Apache OfBiz Cookbook

Table of Contents

Apache OFBiz Cookbook

Credits

About the Author

About the Reviewers

Preface

What this book covers

What you need for this book

Who this book is for

Conventions

Reader feedback

Customer support

Errata

Piracy

Questions

1. Getting Started

Introduction

Getting the project code

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

There's more...

See also

Getting code from the Subversion repository

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

See also

Fixing IP port collision errors

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

There's more...

The JAVA_HOME setting

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

There's more...

Class Not Found errors

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

There's more...

Installation verification

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

There's more...

SSL verification

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

There's more...

See also

Running JUnit tests

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

There's more...

Locating an OFBiz Component

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

There's more...

Locating an OFBiz Application

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

There's more...

2. Java Development

Introduction

Java runtime CLASSPATH

How to do it...

How it works...

Java compile time CLASSPATH

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

Naming conventions

How to do it...

Writing OFBiz Java Events

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

There's more...

Writing OFBiz Java Services

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

There's more...

See also

Debugging using the logfile

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

Calling OFBiz Services from a Java program

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

There's more...

Getting and validating request parameters (Events)

How to do it...

How it works...

There's more...

Getting and validating request parameters (Services)

How to do it...

How it works...

Managing error messages

How to do it...

There's more...

Using Java properties files

How to do it...

How it works...

See also

Sending e-mail from an OFBiz Event or Service

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

There's more...

See also

Handling XML files

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

3. The User Interface

Introduction

Creating HTML web pages

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

There's more...

Adding actions to Screen widgets

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

There's more...

HTML markup in Screen widgets

How to do it...

How it works..

There's more...

CSS styling in Screen widgets

How to do it...

How it works...

There's more...

Platform-specific widgets

How to do it...

How it works...

There's more...

OFBiz Tree widgets

How to do it...

How it works...

There's more...

OFBiz Menu widgets

How to do it...

How it works...

OFBiz Form widgets

How to do it...

How it works...

There's more..

Creating web pages using FreeMarker

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

There's more

See also

Passing Screen widget parameters to FreeMarker

How to do it...

How it works

There's more

Calling Java methods from FreeMarker

How to do it...

How it works...

There's more...

Forcing FreeMarker to render HTML markup

How to do it...

How it works

Uploading files in FreeMarker forms

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

There 's more...

4. OFBiz Services

Introduction

Managing existing OFBiz Services

How to do it...

How it works...

There's more...

Calling a Service from an HTML form

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

Calling asynchronous Services from HTML forms

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

There's more...

Calling a Service many times from an HTML form

How to do it...

How it works...

Creating a new Service definition file

How to do it...

How it works...

Creating a new Service definition

How to do it...

How it works...

See also

Implementing Services

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

There's more...

Defining Service attributes (INPUT/OUTPUT)

How to do it...

How it works...

Service Event Condition Actions

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

There's more...

Service groups

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

See also

Handling Service errors

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

See also

Writing Groovy Services

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

Mail Event Condition Actions

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

See also

Entity Event Condition Actions

How to do it...

How it works...

There's more...

See also

5. The OFBiz Entity Engine

Introduction

Changing the default database

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

See also

Connecting to a remote database

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

Connecting to multiple databases

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

Creating entity groups

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

Disabling automatic database checks

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

Mapping database data types

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

Creating a new entity definition file

How to do it...

How it works...

Creating a new entity model

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

There's more...

Modifying an existing entity model

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

Building a view-entity

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

There's more...

See also

6. OFBiz Security

Introduction

Securing communications ports

How to do it...

How it works...

There's more...

See also

Disabling demonstration user accounts

How to do it...

How it works...

Protecting OFBiz web pages

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

There's more...

Creating user accounts

How to do it...

How it works...

There's more...

Protecting applications using security groups

How to do it...

How it works...

There's more...

Protecting views (Tarpitting)

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

There's more...

Retrieving forgotten passwords

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

Changing your password

How to do it...

How it works...

Adding or changing SSL certificates

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

There's more...

See also

OFBiz single sign-on and the external login key

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

There's more...

7. WebTools

Introduction

Cache maintenance

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

There's more...

See also

Changing debug settings

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

There's more...

Exporting database data to XML documents

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

Loading database(s) from XML documents

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

There's more...

Managing internationalization labels

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works

There's more...

Using the SQL processor

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

Exploring the entity reference tool

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

Viewing OFBiz usage statistics

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

Uncovering artifact information

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

Working with temporal expressions

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

There's more...

8. Web Services

Introduction

Requesting web services using URL parameters

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

There's more...

Requesting web services using an HttpClient

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

There's more...

See also

Creating HttpClients and passing XML documents

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

Creating XML-RPC web service clients

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

See also

Becoming an XML-RPC web service provider

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

See also

OFBiz SOAP messaging clients

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

There's more...

Generating a WSDL document

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

Creating SOAP-compliant web services

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

9. OFBiz Tips and Tricks

Introduction

Fixing Java memory allocation errors

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

There's more...

Reloading OFBiz seed and demo data

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

There's more...

Creating new seed data files

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

There's more…

Changing the administrative user's password

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

There's more…

Creating a new administrative user

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

There's more...

Getting the OFBiz version number

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

There's more...

Building an OFBiz instance

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

There's more...

See also

Building a single OFBiz Component

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

Creating a new OFBiz Component or Application

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

There's more...

Creating a FreeMarker transform

How to do it...

How it works...

There's more...

Preparing data using Groovy

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

There's more...

See also

Pop-up new browser windows

How to do it...

How it works...

There's more...

Installing an OFBiz Visual Theme

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

There's more...

Creating an OFBiz Visual Theme

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

There's more...

See also

A. Entity Engine by Example

Introduction

Putting it all together with a data model example

Sample use case

Entity diagram

New entity definitions

2-way SQL join view-entity

3-way SQL join view-entity

View-entity reports

Next steps

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

EntityUtil.getFirst()

EntityUtil.filterByDate()

EntityUtil.orderBy()

EntityUtil.getFieldListFromEntityList()

EntityUtil.getRelated()

EntityUtil.filterByCondition()

EntityOperator reference

Index

Apache OFBiz Cookbook

Apache OFBiz Cookbook

Copyright © 2010 Packt Publishing

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews.

Every effort has been made in the preparation of this book to ensure the accuracy of the information presented. However, the information contained in this book is sold without warranty, either express or implied. Neither the author, nor Packt Publishing, and its dealers and distributors will be held liable for any damages caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by this book.

Packt Publishing has endeavored to provide trademark information about all of the companies and products mentioned in this book by the appropriate use of capitals. However, Packt Publishing cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information.

First published: September 2010

Production Reference: 1020910

Published by Packt Publishing Ltd. 32 Lincoln Road Olton Birmingham, B27 6PA, UK.

ISBN 978-1-847199-18-8

www.packtpub.com

Cover Image by Harmeet Singh ( <singharmeet@yahoo.com> )

Credits

Author

Ruth Hoffman

Reviewers

Adrian Crum

Shi Jinghai

Acquisition Editor

Chaitanya Apte

Development Editor

Rakesh Shejwal

Technical Editor

Vanjeet D'souza

Indexer

Hemangini Bari

Editorial Team Leader

Mithun Sehgal

Project Team Leader

Ashwin Shetty

Project Coordinator

Joel Goveya

Proofreader

Jonathan Todd

Graphics

Geetanjali Sawant

Production Coordinator

Arvindkumar Gupta

Cover Work

Arvindkumar Gupta

About the Author

Ruth Hoffman is an OFBiz evangelist with over 25 years of information technology experience, including stints in software design and development, training, project management, product marketing, and software sales, She has dedicated the last few years of her eventful career to furthering the OFBiz vision. Whether it be writing about OFBiz, providing implementation and OFBiz consulting services, or just kicking the OFBiz tires for each new release, she enjoys working with and telling the world about all that this amazing ERP software suite has to offer.

Ruth's current passion is her quest to provide high quality, cost effective OFBiz training and documentation. She has pursued this quest through multiple channels, including the OFBiz website. She invites everyone to stop by, take a gander, and give some feedback at http://www.myofbiz.com

As a long-standing supporter of OFBiz, she has authored several other OFBiz titles, including OFBiz E-Commerce Out-Of-The-Box and The OFBiz Catalog Manager. For more information, please see: http://www.myofbiz.com.

I would like to thank my partner, JC, for being so patient and understanding, my daughter for not getting too upset when I cancelled our planned Lilac Festival adventure, and my dog Sadie for sitting by me all those long hours when no one else would.

Also, my sincerest thanks go to Adrian Crum and Shi Jinghai for their dedicated efforts in providing technical reviews of this book. Thanks for keeping me honest and setting me straight on a number of occasions. Your contributions are greatly appreciated!

About the Reviewers

Adrian Crum is an IT Manager/Computer programmer for a company that builds homes. Prior to that, he owned and operated a computer retail/service/consulting business. He was Technical Editor of Coast Compute Magazine, and a contributing writer for Programmer's Journal. Adrian has been involved with the Apache OFBiz project as a contributing programmer since 2004, and he is a member of the Project Management Committee. His extensive experience in many programming languages and cross-platform development has been a key part of his contributions to the Apache OFBiz project.

Shi Jinghai graduated from Tsinghua University in 1991. In 2001, he took part in the China 2G Citizen Card Project and became an important system designer of the National Citizen Identity Information System of China. In 2004, he started his own company (Beijing Langhua Ltd.) focusing on IT services based on some excellent open source projects such as OFBiz, OpenCms, JBoss Portal, and Jasig CAS among others.

Preface

This book is designed to be read in any order, and is a collection of recipes found, by experience, to be most useful for developers working with the OFBiz project. Let it 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. We are now Open For Business.

What this book covers

Chapter 1, Getting Started: If you already know how to get started with OFBiz then you can confidently skip this chapter. If, however, you are new to OFBiz, then you may find helpful hints in here to get you started, including getting a copy of the code from the download page or from the Subversion source code repository; fixing installation-related IP port collision errors; setting JAVA_HOME; fixing Java Class Not Found errors; installation verification; running JUnit tests; and some basic project artifact navigation hints, including where certain special directories (folders for Windows users) and files may be found.

Chapter 2, Java Development: OFBiz Java development starts with a clear understanding of the role of the Java CLASSPATH. In this chapter, learn how the CLASSPATH enables compilation and runtime loading of OFBiz artifacts. In addition, this chapter reveals how the OFBiz Java file-naming convention is helpful in organizing and finding Java source code. Also learn how to create OFBiz Events and Services, effectively use the provided Java debugging methods, call another OFBiz Service from within a Java program, access HTTP/HTTPS request parameters, use existing tools to handle error messages, use Java properties files, send e-mail using existing OFBiz Service(s), and manipulate XML documents using provided tools.

Chapter 3, The User Interface: Users interact with OFBiz—that is, the User Interface—through web pages often referred to within the project as screens or screen views. In this chapter, see how web pages are built from the OFBiz Screen widget, including how to add actions, HTML markup, CSS, and other widgets (Tree, Menu, and Form widgets) to a single screen view widget definition. If your tastes run more towards creating your own screen views, see how to use FreeMarker templates inside Screen widget definitions to build (HTML) web pages. Also discussed in this chapter: passing parameters from the Screen widget's runtime context to the FreeMarker rendering engine, writing JavaScript and including it in a FreeMarker template, calling OFBiz Java methods directly from the FreeMarker context, forcing FreeMarker to render content with HTML markup at runtime, and how to upload a file—that is, support multipart HTML forms—in FreeMarker.

Chapter 4, OFBiz Services: OFBiz Services are reusable snippets of code that represent business processing or other logic. You write an OFBiz Service one time and invoke it anytime, anywhere and as often as needed. In this chapter, discover how to manage existing Services, invoke Services from an HTML form, and implement your own Service. Learn how Services communicate and interact during runtime operations using input and output attributes and triggers called Service Event Condition Actions, or SECAs. See best practices for handling errors within a Service and/or SECA. Also discussed are tips on implementing Services in languages other than Java, and a quick introduction to special SECA for incoming e-mail and operations on specific entities.

Chapter 5, The OFBiz Entity Engine: The OFBiz Entity Engine is the magic behind the database agnostic, data-driven tour-de-force that is OFBiz. In this chapter, see how to configure and use the Entity Engine to your advantage. Specifically, see how to change from the default Derby database to another database (note: throughout the OFBiz documentation, the term data source is used interchangeably with database); how to connect to remote and multiple databases; how entity groups work to help OFBiz organize access to multiple databases; and disable some system database startup checks, map new database field types, create your own entity definition file and entity definition, modify an existing entity definition—often referred to as the entity's model—and build view-entities that represent SQL join statements.

Chapter 6, OFBiz Security: What book about enterprise software would be complete without a word concerning security? In this chapter, get a quick introduction to securing your OFBiz instance, including recipes to lock down communication ports, disable demonstration accounts, protect web pages and web applications using OFBiz Security Groups, enable support for tarpitting, retrieve forgotten passwords, change existing passwords, handle SSL certificates, and use OFBiz single sign-on support by way of the external login key feature.

Chapter 7, WebTools: Often lost in the OFBiz shuffle is a discussion covering basic usage of the many and varied tools that come with the project to manage your OFBiz instance. Collectively called WebTools, this chapter looks at several important tasks easily accomplished using WebTools, including managing the cache, configuring system and application log tool settings for debug and troubleshooting support; exporting and importing database data; managing localization labels, and accessing databases using the SQL processor tool. Also discussed are introductions to the immensely useful Entity Reference Tool, finding and viewing OFBiz usage statistics, tracing OFBiz artifact dependencies, and working with temporal expressions.

Chapter 8, Web Services: With service orientation at the core of the OFBiz architecture, OFBiz is uniquely qualified to act as both a web services client and service provider for any number of web service interactions. In this chapter, learn how to act as a web services client and request service using URL parameter passing, HttpClient and XML document exchanges, and XML-RPC service requests. If you wish to provide web services, see how to set up OFBiz to serve XML-RPC services, generate and serve WSDL documents, and build both SOAP-based clients and services.

Chapter 9, OFBiz Tips and Tricks: This chapter is a collection of recipes