FAQ #31 - How to create your own in-house Update Center in JDeveloper

Introduction

If you ever used the Check for Updates... feature in JDeveloper, I am sure you've seen the list of available Update Centers from which you can download your JDeveloper extensions. In this post we will go through the process of adding your own Update Center to supply your own extensions in a corporate environment.


Main Theme

You can access the Check for Updates... feature in JDeveloper via the Help | Check for Updates... menu. Once you do so, a list of the available Update Centers is presented as shown in the picture below.

It is easy to add your own Update Center by clicking on the Add... button and supplying the necessary information, i.e. the name of the Update Center and its location.

The Update Center location is the http address of the Update Center descriptor as in http://192.168.5.134:8080/center.xml in the above example. The Update Center descriptor is an XML file describing the Update Center and the extensions that makes available. Below is an example descriptor:

The updates tag encloses all available extension updates that are made available by the Update Center. Each extension is listed within the update tag. The information provided in the name, version, author, author-url and description tags are used by JDeveloper to present the necessary information about the specific extension. The bundle-url tag points to the location from where the extension can be downloaded. It does not need to reside in the update location necessarily.

After adding the update center, the Check for Updates... page will reflect the Update Center added as it is shown below:

Selecting the newly added Update Center and clicking Next will present a list of the extensions that are made available by the Update Center.

Conclusion

Adding your own JDeveloper Update Center to supply your own extensions is a pretty straightforward business. Just add it in the Check for Updates... and provide the appropriate Update Center descriptor to describe the JDeveloper extensions that are made available by the Update Center. Of course you've got to have your Update Center web server up and running and your extensions on-line to start serving the extension download requests ;)

Until the next time, keep on JDeveloping!