Multi-Module Enterprise Project

7.1. Introduction

In this chapter, we create a multi-module project that evolves the examples from Chapter 6, A Multi-Module Project and Chapter 5, A Simple Web Application into a project that uses the Spring Framework and Hibernate to create both a simple web application and a command-line utility to read data from the Yahoo Weather feed. The simple-weather code developed in Chapter 4, Customizing a Maven Project will be combined with the simple-webapp project defined in Chapter 5, A Simple Web Application. In the process of creating this multi-module project, we’ll explore Maven and discuss the different ways it can be used to create modular projects that encourage reuse.

7.1.1. Downloading this Chapter’s Example

The multi-module project developed in this example consists of modified versions of the projects developed in Chapter 4, Customizing a Maven Project and Chapter 5, A Simple Web Application, and we are not using the Maven Archetype plug-in to generate this multi-module project. We strongly recommend downloading a copy of the example code to use as a supplemental reference while reading the content in this chapter. Without the examples, you won’t be able to recreate this chapter’s example code. This chapter’s example project may be downloaded with the book’s example code at:

https://www.sonatype.com/hubfs/Maven%20by%20Example/mvnex-examples.zip

Unzip this archive in any directory, and then go to the ch-multi-spring directory. There you will see a directory named simple-parent that contains the multi-module Maven project developed in this chapter. In the simple-parent/ project directory you will see a pom.xml and the five submodule directories simple-model/, simple-persist/, simple-command/, simple-weather/ and simple-webapp/.

7.1.2. Multi-Module Enterprise Project

Presenting the complexity of a massive Enterprise-level project far exceeds the scope of this book. Such projects are characterized by multiple databases, integration with external systems, and subprojects which may be divided by departments. These projects usually span thousands of lines of code, and involve the effort of tens or hundreds of software developers. While such a complete example is outside the scope of this book, we can provide you with a sample project that suggests the complexity of a larger Enterprise application. In the conclusion we suggest some possibilities for modularity beyond that presented in this chapter.

In this chapter, we’re going to look at a multi-module Maven project that will produce two applications: a command-line query tool for the Yahoo Weather feed and a web application which queries the Yahoo Weather feed. Both of these applications will store the results of queries in an embedded database. Each will allow the user to retrieve historical weather data from this embedded database. Both applications will reuse application logic and share a persistence library. This chapter’s example builds upon the Yahoo Weather parsing code introduced in Chapter 4, Customizing a Maven Project. This project is divided into five submodules shown in Figure 7.1, “Multi-Module Enterprise Application Module Relationships”.

Figure 7.1. Multi-Module Enterprise Application Module Relationships

In Figure 7.1, “Multi-Module Enterprise Application Module Relationships”, you can see that there are five submodules of simple-parent. They are:

• simple-model

  This module defines a simple object model which models the data returned from the Yahoo Weather feed. This object model contains the Weather, Condition, Atmosphere, Location, and Wind objects. When our application parses the Yahoo Weather feed, the parsers defined in simple-weather will parse the XML and create Weather objects which are then used by the application. This project contains model objects annotated with Hibernate 3 Annotations. These annotations are used by the logic in simple-persist to map each model object to a corresponding table in a relational database.

• simple-weather

  This module contains all of the logic required to retrieve data from the Yahoo Weather feed and parse the resulting XML. The XML returned from this feed is converted into the model objects defined in simple-model. simple-weather has a dependency on simple-model. simple-weather defines a WeatherService object which is referenced by both the simple-command and simple-webapp projects.

• simple-persist

  This module contains some Data Access Objects (DAO) which are configured to store Weather objects in an embedded database. Both of the applications defined in this multi-module project will use the DAOs defined in simple-persist to store data in an embedded database. The DAOs defined in this project understand and return the model objects defined in simple-model. simple-persist has a direct dependency on simple-model and it depends upon the Hibernate Annotations present on the model objects.

• simple-webapp

  The web application project contains two Spring MVC Controller implementations which use the WeatherService defined in simple-weather and the DAOs defined in simple-persist. simple-webapp has a direct dependency on simple-weather and simple-persist; it has a transitive dependency on simple-model.

• simple-command

  This module contains a simple command-line tool which can be used to query the Yahoo Weather feed. This project contains a class with a static main() method and interacts with the WeatherService defined in simple-weather and the DAOs defined in simple-persist. simple-command has a direct dependency on simple-weather and simple-persist; it has a transitive dependency on simple-model.

This chapter contains a contrived example simple enough to introduce in a book, yet complex enough to justify a set of five submodules. Our contrived example has a model project with five classes, a persistence library with two service classes, and a weather parsing library with five or six classes, but a real-world system might have a model project with a hundred objects, several persistence libraries, and service libraries spanning multiple departments. Although we’ve tried to make sure that the code contained in this example is straightforward enough to comprehend in a single sitting, we’ve also gone out of our way to build a modular project. You might be tempted to look at the examples in this chapter and walk away with the idea that Maven encourages too much complexity given that our model project has only five classes. Although using Maven does suggest a certain level of modularity, do realize that we’ve gone out of our way to complicate our simple example projects for the purpose of demonstrating Maven’s multi-module features.

7.1.3. Technology Used in this Example

This chapter’s example involves some technology which, while popular, is not directly related to Maven. These technologies are the Spring Framework and Hibernate. The Spring Framework is an Inversion of Control (IoC) container and a set of frameworks that aim to simplify interaction with various J2EE libraries. Using the Spring Framework as a foundational framework for application development gives you access to a number of helpful abstractions that can take much of the meddlesome busywork out of dealing with persistence frameworks like Hibernate or iBatis or enterprise APIs like JDBC, JNDI, and JMS. The Spring Framework has grown in popularity over the past few years as a replacement for the heavy weight enterprise standards coming out of Sun Microsystems. Hibernate is a widely used Object-Relational Mapping framework which allows you to interact with a relational database as if it were a collection of Java objects. This example focuses on building a simple web application and a command-line application that use the Spring Framework to expose a set of reusable components to applications and which also use Hibernate to persist weather data in an embedded database.

We’ve decided to include references to these frameworks to demonstrate how one would construct projects using these technologies when using Maven. Although we make brief efforts to introduce these technologies throughout this chapter, we will not go out of our way to fully explain these technologies. For more information about the Spring Framework, please see the project’s web site at https://spring.io/. For more information about Hibernate and Hibernate Annotations, please see the project’s web site at https://hibernate.org/. This chapter uses Hyper Structured Query Language Database (HSQLDB) as an embedded database; for more information about this database, see the project’s web site at https://hsqldb.org/.

7.2. The Simple Parent Project

This simple-parent project has a pom.xml that references five submodules: simple-command, simple-model, simple-weather, simple-persist, and simple-webapp. The top-level pom.xml is shown in simple-parent Project POM.

simple-parent Project POM. 

<project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0"
         xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
         xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0
                             http://maven.apache.org/maven-v4_0_0.xsd">
    <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>

    <groupId>org.sonatype.mavenbook.multispring</groupId>
    <artifactId>simple-parent</artifactId>
    <packaging>pom</packaging>
    <version>1.0</version>
    <name>Multi-Spring Chapter Simple Parent Project</name>

    <modules>
        <module>simple-command</module>
        <module>simple-model</module>
        <module>simple-weather</module>
        <module>simple-persist</module>
        <module>simple-webapp</module>
    </modules>

    <build>
        <pluginManagement>
            <plugins>
                <plugin>
                    <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
                    <artifactId>maven-compiler-plugin</artifactId>
                    <configuration>
                        <source>1.5</source>
                        <target>1.5</target>
                    </configuration>
                </plugin>
            </plugins>
        </pluginManagement>
    </build>

    <dependencies>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>junit</groupId>
            <artifactId>junit</artifactId>
            <version>3.8.1</version>
            <scope>test</scope>
        </dependency>
    </dependencies>
</project>

Note the similarities of this parent POM to the parent POM defined in simple-parent Project POM. The only real difference between these two POMs is the list of submodules. Where that example only listed two submodules, this parent POM lists five submodules. The next few sections explore each of these five submodules in some detail. Because our example uses Java annotations, we’ve configured the compiler to target the Java 5 JVM.

7.3. The Simple Model Module

You can download Apache Maven from the project website at https://maven.apache.org/download.cgi.

When downloading Maven, make sure you choose the latest version of Apache Maven from the Maven website. The latest version of Maven when this book was written was Maven 3.3.3. If you are not familiar with the Apache Software License, you should familiarize yourself with the terms of the license before you start using the product. More information on the Apache Software License can be found in Section 2.9, “About the Apache Software License”.

The first thing most enterprise projects need is an object model. An object model captures the core set of domain objects in any system. A banking system might have an object model which consists of Account, Customer, and Transaction objects, or a system to capture and communicate sports scores might have a Team and a Game object. Whatever it is, there’s a good chance that you’ve modeled the concepts in your system in an object model. It is a common practice in Maven projects to separate this project into a separate project which is widely referenced. In this system we are capturing each query to the Yahoo Weather feed with a Weather object which references four other objects. Wind direction, chill, and speed are stored in a Wind object. Location data including the zip code, city, region, and country are stored in a Location class. Atmospheric conditions such as the humidity, maximum visibility, barometric pressure, and whether the pressure is rising or falling are stored in an Atmosphere class. A textual description of conditions, the temperature, and the date of the observation is stored in a Condition class.

Figure 7.2. Simple Object Model for Weather Data

The pom.xml file for this simple object model contains one dependency that bears some explanation. Our object model is annotated with Hibernate Annotations. We use these annotations to map the model objects in this model to tables in a relational database. The dependency is org.hibernate:hibernate-annotations:3.3.0.ga. Take a look at the pom.xml shown in simple-model pom.xml, and then look at the next few examples for some illustrations of these annotations.

simple-model pom.xml. 

<project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0"
         xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
         xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0
                             http://maven.apache.org/maven-v4_0_0.xsd">
    <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>
    <parent>
        <groupId>org.sonatype.mavenbook.multispring</groupId>
        <artifactId>simple-parent</artifactId>
        <version>1.0</version>
    </parent>
    <artifactId>simple-model</artifactId>
    <packaging>jar</packaging>

    <name>Simple Object Model</name>

    <dependencies>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.hibernate</groupId>
            <artifactId>hibernate-annotations</artifactId>
            <version>3.3.0.ga</version>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.hibernate</groupId>
            <artifactId>hibernate-commons-annotations</artifactId>
            <version>3.3.0.ga</version>
        </dependency>
    </dependencies>
</project>

In src/main/java/org/sonatype/mavenbook/weather/model, we have Weather.java, which contains the annotated Weather model object. The Weather object is a simple Java bean. This means that we have private member variables like id, location, condition, wind, atmosphere, and date exposed with public getter and setter methods that adhere to the following pattern: if a property is named name, there will be a public no-arg getter method named getName(), and there will be a one-argument setter named setName(String name). Although we show the getter and setter methods for the id property, we’ve omitted most of the getters and setters for most of the other properties to save a few trees. See Annotated Weather Model Object.

Annotated Weather Model Object. 

package org.sonatype.mavenbook.weather.model;

import javax.persistence.*;

import java.util.Date;

@Entity
@NamedQueries({
  @NamedQuery(name="Weather.byLocation",
              query="from Weather w where w.location = :location")
})
public class Weather {

  @Id
  @GeneratedValue(strategy=GenerationType.IDENTITY)
  private Integer id;

  @ManyToOne(cascade=CascadeType.ALL)
  private Location location;

  @OneToOne(mappedBy="weather",cascade=CascadeType.ALL)
  private Condition condition;

  @OneToOne(mappedBy="weather",cascade=CascadeType.ALL)
  private Wind wind;

  @OneToOne(mappedBy="weather",cascade=CascadeType.ALL)
  private Atmosphere atmosphere;

  private Date date;

  public Weather() {}

  public Integer getId() { return id; }
  public void setId(Integer id) { this.id = id; }

  // All getter and setter methods omitted...
}

In the Weather class, we are using Hibernate annotations to provide guidance to the simple-persist project. These annotations are used by Hibernate to map an object to a table in a relational database. Although a full explanation of Hibernate annotations is beyond the scope of this chapter, here is a brief explanation for the curious. The @Entity annotation marks this class as a persistent entity. We’ve omitted the @Table annotation on this class, so Hibernate is going to use the name of the class as the name of the table to map Weather to. The @NamedQueries annotation defines a query that is used by the WeatherDAO in simple-persist. The query language in the @NamedQuery annotation is written in something called Hibernate Query Language (HQL). Each member variable is annotated with annotations that define the type of column and any relationships implied by that column:

• Id

  The id property is annotated with @Id. This marks the id property as the property that contains the primary key in a database table. The @GeneratedValue controls how new primary key values are generated. In the case of id, we’re using the IDENTITY GenerationType, which will use the underlying database’s identity generation facilities.

• Location

  Each Weather object instance corresponds to a Location object. A Location object represents a zip code, and the @ManyToOne makes sure that Weather objects that point to the same Location object reference the same instance. The cascade attribute of the @ManyToOne makes sure that we persist a Location object every time we persist a Weather object.

• Condition, Wind, Atmosphere

  Each of these objects is mapped as a @OneToOne with the CascadeType of ALL. This means that every time we save a Weather object, we’ll be inserting a row into the Weather table, the Condition table, the Wind table, and the Atmosphere table.

• Date

  Date is not annotated. This means that Hibernate is going to use all of the column defaults to define this mapping. The column name is going to be date, and the column type is going to be the appropriate time to match the Date object.

Next, take a look at one of the secondary model objects, Condition, shown in simple-model’s Condition Model Object.. This class also resides in src/main/java/org/sonatype/mavenbook/weather/model.

simple-model’s Condition Model Object. 

package org.sonatype.mavenbook.weather.model;

import javax.persistence.*;

@Entity
public class Condition {

  @Id
  @GeneratedValue(strategy=GenerationType.IDENTITY)
  private Integer id;

  private String text;
  private String code;
  private String temp;
  private String date;

  @OneToOne(cascade=CascadeType.ALL)
  @JoinColumn(name="weather_id", nullable=false)
  private Weather weather;

  public Condition() {}

  public Integer getId() { return id; }
  public void setId(Integer id) { this.id = id; }

  // All getter and setter methods omitted...
}

The Condition class resembles the Weather class. It is annotated as an @Entity, and it has similar annotations on the id property. The text, code, temp, and date properties are all left with the default column settings, and the weather property is annotated with a @OneToOne annotation and another annotation that references the associated Weather object with a foreign key column named weather_id.

7.4. The Simple Weather Module

The next module we’re going to examine could be considered something of a “service.” The Simple Weather module is the module that contains all of the logic necessary to retrieve and parse the data from the Yahoo Weather RSS feed. Although Simple Weather contains three Java classes and one JUnit test, it is going to present a single component, WeatherService, to both the Simple Web Application and the Simple Command-Line Utility. Very often an enterprise project will contain several API modules that contain critical business logic or logic that interacts with external systems. A banking system might have a module that retrieves and parses data from a third-party data provider, and a system to display sports scores might interact with an XML feed that presents real-time scores for basketball or soccer. In simple-weather Module POM, this module encapsulates all of the network activity and XML parsing that is involved in the interaction with Yahoo Weather. Other modules can depend on this module and simply call out to the retrieveForecast() method on WeatherService, which takes a zip code as an argument and which returns a Weather object.

simple-weather Module POM. 

<project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0"
         xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
         xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0
                             http://maven.apache.org/maven-v4_0_0.xsd">
    <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>
    <parent>
        <groupId>org.sonatype.mavenbook.multispring</groupId>
        <artifactId>simple-parent</artifactId>
        <version>1.0</version>
    </parent>
    <artifactId>simple-weather</artifactId>
    <packaging>jar</packaging>

    <name>Simple Weather API</name>

    <dependencies>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.sonatype.mavenbook.multispring</groupId>
            <artifactId>simple-model</artifactId>
            <version>1.0</version>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>log4j</groupId>
            <artifactId>log4j</artifactId>
            <version>1.2.14</version>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>dom4j</groupId>
            <artifactId>dom4j</artifactId>
            <version>1.6.1</version>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>jaxen</groupId>
            <artifactId>jaxen</artifactId>
            <version>1.1.1</version>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.apache.commons</groupId>
            <artifactId>commons-io</artifactId>
            <version>1.3.2</version>
            <scope>test</scope>
        </dependency>
    </dependencies>
</project>

The simple-weather POM extends the simple-parent POM, sets the packaging to jar, and then adds the following dependencies:

• org.sonatype.mavenbook.multispring:simple-model:1.0

  simple-weather parses the Yahoo Weather RSS feed into a Weather object. It has a direct dependency on simple-model.

• log4j:log4j:1.2.14

  simple-weather uses the Log4J library to print log messages.

• dom4j:dom4j:1.6.1 and jaxen:jaxen:1.1.1

  Both of these dependencies are used to parse the XML returned from Yahoo Weather.

• org.apache.commons:commons-io:1.3.2 (scope=test)

  This test-scoped dependency is used by the YahooParserTest.

Next is the WeatherService class, shown in WeatherService Class. This class is going to look very similar to the WeatherService class from The WeatherService Class. Although the WeatherService is the same, there are some subtle differences in this chapter’s example. This version’s retrieveForecast() method returns a Weather object, and the formatting is going to be left to the applications that call WeatherService. The other major change is that the YahooRetriever and YahooParser are both bean properties of the WeatherService bean.

WeatherService Class. 

package org.sonatype.mavenbook.weather;

import java.io.InputStream;

import org.sonatype.mavenbook.weather.model.Weather;

public class WeatherService {

    private YahooRetriever yahooRetriever;
    private YahooParser yahooParser;

    public WeatherService() {
    }

    public Weather retrieveForecast(String zip) throws Exception {
        // Retrieve Data
        InputStream dataIn = yahooRetriever.retrieve(zip);

        // Parse DataS
        Weather weather = yahooParser.parse(zip, dataIn);

        return weather;
    }

    public YahooRetriever getYahooRetriever() {
        return yahooRetriever;
    }

    public void setYahooRetriever(YahooRetriever yahooRetriever) {
        this.yahooRetriever = yahooRetriever;
    }

    public YahooParser getYahooParser() {
        return yahooParser;
    }

    public void setYahooParser(YahooParser yahooParser) {
        this.yahooParser = yahooParser;
    }

}

Finally, in this project we have an XML file that is used by the Spring Framework to create something called an ApplicationContext. First, some explanation: both of our applications, the web application and the command-line utility, need to interact with the WeatherService class, and they both do so by retrieving an instance of this class from a Spring ApplicationContext using the name weatherService. Our web application uses a Spring MVC controller that is associated with an instance of WeatherService, and our command-line utility loads the WeatherService from an ApplicationContext in a static main() function. To encourage reuse, we’ve included an applicationContext-weather.xml file in src/main/resources, which is available on the classpath. Modules that depend on the simple-weather module can load this application context using the ClasspathXmlApplicationContext in the Spring Framework. They can then reference a named instance of the WeatherService named weatherService.

Spring Application Context for the simple-weather Module. 

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
       xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
       xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans
         http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans-2.0.xsd"
       default-lazy-init="true">

    <bean id="weatherService"
          class="org.sonatype.mavenbook.weather.WeatherService">
        <property name="yahooRetriever" ref="yahooRetriever"/>
        <property name="yahooParser" ref="yahooParser"/>
    </bean>

    <bean id="yahooRetriever"
          class="org.sonatype.mavenbook.weather.YahooRetriever"/>

    <bean id="yahooParser"
          class="org.sonatype.mavenbook.weather.YahooParser"/>
</beans>

This document defines three beans: yahooParser, yahooRetriever, and weatherService. The weatherService bean is an instance of WeatherService, and this XML document populates the yahooParser and yahooRetriever properties with references to the named instances of the corresponding classes. Think of this applicationContext-weather.xml file as defining the architecture of a subsystem in this multi-module project. Projects like simple-webapp and simple-command can reference this context and retrieve an instance of WeatherService which already has relationships to instances of YahooRetriever and YahooParser.

7.5. The Simple Persist Module

This module defines two very simple Data Access Objects (DAOs). A DAO is an object that provides an interface for persistence operations. In an application that makes use of an Object-Relational Mapping (ORM) framework such as Hibernate, DAOs are usually defined around objects. In this project, we are defining two DAO objects: WeatherDAO and LocationDAO. The WeatherDAO class allows us to save a Weather object to a database and retrieve a Weather object by id, and to retrieve Weather objects that match a specific Location. The LocationDAO has a method that allows us to retrieve a Location object by zip code. First, let’s take a look at the simple-persist POM in simple-persist POM.

simple-persist POM. 

<project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0"
         xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
         xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0
                             http://maven.apache.org/maven-v4_0_0.xsd">
    <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>
    <parent>
        <groupId>org.sonatype.mavenbook.multispring</groupId>
        <artifactId>simple-parent</artifactId>
        <version>1.0</version>
    </parent>
    <artifactId>simple-persist</artifactId>
    <packaging>jar</packaging>

    <name>Simple Persistence API</name>

    <dependencies>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.sonatype.mavenbook.multispring</groupId>
            <artifactId>simple-model</artifactId>
            <version>1.0</version>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.hibernate</groupId>
            <artifactId>hibernate</artifactId>
            <version>3.2.5.ga</version>
            <exclusions>
                <exclusion>
                    <groupId>javax.transaction</groupId>
                    <artifactId>jta</artifactId>
                </exclusion>
            </exclusions>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.hibernate</groupId>
            <artifactId>hibernate-annotations</artifactId>
            <version>3.3.0.ga</version>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.hibernate</groupId>
            <artifactId>hibernate-commons-annotations</artifactId>
            <version>3.3.0.ga</version>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>javax.servlet</groupId>
            <artifactId>servlet-api</artifactId>
            <version>2.4</version>
            <scope>provided</scope>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring</artifactId>
            <version>2.0.7</version>
        </dependency>
    </dependencies>
</project>

This POM file references simple-parent as a parent POM, and it defines a few dependencies. The dependencies listed in simple-persist's POM are:

• org.sonatype.mavenbook.multispring:simple-model:1.0

  Just like the simple-weather module, this persistence module references the core model objects defined in simple-model.

• org.hibernate:hibernate:3.2.5.ga

  We define a dependency on Hibernate version 3.2.5.ga, but notice that we’re excluding a dependency of Hibernate. We’re doing this because the javax.transaction:jta dependency is not available in the public Maven repository. This dependency happens to be one of those Sun dependencies that has not yet made it into the free central Maven repository. To avoid an annoying message telling us to go download these nonfree dependencies, we simply exclude this dependency from Hibernate.

• javax.servlet:servlet-api:2.4

  Since this project contains a Servlet, we need to include the Servlet API version 2.4.

• org.springframework:spring:2.0.7

  This includes the entire Spring Framework as a dependency. It is generally a good practice to depend on only the components of Spring you happen to be using. The Spring Framework project has been nice enough to create focused artifacts such as spring-hibernate3.

Why depend on Spring? When it comes to Hibernate integration, Spring allows us to leverage helper classes such as HibernateDaoSupport. For an example of what is possible with the help of HibernateDaoSupport, take a look at the code for the WeatherDAO in simple-persist’s WeatherDAO Class.

simple-persist’s WeatherDAO Class. 

package org.sonatype.mavenbook.weather.persist;

import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.List;

import org.hibernate.Query;
import org.hibernate.Session;
import org.springframework.orm.hibernate3.HibernateCallback;
import org.springframework.orm.hibernate3.support.HibernateDaoSupport;

import org.sonatype.mavenbook.weather.model.Location;
import org.sonatype.mavenbook.weather.model.Weather;

public class WeatherDAO extends HibernateDaoSupport { (1)

  public WeatherDAO() {}

  public void save(Weather weather) { (2)
    getHibernateTemplate().save( weather );
  }

  public Weather load(Integer id) { (3)
    return (Weather) getHibernateTemplate().load( Weather.class, id);
  }

  @SuppressWarnings("unchecked")
  public List<Weather> recentForLocation( final Location location ) {
    return (List<Weather>) getHibernateTemplate().execute(
        new HibernateCallback() { (4)
          public Object doInHibernate(Session session) {
              Query query =
                getSession().getNamedQuery("Weather.byLocation");
              query.setParameter("location", location);
              return new ArrayList<Weather>( query.list() );
        }
    });
  }
}

That’s it. No really, you are done writing a class that can insert new rows, select by primary key, and find all rows in Weather that join to an id in the Location table. Clearly, we can’t stop this book and insert the five hundred pages it would take to get you up to speed on the intricacies of Hibernate, but we can do some very quick explanation:

Now is a good time for some clarification. HibernateDaoSupport and HibernateTemplate are classes from the Spring Framework. They were created by the Spring Framework to make writing Hibernate DAO objects painless. To support this DAO, we’ll need to do some configuration in the simple-persist Spring ApplicationContext definition. The XML document shown in Spring Application Context for simple-persist is stored in src/main/resources in a file named applicationContext-persist.xml.

Spring Application Context for simple-persist. 

<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
       xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
       xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans
         http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans-2.0.xsd"
       default-lazy-init="true">

  <bean id="sessionFactory"
    class="org.springframework.orm.hibernate3.annotation.AnnotationSessionFactoryBean">
    <property name="annotatedClasses">
      <list>
        <value>org.sonatype.mavenbook.weather.model.Atmosphere</value>
        <value>org.sonatype.mavenbook.weather.model.Condition</value>
        <value>org.sonatype.mavenbook.weather.model.Location</value>
        <value>org.sonatype.mavenbook.weather.model.Weather</value>
        <value>org.sonatype.mavenbook.weather.model.Wind</value>
      </list>
    </property>
    <property name="hibernateProperties">
      <props>
        <prop key="hibernate.show_sql">false</prop>
        <prop key="hibernate.format_sql">true</prop>
        <prop key="hibernate.transaction.factory_class">
          org.hibernate.transaction.JDBCTransactionFactory
        </prop>
        <prop key="hibernate.dialect">
          org.hibernate.dialect.HSQLDialect
        </prop>
        <prop key="hibernate.connection.pool_size">0</prop>
        <prop key="hibernate.connection.driver_class">
          org.hsqldb.jdbcDriver
        </prop>
        <prop key="hibernate.connection.url">
          jdbc:hsqldb:data/weather;shutdown=true
        </prop>
        <prop key="hibernate.connection.username">sa</prop>
        <prop key="hibernate.connection.password"></prop>
        <prop key="hibernate.connection.autocommit">true</prop>
        <prop key="hibernate.jdbc.batch_size">0</prop>
      </props>
    </property>
  </bean>

  <bean id="locationDAO"
        class="org.sonatype.mavenbook.weather.persist.LocationDAO">
    <property name="sessionFactory" ref="sessionFactory"/>
  </bean>

  <bean id="weatherDAO"
        class="org.sonatype.mavenbook.weather.persist.WeatherDAO">
    <property name="sessionFactory" ref="sessionFactory"/>
  </bean>
</beans>

In this application context, we’re accomplishing a few things. The sessionFactory bean is the bean from which the DAOs retrieve Hibernate Session objects. This bean is an instance of AnnotationSessionFactoryBean and is supplied with a list of annotatedClasses. Note that the list of annotated classes is the list of classes defined in our simple-model module. Next, the sessionFactory is configured with a set of Hibernate configuration properties (hibernateProperties). In this example, our Hibernate properties define a number of settings:

• hibernate.dialect

  This setting controls how SQL is to be generated for our database. Since we are using the HSQLDB database, our database dialect is set to org.hibernate.dialect.HSQLDialect. Hibernate has dialects for all major databases such as Oracle, MySQL, Postgres, and SQL Server.

• hibernate.connection.*

  In this example, we’re configuring the JDBC connection properties from the Spring configuration. Our applications are configured to run against a HSQLDB in the ./data/weather directory. In a real enterprise application, it is more likely you would use something like JNDI to externalize database configuration from your application’s code.

Lastly, in this bean definition file, both of the simple-persist DAO objects are created and given a reference to the sessionFactory bean just defined. Just like the Spring application context in simple-weather, this applicationContext-persist.xml file defines the architecture of a submodule in a larger enterprise design. If you were working with a larger collection of persistence classes, you might find it useful to capture them in an application context which is separate from your application.

There’s one last piece of the puzzle in simple-persist. Later in this chapter, we’re going to use hibernate.cfg.xml in src/main/resources. The purpose of this file (which duplicates some of the configuration in applicationContext-persist.xml) is to allow us to leverage the Maven Hibernate3 plugin to generate Data Definition Language (DDL) from nothing more than our annotations. See simple-persist hibernate.cfg.xml.

simple-persist hibernate.cfg.xml. 

<!DOCTYPE hibernate-configuration PUBLIC
  "-//Hibernate/Hibernate Configuration DTD 3.0//EN"
  "http://hibernate.sourceforge.net/hibernate-configuration-3.0.dtd">

<hibernate-configuration>
  <session-factory>

    <!-- SQL dialect -->
    <property name="dialect">
      org.hibernate.dialect.HSQLDialect
    </property>

    <!-- Database connection settings -->
    <property name="connection.driver_class">
      org.hsqldb.jdbcDriver
    </property>
    <property name="connection.url">jdbc:hsqldb:data/weather</property>
    <property name="connection.username">sa</property>
    <property name="connection.password"></property>
    <property name="connection.shutdown">true</property>

    <!-- JDBC connection pool (use the built-in one) -->
    <property name="connection.pool_size">1</property>

    <!-- Enable Hibernate's automatic session context management -->
    <property name="current_session_context_class">thread</property>

    <!-- Disable the second-level cache  -->
    <property name="cache.provider_class">
            org.hibernate.cache.NoCacheProvider
    </property>

    <!-- Echo all executed SQL to stdout -->
    <property name="show_sql">true</property>

    <!-- disable batching so HSQLDB will propagate errors correctly. -->
    <property name="jdbc.batch_size">0</property>

    <!-- List all the mapping documents we're using -->
    <mapping class="org.sonatype.mavenbook.weather.model.Atmosphere"/>
    <mapping class="org.sonatype.mavenbook.weather.model.Condition"/>
    <mapping class="org.sonatype.mavenbook.weather.model.Location"/>
    <mapping class="org.sonatype.mavenbook.weather.model.Weather"/>
    <mapping class="org.sonatype.mavenbook.weather.model.Wind"/>

  </session-factory>
</hibernate-configuration>

The contents of Spring Application Context for simple-persist and simple-parent Project POM are redundant. While the Spring Application Context XML is going to be used by the web application and the command-line application, the hibernate.cfg.xml exists only to support the Maven Hibernate3 plugin. Later in this chapter, we’ll see how to use this hibernate.cfg.xml and the Maven Hibernate3 plugin to generate a database schema based on the annotated object model defined in simple-model. This hibernate.cfg.xml file is the file that will configure the JDBC connection properties and enumerate the list of annotated model classes for the Maven Hibernate3 plugin.

7.6. The Simple Web Application Module

The web application is defined in a simple-webapp project. This simple web application project is going to define two Spring MVC Controllers: WeatherController and simple-weather and the applicationContext-persist.xml file in simple-persist. The component architecture of this simple web application is shown in Figure 7.3, “Spring MVC Controllers Referencing Components in simple-weather and simple-persist.”.

Figure 7.3. Spring MVC Controllers Referencing Components in simple-weather and simple-persist.

The POM for simple-webapp is shown in POM for simple-webapp.

POM for simple-webapp. 

<project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0"
         xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
         xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0
                             http://maven.apache.org/maven-v4_0_0.xsd">
  <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>
  <parent>
    <groupId>org.sonatype.mavenbook.multispring</groupId>
    <artifactId>simple-parent</artifactId>
    <version>1.0</version>
  </parent>

  <artifactId>simple-webapp</artifactId>
  <packaging>war</packaging>
  <name>Simple Web Application</name>
  <dependencies>
    <dependency> (1)
      <groupId>javax.servlet</groupId>
      <artifactId>servlet-api</artifactId>
      <version>2.4</version>
      <scope>provided</scope>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
      <groupId>org.sonatype.mavenbook.multispring</groupId>
      <artifactId>simple-weather</artifactId>
      <version>1.0</version>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
      <groupId>org.sonatype.mavenbook.multispring</groupId>
      <artifactId>simple-persist</artifactId>
      <version>1.0</version>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
      <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
      <artifactId>spring</artifactId>
      <version>2.0.7</version>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
      <groupId>org.apache.velocity</groupId>
      <artifactId>velocity</artifactId>
      <version>1.5</version>
    </dependency>
  </dependencies>
  <build>
    <finalName>simple-webapp</finalName>
    <plugins>
      <plugin> (2)
        <groupId>org.mortbay.jetty</groupId>
        <artifactId>maven-jetty-plugin</artifactId>
        <dependencies> (3)
          <dependency>
            <groupId>hsqldb</groupId>
            <artifactId>hsqldb</artifactId>
            <version>1.8.0.7</version>
          </dependency>
        </dependencies>
      </plugin>
      <plugin>
        <groupId>org.codehaus.mojo</groupId> (4)
        <artifactId>hibernate3-maven-plugin</artifactId>
        <version>2.0</version>
        <configuration>
          <components>
            <component>
              <name>hbm2ddl</name>
              <implementation>annotationconfiguration</implementation> (5)
          </component>
        </components>
        </configuration>
        <dependencies>
          <dependency>
            <groupId>hsqldb</groupId>
            <artifactId>hsqldb</artifactId>
            <version>1.8.0.7</version>
          </dependency>
        </dependencies>
      </plugin>
    </plugins>
  </build>
</project>

As this book progresses and the examples become more and more substantial, you’ll notice that the pom.xml begins to take on some weight. In this POM, we’re configuring four dependencies and two plugins. Let’s go through this POM in detail and dwell on some of the important configuration points:

Next, we turn our attention to the two Spring MVC controllers that will handle all of the requests. Both of these controllers reference the beans defined in simple-weather and simple-persist.

simple-webapp WeatherController. 

package org.sonatype.mavenbook.web;

import org.sonatype.mavenbook.weather.model.Weather;
import org.sonatype.mavenbook.weather.persist.WeatherDAO;
import org.sonatype.mavenbook.weather.WeatherService;
import javax.servlet.http.*;
import org.springframework.web.servlet.ModelAndView;
import org.springframework.web.servlet.mvc.Controller;

public class WeatherController implements Controller {

  private WeatherService weatherService;
  private WeatherDAO weatherDAO;

  public ModelAndView handleRequest(HttpServletRequest request,
                                    HttpServletResponse response)
                                  throws Exception {

    String zip = request.getParameter("zip");
    Weather weather = weatherService.retrieveForecast(zip);
    weatherDAO.save(weather);
    return new ModelAndView("weather", "weather", weather);
  }

  public WeatherService getWeatherService() {
    return weatherService;
  }

  public void setWeatherService(WeatherService weatherService) {
    this.weatherService = weatherService;
  }

  public WeatherDAO getWeatherDAO() {
    return weatherDAO;
  }

  public void setWeatherDAO(WeatherDAO weatherDAO) {
    this.weatherDAO = weatherDAO;
  }
}

WeatherController implements the Spring MVC Controller interface that mandates the presence of a handleRequest() method with the signature shown in the example. If you look at the meat of this method, you’ll see that it invokes the retrieveForecast() method on the weatherService instance variable. Unlike the previous chapter, which had a Servlet that instantiated the WeatherService class, the WeatherController is a bean with a weatherService property. The Spring IoC container is responsible for wiring the controller to the weatherService component. Also notice that we’re not using the WeatherFormatter in this Spring controller implementation; instead, we’re passing the Weather object returned by retrieveForecast() to the constructor of ModelAndView. This ModelAndView class is going to be used to render a Velocity template, and this template will have references to a ${weather} variable. The weather.vm template is stored in src/main/webapp/WEB-INF/vm and is shown in weather.vm Template Rendered by WeatherController.

In the WeatherController, before we render the output of the forecast, we pass the Weather object returned by the WeatherService to the save() method on WeatherDAO. Here we are saving this Weather object—using Hibernate—to an HSQLDB database. Later, in HistoryController, we will see how we can retrieve a history of weather forecasts that were saved by the WeatherController.

weather.vm Template Rendered by WeatherController. 

<b>Current Weather Conditions for:
${weather.location.city}, ${weather.location.region},
${weather.location.country}</b><br/>

<ul>
<li>Temperature: ${weather.condition.temp}</li>
<li>Condition: ${weather.condition.text}</li>
<li>Humidity: ${weather.atmosphere.humidity}</li>
<li>Wind Chill: ${weather.wind.chill}</li>
<li>Date: ${weather.date}</li>
</ul>

The syntax for this Velocity template is straightforward: variables are referenced using ${} notation. The expression between the curly braces references a property, or a property of a property on the weather variable, which was passed to this template by the WeatherController.

The HistoryController is used to retrieve recent forecasts that have been requested by the WeatherController. Whenever we retrieve a forecast from the WeatherController, that controller saves the Weather object to the database via the WeatherDAO. WeatherDAO then uses Hibernate to dissect the Weather object into a series of rows in a set of related database tables. The HistoryController is shown in simple-web HistoryController.

simple-web HistoryController. 

package org.sonatype.mavenbook.web;

import java.util.*;
import javax.servlet.http.*;
import org.springframework.web.servlet.ModelAndView;
import org.springframework.web.servlet.mvc.Controller;
import org.sonatype.mavenbook.weather.model.*;
import org.sonatype.mavenbook.weather.persist.*;

public class HistoryController implements Controller {

  private LocationDAO locationDAO;
  private WeatherDAO weatherDAO;

  public ModelAndView handleRequest(HttpServletRequest request,
    HttpServletResponse response) throws Exception {

    String zip = request.getParameter("zip");
    Location location = locationDAO.findByZip(zip);
    List<Weather> weathers = weatherDAO.recentForLocation( location );

    Map<String,Object> model = new HashMap<String,Object>();
    model.put( "location", location );
    model.put( "weathers", weathers );

    return new ModelAndView("history", model);
  }

  public WeatherDAO getWeatherDAO() {
    return weatherDAO;
  }

  public void setWeatherDAO(WeatherDAO weatherDAO) {
    this.weatherDAO = weatherDAO;
  }

  public LocationDAO getLocationDAO() {
    return locationDAO;
  }

  public void setLocationDAO(LocationDAO locationDAO) {
    this.locationDAO = locationDAO;
  }
}

The HistoryController is wired to two DAO objects defined in simple-persist. The DAOs are bean properties of the HistoryController: WeatherDAO and LocationDAO. The goal of the HistoryController is to retrieve a List of Weather objects which correspond to the zip parameter. When the WeatherDAO saves the Weather object to the database, it doesn’t just store the zip code, it stores a Location object which is related to the Weather object in the simple-model. To retrieve a List of Weather objects, the HistoryController first retrieves the Location object that corresponds to the zip parameter. It does this by invoking the findByZip() method on LocationDAO.

Once the Location object has been retrieved, the HistoryController will then attempt to retrieve recent Weather objects that match the given Location. Once the List<Weather> has been retrieved, a HashMap is created to hold two variables for the history.vm Velocity template shown in history.vm Rendered by the HistoryController.

history.vm Rendered by the HistoryController. 

<b>
Weather History for: ${location.city}, ${location.region}, ${location.country}
</b>
<br/>

#foreach( $weather in $weathers )
<ul>
<li>Temperature: $weather.condition.temp</li>
<li>Condition: $weather.condition.text</li>
<li>Humidity: $weather.atmosphere.humidity</li>
<li>Wind Chill: $weather.wind.chill</li>
<li>Date: $weather.date</li>
</ul>
#end

The history.vm template in src/main/webapp/WEB-INF/vm references the location variable to print out information about the location of the forecasts retrieved from the WeatherDAO. This template then uses a Velocity control structure, #foreach, to loop through each element in the weathers variable. Each element in weathers is assigned to a variable named weather and the template between #foreach and #end is rendered for each observation.

You’ve seen these Controller implementations, and you’ve seen that they reference other beans defined in simple-weather and simple-persist, they respond to HTTP requests, and they yield control to some mysterious templating system that knows how to render Velocity templates. All of this magic is configured in a Spring application context in src/main/webapp/WEB-INF/weather-servlet.xml. This XML configures the controllers and references other Spring-managed beans. It is loaded by a ServletContextListener which is also configured to load the applicationContext-weather.xml and applicationContext-persist.xml from the classpath. Let’s take a closer look at the weather-servlet.xml shown in Spring Controller Configuration weather-servlet.xml.

Spring Controller Configuration weather-servlet.xml. 

<beans>
  <bean id="weatherController" (1)
        class="org.sonatype.mavenbook.web.WeatherController">
    <property name="weatherService" ref="weatherService"/>
    <property name="weatherDAO" ref="weatherDAO"/>
  </bean>

  <bean id="historyController"
        class="org.sonatype.mavenbook.web.HistoryController">
    <property name="weatherDAO" ref="weatherDAO"/>
    <property name="locationDAO" ref="locationDAO"/>
  </bean>

  <!-- you can have more than one handler defined -->
  <bean id="urlMapping"
        class="org.springframework.web.servlet.handler.
          SimpleUrlHandlerMapping">
    <property name="urlMap">
      <map>
        <entry key="/weather.x"> (2)
          <ref bean="weatherController" />
        </entry>
        <entry key="/history.x">
          <ref bean="historyController" />
        </entry>
      </map>
    </property>
  </bean>

  <bean id="velocityConfig" (3)
    class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.velocity.
      VelocityConfigurer">
    <property name="resourceLoaderPath" value="/WEB-INF/vm/"/>
  </bean>

  <bean id="viewResolver" (4)
    class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.velocity.
      VelocityViewResolver">
    <property name="cache" value="true"/>
    <property name="prefix" value=""/>
    <property name="suffix" value=".vm"/>
    <property name="exposeSpringMacroHelpers" value="true"/>
  </bean>
</beans>

Finally, the simple-webapp project was a web.xml which provides the basic configuration for the web application. The web.xml file is shown in web.xml for simple-webapp.

web.xml for simple-webapp. 

<web-app id="simple-webapp" version="2.4"
         xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/j2ee"
         xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
         xsi:schemaLocation="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/j2ee
               http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/j2ee/web-app_2_4.xsd">
  <display-name>Simple Web Application</display-name>

  <context-param> (1)
    <param-name>contextConfigLocation</param-name>
      <param-value>
        classpath:applicationContext-weather.xml
        classpath:applicationContext-persist.xml
      </param-value>
  </context-param>

  <context-param> (2)
    <param-name>log4jConfigLocation</param-name>
    <param-value>/WEB-INF/log4j.properties</param-value>
  </context-param>

  <listener> (3)
    <listener-class>
      org.springframework.web.util.Log4jConfigListener
    </listener-class>
  </listener>

  <listener>
    <listener-class> (4)
      org.springframework.web.context.ContextLoaderListener
    </listener-class>
  </listener>

  <servlet> (5)
    <servlet-name>weather</servlet-name>
    <servlet-class>
      org.springframework.web.servlet.DispatcherServlet
    </servlet-class>
    <load-on-startup>1</load-on-startup>
  </servlet>

  <servlet-mapping> (6)
    <servlet-name>weather</servlet-name>
    <url-pattern>*.x</url-pattern>
  </servlet-mapping>
</web-app>

7.7. Running the Web Application

To run the web application, you’ll first need to build the entire multi-module project and then build the database using the Hibernate3 plugin. First, from the top-level simple-parent project directory, run mvn clean install:

$ mvn clean install

Running mvn clean install at the top-level of your multi-module project will install all of modules into your local Maven repository. You need to do this before building the database from the simple-webapp project.

To build the database from the simple-webapp project, run the following from the simple-webapp project’s directory:

$ mvn hibernate3:hbm2ddl
[INFO] Scanning for projects...
[INFO] Searching repository for plugin with prefix: 'hibernate3'.
[INFO] org.codehaus.mojo: checking for updates from central
[INFO] -----------------------------------------------------
[INFO] Building Multi-Spring Chapter Simple Web Application
[INFO]task-segment: [hibernate3:hbm2ddl]
[INFO] -----------------------------------------------------
[INFO] Preparing hibernate3:hbm2ddl
...
10:24:56,151  INFO org.hibernate.tool.hbm2ddl.SchemaExport - export complete
[INFO] -----------------------------------------------------
[INFO] BUILD SUCCESSFUL
[INFO] -----------------------------------------------------

Once you’ve done this, there should be a ${basedir}/data directory which will contain the HSQLDB database. You can then start the web application with:

$ mvn jetty:run
[INFO] Scanning for projects...
[INFO] Searching repository for plugin with prefix: 'jetty'.
[INFO] -----------------------------------------------------
[INFO] Building Multi-Spring Chapter Simple Web Application
[INFO]task-segment: [jetty:run]
[INFO] -----------------------------------------------------
[INFO] Preparing jetty:run
...
[INFO] [jetty:run]
[INFO] Configuring Jetty for project:
Multi-Spring Chapter Simple Web Application
...
[INFO] Context path = /simple-webapp
[INFO] Tmp directory =  determined at runtime
[INFO] Web defaults = org/mortbay/jetty/webapp/webdefault.xml
[INFO] Web overrides =  none
[INFO] Starting jetty 6.1.7 ...
2008-03-25 10:28:03.639::INFO:  jetty-6.1.7
...
2147 INFO  DispatcherServlet  - FrameworkServlet 'weather': \
initialization completed in 1654 ms
2008-03-25 10:28:06.341::INFO:  Started SelectChannelConnector@0.0.0.0:8080
[INFO] Started Jetty Server

Once Jetty is started, you can load http://localhost:8080/simple-webapp/weather.x?zip=60202 and you should see the weather for Evanston, IL in your web browser. Change the ZIP code and you should be able to get your own weather report.

Current Weather Conditions for: Evanston, IL, US

* Temperature: 42
* Condition: Partly Cloudy
* Humidity: 55
* Wind Chill: 34
* Date: Tue Mar 25 10:29:45 CDT 2008

7.8. The Simple Command Module

The simple-command project is a command-line version of the simple-webapp. It is a utility that relies on the same dependencies: simple-persist and simple-weather. Instead of interacting with this application via a web browser, you would run the simple-command utility from the command line.

Figure 7.4. Command Line Application Referencing simple-weather and simple-persist

POM for simple-command. 

<project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0"
         xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
         xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0
                             http://maven.apache.org/maven-v4_0_0.xsd">
  <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>
  <parent>
    <groupId>org.sonatype.mavenbook.multispring</groupId>
    <artifactId>simple-parent</artifactId>
    <version>1.0</version>
  </parent>

  <artifactId>simple-command</artifactId>
  <packaging>jar</packaging>
  <name>Simple Command Line Tool</name>

  <build>
    <finalName>${project.artifactId}</finalName>
    <plugins>
      <plugin>
        <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
        <artifactId>maven-compiler-plugin</artifactId>
        <configuration>
          <source>1.5</source>
          <target>1.5</target>
        </configuration>
      </plugin>
      <plugin>
        <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
        <artifactId>maven-surefire-plugin</artifactId>
        <configuration>
          <testFailureIgnore>true</testFailureIgnore>
        </configuration>
      </plugin>
      <plugin>
        <artifactId>maven-assembly-plugin</artifactId>
        <configuration>
          <descriptorRefs>
            <descriptorRef>jar-with-dependencies</descriptorRef>
          </descriptorRefs>
        </configuration>
      </plugin>
      <plugin>
        <groupId>org.codehaus.mojo</groupId>
        <artifactId>hibernate3-maven-plugin</artifactId>
        <version>2.1</version>
        <configuration>
          <components>
            <component>
              <name>hbm2ddl</name>
              <implementation>annotationconfiguration</implementation>
            </component>
          </components>
        </configuration>
        <dependencies>
          <dependency>
            <groupId>hsqldb</groupId>
            <artifactId>hsqldb</artifactId>
            <version>1.8.0.7</version>
          </dependency>
        </dependencies>
      </plugin>
    </plugins>
  </build>

  <dependencies>
    <dependency>
      <groupId>org.sonatype.mavenbook.multispring</groupId>
      <artifactId>simple-weather</artifactId>
      <version>1.0</version>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
      <groupId>org.sonatype.mavenbook.multispring</groupId>
      <artifactId>simple-persist</artifactId>
      <version>1.0</version>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
      <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
      <artifactId>spring</artifactId>
      <version>2.0.7</version>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
      <groupId>hsqldb</groupId>
      <artifactId>hsqldb</artifactId>
      <version>1.8.0.7</version>
    </dependency>
  </dependencies>
</project>

This POM creates a JAR file which will contain the org.sonatype.mavenbook.weather.Main class shown in The Main Class for simple-command. In this POM we configure the Maven Assembly plugin to use a built-in assembly descriptor named jar-with-dependencies which creates a single JAR file containing all the bytecode a project needs to execute, including the bytecode from the project you are building and all the bytecode from libraries your project depends upons.

The Main Class for simple-command. 

package org.sonatype.mavenbook.weather;

import java.util.List;

import org.apache.log4j.PropertyConfigurator;
import org.springframework.context.ApplicationContext;
import org.springframework.context.support.ClassPathXmlApplicationContext;

import org.sonatype.mavenbook.weather.model.Location;
import org.sonatype.mavenbook.weather.model.Weather;
import org.sonatype.mavenbook.weather.persist.LocationDAO;
import org.sonatype.mavenbook.weather.persist.WeatherDAO;

public class Main {

    private WeatherService weatherService;
    private WeatherDAO weatherDAO;
    private LocationDAO locationDAO;

    public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
        // Configure Log4J
        PropertyConfigurator.configure(
          Main.class.getClassLoader().getResource("log4j.properties"));

        // Read the zip code from the Command-line
        // (if none supplied, use 60202)
        String zipcode = "60202";
        try {
            zipcode = args[0];
        } catch (Exception e) {
        }

        // Read the Operation from the Command-line
        // (if none supplied use weather)
        String operation = "weather";
        try {
            operation = args[1];
        } catch (Exception e) {
        }

        // Start the program
        Main main = new Main(zipcode);

        ApplicationContext context =
          new ClassPathXmlApplicationContext(
            new String[] { "classpath:applicationContext-weather.xml",
              "classpath:applicationContext-persist.xml" });
        main.weatherService =
          (WeatherService) context.getBean("weatherService");
        main.locationDAO = (LocationDAO) context.getBean("locationDAO");
        main.weatherDAO = (WeatherDAO) context.getBean("weatherDAO");
        if( operation.equals("weather")) {
            main.getWeather();
        } else {
            main.getHistory();
        }
    }

    private String zip;

    public Main(String zip) {
        this.zip = zip;
    }

    public void getWeather() throws Exception {
        Weather weather = weatherService.retrieveForecast(zip);
        weatherDAO.save( weather );
        System.out.print(new WeatherFormatter().formatWeather(weather));
    }

    public void getHistory() throws Exception {
        Location location = locationDAO.findByZip(zip);
        List<Weather> weathers = weatherDAO.recentForLocation(location);
        System.out.print(
          new WeatherFormatter().formatHistory(location, weathers));
    }
}

The Main class has a reference to WeatherDAO, LocationDAO, and WeatherService. The static main() method in this class:

• Reads the zip code from the first command line argument
• Reads the operation from the second command line argument. If the operation is "weather", the latest weather will be retrieved from the web service. If the operation is "history", the program will fetch historical weather records from the local database.
• Loads a Spring ApplicationContext using two XML files loaded from simple-persist and simple-weather
• Creates an instance of Main
• Populates the weatherService, weatherDAO, and locationDAO with beans from the Spring ApplicationContext
• Runs the appropriate method getWeather() or getHistory(), depending on the specified operation

In the web application we use Spring VelocityViewResolver to render a Velocity template. In the stand-alone implementation, we need to write a simple class which renders our weather data with a Velocity template. WeatherFormatter Renders Weather Data using a Velocity Template is a listing of the WeatherFormatter, a class with two methods that render the weather report and the weather history.

WeatherFormatter Renders Weather Data using a Velocity Template. 

package org.sonatype.mavenbook.weather;

import java.io.InputStreamReader;
import java.io.Reader;
import java.io.StringWriter;
import java.util.List;

import org.apache.log4j.Logger;
import org.apache.velocity.VelocityContext;
import org.apache.velocity.app.Velocity;

import org.sonatype.mavenbook.weather.model.Location;
import org.sonatype.mavenbook.weather.model.Weather;

public class WeatherFormatter {

    private static Logger log = Logger.getLogger(WeatherFormatter.class);

    public String formatWeather(Weather weather) throws Exception {
        log.info( "Formatting Weather Data" );
        Reader reader =
            new InputStreamReader( getClass().getClassLoader().
                                   getResourceAsStream("weather.vm"));
        VelocityContext context = new VelocityContext();
        context.put("weather", weather );
        StringWriter writer = new StringWriter();
        Velocity.evaluate(context, writer, "", reader);
        return writer.toString();
    }

    public String formatHistory(Location location, List<Weather> weathers)
        throws Exception {
        log.info( "Formatting History Data" );
        Reader reader =
            new InputStreamReader( getClass().getClassLoader().
                                   getResourceAsStream("history.vm"));
        VelocityContext context = new VelocityContext();
        context.put("location", location );
        context.put("weathers", weathers );
        StringWriter writer = new StringWriter();
        Velocity.evaluate(context, writer, "", reader);
        return writer.toString();
    }
}

The weather.vm template simply prints the zip code’s city, country, and region as well as the current temperature. The history.vm template prints the location and then iterates through the weather records stored in the local database. Both of these templates are in ${basedir}/src/main/resources.

The weather.vm Velocity Template. 

****************************************
Current Weather Conditions for:
${weather.location.city},
${weather.location.region},
${weather.location.country}
****************************************

* Temperature: ${weather.condition.temp}
* Condition: ${weather.condition.text}
* Humidity: ${weather.atmosphere.humidity}
* Wind Chill: ${weather.wind.chill}
* Date: ${weather.date}

The history.vm Velocity Template. 

Weather History for:
${location.city},
${location.region},
${location.country}


#foreach( $weather in $weathers )
****************************************
* Temperature: $weather.condition.temp
* Condition: $weather.condition.text
* Humidity: $weather.atmosphere.humidity
* Wind Chill: $weather.wind.chill
* Date: $weather.date
#end

7.9. Running the Simple Command

The simple-command project is configured to create a single JAR containing the bytecode of the project and all of the bytecode from the dependencies. To create this assembly, run the assembly goal of the Maven Assembly plugin from the simple-command project directory:

$ mvn assembly:assembly
[INFO] -----------------------------------------------------
[INFO] Building Multi-spring Chapter Simple Command Line Tool
[INFO]task-segment: [assembly:assembly] (aggregator-style)
[INFO] -----------------------------------------------------
[INFO] [resources:resources]
[INFO] Using default encoding to copy filtered resources.
[INFO] [compiler:compile]
[INFO] Nothing to compile - all classes are up to date
[INFO] [resources:testResources]
[INFO] Using default encoding to copy filtered resources.
[INFO] [compiler:testCompile]
[INFO] Nothing to compile - all classes are up to date
[INFO] [surefire:test]
...
[INFO] [jar:jar]
[INFO] Building jar: .../simple-parent/simple-command/target/simple-command.jar
[INFO] [assembly:assembly]
[INFO] Processing DependencySet (output=)
[INFO] Building jar: .../simple-parent/simple-command/target
/simple-command-jar-with-dependencies.jar

The build progresses through the lifecycle compiling bytecode, running tests, and finally building a JAR for the project. Then the assembly:assembly goal creates a JAR with dependencies by unpacking all of the dependencies to temporary directories and then collecting all of the bytecode into a single JAR in target/ named simple-command-jar-with-dependencies.jar. This "uber" JAR weighs in at 15 MB.

Before you run the command-line tool, you will need to invoke the hbm2ddl goal of the Hibernate3 plugin to create the HSQLDB database. Do this by running the following command from the simple-command directory:

$ mvn hibernate3:hbm2ddl
[INFO] Scanning for projects...
[INFO] Searching repository for plugin with prefix: 'hibernate3'.
[INFO] org.codehaus.mojo: checking for updates from central
[INFO] -----------------------------------------------------
[INFO] Building Multi-spring Chapter Simple Command Line Tool
[INFO]task-segment: [hibernate3:hbm2ddl]
[INFO] -----------------------------------------------------
[INFO] Preparing hibernate3:hbm2ddl
...
10:24:56,151  INFO org.hibernate.tool.hbm2ddl.SchemaExport - export complete
[INFO] -----------------------------------------------------
[INFO] BUILD SUCCESSFUL
[INFO] -----------------------------------------------------

Once you run this, you should see a data directory under simple-command. This data directory holds the HSQLDB database. To run the command-line weather forecaster, run the following from the simple-command project directory:

$ java -cp target/simple-command-jar-with-dependencies.jar \
       org.sonatype.mavenbook.weather.Main 60202
2321 INFO  YahooRetriever  - Retrieving Weather Data
2489 INFO  YahooParser  - Creating XML Reader
2581 INFO  YahooParser  - Parsing XML Response
2875 INFO  WeatherFormatter  - Formatting Weather Data
****************************************
Current Weather Conditions for:
Evanston,
IL,
US
****************************************

* Temperature: 75
* Condition: Partly Cloudy
* Humidity: 64
* Wind Chill: 75
* Date: Wed Aug 06 09:35:30 CDT 2008

To run a history query, execute the following command:

$ java -cp target/simple-command-jar-with-dependencies.jar \
       org.sonatype.mavenbook.weather.Main 60202 history
2470 INFO  WeatherFormatter  - Formatting History Data
Weather History for:
Evanston, IL, US

****************************************
* Temperature: 39
* Condition: Heavy Rain
* Humidity: 93
* Wind Chill: 36
* Date: 2007-12-02 13:45:27.187
****************************************
* Temperature: 75
* Condition: Partly Cloudy
* Humidity: 64
* Wind Chill: 75
* Date: 2008-08-06 09:24:11.725
****************************************
* Temperature: 75
* Condition: Partly Cloudy
* Humidity: 64
* Wind Chill: 75
* Date: 2008-08-06 09:27:28.475

7.10. Conclusion

We’ve spent a great deal of time on topics not directly related to Maven to get this far. We’ve done this to present a complete and meaningful example project which you can use to implement real-world systems. We didn’t take any shortcuts to produce slick, canned results quickly, and we’re not going to dazzle you with some Ruby on Rails-esque wizardry and lead you to believe that you can create a finished Java Enterprise application in "10 easy minutes!" There’s too much of this in the market; there are too many people trying to sell you the easiest framework that requires zero investment of time or attention. What we’re trying to do in this chapter is present the entire picture, the entire ecosystem of a multi-module build. What we’ve done is present Maven in the context of a application which resembles something you could see in the wild—not the fast-food, 10 minute screen-cast that slings mud at Apache Ant and tries to convince you to adopt Apache Maven.

If you walk away from this chapter wondering what it has to do with Maven, we’ve succeeded. We present a complex set of projects, using popular frameworks, and we tie them together using declarative builds. The fact that more than 60% of this chapter was spent explaining Spring and Hibernate should tell you that Maven, for the most part, stepped out of the way. It worked. It allowed us to focus on the application itself, not on the build process. Instead of spending time discussing Maven, and the work you would have to do to "build a build" that integrated with Spring and Hibernate, we talked almost exclusively about the technologies used in this contrived project. If you start to use Maven, and you take the time to learn it, you really do start to benefit from the fact that you don’t have to spend time coding up some procedural build script. You don’t have to spend your time worrying about mundane aspects of your build.

You can use the skeleton project introduced in this chapter as the foundation for your own, and chances are that when you do, you’ll find yourself creating more and more modules as you need them. For example, the project on which this chapter was based has two distinct model projects, two persistence projects which persist to dramatically different databases, several web applications, and a Java mobile application. In total, the real world system I based this on contains at least 15 interrelated modules. The point is that you’ve seen the most complex multi-module example we’re going to include in this book, but you should also know that this example just scratches the surface of what is possible with Maven.

7.10.1. Programming to Interface Projects

This chapter explored a multi-module project which was more complex than the simple example presented in Chapter 6, A Multi-Module Project, yet it was still a simplification of a real-world project. In a larger project, you might find yourself building a system resembling Figure 7.5, “Programming to Interface Projects”.

Figure 7.5. Programming to Interface Projects

When we use the term interface project we are referring to a Maven project which contains interfaces and constants only. In Figure 7.5, “Programming to Interface Projects” the interface projects would be persist-api and parse-api. If big-command and big-webapp are written to the interfaces defined in persist-api, then it is very easy to just swap in another implementation of the persistence library. This particular diagram shows two implementations of the persist-api project, one which stores data in an XML database, and the other which stores data in a relational database. If you use some of the concepts in this chapter, you can see how you could just pass in a flag to the program that swaps in a different Spring application context XML file to swap out data sources of persistence implementations. Just like the OO design of the application itself, it is often wise to separate the interfaces of an API from the implementation of the API into separate Maven projects.