Speedup jetty-maven-plugin startup time

• Create a own profile - this allows more flexibility

<profile>
    <id>jetty-run</id>
</profile>

• Add jetty-maven-plugin to the profile. We also configure the plugin to get all resources from the src directory and only scan the java sources

<plugin>
    <groupId>org.mortbay.jetty</groupId>
    <artifactId>jetty-maven-plugin</artifactId>
    <configuration>
        <webAppSourceDirectory>${basedir}/src/main/webapp</webAppSourceDirectory>
        <scanIntervalSeconds>2</scanIntervalSeconds>
        <scanTargets>
            <scanTarget>src/main/java</scanTarget>
        </scanTargets>
    </configuration>
    <executions>
        <execution>
            <phase>package</phase>
            <goals>
                <goal>run</goal>
            </goals>
        </execution>
    </executions>
</plugin>

• Skip unit testing via profile property

<properties>
    <maven.test.skip>true</maven.test.skip>
</properties>

• Skip building the WAR file

<plugin>
    <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
    <artifactId>maven-war-plugin</artifactId>
    <executions>
        <execution>
            <id>default-war</id>
            <phase>none</phase>
        </execution>
    </executions>
</plugin>

• If you optimize and aggregate your javascript or CSS files, skip this too! Compression of this files is on localhost just prevents debugging. We created an own servlet which merges the files on-the-fly. Changes on JS or CSS will be also available after F5 in your browser - that's the nice side effect of the servlet :)
• Skip optimzation (we use the primefaces-extensions plugin for this)

<plugin>
    <groupId>org.primefaces.extensions</groupId>
    <artifactId>resources-optimizer-maven-plugin</artifactId>
    <executions>
        <execution>
            <id>optimize</id>
            <phase>none</phase>
        </execution>
    </executions>
</plugin>

• Create a servlet to merge the resources (we also implemented a init-param called includeDirectory to read all source files)

@Override
protected void doGet(final HttpServletRequest request, final HttpServletResponse response)
    throws ServletException, IOException
{
    final OutputStream ouputStream = response.getOutputStream();
    response.setContentType(getServletConfig().getInitParameter("contentType");

    final List<File> filesToMerge = getFiles(getServletContext().getRealPath(getServletConfig().getInitParameter("includeDirectory")));

    for (final File fileToMerge : filesToMerge) {
    final FileInputStream inputStream = new FileInputStream(fileToMerge);
        IOUtils.copy(inputStream, ouputStream);
        inputStream.close();
    }

    ouputStream.close();
}

• For example, if your optimizer plugin aggregates your javascript files to "/javascript/bundle.js", we must overwrite this URL via a servlet mapping.
  We just create a second web.xml (this is just for localhost and jetty) with the name "web-localhost.xml" in your "src/main/webapp/WEB-INF" directory with the following servlet mapping

<servlet>
    <servlet-name>Merge Javascript Servlet</servlet-name>
    <servlet-class>xxx.servlet.MergeResourceServlet</servlet-class>
    <init-param>
        <param-name>includeDirectory</param-name>
        <param-value>/javascript/</param-value>
    </init-param>
    <init-param>
        <param-name>contentType</param-name>
        <param-value>application/x-javascript</param-value>
    </init-param>
</servlet>
<servlet-mapping>
    <servlet-name>Merge Javascript Servlet</servlet-name>
    <url-pattern>/javascript/bundle.js</url-pattern>
</servlet-mapping>

• Now we configure jetty to use our "web-localhost.xml" as overrideDescriptor

<plugin>
    <groupId>org.mortbay.jetty</groupId>
    <artifactId>jetty-maven-plugin</artifactId>
    <configuration>
        <webAppConfig>
            <overrideDescriptor>src/main/webapp/WEB-INF/web-localhost.xml</overrideDescriptor>
        </webAppConfig>
        ...
    </configuration>
</plugin>

Finished! You will be able to start jetty now via "mvn package -P jetty-run".

Introducing PrimeFaces Extensions

In march 2011, I founded my first open source project called "PrimeFaces Extensions".

Our new application required a functionality to resize/rotate images and select a part of the image to do OCR (Optical Character Recognition), both with client-server communication.

I already had experience with JSF2 and PrimeFaces 2.2, so I decided to develop those components in my spare time based on PrimeFaces and commit it to a open source platform (Google Code).

After talking to Cagatay Civici (PrimeFaces founder and lead developer), I got green light to start the "PrimeFaces Extensions" project.

The first release contained this two components: ImageRotateAndResize and ImageAreaSelect.

Months later Oleg Varaksin joined my project as second lead and developer.
For the first big release (0.2), we developed many new components like CKEditor, MasterDetail, ResetInput and Layout.


Nevertheless, after 1,5 years of hard work, we can proudly say that we created some really unique and useful components which are used by many PrimeFaces users and also used in real-world applications!

Currently we are 6 developers around the world and we have about 25 components, functions, behaviors and converters.

Also some of our components and enhancements are now part of PrimeFaces and we also have a little influence on JSF 2.2 with our ResetInput component (JIRA Issue).


Thanks to Cagatay for PrimeFaces, Oleg for the great cooperation and the other PrimeFaces Extensions developers for their great work!