Introduction

Framework to transparently run code on the server via client-side proxies over web sockets

Dartrpc makes it possible to interact with server-side code using regular language constructs (method invocations).

Usage

While no efforts were spared to minimize need for boiler-plate, limitations of dart language got in the way of completely boiler-plate free implementation

Domain and Service

Create domain and service classes as you normally would

You MUST add mirrors import with @MirrorsUsed annotation listing all your domain and service classes as certain optimizations had to be applied which strip mirrored access of everything not explicitely stated in such annotations (see: https://code.google.com/p/dart/issues/detail?id=15344) Library did work without these annotations, but generated JS was > 5 mb

@MirrorsUsed(targets: '<your service>, <domain class 1>, <domain class 2> ...', override: '*')
import "dart:mirrors";

Server

Import model and provider classes. Instantiate RPCServer

var server = new RPCServer();

Client

Use runRemote to create a proxy on service objects and then make calls as you normally would. Note the proxy object returns Futures for all invocations.

import 'package:dartrpc/remote_client.dart';

var service = runRemote(CarProvider, "ws://127.0.0.1:8080/rpc");
service.getCars().then((response) {
  //... do something with response
});

Example

See web/models

Performance

On my machine after a few calls drops to 15-20 ms range. Initial 2-3 calls are rather slow.

Framework Integration

The intent was to figure out a way to integrate such proxying with Angular-dart and Polymer. Sadly, both rely heavily on mirrors and don't seem to provide a facility of "here's the domain object but uses this other instance when you need to make calls".

If anybody has any ideas on how this might be accomplished, it would be greatly apreciated.