Maven Introduction
As we know, mule 4 projects are by default, maven-based projects. Why do we need Maven and what is the significance of Maven?
Significance
A maven is a powerful project management tool that is based on a pom.xml file. The POM means Project Object Model. Basically, the Maven Pom.xml is used for building the projects, supplying the dependencies, nothing but jars. Whatever the required by our projects and also it helps in doing the documentation.
The advantage of Maven is it makes a project easy to build. Assume if we don't have Maven, then we need to build the application manually. Whereas the Maven automates the build process. It will be very easy to add jars to the project as dependencies using Maven. So far, we have been adding the jars manually whenever required while we are doing database operations and JMS operations, we have added those jars manually, whereas we can supply those jars as dependencies through pom.xml. That will be very easy.
There are a lot of advantages to supplying dependencies through pom.xml compared to adding manually. It provides project information while logging, Mailing list, Dependency list, and Unit test reports, we discussed that a MUnit is coupled with Maven. So, we would able to run the unit test cases using Maven before deploying the projects, it is easy to migrate new features of Maven into the projects. Even the Maven upgraded are we want to supply new dependencies or we want to update the repository details, it is very easy using Maven.
What a basic pom.xml contains
Project build name detailsPropertiesPlugins to build the projectDependenciesRepositoriesPlugin repositories
Project build name details
Let's go through a pom.xml and understand, what it all contains, I have opened one of the existing project API and if we open the Pom.xml here we can see the root element.
XML and project, these are all the namespaces required by these configurations and next, we see the modal version. The modal version of Maven is based on the releases by Maven, and we can make use of the latest models.
And here we see group ID, Artifact ID version, and packaging. The advantage of this is we are building our projects correctly whenever we wish to deploy our project. As you see here, I have deployed the project and in the target folder, a jar file will be generated.
We notice how the jar file name has been generated since the pom.xml is responsible for generating our build jar file after deployment. Then it uses this artifact ID, then version, then packaging, then it generates a dot jar. Let me show you the target folder of this project.
So the jar we are going to get is module1-1.0.0-snapshot-mule application.jar. When Maven builds this application, it understands that this name should be provided for the built jar file and it takes from these details. So these are very important to distinguish in building our jar names.
The name represents the application name that we are going to use, whenever we need to import this project.
Properties
These are similar to properties in a Mule application. Just as we create property files and supply them to the application, here we configure properties dynamically as needed.
If we have a mule Maven plugin version like, ${mule.maven.plugin.version} for a reusable purpose, we use this property in pom.xml.
Plugins to build the project
As we know, Maven is a build tool. So, it uses several plugins to build the mule application. And also, we can see the shared libraries here. If we are going to work with MySQL database, then we have to add this jar. Whenever we add any custom jar, the corresponding shared library will be generated here.
This indicates that the library has been added to the application. We use various Mule application plugins to build the Mule application on top. This plugin is crucial for building Maven applications because Maven functions as a building tool itself.
Dependencies
Until now, we've been adding dependencies manually, but Maven offers a convenient solution for managing these jar files. Maven's creators have built a repository where libraries are stored, and we can access these jar files using the <dependency> syntax.
Whenever we add some Connectors of Mule, those corresponding dependencies will be generated here. And if we see, when we add MySQL jar, the corresponding dependency has been added here. This is called dependency management. So, if we wish to add these jars to the application, if we do manually, sometimes we may add unnecessary jars.
So, we may add some jar for development and later, if we wish to remove that implementation, then we will delete it, but we may forget to remove its dependency.
The advantage of having these dependencies through pom.XML is that if we wish to update the versions of dependency, we can easily update here. So, whenever we add a dependency to pom.xml from the library of Maven, the dependency will be downloaded to one of the folders in our system that is called as .m2 local repository. So, if we notice in the path C:/users and in your username, there will be a folder created named .m2. This repository is called as local repository. In this we can see all the jar files that are available.
So, this way, whenever we add a dependency to the pom.xml, the corresponding jar file will be downloaded into local repository from Maven Repository. See if we are creating multiple project and this dependency has already downloaded and available in my local repository. If we are using same dependency in another project, then automatically it will get this dependency from local repository.
If we are adding any new dependency first it will check in the local repository whether this particular dependency is already available or not. If it is available, it will get it from the local repository. If it is not available, then it will get it from the Maven Global Repository.
So here we have two types of dependencies. One is global or primary and we have local. So, first all the dependencies will be downloaded from global repository to local repository, then later that if we are creating any other projects and using the same dependency, if the dependency is available in local repository, then it will get it from the local repository. Otherwise, it will get it from the global repository.
Repositories
Since we are getting these dependencies, we need to also tell the pom.xml from where these dependencies should be downloaded. Those are called as repositories, so we need to provide repository information, all mule related jars, dependencies downloaded from the repositories are mentioned under these <repositories>.
And also, we have plugins here for plugins also. We need to provide the plugin repositories to make avail of these details.
In Conclusion, Maven serves as a cornerstone in Mule 4 projects, offering indispensable features like streamlined dependency management, automated build processes, and project structuring through the pom.xml file. Its significance lies in simplifying development tasks, enhancing project scalability, and promoting code reusability.
By leveraging Maven's capabilities, developers can focus more on coding and less on manual configurations, leading to increased productivity and faster project delivery. Overall, Maven's role in Mule 4 development is pivotal, ensuring efficient and consistent project management practices that contribute to the success of software projects.
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