Java Open Source Programming: with XDoclet, JUnit, WebWork, Hibernate (Paperback)

~ Joseph Walnes (Author), Ara Abrahamian (Author), Mike Cannon-Brookes (Author), Patrick A. Lightbody (Author) "In this chapter, we briefly discuss the things to come-primarily what the tools we'll employ when building PetSoar as well as the development-process philosophies we'll..." (more)
Key Phrases: using webwork, public long getid, xml mapping files, Red Bar, Green Bar, Commons Logging (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

The Java language itself is not strictly open-source (Sun has held onto control, albeit with lots of public input). There is, however, a large open-source development community around this highly capable language. Java Open Source Programming describes and provides tutorials on some of the most interesting public Java projects, and is designed to enable a Java programmer (who's worked through the basic language's initial learning curve) to take on more ambitious assignments. The authors generally treat the covered open-source packages as resources to be used, rather than projects to be contributed to, and so it's fair to think of this volume as the "missing manual" for downloaded code. In that spirit, the authors devote many sections to "how to" subjects (addressing, for example, a good way to retrieve stored objects from a database and the procedure for calling an action in XWork).

Java Open Source Programming takes a bit of a risk by devoting a lot of space to the development of a complex application (an online pet shop), as such a didactic strategy can be hard to follow. The authors pull it off, though, and manage to show that their covered technologies can be used to create a feature-rich and robust application that uses the versatile model-view-controller (MVC) pattern. This book will suit you well if you're planning an MVC Java project and want to take advantage of open-source packages. --David Wall

Topics covered: The most popular open-source Java packages, particularly those concerned with Web applications and the model-view-controller (MVC) pattern. Specific packages covered include JUnit and Mocks (code testing), Hibernate (persistent storage of objects in databases), WebWork (MVC), SiteMesh (Web page layout), Lucene (site searching), and WebDoclet (configuration file generation).

Product Description

 Discover how to develop full-scale J2EETM applications quickly and efficiently using the best Open Source tools

Written by leading authorities in the field, this book shows you how to leverage a suite of best-of-breed Open Source development tools to take the pain out of J2EE and build a complete Web-based application. You’ll combine these tools to actually reduce the points of failure in your application, while increasing overall system stability and robustness. Along with the tools introduced here, you’ll develop the PetSoar application, which follows the PetStore application used by Sun Microsystems to demonstrate features of J2EE. With PetSoar, the authors focus on developing a maintainable and flexible application, rather than showcasing the end result, so that you can apply the material in your own projects.

In addition, the authors provide methods for utilizing Open Source software components for each stage of the development process.

The Open Source products covered include:

• Hibernate to aid with simple,flexible, and speedy transparent object persistence
• OpenSymphony WebWork to allow for pluggable view technologies and extensible configuration
• JUnit and Mock Objects to assist with rapid and robust unit testing
• XDoclet to assist with generating code and configuration files automatically
• Jakarta Lucene to add Google-style smart search capabilities to data stores
• OpenSymphony SiteMesh to aid in the creation of large sites with a common look and feel
• OpenSymphony OSCache to easily cache slow dynamic sections of Web sites resulting in faster-loading pages

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Product Details

• Paperback: 480 pages
• Publisher: Wiley (November 28, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0471463620
• ISBN-13: 978-0471463627
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 7.4 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #952,439 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A missed opportunity, March 15, 2004

By	Thomas Paul (Plainview, NY USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

What a good book this might have been. It isn't an awful book but it could have been so much better. The premise of the book is to take the "Pet Store" and improve it by using several open source tools. The first part of the book discusses each of the tools with brief explanations and sample code. The second part takes us through the development process showing how to use the tools that were discussed earlier.

The good parts of the book are mostly in the second half. The authors apply each of the tools, explain test-driven development, demonstrate how and when to refactor code, etc. The integration of the different tools is made naturally so that it doesn't seem that the authors are trying to squeeze a tool in just to demonstrate it. The bad parts: this book desperately needs editing, both technical and for grammar. It is very distracting to see so much improper English usage including run on sentences, sentence fragments, and noun-verb disagreement. On the technical side, there are so many errors in the code that I doubt very much will actually compile, let alone run. Typical errors include methods declaring to return a value and not returning anything, closing files before they are used, and using variables that are not declared.

If you are interested in the technologies discussed and can debug the code in the book, there is a good amount of value. But it could have been so much better.

19 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Two books in one: Reference and Case Study, November 30, 2003

By	Dion G Almaer (Cambridge) - See all my reviews

There are always a few books that you know are in the works... but aren't due for completion for a long time. Sometimes you are really looking forward to getting them in your hands, and this book was one of these. "Java Open Source Programming" is an interesting title as it could mean so many things. I think this book is two things:

- A look at many great open source technologies that developers should have in their toolboxes such as:

. JUnit
. Mock Objects
. Hibernate
. WebWork
. SiteMesh
. Lucene
. XDoclet

- A chance to watch some good programmers walk through a project with these tools, and see how they all come together.

So you end up getting different things out of the book. It is nice to look at the technology in isolation when you really want to learn that one technology. It is also very helpful to see how these technologies integrate, and how you go about actually building something real (which is after all what we all want to do).

Since so many technologies are covered in the book, the authors have to really think about what they want to get across. If they documented every XML tag, for every possible configuration, you would end up with a tomb of information, and it would be pretty dry reading too. :) I think the authors do a good job of giving you the information that you really want. However, if you are an expert in one of the technologies then you may have wished for more... but for that you will have to wait for a book just on that technology.

I am a big fan (and user) of most of the technologies that are used in this book. Some of them have good documentation via their website, and some of them have NOT so good documentation. It is definitely worth having some high quality docs in one book that I can reference, instead of having to curse at the website.

I have to admit to one moment where I let out a groan. That was when I saw that the sample project would be another PetStore. I think a lot of people are probably tired of the PetStore, but here at TheServerSide that is probably doubly so! :) To be fair to the authors, they do have a section called "Looking at Yet Another PetStore" where they explain their reasons for it, and there are some valid reasons; but I still had to cry a little.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great, well paced intro into O/S java, but I want more!, September 22, 2004

By	Konstantin Gredeskoul "Developer and Musician" (San Francisco, California) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I read this book as part of my switch to java. I've been building web sites for almost 10 years in other languages, and decided to use this book together with Learning Java as a hand-by-hand real world tutorial on how to integrate the tools, properly configure your source tree, run your tests, how to setup your MVC web framework, validation, etc. I think that as a beginning real-world supplement to a java learner like myself, this book succeeds brilliantly. I do not mind poor grammar that other people are complaining about, as I myself was not born in an English speaking country. I do appreciate author's opinionated and passionate approach to subjects they discuss, such as test driven development, their choice of WebWork over Struts, their usage of Ant and jUnit.

I actually did download and compiled (and ran) the PetSoar example, so those reviewers that claim the code does not compile must have not actually tried it. It does work! I started a project based off the PetSoar example, so it was of great help to have that source.

But, there are a couple of issues that I feel could have been done better/differently.

1. The authors use the in-memory database HSQLDB for all of their development. I understand that using in-memory database allows you to test persistence stuff from unit tests, but I would have like to see that done in ADDITION rather than INSTEAD OF a regular database, such as Oracle/PostgreSQL/MySQL.

2. Most web-based applications also have a need for some sort of backend/daemon processes. I saw no mention of how to implement those within the context of WebWork/xWork. For example, a background thread that polls database table for changes is a very common requirement for many apps.

3. Would be great to at least touch on some open source queue (JMS) based implementation, and its integration into a web app.

4. Integration with Resin was out of date by the time I tried it and did not work. I am using Tomcat and would have prefered authors to show how to develop pages without having to reload the context every time the change happens (from Eclipse/IDEA).

5. Description of WebWork/xWork and Hibernate could use extra 10-20 pages each. The IoC concept was not explained that well (I felt), especially considering that the book seems to be targeted at someone like myself, who may not be well accustomed to an alternative. xWork's limitation that only actions can be "aware" of component interfaces makes it hard to design complex object hierarchies, where an action may not be the best place to put all your business logic.

6. Diagrams! Database design, class relationships, please - use UML!! One picture is worth thousand words! Use them! :)

Anyway, I think this book is great, but if there is ever a 2nd edition, it could benefit a lot from getting a bit of face lift, more in-depth analysis on select technologies, and more digrams.