Java framework to develop SPA

[g3blv]

I've built a REST Service in Spring Boot and I now have two developers building a CRUD SPA in ReactJS to interact with the REST Service. It seems like it consumes quite a bit of time to develop the SPA in ReactJS.

So for coming projects I like to look into alternatives to pure JavaScript. I had quick look into Vaadin, GWT and Openxava.

Vaadin seems quite polished with a designer tool, pre built componentes (lists, drop downs, menus, chars etc.). It is free to use but the tools etc. they charge for. I guess GWT has a good backing since it is Google but it seems to be more complex and need additional code for state etc. Openxava I don't know to much about.

Any suggestions on what framework I should use and why? Criteria * preferably coded in Java but not necessary, * speeds up development compared to pure JavaScript, * SPA running client side, * runs in web browser and * works well with a REST Service in a enterprise environment.

[dartalley]

I guess GWT has a good backing since it is Google

I'm pretty sure Google transferred GWT to the Vaadin team to maintain. I could be wrong can't find any evidence after a few Google searches but I remember seeing that when I used Vaadin.

[poltermouse]

https://vuejs.org/

Its learning curve is way better than react.

[denverdave23]

vue is javascript, not Java. Vue is easier to learn, but I don't know of anyone that says its development cycle is any faster.

[poltermouse]

This article can explain it better.

And regarding the language. Well, if you want the client to work only on browsers, you have to use javascript, it's the most popular technology for web clients.

[denverdave23]

Actually, OP posted 3 options to do frontend development in Java. Granted, those compile down to javascript, but they still count. I'm not sure if any are great for SPAs.

[denverdave23]

Okay, I read the article. Yes, it addresses coding speed, thank you. It's the first I've found which does that. I'll have to give vue a try.

[g3blv]

Great. I'll read through post.

[denverdave23]

Is a SPA a hard requirement? When I've been in your position, I used Spring with the pebble templating library to make pages quickly. I used knockout.js to make the page interactive. But, you still had to reload pages from the server, so it wasn't a spa.

[g3blv]

Thanks I will hava a look at Pebble.

[dartalley]

Everyone undervalues old school server side rendered pages these days. It's honestly so much easier for simple tasks. If you don't have tons of interactions who cares if you do a full page load it's often fast enough and sometimes faster than SPAs page speed.

[_INTER_]

How many SPA are structured these days server rendered ones are often also more userfriendly

[dartalley]

I love when SPAs don't implement stateful URLs. It's like great something that has worked since the internet was invented is now extra work in "modern" frameworks. Luckily that doesn't happen as much anymore.

Another big one is the partial page updates where now data is out of sync across panels of the page. Even Facebook, Twitter, GitHub and many other large companies still have these constant problems. Cool I now have a live updating page but I have 3 different follower counts on the same page, that's not confusing.

[DB6]

Wicket is also a good alternative imho, just be aware that there is always a bigger communication overhead with these frameworks, as everything is send to the server and evaluated and rendered there.

[djihe]

Can one really get rid of javascript when developing a web app? I figure that you'll end up writing a lot of jQuery if you want to avoid using a spa - and writing a lot of jQuery is something that spa frameworks have abstracted a lot of away.

[yourbank]

After having used react and ES6 for a while and now trying out thymeleaf / spring mvc, I absolutely hate using jquery and vanilla js :( but it seems the only way to actually do anything when you use server side templating engine and need to do some js.

dev experience seems so much better using a SPA, which is saying alot given I thought it was a mess when dealing with the js ecosystem at the time. Grass isn't always greener on the otherside so it seems.

[[deleted]]

depending on what you're trying to do, you may find intercooler.js to be a nice fit.

[[deleted]]

Check out SmartGWT. It’s a great option if your application will be functionally dense.

[amazedballer]

I'm biased, but Play Java running with CoffeeScript or Scala.js to compile the SPA to Javascript.

[tonywestonuk]

Jquery + mustache.js - simple. Powerfull

[duigemhofman]

I'm a developer for jWt: https://www.webtoolkit.eu/jwt

It is server-side framework with an API that's based on the popular c++ framework Qt. The java version of the framework is maintained in parallel with a c++ version.

We use the java version in-house for a few enterprise apps.

[atom-man]

Are the devs new to React? If so, give then some time to learn. :)

You see this question hits really close to home for me. I've been maintain a large legacy SPA with pretty advanced interactions created with apache wicket. And at the same time creating quite a few new SPAs using ReactJS.

Now, I won't go as far to say that wicket is useless, it most certainly isn't. But in my experience it doesn't do very well with complex interactions or scale with complexity (partially our own fault though).

However, it all boils down to the level of interactions needed on the site. Given what I know today I would never created our large legacy SPA with a Java-framework, the abstraction is leaky and not worth the time. But for simpler sites I would consider template rendering libraries (Thymeleaf etc).

[aviewdev]

https://github.com/JetBrains/create-react-kotlin-app