No joy trying to get started with errai ui

[mdhirsch30345]

I've been trying for days now to get a basic errai-ui project off the ground, with no luck.  I must be doing something very wrong, but can't figure it out.

I initially tried modifying my GWT app, but I've decided to start over.  No matter what I do I end up with missing dependencies and projects that won't load.

First, I can't find any errai-ui maven archetypes.  All the archtypes use the old GWT way of rendering.

The errai-UI demo that is well publicized on the web (http://vimeo.com/44141164) doesn't seem to actually work at all.  When I try to run it in dev mode with "mvn gwt:run" it appears to run, but the web page never loads.  It looks like there is no container running as there is nothing listening on port 8080.

So I figured I'd start with something simple.  I used the "bus-quickstart" archetype like so: mvn archetype:generate -DarchetypeGroupId=org.jboss.errai.archetypes -DarchetypeArtifactId=bus-quickstart -DarchetypeVersion=2.1.0.Beta1 -DarchetypeRepository=https://repository.jboss.org/nexus/content/groups/public/

This runs okay, but doesn't use errai-ui.  So I started by modifying the pom.xml to depend on errai-javaee-all, instead of the individual artifacts, and no other changes.  When I run this in dev mode I do see jetty starting up, but when I load the URL I get this error:

EntryPoint initialization exception

Exception while loading module org.jboss.errai.marshalling.client.api.MarshallerFramework. See Development Mode for details.

java.lang.ExceptionInInitializerError

at java.lang.Class.forName0(Native Method) at java.lang.Class.forName(Class.java:264)

at com.google.gwt.dev.shell.ModuleSpace.loadClassFromSourceName(ModuleSpace.java:654)

at com.google.gwt.dev.shell.ModuleSpace.onLoad(ModuleSpace.java:363)

at com.google.gwt.dev.shell.OophmSessionHandler.loadModule(OophmSessionHandler.java:200)

at com.google.gwt.dev.shell.BrowserChannelServer.processConnection(BrowserChannelServer.java:525)

at com.google.gwt.dev.shell.BrowserChannelServer.run(BrowserChannelServer.java:363)

at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:722)

Caused by: java.lang.RuntimeException:

Deferred binding failed for 'org.jboss.errai.marshalling.client.api.MarshallerFactory' (did you forget to inherit a required module?)

at com.google.gwt.dev.shell.GWTBridgeImpl.create(GWTBridgeImpl.java:53)

at com.google.gwt.core.client.GWT.create(GWT.java:97)

at org.jboss.errai.marshalling.client.api.MarshallerFramework.(MarshallerFramework.java:42)

... 8 more

Caused by: com.google.gwt.core.ext.UnableToCompleteException: (see previous log entries)

at com.google.gwt.dev.shell.ModuleSpace.rebindAndCreate(ModuleSpace.java:503)

at com.google.gwt.dev.shell.GWTBridgeImpl.create(GWTBridgeImpl.java:49)

... 10 more

This is quite similar to the errors I get when I tried to use errai-ui from scratch.  I get told that I'm missing imports, or that a method cannot be found.

Does anyone have a simple errai-ui demo that works?  I would really appreciate seeing it actually work outside of a video.  I'm sure one I get it working I can modify it to my needs, but I'm starting to suspect that there is something wrong in the released jar files.

Thanks,

Michael

[lincolnthree]

Have you tried the errai-ui-demo?

https://github.com/lincolnthree/errai-ui-demo

Deploy the WAR to JBoss AS7.

~Lincoln

[mdhirsch30345]

Hi Lincoln.  I did try the demo, but I finally figured out that I needed to have JBoss 7 running, too.  And I'm already struggling with gwt/errai/maven/eclipse, I didn't think that adding jboss would make my life easier. 

But maybe I should.  At least your demo compiles, which is more than I can say for most of my attempts.

Michael

[lincolnthree]

Hey Michael,

You shouldn't need JBoss AS running behind Errai UI, but this demo requires it because it has a server component. We're working on fixing the getting-started problem overall in Errai, but thanks for bringing this up. It tells us that it has a way to improve.

~Lincoln

[mdhirsch30345]

Yes, getting started is tough. 

So I have jboss 7 running, but how do I deploy your demo to it?  I'm sure it's something easy, but I've not used it before.  I can't tell what part of the demo needs changing,  Is it something in the pom?

Thanks again,

Michael

[lincolnthree]

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/7013783/how-to-deploy-a-war-file-in-jboss-as-7 should help.

[mdhirsch30345]

Okay, I'm finally getting somewhere.

I can deploy the app by some horrible combination of mvn targets and copying of war files.  I can even run it in the debugger.  I'm still working on how to make intellij do that for me, but I'm sure it's possible.

But I can't make your example work unless I add the line:

      <script type="text/javascript" language="javascript" src="/App/App.nocache.js"></script>

to the end of the head of App.html.

Without that your app does nothing but look pretty.  With it, it functions as expected.

Is that really necessary?  It's hard for me to imagine that you left that line out of your checkin, but without it I get no functionality.

[cbrock]

Yes, of course that's necessary. After all, GWT is compiling your Java to a JavaScript payload. The App.nocache.js is the actual generated JavaScript coming out of the GWT compiler.

[lincolnthree]

Ah, yes. That would explain why you are having problems.

App.html is not the file you should be accessing when you request the resource from the server... that is the Errai UI template file which is used to do layout. You should instead access index.jsp:

https://github.com/lincolnthree/errai-ui-demo/blob/master/src/main/webapp/index.jsp#L29

I admit this could be a bit confusing,

~Lincoln

[mdhirsch30345]

LIncoln,

THANK YOU!  This cleared up my understanding of how errai-ui instantiates the web page.  I am now able to create the page I wanted.  This answered my other question on another thread.  

Yay!  Now I can get to work.

[lincolnthree]

Glad you got it working