Step by Step how to configure remote clients with Resin

[Rick Hightower]

Brain Wilson had a question on how to configure remote clients to talk to EJB beans in Resin.
He sent me some offline email as well posting his question on the Resin mailing list.
I thought I would share the answer with this forum since this is appropiate for people getting started with Resin EE.
1) First I would not hardcode the JNDI properties in your source code. Instead put them in a JNDI properties file called jndi.properties. As long
as this file is on you classpath the JNDI system will find jndi.properties as a class resource and use it as the default properties for the initial
context and provider URL. Then all you need to do is create an InitialContext with no arguments. This is the more portable J2EE way to get
your initial context.
Here is an example properties file for accessing weblogic (resin example
will follow)
Sample Listing....
java.naming.factory.initial=weblogic.jndi.WLInitialContextFactory
java.naming.provider.url=t3://localhost:7001
2) Now the question becomes how do you configure the above for Resin. I think
the answer is here
<a href="http://www.caucho.com/resin-ee/ejb-ref/ejb-jndi.xtp">http://www.caucho.com/resin-ee/ejb-ref/ejb-jndi.xtp</a>. Although the link does
not specify client access per se or the jndi.properties file.
Try changing the JNDI properties file as follows for hessian...
java.naming.factory.initial=com.caucho.hessian.HessianContextFactory
java.naming.provider.url=http://<yourhostname>/hessian
Try changing the JNDI properties file as follows for burlap...
java.naming.factory.initial=com.caucho.burlap.BurlapContextFactory
java.naming.provider.url=http://<yourhostname>/burlap
I have not tried this with Resin, but I have done similar things when
working with WebLogic and Sun's RI. I've only done local beans for web apps
with Resin EE in production. This should work.
3) You are not done yet. You also have to expose hessian protocol from your
web application that houses your enterprise beans. I found information how
to do this here...
<a href="http://www.caucho.com/resin-ee/ejb-ref/ejb-server.xtp">http://www.caucho.com/resin-ee/ejb-ref/ejb-server.xtp</a>;
Add the following mapping to your web application's deployment descriptor
for burlap.
<!-- Burlap protocol configuration -->
<servlet-mapping>
<url-pattern id='/burlap/*'/>
<servlet-name id='com.caucho.burlap.EJBServlet'/>
</servlet-mapping>
Strangely.... The documentation only explains Burlap instead of Hessian.
Hessian is the preferred way to access the bean remotely (faster, but does
not sneak through firewalls as well as Burlap).
Based on the logical nature of most of the Resin package naming, I make the
following guess on configuring Hessian. (I'll try this when I add this
information to the tutorial I am writing).
<!-- Hessian protocol configuration -->
<servlet-mapping>
<url-pattern id='/hessian/*'/>
<servlet-name id='com.caucho.hessian.EJBServlet'/>
</servlet-mapping>
4) Lastly it seems you are doing this mainly to test your enterprise beans.
I suggest using Cactus to test local beans. I think there is too much
configuration and runtime overhead to use remote beans just to test beans
that will naturally run locally within the confines of a web application.

[Rick Hightower]

I tried it. It works almost exactly like I said it would.
One thing I left out, is the web application name in the provider url.

java.naming.provider.url=http://<yourhostname>/<your web application
name>/hessian

Also although the jndi.properties is the most portable way to create the web
app.
There are issues of other jndi.properties file being first on the classpath.
Be careful.
If you have problems print out the getEnvironment from the initial context
to see if it is setup correctly.
Or if you are still having classpath/jndi.properties issues you can hard code the , i.e.,

        Properties prop= new Properties();
        prop.setProperty(Context.INITIAL_CONTEXT_FACTORY,
"com.caucho.hessian.HessianContextFactory");
        prop.setProperty(Context.PROVIDER_URL,
"http://foobar/resincmp/hessian");
        Context initial = new InitialContext(prop);

I don't like the hard coding, but...

[Paul Yen]

I tried the tutorial in objectlearn. http://www.objectlearn.com/support/docs/introduction.jsp
I used the Lomboz + Eclipse + Resin. When I tried to do the client testing, I got an error which is "no /hessian/ found" . If I removed the "/hessian/" from the url provider. It throw an exception and stop the process. The exception is unknow code:m.

Any one has tried that tutorial before, and completed it. Or anyone has any idea. I would appreciate that.

Thanks a lot.