Apache Click 2.3.0 final is available for download. v2.3.0 contains important new features including Ajax support, Page Actions and light-weight stateful controls. In addition there are new documentation, examples and lots of other enhancements.

• Click Home
• Roadmap and Changes - full list of new features, improvements and bug fixes
• Upgrade Path - please see the upgrade path when upgrading from 2.2.0 or earlier.
• Download Click 2.3.0
• Live examples

 Highlights:

• Ajax support.
• Page Action support.
• Stateful Controls.

Enjoy Click.

Too complicated, especially in light of the other much simpler frameworks already available.

Disappointing, as one normally expects Apache projects to be slam dunks in terms of simplicity.

First, congrats to the Click team for their efforts!!

I personally think that the Click framework is far simpler and elegant than most of the existing popular frameworks. Would you mind sharing with the community the frameworks that surpass Click in simplicity?

Regards, Georgi

First, congrats to the Click team for their efforts!!

I personally think that the Click framework is far simpler and elegant than most of the existing popular frameworks. Would you mind sharing with the community the frameworks that surpass Click in simplicity?

Regards, Georgi

Stripes is probably the easiest framework to understand and use, while at the same time being powerful and flexible.

Interesting comment there John. Click core API consist of 85 classes, it's a stateless framework, uses Velocity as it's primary template engine and is fully documented. I found it quite easy to work with.

On the other hand Click is page and component oriented so it's more involved than an action based framework. However in the Java space I haven't found a simpler component oriented framework out there. Also note that Click is not a RIA, it is a server based framework built on the Servlet API.

It's not the number of classes that contribute to the lack of simplicity but the number of new concepts that one has to learn in order to use Click. If these new constructs were indispensible there would be no problem.

However, there are a number of frameowrks that allow you to build a web application using the Swing-type event processing mechanism, which is all that is needed. And all of them are component based. So I do not see the value added by Click's way of doing things.

Just my opinion.

Hi John,

I appreciate your comment.

Regarding concepts, Click has only two main concepts, Page and Control (or component) and in 2.3.0 the Behavior concept was added. So I don't think Click has many new concepts to learn but if you are after a stateful, 100% Swing type web framework then I don't think Click is what you are after.

I've started my Java career as a Swing dev and generally don't agree that Swing/desktop is easier or superior to web development. These days I'm doing mostly maintenance and I think traditional statelss web apps are easier to scale and maintain because of the underlying restrcitions imposed by the stateless HTTP protocol. Of course those restrictions carry through to how complex a GUI one can build. Certain problems require desktop type GUI's and in those situations a stateful web framework such as Wicket, Tapestry, JSF or a RIA such as GWT, ZK or Vaadin is a better fit than stateless ones.

All that said, if you are happy with your current set of frameworks, don't change a thing. Frameworks don't mean much in the greater schema of a large project, a hppy developer does ;-)

Kind regards

Bob

> Too complicated, especially in light of the other much simpler frameworks already available.

It's quite the opposite. I evaluated several component frameworks a couple frameworks a couple of years ago (before it joined Apache). Click was by far the simplest Java web framework I have ever examined... so much so that it felt out of place among Java frameworks which seem to quickly devolve into over-engineering. It's very focused on what it does (relies on other projects for the rest) and you can get going within an hour. I stuck to ZK though since it was a superset of Click and I was already using it. However, I could confidently recommend Click to anyone new to Java web application development and wants to get started quickly.

> I evaluated several component frameworks a couple frameworks a couple of years ago

should read as

I evaluated several component frameworks a couple of years ago

Paste error in editing, I guess.

I agree, I therefor much prefer Apache Myfaces, which is an excellent JSF implementation that has the advantage of being easy to understand plus having tons of really good third party components available for it.

Yawn. Back to gwt+hibernate to get stuff done.

Click, Wicket, Stripes, ... represent a new generation of lightweight (Web-)frameworks that are especially geared towards ease of use. Server-side Java is in need of a similar movement. Developers are fed up with over-engineered framewoks like Spring and Hibernate. Although the Java platform already is in a later stage in its lifecycle there is room for new lightweight alternatives - as can be seen by Web-frameworks like Click.

hooray for 

Apache Click 2.3...i have been waitin for it

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Worth a try though,,,a test to see how it work well with our system monroe dimaggio