Apache OfBiz Cookbook

Apache OfBiz Cookbook

Overview of this book

Apache Open For Business (OFBiz) is an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system that provides a common data model and an extensive set of business processes. But without proper guidance on developing performance-critical applications, it is easy to make the wrong design and technology decisions. The power and promise of Apache OFBiz is comprehensively revealed in a collection of self-contained, quick, practical recipes in this Cookbook. This book covers a range of topics from initial system setup to web application and HTML page creation, Java development, and data maintenance tasks. Focusing on a series of the most commonly performed OFBiz tasks, it provides clear, cogent, and easy-to-follow instructions designed to make the most of your OFBiz experience. Let this book be your guide to enhancing your OFBiz productivity by saving you valuable time. Written specifically to give clear and straightforward answers to the most commonly asked OFBiz questions, this compendium of OFBiz recipes will show you everything you need to know to get things done in OFBiz. Whether you are new to OFBiz or an old pro, you are sure to find many useful hints and handy tips here. Topics range from getting started to configuration and system setup, security and database management through the final stages of developing and testing new OFBiz applications.

Apache OFBiz Cookbook

Credits

About the Author

About the Reviewers

Preface

Free Chapter

Getting Started

Introduction

Getting the project code

Getting code from the Subversion repository

Fixing IP port collision errors

The JAVA_HOME setting

"Class Not Found" errors

Installation verification

SSL verification

Running JUnit tests

Locating an OFBiz Component

Locating an OFBiz Application

Java Development

Introduction

Java runtime CLASSPATH

Java compile time CLASSPATH

Naming conventions

Writing OFBiz Java Events

Writing OFBiz Java Services

Debugging using the logfile

Calling OFBiz Services from a Java program

Getting and validating request parameters (Events)

Getting and validating request parameters (Services)

Managing error messages

Using Java properties files

Sending e-mail from an OFBiz Event or Service

Handling XML files

The User Interface

Introduction

Creating HTML web pages

Adding actions to Screen widgets

HTML markup in Screen widgets

CSS styling in Screen widgets

Platform-specific widgets

OFBiz Tree widgets

OFBiz Menu widgets

OFBiz Form widgets

Creating web pages using FreeMarker

Passing Screen widget parameters to FreeMarker

Calling Java methods from FreeMarker

Forcing FreeMarker to render HTML markup

Uploading files in FreeMarker forms

OFBiz Services

Introduction

Managing existing OFBiz Services

Calling a Service from an HTML form

Calling asynchronous Services from HTML forms

Calling a Service many times from an HTML form

Creating a new Service definition file

Creating a new Service definition

Implementing Services

Defining Service attributes (INPUT/OUTPUT)

Service Event Condition Actions

Service groups

Handling Service errors

Writing Groovy Services

Mail Event Condition Actions

Entity Event Condition Actions

The OFBiz Entity Engine

Introduction

Changing the default database

Connecting to a remote database

Connecting to multiple databases

Creating entity groups

Disabling automatic database checks

Mapping database data types

Creating a new entity model

Modifying an existing entity model

Building a view-entity

OFBiz Security

Introduction

Securing communications ports

Disabling demonstration user accounts

Protecting OFBiz web pages

Creating user accounts

Protecting applications using security groups

Protecting views ("Tarpitting")

Retrieving forgotten passwords

Changing your password

Adding or changing SSL certificates

OFBiz single sign-on and the external login key

WebTools

Introduction

Cache maintenance

Changing debug settings

Exporting database data to XML documents

Loading database(s) from XML documents

Managing internationalization labels

Using the SQL processor

Exploring the entity reference tool

Viewing OFBiz usage statistics

Uncovering artifact information

Working with temporal expressions

Web Services

Introduction

Requesting web services using URL parameters

Requesting web services using an HttpClient

Creating HttpClients and passing XML documents

Creating XML-RPC web service clients

Becoming an XML-RPC web service provider

OFBiz SOAP messaging clients

Generating a WSDL document

Creating SOAP-compliant web services

OFBiz Tips and Tricks

Introduction

Fixing Java memory allocation errors

Reloading OFBiz seed and demo data

Creating new seed data files

Changing the administrative user's password

Creating a new administrative user

Getting the OFBiz version number

Building an OFBiz instance

Building a single OFBiz Component

Creating a new OFBiz Component or Application

Creating a FreeMarker transform

Preparing data using Groovy

Pop-up new browser windows

Installing an OFBiz Visual Theme

Creating an OFBiz Visual Theme

Entity Engine by Example

Introduction

Putting it all together with a data model example

Reading data from an OFBiz data source

Working with large result sets (EntityListIterator)

Removing data from the database (Java)

Writing data to the database (Java)

Using the automatic sequence generator

EntityUtil

EntityOperator reference

Customer Reviews

5 star

4 star

3 star

2 star

1 star

Getting code from the Subversion repository

If you are planning to contribute back to the project or are just curious about downloading from the OFBiz source code control system, you may download a complete OFBiz package from the Subversion source code repository using the following procedure.

You will need a Subversion client, or an IDE with a Subversion client installed in order to access and download from Subversion.

Getting ready

Before you can download directly from the OFBiz Subversion repository, you must first have a Subversion client installed locally. Subversion clients come in several forms. The Subversion software comes with a command-line client and a command-line tool that facilitates checkout and download from a Subversion repository. This command is the co command.

Some users prefer to use built-in IDE (Integrated Development Environment) Subversion clients. One such client, Subclipse (http://subclpse.tigris.org), allows the user to checkout and install OFBiz from within the IDE using IDE-specific commands.

It goes without saying: you must also have an Internet connection with access to the OFBiz Subversion repository.

How to do it...

OFBiz source code can be downloaded from the Subversion repository by the following steps:

1. From a command-line window, type the following Subversion command:
```
svn co http://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/ofbiz/trunk ofbiz
```
2. Navigate to the install directory. If you used the above command, navigate to the ofbiz directory. For UNIX users, a command similar to the following is suggested:
```
cd ofbiz
```
3. Run the build script provided:
```
ant run-install
```

How it works...

OFBiz project source code is saved in a repository managed by the Subversion source code control system. Subversion uses a tree-like structure to organize and group together project artifacts, including source code. Each time a project developer commits an artifact to the repository, a new OFBiz version number is created, similar to a leaf on a tree. The project has had thousands of commits over its lifetime, hence the current version number is well on its way towards one million.

To request a version of OFBiz from the repository, a user issues a Subversion checkout command, co. A Subversion checkout fetches by default the latest leaf or version of the project from the Subversion code tree.

The OFBiz source code repository contains all previous versions of OFBiz. You may checkout any version at any time. Additionally, you may checkout "releases" of OFBiz where a "release" is a "branch" of the source code tree, by indicating your desire using the co command options.

Once the fetch from the repository is complete, you must run the OFBiz build script to build the project before running the OFBiz startup scripts. The build script rebuilds all included Java programs, rebuilds the runtime CLASSPATH, and checks and loads the database with seed and demonstration data.

Apache OfBiz Cookbook

Apache OfBiz Cookbook

Overview of this book

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Apache OfBiz Cookbook

Getting code from the Subversion repository

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

See also