Creating Liferay Maven Plugins from the Command Line

To learn how to use Liferay IDE to create Liferay Maven plugins, please refer to the Creating Liferay Maven Plugins from Liferay IDE tutorial. This tutorial explains how to use Maven archetypes to generate Liferay plugin projects using the command line.

Using the Maven Archetype Tool to Create a Liferay Plugin

Follow these steps to create a Liferay plugin from the command line:

1. Open the command prompt or terminal and navigate to the parent directory in which you want to create the plugin project. Create a sub-directory for each plugin project you create.

   Note: If you haven’t already created a parent project, you may want to consider creating one to share common project information. See the Using Liferay Maven Parent Plugin Projects tutorial for details.

2. Execute the following command:

    mvn archetype:generate
   

   Archetype starts and lists the archetypes available to you. You’re prompted to choose an archetype or filter archetypes by group / artifact ID. The output looks like this:

    ...
    39: remote -> com.liferay.maven.archetypes:liferay-hook-archetype
    (Provides an archetype to create Liferay hooks.)
    40: remote -> com.liferay.maven.archetypes:liferay-layouttpl-archetype
    (Provides an archetype to create Liferay layout templates.)
    41: remote -> com.liferay.maven.archetypes:liferay-portlet-archetype
    (Provides an archetype to create Liferay portlets.)
    42: remote -> com.liferay.maven.archetypes:liferay-portlet-icefaces-archetype
    (Provides an archetype to create Liferay ICEfaces portlets.)
    43: remote -> com.liferay.maven.archetypes:liferay-portlet-jsf-archetype
    (Provides an archetype to create Liferay JSF portlets.)
    ...
    Choose a number or apply filter (format: [groupId:]artifactId,
    case sensitive contains):
   

   Important: Sometimes, after a new Liferay release, Liferay’s most up-to-date Maven artifacts may not be available from the default Maven Central repository. In this case, you must use the artifacts stored at repository.liferay.com. To do this, use the -DarchetypeCatalog option to point to the Liferay Repository when generating Maven archetypes. For example:

   mvn archetype:generate -DarchetypeCatalog=https://repository.liferay.com/nexus/content/repositories/liferay-public-releases
   

   You’ll also need to configure a couple other files to ensure the generation command completes successfully. You can refer to the Installing Artifacts from the Liferay Repository section of the Managing Liferay Maven Artifacts tutorial to configure Maven to access the Liferay Repository for Liferay Maven artifacts.

3. To find the right Liferay archetype for your project, you can either scroll up to find it or apply filters to narrow the set of results. Filtering on liferay as your group ID, and a plugin type (portlet, hook, theme, etc.) can help you focus on more applicable Liferay archetypes.

   Entering liferay:portlet as a filter gives a listing of Liferay portlet archetypes:

    Choose a number or apply filter (format: [groupId:]artifactId, case
    sensitive contains): : liferay:portlet Choose archetype:
    1: remote -> com.liferay.maven.archetypes:liferay-portlet-archetype
    (Provides an archetype to create Liferay portlets.)
    2: remote ->
    com.liferay.maven.archetypes:liferay-portlet-icefaces-archetype (Pr
    ovides an archetype to create Liferay ICEfaces portlets.)
    3: remote -> com.liferay.maven.archetypes:liferay-portlet-jsf-archetype
    (Provide s an archetype to create Liferay JSF portlets.)
    4: remote ->
    com.liferay.maven.archetypes:liferay-portlet-liferay-faces-alloy-ar
    chetype (Provides an archetype to create Liferay Faces Alloy portlets.)
    5: remote ->
    com.liferay.maven.archetypes:liferay-portlet-primefaces-archetype (
    Provides an archetype to create Liferay PrimeFaces portlets.)
    6: remote ->
    com.liferay.maven.archetypes:liferay-portlet-richfaces-archetype (P
    rovides an archetype to create Liferay RichFaces portlets.) Choose a
    number or apply filter (format: [groupId:]artifactId, case sensitive co
    ntains): :
   

4. Choose an archetype by entering its number.

5. You’re prompted to choose the archetype version. Enter the number corresponding to the Liferay version for the archetype. You’re not required, however, to select the archetype version that corresponds with your Liferay instance; older archetype versions are compatible with updated Liferay bundles.

    Choose com.liferay.maven.archetypes:liferay-portlet-archetype version:
    1: 6.0.2
    2: 6.0.3
    3: 6.0.4
    4: 6.0.5
    5: 6.0.6
    6: 6.1.0
    7: 6.1.1
    8: 6.1.2
    9: 6.1.10
    10: 6.1.20
    11: 6.1.30
    12: 6.1.30.1
    ...
    23: 6.2.1
    24: 6.2.10.4
    25: 6.2.10.5
    26: 6.2.10.6
    27: 6.2.10.7
    28: 6.2.10.8
    29: 6.2.10.9
    30: 7.0.0-m1
    31: 7.0.0-m2
    Choose a number: 31:
   

6. Enter values for the groupId, artifactId, version, and package coordinates (properties) of your project. Here are some examples:

    groupId: com.liferay.sample
    artifactId: sample-portlet
    version: 1.0-SNAPSHOT
    package: com.liferay.sample
   

   This process is illustrated in the snapshot below:

   

   Figure 1: When creating your portlet plugin, you must enter your *groupId*, *artifactId*, *version*, and *package* properties.

   For more information on defining Maven coordinates, see http://maven.apache.org/pom.html#Maven_Coordinates.

7. Enter the letter Y to confirm your coordinates.

   Maven’s Archetype tool creates a Liferay plugin project directory with a new pom.xml file and source code.

Note: The archetype file is downloaded and installed automatically to your local repository (e.g., .m2/repository/com/liferay/maven/archetypes/[archetype]). If you configured a mirror pointing to your public repository on Nexus, the plugin is installed there.

Following these steps, you can use Archetype to generate all your Liferay plugin projects!

Plugin projects generated from a Liferay archetype are equipped with a POM that’s ready to work with a parent project. It inherits the values for liferay.version and liferay.auto.deploy.dir properties from the parent.

When your plugin is created, you can package and deploy your project to a specified Liferay instance. You can even install and deploy the individual plugin to a remote repository.

Related Topics

Deploying Liferay Plugins with Maven

Developing Liferay Theme Plugins with Maven

Developing Liferay Layout Template Plugins with Maven

Developing Liferay Plugins with Additional Maven Archetypes