Background

Have you ever deploy a Java web application? Are there settings that in web.xml you would like your customer to configure themselves?

It's a pain for user to navigate an XML file even it is so called a "human readable" format. It's a needle in a haystack when there are so many elements and attributes inside the XML. Your user manual or adminstration guide may say:

    Open web.xml in a text editor (Notepad) and find "<some element/attribute>"

Well, the instruction is clear. User may find the element/attribute you specified. It's just not user friendly enough.

So, if it is an XML, why don't we

1. use XPath to pre-specify the elements and attributes
2. coin some meaning descriptions
3. privide a nice GUI to let the users to modify the value

This is how I write this program. about your thought.

Description

The pre-specified elements and attributes are stored in a properties file. XPath as the key and the description of as the value. For example, in SourceForge.net RSS, this properties file may be used to change the description of CVS entry:

    title=XeMeL Configurator
    /rss/channel/item/title[starts-with(text(),"CVS")]/parent\:\:*/description=CVS Description

where the title key will be shown as the caption in the title of the application like this:

XeMeL Configurator will find xemelconfig.properties in the working directory or in the package of MainGui. If desired, the icon of the application may be changed by replacing icon.png in the jar file or specified in xemelconfig.properties with the icon key.

[ Download Source ][ Download JAR ][ License ]

Requirement

• Java SDK 1.5 for compilation
• Java JRE 1.5 for JAR execution

Build

    javac *.java

Usage

• Compiled from source
  • java MainGui
• Using the JAR file
  • java -jar xmlconfig.jar or
  • Double click xmlconfig.jar