Netbeans IDE Blog by Tushar Joshi, Nagpur

NetBeans IDE 7 Cookbook

2011-07-06T09:18:00.000+05:30

Packt Publishing has published a brand new book on NetBeans IDE, named NetBeans IDE 7 Cookbook. This is a treat for NetBeans IDE users. I got opportunity to review this book from Packt Publishers due to this NetBeans IDE blog.

Stay tuned for the next post where I will present my review about this book. Meanwhile do you know that Packt Publishers have made one chapter if this book completely free and available for download?

The free chapter can be downloaded from here.

with regards
Tushar Joshi, Nagpur

Hierarchy View in Project Panel of NetBeans IDE

2011-06-08T09:05:00.001+05:30

This post will cover following topics, questions:

How to change the package display type in NetBeans IDE?
How to see packages as hierarchical tree in the Projects Panel of NetBeans IDE?
Where is the menu to change List view to Tree view for packages in NetBeans IDE?
Customizing the display of Projects Panel in NetBeans IDE.

The preferences for how to see the package hierarchy in Projects Panel change from developer to developer. Some times I like the flat display of the default NetBeans IDE Projects Panel which shows all the packages one below the other and all the classes in the package as a list below the package fully qualified name. This makes the Projects panel only 4 node deep.

NetBeans IDE also allows us to change the display mode from List to Tree for the packages. So instead of flat fully qualified name mode we can change the display to Tree like hierarchy mode where all the folders will also be converted to nodes and the depth of the Projects Panel tree will be deeper.

To do this we have to right click on an empty area of the Projects Panel. The "View Java Packages As" menu only appears when we right click on an empty space of the Projects Panel. This menu has two options and the List one is selected by default. We can choose the Tree option to change the display of the Projects Panel to hierarchy mode.

When we change the mode to hierarchy the display looks more or less like the Files panel and the packages are shown as folder nodes. This also makes the tree deeper according to how deep the packages are in hierarchy.

It is good to know the way to switch between these modes so that we can change the mode for some time if we want and again change it back to what it was.

The NetBeans IDE remembers your last choice by saving the preference in user directory, so when the NetBeans IDE is opened again next time the Tree mode or List mode of the Projects Panel is maintained.

with regards
Tushar Joshi, Nagpur

Downloading OpenJDK7 Binary for Mac OS X

2011-06-05T15:48:00.000+05:30

NetBeans IDE 7.0 has support for the bleeding edge OpenJDK 7.0 build release. Even if Mac OS X does not have an official binary distribution on the Open JDK site yet, we can still get a DMG bundle of the latest build of Open JDK7 to test on Mac OS X.

Let us go through steps we need to perform to install and test OpenJDK7 on Mac OS X. The OpenJDK7 latest binary is available on the Google Code site http://code.google.com/p/openjdk-osx-build/

The latest build available there today is seen as b144 which is the latest build available on the OpenJDK7 download page also. This bundle is available in 32 as well as 64 bit version.

They have created a nice DMG bundle which shows the Java mascot when we open the DMG.

The installation starts as a usual Mac OS X installer bundle. As seen from the below image this version takes 179.6 MB on disk.

Once we have installed the OpenJDK7 latest binary build. We can start the Java Preferences application from the Spotlight and can see two more JDK instances available in the list of JDK available. One for 32 bit and one for 64 bit.

If we choose we can set the JDK7 version default here. I choose not to set it as default yet as it is not an official version from OpenJDK7 site. We can still use this JDK from NetBeans by registering it as a JDK platform.

For registering the JDK7 as platform on NetBeans IDE 7.0 open up the Java Platform Manager from Tools > Java Platforms menu. The new JDK7 will not be seen yet. We will have to press the Add Platform button.

NetBeans IDE will point you to correct Java Library directory from where you can choose the openjdk-1.7 instance of the java platform.

When we select the openjdk-1.7 folder NetBeans IDE correctly fills all the required information and presents a prefilled dialog boz for Add Java Platform and we just have to click Next.

JDK 1.7 will start appearing in the available Java Platforms list. As we can see NetBeans detects all the required files and documents required for registering the JDK 1.7 platform.

Now we can start any Java project and set the Java Platform as JDK 1.7. For that we will have to open the Project Customizer by right clicking the project and choosing the Properties menu.

We need to change the Java Platform entry in the Libraries node first.

Once the Java Platform is set as JDK 1.7 in the Libraries Node it becomes available in the Sources Node also in the Source/Binary Format combo box. We will have to set this as JDK 7 also.

Now this project is set to be compiled and run under Java 7 platform. We can test this by adding some generics statement and NetBeans IDE offers a hint to use diamond operator (Project Coin)

NetBeans IDE will also apply those changes to the code when we select the hint as seen in the image below.

So this is how we can install latest JDK 1.7 on our Mac machines and test the JDK 7 version from NetBeans IDE 7.0 which supports JDK 1.7 features now.

with regards
Tushar Joshi, Nagpur

When you file bugs with NetBeans IDE

2011-04-25T08:29:00.000+05:30

When we file bugs with the NetBeans IDE issue tracking system, and when they are resolved, we get a mail as above. After a major release like the current release NetBeans IDE 7.0 the NetBeans quality team send such messages to the reporters of the bugs which got resolved.

This is a very good feature and I liked it. It feels like someone is really listening and coming back with solutions.

Thanks you NetBeans Team.

with regards
Tushar Joshi, Nagpur

Download your copy of NetBeans IDE 7.0

2011-04-21T08:36:00.000+05:30

NetBeans IDE 7.0 is released and available for download from the NetBeans site.

NetBeans IDE 7.0 features the following changes:

Introduction of JDK 7 support including editor enhancements (syntax, hints)
Revamped support for WebLogic Application Server and GlassFish 3.1
Oracle Database improvements
HTML5 editing support
Maven 3 is supported and bundled with the IDE
Improved support for CDI, REST services, Java Persistence, and Bean Validation
PHP Rename Refactoring
Line wrapping
Improved detection of external changes (native file system listening)
Updates to the C/C++ support (remote file system browsing, library projects running/debugging, enhanced templates/specializations)
Support for Git 1.7.х
Additional enhancements are listed at the NetBeans IDE 7.0 New and Noteworthy page

For more about this release, see the NetBeans IDE 7.0 Release Information page.

with regards
Tushar Joshi, Nagpur

Changing Help Brower font-size in NetBeans IDE

2010-09-15T11:52:00.005+05:30

Help Browser font is not configurable in NetBeans. After detailed discussion it was set to such a value which will be usable for all operating systems.

So there is no normal way to change the font for the Help Browser. There is a hack around this, knowing the fact that the Help browser uses HTML and CSS files. You can change the CSS definition of the body and p elements in the CSS file which is used for the Help Browser. The downside is you have to edit this file any time you want the font size to be changed.

The image above is what you will see if you open the Help Browser on a Mac.

If for some reason you want the font size bigger then the way to change font size is to open the ide.css file located in the paths below and change the "font-size: medium" definition to "font-size: large" for body and p element definitions. In fact you can use any value acceptable for fond size in CSS files.

Path for the usersguide CSS file on different platforms:

On Mac
/Applications/NetBeans/NetBeans 6.9.1.app/Contents/Resources/NetBeans/ide/docs/org/netbeans/modules/usersguide/ide.css

On Ubuntu
$USERHOME/netbeans-6.9.1/ide/docs/org/netbeans/modules/usersguide/ide.css

On Windows 7
C:\Program Files\NetBeans 6.9.1\ide\docs\org\netbeans\modules\usersguide\ide.css

After changing the font-size to large:

You can see the Help Browser font is now bigger.

One better way of doing customizations in the ide.css file could be adding a customization section at the end of the file as follows:

/* Help Font Customization section */
body, p { font-size: large; }
/* end customization */

with regards
Tushar Joshi, Nagpur

Book Review: NetBeans Platform 6.9 Developer's Guide by Jurgen Petri

2010-09-13T12:53:00.001+05:30

This book NetBeans Platform 6.9 Developer's Guide offers to help you in your transition from a Java Developer to become a NetBeans Platform Developer. The approach used in this book is an approach by example. Teaching through an example is a powerful pedagogical pattern which works. This book has assumed a requirement for creating a software with certain features and gradually progresses to develop this assumed software through many chapters. Through different chapters this book tries to teach a developer new concepts which are used in NetBeans Platform like Lookup, Window Systems, Nodes, File System and layer mechanism to name a few. I liked this approach of teaching through an example software requirement.

Developers are most comfortable when someone explains them through code examples. When a book offers learning by example it is always a pleasure. My first reaction was to search for any code sample if provided by the publishing company. I downloaded the code sample from Packt Publishing book page. When developers try to learn a new concept and write code according to instructions the sample code provide a check point to compare whether they have done it write.

The code sample provides significant data to compare but it would be more helpful with some additional things mentioned below:

As of today the code sample does not compile on NetBeans IDE 6.9 out of the box, as it needs some changes in the settings
The presentation locale for the code sample is in German and hence less intuitive to an English reader
The changes in the settings like Lookup module, deprecated Swing extension module can be done by developers who already know some NetBeans platform concepts but for a total beginner they may render the code sample useless.
The code sample is the final version of the software which gets developed progressively through the chapters so it does not help much in the initial chapters, if the code sample is available in chapter wise format it will be a great aid for the book.

The instructions given in the book if followed word by word and line by line, then they do not work in some places. This was a frustrating thing for me. I could figure out the changes needed as I am well ahead in the NetBeans Platform learning curve and have read 2 more books on NetBeans Platform and have watched the top 10 API videos by Geertjan.

For a total beginner the instructions given in the book MUST work when followed exactly word by word and line by line, to give a smooth experience and to avoid frustration. For me this doesn't happened with this book. Blindly following the instructions in the book do not lead to smooth running application and need some refactoring of access (like making certain packages public), one misplaced illustration as mentioned in the the errata on NetBeans wiki and other corrections also mentioned on the errata page.

I came to know about the ERRATA for this book at Packt Publishing site and also one ERRATA maintained by community at the NetBeans Wiki here. This Errata is a MUST to follow to make the instructions in the book work for you. So using this book plus the errata on the NetBeans wiki makes the book complete in all the instructions. With this correction this book will help a Java developer kick start as a NetBeans Developer.

In summary the plus points of the book are:

Teaching by example pedagogical approach
Way of teaching and the language is easy to understand.
Lots of illustrations
Step by step instructions which can be followed to recreate what has been taught (Requires help from errata published on NetBeans wiki)
Experience of creating a complete software using NetBeans Platform towards the end of the book

and the minus points, which I believe will be corrected gradually by Packt publishing by publishing complete errata on their site and fixing the text in next edition

Code sample not chapter wise
Code sample not in English locale
Many corrections required in book to make it work in code as expected by the author. This point is disappointing for a total new developer as they may have no clue about how to correct these errors, and the errata maintained by community is a must reference in that case.

In conclusion Packt Publishing has added one more interesting book in the range of NetBeans Platform learning books. This book gives the feel of NetBeans Platform development quickly and provides opportunity for developers to kick start their journey in the NetBeans Platform land.

With regards
Tushar Joshi, Nagpur

.

Netbeans IDE is powered by NetBeans Platform

2010-09-13T12:17:00.001+05:30

NetBeans IDE is built upon a software system called as NetBeans Platform. NetBeans Platform is used in software development since year 2000 when it went open source. NetBeans Platform is a framework which enables rapid desktop application development. It is an evolving platform and can do much more than rapid application development.

When we start developing a Java application, to achieve some business requirement; we often encounter a set of similar minimum requirements for a software.

The requirements like:

Software shall be modular, which will enable us to turn modules on or off.
Software shall be extensible, which will make it easy to add more functionality and extend the existing functionality.
Software shall have a consistent User Interface and shall follow industry standards for graphical user interface.
Software shall provide multithreaded approach for parallel tasks.
Software shall contain configurable settings for many features offered in it
Software shall have dockable windows
Software shall be cross platform
Software shall have cross platform deployment mechanism in such a way that native operating system users are comfortable with it
Software shall have a update mechanism, which will enable the user to update the modules online
Software shall have module versioning feature which enable developers to create modules for the software which depend on certain version of earlier modules

NetBeans Platform provides solutions for all the requirements mentioned above in a time tested way. It is prudent to use such a platform to develop softwares having more than one of the requirements listed above to save time in architectural features which are necessary for the stability and usability of the software.

This out of the box feature availability is the reason why the people listed in the NetBeans Showcase have chosen NetBeans Platform to build their software applications. I got acquainted with the NetBeans Platform when I started writing this blog and I was fascinated with the platform. Obviously my next step was to start learning this framework and I started searching for documentation and books.

Many things are helping me learning the NetBeans Platform like:

What I found out from my learning is that there is a learning curve associated with NetBeans Platform as it was developed through many years and contains tons of patterns and practices. But, once you acquire the skill of using NetBeans Platform it is a pleasurable experience and efficient way of developing Java applications.

To make the learning easy for new developers Packt Publishing has published a new book for NetBeans Platform named NetBeans Platform 6.9 Developer's Guide by Jürgen Petri. Initially this was a book in German language which is translated by the NetBeans Community in english to make it available for wider audience in the world.

I was asked by Packt Publishing to review this book because of my association with NetBeans IDE and because of this blog where I write about NetBeans IDE. It was a pleasure receiving a complimentary PDF copy of the book and going through all the concepts presented by the book.

With regards
Tushar Joshi, Nagpur

.

NetBeans Platform 6.9 Developer's Guide

2010-08-16T18:27:00.001+05:30

Packt publishing has published a new book on the development of NetBeans Platform applications named NetBeans Platform 6.9 Developer's Guide. The description of the book says that:

This book guides you through the development of a complete Swing application built on the NetBeans Platform. Each chapter introduces a number of new concepts relating to a theme, such as the window system, and then shows you how to implement the concepts in the application you are creating. At the end of the book you have a task manager, which you can adapt to your own purposes. Or you can, of course, create your own applications, now that you have built up a solid basis of NetBeans Platform knowledge.

I will be presenting a detailed review of this book, in my next post.

[UPDATE Sep 12, 2010] I started evaluating this book like a total beginner, and it is taking me some time to go through the sample code and to reproduce what is taught. This is helping me understand what a new learner will feel after reading this book. I will post my review soon.

with regards
Tushar Joshi, Nagpur

Download NetBeans IDE 6.9 Beta

2010-04-23T11:04:00.000+05:30

Tinuola Awopetu announced the availability of NetBeans IDE 6.9 Beta on NetBeans Mailing lists. The announcement is as follows:

NetBeans 6.9 Beta introduces the JavaFX Composer, a visual layout tool for visually building JavaFX GUI applications, similar to the Swing GUI builder for Java SE applications. Additional highlights include OSGi interoperability for NetBeans Platform applications; support for JavaFX SDK 1.3, PHP Zend framework, and Ruby on Rails 3.0; as well as improvements to the Java Editor, Java Debugger, and issue tracking, and more. NetBeans 6.9 Beta is available in English, Brazilian Portuguese, Japanese and Simplified Chinese, as well as in several community-translated languages.

Release Highlights:

OSGi

Develop OSGi bundles with Maven
Bundled Felix container and ability to register other containers such as Equinox

NetBeans Platform

OSGi interoperability: Developing and consuming OSGi bundles in Platform-based applications
Felix 2.0.3 OSGi support, experimental Equinox support

JavaFX

JavaFX Composer for form-like UI components with states and access to various data sources
Added and improved editor hints and refactoring

Java EE

Support for Contexts and Dependency Injection (CDI) (JSR-299)
Spring Framework 3.0 support

Java

Java Debugger: Breakpoint grouping, attach parameter history
Support for annotation processors in the editor, configurable in the Project Properties

PHP

Zend Framework support
"Overrides/Implements" and "Is Overridden/Implemented" annotations

Ruby

Ruby on Rails 3.0 support

C/C++

"Overrides/Is Overridden" annotations and hyperlink navigation
Console type "Internal Terminal"

To learn more visit this link about Beta release.

The final release of NetBeans 6.9 is planned for June 2010. Download Beta today and give feedback about your experience with it. You can also join discussions about the NetBeans IDE and the NetBeans Platform on mailing lists and forums. If you blog about using NetBeans add your blog to Planet NetBeans. Follow NetBeans on Twitter for updates about NetBeans news and development.

with regards
Tushar Joshi, Nagpur

Making executable desktop application in NetBeans

2009-08-23T07:36:00.008+05:30

UPDATE (26 Aug 2009): NetBeans IDE can create executable JAR for any Java project. The steps described in this post are just one way of creating the executable JAR and not the only way. Following the steps described in this post any Java project can be bundled as a JAR executable project.

Topics covered in this post:

How to create a desktop application in NetBeans?
Where is the JAR file after building the application in NetBeans?
Can a Java Desktop application started by double clicking?

We will start with creating a New Project in NetBeans. This is done by choosing menu File > New Project...

In the New Project dialog box choose Java in categories and Java Desktop Application in the projects List box. Then click the Next button.

Choose all the default values offered by NetBeans IDE in the New Desktop Application dialog as we want to see what is offered as defaults by NetBeans. Click Finish to allow NetBeans to create a new project for us.

After we click finish we get a desktop application with some boilerplate code and windows.

Click the Run button in the tool bar or choose menu Run > Run Main Project to see what is displayed when we Run the application with the default code.

We can see that the generated project is a complete application which runs and shows a window with menu and status bar. To run the application outside NetBeans let us build the application. The current version of NetBeans IDE 6.7.1 compiles and builds the project automatically as you save the project. Let us invoke the menu Run > Clean and Build Main Project to see the build process and the message which is shown after a successful build. This message has a tip for us.

The build successful messages tells us the exact location where the application JAR file is kept. We can navigate to that folder through Explorer and double click the JAR file.

The application is not dependant on NetBeans once it is build. Check the JAR file in the folder, in our case it is DesktopApplication1.jar.

When we double click this JAR file the application starts as if like a EXE file. Java is registered in windows registry as the handler of JAR files so when we double click the JAR file windows shell invokes Java Virtual Machine and hands this JAR file name over to it, so it can execute it for us.

Sometimes software like Nokia PC Suite adds JAR file handler entries in windows registry, in that case the JAR file may not run exactly as I have shown. If that happens just right click on the JAR file and choose Open With option. You will get all the application names registered to handle JAR files and choose Java in this menu to achieve the execution of JAR file.

The JAR file created by NetBeans is executable because NetBeans adds a MANIFEST.MF file in the JAR with proper entry of the Main class of the project.

with regards

Tushar Joshi, Nagpur

SHIFT+Click to close all Editor Tabs and ALT+Click to Close all others

2009-08-12T17:36:00.003+05:30

Tips covered in this post:

How to close all the editor tabs in NetBeans IDE?
How to close all other editor tabs except the current one in NetBeans IDE?
How to use mouse and keyboard combination for productivity in NetBeans IDE

SHIFT+Click
When there are many editor tabs open in NetBeans IDE and we want to close them all, we have the keyboard shortcut of CTRL+SHIFT+W, but this can also be done using mouse and a single click. Just hold the SHIFT key and click on any of the editor tab close marks and wooooosh all the editor tabs will be closed.

ALT+Click (Option+Click in Mac)
When there are many editor tabs open and we want to keep only one tab open and close all the others in a single click, just hold the ALT button and click on the close button of the editor tab you want to keep open. This will close all the other editor tabs and only the one you clicked is retained.

with regards
Tushar Joshi, Nagpur

Download NetBeans IDE 6.7

2009-06-30T05:22:00.005+05:30

NetBeans IDE 6.7 is out and available for download. The description as given in mailing list is as follows:

Download NetBeans IDE 6.7

The focus of NetBeans IDE 6.7 is connectivity—helping developers to connect to the latest technologies and to each other. New features include integration with Project Kenai, a collaborative environment for developers to host their open-source projects; native Maven support, and Hudson integration.

Building on the success of previous releases, NetBeans IDE 6.7 offers enhancements for Java, PHP, Ruby, JavaScript, Groovy and C/C++, and more. Additional highlights include a self-diagnostic Profiler, and support for SVG Rich Components, remote debugging in Ruby, and the latest version of GlassFish. The release also provides plug-in support for Zembly, a single registry and repository for popular Web APIs.

Providing superior support for multiple languages and innovative team support through Project Kenai, the NetBeans IDE 6.7 is the ideal tool for developers to stay connected to their teams and to the latest technologies!

NetBeans IDE 6.7 is available in English, Brazilian Portuguese, Japanese and Simplified Chinese. There are several community-contributed localization efforts underway to support additional languages. Join the efforts today.

More information about NetBeans IDE 6.7:

As always, we welcome and encourage feedback about your experience using the NetBeans IDE. Share your thoughts on our mailing lists and forums. If you blog about NetBeans add your blog to Planet NetBeans. Follow NetBeans on Twitter for updates about NetBeans news and development.

NetBeans IDE Connects Developers!

Opening NetBeans projects and files from Linux File Browser

2009-02-20T02:04:00.007+05:30

This post covers the topics as follows:

How to add Open with NetBeans option in the Ubuntu (Nautilus) context menu?
How to open Projects and files from Linux File Browser (in our case Ubuntu Nautilus)?
How to use Netbeans IDE as a generic file editor?

As described in the earlier post NetBeans IDE has a command line option --open which allows us to open any file and folder through command line in NetBeans IDE. Let us check how easy it is to add a context menu option on Linux for this technique.

Adding Open with NetBeans context menu in Linux File Browser

We will open File Browser in Ubuntu which happens to be Nautilus application. We will navigate to the user home and on the folder icon we will right click to see the context menu. We will select the option "Open with Other Application..." option.

Open With dialog box will be shown with the "Use a custom command" portion collapsed. We will click on this portion to get the expanded view of the dialog

The expanded view of the Open With dialog will allow us to type the custom command, which in our case will be

/usr/local/netbeans-6.5/bin/netbeans --open

The folder will get open in NetBeans IDE when we will press the Open button now. Not only this but now the option of Open with NetBeans will be added to the context menu for this user. We can check that by navigating to any folder which is a NetBeans project and right clicking it. Now we can see the Open with "netbeans" option in the context menu.

This makes opening projects in NetBeans IDE a piece of cake. Not only projects but any folder can be open like this in NetBeans IDE using this context menu. If the folder is not a NetBeans Project it will get opened like a folder explorer panel which is very handy to work with files. See how the opened project looks like when opened through this context menu.

Opening files using context menu in File Browser in Linux

Using the same technique we can also add a context menu for files. Let us right click a file and select the "Open with other Application..." option from the context menu.

Again the Open With dialog will pop up. We will type the same custom command here also.

Now the context menu for files is ready to use. Let us right click on any file and we get a Open With sub menu, which has many options including the Open with "netbeans" option also. Now we can use this context menu option to open literally any file from the File Browser.

When a file is opened like this NetBeans IDE provides all the syntax highlighting features for the file type. This makes NetBeans IDE a general purpose editor for any file.

I also tried to run a simple Java file opened like this in NetBeans IDE and it executed and displayed the output on the output window.

with regards

Tushar Joshi, Nagpur

Open with NetBeans context menu in Windows

2009-02-19T23:47:00.004+05:30

This post covers the following topics:

How to add Open with NetBeans to windows file and folder context menu
How to open any file in NetBeans without creating a project
How to use NetBeans IDE as a file and folder explorer
How to use the --open command line option for NetBeans IDE

--open command line option for NetBeans IDE

NetBeans IDE identified --open command line option and opens the file or folder given as an argument after this command line option. This fact makes the NetBeans IDE useful to open any file and folder through command line. In windows we can use this feature to introduce a context menu for files and folders in Explorer by tweaking the Windows Registry.

Adding Open with NetBeans option to windows context menu

In windows we can add two extries to the Windows Registry to add Open with NetBeans option to the Windows Explorer context menu. These entries need absolute path of the NetBeans IDE executable so while trying this trick please check the NetBeans IDE executable path.

My NetBeans IDE 6.5 executable path is

C:\Program Files\NetBeans 6.5\bin\netbeans.exe

We can add the registry entries manually by opening the regedit.exe application from the Start > Run menu, or we can create a REG file to achieve this. Creating the REG file is the easiest option. We will create a file with name openwithnetbeans.reg and we will copy the following contents in that file. Double clicking this REG file will add these registry entries to the Windows registry as required.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\shell\Open with NetBeans\command]
@="\"C:\\Program Files\\NetBeans 6.5\\bin\\netbeans.exe\" --open \"%1\""

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Folder\shell\Open with NetBeans\command]
@="\"C:\\Program Files\\NetBeans 6.5\\bin\\netbeans.exe\" --open \"%1\""

Now when we open the Explorer and right click on a NetBeans project folder we get option as Open with NetBeans and clicking on this option will start the NetBeans IDE and will open this project in the IDE.

We can see the project open in the NetBeans IDE for us.

When NetBeans IDE is already open this command will open the project in the existing IDE.

Opening any file in NetBeans IDE from Windows Explorer

Now when we right click on any file in the Windows Explorer we get the same option of Open with NetBeans and the file gets open in the existing NetBeans IDE or if it is not open a new one is started for us.

This makes NetBeans IDE a general purpose editor for me to edit any file in my computer.

with regards

Tushar Joshi, Nagpur

Using Command Line Arguments in NetBeans IDE

2009-02-17T22:07:00.006+05:30

This post covers the following points:

How to open the project properties dialog box for NetBeans IDE projects?
How to use command line arguments while running programs through NetBeans IDE?

NetBeans IDE provides a way to invoke our Java program having a main method with command line arguments. Let us walk through this process. We will create a new Java Application project and will add some code to the Main method which will print the provided command line arguments on the console.

Test Code we have written in the Main method:

/*
* To change this template, choose Tools | Templates
* and open the template in the editor.
*/
package com.tusharvjoshi.argsdemo;

/**
*
* @author Tushar Joshi
*/
public class Main {

/**
* @param args the command line arguments
*/
public static void main(String[] args) {
if (args.length == 0) {

System.out.println("No Command Line arguments");

} else {

System.out.println("You provided " + args.length
+ " arguments");

for (int i = 0; i < args.length; i++) {
System.out.println("args[" + i + "]: "
+ args[i]);
}
}
}
}

Opening the project properties dialog boxWe can either right click on the project name in the Projects panel and choose the properties option, or we can choose the Project Properties option from the File menu.

Saving the command line arguments

In the project Properties dialog box we will have to choose the Run node from the left Categories tree. As soon as we select the Run node we can see the options for the run configuration.

In the Arguments text box we have to type our command line arguments. We can see we have typed "one two three" as the options in the dialog box for testing.

Now when we Run the project the project will run as if these command line arguments are being typed in front of the java command. We can see the output window to check how the arguments are printed by our test code.

with regards

Tushar Joshi, Nagpur

NetBeans Voice of Community Process (VOC)

2009-02-02T18:48:00.003+05:30

NetBeans is growing day by day as a IDE as well as a platform for RCP. There is considerable volume of community attached with the NetBeans development and looking forward for the new features getting inroduced and also to the issues they face with the NetBeans IDE.

Feedback from Community

Community has many ways to manifest their feedback in the current Web2.0 age. They write blogs, they write twitter messages, they write forum posts, they file bugs and request for enhancements in the NetBeans IssuZilla. They write mails in the mailing lists like nbusers nbdev and openide.

One more effort to listen:

It is thought that increasing overall satisfaction with NetBeans will support Word of Mouth adoption of the IDE which will support further growth of NetBeans userbase. That's why we needed a coordinated process whose primary motivation is to fix issues not only show that we care.

What is VOC?

NetBeans Voice of Community process is started keeping this in mind and it is a team of 3 community members and one representative from Sun. Along with me the other two community members who are now called as VOC Captains are Annabel Melongo and Michel Graciano. The Sun representative is Jiri Kovalsky.

How VOC will work?

Channels are identified to gather feedback like nbusers@netbeans.org mailing list, netbeans chat, blogs, forums like DZone, TheServerSide. So as soon as we find a issue or feedback which has BIG impact on NetBeans and where we know the reported of the issue and when the issue is reproducible we will register that issue as VOC issue and it will be given priority by the development team in the process of development of NetBeans.

How to send feedback directly to VOC?

Community members and NetBeans users can directly send their feedback to the VOC mailing list at voc@netbeans.org No subscription to the mailing list is needed to send the feedback.

References:

VOC Page

http://wiki.netbeans.org/VoiceOfCommunity

with regards

Tushar Joshi, Nagpur

Opening multiple NetBeans IDE instances simultaneously

2008-12-29T02:35:00.005+05:30

Main concepts in this post:

--userdir NetBeans command line switch
opening multiple instances of NetBeans IDE
Netbeans about dialog box

This post answers questions like:

How to open two NetBeans IDE simulteneously?
What is NetBeans user directory?
What is the --userdir NetBeans command line switch?
How to know the current user directory of NetBeans?
How to use same NetBeans installation to open two instances?

Many a times we need to look two projects at the same time in NetBeans IDE. If both the projects are open in two seperate NetBeans IDEs that will be easier to look into one IDE instance having one project and code into the other instance of the IDE for the other project.

The NetBeans IDE maintains one user directory for one instance. The trick is to make seperate user directories and make shortcuts of NetBeans IDE to start the instances in those seperate user directories. Through these shortcuts we can pass the instruction to the IDE about what user directory to choose while running the instance.

Let us take an example. We will create two directories

1. D:\nbuserdir1

and

2. D:\nbuserdir2

Now we will create two shortcuts on the desktop which can be done by copying the NetBeans shortcut in the start menu and making two copies with dufferent names. Now we will right click on the shortcuts and will choose the properties. Then we will change the execution path and add the additional part to that command as

<netbeanscommand> --userdir D:\nbuserdir1 for the first shortcut

and

<netbeanscommand> --userdir D:\nbuserdir2 for the second shortcut.

Now we are ready to execute the NetBeans IDE in two instances. When we double click on those instances we will have two seperate IDEs running simulteneously.

To check which user directory is currently used by the running IDE we can open the Help > About diablog box. This dialog box will also show us the user directory used by the running instance.

with regards

Tushar Joshi, Nagpur

Annoyed about NetBeans IDE

2008-12-16T04:45:00.003+05:30

Danny Nieuwegein from Netherlands is annoyed about NetBeans IDE and the most annoying thing in NetBeans IDE as he mentions, in his blog is, CTRL-F4 closing not only the code windows, but also the project window! and when he cleans up his screen by holding CTRL-F4, all the windows including project windows gets closed and then he need to track down the option to turn the project window back on!

I tried what he is saying and indeed the CTRL+F4 keyboard shortcut closes one window at a time in NetBeans IDE and ultimately you get just the main window.

I think Danny wants a way to close only the editor windows. I tried to find out how to do that by right clicking an editor window.

I go the keyboard shortcut for closing all the editor windows as CTRL + SHIFT + W and it worked. So now atleast this cannot be a reason to get annoyed with NetBeans IDE and we can use this keyboard shortcut to close just the editor windows.

With Regards

Tushar Joshi, Nagpur

Adding MIT license in Java Class as Header

2008-12-10T09:42:00.006+05:30

For our open source project jcompare we are using MIT license. According to the open source tradition we wanted the MIT license to be included in our source code files. NetBeans makes the inclusion of license piece of cake through the templates feature.

We will use the Tools Menu and Templates option

In the various categories we have to select the Licenses Node. We need MIT license to be listed there. Initially there are only two entries under the Licenses node. NetBeans CDDL and Default License. The best way to create another license is select existing license and press the Duplicate button.

Let us press the duplicate button and we get a new License entry. Important thing to note here is the license name shall be exactly as license-MIT.txt

This will ensure we can use the default Java Class template as it is. Now we will select that entry license-MIT.txt and press the Open in folder button to open this file. We will have to change this file with our MIT license text which we will get from OSI site.

<#if licenseFirst??>
${licenseFirst}

${licensePrefix}Copyright (c)
${licensePrefix}
${licensePrefix}Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy
${licensePrefix}of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal
${licensePrefix}in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights
${licensePrefix}to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell
${licensePrefix}copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is
${licensePrefix}furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:
${licensePrefix}
${licensePrefix}The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in
${licensePrefix}all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
${licensePrefix}
${licensePrefix}THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR
${licensePrefix}IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,
${licensePrefix}FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE
${licensePrefix}AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER
${licensePrefix}LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM,
${licensePrefix}OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN
${licensePrefix}THE SOFTWARE.
<#if licenseLast??>
${licenseLast}

Next step we will follow is to open the project.properties file. We will navigate to the Files panel and expand the nbproject folder to see this file and double click on it to open it in editor.

We will add a new property in this file at the end.

That property will be

project.license=MIT

Now when we create a new class in our project the license text will be included as required.

The license file gets created in the config\Templates folder of the NetBeans user directory as shown in the image below:

with regards

Tushar Joshi, Nagpur

References:

Project-Level License Settings in NetBeans IDE 6.0 - Geertjan's Blog

UPDATE: NetBeans License Templates - John Yeary - John has more templates for licenses

Real @author name in java classes

2008-12-10T08:41:00.006+05:30

When we create a new class in NetBeans the class is created using the default template for a Java class and this template uses the user name which is created as the computer user. In my case it is tusharj. This makes the class use my name as

@author tusharj

which is not exciting. I want to use my real name and my email address after the @author java doc tag.

NetBeans provides a way to specify your own name to be used here. Open the Tools Menu and choose the Templates option.

In the long list of Templates locate the User Configuration Properties Node and select its child node User.properties

Uncomment the #user line and add your name and email address. Check the name I have written for me in the image below.

Now when we create a new Java class

We can see the @author tag with my real name

with regards

Tushar Joshi, Nagpur

Running ANT targets from NetBeans IDE

2008-11-26T21:22:00.004+05:30

NetBeans IDE used ANT for building Java projects. Many times it is not obvious for new people to know how to run custom ANT targets from NetBeans IDE.

The footprint project has its own ANT build script with lots of custom targets. Let us see how to run one of the targets from the build script. To see the build script we will navigate to the Files panel which is second tab just right to the Projects panel.

We can see our build.xml build script. When you click on that file name the contents of the file will be instantly shown in the Navigation panel below the Files Panel. Now we can issue the Run Target command from both the panels Files as well as Navigator.

We will just have to right click the desired target and say Run Target > and the target will be executed for you.

with regards

Tushar Joshi, Nagpur

NetBeans IDE 6.5 Released

2008-11-19T22:17:00.003+05:30

Download NetBeans IDE 6.5 Now!.

NetBeans IDE 6.5 offers simplified and rapid development of web, enterprise, desktop, and mobile applications with PHP, JavaScript, Java, C/C++, Ruby, and Groovy.

New features include a robust IDE for PHP, JavaScript debugging for Firefox and IE, and support for Groovy and Grails. The release also delivers a number of enhancements for Java, Ruby on Rails, and C/C++ development. Java highlights include: built-in support for Hibernate, Eclipse project import, and compile on save. Combining excellent out of the box experience, compelling features, and a great plugin ecosystem.

NetBeans IDE 6.5 is currently available in English, Japanese, Simplified Chinese and Brazilian Portuguese. There are several community contributed localization efforts underway to support additional languages. Join the efforts today.

More information about NetBeans IDE 6.5:

As always, NetBeans welcome and encourage feedback about your experience using the NetBeans IDE. Share your thoughts on NetBeans mailing lists and forums; if you blog about NetBeans add your blog to Planet NetBeans. NetBeans is now on Twitter! Follow NetBeans at twitter.com/netbeans to get the latest news and information, ask questions and engage with the NetBeans team.

Learning NetBeans Platform through an example

2008-11-02T21:42:00.005+05:30

I found a good GTD software today. I downloaded it and gave it a trial run. I liked the concept mapping for GTD in this software. This software is complete in all professional software criterias. The most important thing I noted in this software is, it is created using the NetBeans platform.

ThinkingRock as a NetBeans Platform implementation

The ThinkingRock software as is implemented in Netbeans platform I checked the license of the software and was delighted to see that it is having CDDL license and is a open source software. I quickly downloaded the source from the SVN repository kept at sourceforge.net

Now I have a complete software implementation done in NetBeans Platform. This will be a sample application for any NetBeans Platform study. This software contains all the aspects which are expected in a professional software.

with regards

Tushar Joshi, Nagpur

Java Debugger New Feature

2008-08-15T15:56:00.005+05:30

This is an attempt to create a short screencast about one new feature available in Java Debugger in NetBeans IDE 6.5 Beta onward releases.

If you happen to see this screencast please drop a comment. The quality of the screencast seems reduced after uploading to the blogger server. This way of blogging becomes handy when you want to show something you liked quickly to the community.

UPDATE: This screencast is now available on NetBeans.TV site. You can see the New Feature in Java Debugger with better quality there.

With Regards
Tushar Joshi, Nagpur

Simplified GUI Code Generation

2008-08-14T09:38:00.004+05:30

Fully Qualified Class Names
When we design JFrame, JPanels and any other GUI component in NetBeans the generated code contains fully qualified class names of the used classes.

For example let us create a sample JFrame form and add some components to that form through the form designer.

Let us keep the components to minimum as this is just an example. So we have added one label one text field and a button.
When we can see in the folded generated code for init components is all the components are defined and instanciated using the fully qualified class names.

More Human way of code writing
When we write code manually usually we do not write the fully qualified names, we make use of the import option and import all the classes at the top and use just the class names.

NetBeans IDE 6.5 Beta onwards we have a way to do just that. Now we can get simplified code through configuring NetBeans IDE and asking for simplified code.

Select the root component of the form from the Inspector panel. For our example we have clicked on the Form MainForm root node in the tree as shown above.

Now in the properties panel...

There is a new property named Generate Full Classnames and which will be by default checked if you havent done any setting yet. Let us uncheck that checkbox to make our code simpler.

Now the code looks simpler and easy to understand. This is how I will write the code if I write it manually, isn't it?

If you like this setting and if you want it to become the default behavior of the IDE then we have a global setting for it in the Tools > Options dialog box. Just select the Miscelleneous section and the GUI Builder tab. Ensure that Generate Fully Qualified Names of Classes checkbox is unckecked.

With Regards
Tushar Joshi, Nagpur

NetBeans IDE 6.5 Beta - Auto Download for Subversion Client 1.5 in Windows

2008-08-13T23:47:00.005+05:30

NetBeans IDE 6.5 Beta no longer needs Subversion client installed on Windows XP machine. I got this information in the New and Noteworthy page and since then was excited to try out the NetBeans downloading feature of the Subversion Client 1.5 for Windows from the Update Center.

When you do not have Subversion client installed...

After creating a sample application and choosing the Import into Subversion repository... option, NetBeans IDE 6.5 Beta now shows a dialog box indicating that it could not find Subversion client installed and offers two ways to proceed.

NetBeans IDE 6.5 Beta Offers bundled client

Either choose to download the bundled Subversion 1.5 binaries for Windows from the Update Center or Install the SVN 1.5 Command Line client. It also recommends to choose the first bundled option.

After choosing the bundled Subversion option it shows the license agreement for downloading and installing the bundled Subversion Client.

Accepting the license starts the download in the background. We can see the progress of the download in the status bar of the IDE.

It installs the component smoothly and then asks to restart the IDE. Clicking the restart button makes the IDE shut down and start again. This time before the splash screen it shows an Update banner for some time and then the usual Splash screen.

We still need to create our own repository if we want to keep the project in local repository. If we have a remote Subversion server than we can directly use the server. The point is now NetBeans IDE 6.5 Beta is ready to work with Subversion repositories.

We will choose a local already created repository (through TortoiseSVN) for this example.

Rest all the dialog boxes for showing the list of files to be committed and asking the commit comment will be shown and the files will be committed to the Subversion repository.

Here we can see the project successfully committed to the local subversion repository. NetBeans IDE 6.5 Beta has taken a good step by providing the bundled Subversion client which makes installation and use of Subversion even more easier now.

with regards
Tushar Joshi, Nagpur

New Colors of the NetBeans IDE 6.5 Beta Installer

2008-08-13T23:40:00.002+05:30

I joined the download party for NetBeans IDE 6.5 Beta today. This time the installer has new design and new 6.5 logo.

I downloaded the Java EE pack and this is what I got bundled in one installer. The Apache Tomcat 6.0 was not offered but through the Customize... button I got it listed in the list of to be installed components of the installer.

The installation was smooth. When I started NetBeans IDE 6.5 Beta I was surprised with the new design of the splash screen.

I liked what I saw. What about you?

With Regards
Tushar Joshi, Nagpur

Introducing NetBeans IDE 6.5 Beta

2008-08-13T17:54:00.003+05:30

NetBeans IDE 6.5 Beta is released today.

Download NetBeans IDE 6.5 Beta Now

The NetBeans IDE 6.5 Beta release provides several new features and enhancements, such as a new IDE-wide QuickSearch shortcut, more user-friendly interface, and automatic Compile on Save.

In addition to full support of all Java editions (Java SE, Java EE, Java ME), the NetBeans IDE is the ideal tool for software development with PHP, C/C++, Groovy and Grails, Ruby and Rails, Ajax and JavaScript.

The 6.5 release also includes enhanced support for web frameworks (Hibernate, Spring, JSF, JPA), the GlassFish application server, and databases.

The main features supported and listed on netbeans site are

PHP

PHP Editor (Code completion, syntactic and semantic code highlighting)
Support for heredoc notation and PHTML
Xdebug
Generators for MySQL database code snippets

JavaScript and Ajax

JavaScript Editor and Debugger
JavaScript Library Manager
Yahoo UI, Woodstock, jQuery, Dojo, Scriptaculous, Prototype libraries
CSS Editor

Java EE & Web Development

Enhanced support for Spring, Hibernate, JSF, JSF CRUD generator, JPA (Java Persistence API)
Create RESTful web services from database tables or from JPA entities
Drag and drop SaaS services into PHP files
SQL Editor Improvements (code completion, save/recall queries, and more)

Groovy and Grails

Develop pure Groovy apps or use Groovy in Java SE projects
Groovy editor (code completion, highlighting, and more)
Grails web application framework
Open existing Grails applications without adding metadata

Ruby and Rails

Rake improvements: Rake Runner and a pre-generated Rake file
Debugger: Conditional breakpoints and catchpoints
Ruby projects accept JVM options from command line
New Test Runner interface for displaying test results

GlassFish v3 Prelude for Web Development

Modular, OSGi based architecture
Small footprint, fast startup and deployment
Support for scripting, including JRuby

C/C++

Improved code completion, error highlighting, and semantic highlighting
Call graph, Memory window
Remote development
Packaging of application as tar files, zip files, or SVR4 packages

Java ME

New project wizard for adding custom components to the Visual Designer Palette
New SVG UI components in the enhanced SVG Composer enable rich UI design
New Data Binding Custom Components in the Visual Designer Palette
Upgraded obfuscation tool to ProGuard 4.2 and test framework to JMUnit 1.1.0

Java SE

Multi-threaded Java debugging
Java Swing GUI Builder: TreeModel Editor for JTrees
Improved Eclipse project import and synchronization

IDE Tools and Usability

One QuickSearch shortcut for IDE actions, files, options, and docs
Support for Windows UNC paths (shared network folders)
Automatic Compile on Save / Deploy on Save

With Regards
Tushar Joshi, Nagpur

NetBeans in Education

2008-07-27T14:12:00.000+05:30

First part of the “Introduction to Programming” has been made available at the Edu site, http://edu.netbeans.org/. This is a course created by a team of Java instructors in the Philippines. The course outline, teacher's manual, student's manual, and all related NetBeans projects are available for you to use in the classroom.

The course is aimed at complete newbies, not only newbies to Java, but newbies to programming. If you have a group of students who fall into that category, hop over to http://edu.netbeans.org/ and download the courseware and use them as much or as little as you like.

(Taken from nbedu mailing list)

Passion for blogging about NetBeans IDE

2008-05-13T13:44:00.002+05:30

NetBeans IDE 6.1 Beta blogging contest brought motivation for many bloggers. Many new blogs started and old ones continued to speak about NetBeans IDE.

With the list of top 10 winners the complete list of all participating entries is also published. Some more information which can be deduced from that list is bloggers have also submitted multiple entries for the contest.

These are the participants having maximum entries in the contest:

Tushar Joshi (This blog) 19 entries
Adam Bien 8 entries
Rhawi Dantas 7 entries
Alan M. Feldstein 4 entries
Jacek Laskowski 4 entries
Junji Takakura 4 entries

I have not included many bloggers having 3 or less than three entries. The multiple entries shows the flow of energy happening and the passion amongst the bloggers about using and blogging for NetBeans.

with regards
Tushar Joshi, Nagpur

NetBeans IDE Blogging Contest Results

2008-05-13T07:05:00.003+05:30

The results for the NetBeans IDE 6.1 Beta Blogging Contest are out. Congratulations to all 10 $500 American Gift Card winners and all other 100 winners who will get a NetBeans T-Shirt.

The results are available on the NetBeans Blogging Contest Page.

The top 10 winning posts are as follows:

Matthew Nuzum	English	Netbeans 6.1 spanks Eclipse and challenges Visual Studio
Patrick Julien	English	NetBeans 6.1: The Best just got Better
Ding Liang	Chinese	About NetBeans
Diego Silva	Spanish	JavaScript en NetBeans 6.1
Wagner Roberto dos Santos	Portuguese	O que podemos esperar do NetBeans 6.1 ?
Pat Coleman	English	Can NetBeans create a code-less P2P app?
James Eliyezar	English	Subversion and NetBeans - A quick start guide
Junji Takakura	Japanese	NetBeans 6.1 RC to use PHP
Jacek Laskowski	Polish	NetBeans IDE 6.1 - Spring Framework Support
Joshua van Aalst	English	NetBeans 6.1 A Delight To Use

The list of participating blogs is published in a separate URL.

with regards
Tushar Joshi, Nagpur

NetBeans IDE - Default Font Size

2008-05-04T11:05:00.004+05:30

When we set out to search for the tips regarding how to change the default font and default look and feel for NetBeans IDE we get related information in seconds through any decent search engine.

Even then I am adding the same information again here with some fresh screenshots with the intension that,after this the user can find the information even sooner than I got it.

The default font size used by NetBeans IDE 6.1 is small and decent.

Some users may have different needs and want the font size to be bigger. NetBeans IDE has the facility to change the default font size through the configurations settings just like Look and feel setting.

In the netbeans.conf configuration file for NetBeans IDE which can be found in

C:\Program Files\NetBeans 6.1\etc\netbeans.conf

for the default Windows XP NetBeans IDE installation we can add the fontsize option to the netbeans_default_options string value

--fontsize 18

so make the configuration look like

netbeans_default_options="<old-options> --fontsize 18"

where <old-options> are the values already there which we will keep as they are and will add the new settings --fontsize.

This setting will make the default font size bigger and look like:

See how bigger the fonts can be seen now. Even the menus look like:

References:

NetBeans IDE Hacks part 2 font-size
NetBeans IDE Hacks part 2 laf

with regards
Tushar Joshi, Nagpur

NetBeans IDE - Look and Feel

2008-05-03T10:35:00.003+05:30

The default look and feel of the recently released NetBeans IDE 6.1 final is set automatically according to the operating system. This make the NetBeans appear as a Windows application with Windows look and feel while running on windows and so forth in other operating systems.

(Default look and feel on windows XP)

I like the cross platform look of java applications which can be set by configuring the java applications with the Metal look and feel. NetBeans also allows us to change the default look and feel by a configuration setting.

Ideally I would have loved to have a look and feel menu or a setting in the preferences dialog in the NetBeans IDE GUI to set the look and feel. The current way to change the default look and feel is either by changing the configuration file or passing a command line argument to the netbeans startup command.

I will use the configuration file setting method to change the default look and feel of NetBeans IDE.

As this setting is a configuration setting I will have to pass the exact fully qualified name of the look and feel class I want.

In our case as we want metal look and feel we will use the name:

javax.swing.plaf.metal.MetalLookAndFeel

When default paths are chosen for the installation of NetBeans IDE it gets installed in

C:\Program Files\NetBeans 6.1

The configuration files are kept in a subdirectory named etc so the exact path for the netbeans.conf file is:

C:\Program Files\NetBeans 6.1\etc\netbeans.conf

When opened in text editor it will look like

Here we will change the netbeans_default_options portion and add one additional switch to the options line.

(netbeans.con snap without look and feel setting)

We will add the look and feel option like

--laf javax.swing.plaf.metal.MetalLookAndFeel

(netbeans.conf with the additional look and feel option)

Now when we start the NetBeans IDE again the look and feel will be seen as Metal.

(Cross platform Metal look and feel)

References:

NetBeans Wiki: FAQ Custome Look and Feel
Java Tutorials: How to set Look and Feel

with regards
Tushar Joshi, Nagpur

Matisse GUI designer - Seperation of Concerns

2008-05-02T09:50:00.004+05:30

I like the separation of concern concept and I often use it while creating GUI applications. In Java I use interfaces to achieve separation of concern technique.

Let us explore this concept through an example. We will use NetBeans IDE 6.1 final as editor. The Matisse GUI editor will be used to design the GUI and then keep the generated GUI code separate from the main application logic as much as possible to apply the technique.

Let us assume a small application which will show a window with a text box for the user to type name. We will have two buttons Greet and Close. Greet will show a message with Greetings for the typed name and Close will close the application.

Once we have our expectations set right we can start designing the application and the logic. The main aspect of the separation of concerns concept is to keep the concerns seperate. There is one concern of showing the GUI and receiving user input from that GUI. The second concern is to show the greeting for the received name.

suppose we have a design like:

SimpleWindow as our GUI Frame class
SimpleExample as our main class

I will introduce one interface now
ISimpleListener for disconnecting the GUI from application logic.

I have designed a simple GUI for this application by starting a JFrame form file in NetBeans new file wizard. The design contains a text box and two buttons as we decided.

By double clicking the buttons we can generate the event handlers in the designer. After double clicking the buttons IDE generated the required code for the event handlers. Now we need an interface to notify the events to anyone who will implement the interface.

/*
* To change this template, choose Tools | Templates
* and open the template in the editor.
*/

package com.company.simpleview;

/**
*
* @author Tushar Joshi
*/
public interface ISimpleListener {

public void close();

public void greet(String text);

}

This can be done by modifying the generated code and by introducing the interface in constructor and keeping a reference in the class.

Then I will call the methods from the interface when the event handlers will be called from GUI.

This is the only change we have to do in the GUI generated class. This is the minimum code we need inside the generated class. Keeping the generated class with minimum custom code will also help me change and regenerate the code again safely.

In the main class SimpleExample now I will use this SimpleWindow class and I will implement the interface so the events notification will be received by my main class and I can write my logic there.

/*
* To change this template, choose Tools | Templates
* and open the template in the editor.
*/
package com.company.simpleview;

import com.company.simpleview.gui.SimpleWindow;
import java.awt.EventQueue;
import javax.swing.JOptionPane;

/**
*
* @author Tushar Joshi
*/
public class SimpleExample implements ISimpleListener {

private final SimpleWindow simpleWindow;

public SimpleExample() {
this.simpleWindow = new SimpleWindow(this);
}

public void show() {
EventQueue.invokeLater(new Runnable() {

public void run() {
simpleWindow.setVisible(true);
}
});
}

/**
* @param args the command line arguments
*/
public static void main(String[] args) {
new SimpleExample().show();
}

public void close() {
EventQueue.invokeLater(new Runnable() {

public void run() {
simpleWindow.setVisible(false);
}
});
}

public void greet(String text) {
JOptionPane.showMessageDialog(simpleWindow, text);
}
}

One thing to note here is if I want the GUI in a different way I can change the GUI provided that I dont break the interface and the notifications. The two classes are connected only through this interface to communicate with each other.

This technique is my favorite technique for GUI applications.

with regards
Tushar Joshi, Nagpur

Download NetBeans IDE 6.1 Final Release

2008-04-29T05:58:00.003+05:30

NetBeans IDE 6.1 Final is released yesterday.

As mentioned in the release overview, The NetBeans IDE 6.1 release provides several new features and enhancements, such as rich JavaScript editing features, support for using the Spring web framework, tighter MySQL integration, and an improved way of sharing libraries among dependent projects. The acclaimed support for Ruby/JRuby has been enhanced with new editor quick fixes, a Ruby platform manager, fast debug support for JRuby, and many other new features and fixes.

By popular demand, the bean pattern and JSF CRUD generation features that were missing in the 6.0 release have returned. In addition, early versions of new modules, such as ClearCase support, are available as plugins.

Get your copy of NetBeans IDE 6.1 GA from the download page in your favorite pack.

with regards
Tushar

Download NetBeans IDE 6.1 RC2

2008-04-21T08:04:00.003+05:30

NetBeans IDE 6.1 Release Candidate 2 is now available. You can download your favorite pack from the download section of NetBeans site now.

The final release of NetBeans IDE 6.1 is scheduled on April 23rd, 2008. So three days from now we can download the final release.

(NetBeans Roadmap)

(UPDATE: The final release of NetBeans IDE 6.1 is now planned on 28th April 2008. Earlier it was planned for 23rd April but has been postponed to 28th April 2008 now. The change in plan can be seen in the roadmap page on netbeans.org site)

Top 10 NetBeans IDE Keyboard Shortcuts I use the most

2008-04-18T06:38:00.004+05:30

Initially for exploration of the features working with mouse may feel fancy but as you continue using the tool for project development and want to concentrate more on task in hand you start finding ways to do things faster. NetBeans IDE 6.1 provides many keyboard shortcuts if used judiciously they can save a lot of developers time.

I use certain shortcut keys more often than other keys. This is a list of the keyboard shortcuts for NetBeans IDE which I use in my day to day development tasks.

1. CTRL+F12 Navigate to Member

When my class becomes big and there are many methods in the class navigating to a specific method becomes easy with this dialog box.

As soon as I start typing the name of the desired method the dialog contents are filtered for me to select from matching method names starting from what I have typed.

2. SHIFT+ESC Toggle Editor Maximize / Minimize

I like working in the fully maximized editor window. SHIFT+ESC maximize the editor window for me and I can work with full concentration. When I need to see other windows I can again press SHIFT+ESC and I get the normal layout of windows back.

3. CTRL+7 Activate Navigator Window

When I am in maximized editor mode and I need to navigate to some method, either I choose the method 1 as described above or sometimes I use CTRL+7 to activate the navigator window. The windows other than editor in NetBeans follow a specific pattern, you can type characters and a quick search window appears which selects the most appropriate item from the window according to what is typed in this quick search window.

4. CTRL+/ Toggle Comment

For quick commenting of some lines I select those lines and press CTRL+/ to comment all those selected lines. The same lines can be uncommented again by following the same process.

5. ALT+SHIFT+F Format Code

This key combination formats my code to the standard Java Code Formatting template.

6. CTRL+0 Activate the Editor

When I am in the Navigator window through the shortcut CTRL+7 and I want to navigate back to the editor i press CTRL+0. I do not need mouse to do this navigation and save a lot of time in navigating between windows.

7. CTRL+# Activate different windows

These shortcuts are handy for navigating between the different windows. They become very important when I work in maximized editor mode.
CTRL+1 - Project Window
CTRL+2 - Files Window
CTRL+3 - Favorite Window
CTRL+4 - Output Window
CTRL+5 - Services window
CTRL+6 - Tasks Window

8. ALT+INSERT Generate Code

When I need to generate getter setters or constructors this key combination brings the Code Generation menu

9. ALT+F7 Find Usages

Many a times I want to track all the occurrences of a particular method call. Who is calling my method. This Find Usages dialog comes handy in such times.

10. CTRL+F4 Close Editor Window and CTRL+SHIFT+F4 Close All Editor Windows

I use these keys often to close my editor windows and save many mouse clicks.

with regards
Tushar Joshi, Nagpur

NetBeans Innovator Grant Projects Announced

2008-04-17T08:35:00.004+05:30

As mentioned on the grants page on NetBeans site the NetBeans Innovators Grant is a process to provide grants to developers or teams of developers to work on an open source project. A total of 10 large projects will be chosen and awarded a grant of US$ 11,500 dollars. Another 10 smaller projects will be chosen and awarded a grant of US$ 2,000 dollars. Awards will only be awarded upon actual project completion. Projects that excel may receive one of two possible gold awards of US$ 11,000 dollars or two possible silver awards of US$ 5,000 dollars.

Tom Wheeler, on behalf of NetBeans Dream Team, announced the names of the Large as well as Small projects on the openide-dev mailing list today.

I can see 10 large and 10 small projects getting added to the NetBeans treasure in August as this competition takes final turn. Apart from the winning the most important thing is NetBeans community will get 20 best add on features in the NetBeans platform.

Congratulations to all the winners. The list will be published soon on the NetBeans web site for all.

with regards
Tushar

Ohloh flags NetBeans incorrectly, as a mostly JavaScript project

2008-04-17T07:28:00.005+05:30

What is Ohloh?
Ohloh is a open source software directory. Ohloh recognizes the open source source control repositories and when a open source project is registered with Ohloh it crawls the source repository directly and generates reports about the activity and nature of the projects.

NetBeans information on Ohloh
When I checked about NetBeans project on Ohloh to add it to my stack of projects I was surprised to read Ohloh mentioning NetBeans as a mostly written in JavaScript project.

Click here to visit NetBeans page on Ohloh

The mostly written in information, as given by Ohloh site, is extracted from the analysis of NetBeans source repository. This means the source of NetBeans mostly contains JavaScript files.

What is the language used to develop NetBeans?
I know that NetBeans IDE is written in Java language. The NetBeans site do not mention this fact any where as it may be taken as a implicit fact. The NetBeans site mentions about the features of NetBeans and what it can do for you but what it is written in is kept implicit, or at least I could not find any page mentioning the programming language of NetBeans IDE. Now as I am subscribed to NetBeans developers mailing list I know from the discussions going on there that NetBeans is developed in Java.

I have added a comment to the Ohloh mostly written by page to highlight that NetBeans is a Java project and not JavaScript. You can also comment on it to add to it.

with regards
Tushar

10 Things NetBeans must do to survive

2008-04-16T08:35:00.004+05:30

(NetBeans.org web site in initial days around 2001, obtained from WayBack Machine)

I stumbled upon an old post by Matt Stephens with the title 10 Things NetBeans must do to survive. Matt has reviewed NetBeans version 3.0 probably and the post is dated October 27, 2003. I got tempted to check whether his points hold good today for the current version after around 4 and half years of that review.

1. Improve the windowing system
In his first point he points out towards the windowing system. I have used IntelliJ IDEA and I daily use Eclipse in my day job. I can say the windowing system in NetBeans is according to current standards. Same dockable windows, floating windows and expandable editor windows. I am able to use the windowing system without much difference noticed.

2. Improve Usability
In his second point he mentions options panel, properties panel, GUI panel and Wizards being unfriendly. I have not used the NetBeans version 3.0 so cannot say about these windows in that version. For NetBeans IDE 6.1 I can see the options window, properties window, GUI panel and Wizards according to the current industry standards. If you do not have to learn a feature because it follows already established industry standard then that feature can be called as usable. In fact the GUI builder now have choices to create Java code which is not dependent on any NetBeans library.

3. Improve the default Look and Feel
In his third point Matt mentions default look and feel which in his view was not good at those times. Now I can see my NetBeans IDE opening with the Windows XP look and feel for me. This means the IDE now has smart look and feel features. I even tried changing my look and feel by changing the look and feel entry in netbeans.ini configuration and I now know I can have any look and feel to my NetBeans IDE.

4. Keep enhancing Java Editor
In his fourth point he suggests NetBeans to keep the Java editor up to date. I can see many good features now available for Java Editor. There are some hints missing but I see the Java Editor making progress in each version.

5. Slow down on APIs
Matt expresses unhappiness for the rapidly changing API of NetBeans platform. I can see many books in the market now with the established set of APIs. I feel the API of NetBeans is quite matured now and this point does not hold good now.

6. Make the APIs simpler
In this point it is mentioned that API is not suitable for standalone applications to get developed on the NetBeans platform. I cannot say much for this point. You the reader may have better points and if you do please tell me in comments of the post. What I can say is I have seen some applications developed on top of the NetBeans platform and hence do not feel the APIs are not good enough or simple.

7. Lose the NetBeans is slow stigma
The performance of NetBeans has been improved by the NetBeans team from version to version. The startup time is now fast and many benchmarking reviews are available.

8. Offer built-in refactoring support
Now NetBeans has a refactoring menu for Java refactoring. I can see major refactoring options available out of the box.

9. Make more noise
For this point Tim Boudreau also have stated in comments that hyped publicity do not last long. I can see many users of NetBeans writing about it and this is the most original and first hand publicity a software tool can get. So this point has being covered by different and better means creative of publicity and promotion.

10. Stop using that… brown colour scheme on their website
Here Matt says brown color should be left behind and NetBeans should embrace more professional color. I do not agree much to his point but now NetBeans.org site has different colors that those days. The colors now are blue shades and smooth colors to eyes.

Concluding my review of the review I will say that all the points mentioned by Matt are covered by the new NetBeans IDE 6.1 and not only that the IDE now contains many more improvements and support for multiple languages as well.

If Matt writes about the current version of NetBeans IDE 6.1 again I believe he will agree to all my points and will also add some more praise to the points more than me.

Do read that review also as it contains many comments from many important people with interesting viewpoints. Do comment on my post with your opinion.

Recently I saw some back links for my blog. Many thanks to Ramesh and Jay for the link backs.

with regards
Tushar Joshi, Nagpur

Mercurial in NetBeans - Working with Remote Repository

2008-04-15T07:34:00.005+05:30

(You will need Mercurial installed in windows to see the things in this article working. We covered installing Mercurial in windows in an earlier post here)

Support for remote repositories in NetBeans IDE 6.1 is limited to updating and pulling. I wish I could have done all the required things only in NetBeans IDE but unless full support is available in NetBeans IDE we will use NetBeans IDE and TortoiseHg windows shell client to achieve our goals.

Let us start with the free Mercurial project hosting site FreeHg. FreeHg provides free sign up and hosting of your mercurial repositories. If you do not have an account yet sign up now.

Let me create a new repository named myhgtest

After clicking the button Create repository for tusharvjoshi I can see the repository created and displayed on the web page with its web address as http://freehg.org/u/tusharvjoshi/myhgtest/

This is an empty but initialized Mercurial repository for me on remote server. To work with this repository I will clone it to my workstation.

Right clicking in empty space of My Computer window will bring windows context menu with TortoiseHg > Clone a repository option.

I will name my repository as myhgtest and will provide the remote web address for my source path

TortoiseHg creates a new folder and clones the remote repository in that folder.

NetBeans IDE cannot create a new NetBeans project in an existing directory yet. I will have to create a dummy project for this purpose. Let me create a project with name myhgtest-temp just for creating the project skeleton files.

Now as the project skeleton is ready as seen in the image

I will copy all the files in this folder myhgtest-temp to my cloned repository folder myhgtest. Now when I choose Open project command in NetBeans IDE it will show my cloned repository also. Open that project.

We can see Netbeans IDE identifies that this project is under Mercurial version control. Remember we have not yet committed the NetBeans project configuration skeleton files, so the files are shown in a different color.

Let us commit the files to the repository. Committing, Updating can be done from within the Netbeans IDE.

Now we have all the files committed to the local repository. Now when I am done with my development I want to share this version with my friends. The push command to remote repository is not supported in NetBeans IDE 6.1 yet and gives an error for me.

I choose to right click in the folder window and TortoiseHg > Synchronize... option

The synchronize window has an option of Push. Let us choose that option

As soon as I choose the Push option TortoiseHg asks for the password for the repository. Cloning can be done without password but pushing to a repository requires a password in FreeHg server.

It successfully pushed the files. How to check whether the files are really updated on the remote server?

When I refreshed the project page in my browser I could see the new change-set available on the changes section of the project.

This is how we can share a Mercurial project through a remote server. All the developers can clone the project and update the project through Push commands. NetBeans IDE provides identification and local commands to work with the local Mercurial repository copy.

I will like to have all the features in NetBeans IDE as I said earlier so that TortoiseHg is no more needed. I believe this will be very soon.

with regards
Tushar Joshi, Nagpur

NetBeans - I will write about you again and again

2008-04-14T10:08:00.004+05:30

(Image courtesy Ravages)

NetBeans
a helping friend
for Java development
NetBeans
for a newbie developer
your're soothing compliment

NetBeans
you give my programming
a productive touch
NetBeans
I have started liking
you very much

NetBeans
now I don't bother about
syntax errors any more
NetBeans
now I can concentrate
on logic much more

NetBeans
your hints are tonic
for my editing pain
NetBeans
I will write about
you again and again

with regards
Tushar Joshi, Nagpur

Filing an Enhancement request for NetBeans IDE 6.1

2008-04-14T08:20:00.002+05:30

In my expectation driven development post I stumbled upon one limitation of NetBeans hints for Java. When I tried to create a new interface from a hint NetBeans only offered me a "Create Class" hint where I was expecting a Create Interface hint also. Eclipse has this hint and I am used to this Eclipse hint very much.

As an efficient NetBeaner I must file a report for this request in the NetBeans Issuezilla so someday this hint will get added to the IDE.

I started with searching for any other report already submitted regarding hints in Netbeans IDE. Any earlier report will help me understand what is done to submit a report for my requirement. Shall I submit it as a bug or an enhancement? All these questions may get answered in this search.

So in File an Issue page, in the "Search the 'summary' fields of open bugs" textbox I typed "hint" and clicked the search button.

All the reports having mention of hint word were shown to me. After some inspection I observer one interesting issue report.

I found one report http://www.netbeans.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=119619 which was very near to what I was about to submit. I learned from this report that I should file an enhancement report for my requirement. I also learned that the Component is java and subcomponent is hints for this type of report.

My new issue can be seen at http://www.netbeans.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=132711 where I have now filed my request for the enhancement in the hints for Create Class.

Now someday I can expect some development in this hint and will receive a mail when any changes happen to this issue report.

Video demonstration - Expectation driven development through NetBeans IDE

2008-04-14T07:37:00.004+05:30

(UPDATE: Due to bandwidth issues I have changed the links of the video file to a shared hosting service. Please suggest any if option is available where I can host this video free directly in comments to this post)

In an earlier post I presented Expectation driven development through NetBeans IDE concept. I have prepared a video demonstration of that concept.

Please visit the Expectation driven development through NetBeans IDE demo to watch the video.

with regards
Tushar Joshi, Nagpur

Seven Habits of highly effective NetBeaner (NetBeans IDE user)

2008-04-13T10:27:00.008+05:30

First, let me tell you about the word NetBeaner in title of this post. I have read NetBeans developers, technical writers and bloggers using words like "Happy NetBeaning". I think this is a way people show their affection towards the platform, by tweaking the name NetBeans and making a verb out of it, adjective out of it. I also used it here to describe people who like to experiment with NetBeans, who use Netbeans and often say it through their blogs.

Now coming to Seven Habits of highly effective NetBeaners. I don't have to tell you, the reader, more about the phrase Seven Habits. It comes from a popular book written by Stephen Covey. When I though about some good habits NetBeaners should have I came up with some points which I will like to share with you.

1. Be proactive
If you like NetBeans tell that to the world. Blogging is the easiest and best way to shout about your experiences. Blog about your experiences. Tell others why you liked particular feature of NetBeans. To write about something makes you think about it, which is useful for deep exploration of the tool.

2. Begin with end in mind
We must remember that the IDE is a tool to make us develop projects efficiently. Learning IDE to its depth and width will make us productive for development of our projects. So keep in mind that it is the project, which is the end product of all the learning associated with Netbeans. It happens sometimes that we fell into love with the tool so much that we forget the end and the project. Loving the tool is good as it makes the learning process passionate but we shall also keep the project in mind.

3. First things first
Start with what you know about Netbeans by using it in your project. Just because you are new to Netbeans cannot be the reason of staying away from it. You can start with what you have and while developing your project keep learning new tips and tricks about the Netbeans IDE. Adding NetBeans related blogs in your favorite Feed Reader and reading new posts frequently can be a good source of learning new things in the NetBeans platform.

4. Think win win
When we like some tool it does not mean all other tools in the world are not good. Do not make the users of other IDE feel bad just because they do not use NetBeans. I believe in presenting all the goodness of NetBeans to all the people when ever it is possible to me. Using NetBeans does not mean I hate all the existing IDEs in the world. I prefer even testing other IDEs and checking interesting features they have. I appreciate the new features and add them to the wish list for NetBeans if those features are popular and good enough. There will always be some people who have a different requirement or perspective than me. Some people will use other IDEs and I must respect their choice.

5. Seek first to understand
Part of learning NetBeans is also sharing your knowledge with other knowledge seekers. Join nbusers mailing list. This is the mailing list where other NetBeans users discuss about the usage and their difficulties in NetBeans. I can also ask my own problems here. Even if I do not have a problem with NetBeans, still the discussion going on here, helps me learn more things in Netbeans. Reply to mails where you know the solution. This helps the community and you to learn more. Learn from questions and experiment new things in the NetBeans IDE. Join NetBeans Zone and post NetBeans related links there to share with the world. Take part in Netbeans related discussions on NetBeans Zone and put your opinion honestly.

6. Synergize
Join an open source project related to NetBeans. When you find issues and bugs, report them to the NetBeans IssueZilla so the developers can reproduce them and fix them in the next version of NetBeans. Pour your ideas in the mailing lists. Invent new solutions through discussions in mailing lists.

7. Sharpen the saw
Watch the new and noteworthy about the newest version of NetBeans. Learn all the newly added features and keep yourself acquainted with most of the features of the IDE so they can help you become productive in your projects. Join the nbdev mailing list to know about the new developments happening in NetBeans platform. Write new modules to make the IDE better. This can be done either by joining any open source module project or starting your own module project as an open source project.

with regards
Tushar Joshi, Nagpur

Mercurial in NetBeans - Using Mercurial and cloning

2008-04-12T18:43:00.006+05:30

I tried experimenting in NetBeans IDE 6.1 Beta for Mercurial support. Now as the NetBeans IDE 6.1 Release Candidate 1 is available I tried to work with this new version and found some changes in the arrangements of the Mercurial menu. Now onwards we will see the features of NetBeans IDE 6.1 RC1 on this blog as this is the latest available release.

If you try to run any Mercurial command on NetBeans IDE when Mercurial is not installed or not available in the Windows executable search path then NetBeans shows a dialog box saying no support for Mercurial.

Mercurial should be already installed to see the things in this post happening. In an earlier post we covered the installation of Mercurial on Windows. The version of Mercurial we installed was not the version NetBeans was expecting so it displayed a dialog box saying this module was not expecting this Mercurial version but it allows to continue with the version we have.

Choosing Yes will tell NetBeans to try anyway.

I created a new sample project "BankExample" for the test run. After right clicking on the project name we can see menu with Versioning > Initialize Mercurial Project.

Choosing this option will initialize Mercurial repository in the project directory. Mercurial will create a folder named ".hg" in the project folder. This is the Mercurial repository where it will store all the configuration and version control material.

You can see the Mercurial initialization output on the output window.

Unlike Subversion Mercurial will not create .hg folder in all the sub folders. This is one feature I liked very much of Mercurial.

The Mercurial repository is created but the files in the directory are not yet tracked by the Mercurial system. We must commit all the files to the repository first to tell Mercurial to keep version information, which it does in terms of change-sets.

The project explorer shows visual clues by showing icons with the file and package names.

We can commit the files by right clicking the project and choosing the Mercurial > Commit... option

The commit dialog box shows all the files that will be committed to the repository. Here we have choice to change the behaviour of the commit command for different files. We can set some files not to commit. We are required to type a message for commit.

We should commit our code often as we develop the project. This commit is made in the local Mercurial repository crested in the project folder. This is just like maintaining our repository locally with the project.

To check the sharing options of the Mercurial version control system we should clone the project repository. Cloning makes a replica of the project repository and also sets a reference to the original copy of the repository as default push and pull target. Once the project is cloned then the original and the cloned copy can share the version information by commands push and pull.

The command for cloning is available at top menu Versioning > Mercurial > Clone (project name)

NetBeans suggest a name for the clone and also offers to make the new cloned project as main project.

We can see the project cloned in folder BankExample_clone0 and opened in the NetBeans IDE side by side to the original project.

When I changed a file in the cloned project and committed to the repository I can now check pushing the information back to the original repository.

Again Versioning > Mercurial > Share > Push to - default option will allow me to push the changes to the original repository from where I had cloned this repository.

Ideally the projects will be made available on web for sharing by people. People can share the updates to the originally repository by cloning the projects on their workstations. The local copy can be updated by update or pull command from the original repository any time.

with regards
Tushar Joshi, Nagpur

NetBeans IDE 6.1 Release Candidate available

2008-04-12T09:22:00.002+05:30

NetBeans.org has released the NetBeans IDE 6.1 Release Candidate. Download it now!

Highlights of this release include:

JavaScript Support

Semantic Highlighting

Code Completion and Type Analysis

Quick Fixes and Semantic Checks

Refactoring

Performance Enhancements

Up to 40% faster startup

Smarter parsing so that code completion is faster

Less memory consumption

Support for Popular Web APIs
RESTful Web Service Support
Spring Framework Support
New MySQL Support in Database Explorer
Ruby/JRuby Support Enhancements
Java Beans Support (back by popular demand)
JSF CRUD Generator (back by popular demand)
Javadoc Code Completion
Sharing Projects (AKA Sharable Libraries)
New Update Center Modules for ClearCase, AXIS, Hibernate, and SOAP UI

More information about these and other features is at the NetBeans IDE 6.1 Release Candidate page. They say that the final NetBeans IDE 6.1 release is scheduled for late April.

with regards
Tushar Joshi, Nagpur

NetBeans Announcement page - mention of this blog

2008-04-12T08:52:00.005+05:30

This blog got a mention in the NetBeans Announcement Page on Apr 10, 2008.

It says "Lists are easy to read and to the point. Tushar Joshi keeps things simple with his Top 10 Reasons for using the NetBeans IDE 6.1 Beta". The complete announcement has many other names and URLs of the blogs to give a sample about how people are blogging about NetBeans for the contest.

It says check out a few of the insightful *entries that we've received:
How about a little show-and-tell? Lucio Benfante and John Muchow submitted screencasts! Benfante's demo shows a web project created with NetBeans 6.1 and Parancoe, while Muchow presents Ruby in the NetBeans IDE as an alternative to AppleScript.
Lists are easy to read and to the point. Tushar Joshi keeps things simple with his Top 10 Reasons for using the NetBeans IDE 6.1 Beta.
What new feature in NetBeans 6.1 Beta gets your vote? JSF CRUD Generator inspires not one but two posts from David Heffelfinger; while a blogger called Dustin gives Beta's JavaScript support a lengthy and nicely visual summary.
Patrick Julien, Daniel Pfeifer and Harshad Oak are all long-time users of multiple IDEs, and compare the NetBeans IDE 6.1 Beta to other tools—with favorable conclusions.

With Regards
Tushar

Mercurial in NetBeans - Installing Mercurial in Windows

2008-04-11T09:48:00.009+05:30

Mercurial is a distributed version control system. It allows us to maintain source versions in a distributed way. This means we can maintain version information locally in a Mercurial repository and can share this information with others easily. Typically in big projects the topology of sharing of repositories get planned and the repositories are laid out like a tree.

There is one main repository maintained and the developers clone the repositories on their work stations. Cloning means making a replica of the repository on another place. This makes the full Mercurial repository available with the source on local workstation. The origin of the clone is configured as default push path.

Mercurial can be taken as a source control repository server available with in local workstation. This server can share its data with up-link server from where it was cloned in an easy command called as push.

Distributed version control system has become popular lately due to its ease of use all the goodness of copy-merge type of systems and also distributed architecture. This means no central server from where all will have to checkout the projects. This becomes a distributed tree of the project with each developer having his own copy of the server and these servers then collaborate with each other.

NetBeans IDE has support for Mercurial. Actually even the NetBeans code base is now shifted to a Mercurial repository.

Let us see installation of Mercurial system on Windows. Useful information is available on the MozillaWiki Mercurial page. I figured out some missing points to make them work which we will see. We will need some software installers as follows:

1. Mercurial Windows Binary
2. ActiveTcl Installer for hgk
3. hgk.tcl script for "hg view" GUI interesting visualization of repository
4. TortoiseHg Windows Shell client installer

The installation of Mercurial Binary is straight forward.

For windows the installer starts a wizard.

We need to keep on responding with Next. The last page asks whether we want the windows path to be updated. This is a good idea and shall be checked out so the Mercurial command becomes available on command prompt from all the directories.

Once Mercurial is installed I checked the installation by opening a command prompt and typing hg command. It showed the usual output from Mercurial command about the usage of Mercurial. This ensures that I have a good Mercurial installation on my Windows machine now.

Mercurial and GIT are very similar systems. GIT people use a command gitk for visualization of the GIT repository and this command is also available in Mercurial as "hg view". In windows making this command work needs Tcl installed. ActiveTcl distribution makes the Tcl toolkit available in windows.

ActiveTcl provides a installation wizard.

The wizard is simple and easy to follow.

The Registry Settings part is important and registering the tcl extension is important for the tcl files to work.

The hgk file shall be renamed to hgk.tcl and copied to the Mercurial directory. As the Mercurial directory is already in the windows path this will make the hgk file available in path.

Mercurial has a extensions system to work with external command. In the Mercurial.ini file we need to add one line as shown for hgk to work as an extension

At the end of the Mercurial.ini file add one [hgk] section as shown to make the hgk.tcl file path available to Mercurial.

This will ensure that we can run "hg view" command now. lastly we will install the TortoiseHg shell client for windows. Tortoise products are superb products for CVS, SVN and now also for Mercurial. They make task like creating repositories and working with them piece of cake.

Once you start the installer the wizard will ask questions and in minutes you will have tortoise shell client installed on windows.

Let us see how to work with the Mercurial repositories in the next post. We will use Mercurial repositories in NetBeans IDE to check the Mercurial support from NetBeans.

with regards
Tushar

Goodness of PlanetNetBeans in NetBeans IDE start page

2008-04-10T08:56:00.003+05:30

On April 2, 2008 we saw how I added this blog to planetnetbeans.org feed aggregator through the post How to add your NetBeans IDE 6.1 Beta blog to planetnetbeans.org aggregator? It takes some time to get the blog into the list according to the frequency of the request they receive.

The requests made by bloggers to get enlisted is kept in a queue and the request gets processed eventually. The proof of this process is this blog as it is now enlisted in the list with all other NetBeans related blog.

When you will start your NetBeans IDE and see the start page, there is a My NetBeans section. This section shows links from the main page of planetnetbeans.org

The start page can be started from the Help menu if you have closed it.

You can see the the post NetBeans: My top 10 reasons and NetBeans: Eclipse project using GUI designed in NetBeans posts in the list seen on my start page.

When these links are clicked they open up in configured default browser. When I hovered over the link the URL of this blog can be seen in the status bar of NetBeans IDE.

I am happy to see my blog links appearing on my NetBeans IDE start page. Now anyone in the world when they open their NetBeans IDE they will see my NetBeans related posts right in their NetBeans IDE start page without even visiting my blog.

The title will suggest them whether to visit my page and read it further.

with regards
Tushar

Eclipse Project using GUI designed from NetBeans IDE 6.1 Beta

2008-04-08T23:59:00.006+05:30

My office uses Eclipse for the main development projects. This was a decision taken in the beginning of the product life cycle and must be maintained for the whole project as the sand boxes and developer documentation release documentation contains references to Eclipse.

When there is a need of decent GUI to be developed my team members face challenge playing with different layout managers and hand coded Java classes. The GUI building mechanism in Eclipse is available for commercial plugins like MyEclipse which we are not willing to use as company policy.

NetBeans IDE 6.1 Beta comes to rescue us from this situation. NetBeans IDE 6.1 Beta can import the Eclipse project as it is and even without shifting the source files. It only creates a configuration folder for the nbproject files and maintains the project in the Eclipse workspace. This provides a facility of working in same code base with Eclipse IDE as well as NetBeans IDE at the same time.

As an example let us see one simple PhoneBook application which I started as a project in Eclipse 3.3 Europa.

I used the Eclipse Project Importer module in NetBeans to import the project by specifying the workspace of the PhoneBook project. (Please refer to earlier post for importing eclipse projects). We can see below the project as seen in the NetBeans IDE.

In NetBeans I started the JFrame wizard by right clicking the package and choosing the
New > JFrame Form option...

NetBeans offered me to type the name of frame which i filled as PhoneBookFrame and clicked Finish to complete the wizard.

NetBeans created JFrame form class for me. NetBeans shows GUI classes with Design as well as source editors and we have facility to use the Matisse GUI designer available in NetBeans.

I designed a decent GUI on the JFrame very quickly by dragging the controls and assigning them appropriate properties in the properties window. NetBeans created appropriate code in the PhoneBookFrame.java class for me automatically.

Then I copied the code inside the main method of the JFrame auto-generated class to my main method in PhoneBookDemo.java main class and ran the project to see the application GUI.

The real magic starts now when I came back to my Eclipse editor. I refreshed the project and could see the newly created PhoneBookFrame.java class in the project file list. There is no error shown this proves that NetBeans does not use any custom package not available in Java distribution. Even if use the Matisse GUI designer the code emitted is using standard Java packages and classes.

So when I executed the code in Eclipse it also showed the same GUI. Wow! this is too good. Now I do not have any problem designing GUI even in my Eclipse projects.

I just have to import the project in NetBeans and design and generate the GUI classes through the goodness of NetBeans Matisse designer and then I can continue development even in the Eclipse editor for the rest of the project.

I think NetBeans has done a great job in providing the Eclipse Project Importer and especially the feature of working simultaneously keeping the workspace and the source code at the same place. This way I can assign the GUI design to one team member who will work on NetBeans only and handle all the GUI designing tasks and rest of the team can continue in routine tasks of calling the GUI classes.

This will also provide my team members exposure to NetBeans IDE even if they work on Eclipse as their main development IDE. Who knows for the next project we may opt for NetBeans IDE altogether.

with regards
Tushar Joshi, Nagpur

My top 10 reasons to use NetBeans IDE 6.1 Beta

2008-04-08T21:58:00.005+05:30

There are many reasons people use NetBeans IDE. When I started thinking about why I use NetBeans IDE 6.1 Beta many reasons popped in my mind. This is a list oftop 10 of my major reasons for liking and using NetBeans IDE 6.1 Beta.

1. Everything I need is available

Many required features are available out of the box. I can just download the pack I need and start using it right away. The software is explorable that means I can just start navigating the functionality and can explore ways to do things through the intuitive GUI of the software.

2. Modular structure of the platform

I like the modular structure of the platform. There is an ecosystem built around the IDE with useful modules. I can search for some extra functionality which is available as a plugin may be contributed by some NetBeans Guru and use it instantly by installing it as a plugin to the system.

3. Curiosity for the unknown

There are many areas in NetBeans which are unknown to me. It is exciting to travel the unknown territories of NetBeans and explore new things. We as human beings always have passion for mystery and the areas I haven't used are exciting to traverse and conquer.

4. Opportunity for module development

The modular platform and feature of extensibility provides an opportunity to learn module development and write my own modules for NetBeans. This way my desire to work for some open source project will come true.

5. Pure Java based platform

I am impressed by the platform independence and run anywhere philosophy brought by Java. NetBeans follow the same path and is developed in pure Java which is worth exploring.

6. Modeling and GUI building tools support

I love the Matisse GUI builder provided by NetBeans. It increases the productivity while developing desktop applications. I can now concentrate on the business logic more efficiently.

7. Support for multiple packs

Netbeans has become feature rich and I can select the appropriate packs for my different needs. NetBeans adds support for major Java Standards like Mobility, Java EE

8. Supportive Community backing

I get surprising support for my queries from the NetBeans community through mailing lists and blog posts

9. Opportunity to contribute to documentation

I feel elated to contribute to an open source project through documentation. The NetBeans community docs initiative binds me with the NetBeans IDE and the passion for technical writing. NetBeans community lets me write help pages and tutorial about my experiences while I use NetBeans IDE in my day to day programming tasks.

10. Opportunity for learning professional programming practices

I have a habit of scanning the NetBeans sources every now and then to study how the modular architecture was used, how documentation is done, how standard design patterns are followed. The open source nature of the project lets me do this type of exploration.

There are many more reasons, as I go on thinking new reasons and ideas cross my mind. This is a list of major reasons why I feel I am attracted towards this IDE and which is making me continue my journey to explore it more.

with regards
Tushar Joshi, Nagpur

Netbeans IDE 6.1 Beta blog - Index

2008-04-08T08:15:00.004+05:30

I like blogging my experiences in programming and the tools I use. When I started experimenting with NetBeans I was having a thought of blogging about my journey with NetBeans IDE. At the same time I stumbled upon the NetBeans Blogging Contest announcement.

I thought as I have anyway thought of creating a dedicated NetBeans blog why not participate in this contest? This is how this blog started. It has become an exciting journey for me experimenting with NetBeans IDE 6.1 Beta and simultaneously writing about it. In this journey I am getting acquainted with other NetBeans bloggers, NetBeans Gurus and my passion for this journey is keeping me fresh.

What started as a small idea has taken a shape of nine blog posts now. The blog has become my workbook for noting down my findings. I feel this blog will become some help for anyone who is starting with NetBeans and also to someone who knows NetBeans but is interested to know how other people interact with this IDE.

This is a list of the articles published till now:

with regards
Tushar Joshi, Nagpur

Spring Framework 2.5 support for Java SE applications in NetBeans IDE 6.1 Beta -

2008-04-08T00:29:00.005+05:30

We have seen in an earlier post Spring support in Netbeans IDE 6.1 Beta that Spring support for Java SE applications is not much interesting in NetBeans IDE 6.1 Beta. The Spring support is actually considered a part of the web component and hence the wizard appears only when we start a web application in NetBeans IDE 6.1 Beta.

I even found two bugs with the working of Spring Configuration dialog box. We saw how I have reported the bug to NetBeans IssueZilla server in an earlier post Logging issue found in Netbeans IDE 6.1 Beta.

When I checked the issue zilla page again today I found that the issue is fixed. This was very quick. I am glad to have reported the bug as it got fixed right away. The fixed part of the Spring support will not be visible in the NetBeans IDE 6.1 beta but it will be available in the latest development release of NetBeans IDE unless there is another release candidate announced from NetBeans team.

You can see the status of the bug set to FIXED. Now I got impatient to test the new version of NetBeans IDE. I have NetBeans IDE 6.1 Beta already installed on my PC. I do not want to override the IDE 6.1 Beta yet as I want to experiment more on it.

I decided to check the new development version of NetBeans on a freshly build VirtualBox XP machine. I use a VirtualBox virtual XP machine for this type of testing of softwares. I have created a template hard disk and installed Windows XP, Java SE 6.0 on it. I make a clone of the hard disk any time I need a fresh machine with the VBoxManage clonevdi command and use this new virtual hard disk to make a fresh machine for testing.

I downloaded the latest development version of NetBeans from the development downloads page. This version is also called as nightly build version, as this is kept ready each night ready to be tested on the site. This version contains all the updates done till now to the current head branch of the source code.

When I started installing the nightly build version of NetBeans on my fresh VirtualBox XP machine I can see the splash screen of the IDE mentioning DEVELOPMENT VERSION on the graphics.

I created a project as Java SE project. Added one bean Developer to the project so that I can now use that bean class as my configured bean in spring configuration file. I then checked the New file wizard. The choose file type page presented Spring XML configuration file option in the File Types in the Others categories. This is a big change which is not there in the NetBeans IDE 6.1 Beta. This confirms that the issue I have logged is really fixed and there are updates to the working and workflows of the IDE since then.

It offered me a page to fill in the name for my configuration file.

It also offered me selection for Spring Schema files. This was done with considerable efforts in my last post on Spring configuration files. Remember that I did not mentioned of adding Spring Framework 2.5 library support in the project. Actually I forgot to add the library and the page for spring namespaces has a button as Add Spring Framework.

This is great . As soon as I clicked the button spring JARS were added to my project and the button was removed from the wizard.

I tested all the code completion features of the spring configuration file and they were working as before.

This demonstrates that the next version of NetBeans will have the new updated Spring Framework support and yes my bug request was looked after and fixed very quickly.

I will continue testing the NetBeans IDE 6.1 Beta version for new topics. VirtualBox XP machine will provide me test bed to test things like this time and again.

Tushar Joshi, Nagpur

Checkout project from Subversion repository in NetBeans IDE 6.1 Beta

2008-04-04T05:26:00.006+05:30

(This post assumes you have installed the Subversion client binary in your windows machine and you have gone through the earlier post Subversion with NetBeans IDE 6.1 Beta)

If you know there is a project stored in subversion repository and you want to work further in that project. I am considering the case when the project is not yet checked out and configured in NetBeans or you want a second copy of the project checked out locally to test some new feature on the project. In these cases you will need to check out the project from Subversion repository.

We have one local subversion repository and a project added to the repository from the last post. Let us use that project and check out that project again and see how it is configured in NetBeans IDE 6.1 Beta.

The Versioning menu has an option of Subversion > Checkout... Click on this option.

NetBeans will show the Checkout dialog box. The repository URL I typed is the URL for my local subversion repository, the same which we created in the last post.

When clicked on Next NetBeans asks about the project to check out for.

I will click the Browse button to see how many folders are there in the repository and what to select for checking out.

I can see my last example project in the repository. I will click on the EquationExample project and will say OK.

I will also check the Scan for NetBeans Projects after checkout check box so the project will get configured in NetBeans automatically after getting checked out of the repository.

NetBeans asks me whether I want the project to be opened in the IDE right now. I will say Open Project.

We can see the project in the Projects panel now. Note the visual hint on the EquationExample name of the project which shows that this project is associated with some version control system.

When I changed some code in the EquationExample.java file it displayed that class with blue color.

I can right click on the updated files and say SUbversion > Commit... to commit my changes back to the repository.

NetBeans will ask the commit message and will commit the file with the message to the repository.

I added one more class CubeEquation.java and you can see it is shown in green color in the Navigation Project panel. When committed the list of files to be committed in the commit message dialog box correctly shows the files which were updated and which are new.

This way I can easily check out a project from Subversion repository and use it in NetBeans.

The NetBeans community docs contain many examples of working with Subversion repository in complete sense. My effort was to provide my experience with NetBeans IDE 6.1 Beta and to show how intuitive is this IDE even if I have not read the complete documentation I am able to explore on my own the ways to use Subversion.

with regards
Tushar Joshi, Nagpur

How to add your NetBeans IDE 6.1 Beta blog to planetnetbeans.org aggregator?

2008-04-02T23:54:00.004+05:30

What is Planet NetBeans?

As said by the planetnetbeans.org site, Planet NetBeans is an aggregation of NetBeans related musings from all over the Blogosphere. This aggregator presents all the blogs related to NetBeans under one common page using the RSS feed technology. If you love NetBeans, if you write a blog about your experience in NetBeans and your blog has a RSS feed, then you can include your blog in the planetnetbeans.org feed aggregator.

On planetnetbeans.org the right panel has a link to add your blog to the aggregator. This process is very simple. You just have to choose the "Add your blog" link.

You will be presented with some important points and steps to follow. These steps has a link for the submit form. Click that link.

The submit form asks about your email address, and the blog URL and the feed URL for your blog. Once you have entered this information you just have to hit the submit button, of-course after you have proven yourself as a living human being through the captcha.

The planetnetbeans.org team will review your blog and will include it in their list. You will also receive a mail regarding the acceptance of the submission. The final proof will be your newer posts related to NetBeans will start appearing in the main page of the planernetbeans.org site.

This site serves important purpose to publish your NetBeans related post to the whole world. People interested in NetBeans frequently visit this site through web or through their RSS feed readers.

The blog your are reading currently has also been submitted to this site and soon it will start appearing in the main page of the planetnetbeans.org site.

with regards
Tushar

Subversion with NetBeans IDE 6.1 Beta - Source in Control

2008-04-01T20:21:00.007+05:30

(This article expects some knowledge of Subversion source control and check-in checkout process used in version control systems)

Maintaining source code of our projects in a version control software is very important for the maintenance of the project. In large projects the projects are hosted on a server bases source control repository. NetBeans support Subversion, one of the popular source control server softwares.

Subversion allows us to create local repositories also to store our projects and manage the versions on local machine. Let us look how to install Subversion, its client TortoiseSVN and then use it to store our project locally in a source control repository.

We will need two important software binary installers. Subversion the repository server binary and TortoiseSVN a windows shell client for Subversion.

I will copy the svn-win32-1.4.6.zip file which I downloaded into C: drive and will ask my 7Zip shell extension menu to extract the file right into the C: drive.

I will need the Subversion binaries to be in my windows path so NetBeans can find them and use them. I will copy the path of Subversion binaries.

This path must be set into the PATH environmental variable in windows. To set the PATH environmental variable I will right click the My Computer icon, select Properties, select Advanced tab and click the Environmental Variables button.

This will show me a dialog box for Environmental Variables. Here I will click the PATH variable and will choose the Edit button to add one more entry for the Subversion path. The paths in windows are separated with semicolons; so I will remember to add a semicolon before the path.

To check whether my Subversion binaries are really available in the windows executable path I will open a command prompt and type svn --version. This command will show me details of the installed subversion.

Note that Subversion is installed just be copying the ZIP file and extracting the archive. Then the bin path is added in the windows PATH environmental variable. To create a new repository for my local use I will use the TortoiseSVN windows shell extension client. The local repository can also be created through a command line without using the TortoiseSVN client but through TortoiceSVN it becomes easier.

I will create a new folder named svnrepo in C: drive. Then I will right click on the folder choose the TortoiseSVN > Create repository here... option and the repository will be made for me.

Tortoise will ask which type of repository is wanted and I will keep the default Native filesystem (FSFS).

Now I am ready to use the subversion version control system in my NetBeans IDE projects. Let us open the project in NetBeans and right click on the project name.

We can see the versioning option has option of Import into Subversion Repository... By choosing this option we will tell NetBeans that we want to store our project in a repository.

NetBeans will ask where to keep the project, i.e. the path for the repository. There are many ways to describe the paths for Subversion repository and they depend upon how the repository is set and on what protocol it is available. As we are using the repository locally we will have to use the FILE protocol.

So I will type file:///C:/svnrepo as my path for the local repository.

I must specify the message for checking in the project into subversion repository.

NetBeans shows all the files that will be checked in the repository when the wizard completes. I will click the finish button and the project will be added to the local subversion repository. NetBeans shows a visual clue attached to the project icon showing this project is now under version control.

The project when right clicked now shows a Subversion option menu and Subversion sub-menu shows options to Update and Commit the files into the repository.

As soon as there is a change in the files of the project the files are shown in different color and the visual clue is shown with the icon of the file.

When we are done with the updates we right click the file and say Subversion > Commit and NetBeans offers dialog box where we have to type the commit message and then the file updates are stored in the source control repository.

This is how NetBeans makes it easy to manage the project in a local source control repository. There are many more features of the Subversion repository we shall explore one by one through future posts on this blog.

with regards
Tushar Joshi, Nagpur

Expectation driven developement in NetBeans IDE 6.1 Beta

2008-03-31T23:38:00.010+05:30

Most important feature of professional IDEs is the hints feature. They enable me to develop my programs driven by expectations. NetBeans IDE 6.1 Beta supports hints for programming languages. This is an important feature and I use this feature in a particular way which I call expectation driven development.

Before I write my program I like to make a mental picture of the complete program I am going to develop. Modeling tools help me visualize the mental design . I use ArgoUML for modeling the design. The class diagram thus drawn in ArgoUML is a complete picture of the program I want to write. Once this picture is ready the development of the source code becomes piece of cake.
This class diagrams explains that I expect an EquationExample class to contain my main method. I expect an interface IEquation to be implemented by two concrete classes named SquareEquation and CubeEquation. I also have mentioned my expectation of class EquationFactory through the method declarations which says the class EquationFactory shall be a factory class returning objects of concrete classes SquareEquation and CubeEquation in terms of IEquation reference.

I start my program with the settings as EquationExample as my project name and com.mycompany.equation.EquationExample.main as my main method in the NetBeans IDE 6.1 Beta new project dialog box.

In the main method provided by NetBeans wizard through automatic code generation I write the first expectation that I need an variable equationFactory and instanciate it. The NetBeans editor will not help me autocomplete my statement but I know that and do not want to use the autocomplete feature deliberately. Instead I want to exercise a different feature that is hints feature to create the code I want automatically through NetBeans IDE.

So when I write this statement obviously NetBeans shows me hint in the left side of the editor. As soon as I click on the hint NetBeans offers me options for solving the error by adding some code to my project. This time it asked whether NetBeans shall create a class named EquationFactory for me in the same package. This the exact expectation I have so I clicked on the hint suggested and NetBeans created the class for me.

We can see the class EquationFactory created and opened in the editor of its own. We can see NetBeans has not added public access specifier to the class which I will add eventually while completing the code.

Now I again return back to where we started. I want to complete my main method so I will continue writing the main method as if all the elements already exists and as soon as NetBeans find something not written yet it will offer me hint to complete it. This is great feature and this way I will be using it to fulfill my wishes.

This time I created a reference of IEquation interface named squareEquation and called the method createSquareEquation from equationFactory object. Note that IEquation interface is not written yet and even the createSquareEquation method is not there in the EquationFactory class. NetBeans promptly offers me hints for what is not there and still used.

This time NetBeans offered me to write IEquation class. NetBeans has no way to understand that this is an interface so it is offering a class. Anyway I will accept this option.

So here is my IEquation class. Now I will add the public access specifier to the class and replace the word class with interface. This completes my expectation of having an interface named IEquation.
Coming back to the main method again now NetBeans offers me to write the method createSquareEquation and I will accept the offer again.

NetBeans completed my method with the boilerplate code. I will now write new expectation that this method shall create an object of SquareEquation class and return it as IEquation.

As soon as I write the expectation even if the class does not exists NetBeans offers me a hint to write the class and I will accept again.

The hind to write a SquareEquation class.

Now coming back to main method again. I will complete my program by calling the solve method from the squareEquation reference, note that the method solve is not yet written in the IEquation interface. NetBeans offers hind to write that method.

As soon as I accept the offer a method with name solve is written in IEquation interface. Now coming to the SquareEquation class. I will implement the IEquation interface in this class and NetBeans hints me about the missing method solve. As I am implementing the IEquation as per contract I must write solve method and NetBeans hints me for this. I accept the offer again and the method is written for me as a boiler plate method.

I added some code to the method to complete the expectation of returning a square value of the parameter.

In this way I will go on writing the complete program as expected and NetBeans will help me write my program driven by my expectations.

Even if auto completion feature of NetBeans is powerful, I prefer this way of programming where I already know what is to be developed and then NetBeans offering me code writing hints. I call this way of programming as expectation driven development.

with regards
Tushar Joshi, Nagpur

UPDATE:
Now you can watch a video demo of this post. Please visit Expectation driven development through Netbeans IDE video demo.

Logging issue found in Netbeans IDE 6.1 Beta

2008-03-25T22:07:00.004+05:30

While working with the Eclipse Project Importer and Spring Framework 2.5 support in NetBeans IDE 6.1 Beta I found one issue.

When we import an Eclipse project from an Eclipse workspace NetBeans makes a reference to the source folder of Eclipse project. This means that NetBeans makes a folder for the imported project but only to keep the nbproject folder, project.properties and build.xml files which are needed to build the project and are overall NetBeans project configuration files.

The actual Java source code remains on the same place where the Eclipse workspace is located. Now I added the Spring Framework 2.5 support library and tried to Add the configuration file in the project properties dialog box and selecting the Spring Framework node. This functionality does not work beacuse may be the dialog box is assuming the source code to be available in the same directory where the nbproject directory is located.

This is a possible bug in the release. Now if I can pass this information to the NetBeans development team then this bug may get assigned to some developer and we can get a better version of NetBeans next time with this bug resolved.

reporting bugs, issues, is very important part of the open source development concept. Users feedback always help in identification of bugs and also feedback from users gets considered in the future plan of the software. I decided to log this as an bug in the NetBeans IssueZilla.

NetBeans IssueZilla (based on Bugzilla) is an application and database for reporting and tracking bugs. When you enter a bug, Issuezilla assigns it to the appropriate developers and stores it in the database. You, or the developer assigned to the bug, can later modify bug parameters and update bug status.

To log a bug into the NetBeans IssueZilla you need to be registered with the netbeans.org site. This registration can be done from registration page.

First we need to choose a component name. For logging the issue about Spring support I will have to choose the "web" component. For NetBeans IDE 6.1 Beta the NetBeans team has decided to keep the spring support in the web component as it is the responsibility of the web team.

After choosing the component the issue page is shown where we need to select version which I chose 6.1 and subcomponent which chose spring
Then I typed all the description of the found bug into the description area of the bug page. I wrote all the steps involved to reproduce this bug so a developer can check the bug by reproducing the bug on workstation. Ideally I shall also attach the project files I used to identify this bug. The issue page says that the facility for attaching a file will be provided after the bug is logged.

Once my bug was logged I got the link to attach a file. I created a ZIP file for the project I used to check this bug and attached it to the bug.
There is a limit of 1MB for the attachment but we usually attach code samples which are small in size.
My bug number is 131070 and you can see the bug in the NetBeans IssueZilla at http://www.netbeans.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=131070

I got an email for the submitted bug and I was also added to the tracking list of this bug so whenever someone updates this bug I will get an email notifying me about the updates.

with regards
Tushar

Spring support in Netbeans IDE 6.1 Beta

2008-03-24T22:36:00.013+05:30

(This post expects some knowledge of Spring Framework, writing beans configuration file and using Spring Framework. This post highlights the support for Spring Framework 2.5 in Netbeans IDE 6.1 Beta)

Netbeans IDE 6.1 Beta support Spring Framework 2.5 out of the box. The support is not much for a Java SE console application but we can still see what Netbeans offers for Spring Framework support.

I will start with a new Java SE console application through the new project wizard. I will name my project SpringDemo and will fill the appropriate fields of the Name and Location dialog box.

Netbeans IDE created a project for me with SpringDemo as my main class with a boiler plate main method.

The project yet do not contain any support for the Spring Framework 2.5. I will open the project properties dialog box by choosing the File menu "SpringDemo properties" option.

I will have to choose the Libraries node to add Spring libraries to the project.

After clicking the Add Library button Netbeans offers a list of libraries and we can see Spring Framework 2.5 Library is already available in this version of Netbeans IDE.

I chose the Spring Framework 2.5 Library and it is shown in the Compile Time Libraries of my project.

We can see the library references in the Projects panel now in the Libraries node.

Now I will add one spring beans configuration file. Spring work either with XML configuration file or Java annotations. I will use a beans configuration XML file for this project.
I right clicked on the Source Package node and chose New > Other option.

In the Choose File Type dialog box I chose the XML node and XML Document entry from the file type list.

I named the file as demo-beans. The Netbeans wizard automatically appended the XML extension and also showed me the path where this file will be stored. I have kept the file in the source folder directly so I can use this with a relative path and class path loader in Spring.

Netbeans IDE offers many options for the XML generation. I will choose the XML schema option which will need the URL of the Schema. I know the schema URL for Spring Framework 2.5 is http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans-2.5.xsd

I provided the schema URL for the Spring Framework 2.5 from Spring Framework site. I selected the beans element as the root element and spring as prefix for the namespace.

I used default fields for the XML Model Generator Options.

Now I could see the demo-beans.xml file in the Project panel. There is a spring style leaf decoration to the icon for the file demo-beans.xml. This shows that the Netbeans IDE has identified this file as a Spring Configuration File.

I will create two classes to check the Spring support. First class will be a Developer class with just two private fields name and experienceYears. I will generate the setters and getters for these fields from the Netbeans IDE Source generate setter and getter option.

The second class I will write is SoftwareCompany. I will keep two Developer reference variables in this class. My intentions are to create Developer as well as SoftwareCompany objects through the demo-beans.xml spring configuration file.

I will create the BeanFactory by using the XmlBeanFactory and ClassPathResource classes and will try to fetch the software company object from the spring API. This will need a properly configured demo-beans.xml spring configuration file.

With all the classes written the Projects panel shows like this. Now the only task remaining is to write the demo-beans.xml spring configuration file. To provide classpath support in the spring bean configuration file I must tell Netbeans IDE about the existence of the demo-beans.xml file and ask it to use it as spring bean configuration file.

To configure the spring files I opened the project settings dialog box again.

Now I can see the Spring Framework node in the Categories tree. When this node is selected Netbeans presents configuration files section. I will use the Add File button to configure beans configuration file.

Now Netbeans IDE is ready to provide me support for the auto completion of class paths also in my demo-beans.xml file. As it is a XML file support for XML schema was already there. Now with the setting I just did there is support for completion of class names in the editor as well.

First I will have to remove the spring: prefix which I applied while creating the XML file. Netbeans IDE applies a prefix ns1 by default. I typed spring in place of ns1 so the XML file has spring: prefix applied. I will just remove that prefix as I have found the spring support is not getting applied with the prefixed version of XML file.

After the prefix is removed the file will look like:
To see to auto completion support I started typing the first bean element. The XML editor provided me support for completing the bean element as well as writing the id="developer" path. The real support can be seen when I started typing the class name for the class attribute. Now the IDE is providing me the completion for Java class found in my project.

I completed the beans configuration file with the following contents. There is one developer bean defined. There is a software company bean defined with one reference bean and one direct bean. The usual stuff we always do in the spring configuration files.

Now when I build the project and run the main program I could see the output of the program.

The output was as expected and the Netbeans has provided me support for writing the Spring Beans Configuration file. The support for visualization of these files is still not there. The dist folder now contains JAR for my project as well as a lib folder with the required JAR files which must be shipped with my JAR. The lib folder contains commons-logging and spring-2.5 JAR files.

There are some issues with the Spring support also. When I tried to add a configuration file from an Eclipse imported project Netbeans does not recognize the file as configuration file. There must be some problem with the recognition logic. I must report this as an issue in the Netbeans Issuezilla. I will post the procedure to post a issue in Netbeans issuezilla here next time.

with regards
Tushar Joshi, Nagpur

Importing Eclipse project in Netbeans IDE 6.1 Beta

2008-03-22T21:59:00.011+05:30

Today I will check the Eclipse Importer feature of the Netbeans IDE 6.1 Beta. I have a simple project written in Eclipse. I will now import that project in Netbeans and will run that project. As I have downloaded the very base Java SE pack of the Netbeans IDE 6.1 Beta I must ensure that the Eclipse Importer module is available with me.

The Tools menu has Plug-ins options in this version of Netbeans. So I chose to click on it.

I can see the plugins dialog box with many tabs. The Available Plugins tab shows all the available plugins on the Netbeans site. The installed tab shows all the installed plugins. There is a long list of plugins in the available plugins tab. Now how to locate the Eclipse importer module quickly. Here comes the Search filter feature handy.

I just typed the name Eclipse in the search filter text box on the right top of the dialog box and there was the Eclipse Project Importer plugin with its information available.

As soon as I selected the check box I could see that this plugin is 69kb in size and there was an Install button to install this plugin in my Netbeans.

I clicked the install button.

Netbeans started the plugin installation wizard. It confirmed from me whether this is what I really wanted :)

Netbeans showed me the license with which the plugin was available and obviously if I want this plugin I must accept the license agreement. I did that.

This was the Eclipse Project Importer plug-in was installed and I was notified of this fact with a dialog box.

I can now see the Eclipse Project Importer plug-in in my installed plug-ins tab in the Plug-ins dialog box. To quickly check this I again used the search filter text box situated at the right top corner of the plug-ins dialog box.

Now starts the real show. I have to import my project which I have written in Eclipse into Netbeans. The installation of the plug-in is just a one time activity and was needed just because I had downloaded the basic Java SE pack only. This plug-in may be bundled with the other bigger packs.

I can see there is a new menu available in the File menu drop down. Import Project option has a menu entry named Eclipse Project.

I clicked the Eclipse Project entry from the File > Import projects menu. It showed me a dialog box for the location of the eclipse project. There were options to select either the workspace or the project source folder only. Selecting the workspace is a simple idea so all the dependencies of the projects which are saved in the Eclipse workspace are also imported by Netbeans.

Here I pointed the workspace where I have created the simple Java project.

Netbeans showed me the projects available in the selected workspace. There was PersonExample my project. I checked that project and clicked the finish button.

Netbeans took some time to analyze the files and then opened a project for me in the left projects panel. I can now browse all the project files in Netbeans and also can compile them.

When I tried to run the project Netbeans asked me about the main class in the project. As this is an imported project Netbeans was not already knowing my main class and my project may have many classes with main method. Netbeans offered me a dialog box listing all the classes with main method and a choice for me to select the main class. I did that.

The output was as expected. This was just a Hello World program.

The most important fact was learned when I saw the folder where Netbeans created the importer project files for itself. What I can see is the configuration files only there was no actual code in this path. This highlights that Netbeans only creates a reference to the actual sources in Eclipse workspace. This means I can now work in Eclipse and Netbeans at the same time and keep the files at same place. This is great.

Just for curiosity I opened the project.properties file and saw the src entry pointing towards my Eclipse workspace. This made it clear that Netbeans Eclipse Project Importer module only creates reference to the actual eclipse projects and keeps the files where they are. This make working with Eclipse project and Netbeans on that project simultaneously possible.

with regards
Tushar

Hello World from Netbeans IDE 6.1 Beta

2008-03-22T10:29:00.007+05:30

The easiest way to check how things work in any IDE is to write a bare minimum program which is complete in its own sense. A program which can be compiled and which can show some output. This makes the first Hello World program in Netbeans IDE 6.1 Beta important . This program will also help me navigate many features of Netbeans IDE in the process.

I must highlight here that the Netbeans IDE has many good tutorials available on internet . These tutorials teach us any thing which can be done on Netbeans IDE and in Java. I liked the tutorials by Sang Shin on his Java Passion site. But there is a small insect inside me who wants to explore things on its own. To click here and there and see what happens. It wants to apply its past common sense and knowledge to the new softwares and check whether he can work with it and get the thing done by itself. This is just like seeing a new model of Car and trying it out with a thought , so what it is a Car and there will be some gears and an accelerator whats the big deal.

As with any other software there is a File menu and it also has an option of New Project. I must start from this option for my new Hello World program.

As expected Netbeans started a wizard for the initialization of the new project. As soon as you can see steps on the left bar and a next button at the bottom you can identify this is a wizard which will guide me through the process of creating new project. This is just like finding a guide while traveling the world.

From Categories list I chose Java and from projects list I chose Java Application. This is not because I know much about them but because those are the options wizard presented as defaults. When I have already begun the journey on my own, it is interesting to see where the wizard leads me ahead.

On the next page there are text fields I must fill. Here I am very particular. I have my own taste of what should be the project name and what shall be the package name. So I discarded the defaults provided by Netbeans New Project Wizard. I chose to have a good package name as com.mycompany.person for my PersonExample project. The class which will contain main method will be created by wizard probably hence it is asking me the name of my main class so I procided com.mycompany.person.PersonExample

I usually write the main method in any project in a separate class and do not mix it with any other class which is used in the project. many books I have seen present the main method in some of the used classes as it is perfectly valid in Java to have main method any where in any class. So when I have a project with PersonExample as name I prefer to keep the main method in a class named PersonExample and keep nothing else in this class. Thus this class PersonExample become the launcher of the program and nothing else than that.

When I said next the wizard showed a progress bar on the left bottom part of the window telling me that it needs to do some initialization and code generation probably so it can present me the project with some items pre-created.

And here was the wizard done with its magic. Now I can see a new project open in the main window of the Netbeans IDE. The projects panel was showing the structure of the project with one Java file PersonExample.java. It has also created the desired package name for me. The editor pabe on the right panel was showing the PersonExample.java class source code. The wizard has managed to write the whole class for me with the main method with all the default things which I will need in my program.

I know how to print Hello World in Java. All I have to do is just type System.out.println("Hello World"); and this is enough to print the message on the console. As soon as I started typing the Sys word the IDE started helping me write the things by suggesting possible completion of the word. Notepad cannot certainly do this to me. I love IDEs for this intelligence they have.

I completed the program by writing the single System.out statement and now was the time to compile my java source file and see the output. Let me check what Netbeans has done with the files on my hard disk. I opened the folder where the project was created.

Netbeans has created the required files in src folder and there is also a nbproject folder. The contents of nbproject folder says that they are some configuration files Netbeans maintain for the information about the project. There is a build.xml file in the project folder. Netbeans help files say that Netbeans use Ant as the build system. It also promises that I will not have to learn Ant to get the program compiled and it will all be done by Netbeans IDE automatically, and that means the IDE will use the Ant program internally.

I opened the build menu and chose the Build Main Project option. I got this tip obviously from the Netbeans IDE help page. The help is available on the Help Menu. I will say that this help is not much friendly and it will not guide you like a teacher, rather it is like reference. But here come the gurus in Java like Sang Shin who provide us simple tutorials for learning Java and Netbeans.

Then I clicked the Play button on the tool bar which was begging to be clicked looking towards me. I clicked the Play button and there was a output window presented to me with the output of my program. A Hello World message indeed. Good. I am Happy.

I can also see that the Netbeans IDE has also created a dist folder in my project folder. This dist folder contains the PersonExample.jar file. I know that Java programs can be distributed through a JAR file. Java Archive to be specific. This file accompanied with a read me file which has instructions about how to use this JAR file and how to run the program outside Netbeans IDE also.

After all this was a Java program and certainly not tied to the IDE it is developed. This was great to get the JAR file automatically without any effort to create it on the command prompt using some JAR command.

According to what Readme file said I opened the command prompt in my Windows XP machine. I navigated to the folder where this JAR file was located. I typed the exact command as was instructed.

The same output message was displayed on the console. This proves that I have written a complete program which can work independently and do not need help of any IDE any more. The journey for making this program was made happier by Netbeans IDE for me.

Object oriented programming is my passion. It will be fun checking how my classes and objects can be written in Netbeans and how easily I can make a big program from scratch in Netbeans. Till now the experience is smooth and I hope many more new features to learn and explore in my journey of exploring Netbeans IDE.

with regards
Tushar

Locating Netbeans IDE 6.1 Beta

2008-03-20T21:10:00.006+05:30

Learning Java becomes easy when we have a good Integrated Development Environment (IDE) as the Java programming tool. There are many professional Java IDEs in the market like Eclipse, IntelliJ IDEA and Netbeans. Sun Microsystems supports Netbeans development and promotes Netbeans as a preferred Java IDE.

Let us look at the Netbeans IDE closely and see how to obtain Netbeans and install on the computer. I will start with a practical approach to search for the Netbeans IDE download. I do not know the actual path for Netbeans download so I will use Google search engine to locate the download URL. From a recent news post I know that the Netbeans team has released a new beta version of the IDE and its name is Netbeans 6.1 beta. So by basic instincts I will open Google search page and type "Netbeans 6.1 beta" as my search criteria.

Wow! I got the first link as the link for downloading Netbeans IDE 6.1 beta. This is the beauty of information technology. All people blog about the news and the news spread very quickly all over the internet through blogs, twitter, newsletters, articles, screencasts and many search engines index those pages readily. This makes our job of locating the links peace of cake.

After visiting the web site pointed by Google search page we can see the Netbeans download page. There are many editions of the Netbeans IDE 6.1 beta. There is a lot of choice. What to choose now? I will choose the minimum possible edition for this example. Java SE edition of Netbeans IDE 6.1 beta is 24 MB in size and seems a reasonable option for download. This will enable me to write my first Hello World program in Netbeans. The download page also promises that when I need other parts of the Netbeans IDE I can always download them as Netbeans modules from the update site.

There is one more important thing to note. All the editions of Netbeans IDE are free. They provide two different licenses for this IDE as mentioned on the download page.

My download started when I clicked the Download button from the Java SE column. The browser showed a page explaining me that the download has started and soon I will see a Save As dialog box to save the download on my computer. This page also provides link for direct download. Sometimes if there is a problem in automatic download starting then we can click this direct link and start the download again.

While my browser was downloading the Netbeans IDE I noticed that the web page also contains two more links. Release Notes and Installation Instructions. Release note is a very important document to read vital last minute information about the released software. Installation instruction help us install the software on our computer and in checking the compatibility of our hardware and software with the released software.

There it was the good looking Netbeans IDE 6.1 beta windows installer icon on my Desktop. Through windows common sense I already know how to install this software. As it is seen as a EXE file it will start just by double clicking on it. So I double clicked it and expected that the program will start the installation right away.

Netbeans Installer started as expected. And now there will be a sequence of dialog boxes asking me preferences and showing me information about the being installed software.

I can see the installer tool some time to prepare itself and to keep me convinced that it has not stuck in between kept me showing a progress bar with information about what is going on. These installer people know well that users like me are impatient and will get worried if we feel that the program is doing nothing .

Finally it started talking with me. The welcome dialog box told me that the Netbeans IDE installation is about to consume 112.6 MB space on my hard disk. Given the current default sizes of the hard disks starting from 80 GB I have no problem installing a 112 MB software on my C: drive. I clicked the Next button.

The license page told me that the Netbeans IDE is under Dual License including GPL v2 license and I know from my past knowledge that this license will provide me rights to use Netbeans IDE without paying anything to anyone. So the logical choice was to accept the license terms by checking the I accept check box at the bottom of the dialog box.

Netbeans installer showed me confirmation dialog that it will now install the IDE on my computer and will consume 112 MB by installing the Java SE pack. I said Next.

The next dialog showed me the default locations where the Netbeans IDE will be installed. It is always a good choice not to change these default folders if we are doing this first time and if we do not need any customizations. The default folders always work.

Lastly there was a summary dialog box giving me information about all the choices I made in this installation wizard and presented an install button. Obviously I was getting impatient to see the face of Netbeans IDE so I quickly clicked the Install button . The installer then installed the IDE on my computer and finally I could see the Netbeans IDE 6.1 Beta launcher icon or shortcut on my desktop. This shortcut kept on the desktop proves that the installer has done its job quite well and I am ready to start my Netbeans IDE.

So to see the Netbeans IDE I double clicked the shortcut on the desktop names Netbeans IDE 6.1 Beta and there was the splash screen of Netbeans IDE on my desktop telling me that Netbeans IDE will start shortly and there was a progress bar on this splash screen also to tell me it is doing some work in the background and I shall wait for the initialization process to complete.

Netbeans Team has developed beautiful green splash screen . It makes me feel fresh. After some initialization process the Netbeans IDE started and I could see the main window of the IDE on my desktop.

Just to confirm I have the right version of the Netbeans IDE installed on my computer I clicked the Help Menu and About option. This showed me the About dialog box of Netbeans IDE and there was the version number I expected Netbeans IDE 6.1 Beta.

Now I am ready to write my Hello World program in this IDE. There is a startup page shown to me in the main window and there are many links to help me. I can see Quick Start Tutorial, Whats New and Take a tour options and all of them seem exciting to me. I must visit all these links first before I start writing my Java programs on this IDE.

I wish you liked my journey of locating the Netbeans IDE 6.1 Beta download page, Installing it and getting ready to write my Java programs in Netbeans IDE. Do visit again to check my progress with Netbeans IDE. I will keep writing about my experience and views about this IDE here.

with regards
Tushar