Apache Software Foundation Releases Apache Wicket v8.0.0

"Apache Wicket 8's flagship feature, support for Java 8 idioms, started off a few years ago, and allows for a really great development experience where you can achieve the same functionality in a more secure, readable way," said Martijn Dashorst, Vice President of Apache Wicket.

The Apache Software Foundation (ASF), the all-volunteer developers, stewards, and incubators of more than 350 Open Source projects and initiatives, has released Apache Wicket v8.0.0, a component-oriented web framework.

Apache Wicket is a server-side Java web framework used to build complex web applications reaping the benefits of object-oriented programming such as reusability, encapsulation, and easy extensibility. With the tagline of ‘Write less, achieve more,’ the latest major release of Apache Wicket aims to help developers write even more robust, maintainable, and highly performant web applications and websites for governments, stores, universities, cities, banks, email providers, and more.

“Apache Wicket 8’s flagship feature, support for Java 8 idioms, started off a few years ago, and allows for a really great development experience where you can achieve the same functionality in a more secure, readable way,” said Martijn Dashorst, Vice President of Apache Wicket. “I think our users are going to be very happy with the benefits it brings.”

Apache Wicket was initially developed in 2004 and joined The Apache Software Foundation in 2007. The project is one of the few survivors of the “Java server-side Web framework wars” of the mid-2000’s – with a robust history and growing user base over the past decade, Apache Wicket remains a premier choice for Java developers across the world.

Using Apache Wicket, developers are able to build custom components easily, using normal Java idioms for extensibility and encapsulation. Wicket gives developers the ability to create complex user interfaces using just Java and HTML, and keep the applications secure and maintainable. Apache Wicket abstracts the request oriented Web technologies away and provides user interface concepts to the Java developer. So instead of thinking “requests” and “responses”, developers using Wicket think ‘Pages’, ‘Panels’, ‘Buttons’, ‘Links’, ‘Forms’ and ‘ListViews’.

Apache Wicket 8.0.0 comes with new features, bug fixes and improvements that include:

  • Java 8 or newer is required
  • Servlet 3.1 is required
  • Component databinding (IModel) is now a Functional Interface
  • Native JSR 310 Date/Time support
  • Java’s Optional type is used in the right places
  • Removal of many deprecated features from previous versions

The full list of new features and changes is available in the project release notes at https://wicket.apache.org/2018/05/22/wicket-8-released.html.

“Wicket 8 is a long-awaited milestone for the project,” said Andrea del Bene, Apache Wicket committer and Apache Wicket v8.0 Release Manager. “We are proud to provide all the new functionality to Web developers who can leverage Java 8 to remove many lines of code throughout their code bases. The new features are essential for modern Java developers. With Wicket 8, developers can create more maintainable and better performant applications.”

Apache Wicket is used by thousands of organizations that include Ã…land Islands Library, Brazilian Air Force, Emirates Real Estate Investment Trust, German National Library of Science and Technology, India Goa Directorate of Agriculture, Japan National Police Agency, Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Orange Moldova, Pune Smart City, RiskCo, Savings Banks Group Finland, Sweden’s Helge Library, Taiwan High Speed Rail, and Topicus B.V., among others.