3. Round-Trip Engineering

Contents > 3. Developing Web Sites > Round-Trip Engineering

JSFToolbox is intended to work easily with an existing Java Integrated Development Environment (IDE). It performs runtime introspection of your site's classpath to find any JSF classes and resources available to your site and uses this information in Dreamweaver's component palettes , property inspectors , code hints , and tag chooser dialogs.

For best results, make sure your Dreamweaver site's root folder is the same folder as your JSF application's Web root directory in your Java development environment. This allows you to share the same files between both environments and it gives JSFToolbox direct access to the classpath, library, and configuration information it needs to support your JSF application.

With this shared folder approach, JSFToolbox will maintain synchronicity between Dreamweaver and your Java development environment and will automatically keep itself up-to-date as you add managed beans , message bundles , and other JSF components to your application.

You can also package your JSF components as a Java archive (JAR) file and import them directly into an existing Dreamweaver site. For more information on this technique, please see the Imported Jar feature.

Managed beans and other resources appear automatically in the components palette and in other locations as you develop your application. While it is scanning for changes to your classpath, JSFToolbox displays informative progress messages to keep you informed.