Maven plugin to create Thingworx extensions

[LeenaAgarwal]

Are there tools to create Thingworx extensions from entities exported as source control entities? I want to integrate this with our Continuous Integration build tools based on Maven & Jenkins.

If there is a maven plugin to do this job, that would be great! I need it to create extension in a format that is compatible with Thingworx version 7.2.2. It should get imported in Thingworx without any errors and warnings.

Thanks in advance.

[supandey]

Hi Leena, i'm not sure of the Maven plugin availability however there is Eclipse Plugin for ThingWorx Extension Development and this has the capability to import the Entities created by ThingWorx Composer so basically by exporting from there and having it imported within Eclipse plugin

[thearonh]

As far as being able to use something within a CI environment, I don't think there is anything supported by ThingWorx that does that.  As Sushant mentioned, the Eclipse Plugin is the best way to do this, but it is manual to do the import. 

My question to you would be - Are you trying to 'automatically' make an Extension with the CI tools, or are you just trying to add/update Entities for an existing Extension?

[LeenaAgarwal]

Yes, I need to create the extension automatically as part of each build. I have the Thingworx entities exported as source control entities and maintained in our source repository. The need is to pick the entities from there and package it into an extension that is importable in Thingworx.

[thearonh]

I am no Maven expert, but I know that in the gradle/ant scripts that get generated with a new project when creating an Extension in the Eclipse Plugin, there are tasks that build the extension into the appropriate format.

You could take a look at those scripts and make a Maven equivalent that, instead of pulling the /Entities folder from inside the extension, it uses the directory a you would provide pointing to where you exported the entities to.  If you do this, I would be very curious as to the outcomes and would be grateful if you posted the maven tasks that come out of your work for the community to be able to use as examples.

Out of curiosity - Are these extensions just to do an import of entities, or do they also have Java code?

[LeenaAgarwal]

I will definitely try it out when time permits.

Yes the extension includes only entities, no java code.