JBoss Shotoku Contributors
Project Lead: Adam Warski , JBoss
Adam is a Ph.D. student of computer science at the University of Warsaw (Poland). Adam joined JBoss as one of the first interns at JBoss. He has been with the Labs initiative since its beginning.

Developer: Tomek Szymanski , JBoss
Now attending Warsaw Technical University and graduating with an engineering and Master degree in 2007, Tomek is the primary developer of JBoss Wiki and continues to contribute to the core JBoss Labs initiative.

Retired: Damon Sicore
After spending over ten years finding a way to get paid to write open source software, Damon has found his home at JBoss Labs as Lead. Damon offers sacrificial animals and children daily in order to continue the efforts of JBoss Labs.

The Shotoku Project...

Shotoku is designed to provide easy access to content repositories in which you can store data, bind metadata, revision content, and provide branching and merging strategies. This means Shotoku can interface with repositories such as the Java Content Repository (JSR 170: JCR), Subversion, and file-system based repository implementations that aim to support basic revisioning mechanisms.


Here are some of the currently implemented features:
  • Three content managers: the first and default SVN-based, JCR-based and a local file system repository.
  • Because a local working copy is present, data reading is very fast (SVN repository implementation).
  • Data writing is reliable, because data is sent straight to the repository, without touching the working copy (SVN repository implementation).
  • Shotoku can work in "embedded" mode in stand-alone applications, as well as a component in an application server.
  • Shotoku allows you to "inject" content into any POJO using annotations (currently supported only in app server mode). POJOs which are Shotoku aware are automatically updated when a user updates a node in a Subversion repository Shotoku is configured to reference. Content can be anything and there are no structural requirements placed on the repository - even existing Subversion repositories can be referenced by Shotoku without modification.
  • A simple search mechanism.
  • Integeration with Apache Velocity - you can easily store templates in Shotoku to create higher level application features such as content and blog engines.
  • Feeds component - automatic generation of rss, atom and rdf feeds/ podcasts, configured through a xml file, together with arbitrary feeds aggregation. You can see feeds already at work on JBoss Labs - just click the "Feeds" link in navigation or simply here.
  • Blog component.
  • A simple cache with "renewable" values.

As an example application that can be built using Shotoku, a blog and podcasting engine has been created using the template mechanisms available in Shotoku. In fact, all the feeds you see on JBoss Labs, the blog and podcasts, are driven using content stored in our Subversion content repository. This means, to publish a podcast, you just check in your content to a directory of your choice in your svn repository. Shotoku automatically applies the selected templates to produce content feeds. These feeds are described using simple xml files. This is just one of the many application level uses of Shotoku.

But that's only the beginning of what Shotoku will consist of. Here is a short plan for the future:

  • Clustering support using JBoss Cache
  • Semantic web integration
  • Improved searching
  • A servlet for accessing files based on defined access privileges.

More information

Here are some links you might want to visit:

  • For instructions on how to use Shotoku or for examples please visit our wiki.
  • Also, visit our downloads section to get the alpha version of Shotoku.
  • You can view the Shotoku roadmap in JIRA.
  • If you have an suggestions or quesitons, go to the Shotoku forum
  • The javadocs may help a lot.

The latest version of Shotoku source files can be found in Labs subversion repository: http://anonsvn.labs.jboss.com/trunk/forge/portal-extensions/shotoku/.

In the subversion implementation of Shotoku (our main one :) ) we use the JavaSVN library created by TMate. Be sure to visit their site if you are interested in tightly integrating your project with Subversion and accessing its advanced functions.

JBoss Blog Portlet

Typestate checker - introduction
Posted on Nov 17, 2008 1:17:29 PM by Adam Warski.

When dealing with mutable objects in Java, we quite often see that “states” of the class considered emerge. The (abstract) “state” depends of course on the content of the fields of the object. When me...

Envers moves to Hibernate!
Posted on Oct 30, 2008 7:08:13 AM by Adam Warski.

I’m happy to announce that Envers is now a module of Hibernate! This means that: the code is now in the hibernate-core repository (envers module). There will be no more commits to the old repository. ...

Adding structure to Seam events
Posted on Oct 23, 2008 9:19:07 AM by Adam Warski.

The idea described here is originally by Tomek Szymański. I just enhanced it a little. Seam events are a very convenient tool to divide your business logic into smaller pieces, and add some new behavi...

Envers 1.1.0.GA released
Posted on Oct 21, 2008 2:29:18 PM by Adam Warski.

Today Envers 1.1.0.GA has been released. For the impatient: go straight to the downloads! :) This release contains only minor modifications from the last beta version. You can see the release notes fo...

Envers on JDD 08
Posted on Oct 14, 2008 3:51:39 AM by Adam Warski.

If you’ll be visting Java Developers’ Day 2008 in Cracow, Poland on Thursday, be sure to stop by and see my presentation of Envers. It will be an introductory talk, in Polish; I’ll post the slides on ...

Envers 1.1.0.beta2 released with collections support
Posted on Sep 27, 2008 4:44:29 AM by Adam Warski.

Today Envers 1.1.0.beta2 has been released. This release focuses on supporting persistent collections. In earlier versions, it was only possible to version collections belonging to one-to-many bidirec...

Envers on Herbstcampus 2008
Posted on Sep 19, 2008 12:04:02 PM by Adam Warski.

Yesterday I came back from Herbstcampus 2008 in Nürnberg. I gave there a talk on Envers. Thanks to all who attended! I’d also like to thank the organisers, everything went smoothly and I felt really w...

Envers is back from vacations
Posted on Sep 3, 2008 5:58:52 AM by Adam Warski.

Hello, after a vacation break, Envers is back with a 1.1.0.beta1 release. You can find the release notes here . There’s quite a lot of changes and improvements in this release. Firstly, Envers now onl...

Envers 1.0.0.GA released!
Posted on Jul 16, 2008 6:51:30 AM by Adam Warski.

Today the first general availability version of Envers has been released (downloads, release notes). This is a stable version containig all the features found in the preview and beta versions. It does...

Bi-temporal versioning with Envers
Posted on Jun 16, 2008 12:22:43 PM by Adam Warski.

With the recent addition of queries to Envers, it is now possible to easily retrieve data in a bi-temporal way. If you are not familiar with bi-temporal versioning, a good introduction by Martin Fowle...