Prerequisites

In order to start developing plugins from CRM.COM, you will need the following:

• Oracle Java SE Development Kit 8 (JDK)
• Eclipse IDE
• Maven
• Wildfly Application Server v10.1 or later
• The CRM.COM Enterprise Archive (.ear file) - Provided by CRM.COM
• The CRM.COM Plugin SDK - Provided by CRM.COM

Step-By-Step Guide

1.Import CRM.COM archive into your IDE

Open Eclipse IDE and import the .ear file into your workspace as shown in the screenshots below.

2.Install CRM.COM plugin SDK

Extract CRM.COM Plugin SDK to a location in your filesystem where Wildfly Application Server has permission. 

Set the CRM_HOME system property in Wildfly's configuration file to the location the SDK was extracted.

3.Create plugin projects

To create a plugin project, you should run the provided create_plugin script found in the SDK and provide groupid, artifactid, and plugin type as the examples below.

There are 2 plugin types, ejb and web plugins. The ejb plugin projects should be used to implement business logic - the model and controller layers of the plugin and the web plugins should be used to implement the view layer of your plugin - the pages, reports, etc.

./create_plugin.sh com.example example-ejb-plugin ejb

./create_plugin.sh com.example example-web-plugin web

During the creation of the plugin skeleton, you will be prompted to define a version for your plugin and also confirm your configuration (groupId, artifactId and version).

After creating your plugins, you should also register them by updating the plugins descriptor

The plugins.xml file is used to register your plugins. Using this file, you can define your plugins and the organisations that your plugins will be enabled for.

For a full list of plugins file attributes, go to Plugins File Documentation.

<pluginconfig>
	<plugins>
		<plugin>
			<name>example-ejb-plugin</name>
			<description>Example ejb plugin</description>
			<enabled>true</enabled>
			<vendor>CRM.COM</vendor>
			<version>1.0.0</version>
			<organisations>
				<organisationid>SUBSCRIPTIONS_DB</organisationid>
				<organisationid>ADMIN_DB</organisationid>
			</organisations>
		</plugin>
		<plugin>
			<name>example-web-plugin</name>
			<description>Example web plugin</description>
			<enabled>true</enabled>
			<vendor>CRM.COM</vendor>
			<version>1.0.0</version>
			<organisations>
				<organisationid>SUBSCRIPTIONS_DB</organisationid>
				<organisationid>ADMIN_DB</organisationid>
			</organisations>
		</plugin>
	</plugins>
</pluginconfig>

4.Import plugin projects into your IDE

The last step before starting development is to import the created plugin projects into your Eclipse workspace.

After adding the plugin projects to your workspace, you should fix the classpath of your web plugin by adding the required crm-ui.jar.

This can be found under /WebContent/WEB-INF/lib directory of the Crm project.

To fix the classpath of the web plugin, right-click on the project → Properties →  Java Build Path, select the Libraries tab and click the "Add JARs..." button.

The next step is to add your web plugins to the deployment assembly of the Crm project and your ejb plugins to the deployment assembly of the CrmEAR project as demonstrated below.

Cache Properties File

From R13 onwards Hibernate second-level caching is used for the most of CRM.COM configuration entities. To enable this functionality you have to create cache.properties file and place it in the same directory as your custom project(s).

#enable/disable caching - true/false
enabled=true

#multicast address | multicast host name
multicastGroupAddress=224.0.0.251

#Multicast port
multicastGroupPort=4446
         
#0-255
#0 is restricted to the same host
#1 is restricted to the same subnet
#32 is restricted to the same site
#64 is restricted to the same region
#128 is restricted to the same continent
#255 is unrestricted
#The default value in Java is 1, which propagates to the same subnet. Change the timeToLive property to restrict or expand propagation.
timeToLive=1

#the hostname or IP of the interface to be used for sending and receiving multicast packets 
hostName=cyn1lnx007

#Mandatory - the port the listener listens on.
port=40001

#Optional - the number of seconds client sockets will wait when sending messages to this listener until they give up. By default this is 2000ms.
socketTimeoutMillis=2000

CRM.COM Java Projects

The CRM.COM .ear consists of 3 main Java projects, Crm.war, CrmAPI.war and CrmEJB.jar.

For each one of these projects, there is a corresponding custom Java project available in sample projects.

Depending on the custom to be implemented, the corresponding custom project should be modified.

Crm.war

This project includes all the files and code required to implement the View layer such as:

• Pages
• Reports ( WebContent/WEB-INF/reports )
• Printouts ( WebContent/WEB-INF/printouts )
• Dashboard components ( WebContent/WEB-INF/dashboards )

A detailed explanation of the view layer can be found at Developing the View layer

CrmAPI.war

This project includes all the code required to implement the CRM.COM Web API, that is, all the controller classes and Java classes required to parse the data in Web API requests and construct the data included in Web API response.

CrmEJB.jar

This project includes all files and code required to implement the Model and Controller layer. 

More specifically, this project includes the Data object classes, the Business object classes and Service (process) classes.

In addition, this project includes all the metadata required for the application to function correctly.

• Application metadata
• Module metadata
• Menu options metadata
• Entity metadata
• Entity fields metadata
• Variable metadata
• Label translations to specific languages

A detailed explanation of the model layer can be found at Developing the Model layer, and a detailed explanation of the controller layer can be found at Developing the Controller layer