[opencms-dev] Announcement: Release of OpenCms/Flex with JSP support

[Alexander Kandzior]

Hi all

Finally, JSP support in OpenCms has arrived with the newly 
available Flex alpha 1 release.

Features of the Flex alpha 1 release: 

* Full JSP integration in OpenCms 
* Add and manage JSP in the OpenCms Workplace 
* JSP Taglib for common OpenCms tasks (to be further extended) 
* Separate online and offline versions of the same JSP page 
* Introducing the FlexCache, a powerful and easy to use caching
mechanism 
* Optional output streaming on a per-page basis 
* Support for Java 1.4 
* New ClassLoader for OpenCms VFS based classes 
* Class layout now fully conforms to Java web application standards 
* Incooperates the latest draft of the JSP Standard Taglib Library
(JSTL) 
* Based on the newly released updated 4.6.1 version of OpenCms 

System requirements:

* You must use a JSP 1.2/Servlet 2.3 container (like Tomcat 4.x) 
* Java 1.3 or newer 
* For the rest of the components, the usual OpenCms system requirements
apply 

The Flex release is available from the opencms.org website at
http://www.opencms.org/download/opencms_flex_alpha_1.zip

Even though OpenCms/Flex is still an alpha 1 release, the JSP support is
fully 
complete and working. Developers who need JSP support in their projects 
are encouraged to try the current release. What is not complete in
version 
alpha 1 is mainly the Taglib for OpenCms functionality.

More information on the release can be found at
http://www.opencms.org/opencms/opencms/service/flex.html


Important: 

There have been some changes in the library and class loading structure 
for Flex. As a result, there might be a conflict of the Tomcat XML
parser 
and the XML parser required by OpenCms. This will lead to the following 
exception when the login page is opened: 

java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: org/w3c/dom/ranges/DocumentRange 

If you encounter this exception, you must do the following: 
OpenCms includes a recent version of the Xerces XML parser in 
/WEB-INF/libs/Xerces-1_4_4.jar. Copy this file to ${TOMCAT_HOME}/lib or,

in case you don't use Tomcat, copy this file to a java system 
library directory, e.g. ${JAVA_HOME}/jre/lib/ext. 


The Flex demo application and documentation

The OpenCms/Flex distribution includes a full featured demo application.

This demo application also features an extended documentation which
explains 
how to take advantage of the OpenCms features in JSP pages.
Additionally, 
the standard Tomcat JSP examples, as well as the JSTL examples are also 
included in this demo application. Developers are highly encouraged to
import 
this demo application after Flex has been successfully installed.


Please Report Bugs and give Feedback

Please use the OpenCms Bugzilla at http://www.opencms.org/bugzilla/ 
to report all of bugs found in OpenCms/Flex. 
On the page, please select "OpenCms Flex" as the "product" for bug -
reporting. 
You might have to create a Bugzilla account first. 

Please use the mailing list for Feedback and discussions about 
OpenCms/Flex. 


Best Regards,
Alex.

-------------------

Alexander Kandzior
OpenCms Group