Adding new datasources to Gnowsis is easy, a new datasource needs to define at minimum three classes: 

 1. A class implementing Aperture:DataSourceFactory
 1. A class implementing Aperture:CrawlerFactory a
 1. A class extending Gnowsis:ConfigPanel 

The factory classes have to have constructors that take no parameters, so that we can instantiate them with class.newInstance().

Pack these classes up in a jar, write a sensible manifest and put them in ~/.gnowsis-beta/datasources

An example MANIFEST.MF: 

{{{
Manifest-Version: 1.0
Created-By: 1.4.2_09 (Apple Computer, Inc.)
Gnowsis-DS-CrawlerFactory: org.gnowsis.data.datasource.rss.RSSCrawlerFactory
Gnowsis-DS-DataSourceFactory: org.gnowsis.data.datasource.rss.RSSDataSourceFactory
Gnowsis-DS-ConfigPanel: org.gnowsis.data.datasource.rss.RSSConfigPanel
Gnowsis-DS-Icon: /org/gnowsis/data/datasource/rss/rssicon.png
Gnowsis-DS-Label: RSS Datasource
Gnowsis-DS-Desc: A datasource for crawling RSS feeds.
}}}

Note that blank lines are not allowed. 


!A quick guide to creating your own aperture datasource (in eclipse): 

Here I will step through all the steps required to create a new aperture datasource and how to package it so that it can be used with gnowsis. I will create a datasource that wraps an RSS/Atom feed, and I will base it on [https://rome.dev.java.net/ rome].

 * Create a new Eclipse project, copy the main aperture jar (mine is aperture-2006.1-alpha-2.jar) and the 3 sesame jars into the project and add them to the build-path. 
 * Create a new class that implements CrawlerFactory, tell Eclipse to add all unimplemented methods.
 * Create a new class that implements DataSourceFactory, add unimplemented methods. 
 * Create a new class that extends DataSourceBase - create a public static URI called TYPE, and return this in the getType().
{{{
public static URI TYPE=new URIImpl("http://example.org/RSSDataSource");
}}}
 * Create a new