Issue with [env-entry] element in web.xml

Question

I know it's possible to define [env-entry] elements in web.xml for environment
properties of a web application. But how do you access [env-entry] elements from
classes that do not exist within a web application? In other words, this is my
problem:
I have an EAR file, enterprise.ear, which contains the following...
employee.jar
employeeSearchEJB.jar
webApp1.war
META-INF/
application.xml
The employee.jar file is a utility archive that contains common classes, one of
which is a class called LogManager. LogManager needs to read environment properties
in order to initialize itself. Currently, LogManager reads these properties from
a property file, and therefore it needs to know the name of the property file
in order to access it. I dont like this approach because I'm forced to hard-code
the name of the property file in LogManager. I would rather leverage the power
of J2EE deployment descriptors and use the [env-entry] element to define the environment
properties for the LogManager class. Then, I would simply use JNDI to get the
values of the [env-entry] elements without ever having to specify their location
aside from the default JNDI context; java:comp/env, which is standard anyway.
The problem I'm having is that you can define the [env-entry] element in only
2 types of deployment descriptors; namely, web.xml and ejb-jar.xml, neither of
which are available to LogManager because LogManager exists at the EAR root level.
I was hoping application.xml supported the [env-entry] element, but it doesn't.
Any suggestions?
SAF

Answer 1

SAF,
I am not sure if this applies to you situation but if you create an initial context
instance and then grab the value using the jndi name within that context then
you should be able to grab that environment variable.
I have a helper class that is used as part of a deployed application. The helper
class doesn't have access to the Servlet context but it is created as part of
the application workflow. When it gets initiated it grabs an env-entry created
in the web.xml deployment descriptor to find the default url for a content path.
After I create an initialContext, I perform a initContext.lookup("jndi.env.entry.here")
where "jndi.env.entry.here" is the name specified in the env-entry tag.
This returns the value of the entry.
This works under both Jrun and Weblogic so my guess is it should work for you.
Again, I am assuming that your class will at least be able to grab a context
object to communicate back to the server.
Hope this helps,
Troy
"SAF" <[email protected]> wrote:
>
I know it's possible to define [env-entry] elements in web.xml for environment
properties of a web application. But how do you access [env-entry] elements
from
classes that do not exist within a web application? In other words, this
is my
problem:
I have an EAR file, enterprise.ear, which contains the following...
employee.jar
employeeSearchEJB.jar
webApp1.war
META-INF/
application.xml
The employee.jar file is a utility archive that contains common classes,
one of
which is a class called LogManager. LogManager needs to read environment
properties
in order to initialize itself. Currently, LogManager reads these properties
from
a property file, and therefore it needs to know the name of the property
file
in order to access it. I dont like this approach because I'm forced to
hard-code
the name of the property file in LogManager. I would rather leverage
the power
of J2EE deployment descriptors and use the [env-entry] element to define
the environment
properties for the LogManager class. Then, I would simply use JNDI to
get the
values of the [env-entry] elements without ever having to specify their
location
aside from the default JNDI context; java:comp/env, which is standard
anyway.
The problem I'm having is that you can define the [env-entry] element
in only
2 types of deployment descriptors; namely, web.xml and ejb-jar.xml, neither
of
which are available to LogManager because LogManager exists at the EAR
root level.
I was hoping application.xml supported the [env-entry] element, but it
doesn't.
Any suggestions?
SAF