Recent Posts by Geertjan Wielenga

Similar to my previous blog entry, but this time with an XML file—it's very easy to use the NetBeans Palette API together with the New File Type wizard. Here you see a palette of drag-and-drop components especially for the jboss-web.xml file: So, the palette that you see above is only visible when a jboss-web.xml file is open in the NetBeans editor. You too can do this! Firstly, use the New Module wizard to create a NetBeans module project. Secondly, use the New File wizard...

Today I made the Component Palette work for Manifest files. Below you see the result—I have two code snippets in the Component Palette. I can drag-and-drop them (or double-click them) and then a key is inserted in the Manifest file. Here's what it looks like for me now (the tooltip shows what code will be inserted in the Manifest file): The key to everything is this method in ManifestEditorSupport.java (especially note the bits in bold): void associatePalette(ManifestEditorSup...

In a few recent blog entries, I described how to really quickly create a NetBeans module containing code snippets, such as <p> tags (or even more extensive tag combinations). However, not everyone wants to do it that way—maybe all you want to do is add code snippets to the Component Palette, but not share them with anyone else (hmmm, sounds a bit selfish, doesn't it). For example, at the end of Simple Extension of NetBeans Component Palette, Kovica asks: What do you think...

For further details, see Masoud's and Ruth's Developer Collaboration Module Quickstart.

So I've added some code snippets for two sets of tags that I use a lot while writing help files—the header at the top of the page and the 'See Also' section at the end. Both sets of tags are pretty standard, except that each contains links to various other files. So, in the tooltip I've indicated the things that need to be done in bold—by means of the TBD, as shown below: When I double-click (or drag) the Header item above, the tags that you see in the tooltip are created....

So here's the absolutely no-frills simplest implementation of a new code snippet for NetBeans IDE 5.0. The end result in my Projects window is this (in the screenshot, I've selected the only two Java files I needed to create): When I install my new module, the result is an additional code snippet in the HTML section of the Component Palette (which is displayed when I create an HTML file or JSP file): When I double-click the code snippet, a <br> tag is created at the cursor....

A while ago I blogged about the new Component Palette. You can drag and drop various common JSP and HTML items onto a JSP or HTML page. But what if you're missing some items? Are you doomed to wait until the next release? No, not now that it's much easier to create NetBeans modules. Look, I added two very simple items myself today, for those moments where I just can't be bothered to type in paragraph tags and break tags. Now all I need to do is double-click in the Component...

In the last instalment, you ended up with data access code in a Struts Action class. This is bad. For example, if you read slide 7 of Sang Shin's Accessing Database in Struts Application (which is part of his fantastic—and free—regular college semester-like on-line J2EE course), you're told that "all the database access code should be encapsulated behind the business API classes (using the DAO pattern)". So today I tried to work out what that pattern is all about. The whole...

I'm busy working on organizing a tutorial that lets you create Masoud Kalali's Gmail Checker for NetBeans. (By the way, if you listen to this episode of Java Posse, you'll find that Tor Norbye mentions Masoud's module! He says, among other things, "If you want to live in your IDE, this brings you one step closer.") I'm learning quite a lot by writing this tutorial. One thing I've learnt is something I wondered about while writing the NetBeans Options Window Extension Module...