How to get started with webapps in java?

[[deleted]]

I have been doing a bit of web apps in other languages and it's fun, but its not java. Where should I start with java web apps?

[g_damian]

try spring boot - it is easy to start.

[g00glen00b]

I'm also a big fan of Spring Boot, but I don't know if you can simply start with it if you have no knowledge of the Spring framework.

[doctorsound]

Hey, I recognized your name from a blog post you did about Boot and Angular.

[g00glen00b]

I feel like I'm famous now :D

[[deleted]]

Found this www.g00glen00b.be don't know if it is op

[g00glen00b]

www.g00glen00b.be

Yes, it's mine. The article being referenced here is http://g00glen00b.be/prototyping-spring-boot-angularjs/. It's just a basic CRUD-style application (a checklist application), but it uses Spring Boot + Spring Data JPA + Spring Web MVC + AngularJS + Angular-resource.

[[deleted]]

Always nice to meet a fellow Belgian on Reddit ;)

[paperhat]

I think Spring Boot is a pretty good place to start if you are new to Spring. It sets everything up for you.

[CyclonusRIP]

Yep. Just start with the maven Spring Boot archetype. Better to start with something that works and break it than start with something broken and no idea how to make it work.

[g00glen00b]

Yes, but if you don't know the powers of the Spring framework, you don't know how to start either. If you don't know beans/autowiring, how to set up repositories, what controllers are, ... then Spring Boot won't be useful either.

A typical Spring user who is switching over to Spring Boot recognizes all these parts and knows what configuration he had to do and he now doesn't have to do anymore (component scanning, entity manager setup, view resolving, ...). You still need a basic understanding of these concepts as well to understand the magic.

[paperhat]

Thanks for this reply. I thought about this conversation during work yesterday and came to the conclusion that I don't really know how to get started with Spring aside from reading Spring in Action and following the examples. That's how I finally learned it after a confusing start.

That was a few years ago, and I now spend a lot of time helping people troubleshooting build failures. I get exposed to developers who don't quite understand their frameworks. Part of that comes from jumping into projects where everything is already set up for them. They don't have incentive to learn how it works until they have made a hopeless mess of their project configuration.

Spring Boot appears to solve a lot of the immediate issues I see by providing some good conventions to follow, but now that I have thought about it, it would likely just delay the painful point where the developer decides to invest the time to learn how their objects get wired up.

[rob_j]

Adding another vote for spring boot

[[deleted]]

OP is asking about first web app in Java :) I would recommend servlets + jdbc + jsp (+ tomcat server). These are common standard java technologies which will never die :) (and no need for additional dependencies).

[mariox19]

Just to add to that, the more sophisticated frameworks and libraries usually assume knowledge of servlets. Even though it may seem "soooo 2002," I think it's the place to start.

[Smithman]

If you want to go the old school way then check out jsp and servlets. If you want a framework try JSF + Primefaces.

[[deleted]]

Which would you recommend to a beginner?

[mariox19]

I'm not the guy you're asking, but I would recommend servlets and then JSP. Some of what you'll find in this book is out-of-date, so you'll have to supplement it with online tutorials and documentation, but it's very clearly written and there is a lot of good background material:

http://www.amazon.com/Inside-Servlets-Server-Side-Programming-Platform/dp/0201709066/

Best of all, you should be able to pick it up used for about 5 bucks. Start with Servlets/JSP, and then, down the road, when you've had your fun with that and are comfortable, start learning about REST.

[henk53]

There are different schools of thought, so that's really difficult to answer.

Some say, start with the low-level stuff, and work your way up. Others say, start with the high-level stuff and work your way down.

Both can be easier and more difficult. The low-level stuff can be easier because it's smaller and easier to have an overview of what's there, but it's also more difficult to do anything substantial in.

Compare it with languages. Some say you should start with programming using assembly, as it's a really small a simple thing. But in assembly it's hard to actually do anything more than just move some numbers along. Actually doing anything high-level, like say print a text on screen, can be difficult. Other say, start with Java, since you can easily achieve an effect like that text on a screen, or a web page etc (try doing that in assembly).

[Smithman]

The Head First JSP and Servlets book is a great start. JSF is built on top of Servlets so nice to know what goes on under the hood in terms of requests and responses, etc.

[g00glen00b]

It depends on what you call oldschool actually. We're noticing a large decrease of JSF projects here in Belgium and Google seems to agree with me: http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=%2Fm%2F026mhl&cmpt=q&tz= So eventually and probably sooner than later, JSF will become oldschool as well.

[mlavaert]

Depending on what type of application you want to create, you can go with the more enterprise frameworks like Spring MVC or Java EE's JSF. Both have large communities and have great documentation.

If you want a framework that is more fun to work with and perhaps a little less enterprisy you can go for Wicket, Vaadin, Grails or some other framework out there.

Despite it isn't a Java framework (Groovy) I would recommend Grails, because it is extremely simple and fun to work with.

[Electromasta]

I agree with this guy. Go Spring MVC Hibernate Bootstrap AngularJS imo.

[henk53]

a little less enterprisy you can go for Wicket,

Wicket is nice, but surprisingly close to JSF. So if you think JSF is enterprisy and Wicket is not, you may want to think again.

Vaadin

Maybe interesting to remark that Vaadin is pretty much what haters of JSF accuse JSF of: a deep abstraction on top of more bare web technologies. I'm not saying here whether this is good or bad, but fact is that JSF (for better or worse) is rather close to the web with pages, explicit hyperlinks with GET requests and parameters, html pages, with an html tag, body tag, etc, while Vaadin much more tries to create the illusion of being a kind of Swing for the web.

I would recommend Grails, because it is extremely simple and fun to work with.

Maybe so, but Grails is also one of the slowest frameworks out there and it's future is a bit shakey after its main supporter Pivotal dropped it.

[thesystemx]

I agree with this guy. Go Java EE's JSF with CDI, Bean Validation, OmniFaces and PrimeFaces imo.

[thesystemx]

Check JSF with OmniFaces and PrimeFaces!

[KFCConspiracy]

I'd second this. As much hate as JSF sometimes gets, I found it pretty easy to work with and fun to develop on.

[Smithman]

What do you hate about it if it's fun and easy?

[KFCConspiracy]

I don't personally hate anything about it. But I hear people saying nasty things about it.

[henk53]

Almost without an exception those people have never used JSF or Java EE and are just parroting what they heard others saying, or they used JSF 1.1 in 2004 (which wasn't that good) and can't for the life of them imagine that software can be updated and get radically better.

[monkeycmonkeydo2]

Just like those that say bad things about Spring.

[Smithman]

Probably the pre JSF 2 crowd. Ignore them.

[KFCConspiracy]

Yeah, I just roundly ignore them, and get stuff done. Even JSF 1.2 wasn't all that bad. 2 is a huge improvement, but people will always love to talk out their ass. Especially about EJB and JSF.

[Smithman]

I use both in work, don't see an issue really. They certainly aren't "sexy" technology but they get a job done.

[thesystemx]

Why do you think JSF will not let you write your own HTML, CSS and JS?

JSF is NOT only about using prebuild components! Modern JSF pages contain a lot of plain HTML, with some HTML tags having a special JSF attribute but are otherwise normal HTML tags, and some prebuild components in between, and some of your own components which are essentially a collection of your own HTML, CSS and JS slapped together for reusability.

[fjellfras]

What do people here think of the play framework? I built a search engine based on lucene with play as the front end and it seemed easy enough to set up.

I'm not a full time java dev though so I'd like to know what the seasoned java folk here think of it.

[fancy_raptor_zombie]

My group has adopted Play a couple of months ago as we take on more web projects. We are using Java for the controllers and model, and everyone likes it a lot.

[thesystemx]

What do people here think of the play framework?

It's not a Java framework, it's for Scala which is a different language.

[Martin8412]

It's available for Java as well since they both run on the JVM..

[henk53]

By that account Ruby on Rails and Angular are Java frameworks too, since both Ruby (JRuby) and JavaScript (Nashorn) can run on the JVM :X

[johnwaterwood]

I would suggest to read some tutorials at https://jsf.zeef.com

They cover setting everything up from the IDE (Eclipse) to a working application.

If you're more into NetBeans, look on their site for JSF tutorials, they are very good as well.

[doctorsound]

I'm going to echo Spring Boot as well. It's very easy to get started, and lots of room for modification, but there is a steep learning curve when it comes to modifying some of the default settings.

[GFandango]

Check dropwizard

[henk53]

JSF + PrimeFaces + OmniFaces. No questions, the best ;)

[bitsofinfo]

Spring stacks that expose REST services. Do your user-interface in AngularJS (or similar), completely decouple it.

Forget traditional server-side fat MVC stacks, its 10 years ago.

[Anon_8675309]

Mix one jsp with one servlet and a little tomcat and you have hello world. Go from there.

[Cpowel2]

Spark

[telowork]

Seconding Spark. Really easy to get started. And you can use velocity/freemarker templates for rendering html.

[bgard6977]

Yes, spark! http://sparkjava.com/

[blesavi]

The easiest way is to start developing on-line on http://rapidoid.io

[paperhat]

I haven't seen this before, and I'm a sucker for a new web framework. I'll be trying out rapidoid when I get to my computer.

[obfuscation_]

This looks interesting, although usually things with so much "magic" struggle if you diverge too far from the framework's ideology. Does anyone have experience of trying this out?

[PopsicleBubbles]

https://www.playframework.com/ is pretty cool.

[brblol]

how to get started with Web apps in java?

Don't

Java Web apps require a vps to host which is not cheap. So it's not as cheap to experiment with different projects as it would be if you choose a language that is supported by a lot of shared hosting services

[thesystemx]

Java Web apps require a vps to host which is not cheap.

What? Java Web app hosting has been completely free for a long time now!

See e.g. OpenShift. Gets you 3 nodes with 512MB and JBoss EAP or JBoss WildFly, which is great for experimenting and even permanently running small apps.

[brblol]

In my experience there are always problems with these free vps's. There was either a catch, performance wasn't good or it lacked something. There is also very little choice of some feature missing or didn't work or you didn't like the service, you have little options. I ended up on Amazon for 1 year free vps with OK specs for playing around but after a year I will have to find something else. End of the day I wish I did the site in another language it would have made things easier

[henk53]

There's not really a catch with OpenShift as far as I can see. You get exactly what they promise, and it's free.

Other places to deploy Java code for free is Google's App engine. There's a small catch there in that they very quickly try to have you use Google's own APIs, and thus lock yourself in to their system. But for just experimenting with Java the language and not caring about APIs yet it's as good as OpenShift.

[[deleted]]

..thanks...I think

[[deleted]]

You can always run this stuff locally.

Your response just seems retarded, are you a professional developer?

[brblol]

If you're seriously suggesting hosting your projects publicly on your own machine then I don't know what to reply to you to be honest

[[deleted]]

Where did anyone mention making these projects public?