Is it possible to create dynamically pluggable GWT widgets/portlets in separate war files?

Question

Is it possible to create widgets / portlets in GWT that can be dynamically loaded and added to a GWT web application, and where the GWT widgets can reside in a separate war files?

To clarify my question: JSR168/JSR286 compliant portals make it possible to create portlets in separate projects (war files) and to dynamically load these into a portal page. Suppose you want to do something similar in a GWT application. So suppose we made a portal using only GWT for the GUI (no JSP or alike) and we want to dynamically add a "portlet" written in pure GWT. Would that be possible?

I can imagine that it could be done using an IFrame, but it would be nicer if such a GWT widget/portlet would be fully part of the GWT host "portal" application and share it's style sheets and other resources.

Answer 1

I'd imagine that a "GWT portlet" is nothing more than a widget that you write yourself (and perhaps implements a common interface).

The hard part is to dynamically allow a precompiled gwt app to include another gwt component (the portlet in this case) without compiling again with the source (which is what the question seems to imply).

Answer 2

I too have been looking into this, especially after seeing the Wave demo. From what I can tell, the approach the wave team have taken is to use either the Google Gadget api or a variation of the Gadget api. Google also have a tutorial on writing a gadget in GWT. I would image you would use a event based api where JSO objects are passed between the Gadget and the GWT application. Note that this may also introduce XSS issues if from different domains. I think of this as akin toloading a swf dynamically in flash. The event method is similar to working safely with cross-site dynamic loaded swf's.