Adding Resources to Plugins

In most cases Iotellect Server plugins provide various resources, such as pre-configured alerts, reports, widgets, dashboards, models, scheduler jobs, etc. Once such a plugin is installed, resources provided by it can be managed like any other resources included into Iotellect and derived out-of-the-box solutions.

Use Resource Packs module to prepare a new resource plugin without any Java development.

Building a Plugin with Resources

Including resources into a plugin is rather simple:

  • Develop and test a resource (such as a dashboard) using any visual tools provided by Iotellect
  • Open resource configuration in a Properties Editor, click on export button in a toolbar (), and save resource configuration to a *.prs file.
  • In the source code of your plugin, create a new empty package under plugin's main class package. Call it, for example, resources.
  • Create an empty class in this package, e.g. ResourceAccessor. This class will be used to access the resource files from the source code.
  • Put your *.prs resource file(s) to the above package's folder.
  • Override the install(ContextManager cm) method of your plugin's main class. In the overriding method, create an instance of PropertiesResourceBuilder class for each resource and register them in the resource repository by calling RepositoryManager.add(ResourceBuilder builder).

PropertiesResourceBuilder and RepositoryManager classes are defined in server-core.jar archive available in any Iotellect Server installation.

Once the resource builders are created and registered, rebuild you plugin and restart the server. You should then be able to see your new resources in either Create/Update Resources table or Delete Resources table (if a resource with such name already exists).

Different constructors of PropertiesResourceBuilder class accept some or all of the following arguments:

  • version - version of the resource, an integer number that starts from 1 and should be incremented each time a resource template is modified.
  • contextPattern - path of the container context that will hold the resulting resource context. Since the resource can in most cases be created for different users, the pattern differs from a regular context path by that, it can contain % sign that will be substituted by the username of a user for which the resource is being created/updated/deleted. The path can be easily constructed by calling static methods of ContextUtils class, e.g. ContextUtils.dashboardsContextPath(ContextUtils.USERNAME_PATTERN).
  • name - name of the resource context that will be created, e.g. networkDeviceOverview. Our best practice guidelines do not recommend including resource type into its description, for example networkDeviceOverviewDashboard is not recommended as a name.

Resource name must match the name of *.prs template file (without extension).

  • typeDescription - human-readable description of the resource type, e.g. Dashboard.
  • category - a human-readable description of a category the resource will belong to, e.g. Network Management.
  • description - human-readable description of the resource itself, e.g. Network Device Overview. Out best practice guidelines do not recommend including resource type into its description, for example Network Device Overview Dashboard is not recommended as a description.
  • autoCreate - a flag that defines whether the resource should be created upon first launch of the server in a regular installation
  • resourceClass - the above resource class located in the same package with resource's *.prs file.
  • group - a resource group to put the resource into.

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