Liferay 6.2 archetypes

Maven (build tool and a Trickster) provides several Liferay specific archetypes with com.liferay.maven.archetypes archetypeGroupId. Some of these are tied to MVC frameworks to be used in Liferay portlet (e.g liferay-portlet-jsf-archetype), others assembled for more generic functionality. Sample command line to generate Liferay portlet project structure without any MVC specifics added:

mvn archetype:generate \
     -DarchetypeGroupId=com.liferay.maven.archetypes \
     -DarchetypeArtifactId=liferay-portlet-archetype \
     -DarchetypeVersion=6.2.10.6 \
     -DgroupId=thecompany.com \
     -DartifactId=company-portlet-one \
     -Dversion=0.1-SNAPSHOT \
     -DinteractiveMode=false

The list of all available Maven archetypes can be seen with: mvn archetype:generate command. Following MVC agnostic archetypes are available in com.liferay.maven.archetypes group.

1. liferay-ext-archetype — for creating customizations as Liferay extension, also called ext plugin. With ext plugins Liferay core functionality can be replaced with modifications separate from Liferay's code. Jamie L Sammons writes: Liferay Ext Plugins are often considered a last resort in the Liferay Plugin world due to the complexity and the lack of hot deploy as well as the inability to remove them once they are deployed.

2. liferay-hook-archetype — for Liferay customization, a hook has advantage of hot deploy. Web resources, JSPs, portal services, etc can be overridden with hooks. Hooks can also be defined in portlets.

3. liferay-layouttpl-archetype — layout templates allow definition of new page layouts, embedding commonly used portlets in layouts, specifying CSS, etc.

4. liferay-portlet-archetype — minimalistic Liferay portlet to be deployed in portal.

5. liferay-servicebuilder-archetype — to generate a basic service layer. It comes with promise of CRUD and SOAP all in place for the entities.

6. liferay-theme-archetype — Liferay theme plugin archetype for user interface customization of sites in Liferay.

7. liferay-web-archetype — creates a minimal web application skeleton, Liferay specific addition being WEB-INF/liferay-plugin-package.properties file, allowing to manage that application from Liferay Control Panel.