About Alfresco SURF evolution

[jeandur]

Hi there,

This seems to be a good news which could give Surf more audience.

Some questions however :

. will Alfresco participate to Spring Surf ?

. will Alfresco integrate Spring Surf instead of its own version of Surf ?

. will capabilities like being able to talk to remote Alfresco endpoint be kept inside Spring Surf ?

. Will it be possible to have with Spring Surf something like a webscripts framework only version (something like alfwsf.war) ... which sometimes is enough to build some project solutions.

. Is there some differences between Alfresco Surf licence and Spring Surf ?

. Will it be possible to write bean with groovy and then use them inside webscripts ?

A lot of questions, I know

Thanks in advance for your answers.
Jean

[uzi]

These are some great questions!

Here are some facts about Spring Surf. I think you'll find it's pretty much what you were hoping for!

Will Alfresco participate in Spring Surf?
Yes. Alfresco engineering is committing directly into Spring Surf. Spring Surf (and Spring MVC) provide the platform for Alfresco's web applications today and into the future. As such, you'll see regular commits from Alfresco's engineers.

Will Alfresco integrate Spring Surf instead of its own version of Surf?
Yes. Alfresco is presently moving Web Scripts, Surf and Web Studio out of our own SVN and into SpringSource's SVN since it is now a Spring Framework Extension. Alfresco will not maintain a separate line of code for Surf.

Will capabilities like being able to talk to remote Alfresco endpoint be kept inside Spring Surf?
Yes. All of the connector, credential vaulting and endpoint proxying is still part of Spring Surf. We tried to remove as little as possible. Apart from some repackaging, you should see that it's all still there.

Will it be possible to have with Spring Surf something like a webscripts framework only version (something like alfwsf.war)?
Yes. Spring Web Scripts can be built and run standalone. With the move to Maven, you'll see that it's far easier now to generate a standalone Spring Web Scripts application. The dependency pattern means that you can include your own JARs and have the framework pick them up - a really nice way to encapsulate your web scripts, write tests for your web scripts and deploy them as well.

Are there any differences between the Alfresco Surf license and the Spring Surf license?
Spring Surf is available under the Apache 2.0 license. With Alfresco 3.3, Spring Surf will be included. There is no such thing as Alfresco Surf as of Alfresco 3.3 - the Alfresco release will simply package the Spring Surf project release (much like a third-party dependency).

Will it be possible to write a bean with Groovy and then use them inside Web Scripts?
Yes. You can do that today. With Spring Surf, you also have the option to write Groovy script controllers (.groovy files) to back your declarative Web Scripts. We're looking at GSP at the moment since we'd like to provide declarative Web Script .gsp support.

Thanks for the questions. If you or anyone else has further questions or feedback on project direction, we'd love to hear it. If you have a contribution, feel free to post it to the forums!

Michael

[ngcutura]

In your reply since December last year, I see that Surf will implement Apache license; I also see Apache license 2.0 stated in Surf source files.

However, on Alfresco page, I can read the following:

*************************************
Getting Started

Surf is available to the community under a GPL license. You are welcome to use it in your own projects and we encourage the community to participate in Surf's development.

*****************************************

Which license is in use? Where is the ultimate information about the license?

Regards,
NGC

[brianr]

Spring Surf is licensed under Apache License 2.0. I have corrected the Alfresco wiki page.


Brian

[ngcutura]

Thanks a lot!

It would be good to have license information on the Spring web site, too:

http://www.springsource.org/extensions/se-surf

(Maybe it will be required after the incubation period?)

Regards,
NGC

[rmunsky]

Will it be possible to write a bean with Groovy and then use them inside Web Scripts?
Yes. You can do that today. With Spring Surf, you also have the option to write Groovy script controllers (.groovy files) to back your declarative Web Scripts. We're looking at GSP at the moment since we'd like to provide declarative Web Script .gsp support.

The documentation is still some kind of limitted. Is there some where a hint how to run the groovy backed controllers / surf webscripts? If so i would write a tutorial with that information. Currently we are using std. JS backed scripts and use groovy classes exposed to them. I would like to get rid of the JS layer at all but it would be nice to use the web script layer. If possible i would also use directly mapped groovy controllers. As an alternative i would use std. spring services/controllers mapped parallel to the webscripts running in surf. Can anyone give me a hint?

[rmunsky]

Will it be possible to write a bean with Groovy and then use them inside Web Scripts?
Yes. You can do that today. With Spring Surf, you also have the option to write Groovy script controllers (.groovy files) to back your declarative Web Scripts. We're looking at GSP at the moment since we'd like to provide declarative Web Script .gsp support.


The documentation is still some kind of limitted. Is there some where a hint how to run the groovy backed controllers / surf webscripts? If so i would write a tutorial with that information. Currently we are using std. JS backed scripts and use groovy classes exposed to them. I would like to get rid of the JS layer at all but it would be nice to use the web script layer. If possible i would also use directly mapped groovy controllers. As an alternative i would use std. spring services/controllers mapped parallel to the webscripts running in surf. Can anyone give me a hint?

When using the latest version from CI it is possible to use groovy backed webscripts as shown in the svn source code samples.