web rest desc - apache/ctakes GitHub Wiki

The ctakes-web-rest module builds a standalone product, Apache cTaKES Web REST.

ctakes-web-rest is not compiled or built when the main Apache cTAKES code is built with maven.
ctakes-web-rest is not contained within the main Apache cTAKES binary distributable zipped files.

You must build the Apache cTAKES Web REST product alone. Doing so will create its own self-contained Web Application Resource (aka Web ARchive) (WAR) file.
The WAR file contains a large segment of the main Apache cTAKES binary distributable.

If you are running maven by the command line then you must run in the ctakes-web-rest directory or direct maven to the ctakes-web-rest pom.
If you are running maven in an IDE, then you must add ctakes-web-rest as its own maven project and execute maven commands on that project.
Building the main ctakes project will not build ctakes-web-rest.

This configuration exists because:

• building ctakes-web-rest with the main ctakes maven project adds to the build time.
• building ctakes-web-rest with the main ctakes maven project adds to the disk footprint of the build. i.e. it has its own huge target/ directory.
• including ctakes-web-rest in the main Apache cTAKES binary distributable essentially puts two copies of cTAKES in the distributable.
• building ctakes-web-rest with the main ctakes maven project will NOT put any changed code or resources in the war.
• ^ Unless you mvn install. Making ctakes-web-rest a separate build reinforces the separation.

This module performs natural language processing of input payload using REST API endpoint and extracts out clicnical information in JSON format.