How to enable valve in JBoss EAP 6

Environment

• JBoss Enterprise Application Platform (EAP) 6.x

Issue

• How do I enable a valve in JBoss EAP 6?

• In previous versions of JBoss it was possible to configure Tomcat Valves by adding jar to $JBOSS_HOME/server/$PROFILE/lib and setting in:

  • JBoss EAP 4.x:
    • $JBOSS_HOME/server/$PROFILE/deploy/jboss-web.deployer/server.xml
      or
    • $JBOSS_HOME/server/$PROFILE/deploy/jboss-web.deployer/context.xml
  • JBoss EAP 5.x:
    • $JBOSS_HOME/server/$PROFILE/deploy/jbossweb.sar/server.xml
      or
    • $JBOSS_HOME/server/$PROFILE//deploy/jbossweb.sar/context.xml

  How can the same be achieved in JBoss EAP 6.x?

• We have a customised Valve class to whitelist specific paths in a request. Is it possible to make our application dependent on this module instead of loaded as global module?

Resolution

Global Valves are not supported in EAP 6.0.x. Upgrade to EAP 6.1 or higher to use them.

Valves on a per application basis (for all versions of EAP 6.x) are configured in jboss-web.xml:

<jboss-web>
    ...(snip)...
    <valve>
       <class-name>com.redhat.jboss.support.MyCustomValve</class-name>
       <param>
           <param-name>somename</param-name>
           <param-value>somevalue</param-value>
       </param>
    </valve>
    ...(snip)...
</jboss-web>

Starting from EAP 6.1, global valves can be configured by the following steps:

Create a custom module for your valve using this CLI command:

     module add --name=com.redhat.jboss.support.MyCustomValve --resources=/path/to/MyCustomValve.jar --dependencies=sun.jdk,javax.servlet.api,org.jboss.as.web,org.jboss.logging

This will result in the following directory structure:

     $JBOSS_HOME/modules/com/redhat/jboss/support/MyCustomValve/main/MyCustomValve.jar
     $JBOSS_HOME/modules/com/redhat/jboss/support/MyCustomValve/main/module.xml

module.xml will contain:

        <module xmlns="urn:jboss:module:1.1" name="com.redhat.jboss.support.MyCustomValve">
          <resources>
            <resource-root path="MyCustomValve.jar"/>
          </resources>
          <dependencies>
            <module name="sun.jdk"/>
            <module name="javax.servlet.api"/>
            <module name="org.jboss.as.web"/>
            <module name="org.jboss.logging"/>
          </dependencies>
        </module>

Add the valve to the web subsystem. Prefix the "cd" command with /profile=myprofile when in domain mode:

 cd /subsystem=web
 ./valve=MyCustomValve:add(class-name=com.redhat.jboss.support.MyCustomValve,module=com.redhat.jboss.support.MyCustomValve,enabled=false)
 ./valve=MyCustomValve:add-param(param-name=somename,param-value=somevalue)
 ./valve=MyCustomValve:write-attribute(name=enabled,value=true)
 /:reload

This results in a valve entry in the web subsystem:

 <valve name="MyCustomValve" module="com.redhat.jboss.support.MyCustomValve"
        class-name="com.redhat.jboss.support.MyCustomValve" enabled="true">
   <param param-name="somename" param-value="somevalue"/>
 </valve>

More information can be found in the This content is not included.documentation on global valves

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