Tag: extending_notes8

As I briefly described in my last post (“How to extend Notes 8: dynamic extensions using Java“) it’s possible to create new extensions to Lotus Notes using Java and hence inject functionality into the client dynamically. It’s very cool functionality and it allows you to inject anything from content types and recognizers to sidebar panels.

In this post I’ll build on three previous posts and show you how to use dynamic extensions in Lotus Notes in combination with a Java action that uses multiple capture groups for an end-to-end solution that may be deployed as a single Java extension (aka plugin). The result is a plugin that may be deployed to a client workstations which allows you to act on text recognized by the LiveText sub-system but where you have the power of Java for processing.

All the posts in the series may be found under the extending_notes8 tag.

We need three pieces of information:

1. The code to dynamically inject our custom recognizer and content type into Lotus Notes without the need for an extension.xml file. This is what the LiveText sub-system uses to highlight the text for us.
2. The Java action to act on the LiveText selection.
3. The plugin.xml file to bind it all together.

The first piece is the code that injects the custom recognizer and content type under a known id. This code may be run in lots of ways but to make it easy for this example I choose a sidebar panel. Below is the createPartControl-method from that class.

public void createPartControl(final Composite parent) {
  try {
    // define XML
    final String extensionXml = ...;

    // get extension registry and load extension
    // into registry
    final IExtensionRegistry reg = Platform.getExtensionRegistry();
    InputStream ins = new ByteArrayInputStream(extensionXml.getBytes());
    Bundle bundle = Activator.getDefault().getBundle();
    IContributor contr = ContributorFactoryOSGi.createContributor(bundle);
    reg.addContribution(ins, contr, false, null, null, null);

  } catch (Throwable t) {
    t.printStackTrace();
  }
}

The above code injects the recognizer and content type with an id of DCCT.ExampleContentType.1234567890 into the client.

The next part we need is the action class (again implementing org.eclipse.ui.IObjectActionDelegate) to act on the LiveText selection. Most of the code you’ve seen before in a previous post but again it goes and get the text from the underlying document as document properties.

public void selectionChanged(IAction action, ISelection selection) {
   IDocumentContent doc = null;

   // cast/adapt selection
   if (selection instanceof StructuredSelection) {
      Object sel = ((StructuredSelection)selection).getFirstElement();
      if (sel instanceof IDocumentContent) {
         doc = (IDocumentContent)sel;
      }
   } else if (selection instanceof IDocumentContent) {
      doc = (IDocumentContent)selection;
   } else {
      // try and adapt
      IAdapterManager amgr = Platform.getAdapterManager();
      doc = (IDocumentContent)amgr.getAdapter(selection,
          IDocumentContent.class);
   }
   if (null == doc) {
      this.contents = null;
      this.prodFamily = null;
      this.partNumber = null;
      return;
   }

   // get data from document property
   this.contents = doc.getProperties().getProperty("contents");
   this.prodFamily = doc.getProperties().getProperty("pf");
   this.partNumber = doc.getProperties().getProperty("pn");
}

The last piece is the plugin.xml to put it all together using the org.eclipse.ui.popupMenus extension point. Notice how we use the content type id we know (bold text below) from our dynamically deployed content type.

<extension
  point="org.eclipse.ui.popupMenus">
  <objectContribution
    id="com.lekkimworld.extnotes8.dynext.objCtr1"
    objectClass="com.ibm.rcp.content.IDocumentContent">
    <visibility>
      <and>
        <objectState
          name="content.type"
          value="DCCT.ExampleContentType.1234567890">
        </objectState>
        <objectState
          name="contents"
          value="*">
        </objectState>
      </and>
    </visibility>
    <action
      class="com.lekkimworld.extnotes8.dynext.MyAction"
      enablesFor="*"
      id="com.lekkimworld.extnotes8.dynext.action1"
      label="Do me!">
    </action>
  </objectContribution>
</extension>

The result when deployed to a Lotus Notes client is something like the screenshot below where you get a Java action to act on a LiveText recognition. Only change this time is that all the functionality is provided from your plugin. No separate extension.xml is necessary for the recognizer or the content type.

That’s how it’s done. I’ve uploaded an Eclipse project to the blog so you can download it and install it in your Eclipse as a demo. You can download the project here.

I get so many question on how to extend Notes 8 that I finally decided to create a series of blog posts on how to do it. All the posts in the series may be found under the extending_notes8 tag. In all of the examples I assume a working knowledge of Eclipse and Java programming and how to work with extension points.

For this post I’ll build on the “How to extend Notes 8: coupling LiveText to a Java action” and “How to extend Notes 8: using LiveText with capture groups” posts and show how to act on your own custom recognizer from a Java action when you have multiple capture groups.

Please note: I’ll assume that you read the “How to extend Notes 8: using LiveText with capture groups” post and have it working as we’ll build on that example in this post. Unfortunately as we act on the content type id you need to find the id of the content type on your system. I’ll show you how.

Enough with preparations – now on to the code!

So far we have our custom recognizer and our custom content type but instead of a web widget we really want to use our Java action as the recipient of the LiveText selection. We couple the Java action to the content type using an extension point in plugin.xml based on the content type id. Let me show you how to find the content type id.

1. Start by opening the management UI for widgets, content types and recognizers. You do this by choosing “Manage Widgets, Content and Recognizers” from the part menu in the My Widgets sidebar panel as show below.
   
2. Now switch to the “Content Types” panel and make a note of the ID for the “Demo Product Number” content type. Here the id is “DemoProductNumber.1410710777” as highlighted below.
   
3. Now comes the trick. Notes adds “DCCT.” in front of the id shown so the real id is “DCCT.DemoProductNumber.1410710777”. Make a note of your own id and read on…

As previously the first piece of the puzzle is the extension point. Add an org.eclipse.ui.popupMenus extension as previous and specify the id you noted above as the content type id. Mine is shown below – notice how I use the id prefixed with “DCCT.”.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<?eclipse version="3.4"?>
<plugin>
   <extension  point="org.eclipse.ui.popupMenus">
      <objectContribution id="com.lekkimworld.livetxt.objectContr1"
         objectClass="com.ibm.rcp.content.IDocumentContent">
         <visibility>
            <and>
               <objectState name="content.type"
               value="DCCT.DemoProductNumber.1410710777"/>
               <objectState name="contents" value="" />
            </and>
         </visibility>
         <action class="com.lekkimworld.livetext.MyAction"
            enablesFor="*"
            id="com.lekkimworld.livetxt.action1"
            label="Do stuff!" />
      </objectContribution>
   </extension>
</plugin>

Now create your Java action class – again implemening org.eclipse.ui.IObjectActionDelegate – and specify the correct class name in the extension point.

Again when it comes to grabbing the contents of the recognized LiveText it comes down to you selectionChanged-method of your Java action. As our recognizer uses capture groups we have a few choices for the properties we can grasp from the document. As always the entire recognized product number will be in the “contents” property but we also have “pf” and a “pn” property available that holds the product family and the part number. The example code below shows how to get at these.

public void selectionChanged(IAction action, ISelection selection) {
   IDocumentContent doc = null;

   // cast/adapt selection
   if (selection instanceof StructuredSelection) {
      Object sel = ((StructuredSelection)selection).getFirstElement();
      if (sel instanceof IDocumentContent) {
         doc = (IDocumentContent)sel;
      }
   } else if (selection instanceof IDocumentContent) {
      doc = (IDocumentContent)selection;
   } else {
      // try and adapt
      IAdapterManager amgr = Platform.getAdapterManager();
      doc = (IDocumentContent)amgr.getAdapter(selection,
          IDocumentContent.class);
   }
   if (null == doc) {
      this.selection = null;
      return;
   }

   // get all recognized content
   this.prodNumber = doc.getProperties().getProperty("contents");
   this.prodFamily = doc.getProperties().getProperty("pf");
   this.partNumber = doc.getProperties().getProperty("pn");
}

Now when you install the extension and hence put the pieces together you should see two actions for the product number LiveText recognition as shown below. The top one is our Java action and the bottom one is our web widget from previously.

That’s what is required to act on custom recognizers. As you can probably gather from the above it doesn’t work letting users do their own recognizers and then wanting to act on them from Java due to two reasons – 1) never trust a user to give it the right name as instructed 🙂 and 2) the id of the content type will change from machine as it is generated when the user creates the content type. It is possible however if you create the content type and the recognizer for users and install then using an extension.xml file as the extension.xml sets the id’s. That’s probably also the way you’d want it.

There is however an even better solution… Dynamically add the content type and recognizer to the client from Java for a single, combined solution. Stay tuned…

I get so many question on how to extend Notes 8 that I finally decided to create a series of blog posts on how to do it. All the posts in the series may be found under the extending_notes8 tag. In all of the examples I assume a working knowledge of Eclipse and Java programming and how to work with extension points.

For this post I’ll build on the “How to extend Notes 8: coupling LiveText to a Java action“-post and show how to act on your own custom recognizer.

Most of the work is actually the same than for using the built-in recognizers but now you need to utilize your custom recognizer. So you need a recognizer – there are of cause ways to do this programmatically but that’s the focus for another post. For now lets focus on using existing recognizers. Do that by adding your recognizer to Notes – either using MyWidgets or simply importing a recognizer using an extension.xml file such as this one. Remember you need both the recognizer AND the content type it produces (the file has both).

For this example I’ll use the extension.xml I link to above – to install simply drag the link to your MyWidgets sidebar panel. That file gives you a new recognizer with an id of “DCR.Toddlerdemo.885487295” and a content type with an id of “DCCT.demonotes85inspirationproductno.1361861595”. As in previous posts you link your Java action to the content type so make a note of the id.

Now create your Java action class – again implemening org.eclipse.ui.IObjectActionDelegate – and add the org.eclipse.ui.popupMenus extension point to your plugin.xml file using the content type id as below.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<?eclipse version="3.4"?>
<plugin>
   <extension  point="org.eclipse.ui.popupMenus">
      <objectContribution id="com.lekkimworld.livetxt.objectContr1"
         objectClass="com.ibm.rcp.content.IDocumentContent">
         <visibility>
            <and>
               <objectState name="content.type"
               value="DCCT.demonotes85inspirationproductno.1361861595"/>
               <objectState name="contents" value="" />
            </and>
         </visibility>
         <action class="com.lekkimworld.livetext.MyAction"
            enablesFor="*"
            id="com.lekkimworld.livetxt.action1"
            label="Do stuff!" />
      </objectContribution>
   </extension>
</plugin>

Again when it comes to grabbing the contents of the recognized LiveText it comes down to you selectionChanged-method of your Java action. If your custom recognizer doesn’t use capture groups your contents will be in the “contents” property as previously. If you DO use capture groups you need to use the names you specified for the capture groups when you mapped it to the widget – we’ll look at that another time. The example code below simply assumes a single group.

public void selectionChanged(IAction action, ISelection selection) {
   IDocumentContent doc = null;

   // cast/adapt selection
   if (selection instanceof StructuredSelection) {
      Object sel = ((StructuredSelection)selection).getFirstElement();
      if (sel instanceof IDocumentContent) {
         doc = (IDocumentContent)sel;
      }
   } else if (selection instanceof IDocumentContent) {
      doc = (IDocumentContent)selection;
   } else {
      // try and adapt
      IAdapterManager amgr = Platform.getAdapterManager();
      doc = (IDocumentContent)amgr.getAdapter(selection,
          IDocumentContent.class);
   }
   if (null == doc) {
      this.selection = null;
      return;
   }

   // get number from document property
   this.selection = doc.getProperties().getProperty("contents");
}

That’s all. Again the main post is knowing how but again 95% of the plugin.xml file and the Java action is the same. In a future post in this series I’ll show how to act upon custom recognizers using capture groups. Stay tuned…

I get so many question on how to extend Notes 8 that I finally decided to create a series of blog posts on how to do it. All the posts in the series may be found under the extending_notes8 tag. In all of the examples I assume a working knowledge of Eclipse and Java programming and how to work with extension points.

This second post builds upon the “How to extend Notes 8: coupling LiveText to a Java action“-post posted earlier. Most of the post is the same but you’ll need to change the content type to act on. Read on.

My Notes 8.5 client comes with the follow built in recognizers:

The trick is to couple our definitions in plugin.xml to the right content type. So to attach to a recognized web address you need to specify content.web as the content type as shown below:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<?eclipse version="3.4"?>
<plugin>
  <extension point="org.eclipse.ui.popupMenus">
    <objectContribution
          id="com.lekkimworld.livetext.objectContribution2"
          objectClass="com.ibm.rcp.content.IDocumentContent">
       <action
             class="com.lekkimworld.livetext.Action1"
             id="com.lekkimworld.livetext.action2"
             label="Do stuff with web address!">
       </action>
       <visibility>
          <and>
             <objectState name="content.type" value="content.web" />
             <objectState name="contents" value="*" />
          </and>
       </visibility>
    </objectContribution>
  </extension>
</plugin>

Now also change your action to extract the right property from the document. All the IBM recognizers stick the recognized text in the “contents” property so simply grab that. Some of the recognizers (person and address) also have some sub-parts you could extract but I find the recognizers so flaky that I haven’t invested much time in using them. I find the web and phone recognizers the only useful ones. Below is some sample code for the selectionChanged method.

public void selectionChanged(IAction action, ISelection selection) {
   IDocumentContent doc = null;

   // cast/adapt selection
   if (selection instanceof StructuredSelection) {
      Object sel = ((StructuredSelection)selection).getFirstElement();
      if (sel instanceof IDocumentContent) {
         doc = (IDocumentContent)sel;
      }
   } else if (selection instanceof IDocumentContent) {
      doc = (IDocumentContent)selection;
   } else {
      // try and adapt
      IAdapterManager amgr = Platform.getAdapterManager();
      doc = (IDocumentContent)amgr.getAdapter(selection,
          IDocumentContent.class);
   }
   if (null == doc) {
      this.selection = null;
      return;
   }

   // get text from document property
   this.selection = doc.getProperties().getProperty("contents");
}