netgrif/nae-backend-application-starter

Backend Starter project for Netgrif Application Engine

Netgrif Application Engine Backend Starter

This is a starter project for Netgrif Application Engine to make easier to start implementing your own NAE based application.

It helps if you are familiar with Spring Boot framework, but it is not necessary to enjoy possibilities of process driven application.

Requirements

The Application engine has some requirements for runtime environment. The following table is summary of requirements to run and use the engine:

Name	Version	Description	Recommendation
Java	11+	Java Development Kit	OpenJDK 11
Redis	5+	Key-value in-memory database used for user sessions and caching	Redis 6.2.6
MongoDB	4.4+	Main document store database	MongoDB 4.4.11
Elasticsearch	7.17+	Index database used for better application search	Elasticsearch 7.17.3

If you are planning on developing docker container based solution you can use our docker-compose configuration to run all necessary databases to develop with NAE.

Installation

This project can be used as a base to your NAE application. Before you start coding please consider doing following steps to personalize project:

• Rename root java package
• Edit maven project attributes in pom.xml, mainly groupId and artifactId
• Generate security certificates for token encryption

As it is Java Maven project it is assumed that you have some experience with Java programming language.

Generate certificates

You should generate own certificates to encrypt token used by NAE.

 mkdir -p src/main/resources/certificates && cd src/main/resources/certificates && openssl genrsa -out keypair.pem 4096 && openssl rsa -in keypair.pem -pubout -out public.crt && openssl pkcs8 -topk8 -inform PEM -outform DER -nocrypt -in keypair.pem -out private.der && cd ../../../..

Class Description

The project consists of several important classes to configure NAE to work for your use case. You are free to change its names a configuration.

CustomActionDelegate

ActionDelegate class is a gateway to inject your custom functions to Petriflow processes. Every public method and property of this class is available to call from process action. It extends NAE ActionDelegate that contains all Action API, so you can use all its functionality to even more extend its capabilities.

CustomRunner

Runner is special kind of component class that extends CommandLineRunner (or another variants). It is used to run some logic right after application starts but before it is ready to serve requests. NAE call the run method of a runner class to execute its logic.

Project contains one runner class to make easier to start. You can use it to import you processes or create process instances.

CustomRunnerController

The class defines order of runners execution. NAE contains some own runner classes to set up the application. There is highlighted area where it is recommended to place your runner classes (like for example the provided one).

StarterApplication - Main class

The main class is to start the whole application but also for overriding bean definition of NAE default spring beans. In the project only two beans are recommended to override RunnerController and ActionDelegate to start you own implementation.

Further help

If you need any help with the project you can write us a help request as an issue or engage in a discussion in the NAE repository.