Wicket RAD is a new open source project built on top of JPA and Wicket aimed at rapidly creating webapps. It contains features such as an annotation driven bean Form generator, an implementation of the Open Session in View pattern for Wicket with JPA, and the components to put the things together and rapidly generate forms and create, update and delete data. By simply annotating a bean with JPA annotations, then annotating the getters with form annotations such as @TextField, @DropDownChoice etc, creating CRUD webapps can be done with very little code and almost no markup.
The full announcement/blog post can be found here. The sourceforge project page with downloads and sample code can be found here. Nabble web forum/list for the project can be found here. Feedback, thoughts, ideas and contributions would be very much appreciated!

I thought they blogged about not liking them. Also didn't like generics from what I hear. Probably wouldn't like closures either. Someone asked me recently if I was an "object purist", which immediately begged the question - wtf are you talking about? It's a stupid computer that does my bidding, always has and always will. That's why I like it. Anyways, nice to see someone in that community warming up to some of the new "un-pure" java additions...(dot dot dot)

I thought they blogged about not liking them.

This is a third party initiative, so the opinion of Wicket's team is not relevant :-) I blogged about annotations in Wicket a while ago. Except for a few cases, we don't need them is what I said back then and is what I believe today. Many problems can be solved with regular OO programming. I said this in the context of the core framework. Imho, the core framework should be careful not to make assumptions too soon, and enable users to easily built on top of it. Also, it is easy to get carried away with annotations and solve every problem with them, like people did not too long ago with XML. Annotations are imo the nicest addition to Java in a while. I love how it simplified working with Hibernate, Spring and other frameworks, and from the looks of it, annotations are benefitting Tapestry as well (read the fourth comment that I coincidentally made before I read your post Jesse)

Also didn't like generics from what I hear.

There's been a discussion on it yes. Some like it a lot, some like parts of it, some hate it. You're talking about a very differentiated group of people here. The big part of the discussion is on how to successfully apply generics in our framework. I think it is unfortunate that there's been a bit of negative publicity about it, based on a blog item of one of the developers, which got picked up with screaming headlines on The Server Side. But to me, the fact that there is a lot of discussion (hundreds of messages on Wicket's user and developer lists) is a clear sign that WIcket's community is involved and that it's developers are taking it's users seriously.

Probably wouldn't like closures either.

I think closures are great, especially for Wicket where it is natural to work with anonymous classes often. Closures will make a lot of the code I write shorter and prettier. That's my opinion, and some (Jonathan for instance) think differently and have their doubts. Again, you're talking about a fairly large group of people here, all with their own opinions.

Someone asked me recently if I was an "object purist", which immediately begged the question - wtf are you talking about?

Yeah, words like 'purist' smell like zealotry. You can however aim high and still be pragmatic, so it all depends on where you draw the line between being purist and just concerned with elegance :-)

Just for the record, I'm not against annotations (I agree exactly with Eelco here) and I'm certainly not against generics. I also think a very simple implementation of closures (which would probably take longer to achieve, as simplicity is always harder) could be very helpful indeed. My skepticism is more about the implementation of closures in Java (particularly if they're rushed) than the idea of them. I think that there are probabl better uses of time and energy right now, such as improving generics.

I have added a follow-up post to my blog regarding my considerably misunderstood blog post and the subsequent Server Side discussion on generics here

I thought they blogged about not liking them.

Who exactly are 'they'? The core committers? The contributors? End-users? It's a big, active community, you can't just lump 'them' all together like there's a singular hive-mind with one opinion on how things should be done. (Unlike some frameworks we know...) I haven't seen anyone in the community flat-out denouncing the Java 5 language additions as "un-pure". Deficient, yes, but that is a fairly widely held opinion across the entire Java community. FWIW, the Wicket committers are actively working on adding generics to the framework.

Jesse: One of the reasons I am using Wicket is because it doesn't *force* me to use annotations and put EL / logic into the HTML templates unlike a certain other framework that comes to mind :)

I thought they blogged about not liking them. Also didn't like generics from what I hear. Probably wouldn't like closures either.

Someone asked me recently if I was an "object purist", which immediately begged the question - wtf are you talking about? It's a stupid computer that does my bidding, always has and always will. That's why I like it.

Anyways, nice to see someone in that community warming up to some of the new "un-pure" java additions...(dot dot dot)

Just as Eelco is mentioning, this is a third party initiative outside of the "core" Wicket framework. Personally, I don't think annotations have much of a place in the core Wicket framework, but in a context like this, where you build on top of "regular" Wicket, with a particular niche/domain in mind (fast form generation from beans) I think they do serve a purpose. I like annotations (as you might gather), so long as you don't start "programming" by annotations and using them in the place of interfaces, they are particularly useful in the case of simplifying otherwise error-prone tasks and cross-cutting concerns (db mapping, validation, and also in this case generating forms).

Yes, I think that's it exactly.

I am looking forward to using your rad framework on my current project. Looks quite cool. Thanks for writing it!

I am looking forward to using your rad framework on my current project. Looks quite cool. Thanks for writing it!

Thanks! Any feedback, contributions, ideas etc would be very much appreciated - so far it's a one man show, so additional brains are welcome.

oops....Beware the dangers of drunk commenting. Sorry for that guys, probably normally would've been a thought left unspoken otherwise. ;)

oops....Beware the dangers of drunk commenting. Sorry for that guys, probably normally would've been a thought left unspoken otherwise. ;)

Heh. No worries, it's actually good to have stated in public that 'we' are no Java/ new feature haters :-)

Does this framework support polyglot programming in either Groovy or Jruby? I think it should be a new habbit for new frameworks to support at least one scripting language. For example there is a Groovy plugin for struts2, that allow you to use to write "Actions (and Interceptors)" for the struts2 framework in Groovy ... this is nice !!

I think it should be a new habbit for new frameworks to support at least one scripting language.

For example there is a Groovy plugin for struts2, that allow you to use to write "Actions (and Interceptors)" for the struts2 framework in Groovy ... this is nice !!

People have regularly been using Groovy and Scala with Wicket, and there is a Grails plugin for Wicket as well.

Is this the new "term-du-jour"? LOL

Is this the new "term-du-jour"? I think I've come across this about a bazillion times in the last week or so. LOL

Is this the new "term-du-jour"? I think I've come across this about a bazillion times in the last week or so.

LOL

It might not be too late to impress your colleagues yet ;-)

Is this the new "term-du-jour"? I think I've come across this about a bazillion times in the last week or so.

LOL

It is. Thanks mostly to Ola Bini and the rest of the Ruby and Martin Fowler fans who are convinced that if people used lots of different languages that might get to use Ruby more often. I'm still hoping for a Lisp come back myself.... See http://ola-bini.blogspot.com/2008/05/new-hope-polyglotism.html For instance

It probably is. When will people start to grasp the shocking fact that a web application is nothing but a giant string concatenator. The last five years or so have been wasted with providing "better ways to concatenate strings using various buzzword laden approaches that don't make much of a difference in the real world".

It probably is. When will people start to grasp the shocking fact that a web application is nothing but a giant string concatenator. The last five years or so have been wasted with providing "better ways to concatenate strings using various buzzword laden approaches that don't make much of a difference in the real world".

Just like desktop applications are just a bunch of pixels. It's all so simple ;-)

heck, the desktop is just a bunch of pixels too. and an OS is just a way of controlling the shuffling of bits. and ultimately, everything we do in shuffling bits around is reducable to something like "digital bookkeeping". you're right, it is all so simple! ;-)

It probably is. When will people start to grasp the shocking fact that a web application is nothing but a giant string concatenator. The last five years or so have been wasted with providing "better ways to concatenate strings using various buzzword laden approaches that don't make much of a difference in the real world".

Just like desktop applications are just a bunch of pixels. It's all so simple ;-)

Right you are. Still there is a slight difference. Most Buzzword-Of-The-Day-Enabled Web Frameworks may give you some framework, like say what Grails or Rails are aiming at. But these are just a bunch of frail struts(sic!) when compared to desktop application frameworks like what you get using Apple's or Microsoft's desktop development models. Also, and on a slightly different note: Most Web Application frameworks are (buzzword alert sounding) polyglott anyway, in that they use [insert language of choice] and JavaScript :-).

Right you are. Still there is a slight difference. Most Buzzword-Of-The-Day-Enabled Web Frameworks may give you some framework, like say what Grails or Rails are aiming at. But these are just a bunch of frail struts(sic!) when compared to desktop application frameworks like what you get using Apple's or Microsoft's desktop development models.

Well, there are frameworks like Wicket, GWT and Echo for instance, that really try to provide meaningful abstractions and a programming model that 'lifts' it's users up from simply doing string manipulation. And it's not really helping that the internet was designed for passing documents. :-)

As long as hosting providers don't provide a good, cheap option for the Java platform, the next Digg, Youtube, Facebook etc won't use Java.

As long as hosting providers don't provide a good, cheap option for the Java platform, the next Digg, Youtube, Facebook etc won't use Java.

Really huge public sites don't rely on 13 a dozen hosting providers, so I don't agree with that. Yes, there are a number of sites - for small business etc, typically hacked together by the handy nephew - for which PHP is a better option. For the kind of stuff I, and I'm sure many other Java developers, am working on however, shared hosting isn't very interesting.

I couldn't agree with you more Eelco. You and your team have to realize that there will be persons you can't save, and people will gripe about anything. Let me just take this opportunity to thank you and your team for the wonderful work you guys have done in developing this refreshingly intuitive, and easy to use technology which in my opinion is the savior of Java Web Development. And I say that against the background of the pain that we as Java Developers went through in the past with what we had to put up with in using the older, non-intuitive, brain wrenching, time wasting frameworks such as JSF, Struts, and the like(thanks to those teams though for the effort). I really hope that the positive momentum with Wicket and similar techs such as Click continue well into the future. I personally have abandoned the old ways of doing Java Web Development and have for the most part embraced the Wicket way. For those of you who do not understand yet, Java is not a language for hacking crap together (although you can if you want). If you want to hack develop a website, there is a wide range of choices out there, just pick your flavor of scripting languages that's available in or outside of the Java Tech Space. I believe Java hosting will get cheaper with the advent and wide adoption of server virtualization technology. Check out www.rimuhosting.com, or www.dailyrazor.com, and there are a few others - seeing that you must understand that Java Apps run better and safer in its own OS environment rather bunching scores of users in the same VM space. The latter is even more true for really important/enterprise grade business applications - Java just needs its own space.

As long as hosting providers don't provide a good, cheap option for the Java platform, the next Digg, Youtube, Facebook etc won't use Java.

Really huge public sites don't rely on 13 a dozen hosting providers, so I don't agree with that. Yes, there are a number of sites - for small business etc, typically hacked together by the handy nephew - for which PHP is a better option. For the kind of stuff I, and I'm sure many other Java developers, am working on however, shared hosting isn't very interesting.

..on top of that, dedicated hosting is changing and becoming infinitely more affordable. For instance with Amazon EC2, with the added features of persistent storage and permanent IP's setting up your own server cluster is a doodle. Yes, a handy nephew will hardly be able to set it up, but I'm pretty sure whoever comes up with the next Digg, Youtube or Facebook will (have to) be handy enough to know how to setup a linux box.

EC2 rocks! good idea!