Hey Barry:

You'll probably really want to investigate using JBossTools if you want some ready-made APIs to really help send management commands.  Also, discovering the management port will require you either parsing xml yourself or accessing some string constants in our server. 

Let's start with host.  All IServer objects in WTP can get the host simply by server.getHost(), so that's easy.

For getting the management port, there are a few ways to do it. The first is with raw xml, searching the proper file. The xpath you'll need and file data is:

as7.0 xpath:  //*[local-name()="management-interfaces"]/*[local-name()="native-interface"]
as7.1 xpath:  //*[local-name()="socket-binding-group"]/*[local-name()="socket-binding"][@name="management-native"]
xpath attribute:  port
file to search:  standalone/configuration/${jboss_config_file}   (probably standalone.xml)

Obviously here the xpaths differ based on jboss version. AS7.0 has one xpath. AS7.1 has a different.  However, none of these allow the 'overrides' available in the UI.  In the JBossTools UI, you can double-click the server to see the editor. There's a port section there, and there's the opportunity to ignore the xml value and override it via UI.  So if the default xpath has 9999 but somehow you're using more complicated features in the standalone.xml such that the actual value is 9998, you'll need to override this in the UI.

So how to get this value that respects the user's UI choices? Well, two ways. One is by using hard-coded strings (if you want to avoid dependency on jbosstools).  The code for that would look like this:

public static final String AS7_MANAGEMENT_PORT_DETECT= "org.jboss.ide.eclipse.as.core.server.as7.managementPortAutoDetect"; //$NON-NLS-1$

public static final String AS7_MANAGEMENT_PORT = "org.jboss.ide.eclipse.as.core.server.as7.managementPort"; //$NON-NLS-1$

        boolean detect = getAttribute(detectKey, true);
        String result = null;
        if( !detect ) {
            result = getAttribute(attributeKey, (String)null);
        } else {
             // Load it from the xml xpaths listed above
        }

This is if you're trying to avoid any dependencies on jbosstools of course. If you don't mind having dependencies on jbosstools, the best way to get this port is as follows:

     JBoss7Server jb7 = server.loadAdapter(JBoss7Server.class, null);
     if( jb7 != null ) {
            return jb7.getManagementPort();
     }

So what other benefits can JBT provide other than just helping to find the port? Well, we can also run your remote commands for you. JBoss7 servers have a remote management service registered in eclipse, which can run your remote commands and return the results.

The first is our management service. The service interface is IJBoss7ManagerService.  You can see a lot of methods there for deploying or stopping a server. But there's also a method to run arbitrary commands:  public String execute(IAS7ManagementDetails details, String request) throws Exception;

The way to access this service is via the following command: JBoss7ManagerUtil.getService(iserverObject);

This API ensures that if for example the protocol changes slightly (either intentionally or as a bug) between as7.1 and as7.2 / as8.0,  the proper service is returned for the proper AS version. Using these APIs ensure that all the management jars are of the proper version, talking to the proper remote version. It's possible to do all of this on your own, but I'm pretty sure you'll find it a LOT more trouble and you'll simply be replicating our work.

And worse yet, how you intend to get the jboss-as jars on the classpath is a point of interest. We currently will be bundling the management jars for each version (or more specifically for any set of jars that cannot talk to each other. We also work hard to ensure that regressions upstream (ie a new version unable to talk to older ones) is fixed promptly).   If you intend to bundle these jars, it'll be inflating the size of your product substantially. And you'll most likely be re-engineering our solution for separation of version jars.

So we've already discussed how to get the port via xml, and how to get a port that respects user settings. We've discussed how to get the management service regardless of app-server version. From there, running the default commands is simple. For example:

JBoss7ManagerUtil.getService(iserverObject).stop(new AS7ManagementDetails(iserverObject));

So the last thing that remains is how to run an arbitrary command. Due to classpath and classloading concerns, we can't have the management service api and interfaces include references to jboss-as jars or classes like ModelNode, so the method for executing arbitrary commands is:

JBoss7ManagerUtil.getService(iserverObject).execute(IAS7ManagementDetails details, String request) throws Exception;

The "String request" is a JBoss-dmr string. And to generate that string, we have yet another plugin called org.jboss.ide.eclipse.as.dmr.  By depending on this plugin you can write code as follows:

        ModelNode request = new ModelNode();
        request.get(OP).set(READ_CHILDREN_NAMES_OPERATION);
        request.get(CHILD_TYPE).set(getName());
        request.get(OP_ADDR).set(getManagementAddress(getParent()));
        String requestString = request.toJSONString(true);
        String resultString = JBoss7ManagerUtil.getService(iserverObject).execute(new AS7ManagementDetails(iserverObject), requestString);
        ModelNode resultNode = ModelNode.fromJSONString(resultString);

Another way to do this is via the following:

    protected ModelNode executeWithResult(final IServer server, final String request) throws Exception {
        String resultJSON = JBoss7ManagerUtil.executeWithService(new JBoss7ManagerUtil.IServiceAware<String>() {
            public String execute(IJBoss7ManagerService service) throws Exception {
                return service.execute(new AS7ManagementDetails(server), request);
            }
        }, server);
        ModelNode result = ModelNode.fromJSONString(resultJSON);
        return result;
    }


Hopefully this gives you a good starting point to discovering ports and running management commands against AS7, as well as what concerns there are.  I'm sure Max or the build team can assist / advise if you start addign dependencies on jbt plugins.

Good luck!!

- Rob

On 08/03/2012 10:19 PM, Barry Lafond wrote: