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Question

Java beginner web-development toolkit/environment

Answer 1

+2 A:

For web-development I use (and would recommend) the following:

JSP/Servlet API
Spring MVC
JQuery
XHTML & CSS
Fitnesse

With regards to resources, all these technologies are well documented on their respective sites, the only exception being XHTML & CSS for which I'd suggest http://www.alistapart.com.

With regards to editors both IntelliJ and (I believe) Eclipse have very good HTML, CSS, JSP and JavaScript editors.

Also use Firefox (as Brian has suggested) with both the Web Developer plugin and Firebug - both of these are indispensable.

Nick Holt 2009-09-07 08:15:35

Answer 2

+2 A:

Tomcat and Jetty are both well-known/supported servlet containers. If you're building a deployable for customers you may want to test on both, if you don't control the deployment.

For testing, check out (along with your normal unit test frameworks of JUnit/TestNG) Watij and/or HtmlUnit. These will allow you to automate the actual web/browser interactions and will save you a world of grief in the long run. The downside is that you'll have to invest some time in setting up your tests.

Related to automated tests, I think you need an automated build / continuous integration system. Numerous abound in the Java world. Two common ones are CruiseControl and Hudson.

For a lot of the above, standard Java/development tooling applies e.g. the 'standard' IDEs (Netbeans/Eclipse/Intellij - Intellij is worth paying for, btw). The same applies for CMS and there are lots of resources on this website about the pros/cons of SVN/Git/Mercurial etc. It's worth checking that your choice of CMS integrates with your IDE.

I would check out Firebug for simplifying development (on Firefox). It makes the front end development a lot easier. LiveHttpHeaders will ease diagnosis of issues relating to HTTP transfer.

Brian Agnew 2009-09-07 08:22:02

(I can see why you are at 19+k)

slashmais 2009-09-07 09:11:40

That's more to do with lots of time off :-)

Brian Agnew 2009-09-07 09:49:46

Answer 3

A:

First paragraph edited by request of slashmais : This answer is not really aligned with others, and the rephrased question. It's more of a complement to other answers. I believe the personal preferences are really important in choosing between technologies. I see it as (dis)liking some things, and choosing the technologies that correspond. The rest of the answer gives examples:

For example, suppose I believe the developer's actions should be checked in real-time as much as possible, to receive immediate feedback, and also completion if possible, and avoid early so many errors. This (dis)liking determines some preferences:

use a statically type language (like java)
use an IDE that compiles as you type (like Eclipse)
any Xml must be validated, via strict xsd. If the content have references to other information (such as java code), then it should be checked (like Spring checking for bean classes).
for the view technology, because it depends on my java code, I must have a verification that includes my actual java code. An idea could be to code my view in Java. (like Wicket).
my properties need to be in properties files for translation. But using String keys in my code (or view) is not acceptable. I would run a small tool that create java enums from each property file, and my code would reference the enums.
... and so on

Other example, suppose I strongly prefer "Convention over Configuration". That is, I agree to follow stricts rules in my project, getting much less plumbing to do manually (because default values fit):

Maven is the build tool of choice. It will impose many constraints, but also provide out-of-the-box many "build" features...
For a web application, I couldn't use Struts 1, because they are these huge configuration files in struts-config.xml, mostly with plumbing code. I would definitely switch to something like Spring MVC, that has default values for mapping urls to controllers.
and so on ...

Other example, suppose I believe so much in the Model-View-Controller separation, for clarity and reuse, that I want to stretch it a bit. I could use:

in the view, I would cleanly separate my model (clean Html, no formatting, no script), my view (or formatting, external css only), and my controller (javascript, using the non-obstrusive javascript policy).
in the webapp, I could use Spring MVC to separate well those layers.
in the business (this example is a bit constrived :-) ), I could have a rich domain model, use extensively the command pattern ("controllers"), and expose explicitely my business services as an interface API ("view").

KLE 2009-09-07 08:28:24

"There are many many ..." - Indeed! that's exactly why I ask the question: to find out what actually works [nicest|best|most-used|de-facto-standard|..]

slashmais 2009-09-07 08:39:11

Answer 4

+2 A:

CMS

Tortoise SVN

Editor / IDE

eclipse

General tools/utilities

Maven (build and deploy tool)

Cruise Control

GWT/ext-GWT/ICEFaces - web component technology

Spring - dependency injection framework

Hibernate - ORM

Axis 2.0 web service development kit

Jboss

Directed (special purpose) tools/utilities

log5j - for logging

Testing and QA tools/utilities/techniques

- Watij
- Firebug
- QTP for automated testing
- Junit Perf (Junit test cases for performance testing.)

Reference material (both on- & off-line)

Java docs of each of the technologies

Google ofcourse :)

Cshah 2009-09-07 09:46:57

log5j looks promissing; (Tortoise SVN is a version control system) Thanks.

slashmais 2009-09-08 08:25:22

Answer 5

+2 A:

Server side
Tomcat6
CMS
Drupal (not necessary in prilim phase)
Editor / IDE
NetBeans (good for a beginner)
General tools/utilities
(Almost everything is in NetBeans... go for it later)
Directed (special purpose) tools/utilities
(Almost everything is in NetBeans... go for it later)
Testing and QA tools/utilities/techniques
JUNIT and use FireBug (Do manual testing first)
Reference material (both on- & off-line)
HeadFirst Series on JSP, JavaScript, etc.
SCRIBD (online)

cdb 2009-09-08 06:21:03

THIS is the kind of answer I'm looking for - Thanks!

slashmais 2009-09-08 06:34:06

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