Add your own customized user interface

The cleanest way to add a new UI is with an external maven project.

Source code

The source code will have the same structure as in the catalog. The views have to be placed inside a catalog/views folder on src/main/resources

Example: https://github.com/cobweb-eu/core-geonetwork/commit/f2724be0787565d3203afcbc20b92dfeb70e8e55

Configuration

Even with an external project, you have to make geoNetwork know there is a new view that can be used.

You can either modify some config files as described below, or make your pom.xml copy all your resources to the web-ui/src/main/resources folder.

web-ui-wro-sources.xml

You have to add your folders to this file so wro4j knows they are there:

 <require pathOnDisk="web-ui/src/main/resources" >
    <jsSource webappPath="myStyle/js"  pathOnDisk="${project.basedir}/../myStyle/src/main/resources" />
    <jsSource webappPath="myStyle/components" pathOnDisk="${project.basedir}/../myStyle/src/main/resources" />

    <jsSource webappPath="catalog/js" pathOnDisk="${project.basedir}/../web-ui/src/main/resources" />
    <jsSource webappPath="catalog/views" pathOnDisk="${project.basedir}/../web-ui/src/main/resources" />
    <jsSource webappPath="catalog/components" pathOnDisk="${project.basedir}/../web-ui/src/main/resources"     />

    <cssSource webappPath="catalog/views" pathOnDisk="${project.basedir}/../web-ui/src/main/resources" />
    <cssSource webappPath="catalog/style" pathOnDisk="${project.basedir}/../web-ui/src/main/resources" />

    <cssSource webappPath="myStyle/style" pathOnDisk="${project.basedir}/../myStyle/src/main/resources" />
  </require>

web/pom.xml

You need to check the following sections:

  <plugin>
    <artifactId>maven-war-plugin</artifactId>
    <configuration>
      <archiveClasses>true</archiveClasses>
      <!-- Filter resources according to current profile properties
          (see src/main/filters) and copy them to the webapp -->
      <webResources>
        <resource>
          <directory>${project.basedir}/../schemas</directory>
          <includes>
           [...]
        <resource>
              <directory>${project.basedir}/../web-ui/src/main/resources</directory>
        </resource>
        <resource>
              <directory>${project.basedir}/../myStyle/src/main/resources</directory>
        </resource>

And, optionally, maybe you have some Java source files you want to add by adding your new maven project as a maven dependency.

Jetty plugin

There is some inconsistency on how the jetty plugin and tomcat load resources. So, you have to add two more lines on the web-ui-wro-sources.xml to make mvn jetty:run work. But this breaks the building of the war, so remember to remove them before the final build:

<jsSource webappPath="catalog/views/myStyle"  pathOnDisk="${project.basedir}/../myStyle/src/main/resources" />
<cssSource webappPath="catalog/views/myStyle" pathOnDisk="${project.basedir}/../myStyle/src/main/resources" />

On the jetty plugin description, to be able to do mvn jetty:run

 <plugin>
    <groupId>org.mortbay.jetty</groupId>
    <artifactId>jetty-maven-plugin</artifactId>
    <configuration>
        [...]
        <resourcesAsCSV>
          ${project.basedir}/src/main/webapp,
          ${rootProjectDir}/web-ui/src/main/resources/,
          ${rootProjectDir}/myStyle/src/main/resources/,
       [...]

Activate by default

To activate this new UI by default, make sure there is a row on the settings table with the identifier system/ui/defaultView. For example: "system/ui/defaultView";0;"n";10100;"myNewUI"