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

Locating an OFBiz Application

An OFBiz "Application" is a set of directories and files that are located within a Component. Referred to as "webapps", an OFBiz Application may contain all the artifacts necessary to deliver a web browser-compliant UI. As a testament to its flexibility, an OFBiz instance and any OFBiz Component may include an unlimited number of webapps.

An OFBiz Application is defined by the presence of the webapp directory located just beneath a containing Component's top-level directory, and may include one or more of the following files and directories:

A single WEB-INF directory
Beneath the WEB-INF directory, find a web.xml deployment descriptor file
Also beneath the WEB-INF directory, a controller.xml controller servlet configuration file may be present
Many other resources may be present depending on the needs of the Application

Getting ready

To locate an Application, firstly the following should be taken care of:

1. Determine the name of the Application you are searching for.
2. Try to ascertain the Component in which this Application is located An OFBiz Component may have one or more OFBiz Applications within it.

How to do it...

To locate the Application, perform the following:

1. Navigate to the OFBiz install directory.
2. If you know the name of the Component in which this Application is located, navigate to that Component's top-level directory.
3. Open the ofbiz-component.xml file in the top-level Component directory. In this file, locate any XML elements starting with a webapp tag. There may be many of these declarations within a single ofbiz-component.xml file. Each declaration represents the configuration of a single OFBiz web Application. For example, the following is taken from the OFBiz e-commerce Component. Two OFBiz Applications, the"eccomerce" and the"ecomclone", are configured. The top-level directory location of each Component is given by the location attribute value for the webapp element:
```
<webapp name="ecommerce"
title="eCommerce"
server="default-server"
location="webapp/ecommerce"
mount-point="/"
app-bar-display="false"/>
<webapp name="ecomclone"
title="eCommerce Clone"
server="default-server"
location="webapp/ecomclone"
mount-point="/ecomclone"
app-bar-display="false"/>
```

How it works...

OFBiz Applications are configured for each Component using the ofbiz-component.xml file. If one or more webapp elements are present in an ofbiz-component.xml file, this is a trigger to OFBiz that there are Applications for this Component. OFBiz will attempt to load all Component applications in the order defined in the ofbiz-component.xml file at system startup.

There's more...

To mount an Application as the "root" Application, set the mount-point attribute value to"/" as shown earlier. This will change the default URL for this webapp from http://localhost:8080/name to http://localhost:8080/. Only one webapp may be set to the root mount-point per OFBiz instance.

Apache OfBiz Cookbook

Apache OfBiz Cookbook

Overview of this book

Related Content you might be interested in

Current Title:

Apache OfBiz Cookbook

Locating an OFBiz Application

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

There's more...