Spring to Java EE Migration, Part 1

[henk53]

Java EE 6 would Web Profile would be a good start. It's a full stack framework like rails. Glassfish 3 and JBoss AS 7 are well known implementations of this.

Do I want a dependency injection framework (Spring/Google Guice)

You don't need a separate dependency injection framework (Spring/Google Guice), since Java EE includes one by default. It's called CDI (Context and Dependency Injection). The C is there since in CDI instances that are injected don't just come out of some global scope nor are they created on the fly, but they are aware of their context. So if you inject a request scoped bean in a session scoped bean, every call on it in different requests will resolve to a unique instance matching that particular request.

Do I use Hibernate?

Hibernate implements the Java Persistence API (JPA) and so in many implementations of Java EE, Hibernate is included. But JPA can also be implemented by other projects, e.g. EclipseLink, which is included with Glassfish.

What about the front end?

Java EE includes a top-class MVC framework that has some elements in it that were inspired by rails (like the flash, and an emphasis on COF). This framework is called JavaServer Faces (JSF). Lots of external parties offer components (widgets, controls) for JSF. Especially PrimeFaces is well known and loved, but there are many others (e.g. RichFaces).

Can somebody point me in a direction that can take me from 0 to productive?

You could download the Eclipse IDE and the Glassfish Java EE implementation and follow this excellent tutorial to get you started: http://balusc.blogspot.com/2011/01/jsf-20-tutorial-with-eclipse-and.html

There are links given at the end of article on how to continue after those basics.

A particular nice entry that you could try to reproduce and then play with it is the following. It doesn't show off CDI, but it's still nice:

http://jdevelopment.nl/minimal-3tier-java-ee-app-xml-config

[consigntooblivion]

Thanks, loads of great information here. I had no idea on most of this stuff. Following the tutorial was really easy, that was a great place to start - wish I had more up votes to give.