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What are the best Java web frameworks?

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7 Options Considered

7 Options ConsideredPricePlatformsWritten in
Spring MVC
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Play 2
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Spring-boot
Cross-platformJava
ActFramework
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Vaadin
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Spring MVC

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Endi Sukaj
Top Pro

Spring MVC has a massive community

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Being the oldest and most used JVM web framework, means that Spring MVC has a massive community of followers who are very helpful and have provided numerous tutorials and answers on SO. Spring even holds an annual conference called SpringOne. The Spring forums and SO are great places to ask and g...
Endi Sukaj
Top Pro

Spring has an extensive ecosystem

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It is based and is dependent on the Spring Framework, therefore it benefits from tools like for example Roo and Spring Tool Suite and many more tools included in the Spring Framework. All Maven dependencies are available in a public Maven repository. There are also 3rd-party solutions for Spring,...
Andris Pelcbergs
Endi Sukaj
Top Pro

Great documentation that covers almost everything

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The official documentation covers virtually everything. The official website also has a series of great tutorials in video and text formats. There are links to Github repositories for Spring sample applications and there are also a lot of third-party tutorials out there for the fact that Spring MVC...
Endi Sukaj
Top Pro

Spring apps are highly scalable

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Applications are meant to scale as the framework is used in large-scale applications worldwide. Components like EhCache are used to scale memory cache and it also contains components used for parallel processing. Batch enables processing of large volumes of records and job processing statistics.
Endi Sukaj
Top Con

Complex and not newbie friendly

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Spring MVC architecture although simple has a lot of layers and abstractions which can be hard to debug if problems arise. It is also highly dependant on the Spring core. It's an old and mature framework that has numerous amount of ways to extend and configure it – and this actually makes it f...
Endi Sukaj
Top Con

Slow Prototyping

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If you are looking to build a quick prototype fast and easy, Spring isn't going to help much. It's very large and quite hard to grasp if you are just beginning with it.
Andris Pelcbergs
Endi Sukaj
Top Con

Updating and code maintenance can be a grueling task if you are a beginner

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Updating your project is manageable if you’re already familiar with the framework and the project itself, but if you’re just diving in it can be a little overwhelming and hard.
Endi Sukaj
Top Con

Lacking in UI development

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While actually very good and with a very complete and rich feature set to develop and maintain code on the server side, it still doesn't provide any rich framework for building good user interfaces.
See 6 more Pros & ConsSee 6 more Pros & Cons

Play 2

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Alex
Top Pro

Rapid application development

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All error checking and testing done in the browser only needs a page refresh to show the latest updates. This is huge, allowing the ability to code in real-time and make quick edits. Without it the develop would need to reboot/recompile the entire application to test with new data.
DecentBodbDerg
Top Pro

Very fast and easy to install, it is a revolutionary framework

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Alex
Top Pro

Great resources

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With some basic starting tutorials and a fleshed out documentation, there will be no need to go asking others for help, there should be enough for a developer to find a solution.
Alex
Top Pro

Asynchronous requests

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Everything with Play has been built with asynchronous requests in mind. This will result in the application not blocking results while waiting on other operations. With this implemented your application can be developed with multiple threads in mind without worrying about hanging on one request b...
KindheartedAchlys
Top Pro

Supports Scala

•••
Alex
Top Con

Not backword-compatible

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Applications that have been written in Play 1 will not be supported in Play 2 as the core of the framework was rewritten in Scala. This includes plugins that were working in Play 1 as well.
Alex
Top Con

Becoming a Scala framework

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As Play continues to develop and mature it seems as if it is becoming less of a Java framework as the core has been rebuilt in Scala. This may deter adopters.
DashingAtaguchu
Top Con

Steep learning curve

•••
See 6 more Pros & ConsSee 6 more Pros & Cons

Spring-boot

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Endi Sukaj
Luca Orlandi
Top Pro

Inherits all of Spring's strengths

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Boot is just a thin configuration layer over Spring Framework, as such it inherits all the strengths of Spring.
Endi Sukaj
Luca Orlandi
Top Pro

Fast prototyping

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Spring boot is built for fast prototyping.
thermoplastics
Luca Orlandi
Top Pro

Preconfigured starters

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Luca Orlandi
Top Pro

Kick down to Spring

•••
Endi Sukaj
Top Con

Lacking in UI development

•••
While actually very good and with a very complete and rich feature set to develop and maintain code on the server side, it still doesn't provide any rich framework for building good user interfaces.
See 3 more ProsSee 3 more Pros

ActFramework

Francisco
Green Luo
Top Pro

Hot reload

•••
You never restart while you're working on your Act application. Act's hot reload feature is fast and stable, it makes you feel like dealing with scripting language frameworks like Django or NodeJs. Watch this video and feel it.
Francisco
Green Luo
Top Pro

Templating

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Act's view architecture is very flexible and support using multiple view engines in your app. The default template engine is Rythm, a very developer friendly and powerful template engine. Act also support other templating solutions including freemarker, velocity, thymeleaf, and mustache via plu...
Francisco
Green Luo
Top Pro

Database access

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Act's DB layer is extremely easy to use. It supports SQL databases (through ebean orm) and MongoDB (through morphia). Using multiple datasource can never be that easy with Act's DB layer. Go here for more information on this.
Francisco
Green Luo
Top Pro

Scalability

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Act is built as a stateless framework. It supports horizontal scale.
Francisco
Green Luo
Top Pro

Superb RESTful support

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Act makes creating RESTful service a kids game. It features AdaptiveRecord (allows front end to drive the data structure), JSON response control (just declare the fields you want to present or hide) and RESTful URL routing with path variables.
Francisco
Green Luo
Top Pro

Easy to deploy

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ActFramework is not a servlet framework and there are no requirements on containers/app servers. It has a small package size (a helloworld distribution package size is less than 20 MB), a small memory feet print (a helloworld app heap usage is less than 20MB) and a fast boot up speed (a helloworld...
Francisco
Green Luo
Top Pro

Secure

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Act is built as a secure product. It provides built-in CSRF/XSS prevention mechanism. And act-aaa makes it very easy to implement Authentication/Authorization/Auditing in your app.
Francisco
Green Luo
Top Pro

Performance

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There are two aspect of performance: how quick a developer can deliver a feature and how fast the app is running on the product server. Act is designed to delivery excellent result in both aspects. With unbeatable developing experience Act makes it very easy to release a feature; on the other side...
Francisco
Green Luo
Top Pro

Configuration for multiple environments

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Act supports load configuration from a common dir and then overwriting it from a profile dir. Makes it very easy to manage configurations in different environment (e.g., dev, uat, sit, prod) Watch this video to see the innovative way Act delivers its configuration support.
Francisco
Green Luo
Top Pro

Concise and expressiveness

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Act does not require you to put Annotation when it is able to infer the intention from other parts of the code, i.e., you don't use @PathVariable or @RequestParam to tell Act the binding parameter name. And you don't need a ModelMap to bind variables to render argument names. Act has sophis...
Francisco
Green Luo
Top Pro

Complies to standards

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Act's IoC is built on top of Genie, a fast dependency injection library that fully supports JSR330, and Act's validation solution is built on top of JSR303. Act is NOT an odd framework to most Java developers. Unlike Play1.x, ACT applications follow the standard maven project structure and...
Francisco
Green Luo
Top Pro

Fast and flexible routing

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You can configure your routing in either Spring MVC/Jersey style with annotation or Play style with route table or a combination of both. Act's routing supports RESTful URL path variables, optionally validated with regular expressions.
Joe Cincotta
Top Pro

Easy to learn

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Extremely easy to get projects up and running and to learn the framework. Transitioning from being a learner to having something that is secure and production ready is seamless.
Francisco
Green Luo
Top Con

Very small community

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As of February 2017, Act is a brand new framework (even though the project started at the end of 2014). Community is still forming.
Francisco
Green Luo
Top Con

Documentation is still being written

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Act's documentation is still under development.
Francisco
Green Luo
Top Con

Functional testing support still under development

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Developers are still working on innovative functional testing support for Act.
Francisco
Green Luo
Top Con

Incomplete microservice support

•••
Although Act is built to be a great framework that supports microservice development, it lacks some of the key features at the moment, like sending requests to other microservices from within the app, service governance, and messaging handling.
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Vaadin

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Endi Sukaj
Top Pro

Easy to develop in

•••
Vaadin has a 'design mode' which allows developers to drag and drop components into a canvas and then provide the logic for every component. There are also a lot of third party tutorials and guides which help with the initial learning curve.
Endi Sukaj
Top Pro

Compiles Java to JavaScript

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Vaadin uses GWT to compile Java code into JavaScript. This means that developers using Vaadin can write both frontend and backend code in Java.
Endi Sukaj
Top Pro

Easy to develop prototypes quickly

•••
Vaadin has what is called the Vaadin Directory which is a repository of downloadable Vaadin components which can be easily used for development. To use something from the repository, you need to download the JAR file and add it to the project.
Endi Sukaj
Top Pro

Top notch documentation

•••
The book of Vaadin is a must have for every developer that uses Vaadin to make web apps. It is an excellent reference manual and all around a great tool for every Vaadin related need. You can find and download the pdf online or get it for free in almost any Vaadin sponsored conference. The online...
Endi Sukaj
Top Con

Weak scalability

•••
Since Vaadin stores the UI state and logic in the server, this means that for every user interaction a request needs to be sent to the server and the client needs to wait so it can know how to react. This leads to higher traffic and load times.
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Apache Tapestry

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Paolo
ModestCian
Top Pro

Clean code, change of code philosophy

•••
Clean structure helps you maintain your code for a long time.
ModestCian
Top Pro

Save you a lot of work

•••
To save your work you need to understand it's philosophy.
ModestCian
Top Con

Long way to learn it.

•••
It's philosophy is radically different to what you probably ever seen.
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Jersey

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59 Community Recommendations

Endri Siswanto
Diego Potapczuk
Stoyan Dimkov
Luca Orlandi
Alejandro Duarte
Green Luo
Andris Pelcbergs
kouriku
Endi Sukaj
Alexander Balyshyn
Gunjan Patel
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Alejandro Duarte
Alejandro
Contributor for 5 months
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Vaadin
Recommended 5 months ago
As a Java Developer, using Vaadin is intuitive. Writing the front-end using only the Java Programming Language is the top feature of this framework. No need to deal with HTML or JavaScript. It's possible to use those too, but not necessary to build already quite complex web applications.
Pro
 Compiles Java to JavaScript
Pro
 Easy to develop prototypes quickly
Pro
 Easy to develop in
Pro
 Top notch documentation
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