Eclipse Enterprise Content Repository

The Eclipse Enterprise Content Repository Project (ECR) is a proposed open source project under the Eclipse Runtime Project.

Abstract

The scope of the project is to provide developers with a reference implementation for a content repository that is accessible through APIs. It will serve as a solid and efficient base for developing Content Applications. By "Content Applications," we mean any application with a primary function of managing structured or semi-structured content in any way. These could be Document Management applications, Digital Asset Management applications, Case or Record Management applications, Web Content Management applications, or simply business-specific applications.

You can read more about the project on http://www.eclipse.org/proposals/rt.ecr/

For amore detailed reference guide and tutorial, please look at the wiki: https://github.com/nuxeo/org.eclipse.ecr/wiki.

How to build and run

This project is built using Maven Tycho. The only requirement is to use the 3.0.3 version of maven. To build the p2 repository, you have to invoke the following command line:

$ mvn -f build/pom.xml clean install

If you need to use both maven 2 and maven 3 on the same machine you should consider using:

$ mvn -f build/pom.xml -Dmaven.repo.local=/path/to/m3/repository clean install

to use another local repository for maven 3. Or you may want to make an alias and use different maven settings.xml files.

The repository built is located in build/repository/target/repository. At this stage, you're able to load ECR in eclipse.

Configuring Eclipse IDE

To be able to use Eclipse IDE when working with ECR you must have the PDE feature installed in your Eclipse.

To configure your Eclipse you need to create a target platform that will be used when developing ECR plugins.

To create the ECR target platform:

• Open Eclipse Preferences.
• Go to Install/Update > Available Software Sites. Click on Add ...
• Put a name like Local ECR and click on Local.. button
• Choose the repository you built in build/repository/target/repository
• Then go to Plug-in Development > Target Platform preference page.
• Click on Add ... to define your new target platform.
• Select Nothing: Start with an empty ... then put a name like Local ECR in the text box at the top.
• Click on Add ... button and then select Software Site and choose the local repository site you created before.
• Here you may want to select both categories: ECR and ECR SDK. The SDK category is useful only if you need ECR sources. If no categories are listed make sure you checked the Group by Category option.
• Before pressing Finish make sure you UNCHECK Include requires software!
• Press Finish, Activate your new Target Platform and Apply you changes.

Now you can start working with ECR, and create your first ECR plugin.

Launching ECR inside Eclipse

After activating the ECR target platform you can launch the ECR product directly in your Eclipse.

For this you should create a new Run Configuration as follow:

• Open Run > Run Configurations ...
• Create a new OSGi Framework run configuration.
• Put a name let say ECR.
• Set Default Auto-Start to false.
• Select the org.eclipse.ecr.application bundle from the list and set its autostart flag to true.

You are done. Launch your server now.

By default ECR will create a ~/.ecr directory as its working directory.

Also, the Jetty HTTP server will listen at port 8080. You can change this by defining the following some system property in the VM args of your launch configuration:

org.eclipse.equinox.http.jetty.http.port

You can also use any property defined by Jetty bundle to configure the HTTP server.

Launching ECR from command line

To launch ECR from command line you need to perform an additional build task. After building the repository go into build/product folder and execute:

$ ./build.sh

The repository generated before will be used to generate a product with a run.sh (and run.bat) shell script and a configuration folder required to start the ECR application. The product will be generated in build/product/target/ecr-default.zip. To test it, unzip the product and use the run.sh (or run.bat on Windows) script to launch it.
The ECR server will starts and listen at port 8080.

Note that there is no build.bat script provided for Windows. On Windows you can build the product by first building the ecr-install JAR (using mvn install) then building the product by executing the following command from the product directory:

java -jar ecr-installer/target/ecr-installer-{version}.jar -r ..\repository\target\repository -p cmis,h2 target\ecr-default.zip

where ecr-installer/target/ecr-installer-{version}.jar is the ecr-installer JAR built by maven.

Installing ECR without checking out the sources

First download the installer.

Then run from the console

java -jar ecr-installer.jar ECR_INSTALL_DIR

where ECR_INSTALL_DIR is the directory where you want to install ECR (it will be created if not exists). If the target directory is not specified, ECR will be installed int he current directory.

You may have to wait while the the installer will download ~25MB of data. When done, go to the install directory and launch the run.sh script (or run.bat on Windows).

Note that the run.bat Windows script was only tested on Wine.

Accessing ECR through HTTP

You have 2 options in accessing a remote ECR server:

1. Use the automation REST API - available at http://localhost:8080/ecr/automation
2. Use the CMIS API - available at http://localhost:8080/ecr/cmis

Of course these URLs are designed for client applications and not for human access. If you want to expose the repository content using a Web User Interface, you can create your own plugins. (We may also provide this in a future).

Note that any access to ECR through HTTP requires authentication. The default administrator account is:

• Username: admin
• Password: admin

You can find more information about developing with ECR in the Wiki section

Using the ECR Shell

You can use the ECR Shell (a command line application) to connect to an ECR server to create documents, browse the repository etc. The shell is available as a standalone application (running in terminal on Unix like systems or on Windows). Download ECR Shell from maven.nuxeo.org

To connect to the server type connect http://localhost:8080/ecr/automation -u admin.

See complete documentation of the ECR Shell on doc.nuxeo.com.

You can also install the shell as an Eclipse Plugin (tested on Helios and Indigo) with the following update site: http://osgi.nuxeo.org/p2/ecr/ide/. To connect to a development instance type connect -u admin. You can also connect to other remote ECR servers by specifying the right automation URL when connecting.

To launch the ECR Shell view got to Window > Show View > Other ... and select ECR > ECR Shell.

Enjoy!

About Nuxeo

Nuxeo provides a modular, extensible Java-based open source software platform for enterprise content management and packaged applications for document management, digital asset management and case management. Designed by developers for developers, the Nuxeo platform offers a modern architecture, a powerful plug-in model and extensive packaging capabilities for building content applications.

More information on: http://www.nuxeo.com/