Frank Silbermann wrote:
I have some Java application development experience, but my web development experience is very small (mainly just a few simple servlets). At my new job I am tasked with translating an architecturally simple ASP.NET application to J2EE (the company wants to standardize on Java). I’m working alone, and have a lot of freedom in the tools and frameworks I choose.
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To make my job as easy as possible, I’m trying to make a wise trade-off between the time spent learning a new framework (I have no experience in any of them) versus the time spent coding. I’m especially eager to minimize the time I spend wading through HTML code, as my experience there is also thin.
I think Wicket's documentation still needs a lot of work. There is much more available for Struts, Tapestry, or JSF. Wicket, though, is still -- in my opinion -- easier to learn. But I learned it after already having worked some with Struts and Tapestry.
With any of these you will have to learn a reasonable amount about HTML, and I would suggest that you do that as quickly as possible. There are many good tutorials online, but I would suggest that you stick with ones that promote the separation of content from presentation through substantial use of CSS.
Wicket sounds like a good approach – said to be easier to learn and use than JSP/Struts or JSF; and I could cannibalize the html generated by the ASP.NET pages, insert Wicket id attributes, and then work mostly with what I know best – POJOs. Do you think this is a good approach?
This will be the easiest way to match the existing application, but if you can spend the time to clean up the HTML (assuming it is, like so many ASP apps, a total mess) you will find the overall experience more pleasant. As Eelco said, the Java tool most like ASP.NET is JSF, so if you decide to convert the ASP code directly, that would be the path of least resistance. I would suggest Wicket, though.
The first thing I need to do is set up my development environment. Is there an installation guide for Wicket? From the FAQ I read that Java 1.5 SDK is not supported; I suppose I can use any IDE I please as long as I can select or install a Java 1.4.x SDK for development, right?
Java 1.5 is not *required*. Nothing in Wicket (at least in the core) uses generics, annotation, autoboxing, or any of the other language changes of 1.5. But Wicket will run just as well on a 1.5 JRE and will gain from the efficiency improvements that come with it.
I think most of the Wicket core developers use Eclipse or IDEA, but you can use any IDE you want. I still use a programmer's text editor for most of my Java coding, and I haven't found it a problem with Wicket. Tools that help with the IDEs, such as Eclipse plugins, are just now starting to be released.
Are there any restrictions on the version of Tomcat I can use? Should I install the latest stable version (Tomcat 5.5), or is there some reason I need an older version?
I've used the 5.0 series and the 5.5 one with no issues, and I've used Jetty occasionally in development. No issues.
Other than Tomcat and the Java SDK, are there any other tools that must be downloaded separately from the Wicket download?
I'm not real big on debuggers, but I found it necessary to do some interactive debugging with Wicket. If you don't use an IDE that lets you debug the deployed application, you might want a standalone debugger; I use JSwat.
Other tools? I assume you have some testing tool. I've found it hard to really test big chunks of Wicket code, but I do test whatever I can, so I have to have JUnit. Oh and you really have to have Maven and/or Ant. Because Wicket is still so new, I find I want to have the source code handy and ensure that I'm working with the version of Wicket that matches the source, so I build it myself with Maven. But I use Ant for my own projects.
Good luck with your research. Please let this list know if you choose Wicket, and if not, we'd appreciate knowing your reasons.
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