Drools rules decision tables implementation

Installing Liferay on JBoss 5.1

Note: Java 7 deprecated some classes used by JBoss 5.1. Use Java 5 or Java 6 to run JBoss 5.1.
Liferay Home is one folder above JBoss’s install location.

1. Download and install JBoss EAP 5.1.x into your preferred directory. This directory is referred to as $JBOSS_HOME throughout this section.
2. Download the latest version of the Liferay Portal .war file.
3. Download Liferay’s Portal Dependencies.

Now that you have all of your installation files, you are ready to start installing and configuring Liferay on JBoss.

Configuring Dependencies

First we’ll take care of dependencies and potential conflicts.

1. Unzip Liferay’s dependencies to $JBOSS_HOME/server/default/lib.
2. Download your database driver .jar file and put it into the folder as well. For demonstration purposes, we’ll download the MySQL Connector/J driver from http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/connector/j/ and put its .jar file into the $JBOSS_HOME/server/default/lib folder.

1. Next we’ll delete JBoss’s Hibernate Validator and HSQL JARs to prevent conflicts with Liferay’s JARs. Remove the following files from $JBOSS_HOME/common/lib:
   hibernate-validator.jar hsqldb.jar hsqldb-plugin.jar

Next we need to clean up the entries for the JAR files that we deleted.

1. Open $JBOSS_HOME/server/default/conf/login-config.xml in a text editor.
2. Comment out the blocks with the name HsqlDBRealm and JmsXARealm around lines 41-64.

We’ll also delete some other files that can cause conflicts with Liferay when it’s deployed.

1. Remove the following files from $JBOSS_HOME/../server/default/deploy:
   /messaging ejb2-container-jboss-beans.xml ejb2-timer-service.xml ejb3-connections-jboss-beans.xml ejb3-container-jboss-beans.xml ejb3-interceptors-aop.xml ejb3-timerservice-jboss-beans.xml hsqldb-ds.xml jms-ra.rar mail-ra.rar mail-service.xml profile-service-secured.jar uuid-key-generator.sar
2. Delete the following in $JBOSS_HOME/../server/default/deployers:
   jboss-ejb3-endpoint-deployer.jar messaging-definitions-jboss-beans.xml

Deploying Liferay

Now that we’ve added all of the necessary dependencies and removed unnecessary files, it’s time to deploy Liferay.

1. Navigate to $JBOSS_HOME/../server/default/deploy/ROOT.war and delete all the content of the folder.
2. Extract the contents of the Liferay WAR file into this folder.
3. Create a file named jboss-classloading.xml in the $JBOSS_HOME/../server/default/ROOT.war/WEB-INF directory and add the following contents to it:
   

This configuration file defines a domain that does not allow parent classes to load first. Instead, Liferay Portal’s classes are exported. Since JBoss comes with its own Hibernate JARs, the above configuration is needed to tell Liferay to ignore these JARs and to use its own JARs instead. If you omit this configuration, you may encounter a Hibernate exception. It’s also necessary to add a jboss-classloading.xml file to the WEB-INF folder of each Liferay plugin; see the Deploying plugins section below.

1. Create a portal-ext.properties file in $LIFERAY_HOME (one level above $JBOSS_HOME) and add the following properties:
   hibernate.validator.apply_to_ddl=false hibernate.validator.autoregister_listeners=false
2. Delete the following files from the $JBOSS_HOME/ROOT.war/WEB-INF/lib:
   jaxrpc.jar stax.jar xercesImpl.jar xml-apis.jar
3. Add the following lines to your portal-ext.properties file:
   NOTE: The autodeploy folder must be set with the full name of the folder; you can’t use any variables to define the location.
   

   auto.deploy.jboss.dest.dir=${jboss.home.dir}/server/default/deploy
   auto.deploy.deploy.dir=C:/JBoss-<version>/deploy
   

4. Start the JBoss Application Server.

Liferay is now successfully installed on JBoss 5.1.

Deploying plugins

Add a jboss-classloading.xml to the WEB-INF folder of each plugin, with the following content:

<classloading xmlns="urn:jboss:classloading:1.0"
    domain="PLUGINNAME-portlet"
    parent-domain="LiferayDomain"
    parent-first="false"
    top-level-classloader="false"
    export-all="NON_EMPTY"
    import-all="false">
</classloading>

The LiferayDomain referenced in the above configuration is the domain we defined above during step 3 of the Deploying Liferay section. Configuring plugins to use the Liferay domain ensures that if JBoss and Liferay have different versions of a JAR file, the plugin will use Liferay’s version. Without this configuration, Liferay plugins might end up using the wrong versions of JAR files. You can make this configuration either before or after the plugin WAR has been deployed, as long as JBoss is not running. Of course, it’s best to make this configuration before deployment. Otherwise, if there’s a JAR conflict, you’ll have to shut down your server, configure the plugin to use the Liferay domain, and restart the server.
To set up a hot deploy folder and have plugins automatically copied to the right place, add the following lines to your portal-ext.properties file:

auto.deploy.jboss.dest.dir=${jboss.home.dir}/server/default/deploy
auto.deploy.deploy.dir=G:/jboss-eap-5.1/deploy

The first line is the value for the default server; if you’ve installed Liferay in something other than the default, change it accordingly. The path in the second line should point to the deploy folder configured for JBoss.
Liferay also runs on JBoss 7. Let’s see how we’d get it installed on that version of JBoss.