Creating a simple web application using Apache Wicket

25 Sep 2023

In this tutorial, we will explore how to create a simple web application using Apache Wicket, a popular Java web framework for building a rich and responsive user interface. Apache Wicket follows the Model-View-Controller (MVC) architectural pattern, making it easy to develop and maintain web applications.

Prerequisites

Before we begin, make sure you have the following installed on your machine:

Java Development Kit (JDK) 8 or above
Apache Maven
Your favorite IDE (such as IntelliJ IDEA or Eclipse)

Step 1: Set Up a Maven Project

First, let’s start by setting up a Maven project for our web application. Open your terminal or command prompt and execute the following command:

mvn archetype:generate -B -DgroupId=com.example -DartifactId=mywebapp -DarchetypeGroupId=org.apache.wicket \
-DarchetypeArtifactId=wicket-archetype-quickstart -DarchetypeVersion=9.4.0-M6 -DinteractiveMode=false

This command will generate a Maven project structure with the necessary dependencies and configuration files.

Step 2: Create a Home Page

Open your IDE and navigate to the src/main/java/com/example directory. Create a new Java class called HomePage.java and add the following code:

import org.apache.wicket.markup.html.WebPage;
import org.apache.wicket.markup.html.basic.Label;

public class HomePage extends WebPage {
    public HomePage() {
        add(new Label("message", "Welcome to my web application!"));
    }
}

This code creates a HomePage class that extends WebPage. It adds a Label component with the message “Welcome to my web application!”.

Step 3: Configure Application Initialization

Next, open src/main/java/com/example directory and create a new Java class called WicketApplication.java. Add the following code:

import org.apache.wicket.markup.html.WebPage;
import org.apache.wicket.protocol.http.WebApplication;

public class WicketApplication extends WebApplication {
    @Override
    public Class<? extends WebPage> getHomePage() {
        return HomePage.class;
    }
}

This code creates a WicketApplication class that extends WebApplication. It overrides the getHomePage() method to specify that the home page of our application is the HomePage class.

Step 4: Build and Run the Application

Now, let’s build and run our web application! Open your terminal or command prompt and navigate to the project’s root directory. Execute the following command:

mvn clean install

After the build has finished successfully, run the application using the following command:

mvn jetty:run

You can now visit http://localhost:8080 in your browser and see the home page of your web application.

Conclusion

Congratulations! You have successfully created a simple web application using Apache Wicket. You can further explore the capabilities of Apache Wicket and start building more complex and feature-rich applications.

#webdevelopment #javawebframeworks