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Steps for running Appfuse 1.8.2 under Oracle Application Server Enterprise Edition 10g Release 2 (10.1.2.0.2)

To successfully deploy an application developed with Appfuse 1.8.2 under the Oracle AS 10g Rel.2 there are quite a number of steps to follow as Oracle AS has a lot of different (and odd) behaviours from Tomcat.

We need to modify the build.xml and some classes... And we need to write some new ones...

Here we go !

Oracle doesn't like tags in web.xml

We need edit the properties.xml to add a property:

<property name="DeployOnOrion" value="true"/>

Then, we modify the build.xml, in the package-web target so that it doesn't remove the comments out from the tags:

  <if>
    <and>    <!-- Modified Part start -->
      <not>
        <isset property="DeployOnOrion"/>
      </not>
    <or>
      <isset property="tomcat5"/>
      <isset property="tomcat5.5"/>
    </or>
    </and>   <!-- Modified Part end-->
    <then>
      <replaceregexp flags="g"
         file="${webapp.target}/WEB-INF/web.xml"
         match='<!--dispatcher>'
         replace='<dispatcher>'/>
      <replaceregexp flags="g"
         file="${webapp.target}/WEB-INF/web.xml"
         match='</dispatcher-->'
         replace='</dispatcher>'/>
    </then>
  </if>

The contextConfigLocation parameter

In the /metadata/web/web-settings.xml file there is the contextConfigLocation parameter that looks like this:

  <context-param>
    <param-name>contextConfigLocation</param-name>
    <param-value>
      classpath*:META-INF/applicationContext-*.xml
      /WEB-INF/applicationContext-*.xml
    </param-value>
  </context-param>

The problem with Oracle AS is that the wildcards syntax won't work.
And, moreover, the classpath*:META-INF/ search doesn't work because Oracle returns a bad URL format while browsing inside jar files.

So we have to do two different things: the first step is to modify the build.xml file so that it copies the applicationContext-hibernate.xml and applicationContext-service.xml files in the WEB-INF directory.
We do this by adding the following statements at the end of the copy-resources target:

  <copy overwrite="true" tofile="${build.dir}/${webapp.name}/WEB-INF/applicationContext-${dao.type}.xml">
    <fileset dir="src/dao" includes="**/*-${dao.type}.xml"/>
    <filterset refid="variables.to.replace"/>
  </copy>
  <copy tofile="${build.dir}/${webapp.name}/WEB-INF/applicationContext-service.xml">
    <fileset dir="src/service" includes="**/*-service.xml"/>
  </copy>   

  <context-param>
    <param-name>contextConfigLocation</param-name>
    <param-value>
      /WEB-INF/applicationContext-hibernate.xml
      /WEB-INF/applicationContext-service.xml
      /WEB-INF/applicationContext-resources.xml
      /WEB-INF/applicationContext-security.xml
    </param-value> 
  </context-param>

Oracle calls the UserCounterListener twice

The UserCounterListener is added twice when the application is deployed because it is defined both in the web.xml file and in the /WEB-INF/.tld file.

This causes the application to add every user twice in the user list.

Infact, the webdoclet target, in the jsptaglip subtask, re-adds every listener in the taglibrary definition.

You need to modify the webdoclet target in this way:

  <target name="webdoclet" depends="compile-web" unless="webdoclet.unnecessary"
    description="Generate web and Struts descriptors">
    <taskdef name="webdoclet" classname="xdoclet.modules.web.WebDocletTask">
      <classpath>
          <path refid="xdoclet.classpath"/>
          <path refid="web.compile.classpath"/>
      </classpath>
    </taskdef>
    <webdoclet destdir="${webapp.target}/WEB-INF"
      force="${xdoclet.force}"
      mergedir="metadata/web"
      excludedtags="@version,@author"
      verbose="true">
      <fileset dir="src/web"/>
      <fileset dir="${build.dir}/web/gen"/>
      <deploymentdescriptor validateXML="true"
        servletspec="2.3" sessiontimeout="10"
        destdir="${webapp.target}/WEB-INF" distributable="false"
        displayname="${ant.project.name}">
        <configParam name="httpPort" value="${http.port}"/>
        <configParam name="httpsPort" value="${https.port}"/>
        <configParam name="daoType" value="${dao.type}"/>
      </deploymentdescriptor>
     <strutsconfigxml validateXML="true" version="1.2"/>
      <strutsvalidationxml/>
    </webdoclet>
    <webdoclet destdir="${webapp.target}/WEB-INF"
       force="${xdoclet.force}"
       mergedir="metadata/web"
       excludedtags="@version,@author"
       verbose="true">
       <fileset dir="src/web" excludes="**/listener/**"/>
       <fileset dir="${build.dir}/web/gen"/>
       <jsptaglib validateXML="true"
         description="Custom tag library for this application"
         shortName="${webapp.name}" filename="${webapp.name}.tld"/>
     </webdoclet>
  </target>

When invalidating a session, Oracle doesn't call any HttpSessionAttributeListener

So the UserCounterListener is never called to remove unlogged users from the User List.

To fix this behaviour I created an OrionSessionListener class that gets called when a session is invalidated and that removes every variable in the session itself, forcing every HttpSessionAttributeListener to be called from the server.

Here is the class (create it in your /src/.../webapp/listener directory):

Null Object reference in class ConstantsTag

In the header.jsp page, you get a NullPointerException when executing the line

  <appfuse:constants scope="request"/>

This is caused by the release() method of the ConstantsTag

 
  public void release() {
      super.release();
      clazz = null;
      scope = Constants.class.getName();
  }

  clazz = null;

Just comment it out and everything works again.

I tried to use the class parameter of the constants tag, but i got another error and i had no more time to investigate further. :-)

Oracle doesn't execute filters if the url doesn't contain an extension

The problem happens with the j_security_check filter.

If you deploy the application, you will find out that it is impossible to login. This happens because the filter that should be triggered by the j_security_check url never gets called.

I found out that the problem is because the url doesn't have an extension. I changed the j_security_check into j_security_check.login and everything works again.

You have to change this in the following files:
/properties.xml
/metadata/web/filter-mappings.xml
/src/web/your_app_path/webapp/action/LoginServlet.java
/web/WEB-INF/applicationContext-security.xml

Strange behaviours with Orache Web Cache

Using Oracle Web Cache i noticed some strange behaviours. OWC keeps caching pages even if the header's meta tags say not to cache anything.

I had to disable the OWC to have the application work correctly.