Frontman example, problems running

[margaret gillon]

I found this post on the ranch Front man examples 2010. In the post Mike Heffelfinger Original Poster added a link to his site where he has set up a little example of Frontman Sample Hello World Front Man™ JAVA web application. I started a new project and brought in the code from Mike's site. The project builds fine but when I click on the link from the index.jsp the project crashes. It looks like something with the path and I think my web.xml is bad. I get the same error on my work machine with tomcat 6.

What I do not understand is what do I replace <param-value>www.yourserver.commands</param-value> with if I am in and IDE working on a project on my local hard drive. I know many of you use Frontman. Any help is welcome. TIA.

example partial web.xml from the example site

     <init-param>  
       <param-name>commandsPath</param-name>  
       <param-value>www.yourserver.commands</param-value>  
     </init-param>  
     <init-param>  
       <param-name>viewsPath</param-name>  
       <param-value>/WEB-INF/jsp</param-value>  
     </init-param>  
     <load-on-startup>1</load-on-startup>  
   </servlet>  

my web.xml

    <servlet>  
        <servlet-name>CommandBroker</servlet-name>  
        <servlet-class>org.bibeault.frontman.CommandBroker</servlet-class>  
        <init-param>  
            <param-name>commandsPath</param-name>  
            <param-value>/WEB-INF/lib</param-value>  
        </init-param>  
        <init-param>  
            <param-name>viewsPath</param-name>  
            <param-value>/WEB-INF/jsp</param-value>  
        </init-param>  
        <load-on-startup>1</load-on-startup>  
    </servlet>  
   

and this is the error dump from tomcat

Mar 11, 2013 7:08:52 PM org.apache.catalina.core.StandardWrapperValve invoke
SEVERE: Servlet.service() for servlet [CommandBroker] in context with path [/qcweb] threw exception [Could not associate a Command implementation with command verb getHelloWorldMessage] with root cause
org.bibeault.frontman.CommandNotFoundException: Could not associate a Command implementation with command verb getHelloWorldMessage
	at org.bibeault.frontman.CommandBroker.findCommandClass(CommandBroker.java:278)
	at org.bibeault.frontman.CommandBroker.doPost(CommandBroker.java:210)
	at org.bibeault.frontman.CommandBroker.doGet(CommandBroker.java:185)
	at javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet.service(HttpServlet.java:621)
	at javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet.service(HttpServlet.java:722)
	at org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterChain.internalDoFilter(ApplicationFilterChain.java:305)
	at org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterChain.doFilter(ApplicationFilterChain.java:210)
	at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardWrapperValve.invoke(StandardWrapperValve.java:225)
	at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardContextValve.invoke(StandardContextValve.java:123)
	at org.apache.catalina.authenticator.AuthenticatorBase.invoke(AuthenticatorBase.java:472)
	at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardHostValve.invoke(StandardHostValve.java:168)
	at org.apache.catalina.valves.ErrorReportValve.invoke(ErrorReportValve.java:98)
	at org.apache.catalina.valves.AccessLogValve.invoke(AccessLogValve.java:927)
	at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardEngineValve.invoke(StandardEngineValve.java:118)
	at org.apache.catalina.connector.CoyoteAdapter.service(CoyoteAdapter.java:407)
	at org.apache.coyote.http11.AbstractHttp11Processor.process(AbstractHttp11Processor.java:1001)
	at org.apache.coyote.AbstractProtocol$AbstractConnectionHandler.process(AbstractProtocol.java:585)
	at org.apache.tomcat.util.net.AprEndpoint$SocketProcessor.run(AprEndpoint.java:1770)
	at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.runTask(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:886)
	at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:908)
	at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:662)

[Bear Bibeault]

margaret gillon wrote:What I do not understand is what do I replace <param-value>www.yourserver.commands</param-value> with if I am in and IDE working on a project on my local hard drive.

That value should be the Java package where your commands are located. It is not a URL.

[margaret gillon]

Hi Bear,

It is the place where I have the JDK on my computer? C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.6.0_38

Not where I put the Frontman jar and the jakarta commons logging jar in the project ( /WEB-INF/lib )

[Bear Bibeault]

No it's not a file path, it's the package that the command classes are in.

[margaret gillon]

In the simple project I tried with the examples I did not make packages for the files that were calling frontman so wouldn't the package just be the project name since the files were in the default package? 11 hours at this and still thinking it's something really simple that I'm just missing

[margaret gillon]

Posting code and most recent error messages. The jsp's are not in any kind of folder or package. qcweb is the project/package. To check what I was doing I put these into another project. These files did not disrupt the project but the same error message came up when I clicked the <a href='command/GetHelloWorldMessageCommand'>get hello world message.</a> link in the index.jsp. Any help appreciated.

web.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<web-app version="2.5" xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee/web-app_2_5.xsd">
    <servlet>  
        <servlet-name>CommandBroker</servlet-name>  
        <servlet-class>org.bibeault.frontman.CommandBroker</servlet-class>  
        <init-param>  
            <param-name>commandsPath</param-name>  
            <param-value>qcweb.commands</param-value>  
        </init-param>  
        <init-param>  
            <param-name>viewsPath</param-name>  
            <param-value>/WEB-INF</param-value>  
        </init-param>  
        <load-on-startup>1</load-on-startup>  
    </servlet>  
   
    <servlet-mapping>  
        <servlet-name>CommandBroker</servlet-name>  
        <url-pattern>/command/*</url-pattern>  
    </servlet-mapping>
</web-app>

index.jsp

<%@page contentType="text/html" pageEncoding="UTF-8"%>
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
    <head>
        <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
        <title>JSP Page</title>
    </head>
    <body>
        <a href='command/GetHelloWorldMessageCommand'>get hello world message.</a>
    </body>
</html>

helloWorld.jsp

<%@page contentType="text/html" pageEncoding="UTF-8"%>
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
    <head>
        <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
        <title>Hello World JSP Page</title>
    </head>
    <body>
        ${helloWorldMessage}
    </body>
</html>

GetHelloWorldMessageCommand.java in the commands package

package commands;

import org.bibeault.frontman.*;
import java.io.*;
import javax.servlet.ServletException;
import javax.servlet.http.*;

public class GetHelloWorldMessageCommand implements Command {
	public void execute(CommandContext commandContext) throws ServletException, IOException {
		String helloWorld= "Hello World";

		commandContext.getSession().setAttribute("helloWorldMessage",  helloWorld);		
		commandContext.forwardToView("helloWorld");  		
	}
}

Error messages

message Could not associate a Command implementation with command verb GetHelloWorldMessageCommand

description The server encountered an internal error (Could not associate a Command implementation with command verb GetHelloWorldMessageCommand) that prevented it from fulfilling this request.

exception

org.bibeault.frontman.CommandNotFoundException: Could not associate a Command implementation with command verb GetHelloWorldMessageCommand
	org.bibeault.frontman.CommandBroker.findCommandClass(CommandBroker.java:278)
	org.bibeault.frontman.CommandBroker.doPost(CommandBroker.java:210)
	org.bibeault.frontman.CommandBroker.doGet(CommandBroker.java:185)
	javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet.service(HttpServlet.java:621)
	javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet.service(HttpServlet.java:722)

note The full stack trace of the root cause is available in the Apache Tomcat/7.0.29 logs.

[Bear Bibeault]

the qcweb context path is not part of the package. Look at the package statement in your command implementation. It's just commands.

[margaret gillon]

Still get the error with just commands. Tried in another web project and the same error shows up.

Could my problem be with the way the IDE is building the application?. I am using netbeans 7 on Windows 7 (at home).

Another question, I have noticed that the view path in the example, and in Bear's documentation, have a second path but I don't see in my projects, is that path determined by the IDE?

frontman docs

  <init-param>
    <param-name>viewsPath</param-name>
    <param-value>/WEB-INF/pages</param-value>
  </init-param>

tech city systems

     <init-param>  
       <param-name>viewsPath</param-name>  
       <param-value>/WEB-INF/jsp</param-value>  
     </init-param>  

[Bear Bibeault]

No, you can just create whatever folder name you want.

[margaret gillon]

Finally got Frontman working in Eclipse after starting a clean project and working through software issues on my machine.

What Eclipse showed me is that the command class GetHelloWorldMessageCommand.java couldn't compile because there was some kind of system permissions lock on the APIs the project was calling in the JRE. I added an external library that pointed the project to the APIs in another directory and then the class compiled.

Two things that are probably obvious to most everyone but I missed them.
The command classes have to be in their own package, they cannot sit in the default package.
The jsp's that will be called by the frontman need to be in a folder under the WEB-INF folder, they cannot sit directly in the WEB-INF folder.

These things were done in the Eclipse version when I built the project but the project did not work until the permissions on the APIs were resolved.

I went back to Netbeans and added the same fixes but the application still crashes and I am not sure overriding the default API's worked there.

Thanks to Bear for the support.