Top 9 Java Libraries Will Save Your More Time (Part 1)

In Java, we have tons of libraries are available and which can reduce your configuration efforts and also can save somewhat time to manage file structure for you; but here I created a listicle of the Top 9 Best Java libraries which I already used for our industrial and freelance projects in my career. I know the struggle is real.

I really support Open Source libraries/ecosystems and if they have better documentation, it will work definitely fine for you.

Here is my listicle for the best libraries to use in Java:

1. jHipster
2. Maven
3. Apache Commons
4. Google Gson
5. Hibernate-ORM
6. Junit
7. Mockito
8. Log4j and Slf4j
9. Java standard libraries

We are covering up bolded one in this article, please see another part for remaining details for amazing libraries to use in java.

1) jHipster

IT industries are using hybrid applications mostly in all the companies. Hybrid applications mean, on frontend/backend/database — on these 3 layers they are using some other technologies.

JHipster is a development platform to quickly generate, develop, & deploy modern web applications & microservice architectures. It is a Full Stack Platform for the Modern Developer!

For example, if you want to generate, develop, and deploy Spring/Spring Boot + Angular Web applications, jHipster will perfectly fit your requirement most of the time.

Oh, Dude! this one can save you months of development. I could definitely say that this one is my personal favorite and that I keep a special place for it in my heart. It basically generates your whole application from your front-end to the back-end. The only thing you need to add is the business logic behind the architecture. The main and most important libraries, which are included in the generated project are:

Spring Boot — helps you accelerate and facilitate application development

Angular / AngularJS — JavaScript framework

You can find more about JHipster here.

2) Maven

You must be aware of Apache Software Foundation. Yes, It’s the world’s largest open-source foundation and worldwide largest community for developers. There are 350+ projects maintained by this community, Isn’t it so big? Do you still have doubts? Just visit here and try to remember 10 projects daily. It will take a whole 1.5–2 months to remember all the project names.

Maven is a software project management and comprehension tool. Honestly, Maven is really great repository. If you’ve never used Maven before, you’re missing out. Sometimes, I wonder how it was even possible to create enterprise applications before its creation.

Maven can manage all your project dependencies, configurations, and build configurations and even documentation only by specifying them in a single pom.xml file. pom.xml is not just for configuring your project, you can do thousands of things by using it.

Maven’s primary goal is to allow a developer to comprehend the complete state of a development effort in the shortest period of time. To attain this goal, Maven deals with several areas of concern:

• Making the build process easy
• Providing a uniform build system
• Providing quality project information
• Encouraging better development practices

You can find more about Maven here.

3) Apache Commons

We already praised Apache Software Foundation above. Let me come to the point.

Apache Commons is an Apache project focused on all aspects of reusable Java components. We can say it is a whole project focused on creating Java libraries.

There are tons of libraries under this project, you can utilize to achieve your purpose according to your requirements. Here is a shortlist of some of the best and most commonly used libraries:

• Commons IO — it is being used for easier execution of input/output operations. Checking at least the ReversedLinesFileReader is definitely worth it.
• Commons CSV — whatever you are developing, at some point you are going to face the necessity of using CSV files. This includes opening, reading, editing, saving, and creating them. I suggest using the RFC 4180 format from the CSVFormat class and UTF-8 encoding when saving/creating files.
• Commons Math: The Apache Commons Mathematics Library — the name says it all: this library contains components allowing advanced mathematics and statistics operations and computations
• Commons CLI — provides API for parsing command-line arguments. Why will you even bother creating an application without the ability to pass parameters and control its behavior?!
• Email — In your normal user-management kind of system, you just need to notify your user using emails, this library will definitely help you to send emails easily with less code. You just need to do configurations for the required parameters.

You can find more about Apache Commons here.

Stay tuned for another part to must explore the listicle of java libraries.

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© Originally Posted on 9Mood, also republished on Medium by Author Rakshit Shah (me).