How to use HTTP protocol in Resource Adapter in WildFly

Question

I'm trying to implement a inbound resource adapter which will receive a data through HTTP protocol. I have two variants of implementations: to use Jetty as inner server and to use web container from WildFly. I know how to use Jetty, but think that Undertow using is the best. But how? WildFly does not see @WebServlet in RAR. How can I tell to WildFly to deploy a servlet which is located RAR?

Answer 1

When it comes to the point where the whole ecosystem is against me, I usually ask myself whether I'm sure the whole idea is right. Your idea does not seem to be right at all. Still, if you're sure, I'll explain the way of doing something that is close to what you want.

The idea of using servlet inside a resource adapter is a bit odd. Implementing an inbound HTTP adapter is odd either. In some logical sense, servlet container is an inbound HTTP resource adapter itself. It doesn't really utilize JCA container, but it's quite close to what an inbound resource adapter would stand for.

Another reason for not doing so is that resource adapters and application deployments have quite different life cycle. While WAR/EAR deployment represents an application which 'serves as it lives', the RAR semantic is quite different: instead of doing some business logic, resource adapter just provides interfaces for other deployments. You can bundle RAR into your EAR for sure, but if you're not targeting a monstrous monolith, you'll end-up deploying RAR as a separate artefact for your applications to use. Resource adapter should not contain any particular business logic. If you need it to do so, consider rethinking whether you need an application server at the first place: JCA container is quite poor comparing to EJB and Web ones, and if you don't need all the power, Java SE might come in handy.

Now, if you're still 100 % sure you need this, let's take a look at your options:

1. You may try to implement ServiceActivator -- a JBoss-specific start point for custom extensions. From within this activator you can access UndertowService and perform servlet container bootstrap manually. Here is an example of SA-powered artefact from Wildfly team. Since your question is quite unusual, I cannot confirm whether JCA deployment will support it, but it seems to.

2. If you cannot just force Wildfly's web container to process RAR deployment, you could fall back to a manual container instantiation. Undertow itself is just a module inside Wildfly so you can access it by specifying module dependency clause in your RAR's JAR manifest like so:

   Dependencies: io.undertow
   

   Undertow's classes will then be available to you upon deployment through your classloader and you'll be able to instantiate a new server with custom servlets inside.