Application-Startup.md

In order to benefit from most jMCS functionalities, your applications shall derive from the App class.

This class formalize applications life cycle, divided in 4 sequential steps : initialization, GUI setup, execution and quitting:

• Your initServices() method shall contain all your application initialization code, like specific command-line option parsing, core services initialization, ...
• Your setupGui() method shall contain all MVC objects allocation and initialization, GUI setup, ...
• Your execute() method shall in fact contain no code at all, as long as your application GUI fully implement the reflex approach (e.g !Observer/Observable and MVC patterns, ...) and has already been initialized in setupGui(), but is provided to handle specific action once application initialization is done (e.g network connection setup, automatic query launch, ...)
• Your cleanup() method shall contain all application end-of-life management (closing network connection, flushing caches, ...)

Once your App-derived class is instantiated at runtime in your main() method, jMCS Bootstrapper.launch(YourApp) will properly bring your application to life by :

1. Initializing jMCS and App internal mechanisms ([ApplicationData.xml](Application Description) file loading and parsing, [logger](Logging Facilities) setup, command line option parsing, shared functionalities setup, ...);
2. Displaying a splash screen (for at least 2.5 seconds), in order to let the end user know which application is about to start;
3. Calling your initServices() method to start your application core codes;
4. Calling your setupGui() method to properly create your application GUI in EDT while the splash screen is shown;
5. Discarding the splash screen;
6. Calling your execute() method at last, so you can set your GUI as the frontmost window for the end user to freely use it.

Here is a minimal jMCS-compliant application template :

import fr.jmmc.jmcs.App;
import fr.jmmc.jmcs.Bootstrapper;

public class YourMainClass extends App {

    public YourMainClass(String[] args) {
        super(args); // MANDATORY App internal initialization
    }

    protected void initServices() {
        // Add your application initialization code here...
    }

    protected void setupGui() {
        // Add your application GUI creation here...
    }

    protected void execute() {
        // Add your application execution code here...
    }

    protected void cleanup() {
        // Add your application cleanup code here...
    }

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        Bootstrapper.launchApp(new YourMainClass(args));
    }
}