Creating a FirstSpirit web-module: Part 2 – Building the module

feddersen
Community Manager
Community Manager
5 5 3,181

Now that you're convienced that creating a web-application module is a good idea, let's see how you can do so. I've added a complete web-application module to our source code examples.  The module contains a simple servlet and and even simpler taglibrary to showcase the FirstSpirit specific parts.

Getting started
Build the module
  1. Grab and extract the source code examples.
  2. Grab the fs-access.jar (located at /data/fslib) and the fs-client.jar (/web/fs4root/clientjar) from your FirstSpirit server. Copy them to /examples/FS_V4_mod/lib. These two libraries are needed to compile the examples. You'll also need a servlet-api.jar and a jsp-api.jar. They're are shipped with every Tomcat/Glassfish/Jetty installation. Your IDE may ship them as well.
  3. Edit the setenv.sh (setenv.bat if you're on windows) and adjust the path to your JDK.
  4. Execute setenv.sh or setenv.bat to configure the build environment.
  5. Perform a "ant assemble-all" to build all modules, including the web-application example. If you just want to build the web-application example, run "ant assemble-fsm" within the examples/FS_V4_mod/webapp/ directory.
Install the module on a FirstSpirit server
  1. Locate the fsm file under examples/FS_V4_mod/webapp/target/fsm
  2. Install the newly created fsm archive in the 'Server and Project Configuration', Server -> Server properties -> Modules -> Installserver_properties.png
  3. Edit your project, go to the "web components" section and add the module to an environment. Refer to the admin documentation (section 7.3.16 Web applications) for details. Add it at least to the Preview and Production environment.project_web_components.png

Please note that you're able to edit the web.xml, which shipped with the module, by clicking the "web.xml" button. That feature is provided out of the box. Clicking on the "Confgure" button will show you a simple, Swing based, configuration screen.

Verify it's working
  1. Switch to the "Preview" environment tab and click on the "Update" button at the top. This will deploy the web-application to your internal Jetty.project_web_components_update.png
  2. Create a new page template (or modify an existing one) to include the new JSP-Tag.
<%@ page contentType="text/html;charset=UTF-8" language="java" %>
<%@taglib prefix="t" uri="HelloWorld"  %>
<html>
  <head><title>Simple jsp page</title></head>
  <body>
   <p><t:greeter name="Joe"/></p>
   <p><t:greeter name="${param['name']}"/></p>
   <p><t:greeter /></p>
  </body>
</html>








Every working? Great, so let's have a closer look at our webapplication:

WebApp Features
Taglib


The taglib implements one simple "hello world" tag. Nothing fancy here.

Servlet

The servlet is nearly as simple as the taglib. It implements a very simple hit counter ("This servlet has been called x times."). The two configuration options are controlled via a java properties file named "configuration.properties".

Execute the servlet by calling http://YOURHOST/YOURAPP/hello or http://YOURHOST/YOURAPP/hello?name=John

FSM-structure

You already know, we're using  Ant as a build tool. The build.xml contains all normal ant tasks,  necessary to build a Java based project (compile, create jars). The task to create our module (.fsm file) is called "assemble-fsm". As I  mentioned in my previous blog post, a fsm file isn't much more than a  renamed jar file, containing a module.xml.

Here's the file structure of the generated fsm file:

fsm-structure.png

configuration.properties

This file contains the configuration options for our servlet.

environment=PRODUCTION
counterInitialValue=0

HelloWorld.tld

Defines our tag

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<taglib version="2.0" xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/j2ee" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/j2ee web-jsptaglibrary_2_0.xsd">
<tlib-version>1.0</tlib-version>
<short-name>helloworld</short-name>
<uri>HelloWorld</uri>
<tag>
   <name>greeter</name>
   <tag-class>de.espirit.firstspirit.opt.examples.webapp.web.HelloWorldTag</tag-class>
   <body-content>empty</body-content>
   <attribute>
       <name>name</name>
       <rtexprvalue>true</rtexprvalue>
       <required>false</required>
    </attribute>
</tag>
</taglib>

web.xml

Define our servlet and it's mapping

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<web-app version="2.4"
         xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/j2ee"
         xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
         xsi:schemaLocation="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/j2ee http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/j2ee/web-app_2_4.xsd" >

    <servlet>
        <servlet-name>HelloWorldServlet</servlet-name>
        <servlet-class>de.espirit.firstspirit.opt.examples.webapp.web.HelloWorldServlet</servlet-class>
    </servlet>
    <servlet-mapping>
        <servlet-name>HelloWorldServlet</servlet-name>
        <url-pattern>/hello</url-pattern>
    </servlet-mapping>
</web-app>

Lib directory
  • The webapp-example-0.0.1_422.jar contains all FirstSpirit specific classes, which are necessary to install/configure the module.
  • The webapp-example-0.0.1_422-webapp.jar contains the servlet and taglibrary.

module.xml

Contains all metadata for our module.

<!DOCTYPE module SYSTEM "../lib/module.dtd">
<module>
    <name>FirstSpirit WebApp Example Module</name>
    <version>0.0.1_422</version>
    <description>FirstSpirit WebApp Example Module</description>
    <vendor>e-Spirit AG</vendor>
    <class>de.espirit.firstspirit.opt.examples.webapp.configuration.WebAppModule</class>
    <components>
        <web-app>
            <name>FirstSpirit WebApp Example Module</name>
            <description>Web component of FIRSTspirit integration.</description>
            <class>de.espirit.firstspirit.opt.examples.webapp.configuration.WebApp</class>
            <configurable>de.espirit.firstspirit.opt.examples.webapp.configuration.WebAppConfiguration</configurable>
            <web-xml>web.xml</web-xml>
            <resources>
                <resource>lib/webapp-example-0.0.1_422.jar</resource>
            </resources>
            <web-resources>
                <resource>HelloWorld.tld</resource>
                <resource>configuration.properties</resource>
                <resource>lib/webapp-example-0.0.1_422-webapp.jar</resource>
            </web-resources>
        </web-app>
   </components>
</module>

I'll cover the module.xml as well as all referenced classes in the next installment of this series.

Next part: Creating a FirstSpirit web-module: Part 3 – Understanding the module

5 Comments
HanSolo80
I'm new here

Hi,

could you please specify, what is meant by YOURAPP in http://YOURHOST/YOURAPP/hello ? I don't understand, how to access the servlet correctly, is "YOURAPP" the name of the servlet? Or the name of the WebApp?

I developed my own Servlet as a WebApp module but have no idea how to access it.

Thanks for your help.

Best regards,

Christoph

feddersen
Community Manager
Community Manager

It's the name of the webapp.

HanSolo80
I'm new here

Ok, so in this case you write http://YOURHOST/FirstSpirit WebApp Example Module/hello ?

Thanks.

feddersen
Community Manager
Community Manager

No, it's the name of the war file you can download and install in your servlet container. Please check the admin documentation, section 7.3.16 Web applications on how to generate the war file.

marc_palm
I'm new here

I have choosen to install the webapp on localhost:8000, where my InternalJetty is running. When I download the *.war  in project>webcomponent>production the name project_11_live.war is displayed. Nevertheless localhost:8000/project_11_live/hello is not available. Any hints? Also it bothers me that we install the module on the projectlevel, where localhost:8000/project_11_live/hello isn't server level?

By the way, it works in the preview. Here you should probably make a remark that we need a *.jsp-file.

Best regards, Marc

Version history
Last update:
‎09-08-2010 10:11 AM
Updated by: