Use an IDE to write Turbine applications with M.E.T.A.

Let's face it. Using a text editor and deploying your application into a container is not everyone's development style, even when using the excellent emacs editor. Many developers like to use an IDE like Eclipse. M.E.T.A. supports this style of application development, though some developers consider the arguments for an IDE to be the same as for a debugger.

The remainder of this page uses Eclipse as IDE because there is good integration between Maven and Eclipse. Examples for other IDEs like netBeans, IntelliJ IDEA, JBuilder or any other IDEs are welcome.

Setting up your workbench

Setting up Eclipse and Tomcat for M.E.T.A. is very easy to do:

  • Download Eclipse from the the Eclipse Website and install it.
  • Download Tomcat from the Tomcat website. This will be the web container that we use for running and debugging the Turbine application.
  • For development, it is also very useful if you can start and stop Tomcat directly from Eclipse. A very useful Plugin for Eclipse is the Sysdeo Tomcat Plugin

Now configure Eclipse to your installed tomcat by setting its home directory and server.xml location in "Window" -> "Preferences" -> "Tomcat":

Tomcat Preferences

Prepare your application for use with Eclipse

Create a new Turbine application by running 

maven -Dturbine.app.name=helloworld -Dturbine.plugin.mode=inplace -Dturbine.plugin.inplace.dir=tomcat turbine:setup
This generates a new inplace application that can be used with an IDE.

Build the OM Peer classes: 

maven torque:om
Note that you must rerun this command every time you OM schema changes.

The new application must be compiled once with the M.E.T.A. plugin. This makes sure that all dependencies from the project descriptor get copied into the web application lib directory. If you forget this step, you will get a lot of missing dependencies in Eclipse. 

maven java:compile

We must prepare our application for Eclipse. Maven offers a goal which builds the project description and classpath files: 

maven eclipse
The last two commands should be re-run everytime the values in the application project descriptor change unless you do not intend to rebuild your project outside of Eclipse.

Develop your application inside eclipse

Import your application into Eclipse by selecting "File" -> "Import" -> "Existing Project into Workspace" and enter the location of your new Turbine application into the Wizard. The resulting tree should look like this:

Helloworld in Eclipse

Finally, tell Eclipse that your application is a Tomcat application and should be run in the web container. Highlight your application and select "File" -> "Properties" from the Menu to open the Properties Dialog for your application. Select the "Tomcat" properties:

Helloworld Tomcat Preferences

Enter the desired context name in the first text box. In the second text box, the application root is entered. This must be the same value as the turbine.plugin.inplace.dir value when setting up the Turbine application. Make sure that you have leading slashes in both text boxes! If you forget these, the Tomcat plugin will not work correctly. Also, check all three checkboxes to allow Eclipse to manage your application inside Tomcat and to redirect the catalina.out log file into the Eclipse console.

Now you can launch your application through Tomcat by using the "Tomcat" menu from Eclipse. You can set breakpoints in your classes and debug directly in the IDE. Maven and the M.E.T.A. environment have been used for setting up the application but are no longer needed for developing inside the IDE.