Resource sharing between war files - spring

We've multiple wars being deployed on one server.
The CSS, JS, images, ... are mostly common for all war files.
What is the best way to serve these resources?
Options I've found so far:
Use Maven Overlay plugin (This causes us to loose flexibility of hot-swapping resources in our IDE)
Create a common jar to package in your war (needs Servlet 3.0 api if I'm correct)
Create a war file that contains only resources and that can be deployed on the server as well

If you have may users, then a content delivery network would be an appropriate way to deliver the static files.

Related

How to reduce the size of ear file

The size of my EAR file has reached around 100 MB after adding many exetrnal jars.
Environment : Java Spring/Websphere application server/Maven
Please share the tips to reduce the size of an EAR file.
Seems the exteral jars contribute most to the large size. Is it possible to follow an approach like below, if so how to do that?
Do the maven build with compile scope for large jars
Keep the large sized jars in app server lib, with this will the app take these jars at runtime from appserver?
Thanks
Smitha
You should really review your jars, especially poorly done Maven builds add a lot of unnecessary jars to the application (like jta, servlet, jee-api, etc..), so make sure you don't have them. Sometimes jars are duplicated in every web module you have in the EAR.
Second WebSphere is Java EE 6 server, so it provides lots of common features like JAX-WS, JAX-RS, JPA, etc..., so you should consider using them, before throwing all that as third party libraries in your application.
If you want to use shared library approach, do not put the jars in the server lib folder or server classpath. This is not recommended.
Create Shared library via Environment > Shared libraries see here and assign them to the application.
To reduce the War size you can consider
Static Content :Keep the Static content like images etc out of the war file and refer them via application using references to location.
Shared Libs : if majority of the size is contributed by Shared Libs you can separate that out of war. to do that you can place the war libraries in one of the following locations
a) In Server Lib folder, Not Recommended since different apps might use diff versions.
b) In Server App Lib Folder
b) In a shared folder and including that folder into class path .
c) Use exploded war deployment deploying only changes.

Sharing files and backbeans between different wars Java EE

I am working on a large scale system using PrimeFaces 5.0, Java EE 7, Maven 3.0.5, Netbeans 7.4 & GlassFish 4.0
I want to implement it as (multiple WARs , multiple EJBs , one EAR).
Multiple wars could have common files like (JS, CSS, XHTML, Backbeans & Converters)
i have achieved this using jar which contains this resources.
different WAR files, shared resources
I need a session-scoped bean to be shared between different wars, I found this but i found it more than what i need.
http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E18686_01/coh.37/e18690/glassfish.htm#CEGBDHJB
so my questions is:
Is using a jar is the right approach to share what i want ??
where do i put jars like primefaces or omnifaces in the project where they use the same class loader ??
How can i share session-scoped between different wars ??
I have been working on a ear project with similar requirements as yours, according to our experience :
Sure. We have seperated our war projects and use them as extended controllers to carry out front end logic and passing data to view, and they make their service calls via a jar file called common-services.jar . Our whole service layer is living on a single jar file. However if you ask my personal opinion, I think it would have made a lot sense to create a third war file just for the services, and talk restful with all the front-end repos. That way service calls could be opened to third party users without any further work. So to sum it all up, yes it is an acceptable approach, but you should also consider packing it as war.
On a parent pom above all war, so all war files use the same version and it is managed from a single pom.
Carry all session based operations to your third jar / war we have discussed in question 1. Makes much more sense that way. Or I suppose you will need solutions like single sign on. But my first suggestion works like a charm for us.

Where should I store static resources when I build spring-boot app by gradle?

I've found samples that stores static files in /src/main/webapp/ and /src/main/resources/static/. What's the difference and what's the best place to store static files in spring-boot app?
If your resources are in src/main/webapp that suggests you are building a WAR archive. And for a JAR src/main/resources is more appropriate (eg in /static if it's a boot app). It's up to you though if you want to put stuff in non standard places - you just have to configure the build system to understand what you mean.

Externalizing static content from a WAR and serve both on jetty

In my project I use Maven to package a web application to a WAR which is later deployed to Jetty using a custom Maven plugin on CentOS. The custom plugin is used by every project that deployes to a production environment. There is now a requirement that all static content (like web site text, properties) is packed outside of the WAR so that it can be changed in production without requiring a new release cycle. I am unsure how to achieve this externalization.
The Jetty server has the directory structure described in Jetty quick start guide. Currently, the web application already offers some .properties files which can be altered externally, and these reside in the resources/ directory. These files are moved here by the custom Maven plugin. The WAR resides in the webapp/ folder. One option for my problem is to use <packagingExcludes> of maven-war-plugin to not include e.g. *.xhtml and *.properties in the WAR. Later, I can use the custom Maven plugin to move excluded files to resources/ directory. But, I have a feeling this is not the correct way to externalize static content... Shouldn't xhtml files live in webapp/ folder while the only the properties file live in resources/ folder?
I have also researched the option of deploying the WAR as exploded, but I am unsure of the implications of such. Clearly, the changes in the exploded WAR files will be overwritten in the next deploy, but the idea is to do static changes both in development and production. Also, I am not sure how to achieve WAR "explosion", is it something that Jetty does for your WAR if configured in jetty.xml or do I have to extract the WAR before deploying?
Lastly, how do people serve static content in Jetty which can be altered in production? Do both the WAR and static files live side by side
The Jetty resources folder should not be used for application files. A J2EE web application (war) should be self-contained -- and in Jetty, reside only on the /webapps folder -- and its only binding to the container (Jetty servlet engine) is via the web.xml deployment descriptor.
Since property files may be read from the classpath and the Jetty resources folder is part of the system classpath, a property file there could be read by the web application class loader. Note that there are other ways to read property files as well and the Jetty resources folder should not be used for application properties. Also, the application may not be portable as other application servers have different forms of webapp classloader isolation.
If the below architecture approach does not work for you, then your only approach would be to expand (explode the war) in the /webapps folder and hope for the best when files are edited.
Tackling this from a different angle,
- if your web application depends on .properties and .xhtml files in order to function properly, then these files are probably not 'content'. The fact that there is a business process that requires them to to be updated ad hoc does not make them content.
- 'content' is something like text, images, and videos that is added, edited and removed by an administrative user. The application does not depend on it for correct execution, it merely reads and passes it on the browser.
Suggestions:
I would suggest that you deploy your application every time there is a change to the .xhtml or .properties files change. If the editors of these files are power business users, you might think of a git push-pull tool for them and a continuous build hook, so that when they make changes and push them to the git repository, the application gets tagged with a newer version and gets built and deployed. If there is a problem (tag not closed in xhtml), then it would be easy to roll back to the last tag.
Alternately, if the changes are minor (such as text descriptions), then modify the application to read them from an arbitrary external file (outside the webapp) -- a location that is provided to the webapp on startup. You can then package a 'default' version of the file in the webapp, but the code would attempt to look in the specified external location first.
I discovered that you can add HTML tags to properties and later use <h:outputFormat> to fetch these properties with parameters. Also, you can do pretty neat stuff with property files as described in MessageFormat API.
My solution was to keep the .xhtml files inside the WAR, but use simple HTML snippets properties from the default resource bundle which is based on a .properties file. These properties were included in the .xhtml using <h:outputFormat>and <h:outputText>. This allows the user to add simple styling like bold and underline to the snippets.
The properties file are copied to the Jetty resource folder using the custom Maven plugin, so I have kept the .properties files in the WAR. For some reason the Jetty resource folder has precedence over the packed .properties files, so this works out fine. Also, as Akber pointed out, I will have the default versions of the properties available if for some reason the WAR was moved to some other application server where the resource folder is not available.
Of course, with this approach the code can break if malformed HTML is placed inside the snippet properties, as pointed out by Akber, but it works for our application as it is very small. I may never have done this if this was a much larger application, but then I might have gone for a database based solution for adding static text (like Joomla/Drupal/Wordpress).

xmlaccess deploy portlet with library reference

I have problem with deploying JSR168 portlet using xmlaccess. I have no problem with deploy and join to conrete page but I would like to add shared library reference automatically. Is it possible?? I added shared library named 'libshared' using IBM WS console. Can I add this reference in input xml using by xmlaccess?
I don't think you can do this in xmlaccess. But you may try putting a reference to the library under the Manifest.MF file of the META-INF directory of your portlet's war file.
Or could just put the shared jar file under your /shared/ext directory. Or you could put it inside your wps.ear file. Mind you, either of these two solutions would share your library with the entire portal installation, rather than just select portlets.
You can deploy the application using wsadmin or similar and use that to update the classpath (i.e. for the shared library), you can then use xmlaccess to deploy the portlets and reference the previously deployed application - although I think this may only work in WebSphere Portal 6.1.
Give me a shout if you need further details.
I encountered this as well, a while ago... and researched it to the max, including spending some time chatting with IBM's support in various levels.
The XMLAccess protocol doesn't provide for such "system-level" configuration alongside Portlet application deployment; it can only be used to install, customize and uninstall Portlet applications and related artifacts.
If your deployment strategy involves deploying WAR files directly through XMLAccess, then you will have to manually add the shared-library to the application through the WAS admin console; this will have to be done manually because, when deploying WAR files through XMLAccess, an EAR with some random name is being created by WebSphere Portal to "host" your WAR file; hence you can't script the attachment of a shared library.
(alternatively, you may wish to add the shared library to the server's (WebSphere_Portal) classpath)
If your deployment strategy, instead, involves deploying Portlet applications packaged as EARs, then you're in a better position; you could automate the shared-library attachment as part of your EAR deployment process, then use XMLAccess to inform WebSphere Portal about the location, in the EAR, of your Portlet applications (which is what Michael mentioned above; it works in WebSphere Portal 6.0 as well).
Good luck.

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