Hello Developers
Hereby i announce the release of the first version of the VPRO-Wizards in
the MMBase cvs. The VPRO-Wizards application is a toolkit for building
custom, task-oriented editors and could be the base for a replacement for
the editwizards. Although they don't have all the features of the
editwizards yet, they have some major advantages:
- the editors are build in jsp using tag files. It is very easy to customize
your editor (environment), and add functionality in the front end (example:
i created an editor that has a google map where you can visually input
coordinates in a fiew hours).
- there is a strong frontend-backend separation. it is easy to add new back
end actions (after the refactoring is complete) without implications for the
front end.
major drawbacks:
- data types are not supported yet.
- field validation is not supported yet.
- you can not force a constraint on minimum or maximum relations.
In spite of these limitations the system is very popular at the VPRO, and we
are in a process of converting al hour editing environments to this system.
The system is based on back end java command objects that are created and
configured using spring (form) data binding. The tag files you use to create
your editors create simple html forms. Everything is transparent and easily
customizable.
It should work in both the 1.8 Branch and head (1.9).
Documentation is not present yet. here are some things that need doing and
are being done:
1 refactoring back end (in progress)
2 development of a tool to create tld's and documentation by parsing the tag
files (in progress)
3 creation of documentation. some documentation exists in some form or
other. that will be converted to docbook first.
If there is enough interest in this project i would propose that a small
group is formed, that will analyze the current state of the project,
formulate some 'quick wins', shortlist some major problems, and thus create
the focus for a 1.0 release.
So, download it, try it out, ask your questions, and we'll see.
regards,
Ernst Bunders,
developer at VPRO
getting started
================
- checkout mmbase (or update your checkout and clean it, some jar
dependencies have changed). use head or the 1.8 Branch.
- in <mmbase checkout>, type 'ant war'. when this is done the web app is
created.
- check out speeltuin/ernst/vpro-wizards in <mmbase checkout>/applications/.
make sure you check it out at tag 'version_1_0'.
- go there and type 'ant install'.
- mmbase and the vpro wizards should now be installed in <mmbase
checkout>/build/mmbase/mmbase-webapp/
- open <mmbase checkout>/applications/vpro-wizards/web.fragment.xml and
merge it with <mmbase checkout>/build/mmbase/mmbase-webapp/WEB-INF/web.xml
(paste everything minus the root tags into web.xml at the position just
before the servlet declarations.
- download tomcat (if you don't have it yet).
- you can do twoo things. either you copy the mmbase-webapp folder to the
tomcat/webapps folder, or you crate a symlink there. If you do the latter,
make sure your server.xml contains something like:
<Host name="localhost" appBase="webapps">
<DefaultContext allowLinking="true"/>
</Host>
- now start tomcat. if MyNews is not installed yet, do it in your browser:
mmbase administration > applications > MyNews > install. (in mmbase 1.9
MyNews is installed automatically).
- now go to <context path>/mmbase/mmexamples/vpro-wizards/ in your browser.
Here you find a demo editor tool for MyNews. Look at how it works and
examine the editors.
- take a look at <mmbase checkout>/applications/readme.txt. there is some
information there (in dutch).
- take a look at the tag files at <mmbase
checkout>/build/mmbase/mmbase-webapp/WEB-INF/tags/vpro-wizards/
remarks
================
- currently only ant building is supported. Maven building (the stuff of
dreams) is a thing for the future.
- It seems that the ant build for the rich text app is broken in head. i had
to comment it out in <mmbase checkout>/applications/build.xml to get the
head ant build to work.
- the commons-fileupload jar has been updated, and it now depends on
commons-io, so we need that too.
- currently the vpro-wizards use NekoHtml, a html filtering api as part of
the rich text stuff. NekoHtml directly depends on xerces, so we're stuck
with that again. Perhaps we can find a more lightweight html filtering
solution, and perhaps that should be part of mmbase itself.
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