In my previous post, I explained the development process of custom taskflows targeted for WebCenter Portal Server. We also learned that deployment process requires shared library type deployment. In this post, I will talk about FlexDeploy based automated build process to create shared libraries from JDeveloper applications – Portal Server extension and custom fusion web application.
We will setup automated process such that the built .war files contain empty web.xml file. The Oracle whitepaper http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/middleware/webcenter/portal/learnmore/wcp-createcustomtaskflow-2135965.pdf indicates a very important warning – Double check the WEB.XML file that there are no entries within the file.
Setup JDeveloper Instance
Let’s setup JDeveloper instance to compile and build applications.
Setup FlexDeploy Build Workflow
Let’s define a workflow to build WAR shared library files.
We will first define a custom property on the Workflow main page to indicate a Web Project name that will generate the WAR file. Property is configured to be Project scope, so each Project utilizing this workflow will need to configure value for this property.
Now let’s define the steps of the workflow. The main steps are:
- Export and Tag SVN source. (in this example, we are using SVN, but GIT or other SCM systems can be utilized as well). This step is very common for most workflows as it creates correlation between FlexDeploy and specific tag in SCM system.
- Replace web.xml file with contents of fd-web.xml. fd-web.xml file is dummy xml file which contains empty web-app tag.
- Run JDeveloper deployment profile to build .war file. Here we are using the JDeveloper plugin that allows execution of Deployment profiles to generate .war files.
- Copy .war file to artifacts directory for use with deployment to various environments.
Setup FlexDeploy Project
Now let’s configure FlexDeploy project for FDCustomTaskflows, which is Fusion Web application for custom taskflows. Project is configured for build and deploy workflows & instances, SVN path details and various Properties.
Properties for project are automatically displayed in the properties tab, you can fill in appropriate values.
Execute Project Build
Now we are ready to perform deployment. Click Build button to request build.
You can see results of workflow execution in UI including detailed log messages for each Plugin operation.
At the end of workflow execution, you will see the Artifacts as well in the UI.
Now let’s configure and build SFIPortalServerExtension and it will result in Artifact as shown below.
In the next blog post in this series, we will look at automated deploy workflow to deploy build artifacts to WebCenter Portal Server.