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Architecture

Custom Java Plugins

AMI supports functionality for writing different Java plugins for alternative datasources, authentication, custom objects, and more. There are a few guidelines to follow for extending the platform to suit your needs.

Overview

If you require specific plugins from 3forge, we will asign them to you as zips or .jar files that you can download from the client portal. Otherwise, you are welcome to write your own custom Java plugins.

To see a full list of the types of plugins that AMI supports and more in-depth guides on how to configure them accordingly, see the end of this document.

General Setup

Plugins that we provide and any that you write should be written in Java and then exported as .jar files. Some setup is required, otherwise the AMI client will not launch correctly. In both cases, you should be aware of the following requirements:

Requirements

  • Plugins should follow the correct plugin interface from our list.
  • Plugins should be packaged and then exported as .jar files. We recommend using an IDE like eclipse.
  • Plugins must be correctly included in the local.properties configuration file. This will vary depending on your specific case.
  • Plugins should have a universally unique ID.
  • Plugins will need to implement and extend classes and methods in AMI's autocode.jar and out.jar files.

Creating and Importing Plugins

  1. Navigate to your client portal and download the assigned plugin .jar files.
  2. In the root directory of your AMI installation, go to ami/amione/lib and paste the .jar files into there.
  3. In your local.properties file (located in ami/amione/config), add the appropriate configuration line which will be given to you.
  1. Identify which plugin interface you wish to use, e.g a custom object.
  2. In your chosen Java IDE, e.g eclipse, create a new package and your Java files.

  3. Each plugin interface will require you to import different methods from AMI. You will need to include these in your build path using the autocode.jar and out.jar files, which are located in ami/amione/lib.

  4. Add the compiled classes to the classpath. You can do this by saving and exporting your package as a .jar file into the ami/amione/lib directory.

  5. Update your local.properties file with the appropriate properties. For example, for the custom object TestClass: 
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    ami.web.amiscript.custom.classes=my_package.TestClass
ami.center.amiscript.custom.classes=my_package.TestClass
    You can then use this plugin the next time you run AMI.

Note

Plugins are instantiated and initialized during startup. Failure of a plugin to start will cause AMI to hard fail on startup. The exact reason for failure can be found in the log files.

More detail on each plugin type and their corresponding properties is in the plugin list below.

Plugin List