Working with exteNd Composer Projects

This chapter explains how to add new and existing exteNd Composer projects as subprojects of your current project. It contains the following sections:

About exteNd Composer projects

Before you run the Composer Pageflow Wizard, you need to add an exteNd Composer subproject to your exteNd Director project. You can do this in either of two ways:

By creating a new exteNd Composer project
By adding an existing exteNd Composer project

Once you've added the exteNd Composer subproject to your exteNd Director project, you need to deploy your exteNd Director project at least once. Then you can begin to take advantage of the vulturing capabilities provided by the resource set (since the exteNd Composer subproject is added to the resource set). The resource set ensures that any change you make to an exteNd Composer project artifact is automatically picked up by the server and can be tested right away. This is also true of the pageflow, since pageflows are also stored in the resource set as well.

NOTE: The resource set being used by exteNd Composer must be the same one used by the pageflow. If they are not the same, the pageflow will not be able to find all of the resources associated with the service.

For more information For complete details on working with exteNd Composer services, see the exteNd Composer help. For details on creating exteNd Composer pageflows, see the chapter on using the Composer Pageflow Wizard in the Pageflow and Form Guide.

Working in the Express Portal project The Express Portal project contains a exteNd Composer subproject. Therefore, if you plan to work in the Express Portal project, you do not need to add an exteNd Composer subproject.

Creating new exteNd Composer projects

Procedure To create a new exteNd Composer project within an exteNd Director project:

In the exteNd Director development environment, open the exteNd Director project that will contain the exteNd Composer subproject.
Select File>New>Project.

The New Project dialog appears.
Select the Composer tab and choose Composer Project:
(Required) Type a project name. exteNd Director adds the project name extension (.spf).
Specify the directory where you want your project to reside. Select ... to browse the directories on your computer.
Enter a deployment context string in the bottom-most text field of the dialog. The string should contain labels (no spaces) separated by periods, as in composer.myapp.

NOTE: The context string should not contain Java-language keywords, such as try, catch, finally, int, for, and so forth.
To launch exteNd Composer after the project is created, leave the Launch Composer checkbox selected:
Click Finish. The window appears with the name of the project you just created in the title bar.

Adding existing exteNd Composer projects

Procedure To add an existing exteNd Composer project to an exteNd Director project:

In the exteNd Director development environment, open the exteNd Director project that will contain the exteNd Composer subproject.
Select File>New Project.

The New Project dialog appears.
Select the Composer tab and choose Existing Composer Project:
Specify the directory where you want your project to reside. Select ... to browse the directories on your computer.
To launch exteNd Composer after the project is created, leave the Launch Composer checkbox selected.
Click Finish. The window appears with the name of the project you just created in the title bar.