Spring Web Flow (SWF) is the sub-project of the

Spring Framework The Spring Framework is an application framework and inversion of control container for the Java platform. The framework's core features can be used by any Java application, but there are extensions for building web applications on top of the J ...

that focuses on providing the infrastructure for building and running

rich web applications A rich web application (originally called a rich Internet application, or RIA or installable Internet application) is a web application that has many of the characteristics of desktop application software. The concept is closely related to a sin ...

. The project tries to solve 3 core problems facing web application developers: * How do you express page navigation rules? * How do you manage navigation and conversational state? * How do you facilitate modularization and reuse? In Spring Web Flow, a ''web flow'' answers all of the above questions: it captures navigational rules allowing the Spring Web Flow execution engine to manage a conversation and the associated state. At the same time, a ''web flow'' is a reusable web application module. Since version 2.0, Spring Web Flow also introduces other additional features supporting the construction of ''rich'' web applications, such as

AJAX Ajax may refer to: Greek mythology and tragedy * Ajax the Great, a Greek mythological hero, son of King Telamon and Periboea * Ajax the Lesser, a Greek mythological hero, son of Oileus, the king of Locris * ''Ajax'' (play), by the ancient Gree ...

support and tight integration with

JavaServer Faces Jakarta Faces, formerly Jakarta Server Faces and JavaServer Faces (JSF) is a Java specification for building component-based user interfaces for web applications and was formalized as a standard through the Java Community Process being part o ...

History

The Spring Web Flow project started as a simple extension to the Spring Web MVC framework providing ''web flow'' functionality, developed by Erwin Vervaet in 2004. In 2005 the project was introduced into the Spring portfolio by Keith Donald and grew into the official Spring sub-project it is now. The first production ready 1.0 release was made on 2006-10-26. Version 2.0, first released on 2008-04-29, saw a major internal reorganization of the framework to allow better integration with

References

Erwin Vervaet Erwin may refer to: People Given name * Erwin Chargaff (1905–2002), Austrian biochemist * Erwin Dold (1919–2012), German concentration camp commandant in World War 2 * Erwin Hauer (1926–2017), Austrian-born American sculptor * Egon Erwin Kis ...

: The Definitive Guide to Spring Web Flow, Apress, * Marten Deinum and Koen Serneels: Pro Spring MVC: With Web Flow, Apress,

External links

Spring Web Flow Homepage (Spring.io)

Original Spring Web Flow version (Ervacon)
Cross-platform free software Free software programmed in Java (programming language) {{compu-lang-stub