Still wresting with GWT and App Engine, and I have come to this problem:
I have an app engine populated with various data, which I would like to present on the client using a GWT RPC.
I have found out the hard way that, because my Model objects are annotated with JDO, i can't just send them back to the client because they aren't serializable. This means I'm going to have to create a layer of intermediate classes to extract data from my model objects, and send it back to the client to use asynchronously.
I am wondering though, it is possible to construct a GWT object in a servlet and send it back to be used? For example, the servlet would be receive my asynchronous request, pull out the data i want from the database, create a GWT VerticalPanel() with appropriate child elements for the data, and send that VerticalPanel back to the client to be injected.
My understanding of the Java / Javascript interaction that is going on here is still foggy, and I'm thinking that sending a Java object that is not compiled to Javascript after the application is deplyed will not work. Can anybody clarify this for me?
No the server can't create GWT UI objects (like vertical panels) to be used in the presentation layer, nor should it, that's why it's called a 'server' and a 'presentation layer' one serves the data and handles all the business logic, the other displays things on a screen and allows a user to interact with them.
You can however send your JPA annotated POJO's to the front end just fine (we do it in all our applications). You simply need to include the source code for the annotations themselves so that GWT knows how to compile them. You also need to make sure your POJOs's are in a package that is referenced by a NameOfXmlFile.gwt.xml file, eg:
<module>
<inherits name='com.google.gwt.user.User'/>
<source path="domain" />
</module>
This file in my case is in a folder above a package called 'domain' where all my JPA annotated POJO's live. Then in your client side you tell it to inherit that .gwt.xml file:
<module>
<inherits name='com.google.gwt.user.User'/>
<!-- Domain layer references -->
<inherits name='your.package.structure.NameOfXmlFile'/>
</module>
There are restrictions on what you can put in those classes (like for example BigDecimal is not supported, etc) but anything that can be compiled by the GWT compiler (and JPA annotations certainly can be) can be sent without needing any kind of transfer objects. This is one of the real strengths of GWT, that you can use the same JPA Pojos in your entire application, without ever needing to create any other similar object.
Edit: I just noticed you said JDO and not JPA. I assume the same applies there as well though if they are just annotations?
I've seen good answers, so I won't repeat them myself..
Anyway my simple but vital suggestion is: the only way to go is through POJO objects.. BUT IMHO to avoid problems, remember that your POJO objects SHOULD be really PLAIN
Anyway, I can suggest you also a little framework I recently did (few hours of work, so don't expect a rocket!).
It is pojo-injector: http://code.google.com/p/pojo-injector
It helps you in translating your data models to POJO and back... It's based on annotations (only on the POJO side!).
I hope it can help.
This is (imho) one of the problems with GWT.
Basically in Java Web applications it's pretty common to have data or domain objects (which would be your JDO objects) and presentation objects, which are sent to the view. Some go much further than this and can have many more layers of abstraction ("go ahead, add one more layer").
I can see the argument for this but it adds a lot of boilerplate as you translate objects between layers.
Anyway, in GWT you need to do this if your domain objects are POJOs (and as with JPA, even though they claim to be POJOs, the annotations make them not so in reality).
GWT will do this for you on objects returned by your RPC interface but there are certain classes you can't use (eg BigDecimal) as there is no Javascript equivalent (so to use BigDecimals you pass Strings around to construct BigDecimals yourself on the serverside when you ened them and convert them back to Strings when you send them to the client).
Related
GWT's servlet implementation has onBefore/onAfterDeserialization which would give me a hook with which to start and stop transactions without doing anything fancy, however those methods don't allow me to properly check for error conditions after the service method got invoked, I just have access to the serialized return value, not directly to any exception that might have been thrown, so deciding whether to roll back or not is not possible that way without rewriting parts the GWT servlet.
I was thinking about using aspectj's compile-time weaving. However, this does not work with Netbeans' compile-on-save feature because the module needs to be recompiled using the aspectj compiler.
How about LTW (load-time-weaving)? Is there any way (or example) to add LTW to the webapp container without using the Spring framework?
I was also thinking about using AOP based on Java dynamic proxies, ie. to put a proxy in front of the servlet. Again, the question arises how to tell the Jetty WebApp container to load the proxy instead of the original servlet.
Or is there any ready-to-use solution out there already?
I think you could overwrite a combination of
public String processCall(RPCRequest rpcRequest) from RemoteServiceServlet and RPC.invokeAndEncodeResponse to do what you want.
Not ideal, as you need to copy/paste a few lines of code, but they really are only a few.
I myself hit the same problems as I needed some customizations, and relevant methods didn't had the access modifier that I needed, so I ended up copy/pasting some portions.
I can't comment on the rest of your question, but I don't expect to find any ready-to-use solutions, as GWT-RPC doesn't seem to have any new fans out there; just people maintaining legacy systems. Therefore, I expect that you either don't find anything or find solutions that are no longer maintained.
In some implementations, I've seen jsp's using java bean classes acting as an intermediate store/data access layer to get data from a jcr.
Why is this, since the jsp can access the jcr directly via the jcr api.
Separation of concerns? Memory cache for the data?
Just wondering why such a pattern exists when the jcr api was written in the first place.
Using scriptlet's might not be so problematic in smaller installations but is in large multi site projects.
Separating UI code and model/business logic eases maintainability and allows reusability of code upon projects. Also changing layout's gets much easier. Usually this seperation is done by using a component bean to access the JCR repo and to provide the data and by using the JSP just for the view.
Just imagine that your customer requires a large UI change propably in multiple sites. It's harder to change JSPs mixed up with scriptlets and UI code, especially if you have a lot of them.
From an OO perspective using JSPs and scriptlets prevents you from using inheritance and composition. Scriptlet's can not be made abstract.
I experienced that java beans are easier to debug then scriptlets, especially in case of an exception and java beans can be easier unit tested.
I am developing an GWT application that uses Hibernate for data persistence on the server side. There are Objects like "Customers" with several attributes like Strings, Integers and Dates.
My problem is to get these objects to the Client to display them (and change/create them and send them to the server). But I always get serialization errors when trying to use my own Types. I read books, searched the internet, read source code and tried out samples. I finally "converted" the attributes of my Objects into the fields of an ArrayList, but I think that can't be the way I should go.
I am currently using gwt-2.0.3 with Eclipse.
Looking forward to reading your suggestions!
This problem occurs because hibernate is using its own colections (PersistentSet and similar). You should use DTO pattern or use Gilead. I'd suggest Gilead (earlier known as hibernate4gwt), you have to configure it and your problem should be gone (read their documentation first to know what is the problem and how Gilead solves it).
If your problem is not related with lazy loading/collections, then your objects are not serializable. Make sure that your classes implement Serializable interface and have zero-argument constructors.
Is there any way to have the same class implemented differently on the client vs the server?
To avoid the "Why do you want to do that?" question.. I will elaborate
I am converting a very large Java client/server application. Currently it uses a Swing GUI client and talks to the server via Spring remoting (RPC). Using GWT RPC with Spring services is not a problem, there are several excellent examples available and the all seem to work well.
Several classes that are common to both the client and the server contain data that is passed back and forth. These classes also contain some behavior that is implemented by using the standard JRE classes. For example, one class contains, parses and formats date and time, including time zone, DST, etc. in a locale specific way. I could rewrite/refactor it but the application is over 10 million SLOC, resulting in literally millions of references to this class alone, so a major rewrite is not cost effective.
To use this as an example, GWT provides excellent i18n support for parsing and formatting dates. But the implementation is different to the way the JRE does it.
So I'm looking for a cleaver way where by I can inject an implementation into the shell of my DateTime class, depending on whether it is in the client (using GWT and native JS) or in the server (using the JRE). Is there a cunning way to do this? Perhaps using the module file XXXXX.gwt.xml. I'm looking for a generic solution.
You'd want to use the <super-source> for overriding one package implementation with another.
This is what GWT uses to emulate the Java Runtime classes, and (among others) provide different implementations for client and server of the com.google.gwt.regexp.shared.* classes.
I think what You are looking for, is this: <source path="client" /> in your project gwt.xml file. It tells the GWT generator where to look for client side code to convert to JS. In my project I have it set up this way:
<source path="client" />
<source path="shared" />
Basically client code is in the client directory, and in shared we keep beans and some data wrappers for client and server side.
What you could do, is to add the packages you want to convert to client with the source path like above. But you must remember, that the classes you are going to convert, can be composed only of objects and properties which GWT generator can convert into client-side java script. I'm not sure also if more accurate path can be put in the source path, like:
<source path="shared/beans/whatever" />
Another drawback is, that if you use GWT i18n support, it handles different locale in time of compilation by its own - which is good. If you decide to use your own mechanism, your classes must contain some logic to be aware of locale being used currently, which must be compatible with GWT.
In short, how do you transfer semantic data between client and server with GWT and which frameworks do you use? Read on for more details that I've thought about.
For example, using GWT 2.2.0 features like the RequestFactory will bring the constraint to have java beans transferred while the semantic resources are represented as triples and a resource can have a varying set of properties. So the RequestFactory itself cannot be shaped to transfer semantic-driven data easily.
A way to do that would be to use RequestFactory with beans that represent triples. Such bean would have 3 properties: subject, predicate, object. These beans will be transferred to client which will know to query, change their properties and then send them to server. This approach will however need a custom implementation(there are no GWT-based frameworks to represent semantic data on client-side, from what I've searched so far) and that could prove buggy or unoptimized. I've seen this approach in this project: http://code.google.com/p/gwt-odb-ui/ - it used GWT-RPC and implements some classes that represent semantic resources. However, I think it's in an incipient stage so I'm reluctant to copy their model.
Also, I've found that Restlets is a framework that supports the semantic web approach to applications. However, there is no documentation or an example on how to use Restlets with Semantic Web and perhaps with GWT. Also, Restlets is also supporting GWT. Does anyone know if this is a viable solution or not?
Thank you!
Restlet should work quite well for you. It has a GWT edition able to automatically serialize your triple beans. In addition, it also comes with an org.restlet.ext.rdf extension, including a Link class similar to your triple bean idea.
For further documentation, I would suggest the "Restlet in Action" book which covers GWT and the semantic web from a Restlet and REST point of view.