Spring IDE Blog

With this blog entry I would like to introduce one of Spring IDE 2.0’s new features - the improved integration with Eclipse’s Project Explorer.

But before delving into the details let’s take a look on the Project Explorer:

This view was introduced with Eclipse 3.2. It leverages the Common Navigator Framework to present a domain-oriented view of the projects in the workspace. General projects are shown in the same way as the Navigator view, but other projects are presented in a hierarchy that makes sense for their particular domain. For example, Java projects appear as a hierarchy of source folders and packages rather than folders.

Starting with version 1.3.3 Spring IDE contributed Spring-related content and corresponding filters to the Project Explorer.

With the upcoming version 2.0 of Spring IDE these contributions to the Project Explorer were further improved:

• The Spring Beans content contribution now supports additional domain elements:
  • nested elements like values of properties / constructor arguments, collection types and inner beans
  • XML namespaces which were introduced with Spring 2.0, e.g. <aop:config> or <tx:advice>
  • list of Spring beans referencing a certain Java type as their bean class
  • A new content contribution was added - Spring Web Flow. This content contribution adds the domain elements of Spring IDE 2.0’s new support for the Spring Web Flow framework - namely the Web Flow configuration files.
  • A new content contribution was added - Spring Elements. This content contribution adds a virtual folder (named “Spring Elements”) to the root folder of every Spring Project. The virtual folder contains other virtual folders (named “Beans” and “Web Flow”) contributed by the other Spring IDE content contributions holding their corresponding domain elements.
  • New content filters were added:
    • The filter “Non-Spring Elements” hides all non-Spring related files and folders within a Spring Project.
    • The filter “Spring Bean Class References” hides the list of Spring bean references from the Java types which are used as Spring bean classes.
  • New context menu item were added:
    • The item “Open Java Element” (available on Spring beans and bean properties) opens the corresponding Java element in Eclipse’s Java editor.
    • The item “Open Reference” (available on Spring bean references) opens the referenced Spring bean in Spring IDE’s beans XML editor.



These improvements (and others) can be tested with one of the latest nightly builds of Spring IDE 2.0 (currently milestone 4).

Be aware that these nightly builds are for testing purposes only. They are not intended to be used in production environment.

If you would like to see other Project Explorer related improvements in Spring IDE then feel free to open a corresponding ticket with type of “enhancement” and component of “ui.navigator”.