vendredi octobre 20, 2006 
vendredi octobre 20, 2006 Developing OpenOffice extensions using Java and NetBeans
(short demos at the end)
You can call Sun people slow when it comes to creating an ecosystem of plugins. NetBeans had a platform years ago, but it's only been a year since it became brain-dead easy to develop on top of it. As the saying goes: better late than never...
Starting
with
version OpenOffice 2.0.4 (freshly released) which was just released,
packaging has evolved (new .oxt extension) and tools (Java for the
time being) are now available to help you write code to extend the
features of the suite or to interact with a silent instance. If you
want to find out more about it, read this.
Also, the last OpenOffice
Conference in Lyon had a presentation by Jürgen
Schmidt on “OpenOffice.org
Extensions Infrastructure”. Note that all this
applies to
StarOffice 8 (Update 4) also.
A
couple of weeks
back, I needed to write a prototype client to illustrate to end-users
the use of a web services protocol (more on that in a later entry).
TCP tunnels and technical Swing clients are not what you everyday
tool and OpenOffice felt like a better choice. The only problem was
the rather bad experience I had a couple of years back trying to get
my head around UNO, the IDL language behind (inside) OpenOffice. I
briefly tried the Eclipse
plugin, but it required too much hand-coding and UNO
investment.
I was lucky to test-drive an early version of the NetBeans OpenOffice integration plugin (thank you Steffen and Jürgen!). Here's how it went:
What
I simply wanted
to do is provide a UI to the user to be able to send to current
document using an optimized, reliable, and secure web services
protocol (implemented in my case using GlassFish's
WSIT). If
this document was
in Open
Document
format, I would show the document metadata (properties) and send them
over in the payload together with the document.
I decided on using Java 6 because of all the great desktop improvements (most important to me were look-and-feel fidelity and no more gray rectangle) it provides and because obviously Java now has Web Services in the JDK. So here are the ingredients:
- Java 6 SDK (I used build 96)
- OpenOffice 2.0.4 (build 680)
- OpenOffice SDK (same version)
- NetBeans 6 Milestone 3
Java needs to be enabled (this is the default), and OpenOffice should be set to use the proper JRE (this is also where debugging options for the JVM are set) :
Once the OpenOffice NetBeans plugin is installed (get it here), and the OpenOffice and SDK configured (Tools -> Options -> Misc.).
NetBeans now has several new project types: client application, Calc Add-in, UNO component:
You can now develop using
Java and Swing (Matisse is yet again a life saver) and build the
archive (an .oxt file containing the JAR and
XML metadata) or even
deploy directly (using a call to the unopkg
binary) to the OpenOffice
instance (you'll need to restart it to test).
setting up UNO environment ...
build UNO idl files
finished
uno-idl-compile:
init:
deps-jar:
jar:
Building jar: D:\dev\PRESTOopenoffice\dist\PRESTOopenoffice.jar
uno-package:
creating UNO
extension package ...
Deleting: D:\dev\PRESTOopenoffice\dist\PRESTOopenoffice.oxt
Building zip: D:\dev\PRESTOopenoffice\dist\PRESTOopenoffice.oxt
Copying 1 file to D:\dev\PRESTOopenoffice\dist
uno-deploy:
deploying UNO
extension package ...
T:/OpenOffice.org2.0\program\unopkg
add
-f D:\dev\PRESTOopenoffice\dist\PRESTOopenoffice.oxt
BUILD SUCCESSFUL (total time: 3
seconds)
Installing the extension
can also be
done manually using the Package Manager from the Tools menu
(which is how your users would use it). Note that you can deploy
this extension into previous versions of OpenOffice (2.0.x) or
StarOffice 8 by changing the extension from .oxt
to .uno.pkg.
A Calc Add-In project looks like this:
I will not go into all the
details of
these files. All I can say is that I happy I don't have to know most
of what they do and why they exist.
The CalcAddins.xcu file is key to
registering your extension in the OpenOffice UI : a menu item, a
toolbar, etc... All this can be conditional and internationalized. The uno-extension-manifest.xml
file is
very similar to the JAR manifest and points to all the resources
needed by the extension (including to file described above and all the
Java code).
Once set up, you'll have code completion for com.sun.star.*
classes.
Debug
It really felt strange the first time I
crashed OpenOffice. I started looking for a stacktrace but couldn't
find one. So I ended up setting NetBeans de remote
debug the JVM running inside OpenOffice executing my code. To enable
debugging, add this line to the Parameters in the above Java options
window:
-Xrunjdwp:transport=dt_socket,server=y,address=12999,suspend=n
and use Run -> Attach Debugger in NetBeans (the connector is SocketListen
and port is 12999 on localhost).
You can't step into OpenOffice code at this point, but this proved to
be very useful.
Tips
- I'm no UNO/OpenOffice expert, so I relied on OO-Snippets
(to get the current document path in my case).
- If you really want to mess with .xcu files,
make sure NetBeans recognizes them as XML:
Tools ->Options ->Advanced ->IDE
Configuration ->System ->Object Types ->XML Objects.
- Make sure the .oxt file contains all the
Java code you need including libraries (hack the uno-package
ANT target if necessary and make sure the manifest has an appropriate
entry to reference the library jars relatively using Class-Path:).
If you're really in hacking mode, drop library jars in the jre/lib/ext
folder.
- If you're crashing OpenOffice all too often, try disabling
the auto recovery.
- Looking for standard output: simply start OpenOffice from the command
line.
And finally, the small
demos :
Using the module in NetBeans.
Installing and using the extension in OpenOffice.
Hopefully this will give
you ideas of what can be achieved with OpenOffice and a little bit of
Java coding.
I have a few ideas myself, let's see if can find the time to implement.
( oct. 20 2006, 01:44:04 AM CEST )
Permalink
Comments [13]
Trackback URL: http://blogs.sun.com/alexismp/entry/developing_openoffice_extensions_using_java
Post a Comment:
Posted by Rhawi Dantas on mars 15, 2007 at 12:52 AM CET #
Posted by Rhawi Dantas on mars 15, 2007 at 12:54 AM CET #
Posted by Juergen Schmidt on mars 15, 2007 at 01:43 PM CET #
good
Posted by 122.169.21.222 on août 19, 2007 at 09:19 AM CEST #
I'm really looking for something like this.
This post is old, and the plug-in doesn't seem to support NetBeans 6. Any possibility that this will be updated?
Posted by javadev on février 07, 2008 at 07:04 PM CET #
I understand the developers are working on the NetBeans 6 version. See: http://blogs.sun.com/GullFOSS/entry/oo_org_netbeans_plugin_will
Posted by Alexis MP on février 07, 2008 at 08:26 PM CET #
Hi, I'm interested in making OOo extension in java, using a java developpement software. Personaly i used Eclipse to do some stuff, but i wonder if, using Netbeans i could do an OOo extension including externals packages.
Is it possible ?
Posted by Tanith on mars 10, 2008 at 02:58 PM CET #
I started off with Eclipse when NetBeans had nothing to offer. Moving to NetBeans made all the difference. Not sure about external packages though.
Posted by Alexis MP on mars 10, 2008 at 03:03 PM CET #
you can find the plugin in the Beta Update center for NB 6. The project is active and we will provide future releases with further improvements and smoother integration in NB. The current version has still the issue that i have described in my blog entry but it works and you can use it. Stay tuned for more ...
Posted by Juergen Schmidt on mars 10, 2008 at 03:25 PM CET #
Heu... i've try to use Netbeans in order to make a component which just print 'Helloworld' ... and i failed...
Is there a tuto explaining how to begin ?
Posted by Tanith on mars 10, 2008 at 05:31 PM CET #
Make sure you start OOo from the command-line to see the standard output.
Posted by Alexis MP on mars 11, 2008 at 12:16 AM CET #
Hi ! I started to manage myself with netbeans, the last problem is when i want to access to the current text's document.
I dispose of 2 objects :
- XComponentContext m_xContext
- and a XFrame m_xFrame
How can i access to the text with those object ?
Posted by Tanith on mars 11, 2008 at 10:27 AM CET #
Ok i found it !
to others i post the solution :
XMultiComponentFactory xmcf = m_xContext.getServiceManager();
Object desktop;
try {
desktop = xmcf.createInstanceWithContext("com.sun.star.frame.Desktop", m_xContext);
XDesktop xDesktop = (XDesktop) UnoRuntime.queryInterface(XDesktop.class, desktop);
XComponent document = xDesktop.getCurrentComponent();
XTextDocument xTextDoc = (XTextDocument) UnoRuntime.queryInterface(XTextDocument.class, document);
XText xTxt = xTextDoc.getText();
XTextRange xTextRange = xTxt.getEnd();
xTextRange.setString(result);
}
catch(Exception e){
System.out.println("dispatch Exception : " + e.getMessage());
e.printStackTrace();
}
Posted by Tanith on mars 11, 2008 at 11:27 AM CET #