A Brief Talk About Dropwizard

Hello, friend!

In my practice working with Java, I, like most of you, mostly worked with the Spring Framework. And it’s no surprise, as the so-called “magic” of Spring significantly simplifies development by automating many routine processes and making complex things more understandable — of course, unless you dive deeply into the principles of how Spring itself works.

However, apart from Spring, there are other frameworks.

Recently, I had the opportunity to get acquainted with one of them – Dropwizard.

Despite its name, there’s almost no “magic” in it, or only a minimal amount. This can be a significant advantage for developers who prefer maximum control over the development process. Like Spring, Dropwizard is completely free, which can also be considered a definite plus.

One of the main advantages of Dropwizard is the minimal overhead, as it does not contain the complex mechanisms typical of Spring.

As a result, services start quickly, and resource usage remains optimal.

The framework also has built-in TLS support, which greatly simplifies the implementation of secure APIs, as well as built-in metrics and monitoring. With Dropwizard Metrics, you can easily track the performance of a service without needing to add third-party libraries.

However, apart from the advantages, there are certain controversial aspects.

For example, configuration in Dropwizard is done exclusively through a YAML file, which limits the choice of configuration methods. This can, of course, be seen as a plus. In Spring, mixing configurations in .properties files, Java code, and annotations can sometimes create chaos. On the other hand, this can be a disadvantage if you need flexibility in configuration approaches. So, whether this is an advantage or a disadvantage is an individual matter.

Another controversial point is the lack of built-in Dependency Injection (DI). In Spring, it comes “out of the box,” but here, if you need DI, you’ll have to add it manually using third-party libraries. Again, this creates a certain dilemma: on the one hand, you can choose from several options (Google Guice, HK2, Dagger), but on the other, each additional decision increases complexity, which partly undermines the
simplicity and ease of Dropwizard.

In my opinion, the most optimal solution in this case is Google Guice – it integrates well with Dropwizard and allows you to maintain control over the code.

When it comes to the community, it’s clearly not as large as Spring’s.

Fortunately, the developers have taken care, and there’s quite a good documentation on the official website that can help solve some tricky issues. And here again, in my opinion, it’s a controversial point.

Dropwizard is an excellent choice for those who value control, speed, and simplicity in configuration. However, when working with it, it’s important to carefully manage dependencies to avoid overloading the project with unnecessary libraries and losing the key advantages of this framework.

Our team at Swan Software Solutions enjoys learning. We like to explore new tools, technologies, languages, frameworks and more. We believe that we succeed when our clients succeed. To find out more about how we can help your technology needs, contact us to set up a free discovery call.