FullStack Project Plugins

Gradle plugins for the automated management of a FullStack project based on convention over configuration and a standardized project structure.

Implementation description

FullStack application projects are compositions of multiple sub component projects that may be based on different technologies and programming languages.

An example would be an e-commerce platform that's a product of the following five components:

• Backend written in Go
• Frontend written in Angular
• Database based on SQL
• Search Engine based on ElasticSearch
• AI-based algorithm for product recommendation based on TensorFlow and Python

Each of these elements uses another technology or programming language. In many cases each of this projects has it's own project structure conventions and is stored independently of the other component projects. Besides that the type of the source control management might by different.

The disadvantage of this strategy is that if a developer wants to verify the current state of the application, multiple sub projects need to be checked out and build independently from each other and published to a central repository (e. g. mavenLocal()) which might affect productivity. Breaking changes in specific components may also occur because the components do not know about the current development state of each other.

The aim of this repository is the definition on a clean predictable project structure for bundling the component projects of complex full stack projects. Gradle, the two Gradle plugins provided by the repository 'com.github.ptkltm.development.fullstackproject.gradleplugin' and the Recursive Include Plugin provided by the repository 'com.github.ptkltm.development.recursiveinclude.gradleplugin' will be the clue for connecting the component projects together.

Each project is based on the following semantic components:

Semantic Component	Description	Example for naming convention (always case-sensitive)	Example for relative location (always based on lower-case)
Domain	A Domain may encapsulate multiple FullStack projects (Platforms).	Com.Github.Ptkltm.Development	/com.github.ptkltm.development
Platform	Each Platform represents a FullStack project and is able to contain multiple 'Implementation' projects.	RecursiveInclude	/com.github.ptkltm.development/recursiveinclude
Implementation	The technology the domain-specific model/algorithm is implemented with.	GradlePlugin	/com.github.ptkltm.development/recursiveinclude/com.github.ptkltm.dsl.recursiveinclude.gradleplugin
Implementation sub projects	Sub projects of the 'Implementation' project.		/com.github.ptkltm.development/recursiveinclude/com.github.ptkltm.dsl.recursiveinclude.gradleplugin/com.github.ptkltm.dsl.recursiveinclude.gradleplugin.model

Based on this information all FullStack projects make use of the following three Gradle plugins:

• com.github.ptkltm.development.fullstackproject.domain

  The plugin 'com.github.ptkltm.development.fullstackproject.domain' has to be applied to the build.gradle(.kts) file of the 'Domain' project at the root-level of the project structure. It's responsible for defining four tasks - 'clean', 'build', 'publishAllPublicationsToMavenRootRepository' and 'wrapper' that depend on the same-named tasks in all sub builds ('Implementation' projects).

  The 'build' and 'wrapper' tasks have no additional logic than executing all dependent tasks but 'clean' and 'publishAllPublicationsToMavenRootRepository' perform additional logic:

  • 'clean' deletes the build directory of the 'Domain' project.

  • 'publishAllPublicationsToMavenRootRepository' copies the artifacts of all 'Implementation' Maven repositories in an additional directory inside the build directory of the 'Domain' project with the name of the domain project followed by the '.repository' suffix.

    This task is defined for getting a temporary project-specific Maven repository without being coupled to the Maven local repository that's used across the whole system.

    If other projects outside the FullStack project want to use the latest development state they'll be able to define a Maven repository with a relative path to the repository inside the build directory of the 'Domain' project and get a clean state of the latest build artifacts.

• com.github.ptkltm.development.fullstackproject.implementation

  'com.github.ptkltm.development.fullstackproject.implementation' has to be applied to the build.gradle(.kts) file of all 'Implementation' projects. It sets the group name of the 'Implementation' project and all it's sub projects to the project name and defines the tasks 'clean', 'build' and 'publishAllPublicationsToMavenRootRepository' being dependent on the same-named tasks in the sub projects.

  After the evaluation of the sub projects each sub project with no explicitly set version will get the version of the root project automatically.

  Apart from that all projects containing the 'maven-publish' Gradle plugin will be extended by a Maven publication with the name 'mavenRoot'.

  The 'build' task only executes the 'build' tasks of all sub projects but 'clean' and 'publishAllPublicationsToMavenRootRepository' provide additional logic:

  • 'clean' deletes the build directory of the 'Implementation' root project.
  • 'publishAllPublicationsToMavenRootRepository' copies the artifacts of the Maven publications of all sub projects of an 'Implementation' in an additional directory inside the build directory of the 'Implementation' root project with the name of the root 'Implementation' project followed by the '.repository' suffix.

• com.github.ptkltm.development.recursiveinclude

  The Recursive Include Plugin has the ability to include sub builds and sub projects.

  It's located at another repository because it can be used independently of the other plugins. In the context of FullStack projects it's applied at the settings.gradle(.kts) files of the 'Domain' and all 'Implementation' projects - at the 'Domain' project-level it includes all ('Implementation') sub builds via Gradle's composite build feature and at the 'Implementation' level it automatically includes all sub projects of the 'Implementation' project it's applied to.

Current Version

Usage

The plugins with the ids 'com.github.ptkltm.development.fullstackproject.domain' and 'com.github.ptkltm.development.fullstackproject.implementation' are hosted at Bintray and can be applied via the following configurations to either a build.gradle.kts or a build.gradle file.

• Configuration of the build.gradle(.kts) file in 'Domain' type projects:

  • build.gradle.kts file (if the Kotlin syntax is used)

  buildscript {
      repositories {
          jcenter()
      }
      dependencies {
          classpath(
              group = "com.github.ptkltm.development.fullstackproject.gradleplugin",
              name = "com.github.ptkltm.development.fullstackproject.gradleplugin",
              version = "0.1.0"
          )
      }
  }
  
  apply(plugin = "com.github.ptkltm.development.fullstackproject.domain")

  • build.gradle file (if the Groovy syntax is used)

  buildscript {
      repositories {
          jcenter()
      }
      dependencies {
          classpath 'com.github.ptkltm.development.fullstackproject.gradleplugin:com.github.ptkltm.development.fullstackproject.gradleplugin:0.1.0'
      }
  }
  
  apply plugin: 'com.github.ptkltm.development.fullstackproject.domain'

• Configuration of the build.gradle(.kts) file in all 'Implementation' type projects:

  • build.gradle.kts file (if the Kotlin syntax is used)

  buildscript {
      repositories {
          jcenter()
      }
      dependencies {
          classpath(
              group = "com.github.ptkltm.development.fullstackproject.gradleplugin",
              name = "com.github.ptkltm.development.fullstackproject.gradleplugin",
              version = "0.1.0"
          )
      }
  }
  
  apply(plugin = "com.github.ptkltm.development.fullstackproject.implementation")

  • build.gradle file (if the Groovy syntax is used)

  buildscript {
      repositories {
          jcenter()
      }
      dependencies {
          classpath 'com.github.ptkltm.development.fullstackproject.gradleplugin:com.github.ptkltm.development.fullstackproject.gradleplugin:0.1.0'
      }
  }
  
  apply plugin: 'com.github.ptkltm.development.fullstackproject.implementation'

• Configuration of the settings.gradle(.kts) file in all 'Domain' and 'Implementation' type projects:

  • settings.gradle.kts file (if the Kotlin syntax is used)

  buildscript {
      repositories {
          jcenter()
      }
      dependencies {
          classpath(
              group = "com.github.ptkltm.development.recursiveinclude.gradleplugin",
              name = "com.github.ptkltm.development.recursiveinclude.gradleplugin",
              version = "0.4.0"
          )
      }
  }
  
  apply(plugin = "com.github.ptkltm.development.recursiveinclude")

  • settings.gradle file (if the Groovy syntax is used)

  buildscript {
      repositories {
          jcenter()
      }
      dependencies {
          classpath 'com.github.ptkltm.development.recursiveinclude.gradleplugin:com.github.ptkltm.development.recursiveinclude.gradleplugin:0.4.0'
      }
  }
  
  apply plugin: 'com.github.ptkltm.development.recursiveinclude'

Building the source code

• git clone https://github.com/ptkltm/com.github.ptkltm.development.fullstackproject.gradleplugin.git
• cd com.github.ptkltm.development.fullstackproject.gradleplugin
• ./gradlew (on Linux or macOS) / gradlew.bat (on Windows)

License information

Copyright [yyyy] [name of copyright owner]

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at

   http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License.