B&S Stub errors running in network client mode

[Kevin Florish]

Hi

Had this problems a few days can't seem to figure it out, I keep getting classnotfound or absractmethod errors.
Here's some code snippets and an overview of the problem I keep getting.

Services Interface

    
package suncertify.controller;
public interface Services {
	public void bookContractor(long recNo, String customerId, String nameLocation)
	 		throws IOException;
	public ContractorTableModel searchContractors(String name, String location)
			throws IOException;
	public long getContractor(String name, String location) throws IOException;
} 

My remote marker interface

    
package suncertify.controller;
import java.rmi.Remote;
public interface RemoteServices extends Remote, Services {
}

Implementation RemoteServicesImpl

package suncertify.controller;
...
public class RemoteServicesImpl extends UnicastRemoteObject implements RemoteServices {
...
........................
Start the server (called when I start the server - "server" mode) 
.......................
    public static void getServices(String databaseLocation, int rmiPort) throws RemoteException {
        Registry r = java.rmi.registry.LocateRegistry.createRegistry(rmiPort);
		r.rebind("ContractorMediator", new RemoteServicesImpl(databaseLocation));
        //RemoteServices remoteServicesImpl = new RemoteServicesImpl(databaseLocation);
		//r.rebind("ContractorMediator", remoteServicesImpl);
    }
...
......................
Create the stub (called in client mode - "" mode
......................
...
    public static Data getServices(String hostname, String port) throws RemoteException {
        String url = "rmi://" + hostname + ":" + port + "/ContractorMediator";

        try {
        	Remote remote = Naming.lookup(url);

                // Have tried using RemoteServicesImpl as Cast, as return type nothing seems to work

        	RemoteServices remoteServices = (RemoteServicesImpl) remote;
    		return (Data) remoteServices;
        } catch (NotBoundException e) {
            System.err.println("Contractor Mediator not registered: "
                    + e.getMessage());
            throw new RemoteException("Contractor Mediator not registered: ", e);
        } catch (java.net.MalformedURLException e) {
            System.err.println(hostname + " is invalid: " + e.getMessage());
            throw new RemoteException("Cannot connect to " + hostname, e);
        } 
    }

Called from

public class ServicesImpl implements Services {
...
    private ServicesImpl(ContractorApplicationRunMode userMode, String dbLocation, String port) { 
        log.entering("ServicesImpl", "ServicesImpl", new Object[]{userMode, dbLocation, port});
        if (userMode == ContractorApplicationRunMode.STANDALONE_CLIENT) {
        	connection = getServices(dbLocation);
        } else {
        	try {
				connection = RemoteServicesImpl.getServices(dbLocation, port);
			} catch (RemoteException e) {
	            log.log(Level.SEVERE, e.getMessage(), e);
	        	throw new ServicesException(e);
			}
        }
        log.exiting("ServicesImpl", "ServicesImpl");
    }
...

I get various versions of the following error dependant on what I am casting 2

06-Jan-2009 14:00:37 suncertify.view.RunModeDialog update
INFO: Server specified localhost
Exception in thread "main" java.lang.ClassCastException: suncertify.controller.RemoteServicesImpl_Stub cannot be cast to suncertify.controller.RemoteServicesImpl
	at suncertify.controller.RemoteServicesImpl.getServices(RemoteServicesImpl.java:102)
	at suncertify.controller.ServicesImpl.<init>(ServicesImpl.java:51)
	at suncertify.controller.ServicesImpl.getServicesImplInstance(ServicesImpl.java:76)
	at suncertify.view.ContractorWindow.<init>(ContractorWindow.java:100)
	at suncertify.view.ContractorApplicationStartup.<init>(ContractorApplicationStartup.java:76)
	at suncertify.view.ContractorApplicationStartup.main(ContractorApplicationStartup.java:32)

If anyone could give me any pointers on where I am going wrong would be much appreciated.

Thanks Kevin.

[Roberto Perillo]

Hey, partner.

Please take a look here. I think it will be helpful!

[Kevin Florish]

Thanks for the reply Rob, read the articles, very illuminating

I was trying to not have references to my Data class in the remote interface and just have a RemoteService and RemoteServiceImpl, that has a book and search method and not a lot of other methods from say the DBAcess interface.

This is where my problems lies on return from the stub injection I cant cast from Services to Data

I could include DBAcess in my remote interface but am sure I can do this without having to do this, just haven't figured it out yet.

[Roberto Perillo]

Hum... well, here's what I did: I have an interface and an implementation that run on the client (my client is "fat"), and the implementation calls the server and uses its methods. The server has the same methods as the Data class, and the server is the one that uses the Data class.

[Kevin Florish]

Thanks for that Bob if I can't get over the stub injection problem thats the way I would do it, I just returned from a Spring course and am trying to integrate what I learned into the assignment

Here's a quote from a very old article by Ken Krebs who was also infulenced by the Spring framework: .

Networking
========
Choosing RMI seemed to be a total no-brainer as it is so simple compared to using sockets. My entire networking code compiles to only 5,408 bytes of code. It consists of 2 classes, RemoteServices and RemoteServicesImpl. RemoteServices is an interface that extends Services and Remote. It has no body. This is possible because all the Services methods throw IOException and can therefore also throw a RemoteException. It's a nice trick that keeps things simple. RemoteServicesImpl extends UnicastRemoteObject and implements RemoteServices. It has 2 parts, the implementation of RemoteServices (i.e. the 2 Services methods) and static getServices methods that allow the clients to get a Services instance that is either an RMI server for the Network Server application functionality or its stub for the Network Client application functionality. The Services method implementations simply delegate all work to the ServicesImpl singleton. Since all of the locking occurs in a single method call in the Network Server's JVM, there is no need to worry about the RMI connection dieing in the middle of a locking operation.

I am just trying to do this in A Spring like way, if that makes any sense and it giving me a headache at the moment because of the ClassCast problem

[Ken Krebs]

Let's revisit RMI a little.

On the server side:
Your RemoteServicesImpl implements the Services interface either directly or through a helper. RMI provides a server side proxy (stub) that also implements the Services interface and delegates to the RemoteServicesImpl instance that you bound to the RMI registry. All communication via RMI from the client side goes through this proxy.

On the client side:
RMI provides a proxy against which you can make your Services method calls. This object is created by RMI is neither a RemoteServicesImpl or a Data object. The proxy object RMI provides can only be cast to Services. All communication via RMI to the server side goes through this proxy.


I leave it to you to figure out the rest. I don't want to spoil your fun.



FYI: You cannot use the following for the cert, but it can be useful afterwards.

Spring provides a nice Remoting technology that is a simple alternative to RMI called HttpInvoker. Essentially it provides Remoting via Java serialization over HTTP. Unlike RMI, it does not need a central registry, it only needs an HTTP port to serve. Another real plus for this is that since runs over HTTP, it is very firewall friendly, unlike RMI. This strategy, of course, only is useful when both the client and server are implemented using Java and Spring. You only need to write your service interface and its implementation as POJO's that have no knowledge whatsoever of any Remoting that is going on and don't have to handle any checked Exceptions.

Spring also maps RemoteExceptions to unchecked RemoteAccessExceptions making your code much easier to write. In fact it does this exception mapping for a number of other Remoting technologies as well as HttpInvoker.

Switching Remoting strategies is often as simple as tweaking 2 simple XML configurations, 1 on the server and 1 on the client.

[Kevin Florish]

Thanks for the fast reply Ken although I am still totally stumped on this.

I have changed things around but am still getting either a classcast or stub error. Here's my latest attempt at trying to solve this problem.

Services

    
package suncertify.controller;
import java.io.IOException;
import suncertify.view.ContractorTableModel;
public interface Services {
	public void bookContractor(long recNo, String customerId, String nameLocation)
	 		throws IOException;
	public ContractorTableModel searchContractors(String name, String location)
			throws IOException;
	public long getContractor(String name, String location) throws IOException;
}

ServicesImpl

   
package suncertify.controller;

import java.rmi.RemoteException;
import java.util.logging.*;
import suncertify.model.*;
import suncertify.view.ContractorApplicationRunMode;
import suncertify.view.ContractorTableModel;
public class ServicesImpl implements Services {
...
    private ServicesImpl(ContractorApplicationRunMode userMode, String dbLocation, String port) { 
        log.entering("ServicesImpl", "ServicesImpl", new Object[]{userMode, dbLocation, port});
        if (userMode == ContractorApplicationRunMode.STANDALONE_CLIENT) {
        	uniqueServicesImplInstance = getServices(dbLocation);
        	this.connection = (Data) uniqueServicesImplInstance;
        } else {
        	try {
        		uniqueServicesImplInstance = RemoteServicesImpl.getServices(dbLocation, port);
				//connection1 = RemoteServicesImpl.getServices(dbLocation, port);
				this.connection = (Data) uniqueServicesImplInstance;
			} catch (RemoteException e) {
	            log.log(Level.SEVERE, e.getMessage(), e);
	        	throw new ServicesException(e);
			}
        }

StartupRmi

public StartupRmi(String databaseLocation, String port, JLabel status) {
		log.entering("StartupRmi", "StartupRmi");
        try {
            // Validate port number.
            this.port = Integer.parseInt(port);
            log.info("Starting RMI registry on port " + port);
            status.setText(SERVER_STARTING);
            suncertify.controller.RemoteServicesImpl.getServices(databaseLocation, this.port);

RemoteServices

    
package suncertify.controller;

import java.rmi.Remote;
import java.rmi.RemoteException;

public interface RemoteServices extends Remote, Services {

	public Services getClient() throws RemoteException;
}

RemoteServicesImpl

    
package suncertify.controller;

import java.io.*;
import java.rmi.*;
import java.rmi.registry.Registry;
import java.rmi.server.UnicastRemoteObject;
import java.util.logging.Level;
import java.util.logging.Logger;
import suncertify.model.*;
import suncertify.view.ContractorTableModel;
import suncertify.view.SavedRunModeOptions;

public class RemoteServicesImpl extends UnicastRemoteObject implements RemoteServices {
...
    public static void getServices(String databaseLocation, int rmiPort) throws RemoteException {
        Registry r = java.rmi.registry.LocateRegistry.createRegistry(rmiPort);
        r.rebind("ContractorMediator", new RemoteServicesImpl(databaseLocation));
    }

    public static Services getServices(String hostname, String port) throws RemoteException {
        String url = "rmi://" + hostname + ":" + port + "/ContractorMediator";

        try {
        	//Services services = (Services) Naming.lookup(url);
        	RemoteServices remoteServices = (RemoteServicesImpl) Naming.lookup(url);
                /// 
                /// For some reason remoteServices.getClient() code is never reached
                ///
        	return remoteServices.getClient(); 
        } catch (NotBoundException e) {
            System.err.println("Contractor Mediator not registered: "
                    + e.getMessage());
            throw new RemoteException("Contractor Mediator not registered: ", e);
        } catch (java.net.MalformedURLException e) {
            System.err.println(hostname + " is invalid: " + e.getMessage());
            throw new RemoteException("Cannot connect to " + hostname, e);
        } 
    }
    
    public Services getClient() throws RemoteException {
        // Load saved configuration
        SavedRunModeOptions savedRunModeOptions = SavedRunModeOptions.getSavedConfigurationInstance();
        // If no default database location, validate before using the returned value.
        String databasebPathName =
        		savedRunModeOptions.getParameter(SavedRunModeOptions.DATABASE_LOCATION);
        return (Services) Data.getDataInstance(databasebPathName); 
    }

    static class Data implements Serializable, Services {
         ...
  	return uniqueRemoteDataInstance;
        ... 

Sorry about showing so much code but hard to explain what I am trying to do without it.

If I cast to Services in Naming.lookup in RemoteServicesImpl then it wants getClient() in Services, yet haveing a cast to RemoteServices and doing getClient() does nothing. Could anyone please tell me if my design has a fatal flaw

Here's what I get from RMI when I dont try to call getClient() and just pass back the services value

Services services = (Services) Naming.lookup(url);
//RemoteServices remoteServices = (RemoteServicesImpl) Naming.lookup(url); 

SERVER

RegistryImpl[UnicastServerRef [liveRef: [endpoint:[192.168.0.194:1095](local),objID:[0:0:0, 0]]]]

CLIENT

RemoteServicesImpl_Stub[UnicastRef [liveRef: [endpoint:[192.168.0.194:1375](remote),objID:[286c727e:11ed1b603ef:-7fff, 7169049049094253434]]]]

Any suggestions on where I am going wrong would be greatly appreciated, thank you.

[Ken Krebs]

Although your RemoteServicesImpl cannot be cast to Data, it can certainly delegate to an instance of Data to help it implement the Services interface.

[Kevin Florish]

Hi Ken

Thanks for the fast reply :lol:

Although your RemoteServicesImpl cannot be cast to Data, it can certainly delegate to an instance of Data to help it implement the Services interface.

Not really sure how I would delegate to Data from RemoteServicesImpl and do you mean within RemoteServicesImpl when creating the proxy or on return to the Services class.

I think this is the crux of the matter: I can't seem to get Data involved in the proxy, and on return can't call Data methods because of this and hence getting classcast exceptions.

Could you possibly give me a code example of what you mean by the above statement.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks Kevin.

[Ken Krebs]

How about something like this:

    
public class RemoteServicesImpl  extends UnicastRemoteObject implements RemoteServices {

    private Data data;

    public RemoteServicesImpl(Data data) {
        this.data = data;
    }

    ...

}

You would then make whatever calls on data that are necessary to support implementing your Services intrerface.

[Kevin Florish]

Thanks very much for explaining this ken, I have adopted this approach into the design but think I still have a problem.

Server Start up:

StartupRmi

    
private Data connection;
…
public StartupRmi(String databaseLocation, String port, JLabel status) {
        try {
            this.port = Integer.parseInt(port);
            this.connection = suncertify.model.Data.getDataInstance(databaseLocation);
            suncertify.remote.controller.RemoteServicesImpl.getServices(
            		this.connection, this.port);

RemoteServicesImpl

 
RemoteServicesImpl (made data Static so can be used in getServices(). 
private static Data connection = null;

public RemoteServicesImpl(Data connection) throws RemoteException {
    this.connection = connection;
}

public static void getServices(Data connection, int rmiPort) throws RemoteException {
    Registry r = java.rmi.registry.LocateRegistry.createRegistry(rmiPort);
    r.rebind("ContractorFile", new RemoteServicesImpl(connection));
}

Client Start up:

ServicesImpl

private ServicesImpl(RunMode userMode, String dbLocation, String port) { 
        if (userMode == RunMode.STANDALONE_CLIENT) {
        	this.connection = getServices(dbLocation);
        } else {
        	try {
	    this.connection = RemoteServicesImpl.getServices(dbLocation, port);
	} catch (RemoteException e) {
        	    throw new ServicesException(e);
	}

RemoteServicesImpl

public static Services getServices(String hostname, String port) throws RemoteException {
    String url = "rmi://" + hostname + ":" + port + "/ContractorFile";
    try {
       	Services services = (Services) Naming.lookup(url);

	// SURE I SHOULDN’T BE USING SAVED RUN MODE OPTIONS TO GET DATABASE NAME, BUT 
	// CONNECTION DATABASE NAME IS RESET

       // Load saved configuration
       SavedRunModeOptions savedRunModeOptions = 
       		SavedRunModeOptions.getSavedRunModeInstance();
       // If no default database location, validate before using the returned value.
       String databasebPathName =
   		savedRunModeOptions.getParameter(SavedRunModeOptions.DATABASE_LOCATION);
       return connection = Data.getDataInstance(databasebPathName); 

Connection set to database name on initial call but when I go back in from the client field this has been reset to null.

Only way I can see to get the database name is to call the saved configuration file and get the name from there. This doesn’t seem right to me but works when I do this. But I think then maybe I am violating the client/server relationship by accessing saved configuration from the client ?

If I look at the example from Andrew Monkhouse book he uses DVDDatabaseFactoryImpl in a similar way to set database name from server. And then uses the database name from client to set his connection. Have no idea why Andrews database name isn’t reset and mine is.

Anyone have any advice or pointers on this please

[Andrew Monkhouse]

Kevin Florish wrote:Here's a quote from a very old article by Ken Krebs who was also infulenced by the Spring framework: .

Ken Krebs wrote: Networking
========
Choosing RMI seemed to be a total no-brainer as it is so simple compared to using sockets. My entire networking code compiles to only 5,408 bytes of code. It consists of 2 classes, RemoteServices and RemoteServicesImpl. ...

A bit off topic, but I am not sure I agree with the general assumption people make that RMI is so much easier than Sockets. You might be interested in looking at these two topics:

Sockets vs. RMI

Anybody interested in a sockets discussion ?

There are many valid reasons for going with RMI instead of Sockets (I really chose it for my assignment because I did not know RMI).

Having said in the 2 topics above that Sockets can be as simple as RMI, I went back and looked at the RMI and the Sockets package used in my book, and the stats don't look so good for my position:

cloc --by-file remote/*
       9 text files.
       9 unique files.                              
       0 files ignored.

http://cloc.sourceforge.net v 1.07  T=1.0 s (9.0 files/s, 525.0 lines/s)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
File                                         blank   comment      code    scale   3rd gen. equiv
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
remote/DvdDatabaseImpl.java                     13       117        50 x   1.36 =          68.00
remote/RmiNoFactoryExample.java                 11        25        37 x   1.36 =          50.32
remote/RmiFactoryExample.java                   10        22        35 x   1.36 =          47.60
remote/DvdConnector.java                         4        23        25 x   1.36 =          34.00
remote/RegDvdDatabase.java                       7        34        19 x   1.36 =          25.84
remote/package.html                              3         0        15 x   1.90 =          28.50
remote/DvdDatabaseFactoryImpl.java               5        20        15 x   1.36 =          20.40
remote/DvdDatabaseFactory.java                   3        11         7 x   1.36 =           9.52
remote/DvdDatabaseRemote.java                    2         7         5 x   1.36 =           6.80
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SUM:                                            58       259       208 x   1.40 =         290.98
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

cloc --by-file sockets/*
       8 text files.
       8 unique files.                              
       0 files ignored.

http://cloc.sourceforge.net v 1.07  T=0.5 s (16.0 files/s, 1884.0 lines/s)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
File                                   blank   comment      code    scale   3rd gen. equiv
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
sockets/DvdSocketClient.java              28       169       120 x   1.36 =         163.20
sockets/DbSocketRequest.java              14        51        88 x   1.36 =         119.68
sockets/DvdResult.java                    20        97        54 x   1.36 =          73.44
sockets/DvdSocketServer.java               9        38        41 x   1.36 =          55.76
sockets/DvdCommand.java                   14        69        40 x   1.36 =          54.40
sockets/package.html                       3         0        15 x   1.90 =          28.50
sockets/SocketCommand.java                 1        18        14 x   1.36 =          19.04
sockets/DvdConnector.java                  3        24        12 x   1.36 =          16.32
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SUM:                                      92       466       384 x   1.38 =         530.34
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

So looking at the raw numbers it appears that my co-author wrote nearly twice as many lines of code for the Sockets solution versus the RMI solution.

Regards, Andrew

[Ken Krebs]

The client proxy you get will know nothing about RemoteServicesImpl and cannot be cast to it. The client code must use the Services interface to do its work. Data can only be used on the server side.

[Ken Krebs]

Greetings Andrew !

It seems to me the that Sockets would be a good alternative if you need maximum performance or there's something you can't live with in RMI but you'll have to embed your own protocol, hence the extra work.

I actually don't use RMI much in my own work, preferring to use Spring's HttpInvoker (Java serialization over Http) as it's firewall friendly. We can't of course use that for the cert.