Hello,

I tried to follow the end to end guide (http://scn.sap.com/docs/DOC-33513). Unfortunately when I add the table as described in section 2.3 I get the following error, when I try to display the page in the javascript log: Uncaught TypeError: Cannot read property 'Table' of undefined. Nothing, besides the background, gets displayed. I attached my source code (Note that you have to rename the file to *.zip).

Best Regards,

Jan

Hello,

When I try to configure eclipse for NW cloud i get the below message. Can someone help ?

Cannot complete the install because one or more required items could not be found.

  Software being installed: Eclipse Tools for SAP NetWeaver Cloud 1.9.7.1 (com.sap.core.tools.eclipse.server.feature.feature.group 1.9.7.1)

  Missing requirement: Juno-specific Implementation for SAP NetWeaver Cloud 1.4.4.1 (com.sap.core.tools.eclipse.server.version 1.4.4.1) requires 'bundle org.eclipse.wst.server.core 1.4.0' but it could not be found

  Cannot satisfy dependency:

    From: WTP Server Adapter for SAP NetWeaver Cloud 1.4.4.1 (com.sap.core.tools.eclipse.server.cloud.feature.feature.group 1.4.4.1)

    To: com.sap.core.tools.eclipse.server.version [1.4.4.1]

  Cannot satisfy dependency:

    From: Eclipse Tools for SAP NetWeaver Cloud 1.9.7.1 (com.sap.core.tools.eclipse.server.feature.feature.group 1.9.7.1)

    To: com.sap.core.tools.eclipse.server.cloud.feature.feature.group [1.4.4.1]

Hello,

I created a Dynamic Web Project and converted it to a Maven Project. When I try to execute Maven Install I get the following Error:

[ERROR] COMPILATION ERROR :

[ERROR] bootstrap class path not set in conjunction with -source 1.6

C:\Users\D056848\workspace\social-media-integration\src\com\sap\netweaver\cloud\social\media\TwitterServlet.java:[5,31] error: package javax.servlet.annotation does not exist

[ERROR] C:\Users\D056848\workspace\social-media-integration\src\com\sap\netweaver\cloud\social\media\TwitterServlet.java:[13,1] error: cannot find symbol

I attached the complete Maven log for further details. Furthermore I attached my pom.xml which is basically the same as the pom.xml from the end-to-end tutorial.

In Project Properties --> Java Build Path the SAP Netweaver Cloud Library is existent (including javax.servlet-3.0.0.v201103241009.jar and javax.servlet.jsp-2.2.0.v201103241009.jar)

Any ideas?

Regards,

Jan

Hi All,

I would like to know if it is possible to deploy .war from a running web application ?

I have a scenario when my first web app builds another  .war application file in runtime and then needs to deploy it on the same cloud.

Is it possible to do on nwtrial.ondemand.com cloud ? Is this a legal scenario ?

If yes, what apis or services should the first application use?

Regards,

Slavik.

Between Christmas and New Year I've had some time at home to play around with NetWeaver Cloud. This time I was wondering how to make it easier to run SAP NetWeaver Cloud on your machine with very little efforts to setup the infrastructure.

The persona for this script

The person that I wrote this script for is somebody

• who likes to understand what you can do with NetWeaver Cloud
• doesn't want to spend too much time and create a big data footprint on the hard drive
• or simply wants to try out something new (just like me) :-)

The list of assets

After thinking through this is my list of assets I wanted to use

• a Virtualized Ubuntu machine
• SAP NetWeaver Cloud
• the related SDK and the Eclipse Tools
• a bash script to install everything properly with close-to-zero effort

Step 1: Setup a virtualized Ubuntu

After trying out the latest version Ubuntu 12.10 and Ubuntu 12.04 I found out that the more stable release is 12.04. With 12.10 I faced several issues with bad performance and after crawling the internet that seems to be a known issue that hasn't been fixed, yet.

So I took Ubuntu 12.04 desktop and installed it on VirtualBox on my MacBook Pro. This went pretty quickly and took me around 5 minutes.

Remember the password you've given the system :-)

Step 2: Download SAP NetWeaver Cloud SDK

Start Ubuntu and the Firefox browser, go to the SAP NetWeaver Cloud Update Site and download the SAP NetWeaver Cloud SDK.

Store it in the Downloads folder of your user.

Step 3: Store and run the bash-script

Now we get to the fun part of all of this.

Start the terminal in Ubuntu. For that you click on the Dash Home button at the top left and type-in Terminal into the search box. Click on the Terminal button showing up below the search field.

Now you change to the Downloads folder and create a bash file called install.sh. For that you need to be logged-on as a root user.

sudo -s

cd Downloads

sudo gedit install.sh

Take the text below and copy and paste it to the editor in your Ubuntu system.

#!/bin/bash

 

echo "###########################################################"

echo "## Define variables for pre-downloaded software and URLs"

echo "###########################################################"

echo "# Neo SDK (get the file at https://tools.netweaver.ondemand.com/)"

echo "# The file needs to be stored in the Downloads folder"

filenameNeoSdk=neo-sdk-1.17.0.zip

urlCloudTools=https://tools.netweaver.ondemand.com/juno

 

echo "# Ensure that the script changes into the Downloads folder"

cd $HOME/Downloads

 

echo "###########################################################"

echo "## Update your ubuntu system"

echo "###########################################################"

apt-get update

echo "# Now upgrade assuming that all questions from the"

echo "# upgrade will be answered with yes"

apt-get upgrade --assume-yes

apt-get autoclean

apt-get autoremove

 

echo "###########################################################"

echo "## Install some additional packages"

echo "###########################################################"

echo "# Install JDK"

apt-get install openjdk-7-jre-headless --assume-yes

echo "###########################################################"

echo "## Install Eclipse"

echo "###########################################################"

echo "# Get Eclipse Juno for Linux (32 bit)"

wget http://mirror.netcologne.de/eclipse//technology/epp/downloads/release/juno/SR1/eclipse-jee-juno-SR1-linux-gtk.tar.gz&mirror_id=580

echo "# Unzip the Eclipse  tar file into the current folder"

tar xzf eclipse-jee-juno-SR1-linux-gtk.tar.gz

 

echo "# Move it to the opt directory"

mv eclipse /opt/

 

echo "###########################################################"

echo "## Start Eclipse"

echo "###########################################################"

/opt/eclipse/eclipse -clean

You need to ensure that the text #!/bin/bash is really on the first line. Additionally you'll also have to adapt the filename for the SDK you've downloaded to the name in the script in line 7

filenameNeoSdk=neo-sdk-1.17.0.zip

Save the file and exit the editor by closing it.

Before you can run it you need to make the bash file executable. You do that with the following command:

chmod +x install.sh

The only thing left to do now is to run the script and wait until Eclipse starts.

./install.sh

What will the script do? It'll

• first update the Ubuntu OS itself (till line 21)
• install Java on Ubuntu (line 23 - 27)
• install Eclipse Juno (line 29 - 38)
• start Eclipse (line 43)

Step 4: Setting up Eclipse

This is the part I'm still not happy with. Ideally one could install the SAP NetWeaver tools via the command line, too. Unfortunately I wasn't able to make that work. In theory this should work with the p2 director application, but I wasn't able to provide the SCN credentials to the script.

So just follow the instructions on the SAP NetWeaver Cloud Update Site on step number 3 and you're done :-)

Step 5: Taking advantage of the VM

Once you were able to setup everything properly you should create a snapshot of your VM and secure it. From this point on you can restore the VM whenever you want and have a fully functional development environment for SAP NetWeaver Cloud.

Not 100% there, yet

If I compare what I've tried to achieve and what I was able to do I wasn't successful in automating everything. There are a few things left:

• In case you have an idea how to automate the installation of the SAP NetWeaver tools via the command line, please let me know and I'll update this blog accordingly.
• Adding the NetWeaver server automatically would be another thing I'd like to see being automated. Again maybe some of you have an idea on how to best do it via the command line. Please let me know.
• Any other idea how to improve the script? Please add a comment to this blog and I'll try to incorporate it.

It was a nice exercise to setup the script and install the development environment for SAP NetWeaver Cloud.

I hope you find this useful, too.

Best,

Rui

I'm looking for a functionality to delete old log files from an application deployed on the nw cloud but I wasn't able to spot it yet. Neither the neo sdk tools nor the web page https://account.netweaver.ondemand.com/ seem to provide such a functionality. As a workaround I'd also be happy with some kind of logrotate functionality where I can manually trigger a rename of the existing logs so I can start with a new and empty log file.

Is it possible (or planned to be supported) to deploy web application bundles on the nw cloud? According to the documentation one can deploy wars and osgi bundles. I just tried to deploy a minimal wab with a single servlet. The wab has a its classes under WEB-INF\classes, a web.xml fle and a manifest with the web contextpath entry and the the bundle class path set to WEB-INF\classes. After starting the app I can see in the log files entries like '

#DEBUG#com.sap.core.js.admin.operations.AdminOperations##anonymous#RMI TCP Connection(17)-10.78.1.9##foo#app#web#null#null#All bundles are active|

2013 01 28 10:22:40#+00#DEBUG#com.sap.core.js.admin.operations.AdminOperations##anonymous#RMI TCP Connection(17)-10.78.1.9##foo#app#web#null#null#All bundles are active|

2013 01 28 10:22:40#+00#DEBUG#com.sap.core.js.admin.operations.AdminOperations##anonymous#RMI TCP Connection(17)-10.78.1.9##foo#app#web#null#null#All bundles are resolved|

2013 01 28 10:22:40#+00#DEBUG#com.sap.core.js.admin.operations.AdminOperations##anonymous#RMI TCP Connection(17)-10.78.1.9##foo#app#web#null#null#Context path [webconsole] not found in any of the web application paths|

2013 01 28 10:22:40#+00#DEBUG#com.sap.core.js.admin.operations.AdminOperations##anonymous#RMI TCP Connection(17)-10.78.1.9##foo#app#web#null#null#Applications not started yet: {webconsole=Application with context path [webconsole] is not started.}|

2013 01 28 10:22:40#+00#DEBUG#com.sap.core.js.admin.operations.AdminOperations##anonymous#RMI TCP Connection(17)-10.78.1.9##foo#app#web#null#null#Not all applications started yet|

'

Is there anything else required? I've seen at http://zeroturnaround.com/software/jrebel/resources/documentation/jrebel-how-to-getting-started-with-sap-netweaver-cloud/ that they use a touchpoint action for p2 to extract the bundle but don't know if this is a strict requirement? The documentation is definitely lacking some details here. Also I wasn't able to find a list of the provided bundles/packages in the nw cloud. Sure one can enable the debug level logging (thats what I've done) and look at the output here but this isn't really cool.

Hi,

I am experiencing this very often, but not I don't know how it can be provoked so it can be reproduced. It happens when I start the local server, while the WAR (config\.\pickup\server.war) is deployed.

However, when it happens, the Job hangs, and I cannot cancel. Restarting Eclipse is no option, as the Job is still running. So I can either kill Eclipse, or wait until a timeout is reached and the Job exits.

Is it possible to make the deployment job cancelable? Or at least catch up from the error and exit the job.

Below the stacktrace...

Regards, Sebastian

17:17:43,610 [com.sap.core.js.logging.bridge.OSGILogListener@4dfe7933] ERROR org.eclipse.osgi (OSGILogListener.java:62) writeLogTrowable - An unexpected runtime error has occurred. The application will terminate.java.util.zip.ZipError: jzentry == 0,

jzfile = 1739899488,

total = 853,

name = D:\Dev\sap-cloud\workspace\Servers\Local Test Server for SAP NetWeaver Cloud-config\webapps\server\WEB-INF\lib\jaxb-impl-2.2.6.jar,

i = 337,

message = null

    at java.util.zip.ZipFile$1.nextElement(ZipFile.java:527)

    at java.util.zip.ZipFile$1.nextElement(ZipFile.java:505)

    at java.util.jar.JarFile$1.nextElement(JarFile.java:246)

    at java.util.jar.JarFile$1.nextElement(JarFile.java:241)

    at org.apache.tomcat.util.scan.FileUrlJar.nextEntry(FileUrlJar.java:77)

    at org.apache.catalina.startup.ContextConfig.processAnnotationsJar(ContextConfig.java:1995)

    at org.apache.catalina.startup.ContextConfig.processAnnotationsUrl(ContextConfig.java:1943)

    at org.apache.catalina.startup.ContextConfig.processAnnotations(ContextConfig.java:1928)

    at org.apache.catalina.startup.ContextConfig.webConfig(ContextConfig.java:1322)

    at org.apache.catalina.startup.ContextConfig.configureStart(ContextConfig.java:878)

    at org.apache.catalina.startup.ContextConfig.lifecycleEvent(ContextConfig.java:369)

    at org.apache.catalina.util.LifecycleSupport.fireLifecycleEvent(LifecycleSupport.java:119)

    at org.apache.catalina.util.LifecycleBase.fireLifecycleEvent(LifecycleBase.java:90)

    at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardContext.startInternal(StandardContext.java:5173)

    at org.apache.catalina.util.LifecycleBase.start(LifecycleBase.java:150)

    at org.apache.catalina.core.ContainerBase.addChildInternal(ContainerBase.java:901)

    at org.apache.catalina.core.ContainerBase.addChild(ContainerBase.java:877)

    at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardHost.addChild(StandardHost.java:618)

    at org.eclipse.gemini.web.tomcat.internal.TomcatServletContainer.startWebApplication(TomcatServletContainer.java:125)

    at org.eclipse.gemini.web.internal.StandardWebApplication.start(StandardWebApplication.java:109)

    at org.eclipse.gemini.web.extender.WebContainerBundleCustomizer.addingBundle(WebContainerBundleCustomizer.java:45)

    at org.osgi.util.tracker.BundleTracker$Tracked.customizerAdding(BundleTracker.java:482)

    at org.osgi.util.tracker.BundleTracker$Tracked.customizerAdding(BundleTracker.java:1)

    at org.osgi.util.tracker.AbstractTracked.trackAdding(AbstractTracked.java:262)

    at org.osgi.util.tracker.AbstractTracked.trackInitial(AbstractTracked.java:185)

    at org.osgi.util.tracker.BundleTracker.open(BundleTracker.java:163)

    at org.eclipse.gemini.web.extender.ExtenderActivator$ExtendedWebContainerTracker.addingService(ExtenderActivator.java:59)

    at org.eclipse.gemini.web.extender.ExtenderActivator$ExtendedWebContainerTracker.addingService(ExtenderActivator.java:1)

    at org.osgi.util.tracker.ServiceTracker$Tracked.customizerAdding(ServiceTracker.java:980)

    at org.osgi.util.tracker.ServiceTracker$Tracked.customizerAdding(ServiceTracker.java:1)

    at org.osgi.util.tracker.AbstractTracked.trackAdding(AbstractTracked.java:262)

    at org.osgi.util.tracker.AbstractTracked.track(AbstractTracked.java:234)

    at org.osgi.util.tracker.ServiceTracker$Tracked.serviceChanged(ServiceTracker.java:941)

    at org.eclipse.osgi.internal.serviceregistry.FilteredServiceListener.serviceChanged(FilteredServiceListener.java:104)

    at org.eclipse.osgi.framework.internal.core.BundleContextImpl.dispatchEvent(BundleContextImpl.java:861)

    at org.eclipse.osgi.framework.eventmgr.EventManager.dispatchEvent(EventManager.java:230)

    at org.eclipse.osgi.framework.eventmgr.ListenerQueue.dispatchEventSynchronous(ListenerQueue.java:148)

    at org.eclipse.osgi.internal.serviceregistry.ServiceRegistry.publishServiceEventPrivileged(ServiceRegistry.java:819)

    at org.eclipse.osgi.internal.serviceregistry.ServiceRegistry.publishServiceEvent(ServiceRegistry.java:771)

    at org.eclipse.osgi.internal.serviceregistry.ServiceRegistrationImpl.register(ServiceRegistrationImpl.java:130)

    at org.eclipse.osgi.internal.serviceregistry.ServiceRegistry.registerService(ServiceRegistry.java:214)

    at org.eclipse.osgi.framework.internal.core.BundleContextImpl.registerService(BundleContextImpl.java:433)

    at org.eclipse.osgi.framework.internal.core.BundleContextImpl.registerService(BundleContextImpl.java:451)

    at org.eclipse.osgi.framework.internal.core.BundleContextImpl.registerService(BundleContextImpl.java:950)

    at org.eclipse.gemini.web.internal.WebContainerActivator$ServletContainerTracker.addingService(WebContainerActivator.java:117)

    at org.eclipse.gemini.web.internal.WebContainerActivator$ServletContainerTracker.addingService(WebContainerActivator.java:1)

    at org.osgi.util.tracker.ServiceTracker$Tracked.customizerAdding(ServiceTracker.java:980)

    at org.osgi.util.tracker.ServiceTracker$Tracked.customizerAdding(ServiceTracker.java:1)

    at org.osgi.util.tracker.AbstractTracked.trackAdding(AbstractTracked.java:262)

    at org.osgi.util.tracker.AbstractTracked.track(AbstractTracked.java:234)

    at org.osgi.util.tracker.ServiceTracker$Tracked.serviceChanged(ServiceTracker.java:941)

    at org.eclipse.osgi.internal.serviceregistry.FilteredServiceListener.serviceChanged(FilteredServiceListener.java:104)

    at org.eclipse.osgi.framework.internal.core.BundleContextImpl.dispatchEvent(BundleContextImpl.java:861)

    at org.eclipse.osgi.framework.eventmgr.EventManager.dispatchEvent(EventManager.java:230)

    at org.eclipse.osgi.framework.eventmgr.ListenerQueue.dispatchEventSynchronous(ListenerQueue.java:148)

    at org.eclipse.osgi.internal.serviceregistry.ServiceRegistry.publishServiceEventPrivileged(ServiceRegistry.java:819)

    at org.eclipse.osgi.internal.serviceregistry.ServiceRegistry.publishServiceEvent(ServiceRegistry.java:771)

    at org.eclipse.osgi.internal.serviceregistry.ServiceRegistrationImpl.register(ServiceRegistrationImpl.java:130)

    at org.eclipse.osgi.internal.serviceregistry.ServiceRegistry.registerService(ServiceRegistry.java:214)

    at org.eclipse.osgi.framework.internal.core.BundleContextImpl.registerService(BundleContextImpl.java:433)

    at org.eclipse.osgi.framework.internal.core.BundleContextImpl.registerService(BundleContextImpl.java:451)

    at org.eclipse.osgi.framework.internal.core.BundleContextImpl.registerService(BundleContextImpl.java:950)

    at org.eclipse.gemini.web.tomcat.internal.Activator.start(Activator.java:61)

    at org.eclipse.osgi.framework.internal.core.BundleContextImpl$1.run(BundleContextImpl.java:711)

    at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method)

    at org.eclipse.osgi.framework.internal.core.BundleContextImpl.startActivator(BundleContextImpl.java:702)

    at org.eclipse.osgi.framework.internal.core.BundleContextImpl.start(BundleContextImpl.java:683)

    at org.eclipse.osgi.framework.internal.core.BundleHost.startWorker(BundleHost.java:381)

    at org.eclipse.osgi.framework.internal.core.AbstractBundle.resume(AbstractBundle.java:389)

    at org.eclipse.osgi.framework.internal.core.Framework.resumeBundle(Framework.java:1131)

    at org.eclipse.osgi.framework.internal.core.StartLevelManager.resumeBundles(StartLevelManager.java:559)

    at org.eclipse.osgi.framework.internal.core.StartLevelManager.resumeBundles(StartLevelManager.java:544)

    at org.eclipse.osgi.framework.internal.core.StartLevelManager.incFWSL(StartLevelManager.java:457)

    at org.eclipse.osgi.framework.internal.core.StartLevelManager.doSetStartLevel(StartLevelManager.java:243)

    at org.eclipse.osgi.framework.internal.core.StartLevelManager.dispatchEvent(StartLevelManager.java:438)

    at org.eclipse.osgi.framework.internal.core.StartLevelManager.dispatchEvent(StartLevelManager.java:1)

    at org.eclipse.osgi.framework.eventmgr.EventManager.dispatchEvent(EventManager.java:230)

    at org.eclipse.osgi.framework.eventmgr.EventManager$EventThread.run(EventManager.java:340)

Hi,

I'm having a bit of difficulty as it appears that the DataHandler class referenced in com.sap.javax.mail-1.41.jar javax.mail.internet.MimeBodyPart.setDataHandler is different to the one that is referenced in com.sap.javax.activation-1.1.1.jar

thus I'm getting:

java.lang.LinkageError: loader constraint violation: when resolving method "javax.mail.internet.MimeBodyPart.setDataHandler(Ljavax/activation/DataHandler;)V" the class loader (instance of org/eclipse/osgi/internal/baseadaptor/DefaultClassLoader) of the current class, au/com/discoveryconsulting/timesheet/demo/mail/MailEventSender, and the class loader (instance of org/eclipse/osgi/internal/baseadaptor/DefaultClassLoader) for resolved class, javax/mail/internet/MimeBodyPart, have different Class objects for the type n/DataHandler;)V used in the signature

my build path has the SAPNWCloud components above the JRE so the SAP libs should be the ones that are being referenced and not the ones from the JDK.

I'm currently running SDK 1.12 - so will update to 1.17 and see if that makes a difference...

this is the code that's dying:

MimeBodyPart sigAttachment = new MimeBodyPart();                              mainPart.addBodyPart(sigAttachment);                                FileDataSource sigDS = new FileDataSource(                                                  "/images/Discovery_email_sig.jpg");                              sigAttachment.setDataHandler(new DataHandler(sigDS)); //this line here!

Any pointers much appreciated.

Cheers,

Chris

In this discussion we are going to announce NetWeaver Cloud Trial landscape infrastructure downtimes.

Regards,

NetWeaver Cloud operations team

Hello, and welcome to another blog in the series Joanna Chan and I are writing about our experiences and learning building a mobile application using the SAP NetWeaver Cloud as a platform. Sorry for the hashtag or should I say mot-dièses in the title, it just means linking to it in twitter becomes easier

Long live the whiteboard but the code's in the blog!

As has been the case with my other blogs in this series, I've thrown together a little video which goes through the key points of the blog and tries to explain them with the help of a few whiteboard drawings. This time however, I'll leave my code walkthrough to the blog - so please excuse the rather copious amounts of code below.

The video as embedded in the SCN blog is a little on the small size, so please feel free to open in another window if you want to make it a little bigger. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uefr4HWLeM8

Problem:

So, we want to be able to send a user an email confirming that they have successfully sent their time sheet entries to our cloud repository. We want this email to be nicely formatted. An image or two in the body/sig block of the email would be nice. We'd like to group all the time sheet entries for a given user into one email. So if the user sends 10 time sheet entries through, only 1 email should be sent. But if they only post 1, then only 1 should be sent.

Hundreds of emails

The first issue here is how on earth to only send one email, given that the trigger for the emails is a POST or a PUT to the time sheet entry resource?

What we need to do somehow is to gather up all the triggers/posted entries into a bucket and send the bucket-load over. What we need is some way for the first time sheet entry to put up a flag that any subsequent entries can see and gather around. Then we need some way that the flag can be brought down after a certain amount of time has passed and send the email with the details of all the entries collected to that point. Sounds reasonable (although not simple) but how on earth does one achieve that?

Threads, synchronised methods and delayed action

In Java, just as in ABAP, it is possible to have asynchronous processes started from the same thread. and communicate with each other. In ABAP this in practice proves to be tricky as it means calling an RFC and communicating via polling shared memory areas. In Java, it's a bit simpler than that, and a decent part of the language deals with just this point. Whereas in ABAP the easily addressable memory space of a program is constrained to a single process (outside of using shared memory construction), in Java this is not the case.

I have a class - UserMailSender that has a private constructor, this means that it cannot be instantiated from outside of methods within the class itself. (It also mucks up subclassing it, but that's a different issue). That means a static method of the class must be used to create an instance. This design pattern is somewhat similar to the singleton design pattern that I love so much to hate. However, in this use case it makes sense - even if it isn't actually a singleton. (I'm sure that this design pattern should have a name - factory was closest I could find, but it doesn't really fit.) (Leave a comment if you know what the design pattern should be called!)

The method to actually trigger the sending of an email is:

public static synchronized UserMailSender addEntryForMail(                                                TimeSheetEntry entry, ServletContext context) {                synchronized (threadLock) {                                // see if there already exists an instance for this user                                UserMailSender foundInstance = null;                                int userId = entry.getAssociatedDay().getAssociatedUser().getId();                                Iterator<UserMailSender> mailerIter = mailSenders.iterator();                                while (foundInstance == null && mailerIter.hasNext()) {                                                UserMailSender mailer = mailerIter.next();                                                if (mailer.getUserId() == userId) {                                                                foundInstance = mailer;                                                }                                }                                if (foundInstance == null) {                                                foundInstance = new UserMailSender(userId, context);                                                mailSenders.add(foundInstance);                                }                                foundInstance.addEntry(entry);                                return foundInstance;                }
}

By specifying that the method is synchronized we can be sure that only one call to it will occur at a time, other calls will wait until the previous call is finished. (This does result in a bottleneck in our code, but so far this doesn't seem to be  a problem.) By further specifying within the code that a synchronised block exists we can "enqueue" , to use a more ABAP term, the handling of the list so that only one thread at a time may have access to add, retrieve or delete instances from the global list of email handlers.

It is this method that is called from the servlets (see my previous blog for more details:

protected void doPost(HttpServletRequest request,                                                HttpServletResponse response) throws ServletException, IOException {
...                // store in db                userData.store(entry);                // send email                UserMailSender.addEntryForMail(entry, this.getServletContext());       /send JSON response                outputResponse(entry, request, response);
....

When the method is called, it checks through a list of existing instances to see if a class has been instantiated for the current user id. (A HashMap or other lookup would probably be better code here than just looping through the array, but given the number of users I'm guessing would concurrently access my application, it's probably not worth fretting about). If I find an instance, then I call the addEntry method on it. If I can't find an instance I create one and add it to the list of existing instances.

Now, an interesting thing need to happen when we create that instance. It needs to shut itself down after a certain period of time, and remove itself from the list of instances available for users.

So in the constructor method of the class:

private UserMailSender(int userId, ServletContext context) {                this.userId = userId;                // can only be instantiated via static method                // on instantiation, create a callback that will trigger in 1 minute                Thread callBackThread = new Thread(new waitThenSendMail(this, context));                callBackThread.start();
}

I create a new "thread" or asynchronous task. This thread is started using the start() method. The constructor for the thread requires that you pass it an instance that implements the Runnable interface. So I have created a private inner class which does this:

private class waitThenSendMail implements Runnable {                UserMailSender userMailSender;                ServletContext context;                public waitThenSendMail(UserMailSender userMailSender,                                                ServletContext context) {                                this.userMailSender = userMailSender;                                this.context = context;                }                @Override                public void run() {                                try {                                                Thread.sleep(DELAY_BEFORE_SEND);                                } catch (InterruptedException e) {                                                // that's cool just send the mail                                }                                UserMailSender.removeMailer(userMailSender.getUserId());                                   userMailSender.sendMail(context);                                       }
}

Note how the constructor of this class takes a reference to the instance of UserMailSender class that called the thread. Another important point to note is that a reference to ServletContext is being passed through to all of these methods - this is so that we can eventually pass it to the sendMail method that is called in the implementation of the run() method. The run() method tries to sleep for however long I like (I've used 60 secs as I think this is quite reasonable). This is possible because we have a separate process that is not blocking anything else from occurring. Just that one thread is paused. Once it has finished sleeping, the thread then (and this is quite important) removes the reference to the instance from the global list.

private static synchronized void removeMailer(int userId) {                synchronized (threadLock) {                                UserMailSender foundInstance = null;                                Iterator<UserMailSender> mailerIter = mailSenders.iterator();                                while (foundInstance == null && mailerIter.hasNext()) {                                                UserMailSender mailer = mailerIter.next();                                                if (mailer.getUserId() == userId) {                                                                foundInstance = mailer;                                                }                                }                                if (foundInstance != null) {                                                int index = mailSenders.indexOf(foundInstance);                                                if (index != -1) {                                                                mailSenders.remove(mailSenders.indexOf(foundInstance));                                                }                                }                }
}

Like the method that fetched/created the instance in the global list, this method is synchronised both by definition and by the user of a synchronized block to ensure that only one thread at a time adds or removes entries.

Once we are sure that no more entries will be added to the current list (it is "finalised") then we start the process of actually sending the email.

Emails using NWCloud - setting it up

Before I could send an email from NWCloud there is a bit of a work to do in order to set it up.  You firstly will need an email account to send the emails from. The online documentation states that you can " integrate your own e-mail provider (currently subject to restrictions)" so whilst I do know that Google mail users (including apps users) do work, if you're using anything else, it might not! The online doco is pretty good, so I won't repeat it here. But will just clarify a few things that were perhaps not as straightforward.

Testing locally

You'll need to paste a copy of your email set-up xml into your local cloud set-up. And you'll need to re-do this every time you patch to a new SDK level! So it is worth keeping a copy with your application.

I store a copy in my WEB-INF folder. It might be an extra piece of info to deploy to the cloud, but it's a nice easy place to keep track of it. In the version 2.x of the NetWeaver Cloud this process is supposed to become easier I understand. Good thing too!

You'll need to copy this file to a folder of the "Servers" project  in Eclipse:

(Now wasn't that simpler than the doco ).

Deploying to the NWCloud Trial system

The next step is to deploy also to the cloud. You'll need to use the command line interface for this:

One thing the doco doesn't mention is that you'll need to add the --host parameter with a link to the trial system, otherwise it defaults to the productive NWCloud. BTW - I've upgraded to a later SDK since I took the screenshot if you were wondering! You'll notice also that the content of the parameter values differ somewhat from the suggestions in the doco. All I can say is that you have proof in that there screenshot - what I entered worked!

Multipart MIME Messages

So now we have a collection of data that we want to send as an email, we have the required email account, and we uploaded that info to the cloud - how do we actually send the email? Well, before we can do that, we need to understand how to build that email.

The emails that you receive today are generally formatted as Multipart Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME) Messages . In order to programmatically send one of these messages it helps to have a little understanding of what they are and how they are put together.

A multipart MIME message allows us to send the nicely formatted emails that most email clients support, along with images. Unlike HTML pages where the  browser fetches each image individual and the user agent string can be used to redirect the user to an appropriate rendering of the content, in MIME messages all the content, including alternate renderings must all be sent at once.

For our purposes there are two important multipart subtypes - Alternative and Related.

We need to create a message that has Related parts (that is to say the formatted text of the message and an inline image) but we also need to allow for the case were the email client that is used to receive our email does not know how to display HTML formatted documents, so we need to drop back to just using plain text. This requires us to use the Alternative subtype.

There a many different MIME types that we could use to convey our formatted message, but I'll use HTML as it's pretty darn simple and has lots of formatting options.

Building the HTML message

I threw together some code to build the message from the user object and the list of entries that should be sent:

public String getHTMLMailText(List<TimeSheetEntry> entries) {                String entriesText = "";                Iterator<TimeSheetEntry> entriesIter = entries.iterator();                int index = 0;                while (entriesIter.hasNext()) {                                index++;                                TimeSheetEntry entry = entriesIter.next();                                String times = "";                                if (entry.getHours() == 0) {                                                times = "Start to End: " + entry.getStartTime() + " - "                                                                                + entry.getEndTime();                                } else {                                                times = "<b>Hours:</b> " + entry.getHours() + " hours";                                }                                if (entry.isBillable())                                {                                                times += " (billable)";                                }                                else                                {                                                times += " (non-billable)";                                }                                String entryText = String.format("<p><b>Date:</b> "                                                + entry.getAssociatedDay().getDay().substring(6, 8) + "/"                                                + entry.getAssociatedDay().getDay().substring(4, 6) + "/"                                                + entry.getAssociatedDay().getDay().substring(0, 4)                                                + "</p><p>" + "<b>Project:</b> " + entry.getProjectCode()                                                + " - " + entry.getProjectName() + "</p><p>" + times                                                + "</p><p>" + "<b>Comments:</b> " + entry.getComments()                                                + "</p>");                                String divColor;                                if (index % 2 == 0) {                                                divColor = "#dcedf9";                                } else {                                                divColor = "#e8f3fb";                                }                                entriesText += "<div style=\"background-color:" + divColor + "\">"                                                                                + entryText + "</div>";                }                String text = String                                                .format("<p>Hi "                                                                + name                                                                + ",</p>"                                                                + "<p><i>Thanks for using the Discovery Consulting demonstration "                                                                + "mobile application.</i></p>"                                                                + "<p><i>If you would like to speak to one of our team on how we "                                                                + "can assist your enterprise, please reply to this email or contact "                                                                + "us on 0418105358.</i></p>"                                                                + "<p>Your time sheet entries have been successfully received "                                                                + "and will be transferred to payroll.</p>"                                                                + "<div style=\"background-color:#dcedf9\"> "                                                                + entriesText                                                                + "</div>"                                                                + "<p></p><p>Regards,</p>"                                                                + "<p>Discovery Consulting Group Pty Ltd</p>");                return text;
}

There was a slightly amusing (for me) exchange between our client relations person (great bloke is Leigh) and me when he offered to help with the formatting of the email, and I sent him an early version of this code and told him to go for it . Afterwards we refined terms a little - he sent me a mock-up and I did the formatting and we think it's not a bad result!

One of the things to note is that HTML in emails does not render the same way as HTML in your browser in every case, you may have very little control over things like margins between divs etc. So it is worth while testing and doing more testing. Don't forget that most people read email via mobile devices, so make sure you test those too. In this example code we've got a very simple alternating background colour for the time sheet entries to help distinguish one from the other.

Using the javax.mail services in NWCloud - adding inline images

Please excuse the gratuitous code in this section - but I think it's the best way to explain it! Here's the code that I use to send my emails.

package au.com.discoveryconsulting.timesheet.demo.mail;

import java.io.File;
import java.util.List;
import java.util.UUID;

import javax.mail.Message.RecipientType;
import javax.mail.MessagingException;
import javax.mail.Session;
import javax.mail.Transport;
import javax.mail.internet.InternetAddress;
import javax.mail.internet.MimeBodyPart;
import javax.mail.internet.MimeMessage;
import javax.mail.internet.MimeMultipart;
import javax.naming.InitialContext;
import javax.servlet.ServletContext;

import org.slf4j.Logger;
import org.slf4j.LoggerFactory;

import au.com.discoveryconsulting.timesheet.demo.TimeSheetUser;
import au.com.discoveryconsulting.timesheet.demo.entries.TimeSheetEntry;

public class MailEventSender {

                Transport transport;                Logger logger = LoggerFactory.getLogger(MailEventSender.class);                public void sendEmail(TimeSheetUser user, List<TimeSheetEntry> entries,                                                ServletContext context) {                                try {                                                InitialContext ctx = new InitialContext();                                                Session smtpSession = (Session) ctx                                                                                .lookup("java:comp/env/mail/Session");                                                transport = smtpSession.getTransport();                                                transport.connect();                                                MimeMessage mimeMessage = createMimeMessage(                                                                                smtpSession,                                                                                "'Discovery Mobile Demo' <timesheetdemo@discoveryconsulting.com.au>'",                                                                                user.getSettings().getEmail(),                                                                                "Demo Time Sheet Successfully Received",                                                                                user.getMailText(entries), user.getHTMLMailText(entries),                                                                                context);                                                transport.sendMessage(mimeMessage, mimeMessage.getAllRecipients());                                                transport.close();                                } catch (Exception e) {                                                logger.error(e.toString());                                }                }

The only public method of the email sending class is what was called from our time sheet entries aggregation logic. It get a reference to the email setup that we have loaded onto our server and then creates a MIME message using the private createMimeMessage method. It then uses the references to the email setup to send the message.

Ok - I'm going to try to break this code down a little.

private MimeMessage createMimeMessage(Session smtpSession, String from,                                String to, String subjectText, String mailText, String mailHTML,                                ServletContext context) throws MessagingException {                try {                                MimeMessage mimeMessage = new MimeMessage(smtpSession);                                InternetAddress[] fromAddress = InternetAddress.parse(from);                                InternetAddress[] toAddresses = InternetAddress.parse(to);                                mimeMessage.setFrom(fromAddress[0]);                                mimeMessage.setRecipients(RecipientType.TO, toAddresses);                                mimeMessage.setSubject(subjectText, "UTF-8");

Up to here it's pretty simple really - just creating the message and setting who it's from, to and the subject. It's the next bit that gets tricky! I even included a picture in my code to help me understand what the heck was happening ! Of course the inline Java formatting used in SCN doesn't use a fixed width font, so the pictures kinda screwed up...

                                // create main message                                // +----------------------------------------------+                                // | multipart/related........................... |                                // | +---------------------------+ +------------+ |                                // | |multipart/alternative..... | | image/jpg. | |                                // | | +-----------+ +---------+ | |........... | |                                // | | |text/plain | |text/html| | |........... | |                                // | | +-----------+ +---------+ | |........... | |                                // | +---------------------------+ +------------+ |                                // +----------------------------------------------+                                MimeMultipart mainPart = new MimeMultipart("related");

Firstly the related multipart is created,

                                // add the messages                                MimeBodyPart messageWrapper = new MimeBodyPart();                                MimeMultipart messagesPart = new MimeMultipart("alternative");                                MimeBodyPart html = new MimeBodyPart();                                MimeBodyPart plaintext = new MimeBodyPart();                                messagesPart.addBodyPart(plaintext);                                messagesPart.addBodyPart(html);

Then a new MimeBodyPart is created to insert the alternative multipart which contains both the HTML and plain text formatted versions of the email.

                                messageWrapper.setContent(messagesPart);                                mainPart.addBodyPart(messageWrapper);                                MimeBodyPart sigAttachment = new MimeBodyPart();                                mainPart.addBodyPart(sigAttachment);

The content of the alternative multipart is then inserted into the body part that is then added to the main related multipart. Another body part is created to hold the footer image that I use in my email.

                                // create the details for the sig content                                String embeddedAttachmentId = UUID.randomUUID().toString();                                String mailHTMLWithSig = "<html><body>" + mailHTML                                                                + "<p><img src=\"cid:" + embeddedAttachmentId                                                                + "\" alt=\"ATTACHMENT\"></p></body></html>";                                String sigPath = context                                                                .getRealPath("/images/Discovery_email_sig.jpg");                                File sigFile = new File(sigPath);                                sigAttachment.attachFile(sigFile);                                sigAttachment.setContentID("<" + embeddedAttachmentId + ">");                                sigAttachment.setHeader("Content-Type", "image/jpg");                                sigAttachment.setFileName(sigFile.getName());

This is where I really had some fun!  Unfortunately in NWCloud 1.x the email libs don't quite work as they should , so I had a bit of fun trying to get the javax.mail.internet.MimeBodyPart setDataHandler method working.  End result it doesn't and I had to try something else. Fortunately the attachFile method does work so I found some way of getting the image file into the MIME message. However, in order to do that, I needed to get a reference to the image file itself.

Fortunately there happens to be a way to get real file references from virtual paths (the ones used in your eclipse project) through the ServletContext method getRealPath. This was why all the email aggregation logic kept a reference to this servlet context. So that the context could be used in the final email handling to get a file handle for the image file to be sent.

Some other stuff that's worth noting, is that when calling the setContentID method the id needs to be inside carets  <> otherwise it doesn't work.

I've wrapped the HTML that I got for the entries  with a simple <html>  and <body> tags and added the attached image into the HTML with a reference to "cid:" or content-id and the GUID I created to reference the associated image.

                                plaintext.setText(mailText, "utf-8", "plain");                                html.setText(mailHTMLWithSig, "utf-8", "html");                                mimeMessage.setContent(mainPart);                                return mimeMessage;                } catch (Exception e) {                                logger.error(e.toString());                                return null;                }
}

Finally I actually load the generated HTML into the HTML body part, the plain text in the plain text body part and link the whole lot to the MIME message object that had the to, from, subject etc.

The result

I'm really happy with the generated email, it looks good and it took some rather tricky work to get it there.

For those that are interested - here's the actual MIME message, including the plain text version of the email (minus all the server/send headers):

Date: Tue, 29 Jan 2013 00:35:55 -0800 (PST)
From: "'Discovery Mobile Demo'" <timesheetdemo@discoverydemo.com.au>
To: chris@wombling.com
Message-ID: <1594048334.5.1359448554627.JavaMail.javamailuser@localhost>
Subject: Demo Time Sheet Successfully Received
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: multipart/related;                 boundary="----=_Part_3_779503997.1359448552910"
X-Gm-Message-State: ALoCoQn7Kwk/A+NOBGgOVc754vUHDP41PADsZNMBpjI8HZk+8Xm5OY21WF0vgk2uvT+439s+Ilrx

------=_Part_3_779503997.1359448552910
Content-Type: multipart/alternative; 
                boundary="----=_Part_4_1473430879.1359448552910"

------=_Part_4_1473430879.1359448552910
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

Hi Chris Paine,

Thanks for using the Discovery Consulting demonstration mobile application.
If you would like to speak to one of our team on how we can assist your enterprise, please reply to this email or contact us on 0418105358.
Your time sheet entries have been successfully received and will be transferred to payroll.

Date: 20120115
Project: DISCO1 Timesheet demo app
Hours: 8.0 hours (non-billable)
Comments: I really hope this works

Date: 20120116
Project: DISCO1 Timesheet demo app
Hours: 10.0 hours (non-billable)
Comments: Working really hard

Date: 20120117
Project: DISCO1 Timesheet demo app
Hours: 12.0 hours (non-billable)
Comments: Must get emails working



Regards,
Discovery Consulting Group Pty Ltd

------=_Part_4_1473430879.1359448552910
Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

<html><body><p>Hi Chris Paine,</p><p><i>Thanks for using the Discovery Cons=
ulting demonstration mobile application.</i></p><p><i>If you would like to =
speak to one of our team on how we can assist your enterprise, please reply=
 to this email or contact us on 0418105358.</i></p><p>Your time sheet entri=
es have been successfully received and will be transferred to payroll.</p><=
div style=3D"background-color:#dcedf9"> <div style=3D"background-color:#e8f=
3fb"><p><b>Date:</b> 15/01/2012</p><p><b>Project:</b> DISCO1 - Timesheet de=
mo app</p><p><b>Hours:</b> 8.0 hours (non-billable)</p><p><b>Comments:</b> =
I really hope this works</p></div><div style=3D"background-color:#dcedf9"><=
p><b>Date:</b> 16/01/2012</p><p><b>Project:</b> DISCO1 - Timesheet demo app=</p><p><b>Hours:</b> 10.0 hours (non-billable)</p><p><b>Comments:</b> Worki=
ng really hard</p></div><div style=3D"background-color:#e8f3fb"><p><b>Date:=</b> 17/01/2012</p><p><b>Project:</b> DISCO1 - Timesheet demo app</p><p><b>=
Hours:</b> 12.0 hours (non-billable)</p><p><b>Comments:</b> Must get emails=
 working</p></div></div><p></p><p>Regards,</p><p>Discovery Consulting Group=
 Pty Ltd</p><p><img src=3D"cid:f5ab0d22-17e7-49c5-9ddd-a861e5ce089a" alt=3D=
"ATTACHMENT"></p></body></html>
------=_Part_4_1473430879.1359448552910--

------=_Part_3_779503997.1359448552910
Content-Type: image/jpg; name=Discovery_email_sig.jpg
Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64
Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=Discovery_email_sig.jpg
Content-ID: <f5ab0d22-17e7-49c5-9ddd-a861e5ce089a>

/9j/4AAQSkZJRgABAQEAeAB4AAD/2wBDAAoHBwkHBgoJCAkLCwoMDxkQDw4ODx4WFxIZJCAmJSMg
IyIoLTkwKCo2KyIjMkQyNjs9QEBAJjBGS0U+Sjk/QD3/2wBDAQsLCw8NDx0QEB09KSMpPT09PT09
<snip> - for the sanity of us all!
+4PzoooAXdL/AM8x+dG6X/nmPzoooAduf+5+tOHSiigBaKKKACiiigAooooAKKKKACiiigAooooA
KKKKACiiigAooooAKKKKACiiigAooooAKKKKAP/Z
------=_Part_3_779503997.1359448552910--

Wrap up - key learnings, what else I'd implement

Sending an email with an image attachment, a company logo or a picture of the item you just ordered, whatever is quite possible using the SAP NWCloud. This generates some very interesting possibilities. I certainly see a much more interactive solution in the future. (That is if we're still using email!)

One key learning I had here is to re-examine every design choice/restriction that I've used/had with ABAP code. It is likely that it is either not relevant or is possible when using the NW Cloud - I just have to figure out how. That's not to say it's not possible with ABAP - it's just quite often easier in the cloud.

I'm very chuffed with my solution, especially as I had not found anyone else writing about using SAP NWCloud to send emails with inline images (and even blogs on using javax.mail are relatively few)! However, something that I should have implemented, but didn't - was some way of verifying that the email address that the user has entered is their own. A simple email verification link would have been simple to build using SAP NW Cloud, and is certainly a requirement for any productive solution like this where the user can enter their own (or if they wanted to, someone else's) email address. (I did default the email address when the user signs in using Google - but what would be good would be to also default a "validated email address" flag.)  There is all sorts of legislation regarding spam emails which I should probably try to be very careful about. In Australia, for example, any "commercial electronic message" must have a means for the recipient to unsubscribe and can be backed up by court action and fines! (Better get working on implementing that one!)

As per my previous blog, I'd like to implement some decent JUnit tests here too. If for nothing else than to give me some exercise in understanding how they could help with the development or potentially be a PITA.

Disclaimer, ramblings and what's next

As usual, even if I make outrageous claims like "here is the code I used", it's all for use at your own risk, I don't promise that any of it works or won't completely bugger up your system. Likewise, none of my ridiculous ramblings should be taken to be indicative of the opinion of my wonderful and very patient employer (who has had to deal with me not being able to come into the office again today as my poor little girl isn't feeling too well!)  If you do reuse my code, some attribution would be appreciated but really what is code development if not elaborate copy/paste. These are my opinions, ramblings and mistakes. I've tried not to offend, imply anything which might offend or eat fresh raspberries with whipped cream whilst putting together this blog. I'm pretty sure I've failed on one point there.

Next blog will likely be the use of CORS to allow successful connections from mobile devices to the cloud. But we'll see! (might be working on that unsubscribe button! )

In the meantime, and in my own time, I've put together a little page on www.wombling.com/BunkBed which shows that I don't just live, eat, sleep and dream SAP stuff - there is another side! (so there Jo! I know it's not quite the same as frocking up and writing a fashion blog, but it counts? cc John Moy.)

@jwenna @wombling Yes, but in between his technical #SCN blogs did @wombling find time to frock up and write a fashion blog? I think not!

— John Moy (@jhmoy) January 24, 2013

If you liked my blog and might even have found the code useful, please take a sec, log in and rate it and even click on the like button. So far Jo is getting far more likes than me and I'm nothing if not competitive. So if you want to have a little fun at my expense, please go read her blogs, rate them and like them and don't bother with mine .

In this blog I want to show you how to use the SAP NetWeaver Cloud and SAPUI5 and create a cloud application which connects securely with an on-premise SAP NetWeaver BPM system (7.3 or 7.31)

Inspired by all the great blogs about SAP NetWeaver Cloud recently published and some friendly reminders I decided to finally finish my first blog about SAP NetWeaver Cloud. It was on my to-do list and draft version for a very long time...

Last year when the SAP NetWeaver Cloud Beta Program was introduced I decided to join and sign up with the idea to create my Leave Request application in the cloud. After finishing this application came the idea to maybe submit a DemoJam entry for SAP TechEd Madrid. Actually Peter Peshev was the one suggesting I should participate with a SAP NetWeaver Cloud application. Thanks again Peter also for the great support during the beta-program and preparations for DemoJam.

The result: Twan van den Broek and me on stage at SAP TechEd DemoJam with our Garbage Collector SAPUI5 NetWeaver Cloud application.

On stage at TechEd DemoJam. The ultimate dream of every SAP Developer

More info and details about our DemoJam entry in a future blog.

My first application in the cloud

The idea I had for my first application is based on my previous blog. Where I showed how to develop a jQuery Mobile application for displaying and approving BPM Tasks with the BPM Rest API. I think this is an ideal application to put in the cloud:

• No need to open up your NetWeaver 7.3(1) stack to the whole world
• Secure connection to your On-Premise Backend System with the SAP Cloud Connector
• Accessible anywhere and from any device

BPM Process

For the BPM Process I will use my sample project from my previous blog again: a Leave Request process. As mentioned by Matthias Steiner at SAPCodeJam Huizen“Leave Request is the new Hello World!”

This time I used the BPM Process from the document Building UIs with Ruby and Sinatra on NW BPM by Harald Schubert as example. This BPM process can be started by the employee when submitting the Leave Request. An administrator is not necessary to start the process as in my previous blog. This is how it looks now.

It’s a simple Leave Request where an employee submits a leave request and the manager approves or rejects it and gets a notification when the request is approved.

BPM RESTful API

For connection to this BPM Process I will be using the BPM Rest API again. More information about this service can be found here on Code Exchange and in this blog by Stefan Henke. Because this REST API is running on my on-premise system and is using Basic Authentication I had some challenges to make calls from the SAP NetWeaver Cloud.

1. Basic Authentication on BPM Rest API. All call to the API need Basic Authentication.
2. Same origin policy: To make it possible to make calls without having “Same origin policy” issues I created an HttpProxyServlet. All calls from my cloud application are redirect through this servlet.

For the first challenge I developed a simple LoginServlet. This servlet is running on my SAP NetWeaver 7.3 system. This servlet can be executed with parameters username and password and checks against the SAP UME if the supplied information is valid. If not it returns “NOK” as response. If user and password check are valid it returns “OK” with the user role.

LoginServlet running on SAP NetWeaver 7.3

package nl.ciber.login;

import java.io.IOException;

import javax.servlet.ServletException;
import javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet;
import javax.servlet.http.HttpServletRequest;
import javax.servlet.http.HttpServletResponse;

import com.sap.security.api.IUser;
import com.sap.security.api.IUserAccount;
import com.sap.security.api.UMFactory;

/**
 * Servlet implementation class LoginValidator
 */
public class LoginServlet extends HttpServlet {
    private static final long serialVersionUID = 1L;    /**     * @see HttpServlet#HttpServlet()     */    public LoginServlet() {        super();    }    /**     * @see HttpServlet#doGet(HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse response)     */    protected void doGet(HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse response)         throws ServletException, IOException {    }    /**     * @see HttpServlet#doPost(HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse response)     */    protected void doPost(HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse response)         throws ServletException, IOException {        String username = request.getParameter("username");        String password = request.getParameter("password");        boolean result = false;        String returnValue = null;        try {            IUser user = UMFactory.getUserFactory().getUserByLogonID(username);            if (user != null) {                IUserAccount account = user.getUserAccounts()[0];                result = account.checkPassword(password);                if (result) {                    String firstname = user.getFirstName();                    String lastname = user.getLastName();                    String role = username; // Put portal role here (for now username)                    returnValue = firstname + " " + lastname + "|" + role;                }            }        } catch (Exception e) {            e.printStackTrace();        }        if (result) {            response.getWriter().println(returnValue);        } else {            response.getWriter().println("NOK");        }    }
}

For the second challenge I developed my own ProxyServlet. All requests from SAPUI5 are redirected to this Servlet. This servlet then executes the call serverside to the BPM API running on my on-premise NetWeaver 7.3 system and adds Basic Authentication to the requests. See this diagram for more information. No whiteboard video (like Chris Paine) yet, i will stick with powerpoint for now

HttpDestinations

Both servlets developed above make connection to the SAP NetWeaver 7.3 system by using Destination APIs from the SAP NetWeaver Cloud Connectivity Service like this:

<resource-ref>    <res-ref-name>logindest</res-ref-name>    <res-type>com.sap.core.connectivity.api.http.HttpDestination</res-type></resource-ref><resource-ref>    <res-ref-name>bpmdest</res-ref-name>    <res-type>com.sap.core.connectivity.api.http.HttpDestination</res-type></resource-ref>

In the web.xml they are configured and with JNDI lookup you can use them in your code:

Context ctx = new InitialContext();
HttpDestination destination = (HttpDestination) ctx.lookup("java:comp/env/bpmdest");
HttpClient createHttpClient = destination.createHttpClient();

These destinations can be configured on your local SAP NetWeaver Cloud or real SAP NetWeaver Cloud server via Eclipse:

SAP Cloud Connector

To make a secure connection to your on-premise system the SAP Cloud Connector has to be used.

However there was another challenge. My first NetWeaver 7.3 was running on Windows and the SAP Cloud Connector is currently only available for SUSE Linux. Let’s hope it will be released for other platforms soon.

For my demo I was lucky that exactly at the right time there was the announcement of the new SAP NetWeaver 7.3 Trial for Linux. I downloaded it immediately and installed the SAP Cloud Connector on it. After installing the right rpm packages on the environment I could login to the SAP Cloud Connector and setup my secure connection to the SAP NetWeaver Cloud.

After the initial configuration I got the message that “SAP Cloud Connector is operational”

Next configuration is Access Control to the SAP NetWeaver BPM applications which is on the same machine and use the Ping Test applications for testing connectivity.

More information about installation and configuration of the SAP Cloud Connector can be found here.

Note:I am aware that there is a possibility to use Single Sign-On and Identity Federation right now, but at the time of my developments this was not yet available and I am also not sure if this can be used together with SAP Connector. For more info about SAP NetWeaver Cloud Security Tutorial - Single Sign-On and Identity Federation with SAP NetWeaver Identity Management. See this document http://scn.sap.com/docs/DOC-35457

SAPUI5

Final part of my application is the front-end. For this I used the UI Development Toolkit for HTML5 better known as SAPUI5. When installing the Eclipse plug-ins for SAP NetWeaver Cloud the UI Development toolkit is automatically included. This way you can easily create a SAPUI5 application from scratch with wizards and you will get SAPUI5 javascript code-completion.

My application contains one shell with 3 nested views. As example for my project I used the great blog by John Patterson where he describes how to nest the views in one shell and handle navigation between them.

My application consists of 4 views with their controllers.

• Shell – the main application frame for the other views
• Login – Login form
• Leave – Leave Request form for the employee
• Approve – Approval inbox and form for the manager

Asynchronous HTTP requests with jQuery

From the SAPUI5 controllers several REST calls are executed for retrieving and submitting data to the LoginServlet and BPM RESTful Service. Here a short overview:

Login view
Behind the loginscreen there is asynchronous HTTP (Ajax) request to the LoginProxyServlet described above

$.ajax({         type: 'post',         url: 'LoginProxyServlet',        data: form,        dataType: 'text',        success: function(data) {            var loginData = $.trim(data);            if (loginData == "NOK") {                alert('Login failed! Please try again');            } else {                var oView = sap.ui.getCore().byId("view.shell");                var oCtrl = oView.getController();                oCtrl.navigateToView(loginData);            }        }
});

Leave view
In the controller of the leave view 4 REST call are involved to the BPM API

1. Retrieve the right processdefinitionid of the BPM Process by name.
   GET: bpm/bpemservices/processdefinitions?vendor=ciber.nl&dcName=leaverequest~bpm&processName=LeaveRequest
2. Retrieve the processstartid for this BPM Process
   GET: bpm/bpemservices/processstartevents?processDefinitionId=<processdefid>
3. Retrieve the Process Start Data. Used for the data object
   GET: bpm/bpemservices/processstartevents/<processstartid>
4. Post the start event with the data object populated with values from the leaverequest form.
   POST: bpm/bpemservices/processstartevents/<processstartid>

Approve view

For the approval screen the following data is retrieved and submitted with the RESTful API.

1. Retrieval of tasks
   GET: bpm/bpemservices/taskinstances?status=READY&status=RESERVED
2. Retrieve approve task data
   GET: bpm/bpemservices/taskinstances/<taskid>/input
3. Submit data (Get schema, Claim task, Complete task)
   GET: bpm/bpemservices/taskinstances/<taskid>/output?schema=true
   PUT: bpm/bpemservices/taskinstances/<taskid>?action=CLAIM
   PUT: bpm/bpemservices/taskinstances/<taskid>?action=COMPLETE

The final result of this application can be viewed here:

 
The code for this SAP NetWeaver Cloud application can be found on github. In this application the SAPUI5 libraries are not included. For more information about setting up github and maven in eclipse. Check out this blog by Matthias Steiner.

To keep my github project clean I decided to use the general available bootstrap for sapui5. This way you don’t have to include any extra SAPUI5 libraries in your eclipse project. 

<script id="sap-ui-bootstrap"    type="text/javascript"  src="https://sapui5.netweaver.ondemand.com/resources/sap-ui-core.js"  data-sap-ui-theme="sap_goldreflection"  data-sap-ui-libs="sap.ui.commons,sap.ui.ux3,sap.ui.table"></script>

Disadvantage is that code completion for SAPUI5 will not work now, but that can be fixed by adding the UI5 project nature. More details in this blog by Christian Loos. about setting SAPUI5 in NWDS/Eclipse.

To run the application locally on your own SAP NetWeaver Cloud environment you can download the project from github. Update the pom file below to match your version of the SDK and set your NW_CLOUD_SDK_PATH environment variable to right location.

<properties>    <nw.cloud.jdk.version>1.6</nw.cloud.jdk.version>  <nw.cloud.sdk.version>1.17.0</nw.cloud.sdk.version>  <project.build.sourceEncoding>UTF-8</project.build.sourceEncoding>  <project.reporting.outputEncoding>UTF-8</project.reporting.outputEncoding></properties>

SAP NetWeaver 7.31 SP05 and SAPUI5 Inbox

Since SAP NetWeaver 7.31 SP05 it is possible to also use SAPUI5 directly from your BPM application. Instead of using WebDynpro Java, WebDynpro ABAP or Visual Composer screens it is possible to use SAPUI5 for UI Tasks. This way you have direct integration with the tasks and your SAPUI5 front-end. The new SAPUI5 Inbox control is used for retrieving tasks. I almost tried to use this new Inbox for our DemoJam in Madrid but I could not get it working on time….

Looking at the source code in the example I see that relative uri’s are used so I expect to make it work that the SAPUI5 front-end should be hosted on the same SAP NetWeaver 7.31 PO environment. But I am anxious to try it out and discover the possibilities.

Hope you enjoyed this blog and I should not forgot to mention the application shown here is just an example of what is possible by using SAP BPM, SAP NetWeaver Cloud and SAPUI5 and i could not resist to include the fantastic disclaimer I found in Joanna Chan’s latest blog.

Disclaimer: The above code, examples etc. are supplied with no guarantee to them actually being fit for use. Copy at your peril!

Hi guys,

I've unfortunately got an issue where I'm getting a low level class not found exception.

You can find the full stack trace attached but the jist is:

The server encountered an internal error () that prevented it from fulfilling this request.exception javax.servlet.ServletException: javax.naming.NamingException: Error while attempting to resolve reference [Root exception is javax.naming.NamingException: Could not create resource factory instance [Root exception is java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: org.apache.tomcat.dbcp.dbcp.BasicDataSourceFactory]]

This error occurs time & time again for each workspace & version of eclipse. This error doesn't occur for any of my colleagues who follow the exact same steps.

The code that goes with it is:

try {            InitialContext ctx = new InitialContext();            ds = (DataSource) ctx.lookup("java:comp/env/jdbc/DefaultDB");
} catch (NamingException e) {            throw new ServletException(e);
}

Any help would be much appreciated

Thanks

Mark

I'm currently trying to build a simple web application bundle which makes use of sapui5. My bundle has roughly the following content:

`- META-INF/    `- MANIFEST.MF    `- p2.inf
`- WEB-INF/    `- classes/    `- lib/    `- web.xml
`- js/
`- resources/
`- index.html

The WEB-INF/lib folder contains the 13 jars for sapui5 version 1.8.6. The index.html includes the sap bootstrap js  and a local js which builds the shell content. The bootstrapping works but when it comes to the creation of the app specific sapui5 controllers and views I'm getting a browser error saying the resource is not available. On the server the log contains entries like:

javax.naming.NameNotFoundException: Name '/resources/foo/bar/l10n/messagebundle_en.properties' does not exist.
 at org.eclipse.gemini.web.tomcat.internal.loading.BundleDirContext.getNamedEntry(BundleDirContext.java:104)
 at org.eclipse.gemini.web.tomcat.internal.loading.BundleDirContext.doGetAttributes(BundleDirContext.java:169)
 at org.apache.naming.resources.BaseDirContext.getAttributes(BaseDirContext.java:1102)
 at org.apache.naming.resources.BaseDirContext.getAttributes(BaseDirContext.java:1055)
 at org.apache.naming.resources.ProxyDirContext.cacheLoad(ProxyDirContext.java:1613)
 at org.apache.naming.resources.ProxyDirContext.cacheLookup(ProxyDirContext.java:1536)
 at org.apache.naming.resources.ProxyDirContext.lookup(ProxyDirContext.java:297)
 at org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationContext.getResource(ApplicationContext.java:536)
 at org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationContextFacade.getResource(ApplicationContextFacade.java:201)
 at com.sap.ui5.resource.impl.ServletResourceLocator.findResource(ServletResourceLocator.java:87)
 at com.sap.ui5.resource.ResourceServlet.findResource(ResourceServlet.java:603)
 at com.sap.ui5.resource.ResourceServlet.findResource(ResourceServlet.java:622)
 at com.sap.ui5.resource.ResourceServlet.serveResource(ResourceServlet.java:453)
 at com.sap.ui5.resource.ResourceServlet.doGet(ResourceServlet.java:191)
 at javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet.service(HttpServlet.java:735)
 at javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet.service(HttpServlet.java:848)
 at org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterChain.internalDoFilter(ApplicationFilterChain.java:305)
 at org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterChain.doFilter(ApplicationFilterChain.java:210)
 at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardWrapperValve.invoke(StandardWrapperValve.java:222)
 at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardContextValve.invoke(StandardContextValve.java:123)
 at org.apache.catalina.authenticator.AuthenticatorBase.invoke(AuthenticatorBase.java:472)
 at com.sap.security.auth.service.webcontainer.internal.Authenticator.invoke(Authenticator.java:147)
 at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardHostValve.invoke(StandardHostValve.java:168)
 at org.apache.catalina.valves.ErrorReportValve.invoke(ErrorReportValve.java:99)
 at org.apache.catalina.valves.AccessLogValve.invoke(AccessLogValve.java:929)
 at com.sap.core.tenant.valve.TenantValidationValve.invokeNextValve(TenantValidationValve.java:169)
 at com.sap.core.tenant.valve.TenantValidationValve.invoke(TenantValidationValve.java:84)
 at com.sap.core.js.monitoring.tomcat.valve.RequestTracingValve.invoke(RequestTracingValve.java:27)
 at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardEngineValve.invoke(StandardEngineValve.java:118)
 at org.apache.catalina.connector.CoyoteAdapter.service(CoyoteAdapter.java:407)
 at org.apache.coyote.http11.AbstractHttp11Processor.process(AbstractHttp11Processor.java:1002)
 at org.apache.coyote.AbstractProtocol$AbstractConnectionHandler.process(AbstractProtocol.java:585)
 at org.apache.tomcat.util.net.JIoEndpoint$SocketProcessor.run(JIoEndpoint.java:312)
 at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.runTask(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:886)
 at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:908)
 at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:722)|

Any hints someone?

In this discussion we are going to announce NetWeaver Cloud infrastructure downtimes.

Regards,

NetWeaver Cloud operations team

Release Notes for SAP NetWeaver Cloud - January 31st

Release Notes for SAP NetWeaver Cloud - January 17th

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Release Notes for SAP NetWeaver Cloud - September 27th

Release Notes for SAP NetWeaver Cloud - September 13th

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Release Notes for SAP NetWeaver Neo - May 10th

Release Notes for SAP NetWeaver Neo Beta - April

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Release Notes for SAP NetWeaver Neo Beta - February

Initially, I had named this blog post as "Extract Person names from unstructured data using Apache UIMA running on Netweaver cloud" - but looking at all the interesting titles we are finding on Netweaver Cloud Developer center community blog- I decided to be cooler. :-) 

My previous blog post was on- how to deploy a UIMA annotator on Netweaver cloud as REST service. I have been playing around with various UIMA annotators that do some wonderful stuff extracting information from unstructured data. I started with concept mapper which finds concepts in the source text by comparing it with concept dictionary loaded in memory. It helps in identifying and enriching the concepts of your interest. It’s been widely used in medical field to analyze medical records and patient history where medical terms and its properties are well documented (National Library of Medicine).

I was thinking hard to find an application for concept mapper running on Netweaver cloud that could demonstrate its strength. I started with SAP netweaver cloud glossary as source of dictionary terms and was playing with some blog text to find the named entities. Idea was to classify blogs based on glossary terms. Like – find all the blogs which are related to Cloud connectivity services, blogs related to document services etc. However, I was not very happy with the dictionary based on glossary terms. Results received from Concept mapper based on this dictionary had many problems. I had to abandon this idea for a newer one- finding person names in text.

NameFinder service is implemented as a REST service running on Netweaver cloud. You can try it at-

https://namefinders0007950666trial.nwtrial.ondemand.com/uima-simple-server-concept/?mode=form

Enter some sample text with person names in it. Here some content taken from wiki.

Submit the text to NameFinder annotator. You will see result with <NameAnnotation> xml tags.

NameFinder annotator in based on OpenNLP toolkit that uses machine learning process for analyzing natural language text. It supports the most common NLP tasks, such as tokenization, sentence segmentation, part-of-speech tagging, named entity extraction, chunking, parsing, and coreference resolution. These tasks are usually required to build more advanced text processing services. OpenNLP also includes maximum entropy and perceptron based machine learning. I will try to cover all the technical details about NameFinder annotator in subsequent blogs.

This rest service can be easily consumed using following SAUI5 javascript code to show the NameAnnotation in a table–

              var oModel = new sap.ui.model.xml.XMLModel();

              $.ajax({

                  url: 'http://localhost:8080/uima-simple-server-concept/',

                  type: 'POST',

                  data: 'text='+InputText+'&mode=inline',

                  dataType: "xml",

                  success: function(xml) {

                     oModel.setData(xml);

                     sap.ui.getCore().byId("cTable").setModel(oModel);

                     sap.ui.getCore().byId("cTable").bindRows("/NameAnnotation"); 

                  }

Next challenge was to find a good source of unstructured data that can be programmatically fed to NameFinder REST api. ‘scnReader’ project by Tom Van Doorslaer which is documented in this blog came handy. Thank you Tom; for your wonderful work here. In no time, I was able to import this SAPUI5 project into eclipse and add my own code to read RSS feed items and pass it to NameFinder REST api and show the names in a table.

I added couple of input fields to SCN reader to take any RSS feed link and number of items to fetch.

As a sample, I used Netweaver cloud developer center RSS feed for blogs.

On entering RSS feed link and submitting – it fetches recent 10 items and shows in the table.

Now we have blog list with its content that can be sent to NameFinder REST service for analysis. On clicking ‘Get Names’ following result in shown in ‘Identified English Names’ table:

On scrolling down-

Further scroll down-

Total 18 names are identified from recent 10 blog posts in Cloud community. With some more javascript, number of occurrences of a name can be calculated for comparison. With some efforts, these results can be persisted into database (HANA?) with some additional information like blog category(tags), blog link, results from concept mapper, date and time information, etc to come with some real world application.

So now you know who is famous on SAP netweaver cloud community. Some of the NameAnnotations are not person names. These miss hits are due to machine learning algorithm and name finder model.  These models can be enriched and algorithm can be retrained using OpenNLP library to improve the accuracy.

Hi there..

I'm planing to develop an app for the SAP Cloud.

So I searched for the information, which requirements the end-user of the SAP Cloud App needs - but I didn't find some good answers.

He only need a SAP Account? Or what else?

Thanks for some help..

Andi