CHRISTMAS 2013 POC

Primary Aims:

• Generate a QR bar code
• Generate a PDF file with embedded QR bar code

Secondary Aims:

• Investigate Spring boot
• Integrate Spring boot and JSF
• Integrate Groovy into a java project.
• Setup a gradle project

QR Code

What is a QR code ? See here for the wikipedia entry. A QR barcode looks like one of these:

Encoded in those dots is a message. It can store a lot more information than standard stripey bar code. I'm going to use GRGen which is an API built on top of ZXing. The plan is to wrap this in a servlet.

PDF from HTML

To do this I found a really good library with the interesting name of Flying Saucer. Pretty much you give it a URL and it will convert the HTML to PDF and write the corresponding PDF byte data to a stream. Again this will be handled via a servlet.

The PDF data type is: application/pdf

Spring boot

First off I want to say how cool spring boot is. The spring guys are really trying to make life easy for us!

In a nutshell spring boot provide a way to rapidly prototype a spring application. It uses lot of convention over configuration to achieve a web application in a few lines (This was why I also looked at groovy as this could reduce the line count down further!). I see spring boot as a replacement for web.xml, war files and the whole web deployment process!!! You run a spring boot project from the command line and it fires up your web app inside an embedded container. It's a much simpler world. To get started on spring boot take a look at:

Spring 4.0 and Intellij IdEA 13 - This is a great tutorial and where I started.

Spring website

Spring boot github

Spring boot samples

Spring boot JSF integration?

First off, I did not get this working but for the record here is what I tried

1. Added JSF dependencies

    <dependency>
        <groupId>com.sun.faces</groupId>
        <artifactId>jsf-api</artifactId>
        <version>2.2.4</version>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>com.sun.faces</groupId>
        <artifactId>jsf-impl</artifactId>
        <version>2.2.4</version>
    </dependency>
   

2. Added spring boot servlet mapping

   @Bean public ServletRegistrationBean jsfServlet() { return new ServletRegistrationBean( new javax.faces.webapp.FacesServlet(), "*.jsf" ); }

When I try and hit a JSF page I get:

java.lang.IllegalStateException: Could not find backup for factory javax.faces.context.FacesContextFactory.
        at javax.faces.FactoryFinder$FactoryManager.getFactory(FactoryFinder.java:1135)
        at javax.faces.FactoryFinder.getFactory(FactoryFinder.java:379)
        at javax.faces.webapp.FacesServlet.init(FacesServlet.java:350)
        at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardWrapper.initServlet(StandardWrapper.java:1280)
        at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardWrapper.allocate(StandardWrapper.java:885)

Groovy

Groovy integration is as simple as adding a build plugin to the maven pom file. You can then mix .groovy with your .java files.

<plugin>
   <artifactId>maven-compiler-plugin</artifactId>
   <version>3.1</version>
   <configuration>
       <source>1.7</source>
       <target>1.7</target>

       <compilerId>groovy-eclipse-compiler</compilerId>
   </configuration>
   <dependencies>

       <dependency>
           <groupId>org.codehaus.groovy</groupId>
           <artifactId>groovy-eclipse-compiler</artifactId>
           <version>2.8.0-01</version>
       </dependency>
       <dependency>
           <groupId>org.codehaus.groovy</groupId>
           <artifactId>groovy-eclipse-batch</artifactId>
           <version>2.1.8-01</version>
       </dependency>
     </dependencies>

Putting it all together

Using maven:

git clone http://github.com/coder36/xmaspoc
cd xmaspoc
mvn clean install
java -jar target/xmaspoc-0.1-SNAPSHOT.jar

Using gradle

git clone http://github.com/coder36/xmaspoc
cd xmaspoc
gradlew build
java -jar build/libs/xmaspoc-0.1.jar

Navigate to http://localhost:8080/

To see groovy in action, navigate to http://localhost:8080