What to learn for making Java web applications in Java EE 6?

Question

My goal is to make web applications!

I finished reading the Books "Headfirst - Java" and "Headfirst - Servlets and JSP".

Because this topic (web applications) is so big and complicated, I would like to ask what I should learn next. I feel overstrained when I read catchwords like Java EE, EJB, JSF, JPA, Glassfish ... but I won't give up.

Can anyone please tell me how I should proceed with learning? Should I grab a book like this: Beginning Java EE 6 Platform with GlassFish 3: From Novice to Professional or should I just make some Online tutorials?

Thanks!

Answer 1

This question was asked twice today that I can think of. Here's one that I answered: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1958472/web-development-in-java/1958478#1958478

Answer 2

I've read the two threads. But again: In the threads they are only saying "learn Tomcat, JBoss, Hibernate, learn this or that, etc..." Just throwing with words. But I want to know which specific book or tutorial I should lern. Maybe there is no such way and I have to learn it "inefficiently" by looking every single word up. I justed hoped to get an advice how to proceede.

Answer 3

For Tomcat, read the manual on the website. It is very good. Particularly, the first few chapters on web app organization and deployment, and the chapters on the Servlets API and JSPs.

For Spring, the Manning book Spring in Action is very good. Similarly for Hibernate (the Manning book) but I think Hibernate is mostly outside the scope of webapps. Your call, though.

Wicket - Manning book also. But really, just write your front-end code in Javascript. It will be less painful, IMO.

Answer 4

Even if I know that this will be controversial, my advice would be to start with Java EE 6 only. So, grab GlasshFish v3 and either get the book Beginning Java EE 6 Platform with GlassFish 3: From Novice to Professional or follow the Java EE 6 tutorial. In my opinion, the book (that I've started to read so I know what I'm talking about) provides more guidance which might be preferable if "everything" is new for you (it covers both the Java EE platform and its APIs and the environment to build, deploy your applications).

Now, as I said, I can already hear voices saying things like "Java EE is heavy, use Spring instead, learn Struts or Wicket or Stripes for the presentation layer, learn Hibernate for persistence, or not because I don't like ORM, use iBatis or straight JDBC instead (you'll see, it's cool with Spring, Spring is so cooool), and use Tomcat (and why not Jetty), or JBoss, or just forget all this and go for Grails, and bla bla bla...".

But I don't think that this is really helping you and, without mentoring or guidance (and you won't find a non outdated unique resource covering all combinations), this must sound very confusing for a beginner.

So, because I think that Java EE 6 is a big improvement over previous versions of Java EE, because it provides really nice standard APIs for all your needs (Servlet 3.0, JSF 2.0, JPA 2.0, EJB 3.1 lite, Bean Validation 1.0, CDI, etc), because these APIs are all more than decent, because there is nothing really wrong in learning them, because this is already a big task, because you have to start somewhere, I'd focus on Java EE 6 only and forget the other frameworks for now. More precisely, I'd start with the Java EE 6 Web Profile (and then add things if you want to go further).

By doing this, 1) you'll get started and you'll learn brand new things and 2) you'll give some time to all other frameworks and/or tools to adapt and prove that there is still a need for them. And if there is, it will still be time to experiment the survivors and you'll be able to understand much better why they exist.

Answer 5

Java EE 6 is really amazing. The only problem is that it's about 2 weeks old, and there is only 1 container currently offering it's features -- Glassfish.

I have nothing against Glassfish, I use it all over the place, several production instances, I love the product and the project.

That said, the details of JEE 6 do not translate back to JEE 5. Some do, many do, but the Web Profile, Servlet 3.0, the new Bean types, JPA 2, etc. Those aren't there.

So, by learning JEE 6 first, you're simply constraining yourself to a single container. More are coming, but they're not here yet.

Tomcat, JBoss, OpenEJB, Glassfish, Jetty, Resin, Geronimo, etc. all work well with the JEE 5 spec (at least those parts of the spec that they support, Tomcat doesn't have EJB for example).

I can't think of anything in JEE 5 that wasn't carried forward to JEE 6. JEE 6 made some very old aspects optional, and those you simply wouldn't learn today anyway. JEE 6 made some JEE 5 stuff even easier (packaging notably, EJB Lite for example).

Learn JEE 5 now so that you can actually apply what you learn in a variety of environments, rather that learning JEE 6 now and discovering you may not be able to use much of what you learn.

No single book will teach you what you need to know. Servlets, for example, are a nice foundation, but for anything larger than a couple of pages or endpoint, you will want to use one of the many 3rd party frameworks, or JSF, and no book covers the core and then a framework on top of that.

The JEE 5 tutorial is good at getting the foundations down, my major complaint is that they don't show you the source code. Rather they expect you to just download and run it. It's not discussed in the tutorial. I've found the Head First books to be pretty good.

For web programming, raw Servlets are important enough just to understand the request/response cycle but you don't need a deep understanding to make a leap to a 3rd party framework.

I'm a big fan of Stripes for an Action framework (vs a component framework), and the single Stripes book available is excellent (making choosing that an easy choice).

I can't suggest a Component framework book, and I actually would not recommend one right off. The component frameworks truly bury the HTTP core request/response structures. They bury them for a reason, and they gain value BY burying them, but I believe to be effective you need to have a solid understanding of these concepts early on. That's why I don't suggest learning a Component framework first.

The JAX-RS REST framework, included in JEE 6, but readily installable in JEE 5 or any servlet container, is excellent. Arguably it is what Servlet 3.0 should have been. But I don't know any books for that.

Answer 6

My advice is to stop reading books and start implementing stuff. In my experience book learning is not a substitute for the learning you get by doing things.