The contents of this document are a work in progress
The 'Plexus' Personality
Overview
The Plexus personality revolves around two segments. The 'begin' and the 'end' segments. The 'begin' segment is run when your component is being started up and the 'end' segment when it is being shut down.
Begin Phase
| Phase | Interface | Description |
| LogEnable | LogEnable | Passes a logger to your component. You will most likely want to inherit AbstractLogEnabled instead |
| Composition | (no interface) | Injects your dependencies (see below) |
| Context | Contextualizable | Passes the Plexus context. From here you can access the home directory, Plexus Container, and more. |
| Configuration | PlexusConfigurable | Gives you access to the PlexusConfiguration to configure your application |
| Intialization | Initializable | Initializes your component. |
| Start | Startable | Starts your component |
End Phase
| Phase | Interface | Description |
| Stop | Startable | Stops your component |
| Dispose | Disposable | Allows you to dispose of the components you depend on and other resources. |
| LogDisable | LogEnabled | Disables component logging |
Dependency Injection
Plexus has the ability to do automatic dependency injection. When your component is being composed it will automatically fill in the fields or setters with your components dependencies.
Configuration
The Plexus personality can configure your component two ways. In the auto configuration mode, it matches the xml to fields and classes on your components using XStream. For example, if you have a String field named "cheese" on your component, then this would automatically set that field to "swiss".
<configuration> <cheese>swiss</cheese> </configuration>
If this doesn't provide the needed flexibility you can implement the interface PlexusConfigurable and the PlexusConfiguration object for your component will be passed on to you.