How to create a custom project

This guide explains how to create a custom project for openCRX. A custom project allows to extend the customizing delivered with the standard distribution of openCRX by adding and modifying

• Headers, footers and logos
• Groovy-based controls
• Code tables
• Wizards
• Reports
• Java classes
• openCRX model and database

A custom project allows you to strictly separate the directory structures of the openCRX distribution and your custom-specific files.

This guide assumes that you have installed openCRX 2.4 / 2.5 SDK (also see here).

Create the sample custom project

In a first step download the distributions for the sample project from here:

• opencrx-2.4.0-sample.jre-1.5.zip
• opencrx-2.5.1-sample.jre-1.5.zip
• opencrx-2.5.2-sample.jre-1.5.tar.gz

and expand to content to a directory of your choice, e.g. c:\temp\SF. This creates the new directory c:\temp\SF\opencrx-custom\sample.

Next create the directory opt in opencrx-custom. The directory structure should then look as shown below.

Next navigate to the folder .\opencrxSdk-2.4.0\repository\distribution (we assume that you have openCRX 2.4 SDK installed).

Extract the content of opencrx-2.4.0-core.jre-1.5.zip to .\opencrx-custom\opt.

Next extract the following archives to the same location:

• openmdx-2.4.0-core.jre-1.5.zip
• openmdx-2.4.0-portal.jre-1.5.zip
• openmdx-2.4.0-security.jre-1.5.zip
• openmdx-2.4.0-log.jre-1.5.zip (not required for version 2.5.1)

Finally the directory structure of .\opencrx-custom looks as shown below.

Next open a shell. Make sure that the environment variables such as JAVA_HOME, JRE_15, etc. are correctly set as described in openCRX 2.4 SDK for Ant Step-by-Step.

Enter the command ant install-src. The command must complete without errors.

Then enter the command ant deliverables. This processes custom-specific models, Java classes and generates JAR libraries. If you get the error build-library.xml:1354: Problem creating zip: Negative seek offset ignore it and run ant deliverables again.

Then enter the command ant assemble. This generates the EARs containing all custom-specific files.

After successfully building the project the directory structure looks as shown below.

• jre-1.5/sample/deployment-units: custom-specific EARs
• jre-1.5/sample/lib: custom-specific JARs
• sample/build.properties: allows to customize project-specific properties
• sample/build.xml: custom-specific Ant build.xml
• sample/src/data/org.opencrx.sample: contains the custom-specific UI extensions. You have to put the custom-specific files such for ui, codes, reports, wizards, etc. in these directories. They are added to the WAR. A very important file is the .\WEB-INF\web.xml which contains the configuration of all servlets.
• sample/src/java: custom-specific Java classes

Next steps

• If you want to rename the project sample by your own name, e.g. myname then you have to adapt build.xml, build.properties and the directory name containing the data files in src/data
• If you want to learn more about UI customizing then see here for more information
• In the near future we will add a guide which shows how to extend the model

Congratulations

You have successfully created your first openCRX custom project.