jEdit

On Saturday 01 March 2008 11:20, Randall R Schulz wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I have a Web service with a REST interface that allows retrieval and
> update of some text held in a persistent store.
>
> ...

If it matters, PUT is acceptable too. When I discovered that KDE (Linux 
desktop environment) has support for GET and PUT, I added a PUT handler 
to my server.


> Is this something that jEdit can do, either natively or via a
> plug-in?


Randall Schulz

On Saturday 01 March 2008 13:44, Randall R Schulz wrote:
> On Saturday 01 March 2008 11:20, Randall R Schulz wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > I have a Web service with a REST interface that allows retrieval
> > and update of some text held in a persistent store.
> >
> > ...
>
> If it matters, PUT is acceptable too. When I discovered that KDE
> (Linux desktop environment) has support for GET and PUT, I added a
> PUT handler to my server.
>
> > Is this something that jEdit can do, either natively or via a
> > plug-in?

On a lark, I decided to just give this a try in my installed jEdit
(4.3pre8). As I mostly expected, it loaded a URL I gave it in the
Open dialog (FSB) just fine.

When I tried to save the buffer, however, I got an I/O Error
alert stating:

-==--==--==--==--==--==--==--==--==--==--==--==--==--==--==--==-
http://someHost/somePath:
Cannot save: java.net.ProtocolException: cannot write to a URLConnection if doOutpu=false - call setDoOutput(true)
-==--==--==--==--==--==--==--==--==--==--==--==--==--==--==--==-


Is this something I can do from, say, the BeanShell console?
Or is there an option I'm overlooking that controls this behavior?


Thanks.


Randall Schulz

Hi Randall,

Weird. I got this second update long before your original post.

On 1-Mar-08, at 6:06 PM, Randall R Schulz wrote:
> On Saturday 01 March 2008 13:44, Randall R Schulz wrote:
>> On Saturday 01 March 2008 11:20, Randall R Schulz wrote:
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> I have a Web service with a REST interface that allows retrieval
>>> and update of some text held in a persistent store.
>>>
>>> ...
>>
>> If it matters, PUT is acceptable too. When I discovered that KDE
>> (Linux desktop environment) has support for GET and PUT, I added a
>> PUT handler to my server.

In your testing, the jEdit code that's handling the open/save is in  
org.gjt.sp.jedit.io.UrlVFS. When saving, it uses the openConnection()  
method of the java.net.URL class. This returns a URLConnection  
object, but these connections are by default read-only. As your error  
message noted, you would have to call URLConnection.setDoOutput(true)  
to allow writing over the connection.

I suppose you could try modifying UrlVFS and create your own  
customized version of jEdit. Alternatively, a plugin could be written  
to create a custom VFS implementation for this similar to what the  
FTP plugin does. Or a custom save method could be provided in the  
plugin's menu, similar to what the version control plugins would do.

I'm not currently aware of any plugin or mechanism in jEdit that  
allows writing to a remote URL like this, though.

Steve Jakob
Wide Skies Information Technologies

On Saturday 01 March 2008 16:48, Steve Jakob wrote:
> Hi Randall,
>
> ...
> >>> I have a Web service with a REST interface that allows retrieval
> >>> and update of some text held in a persistent store.
> >>>
> >>> ...
> >>
> >> If it matters, PUT is acceptable too. When I discovered that KDE
> >> (Linux desktop environment) has support for GET and PUT, I added a
> >> PUT handler to my server.
>
> In your testing, the jEdit code that's handling the open/save is in
> org.gjt.sp.jedit.io.UrlVFS. When saving, it uses the openConnection()
> method of the java.net.URL class. This returns a URLConnection
> object, but these connections are by default read-only. As your error
> message noted, you would have to call URLConnection.setDoOutput(true)
> to allow writing over the connection.
>
> I suppose you could try modifying UrlVFS and create your own
> customized version of jEdit. Alternatively, a plugin could be written
> to create a custom VFS implementation for this similar to what the
> FTP plugin does. Or a custom save method could be provided in the
> plugin's menu, similar to what the version control plugins would do.
>
> I'm not currently aware of any plugin or mechanism in jEdit that
> allows writing to a remote URL like this, though.

Thanks for the information.

So far, the best support I've found is in KDE, which makes GET / PUT 
access entirely transparent to the applications running under it (which 
are not even limited to KDE or Qt applications).

It seems that with the growing use of REST, and of Web Services in 
general, this is something that will become both more important and 
more available.

I wish I had time to experiment with modifying or extending jEdit or 
with writing a plug-in, but at the moment that's not an option for me. 
I'm personally OK with the (not quite entirely transparent) Vim support 
I've created and my most important user is an Emacs guy, and I think it 
can handle GET / POST directly, so I probably will make do with what I 
can get off-the-shelf.

If anybody knows of a Windows text editor that can handle this, I have 
one other key user who's mired therein (Windows, i.e.).


Thanks again.


> Steve Jakob
> Wide Skies Information Technologies


Randall Schulz