Getting Started with Apache Tapestry

Apache Tapestry is a fast, easy to use, high-performance, general purpose web framework. Tapestry eschews heavy XML configuration, base classes, and boilerplate code: instead it embraces convention-over-configuration, letting you build your application from simple, concise POJO (Plain Old Java) page and component classes. Tapestry is laser-focused on giving you maximum bang for your programming buck, and this shows up as a broad range of well-integrated features, including extensive Ajax support. Don't let unfamiliarity get in the way of learning this powerful, friendly tool.

Tapestry is different from traditional action-oriented frameworks, such as Struts and SpringMVC, because it is component-based: it organizes the overall application into pages, and builds pages from reusable components. Tapestry leverages this overall map of the application to take over many responsibilities normally tossed in the developer's lap, such as building and dispatching on URLs, and managing server-side state.

Tapestry is very easy to get started with: a few seconds using Maven and you'll have a template project ready to customize. In this session, we'll start with that template, add in some database support, and have a somewhat polished application that includes client-side and server-side input validation and basic Ajax support. Along the way we'll learn a bit about what Tapestry is doing under the covers to support you as a developer: obsessive attention to exception reporting, live reloading of classes, the ease with which reusable components can be created, and lots of meta-programming. We'll also touch on what makes Tapestry great in production: its terrific performance, its approach to organizing and deploying JavaScript, and how it exposes other assets to the client in a scalable, efficient way.

About Howard Lewis Ship

Howard Lewis Ship is the original creator of the Apache Tapestry project, and is a noted expert on Java framework design and developer productivity. He has over twenty years of full-time software development under his belt, with over fifteen years of Java. He cut his teeth writing customer support software for Stratus Computer, but eventually traded PL/1 for Objective-C and NeXTSTEP before settling into Java.

Howard has been developing financial and e-commerce applications in 100% Clojure since 2012.

Howard currently works for Wal-Mart's Global E-Commerce division. He lives in Portland, Oregon with his wife Suzanne, and his children, Jacob and Olivia.

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