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Working with Platform Assets

To fully show the power and the collaboration features behind platform assets, you will perform several different steps in this tutorial. The steps will include creating a model, assigning this model to an access, creating the respective platform assets, deploying them to a repository and setting up your platform from scratch based on your new assets.

On this page

  1. Prerequisites
  2. Creating an Asset
  3. Closing an Asset
  4. Deploying an Asset
  5. Adding Dependencies
  6. Setting up Environment Based on Your New Assets

Prerequisites

It is vital to set up you environment correctly and to know what platform assets do and what different natures they come in before you dive into this tutorial.

For more information, see Platform Assets and perform the steps described on Setting Up Environment for Platform Assets.

Creating an Asset

In this procedure you will create a simple model and package it as an asset with the ManipulationPriming nature.

For more information about asset natures, see Platform Assets.

  1. Using Modeler, create a new car-model model with only one entity type: Car.

    For information how to use Modeler, see Using Modeler.

  2. Add two properties to the Car entity: a String licensePlate and an integer power.
  3. Commit your changes.

Closing an Asset

When you feel you are done working on your asset, it's time to close it.

As you may already know, all the manipulations are stored in the trunk asset of the respective access. Manipulations done in Control Center are stored in the trunk-cortex asset, while manipulations done in a custom CollaborativeSmoodAccess are stored in the respective trunk asset of that access.

Closing the asset we just created means that an artifact with the ManipulationPriming nature is being created, containing the manipulation files as well as zipped resources, if there are any.

A best practice is to give the asset a name which reflects the manipulations stored inside. Additionally, you can add a comment which is also stored as a manipulation (containing the comment description, the user who created the comment and the date). Closing an asset with adding a comment also wraps those manipulations in a block. You can think of this functionality as something similar to a commit in a version control system.

To close an asset:

  1. In Control Center, switch to the Platform Setup access by clicking the cogwheel icon in the top-right corner and clicking Switch to -> Platform Setup.
  2. In the Platform Setup access, navigate to the Trunk Asset entry point. Your trunk asset is visible there.
  3. Right-click trunk-cortex and select Platform Setup -> Close. If you are on a different access than cortex, then your trunk asset's name is trunk-accessName, where accessName is the name of the access.

    For more information on available actions, see Platform Setup Access.

  4. Provide a name for your asset, for example car-model-asset, and click Execute. A notification is displayed and your new asset is created:
Successfully closed trunk asset (access: cortex)
Values: custom:car-model-asset#1.0

When you successfully close an asset, it is no longer a part of the trunk asset - your closed asset becomes a standalone asset.

Deploying an Asset

Deploying an asset means to transfer it as an artifact to a Maven-compatible repository to persist it and make it available for further setups. Deploying also increases the resolvedRevision property of the asset. Depending on whether it's a remote or a local repository, deploying an asset might mean that other people can download it and use it. This is, of course, the case if you're uploading an asset to a remote repository.

You can only deploy a closed asset.

To deploy an asset:

  1. In the Platform Setup access, navigate to the All Assets entry point.
  2. Right-click your new car-model-asset and select Platform Setup -> Deploy. When the asset is successfully deployed to the repository you specified in your CortexConfiguration, a notification is displayed: 
    Successfully deployed asset 'custom:car-model-asset#1.0'

    For information how to set up your Maven for platform assets development, see Setting Up Environment for Platform Assets.

Adding Dependencies

You must add your new asset as a dependency to the project aggregator if you want to be able to set up your environment based on that asset. This is because it is the project aggregator that you pass as a parameter during the setup of your project.

  1. Switch to the Platform Setup access and navigate to Aggregators .
  2. Find themy-project aggregator asset. This asset only appears in the list if you set up your environment as described on Setting Up Environment for Platform Assets. If you used a different name for your project, the name of the aggregator asset will be different.
  3. Right-click the my-project asset and select Platform Setup -> Add Dependencies. A new window opens.
  4. In the new window, add the car-model-asset as a dependency, mark the as global setup candidate checkbox and click Execute.
  5. Still in the Platform Setup access, go to Modified Assets, right-click your my-project aggregator asset and select Platform Setup -> Deploy. This effectively persists the asset aggregator in your local Maven repository.

Setting up Environment Based on Your New Assets

It's now time to use your new platform assets to set up a tribefire installation where they will be present out-of-the-box.

  1. Create a new directory, for example setupTest.
  2. In the setupTest directory, run the jinni setup-local-tomcat-platform setupDependency=tutorial:my-project#1.0 installationPath=pathToThisDirectory command. If you used a different name for your project, the name of the aggregator asset will be different.
  3. Navigate to setupTest/runtime/host/bin and run catalina start to start the server.
  4. On the landing page, inspect if your model and access are part of your new installation.