Hello,
I need to build a web application that will act as an administration panel for one of our systems here. It must be written in Java and unfortunately I've never written a web app in Java before. I've only written standalone Java apps. I have written many portals/content management systems in PHP using my own custom frameworks based around the Smarty template engine and so I'm looking for that kind of simplicity, rapid development and separation of logic/design experience in Java. This is what led me to Tapestry as it appears to have many similarities to the frameworks I've written in PHP. As such I have started a new project for Tapestry 5.0.5 in Eclipse 3.3 and have been able to get through all of the basic tutorials available. Still, not all my questions are being answered. If any of you can provide me some answers to these questions it would be greatly appreciated. I apologize for my ignorance in this matter. Like I said, I've never written a web app in Java before. 1. When a user points their browser to http://server/myapp/somepage.html where does the entry point of execution for the component begin? For instance, since this application will be an administration tool I will need a user to authenticate their self and then hold a session. If the user attempts to access a page that they do not have access to either because their permission level isn't high enough or because they have not logged in, then I would need to redirect them. So where do I put the code to make these checks and further set up my page? 2. Typically when I write a web application there is a common look and feel the entire application must conform to. In order to provide much simpler page development I usually create a header and footer file to contain the common HTML elements that will then be pieced together with the body of a template as a page is being rendered. How can I accomplish this with Tapestry? 3. How do I create and access persistent objects and variables that can span the entire realm of pages I am building? I see that I can inject variables into other pages and that variables/objects can be set in the component but this seems to always require that the programmer know which page the user comes from and which pages the user will end up. For instance, I would create an object representing the user including their properties, priveleges, etc. once they log in. This object should be persistent across the entire web application so that if the user decides to use a bookmark to move to another page they're session will still remain and they will not need to log back in. Once again thank you for any help you can provide. I'm sure this stuff seems obvious but writing web apps in Java is apparently very different from writing web apps in a scripting language model. Jean-Philippe Steinmetz ----------------------------------- Webmaster / Developer Information Sciences Institute University of Southern California [EMAIL PROTECTED] 310.448.8471
