Modeshape Repository Web Explorer + Spring Boot

[jimleroyer]

Hello,

We are evaluating JCR+Modeshape 5.0x and we want the capability of browsing the content repository. We have integrated Modeshape within Spring Boot successfully but when it comes to have the repository web explorer, it does not seem compatible with Spring Boot way of doing (at least, reading from the documentation). Was this done before? Are there any examples? Or do you see this as possible and what would be summary steps (or redirect me to proper resources)?

Best regards,

Jimmy

[hchiorean]

The web-explorer consists mainly of 2 artifacts:

1. a JAR (modeshape-web-explorer.jar) representing a GWT based web fragment; this represents the core artifact
2. a WAR (modeshape-web-explorer.war) which packages the above JAR together with a repository configuration file and a web.xml file

To use the web explorer (1) is mandatory and (2) is optional (one can repackage the web fragment in another WAR).

That being said, I'm not familiar with Spring Boot so I can't say if it GWT web fragments work with it or not.

As an alternative, there's another lightweight JS based repository explorer, which was implemented by one of our community members: GitHub - Pinpin31/modeshape-browser: Lightweight ModeShape Browser Client

[jimleroyer]

Hi Horia,

Thanks for the reply.

We have trouble to make the GWT application work within Spring Boot, especially one contained in a separate JAR/WAR files.

A couple more questions:

* Is it possible for us to deploy the web explorer in its own server container, and have it speak remotely to our ModeShape repository?

Regarding the alternative and the lightweight JS based repository explorer... Even that requires to enable the REST API endpoints for ModeShape in Spring Boot, and we are a bit hesitant. We want to try but we are afraid this will get us in JAR hell as well. It seems to me that ModeShape is tightly coupled to web containers. And we would like some kind of UI client to easily navigate through the content repository.

Do you have any other suggestions? or thoughts?

[hchiorean]

* Is it possible for us to deploy the web explorer in its own server container, and have it speak remotely to our ModeShape repository?

web-explorer only works if it is collocated (JVM wise) with the ModeShape engine (i.e. repositories) it exposes. The integration can be either direct (via the repository JSON file) or JNDI (web-explorer looking up a ModeShape engine bound in JNDI)

We want to try but we are afraid this will get us in JAR hell as well. It seems to me that ModeShape is tightly coupled to web containers. And we would like some kind of UI client to easily navigate through the content repository.

Do you have any other suggestions? or thoughts?

ModeShape's WAR artifacts are Servlet based, so yes, their primary runtime environment is expected to be a web container. ModeShape never intended to provide a production-grade UI for managing repository content. The web-explorer was created as more of a development tool to help less technical users with the evolution/development of their repository schema and data structure.

So if you can't get the web-explorer to work with your environment and using a remote REST API is not an option, then the only solution I can think of is to build your own custom UI based on your context/domain.

[jimleroyer]

Thanks for the information Horia.

It was not clear to me at first that we could simply deploy an extra modeshape instance (for reading purposes only) in its own servlet container along with web explorer as long as we target the correct repository configuration.

So that's all fine and dandy. We were able to make the REST API works directly in Spring Boot too, just FYI. But we consider moving the REST API in a different application container too.

> The web-explorer was created as more of a development tool to help less technical users with the evolution/development of their repository schema and data structure.

This is our goal as well, to have a tool that can easily query our repository and especially for the less technically inclined folks.

Thanks for your help!

[vijaymarappan]

Hi Jimmy Royer,

I am also working like you worked.

Could you please share the git source url

Advance gratitude to you