Process flow editor allows for drag-and-drop creation of process flows that are translated into Spring MVC application flows. A single process equates to a Spring dispatcher servlet while the nodes within it represent Spring controllers. The process flow builder automatically generates the code for a DispatcherServlet subclass, prototypes for the controllers, the dispatcher configuration file, and the web.xml.
Form editor allows forms to be designed graphically. Forms are composed of strongly-typed form fields that are able to populate themselves from the request. Each form field is assigned a converter that allows it to convert data from the request into its datatype. The Gaijin builder automatically generates the form bean and internal details of the form.
Form validator edtor creates Spring-compatible validators for Gaijin forms. Validators are datatype-specific and may be chained for complex validation. Validation errors are made available to the request in the standard location expected by Spring taglibs.
Properties files are created for each process, form and validator and are updated automatically from the editors. The files are merged into a reloadable message source registered in the Spring dispatcher configuration file. Changes to messages such as form field names and validation messages are reflected immediately in the application without restarting the server.
Gaijin Studio is fully integrated with the Spring IDE plugins which are included in the standard distribution. Spring IDE configuration sets are used to specify groups of config files for both the root bean context and each dispatcher servlet bean context. When specifying bean references in the controllers, the configuration sets provide context-sensitive lists of available beans to choose from. The Spring IDE plugins also provide sytax highlighting of the config XML files and a graphical view of bean relationships.
