Wednesday, September 5th, 2007
First milestone of next gen Spring Web Flow released, now includes the Ext framework
<p>The Spring Framework continues to evolve releasing the first milestone of their next generation Spring Web Flow product:The overall goal of Spring Web Flow 2.0 is to formally take the product from what it is today, a framework used primarily to implement linear wizards, to what it was always designed to become: a universal application controller engine for powering all types of client interactions. Such interactions include wizards, stateless “RESTful” interactions, and finer-grained, non-linear/asynchronous interactions often present in a “web 2.0″ application.
Of note is that fact that Jack Slocum’s Ext Framework has been adopted for the project’s Spring Faces module:
The Spring Faces module provides the Spring community a dedicated project for exploring additional JSF integration opportunities. The initial work in 2.0 M1 introduces integration with Ext, a popular Javascript GUI widget framework. Several lightweight JSF UI Components are provided that encapsulate the rendering of rich Ext widgets. The approach we took allows Ext widgets to decorate standard JSF components, adding a desktop-like look-and-feel and additional UI behaviors such as client-side validation. The following Ext component decorators are provided in 2.0 M1:
* A date validator component that performs rich client-side validation on a date text field, with a great-looking date chooser control.
* A text validator that performs rich client-side validation on a free-form text input field.
* A number validator that performs rich client-side validation on number text fields.Ext controls look great, and because all UI behaviors execute client side the responsiveness of the UI is excellent. We will be adding further support in this area in future Web Flow release milestones, as part of the Spring Faces module.
The complete Spring Web Flow 2.0 roadmap can be found here.
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wished there was a similar php-based framework in the works. anything like it available?
Jack,
Keep up the good work; Great to see Ext library embraced by Spring WebFlow..
Satish Mummadi
I don’t know, but I think PRADO Framework would adopt this concept in the meaning time.
Prado docs on controls in general:
http://www.pradosoft.com/demos/quickstart/?page=Fundamentals.Controls
Prado docs on Standard controls:
http://www.pradosoft.com/demos/quickstart/?page=Controls.Standard
Prado docs on active controls (ajax):
http://www.pradosoft.com/demos/quickstart/?page=ActiveControls.Home
Yea, PRADO would be it for php components. And we’re actually starting work porting our WebWidgetry/MashupStudio platform from asp.net to php using PRADO. We also decided to use Jack and Brian’s Extjs for our foundational widgets. Check my sig link for a little more info.c
NICE! It’s great to see a server side framework attempts to integrate front-end framework. I can’t wait to give it a spin. I wonder when will it be available to Spring.NET though….
Rey, If you could change that from GUI to UI, it would help Ext. a little in terms of search ranking.