Is it possible to run services outside of the container?

[corridor]

We are trying to navigate the integration waters with Alfresco and the root context of liferay to add new portals which call on the services available in the spring context.

One of my first steps has been to try running the application within a maven 2 integration test project (and ultimately in another war file). Before I continue chasing down the exceptions thrown back at me while trying this, I'd like to ask:

Can alfresco be run outside of the alfresco webapp and outside of the container? When I try to load the startup around the existing application context I get an error that the CacheManager is not alive. Is this just the first in a long line of hurdles, or is there a simple way to accomplish this (e.g., an existing IT test)?

What we need is to call file folder operations, and these are not available in the web services stack. Web scripting isn't an option for us. Our alternatives appear to be either getting the services running within our webapp or adding a servlet/ws interface to the alfresco war to call into.

[mindthegab]

Maybe you could be interested in running Alfresco within jetty maven2 embedded ?
You can use this feature in the maven-alfresco-extension archetype we've just released in the forge, and also provide some feedback on its usage 

See forge project page

http://forge.alfresco.com/projects/m2alfresco/

and project website

http://repository.sourcesense.com/maven2-sites/maven-alfresco-extension-archetype-1.0.0/

in case it can help you…

Hope so!

Ciao,
Gab

PS:
Well ok, technically it's not out of a container, but it's soooo fast and smooth I had to tell you ))

[corridor]

Funny you mentioned it - I ended up creating my own alfresco archetype as well. It doesn't sound quite as thorough as yours, but it's allowed me to easily extend the api with embedded changes. Branding is a snap now too.

Thanks for chiming in!

[jdbrown]

Corridor - Were you able to successfully embed the Alfresco Spring services within your own web app using this approach?

[mindthegab]

Basically what happens in my archetype is:

- The archetype generates a project which has basically a maven-archetype-webapp structure
- It has a WAR dependency in the POM to the alfresco.war
- It produces a customized WAR in target overlaying the sources with alfresco (and potentially more, that's where it may come handy to you) war(s)
- You can run it all with a mvn jetty:run-exploded

Don't know your project, but it may help. I think that with an advanced maven-war-plugin configuration you could make it.

Ciao and HTH,
Gab