Wicket in Action

Wicket and Seam sitting in a tree

Peter Muir of the Seam team has written up an introduction into using Wicket and Seam together.

He starts by stripping JSF support from the default Seam setup (and it never gets uncomfortable writing this down), and adding Wicket specifics to it. Peter starts with a simple Hello, World! page, which has nothing specific to Seam. But then things get interesting with implementing an authentication form using Seam’s bijections.

The code is quite easy to follow (I’ve merged the final resulting form class, and applied a CompoundPropertyModel to save on some code):

public class LoginForm extends Form {
    @In Identity identity;
    @In Credentials credentials;
 
    public LoginForm(String id) {
        super(id, new CompoundPropertyModel(credentials));
        add(new TextField("username"));
        add(new PasswordTextField("password"));
    }
 
    protected void onSubmit() {
        try {
            identity.authenticate();
            setResponsePage(HomePage.class);
        } catch (LoginException e) {
            error("Login failed");                    
        }
    }   
}

This looks very readable. Read more about Wicket and Seam on the Seam Blog.

Building a smart EntityModel

A lot of Wicket applications use an ORM framework to work with the database. Because ORMs provide a generic mechanism for loading entities we can create a generic Wicket model that can simplify binding between ORM and Wicket. In this article I will walk you through creating an EntityModel that will make using Wicket and ORM fun, read inside…

Read the rest of this entry »

Kopenhagen Wicket event October 15th

It must be fall: Wicket community events are dropping like leaves. Nino Wael is organizing a Kopenhagen Wicket event at the Jayway offices:

Jayway DK
Jakob Dannefærdsvej 6B
Frederiksberg, 1973 
Denmark

You can register here.

London Wicket October 1st

The London Wicket chapter is organizing its bi-monthly event next Wednessday (October 1st). It is hosted again at Google’s offices and they have an extra large room this time. They’re a bit secretive about the program, but given that last events were well received with some great presentations, this time will be good too.

Register now for this event.

First amazon review of Wicket in Action

The first review of Wicket in Action is on Amazon.com! Dan Syrstad (known from Wicket Web Beans) responded to my plight for reviews in the following way:

This is a great book that really gives a in-depth overview of Wicket. I’ve been working with Wicket for a couple of years and had to suffer through figuring things out from examples and mailing lists. This book is the definitive guide. I’ve already learned several new things from it. Many thanks to the authors who went to great lengths to get this book out!

Let me thank Dan for writing this review. We really appreciate it!

Wicket in Action: get it while it’s hot

According to Manning’s website, Wicket in Action is the number 2 selling book from their portfolio last week, only surpassed by JQuery in Action.

Wicket in Action ranks #2 in US retail

We’re very happy with this result. Now… if someone could write up a review on our Amazon listing, that would be great! We’d do it ourselves, but that would be … bad …

Bonus chapter: Setting up a Wicket application available

Readers of the early access edition might have noticed that chapter 3 from their first PDF downloads has gone missing from the final manuscript. We needed to cut down on the number of pages and this was a chapter we thought not to be crucial to the book so we decided to remove it from the manuscript. This saved roughly 25 pages and kept the book under the magical 400 page limit (our original contract stated 350 pages +- 50 pages).

Most developers have already some knowledge of setting up a project, and already know how to work with Apache Ant and Maven. The added value to the book when we should’ve included the chapter would not be great. But the chapter is important for first time web developers and new comers to Java development.

Instead of throwing away the chapter we updated it to the latest code examples and made the chapter available online as a free bonus chapter available to everyone. Everyone? Yes, even if you haven’t bought the book, you can download it without strings attached. We are happy to provide this chapter as a service to the community and give more insight into our book (the rest of the book is even better!)

What are you waiting for? Go and download the free bonus chapter and set up your Wicket application!

Welcome to wicketinaction.com

Like I announced about a week ago on my blog called A Wicket Diary, I have been creating a new companion website for Wicket in Action. This website will service as my new home for blogging about Apache Wicket, related events, community news such as releases and I’ll be writing about the book.

So don’t be a stranger, and add the RSS feed of this site to your news reader and keep an eye out for new content.