Christoph Kiehl

Alright here is the short summary: Martijn and Eelco have done an amazing job writing a comprehensive yet easy to read book, that covers pretty much every aspect of Wicket and is more than recommended for everyone who wants to get started with Wicket.

Starting with the introduction they give you a good idea what Wicket is and how it came into life. It outlines a lot of the reasons why Model 2 web frameworks suck and how Wicket does a better job. This already got me hooked because it’s always nice to read about different approaches.

Wicket Architecture

After explaining the wicket architecture they introduce the first sample application which is … no, not another pet store … a cheese store But as you continue reading you will find that their writing is not cheesy at all. They’ve got a fresh style of writing which is not too boring but still delivers all the technical details you need, to thoroughly understand what’s going on.

The first two chapters of part 2 of the book go into detail about Wicket’s core elements: Models and Components. Understanding those and how they interact is the cornerstone of understanding Wicket.
But to really fill your models and components with life, you will need to interact with your user and fill your application with data. Explaining how to process user input using forms including validation and what different layout concepts Wicket has to offer is covered by the next two chapters.

Advanced Topics

So what’s next? I already gained the knowledge to write my basic Wicket application, but there are still some advanced topics to cover:

• Developing reusable components
• Images, CSS and scripts: working with resources
• Rich components and AJAX

If you ever build a bigger web application you’ll realize quickly that there are some topics left to explain. Does Wicket provide means of authentication and authorization? How does i18n work? Oh, and I want my application to integrate with Spring and Hibernate! And how do I test my wicked Wicket application?
Fortunately all those questions and more are answered in the last part of the book called “Preparing for the real world”.

Awesome Book

Martijn and Eelco do a great job getting you up to speed with Wicket. But it’s not only about getting through those sample applications. What I love about the book is that it actually provides hands on instructions for real world applications which is often missing from such books. It’s probably due to the fact that they are both members of the core Wicket team and use Wicket on a daily basis. They are not another example of those authors that just decide that they are going to write a book about a topic, and then do the tutorials and hang around on the mailing lists to gather just enough information to fill a book.

To summarize: Well done! I wish this book was available about a year ago, when one of my colleagues tried to build his first Wicket application!

If you are thinking of buying the book, you should buy it now as they offer a 35% discount until the end of August.

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