samples VS javalin

If you're relatively new to this, I would recommend checking out the JavaFX documentation at https://openjfx.io/openjfx-docs/#maven and starting from the samples: https://github.com/openjfx/samples/tree/master/HelloFX/Maven

i also replaced the build.gradle file contents with what the openJFX suggested i changed it to. then i sync'd it after changing the javafx version in that .gradle file to 17.0.1 instead of 16.

An example pom file (maven) for a JavaFX program looks like https://github.com/openjfx/samples/blob/master/HelloFX/Maven/hellofx/pom.xml

Yes, JavaFX is a pain to configure. I'd recommend using Maven or Gradle with the JavaFX plugin to manage your application, that way you don't need to download and configure the entire OpenJFX SDK. There are samles for both Maven and Gradle in the repo you linked, so I would try them out. Note that only the Gradle sample includes a wrapper, so if you try the Maven sample you'll need to install Maven first.

Non-modular project (i.e. not using java modules): https://github.com/openjfx/samples/blob/master/CommandLine/Non-modular/Gradle/hellofx/build.gradle

example maven no modular project structure here https://github.com/openjfx/samples/tree/master/IDE/Eclipse/Non-Modular/Maven/hellofx/src/main

If you've read this far, you might be interested to know that Javalin has been offering Brotli compression through jvm-brotli for three years already, and that there have been no (reported) issues. In other words, the effort required to release and maintain this is probably not huge.

I'm a big fan of Ktor (ktor.io) but another reasonable lightweight alternative is Javelin (https://javalin.io/). Heck even Spring Boot isn't that bad. HikariCP + JooQ (has both java and kotlin codegen) for DB access if you need and you're good to go.

A similar alternative that does not rely on web sockets is https://htmx.org. I have greatly enjoyed using it with some simpler web frameworks like https://javalin.io to do some prototyping and smaller projects. I'm sure if someone made a plug and play UI library like material UI for Angular on top of htmx you could absolutely fly through MVPs.

Javalin

If you're already familiar with most of the concepts around HTTP and web services, I'd recommend using something like https://javalin.io/ which is light weight frame work that makes getting something up and running quickly a very easy task.

I've been looking at https://javalin.io/ Seems close enough to express and some big names are using it, so I wouldn't say it's fizzling out

Javalin (https://javalin.io) is strongly inspired by Express and Koa, so you should feel right at home:

If you want to do a proper comparison between the two, I would be happy to help with code examples from Javalin's side. I could even host it on https://javalin.io as a "Comparison to Jooby" blog post.