Introduction to Wicket

Why Wicket?

If you are looking to do web application programming in Java, you have a very large number of choices these days. In fact, there are so many web application frameworks now that it has become somewhat of a joke. One blog site on the Internet poses the question: How many Java web frameworks can you name? The answer they show looks like this:

Frameworks, Frameworks Everywhere

Echo	Cocoon	Millstone	OXF
Struts	SOFIA	Tapestry	WebWork
RIFE	Spring MVC	Canyamo	Maverick
JPublish	JATO	Folium	Jucas
Verge	Niggle	Bishop	Barracuda
Action Framework	Shocks	TeaServlet	wingS
Expresso	Bento	jStatemachine	jZonic
OpenEmcee	Turbine	Scope	Warfare
JWAA	Jaffa	Jacquard	Macaw
Smile	MyFaces	Chiba	JBanana
Jeenius	JWarp	Genie	Melati
Dovetail	Cameleon	JFormular	Xoplon
Japple	Helma	Dinamica	WebOnSwing
Nacho	Cassandra	Baritus	Stripes
Click	GWT

Why “Reinvent the Wheel”?

In light of this, you may be wondering “What good is another web application framework?” Indeed. Why “re-invent the wheel?” One snappy comeback to that old saw is: because this time we could make it rounder!

But it was not simply a desire for higher quality that drove the creation of Wicket. Even with so many options, there really is no web toolkit which fills exactly the niche that Wicket fills. In fact, Wicket is quite unlike each of the frameworks above.

Wicket’s closest cousins are probably Tapestry and Echo, but even there the likeness is very shallow. Like Tapestry, Wicket uses a special HTML attribute to denote components, enabling easy editing with ordinary HTML editors. Like Echo, Wicket has a first-class component model. But Wicket applications are not like applications written in either Tapestry or Echo, because in Wicket you get the best of both worlds. You get the benefits of a first-class component model and a non-intrusive approach to HTML. In many situations, this combination may prove to be a significant development advantage.

To understand why Wicket is so different, it may help to understand the motivations that created it.