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Business Entity Editor

Business Entity Editor

Owned by Gidi Shalev (Unlicensed)
Last updated: Jun 01, 2020

This simple graphical editor allows users to view and edit simple models that don't have representation in the legacy system but have a strong meaning to the business.
This is an easy and more convenient way for the user to deal with these business entities, save time in searching and writing code by allowing everything to be done with a few clicks.
This will allow the business to eventually assign less experienced users, thus lowering costs as well as reducing development time.

The Business Entity Editor is available for Java classes that contain the @BusinessEntity annotation on the top level class.
The editor has two tabs:

  • Fields - view and edit the fields and the model structure 
  • Source (read only) - view the Java code.

Fields Tab:

The left pane displays a tree of all the fields in the class, with the option to rearrange them using drag and drop.

To the right of the fields tree are three buttons for adding, converting and deleting fields.

Add Fields

Pressing on the Add button will open the following menu:

With the following options:

  • Simple fields
    • String
    • Integer
    • BigInteger
    • Double
    • BigDecimal
    • Boolean
    • Date
  • Structures
    • Internal class
    • List
    • Map
  • Existing class

Converting Fields

The Convert button will be enabled only when a simple field is selected. A simple field can be converted to any of the other available simple fields (as in the "Simple field" section in the "Add" button, above).

For each field type that is selected in the tree, the relevant attributes should appear on the right (marked in red in the image).

For simple fields (String, Integer, BigInteger, Double, BigDecimal, Boolean and Date) the following attributes will be available:


For Internal Class:


For List:


For Map:


And for Existing Class:

Clicking the Browse button to select other classes will open the following dialog. Using wildcards or an actual name will return a matching list of available classes, with no limitations:


Important

  • By default, the editor will add fields as private. However, when working with a class that already has fields that were added manually in the code, whether public, protected or package-private, the editor is able to work with them as well, without changing their level.
  • For fields that are initiated via the code, such as:
    private String string = "abc";
    The editor is able to work with them, without changing or removing their initialization.
  • The editor is able to work with fields that have annotations, without removing the annotations.
  • Any field added with the editor should add relevant Getters and Setters for it in the same file via Lombok. If a field was added manually from the code, and it did not have Getters and Setters previously, the editor does not generate Getters and Setters for it. 
  • The editor ignores other code, methods, or comments that might appear in the selected class without changing them or removing them.

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