I learnt a lot about JBoss Tools whilst writing a quick demo for my talk at Javapolis, and I wanted share a favourite feature with you - hot deploy of Seam components. Now, of course, this works with any seam problems if you set it up right, but JBoss Tools makes it /seamless/ :-). It removes the need for calling out to ant to copy the files to the application server - this makes it so quick you don't even see the progress bar pop up!
So, how do you get this going in your project?
Well, first, create a new WAR project (you can't currently hot-deploy EJB3s - vote for the issue here!)
You can learn more about creating a new project here.
Now, run your project on the server - you'll need to wait a few seconds while the server boots.
Find out more about deploying your project here.
Finally, add a method (note, we are changing the class signature here!) to one of your actions, and add a <h:commandLink /> to your view to call it. Make sure to save both the class and the facelets.
You are restricted to /action/ classes here - you can't hot deploy model classes (entities).
You'll notice that JBoss Tools also provides EL completion in java class files :-)
Seam tells you it has hot deployed the the component.
Refresh the page in your browser, click the button, and the method is called without having to restart your application - now you need another excuse to get a cup of coffee than I had to restart my application!
;-)
Well, that concludes our quick tour of hot deployment with Seam and JBoss Tools. The JBoss Tools docs are a great place to learn more.
