Background:

The application was running happily in Jetty ever since I wrote it three months ago but my client wants to run it in tomcat. It was a standard web application so I thought it will be a child’s play to deploy it in tomcat. Ah! As if I have learned nothing from history! Nothing is child’s play when it comes to deploy an application in a new container, no matter how standard it is! I have learned this lesson hard way from deploying application in tomcat, jetty, jboss, weblogic, glassfish (yeah..i’v been fortunate/unfortunate enough to play with them all) , yet I tend to forget.

Problem 1:
First time I tried to run the app, I ran into the ClassNotFoundException:

SEVERE: WSSERVLET11: failed to parse runtime descriptor: java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: javax/xml/ws/soap/AddressingFeature$Responses
java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: javax/xml/ws/soap/AddressingFeature$Responses
	at com.sun.xml.ws.policy.PolicyWSDLGeneratorExtension.loadConfigurators(PolicyWSDLGeneratorExtension.java:459)
	at com.sun.xml.ws.policy.PolicyWSDLGeneratorExtension.start(PolicyWSDLGeneratorExtension.java:111)

..........................

I remember this! This was due to the jaxws-2.2 libraries conflicting with jaxws-2.1 libraries shipped with jdk-1.6! But I had it fixed by placing the latest jaxb-api.jar & jaxws-api.jar into the JDK_HOME/jre/lib/endorsed folder!

Hmm…here is a clue…the library is setup properly in JDK , app is running fine with Jetty with the same JDK, but wouldn’t load in tomcat!! Who is the ‘Usual Suspect’ ? Of course the tomcat classloading framework! Its ignoring the ‘endorsed’ jars configured in JDK ! Ah, at this point I begin to miss my old complex Tomcat 5.5, there was this ‘endorsed’ directory in the ‘common/endorsed’ folder. Where is it in tomcat 6? Luckily I had some old trick under my belt…Quickly Added a ServletContextListener like this:

public class WebappLoadListener implements ServletContextListener {
	private static final Log log = LogFactory.getLog(WebappLoadListener.class);
	public void contextDestroyed(ServletContextEvent arg0) {
	}

	public void contextInitialized(ServletContextEvent arg0) {
		log.info("\n\n\n ENDORSED DIR: " +System.getProperty("java.endorsed.dirs"));		
	}
}

And the output was:

ENDORSED DIR:  /usr/local/development/servers/apache-tomcat-6.0.26/endorsed

How the hack am I supposed to know that, the directory is not even there! Come on tomcat guys, I understand you want to make things simple for the new tomcat adopters, but why screw us – the old 5.5 users!!! Created folder “/usr/local/development/servers/apache-tomcat-6.0.26/endorsed” and copied the latest jars (jaxb-api.jar jaxws-api.jar) in there, got rid of the ClassNotFoundException.

Problem 2:
As soon as I got rid of problem 1, I ran into this:

SEVERE: WSSERVLET11: failed to parse runtime descriptor: java.lang.NoSuchMethodError: com.sun.istack.logging.Logger.getLogger(Ljava/lang/Class;)Lcom/sun/istack/logging/Logger;
java.lang.NoSuchMethodError: com.sun.istack.logging.Logger.getLogger(Ljava/lang/Class;)Lcom/sun/istack/logging/Logger;
	at com.sun.xml.ws.api.config.management.policy.ManagementAssertion.<clinit>(ManagementAssertion.java:87)
	at com.sun.xml.ws.server.MonitorBase.createManagedObjectManager(MonitorBase.java:121)
	at com.sun.xml.ws.server.WSEndpointImpl.<init>(WSEndpointImpl.java:143)
	at com.sun.xml.ws.server.EndpointFactory.createEndpoint(EndpointFactory.java:232)
	at com.sun.xml.ws.api.server.WSEndpoint.create(WSEndpoint.java:505)
	at com.sun.xml.ws.transport.http.DeploymentDescriptorParser.parseAdapters(DeploymentDescriptorParser.java:253)
	at com.sun.xml.ws.transport.http.DeploymentDescriptorParser.parse(DeploymentDescriptorParser.java:147)

Now this got my head spinning! All the clue I got from Google was pointing to ‘Problem 1′…I was also a little confused and headed that way, placed the ‘jaxb-api.jar jaxws-api.jar’ in various locations, with no luck ! Ok, time to give up that trail and think clear. So, it was not a ClassNotFoundException, the class is there, but the Method is not. Why do this sounds familier? Because I have seen it countless times! Its because of two version of same class staying in the classpath and the faulty one getting preference by Tomcat ClassLoader! If you know about tomcat classloading, you know that it creates a ClassLoader for each webapp and the jars in “WEB-INF/lib” are loaded first (by the child classloader). So I must have some jar in my dependency which should not be there…Hmm..how do I know which jar? Wait, I know a way, infact I even blogged about it HERE.

So quickly added this method in my WebappLoadListener:

public static String getClassLocation(Class clazz) {
		if(clazz == null) {
			return null;
		}

		try {
			ProtectionDomain protectionDomain = clazz.getProtectionDomain();
			CodeSource codeSource = protectionDomain.getCodeSource();
			URL location = codeSource.getLocation();
			return location.toString();
		} catch (Throwable e) {
			e.printStackTrace();
			return "Not found";
		}
	}

	public void contextInitialized(ServletContextEvent arg0) {		
		log.error("jar file: " + getClassLocation(com.sun.istack.logging.Logger.class));		
	}

OUTPUT:

ERROR WebappLoadListener:21 - jar file: file:/home/sajid/workspace_test/.metadata/.plugins/org.eclipse.wst.server.core/tmp0/wtpwebapps/jaxws-sample/WEB-INF/lib/istack-commons-runtime-1.1-SNAPSHOT.jar

I got you “Professor Moriarty” (in case you are not familiar with Sherlock Holmes, Professor Moriarty is the common villain)! How did you got in my LIB folder ! The very name “istack-commons-runtime-1.1-SNAPSHOT.jar” suggests that I should not bundle it in my app! I deleted the jar manually and ran the code. Ah! Sweet. At last my code deployed in tomcat and all my SOAP-UI tests(only Three to be honest) are passed! And where is the class loaded from now?

ERROR WebappLoadListener:21 - jar file: file:/home/sajid/workspace_test/.metadata/.plugins/org.eclipse.wst.server.core/tmp0/wtpwebapps/jaxws-sample/WEB-INF/lib/jaxb-impl-2.2.jar

See! The right class is supplied with the jaxb-impl Jar.

Now, back to the old question, how did istack-commons-runtime-1.1-SNAPSHOT.jar ended up in my library? Did a quick ‘Dependency Graph’ in eclipse

So I added an exclusion rule in the dependency of jaxws-rt:

		<dependency>
			<groupId>com.sun.xml.ws</groupId>
			<artifactId>jaxws-rt</artifactId>
			<version>2.2</version>
			<exclusions>
				<exclusion>
					<groupId>com.sun.istack</groupId>
					<artifactId>istack-commons-runtime</artifactId>
				</exclusion>
			</exclusions>
		</dependency>

Ran all the tests and everything seemed to be OK. I feel so lucky that I spent time writing those SOAP-UI test cases (at the time it felt like complete waste of time)! Otherwise, I’d have to test the application manually to see if anything was broken by this.

Conclusion:
I see now why newbies like to adopt those exotic Ruby framework instead of Java. Imagine someone trying to build a webservice using JAX-WS. As if the api specs are not confusing enough, he has to go through all these pain to run the app! I feel sorry for the poor guy if he starts with tomcat, he would have no clue that its not his code’s fault that the app is not running. Luckily I started with Jetty, not because I was wise but because the client wanted it in Jetty.

But did I have fun going through all these pain? I sure did . Good to know that I still get a kick out of fixing these weird problems, no matter how many times I did it before.

• See if its a suitable replacement for “Appfuse” when I start a new project
• Learn best practices for building spring application from the spring guys

At first I was ‘WOW’ ed by the dynamic code generation and when I saw the app running, but as soon as I “perform eclipse” and imported the code in my workspace, I was disheartened. It is a great effort from the spring team but I am not gonna like it.

Why you may ask? I have couple of reasons, but the most important one is , Spring tried to inject their cutting edge features, aspect-j notations into the generated source. I am not against aspects but when I have more “Aspect-J” codes than my regular codes, I become worried. Worried about how I am going to maintain it, is there good enough IDE for it, are the regular java developers who will be working on the codes going to like/learn the new AspectJ concepts? Again, I am against overuse of annotation. I am ok with Hibernate annotations or validation annotations or transactional annotations, but its too much for me when I write annotations on the controller and map my http requests against it.

I am a big fan of spring , not because it gives me magical transaction management or supercool Controller annotations but because it lets me dependency inject my POJO beans into one another. This is an awesome tool for any designer. But with the latest Roo effort from Spring, I am worried about the future of spring framework. It seems like they are focusing on Rapid Application Development too much.

Anyone who has worked on a product for a decent amount of time will soon realize that the initial development time of the code is only 30-40% of the total lifecycle of the code (or even less). You have to update the code, add twisted domain logic which is never predictable by any annotation driven framework, perform bug fix on the code and the list goes on. By adding all these “Magic” into the code, you are going to leave the new developer (who will eventually take over the code from you) in the wonderland.

I liked the Spring Roo’s shell though. And the JPA POJO generation is also cool..but thats about it. Why don’t the spring guys make a better PetClinic application instead of overdoing annotations?

Here is the problem in my words:

Create a linked list of N Ring where each Ring is an erlang process. When you pass a message to the head Ring , it should propagate the message to the  next Ring and that propagates to the next ring and so on. I added additional clause  — “Each ring should report its successful message delivery to the previous ring and the previous ring should print successful message delivery from its child rings.

Here is the code:

-module(ring).
-compile(export_all).


createRing(N) ->
    Self = self(),
    Head = spawn(fun() -> ring(N, Self) end),   
    Head.

ring(N, PreviousRing) when N > 0 ->
    Self = self(),
    io:format('~w #ring created PID: [~w] ListenerPid: [~w] ~n',[N, Self, PreviousRing]),
    NextRing = spawn(fun() ->
			     ring(N-1 , Self) end),
    loop(N ,NextRing, PreviousRing);

ring(N, PreviousRing) ->
    io:format('last ring reached! ~w ~n',[N]),
    NullRing = spawn(fun() -> 
			     receive
				 Any ->
				     io:format('dummy ring received ~w ~n', Any)
			     end
		     end),
    loop(N, NullRing, PreviousRing).



loop(N, NextRing, PreviousRing) ->
    receive
	{send_message, Message} ->
	    io:format('ring # ~w with pid: #~w received ~w ~n',[N, self(), Message]),
	    NextRing ! {send_message, Message},
	    PreviousRing ! {ok, self()},
	    loop(N, NextRing, PreviousRing);
	{ok, NextRing} ->
	    io:format('~w with pid# ~w successfully sent message ~n',[N-1, NextRing]),
	    loop(N, NextRing, PreviousRing);
	{quit} ->
	    io:format('quiting ring: ~w with Pid: ~w ~n',[N, self()])
    end.


sendMessage(Head, M) when M > 0 ->
    Head ! {send_message, M},
    sendMessage(Head, M - 1);
sendMessage(Head, M) ->
    io:format('sending last message ~n'),
    Head ! {send_message, M}.

Unfortunately they only provide 1 month free subscription

This can be very annoying, specially when you want to execute certain critical features run before running the other not so critical features. Cucumber does not have any provision for feature ordering. But with some minor hacks, you can achieve this.

1st, you need to give each of your features a certain ‘weight’ in a yml file:

features/vcc_admin_create_test.feature: 80
features/transferred_acd_call.feature: 9
features/supervisor_create_test.feature: 8
features/super_force_signout_test.feature: 7
features/simple_queue_call_test.feature: 6
features/queue_delivered_count_test.feature : 67
features/queue_create_test.feature : 13
features/queue_call_treatment_test.feature : 12
features/email_status_monitor_test.feature : 11
features/email_forward.feature : 10
features/dynamic_and_static_number_test.feature : 9
features/agent_profile_change_test.feature : 8
features/agent_email_receiver_test.feature : 7
features/agent_create_test.feature : 6
features/agent_acd_state_test.feature : 5
features/agent_acd_call_duration_test.feature : 4
features/agent_acd_call_count_test.feature : 3
features/admin_call_distribution_policy_test.feature : 2
features/CC_create_test.feature : 1

next, update your env.rb file for adding a hook:

# Overrides the method +method_name+ in +obj+ with the passed block
def override_method(obj, method_name, &block)
  # Get the singleton class/eigenclass for 'obj'
  klass = class <<obj; self; end
 
  # Undefine the old method (using 'send' since 'undef_method' is protected)
  klass.send(:undef_method, method_name)
 
  # Create the new method
  klass.send(:define_method, method_name, block)
end
 
 
  
def get_weight(x)
  weights = YAML::load(File.open('order.yml')) #this is expensive but is done only on rake start
  weight = weights[x]
  if weight == nil or weight == ''
    weight = '100' #this is because we want to run the newly added tests first.
  end
  return weight.to_i()
end
 
def sort_according_to_weights(features)
  return features.sort { |x,y|  get_weight(y)  &lt;=&gt; get_weight(x)}
end
 
 
AfterConfiguration do |configuration|
  puts "\n\n\n *****  config: #{configuration} "
  featurefiles =  configuration.feature_files
 
  override_method(configuration, :feature_files) {
    puts "overriding the old featurefiles according to their weight"
    sorted_files = sort_according_to_weights(featurefiles);   
    sorted_files
  }
 
    puts "\n\n *************************** features will be executed in following order: \n"
    for i in configuration.feature_files
      puts "#{i} : weight: #{get_weight(i)}"
    end
end

After Cucumber loads the feature files from the directory, it calls “AfterConfiguration” before it starts executing the features. Sadly the configuration.feature_files is not an array which you can just sort. Its a method ! But with ruby being a dynamic language, you can push new method definition into the configuration instance so that it returns the features according to the order you specified !

Sipper comes with its testing/assertion/validation framework. First things first, we need to drop them. We are only interested into the Sip Stack and Call abstraction framework provided by sipper. We will do the assertion from our Cucumber framework.

First of all, you need to be able to run sipper in standalone mode rather than using the ‘rake’ provided by sipper framework. You need to bootstrap sipper framework from your ruby code. You can do that with the following code (usually you would want to put it in your support/env.rb configuration file for cucumber) :

require 'sipper'
require 'sipper_configurator'</code>

cf = File.join("C:/dev/projects/myproject/qa/sipper_tests/cucumber_tests/", "config", "sipper.cfg")
SipperConfigurator.load_yaml_file(cf)

@sipper = SIP::Sipper.new()
@sipper.start

Now that you have started sipper, you can register any controller in it from your cucumber steps. Lets say we have a step like this:

   Then I start customer's phone

You would want to start the controller that ‘REGISTER’ for the customer’s phone and wait for any incoming call.

Then /^I start customer's phone$/ do
  puts "Going to start Controller: CallReceiverCustomerController"
  @customer_controller = @sipper.start_named_controller("CallReceiverCustomerController")
  sleep 3
end

I have extended the standard sipper controller so that I can call it and control it from any ruby application. Basically this will act as a SIP phone and provide me the nice API’s

require 'sip_test_driver_controller'

# NOTE: Extending Core Sipper controller to provide programmable API to simple RUBY client. The ruby client 
# can directly call this controller to control the call flows.

class CommonCallController   < SIP::SipTestDriverController 

  # change the directive below to true to enable transaction usage.
  # If you do that then make sure that your controller is also 
  # transaction aware. i.e does not try send ACK to non-2xx responses,
  # does not send 100 Trying response etc.

  transaction_usage :use_transactions=>false

  # change the directive below to true to start after loading.
  start_on_load false


  def initialize    
    logd('CallReceiverController: Controller created')
    clear_states()
  end

  def clear_states()
    @registered = false
    @current_session = nil
    @call_ended = false
    @got_invite=false
  end

  def specified_transport    
    log " specified_transport #{get_local_sipper_ip()} : #{get_local_sipper_port()}"
    [get_local_sipper_ip(),get_local_sipper_port()]
  end  
  
  def start
    if required_registration
      register()
    end
    
    return self 
  end


  def register()
      log "doing registration with " + get_line_port
      session = create_udp_session(SipperConfigurator[:DefaultRIP], SipperConfigurator[:DefaultRP])
           r = session.create_initial_request("REGISTER", "sip:" + SipperConfigurator[:BroadworksDomain] ,
           :from=> "sip:"+ get_line_port, :to=>"sip:"+ get_line_port,
           :contact=> "sip:" + get_line_port_without_domain + "@"+ get_local_sipper_ip() +":"+get_local_sipper_port().to_s(),
           :expires=>"300",
           :cseq=>"1 REGISTER",
           :p_session_record=>"msg-info")
      r.contact.q="0.9"
      session = create_udp_session(SipperConfigurator[:DefaultRIP], SipperConfigurator[:DefaultRP])
      session.send(r)
      @current_session = session
      log "---------session: #{session}"
  end

  def required_registration
    true
  end
  
  def on_success_res_for_register(s)
    @current_session = s
    log "@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ on_success_res_for_register"
    @registered = true
    s.invalidate(true);
  end

  def on_success_res(s)
     @current_session = s
    log '@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ on_success_res ->'
    @registered = true
    s.invalidate(true);
 end
 
  def on_failure_res(session)
    sleep 10
    log "on_failure_res error code: #{session.iresponse.code}"
    puts "\n -----------------------------****************  #{caller}"
    if session.iresponse.code == 401
     r = session.create_request_with_response_to_challenge(session.iresponse.www_authenticate, false,get_auth_id, get_auth_password)     
     session.send r
     session[:auth] = r.authorization
    end
  end

  
  def is_ringing() 
    
      return @got_invite
    
  end
  
  #for the first invite it will send 180, for all other re-invite, it will send 200
  def on_invite(session)
    
    if !session['invite']
      log "got invite------------"
      @current_session = session
      log 'got call from Queue '
      session.respond_with(100)
      session.respond_with(180)
      session['invite']=1
      @got_invite=true
    else
      log "got re invite------------"
      log 'CallReceiverController:  got re-invite'
      if @accept_call         
        session.respond_with(200)      
       end
    end    
  end
  
  
  def make_call(uri)
    log "make_call : #{uri}"
    session = create_udp_session('10.0.0.27', 5060)
    session.request_with('INVITE', uri)
    #@current_session = session
  end
  
  def accept_call()
    log "accept_call #{@current_session}"
    @accept_call=true
    @current_session.respond_with(200)  
  end
  
  def end_call()
    log "ending call #{@current_session}"
    if @current_session
      log 'sending bye'
      @current_session.rp = SipperConfigurator[:DefaultRP]
      @current_session.request_with('BYE')
    end
  end
  
  def on_bye(session)
    log "*******************got bye"
    @call_ended = true
    session.respond_with(200)
    session.invalidate(true)
  end

  def is_call_ended()
    return @call_ended
  end
  
  def last_session_state
    @current_session.last_state
  end
  
  def get_local_sipper_port
    SipperConfigurator[:LocalSipperPort][4]
  end
  protected :get_local_sipper_port
  
  def get_local_sipper_ip
    SipperConfigurator[:LocalSipperIP]
  end  
  protected :get_local_sipper_ip

  def get_line_port
    SipperConfigurator[:AgentLinePort]
  end
  protected :get_line_port

  def controller_name
    self.class.name
  end
  
  def get_line_port_without_domain
    SipperConfigurator[:AgentLinePortWithoutDomain].to_s
  end
  protected :get_line_port_without_domain

  def get_auth_password
    SipperConfigurator[:CustomerAuthenticationPassword]
  end
  protected :get_auth_password
  
  def get_auth_id
    SipperConfigurator[:CustomerAuthenticationUserId]
  end
  protected :get_auth_id

  def log(argument) 
     puts  controller_name + " : " + argument
  end
end

Our CallReceiverCustomerController is a simple subclass of the CommonCallController to provide the SIP Registration Details so that it can register to any sip provider (in our case Broadworks).

require 'common_call_controller'

class CallReceiverCustomerController  < CommonCallController 


  def initialize
    puts "initialize"
    super()
    log 'CallReceiverControllerAgent: Controller created'
  end

  def get_local_sipper_port
    SipperConfigurator[:LocalSipperPort][6]
  end
  protected :get_local_sipper_port
  
  def get_local_sipper_ip
    SipperConfigurator[:LocalSipperIP]
  end  
  protected :get_local_sipper_ip

  def get_line_port
    SipperConfigurator[:AgentLinePort]
  end
  protected :get_line_port

  def controller_name
    self.class.name
  end
  
  def get_line_port_without_domain
    SipperConfigurator[:AgentLinePortWithoutDomain].to_s
  end
  protected :get_line_port_without_domain

  def get_auth_password
    SipperConfigurator[:AgentAuthenticationPassword]
  end
  protected :get_auth_password
  
  def get_auth_id
    SipperConfigurator[:AgentAuthenticationUserId]
  end
  protected :get_auth_id

end

Now the rest is simple, you can add cucumber steps for like this :

      Then customer Should get Alerting on his phone
      Then customer waits for 10 seconds
      Then customer accepts the phone
      Then customer waits for 20 seconds
      Then customer hangups the phone

and the steps definitions like this:

Then /^customer accepts the Call$/ do
puts "Agent is accepting the Call"
@customer_controller.accept_call()
end

Then /^customer hangs up the Call$/ do
puts "Agent is hanging up the Call"
@customer_controller.end_call()
end

Then /^customer should get alerting on his phone$/ do
i = 0
#wait for the ringing event to come
while ! @customer_controller.is_ringing() && i < 10
sleep 1
i += 1
end

if !@customer_controller.is_ringing()
raise "Agent didn't get any incoming call"
end
end

There you go. The beauty of this approach is that now, even your product owner can write test steps without having any clue of SIP / SIPPER. This is just plain english!

The "CommonCallController" I wrote is neither perfect not elegant. It uses instance variables to store the call state which can get wild for unexpected call flows. But It can easily be modified to suit your need. For me, it does its job for simple call flows.

There are plenty of documents on the web about how to use cucumber with Watir to automate webapplication testing..so I am not gonna talk about that.