We'll start our look at entity beans in JBoss by examining one of the CMP entity beans in the crime portal. We'll look at the gangster bean, which is implemented as local CMP entity bean. Although JBoss can provide remote entity beans with pass-by-reference semantics for calls in the same VM to get the performance benefit as from local entity beans, the use of local entity beans is strongly encouraged.

We'll start with the required home interface. Since we're only concerned with the CMP fields at this point, we'll show only the methods dealing with the CMP fields.

// Gangster Local Home Interface
public interface GangsterHome 
    extends EJBLocalHome 
{   
    Gangster create(Integer id, String name, String nickName)
        throws CreateException;
    Gangster findByPrimaryKey(Integer id) 
        throws FinderException; 
}

The local interface is what clients will use to talk. Again, it contains only the CMP field accessors.

// Gangster Local Interface 
public interface Gangster
    extends EJBLocalObject
{
    Integer getGangsterId();

    String getName();

    String getNickName();
    void setNickName(String nickName);

    int getBadness();
    void setBadness(int badness);
}

Finally, we have the actual gangster bean. Despite it's size, very little code is actually required. The bulk of the class is the create method.

// Gangster Implementation Class
public abstract class GangsterBean 
    implements EntityBean 
{
     private EntityContext ctx; 
     private Category log = Category.getInstance(getClass());
     public Integer ejbCreate(Integer id, String name, String nickName)
         throws CreateException 
     {
         log.info("Creating Gangster " + id + " '" + nickName + "' "+ name);
         setGangsterId(id);
         setName(name);
         setNickName(nickName);
         return null;
     }
     
     public void ejbPostCreate(Integer id, String name, String nickName) {
     }
     
     // CMP field accessors ---------------------------------------------
     public abstract Integer getGangsterId();
     public abstract void setGangsterId(Integer gangsterId); 
     public abstract String getName();
     public abstract void setName(String name);
     public abstract String getNickName();
     public abstract void setNickName(String nickName);
     public abstract int getBadness();
     public abstract void setBadness(int badness);
     public abstract ContactInfo getContactInfo();
     public abstract void setContactInfo(ContactInfo contactInfo);  
     //... 
     
     // EJB callbacks ---------------------------------------------------
     public void setEntityContext(EntityContext context) { ctx = context; }
     public void unsetEntityContext() { ctx = null; }
     public void ejbActivate() { }    
     public void ejbPassivate() { }   
     public void ejbRemove() { log.info("Removing " + getName()); }
     public void ejbStore() { }
     public void ejbLoad() { }
}

The only thing missing now is the ejb-jar.xml deployment descriptor. Although the actual bean class is named GangsterBean, we've called the entity GangsterEJB.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<ejb-jar xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/"Whats_new_in_JBoss_4-J2EE_Certification_and_Standards_Compliance" version="2.1"
    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/ejb-jar_\2_1.xsd">
   <display-name>Crime Portal</display-name>

    <enterprise-beans>
        <entity>
            <display-name>Gangster Entity Bean</display-name>
            <ejb-name>GangsterEJB</ejb-name>
            <local-home>org.jboss.cmp2.crimeportal.GangsterHome</local-home>
            <local>org.jboss.cmp2.crimeportal.Gangster</local>

            <ejb-class>org.jboss.cmp2.crimeportal.GangsterBean</ejb-class>
            <persistence-type>Container</persistence-type>
            <prim-key-class>java.lang.Integer</prim-key-class>
            <reentrant>False</reentrant>
            <cmp-version>2.x</cmp-version>
            <abstract-schema-name>gangster</abstract-schema-name>

            <cmp-field>
                <field-name>gangsterId</field-name>
            </cmp-field>
            <cmp-field>
                <field-name>name</field-name>
            </cmp-field>
            <cmp-field>
                <field-name>nickName</field-name>
            </cmp-field>
            <cmp-field>
                <field-name>badness</field-name>
            </cmp-field>
            <cmp-field>
                <field-name>contactInfo</field-name>
            </cmp-field>
            <primkey-field>gangsterId</primkey-field>

            <!-- ... -->
        </entity>
    </enterprise-beans>
</ejb-jar>