Prerequistes knowledge of doing RCP projects - java

I have done .NET Win32 projects and from Java well I can adopt my knowledge to its classes and you know the language itself but as far as technologies based on Java ..for example I mean SWT?, JFace,Hibernate, etc... I have zero experience with them...
Now by two weeks! I need to create a DEMO application with RCP,Eclipse ..a simple one tho, just some forms with a couple of ListViews and SpreadSheets on them, type something in a ComboBox, add it to a spreadsheet, etc.. stuff like this.
Ok, with this background and what I need to know, please let me know what is my starting point? any books? resources? and prerequisite knowledge that I need to learn first?
Thanks all.

I'd start with Lars Vogel's pile of excellent tutorials. They're broken out into basic categories, and if you work your way through several of them you should be able to start getting a feel for things.

may i suggest to have a look at eclipse scout [1]. the framework comes with the scout sdk which should helpt you do what you're looking for.
understanding of the eclipse platform is initially not required. however, a good understanding of java is ...
after the "hello world" you can go through the more comprehensive demo app [2]. should you hit a roadblock don't hesitate to ask questions in our forum [3].
good luck! matthias
[1] http://www.eclipse.org/scout
[2] http://wiki.eclipse.org/Scout/Tutorial/3.8
[3] http://www.eclipse.org/forums/index.php?t=thread&frm_id=174

Related

Where to find design patterns, best practices for Eclipse plugin development

Our team is developing a Eclipse based IDE (typically a plugins), currently we are progressing good but I feel somehow we are feeling smell of bad practices in code. Example I can give here is, eventListeners :
Consider we have button named button1 and in the same java file (just below the button) we are adding selection listener to it like:
button1.addSelectionListener(new SelectionListener() {
//Remaining code here
}
Which I feel is completly bad idea, and my question, is there any design pattern, best practices etc available for eclipse plugin development? Or do you have any small tips/suggestions for the same? I know there are books available like Code Complete 2 etc etc, but I need bit suggestions respect to eclipse plugin development.
I tried in Google and didn't get much good informations regarding same, I got this IBM's article. But I feel it's not very useful, any suggestions or tip is appreciated.
Note: Please let me know if it is not appropriate here or is it good for anyother stackexchange networks (like programmers), I can move it there.
After several years of plugin development, I find these resources to be most useful for me when I find myself struggling on how to implement new feature:
Eclipse sources. Nothing will beat this. Try to find some already existing analogic part of what you're just doing and look how Eclipse developers did it - what patterns and extensions they used and so on. Helps to keep you plugins consistent with other parts of Eclipse. Eclipse Plugin Spy is your friend here (Alt + Shift + F1/F2).
Platform Plug-in Developer Guide - will guide you through basic concepts of Eclipse, like how to create menus properly, implement an editor, or save user preferences.
Eclipse Plug-ins (4th Edition) - Well known must-have for plugins developer.
And, of course, Stack overflow :)
I like to add some more resources that I have found useful to dreo's answer. The eclipse sources are invaluable, if you want to understand something in detail. To understand global concepts however, I suggest to read as much tutorials as you can. I can recommend the following websites:
Eclipse Corner Articles Has a lot of tutorials ranging from basic concepts to plugins specific topics.
Vogella Eclipse Tutorials Also a good tutorial website. It deals with a lot of topics that are important for Eclipse RCP development.
SWT Snippets More than 100 code snippets. Really useful, if you want to learn more about SWT and its capabilities.
The Official Eclipse FAQs Last but not least, I can recommend the official Eclipse FAQs. They provide compact solutions for a variety of topics.

need help finding comprehensive netbeans plugin development tutorials

I am trying to develop/create a plugin, but I can't seem to find a [good] series of tutorials covering the broad range of topics that are involved in doing so. I have already found the Developer FAQ Page, the NetBeans Platform Learning Trail, and the NetBeans Platform 7.3 Plugin Quick Start, but none of those, or similar sites on netbeans.org have a[n extensive] tutorial on plugin development. So my question basically is: does anyone know a good, comprehensive tutorial for developing netbeans plugins. As always, any information, resources, or advice is much appreciated.
Thanks!
All the documentation you could possible want:
http://netbeans.org/kb/index.html
Tutorials:
http://netbeans.org/kb/docs/javaee/ecommerce/intro.html
Plug-Ins:
http://platform.netbeans.org/tutorials/nbm-google.html
Dunno if you still looking for an answer, that's the link you're looking for I presume. the video in this link is quite descriptive of how to look around in the doc and is a very good quick start guide you have also applications tutorial that are real-world examples built step by step, there is even a book: Netbeans Platform for beginners if you want to go deeper, a list of videos are available here ... basically just look carefully in the first link it has many resources they're just scattered.

Are there any resource similar to dotnetshoutout.com & dotnetkicks.com in Java World?

As I'm moving from .Net to Java, please refer me the sites that contains the daily updates of java, spring, eclipse...
Dzone – It’s like DotNetKicks but has everything including Java stuff.
http://www.dzone.com/links/tag/java.html
Not a daily update site, but it contains periodic podcasts from the Java world - JavaPosse.
Another good Java site for finding what free software is available with a short review is http://java-source.net/ I suggest you have a look if you are new to Java. I also subscribe to http://javablogs.com/

open source swing based application that employs good practices

I'm trying to learn swing and I was thinking you guys may know a really good swing based open source application that I could study and inspire from. I'm looking for something that has a real world use, not just some concepts explained (like examples in most books and tutorials).
Thank you!
It's certainly less well-known than some of the other projects mentioned here, but have a look at GoGrinder. The code is well written and documented.
It might also be a good idea to look for something that you'll actually use. I find it easier to read the source of applications that I'm familiar with from using them.
In the same spirit as the answer suggesting to check NetBeans, I would suggest to get the sources of IntelliJ IDEA Community Edition and IntelliJ Platform from their git repository. At some point, IDEA was IMO a state of the art Swing application (fast, responsive, not ugly, nice user experience, etc).
Maybe you could have a look at the open source NetBeans IDE. It is huge, but it is using Swing intensively and is well designed and documented. Moreover, it is also a generic platform to build modular GUI applications.
The Swing Tutorial is filled with excellent code, and the Swing code itself is available for study in most IDEs.
jEdit is a programmer's text editor that I wrote some plugins for a few years ago. Partially due to the plugin system, the code is well documented, and after having been in development for many years is generally very high quality.
You could take a look at the jgoodies examples. They are not plain swing though, and I don't know the license.

Is there something like ZenTest/Autotest for Java and JUnit

I've used ZenTest and autotest to work on Ruby projects before, and I used to using them for test-driven development a la this configuration. I have a project that I'm currently working on in Java, and I was wondering if there is something similar in the Java world to achieve the same effect.
Might I also suggest Infinitest, it is under active development and works with other languages besides Java. I believe it works fine with Scala, but I haven't had much luck using it with Groovy.
It is free for personal use and is being developed by Improving.
I use junit max which is a eclipse plugin written by kent beck
Although not a lot of people use autotest like tools in java, there is one (although not so mature).
A blog about it.
Autotest for java.
I used the tool and looks pretty cool for first release.. I would request him to come up with next version soon...
I was looking for something like this a couple of weeks ago when I had to start doing some java. I couldn't find anything anywhere (being new to java) and I don't use eclipse so I hacked this together and will hopefully make it more useful in the future when I find some time:
http://github.com/feydr/crappe

Categories