Jessie – Atbash blog

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.

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.