Tutorial

Eclipse RAP is a Eclipse based platform for Ajax web applications which provides part of the API of Eclipse RCP. Eclipse RAP allows to use Eclipse RCP paradigm for developing Ajax web-applications.

RAP is based on the OSGi implementation Equinox. It is possible to run Eclipse RAP applications via the OSGi servlet bridge in a servlet container, e.g. Apache Tomcat or Jetty.

Eclipse RAP supports extension points, views, perspectives, selection service, commands, handlers, editors and databinding.

Eclipse archives this by providing its own implementations for SWT, JFace and the Workbench. Eclipse RAP replaces SWT with RWT (RAP widget toolkit) layer. This toolkit is based on the qooxdoo Ajax library. RWT is a distributed system; every RWT widget has a client and a server part. These part communicate via Ajax.

During development Eclipse RAP applications run in the embedded webserver Jetty which is part of the Eclipse RAP development tooling.

Eclipse RAP does not provide all the possibilities Eclipse RCP. For example Eclipse RAP has no Graphics Context which can be used in SWT to draw directly onto the SWT widgets.

Each Eclipse RAP releases provides more functionality so that the differences between Eclipse RCP and Eclipse RAP are getting smaller every release.

Eclipse RAP have its own target platform. A target platform contains the artifacts, e.g. plug-ins, against which the Eclipse plug-ins are compiled. For example Eclipse RAP does not rely on SWT but on RWT therefore the target platform must provide these.

Typically you should create a new workspace for your Eclipse RAP projects. As you have to change the target platform to compile against Eclipse RAP your existing projects may not work with the RAP target platform and may show syntax errors.

Create a new plugin project "de.vogella.rap.first" via File -> New -> Project -> Plug-in Development -> Plug-in Project. Perform the following selection.

Select the "RAP Hello World" template and press "Finish".

Select your "MANIFEST.MF", right click on it, select Run-as-> Rap Application.

This should start your first RAP application.

Congratulations! You have your first Eclipse RAP application running.

Eclipse RAP requires an entrypoint similar to "org.eclipse.core.runtime.applications" for Eclipse RCP applications. The entrypoint for Eclipse RAP is defined via "org.eclipse.rap.ui.workbench.entrypoint".

View your Entrypoint via the entension "org.eclipse.rap.ui.workbench.entrypoint" in the file "MANIFEST.MF" . Please note that the parameter "default" is used in your runtime configuration of RAP.

Create now a view. Select therefore in MANIFEST.MF the tab extension and add the extension point "org.eclipse.ui.views". Add then add the view with the id "de.vogella.rap.first.View". The procedure is the same as for Eclipse RCP application which is described in Adding views to Eclipse RCP applications .

Create the following view class.

				
package de.vogella.rap.first;

import org.eclipse.swt.SWT;
import org.eclipse.swt.widgets.Composite;
import org.eclipse.swt.widgets.Label;
import org.eclipse.swt.widgets.Text;
import org.eclipse.ui.part.ViewPart;

public class View extends ViewPart {

	public static final String ID = "de.vogella.rap.first.View";

	@Override
	public void createPartControl(Composite parent) {
		Label label = new Label(parent, SWT.NONE);
		label.setText("This is my label");
		Text text = new Text(parent, SWT.NONE);
		text.setText("Input");
	}

	@Override
	public void setFocus() {

	}

}

			

Add the view to the perspective by changing Perspective.java to the following.

				
package de.vogella.rap.first;

import org.eclipse.ui.IPageLayout;
import org.eclipse.ui.IPerspectiveFactory;

/**
 * Configures the perspective layout. This class is contributed 
 * through the plugin.xml.
 */
public class Perspective implements IPerspectiveFactory {

	public void createInitialLayout(IPageLayout layout) {
		String editorArea = layout.getEditorArea();
		layout.setEditorAreaVisible(false);
		
		layout.addStandaloneView(View.ID,  false, IPageLayout.LEFT, 0.25f, editorArea);
	
	}
}

			

Run your application and see your new view in actions.

Eclipse RAP supports most of the API JFace and Eclipse RCP support. If you want to learn how you can extend your Eclipse RAP application you can review Eclipse RCP Tutorial or Eclipse JFace TableViewer

Of course Eclipse RAP does only support a subset of these API (but this is increasing every release) so the best way of exploring it is to build your application and see which API are available.

A Eclipse RAP application look similar to a Eclipse RCP application running in a browser. While this is cool, it is not necessary always what you want if you develop a web application.

Eclipse RAP therefore provides the possibility to change the look of the application via theming. Themes can be defined in css like files. The following will give an demonstration how to do this.

Create a new Eclipse RAP project "de.vogella.rap.theming". Use the "RAP Mail Template" as template.

Create a new folder "themes" in your project.

Add the directory themes to your build.properties. Otherwise the files from themes will not get included in an exported product.

Add the extension point "org.eclipse.rap.ui.themes". Use the following settings.

Create now the following file "theme.css" in the folder themes.

				 
* {
    backgound-color: yellow;
    color: red;
  }

  
			

Add now the "org.eclipse.rap.ui.branding" extension point which the following settings. Important is the servletName "rap" as this is used in your runtime configuration, your entrypoint and the theme you want to use.

This will result in the following rap application display.

For additional properties in the style sheet check the RAP Theming Wiki (link below).

Source Code of Examples

Eclipse RCP Training (German) Eclipse RCP Training with Lars Vogel

Android Tutorial Introduction to Android Programming

GWT Tutorial Program in Java and compile to JavaScript and HTML

Eclipse RCP Tutorial Create native applications in Java

JUnit Tutorial Test your application

Git Tutorial Put everything you have under distributed version control system

http://www.eclipse.org/rap Eclipse RAP homepage

http://wiki.eclipse.org/RAP Eclipse RAP Wiki

http://wiki.eclipse.org/RAP_Theming Eclipse RAP Theming Wiki

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/opensource/library/os-eclipse-richajax2/ Eclipse RAP article Part from IBU