A Look At The Synergy Between Liferay And Vaadin

Both these frameworks, Liferay and Vaadin are popular ones in their own respects and have been tried and tested over these years. There are certain similar areas and certain contrasting ones too. But, it is certain that an amalgamation of these two is sure to weave wonders and create magic. But how? Let us have a look.

Liferay Overview

Liferay is an open-source, Java enterprise portal solution and web application platform, which executes on a Java EE server – Tomcat, JBoss, etc. It facilitates the development of robust websites and portals. It supports plugins in various languages like PHP and Ruby portlets. It executes on any platform having JRE and an app server.

Vaadin Overview

Vaadin is another open-source Java framework, which is known for developing modern and dynamic web applications. It is majorly focussed on Rich Internet Applications and uses the AJAX technology at the browser side. Even GWT is used to construct the setup.

How Do Liferay And Vaadin Synergize With Each Other?

A few commons, a few diversions but yet a healthy synergy budding between the two – that is what is observed for Liferay and Vaadin.

Both these frameworks possess certain qualities which are similar in nature, as below:

• Open-source
• Multi-user
• Java-based programming
• Multilingual content
• Adobe Flash support
• Unicode
• Standard compliance
• Revision Control
• Multi-browser support

Here are some of the uncommon factors between the two:

• Operating System (Cross-platform for Liferay, JVM compatible for Vaadin)
• Framework (web2py Spring for Liferay, MVC for Vaadin)
• Scripting language support (Scala, PHP, Ruby, JavaScript for Liferay, JavaScript for Vaadin)
• Backend (Java for Liferay, Any for Vaadin)

These are some of the few similar and dissimilar features, both of these stalwarts have. But, keeping in mind these factors, both of them have a lot of synergy between them.

They are considered to be the best possible combination for a wonderful frontend experience. Vaadin has been implanted in Liferay releases starting with Liferay 6.0, but of course, the Vaadin releases are not the latest, since both of them don’t share the same release cycles. There are apt approaches to package Vaadin apps for Liferay, hence, having completely independent versions of Vaadin.

Writing Vaadin apps is interesting based on the infrastructure created. Actually these Vaadin apps are data-driven and have to integrate with Liferay’s system, leading to a communication between Vaadin and Liferay.

Liferay has a component ‘Liferay IPC addon’ which is easily configurable in Vaadin 7. There is no need to add it separately as a layout.

These ways, there are many points of integration where Liferay and Vaadin interact amicably and yet, possess their own independent style of working. It surely proves to be an ideal situation and hence, both these frameworks are successfully synergetic.