The main focus of Pro Web 2.0 Application Development with GWT is a case study of a real Web 2.0 application called ToCollege.net.

What you’ll learn:

• You’ll take a full tour of a modern Web 2.0 startup’s codebase. That’s 15,000 lines of source code that includes everything from Google Gears integration to Acegi OpenID, Lucene full–text search, and Google Maps, all of it integrated with GWT 1.5.
• Leveraging this book’s available source code, you’ll see the nitty–gritty details of how to merge a modern Web 2.0 application stack including Hibernate, Spring, Spring MVC 2.5, SiteMesh, and Freemarker together.
• You’ll see how to wire GWT into an industry standard Maven build environment, which will help you get up to speed quickly and avoid configuration headaches.
• The great pitfall of many Ajax applications is they’re mostly opaque to search engines. You’ll see the ToCollege.net solution to this thorny problem.
• Protection from XSS and XSRF attacks is beyond the scope of simple GWT tutorials, but they are a real concern for a site like ToCollege.net. The book will cover the ToCollege.net security architecture in detail.

Who is this book for?

This book is for developers who are ready to move beyond small proof–of–concept sample applications and want to look at the issues surrounding a real deployment of GWT. If you want to see what the guts of a full–fledged GWT application look like, this is the book for you.

GWT 1.5 is a game–changing technology, but it doesn’t exist in a bubble. Real deployments need to connect to your database, enforce authentication, provide protection from security threats, and allow good search engine optimization.

To show you all this, this book looks at the code behind a real live web site called ToCollege.net. This application specializes in helping students who are applying to colleges, allowing them to manage their application process and compare the rankings that they give to each school. It’s a slick application that’s ready for you to sign up and use.

The audience for this book either owns another GWT book for the basic tutorials or is comfortable using the online documentation and forums when they’re stuck, which allows this book to move quickly and focus on answering the bigger architecture questions.

About the Apress Pro Series

The Apress Pro series books are practical, professional tutorials to keep you on and moving up the professional ladder.

You have gotten the job, now you need to hone your skills in these tough competitive times. The Apress Pro series expands your skills and expertise in exactly the areas you need. Master the content of a Pro book, and you will always be able to get the job done in a professional development project. Written by experts in their field, Pro series books from Apress give you the hard–won solutions to problems you will face in your professional programming career.