Reading EAR/META-INF/application.xml from EJB or WAR module?

[henk53]

In JBoss AS 6.1 and below I could read the content of an EAR's META-INF or any other directory next to META-INF from a contained EJB or WAR module.

E.g. with a structure as the following:

EAR
    META-INF
        application.xml
    conf
        myproperties.xml
    ejbmodule.jar
    warmodule.war

I could read both xml files via code such as the following from within e.g. a Singleton EJB, an MBean, etc:

InputStream myProperties = Thread.currentThread().getContextClassLoader().getResourceAsStream("conf/myproperties.xml");
InputStream application = Thread.currentThread().getContextClassLoader().getResourceAsStream("META-INF/application.xml");

In JBoss AS/EAP 7/6 this no longer seems to be possible. Both calls return null.

How can I do this now?

[sfcoy]

The fact that this worked in older versions of JBoss was an (un)happy accident.

The content of an EAR file is not available in an application's classpath.

There's a chance that adding something like this jboss-deployment-structure.xml to your EAR/META-INF directory will work, but I have not tested it:

{code:xml}<jboss-deployment-structure xmlns="urn:jboss:deployment-structure:1.2">
     <deployment>
          <resources>
               <resource-root path="." />
          </resources>
     </deployment>
</jboss-deployment-structure>{code}

I'll add that you're probably better off moving your properties file into a module as described in How to put an external file in the classpath.

[henk53]

Hi,

Stephen Coy wrote:

The fact that this worked in older versions of JBoss was an (un)happy accident.

The content of an EAR file is not available in an application's classpath.

Hmmm, in my (perhaps not so) humble opinion this should then maybe change

There's a chance that adding something like this jboss-deployment-structure.xml to your EAR/META-INF directory will work, but I have not tested it:

Thanks, I'll give it a try.

Meanwhile I found that requesting a resource within the EJB, taking its URL and then working up to the EAR level does seem to work.

E.g.

In packaged mode, I get the following external form of the URL:

vfs:/content/myapp_ear.ear/myapp_business.jar/META-INF/dummy.xml

If I then skip passed the .jar in the path and construct a URL from the following:

vfs:/content/myapp_ear.ear/META-INF/application.xml

Then it thus works. For the exploded deployment the URL is slightly different, but the trick works the same way. What do you think, is this a viable solution?

[sfcoy]

The JEE6 spec is fairly clear when discussing resource/class visibility.

Your solution may get you working for now, but any kind of JBoss upgrade could cause it to stop working because this behaviour is not mandated anywhere.

I'm also curious if it works when you deploy the application via the CLI and/or into a cluster.

[henk53]

Stephen Coy wrote:

The Java EE 6 spec is fairly clear when discussing resource/class visibility.

It seems to be indeed, but there's little that can't be changed for say Java EE 8, is there?

Your solution may get you working for now, but any kind of JBoss upgrade could cause it to stop working because this behaviour is not mandated anywhere.

I was afraid of that indeed but I guess I'll have to take my chances for now then and see if it's possible to DO get this behavior to be mandated. I never touch the CLI though, and always just copy to the deployment folder, but I'll check it out. Why would a CLI deployment be different? I'll also be sure to check what a cluster deployment does, thanks a lot for the hints!