Web Development by Numbers

• By Matt Stephens
• September 13, 2006

Web development using NetBeans is really quite slick nowadays. The feature that works best is the ability to right-click a JSP file and select “Run File”. If everything’s set up correctly, your application should be built and deployed to the embedded Tomcat within NetBeans; and a browser is also launched to show the resultant web page. And all that without having to download, install and fight with a single plug-in.

But what if you’re developing to a specific web framework like Spring?

This quick n’easy tutorial walks you through the steps involved in setting up a Spring Web MVC project in NetBeans. It then walks you through creating the files needed for a very simple interactive 1-page web app.

The tutorial will be useful for two groups of developers: those who have used Spring but want a quick introduction to web development with NetBeans; and (to a far lesser extent) those who are familiar with NetBeans web development but want a quick introduction to Spring. Oh, and I guess there’s also a third group – those who want a quick introduction to both Spring and NetBeans. Is that all the bases covered? Hope so.

What this tutorial doesn’t do is give you a run-down of the theory behind Spring (Inversion of Control etc). For that, you’ll need to read any of the many books or web-based tutorials on Spring development. That’s why this tutorial is probably better suited to developers who understand Spring but want to create their web apps in NetBeans.

But it’s still indicative of just how easy Java-based web development has become. In the comments following the tutorial, someone suggested a plug-in for automating the process further; but it’s so easy already that a plug-in is hardly needed.