Getting Started With the GWT

The world is moving too fast now a day. People wants immediate response from the web pages rather than the total reloading of the page. That's why, web applications using AJAX, are becoming more and more popular day by day. Now suppose, you want to develop this kind of web applications, but you are not familiar with javascript or the AJAX technology and you know Object Oriented Programming, you have the basics of developing desktop applications, then GWT is the perfect tool you are looking for.
GWT (Google Web Toolkit) is a marvelous tool to develop web app with java programming. You write your application in java like a desktop app, and GWT will convert it to a web-app by compiling the java code to javascript code. You can have a look here for the official review of GWT.
For developing using GWT, you have to:

• Install the Java SDK. You can get it from here.
  
• Have Eclipse IDE (version 3.0 or later).
  
• Download GWT from here.
• Unzip the Google Web Toolkit package.

If the above four steps are finished, you are ready to give a run with GWT.

Now, Look at the folder you have just unzipped. You'll see there are two command line utility named "projectCreator" and "applicationCreator". These two files will help you to create a new GWT project. Follow this steps now:

• First of all, we will create a project with eclipse support by running this script on the command-line:

  projectCreator.cmd -eclipse TestGWT -out samples\TestGWT

This command will create a Eclipse project named "TestGWT" under the "samples" folder.

• Then, run this script:

applicationCreator.cmd -out samplesTestGWT -eclipse TestGWT -overwrite org.hillol.testgwt.client.TestGWT

This will generate all the files needed two start a GWT project.

• To open your project in Eclipse, launch Eclipse and click the File -> Import menu. Choose "Existing Projects into Workspace" in the first screen of the wizard, and enter the directory in which you generated the .project file in the next screen of the wizard. When you are complete, you should see your GWT project loaded into your Eclipse workspace:

• Now, run the project. You will see a page with a logo and a button. Click on the button, you will see a dialogue box popped up. This is the default simplest GWT project. Later I will show you how to create more complex applications and how to communicate with the server.