What this book covers

Chapter 1, Creating a Project in Vaadin, shows how to create projects that support three languages—Java, Groovy, and Scala.

Chapter 2, Layouts, is about the practical concepts of layouts in the Vaadin framework. It describes controlling components using the CSS layout, aligning components on the page, creating bookmark-able applications, dragging and dropping between different layouts, and building any layout with AbsoluteLayout.

Chapter 3, UI Components, describes how to use server-side components such as ListSelect, Slider, the very useful Table component, and more. We will learn how to visualize data using the Flot chart and Highcharts libraries. We will also describe how to drag-and-drop components.

Chapter 4, Custom Widgets, describes how to create client-side widgets. We will show you how to extend text field widgets from the GWT library. We will learn how to use listeners on the GWT widgets, how to share state between widgets and components, and how to call native JavaScript.

Chapter 5, Events, describes using the events and listeners on the Vaadin components. We will learn how to react on the mouse click and the double click. It also describes using actions that can be grouped in the context menu. We will also learn how to use two different ways to handle server-push events.

Chapter 6, Messages, helps you with the implementation of validation errors, tool tips, component inside a pop-up view, confirmation window, or how to work with progress bars.

Chapter 7, Working with Forms, describes the creation of various forms with different fields. We will learn how to generate fields from a Java bean, how to validate the user's input, and how to filter items using the ComboBox component.

Chapter 8, Spring and Grails Integration, helps you with the integration of Spring into a Vaadin application. It also shows how to build Vaadin applications inside the Grails project.

Chapter 9, Data Management, helps us to understand the concept of the Vaadin Data Model that consists of three levels: Property, Item, and Container. It also describes filtering data in the table—using a new function called Converters—and storing data in the cookies.

Chapter 10, Architecture and Performance, describes ways and benefits coming from building Vaadin application with the Model View Presenter design pattern. We will see how to improve the performance of Vaadin applications and how to make Vaadin applications visible for search engines.

Chapter 11, Facilitating Development, shows you how to build Vaadin applications with a test-driven approach and how to create tests with TestBench. It also shows tips for tackling widgetset complications in Maven, how to auto-reload changes in code, and how to block uncatchable exceptions in the production mode.

Chapter 12, Fun, describes three fun-oriented recipes. In this chapter, we will put to use everything we have learned in the previous recipes. We will also learn how to use the PlayingCards add-on and also learn to alert the user before closing the web page.