Comments on: A word about custom components

By: Deconstructing generic components

Deconstructing generic components — Sat, 03 Feb 2007 01:56:28 +0000

[...] posted almost a year ago about how important it is that components are easy to write in Wicket, and how [...]

By: Frank Silbermann

Frank Silbermann — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 17:10:07 +0000

I just implemented a system with about 50 pages, each of which displays the results of a different SQL SELECT query customized by parameters set by the user. Some pages provided multiple such panels. Each result set display was associated with a button so the user could download the table as a file readable by MS Excel.

Does any commercially available component set provide a result-set display component with an associated button for downloading contents as an MS Excel file? Of course not! That would be too ad-hoc a requirement.

Yet, the thought of re-writing HTML to display both a result-set and a download button, and the Java code to populate the display both in the table and in response to the MS Excel request buttons click _50+_ times was sickening! Wicket saved me.

Yes, if it is truly essential, most frameworks will (with severe difficulty) allow gurus create their own compound components. But the difficulty inhibits refactoring, so you’re design had better be perfect the first time.

The move towards object-oriented programming languages in the 1990s was motivated by real productivity needs, and it seems silly to pretend that we don’t have the same productivity needs when coding presentation logic as we do when coding business logic.

By: chillenious

chillenious — Fri, 12 May 2006 16:34:50 +0000

I think even for large companies it makes sense to ‘think in custom components’. They typically have more rigid rules when it comes to complience to company’s (UI) standards etc, and if such a company does a lot of projects, there will even be many opportunities to reuse domain specific components across projects.

But yeah, smaller companies should definitively try to be independend from third parties. Though if the offering of a certain component lib is really good, it can save time, money and marriages. The point of my piece here is that the availability of commercial component libraries is used often as the main sales argument for a couple of famous frameworks, while I think that is largely a bogus argument.

By: middledot

middledot — Fri, 12 May 2006 16:14:17 +0000

Big companies have the resources to spend on specialised components as long as the job gets done quickly. In a long run they have saved a lot of buck.
Most creativity (usually) comes from smaller teams and small companies unable to spend extra money on the ready-made components and that’s why they create them themselves.
If a framework provides ready made components and allows you to easily create new ones then that framework has what it takes to be a winner. And guess what it’s Wicket!!!

By: chillenious

chillenious — Fri, 12 May 2006 15:30:14 +0000

Actually, my response is just a fancy way of saying ‘Huh?’ or even ‘WTF?’. ;)

By: n8han

n8han — Fri, 12 May 2006 15:10:48 +0000

You’ve found the source of that “liberating” feeling we all get from Wicket programming. Funny that programmers writing their own components is such a radical idea.

When I started my first Wicket prototype I was told that Wicket would never be able to compete with JSF’s commercial component libraries. Into my mind flashed an array of crappy pre-fabs designed to appeal to everyone’s non-techie boss (“This one looks just like Excel!”) and my response was, “Huh?”

Your response is a lot more eloquent.