WebSocket Chat on WildFly and OpenShift (Tech Tip #51)

Chat is one of the most canonical sample to explain WebSocket. Its a fairly commonly used interface and allows to explain the fundamental WebSocket concepts very easily. Of course, Java EE 7 WebSocket has one too, available here! You can easily run it on WildFly using the following steps:

curl -O http://download.jboss.org/wildfly/8.1.0.Final/wildfly-8.1.0.Final.zip
unzip wildfly-8.1.0.Final.zip
./wildfly-8.1.0.Final/bin/standalone.sh
git clone https://github.com/javaee-samples/javaee7-samples.git
cd javaee7-samples
mvn -f websocket/chat/pom.xml wildfly:deploy

And then access it at http://localhost:8080/chat/.

One of the biggest advantage of WebSocket is how it opens up a socket over the same port as HTTP, 8080 in this case. If you want to deploy this application to OpenShift, then WebSocket is available on port 8000 for regular access, and 8443 for secure access. This is explained in the figure below:

 If you want to run this Chat application on OpenShift, then use the following steps:

1. Click here to provision a WildFly instance in OpenShift. Change the name to “chatserver” and everything else as default. Click on “Create Application” to create the application.
2. Clone the workspace:
   

   git clone ssh://544f08a850044670df00009e@chatserver-milestogo.rhcloud.com/~/git/chatserver.git/

3. Edit the first line of “javaee7-samples/websocket/chat/src/main/webapp/websocket.js”from:
   

   var wsUri = "ws://" + document.location.hostname + ":" + document.location.port + document.location.pathname + "chat";

   
   to
   

   var wsUri = "ws://" + document.location.hostname + ":8000" + document.location.pathname + "chat";

4. Create the WAR file:
   

   cd javaee7-samples
   mvn -f websocket/chat/pom.xml

5. Copy the generated WAR file to the workspace cloned earlier:
   

   cd ..
   cp javaee7-samples/websocket/chat/target/chat.war chatserver/deployments/ROOT.war

6. Remove existing files and add the WAR file to git repository:
   

   cd chatserver
   git rm -rf src pom.xml
   git add deployments/ROOT.war
   git commit . -m"updating files"
   git push

   
   And this shows the output as:
   

   Counting objects: 6, done.
   Delta compression using up to 8 threads.
   Compressing objects: 100% (4/4), done.
   Writing objects: 100% (4/4), 6.88 KiB | 0 bytes/s, done.
   Total 4 (delta 1), reused 0 (delta 0)
   remote: Stopping wildfly cart
   remote: Sending SIGTERM to wildfly:285130 ...
   remote: Building git ref 'master', commit 05a7978
   remote: Preparing build for deployment
   remote: Deployment id is 14bcec20
   remote: Activating deployment
   remote: Deploying WildFly
   remote: Starting wildfly cart
   remote: Found 127.2.87.1:8080 listening port
   remote: Found 127.2.87.1:9990 listening port
   remote: /var/lib/openshift/544f08a850044670df00009e/wildfly/standalone/deployments /var/lib/openshift/544f08a850044670df00009e/wildfly
   remote: /var/lib/openshift/544f08a850044670df00009e/wildfly
   remote: CLIENT_MESSAGE: Artifacts deployed: ./ROOT.war
   remote: -------------------------
   remote: Git Post-Receive Result: success
   remote: Activation status: success
   remote: Deployment completed with status: success
   To ssh://544f08a850044670df00009e@chatserver-milestogo.rhcloud.com/~/git/chatserver.git/
   454bba9..05a7978  master -> master

And now your chat server is available at: http://chatserver-milestogo.rhcloud.com and looks like:

Enjoy!