I'm making a database for my project (wirtual clinic) which will be a web application, but here is a thing.. I want in order that my app will based on a JavaFX (MVC pattern, where in View segment I could use .fxml files edited in SceneBuilder) is this solution possible?
If you need a web application running in a browser with a backend in a container, then you cannot use JavaFX. But you might try Vaadin. There you can use either Java code or HTML to build your application. They also sell a designer application.
The http://javafx-samples.com/ mentioned in the other answer shows a JavaFX application running as a server process and mirrored thru the network using JavaScript. This is technically admirable and might work reasonably well for your use case but you should keep that in mind when comparing it to client side JavaScript solutions.
It will not work well for flaky internet connections and extending it will have limits since it would require both Java server side code and JavaScript side code.
Such architectures have been used extensively in the past (e.g. Echo2, AjaxSwing etc.) and they all never gained serious traction even when compared to similar architectures such as GWT.
There are now several client side JavaScript based VM's including TeaVM which are pretty amazing and can produce pretty good results entirely on the client e.g. we used this VM in a recent demo.
Of course it is possible, but with the plugin and updates problems.
Some solutions are in progress. You can check this site:
http://javafx-samples.com/
It is promising I think because you don't need plugin.
Related
Is there one or several java based technology that can help me write an application code base once (including Logic-Views-Controllers) and then compile and run it for
all platforms including main desktop and mobile operating systems as well as
in the browser. It must work and save in offline mode too so that it could sync with remote server as soon as it is connected to the internet. To me, it seems there must be a way if I use some sort of html/css/js technology to handle my views for such an application since I don't need fancy operating system dependent view technologies, and java for Logic and controllers. So far I have found Oracle ADF Mobile which seems to be commercial, eclipse RAP, eclipse scout .... But I look for something that covers Desktop as well. In addition if I can make the application run only in web browser, in case it would run and save in offline mode, it would be fine enough for me.
You could use Eclipse Scout for this with the following setup/limitations:
Since June 2016 Scout only supports web UIs (until 2015 Scout also had support for Swing/SWT, but this is gone now)
You would need to run the Scout frontend model part in a local Tomcat
or similar
You would need to add the sync code for connecting the Scout frontend
model with the Scout backend (that would sync data once a client installation gets online)
Asking for a mobile solution in combination with Java will most likely put you in a messy situation, especially with the discontinuation of RoboVM
Hint: The Scout team has started working on JS offline capability of the Scout UI. However, this is effort is still many months away from production quality (many parts/concepts still missing, not all parts open source, no documentation, etc.)
Addition: You will have the same limitations with Eclipse RAP (needs a frontend server, only web based, hint: styling rap apps is hard).
Looking for the silver bullet... Beware that "not caring about something" (the OS) will make you care a lot about a framework that does the "dirty work".
Leaving opinions aside, in 2016 you will reach your goal quicker with JavaScript, it has become the only thing supported everywhere.
It may be a good deal if you're OK with JS, and living on the bleeding edge with heterogeneous / less mature tooling (see NPM gate).
Java in the browser (applets) is dying soon due to its well documented security issues. One could argue it's been dead for a long time.
If you do want to code in Java only, GWT is still alive. It compiles your Java code into highly efficient JavaScript.
However, ever since Google reduced its involvement by giving away the project to a steering committee, the developments have slowed down drastically, and I'm not even sure they are up to date with JDK 8 yet.
Google still uses GWT in projects like inbox, for what it's worth.
I would go with GWT.
Google also uses this for projects like the inbox webapp, and the inbox android app. Using GWT a lot of code between the two apps can be shared.
It is also possible to compile as a windows desktop application.
I would like to replace Java Applet which currently needs to use client's resources, i.e. external readers, and to communicate with a server via socket.
Reason:
1. I have thousands of client machines using this Java Applet program, and most of them are running out-dated JRE. When the Java Applet program is updated / added new features, all client machines will need updating the latest JRE.
Expected Solution:
The Java Applet program would be expected to be replaced by a web-based application, which allows to compile and run source code at client's side such that the new web-based application could still use client's resources and communicate with server via socket.
Can I use JavaScript to achieve it?
I would very appreciate your help/suggestion for this problem. Thank you!
JavaScript is a scripting language that gets evaluated in the browser.
I would not describe it as compiling and running but yes, it does mean you can run code in the client and is commonly used to create applications that run in the browser.
There's a staggering amount of frameworks that you can use to write your application. Take a look at the TodoMVC site to see the same TODO app created using several different frameworks.
If you come from Java applets, GWT may be interesting to look at.
If you wish to let the JavaScript client listen for messages from the server, take a look at websockets.
The smart card reader is going to be a problem, though!
See Architectures to access Smart Card from a generic browser? Or: How to bridge the gap from browser to PC/SC stack?
By the way:
The real issue with outdated JREs is not that your code will not run on old JREs, you can create perfectly fine applets using java 1.4 or java 5. Any libraries you may need you can deploy alongside your applet. The pain is a security problem. Anything but the latest version Java plugin is getting actively exploited and puts the user at risk. Occasionally, even the latest version is not safe.
try socket.io
I think this is the latest technology you can use to communicate with client browsers. it support the latest browsers and mobile browsers too.
hope this will help you.
Javascript has become very powerful with HTML 5.0. Here is a list of new elements that you can use to access all kinds of resources, including local files, audio, video, GPU rendering (canvas + WebGL) and GPU compute (WebCL). Here are even more things you can do, including database connections and networking. You can even create offline Javascript applications.
jQuery and jQuery layout make robust GUI development a lot easier. Rich tool suites, such as Google Closure offer optimization and a compiler for improving performance and detecting obvious mistakes early in the development process.
W3 offers useful stats for making an informed decision on how many users on average have access to which features. Note that the most annoying guy in that list arguably is IE8 due to it's lack of proper HTML 5.0 support.
In case you want to stick with Java, then one alternative would be to use my http://bck2brwsr.apidesign.org project. It's goal is to create small Java that can run in 100% of modern browsers without any plugin installed.
There are Java bindings to HTML (via knockout - one of the four most popular frameworks for HTML5) and that is why one can code whole business logic in Java and just render it via HTML. Should be enough to replace most of the applet UI.
In addition to that there is an experimental API to render on HTML canvas. People use it to write Java games that run in a pure browser.
There is a simple way to communicate with server via JSON REST API or via WebSockets. A live example is here.
I am researching possible ways to deploy an existing Java Swing application in a browser such that the client would not need to have a Java runtime installed (and "plugged into" the browser).
The application including the UI would need to run on a server, but the GUI should then "somehow" be rendered in a plain vanilla (of course JavaScript-enabled) browser. Performance and scalability are for once not an issue here...
The challenge is to get away with minimal changes or wrappers of the original Swing application.
I am aware of Eclipse RAP that allows something like that and using the SWT_AWT bridge it should then be possible to embed the Swing UI inside an SWT wrapper and render that on a browser.
I wonder, whether there are any other alternatives or approaches that come to mind?
Cheers,
Michael
AjaxSwing (formerly known as WebCream)seems to promise to do exactly that. I have no experience using it myself however.
Slightly related, but probably no direct help: someone has done the same to the GTK 3 UI Toolkit.
I am wondering if there are specific cases where GWT is not suitable? For example would it be approriate to re-develop Stack Overflow using GWT?
I am developing an app which has a Java Restlet API and I was planning on using GWT (previously I would just have used bog-standard HTML/CSS with back-end PHP code calling an API). I am wondering if there are reasons why I shouldnt choose to do this?
My answer is not full but I believe the following bullets may be useful.
GWT should not be used for applications that mostly present textual information and some pictures, i.e. not very interactive. For these applications GWT does not bring you a lot of benefits.
GWT should not be used by teams that have strong web skill and relatively weak java skills.
Do not use GWT if you are required to support browsers that GWT does not support officially. For example MSIE 6.
have a look at this topic GWT for big projects?
GWT is best choice to manipulate complex actions in a single page. like Google wave, Google mail ... you can easily update (ajax) any part of the page.
Because of the GWT is java-to-javascript compiler, user should wait the loading of .js files and it causes many and many problems if your web app is big. The bigger your project, the bigger javascript files, the more user should wait the loading of .js files
IMHO If you have a static looking website like a blog, news portals, etc which each page has its own identity and represents an entity and is requested separately don't use GWT alone (you can still mix it with server-side generated pages like FB).
For most of other web apps especially if users sign in to use your app or your app is interactive and there is no technical problem use GWT (like Gmail design).
I would propose to avoid GWT at any cost. I have experience developing huge project with GWT and it is nightmare, because of long development circle. If you have application in angularjs/react/jquery, you update source code, click F5 and reload it. You can quickly debug clicking F12.
If you use GWT on huge project, you have to wait ~1 min for app to compile. And then there is no good way to debug it. Google provided special browser plugins, but they worked unstable and didn't support last versions of browsers, so I had to downgrade FF. Also huge GWT app debuggin takes tons of java memory, so you have to provide more memory to tomcat. And finally in practice you can't avoid learning js, you will have to learn it if you do modern web development.
UPDATE 15.05.2017: My answer was downvoted by GWT fans, but I'd like to note, that my info is up to date: 1-page hello world app rebuild cyrcle takes about 30seconds with last IDEA and 10Gb mem SSD notebook. I also asked friends having GWT in production for serious project: they claim 2min is average redeploy time.
There are zillions of Java web application frameworks.
95% were designed before the modern era of AJAX/DHTML-based development, and that means these new methods are grafted on rather than designed in.
Has any framework been built from the ground up with e.g. GWT + Extjs in mind?
If not, which framework has adapted best to the world of forms with dynamic numbers of fields and pages that morph client-side?
Echo2 / Echo3 by Nextapp (www.nextapp.com) is totally awesome.
Advantages over GWT:
1) It is not limited to a sub-set of java like GWT
2) It is easier (in my estimation) to learn
3) Has extremely robust design studio for almost drag and drop designing.
4) It is very fast, and works very well on all platforms browsers
5) You can write your application using either java script or java
6) It has great and straight forward methods for handling events and actions.
Personally I think that for any web-application in which you are trying to integrate java and speedy delivery I wouldn't hesitate to pick Echo3 or Echo2.
If you're starting from scratch. I'd have to say Google Web Toolkit. I have to say it is incredibly powerful. You get keep using most of your Java tools. Plus, you don't have to duplicate code that exists on both the server and the client, it just gets compiled differently for each area.
I'd consider REST-style frameworks as well as the other recommendations here- Restlet or Jersey may be good choices for the backend, while you use something like JQuery or GWT on the front end. Both frameworks can easily produce JSON, and the REST style provides a nice clean line of demarcation between your client application and your server source; I find that JSF can make that demarcation pretty muddy.
I use JSF and IceFaces. Although JSF has a few limitations, IceFaces seems to work pretty well and has ironed out a few of the problems with JSF.
I haven't used a really good AJAX Java framework as yet, although Echo2 looks interesting.
I like the stripes framework. It lets you use whatever javascript toolkit you want.
Here is their documentation on AJAX
GWT is quite powerful and easy to use (all Java, no Javascript/HTML/CSS coding). If Google has their way it will be a dominant framework/tool in web applications development, and for good reason. It already works with Google Gears (which allows offline access to web apps) - and more than likely will be optimized to work within Google Chrome.
DWR
I use this to dynamically populate drop downs, and even filter them on the fly based on user input in other places on the form.
I like the combination of JBoss Seam and Richfaces, especially with the JBoss tools that are extentions to Eclipse - makes building these sort of RIA's incredibly easy.
Wikipedia contains some useful comparisons:
Comparison of JavaScript frameworks
List of AJAX Frameworks
Your choice depends on several different factors including whether you want the "work" done client-side (most javascript frameworks) or server-side (echo2 etc.). Other things worth looking at are tools like OpenLaszlo that provide Flash (I think) out of the box, but drop back to DHTML if there is no Flash player present.
Unfortunately I think the decision comes down to balancing several competing cocerns. Check out the comparisons and try them out - most come with online demo's for you to try.
Aptana has a server side frame work called Jaxer. This is from their site:
Jaxer's core engine is based on the same Mozilla engine that you'll find in the popular Mozilla Firefox browser. This means that the execution environment you use on both the client and the server are the same. It's Ajax all the way through and through. That means you only need one set of languages -- the languages that are native to the browser -- to create entire applications.
This framework is open source and has a very nice IDE based on Eclipse. Aptana is also working on a Javascript implementation for ActiveRecord called ActiveRecordJS. Potentially you could use this both client and server side with their framework.
GWT is one of the best AJAX framework that I used ever. Most important thing about this framework is that its maintained by Google. And Everyone know "Who is Google ?"
GWT is used by many products at Google, including Google AdWords and Google
Wallet. It's open source, completely free, and used by thousands of
enthusiastic developers around the world.
GWT provide rich widgets that can be used to built any application. Almost all the widgets they have.
Another important point is GWT is continuously developing and its also have stable release which is very good thing. Another thing Google has also released GWT-Material which is again a very good thing because everyone is moving toward material.
I hope this will help you!!!