Getting parameters from BigInsights

Question

I developed a Java application and deployed it to BigInsights. But I had to give some parameters in code. How can I get them from BigInsights application page? I add input fields when i publish BigInsights project in parameters tab but how can i bind them with application? I couldn't find any documents about this.

Answer 1

Did you check the args from you main method? Maybe you find the configured parameters in there?

Answer 2

I know this is an old question but I've just been experimenting with exactly this kind of thing on BigInsights so here's what I've discovered so far.

I've created a very basic main method which just logs the arguments. To configure the BigInsights application to pass the parameter through, I did the following.

Add a ${exampleParameter} arg to my Java action in BIApp/workflow/workflow.xml

Which looks like this in the XML.

<workflow-app name="wfapp" xmlns="uri:oozie:workflow:0.2">
    <start to="java-action"/>
    <action name="java-action">
        <java>
            <job-tracker>${jobTracker}</job-tracker>
            <name-node>${nameNode}</name-node>
            <main-class>com.ibm.uk.jamest.JavaAction</main-class>
            <arg>${exampleParameter}</arg>
        </java>
        <ok to="end" />
        <error to="kill" />
    </action>
    <!-- add actions here -->
    <kill name="kill">
        <message>error message[${wf:errorMessage(wf:lastErrorNode())}]</message>
    </kill>
    <end name="end"/>
</workflow-app>

This gets picked up by the BigInsights Application Publish wizard as a parameter which you can then edit as required.

Here what ends up in the BIApp/application/application.xml as a result. (It sounds like this is the bit you did.)

<application-template xmlns="http://biginsights.ibm.com/application" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
    <name>BIProject</name>
    <properties>
        <property isInputPath="false" isOutputPath="false" isRequired="true" label="Example parameter" name="exampleParameter" paramtype="TEXTAREA" uitype="textfield"/>
    </properties>
    <assets>
        <asset id="BIProject" type="WORKFLOW"/>
    </assets>
    <imagePath>defaultApp_L.png</imagePath>
    <categories>Sandbox</categories>
</application-template>

Once the application was published I could provide a value for the example parameter when running it ...which got passed to the main method as expected!

These links seemed useful for putting the two bits together:

• https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/OOZIE/Java+Cookbook
• http://www-01.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/SSPT3X_3.0.0/com.ibm.swg.im.infosphere.biginsights.dev.doc/doc/application.xml_ref_syntax.html

Answer 3

The only option I've noticed so far is that after deploying the application, you may choose to specify the input path from "Parameters area" in the biginsights web console.