Eclipse: Two web projects, one servlet - java

I use a library which includes, among other things, a servlet. I've fetched the source for this lib to a dynamic web project and it works fine.
I'd like to make an example dynamic web application in another project which would just reference to the classes of this library. Is it possible to do it this way in Eclipse Galileo and deploy to Tomcat.
This I like to do, so that in the library source project I have only the libs own code and my modifications to it and my example app would be a totally another app.
In Eclipse I've referenced my example app project to the lib project and it works fine when coding, but when I try to access the example app URL it throws a ServletException because it can't find the Servlet.
The libs own web page works fine.

Can you not just create a JAR containing the classes you which to share and then reference this JAR in each project?
I would recommend staying away from IDE features like the ones in Eclipse that try to bundle up your app and deploy it for you - I find it helps much more to control this yourself, with your own build scripts, app server setup, etc.
This way you aren't stuck wondering why a certain nuance of the IDE works the way it does (such as, why is Eclipse not deploying the output of a project I've added as a "reference" along with this project?) - you can completely control your own environment. It's more valuable to know how to bundle up and deploy things on your own anyway (since it works the same regardless of whatever IDE you are using), and the tools behind it are a lot more powerful than any "press this shiny button and everything gets deployed and launched" feature in your IDE.

Related

Test dependencies of Java web app library

I am coding a java web app.
When I started, every time I needed to use an external package, I would download the jars manually and download all dependencies of each jar manually and place them in the libraries folder (in Netbeans).
As time went on, I started using a dependency manager (Ant).
Now, I would like to use my dependency manager for all of my external libraries.
If, after executing this change I run my application and it successfully deploys (no ClassNotFoundExceptions and no NoClassDefFoundErrors), is it safe to assume that I have not missed anything and that my application will run smoothly as far as the external packages go?
Or, do I need to individually test out each functionality in my web app to confirm that the changes I made to the libraries didn't change how the application runs?
It's actually depends on the code inside these libraries. Only part of classes are loaded at startup, thus you can miss something. Also there might be a possibility that you're loading some classes in runtime manually, i.e. Class.forName(String) and this code has not been triggered at startup. Thus, I would say you can't be 100% sure.
Generally in Java here are 3 build approaches:
Imperative - you're saying "How to assembly your code". The typical example of this is Apache Ant.
Declarative - you're saying "Which code you want to assembly". The typical example of this is Apache Maven
Mixed - which takes benefits of previous systems. This is Gradle.
How it helps!

Clientside GWT and Maven curious Setup

I want to setup GWT in a special mode. I only use GWT for the client side as a replacement for having to deal with JavaScript directly.
The idea is to produce a single JS file.
Since this is also part of a bigger project with multiple project pages I got a problem where to put the output of the compiler and how to setup.
The ideal setup would be placing the GWT stuff into a single project and incooperate the ouput in a different project. The question is how to do it?
Update:
The current plan is to compile the JavaScript out of GWT using a simple Java application just issuing the GWT compile command and taking the Eclipse auto-build classes as necessary input. After the sources are compiled to java script the application copies the js files (one for every supported browser) to the related destination. This way the once created js files stay static and other developers do not have to deal with GWT related build tasks and we just avoid a necessary maven fight to get things working on build.
Also the GWT project can now depend on the web project making it possible to start the web application and alter its behaviour by adding support to host mode debugging.
Does anyone know a working example?
The easiest way, if you build a WAR in the end, is to put the output of GWT in a WAR too that you can use an an overlay in the final WAR module.
Other Maven plugins could do the trick too (dependency:unpack, maven-shade-plugin, etc.)
See https://github.com/tbroyer/gwt-maven-archetypes for examples.

Linking jar to war

I created a project(in netbeans) where all my gui part(used swings) is in java application-1.The data from java application-1 is passed to servlets in WebApplication-1 where the details are stored to the database.The project is working fine.
I was asked to create jar/war for my project..so that it can used any where...
I have gone through creation of jar and war(also tested with sample applications).My question is how can I link java application-1(jar) to WebApplication-1(war)??
For suppose jar is imported in another system it has to use war(since servlets are there in Webapplication).How can I do this??Is there a way to bind all the project into one library??
You can't access a war directly from the outside since according to the Java EE spec wars have to be isolated. Thus any communication between the GUI app and the web app must use other channels, the most obvious being http-based communication, like webservices.
Another option might be to create an ear and put the database code (moving it out of the war) as well as the GUI app and the war into that.

Questions about developing GAE apps on Eclipse with Clojure

After getting counterclockwise working on my Eclipse setup
and GAE development server running in interactive mode I found these
things still unclear for me:
1) How can I start server and application without commanding it on
REPL?
2) When I deploy application to Google servers, how and where do I
define the entry point of application? I mean, how Google will know
which application, application handlers and routes to use?
3) Can I combine using java classes and clojure files on same project
so that both are compiled automatic when creating and editing them on
my src folder?
4) Which files and jars are actually needed for uploading to GAE at
the end? Im used to deploy PHP apps to GAE, but here I dont know if I should make jars, include compiled clj files. I also might like to organize files different way than counterclockwise or appengine-magic does, so where do I specify paths to resources and classes?
5) Finally is it possible to connect Google production server with
Emacs - Slime - Swank combination? That would be the fulfill of
dreams, lol.
I'm using appengine-magic with Jetty, Compojure, Ring and Hiccup.
I'm going to suggest a lein/appengine-magic/Eclipse hybrid approach. Create your GAE project with appengine-magic and then set it up in Eclipse.
Create a Clojure "Run Configuration" and check the source files you need evaluated to bring the server up. You will get a REPL to it when it starts.
Your GAE entry point is your web.xml server-class, which refers to the ahead-of-time compiled source in app_servlet.clj (assuming you used lein appengine-new to create the project originally). Look in app_servlet.clj for the call to make-servlet-service-method -- the argument there is your App Engine Magic (see def-appengine-app in core.clj) entry point. In turn that refers to your Compojure handler and routes. See https://github.com/gcv/appengine-magic for the details.
I have not done this, so cannot comment.
Let appengine-magic take care of this: lein appengine-magic prepare, then deploy the deploy the war directory appcfg.sh (which you can find in the GAE Java SDK). You may also be able to use the GAE Eclipse plugins to achieve this.
You cannot use sockets with GAE. Swank depends on sockets, so a REPL to your live application is not possible. You can REPL all you like with the dev server however.
Q 1 & 2 were eventually solved and cleared.
Q 3 I wasnt able to do it because either java or clojure classes overwrote each other and I couldnt change target directories for them separately.
Q 4 after first succesfull deployment now I know what are the core base jars to be included. Yes it depends on what you happen to use on your project. I think I have transferred way too many unnecessary files on PHP deployments.
Q 5 Thats what I thought. But I didnt get swank working on dev app engine server. Its reporting illegal access to some appengine sdk file. Maybe I need to include it on project libs...

Java EE Jar file sharing

At our shop, we are maintaining roughly 20 Java EE web applications. Most of these applications are fairly CRUD-like in their architecture, with a few of them being pretty processor intensive calculation applications.
For the deployment of these applications we have been using Hudson set up to monitor our CVS repository. When we have a check-in, the projects are set to be compiled and deployed to our Tomcat 6.0 server (Solaris 10, sparc Dual-core 1.6 GHz processor, 2 GB RAM...not the beefiest machine by any stretch of the imagination...) and, if any unit-tests exist for the project, those are executed and the project is only deployed if the unit-tests pass. This works great.
Now, over time, I've noticed myself that a lot of the projects I create utilize the same .jar files over and over again (Hibernate, POI (Excel output), SQL Server JDBC driver, JSF, ICEFaces, business logic .jar files, etc.). Our practice has been to just keep a folder on our network drive stocked with all the default .jar files we have been using, and when a new project is started we copy this set of .jar files into the new project and go from there...and I feel so dirty every time this happens it has started to keep me up at night. I have been told by my co-workers that it is "extremely difficult" to set up a .jar repository on the tomcat server, which I don't buy for a second...I attribute it to pure laziness and, probably, no desire to learn the best practice. I could be wrong, however, I am just stating my feelings on the matter. This seems to bloat the size of our .war files that get deployed to the server as well.
From my understanding, Tomcat itself has a set of .jar files that are accessible to all applications deployed to it, so I would think we would be able to consolidate all of these duplicate .jar files in all our projects and move them onto the tomcat server. This would involve only updating one .jar file on the server if, for example, we need to update the ICEFaces .jar files to a new version.
Another part of me says that by including only one copy of the .jar files on the server, I might need to keep a copy of the server's lib directory in my development environment as well (i.e. include those .jar files in eclipse dependency).
My gut instinct tells me that I want to move those duplicated .jar files onto the server...will this work?
I think Maven and Ivy were born to help manage JAR dependencies. Maybe you'll find that those are helpful.
As far as the debate about duplicating the JARs in every project versus putting them in the server/lib, I think it hinges on one point: How likely is it that you'll want to upgrade every single application deployed on Tomcat at the same time? Can you ever envision a time where you might have N apps running on that server, and the (N+1)th app could want or require a newer version of a particular JAR?
If you don't mind keeping all the apps in synch, by all means have them use a common library base.
Personally, I think that disk space is cheap. My preference is to duplicate JARs for each app and put them in the WAR file. I like the partitioning. I'd like to see more of it when OSGi becomes more mainstream.
It works most of the time, but you can get into annoying situations where the jar that you have moved into tomcat is trying to make an instance of a class in one of your web application jars, leading to ClassNotFoundException s being thrown. I used to do this, but stopped because of these problems.
I really don't think putting libraries in common/lib is a good idea. The idea behind the use of war files as applications into a servlet container, is to have a real idea of isolation between your webapps. You could face errors like deploy some third party WAR (with it own libraries inside WEB-INF/lib) and it behave unexpectedly because it loaded other version of one of it libraries from the common one (remember that the regular behavior for load classes is first look at the common classloader and if you don't find the class look into the one for your webapp). Don't even mention how painful could be to move some application to other servlet container or an Application Server.
As mentioned before, you could use maven to deal with jar dependencies, and if you like the homogeneous use of libraries, define a POM parent (maven jargon) across all your applications.
In my experience you should be very careful with sharing libraries between web applications by moving them into the web container itself.
Let them live in WEB-INF/lib so your wars are self contained (you WILL be glad you did one day).
What you might consider is employing maven or Ant Ivy to pull in library jars from a common repository instead. This is very useful and should not be a problem in your scenario.
Edit: A notable exception is the Metro library - web service layer from Glassfish - which needs to be in the web container and not in the web application.

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