24/7 Flow with Vaadin 24.7

Vaadin 24.7 keeps your development moving smoothly with smarter automation, stronger security, and streamlined workflows. This release simplifies upgrades, enhances security, and improves automation—so you can spend less time on maintenance and more time building great business applications. Whether you're modernizing a legacy app or starting fresh, Vaadin 24.7 lets you focus on what matters—shipping great software.

Read on to explore the key improvements in this release.

What’s new in Vaadin Flow?

This release strengthens Flow’s resilience and security, making applications more robust in real-world scenarios. With better handling of server-client communication, improved authentication management, and optimized performance for Quarkus-based applications, Flow is even better suited for modern, scalable deployments.

• Fault-tolerant messaging for server-client communication: Improves the reliability of server-client communication by making it more resilient to network issues and disruptions.
• Native image support for Quarkus: Quarkus-based applications can now be built as native images, improving startup time and resource efficiency.
• OAuth2 logout configuration: Adds support for configuring OAuth2 logout, making it easier to manage authentication flows in Vaadin applications.

What’s new in Hilla?

This release enhances file uploads, strengthens type safety in Kotlin projects, and ensures compatibility with the latest front-end technologies. React 19 support, improved TypeScript type generation, and better control over UI behavior make Hilla development more seamless.

• File Upload enhancements: Native file upload capabilities for a smoother experience in Hilla applications.
• React 19 support (optional): Ensures compatibility with the latest version of React, enabling modern front-end development.
• Disable progress indicator: Developers can now choose to disable the progress indicator, providing more control over loading behavior.
• Kotlin form validation now works out of the box: Form validation in Kotlin now behaves the same way as in Java, eliminating the need for Kotlin-specific workarounds.
• JSpecify nullability support: Enables the use of JSpecify standard @Nullable and @NonNull annotations, deprecating Hilla’s non-standard annotations for better interoperability.
• Data binding enhancements: Introduces useComboBoxDataProvider and useGridDataProvider React hooks, simplifying data provider setup with filtering.

Modernization Toolkit: Expanded Vaadin 7 component and API support

Migrating from Vaadin 7 to Flow is now easier with broader support for legacy components and APIs in the Modernization Toolkit. This update adds over 50 classes from the com.vaadin.data package, key UI components, and essential utilities, bringing coverage to approximately 70% for typical Vaadin 7 applications.

Included in this update:

• Data binding and API support: Over 50 classes, including FieldGroup, Container, Item, Property, BeanItem, BeanItemContainer, PropertySetItem, and Vaadin 7 Converters and Validators.
• Single-value components: TextField, TextArea, CheckBox, CustomField, and DateField.
• Multi-value components: ComboBox and Table.
• Additional utilities: Page, MenuBar, ReflectTools, FontAwesome, and UserError.
• Abstractions: Including abstractions themselves like AbstractComponent, AbstractSelect, AbstractField, and AbstractTextField and their relationships with each other and the other components from the V7 API.

This enhancement makes it significantly easier to modernize Vaadin 7 and 8 applications while preserving familiar APIs and components. To learn more about streamlining your migration, check out our recent blog post: Your first step to Java application modernization.

Vaadin Copilot: Smarter tools, smoother upgrades, and more control

Vaadin 24.7 expands Copilot’s capabilities, making development more intuitive and efficient. With improved component management, smarter automation, and easier upgrades, Copilot helps developers build faster with less effort.

• Custom components support for Flow: Copilot now supports working with custom components, providing full access to standard component operations. Users can explore the structure of custom components using View or Outline navigation.​
• Version upgrade helper: Copilot's version upgrade helper assists in identifying and updating outdated Vaadin-related dependencies, ensuring your projects remain up-to-date with minimal effort.
• Impersonation: Quickly switch between user accounts to test different roles and permissions without needing separate logins. Switch users via the Copilot activation button menu. With this, one can leave login functionality for Control Center.

• Connect to Service: A new tool for seamlessly connecting Grid and ComboBox components to backend services. Use the Entity Editor (manually or with the help of the AI assistant) to create beans and generate sample data (for Grids only).
• AI request permission: Copilot now asks for user confirmation before sending AI requests, giving developers greater control over data sharing.
• Generate dummy data for charts (Hilla only): Developers can now generate realistic example data for grids and charts, making it easier to prototype and test data-driven views.

• Expanded AI capabilities (experimental): AI-powered features have been integrated across various parts of Copilot. By enabling the Copilot Experimental Features flag, developers can access tools like the documentation assistant and theme generation.
• React 19 compatibility: Copilot is now fully compatible with React 19.

Control Center: General availability and major enhancements

Control Center 1.2 marks a major milestone with its general availability. This release enhances security with Passkey authentication via WebAuthn, allowing users to authenticate using secure device-based credentials such as fingerprints, facial recognition, or hardware security keys. It also introduces a built-in log viewer for easier debugging and automates domain and certificate management. With improved configuration options, Control Center makes it easier to deploy, manage, and monitor your applications.

• Log viewer: A built-in log viewer allows developers to view and analyze application logs directly within Control Center, making debugging and monitoring more efficient.
• Passkey (WebAuthn) authentication: Control Center now supports WebAuthn, enabling passkey authentication as a more secure and convenient alternative to traditional passwords. Instead of relying on credentials that can be forgotten or stolen, users can log in using the capabilities based on their devices, such as fingerprints, facial recognition, or hardware security keys.
• Automated domain name updates: Domain names are now updated automatically, reducing manual configuration effort.
• Automated certificate creation and renewal: SSL/TLS certificates are created and renewed automatically, ensuring secure applications with minimal effort.
• Environment variable management: Developers can now manage environment variables directly in Control Center, providing more flexibility in application configuration.

Design System: New components, better flexibility

The Design System continues to evolve with new components, enhanced layouts, and greater flexibility for data handling and accessibility. This release introduces the Card component for effortless modern UI design, Gantt chart support with drag & drop editing, and various improvements to Grid, layouts, and form controls. Developers also benefit from expanded customization options and accessibility enhancements, making it easier to build user-friendly, well-structured applications.

• New Card component: The new Card component provides a great-looking, accessible, and configurable implementation of this modern UI pattern without writing a single line of CSS. (Supports Hilla; Flow support is coming up in the 24.8 release.)

• Gantt chart: Vaadin Charts now supports Gantt charts, providing a clear visualization of project schedules, timelines, and task dependencies, complete with drag & drop editing.

Try Vaadin 24.7

Upgrade to Vaadin 24.7 today, and let us know what you think. For a full list of improvements and changes, check out the release notes.

Got questions? Our experts are here to help—Reach out or join the discussion on the Vaadin Forum.