Apache Ant EJB Tasks User Manual

by

• Paul Austin (p_d_austin@yahoo.com)
• Holger Engels (hengels@innovidata.com)
• Tim Fennell (tfenne@rcn.com)
• Martin Gee (martin.gee@icsynergy.com)
• Conor MacNeill
• Cyrille Morvan (cmorvan@ingenosya.com)
• Greg Nelson (gn@sun.com)
• Rob van Oostrum(rob@springwellfarms.ca)

Table of Contents

• Introduction
• EJB Tasks

Introduction

Ant provides a number of optional tasks for developing 1.x and 2.x Enterprise Java Beans (EJBs). In general these tasks are specific to the particular vendor's EJB Server.

The tasks support:

• Borland Application Server 4.5
• iPlanet Application Server 6.0
• JBoss 2.1 and above EJB servers
• Weblogic 4.5.1 through to 7.0 EJB servers
• JOnAS 2.4.x and 2.5 Open Source EJB server
• IBM WebSphere 4.0

EJB Tasks

ddcreator

Description:

ddcreator will compile a set of Weblogic text-based deployment descriptors into a serialized EJB deployment descriptor. The selection of which of the text-based descriptors are to be compiled is based on the standard Ant include and exclude selection mechanisms.

Parameters:

Examples

<ddcreator descriptors="${dd.dir}"
           dest="${gen.classes}"
           classpath="${descriptorbuild.classpath}">
  <include name="*.txt"/>
</ddcreator>

ejbc

Description:

The ejbc task will run Weblogic's ejbc tool. This tool will take a serialized deployment descriptor, examine the various EJB interfaces and bean classes and then generate the required support classes necessary to deploy the bean in a Weblogic EJB container. This will include the RMI stubs and skeletons as well as the classes which implement the bean's home and remote interfaces.

The ant task which runs this tool is able to compile several beans in a single operation. The beans to be compiled are selected by including their serialized deployment descriptors. The standard ant include and exclude constructs can be used to select the deployment descriptors to be included.

Each descriptor is examined to determine whether the generated classes are out of date and need to be regenerated. The deployment descriptor is de-serialized to discover the home, remote and implementation classes. The corresponding source files are determined and checked to see their modification times. These times and the modification time of the serialized descriptor itself are compared with the modification time of the generated classes. If the generated classes are not present or are out of date, the ejbc tool is run to generate new versions.

Parameters:

Examples

<ejbc descriptors="${gen.classes}"
           src="${src.dir}"
           dest="${gen.classes}"
           manifest="${build.manifest}"
           classpath="${descriptorbuild.classpath}">
  <include name="*.ser"/>
</ejbc>

iplanet-ejbc

Description:

For each EJB specified, the task will locate the three classes that comprise the EJB in the destination directory. If these class files cannot be located in the destination directory, the task will fail. The task will also attempt to locate the EJB stubs and skeletons in this directory. If found, the timestamps on the stubs and skeletons will be checked to ensure they are up to date. Only if these files cannot be found or if they are out of date will the iAS ejbc utility be called to generate new stubs and skeletons.

Parameters:

Examples

<iplanet-ejbc ejbdescriptor="ejb-jar.xml"
              iasdescriptor="ias-ejb-jar.xml"
              dest="${build.classesdir}"
              classpath="${ias.ejbc.cpath}"/>


<iplanet-ejbc ejbdescriptor="ejb-jar.xml"
              iasdescriptor="ias-ejb-jar.xml"
              dest="${build.classesdir}"
              keepgenerated="yes"
              debug="yes"
              iashome="${ias.home}">
              <classpath>
                  <pathelement path="."/>
                  <pathelement path="${build.classpath}"/>
              </classpath>
</iplanet-ejbc>

wlrun

Description:

The wlrun task is used to start a weblogic server. The task runs a weblogic instance in a separate Java Virtual Machine. A number of parameters are used to control the operation of the weblogic instance. Note that the task, and hence ant, will not complete until the weblogic instance is stopped.

Parameters:

Nested Elements

The wlrun task supports nested <classpath> and <wlclasspath> elements to set the respective classpaths.

Examples

This example shows the use of wlrun to run a server under Weblogic 5.1

    <wlrun taskname="myserver"
           classpath="${weblogic.boot.classpath}"
           wlclasspath="${weblogic.classes}:${code.jars}"
           name="myserver"
           home="${weblogic.home}"
           properties="myserver/myserver.properties"/>

This example shows wlrun being used to run the petstore server under Weblogic 6.0

    <wlrun taskname="petstore"
           classpath="${weblogic.classes}"
           name="petstoreServer"
           domain="petstore"
           home="${weblogic.home}"
           password="petstorePassword"
           beahome="${bea.home}"/>

wlstop

Description:

The wlstop task is used to stop a weblogic instance which is currently running. To shut down an instance you must supply both a username and a password. These will be stored in the clear in the build script used to stop the instance. For security reasons, this task is therefore only appropriate in a development environment.

This task works for most version of Weblogic, including 6.0. You need to specify the BEA Home to have this task work correctly under 6.0

Parameters:

Nested Element

The classpath of the wlstop task can be set by a <classpath> nested element.

Examples

This example show the shutdown for a Weblogic 6.0 server

    <wlstop classpath="${weblogic.classes}"
            user="system"
            url="t3://localhost:7001"
            password="foobar"
            beahome="${bea.home}"/>

ejbjar

Description:

This task is designed to support building of EJB jar files (EJB 1.1 & 2.0). Support is currently provided for 'vanilla' EJB jar files - i.e. those containing only the user generated class files and the standard deployment descriptor. Nested elements provide support for vendor specific deployment tools. These currently include:

• Borland Application Server 4.5
• iPlanet Application Server 6.0
• JBoss 2.1 and above
• Weblogic 5.1/6.0 session/entity beans using the weblogic.ejbc tool
• IBM WebSphere 4.0
• TOPLink for WebLogic 2.5.1-enabled entity beans
• JOnAS 2.4.x and 2.5 Open Source EJB server

The task works as a directory scanning task, and performs an action for each deployment descriptor found. As such the includes and excludes should be set to ensure that all desired EJB descriptors are found, but no application server descriptors are found. For each descriptor found, ejbjar will parse the deployment descriptor to determine the necessary class files which implement the bean. These files are assembled along with the deployment descriptors into a well formed EJB jar file. Any support files which need to be included in the generated jar can be added with the <support> nested element. For each class included in the jar, ejbjar will scan for any super classes or super interfaces. These will be added to the generated jar.

If no nested vendor-specific deployment elements are present, the task will simply generate a generic EJB jar. Such jars are typically used as the input to vendor-specific deployment tools. For each nested deployment element, a vendor specific deployment tool is run to generate a jar file ready for deployment in that vendor's EJB container.

The jar files are only built if they are out of date. Each deployment tool element will examine its target jar file and determine if it is out of date with respect to the class files and deployment descriptors that make up the bean. If any of these files are newer than the jar file the jar will be rebuilt otherwise a message is logged that the jar file is up to date.

The task uses the BCEL framework to extract all dependent classes. This means that, in addition to the classes that are mentioned in the deployment descriptor, any classes that these depend on are also automatically included in the jar file.

Naming Convention

• descriptor

This is the default naming scheme. The name of the generated bean is derived from the name of the deployment descriptor. For an Account bean, for example, the deployment descriptor would be named Account-ejb-jar.xml. Vendor specific descriptors are located using the same naming convention. The weblogic bean, for example, would be named Account-weblogic-ejb-jar.xml. Under this arrangement, the deployment descriptors can be separated from the code implementing the beans, which can be useful when the same bean code is deployed in separate beans.

This scheme is useful when you are using one bean per EJB jar and where you may be deploying the same bean classes in different beans, with different deployment characteristics.

• ejb-name

This naming scheme uses the <ejb-name> element from the deployment descriptor to determine the bean name. In this situation, the descriptors normally use the generic descriptor names, such as ejb-jar.xml along with any associated vendor specific descriptor names. For example, If the value of the <ejb-name> were to be given in the deployment descriptor as follows:

<ejb-jar>
    <enterprise-beans>
        <entity>
            <ejb-name>Sample</ejb-name>
            <home>org.apache.ant.ejbsample.SampleHome</home>

then the name of the generated bean would be Sample.jar

This scheme is useful where you want to use the standard deployment descriptor names, which may be more compatible with other EJB tools. This scheme must have one bean per jar.

• directory

In this mode, the name of the generated bean jar is derived from the directory containing the deployment descriptors. Again the deployment descriptors typically use the standard filenames. For example, if the path to the deployment descriptor is /home/user/dev/appserver/dd/sample, then the generated bean will be named sample.jar

This scheme is also useful when you want to use standard style descriptor names. It is often most useful when the descriptors are located in the same directory as the bean source code, although that is not mandatory. This scheme can handle multiple beans per jar.

• basejarname

The final scheme supported by the <ejbjar> task is used when you want to specify the generated bean jar name directly. In this case the name of the generated jar is specified by the "basejarname" attribute. Since all generated beans will have the same name, this task should be only used when each descriptor is in its own directory.

This scheme is most appropriate when you are using multiple beans per jar and only process a single deployment descriptor. You typically want to specify the name of the jar and not derive it from the beans in the jar.

In addition to the bean classes, ejbjar is able to ad additional classes to the generated ejbjar. These classes are typically the support classes which are used by the bean's classes or as parameters to the bean's methods.

In versions of Ant prior to 1.5, ejbjar used reflection and attempted to add the super classes and super interfaces of the bean classes. For this technique to work the bean classes had to be loaded into Ant's JVM. This was not always possible due to class dependencies.

The ejbjar task in Ant releases 1.5 and later uses the BCEL library to analyze the bean's class files directly, rather than loading them into the JVM. This also allows ejbjar to add all of the required support classes for a bean and not just super classes.

In Ant 1.5, a new attribute, dependency has been introduced to allow the buildfile to control what additional classes are added to the generated jar. It takes three possible values

• none - only the bean classes and interfaces described in the bean's descriptor are added to the jar.
• super - this is the default value and replicates the original ejbjar behaviour where super classes and super interfaces are added to the jar
• full - In this mode all classes used by the bean's classes and interfaces are added to the jar

The super and full values require the BCEL library to be available. If it is not, ejbjar will drop back to the behaviour corresponding to the value none.

Parameters:

Nested Elements

In addition to the vendor specific nested elements, the ejbjar task provides three nested elements.

Classpath

The <classpath> nested element allows the classpath to be set. It is useful when setting the classpath from a reference path. In all other respects the behaviour is the same as the classpath attribute.

The <dtd> element is used to specify the local location of DTDs to be used when parsing the EJB deployment descriptor. Using a local DTD is much faster than loading the DTD across the net. If you are running ejbjar behind a firewall you may not even be able to access the remote DTD. The supported vendor-specific nested elements know the location of the required DTDs within the vendor class hierarchy and, in general, this means <dtd> elements are not required. It does mean, however, that the vendor's class hierarchy must be available in the classpath when Ant is started. If your want to run Ant without requiring the vendor classes in the classpath, you would need to use a <dtd> element.

support

The <support> nested element is used to supply additional classes (files) to be included in the generated jars. The <support> element is a FileSet, so it can either reference a fileset declared elsewhere or it can be defined in-place with the appropriate <include> and <exclude> nested elements. The files in the support fileset are added into the generated EJB jar in the same relative location as their location within the support fileset. Note that when ejbjar generates more than one jar file, the support files are added to each one.

Vendor-specific deployment elements

Jboss element

The jboss element searches for the JBoss specific deployment descriptors and adds them to the final ejb jar file. JBoss has two deployment descriptors:

• jboss.xml
• for container manager persistence:
  

  CMP version	File name
  CMP 1.0	jaws.xml
  CMP 2.0	jbosscmp-jdbc.xml

Weblogic element

The weblogic element is used to control the weblogic.ejbc compiler for generating weblogic EJB jars. Prior to Ant 1.3, the method of locating CMP descriptors was to use the ejbjar naming convention. So if your ejb-jar was called, Customer-ejb-jar.xml, your weblogic descriptor was called Customer- weblogic-ejb-jar.xml and your CMP descriptor had to be Customer-weblogic-cmp- rdbms-jar.xml. In addition, the <type-storage> element in the weblogic descriptor had to be set to the standard name META-INF/weblogic-cmp-rdbms- jar.xml, as that is where the CMP descriptor was mapped to in the generated jar.

There are a few problems with this scheme. It does not allow for more than one CMP descriptor to be defined in a jar and it is not compatible with the deployment descriptors generated by some tools.

In Ant 1.3, ejbjar parses the weblogic deployment descriptor to discover the CMP descriptors, which are then included automatically. This behaviour is controlled by the newCMP attribute. Note that if you move to the new method of determining CMP descriptors, you will need to update your weblogic deployment descriptor's <type-storage> element. In the above example, you would define this as META-INF/Customer-weblogic-cmp-rdbms-jar.xml.

The weblogic nested element supports three nested elements. The first two, <classpath> and <wlclasspath>, are used to set the respective classpaths. These nested elements are useful when setting up class paths using reference Ids. The last, <sysproperty>, allows Java system properties to be set during the compiler run. This turns out to be necessary for supporting CMP EJB compilation in all environments.

TOPLink for Weblogic element

Deprecated

The toplink element is no longer required. Toplink beans can now be built with the standard weblogic element, as long as the newCMP attribute is set to "true"

The TopLink element is used to handle beans which use Toplink for the CMP operations. It is derived from the standard weblogic element so it supports the same set of attributes plus these additional attributes

Examples

This example shows ejbjar being used to generate deployment jars using a Weblogic EJB container. This example requires the naming standard to be used for the deployment descriptors. Using this format will create a ejb jar file for each variation of '*-ejb-jar.xml' that is found in the deployment descriptor directory.

    <ejbjar srcdir="${build.classes}"
            descriptordir="${descriptor.dir}">
      <weblogic destdir="${deploymentjars.dir}"
                classpath="${descriptorbuild.classpath}"/>
      <include name="**/*-ejb-jar.xml"/>
      <exclude name="**/*weblogic*.xml"/>
    </ejbjar>

If weblogic is not in the Ant classpath, the following example shows how to specify the location of the weblogic DTDs. This example also show the use of a nested classpath element.

    <ejbjar descriptordir="${src.dir}" srcdir="${build.classes}">
       <weblogic destdir="${deployment.webshop.dir}"
                 keepgeneric="true"
                 args="-g -keepgenerated ${ejbc.compiler}"
                 suffix=".jar"
                 oldCMP="false">
         <classpath>
           <pathelement path="${descriptorbuild.classpath}"/>
         </classpath>
       </weblogic>
       <include name="**/*-ejb-jar.xml"/>
       <exclude name="**/*-weblogic-ejb-jar.xml"/>
       <dtd publicId="-//Sun Microsystems, Inc.//DTD Enterprise JavaBeans 1.1//EN"
            location="${weblogic.home}/classes/weblogic/ejb/deployment/xml/ejb-jar.dtd"/>
       <dtd publicId="-//BEA Systems, Inc.//DTD WebLogic 5.1.0 EJB//EN"
            location="${weblogic.home}/classes/weblogic/ejb/deployment/xml/weblogic-ejb-jar.dtd"/>
    </ejbjar>

This example shows ejbjar being used to generate a single deployment jar using a Weblogic EJB container. This example does not require the deployment descriptors to use the naming standard. This will create only one ejb jar file - 'TheEJBJar.jar'.

    <ejbjar srcdir="${build.classes}"
            descriptordir="${descriptor.dir}"
            basejarname="TheEJBJar">
      <weblogic destdir="${deploymentjars.dir}"
                classpath="${descriptorbuild.classpath}"/>
      <include name="**/ejb-jar.xml"/>
      <exclude name="**/weblogic*.xml"/>
    </ejbjar>

This example shows ejbjar being used to generate deployment jars for a TOPLink-enabled entity bean using a Weblogic EJB container. This example does not require the deployment descriptors to use the naming standard. This will create only one TOPLink-enabled ejb jar file - 'Address.jar'.

    <ejbjar srcdir="${build.dir}"
            destdir="${solant.ejb.dir}"
            descriptordir="${descriptor.dir}"
            basejarname="Address">
            <weblogictoplink destdir="${solant.ejb.dir}"
                    classpath="${java.class.path}"
                    keepgeneric="false"
                    toplinkdescriptor="Address.xml"
                    toplinkdtd="file:///dtdfiles/toplink-cmp_2_5_1.dtd"
                    suffix=".jar"/>
            <include name="**/ejb-jar.xml"/>
            <exclude name="**/weblogic-ejb-jar.xml"/>
    </ejbjar>

This final example shows how you would set-up ejbjar under Weblogic 6.0. It also shows the use of the <support> element to add support files

    <ejbjar descriptordir="${dd.dir}" srcdir="${build.classes.server}">
       <include name="**/*-ejb-jar.xml"/>
       <exclude name="**/*-weblogic-ejb-jar.xml"/>
       <support dir="${build.classes.server}">
            <include name="**/*.class"/>
       </support>
       <weblogic destdir="${deployment.dir}"
                 keepgeneric="true"
                 suffix=".jar"
                 rebuild="false">
         <classpath>
            <pathelement path="${build.classes.server}"/>
         </classpath>
         <wlclasspath>
            <pathelement path="${weblogic.classes}"/>
         </wlclasspath>
       </weblogic>
    </ejbjar>

WebSphere element

The websphere element searches for the websphere specific deployment descriptors and adds them to the final ejb jar file. Websphere has two specific descriptors for session beans:

• ibm-ejb-jar-bnd.xmi
• ibm-ejb-jar-ext.xmi

• Map.mapxmi
• Schema.dbxmi

For the websphere element to work, you have to provide a complete classpath, that contains all classes, that are required to reflect the bean classes. For ejbdeploy to work, you must also provide the classpath of the ejbdeploy tool and set the websphere.home property (look at the examples below).

This example shows ejbjar being used to generate deployment jars for all deployment descriptors in the descriptor dir:

    <property name="websphere.home" value="${was4.home}"/>
    <ejbjar srcdir="${build.class}" descriptordir="etc/ejb">
      <include name="*-ejb-jar.xml"/>
      <websphere dbvendor="DB2UDBOS390_V6"
                 ejbdeploy="true"
                 oldCMP="false"
                 tempdir="/tmp"
                 destdir="${dist.server}">
        <wasclasspath>
          <pathelement location="${was4.home}/deploytool/itp/plugins/org.eclipse.core.boot/boot.jar"/>
          <pathelement location="${was4.home}/deploytool/itp/plugins/com.ibm.etools.ejbdeploy/runtime/batch.jar"/>
          <pathelement location="${was4.home}/lib/xerces.jar"/>
          <pathelement location="${was4.home}/lib/ivjejb35.jar"/>
          <pathelement location="${was4.home}/lib/j2ee.jar"/>
          <pathelement location="${was4.home}/lib/vaprt.jar"/>
        </wasclasspath>
        <classpath>
          <path refid="build.classpath"/>
        </classpath>
      </websphere>
      <dtd publicId="-//Sun Microsystems, Inc.//DTD Enterprise JavaBeans 1.1//EN"
           location="${lib}/dtd/ejb-jar_1_1.dtd"/>
    </ejbjar>

iPlanet Application Server (iAS) element

Like the WebLogic element, a naming convention for the EJB descriptors is most commonly used to specify the name for the completed JAR file. For example, if the EJB descriptor ejb/Account-ejb-jar.xml is found in the descriptor directory, the iplanet element will search for an iAS-specific EJB descriptor file named ejb/Account-ias-ejb-jar.xml (if it isn't found, the task will fail) and a JAR file named ejb/Account.jar will be written in the destination directory. Note that when the EJB descriptors are added to the JAR file, they are automatically renamed META-INF/ejb-jar.xml and META-INF/ias-ejb-jar.xml.

Of course, this naming behaviour can be modified by specifying attributes in the ejbjar task (for example, basejarname, basenameterminator, and flatdestdir) as well as the iplanet element (for example, suffix). Refer to the appropriate documentation for more details.

Parameters:

As noted above, the iplanet element supports additional <classpath> nested elements.

Examples

    <ejbjar srcdir="${build.classesdir}"
            descriptordir="${src}">

            <iplanet destdir="${assemble.ejbjar}"
                     classpath="${ias.ejbc.cpath}"/>
            <include name="**/*-ejb-jar.xml"/>
            <exclude name="**/*ias-*.xml"/>
    </ejbjar>

    <ejbjar srcdir="${build.classesdir}"
            descriptordir="${src}">

            <iplanet destdir="${assemble.ejbjar}"
                     iashome="${ias.home}"
                     debug="yes"
                     keepgenerated="yes">
                     <classpath>
                         <pathelement path="."/>
                         <pathelement path="${build.classpath}"/>
                     </classpath>
            </iplanet>
            <include name="**/*-ejb-jar.xml"/>
            <exclude name="**/*ias-*.xml"/>
    </ejbjar>

    <ejbjar srcdir="${build.classesdir}"
            descriptordir="${src}"
            basejarname="HelloWorld">

            <iplanet destdir="${assemble.ejbjar}"
                     classpath="${ias.ejbc.cpath}"/>
            <include name="**/*-ejb-jar.xml"/>
            <exclude name="**/*ias-*.xml"/>
    </ejbjar>

    <ejbjar srcdir="${build.classesdir}"
            descriptordir="${src}">
            <iplanet destdir="${assemble.ejbjar}">
                     classpath="${ias.ejbc.cpath}"/>
            <include name="**/*-ejb-jar.xml"/>
            <exclude name="**/*ias-*.xml"/>

            <dtd publicId="-//Sun Microsystems, Inc.//DTD Enterprise JavaBeans 1.1//EN"
                 location="${ias.home}/APPS/ejb-jar_1_1.dtd"/>
            <dtd publicId="-//Sun Microsystems, Inc.//DTD iAS Enterprise JavaBeans 1.0//EN"
                 location="${ias.home}/APPS/IASEjb_jar_1_0.dtd"/>
    </ejbjar>

JOnAS (Java Open Application Server) element

The <jonas> nested element is used to build JOnAS-specific stubs and skeletons thanks to the GenIC specific tool, and construct a JAR file which may be deployed to the JOnAS Application Server. The build process will always determine if the EJB stubs/skeletons and the EJB-JAR file are up to date, and it will do the minimum amount of work required.

Like the WebLogic element, a naming convention for the EJB descriptors is most commonly used to specify the name for the completed JAR file. For example, if the EJB descriptor ejb/Account-ejb-jar.xml is found in the descriptor directory, the <jonas> element will search for a JOnAS-specific EJB descriptor file named ejb/Account-jonas-ejb-jar.xml and a JAR file named ejb/Account.jar will be written in the destination directory. But the <jonas> element can also use the JOnAS naming convention. With the same example as below, the EJB descriptor can also be named ejb/Account.xml (no base name terminator here) in the descriptor directory. Then the <jonas> element will search for a JOnAS-specific EJB descriptor file called ejb/jonas-Account.xml. This convention do not follow strictly the ejb-jar naming convention recommendation but is supported for backward compatibility with previous version of JOnAS.

Note that when the EJB descriptors are added to the JAR file, they are automatically renamed META-INF/ejb-jar.xml and META-INF/jonas-ejb-jar.xml.

Of course, this naming behavior can be modified by specifying attributes in the ejbjar task (for example, basejarname, basenameterminator, and flatdestdir) as well as the iplanet element (for example, suffix). Refer to the appropriate documentation for more details.

Parameters:

As noted above, the jonas element supports additional <classpath> nested elements.

Examples

This example shows ejbjar being used to generate deployment jars using a JOnAS EJB container. This example requires the naming standard to be used for the deployment descriptors. Using this format will create a EJB JAR file for each variation of  '*-jar.xml' that is found in the deployment descriptor directory. 

      <ejbjar srcdir="${build.classes}"
              descriptordir="${descriptor.dir}">
        <jonas destdir="${deploymentjars.dir}"
             jonasroot="${jonas.root}"
             orb="RMI"/>
        <include name="**/*.xml"/>
        <exclude name="**/jonas-*.xml"/>
        <support dir="${build.classes}">
             <include name="**/*.class"/>
        </support>
      </ejbjar>

This example shows ejbjar being used to generate a single deployment jar using a JOnAS EJB container. This example does require the deployment descriptors to use the naming standard. This will create only one ejb jar file - 'TheEJBJar.jar'.

      <ejbjar srcdir="${build.classes}"
              descriptordir="${descriptor.dir}"
              basejarname="TheEJBJar">
        <jonas destdir="${deploymentjars.dir}"
                  jonasroot="${jonas.root}"
                  suffix=".jar"
                  classpath="${descriptorbuild.classpath}"/>
        <include name="**/ejb-jar.xml"/>
        <exclude name="**/jonas-ejb-jar.xml"/>
      </ejbjar>