Richard Pajerski Software development and consulting

Notes/Domino application development has for years targeted the web browser for the GUI but for many organizations, a large portion of apps are written for the native Notes client. While a common path for extending these native apps is to develop a portion of them as web apps, another powerful way is to implement Java applets in forms and pages. Even though Java applets were initially intended for web browsers, we can use use them as though they were native Notes widgets right in the Notes client.

The ability to embed Java applets in the Notes client has been available since Java itself was introduced into the environment way back in the 4.x days. However, applets were a tough sell then for a number of reasons, among them slow load times and sub-par look and feel. It wasn't until Java 6 was available in the 8.x client – a dozen years later – that custom applets became a realistic option for production Notes apps.

Let's look at a custom applet that can retrieve a contact list from a Notes 9 database and let the user export that data to a comma-delimited file. For this example, I'm using the NetBeans IDE (version 8.02) to develop the applet. The applet will compile to a jar archive which we'll import into the Designer client. Familiarity with Java and using Domino Designer will be assumed but since NetBeans and Java Applets in particular are not commonly used in Notes development, I'll try to be a bit more detailed when referring to them.

In Part 1, we'll set up the applet project in NetBeans. In Part 2, we'll walk through getting the applet integrated in Notes. Finally, in Part 3, we'll code the applet source with the main functionality and then refresh the Notes database with the updates.


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Part 1 -- Setting up the NetBeans project.
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Step 1. Create a new Java Project. From the menu, Start > New Project and choose new Java Application. I'm calling the new project ContactExport and using com.example as the default package.

By default, this creates a class file called ContactApplet but we're not going to use it. We're going to create a JApplet Form (Step 2) file and use that instead so the ContactApplet file can safely be deleted.

Step 2. Create a JApplet. Create a new JApplet form in the com.example package called ContactExport. This allows us to use the GUI builder in NetBeans which can greatly simplify designing a Swing-based user interface.

Step 3. Set Source/Binary Format to JDK 6 and add NCSO.jar as a library. Right-click on the project, then Properties, Source and make sure that the Source/Binary Format (at the bottom of the dialog) is set to JDK 6 which matches the JRE version on Notes 9. Next, in the same dialog, click Librairies on the left-hand navigation and then on the right, Add JAR/Folder. Here we add the NCSO.jar (found in the Notes\Data\domino\java directory) as a library for this project to expose the Notes Java API.

Step 4. Extend JAppletBase. By default, the applet extends javax.swing.JApplet but let's change that to extend lotus.domino.JAppletBase. Next, click the light bulb in the left margin to import the lotus.Domino.JAppletBase package.

Step 5. Update init() method. Change the applet's init() method to notesAppletInit(). Since we've changed our default class from javax.swing.JApplet to lotus.domino.JAppletBase, we need to use this new method to initialize the applet.

Step 6. Add components to the applet. Switch to Design mode (click 'Design' at the top of the source Editor) and drag and drop a JPanel to the applet background; then size it till it covers the entire visual space of applet. Next, add a Start button (JButton) and a progress bar (JProgressBar) to the JPanel. Right-click on the button, click Edit Text and change to name to Start.

That completes getting the basics of the applet itself set up. We'll cover making it functional in Part 3. But next, in Part 2, we're going to import the applet into Notes using Domino Designer and show how to embed it in a Notes Page design item.