Deploy your java apps to the cloud

I work for CloudBees Inc., they are a great company with great products. I have mostly been working on the DEV@ side of the fence which is focused on continuous integration and basically the development side of your application, but we also have the RUN@ side of the fence where we provide a platform as a service (PaaS) for running your java web applications on the cloud. I could give you the sales pitch, but I'll leave it at: the technologies and people behind RUN@ were one of the key reasons why I decided to join CloudBees.

Well I've been busy on some stuff since joining, so I decided it was time to actually try out the RUN@ stuff for my self.  So here is my experience:

My test application:

• I'm on the Apache Maven PMC, so I'm going to build it with... shock... horror... Maven.
• I am partial to the odd bit of JSF, so it will be a JSF 2.0 application based off of Apache MyFaces.
• I love Jetty as a servlet container for local testing, so we'll use that hammer too.

Let's get started...

First the pom.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
         xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 http://maven.apache.org/xsd/maven-4.0.0.xsd">
  <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>

  <!-- basic information -->

  <groupId>com.blogspot.javaadventure.cloudbees.run</groupId>
  <artifactId>jsf2-hello-world</artifactId>
  <version>0.1-SNAPSHOT</version>
  <packaging>war</packaging>

  <!-- Project information -->

  <name>JSF 2.0 Hello World</name>
  <description>
    A JSF 2.0 web application that says hello world.
  </description>

  <properties>
    <project.reporting.outputEncoding>UTF-8</project.reporting.outputEncoding>
    <project.build.outputEncoding>UTF-8</project.build.outputEncoding>
    <project.build.sourceEncoding>UTF-8</project.build.sourceEncoding>
  </properties>

  <!-- Dependency details -->

  <dependencies>
    <dependency>
      <groupId>org.apache.myfaces.core</groupId>
      <artifactId>myfaces-api</artifactId>
      <version>2.0.5</version>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
      <groupId>org.apache.myfaces.core</groupId>
      <artifactId>myfaces-impl</artifactId>
      <version>2.0.5</version>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
      <groupId>junit</groupId>
      <artifactId>junit</artifactId>
      <version>4.8.2</version>
      <scope>test</scope>
    </dependency>
  </dependencies>

  <!-- Build settings -->

  <build>
    <pluginManagement>
      <plugins>
        <plugin>
          <artifactId>maven-clean-plugin</artifactId>
          <version>2.4.1</version>
        </plugin>
        <plugin>
          <artifactId>maven-compiler-plugin</artifactId>
          <version>2.3.2</version>
          <configuration>
            <source>1.6</source>
            <target>1.6</target>
          </configuration>
        </plugin>
        <plugin>
          <artifactId>maven-deploy-plugin</artifactId>
          <version>2.6</version>
        </plugin>
        <plugin>
          <artifactId>maven-failsafe-plugin</artifactId>
          <version>2.8.1</version>
          <executions>
            <execution>
              <goals>
                <goal>integration-test</goal>
                <goal>verify</goal>
              </goals>
            </execution>
          </executions>
        </plugin>
        <plugin>
          <artifactId>maven-install-plugin</artifactId>
          <version>2.3.1</version>
        </plugin>
        <plugin>
          <artifactId>maven-jar-plugin</artifactId>
          <version>2.3.1</version>
        </plugin>
        <plugin>
          <artifactId>maven-surefire-plugin</artifactId>
          <version>2.8.1</version>
        </plugin>
        <plugin>
          <artifactId>maven-release-plugin</artifactId>
          <version>2.1</version>
        </plugin>
        <plugin>
          <artifactId>maven-resources-plugin</artifactId>
          <version>2.5</version>
        </plugin>
        <plugin>
          <groupId>org.mortbay.jetty</groupId>
          <artifactId>jetty-maven-plugin</artifactId>
          <version>8.0.0.M2</version>
        </plugin>
      </plugins>
    </pluginManagement>
    <plugins>
      <plugin>
        <artifactId>maven-release-plugin</artifactId>
        <configuration>
          <autoVersionSubmodules>true</autoVersionSubmodules>
          <goals>install</goals>
        </configuration>
      </plugin>
    </plugins>
  </build>

</project>

Then the src/main/webapp/WEB-INF/web.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<web-app version="2.5" xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee"
         xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
         xsi:schemaLocation="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee/web-app_2_5.xsd">
  <display-name>JSF 2.0 Hello World</display-name>
  <description>
    A JSF 2.0 web application that says hello world.
  </description>
  <context-param>
    <param-name>javax.faces.STATE_SAVING_METHOD</param-name>
    <param-value>server</param-value>
  </context-param>
  <context-param>
    <param-name>javax.faces.DEFAULT_SUFFIX</param-name>
    <param-value>.xhtml</param-value>
  </context-param>
  <context-param>
    <param-name>javax.faces.FACELETS_SKIP_COMMENTS</param-name>
    <param-value>true</param-value>
  </context-param>
  <context-param>
    <param-name>javax.faces.PROJECT_STAGE</param-name>
    <param-value>Production</param-value>
    <!--param-value>Development</param-value-->
  </context-param>

  <!-- [jetty] does not initialize myfaces correctly for some reason -->
  <listener>
    <listener-class>org.apache.myfaces.webapp.StartupServletContextListener</listener-class>
  </listener>
  <!-- [/jetty] -->

  <servlet>
    <servlet-name>Faces Servlet</servlet-name>
    <servlet-class>javax.faces.webapp.FacesServlet</servlet-class>
    <load-on-startup>1</load-on-startup>
  </servlet>
  <servlet-mapping>
    <servlet-name>Faces Servlet</servlet-name>
    <url-pattern>*.xhtml</url-pattern>
  </servlet-mapping>

  <session-config>
    <session-timeout>60</session-timeout>
  </session-config>
  <welcome-file-list>
    <welcome-file>index.xhtml</welcome-file>
  </welcome-file-list>

</web-app>

Then the backing bean (src/main/java/com/blogspot/javaadventure/cloudbees/run/GreeterBean.java)

package com.blogspot.javaadventure.cloudbees.run;

import javax.faces.bean.ManagedBean;
import javax.faces.bean.ViewScoped;
import java.io.Serializable;

@ManagedBean(name="greeter")
@ViewScoped
public class GreeterBean implements Serializable {
    private String name;

    public String getName() {
        return name;
    }

    public void setName(String name) {
        this.name = name;
    }

    public String getResponse() {
        if (name != null && !name.isEmpty()) {
            return "Hello " + name;
        } else {
            return null;
        }
    }

}

Should always have some tests (src/test/java/com/blogspot/javaadventure/cloudbees/run/GreeterBeanTest.java)

package com.blogspot.javaadventure.cloudbees.run;

import org.junit.Test;

import static org.hamcrest.CoreMatchers.*;
import static org.junit.Assert.*;

public class GreeterBeanTest {
    @Test
    public void nullNameMeansNoGreeting() throws Exception {
        GreeterBean instance = new GreeterBean();
        instance.setName(null);
        assertThat(instance.getResponse(), nullValue());
    }

    @Test
    public void noNameMeansNoGreeting() throws Exception {
        GreeterBean instance = new GreeterBean();
        instance.setName("");
        assertThat(instance.getResponse(), nullValue());
    }

    @Test
    public void aNameMeansGreeting() throws Exception {
        GreeterBean instance = new GreeterBean();
        instance.setName("Fred");
        assertThat(instance.getResponse(), notNullValue());
    }
}

Next the page of our web application (src/main/webapp/index.xhtml), i'm going to use the JSF 2.0 ajax support (because it's there)

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
        "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"
      xmlns:ui="http://java.sun.com/jsf/facelets"
      xmlns:h="http://java.sun.com/jsf/html"
      xmlns:f="http://java.sun.com/jsf/core">
<ui:insert name="metadata"/>
<h:head>
    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8"/>
    <title>
        JSF 2.0 Hello World
    </title>
</h:head>
<h:body>
    <f:view>
        <h:form>
            <h:outputLabel for="greeter" value="Please tell me your name:"/>
            <h:inputText id="greeter" value="#{greeter.name}">
                <f:ajax event="keyup" render="text"/>
            </h:inputText>
        </h:form>
        <h:outputText id="text" value="${greeter.response}"/>
    </f:view>
</h:body>
</html>

Let's test it locally

$ mvn jetty:run

[INFO] Scanning for projects...
[INFO]                                                                         
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] Building JSF 2.0 Hello World 0.1-SNAPSHOT
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] 

...

WARNING: 

*******************************************************************
*** WARNING: Apache MyFaces-2 is running in DEVELOPMENT mode.   ***
***                                         ^^^^^^^^^^^         ***
*** Do NOT deploy to your live server(s) without changing this. ***
*** See Application#getProjectStage() for more information.     ***
*******************************************************************

2011-05-17 10:22:10.982:INFO::Started SelectChannelConnector@0.0.0.0:8080
[INFO] Started Jetty Server

Fire up a browser to http://localhost:8080/ and here's what we get:

OK, so now I turn off DEVELOPMENT mode in the web.xml, build my app and deploy it to RUN@cloud... and here's what we get:

That was cool. Didn't have to change anything (other than switch to production mode for safety as it's being deployed in the wild) and I did all this in under 20 minutes (including signing up for RUN@cloud)

My next steps will be to integrate this web application with DEV@cloud and our Jenkins plugin for deployment to RUN@cloud so that I can show off continuous deployment! But that will be a different day!