Spring MVC & UI Components

Question

I\'m in the \"technologies selection\" phase of a small, single-page web application that will be heavily-based in AJAX, and which will report to a Java backend.

In a pr

Answer 1

Typically, the value so-called UI components lies in how they keep track of user interactions on the server side by integrating with a stateful framework.

Since you have decided to go for a request oriented framework, it would make more sense to use some well-known client-side JavaScript libraries instead. Popular choices include:

• Backbone.js – an MVC foundation for user interfaces
• jQuery UI for some premade widgets (calendars, etc.)
• If you want to go down a more complex route, but with a more desktop-like feel, Sproutcore
• Finally, if you wish to avoid JavaScript, you can useGoogle Web Toolkit, which compiles Java to JavaScript and is supposed to have good integration with Spring.

Personally, if I don't need a lot of standard prebuilt widgets, I like Backbone.js + underscore.js + jQuery. I don't like Google Web Toolkit since it feels like writing a pidgin JavaScript, and at that point I prefer to write JavaScript directly.