Chapter 1. Design Time Tooling

You access the tooling by opening the JBoss Perspective, and then selecting File New Fuse Project on the menu bar.

Creating a new Fuse project provides access to the route editor, the main design time tooling, shown in Figure 1.1.

It consists of four main areas:

The canvas is route editor's workbench and where you do most of your work. It displays a graphical representation of a route, which is made up of one or more connected EIP patterns (called nodes once they are placed on the canvas). Because the canvas displays only one route at a time, it delineates one route from another. You can add additional routes to your project, but each is displayed separately on its own slice of canvas.

Patterns are typically placed on the canvas by dragging them from the palette. Once on the canvas, a node's properties can be edited in the Properties editor. To do so, you need only select a node to open and populate the Properties editor with the properties that apply to that node. You can also edit a route's properties by clicking the canvas, which opens and populates the Properties editor with the properties that correspond to a single route in the routing context file.

The Palette contains all of the patterns needed to construct a route. The Palette groups the patterns into categories according to function:

Project Explorer provides access to all of the components that make up a project. It provides the tools for managing, configuring, running, and debugging your project.

Outline view provides a graphical outline of your route components. It enables you to switch easily between routes in a multiroute project. Clicking on a route in Outline view displays it on the route editor's canvas.

Outline view also provides a viewing portal when the route extends beyond the viewable area on the canvas. Sliding the view portal in Outline view over outlier nodes moves the canvas accordingly to bring those nodes into view.

You use the Properties editor to configure the route and each node in it. Each type of node has a set of properties that can or must be set. The Properties editor opens populated with fields that apply to the selected node.

The Properties editor makes it clear which fields are required. marks any required property that is not set, and the Properties editor displays an error message stating the number of required properties that still must be set, as shown in Figure 1.2.

The Properties editor's Documentation tab displays information about how to configure the selected node.