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| NetForm Web Application Framework for Java |
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| Current version is 0.64 |
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| There is Test application on internet implemented with latest NetForm library. |
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| Goal |
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| Goal of NetForm Web Application Framework for Java is to be easy, productive and maintainable way to create complex HTML application forms and logic. |
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| Design of NetForm Web Application Framework is based on Model View Controller architecture. NetForm uses template (currenlty only JSP) mechanism to create web page and semiautomatic request handling, which is done by server side form components. These components are generating events, which programmer has to implement. With NetForm it is possible to create HTML form logic that normally would be very hard to do. |
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| Features |
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| Current features |
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| + | MVC pattern, easy web page customization with help of templating engines. Currently JSP |
| + | Server side events. |
| + | Server form side validation |
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| - | with help of component validators |
| - | if one component is not valid also the whole form is not valid. |
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| + | Server side components are data-aware. |
| + | Session time out handling. |
| + | Browsers back button behavior handling. |
| + | Login handling. It is also possible to make form without login and let container handle login. |
| + | Double event generation prevention. Impossible to generate double events. So example double add to database is imposible by result of user behavior. |
| + | More security, because every component name "<input name=".."> is unique for every every component and every page generation. |
| + | Easy to create front ends to database applications. |
| + | File upload support |
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| Planned Features |
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| + | JSP Tag library |
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| - | To wrap current scriplets to tag-library. |
| - | Tag library based components which are not connected to application logic. |
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| + | Other templating engines. |
| + | Beautiful URLs (means that all URL are short and easy to write and seems that there is no parameters.) |
| + | Javascript library to help browser side validation etc. |
| + | Change management ( components automatically knows if their state has been changes since defined period ) |
| + | Port the idea to other programming languages, idea is not language specific. |
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| Background |
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| At past I have looked technologies to design web applications rapidly and maintainable ways. There many popular technogies like Microsoft Active Server pages and PHP which allows to mix the application logic and the look and feel, that makes maintenace much more difficult. Many people has been made so called template libraries for separation of page layout from application logic. This still solution helped only design read only applications or simple forms. When dealing with more complex forms, the form design started to be much more complex than example normal client server applications, so I started to do design framework. |
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| Licence |
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| NetForm is distributed under GNU Library or Lesser General Public License (LGPL), if you want to have licence this with other kind of licence please contact to author. |
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| Final words |
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| Hopefully this framework is helpfull. All feedback and comments are more than welcome. If you find a bug or you have new idea please tell me it also, because there might be quite quickly fix for it. |
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| - Sampsa Sohlman
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