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Harness the power of XPages in Lotus Domino Designer

How to Web 2.0 enable your Domino application

Chris Toohey (ctoohey@dominoguru.com), Chief Solutions Architect, Clearframe

A published developer and Webmaster of DominoGuru.com, a Lotus Notes/Domino-themed "Tips & Tricks" Web site and Weblog, Chris Toohey is the Chief Solutions Architect for Clearframe, and specializes in integrating IBM Lotus Notes/Domino with other enterprise-level solutions. Since entering the IT industry in 1998, Chris's unconventional methodologies, forward thinking, and his ability to uniquely analyze and attack a given problem with award winning solutions has afforded him recognition as an expert in his field, as well as yielding many happy customers.

Summary: One of the latest additions to the Domino Web developers' toolkit of technologies, XPages, is also arguably its most powerful and revolutionary to date. XPages allows for functionality and capabilities previously thought impossible to achieve in Domino application development. With the inclusion of XPages, you now have the ability to easily create Web 2.0 user experiences in your existing applications. To demonstrate the power of XPages, this tutorial shows you how to Web 2.0-enable the personal address book Domino application template.

Date: 02 Feb 2009 (Published 23 Sep 2008)
Level: Intermediate
PDF: A4 and Letter (1363KB | 43 pages)Get Adobe® Reader®

Activity: 76931 views
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Before you start

This tutorial is intended for experienced Domino Web application developers who are new to XPages and what this latest enhancement to the Domino Web environment can do for your existing Domino applications. Although this tutorial covers several basic and fundamental XPage development topics, it refers to common Domino Web application development techniques.

About this tutorial

XPage capability is the latest Domino Browser Client design element. XPages allow Domino Web application developers to both extend the functionality and the end-user reach of current IBM® Lotus® Notes and Domino applications, and rapidly create new, rich Web applications -- all while natively adhering to current Web development standards. Delivered through Java™Server Faces (JSF) technology, XPages provide both novice and seasoned Web application developers with nearly limitless data architecture and function previously not available to Lotus Notes and Domino applications.

One of the benefits of XPages is that you may never truly need to understand JSF technologies to benefit from them. JSF, to put it in terms we Domino developers understand, is the equivalent of a custom-class rendering engine. It interprets developer-supplied markup, evaluating the desired end-result based on predefined rendering logic mapped to the JSF custom-class libraries.

To better illustrate the power of XPages, this tutorial makes use of the personal address book template that comes with Domino. Obviously, the personal address book template was not designed with the Web browser client as the primary user. The template, however, is great to use as the example for this tutorial.

Although the personal address book template does more than simply store contact and contact group information, this tutorial focuses on these two aspects of the application template in this tutorial. Specifically, you will use XPages to provide a Web 2.0-based contact and group management and navigation entry point into the personal address book template.

This tutorial includes the following:

Overview of XPage Domino design elements
Creation of a functional example View-type XPage
Creation of a functional example NotesDocument-type XPage
Creation of a multipurpose, fully functional XPage, displaying both View and Document-type XPage objects in a single XPage

Prerequisites

If you are unfamiliar with the Lotus® Domino Server 8.5 Public Beta, Lotus Notes, and Domino Designer in Eclipse Client installation processes and need additional information before reading on, please use your IBM ID and password (or complete the simple registration) to review the Release Notes specific to your particular environment.

System requirements

XPages capability requires both the Domino HTTP Server and the Domino JSF, available in the Domino Designer in Eclipse 8.5 Client. Download the following:

IBM Lotus Domino Server 8.5: XPage capability requires both the Domino HTTP Server and the new Domino JSF, which is included in the Domino Designer in Eclipse 8.5 Client.
IBM Domino Designer in Eclipse 8.5, which allows you to create, edit, and maintain XPages.

For this tutorial, you can use the personal address book template (pernames.ntf) packaged in the Lotus Notes 8.5 Public Beta or, as mentioned, any Lotus Notes Client Release 6.5 or greater. This template will serve as a Domino application template that we'll infuse with XPages. You will be creating a new instance of the personal address nook on your Domino Application Server, allowing you to follow along at home with the modifications discussed and detailed in this tutorial.

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