Spring BaseX View

An experiment with using XQuery for view rendering in Spring Boot web application. The XQuery processor is provided by BaseX running in embedded mode.

Only the default view resolver was replaced. All other Spring Boot features still applies normally.

Dependencies

With the exception of Java 8, the dependencies are handled by the Gradle wrapper in the project.

• Java 8
• Gradle 6.1.1 (for build)
• Spring Boot 2.2.4
• BaseX 9.3.1
• Saxon 9.9.1

Running the Application

Defaults

• Port: 8080
• View files location: {APPLICATION FOLDER}/view/
• URL paths: URL paths are relative to the application folder (not fully tested)

Run the Project In-Place

Execute ./gradlew bootRun to run the application in-place.

Building the Project

Execute ./gradlew build to build the project. The resulting JAR file will be located at build/libs/spring-basex-view-xxx.jar.

Required Resources for Distribution

These are relative to application folder or wherever the application is started from):

Name	Description
.basex	This is BaseX configuration file
spring-basex-view-xxx.jar	The application JAR
views	The application will look for XQuery files in this folder. Note that the XQuery file must have .xql extension.
xqmodules	This folder is for storing XQuery modules. XQuery modules located in this folder will automatically be available to XQuery running in BaseX XQuery processor. These modules can be imported by namespace without specifying the physical path of the module's file.
BaseXData	This folder will be automatically created by BaseX when it's database feature is used (e.g. storing XML).

Running the Distribution

Once all the necessary files are available, execute java -jar spring-basex-view-xxx.jar to start the application.