Swinglets Web Framework Let Loose

(Press Release, March 15 2004)

Hot on the heels of the Verge web framework going open-source, Javelin Software's innovative Swinglets framework is now available under the Apache license (i.e. FREE, full source code available etc).

Swinglets takes a component-based approach to web development - and predates Sun's own Java Server Faces by several years.

As the name suggests, Swinglets is based around Swing; so Swinglets would be well-suited if you have developed a "thick client" application using Swing, and want to migrate it to a servlet or JSP-based web app without having to rewrite large amounts of legacy code.

For example, Swinglets uses the Swing data models (TreeModel, TableModel etc) and event listener approach. This allows you to create server-side event listeners for your forms and components, resulting in form handler code that is largely identical to your Swing code.

The GUI components themselves, by necessity, don't reuse the actual Swing components. Instead, Swinglets consists of a set of server-side components that are semantically very similar to the Swing component set. For example, it offers SLabel, STree, STable and so forth; and Swing-like layout managers (although for JSP, you're more likely to use the JSP page itself for defining the layout, and then place the Swinglet components using JSP scriptlets).

As with Swing, components can also be nested; Swinglets handles the generation of HTML, so your code is always at the higher component level (as it should be!). The HTML generated by Swinglets renders just fine in both Internet Explorer and Firefox.

Because the data models are the same, this code can also be re-used. Of course, you might still need to revisit the code to optimise it for multi-user access and so forth, but for Swing-to-web migration projects, Swinglets gives you a flying start in the right direction.

Download Swinglets

Check out the "AmazingServlet" demo on-line

More info at the Javelinsoft website

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