Tech and Tips

The H2 console application nicely lets you interact with any of your locally created H2 databases. It gives you access via your web browser so it also works for remote machines, as long as you can start the console application there and access the box via HTTP.
More info on the H2 website.

The you get something which looks like this:



For reference:
The name H2 stands for Hypersonic 2, however H2 does not share code with Hypersonic SQL or HSQLDB. H2 is built from scratch.
More info from wikipedia here.

I am currently using SOAPUI to load test an application via web services.
In order to do that, I need to be able to change the value of some XML elements on the fly.
Here is how you can do that:
- Create a Test Suite
- Create a Test Case (which will contains Test Steps)
- Your first test step will be a SOAP request called TestReq1
- In the Test Case Editor, you can create a Setup Script

Here is the Groovy script I use to set the value of one element dynamically (in this case the element attribute called Version):

def groovyUtils = new com.eviware.soapui.support.GroovyUtils(context)
def holder = groovyUtils.getXmlHolder("TestReq1#Request")
holder.setNodeValue("//@Version","7.2")
holder.updateProperty()

At the moment the script is not so useful since it dynamically sets the element to the same value. But there are several strategies to use different values each time, from reading from a file or a DB to writing a little generator in Groovy.


Another thing which is useful with SOAPUI is to be able to create a mock-up response which is dynamically created according to the incoming data. Once you have created your mock-up service, here is how to fetch data from the request and paste it in the response. First the incoming XML and then the Groovy script changing the response (in this example both the request and the response have a Version attribute on an element and we simply return the value we get in):

<soapenv:Envelope xmlns:soapenv="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/" xmlns:abc="http://my.project.com/abc">
   <soapenv:Header/>
   <soapenv:Body>
      <abc:customerApp Version="${version}" />
   </soapenv:Body>
</soapenv:Envelope>

def holder = new com.eviware.soapui.support.XmlHolder(mockRequest.requestContent)
context.version = holder["//@Version"]

Here a 3 part blog post showing how to use JUnit and Hibernate (and Hypersonic) to test your database layer. Often using an ORM makes this superfluous but in some cases it can be an interesting to do.

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

I started using Arquillian to test my business logic code directly in my running JBoss 5.1 instance, and after some fighting I got it working pretty nicely!

So here is what I had to do:
1. Add a profile for running the Arquillian Integration tests in Maven

<profiles>
   <profile>
      <id>it</id>
      <activation>
        <activeByDefault>false</activeByDefault>
      </activation>
      <build>
        <defaultGoal>verify</defaultGoal>
        <plugins>
          <plugin>
            <artifactId>maven-failsafe-plugin</artifactId>
            <version>2.6</version>
            <executions>
              <execution>
                <goals>
                  <goal>integration-test</goal>
                </goals>
              </execution>
            </executions>
          </plugin>
        </plugins>
        <testResources>
            <testResource>
                <directory>src/test/resources</directory>
            </testResource>
        </testResources>
      </build>
      <dependencies>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.jboss.arquillian.container</groupId>
            <artifactId>arquillian-jbossas-remote-5.1</artifactId>
            <version>1.0.0.Alpha4</version>
            <scope>test</scope>
          </dependency>
        <dependency>
          <groupId>org.jboss.jbossas</groupId>
          <artifactId>jboss-as-client</artifactId>
          <version>5.1.0.GA</version>
          <type>pom</type>
        </dependency>
      </dependencies>
    </profile>  
</profiles>

2. Make sure you are using the correct version of the javassist library in your business logic project. It has to be version 3.10.0.GA. The one coming with JBoss AS 5.1.0 GA is older (3.9.0) and will not work properly!

3. Write your test classes and run them using "mvn -Pit"!

4. Here is an example of a simple class just calling a EJB3 SLSB (test-persistence.xml has to be in src/test/resources together with jndi.properties):

import javax.naming.Context;
import javax.naming.InitialContext;

import junit.framework.Assert;
import myclasses.ejb.actions.interfaces.AuthenticatorLocal;
import myclasses.ejb.valueobjects.RequestorInfo;

import org.jboss.arquillian.api.Deployment;
import org.jboss.arquillian.junit.Arquillian;
import org.jboss.shrinkwrap.api.ArchivePaths;
import org.jboss.shrinkwrap.api.ShrinkWrap;
import org.jboss.shrinkwrap.api.spec.JavaArchive;
import org.junit.Test;
import org.junit.runner.RunWith;

@RunWith(Arquillian.class)
public class AuthenticatorBeanIT {
 @Deployment
 public static JavaArchive createDeployment() {
  return ShrinkWrap.create(JavaArchive.class, "testAuthenticatorBean.jar")
  .addClasses(AuthenticatorBean.class, AuthenticatorLocal.class, RequestorInfo.class)
  .addManifestResource("test-persistence.xml", ArchivePaths.create("persistence.xml"));
 }

 @Test
 public void isAuthenticatedTest() throws Exception {
  Context ctx = new InitialContext();
  AuthenticatorLocal auth;

  Object obj = ctx.lookup("AuthenticatorBean/local");

  auth = (AuthenticatorLocal) obj;
  RequestorInfo req = new RequestorInfo();

  // Trying with a valid user (according to import.sql!)
  req.setRequestorId("0123456789");
  req.setPassword("secret");
  Assert.assertTrue(auth.isAuthenticated(req));
  
  // Trying with a invalid user
  req.setRequestorId("0123456789");
  req.setPassword("incorrect");  
  Assert.assertFalse(auth.isAuthenticated(req));
 }
}

5. Here is an example of a class persisting something to the DB and cleaning up after itself (Note: you have to lookup the EntityManager and EntityTransaction yourself. They can not be injected since you are not in an EJB(:

import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.Date;
import java.util.List;

import javax.naming.Context;
import javax.naming.InitialContext;
import javax.persistence.EntityManager;
import javax.persistence.EntityManagerFactory;
import javax.persistence.EntityTransaction;
import javax.persistence.Query;

import junit.framework.Assert;
import myclasses.ejb.actions.interfaces.MyClassLocal;
import myclasses.ejb.valueobjects.Info;

import org.jboss.arquillian.api.Deployment;
import org.jboss.arquillian.junit.Arquillian;
import org.jboss.shrinkwrap.api.ArchivePaths;
import org.jboss.shrinkwrap.api.ShrinkWrap;
import org.jboss.shrinkwrap.api.spec.JavaArchive;
import org.junit.Test;
import org.junit.runner.RunWith;

@RunWith(Arquillian.class)
public class BarCodeBoardingPassBeanIT {
 @Deployment
 public static JavaArchive createDeployment() {
  return ShrinkWrap.create(JavaArchive.class, "testBarCodeBoardingPassBean.jar")
  .addClasses(MyClassLocal.class)
  .addManifestResource("test-persistence.xml", ArchivePaths.create("persistence.xml"));
 }

 @Test
 public void persistBoardingPassInfoTest() throws Exception {
  Context ctx = new InitialContext();
  MyClassLocal mcl;

  Object obj = ctx.lookup("MyClasssBean/local");

  mcl = (MyClassLocal) obj;
  
  Info info = new Info("XXX");
  mcl.persistInfo(info);
  
  
  // Now checking that the data is properly persisted in the DB
  EntityManagerFactory emFactory = (EntityManagerFactory) ctx.lookup("java:/myTestEntityManagerFactory");
  EntityManager em = emFactory.createEntityManager();
  EntityTransaction tx = em.getTransaction();
  tx.begin();

  Query query = em.createQuery("From Info where text=:info");
  query.setParameter("info", "XXX");
  runQuery(query);
  
  // Cleaning up
  query = em.createQuery("delete from Info where text=:info");
  query.setParameter("info", "XXX");
  query.executeUpdate();
  
  tx.commit();
 }
 
 private void runQuery(Query query) {
  try {
   query.getSingleResult();
   Assert.assertTrue(true);
  } catch (Exception e) {
   Assert.assertTrue(false);
  }
 }
}

6. For the previous test class to work you need a persistence.xml which looks like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<persistence xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/persistence"
    xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
    xsi:schemaLocation="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/persistence http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/persistence/persistence_1_0.xsd"
    version="1.0">

     <persistence-unit name="myTestPU" transaction-type="RESOURCE_LOCAL" >
        <provider>org.hibernate.ejb.HibernatePersistence</provider>
        <non-jta-data-source>java:/myAppDS</non-jta-data-source>
        <properties>
            <property name="hibernate.dialect" value="org.hibernate.dialect.PostgreSQLDialect"/>
            <property name="hibernate.current_session_context_class" value="jta"/>
            <property name="hibernate.show_sql" value="true"/>
            <property name="hibernate.format_sql" value="true"/>
            <property name="hibernate.default_schema" value="public"/>
            <property name="hibernate.hbm2ddl.auto" value="validate" />
            <property name="jboss.entity.manager.factory.jndi.name" value="java:/myTestEntityManagerFactory"/>
            
        </properties>
    </persistence-unit>

</persistence>