Prerequisites

Development Environment

The FirstSpirit Module development and build process requires a Java environment including a Java Development Kit (JDK), Apache Ant and--optionally, but highly recommended--an integrated development environment (IDE).

For information about supported JDK versions, please see the requirements for FirstSpirit servers in “Technical requirements and recommendations (→Documentation for Administrators)” (FirstSpirit Server).

Libraries

FirstSpirit module development requires several JAR files to be available in the IDE's and compiler's class path.

Required for Development and Compilation
In order to use the FirstSpirit Access and Developer APIs for plug-in development, the following JAR file must be available in the class path used while compiling Java classes:

• fs-isolated-runtime.jar
  located in the FirstSpirit installation directory, in the subpath [serverRoot]/data/fslib.
  
  This JAR file contains the interfaces of the FirstSpirit Access and Developer APIs as well as supporting classes which are required during compilation but which are not included in the FirstSpirit APIs.

Required for FirstSpirit API Conformity Check
A separate JAR file may be used to verify that custom FirstSpirit extension implementation code only uses officially supported interfaces of the FirstSpirit Access and Developer APIs:

• fs-api.jar
  located in the FirstSpirit installation directory, in the subpath [serverRoot]/data/fslib.
  
  This JAR file contains only interfaces and classes explicitly offered in the FirstSpirit Access and Developer APIs and may be used to ascertain that only officially supported access and extension interfaces of FirstSpirit are used in custom extension code, e.g. by configuring scope-based colors for interface usages from fs-api.jar and fs-isolated-runtime.jar in the IDE.

Example Modules

Crownpeak provides several module source code packages for download. These packages contain sample implementations of plug-in types described in this chapter as well as in the Thema dieser Dokumentation (→Manual for Module Developers) (“beta” and currently available in German only).

These module source code packages may be downloaded on the page Example Modules.