Towards Java EE Nirvana

Java EE 6 makes it pretty straightforward to crunch out a basic web + database application. This semester, my software engineering class is building web apps, and I decided it is simpler to have them use JSF + JPA in Glassfish v3 rather than some technology that seems easy at first and then lets them down.

Here is a laundry list of recent simplifications.

• Author JSF pages as facelets: XHTML + JSF tags. No icky JSP syntax
• Use annotations: @ManagedBean @Stateless @Entity @EJB @PersistenceContext. No icky XML configuration
• Use EZNavigation™ in JSF. Actions directly return the view ID string. Hooray—no navigation in faces-config.xml
• No more busywork interfaces for session beans
• Use entity annotations, and let JPA generate the tables. No SQL!
• Package everything in a single WAR

The WAR file has the structure

web pages (.xhtml)
WEB-INF/
  web.xml
  faces-config.xml
  classes/
    managed beans
    stateless session beans
    entity beans
    META-INF/
      persistence.xml

There are three cookie-cutter XML files that you never need to touch. In particular, faces-config.xml is empty! The rest is XHTML and Java.

Unfortunately, setting up your tools is a bit of trouble because everything is right now a moving target. Here are the steps.

1. Install Glassfish v3 Prelude
2. Add the glassfish-v3-prelude-version/glassfish/bin directory to your PATH
3. Run glassfish-v3-prelude-version/updatetool/updatetool. Add the Glassfish EJB container. Install any available updates.
4. Check the version of the JSF 2.0 implementation in the updatetool. If it is ≤ 2.0.0.8, download the JSF 2.0 Nightly build; pick mojarra-2.0.0-SNAPSHOT-binary.zip and replace glassfish-v3-prelude-version/modules/jsf-api.jar and glassfish-v3-prelude-version/modules/web/jsf-impl.jar with the versions in that zip file.
5. Start the server:

   asadmin start-database
   asadmin start-domain

6. Download and unzip this test application. Edit build.properties and set the path of your Glassfish installation. Run ant. Point your browser to http://localhost:8080/SimpleQuiz

   

7. You can use the EE version of Netbeans 6.5 out of the box. With the EE version of Eclipse 3.4, install the Eclipse Glassfish adapter . When you import the sample project into Eclipse, make a “Dynamic web project”, set the source path to src/java (not src), the web path to web (not WebContent), and uncheck “Generate deployment descriptor” . Both Netbeans and Eclipse do a beautiful job with hotswapping.

Overall, I was very happy. This is a huge step forward from five years ago, when Bruce Tate refused to eat Elephant again.

Have we reached Nirvana? Not quite. Here are some remaining hassles:

• I hate writing (and reading) all those getters and setters. Did I ever mention that Java needs support for properties?
• For a simple app, it is a nuisance to separate managed beans and session beans. Web beans, erm, Java Contexts and Dependency Injection, should solve that, but I didn't have the courage to throw that into the mix. Next semester :-)
• Error reporting has become better, in no small part thanks to facelets. But I still get the stack trace from hell more often than I'd like.