Understanding ActiveBPEL Tutorial Test Client

Going through the BPEL construction process worked well but I also wanted to discover how the rest of the tutorial worked. So I dug in and hopefully this breakdown will help you. It helped me! :-)





The loan approval components A-F:

A. index.jsp:

Form with values such:
FirstName: John
LastName: Smith
Amount: 500
Operation:request
URL: http://localhost:8080/active-bpel/services/LoanService
Assessor Response: high,low,FAULT
Approver Response: yes,no, FAULT

Upon Submission:

- A form that submits to itself in which the jsp will make a call to the BPEL process

Step 1: update the values of "loan_approval_config.xml"
(~\Active Endpoints\ActiveBPEL Designer\Server\ActiveBPEL_Tomcat\temp\loan_approval_config.xml)
is updated with the values from the form via the RuntimeParams.java class using xpath notation.

Step 2:
Get the BPEL result via the following call:

This call grabs the newly updated values form the above loan_approval_config.xml
and essentially makes a call to the web service via code like:

BPELTestClient.java

Service service = new Service();
Call call = (Call)service.createCall();
String urlString = rp.getAttr("/rundata/client", "url");
call.setTargetEndpointAddress(new java.net.URL(urlString));
call.setOperationName(rp.getAttr("/rundata/client", "operation"));
call.addParameter("firstName", org.apache.axis.Constants.XSD_STRING,
ParameterMode.IN);
call.addParameter("name", org.apache.axis.Constants.XSD_STRING,
ParameterMode.IN);
call.addParameter("amount", org.apache.axis.Constants.XSD_INTEGER,
ParameterMode.IN);
call.setReturnType(org.apache.axis.Constants.XSD_STRING);

firstName = rp.getText("/rundata/client/firstName");
lastName = rp.getText("/rundata/client/name");
amount = new BigInteger(rp.getText("/rundata/client/amount"));
result = (String)call.invoke(new Object[] {firstName, lastName, amount});

Note however that the index.jsp updates the values for the Assessor and Approver web services in the loan_approval_config.xml.




B. RuntimeParams.java

Class designed to update the "loan_approval_config.xml" file.
It contains a org.w3c.dom.Document and a java.io.File instance variable so that the xml document can be updated via xpath notation.


C. Constants.java

public interface Constants {
public static final String MAGIC_FAULT_STRING = "FAULT";
public static final String MAGIC_FAULT_ERROR_CODE_STRING = "42";
public static final String UNEXPECTED_ERROR_CODE_STRING = "9999";
}



D. loanProcessFault.java

Special extension of org.apache.axis.AxisFault which is thrown by the 2 Web Services
ApproverWebService.java and the AssessorWebService.java


E. The Web Services

Looking at the 2 web services used in the BPEL:

1. ApproverWebService.java
Simply retrieve a value from the loan_approval_config.xml file
RuntimeParams rp = new RuntimeParams();
response = rp.getText("/rundata/approver/accept");

2. AssessorWebService.java
response = rp.getText("/rundata/assessor/risk-level");


Summary
So basics of this BPEL client is index.jsp which

1. updates a loan_approval_config.xml with form values
2. makes a call the to the BPEL by reading the values from loan_approval_config.xml
3. the two partnerLink webservices(Approver and Assessor) read their values from this xml file
4. the jsp is returned the results from the BPEL call