Cross-compiling Java to JavaScript

Question

I have developed a Java applet which opens a URL connection to some different server. The applet then retrieves contents of the HTML page and do some processing and then shows to user. Can I cross-compile it to JavaScript using GWT?

Answer 1

Cross compile: No. Port: Probably. Depends on your constraints.

You won't be able to do a straight recompile and have it "just work" (GWT only supports a subset of the JRE and any UI stuff definitely isn't a part of it) but you might be able to port some of your logic over. If you're using XPath to pull content out of the page, that code most likely will need to be redone as well. There's a GWT wrapper for Sarissa that works pretty well.

Also, since the requested page is going to be on a different server, you'll need to set up some method of doing a cross site request. So either browser hacks or a proxy on the hosting server.