Panda Framework

Outline

Panda Framework is an elegant, extensible framework for creating enterprise-ready Java Web applications. The framework is designed to streamline the full development cycle, from designing to building, to deploying, to maintaining applications over time. Comparing to popular Java application frameworks such as Spring/Struts2/Hibernate, Panda Framework is small and complete, easy to use, and easy to develop. The learning cost, development efficiency and maintainability are similar to Ruby on rails or Django.

Features

1. Automatic generation of the source code
   The Panda Framework Code Generator can automatically generate the source of Action / Dao / Bean / View. The cost of development can be significantly reduced.

2. Fluent DAO API
   Use the Fluent DAO API provided by Panda Framework, you can easily execute query / insert/ update / delete function based on a database table. Writing SQL is not needed。

3. Business Logic Development is Easy
   Using template class to develop Search/List/View/Add/Update/Delete function is very easy and fast.

4. Improve productivity and source quality
   Base on the generated source, the source quality and program productivity can be significantly improved.

5. Many extended modules
   • HTML Page ⇒ PDF Convert Feature
   • Media (Image) module
   • Post (Article) module
6. Easy to use
   We provide a rich set of documents and samples to reduce initial cost from introduction to development.

Panda Framework Applying Effect

By applying Panda Framework, effective development and operation maintenance can be achieved.

System Architecture

Modules

Panda Framework consists of the following modules.

Module	Description
panda-core	This is the most basic part of the Panda framework and it contains many useful classes similar to apache-commons.
panda-gear	IOC/MVC module. Similar to Spring-MVC, Struts2, contains some commonly used taglib.
panda-gems	Extension module for Web-APP. Contains basic template classes that implement CRUD, user authentication, and some other useful classes.
panda-glue	ASM/AOP module.
panda-html	Contains jQuery, Bootstrap, and the css/javascript required by panda-gear’s taglib.
panda-cgen	CRUD source code generator for Panda MVC Framework. Can generate Entity/Query/Dao/Action class, Freemarker (HTML) template file.
panda-tube	Web Service API client (WordPress XMP-RPC, Google Vision API).

Code Generator

About the code generator

By using the Code Generator of Panda Framework, programmers do not need to write source code & SQL statements. Just define the database table structure and the user interface layout, and let Code Generator automatically generate source code to achieve the data search / list(sort, paging) & record view / insert / update / delete functions based on a database table. Greatly reduce the amount of manually coded source, improve the quality of source code and reduce the development costs.

The effect of code generator

Generated features by code generator

Code generator can generate the following features. And it is easy to customize.

No.	Feature	Description
1	Search	Search/Query form.
2	List View	Search result list view.
3	List Print View	Search result list view for print.
4	Data Detail View	Data detail view page.
5	Data Detail Print View	Data detail view page for print.
6	Data Add	Data add feature.
7	Data Copy	Data duplicate feature.
8	Data Edit	Data edit feature.
9	Data Delete	Data delete feature.
10	Data Export	Export data to CSV/XLS file.
11	Data Import	Import data from CSV/XLS file.
12	Bulk Data Process	Process multiple data.

Generated web page transition diagram

Screenshot of generated source

List/Search Page

Detail View Page

Data Add Page

Data Add Confirm Page

Data Add Complete Page

Edit Page

Edit Confirm Page

Edit Complete Page

Delete Confirm Page

Delete Complete Page

Bulk Delete Confirm Page

Bulk Delete Complete Page

Some thoughts

Perhaps the biggest highlight of Panda Framework is the panda-tool source code generator.

Many programmers who do web application development will find that many pages function is nothing more than “list / create / update / delete” these four patterns. A lot of code is written repeatedly, annoying and tired. So I just want to develop a source code generator to generate the code I need through an XML definition file.

The first version source code generator developed several years ago can generate source based on Struts2/iBatis2. But there are many features can not be implement easily by that Struts2/iBatis2. At that time, I meet the Nutz framework developed by Wenda. A small compact framework that can implement the features of Spring / Hibernate. I am sorry for borrowed some of Nutz’s API design, modified it and wrote my own implementation.

Having persisted in writing for several years, I finally completed a framework that I was satisfied with. It can implement some very common features of Spring/Struts2/Hibernate. The source code generator can generate the source code (including HTML pages and server side logic) implements the CRUD features.

I made a DEMO website. Through this DEMO, you may understand the Panda Framework more intuitively.

I would be very grateful for that if you think the Panda Framework is easy to use and can help your work well. Leave a suggestion or write a bug report, welcome to Folk.