Extending the Administration Console

The Administration Console is a browser-based tool for administering Enterprise Server. It features an easy-to-navigate interface and online help. Extending the Administration Console enables you to provide a graphical user interface for administering your add-on component. You can use any of the user interface features of the Administration Console, such as tree nodes, links on the Common Tasks page, tabs and sub-tabs, property sheets, and JavaServer Faces pages. Your add-on component implements a marker interface and provides a configuration file that describes how your customizations integrate with the Administration Console.

This chapter refers to a simple example called console-sample-ip that illustrates how to provide Administration Console features for a hypothetical add-on component. Instructions for obtaining and using this example are available at the example's project page. When you check out the code, it is placed in a directory named glassfish-samples/v3/plugin/adminconsole/console-sample-ip/ in your current directory. In this chapter, path names for the example files are relative to this directory.

The following topics are addressed here:

• Administration Console Architecture

• About Administration Console Templates

• About Integration Points

• Specifying the ID of an Add-On Component

• Adding Functionality to the Administration Console

• Adding Internationalization Support

• Changing the Theme or Brand of the Administration Console

• Creating an Integration Point Type