Comparing Java Web Frameworks

Comparing Web Frameworks Struts, Spring MVC, WebWork, Tapestry & JSF

Introductions

Your experience with webapps? Your experience with J2EE? What do you want to get from this session? Experience with Ant, Tomcat, Hibernate, Spring? Web Framework Experience: Struts, Spring MVC, WebWork, Tapestry, JSF Others: Wicket, Ruby on Rails?

Anyone used AppFuse or Equinox?

Who is Matt Raible?

Father, Husband, Open Source Practice Leader Developing websites since 1994 - Developing J2EE webapps since 1999 Committer on several open source projects: AppFuse, Roller Weblogger, XDoclet, Struts Menu, Display Tag J2EE 5.0 and JSF 1.2 Expert Group Member Author: Spring Live (SourceBeat) and contributor to Pro JSP (Apress)

J2EE 5.0 and JSF 1.2 Expert Group Member

Why are you all here today?

Because Struts sucks?

My Experience

Struts: used since June 2001 - same time 1.0 was released. Spring MVC: used since January 2004 - before 1.0 was released. WebWork: used since July 2004. Tapestry: used since July 2004. JSF: used since July 2004 - both Sun’s RI and MyFaces.

Meet the Candidates

Struts

Pros: The “Standard” - lots of Struts jobs Lots of information and examples HTML tag library is one of the best Cons: ActionForms - they’re a pain Can’t unit test - StrutsTestCase only does integration Project has been rumored as “dead”

Struts Action

public class UserAction extends DispatchAction { private UserManager mgr = null;

public void setUserManager(UserManager userManager) { this.mgr = userManager; }

public ActionForward delete(ActionMapping mapping, ActionForm form, HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse response) throws Exception { DynaActionForm userForm = (DynaActionForm) form; User user = (User) userForm.get("user");

mgr.removeUser(request.getParameter("user.id"));

ActionMessages messages = new ActionMessages(); messages.add(ActionMessages.GLOBAL_MESSAGE, new ActionMessage("user.deleted", user.getFullName()));

saveMessages(request.getSession(), messages);

return mapping.findForward("users"); }

Struts Action

public class UserAction extends DispatchAction { private UserManager mgr = null;

public void setUserManager(UserManager userManager) { this.mgr = userManager; }

mgr.removeUser(request.getParameter("user.id"));

ActionMessages messages = new ActionMessages(); messages.add(ActionMessages.GLOBAL_MESSAGE, new ActionMessage("user.deleted", user.getFullName()));

saveMessages(request.getSession(), messages);

return mapping.findForward("users"); }

Struts Action

public class UserAction extends DispatchAction { private UserManager mgr = null;

public void setUserManager(UserManager userManager) { this.mgr = userManager; }

mgr.removeUser(request.getParameter("user.id"));

ActionMessages messages = new ActionMessages(); messages.add(ActionMessages.GLOBAL_MESSAGE, new ActionMessage("user.deleted", user.getFullName()));

saveMessages(request.getSession(), messages);

return mapping.findForward("users"); }

Display Tag

Struts: userForm.jsp

:
:
:	"/> [${datePattern}]

Spring MVC

Spring MVC (Continued)

Pros: Lifecyle for overriding binding, validation, etc. Integrates with many view options seamlessly: JSP/JSTL, Tiles, Velocity, FreeMarker, Excel, XSL, PDF Inversion of Control makes it easy to test Cons: Conﬁguration intensive - lots of XML Requires writing lots of code in JSPs Almost too ﬂexible - no common parent Controller

Spring Controller

public class UserController implements Controller { private final Log log = LogFactory.getLog(UserController.class); private UserManager mgr = null;

public void setUserManager(UserManager userManager) { this.mgr = userManager; }

public ModelAndView handleRequest(HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse response) throws Exception { if (log.isDebugEnabled()) { log.debug("entering 'handleRequest' method..."); }

return new ModelAndView("userList", "users", mgr.getUsers()); } }

Spring Controller

public class UserController implements Controller { private final Log log = LogFactory.getLog(UserController.class); private UserManager mgr = null;

public void setUserManager(UserManager userManager) { this.mgr = userManager; }

public ModelAndView handleRequest(HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse response) throws Exception { if (log.isDebugEnabled()) { log.debug("entering 'handleRequest' method..."); }

return new ModelAndView("userList", "users", mgr.getUsers()); } }

Spring: userForm.jsp

" onsubmit="return validateUser(this)" name="userForm">

:
:
:	"/> [${datePattern}]

Spring: userForm.jsp

" onsubmit="return validateUser(this)" name="userForm">

:	${status.errorMessage}

Spring Web Flow

WebWork

WebWork (Continued)

Architecture: With Struts and Spring - I felt overwhelmed whenever I dived into the code and tried to ﬁx or extend. With WebWork/ XWork - it was easy to ﬁnd how stu worked. Not bound to the Servlet API is not much of an advantage in my book.

Pros: Simple architecture - easy to extend Tag Library is easy to customize - backed by Velocity Interceptors are pretty slick Cons: Small Community Documentation only recently written, few examples Client-side validation immature

WebWork Action

public class UserAction extends ActionSupport { private UserManager mgr; private User user; private String id;

public void setUserManager(UserManager userManager) { this.mgr = userManager; }

public void setId(String id) { this.id = id; }

public User getUser() { return user; }

public String edit() { // check for an add if (id != null) { user = mgr.getUser(id); } else { user = new User(); } return SUCCESS; }

WebWork: userForm.jsp

OGNL

Tapestry

Tapestry (Continued)

User community seems almost cultish - everyone that uses it loves it Seems like the WebWork users last year No one has heard of it - tough for jobs Ugly URLs - dicult for integrating container-managed authentication (patch exists)

Pros: Very productive once you learn it Templates are HTML - great for designers Healthy and smart user community Cons: Documentation very conceptual, rather than pragmatic Steep learning curve - very few examples Long release cycles - major upgrades every year

Tapestry Page

public abstract class UserForm extends BasePage {

public abstract UserManager getUserManager(); public abstract void setUserManager(UserManager manager);

public abstract void setUser(User user); public abstract User getUser();

public void save(IRequestCycle cycle) { if (log.isDebugEnabled()) { log.debug("entered 'save' method"); }

getUserManager().saveUser(getUser());

UserList nextPage = (UserList) cycle.getPage("users"); nextPage.setMessage(format("user.saved", getUser().getFullName())); throw new PageRedirectException(nextPage); }

Tapestry: userForm.html

:	${status.errorMessage}
:	java.util.Date) ? user.birthday : ''"/> "/> [${datePattern}]
:	"/> [${datePattern}]

DatePicker Component

First Name:
Last Name:
First Name:

JSF

JSF (Continued)

JSF to be developed with tools. In my experience, tools suck and just get in the way. Java Studio Creator is for the “corporate developer”. Should corporate developers be developing enterprise applications? Could easily become a truly great framework if folks stop bitching and pitch in to make it better. JavaScript everywhere - wouldn’t be so bad if the testing frameworks (i.e. WebTest and jWebUnit) supported JavaScript better Everything is a POST - GETs are good for bookmarking and refreshing

Pros: J2EE Standard - lots of demand and jobs Fast and easy to develop with Rich Navigation framework Cons: Tag soup for JSPs Immature technology - doesn’t come with everything No single source for implementation

JSF Managed Bean

public class UserForm { private String id; public User user = new User(); public UserManager mgr;

public void setId(String id) { this.id = id; }

public void setUser(User user) { this.user = user; }

public void setUserManager(UserManager userManager) { this.mgr = userManager; }

public String edit() {

if (id != null) { // assuming edit setUser(mgr.getUser(id)); }

return "success"; }

JSF: userForm.jsp

First Name:
Last Name:
First Name:

Let’s Compare!

Evaluation Criteria

List Screens: How easy is it to code pageable, sortable lists? Bookmarkability: Can users bookmark pages and return to them easily? Validation: How easy is it to use and does it support client-side (JavaScript) validation? Testability: How easy is it to test Controllers out of container?

Evaluation Criteria (Continued)

Post and Redirect: How does the framework handle the duplicate post problem? Spring Integration: Does the framework support using Spring in the middle tier; how easily? Internationalization: How is i18n supported and how easy is it to get messages in Controllers? Page Decoration: What sort of page decoration/composition mechanisms does the framework support?

Evaluation Criteria (Continued)

Tools: Is there good tool (particularly IDE) support for the framework? Marketability of Skills: If you learn the framework, will it help you get a job? Job Count: What is the demand for framework skills on dice.com?

List Screens

How easy is it to integrate a sortable/ pageable list of data? Struts, Spring MVC and WebWork can all use Tag Libraries like the Display Tag Tapestry has a contrib:Table component JSF has a dataTable with no sorting - have to write your own logic if you want it

I thought JSF’s real power was going to be its widgets? It’s still early - this should be something easy to solve. You can use the displaytag in JSF, but you can’t link items to actions - even with an

Bookmarking and URLs

Using container-managed authentication (or other filter- based security systems) allow users to bookmark pages. They can click the bookmark, login and go directly to the page. WebWork has namespaces - makes it easy Struts and Spring allow full URL control Tapestry has ugly URLs - difficult to segment the app for different roles JSF does a POST for everything

Validation

Validation should be easy to configure, be robust on the client side and either provide good out of the box messages or allow you to easily customize them. Struts and Spring MVC use Commons Validator - a mature solution WebWork uses OGNL for powerful expressions - client-side support very new Tapestry has very robust validation - good messages without need to customize JSF - ugly default messages, but easiest to configure

I’ve heard that the code under commons validator is ugly - who cares it works!

Testability

Struts - can use StrutsTestCase Spring and WebWork allow easy testing with mocks (e.g. EasyMock, jMock, Spring Mocks) Tapestry appears difficult to test because page classes are abstract, Tapestry Test Assist to the rescue JSF page classes can be easily tested and actually look a lot like WebWork actions

StrutsTestCase requires struts-conﬁg.xml and web.xml. More of an integration test (which are more important than unit tests IMO) Spring Mocks (spring-mock.jar) mocks the Servlet API and is not Spring-speciﬁc JSF page classes are true POJOs and don’t extend any classes

Post and Redirect

The duplicate-post problem, what is it? Easiest way to solve: redirect after POST Is there support for allowing success messages to live through a redirect? Struts and Spring are the only framework that allows success messages to live through a redirect WebWork requires a custom solution Tapestry requires you to throw an Exception to redirect JSF requires a custom solution, i18n messages difficult to get in page beans

Struts makes it fairly easy to get i18n messages in a Struts Action. Spring has long classnames / method arguments make it kinda clunky to get messages. WebWork has the cleanest way to get messages using a simple "getText()" method. Tapestry requires you to throw an exception to redirect and it still doesn't redirect JSF requires lots of code to get a ResourceBundle With JSF - you could use Spring's IoC to inject a "messageSource" bean

Spring Integration

All frameworks have integration with Spring Struts: ContextLoaderPlugin and Base classes WebWork: SpringObjectFactory Tapestry: override base engine, grab from servlet context, put into global map JSF: DelegatingVariableResolver or JSF-Spring Library

Struts Spring Plugin is nice because you can actually have Spring manage your beans. WebWork is only framework that requires support and doesn’t have code in Spring Tapestry integration requires a little more setup but works great once you’ve done it JSF: DelegateVariableResolver only works with MyFaces, which reports errors. JSF-Spring works nicely with both Sun’s RI and MyFaces

Internationalization

JSTL’s tag makes it easy No standard for getting i18n messages in controller classes Struts, Spring and JSF encourage one ResourceBundle per locale WebWork and Tapestry advocate separate files for each page/action

Sample app gets messages from JSTL - so there’s a standard way in each app’s Base controller class WebWork and Tapestry’s approach probably better for large teams. Dicult for AppFuse though

Page Decoration

Tiles Experience: used since it first came out SiteMesh is much easier to setup and use Tiles can be used in Struts, Spring and JSF Requires configuration for each page SiteMesh can be used with all frameworks Requires very little maintenance after setup Use both for powerful decoration/composition

All ﬁve sample apps use SiteMesh w/ the same decorator. Changes were not required for any of the frameworks.

SiteMesh

SiteMesh: web.xml

sitemesh com.opensymphony.module.sitemesh.filter.PageFilter

sitemesh /* REQUEST FORWARD

/WEB-INF/sitemesh.xml

/WEB-INF/decorators.xml

/demos/* /resources/* /*

Sample Decorator

<%@ include file="/taglibs.jsp"%>

<decorator:title default="Equinox"/> >

<%@ include file="/messages.jsp"%>

Before SiteMesh

After SiteMesh

Tools

Struts has a lot of IDE support and even has frameworks built on top of it (i.e. Beehive’s PageFlow) Spring has Spring IDE - only does XML validation, not a UI/web tool WebWork has EclipseWork Tapestry has Spindle - great for coders JSF has many, all cost money and hook into proprietary app servers

Tools Available

15.00 Cocoon Struts 11.25 Spring MVC WebWork Tapestry 7.50 JSF

3.75

Marketability of Skills

Struts is still in high-demand and widely-used Spring is getting more press, but mostly due to the framework’s other features WebWork is gaining ground, but very scarce on job boards Tapestry is even more scarce - needs more marketing JSF is quickly becoming popular

Struts: a lot of enterprise applications are based on it WebWork: gig is likely word-of-mouth and you’ll probably be working with some pretty smart folks. Often used with Spring and Hibernate JSF: want to stay employed - learn JSF. The best reason: so you can back up your arguments on why you do/don’t like it.

Dice Job Count 1,500

1,125

750

375

0 October 15, 2004 June 9, 2005 Struts: 1006 Spring: 15 (tough to search) WebWork: 14 Tapestry: 9 JSF: 147 (Lockheed Joint Strike Fighter) w/o 26

Jobs sans Struts 55.00

41.25

27.50

13.75

0 October 15, 2004June 9, 2005

Struts: 1006 Spring: 15 (tough to search) WebWork: 14 Tapestry: 9 JSF: 147 (Lockheed Joint Strike Fighter) w/o 26

Employer Search on Monster.com Resumes posted 6/10 - 6/13/2005

650 Struts 520 Spring MVC WebWork 390 JSF Tapestry 260

130

Mailing List Traffic

Wicket MyFaces Tapestry WebWork Struts Cocoon

0 625 1,250 1,875 2,500

* Spring MVC is not listed here because they have a forum instead of a mailing list and I couldn’t ﬁgure out a way to count the number of messages for each month.

Books on Amazon

Which would I choose?

My Opinion

Struts ActionForms suck, but AppFuse/XDoclet takes those out of the equation Struts is fast to develop with because most problems have been solved. HTML tag library the best of the bunch. Spring is nice, but lack of form tags drops it down a notch or two. JSP 2.0 tag ﬁles exist in issue tracker. I like WebWork a lot, easy to learn, use and test. Used in a log of products (i.e. JIRA, Jive, NoFlu sites) Tapestry - seems nice, users like it, powers TSS. JSF - needs to listen to developers to see what they want instead of tools vendors.

Which would I choose?

Quick and dirty project? Whichever one needs the most work in AppFuse ;-) Massive enterprise project? Tapestry for its reusable components If I got a job as an open source developer? WebWork because using it requires you to dig into the frameworks

Passion might be the most important factor. Massive project would have to have time to budgeted for learning curve. Audience: which would you choose and why? Has anyone switched a major project from one framework to another? When will JSF be ready (w/o Tools)?

What do others think? Spring MVC 20 Struts WebWork JSF 15 Tapestry

0 AppFuse Usage http://raibledesigns.com/page/rd?entry=spring_mvc_the_most_popular

Resources

Download sample apps from this presentation http://equinox.dev.java.net/framework-comparison Struts - http://struts.apache.org StrutsTestCase: http://strutstestcase.sf.net Spring MVC - http://www.springframework.org Spring IDE: http://www.springide.org Gaijin Studio: http://gaijin-studio.sf.net WebWork - http://opensymphony.org/webwork Eclipse Plugin: http://sf.net/projects/eclipsework IDEA Plugin: http://wiki.opensymphony.com/display/WW/IDEA +Plugin

Resources (Continued)

Tapestry - http://jakarta.apache.org/tapestry Spindle: http://spindle.sourceforge.net JSF - http://java.sun.com/j2ee/javaserverfaces and http:// myfaces.apache.org Java Studio Creator: http://sun.com/software/products/jscreator MyEclipse: http://myeclipseide.com IDEA: http://www.jetbrains.com/idea SiteMesh: http://opensymphony.com/sitemesh

Resources (Continued)

Testing Frameworks JUnit: http://junit.org EasyMock: http://easymock.org jMock: http://jmock.org jWebUnit: http://jwebunit.sourceforge.net Canoo WebTest: http://webtest.canoo.com Tapestry Test Assist: http://howardlewisship.com/blog/ 2004/05/tapestry-test-assist.html XDoclet - http://xdoclet.sourceforge.net AppFuse - http://appfuse.dev.java.net javablogs.com theserverside.com raibledesigns.com jroller.com

Books

Struts in Action, Ted Husted and Team Struts Live, Rick Hightower and Jonathan Lehr Spring Live, Matt Raible Pro Spring, Rob Harrop and Jan Machacek Spring in Action, Craig Walls and Ryan Breidenbach Professional Java Development with Spring, Rod Johnson, Juergen Hoeller and Team

Books (Continued) WebWork Live, Matthew Porter WebWork in Action, Patrick Lightbody and Team Tapestry Live, Warner Onstine Tapestry in Action, Howard Lewis Ship Core JSF, David Geary and Cay Horstmann JSF in Action, Kito Mann

What’s Next? AJAX Wicket Seam Clarity Ruby on Rails Trails OpenLaszlo

Don’t worry, the current web frameworks will also be around for a long time to come!

Please fill out the evals! Questions? [email protected]

www.springlive.com

http://tinyurl.com/agczp

Matt Raible — Comparing Web Frameworks Struts, Spring MVC, WebWork, Tapestry & JSF Page 84

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