# Awesome Java A curated list of awesome Java frameworks, libraries and software. Inspired by [awesome-python](https://github.com/vinta/awesome-python). - [Awesome Java](#awesome-java) - [Build Tool](#build-tool) - [Code Analysis](#code-analysis) - [Compiler-compiler](#compiler-compiler) - [Continuous Integration](#continuous-integration) - [Database](#database) - [Date and Time](#date-and-time) - [Dependency Injection](#dependency-injection) - [Development](#development) - [Distributed Applications](#distributed-applications) - [GUI](#gui) - [Game Development](#game-development) - [High Performance](#high-performance) - [IDE](#ide) - [JVM and JDK](#jvm-and-jdk) - [JSON](#json) - [Logging](#logging) - [Machine Learning](#machine-learning) - [Messaging](#messaging) - [Miscellaneous](#miscellaneous) - [Natural Language Processing](#natural-language-processing) - [ORM](#orm) - [PDF](#pdf) - [Security](#security) - [Science](#science) - [Server](#server) - [Template Engine](#template-engine) - [Testing](#testing) - [Utility](#utility) - [Visualization](#visualization) - [Web Crawling](#web-crawling) - [Web Frameworks](#web-frameworks) - [REST Frameworks](#rest-frameworks) - [Resources](#resources) - [Communities](#communities) - [Influential Books](#influential-books) - [Podcasts](#podcasts) - [Twitter](#twitter) - [Websites](#websites) - [Contributing](#contributing) ## Build Tool *Tools which handle the buildcycle of an application.* * [Apache Maven](http://maven.apache.org/) - Declarative build and dependency management which favors convention over configuration. It's preferable to Apache Ant which uses a rather procedural approach and can be rather difficult to maintain. * [Gradle](http://www.gradle.org/) - Incremental builds which are programmed via Groovy instead of declaring XML. Works well with Maven's dependency management and treats Ant scripts as first-class citizens. ## Code Analysis *Tools that provide metrics and quality measurements of static code.* * [SonarQube](http://www.sonarqube.org/) - Inspection tool for code quality. It integrates with several external tools like Gradle, Jira and Jenkins and provides an overview of the metrics over time. * [FindBugs](http://findbugs.sourceforge.net/) - Static analysis of bytecode to find potential bugs. * [Metrics](http://metrics.codahale.com/) - Measures the behavior of critical components. ## Compiler-compiler *Tools that create parsers, interpreters or compilers.* * [ANTLR](http://www.antlr.org/) - Complex full-featured framework for top-down parsing. * [JavaCC](https://javacc.java.net/) - More specific and slightly easier to learn. Has syntactic lookahead. ## Continuous Integration *Tools which support continuously building, testing and releasing applications.* * [Jenkins](http://jenkins-ci.org/) - Provides server-based services. Often seen as the successor to Hudson, although it is still actively developed. ## Database *Everything which simplifies interactions with the database.* * [jOOQ](http://www.jooq.org/) - Generates typesafe code based on SQL schema. * [Liquibase](http://www.liquibase.org/) - Source control for your database which can be embedded. ## Date and Time *Libraries related to date and time.* * [Java 8 SE: Date and Time API](http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/articles/java/jf14-date-time-2125367.html) - Basically, it incorporates Joda-Time. * [Joda-Time](http://joda-time.sourceforge.net/) - De facto standard date/time-library before Java 8. ## Dependency Injection *Libraries that help to realize the [Inversion of Control](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inversion_of_control) paradigm.* * [Dagger](http://square.github.io/dagger/) - Compile-time injection framework without reflection, mainly for Android. * [Google Guice](http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Guice) - Lightweight but powerful framework. * [Spring](http://spring.io/) - Only Spring Context is needed for injections. * [Weld](http://docs.jboss.org/weld/reference/latest/en-US/html_single/) - CDI reference implementation. ## Development *Integrated environments that augment the process of development at a fundamental level, e.g. classloading.* * [DCEVM](http://ssw.jku.at/dcevm/) - Modification of the JVM that allows unlimited redefinition of loaded classes at runtime. * [JRebel](http://zeroturnaround.com/software/jrebel/) - Instantly reloads code and configuration changes without redeploys. ## Distributed Applications *Libraries and frameworks used to ease writing distributed and fault-tolerant applications.* * [Akka](http://akka.io) - Toolkit and runtime for building highly concurrent, distributed, and fault tolerant event-driven applications. * [JGroups](http://www.jgroups.org/) - Toolkit for reliable messaging and creating clusters whose nodes can send messages to each other. * [Apache ZooKeeper](http://zookeeper.apache.org/) - Coordination service with distributed configuration, synchronization, and naming registry for large distributed systems. ## GUI *Libraries to create modern graphical user interfaces.* * [JavaFX](http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/overview/javafx-overview-2158620.html) - The successor of Swing. * [Scene Builder](http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/javafxscenebuilder-info-2157684.html) - Visual layout tool for JavaFX applications. ## Game Development *Frameworks that support the development of games.* * [jMonkeyEngine](http://jmonkeyengine.org/) - Game engine for modern 3D development. * [LWJGL](http://lwjgl.org/) - Robust framework that abstracts libraries like OpenGL/CL/AL. * [libGDX](http://libgdx.badlogicgames.com/) - All-round cross-platform, high-level framework. ## High Performance *Everything about high performance computation, from collections to specific libraries.* * [Trove](http://trove.starlight-systems.com/) - Primitive collections. * [HPPC](http://labs.carrotsearch.com/hppc.html) - Primitive collections. * [Disruptor](http://lmax-exchange.github.io/disruptor/) - Inter-thread messaging library. * [Javalution](http://javolution.org/) - Library for real-time and embedded systems. ## IDE *Integrated development environments that try to simplify several aspects of development.* * [NetBeans](https://netbeans.org/) - Provides integration for several Java SE and EE features starting with database access and servers to HTML5 and AngularJS. * [Eclipse](http://www.eclipse.org/) - Does a lot of things in the background. Noteworthy are its large amount of plugins. * [IntelliJ IDEA](http://www.jetbrains.com/idea/) - Supports a lot of JVM languages and provides good options for Android development. The commercial edition targets the enterprise sector. ## JVM and JDK *Various implementations of the JVM/JDK.* * [HotSpot](http://openjdk.java.net/groups/hotspot/) - Official JVM. * [JDK 9](https://jdk9.java.net/) - Early access releases of JDK 9. * [OpenJDK](http://openjdk.java.net/) - Open source implementation. ## JSON *Libraries that simplify JSON processing.* * [Google Gson](https://code.google.com/p/google-gson/) - Serializes Java objects to JSON and vice versa. Good performance with on-the-fly usage. * [Jackson](http://wiki.fasterxml.com/JacksonHome) - Similar to GSON but has performance gains if you need to instantiate the library more often. ## Logging *Libraries that log the behavior of an application.* * [Apache Log4j 2](http://logging.apache.org/log4j/) - Complete rewrite of the previous version. Now has a powerful plugin and configuration architecture. * [Logback](http://logback.qos.ch/) - Founded by the same developer as Log4j and proves to be a robust logging library with interesting configuration options via Groovy. * [SLF4J](http://www.slf4j.org/) - Abstraction layer which is to be used with an implementation. ## Machine Learning *Tools that provide specific statistical algorithms which allow to learn from data.* * [Apache Hadoop](http://hadoop.apache.org/) - Open-source software framework for storage and large-scale processing of data-sets on clusters of commodity hardware. * [Apache Mahout](https://mahout.apache.org/) - Scalable algorithms focused on collaborative filtering, clustering and classification. * [Apache Spark](http://spark.apache.org/) - Open-source data analytics cluster computing framework. * [Weka](http://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/ml/weka/) - Collection of algorithms for data mining tasks ranging from pre-processing to visualization. ## Messaging *Tools that help sending messages between clients to ensure protocol independency.* * [Apache ActiveMQ](http://activemq.apache.org/) - Open-source message broker that implements JMS and converts synchronous to asynchronous communication * [JBoss HornetQ](http://hornetq.jboss.org/) - Clear, concise, modular and made to be embedded. ## Miscellaneous *Everything else.* * [Jimfs](https://github.com/google/jimfs) - In-memory file system. * [Lombok](http://projectlombok.org/) - Code-generator which aims to reduce the verbosity of Java. ## Natural Language Processing *Libraries that specialize on processing text.* * [Apache OpenNLP](https://opennlp.apache.org/) - Toolkit for common tasks like tokenization. * [LingPipe](http://alias-i.com/lingpipe/) - Toolkit for a variety of tasks ranging from POS tagging to sentiment analysis. * [Mallet](http://mallet.cs.umass.edu/) - Statistical natural language processing, document classification, clustering, topic modeling, etc. ## ORM *APIs which handle the persistence of objects.* * [EclipseLink](https://www.eclipse.org/eclipselink/) - Supports a number of persistence standards: JPA, JAXB, JCA and SDO. * [Hibernate](http://hibernate.org/orm/) - Robust and widely used with an active community. ## PDF *Everything that helps with the creation of PDF files.* * [Apache FOP](http://xmlgraphics.apache.org/fop/) - Creates PDF from XSL-FO. * [Apache PDFBox](http://pdfbox.apache.org/) - Toolbox for creating and manipulating PDF. * [JasperReports](http://community.jaspersoft.com/project/jasperreports-library) - Complex reporting engine. * [DynamicReports](http://dynamicreports.org/) - Simplifies JasperReports. * [iText](http://itextpdf.com/) - Easy to use PDF library which creates PDF files programmatically but requires a license for commercial purposes. ## Security *Libraries that handle security, authentication, authorization or session management.* * [Apache Shiro](http://shiro.apache.org/) - Performs authentication, authorization, cryptography and session management. * [Keycloak](http://keycloak.jboss.org/) - Integrated SSO and IDM for browser apps and RESTful web services. Currently in beta but looks very promising. * [PicketLink](http://picketlink.org/) - PicketLink is an umbrella project for security and identity management for Java applications. * [Spring Security](http://projects.spring.io/spring-security/) - Focuses on authentication/authorization and protects against several attack vectors. ## Science *Libraries for scientific computing and analysis.* * [JScience](http://www.jscience.org/) - Comprehensive framework of science related libraries. * [JTransforms](https://sites.google.com/site/piotrwendykier/software/jtransforms) - Multithread FFT library. * [Parallel Colt](https://sites.google.com/site/piotrwendykier/software/parallelcolt) - Multithread high performance scientific and technical computing. * [SCaVis](http://jwork.org/scavis/) - Environment for scientific computation, data analysis and data visualization. ## Server *Servers which are specifically used to deploy applications.* * [GlassFish](https://glassfish.java.net/) - Open source reference implementation for Java EE sponsored by Oracle. * [WildFly](http://www.wildfly.org/) - Formerly known as JBoss and developed by Red Hat with extensive Java EE support. * [Jetty](http://www.eclipse.org/jetty/) - Lightweight, small server, often embedded in projects. * [Apache Tomcat](http://tomcat.apache.org/) - Robust all-round server for Servlet and JSP. * [Apache TomEE](http://tomee.apache.org/) - Tomcat plus Java EE. ## Template Engine *Tools which substitute expressions in a template.* * [Apache Velocity](http://velocity.apache.org/) - Templates for HTML pages, emails or source code generation in general. * [FreeMarker](http://freemarker.org/) - General templating engine without any heavyweight or opinionated dependencies. * [JavaServer Pages](https://jsp.java.net/) - Aged templating for websites with custom tag libraries. * [Thymeleaf](http://www.thymeleaf.org/) - Aims to be a substitute for JSP and works for XML files in general. ## Testing *Tools that test from object to interface level including performance and other benchmarks.* * [AssertJ](http://joel-costigliola.github.io/assertj/) - Fluent assertions. * [Apache JMeter](http://jmeter.apache.org/) - Functional testing and performance measurements. * [Arquillian](http://arquillian.org/) - Integration and functional testing platform with integration of Java EE containers. * [Calipher](https://code.google.com/p/caliper/) - Microbenchmarking framework. * [FEST](https://code.google.com/p/fest/) - Collection of testing libraries. * [Hamcrest](http://hamcrest.org/JavaHamcrest/) - Framework for writing declarative assertion matchers. * [JMH](http://openjdk.java.net/projects/code-tools/jmh/) - Microbenchmarking. * [JUnit](http://junit.org/) - Testing framework. * [Mockito](http://code.google.com/p/mockito/) - Creation of test double objects in automated unit tests for the purpose of TDD or BDD. * [Selenium](http://docs.seleniumhq.org/) - Portable software testing framework for web applications. * [TestNG](http://testng.org/) - Testing framework. * [VisualVM](http://visualvm.java.net/) - Visual interface for viewing detailed information about Java applications while they are running on a JVM. ## Utility *Libraries which provide unspecific functionality, e.g. optimized datastructures.* * [Apache Commons](http://commons.apache.org/) - Provides different general purpose functions like configuration, validation, collections, file upload or XML processing. * [Google Guava](http://code.google.com/p/guava-libraries/) - Collections, caching, primitives support, concurrency libraries, common annotations, string processing, I/O, and so forth. ## Visualization *Libraries or frameworks which allow you to visualize data.* * [Processing](https://www.processing.org/) - A project deeply rooted in visual art which allows you to program the visualization of data. ## Web Crawling *Libraries that analyze the content of websites.* * [Apache Nutch](http://nutch.apache.org/) - Highly extensible, highly scalable Web crawler for production environment. * [Crawler4j](https://code.google.com/p/crawler4j/) - Simple lightweight alternative. * [jsoup](http://jsoup.org/) - Scrapes, parses, manipulates and cleans HTML. ## Web Frameworks *Frameworks that handle the communication between the layers of an web application.* * [Apache Tapestry](http://tapestry.apache.org/) - Component oriented framework for creating dynamic, robust, highly scalable web applications in Java. * [Spring](http://projects.spring.io/spring-framework/) - Aims to simplify the development with Java EE and provides packages for dependency injection and aspect-oriented programming. * [Vaadin](https://vaadin.com/) - Event-driven framework build on top of GWT. Uses server-side architecture with Ajax on the client-side. * [Google Web Toolkit](http://www.gwtproject.org/) - Toolbox which includes a Java-to-JavaScript compiler for client-side code, XML parser, API for RPC, JUnit integration, internationalization support and widgets for the GUI. * [Apache Wicket](http://wicket.apache.org/) - Component-based web application framework similar to Tapestry with a stateful GUI. * [Play](http://www.playframework.com/) - Uses convention over configuration, hot code reloading and display of errors in the browser. * [PrimeFaces](http://primefaces.org/) - JSF framework which has a free and a commercial version with support. Provides several frontend components. * [Spark](http://www.sparkjava.com/why.html) - Unique framework which focuses not on complex MVC patterns but on rapid development. ## REST Frameworks *Frameworks specifically for creating RESTful services.* * [Dropwizard](https://dropwizard.github.io/dropwizard/) - Opinionated framework for setting up modern web applications, includes Jetty, Jackson, Jersey and Metrics. * [Jersey](https://jersey.java.net/) - JAX-RS reference implementation. * [RESTEasy](http://resteasy.jboss.org/) - Fully certified and portable implementation of the JAX-RS specification. # Resources ## Communities *Active discussions.* * [r/java](http://www.reddit.com/r/java) - Subreddit for the Java community. * [stackoverflow](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/java) - Question/answer platform. ## Influential Books *Books about Java that had a high impact and are still worth reading.* * [Effective Java (2nd Edition)](http://www.amazon.com/Effective-Java-Edition-Joshua-Bloch/dp/0321356683) * [Java Concurrency in Practice](http://www.amazon.com/Java-Concurrency-Practice-Brian-Goetz/dp/0321349601) * [Thinking in Java](http://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Java-Edition-Bruce-Eckel/dp/0131872486) ## Podcasts *Something to listen to while programming.* * [The Java Posse](http://www.javaposse.com/) ## Twitter *People to follow.* * [Adam Bien](https://twitter.com/AdamBien/) * [Antonio Goncalves](https://twitter.com/agoncal/) * [Arun Gupta](https://twitter.com/arungupta/) * [Ed Burns](https://twitter.com/edburns) * [Java](https://twitter.com/java/) * [Java EE](https://twitter.com/Java_EE/) * [Java.net](https://twitter.com/javanetbuzz/) * [Java Magazine](https://twitter.com/Oraclejavamag) * [Mark Reinhold](https://twitter.com/mreinhold) * [OpenJDK](https://twitter.com/OpenJDK) * [Pete Muir](https://twitter.com/plmuir/) * [Reza Rahman](https://twitter.com/reza_rahman) * [Simon Maple](https://twitter.com/sjmaple) * [Tim Boudreau](https://twitter.com/kablosna) ## Websites *Sites to read.* * [Java.net](http://java.net/) * [JavaWorld](http://www.javaworld.com/) * [Javalobby](http://java.dzone.com/) # Contributing Contributions are very welcome! Please have a look at [CONTRIBUTING](https://github.com/akullpp/awesome-java/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md) for guidelines. Topics which have no libraries as of yet are located in [TOPICS](https://github.com/akullpp/awesome-java/blob/master/TOPICS.md).