How to create a working OSGI bundle for Apache POI 3.8?

Question

My goal is to create an Excel 2007 document (XLSX) in an Eclipse RCP Environment (Excel 2003 is simple). I don't want to place the POI jars inside a /lib folder, instead I want to use a working POI OSGI bundle from my target definition.

All my attempts so far have failed to create a working OSGI bundle of POI 3.8. What I did so far:

• I merged all relevant JAR files with the Ant zip task:

  • poi-3.8-beta3-20110606.jar
  • poi-ooxml-3.8-beta3-20110606.jar
  • poi-ooxml-schemas-3.8-beta3-20110606.jar
  • poi-scratchpad-3.8-beta3-20110606.jar

• I ran the bnd tool with the wrap parameter: java -jar biz.aQute.bnd.jar wrap ./poi-3.8-beta3-20110606-merged.jar

• I had to bundle the jars in the /ooxml-lib folder separately, with bnd:

  • xmlbeans-2.3.0.jar
  • stax-api-1.0.1.jar
  • dom4j-1.6.1.jar

• This leads to ClassNotFoundExceptions for org.w3c.dom.Node because xmlbeans-2.3.0.jar exports four classes from this package org.w3c.dom. Normally the JavaSE-RuntimeEnvironment would export these.

• I deleted the org/w3c/dom folder from xmlbeans-2.3.0.jar and rebundled the jar but I got other ClassNotFoundExceptions.

This is where I got so far. I think working with bnd wrap is not enough. Probably I must create a bnd.properties file and have explicit Export-Package/Import-Package statements but which work?

So, has anyone successfully managed to create a working POI 3.8 OSGI bundle?

Answer 1

If you don't need that specific version, simply use http://ebr.springsource.com/repository/app/bundle/version/detail?name=com.springsource.org.apache.poi&version=3.0.2.FINAL that page lists it's dependencies etc (which you can also download or reference if you're using Maven/Ivy)

May be http://engroup.sourceforge.net/maven2/engroup/osgi/commons/poi-osgi/3.1/ or http://ebr.springsource.com/repository/app/search?query=poi can provide some inspiration (in the first link there's a maven POM that lists the (bnd) instructions in the bundle plugin section).

Why are you merging the jars? Why not try wrapping each individually?

A second thing to try is to use existing OSGi'd jars of xmlbeans, stax-api and dom4j

Also you can configure what the JRE (system bundle) exports using "org.osgi.framework.system.packages" - so you can choose not to export org.w3c.dom