Apache Cocoon

Apache Cocoon is a Spring-based (since version 2.2 of Cocoon) framework built around the concepts of separation of concerns and component-based development.

Cocoon implements these concepts around the notion of component pipelines, each component on the pipeline specializing on a particular operation. This makes it possible to use a Lego(tm)-like approach in building web solutions, hooking together components into pipelines, often without any required programming.

Cocoon used as web framework is "web glue for your web application development needs". It is a glue that keeps concerns separate and allows parallel evolution of all aspects of a web application, improving development pace and reducing the chance of conflicts. In particular it makes it easy to support multiple output formats, offers continuation based web controller implementations and comes with a JSR-168 compatible Portal implementation.

Cocoon blocks

A block is the unit of modularization in Cocoon (in comparison: Eclipse uses the term plugins, OSGi bundles). Everything that goes beyond what Cocoon provides in its core modules (Spring integration, sitemap and pipeline implementation) is provided as block. Custom Cocoon applications are also developed as blocks. A block can provide the following features:

• general servlet services (any servlet can be managed by the Cocoon servlet-service framework),
• special services that provide pipelines as services,
• component services (Spring beans, Avalon services/components),
• a container for classes and resources.

A block is packaged as a Java archive (jar) following certain conventions concerning the directory structure.

Apache Cocoon 2.1.11 Released   The Apache Cocoon Community is proud to announce the new release   of Apache Cocoon.   Apache Cocoon is a web development framework built around the concept   of separation of concerns (that is: allowing people to do their job   without having to step on each othe...