Hi all,
With HTML5 a new breed of applications have become common, the so called single-page apps, where the
client side is written entirely in Javascript using jQuery, Dojo, Mootools etc. The server is used
to fetch data, through JSON.
GWT is a possible choice for Java devs, however using Java for heavy client side apps is a little
clunky. Google also seems to have abandoned GWT and moved resources to Dart.
Click is mostly concerned with responding to requests with HTML code so it isn't a good fit for
these single-page apps.
Most of these single-page apps use Rest frameworks as the backend.
I've been wondering if it is worth adding a Service concept to Click that can be used to serve up
JSON/XML etc to single-page apps. The Service would be a first class citizen similar to Page, but
only with the onInit lifecycle method. Other public methods is for handling the request eg:
class MyService {
public void onInit() {
// Only lifecycle method?
}
public ActionResult getPersonData() {
}
public ActionResult savePersonData() {
}
}
I'm not thinking of a Rest based architecture here, simply a JSON/XML over HTTP
service layer.
ClickServlet might also have to be refactored into a Filter for more flexible
URL mappings.
On the other hand this might just be reinventing the wheel. One thing which would be nice with Click
(compared to the other Rest frameworks) is our integration with Velocity.
Thoughts?
Kind regards
Bob
