Modular web apps

Question

I\'ve been looking into OSGi recently and think it looks like a really good idea for modular Java apps.

However, I was wondering how OSGi would work in a web applica

Answer 1

Take a look at http://www.ztemplates.org which is simple and easy to learn. This one allows you to put all related templates, javascript and css into one jar and use it transparently. Means you even have not to care about declaring the needed javascript in your page when using a provided component, as the framework does it for you.

Answer 2

We've been using Restlet with OSGi to good effect with an embedded Http service (under the covers it's actually Jetty, but tomcat is available too).

Restlet has zero to minimal XML configuration needs, and any configuration we do is in the BundleActivator (registering new services).

When building up the page, we just process the relevant service implementations to generate the output, decorator style. New bundles getting plugged in will add new page decorations/widgets the next time its rendered.

REST gives us nice clean and meaningful URLs, multiple representations of the same data, and seems an extensible metaphor (few verbs, many nouns).

A bonus feature for us was the extensive support for caching, specifically the ETag.