Use mail transport in ESB to convert the SOAP message to a plain text mail

Scenario:
Imagine a scenario where you are using the mail transport in ESB. You need to convert the SOAP message to a plain text mail, without any XML in it. This blogpost is written to address it :).

How To:
Following steps will guide you to get your scenario up and running.

1) Uncomment the mail TransportSender and TransportReceiver from axis2.xml

2) Add the following line to axis2.xml's MessageFormatters.

<messageFormatter contentType="text/plain" class="org.apache.axis2.format.PlainTextFormatter"/>

3) Build the SimpleStockQuote service (which is residing inside the samples). Run sample axis2Server.

4) Use the attached proxy configuration.

<!-- Using the mail transport -->
<definitions xmlns="http://ws.apache.org/ns/synapse">
  <proxy name="StockQuoteProxy" transports="mailto">

      <parameter name="transport.mail.Address">synapse.demo.1@gmail.com</parameter>
      <parameter name="transport.mail.Protocol">pop3</parameter>
      <parameter name="transport.PollInterval">5</parameter>
      <parameter name="mail.pop3.host">pop.gmail.com</parameter>
      <parameter name="mail.pop3.port">995</parameter>
      <parameter name="mail.pop3.user">synapse.demo.1</parameter>
      <parameter name="mail.pop3.password">mailpassword</parameter>
      <parameter name="mail.pop3.socketFactory.class">javax.net.ssl.SSLSocketFactory</parameter>
      <parameter name="mail.pop3.socketFactory.fallback">false</parameter>
      <parameter name="mail.pop3.socketFactory.port">995</parameter>
      <parameter name="transport.mail.ContentType">application/xml</parameter>

      <target>
          <inSequence>
              <property name="senderAddress" expression="get-property('transport', 'From')"/>
              <log level="full">
                  <property name="Sender Address" expression="get-property('senderAddress')"/>
              </log>

              <send>
                  <endpoint>
                      <address uri="http://localhost:9000/services/SimpleStockQuoteService"/>
                  </endpoint>
              </send>
          </inSequence>
          <outSequence>
              <property name="Subject" value="Custom Subject for Response" scope="transport"/>
        <property name="messageType" value="text/plain" scope="axis2-client"/>
 <script language="js"><![CDATA[
                mc.setPayloadXML(<ns:text xmlns:ns="http://ws.apache.org/commons/ns/payload">Plain text received!</ns:text>);
     ]]></script>
              <header name="To" expression="fn:concat('mailto:', get-property('senderAddress'))"/>
              <log level="full">
                  <property name="message" value="Response message"/>
                  <property name="Sender Address" expression="get-property('senderAddress')"/>
              </log>
              <send/>
          </outSequence>
      </target>
      <publishWSDL uri="file:repository/samples/resources/proxy/sample_proxy_1.wsdl"/>
  </proxy>
</definitions>

5) Send an email to synapse.demo.1@gmail.com

6) You will receive the response in plain text.

Exposing a non-secured service with security using ESB

This article explains how to expose a non-secure service as a secured service using WSO2 ESB. The unsecured service is SimpleStockQuoteService. The strategy taken up is to secure SimpleStockQuoteService throught a secured proxy. A proxy service is written to enable username token authentication and logging of messages. Steps specified in the article demonstrates how to get this scenario up and running. [Read the full article for more info]

My article on IBM Developer Works

It was one of my dreams to publish an article in IBM dW. Last week one of my articles got published in the IBM developerWorks. A special thank goes out to Chris Walden (Web Development Editor) of developerWorks who made this happen.

Basketball @ WSO2 : How to Survive

It's been a while since I wrote a blogpost that relates to sports. Since annual basketball tournament at wso2 is coming up next week, I thought it would be the perfect time to write a blogpost on WSO2 basketball. The ideas & views expressed below can be a KnowledgeBase for anyone joining wso2 or newbie who wants to play basketball @ wso2.

Wso2 folks dont have a permanent basketball court to play basketball. Instead they have transformed the car park into a basketball court. It is car-park by day and basketball court by night. We have portable baskeball posts, so we move em to the car-park in the evening. The court is not having the ideal dimensions of a standard basketball court; it is due to the limited space available in the car park.

We started playing basketball @ wso2 around 1 year back and we followed it up with a inter-house basketball tournament, which was a blast. It was a very successful event and everyone enjoyed it a lot(apart from the people who got injured while playing lol). Now 1 year has elapsed since the introduction of basketball to wso2 and IMO I say that we are playing a different flavor of basketball.

Basketball is having several flavors ranging from Streetball to Slamball. Wso2's basketball has evolved into a unique flavor apart from these. I'd say it is a hybrid of both basketball and rugby :D. I'd like to call it RugBBall. Since I said that this would be a KB item, following are some tips to be successful(or survive lol) @ basketball court, during practice sessions.

• You should be able to tolerate elbow shots and slaps, cos these arn't fouls :)

• Dont ever argue with guys on "whether it was a foul or not". You could never win that argument :). Therefore it's better to carry on with the game without arguing.

• After a practice session you'd feel like if you were scratched by a kitten and tackled by a NFL linebacker lol.

Those are the fun facts to know before you enter into the bb court.

I will follow this post up with a pre-tournament analysis of the wso2's inter-house basketball teams. So stay tuned ;) .

Create ZIP archieve from multiple files

Following code snippet shows how to create a zip archieve from multiple files.

import java.util.zip.*;
import java.util.Iterator;
import java.util.List;
import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.io.*;

public class ZipDemo {
    static int BUFFER_SIZE = 1024;
    static String zipArchieveName = "allfiles.zip";

    public static void main(String args[]) {
        try {
            // Reference to the file we will be adding to the zipfile
            BufferedInputStream origin = null;

            // Reference to zip file
            FileOutputStream dest = new FileOutputStream(zipArchieveName);

            // Wrap our destination zipfile with a ZipOutputStream
            ZipOutputStream out = new ZipOutputStream(new BufferedOutputStream(dest));

            // Create a byte[] buffer that we will read data from the source
            // files into and then transfer it to the zip file
            byte[] data = new byte[BUFFER_SIZE];

            List files = new ArrayList();
            files.add("/tmp/systemInfo.txt");
            files.add("/tmp/osgiInfo.txt");
            files.add("/tmp/errorInfo.txt");

            // Iterate over all of the files in list
            for (Iterator i = files.iterator(); i.hasNext();) {
                // Get a BufferedInputStream that we can use to read the source file
                String filename = (String) i.next();
                System.out.println("Adding: " + filename);
                FileInputStream fi = new FileInputStream(filename);
                origin = new BufferedInputStream(fi, BUFFER_SIZE);

                // Setup the entry in the zip file
                ZipEntry entry = new ZipEntry(filename);
                out.putNextEntry(entry);

                // Read data from the source file and write it out to the zip file
                int count;
                while ((count = origin.read(data, 0, BUFFER_SIZE)) != -1) {
                    out.write(data, 0, count);
                }

                // Close the source file
                origin.close();
            }

            // Close the zip file
            out.close();
        }
        catch (Exception e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
    }
}

How to add a Log4j Appender to WSO2 Carbon

1) Write a java class and extend AppenderSkeleton. Add the logic to the append(LoggingEvent e) method.

public class JiraAppender extends AppenderSkeleton {
    protected void append(LoggingEvent loggingEvent) {
        if (loggingEvent.getLevel().toString().equalsIgnoreCase("INFO")) {
            System.out.println("INFO invoked!");
        }
    }

    public boolean requiresLayout() {
        return false; 
    }

    public void close() {
    }
} 

2) Modify the log4j.properties file located at

/carbon-platform-2.0.1/carbondistribution/carbon-home/lib/log4j.properties 

a) Add the following entry to the log4j.properties file.

# CARBON_JIRA is set to be a MemoryAppender using a PatternLayout.
log4j.appender.CARBON_JIRA=org.wso2.carbon.utils.JiraAppender
log4j.appender.CARBON_JIRA.layout=org.apache.log4j.PatternLayout
log4j.appender.CARBON_JIRA.layout.ConversionPattern=[%d] %5p - %x %m%n
log4j.appender.CARBON_JIRA.threshold=DEBUG

b) Update the log4j.properties file with the following entry.

log4j.rootLogger=INFO, CARBON_CONSOLE, CARBON_LOGFILE, CARBON_MEMORY, CARBON_SYS_LOG, CARBON_JIRA

log4j.logger.org.apache.axis2.wsdl.codegen.writer.PrettyPrinter=ERROR, CARBON_LOGFILE, CARBON_MEMORY, CARBON_JIRA
log4j.logger.org.apache.axis2.clustering=DEBUG, CARBON_CONSOLE, CARBON_LOGFILE, CARBON_JIRA
log4j.logger.org.apache=INFO, CARBON_LOGFILE, CARBON_MEMORY, CARBON_JIRA
log4j.logger.org.apache.catalina=WARN
log4j.logger.org.apache.tiles=WARN
log4j.logger.org.apache.coyote=WARN
log4j.logger.org.hibernate=ERROR, CARBON_LOGFILE, CARBON_MEMORY, CARBON_JIRA
log4j.logger.org.mortbay=ERROR, CARBON_LOGFILE, CARBON_MEMORY, CARBON_JIRA
log4j.logger.net.sf=ERROR
log4j.logger.org.wso2=INFO
log4j.logger.org.apache.axis2.enterprise=FATAL, CARBON_LOGFILE, CARBON_MEMORY, CARBON_JIRA
log4j.logger.de.hunsicker.jalopy.io=FATAL, CARBON_LOGFILE, CARBON_MEMORY, CARBON_JIRA

WSO2 Carbon Articles

Following are a list of useful articles on WSO2 Carbon.

Getting Started with WSO2 Carbon

How Stuff Works – WSO2 Carbon