Pounding Down Java
by Alright I gave in, no other choice with our legacy technologies, so I might as well enjoy this transition.
What I need is not full explainations, just some pointers in the right direction.
I want to develop web pages and applications, integrate with database, and use some good frameworks for doing such. In C# web pages were ASP with C#/VB "code behind pages"
Give me some buzz names I can look up, technologies, suggestions, books, sites to keep me up to date. I'm not so much worried about Java the language itself, as I am what tools I should be concerning myself with. Edit: Simply because, I'm seasoned C++/C C# at this point, and the technologies in .NET and C++ don't translate into Java simply.
Thanks in advance.
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So I can have a variable hold the type of a class, and then later instantiate that class. That's really really wild.
I'm sure C# has this, but I wasn't expecting in java.
Reminds me of .NET that has this sweet ability that you can compile C# code and then run it from within the library itself (not just system calls for programs, but the lib itself exposes the methodology of the compilers). IIRC
yeah, not typical, but some things take advantage of that.
For example, In Spring, you configure instances of (typically Singleton) objects in an XML file stating the type and the Spring container uses that to instantiate them.
like:
<bean id="myCar" type="com.autos.Car" />
basically behind the scenes its doing:
Class myCarClass = new Class("com.autos.Car");
Object myCar = myCarClass.getInstance();
(or something similar, I can't remember exact syntax)
HelloWorldServlet. yesssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss
HelloWorld.jsp next!
Basically you explained Model 2 or MVC, in Java this is classically done with JSPs and a controlling servlet behind the scenes. Java web frameworks basically provide their own servlet, and you plug into it somehow, by creating your own "Action" (Struts) or "Controller" (Spring) classes..
if you're using Java for web applications, picking the right frameworks is key. Ian put some good ones up, but I'd go with:
Spring for Web MVC (http://www.springframework.org) an alternative to Struts MVC.
and also Spring framework for managing everything else (Spring makes JDBC easy) (even if you use Struts for the web mvc part, Spring can make the rest easier)
If you go with Spring, it makes using Ibatis ORM so easy to use.
Ibatis would be an alternative to Hibernate.
basically, if you're doing Java development, use Spring.
At its heart, Spring is a way to manage Singletons and other objects in a sort of container, using dependency injection.
Beautiful, this is really what I'm looking for the most. .NET has code behind pages, which are I guess their own version of an MVC, and it seems this works somewhat silmilar.
Donovan's learning JSP. I'll never understand why he'll enjoy learning a new programming language and reading a 500 page book. I'd rather read a novel.
gotta keep up with the learning, or else you either fall behind or get old and crotchety!
Tools abound with java. This is both good and bad.
There's something for everything, but there's also SO much choice that it can be extremely confusing.
Some of the very popular and leading technologies are:
- Tomcat - http://tomcat.apache.org/ - a servlet container. This is basically an app server for running your webapp. Supports JSP (scripting language), Servlets, and full objects.
- Hibernate - http://www.hibernate.org/ - powerful, high performance object/relational persistence and query service. This is a great way of mapping your objects to your database tables. Makes CRUD easy.
- Struts - http://struts.apache.org/ - An MVC framework for building websites. This is the leading framework out there. Lots of people know it, and it really can make your webapp development easier.
- Ant - http://ant.apache.org/ - Apache Ant is a Java-based build tool. - It's like make. XML based build scripts. This will help you a LOT.
- AppFuse - http://raibledesigns.com/wiki/Wiki.jsp?page=AppFuse - This ROCKS. You should start here, I'd say. It's basically a kickstart for a webapp, using the most popular technologies out there (including those mentioned above). Even if you don't end up sticking with it, it's a GREAT way to look at some code and see how you should be doing things.
- Eclipse - http://www.eclipse.org/ - a free IDE
- IntelliJ IDEA - http://www.jetbrains.com/idea/ - a non-free IDE - THIS IDE ROCKS
i wish there was a way to just plug in code into a program and have it automatically translate to another language
haha yeah if only it were so easy. then again maybe i wouldn't have a job. but that's some of the focus of .NET and Java, making it platform independant. It's so ridiculous really, everybody has some kind of initiative to make stuff run everywhere