My favorite JDeveloper extensions

by Eduardo Rodrigues

Hi everybody!

You must have noticed that JDeveloper may be boosted by a great number of extensions provided either by Oracle itself or by an open source and partners community. If you did not noticed that yet, then you certainly should do so. Even if it's just for curiosity, you may check a complete list of all extensions available selecting the menu item "Help -> Check for Updates...".

It's important to say that for this feature to work properly, your JDev's web proxy configuration must be correct. So it's worth to take a look at this first by selecting menu item "Tools -> Preferences...":



Now that we're all set, let's go back to the "Help -> Check for Updates..." thing.

On the wizard's first step you should make the following selection:



After pressing "Next" you'll be presented to a list of available extensions from the update centers selected before. Browse the list and see how many interesting and useful stuff you can add to your JDeveloper environment. All you have to do is to select the extensions you like and proceed with the wizard. After restarting JDeveloper will automatically install all downloaded extensions. I recommend that you always restart JDeveloper immediately when prompted to.

An alternative way to browse and download these extensions outside JDeveloper is to visit the following URLs:

• http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/jdev/101/update/center.xml
• http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/jdev/101/update/exchange.xml

In this case, to install them, use the feature "Install From Local File" in "Help -> Check for Updates..." wizard:



As a suggestion, here is a list of my favorite extensions:

• MUST HAVE


• Oracle ADF SRDemo Applications
  Great way to learn ADF by example. Comes in 2 flavors: EJB 3.0 + Toplink Essentials JPA or ADF BC


• Oracle ADF Developer's Guides Update


• JDeveloper Spring 2.5 Support
  Adds support for creating and editing Spring 2.5 bean defintions. This addin will create the Spring 2.5 library and register the relevant XSDs and DTDs with the IDE to provide a productive editing experience for Spring definitions


• Struts Documentation 10.1.3
  Complete Javadoc for Struts


• Variable Highlighter Extension
  Dynamically highlights variables as you click on them


• Subversion VCS Extension
  Much better version controller than plain CVS


• USEFUL


• JUnit Integration Extensions
  Various extensions providing integrated support for JUnit


• Oracle JHeadstart Evaluation Version
  Oracle JHeadstart is a productivity toolkit that works on top of Oracle ADF. Using ADF Faces as View, JSF as Controller and ADF Business Components as Business Service, JHeadstart generates sophisticated ADF web applications using simple metadata. Generated features include wizards, shuttles, trees, list of values, multi-row insert/update/delete, advanced and quick search capabilities, file upload/download, deeplinking, conditionally dependent items, dynamic breadcrumbs and more.


• Copy As HTML
  Great extension that makes the task of copying bits of source code to blogs much easier


• XPath Search Extension
  Best way to search inside XML documents


• Make Read-only Files Writable


• GWT Developer
  Provides visual editing environment to help with developing with the Google Web Toolkit (GWT)


• PMD JDeveloper Extension
  Provides integrated support for PMD 4.1


• Remove Workspaces and Projects
  Adds a context menu option that allows the deletion of projects and workspaces and of their sub-contents, quick and easy.


• Additional Skins for ADF Faces


• Zipper
  This extension provides a simple ZIP feature for applications and projects

On the other hand, the extension "JDeveloper Keep Resident (for Windows only)" is definitely one that you should NOT use. That's an experimental extension, works only on Windows and the very same effect may be achieved in a much better way which has already been explained in a previous post.

Finally, if you want to contribute with your own great JDeveloper extension, you may install "JDeveloper Extensions SDK" which is an extension itself and includes documentation and sample extensions.

That's all for now.

Cheers and... keep reading!