Developing a simple plug-in for Lotus Notes. Part 1
Category Notes 8 plug-in development tutorial
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This is part 1 of a three part tutorial.
Part 2
Part 3
This tutorial will show you how to create, test and deploy a simple Sidebar plug-in for Lotus Notes 8.
This tutorial is focused on the process of creating, testing and deploying the plug-in rather than explaining how to write the plug-in itself. In fact we will not see any Java code in this tutorial. That will be the subject of further tutorials. In this tutorial we will let Eclipse write all the code for us.
After creating and testing the plug-in it will be packaged onto an Update Site and installed into the Notes 8 Client.
The finished plug-in looks like this in the Notes 8 Sidebar:
The tutorial assumes that you already have the Notes 8 client installed. I have only tested this tutorial on Notes 8.0.2 but it should run fine in 8.0, 8.0.1 and 8.5.
There is no need to have access to a Domino server unless you want to replicate your update site to a web server as described in section 10.
There are various different packages of Eclipse that can be downloaded from eclipse.org, each one tailored for a different audience. However, the Lotus Expeditor Toolkit 6.1.2 only seems to install correctly on Eclipse 3.2.2. Newer version of Eclipse don't work because Expeditor has dependencies on older version of Equinox.
Eclipse 3.2.2 can be found here. For Windows eclipse-SDK-3.2.2-win32.zip is the file you need.
Eclipse doesn't need installing like a normal Windows program. Just unzip the file to a suitable location of your hard-drive. That's it, no need to run any install program.
To run Eclipse just double-click on eclipse.exe.
Top Tip: On Windows file paths can only be 260 characters long. If you try and unzip the file on your Desktop you might get error messages about files needing passwords or warnings that filenames are too long. Try extracting the files to a location with a shorter filepath, eg c:\temp.
The Lotus Expeditor toolkit can be downloaded for free from the Lotus Download site but you will need an IBM User ID. Download the Lotus Expeditor Toolkit 6.1.2 Multiplatform Multilingual. There appear to be two identical versions of the toolkit for download so I downloaded the first in the list.
Now let's get Eclipse to write a plug-in for us.
Bookmark :
- Introduction
- Installing Lotus Notes 8
- Installing and configuring Eclipse and Expeditor
- Creating a simple plug-in
- Testing the plug-in
- Customising the plug-in
- Creating a Feature Project
- Creating an Update Site Project
- Installing the plug-in in the Notes 8 Client
- Creating a Notes Application Update Site
- Conclusion
This is part 1 of a three part tutorial.
Part 2
Part 3
1. Introduction
This tutorial will show you how to create, test and deploy a simple Sidebar plug-in for Lotus Notes 8.
This tutorial is focused on the process of creating, testing and deploying the plug-in rather than explaining how to write the plug-in itself. In fact we will not see any Java code in this tutorial. That will be the subject of further tutorials. In this tutorial we will let Eclipse write all the code for us.
After creating and testing the plug-in it will be packaged onto an Update Site and installed into the Notes 8 Client.
The finished plug-in looks like this in the Notes 8 Sidebar:
2. Installing Lotus Notes 8
The tutorial assumes that you already have the Notes 8 client installed. I have only tested this tutorial on Notes 8.0.2 but it should run fine in 8.0, 8.0.1 and 8.5.
There is no need to have access to a Domino server unless you want to replicate your update site to a web server as described in section 10.
3. Installing and configuring Eclipse and Expeditor
There are various different packages of Eclipse that can be downloaded from eclipse.org, each one tailored for a different audience. However, the Lotus Expeditor Toolkit 6.1.2 only seems to install correctly on Eclipse 3.2.2. Newer version of Eclipse don't work because Expeditor has dependencies on older version of Equinox.
Eclipse 3.2.2 can be found here. For Windows eclipse-SDK-3.2.2-win32.zip is the file you need.
Eclipse doesn't need installing like a normal Windows program. Just unzip the file to a suitable location of your hard-drive. That's it, no need to run any install program.
To run Eclipse just double-click on eclipse.exe.
Top Tip: On Windows file paths can only be 260 characters long. If you try and unzip the file on your Desktop you might get error messages about files needing passwords or warnings that filenames are too long. Try extracting the files to a location with a shorter filepath, eg c:\temp.
The Lotus Expeditor toolkit can be downloaded for free from the Lotus Download site but you will need an IBM User ID. Download the Lotus Expeditor Toolkit 6.1.2 Multiplatform Multilingual. There appear to be two identical versions of the toolkit for download so I downloaded the first in the list.
| • Unzip the Lotus Expeditor 6.1.2.zip file to a local folder. |
| • The Expeditor Toolkit is installed from within Eclipse so launch the program by double-clicking on eclipse.exe. |
| • The first time
you start Eclipse you will be asked for the location of the workspace.
This is the directory that will contains all you Eclipse projects.
• Top Tip: If you have lots of different projects and plug-ins you can have different Workspaces and switch between them. |
|
| • When the Welcome page appears, click on the Workbench icon. |
|
| • Now we need to
install the Expeditor Toolkit. The toolkit is distributed as a set of plug-ins
in an Update Site. We will see how to create our own Update Site later
in this tutorial.
• From the main menu select Help -> Software Updates -> Find and Install... • Select Search for new features to install and click on the Next button. • Click on the New Local Site... button and navigate to the Expeditor_Toolkit_install folder within the folder where you unziped the toolkit and click OK. |
|
| • Make sure that the new update site is selected and click Finish. |
|
| • The next dialog
show all the different features in the toolkit. What do they all do? No
idea... but it's all very clever so we might as well install the lot.
• Select the top level checkbox and click on the Next button. Accept the license and click Finish. Then wait as about a zillion plug-in are downloaded and installed. |
|
| • When prompted to restart the Workbench, click Yes. |
| • After Eclipse has restarted you will be asked to configure the Expeditor Toolkit. Select Lotus Notes 8 as the Test Environment and click OK. |
|
| • That's it, Eclipse and Expeditor are now configured for developing Notes 8 plug-ins. |
4. Creating a simple plug-in
Now let's get Eclipse to write a plug-in for us.
| • Form
the main menu select File -> New -> Other.
• Expand the Plug-in Development section, select Plug-in Project and click on the Next button. |
|
| • Give the plug-in an ID, mine is called com.domiclipse.tutorial1. Click on the Next button. |
|
| • On the Templates page select Plug-in with a view and click Finish. |
|
| • After a few moments
our plug-in is opened in the workbench.
• On the left hand side of the screen is the Package Navigator view which shows all the Projects in the Workbench. The most important bits are the src folder which contains all the Java code and the plugin.xml file which defines how our plug-in fits into the Eclipse environment. |
| • To add our view
to the Lotus Notes 8 Sidebar we need to define an Extension.
• Click on the Extensions tab of the plugin.xml file and click on the Add... button. |
|
| • De-select the
Show only extension points from the required plug-ins checkbox and
in the Extension Point filter field start typing com.ibm.rcp.ui.
• Select the com.ibm.rcp.ui.shelfView Extension Point and click Finish. |
|
| • Select Yes to add the com.ibm.rcp.ui plug-in to the dependencies. |
|
| • Right-click on
the new extension point and select New -> shelfView.
• In the Extension Element Details form enter the class name of our view in the id and view fields. In this case the view is called com.domiclipse.tutorial1.views.SampleView. Note, class names are case sensitive. |
|
| • Save and close
the plugin.xml file.
• Our plug-in is now finished. Time to test it. |
Comments
Posted by Mtho At 13:55:59 On 15/12/2008 | - Website - |
Posted by :cool: :-D At 11:11:23 On 21/04/2009 | - Website - |
Thanks for the tutorial.
I'm now on Notes 8.5.1 and i can't get this working.
Could you please rewrite this tutorial for this current version?
Posted by Sriram At 09:24:20 On 18/11/2009 | - Website - |
Thanks a lot
Posted by Sriram At 12:13:55 On 19/11/2009 | - Website - |
I get this errormessage with 8.5.1:
2009-nov-23 12:54:19 com.ibm.rcp.lifecycle.internal.platform.PlatformStartup initializeSecurity
Throwable occurred: java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: com.ibm.rcp.security.ServiceProvider
Do anyone know what the problem could be?
Thanks in advance!
//Freddy
Posted by Freddy At 11:56:46 On 23/11/2009 | - Website - |
I have followed a few more guides than this one and they all generate this error.
Some advice would be appreciated!
Posted by Joris At 12:18:09 On 24/02/2010 | - Website - |