Is there a SelfAttachingServerResource for Restlet?

Question

I'm trying to create a Framework on top of Restlet and my question would be, is it possible to have a ServerResource to be "injected" from outside the org.restlet.Application code?

The standard way is to have a resource injected here:

public class FrameworkApplication extends Application {
    private static final String ROOT_URI = "/";
  /**
   * Creates a root Restlet that will receive all incoming calls.
   */
  @Override
  public Restlet createInboundRoot() {
    Router router = new Router(getContext());
    router.attach(ROOT_URI, RootServerResource.class);
    return router;
  }
}

However since I am building a framework the use of FrameworkApplication is through including it as a dependency:

<dependency>
    <groupId>com.mycompany</groupId>
    <artifactId>myframework</artifactId>
    <version>0.0.1</version>
</dependency>

Going back to the question, I want to know if it is possible to have a ServerResource to be added in the Restlet routing like this:

public class PluggableResource extends ServerResource {
    @Get("json")
    public String represent() {
        // stuff
        return resp;
    }
}

In the case of dependency injection, the solution was to do, SelfInjectingServerResource now can I make such a SelfAttachingServerResource?

Answer 1

I don't know what you exactly want to do but auto-discovering support of server resources isn't supported in Restlet. You need to implement by your own within a dedicated implementation of the class Application of Restlet. The method createInboundRoot would be responsible to scan the classpath to detect server resources. Moreover you need to add more metadata for server resources (with annotations for instance) to specify the attachement path.

However, the JAX-RS support provides this feature. It provides a set of annotations to make easy to identify server resources and provide metadata like attachement path, methods and exchanged media types for methods. Here is a sample of use: http://restlet.com/technical-resources/restlet-framework/guide/2.3/extensions/jaxrs. The classes for server resources need to be register by hand but you can go further. As a matter of fact, you can scan the classpath to detect classes having the annotation Path. See this link for the way to implement such ferature: Scanning Java annotations at runtime. In this case, they will be autodetected based on annotations. Is something can suit your needs?

Hope it helps. Thierry