Features

This document is for bragging about all of Turbine's features and inherent coolness. Turbine is well over 200 classes and contains a boat load of features and API's. Many of these can also be used independently of Turbine. Almost all of the default implementations can be easily overridden with your own implementations. Turbine also has extensive Javadoc documentation for nearly all of the classes as well as in-code comments. At the risk of sounding snooty <smile>, Turbine is by far the leader of complex web application development tools. No other systems come close to being as cleanly implemented and executed. It clearly has been developed by the people who do web applications on a daily basis and have to constantly solve the same problems over and over again.

All of these features have been made possible thanks to the over 30 developers (and growing all the time!) who have contributed to Turbine over the last 2+ years.

  • Integration with template systems: Velocity, JSP
  • Utility code for working with Velocity, such as a SelectorBox class for building select boxes
  • Single Entry Point Servlet model for optimal security and control
  • ParameterParsing for GET/POST/PATH_INFO
  • Event based Action handling!
  • Strict MVC guidelines implemented through many interfaces and abstract classes as well as through the template systems.
  • Object-Relational tools: DatabaseMap/Peers, Village.
  • IDBroker that abstracts the autoinsert/sequence usage from the database
  • Failsafe Job based scheduler system (ie: a Java based cron)
  • GlobalCache (Singleton based system for caching data across servlets and requests)
  • DateSelector (utility for building the HTML for popup date menus)
  • File Upload API
  • Generic Services API for creating Singletons
  • XML-RPC Service Integration
  • Localization Services API
  • JNDI Services API
  • Visitor/Member API for managing users
  • Temporary and Permanent storage/management for users session data
  • ACL (Access Control List) based security system that uses Roles and Permissions (and the database schemas)
  • BrowserDetector class for determining which browser someone is using
  • GenerateUniqueId class for getting a unique number (ie: for sessions)
  • Logging via commons-logging, backed by Log4j.
  • A centralized configuration using commons-configuration to make it easy to retrieve properties.
  • Integration with commons-email to make sending email painless
  • Integration with commons-email and Velocity to allow you to send processed Velocity templates as email!
  • Built using Maven
  • Turbine Servlet works cleanly with Servlet API 2.1 and higher
  • Works with JDK 1.4 and higher - 100% Pure Java