I was just smiling a little bit while reading this because I remembered my presentations almost 10 years ago about such discussions...
Just for reference (you don't need to agree with my categorization), and today you think much more about "Vue/Angular/React/JS-Framework of the week". I discussed the following ~10 years ago: [image: image.png] http://www.kai-waehner.de/blog/2010/12/30/categorization-of-web-frameworks-in-the-java-environment/ https://www.slideshare.net/KaiWaehner/categorization-of-java-web-frameworks-jsf-wicket-tapestry-gwt-zk-flex-javafx-grails-lift-spring-mvc-roo *From my experience, I would clearly vote for your option 1) => * *Simple handwritten html+javascript (Jquery?) served by the Spring Boot backend (easy to start with but might get a bit messy over time)* If the UI gets a lot of traction and evolves over time, some refactoring (and the inclusion of a web framework) is probably reasonable. But *I would definitely start with a "quick and dirty" keep it simple solution which just works. A web framework makes it much more complex from the beginning.* I had a project with GWT... GWT was awesome, but also the biggest pain in the project becasue most people of the team did not understand the framework in detail... And the UI is not they main part of PLC4X. Start simple, if it works well and gets traction, plan a good web architecture without pressure in parallel and release it in another major release of this Apache project. I guess most other Apache projects started similarly (even today most UIs are not really nice). Best regards, Kai Waehner Just my two cents from my experience. On Tue, Oct 15, 2019 at 1:53 PM Tim Kläsener <tim.klaese...@codecentric.de> wrote: > Hi everyone again, > > We're currently looking into creating a frontend for interacting with > the PLC Simulator, i.e. having an administration interface for > changing properties/input/output and, if time allows, some fancier > visual representations of the devices the PLCs control. > > As for the REST service, I've so far developed it with Spring Boot > which should be okay from a licensing perspective (let me know if you > have any concerns), now I'm looking into different options for > developing the frontend: > > 1. Simple handwritten html+javascript (Jquery?) served by the Spring > Boot backend (easy to start with but might get a bit messy over time) > 2. Separate single page application using > Vue/Angular/React/JS-Framework of the week (better separation of > concerns but requires JS-toolset) > 3. Java-based web UI framework like Vaadin or Royale > > Any other suggestions or reasons to choose one option over the others? > > Cheers, > > Tim >
