Slashdot Mirror
Tapestry Making Web Development a Breeze?
An anonymous reader writes "IBM DeveloperWorks has an interesting article on how to simplify your Web-based development with Tapestry, an open-source, Java-based framework that makes developing a breeze. The article shows you around Tapestry, from installation to file structure. See for yourself how Tapestry facilitates servlet-based Web application development using HTML and template tags."
""IBM DeveloperWorks has an interesting article on how to simplify your Web-based development with Tapestry, an open-source, Java-based framework that makes developing a breeze."
Quick! Someone weave a fan.
I realized long ago that frameworks were a waste of time, I'd already authored several by then. The last framework I wrote generated static html and now we just edit these pages by hand or write simple shell scripts. The solution is definately more involved than the problem.
Is it just me, or does anyone else feel that all the "rapid development" frameworks that are all the rage lately may be harmful to the current crop of new developers? There should always be a balance between development speed and flexibility, and I fear that crutches like rapid web development frameworks trade ease of use for the ability to do something novel. Of course, one can say "if you don't like it, don't use it", but the fact is that people new to the field will use it regardless, simply because it's the path of least resistance. True, some clever ones will extend the range of what was thought possible, but most will end up with the same cookie-cutter projects for which these frameworks are always tailored (look to scaffolding in Ruby on Rails for an example of the omnipresent "database browser").
I suppose this is just the next step in the constant progression toward appeasing laziness; no matter how easy an interface becomes, there will always be demand for something or someone to fill the gap of applying actual effort to learn it.
Yes, the squirrel lives in a tree in my yard and I feed him nuts.
You're probably wondering what this has to do with anything, which is what I would ask of the parent.
Real Men code html by hand, in a text editor
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
That doesn't make a damn bit of sense... unless IBM is giving them some sort of payoff for just posting the story then how the hell would they make revenue from this? So, stop being a bitch and either a) stop reading slashdot or b) shut the fuck up.
Hm. Tapestry is an open source project; from the FAQ:
So I'm not sure that this really qualifies as an ad. More of a "free, informative article", especially since the author (Brett McLaughlin) is quite a Java guru.
Looks like Tapestry uses annotations a lot; I've found them to be pretty handy things as well...
The Army reading list
IMHO, this article is really poorly written. When reading an article on this kind of topic, I want the first couple of paragraphs to tell me what is new/unique about this tool. Instead the author wastes endless column space describing how to install the software, then more space describing the sample applications that you could look at yourself once you downloaded it anyway. I want to be given a reason to try it out: What makes this tool powerful; how can it save me time/help me to produce cleaner code? Maybe he got to this by the end of the article, but I had given up by then.
As the original author of Tapestry (but not the article on DeveloperWorks, which caught me by surprise) I can say that IBM doesn't have any secret agenda on this. In fact, given that IBM is selling a commercial product that competes head-to-head with Tapestry (their JavaServer Faces, built on top of their WebSphere proprietary Eclipse IDE) it is enlightened of them to cover Tapestry.
Of course, what's going on there is two fold. First, IBM is big enough that different areas of the organization will have different and occasionally competing goals. Primarily, all on-line magazines are constantly hunting for new material to keep the eyeballs looking (and the click rates clicking). IBM doesn't solicit authors to write on particular subjects, they accept existing authors efforts, with the authors pursuing their own interests. Here, Brett happened to be into Tapestry and did a great job providing additional documentation in the form of this article.
I make my living off of Tapestry, so I'm happy to see this kind of coverage, but the framework itself is open source and free, with a very, very liberal license (ASL 2.0). I make money by providing Tapestry support and training. There's your ad.
In even newer news, Tapestry 4.0 final release is now available.
Howard M. Lewis Ship -- Independent J2EE / Open-Source Java Consultant -- Creator, Apache Tapestry and HiveMind
Great, another cookie-cutter, marginally informative post from IBM DeveloperWorks. This is getting old.
DeveloperWorks has not come out with anything all that interesting lately. How very odd that they make it to Slashdot every week, like clockwork. They couldn't be paying for placement, could they?
Slashdot has jumped the shark.
pfft, web based tapestry making has been around for ages.
No! :(
The post looks like an ad.
I have used Tapestry several times since its firsts versions (pre-Apache). It sucks.
Yeah is much better than Struts and others, but is really complicated... a lot of XML
Why other frameworks like Seaside http://www.seaside.st/ doesn't receive the attention of Slashdot?
Seaside is technically superior, it uses continuations to mantain state and this make it really transparent...
Maybe because Seaside runs in Squeak http://www.squeak.org/, is open source and...
Wait is not sponsored by any big name (like IBM, or Sun)... mmm both IBM and Sun publishes its ads in slashdot...
Ahhh now I see why
Rails has a lot going for it, and the entire Ruby concept of focusing on code has influenced many frameworks, including Tapestry. Tapestry uses abstract properties combined with annotations (or auxillary XML files) to do the kind of meta programming that is done using class methods in Ruby, but nonetheless.
In terms of dependencies, being an Apache project causes some distribution problems w.r.t depenencies, especially when you use non-Apache projects like OGNL and Javassist. The next major release of Tapestry will build using Maven, which will make nearly all of part 1 of this article irrelevant (or at least, standard). I'm looking forward to part 2 myself, which should identify why Tapestry is so special.
Finally, within the Java community, Tapestry is fairly well known, though a regrettably small percentage have used it. The majority of the targetted readers of this article would have objected to wasting too much space describing Tapestry and its goals, just as others in this thread have objected to the lack of that introductory material. You can't please everyone (exception on Slashdot, where you can't please anyone).
Howard M. Lewis Ship -- Independent J2EE / Open-Source Java Consultant -- Creator, Apache Tapestry and HiveMind
"I suppose this is just the next step in the constant progression toward appeasing laziness; no matter how easy an interface becomes, there will always be demand for something or someone to fill the gap of applying actual effort to learn it."
Or this is the outcome of the evolution of the web. This is no longer our father's web so why should our tools be our fathers?
I've been using Tapestry 3.0. The first problem: its mechanisms are very hard to understand in the beginning; for instance, there is no such very basic thing as including HTML parts - you have to write your own components. OK, Tapestry simplifies creating basic forms (especially when used with Hibernate), but when you want to do something more advanced like variable number of input fields... you have to fight it and create workarounds. I really prefer something more low-level as PHP.
Please don't take offense with this, but Tapestry seems to be an open source version of NeXT's - then Apple's WebObjects web application development system. Even the Tapestry documentation acknowledges this.
WebObjects performed poorly in the marketplace due to Apple's stunning inability to market it's strengths - the exact same strengths the article is describing. Many people, including Apple employees - (myself in the past) - lobbied for WO to be made open source. We failed. Good to see that the ideas live on.
To be fair, when I hear a reference to the "Original Author of Tapestry" I do think its only fair to refer to the staff at NeXT, then Apple who developed this wonderful system. Tapestry is impressive in its own right, but seems more an extension of WO design principals rathen than a unique work. Such is the history of software design, so all's fair in the end.
And yes, I own your book, and think it's very well done. Tapestry is a great system, and can be recommended - but let's not forget the original inspiration.
/* Dang, I can't type that well. */
Certain other tapestries....
It seems like every week I read about something like this where I'd be screwed if I was still locked into Windows only technologies.
Oh, enlighten us, oh troll, as to this week's problem with IIS/.Net, if it's not too much trouble.
I don't respond to AC's.
This is no longer our father's web so why should our tools be our fathers?
Because they work.
KFG
I have heard authors who swear that handwriting is much better than typewriting. Some people swear that they can tell if a story was written on a word processor. I have heard many complaints that Power Point tends to force presentations into a kind of mindless cookie-cutter kind of sameness. All these things are actually true.
What separates a good web page from a crummy one is not so much the tools that get used but the talent and knowledge of its author. The sad truth is that there are many hacks out there who won't produce good web pages no matter what tools they use. Easy-to-use tools do make it easier for talented designers to get up to speed quickly.
My experience is with the sign industry. In the good old days, a sign painter would work for years to perfect a 'font' which he could produce effortlessly with his brush. By the time he learned his craft he was probably a pretty good designer too. Then we got sign cutters (cutting vinyl letters with a plotter). Now everyone had the same set of fonts. Joe's Rapid Cheap Sign Place was competing with businesses that had been established for many years. Guess what? The good designers still command good prices. The hacks race to the bottom of the market; undercutting each other on price. As far as I can tell, web design is quite similar. Any high school kid can churn out a web page. Some of them are nicer than those done by 'professionals'. There's still a market for good work. The hacks can't do good work and people can tell the difference.
I think in real life it doesn't metter which technology you use for implementation to give results fast too much. Ofcourse with some technologies the results are faster than wiht another for instance PHP vs Java Servlet. But if you count time which you spend on implementation of user requirements and time which you spend by reimplementing functionality which user specified incorrectly, you can end-up with result that reparing taken most of the time in other words budget. In our company we solved this issue by creating prototypes with this tool PETRA (http://www.cleverlance.com/petra). Business analyst draws gui prototype by speed 20 pages per day. When he is finished he gives prototype to customer/user who clicks trough and expresses his changes. After making several rounds customer and customer is satisfied with prototype, programers finaly start coding. We expirienced that with this approach customer knows what will be delivered on the begining of the project. He saves money on change requests and we deliver real application twice faster. It isn't just rapid development what does delivering faster, but clear customers requrements rafined by prototype. Check out that tool, it realy helps.
I've been earning a living programming in PHP/MySQL for about 6 years now. Don't see any need to switch. Will this Java web dev thing catch on? Probably not. Will I be flamed for mentioning PHP? Probably. I don't care. I like PHP and am not interested in what the elitist programmers have to say about it.
Meh.
*coughs* I smell an advertisement! Seriously now, since when has this sort of crap passed as news?
"We are Samurai, the Keyboard...Cowboys"
By the way, do you plan on releasing a new edition of your Tapestry book soon that is updated for version 4.0? I have the current version, but would love an updated version detailing some of the new stuff in 4.0 (like friendly URLs, something about HiveMind in 4, etc).
"No, it is because systems like Squeak, no matter how technically wonderful it is (and it is!) is not a production-ready system for high volume websites."
Well Squeak may be, but since Smalltalk is Smaltalk. Dolphin Smalltalk is commercial grade software used...commercially. The problem is more marketing and mindshare than any technical deficiencies.
Don't be put off by the comments. If you already know about it, how to install it etc, this is not for you. But if you don't, its clear and informative and interesting. Looking forward to the next part.
That's what i did. You're forgetting about the lameness filter. Dumbass.
I could fall over and die right now. My graduation project is the exact same thing as their "Virtual Library". I feel so redundant. >X(
I just finished reading an interesting comparison of Java, PHP and Python over on Bob Ippolito's weblog. It talks about the implementation of a simple web service in the three languages. To summarise:
That's to implement the same web service.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
I am aware of the dangers associated with poorly designed rich clients, but rich clients work well, as long as you use some discipline in the system architecture. I know some rich client architectures exist, such as Curl, but in general, it appears there is very little activity in this arena. I wish this industry would focus a little more on interesting GUIs, instead of beating the same horse over and over again.
He says it takes 3004 lines of Java code, but he won't link to it. I don't think Java is 30x larger and unless it's available for inspection, it's just a bunch of hot air.
Unbelievable. All the guy says is what worked for him and he's happy with it, and for this he draws such ire. Maybe he's not replying because it's a waste of time to enlighten a rock.
Although I freely being influenced as a user of WebObjects back in the day (circa 1998 and 1999), that's about as far as the lineage goes. I certainly built Tapestry with a different set of expectations and compromises than WebObjects, and that has evolved further of the years.
However, I will stand by declaring myself "the original author of Tapestry". That clearly describes Tapestry design and implementation; the flavor might inlcude a little WebObjects spice, but the meat is pure Java + Servlets + Howard Lewis Ship's insights and contributions (and mistakes).
Now look what you made me do ... refer to myself in the third person!
Howard M. Lewis Ship -- Independent J2EE / Open-Source Java Consultant -- Creator, Apache Tapestry and HiveMind
You'll quickly learn that the watchword in Tapestry is simple. That's not simple as in primitive or lacking sophistication, but simple as in easy to understand, usable, and intuitive. Because installation is your introduction to any new technology, it goes without saying that installing Tapestry is very easy
and this before a 4 page explanation of how to install.
Without a doubt web development could use simplification, but if they can't even simplify the installation process to less than four pages, how can they simplify the web? Seems they have some interesting ideas, though.
Qxe4
* 117 lines of very liberally spaced Python code, or
* 138 lines of insecure PHP code, or
* 3004 lines of Java code in 45 files, 29 lines of SQL, and 246 lines of XML configuration in five files.
Which is complete nonsense, as with Java you can use JSP tag libraries, which will are secure (compiled, so no code injection at run-time) and can be used in exactly the same way as PHP, so will require about the same size of code.
Hey now, my legs work too. That doesn't mean I'm going to walk from LA to NY. It does mean I walk and use a stair-stepper. Agreed that people should code by hand to keep in shape, but don't look down at the corporate jet when we have a meeting a long ways away, saying, "I think I'll just walk."
I've worked with Tapestry. Is it a decent framework? Yes. Did we end up choosing it over JSF for our project? Yes, we did. Did it make development "a breeze"? No.
In my experience, Tapestry simplifies some complex tasks and helps you write reasonably clean, well-structured code. This is, I think, all anyone should realistically hope for from any framework. However, it isn't a magic bullet and we did find that things became a little gnarly as soon as we tried to do stuff that the Tapestry developers hadn't really anticipated or designed for (and the things we were trying to do weren't really very exotic).
Of the frameworks I've seen lately, Ruby on Rails is the one that bends the curve the furthest in the trade-off between 'what you can do' and 'how easy it is to do it'. Tapestry is a way behind that, but it's nevertheless a solid addition to anyone's toolkit, so long as you don't have unrealistic expectations of what it can do for you.
Huh, the python and PHP versions don't use SQL? Then why does Java?
don't look down at the corporate jet
.when we have a meeting a long ways away, saying, "I think I'll just walk."
That's your father's tool. Yours is video conferencing.
. .
I bicycle.
KFG
Z Object Publishing Environment (ZOPE) http://www.zope.org/ and its derivative Plone http://www.plone.org/ seem like they have all this and more. Like they are a whole universe. What does Tapestry have that Zope/Plone doesn't? -- IV
http://www.LinuxMedNews.com Revolutionizing Medical Education and Practice.
I agree with the sentiment of this comment -- but Escherial, I think you saw the word "rapid" and made a bunch of bad presumptions about Tapestry. Tapestry is not a crutch; it is an excellent framework, one you're obviously ignorant of.
What Tapestry is emphatically not is a whizzy-ooey drag-and-drop autogenerated no-coding-necessary whiz-bang shill. Those are, by and large, a bunch of crap: they usually just make the easiest 90% even easier, and the "last 90%" even harder.
What Tapestry is is a very nice web framework, which has a lot of the same MVC capabilities as Struts and the code reuse possibilities of JSF, with far less configuration and unnecessary complexity than either of those options. The Tapestry team, much like the excellent Rails folks, have looked for ways to reduce redundancy, boilerplate code, and messy configuration -- especially in this 4.0 release. Roughly speaking, Tapestry is about 80-90% of the streamlined simplicity of Rails, but with a much richer framework underneath and all the existing libraries and machinery of Java at your disposal. It has the best mechanism for HTML fragment reuse I know of.
What the Tapestry team has not done is try to make an app that thinks for you. You've still got to code. It's just a lot less tedious than with most other frameworks.
My two latest webapps have been all Tapestry 4, and it's great how little code/config I have to write that isn't conveying useful information. I'm really quite impressed with the framework.
So yeah, I agree with your rant, but it's not appropriate to Tapestry.
...will people stop pretending that "Java" is one giant monolithic thing that only works one way.
Look, these flagships specs like J2EE and EJB are designed to solve problems of writing massively distributed apps that need to have transactions spanning multiple servers running different OSes -- horrendous problems that you never, ever, ever want to have to solve. And if you do have to solve them, Java is the best way -- but if you take all that machinery and try to write a "hello world" webapp, of course it's going to take 30 bazillion lines of code.
Somebody writing the webapp he describes in 3000 lines of Java is either (1) utterly ignorant of how to use the Java frameworks (like Tapestry) that are appropriate for the task, or (2) deliberately spreading FUD on behalf of Python.
That is not to slight Python or the framework he's using. Python is very cool. I'm just sick of people complaining about "Java" when what they're really complaining about is "Java abuse."
Despite the nay sayers below, I have done Perl, PHP and Java for web services...Java takes A LOT more code to do the same thing. So, I agree :)
"He was a wise man who invented beer." - Plato
Lets just, for the sake of clarity and shameless Python-fanboyism, ignore the fact that the PHP code was properly commented (about a third of the 'code') and the Python code had a whopping 1 (one) line of commenting. Not to mention the PHP code had extra newlines adding to the readability of the code, and about half the code was a (very neatly indentend) array for some external library. Wake me up when you have a proper comparison.
Don't get me wrong: I love Python. But it doesn't need flawed statistics. Heck, I'd think a maintenance programmer would love the PHP code easily over that Python mess. (K)LOC don't count people, your use of commenting and clear code does!
This sig is intentionally left blank
The numbers seem a bit off, but Java is a wordy language. The servlet api tends to make you code much closer to the protocol than you should need too. The lack of a standard web framework for java makes things very difficult. Every other language tends to have one way to do things at the basic level and with java you are stuck learning a few frameworks and pray you don't have to switch.
.NET developers agree on that point. Unless you are doing a major release (4.x to 5.x), there should be no major changes to the api that break things. Remember php is a language! Each time there is a change, its usually easy to fix but means there is non stop maintinence on web apps. It certainly makes it hard to sell them doesn't it? Your customers upgrade their server and break their software, etc. Your hosting company decides to patch a security hole and upgrade.. now customers sites are down. One can complain about microsoft, but at least asp apps tended to work when new versions of the language came out. IIS 4 and IIS 5 could both run my sites for instance without any changes at the time. I upgrade tomcat and my java servlets still run ok. I started on 4.x and now run on 5.5.x! Its not an open source problem because tomcat works.
Java based web apps take longer to code in my experience. I dislike php and haven't found time to play with ruby on rails or python. I also dislike jsp as a view technology.
I think the problem we are seeing with web technology is that there are two types of programmers. We have the hobby or asp era web app developers who prefer scripting and we have the bulky framework keep my job by adding complexity since real app development is dead type. In reality, the ideal model is probably somewhere in the middle. Scripting for views and easy stuff and something more framework like for web services and other things that require performance or a lot of code. (where scripting is slow) I like ASP.NET to some degree because its somewhere near the middle. I learned to code with vb and classic asp in the late 90s so I have a bias toward Microsoft on development. I think they provide some of the easiest development environments. I think the lack of classic asp scripting has forced hobbyists into php though.
I'd like to see someone create a good balanced environment with a scripting language and a framework for things like web services and ways to use code written in other languages (like C++) easily. I don't think we'll ever have that again.
As for tapestry, at the time I tried to learn it when it was just switching to be an apache project, it had the worst documentation ever. From what i've seen lately, the apache project still has that problem. Apache 2.0/2.2 aren't well documented systems and most of the jakarta projects are an order of magnitude worse.
In case anyone is wondering why I hate php so much, read the change logs. Code written for one release does not work on the next way too often. I don't just speak of the php 5 migration but of the 4.0 vs 4.1 vs 4.2 etc changes. A good project does not break their api on a whim. Most java developers and
MidnightBSD: The BSD for Everyone
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Responding to a user asking about his program:
If you don't already know what it does, it's not for you. Not yet, probably never.Responding to a question about Windows:
Yes, I wrote py2app, and I have no plans of making it operate on Windows. It'd be hard, and I have better things to do.Responding to another user asking about his program:
Follow the links, google the terms you don't understand. How hard is that?Wow, what a sweetie!
IBM has been pushing Java pretty hard for a few years now and has contributed a lot to the community. They may very well contribute to Apache, but I'm not sure on that. The article above was written for IBM's developerworks site which has frequent articles on all of the technology and development tools that IBM have their fingers in, including Linux, Java, Open-Source, and quite a bit more. It's a cool site to visit every so often.
There will always be a need for developers. The lack of creative flexability that these types of systems offer will be their ultimate downfall.
This just in! 3 out of 4 people make up 75% of the population.
Sorry for what must sound like a technical support question, but is it possible to run Tapestry in a lightweight HTTP server such as Simple? It uses the usual HttpRequest/HttpResponse API for dealing with requests and has a minimal footprint. Can I call something in the Tapestry API and pass it the request to render the page?
Or can anyone recommend any other lightweight Java HTML generation frameworks that don't require full-blown servlet containers such as Tomcat?
Those are perfectly reasonable answers. If you don't know what Flash and Python are, then it's highly unlikely you want a Flash library for Python. If you want him to write Windows stuff for you, then he's just making it clear it ain't gonna happen. And he's not a mind-reader, so how the fuck can he explain things to somebody with vague complaints of "fuzziness"?
Oh, and even considering for a second that you can generalise one programmer's attitude to everybody using the same language is idiocy in the first degree.
I would just like to weigh in and place my X firmly in this "What a load of horseshit!" box.
The Java version of the BirthdayOrganizer backend, which I won't even bother linking to, is well... ginormous.
The author happily provided links to the python and PHP code but 'wont bother' linking to the Java source. Anyone who needs 3004 lines of Java over 45 files to implement a simple webservice is in the throes of a brain haemorrhage. I do love these kiddie blogs, "I wrote some crap Java code and look how crap it is, ergo, Java must be crap!!!11".
Java does have it's faults, but I advise the reader to seek out a better source of information. It can sometimes be difficult to be sure of the quality of a source of information but fortunately this blogger has made our job easier by using the word 'ginormous', clearly showing themselves to be a complete wanker.
Or...I could use about a hearty 20 lines of coldfusion code and have the data communicated between flash and the coldfusion server in binary (much less data overhead). Quit trying to unfairly compare code of languages when you do not equally understand what is available in all of them nor share your code.
One library or capability makes no language worth switching to and when I see an excellent library I think:
1) Wow, I wonder how I could implement this using my development tool of choice
2) What benefits of the library are specific to the language it was originally developed in (ex: more readable syntax)
3) What benefits could my development tool of choice offer the library that the other language does not (ex: better caching)
There is a world more considerations and we need to start cooperating between many of the great languages out there instead of becoming pride mongers for our respective languages of the week.
from TFA
So that's 117 lines of Python...and a library. And it doesn't say how big the library is.
Could any of these 3004 lines be considered/implemented as library files? How many lines of Java would it take then?
And this begs the question: who wrote it? It is possible to write secure PHP, as much as it's possible to write insecure python.
You can take yer apples and pears, and compare them up yer own arse.
Must be slashdot:
- Uninformed comment near the top? check
- Pointless flamebait modded to Score 5? check
- Disingenuous and patently ridiculous to boot? check
- Complete ignorance to the turing equivalency to all languages? of course
Wow. I'm making a study. Apparently in french:
"Voulez-Vous Couchez Avec Moi?"
In English
It has come to the attention of my biological subsystems that I find you sexually fit and attractive, and thus would like to engage in procreative attempts in order to further the expansion of my genetic sequences in the Hobbesian environment we live in. Do you find such a query to be to your liking and predilection?
Hey, I'm just your average shit and piss factory.
I second that.
Especially the XML configuration file can't be much bigger than 20 lines.
It should be something like:
140 - 200 lines of JSP/Java (for imports, package declarations, typed variables etc.)
29 Lines SQL
20- 30 lines XML Config file
angel'o'sphere
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
who is bob ippolito?. is he a guru or something?
Real men do server-side scripting in PHP (well, the really real hardcore men code CGI scripts in machine code, but it is rather extreme) in a text editor.
println "Hello, World!"
How about something more useful like dumping your properties in all your property files?
"Our apologies The IBM developerWorks Web site is currently under maintenance.
Please try again later. Thank you."
Isn't that French for "we got slashdotted"?
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
"Because they work."
Then "father" shouldn't have a problem running IBM, or Microsoft's site, let alone the NYT, using notepad.
01010010011001010110000101101100001000000110110101 10010101101110001000000110001101101111011001000110 01010010000001000101010101100100010101010010010110 01010101000100100001001001010011100100011100100000 01101001011011100010000001100010011010010110111001 100001011100100111100100101110
http://www.TheGamerNation.com/Forums
They probably also tested Ruby on Rails, but didn't think a number like 30 would make Python look good so they left it out.
-matthew
"THERE IS NO JUSTICE, THERE IS ONLY ME." -Death
I have no first-hand experience, but it seems to be lightweight (350K), embeddable and Tapestry is said to run under it.
If a giant oil company wanted an abortion, would W's head explode?
Hmm, how much do you want to bet that Mr. "bob.pythonmac.org" knows python just a bit better than Java? Hopefully he does, because no one in their right mind would _EVER_ write a "trivial" little app like his test application in full J2EE.
I think it's not just up to us web developers are pages good. I mean, I can make technically good page that is well done. It isn't necessary same page or site that is good to use.
After all, customers may have their own ideas and needs that aren't good, and customers are always right.
Depends what one does of course, but where I work, were more a consulting architech that the architect that desigs the whole thing. We do what cusomers have visioned and inform what sucks in that context. We don't make the context , design or choose it.
Like construction company, we don' design the bulding we just build by the design and try to make it work well as possible. Within frameowork of time and expenses.
If the original idea sucks and can't work well, then it is so. It doesn't matter how good pianist you are, if acoustic sucks and composer did it all while drunk(besides being ungifted), you can't evoke miracles from absolutely nothing. You can only do best what those circumstances allow you to do.
Nobody knows the trouble I've seen, nobody knows has the trouble seen me, even I sometimes wonder why I write these line
Sun's java studio creator is now free. I'm not sure which "framework" if any it uses but it seems a quick and
e ator/index.jspe ator/reference/quicktour/2/flash/index.html
well though out way to created database backed web pages. I wonder if tapestry works with this or eclipse.
Sun is definetly feeling some heat from eclipse and starting to make it development tools significantly better.
If I wasn't using php I would definetely look into thses.
http://developers.sun.com/prodtech/javatools/jscr
http://developers.sun.com/prodtech/javatools/jscr
Preach on bro!!!
: xmethods-delayed-quotes.wsdl"
<CFINVOKE
WEBSERVICE="http://services.xmethods.net/soap/urn
METHOD="getQuote"
RETURNVARIABLE="aQuote">
<CFINVOKEARGUMENT name="symbol" value="MACR"/>
</CFINVOKE>
<cfdump var="#aQuote#">
I evaluated both JSF and Tapestry for my latest project, with a slight prejudice in favor of JSF, and ended up choosing Tapestry ... by a mile, actually, and for some of the same reasons you mentioned: too hard to "break the mold" in JSF.
That's not to say that I haven't had some wrangling with Tapestry, but it was for genuinely unusual stuff. And it's a heck of lot more concise than JSF.
The Tapestry docs are rather mediocre; they're still a holdover from v3 in many parts, and make some things sound harder than they need to be. I wonder if you used Tap 4 on Java 1.5 to their full potential?
The annotations are indeed nice, but they're not necessary. Anything you can do with an annotation, you can do with XML. Just wanted to make it clear that Tapestry targets older platforms (1.3+, IIRC).
Handcoding as a means of measuring who has the biggest.....
RAD is indespensible these days because these tools allow you to do a lot of work fast. I personally use Codecharge studio to create webapplications and the time it safes is tremendous. Doing all that work by hand would cost my employer a lot because I would take three to four times as long. So now stand up and run to your employer and ask him to still keep you on board just because handcoding is sooo cool.
These are the same kinds of people who can tell the difference between normal high-quality copper cables and gold plated, revsered ionising, high-molecular partical charged, $10,000, copper audio cables.
If the Simple container is a valid Servlet container, then Tapestry will work fine within it. Tapestry's footprint is rather large, however. About 2 MB for the framework and its dependencies. That may compromise its use for embedded.
Howard M. Lewis Ship -- Independent J2EE / Open-Source Java Consultant -- Creator, Apache Tapestry and HiveMind
How about 55 lines of ColdFusion?
///--->
///--->
///--->
///---> ///--->
///--->
///--->
///--->
<cfcomponent displayname="pizzaService" hint="Sample pizzaService authors:Klassjan Tukker and Justin Watkins" output="No">
<!---///
A container to store all of the relevant
db connection info
<cfset variables.host = "localhost">
<cfset variables.db = "DATABASE">
<cfset variables.user = "USER">
<cfset variables.pwd = "PASSWORD">
<cfset variables.ordertable = "amfphp_orders"> <!---/// the orders table
<cfset variables.pizzatable = "amfphp_pizzas"> <!---/// the pizzas table
<cffunction name="orders" access="remote" returntype="numeric" roles="pizzaLovers" displayname="orders" hint="Orders a pizza">
<cfargument name="name" type="string" required="yes">
<cfargument name="orders" type="array" required="yes">
<!---/// grab the time stamp
<cfset variables.t = now()>
<!---/// insert the customer information
<cfquery name="CustomerInsert" username="#variables.user#" password="#variables.pwd#" dbserver="#variables.host#" dbname="#variables.db#">
INSERT INTO ordertable (order_status, order_time, order_name) VALUES (1, #variables.t#, '#cfargument.name#');"
</cfquery>
<!---/// grab the new id from the auto increment key
<cfquery name="GetMaxKey" username="#variables.user#" password="#variables.pwd#" dbserver="#variables.host#" dbname="#variables.db#">
SELECT MAX(order_id) AS order_id FROM ordertable
</cfquery>
<!---/// loop over each order
<cfloop index="i" from="1" to="#ArrayLen(cfargument.orders)#">
<cfquery name="OrderInsert" username="#variables.user#" password="#variables.pwd#" dbserver="#variables.host#" dbname="#variables.db#">
INSERT INTO pizzatable (order_id, pizza_details, pizza_quantity) VALUES (#GetMaxKey.order_id#, '#cfargument.orders[i][details]#', #cfargument.orders[i][quantity]#)
<cfloop>
<!---/// return the new order id
As a long term web application developer, with exposure and experience developing with/on/for many of the top frameworks, I would like to say that tapestry *IS* one of the better ones. I've seen it progress over the years and have to congratulate Howard on his amazing work. It may have started off with WO in mind but it has certainly evolved since then. I have written a HUGE project with it, that couldn't have been done nearly as well with some of the competing proprietary systems. I encourage any serious developer to give it a try. And since you all seem to love google so much you might want to read some of the frameworks they are looking for experience in as of late.
No... Java is going to change the world! Write once run slowly everywhere!
117 is the LOC for two examples. The php is closer to 66 lines if you remove the array's formatting and delete commments. Of course, the python is far more secure and readable.
Book: Rapid Development.
Section: Classic mistakes
"There are no silver bullets"
Check. As long as I can build entire sites over the weekend, I'll keep developing with a framework that I know.
Visit http://ringbreak.dnd.utwente.nl/~mrjb/growingbettersoftware to download your free copy of the book
Well, Frameworks like tapestry are pretty server agnostic as well all they need is a valid servlet/jsp runner. The reason for this simply is that servlets/jsps have become the base technology for such frameworks, there is no use in providing your own servlet clone, the technology is mature and stable and dozends of implementations many of them free can be downloaded from the net. The last framework I have seen not doing this was around 2000 (and that one was utter cr***).
using what frameworks or tools? Ever tried wicket? hibernate or EJB3? Spring or other IoC containers? What type of app was this? Less lines of code doesn't not always mean better... have you ever had to take over a PHP or Perl project that someone else wrote? IMO, PHP code gets mangled as all hell because there are so many "outs" to any given problem (like variable variables when a simple array will do). I believe you can code PHP or Perl in less lines of code because they are just Syntactically different, yet when I have IDEA working on my side I can hammer out 10 lines of code or more in a few keystrokes. I have the knowledge, tools and frameworks working on my side, whereas you are relying simply on the language syntax for brevity.
That's what great about Java, you have plenty of web frameworks to choose from. Why do you need a standard framework? ASP is not perfect, .NET is not perfect... I know I hated ASP.NET when I used it so I'd surely hate it if I was stuck using this "standard" framework. Java probably takes longer to code because you have more experience with Microsoft specific products. Most Java developers can stake the same claim for Java, so that is a moot point. And I honestly don't see how you get off saying Java is wordy when you code in VB... Let's see code examples in both languages that perform the same thing, with the VB version coming out significantly more concise than the well-written java counterpart-- and then I may begin to believe your claim.
1. Complicated. Uneasy to learn. .war archive, send to web server, perform refresh. When used with Apache Tomcat, leads to memory leaks.
2. Does not support unit testing.
3. The "Model" component of MVC is closely tight to "View"; you cannot have many views of the same page (for instance: web page, web page for printing, WAP page).
4. Adding your own JavaScripts suxx. You have to map component names etc.
5. If you want to validate form field, you have to use special components (ValidField). Some components do not have their validated counterparts. Client-side validation is very basic (e.g. cannot check if entered date is in the future).
6. Changing one line of code/template requires you to redeploy whole application; that is, pack it into
7. The page pool model is said to scale well, but can be very error-prone. For instance: if you forget to reset some variable, it can be displayed by some other user when he happens to pull it from the page pool.
I'm surprised no-one has mentioned Wicket in this thread. It is a component-based framework in the same mold as Tapestry but is a lot easier to work with...
Invoicing, Time Tracking, Reporting
Speed?
This gets modded Informative? Oh, the irony... it hurts.
Mods, just bogart that joint! My post (above) wasn't Informative . At best it was (dubiously) Funny . Arguably it was either Flamebait or Troll ; and it is now certainly Overrated .
See, these funny little words in the moderation menu, they all have semantic content, you know? Like, they actually mean something... Oh, never mind. As you were.
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
1. Complicated. Uneasy to learn.
Just different. People trying to find Struts++ get confused because Tapestry is a completely different beast.
2. Does not support unit testing.
Wrong. This was doeable in 3.0 with an add-on; an improved version of the add-on is part of Tapestry 4.0.
3. The "Model" component of MVC is closely tight to "View"; you cannot have many views of the same page (for instance: web page, web page for printing, WAP page).
Ultimately, your model is really DTO, not your page or component class. Tapestry components don't care where data comes from, thanks to OGNL. So, there's no reason you can't have multiple pages for different formats. However, Tapestry does not address the myth of one page / multiple views. A desktop HTML application and a WAP application are completely different beasts and should be treated as such. You should not be coding applications inside a big case statement.
4. Adding your own JavaScripts suxx. You have to map component names etc.
Because HTML output is componentized, JavaScript generation for that HTML must be componentized. This is an annoyance for simple cases, but means that complex cases just work. You can have as many DatePickers or Palettes or validating fields and forms per page as you like and it all just works with everything wired together properly, and all client-side elements (JavaScript variables and function names) generated free of naming collisions. Tapestry was born to do Ajax.
5. If you want to validate form field, you have to use special components (ValidField). Some components do not have their validated counterparts. Client-side validation is very basic (e.g. cannot check if entered date is in the future).
You haven't looked at Tapestry 4.0. Paul Ferarro did a complete rewrite of the validation subsystem to make it more powerful and more flexible; all the form control components now support input validation, ValidField has been deprecated.
6. Changing one line of code/template requires you to redeploy whole application; that is, pack it into .war archive, send to web server, perform refresh. When used with Apache Tomcat, leads to memory leaks.
So you're blaming Tapestry for your bad development model? I deploy into Tomcat, but do all my development inside my IDE using Jetty. No redeploy, and I can bounce the Jetty instance in a few seconds.
7. The page pool model is said to scale well, but can be very error-prone. For instance: if you forget to reset some variable, it can be displayed by some other user when he happens to pull it from the page pool.
This I find an amazing observation; Even Tapestry 3.0 supports transient and persistent properties for you ... meaning you write an abstract class and let Tapestry provide the code to implement the property along with the compliance code to work well with the page pool. Management of transient and persistent page state is an application concern that you should be delegating to Tapestry. Just define abstract getters and/or setters, rather than instance variables (and getters and setters). Tapestry writes the code for you (at runtime).
Howard M. Lewis Ship -- Independent J2EE / Open-Source Java Consultant -- Creator, Apache Tapestry and HiveMind
...or maybe we can switch it to Java On Nails, Jon for short. People in the industry will be talking about how they "Used Jon to build this or that", and I will quietly sneak off and switch my name to "Jon" on my resume and watch the job offers pour in.
Next time please include "ultimate" ;)
You forgot to add all the additional frameworks like spring, hibernate, etc, which seemingly must be used for absolutely no reason. I've worked on projects where there were well over 1000 lines of XML configuratoin just to work with FIVE JSP pages. But at least we avoided writing any SQL! ...and replaced them with 10 lines of XML per query.
That's a good one. I'm going to try that one next weekend.
I've actually been using Jetty as a development platform to test my code, but it's a bit of a memory hog. However, I note now that Jetty 6 is out and one of the goals was to reduce the footprint and dependancies apparently. I'll be checking the update out, thanks for the suggestion.
Just for the sake of correctness:
:)
"Voulez-vous coucher avec moi?" (It sounds exactly the same, but spells differently)
As in "Would you like TO sleep with me?"
In fact, as French, I tend to prefer the double meaning English version, even though that there's not much room for interpretation once you're a grown up...
PS: What a coincidence! The word to type to validate this post is 'naughty'
Hehe,
... if you use it because it simplyfies something for you, of course you have to configure it.
you only add and use them if you want to use them.
A standard Java Web Application does not need hibernate/spring
angel'o'sphere
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Relying on constant diligence and universal competence IS a gaping security hole. A good web environment should rely upon the fact that all people are idiots all of the time.
No... Java is going to change the world! Write once run slowly everywhere!
;-)
Not everywhere: "You acknowledge that Licensed Software is not designed or intended for use in the design, construction, operation or maintenance of any nuclear facility." Good thing, too, or it might indeed "change the world"!
Attention zealots and haters: 00100 00100
It runs on the general-purpose cross-platform runtime the industry has chosen.
Make Zope/Plone run on any standard JVM and that might change.
A not so well known framework Simple provides an effective alternative to Servlet based frameworks. Its very stable and its much more scalable than most if not all of the open source Servlet engines. It makes use of a Struts Tiles like framework for presentation and can use Velocity or Groovy templates for the view. Also, frameworks like Tapestry seem to go a bit over the top, over 40 packages for web development with the addition of a Servlet engine??
Ad to what?
Either it's an ad to DeveloperWorks, which is fine for they run interresting articles about most languages and frameworks and get linked everywhere all the time.
Or it's an ad to Tapestry, which is an OSS framework...
Wait, aren't ads supposed to generate some kind of revenu or something?
"The way we can tell it's C# instead of Haskell is because it's nine lines instead of two." -- wadler
Well, Java is nice indeed, but it's not necessary. Anything you can do with Java, you can do with Brainfuck. Just wanted toi make it clear that your statement is stupid.
"The way we can tell it's C# instead of Haskell is because it's nine lines instead of two." -- wadler
Two comments on your post:
If you assume that all Tapestry is doing is routing requests and outputting HTML, you are missing the forrest for the trees. To be honest, I think most web application development is primarily about state management (transient state used for one request, persistent state used across requests, stored on the server or on the client). These are more areas where developers are used to slaving away, but a real framework is quite capable of handling it, and handling it better than the developer can (at a certain scale of complexity). So, as long as you are happy to try and manage everything in terms of HttpServletRequest and HttpSession attributes, and endless code to pick apart query parameters, and a bunch of other limitations, you can get by with something simple. I tend to think of Tapestry, not as more complex, but as more complete.
Second, there is an inherent and invalid assumption in your statement that Tapestry is not scalable, when in fact, it is very scalable not just in terms of concurrent users, but scalable in many dimensions: scalable in terms of number of pages, of number (and type) of developers, in the complexity of pages. What's important is that as your application does grow more complicated, your approach never has to change ... in effect, Tapestry is built for the worst case: highly dynamic pages, complex forms, multiple forms per page, complex client-side JavaScript, etc. A major portion of what Tapestry does is fundamentally about naming things, particularily form control element ids, and JavaScript functions and fields, to avoid naming conflicts. But even in terms of basic scalability, Tapestry uses a pooling mechanism around its page objects to support effecient, concurrent access by restricting non-threadsafe objects (the pages) to individual requests (and, thus, individual threads).
So, what you get is an object oriented programming model (hey! look! objects with methods and properties!) in a highly multithreaded environment without having any concerns about multiple threads. The pooling and typesafety is baked into the framework, not the code you write. Further, you get to build a servlet application without ever seeing the servlet API (unless you really want to).
So, yes, there's a lot of moving parts in Tapestry, but they are all there for a purpose. I personally find Tapestry useful even for a single-page application ... and I wouldn't want to use anything else when I'm working on an application with dozens or hundreds (even thousands) of pages and components.
Howard M. Lewis Ship -- Independent J2EE / Open-Source Java Consultant -- Creator, Apache Tapestry and HiveMind
Sorry I didn't reply sooner. I was troubleshooting an XML file so I could persist my data.
"He was a wise man who invented beer." - Plato