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Startup Properties


By luano - Posted on 14 January 2009

The startup.properties file is a key file in controlling the behaviour of an application. This appendix documents the parameters in the startup file.

Properties

The list below contains the basic set of properties used by Aria. The properties file is a generic mechanism and can be used for other purposes such as application specific variables and therefore it cannot be guaranteed that this is an exhaustive list of values that can be found in the startup file.

Startup properties
Property Role
UseWindow (true|false) Toggles use of a separate Window for the application. With a Window the application does not appear in the normal frame of the applet viewer and can appear as though it occupies the fullscreen (depending on the values of ClientWidth and ClientHeight).
ClientWidth Width of the applet or application window in pixels, defaults to 640
ClientHeight Height of the applet or application window in pixels, defaults to 480
StartPackage The name of the package in which the page implementations are found e.g. com.mycompany.mypackage
StartClass The name of the start page or the first page that is displayed. e.g. Welcome . The page name is qualified by prefixing it with the StartPackage name. If a value of NONEis given then no page is loaded. This can be useful when using framesets as the frameset may also specifies content for each of its areas and this could lead to unnecessary reloading of pages in the content area.
Title The application title, shown on the main window.
StyleFile The name of the file containing the style definitions, by default this is styles.xml
ModelData The name of the file listing the datasets used by the application, by default this is datasets.xml
CenterWin A boolean value (true|false) indicating whether or not the application window is to be centered on screen.
DataSourceClass The name of the class that implements the datasource, by default this is org.formaria.data.OptionalDataSource
LibVisualise A boolean indicating whether or not to show the visualizer. The visualizer allows you to see the data in the model at runtime.
Validations The name of the file containing the validation rules, by default this is validations.xml
ValidationFactory The name of an alternative validation factory class.
LogLevel An integer value indicating the logging level used by the debug version of the application.
LifeCycleListener The name of a class that implements the LifeCycleListener interface. This interface is used to perform special shutdown operations.
ComponentRegistry The name of the XML file containing component registry information.
NumComponentFactories Specify the extra component factories to use and the source of registry info
ComponentFactory0 An entry like this is used for each component factory and names the class that implements the component factory.
BuilderClass The name of the default builder class, normall org.formaria.builder.AriaBuilder
DefaultModelClass Sets the default model class. Normally this is BaseModel . The model class has a major role in Aria applications and any changes to this parameter should be undertaken with caution.
SavePath The output path for temporary or cached data. If this setting is not preset or if it is blank Aria will save data to the System specified temporary directory.
TriggerValidations When set to true a page's validations are triggered prior to page transition and a failure in the validations will block the page transition.

And some properties introduced with Aria 2.0:

Startup parameters introduced in version 2.0 of Aria
Property Role
LAF The class name of a Look and Feel installer. A look and feel installer includes a static method installLAF that carries out whatever steps are needed to install the look and feel. The method is called when the application first starts.
SynthConfigFile The file used by the Synth look and feel for its configuration.
SynthResourceLoader The class used by the Synth look and feel to load the resources referenced in the Synth configuration file.
AntiAlias A value of true turns anti-aliasing on for all components within a Swing application.
LogWriter Specify the class name of a log writer, for example org.formaria.log.QueueLogWriterwhich writes to the output stream in a background thread - this provides for better application performance during heavy logging.
ProjectPath The root path of the project. This property is generated dynamically and does not appear in the properties file and is instead set during startup.

And some properties introduced with Aria 3.0:

Startup parameters introduced in version 2.0 of Aria
Property Role
BuilderClass[N] The name of a builder class, where N is the number of the builder such that N is less than NumBuilderClasses2. An attempt is still made to load the default builder class via the bare BuilderClass property.
NumBuilderClasses The number of builder classes to attempt to load.
DataBindingContextClass Specifies a binding context class, an instance of which will be used to manage the PageHelper to manage the bindings. The class should implement the DataBindingContext interface. An example of this is the HibernateDataBindingContext which transparently starts the database transaction (hibernate session) before the bindings are evaluated.
DefaultTarget If this value is set to NONE then the internal frames/desktop style of application will not attempt to set and load a default target area and this means that a desktop/internal frames application can be started without an initial document being required/displayed, i.e. an empty desktop provided that the frames file does not define frames or content areas.

1. Swing only