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Brief Overview of Eclipse Dirigible
Eclipse Dirigible is an open-source cloud development platform that comes with its own Web IDE. Dirigible is also one of the top-level cloud development projects of the Eclipse foundation.
The platform aims to unify open-source business services by providing software developers with a convenient set of tools for building, running, and operating business applications on the Cloud.
Main Goal of the Blog
This blog presents the Document Explorer – a feature that you can use as part of the Eclipse Dirigible Web IDE. The Explorer allows you to upload, overwrite, download, delete, and search for pictures, spreadsheets, PDF files, and videos, among other artifacts.
The Document Explorer of Dirigible is compatible with SAP Cloud Platform Document service in the Neo environment. This means that you can deploy Eclipse Dirigible as a Java application in the Neo environment, configure Dirigible’s document management features directly in the SAP Cloud Platform cockpit, and run the Document Explorer in your subaccount.
The Document Explorer provides a set of REST APIs that can be consumed by third-party applications and services. Eclipse Dirigible also provides you with Enterprise JavaScript APIs for building your own custom application. For more information about the JavaScript API for document management, see CMIS.
This blog will focus on enabling the Eclipse Dirigible Document Explorer in the SAP Cloud Platform cockpit.
Setup Using the SAP Cloud Platform Cockpit
There’s a dedicated video on YouTube that goes through the whole process. Here’s a brief overview of each step:
1. First, go to Repositories → Document Repositories and create a New Repository in the SAP Cloud Platform cockpit.
This is the place where you’ll store all your documents uploaded through the Dirigible document explorer. We’ll see that a bit later in the blog.
2. Next, go to Connectivity → Destinations, create a New Destination, and specify the appropriate security configurations.
Use the configurations as shown in the screenshot above.
In the User field, enter the name of the repository you’ve just created. In the Password field, enter the repository key. You should have already used this key when you created the repository in step 1.
3. Go to the official website of Eclipse Dirigible, navigate to the Downloads section, and download the SAP All edition of Eclipse Dirigible.
For more information, check the video Eclipse Dirigible - Setup on SAP Cloud Platform.
4. Go to Java Applications, deploy Eclipse Dirigible as a Java application using the ROOT.war file you've downloaded in step 3, and instruct the application to use the destination for authentication purposes.
To do that, copy and paste the following JVM arguments in the JVM Arguments field:
-DDIRIGIBLE_THEME_DEFAULT=fiori
-DDIRIGIBLE_HOME_URL=/services/v4/web/ide-documents/
-DDIRIGIBLE_CMS_MANAGED_CONFIGURATION_AUTH_METHOD=destination
-DDIRIGIBLE_CMS_MANAGED_CONFIGURATION_DESTINATION=mydocuments-destination5. Before you start the deployed application, create any database bindings you might need. You can do that in Data Source Bindings.
Note: If you've downloaded the SAP CMS or the SAP Ephemeral edition of Eclipse Dirigible, step 5 is optional and you may skip it.
6. Go to Security → Roles to assign the Operator and Developer roles to your user ID.
Note: If you forget to assign these roles to your user, you won’t have the permission to perform any sort of document management at all.
7. Once you’ve assigned the necessary roles, go to the Overview page of your Java application. It’s time to Start the application!
Once it’s started, open the Document Explorer with the application URL.
From there, you can start managing your documents by creating new folders and uploading artifacts such as .png, .mp4, and all sorts of other file types. Of course, you can also delete any folders or files you no longer need.
If you ever feel the need to check the current state of your repository, you can always go back in the SAP Cloud Platform cockpit to do so:
Support for SAP Cloud Platform, Cloud Foundry Environment
The Document Explorer of Eclipse Dirigible now also supports the SAP Cloud Platform Cloud Foundry environment. A separate blog will soon dive into the details of this setup process, so stay tuned!
Until then, you can configure the Dirigible document management system to use a database via environment variables and your own Eclipse Dirigible Docker image to deploy Dirigible on Cloud Foundry. If you currently don't have an Eclipse Dirigible Docker image, you can use one of these Docker images instead.
Conclusion
Eclipse Dirigible is currently in its version 4.2 and there are a lot of cross scenarios with SAP Cloud Platform. Thus, it’s safe to say that there will be new blogs to follow in the near future.
In the meantime, to get the most up-to-date information about the Eclipse Dirigible platform, feel free to visit www.dirigible.io or check the latest news on Twitter.
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