CODEWITHSUNDEEP
gwt
Jay
Jay

Reputation: 19857

Proper way to break apart a GWT widget into smaller chunks

I just want to know if this is the proper way to go about splitting up widgets in GWT that get too large, or if I am missing the concept of widgets/proper GWT usage all together.

I started out with a single class (widget), PCBuilder. As PCBuilder became too large, I decided to branch off and make two classes SuggestionPanel, and BuildControlPanel, both of which just split off PCBuilder's code into separate classes that still have access to the methods in PCBuilder:

example

This way, in my PCBuilder class, I can do something like this to add the SuggestionPanel and the BuildControlPanel to the tabs (TabLayoutPanel) that are specified in the UiBinder of PCBuilder while allowing for SuggestionPanel and BuildControlPanel to have their own separate UiBinder specifications:

example

My question is: Is this proper? Part of me thinks "no" just because it's not a nice way of doing it. On the other hand it works just fine, and my web application is somewhat broken up into manageable "sections" which is what I wanted.

Thanks for any insight.

Upvotes: 1

Views: 124

Answers (2)

Peter Knego
Peter Knego

Reputation: 80340

It's fine apart from the fact that you have circular dependencies between classes.

Why do SuggestionPanel and BuildControlPanel need to call PCBuilder? Is there any business logic in it? RPC maybe? Separate that into another class.

First, you might want to take a look at GIN - this handles dependency injection. This is good for testability.

Second, if your app goes beyond one "page", then take a look at GWT MVP.

Upvotes: 2

Jai
Jai

Reputation: 3609

You should not consider your PCBuilder as a widget. Quoting gwt -

You construct user interfaces in GWT applications using widgets that are contained within panels. Widgets allow you to interact with the user. Panels control the placement of user interface elements on the page.

Coming back to your question, my take is to create widgets only if I can reuse the same element more than once. The rest of my layout logic goes into the view. Layout shouldn't be a part of the definition of the widget as much as possible.To conclude, push styling in css, push layout in the views; widgetize only if re-usable (and core) or if adding additional functionality to existing widgets.

Upvotes: 1

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