We are interested in deploy functionality inside Alfresco.
I have noticed that the newest versions of Alfresco Share are based on Spring Surf.
So we have ruled out WebScripts as an option. Are them old fashioned?
Before start with Spring Surf and in order to be practical: what about extend Alfresco with our own controllers and JSP views?
I’m not familiar with WebScripts or Spring Surf. It could be so interesting to debate the advantages/disadvantages of using these technologies.
I’ll start with some points related to our team which is used to Java programming.
CLASSIC SPRING MVC / JSP VIEW
Advantages
- We are familiar with these techlonogies
- Template hot deployment is possible with JSP. Ok. It’s true that JSP aren’t templates, but they will be our view.
SPRING SURF
Advantages
- Lack of the necessity to know Java programming. Ok but we can program in Java
Disadvantages
- We have to learn a new technology.
- Springsource has it in incubation status. Perhaps we’re going to learn a new technology that won’t achieve success.
- Is there any project adopting this technology apart from Alfresco?
Thanks in advance. Best regards
ATV
Tackling one of the sub-questions: Alfresco WebScripts are built on top of Spring Surf! A Webscript is an implementation of org.springframework.extensions.webscripts.WebScript
With WebScripts, you also have the choice of writing your controller in either Java or JavaScript, which I don't believe SpringMVC offers.
Hopefully someone else can advise you on the rest.
A big disadvantege of SpringSurf is that you need a webscript, usually with a javascript acting as a controller and the javascript API is much less powerfull than Foundation Services API. Of course, you can write a Java backed webscript to gain access to the foundation API, but this is extra work.
An advantage of SpringSurf is that the look & feel usually appeals more to end users due to the old fashioned look of JSF based UI's comparing to the javascript libraries like http://script.aculo.us/ .
Related
I am developing a web application using Spring MVC. Since I am kind of done with the the basic functionality, I was going to add user management. By this I mean that I have to extend the logic of the application to support several users. However being new to Spring MVC I am lost... How and where to add session management? How to change my controllers? Could anyone please suggest a good resourse? Tutorials which I find on the Internet mainly deal with page access by using Spring Security. I need more than that. Thanks in advance!
This tutorial http://www.mkyong.com/spring-security/spring-security-form-login-using-database/ gives a good step by step direction on how to use spring security with a database based on user roles. I am not sure exactly what more you want that needs to be directly addressed in your question. The good thing with spring security is that you don't need to change your controllers. It uses a simple xml configuration and is independent of the platform you use.
I want to develop a pretty standard webproject with all basic functionalities such as landingpage, user registration, login and so on.
Since I'm familiar with Java and Spring, I set up the a project with Spring Roo including DBRE from an MySql database, MVC and Spring security.
Right now I'm wondering how to go on with the UI. I would like integrate a template from twitter-bootstrap and I already downloaded a working example project (no apache tiles structure). I'm not very familiar with Apache tiles and frontend design in general so my question is, what would be the best way to integrate it and bypass the standard CRUD design?
Is it only necessary to design a new default-layout and reuse existing .jspx files? Also is it possible to take the existing bootstrap.jsp template which uses sitemesh from the bootstrap-example as a new template and reuse existing .jspx files?
Reuse is important since there are still entities which will change in future.
Appreciate any help!
I haven't personally used twitter-bootstrap, but I am fairly familiar with the Spring Roo structure.
My first bit of advice would be to just simply not use their UI stuff. Nothing says you have to generated your Controllers with scafolding, which takes the scafolded classes and auto-generates the CRUD methods and UI peices for you. In fact, in my last 4 projects, I did all the UI coding myself (I still used Tiles w/JSPs, and let Roo make all the relavent tiles configs and resource bundles). You can ALWAYS generate a plan Controller and use Roo for everything except the View pieces.
I don't see why you couldn't use the bootstrap.jsp you speak of. The Tiles implementation is done using the TilesViewResolver, I believe, which should be configured in the application_context.xml (or whatever Roo calls the context XML file). Just replace the TileViewResolver setup with something else. I would suggest reading up on Chapter 17.5 Resolving Views in the Spring Reference guide. I think for JSPs you want to use InternalResourceViewResolver.
I am just delving into the spring mvc (or spring roo), from what i have read it appears that spring MVC can be a nightmare to configure. I have to configure XML files, is this the web.xml file??? Or something different?
Is it still a nightmare or has it been improved?
Is there no editor for these XML files? I am using eclipse IDE
Spring roo apparently does spring mvc without XML config worries.
I would love anyone to explain the differences..
Thanks in advance
First Spring MVC is not a nightmare to configure, you just have to know what you are doing.
For that I would suggest you to download Spring IDE, which have a lot of XML editors that make you life easier if you are not experienced with Spring XMLs.
Basicly you have to configure 2 things
Web.xml ( this one is not because of spring it's Java EE, but you
need to include some spring MVC configs in it )
applicationContext.xml( this is where you define what you want from Spring )
servlet-context.xml ( this is also from spring MVC and have some servlet definitions as well as some routing ones)
one you get to know them you will find it easy to configure and very flexible.
One thing to notice Spring and Spring MVC are different things, I advise you to learn both of them.
Also Spring Roo is a code generator, for Cruds, simple things and setup projects it's great but if you need to build a reasonable big app that will need support it's always easier to create everything youself because it's easier to support when you know the code, so use it with care.
I'd add that Spring XML configuration can be as simple as a few lines, with the bulk of work done via annotations. It may not always be preferable to do it that way, but it's an option. Configuration can be divided between mechanisms when it makes sense to do so.
You might want to spend some time with the Spring documentation, at least regarding the components you're using. If you think configuring it is a nightmare, wait until you have to diagnose a problem brought about by magic based on convention without understanding how the underlying framework(s) work.
We are in the phase of evaluating some of the frameworks for portlet development. As of now I know of below 3 options. I would like to know your experiences with them and others
Struts 2
Spring Portlet MVC
Liferay 6.x MVC Framework
Please try to share Pros/Cons in following areas along with what you think is important
Speed of development
Maintenance
Ease of development with Geo Distributed teams
Please suggest any other frameworks which can be used as alternative with some pros/cons
From my point of view, using MVCPortlet and JSPs without Spring-mvc or Struts is suitable enough only for a simple portlet. I would definitely try at least a sample portlet to see how it works if developers haven't done portlets.
The only advantage of using Struts is that the Portal itself is heavily using it because spring-portlet-mvc is relatively new. So that you can learn a lot from variety of examples. Otherwise the technology afaik is dying (regarding portlet development) and if you haven't been working with Struts, the better option for you would be go for spring-portlet. I've been using spring-portlet for more than a year, and I must say that I was amazed how well integrated it is into portlet container and what features are implemented there. You can do practically everything as with spring-mvc (servlet spec), except for some minor support that I found redundant anyway.
Speed of development
an experience developer that knows spring-mvc can create a robust application with only a few spring controllers.
Maintenance
The amount of source code is significantly lesser with spring then struts. Spring-portlet has implemented 268 JSR, so that it saves couple of workarounds.
Ease of development with Geo Distributed teams
I sense you are going for something bigger, so that ask developers about their experience with Spring and Struts and make your choice. Anyway, Liferay is a pretty robust portal solution and to "learn" it and find a way to use it properly is more important issue than how to develop portlets.
Also be interested in developers knowledge of Javascript. If they don't know JS much or you don't have front-end developers, I would probably give a shot to Vaadin or GWT portlets. However Liferay has a very good client-side support and you'll see that a lot of things can be done on client-side in Liferay. JSP tag libraries provides a significant amount of dynamic behavior and Alloy JS framework that is built on top of YUI provides you with a nice environment and it is not hard to use.
EDIT: The comparison of Struts vs. Spring is regarding portlet specification, where (my opinion) struts support is an old Volkswagen and spring is Bentley continental gt :-)
ALSO: The key tool for Liferay portlet development is so called ServiceBuilder, which is a code generator, that generates a significant part of your persistence layer, remote service layer based on domain model and metadata. If you choose to use it, your portlet is automatically Spring based. And I'd recommend to use it, because once you try it, you won't let it go. For instance, to create Ajax calls from client-side to remote services is a question of 2 minutes to set it up and be able to call them and even get the return value. Hibernate setup is fully optimized and ready to use after you run servicebuilder. And much, much more.
It's Really depend on your requirements, since liferay MVCPortlet are just simple sub-classes of the javax.portlet.GenericPortlet, i dont think it's a fair comparison between web framework such as Strut 2 or Spring MVC.
I suggest using Spring MVC or Struts 2 for 168 & 268 JSR portlet if you want cross portlet-container portability or if you have more complex presentation requirements, you should find a list of the pro and cons of the two framework everywhere .
If you requirement are very simple then go with liferay MVCPortlet or even the JSPPortlet.
I have used 2) and 3) but not 1) - I'm not a fan of Struts.
Spring MVC gives you the power of Spring and plugs seamlessly into a Spring back-end as well as allowing the ability to wire to the Liferay Spring services. Provided you use MVC correctly and separate Controller concerns into separate Action classes then this is an extremely scalable and flexible choice and works well when coupled with Liferay.
Liferay's MVCPortlet provides much less in terms of flexibility but when used properly it is still highly scalable and a very useful choice. It also ties in to the Liferay IDE/Liferay Development Studio which provides benefits during development. If you have access to the Liferay Developer training then there is extensive coverage on Day 2.
Overall Spring has the greater benefits but also comes with the larger learning curve and greater risk of doing things incorrectly and hits you harder when done badly. Liferay's MVCPortlets done badly end up looking like vanilla portlets and as such is the lesser evil. Personally I use MVCPortlets for small tasks and Spring MVC for the larger ones.
In both cases 'doing it well' involves correct use of the framwork and annotations.
Liferay also supports Vaardin and have released the new Mail Portlet using it. I haven't used Vaardin but certainly plan on it and have heard good things so far.
From the ease-of-development point, I think the Vaadin is one of the best. The new Liferay IDE 1.2 already includes the Vaadin support making it very easy to start with it.
The same goes for application maintenance and APIs. With Vaadin the application code is simply Java code and that makes it easy to divide the work, and maintain the existing code (OOP benefits).
Already a good number of "add-ons" for Vaadin that demonstrate how the Java code can be "componentized" and development split across the organization(s).
Only downside comes from the fact that the Vaadin libraries are shared with all the Vaadin- portlets in a portal, which means they should use the same Vaadin version to keep the deployment easier.
Anyway, I'd say quite good match for your needs.
What are some of the advantages in adding Spring into a Flex / AIR application? And When would you recommend using Spring?
If you're writing a Flex app with a Java backend, you'll want to use BlazeDS to handle remoting and/or messaging between the client and server. Spring has support for integrating with BlazeDS and making Blaze a little easier to setup and configure. It's also pretty easy to set up BlazeDS on its own, so if you don't want to learn Spring then you should not be afraid to use BlazeDS by itself.
The bulk of what Spring provides is specific to the Java layer but it will help you write better Java applications. In particular it provides a clean way for wiring up application components, simplifies data access using Hibernate and/or JDBC, makes it easy to do aspect-oriented programming and also has a pretty nice security framework (Spring Security). There's a ton that Spring can do and I recommend using Spring for pretty much any Java backend.
Flex is addressing what happens in the UI. You are likely to need some server-side logic to provide the data for the UI. Writing robust, performant, secure server-side logic from scratch is not trivial. Frameworks such as Spring, EJB 3, etc. really do help with that. The learning curve for modern frameworks is not too steep, getting started is barely more that a few extra "annotations" to the code you knew you wanted to write.
Well worth investigating.
The sum total of learning Flex + Spring + also some DB admin is still quite a lot. You may need to keep your ambitions under control, don't try to fly before you are walking comfortably.
Good luck.