Whole app as one big transmission

[Blake McBride]

Greetings,

Unless I misunderstand something, I just found out that GWT apps get transmitted to, and treated by, the client as a single web page - albeit with JavaScript code that clears sections and puts different content on it to make it look like different pages are being loaded.  This is cool in terms of minimizing client interaction delays, but raises serious concerns on my part when attempting to build a very large application.  

For example, if my application had 500 screens (or what appeared to the user as 500 different screens), I would hate to think that, even though the client only currently needs 20 screens, he/she is going to get all 500 up front!  The initial load would take an unnecessarily long time too.

If I understand correctly, this model is great for small apps but could be a very significant problem as an application grows considerably.

I would really appreciate feedback on this issue.  Has this been an issue for others?  Is there a simple way to make pages load on an as-needed basis?

Thanks for the feedback!

Blake McBride

[Gal Dolber]

https://developers.google.com/web-toolkit/doc/latest/DevGuideCodeSplitting

Blake McBride

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Guit: beautiful gwt applications

https://github.com/galdolber/Guit

[Raphael André Bauer]

On Wed, May 2, 2012 at 10:44 PM, Gal Dolber <gal.d...@gmail.com> wrote:
> https://developers.google.com/web-toolkit/doc/latest/DevGuideCodeSplitting

Jupp. Gwt is made for that scenario :)

I'd recommend checking out the excellent gwtp project. Using gwtp you
get code splitting almost for free :)

http://code.google.com/p/gwt-platform/
and
http://code.google.com/p/gwt-platform/wiki/GettingStarted?tm=6#Your_first_Proxy

Cheers,

Raphael

inc: http://ars-machina.raphaelbauer.com
tech: http://ars-codia.raphaelbauer.com
web: http://raphaelbauer.com

[Jens]

Thats what code splitting is for. But don't create 500 split points (each split point has some overhead), e.g. one for each screen! Make it more meaningful so you may end up with 20 split points or so. 

As of today, when you introduce split points in your code you have to make sure that the code behind that split point is exclusive to that split point. Everything thats not exclusive to a single split point will be loaded on app start.

Example: You have 2 pages and each is behind a code split point. If both pages make heavy use of the same GWT Widgets, all these widgets will be downloaded when the app starts although they are behind a split point. Thats because they are not exclusive to a single split point anymore. 

So if you choose your split points larger, you have a better chance to have more exclusive code behind that split point.

In an upcoming release (hopefully GWT 2.5) a new code splitting algorithm will be introduced that uses heuristics to merge smaller split points into larger ones to make more code exclusive to a split point and thus reducing the initial download when the app starts. With such an algorithm you could define 500 split points in your code but may end up with 20 real split points after compiling the app.

Also keep in mind if your split points have a certain size, its a good idea to give the user some feedback that your apps now loads additional code from the server. 

-- J.

[Blake McBride]

Thanks for all the feedback.  I feel very comfortable with the solution.  Thanks!

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