[[EJB_invocations_from_a_remote_client_using_JNDI]]
= EJB invocations from a remote client using JNDI

This chapter explains how to invoke EJBs from a remote client by using
the JNDI API to first lookup the bean proxy and then invoke on that
proxy.

[IMPORTANT]

After you have read this article, do remember to take a look at
https://docs.jboss.org/author/display/WFLY8/Remote+EJB+invocations+via+JNDI+-+EJB+client+API+or+remote-naming+project[Remote
EJB invocations via JNDI - EJB client API or remote-naming project]

Before getting into the details, we would like the users to know that we
have introduced a new EJB client API, which is a WildFly-specific API
and allows invocation on remote EJBs. This client API isn't based on
JNDI. So remote clients need not rely on JNDI API to invoke on EJBs. A
separate document covering the EJB remote client API will be made
available. For now, you can refer to the javadocs of the EJB client
project at http://docs.jboss.org/ejbclient/. In this document, we'll
just concentrate on the traditional JNDI based invocation on EJBs. So
let's get started:

[[deploying-your-ejbs-on-the-server-side]]
== Deploying your EJBs on the server side:

[NOTE]

Users who already have EJBs deployed on the server side can just skip to
the next section.

As a first step, you'll have to deploy your application containing the
EJBs on the WildFly server. If you want those EJBs to be remotely
invocable, then you'll have to expose at least one remote view for that
bean. In this example, let's consider a simple Calculator stateless bean
which exposes a RemoteCalculator remote business interface. We'll also
have a simple stateful CounterBean which exposes a RemoteCounter remote
business interface. Here's the code:

[source,java,options="nowrap"]
----
package org.jboss.as.quickstarts.ejb.remote.stateless;
 
/**
 * @author Jaikiran Pai
 */
public interface RemoteCalculator {
 
    int add(int a, int b);
 
    int subtract(int a, int b);
}
----

[source,java,options="nowrap"]
----
package org.jboss.as.quickstarts.ejb.remote.stateless;
 
import javax.ejb.Remote;
import javax.ejb.Stateless;
 
/**
 * @author Jaikiran Pai
 */
@Stateless
@Remote(RemoteCalculator.class)
public class CalculatorBean implements RemoteCalculator {
 
    @Override
    public int add(int a, int b) {
        return a + b;
    }
 
    @Override
    public int subtract(int a, int b) {
        return a - b;
    }
}
----

[source,java,options="nowrap"]
----
package org.jboss.as.quickstarts.ejb.remote.stateful;
 
/**
 * @author Jaikiran Pai
 */
public interface RemoteCounter {
 
    void increment();
 
    void decrement();
 
    int getCount();
}
----

[source,java,options="nowrap"]
----
package org.jboss.as.quickstarts.ejb.remote.stateful;
 
import javax.ejb.Remote;
import javax.ejb.Stateful;
 
/**
 * @author Jaikiran Pai
 */
@Stateful
@Remote(RemoteCounter.class)
public class CounterBean implements RemoteCounter {
 
    private int count = 0;
 
    @Override
    public void increment() {
        this.count++;
    }
 
    @Override
    public void decrement() {
        this.count--;
    }
 
    @Override
    public int getCount() {
        return this.count;
    }
}
----

Let's package this in a jar (how you package it in a jar is out of scope
of this chapter) named "jboss-as-ejb-remote-app.jar" and deploy it to
the server. Make sure that your deployment has been processed
successfully and there aren't any errors.

[[writing-a-remote-client-application-for-accessing-and-invoking-the-ejbs-deployed-on-the-server]]
== Writing a remote client application for accessing and invoking the
EJBs deployed on the server

The next step is to write an application which will invoke the EJBs that
you deployed on the server. In WildFly, you can either choose to use the
WildFly specific EJB client API to do the invocation or use JNDI to
lookup a proxy for your bean and invoke on that returned proxy. In this
chapter we will concentrate on the JNDI lookup and invocation and will
leave the EJB client API for a separate chapter.

So let's take a look at what the client code looks like for looking up
the JNDI proxy and invoking on it. Here's the entire client code which
invokes on a stateless bean:

[source,java,options="nowrap"]
----
package org.jboss.as.quickstarts.ejb.remote.client;
 
import javax.naming.Context;
import javax.naming.InitialContext;
import javax.naming.NamingException;
import java.security.Security;
import java.util.Hashtable;
 
import org.jboss.as.quickstarts.ejb.remote.stateful.CounterBean;
import org.jboss.as.quickstarts.ejb.remote.stateful.RemoteCounter;
import org.jboss.as.quickstarts.ejb.remote.stateless.CalculatorBean;
import org.jboss.as.quickstarts.ejb.remote.stateless.RemoteCalculator;
import org.jboss.sasl.JBossSaslProvider;
 
/**
 * A sample program which acts a remote client for a EJB deployed on WildFly 10 server.
 * This program shows how to lookup stateful and stateless beans via JNDI and then invoke on them
 *
 * @author Jaikiran Pai
 */
public class RemoteEJBClient {
 
    public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
        // Invoke a stateless bean
        invokeStatelessBean();
 
        // Invoke a stateful bean
        invokeStatefulBean();
    }
 
    /**
     * Looks up a stateless bean and invokes on it
     *
     * @throws NamingException
     */
    private static void invokeStatelessBean() throws NamingException {
        // Let's lookup the remote stateless calculator
        final RemoteCalculator statelessRemoteCalculator = lookupRemoteStatelessCalculator();
        System.out.println("Obtained a remote stateless calculator for invocation");
        // invoke on the remote calculator
        int a = 204;
        int b = 340;
        System.out.println("Adding " + a + " and " + b + " via the remote stateless calculator deployed on the server");
        int sum = statelessRemoteCalculator.add(a, b);
        System.out.println("Remote calculator returned sum = " + sum);
        if (sum != a + b) {
            throw new RuntimeException("Remote stateless calculator returned an incorrect sum " + sum + " ,expected sum was " + (a + b));
        }
        // try one more invocation, this time for subtraction
        int num1 = 3434;
        int num2 = 2332;
        System.out.println("Subtracting " + num2 + " from " + num1 + " via the remote stateless calculator deployed on the server");
        int difference = statelessRemoteCalculator.subtract(num1, num2);
        System.out.println("Remote calculator returned difference = " + difference);
        if (difference != num1 - num2) {
            throw new RuntimeException("Remote stateless calculator returned an incorrect difference " + difference + " ,expected difference was " + (num1 - num2));
        }
    }
 
    /**
     * Looks up a stateful bean and invokes on it
     *
     * @throws NamingException
     */
    private static void invokeStatefulBean() throws NamingException {
        // Let's lookup the remote stateful counter
        final RemoteCounter statefulRemoteCounter = lookupRemoteStatefulCounter();
        System.out.println("Obtained a remote stateful counter for invocation");
        // invoke on the remote counter bean
        final int NUM_TIMES = 20;
        System.out.println("Counter will now be incremented " + NUM_TIMES + " times");
        for (int i = 0; i < NUM_TIMES; i++) {
            System.out.println("Incrementing counter");
            statefulRemoteCounter.increment();
            System.out.println("Count after increment is " + statefulRemoteCounter.getCount());
        }
        // now decrementing
        System.out.println("Counter will now be decremented " + NUM_TIMES + " times");
        for (int i = NUM_TIMES; i > 0; i--) {
            System.out.println("Decrementing counter");
            statefulRemoteCounter.decrement();
            System.out.println("Count after decrement is " + statefulRemoteCounter.getCount());
        }
    }
 
    /**
     * Looks up and returns the proxy to remote stateless calculator bean
     *
     * @return
     * @throws NamingException
     */
    private static RemoteCalculator lookupRemoteStatelessCalculator() throws NamingException {
        final Hashtable jndiProperties = new Hashtable();
        jndiProperties.put(Context.URL_PKG_PREFIXES, "org.jboss.ejb.client.naming");
        final Context context = new InitialContext(jndiProperties);
        // The app name is the application name of the deployed EJBs. This is typically the ear name
        // without the .ear suffix. However, the application name could be overridden in the application.xml of the
        // EJB deployment on the server.
        // Since we haven't deployed the application as a .ear, the app name for us will be an empty string
        final String appName = "";
        // This is the module name of the deployed EJBs on the server. This is typically the jar name of the
        // EJB deployment, without the .jar suffix, but can be overridden via the ejb-jar.xml
        // In this example, we have deployed the EJBs in a jboss-as-ejb-remote-app.jar, so the module name is
        // jboss-as-ejb-remote-app
        final String moduleName = "jboss-as-ejb-remote-app";
        // AS7 allows each deployment to have an (optional) distinct name. We haven't specified a distinct name for
        // our EJB deployment, so this is an empty string
        final String distinctName = "";
        // The EJB name which by default is the simple class name of the bean implementation class
        final String beanName = CalculatorBean.class.getSimpleName();
        // the remote view fully qualified class name
        final String viewClassName = RemoteCalculator.class.getName();
        // let's do the lookup
        return (RemoteCalculator) context.lookup("ejb:" + appName + "/" + moduleName + "/" + distinctName + "/" + beanName + "!" + viewClassName);
    }
 
    /**
     * Looks up and returns the proxy to remote stateful counter bean
     *
     * @return
     * @throws NamingException
     */
    private static RemoteCounter lookupRemoteStatefulCounter() throws NamingException {
        final Hashtable jndiProperties = new Hashtable();
        jndiProperties.put(Context.URL_PKG_PREFIXES, "org.jboss.ejb.client.naming");
        final Context context = new InitialContext(jndiProperties);
        // The app name is the application name of the deployed EJBs. This is typically the ear name
        // without the .ear suffix. However, the application name could be overridden in the application.xml of the
        // EJB deployment on the server.
        // Since we haven't deployed the application as a .ear, the app name for us will be an empty string
        final String appName = "";
        // This is the module name of the deployed EJBs on the server. This is typically the jar name of the
        // EJB deployment, without the .jar suffix, but can be overridden via the ejb-jar.xml
        // In this example, we have deployed the EJBs in a jboss-as-ejb-remote-app.jar, so the module name is
        // jboss-as-ejb-remote-app
        final String moduleName = "jboss-as-ejb-remote-app";
        // AS7 allows each deployment to have an (optional) distinct name. We haven't specified a distinct name for
        // our EJB deployment, so this is an empty string
        final String distinctName = "";
        // The EJB name which by default is the simple class name of the bean implementation class
        final String beanName = CounterBean.class.getSimpleName();
        // the remote view fully qualified class name
        final String viewClassName = RemoteCounter.class.getName();
        // let's do the lookup (notice the ?stateful string as the last part of the jndi name for stateful bean lookup)
        return (RemoteCounter) context.lookup("ejb:" + appName + "/" + moduleName + "/" + distinctName + "/" + beanName + "!" + viewClassName + "?stateful");
    }
}
----

[NOTE]

The entire server side and client side code is hosted at the github repo
here
https://github.com/wildfly/quickstart/tree/master/ejb-remote[ejb-remote]

The code has some comments which will help you understand each of those
lines. But we'll explain here in more detail what the code does. As a
first step in the client code, we'll do a lookup of the EJB using a JNDI
name. In AS7, for remote access to EJBs, you use the ejb: namespace with
the following syntax:

*For stateless beans:*

[source,java,options="nowrap"]
----
ejb:<app-name>/<module-name>/<distinct-name>/<bean-name>!<fully-qualified-classname-of-the-remote-interface>
----

*For stateful beans:*

[source,java,options="nowrap"]
----
ejb:<app-name>/<module-name>/<distinct-name>/<bean-name>!<fully-qualified-classname-of-the-remote-interface>?stateful
----

The ejb: namespace identifies it as a EJB lookup and is a constant (i.e.
doesn't change) for doing EJB lookups. The rest of the parts in the jndi
name are as follows:

*app-name* : This is the name of the .ear (without the .ear suffix) that
you have deployed on the server and contains your EJBs.

* Jakarta EE allows you to override the application name, to a name of
your choice by setting it in the application.xml. If the deployment uses
uses such an override then the app-name used in the JNDI name should
match that name.
* EJBs can also be deployed in a .war or a plain .jar (like we did in
step 1). In such cases where the deployment isn't an .ear file, then the
app-name must be an empty string, while doing the lookup.

*module-name* : This is the name of the .jar (without the .jar suffix)
that you have deployed on the server and the contains your EJBs. If the
EJBs are deployed in a .war then the module name is the .war name
(without the .war suffix).

* Jakarta EE allows you to override the module name, by setting it in the
ejb-jar.xml/web.xml of your deployment. If the deployment uses such an
override then the module-name used in the JNDI name should match that
name.
* Module name part cannot be an empty string in the JNDI name

*distinct-name* : This is a WildFly-specific name which can be
optionally assigned to the deployments that are deployed on the server.
More about the purpose and usage of this will be explained in a separate
chapter. If a deployment doesn't use distinct-name then, use an empty
string in the JNDI name, for distinct-name

*bean-name* : This is the name of the bean for which you are doing the
lookup. The bean name is typically the unqualified classname of the bean
implementation class, but can be overriden through either ejb-jar.xml or
via annotations. The bean name part cannot be an empty string in the
JNDI name.

*fully-qualified-classname-of-the-remote-interface* : This is the fully
qualified class name of the interface for which you are doing the
lookup. The interface should be one of the remote interfaces exposed by
the bean on the server. The fully qualified class name part cannot be an
empty string in the JNDI name.

For stateful beans, the JNDI name expects an additional "?stateful" to
be appended after the fully qualified interface name part. This is
because for stateful beans, a new session gets created on JNDI lookup
and the EJB client API implementation doesn't contact the server during
the JNDI lookup to know what kind of a bean the JNDI name represents
(we'll come to this in a while). So the JNDI name itself is expected to
indicate that the client is looking up a stateful bean, so that an
appropriate session can be created.

Now that we know the syntax, let's see our code and check what JNDI name
it uses. Since our stateless EJB named CalculatorBean is deployed in a
jboss-as-ejb-remote-app.jar (without any ear) and since we are looking
up the org.jboss.as.quickstarts.ejb.remote.stateless.RemoteCalculator
remote interface, our JNDI name will be:

....
ejb:/jboss-as-ejb-remote-app//CalculatorBean!org.jboss.as.quickstarts.ejb.remote.stateless.RemoteCalculator
....

That's what the lookupRemoteStatelessCalculator() method in the above
client code uses.

For the stateful EJB named CounterBean which is deployed in hte same
jboss-as-ejb-remote-app.jar and which exposes the
org.jboss.as.quickstarts.ejb.remote.stateful.RemoteCounter, the JNDI
name will be:

....
ejb:/jboss-as-ejb-remote-app//CounterBean!org.jboss.as.quickstarts.ejb.remote.stateful.RemoteCounter?stateful
....

That's what the lookupRemoteStatefulCounter() method in the above client
code uses.

Now that we know of the JNDI name, let's take a look at the following
piece of code in the lookupRemoteStatelessCalculator():

[source,java,options="nowrap"]
----
final Hashtable jndiProperties = new Hashtable();
jndiProperties.put(Context.URL_PKG_PREFIXES, "org.jboss.ejb.client.naming");
final Context context = new InitialContext(jndiProperties);
----

Here we are creating a JNDI InitialContext object by passing it some
JNDI properties. The Context.URL_PKG_PREFIXES is set to
org.jboss.ejb.client.naming. This is necessary because we should let the
JNDI API know what handles the ejb: namespace that we use in our JNDI
names for lookup. The "org.jboss.ejb.client.naming" has a
URLContextFactory implementation which will be used by the JNDI APIs to
parse and return an object for ejb: namespace lookups. You can either
pass these properties to the constructor of the InitialContext class or
have a jndi.properites file in the classpath of the client application,
which (atleast) contains the following property:

[source,java,options="nowrap"]
----
java.naming.factory.url.pkgs=org.jboss.ejb.client.naming
----

So at this point, we have setup the InitialContext and also have the
JNDI name ready to do the lookup. You can now do the lookup and the
appropriate proxy which will be castable to the remote interface that
you used as the fully qualified class name in the JNDI name, will be
returned. Some of you might be wondering, how the JNDI implementation
knew which server address to look, for your deployed EJBs. The answer is
in AS7, the proxies returned via JNDI name lookup for ejb: namespace do
not connect to the server unless an invocation on those proxies is done.

Now let's get to the point where we invoke on this returned proxy:

[source,java,options="nowrap"]
----
// Let's lookup the remote stateless calculator
        final RemoteCalculator statelessRemoteCalculator = lookupRemoteStatelessCalculator();
        System.out.println("Obtained a remote stateless calculator for invocation");
        // invoke on the remote calculator
        int a = 204;
        int b = 340;
        System.out.println("Adding " + a + " and " + b + " via the remote stateless calculator deployed on the server");
        int sum = statelessRemoteCalculator.add(a, b);
----

We can see here that the proxy returned after the lookup is used to
invoke the add(...) method of the bean. It's at this point that the JNDI
implementation (which is backed by the EJB client API) needs to know the
server details. So let's now get to the important part of setting up the
EJB client context properties.

[[setting-up-ejb-client-context-properties]]
== Setting up EJB client context properties

A EJB client context is a context which contains contextual information
for carrying out remote invocations on EJBs. This is a WildFly-specific
API. The EJB client context can be associated with multiple EJB
receivers. Each EJB receiver is capable of handling invocations on
different EJBs. For example, an EJB receiver "Foo" might be able to
handle invocation on a bean identified by
app-A/module-A/distinctinctName-A/Bar!RemoteBar, whereas a EJB receiver
named "Blah" might be able to handle invocation on a bean identified by
app-B/module-B/distinctName-B/BeanB!RemoteBean. Each such EJB receiver
knows about what set of EJBs it can handle and each of the EJB receiver
knows which server target to use for handling the invocations on the
bean. For example, if you have a AS7 server at 10.20.30.40 IP address
which has its remoting port opened at 4447 and if that's the server on
which you deployed that CalculatorBean, then you can setup a EJB
receiver which knows its target address is 10.20.30.40:4447. Such an EJB
receiver will be capable enough to communicate to the server via the
JBoss specific EJB remote client protocol (details of which will be
explained in-depth in a separate chapter).

Now that we know what a EJB client context is and what a EJB receiver
is, let's see how we can setup a client context with 1 EJB receiver
which can connect to 10.20.30.40 IP address at port 4447. That EJB
client context will then be used (internally) by the JNDI implementation
to handle invocations on the bean proxy.

The client will have to place a jboss-ejb-client.properties file in the
classpath of the application. The jboss-ejb-client.properties can
contain the following properties:

....
endpoint.name=client-endpoint
remote.connectionprovider.create.options.org.xnio.Options.SSL_ENABLED=false
 
remote.connections=default
 
remote.connection.default.host=10.20.30.40
remote.connection.default.port = 8080
remote.connection.default.connect.options.org.xnio.Options.SASL_POLICY_NOANONYMOUS=false
 
remote.connection.default.username=appuser
remote.connection.default.password=apppassword
....

[NOTE]

This file includes a reference to a default password. Be sure to change
this as soon as possible.

The above properties file is just an example. The actual file that was
used for this sample program is available here for reference
https://github.com/wildfly/quickstart/blob/master/ejb-remote/client/src/main/resources/jboss-ejb-client.properties[jboss-ejb-client.properties]

[NOTE]

We'll see what each of it means.

First the endpoint.name property. We mentioned earlier that the EJB
receivers will communicate with the server for EJB invocations.
Internally, they use JBoss Remoting project to carry out the
communication. The endpoint.name property represents the name that will
be used to create the client side of the enpdoint. The endpoint.name
property is optional and if not specified in the
jboss-ejb-client.properties file, it will default to
"config-based-ejb-client-endpoint" name.

Next is the remote.connectionprovider.create.options.<....> properties:

....
remote.connectionprovider.create.options.org.xnio.Options.SSL_ENABLED=false
....

The "remote.connectionprovider.create.options." property prefix can be
used to pass the options that will be used while create the connection
provider which will handle the "remote:" protocol. In this example we
use the "remote.connectionprovider.create.options." property prefix to
pass the "org.xnio.Options.SSL_ENABLED" property value as false. That
property will then be used during the connection provider creation.
Similarly other properties can be passed too, just append it to the
"remote.connectionprovider.create.options." prefix

Next we'll see:

....
remote.connections=default
....

This is where you define the connections that you want to setup for
communication with the remote server. The "remote.connections" property
uses a comma separated value of connection "names". The connection names
are just logical and are used grouping together the connection
configuration properties later on in the properties file. The example
above sets up a single remote connection named "default". There can be
more than one connections that are configured. For example:

....
remote.connections=one, two
....

Here we are listing 2 connections named "one" and "two". Ultimately,
each of the connections will map to a EJB receiver. So if you have 2
connections, that will setup 2 EJB receivers that will be added to the
EJB client context. Each of these connections will be configured with
the connection specific properties as follows:

....
remote.connection.default.host=10.20.30.40
remote.connection.default.port = 8080
remote.connection.default.connect.options.org.xnio.Options.SASL_POLICY_NOANONYMOUS=false
....

As you can see we are using the "remote.connection.<connection-name>."
prefix for specifying the connection specific property. The connection
name here is "default" and we are setting the "host" property of that
connection to point to 10.20.30.40. Similarly we set the "port" for that
connection to 4447.

By default WildFly uses 8080 as the remoting port. The EJB client API
uses the http port, with the http-upgrade functionality, for
communicating with the server for remote invocations, so that's the port
we use in our client programs (unless the server is configured for some
other http port)

....
remote.connection.default.username=appuser
remote.connection.default.password=apppassword
....

The given user/password must be set by using the command bin/add-user.sh
﻿(or.bat). +
The user and password must be set because the security-realm is enabled
for the subsystem remoting (see standalone*.xml or domain.xml) by
default. +
If you do not need the security for remoting you might remove the
attribute security-realm in the configuration.

security-realm is enabled by default.

[NOTE]

We then use the "remote.connection.<connection-name>.connect.options."
property prefix to setup options that will be used during the connection
creation.

Here's an example of setting up multiple connections with different
properties for each of those:

....
remote.connectionprovider.create.options.org.xnio.Options.SSL_ENABLED=false
 
remote.connections=one, two
 
remote.connection.one.host=localhost
remote.connection.one.port=6999
remote.connection.one.connect.options.org.xnio.Options.SASL_POLICY_NOANONYMOUS=false
 
remote.connection.two.host=localhost
remote.connection.two.port=7999
remote.connection.two.connect.options.org.xnio.Options.SASL_POLICY_NOANONYMOUS=false
....

As you can see we setup 2 connections "one" and "two" which both point
to "localhost" as the "host" but different ports. Each of these
connections will internally be used to create the EJB receivers in the
EJB client context.

So that's how the jboss-ejb-client.properties file can be setup and
placed in the classpath.

[[section]]
=====

The EJB client code will by default look for jboss-ejb-client.properties
in the classpath. However, you can specify a different file of your
choice by setting the "jboss.ejb.client.properties.file.path" system
property which points to a properties file on your filesystem,
containing the client context configurations. An example for that would
be
"-Djboss.ejb.client.properties.file.path=/home/me/my-client/custom-jboss-ejb-client.properties"

[[section-1]]
=====

A jboss-client jar is shipped in the distribution. It's available at
WILDFLY_HOME/bin/client/jboss-client.jar. Place this jar in the
classpath of your client application.

If you are using Maven to build the client application, then please
follow the instructions in the WILDFLY_HOME/bin/client/README.txt to add
this jar as a Maven dependency.

[NOTE]

[[summary]]
== Summary

In the above examples, we saw what it takes to invoke a EJB from a
remote client. To summarize:

* On the server side you need to deploy EJBs which expose the remote
views.
* On the client side you need a client program which:
** Has a jboss-ejb-client.properties in its classpath to setup the
server connection information
** Either has a jndi.properties to specify the
java.naming.factory.url.pkgs property or passes that as a property to
the InitialContext constructor
** Setup the client classpath to include the jboss-client jar that's
required for remote invocation of the EJBs. The location of the jar is
mentioned above. You'll also need to have your application's bean
interface jars and other jars that are required by your application, in
the client classpath

NOTE: References in this document to Enterprise JavaBeans(EJB) refer to the Jakarta Enterprise Beans unless otherwise noted.
