This file serves as a tutorial on how to get started with writing a java plugin.

Basics

If you want to know more about plugins in general, please check out the How-To: Write a Plugin page. If you need a tutorial for java, please check out the How-To: Java kdb page.

Two Types of Java Plugins

Before we will take a look into how to write a plugin in Java, it is important to note, that there are two ways of doing that:

using JNI plugin
using JNA binding

If you would like to write a plugin in Java and look into the documentation, then you will definitely meet two notions like JNI Plugin and JNA Binding, so let's clarify, what they are.

JNI Plugin

Java Native Interface is a framework, which allows Java code to execute or to be executed by programms, written in other languages like C, C++ and Assembly. Most of Elektra’s plugins are written in C and C++. Developer can use the JNI plugin, which was created specifically for Elektra to write plugins using Java code. For more information on JNI plugins, please take a look here.

In order to use jni in Elektra, the library jni.h must be provided for it. This file is used by the JNI Plugin, which has to be enabled, while installing Elektra. More information on how to install the JNI plugin can be found here. Please read carefully and follow instructions in the “Installation” and “Enabling the Plugin” sections. If you don't have the jni.h file, it can be easily downloaded and placed under this path:

/path/to/SDK/include

or you can reinstall the Java SDK.

JNA Binding

Java Native Access is Java technology (library), which like JNI allows a developer to run native code using only Java by providing access to native shared libraries. In order to use the JNA binding, it should be installed first. You can find more information on JNA’s GitHub page.

Generally speaking, JNI and JNA are both different Java technologies that could be used to bind Java code and code written in C and C++. JNI gives developers the ability to integrate Java code into C too. That is not possible with JNA.

Here we will look into, how can we write Java Plugins using - JNA Binding.

Writing a Plugin

Under the the following path you can find the examples of already existing plugins and you can look into libelektra Java library, which is used for communication with the configuration database.

In order to write a new Java Plugin, the new class has to be created under the plugin folder. It has also to extend the Plugin.java interface, which contains all required methods to communicate with Elektra’s database. You can leave some of the methods unimplemented, if there is no need for them.

The Plugin.java interface contains methods for the five basic functions of plugins:

It is expected that each method returns -1 if an error occurred or 0 if everything worked as expected.

Usage of Plugin

To use the bindings in a Java project, we have to include the jar file libelektra-version.jar in the project. The version number is the same one as used for Elektra. This jar is created upon build, if you enable the JNA binding. You can also use Maven to take care of the dependencies. After that you can take your implemented class out of the libelektra folder and integrate it into your project.