scripting.dev.java.net

Java SE 6 will contain JSR 223: Scripting for the JavaTM Platform API classes. This Framework can be used to host Script Engines in Java Applications. Sun's implementation of Java SE 6 includes a Script Engine based on Rhino: JavaScript for Java version 1.6R2

The Scripting Framework also supports third-party Script Engines that implement the JSR 223 Scripting APIs . The primary purpose of this project is to provide ScriptEngine implementations that developers can use in their Java Applications. Developers can also use the Script Engines as examples of how to implement the Scripting APIs using their own Java-based Scripting implementations.

This project also includes example applications that use the Scripting Framework. Developers are invited to participate in the project by including their own ScriptEngines and applications.

The Source Code in the project is licensed under the BSD License. The third-party scripting implementations used by several of the Script Engines are included in binary form for convenience. In some cases their licensing terms impose conditions and restrictions on software derived from them or using them. The text of each third-party license is included.

Working with the binaries

• Download jsr223-engines.tar.gz (or jsr223-engines.zip) from "Documents & files" link.
• gunzip/untar (or unzip) it in a directory, say $JSR223-ENGINES
• There is one directory for each language for which jsr223 engine is available.
• Under each directory, there is a README.TXT that has URL of the scripting language implementation. You have to download that under the lib sub-directory.
• To try out command line usage, look for scripts under bin sub-directory.

Working with the source

Build Requirements

• JDK 6
• Ant build tool from https://ant.apache.org - you need ant version 1.5.4 or above
• cvs to checkout the sources for this project

Steps to build

1. CVS checkout the scripting project in a directory, say $SCRIPTING_SRC
2. To build all script engines, use the following commands:

   
       cd  $SCRIPTING_SRC/engines
       ant
   
   

3. To build a specific script engine, use the following commands:

   
       cd $SCRIPTING_SRC/engines/<script-engine-dir>/make
       ant
   
   

Steps to run/use

1. cd $SCRIPTING_SRC/engines/<script-engine-dir>/bin
2. Use the shell script (or batch file) under the above dir to run the script engine. These are wrappers over jrunscript tool shipped with JDK 6.

To use a specific script engine for language Foo in your application, you have put Foo-engine.jar file and associated jar files in $SCRIPTING_SRC/engines/Foo/lib/ in your CLASSPATH. In your Java class, you can get ScriptEngine instance using the following snippet:

    ScriptEngineManager m = new ScriptEngineManager();
    ScriptEngine fooEngine = m.getEngineByName("Foo");

Scripting applications

NetBeans scripting module

In addition to the JSR-223 script engines for many languages, we want to develop/maintain interesting/useful applications of scripting. To start, scripting support modules for NetBeans IDE have been added under applications/NetBeansModules directory.

Scriptlets

Scriptlets are applets written in JavaScript. Developers use a pre-defined Java applet class (com.sun.scriptlet.Scriptlet) and define an applet param which identifies a JavaScript. The JavaScript code can define functions for applet's paint, init, start, stop and destroy methods [effectively "override" applet's methods with JavaScript functions]. The code for scriptlet is under applications/scriptlet directory.

SVG scripting

Batik (https://xml.apache.org/batik) script extension. This adds script tag support for any jsr-223 scripting language. So, it is possible to use any jsr-223 scripting language with SVG script tag.

Useful scripts

We want to create/maintain useful scripts in this project. To start with, we have added few scripts under scripts/javascript/ajax directory.

These include ajax.js (script to support XMLHttpRequest, XMLSerializer, DOMParser etc. for JDK 6's JavaScript engine) and two test scripts (test.js, test2.js) to test the same.

Script Engines in this project (so far!)

JSR 223 script engines maintained elsewhere

• JavaFX Script (https://openjfx.dev.java.net/)
• AppleScript (https://jasconn.dev.java.net - Mac OS X only)
• Bex script (https://bexscript.sourceforge.net)
• PHP (https://www.caucho.com/resin-3.0/quercus/) - pure Java implementation of PHP.
• PHP (https://php-java-bridge.sourceforge.net/) - uses native PHP implementation through remoting.
• Python (https://jepp.sourceforge.net/) - uses the native Python implementation to implement JSR 223 engine.

Related Scripting Projects

• Phobos - webapp framework that uses scripting
• jMaki - Serverside AJAX framework - server-side runtime is provided as a JSP tag library or a JSF component