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Spring boot back end with Swing client

I have a design question: I use DB + Hibernate + SpringBoot as back end in a server and use Swing clients on desktops.
I am considering for a new project the following architecture:
Back end (maybe in separate servers):
SQL DB
Spring Boot + Hibernate Java App
Front end(s):
Swing Java App
later: mobile App; Browser
I have searched a bit, but still have some doubts and feel I am missing something. I initially considered using React for front end. But this is going to take too long for me and I have lots of Swing components that I already optimized (and this my applications tend to use lots of grids with edits "in place")
I searched for Spring + Swing, but what I found was about running everything on the same JVM. I would think that separating them would allow me to (later) build a Mobile or Web front end using the same back end.
To sum it up:
create back end services with spring boot + hibernate on top of SQL db
create Swing front end that consumes those services
(later stage) mobile app to consume these same services
Questions:
Is this a good approach ? Am I seeing this the wrong way
How to "share" the POJOs between the back end and the front end? (thinking about placing the models on a separate lib); I don't mean how to transport them, I mean how to reuse them on both projects.

This is possible.
I would create the backend application with Spring Boot and access a datastore with Spring DATA. I would make services available via REST.
To access REST from your Swing client you must use a REST client of some sort. I would recommend Spring RestTemplate but there are many alternatives.
Synchronous client to perform HTTP requests, exposing a simple,
template method API over underlying HTTP client libraries such as the
JDK HttpURLConnection, Apache HttpComponents, and others.
Since you want mobile support some time in the future you could consider creating a webclient instead and making it cross platform (browser only).
To answer your two questions:
Regarding backend you will be perfectly fine as Spring Boot is a good option. As for the client I personally would not choose Swing today since it is very old and rather go for JavaFX 2 or a web client if that is an option. If you are the only developer and since you are proficient it might be a good solution for you.
You can share the POJOs from you Server for your Client as an api that you include as dependency. However it is usually not recommended to share POJOs but rather generate it on the client side or just type them. In your case if it is a small project it probably is ok. Do what is most easy for you.
I would recommend start using Maven as a build tool if you do not already.
Good luck.

Your request is perfectly valid, as you are a Swing developer and your approach is absolutely fine.
So let's draw the general picture: you're building a backend/frontend product/software.
Backend
Your backend will be a Spring application that will run on a server, let's say http://localhost:8080, serving requests to clients.
You'd probably want to create a #RestController on http://localhost:8080/api/... to expose your functions to your Swing client.
Swing client
Your client will be a Swing application running on your desktop.
To connect your client to the Spring application, you now need to implement a service in your Swing application that will call your Spring web server and fetch the resources from there.
To achieve this goal, may options exist:
Why not plain Java ? Use this tutorial to call your Spring services.
Http components from Apache are quite common.
Spring your app ! Spring API includes RestTemplate that you can use in your Swing app to call Spring backend and fetch resources for your desktop app.
As you can see, this is EXACTLY the same thing as with a website in React:
your web page is the JFrame
your JSX components in React would be your JPanels and components
you'd connect action listeners on components (JComboBox, JButton) to a service calling your Spring backend.
you'd then use the resources fetched from your Spring server to update your application state.
rince and repeat
So, be confident, your approach is correct. You'll find people ranting at you having chosen an obsolete techno but really, who cares?
(May I add, totally a pun, you've been smarter than the JavaFX guys which are now facing the segregation of javafx libraries from the core Java ;-))
And as always... happy coding !

Migrating Spring MVC application from JSP to AngularJS

I am considering moving from server-side rendering view technologies like JSP, Struts to client-side rendering view technologies using AngularJS,
A popular Javascript framework for modern browsers.
When we are making this change and what are all the things that I may encounter.
If anybody who are experienced in Spring Web MVC and JSP development and would know how Spring MVC can work together with a client-side Javascript like AngularJS.
Kindly Answer.

You have to rewrite the view part using angularJS, and replace the logic from the server with a REST API.
It's often a huge work, and the hardest part is to migrate the existing server-side session management to the browser, because a REST API is stateless.

Below is one of the suggested way in which i recently migrated my existing spring MVC web-application in Single page application using AngularJs as client side java-script framework:
1).First you needs to bisect your core business logic which must needs to handle in DB layer,if not done already. i.e. SP's,trigger's,etc...
2).Then for the thing mentioned as hardest by Toilal ("to migrate the existing server-side session management to the browser, because a REST API is stateless"), you can consider Spring Boot as one of the options to build things quickly instead of Spring MVC with fusion of java8 features to yield the JSON response via API's.
3).And than last but not the least, build UI layer with AngularJS in front End encapsulating the data returned by the spring boot API's. Please note that as angular is super power full, you can do most of your business logic at client side,your DB layer just needs to give you the whole bunch of business data to render the screen,other things you can easily handle in angular.
Thus, this way by making the DB layer thin and imbibing angular at front end, you can improve performance of your existing application drastically.
You can also check this AngularJS with Spring-mvc useful thread in same context.

Separate frontend and backend in Java - Spring MVC Framework

I'm new at Spring MVC framework i want to learn how to fully separate frontend(html,js etc.) and backend(java).
I'm going to use RESTfull services, play with JSONs.
I think i'm going to build Single Page Application.
Most of tutorials shown in jsp pages which i dont like.
I saw my friends company project(Using Spring MVC) they used Embedded Jetty server and in server configuration they assigned two different paths for frontend and backend paths.
I saw frontend codes there was only html javascripts etc. on the backend side the approach was the same.(Fully Separated !!!)
My question is:'How they pass requests from frontend to backend and get results from backend and update frontend'.
Also they were using Maven backend and frontend defined as modules in the root.
Could you share tutorials so i can understand playing with codes ?

'How they pass requests from frontend to backend and get results from
backend and update frontend'
They probably use HTTP[S] as the transport and JSON as the data representation format. Browsers support AJAX which allows you to make HTTP connections without reloading the page.
Could you share tutorials so i can understand playing with codes ?
No, that's not what this site is for.
Comments:
JSP is still very useful for generating HTML on the server. This is pretty close to necessary if you want Google to crawl your site.
Check out Spring Data REST for a framework for quick REST APIs.
Also check out ExtJS or Dojo for good Single Page App frameworks.

Webflow vs. Angular or Both?

We are developing an Enterprise application with the following technology stack:
Websphere Application Server
Spring (Webflow (Session in View pattern), JPA (Hibernate), Core)
DB2 osZ
Frontend (JSP Rendering HTML5 (CSS 2.0), Ajax in combination with webflow, JQuery)
Multiple Single Pages design combined by using webflow for supporting
subflows
Development Methodology
- Domain Driven/Component Driven Application
- Test Driven Development
Current Situation
Our domain model has very deep domain class hierarchy and therefore we decided to use webflow to allow deep class navigation in sub flows.
We are using the “session in view pattern” because there are many screens reflecting the class hierarchy of the domain model.
This worked very well because of having the backend managing session scoped data for the frontend.
What do we want to do next?
Single Page Design
Control User data in session
Control User data across screens
Support multiple instance of a browser in one user session
Want to be able to talk to the backend (Enterprise Java/Spring) to
retrieve data and persist
Support more state-of-art user experience
Technology Stack
Websphere Application Server
Spring (Webflow (Session in View pattern), JPA (Hibernate), Core)
DB2 osZ
Frontend (Angular, JQuery, Bootstrap 3)
So the discussion internally is how to integrate Angular?
Should we give up Webflow and solve everything with Angular?
Does a mix make sense?
We have taken the following chart as a reference:
http://vschart.com/compare/angularjs/vs/spring-framework
We know what both frameworks are able to do, and know how to make them work. We are interested in other teams experience on how to integrate Angular? Did someone ever mix Webflow and Angular?
We are interested to see some best practices and how teams have transitioned to either framework or keeping both?
Thanks for input,
Andrew

I suggest you to check the Java library thymeleaf in order to get directly the benefits of HTML5 which you can easily add AngularJS and build on top of it (with bootstrap if you need it), and use Spring Security for Auth & session management.
As loose coupling at all levels (front-end included) is most of the times desirable, try to avoid technology mixing (WebFlow & AngularJS in this case) where doesn't makes sense.
Last thing, you and your team can discuss the possibility to develop an Angular based single page application which consumes a server side API coded in Java.

It is too late but might be useful for someone looking for this sort of answer.
I would recommend
Angularjs SPA(single page application) and use html template instead jsp.
Implement Token based authentication rather session based and implement restful spring web mvc api.
web flow/navigation can be controlled using the Angular services or browser's localstorage. I would recommend Angular services to manage app state instead browser localstorage.
And obviously bootstrap 3 to make the UI pretty.
Example implementation: jhipster

Simple RIA backend

I'm creating a prototype for a java web application.
Frontend is a Swing-based java applet.
Backend should be a type of web-service, that is called by applet.
Backend should run inside a servlet container and should have its own security (username/password) database. I know, that Tomcat has its own user database (realm), but the app should have own. Web-services, in turn, carrying out app logic and database access (via Hibernate).
I'm a newbie for a web development and I'm getting lost in a huge amount of the java web frameworks. Even just reading 'introduction' and 'getting started' documents takes a lot of time.
So I need an advice which framework(s) are suitable for the task and not very complex for a quick start.
Thank you

I would avoid any web framework in such case. Most frameworks are designed so that it is easier to connect bussines logic (backend) with WWW user interface. In your case you don't need web GUI - you have an applet, so web framework like Stripes, Struts, etc. would not help to much.
I think you can use servlet or several servlets as a connector between backend and you applet. Servlets are simple, easy to learn.
If you want to have some abstraction layer with additional services, like security, for instance, you can consider Spring Framework, but it has its own learning curve.

Spring (http://www.springsource.org/) seems like a good choice to handle DB access, and server side logic. Spring-security can be used to integrate security (it takes some time to get started, but it works very well). SpringMVC can be used to output simple XML documents, or if you need more complex remoting capabilities, SpringRemoting is a good solution.
If you want to go the full WebService (with a capital W and a capital S) Spinr-WS can be useful.