Enterprise application development is an art form rarely acknowledged in this fast-paced technical world. This book describes the patterns and strategies that will simplify large-scale development projects using two of the most popular technologies available: the Spring Framework and Sencha Ext JS. Each chapter defines and builds a concise layer in the enterprise application stack, condensing an approach to web development that was gained from many years of developing real-world projects. We cover quite an extensive conceptual ground, so be prepared for an interesting journey!
This book is not an introduction to Java, JavaScript, or any web development concepts. There are significant amounts of practical code in both Java and JavaScript languages, so an understanding of these technologies is required. If you are not familiar with Java and associated concepts such as object-oriented programming, you may be challenged when following the examples and explanations. The same can be said for Ext JS development; you need to have some experience with the fundamental concepts, including the framework APIs, to follow most examples.
You do not need to be an expert, but beginners may wish to start their journey elsewhere.
Regardless of your experience and background, the practical examples provided in this book are written in a way to thoroughly cover each concept before moving on to the next chapter.
Chapter 1, Preparing Your Development Environment, discusses the installation and configuration for the development environment, including the Java Development Kit, NetBeans, and MySQL. We will also introduce Maven, create a new NetBeans project, and deploy the project to the GlassFish 4 application server.
Chapter 2, The Task Time Tracker Database, defines the Task Time Tracker (3T) database design and helps configure NetBeans as a client of the MySQL server. We create and populate all the tables and identify the possible enhancements that could be appropriate for enterprise use.
Chapter 3, Reverse Engineering the Domain Layer with JPA, helps us reverse engineer the 3T database using the NetBeans IDE to create a domain layer of JPA entities. These entities are explored and refactored as we examine and define core JPA concepts.
Chapter 4, Data Access Made Easy, introduces the Data Access Object (DAO) design pattern and helps implement a robust data access layer using the domain classes we defined in the previous chapter. Java generics and interfaces, the Simple Logging Facade for Java (SLF4J), the JPA EntityManager, and transactional semantics are also introduced.
Chapter 5, Testing the DAO Layer with Spring and JUnit, introduces the configuration of a JUnit testing environment and the development of test cases for several of our DAO implementations. We introduce the Spring Inversion of Control (IoC) container and explore the Spring configuration to integrate Spring-managed JUnit testing with Maven.
Chapter 6, Back to Business – The Service Layer, examines the role of the service layer in enterprise application development. Our 3T business logic is then implemented by the Data Transfer Objects (DTO) design pattern using Value Objects (VO). We also examine writing test cases prior to coding the implementation—a core principle of test-driven development and extreme programming.
Chapter 7, The Web Request Handling Layer, defines a request handling layer for web clients that generates JSON data using the Java API for JSON processing, which is a new API introduced in Java EE 7. We implement the lightweight Spring controllers, introduce Spring handler interceptors, and configure Spring MVC using Java classes.
Chapter 8, Running 3T on GlassFish, completes our Spring configuration and allows us to deploy the 3T application to the GlassFish 4 server. We also configure the GlassFish 4 server to run independently of the NetBeans IDE, as would be the case in enterprise environments.
Chapter 9, Getting Started with Ext JS 4, introduces the powerful Ext JS 4 framework and discusses the core Ext JS 4 MVC concepts and practical design conventions. We install and configure our Ext JS development environment using Sencha Cmd and the Ext JS 4 SDK to generate our 3T application skeleton.
Chapter 10, Logging On and Maintaining Users, helps us develop the Ext JS 4 components that are required for logging on to the 3T application and maintaining users. We will discuss the Ext JS 4 model persistence, build a variety of views, examine application concepts, and develop two Ext JS controllers.
Chapter 11, Building the Task Log User Interface, continues to enhance our understanding of the Ext JS 4 components as we implement the task log user interface.
Chapter 12, 3T Administration Made Easy, enables us to develop the 3T Administration interface and introduces the Ext JS 4 tree component. We examine dynamic tree loading and implement drag-and-drop tree actions.
Chapter 13, Moving Your Application to Production, will help us prepare, build, and deploy our 3T project to the GlassFish server. We introduce Ext JS theming, integrate Sencha Cmd compiling with Maven to automate the Ext JS 4 app-all.js file generation process, and learn how to deploy our production build on the GlassFish server.
Appendix, Introducing Spring Data JPA, provides a very brief introduction to Spring Data JPA as an alternative to the implementation discussed in Chapter 4, Data Access Made Easy.