Java – The moons of Verthandi

Easier web app testing by mapping entities to UI objects

Automated, browser-based testing is a key element of web application development, benefiting both simple and complex applications. Writing effective tests for browser-based apps can be a complex, tedious and often repetitive task. In this post, I will be discussing a general approach to write meaningful, loosely-coupled UI tests for web applications by going beyond the Page Object Design Pattern into a more fine-grained approach I call ‘Logical entities to UI object mapping‘. I will show code in written Java 8 leveraging the Selenium and Selenide frameworks to show examples of the method described.

Layers of web app testing responsibility

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Building an FTP server Maven plugin from scratch

In this post we design and code a new Maven plugin that fires up a FTP server to aid in integration testing of FTP-bound processes, thus demonstrating the flexibility and power of Maven plugins.
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Templating the OSGi way with Freemarker

After some well-deserved rest the OSGi components on the server series is back with a vengeance and a somewhat independent post. For some background please check the other posts in the series.

A common feature of Web applications is the need to output structured content, be it XML, XHTML markup, JSON or many others. A number of technologies is used to do that but few seem to be that dynamic, usually only reloading templates when they change or loading them from URLs. Surely we can leverage OSGi to make things more interesting…

Therefore we should be following the OSGi dynamic philosophy as much as possible, exploiting the features made available by the framework such as dynamic discovery, services, bundle headers and the lot.

In the case of our cache app we are violating quite a few basic design principles by having the format embedded in the java code. So we should as well use a template separate from the code and if possible reuse some existing well-known templating engine from somewhere.

Given these basic design principles let’s get started.

Firstly, we need a robust and flexible templating engine. We select the mature Freemarker engine which is reasonably speedy and has the power and flexibility we want. Make sure you check out the license, of course.

We could stop at putting the library JAR in a bundle and package it so it can be used by any other bundle and that is what we do to be able to use it in OSGi. That however doesn’t exploit many of the nicer OSGi capabilities so we will create another bundle called ‘com.calidos.dani.osgi.freemarker-loader’.

What we want is to allow bundles to carry templates inside them and have our freemarker-loader templating bundle discover them automagically. This is the same technique that the Spring dynamic modules use and you can find more info here. The mechanism is described in this diagram:

OSGi freemarker templating diagram

That is easy enough with a BundleTracker and a BundleTrackerCustomizer implementation. The BundleTracker class tracks bundles being added to the environment like this:

tracker = new BundleTracker(context, Bundle.RESOLVED, templateTracker);
tracker.open();

With this snippet the tracker instance will look for bundles in the RESOLVED state (which lets us track fragments). The ‘templateTracker’ object is an instance of BundleTrackerCustomizer and will receive callbacks whenever bundles are added to the environment.

For instance, when a bundle is added we check for a special header in the bundle which tells us what is the relative path of available templates in the bundle being resolved:

public Object addingBundle(Bundle bundle, BundleEvent event) {
		
// we look for the header and act accordingly		
String templatesLocation = (String) bundle.getHeaders().get(TEMPLATE_HEADER);
if (templatesLocation!=null) {
			 
	Enumeration bundleTemplates = bundle.findEntries(templatesLocation, "*.ftl", true);
	HashSet templatesFromAddedBundle = new HashSet();
	while (bundleTemplates.hasMoreElements()) {
			
		URL templateURL = bundleTemplates.nextElement();
		addTemplate(bundle, templateURL,templatesLocation);
		templatesFromAddedBundle.add(templateURL);
				
	}
	
	templatesOfEachBundle.put(bundle.getBundleId(), templatesFromAddedBundle);
			
}
return null;
		
}	// addingBundle

An interesting method being used here is ‘findEntries’ which loads all the entries in the provided templates folder and lets us add them to our holding structure. We also take care to implement the methods to remove the templates and update them accordingly whenever bundles are updated or unloaded from the environment.

Having TEMPLATE_HEADER with a value of ‘Freemarker-Templates’ means that bundles having a header such as Freemarker-Templates: /templates will have any templates within that folder (please note that the ‘/templates’ bit is not added to template URLs!).

The next thing we need to do is make the loaded templates available to the environment. To do that we make a freemarker Configuration object accessible as an OSGi service object. That Configuration instance is the main object Freemarker to load and use templates and has an interesting mechanism to override its template loading mechanism we use to make available our OSGi environment templates.

freemarkerConfig.setTemplateLoader( new URLTemplateLoader() {
			
@Override
protected URL getURL(String url) {
Stack templateStack = templates.get(url);
if (templateStack!=null) {
	TemplateEntry templateStackTop = templateStack.peek();
	if (templateStackTop!=null) {
		return templateStackTop.getTemplateURL();
	}
	return null;
}
return null;
}

});

The service Configuration object is set with a template loader inner class that uses our template holding objects to retrieve templates stored in our OSGi context. Cool.

This also allows us to effectively disable the template refreshing cycles that Freemarker does by default (allegedly making it slightly more efficient). Now we only need to refresh a bundle containing the templates to get the new version. This can be modified by using the appropriate methods on the Configuration service of course. (There is another method explained later).

An interesting feature we can add to exploit the dynamic nature of OSGi is to make templates available in a stack. This means different bundles can dynamically overwrite templates by the same name. Moreover, once a template is removed the previous version becomes available. This can be used to make temporary changes to templates to add or remove diagnostics information, test new templates temporarily, etc.

We do that using a Stack of TemplateEntry objects, TemplateEntry being a helper class to store template entries.

This is all very nice but we have a problem when having multiple versions of the same bundle that hold multiple copies of the same template, this means they will stack and we have no way to access a particular version of a template. To solve this problem we store each template in three different stacks by three different URLs:

‘path/file.ftl’
‘bundle://bundlename/path/file.ftl’
‘bundle://bundlename:version/path/file.ftl’

In this manner we can use the more generic URL in most cases but still can access specific versions when needed. It is important to think about the dynamic nature of OSGi as well as the possibility of several versions of the same bundle coexisting peacefully in the same environment.

From the perspective of any bundle using the service in the simplest case it only needs to look for a service named ‘freemarker.template.Configuration’. For convenience, the property ‘dynamicConfiguration’ is set to ‘true’ to coexist peacefully with other Configuration services (maybe coming from an official Freemarker bundle). For instance, if we know for sure our dynamic Configuration service is the only one present we can do:

context.getServiceReference(Configuration.class.getName());

That will give us the highest ranking Configuration service. If there are several such services we can use a call like this to get the one that has the dynamic OSGi loader:

context.getServiceReferences(Configuration.class.getName(), "dynamicConfiguration=true");

There is one last feature which lets bundle users feed an already configured template configuration object to the bundle by publishing a Configuration service with property ‘preparedConfiguration’ set to ‘true’. This will get picked up by the bundle and its template loader put in sequence with the dynamic OSGi template loader. This means that any original Configuration settings are maintained (For further information on service filtering based on properties please check the BundleContext javadoc.).

Best thing to do is to go and try it by downloading the bundles here. Source is also available.

Components on the server (6): adding Integration Testing

In this installment of the server-side OSGi series, we add integration testing capabilities to our project. Integration testing goes beyond plain unit testing and checks the interactions between real components. This is in contrast with unit testing, which generally uses mockups to represent components outside the one being tested. Please take a look at previous installments, as usual.

In the case of integration testing, it is manly used in a pre-production environment, with a valid build that has all unit tests passed. It can even be used in production to just after a deployment is made, taking care not to have destructive checks or massive load tests in the integration test code. YMMV.

To achieve integration testing we need to check the various OSGi components deployed interact in the way that is expected of them. Therefore we need to test the components in a group and not in isolation. To do that in the OSGi world means we need to have access to the OSGi context from within the tests to access services, call them and check their responses, etc.

To allow for this kind of integration testing within the OSGi environment, we make a slight modification to the excellent test.extender we have already patched in the previous installment.

Basically, the basic test.extender seeks out any JUnit test classes within the fragment bundle, creates an instance using an empty constructor and then fires up the tests. This is activated either by default when the fragment is loaded or by using ‘test ‘ in the console. For further information please see the previous post about this subject.

For our integration testing, we add an extra command to test.extender:

public Object _integrationTest(CommandInterpreter intp) {
        String nextArgument = intp.nextArgument();
    	testExtender.integrationTest(Long.parseLong(nextArgument));
    	return null;
}

And we refactor the TestExtender to add the integrationTest method which reuses some of the code to instantiate test cases using a constructor that accepts the OSGi context as a parameter.

Constructor[] constructors = clazz.getConstructors();
boolean foundConstructor = false;
for (int i = 0; i < constructors.length && !foundConstructor; i++) {
	Constructor constructor = constructors[i];
	Class[] types = constructor.getParameterTypes();
	if (types.length==1 && types[0].isInstance(context)) {
		foundConstructor = true;
		EClassUtils.testClass(inspectClass, constructor.newInstance(context));
	}
} // for

The OSGi context is passed onto the constructor and then the test class is run. It is obviously up to the test class to use the context appropriately for its integration testing.

In our cache project setup, we can do some useful integration testing on the cache.controller component, basically checking if the interaction with the provider components is behaving as we expect it. The integration testing is also added to a fragment that can be deployed optionally, of course.

We start by creating the fragment and adding a testing class like this:

Adding test class

Next, we add the constructor that accepts an OSGi context, which is very simple:

public CacheIntegrationTest(BundleContext ctx) {
	super();
	this.context = ctx;
}

In the setup and teardown methods we get and unget the cache service to perform the testing:


public void setUp() throws Exception {
	serviceReference = context.getServiceReference(Cache.class.getName());
	controller = (CacheControllerCore) context.getService(serviceReference);

}

public void tearDown() throws Exception {		
	context.ungetService(serviceReference);
	controller = null;		
}

In this case we get the controller cache service and store it in an instance used to perform the tests. This is quite simple and fulfills our intended purpose but we still have the flexibility to make more complex integration testing if needed.

Next we create as many test cases as needed:

public void testGet() {
	try {
		controller.init();
		double v = Math.random();
		String k = "/k"+v;
		controller.set(k, v);
		assertEquals(v, controller.get(k));
	} catch (CacheProviderException e) {
		e.printStackTrace();
		fail(e.getMessage());
	}

}

It should be noted that while the code looks like regular testing code, it is actually using real services from the OSGi environment as opposed to mockups. This means we are testing the real integration between components as well as the individual controller component code. The disadvantage here is that if there is an error in the controller we might mistake the problem with an issue with the services used. In conclusion, having integration code doesn’t negate the need to have unit tests.

Once we load the fragment onto the environment, first we need to obtain the bundle id of the integration fragment and then launch the integration testing in this manner:

osgi> integrate 125 Bundle : [125] : com.calidos.dani.osgi.cache.controller.integration _ CLASS : [com.calidos.dani.osgi.cache.controller.CacheIntegrationTest] ___________________________________________________________________________ Method : [ testInit ] PASS Method : [ testInitInt ] PASS Method : [ testSize ] PASS 14:21:43,077 WARN CacheControllerCore Couldn't clear some of the provider caches as operation is unsupported 14:21:43,077 WARN CacheControllerCore Couldn't clear some of the provider caches as operation is unsupported Method : [ testClear ] PASS Method : [ testSet ] PASS Method : [ testGet ] PASS Method : [ testGetStatus ] PASS ___________________________________________________________________________

The results tell us that all operations are OK but we need to bear in mind that the clear operation is not supported in some backend caches. If this is what is expected by the operator then all is fine.

We take advantage of the new integration testing functionality to make some extensive changes to logging and exception handling of the controller code. By running the integration tests we make sure all seems to work fine (even though we still need some proper unit testing of the controller). Modifications are made quite quickly thanks to the integration tests.

To recap, we’ve added integration testing support to the existing ‘test.extender’ bundle and created integration testing code for the cache controller component. This has allowed us to make code changes quickly with less risk of mistakes.

Here you can find a patch for the test extender project as well as the patched testing bundle already compiled. Enjoy!

Components on the server (4): adding Tomcat support

In this post, we examine what is needed to deploy OSGi in a regular Servlet Container using the Equinox Servlet Bridge. We also use the Servlet Bridge to deploy our OSGi cache using Tomcat and wrap it up all together in a standalone WAR archive.

Please read the previous installments to get up to speed and see the source used in this post.

Firstly, we need to setup some kind of project to hold all that is going in the WAR archive. This can be done using the WTP (Web Tools Project) or just as a regular project.

In this case we do it using a plain-vanilla resource project but feel free to use WTP as the basics are the same.

So firstly we create a resources project to hold the stuff, named ‘com.calidos.dani.osgi.cache.package’ for instance.
Secondly, we create the folder structure we need to hold all the files that need to reside in the final WAR webapp, so we create a WEB-INF folder to hold all the classes, libraries metadata and configuration.

We also know we need a web.xml file to define all the servlets this webapp declares. This is where the Equinox Servlet Bridge kicks in. It provides a Servlet that loads up the environment as well as forwards any HTTP requests onto our OSGi-managed Servlet instances.

We check the Equinox in a servlet container article and learn what the bridge Servlet is called, what parameters it can take and any other web.xml details we need.

For instance, we declare that the webapp service class is our BridgeServlet class:
<servlet-class>org.eclipse.equinox.servletbridge.BridgeServlet</servlet-class> <init-param> <param-name>commandline</param-name> <param-value>-console</param-value> </init-param> <init-param> <param-name>enableFrameworkControls</param-name> <param-value>true</param-value> </init-param>

We also add two parameters (more information and additional options can be found on the FrameworkLauncher servlet bridge class and the Equinox documentation).

Next, we need this special servlet itself. I prefer to check out the servlet from CVS and compile it myself but you can also find it here (from the the Latest Release pick up the org.eclipse.equinox.servletbridge jar). In the case of using the source, the CVS connection data is the following:

Method: pserver User: anonymous Host: dev.eclipse.org Repository path: /cvsroot/rt CVS Module: org.eclipse.equinox/server-side/bundles/org.eclipse.equinox.servletbridge

Once we import the project into Eclipse it looks like this:

Servlet bridge project

As we can see, there are just three classes which compose the servlet, a special classloader and finally a class that launches OSGi.

If we import the project into our workspace, we have compiled classes in the bin/ folder of the project but we really want them neatly packaged as a jar file. Therefore, we right-click on the project to export as a JAR java package:

Servlet bridge JAR export

We take this JAR archive and save it in our package project WEB-INF/lib folder. We also check the composition of the file to make sure it includes all the classes we need.

This takes care of the plain webapp side of things so we move onto actually loading OSGi and what configuration it needs.

As mandated by Equinox we add a launch.ini file to clear and possibly override System properties (please see the source for details on that).

We then create an eclipse folder, which the servlet bridge expects to find the OSGi platform jar and any bundles (including ours).

We select all our project bundles, right-click and select the ‘Export…:Deployable plug-ins and fragments’ option.

This leaves us with a list of bundles that compose our custom code:
com.calidos.dani.osgi.cache.controller_1.0.0.beta.jar com.calidos.dani.osgi.cache.frontend.http_1.0.0.beta.jar com.calidos.dani.osgi.cache.log4jconfig_1.0.0.beta.jar com.calidos.dani.osgi.cache.provider.memcached_1.0.0.beta.jar com.calidos.dani.osgi.cache.provider.memory_0.0.1.dev.jar

Good, as we know, there are some standard and some special bundle dependencies we need as well. Let’s go through them by groups. We get a bunch of basic OSGi bundles we should include in most projects:
org.eclipse.equinox.registry_3.4.100.v20090520-1800.jar org.eclipse.osgi.services_3.2.0.v20090520-1800.jar org.eclipse.osgi.util_3.2.0.v20090520-1800.jar org.eclipse.osgi_3.5.1.R35x_v20090827.jar

There are several options to obtain these bundles:

For expediency, we can go to our Eclipse installation folder and look for them in the ‘plugins’ subfolder. We then copy them into our package ‘plugins’ folder and there you go.

The second option is to get them from the Equinox distribution.

Another option is to the prepackaged servlet bridge feature which can be picked from CVS as well:

Method: pserver
User: anonymous
Host: dev.eclipse.org
Repository path: /cvsroot/rt
CVS Module: org.eclipse.equinox/server-side/features/org.eclipse.equinox.servletbridge.feature

Once that is loaded onto our workspace, we open the feature.xml and select the ‘Export Wizard’ form the ‘Exporting’ section. This lets us export these minimum bundles and generate both the deployment ‘feature.xml’ file as well as the bundle listing (even though the wizard actually takes them from our Eclipse platform).

We also have some more dependencies related to doing HTTP and the logging platform:
org.apache.log4j_1.2.13.v200903072027.jar org.eclipse.equinox.common_3.5.1.R35x_v20090807-1100.jar org.eclipse.equinox.http.registry_1.0.200.v20090520-1800.jar org.eclipse.equinox.http.servlet_1.0.200.v20090520-1800.jar org.eclipse.equinox.registry_3.4.100.v20090520-1800.jar

These can also be obtained from the Eclipse plugins folder or Equinox distribution folder. One should note that modifying the feature.xml taken from the Eclipse CVS repository, adding any required plugins there and then running the Export Wizard.

Finally, we have two dependencies we need to pay special attention to:
org.eclipse.equinox.http.servletbridge_1.0.200.200911180023.jar javax.servlet_2.4.0.200911240836.jar

In the first case, it’s a special minimal bundle that hooks the plain webapp servlet bridge with the OSGi ‘org.eclipse.equinox.http.servlet’ standard component which publishes a servlet service onto the OSGi platform.

This are the details to get it from CVS:

Method: pserver
User: anonymous
Host: dev.eclipse.org
Repository path: /cvsroot/rt
CVS Module: org.eclipse.equinox/server-side/bundles/org.eclipse.equinox.http.servletbridge

We export it as a deployable plug-in and add it to the mix. We can also download it from the Equinox distribution site as well.

In the second case, this bundle contains the basic servlet classes and interfaces and I have found problems of class signatures when using 2.5 along with the servlet bridge so unless all is compiled against 2.5 the safest bet is to go with 2.4.

(Check http://www.eclipse.org/equinox/documents/quickstart.php for more info).

Next, Equinox requires an XML file to define some metadata about the loaded bundles and make our configuration easier. The file sits in a folder called ‘features’ plus a subfolder with a reverse DNS name and is called feature.xml.

The structure is quite simple (though it can be created using the Eclipse Feature Export Wizard) and mainly holds a list of plugins, their version data and some more fields:

We complete the list with all our bundles, fully knowing that we can extend our environment on the fly once it’s loaded if we need it.

Next, we create the config.ini file which really tells equinox which of the bundles stated in the feature file to start, at which start level and lets us add even more bundles (though we need to specify where the actual file is located and the full filename in that case). It also lets us configure the environment pretty thoroughly.

The resulting config.ini file looks like this:

#Eclipse Runtime Configuration File osgi.bundles=org.eclipse.equinox.common@1:start, org.apache.log4j@start, org.eclipse.osgi.util@start, org.eclipse.osgi.services@start, org.eclipse.equinox.http.servlet@start, \ org.eclipse.equinox.servletbridge.extensionbundle, \ org.eclipse.equinox.http.servletbridge@start, \ javax.servlet@start, org.eclipse.equinox.registry@start, org.eclipse.equinox.http.registry@start, org.eclipse.equinox.servletbridge.extensionbundle \ org.eclipse.equinox.http.servlet@start, org.eclipse.equinox.common@start, com.calidos.dani.osgi.cache.log4jconfig, \ com.calidos.dani.osgi.cache.provider.memcached@3:start, com.calidos.dani.osgi.cache.provider.memory, com.calidos.dani.osgi.cache.controller@4:start, \ com.calidos.dani.osgi.cache.frontend.http@5:start

osgi.bundles.defaultStartLevel=4

We decide not to start the in memory bundle as it only works reliably in a single instance deployment scenario. Otherwise, in a multiple server setup the in-memory cache data would become inconsistent.

Also, be sure to check the Equinox quickstart guide and documentation for more information.

Once all is is done, the project looks like this:

Finished package project

Time to right-click on the project and select ‘Export:Archive file’ to save it in zip format and rename it to .war. Ready to deploy! Remember to access it using the URL //cache/. In web.xml the ‘-console 6666’ parameter means that doing a telnet on port 6666 of the machine initiates a session within the OSGi console. WARNING: there is absolutely NO SECURITY so disable, firewall or ACL that port NOW.

As usual, here you can find the source and the completed WAR though they are one and the same.

Components on the server (3): adding a HTTP frontend

Welcome to the third instalment of our OSGi ABC tutorial. Please make sure you check both the 1st installment and the 2nd.

In this post, we will add another cache provider implementation to the mix as well as provide an HTTP front-end so the whole application can be tested.

First of all, let’s present a conceptual diagram of all the bundles and fragments involved so far.

Components diagram

Read on for more…

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Components on the server (2): creating the first bundles

Hopefully you enjoyed the OSGi journey in its first installment.

Though simple and easy to understand, the first example does nothing out of the ordinary. It is far more interesting to start exploiting some of the basic features OSGi gets us “for free”.

For instance, we could begin by moving our first basic implementation into a separate “model” bundle and enhancing the interface so it can throw exceptions. For instance, an exception can be thrown when no implementations are available or cannot be contacted/operated.

Read the rest of the post for the implementation details…

Continue reading “Components on the server (2): creating the first bundles”