To include a single jar by name, just declare a 'Deployments' element with a 'jar' attribute pointing to the jar file on the file system.
<openejb>
...
<Deployments jar="c:\my\app\superEjbs.jar" />
<Deployments jar="c:\someplace\purchasing.jar" />
<Deployments jar="timeTrack.jar" />
</openejb>
The last element in the example uses a relative path to point to the ejb jar. This path will be resolved relative to the openejb.base property. So, for example, of the value of openejb.base was 'c:\timeapp\' then OpenEJB would look for the jar 'c:\timeapp\timeTrack.jar'. See the [OPENEJB:Configuration] guide for more details.
To point to a directory that contains several jar files that OpenEJB should load, simply declare a 'Deployments' element with a 'dir' attribute pointing to the directory containing the jar files.
<openejb>
...
<Deployments dir="c:\my\app\beans\" />
<Deployments dir="c:\crimestopper\lib" />
<Deployments dir="ejbs" />
<Deployments dir="beans" />
</openejb>
The directories listed will be searched for jars containing 'META-INF/ejb-jar.xml' files and will be added to the list of jars to load if they do. Better said, it's completely safe to point to a directory containing a mix of ejbs and regular jar files. OpenEJB will simply skip over jars that do contain the required 'META-INF/ejb-jar.xml' file.
The last Deployments element declares a 'beans' directory relative to openejb.base for holding ejb jars. This declaration is simply convention and not required.
As of 1.0 beta1, OpenEJB supports unpacked ejb jars. Simply meaning that you don't need to pack your ejb's into a jar file in order to use them in OpenEJB. You still need to follow the ejb jar layout and include an "META-INF/ejb-jar.xml" in the directory that contains your ejbs.
For example, if you have a directory structure like this:
> C:\myapp\
> C:\myapp\acmeEjbs\
> C:\myapp\acmeEjbs\META-INF\ejb-jar.xml
> C:\myapp\acmeEjbs\org\acme\Foo.class
> C:\myapp\acmeEjbs\org\acme\FooBean.class
> C:\myapp\acmeEjbs\org\acme\FooHome.class
> C:\myapp\acmeEjbs\org\acme\Bar.class
> C:\myapp\acmeEjbs\org\acme\BarBean.class
> C:\myapp\acmeEjbs\org\acme\BarHome.class
Then you would delcare a 'Deployments' element with the 'dir' attribute set to 'C:\myapp\acmeEjbs' as shown below.
<openejb>
...
<Deployments dir="c:\myapp\acmeEjbs" />
</openejb>
Note that this syntax is the same as the directory syntax above. If OpenEJB finds a META-INF directory with an 'ejb-jar.xml' fine inside, then OpenEJB will treat the directory as an unpacked ejb jar. Otherwise OpenEJB will look for ejb jar files to load as detailed in the above section.
When trying to figure out if your ejbs were loaded, the openejb.log file is an incredible asset.
If your ejbs were loaded successfully you should see entries like the following (1.x and higher only):
INFO : Loaded EJBs from
/usr/local/openejb-1.0-beta1/beans/openejb-itests-beans.jar
INFO : Loaded EJBs from
/usr/local/openejb-1.0-beta1/beans/openejb-webadmin-clienttools.jar
If your ejbs failed to load, you will see an entry similar to the following.
WARN : Jar not loaded. /usr/local/openejb-1.0-beta1/beans/helloworld.jar.
Jar failed validation. Use the validation tool for more details
Additionally, all the successfully loaded ejbs are individually listed in the log file at startup. The Deployment ID listed is the JNDI name used to lookup the ejb from a client of the Local or Remote Servers. The beans listed below are from our test suite.
DEBUG: Deployments : 19
DEBUG: Type Deployment ID
DEBUG: CMP_ENTITY client/tests/entity/cmp/RMI-over-IIOP/EJBHome
DEBUG: STATEFUL client/tests/stateful/EncBean
DEBUG: STATELESS client/tests/stateless/BeanManagedBasicStatelessHome
DEBUG: STATEFUL client/tests/stateful/BasicStatefulHome
DEBUG: STATELESS client/tests/stateless/EncBean
DEBUG: STATEFUL client/tests/stateful/BeanManagedTransactionTests/EJBHome
DEBUG: BMP_ENTITY client/tests/entity/bmp/RMI-over-IIOP/EJBHome
DEBUG: STATEFUL client/tests/stateful/RMI-over-IIOP/EJBHome
DEBUG: STATELESS client/tests/stateless/BeanManagedTransactionTests/EJBHome
DEBUG: BMP_ENTITY client/tests/entity/bmp/allowed_operations/EntityHome
DEBUG: CMP_ENTITY client/tests/entity/cmp/EncBean
DEBUG: STATEFUL client/tests/stateful/BeanManagedBasicStatefulHome
DEBUG: BMP_ENTITY client/tests/entity/bmp/BasicBmpHome
DEBUG: STATELESS client/tests/stateless/BasicStatelessHome
DEBUG: CMP_ENTITY client/tests/entity/cmp/BasicCmpHome
DEBUG: STATELESS client/tools/DatabaseHome
DEBUG: CMP_ENTITY client/tests/entity/cmp/allowed_operations/EntityHome
DEBUG: BMP_ENTITY client/tests/entity/bmp/EncBean
DEBUG: STATELESS client/tests/stateless/RMI-over-IIOP/EJBHome