What is a Resource Type

One could describe a resource as the atom of Yanel. Resources are responsible for processing requests and generating responses. Examples are

• Node/File resource which helps to retrieve static content, for example images or PDF documents.
  
• XML resource which helps to generate XHTML or generic XML pages by applying various XSLTs to some original XML
• Calendar resource which helps to read/write calendars based on the ICS format (for example with Sunbird as a client)

The Yanel distribution (source and binary) contains many more examples, which can be reused or customized.

For complete customization, one can also create a resource from scratch very easily, whereas a resource from scratch doesn't do much in the first place. In order to actually get life into a from scratch resource one can implement various interfaces. In most cases one wants to implement the four basic functions called CRUD (Create, Read, Update and Delete).

A resource can also be used by another resource. For example the generic "user registration" resource can be extended by a custom user registration resource. In order to do so one makes the generic resource available by adding a pom file to this resource (e.g. YANEL_HOME/src/resources/registration/src/build/pom.xml) and by adding its dependency to the custom resource which is extending the generic resource (e.g. MY_REALM/resources/custom-registration/src/build/dependencies.xml). Please make sure to re-build Yanel in order to update the local maven repository based on the added pom file.