GWT
(Google Web Toolkit) is a popular and leading framework for building
AJAX web applications. There are a number of ways for GWT applications
to communicate, the standard one is through its built-in RPC mechanism
but there is no easy way for your GWT applications to talk with Mule
endpoints directly.
SOAFaces is
a lightweight framework that ties GWT and Mule together and makes it
possible for GWT apps to access the Mule API and services directly from
the AJAX client. This is done through the SOAFaces UniversalClient java
interface which is very similar to the MuleClient interface found in
the Mule APIs. The UniversalClient allows for messages to be invoked on
Mule endpoints (SOA endpoints) and objects/data to be passed and
returned directly from the GWT client code. All this is done without
the need to use the GWT RPC mechanism. Simply use the UniversalClient
interface in much the same way you would traditionally use the
MuleClient interface in the Mule framework.
SOAFaces provides three sub APIs to develop with:
org.sofaces.services.*
This
is the main package that includes the UniversalClient interface and
facilitates the communication and marshaling (JSON or GWT/Java
serializable objects) between GWT client and Mule/SOA back end
services. This package can be used independently with any custom GWT
application and in any j2ee app server. Mule endpoints can be invoked
and messages will be routed to a MuleClient proxy on the j2ee back end.
This is all transparent to the GWT/SOAFaces developer. Mule requests
from GWT are proxied through the webserver and out to the Mule services
bus, with all marshaling handled by SOAFaces.
org.soafaces.bundle.client.*
This
package in SOAFaces makes it easy to build modular GUI applications
(called Weblets) in GWT that have convenient access to SOA services
like Mule (using UniversalClient interface). This package also provides
a simple and optional API to persist the state of GWT POJO objects, so
building modular web apps is easier and with less hassle using SOAFaces!
org.soafaces.bundle.workflow.*
This
package in SOAFaces allows building back end server components called
Tasklets. Tasklets can be used in jobs and workflows to execute back
end batch type processing. Tasklets can be chained together to form
more complex workflows and allowing message passing between the
Tasklets which provides for rich functionality to be supported. Refer
to
JobServer for an example of a job scheduling engine that implements the Tasket API and for running and managing jobs.
The
SOAFaces framework brings together these APIs for building Mule and GWT
powered applications making accessing Mule a quick hop away from your
AJAX apps.
For more information please refer to the
SOAFaces website.
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