Together's deployment support will, at your option, generate a simple JSP-based client application to a location you specify in the EJB Deployment Expert. You can use this client to access a deployed EJB running on the server. This capability is currently available for WebLogic Server 5.1 and WebSphere 3.5.
When you select WebLogic Server 5.1 and check the Generate Simple JSP Client checkbox in the EJB Deployment Expert, a Java Server Pages (JSP) client for Enterprise JavaBeans will be generated during deployment processing. This client is the set of interrelated JSP and HTML files which can be viewed in any Internet browser. The purpose of the JSP client is to provide access to a remote EJB object through its open interfaces (i.e., "Remote" and "Home"). Generally, the "Home" interface is intended for control over remote object life cycles and the "Remote" interface is for calling remote object business methods. The simple generated JSP client is able to perform these operations and save you the necessity to write your own client program for testing purposes.
Some notes that are worth mentioning:
JSPs are "active" pages... you can view them only through the server (in this case - through the WebLogic 5.1 or WebSphere 3.5).
The semantic information necessary to generate a JSP client comes from the Together project's currently active diagram. Because this provides rather sparse information, it is not practical to create a sophisticated, commercial-grade client program. Therefore you need to consider the generated JSP client as universal testing facility.
When you check the JSP client generation option in the Deployment Expert, an additional page is included in the page sequence. You fill in a number of fields on this page with information to support JSP client generation.
JSP client fields in the EJB Deployment Expert (WebLogic version shown)
The following fields are displayed in the Deployment Expert when Weblogic 5.1 is the selected server:
WebLogic public directory: The root of the WLS file hierarchy which can be accessed from outside. Thus if you want to allow access to some HTML for JSP files, then you need to allocates it somewhere here. By default the WLS public directory allocated at [WebLogic home]/myserver/public_html .
Subdirectory for placing JSP files: To avoid disorder in public directory it is desirable to allocate files by separated groups in some subdirectory. You can assign the path to a subdirectory where your JSP files are to be placed. This path is considered relative to root of the public directory. The subdirectory will be created automatically if it does not exist (after confirmation).
Base URL for browsing JSP: In order to browse any remote resource it is of course necessary to specify its URL. Standard Web URL includes protocol, host, port, web resource alias, and path. In this field you have to set all necessary parts except for the path. During request processing, the server will replace this base URL with the WebLogic public directory in order to access the requested web resource. If you make a typing error, or specify erroneous relativity to the WebLogic public directory, your will get an access error when you try to load the JSPs in a browser. By default, the base URL is http://localhost:7001/.
Show result after generation: This field is a flag that indicates whether to show the start page after successful generation. If you check it, the standard Internet browser will launch and show the start page.
The following fields are displayed in the Deployment Expert when WebSphere 3.5 is selected:
Document root directory: This directory is the root of file hierarchy, which can be accessed from outside. Thus, if you want to allow access to some HTML of JSP files, you need to allocate them accordingly.
Subdirectory for placing JSP files: To avoid disorder in public directory, it is desirable to allocate files in separate groups by the means of a subdirectory. You can assign the path to the subdirectory where your files will be placed. This path is relative to the root public directory. If the subdirectory doesn't exist, it will be created automatically (after confirmation).
Root Web path for browsing JSP: In order to browse remote WEB resource, you have to set URL. Standard Web URL includes protocol, host, port, web resource alias, and path. In this field you have to set all necessary parts except for the path. During request processing, server will substitute this Web path to WebSphere document root directory in order to access the requested web resource. If this field, or the root directory field, is wrong, an access error will be reported when you try to load JSPs in a browser. By default root Web path is http://localhost/.
WebSphere JNDI service provider URL: This field is required to establish connection between JSP client and EJB server. It is well known that the client should first send request to the name service provider, in order to find EJB service provider. This value appends to the JSP files in course of generation and is used during execution. Normally, you do not need to change this field. Default value is iiop://localhost:900.
Show result after generation: This field is a flag that indicates whether to show the start page after successful generation. If you check it, the standard Internet browser will launch and show the start page.
General considerations
WebSphere Application Server supports multiple document roots. Each root is associated with a so called "Web Application". The field values on the current page should comply with those of the Web application.
You can create new Web Application and automatically configure it in the "Process Servlet(s)" step. Otherwise you are personally responsible for the existence of Web Application.
If you manually configure Web Application, make sure that:
"JSP 1.0 support servlet" com.sun.jsp.runtime.JspServlet is appended to your Web Application.
Servlet "Enables File Serving" (com.ibm.servlet.engine.webapp.SimpleFileServlet) is appended to your Web Application.
Path to your deployed enterprise beans is added to the Web Application classpath.
If you check the Show result after generation option, your browser opens and loads the html index page at the location you specified as the path for JSP browsing. Alternatively, you can use your browser to open the index.html file at that location.
You can click to link to the create() method to launch another JSP that creates and instance of the EJB object and enables you to access it's fields, as shown in the following figure.
Of course, the field content and results of the interaction will vary with the design and coding of the EJB... this interaction of an EJB running against an Access database is just an example of how you can use the JSP client to test a running EJB.
To carry on with the example, you can use the client to test the Finder method on an EJB by returning to the initial navigation page and running that method agains a known value, as shown below:
In this example, the result of the operation proves that the Bean and its business logic is functioning correctly:
