November 14, 2014

Maven support for WaveMaker Projects helps developers use their familiar IDEs

The new release of WaveMaker Studio (version 7.1) expected to be released next week offers a bi-directional integration of WaveMaker projects with other IDEs. WaveMaker Studio projects can be exported and imported into any IDE of your choice i.e., Eclipse, IntelliJ IDEA, etc. providing an easy way for developers to utilize their familiar IDE for complex programming tasks.  Maven-based project export feature is especially relevant to Professional developers and Enterprise Architects, who want to do more than just a simple drag-n-drop operation to build their applications. While WaveMaker Studio provides visual-design-based drag-n-drop, code generation, collaboration, readily available templates, and widgets for faster application development, you can now export the WaveMaker project with a Project Object Model (POM) file to code, debug, or test with a different development environment that supports Maven.

In this post, we will learn how you can export your project from WaveMaker Studio and experience the added benefits of a Maven-compliant project.

Currently, in WaveMaker Studio 7 you can export your project as a ZIP file using the “Export” menu option.

These exported projects are Maven compliant and generate a Maven-based pom.xml as shown below in FIG-2

The biggest benefit of making the exported project as Maven compliant is the ease with which the user can switch between WaveMaker Studio and the IDE of his choice to leverage the superior Java code editing and debugging features of the IDE.  Let's see how you can import a project into Eclipse IDE and use it.

Importing WaveMaker Studio projects into Eclipse is just a 2-step process as shown in FIG-3 & FIG-4.  This allows the user to instantly switch from WaveMaker Studio to Eclipse, work and leverage Eclipse features, switch back to WaveMaker Studio, and import back the modified project.

Some of the common tasks in WaveMaker that can leverage Eclipse (or any IDE) features include the following

1. Writing and debugging Java services
2. Debugging a WaveMaker app deployed on Tomcat or any other webserver

Java Services are just Java classes that can be written and debugged with far more ease and authority in an IDE like Eclipse than in WaveMaker Studio itself.

For debugging the app you can use the “Remote Java Application” (see FIG-5) feature in Eclipse to remotely debug your Tomcat deployed app.

If your organization is using WaveMaker applications as part of a bigger project that uses Maven, you can include WaveMaker project as a Maven sub-module.

You can also instantly generate the project war file to deploy using the Eclipse “Maven install” menu option as shown in FIG-6.

And finally, after you are done making your changes to the files using Eclipse, you can import the ZIP file (%PROJECT_HOME%/target/export/PROJECT_NAME.zip), created automatically using “Maven Install”, back into WaveMaker Studio.  You can do this using the “Update Project Source” (see FIG-7) feature in WaveMaker Studio.

WaveMaker continues to focus on bringing the new trends in application evolution such as API-driven development and design-first paradigms to WaveMaker Platform in the upcoming releases, keep looking out for more exciting news from us.

Create your WaveMaker app now!  If you have any suggestions or feedback, please mail us at feedback@wavemaker.com

Karthick Viswanathan
Product & Customer-Success Manager