GWT and Android: A marriage made in heaven?

The Google Web Toolkit has many awesome advantages for developing AJAX applications: Reuse of your favorite toolchain features (IDE, codeassist, debugger, refactor, build, etc), as well as producing much more compact Javascript code than any JS compiler/obfuscator can ever hope for. But one feature that initially caught our eye was the ability to reuse code in multiple environments.

Chronoscope started as two separate projects. The first, a prototype server-side renderer for Timepedia using the very capable JFreeChart. The second, a pure-JS canvas version written to test the ability to do AJAX charts without Flash. The JFreeChart version then became the version which would be used for static chart icons, sparklines, fallback for older browsers, and export to PDF/SVG.

Immediately, we encountered the problem that the two code bases had different features, different rendering style, which required laborious coding to keep them matched as close as possible. Over time, as the feature sets evolved, it became harder and harder to keep the JS client charts and server-side charts in sync.

Then Google released GWT and it immediately offered a solution: Write one chart library, in Java, and deploy to Servlet, Applet, Browser JS, and maybe J2ME and Flash. It was an enormous promise, and we initially adopted GWT for this purpose without realizing the other tremendous benefits that GWT provides for developing large JS codebases.

Early on, we produced prototypes of GWT Chronoscope running in servlet and applet environments, but with the release of the Android SDK, the initial promise has been fulfilled: GWT code running in a mobile environment.

The following is a screencast demo showing Chronoscope, with no changes to the core codebase running in the Android SDK emulator natively (not in the web browser).



It required about 8 hours to get this working. Most of the time was spent finding the Android equivalents of Java2D calls, and writing 6 Java classes (the Chronoscope Canvas abstraction layered over Android Graphics API)

At this point, we've only touched the tip of the iceberg. Future enhancements in GWT may allow this portability to go even further, such as compiling to ActionScript.

If your attending the GWT Conference on December 3-6, feel free to track down Ray Cromwell or Shawn O'Connor for a live demo.


p.s. There are no ticks or axis labels being shown in the sceencast to maximize screen real estate as well as performance. Android SDK text rendering is a drag on performance at the moment.