For my full-stack projects I like to use Server-Side rendering with Javalin, j2html and htmx. Together, these libraries allow you to write interactive full-stack web applications in vanilla java. In this post I’d like to explain how the j2html library fits in this setup, go over a few benefits, and link a converter that I wrote to make building the user interface easier.

Server Side Rendering

While the last decade was dominated by client-side frameworks, many applications could perhaps have saved a lot of development time by using server-side rendering. This means that the resulting html is built on the server, including its data, styling and behaviour.