DDevelopment & Design

Karaf configuration as Groovy file

IntroductionBy deafault, Apache Karaf keeps configuration for bundles in the etc directory as flat properties files. We can override configuration for the storing mechanism by providing own implementation of the org.apache.felix.cm.PersistenceManager i…

Introduction

By deafault, Apache Karaf keeps configuration for bundles in the etc directory as flat properties files. We can override configuration for the storing mechanism by providing own implementation of the org.apache.felix.cm.PersistenceManager interface and use much more readable format for bundle properties, e. g. groovy config.

Turning off built-in Karaf persistence

As we can read in Karaf documentation:

Apache Karaf persists configuration using own persistence manager in case of when available persistence managers do not support that.

We will use our custom implementation of persistence, so Karaf persistence is not needed. We can turn it off by setting variable storage to an empty value:

$ cat etc/org.apache.karaf.config.cfg
storage=

This option is available since version 4.1.3 when this issue was resolved.

Registering custom Persistence Manager

First we have to create and register an OSGi service implementing org.apache.felix.cm.PersistenceManager. If we build and install the bundle with such service while Karaf is running (e.g. by putting jar in the deploy directory), then we should have at least two PersistenceManager services registered:

karaf@root()> ls org.apache.felix.cm.PersistenceManager
[org.apache.felix.cm.PersistenceManager]
----------------------------------------
 service.bundleid = 7
 service.description = Platform Filesystem Persistence Manager
 service.id = 14
 service.pid = org.apache.felix.cm.file.FilePersistenceManager
 service.ranking = -2147483648
 service.scope = singleton
 service.vendor = Apache Software Foundation
Provided by :
 Apache Felix Configuration Admin Service (7)
Used by:
 Apache Felix Configuration Admin Service (7)

[org.apache.felix.cm.PersistenceManager]
----------------------------------------
 osgi.service.blueprint.compname = groovyConfigPersistenceManager
 service.bundleid = 56
 service.id = 117
 service.pid = com.github.alien11689.osgi.util.groovyconfig.impl.GroovyConfigPersistenceManager
 service.ranking = 100
 service.scope = bundle
Provided by :
 groovy-config (56)
Used by:
 Apache Felix Configuration Admin Service (7)

Loaded configurations will be cached by configuration admin. We can use org.apache.felix.cm.NotCachablePersistenceManager interface if we want to implement custom caching strategy.

Creating a new properties file

Let’s create a new properties file in groovy, e.g:

$ cat etc/com.github.alien11689.test1.groovy
a = '7'
b {
    c {
        d = 1
        e = 2
    }
    z = 9
}
x.y.z='test'

If we search for properties with pid com.github.alien11689.test1, Karaf will find these.

karaf@root()> config:list '(service.pid=com.github.alien11689.test1)'
----------------------------------------------------------------
Pid:            com.github.alien11689.test1
BundleLocation: null
Properties:
   a = 7
   b.c.d = 1
   b.c.e = 2
   b.z = 9
   service.pid = com.github.alien11689.test1
   x.y.z = test

If we make any change to the file they won’t be mapped to properties, because there are no file watchers defined for it.

We could manage such properties using Karaf commands instead.

Managing configuration via Karaf commands

We can define a new pid using Karaf commands:

karaf@root()> config:property-set -p com.github.alien11689.test2 f.a 6
karaf@root()> config:property-set -p com.github.alien11689.test2 f.b 'test'

Since our PersistenceManager has higher service.ranking (100 > -2147483648), new pid will be stored as a groovy file:

$ cat etc/com.github.alien11689.test2.groovy
f {
    b='test'
    a='6'
}

We can also change/remove properties or remove the whole configuration pid using karaf commands and it will all be mapped to groovy configuration files.

Sources

Sources are available on github.

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DDevelopment & Design

JBoss Envers and Spring transaction managers

I've stumbled upon a bug with my configuration for JBoss Envers today, despite having integration tests all over the application. I have to admit, it casted a dark shadow of doubt about the value of all the tests for a moment. I've been practicing TDD since 2005, and frankly speaking, I should have been smarter than that.

My fault was simple. I've started using Envers the right way, with exploratory tests and a prototype. Then I've deleted the prototype and created some integration tests using in-memory H2 that looked more or less like this example:

@Test
public void savingAndUpdatingPersonShouldCreateTwoHistoricalVersions() {
    //given
    Person person = createAndSavePerson();
    String oldFirstName = person.getFirstName();
    String newFirstName = oldFirstName + "NEW";

    //when
    updatePersonWithNewName(person, newFirstName);

    //then
    verifyTwoHistoricalVersionsWereSaved(oldFirstName, newFirstName);
}

private Person createAndSavePerson() {
    Transaction transaction = session.beginTransaction();
    Person person = PersonFactory.createPerson();
    session.save(person);
    transaction.commit();
    return person;
}    

private void updatePersonWithNewName(Person person, String newName) {
    Transaction transaction = session.beginTransaction();
    person.setFirstName(newName);
    session.update(person);
    transaction.commit();
}

private void verifyTwoHistoricalVersionsWereSaved(String oldFirstName, String newFirstName) {
    List<Object[]> personRevisions = getPersonRevisions();
    assertEquals(2, personRevisions.size());
    assertEquals(oldFirstName, ((Person)personRevisions.get(0)[0]).getFirstName());
    assertEquals(newFirstName, ((Person)personRevisions.get(1)[0]).getFirstName());
}

private List<Object[]> getPersonRevisions() {
    Transaction transaction = session.beginTransaction();
    AuditReader auditReader = AuditReaderFactory.get(session);
    List<Object[]> personRevisions = auditReader.createQuery()
            .forRevisionsOfEntity(Person.class, false, true)
            .getResultList();
    transaction.commit();
    return personRevisions;
}

Because Envers inserts audit data when the transaction is commited (in a new temporary session), I thought I have to create and commit the transaction manually. And that is true to some point.

My fault was that I didn't have an end-to-end integration/acceptance test, that would call to entry point of the application (in this case a service which is called by GWT via RPC), because then I'd notice, that the Spring @Transactional annotation, and calling transaction.commit() are two, very different things.

Spring @Transactional annotation will use a transaction manager configured for the application. Envers on the other hand is used by subscribing a listener to hibernate's SessionFactory like this:

<bean id="sessionFactory" class="org.springframework.orm.hibernate3.annotation.AnnotationSessionFactoryBean" >        
...
 <property name="eventListeners">
     <map key-type="java.lang.String" value-type="org.hibernate.event.EventListeners">
         <entry key="post-insert" value-ref="auditEventListener"/>
         <entry key="post-update" value-ref="auditEventListener"/>
         <entry key="post-delete" value-ref="auditEventListener"/>
         <entry key="pre-collection-update" value-ref="auditEventListener"/>
         <entry key="pre-collection-remove" value-ref="auditEventListener"/>
         <entry key="post-collection-recreate" value-ref="auditEventListener"/>
     </map>
 </property>
</bean>

<bean id="auditEventListener" class="org.hibernate.envers.event.AuditEventListener" />

Envers creates and collects something called AuditWorkUnits whenever you update/delete/insert audited entities, but audit tables are not populated until something calls AuditProcess.beforeCompletion, which makes sense. If you are using org.hibernate.transaction.JDBCTransaction manually, this is called on commit() when notifying all subscribed javax.transaction.Synchronization objects (and enver's AuditProcess is one of them).

The problem was, that I used a wrong transaction manager.

<bean id="transactionManager" class="org.springframework.jdbc.datasource.DataSourceTransactionManager" >
    <property name="dataSource" ref="dataSource"/>
</bean>

This transaction manager doesn't know anything about hibernate and doesn't use org.hibernate.transaction.JDBCTransaction. While Synchronization is an interface from javax.transaction package, DataSourceTransactionManager doesn't use it (maybe because of simplicity, I didn't dig deep enough in org.springframework.jdbc.datasource), and thus Envers works fine except not pushing the data to the database.

Which is the whole point of using Envers.

Use right tools for the task, they say. The whole problem is solved by using a transaction manager that is well aware of hibernate underneath.

<bean id="transactionManager" class="org.springframework.orm.hibernate3.HibernateTransactionManager" >
    <property name="sessionFactory" ref="sessionFactory"/>
</bean>

Lesson learned: always make sure your acceptance tests are testing the right thing. If there is a doubt about the value of your tests, you just don't have enough of them,