FreeMarker vs. GSP for Dynamic Template Rendering, Revisited.

First of all, many thanks to valuable comments and inputs given in my previous blog post about this topic, grails forum and stackoverflow.com. Based on your comments and inputs I find out that the benchmarking test can be divided to 3 parts: Template Creation only, Rendering only and Both (Template Creation and Rendering). So, I update the benchmark application to support these 3 types of test. You can see the screen of updated benchmark application below:

The Result

	Template Creation	Rendering	Both
FreeMarker	17,981ms	29,909ms	45,868ms
GSP	In iteration 773, OutOfMemoryError: PermGen space	23,569ms	In iteration 669, OutOfMemoryError: PermGen space

The table above is the results of the test executed in 1000 times. It is clear that GSP is the winner for Rendering, but Template Creation and Both is not comparable as GSP facing OutOfMemoryError.

So, I re-run the tests  for 500 times, please see the results below:

	Template Creation	Rendering	Both
FreeMarker	15,885ms	33,279ms	47,032ms
GSP	379,783ms	23,346ms	420,874ms

Edited on 28-Jan-2011:

• Running Both (Template Creation and Rendering) 500 times in Tomcat 7.0.6, FreeMarker takes 23,291ms and GSP takes 321,801ms.
• Running Rendering tests 5,000 times using grails prod run-war, FreeMarker takes 177,624ms and GSP takes 142,105ms.

Edited on 29-Jan-2011:

• Running Both (Template Creation and Rendering) 5,000 times in Tomcat 7.0.6, FreeMarker takes 174,828ms on first time, and I re-run the same test without restart the Tomcat, it takes 161,724ms. (I did tried to run the test 10,000 times, facing java.lang.OutOfMemoryError: Java heap space in iteration 5,442.)

How I Run The Benchmark Tests
I run the benchmarking tests with the following steps:

1. Start the application using grails prod run-war.
2. After the application was started, open or refresh the URL http://localhost:8080/freemarker-vs-gsp/benchmark/index in browser.
3. Click on "Template Creation" link and wait for test completion and shutdown the application. Do the same for remaining links, start from step 1.

The Environment
Operating System: Puppy Linux 4.3.1
JDK:  1.6.0_20
Grails: 1.3.6
Plugins: freemarker 0.3 and freemarker-tags 0.5.8
Processor: Intel Pentium M 1.5GHz
Memory: 1285MB

The Configuration
grails.plugins.freemarkertags = [
   autoImport: false,
   asSharedVariables: true
]

Edited on 29-Jan-2011: defineFunctions configuration no longer supported, so I remove it, with the updated source code below.


The Source Code
You can download the complete source code of the benchmark application and run it yourself. If you run the tests, please post the test results under comment section.

Conclusion
If your application required dynamic rendering only, go for GSP, otherwise FreeMarker is a better option.

Request For Comment: JQuery Form Builder Plugin

The JQuery Form Builder Plugin is the first JQuery plugin created by me. Finally, the first demo of the Form Builder went live and hosted in Google App Engine (GAE) at http://jquery-form-builder-plugin.appspot.com/.

Please take note that the live demo was tested in Firefox and Google Chrome browser only, if you see some thing odd for the layout and found some issues when running the Form Builder in your browser, please create an issue report included browser version and OS at http://code.google.com/p/jquery-form-builder-plugin/issues/list.

I would like to seeking your reviews, comments and advices for Design, API and Source Code of the project. Please let's me know if you have more efficient way to do the same thing, let's me learn from you.

The missing portion of the project is implementation of QUnit test suites, if you have expertise in QUnit, we welcome your contributions and advices.

You can find out more information about the project at http://code.google.com/p/jquery-form-builder-plugin/

Lastly, you are invited to join the project discussion forum at http://groups.google.com/group/jquery-form-builder-plugin to tell us what you think about the project.

Thanks for reading.

FreeMarker vs. GSP for Dynamic Template Rendering

I find out that there are two ways in Grails to render dynamic template (String template), using FreeMarker and GSP. FreeMarker support enabled by freemarker plugin and freemarker-tags plugin. Special thanks to Jeff and Daniel creating these plugins, it will be less options for Grails view technology without their contribution. Given two options, I need to perform some micro-benchmarking to find out which one is the appropriate technology for given requirements.


The Objective
To evaluate and decide which template engine (FreeMarker or GSP) to use as Form Template of the Grails Form Builder Plugin.


The Result
FreeMarker is the winner. By perform rendering 100 times for the same template, GSP need 119,946ms and FreeMarker need approximately 1/4 of GSP, 32,749ms (Surprise? Yes, I am surprised about the performance of FreeMarker over GSP in dynamic template rendering).


How I Did It 
The Benchmark Case
The dynamic template was created based on the following domain class:
package test_freemarker2

class Test1 {
    int prop1
    String prop2
    Date prop3
   
    static constraints = { prop2 blank:false }
}

The FreeMarker's template rendering code:
new Template("freemarkerTemplate",
             new StringReader(freemarkerTemplateCode),
             freemarkerConfig.configuration)
            .process([test1Instance: test1Instance, flash:flash], out)

The GSP's template rendering code:
groovyPagesTemplateEngine.createTemplate(gspTemplateCode, 'gspTemplate').make([test1Instance: test1Instance]).writeTo(out)

As the template code (freemarkerTemplateCode and gspTemplateCode) was too lengthy, I will not describe it here (You can download the complete source code of the application here to run the benchmark test in your own environment).

The Benchmark Application
I run the benchmarking tests with the following steps:

1. Start the application using grails run-war.
2. After the application was started, open or refresh the URL http://localhost:8080/freemarker-vs-gsp/benchmark/index in your browser. You will see the following screen:
   
   
3. Click on "FreeMarker" link and wait for test completion and shutdown the application. Do the same for "GSP", start from step 1.

The Environment
Operating System: Puppy Linux 4.3.1
JDK:  1.6.0_20
Grails: 1.3.6
Processor: Intel Pentium M 1.5GHz
Memory: 1285MB

The Source Code
You can download the complete source code of the application and run it yourself.

Conclusion
Even the winner of this benchmark test is FreeMarker, the benchmark code was written based on my limited knowledge of FreeMarker and GSP. You may have better way to write optimized code than I do, please let's me know if you found a better way.

Edited on 28 Jun 2012: Please see the part 2 of this post.

JQuery Form Builder Plugin Project 0.1 Roadmap

These few days, I working hard on the JQuery Form Builder Plugin Project and attempt to get it up and running as soon as possible. Finally, I just finished lay the solid foundation for future grow of the project.

Following tasks have been completed:

• Defined project directory structure.
• Created ant build script for project distribution (min, pack and zip release) and deployment to Google App Engine (GAE). 
• Created a jQuery Plugin Template as base of plugin development (End up created another jQuery UI Widget Template which support plugin inheritance as base of widget development for this project).

While rushing for this project in the past few days, I realized that I haven't defined proper plan and project target for release 0.1. Let's come out proper roadmap. (Edited on 26-Jan-2011: The project roadmap was revised to have shorter and consistent release cycle, please see the updated roadmap at http://code.google.com/p/jquery-form-builder-plugin/wiki/Roadmap)

The following two group of fields supported by the JQuery Form Builder Plugin:

Standard Fields	Fancy Fields
Single Line Text (Text Box) [0.1] Number (Digit & Decimal) [0.1] E-mail Address [0.1] Web Address [0.1] Multi Line Text (Text Area) Multiple Choice (Radio) Checkboxes File Upload	Name Date (Date Picker) Time Phone (International & US) [0.1] Mailing Address Currency Plain Text [0.1] Rich Text (Html Text)

All fields marked with [0.1] above will be targeted for 0.1 release and developed in the following order:

• Plain Text (Development Started)
• Single Line Text
• Number
• E-mail Address
• Web Address
• Phone

A picture worth more than thousand words, I have mocked up the following screen so that you can visualize the deliverables of 0.1 release (will be hosted in Google App Engine platform):

Any feedback is welcome and highly appreciated. You are invited to join the discussion group of the project, tell us what you think, see you there!

Kick Off JQuery Form Builder Plugin Project

What is Form Builder?
A GUI or WYSIWYG tool that allowed you to create online forms in web browser without any programming knowledge.

The project
The JQuery Form Builder Plugin project is a brand new project that licensed under Apache 2.0 kicked off by me on the first great day of the new year, 1-1-11 that implementing Form Builder as JQuery Plugin and using JQuery UI as widgets.

The JQuery Form Builder Plugin project implements the front-end of Form Builder, another sister project Grails Form Builder Plugin implements the back-end of Form Builder using Grails Framework. Please take note that the JQuery Form Builder Plugin is back-end natural, you are welcome to implement the back-end of Form Builder using any language, framework and platform you preferred.

Origin of the project and motivation behind
Since I kicked off the Grails Form Builder Plugin project 2 months ago, I found an open source JQuery Form Builder which I think likely to meet my project requirements.

However, when I dig into the codes and attempt to refine it few days ago, I find out that the project have one critical issue: It is not design to support extensibility and modularity. I can see that if I use it as initial code base of Grails Form Builder Plugin's front-end, I will have problem to extend it to support additional widgets and will have hard time to maintain it. That's how the born of JQuery Form Builder Plugin project that intended to solve this issue.

Nevertheless,  the JQuery Form Builder remained to be very good reference for the JQuery Form Builder Plugin Project. Just drop me a mail if you are interested to join this project.

Happy New Year 2011!