Tips and Tricks

Shortcuts and tips on how to use Workshop more effectively.

Links to sections:

Page Flow Design

Streamlining Deployment/Testing

Controlling Builds

Page Flow Design

What How
Quick run Click the Run on Server button in the toolbar of the Page Flow Explorer to run the current page flow, regardless of which source file is currently being edited.
Get agreement between action output annotations and corresponding page input tags

Use the Action Output/Page Input Editor to quickly get agreement between action output annotations and corresponding page input tags. Either select a forward link in the Page Flow Editor and click the Edit Inputs and Outputs button on toolbar over the downstream pane or right click on a forward link and select Edit Action Outputs

Create a hyperlink from the page that raises an action

Drag an action from the Page Flow Explorer and drop it downstream from a page in the center pane of the Page Flow Editor to create a hyperlink in the page that raises the action.

Create a forward from an Action to a JSP Drag a page from the Page Flow Explorer and drop it downstream from an action in the center pane of the Page Flow Editor to create a forward from the action to the page
Change Page Flow Editor focus Drag an action or page from the Page Flow Explorer onto the center pane of the Page Flow Editor to quickly change the focus of the editor.
Synch Page Flow Editor focus with current cursor position in the Source Editor Use the Synch with Source Editor button at the bottom of the center pane of the Page Flow Editor to change the focus of the Page Flow Editor when the source editor cursor is in a node-related source element, such as an action method.
Setting the destination of the forward Drag an action or page from the Page Flow Explorer onto an unspecified node to set the destination of the forward.
Replacing the destination of a page link Drag an action from the Page Flow Explorer onto an existing action in the downstream pane of the Page Flow Editor to change the destination of the associated page link.
Replacing the destination of a forward Drag a page node from the Page Flow Explorer onto an existing page in the downstream pane of the Page Flow Editor to change the destination of the associated forward.
Creating an action that calls a control method Drag control methods from the Referenced Controls folder of the Page Flow Explorer onto the Page Flow Editor canvas to create an action that calls the control method.
Create a new node (JSP or Action) Right click on the downstream pane of the Page Flow Editor to create a new node at that point in the flow diagram.
Edit a forward or page link Right click on arrow links in the Page Flow Editor to see operations that apply to the forward or page link.
Display source elements by clicking corresponding icons Double-click any icon in the Page Flow Editor or Page Flow Explorer to see the corresponding source element in the source editor
Edit form bean validation rules

Right click on any action that takes a form bean and select one of the validation rules options to launch the Validation Rule editor

Streamlining Deployment/Testing

What How
Limiting the Projects that are Deployed When you use the Run command, all open projects associated with the current server will be deployed. To streamline deployment, use the Project > Close Project command to close individual projects that are not needed for your current testing.
Using Working Sets to Limit the Projects that are Deployed To specify a set of projects/files to be deployed, define a working set from the Navigator view.
Separating web services

If you have a web service that calls another web service in the same project, the two web services should either be moved to separate projects (that are linked to separate EAR projects), or the shared code should be extracted into a control so that the web services do not call each other directly.

A web services can call another web service in the same project, but this incurs a great deal of extra overhead that will slow down testing.

Undeploy unneeded projects From the Servers view, expand your server to see what projects are deployed to the server. On a Run command, all of these projects will be checked to verify that they are current. Right click on the server name and use the Add and Remove Projects command to remove unneeded projects.
Remove projects deployed to the server from other applications

From the Servers view, double click on the server name. Then from the Servers Overview window in the Published Modules box, click on any projects that were loaded with other enterprise applications that are no longer needed and click Undeploy to remove them.

Be sure that you do not remove any system library files. System files begin with "workshop", "beehive", "struts", etc. Remove only projects that you deployed.

Controlling Builds

What How
Disabling Automatic Build If system performance is too slow, try Project > Build Automatically to disable automatic builds.
Cleaning up Build Artifacts If builds get strange errors, try doing a Project > Clean before building to remove artifacts of previous builds

Still need help? Post a question on the Workshop newsgroup.