Application Template

Belongs to the following category: Template,

Purpose

This contribution provides the developer with a ULC application template that enables a head-start when implementing a new ULC application. It frees the developer from repetitive and mechanical initial tasks. The Application Template comes with a simple GUI (dialogs, menus, sortable table, etc.), includes best practices (design, implementation, project setup, etc.), and contains ANT targets (build, deployment, Jar-File signing, etc.).

The Application Template can be regarded as the output of a passive code generator: it is used as a starting point and will be extended and adapted to the specific project needs until new code and provided code become inseparable.

The provided Application Template binary is in a consistent state but not finished. It will never be finished since ULC project experiences gained in the future will be integrated into the Application Template as an ongoing process.

The Application Template includes the following features / concepts:

• project setup
• ANT targets
• MVC pattern
• configuration using properties files
• internationalization using resource bundles
• sorting table data
• filtering table data
• generic confirmation dialog
• icon factory
• support of table layout, grid bag layout, grid layout, border layout, and flow layout
• JGoodies custom Look&Feel
• client-side splash screen
• Log4J implementation of the ULC logging interface
• Log4J logging with distinction between different ULC sessions
• synchronous handling of asynchronously server-side triggered events
• PDF printing functionality
• generic and runtime environment-aware download of documents
• JNLP support
• launchers for different runtime environments using JGoodies Look&Feel
• custom standalone launcher for JBoss integration
• war file creation with signed client-side libraries
• deployment as web application
• deployment as EJB application
• utility class to check at runtime if current ULC session is serializable
• JDK 1.3 compatibility

Related to

This contribution is related to the Eclipse IDE Integration, which provides Eclipse wizards to create, update and deploy a ULC project.

Resources

• Download the complete source code here.
• Try out the Application Template as applet or as JNLP application.

How to use

1. Extract the Zip-File and include the content in your favourite IDE
2. If not yet done, obtain the ULC Release and an ULC license
3. Read and follow the instructions provided in the README.txt file located in the root directory of the extracted Zip-File
4. After configuring the build properties in the build.xml, use the ant -f build.xml fetch.ulc.release command to copy the required ULC libraries into the Application Template project tree
5. Use the ant -f build.xml run.develop command to start the Application Template from the command line
6. Use the ant -f build.xml war.prod.clean command to create the template.war web application archive
7. Deploy the generated war file into your J2EE-compliant Servlet container
8. Start either the Applet or the JNLP client from the corresponding subfolder of http://<host>:<port>/template/clientLib
9. Extend and modify the Application Template to your needs

How it is implemented

The Application Template has been implemented from scratch and is based on the experiences gained by different ULC developers working on different ULC projects.

Compatibility

The described functionality has been developed and tested using JDK 1.3.1_10 and ULC 5.2.

Author

etienne