GSoC 2025 with OpenMRS – Week 1: Laying the Plugin Foundation

📅 May 15–23

✅ What I Planned to Do

• Integrate a minimal Maven plugin into the webservices.rest build lifecycle
• Deep-dive into the module's codebase to understand how representations function
• Study prior get*Models() implementations and analyze mherman's PRs to derive insights

🚧 What I Worked On

• I began by exploring the REST module's file structure and tracing how a GET request flows through the system. This helped me understand which methods and classes are triggered for different representation types.
• Much of this understanding came from my pre-GSoC exploration, where I used the debugger extensively and tested various resource calls.
• My 1:1 calls with Chi Bong and the detailed project brief were invaluable in clarifying the scope and direction of the work.
• I created a standard Maven plugin structure and implemented a simple Mojo class that printed "Hello World" on invocation.

• After running mvn clean install, I successfully integrated the plugin into the omod directory's pom.xml. The plugin compiled and executed without errors, a foundational milestone!
• I then focused on extracting Javadoc comments from resource classes. Based on feedback and research, I compared the Doclet API and JavaParser.
• JavaParser stood out for its simplicity and ability to parse source-level Java code using Abstract Syntax Trees (ASTs).
• I implemented basic JavaParser logic and hardcoded it to test with PatientResource. After resolving dependency and path issues, I successfully retrieved the class-level Javadoc!