RAIN is a platform based on JavaScript. It aggregates web components located on multiple servers, it has significant implementation code both on server and client side, JavaScript and HTML files. It uses the Handlebars template engine in HTML files.
JavaScript is a language that is very hard to inspect, so that’s why programming IDE’s have a hard time developing features that work 100%, especially for NodeJS, that’s a new technology. But these features exists and based on them we can add additional features that will make developing RAIN faster and easier.
These features can be implemented in the form of plugins for different existing IDEs. As far as possible these should use the commands that are already provided by the RAIN SDK and visually enhance their functionality. The plugins must work on Linux, Windows and MacOS.
Eclipse is one of the most used open source IDE. It has a set of plugins for JavaScript Development Tools (JSDT) that lets the developer create JavaScript projects and files, has a JavaScript editor and many introspection tools. These tools are part of the Web Development Tools (WTP), the latest version (3.4.1) being released on September 28th, 2012.
The best starting point for developing a RAIN plugin for Eclipse would be the JSDT. It should be compatible with version 4.x of Eclipse.
The RAIN plugin will offer multiple features that can be developed progressively and in most cases they are independent one from another.
This feature will give the developer a new wizard to create a RAIN project. It should extend the existing JavaScript project wizard and add some specific RAIN configuration parameters like:
The wizard will use the create-project command from the RAIN SDK to generate the project folder structure.
This feature will give the developer a new wizard to create a RAIN component in the existing RAIN project. The wizard must have at least the component id and component version configuration parameters. Optional parameters that can be later added: views, permissions.
The wizard will use the create-component command from the RAIN SDK to generate the component folder structure.
This feature will give the developer an Eclipse perspective customized for RAIN that will be associated automatically with RAIN projects and will contain:
The project view navigator customized to show the additional RAIN commands like:
- New -> RAIN Project
- New -> RAIN Component
- New -> RAIN View
- Run As -> RAIN Application
- Debug As -> RAIN Application
- RAIN -> Generate Translation Files
- RAIN -> Deploy
The RAIN server console that displays the server state (started / stopped), the console output and additional commands to start / stop / restart the server.
The RAIN HTML editor that has autocomplete functionality for the available Handlebars helpers.
The components view that shows the available components and additional documentation about them.
This feature will give the developer the possibility to start and stop the RAIN server directly from Eclipse. To achieve this, a new Eclipse command will be added that will use the raind command from the RAIN SDK to start the server.
This feature will add a new Eclipse View, the RAIN server console, that will capture the output coming from the RAIN server. It will have additional commands to start / stop / restart the server.
This feature will give the developer the possibility to see what components are already available to him to use. He will be able to configure the endpoint to a components’ registry service that will provide description and documentation about the available components.
The available components will be shown in an Eclipse View. When the developer clicks a component, a Handlebars helper text will be inserted in the current RAIN HTML editor and will populate the required parameters with default values.
This feature will provide autocomplete support for the RAIN template files. An existing HTML editor should be extended to detect Handlebars syntax and based on the list of available components and autocomplete features to suggest available values for the component attributes.
The editor should be able to differentiate between different helpers and suggest the appropriate parameters. E.g. for the CSS helper it should automatically add the path attribute.
This feature will give the developer the possibility to run the generate-po-files command found in the RAIN SDK directly from Eclipse using an Eclipse command. The developer should be able to choose from multiple commands, depending if he wants to generate the translation files only for the selected component, for all components or for specific languages.
The debug process is essential to every development process and that’s why debugging a RAIN project in Eclipse will help the developer stay in the same environment that he uses to program. This might not be that easy to implement because the JSDT don’t offer any support for NodeJS, but a research has to be done to see how a plugin can extend the existing Eclipse JavaScript debug features.
This feature will integrate the Eclipse help system with the RAIN components articles and JSDoc generated for its components. The result will be that the developer will see inside Eclipse all he needs to know about each external component that he want to use: its APIs, usage examples.