Using EJB in Flex with blazeds

This blog explains how you can use ejb in Adobe Flex with blazeds. First thing I did is creating a application with the jsf, ejb template.

In the model project we can create a new entity bean. I use the CMP entity bean from tables.

For the EJB version I use Enterprise JavaBeans 2.1 option. The Oracle table I will use in this entity bean is the employee table of the HR schema.

Now we can create a Session Bean
If we look at the properties of the session bean we see the retrieveAllEmployees method. We will use this to display all the employees in flex.

We are ready to add the blazeds libraries to the viewcontroller project. Because we want to use EJB, we have to download an extra library. Here is the link of the ejb library which is made by Ryan J. Norris. Add also this library to the viewcontroller project.
Because we use ejb we have to add the embedded oc4j client and j2ee library to viewcontroller project.

Now we can configure blazeds. We have to create two files (remoting-config.xml and services-config.xml ) in WEB-INF/flex/ folder
Here is the remoting-config.xml file. In this file we define a destination with the name of the session bean in the model project.

<?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="EmployeeEJB">
        <properties>
            <factory>ejb</factory>
            <source>SessionEJB</source>
        </properties>
    </destination>
</service>

Here is the services-config.xml. In this file we define the ejb factory in my case I have to use com.adobe.ac.ejb.EJBFactory for ejb3 we have to use com.adobe.ac.ejb.EJB3Factory as factory class.

<?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>
    <factories>
 <factory id="ejb" class="com.adobe.ac.ejb.EJBFactory" />
    </factories>
    <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="Error">
            <properties>
                <prefix>[Flex] </prefix>
                <includeDate>false</includeDate>
                <includeTime>false</includeTime>
                <includeLevel>false</includeLevel>
                <includeCategory>false</includeCategory>
            </properties>
        </target>
    </logging>
</services-config>

Add the blazeds servlet to the web.xml

    <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>

    <listener>
        <listener-class>flex.messaging.HttpFlexSession</listener-class>
    </listener>

The last step in jdeveloper is to add -Doc4j.jmx.security.proxy.off=true to the run options of the viewcontroller project.

Let's open Flex builder 3 and create a new project.

We have to select j2ee server technology.

The second step is to add the webapp url's.
The mxml is very simple. First we add a remoteobject, then we are calling theretrieveAllEmployees method when the application is loaded and at last we display the result in a datagrid.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<mx:Application xmlns:mx="http://www.adobe.com/2006/mxml" 
 width="1155" height="206.21213">
 <mx:applicationComplete>
 srv.retrieveAllEmployees()
 </mx:applicationComplete>

  <mx:RemoteObject id="srv" showBusyCursor="true" 
   destination="EmployeeEJB"/>
  <mx:DataGrid width="1104.6212" 
   dataProvider="{srv.retrieveAllEmployees.lastResult}"  
   height="140.98485"/>
 
</mx:Application>

Here the result. That's all.