Ask HN: What stack would you use to build a CRUD web app on the JVM today? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: What stack would you use to build a CRUD web app on the JVM today?

#81

Post by humbleMouse » Wed, Sep 30, 2015, 4:04 PM UTC

andretti1977 wrote: post #79

humbleMouse wrote: post #73

Grails/groovy with postgre. Grails is so ridiculously simple to set up and code with... you can literally parse JSON out of a request and map it to an object with "Object yourObject = request.getJSON". Then you can save it with another line like "yourObject.save()".

I agree, building crud in grails is really fast. I'm just sorry grails is not so much adopted.

Honestly it blows my mind why more people don't use it. Grails wraps Hibernate/Spring, the two most robust java abstractions that exist. Then, it adds the out of the box ability to do things like parse JSON, re-direct, handle AJAX calls easily, manage session object, ect. ect. In my experience coding web apps there is nothing that even comes close to touching the simplicity of Grails.

Re: Ask HN: What stack would you use to build a CRUD web app on the JVM today?

#82

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Sep 30, 2015, 4:07 PM UTC

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: What stack would you use to build a CRUD web app on the JVM today?

#83

Post by mindcrime » Wed, Sep 30, 2015, 4:08 PM UTC

Groovy / Grails. It's what we chose to base all of our products on and it has worked out really well for us. If there's any complaint / negative, it might be that the ecosystem is in a bit of a "state of flux" with Pivotal dropping support for Groovy and the language moving to the ASF, etc. One bit of fallout from that, for example, is that the GGIDE isn't available for Eclipse Mars yet (or it wasn't last time I looked).

Still, it works, it's easy to learn, there's a rich assortment of plugins for adding functionality, GSP's are nice, it's easy to make custom taglibs, etc., etc.

Re: Ask HN: What stack would you use to build a CRUD web app on the JVM today?

#84

Post by mindcrime » Wed, Sep 30, 2015, 4:13 PM UTC

sandGorgon wrote: post #33

jareds wrote: post #19

Grails, I really like Groovy as a language. Grails provides a lot out of the box and is good enough performance wize for small to medium sites with no tuning.

this is a comment posted yesterday criticizing the management of Groovy - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10293508

Meh... vorg posts on nearly every thread that mentions Groovy and rants about all the perceived wrong-doings in the Groovy community. Some of his points have some merit, but he seems to tend to make mountains out of mole-hills.

Re: Ask HN: What stack would you use to build a CRUD web app on the JVM today?

#85

Post by crudbug » Wed, Sep 30, 2015, 4:14 PM UTC

I would look at vertx.io with reactjs.

Re: Ask HN: What stack would you use to build a CRUD web app on the JVM today?

#86

Post by siavosh » Wed, Sep 30, 2015, 4:15 PM UTC

We use Play for www.faqt.co, and it's been nice, but (like any framework) you start hitting random limitations that takes a lot of work and occasional Scala code to get around. Sometimes I wonder if using something like dropwizard.io for a single page app would of been better.

But if your project is only going to be a crud app with limited traffic volume/life time, I'd personally probably pick an interpreted language and framework.

Re: Ask HN: What stack would you use to build a CRUD web app on the JVM today?

#87

Post by hluska » Wed, Sep 30, 2015, 4:24 PM UTC

dommer wrote: post #29

I would not start with technology stack and build around them. You look at your use cases and build out. Pick your frameworks and databases judiciously and as late as possible. Read: https://blog.8thlight.com/uncle-bob/2012/05/15/NODB.html Read: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Growing-Object-Oriented-Software-Gui... [EDIT] Removed the unnecessary/unhelpful opening statement.

The OP listed the following requirements:

"simple CRUD app"

That is more than sufficient to pick a framework/database and start working. I'm not sure how many simple CRUD apps you have built, but the challenge tends to come when you put them in front of users who can't figure out the interface. Consequently, I'd argue to choose a framework quickly and get it in front of a user as fast as you can.

Re: Ask HN: What stack would you use to build a CRUD web app on the JVM today?

#88

Post by pookeh » Wed, Sep 30, 2015, 4:25 PM UTC

jakozaur wrote: post #13

neya wrote: post #4

I second Play Framework. Have used it and Scala is a very nice language to learn. If I had invested in so much into the JVM, Play Framework would be it. But, if it's just a simple CRUD app, and if you had a choice, I'd recommend you to give Ruby on Rails a try. Hope this helps!

Scala and Play is a great choice. Another good Scala framework is Lift: http://liftweb.net/ If JVM is not a must, consider using Meteor.

+1 for Meteor. We've been using Meteor for about 8 months now and are amazed with the productivity and no-boilerplate code. To give some context, we were previously a JVM-only shop. In the past we've used Spring+Hibernate+GWT for one project, Ninja for another project, and a full blown custom stack + Dojo client side in a third project.

If JVM is your only choice because you want to connect to legacy Java API, consider wrapping the Java API with REST interfaces and use them with Meteor.

Re: Ask HN: What stack would you use to build a CRUD web app on the JVM today?

#89

Post by duaneb » Wed, Sep 30, 2015, 4:30 PM UTC

joostdevries wrote: post #61

neya wrote: post #4

I second Play Framework. Have used it and Scala is a very nice language to learn. If I had invested in so much into the JVM, Play Framework would be it. But, if it's just a simple CRUD app, and if you had a choice, I'd recommend you to give Ruby on Rails a try. Hope this helps!

I agree. And I'd add that the continuous compilation of the Play framework allows for a great, fast workflow. Even in combination with non-JVM compilation like for Typescript. The last version comes with Slick integration which brings Ling-for-Sql style persistency to the JVM. In combination with support for Postgress JSON persistency that makes for a great fast prototyping stack.

I highly, highly recommend squeryl over slick. Much more readable as you're basically writing SQL in scala; you don't have to translate constantly between orm methods and SQL.