36 GWT Tutorials

This post was previously on the Pathfinder Software site. Pathfinder Software changed its name to Orthogonal in 2016. Read more.

While the excellent GWT in Action was released last month, there are lots of people that want to get their feet wet before plunking down $50 for a book. To that end, I’ve pulled together all of the GWT tutorials I’m aware of. There’s a little bit of everything here: simple getting started guides; “Hello, World!” apps in all flavors; tutorials that focus on a specific aspect of GWT, such as history management and JSON; extensive examples that are still valuable even if you have the aforementioned book; guides for integrating GWT with a non-Java backend. Hopefully, you will find something to your liking here.

1. Getting Started Guide – From the GWT site itself, their basic kickstart.
2. Kickstarting Google Web Toolkit on the Client Side – Early “Hello, World!” tutorial with a second, animation example. This quick-start tutorial aims to translate some of the knowledge gained from my monkeying about with GWT into a useful text which will get other developers up and running quickly. To keep things nice and simple, we’ll focus on only client-side matters.
3. Google Web Toolkit Tutorial: The Break Down – Very short tutorial from early on. Demonstrates a simple rollover with GWT.
4. Working with the Google Web Toolkit – Extensive tutorial with lots of screenshots that demonstrates everything from the basic getting started to some of the more interesting features, such as history support (i.e. the back button.). The article includes a Maven module for GWT.
5. Introduction to the Google Web Toolkit – another extensive tutorial, this one from Oracle, so if you want to see how to GWT with JDeveloper, this one is for you.
6. GWT Tutorial with Googlipse – yes, Googlipse is no more, but Cypal Studio has taken it’s place. This demonstrates one way of doing GWT with Eclipse.
7. Exporting WAR in GWT – Tutorial to create a WAR file in command line (works only with WTP 2.0).
8. GWT Small Guide – I wrote this guide thinking about the user who wants to develop dynamic applications with the  GWT (Google Web Toolkit)  in an AMP(Apache,MySQL,PHP) environment. The basic idea is to write a small and very simple application using  MySQL and PHP at the server side, and GWT for the client interface, using JSON for the communication between the client and the server.
9. Ajax for Java developers: Exploring the Google Web Toolkit – One of several GWT tutorials from IBM’s developerworks. In this article, I’ll run through creating a simple GWT application to fetch a weather report from a remote Web API and display it in the browser. On the way, I’ll briefly cover as many of GWT’s capabilities as possible, and I’ll mention some of the potential problems you’ll come across.
10. Trivial GWT Example – from Robert Hanson, who went on to write an excellent book on GWT, a simple GWT-RPC example.
11. Build an Ajax-enabled application using the Google Web Toolkit and Apache Geronimo – recent (May 2007) two part series (part two is here) with source code, flash demos, etc.. Requires registration.
12. Google Web Toolkit – This article describes the development of a simple Ajax application on Mac OS X using GWT and familiar Java tools, such as Apache Ant, the Tomcat 5.0 servlet container, and the IntelliJ IDEA integrated development environment (the latter is a commercial IDE). The article assumes some knowledge of Java and Ant.
13. GWT Tutorial – focuses on producing a web site, rather than a webapp.
14. Getting Started – the first of Paval JBanov’s planned five GWT tutorials. The others are First Application, Core widgets and panels, Custom widgets and RPC (not yet written).
15. GWT Plugin Tutorial – oddly enough, this tutorial demonstrates how to integrate GWT with Struts 2 WITHOUT the GWT plugin. Hmmmm.
16. Getting Started with Google Web Toolkit (GWT) – Very basic, getting started instructions.
17. Tutorial: Creating a Login application – demonstrates the use of Instantiations’ GWT Designer tool (WYSIWYG UI design for GWT).
18. Basic GWT / PHP Communication – Part 1: Java and Part 2: PHP. All the GWT documentation is about hooking up Java on the front and back ends. What about PHP? This shows how.
19. String-based RPC between GWT and PHP – forget about serializing Java objects via XML and JSON; this is the dead simple approach.
20. Using cURL to Interface GWT with an Existing Site – this one is kind of hard to explain. If you know about curl and PHP, this article is worth reading.
21. Creating GWT RPC Services Tutorial – short guide to using gwt4nb, the Netbeans plugin for GWT, to create GWT-RPC services.
22. Creating a simple app with GWT4NB – flash based tutorial on creating an anagram application with GWT and Netbeans.
23. Googled by GWT – Part 1 and Part 2. Extensive getting started tutorial with lots of screenshots.
24. Google Web Toolkit Tutorial – short example demonstrates use of the keyboard listener.
25. Step by Step: A Mortgage Calculator using GWT – as it says, a mortgage calculator demo using GWT.
26. IntelliJ IDEA: Google Web Toolkit as 1-2-3 – Animated demo walks through the configuration of IntelliJ Idea for the
    Google Web Toolkit and shows how to write a GWT image viewer
    application.
27. IntelliJ IDEA: Creating GWT Application from a Web Module – Animated demo of using GWT in a web module (IDEA’s project/module type for Java webapps).
28. Ajax for Java developers: Exploring the Google Web Toolkit – extensive tutorial from IBM developerworks that builds all the way to a weather reporter widget.
29. Integrating the Google Web Toolkit with JSF using G4jsf – I can’t say that I really love JSF, but if you bend that way, this will teach you how to marry the two. Extensive with lots of code snippets and screenshots.
30. Asynchronous Google (Web Toolkit) and Django – Integrating GWT and Django using JSON.
31. Using VistaFei  IDE 1.0 for GWT: A Tutorial – VistFei is an IDE. The last time I looked at it, this tutorial had somehow lost its screenshots and the CSS had been jacked up.
32. Using Google Web Toolkit – video HOWTO by Bruce Johnson, the tech lead of GWT.
33. GWT-Spring Integration Demystified – any time a new technology comes along, it just has to be integrated into Spring. Here you go.
34. Build an Ajax application using Google Web Toolkit, Apache Derby, and Eclipse – Part 1 and Part 2. Extensive tutorial in two parts, the first of which deals with the front end, the second of which deals with the back end.
35. Ease AJAX development with the Google Web Toolkit – develops a book search application as part of a getting started tutorial.
36. Roughian Examples – combination demo/tutorial of GWT. Version 2 is under development.

If I’ve missed any, please add them to the comments.

Update: See Yet Another 17 GWT Tutorials

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