Foreword

This book shows how to build Java back-end web applications with Java Server Faces (JSF) as the user interface technology, the Java Persistence API (JPA) for object-to-storage mapping, and a MySQL database. It follows a "learning by doing" approach, which means that you don't have to read lots of text about the intricacies of Java (like in many Java programming books), but rather you just focus on the essential parts of Java and only read the minimum needed for starting to code your first app. By learning from the many examples provided in the book, you can quickly improve your understanding of basic concepts and techniques, and by downloading the complete code of these example apps and using it as a starting point for your own projects, you learn best practices and experience the joy of becoming a great app developer.