indiWiz.com

[2009-12-03] Updated for new Maven repository.

Thanks to Ganesh Gembali and Velrajan for helping me with this post.

One thing I hate about Alfresco is it’s SDK. I hate to learn new methodologies and configurations specific to new software. When it comes to developing Alfresco modules and extensions, it was difficult to do it without configuring Alfresco SDK. But that is history

Alfresco Maven Archetypes

I will discuss the steps I followed to configure a new Alfresco module project using Maven Alfresco AMP Archetype.

Step 1: Configuring Alfresco Repositories

Add the following repositories to your Maven configuration:

<repositories>
    <repository>
        <id>alf-public</id>
        <url>http://maven.alfresco.com/nexus/content/repositories/releases</url>
    </repository>
</repositories>
<pluginRepositories>
    <pluginRepository>
        <id>alf-public-plugin</id>
        <url>http://maven.alfresco.com/nexus/content/repositories/releases</url>
    </pluginRepository>
</pluginRepositories>

Step 2: Using archetype:generate to generate a new project structure

mvn archetype:generate \
  -DarchetypeCatalog=http://maven.alfresco.com/nexus/content/repositories/releases/alfresco-archetype-catalog.xml

Actually the above code did not work in our proxy environment (I have configured Maven for Proxy usage correctly). So I saved the alfresco-archetype-catalog.xml to local filesystem and referenced it thus:

mvn archetype:generate \
  -DarchetypeCatalog=file:///home/subhash/alfresco-archetype-catalog.xml

The application quizzes you about artifactId, groupId, package name and version. Give the details. It will create the project directory.

Step 3: Placement of files

The following table will help you understand where to place your source files. The third column (AMP path) describes the path where the source file will be packaged inside the AMP. The fourth column (Deployment Path) the path where the file will be installed inside Alfresco deployment.

Step 4: Configuring Alfresco Dependencies

As an example, our module depended on alfresco-webscript-framework and alfresco-core APIs:

<dependency>
        <groupId>org.alfresco</groupId>
        <artifactId>alfresco-webscript-framework</artifactId>
        <version>3.2r</version>
        <classifier>community</classifier>
        <scope>provided</scope>
</dependency>
<dependency>
        <groupId>org.alfresco</groupId>
        <artifactId>alfresco-core</artifactId>
        <version>3.2r</version>
        <classifier>community</classifier>
        <scope>provided</scope>
</dependency>

Two things to note:

• The <classifier> element is needed. The Jar files in the repository is named as {artifactId}-{version}-{classifier}.jar
• Always give the scope as provided. This ensures Alfresco Jars do not get bundled with your AMP.