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A feature I’d love to see is support for Struts development. Perhaps a combination of simple wizards for creating new Struts forms, actions, forwards, etc., plus a graphical viewer/editor for the struts-config.xml and module configuration files. A fancier version could know about your struts configuration and use it with code completion to help insert the right property/action/whatever names into the JSPs and config files. An even fancier version would know about the Validator and help generate its config files, perhaps by tying into the Forms setup.
There seem to be two existing plugins in this area, but both have their problems:
- EasyStruts is rather buggy, has a lousy (or maybe just buggy) UI, and sometimes generates invalid xml in struts-config.xml. It does have a bunch of wizards to generate useful classes, though.
- Struts Config Editor from Improve has a promising-looking graphical viewer/editor for config files, but I can’t get it to work with my eclipse installation. I’m not entirely sure what it’s conflicting with; when the next MyEclipse release comes out I’ll probably try a clean install and see if that makes it work.
Laura
Laura,
Stuts support is definately on our list of additional features after GA. We’ve put it off a little simply because it’s useful, but not as essential as the basic build / deploy / debug stuff that’s been the focus for the first release. Also, as you’ve seen, the plugins that are available don’t seem to quite be “product” yet. Whatever we do in this area has to work, and work well so we’re being very deliberate about how we pursue this and other features we plan to assimilate.
If you continue to try out the various struts plugins available, please keep us apprised of what you find. In fact, you can even write a review and post it to our ‘Review’ section if you’d like.
–Scott
MyEclipse SupportHi Scott,
I definitely agree with your priorities: get the basic stuff working well (and documented well 🙂 first.
— Laura
Laura,
(and documented well 🙂 first.
This one has proven the toughest of all. Our developers are a highly motivated bunch when it comes to building software. It’s much more difficult to motivate them to help with the documentation. Unfortunately, building development tools is the only software I can think of where developers get to be their own subject matter experts. So, they can’t pawn off the doc like they normally do.
Any volunteers to write a tutorial or two? 🙂
–Scott
MyEclipse WorkbenchWhatever you do, don’t do it the WSAD way. They’ve got most of the features of Struts 1.1 supported in WSAD 5.0, but it’s very buggy and simply doesn’t know what’s going on sometimes (e.g. WRT sub-modules).
I fully support this request. We would love to see Struts support added to the product. If can alse take a look at JBuilder 8 or 9 to see a pretty good example of how integrated struts support could/should work. Keep up the good work!
The fact that I just subscribed to MyEclipse for the possibility of a struts plugin would be an indicator of my opinion regarding what is currently available. I don’t need much, but would love to start with just a simple wizard to manage the struts-config.xml file. Thanks 🙂
The assistance of a struts plug-in on myeclipse will made the IDE much more valuable that it already is. I support the need for this feature fully. Thanks 🙂
@scott wrote:
Stuts support is definately on our list of additional features after GA. We’ve put it off a little simply because it’s useful, but not as essential as the basic build / deploy / debug stuff that’s been the focus for the first release. Also, as you’ve seen, the plugins that are available don’t seem to quite be “product” yet. Whatever we do in this area has to work, and work well so we’re being very deliberate about how we pursue this and other features we plan to assimilate.
This is so good to hear ! I’ve never found struts config files to be especially difficult to edit by hand, but having a fully featured XML editor sure helps. Your reaffirmation of having a solid foundation of basic tools is music to my ears, and I hope others realize that the resulting product will go much furthur than a buggy swiss army knife.
Ivar,
Thanks for the feedback. Do you have any existing struts plugins that you’re using presently? How are they? What do they lack? What’s great about them?
–Scott
MyEclipse Support@scott wrote:
Ivar,
Thanks for the feedback. Do you have any existing struts plugins that you’re using presently? How are they? What do they lack? What’s great about them?
–Scott
MyEclipse SupportI’m not Ivar, but for myself, I’ve stopped using any plugin for Struts except your XML editor. I have two problems with most struts plugins as they are right now: 1) they’re buggy. I liked the ui in easy struts, but it seemed to randomly whack the struts-config file, leaving you scratching your head. 2) struts has been moving pretty rapidly, and most tools haven’t kept up.
I believe #2 is reason enough to start slowly on anything you do, and come out with something stable that helps with the mundane tasks of struts development.
Back to Easy Struts, what I liked was the generation of actions, the entry into the struts config, creation of the action class, and any necessary form beans. Being able to automate handling of the struts-config is to me the largest benefit of any plugin.
Great site, great plugin. Thanks,
Paul
I agree with most of the above posts in that:
1. Some sort of struts integration would be very useful, as a large number of large scale J2ee projects (including mine) are using struts as an integral piece of their architecture
2. The best thing you could do right now would be to improve the xml editor so that it can read the struts config file schema and offer code completion for tags (i.e. press control space within a tag and it gives a list of valid attributes, or children). We at the moment do all our config file editing directly in the xml because the current graphical editors seem to munge it randomly
I agree with improving the xml editor to give better code completion based on the dtd/schema.
As far as the current struts plugins –>
Struts model gives a pretty cool view of the actions(shame it doesn’t assist with modifiying them). I like the way Easy struts works, but appears buggy some times.<some random thoughts>
I webwork2 editor would be cool 🙂 I know that won’t happen anytime soon.What would be extremely helpful with a velocity template engine plugin. Have a couple built in templates for generating various struts related files, but also allow new templates to be added. Register this template engine with the “right click” on class files. That way someone can click on an existing class an select “Generate form bean”.
Internally I would assume the templates would work with a “domified” version of the class file.
A community driven repository of templates would be a cool thing to added to the myeclipseide website.Matt
@sutter2k wrote:
What would be extremely helpful with a velocity template engine plugin. Have a couple built in templates for generating various struts related files, but also allow new templates to be added. Register this template engine with the “right click” on class files. That way someone can click on an existing class an select “Generate form bean”.
Internally I would assume the templates would work with a “domified” version of the class file.
A community driven repository of templates would be a cool thing to added to the myeclipseide website.
Matt
I’m not sure if we’re on the same track or not 🙂 I posted awhile back though, and Scott responded, that MyEclipse does have a psuedo template system, which does not currently work. There is a templates directory you can place your files, and it is supposed to be picked up so that you can right-click, select new, choose the type, and then have a drop down box asking you from a template, etc. I had created some templates myself so that I could generate a new action with db access, a forward type action, etc.
I love struts, and I love myeclipse, I just wish I could use one to automate those tedious little steps I’d rather keep doing for the other 🙂
