Spring Web Flow 1.0 RC3 Released

Releases | Keith Donald | June 26, 2006 | ...
 

Dear Spring Community,

We are pleased to announce that Spring Web Flow (SWF) 1.0 RC3 (Release Candidate 3) has been released.  Download | Documentation | Changelog

This stable release contains bug fixes and minor improvements.   At this time we expect this to be the last release candidate before Spring Web Flow 1.0 final, which is just around the corner.  The noteworthy include...

NOTEWORTHY IMPROVEMENTS

Improved flow exception hierarchy.  Overall the exception hierarchy now more clearly organizes the categories of failure from flow definition access (FlowLocatorException) to runtime flow execution (FlowExecutionException) and execution persistence (FlowExecutionRepositoryException).

 

Improved support for BACK button use within a Portlet environment.  Combined with a continuation-based repository SWF supports full use of browser navigational buttons (back, refresh) within a Portlet environment while the flow remains active.  When a flow execution terminates a browser refresh will trigger a new execution to be launched automatically.

Simpler default JSF view mapping.  Now by default SWF view names are expected to correspond to JSF view ids exactly. You'll see this default in play within the sellitem-jsf sample--note how views are referenced like "/priceAndItemCountForm.jsp" like a standard JSF navigation handler.  This allows natural support for other JSF view technologies such as Facelets and is a more natural default for JSF developers.  If you require a custom mapping SWF to JSF view mapping, plug a custom ViewIdMapper into your FlowPhaseListener.

Sample application simplifications.  We've simplified the fileupload, flowlauncher, birthdate, and sellitem samples to take advantage of the latest features and best practices of Spring Web Flow.

POTENTIAL USER AFFECTING CHANGES

With 1.0 RC3 there are a few potential user-affecting changes on the road to 1.0 final.  The following section notes them:

The FormAction property "validateUsingValidatorMethod" was removed for simplicity.  Experience has shown this property to be a source of confusion for new users.  As a better alternative, to execute a data binding operation without validation simply invoke the "bind" action method from your flow definition.  When you require piecemeal Validator validation, simply invoke "bindAndValidate" or "validate" with the "validatorMethod" attribute set to the specific validator method.  See sellitem for an example.

StateExceptionHandler was renamed "FlowExecutionExceptionHandler". This affects custom handler implementations.  To upgrade, simply implement the new interface; the signature is logically the same.

FlowExecutorImpl's "redirectOnPause" attribute now accepts a boolean value instead of a RedirectType enum.  There is only one redirect type in SWF as of 1.0 RC2--the flow execution redirect.  Setting this flag to 'true' triggers it each time a flow execution pauses by entering a view state.  See Numberguess or sellitem for an example.
--------

One of the best ways to get started with Spring Web Flow is to review and walkthrough the sample applications.  We recommend reviewing all samples, supplementing with reference manual material as needed from the start. Ten sample applications ship with the 1.0 RC3 release, each demonstrating a distinct set of product features.  These samples are:

1. Phonebook - the original sample demonstrating most features (including subflows)
2. Sellitem - demonstrates a wizard with conditional transitions, flow execution redirects, conversational scope, and continuations
3. Flowlauncher - demonstrates all the possible ways to launch and resume flows
4. Itemlist - demonstrates REST-style URLs and inline flows
5. Shippingrate - demonstrates Spring Web Flow together with Ajax technology (thanks to Steven Devijver)
6. NumberGuess - demonstrates stateful beans and "single key" flow execution redirects.
7. Birthdate - demonstrates Struts integration
8. Fileupload - demonstrates multipart file upload
9. Phonebook-Portlet - the phonebook sample in a Portlet environment
(notice how the flow definitions do not change)
10. Sellitem-JSF - the sellitem sample in a JSF environment

Enjoy!

The Spring Web Flow Team

Keith Donald
Erwin Vervaet
Juergen Hoeller
Colin Sampaleanu
Rob Harrop

Spring 2.0 RC1 Released

Releases | Juergen Hoeller | June 20, 2006 | ...

Dear Spring community,

We are pleased to announce that Spring 2.0 RC1 has been released.  Download | Documentation | Changelog

This is the first release candidate for Spring 2.0 after five milestone releases over the last six months. This stable release is waiting for broad user feedback on the way towards 2.0 final, targeted for early July.

The major new themes of Spring 2.0 are:

  1. Simplified Configuration - you will find you write much less code overall to configuration your applications.  The code you do write is high-level and domain-specific, benefiting from smart defaults as well as rich validation and tool support.

  2. Powerful AOP Unification - you may apply aspects that weave custom behavior before, after, and around your objects concisely with AspectJ while still benefiting from the simplicity of the Spring AOP runtime.

  3. JSR 220 Java Persistence Archtecture (JPA) - to provide you choice in persistence provider implementation.  Spring is the first to support JPA in both JEE and JSE environments with full portability between the two.

  4. Asynchronous JMS Messaging - Message-Driven POJOs bring you lightweight asynchronous components for JSE environments with the choice of JMS provider.

  5. JSR-168 Portlets - Spring Portlet MVC delivers a framework for developing JSR 168 portlets which includes integration with Spring Web Flow for orchestrating user interactions.

It is important to emphasize that Spring 2.0 provides backwards compatability with the Spring 1.x series.  Compatability is critically important to our user base and we are committed to providing it.

Further major new features for each of these areas include...

Configuration Simplification
  • Bean definitions based on XML schema, with out-of-the-box XML namespaces for simplifying common configuration tasks
  • Support for extended bean scopes in application contexts, with web request and session scopes as main targets
  • Bean definition enhancements: lazy loading of bean classes, collection merging, and intelligent error messages
AOP
  • Simplified AOP configuration based on XML schema namespaces
  • Support for AspectJ pointcut expression language and @AspectJ-style aspects
  • Support for dependency injection on any object, including fine grained domain objects (based on AspectJ)
Persistence and JPA
  • Enhanced JDBC support: named SQL parameters, generics-based SimpleJdbcTemplate
  • Explicit support for Hibernate 3.1 and 3.2 (while remaining compatible with Hibernate 3.0)
  • Support for the Java Persistence API (JPA), including the full container contract with class instrumentation
Scheduling and Messaging
  • TaskExecutor abstraction for submitting asynchronous work
  • Support for various thread pools, such as a Java 5 ThreadPoolExecutor and a CommonJ WorkManager
  • Support for asynchronous JMS ("Message-Driven POJOs") based on message listener containers
Web Application Development
  • Conventions-based web MVC: controller mappings, model attribute names
  • JSP form tag library for use with Spring Web MVC and Spring Web Flow
  • Full support for Portlet environments, including Portlet-style MVC based on a DispatcherPortlet

... and many, many other refinements in the details.

To see many of these features in action, review the JPetstore reference application included in the release distribution within the samples/jpetstore directory.  See the What's New in 2.0? section of the reference documentation for additional detail.

We will be working with the Maven2 community to have 2.0 RC1 uploaded to the Maven repository in the coming days.

Thank you Spring community for all of the feedback leading up to this release.  We look forward to your feedback towards the big 2.0 GA launch date!

Enjoy, 

Juergen Hoeller
Lead, Spring 2.0 Product Development

Spring Web Services 1.0 M1 Released

Releases | Arjen Poutsma | June 12, 2006 | ...

Dear Spring community,

I'm pleased to announce that Spring Web Services 1.0 M1 has been released. Download | Documentation | Changelog

This release is the first milestone of Spring-WS: a product of the Spring community focused on creating document-driven Web services.

Spring-WS 1.0 M1 includes:

  • A streaming SOAP message model based on Apache Axiom,
  • WS-Security support that integrates with Acegi,
  • JAXB 2.0 marshaller support,
  • Many further improvements and fixes for issues discovered since 0.9.1.

See the changelog for details.

For more information about Spring-WS and its goals, refer to the Spring-WS homepage.

Spring Web Flow 1.0

Releases | Keith Donald | June 10, 2006 | ...

 

Product Leads
Keith Donald, SpringSource
Erwin Vervaet, Ervacon
 
Spring Web Flow is a next generation Java web application controller framework that allows developers to model user actions as high-level modules called flows that are runnable in any environment.  The framework delivers improved productivity and testability while providing a strong solution to enforcing navigation rules and managing application state.  

The Big Picture

Spring Web Flow allows developers to build reusable, self-contained…

Spring Web Flow 1.0 RC2 Released

Releases | Keith Donald | June 10, 2006 | ...


 

Dear Spring Community,

We are pleased to announce that Spring Web Flow (SWF) 1.0 RC2 (Release Candidate 2) has been released.  Download | Documentation | Changelog

This release contains bug fixes and minor improvements.   The new and noteworthy of 1.0 RC2 include...

NEW AND NOTEWORTHY

Support for passing newly launched flow executions input from their calling environment in a configurable manner.  By default all request parameters are exposed as input.  The flow may then choose to map this input into its own local scope using its input mapper.  This mapper defines the input contract for the flow which is consistent regardless of whether the flow is started as a top-level flow  or as a subflow.

Consider the following request URL as an example:

http://localhost:8080/flights/search-flow?flightNumber=12345

By default, when this URL is accessed the backing FlowExecutor will place the "flightNumber" request parameter into an "input map".  The input map is then passed to a new execution of the "search-flow".

Within the search-flow definition:

<flow start-state="executeSearch">
    <input-mapper>
        <mapping source="flightNumber" target="flowScope.flightNumber"/>
    </input-mapper>

    ...
</flow>
The <input-mapper> above defines the flow's input contract, stating this flow supports a "flightNumber" input attribute.  When a flightNumber is provided at startup it will be mapped into "flowScope" under the name "flightNumber".  The mapper is also capable of performing a type conversion during the mapping operation.

To customize flow execution input map population, for example, to pull attributes from the request path or some other external source, configure the "FlowExecutorImpl.inputMapper" property.

Support for flow execution and external redirects within a JSR168 Portlet environment.  Combined with a continuation-based repository this allows use of browser navigational buttons (back, refresh) within a Portlet environment.  Also in a Portlet environment we now expose a "globalSessionMap" property for accessing attributes in Portlet Session APPLICATION_SCOPE.

A new repository factory named "SingleKeyFlowExecutionRepositoryFactory". This implementation generates a single unique identifier for each persistent flow execution.  It is useful for achieving 1.0 EA "conversation redirect" semantics--the case where after every POST a REDIRECT-GET hits a stable "flow execution URL" which embeds the constant flow execution key.  See the NumberGuess sample for an illustration.

Introduction of a standalone "conversation" subsystem, which the provided flow execution repository implementations delegate to for demarcating logical conversations that manage flow execution state.  This conversation subsystem is fully decoupled from the rest of Spring Web
Flow, is usable outside of SWF, and may evolve into its own independent module over time. 
The central service interface consists of:

public interface ConversationService {
    public Conversation beginConversation(ConversationParameters parameters);
    public Conversation getConversation(ConversationId id);
    public ConversationId parseConversationId(String encodedId);
}


public interface Conversation {
    public ConversationId getId();
    public void lock();
    public void end();
    public Object getAttribute(String name);
    public void setAttribute(String name, Object value);
    public void removeAttribute(String name);
    public void unlock();
}
When a new flow execution is launched and needs to be persisted beyond one request the repository calls "beginConversation" to start a new logical
conversation and places attributes in conversation scope to track execution state.  Likewise, when a flow execution ends the governing conversation also ends and any allocated state is cleaned up.

In the future we expect to offer robust features within this system, including conversation monitoring and management via JMX as well as conversation history and statistics.  We also expect to prove its applicability to other environments outside of Spring Web Flow.  Special thanks to Juergen Hoeller and Ben Hale for their help in the design of this portable conversation service abstraction.


POTENTIAL USER AFFECTING CHANGES

With 1.0 RC2 there are a few potential user-affecting changes on the road to 1.0 final.  The following section notes them:

In spring-webflow-dtd, we renamed 'resultName' and 'resultScope' <action/> element attributes to 'result-name' and 'result-scope', respectively, for consistency with other attribute and element names.

The FormAction properties "bindOnSetupForm" and "validateOnBinding" were removed for simplicity.  Experience has shown these properties are rarely used  and have been a source of confusion for new users.  As a better alternative, to execute a data binding operation before entering a view state simply invoke the "bind" action method from your flow definition.  To calculate if validation should occur for a bindAndValidate attempt, override the single "validationEnabled(RequestContext)" hook.

The FormAction "exposeFormObject" action method was removed.  Simply use "setupForm" which is preferred.

The FlowExecutionRepository and FlowExecutor SPI interfaces were simplified.  More logic is now encapsulated behind a FlowExecutionRepository including the structure and format of generated FlowExecutionKeys.  In addition, the FlowExecutionRepository is now strictly responsible for managing persistent flow executions and nothing else.  The additional concept of a "conversation" is no longer known to the SWF core.  This means several things:

  • The overall repository interface is simpler, making it easier to create custom FlowExecutionRepositories with custom FlowExecutionKeys.
  • The SWF core lexicon is stronger: flow executors invoke flow executions to execute flows.  Executions that remain active beyond one request are persisted to a repository.
  • The default repository implementations choose to delegate to a distinct "conversation subsystem" for tracking conversational state driven by the execution system, but the dependency on this system is fully encapsulated and is optional.

The FlowExecutor interface, the entry point into SWF, was also simplified for callers.  It now encapsulates knowledge of complex internal types such
as EventIds and FlowExecutionKeys and thus is overall easier to use.

Along the same lines, support for the explicit "conversationRedirect" was removed.  This represents removal of the "conversationRedirect:"
'view' prefix and the "CONVERSATION" RedirectType.  To achieve the same logical redirect semantics with 1.0 RC2 simply configure a FlowExecutor with redirectOnPause type FLOW_EXECUTION and a repositoryFactory of
SingleKeyFlowExecutionRepositoryFactory.
--

Spring Web Flow 1.0 RC2 further refines the reference manual, providing 50 pages on SWF usage.  The manual is available on-line in HTML and PDF forms.

One of the best ways to get started with Spring Web Flow is to review and walkthrough the sample applications.  We recommend reviewing all samples, supplementing with reference manual material as needed from the start. Ten sample applications ship with the 1.0 RC2 release, each demonstratinga distinct set of product features.  These samples are:

1. Phonebook - the original sample demonstrating most features (including subflows)
2. Sellitem - demonstrates a wizard with conditional transitions, flow execution redirects, conversational scope, and continuations
3. Flowlauncher - demonstrates all the possible ways to launch and resume flows
4. Itemlist - demonstrates REST-style URLs and inline flows
5. Shippingrate - demonstrates Spring Web Flow together with Ajax
technology (thanks to Steven Devijver)
6. NumberGuess - demonstrates stateful beans and "single key" flow
execution redirects.
7. Birthdate - demonstrates Struts integration
8. Fileupload - demonstrates multipart file upload
9. Phonebook-Portlet - the phonebook sample in a Portlet environment
(notice how the flow definitions do not change)
10. Sellitem-JSF - the sellitem sample in a JSF environment

To build the sample applications for deployment in one step simply extract the release archive, access the projects/spring-webflow/build-spring-webflow directory and execute the "ant dist" target.  See the release readme.txt and
projects/spring-webflow/spring-webflow-samples/readme.txt for more information on the release archive contents and samples, respectively.
All sample projects are Spring IDE projects directly importable into Eclipse.

Thanks to everyone out there who supported this release.  At this time we expect the next release of SWF to be 1.0 final targeting the late June
timeframe.  There is still the possibility we will have another 1.0 release candidate if warranted.  Be sure to monitor the SWF homepage and
forums for updates.

Enjoy!

The Spring Web Flow Team

Spring IDE 1.3.1 Released

Releases | Torsten Juergeleit | June 08, 2006 | ...

Dear Spring Community,

We are pleased to announce that Spring IDE 1.3.1 has been released.

This release of Spring IDE provides a bunch of bugfixes. For a complete list visit http://springide.org/project/milestone/Release%201.3.1

Changes:

  • Now Web Tools is only required if you want to use the BeansXmlEditor
  • Fixed resource leak in image caching
  • Updated to Spring 1.2.8

More details are available from the project's site http://springide.org/

Use Eclipse's update manager to install this release from the project's update site http://springide.org/updatesite/

For bug reports tickets can be…

Getting Started With JPA in Spring 2.0

Engineering | Mark Fisher | May 30, 2006 | ...

The motivation behind this blog entry is to provide a simple step-by-step guide for getting started with JPA in a standalone environment with the Spring Framework. While the JPA specification originated as the persistence mechanism for EJB 3.0, it was fortunately recognized that any such mechanism should in fact be able to persist simple POJOs. Therefore, with a handful of JARs in your classpath and a few Spring-configured beans, you can begin experimenting with JPA code within your favorite IDE. I will be using Glassfish JPA - which is the reference implementation and is based upon Oracle's…

Acegi Security 1.0.0 is released

Releases | Ben Alex | May 30, 2006 | ...

After more than two and a half years of development, I am delighted to announce that Acegi Security 1.0.0 is now officially released.

Download | Documentation | Changelog 

In addition to more than 80 improvements and fixes since 1.0.0 RC2, this new release includes several changes to help new users. This entails a significant restructure and expansion of the reference guide (now at more than 90 pages) and a new "bare bones" tutorial sample application.

Furthermore, many of the frequently-identified problems experienced by new users have been addressed, such as:

  • custom 403 messages (as opposed to using the Servlet Container's error handler)
  • detecting corrupt property input following the reformatting of XML files
  • a new logout filter. 

We've also refactored our LDAP services, made the SecurityContextHolder a pluggable strategy (especially useful for rich clients who wish to avoid ThreadLocal), and improved CAS support.

Please visit here for a detailed changelog. As always, detailed upgrade instructions are included in the release ZIP file.

The project's web site at http://acegisecurity.org provides additional information on Acegi Security's features, access to online documentation, and links to download the latest release. I will also be providing a presentation on Acegi Security at SpringOne next month, so I hope to see you there.

Atlanta DevCon 2006

Engineering | Ben Hale | May 26, 2006 | ...

I just got finished with my Spring 2.0: New and Noteworthy talk at Atlanta DevCon 2006. Let me be the first to say that the conference was great. The site and organizers were all top notch. I'd like to give a special shout-out to Burr Sutter for putting on one heck of a conference. You know that things are going well when the conference center doesn't have a wireless network but you can get the one from the cafe next door. That's good karma! The JUG members were all very knowledgeable (even the ones that didn't know about Spring) and asked great questions. I fielded questions about EJB…

Spring Framework 1.2.8 Released

Releases | Juergen Hoeller | May 08, 2006 | ...

Dear Spring community,

We are pleased to announce that Spring 1.2.8 has been released. Download | Docs | Changelog

This is a maintenance release, fixing a number of issues found in previous 1.2.x releases. Most of these fixes have been backported from 2.0 M4, so have already been available there. Please see the changelog for details.

Juergen
-----
Juergen Hoeller
Lead, Spring Framework Development
Chief Architect, Interface21
http://www.springframework.org
http://www.interface21.com

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