Status of Joda/Goda time, future of Date handling

[Chris Lercher]

Hi,

I think, many people (including myself) are a little bit unhappy with
the current situation of date and time handling

a) due to the use of deprecated methods of java.util.Date and
b) due to the general weaknesses of the java Date API

This topic crops up repeatedly on different forums, as well as in this
GWT issue report:
http://code.google.com/p/google-web-toolkit/issues/detail?id=603

There are several projects that have attempted to port Joda time to
GWT:

http://code.google.com/p/goda-time/
http://code.google.com/p/gwittir/
http://github.com/mping/gwt-joda-time
http://code.google.com/p/gwt-time/

But all of them seem to be in alpha/beta status (or have licensing
problems in the case of goda), and as far as I can see, they're not
really active anymore (I hope, I'm wrong for at least one of the
projects?)

Are you using any of these projects, can you recommend one? Does the
GWT team have plans to integrate a Joda-like API?

Thanks
Chris

[Paul Stockley]

I am using gwt-time. I haven't had any issues as yet. However, the
biggest
problem is that it adds 250 - 300 kb to the project js download. I
was careful to avoid the dependency for the initial download fragment.

On May 30, 12:36 pm, Chris Lercher <cl_for_mail...@gmx.net> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I think, many people (including myself) are a little bit unhappy with
> the current situation of date and time handling
>
> a) due to the use of deprecated methods of java.util.Date and
> b) due to the general weaknesses of the java Date API
>
> This topic crops up repeatedly on different forums, as well as in this
> GWT issue report:http://code.google.com/p/google-web-toolkit/issues/detail?id=603
>
> There are several projects that have attempted to port Joda time to
> GWT:
>

> http://code.google.com/p/goda-time/http://code.google.com/p/gwittir/http://github.com/mping/gwt-joda-timehttp://code.google.com/p/gwt-time/

[Chris Lercher]

On May 31, 2:26 am, Paul Stockley <pstockl...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I am using gwt-time. I haven't had any issues as yet. However, the
> biggest
> problem is that it adds 250 - 300 kb to the project js download.

That's massive, and it would be way too much for my project. I wonder,
why it's that large - What does the SOYC compile report say? If it's
mainly the timezone tables, maybe there's a way to reduce them.

[Paul Stockley]

I did that already. There isn't really anything that can easily be
removed. There is just a lot of code. The jar is 839kb including
source. In java your don't really notice it. I am looking for
something more lightweight.

[Scott Fines]

That's not particularly suprising to me. One of the reasons that gwt-
time is still listed as being in alpha status is that there is a
possibility of needed further API changes to deal with issues like
that. Unfortunately, I have been distracted for the past little while
and am only just now able to get back to working on it. However, I'll
post an issue-report on the large download size so that we won't
forget it. If any of you are willing, we are looking for contributors
to help get this thing off the ground.

Thanks,

Scott Fines

[Scott Fines]

Hey, guys

I'm the main contributor(for what it's worth) of gwt-time, and it's
nice to know that it works for you guys. I've had to put it off the
burner for a while, but I'm starting to pick it back up again.

However, there are a few issues with it that we still need to address,
most notably the large download and Serialization issues.

Any information you could give me would be of the utmost help with
improving it. I haven't run an SOYC on it yet, so I don't quite know
why it would be so big--perhaps Timezone tables are the reason, but
I'm guessing it just has more to do with the structure of the project
as a whole. There may be a much more GWT-friendly way to organize the
API which will help with this (Thus the reason that gwt-time is still
listed as in alpha stage--I don't want too many people getting angry
if I change the API around)

Please let me know what troubles you are having so that we can get to
fixing them.

Thanks,

Scott