Spring roo is new framework and I found it very interesting. I have been working on web application for last 3-4 years and Always found JSPs are hard to maintain across teams if everyone is not disciplined enough about separation of markup and serverside logic. I have used JackBe/BackBase in last projects and I enjoyed xml templates working as views. This was much better than JSPs. But I couldnt automate webtests through selenium for backbase.
I would be surely using Spring MVC (-view), Hibernate on the backend. I found Wicket as good alternative. Have you used wicket along with Spring and what was your experience?
First, Spring Roo is a code generator tool (similar to Grails commands system):
(source: springsource.com)
Second, Spring Roo applications currently use Spring Web Flow for the view and Spring for the glue.
So, while you can compare (Spring Web Flow + Spring) and (Wicket + Spring), the later combo doesn't offer anything comparable to Roo out of the box (maybe AppFuse or AppFuse Light but you didn't mention them and they are third-party projects).
In other words, I don't think that "Spring Roo vs (Wicket and Spring)" makes sense.
Our current project uses Spring and Wicket, we have always used Spring but switched to Wicket a year ago. Few advices:
Get the "Wicket in Action" book.
The user mailing list is very helpful.
Make sure you understand Wicket's programming model especially the session serialization related stuff (the book does not help enough in this area IMHO).
Wicket is good at building stateful pages, it requires more work to build stateless pages.
There are some good UI widgets available like inmethod DataGrid.
It's easy to inject your Spring beans in your pages or components.
Spring Roo is still in beta (1.0 M2), so it may be a little early.
We also considered Tapestry 5 but we thought it was a bit young a year ago.
Spring Roo 1.0.0 (GA) has now been released, complete with around 100 pages of documentation.
If you're wondering about what Roo is and why use it, I recommend you take a read of the introductory chapter of the reference guide. It covers this and more.
#Antony, GWT support is a major priority for Roo and something I am currently working on. Expect to see some interesting integration in the very near future.
I was at the SpringOne conference in Amsterdam earlier this year when they announced Roo. My impression (and that of my colleague who was there) was that Roo was good if you were generating a web-based CRUD application every few weeks - they pitched it as the pure Java version of Grails (which is RoR for Java).
Didn't look interesting for anyone else - but that's just an opinion.
I've seen a demo of Roo a few months ago. It looks a lot like Grails (another spring technology), except that instead of creating artifacts for the Groovy language, you create them for Java.
Still it enforces good practice and makes you apply the MVC pattern in a clean way.
Personally, the demo didn't make me change my preferred toolkit (Grails), but that's because I can achieve faster results with Groovy (parsing xml for example is much more "painful" in Java than in Groovy). Also, with Grails I can see the changes I make instantly without having to recompile my entire project and relaunch the application each time I want to see the results.
Last but not least, in Grails you have tons of plugins to make fancy Ajax websites (ZK for example, if you want to avoid Javascript, but there are plugins for GWT, Yahoo, Dojo, etc...).
So, if you don't want to learn Groovy (which is not too difficult if you already know Java), Roo is the way to go to build clean web projects with all the power of Hibernate and Spring.
I hope this helps...
Why use Roo when one can build something w/ GWT and end up w/ a far richer better outcome and without the constraints of Roo and its architecture. Spring Web Flow is yesterdays technology.
It completely depends on what your requirements are. If it's a small site then Component Oriented frameworks like GWT or Wicket are a must as they make things really easy.
How soon with Roo support GWT? I think that the use of GWT by Roo makes it a huge win for GWT and Roo!
Roo and GWT are available today in pre-release form. In my opinion, definitely not ready for prime time.
Related
I have used spring 3 but not sure what is the equivalent of a grails plugin. And now need to suggest a stack for a new app. Looking at grails it seems to be great for making data base models and has a lot of plugins. but it seems its more expensive at runtime.
So my question is that is there a equal or better repo of spring for every little thing you can need like facebook login or other social actions, ajax upload, joda etc or is this what we call a dependency and some code from a blog/ stack?
Is there any repo of small reusable code like we have on grails plug ins for regular spring mvc projects?
I know that your question is about pure spring alternatives, but I would honestly recommend just using Grails. I've done projects in both stacks. If you want to get rid of the configuration headaches and get started quickly on a new project while staying within the Spring stack, it is the way to go. It is a great framework and some of my employers have many production Grails applications supporting thousands of customers.
You can also upgrade to Grails 3 when it comes out next year and take advantage of the leaner code they provide in it due to Spring Boot!
You may need to check into Spring Boot. It does not provide a full stack framework, but it is hiding much of the extra coding you may need to do for a spring application. There are some new projects that enable you to get the benefits of spring boot. Check the below projects:
1- http://jhipster.github.io/ , use it if you need to make SPA with AngularJS also have commands to generate Entities for you using Yeoman
2- http://lightadmin.org/ , use it if you want to create CRUD pages based on Spring Data Entities
For both, you may have to use Spring Data and maybe even Spring Data REST. These may be helpful too.
I'm trying my best to use ROO, the problem is all I worked before was normal GWT apps created with eclipse and gwt designer. Also, I do know how Spring and JPA work, how DAOs are simplified with the use of aspects, and how to data is obtained from the DB.
When things go crazy is when I try the gwt setup feature... it implements one or 2 patterns and all I can say after is "where I place my .java from my .client package now?" feels like a maze with the mouse trying to get the cheese from the DB
So, how do I work with these patterns now? or, is it possible to drop roo at a point where I could just use the Entities and keeping it like a normal GWT app with client/server packages?
Roo does not lock you in to using it so you can drop it at any stage, e.g. there is nothing stopping you from just making your entities with Roo and then not running the "gwt setup" step and just doing that stuff yourself.
However, I would not recommend that. The amount of GWT boilerplate code that Roo does for you is very beneficial. Another important point is that the GWT pattern Roo uses is MVP (Model View Presenter) which is considered the "best practice" GWT pattern. The first time I used Roo for a GWT app I knew nothing about MVP and I actually used Roo along with the GWT docs to learn concepts like MVP and UIBinder and it has proved very beneficial.
So I would suggest that you read up on the general MVP concepts and see how Roo has used these in the project that it created for you. A good place to start is here.
If you have any more specific questions to ask around why Roo has done certain things during the GWT setup then feel free to ask me, I should be able to help you out since I have put together quite a complicated GWT - Roo app quite recently.
The GWT plugin for Roo was developed by google employees, that's why the generated application uses the best practices recommended by google. If you want to learn more about the generated application and how to customize it I recommend http://gwtsts.blogspot.com/ .
You can also ignore Roo and build your own GWT application. You can also remove Roo easilly (see this refcard http://refcardz.dzone.com/refcardz/spring-roo-open-source-rapid)
I am just starting to learn about spring and was looking at the difference between Spring 3.0 and Spring 2.5.
Initially i was following this tutorial http://static.springsource.org/docs/Spring-MVC-step-by-step/index.html which is a step by step guide to developing a Spring MVC application. It is based on Spring 2.5 and i notice there are quite a few differences with Spring 3.0. I tried to find the equivalent tutorial that is based on 3.0 but couldnt find it.
The difference i notice with 3.0 is that there is a lot of use of annotations and a lot of things is done for you in the background. I am sure this is a good thing but i am wondering for the purpose of learning the framework should i continue with 2.5 so that i can understand what goes on behind the scenes before i use spring 3.0?
Please also if you can recommend a spring book that is suitable for a beginner i would appreciate it.
Thanks
I'd recommend to always use the latest version of a framework. Especially if you're starting on a new project. There are always (well usually) tons of improvements, and simplifications, and migrating to the latest version later may be a pain.
Spring has a great user manual (see http://static.springsource.org/spring/docs/3.0.x/spring-framework-reference/html/), and IMHO a book doesn't have an added value in this case. I found the Spring user manual always easy to read and understand, so don't get intimidated. I think this is definitely the best starting for beginners as well. You don't have to read it all. Only the sections of interest!
Note that Spring 3.x contains many other improvements such as SpEL (Spring Expression Language), improved web support (you already saw that), REST support, and more.
... should i continue with 2.5 so that i can understand what goes on behind the scenes before i use spring 3.0?
That's really up to you to decide, but if you are going down the Spring 3.x annotation-based route, it is not clear that you >>need<< to understand what is happening behind the scenes. Especially for run-of-the-mill applications.
I was not aware of the purchase of Spring by VMware. Do you think this might affect the open source aspect of Spring in that it might not be open source anymore?
First, the SpringFramework guys are thoroughly committed to open source (from what I can see). So a change would probably entail lots of developers leaving.
Second, most of the people who use Spring do so because it is open source, so a change would risk a major migration of (paying) customers away.
Third, turning Spring into a closed source product would be a politically awful move for VMware, and would likely have fallout for other VMware product lines.
Finally, and most importantly for people committed to using Spring: there is no way that the VMware could legally "undo" the open sourcing of current Spring releases. The best they could do would be say that Spring 4.0 etc was closed source. Anyone who wanted to would be free to continue distributing and using SpringFramework 1.0.x, 2.0.x, 2.5.x, 3.0.x and all associated open sourced technologies. And anyone would be free to create a "fork" of any of them to continue Spring open source development. The only possible issue would be the use of trademarks, and that is easily worked around.
Add that all up, and (IMO) there is nothing to worry about.
"Spring in Action", "Pro Spring", and "Spring Recipes" are the three that I'd recommend to anyone.
If you've never used Spring, I'd say that learning either one will suit your purposes. The majority of Spring 2.5 carries over to 3.0, so it's not wasted.
The books and tutorials haven't kept up with Spring 3.0. Another change between versions was the purchase of Spring by VMWare. They've separated paid support from open source, so it's hard to tell what the future will be for non-paying customers.
Scenario: A fairly mature project uses Struts2 and Spring and Hibernate. I say mature because it has been going on a for a while and there are many struts actions written already.
Suppose we wanted to remove Struts2 from the project and instead depend entirely on Spring MVC without rewriting the entire project.
Is this something that should even be considered?
Are there any migration guides out there?
Has anyone done this before and would like to warn me against it?
If it ain't broke, don't fix it. You have very likely better things to do than a migration that won't add any value to the product (and will certainly introduce some bugs). If I were the business, I would never buy such a migration (with close to zero benefits).
I have to ask: What advantages do you see with Spring MVC that aren't being fulfilled by Struts 2?
If there's not at least a handful of "smoking hot" features, or the amount of time saved is more than enough to overcome the time taken for the migration in the first place then it's probably best to stick with what you have.
You can do it slowly. Struts is a MVC framework. The rest of your application (business and data tiers) are classes which can be invoked by action classes. Struts is a plugin based architecture and it is easy for you to define a plugin in struts configuration file.
Take a look at this link. This may help.
With Struts2 security vulnerabilities being exposed and reported often, this task takes on more importance.
What are the advantages/disadvantages of Seam over Spring? Why would I use Seam in lieu of Spring?
Is there anything that can be done in Seam that can't be done in Spring? Anything in Spring that can't be done in Seam?
What about stateful/stateless architecture? I am a Spring user, so I am biased, naturally.
Why Spring?
Cleaner code
Streamlined application configuration
Nice integration with popular open source products
First class AOP support
Enterprise-scale security: Acegi
Highly flexible MVC
Abstracted data access (JDBC is OK)
Enterprise Java without EJB
Testing is easy
Why Seam?
Merge Java EE 5 standards (EJB 3.0, JPA, JSF, Annotation) seamlessly
Stateful by design
Bijection
Integrated Ajax (ICEfaces and Ajax4JSF)
Business process integration (jBPM)
Business rules integration (Drools)
Workspace management
Deliver complete stack (from JBoss & RedHat)
Seam Text and EL enhancements
Probably will be a standard (JSR-299: Web Beans)
From Framework Deathmatch: Spring vs Seam. Thomas Wiradikusuma (Spring). Joshua Jackson (Seam). Java User Group Indonesia. JaMU 07.03. March 17, 2007 power point presentation here
although seam does have many advantages over spring, there is a magic word that really is worth paying attention to and this is PERFORMANCE!!! if you are not worried about performance issues I would go with seam. From the other hand if you want your application to be as fast as possible and your hardware is limited I would use spring. I am not saying that you can not develop fast applications with seam, but in order to do this you really need to know what you are doing. I have used both of them (i am not a guru in any of them) and what I found out is that although spring needs more effort to build what you want, at the end the result is more flexible and is performing better. I do not think that there is something that can be done in one framework that it can not be done in the other, saying that, remember that I am not an expert to any of those.
Seam will give you a pretty, ah, seamless, integration between the components that make up the seam stack. All very nice as long you keep within that stack, and within the seam model and foing things. It all starts to look a little less convincing as soon as you start doing something unusual, though.
If it's not too much of a generalisation, Seam is very "microsofty" in that regard. This isn't a bad thing, it's just a stylistic thing. Spring is more open-ended and takes more effort to get going, but it's ultimately more flexible, and a lot more open.
You can use Spring and Seam together - Spring for backend components, Seam for enhancement of web layer (JSF/GWT/Wicket) and other stuff. Seam offers a lot of Spring functionality (i.e. IoC container, transaction managment) - in your project you can decide - witch implementation to use.
More details on integrating Seam with Spring - "Seam in Action - free bonus chapter"
Let's compare the two.
What is common?
Both are open source, follow MVC architecture and has a servlet based front controller.
Advantages of Spring MVC
Extension of Struts.
View can be developed using JSP and HTML. You can also plugin other's like PHP or velocity.
Has large number of controllers predefined.
Integrated out of the box with Spring framework.
Advantages of Seam
Extension of JSF
View can be developed using JSF component library. There are large number of vendors to choose from.
Integrates JPA entities with Web layer
Annotation based validation
Integrates with EJB 3.0
Out the box jBPM support which provides process flow definitions.
Integrates with Drools where you can define web layer business rules.
Good community support.
Conclusion
Since Seam is built on JSF, it has large number of UI Component libraries to pick from. It reuses Java EE stack better. It has lot of interesting modules integrated beforehand.
Spring MVC is built on top of Struts and Spring, so it will reuse Spring framework stack far better than others. But the view is built using JSP, so we have to rely on JSP tag library vendors to build rich components.
Seam framework would be a better choice as Spring framework is anyway extensible enough to be leveraged by Seam.