> Does anybody have any thoughts on pros and cons of building swing
> applications
> with merlin? I have a rather large swing app running in Fortress right
> now, and
> that's all running as expected.
>
> Now, I'm splitting the app into a server component and a
> client component iso a pure client side app. It's be nice to be able to
> use the same
> technology for the client and the server side, so I can easily move
> components from
> one side to the other as required. It'd also be great to be able to
> auto-download
> updates from a central server and things like that. Seems like Merlin is
> especially
> apt at all that. However, Merlin seems to be more targeted at server
> applications,
> so I'm wondering what would be required to let Merlin run a swing app
> (some hooks
> during startup, being able to trap runtime exceptions and at the very
> least display
> them to the users, event bus,...)
>
> Anybody any observations?
>
I actually built a swing application to use while debugging/managing/inspecting a
complex component called a backend database. I wrote a client GUI component that
basically had a dependency on the database and blew up a Frame subclass that needed a
handle to the database component supplied.
I made the setVisible(true) call happen in the execute() lifecycle method of the
component. Here's the gui component code which is simply a wrapper around a frame.
public class BackendDatabaseViewer extends AbstractLogEnabled
implements Serviceable, Executable
{
/** A handle on the atomic backend */
private AbstractBackend m_backend ;
/**
* Viewer main is not really used.
*
* @param a_argv
*/
public static void main( String [] argv )
{
// set up system Look&Feel
try
{
UIManager.setLookAndFeel( UIManager
.getSystemLookAndFeelClassName() ) ;
}
catch ( Exception e )
{
System.out.println( "Could not set look and feel to use " +
UIManager.getSystemLookAndFeelClassName() + "." ) ;
e.printStackTrace() ;
}
BackendDatabaseViewer l_viewer = new BackendDatabaseViewer () ;
try
{
l_viewer.execute() ;
}
catch ( Exception e )
{
e.printStackTrace() ;
System.exit( -1 ) ;
}
}
public void execute() throws Exception
{
BackendFrame l_frame = new BackendFrame( m_backend, getLogger() ) ;
Dimension l_screenSize = Toolkit.getDefaultToolkit().getScreenSize() ;
Dimension l_frameSize = l_frame.getSize() ;
l_frameSize.height = ( ( l_frameSize.height > l_screenSize.height )
? l_screenSize.height : l_frameSize.height) ;
l_frameSize.width = ( ( l_frameSize.width > l_screenSize.width )
? l_screenSize.width : l_frameSize.width ) ;
l_frame.setLocation( ( l_screenSize.width - l_frameSize.width ) / 2,
( l_screenSize.height - l_frameSize.height ) / 2) ;
l_frame.setVisible( true );
System.out.println( l_frameSize ) ;
}
/**
* @avalon.dependency
* type="ldapd.server.backend.AtomicBackend"
* key="system-backend" version="1.0"
*
* @see org.apache.avalon.framework.service.Serviceable#service(
* org.apache.avalon.framework.service.ServiceManager)
*/
public void service( ServiceManager a_manager )
throws ServiceException
{
m_backend = ( AbstractBackend ) a_manager.lookup( "system-backend" ) ;
getLogger().debug( "Got handle on system backend!" ) ;
}
}
So if I can do this another better way I would also be interested in advice from the
Avalon team as well.
Alex
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