Plugging an external Jackrabbit repository to Apache Sling Launchpad : Complete

After number of trials I could plug an external Jackrabbit repository to Apache Sling Launchpad. Here are the steps I followed.

Step 1:

Go to external Jackrabbit repository directory. Modify its repository.xml by replacing its configuration element by following.

<Security appName="Jackrabbit">
     <SecurityManager class="org.apache.jackrabbit.core.DefaultSecurityManager" workspaceName="security">
     </SecurityManager>
     <AccessManager class="org.apache.sling.jcr.jackrabbit.server.impl.security.PluggableDefaultAccessManager">
     </AccessManager>
     <LoginModule class="org.apache.sling.jcr.jackrabbit.server.impl.security.PluggableDefaultLoginModule">
          <param name="anonymousId" value="anonymous"/>
          <param name="adminId" value="admin"/>
     </LoginModule>
</Security>

Step 2: 

Follow steps in this post.

That's all. Everything works smoothly.

Plugging an external Jackrabbit repository to Apache Sling Launchpad : Attempt 1

Apache Sling Launchpad has its own Jackrabbit repository embedded in it. But since Airavata has its own Jackrabbit repository, Sling Launchpad's embedded repository should be replaced by that of Airavata. According to a thread in Sling user mailinglist, I configured Launchpad.  

I did this twice with 2 versions of Sling Launchpad.

1) Sling Launchpad 6
2) Sling Launchpad 7

How to configure?

1. Start Launchpad as mentioned in this tutorial. 
2. Now go to http://localhost:8080/system/console/configMgr 
• Give admin:admin as username:password if asked.
3. Go to row Apache Sling Embedded JCR Repository
4. Click on org.apache.sling.jcr.jackrabbit.server.SlingServerRepository.########
5. Configure Configuration File, Repository Home and Repository Name as follows.
• Configuration File: Jackrabbit Repository.xml path 
• Eg. /home/.../jackrabbit/repository.xml
• Repository Home: Jackrabbit home path
• Eg. /home/.../jackrabbit/
• Embedded JCR Repository Name: 'jackrabbit'
6. Restart Launchpad

Progress Update for the 1st Week of June

According to my project proposal, first thing to implement is the login procedure. So I studied login part of Airavata registry API by debugging the system and I think I have a good understanding about it now. 

In last 2 weeks I studied Apache Sling and Apache Jackrabbit, and I followed most of their tutorials well. I got some issues with samples in Sling Source and I sent several emails to their user and dev mailing lists. I had to wait several days for a response and finally I got one. Hopefully I will be able to keep contact with them. The good thing is Sling community was aware of my project even before I contacted them.

Apache Sling has something called Launchpad (a server), and it has its own jackrabbit repository. The tutorials are based on that. I was trying to plug a separate jackrabbit server instead of its in-built one, and I think it is possible. I'm trying to understand how to use this Launchpad for this project.

My Project in GSoC 2012

For GSoC 2012 I applied to a project which was named as 'Integrate Apache Sling to Apache Airavata Registry' and I was lucky enough to be selected for this project. The project proposal I submitted is published here.

As the project name implies the project is focused on Apache Airavata Registry API. What I have to do in the project is to integrate Apache Sling in to Apache Airavata Registry, so that Airavata Registry API can communicate with remote Content Repositories (in this case it is Apache Jackrabbit) in a RESTful way.