Chapter 3. The Web Beans Reference Implementation

3.1. The numberguess example
3.2. The translator example

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:

the latest release of the Web Beans RI,
JBoss AS 5.0.0.GA, and
Ant 1.7.0.

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-$VERSION.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.

Note

Currently, two updates are needed. Firstly, a new deployer, webbeans.deployer is added. This adds supports for Web Bean archives to JBoss AS, and allows the Web Beans RI to query the EJB3 container and discover which EJBs are installed in your application. Secondly, an update to JBoss EJB3 is needed.

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-$VERSION/jboss-as
$ ant update

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

Tip

The build scripts for the examples offer a number of targets, these are:

ant restart - deploy the example in exploded format
ant explode - update an exploded example, without restarting the deployment
ant deploy - deploy the example in compressed jar format
ant undeploy - remove the example from the server
ant clean - clean the example

To deploy the numberguess example:

$ cd examples/numberguess
ant deploy

Start JBoss AS:

$ /Application/jboss-5.0.0.GA/bin/run.sh

Tip

If you use Windows, use the run.batscript.

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>

</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

Note

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

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 and game.guess ne 0}"/>
             <h:outputText id="Lower" value="Lower!" rendered="#{game.number lt game.guess and game.guess ne 0}"/>
          </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" 
                          disabled="#{game.number eq game.guess}">
                <f:validateLongRange maximum="#{game.biggest}" 
                                     minimum="#{game.smallest}"/>
             </h:inputText>
            <h:commandButton id="GuessButton"  
                             value="Guess" 
                             action="#{game.check}" 
                             disabled="#{game.number eq game.guess}"/>
          </div>
          <div>
            <h:commandButton id="RestartButton" value="Reset" action="#{game.reset}" immediate="true" />
          </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.

You'll 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.

package org.jboss.webbeans.examples.numberguess;



import javax.annotation.PostConstruct;

import javax.faces.application.FacesMessage;

import javax.faces.context.FacesContext;

import javax.webbeans.AnnotationLiteral;

import javax.webbeans.Current;

import javax.webbeans.Initializer;

import javax.webbeans.Named;

import javax.webbeans.SessionScoped;

import javax.webbeans.manager.Manager;


@Named

@SessionScoped

public class Game

{

   private int number;

   

   private int guess;

   private int smallest;

   private int biggest;

   private int remainingGuesses;

   

   @Current Manager manager;

   

   public Game()

   {

   }

   

   @Initializer

   Game(@MaxNumber int maxNumber)

   {      

      this.biggest = maxNumber;

   }


   public int getNumber()

   {

      return number;

   }

   

   public int getGuess()

   {

      return guess;

   }

   

   public void setGuess(int guess)

   {

      this.guess = guess;

   }

   

   public int getSmallest()

   {

      return smallest;

   }

   

   public int getBiggest()

   {

      return biggest;

   }

   

   public int getRemainingGuesses()

   {

      return remainingGuesses;

   }

   

   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;

   }

   

   @PostConstruct

   public void reset()

   {

      this.smallest = 0;

      this.guess = 0;

      this.remainingGuesses = 10;

      this.number = manager.getInstanceByType(Integer.class, new AnnotationLiteral<Random>(){});

   }

   

}

3.2. The translator example

The translator example will take any sentences you enter, and translate them to Latin.

The translator example is built as an ear, and contains EJBs. As a result, it's structure is more complex than the numberguess example.

Note

EJB 3.1 and Jave EE 6 allow you to package EJBs in a war, which will make this structure much simpler!

First, let's take a look at the ear aggregator, which is located in webbeans-translator-ear module. Maven automatically generates the application.xml for us:


<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>

   </configuration>

</plugin>

Here we set the context path, which gives us a nice url (http://localhost:8080/webbeans-translator).

Tip

If you aren't using Maven to generate these files, you would need META-INF/application.xml:


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

<application 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/application_5.xsd"

             version="5">

  <display-name>webbeans-translator-ear</display-name>

  <description>Ear Example for the reference implementation of JSR 299: Web Beans</description>

  

  <module>

    <web>

      <web-uri>webbeans-translator.war</web-uri>

      <context-root>/webbeans-translator</context-root>

    </web>

  </module>

  <module>

    <ejb>webbeans-translator.jar</ejb>

  </module>

</application>

Next, lets look at the war. Just as in the numberguess example, we have a faces-config.xml (to enabled Facelets) and a web.xml (to enable JSF) in WebContent/WEB-INF.

More intersting is the facelet used to translate text. Just as in the numberguess example we have a template, which surrounds the form (ommitted here for brevity):


<h:form id="NumberGuessMain">

            

   <table>

      <tr align="center" style="font-weight: bold" >

         <td>

            Your text

         </td>

         <td>

            Translation

         </td>

      </tr>

      <tr>

         <td>

            <h:inputTextarea id="text" value="#{translator.text}" required="true" rows="5" cols="80" />

         </td>

         <td>

            <h:outputText value="#{translator.translatedText}" />

         </td>

      </tr>

   </table>

   <div>

      <h:commandButton id="button" value="Translate" action="#{translator.translate}"/>

   </div>

   

</h:form>

The user can enter some text in the lefthand textarea, and hit the translate button to see the result to the right.

Finally, let's look at the ejb module, webbeans-translator-ejb. In src/main/resources/META-INF there is just an empty web-beans.xml, used to mark the archive as containing Web Beans.

We've saved the most interesting bit to last, the code! The project has two simple beans, SentenceParser and TextTranslator and two enterprise beans, TranslatorControllerBean and SentenceTranslator. You should be getting quite familiar with what a Web Bean looks like by now, so we'll just highlight the most interesting bits here.

Both SentenceParser and TextTranslator are dependent beans, and TextTranslator uses constructor initialization:

public class TextTranslator { 

   private SentenceParser sentenceParser; 

   private Translator sentenceTranslator; 

   

   @Initializer

   TextTranslator(SentenceParser sentenceParser, Translator sentenceTranslator) 

   { 

      this.sentenceParser = sentenceParser; 

      this.sentenceTranslator = sentenceTranslator;

TextTranslator is a stateless bean (with a local business interface), where the magic happens - of course, we couldn't develop a full translator, but we gave it a good go!

Finally, there is UI orientated controller, that collects the text from the user, and dispatches it to the translator. This is a request scoped, named, stateful session bean, which injects the translator.

@Stateful

@RequestScoped

@Named("translator")

public class TranslatorControllerBean implements TranslatorController

{

   

   @Current TextTranslator translator;

The bean also has getters and setters for all the fields on the page.

As this is a stateful session bean, we have to have a remove method:

   @Remove

   public void remove()

   {

      

   }

The Web Beans manager will call the remove method for you when the bean is destroyed; in this case at the end of the request.

That concludes our short tour of the Web Beans RI examples. For more on the RI, or to help out, please visit http://www.seamframework.org/WebBeans/Development.

We need help in all areas - bug fixing, writing new features, writing examples and translating this reference guide.