Calling makeRequest in GWT to Get External Data for an Opensocial Gadget and Creating an Overlay

For this tutorial I use the following parameters:

$your_namespace_dots = the namespace of your unit with dots.
$your_namespace_folders = the namespace of your unit with folder delimiters.
$your_website = the URL of a web site you control.

Since we may want to get information that’s not necessarily on the server our gadget is hosted on, cross site scripting restrictions limit us to using makeRequest to get external data. This tutorial builds on a previous one.

1. Create a Java class YourRecord.java for the overlay type in the client folder (you may want to reorganize this class for reuse later) as:
   

   
   package $your_namespace_dots.gwt.client;

import com.google.gwt.core.client.JavaScriptObject;

class YourRecord extends JavaScriptObject {
// Overlay types always have protected, zero-arg ctors
protected YourRecord() { }
// Typically, methods on overlay types are JSNI
public final native String getTitle() /{
return this.data.getElementsByTagName(“title”).item(0).textContent;
}/;
}

1. To the YourGadget class add a reference to the EntryPoint:
   

   
   	public EntryPoint entryPoint = this;
   

   
   In Javascript methods that call Java methods, we can usually use “this” like:
   

   
   this.@$your_namespace_dots.gwt.client.SomeGadget::handleResponse(L$your_namespace_folders/gwt/client/SomeObject;)(obj);
   

   
   However, we’re going to put the method call in a callback so “this” is not what we want.
2. Now add two methods. The JSNI method calls makeRequest and and the makeRequest callback calls the Java method which applies the overlay.
   

   
   	public void handleResponse(YourRecord rr) {
   		Window.alert(rr.getTitle());
   	}
   	native void callMakeRequest(EntryPoint ep) /{
   		$wnd[“response”] = function(obj) {
   			ep.@$your_namespace_dots.gwt.client.YourGadget::handleResponse(L$your_namespace_folders/gwt/client/YourRecord;)(obj);
   		};
   		var params = {};
   		params[gadgets.io.RequestParameters.CONTENT_TYPE] = gadgets.io.ContentType.DOM;
   		var url = “http://www.clicc.ucla.edu/rss/laptops.php”;
   		gadgets.io.makeRequest(url, response, params);
   	}/;
   

3. Add a call to the method in a suitable place. For instance, in the button’s onClick event:
   

   
   callMakeRequest(entryPoint);
   

4. Compile the code, copy it to your server (don’t forget to rename the folder), and check it out at $your_website/YourGadget/yourgadgetcontainer.html.
5. Add the new file to the repostory, commit then work on adding functionality to the overlay and making handleResponse do what you want with the record.
   svn add $your_namespace_folders/gwt/client/YourRecord.java
   svn commit