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Date: Sun, 26 Jan 2014 12:21:33 +0100
Message-ID: 
 <CAH4gT7oL6c9_yCxUxY+uq5s-YrZGejG0v7cHOqH9Zq1PqXbH6A@mail.gmail.com>
Subject: Re: How to Run Application without DesktopApplicationContext
From: Sandro Martini <sandro.martini@gmail.com>
To: Users - Apache Pivot <user@pivot.apache.org>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

Hi all,

Roger note that the additional version of main with an Application
instance as argument exist already in DesktopApplicationContext (I put
it with the changes for ...), take a look at:

main(Application applicationInstance, String[] applicationArgs)

which calls the usual version of main

main(Class<? extends Application> applicationClass, String[] applicationArgs)

As a sample (minimal) usage look at ApplicationWithPropertiesTest.
So I think that all should already be in trunk, anyway tell us for
other changes/improvements (that's the main reason for us to develop
2.1.x).


For a non-GUI contric implementation of ApplicationContext, could be
useful so if someone has an idea / some sample code we could try to
look at it ... but in the meantime I hope that existing code in trunk
(for 2.1.x) should be enough :-) .

Tell us for suggestions, improvements, etc ...

Bye,
Sandro

2014/1/25 Roger and Beth Whitcomb <RogerandBeth@rbwhitcomb.com>:
> Hi Mark,
>     I have to apologize for confusing the issue.  When I said "create an
> application class" I meant "write the code for an application class".  Of
> course, the actual class object is created inside
> DesktopApplicationContext.main, so (right now) there is no way to create it
> first before this call.  So, (again right now) you would have to use
> Sandro's mechanism to pass parameters to your main class, or what you have
> come up with.
>     I'm thinking, though, that we could possibly add an alternate signature
> for DesktopApplicationContext.main that would accept an already created
> application object, instead of the class object. Maybe I will look into
> that, if it would help you in your use case?!  Looking at the code, it is a
> little tricky, but I think I can rearrange the code to accommodate the
> existing signatures (Class, String[]) and (String[]) as well as provide a
> (Application object, String[]) as well by delegating to some other internal
> methods.  Maybe this would help with Sandro's use case with Groovy as well??
>     BTW, are you using the release (2.0.3) version or are you building from
> SVN trunk?  If the latter, I could perhaps provide a patch for you to try.
>
> Again, thanks for using Pivot,
> ~Roger
>
>
> On 1/25/14 9:23 AM, Mark R. Chambers wrote:
>>
>> Hi All,
>>
>> Thanks Sandros for your feedback I will take a look at the classes.
>> Roger I don't understand how you think you can call
>> DesktopApplicationContect.main after you create a class and still pass
>> variables back and forwards, unless you are talking using super for the
>> constructor, which has the same problems as using Startup.
>> Currently I have changed my code so the main class extends Application and
>> then I change the constructor to the Startup method, it works fine, but
>> does
>> make the application GUI centric...
>>
>> Anyway thanks again both of you for your support.
>>
>> Regards,
>> Mark.
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Roger L. Whitcomb [mailto:Roger.Whitcomb@actian.com]
>> Sent: Wednesday, 22 January 2014 12:36 AM
>> To: user@pivot.apache.org
>> Subject: RE: How to Run Application without DesktopApplicationContext
>>
>> So, our application is a desktop app, but there is a considerable amount
>> of
>> work that is done in the "main" method of the application before it ever
>> calls DesktopApplicationContext.main(...), which in turn invokes the
>> "startup" method of the main class, and etc.  So, there is no particular
>> reason that you can't create an application class that has all the
>> variables
>> / state that you need, and when you need to display the GUI, at that time,
>> call DesktopApplicationContext.main....  And as Sandro has said, his new
>> classes give you some further help passing state into the Pivot
>> application
>> (in addition to what I just described).
>>
>> HTH,
>> ~Roger
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Sandro Martini [mailto:sandro.martini@gmail.com]
>> Sent: Tuesday, January 21, 2014 5:39 AM
>> To: Users - Apache Pivot
>> Subject: Re: How to Run Application without DesktopApplicationContext
>>
>> Hi all,
>>
>>> My application is not GUI centric, and I don't want to make the GUI the
>>
>> main part of the application.
>>>
>>> How can I pass variables back from  DesktopApplicationContext or start a
>>
>> pivot application without  DesktopApplicationContext?
>>
>> Under trunk (for Pivot-2.1.0, still in development) I put some new classes
>> related to this:
>> ApplicationWithProperties and ApplicationWithPropertiesTest .
>>
>> Take a look and tell us if there is something that should be
>> updated/improved, even for your needs.
>>
>>
>> Note that some month ago I put some test Groovy scripts and classes under
>> Pivot-Stuff ( http://code.google.com/a/apache-extras.org/p/pivot-stuff/ )
>> in
>> the project pivot-stuff-common-groovy ... under scripts and test you can
>> find some minimal example fro using Pivot in a little different way.
>> As soon as I find some time I should update these examples (or add
>> others) using the new method added in ApplicationWithProperties , so for
>> example I could get GroovyClassLoader from Groovy and set into Pivot
>> application, etc ... I hope this can help you.
>>
>>
>> Bye,
>> Sandro
>>
>>
>> 2014/1/21 Mark R. Chambers <mark@mrchambers.org>:
>>>
>>> Hi Roger,
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Thanks for your reply.  Previously I was using Swing and my own XML
>>> parser to create the GUI. So it was called with for example GUIPanel
>>> mGUIPanel = new GUIPanel() from my main application class that
>>> controlled various devices and the database connections;
>>>
>>> Then I could just access the MGUIPanel.mState information etc...
>>>
>>> The application can be run headless, so sometimes there is not a GUI,
>>> but I guess I can hack around that...
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> I can probably modify the DesktopApplicationContext.main (to maybe
>>> mainReturn) to return, a reference to the application return type(Just
>>> calls main and then returns the reference....)
>>>
>>> Or I could change the architecture to have it GUI centric... It just
>>> that my diagrams would then need to change... and they would not look
>>> at neat:]
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Anyway I think your answer is, that currently it is not supported:] It
>>> would be a nice feature, since probably not everybody wants to use
>>> Pivot from main...
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> PS-Thanks for the Pivot Framework, I like the code;] Although the
>>> documentation still needs massive amounts of work;] And the Component
>>> Explorer needs to be finished;]
>>>
>>> PS2- If I get some time I will start adding to the Wiki... to try to
>>> minimise the learning cliff;]
>>>
>>> Regards,
>>>
>>> Mark.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> From: Roger L. Whitcomb [mailto:Roger.Whitcomb@actian.com]
>>> Sent: Tuesday, 21 January 2014 1:35 AM
>>> To: user@pivot.apache.org
>>> Subject: RE: How to Run Application without DesktopApplicationContext
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Hi Mark,
>>>
>>>                  Welcome to Pivot.  I'm sorry that you're having
>>> trouble, but let me see if I can help.  To start with, could you tell
>>> me what the original application was written in (i.e., what GUI
>>> framework you were using)?  How did you pass information back and
>>> forth between the GUI and the main application before (i.e., was it some
>>
>> kind of RPC, or what)?
>>>
>>>                  Currently Pivot has just two modes of operation:  as a
>>> desktop app, or as a browser applet.  These two would use
>>> DesktopApplicationContext and BrowserApplicationContext.  There is
>>> probably no real reason we couldn't have a third type of application
>>> (maybe an "EmbeddedApplicationContext" that would act more like the
>>> GUI object that you're talking about).  At this moment I wouldn't know
>>> exactly how to go about writing such a class, but I don't know of any
>>> technical reason why it couldn't be done.  At some point you have to
>>> hook into AWT and connect to a GUI widget and the event handling
>>> (event loop) for it, but that (I'm pretty
>>> sure) could be wrapped in a slightly different way than
>>> DesktopApplicationContext does it (which pretty much assumes it is the
>>> main program of the application), but maybe more like
>>> BrowserApplicationContext (which obviously is assuming it is wrapped
>>
>> inside a browser as an applet).
>>>
>>>                  There should be no reason you couldn't pass
>>> application arguments even to a DesktopApplicationContext via the
>>> command line stuff even now.  Or if you are using a message bus, or
>>> some other RPC mechanism, why you couldn't use that with Pivot also.
>>> Unless I'm misunderstanding the way your app is architected.  So, maybe
>>
>> you could explain a bit more.
>>>
>>>                  Again, thanks for trying Pivot, and I hope we can get
>>> you going!
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> ~Roger
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> From: Mark R. Chambers [mailto:mark@mrchambers.org]
>>> Sent: Monday, January 20, 2014 6:11 AM
>>> To: user@pivot.apache.org
>>> Subject: How to Run Application without DesktopApplicationContext
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Hi Pivot,
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> My application is not GUI centric, and I don't want to make the GUI
>>> the main part of the application.
>>>
>>> How can I pass variables back from  DesktopApplicationContext or start
>>> a pivot application without  DesktopApplicationContext?
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> BACKGROUND:
>>>
>>> I have an existing application and I am replacing the GUI component
>>> with Pivot, it is a component of a much larger application. I
>>> previously just had a GUI object that I called and it made the GUI
>>> etc. and I could pass state information and values back to the main
>>> application. Is there any way to do this with pivot? Or do I need to
>>> modify the pivot src? (Or choose another GUI option, although I have
>>> battled with pivot for 3 days. to convert my GUI, and now find out
>>> that I can't seem to be able to get any variables back to the main
>>> program.)
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Regards,
>>>
>>> Mark
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>