Generate GWT Overlay types from Java objects

Question

We're currently using GWT RPC for serialization on a GWT project but we're currently maintaining two sets of objects - the object that we need to convert for the database to retrieve/save and a version of the object that is safe for GWT RPC serialization (no enums/big decimal, etc.).

We're spending a lot of effort writing code that merely converts from one format to the other format. In addition it's pretty painful to make any changes to the data model because it has to be changed in two places.

I was thinking that we could use a combination of Spring 3.0 MVC and Jackson to replace the RPC calls with JSON calls. If we built JavaScript objects for GWT to hold this JSON data, then it would remove the need for any property conversion code. However we'd still have to maintain two sets of objects - one JavaScriptObject for the client side code and the server side representation.

To eliminate this layer, to take a Java object and have it produce a GWT JavaScriptObject with the JSNI getters/setters exposed. Is there a library out there that could do this automatically?

Answer 1

We eventually dropped GWT and went with a Spring MVC/jQuery solution, but I did find the protostuff library which looked like it could do most of what I was looking for.