| Re: [e4-dev] E4 for Ajax applications? |
Hello Axel,
Axel Rauschmayer wrote on 08/29/2009 09:24:48 PM:
> I'm currently evaluating client/server solutions for Ajax
> applications. Does the following scenario make sense? Will this be
> supported in a future E4 version? When?
>
> - Server: OSGi modules written in either Java or _javascript_
I believe we already support this as of e4 0.9, but the _javascript_ support is not very well tested, we don't have examples, and hence I wouldn't say we are there yet.
Btw, if anyone has time to experiment with this and write an example _javascript_ bundle, that would be great!
> - Client: Dojo
The prototypical "PDE site.xml editor" (see http://download.eclipse.org/e4/downloads/drops/R-0.9-200907291930/e4-news-all.html#web2desktop) uses Dojo client-side. We complemented Dojo with API for a few higher-level concepts, a small subset of what we call "Eclipse Application Services" or "the twenty things". This is about being able to integrate independently developed UI components to form an application, for example API for an editor to signal that it has unsaved changes, and a callback for triggering a save.
> - Client-server communication: via JSON-RPC
The editor I mentioned uses XMLHttpRequest to communicate with the server, and it uses JSON as the data transport format. Does this count?
> - Server-side plugins should be able to contribute client-side
> modules. How would this be done? One possibility is for the server-
> side modules to contribute server-side directories that are accessible
> from the client. This kind of server-side file system contribution
> would be desirable for static content (HTML, CSS, images, ...), too.
Using the Jetty/Equinox integration, you can do this already by contributing server-side directories through extensions. It is not very elegant though and I would like to hear your ideas on this - can you give more details on what kind of support you would like to see?
> If all of this worked, it would make E4 a killer Ajax platform. E4
> would be a lightweight alternative to Spring, Aptana Jaxer, etc.
Killer or not, it's "e4" (lowercase) not "E4". ;-)
> I do realize that this is the SWT/Browser Edition approach turned
> inside out, but it would give one excellent modularity while having
> more control over the GUI in the browser. Plus, server-side language
> agnosticism is also a cool feature.
I am not sure I fully understand what you are saying. I get the part about modularity (but do Ajax developers care about modularity?) - but what do you mean by "more control over the GUI in the browser"?
Cheers,
Boris