Using the Custom Controller

Let us suppose that we have written the class com.escenic.framework.controller.impl.CustomController which extends the class com.escenic.framework.controller.AbstractController. Let us also assume that this class is in a separate maven module and packaged in a jar file. We now want to use this class as the controller for one of the standard widgets. In the following paragraphs, we will describe how to do so in the context of the Widget Framework Core distribution.

  • Please ensure that the maven module for the custom controller contains a properties file named CustomController.properties in the folder /src/main/resources/com/escenic/servlet/default-config/com/escenic/framework/controller/impl. The content of the file will be as follows :

    $class=com.escenic.framework.controller.impl.CustomController

  • Run mvn clean install command in the custom maven module so that the jar file is created and installed in your local repository.

  • Download and extract Widget Framework Core distribution. Go to misc/widgets folder.

  • Choose one of the core widgets for modification. For the sake of discussion, let us suppose that we have chosen the 'ad' widget.

  • Create a properties file named ControllerFactory.properties in the widget-core-ad/src/main/resources/com/escenic/servlet/default-config/com/escenic/framework/controller/factory folder. The contents of the file will be as follows :

    controller.ad=/com/escenic/framework/controller/impl/CustomController

  • Run mvn clean install command in misc/widgets folder.

  • Then go to misc/demo folder. Edit the pom.xml file in that folder and add the dependency to the jar file that contains the custom controller and relevant configuration files. The dependency should be added in compile scope to ensure that the jar file containing the custom controller is present in WEB-INF/lib folder of the demo war after the build.

  • Run mvn clean install command in misc/demo folder. During the build, all the ControllerFactory.properties files in various modules will be merged. The merged file will contain the line that we placed in the ControllerFactory.properties file specific to the 'ad' widget.

  • Deploy the demo webapp war file that is created in misc/demo/target folder.

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