J2Ee Jboss Ejb With Eclipse 2003

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Bert Torfs Page 1 02-02-2003

Introduction....................................................................................................................................................................... 2

Environment ...................................................................................................................................................................... 2

DOWNLOAD J2EE.......................................................................................................................................................... 3

Eclipse................................................................................................................................................................................ 3

Download and install...................................................................................................................................................... 3

Create a simple HelloWorld program.............................................................................................................................. 3

Make the sessionbean.................................................................................................................................................. 8

Create the remote interface ......................................................................................................................................... 9

Create the home interface ........................................................................................................................................... 9

Package the bean into a JAR to be deployed on JBoss.................................................................................................. 9

Deploying the bean................................................................................................................................................... 10

Changing our client to use the bean .......................................................................................................................... 11

Running and debugging............................................................................................................................................ 12

Accessing a database.......................................................................................................................................................... 13

Introduction................................................................................................................................................................. 13

MySql .......................................................................................................................................................................... 13

Back to eclipse : update the server application to read the database ................................................................................ 20

Add the beans to the project ..................................................................................................................................... 20

Modify the session bean to get its data from the entity beans ..................................................................................... 21

Modify, run and debug the client.............................................................................................................................. 24

JSP................................................................................................................................................................................... 26

Required setup ............................................................................................................................................................. 26

Download and install Apache Tomcat....................................................................................................................... 26

Download and install ‘Sysdeo Eclipse Tomcat Launcher plugin’................................................................................ 27

Download and install ‘Solar Eclipse’.......................................................................................................................... 28

A Simple JSP example : WhatTimeIsIt.......................................................................................................................... 29

Store and get preferences and settings in XML files ........................................................................................................... 42

What’s next ...................................................................................................................................................................... 42

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Bert Torfs Page 2 02-02-2003

Introduction

It all started with the article ‘Working with Java – Enterprise Java’ on Apples website. It showed that enterprise Java on OS X

was possible, that everything worked. But it left me somewhat unhappy. As I am very GUI minded – I would not be a Mac

user if I wasn’t – I wanted an IDE that could help me with my OS X enterprise java stuff, and nowhere in that article was

any hint to such an IDE. Secondly, but very related, I want to debug my server code. And last but not least, I do not want to

spend my time writing repetitive code or code that can easily be generated. Just think about EJB-JAR.XML, a good part of

jboss.xml and even the ejb’s and their interfaces–all these getters and setters - they can easily be generated from the lay-outs

of your database..

The IDE used is Eclipse, a free product written by IBM and backed by others (Borland being one of them). Although it lacks

some of the flashy features offered by commercial IDE’s (just think of GUI-editors, wizards…), it is very good at what it

does, and its performance is acceptable. It is even usable on a Pismo 500 MHz PowerBook, although you’ll better have the

fastest dual G4 at hand if you are using it on a daily basis. Eclipse has an extensible plug-in architecture. The integration

with JBoss is handled by such a plug-in to name one. No doubt GUI-editing, EJB-generation and others will be added as

plug-ins later. (If you all register WhereDidAllMyMoneyGo?, I could do this myself).

As stated earlier, MySql is the database system I use. To generate ‘stupid code’, I am using a command line tool called

Middlegen. JBoss is my application server, Tomcat my webserver. All these tools are available for free under a GNU licence.

Later, I might add a chapter on version control (using CVS), a chapter on XML (using Castor), but currently, I’ll limit

myself to session and entity beans, and to JSP and servlets.

Environment

All the stuff described in this article was written and tested on a dual GHz Quicksilver G4 running OS X 10.2.1. 10.2 is a

prerequisite for Eclipse – threads on Apples Java developer mailing list learn that people using 10.1 have difficulties running

Eclipse. A second prerequisite is a fast Internet connection. There is over 100 megabytes to download if you want to replay

this article.

I unzipped or unstuffed all downloads with Stuffit Expander. You MUST use Stuffit Expander version 7.0 or later, as earlier

versions make a mess of long filenames.

Everything I downloaded just worked as advertised for me after unstuffing. I do not have any unsupported tools, cracked or

doubtful software or haxy installed, so my system is quite out-of-the-box.

As I am not a command line freak, I did not change the configuration of my terminal application. If you use another shell, I

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Bert Torfs Page 3 02-02-2003

http://java.sun.com/j2ee/sdk_1.3/. (Id did not download the 1.4 version, as OS X java is still at 1.3.1). Just download and

unzip it. I unzipped it to Aa folder named /Applications/java/j2sdkee1.3.1.

This download is not really necessary for the examples of this article. All I did with this download was to include the file

‘j2ee.jar’ in my projects. J2ee.jar contains the interfaces implemented by enterprise beans. But these interfaces are – if you

search a bit – included in jar-files that come with JBoss as well. But as I had downloaded the sdk earlier on alraedy, I just

used it without looking further. But pf course, including the full J2ee.jar file in a J2ee application is overkill.

When you finished installing the j2ee-sdk, it might be a good time to read trough Suns excellent J2EE tutorial, available

Download and install

First of all, Eclipse requires OSX 10.2 or later. If you are running on 10.1x, you should repackage eclipse (doing things with

the info.plist file amongst other things. There is a thread on this on Apples Java developer mailing list).

Eclipse can be downloaded from http://www.eclipse.org/downloads/index.php.

The latest OSX builds are currently in the ‘Stable build’ category, next to the M1 build name. Future builds will appear in

the ‘Latest Release’ category. The current stable build weights about 57 Mb. Download it and unzip it with a version of

Stuffit Expander later than 7.0. (You might have to add the .zip extension to the file in order for the system to identify it as a

zip archive.). If you have an older version, you should use the command line tools that come standard with OSX to unzip.

The result of the download process is a folder called ‘Eclipse’ that contains, well, Eclipse. Just move this folder to the

‘Applications’ folder.

- Select Java and Java Project, then click ‘Next >>’

- Give your project a name (I named it HelloProject) and a location (I kept the default, which is inside the ‘Eclipse’

folder – bad choice me thinks) and press ‘Next>>’ again.

- On the next screen, check the ‘Use source folders contained in the project’ button, push the ‘Create New Folder…’

button and name the source folder ‘src’. Answer ‘Yes’ when Eclipse suggests you to place builds in a build folder as

well. Next Press ‘Finish’.

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Bert Torfs Page 4 02-02-2003

- The workspace should now look like this:

- Next thing to do is to create our program. Control-click the HelloProject folder and select ‘New Class’ from the

contextual menu and fill in the dialog. Note that you cannot use the <Tab> key to move between form fields. <Tab>

will just insert a tab into the current field. The dialog should be like this when filled:

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Bert Torfs Page 5 02-02-2003

and select ‘Format’ from the contextual menu.

- Next we complete the main method. It should be

public class HelloClient

{

public static void main(String[] args)

{

System.out.println("Hello world");

}

}

- Then click on the little arrow next to the ‘Bug’ button, and select ‘Debug as->Java Application’ from the menu.