Poll: does anybody use IntelliJ IDEA GUI editors for servlets?
Are they useful? And is there a way to make them more useful, or maybe
it's better to drop them and make user edit plain XML?
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I even did not know that there is a GUI editor for servlets.
Surprise! Project View | JavaEE structure | your web facet node |
servlet node | F4 | there you are!
Hm, that opens just the usual code editor. What plug-in is needed for that?
Or do you mean the dialog-like servlet configurator one node above the
class? If so, no, I haven't used it until now. Wouldn't it be better to have
it as a tab in the normal servlet code editor like the bottom tabs when
editing the web.xml?
The question is exactly, that if this editor is necessary at all, it
will be moved to such tab. But is it necessary? What do you expect to
edit there?
Hello Tom,
For me there are 'tabs' at the bottom of "web.xml".
-tt
To be honest, when first reading "GUI editor" I expected something like the
Swing GUI editor and hence wondered that there would be something like that
for servlets.
Oh no, it's not. It's just editor for several tags in web.xml.
Yes. Personally I don't use it but I observed that newbies
like it allot, as they feel much more comfortable with it
than with plain XML. Of course, after they master it, they
tend to use plain XML, but you would be surprised to know
how many users are in fact "servlet newbies" even if they were
hired as professionals :).
Yes. I could make a list if you would like.
Nope. The plain XML editing for servlets could be improved however too,
so that advanced users could be much more productive.
I could make a list here too (if it's needed), but I'm asking this since
your JIRA has so many thousands of issues that one is totally lost there :(.
Also I don't know if servlet support improvements are on your plan before 7.0 will be released.
Ahmed.
Strange. I thought that no one writes servlets manually these days, they
just copy-paste the XML from some framework documentation and forget
about this forever. So I'm not right?
>> And is there a way to make them more useful,
Please do it. Because the current servlet edtitor seems to be useless
even for newbies. At least if I were a servlet newbie, it wouldn't help
me at all.
>> or maybe it's better to drop them and make user edit plain XML?
A list would also help very much, and JIRA is really a right place for
it. Personally I'm not lost there yet. :)
Yes, sure. I'm not sure that all, but at least some.
Never noticed it, because it is hidden too well.
IMHO it should be made more visible and as more people will be looking
and it they'll raise feature requests soon enough.
However it won't do to make it part of the servlet class code.
The gui's contents are not specific for that class but rather for the
servlet configuration in web.xml, right?
In fact I just noticed that you can get the same gui by invoking "Edit" on
the context menu in the "servlets configured" panel in the "general tab"
of the web.xml code editor.
Not really more "discoverable" than F4 on the parent node in EE view.
I think the gui should somehow be made part of the other tabs for web.xml.
Can you see/edit filter mappings somewhere in the web.xml tabs?
Can't find it, but that does not mean much ;)
Peter Gromov (JetBrains) wrote:
Absolutely. And how do you imagine an easier way to open it? A gutter
icon for class/JSp file?
And how? There are very few servlet settings worth to be edited (name,
JSP/class, load order, init-params, mappings and... maybe some security
role. Do you have any other ideas?). A dedicated tab for each servlet
has too much blank space. They could be presented in one scrollable
view, with compact presentation of all listed settings. Or what do you
think?
"Assembly Descriptor" tab.