RAP 2.3 M1 - New and Noteworthy

Applications

Support for entrypoints at the root path

Entrypoints in RAP are registered with a servlet path (e.g. “/example”). When deployed in a servlet container, every web application also has a context path. For example, a WAR file named “myapp.war” will lead to the context path “/myapp” This results in a URL like the following:

  http://example.com/myapp/example

It may be desirable to make the default entrypoint of an application directly available at the application's base URL:

  http://example.com/myapp/

To enable this pattern, entry points can now also be registered at the root path (“/”):

public class ExampleApplication implements ApplicationConfiguration {

  public void configure( Application application ) {
    application.addEntryPoint( "/", ExampleEntryPoint.class, null );
  }

}

Please note that for RWT standalone, you should map the RWT servlet to the empty string (the path “/” is a special case in the servlet spec, it identifies the so-called global servlet).

<servlet-mapping>
  <servlet-name>rwtServlet</servlet-name>
  <url-pattern></url-pattern>
</servlet-mapping>

Support for starting with HTTP POST

Since RAP 1.5, the RAP server required that the initial request to an application was made using the HTTP GET method. This request will be answered with the initial HTML page that loads the application. POST requests were reserved for Ajax calls that update the client's UI. Some users have reported that in certain restricted environments, it can be helpful to be able to start a RAP application with a POST request.

Therefore we changed our policy and allow for RAP applications being accessed with a POST request again. However, please note that POST parameters sent with the initial request are not yet available to application code.

Deployment

New Virgo RAP Server

It seems that WAR files are still the most popular deployment option for RAP applications. In order to provide an easier way of deploying RAP applications, we've started a collaboration with the Virgo project to provide a lightweight RAP server runtime based on Virgo nano. This OSGi container is equipped with all RAP bundles required to run your application.

This container will soon be available on the Virgo download pages. If you're interested, you can already try out the latest build that is based on RAP 2.3 M1. To run your application on it, follow these steps:

• Download virgo-nano-rap from the latest snapshot build
• Extract the zip file to a folder of your choice
• Copy your application bundles into the pickup/ directory
• Start the server using the startup script in bin/
• Access your application at http://localhost:8080/yourapp

$ unzip virgo-nano-rap-3.7.0.CI-2014-01-30_19-33-17.zip
$ cd virgo-nano-rap-3.7.0.CI-2014-01-30_19-33-17
$ cp ~/org.eclipse.rap.demo.controls_2.3.0.20131210-1030.jar pickup
$ bin/startup.sh