Welcome to my first topic on OSGi. This article is focused on using Netbeans to create an OSGi declarative service deployed on Glassfish which is of course built on Apache Felix - an OSGi framework implementation.

OSGi defined

According to Craig Walls in the book "Modular Java - Creating Flexible Applications with OSGi and Spring", OSGi is a component framework specification that brings modularity to the Java platform. OSGi enables the creation of highly cohesive, loosely coupled modules that can be composed into larger applications. Each module can be individually developed, tested, deployed, updated and managed with minimal or no impact to the other modules. Hence, OSGi is a solution to Java's modular incapabilities.

OSGi Declarative service

The knowledge of the OSGi Declarative service is not that far fetched. The basics of this topic can be found at Jerome's blog and Neil Bartlett blog. Like I said earlier, this article is focused on using Netbeans to perform the same task created with Eclipse by Neil Bartlett, but with an Apache Felix flavour.

Use of Maven

The Apache Maven "build tool" or "project management tool" is the primary tool I will be using for this application. More information about Apache Maven can be found here

Howto with Netbeans

So, getting started with this, this example assumes you are using Netbeans 6.8. The latest Glassfish is bundled with the Apache Felix OSGi runtime. But the OSGi declarative support is not. So firstly, download the Apache Felix SCR plugin here.

Before we start to write the application, let's deploy the downloaded scr plugin to Glassfish.

• cd to Glassfish bin directory;
  • On Windows: <glassfish-installation-directory>\sges-v3\bin
    On Solaris/UNIX/Mac OS X: <glassfish-installation-directory>/sges-v3/bin
• Run the command
  • asadmin deploy --type osgi $HOME\org.apache.felix.scr-1.4.0.jar. Where $HOME is the directory to which you downloaded the org.apache.felix.scr-1.4.0.jar file.

Note: If you encounter RuntimeException and CommandException,

• cross check the command you entered.
• the org.apache.felix.scr-1.4.0.jar file is not already in Glassfish directory before you run the command.
• Restart Glassfish before you try the command again.

To confirm that you have successfully deployed the org.apache.felix.scr-1.4.0.jar plugin, check the Glassfish autostart directory at <path to Glassfish>/modules/autostart

Now, let's write a simple OSGi service and a client to access the bundle.

In Netbeans:

Start a new Maven project

Note: the following directory structure in Netbeans
\myosgiprojects\MyComputeService
\myosgiprojects\MyComputeService\src
\myosgiprojects\MyComputeService\src\main
\myosgiprojects\MyComputeService\src\main\java
\myosgiprojects\MyComputeService\src\main\java\com
\myosgiprojects\MyComputeService\src\main\java\com\mycompany
\myosgiprojects\MyComputeService\src\main\java\com\mycompany\mycomputeservice
\myosgiprojects\MyComputeService\src\main\java\com\mycompany\mycomputeservice\impl

Write the interface.

Create a Java interface ComputeService.java and copy the following code into it.

Write the interface implementation.

Create a Java class ComputeServiceImpl.java in the package com.mycompany..mycomputeservice.impl and copy the following code into it.

In your file system, create the following directories

\myosgiprojects\MyComputeService\src\main\resources
\myosgiprojects\MyComputeService\src\main\resources\META-INF
\myosgiprojects\MyComputeService\src\main\resources\OSGI-INF

Create an XML document.

In the OSGI-INF directory, create an XML document computeservice.xml and add the following code;

Note: Take note of the name of this component (decl-compservice). It is used as an identifier for a client application.

Create a Manifest file

In the META-INF directory, create a manifest file MANIFEST.MF to add the metadata about the bundle, and add the following code;

Modify the pom.xml file

Modify the pom.xml file by adding the maven-jar-plugin plugin. The pom.xml(POM meaning Project Object Model) file stores information about the project. There's no Maven without a pom.xml file. Inside the pom.xml file, add the following code within the <project></project>;

Clean and build the project

Make sure the application builds successfully.

Check the output console

This concludes the first phase of the project. In the next, we will write a client that will utilize this service and it's methods.