How can I provide a HTTP management console for a Java application?

Question

I'm writing a Java application that will run for a long time (essentially, it stays running between system restarts) and does a fair bit of intensive near real-time data processing. Data is delivered to the application, some work is done on that data, and it's then passed on for delivery.

I need to provide a way to inspect the inner workings of the application at runtime. I've already got a fairly well established but hand-carved telnet style interface that allows you to use a command line to ask questions about statistics, data queues, etc, but I'd like to move that to HTTP as I think it will allow me to provide a much richer picture of what's going on (showing load graphs, etc).

Are there any established Java frameworks that allow me to embed a web server and handle requests in a reasonable way? I don't really want to have to hand-carve a whole lot of HTML handling and response generation as it's just annoying background noise to the essence of what I need.

Answer 1

Are you sure you want to embed an HTTP interface?

A pretty common way of doing things like this is to set the Java application up with a restricted RMI interface. Then, you write a J2EE (JSP/Servlet) web interface which makes RMI calls to the application for data.

This setup avoids you having to implement the HTTP protocol (or any other interface protocol - RMI calls are just Java methods), and also separates data (the embedded J2SE program) from presentation (the user-interface J2EE program).

Answer 2

You may want to consider using jconsole and JMX (http://java.sun.com/developer/technicalArticles/J2SE/jconsole.html).

They provide a graphical way to see what is going on inside your application and you can also setup controls to perform given actions through jconsole.