Writing A Web Application Framework, One More Time, Again

September 17, 2007

In the past year I've written two complete java web application frameworks from scratch; one like Wicket, and one (Blogfiche) a more traditional MVAC framework with an alternative syntax to HTML. So why am I building another one?

Am I nucking futs?

The answer is always the search for more programmer productivity, flexibility and reliability. Blogfiche (which runs this blog and other things) has proven itself to be flexible, reliable, and for what I use it for, scalable. Digg and Reddit traffic don't faze it, even though it runs on a shared (and rather overloaded) server. The alternate HTML syntax is fun to use, much less irritating than HTML if you write by hand:

    if(headlines:sizenot0)[
      div(class=articlebox heads)[
        loop(post|headlines)[
          p[a(href={post:url})[{post.title}] span[{post.created:datetime}]]
        ]
      ]
    ]

So why do another one? Mainly I want to be able to build an entire web application without any recompilation, yet still have good performance in production. I am using the solid foundation of my Fiche framework (built on the servlet spec) including its automatic caching of web content. On top of this I intend to support Javascript (Rhino) and Groovy (and anything else interesting) and see what I like better. Although I can use the alternative HTML syntax, I am building a view technology on top of regular XHTML to make it easier to use examples from the web.

Something like:

  <head>
    <title>{title}</title>
  </head>
  <body>
  {if(test)}
    <p>Test</p>
  {else}
    <p>Not Test</p>
  {end}
  </body>

For database support I will continue to use iBatis, if I can properly reload the sqlmaps when they change, or maybe try something new like couchDB, or even build something similar to ActiveRecord. There is a lot of possibilities here; the primary point is to be able to update code and database use without compilation.

I am not trying to replicate PHP or ROR or whatever flavor you might enjoy. Software is an infinitely malleable clay; you don't know what you can do unless you try something.

Again with the why? Why not, I enjoy it, I like productivity, challenges, and I have time while I wait in absolute contractor hell; at least my mind is working and I can avoid going absolutely bonkers waiting on people to make a #@!$#@decision.