I am studying java ee and I am trying to get the picture of entire application. I Know I want to use Enterprise Java beans for the server side functionality, but I am not sure how to connect it to the user interface. As far as I can see there are two major UI frameworks:
java server faces and Servlets. Which one would be better to use with EJB? (Is it even possible to link them?)
I see JSF gives an nice MVC which I would actually like to follow, but not sure if it is intended to be used with EJB?
I am studying java ee and I am trying to get the picture of
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1) Servlets are not actually UI framework, its a whole technology to create websiter on both server and client side.
2) JSF is considered as a successor to JSP and Servlets so I would definitely use JSF. There are also nice frameworks like PrimeFaces or RichFaces which provides additional components and functionality to JSF. Integration with EJB seems to me smoother with JSF because they both have similir concept of beans and scopes so they kind of fits together.
3) If you are not forced to use either JSF or Servlets then you can also consider other frameworks to use. Some popular ones – GWT, Vaadin, Play Framework and others.Especially Play is not a bad start.
P.S. One note – you will probably still have to develop some Servlets even if you use JSF. Reason is that JSF is built on top of Servlet technology and its not almighty, so for example for file upload you will have to use Servlets or framework like RichFaces which can do that for you.