xavi colomer's blog

BlazeDS is a “server-based Java remoting and web messaging technology that enables developers to easily connect to back-end distributed data and push data in real-time“, in other words if you want to write chat applications, or maybe optimize the communications between front-end and back-end this is a great OPEN SOURCE option.

There’s the enterprise version called LCDS ( Livecycle Data Services ) which offers some more features like Data-Synchronization, Offline applications, RIA-PDF generation, etc…

You can find a comparison between the features of BlazeDS and LCDS here:

Requeriments:

- You must download and install JDK ( Java Development Kit )

- You must download and copy BlazeDS ( Copy to the folder you wish, for example C:\Program files\BlazeDS, this is the folder I’ll be using all the tutorial )

- Obviously you must have installed Eclipse or Flex Builder

- You must must/have install/ed the plugin for Java Development on Eclipse / Flex Builder ( Help -> Software Updates )

1. Create an environment variable called JAVA_HOME pointing to the JDK installation.

To create this environment variable you can right-click on MyPC and follow this images ( Remember to change the folder if necessary ):

Now you must restart in order that changes take effect.

1,5. Showing Servers tab

You may want to view the servers tab in order to run it from any perspective.

In this case:

from Flex Builder go to Window -> Other Views… -> Server -> Servers

from Eclipse go to Window -> Show View -> Other… -> Server -> Servers

You will see in your bottom view a new tab called Servers.

2. Create a new server in Eclipse / Flex Builder.

Right click in the Servers view and select New… or New -> Other -> Server -> Server

This window will appear:

We’ll let Server’s host name to localhost and will call this new Server BlazeDS.

Click next.

Now we will point this new server to the tomcat’s folder in our BlazeDS installation. Be aware to change the path if needed.

Click Next.

We won’t add any project for the moment:

OK. We’ve just created a new server.

You can run it to test it, but it won’t work until we configure it correctly, how? keep reading!!!! XD

3. Configuring correctly the server.

Right click on your brand new server in the Servers view and select Open…

This image should appear:

Here you must change two values under Server location:

1. On the first radiobuttons select the second one ( Use tomcat installation )

2. Chage Deploy path from wtpwebapps to webapps or your full path to webapps folder.

4. Test the server.

Now you can Restart the server and Test it going to this address in your internet browser http://localhost:8400

A welcome screen will appear with a short many of your options.

Note: In order to get the examples working you must run the file C:\Program Files\BlazeDS\sampledb\startdb.bat ( Change path if needed )

5. That’s all folks

That’s all!!!  I’ll post how to connect your AIR / Flex project with this server very soon!!!!

Happy Xmas