[Liferay] Multiple Service Builders in one Liferay Project

While working on liferay projects and portlets, sometimes we have a huge amount of service entities and we can logically group them and divide into multiple files and then import into main service.xml file.

Lets take an example of a company intranet where several modules are to be designed to support employee information, leaves, timesheet, projects, performance evaluations, trainings, meeting room booking etc. Our main service.xml will look like

	<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
	<!DOCTYPE service-builder PUBLIC "-//Liferay//DTD Service Builder 6.2.0//EN" "http://www.liferay.com/dtd/liferay-service-builder_6_2_0.dtd">
	<service-builder package-path="me.rkg.apps.hrms">
	<author>Ravi Kumar Gupta</author>
	<namespace>HRMS</namespace>
	<!-- Entities start here -->
	...
	<!-- Entities end here -->
	<service-builder-import file="lms-service.xml"></service-builder-import>
	<service-builder-import file="eis-service.xml"></service-builder-import>
	<service-builder-import file="pms-service.xml"></service-builder-import>
	</service-builder>

view raw Main Service.xml hosted with ❤ by GitHub

This service.xml file can include any number of entities just like we add in usual way. For specific modules, we have imported children xxx-service.xml files.

The name of the files need not to be in xxx-service.xml, it can be anything that suits you.

The child xml files will contain entities related to a specific module. For example leave management system related service lms-service.xml will be like -

	<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
	<service-builder package-path="me.rkg.apps.hrms">
	<entity name="LeaveEntry" remote-service="false" local-service="true">
	<column name="entryId" type="long" primary="true"></column>
	...
	</entity>
	<entity name="LeaveTypes" remote-service="false" local-service="true">
	<column name="id" type="long" primary="true"></column>
	...
	</entity>
	</service-builder>

view raw lms-service.xml hosted with ❤ by GitHub

Our performance management system related service pms-service.xml will be like -

	<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
	<service-builder package-path="me.rkg.apps.hrms">
	<entity name="EvaluationParam" remote-service="false" local-service="true">
	<column name="paramId" type="long" primary="true"></column>
	...
	</entity>
	<entity name="EvaluationCycle" remote-service="false" local-service="true">
	<column name="cycleId" type="long" primary="true"></column>
	...
	</entity>
	...
	</service-builder>

view raw pms-service.xml hosted with ❤ by GitHub

Hope this helps you to manage your long entities into smaller xml files and set you up with a short, readable, and organized service.xml. :)