The best 8 Java RESTful frameworks

With each 1year in the past, more and more Java frameworks have emerged. Like JavaScript, everyone thinks they know what a good framework should look like. Even my old grandmother now USES a framework I've never heard of and probably never will. Jokes aside, the bloated framework market, which can do almost anything, is saturated, but how to judge. This article aims to provide the best Java RESTfulful framework available today. I'm just going to talk about lightweight products, skipping the bloated over-designed frameworks. At the same time, I just want them to be stable and mature, offering simple, lightweight features. I only break this rule when I introduce Play frameworks, for reasons I'll give later. Which Java RESTful framework to use in future projects depends entirely on your current requirements. To make it easier for you to choose, I'll list the most prominent framework features, which I hope will save you some time.

Dropwizard

Date of birth: 2011
4.5/5 grade:

Dropwizard provides a stable and mature Java library wrapped in a simple, lightweight package.
Dropwizard is somewhere between a framework and a library. It provides all you need to develop an web application. Thanks to built-in modularity, an application can remain small and lean, reducing development and maintenance time and overhead.
Dropwizard USES the existing Jetty HTTP library and is embedded in your project without the need for an external server. All Dropwizard projects have an main method to manage the built-in HTTP server.

link
Official site   GITHUB   documentation

advantages

Rapid project build and launch

modular

Incredibly fast (at least as measured by the built-in metric)

Jetty for HTTP, Jersey for REST, and Jackson for JSON

Other libraries are also supported, such as Mustache, Logback, JDBI, Hibernate Validator, Guava...

Monitoring is supported using Metrics

The Main method starts Jetty server and can be easily debugged and maintained

Strong community

disadvantages

The Dropwizard documentation is a major source of knowledge, but it's not great. You may need to search and explore the documentation of the third party library.

The error is treated as plain text for some reason, which can be problematic if you want the response result to always be JSON

Be sure to use the latest version of Dropwizard. Some older versions use an obsolete third party library. And the early Dropwizzard was hard to upgrade

example

package com.example.helloworld;
 
import io.dropwizard.Application;
import io.dropwizard.setup.Bootstrap;
import io.dropwizard.setup.Environment;
import com.example.helloworld.resources.HelloWorldResource;
import com.example.helloworld.health.TemplateHealthCheck;
 
public class HelloWorldApplication extends Application<HelloWorldConfiguration> {
   public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
     new HelloWorldApplication().run(args);
   }
 
   @Override
   public String getName() {
     return "hello-world" ;
   }
 
   @Override
   public void initialize(Bootstrap<HelloWorldConfiguration> bootstrap) {
     // nothing to do yet
   }
 
   @Override
   public void run(HelloWorldConfiguration configuration,
           Environment environment) {
     // nothing to do yet
   }
 
}

annotations
Individuals do not want to recommend this framework for large projects. But if you try, you won't be disappointed. Primarily this framework USES the best modern Java web components, assembled into an easy-to-use framework.
Unfortunately this brings its own problems. Mashing these libraries together can cause unforeseen problems. That's why I subtracted 0.5 stars from it instead of 5 stars out of 10.

Jersey

Date of birth: 2012 (Jersey 2.X)
5/5 grade:

The Jersey RESTful framework is an open source RESTful framework that implements JAX-RS (JSR 311) & JSR 339) specification. It extends the JAX-RS implementation with additional features and tools to further simplify RESTful service and client development. Although relatively new, it is already a product of the RESTful service and client frameworks.

link
Official site   GITHUB   documentation

advantages

Excellent documentation and examples

fast

Super easy routing

Smooth JUnit integration

Personally, when developing RESTful service, the JAX-RS implementation is better than the MVC framework.

It can be integrated into other libraries/frameworks (Grizzly,   Netty). This is probably why many products use it.

Support for asynchronous linking

Don't like servlet container; You can use Jersey without them.

WADL, XML/JSON support

Included in Glassfish

disadvantages

Jersey 2.0+ USES a somewhat complex implementation of dependency injection

Maybe not a bad thing. Jersey 1.X USES the older JAX-RS implementation

1 heap 3 libraries only support Jersey 1.X, Jersey 2.X is not available

example

package org.glassfish.jersey.examples.helloworld;
 
import javax.ws.rs.GET;
import javax.ws.rs.Path;
import javax.ws.rs.Produces;
 
@Path ( "helloworld" )
public class HelloWorldResource {
   public static final String CLICHED_MESSAGE = "Hello World!" ;
 
@GET
@Produces ( "text/plain" )
   public String getHello() {
     return CLICHED_MESSAGE;
   }
}

annotations
Jersey is my choice, 5 stars.

Ninja Web Framework

Date of birth: 2012
3.5/5 grade:
Ninja Web Framework is the full stack of java web framework. Stable, fast, reliable, product grade.
It provides a slice of development, testing, publishing, and maintenance of RESTful web applications (Servlets, Guice, JPA, Flyway migrations, Maven, etc.).
Just like DropWizzard, Ninja Web Framework is an integrated software stack. You don't have to build your own, just use Maven archetype to generate a new project, import it into IDE and start coding.

link
Official site   GITHUB   documentation

advantages

fast

Rapid project build and launch

modular

XML, HTML, JSON render

Other libraries are also supported (e.g., Guice, Logback, Guava, etc.)

Good data persistence and caching

Don't like servlet container; U can choose the container you like

If you don't like containers at all, you can use standalone mode, using Jetty as a self-executing jar

disadvantages

Again, like DropWizzard, the documentation is there but not good enough. It took me a long time to understand it. The framework also relies on many other libraries, and sometimes it can be difficult to get the information you need.

Not very well known. Small community. Rumor has it that this framework was created by Play 2.X users who switched to Scala

example

package controllers;
 
public class ApplicationController {   
 
   public Result index() {
 
     Person person = new Person();
     person.name = "John Johnson" ;
 
     return Results.json().render(person);
 
   }
}

annotations
It looks good, but I'm going to leave it on the one side until it matures.

Play Framework

Date of birth: 2011
4/5 grade:

Play Framework is easy to create, build, and publish web applications with Java support & Scala. It USES Akka, based on a lightweight stateless architecture. It should be used for large-scale applications with low CPU and memory consumption.

link
Official site   GITHUB   documentation

advantages

Easy to develop

Fast, but not as fast as some other frames

Support for non-blocking I/O based on Netty. Excellent for handling remote calls in parallel

The community is very big

Rapid project build and launch

modular

MVC

REST, JSON/XML, Web Sockets, non-blocking I/O

Just refresh your browser to see the latest changes

Support Async

There are published books

disadvantages

Version 2.0 is the most controversial Java framework. Switch to Switch to Scala made some Java developers outraged.

Backward incompatible; Play 2.X has been rewritten

Known as lightweight, but a bit bloated

The SBT build tool. Known as the Maven killer, but never good enough to replace it. Difficult to learn and configure

The servlet

Breaking changes across releases

example

package controllers
 
import play.api._
import play.api.mvc._
 
class Application extends Controller {
 
  def hello(name: String) = Action {
   Ok( "Hello " + name + "!" )
  }
 
}

annotations
For all the complaining, I still prefer 1 straight and preferred this framework. Unfortunately, I can only give it four stars. I firmly believe that the framework based on JAX-RS is more suitable for RESTful web services.

RestExpress

Date of birth: 2009
3/5 grade:

RestExpress is a non-container lightweight Netty HTTP stack wrapper to make it easier to create Java RESTful services.
The RestExpress goal is to support the best RESTful practices.

link
GITHUB

advantages

Real micro frames

Top performance, fast, reliable

XML/JSON

The oldest and most stable RESTful framework 1

disadvantages

No document

Little support

Small community

example

package com.example;
 
import java.io.IOException;
 
import io.netty.handler.codec.http.HttpMethod;
import org.restexpress.RestExpress;
 
public class Main
{
   public static RestExpress startServer(String[] args) throws IOException
   {
     RestExpress server = new RestExpress();
     MyResource r = new MyResource();
 
     server.uri( "/myapp/myresource" , r)
       .method(HttpMethod.GET)
       .noSerialization();
 
     server.uri( "/myapp/myresource" , r)
       .method(HttpMethod.POST);
 
     server.bind( 8080 );
     return server;
   }
 
   public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception
   {
     RestExpress server = startServer(args);
     System.out.println( "Hit enter to stop it..." );
     System.in.read();
     server.shutdown();
   }
}

annotations
Even though this framework is super fast, I don't want to recommend it. Lack of documentation and no support makes it a poor framework. Give it three stars for speed's sake.

Restlet

Date of birth: 2005
4.5/5 grade:

Restlet helps Java programmers build large-scale, fast web api architectures that conform to the RESTful architectural pattern.
It provides powerful routing and filtering systems. client/server Java API. Meets all the major platforms (Java SE/EE, Google AppEngine, OSGi, GWT, Android) and provides countless extensions to meet the needs of programmers.
As far as I know, it is the first java RESTful web framework. A lot of companies use it, but you've probably never heard of it, as if it's no longer visible.

link
Official site   GITHUB   documentation

advantages

strong

Enterprise level framework

Multi-platform Java SE, Java EE, Google Web Toolkit, Google AppEngine, Android, OSGi environments

Support JAX-RS (like Jersey)

Most advanced RESTful support

modular

Support for other libraries

Development 1 is active

Intelligent url binding, fully functional URI routing

There are books about it

disadvantages

Very steep learning curve

Closed communities, although StackOverflow is still open

No longer popular, more due to Play Framework and Jersey

example

public class Part03 extends ServerResource {
 
   public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
     // Create the HTTP server and listen on port 8182
     new Server(Protocol.HTTP, 8182 , Part03. class ).start();
   }
 
   @Get ( "txt" )
   public String toString() {
     return "hello, world" ;
   }
 
}

annotations
Although the framework is still 1 in popularity, I can't give it 5 stars to its current degree of completion.

Restx

Date of birth: 2013
3.5/5 grade:

Restx is a lightweight, modular, feature-rich, super-fast open source Java REST framework.

link
Official site   GITHUB   documentation

advantages

Fast, lightweight

Easy to set up

Real micro frames

modular

Support for other libraries

Support MongoDB

disadvantages

Unfriendly confusing document. I expect a good 1 point of documentation for this type of framework

Too young

Asynchronous Async is not currently supported

example

@GET ( "/message/{id}" )
   public Message sayHello(String id, // path param
               String who // query param
               ) {
     return new Message().setMessage(String.format(
         "hello %s, it's %s" ,
         who, DateTime.now().toString( "HH:mm:ss" )));
   }
@POST ( "/message/{id}" )
   public Message sayHello(String id, // path param
               Message msg // body param
               ) {
     return msg.setMessage(String.format(
         "%s @ %s" ,
         msg.getMessage(), DateTime.now().toString( "HH:mm:ss" )));
   }

annotations
Honestly, I didn't spend much time on this framework. I mean, the Java framework market is getting more and more fragmented, just like the JavaScript market, and it should stop.

Spark Framework

Date of birth: 2011
3.5/5 grade:
Not to be confused with Apache's big data framework Spark, the Spark framework is a lightweight Java web framework for rapid development (50% of Spark users use Spark to create REST APIs). It is inspired by the Ruby framework Sinatra.

It has a minimal kernel of less than 1M, providing all the basic features for building RESTful or traditional web applications.

link
Official site   GITHUB   documentation

advantages

Fast, lightweight

Excellent rapid prototyping

Easy to set up

Often used with AngularJS

Real micro frames

Using Jetty

It can be used in a container or run independently

disadvantages

The documentation could be better, it's not for beginners

Not suitable for large projects

Small community

example

import static spark.Spark.*;
 
public class HelloWorld {
  public static void main(String[] args) {
    get( "/hello" , (req, res) -> "Hello World" );
  }
}

annotations
This framework is suitable for initial development. Mainly used for small projects or prototypes.