• What is OFBiz?
• Roadmap
• Demos
• Tutorials
• Training Video
• Downloads
• Accounting/GL
• CRM/SFA
• Resources
• Mentoring
• opentaps CD

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OFBiz Tutorials

These tutorials are designed to give you a basic knowledge of developing applications with OFBiz. Please read them in sequence. If you find any errors, please let us know.

• OFBiz in a Nutshell (PDF) - General overview of Open For Business.
• Running OFBiz - a short guide on how to run OFBiz.
• Developing Applications with OFBiz - an architectural overview.
• Tall, Grande, or Venti? - How much Java do I need to know for OFBiz?
• A Tour of OFBiz - Exploring the structure of an OFBiz application.
• Entities and Services - How to use the entity and service engines to work with data and access business logic.
• Hello World 1 - Your first OFBiz application.
• Hello World 2 - Build a bigger web application with decorator pattern, screen widgets, and actions.
• Hello World 3 - Building a complete application with data models, business logic, and user interface.
• Fixes for More Recent OFBiz Versions - If you are using a version of OFBiz later than opentaps 0.9.x, you may need to make these changes to the Hello World tutorials.
• Changes for opentaps 1.4/ofbiz 09.04 - If you are using opentaps 1.4 or later (or ofbiz 09.04 release), these are some important changes.
• OFBiz SOAP/RMI Tutorial by Vincenzo di Lorenzo - How to access OFBiz applications via SOAP and RMI. (Download files). See additional OFBiz material on opensourcesupport.it
• Securing your OFBiz application - General notes on security in OFBiz.
• Internationalizing OFBiz - Internationalizing OFBiz applications.
• OFBiz in Eclipse - Debugging OFBiz with the Eclipse IDE.
• OFBiz Contributors Best Practices - Please read this before you start working with or contributing back to OFBiz.
• Unit Testing
• Loading wars into OFBiz - This one in particular covers how to load openi OLAP application. This is far easier than trying to deploy OFBIZ inside another Tomcat container.
• opentaps SQL Query Tool

opentaps tools

These tools are part of the opentaps Open Source ERP + CRM system based on OFBIZ and not part of OFBIZ.

• opentaps Javadocs - opentaps is a superset of ofbiz
• opentaps - Hibernate integration - opentaps allows you to use ofbiz with hibernate. This tutorial shows you how.
• Domain Driven Architecture - an object-oriented architecture on top of ofbiz
• Base Entity Classes - auto generated Java classes for ofbiz entities
• Java Wrapper for OFBiz Services - auto generated Java classes for ofbiz services
• opentaps Form Macros
• opentaps Live Catalog for integrating with Joomla and other PHP or Ruby On Rails systems
• opentaps Coding Guidelines
• Developing better user interfaces
• Opentaps Online Manuals
• opentaps and Google Web Toolkit (GWT)
• Screen Widget Actions in Java

OFBiz Cookbooks

These are our howto notes for developing with OFBIZ, written as we work with it.

• OFBIZ Debugging Guide (text) - Read this!
• OFBIZ Form Widget Cookbook (text)
• OFBIZ Screen Widget Cookbook (text)
• OFBIZ Menu Widget Cookbook (text)
• OFBIZ Entity Engine Cookbook (text)
• OFBIZ Service Engine Cookbook (text)
• OFBIZ Webapp/Controller Cookbook (text)
• OFBIZ Minilang Cookbook (text)
• Working with BigDecimal (text)

Reporting

• Creating OFBiz Reports with BIRT (PDF)

User Manuals

• opentaps User Manuals
• opentaps Video Demos
• docs.ofbiz.org - OFBiz documentation wiki site

The User Manuals and Video Demos are also included on the opentaps/OFBiz CD.

Training Video

If you would like additional training, the opentaps/OFBIZ Developer Training Video offers you four and half hours of pre-recorded training and live development demonstration that cover many key aspects of developing with the OFBIZ framework.

Learning OFBiz

Now that you have completed the tutorials, you should have a good understanding of the OFBiz Framework, its principles, and a basic knowledge of how to build applications with it. You can probably build a small application or customize an existing one, such as the eCommerce online store, at this point.

You should not try to build a large application with OFBiz yet. Larger applications require an understanding the data model and business logic already in OFBiz. Without this knowledge, you might waste time writing duplicate code or implement poorly conceived processes.

The best way to learn OFBiz is by joining it. Dedicate some time each week to working on OFBiz. Find an issue that interests you on the issue tracker, or ask for one on the developer list. Work on it at you pace. Submit your results. Other developers' feedback on your work will help you learn OFBiz. If you are an experienced developer and spent the equivalent of a week, or four hours a week for about three months, you should get quite good with OFBiz.

We also offer mentoring services to help you and your team develop large-scale applications succesfully with OFBiz. Please contact us.

Thank you

Thanks to Daniel Kunkel for the screenshots of the files and directories for the Hello World tutorials.

Thanks to Christopher Cullum, Robert Riggins, Manuel Meyer, and all the others who helped with comments, corrections, and suggestions to make these tutorials better.