Question

I primarily come from a PHP background but I have been asked to develop a website using the Java platform. I have been exposed to some terminology that I don’t quite yet understand and I was hoping that anybody with Java familiarity could let me know in basic terms what it means/is used for. Or if you could tell me its equivalency in the PHP world that would be great too. The words are:

1. Spring
2. Struts
3. JavaBeans
4. EJB
5. JMS
6. Servlet

Thanks!

Answer 1

First of all most of them are Technologies that have been wrapped up around Java EE architecture. First of all do you understand what MVC stands for. MVC is Model-View-Controller pattern. It is a design principle that lets you separate your concerns easily. There are couple of PHP frameworks that follow MVC pattern. Eg:- Kohana

Spring

Spring is an MVC aritecture but beware it’s not just for MVC… Spring has loads of uses. If you have used frameworks related to PHP such as Zend or CakePHP you could say that Spring is similar to them. You can checkout the Spring features.

Struts

Struts is a Front End controller. It takes all the requests and map them to their relevant actions. Here is a part from Apache Struts website

One way to separate concerns in a software application is to use a
Model-View-Controller (MVC) architecture. The Model represents the
business or database code, the View represents the page design code,
and the Controller represents the navigational code. The Struts
framework is designed to help developers create web applications that
utilize a MVC architecture.

Here are the basic components of Struts.

1. A “request” handler provided by the application developer that is
   mapped to a standard URI.
2. A “response” handler that transfers control to another resource
   which completes the response.
3. A tag library that helps developers create interactive form-based
   applications with server pages.

PHP equivalent for this should probably be the Routes module in a PHP framework. Some helpful sources to easily get started with Struts –

Struts for dummies

JavaBeans

1. Java beans are rather simple. They follow a standard. Here are the
   followed conventions – The class must have a public default
   constructor (no-argument). This allows easy instantiation within
   editing and activation frameworks.
2. The class properties must be accessible using get, set, is (used for
   boolean properties instead of get) and other methods (so-called
   accessor methods and mutator methods), following a standard naming
   convention. This allows easy automated inspection and updating of
   bean state within frameworks, many of which include custom editors
   for various types of properties. Setters must receive only one
   argument.
3. The class should be serializable. It allows applications and
   frameworks to reliably save, store, and restore the bean’s state in
   a fashion independent of the VM and of the platform.

If you found above explanations harder to understand that’s fine since Java Beans can be explained by an example simply.

public class Student implements java.io.Serializable{
 private String name;
 private Integer id;
 public Student(){}

 public void setName(String name){
  this.name=name;
 }
 public String getName(){
  return this.name;
 }
 public void setId(Integer id){
  this.id=id;
 }
public Integer getId(){
 return this.id;
 }
}

More helpful sources from – Wikipedia. Probably this is a PHP class.

EJB

EJB – Enterprise Java Beans. This probably doesn’t have a PHP alternative. EJB is bit complex. It’s kinda of like a mega bean that has business logic around it. Best place to find more is Wikipedia –

JMS

JMS stands for Java Messaging Service. JMS provides communication in between Java applications. JMS is a technology and there are many provider implementations of it. Best I heard of happens to be HornetQ. Beware that I haven’t used it. There is no PHP counter part as I know.

Servlet

Servlet is what takes the request and provides controller logic. Servlet routes the files back again to a JSP – which a Java Server page. This can be your PHP frameworks controller code.