I’m a .NET web developer who has just been asked to produce a small demo website using NetBeans IDE 5.5. I have no experience with Java up to this point.
I’ve followed a couple of quick tutorials, one which just uses a JSP file and another which uses a servlet. My concern at this early stage is that it looks difficult to keep my application code away from my markup.
Using JSP files looks quite similar to the old days of classic ASP. On the other hand, servlets look useful but seem to involve a lot of writing out markup to the output stream, which I’m not happy with either.
Is there an equivalent to the ASP .NET code-behind model, or any other strategies for separating out markup and code? Is it possible to keep markup in the JSP and then use the servlet from the JSP?
The thing about Java is that it doesn’t really come ‘bundled’ with stuff in the same way .NET does… you generally go looking for the goods.
This makes starting with web apps in Java daunting because there are so many options. Many of them are built off JSPs, which is a plus.
If you are set on using vanilla JSPs you are not going to have a good time. Otherwise, I would suggest Wicket, Stripes or Spring MVC.
Stripes is probably the simplest of the three (Spring is a little complicated and Wicket is conceptually different from the other two). Having said that Spring MVC is probably the most used of the three..
All Stripes really is is JSPs and ActionBeans. Action beans are Java classes that contain actions, which are methods that perform your actions. Theses ActionBean classes also contain the data for the current page.
This page has more information about Stripes.