Flex app which call a remote java object in JDeveloper ( blazeds )

In this blog I will show you how you can create a simple Adobe Flex application which get the data from java objects which runs in the embedded oc4j container. For this I create a simple webapp where I use the blazeds libraries and configuration files. Then I can just start the webapp in the embedded container, open the flash application and see the results.

We have to create in JDeveloper a new application with no project. Then we create in this workspace a new web project. In this web project we copy the libraries of the blazeds.war to the lib folder ( WEB-INF/lib ). Do the same with the flex configuration files ( flex folder) and copy these files to WEB-INF/flex. I only use remoting-config.xml for defining the java objects and the services-config.xml for configuring the type of service and logging.
the web.xml of the web application must look like this. Where the listener and the messagebroker configuration are needed for flex.

<?xml version = '1.0' encoding = 'windows-1252'?>
<web-app xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/j2ee http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/j2ee/web-app_2_4.xsd" version="2.4" xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/j2ee">
    <display-name>Flex data</display-name>
    <description>Flex data</description>

    <!-- Http Flex Session attribute and binding listener support -->
    <listener>
        <listener-class>flex.messaging.HttpFlexSession</listener-class>
    </listener>

    <!-- MessageBroker Servlet -->
    <servlet>
        <servlet-name>MessageBrokerServlet</servlet-name>
        <servlet-class>flex.messaging.MessageBrokerServlet</servlet-class>
        <init-param>
            <param-name>services.configuration.file</param-name>
            <param-value>/WEB-INF/flex/services-config.xml</param-value>
       </init-param>
        <load-on-startup>1</load-on-startup>
    </servlet>

    <servlet-mapping>
        <servlet-name>MessageBrokerServlet</servlet-name>
        <url-pattern>/messagebroker/*</url-pattern>
    </servlet-mapping>

    <session-config>
        <session-timeout>35</session-timeout>
    </session-config>
    <mime-mapping>
        <extension>html</extension>
        <mime-type>text/html</mime-type>
    </mime-mapping>
    <mime-mapping>
        <extension>txt</extension>
        <mime-type>text/plain</mime-type>
    </mime-mapping>

</web-app>

Then I created with BC4J a simple method which retrieves the employees of the scott schema and returns it as a List. Too bad I can not use the RowImpl of the employees viewobject. So I had to create a simple object.

public class Employees {
public Employees() {

}

public List getEmployees() {

System.out.println("called employees");
List list = new ArrayList();
final ScottModuleImpl scott = (ScottModuleImpl)Configuration.createRootApplicationModule("nl.ordina.service.Scottmodule", "ScottModuleLocal");
try {
EmpViewImpl emp = scott.getEmpView();
emp.executeQuery();

while (emp.hasNext()) {
EmpViewRowImpl row = (EmpViewRowImpl) emp.next();
Employee empRecord = new Employee();
empRecord.setName(row.getEname());
empRecord.setEmployeeNumber(row.getEmpno().toString());
list.add(empRecord);
}

} finally {
Configuration.releaseRootApplicationModule(scott, false);
}
return list;
}
}
In the WEB-INF/flex/remoting-config.xml we define the remote object name and the scott employees class.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<service id="remoting-service"
    class="flex.messaging.services.RemotingService">

    <adapters>
        <adapter-definition id="java-object" class="flex.messaging.services.remoting.adapters.JavaAdapter" default="true"/>
    </adapters>

    <default-channels>
        <channel ref="my-amf"/>
    </default-channels>

    <destination id="Employees">
        <properties>
            <source>nl.ordina.flex.data.Employees</source>
        </properties>
        <channels>
           <channel ref="my-amf"/>
        </channels>         
    </destination>
  </service>

In the WEB-INF/flex/services-config.xml I define the remote objects file, the channel definition and the logging.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<services-config>

    <services>
        <service-include file-path="remoting-config.xml" />
        <default-channels>
           <channel ref="my-amf"/>
        </default-channels>
    </services>

   <channels>
        <channel-definition id="my-amf" class="mx.messaging.channels.AMFChannel">
            <endpoint url="http://{server.name}:{server.port}/{context.root}/messagebroker/amf" class="flex.messaging.endpoints.AMFEndpoint"/>
            <properties>
                <polling-enabled>false</polling-enabled>
            </properties>
        </channel-definition>
    </channels>

    <logging>
        <target class="flex.messaging.log.ConsoleTarget" level="Debug">
            <properties>
                <prefix>[Flex] </prefix>
                <includeDate>false</includeDate>
                <includeTime>false</includeTime>
                <includeLevel>false</includeLevel>
                <includeCategory>false</includeCategory>
            </properties>
        </target>
    </logging>
</services-config>

Now we are ready to start with Adobe Flex builder 3. Here we create a new project.

We have to select the application server type. In our case J2EE and check the option Use remote object access service.
Then next step is to define the j2ee server path with the root folder of the webapp. This is in my case public_html folder. In this folder Flex creates a debug and release build folder for the flash binairy. And you have to define the url of the webapp.

The last step is to create the mxml application file. It looks like this
<br /><?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?><br /><mx:Application xmlns:mx="http://www.adobe.com/2006/mxml" layout="absolute"><br /> <br /> <mx:RemoteObject id="srv" fault="faultHandler(event)" showBusyCursor="true" destination="Employees"><br /> </mx:RemoteObject><br /><br /> <mx:Script><br /> <![CDATA[<br /> import mx.managers.CursorManager;<br /> import mx.rpc.events.ResultEvent;<br /> import mx.rpc.events.FaultEvent;<br /> private function faultHandler(fault:FaultEvent):void<br /> {<br /> CursorManager.removeBusyCursor();<br /> result_text.text = "code:\n" + fault.fault.faultCode + "\n\nMessage:\n" + fault.fault.faultString + "\n\nDetail:\n" + fault.fault.faultDetail;<br /> }<br /><br /> ]]><br /> </mx:Script><br /><br /> <mx:VBox x="24" y="25" width="527" height="730"><br /> <mx:Button label="Get Data" click="srv.getEmployees()"/> <br /> <mx:TextArea x="10" y="36" width="319" height="113" id="result_text"/><br /> <mx:DataGrid dataProvider="{srv.getEmployees.lastResult}" width="500" height="300"/> <br /> </mx:VBox><br /></mx:Application><br /><br />
In the mx:RemoteObject we use the destination which we defined in remote-config.xml In mx:DataGrid we define the java method in my case is that getEmployees dataProvider="{srv.getEmployees.lastResult}"
Now we can run the flex application and it looks like this