News

New JNBridge Lab: Using Play To Create Java Web Apps on .NET

• By John K. Waters
• May 11, 2016

Java/.NET interoperability solutions provider JNBridge published a new entry in its growing database of free developer tutorial kits called Labs, which "showcase the myriad possibilities available to developers when bridging Java and .NET frameworks."

The new entry ("Using the Play Framework to Create Java Web Application on Top of a .NET Back-End"), shows how to create a Web application that uses the Play Web app framework to implement a Java-based, front-end presentation layer, and then uses .NET to implement the back-end business logic and data layer. Play is written in Java and Scala, which is a type-safe language for the Java Virtual Machine (JVM).

"We wanted to show that you can use your existing Java skills to easily create applications that use one of the many Java Web frameworks developers have to choose from today," said JNBridge co-founder and CTO Wayne Citrin. "And boy, do they have a lot to choose from: Spring MVC, Java Server Faces, Struts, GWT, Grails. It can be overwhelming, and it's only getting worse."

The Boulder, Colo.-based company has been on something of a mission to address the "developer fatigue" that results from the constant and increasing flood of new languages, libraries, frameworks, platforms and programming models that are garnering popular attention in the developer community. JNBridge is taking on the problem directly with its Labs program, Citrin said.

Of course it doesn't hurt that the company's flagship product is a go-to solution for this sort of thing. JNBridgePro is a general purpose Java/.NET interoperability tool designed to bridge anything Java to .NET, and vice versa. The tool allows developers to access the entire API from either platform. As Citrin has explained it to me once, it connects Java and .NET Framework-based components and applications with simple-to-use Visual Studio and Eclipse plug-ins that remove the complexities of cross-platform interoperability.

"Yeah, it's self-serving to say it, but interop tools like ours can really help with this fatigue," Citrin said. "In this particular Lab, we're showing an example of how developers charged with updating Web apps with unfamiliar frameworks can simplify a potentially frustrating and time-consuming task by re-implementing only the front-end presentation layer while preserving the familiar code in the back-end, business-logic, and data layer."

The new JNBridge Lab is not a Play tutorial, but it comes with full documentation and source code for getting the Web app working. It's available now on the company's Web site.