Introduction to SMARTGWT, part 1th

Since the launch of Google Web Toolkit, the vast majority of Java developers have been attracted to web development, and a lot of GWT based extensions have emerged. The newly launched SMARTGWT is undoubtedly one of the best, and it is the GWT API that wraps up the mature Ajax framework smartclient. SMARTGWT contains richer Web controls, but the powerful server-side data integration feature that makes it stand out from other GWT extensions makes it easy for users to develop Web applications that operate business data, making it a tool for enterprise-class Web2.0 development.

SMARTGWT Overview

In a nutshell, SMARTGWT is the GWT API that encapsulates smartclient. And SmartClient is an Open-source enterprise-class Ajax development framework.

The launch of Google Web Toolkit dramatically lowers the threshold for Java developers to web development. However, GWT itself offers relatively limited controls and functionality. So there are a lot of third-party open source expansion libraries. Many extension libraries use GWT to do Java encapsulation of existing JavaScript libraries, and to provide GWT with more APIs available. SMARTGWT is one of the best, and its low-level uses smartclient, the mature Ajax library. SMARTGWT has been developing since 2008 and has been in a very active state of development. The 2.0 edition, officially released in December 2009, has become a full-fledged WEB 2.0 development framework.

SMARTGWT is more than just "another Web control Library," and its biggest feature is the framework for consolidating client and server-side data. Because the underlying smartclient implements the Ajax version of the MVC pattern, the integration of back-end data in SMARTGWT is the ability to build controls, rather than the modules that users need to assemble themselves. Need to deal with a variety of types, complex structure of business data is the characteristics and difficulties of enterprise-level WEB development, SMARTGWT on data manipulation, greatly simplifying the threshold of enterprise-class Web2.0 application development. That's what makes SMARTGWT different. In a later introduction, you can see that some of the most complex typical data applications are implemented in SMARTGWT with very little code.

Overall, SMARTGWT has the following characteristics:

Rich controls. Many of the more complex common interfaces are packaged into simple and easy-to-use controls. such as editable tree forms, querying common filter creators and calendars like Google calendar, and so on.

Built-in data consolidation capabilities. Using the SmartClient MVC pattern, users can easily develop an interface to create, update, retrieve, and delete server-side data by defining a data source. Even within 10 lines of code.

Support Skin. Through the Skin, users can customize the entire style of the interface of a consistent solution. Just switch online, and you can change to a new style.

Is it difficult to get started with such a powerful function? Whether! GWT based SMARTGWT is very easy to use, and even if it's cool, the implementation code is very brief, and Java developers can quickly make a dazzling Web application.

SMARTGWT has four different distributions: the free LGPL version, the Professional edition, the power version and the Enterprise Edition. In addition to the license difference, the functional difference is mainly reflected in the server side. The LGPL version is a pure client GWT library, while other billing versions provide server-side components such as Servlet,sql connectors. This article mainly describes the client GWT APIs included in the LGPL version.

Rich UI Components

SMARTGWT provides an extremely rich UI component. In addition to traditional components such as forms, menus, and dialogs, SMARTGWT includes lists of sorting, paging, grouping, filtering, summarizing, print preview, and real-time updates, drag-and-drop between component elements, accordion partitioning, and stack layouts. It can be said that SMARTGWT is a powerful "advanced" component library.

Here are some of the featured components. These examples are derived from the Showcase example application that comes with the SMARTGWT release.

Pick Tree

A tree selector that resembles a multilevel menu.

Figure 1. Tree Selector

Listing 1. Tree Selector Code Instance

Tree　tree　=　new　Tree();
…
　 PickTreeItem　departmentItem　=　new　PickTreeItem();
　 departmentItem.setValueTree(tree);

Treegird

The combination of a tree and a table, a control that people who handle complex multilevel data want!

Figure 2. Tree table