Hilla, the type-safe web framework for Spring Boot, has announced the release of version 2.0. This latest release utilizes Spring Boot 3, Java 17, and Jakarta EE 10, providing access to the latest features and improvements in the Java ecosystem. Hilla 2.0 also includes an improved TypeScript generator, web socket support for reactive endpoints, support for GraalVM native images, a simplified theming mechanism, and a new SSO Kit.
With Hilla's new reactive endpoints feature, developers can send data to clients in a stream without using the usual HTTP request-response pattern. This feature uses Reactor to stream data and needs the hillaPush feature flag to be turned on. With Hilla's reactive endpoints, server push allows developers to push data to the frontend in a sequence of 0-N items that can be transformed, connected to other fluxes, and have multiple subscribers. To learn more about reactive endpoints, and reactive programming, developers can explore the blog post by the CTO at Vaadin, Artur Signell and Project Reactor reference guide.
Another significant addition to Hilla 2.0 is GraalVM Native image support. This feature includes AOT compiler hints required by Spring Boot to build a native GraalVM image. Native images offer faster startup times and lower memory usage compared to JVM-based applications. Developers can build a native image locally through Maven, and leverage buildpacks to create a container for production deployment.
Nevertheless, Hilla 2.0 also includes simplified theming, a new SSO Kit for quickly adding single sign-on capabilities to Hilla apps, and an improved TypeScript generator. The SSO Kit allows integration with third-party identity providers like Okta, Keycloak, and Azure Active Directory, and provides all the necessary configuration for adding single sign-on capabilities to Hilla applications based on OpenID Connect.
Spring Developer Advocate at VMware Tanzu, Dan Vega expressed his enthusiasm about the Hilla 2.0 release by tweeting:
This is super exciting to see. Hilla is on the short list of projects I need to check out.
Developers can upgrade to Hilla 2.0 by replacing the version number with 2.0.0 in their pom.xml file and updating jakarta.servlet:jakarta.servlet-api instead of javax.servlet:javax.servlet-api, and import statements to use jakarta packages instead of javax. Hilla's next feature release, Hilla 2.1, is expected to include an enhanced SSO Kit, improved Form binding in Hilla + React, better starters and documentation, and more.
Developers who are interested in trying out Hilla 2.0, can make use of the documentation to get started.