New URLStreamHandlers in glassfish

Question

I have a legacy application that I'm trying to port to Java EE. Presently this application calls URL.setURLStreamHandlerFactory() to register some custom URL protocol handlers. This call fails under Glassfish v 2.1 and 3 because glassfish has already registered a factory.

I've tried using the java.protocol.handler.pkgs system property, but that doesn't work for me due to classloader issues. The handler classes are all part of the application and I'm not keen on trying to extract them and put a jar in the container's classpath.

I've got a whiff of osgi bundles - apparently I could write a Bundle that'll deal with the new protocols. I'm not keen on making this web application an osgi bundle (one step at a time! EE first, then osgi if the need arises).

Is it possible to pop a bundle jar in to my WEB-INF/lib directory and have Glassfish load it as a bundle? The bundle will need to import packages from the web applications (another jar in WEB-INF/lib or in WEB-INF/classes). I'm willing to package this app as an EAR if that'll work, I just can't justify osgifying the entire application without knowing more.

Answer 1

I've solved my issue. Apparently I had some wires crossed as the java.protocol.handler.pkgs system property works fine.

For any one else tripping up, I put a jar with my handlers in $DOMAINDIR/lib/ext/ as well as in my WAR's WEB-INF/lib directory. In my application's configuration I've also put a jvm option -Djava.protocol.handler.pkgs=my.handlers.pkg.prefix

I've noticed in glassfish 2.1 it works without the jvm option if I put the prefix in to some startup code, but in glassfish 3 the jvm option is necessary because felix (the osgi implementation glassfish is using) only consults the property upon the server startup, not for each request.