GENERAL PRINCIPLES OF IDES IN FRAMEWORK/COMPONENT DEVELOPMENT

Integrated Development Environments (IDEs) are often a software developer's most intensively used tool, and this is often true of Web-application development. Until recently, IDEs had few special features for Web-application development, but this has changed. IDEs have become more flexible and easily configured, and their increased capabilities make them a better fit with frameworks. In this chapter we examine IDEs and how they relate to frameworks, with a few specific examples as well as some general observations and best practices.

IDEs and frameworks actually have much in common. They are tools that allow you to build your applications. The difference is that whereas an IDE provides tools for manipulating code, editing, searching, compiling, and so forth, a framework also provides services to be used by your code. A framework does not generally help you manipulate code (although some do generate code), it instead provides you with structure and services to build your application faster and easier.

Sometimes the line blurs a little between a framework and an IDE. Some IDEs provide libraries or APIs that are intended to be used in combination with your finished application at run time – this means they have at least some of the elements of a framework. Some frameworks provide graphical or command-line frontends to help you generate code, where the generated code is commonly a subclass of one of the abstract classes provided by the framework – in this sense, the framework provides some of the capabilities of an IDE.