Week 1: Laying the Plugin Foundation

📅 May 15–23

What I Planned to Do

• Integrate a minimal Maven plugin into the webservices.rest build lifecycle

• Deep-dive into the module's codebase to understand how representations function

• Study prior get*Models() implementations and analyze mherman's PRs to derive insights

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What I Worked On

• I began by exploring the REST module's file structure and tracing how a GET request flows through the system. This helped me understand which methods and classes are triggered for different representation types.

• Much of this understanding came from my pre-GSoC exploration, where I used the debugger extensively and tested various resource calls.

• My 1:1 calls with Chi Bong and the detailed project brief were invaluable in clarifying the scope and direction of the work.

• I created a standard Maven plugin structure and implemented a simple Mojo class that printed "Hello World" on invocation.

  

• After running mvn clean install, I successfully integrated the plugin into the omod directory's pom.xml. The plugin compiled and executed without errors, a foundational milestone!

• I then focused on extracting Javadoc comments from resource classes. Based on feedback and research, I compared the Doclet API and JavaParser.

• JavaParser stood out for its simplicity and ability to parse source-level Java code using Abstract Syntax Trees (ASTs).

• I implemented basic JavaParser logic and hardcoded it to test with PatientResource. After resolving dependency and path issues, I successfully retrieved the class-level Javadoc!

  

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Challenges Faced

• While early progress was promising, the approach relied on hardcoded class paths, which won't scale in later stages.

• Future work — such as dynamically invoking methods via reflection — will introduce complexity that I’ll need to handle robustly.

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What I Learned

• Learned how to implement a Maven plugin from scratch and integrate it into a multi-module Maven project.

• Understood how to configure plugin execution within pom.xml files for both module and class-level granularity.

• Explored and compared two Javadoc parsing libraries, Doclet API and JavaParser.

• Gained hands-on experience with Abstract Syntax Trees (ASTs) through JavaParser and understood how it enables source-level analysis.

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Commits/PRs This Week

• PR Title: Initial implementation of OpenAPI Generator Maven Plugin with JavaParser integration

• Link: RESTWS-980: Initial implementation of OpenAPI Generator Maven Plugin with JavaParser integration by capernix · Pull Request #657 · openmrs/openmrs-module-webservices.rest

• Status: Draft

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Plans for Next Week

• Invoke getRepresentationDescription() within the plugin context

• Handle mocked contexts and dependencies required for resource introspection

• Parse and convert Property objects into detailed OpenAPI-compatible JSON schema

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Notes/Discussion Points

• Would love more community involvement, any implementation I am skeptical about should be resolved through the community.

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Thank you!