ptg 12 Chapter 1 Installing the IBM WebSphere sMash CLI publish Publish the module to your local repository. repository Manage repositories. resolve Determine the module’s dependencies. rollback Reverts the effects of the last resolve or update. search Finds and prints all matching modules in the reposi- tory. switch Switch the module group. update Resolves a module to its latest dependencies. version Displays version information As you can see, there are a bunch of available commands. Each command may have argu- ments that it can be given, but again the command line is very helpful. You need only to type the following to get help on a particular command: zero help <command> For example, if we use zero help search, we get the results shown in Listing 1.10. Listing 1.10 Results of “Zero Help Search” in the CLI Usage: zero search <org:module[:revision]> [-remote] [-json] The command uses the current module group to find in the local re- pository for a module that matches the given <org:module:revision> value and prints its search results. If no module name is given, the command will print information about all available modules. You can also use the -remote option to tell the command to search the remote repository instead of the local one. If the -json option is used the report is formatted as a JSON docu- ment. The return codes for this command are: 0 - success 1 - command failed The search command enables you to search for modules in the repository. There are com- mands to create new IBM WebSphere sMash applications, start and stop applications, package applications, and many more. Spend some time familiarizing yourself with the commands, and we’ll take another look at the CLI in the next chapter. Download from www.wowebook.com ptg Conclusion 13 Conclusion In this chapter, we learned how to install IBM WebSphere sMash and how to test that installa- tion. We also started working with the command-line interface (CLI) and became familiar with the available commands. In the next chapter, we’re going to take a look at three different devel- opment environments that you can use to develop IBM WebSphere sMash applications. The first is a web browser-based environment called AppBuilder that is built into IBM WebSphere sMash. The second is an Eclipse-based development environment. Finally, we’ll come back to the CLI and take a look at what else it can do. Download from www.wowebook.com ptg This page intentionally left blank Download from www.wowebook.com ptg 15 Introduction WebSphere sMash offers three different development environments: AppBuilder, Eclipse, and a CLI environment. AppBuilder is a fully functional web-based application development environ- ment. It is lightweight, easy to use, and comes with WebSphere sMash as a sMash application. Eclipse is a full-feature development environment that is very popular the world over. WebSphere sMash offers a plugin for the Eclipse environment that enables developers to use the full Eclipse suite of tools to help develop WebSphere sMash applications. Finally, there is a CLI environment that enables developers to utilize their own tooling suite to develop WebSphere sMash applica- tions. This gives developers a broad range of development options and the ability to set up and configure an environment in which they are comfortable. AppBuilder The AppBuilder environment is the quickest and easiest way to get started with WebSphere sMash and comes included with your WebSphere sMash installation—how nifty that you can build WebSphere sMash applications with a WebSphere sMash application! The AppBuilder uses a lightweight browser-based environment and provides some nice features, including a drag-and- drop client designer for the Dojo Toolkit and a graphical editor for Assemble Flow (see Chap- ter 11, “Framework Components”). Generally, the AppBuilder is a great way to get your feet wet and implement small projects. C H A P T E R 2 Choose Your Development Environment Download from www.wowebook.com ptg 16 Chapter 2 Choose Your Development Environment Getting Started After you have installed WebSphere sMash, you can start the AppBuilder by running the appbuilder command from the command line in the zero directory. The first time this script is run, it will resolve and download all the needed packages; when that has completed, you should be presented with the usage for the script, as shown in Listing 2.1. Listing 2.1 appbuilder Usage Usage: appbuilder command where command is one of: open Starts the AppBuilder (if not already started) and opens it in a browser start Starts the AppBuilder stop Stops the AppBuilder status Prints the started or stopped state of the AppBuilder update Updates the AppBuilder with the latest dependencies version Prints the AppBuilder version information help Prints this help message Run appbuilder open from the CLI, and the AppBuilder opens in your default browser. Your development can begin, as shown in Figure 2.1. As you can see, there are several quick help lists to get you started: Create a new applica- tion, open an existing application, and copy a sample. Sample Applications A great way to get started with WebSphere sMash is to take a look at the samples that are avail- able. To do that, click Create from repository link. The Create from Repository dialog box appears, as shown in Figure 2.2. Note that you need an Internet connection for this to work because AppBuilder connects to the WebSphere sMash repository to retrieve a list of available modules. When you type demo into the text box, the list of modules will be filtered to show only available sample applications. The modules that are filtered are the features that can be added to your WebSphere sMash application. We’ll look at some of them later in the book. From here, you can select any of the sample applications. There are a number of sample applications that demonstrate different aspects of WebSphere sMash. Choose any application that interests you and click Create. AppBuilder will now create a new application from the repository and open up the MyApplications page, where you can explore the application or run it as described later in this chapter. Before we do that, though, let’s take a look at how to create an application from scratch. Download from www.wowebook.com ptg AppBuilder 17 Figure 2.1 Initial AppBuilder screen Figure 2.2 Create a sample application from the repository. Download from www.wowebook.com ptg Figure 2.3 Create new application dialog Figure 2.4 My Applications list Creating a New Application To create a new application, start by clicking the Create new application link in the left navigation bar, as shown previously in Figure 2.1. This link pops open a dialog box, which enables you to type in an application name and choose a path in which to store your application, as shown in Figure 2.3. 18 Chapter 2 Choose Your Development Environment Type in an application name and the path where you want it to store the application. We used “Test application” for our application name. You may use any name you’d like, but the images all reference “Test application.” After your new application has been created, it will be displayed in your My Applications list, as shown in Figure 2.4. Editing Applications From the application list, you can do several things. By clicking the name of the application or the pencil icon, you can start editing your application. Click the green arrow to start the application Download from www.wowebook.com ptg Figure 2.5 Initial application edit display AppBuilder 19 and the last icon to the right to package your application for deployment onto another machine. If you start editing the application, you’ll see several tabs that enable you to do everything from edit- ing files and managing dependencies to debugging the running application. Figure 2.5 shows the initial display when you first begin to edit your application. From the initial File Editor tab, you can create and edit any of the files in the application. By clicking the filename in the left navigation bar, you can start editing the given file. Likewise, you can create new files by selecting the New File link in the left navigation bar. The File Editor tab opens context-sensitive editors for each type of file. For example, there is a drag-and-drop HTML editor that has the Dojo Toolkit support. This feature makes it easy to quickly lay out your HTML client pages. Adding Dependencies The Dependencies tab enables you to resolve and manage your project dependencies. In Figure 2.6, you can see that the project starts with a dependency on zero.core. The zero.core module is the base module that WebSphere sMash needs to run. Download from www.wowebook.com ptg 20 Chapter 2 Choose Your Development Environment Figure 2.6 Dependencies tab Figure 2.7 Add Dependency dialog You can ad d a de pen de ncy on a not her pac kag e b y cl ick ing th e A dd bu tto n. Th e A dd bu tto n opens a dialog that displays several packages that can be added to the project, as shown in Figure 2.7. Download from www.wowebook.com ptg Eclipse 21 After a dependency is added, it shows up in the list of application dependencies. You can, of course, remove and update dependencies on the main Dependencies tab. The Explorer tab is a file explorer that allows you to explore the application’s directory and look at files in a read-only mode. The Console tab provides a command-line console for controlling various aspects of the project, such as starting and stopping the application and resolving dependencies. The Console is a web-based CLI environment and can be used like the CLI environment we discuss later in this chapter. The last tab is the Debug tab. The Debug tab gives the application developer the ability to set breakpoints and look at variables while the application is running. This is a powerful aspect of the AppBuilder environment. Breakpoints can be set at any place in the code and variables inspected to determine their state at that point in the code. Finally, when your application is complete and you’d like to deploy it to another machine, you’ll need to package it up. This is made very easy in the AppBuilder. Simply return to the My Applications page and click the Package button (it looks like a little window with an arrow point- ing to it), as shown earlier in Figure 2.4. This button enables you to package your application in a zip file that will be stored in the application’s export directory. There is an option to package the application as a standalone application. This packages the WebSphere sMash runtime in with the zip file so that there will be nothing but the application to install. Overall, the AppBuilder is a nice lightweight environment for developing WebSphere sMash applications. Because the AppBuilder comes included with WebSphere sMash, it is easy to get started with it and costs no additional time to set up. This feature of WebSphere sMash is constantly evolving, so it’s worth looking at in each new release of the product. Eclipse Eclipse is an open source-integrated development environment used by many professional devel- opers. There are more than a thousand commercial and open source plugins created for Eclipse that enhance the development environment. It is intended for experienced developers and teams with plugins for several source control systems, database access, and a plethora of others to help with development tasks. WebSphere sMash offers a plugin for Eclipse that allows a developer to create, build, and export WebSphere sMash applications in Eclipse. Installation instructions for the plugin can be found on the Project Zero website (http://www.projectzero.org). Sample Applications As with the AppBuilder, you can create a sample application from the repository. This is a good way to get a feel for various features of WebSphere sMash. To create a sample application, go to File > New > Project and choose Examples > WebSphere sMash Examples > WebSphere sMash Sample Application, as shown in Figure 2.8. After you press the Next button, a list of sample applications will be retrieved from the repository, as shown in Figure 2.9. Download from www.wowebook.com . stopped state of the AppBuilder update Updates the AppBuilder with the latest dependencies version Prints the AppBuilder version information help Prints this help message Run appbuilder open. with WebSphere sMash and comes included with your WebSphere sMash installation—how nifty that you can build WebSphere sMash applications with a WebSphere sMash application! The AppBuilder uses. different aspects of WebSphere sMash. Choose any application that interests you and click Create. AppBuilder will now create a new application from the repository and open up the MyApplications page,