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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-20T16:05:23+00:00

I would like to develop a web application in Java/Spring/Hibernate serving as a business

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I would like to develop a web application in Java/Spring/Hibernate serving as a business platform that I could connect plugins to (i.e. CRM plugin, ware plugin, sales plugin). Those plugins could be dependent on other plugins in a tree manner. The parent project would be packaged as war having all the basic configuration and looks (Spring configs, CSS, scripts), ready-to-go user and group management, security settings, etc.

Altogether, I would like it to behave and look a bit like Joomla, but be built using different tools for different purposes. And I have a few questions concerning that project:

  1. Do you know of any open source projects offering such a platform ready to go?
  2. If not, is Maven applicable for managing those plugins?
  3. What is the best way to package and deploy those plugins?

And last but not least, is this the right way to go, or is it a dead end? Would it be better to create a separate web app for those business needs?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    There are lots of ways to build plugin modules.
    Some Ideas:

    You could package every plugin module as a jar and in the classpath root of this jar, put a spring config file with the beans configuration, so if when you are using a specific plugin. You can “turn on” the beans of this package on a web application by simply adding this file to the contextConfigLocation parameter in your web.xml:

    <listener>
    <listener-class>org.springframework.web.context.ContextLoaderListener</listener-class>
</listener>

<context-param>
    <param-name>contextConfigLocation</param-name>
    <param-value>
        classpath:module1.xml
        classpath:module2.xml
        classpath:module3.xml
        classpath:module4.xml
    </param-value>
</context-param>

    So you are able to use those beans in your web application. Another way of doing this, would be to use a more annotations driven approach. Or you can mix the methods.

    Some time ago, I structured a way to automatically hot-detect (in execution time, without having to restart the application) plugins in a desktop application by detecting all implementations of a specific abstract class (a contract) in the classpath. So, all that I had to do to build a new plugin, was to implement this “contract”. I’ve used some “classloader” goodies to do this.

    When talking about “modules” maybe you would like to see something about OSGi

    Well… those are some ideas. I hope it helps in any way. 😉

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