h1. Apache Wicket 1.3 released The Wicket team wishes everybody a happy new
year and starts 2008 promising with a fresh new release: Apache Wicket 1.3.
"Apache Wicket":http://wicket.apache.org is a Java open source component
based web application framework. Apache Wicket was established as a top
level project at the Apache Software Foundation on June 20th 2007. With
proper mark-up/logic separation, a POJO data model, and a refreshing lack of
XML, Apache Wicket makes developing web-apps simple and enjoyable again.
Swap the boilerplate, complex debugging and brittle code for powerful,
reusable components written with plain Java and HTML. This new release
features some considerable improvements over previous releases and
stabilizes several core API's. Highlights from this release: * last
JDK-1.4release (next release will be Java 5 based) * package move from
@wicket@ to
@org.apache.wicket@ -- Wicket joined the Apache Software foundation and
renaming all packages to go into the Apache namespace reflects this move *
simplified models API -- the number of Model classes was minimized, the
@Component@ parameter to the @get/setObject@ methods has been removed as it
was not always clear which component to provide * simplified converter API
-- converters now need two methods (see interface @IConverter@):
@convertToObject(String, Locale)@ and @convertToString(Object, Locale)@,
this makes rolling your own custom converters much easier * all URL's are
now generated as relative URL's -- this means it works with zero-config
behind a proxy server * simplified validator API -- the validator API has
been decoupled from Wicket's form component hierarchy allowing you to create
validators so that validators can be reused outside Wicket * guice support
-- want to use Google's guice as your dependency injection framework?
wicket-guice makes it easy: @@Inject private IService service;@ will inject
the IService implementation into your Wicket component. * portlet support
("JSR-168":http://jcp.org/en/jsr/detail?id=168, "JSR-286":
http://jcp.org/en/jsr/detail?id=286) -- Wicket pages can now work directly
in a portal as portlets without changing a line of code (no separate
component hierarchy), learn more about Wicket's portlet support in this
presentation by Ate Douma: "Wicket portlet primer":
http://www.slideshare.net/ate.douma/wicket-portlet-primer * switched logging
API from commons-logging to slf4j * improved Ajax support -- new Ajax
components can be added to the page and contribute new javascript
dependencies to the page header, hide/show components using Ajax without
workarounds (@setOutputMarkupPlaceHolderTag@) * added @<wicket:enclosure>@
and @<wicket:container>@ tags -- @<wicket:enclosure>@ is a grouping tag for
controlling visibility of markup surrounding a component,
@<wicket:container>@ can add components' markup in places where it would
make the page non-w3c compliant * stateless pages and components for those
parts of your application that needs to scale * hybrid URL encoding to make
search engines and your users happy (see "Thoof":http://thoof.com for an
example in action) * nested form components -- create panels that contain
forms and use them anywhere without having to worry about the nesting of
forms * minimized session use by storing component hierarchy in file system
(DiskPageStore) And much more small updates, upgrades and new features. As
there have been API breaks you will need to do some work on your existing
applications to make it 1.3 compliant. This is not a drop-in replacement for
Wicket 1.2. The release is accompanied with a "migration guide":
http://cwiki.apache.org/WICKET/migrate-13.html and "live examples":
http://wicketstuff.org/wicket13 (the examples are part of the distribution).
The distribution contains the Wicket jars and all sources. You can download
the release here on one of the "Apache mirrors":
http://www.apache.org/dyn/closer.cgi/wicket/1.3.0 While we take a break
recuperating from the holidays, we have begun planning the next version: it
will be Java 5 based, introduce generics into the models, and some other
"nice stuff":http://cwiki.apache.org/WICKET/wicket-14-wish-list.html. You
can help and discuss the future of Wicket on our mailing list.
