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Version 1.1 - 2000/07/18
Ant provides a number of optional tasks for developing Enterprise Java Beans (EJBs). In general these tasks are specific to the particular vendor's EJB Server. At present the tasks support Weblogic 4.5.1 and 5.1 EJB servers. Over time we expect further optional tasks to support additional EJB Servers.
| Task | Application Servers |
| ddcreator | Weblogic 4.5 |
| ejbc | Weblogic 4.5 |
| wlrun | Weblogic 4.5 |
| wlstop | Weblogic 4.5 |
| ejbjar | Weblogic 5.1 |
ddcreator will compile a set of Weblogic text-based deployment descriptors into a serialized EJB deployment descriptor. The selection of which of the text-based descriptors are to be compiled is based on the standard Ant include and exclude selection mechanisms.
| Attribute | Description | Required |
| descriptors | This is the base directory from which descriptors are selected. | Yes |
| dest | The directory where the serialised deployment descriptors will be written | Yes |
| classpath | This is the classpath to use to run the underlying weblogic ddcreator tool.
This must include the weblogic.ejb.utils.DDCreator class |
No |
<ddcreator descriptors="${dd.dir}"
dest="${gen.classes}"
classpath="${descriptorbuild.classpath}">
<include name="*.txt" />
</ddcreator>
The ejbc task will run Weblogic's ejbc tool. This tool will take a serialised deployment descriptor, examine the various EJB interfaces and bean classes and then generate the required support classes necessary to deploy the bean in a Weblogic EJB container. This will include the RMI stubs and skeletons as well as the classes which implement the bean's home and remote interfaces.
The ant task which runs this tool is able to compile several beans in a single operation. The beans to be
compiled are selected by including their serialised deployment descriptors. The standard ant
include and exclude constructs can be used to select the deployment descriptors
to be included.
Each descriptor is examined to determiune whether the generated classes are out of date and need to be regenerated. The deployment descriptor is de-serialized to discover the home, remote and implementation classes. The corresponding source files are determined and checked to see their modification times. These times and the modification time of the serialised descriptor itself are compared with the modification time of the generated classes. If the generated classes are not present or are out of date, the ejbc tool is run to generate new versions.
| Attribute | Description | Required |
| descriptors | This is the base directory from which the serialised deployment descriptors are selected. | Yes |
| dest | The base directory where the generated classes, RIM stubs and RMI skeletons are written | Yes |
| manifest | The name of a manifest file to be written. This manifest will contain an entry for each EJB processed | Yes |
| src | The base directory of the source tree containing the source files of the home interface, remote interface and bean implementation classes. | Yes |
| classpath | This classpath must include both the weblogic.ejbc class and the
classfiles of the bean, home interface, remote interface, etc of the bean being
processed. |
No |
<ejbc descriptors="${gen.classes}"
src="${src.dir}"
dest="${gen.classes}"
manifest="${build.manifest}"
classpath="${descriptorbuild.classpath}">
<include name="*.ser" />
</ejbc>
This is an experimental task and is not currently documented.
This is an experimental task and is not currently documented.
This task is designed to support building of arbitrary EJB1.1 jar files. Support is currently provided for 'vanilla' EJB1.1 jar files - i.e. those containing only the user generated class files and the standard deployment descriptor. Nested elements provide support for vendor specific deployment tools. Currently a nested element is provided for Weblogic 5.1 using the weblogic.ejbc tool.
This task assumes a particular naming convention for deployment descriptor files. For an
Account bean, for example, the deployment descriptor would be named Account-ejb-jar.xml.
This naming convention allows the task to distinguish deployment descriptors without relying on
their positioning within a source tree. It is also used to derive the name of the .jar file
which is generated. For the example this would be Account.jar. Vendor specific files
are assumed to be named in a similar fashion. The deployment descriptor file which defines
additional weblogic specific information for the above bean would be
Account-weblogic-ejb-jar.xml.
The task works as a directory scanning task, and performs an action for each deployment descriptor found. As such the includes and excludes should be set to ensure that all desired EJB1.1 descriptors are found, but no application server descriptors are found. For each descriptor found, ejbjar will parse the deployment descriptor to determine the necessary class files which implement the bean. These files are assembled along with the deployment descriptors into a well formed EJB jar file. Note that support classes used by the bean but which are not part of the bean's interfaces are not included in the assembled jar. These need to be collected into a separate support jar file.
If no nested vendor-specific deployment elements are present, the task will simply generate a generic EJB jar. Such jars are typically used as the input to vendor-specific deployment tools. For each nested deployment element, a vendor specific deployment tool is run to generate a jar file ready for deployment in that vendor's EJB container. Note that at this time the only supported tool is Weblogic's ejbc tool.
The jar files are only built if they are out of date. Each deployment tool element will examine its target jar file and determine if it is out of date with respect to the class files and deployment descriptors that make up the bean. If any of these files are newer than the jar file the jar will be rebuilt otherwise a message is logged that the jar file is up to date.
| Attribute | Description | Required |
| descriptordir | The base directory under which to scan for EJB deployment descriptors. | Yes |
| srcdir | The base directory containg the .class files that make up the bean. Note that this can be the same as the descrptordir if all files are in the same directory tree. | Yes |
| destdir | The base directory into which generated jar files are deposited. Jar files are deposited in directories correpsonding to their location within the descriptordir namespace. Note that this attribute is only used if the task is generating generic jars (i.e. no vendor-specific deployment elements have been specified). | Yes |
| basenameterminator | String value used to substring out a string from the name of each deployment descriptor found, which is then used to locate related deployment descriptors (e.g. the WebLogic descriptors). For example, a basename of '.' and a deployment descriptor called 'FooBean.ejb-jar.xml' would result in a basename of 'FooBean' which would then be used to find FooBean.weblogic-ejb-jar.xml and FooBean.weblogic-cmp-rdbms-jar.xml, as well as to create the filenames of the jar files as FooBean-generic.jar and FooBean-wl.jar. | No, defaults to '-'. |
| genericjarsuffix | String value appended to the basename of the deployment descriptor to create the filename of the generic EJB jar file. | No, defaults to '-generic.jar'. |
| Attribute | Description | Required |
| destdir | The base directory into which the generated weblogic ready jar files are deposited. Jar files are deposited in directories correpsonding to their location within the descriptordir namespace. | Yes |
| genericjarsuffix | A generic jar is generated as an intermeditate step in build the weblogic deployment jar. The suffix used to generate the generic jar file is not particularly important unless it is desired to keep the generic jar file. It should not, however, be the same as the suffix setting. | No, defaults to '-generic.jar'. |
| suffix | String value appended to the basename of the deployment descriptor to create the filename of the WebLogic EJB jar file. | No, defaults to '.jar'. |
| classpath | The classpath to be used when running the weblogic ejbc tool. Note that this tool typically requires the classes that make up the bean to be available on the classpath. Currently, however, this will cause the ejbc tool to be run in a separate VM | No |
| keepgeneric | This controls whether the generic fiule used as input to ejbc is retained. | No, defaults to false |
<ejbjar srcdir="${build.classes}"
descriptordir="${descriptor.dir}">
<weblogic destdir="${deploymentjars.dir}"
classpath="${descriptorbuild.classpath}"/>
<include name="**/*-ejb-jar.xml"/>
<exclude name="**/*weblogic*.xml"/>
</ejbjar>