Foundations of JSP Design Patterns

Rating:
Summary: Understand the idea of patterns
Review: A good reworking of what are now classic JSP design patterns, as codified by Sun and others. You need never have read about design patterns to appreciate this book. But chances are, you're already coding JSPs and Servlets. If so, you need a book like this. At the very least, a rough Model-View-Controller design will aid your coding.

But Patzer also goes into more detailed patterns. Like a decorator filler and a front controller. But perhaps as important as any specific pattern is that you get some idea of what to look for as a pattern that might arise out of your work. The patterns in the book show you code reuse, at a higher level than literal reuse of a given body of source code. A very powerful idea for you to grasp.

I reiterate. Understanding, using and looking for new patterns moves you into the realm of design. Increases your experience and your value. Design is higher margin work. Makes your skill sets more valuable.

He also introduces you to the discipline of testing. Especially having a unit testing framework. And since this is java, you have JUnit to help you.

Rating:
Summary: Respect due to JSP
Review: For the front end of Java web applications JSP has never been given a lot of respect. It's always been the domain of lower paid 'front end programmers'. But that doesn't mean that it isn't difficult to do it right. This book takes the time to emphasize the patterns of implementation to make a solid web front end.

The book covers the web application page flow of forwarding and maintaining state. It also covers tag libraries, data validation and a host of other topics.

The text of the book is well written, and graphics are used effectively.

This is a great book for front end developers. This is the type of coverage this complex topics needs. Hopefully we can get similar books for PHP and Perl web development.

Rating:
Summary: The next step for intermediate JSP developers...
Review: If you're familiar with JSP technology and you're ready to take the next step, you might find the book Foundations Of JSP Design Patterns by Andrew Patzer (Apress) interesting...

Chapter list: JSP Foundations; Using JSP; Role Separation with JavaBeans; Role Separation with Custom Tags; Development Using Patterns; The Decorating Filter Pattern; The Front Controller Pattern; The View Helper Pattern; Testing Techniques; Deployment Techniques; Application Frameworks; Putting It All Together; Index

While this book does cover some basics of JSP, I wouldn't recommend it for a complete newcomer to the subject. This book is more designed for the person who has learned the basics, done some work with JSP, and would now like to learn how to better structure their code to separate business logic from presentation. Patzer does a good job in showing how a consistent approach to presentation/logic separation can avoid maintenance issues down the road, and how it allows developers and designers with different roles to work together on a project. By introducing patterns, the developer can build applications with a solid structure that follow proven architecture that works. The thing I appreciate most is that the pattern chapters have plenty of code that allows you to understand the pattern both by explanation and by example of a real application. That helps take the information from a theoretical to a practical level. The chapters at the end that deal with testing and deployment are also very valuable, and they should help the developer to follow a solid approach to JSP application development from design through implementation. Very good material here.