Introduction To Developing Web Applications - Feedback

quickstart-webapps.html feedback to NetBeans

Don Smallidge July 3, 2009

Don Smallidge

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Feedback

Each time I upgrade to the latest version of NetBeans, I have trouble getting my old projects set up and working again (though the IDE asks me if I want to bring in my existing projects, which works just fine). The projects travel, but the services are left behind. So I need to redefine them (and that isn’t always simple because I have forgotten how I did it last time). This time I resolved to write it all down so I would have an easy upgrade path.

Don Smallidge

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As the first step in this process, I thought I would do some of the tutorials. First up: Introduction to Developing Web Applications. Little did I know when I started (with only a few spare moments available to do the tutorial) that it would lead me on another adventure!

I decided to try out the new NetBeans 6.7 IDE on my Mac (running Leopard, which comes with JDK version 5) and Tomcat 6.x (because I use Eclipse Ganymede and Tomcat at work on my PC and I hope to port the resulting application when I am done).

I tried downloading the sample application, but when I attempted to run it, I got the symptom shown above: In-place deployment at /Users/donaldsmallidge/NetBeansProjects/HelloWeb/build/web deploy?config=file%3A%2Fvar%2Ffolders%2FuZ%2FuZrudt8BFam6LW2P1nMx4k%2B%2B%2BTI%2F-Tmp%2Fcontext7768383691021465265.xml&path=/HelloWeb FAIL - Failed to deploy application at context path /HelloWeb /Users/donaldsmallidge/NetBeansProjects/HelloWeb/nbproject/build-impl.xml:563: The module has not been deployed. BUILD FAILED (total time: 0 seconds)

Don Smallidge

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Undaunted, I thought to myself: there must be something wrong with the sample application, I’ll just follow the tutorial and everything will work fine.

The tutorial is well-written and I ran into no trouble at all following the instructions. I reproduce it on the following pages in its entirety (with my annotations) to make it easier to develop a template for future development efforts.

Don Smallidge

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Note: This functionality is a little more robust than the Eclipse approach (which just generates the methods without any fine-tuning capabilities). I suppose they might have a way to tweak a template for getter/setter methods, but it would be a global tweak, not a per variable tweak.

Don Smallidge

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Note: It surprised me that Name could contain embedded spaces (I am used to camel case names with no spaces. I followed the tutorial and included the embedded spaces.

Don Smallidge

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Don Smallidge

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Don Smallidge

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In a perfect world, this is what I should have seen. Instead, when I choose Run:

Bummer! Never even get to the index.jsp page. Something isn’t right.

Don Smallidge

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In the thoughtfully provided Troubleshooting section, I find nothing pertinent, so follow the link the the HelloWeb output tab.

If I knew Ant, this would have been real helpful. As it is, my conceptual knowledge of Ant didn’t help me spot the “obvious” answer here! Over time, I can see how this would be extremely useful to jump me right into the middle of an Ant script (particularly if I had written or tweaked it myself).

Don Smallidge

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Before I call in the cavalry, I think I will try to figure this out myself. First, I do a “clean and build”.

That looks fine. Next step: deploy it. Same problem.

Don Smallidge

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Time to send some feedback! 1.

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The tutorial was great. Very simple, easy to follow and should make a useful baseline for me to do simple projects to improve my productivity (e.g., upgrading some of my existing applications from JDK 1.4 to JDK 1.5 and learning some of the subtleties of collection processing). The new interface takes a little getting used to, but the rectangular surfaces of the windoids make screen captures easier. The functionality is terrific; I ran into some “real estate” issues when I was creating the JSP page (does the windoid detach

and float?). I see that it does detach (and I figured out how to put it back again by docking it)!

Don Smallidge

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At work everyone is using Eclipse on PCs for the most part (shop standard); I am interested in using NetBeans on the Mac [at least at home], then porting my efforts to NetBeans and Eclipse on the PC. These tutorials are great, because I can try them out independently and then try porting them (as a proof of concept and basis for documenting the process, so others can enjoy the flexibility of developing on the most comfortable platform for them). It occurred to me that an Ant tutorial would be immensely helpful; I have some books, and have looked over some of the material available on the Internet, but have never clicked yet. I could tell from my reading just how powerful Ant is (and I have got simple scripts working, but when I progress to trying to do more complicated scripts I get into trouble). Just being able to debug this script would be great. I will try this tutorial with NetBeans 6.5 (my current active IDE) and see if I have the same problem. I will also try it with Eclipse just to see what the differences are. I prefer NetBeans to Eclipse, but I am required to use Eclipse at work. Any advice and help you could provide that would make it easier for me to develop with NetBeans and deliver to Eclipse would be much appreciated. We are using CVS as our code repository (but planning to move to Subversion at some point). If I can deliver my projects to CVS from NetBeans and pull them down into Eclipse without adversely affecting my colleagues, that would improve my morale considerably.

Don Smallidge

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