A wide and shallow survey of popular frameworks for Javascript, CSS, PHP, Java, Groovy, Ruby, Perl, Python and other web oriented technologies.

1. Frameworks Galore
A pragmatic review of available
frameworks
Now with 20% more framework-y goodness!

2. What are frameworks?
• Frameworks are tools or libraries that you can
include in your application to take advantage
of functionality that you would otherwise
need to develop.

3. When should I use a framework?
• One of the main advantages of a framework is
the reduction of developer workload.
• Another approach is to utilize frameworks for
their subject expertise.

4. How would a framework help me?
• Drop-in functionality.
• Reduced maintenance.
• Faster startup and prototyping.

5. Downsides to using frameworks?
• Increased complexity.
• Enlarged security profile.
• Unused functionality.

6. What frameworks are out there?
Finally, the good stuff!

7. Javascript Frameworks
• Historically focused on the client side, but
with the advent of technologies such as
Node.js and Vert.x this focus is lessening.
• Functionality ranges from DOM manipulation
to visual effects.
• Purely client side MVC applications are
possible with the functionality available from
some frameworks.

8. jQuery, jQuery UI, jQuery Mobile
• jQuery features DOM element
Selection, Events, AJAX interaction, Effects and
extendable via Plugins.
• jQuery UI enhances jQuery with Themable
appearance, Widgets, Interactions, Utilities
and more Effects.
• jQuery Mobile focus jQuery and jQuery UI
functionalities on mobile platforms (HTML5)

9. Modernizr.js
• Used to fill in functionality in browsers that
lack HTML5 feature support (IE mostly)
• Checks for a variety of HTML5 and CSS3
features and can load various modules in
response to the presence of those capabilities.
• Very helpful for situations where support of
older browsers is required but newer features
are desired.

10. Backbone.js + Underscore.js
• Backbone adds
modeling, collections, manipulations and
event modeling to allow your application to
interact with a backend via JSON.
• Underscore provides utility functions for use
by Backbone, but can be used without
Backbone.

11. Spine.js + Spine Mobile
• Adds Models, Views, Controllers, Routers, and
Events to web applications.
• Spine Mobile aims to match Native
applications for mobile users and extends the
Spine functionality with a Touch interface and
a web interface equivalent of Story Boards for
Xcode.

12. Mustache.js + Handlebars.js
• Mustache (no designation) is a template
languages for HTML generation.
• Mustache.js is the javascript processor for
Mustache templates.
• Handlebars is a superset of mustache and
adds some processing logic (iteration and
conditional evaluation) to mustache
templates.

13. CSS Frameworks
• Used to standardize CSS implementations
across various browser platforms.
• Implement good practices for layout and
typography.
• Allow easier layout by standardizing columns.
• More modern systems allow for designs that
respond to the width of the viewport on the
browser.

14. Twitter Bootstrap
• Actually includes JS functionality built on top
of jQuery.
• Cohesive appearance of elements.
• Helps overcome lack of a UI/UX designer on
the team by providing some basic elements
and styles for your information, forms, and
layout.

15. 960 Grid System
• Designed to help layout pages of information.
• Designed around a 12, 16 or 24 column
approach for a screen width of ~960px.
• Very light weight (~7KB)
• Only concerned with columns, widths and
placement.

16. Blueprint CSS
• A column based system, but expanded to
include typography and form
elements/interfaces.
• Includes a plugin system.
• Additional support for printing forms

17. Less CSS
• Actually extends the original CSS with features
such as
variables, functions, operations, mixins, and
conditional responses.
• Available as a javascript library to add
interpretation to your webpages.
• Can also be used to preprocess your .less files
into .css files for inclusion in your application.
• Responsive? Gotcha covered!
width: 100%*(140/620);

18. SASS CSS
• Another preprocessor style framework for
CSS.
• Adds functionality for
variables, nesting, mixins, and selector
inheritence.
• Used by Rails 3.1+
• Also supports math inline, so:
font: #{$font-size}/#{$line-height};

19. Data Frameworks
• Serve to isolate your application logic from the
persistence layer beneath.
• Allows your application to run against various
database management systems without
convoluted configurations.
• Provides a façade covering over the specific
idiosyncrasies for the DBMS.

20. SQLAlchemy
• Two main components: Core and ORM
• Core: Generates DDL and abstracts the SQL
commands.
• ORM: Allows more abstraction, allowing you to
delegate persistence to the SQLAlchemy engine.
• Mature, High Performance framework
• Database Reflection/Type Introspection
• Allows hand-written SQL to be injected if needed.

21. DBIx::Class
• Speeds development, data abstraction and
improves portability for your application.
• Allows you to represent your business rules
through OO code and generate boilerplate
code for CRUD operations.
• Available modules to inspect your
database, and automatically create classes for
all the tables in your schema.

22. Hibernate/nHibernate
• Originally a Java technology, but a .NET
version is available too.
• Multiple configuration pathways, XML or
JPA/Annotations
• Swappable connection pooling and caching
techniques.
• Very flexible representations of relationships
of objects to the database.
• HQL for Queries and Criteria elements.

23. ADO.NET Entity Framework
• Three operational modes: Code First, Model First and
Database First.
• Code First is typically used when you’ve already developed
code based objects and generally requires some minor
adjustments to the base object to enable linkages to the
child/parent objects themselves.
• Model First is typically used in new projects and excels at
allowing a developer to rapidly work up the data model and
interactions between the various modeled entities.
• Database First can be used to create strongly typed classes
from an existing database. This can help with mapping new
applications to old data sources or “web enabling” old
applications.

24. MyBATIS
• Supports Java and .NET
• While Hibernate/nHibernate do many things
for you automatically, MyBatis takes the other
approach of asking you to dictate what code
results in what DB interactions (mapping).
• Still uses a Unit of Work operational style
(openSession() and closeSession() calls are
expected).

25. Miso.Dataset
• A javascript library that allows dataset
operations on the client side.
• Functions include
filtering, grouping, aggregate calculations and
other common manipulations that are
typically performed at the DB layer.
• Can import data from json or other formats
via AJAX calls.

26. Web Frameworks
• Generally provide some functionality to
abstract away the details.
• Often used in conjunction with a Data
Abstraction Framework and possibly a
Javascript framework and/or CSS framework.

27. CodeIgniter
• A MVC based PHP system with a separation of
your application code vs. system code.
• Well documented.
• Provides DB Access, Templates, Validation,
Session Management, and more.
• Modular allowing additional libraries and
helper functions.
• Integrates well with other static content
frameworks (CSS and Javascript)

28. CakePHP
• Another PHP MVC system with excellent
documentation.
• Many built in features for XSS, CSRF, and input
validations.
• Components to help with
email, cookie, security, session, and request
handling.
• Requires minimal (if any) setup on the server.

29. Spring MVC
• Excellent (excessive?) separation of concerns.
• Available to a wide range of Java based
application servers.
• Flexible configuration and management.
• Able to import or take advantage of an
incredible number of Java based libraries.

30. Stripes
• Attempts to simplify creation of Java based
MVC web applications.
• Auto-discovery of ActionBeans (convention
over configuration)
• Flexible routing configuration (you want to
masquerade as a collection of .html files, no
problem)
• Requires Java 5 (because it uses Annotations
and Generics)

31. JVM->Groovy->Grails
• Based on the Groovy scripting language (runs
on the JVM Platform)
• Started as a port of Ruby on Rails, so it inherits
many of the foundational concepts of Rails
• Includes a Groovy based ORM, which provides
a façade over Hibernate.
• Simplifies development and has interop with
Java based classes (JAR)

32. ASP.NET Web Forms
• Tons of Support, tutorials and other
educational materials on the internet.
• Well constructed and fairly complete attempt
to introduce a stateful mindset to web
applications.
• Can get heavy handed with view state and
sometimes page life cycle becomes a mystery.
• Many helper utilities and a very good IDE.

33. ASP.NET MVC
• Catching up to the MVC/lighter web
applications process.
• Several versions released in rapid fire.
• Supports multiple templating/view engines.
• Benefits from much of the .NET ecosphere
and can take advantage of my of the features
from Web Forms (but not viewstate based
controls)

34. Ruby on Rails
• Takes advantage of strong Ruby ecosphere.
• Opinionated software can help reduce the
number of technology concerns for
application development.
• Strongly supports testing.
• Many innovations that have been ruthlessly
copied by others (such as Grails and many
other web application frameworks).

35. Sinatra
• Very slim feature set, but very versatile.
• Well suited for exposing API end points
without incurring overhead.
• Integrates with rack middleware (e.g. for
sessions and auth functionality)
• Very flexible template resolution:
require 'rdiscount'
get('/') { markdown :index } #returns index.markdown

36. Catalyst
• Perl based MVC framework
• Swappable ORM layers (DBIx::Class, DBI, or
many other persistence layers)
• Template processing via several optional
engines
• Many included plugins for Form
Validation, Request Handling, Session
Management, and I18N.

37. Django
• Python based MVC Framework – Detail
oriented yet quick to get results.
• Provides it’s own internal ORM along with
several classes to help query and sift data.
• Calls views controllers and controllers
views, or is it the other way around?
• “Pluggable” features form sub-functionality of
a larger application or project.

38. Flask
• A “micro” framework that offers much basic
functionality without dictating backend
options.
• Managed Cookies, Flash
Messages, Templates, File Uploads and many
other handy items are implemented.
• Can be very handy for small API
endpoints, but might not be a great fit for a
larger application.

39. Testing Frameworks
• Serve to provide a suite of functions to
enhance or establish tests for your code base.
• Several flavors from unit testing (testing
specific small pieces of code) to integration
testing (testing functionality of disparate
systems) to usability testing.
• Often tied to the programming language used
in a web application framework or other
coding environment.

40. Unit Testing
• NUnit (.NET)
• Visual Studio Unit Testing Framework (.NET)
• JUnit (JVM)
• TestNG (JVM)
• PHPUnit (PHP)
• test::unit/minitest (Ruby)
• unittest (Python)

41. Behavior Testing
• Rspec (Ruby)
• Jasmine.js (Javascript)
• PySpec (Python)

42. Browser/Automation Testing
• Selenium
• Mocha.js

43. Obligatory Incendiary Slide
Framework Requests/Second
Flask 0.7.2 1191
Sinatra 1.2.6 982
Pyramid 1.2 555
CodeIgniter 2.0.3 542
Djanog 1.3.1 465
Rails 3.1 463
CakePHP 1.3.11 193
(Results from https://github.com/seedifferently/the-great-web-framework-shootout)

44. JVM + Ruby = JRuby
JRuby + JBoss AS = TorqueBox
BONUS SLIDE
Achievement: Perseverance Unlocked!
• Implement Ruby, Rails or Sinatra Applications
on top of JBoss AS. Which brings to the table
InfiniSpan, JDBC, JBoss Clustering and JBoss
Scheduling features.
• Natively run WAR/EAR packaged systems side-
by-side (from other jvm based systems).

45. The End
or is it?
The comic faces and language logos used in this presentation are the property of their respective owners.

46. Questions?
Lee Fent
Email: lee.fent@okstate.edu
Twitter: @lee_fent