AppFuse 3.0 has been released. It refreshes used technologies (Java 7+, Spring 4, Spring Security 3.2) and adds a bunch of new (Bootstrap 3, PrimeFaces, wro4j, WebJars and finally Apache Wicket).
From the project home page:
AppFuse is a full-stack framework for building web applications on the JVM. It was originally developed to eliminate the ramp-up time found when building new web applications for customers. Over the years, it has matured into a very testable and secure system for creating Java-based webapps. At its core, AppFuse is a project skeleton, similar to the one that’s created by your IDE when you click through a wizard to create a new web project.
I you are looking for some foundation for your project or just would like to see how the same things look in different technologies you can give AppFuse a try. A quick start page should be a good starting point.
There is also a personal thread in this story. Steadfast readers can remember that over 3 years ago I started working on Wicket frontend for AppFuse. I definitely prefer working on backends, but I wanted to get know Wicket (and its famous ability to being tested without Selenium) better and an engagement in the AppFuse development seemed to be a good way to practice these skills. There are still places in a Wicket frontend which need to be polished, but the work is mostly done (what I’m happy about :) ).
As a summary of my work I can write that even Wicket (where all page logic is written in Java or Groovy classes – no more c:forEach tags!) cannot completely remove the pain which comes with the limitation of HTTP (which wasn’t designed for the “enterprise applications”) and differences between browsers (although with jQuery and Bootstrap it is much easier). In addition 3 years is a lot of time in IT and currently there are even more use cases where component-based server side frameworks aren’t the best solution to make a good looking, responsible, scalable and trendy UI. Maybe it is time to work on an AngularJS frontend ;).
Solid Soft 