Ask YC: How do you transfer input to and output from a widget in an iframe?

1 point·amichail··8 comments

IFrame (Wikipedia): an HTML element which makes it possible to embed another HTML document inside the main document.

Widget (Wikipedia): a portable chunk of code that can be installed and executed within any separate HTML-based web page by an end user without requiring additional compilation.

What exactly are you trying to ask? You can certainly exchange data via a database and 'make it feel interactive' between the frames using JavaScript/AJAX.

I have a Facebook page with an iframe containing a gwt widget. How do I transfer data to the gwt widget? I know what this data is when I am generating the Facebook page, so I was hoping there's an easy way to do this without having the gwt widget contact the server to get its input.

I also need to get data back from the gwt widget. How should it send this data back to the server?

XMLHttpRequest?

Is there a way to avoid the request for input since you can include it in the web page so that the widget can pick it up?

Sorry, I don't quite understand what you mean. What exactly is the "input"?

The widget takes some input that the server knows. Instead of having the widget make a request to the server to get it, can the server somehow include this input in the web page so that the widget can take it directly from the web page?

Sure, but I still don't really know what you're talking about. You're talking about a GWT widget?

yes

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