Category: Project setup

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MicroProfile Project setup

MicroProfile 1.3 support for Jessie

Introduction

In a previous release of Jessie, there was support added for MicroProfile specifications. Initially, it was only for version 1.2 because this is the specification for which you have to most implementations available, Payara Micro, Open Liberty, WildFly Swarm and KumuluzEE.

Now I have added support for version 1.3 which is already supported by Open Liberty and Payara Micro.

MicroProfile 1.3

With the release of MicroProfile 1.3, there are a few specifications added to the mix.

OpenAPI 1.0

The specification defines the documentation of your JAX-RS endpoints using the OpenAPI v3 JSON or YAML specification.
The MicroProfile specification defines various ways on how this can be generated, like using specific annotations, fixed document, java based generator and filter.
More information and usage scenario can be found in the specification document.

OpenTracing 1.0

This specification will help you to keep track of the requests flow between all your micro-services. It has 2 main goals, define how the correlation id and additional information is transferred between different micro-services and the format of the trace records which are produced.

More information can be found in the document at link.

REST Client 1.0

The last addition is the most attractive one for developers I guess, at least for me. It builds on top of the JAX-RS client specification of Java EE/Jakarta EE.
It allows you to use type-safe access to your endpoints without the need to programmatic interact with the Client API.
You define with an interface how the JAX-RS endpoint should be called and by adding the required JAX-RS constraints (defining, for example, the method and the format like JSON) the JAX-RS client is generated dynamically.
You can read more about this nice feature in my previous blog post where I explored this specification and presented you with a client for Java SE.

What is available in Jessie?

In this release, support for MicroProfile 1.3 is added as mentioned in the introduction. It means you can select the version within a dropdown and later on, the server implementations capable of providing your selection are shown.

Not for all specifications added in this 1.3 version, have examples in the generated application. They will be added in a next version, but for those who want to get started, this version of Jessie can help them.

There are 2 other improvements added to this version
– Since there are quite some specifications now, you can specify for which of them you want a simple example in the generated application. This doesn’t restrict you in any way of using the other specifications but can help you to better keep the overview.
– A readme file is generated with more information about the specifications which are selected and how some of the specifications can be tested within the generated application.

Conclusion

Support for MicroProfile 1.3 version is added to Jessie at the request of some users who wanted to get started with it. Example code for some of the specifications will be added soon.

You can find Jessie here.

Have Fun

Categories
MicroProfile Project setup

MicroProfile support for Jessie

Introduction

In some previous blog, I introduced Jessie, a tool for creating maven based applications which contain the skeleton for applications using Java EE, DeltaSpike, PrimeFaces, and Octopus (the declarative security framework for Java EE)

Although most people just copy and paste from an existing application, I find it very handy that I can generate very easily some as I create quite some demo type applications.

The last few months, besides Java EE applications, I’m also creating more and more Eclipse MicroProfile based demos. So in the last few weeks, I added support for MicroProfile into Jessie. It generates a demo app which uses the MicroProfile Specifications and specific support for the different server implementations.

MicroProfile 1.2

Version 1.2 is not the latest version of the specification. It is released end of September 2017 but is supported by quite a number of implementations as you can see on this overview page.

Besides the basic buildings blocks JAX-RS, JSON-P, and CDI, it contains

Configuration

This specification defines how configuration values can be read from different sources to customize your application.

Fault tolerance

It defines some various options for resilient micro-services like retry policies, bulkheads, circuit breakers, and fallback options.

JWT Authentication

This first version defines the basics of authentication and authorization information propagation to the micro-service using JWT. Inspired on OAuth2 and OpenId Connect, it is possible to define user information and the roles it has in a self-contained way so that no external parties need to be consulted.

Health Metrics

It defines the way how developers can expose some ‘telemetry’ data in a uniform way. It has support for things like the number of invocations, statistics on the execution time of endpoints, and so on.

Health Checks

The health checks are on a different level as the metrics. Which the checks we can verify if our service is still performing well. Or that we should kill it and start a new one. Besides standard checks (using memory, CPU, etc …) you can define your own checks very easily.

Application Generation

In this first version, the generation is still at a basic level. The online version of Jessie can be found here.

After you have selected the ‘MicroProfile’ technology stack, added some basic information about the maven artifact name, you can select one of the 4 implementations that support MicroProfile 1.2 completely

– WildFly swarm – 2017.12.1
– Liberty 17.0.0.3
– KumuluzEE 2.5.2
– Payara micro 5.181

The app contains examples of all specifications mentioned above (the JWT auth code is not always completely working due to small issues in configuration and calling the endpoint) and can be seen in action from the index.html overview page.

Conclusion

In this second official release of Jessie, you can now also generate MicroProfile 1.2 applications. You can choose one of the 4 supported implementations and all the required code for generating a fat jar application is in place.

In a future version of Jessie, newer releases of MicroProfile will be supported, the small known issues will be handled and selection of the included specifications will be possible.

have fun.

Categories
Project setup

Generating (Maven) Projects

Introduction

The first thing we do when starting a new application is setting up our project. A lot of people use Maven for this, and you have various options how you can do this.
Since I create a lot of projects for testing out various features of the Atbash projects or for trying things out (I have around 300 projects on my computer today) I was searching for some help to do this.

Application setup

When trying things out, I need to have some minimal project setup. Not only do I need the Maven pom file with the required dependencies, I also need some files like configuration or a login file for Octopus.

I do not need to have tools to generate me the JPA entities, JSF Screens or JAX-RS endpoints. Creating a few of them is not difficult with the current IDE’s and that automatic generation is mostly too opinionated so that it is not usable in production systems either.

So what are the options to have this minimal project setup

Copy and Paste

You can always copy such a minimal project you have already created and made some modifications to

  • Change the groupId and artifactId of the pom file
  • Update the dependencies
  • Update the configuration file to match your new dependencies and use case you want to test out.
  • Change the java package with your java code
  • Add or remove code depending on the feature for this use case.

This is a valid procedure and in most cases the most efficient one. You don’t need to learn any new tool, extend it with your features (Like Octopus in my case) but of course, it is not the most fun way of doing things.

JBoss Forge

JBoss Forge https://forge.jboss.org/ is a tool specifically designed to get your application up and running fast. It not only generates the project for you but also can help you in generating those well-structured classes like JPA entities, JAX-RS endpoints, and screens with JSF or Angular(JS).

I used it in the past and it can be a valuable tool but it is not the right thing for what I want.
Although you can generate your maven project, you need a script and/or a custom add-on for the features that I want (specific dependencies within the pom.xml file and some configuration and java files)

It also has a lot of options to generate code for you, but again this is sometimes opinionated and not what you or your company wants to use.

Other tools

Since there are various other tools on the internet, the topic seems to be important for a lot of people. Similar tools which I found are generjee and factorEE.
Not all of them are maintained anymore or do focus on the wrong things (for my use case) like generating code.
I also find a CLI very important in this case since it allows you to create an application very rapidly (and recreate it based on the same configuration)

Jessie

So, due to the lack of the right tool for me, I created one of my own called Jessie (Java EE Start project as it was geared at that time towards Java EE). Last year with the release of CDI 2.0, I did a rewrite of it using the Java SE CDI container and included the usage of ThymeLeaf as templating mechanism so that it became easier to generate files which can be customized.

In the OpenSource spirit of Atbash, I placed the code on Github  and created a front end for it.
You can play with it on the OpenShift V3 instance  or can download the code that just needs a few parameters within a YAML config file and the CLI version generates your project.

The first version has support for Java EE and additional frameworks like DeltaSpike, PrimeFaces, and Octopus, the security framework.

Since I’m also involved with MicroProfile lately, a version for MicroProfile and the support for the different vendor implementation like LibertyIO, WildFly Swarm, Payara Micro etc will be created later on.

Conclusion

When setting up a new project, the most efficient solution is creating it from scratch or start from a similar existing project and make the required adaptations.
Another useful tool is JBoss Forge, mainly when you are interested in generating some code.

Jessie has been created a few years ago as a toy and now available on GitHub and it was a good learning opportunity for CDI 2.0, templating with ThymeLeaf and creating a tool which runs in multiple environments (CLI, Java FX, Web/JSF)

Maybe it is also helpful for you.

Have fun.

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