Spring webflow with Spring MVC

[jaggernat]

hi guys n gals,

Just a general question. I worked on a project where i used ONLY
spring webflow + IBATIS.

Is there any benefits of using spring MVC + Spring webflow or
would using spring webflow alone is fine?

I am assuming Spring MVC and Spring Webflow do the same thing, correct?

thanks.

[Bert van den Bosch]

Hi,

as far as I understand springwebflow's relation to spring mvc is that springweblow is loaded into mvc as an mvc controller, so in that sense they are not the same.

For most stuff we use webflow, just a few annoying thing I've put as an mvc controller, which mainly has something to do with popups and the fact that I could not handle parallel flows easily. But the functionality in the popups was very simple so I could make use of an custom mvc controller. But for the rest we use webflow.

[jaggernat]

>>>springwebflow's relation to spring mvc is that springweblow is loaded into mvc as an mvc controller

The point i am trying to make is why would you load webflow into spring MVC? Everything which is done using MVC can be done using webflow (in a different way).

Are you saying you could not handle popups and parallel flows in webflow?
By parallel flows do you mean multithreading ?

thx for response.

[Bert van den Bosch]

Well that is what I meant, webflow is part of mvc.

so you come in with the dispatcherservlet, that one goes into mvc, then through some resolving you end up with a webflow controller. But you always go through the mvc part.(at least to my understanding)

With parallel flows I mean having two flows in two browserwindows on the same session.

[aempinheiro]

As the word say webflow should be used for flows.

As an example, if you want to get a list of hotels, why you would use webflow. Don't forget that webflow is a framework by it self, so there are many more things at work. Flow snapshots, flow executions, xml for the flow definitions etc... These are things that are a huge overhead for some simple actions.

If things are not flows they are not meant for webflow.

[jaggernat]

so you are saying for simple apps go with mvc, for complex apps go with webflow....that kinda makes sense.

[aempinheiro]

I didnt say that. Specially because defining what is complex and what is not its always a debate.

For example yahoo homepage, do you see there any use for webflow, do you think its simple? Do you need webflow for making search even if the search uses many parameters and has some complex algorithm?

Why not combine both of them? Spring MVC + Spring Webflow... For example an e-commerce page; for searching items, adding or removing items from the shopping cart you don't need webflow; for payment, maybe you can consider webflow.

Again, webflow is for making flows.