Wicket in Action

For the past nine months I have been quietly working on a book about Wicket. Unlike other books on the market this one does not attempt to teach you Wicket from the ground up. Instead, it is for developers who already know the basics and want to learn how to implement some of the more advanced use cases. Essentially, it contains recipes that show the reader how to implement solutions to some of, what I think are, the most commonly asked questions and stumbling blocks. This morning I was informed that the book has been published! You can read more about it and pick up a copy on PACKT"s Site. I hope you enjoy it, more details below the break ...

• UPDATE: Table of Contents added below the break.
• UPDATE: PACKT made

Description

Apache Wicket is one of the most famous Java web application frameworks. Wicket simplifies web development and makes it fun. Are you bored of going through countless pages of theory to find out how to get your web development done? With this book in hand, you don’t need to go through hundreds of pages to figure out how you will actually build a web application. You will get practical solutions to your common everyday development tasks to pace up your development activities.

Apache Wicket Cookbook provides you with information that gets your problems solved quickly without beating around the bush. This book is perfect for you if you are ready to take the next step from tutorials and step into the practical world. It will take you beyond the basics of using Apache Wicket and show you how to leverage Wicket’s advanced features to create simpler and more maintainable solutions to what at first may seem complex problems.

You will learn how to integrate with client-side technologies such as JavaScript libraries or Flash components, which will help you to build your application faster. You will discover how to use Wicket paradigms to factor out commonly used code into custom Components, which will reduce the maintenance cost of your application, and how to leverage the existing Wicket Components to make your own code simpler.

A straightforward Cookbook with highly focused practical recipes to make your web application development easier with the Wicket web framework

What you will learn from this book

• Leverage Wicket to implement a wide variety of both simple and advanced use cases in a narrative that gets straight to the point
• Make forms work in the crazy world of the Web by learning the ways of Wicket’s form processing
• Simplify localizing your Wicket applications
• Take the boring out of your forms by discovering how to improve the user experience while simplifying your code at the same time
• Leverage the built-in Table component to make displaying tabular data a snap
• Think Wicket’s Borders are not very useful? Learn to use them in unexpected places to simplify things
• See how to integrate with Flash components and create interactive charts at the same time
• Web 1.0 too boring? Learn how to tame Wicket’s AJAX support and bring your application into Web 2.0
• Simplify your security code by learning various security techniques
• An application cannot be built with Wicket alone; see how to make it play nice with other frameworks

Approach

This is a hands-on practical guide to a large variety of topics and use cases. This book tries to use real-world examples when possible, but is not afraid to come up with a contrived pretext if it makes explaining the problem simpler. Unlike a lot of other books, this one does not try to maintain a continuous theme from chapter to chapter, such as demonstrating solutions on the same fictional application; doing so would be almost impossible given the wide variety of recipes presented here. Instead, this book concentrates on focused problems users are likely to encounter and shows clear solutions in a step-by-step manner. This book tries to teach by example and is not afraid to show a lot of code because, after all, it is for coders.

Who this book is written for

This book is for current users of the Apache Wicket framework; it is not an introduction to Wicket that will bore you with tons of theory. You are expected to have built or maintained a simple Wicket application in the past and to be looking to learn new and better ways of using Wicket. If you are ready to take your Wicket skills to the next level this book is for you.

Table of Contents

• Chapter 1: Validating and Converting User Input
  • Introduction
  • Performing form-level custom validation
  • Creating a custom validator
  • Composing multiple validators into a single reusable validator
  • Converting string inputs to objects

• Chapter 2: Getting Down and Dirty with Forms and Form Components
  • Introduction
  • Creating linked selectboxes
  • Composing multiple form components into a single reusable component
  • Preventing multiple form submits
  • Protecting against spam with a CAPTCHA

• Chapter 3: Making Forms Presentable
  • Introduction
  • Changing form component CSS class on validation errors
  • Using FeedbackPanel to output form component specific messages
  • Streamlining form component presentation using behaviors

• Chapter 4: Taking your Application Abroad
  • Introduction
  • Storing module resource strings in package properties
  • Retrieving a localized string
  • Feeding dynamic localized strings to components using StringResourceModel
  • Using wicket:message to output localized markup
  • Overriding localized resources on a case by case basis

• Chapter 5: Displaying Data Using DataTable
  • Introduction
  • Sorting
  • Filtering
  • Making cells clickable
  • Making rows selectable with checkboxes
  • Exporting data to CSV

• Chapter 6: Enhancing your UI with Tabs and Borders
  • Introduction
  • Creating tabs with dynamic titles
  • Making a tabbed panel play nice with forms
  • Creating a client-side JavaScript tabbed panel
  • Using borders to decorate components
  • Creating a collapsible border

• Chapter 7: Deeper into Ajax
  • Introduction
  • Adding Ajax validation to individual form components
  • Blocking until an Ajax request is complete
  • Providing Ajax feedback automatically

• Chapter 8: Visualizing Data with Charts
  • Introduction
  • Charting with Open Flash Chart
  • Feeding chart data using a SharedResource
  • Responding to clicks

• Chapter 9: Building Dynamic and Rich UI
  • Introduction
  • Swapping components using a select box
  • Creating dynamic forms
  • Creating a dynamic portal layout

• Chapter 10: Securing your Application
  • Introduction
  • Creating a login page and forcing the user to log in
  • Authenticating with OpenID
  • Securing components using IAuthorizationStrategy
  • Securing URLs and protecting against cross-site request forgery
  • Switching from HTTP to HTTPS and back again

• Chapter 11: Integrating Wicket with Middleware
  • Introduction
  • Integrating with Spring
  • Integrating with CDI
  • Populating repeaters from a JPA query
  • Creating a model for a JPA entity

Book details