Spring Web Flow 2 Released Introduces New Faces and JavaScript Modules

Releases
Keith Donald
May 15, 2008

Dear Spring Community,

We are pleased to announce general availability of Spring Web Flow 2. Download | Documentation

Spring Web Flow is the project in the Spring Portfolio that focuses on providing the infrastructure for building and running rich web applications. As a Spring project, Web Flow builds on the Spring Web MVC framework to provide:

A domain-specific-language for defining reusable controller modules called flows
An advanced controller engine for managing conversational state
First-class support for using Ajax to construct rich user interfaces
First-class support for using JavaServerFaces with Spring

The modules of the Web Flow 2 distribution and their relationship with the Spring Framework are illustrated below:
What’s in Web Flow 2

Web Flow 2 Distribution Components

Spring Web MVC

The Spring Web MVC framework, a module of the Spring Framework distribution, provides the foundation for developing web applications with Spring using the proven ModelViewController paradigm. Each of the modules of the Web Flow distribution builds on this foundation.
Spring Web Flow

The Web Flow module is a MVC extension that allows you to define Controllers using a domain-specific-language. This language is designed to model user interactions that require several requests into the server to complete, or may be invoked from different contexts.
Spring JavaScript

Spring JavaScript is a JavaScript abstraction framework that makes it easy to write unobtrusive JavaScript to progressively enhance a web page with behavior. The framework consists of a public JavaScript API along with an implementation that builds on the Dojo Toolkit. Spring.js aims to simplify the use of Dojo for common enterprise scenarios while retaining its full-power for advanced use cases.

Spring JavaScript can work with any server-side framework. The Web Flow 2 distribution includes convenient integration between Spring JavaScript and Spring Web MVC for processing Ajax requests.
Spring Faces

The Spring Faces module contains Spring’s support for JavaServerFaces. This support allows you to use JSF as a View technology within a familiar Spring MVC and Web Flow Controller environment. With this architectural approach, you combine the benefits of the JSF UI component model with the benefits of a Web MVC architecture. Spring Faces also includes a lightweight component library built on Spring JavaScript for declaratively enabling Ajax and client-side validation behaviors in a progressive manner.
Themes of the Web Flow 2 Release

In addition to introducing the new Spring Faces and Spring Javascript modules, the Web Flow 2 release effort addresses two major themes: Integration and Simplicity.
Integration

Across each of the modules, the Web Flow 2 distribution adds a number of interesting integrations that allow you to enrich your web applications. These integrations support:

Using Spring Security to secure your flows in a declarative manner
Using Tiles for JSP page composition and Ajax partial-rendering
When using JSF, using Facelets for page composition and layout
When using JSF, using Apache Trindad and JBoss RichFaces component libraries
Using the Dojo widget system in a progressive and unobtrusive manner; a manner that degrades gracefully if JavaScript is not available on the client

Simplicity

The flow definition language has been simplified tremendously in Web Flow 2 while becoming more powerful overall. These simplifications include:

An appoximate 50% overall reduction in lines-of-code when comparing a version 2 flow definition with its version 1 equivalent (example: version 2 vs version 1)
A concise syntax for invoking actions using an Expression Language (EL), with support for both the Unified EL and OGNL
Declarative model binding and validation, with support for convention-over-configuration
Support for reuse at both the flow and state levels using flow definition inheritance
Enhanced modularity, allowing a flow and its dependent resources to be packaged together in a self-contained bundle

Release Notes

Web Flow 2 requires Java 1.4 or greater and runs on all major Java EE platforms including Tomcat, Jetty, Websphere, WebLogic, and JBoss.

Web Flow 2 requires Spring Framework 2.5.4 or greater.

Web Flow 2 has been certified by SpringSource as "Platform Ready" and is fit to run on the SpringSource dm Server in OSGi-enabled web applications.

Getting Started

Get started using Web Flow by downloading the release and walking through the reference applications. Supplement with the documentation as you go to familiarize yourself with the feature set.



To get started using a build system such as Maven or Ant+Ivy, access Web Flow artifacts from the Maven Central Repository.



To get started using Web Flow in an OSGi environment on the SpringSource Application Platform, download the platform and get Web Flow bundles from the SpringSource Enterprise Bundle Repository.

Additional Community Resources

Read the interview with Keith Donald and Jeremy Grelle of SpringSource describing what’s new in the Web Flow 2 distribution in more detail



Watch the Ajaxian.com interview where the release and Spring JavaScript are discussed with Dion Almaer.



Get involved with the Web Flow 2 community on the Spring Community Forums



Explore Spring Web reference applications on-line. The Spring Travel application showcases the integrated Web Flow 2 feature set and is included in the distribution. The SpringSource Enterprise Bundle Repository is a real-world application in production built on Spring 2.5 and Spring Web Flow 2.0.



If you are an existing Web Flow 1 user, review the migration guide to help in upgrading to Web Flow 2. The WebFlowUpgrader tool automates the conversion of your flows to the version 2 syntax



Submit bug reports and requests for enhancement using the Web Flow issue tracker



Track updates to the Web Flow source repository with Fisheye



Checkout the Web Flow source code from the Spring Project SVN Repository



Watch for upcoming articles on Web Flow 2 by subscribing to springframework.org

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translate：
翻译：

亲爱的春季社区，

我们很高兴宣布Spring Web Flow 2全面上市。 文献资料

Spring Web Flow是Spring产品组合中的项目，致力于提供用于构建和运行富Web应用程序的基础结构。 作为Spring项目，Web Flow建立在Spring Web MVC框架的基础上，以提供：

 用于定义称为流的可重用控制器模块的领域特定语言
 用于管理对话状态的高级控制器引擎
 对使用Ajax构建丰富的用户界面的一流支持
 对在Spring中使用JavaServerFaces的一流支持

Web Flow 2发行版的模块及其与Spring框架的关系如下所示：
Web Flow 2中的内容