Creating a user-defined node project

The project is the container for user-defined nodes and their supporting files. You must create the project before you can create the interface for the node.

To create a new project for your user-defined node:

  1. Switch to the Broker Application Development perspective.
  2. Launch the New Message Flow Project wizard: Click File > New > Project... then Message Flow Node Development > Message Flow Plug-in Node Project.
  3. Click Next. The New Message Flow Plug-in Node Project window is displayed.
  4. Specify the name of the category for the nodes that you are creating. This is the name that is displayed in the Resource Navigator pane in the Broker Application Development perspective. For example, for the samples, the category is called "IBM sample nodes".
  5. Click Next. The New Plug-in Project window is displayed.
  6. Specify a name for your project. To be consistent with the supplied nodes, and to avoid conflict with other ISVs node project names, use your organization's Internet domain name as part of the name. For example, the name should be of the form com.ibm.nodegroup. You can save any number of nodes in a single project.
  7. Click Next. The Plug-in content panel of the New Plug-in Project window is displayed.
  8. Optional: Specify a plug-in runtime library name.
  9. Do one of the following tasks:
    • If you intend to develop Property Editors or write a compiler class for your node, specify the JAR file name you want to use.
    • If you want to do any Java development, accept the defaults or specify the source folder in which to store your Java source.
    • If you do not want to do any Java development, you can either accept the default values or remove them.
  10. Clear the "Generate the Java class that controls the plug-in's life cycle (recommended)" checkbox as this is not required with Eclipse Version 3 or higher.
  11. Click Next. The Templates panel of the New Plug-in Project window is displayed.
  12. Click Finish.
  13. If there are any task-list warnings associated with the newly created project, perform the following steps.
    1. Go to Window > Preferences
    2. Expand Plug-In Development and select Target Platform
    3. Click Not In Workspace to select all loaded plugins
    4. Click OK
    5. Select your user-defined node project in the Package Explorer, and click Project > Clean Project.

A project folder containing all the supporting files that are needed for your user-defined node is displayed in the Package Explorer.

The project is stored in the file system as: <workspace path>/project_name

Related concepts
User-defined input nodes
User-defined message processing nodes
User-defined output nodes
Related tasks
Developing user-defined extensions
Creating a user-defined node
Testing a user-defined node
Distributing a user-defined extension
Related reference
User-defined extensions