We’re halfway through the Amsterdam community meetup. It is really a great event!

You can see a partial live blog on the ##wicket channel on freenode.net, or see some nice pictures on flickr.

As you know, both Eelco and I are really trying hard to get the book done. I know a lot of you already have ordered the MEAP version (early access) and we are really grateful that you have shown such an interest in our book. We are also surprised with the positive comments and feedback we received so far: they are really encouraging us to keep going.

Just as much as we like to hear that you like our book, we also appreciate feedback on parts that can be better, are unclear or just not interesting. We also appreciate the bugs, language errors or other mistakes you have uncovered in our manuscript. Any feedback sent now can still be taken into account before we go chop trees.

When you find something that can be improved, let us know! The best way to provide feedback is to post a message to Manning’s Author Online forum. Both Eelco and I are subscribed to the forum. However, if you feel you want to provide more personal feedback, don’t hesitate to email us privately.

So please take some time to think about what you like most, don’t like and what part of the book doesn’t ‘stick’, and post a message to the Wicket in Action forum. It will help us write the book you always wanted but were afraid to ask.

Thanks again for your support and help!

The Dutch Wicket community is trying to bootstrap a Wicket user group and organize a community meetup, similar to those held in London and Copenhagen. We expected a dozen, perhaps the odd 20 people attending, however reality often got the best of us (currently 57 and counting).

November 30th, 2007 we will meet in Amsterdam in the Felix Meritis building starting with setup at noon and going full swing from 3pm until we are done or the host throws us out.

You can register at our community meetups page, just add your name to the list.

This is the first release candidate for Apache Wicket we have prepared for your pleasure. It contains over 80 fixes to issues with previous releases and todo items we have cleared.

In this announcement:

• Apache Wicket
• This release
• Migrating from 1.2
• Downloading the release
• Validating the release
• Reporting bugs
• The distribution
• Release Notes – Wicket – Version 1.3.0-rc1

Eager people click here to download the distribution, others can read further:

http://www.apache.org/dyn/closer.cgi/wicket/1.3.0-rc1

We thank you for your patience and support.

The Wicket Team

Apache Wicket

Apache Wicket is a component oriented Java web application framework. With proper mark-up/logic separation, a POJO data model, and a refreshing lack of XML, Apache Wicket makes developing web-apps simple and enjoyable again. Swap the boilerplate, complex debugging and brittle code for powerful, reusable components written with plain Java and HTML.

Our migration to a top level project is now completed and you can find our website and documentation here:

http://wicket.apache.org

This release

This release is the first in a series of release candidates releases until we feel confident to finalize Wicket 1.3. This is called a release candidate because we strive for API freeze. This means only bug fixes will be done on the 1.3 release from now on.

Migrating from 1.2

If you are coming from Wicket 1.2, you really want to read our migration guide, found on the wiki:

http://cwiki.apache.org/WICKET/migrate-13.html

Downloading the release

You can download the release from the official Apache mirror system, and you can find it through the following link:

http://www.apache.org/dyn/closer.cgi/wicket/1.3.0-rc1/

For the Maven and Ivy fans out there: update your pom’s to the following, and everything will be downloaded automatically:

<dependency>
    <groupId>org.apache.wicket</groupId>
    <artifactId>wicket</artifactId>
    <version>1.3.0-rc1</version>
</dependency>

Substitute the artifact ID with the projects of your liking to get the other projects.

Please note that we don’t prescribe a Logging implementation for SLF4J. You need to specify yourself which one you prefer. Read more about SLF4J here: http://slf4j.org

Validating the release

The release has been signed by Frank Bille, your release manager for today. The public key can be found in the KEYS file in the download area. Download the KEYS file only from the Apache website.

http://www.apache.org/dist/wicket/1.3.0-rc1/KEYS

Instructions on how to validate the release can be found here:

http://www.apache.org/dev/release-signing.html#check-integrity

Reporting bugs

In case you do encounter a bug, we would appreciate a report in our JIRA:

http://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/WICKET

The distribution

In the distribution you will find a README. The README contains instructions on how to build from source yourself and a list of all things that have been fixed, added and/or removed since the first beta release.

Release Notes – Wicket – Version 1.3.0-rc1

Sub-task

• WICKET-1022 – Created new bug – ValueMap set to null

Bug

• WICKET-330 – CheckBox incorrectly converts its model value when a custom Boolean converter is installed
• WICKET-336 – Inheritable model cannot be a wrap model
• WICKET-382 – Converter misusage/mangling in RadioChoice
• WICKET-487 – Buggy behaviour in PageMap.access(IPageMapEntry,int). Wicket1.2.4
• WICKET-588 – continueToOriginalDestination / RestartResponseAtInterceptPageException with page parameters broken
• WICKET-605 – Stateless form skips page parameters
• WICKET-607 – Stateless forms don’t work with QueryStringUrlCodingStrategy
• WICKET-642 – Need to escape select html option value
• WICKET-645 – Form with ajaxsubmitbutton won’t submit after error
• WICKET-702 – MockWebApplication doesn’t redirect properly to mounted pages under RestartResponseAtInterceptPageException
• WICKET-734 – Custom ILinkListener component causes error in cell on mounted page
• WICKET-746 – Thread synchronization problems in FilePageStore
• WICKET-855 – ModalWindow makes Internet Explorer 6 show an security warning dialog
• WICKET-901 – DatePicker#getConfigureYUIBasePath() is useless or never called
• WICKET-916 – inconsistent state after setting AjaxDebugModeEnabled to true in an AjaxRequest
• WICKET-920 – ExternalLink produces invalid html
• WICKET-950 – StatelessForm + QueryStringUrlCodingStrategy problem
• WICKET-953 – Session invalidateNow() does not immediate remove the session from disk
• WICKET-958 – Mounts ignored for PageExpiredErrorPage
• WICKET-972 – IndexedParamUrlCodingStrategy seems to have problems handling resources
• WICKET-988 – PropertyResolver map
• WICKET-991 – StringIndexOutOfBoundsException in ServletWebRequest.getRelativePathPrefixToWicketHandler
• WICKET-995 – getMarkupId generates ID which contains special characters which should be escaped or replaced
• WICKET-1011 – wicketShow and wicketHide don’t check for existence of element before setting display
• WICKET-1014 – AjaxEditableChoiceLabel doesn’t work in IE 6
• WICKET-1015 – StringResourceModel does not escape interpolated properties
• WICKET-1028 – WebRequestCycle.getProcessor javadoc doesn’t make sense
• WICKET-1037 – Text not visible in Wicket Ajax Debug window
• WICKET-1039 – parameters for Image never used when using a ResourceReference
• WICKET-1040 – setEnabled() does not work on YUI DateField
• WICKET-1047 – Amersand escaped twice for ResourceLink href
• WICKET-1051 – StyleSheetReference doesn’t take style/locale into account
• WICKET-1061 – Can’t enter data in any input field after closing modal window
• WICKET-1062 – LocalizedImageResource does not serialize locale/style fields
• WICKET-1065 – NullPointer in FileCleaner causes infinite loop
• WICKET-1071 – AjaxFormSubmitBehavior creates invalid HTML
• WICKET-1072 – Stateless pages bind to http session
• WICKET-1074 – Image resource parameters fail to output in src attribute
• WICKET-1075 – LocalizedImageResource: ‘static’ Resource lost after locale/style change
• WICKET-1077 – VisitChildren + IComponentResolver broken in beta 4?
• WICKET-1080 – StringResourceModel.toString() misbehavior
• WICKET-1081 – ClassCastException with MetaDataEntry
• WICKET-1087 – Ajax update on a panel caused markup outside the panel to be missing
• WICKET-1092 – IndexedParamUrlCodingStrategy creates a parameter in PageParameters when there is no parameter in the URL
• WICKET-1095 – invisible TransparentResolver skips markup of visible children and thus resulting in an exception in Page#checkRendering (component not found in markup)
• WICKET-1101 – NullPointerException in HybridUrlCodingStrategy
• WICKET-1107 – XHTML code in AjaxFormSubmitBehavior.getPreconditionScript() is not well formed.
• WICKET-1109 – CLONE -DatePicker: NaN if numerical input cannot be parsed
• WICKET-1112 – wantonselectionchangednotification does not work in embedded forms
• WICKET-1119 – Strings.replaceAll giving StringIndexOutOfBoundsException

Improvement

• WICKET-30 – Nice and more practical url scheme
• WICKET-947 – Add ‘UrlValidator’ key to PL properties
• WICKET-949 – ExternalLink does not support enable/disable like Link
• WICKET-957 – Change default focus component for focus related events to null
• WICKET-963 – add extension point to configure resource cache expiration time
• WICKET-1005 – provide programmatic access to wicket-ajax.js
• WICKET-1045 – mvn archetype:create -DarchetypeGroupId=org.apache.wicket -DarchetypeArtifactId=wicket-archetype-quickstart
• WICKET-1052 – Wicket Javadoc Standardization: org.apache.wicket.util.thread
• WICKET-1053 – Wicket Javadoc Standardization: org.apache.wicket.util.tester
• WICKET-1054 – No way to escape html markup but keep non-7 bit characters in generated output
• WICKET-1057 – Remove final from WebRequestCodingStrategy. urlCodingStrategyForPath
• WICKET-1059 – Remove onAttach
• WICKET-1060 – Allow component to a IComponentSource implementation that can reconstruct the component
• WICKET-1063 – wicket-guice should support Provider injection and TypeLiteral injection
• WICKET-1067 – Correct javadoc for Fragment
• WICKET-1070 – Missing img alt attribute in WicketAjaxIndicatorAppender
• WICKET-1083 – Inform wicket-ajax whether the application is running in a portlet
• WICKET-1084 – Optimize memory usage
• WICKET-1086 – Extending PagingNavigator for stateless pages
• WICKET-1096 – Wicket Javadoc Standardization: org.apache.wicket.util.template, .string.interpolator
• WICKET-1100 – Make portlet support configurable and default disabled
• WICKET-1113 – DownloadLink support for temporary files
• WICKET-1117 – FormComponent.setType is called in AbstractTextComponent.onBeforeRender
• WICKET-1121 – Slight AbstractChoice refactoring
• WICKET-1122 – Allow override of Pragma No-cache settings in WebPage

New Feature

• WICKET-445 – TriStateCheckbox Component for use with CheckGroups
• WICKET-975 – Update ImageButton to handle ResourceReferenc
• WICKET-1106 – WicketTester or TagTester should provide access to the enclosed value of a tag

Task

• WICKET-1078 – format entire codebase with wicket code format settings
• WICKET-1126 – Release Wicket 1.3.0 RC1

Wish

• WICKET-1012 – tracking dirty state (was:make setVisible, setEnable, add, addOrReplace, remove and removeAll non-final)

Manning has just updated the MEAP and released chapters 1 through 6 of Wicket in Action. This time we have new versions of the early chapters with a much improved chapter 1.

Please note that this is preproduction material and the images in the document are not great looking (we do have higher resolution images).

On a side note, chapter 7 should make its way the coming weeks. I delivered it again today to our editor and she’ll make a final judgment soon. But I think she will share my enthusiasm for this chapter.