We're happy to announce the release of EPlug 1.2.5. Even though the change in the version number is quite small, the changes which have gone into this version are very interesting.

Better hover information and improved DataBookView

The biggest visual change in this new version is the new hover information for columns:

As you can see it has been vastly extended, with nearly all information about the column which you might want to know about, including its type, the label and all other properties.

Also the image preview is now more useful and is displaying the complete image but scaled to fit the hover:

Additionally the DataBookView has been restructured to display the information in a more easily digestible way, structured by variable name and source of the columns:

Improved DataBook support

The support for DataBooks/DataRows has been greatly improved and the plugin does now support a lot more variations on how to achieve the metadata. For example cloning of ColumnDefinitions, assigning of RowDefinitions and even getDataRow(...) and similar methods are now processed to acquire the metadata and column information.

Objects in server calls

One of the build-time checks is the type-check of parameters in server calls. Let's look at a simple example:

While this compiles completely fine in pure Java (because callAction(...) does accept an Object vararg), EPlug would flag it with an error because getValue(...) returns an Object but the server-side expects a BigDecimal. With this update there is now a build option available in the Project/EPlug settings to ignore such errors, allowing to pass Objects to the server side without checks.

Misspelled a column name? No problem!

We do now offer QuickFixes for column names with typos:

Automatic check of complement files

There is now a new build option in the Project/EPlug settings which allows to enable the automatic check of complement files. A "complement" file is simply the "other side", for example for the lifecycle-object the complement file is the workscreen, and vice versa. That means that now workscreens are automatically checked if the lifecycle object changes.

Preliminary String array support

There are various functions which do accept a String array of column names, for example getValues(...). Because of limitations coming up from the JDT infrastructure which we are using, we've been unable to provide autocompletion for column names in such circumstances:

We are still unable to determine the exact databook in such circumstances, but we do now simply provide all columns as completion suggestions. What we can do is provide full hover and build support for these functions.

Improved VisionX/EPlug communication

VisionX is now a lot more talkative, it informs EPlug about file changes. If "Auto Reload" is enabled in EPlug, all files that have been changed by VisionX will now be reloaded and checked automatically. The same accounts for changed metadata.

Changes

• Updated JVx version
• Cached MetaData is now correctly invalidated and refreshed
• DataBookView is now not constantly refreshed
• Markers (Errors, Warnings) are now only placed on the names of the columns, instead of the whole statement
• Inserted methods (from quick fixes) should now always be correctly formed
• Fixed "phantom" markers which could pop up during build
• Fixed that the DataBookView might not display all metadata
• Fixed that folding nodes in the DataBookView made the child-nodes vanish
• Various bug fixes

Simply update EPlug via Eclipse!