What is RAP?

In a nutshell: “RAP brings RCP applications to the browser”.

Our mission:
The RAP project enables developers to build rich, Ajax-enabled Web applications by using the Eclipse development model, plug-ins with the well known Eclipse workbench extension points and a widget toolkit with SWT API (plus JFace).

How does it work?

RAP is very similar to Eclipse RCP, but it has its own implementation of the SWT API (called RWT) which renders the widgets remotely on a web browser. The RAP application runs on a servlet container and clients can access the application with standard web browsers.

Single Sourcing

A popular use case for RAP is the development of rich clients and web clients from a single code base, also called “Single Sourcing”.

Application vendors are increasingly required to provide both desktop and web clients for their customers. But these platforms are based on very different technologies which generally demand different programming paradigms and skills that make it difficult to reuse code. The need for specialized development skills and for implementing the same thing twice increases the cost of production without adding substantial value to the project.

The Rich Ajax Platform (RAP) was designed to address exactly these problems for the Eclipse world. RAP allows Java and Eclipse developers to reuse their existing skills through a Java-based development model for web-clients. Furthermore, RAP maximizes code reuse by including the largest-possible web-enabled subset of the Rich Client Platform.