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  3. JSTL vs jsf

JSTL vs jsf

OverviewComparisonAlternatives

Overview

JSTL
JSTL
Stacks25
Followers24
Votes0
JSF
JSF
Stacks142
Followers222
Votes4

JSTL vs jsf: What are the differences?

JSTL vs JSF

JSTL (JavaServer Pages Standard Tag Library) and JSF (JavaServer Faces) are two technologies used in Java web development. Although they both serve the purpose of enhancing the functionality of Java web applications, there are key differences between them.

  1. Expression Language: JSTL uses EL (Expression Language) version 1.2, while JSF uses EL version 2.1. The difference in versions leads to variations in the way expressions are evaluated and processed in the two technologies.

  2. MVC Architecture: JSTL is primarily focused on the View layer of the Model-View-Controller (MVC) architecture, providing tags for manipulating and displaying data. On the other hand, JSF is a complete MVC framework that encompasses all layers, including the Model and Controller, in addition to the View.

  3. Component-based vs Tag-based: JSF is a component-based framework, where components are defined and managed by the framework. JSTL, however, is a tag-based library that utilizes custom tags for embedding logic within JSP (JavaServer Pages) files.

  4. Advanced Features: JSF offers more advanced features such as AJAX support, server-side state management, event handling, and form validation. JSTL, being a simpler library, lacks these advanced features and is mainly focused on providing looping, conditional statements, and basic data manipulation tags.

  5. Integration with IDEs: JSF has better IDE (Integrated Development Environment) support compared to JSTL. IDEs provide comprehensive tools for JSF, including drag-and-drop support for component-based development, code generators, and visual editing capabilities. JSTL, being a tag-based library, may not have the same level of support in IDEs.

  6. Compatibility with Java EE: JSF is part of the Java EE (Enterprise Edition) standard, which means it is more likely to receive updates and maintenance in line with the Java EE specifications. JSTL, although widely used, is not officially part of the Java EE standard.

In summary, JSTL and JSF are different in terms of expression language versions, MVC architecture coverage, component-based/tag-based nature, advanced features, IDE support, and Java EE compatibility.

Detailed Comparison

JSTL
JSTL
JSF
JSF

It has support for common, structural tasks such as iteration and conditionals, tags for manipulating XML documents, internationalization tags, and SQL tags. It also provides a framework for integrating the existing custom tags with the JSTL tags.

It is used for building component-based user interfaces for web applications and was formalized as a standard through the Java Community

tags for manipulating XML documents; internationalization tags; SQL tags
-
Statistics
Stacks
25
Stacks
142
Followers
24
Followers
222
Votes
0
Votes
4
Pros & Cons
No community feedback yet
Pros
  • 2
    Rich and comprehensive Request Life-cycle
  • 1
    Server Side component
  • 1
    Very Mature UI framework
Integrations
Spring Boot
Spring Boot
Java EE
Java EE
Java
Java
Java EE
Java EE

What are some alternatives to JSTL, JSF?

AngularJS

AngularJS

AngularJS lets you write client-side web applications as if you had a smarter browser. It lets you use good old HTML (or HAML, Jade and friends!) as your template language and lets you extend HTML’s syntax to express your application’s components clearly and succinctly. It automatically synchronizes data from your UI (view) with your JavaScript objects (model) through 2-way data binding.

Vue.js

Vue.js

It is a library for building interactive web interfaces. It provides data-reactive components with a simple and flexible API.

Ember.js

Ember.js

A JavaScript framework that does all of the heavy lifting that you'd normally have to do by hand. There are tasks that are common to every web app; It does those things for you, so you can focus on building killer features and UI.

Backbone.js

Backbone.js

Backbone supplies structure to JavaScript-heavy applications by providing models key-value binding and custom events, collections with a rich API of enumerable functions, views with declarative event handling, and connects it all to your existing application over a RESTful JSON interface.

Angular

Angular

It is a TypeScript-based open-source web application framework. It is a development platform for building mobile and desktop web applications.

Aurelia

Aurelia

Aurelia is a next generation JavaScript client framework that leverages simple conventions to empower your creativity.

Mithril

Mithril

Mithril is around 12kb gzipped thanks to its small, focused, API. It provides a templating engine with a virtual DOM diff implementation for performant rendering, utilities for high-level modelling via functional composition, as well as support for routing and componentization.

Quarkus

Quarkus

It tailors your application for GraalVM and HotSpot. Amazingly fast boot time, incredibly low RSS memory (not just heap size!) offering near instant scale up and high density memory utilization in container orchestration platforms like Kubernetes. We use a technique we call compile time boot.

Marionette

Marionette

It is a JavaScript library with a RESTful JSON interface and is based on the Model–view–presenter application design paradigm. Backbone is known for being lightweight, as its only hard dependency is on one JavaScript library, Underscore.js, plus jQuery for use of the full library.

Ampersand.js

Ampersand.js

We <3 Backbone.js at &yet. It’s brilliantly simple and solves many common problems in developing clientside applications. But we missed the focused simplicity of tiny modules in node-land. We wanted something similar in style and philosophy, but that fully embraced tiny modules, npm, and browserify. Ampersand.js is a well-defined approach to combining (get it?) a series of intentionally tiny modules.

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