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Using Oxygen XML Editor in a Web Browser (Experimental)

Radu Coravu
15 Mar 2022
Read time: 3 minute(s)

The JetBrains Projector is a technology for rendering Swing applications over the network and is an interesting way to run and access these apps remotely. Some of its use cases are listed here: https://jetbrains.github.io/projector-client/mkdocs/latest/ij_user_guide/jetbrains/#use-cases.

Since Oxygen XML Editor is a Java Swing-based application, this blog post explains how Oxygen XML Editor could be accessed remotely and used from a web browser.
Figure 1. Oxygen XML Editor Running in the Safari Web Browser Using JetBrains Projector
To prepare an Oxygen XML Editor installation on the server side for running in a web browser:
  1. Download an All Platforms version of the Oxygen XML Editor installation kit (oxygen.tar.gz): https://www.oxygenxml.com/xml_editor/download_oxygenxml_editor.html?os=Other.
  2. Unpack it to the oxygen folder.
  3. Download the Jetbrains projector server and unzip it in the Oxygen installation folder (the folder path should be something like: oxygen/projector-server-1.5.0).
  4. Download the Jetbrains Java 11 runtime enviroment and unpack it to the oxygen/jbr folder.
  5. Create a start-projector-oxygen.bat script in the oxygen installation folder so that it adds the JetBrains libraries to the classpath and runs the JetBrains server giving it the name of the main class as a parameter to run it with the contents:
    @echo off
SET CP="%~dp0;%~dp0/classes;%~dp0/lib/oxygen-basic-utilities.jar;%~dp0/lib/oxygen.jar;%~dp0/projector-server-1.5.0/lib/*"

%~dp0\jbr\bin\java.exe %OXYGEN_JAVA_OPTIONS% -Dcom.oxygenxml.app.descriptor=ro.sync.exml.EditorFrameDescriptor -cp %CP% -Dorg.jetbrains.projector.server.classToLaunch=ro.sync.exml.Oxygen org.jetbrains.projector.server.ProjectorLauncher %*
  6. Run the start-projector-oxygen.bat script, which will start an HTTP server on port 8887 by default.
  7. Connect to the localhost:8887 port from the same computer or from another computer using a web browser.

Result: You should be able to use Oxygen XML Editor in a web browser and have full access to the server-side resources.