jst j2ee
wizards api overview
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Intoduction
 
 

The following document provides a high level overview of the J2EE Wizards made available as part of the WTP M2 release. Most of these wizards are meant to be consumed by actions or UI, but facilities are provided to implement your own custom J2EE wizards.

Overview
 
 

The purpose of the following document is to highlight the API exposed as part of the Web Tools Platform Project for the creation, import, and export of J2EE artifacts. A J2EE artifact is any contained, deployable component that follows the J2EE specification in its structure and content.

 

Each of the three general actions creation, import, and export provides a base class with common functionality which is designed to be exposed as public API. Each of these general classes is then extended for the specific J2EE module types: Enterprise Applications, Application Client Modules, Connector Modules, Enterprise Java Bean Modules, and Web Application Modules. The concrete implementations are not exposed to be extended, only to be consumed. The purpose of these wizards is to facilitate a reference implementation for the entry and exit story for J2EE artifacts. More specialized implementations can extend the general base classes as needed.

 

The Creation Story

 

Clients that wish to build their own creation wizard can use one of two base classes. The org.eclipse.jst.j2ee.ui.J2EEArtifactCreationWizard is generic enough for any type of J2EE module (*.jar, *.war, *.rar) or application (*.ear) creation. The J2EEArtifactCreationWizard provides template methods for initialization (#doInit()) and disposal (#doDispose()). In the final init() method, the wizard will store away the selection which was available when the wizard was created for use by subclasses (#getSelection()). Furthermore, some customized logic is available to override the final perspective that will be suggested to the user. Like other Eclipse creation wizards, upon completion an appropriate perspective will be suggested to the user. However, in the realm of the Web Tools Platform, some wizards may be used by different perspectives (e.g. a Web Perspective vs. a J2EE Perspective). The Web Tools Platform has extended this functionality to allow subclassed wizards to return a different final perspective ID which can be determined programmatically. SPI Clients should override getFinalPerspectiveID() to take advantage of this functionality.

 

Clients that are focused on basic J2EE module types (*.jar, *.war, *.rar) and that use an Operation Data Model based on org.eclipse.jst.j2ee.application.operations.J2EEModuleCreationDataModel may org.eclipse.jst.j2ee.ui.J2EEModuleCreationWizard.

 

The subclasses will have the actively selected Enterprise Application module automatically filled in their Operation Data Model using the J2EEModuleCreationDataModel.EAR_PROJECT_NAME property, in addition to the correct ServerTargetDataModel.J2EE_VERSION_ID and J2EEModuleCreationDataModel.J2EE_VERSION.

 

The remaining creation wizard classes are not meant to be extended, but instead provide a reference implementation for clients that only wish to use the wizards in their UI or actions. The following wizards:

 

 
  • org.eclipse.jst.j2ee.ui.EnterpriseApplicationCreationWizard
  • org.eclipse.jst.j2ee.ui.AppClientModuleCreationWizard
  • org.eclipse.jst.j2ee.jca.ui.ConnectorModuleCreationWizard
  • org.eclipse.jst.ejb.ui.EJBModuleCreationWizard
  • org.eclipse.jst.servlet.ui.WebModuleCreationWizard
 

define the basic functionality to use their corresponding Operation Data Models and Operations. Clients may use the default constructor to create these wizards, which will cause the Operation Data Model and Operation to be created as needed, or clients may supply an Operation Data Model with some values already set, which will be used to pre-populate widget values in the wizard.

 

The Import/Export Story

 

The Import/Export story follows a pattern similar to the creation story. All general function is encapsulated into a generic base class ( org.eclipse.jst.j2ee.ui.J2EEArtifactImportWizard and org.eclipse.jst.j2ee.ui.J2EEArtifactExportWizard respectively). Each of these wizards ensures that open, dirty editors are saved before the operation executes. The selection is also made available to subclasses via getSelection(). Furthermore, the J2EEArtifactImportWizard provides functionality to override the suggested final perspective in the same way that the J2EEArtifactCreationWizard does.

 

The J2EEArtifactImportWizard is subclassed into an abstract org.eclipse.jst.j2ee.ui.J2EEModuleImportWizardwhich pulls together common functionality required by concrete module import wizards based on org.eclipse.jst.j2ee.application.operations.J2EEModuleImportDataModel. The J2EEModuleImportWizard does not use the same direct operation returned from WTPWizard.createBaseOperation(). Instead, the returned operation is wrapped in another WTP Operation that performs validation once the project has been imported. The specific module validators to be run are defined by the method J2EEModuleImportWizard.getModuleValidatorStrings().

 

The J2EEArtifactExportWizard is subclassed directly into concrete module export classes.

 

The concrete Import/Export wizards may be used by clients that wish to add import/export functionality into their UI or actions, but these classes are not meant to be extended. Any custom wizards should be built using the abstract J2EEArtifact<Action>Wizards.