WebWork 2.2 Release Notes
Key Changes
Productivity enhancements
Tools
- Fully functional WebFlow support for JSP, FreeMarker, and Velocity
- QuickStart: simple embedded application server for getting started immediately
Documentation
- Improved documentation, including detailed information for every interceptor
- Totally new example application: now the example application is a set of tutorials and only teaches best practices of WebWork, rather than every single feature.
Enhanced framework feedback
- Better and more intelligent error reporting
- "Developer" mode where inline errors are displayed when possible
- Common interceptor stack issues, such as validation+workflow with no "input" result, are now reported in a more obvious way
Other
- Deprecated WebWork IoC container in favor of Spring
- Built-in support for Spring
- Official support for wizards/workflows using the Scope Interceptor and a pre-release of Continuations
- Removed support for WebWork 1.x migration jar
User interface improvements
UI tag overhaul
- FreeMarker is now the default UI tag implementation
- Refactored UI tag base classes such that they are no longer tied to JSP
- New native Velocity and FreeMarker UI tag support, built on top of new base classes
- UI tags now use "altSyntax" (available since 2.1.4) as the default syntax (the 2.0 - 2.1 syntax is deprecated but still available)
- New Head tag that links the correct CSS and JavaScript files for each theme
Velocity Support Improvements
- Upgraded support to velocity 1.4
- webwork.velocity.contexts now chains contexts on each request, i.e. contexts do not need to be thread-safe
AJAX support
- Official support for client side validation using DWR
- New tabbed panel widget
- Built in support for Dojo wdigets
Result changes
- Velocity and FreeMarker Servlets are now deprecated in favor of direct results
Other
- Easy way to invoke different action name or command, making forms with multiple buttons easy to use
- Initial JSR168 integration
Core API changes
Type conversion
- Typing support in Maps, Sets, and Lists is now supported even when the collection is not null
- Map type conversion support for keys and values
- Support for Java 5 generics and annotations for Collections and enums
Other
- Improved exception handling, with support for exception-to-result mapping in xwork.xml
- Parameters interceptor updated to let you include and/or exclude certain parameters, thereby providing a simple way to secure what data can be changed from the web
Migration Notes
WebWork 2.2 is the most significant release since the 2.0 release two years ago. There are some significant changes, deprecated items, and various issues to be aware of when upgrading or if you're just curious what is new. Please see the WebWork 2.2 Migration Notes for more info.
Changelog
For a complete list of all the changes, please refer to the complete changelog
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