New features in DWR 0.8

DWR version 0.8 contains a big list of new features. You can download version 0.8 from java.net. The change log looks like this:

• Batch sending of remote calls:
  DWR will now send a group of remote calls together in a single batch to reduce network latency. See DWREngine.beginBatch() and DWREngine.endBatch() for more information.
• Provision of call ordering promises:
  DWR can return results in the order in which they were sent using DWREngine.setOrdered(). Warning: Setting this to true will slow down your application, and it expose you to timeouts if a message gets lost. In addition and it may well mean that you are being lazy and not thinking about the asynchronous model properly.
• Fine grained access control:
  You can now specify exactly which methods are allowed and disallowed using the include and exclude elements in dwr.xml:

  <create creator="new" javascript="JDate" class="java.util.Date">
    <include method="getSeconds"/>
    <include method="getMinutes"/>
  </create>
  

  The alternative is to <exclude .../>. You can do one or the other but not both.
• J2EE role based authorization:
  You can now specify that certain methods are only available to users with certain roles:

  <create creator="new" javascript="JDate" class="java.util.Date">
    <auth method="toString" role="devel"/>
  </create>
  

  This requires you to have added J2EE security turned on in your web.xml.
• Methods on java.lang.Object (like wait()) are now disallowed.
• Enhanced debug pages:
  The debug pages at http://localhost:8080/[YOUR-WEB-APP]/dwr have been enhanced to allow you to enter parameters other than strings, to show more detail on returned objects and to give more feedback on why methods are unavailable.
  
• Auto-fill of Servlet Spec parameters:
  If you have a DWR remoted method that has an HttpServletRequest parameter then DWR will automatically fill it in for you. This gives you a way of accessing HttpServletRequest like ExecutionContext except that you don't get the dependency on DWR. It also works for HttpServletResponse etc.
• Logging is now fine grained, and there is more of it:
  If you were turning DWR debug on globally, you probably don't want to any more!
• You can specify detailed type information for collections:
  List, Set etc don't have type info (and even under 1.5 it seems you can't get at it) so you can specify the types in dwr.xml:

  <create creator="new" javascript="Test" class="uk.ltd.getahead.testdwr.Test">
    <parameter method="testBeanSetParam" number="0" type="uk.ltd.getahead.testdwr.TestBean"/>
  </create>
  

  This solution is not perfect, and there is an update planned post 1.0

We are working on a smaller list for the next version so we are not that far from 1.0.

Update: Make that 0.8.1; there was an annoying Javascript error as a result of me fixing some issues brought up by a Javascript lint program. That'll teach me to use lint.