CRX Feature for Eclipse HOWTO

This HOWTO has originally been written by Alexander Klimetschek. Thank you very much.

It has now been adapted to the new CRX Feature for Eclipse 3.7.1 and CRX Feature for Eclipse DavEx Transport 1.0.0 which does not use RMI any longer. Since DavEx is enabled in CRX out of the box, there is no need any more to fiddle with the CRX Web Application to enable RMI.

Install the feature and restart Eclipse.
Open the Java Content Repository perspective
In the left, there's a JCR Repository view, in which you can configure multiple repositories to connect to
Right-click in that view and select New -> Repository
Select Configure a new remove (DavEx) Repository and click Next
For the Repository DavEx URL enter the DavEx URL of the CRX instance. For a default CRX instance this will be http://localhost:7402/crx/server while for a default Communiqué 5 instance this will be http://localhost:4502/crx/server
Set the password for the JCR session login (admin/admin set by default)
Choose whether you want to persist the password or not by checking (or not) the Save Password checkbox. If you do not persist the password, you will be asked to enter it when you connect to the session again.
Select the workspace to connect to under Workspace Name; use the Browse button if you have the admin credentials; the default workspace in crx is named crx.default
Hit Finish
A new node is now visible in the JCR Repository view which you can browse immediately.
Browse the tree including nodes and properties in the left view
For JCR operations, right click nodes or properties to see a context menu with all options
Properties and other node metadata is visible in the Properties view (at the bottom)
To the right, the define node types are listed in the JCR Node Types view.

Note: The JCR Repository view can be opened in any perspective, particularly I like to have it open in the Debug perspective. The JCR perspective is mainly a convenience because it has all views of the CRX Feature for Eclipse nicely setup.