Book Image

Seam 2.x Web Development

Book Image

Seam 2.x Web Development

Overview of this book

The Seam framework from JBoss allows developers to use JSF, Facelets, EJB, and JPA to write conversational web applications. But you will first have to learn how these standard technologies are integrated using Seam and how they can be built upon using additional Seam components. If you need to build a Java web application fast, but don't have time to learn all these complex features, then this book is for you. The book provides a practical approach to developing Seam applications highlighting good development practices. It provides a complete walk through to develop Web applications using Seam, Facelets, and RichFaces and explains how to deploy them to the JBoss Application Server. You can start using key aspects of the Seam framework immediately because this book builds on them chapter by chapter, finally ending with details of enterprise functionality such as PDF report generation and event frameworks. First, the book introduces you to the fundamentals of Seam applications, describing topics such as Injection, Outjection and Bijection. You will understand the Facelets framework, AJAX, database persistence, and advanced Seam concepts through the many examples in the book. The book takes a practical approach throughout to describing the technologies and tools involved. You will add functionality to Seam applications after you learn how to use the Seam Generator RAD tools and how to customize and fully test application functionality. Hints and tips are provided along the way of how to use Seam and the JBoss Application Server.
Table of Contents (17 chapters)
Seam 2.x Web Development
Credits
About the author
About the reviewers
Preface

Summary


In this chapter, we've provided an overview of what the Seam Framework is, and the benefits that we as Java developers, will gain by using the framework.

We've learned that Seam is much more than a web framework, and that it provides:

  • Java 5 annotation support, allowing Seam components to be configured easily

  • Dependency Bijection facilities and component lookup, without needing to write large amounts of XML

  • Integration with both JSF and Facelets web view technologies

  • First-class support for testing Seam components both as POJOs and within the JBoss embeddable Application Server

  • Tight integration with RichFaces (including AJAX4JSF) and ICEFaces

  • An application framework for handling database persistence

  • AJAX support via integration with the AJAX4JSF library

  • User-based and role-based security access

  • A tool for generating skeleton applications

After the introduction to Seam, we saw that Seam can be deployed to many different Application Servers such as JBoss Application Server, WebLogic, and Tomcat. We saw how we are going to use the JBoss Application Server throughout this book, and also how to install, start, and stop this server.

Finally, we looked at how to download the Seam Framework, and how to configure it to allow us to compile and deploy the supplied sample applications.

In the next chapter, we are going to look in detail at the Seam Framework, and will begin our journey of learning how to develop with Seam.