You Bluemix XPage server can interact with other services using the VCAP_SERVICES where all the credentials for contacting other services is stored. This JSON data can be retrieved using
var services = fromJson(bluemixContext.getVCAP_SERVICES());
This will give you a direct access to the connected services credentials and exposed information, the credentials is what I have found updated each time you deploy a new version of you code so you need to use this way to get the credentials.
If you login to your Bluemix dashboard and click on your XPage service icon, you’ll find environment variables in the left hand navigator. This will display the structure of the VCAP_SERVICES JSON data check it out.
Most of the services has different methods of accessing them, I’m still investigating how to use different services and future posts will show how to use Bluemix services using XPages
When you want to deploy your app to the real world a mybluemix.net adress might not be the best you probably want your own domain added. Fortunately this is very simple to do with Bluemix.
Click on the settings icon in the top right corner on your Bluemix Dashboard and select Edit Routes and App Access.
Click on Manage Domains
Click on Add Domain
Write your custom Domain name and press Save
an upload SSL Certificate appears and if you want to accept SSL to you application, you need to upload a certificate to your application.
Add your CRT file i the Certificate file upload control and your Key File and password in the next two fields. And press Upload.
Now you are almost done.
Go back to the first screen
your new domain will now show up as an option instead of mybluemix.net
There are several options too create a SSL cert but for test purposes I use https://www.startssl.com/ it’s a great way to create a free SSL cert or your can get a great price from Digicert that I use for all my professional certs
I have seen more than once both of own and other developer experience that a loop in XPages gone bad and you have to kill the server. How can this kind of behavior be fixed in XPages for Bluemix will the dashboard work to “kill” the server?
When I started to try out XPages for Bluemix I started to create a list of questions for the future because this is in Beta and between now and Gold release some of this questions would be good to have an answer on.
What release cycle could we expect to get for the XPages runtime, in relation of getting new versions of extension library and functionality – Answereda monthly release cycle or synced with openntf extension library upgrades
How do we run scheduled code that we have runned in agents before – Not at this point but the possibility could be there in a future release Answer
How to handle Users/Groups/Roles partial answerGroups is not supported and you are limited to 6 web users in the experimental version of XPages for bluemix
How to register users thru code, integrate with LDAP, SAMLNot at this point partial answer
How to control JVM Security
How to do an automated XPage build process – Could could add git to a Bluemix project and deploy your code the git See post perhaps we will see a ODP git push to Bluemix in the future that would be great.
How to use other Bluemix Services with XPages AnswerAnswer2
How to package an XPage for Bluemix solution as a temple for multi service deployment
can a XPages application be run inside a Docker container
How does XPages in Bluemix scale – Answer and a very good one
Is the database
I will probably get more questions and will then update this post. I will also add any answers I get to this post. If you know any answer please comment.
On friday the XPages runtime on Bluemix was released and also the new version of OpenNTF Extension library that enables to work with.
My first impression is that it works great I haven’t had time to do any deep diving into the new possibilities but I thought I should share as long as I have tried it.
To get it to work you need a bluemix account and install the latest extlib into you designer client when you done that you will get a new entry in your preference in the designer.
I have selected the US South (Don’t know if the XPage engine is deployed in the UK site) write your user name and password and Test Connection
if this is ok your designer is connected to Bluemix
Go to bluemix and setup an XPage Starter app when you have logged in to Bluemix you need to go to catalog and at the bottom click on Bluemix Labs Catalog
inside this beta catalog you will find the XPage Bluemix engine and also a web starter application click on this entry.
Fill out an name for you app at the lefthand side and press Create
Your started application is now being setuped and the next step is to download the webstarter app, I actually don’t know if you need the Bluemix commandline tool and I haven’t been able to download it and had it from before so I couldn’t test with out it, but try without it and let me know.
When you have downloaded the starter code go to designer and in the tools menu
This will start a wizard when you need to specify a path to a bluemix staging area, this area should not be in the client data folder and connect to the bluemix app area.
To deploy your code to bluemix you need to right click on the database and select deploy application remember to sign your database before doing this if you have multiple signers in the application.
The deployment will take very long time and if you check the Bluemix the application will show as started but it’s not. This might hopefully be improved with better status updates in future releases.
This will add the design database if you want to connect to the data nsf you need to go into Bluemix and download a notes id and connect you will find this information below services in the Bluemix dashboard.
It seams like the backend data store for the Bluemix is a Linux Domino server because if you browse it you will find regular databases in the root of the server. It will be interesting to see any performance data from the Bluemix setup.
All the old Java applets that is YES in some old apps not yet converted used got another problem today on Domino 9 and 9.01. They are now blocked by Oracle because the code signing certificate is outdated, it seams like when they where updated to work with Java 1.7 45 the person who resigned them did that with an old certificate and now that cert is outdated and has been so for 1 month. If IBM or you want to keep track on when your code or SSL certs expires QNova Systems contract management system works really great for this purpose and many more things, contact me if you want to know more. An interesting thing will also to see if the new code cert created with SHA-2, because I don’t think you can get one with SHA-1 anymore and this will make Java 1.6 outdated because it doesn’t have support for SHA-2.
The previous 5 steps in this series (part 1part 2part 3part 4part 5) has been getting data out to excel in different ways this part will show you how to get data back into Domino again thru your XPage, this will give you the possibility to roundtrip data handling. Export all customers mark the rows you have changed and re import the data. Because Apache POI is installed on the server as an OSGI we have access to these classes in all java code on the server and that is what I’m going to show you today and how to upload an Excel file and read some data from a cell.
In the example database for POI4XPages there is a class you really need and that is the ImportAction this is needed to open up a workbook of a xlsx file you don’t need it if you are only using xls. This class is used for changing the classpath of the jvm and some security stuff so you don’t need to modify the java.policy file on your server (Thanks Christian for pointing this out)
We start with some OpenNTF data in Excel
We create an java class
public String getData(java.io.File file,Integer row,Integer cell){
try {
String inputFile = file.getPath();
String CellVal=””;
ImportAction ioAction = new ImportAction();
HashMap<String, String> hsCurrent = new HashMap<String, String>();
hsCurrent.put(“FILE”, inputFile);
workbook = ioAction.run(null, hsCurrent);
if (ioAction.hasError()) {
Exception exLst = ioAction.getLastException();
throw(exLst);
}else{
Sheet worksheet=workbook.getSheetAt(0);
Row rowdata = worksheet.getRow(row);
Cell celldata = rowdata.getCell(cell);
CellVal= celldata.getStringCellValue();
}
return CellVal;
}catch(Exception e){
return “”;
}}
lets look at the parts of this class
ImportAction ioAction = new ImportAction();
HashMap<String, String> hsCurrent = new HashMap<String, String>();
hsCurrent.put(“FILE”, inputFile);
workbook = ioAction.run(null, hsCurrent);
if (ioAction.hasError()) {
Exception exLst = ioAction.getLastException();
}
This is the magic call the the ImportAction class that will create a Excel POI workbook Object.
The following rows will get the first sheet in the excel file get the first row and the first cell and return the string
Sheet worksheet=workbook.getSheetAt(0);
Row rowdata = worksheet.getRow(row);
Cell celldata = rowdata.getCell(cell);
CellVal= celldata.getStringCellValue();
Now we need to create the XPage to enable the upload of the Excel file
The interesting part is behind the read button onclick event
importPackage(com.xpagedeveloper)
var con = facesContext.getExternalContext();
var request:com.sun.faces.context.MyHttpServletRequestWrapper = con.getRequest();
var map:java.util.Map = request.getParameterMap();
var fileDataName = getClientId(“fileUpload1”) ;
var fileData:com.ibm.xsp.http.UploadedFile = map.get( fileDataName );
if( fileData == null ){
return;
}
var tempFile:java.io.File = fileData.getServerFile();
var Excel=new com.xpagedeveloper.ExcelData()
viewScope.data=Excel.getData(tempFile,0,0)
We get the uploaded file in fileData and retrieve the actual file using fileData.getServerFile() remember that this file is a server based temp file and with that I mean that you will not get the same same on the file as it was when the user uploaded it. And next I create an object of my class and call the getData function with the java io file object the row and the cell number remember that this has a zero based index so 0,0 is actual row 1 and cell 1, this is the result I get when running the code against the Excel sheet
If you are going to loop thru a full excel sheet you probably need to rewrite the code but this will give you a hint where to begin.
In the previous parts (Part 1Part 2Part 3Part 4) we covered plain export, styling your exports and doing selective exports. Today I want to show you how to create more advanced and flexible way to get your data using a java object that we use for the export.
We start by creating 2 java classes one for the export and one of the Export Data
Then in each class add implements Serializable and the private variable on the row below. This is so the java VM can swap the data out disk if needed.
We will start by creating our data class, very simple. Check what type of data you want to export in each column, in my case I want to export
And then we use the generate setters/getters function in DDE by right clicking in the source window
And select all variables you want to autogenerate setter and getters for an click on OK
Time to create the getData function in the Export class the important thing here is that we return a a java object of the type List.
I also create the function as static because I will only run this function and return the data once. This is the code for the export class. The important thing to point out is
The I create the Exportdata object on each row and store it in the RowData variable
And when I have populated it I add it to the Data ArrayList Object the is returned from the function at the end.
In my Excel export component in All properties datarowexport and I select to create a wgpoi:ListObjectDataSource.
And click on the buildValues property to add some source
And we add this simple code to get the data from the Java objects returned you can expand you getData class and sending in filter parameters from the XPage as we did in Part 4 of this series but in this case the filtering will be done in java.
But wait, you might say how do we populate the column data. That’s the great part of the implementation. You write the name of you variable in you data class and the getter will do the rest. so in this case it will call getName from your row class that is returned.
With this new way of exporting you can combine the data from different sources not only one as I’ve shown in the past parts of this series of posts and giving even better exports to you users.
Integrating a better export into your application will make your users happier
The recent parts of this series has shown you how to create excel exports from a view and also changing the layout of the reports with headers and logos. This post will show you how to filter the data in your excel reports both using keys and fulltext searches. Let’s get started.
To get some filtered export we add an combobox into our XPage and in this case to show both a Export with a key and search we have two buttons for the different export options.
The code behind the combobox is a standard lookup fro the value data
And storing the information within a viewScope variable ExportData
The setup behind the buttons is the same as we done in the previous posts but we add a scriptblock before doing the actual export
If we look at the simple formula for a key based export.
We clear the ExportSearch viewScope var I’ll explain this later and assign the ExportData var into the ExportKey var. The view we are working against is an ordinary view with a categorized first column.
What you need is assigning the key param with the viewScope.ExportKey. In this case I’ve also assigned the search param. But in an ordinary case you would probably assign only one of them. Depending on if you want to get all documents by category or by Fulltext search.
The code behind the search export button is this
We place a standard FT search formula inside the ExportSearch viewScope variable. Selecting all documents that the field Region has the value stored in the ExportData viewScope variable.
So exporting to excel with user customized data has never been easier.
Apache POI for XPages has more options up it sleave so this series will continue so stay tuned in.
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We place a standard FT search formula inside the ExportSearch viewScope variable. Selecting all documents that the field Region has the value stored in the ExportData viewScope variable.
