Using Maven From Liferay IDE

Wouldn’t it be nice if you could manage your Liferay Maven projects from Liferay IDE? You can! Liferay IDE 2.0 introduces the Maven project configurator (m2e-liferay), or the added support of configuring Maven projects as full Liferay IDE projects. This tutorial explains what the Maven project configurator does, how to install it, and how to install its dependencies. As you read through it, you’ll examine the structure of Liferay Maven projects and explore some configuration options.

Installing Maven Plugins for Liferay IDE

In order to properly support Maven projects in the IDE, you first need a mechanism to recognize Maven projects as Liferay IDE projects. IDE projects are recognized in Eclipse as faceted web projects that include the appropriate Liferay plugin facet. Therefore, all IDE projects are also Eclipse web projects (faceted projects with the web facet installed). In order for the IDE to recognize the Maven project and for it to be able to leverage Java EE tooling features (e.g., the Servers view) with the project, the project must be a flexible web project. Liferay IDE relies on the following Eclipse plugins to provide this capability:

  • m2e-core (Maven integration for Eclipse)
  • m2e-wtp (Maven integration for WTP)

The m2e-core plugin provides the standard Maven tooling support for Eclipse. It provides dependency resolution classpath management and an abstract project configuration framework for adapters. The m2e-wtp plugin provides project configuration mappings between the Maven models, described in the Maven project’s POMs, and the corresponding flexible web project supported in Eclipse. This allows a Liferay Maven project to be recognized as a flexible web project. Them2e-liferay plugin installation includes these plugins and installs them by default. With these integration features in place, the only remaining requirement is making sure that the m2e-core plugin can recognize the extra lifecycle metadata mappings necessary for supporting Liferay’s custom goals. Let’s break down the lifecycle mappings just a bit to get a better understanding of what this means.

Both Maven and Eclipse have their own standard build project lifecycles that are independent from each other. For both to work together and run seamlessly within Liferay IDE, a lifecycle mapping is required to link both lifecycles into one combined lifecycle. Normally, this would have to be done manually by the user. Fortunately, the m2e-liferay plugin combines the lifecycle metadata mapping and Eclipse build lifecycles, to provide a seamless user experience. The lifecycle mappings for your project can be viewed by right-clicking your project and selecting PropertiesMavenLifecycle Mapping.

Figure 1: You can view your projects lifecycle mappings.

Figure 1: You can view your project's lifecycle mappings.

When first installing Liferay IDE, the installation startup screen lets you select whether you’d like to install the Maven plugins automatically. Don’t worry if you missed this during setup. To install the required Maven plugins, navigate to HelpInstall New Software. In the Work with field, insert the following value:

Liferay IDE repository - http://releases.liferay.com/tools/ide/latest/milestone/ 

Figure 2: You can install the m2e-liferay plugin by searching for software on Liferay IDEs repository.

Figure 2: You can install the `m2e-liferay` plugin by searching for software on Liferay IDE's repository.

If the m2e-liferay plugin does not appear, then it’s already installed. To verify that it’s installed, uncheck the Hide items that are already installed checkbox and look for m2e-liferay in the list of installed plugins. Also, if you’d like to view everything that is bundled with the m2e-liferay plugin, uncheck the Group items by category checkbox.

Awesome! The required Maven plugins are installed and your IDE instance is ready to be mavenized! Next, you’ll learn how to configure an existing Maven project.

Configuring Your Liferay Maven Project

Now that your Liferay IDE is Maven-ready, you can examine the anatomy of a Liferay Maven project. Note, you don’t need to have an existing Liferay Maven project to continue. However, if you’d like to create a new Liferay Maven portlet project in the IDE before proceeding, you can do so by following instructions in the tutorial Developing Liferay Portlets with Maven. Alternatively, you can import an existing Maven project by navigating to FileImportMaven and selecting the location of Maven project’s source code.

The m2e-core plugin delegates your Liferay Maven plugin’s project configuration to the m2e-liferay project configurator. The m2e-wtp project configurator then converts your Liferay WAR package into an Eclipse flexible web project. Next, the m2e-liferay configurator looks for the Liferay Maven plugin to be registered on the POM effective model for WAR type packages. If no Liferay Maven plugin is configured on the effective POM for the project, project configuration ceases. If the plugin is configured, the project configurator validates your project’s configuration, checking it’s POM, parent POM, and the project’s properties. The configurator detects invalid properties and reports them as errors in the IDE’s POM editor. There are a list of key properties that your project must specify in order for it to become a valid Liferay IDE project. The Using Maven Parent Plugin Projects tutorial identifies these properties and explains how they are used.

Liferay IDE’s Quick Fix features provide two options for resolving missing Liferay Maven properties in a Liferay Maven plugin project. To access the Quick Fix dialog, right-click the error and select Quick Fix. The following two options are presented:

  • Quick Fix Option 1: Create a new maven profile based on a Liferay runtime and attach it to the project.
  • Quick Fix Option 2: Select existing maven profiles to attach the current project.

Quick Fix Option 1: Creating a new Maven profile based on a Liferay runtime

  1. After you select this fix and click Finish. The Create New Maven Profile dialog appears with a profile that was generated automatically based on your runtime.

  2. The profile location is set to the project pom.xml by default. You can alternatively select your local settings.xml file.

  3. Click OK to finish quick fix.

Figure 3: Liferay IDEs Quick Fix feature lets you create a new Maven profile based on a Liferay runtime environment.

Figure 3: Liferay IDE's Quick Fix feature lets you create a new Maven profile based on a Liferay runtime environment.

Quick Fix Option 2: Selecting an existing Maven profile

  1. After you select this fix, the Select Active profile dialog appears. The profiles in Profile Id column on the left are read from your local settings.xml file.

  2. Add one or more active profiles to the Profile Id column on the right and then click OK.

  3. Click Finish to apply the profiles.

Figure 4: Liferay IDEs Quick Fix feature also lets you select any existing active Maven profile to attach to your project.

Figure 4: Liferay IDE's Quick Fix feature also lets you select any existing active Maven profile to attach to your project.

You can also manually specify required Liferay properties in either the Maven profile of the global settings.xml file (recommended), in the user settings.xml file, in the parent pom.xml, or in the project pom.xml directly. Each file is described below:

  • Global settings.xml: provides configuration for all plugins belonging to all users on a machine. This file resides in the ${MAVEN_HOME}/conf/settings.xml directory.

  • User settings.xml: provides configuration for all plugins belonging to a single user on a machine. This file resides in the ${USER_HOME}/.m2/settings.xml directory.

  • Parent pom.xml: provides configuration for all modules in the parent project.

  • Project pom.xml: provides configuration for the single plugin project.

You can think of these choices as a hierarchy for how your Maven plugins receive their properties. The project pom.xml overrides the parent pom.xml, the parent pom.xml overrides the user settings.xml file, and the user settings.xml file overrides the global settings.xml file.

Note that if a profile is active from your user settings.xml, its values override your properties in a POM. If you’d like to specify the properties in a POM, see the Using Liferay Maven Parent Plugin Projects tutorial for more details.

Here’s an example of what a Maven profile looks like inside the settings.xml file.

<profiles>
    <profile>
        <id>sample</id>
            <properties>
                <plugin.type>portlet</plugin.type>
                <liferay.version>6.2.0</liferay.version>
                <liferay.maven.plugin.version>6.2.0</liferay.maven.plugin.version>
                <liferay.auto.deploy.dir>E:\liferay-portal-tomcat-6.2.0-ce-ga1\deploy</liferay.auto.deploy.dir>
                <liferay.app.server.deploy.dir>E:\liferay-portal-tomcat-6.2.0-ce-ga1\tomcat-7.0.42\webapps</liferay.app.server.deploy.dir>
                <liferay.app.server.lib.global.dir>E:\liferay-portal-tomcat-6.2.0-ce-ga1\tomcat-7.0.42\lib\ext</liferay.app.server.lib.global.dir>
                <liferay.app.server.portal.dir>E:\liferay-portal-tomcat-6.2.0-ce-ga1\tomcat-7.0.42\webapps\ROOT</liferay.app.server.portal.dir>
            </properties>
    </profile>
</profiles>

Once you’ve configured a Maven profile in your user settings.xml file, you can activate the profile by right-clicking on [your project]PropertiesMaven and entering the profile IDs that supply the necessary settings into the Active Maven Profiles text field. For example, to reference the profile and properties we listed above, you’d enter sample for the Active Maven Profile. Once you’ve specified all the values, the configurator (m2e-liferay) validates the properties. If there are errors in the pom.xml file, the configurator marks them in Liferay IDE’s POM editor. If you fix a project error, update the project to persist the fix by right-clicking [your project]MavenUpdate Project.

After your POM configuration meets the requirements, the configurator installs the Liferay plugin facet and your Maven project is officially a Liferay IDE project!

You can execute Maven goals such as liferay:build-lang or liferay:build-db. You can access and execute any of your project’s Maven goals by right-clicking [your project]LiferayMaven and select the goal you want to execute. To learn more about Maven’s build lifecycle and plugin goals, visit Apache’s Build Lifecycle Basics guide.

When working with your pom.xml file in the IDE, you’ll notice that the editor has several different modes. Each mode is described in the following listing:

  • Overview: provides a graphical interface where you can add to and edit the pom.xml file.

  • Dependencies: provides a graphical interface for adding and editing dependencies in your project, as well as modifying the dependencyManagement section of the pom.xml file.

  • Effective POM: provides a read-only version of your project POM merged with its parent POM(s), settings.xml, and the settings in Eclipse for Maven.

  • Dependency Hierarchy: provides a hierarchical view of project dependencies and an interactive listing of resolved dependencies.

  • pom.xml: provides an editor for your POM’s source XML.

The figure below, shows the pom.xml file editor and its modes.

Figure 5: Liferay IDE provides five interactive modes to help you edit and organize your POM.

Figure 5: Liferay IDE provides five interactive modes to help you edit and organize your POM.

By taking advantage of these interactive modes, modifying and organizing your POM and its dependencies has never been easier!

Creating Liferay Maven Plugins from Liferay IDE

Deploying Liferay Plugins with Maven

Setting Up Liferay Maven Facets in Existing Liferay Maven Plugin Projects

« Installing and Managing Liferay Maven ArtifactsUsing Liferay Maven Parent Plugin Projects »
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