How to edit the AppFuse user class (and others)

For my AppFuse application, I need to add some functionality regarding the basic user class. Fortunately, this seems to be rather easy, if the AppFuse documentation is correct. In this way, one should be able to edit the core classes.

I tested everything up to really editing the core classes. Still, I do not expect any problems from what I've seen so far.

Some Eclipse plug-ins worth to look at

There are some cool Eclipse Europe plugins worth to look at. Here is just a small collection one can use when developing with Maven, Spring and AppFuse:

• Subclipse -- SVN client from within Eclipse. I prefer to have the team functionality in my IDE. I can still use TortoiseSVN at the same time, which is my default SVN client in Windows.


• Maven Integration for Eclipse to get some of the Maven stuff into Eclipse.


• Spring IDE -- I haven't checked out the full functionality yt, but it seems to be quite nice.


• Candy for Appfuse -- again, I don't know the full functionality yet.


• CommonClipse -- provides generators for methods like toString(), hashCode(), ...

Get Jetty to run without WAR

After looking at Appfuse for quite a while, I finally found out how to enable the mvn jetty:run command. This is especially important for editing the front-end, since it does not need packaging the war file when there were just JSP pages edited.

The solution, hidden somewhere in the AppFuse FAQ:

1. Run mvn war:inplace in the project's base folder
   
2. Delete the folder src/main/webapp/WEB-INF/lib

Nothing more to do. Now you can run mvn jetty:run. Your web page will be updated if you update your jsp files and refresh the browser.