Spring Web Flow Editor usage

First Usage

After installing the Spring IDE using either the Eclipse Update Manager or any other method you need to define your Spring IDE WebFlow Configs. This is similar to the approach Spring IDE's beans support uses.

• Before you can start using the WebFlowEditor make sure you have added the SpringProject Nature to the corresponding Java Project within Eclipse using the project's context menu action Add Spring Project Nature. For more information refer to the Spring IDE Guide.
• Define your Spring configs and config sets within the project's properties.
• Define your Spring WebFlow config the project's properties.

• Link BeansConfig files to WebFlow configs by using the Edit button. If you don't link a BeansConfig to the WebFlow config Spring IDE will not be able to provide content assist and selection dialogs for bean references and action methods.

• Open the SpringExplorer and make sure that the Spring Web Flow content contribution is selected in the view's properties. Window -> Show View -> Other -> Spring.
• Do a right click on the WebFlow Config you want to edit in the SpringExplorer and select Open Graphical Editor.

• Start editing the WebFlow configuration.

• After you have edited the configuration you can save your work by selecting Eclipse' Save/Save As Actions.

Editing

Creating states

The palette of the WebFlow Editor provides access to the different kind of states and actions of a state. In order to create a new state in the configuration select the type in the palette and click the editor's content pane. The properties dialog of the selected state will appear to ask for mandantory user input.

Adding actions to action states

To create a action within an action state select the action tool in the palette and click on the desired ActionState. The new action will be created within the selected ActionState.

Export

The Spring IDE WebFlowEditor is build on top of the GraphicalEditingFramework (GEF). Currently GEF supports exporting to png, jpg and bmp image files.

To export an WebFlow configuration to an image do the following:

1. Open the WebFlow configuration with the WebFlowEditor
2. Select the Export Action either from the context menu or the toolbar
3. Select a parent folder and specify an image name using the extensions .png, .jpg or .bmp.

Outline

The outline is not just a visual tool for selecting items in the WebFlowEditor. For example you can use the outline to order the WebFlow states, to move around actions from one ActionState to another or to move properties from one state to any other.

The start state of the WebFlow is always the first element in the outline. During saving of the configuration the states will be written to the configuration file in the order they appear on the outline.

---

See also : SpringideGuide, SpringProject, SpringProjectProperties, WebFlow, WebFlowEditor, SpringExplorer