Servoy Click Client
Published by admin on Friday, June 12, 2009 - 14:35:49 - Filed under General, News
Yesterday evening I started working on part 3 of the awaited tutorial, and then I was side-tracked.
I have been resurrecting a test project of mine that was a proof of concept on integrating Servoy with a full fledged Java Web Framework - to the pressing invitation of someone else to be more precise.
- Jeff, you will recognize yourself, this is all your fault! ;-)
Anyway the idea behind the project was that, since I lately I’ve been using more and more the Click framework for web projects, I wanted to know if it would be possible integrate it with Servoy as a Headless client instead of using plain JSP.
JSP is an old technology with big drawbacks for long term maintenance due to the mixing of java logic inside the html view, basically this technology sucks and I hate it!
I don’t know why Servoy chose it when they already have “Wicket inside”.
Click on the other hand is a very clean, very lean and very easy to learn and use modern, component oriented, fast and secure web framework. It is the equivalent of Wicket - that you must have heard of, haven’t you? - but easier. So to match it with Servoy would be a real treat for web projects with a Servoy back-end.
That’s why I did it again, - this time integrating it as a Java projects inside Servoy Developer (to increase the challenge ;-).
This time I also wanted the project to work as a cross-context project - to avoid installing in the /ROOT context folder of the Tomcat server, so I used the cross-context trick in the context xml declaration of my webapp (look for cross context in Tomcat on the web if you don’t know what I’m talking about).
The only difficulty with integrating in Developer is that Servoy has no idea of the structure of a web project (like you could find in a war file), so I had to teach him (creating the structure by hand, and when exporting as a war making the right choices of folders and options for him), but this is only a very minor drawback.
The cross-context is another problem, it works like a charm when the server is launched from the command line or as a service/daemon, but it doesn’t in developer. I have a feeling that this is the way Servoy Developer bootstraps the Tomcat server in the background with some limitations.
Something to look at.
Anyway, this works very nicely and if any of you is interested (and is willing to try some very different way of using Servoy), I could make public the Servoy/Eclipse project file, with a Servoy sample solution, and a little “tutorial-like” pdf on how to use… Just send me a note.
I would really love to see people trying all different kinds of web frameworks this way and help find ways to better integrate Servoy in the java/web modern world instead of using plain old JSP.
Think of it, for the web client, Servoy itself is using Wicket, a modern component oriented, very powerful framework, but for you to build your custom pages, you are left with prehistoric technology! This is pitiful.
If you want to help make change to this state of fact, send me a note, let’s try some new, powerful and exciting things!
