The DocdokuPLM is an open-source platform allowing its users to manage their product's lifecycle, from design to maintenance. The main application is built upon RequireJS and BackboneJS librairies for the front-end, and JEE for back-end. The GUI is quite complete, and may won't fit for all users involved in the process. This is especially the case for CAD designers who just need to commit their changes without having such a rich graphic interface. To answer this need, we developped a desktop application, interfacing our server with the CAD designer's file system : the DPLM. First, we developped a command line interface, which is very lightweight and really great for advanced users. However providing a GUI which could interface with the CLI and allow the user to manage multiple files upload at once was more than needed. Providing a consistent user experience across different platforms has been one of our challenges in the context of our application. The choice of a web framework was then a natural choice. But how could we get it run within a desktop application ? Node-Webkit brought us the ability to interact directly with the user's file system and embed the app in a webview, letting us the choice to use any web framework we wanted to use.
Training Electronics, Morgan is now a mobile consultant at DocDoku, where he was able to dive into open source technologies and work alongside passionate and involved developers.
