GWT File upload.

[Marcos Lilljedahl]

Hi, 

A couple of days ago I needed to implement a file upload feature for my application. As I'm using SpiffyUI as the main web framework, I've integrated the this  gwtupload module (http://code.google.com/p/gwtupload/) into my app. 

What I wanted to ask is how do you think about adding a client side file upload widget into SpiffyUI. I've searched into this forum for file upload stuff but seems like nobody asked this before.

I'd like to hear your thougts about this.

Regards, 

Marcos.

[Zack Grossbart]

Hi Marcos,

We actually have a file upload widget that we've written for proprietary
products. We've shied away from including it in Spiffy UI because it has a
lot of server-side code. We wanted a file upload widget to support AJAX
style file uploads, an upload progress bar, and the ability to cancel an
upload in progress. That requires a tight integration with the client and
the server.

Spiffy UI is a mostly client-side framework and we're committed to running
against any server. We have a couple of server-side pieces for
localization, but they're small and easy to replace in other environments.

An awesome file upload control for GWT would be a great open source project,
but probably not a good fit for Spiffy UI.

Thanks,
Zack

[Marcos Lilljedahl]

Zack, 

Thanks for your quick reply. 

I understand your concern and I totally agree about keeping SpiffyUI client side, but in this particular case I was thinking that we could provide only the client side code for this upload widget (rendering / behaviour / events ) and leave the server side (servlets) stuff to the person who will be using implementing it. 

The GWT file upload module i've listed has all the features you mentioned (progress bar / cancellation / ajax / etc) and it separates the client and server side stuff clearly as you can tell the widget which servlet you will be using to process the uploads and the widget will automatically raise events that will call your servlets.

If you think it's worth it, I can provide up a small example about how to implement it.

Thanks, 

Marcos.

[Zack Grossbart]

Marcos,

If you have an example we'd love to take a look. We would need to make sure
that the contract between the client and server is simple and that it's
possible to implement it on other platforms.

[squ...@moxiegroup.com]

Note that if you're looking for a pure client-side approach for handling file uploads with progress events in GWT, you can also check out the GWT Uploader project:

http://www.moxiegroup.com/moxieapps/gwt-uploader/

Best of luck,

      -Shawn