Minimal Soffit

A soffit’s interaction with the portal is HTTP-based. It is posible to write a soffit in any language or platform that can accept, process, and respond to a connection over HTTP. At the present time, the creators of Soffit expect to develop soffits mostly with Java and Spring Boot.

Minimal Soffit Setup Instructions Using Spring Boot

1. Use the Spring Initializer to create a new Spring Boot project with the following settings:
   • Gradle Project (recommended)
   • Packaging=War (recommended)
   • Dependencies=Cache (recommended) & Web (required)
   • Additional dependencies you intend to use (optional – you can add them later)

   When you’re ready, click the Generate Project button and download your new project source files as a .tar.gz or a .zip. Decompress and copy the contents of the archive to a good place in your file system. Open your project files in a suitable tool for editing, such as IntelliJ IDEA, Eclipse, or possibly Atom.

2. Add Soffit as a dependency to your project (see Adding the Soffit dependency below)
3. Add the tomcat-embed-jasper dependency to your project (see Adding the tomcat-embed-jasper dependency below)
4. Add the @SoffitApplication annotation to your application class (the one already annotated with @SpringBootApplication) NOTE: remember to add import org.apereo.portal.soffit.renderer.SoffitApplication; appropriately at the top of the file.
5. Create the directory path src/main/webapp/WEB-INF/soffit/
6. Choose a name for your soffit and create a directory with that name inside /soffit/ (above); recommended: use only lowercase letters and dashes (‘-‘) in the name
7. Create a view.jsp file inside the directory named for your soffit; add your markup (e.g. <h2>Hello World!</h2>)
8. In src/main/resources/application.properties, define the server.port property and set it to an unused port (like 8090)
9. Run the command $ ./gradlew assemble (on *-nix) or $ gradlew.bat assemble (on Windows) to build your application
10. Run the command $ java -jar build/libs/{filename}.war to start your application

That’s it! You now have a functioning, minimal Soffit application running on localhost at server.port.

Adding the Soffit dependency

You will need to modify the project build file in your editor of choice. NOTE: be sure to specify the correct dependency version; it may no longer be 5.0.0-SNAPSHOT by the time you’re reading this guide.

Gradle Example (build.gradle):

repositories {
    mavenLocal()  // Add this line if not already present!
    mavenCentral()
}

[...]

compile('org.jasig.portal:uPortal-soffit-renderer:5.0.0-SNAPSHOT')

Maven Example (pom.xml):

<dependency>
    <groupId>org.jasig.portal</groupId>
    <artifactId>uPortal-soffit-renderer</artifactId>
    <version>5.0.0-SNAPSHOT</version>
</dependency>

Adding the tomcat-embed-jasper dependency

You will need to modify the project build file in your editor of choice.

Gradle Examplee (build.gradle):

configurations {
    providedRuntime  // Add this line if not already present!
}

[...]

providedRuntime('org.apache.tomcat.embed:tomcat-embed-jasper')

Maven Example (pom.xml):

<dependency>
    <groupId>org.apache.tomcat.embed</groupId>
    <artifactId>tomcat-embed-jasper</artifactId>
    <scope>provided</scope>
</dependency>