Seam Framework

Michael Juntao Yuan is cofounder of Ringful, LLC, a company that develops RESTful APIs for telephone voice and mobile messaging solutions. He contributes code to the Seam project and writes about Seam at www.michaelyuan.com/blog. Formerly technical product manager at Red Hat’s JBoss division, Yuan is author of five books on software development.   Jacob Orshalick is an independent consultant and the owner of Focus IT Solutions, LLC. He has developed enterprise software solutions that span the retail, financial, media, and telecommunications industries. He specializes in developing enterprise Java solutions utilizing open source technologies and agile techniques. He is a committer to the Seam project, and you can find Jacob writing about Seam, Web Beans, and related Java EE technologies in his blog, www.solutionsfit.com/blog.   Thomas Heute was a contributor to the pre-JBoss Portal project before being hired by JBoss, Inc., in 2004. He started as a member of the JBoss Portal team but became a JBoss Seam coleader in 2005, with a plan to bring EJB3 closer to JSF (where it really should be). At the end of 2006, Thomas returned to the JBoss Portal team to work on a range of tasks.

About This Book xvii

About the Authors xix

Acknowledgments xxi

 

Part I: Getting Started 1

 

Chapter 1: What Is Seam? 3

1.1: Integrating and Enhancing Java EE Frameworks 4

1.2: A Web Framework That Understands ORM 5

1.3: Supporting Stateful Web Applications 6

1.4: Web 2.0 Ready 7

1.5: POJO Services via Dependency Bijection 7

1.6: Convention over Configuration 8

1.7: Avoiding XML Abuse 8

1.8: Designed for Testing 9

1.9: Great Tools Support 10

1.10: Let’s Start Coding! 10

 

Chapter 2: Seam Hello World 11

2.1: Create a Data Model 13

2.2: Map the Data Model to a Web Form 13

2.3: Handle Web Events 14

2.4: Navigate to the Next Page 15

2.5: EJB3 Bean Interface and Mandatory Method 16

2.6: More on the Seam Programming Model 17

2.7: Configuration and Packaging 20

2.8: How Is This Simple? 25

 

Chapter 3: Recommended JSF Enhancements 27

3.1: An Introduction to Facelets 28

3.2: Seam JSF Enhancements 34

3.3: Add Facelets and Seam UI Support 38

3.4: PDF, Email, and Rich Text 40

3.5: Internationalization 46

 

Chapter 4: Seam without EJB3 47

4.1: A Seam POJO Example 47

4.2: Configuration 48

4.3: Packaging 50

4.4: POJO Trade-Offs 52

 

Chapter 5: Rapid Application Development Tools 53

5.1: Prerequisites 54

5.2: A Quick Tutorial 54

5.3: Working with IDEs 63

5.4: Generating a CRUD Application from a Database 72

5.5: Seam-gen Command Reference 73

 

Part II: Stateful Applications Made Easy 75

 

Chapter 6: An Introduction to Stateful Framework 77

6.1: Correct Usage of ORM 77

6.2: Better Performance 79

6.3: Better Browser Navigation Support 81

6.4: Fewer Memory Leaks 82

6.5: High Granularity Component Lifecycle 83

6.6: Reducing Boilerplate Code 84

 

Chapter 7: Thinking in Components 87

7.1: Stateful Components 87

7.2: Managing Stateful Components 92

7.3: Configuring Components through XML 97

7.4: Page Navigation Flow 99

 

Chapter 8: Conversations 101

8.1: What Is a Conversation? 102

8.2: Long-Running Conversations 106

8.3: Managing Long-Running Conversations 112

8.4: New Frontiers 124

 

Chapter 9: Workspaces and Concurrent Conversations 125

9.1: What Is a Workspace? 125

9.2: Workspace Management 129

9.3: Natural Conversations 134

9.4: Workspace Timeout 140

9.5: Desktop Features in a Stateless Web 143

 

Chapter 10: Nested Conversations 145

10.1: Why Are Nested Conversations Needed? 145

10.2: Continuing the Conversation 147

10.3: The Conversation Stack 152

10.4: Fine-Grained State Management 157

 

Chapter 11: Transactions and Persistence 159

11.1: Seam-Managed Transactions 160

11.2: Atomic Conversation (Web Transaction) 165

 

Part III: Integrating Web and Data Components 175

 

Chapter 12: Validating Input Data 177

12.1: Form Validation Basics 177

12.2: Validation Annotations on Entity Beans 179

12.3: Triggering the Validation Action 181

12.4: Displaying Error Messages on the Web Form 183

12.5: Using JSF Custom Validators 185

 

Chapter 13: Clickable Data Tables 187

13.1: Implementing a Clickable Data Table 188

13.2: Seam Data-Binding Framework 191

 

Chapter 14: Decoupling Components Using Events 193

14.1: The Observer Pattern 193

14.2: Component-Driven Events 196

 

Chapter 15: Bookmarkable Web Pages 203

15.1: Using Page Parameters 204

15.2: The Java-Centric Approach 207

15.3: RESTful Web Services 211

 

Chapter 16: The Seam CRUD Application Framework 213

16.1: Data Access Objects (DAOs) 213

16.2: Seam CRUD DAOs Are POJOs 214

16.3: A Declarative Seam DAO Component 215

16.4: Queries 218

 

Chapter 17: Failing Gracefully 223

17.1: Why Not Standard Servlet Error Pages? 223

17.2: Setting Up the Exception Filter 225

17.3: Annotating Exceptions 225

17.4: Using pages.xml for System Exceptions 227

17.5: The Debug Information Page 229

 

Chapter 18: Seam Security 233

18.1: Authentication and User Roles 234

18.2: Declarative Access Control 237

18.3: Identity Management 243

18.4: Additional Security Features 251

 

Part IV: AJAX Support 257

 

Chapter 19: Custom and AJAX UI Components 259

19.1: Autocompletion Text Input Example 261

19.2: Rich Input Control Examples 263

19.3: A Scrollable Data Table 264

19.4: Using RichFaces with Seam 265

19.5: Other JSF Component Libraries 266

 

Chapter 20: Enabling AJAX for Existing Components 269

20.1: AJAX Validator Example 270

20.2: Programmatic AJAX 272

20.3: AJAX Buttons 274

20.4: AJAX Containers 276

20.5: Other Goodies 276

20.6: Using Ajax4jsf with Seam 277

20.7: Pros and Cons 278

 

Chapter 21: Direct JavaScript Integration 279

21.1: AJAX Validator Example (Reloaded) 280

21.2: AJAX Progress Bar 284

21.3: Integrating the Dojo Toolkit 287

 

Part V: Business Processes and Rules 293

 

Chapter 22: Rule-Based Security Framework 295

22.1: Rule-Based Access Control 295

22.2: Configuring Rule-Based Permissioning 296

22.3: Simple Access Rules 297

22.4: Per-Instance Access Rules 299

22.5: Securing Your Entities 302

 

Chapter 23: Integrating Business Rules in Web Applications 305

23.1: Embedded Rules 305

23.2: Generic Rules 309

23.3: Building and Deployment 312

23.4: Conclusions 313

 

Chapter 24: Managing Business Processes 315

24.1: jBPM Concepts and Vocabulary 316

24.2: Application Users and jBPM Actors 318

24.3: Creating a Business Process 320

24.4: Managing Tasks 325

24.5: Business Process-Based Page Navigation Flow 330

24.6: jBPM Libraries and Configuration 333

 

Chapter 25: Integrating Business Processes and Rules 335

25.1: The Process 335

25.2: The Rules 337

25.3: Conclusions 338

 

Part VI: Testing Seam Applications 339

 

Chapter 26: Unit Testing 341

26.1: A Simple TestNG Test Case 343

26.2: Simulating Dependency Bijection 344

26.3: Mocking the Database and Transaction 345

26.4: Loading the Test Infrastructure 347

 

Chapter 27: Integration Testing 351

27.1: Simulating JSF Interactions 352

27.2: Using JSF EL Expressions 353

27.3: Transactional Data Source 355

 

Part VII: Production Deployment 357

 

Chapter 28: Using a Production Database 359

28.1: Installing and Setting Up the Database 359

28.2: Installing the Database Driver 361

28.3: Defining a Data Source 361

28.4: Configuring the Persistence Engine 362

28.5: How about Tomcat? 362

 

Chapter 29: Java EE 5.0 Deployment 365

29.1: JBoss AS 4.0.5 365

29.2: JBoss AS 4.2.x and 5.x 366

29.3: GlassFish 367

 

Chapter 30: Performance Tuning and Clustering 371

30.1: Tuning Performance on a Single Server 372

30.2: Clustering for Scalability and Failover 379

 

Part VIII: Emerging Technologies 383

 

Chapter 31: Scheduling Recurring Jobs from a Web Application 385

31.1: Simple Recurring Events 386

31.2: Configuring the Quartz Scheduler Service 387

31.3: Scheduling Cron Jobs 389

31.4: Scheduling Jobs When Starting Up 390

31.5: Conclusion 391

 

Chapter 32: Improving Scalability with Multilayered Caching 393

32.1: Multilayered Caching 394

32.2: Integrating a Cache Provider through Seam 396

32.3: Simplified Caching with Seam 398

 

Chapter 33: Making Seam Groovy 401

33.1: Groovy Entities 402

33.2: Groovy Actions 405

33.3: Integrating Groovy 406

 

Chapter 34: Introduction to Web Beans 409

34.1: Defining a Web Beans Component 410

34.2: Component Injection 411

34.3: Producer Methods 414

34.4: The Context Model 416

34.5: Component Stereotyping 419

34.6: Implementing Cross-Cutting Behavior 421

34.7: Conclusion 423

 

Appendix A: Installing and Deploying JBoss AS 425

A.1: JDK 5.0 Is Required 425

A.2: Installing JBoss AS 426

A.3: Deploying and Running Applications 426

 

Appendix B: Using Example Applications as Templates 427

B.1: Simple EJB3-Based Web Applications 428

B.2: POJO-Based Web Applications 433

B.3: More Complex Applications 438

 

Appendix C: Using Maven 441

 

Appendix D: Direct Access to the Hibernate API 451

D.1: Using the Hibernate API 451

D.2: Configuration 453

 

Index 455