g-Eclipse - Defining Application Parameters

Introduction

Application Parameters allow user to define extension of New Job Wizard in form of additional wizard's pages without writing even single line of programming code. From user's point of view this is declarative mechanism based on XML files.

If any Application Parameters are defined they will be displayed on Executable page in New Job Wizard in Application name list (by application name parameter). Choosing one of the applications from the list will result in adding new pages to wizard (defined by XML file associated with Application Parameters). If not empty JSDL file is set for Application Parameters it will be used as a base for creating new job description by Wizard.

Defining Application Parameters

Application Parameters can be defined using Window > Preferences > g-Eclipse > Application Parameters menu, by providing the following information:

• Application Name - name of the application, it will be listed on Executable page in New Job Wizard in the Application name list
• Application Path - path to the executable file of the application. This should be absolute path on the host on which application is to be launched. This parameter is optional.
• XML Path - absolute path to the local XML file describing additional New Job Wizard content. This XML is defined by ui_definition.xsd" schema file located in eu.geclipse.jsdl.ui plug-in in xml subdirectory.
• JSDL Path - path to the local JSDL file. This file is used as a base file when creating new JSDL file in New Job Wizard. If some of the fields for which Wizard's fields provide input are defined in this file the corresponding fields in Wizard will be pre-populated with values taken from this JSDL file.

Additional wizard's pages definition

Any extra wizard's pages should be defined in XML file passed to application parameters through XML Path field in Preferences dialog. This XML is described by ui_definition (this file can be found in eu.geclipse.jsdl.ui/xml/) XSD document.

The basic document structure, listing main XML elements is described below. Please refer to XSD document for detailed information.

• pluginPages - XML document root element, within it page elements are contained
• page - each page element defines new wizard's page. Graphical components of page should be defined inside this element. Elements components supported by parametric wizard extensions are the following:
  • text - defines simple text filed (org.eclipse.swt.widgets.Text). As a children of this XML element also label and paramName elements should be created. The first of them represents org.eclipse.swt.widgets.Label widget that will precede text component with field description. paramName stands for JSDL element to which value of this text field will be written.
  • textWithFileChooser - the same as text element (including children of it), but has additional org.eclipse.swt.widgets.Button coming after SWT's text field. Pressing this button will result in opening eu.geclipse.ui.dialogs.GridFileDialog. Selection made in this dialog will be passed to SWT's text field.
  • list - represents org.eclipse.swt.widgets.Combo widget. It extends text element, which means that it inherits all his children elements, but in addition has its own value and writeable sub-elements. In values elements list content should be defined. writeable decides whether user will be able to edit SWT's combo's entries.
  • multipleArguments - control used to keep multiple values of one parameter. Values are kept in table (org.eclipse.swt.widgets.Table) - in which their String values are presented (because of the LabelProvider used). This table comes in together with 3 buttons: ``Add'' for adding new value and ``Edit'' and ``Remove'' respectively for editing and deleting selected item. As for all components also for this one paramName should be defined to associate this control with JSDL element. Also the range of number of parameter's values can be determied - using minArgumentsCount and maxArgumentsCount elements.
  • textDataStaging - the same as textWithFileChooser, but for chosen file also the DataStaging element in JSDL will be created. There is possibility to determine if this file should be staged in or out onto Grid by giving element file values ``in'' or ``out'' respectively.
  • multipleDataStaging - this is intended to combine textDataStaging with multipleArguments, but as for release 1.0 there's no support for this element.

NOTE: paramName element which must be defined for all of the components' element is the name of parameter that will be passed to application. This is done by adding name of the parameter to executable call of the application. In JSDL those values are represented by jsdl-posix:Argument elements.