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Craig Walls

Author of 'Spring in Action' and 'Building Talking Apps'

Craig Walls is a Principal Engineer, Java Champion, Alexa Champion, and the author of Spring AI in Action, Spring in Action, and Build Talking Apps. He's a zealous promoter of the Spring Framework, speaking frequently at local user groups and conferences and writing about Spring. When he's not slinging code, Craig is planning his next trip to Disney World or Disneyland and spending as much time as he can with his wife, two daughters, 1 bird and 2 dogs.

Presentations

Effective Spring Workshop

9:00 AM MDT

After over 10 years and several significant releases, Spring has gone a long way from challenging the then-current Java standards to becoming the de facto enterprise standard itself. Although the Spring programming model continues to evolve, it still maintains backward compatibility with many of its earlier features and paradigms. Consequently, there's often more than one way to do anything in Spring. How do you know which way is the right way?

In this 2-part workshop, you'll get a hands-on feel for the current best approaches in Spring development. We'll see how to take advantage of some of the latest tricks Spring has to offer to build an application with minimal boilerplate and none of the cruft that is often carried around in Spring applications.

Effective Spring Workshop

11:00 AM MDT

After over 10 years and several significant releases, Spring has gone a long way from challenging the then-current Java standards to becoming the de facto enterprise standard itself. Although the Spring programming model continues to evolve, it still maintains backward compatibility with many of its earlier features and paradigms. Consequently, there's often more than one way to do anything in Spring. How do you know which way is the right way?

In this 2-part workshop, you'll get a hands-on feel for the current best approaches in Spring development. We'll see how to take advantage of some of the latest tricks Spring has to offer to build an application with minimal boilerplate and none of the cruft that is often carried around in Spring applications.

Spring Rebooted

1:30 PM MDT

In this session, we'll see how to build real Spring applications using Spring Boot. We'll also look under the covers to see what makes Spring Boot tick.

Spring offers a number of configuration options: XML configuration, Java configuration, and Groovy configuration to name a few. To some degree, component-scanning and autowiring help eliminate some explicit configuration. But in general most Spring applications require some essential “bootstrap” configuration to enable key functionality. What's the right way to build Spring applications when there are so many choices?

What if I told you that configuration was optional?

Spring Boot is an exciting new programming model for Spring that makes it extremely easy to create stand-alone, production-ready Spring applications. Rather than writing lots of code to satisfy the needs of a framework, Spring Boot helps you focus your coding efforts on your application. Spring Boot takes an opinionated approach to configuring Spring, making it possible to create Spring applications with little or, in some cases, no Spring configuration at all!

Spring Data Workshop

9:00 AM MDT

In recent years, there has been a renewed interest in how data is stored. Although RDBMS has long been treated as a one-size-fits-all solution for data storage, a new breed of datastores has arrived to offer a best-fit solution. Key-value stores, column stores, document stores, graph databases, as well as the traditional relational database are options to consider.

With these new data storage options come new and different ways of interacting with data. Even though all of these data storage options offer Java APIs, they are widely different from each other and the learning curve can be quite steep. Even if you understand the concepts and benefits of each database type, there's still the huge barrier of understanding how to work with each database's individual API.

Spring Data is a project that makes it easier to build Spring-powered applications that use new data, offering a reasonably consistent programming model regardless of which type of database you choose. In addition to supporting the new “NoSQL” databases such as document and graph databases, Spring Data also greatly simplifies working with RDBMS-oriented datastores using JPA.

In this 2-part workshop, we'll dig in with a hands-on exploration of a variety of data stores, including Redis, MongoDB, Neo4j, and traditional RDBMS. In doing so, you'll experience first-hand how Spring Data simplifies working with these data stores.

Spring Data Workshop

10:45 AM MDT

In recent years, there has been a renewed interest in how data is stored. Although RDBMS has long been treated as a one-size-fits-all solution for data storage, a new breed of datastores has arrived to offer a best-fit solution. Key-value stores, column stores, document stores, graph databases, as well as the traditional relational database are options to consider.

With these new data storage options come new and different ways of interacting with data. Even though all of these data storage options offer Java APIs, they are widely different from each other and the learning curve can be quite steep. Even if you understand the concepts and benefits of each database type, there's still the huge barrier of understanding how to work with each database's individual API.

Spring Data is a project that makes it easier to build Spring-powered applications that use new data, offering a reasonably consistent programming model regardless of which type of database you choose. In addition to supporting the new “NoSQL” databases such as document and graph databases, Spring Data also greatly simplifies working with RDBMS-oriented datastores using JPA.

In this 2-part workshop, we'll dig in with a hands-on exploration of a variety of data stores, including Redis, MongoDB, Neo4j, and traditional RDBMS. In doing so, you'll experience first-hand how Spring Data simplifies working with these data stores.

Cujo.js Workshop

1:30 PM MDT

In this workshop, we'll look at Cujo.js, an “unframework” that provides dependency injection that takes Javascript's unique needs into consideration to create loosely-coupled code. We'll also see how, although Cujo.js isn't strictly a UI framework, elements of Cujo.js can be brought together to elegantly build client-side UIs.

In modern applications, Javascript is increasingly prevalent both on the client-side and to some degree on the server-side. As we continue to crank out more Javascript code, we're finding that many of the same hard-lessons we learned in writing decoupled Java code are equally desirable in Javascript code. Without the benefit of dependency injection and AOP, both Java and Javascript code can quickly become an unnavigable and untestable mess.

Where frameworks like Spring have helped us gain control over our Java code, Cujo.js similarly aims to give our Javascript code more structure and testability.

Cujo.js Workshop

3:15 PM MDT

In this workshop, we'll look at Cujo.js, an “unframework” that provides dependency injection that takes Javascript's unique needs into consideration to create loosely-coupled code. We'll also see how, although Cujo.js isn't strictly a UI framework, elements of Cujo.js can be brought together to elegantly build client-side UIs.

In modern applications, Javascript is increasingly prevalent both on the client-side and to some degree on the server-side. As we continue to crank out more Javascript code, we're finding that many of the same hard-lessons we learned in writing decoupled Java code are equally desirable in Javascript code. Without the benefit of dependency injection and AOP, both Java and Javascript code can quickly become an unnavigable and untestable mess.

Where frameworks like Spring have helped us gain control over our Java code, Cujo.js similarly aims to give our Javascript code more structure and testability.

Books

Spring AI in Action

by Craig Walls

Generative AI tools like ChatGPT cause an immediate jaw drop for almost everyone who encounters them. Until recently, though, Java developers have had few good tools for adding AI features to existing and new applications. Spring AI, an exciting new extension for Spring and Spring Boot, changes the equation. Spring AI provides generative AI capabilities natively within the framework, so you can stick with Java end-to-end. Spring AI in Action shows you how!

Spring in Action, 6th Edition

by Craig Walls

A new edition of the classic bestseller! Spring in Action, 6th Edition covers all of the new features of Spring 5.3 and Spring Boot 2.4 along with examples of reactive programming, Spring Security for REST Services, and bringing reactivity to your databases. You'll also find the latest Spring best practices, including Spring Boot for application setup and configuration.

Build Talking Apps for Alexa

by Craig Walls

Voice recognition is here at last. Alexa and other voice assistants have now become widespread and mainstream. Is your app ready for voice interaction? Learn how to develop your own voice applications for Amazon Alexa. Start with techniques for building conversational user interfaces and dialog management. Integrate with existing applications and visual interfaces to complement voice-first applications. The future of human-computer interaction is voice, and we’ll help you get ready for it.

Spring in Action, 5th Edition

by Craig Walls

Spring Framework has been making Java developers more productive and successful for over a dozen years, and it shows no signs of slowing down!

Spring in Action, 5th Edition is the fully-updated revision of Manning's bestselling Spring in Action. This new edition includes all Spring 5.0 updates, along with new examples on reactive programming, Spring WebFlux, and microservices. Readers will also find the latest Spring best practices, including Spring Boot for application setup and configuration.

Purchase of the print book includes a free eBook in PDF, Kindle, and ePub formats from Manning Publications.