Eric Handtke

Phone numbers arrive as 5551234567, 555-123-4567 and (555) 123 4567. Prices come in with stray letters, and dates show up in three different orders. Every form that accepts free text ends up cleaning it afterwards.

An input mask in Java stops that at the source. The field only accepts characters that fit the pattern and formats the value as the user types. In webforJ the masks are built in, so a clean phone, price or date field is a few lines of Java.

You know some Java, you have written console programs or a few classes, and now you want to see something running in a browser. Most guides at this point throw HTML, JavaScript, a template engine and a build pipeline at you before the first page shows up.

This java web app tutorial for beginners takes a shorter path. With webforJ, a full-stack Java framework, you build the page in Java, generate a working project in a minute and run it with one Maven command. By the end you will have a first Java web app on screen, a button that reacts to clicks, and a clear idea of where to go next.

Your feed has thousands of rows, and a page of numbered buttons feels dated. Users expect to keep scrolling and see more appear, without waiting for the whole list to load up front.

Infinite scroll in Java gives you exactly that: the list loads the next batch of items when the user reaches the bottom. In webforJ a single component handles the scroll detection, and everything else stays in your Java listener. The code in this guide is all Java.

In my time working with documentation and coding for customers I have built quite the number of demo apps myself, so by now I know what the shortcuts look like. The dataset is always small, with authentication and advanced features "coming soon" or hardcoded in instead of properly implemented. Filtering works fast, because coincidentally there are only five rows to filter. All of that isn't to say those demos are bad, after all they serve their purpose, but I wanted to see how efficiently I could build a demo that doesn't cut corners while still being small and easy to understand.

The webforJ Bookstore is my attempt at that. It's a book inventory manager built on webforJ and Spring Boot with live table filtering, colored genre chips, a data-bound edit drawer, and Spring Security handling who can do what. This post covers the pieces I found most worth writing about.

We all probably know this situation; browsing a website or webapp, make a simple misclick and instinctively try to go back or undo it. Only to then be somewhere completely else, worst case not even on the site anymore.

Seeing that user experience is one of the most important factors in modern web development, that scenario is one of the many reasons why a robust and well-maintained routing system is so important for your Single Page Application (SPA).

In this article, I will give a quick overview on how to achieve that with webforJ. First we will take a look at movement between views, preserving different states, and in general intuitive interaction with our app. In around 10 minutes, you should be able to set up routes, handle advanced navigation scenarios, and follow the best practices for future maintenance.