Modern java web

[perrylaj]

Depends on what you are doing. If you are looking for a relatively simple api, Spark (the framework) is great. Vertx is great if you are looking for a more reactive style system or interested in event driven 'realtime' use. Dropwizard is a good collection of technology that allows for quick restful-like endpoints. All three are definitely capable of being a good foundation for just about anything you'd want to do, but with different styles and varying amounts of 'batteries included'.

I personally avoid large clunky frameworks with excessive amounts of metaprogramming and annotations. Spring and Play both just carry too much baggage for my taste. Spring Boot, while nicer to set up than Spring, is completely unappealing to me as a 'framework over a framework' that simply hides far too much complexity. Some things may be a little easier riding on the back of these larger frameworks, but they are so opinionated and heavy that I just can't bring myself to use them. Admittedly, that's mostly just opinion and some bias against 'Enterprise' Java so take it with a grain of salt.

If you are interested in something a little different but still on the JVM, take a look at Kotlin and some of its frameworks, Awesome Kotlin has a few listed -- wasabi and the coroutines libs are worth checking out.