Apache Isis 0.2.0-incubating

Just a quick announcement that last week we put out our second release of Apache Isis from the incubator, namely 0.2.0-incubating.

The main theme in this release is to try to simplify things a little, so that would-be users can more easily grok what Isis is about:

• We've updated the website, hopefully explaining better what Isis is and what use cases it hits.
• we now have the online demo linked directly from the website.
• the archetype has also been reworked; rather than have a module for each of the viewers, we've reduced the number of viewers (just HTML viewer and JSON viewer) and put them into a single webapp module.

You can read full release notes here.

And, as for all Isis releases, the release can be found in the Maven central repo, you can use the Maven archetype to create a quickstart app, or you can download the release and build it from source.

By the way, work is well under way on the next release, where the plan is to re-introduce the Scimpi viewer to the archetype, and also to bring in NoSQL (MongoDB) support.

Posted at 08:39AM Feb 27, 2012 by danhaywood in Announcements  |   | 

JQueryMobile demo app now included in the online demo

If you're interested in REST or in mobile apps, you might want to check out two recent blogs posts which highlight a demo app written in JQueryMobile, and consume the RESTful API provided by the Apache Isis json-viewer. 

The first of the blog posts shows some screenshots of the new app in action, while the second post has a fairly detailed code walk-thru of that app.  

Posted at 11:42PM Feb 01, 2012 by danhaywood in General  |   | 

Updated Apache Isis Presentations

If you're thinking of introducing Apache Isis to your co-workers, you might be interested to know that Isis already has an "Introducing Apache Isis" presentation slide deck (in ODP,  PPTX or PPT, PDF slides or notes).  You are free to use this as you will.

I've just updated the deck in line with the forthcoming v0.2.0 release; the most significant new content includes an overview of the main use cases for Apache Isis.  The online demo for Isis also gets a link.

As ever, feedback welcome!

Posted at 07:29AM Dec 16, 2011 by danhaywood in General  |   | 

Online Demo now available

We've finally got around to putting together an online demo of Apache Isis for would-be users to quickly grok what Isis  is all about. If you don't fancy reading any further but just want to play, you can find it here.

Posted at 08:17AM Dec 09, 2011 by danhaywood in General  |   | 

Restful Objects

Now that we have our first release of Apache Isis out of the door, I've been spending some time on Restful Objects, which forms the basis of the JSON viewer within Isis.

The idea of Restful Objects is to provide a standard, generic RESTful interface for domain object models, exposing representations of their structure using JSON and enabling interactions with domain object instances using HTTP GET, POST, PUT and DELETE.

The Restful Objects website is a place where the specification will be documented as it evolves, and if you take a look through the spec as it stands you may realize that it's very much based on the idea of a domain model as envisaged by naked objects.   That is:

• the start page provides links to the set of registered services/repositories
• from these services, references to domain object instances can be obtained
• each domain object has properties, collections and actions
• the usual business rules (hiding, disabling and validating) are supported
• actions (idempotent or non-idempotent) can be invoked

More generally, you'll see that all the representations are fully self-describing, opening up the possibility of generic viewers to be implemented if required, eg in languages such as HTML5/Ajax, Flex, Silverlight etc etc.

Alternatively, the representations can be consumed directly by a bespoke application.

One of the nice things about this specification is that it is completely language-independent.  As you might expect, I'll be implementing this specification through the Isis JSON viewer, and using that implementation to refine the spec.  In addition Richard Pawson is hoping to commit to working on a similar implementation for Naked Objects MVC (he's a co-author on the Restful Objects site).

And, if you know of or are the author of another naked objects-style framework, eg written in Ruby or Python, and the idea of Restful Objects interests you, then I'd love to hear from you.

Posted at 01:02PM Aug 03, 2011 by danhaywood in General  |   |