Best Java Frameworks 2020

In this article, we would like to suggest a few best Java frameworks for Java developers to learn in 2020.

The framework makes the developers life easier by helping them focus on business logic rather than worrying about common pieces of code.  Frameworks come with a set of prewritten code that you can append to your own to create custom solutions to problems by calling its methods, inheritance, listeners, or other implementations of the patterns.

These Java/JavaEE frameworks can be used to develop web applications, enterprise applications, and standalone applications, etc.

1. Spring Framework ( Spring Boot)

Spring framework is the most popular and widely used Java framework for developing enterprise applications so having Spring framework skills really useful for Java developers to get a Job. 

A key element of Spring is infrastructural support at the application level: Spring focuses on the "plumbing" of enterprise applications so that teams can focus on application-level business logic, without unnecessary ties to specific deployment environments.

Spring Boot is basically an extension of the Spring framework which eliminated the boilerplate configurations required for setting up a Spring application.

Spring Boot has taken the Spring framework to the next level. It has drastically reduced the configuration and setup time required for spring projects.

You can set up a Spring-based projects with almost zero configuration and start building the things that actually matter to your application.

If you are new to Spring boot and want to get started with it quickly, then check out my spring boot tutorial at https://www.javaguides.net/p/spring-boot-tutorial.html.

Learn Spring framework on our website at https://www.javaguides.net/2018/10/spring-ioc-container-overview.html

2. Hibernate Framework ( ORM Framework) 

Hibernate ORM (or simply Hibernate) is an object-relational mapping tool for the Java programming language. It provides a framework for mapping an object-oriented domain model to a relational database. 

Advantages to using Hibernate include the following:

• Hibernate framework provides support for XML as well as JPA annotations, which makes our code implementation independent.
• Hibernate provides a powerful query language (HQL) that is similar to SQL. However, HQL is fully object-oriented and understands concepts like inheritance, pol, morphism, and association.
• Hibernate is easy to integrate with other Java EE frameworks, it’s so popular that Spring Framework provides built-in support for integrating hibernate with Spring applications.
• Hibernate supports lazy initialization using proxy objects and perform actual database queries only when it’s required.
• Hibernate cache helps us in getting better performance.
• For a database vendor-specific feature, hibernate is suitable because we can also execute native SQL queries.

There are other ORM frameworks in the Java community but overall hibernate is the best choice in the current market for the ORM tool, it contains all the features that you will ever need in an ORM tool.

You should learn this hibernate framework to develop a DAO or persistence layer in Java/Java EE applications.

Learn the Hibernate framework on our website at https://www.javaguides.net/p/hibernate-tutorial.html.

3. JavaServer Faces ( JSF)

JavaServer Faces (JSF) is developed by Oracle for building user interfaces for Java-based web applications. It’s an official standard of the Java Community Process (JCP) initiative. It’s a pretty stable framework.

It’s often a huge task for back end developers to get the front side of complex applications right. This is where JSF comes in handy. 

It is a component-based MVC framework and has reusable UI components for server-based applications. The main idea is to encapsulate various client-side technologies like CSS, JavaScript, and HTML that will allow developers to create UI without knowing any of these technologies in-depth. They can just drag and drop UI components and focus more on their presentation layer specifics.

Read more at JavaServer Faces.

4. Apache Struts 

Apache Struts is another robust open-source framework for web applications. It follows the MVC (Model-View-Controller) model and extends the JSP API.

Nowadays, everyone using Spring MVC as an alternative to Struts 2 because Spring MVC leverages the core features of Spring such as DI, AOP and etc.

This framework ships with plugins to support REST, AJAX, and JSON and can be easily integrated with other Java frameworks like Spring plugin for dependency injection and Hibernate plugin for object-relational mapping.

Read more at Apache Struts.

5. Vaadin Framework

Vaadin is an open-source web framework that helps Java developers build great user experiences with minimal effort.

Vaadin makes it easy to build beautiful web apps in Java. The included library of UI components is designed to work well on both mobile and desktop.

Here are some Vaadin Java framework advantages:

• Responsive and good-looking CSS interfaces come as defaults for all instances.
• You have built-in JavaBeans validation by annotation.
• If data visualization is a major deliverable for a project, Vaadin will put your results on steroids.

Read more at Vaadin Framework.

6. Google web toolkit [GWT] 

Google Web Toolkit (GWT) is a completely free, open-source framework that helps the developers to write client-side Java code and establish it as JavaScript. A lot of Google products are written using GWT such as AdSense, Google Wallet, and Blogger.

Read more at Google web toolkit [GWT].

7. Play Framework

Play Framework is an open-source web application framework that follows the model–view–controller (MVC) architectural pattern. 

Play is a high-productivity web application framework for programming languages whose code is compiled and run on the JVM, mainly Java and Scala. It integrates the components and APIs we need for modern web application development.

Read more about the Play framework at https://www.playframework.com/

Conclusion 

In this article, we have discussed well-known Java based frameworks such as Spring, Hibernate, JSF, Struts, GWT, Vaadin, and Play framework.

Guys, I know these above discussed Java-based frameworks very well but if you know or worked on any other popular Java frameworks then let me know in a comment section below ( I will review and add to this list).