OpenXava 7.7 released

OpenXava 7.7 is here, a rather chatty release, because your users will be able to chat with your application and the application will respond in plain, simple English. Yes, OpenXava now includes a chat that allows you to query data, filter the list, and even make changes.

But it's not only your users who will enjoy the delights that AI can offer us—there's something for you as well, developers. OpenXava projects are now prepared to work better with AI coding assistants, even with more affordable LLMs.

In addition, we have more down-to-earth improvements, such as the ability to "Undo changes" to data recently modified in an editable list, and new annotations for references.

All this and much more.

Watch the video to see some of these features in action.

Update to 7.7

To update edit the pom.xml file in your project and change the value of the openxava.version property, in this way:

<properties>
    <openxava.version>7.7</openxava.version>
    ...
</properties>

To enjoy the AI chat in your application you need to add an extra dependency in your pom.xml:

<dependency>
    <groupId>org.openxava</groupId>
    <artifactId>openxava-7.7-chat-jdk17</artifactId>
    <version>${openxava.version}</version>
</dependency>

Also, note that the chat requires Java 17 to work. Otherwise, OpenXava 7.7 is compatible with Java 8. Adding this dependency is optional. Without it, the chat will not work, but you can run on Java 8.

Then rebuild your project with mvn clean package

Look at the migration instructions.

New project with 7.7

On the other hand, if you want to try this new version in a new project, follow our quick start instructions:

New features

We’ve added the following::

• AI chat assistant available in all modules to query, filter, and modify data in natural language.
• New projects include AGENTS.md and sample code to improve AI code assistant effectiveness.
• Undo link to revert changes when modifying a value in an editable property in a list.
• New @NewView annotation to choose the view used when creating new objects from references and collections.
• New @EditView annotation to choose the view used when editing objects from references and collections.
• @NewAction and @EditAction now work for references too.
• An IFormatter for a @DescriptionsList can be defined via the descriptionsFormatter property of its editor.
• editors.xml allows defining a custom editor for all @DescriptionsList references at the application level.
• A custom editor for a specific @DescriptionsList can be defined combining @Editor and @DescriptionsList.
• With @Editor + @DescriptionsList(showReferenceView=true), applies only to the combo, not detail view.
• Easy way to customize the favicon for your own application.
• Default favicon for all OpenXava applications.
• Properties storing a UUID are excluded by default in calculated, @ManyToMany and @OrderColumn collections.
• Properties storing a UUID with a list formatter are included by default in collections.
• Actions invoked via executeAction() from a view now recognize the view previously set with setView().
• Embedded Tomcat now stores temporary files in the target folder to avoid Windows file-locking issues.
• New setStyle() and clearStyles() methods in View to set and clear property CSS classes programmatically.
• IFilter can be applied to collections using the new filter attribute in @Condition.

Upgraded libraries

We have upgraded the following third party libraries:

• Commons Lang 3 upgraded to 3.20.0.
• Groovy upgraded to 4.0.30.
• JSoup upgraded to 1.22.1.
• Htmlunit upgraded to 4.21.0.
• JSon upgraded to 20251224.
• Embedded Tomcat used in development upgraded to 9.0.115.
• Driver version in doc/new projects upgraded for MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle, MS SQL Server and Firebird.

Documentation

We have been working to improve documentation:

• Documentation article on optimizing AI assistants' code generation.
• The Quick Start section in the documentation has been simplified to leave only one option.
• New "Starting with OpenXava" video using IntelliJ and a recent OpenXava version.
• Updated Getting Started guide using IntelliJ and a recent OpenXava version.

We release new docs and videos constantly, not waiting for the official release of the code. So you have been already using some of the above material, although all the above docs are in the GitHub under the 7.7 tag.

Bug fix

Though this is not a maintenance version we have done one fix:

• Fix: Validation error in web.xml reported by IntelliJ with no functional impact in new projects.