Scope: a generic HMVC framework / News: Recent posts

With a solid foundation, the following list reflects the work to be done to get to a 1.0 release:
* Revisit the servlet implementation to make it simpler, performant, well documented, and well tested.
* Make the BasicModel event despatcher work. Right now it uses .equals() to find models... which may fail when the model's state changes!
* Add examples for the servlet implementation.
* Add examples for ModelChangeEventSource in a Swing environment.
* Just add more examples!
* Make the documentation easy to understand.... read more

This version of Scope is the result of heavy refactoring and rework, resulting in a very useable framework for both Swing and servlet based applications. It has also proved itself in commercial use for web, desktop and voice implementations.

Scope now provides a compelling MVC framework that does not force application developers to "bend" their business objects into predefined base classes. By default Scope acts upon standard Javabean objects to implement a hierarchical MVC with full two-way data binding.... read more

Development of Scope has now reached a critical point, and unfortunately I've not been able to find much time recently to continue work on it -- apologies to those waiting for the new version.

The current status is that the Model subsystem is undergoing major rework to remove some of the dependency of application code on the Scope framework, and to bring the default Model implementation directly on top of standard JavaBeans. (An alternative implementation to sit on top of JMX MBeans will also be very easy.)... read more

This release of Scope has a strong emphasis on completion of existing
functionality, increased developer-friendliness, and more documentation.

The following is a list of the changes:
* Addition of second and third example applications, and the "Launcher" application.
* Added a build target that delivers a runtime version of Scope without unit tests or sample code.
(Currently the runtime version still has assertions enabled and debug information compiled into the classes.)
* Added hooks for form entry validation in the servlet implementation.
* Reworked the Swing implementation and added more bound widgets.
* Cleaned up the Controller and View management -- this looks much better now.
* Changed documentation to reflect the new Controller life-cycle.... read more

Scope is beginning to show signs of being a very promising platform for development of user interface code (the presentation layer of a typical J2EE application). With the return of rich GUI clients on the horizon in the shape of Java-enabled devices, the aim is to make Scope indispensible.

Here are several very short term aims, some medium term goals and a long-term strategy.

I am actively seeking help on this project, either in terms of writing code or in documentation. Please contact me at smeyfroi@users.sf.net if you would like to join the project.... read more

Future development of Scope will revolve around making the framework simple to use in a range of environments. The improvements are in progress and are planned in two phases:

View management and Controllers

Right now, the view management and hierarchical controllers are reasonable for a full rich Swing-based application (being based on classic patterns found in many C++ GUI frameworks). This is an environment in which there is a natural hierarchy of user interface elements that map onto a hierarchy of handlers for the high-level events that these elements produce.... read more

A long-awaited major release of Scope following a prolonged
sequence of 0.3.X releases. This distribution includes: a Model class
based on the standard JavaBeans API; much improved Controller and View
management; more complete unit tests; better documentation; and many bug
fixes. It includes work by the project's newest contributor, Simon
Harris. Scope is now offered under a BSD style license to simplify the
legal issues around commercial use. ... read more

Pre-release of next major revision includes much improved servlet implementation over 0.3.x releases, better ModelChangeListener management, and lots of other changes throughout. Documentation needs to be brought up to date, unit tests need to be completed and the code fully tidied before the stable 0.4.0 release soon.

Scope has been going through a phase of stabilisation and minor tweaking of the servlet implementation as it has been used as the basis for a live project.

As a result, a new stable release is just around the corner. This should consolidate the existing code, round off the model.collection support and include good documentation of the basic.model and servlet implementations.

Stay tuned!

Scope is currently being used as the basis for a proprietary component application framework based on the J2EE layered architecture. Scope Models are used in the Business Object and Presentation layers, and an XML/XSLT view implementation is being used to build a B2B portal as a web application.

Scope is also being evaluated for use in Swing and Voice XML based applications.

The future of Scope is as a standard kernel providing an MVC implementation that can be extended to build custom application frameworks.

An interim release of just sources and documentation. This has most of a JavaBeans compatibility layer for Models, a new ModelAction concept for invoking arbitrary methods on Models that fixes the design problems with Models implementing collections, major refactoring and simplification of some of the core packages, completely new documentation for those packages aimed at making Scope easy to use.... read more

The CVS repository contains the latest sources that include the first part of a simplification of the Model/BasicModel infrastructure. This includes the introduction of generic "ModelAction"s that represent arbitrary methods on Models, and the layering of Model metadata on BeanInfo.

The immediate aim is to rename the BasicModel stuff to be "BeanModel" so that any JavaBean that subclasses BeanModel will automatically be a valid Scope Model that can bind to Scope Views, whether Swing-based or servlet-based.... read more

Another major step forward: this release contains a sample application running as both a Swing application and as a web-based servlet application! The only difference between the two is the views that are used: Swing views versus XSL views. How cool is that?!

Instructions for running the samples are given in the readme, and more details are available in docs/browser.html

The plan now is to complete, document and unit test the current codebase so that v0.4.0 contains a stable core that fully supports Swing and servlets. Full sets of view components, code generators and automatic form layouts will follow in future releases after this
consolidation phase.... read more