Frameworks allow programmers to create dependable and strong programs without having to write every line of code properly. Java continued to be one of the most in-demand development languages throughout this third decade as well. Developers can further enhance the capability of Java by using the framework’s classes of ready-to-use code, methods, and UI components.
Here are the top 10 most popular frameworks in java in 2023.
Spring
Due to its wide range of applications and emphasis on speed, simplicity, and productivity, Spring continues to be the most widely used Java framework among Java developers. Spring modularity allows the developers to make use of the advantages of its tools for every step of their project. In addition to that, Spring interacts with countless security tools and features. Therefore, this framework enables the developers to create and integrate features like ensuring optimal security, login validation, and user authentication for the app and user data.
The main advantages of the spring framework are :
Predefined Template
Spring provides templates for technologies such as JDBC, Hibernate, JPA, etc thus reducing the effort of coding. Thereby developer efforts are less and reduce boilerplate codes.
Loose Coupling
Through dependency injection, loose coupling is enabled in Spring.
Easy To Test
Spring framework does not need any server, hence easy to test applications. Dependency Injection makes the testing easier.
Lightweight
Because of POJO implementation Spring framework is lightweight.
Fast Development
Spring supports many frameworks, and dependency injection makes the development process faster.
Powerful Abstraction
It supports powerful abstract specifications such as JMS, JDBC, JPA, JTA, etc.
Declarative Support
It provides declarative support such as caching, formatting, validations, and transactions.
Google Web Toolkit
It’s an open-source Java software development framework that makes AJAX applications easy. It enables AJAX applications to debug and develop easily. At the time of production deployment, the GWT compiler translates Java applications to browser-compliant javascript and HTML. GWT ships with a Java-to-Javascript compiler and a special browser that helps debug applications easily. Using GWT, we can develop enterprise as well as commercial applications. It makes the integration of Junit and Maven easy.
The main advantages of GWT are:
- Completely free and open-source java framework.
- Provides easy integrations with Junit and Maven.
- The low learning curve for java developers.
- It supports developer options for writing client-side applications.
- Since the applications are cross-browser compliant, it generates the javascript code suitable for corresponding browsers.
Hibernate
Hibernate is an open-source, lightweight ORM tool. This framework is useful for implementing persistence logic. The persistence logic is done in Hibernate by implementing the JPA specifications. Since Hibernate supports auto-DDL operations, it makes the developer’s job easy. This framework allows mapping object-oriented domain models to relational databases for web application development. It helps reduce boilerplate scripts by maintaining the object-table mapping, which cuts down on development time and maintenance expenses.
The main advantages of Hibernate are :
- Open source and light-weight
- Fast Performance
- Automatic Table Creation
- Database Independent Query
Struts
Structs are an MVC architecture-based framework that employs technologies like Servlet, JSP, JSTL, XML, etc. It can be integrated with other Java technologies like Spring, Hibernate, JDBC, EJB, and many more. Struts also provides a validation-based framework. This java framework is used to develop only front-end frameworks. The business logic in Struts is mainly written in the abstract class Action.
The main advantages of Struts are :
- Powerful Validation Support.
- Decoupling of View From Action Classes
- Centralized Configurations
- Less Development Time
- Provides a powerful exception-handling mechanism.
- Struts Tag Library improves development efficiency.
Play
Play is a lightweight, stateless web application framework. It has a web-friendly architecture. The programming languages especially java and scala which are compiled and run on Jvm use this highly productive web application framework. This framework is widely used for the creation of scalable web applications. It has built-in testing support.
It is developer friendly, with a “just hit refresh” workflow. Play is a perfect fit for modern web and mobile applications by using Restful by default, including JSONs, asset compilers, and web socket support.
The main advantages of Play are :
- Makes the development process easier, and allows development in multiple projects at the same time.
- Easy to test the application because of the built-in testing tool.
- Hit Refresh Workflow.
- Powerful console and build tools
- Excellent documentation
Grails
Grails is an open-source web application framework that helps in rapid application development. This Java-based framework uses the Groovy programming language. Grails uses the MVC (Model, View, and Controller) design pattern. Developers who are working on the Grails framework need to spend less time configuring the framework and concentrate more on actual application requirements. Grails are built using tools like spring, hibernate, gradle, and quartz. This framework is mainly useful for agile development. The most prominent feature of Grails is that it stresses the coding over the convention paradigm.
The main advantages of Grails are :
- Ready to use the development framework.
- No XML configuration.
- Mixins Support.
Java Server Faces
Java Server Faces is a robust web application framework. This framework is mainly for the development of event-based and component-based applications. It enables access to server-side data and logic. JSF is an XML document that represents formal components in a logical tree, these components are backed by Java. These components are independent of HTML, and they have a full range of Java abilities, which include accessing remote APIs and databases. JSF works by encapsulating client-side technologies like HTML, CSS, and Javascript and allowing the developers to build web interfaces.
The main advantages of JSF are :
- Supports HTML5
- Component-based framework
- Easy and Rapid web development
- Integration with Expression Language
- Default Exception handling.
- Enabling the implementation of custom components
- Allows to write client-side events to server-side application code.
Dropwizard
It’s an open-source Java framework. It’s mainly used for the ease and rapid development of high-performance Restful web services. For the creation of lightweight packages, it uses popular libraries, such as Jetty, Jersey, JUnit, Jackson, and Guava. The most used one is Jetty. Besides these libraries, it uses its own library called Metrics. Dropwizard supports logging, configuration, operation tools, and metrics so that this will ensure product quality during the shipment and allows delivery of the product in the shortest amount of time. Dropwizard consists of components such as JSON, logging, the hibernate validator, embedded Jetty, JAX-RS, and metrics.
The main advantages of Dropwizard are :
- Highly productive since the application has a main program that starts the jetty container. So that application can run and debug within the IDE.
- Allows Quick Project Bootstrap by adding a dependency in pom.xml
- Supports application metrics that provide useful information like request/ response time etc.
- Supports integration of several third-party libraries.
- Ops- friendly
Vaadin
It is an open-source Java framework for web application development. Vaadin supports both AJAX and Javascript. It is actually a UI framework with a server-side programming model. If the developer wants to include some external features in the Vaadin framework, they can make use of the Google Web Toolkit. Without taking any markup files, the Vaadin framework renders data in the framework, saving time for developers. It allows the developers to write a user interface without using the client-side technologies in Java.
The main advantages of Vaadin are :
- HTML templates are declarative with data binding.
- Provides the productive tools to speed up and ease development.
- Comes with a lot of starters to bootstrap the project.
- Allows controlling any HTML element from java or javascript.
- Vaadin flow framework comes with modern java APIs.
Wicket
Wicket is an open-source Java server-side framework for building web applications. It is a component-based framework that simplifies the development process with the help of patterns. Web applications are built using only Java code with XHTML-compliant HTML pages. The development did not require Javascript or XML configuration files. Since the framework provides a layer over the request-response cycle, developers only need to focus on the business logic. Wicket favors convention over configuration. The main components of the wicket framework are a Java class, HTML markup, and a model. Through the models, components are useful for accessing the data.
The main advantages of Wicket are:
- Open source framework.
- Provides useful utilities to write unit test cases.
- Efficient event/ messaging system. Though the events in wicket pages and components communicate with each other.
- Most of the cases javascript is not necessary.
- Simple and effective state management system. An appropriate time the state of the components gets serialized and deserialized in the user session.
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