Basic Maven B2 Tutorial

Prerequisites

A running Blackboard Developer VM on http://localhost:9876. This was covered in the BBDeveloperVMSetupTutorial

Introduction

This tutorial shows how to create and deploy a basic B2 to Blackboard. The most basic mavenized B2 will have the following files:

pom.xml - Maven's Project Object Model. After created, B2 deployment is a single step procedure. Much of it can be reused. add properties
src/main/webapp/WEB-INF/web.xml - Web Application Deployment Descriptor of your application see explanation.
src/main/webapp/WEB-INF/bb-manifest.xml - This is a blackboard specific file. It describes how your B2 is to be integrated into blackboard. Further details have been documented in this bb-manifest.xml reference..
src/main/webapp/home.jsp - just a simple a jsp.

Tutorial

For those already familiar with B2 development here is a zip archive of the completed project. Just extract, import into eclipse and skip to the Deploy! section.

Create new Maven Project in Eclipse

Navigate to File > New > Other... to create a new Maven project.
Select Maven Project and then Click Next in the Select a Wizard dialog box
Enable Create a simple Project... and then Click Next in the New Maven Project Dialog box
Fill out the following in the second New Maven project Dialog
- Group Id: com.justinwrobel
- Artifact Id: hello-world-b2
- Version: 0.0.1-SNAPSHOT
- Packaging: war
- Name: Hello World B2

Maven should have created the following file structure and files:

Create a B2

Start by adding the following to src/main/webapp/hello.jsp:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
	<head>
		<title>Hello</title>
	</head>
	<body>
		Hello World!
	</body>
</html>

Add the following to src/main/webapp/WEB-INF/web.xml (create the WEB-INF directory, if not there already)

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<web-app version="2.5" xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee"
	xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
	xsi:schemaLocation="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee/web-app_2_5.xsd">

</web-app>

Add the following to src/main/webapp/WEB-INF/bb-manifest.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<manifest xmlns="http://www.blackboard.com/bb-manifest-plugin"
	xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
	xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.blackboard.com/bb-manifest-plugin http://fibbba.blackboard.com/xsd/bb-manifest-plugin.xsd">
	<plugin>
		<name value="hello-world-b2" />
		<description value="My first B2 - Hello World!" />
		<default-locale value="en_US" />
		<webapp-type value="javaext"/>
		<!-- handle value will be part of the B2's url please see -->
		<!-- https://github.com/justinwrobel/bbmd/blob/master/B2UrlAnatomy.md -->
		<!-- for more information -->
		<handle value="hello-world-b2" />
		<version value="0.0.1" />
		<requires>
				<bbversion value="8.0" />
		</requires>
		
		<!-- vendor id will be part of the B2's url please see -->
		<!-- https://github.com/justinwrobel/bbmd/blob/master/B2UrlAnatomy.md -->
		<!-- for more information -->
		<vendor>
			<id value="jw" /> <!-- id is limited to 4 chars -->
			<name value="justinwrobel" />
			<url value="http://www.githut.com/justinwrobel" />
		</vendor>
		
		<!-- This application will be available at -->
		<!-- http://${bbhost}/webapps/jw-hello-world-b2-BBLEARN -->
		
		<!-- the application-defs element is where the integration points between -->
		<!-- Blackboard and the webapp are defined. -->
		<application-defs>
			<application handle="hello-world-system" type="shared"
				use-ssl="false" name="Hello World to the System">
				<links>
					<link>
						<type value="system_tool" />
						<name value="Hello World System Link" />
						<description value="Hello World System Description" />
						<url value="hello.jsp" />
					</link>
				</links>
			</application>
		</application-defs>
	</plugin>
</manifest>

Congratulations! You've just created your first B2!

Test build & Manually Deploy

Right click hello-world-b2 and then select Run as... > install to Build the war file
Open a browser to localhost:9876
Sign in as Administrator/password
Navigate to System Admin
Navigate to Building Blocks
Navigate to Installed Tools
Click the Upload Building Blocks button
Click Browse and select Workspace/hello-world-b2/target/hello-world-b2-0.0.1-SNAPSHOT.war
Click Submit on the Install Building Block
Click Approve on the Install Building Blocks and Make Building Blocks Available page
Wait for B2 to install then Click the Return button.
Navigate to System Admin tab
Click the Hello World System Link link (it should point to http://localhost:9876/webapps/jw-hello-world-BBLEARN/hello.jsp)

We could stop at this point and use this method to deploy but we would have to manually deploy the war file each time. The manual deployment process is over 9 steps and it takes over a minute. Each time. Why would we do that when Maven can simplify the entire process down to one command and speed up deployment to just a few seconds.

Add the b2deploy-task to our build

Add pluginRepositories to pom.xml for b2deploy-task

 <project...
 ...
 <pluginRepositories>
 	<pluginRepository>
 		<id>blackboard-repo</id>
 		<name>Blackboard Repository</name>
 		<url>https://bbprepo.blackboard.com/content/repositories/releases/</url>
 	</pluginRepository>
 </pluginRepositories>
 ...
 </project>

Add maven-antrun-plugin, b2deploy-task to the build section

 <project...
 ...
 <build>
 	<plugins>
 		<!-- The following task automatically uploads the war file to blackboard. -->
 		<!-- It is called by executing 'mvn antrun:run' -->
 		<plugin>
 			<artifactId>maven-antrun-plugin</artifactId>
 			<version>1.5</version>
 			<dependencies>
 				<dependency>
 					<groupId>org.oscelot</groupId>
 					<artifactId>b2deploy-task</artifactId>
 					<version>0.1.0</version>
 				</dependency>
 			</dependencies>
 			<configuration>
 				<!-- The b2deploy task automatically deploys the war file onto the -->
 				<!-- development server so you don't have to. -->
 				<target>
 					<taskdef name="b2deploy" classpathref="maven.plugin.classpath" classname="org.oscelot.ant.B2DeployTask" />
 					<b2deploy localfilepath="${project.build.directory}/${project.build.finalName}.war" host="${bbhost}" courseorgavailable="true" clean="true" />
 				</target>
 				<!-- Requires "Starting Block" installed on the server. -->
 				<!-- Download the war file from -->
 				<!-- http://behind.blackboard.com/downloads/details.aspx?d=1669 -->
 			</configuration>
 		</plugin>
 	</plugins>
 </build>
 ...
 </project>

Deploy!

Right click on the project and choose Run As > Maven Build
In the Edit configuration dialog box set Goals to install antrun:run and Click Run!

If you get the OK message after the Installing: ... message it should be installed.
Finally, you can either navigate directly to http://localhost:9876/webapps/jw-hello-world-b2-BBLEARN/hello.jsp or click the Hello World System Link under Tools and Utilities on the System Admin page and you should see the following:

##Troubleshooting

The following message indicates that Starting Block B2 is not installed.

       {
         try {DWREngine.endBatch();} catch(ignore) {}
       }
                          BrowserSpecific.registerListeners();
                loadLoginPage();
               });
   </script>
       </body>
</html>
[INFO] Executed tasks
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] BUILD SUCCESS
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] Total time: 2.944s
[INFO] Finished at: Wed Mar 12 11:50:41 EDT 2014
[INFO] Final Memory: 9M/156M
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------

The following message indicates that blackboard is either not up or ready yet.

main:
Installing: C:\Users\jwrobel\Desktop\ws\tutorial\hello-world-b2\target/hello-world-b2-0.0.1-SNAPSHOT.war 
to localhost:9876
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] BUILD FAILURE
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] Total time: 5.726s
[INFO] Finished at: Wed Mar 12 11:41:33 EDT 2014
[INFO] Final Memory: 8M/124M
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[ERROR] Failed to execute goal org.apache.maven.plugins:maven-antrun-plugin:1.5:run (default-
cli) on project hello-world-b2: An Ant BuildException has occured: 
java.net.ConnectException: Connection refused: connect -> [Help 1]
[ERROR] 
[ERROR] To see the full stack trace of the errors, re-run Maven with the -e switch.
[ERROR] Re-run Maven using the -X switch to enable full debug logging.
[ERROR] 
[ERROR] For more information about the errors and possible solutions, please read the following articles:
[ERROR] [Help 1] http://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/MAVEN/MojoExecutionException

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BasicMavenB2Tutorial.md

BasicMavenB2Tutorial.md

Basic Maven B2 Tutorial

Prerequisites

Introduction

Tutorial

Create new Maven Project in Eclipse

Create a B2

Test build & Manually Deploy

Add the b2deploy-task to our build

Deploy!

Files

BasicMavenB2Tutorial.md

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BasicMavenB2Tutorial.md

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Basic Maven B2 Tutorial

Prerequisites

Introduction

Tutorial

Create new Maven Project in Eclipse

Create a B2

Test build & Manually Deploy

Add the b2deploy-task to our build

Deploy!