Yesterday, we released milestone 1 of our improved Domino API. This is our first tagged release meant for proper testing - all of the classes are implemented, many of the banner features are in there, and we've been using it in various real-world situations. I switched a couple of my side projects over - my portfolio site, the code for this blog (though I haven't deployed the template yet), and a couple personal game-related apps. That kind of testing is going to be crucial in getting us to a real ready-for-production release, and it's pretty exciting that we're already this far.

I encourage you to go check out the release on OpenNTF, browse and follow the code on GitHub, and don't hesitate to pitch in. We welcome contributors of all types - outright code contributions, real-world testing, or just feature requests. One of the overarching goals of the API is to solve as many of the little annoyances that we've all dealt with for years, so definitely let us know, either individually or via the Issues section of the GitHub project.

We're hard at work on some of the next steps: more documentation, streamlining the process of upgrading from the legacy to the new API in various scenarios (agents, XPage apps, DOTS, etc.), and all of the issues slated for M2. Watch that space!

As Nathan and Tim posted earlier today, a number of us have been working recently on a pretty exciting new project: the org.openntf.domino API. This is a drop-in replacement/extension for the existing lotus.domino Java API that improves its stability and feature set in numerous ways. The way I see it, there are a couple main areas of improvement:

Plain Old Bug Fixes

doc.hasItem(null) crashes a Domino server. That's no good! We've fixed that, and we're going through and fixing other (usually less severe) bugs in the existing API.

Modern Java

Java has progressed a long way since Domino 4.x, but the Java API hasn't much. Our API is chock full of Iterators, proper documentation, generic type definitions, preference for interfaces over concrete classes, and other trappings of a clean, modern API. Additionally, Nathan put together some voodoo programming to take care of the recycle thing. You read that right: recycle = handled.

New Features

In addition to cleaning up the existing functionality, we're adding features that will be useful every day. My favorite of those (since I'm implementing it myself) is baked-in MIMEBean-and-more support in get/replaceItemValue:

Set<String> stringSet = new HashSet<String>();
stringSet.add("foo");
stringSet.add("bar");
doc.replaceItemValue("Set", stringSet);

doc.replaceItemValue("Docs", database.getAllDocuments());

NoteCollection notes = database.createNoteCollection(true);
notes.buildCollection();
doc.replaceItemValue("Notes", notes);

doc.replaceItemValue("ExternalizableObject", new MimeType("text", "plain"));

List<String> notAVector = new ArrayList<String>();
notAVector.add("hey");
doc.replaceItemValue("TextList", notAVector);

doc.replaceItemValue("LongArray", new long[] { 1L, 2L, Integer.MAX_VALUE + 1L });

That's all legal now! We have more on the docket for either the initial release or future versions, too: TinkerPop Blueprints support, easy conversion of applicable entities to XML and JSON, fetching remote documents from DXL or JSON files, proper Logging support, and more.

As we've been developing the new API, we've already found it painful to go back to the old one - it doesn't take long to get spoiled. And fortunately, the transition process will be smooth: you can start by just replacing one entry point for your code (say, changing "JavaAgent" to "org.openntf.domino.JavaAgent" in an agent), then advance to swapping out your "import lotus.domino.*" line for "import org.openntf.domino.*" line, and then start using the new methods. All the while, your existing code will continue to work as well or better than before.

We hope to have a solid release available around the beginning of next month, and in the mean time I highly encourage you to check out the code. Download it, give it a shot, let us know how it works for you and if you have anything you'd like us to add.