Status of Spring Surf?

[arnoldschrijve1]

A bit more than a week ago I posted the following message to the Spring Surf forum on SpringSource.org: http://forum.springsource.org/showthread.php?113550-Spring-Surf-project-still-active but without getting any answer.

Given the heavy use of Surf by Alfresco Share I am curious on Alfresco's feedback on the status of this project, whether or not it is still active, and if not, what the impact is on future direction.

[kevinr]

Hi,

SpringSurf and the various core libraries it entails are still the web and REST framework that underpins the core of Alfresco Share, Alfresco WCMQS and other Alfresco apps. It is not going away regardless of the state of the Spring extensions. The discussion currently is around what is the future direction for the Spring Extension i.e. the uptake and interest of WebScripts and SpringSurf as separate Spring hosted libraries is low and there is discussion around the value of it being a separate externally hosted library. As far as actually using it internally - WebScripts is the REST API framework of choice for Alfresco, Surf and YUI are component page composition framework and JavaScript framework of choice for Alfresco applications. The customisation and extension features of Share 4.0 are all built on WebScripts and Surf.

Cheers,

Kev

[arnoldschrijve1]

Thank you for this information!

[paolatco]

Hello to everyone.
Currently my team and I are working with Alfresco 4.0d and I was trying to configure development enviroment in order to understand Web Quick Start and how to extend Share.

However, when in eclipse i tryed to install Spring Surf Developer Tools ( http://www.springsurf.org/sites/1.0.0/spring-surf-devtools/spring-surf-eclipse-extensions/installati...) I got the error:

Cannot complete the install because one or more required items could not be found.
Software being installed: Spring Surf Developer Tools 1.0.0.CI-SNAPSHOT (org.springframework.extensions.surf.feature.feature.group 1.0.0.CI-SNAPSHOT)
Missing requirement: Spring Surf Developer Tools 1.0.0.CI-SNAPSHOT (org.springframework.extensions.surf.feature.feature.group 1.0.0.CI-SNAPSHOT) requires 'org.springframework.batch.core 2.1.0' but it could not be found

Just like this post http://forums.alfresco.com/en/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=42605

We tryed to use Roo to install suf enviroment (http://www.springsurf.org/sites/1.0.0.M3/spring-surf-devtools/spring-surf-roo-addon/reference/html/i...), however Roo don't work like this tutorial since its 1.0.2 version.

Can somebody help me or give me a hint about how or to make a site like web quick start, even if it's not with Spring Surf (according with this post is not trustable anymore). I'm reaching desperation  :!:, a tutorial, sample code, anything?

Thank you very much.

[ddraper]

Spring Surf is still being extensively developed for use in Alfresco however we have not been pushing any updates externally to the SpringSource website due to a lack of interest in using it outside of Alfresco (however regular commits are being made to the source and updated libraries are being regularly being committed to Alfresco source projects). The documentation on the Spring website is very much out of date the development tools (both Eclipse and Roo plugins) do not work and are not being developed further.

There is currently work being done to create new Surf documentation although this is not available yet. There is lots of information on Surf on various Alfresco engineers blogs:
http://blogs.alfresco.com/wp/ddraper
http://blogs.alfresco.com/wp/dwebster
http://blogs.alfresco.com/wp/ewinlof
http://blogs.alfresco.com/wp/kevinr

It should not be necessary to need Eclipse plugins or Roo to develop Surf applications because it mostly comprises working with small and relatively simple XML files.

Regards,
Dave

[skuro]

Say I'm developing an extension to Spring Surf Webscript, and I would like to get some more in depth information at code level. Is there any way other that trying to directly bother the people you listed to get such knowledge? Any community something to refer to?

[ddraper]

Of the people on that list then really the only two with in-depth knowledge of the Spring Surf source code are myself and Kevin Roast. The absence of a community around Spring Surf is why we're not pushing regular releases out to the Spring website and are just focusing on internal development. If you haven't already then the best way to get a deep understanding of the code is to checkout the source code from https://anonsvn.springframework.org/svn/se-surf/trunk and review it. Kev and I have made considerable effort to ensure all the classes are well commented and JavaDoc'd so hopefully they should be fairly readable. We're quite happy to try and answer your questions on this forum though.

Regards,
Dave