GWT 无 RPC 的数据库访问

Question

I'm using GWT for a web-app and I need to access to a mySql-database. There will be only one client (The app is used on a iPad localy). Is there any way to access the database without RPC? I'm looking for a possibility to direkty query a database.

Thanks!

Answer 1

There are 2.5 reasons you cannot use gwt to directly access MySQL.

Reason #1. GWT is compiled into Javascript. You need to open a socket to the database server. GWT does not allow you to open a socket. In fact, no unaugmented browser (before advent of html5) is able to open a socket. But you can open a socket using Flash actionscript, or HTML 5 javascript.

Reason #2. OK, let's say you used HTML5 sockets. And you spent 6 months writing in Javascript a JDBC connectivity. But, your websocket would still need to address a servlet on the server which would help your websocket establish a persistent connection - and mysql is unable to perform such an establishment.

Reason #3. SLD - SOP restriction: (Second Level Domain Same Origin Policy) Standard browser restricts its pages to only be able to request for, and to include, content from within the same second-level domain (SLD) as the server that provided that page to the browser. Top level domains (and top-level and a half) are such as.com, .org, .net, .me.us or.co.uk. So, domain names such as google.com, fbi.gov, mit.edu are second level domains. While, mail.google.com would be a third-level domain. Therefore, GWT would work only within the confines of an SLD. Your web server must also be accessible at the same SLD as your mysql server.

SLD-SOP and tunneling requirement is to close a security hole that could have allowed any tom-rick-or-mary to log into your system thro your browser. Tunneling is always required for a browser to connect to a server other than a http server. Tunneling is when a browser exploits the web server as a yenta (yiddish for busy-body/go-between/match-maker) to get to another server.

You have no choice but to use GWT-RPC. Perhaps you don't wish to use RPC, then you could use RequestBuilder, or Script-Include or RequestFactory. But they are all still diverse means of tunneling. http://h2g2java.blessedgeek.com/2011/06/gwt-requestbuilder-vs-rpc-vs-script.html .

There is one reason why you can connect to your database server from your gwt client: Your database server must run httpd connection engine. That is, your gwt app would access the db server thro http. I am not familiar with which relational database has a http access available. Most probably, you would have to query thro xml or json.

However, a company I had worked for created our own http service to allow "direct" client access. "direct" is a misnomer because we used tomcat. It is stil tunneling. Any database company that offers "direct" http access is still tunneling. Tunneling - no escape from it.

You could augment the browser with Flash and write a Flash application rather than using GWT. If direct access is so essential to you, you would have to abandon GWT and develop in Flash and run a httpd engine for your database server.

Answer 2

GWT is ultimately Javascript. As noted at Are there JavaScript bindings for MySQL? , there is currently no way of accessing MySQL from Javascript.

Therefore you can't access it from client-side GWT code.

Answer 3

AFAIK it's not possible, and even if it were, it would be a really bad idea. Are you sure you actually need a database? Maybe something like gwt-client-storage would be more appropriate.

EDIT

Your database would we publicly accessible and open for any sort of attacks.

EDIT 2

This may even be a better solution, as it offers support for accessing the HTML5 Database API and is targeted to iPhone/iPad.

gwt-mobile-webkit

Answer 4

If you were even successful in doing so, in short, doing a CTRL + U on the browser would make your database name, username, password, tables names etc visible... And done, any developer curious to know your code has a way to hack anything and everything in your server.

Answer 5

I think it's not possible, I mean, if you want all your data stored in DBs. I mean, GWT compiles into javascript and javascript executes on the client (typically a web browser).

If you want to access data stored somewhere (by some mean) in a server, then you have no option but RPC. If I were you, I would stop thinking in client-server paradigm (GWT was developed with that in mind). Perhaps some embedded database like H2 and then hold connections through JDBC.