Workshop: Nicolas Fränkel «Advanced Vaadin framework techniques»

Vaadin is a Java framework for building modern web applications that look great, perform well and make you and your users happy.

In most projects you and your team have as many front-end skills as back-end skills, or there are two different teams that need to integrate their code together. The first case is rare, the second costly. Vaadin is also the shortest way for pure Java programmers with few front-end skills to quickly create nice-looking and robust web applications running on the JVM.

At this workshop you’ll learn how to write web applications with Vaadin effectively. Given that you code only in Java, compile to bytecode you can integrate it easily with Spring, CDI, JDBC, JPA and build rich and robust application with minimum effort.

During this workshop I’ll guide you through the steps of development of a typical web application with Vaadin. This application will be a simple Chat application through which we will demo fundamental Vaadin features:

- First, we will some overview over Vaadin Components and Layouts, including sizing and alignment.
- After that we’ll move forward and architecture the code developed so far to be Object Oriented, then extend that basic application with Screen switching and Notifications.
- Finally, we will integration with the database and display the result into a table to add more business value into that.
- If time allows, we’ll add Push features so as to have a feature-complete Chat application.

Forget all about JavaScript and all those fancy frameworks that become hype and are replaced after only a couple of months: after the workshop, participants will be able to build professional looking business applications on their own, with only knowledge of Java and Vaadin.

All that is going to be done within your favourite IDE with Java so you may use all the familiar things like OOP, static typing, refactoring, etc.

Prerequisites: the allocated time is limited, so that in order to be as efficient as possible, attendees are expected to prepare their environment for the workshop in advance.

First, get Java (preferably 8), Maven and your IDE of choice (Eclipse, IntelliJ or NetBeans). There’s a dedicated Github project page: https://github.com/nfrankel/vaadin7.... Clone the repository and checkout tag v7.2-1. Then, import the project into your IDE, run mvn package and you should be set."

About the trainer

Nicolas Fränkel - a Software Architect with +12 years experience consulting for many different customers, in a wide range of contexts (such as telecoms, banking, insurances, large retail and public sector). He’s generally focused on Java and JavaEE technologies, but also narrowed interests like Software Quality, Build Processes and Rich Internet Applications. Currently working for a eCommerce solution vendor leader. He’s also double as a teacher in universities and higher education schools, and a trainer for experienced pros, and triples as a book author. His personal blog: http://blog.frankel.ch/