Your First Project with IT Mill Toolkit

Let us create the first application project with the tools installed in the previous section. Launch Eclipse and create a project by selecting New > Project... from File menu. From the New Project window, select "Tomcat Project" under the Java folder as shown below. Click Next.

Give the project name "calc" and leave Use default location selected to create the new project under the default workspace location. Click Next.

The wizard will suggest /calc for a context name. This will be the subpath in the URL, for example http://localhost:8888/calc. The default for application root will be / (root).

You can just accept the defaults and click Finish. The wizard closes and creates the project.

Feel free to explore the contents of the project skeleton. It will include a Java Runtime library, Tomcat Servlet API, and and some other Tomcat libraries. Your source code will go under WEB-INF/src. IT Mill Toolkit libraries and any resource files will go under WEB-INF.

You need to include IT Mill Toolkit libraries in the project. Copy the following packages from the directory where you unpacked IT Mill Toolkit distribution to WEB-INF/lib folder:

You must add IT Mill Toolkit library to project build settings. Select Properties from Project menu. Select Java Build Path from the tree and add the itmill-toolkit-4.0.3.jar to libraries. You should also link the added library to the source package and javadocs as illustrated below:

In order to use dynamic class loader feature of the Sysdeo Tomcat plugin, you need to activate dynamic loading for classes built in this project. This is also done in project settings, but on Tomcat page:

Right-click on the WEB-INF/src folder and select New > Class. Enter the "Calc" class name in Name field. Leave Package empty to create the class in the default package. Click Finish to create the class and its source file. The skeleton of the file will be opened in the editor.

You can now write the source code. As we are writing the Calculator example, you can copy and paste the source code for the Calc application from Example 1.2, “Calc.java” or from the demo application.

If you are in a lazy mood, you can import the source file into the project. Just remember to import the source file under the default package or you have to include the package in the classname in the deployment descriptor below.

You need to set up the application environment as described in the section called “Application Environment” and provide a deployment descriptor WEB-INF/web.xml. The contents of the descriptor for the Calc application is given in Example 1.3, “web.xml” below.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<web-app id="WebApp_ID" version="2.4" xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/j2ee" 
    xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" 
    xsi:schemaLocation="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/j2ee http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/j2ee/web-app_2_4.xsd">

    <servlet>
        <servlet-name>calc</servlet-name>
        <servlet-class>com.itmill.toolkit.terminal.web.ApplicationServlet</servlet-class>
        <init-param>
            <param-name>application</param-name>
            <param-value>Calc</param-value>
        </init-param>
    </servlet>
    <servlet-mapping>
        <servlet-name>calc</servlet-name>
        <url-pattern>/*</url-pattern>
    </servlet-mapping>
</web-app>

The descriptor defines a servlet with name calc. The servlet class, com.itmill.toolkit.terminal.web.ApplicationServlet, is provided by IT Mill Toolkit framework and it should be the same for all IT Mill Toolkit projects. The servlet takes the class name Calc of the user application as a parameter.

Now everything should be in place and your Eclipse should look like this:

If you have everything set up as described above, all the rest is easy. To run your application, just select Start Tomcat from Tomcat -menu. After this your Tomcat will start on port 8080. Just head your web browser to http://localhost:8080/calc/

To examine how the application works, you can put break points in the Java code by double clicking on left marginal of the source code window. If you put a breakpoint into buttonClick event handling method and click any button on calculator, eclipse will open the debugger. You can examine the state of the application and even make some changes and then select Resume from Run menu.