JSF Datatable with database sorting, filtering and pagination

When database grows (or may grow) significantly it is necessary to consider database pagination for loading data since the Application Server memory isn’t sized for handling such huge amount of data.

Luckily rich:extendedDataTable provides an easy way of delegating the sorting, filtering and also pagination to the underlying data store. I sincerely remember that the I saw the base for this idea somewhere in Seam Framework forum (if anyone knows something similar please let me know) but I couldn’t find it for referencing, anyways it is now extended and more flexible. Another foundation of this technique is the org.jboss.seam.framework.Query since it provides means of expressing filtering and sorting as a huge string even with JSF variables (eg.: #{something.otherthing}).

Lets start with the EntityExtendedTableDataModel that is responsible for passing filtering and sorting data from view layer to data layer:

<pre>/**
EntityExtendedTableDataModel - Database pagination, sorting and filtering for richfaces datatables
Copyright (C) 2011 Rafael Ribeiro

This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
modify it under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public
License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either
version 2.1 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This library is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the GNU
Lesser General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU Lesser General Public
License along with this library; if not, write to the Free Software
Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA  02110-1301  USA
*/</pre>
import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.List;
import java.util.regex.Matcher;
import java.util.regex.Pattern;

import javax.faces.component.html.HtmlInputText;
import javax.faces.context.FacesContext;
import javax.faces.convert.Converter;
import javax.faces.convert.ConverterException;

import org.apache.commons.lang.StringUtils;
import org.jboss.seam.core.Expressions;
import org.jboss.seam.core.Expressions.ValueExpression;
import org.jboss.seam.framework.Query;
import org.jboss.seam.ui.AbstractEntityLoader;
import org.richfaces.model.DataProvider;
import org.richfaces.model.ExtendedFilterField;
import org.richfaces.model.ExtendedTableDataModel;
import org.richfaces.model.FilterField;
import org.richfaces.model.Modifiable;
import org.richfaces.model.Ordering;
import org.richfaces.model.SortField2;

public class EntityExtendedTableDataModel extends ExtendedTableDataModel implements Modifiable {
EntityDataProvider entityDataProvider;
public EntityExtendedTableDataModel(Query query) {
super(new EntityDataProvider(query));
entityDataProvider = (EntityDataProvider) getDataProvider();
}

public void modify(List<FilterField> filterFields,
List<SortField2> sortFields) {
performSort(sortFields);
performFilter(filterFields);
}

private void performSort(List<SortField2> sortFields) {
StringBuilder order = new StringBuilder();
Pattern p = Pattern.compile("\\#\\{(.+)\\}");
for (SortField2 s: sortFields) {
if (Ordering.UNSORTED.equals(s.getOrdering()) == false) {
String expr = s.getExpression().getExpressionString();
Matcher m = p.matcher(expr);
if (m.matches()) { //remove the #{} otherwise richfaces wont trigger the sort event
order.append(m.group(1));
}
else {
order.append(expr);
}
order.append(" ");
order.append(Ordering.ASCENDING.equals(s.getOrdering()) ? "ASC" : "DESC");
order.append(", ");
}
}
if (order.length() > 0)
entityDataProvider.getQuery().setOrder(order.delete(order.length()-2, order.length()).toString());
}
//allows us to specify filter as o.name == #{exampleEntity.name}
private void performFilter(List<FilterField> filterFields) {
Expressions expressions = new org.jboss.seam.core.Expressions();
Pattern p = Pattern.compile(".*(\\#\\{.+\\}).*");
List<String> restrictions = new ArrayList<String>();
for (FilterField f: filterFields) {
ExtendedFilterField e = (ExtendedFilterField) f;
if (StringUtils.isEmpty(e.getFilterValue()))
continue;
StringBuilder filter = new StringBuilder();
String expr = e.getExpression().getExpressionString();
Matcher m = p.matcher(expr);
if (!m.matches())
continue;
ValueExpression ve = expressions.createValueExpression(m.group(1));
FacesContext ctx = FacesContext.getCurrentInstance();
Converter c = ctx.getApplication().createConverter(ve.getType());
if (c == null)
ve.setValue(e.getFilterValue());
else {
try {
ve.setValue(c.getAsObject(ctx, new HtmlInputText(), e.getFilterValue()));
} catch (ConverterException ce) {
continue;
}
}
restrictions.add(expr);
}
entityDataProvider.getQuery().setRestrictionExpressionStrings(restrictions);
}

}
class EntityDataProvider implements DataProvider {

private Query query;
public EntityDataProvider(Query query) {
this.query = query;
}

public Object getItemByKey(Object key) {
return AbstractEntityLoader.instance().get(String.valueOf(key));
}

public List getItemsByRange(int firstRow, int endRow) {
query.setFirstResult(firstRow);
query.setMaxResults(endRow-firstRow);
return query.getResultList();
}

public Object getKey(Object item) {
return AbstractEntityLoader.instance().put(item);
}

public int getRowCount() {
return query.getResultCount().intValue();
}
protected Query getQuery() {
return query;
}
}

Now we have to replace Seam datamodels component with ours:

<pre>EntityExtendedTableDataModel - Database pagination, sorting and filtering for richfaces datatables
Copyright (C) 2011 Rafael Ribeiro

This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
modify it under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public
License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either
version 2.1 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This library is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the GNU
Lesser General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU Lesser General Public
License along with this library; if not, write to the Free Software
Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA  02110-1301  USA
*/</pre>
import static org.jboss.seam.ScopeType.STATELESS;
import static org.jboss.seam.annotations.Install.FRAMEWORK;

import javax.faces.model.DataModel;

import org.jboss.seam.annotations.Install;
import org.jboss.seam.annotations.Name;
import org.jboss.seam.annotations.Scope;
import org.jboss.seam.annotations.intercept.BypassInterceptors;
import org.jboss.seam.faces.DataModels;
import org.jboss.seam.framework.EntityQuery;
import org.jboss.seam.framework.Query;

@Name("org.jboss.seam.faces.dataModels")
@Install(precedence=FRAMEWORK)
@Scope(STATELESS)
@BypassInterceptors
public class RichFacesModels extends DataModels
{

@Override
public DataModel getDataModel(Query query)
{
if (query instanceof EntityQuery)
{
return new EntityExtendedTableDataModel((EntityQuery) query);
}
else
{
return super.getDataModel(query);
}
}

}

Finally we specify in rich:column the filtering remembering that the base object name here must be in sync with the referenced query, example:

<rich:extendedDataTable id="listaPacientes" rows="10" value="#{queryAllEntities.dataModel}" var="obj">
<rich:column sortable="true" sortBy="#{o.name}" selfSorted="false"
filterBy="lower(o.name) like concat(lower(#{exampleEntity.name}),'%')" filterEvent="onkeyup"
label="Name">

The trick here is to specify selfSorted=”false” and adding the JSF #{} part for the sorting to work, this way o.name will be appended to Query sorting.

On the other hand, for filtering to work you only need to specify your query, note that what you specify between the #{} will hold the filter data handed to the Query.

Also note that you need to have a query and an entity as a component specified in components.xml, in this example, this could be the query and the example entity:

<component name="exampleEntity" class="br.com.rafaelri.MyEntity" scope="session" />
<framework:entity-query name="queryAllEntities" ejbql="select o from MyEntity o" />

This, combined with rich:dataScroller will result in sorting, pagination and filtering handled by the Database.

Enum backed h:selectOneRadio and h:selectOneMenu

Recently I needed to display a h:selectOneRadio and a h:selectOneMenu with values provided by a Java Enum. After some research on seamframework forum I saw one post that clarified a lot the way I should pursue, specially Pete’s comment. My greatest concern was the same of Pete: wiring up presentation and domain layer. But, after some analysis I found a simple solution that does not wire up domain and presentation layer and also respects the DRY principle. The solution involved crafting a class that would be instantiated as a Seam component on components.xml so it can be instantiated for each and every enum that we want to provide on view layer and also used EnumSet.allOf method so we could automagically iterate for each of the enum values.

Below, you can find the EnumList class:

/**
EnumList Seam Component - Converts Java Enums to List.
Copyright (C) 2011 Rafael Ribeiro

This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
modify it under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public
License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either
version 2.1 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This library is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the GNU
Lesser General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU Lesser General Public
License along with this library; if not, write to the Free Software
Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA  02110-1301  USA
*/
import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.EnumSet;
import java.util.List;

import org.apache.commons.lang.builder.ToStringBuilder;
import org.apache.commons.lang.builder.ToStringStyle;

public class EnumList<T extends Enum<T>> {
private List<T> list;

public void setEnumClass(Class<T> c) {
list = new ArrayList<T>();
list.addAll(EnumSet.allOf(c));
}

public List<T> getList() {
return list;
}

public String toString() {
return new ToStringBuilder(this, ToStringStyle.SHORT_PREFIX_STYLE)
.append("list", list).toString();

}
}

And the configure it on components.xml as follows:

<component name="myEnumComp" scope="application" auto-create="true">
<property name="enumClass">br.com.rafaelri.MyEnum</property>
</component>
<factory name="myEnum" value="#{myEnumComp.list}" scope="application" auto-create="true"/>

Finally you’ll refer to it on your xhtml as follows:

<h:selectOneMenu id="myEnumSelect" value="#{instanceHome.instance.myEnum}">
<s:selectItems var="enum" value="#{myEnum}" label="#{enum.description()}"/>
<s:convertEnum />
</h:selectOneMenu>

Disabling Seam Deployer

This post is only an update to the previous post. Recently I found an even more elegant solution in order to disable seam.deployer. Instead of removing the package from JBoss AS deployers folder we can provide a jboss-scanning.xml file which as documented on JBoss Wiki is able to remove certain files from scanning process.
So, a better (and also less instrusive) workaround is to provide under war/WEB-INF/classes a jboss-scanning.xml file with the following contents:

<scanning xmlns="urn:jboss:scanning:1.0">
  <path name="servlet-1.0.war/WEB-INF/classes">
    <exclude name="seam.properties"/>
  </path>
</scanning>

Seam on JBoss 5.x without Seam Deployer

Recently I started a proof of concept for a new project that will run on JBoss 5.1. The reason for picking JBoss 5.1 instead of the mature 4.2 series was due to its full support for JavaEE 1.5 (4.2 supports only EJB3 spec, no servlet injection, etc) as well as its longer support (4.2 will start an EOL cycle soon).
As soon as I decided to use JBoss 5.x the classloading nightmare started. First of all, Seam uses a kinda strange hack for detecting its components (its scanner class makes use of java.io.File which in turn does not work on newer VFS system released on JBoss 5.x).
Recommendation on Seam forums is to include no Seam file at you EAR/WAR and let Seam deployer do the trick but thiss comes with much obvious limitations:

1. You’ll need a separate packaging for your application on JBoss (this is probably the worst limitation)
2. Seam (and its dependencies) upgrades will involve patching Application Server files

But although recommended you can still deploy a regular Seam application without Seam Deployer. I’ll try to provide a step-by-step guide on how to circumvent this limitation:

First step: remove seam.deployer from $JBOSS_HOME/server/default/deployers (an alternative and less intrusive solution that I just found after writting this post is described over here)
Second step: add all Seam dependencies (jboss-seam-ui.jar, jboss-seam.jar, etc) inside EAR (I sincerely suggest under a lib folder).
Third step: place a jboss-app.xml with the following content on you EAR/META-INF folder

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
  <!DOCTYPE jboss-app
    PUBLIC "-//JBoss//DTD J2EE Application 4.2//EN"
    "http://www.jboss.org/j2ee/dtd/jboss-app_4_2.dtd">
<jboss-app>
      <loader-repository> 
            myapp.ear=MyAppEar
      </loader-repository> 
</jboss-app> 

Fourth step: place a jboss-classloading.xml also on EAR/META-INF folder with the following contents:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<classloading xmlns="urn:jboss:classloading:1.0"
              name="myapp.ear"
              domain="MyAppEar">
</classloading>

Fifth step: place jboss-seam-int-jbossas.jar from seam.deployer/lib-int into your EAR/lib folder. (this jar contains org.jboss.seam.integration.jbossas.vfs.VFSScanner)
Sixth step: place another jboss-classloading.xml on WAR/WEB-INF folder with the following contents:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<classloading xmlns="urn:jboss:classloading:1.0"
              name="mywebapp.war"
              domain="MyWebAppWar">
</classloading>

Seventh step: Place a jboss-web.xml under WAR/WEB-INF with the following contents:

<jboss-web>
	<class-loading java2ClassLoadingCompliance="false">
		<loader-repository>
			mywebapp.war:loader=MyWebApp
			<loader-repository-config>java2ParentDelegation=false
			</loader-repository-config>
		</loader-repository>
	</class-loading>
</jboss-web>

Eighth step: place a seam-deployment.properties anywhere in the classpath (anywhere but before seam jar) with the following contents:

org.jboss.seam.deployment.scanners=org.jboss.seam.integration.jbossas.vfs.VFSScanner

Ninth step: Add all Seam dependencies on MANIFEST.MF file under WAR/META-INF and remember to include jboss-seam-int-jbossas.jar on the classpath.

That’s all you need to avoid having a separate packaging for a Seam enterprise application running on JBoss 5.x (sincerely I guess that you risk having to remove the seam-deployment.properties only). This also makes it easier to replace the JSF implementation on your application.