uimaj-documentation/src/docs/asciidoc/user/uv3.spi.adoc

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[[_uv3.spi]]
= Type discovery via SPI

== JCas class discovery

JCas types and associated type system descriptions can be made discoverable by UIMA using Java's
SPI mechanism. 

NOTE: The core UIMA Java SDK currently only this mechanism to discover JCas classes. SPI-based
      auto-discovery of type system descriptions is supported by uimaFIT 3.4.0 and higher.

SPI-based JCas class discovery is important in situation where multiple classloaders are used, e.g.
in OSGi environments. This is because JCas classes must be globally unique in the entire system
(with the exception of PEARs which can have their own JCas classes). So if JCas classes are to be
provided through different class loaders (e.g. OSGI bundle classloaders), they must be announced via
SPI, otherwise UIMA will not be able to reliably associated the JCas classes with their unique 
classloader.

To announce JCas classes via SPI, create a file `META-INF/services/org.apache.uima.spi.JCasClassProvider`
and in the file, place implementations of the interface `org.apache.uima.spi.JCasClassProvider`, one 
per line.

Here is a trivial example implementation of the interface that announces two JCas classes.

[source]
----
public class MyJCasClassProvider implements JCasClassProvider {

  @Override
  public List<Class<? extends TOP>> listJCasClasses() {
    return asList(MyToken.class, MySentence.class);
  }
}
----

More elaborate implementations might e.g. use uimaFIT to auto-detect types and if there is a JCas
class for any of these types, announce them.

== Type system description discovery

The core UIMA framework defines the `TypeSystemDescriptionProvider` interface to also enable
type system discovery via SPI. However, note that currently only uimaFIT actually implements
the type system discovery.

Here is an example of how to implement a type system description provider for use with 
uimaFIT:


[source]
----
import org.apache.uima.util.TypeSystemUtil;

public class MyTypeSystemDescriptionProvider implements TypeSystemDescriptionProvider {
  @Override}
  public List<TypeSystemDescription> listTypeSystemDescriptions() {
    return TypeSystemUtil.loadTypeSystemDescriptionsFromClasspath(getClass(), "TypeSystem1.xml",
        "TypeSystem2.xml");
  }
}
----