I haven`t any experience in plugin development yet, but I have very specific problem to solve.
I want to ask, if "Eclipse Plugins" book is good material for me to solve it.
Problem description:
I`m responsible for big
JEE project with its own web framework (based on
Struts). Most of web components in this framework are implemented as xml files, which define various artefacts - forms, lists, toolboxes and other elements of view. Each of these components refer to specific local EJBs (through special tag in xml), which are entry points to business logic layer and are also divided into different types - FormManagers, ListProviders, etc. according to different types of view components, they serve.
I would like to make plugin which will provide following features:
- extention to EnterpriseExplorer in
Java EE perspective (or separate navigator) which will let explore (using dedicated icons) different web and ejb artifacts independently of actual location in file/files
- explorer tree should also contain links to dependent components. F. e. "form" element should have such subelements as FormManager, toolbox etc. which allow to jump to that component
- customized outline view for web (xml) components which will list references to framework-dependent properties (tags in xml files), such as EJB references, which will work like outline in java files, which moves cursor to selected element
- "Open Type"-like tool to search for different web artefacts by name
My question is, to what extent the book will give me answers, how resolve above mentioned issues.