Component Designer
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Talend Component Designer Perspective
As discussed in Component Design Setup, Talend Studio is an Eclipse based product, with your work being performed within a perspective. The default perspective is Integration, and this is where you would normally design your Talend Jobs.
Switching to the Component Designer Perspective
To design new components, you will need to switch to the Component Designer perspective. There are several ways that you can switch perspective. For the purposes of this article, you'll will switch perspective by selecting the menu option Window->Perspective->Component Designer, as shown below.
Exploring the Component Designer Perspective
Now that you've switched to the Component Designer perspective, your Talend Studio should look similar to the screen shot below. If you do not see node COMPONENT_PROJECT, then read the article on Design Setup, to ensure that you have correctly setup Talend Studio for component design.
Now, expand the COMPONENT_PROJECT node, to reveal the .project file that you described in the Component Designer Project File section of the article Design Introduction. If you double-click .project, the file editor will be loaded, as shown below. You can now close the .project editor window.
Creating a new Component
You'll now create a new component, named tMyComponent. You'll use all of the default options. You'll do just enough so that you can create the component and publish it to the Component Palette.
To create a new component, right-click the COMPONENT_PROJECT node and then select New->New Component, as shown below.
You should now be presented with the New Component (Main Properties) dialog. Enter tMyComponent for both Name and Long Name (mouseover tooltip). When completed, hit the Next button, as shown on the following image.
The next dialog allows you to Specify resources. For now, you'll simply take the defaults. You'll explore the different options in a later article. In this article, you just want to create a simple component. Hit the Next button, as shown below.
The next dialog allows you to Create the XML configuration file for JAVA Component. Again, you'll simply choose the defaults at this time, hit Finish to complete the definition of the component.
Viewing your New Component
Your new component has now been created and you should see a new node, tMyComponent, nested under COMPONENT_PROJECT. Expand this new node to reveal the component files that have been created, as shown below. Note that you should see the minimum file set, as summarised in the Minimum File Set table shown in the Design Introduction article.
Push Components to Palette
Now that you've created your new component, you'll perform a test publication, and make sure that the component can be found in the Component Palette. Component publication is referred to as Push Components to Palette. Note that this is Components. You can't publish a single components, all components are published together.
To publish your component, right-click you're component's folder and select Push Components to Palette, as shown in the screenshot below.
If publication has been successful, you should see the dialog message shown below. This can simply be acknowledged. Read this message carefully as, sometimes, this may yield an error message and it is easy to simply hit OK and miss it. You will look at how to investigate publication errors in a later article.
Testing your new Component
To test your new component, switch back to the Integration perspective, create a new Job, search for your new component on the Component Palette, and then add it to your Job.
Switching back to the Integration Perspective
To switch back to the Integration perspective. select the menu option Window->Perspective->Integration, as shown below.
Now that you've successfully added your new component to a Job, your Job should look something like the screenshot below. Note that your new component has been placed in the Sample folder of the Component Palette. If you are not able to locate your new component, check the spelling and also read the article on Design Setup, to ensure that you have correctly set up Talend Studio for component design.
Conclusion
You have now successfully created a new component, published it to your Component Palette, and added it to a new Job. The component does not serve any purpose; but you should now have a good understanding of the design and publication process.
In the next article in this series, you'll analyse the source code for the tJava component. This will give you a good understanding of some component design basics.
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