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Java Creator for open source development, or not

partial Creator screenshot One of the other things I did over the break was to start reading Core JSF again. I've made it about halfway through this time and I must say, the book is quite good. I like the way Geary and Horstmann walk you through the learning process. Starting with something small, simple and not IDE specific and slowly adding in the pieces you need to build a real app. For me, that approach dispelled the "JSF is too complex argument." I'm finding that JSF is a lot less complex than Struts, which is really all I have to compare it against. I might actually finish the book this time ;-)

At JavaOne, I picked up a copy of Java Creator 2 early access (EA) and I've been playing with that as well. I was hoping to build a simple JSF front-end for Roller, just for fun. Creator looks great and the form designer works well, but when I noticed how many com.sun.* classes end up in the generated code I backed off. According to the release notes the whole JSF implementation and com-sun-web-ui-appbase jars are redistributable (as are mail.jar and activation.jar -- that's news to me), but the idea of IDE specific code makes me uncomfortable -- especially in an open source context. So instead of using the form editor, I decided to base my little RollerFaces experiment on example code from Core JSF, which so far relies only on the javax.faces packages.

I decided not to use the form editor, but I didn't want to give up on Creator completely. So I tried to use Creator in place of Netbeans, but ran into another problem: Creator 2 EA only supports the Sun Java App Server and the built-in Netbeans Tomcat launch/debug feature has been disabled. That's disappointing. I don't want or need a full-blown EJB app server for this simple learning excercise. I want Tomcat. It's light-weight, starts fast and I know it well (as do most Java webapp developers, I expect). According to the Creator EA 2 docs, Tomcat support is coming soon. Personally, I would have supported Tomcat and simple webapps first and then Sun Java App Server and more advanced EJB stuff later. Please the most folks first, right? Anyhow, I backed off of Creator 2 EA entirely and now I'm hacking RollerFaces in Netbeans 4.1. I'll try Creator 2 again when it hits beta.

Comments:

Hey Dave, you should give IBM Rational Application Developer v6.0 a test drive. It's built on top of the popular Eclipse v3.0 SDK and you can target Tomcat servers and it has also got support for JSF. Even though RAD is essentially a competitor to your company's Creator product, it's still worth a look. There's a trial downloads page that I can point you at if you're interested.

Posted by Bill Higgins on July 12, 2005 at 12:10 PM EDT #

I might do that, but first I want to learn enough about JSF to understand 1) if/why IDE specific code is required 2) what prevents open source JSF implementations such as MyFaces from being used in Creator (and other IDEs?).

Posted by Dave Johnson on July 12, 2005 at 12:57 PM EDT #

Sounds good. If/when you find out the answers to your two questions, I hope you blog it.

Posted by Bill Higgins on July 12, 2005 at 03:04 PM EDT #

IDE support for JSF is very much a work in progress. The sticky issue is visual page design. There is not yet a standard API for the design-time behavior for components. Creator uses its own API, which may well become the basis of the JSF 2.0 standard.

Right now, you can add third-party components such as the MyFaces components to Creator, but you can't see them when you build page, and you can't use the property editor to modify them.

The JSF support of current IDEs tends to be more modest. They manage some of the boring parts (such as faces-config.xml, web.xml, or resource bundles). But you still need to know how to organize your pages and your beans. It's a lot better than doing Struts, of course, but it isn't yet the ease of ASP.NET.

Posted by Cay Horstmann on July 12, 2005 at 04:31 PM EDT #

The main reason for using Creator is (1) the visual editor and (2) the tedius "plumbing code" it provides automatically provides. Otherwise, use eclipse or netbeans. Issues of IDE-independent JSF components are being addressed (JSR 273). See

http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/tor?entry=jsr_273_is_born

as well as

http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/tor?entry=how_to_write_a_jsf

Posted by Gail Anderson on July 12, 2005 at 05:54 PM EDT #

[Trackback] One of the nice people I met at JavaOne was Dave Johnson, the guy behind Roller , which is the open source blog server software we're using at Sun. In this blog entry he describes his recent experiments with learning JSF and using Creator 2: ...

Posted by Tor Norbye's Weblog on July 14, 2005 at 01:59 AM EDT #

Hi Dave, I've written up some of the reasons for this in a new blog entry: http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/tor?entry=com_sun_classes_in_creator

Posted by Tor Norbye on July 14, 2005 at 02:03 AM EDT #

Wow

Posted by 206.180.223.251 on September 13, 2005 at 12:29 PM EDT #

Hi Bill, I completely agree with Dave about Creator 1 and Creator 2 EA and I would like to mentioned that even such a good product as IBM Rational Application Developer doesn’t support open source like MyFaces it doesn’t support connection to MySQL either . Right now I am involved in the project to find out which IDE meet needs of company that I work for in order to develop end deploy as fast as possible an JSF app. So far I have tried Sun Studio Creator, Eclipse, MyEclipse, Nitrox , RAD and for now I could make some conclusions 1. Sun Studio Creator is great but as Dave said, it brings up a lot com.sun.* classes. 2. Eclipse, for now it doesn’t support MyFaces, we should wait probably more few months 3. MyEclipse support MyFaces but it doesn’t have design palette for MyFaces components ( so, for now drug-and-drop is a out of discussion) 4. Nitrox, supports MyFaces, brings design palette for MyFaces components but you should pay for it ;). 5. RAD for now I have information that it doesn´t have any support for MyFaces, may be in the future, let’s hope. If I am wrong in my conclusions let me know. Thanks in advance for you time and effort. Best regards to all.

Posted by Aleksandar on March 28, 2006 at 11:54 AM EST #

Hi Aleksandar. IBM generally frowns upon us posting information about future product directions on Sun forums ;-), but if you send me an email (bhiggins@us.ibm.com) I can put you in contact with a RAD product manager. Dave, sorry to hijack your blog to do marketing for IBM. Next Raleigh blogger's meeting, first round of beers are on me!

Posted by Bill Higgins on March 28, 2006 at 12:15 PM EST #

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