Shale Framework
Shale is a modern web application framework, fundamentally based on
JavaServer Faces. Architecturally, Shale is a set of loosely coupled services
that can be combined as needed to meet particular
application requirements. Shale provides additional functionality such as
application event callbacks, dialogs with conversation-scoped state, a view
technology called Clay, annotation-based functionality to reduce
configuration requirements and support for remoting. Shale also
provides integration links for other frameworks, to
ease development when combinations of technologies are required.
Shale Features
The major features of the Shale Framework are described in the
following detail sections:
- View Controller - Convenient
mechanism to associate a "backing" Java class with each
JavaServer Faces view in an application, with predefined
event handlers for events significant to an application developer.
- Dialog Manager - Mechanism to
define a "conversation" with a user that requires multiple HTTP
requests to implement, modeled as a state diagram.
- Application Manager -
Traditional application wide front controller features that should
be applied to every request.
- Validation - Integration with
the
Apache Commons Validator Framework, supporting both client side
and server side validations based on a single set of configured
validation rules.
- Remoting - Server side support
for applications that employ
AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) style interactions.
- Spring Integration - Integration
with the Spring Framework,
allowing the use of Spring's dependency injection framework to create
JavaServer Faces managed beans.
- Clay - An alternative to JSP where
you define views in pure HTML, in a fashion similar to Tapestry
and Facelets.
An innovative
sub-framework for supporting the configuration of reusable subtrees
of JavaServer Faces components for customizable reuse.
- Test Framework - Set of mock objects
and JUnit test case base classes suitable for
testing both the framework classes themselves, as well as application
components built on top of the framework.
- Tiger Extensions -
Optional add-on library that adds additional ease-of-use features
for Shale applications that run on Java Standard Edition 5
(popularly known by its code name during development, "tiger").
Shale Foundations
Shale is based on (and requires a runtime environment that
supports) the following foundation technologies:
- Java Runtime Environment (JRE) 1.4 or later.
- Servlet API 2.4 or later.
- JavaServer Pages 2.0 or later.
- JavaServer Faces 1.1 or later.
- JSP Standard Tag Library (JSTL) 1.1 or later.
- Apache Commons BeanUtils 1.7 or later.
- Apache Commons Chain 1.1 or later.
- Apache Commons Digester 1.8 or later.
- Apache Commons Logging 1.1 or later.
Various optional Shale components have dependencies on the following
additional runtime technologies:
- Apache Commons Validator 1.3.1 or later.
- Apache Commons SCXML 0.6 or later.
- Spring Framework 1.2.8 or later.
- Cargo
- jMock
If you wish to work on Shale itself, you will require the following
additional resources:
- Java Development Kit (JDK) 1.4 or later. (JDK 1.5 is required for Shale Tiger.)
- Apache Maven 2.0.4 or later.
Shale Download
Shale 1.0.4 is available at
http://www.apache.org/dyn/closer.cgi/shale/. The
release notes describe the most recent changes.
The code signing key can be verified using the KEYS file at
http://www.apache.org/dist/shale/KEYS
The previous build (version 1.0.3) is available
here
with release notes
here.
Nightly builds of Shale are available from
http://people.apache.org/builds/shale/nightly/.
For convenience, the nightly builds include the following packages:
- shale-framework-YYYYMMDD.{tar.gz,zip} - The binary
and source download of the framework itself, including its
dependencies.
- shale-XXXXXXXX-YYYYMMDD.{tar.gz,zip} - A distribution containing
source code and a web application archive for
each example application that is available. Currently, the available
examples are: shale-blank, shale-clay-usecases, shale-mailreader,
shale-sql-browser, and shale-usecases.
Snapshots of Shale are also available in Maven repositories.
The group identifier for all Shale artifacts is
org.apache.shale
, while the artifact identifier varies:
shale-application
- Shale Application Controller (jar)
shale-clay
- Shale Clay Plugin (jar)
shale-core
- Shale Core Library (jar)
shale-dialog
- Shale Dialog Manager (jar)
shale-dialog-basic
- Shale Dialog Manager (Basic Implementation) (jar)
shale-dialog-scxml
- Shale Dialog Manager (SCXML Implementation) (jar)
shale-remoting
- Shale Remoting (jar)
shale-spring
- Shale-Spring Integration (jar)
shale-test
- Shale Test Framework (jar)
shale-tiger
- Shale Tiger Extensions (jar)
shale-validator
- Shale Validator Integration (jar)
shale-view
- Shale View Controller (jar)