Stripes: ...and Java web development is fun again (Pragmatic Programmers)

As a Java developer, you want to leverage your knowledge and the wealth of Java libraries and tools. But when it comes to web development, many frameworks seem over-engineered and too complex. They have a steep learning curve, and it's just too difficult to get them to do exactly what you need because of their `closed-box` design. Stripes brings simplicity back to Java web development. You'll be up and running in minutes, and can go a long way with just a few simple concepts. You'll spend your time developing your application, not maintaining gobs of configuration. Because Stripes is very transparent, you will understand exactly what is going on from request to response. The popularity of Stripes keeps increasing because of its clean design and extensibility. With this complete tutorial and reference, you can master Stripes and take advantage of its productivity in web application development. You'll tailor the framework to your requirements, not the other way around! This book is packed with explanations and examples so that you learn practical problem-solving techniques. You'll be able to `wrap your head around the framework` and fully understand how Stripes works. When a client requests a feature, you'll answer `yes` with confidence because you're using a framework that lets you get the results that you need without getting in your way. Because of its open design, Stripes lets you easily integrate your favorite tools: tag libraries, AJAX frameworks, ORM solutions, dependency injectors, and more.

User review
Great book does justice to Great framework
Personally, I consider this book the best confluence of a great explication with a great technology since C Programming by K&R. Like K&R, this book proceeds from the deceptively simple yet powerful through all the features and facets in a linear and consistent way. It bucks the paper happy approach (pioneered by Petzold in in his Programming Windows series) of showing 5 wrong ways before finally one right, and constantly gives the best way for each practice and then moves on.

Daoud does have the benefit of describing an enlightened platform, a meta MVC platform (a MVC framework for your MVC2 application) that is to software as The Declaration of Independence is to documents. Stripes is a container to web applications as Smalltalk was (is) for client applications. The features and facets of stripes are consistent, thematic, similarly sized and driven by both a view from 10,000 feet and the experience of a programmer in the trenches. While Stripes uses Java 5 features to implement code driven code that does programmatic busywork automatically, it also roles off gracefully where the platform ends and the user starts. So, while many facets of Stripes use smart binding driven by metadata (whether java inherent or decorated with annotations), it continues with use of interfaces and generics to allow user defined plug-in polymorphism for formatters (data to strings), converters (strings to data) and other platform features. While other well begun and meaning projects and books (e.g Spring and Hibernate) become increasingly full of Petzold-like blather (first 5 wrong ways to do it, just so you can appreciate what comes next, and then 3 right ways to do it), this book is a constant jazz-like crescendo of best-practices.

I will credit reading Harnessing Hibernate by James Elliott with turning me on to Stripes. But even this book presented a Rube Goldberg solution to the problem of facile binding of request data to Hibernate model objects (with yet-to-be lazily loaded related data requiring a session) using a Stripes Interceptor to rebind the unbound data. Stipersist, as described by Daoud, continues Fennel's approach of: given everything we've learned and everything we have available, how can we do this right FOR YOU.

This is my new favorite programming book and framework. Because of this book, I will use Stripes to coordinate other best practice technologies, such as Hibernate and Spring, rather than the other way around. Having said that, let me acknowledge what Daoud and Fennel do: Stripes knows it's place in the software ecology. It doesn't strive to be Kudzu-like, overwhelming diversity. It has a carefully described and confined mission - being the MVC of your VC and facilitating co-operation with the rest with no xml config.

User review
Fantastic book! Great code well written everything you need to get going.
As others have mentioned this is one of the best written books on programming/frameworks that I have read bar maybe Agile Web Development on Rails. I am a relative Java newbie and this has book has successfully got me up and running on 2 new projects using stripes. I will continue to use stripes and this book as reference for time to come. Thanks Freddy for your belief in this framework and your efforts to make its ease of use well known.

User review
Simply a great book

Unfortunately for other authors, there doesn't need to be another Stripes book written because this one covers it all. Not only does it lead you through a great example application, but the chapters are split into sections that allow the book to also be a great reference. The book is well written, and the additional `Tim says,,.` and `Joe asks,,.` inserts are extremely helpful.

The Stripes framework is a powerful, yet easy to learn framework that puts Struts to shame.

Get the book, learn the framework and be a happier developer.

User review
Great Book for great framework
Really good book. Great place to start learning Stripes. To the point, with information from the creator of Stripes. Probably the best framework-specific book I've ever read.

User review
Lives up to the title of the book.
At 380 pages this is the thinnest technical book in my book shelve but yet it covers everything I need to know to develop a web application - from `Hello World` to ajax, security, cross sites scripting attack, unit testing ,,.

I was pleasantly surprised by how comprehensive this book is. I learned a great deal from this book. I am especially appreciative of the section on security. I learned a great deal seeing how the many well though out features of Stripes being put together to produce a secured wed application. This section alone is worth the price of the book.

A superb framework and an equally superb book. Stripes is my favorite web framework, and this is one of the few technical book that I enjoyed reading and owning.