Getting Started With Vaadin in Spring and Java EE

One of the most interesting findings in the latest Vaadin Community Survey was that Java EE is used slightly more than Spring among developers. Although the differences between Java EE and Spring is small, if we combine both, we see that 73% of developers using Vaadin also use either Java EE or Spring:

The good news for developers is that Vaadin officially supports both Java EE and Spring. Vaadin’s Matti Tahvonen and Petter Holmström recently explained the Dependency Injection alternatives in a webinar, and I recently published two videos showing how simple it is to set up a Vaadin project with the Java EE and Spring back-ends. Of course, these videos aren’t the only resources available. I’ll talk about some resources for learning Spring and Java EE with Vaadin below.

Java EE + Vaadin

To see Java EE and Vaadin in action, watch this 5-minute video:

Java EE is supported through the Vaadin CDI add-on. You can find the must-read documentation at the docs site. As Java EE includes several APIs' specifications, you can use a compatibility matrix to check the compatibility of Vaadin with several of these APIs. One way to master CDI is by reading the specification and then putting the concepts into practice. There’s also a Vaadin Framework and Java EE training that focuses on the basics of Java EE and how to use it in Vaadin applications.

Spring + Vaadin

To see how to mix these two frameworks in less than 5 minutes, watch this video:

This is a good starting point if you want to learn about the Vaadin + Spring combination. In short, Spring Framework is supported through the Vaadin Spring (a new release is coming this month) and Vaadin Spring Boot add-ons. The best place to start learning about these add-ons is the docs site. If you like learning by watching videos, you should watch Marcus Hellberg’s video where a full-stack “to do” application is developed from scratch, and this webinar with Stéphane Nicoll and Matti Tahvonen. Alternatively, you can read the guide at spring.io.