Using SVG in GWT

Question

I was wondering if it is possible to include SVG content inside a panel (or whatever would work in GWT), be able to add more to the SVG (like add a circle or a curve) programmat

Answer 1

Whoa. This question has been left alone for awhile. - A fantastic (definitive?) GWT SVG library has been released! see lib-gwt-svg. There isn't anything out there nearly as good. The author (Lukas Laag) has been very responsive and has been working hard to keep the library updated and in top shape. The above link will take you to some impressive demos and you can always participate in the lib-gwt-svg forum.

Answer 2

After playing around a bit, I've been most successful with using Raphaël (which handles cross-browser compatibility) though I suspect anything along those lines would work just fine. Basically I do the following in JavaScript:

var r = Raphael("someID", WND_WIDTH, WND_HEIGHT);
// additional configuration and setup if needed....

Then I would do the following in GWT:

public native JavaScriptObject getRaphael() /*-{
  return $wnd.r;
}-*/;

// I now have access to the JavaScript object and could do the following:

public native void drawCircle(JavaScriptObject obj, int x, int y, int r) /*-{
  obj.circle(x, y, r);
}-*/;

I've also been reading around and it seems that porting Raphaël into GWT (this article is a good read) will not only increase performance (as per some post I read on Google Groups but can't find at the moment - they mentioned the compiler does quite a bit of work) but also facilitate coding & debugging.

So I accomplished my goal of being able to manipulate the SVG directly (somewhat until I port Raphaël into Java or at least create wrappers). I have yet to look seriously into the Google Visualization API but I suspect it might work just as well but I'm not sure if it is robust enough for my needs.

An important thing I believe I was missing as stated on Raphaël's site was the following:

This means every graphical object you create is also a DOM object, so you can attach JavaScript event handlers or modify them later.