[platform-help-dev] creating a secondary help webapp?

[Erik Hennum <ehennum@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Esteemed Help Creators:

How does one go about creating a secondary webapp for Eclipse 2.1 (that is,
a webapp that supports additional requests without replacing the standard
webapp) that can be invoked via URL under InfoCenter Eclipse?

I looked at org.eclipse.help_*/schema/webapp.mxsd but didn't get enough to
get going.

Is it something along the lines of the following:

*  Create a new plugin directory.
*  Create the webapp in the usual way with
     -  WEB-INF/web.xml mapping the requests
     -  JSPs in the plugin directory
     -  servlets in WEB-INF/lib/*.jar
*  Create a runtime library of classes used by the JSPs as a jar file in
the plugin directory
*  Create a plugin.xml similar to org.eclipse.help.webapp_*/plugin.xml but
specify
     -  the plugin ID for your plugin
     -  your runtime library
     -  the false value for the default attribute of the webapp element

If so, how is the URL determined for the new web application?

If not, should the webapp plugin provide a class equivalent to
org.eclipse.help.internal.HelpApplication and a plugin.xml similar to
org.eclipse.help_*/plugin.xml?  How would a JSP in this new web application
construct a relative URL for using a JSP in the standard web application?

Since all of the help APIs have internal in their path, is it correct to
assume that other plugins shouldn't call those APIs?


Thanks in advance,


Erik Hennum
ehennum (at) us (dot) ibm (dot) com