Introduction to the Google WEB Toolkit framework

Google Web Toolkit (GWT) is an open source Java software development framework designed to help developers who are not well versed in browsers to write Web 2.0 applications more easily, that is, to write asynchronous Web applications via AJAX, see Google Web toolk It site. Writing a Dynamic Web application is now a tedious and error-prone process that takes 90% of the time to handle the subtle incompatibilities between Web browsers and platforms, and because JavaScript is not modular, it is difficult to share, test, and reuse AJAX components. GWT overcomes these flaws and still provides users with the same dynamic and standard experience. Write front-end code in the Java programming language, and then the GWT compiler converts Java classes into JavaScript and HTML that support browsers. ”

The software required for this tutorial

Before you begin, you need to download and install the following software on your computer:

NetBeans IDE 6.0 Web & Java EE.

Java Standard Development Kit (jdk™) version 5.0 or 6.0

Google Web Toolkit

In the IDE, open Plugin Manager (under the Tools menu) and install the GWT plugin, as shown in the following illustration:

For more information about GWT, please refer to http://code.google.com/webtoolkit/. For more information about the IDE's GWT support, consult the https://gwt4nb.dev.java.net/. If you are familiar with GWT, you are welcome to contribute code for the GWT plug-in used in this tutorial.

Note: This tutorial will be based on some of the examples presented in Google WEB TOOLKIT:GWT Java AJAX programming, written by Prabhakar Chaganti and in February 2007 by Packt Publis Hing published.

Setting up the environment

First, use the IDE to generate a basic source structure. When you're done, we'll look at it carefully to understand how GWT works inside.