Conventions

The maven javascript tool set use the following conventions for directory structure. This is only a standard layout, not a requirement, but will keep your POM files as simple as possible.

  <project-root>/
  |
  +- pom.xml
  |
  +- src/
  |  |
  |  +- main/
  |  |  |
  |  |  +- javascript/ (source location for Scripts)
  |  |  +- resources/ (source location for any static resources)
  |  |
  |  +- test/
  |  |  |
  |  |  +- javascript/ (source location for (jsunit) test sources)
  |  |
  ...

Project Definition

Your project must configure some extentions to the maven base to enable the javascript support:

<project>

  <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>
  <groupId>com.mycompany</groupId>
  <artifactId>myexample</artifactId>
  <packaging>javascript</packaging>
  <version>1.0-SNAPSHOT</version>
  <name>My example Javascript project</name>

  <build>
    <outputDirectory>target/scripts</outputDirectory>
    <testOutputDirectory>target/test-scripts</testOutputDirectory>
    <extensions>
      <extension>
        <groupId>org.codehaus.mojo.javascript</groupId>
        <artifactId>javascript-maven-plugin</artifactId>
      </extension>
    </extensions>
    <plugins>
      <plugin>
        <groupId>org.codehaus.mojo.javascript</groupId>
        <artifactId>javascript-maven-plugin</artifactId>
        <extensions>true</extensions>
      </plugin>
    </plugins>
  </build>
</project>

Please note you have to setup javascript-maven-plugin both:

- as a maven extension to get a javascript dedicated lifecycle

- as a plugin with <extensions>true</extensions> to handle javascript dependencies

Once you have your pom setup then you can build the module in the normal way via:

mvn install

Project life cycle

Maven will take your source scripts and assemble them following an optional descriptor. The descriptor can either be written via the plugin native XML format, or using a jsbuilder file. All non listed scripts will simply be copied to the packaging directory.

You can take advantage of other javascript librairies to make your code simplier or cleaner. Simply declare a dependency of type javascript and maven will download the associated javascript archive.

  <dependencies>
    <dependency>
      <groupId>org.prototypejs</groupId>
      <artifactId>prototype</artifactId>
      <version>1.5.1.1</version>
      <type>javascript</type>
    </dependency>
  </dependencies>

You can unit test your scripts by including jsUnit tests. Tests, source scripts and dependencies will be copied in a working directory before running the test suite.

Finally, maven will package your scripts as a javascript arcive to get deployed in your maven repository. Optionally, you can create a compressed version of your scripts, to distribute a lightweight version of your project to non-maven users.

Project documentation

You can document your code by following the jsDoc conventions, very similar to javadoc.

Maven can also run jslint on your project to check code quality.