Summary	JotAzul BluEclipse - Objects First on Eclipse !
Categories	None
License	GNU General Public License (GPL v. 2.0)
Owner(s)	morgade

JotAzul Blueclipse Plug-in

Requirements

Just the Eclipse SDK 3.1 (or ...)
By now, the plug-in was only tested on version 3.1M4, but should work on any 3.1 version or higher (and maybe in 3.0 too). Who wanna be a tester ??

Download

Download Nightly Build (June 19, 2005) Experimental, but fully usable
To install extract the file into your eclipse directory and restart eclipse

Usability

The plug-in can be used as a tool to:

• Help teatchers and newbies in the OOP world using the Objects First approach
• Do online and interactive tests with objects of your application and generate test-code
• Create code-reliable object diagrams
• Eclipse scripting !

Features

Interactive object creation

You can instantiate your own classes or classes into your project classpath with Blueclipse and see visual references in a new view. No main method required ! The JotAzul View displays the object graph, containig the state of objects and the connections between them ( by composition, arrays, or associated in Maps and Collections ). The objects are really there !
Click to enlarge

You can save JPEG snapshots of the diagram directly into a folder of your project. You can also print the diagram directly from the JotAzul View.
The graphics are generated directly from the SWT API. The execution of code is fully based on Java Reflection API and the JavaBeans member naming pattern specification. This means high graphics performance and no third party libraries required. The code of objects will run directly on the Eclipse VM. It means that the code runs faster and that you can scripting Eclipse ! Just create a class that make use of the Eclipse SDK API, instantiate it and call a method ! But, it also means that a method in your class calling System.exit() will kill Eclipse ! (This kind of issue will be controlled just using a SecurityManager for your code.)

Interactive object manipulation

You can point and click objects in the diagram to invoke methods and modify field values. The Blueclipse Console supports objects use of System.in and System.out. Objects from diagram can be used as method parameters. Method return values can be capturated to the diagram.
Click to enlarge

Code of the classes are really running ! (Try to create a java.awt.Frame and call the show() method and the frame will pop-up from Eclipse).
Exceptions throwed by objects are write in the Java Stack Trace Console, making it easy to debug your code.
Static methods and fields can also be manipulated.

Interaction code generation

You can record interaction with objects and Blueclipse will generate a class in you project with the code generated by this interactions.
Click to enlarge