I was working on migrating an existing application that was using WebLogic Workshop (yes you read it right, using an IDE that is out of support) to maven. There were a few gotchas during the journey which i wanted to jot down here for anyone who might find it useful and specially for myself just as a reference.
The overall application was using Apache XMLBeans to deal with everything to do with XML and this was the first part I was migrating to maven. Maven did have a maven plugin for XMLBeans and the following snippet explains how you can incorporate this plugin to your project;
01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 | <build> <plugins> <plugin> <groupId>org.codehaus.mojo</groupId> <artifactId>xmlbeans-maven-plugin</artifactId> <version>2.3.3</version> <configuration> <javaSource>1.5</javaSource> </configuration> <executions> <execution> <phase>generate-sources</phase> <goals> <goal>xmlbeans</goal> </goals> </execution> </executions> </plugin> </plugins> </build> |
The one gotcha here is that you need to use the <javaSource>1.5</javaSource> tag if you want the XMLBeans code generated to have the “List” data structure for elements that have a maxoccurs set to unbounded. This is only if your code is already using the list type. Without this tag, this plugin will just generate the Array type for the unbounded elements.
Next up, it was the time to migrate the modules which exposed the web services of the application. As this was running on WebLogic, it used the “jwsc” task to generate the require artifact. I could not find an out of the box maven plugin which catered for this requirement and after some searching around I came across the solution where an ant build was invoked via the maven ant run plugin. Let us look at the configuration changes required on the pom.xml;
001 002 003 004 005 006 007 008 009 010 011 012 013 014 015 016 017 018 019 020 021 022 023 024 025 026 027 028 029 030 031 032 033 034 035 036 037 038 039 040 041 042 043 044 045 046 047 048 049 050 051 052 053 054 055 056 057 058 059 060 061 062 063 064 065 066 067 068 069 070 071 072 073 074 075 076 077 078 079 080 081 082 083 084 085 086 087 088 089 090 091 092 093 094 095 096 097 098 099 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 | <plugin> <groupId>org.codehaus.gmaven</groupId> <artifactId>gmaven-plugin</artifactId> <version>1.3</version> <executions> <execution> <id>set-main-artifact</id> <phase>package</phase> <goals> <goal>execute</goal> </goals> <configuration> <source> project.artifact.setFile(new File(project.build.directory+'/'+project.artifactId+'-'+project.version+'.war')) </source> </configuration> </execution> </executions> </plugin> <plugin> <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId> <artifactId>maven-antrun-plugin</artifactId> <version>1.6</version> <executions> <execution> <phase>prepare-package</phase> <configuration> <target> <property name="maven.compile.classpath" refid="maven.compile.classpath" /> <property name="maven.runtime.classpath" refid="maven.runtime.classpath" /> <property name="maven.test.classpath" refid="maven.test.classpath" /> <property name="maven.plugin.classpath" refid="maven.plugin.classpath" /> <ant antfile="src/main/ant/build.xml" target="all" /> </target> </configuration> <goals> <goal>run</goal> </goals> </execution> </executions> <dependencies> <dependency> <groupId>org.apache.ant</groupId> <artifactId>ant</artifactId> <version>1.7.1</version> <scope>runtime</scope> </dependency> <dependency> <groupId>ant-contrib</groupId> <artifactId>ant-contrib</artifactId> <version>1.0b2</version> <scope>runtime</scope> </dependency> <dependency> <groupId>weblogic</groupId> <artifactId>weblogic</artifactId> <version>10.3.0</version> <scope>compile</scope> </dependency> <dependency> <groupId>weblogic</groupId> <artifactId>xmlbeans</artifactId> <version>10.3.0</version> <scope>compile</scope> </dependency> <dependency> <groupId>weblogic</groupId> <artifactId>wlserv</artifactId> <version>10.3.0</version> <scope>compile</scope> </dependency> <dependency> <groupId>weblogic</groupId> <artifactId>jaxwsrt</artifactId> <version>10.3.0</version> <scope>compile</scope> </dependency> <dependency> <groupId>weblogic</groupId> <artifactId>beadescriptor</artifactId> <version>10.3.0</version> <scope>compile</scope> </dependency> <dependency> <groupId>weblogic</groupId> <artifactId>beadescriptorbinding</artifactId> <version>10.3.0</version> <scope>compile</scope> </dependency> <dependency> <groupId>weblogic</groupId> <artifactId>beadescriptorsettable</artifactId> <version>10.3.0</version> <scope>compile</scope> </dependency> <dependency> <groupId>weblogic</groupId> <artifactId>staxb</artifactId> <version>10.3.0</version> <scope>compile</scope> </dependency> <dependency> <groupId>org.apache.xmlbeans</groupId> <artifactId>xmlbeans</artifactId> <version>2.4.0</version> </dependency> <dependency> <groupId>weblogic</groupId> <artifactId>webservices</artifactId> <version>10.3.0</version> <scope>compile</scope> </dependency> <dependency> <groupId>com.sun</groupId> <artifactId>tools</artifactId> <version>1.5.0</version> <scope>system</scope> <systemPath>${java.home}/../lib/tools.jar</systemPath> </dependency> </dependencies> </plugin> <plugin> <artifactId>maven-war-plugin</artifactId> <version>2.1.1</version> <configuration> <encoding>UTF-8</encoding> </configuration> <executions> <execution> <id>default-war</id> <phase>none</phase> </execution> </executions> </plugin> |
Note that the dependency items with the groupId set with “weblogic” was installed on the maven repository manually using the maven install file command. The jar libraries required are as follows;
- wlfullclient.jar (this jar was built as per the instructions specified here)
- webserviceclient.jar
- webservices.jar
- wls-api.jar
- xercesImpl.jar
- xmlParserAPIs.jar
- com.bea.core.descriptor.settable.binding_1.4.0.0.jar
- com.bea.core.descriptor.wl.binding_1.1.0.0.jar
- com.bea.core.descriptor.wl_1.1.0.0.jar
- com.bea.core.xml.beaxmlbeans_1.0.0.0_2-4-0.jar
- com.bea.core.xml.staxb.buildtime_1.3.0.0.jar
- glassfish.jaxws.rt_2.1.3.jar
The next step is to drop the ant build.xml on to the src/main/ant directory of your project. The build.xml is as follows;
01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 | <project name="build-webservice" default="all"> <target name="all" depends="build.webService" /> <path id="maven_plugin_classpath"> <pathelement path="${maven.plugin.classpath}" /> </path> <path id="maven_runtime_classpath"> <pathelement path="${maven.compile.classpath}" /> <pathelement path="${maven.runtime.classpath}" /> <pathelement path="${maven.plugin.classpath}" /> <pathelement path="${weblogic.jar}" /> </path> <taskdef name="jwsc" classname="weblogic.wsee.tools.anttasks.JwscTask" classpath="${weblogic.jar}" classpathref="maven_plugin_classpath" /> <target name="build.webService" description="Compile the web services if not up2date"> <!-- Eclipse compiles and places classes into target/classes when the workspace is building. If this folder exists when jwsc runs, then any classes that are already compiled will NOT be included in the final WAR file. Thus, this directory is removed prior to created the webServices WAR fie. --> <delete dir="target/classes" /> <jwsc srcdir="${project.build.sourceDirectory}" destDir="target" classpathref="maven_runtime_classpath" keepGenerated="yes" applicationxml="${project.build.directory}/application.xml" fork="true" memorymaximumsize="256m" verbose="true" debug="on" > <module contextPath="ws" name="${project.artifactId}-${project.version}"> <jwsfileset srcdir="."> <include name="**/*.java" /> <exclude name="**/*Test.java" /> </jwsfileset> </module> </jwsc> </target> </project> |
Note that there are no changes required to be made on this build.xml.
Next up, it was about building the EAR module to be deployed to weblogic. Looking at the EAR built up by WebLogic Workshop, I could see that all the required third-party libraries were being bundled up into a folder called APP-INF/lib which was located in the root directory of the EAR. Also the WAR files did not have any jar files in the lib directory and I wanted to mimic this functionality when building the EAR using maven. The following configuration allowed me to do that;
01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 | <build> <finalName>ErrorXAEAR</finalName> <plugins> <plugin> <artifactId>maven-ear-plugin</artifactId> <version>2.10.1</version> <configuration> <defaultLibBundleDir>APP-INF/lib/</defaultLibBundleDir> <skinnyWars>true</skinnyWars> <modules> <jarModule> <groupId>mtn.sa.errorxa</groupId> <artifactId>errorxa-ejb</artifactId> <bundleDir>/</bundleDir> <bundleFileName>ErrorXAEJB.jar</bundleFileName> </jarModule> <webModule> <groupId>mtn.sa.errorxa</groupId> <artifactId>errorxa-service</artifactId> <bundleDir>/</bundleDir> <bundleFileName>ErrorXAService.war</bundleFileName> </webModule> </modules> </configuration> </plugin> </plugins> </build> |
The tag <skinnyWars> is what enables the lib directory of the war file not be populated with the third-party libraries required which is now bundled up in the APP-INF/lib directory on the EAR. The tag <defaultLibBundleDir> handles copying all required libraries to a folder called APP-INF/lib within the EAR.
One other thing with respect to the generation of the EAR is that I did not want maven to generate the application.xml file as this file along with the weblogic-application.xml was already generated on the project and I wanted use the same. To achieve this, all i had to do was to drop both those files into the folder src/main/application and the default application.xml was overridden.
I found the mvn dependency:tree tool of maven to be quite useful when building up the EAR to identify and remove the unnecessary dependencies being dragged into the EAR via recursive dependencies. With a simple exclusion tag I was able to remove the unwanted libraries.
That is about it for this post. I will keep updating the post with any things I may come across. The next step is to use maven to do the deploy and un-deploy of each application as part of the build process.
| Reference: | Few maven tips and tricks from our JCG partner Dinuka Arseculeratne at the My Journey Through IT blog. |
