Author: feddersen
Publication Date: 8/19/2010 11:30
You can extend FirstSpirit by developing a custom module, which is great if you need functionality that isn't offered by FirstSpirit out of the box.
So what can you do with a FirstSpirit module? Common use-cases are:
- Create a new input component (form element), which is a good way to integrate a third-party document management system or media asset management.
- Use it as a simple container to load java libraries that you need within a FirstSpirit script
- Create a service that communicates with a third-party webservice to exchange information
- Create a webapplication to easily deploy your JSP/Taglibs to different environments (preview/staging/production)
A module can consist of one or multiple components. Here's a quick overview of the available component types:
Library
A library can contain one or multiple jar files. All containing classes will be loaded and are available on the server, the java client, in scripts and modules. A typical use-case is would be to load a third-party library that you want to use in another component of your module. If you're developing a module that talks to a webservice, you might want to load something like Apache CXF as a library.
Editor
You can create your own input component (form element) by implementing an editor. So this is a very powerful component, that can be used to integrate content from third-party applications. Creating an input component that allows an editor to reference document from a third-party document management system is just one example.
Service
A service is a server-side component that provides a public interface which can be accessed from editors, scripts or project-applications. If you need to talk to external application within your module, you'll probably want to implement it as a service.
Project-Application
As you might have guessed, the scope of a project-application is limited to a single project. You want to implement a project-app if your module requires a per project configuration.
Web-Application
You want to create a FirstSpirit web-application-component if you want to use JSP, servlets or any other kind of java based web technology (JSF, Spring etc.). You might already have worked with Firstspirit web-applications you've used one of our FirstSpirit Integration, FirstSpirit Personalisation or FirstSpirit Security. These modules ship with web-applications as well. You can configure them per project and for each environment (preview/staging/production). So if you've ever wondered how to add your custom Taglibrary into the FirstSpirit preview, creating a web-application-component is the way to go.
We offer a dedicated documentation, called FirstSpirit Manual for Developers (Components). Unfortunately, it's not available in English yet, but it's a recommended read for all German speaking developers. In addition, you can grab some code examples, to get you started. These examples contain the Developer-API as well. You might notice that we don't have an example for a web-application yet, but I'll cover that topic in my next blog posting.
Tags: development, fs4.2, module
Kommentare
3 Kommentare
Hello Mr. Christoph Feddersen,
Is there any possiblities that the http://www.e-spirit.com/odfs42/media/dokumentation/dokumentation_entwickler/MODDEV4xDE_FirstSpirit_ModulDeveloperDoc.pdf pdf will be available in English. ??
Hi,
we're currently revamping that part of the documentation for the upcoming FirstSpirit 5.0 release. The updated version will be available in English as welll. Our current plan is to release is by the end of the year.
Dear Mr. Christoph,
Thank you for the information.
Regards,
Vasanth
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