Web App Frameworks

aka The Luke and Josh Variety Hour

servlets are terrible

• Way too many System.out.println’s

• Tightly coupled

• Umm... sessions

• The ultimate DIY

web frameworks are cool

• Fewer System.out.println’s

• Hide the gross stuff (sessions...)

• Lots of free stuff

• Steep learning curve :(

the basics

• Model (the stuff)

• View (the pretty face)

• Controller (the middleman)

model (the stuff)

• Persistent data

• Trucks, POs, etc.

controller (the middleman)

• Pull data / I can has trucks?

• Push data / save the truck’s state

view (the pretty face)

• Show the trucks

• Edit the trucks

Seam

It’s pretty cool I guess

seam model

• Model = Java object + annotations

• Truck.java

seam controller

• Controller = Java object + annotations

• YardController.java

seam view

• View = XHTML

• trucks.xhtml

Ruby on Rails

Why it is Always the Right Answer

rails

• “Web development that doesn’t hurt.”

• Based very strongly on the Ruby scripting language

• Heavily Object-Oriented

• Dynamic type

• Basically, it’s scripting for the web.

• Well-developed programming paradigm

• Huge community support and documentation

paradigm

• RESTful design

• REpresentative State Transfer

• Designs data control into the four natural states of HTTP communication

• Not specific to Rails, just the adopted paradigm

• States: The CRUD Model

UD

• CRUD

• POST

• Create

• GET

• Read

• PUT

• Update/Create

• DELETE

• Delete

• HTTP

• CRUD

• POST

• Create

• GET

• Read

• PUT

• Update/Create

• DELETE

• Delete

• HTTP

• CRUD

• POST

• Create

• GET

• Read

• PUT

• Update/Create

• DELETE

• Delete

HTTP CRUD

POST Create

GET Read

PUT Update/Create

DELETE Delete

paradigm

• Reasons for RESTful design

• Clean, meaningful organization

• Organized by action

• Concise way of sending data

• Improves consistency and data integrity

• Simplified interface design

• Three components

• View data

• Create new entry

• Edit existing entry

HTTP CRUD

POST Create

GET Read

PUT Update/Create

DELETE Delete

design

• How It Looks: an MVC example

• The Model, Part I

design

• The Model, Part II

design

• The Views

design

• The Views: Partials

design

• The Views: New

design

• The Controller: Part 1

design

• The Controller: Part 2

why rails is better

• Single-Source Solution… mostly

• Install Ruby and RoR and you’re ready to start.

• The total MVC solution is wrapped up in Rails, no need for:

• JBoss framework

• Seam

• Hibernate

• JSF

• Richfaces

• This includes JavaScript/AJAX functionality. All Ruby code which is

rendered to HTML/Javascript later.

why rails is better

• Integration across platform much smoother, all Ruby/Rails code, no need for other layers.

• Because of this, it’s faster.

• More control over finer details of:

• Server environment

• Development or Production

• Database setup – lots of options

• Optimization – lots of opportunities for this

• Large number of plugins

• Can get a bit over-the-top if not careful.

downfalls• Still gaining adoption on a large scale

• Very strict definitions (namely database naming conventions)

• A bad thing?

• Optimization is not automatic, programmer needs to do a lot to optimize

• Takes smart programming to gain in efficiency

• A bad thing?

• Not as many sweet built-in GUI features

Last Word

Use Ruby on Rails... it’s amazing

Questions?

references• http://www.seamframework.org/Documentation/GettingStarted

• http://livedemo.exadel.com/richfaces-demo/richfaces/message.jsf?s=glassX

• http://www.infoq.com/articles/jboss-seam

• http://rubyonrails.org/- Ruby on Rails site

• http://www.railsbrain.com/ - Rails documentation

• http://railscasts.com/ - Rails Tutorials via Screencast

• http://railsforum.com/ - Rails help / discussion forum