10 Best Java Frameworks You Should Know

Written By
Published on August 27th, 2022

Table of Contents [show]

Table of Contents

Introduction

Java has emerged as the predominant programming language. This is the language of choice for pioneering software development tasks. Many individuals enquire, “Which Java frameworks should be used?” when creating a new project. Java Frameworks are computer programs that can be used to enhance your ode’s functionality and make it appear more user-friendly. In this blog, we developed the top Java frameworks you should know. But what are Java frameworks? Let’s discuss this first.

What are Java Framework?

Frameworks are large amounts of pre-written code that Java developers can use and reuse to develop an application by adding their own code. A developer cannot create an application from scratch. A developer needs a foundation to develop an application. Frameworks offer a base upon which an application developer can build.

An application is created using a variety of computer languages, each of which performs a specialized function. Frameworks and numerous programming languages are related. One of them is a Java framework.

Java framework is a platform for creating Java programs and software applications. It employs Java as its programming language. It consists of predefined classes and functions for processing inputs, managing hardware services, and communicating with system applications. When it comes to machine learning, it is also helpful.

Why Frameworks?

Frameworks give structure to your applications. For example, if we have a suitable testing framework, we can automate many things and get accurate and consistent results. Similarly, suppose there are frameworks for ORM, web applications, logging, data management, etc. In that case, it will make life easier for developers and help them focus more on business logic rather than worrying about standard pieces of code used across the domain or application.

Now, Let’s take a look at some Java frameworks!

List of the Top 10 Most popular Java Frameworks in 2022

1.Spring

Any Java program can use the open-source Spring framework. Because it offers loose coupling, it solves the issue of tight coupling across modules by preventing the need for changes in other categories when one class is modified. Because it supports functions like configuration and security, Spring is a package unto itself. You can find a lot online because it has a vibrant community.

The following characteristics of Spring distinguish it and impress programmers:

The binding of objects occurs at runtime rather than during compilation, or inversion of control (IoC).

Dependency Injection: Works with IoC and allows loose coupling by providing object dependencies.

2.Hibernate

Hibernate is an object-relational mapping (ORM) that makes it easier to work with databases in Java by removing JDBC’s problems because JDBC does not support object-level relationships, a key concept in application development. Hibernate queries are known as Hibernate Query Language (HQL). It directly maps database tables to corresponding Java classes by creating an abstraction layer for code to be loosely coupled. Thanks to Hibernate, developers don’t have to think about establishing database connections or performing operations. Hibernate itself takes care of this. The hibernate.cfg.xml file contains configuration and database mapping information.

3.Struts

Apache Struts is an open-source framework used for web applications. It is based on Model-View-Controller (MVC), which separates the model, view, and controller and connects the three using the struts-config.xml file to create a comfortable application. Struts 1 and Struts 2 are its two variations. All businesses prefer Struts 2, which is a better version. It includes a variety of plugins and supports AJAX, REST, and JSON. Compared to conventional MVC architecture, it is more adaptable and offers a simple setup. For web developers, it is a good option.

Our Learners Also Read : Collections In Java and How to Implement Them?

4.Google Web Toolkit (GWT)

As the name suggests. Google products like AdSense, Blogger, and Google Wallet were designed using GWT. The main reason Google Web Toolkit is considered developer-friendly is that it makes it easy to work with Google APIs. The ability to convert Java code to JavaScript on a browser basis makes it stand out in the queue of Java frameworks. With its help, you can create beautiful and elegant Internet Java applications.

5.Apache Wicket

The tutorial will be a breeze if you’ve worked with JSP before. With simple Java web frameworks, Wicket has a component-oriented structure; all you need to know is Java and HTML. Absolutely no XML or configuration files!

Wicket’s main feature is its POJO model, where components are plain (plain old) Java objects with OOP functionality. These components come as reusable packages with images, buttons, forms, links, pages, containers, behaviors, and more, so developers can customize them.

Wicket is lightweight, and you can build apps really fast. It is also accessible for unit test code written in Wicket.

6.The Grails

Grails are suitable for beginners. It was created using the programming language Groovy. Despite having more features than Java, Groovy is identical to Java. Grails is a Java platform application that is built on the MVC paradigm and compatible with Java syntax. A Grails renderer is GSP (Groovy Server Pages), and an ORM implementation is GORM. What if we combine Java and Groovy code? It’ll go smoothly. The ability to combine Grails and Java code is one of its advantages.

7.Vaadin

Vaadin has an entirely new way of working because it removes the worry of client-server communication and routing, so one can focus only on the presentation layer. It is open-source, and the components can be customized to create highly versatile code. One of the critical features of Vaadin is that it is a cross-platform framework, i.e., you can migrate your code to another platform.

8.Play

Play is a slightly conventional and unique framework that follows a convention over configuration approach. In addition to Java, you can write and play web applications in Scala.

Play is similar in architecture to Django, Ruby on Rails, or ASP.NET and does not necessarily conform to J2EE web standards.

Some features of Play are

High-performance thanks to asynchronous processing
No container, no states, and built on reactive principles
It uses a statically typed language, so most errors are caught during compilation, saving many mistakes early in the development lifecycle.
A new robust build system suite was released with Play2, making integrating with Maven projects and creating simple JAR files easy.
Extensive relational database access libraries for standard functions are built-in.

9.Apache Hadoop

Although Apache Hadoop is not a full-stack framework, it provides a software framework and operates on the MapReduce programming model. These tools can quickly process vast volumes of data (Big Data), store, analyze and process it to provide faster and more efficient results.

I’ve included Hadoop in this list because it’s the “thing” today when big data comes to the fore.

Hadoop helps distribute data storage and processing using a master-slave design pattern. The Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS) layer of the head node (Name Node) has a data node. The MapReduce layer has a JobTracker and a Task Tracker. Child nodes have a Data node and a Job Tracker.

HDFS divides files into a set of blocks, and these are replicated across the cluster.

10.Spark

Another masterstroke from Apache, Spark is an open-source web development framework with similar features to Spring, Play, and JAX-RS but more powerful. It does not follow the traditional MVC design pattern.

It is a micro-framework and domain-specific language for Java, focusing on development speed. It requires significantly less configuration and coding. Due to in-memory computing, it is 10 times faster than Hadoop in processing data. The fully dynamic Spark framework supports lazy initialization and real-time data processing.

It also easily integrates with Scala and R, programming languages focused on data science and big data. Processing enormous amounts of data and supporting advanced analytics using SQL queries, machine learning, and graph algorithms are Spark’s main goals.

If you want to work in data science, mastering both of these frameworks will give you an advantage over the competition. Don’t think about Spark as a replacement for Hadoop; rather, consider it as an expansion of the functionality that Hadoop offers.

Conclusion

Numerous other popular Java frameworks, such as log4j for logging, Junit, and Selenium for testing, are useful in all applications despite not being full-stack or web development frameworks.

The ideal framework for your application should satisfy your operational needs, offer a certain amount of flexibility and top performance, and be simple to maintain and adapt to changes.