best way to externalize HTML in GWT apps?

Question

What\'s the best way to externalize large quantities of HTML in a GWT app? We have a rather complicated GWT app of about 30 \"pages\"; each page has a sort

Answer 1

The GWT Portlets framework (http://code.google.com/p/gwtportlets/) includes a WebAppContentPortlet. This serves up any content from your web app (static HTML, JSPs etc.). You can put it on a page with additional functionality in other Portlets and everything is fetched with a single async call when the page loads.

Have a look at the source for WebAppContentPortlet and WebAppContentDataProvider to see how it is done or try using the framework itself. Here are the relevant bits of source:

WebAppContentPortlet (client side)

((HasHTML)getWidget()).setHTML(html == null ? "Web App Content" : html);

WebAppContentDataProvider (server side):

HttpServletRequest servletRequest = req.getServletRequest();
String path = f.path.startsWith("/") ? f.path : "/" + f.path;
RequestDispatcher rd = servletRequest.getRequestDispatcher(path);
BufferedResponse res = new BufferedResponse(req.getServletResponse());
try {
   rd.include(servletRequest, res);
   res.getWriter().flush();
   f.html = new String(res.toByteArray(), res.getCharacterEncoding());
} catch (Exception e) {
   log.error("Error including '" + path + "': " + e, e);
   f.html = "Error including '" + path +
        "'
(see server log for details)";
}