Author: Sirisha Pratha

Vaadin, an open-source web application development platform for Java developers, released version 24.4 in June 2024. The release aims to improve and simplify the developer experience by unifying the Hilla framework with the Vaadin platform, introducing the Vaadin Copilot, and several enhancements to the design system.

One of the most significant changes in this release is the introduction of Vaadin Copilot, a handy AI-powered development tool. Vaadin Copilot allows users to drag and drop components, reorganize layouts, and edit labels and captions while developing the application. Vaadin Copilot is project-aware and seamlessly integrated with supported IDEs, instantly updating the source code as the changes are made in the Vaadin Copilot. The outline view lets users understand the overall UI structure and quickly navigate to specific components.

One of Vaadin Copilot’s key features is its capability to use generative AI to generate and modify UI components based on prompts. The tool offers users a convenient way to change the theme of individual components and the entire application by adjusting the properties in the Theme Editor without having to edit the underlying CSS. Vaadin Copilot is only available for views built in Hilla/React.

Starting with the 24.4.0 release, Vaadin BOM and Vaadin Spring Boot starter include the Hilla framework, allowing users to build hybrid applications containing Flow and Hilla views. It is now possible to wrap React components as Flow components via an adapter Web Component. This integration allows the React components to be used in Java applications, modify the component’s state, and send events back and forth between client and server-side.

Aligning with the theme of a unified Vaadin platform, it is possible to embed Flow components into Hilla/React views by implementing the WebComponentExporter class. The resulting web component can be imported into a Hilla view. Follow the guide for further code examples and details.

Vaadin Flow defaults to React Router, which is configured via the property reactEnable. This can be set in the Vaadin maven plugin or through Java system properties. When set to true, it includes core React dependencies and other React components. If set to false, Vaadin Router is used, React dependencies are excluded, and Lit dependencies are added. See the full list of properties for details.

Other noteworthy changes include the introduction of the file-based router in Hilla. The Hilla file router is built on top of the React Router. It maps the routes defined in files in the src/main/frontend/views directory and subdirectories. The Hilla File router provides a utility function, createMenuItems, to populate menu items from routes in the React main layout.

This release also brings several improvements to the design components, such as support for read-only and required states in the Checkbox, the collapsing of menu items in the Menu Bar from the left end of the bar, and support for query parameters in the Side Navigation.

See the release notes and blog for the complete list of features in Vaadin 24.4.0. In addition to these resources, the Vaadin team held a live-stream session and a community town hall on the 24.4.0 release.

To learn more about Vaadin, refer to their official docs.

Red Hat released version 8.0 of the JBoss Enterprise Application Platform (EAP), an open-source Jakarta EE-compliant platform. The latest release brings several improvements that include support for Jakarta EE 10, changes to the management console and CLI, and removal of legacy security subsystems.

JBoss EAP 8.0 provides implementations of the Jakarta EE 10 APIs and Jakarta EE 10 Web Profile, Core Profile, and the Full Platform standards. See the complete list of specifications in the release notes. The previous version, JBoss EAP 7.4, supported Jakarta EE 8. However, Jakarta EE 10 has undergone several changes, the most significant being the modification of the package namespace for Jakarta EE APIs from javax to jakarta. To facilitate the migration to JBoss EAP 8.0, Red Hat has updated the Migration Tool Kit for Application (MTA) to accommodate these namespace changes, among others. The Galleon Provisioning Layer, ee-core-profile-server, provisions a server with the Jakarta EE 10 Core Profile.

JBoss EAP 8.0 introduced the JBoss EAP Maven plug-in to provision a trimmed server using Galleon and to install the application on the server. Under the hood, the plug-in uses wildfly-ee-galleon-pack and eap-cloud-galleon-pack to customize the server configuration file. The plug-in also supports the execution of CLI script files for further server customization and the installation of extra files, such as keystore files, on the server. The Maven pom.xml file is responsible for maintaining all the necessary configuration settings for the build process.

The legacy security subsystems, PicketBox and PicketLink, were removed in this edition of JBoss EAP. To use custom login modules with the elytron subsystem, use the security realm jaas-realm, Java Authentication and Authorization Service (JAAS). Red Hat recommends using the Elytron subsystem’s existing security realms, such as jdbc-realm, ldap-realm, and key-store-realm, over jaas-realm. Refer to the release notes for use cases of jaas-realm. By configuring the aggregate-realm, distributed-realm, or failover-realm, it is possible to combine different security realms. Another noteworthy enhancement is the introduction of elytron-oidc-client that provides native support to OpenID Connect (OIDC). Read more about securing applications deployed on JBoss EAP with OIDC.

Other significant enhancements are the introduction of jboss-eap-installation-manager to update and install JBoss EAP 8.0 and its integration with the Management CLI under the installer command to perform several server management operations in standalone or managed domain mode. Furthermore, JBoss EAP 8.0 requires JDK 11 or JDK 17, as support for JDK 8 was removed. See the complete list of unsupported, deprecated, and removed features.

Check out the product documentation to learn more about the Red Hat JBoss Enterprise Application Platform 8.0.