Adding WebJars to uPortal-start

WebJars are a relatively recent addition to the web application development landscape. They are client-side web libraries (typically JavaScript and/or CSS) packaged into JAR (Java Archive) files.

Introducing the resource-server

The resource-server is a bundled module in uPortal-start. You can easily deploy WebJars with uPortal and use their contents to build a compelling portal experience by declaring them as dependencies of the overlays:resource-server sub-project.

Edit the dependencies section of the overlays/resource-server/build.gradle file to add WebJars from Maven Central.

An alternative to WebJars is to manually add static files to resource server. WebJars are the preferred approach; however, this method is detailed here for cases where WebJar implementations are not available.

WebJar Dependency Example

  runtime 'org.webjars.npm:uportal__content-carousel:1.6.0@jar'

NOTE: In most cases, you should include the @jar classifier with your WebJar dependency. This classifier tells Gradle not to pull transitive dependencies of your WebJar. (Transitive dependencies may be needed if you were extending the component in Node.js, but typically aren’t required for using the component in a browser.)

Using Files Within WebJars

Once your WebJar is available within the resource-server, you can access the files they contain in your browser by using URLs like the following: /resource-server/webjars/uportal__content-carousel/1.6.0/dist/content-carousel.js.

In this example, /uportal__content-carousel/1.6.0/dist/content-carousel.js is the complete path to the content-carousel.js file within the webjar.