The aim of Backset is to provide Spring Boot/Dropwizard like developer experience for Java EE.
The idea is that you create your web application based on the technologies you are familiar with: CDI, JAX-RS, JSF, JPA and so on. But instead of deploying a WAR to some application server, you simply run the Maven build which will produce a executable uberjar. Now you can start you application like this:
java -jar myapp.jar
You application will include everything required for running it. This makes deploying and setting up a dev environment VERY easy and straight forward.
Currently Backset supports the following Java EE technologies:
- Servlet 3.1
- JSP 2.3
- EL 3.0
- CDI 1.2
- JAX-RS 2.0
- JPA 2.1
- JSF 2.2
- JDBC DataSources via JNDI
The following technologies are currently on the roadmap:
- JTA
- EJB
Backset is currently in early development stage. The latest version available in Maven Central
is 1.0.0.Alpha1. It's fine to use this version for your first experiments. If you want to give
the bleeding edge version a try, you will have to build it yourself:
First you should clone the source and build it:
$ git clone https://github.com/chkal/backset.git
$ cd backset && mvn -DskipTests install
The showcase directory contains some sample applications. The todo app is probably
the most complete one. It shows how to create a simple task manager based on
CDI, JSF and JPA.
You can start the todo application with a simple java -jar command:
$ java -jar showcase/todo/target/backset-showcase-todo-1.0-SNAPSHOT.jar
After the application has started, you can access it by opening the following URL in your browser:
http://localhost:8080/index.jsf
A Maven archetype is currently work in progress. So stay tuned.
There are some important difference between classic web applications and a web application built with Backset.
The first difference is that you will have to use jar instead of a war packaging for
your project. So your pom.xml will typically look like this:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0" ....>
<modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>
<groupId>com.example</groupId>
<artifactId>myapp</artifactId>
<version>1.0-SNAPSHOT</version>
<packaging>jar</packaging>
<!-- ... more .... -->
</project>The second important difference is that the content of your web application (JSPs, JavaScript, CSS, etc)
has to be placed in a directory called webapp on your classpath.
So you will NOT place your files in:
src/main/webapp
Instead use:
src/main/resources/webapp
So your project structure will typically look like this:
myapp
|-- pom.xml
`-- src
`-- main
|-- java
| `-- <your classes>
`-- resources
`-- webapp
|-- index.jsp
`-- WEB-INF
`-- web.xml
To use Backset in your project, you will have to add the following dependencies to your pom.xml
<!-- The core Backset dependency -->
<dependency>
<groupId>de.chkal.backset</groupId>
<artifactId>backset-server</artifactId>
<version>${backset.version}</version>
</dependency>
<!-- All the modules are optional -->
<dependency>
<groupId>de.chkal.backset</groupId>
<artifactId>backset-module-?????</artifactId>
<version>${backset.version}</version>
</dependency>So you basically need to add backset-server and all the modules you would like to use. Have a look at the
Modules section for more details about the modules available.
Running a Backset application in your IDE is very easy. The nice thing about Backset is that
your application ships with the server. So you just have to point your IDE to the Backset
main class which contains an ordinary main() method.
In case of Eclipse simply import the project into your workspace and create a new Run Configuration like this:
Just make sure to select the correct Main class:
de.chkal.backset.server.Bootstrap
Now click the Run button and your application will start up.
Backset uses the Maven Shade Plugin to create an executable uberjar.
Just add the following ugly configuration snippet to your pom.xml.
<plugin>
<groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
<artifactId>maven-shade-plugin</artifactId>
<version>2.3</version>
<executions>
<execution>
<phase>package</phase>
<goals>
<goal>shade</goal>
</goals>
<configuration>
<createDependencyReducedPom>false</createDependencyReducedPom>
<transformers>
<transformer implementation="de.chkal.backset.maven.shade.DefaultRelocationsTransformer" />
<transformer implementation="org.apache.maven.plugins.shade.resource.ServicesResourceTransformer" />
<transformer implementation="org.apache.maven.plugins.shade.resource.ManifestResourceTransformer">
<manifestEntries>
<Main-Class>de.chkal.backset.server.Bootstrap</Main-Class>
</manifestEntries>
</transformer>
</transformers>
</configuration>
</execution>
</executions>
<dependencies>
<dependency>
<groupId>de.chkal.backset</groupId>
<artifactId>backset-maven-tools</artifactId>
<version>${backset.version}</version>
</dependency>
</dependencies>
</plugin>Now you can run this command to create the uberjar:
mvn package
You can then run your application using a simple java -jar command:
java -jar target/myapp.jar
Easy, isn't it? :)
Backset uses YAML files for configuration. A typically configuration file looks like this.
undertow:
connectors:
- type: http
port: 8080
logging:
level: INFO
loggers:
de.chkal.backset: DEBUGThe top-level elements in the configuration files are called sections
(undertow and logging in this case). Typically each component and module defines
its own section.
There are basically two ways to provide configuration parameters:
- Backset will looks for a file called
backset.ymlon your classpath. - You can provide a YAML configuration file when starting Backset by specifying it
as the first command line argument (example:
java -jar myapp.jar config.yml).
When a component or module tries to access a section from the configuration, Backset performs the following steps:
- If a config file has been specified on the command line and it contains the relevant section, use this section.
- If there is a
backset.ymlon the classpath and it contains the relevant section, use this section. - Use the fallbacks as specified by the module or component.
This allows you to specify a fallback configuration using a backset.yml on your classpath
which can be overwritten by a custom configuration specified on the commandline.
The following sub sections will describe the core configuration options of Backset. Please note that there are many more configuration options for specific modules which are described in the corresponding module sections.
The first thing you will typically have to configure is the logging. Backset uses Logback for logging. In most cases you can use a configuration like this configure the logging:
logging:
level: INFO
loggers:
de.chkal.backset: DEBUG
com.acme.myapp: TRACEThis will set the default logging level to INFO which is usually a good choice. Additionally you
can change the log level for individual loggers. To do so, just type the package name under the
loggers key and set the log level accordingly.
Future versions may support to reference a logback.xml file which contains full Logback
configuration. Any patches welcome. ;)
Backset uses Undertow as the embedded web container. You can configure some core features of Undertow
using the undertow configuration section.
A full configuration example looks like this:
undertow:
ioThreads: 50
workerThreads: 50
connectors:
- type: http
port: 8080
- type: ajp
host: 127.0.0.1
port: 8009
contextParams:
javax.faces.PROJECT_STAGE: Development
com.acme.myapp.SOMETHING: Some valueFirst you can control the number of IO and worker threads. If you don't specify these values, Backset will use Undertow's defaults.
The connectors elements allows you to define a list of connectors. Each connector has a type, a host
address and a port. The type is either http or ajp. The host address allows you to control which
network interface Undertow will use for this connector. In the example above, the AJP connector is bound
to the local interface, so that connections are only possible from the same host. If you don't specify the
host address, Backset will use 0.0.0.0. The third property of a connector is the port. If you don't specify
the port, Backset will use 8080 or 8009 depending on the port type.
In some situations it may be useful to set servlet context parameters depending on your runtime environment.
This will for example allow you to put JSF into development mode while developing without having to add
the context parameter to your main web.xml. You can use the contextParams element to specify a
mapping from context parameter keys to their values.
This sections will describe the optional Backset modules which you can add to your project to get support for different Java EE technologies.
Most applications should add the Backset servlet module by adding it to their
pom.xml like this:
<dependency>
<groupId>de.chkal.backset</groupId>
<artifactId>backset-module-servlet</artifactId>
<version>${backset.version}</version>
</dependency>This modules provides the following features:
- Discovery and parsing of
web.xmlandweb-fragment.xmlfiles. - Discovery and registration of classes annotated with
@WebServlet,@WebFilterand similar annotations.
Backset uses JBoss Weld as its CDI implementation. If you want to use CDI in your application, add the following dependency:
<dependency>
<groupId>de.chkal.backset</groupId>
<artifactId>backset-module-weld</artifactId>
<version>${backset.version}</version>
</dependency>There is currently one problem with the CDI support in Backset. Standard application servers use the
/META-INF/beans.xml file to identify JAR files for which CDI should be enabled. As Backset merges
all JAR files into a big fat JAR, this won't work very well.
For this reason you currently have to tell Backset which packages should be considered to contain CDI beans. In a typical application this will be your root application package and the root package names of all CDI extension libraries your are using.
See this configuration for an example:
weld:
packages:
- com.acme.myapp
- org.apache.deltaspikeI'm currently looking for other ways to fix this problem. However, specifying the packages this way manually seems to work fine for most applications.
Backset uses BoneCP as the JDBC connection pool. If you want to access your
database via JDBC, you should add this module to your pom.xml.
<dependency>
<groupId>de.chkal.backset</groupId>
<artifactId>backset-module-bonecp</artifactId>
<version>${backset.version}</version>
</dependency>The BoneCP module allows you to define datasources in your Backset configuration. A full example looks like this:
bonecp:
datasources:
- name: 'TestDataSource'
jndiName: 'java:/comp/env/TestDataSource'
driverClass: 'org.h2.Driver'
jdbcUrl: 'jdbc:h2:mem:simple-test'
username: 'sa'
password: ''Each datasource has a name and a jndiName. Both are optional, but you should set at least one of them.
If you set the name, you can get a reference to the java.sql.DataSource using Backset's DataSources
class which offers static methods to lookup datasources by name. If you set the jndiName, you will
be able lookup the datasource from JNDI. This is especially useful if you are using JPA and want
to use <non-jta-data-source> in your persistence.xml to refer to the datasource.
The other properties are straight forward. For each data source you have to define the name of the JDBC driver class, the JDBC URL and the credentials required to connect to the database.
There is currently no Hibernate module in Backset. But the reason for this is, that there is no integration code required to use Hibernate. So you can simply add the Hibernate dependency directly:
<dependency>
<groupId>org.hibernate</groupId>
<artifactId>hibernate-entitymanager</artifactId>
<version>${hibernate.version}</version>
</dependency>Now you can add a persistence.xml file to your project like you would do with a standard application.
An persistence.xml could look like this:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<persistence version="2.0" xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/persistence">
<persistence-unit name="myapp" transaction-type="RESOURCE_LOCAL">
<non-jta-data-source>java:/comp/env/TestDataSource</non-jta-data-source>
<!-- Add your entities here -->
<class>de.chkal.backset.showcase.todo.model.Item</class>
</persistence-unit>
</persistence>Easy, isn't it? Please refer to the BoneCP section for details on how to create a JDBC datasource.
Now you will typically just create a CDI bean which manages the lifecycle of the EntityManager.
Such an class could look like this:
@ApplicationScoped
public class EntityManagerProducer {
private EntityManagerFactory entityManagerFactory;
@PostConstruct
public void init() {
entityManagerFactory = Persistence.createEntityManagerFactory("myapp");
}
@Produces
@RequestScoped
public EntityManager getEntityManager() {
return entityManagerFactory.createEntityManager();
}
public void disposeEntityManager(@Disposes EntityManager entityManager) {
entityManager.close();
}
@PreDestroy
public void shutdown() {
entityManagerFactory.close();
}
}This setup will create one EntityManager instance for each request. You can now simply inject the
EntityManager into any of your CDI beans like this:
@ApplicationScoped
public class TodoService {
@Inject
private EntityManager entityManager;
/* more code */
}If you want to use declarative transaction management, you should consider using the
Apache DeltaSpike JPA Module. See the todo showcase
application for a detailed example.
Backset may add support for @PersistenceContext and @PersistenceUnit at a later point in time.
Backset uses Jersey as the JAX-RS implementation. So if you want
to create JAX-RS services, add the Jersey module to your pom.xml.
<dependency>
<groupId>de.chkal.backset</groupId>
<artifactId>backset-module-jersey</artifactId>
<version>${backset.version}</version>
</dependency>There is no additional configuration required for the Jersey module. Just create you application class and your resources classes and they will be picked up automatically.
Backset uses Apache MyFaces as the JSF implementation. To use JSF
in your application, add this module to your pom.xml:
<dependency>
<groupId>de.chkal.backset</groupId>
<artifactId>backset-module-myfaces</artifactId>
<version>${backset.version}</version>
</dependency>There is no additional configuration required for this module.
If you want to use JSP files in your application, add this module to your pom.xml:
<dependency>
<groupId>de.chkal.backset</groupId>
<artifactId>backset-module-jsp</artifactId>
<version>${backset.version}</version>
</dependency>This module uses Jastow under the hood. You can register custom TLD files using a configuration like this:
jsp:
tldFiles:
- foobar.tld
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