Learn the future of web development

In part one we are going to download and install GWT,  install the GWT4NB plugin for Netbeans, and create a new GWT project. If you have not yet installed Netbeans 6.7, you should do so now. If you need some help installing Netbeans then you should read the tutorial Setting up Java and the Netbeans IDE.

Installing GWT is pretty simple since it consists of a directory structure that can be installed anywhere on your computer. To download GWT you need to go to the Google Web Toolkit home page or you can just click here. Once you have downloaded GWT, unzip the contents of the zip file, storing them somewhere on your hard drive (just remember where you saved the files). As of this moment, the latest release of GWT is 1.7.0.

Next, we are going to install the GWT4NB plugin for our Netbeans IDE. From inside the IDE go to tool -> plugins. The install plugins wizard will now be displayed, and you are going to want to make sure that the “Available Plugins” tab is selected. Search through the available plugins for GWT4NB, and select it by clicking on the checkbox. Once you have done this, click install, and the GWT4NB plugin will be installed.

Now comes the fun part, setting up a new GWT enabled web application. We will begin by creating a new project, which you can do by going to File -> New Project within Netbeans. Next select Java Web and then Web Application and finally click next.

The next screen will allow you to rename your project, but for simplicity sake, I am going to keep the default name of WebApplication1.

For now we can just leave the default setting for the server, which should be Glassfish v3 Prelude Domain.

The final screen you are going to be presented with is were the real work comes into play. Here you are going to tell Netbeans that this project uses GWT. If you have successfully installed GWT4NB then the top framework should be Google Web Toolkit. Check the box next to Google Web Toolkit. Once you have done this, you will see that Netbeans is going to ask you for the path to the GWT framework. Enter in the path where you installed GWT. Finally, you can rename the GWT Module name to anything you like as long as it end in .Main. So for example if your site is www.techinews.com you are going to name your GWT Module com.techinews.Main.

That’s all there is to setting up a GWT project within Netbeans. Part two of Getting Started is going to explain some of the files created in a new GWT project.