Invoking EJBs / JNDI / JMS over HTTP in JBoss EAP 7.2+ with or without a Load Balancer

Solution Verified - Updated

Environment

  • Red Hat Enterprise Application Platform (EAP) 7.1 or later
  • Remote Enterprise Java Beans (EJB)
  • Java Messaging Service (JMS)
  • HTTP protocol

Issue

  • How to configured and invoke
  • How to disable / enable
  • Need to change the default wildfly-services path
  • Load-balancer friendly protocol needed

Resolution

Note: When using a load balancer, it needs to be a httpd-based load balancer for EJB over http through a load balancer to work correctly.

The implementation is simple using the default configuration:

  • Add the following dependency to the client code:

      <dependency>
      <groupId>org.wildfly.wildfly-http-client</groupId>
      <artifactId>wildfly-http-ejb-client</artifactId>
  </dependency>

  • Example Client Context Code

      public void callRemoteEjbOverHttp() {
    HelloRemote remote = getInitialContext(host, port, user, pass).lookup("ejb:helloWorld/helloWorld-ejb/HelloWorldSLSB!org.jboss.examples.ejb.HelloRemote");
        remote.helloWorld();
  }

  public static Context getInitialContext(String host, Integer port, String username, String password)  throws NamingException {
    Properties props = new Properties();
    props.put(Context.INITIAL_CONTEXT_FACTORY,  "org.wildfly.naming.client.WildFlyInitialContextFactory");
    // https://localhost:8080/wildfly-services
    props.put(Context.PROVIDER_URL, String.format("%s://%s:%d/wildfly-services", "http", host, port));
    if(username != null && password != null) {
        props.put(Context.SECURITY_PRINCIPAL, username);
        props.put(Context.SECURITY_CREDENTIALS, password);
      }
    return new InitialContext(props);
  }

These are few useful configuration commands.

Changing the default wildfly-services path

The default path wildfly-services can be changed in the undertow subsystem, for example the CLI command below changes it to be http, where the client would use the JNDI provider URL of http://localhost:8080/http

/subsystem=undertow/server=default-server/host=default-host/setting=http-invoker:write-attribute(name=path,value=http)

Disabling EJB / JNDI over HTTP

Remove the http-invoker from the host in the undertow subsytem for example:

/subsystem=undertow/server=default-server/host=default-host/setting=http-invoker:remove()

Re-enable EJB / JNDI over HTTP

This CLI command below will add the default http-invoker configuration back to the default-host in the undertow subsystem:

/subsystem=undertow/server=default-server/host=default-host/setting=http-invoker:add(security-realm=ApplicationRealm, path=/wildfly-services)

Related Solutions

Note EJB / JNDI over HTTP is support for JBoss EAP 7.2 but Tech Preview for 7.1

Root Cause

Server Side

The server-side, enabled by default in JBoss EAP 7.2, consists of a service that handles the incoming HTTP requests, unmarshals them and passes the result to the internal EJB invocation code.

It can also handle accepting and pushing JMS messages.

NOTE: Any deployment that aims to use the http-authentication-factory must use Elytron security with the same security domain corresponding to the specified HTTP authentication factory.

Client Side

The client-side implementation consists of an EJBReceiver that uses the Undertow HTTP client to invoke the server. Connection management is handled automatically using a connection pool.

To perform the HTTP invocation, you must use the http or https URL and include the context name of the HTTP invoker, which defaults to wildfly-services. For example, if remoting-based code is currently using remote+http://localhost:8080 as the target URL, in order to implement HTTP transport, this would correspond to http://localhost:8080/wildfly-services.

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