It's that time of year again. The birds are singing and JBoss developers are hard at work to make your lives easier! Join us today in celebrating this very special release of Seam Forge - "Birthday!" Once you have installed Forge, there's a silly little surprise for someone special (thanks to Aslak Knutsen;) just follow the instructions here. (If you are not doing this on June, 9th, you might have to do some fiddling with your system clock.)

 

Download Forge 1.0.0.Alpha4 - Read the Reference Guide - Watch a Forge Screencast

Get involved by joining Users or Dev mailing lists.

Introduction

 

How many times have you wanted to start a new project in Java EE, but struggled to put all the pieces together? Has the Maven archetype syntax left you scratching your head? Everyone else is talking about cool new tools in other languages or frameworks, and you're left thinking, "I wish it were that easy for me." Well, there's good news: You don't have to leave Java EE just to find a developer tool that makes starting out simple. Seam Forge is heating up Java EE, and is ready to work it into a full-fledged project.

 

In addition to being a rapid-application generation tool, Forge is also an incremental enhancement tool that lets you to take an existing Java EE projects and safely work-in new functionality. Forge comprehends your entire project, including the abstract structure of the files, and can make intelligent decisions of how and what to change.

 

Whether you want to get your startup off the ground today, or make your big customers happy tomorrow, Forge is a tool you should be looking at.

 

What's new in Forge Alpha4?

There's too much to list here, take a look at the release notes. However, some of the more major improvements are:

 

  • [SEAMFORGE-1] - Forge Shell should have an online/offline mode option.
  • [SEAMFORGE-46] - Reverse engineering of database tables into JPA entities * by Max Andersen (to install, run forge and type: `forge git-plugin git://github.com/forge/plugin-hibernate-tools.git` without quotes)
  • [SEAMFORGE-162] - Scaffold should support paging * by Liu Jianhong
  • [SEAMFORGE-165] - Provide a plugin for Bean Validation (JSR 303) * by Kevin Pollet
  • [SEAMFORGE-199] - Forge should use embedded Maven if it is not detected in the underlying system (maven no longer required to use many Forge features.)
  • And many many API changes, meaning if your plugin targets the Alpha3 API, it will need to be updated to function in Alpha4

 

Note: If you have problems starting Forge after the update, make sure that you've emptied your installed plugins directory: (Usually '~/.forge/plugins', where '~/' is your home directory.)

What can Forge do for me?

If you're wondering what Forge actually "does," then keep reading, because it's hard to fit everything in to one blog post.

 

  • Create Java web applications from scratch in a matter of seconds.
  • Setup Java Persistence (JPA) for Hibernate, EclipseLink, and OpenJPA on JBoss AS 6, JBoss AS7 and GlassFish
  • Setup Java Server Faces (JSF)
  • Setup Contexts and Dependency Injection for Java (CDI)
  • Create JPA @Entities in just a few commands, including adding new fields, relationships, and collections.
  • Generate barebones UI from @Entity classes for adding, removing, editing, and deleting rows from the database.
  • Manage project dependencies and repositories.

 

But more than all this, which is really just scratching the surface of what's possible already, Forge is an extendable platform for Plugin development. It's more than just a tool for creating Java or Java EE applications, and in fact has been designed to be technology agnostic; Forge is not limited to Java EE. Plugins can be written for any variety of technologies.

 

Some plugins you might enjoy:

  • URL-rewriting: forge git-plugin git://github.com/ocpsoft/prettyfaces-forge-plugin.git
  • Unit & Integration testing with Arquillian: forge git-plugin git://github.com/forge/plugin-arquillian.git
  • Database reverse engineering: forge git-plugin git://github.com/forge/plugin-hibernate-tools.git
  • And more...

 

But I like my IDE...

Good news! That's coming, too: watch the video, or try it yourself!

Great, Forge looks awesome. Now what?

We hope you enjoy the latest release of Seam Forge, and would like to solicit involvement. The project is advancing quickly, picking up new community members all the time, and if you are an application developer and just can't wait to try it out, if you are interested in writing plugins, if you are interested in contributing to the Project, or if you just want to give some feedback, the following links are for you: