Seam in Action (Paperback)

by Dan Allen (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
JBoss Seam is an exciting new application framework based on the Java EE platform that is used to build rich, web-based business applications. Seam is rapidly capturing the interest of Java enterprise developers because of its focus on simplicity, ease of use, transparent integration, and scalability.

Seam in Action offers a practical and in-depth look at JBoss Seam. The book puts Seam head-to-head with the complexities in the Java EE architecture. The author presents an unbiased view of Seam from outside the walls of RedHat/JBoss, focusing on such topics as Spring integration and deployment to alternative application servers to steer clear of vendor lock-in. By the end of the book, you should expect to not only gain a deep understanding of Seam, but also come away with the confidence to teach the material to others.

To start off, you will see a working Java EE-compliant application come together by the end of the second chapter. As you progress through the book, you will discover how Seam eliminates unnecessary layers and configurations, solves the most common JSF pain points, and establishes the missing link between JSF, EJB 3 and JavaBean components. The author also shows you how Seam opens doors for you to incorporate technologies you previously have not had time to learn, such as business processes and stateful page flows (jBPM), Ajax remoting, PDF generation, asynchronous tasks, and more.

All too often, developers spend a majority of their time integrating disparate technologies, manually tracking state, struggling to understand JSF, wrestling with Hibernate exceptions, and constantly redeploying applications, rather than on the logic pertaining to the business at hand. Seam in Action dives deep into thorough explanations of how Seam eliminates these non-core tasks by leveraging configuration by exception, Java 5 annotations, and aspect-oriented programming.

About the Author
Dan Allen is a passionate enterprise software developer, scholar, and mentor with over eight years of development experience using technologies that include Java frameworks (Seam, JSF, EJB3, Hibernate, Spring, Struts), testing frameworks (JUnit, TestNG), JavaScript and DOM scripting, CSS and page layouts, Maven 2, Ant, Groovy, and others. Dan is also a dedicated open source advocate who has been running Linux (and only Linux) since 2000. Dan's professional passions are equally divided between Java and Linux.

Product Details

• Paperback: 624 pages
• Publisher: Manning Publications (June 15, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1933988401
• ISBN-13: 978-1933988405
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.2 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #179,729 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fantastic, September 12, 2008

By	Kevin P. Galligan "Captain Awesome" (New York, NY) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I'll be honest. I reviewed this book for Manning before it came out. Look at the back cover. There I am. I cannot stress this enough. If you want to learn Seam (and if you're building web applications, you want to learn Seam), you should buy this book. I reviewed it because I work with Seam daily, on multiple projects. From simple Crud stuff to trading systems. I do not lie in my quote on the back cover. I learned a lot of stuff reviewing this book. I have read all the other Seam books out there, at least up to the time I reviewed this one. Other books are good, and I won't get into specific comparisons, but I learned a lot reviewing this one. However, its well organized, so if you know nothing, you'll be able to learn it from this book. So, you know, buy it.

FYI I was not paid to review the book, and will certainly get nothing if you buy it.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Review by Celinio Fernandes, February 7, 2009

By	Developpez.com writers - See all my reviews

A seam is a joining of 2 things, like 2 fabrics for example. But for 3 years now, it has had another meaning for developers since it also refers to a framework. It is a rather new framework, the 1.0.0 Beta version was released in September 2005, the project leader was Gavin King (one of the creators of Hibernate), it uses JSF and EJB 3, and so it is with some big interest and curiosity that i read this book. The author, Dan Allen, knows what he is talking about since he is a committer on the project. We learn that the term Seam was chosen to refer to the work put on to facilitate the collaboration between JSF and EJB 3. JBoss Seam applications may run on Websphere, Weblogic, Tomcat. The book has a practical approach since it is based on an application centered on the game of golf (Open 18), to illustrate the features of Seam. The book is divided into 4 parts.

In the 1st part (chapters 1, 2), the seam-gen tool is explained and used from the beginning to set up the development environment, using a Hypersonic H2 database.

In the 2nd part (chapters 3, 4, 5, 6), the author explains what Seam brings to JSF, correcting some defects, such as a verbose XML file (faces-config.xml), by removing the <managed-bean> tags from the file. With Seam it is possible to define the backed beans in an XML file. The life cycle of JSF with Seam is also detailed to explain the advantages of Seam. Chapter 4 introduces the components, its related annotations (@Name, @Scope ...), the life cycle of components, etc. In chapter 5, the tags of the configuration file components.xml (the alternative to annotations) are explained in details. Chapter 6 is about interceptors and the concept of bijection (= injection + outjection, with annotations @In, @Out) by introducing the new term outjection which refers to the possibility of injecting the property of a component into a context variable, which can be re-used inside another component, a JSF view ... With bijection, the values are injected from context variables when the component is called and injected again into the context variables. A clear distinction is made between static injection (the value is injected when the component instance is created) and dynamic injection (the value is injected when a method on the component is executed).

In the 3rd part (chapters 7, 8, 9, 10), an entire chapter (chapter 7) is dedicated to the Conversation scope, one of the 2 scopes/contexts introduced by Seam (the other scope being business process, which is longer than the session), as an addition to the 4 classic scopes which are Request, Page, Session, Application. This scope ties together individual requests. So the 6 scopes ordered by ascending scope are : Request (event), Page, Conversation, Session, Business Process, Application. The term of conversation, page flows and related annotations (@Begin, @Conversational, @End, etc) are systematically and largely explained with code snippets around the Open 18 application. Chapter 8 is a necessary reminder of JPA and Hibernate. I have particularly liked the quick presentation on extended persistence context and the differences between these 2 APIs because it is well explained. The next chapter is about the persistence and the transactions with Seam, in particular within the conversation, and is largely illustrated with code snippets. Chapter 10 explains the Seam Application Framework with an exercise.

In the 4th part (chapters 11, 12, 13), we learn that Seam relies on JAAS for authentication (chapter 11). A sample with a JSF login page form is used. A clear distinction is made between role-based authorizations and rule-based authorisations. The rules engine Drools (the name Drools is derived from the term "dynamic rules") is explained and used to create the rules. A quick sample of use of the org.jboss.seam.captcha component to display CAPTCHA inside a web page is explained. AJAX and existing solutions (Ajax4jsf, ICEfaces, GWT ...) are empasized in chapter 12. Finally, chapter 13 introduces a few Seam components such as <s:fileUpload> to upload files from a JSF form, <s:graphicImage> for the dynamic rendering of images, UI components to generate PDF files using facelets templates, but also the Seam module for graphic generation based on JFreeChart, composing email with a Seam component mail etc

What I liked about this book : The author's tone. It makes you feel like you are attending a live presentation on Seam, the author spends a lot of time introducing things, weighs the pros and the cons of existing solutions and then explains how Seam can be a possible solution. I also liked the golf theme, omnipresent, and instructive ;-)

What I liked the least in this book :The referring to an older version of JBoss AS : 4.2 instead of 5 (Java EE 5)

The source code of the book is of course available on the book's website, along with 2 extra chapters in PDF format regarding the integration with Spring and the use of business process (jBPM) : http://www.manning.com/dallen/

The author's website : http://www.mojavelinux.com/ An errata is also available at http://www.manning.com/dallen/excerpt_errata.html

Finally, the code source of the book is also available at : http://code.google.com/p/seaminaction/

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent resource for JBoss Seam!, October 4, 2008

By	Chris Stewart (Richmond, VA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Not too many months ago, I was evaluating a number of Java frameworks for a project I was starting. One of those frameworks was JBoss Seam. Seam brings together J2EE technologies such as Enterprise Java Beans 3.0, Java Server Faces, POJOs, and a wealth of rich web components.

Many of us are familiar with the "In Action" series of books from Manning. They are quite simply some of the most highly respected technology books available. I purchased this book knowing the kind of quality I could expect, and I wasn't let down. The presentation and quality of the material was as I expected. Some of the key areas of focus were those that are most important in Seam; the Seam life cycle, inversion of control, state management, persistence, and transactions. Obviously many of these topics exist outside of Seam but what the Seam framework does is provide added features for these key items. The book focuses heavily on each and really drills into the improvements made.

I've done a lot of scrounging around the web for tutorials, guides, and articles about Seam. This book is far and away the best resource I've found. Everything else has been a mere reference. If you are like me, and want a real resource on the topic, you'll be happy with this purchase.