This page describes a brainstorm / work in progress. It is not stable or usable in Production at this time. If this is ever released, you'll hear about it in a future release!

Background

In the past we've had several discussions/attempts at making DSpace easier to install (e.g. Installer PrototypeInstaller Brainstorms). 

However, with DSpace 7.0, the new REST API (dspace-spring-rest module) is now a Spring Boot web application.  Spring Boot's entire purpose is to provide tools to make easy-to-install web applications.

This proposal is to begin to utilize the tools in Spring Boot to turn DSpace's "backend" webapps (REST API, OAI-PMH, SWORD, RDF) into a single, easy to install webappAt this time, I'm concentrating only on the backend webapps, as they are all Java webapps. So, it does not include the new Angular UI.  I'm also specifically excluding the old REST API (v4-6), as it is deprecated in DSpace 7 (and will be removed in DSpace 8).

How would we achieve this?

All of the separate, backend web applications (namely SWORDv1, SWORDv2, OAI-PMH, and RDF) would be merged into a single Spring Boot web application.  This can be achieved as follows:

  1. Keep each as a separate Maven module
  2. Turn each Maven module into a JAR (i.e. update each module's POM)
  3. Add a new dependency on Spring Boot (spring-boot-starter-web), to allow each module to use Spring Boot annotations/APIs.
  4. Replace each module's web.xml webapp configuration with a Spring @Configuration class (defining several @Beans).  This is a direct replacement for the web.xml concept.
    1. For example, in PR#2265, SWORDWebConfig.java replaces SWORDv1's web.xml
      1. Notice how the class defines a series of @Beans, all of which can be enabled/disabled via DSpace configuration (in this case a "sword-server.enabled" property).
      2. Additionally, this class can pull in other DSpace configuration/settings to allow for path customization (see the "swordPath" variable in this example, which reads from the "sword-server.path" configuration)
  5. Remove the Overlay folder for the module (from [dspace-src]/dspace/modules/).  The Maven Overlay concept is only supported by WARs, and therefore, all Overlays would be applied to the Spring Boot webapp.

An example of this can be found in this work-in-progress PR: https://github.com/DSpace/DSpace/pull/2265

What is the benefit?

There are several known benefits:

Other questions to consider

Would I still be able to disable specific features?  For example, what if I don't need or want to install SWORD

Yes, it's now a simple configuration.

All of these modules come out-of-the-box within DSpace. You can choose whether to enable or disable specific ones in your local.cfg.

For example, enabling SWORDv1 in PR#2265 just requires adding this to your local.cfg:

sword-server.enabled = true

Commenting out that setting or setting it to "false" will disable SWORDv1.

Can I still overlay specific classes within a module (e.g. in OAI-PMH or SWORD)?

While this still needs to be tested out further, you should be able to simply move those overlays to overlay the main DSpace Spring Boot web application.  So, overlays should still be possible, but they would all now exist in a single place (i.e. you'd always be overlaying the "dspace-spring-rest" webapp, as that's the webapp that loads all other modules)

Can I still change the URL or path of OAI-PMH or SWORD?

Yes, it's now a simple configuration.

While each module has a default path, you can easily override it within your local.cfg.

For example, in PR#2265, the SWORDv1 module defaults to using the "sword" path (e.g. http://localhost:8080/spring-rest/sword/).  However, if you wanted to change it to use the "swordv1" path, you can simply set the following in your local.cfg:

sword-server.path = swordv1

Keep in mind that this path will always be a subpath of the root webapp (i.e. spring-rest). So, you need to be careful not to set two modules to use the same subpath (e.g. setting both SWORDv1 and SWORDv2 to use "sword" won't work).  Additionally, the "api" path is reserved, as it's used by the REST API (e.g. http://localhost:8080/spring-rest/api/).

However, if you install the root webapp at the root path, then this behavior is similar to current DSpace (v6). For example, if the "spring-rest" WAR is accessible at https://mydspace.edu/, then all webapps would be a subpath of that:

If the backend is all one webapp, what should this webapp be called?

Good question.  Currently, the work-in-progress PR leaves this Spring Boot webapp named "dspace-spring-rest" (i.e. it's the REST API v7 module).  But, if this one webapp now includes all modules, we may want to consider giving it a more generic name to make it clear that it's much more than just the REST API.