Migrating from Struts 1.x to GWT 2.x

Question

This is a rather open ended question since I'm only in the beginning of my research, but I'm having trouble finding resources on how to mix GWT into a Struts application with the eventual goal of removing Struts. So, I was hoping someone out there could either point me to a good reference or if they could be that reference here. The closest thing I've found to what I want is http://pjug.org/docs/gwt092008.pdf but the description without hearing the presentation leaves me with a few questions. I'll continue to tinker, of course, adding my own discoveries as I make them, but any advice on pitfalls or gotchas from the community would be appreciated.

One specific question... Would it be a better idea to, instead, create a separate GWT application that simply makes RPCs to the Struts app, and slowly pull the functionality into the GWT application?

Answer 1

If you have a service layer in your Struts application, you could try to reuse the service layer and use it for both the Struts and GWT frontend. I wouldn't take the RPC approach, since it causes significant coding and performance overhead.

Better develop them side by side within the same webapp.