Wicket Framework can save 60% of programming time
If you are from a cricket playing nation, a wicket can mean things like the batsman being declared out, the pitch, stumps, etc. However wicket is now taking a new meaning for Java developers. A google search for wicket surprisingly throws up the Wicket Java web application framework as the first result.
If Google feels that the wicket framework is what most people are looking for when they search wicket, we sure need to have a closer look at the Wicket framework. One of our friends at IndicThreads has been trying out Wicket and he says that Wicket is saving him 60% on programming time as compared to a framework like Struts. These figures sure will vary in each case, but even if he is half way to the truth, we have a framework that needs to be taken note of.
The Wicket website (http://wicket.sourceforge.net/) is clean and usable. The site says that “Wicket is a Java web application framework that takes simplicity, separation of concerns and ease of development to a whole new level.”. I guess we have all heard that before. java.about.com says “Wicket was the most often recommended framework in reader emails! The two main differentiators of Wicket over other frameworks are that all logic is in unit-testable plain old Java objects and, also, the view is comprised of simple HTML pages”.
Only a few days back, Wicket released version 1.2rc1. There are 10s of Java web frameworks out there, and most developers react with “Not another framework!” whenever they hear of a new one. It is creditable that even in such an environment, a new framework like Wicket has got some momentum going. Wicket had it’s 1.0 release only in June 05.
J2EE community has always been the most framework addicted. It began with Struts, then Spring took over and maybe Spring isn’t cool enough anymore and Wicket gets a shot.
Check out the features of Wicket and the reasons why the creators feel you should adopt Wicket.
If you don’t care about the Wicket Java framework but are keen to know what the cricketing meaning of Wicket is, check out en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wicket
Related:
Related:
>> Struts Action Framework 2.0 should be released by August 2006
>> Spring In Action: 9I Book Review
>> PHP readies Java like framework
>> 5 good things about the Spring framework
>> Apache’s Java reflections on 2005
I beg your pardon? I can think of many reasons why anyone would not choose Wicket as their framework of choice, but…
‘The documentation is pitiful’? Wicket is probably one of the best frameworks when it comes to both JavaDocs and examples (like the component reference). Did you even try to look around a bit?
‘There is no way to contact anybody’? I don’t know why you got bounced back. Registering on mailing list is typically not rocket science. And did you even try googling a bit for the ‘problems’ you encountered? At the time I write this wicket-user (429 users that actually did manage to subscribe) has 16809 messages, and wicket-develop has 8430. We’re in the top-50 of most active projects on sourceforge. And then there is the IRC channel as advertised on the site, which usually has at least some core developers on line.
‘These guys that write the framework don’t really care for it’s acceptance by the community’?… that depends what you mean by ‘the community’. We’re not aiming to be the framework market leader or something. We’re an old skool open source project in that we’re primarily after scratching our itch and that of our users. No hidden (commercial) agenda, just the software.
I’m not sure what you think you can gain with spreading FUD here, ‘guest’. But if you want to discredit the framework or it’s authors, this is the n00best way of doing that.
It’s getting frustrating. These guys that write the framework don’t really care for it’s acceptance by the community. It’s just a inward looking programming exercise.
The documentation is absolutelly pitifful. I tried to figure out how to do a master-detail form and after few hours I just gave up – on wicket. There’s no way to contact anybody. I tried to register to the user list yet been bounced back.
I’m already ticked off by these guys – as far as I am concerned their 60% time savings translate into 60% frustration and waste of time.
Stripes is nice but it has a different focus from Wicket. Stripes tries to simplify developing to the model 2/ web mvc paradigm, while Wicket tries to deliver object orientation without compromises to the web tier. You might be interested to read the opinions written [URL=http://www.virtuas.com/articles/webframework-sweetspots.html]in this framework comparison paper[/URL]
I saw the Stripes framework the other day (http://stripes.mc4j.org/confluence/display/stripes/Home)… And it also seems to achieve many of the things that Wicket sets out to achieve… Having said that, bot Wicket and Stripes are on my ‘todo’ list of things I need to try out…
So many frameworks…so little time 😉
The main new thing about Wicket (I am the originator of the framework) is a real focus on rigorously separating code from markup, and getting back to implementing all behavior with simple, basic, powerful OO Java programming. There’s a much longer vision statement on the Wicket web site (http://wicket.sf.net).
Alef is quite correct that it’s not a choice of Wicket OR Spring. It’s Wicket AND Spring for those that want to since we have very nice Spring integration. The nice thing about Wicket Spring integration though is that it’s quite optional. Wicket can be used very nicely with Hibernate or even JDBC.
Comparing Wicket to Spring is almost the same as comparing Struts to a fullblown J2EE app server.
As far as I know, Wicket doesn’t do anything in the non-web area. Spring MVC and Spring WebFlow are web-related products but the other parts of Spring (such as the AOP capabilities, the portable service abstractions for JDO, Hibernate, JDBC, transaction management, scheduling, mail, et cetera) are at least equally important not to mention the most advanced IoC capabilities seen so far.
regards,
Alef
Note: of course, I’m biased in the sense that I work for Interface21.
Spring became popular because it had IOC or dependency injection which was a new concept. What is the new thing in Wicket?
As scripting langauges don’t compile, there’s not much need for an IDE. Text editor plugins for Groovy and Jython will be good enough