GWT Fun

Over the past 4 weeks I have been building an impressive list of what to do an what not to do when it comes to GWT. In my last post I mentioned an issue with JSP 2.0 and GWT.

Tip #1
Tonight, I came across a very similar issue with IE6. (might be IE7 problem also).

the Script tag which you include the GWT module with looks like

<script .../>

But , if that is how you do it, IE won't like it. In fact it will render a big blank page with no error and "Done." down the bottom.

You won't even see an ounce of the "page" even if GWT is not the primary content.

The quick fix is to change the single script tag to have an open and close (and put some space between them).

That took all of about 20 minutes to discover.

So far, my verdict on GWT is 80% for and 20% against. I am certain the 20% against, ie things that I can find I don't like, are because I have not yet worked out the "good" or proper way of doing things.

Tip #2

Some people have mentioned about needing the rpc interfaces in the client package and that they don;t like it. Well I didn't like it either. I have an rpc package.

I found a sneaky (smelly) way of just having arbitrary "code" for GWT to find.

Create a "BaseGWT.gwt.xml" and point the entry-point class at an empy implementation of EntryPoint. But in this gwt.xml, set all the source folders that you want.

Then in the "other" modules, inherit it. Now, the compiler (maven2) complains and errors, but because of a bug in the maven2 GWT plugin, it keeps going (and doesn't fail) and the other modules happily inherit this dummy GWT module and all the trappings (other source folders).

When I find a better way of doing this, I'll holler.