Sometimes you are not working in the big enterprise project with thousand lines of code. You just want to play with a new library or a single aspect. Integrating this from the beginning in the main project can sometimes be a slow and complicated task.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We have a special area called Sandbox<\/em> for this small projects in our repository. After years of IDE usage, some people loose the speed in starting a small project from scratch. Too much tooling can be a problem, but the right tooling can be a great time saver. I played with the PDF library itext \u2013 great one. With just a few lines of code. I even needed to install this library on different computers and operating systems (font types, \u2026). A jar is the purest form for Java projects. But with external dependencies you are dealing with the classpath. To avoid this I packaged the dependencies into an Uber-Jar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The assembly plugin is just one of the possibilities. There are several Maven plugins to create Uber-Jars. But the assembly plugin worked great.<\/p>\n\n\n\n My example main class is pretty simple. Just a few lines to demonstrate the use case.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To package it run:<\/p>\n\n\n\n You will find a file with the Name *-jar-with-dependencies.jar in the target folder. Maven is a little bit verbose in its, but you can copy and paste the functionality most of the time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Another useful command is the execution of the Main class directly from Maven (if you don\u2019t want to package it):<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Maven is most of the time a useful thing, if used in the right way. Don\u2019t reinvent the wheel and make it too complicated for others to understand your prototype.<\/p>\n\n\n\n[codesyntax lang=\"xml\"]\n<pre><project xmlns=\"http:\/\/maven.apache.org\/POM\/4.0.0\" xmlns:xsi=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2001\/XMLSchema-instance\"\n xsi:schemaLocation=\"http:\/\/maven.apache.org\/POM\/4.0.0 http:\/\/maven.apache.org\/maven-v4_0_0.xsd\">\n <modelVersion>4.0.0<\/modelVersion>\n \n <groupId>de.viaboxx<\/groupId>\n <artifactId>itext-pdf-writer<\/artifactId>\n <version>1.0-SNAPSHOT<\/version>\n <packaging>jar<\/packaging>\n \n <dependencies>\n <dependency>\n <groupId>com.lowagie<\/groupId>\n <artifactId>itext<\/artifactId>\n <version>2.0.7<\/version>\n <\/dependency>\n <\/dependencies>\n \n <build>\n <plugins>\n <plugin>\n <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins<\/groupId>\n <artifactId>maven-jar-plugin<\/artifactId>\n <configuration>\n <archive>\n <manifest>\n <mainClass>de.viaboxx.itext.Main<\/mainClass>\n <addClasspath>true<\/addClasspath>\n <\/manifest>\n <\/archive>\n <\/configuration>\n <\/plugin>\n <plugin>\n <artifactId>maven-assembly-plugin<\/artifactId>\n <configuration>\n <descriptorRefs>\n <descriptorRef>jar-with-dependencies<\/descriptorRef>\n <\/descriptorRefs>\n <archive>\n <manifest>\n <mainClass>de.viaboxx.itext.Main<\/mainClass>\n <\/manifest>\n <\/archive>\n <\/configuration>\n <executions>\n <execution>\n <id>make-my-jar-with-dependencies<\/id>\n <phase>package<\/phase>\n <goals>\n <goal>single<\/goal>\n <\/goals>\n <\/execution>\n <\/executions>\n <\/plugin>\n <\/plugins>\n <\/build>\n<\/project><\/pre>\n[\/codesyntax]<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
[codesyntax lang=\"java\"]\n<pre>package de.viaboxx.itext;\n \nimport com.lowagie.text.Document;\nimport com.lowagie.text.Paragraph;\nimport com.lowagie.text.pdf.PdfWriter;\n \nimport java.io.FileOutputStream;\n \npublic class Main {\n public static void main(String[] args) {\n try {\n Document document = new Document();\n PdfWriter.getInstance(document, new FileOutputStream(\"hello.pdf\"));\n document.open();\n document.add(new Paragraph(\"Hello\"));\n document.close();\n } catch (Exception e) {\n e.printStackTrace();\n }\n }\n}<\/pre>\n[\/codesyntax]<\/pre>\n\n\n\n<div>\n<div id=\"highlighter_582527\" class=\"syntaxhighlighter plain\"><code class=\"plain plain\">mvn install<\/code><\/div>\n<\/div><\/pre>\n\n\n\n
To run it, call:<\/p>\n\n\n\njava -jar NAME-jar-with-dependencies.jar<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
mvn compile\nmvn exec:java -Dexec.mainClass=\"de.viaboxx.itext.Main\"\n<\/pre>\n\n\n\n