Spring Web Flow Portal

The best way to get started using Spring Web Flow is to download it, read the practical introduction, and try out the samples. This should set you up to hit the ground running.

If you're looking for in-depth and thorough coverage of the entire Spring Web Flow feature set, your best bet is to read Working with Spring Web Flow. Written by Erwin Vervaet, the originator of the Spring Web Flow project, this book covers Spring Web Flow in detail by explaining its motivation and feature set, as well as providing practical guidance for using the framework to develop web applications successfully in a number of environments.

The Spring Web Flow tips and tricks are small articles filled with expert knowledge on Spring Web Flow. They cover a range of Spring Web Flow related topics: answers to frequently asked questions, best practices, advanced use cases and so on. All Spring Web Flow users, from novices to experts, should be able to find useful information here.

• Tip 1: Accessing a flow execution from outside Spring Web Flow
  25/10/2006 - In some situations it is useful to get access to a Spring Web Flow flow execution from outside of Spring Web Flow itself. This tip illustrates how that can be accomplished.
• Tip 2: Controlling conversational state management
  04/11/2006 - Spring Web Flow automatically manages conversational state, i.e. data associated with the conversations users have with your web application. This tip shows you how to control Spring Web Flow's state management.
• Tip 3: Interacting with the calling environment
  19/01/2007 - This tip explains how Spring Web Flow code can interact with the calling environment.
• Tip 4: Understanding alwaysRedirectOnPause
  A lot of questions on the Spring Web Flow forum are related to Spring Web Flow's alwaysRedirectOnPause setting. This tip explains that feature in detail.
• Tip 5: Real World Use-Cases
  A number of real world use-cases are described in Chapter 10: Real World Use-Cases of the Working with Spring Web Flow book. This chapter is available as a free sample chapter, and will teach you about accessing the host environment, parameterizing flows, and using flow execution listeners to do things like securing your flows, implementing a global back transition, or creating a breadcrumb trail. You will also learn how to load and stress test your Spring Web Flow application using Apache JMeter.

If you would like to contribute a tip or trick, send it to swftips@ervacon.com.

The Spring Web Flow distribution includes several sample applications, each illustrating a different set of Spring Web Flow features. We encourage new users to study these sample applications to get a practical introduction to Spring Web Flow. You can try the sample applications online at http://spring.ervacon.com.

Ervacon offers consulting and training services for the Spring Framework and Spring Web Flow. If you are looking for an expert Spring Web Flow consultant to help you adopt this exciting framework, you have come to the right place! We also offer on-site training, architectural reviews and help setting up a proof of concept.
Feel free to contact us for further information regarding our Spring Web Flow services, including pricing and availability.

Useful links for the Spring Web Flow user.

• The Spring Web Flow home page.
• Download Spring Web Flow.
• Documentation.
• The Spring and Spring Web Flow community support forums.
• JIRA issue tracking.