Introduction

This is a short guide to get you moving in the Crank direction and get the most out of Crank.

Details

First, thanks for looking into Crank. I think you will be pleasantly surprised.

The idea is to come up to speed with Crank.

Think of a simple object model and then map it to Crank. Make it up. This is a prototype. We plan on throwing it away.

Before you get started (proposed steps) you will want a little background on the Crank project. If you are using the JSF Crud development model, you need to understand JSF, Facelets, Crank and Ajax4JSF.

To get an understanding of JSF read these four articles:

Step 1: Clearing up the JSF FUD

Then to come up to speed on Facelets read this:

Step 2: Facelets:

The last two article are very important because they discuss the design principles that back Crank. (Crank improves on them quite a bit, thanks in large part to Paul Tabor, the king of composition components).

Once you have the above under your belt please read about Crank itself

Step 3 Crank:

Step 4: Manage some objects You can download the sandbox code from svn at https://krank.googlecode.com/svn/trunk

In order to manage objects you need to know a thing or two about JPA. Check out JPA Resources and the best JPA training course

You need maven 2 to build any of our apps.

Base you example on the sandbox

http://krank.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/crank-crud-webapp-sample

Don't worry about the real object model. Simplify it as much as you need to and get familar with the technique.

--Rick Hightower

Comment by chrismathiaster, Aug 28, 2007

Nice work Rick. Thanks for taking the time to put this together!

I think we should get a beginners guide together as as well, that steps back even farther with a step 1, 2, 3 that helps the newbie really get the feel for using crank dao support, and then crank crud (also broken up into some more explicit examples). Also, I don't think you necessarily need to understand jsf or facelets to get the most out of crank dao support.

Or maybe we should just relabel this article 'getting started with crank crud' ;)

Your thoughts?

Comment by RichardHightower, Sep 01, 2007

Good point Chris. Not sure where to start really.

Comment by mathias.bogaert, Sep 06, 2007

Richard, I'm following this for a couple of weeks now, and I'm thinking of migrating my own generic DAO to Crank. The only thing is that I use a totally different (GWT) web front-end, and therefore have no need of all the Controller / Spring / Stuts stuff. It would be very useful to have a document that only describes how to use / integrate Crank DAO. Regards

Comment by RichardHightower, Sep 26, 2007

The closest we have is http://code.google.com/p/krank/wiki/UsingDAO

Comment by pavitar.singh, Oct 01, 2007

Hi Richard, I wanted to develop something of this sort for quite some time.Just today happened to look at Krank.But as there is no point of writing the whole DAO layer again. I would be interested in developing GWT based framework over it which will be using DAO support of Krank. Would like to disuss more with you on how to go ahead on this.I can afford to spend 4 man-months on this effort. Drop me an email at pavitar.singh@gmail.com so that we can discuss more on this.

Comment by koen.handekyn, Nov 12, 2007

Hi Richard Any comments on Crank running on top of JBoss Seam? (http://www.jboss.com/products/seam) Koen Handekyn.

Comment by ganezt, Mar 06, 2008

This is a cool one! I already developed some thing of this sort using Struts! And some times I had to bypass struts to get my work done. I am analyzing this, once everything moves on, we will use crank!! Thank you !!

Comment by sustbird, Apr 24, 2008

Nice work! It would ve very usefull..if you write some direction on how can i use crank in a struts based application. Waiting for your reply......