New Project: Custom Actions Library

Chuck Imperato and Bob Balfe from IBM have created a new project - Custom Actions Library. The following text is from Chuck.

Beginning with Lotus Expeditor 6.2.1 and Lotus Notes 8.5.1, the composite application team has introduced the composite application container framework. Containers are powerful components that allow application assemblers define the bahavior of their applications through the use of Landmarks. You may be asking what a landmark is at this point (and no it is not something you might see on the side of the road). A Landmark is a reachable state or condition that occurs during the lifecycle of the container which then triggers events. These events then execute a series of actions which define the behavior of the container component. Many common actions include publishing a property, receiving a property or setting a URL. This is where custom actions come into play. The custom action API is an Eclipse extension point allowing consumers to contribute actions to the runtime which can be executed within landmark configurations within their application. The Composite Applications Wiki has several nice tutorials and articles explaining how to build custom actions and when to use them. Links to those articles are shown below:

Introduction to Custom Actions

Extending the Notes View container with a custom action

Create a custom container action that executes JavaScript

Extending the Notes View Container with a "Run Agent" custom action

This project is a repository of custom actions that have been contributed by the community; which can then be downloaded for re-use within your applications. Going forward this project will be opened up for submissions from IBMers and from the Lotus community. We will also be posting ideas and information on the direction we are heading with custom actions and the container framework. Please feel free to post feedback and/or ideas that you may have which may enhance the productivity of our community.