Best resources for learning Wicket?

Question

I'm looking to learn Apache Wicket. What resources would you recommend for someone with plenty of Java and web development experience (but ~zero experience with Wicket or similar frameworks)?

Found 3 book options:

• Pro Wicket (September 2006) dated, and looking at Amazon, not really worth it
• Enjoying Web Development with Wicket (June 2008)
• Wicket in Action (September 2008)

Wicket in Action seems the strongest choice, according to Amazon reviews. But it is 2 years old now, and as we know, things can change fast in the world of Java web frameworks...

So, would you recommend just getting the Wicket in Action book to get started? (Or is there a 2nd edition around the corner that I should wait for?) Or skip books altogether and go with online docs or tutorials (which ones)? Something else?

Answer 1

Wicket in Action seems the strongest choice, according to Amazon reviews. But it is 2 years old now, and as we know, things can change fast in the world of Java web frameworks...

Wicket in Action is quite good, and probably worth getting even though it's not current. The book was based on Wicket 1.3. You'll want to be using 1.4, but much carries over.

There's also good information and a list of good blogs at the Apache Wicket site and many examples at wicketstuff.

Answer 2

My resources are: google, wicket in action (pdf to be searchable) and:

• http://wicketstuff.org/wicket14/
• http://wicketbyexample.com/
• http://wicketstuff.org/confluence/display/STUFFWIKI/Wiki
• and sometimes the wiki is helpful: https://cwiki.apache.org/WICKET/
• some blogs: http://wicket.apache.org/meet/blogs.html
• and through this little research I found http://visural-wicket-examples.appspot.com/

To get the latest news:

• use twitter http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%23wicket
• or even better: jetwick where the tweets are filterable by date (and which is created by wicket ;-)): http://jetwick.com/?q=%23wicket

So, to get started I wouldn't recommend the book. Try the available example at wicket.org and see if wicket is nice for you. But then IF wicket does the things you want, I recommend to buy the pdf/book to get some deeper knowledge + tricks. BTW: Although the book is a bit outdated this wasn't a big problem for me the last times I needed help from it.

Answer 3

Wicket in Action is definitly the best Wicket book out there. It was based on Wicket 1.3 but most of the content is still valid.

Other good sources are

• http://wicket.apache.org/
• http://wicketstuff.org/wicket14/