Understanding available Vaadin 7 Widgets/addons 'GWT'

Question

From my understanding Vaadin consumes GWT and adds an engine on the browser end to interact with server side UI. In looking for a 'Confluence' Vaadin add on I came up with nothing. I would like to use Javascript instead of Vaadin pure Java to talk with Confluence 'rest'. However I believe that I found find some GWT Confluence plugins. Since Vaadin uses GWT already do you think a GWT confluence plugin is the way to go? Also there is a angularjs/vaadin addon and then I could us angularjs with Confluence. Your thoughts please...

Answer 1

The traditional Vaadin Framework consists of a java backend on the server and components which are rendered on client side. Most of those are client side rendering are written with Java/GWT.

In addition to this, there exist the Vaadin Elements, which are "pure" JS components for the frontend.

Is Vaadin Elements meant to be used with the Vaadin Framework?

If you wish to write a app with all logic client side (And perhaps calling some REST api), then you will need to write this in JS (perhaps with Angular/Polymer etc.). In that case you could use the vaadin elements for some of the tasks, but you will remain in the JS world.

To answer your question: Using a GWT thing and combining it with JS isn't the most up-to-date way to handle things. GWT makes sense when you wish to write frontend code with Java but certainly not for JS.