A web application framework is a software framework that is designed to support the development of dynamic websites, Web applications and Web services. The framework aims to alleviate the overhead associated with common activities used in Web development. For example, many frameworks provide libraries for database access, templating frameworks and session management, and often promote code reuse. A software framework is a reusable design for a software system (or subsystem). ... Web development is a broad term for any activities related to developing a web site for the World Wide Web or an intranet. ... In classical hypertext navigation occurs among static documents, and, for web users, this experience is reproduced using static web pages. ... In software engineering, a web application is an application delivered to users from a web server over a network such as the World Wide Web or an intranet. ... Web services architecture A Web service (also Web Service) is defined by the W3C as a software system designed to support interoperable Machine to Machine interaction over a network. ... This article is principally about managing and structuring the collections of data held on computers. ... The term template, when used in the context of software engineering has various technical specifications, but is generally identified as any processing element that can be combined with a data model and processed by a template engine to produce a result document. ... In computer science, in particular networking, a session is either a lasting connection using the session layer of a network protocol or a lasting connection between a user (or user agent) and a peer, typically a server, usually involving the exchange of many packets between the users computer and... Code reuse, also called software reuse, is the use of existing software, or software knowledge, to build new software. ...

History

Common Gateway Interface

As the design of the World Wide Web was not inherently dynamic, early hypertext consisted of hand-coded HTML that was published on web servers. Any modifications to published pages needed to be performed by the pages' author. To provide a dynamic web page that reflected user inputs, the Common Gateway Interface (CGI) standard was introduced for interfacing external applications with web servers.^[1] CGI could adversely affect server load, though, since each request had to start a separate process. The World Wide Web and WWW redirect here. ... In computing, hypertext is a user interface paradigm for displaying documents which, according to an early definition (Nelson 1970), branch or perform on request. ... HTML, an initialism of HyperText Markup Language, is the predominant markup language for web pages. ... The term web server can mean one of two things: a computer responsible for serving web pages, mostly HTML documents, via the HTTP protocol to clients, mostly web browsers; a software program that is working as a daemon serving web documents. ... In classical hypertext navigation occurs among static documents, and, for web users, this experience is reproduced using static web pages. ... The Common Gateway Interface (CGI) is a standard protocol for interfacing external application software with an information server, commonly a web server. ...

Tighter integration

Programmers wanted tighter integration with the web server to enable high traffic web applications. The Apache HTTP Server, for example, supports modules that can extend the web server with arbitrary code executions (such as mod_perl) or forward specific requests to a web server that can handle dynamic content (such as mod_jk). Some web servers (such as Apache Tomcat) were specifically designed to handle dynamic content by executing code written in some languages, such as Java. In software engineering, a web application is an application delivered to users from a web server over a network such as the World Wide Web or an intranet. ... The Apache HTTP Server, commonly referred to simply as Apache, is a web server notable for playing a key role in the initial growth of the World Wide Web. ... mod_perl is an optional module for the Apache web server. ... mod_jk is an optional module for the Apache web server which connects it to Jakarta Tomcat (used to serve Java Server Pages and Servlets). ... Apache Tomcat is a Servlet container developed at the Apache Software Foundation (ASF). ... Java language redirects here. ...

Web languages

Around the same time, new languages were being developed specifically for use in the web, such as PHP and Active Server Pages. For other uses, see PHP (disambiguation). ... Active Server Pages (ASP) is Microsofts first server-side script engine for dynamically-generated web pages. ...

Web libraries

While the vast majority of languages available to programmers to use in creating dynamic web pages have libraries to help with common tasks, web applications often require specific libraries that are useful in web applications, such as creating HTML (for example, JavaServer Faces). Illustration of an application which may use libvorbisfile. ... In software engineering, a web application is an application delivered to users from a web server over a network such as the World Wide Web or an intranet. ... HTML, an initialism of HyperText Markup Language, is the predominant markup language for web pages. ... JavaServer Faces (JSF) is a Java-based Web application framework intended to simplify development of user interfaces for Java EE applications. ...

Full Stack

Eventually, mature, "full stack" frameworks appeared, that often gathered multiple libraries useful for web development into a single cohesive software stack for web developers to use. Examples of this include JavaEE, WebObjects, OpenACS, and Ruby on Rails. Web development is a broad term for any activities related to developing a web site for the World Wide Web or an intranet. ... In computing, a solution stack is a set of software subsystems or components needed to deliver a fully functional solution, e. ... Java Platform, Enterprise Edition or Java EE is a widely used platform for server programming in the Java programming language. ... WebObjects is a Java Web application server by Apple Computer. ... The OpenACS logo The Open Architecture Community System (OpenACS) is an advanced open-source toolkit for developing community web applications licensed under the terms of the GNU GPL. The Open Architecture Community System provides: A large set of applications, that can be used to deploy web sites that are strong... Ruby on Rails is a free web application framework designed to make web development faster, simpler and more efficient. ...

Architectures

Model view controller

Many frameworks follow the Model View Controller (MVC) architectural pattern to separate the data model, business rules and user interface. A simple diagram depicting the relationship between the Model, View, and Controller. ... Architectural patterns are software patterns that offer well-established solutions to architectural problems in software engineering. ... A data model is a model that describes how data are represented and used in an abstract way. ... Business rules describe the operations, definitions and constraints that apply to an organization in achieving its goals. ... The user interface is the part of a system exposed to users. ...

Push-based vs. Pull-based

Most MVC frameworks follow a push-based architecture. These frameworks use actions that do the required processing, and then "push" the data to the view layer to render the results.^[2] Struts, Django, Ruby on Rails and Spring MVC are good examples of this architecture. An alternative to this is pull-based architecture, sometimes also called "component-based". These frameworks start with the view layer, which can then "pull" results from multiple controllers as needed. In this architecture, multiple controllers can be involved with a single view. Tapestry, JBoss Seam and Velocity are examples of pull-based architectures. Jakarta Struts is an open-source framework for developing J2EE web applications. ... Django is an open source web application framework, written in Python, which loosely follows the model-view-controller design pattern. ... Ruby on Rails is a free web application framework designed to make web development faster, simpler and more efficient. ... The Spring Framework (or Spring for short) is an open source web application framework for the Java platform. ... Tapestry is a Java-based programming toolkit that uses XML to implement applications in accordance with the model-view-controller design pattern. ... JBoss Seam is a web application framework developed by JBoss, a division of Red Hat. ... Apache Velocity is an open source package directed by the Apache Software Foundation. ...

Content Management Systems

Some self-described content management systems have begun to expand into higher layer web application frameworks. For instance, Drupal's structure provides a minimal core whose function is extended through modules that provide functions generally associated with web application frameworks. Joomla and Plone have similar functionality. Historically these projects have been termed content management systems. However, it is debatable whether "management of content" is the primary value of such systems, especially when some, like SilverStripe, provide an object-oriented MVC framework. Add-on modules now enable these systems to function as full fledged applications beyond the scope of content management. They may provide functional APIs, functional frameworks, coding standards, and many of the functions traditionally associated with Web application frameworks. Drupal (pronounced ) is a free and open source modular framework and content management system (CMS) written in the programming language PHP. Drupal, like many modern CMSs, allows the system administrator to create and organize content, customize the presentation, automate administrative tasks, and manage site visitors and contributors. ... Joomla is the new name of Mambo since the development team and the copyright holder of the Mambo name have parted ways on August 17th, 2005. ... Plone is an open-source content management system built on top of the Zope application server. ... A content management system (CMS) is computer software used to create, edit, manage, and publish content in a consistently organized fashion. ... SilverStripe is a free software / open source content management system (CMS) for creating and managing websites through a simple web interface. ...

Features

Security

Some web application frameworks come with authentication and authorization frameworks, that enable the web server to identify the users of the application, and restrict access to functions based on some defined criteria. Django is one example that provides role-based access to pages, and provides a web-based interface for creating users and assigning them roles. For other uses of the terms authentication, authentic and authenticity, see authenticity. ... In security engineering and computer security, authorization, is a part of the operating system that protects computer resources by only allowing those resources to be used by resource consumers that have been granted authority to use them. ... The inside/front of a Dell PowerEdge web server The term Web server can mean one of two things: A computer program that is responsible for accepting HTTP requests from clients, which are known as Web browsers, and serving them HTTP responses along with optional data contents, which usually are... Django is an open source web application framework, written in Python, which loosely follows the model-view-controller design pattern. ...

Database access and mapping

Many web application frameworks create a unified API to a database backend, enabling web applications to work with a variety of databases with no code changes, and allowing programmers to work with higher-level concepts. For higher performance, database connections should be pooled as e.g. AOLserver does. Additionally, some object-oriented frameworks contain mapping tools to provide Object-Relational Mapping, which will map objects to tuples. API may refer to: In computing, application programming interface In petroleum industry, American Petroleum Institute In education, Academic Performance Index This page concerning a three-letter acronym or abbreviation is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages that might otherwise share the same title. ... AOLserver is America Onlines open source web server. ... Object-oriented programming (OOP) is a programming paradigm that uses objects and their interactions to design applications and computer programs. ... Object-Relational mapping (aka O/RM, ORM, and O/R mapping) is a programming technique for converting data between incompatible type systems in databases and object-oriented programming languages. ... Object-oriented programming (OOP) is a programming paradigm that uses objects and their interactions to design applications and computer programs. ... The relational model for database management is a database model based on predicate logic and set theory. ...

Other features web application frameworks may provide include transactional support and database migration tools. A database transaction is a unit of interaction with a database management system or similar system that is treated in a coherent and reliable way independent of other transactions. ... Data migration is the transferring of data between storage types, formats, or computer systems. ...

URL mapping

By automatically rewriting a url with parameters to a friendly URL, the system becomes easier to use, and as an additional benefit, is better indexed by search engines. An example would be the address ending in ?cat=1&pageid=3 to /category/science/topic/physics or just /science/physics. When the id of the category changes the url can stay the same (hence the advantage for search engines). Rewriting URL's can help make an application better conform to some elements of RESTful design practices. // Uniform Resource Locator (URL) formerly known as Universal Resource Locator, is a technical, Web-related term used in two distinct meanings: In popular usage and many technical documents, it is a synonym for Uniform Resource Identifier (URI); Strictly, the idea of a uniform syntax for global identifiers of network-retrievable... Representational state transfer (REST) is a style of software architecture for distributed hypermedia systems such as the World Wide Web. ...

Web template system

Main article: Web template system

Dynamic web pages usually consist of a static part (HTML) and a dynamic part, which is code that generates HTML. The code that generates the HTML can do this based on variables in a template, or on code. The text to be generated can come from a database, thereby making it possible to dramatically reduce the number of pages in a site. Stub, for web template + template engine + standards (of plugs and languages) The basic process on the system: content (from database), and presentation specifications (from web template), producing (through the template engine) web pages. ...

Consider the example of a real estate agent with 500 houses for sale. In a static web site, the agent would have to create 500 pages in order to make the information available. In a dynamic website, the agent would simply connect the dynamic page to a database table of 500 records.

In a template, variables from the programming language can be inserted without using code, thereby losing the requirement of programming knowledge to make updates to the pages in a web site. A syntax is made available to distinguish between HTML and variables. E.g. in JSP the <c:out> tag is used to output variables, and in Smarty, {$variable} is used. A web template is an element of a web template system that is used to rapidly generate and mass-produce web pages through a pre-defined schematic, layout, or finite number of programming language instructions. ...

Many template engines do support limited logic tags, like IF and FOREACH. These are to be used only for decisions that need to be made for the presentation layer, in order to keep a clean separation from the business logic layer, or the M(odel) in the MVC pattern.

Caching

Main article: Web cache

Web caching is the caching of web documents in order to reduce bandwidth usage, server load, and perceived "lag". A web cache stores copies of documents passing through it; subsequent requests may be satisfied from the cache if certain conditions are met. Some application frameworks provide mechanisms for caching documents and bypassing the web template system. Web caching is the caching of web documents (e. ... This article is about the computer term. ... The World Wide Web and WWW redirect here. ... Electronic document means any computer data (other than programs or system files) that are intended to be used in their computerized form, without being printed (although printing is usually possible). ... Bandwidth is the difference between the upper and lower cutoff frequencies of, for example, a filter, a communication channel, or a signal spectrum, and is typically measured in hertz. ... The inside/front of a Dell PowerEdge web server The term Web server can mean one of two things: A computer program that is responsible for accepting HTTP requests from clients, which are known as Web browsers, and serving them HTTP responses along with optional data contents, which usually are... For other uses, see Lag (disambiguation). ...

Ajax

Main article: Ajax framework

Ajax, shorthand for "Asynchronous JavaScript and XML", is a web development technique for creating interactive web applications. The intent is to make web pages feel more responsive by exchanging small amounts of data with the server behind the scenes, so that the entire web page does not have to be reloaded each time the user requests a change. This is intended to increase the web page's interactivity, speed, and usability. // An Ajax framework is a framework that helps to develop web applications that use Ajax, a collection of technologies used to build dynamic web pages on the client side. ... AJAX redirects here. ... Asynchrony is the state of not being synchronized. ... JavaScript is a scripting language most often used for client-side web development. ... The Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a general-purpose markup language. ... Web development is a broad term for any activities related to developing a web site for the World Wide Web or an intranet. ... In software engineering, a web application is an application delivered to users from a web server over a network such as the World Wide Web or an intranet. ... Usability is a term used to denote the ease with which people can employ a particular tool or other human-made object in order to achieve a particular goal. ...

Due to complexity of Ajax programming, there are numerous Ajax frameworks that exclusively deal with Ajax support. Some Ajax frameworks are even embedded as a part of larger frameworks. For example, the Prototype JavaScript Framework is included in Ruby on Rails. // An Ajax framework is a framework that helps to develop web applications that use Ajax, a collection of technologies used to build dynamic web pages on the client side. ... The Prototype JavaScript Framework is a JavaScript framework created by Sam Stephenson that provides an Ajax framework and other utilities. ... Ruby on Rails is a free web application framework designed to make web development faster, simpler and more efficient. ...

Automatic configuration

Some frameworks minimize web application configuration through the use of introspection and/or following known conventions. For example, many Java frameworks use Hibernate as a persistence layer, which can generate a database schema at runtime capable of persisting the necessary information. This allows the application designer to design business objects without needing to explicitly define a database schema. Frameworks such as Ruby on Rails can also work in reverse, that is, define properties of model objects at runtime based on a database schema. In computing, type introspection is a capability of some object-oriented programming languages to determine the type of an object at runtime. ... This article refers to the process of hibernation in biology. ... Ruby on Rails is a free web application framework designed to make web development faster, simpler and more efficient. ...

Web services

Main article: Web services

Some frameworks provide tools for creating and providing web services. These utilities may offer similar tools as the rest of the web application. A web service is a collection of protocols and standards used for exchanging data between applications. ... A web service is a collection of protocols and standards used for exchanging data between applications. ...

Technologies

See also: List of web application frameworks

This is a list of notable web application frameworks, used for creating web applications. ...

Languages

Many languages have an associated web application framework. However, certain languages either have a critical mass of developers to give a higher level of support to frameworks, or provide features that prove conducive to the development of web application frameworks

Java

There are numerous Java frameworks either in development or in use. Many of these frameworks are built on top of, or borrow elements from the Java EE platform or Eclipse etc. Java Platform, Enterprise Edition or Java EE is a widely used platform for server programming in the Java programming language. ...

C# and VB.NET

C# and VB.NET are the most popular languages on the language-neutral Microsoft's ASP.NET platform. One of the most popular web application frameworks early on was the DotNetNuke web application framework. Since ASP.NET itself is a technology designed for building web applications, it is often wrongly referred to as only a web application framework. This is a reduced view of ASP.NET; besides all of the essential web application framework features, you can choose your favourite language of .NET Languages. ASP.NET also has an integrated AJAX framework, ASP.NET AJAX. Microsoft Corporation, (NASDAQ: MSFT, HKSE: 4338) is a multinational computer technology corporation with global annual revenue of US$44. ... ASP.NET logo ASP.NET is a web application framework marketed by Microsoft that programmers can use to build dynamic web sites, web applications and XML web services. ... DotNetNuke is an open source [5] web application framework [6] written in VB.NET for the ASP.NET framework. ... ASP.NET logo ASP.NET is a web application framework marketed by Microsoft that programmers can use to build dynamic web sites, web applications and XML web services. ... // CLI Languages are computer programming languages that are used to produce libraries and programs that conform to the Common Language Infrastructure specifications. ... ASP.NET AJAX, formerly code-named Atlas, is a set of extensions to ASP.NET developed by Microsoft for implementing Ajax functionality. ...

PHP

PHP's original design for dynamic web pages has given support to projects such as CakePHP, PRADO, ThinkPHP,Qcodo, symfony, Zoop Framework, the eZ publish web publishing framework and the Zend Framework. These frameworks assist application structure and modeling by providing a framework layer on top of the core language. These attack the programming problem from the "bottom-up."^[3] CakePHP is an open source web application framework written in PHP, modeled after the concepts of Ruby on Rails, and distributed under the MIT License. ... Prado may refer to: Land Cruiser Prado, a 4WD vehicle from Toyota Museo del Prado, an art gallery in Madrid Prado, Spain, a village in Castile-Leon the prado dam Prado River Miguelanxo Prado, a spanish comic book artist Ed Prado, a U.S. appeals court judge PRADO, a PHP... The QCodo Development Framework is an open-source PHP 5 framework which builds an Object Relational Model (ORM), CRUD (Create, Retrieve, Update, Delete) UI pages, and AJAX hooks from an existing data model. ... Symfony is a web application framework written in PHP which follows the model-view-controller (MVC) paradigm. ... Zoop Framework stands for Zoop Object Oriented PHP Framework. ... eZ publish is a popular enterprise open source content management system (CMS) and development framework. ... Zend Framework is an open source, object-oriented web application framework implemented in PHP 5 and licensed under the New BSD License. ...

In contrast with the mentioned frameworks, software projects like Drupal, Joomla, MODx, or TYPO3 have begun to morph from web content management systems to a higher layer web application framework. Their structure generally provides a minimal core whose function is extended through modules that provide functions generally associated with web application frameworks. SilverStripe began life as both a framework and CMS rather than starting with one and going to the other. As open source projects, their communities contribute many modules (for example, Drupal has over 2,000 such modules and Typo3 more than 2,500). Use of these CMS's core+modules constitutes a method for assembling a website with a broad range of application features without actually doing any PHP-level coding. Drupal (pronounced ) is a free and open source modular framework and content management system (CMS) written in the programming language PHP. Drupal, like many modern CMSs, allows the system administrator to create and organize content, customize the presentation, automate administrative tasks, and manage site visitors and contributors. ... Joomla is the new name of Mambo since the development team and the copyright holder of the Mambo name have parted ways on August 17th, 2005. ... MODx is an adaptable Web Content Management System plus a robust Content Management Framework. ... Not to be confused with Typo, which is an open source blogging engine. ... SilverStripe is a free software / open source content management system (CMS) for creating and managing websites through a simple web interface. ... Open source refers to projects that are open to the public and which draw on other projects that are freely available to the general public. ... Drupal (pronounced ) is a free and open source modular framework and content management system (CMS) written in the programming language PHP. Drupal, like many modern CMSs, allows the system administrator to create and organize content, customize the presentation, automate administrative tasks, and manage site visitors and contributors. ...

Perl, Python and Ruby

There are numerous dynamic language frameworks.

Perl has Catalyst, Maypole, Gantry and Jifty. Catalyst is an open source Web application framework written in Perl, that closely follows the Model-view-controller (MVC) architecture, and supports a number of experimental web patterns. ... Maypole is a Perl framework for MVC-oriented web applications, similar to Jakartas Struts. ...

Python has for example Django, TurboGears, pylons, Zope, Quixote, Karrigell and web2py. A near complete list can be found here. Django is an open source web application framework, written in Python, which loosely follows the model-view-controller design pattern. ... TurboGears is a Python web megaframework created by bringing together a number of mature components such as MochiKit, SQLObject, CherryPy and Kid, along with some TurboGears specific code to make everything work together easily. ... Pylons is an open source web application framework written in Python. ... Zope management interface in a web browser window. ... Quixote is a framework for developing web applications in Python. ... Karrigell is a web framework written in Python and published under the Open Source BSD licence. ...

Ruby has Ruby on Rails, Nitro, and Merb. Ruby on Rails is a free web application framework designed to make web development faster, simpler and more efficient. ... Nitro is a Ruby based web application framework. ... Merb is a Model View Controller web framework written in Ruby. ...

TCL

OpenACS is an open source web application framework designed for developing high traffic web applications in Tcl. The OpenACS logo The Open Architecture Community System (OpenACS) is an advanced open-source toolkit for developing community web applications licensed under the terms of the GNU GPL. The Open Architecture Community System provides: A large set of applications, that can be used to deploy web sites that are strong... Tcl (originally from Tool Command Language, but nonetheless conventionally rendered as Tcl rather than TCL; and pronounced tickle) is a scripting language created by John Ousterhout. ...

Smalltalk

Seaside is an open source web application framework for developing web applications in Smalltalk. Although the main development of Seaside happens in Squeak there exist ports for other Smalltalk dialects. Seaside is a development framework for web applications, written in Smalltalk. ... For other uses, see Small talk. ... Screenshot of the Squeak VM running under X11 on Kubuntu Linux. ...

JavaScript

Helma is an open source web application framework / publishing system written in Java which uses Javascript as programming language. Helma Object Publisher is an open source software package that provides JavaScript based server-side scipting language. ... Java language redirects here. ... JavaScript is a scripting language most often used for client-side web development. ...

Operating Systems

With very few exceptions, web application frameworks are based upon platform independent languages that run on a variety of platforms. While some frameworks may recommend particular configurations, most can run on Windows, Linux, Mac and other Unix-based platforms. A notable exception is DotNetNuke, written for the .NET Framework, which does not support the Mono runtime. Windows redirects here. ... This article is about operating systems that use the Linux kernel. ... Mac OS X (pronounced ) is a line of graphical operating systems developed, marketed, and sold by Apple Inc. ... Filiation of Unix and Unix-like systems Unix (officially trademarked as UNIX®, sometimes also written as or ® with small caps) is a computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie and Douglas McIlroy. ... DotNetNuke is an open source [5] web application framework [6] written in VB.NET for the ASP.NET framework. ... Microsoft . ... Mono is a project led by Novell (formerly by Ximian) to create an Ecma standard compliant . ...

References

1. ^ CGI: Common Gateway Interface. Retrieved on 2007-07-29.
2. ^ Thomson, Kris (2003-10-29). Clarification on MVC Pull and MVC Push. Retrieved on 2007-07-29.
3. ^ Interview with SilverStripe co-founder at Googleplex

• Tony Shan and Winnie Hua (2006). Taxonomy of Java Web Application Frameworks. Proceedings of the 2006 IEEE International Conference on e-Business Engineering (ICEBE 2006), October 2006, p378-385.

Year 2007 (MMVII) was a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar in the 21st century. ... is the 210th day of the year (211th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2003 (MMIII) was a common year starting on Wednesday of the Gregorian calendar. ... is the 302nd day of the year (303rd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2007 (MMVII) was a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar in the 21st century. ... is the 210th day of the year (211th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ...

See also

• Application framework
• Application security
• Comparison of web application frameworks
• Don't repeat yourself (DRY)
• List of web application frameworks
• List of Web service Frameworks
• Rich Internet Application
• Software framework
• Solution stack
• JavaScript library