If you're looking to write a backend service using Java, I would take a serious look at dropwizard http://dropwizard.codahale.com/ http://dropwizard.codahale.co

If you're looking to write a backend service using Java, I would take a serious look at dropwizard http://dropwizard.codahale.com/ http://dropwizard.codahale.com/ The get started page is not that long, and you should be able to kill it in a few hours. At the minimum you get http requests routed to methods and restful json parsed for you automatically. If you want, you can add optional configuration, metrics, healthcheck, logging, db access, views etc.