Creating Plugins

To, for example, extend the RA functionality considerably, possibly including additional database tables as well, you may consider using the EJBCA plugin scheme which provides custom applications with the core EJBCA environment data. In the directory src/samples/plug-ins you will find a couple of complete demo plugins that can be added to an existing EJBCA installation without any configuration.

Including Plugins in EJBCA

There are two methods of creating and including your own plugins in EJBCA:

• Including External JARs on the Classpath
• Including External Source Directories

Including External JARs on the Classpath 

This may be the easier method for some and involves pre-compiling your own JAR (preferably using one of our plugin interfaces and a manifest file, see below) and making sure it's available on the classpath. To enable this:

1. Modify the file plugin.properties.sample (renaming it to for example widget.properties) and place it in either conf/plugins in your local EJBCA directory or under ejbca-custom/conf/plugins if you're using an external configuration directory.
   
   

2. Make sure that the file contains the following line where the directory points to the location of your compiled JAR file. 

   plugin.ejbca.lib.dir=/home/demo/myplugin/dist/

   CODE

You can also add custom language files in the plugin jar file:

myjar.jar
  |
  +-- com/
  |     |
  |     +-- example/
  |           |
  |           +-- MyPlugin.class
  |
  +-- languages/
  |     |
  |     +-- languagefile.en.properties

Including External Source Directories

The other variant is to create a source directory alongside EJBCA from which EJBCA can copy source files from. While this variant may be simpler to maintain due to sourcing the EJBCA libs directly from EJBCA, it may also be more difficult to set up a development environment against. To enable this:

1. Modify the file plugin.properties.sample (renaming it to for example widget.properties) and place it in either conf/plugins in your local EJBCA directory or under ejbca-custom/conf/plugins if you're using an external configuration directory.

2. Make sure that the file contains the following line to point to the build file of your plugin. 

   plugin.ejbca.ant.file=/home/demo/myplugin/build.xml

   CODE

For more information on setting this up, see plugin.properties.sample.

Sample Plugin

A basic sample plugin is provided in the directory src/samples/plugins. It contains a web application and an EJB bean.

To deploy and test the plugin, run the following:

ant build -Dejbca.plugin.conf.path=/home/user/Dev/workspace/ejbca-trunk/src/samples/plugins
ant deployear 

You can then access the plugin webapp at http://localhost:8080/ejbca/pluginweb/.

For more information, refer to the README file located in the directory src/samples/plugins.

Plugin Interfaces 

Several plugin interfaces allow you to extend functionality using your own classes. Using any of the following interfaces, including a manifest file in the JAR and making sure that the JAR is available on the classpath (see Including External JARs on the Classpath) during the construction of the EJBCA EAR, will lead to the plugins automatically appearing where relevant. 

Since EJBCA is open source, you can modify anything you like, or use any of the interfaces and create your own add-ons. For more information on how to manage add-ons and plugins, see Adding Rules to Regulate Values of End Entity Fields.