Dynamic Open File in Oxygen XML Editor Distributed via JavaWebStart

Question

How can we dynamically open a file in an Oxygen XML Editor distributed via JWS?

Answer

The JWS packager ANT build file which comes with Oxygen XML Editor signs by default the JNLP file (this means that a copy of it is included in the main JAR library) in this step:

<copy file="${outputDir}/${packageName}/${productName}.jnlp" tofile="${home}/JNLP-INF/APPLICATION.JNLP"/>

Signing the JNLP file is required by newer Java versions and means that it is impossible to automatically generate a JNLP file containing some dynamic arguments. The solution is to use the signed JNLP template feature of Java 7, bundle inside the JAR library a signed APPLICATION_TEMPLATE.JNLP instead of an APPLICATION.JNLP with a wildcard command line argument:

<application-desc main-class="ro.sync.jws.JwsDeployer"> 
   <argument>*</argument>
</application-desc>

Then you can replace the wildcard in the external placed JNLP to the actual, dynamic command line arguments value.

A different approach (more complicated though) would be to have the JNLP file signed and always referenced as a URL argument a location like this:

http://path/to/server/redirectEditedURL.php

When the URL gets clicked on the client side you would also call a PHP script on the server side which would update the redirect location for redirectEditedURL.php to point to the clicked XML resource. Then the opened Oxygen XML Editor would try to connect to the redirect PHP and be redirected to open the XML.