iPlanet Application Builder Beta 6.0 Quick Tour

A Quick Tour of iPlanet Application Builder

About iPlanet Application Builder

The iPlanet Application Builder is an integrated development environment (IDE) for application developers, whose skills include languages such as Java, SQL, JavaScript, and HTML. iPlanet Application Builder lets you develop applications for deployment on iPlanet Application Server and on a web server.

For example, to build an application that accesses a relational database, you can use the iPlanet Application Builder to create forms and reports based on a database. You can design the application presentation logic, such as performing validation and error- checking. You tie this functionality together by placing it on a set of HTML pages and JavaServer Pages that users access through a web browser. The result is a web-based application.

An overview of the design process is described in Designing Applications.

The Welcome Dialog Box

When you start iPlanet Application Builder, a Welcome dialog box appears:

From the Welcome dialog box, you can create a new project, open a recently used project, or browse for other projects. In addition, pressing the Tutorial button opens instructions for the online tutorial.

The Workspace

The workspace is the main window of iPlanet Application Builder, and it provides a framework for the iPlanet Application Builder user interface.

When no windows or dialog boxes are open, the workspace appears as shown in the following figure. Your particular workspace may look different, depending on how the toolbars and windows were arranged when you last used iPlanet Application Builder.

Most of the workspace is used for displaying various windows. This section lists the different types of windows. It also describes how they typically appear in the workspace and how you can rearrange them.

Window Types

This section summarizes the windows you will interact with most often. Each type of window is introduced in a separate section later in this chapter.

Window Description
Project window Lists the files that are part of a project.
Editor windows Used for editing files. Each one displays the contents of a particular file. The display modes that are available and the operations that are allowed depend on the kind of file being edited.
Palette Used when editing JSP or HTML pages. Provides a set of prebuilt components, or building blocks, that make up a JSP or HTML page.
Properties window Used together with an editor window for viewing or editing objects in a file. Lists the properties and events associated with objects in a file. Can also list properties of the file itself.
Message window Displays diagnostics generated from building, testing, or deploying an application.

Moving and Resizing

As is typical in any integrated development environment, you can maximize, minimize, move, or resize the workspace by dragging the edges or by clicking the buttons in the right corner of the title bar. These operations are also available under the iPlanet Application Builder menu, denoted by an icon in the left corner of the title bar.

A notable feature of iPlanet Application Builder is that many of its windows are dockable. If a window is dockable, you can automatically resize it by dragging its title bar. All windows except editor windows are dockable.

A dockable window possesses "gravity"--an attribute that gives the window a tendency to "dock with," or snap to, other dockable windows, as well as to the workspace borders. As a result, dockable windows can never be obscured by other windows. For example, when two windows are docked to each other, dragging their common border enlarges one window but shrinks the other.

Docking promotes a well-organized workspace by allowing windows to attach snugly to each other, like pieces in a jigsaw puzzle.

The Main Menu

The Main menu consists of the following top-level options:

Menu What to Use It For
File Opening, closing, and saving files or projects; adding or printing files; downloading projects; quitting iPlanet Application Builder.
Edit Cutting, copying, pasting, deleting, undoing, redoing, finding, and replacing the contents of a file; opening files; navigation to specific lines.
View Displaying iPlanet Application Builder windows and toolbars.
Project Adding files to a project, removing files from a project, deploying a project, importing Servlets and EJBs, packaging JARs, and setting project options.
Insert Inserting objects into files. This menu is context-sensitive and appears only when you are editing a file.
Format Applying formats to text and paragraphs. This context-sensitive menu duplicates features of the Format toolbar, and it appears only when you are editing an HTML or JSP file.
Build Compiling an individual file, building or rebuilding an entire project, cleaning a project; registering files.
Test Running your application on a runtime server to preview the application's behavior; using debug commands.
Tools Using source code control and customizing the behavior of iPlanet Application Builder.
Window Managing which windows appear in the workspace, and how they are arranged.
Help Viewing help on iPlanet Application Builder and viewing online manuals.

In addition to the Main menu, context-sensitive menus appear whenever you right-click on a file or folder in the project. If you right click on a folder, iAB brings up the New File(s) dialog box. If the folder does not contain a file of the requested type and a wizard is available to create it, iAB opens the New tab of the dialog box and highlights the kind of file you have requested. Wizards exist for creating HTML, JSP, Java, Query, Data Model, and EJB files. If a file of the requested type already exists or if no wizard exists to create the file, iAB opens the Existing tab and highlights the file type below the icon.

Toolbars

Toolbars provide easy access to common tasks. When you place the cursor over any toolbar button, you see a tooltip--a word or phrase that summarizes the button's purpose. The toolbars are shown and described in the following table:

Toolbar Description
The build toolbar provides shortcuts to items on the Build menu.
The format toolbar has shortcuts to items on the Format menu, the context-sensitive menu that appears whenever an HTML file is open.
The query toolbar lets you quickly add select, insert, update, or delete statements to a query file.
The standard toolbar has commonly used commands from the File and Edit menus.
The test toolbar provides shortcuts to items on the Test menu.

Repositioning Toolbars

Toolbars normally appear immediately under the Main menu. You can reposition a toolbar by dragging its handle, which is shown as two parallel lines on the left side of each toolbar. Dragging a toolbar sideways switches its order in the row. Dragging slightly up or down creates a new row, if necessary, and places the toolbar there.

When you drag a toolbar into the workspace, one of two things can happen. If you drag the toolbar to an edge, the toolbar automatically attaches to--or docks with--the workspace. By contrast, if you drag the toolbar elsewhere in the workspace, you create a freestanding object called a floating toolbar.

A floating toolbar includes a title bar to better identify it. To restore a floating toolbar to a docked position, drag the toolbar to an edge of the workspace.

Showing and Hiding Toolbars

From the View menu, you can choose the Toolbars submenu to list the available toolbars. Each checked item indicates a toolbar that is currently displayed. You can choose an item to switch its state from displayed to hidden, or vice versa.

The Project Window

Project window displays the files in a project, as shown in the following figure:

The file type view organizes files according to their content. The folder name indicates what type of files are contained within. This organization is preset. You cannot remove or rename folders. The file name view organizes files alphabetically, without using folders.

Every project includes exactly one project file (.iab). The project file is a master index that tracks which files are associated with that particular project.

You can double-click or right-click a file in the Project window. Double-clicking launches an editor window associated with that file type. Right-clicking displays a context-sensitive menu.

The following table lists the various iPlanet Application Builder 6.0 project folders and describes their associated project files.

Folder Type What It Contains
HTML Pages HTML files.
JavaServer Pages HTML files whose contents are dynamically generated.
Images Graphic files in formats such as GIF and JPEG.
JavaScript Files JavaScript files.
Java Files Servlets and other (.java) code files.
Connections Database connection parameter (.props) files.
Data Models Data model (.kdm) files. Each query depends on a data model.
Queries Query (.gxq) files. Query files contain SQL statements.
Compiled Files Compiled source code such as Java classes.
Enterprise Java Beans Enterprise Java Bean files.
Miscellaneous Files Any files that don't belong in the above folders.

Editor Windows

To edit a file, you can open it by double-clicking it from the Project window. You can also select the file in the Project window, then choose Open from the File menu or from the right-mouse menu.

iPlanet Application Builder provides built-in support for editing the following types of files:

Depending on the type of file you open, a different editor window appears, with different features available. For example, when you edit HTML files, you can display the contents as markup text, as a structural outline, or as a layout design.

For more information about editing files in a project, see the individual chapters on HTML files, Java files, data models, and query files.

In addition, you can customize iPlanet Application Builder to use an external HTML editor, Java editor, or image editor (for files with a .gif or .jpg suffix). To designate external editors, pull down the Tools menu and choose Development Options.

Arranging Editor Windows

You will often have more than one editor window open at the same time. Typically, you want each editor window to be large, but you don't need to see them all at once. It is easier to edit files when the windows are allowed to obscure one another, so editor windows are not dockable.

You can arrange editor windows using the same operations available for arranging the workspace--minimizing, maximizing, closing, moving, and resizing. In addition, iPlanet Application Builder provides options under the Window menu to tile or cascade a set of windows. These options affect only editor windows, not dockable windows.

The Palette

While painting, an artist uses a palette for easy access to colors that are needed frequently. Similarly, while working with HTML pages and templates in iPlanet Application Builder, you use the palette for easy access to the building blocks of your application. From the palette, you can drag and drop components onto pages, so you typically want the palette visible whenever you edit HTML, Form, JSP, and RDBM components.

The palette appears when you pull down the View menu and choose Palette. The following figure shows the icon and list views of the palette:

The Properties Window

The Properties window is useful for editing files, especially Java code. This window displays properties and events associated with the currently selected object in the workspace. These objects can be either the files in the project or the highlighted contents of a file.

You can open the Properties window in any of the following ways:

The Properties window is shown in the following figure. The information that appears in the window depends on the object that is currently selected.

The Messages Window

The iPlanet Application Builder generates diagnostic output in response to actions such as building, testing, and deploying. The Messages window appears automatically whenever iPlanet Application Builder generates messages to display. To manually show or hide the Messages window, pull down the View menu and choose Messages.