Vaadin 7 is a Servlet based Java web framework. And as most OSGi container support Servlet based web applications very well this should be a match made in heaven. But their are some minor things one will stumble upon when trying to run a Vaadin application inside an OSGi container. One of those things is always the classpath.

Some major changes have been made to the Vaadin API from version 6 to 7 but also some structural changes to the deployment. When Vaadin 6 was comfortably packaged into one jar Vaadin 7 comes with multiple jars. The Vaadin 6 jar didn't depend on any other jar which was very convenient. In contrast Vaadin 7 depends on dozens of other jars (some of them not OSGi ready out of the box).

OSGi Web Applications are called WAB ⇒ Web Application Bundle. Same as a bundle is just a jar file with an extended manifest file the same goes for the WAB. A web application bundle is just a WAR file with an extended manifest.

The demo application is a stripped barebone Vaadin application. It uses the default widgetset and the default Vaadin Reindeer theme.

It is derived from the Vaadin application maven archetype and just shows a button which will display a message on click.

Maven and the Maven Bundle Plugin (and some other plugins) are used for development.

To get the application code from the source code repository just clone it with hg (Mercurial):

hg clone http://hg.code.sf.net/u/fist/test.vaadin7 test.vaadin7

The VaadinServlet class is used to register the web application at the servlet container. Due to a classpath problem a class extending VaadinServlet must be created so that the bundle can resolve all needed classes.

package test.vaadin7;

import com.vaadin.server.VaadinServlet;

public class OsgiVaadinServlet extends VaadinServlet {

    private static final long serialVersionUID = -4733496883901044844L;

}

The registration of the servlet is done via the web.xml file (annotations didn't work).

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<web-app xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
	xsi:schemaLocation="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee
        http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee/web-app_3_0.xsd"
	version="3.0">

	<servlet>
		<servlet-name>vaadin_servlet</servlet-name>

		<servlet-class>test.vaadin7.OsgiVaadinServlet</servlet-class>

		<init-param>
			<param-name>UI</param-name>
			<param-value>test.vaadin7.MyVaadinUI</param-value>
		</init-param>
	</servlet>

	<servlet-mapping>
		<servlet-name>vaadin_servlet</servlet-name>
		<url-pattern>/*</url-pattern>
	</servlet-mapping>

</web-app>

The Maven Bundle Plugin takes care of all things related to the building of a bundle with the needed entries in the manifest file. Just add it to the pom.xml.

<plugin>
	<groupId>org.apache.felix</groupId>
	<artifactId>maven-bundle-plugin</artifactId>
	<version>2.3.6</version>
	<extensions>true</extensions>
	<executions>
		<execution>
			<id>bundle-manifest</id>
			<phase>process-classes</phase>
			<goals>
				<goal>manifest</goal>
			</goals>
		</execution>
		<execution>
			<id>bundle-install</id>
			<phase>install</phase>
			<goals>
				<goal>install</goal>
			</goals>
		</execution>
	</executions>
	<configuration>
		<supportedProjectTypes>
			<supportedProjectType>ejb</supportedProjectType>
			<supportedProjectType>war</supportedProjectType>
			<supportedProjectType>bundle</supportedProjectType>
			<supportedProjectType>jar</supportedProjectType>
		</supportedProjectTypes>
		<instructions>
			<!-- Read all OSGi configuration info from this optional file -->
			<_include>-osgi.properties</_include>
			<Bundle-PresentationName>${project.artifactId}</Bundle-PresentationName>
			<Embed-Directory>WEB-INF/lib</Embed-Directory>
			<Embed-Dependency>*;scope=compile</Embed-Dependency>
			<Embed-Transitive>true</Embed-Transitive>
		</instructions>
	</configuration>
</plugin>

Building the web application bundle with maven is no more than doing a

mvn clean package

The target folder should contain the bundle (war) file.

For the testing purpose I am using Apache Karaf 3.0.0 which is the latest stable version of Apache Karaf and can be downloaded from the Apache Karaf website.

Karaf is a very easy to manage OSGi container. Just unpack the archive and start it with

bin/karaf

The bundles can be dumped into the deploy folder which will automatically start the bundles.

The war feature need to be installed with the command

feature:install war

Now drop all the dependencies into the deploy folder and you are ready to proceed.

Sadly not all libraries delivered with the Vaadin All-In-One archive are provided with a valid OSGi manifest header. But for most use cases a subset of libraries is sufficient enough. For this demo only the following libraries are needed:

• jsoup-1.6.3.jar
• commons-collections-3.2.1.jar
• commons-codec-1.7.0.jar
• commons-io.2.4.0.jar
• commons-lang3-3.1.0.jar
• vaadin-server
• vaadin-client
• vaadin-client-compiled
• vaadin-shared
• vaadin-shared-deps
• vaadin-themes

Just copy the test.vaadin-x.x.x.war to the deploy folder are you are done.

Apache Karaf uses Jetty as its HTTP server. By default it uses the port 8181. You can check this by either pointing your browser to http://localhost:8181 or by using netstat.

netstat -an | grep 8181

A good place to start looking for your application is always the log, see karaf/data/logs/karaf.log.

Another nice method is by using the Apache Felix Webconsole. You can install it with feature:install webconsole. Then go to http://localhost:8181/system/console/http . There you will see the installed WABs.

The Vaadin Push support has been tested in this setup. It may need some additional classes which has to be available on the bundle classpath.

• Maven pom.xml file for OSGi Web Application Bundles
• Vaadin 7 OSGi Web App Test Case - Source Code Repository

• Vaadin
• Vaadin Wiki - Creating a Modular Vaadin Application with OSGi
• Vaadin 6 Modular Application - Web Launcher
• Maven Bundle Plugin
• Apache Karaf