I've been using Maven to deploy my bundles over a felix server.
One of the things that fascinates me about Felix/OSGi is if i have configured a component with some values and i deploy my bundle again, even though the #Activate method will be called again for that configuration but my values which i've put there before deployment still persist.
How is Felix able to achieve this and is the configuration shown at /system/console/configMgr not an instance of my Java class used to create the OSGi Component ?
It's the job of the Configuration Admin service (for which Apache Felix provides an implementation) to deal with those details. Ideally, the "how" is irrelevant because those are implementation details, but if you are running an OSGi framework in a specialized environment (an embedded device for example), you would have to select a Configuration Admin provider that works within the limits of the host platform.
Under the hood, the Felix Configuration Admin service uses one or more PersistenceManagers to persist and retrieve the configuration data for your managed services. If you're curious about these implementation details you can read about them on the Felix website or you can take a look at the source code.
The configuration is OSGi is handled by the Configuration Admin Service
If you use OSGi container such as Karaf, you will remark that your configuration is independent from your bundle ($KARAF_HOME/etc) and are injected by the configuration admin service.
As was already said, Configuration Admin is your friend here. In OSGi enRoute we've a page about Configuration Admin and a sample project with lots of Configuration Admin example code.
Related
I am trying to brand a Apache Felix web console, but I am not able to find resource for the same. As per Apache Felix website,
Branding for the Web Console can be provided in two ways: By registering a BrandingPlugin service or by providing a branding properties files. The Web Console uses the branding from the BrandingPlugin service registered with the highest ranking.
But I am not understanding how to register a BrandingPlugin service? What and Jar files should I put? Is there any guidance or tutorial available for the same? If yes, can you guide me in this?
Since I am totaly getting confused with Apache Felix's website, since those documents are not clear on this.
You may find it helpful to do some background reading on OSGi services. OSGi provides a service registry, and most interactions in an OSGi environment are handled by registering and consuming services. It doesn't matter what jar file you put the service in; the only thing that matters is the interface name its registered under.
You can register services in lots of ways; programmatically from a BundleActivator, using Declarative Services (also known as SCR), and using Blueprint are some of the most popular patterns. Which one is easiest for you depends on how you're building your jars and what other OSGi facilities you're using. If you've already got an Activator the programmatic route may be the quickest way to get started; if you're using the Maven bundle plugin you may find SCR annotations easiest.
What you'll need to do is include an implementation of the 'BrandingPlugin' interface in a jar which gets started by your OSGi runtime, and register that implementation as an OSGi service. Once you've done this you should see that the Felix console discovers your BrandingPlugin implementation and uses it.
I try to use the "Apache Felix" implementation of OSGi for my project, I launch the framework from the distributable jar (/bin /felix.jar). I have created simple example bundles to register or consume services in the registry.
I want to use a configuration management service so I installed the bundle "org.apache.felix.configadmin" felix in the framework, and then I do not know how and where to put the configuration file of another bundle, for example I want to install the bundle "org.apache.felix.http.jetty" and then I want to configure this bundle through the configAdmin, so how I rename my config file, and where to put it?
Another question, what is the difference between setting, for example, the property "org.osgi.service.http.port" of the jetty bundle using the framework properties(conf/config.properties) or configure it through the bundle of configuration admin service.
Best regards,
You probably also need the file-installer from felix for it to pick up the config files.
If you want to see a working example of this take a look at Apache Karaf. It's a OSGi Container with lots of nice preconfigured features. The config admin service works out of the box.
Normally you use the felix config admin service together with the felix fileinstall. So fileinstall takes care of the directory to be monitored for config files and hands over to config admin to make it available as configs in OSGi.
For a fully working example take a look at Apache Karaf. There you can see the configs you need for it to work together. You might also consider to simply install your own bundles into karaf as it makes managing the felix framework a lot easier.
I have a server side application and want to embed an osgi framework into for dynamic bundle loading.
Suppose I want to expose a QuoteImpl implementing IQuote(instantiated as part of the server container bootstrap/Spring) to be used by different Bundles.
Q1. Is there a clean way of exposing server-application instances to Bundles ? (btw because of legacy it is not possible to make server code into bundle :) and donot want to make entire application osgi'ed.
Tried exposing via a service and bundle to cast into an IQuote. Not sure I am doing it well but fails with unresolved compilation problems as IQuote resides in the core app projects as opposed to the bundle project. any ideas?
Yes the way to do this is with a service. The "host" application would publish the service and the bundles inside OSGi would consume the service in the normal way.
The key to get this working is that the service API (i.e. the package containing IQuote) must be exported by the host application through the system bundle exports. You can control this by setting the org.osgi.framework.system.packages.extra property when you create the embedded OSGi framework. I wrote a blog post on this subject that should help you get started (look for the heading "Exposing Application Packages").
You state that you have compilation problems. To fix those it's necessary to know how you have structured your projects and build system.
This is how I embedded Equinox OSGi runtime in my Java class. I suppose you could do the same. https://github.com/sarxos/equinox-launcher/blob/master/src/main/java/com/github/sarxos/equinox/Launcher.java
I our application we have several bundles that are running by the Equinox OSGI framework (with Tomcat).
Currently we are passing the application configuration mostly by Java system properties.
This properties are shared across all bundles and all of them can access to the properties value.
We are trying to find other option to pass them so only a specific bundle could access a specific property.
Is there a way to do it by a Java arguments?
How can i pass a java argument to a specific bundle?
You should have a look at the Config Admin service, it is designed for this use case, providing specific bundles with configuration information. Apache Felix File Install provides a convenient mechanism to supply configuration data through property files. Probably Equinox has something similar, but felix file install should run on Equinox.
I am at the moment creating a matrix which is showing how far Knopflerfish, Equinox and Felix are OSGi 4.2 compliant.
So far I looked at the Knopflerfish documentation (Link 1, Link 2) to get an idea of how much of the Core and Compendium specs are actually implemented.
The core specification seems to be fully implemented, although there are some inconsistent statements about the Security Layer and the Declarative Services.
What makes me wonder is how much of all the Compendium specs are implemented:
Remote Services
Log Service
Http Service
Device Access
Configuration Admin Service
Metatype Service
Preferences Service
User Admin Service
Wire Admin Service
IO Connector Service
Initial Provisioning
UPnP Device Service
Declarative Services
Event Admin Service
Deployment Admin
Auto Configuration
Application Admin
DMT Admin Service
Monitor Admin Service
Foreign Application Access
Blueprint Container
Tracker
XML Parser Service
Position
Measurement and State
Execution Environment
To find out more I downloaded (Download page) the source code of Knopflerfish and had a look at it. It looks like some parts of the spec are implemented through the "original" framework provided by the OSGi Alliance (org.osgi.*).
One example is the UPnP package:
alt text http://img6.imageshack.us/img6/5853/screenshot20100403at212.png
Does this mean that missing parts which are not directly implemented by Knopflerfish are added through the "original" OSGi framework?
And does this also apply to other frameworks like Felix or Equinox?
Most of the OSGi specifications define interface classes for services. You can download these classes together with the specification directly from the OSGi Alliance's website.
Implementations such as Knopflerfish must provide the underlying functionalities, e.g. the actual implementation for the UPnP Service Admin you mentioned in your example. Some of the interface classes also provide interfaces that must be implemented by the developer of a user service, e.g. a BundleActivator.
All frameworks that claim to be OSGi compliant must provide implementations for these interfaces. There is no "original" OSGi framework (well, beside of the reference implementation, of course). The interfaces do not provide implementations.