Discovered a link through Twitter between all the cricket match reports (yes there is still a place on the ‘net where Wicket doesn’t mean web framework). Netbeans TV features “A dummy’s guide to Wicket”.
Or watch it on the Netbeans TV website!
This is big news for the Wicket community: the Hippo guys have just released the big 7.0 version of their open source CMS product. The Hippo developers are big fans of Wicket, and use it in their product. Not only do they use Wicket, they also provide support for Wicket’s portlet implementation. Being big fans of everything Apache, they use the following technologies in Hippo CMS:
Congratulations go to the Hippo team and keep up the good work! Now, if you are interested in their product, you can download it from the Hippo website.
Ironically, property models are the most convenient and the most troublesome feature of wicket. Lets use the following code as an example:
new TextField(“zip”, new PropertyModel(person, “addressBook.addresses.0.zip”));
They are convenient because they make it trivial to bind components to domain objects using one line of code.
They are troublesome because they create code that is easily broken and whose breakage is not apparent until run time. For example: if the AddressBook#getAddresses() method used in the example above is renamed to AddressBook#getLocations() it will not cause a compilation error, but rather a runtime error when the page is rendered. This is a big problem unless every page of the webapp is covered by a unit test.
The presentation I gave at the Øredev conference on November 20th 2008 is now online. You can watch me stumble, mumble and rumble about Wicket in English. Here we go, enjoy:
Peter Thomas has written another nice article where he compares Seam/JSF with Wicket based on the booking example application of Seam. In his tests he compared the performance characteristics (Wicket is faster) and memory usage (Wicket is lighter). Peter writes:
Wicket appears to be faster by a wide margin. [...] on the Seam / JSF side, the 20 sessions each take up about 800 KB adding up to around 16 MB total. On the Wicket side the 20 sessions add up to around 1.5 MB.
I am amazed that a couple of guys working as volunteers (none of us is paid to work on Wicket) can create something that is more innovative, faster and lighter than a billion dollar industry.
There is just one question that remains: why not compare Seam/JSF with Seam/Wicket?
Wicket in Action was the sixth best selling book for Manning in 2008! To join all the other people who have gone ahead of you, you can get Wicket in Action (or any other purchase at manning.com over $20) at a 31% discount! Just fill in ja1331 when you check out as the coupon code.
Here are the 2008 top 10 bestsellers from Manning:
A dutch Wicket presentation done by Erik van Oosten at the Dutch Java User Group conference. The presentation is given in dutch, but the slides are English so you might even get something out of it by just scrolling through the slides. I was unable to attend the NLJUG events this year, but hope to be present next spring.
Watch Erik as he shows how to work effectively with Wicket:
With this book, Wicket will become the greatest territory the Dutch have settled since Manhattan.
Nathan Hamblen
Senior Software Engineer, Teachscape Inc.
This is the complete and authoritative guide to Wicket, written and reviewed by the core members of the Apache Wicket team. If there's anything you want to know about Wicket, you are sure to find it in this book.
Jonathan Locke
Founder and Architect of Apache Wicket, Foreword Wicket in Action
Without question, Wicket in Action... is the be-all and end-all when it comes to Wicket.
Geertjan Wielenga, Wicket Netbeans Plugin Author
The tutorial and conversational tone of the writing makes the book very approachable.
Nick Heudecker
System Mobile
Loved the sample application—it tied everything together.
Phil Hanna
Senior Software Developer, SAS Institute
The essential guide for learning and using Wicket.
Erik van Oosten
Lead programmer and Project Manager, JTeam
Finally, the Web Framework of web frameworks, Apache Wicket, now has a bible of its own.
Per Ejeklint
Senior Software Architect, Heimore group
Wicket is an innovative evolution of the MVC programming with simple roots, but without a primer such as this, it can be more challenging than it needs to be.
Brian Topping
Founder, Bill2 Inc.
Wicket In Action glues the areas of web development with Apache Wicket together and gives a great overview of Apache Wicket...it will make a great compendium.
Nino Martinez Wael
Java Specialist, Jayway Denmark