Saturday, July 22, 2006

Expert Spring MVC and Web Flow - Book review

I just finished another book: Expert Spring MVC and Web Flow. This time I really enjoyed reading the book. The tutorial and the example applications distributed with Spring are excellent, but to get a good feel for the complete Spring MVC this book is a gem.

Here are some of its strong points:
- The book has clear subjects per chapter (an obvious requirement, but not always met).
- Your time is not wasted; the language is concise without being to cryptic. Really, the books reads as if it has been reviewed and corrected by at least 30 knowledgeable persons.
- You're not coerced in how you must use Spring MVC, but you're told how to make the appropriate choices from the options Spring MVC provides.
- The book not only shows you how stuff works, but also why, learning you valuable design principles that stretch way beyond Spring MVC.
- The appendix on DWR integration is short but very sweet.

Some minor nitpicking:
- The books regularly refers to Spring 1.3, though by the time of writing it was already known that version 1.2 would be followed by 2.0 (the chapters on Spring Web Flow have this correct).
- There is no information on the new form tag libraries.
- There is no mention of Spring Portlet MVC, except for a short reference in the chapters on Spring Web Flow. (Note that you'll find switching from Spring MVC to Spring Portlet MVC quite easy.)

If you are considering learning another web application framework: buy this book.

2 comments:

  1. I am studying the Design patterns (GoF) and I am searching for some real world application.

    Does this book offers an extensive code example, information about the Design patterns?

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  2. It appear you are asking 3 questions:

    1. Does it show real world applications?

    No. That does not mean the examples are worthless, on the contrary. Real world examples would only pollute the subject at hand with many other details.

    2. Does it show extensive code examples?

    Not extensive, but plenty to get you started.

    3. Does it offer information about the Design Patterns?

    It touches on the subject now and then. For studying design patterns (if such a thing is possible) this book is not at all suitable.

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