Configuring a JNDI resource that isn't a datasource in Liberty Profile

Question

I'm trying to run an existing WebSphere application in Liberty Profile but have run into a problem. The application has a resource environment entry configured in the server which I need to translate into a Liberty Profile resource. How can I configure a JNDI resource in the server.xml, that isn't a datasource (dataSource) or a constant (jndiEntry)?

Many thanks

Alasdair Alasdair · Accepted Answer · 2013-08-07T13:02:44

You can configure this using the element in the server.xml. This is documented in the infocenter. Essentially you enable the jndi feature in the server.xml using this:

<featureManager>
   <feature>jndi-1.0</feature>
</featureManager>

Then you can configure the JNDI entries. You can only do simple types using this, so no complex objects. To configure your entry you then do this:

<jndiEntry jndiName="myProp/philosopher" value="plato" />

The Liberty profile does type inference, so if you expressed this:

<jndiEntry jndiName="myProp/philosopher" value="1234" />

you get an Number from JNDI. If you express this:

<jndiEntry jndiName="myProp/philosopher" value="1234.3D" />

You get a Double.

If you want a number as a string literal you would express it using quotes:

<jndiEntry jndiName="myProp/philosopher" value='"1234.3D"' />

To get this from your application you can do a global lookup such as:

Context ctx = new InitialContext();
Object jndiConstant = ctx.lookup("myProp/philosopher");
String philosopher = (String) jndiConstant;

You can also map this to a resource environment entry in the ibm-web-bnd.xml file:

<env-entry name="philosopher" binding-name="myProp/philosopher" />

and then use this code to look it up:

Context ctx = new InitialContext();
Object jndiConstant = ctx.lookup("java:comp/env/philosopher");
String philosopher = (String) jndiConstant;

Configuring a JNDI resource that isn't a datasource in Liberty Profile

3 Answers