Easier deployment of ExtLib ( and other OSGI plugins ) in Domino 8.5.3

Posted on June 15, 2011 by qtzar

Disclaimer :

“This is beta software from IBM and does not represent a commitment, promise or legal obligation by IBM to deliver, in a future release of Notes/Domino or Lotus Notes Traveler, any material, code or functionality described/shown in this presentation.”

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I should repeat the disclaimer on this one as it’s not in the release notes yet so there is no guarantee this will make it into the final released version of Domino 8.5.3 but from what I’ve been told the feature has tested very well.

To make the deployment of OSGi plugins like the Extension Library from OpenNTF easier a couple of updates have been made to the UpdateSite template and a new notes.ini variable has been added to Domino 8.5.3.

Firstly the UpdateSite has a new ‘Sign’ button that will allow you to sign all the documents in the UpdateSite. So if your going to be deploying ExtLib using this method you would create a new UpdateSite database based on the template and then import the UpdateSite from the ExtLib and then sign it. Only updates that have been signed can be deployed using this new method. Lets say we created our updateSite to be called AdminExtLib.nsf

Next you need to add in a new notes.ini variable on the Domino server called OSGI_HTTP_DYNAMIC_BUNDLES and point it to the UpdateSite database. In this case our new notes.ini variable would read OSGI_HTTP_DYNAMIC_BUNDLES=admin/extlib.nsf

Once this is done all you will need to do is issue a ‘Restart Task HTTP’ and when the HTTP task restarts it will tell the OSGI loader to read in the plugins from the database.

if your UpdateSite database isn’t at the correct version then you’ll see an error message during http startup stating that the view $vwOSGiLoader is missing.

If everything has gone successfully then you will see a message saying ‘NSF Based Plugins are being installed in the OSGI runtime’.

One of the nice things about this is that when newer versions of the plugin become available all you need to do is import them into your UpdateSite NSF and then restart the HTTP task.

Another thing that you will notice is that the plugins stay in the NSF and don’t get extracted out to the workspaceapplicationsplugins folder so if you have deployed older versions of ExtLib you can now get rid of all those old files and have a cleaner deployment.

And this isn’t just for ExtLib. You’ll be able to deploy any OSGi plugins to your Domino server this way. if you have heard of GBS Transformer then you may know that they have their own set of XPages Extensions that are deployed via OSGi plugins so they could be deployed using this method.

Fingers crossed that this feature does make it into the Domino 8.5.3 final code. It’s going to be great for admin and developers alike.

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Red and Yellow and Pink and Blue

Posted on June 14, 2011 by qtzar

Disclaimer :

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Maybe not all the colors of the rainbow but oneUI has been updated in Domino 8.5.3 to version 2.1 which includes a couple of new colors, yes, including pink.

The new oneUI V2.1 colors are : Blue, Gold, Green, Onyx, Orange, Pink, Purple, Red and Silver

You can use all of these themes in your own applications by pointing the theme name to oneuiv2.1_xxx where xxx is one of the colors above or you can extend your own themes using the same theme name. There is also a oneuiv2.1 theme with no specific colors and a oneuiv2.1_gen1 which I still need to look into.

All of these themes still use Dojo’s Tundra CSS for the Dojo elements and not the newer Claro theme however it probably wouldn’t be too much work to copy the supplied theme files and replace all references of Tundra with Claro if you prefer that look and feel for your dojo widgets.

ALSO…

The Domino 8.5.3 installer code no longer removes any theme files that you may have created yourself in the dominoxspnsfthemes folder. In the past if you created a theme file here and then upgraded your Domino server your theme files would be removed. This fix allows you to create your own company standard theme file that you can then just reference from your XPages applications or you may have some special themes for mobile devices that you can use with the ExtLib Mobile Controls in this folder.

Tagged with: 8.5.3, XPages
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Baked in Source Control Enabler in IBM Domino Designer 8.5.3

Posted on June 13, 2011 by qtzar

Disclaimer :

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Last year IBM released a ‘Technology Preview’ on OpenNTF for Source Control enablement of Domino Designer. This plugin worked on Domino Designer 8.5.2 and the good news is that the current beta of 8.5.3 has the plugin baked right into the code.

Source control is a very hot topic when it comes to Domino Designer. It was shown off at Lotusphere to great applause.

The plugin itself does not do the source control. All it does is help you create a flat-file / on-disk version of an NSF and keep it in sync. when you change a design element in Domino Designer it is synced out to the on-disk version and if a change is made to the on-disk version it is synced into the NSF.

You then need to install a source control plugin into your Domino Designer, this can be a simpler client-server style source control system like SVN or a distributed style one like Mercurial or GIT. They all have advantages and disadvantages. Personally I’ve been using Mercurial and I’m also running a RedMine server for issue tracking that works great against my Mercurial repositories.

A little bird whispered in my ear that there MAY be a NoteIn9 video about source control, mercurial and RedMine coming out soon…

Tagged with: Lotus Development, Source Control
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XPages and HTML5 gets easier in IBM Notes/Domino 8.5.3

Posted on June 13, 2011 by qtzar

Disclaimer :

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The embargo on talking about the upcoming IBM Notes/Domino 8.5.3 release has been lifted and a couple of others have already blogged about some of the new features like the JS/CSS Aggregator or the new Java design Element but I wanted to mention a small feature that’s going to make life easier for anybody working on HTML 5

First of all the application properties page now has an option to allow you to select the HTML DocType for all the pages generated by your application. One of the options listed here is HTML 5.

Next there is a new property type that has been added to a number of controls called ‘Attribs’. Currently you can find them in the all properties section of the control. The idea behind this is to allow you to add additional attributes that will be rendered to the browser which will allow you to add html 5 attributes to your controls. So if you want to add the ‘Placeholder’ you can add the following to your inputText control :

<xp:this.attrs>
 <xp:attr name="placeholder" value="This is the placeholder text"></xp:attr>
 </xp:this.attrs>

These two new features alone will make working with HTML5 in XPages much easier.

Tagged with: XPages
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