Question

How are the web frameworks - Spring, Google Web Toolkit, and Java Server Faves - similar and how are they different?

Answer 1

Answer:-

1. Spring Framework

The Spring Framework is one of the most popular Java frameworks. It has a big ecosystem and a vast community around it. Spring allows you to develop enterprise-level Java web services, applications and microservices

Developers use the Spring Framework for common programming tasks like data processing, security, and messaging. The modularity of the tools enables you to write clean and accessible code. The active Spring community provides help and answers question regarding how to do certain things or how things work.

Main Features:

• Excellent documentation and multiple tutorials.
• Huge ecosystem and community.
• Enhanced modularity to improve the readability of code.
• Simplified injection to test data through POJOs (Plain Old Java Objects) simplifies the codebase and makes it more flexible.

Downside: Spring is a complex Web Framework and if you are new to Java programming, then this probably isn’t the best choice for you. Spring requires a lot of prerequisite knowledge, and this makes the learning curve steep.

Google Web Toolkit (GWT)

GWT (Google Web Toolkit) is a Java framework for web developers from Google. GWT allows you to write client-side Java code and deploy it in the browser as JavaScript. Google Web Toolkit creates UIs of reusable components, similar to JavaServer Faces.

The GWT framework provides functionalities for standard web development work like bookmarking, history management, remote procedure calls, UI abstraction and more. In addition, you can create dynamic features such as drag and drop UIs using GWT’s pre-designed classes.

Main Feature:

• Supports responsive web applications with complex client-side design.
• Provides pre-designed panels and widgets and a set of CLI tools.
• Provides support for unit testing, internationalization and localization.
• Easy to learn, many online tutorials available.
• The code is divided into a number of JavaScript files that help the application load smoothly.
• Manages static resources in the code like images and CSS, which requires explicit declaration in the Java code.

Downside: Every client-side code change requires a new compilation. That makes GWT development slower, compared to other Java web frameworks. Developers are used to quickly refreshing the browser to see the changes.

JavaServer Faces (JSF)

JavaServer Faces (JSF) is a framework for building Java web applications, developed by Oracle. It comes with in-depth, complex documentation

Developers use the JSF framework to build UIs of reusable components, manage the state of your components, connect components data sources, and bind user-generated events to event handlers on the server side.

Facelets is the default templating system of JSF, it was created especially for this project. Facelets allows you to use XML instead of Java for view handling. Other technologies such as XUL and plain Java allow you to create views. Web applications created with JSF are portable across different Java EE application servers as well.

Main Features:

• Oracle provides support for the code base.
• High-quality documentation.
• Reliable and stable framework.
• Official standard, part of the Java Community Process (JCP) program.
• Extensive set of tools and ecosystem.

Downside: Non-JSF and JSF components can’t work together, as non-JSF components don’t acknowledge the stages of the JSF process.