Shortcomings in Places

I'm trying to implement a simple pattern that is *very* common in the
world of "normal" webapps:

1) Most of my application requires authentication in order to access.
2) I allow deep links to protected content.
3) When visiting a deep link, you are given a login page - after
logging in, you get the content.

I have a single-page GWT app that uses Places. I've spent a lot of
time on this issue, and I *almost* have it working - but it's not
elegant and there are still broken edge cases. If you want to
experience it firsthand, visit http://www.similarity.com/#matches:

The specific issues with the Places system are:

* The default place is different in authenticated mode vs anonymous
mode. When you are anonymous, your default place is the "hello,
stranger" place but when you're logged in, the default place is "all
about your account". Since I can't reset the default place in the
PlaceHistoryHandler, I need to swap out the instance when I switch
modes.

* The PlaceController has no way to reset the current place. When an
anonymous user tries to go to the #matches: link, the place is set to
MatchesPlace (which my special handler translates into a "you must log
in first" message). When the user logs in, I force another
handleCurrentHistory(), but it doesn't actually do anything - because
the PlaceController is already at MatchesPlace. I'll have to swap out
the PlaceController instance when I switch modes.

And now a little rant:

All in all, this seems ludicrously difficult for something I could
have done with dozen lines of code if I wasn't trying to use the
standard GWT tools. I feel like I've wasted a lot of time learning
the system, and what I've ultimately learned is that I would be better
off building it from scratch.

Am I the only one that thinks the Places system is WAY
over-engineered, yet not all that useful?

Jeff

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