So you're already keen to get started writing your first Web Bean? Or perhaps you're skeptical, wondering what kinds of hoops the Web Beans specification will make you jump through! The good news is that you've probably already written and used hundreds, perhaps thousands of Web Beans. You might not even remember the first Web Bean you wrote.

public class SentenceParser {

    public List<String> parse(String text) { ... }

}

@Stateless

public class SentenceTranslator implements Translator {

    public String translate(String sentence) { ... }

}

@Local

public interface Translator {

    public String translate(String sentence);

}

public class TextTranslator {

    

    private SentenceParser sentenceParser;

    private Translator sentenceTranslator;

    

    @Initializer

    TextTranslator(SentenceParser sentenceParser, Translator sentenceTranslator) {

        this.sentenceParser = sentenceParser;

        this.sentenceTranslator = sentenceTranslator;

    }

    

    public String translate(String text) {

        StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();

        for (String sentence: sentenceParser.parse(text)) {

            sb.append(sentenceTranslator.translate(sentence));

        }

        return sb.toString();

    }

    

}

@Initializer

public setTextTranslator(TextTranslator textTranslator) {

    this.textTranslator = textTranslator;

}

TextTranslator tt = manager.getInstanceByType(TextTranslator.class);

@CreditCard PaymentProcessor paymentProcessor

@CreditCard

public class CreditCardPaymentProcessor 

    implements PaymentProcessor { ... }

@Mock

public class MockSentenceTranslator implements Translator {

    public String translate(String sentence) {

        return "Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet";

    }

}

@SessionScoped

public class ShoppingCart { ... }

@SessionScoped @Named("cart")

public class ShoppingCart { ... }

<h:dataTable value="#{cart.lineItems}" var="item">
    ....
</h:dataTable>

@SessionScoped @Named

public class ShoppingCart { ... }

@SessionScoped 

@Interceptors(TransactionInterceptor.class)

public class ShoppingCart { ... }

@SessionScoped @Transactional

public class ShoppingCart { ... }

@Stateful @SessionScoped

public class ShoppingCart {


    ...

    

    @Remove

    public void destroy() {}


}

@ApplicationScoped

public class Generator {


    private Random random = new Random( System.currentTimeMillis() );

    

    @Produces @Random int next() {

        return random.nextInt(100);

    }


}

@Random int randomNumber

@Produces @RequestScoped Connection connect(User user) {

    return createConnection( user.getId(), user.getPassword() );

}

void close(@Disposes Connection connection) {

    connection.close();

}

Let's illustrate these ideas with a full example. We're going to implement user login/logout for an application that uses JSF. First, we'll define a Web Bean to hold the username and password entered during login:

@Named @RequestScoped

public class Credentials {

    

    private String username;

    private String password;

    

    public String getUsername() { return username; }

    public void setUsername(String username) { this.username = username; }

    

    public String getPassword() { return password; }

    public void setPassword(String password) { this.password = password; }

    

}

This Web Bean is bound to the login prompt in the following JSF form:

<h:form>

    <h:panelGrid columns="2" rendered="#{!login.loggedIn}">

        <h:outputLabel for="username">Username:</h:outputLabel>

        <h:inputText id="username" value="#{credentials.username}"/>

        <h:outputLabel for="password">Password:</h:outputLabel>

        <h:inputText id="password" value="#{credentials.password}"/>

    </h:panelGrid>

    <h:commandButton value="Login" action="#{login.login}" rendered="#{!login.loggedIn}"/>

    <h:commandButton value="Logout" acion="#{login.logout}" rendered="#{login.loggedIn}"/>

</h:form>

The actual work is done by a session scoped Web Bean that maintains information about the currently logged-in user and exposes the User entity to other Web Beans:

@SessionScoped @Named

public class Login {


    @Current Credentials credentials;

    @PersistenceContext EntityManager userDatabase;


    private User user;

    

    public void login() {

        

        List<User> results = userDatabase.createQuery(

           "select u from User u where u.username=:username and u.password=:password")

           .setParameter("username", credentials.getUsername())

           .setParameter("password", credentials.getPassword())

           .getResultList();

        

        if ( !results.isEmpty() ) {

           user = results.get(0);

        }

        

    }

    

    public void logout() {

        user = null;

    }

    

    public boolean isLoggedIn() {

       return user!=null;

    }

    

    @Produces @LoggedIn User getCurrentUser() {

        return user;

    }


}

Of course, @LoggedIn is a binding annotation:

@Retention(RUNTIME)

@Target({TYPE, METHOD, FIELD})

@BindingType

public @interface LoggedIn {}

Now, any other Web Bean can easily inject the current user:

public class DocumentEditor {


    @Current Document document;

    @LoggedIn User currentUser;

    @PersistenceContext EntityManager docDatabase;

    

    public void save() {

        document.setCreatedBy(currentUser);

        docDatabase.persist(document);

    }

    

}

Hopefully, this example gives a flavor of the Web Bean programming model. In the next chapter, we'll explore Web Beans dependency injection in greater depth.

The Web Beans Reference Implementation is being developed at the Seam project. You can download the latest developer release of Web Beans from the the downloads page.

The Web Beans RI comes with a two deployable example applications: webbeans-numberguess, a war example, containing only simple beans, and webbeans-translator an ear example, containing enterprise beans. To run the examples you'll need the following:

Currently, the Web Beans RI only runs on JBoss Application Server 5. You'll need to download JBoss AS 5.0.0.GA from jboss.org, and unzip it. For example:

$ cd /Applications
$ unzip ~/jboss-5.0.0.GA.zip

Next, download the Web Beans RI from seamframework.org, and unzip it. For example

$ cd ~/
$ unzip ~/webbeans-1.0.0.ALPHA1.zip

Next, we need to tell Web Beans where JBoss is located. Edit jboss-as/build.properties and set the jboss.home property. For example:

jboss.home=/Applications/jboss-5.0.0.GA

As Web Beans is a new piece of software, you need to update JBoss AS to run the Web Beans RI. Future versions of JBoss AS will include these updates, and this step won't be necessary.

To install the update, you'll need Ant 1.7.0 installed, and the ANT_HOME environment variable set. For example:

$ unzip apache-ant-1.7.0.zip
$ export ANT_HOME=~/apache-ant-1.7.0

Then, you can install the update. The update script will use Maven to download the Web Beans and EJB3 automatically.

$ cd webbeans-1.0.0.ALPHA1/jboss-as
$ ant update

Now, you're ready to deploy your first example!

To deploy the numberguess example:

$ cd examples/numberguess
ant deploy

Wait for the application to deploy, and enjoy hours of fun at http://localhost:8080/webbeans-numberguess!

The Web Beans RI includes a second simple example that will translate your text into Latin. The numberguess example is a war example, and uses only simple beans; the translator example is an ear example, and includes enterprise beans, packaged in an EJB module. To try it out:

$ cd examples/translator
ant deploy

Wait for the application to deploy, and visit http://localhost:8080/webbeans-translator!

3.1. The numberguess example

In the numberguess application you get given 10 attempts to guess a number between 1 and 100. After each attempt, you will be told whether you are too high, or too low.

The numberguess example is comprised of a number of Web Beans, configuration files, and Facelet JSF pages, packaged as a war. Let's start with the configuration files.

All the configuration files for this example are located in WEB-INF/, which is stored in WebContent in the source tree. First, we have faces-config.xml, in which we tell JSF to use Facelets:

<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?>

<faces-config version="1.2"

              xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee"

              xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"

              xsi:schemaLocation="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee/web-facesconfig_1_2.xsd">

    

    <application>

        <view-handler>com.sun.facelets.FaceletViewHandler</view-handler>

    </application>



</faces-config>

There is an empty web-beans.xml file, which marks this application as a Web Beans application.

Finally there is web.xml:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<web-app version="2.5"
    xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee"
    xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
    xsi:schemaLocation="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee/web-app_2_5.xsd">
   
   <display-name>Web Beans Numbergues example</display-name>

   <!-- JSF -->

   <servlet>  
      <servlet-name>Faces Servlet</servlet-name>
      <servlet-class>javax.faces.webapp.FacesServlet</servlet-class>
      <load-on-startup>1</load-on-startup>
   </servlet>

   <servlet-mapping>
      <servlet-name>Faces Servlet</servlet-name>
      <url-pattern>*.jsf</url-pattern>
   </servlet-mapping>
   
   <context-param>
      <param-name>javax.faces.DEFAULT_SUFFIX</param-name>
      <param-value>.xhtml</param-value>
   </context-param>

   <session-config>
      <session-timeout>10</session-timeout>
   </session-config>
   
    <listener>
       <listener-class>org.jboss.webbeans.servlet.WebBeansListener</listener-class>
    </listener>

</web-app>

	Enable and load the JSF servlet
	Configure requests to .jsf pages to be handled by JSF
	Tell JSF that we will be giving our source files (facelets) an extension of .jsf
	Configure a session timeout of 10 minutes
	Configure the Web Beans listener, so that Web Beans services can be used in the servlet request

Note

The only configuration required by the Web Beans RI in web.xml is to add the Web Beans listener.

Whilst this demo is a JSF demo, you can use the Web Beans RI with any Servlet based web framework; just configure the Web Beans listener.

Let's take a look at the Facelet view:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"
    xmlns:ui="http://java.sun.com/jsf/facelets"
    xmlns:h="http://java.sun.com/jsf/html"
    xmlns:f="http://java.sun.com/jsf/core"
    xmlns:s="http://jboss.com/products/seam/taglib">

  <ui:composition template="template.xhtml">
    <ui:define name="content">
       <h1>Guess a number...</h1>
       <h:form id="NumberGuessMain">
          <div style="color: red">
             <h:messages id="messages" globalOnly="false"/>
             <h:outputText id="Higher" value="Higher!" rendered="#{game.number gt game.guess}"/>
             <h:outputText id="Lower" value="Lower!" rendered="#{game.number lt game.guess}"/>
          </div>
   
          <div>
             I'm thinking of a number between #{game.smallest} and #{game.biggest}.
             You have #{game.remainingGuesses} guesses.
          </div>
     
          <div>
             Your guess: 
             <h:inputText id="inputGuess" 
                          value="#{game.guess}" 
                          required="true" 
                          size="3">
                <f:validateLongRange maximum="#{game.biggest}" 
                                     minimum="#{game.smallest}"/>
             </h:inputText>
            <h:commandButton id="GuessButton" 
                             value="Guess" 
                             action="#{game.check}"/>
          </div>
   
       </h:form>
    </ui:define>
  </ui:composition>
</html>

	Facelets is a templating language for JSF, here we are wrapping our page in a template which defines the header.
	There are a number of messages which can be sent to the user, "Higher!", "Lower!" and "Correct!"
	As the user guesses, the range of numbers they can guess gets smaller - this sentance changes to make sure they know what range to guess in.
	This input field is bound to a Web Bean, using the value expression.
	A range validator is used to make sure the user doesn't accidentally input a number outside of the range in which they can guess - if the validator wasn't here, the user might use up a guess on an out of range number.
	And, of course, there must be a way for the user to send their guess to the server. Here we bind to an action method on the Web Bean.

The example exists of 4 classes, the first two of which are binding types. First, there is the @Random binding type, used for injecting a random number:

@Target( { TYPE, METHOD, PARAMETER, FIELD })

@Retention(RUNTIME)

@Documented

@BindingType

public @interface Random {}

There is also the @MaxNumber binding type, used for injecting the maximum number that can be injected:

@Target( { TYPE, METHOD, PARAMETER, FIELD })

@Retention(RUNTIME)

@Documented

@BindingType

public @interface MaxNumber {}

The Generator class is responsible for creating the random number, via a producer method. It also exposes the maximum possible number via a producer method:

@ApplicationScoped

public class Generator {

   

   private java.util.Random random = new java.util.Random( System.currentTimeMillis() );

   

   private int maxNumber = 100;

   

   java.util.Random getRandom()

   {

      return random;

   }

   

   @Produces @Random int next() { 

      return getRandom().nextInt(maxNumber); 

   }

   

   @Produces @MaxNumber int getMaxNumber()

   {

      return maxNumber;

   }


}

You'll notice that the Generator is application scoped; therefore we don't get a different random each time.

The final Web Bean in the application is the session scoped Game. By making Game session scoped, you can only play the game once per browser session. You could easily add a reset button - a good exercise for the reader :-)

You'll also note that we've used the @Named annotation, so that we can use the bean through EL in the JSF page. Finally, we've used constructor injection to initialize the game with a random number. And of course, we need to tell the player when they've won, so we give feedback with a FacesMessage.

@Named

@SessionScoped

public class Game {

   private int number;

   

   private int guess;

   private int smallest;

   private int biggest;

   private int remainingGuesses;

   

   public Game() {}

   

   @Initializer

   Game(@Random int number, @MaxNumber int maxNumber) {

      this.number = number;

      this.smallest = 1;

      this.biggest = maxNumber;

      this.remainingGuesses = 10;

   }


   // Getters and setters for fields

   

   public String check() {

      if (guess>number) {

         biggest = guess - 1;

      }

      if (guess<number) {

         smallest = guess + 1;

      }

      if (guess == number) {

         FacesContext.getCurrentInstance().addMessage(null, new FacesMessage("Correct!"));

      }

      remainingGuesses--;

      return null;

   }

   

}

<plugin>

   <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>

   <artifactId>maven-ear-plugin</artifactId>

   <configuration>

      <modules>

         <webModule>

            <groupId>org.jboss.webbeans.examples.translator</groupId>

            <artifactId>webbeans-translator-war</artifactId>

            <contextRoot>/webbeans-translator</contextRoot>

         </webModule>

      </modules>

      <jboss>

         <loader-repository>webbeans.jboss.org:loader=webbeans-translator</loader-repository>

      </jboss>

   </configuration>

</plugin>