How-to deploy and run the ADF Faces Rich Client Components 11g Demo

Introduction

To explore the ADF Faces Ajax components at runtime, the ADF Faces RC development team at Oracle created a component demo that showcases the various components and framework capabilities and allows you to try different property settings on the selected component. This how-to explains how to setup and launch the ADF Faces component demo locally on your machine using the stand alone and the Oracle JDeveloper 11g integrated version of Oracle WebLogic Server (WLS).

Using the integrated WebLogic Server in Oracle JDeveloper 11g

The rich client component runtime demo can be started from inside Oracle JDeveloper 11 using the integrated Oracle Weblogic Server. Start Oracle JDeveloper and choose File | New from the menu. Select Applications and press Ok. In the Create Application dialog type adffacesdemo as the application name and press Finish. This creates new application workspace and project. The project is not needed and you may delete the project, choosing File | Delete Project file from disk in the Oracle JDeveloper 11g menu.

Choose File | New from the JDeveloper menu and select Projects. In the list of items, select Project from WAR File and press Ok. Skip the first dialog panel, and provide a name for the project, e.g. adffacesdemo, on the second. Keep the Directory information . On the third panel, use the file browser to select the the ADF Faces demo WAR file on your file system and finish the wizard.

Double click onto the project node to open the project properties and select the Run | Debug | Profile option . Press the Edit button and select the Tool Settings. In the Before Running section, uncheck the Make Project option and close the dialog pressing Ok.

Expand the project and select index.jspx under the Web Content node. Choose Run from the right mouse context menu.

Deploying the ADF Faces RC Component Demo on a stand alone instance of Oracle WebLogic Server 10.3

To run the ADF Faces RC component demo on a stand alone version of Oracle WebLogic 10.3, download the WebLogic server software from OTN, as well as the Oracle ADF installer, which is bundled with the Oracle JDeveloper 11g installation. Follow the deployment chapter of the Oracle® Fusion Middleware Fusion Developer's Guide for Oracle Application Development Framework 11g Release 1 (11.1.1) to configure Oracle WebLogic server 10.3 for ADF.

In a brief summary, to install the ADF libraries on WLS:

• Start the installer by issuing java -jar jdevstudio11113install.jar on a command line using Java 1.6
• In the Choose Middleware Home directory page, select Use an existing Middleware Home, select the directory in which your Oracle WebLogic Server 10gR3 resides, and click Next.
• In the Choose Products and Components page, choose Application Development Framework Runtime, (deselect JDeveloper Studio) and click Next.

Follow section 32.6.2 How to Extend a WebLogic Domain for Oracle ADF of the Oracle® Fusion Middleware Fusion Developer's Guide to either create an new WLS domain that contains the ADF libraries or to configure an existing domain to include the ADF libraries.

Installing the ADF Faces Component Demo

Download the ADF Faces rich client component runtime demo web archive (WAR) file and store it on the local file system (e.g. c:\rcf-dvt-demo.war). Once Oracle WebLogic Server 10.3 is installed and started, open the WebLogic administration console in a browser window. To access the WLS console, type "http://localhost:7001/console" into the browser address field, assuming that Oracle WebLogic is installed on the local machine with the default port configured at 7001.

Authenticate to the WebLogic console as weblogic/weblogic, which is the default administration account created when installing WebLogic. In the Oracle WebLogic console, select Deployments in the Domain Structure portlet area.

Press the Install button and navigate to the location of the rcf-dvt-demo.war file on the file system. Follow the wizard and accept all the default settings. Eventually hit Finish to complete the installation. After a success installing of the component demo, open a browser window and type http://localhost:7001/faces-11.1.1.2.0/faces/index.jspx to start the it up.

What's in the demo

The demo starts with an index page showing all categories for which samples are available

The Tag Guide is the entry link to the component demo and shows a list of ADF Faces components that you can select to further explore. Each component demo is launched in a browser that has a split screen layout. The split screen's right content area has a property inspector functionality that you can use to set properties for the individual component. Note that the right content area might be closed so that you have to drag it open before using it. Also of interest is that in addition to the rich client components, the data visualization components which allow you to graphically represent your data are also present in this listing.

A demo of interest should be the Styles demo. Users frequently get confused by which part of a component is styled by the inlineStyle attribute and which part is styled by the contentStyle attribute. Not shown in the image below, but contained in the demo is a skinning demonstration that allows developers to play with various skin definitions per component.

Demo Source Code

The war file also contains the demo source files for developers to study and learn from. All JSPX files and Java sources can be looked at in the Oracle JDeveloper project that is created when importing the WAR file. Note that the ADF Faces component demo does not contain the ADF Faces RC sources and ADF binding sources. These can be request from customer support, requiring a customer support contract for ADF.