Google Web ToolkitBy

Kaushik Sahoo

Mindfire SolutionsDate: Oct 30, 2013

What is GWT?

A set of tools for building AJAX apps in the Java language

Write, run, test, and debug in Java

Is it a compiler?

Why? Handwritten Scripts vs GWT

Poor Usability

• history, bookmarks

Poor Tool Support• Limited IDE support

• Debugging too often boils down to window.alert()

• Profilers? Findbugs?

Why? Handwritten Scripts vs GWT

Hard to test

• JUnit support for GWT

Quality Risks

• New categories of runtime-only bugs (e.g. spelling bugs)

1047: x.compnent = getValue("x");

• Poor JS reuse model encourages "from scratch" or copy/paste

Why? Handwritten Scripts vs GWT

Hard for large teams to work on the same code base

Auto Complete Browser Compatibility

Remember our Dear friend IE !!!

All these points start to matter a lot for big projects

What is the Solution?

Can Java be used for client-side scripting?More or less, the impossible…

Unless you translate Java into JavaScript

GWT Features

HTML 5 support Mobile Web support Cross-browser? An abstract DOM class History class - Demo RPC Widgets JSNI Presentation - CSS

Widgets and Panels

Demos at Showcase

RPC

GWT supports various ways to communicate with the server JSON, XML etc.

But a pure Java RPC interface would be awesome. Isn't it?

JSNI

JavaScript Native Interfacepublic static native void alert(String msg) /*-{$wnd.alert(msg);

}-*/;

Things to know...

Technology second, users first.

It isn't Java vs Javascript or Java vs everything else.

Download exactly what you need.

GWT Team slogan: the bling is on the inside

Hosted mode

Question and Answer

Thank you