Java::Import::Examples 0.03

Java::Import::Examples is an example of how to use Java::Import to call into Java classes.

Making RMI calls from Perl

One nice thing about Java is the extremely straight forward manner in which it allows you to make calls to remote objects residing on distant servers. Many people use this ability as a point of integration between their system and a posible third party or legacy system. Unfortunatly, for the most part the ability to make calls to these remote objects is something that only other Java applications can do without making a big fuss about it. However, we can now do this from Perl.

Assume that I have a RMI server from which I can get data from in the form of simple Java Beans. One method of doing this is to use the GCJ::Cni library and natively compile and wrap a set of Java Classes which can then be used from my Perl script. However, there is an easier way.

Lets begin by descriping the Java interfaces that well be working with. We first have the Remote Interface that we will be interacting with:

import java.rmi.*;
public interface RemoteInterface extends Remote {
public SomeBean getMessage(String seedMessage) throws RemoteException;
}
And we also have the bean we will be asking for:
import java.io.*;
public class SomeBean implements Serializable {
private String value;
public SomeBean() {}
public void setValue ( String _value ) { ... }
public String getValue ( ) { ... }
}
As far as any Perl client program is concerned this is all we need to know about.
Now all there is left to do is write a client:
use Java::Import qw(
java.rmi.Naming
);

my $remote_interface = java::rmi::Naming->lookup(jstring("//localhost/Home"));
my $bean = $remote_interface->getMessage(jstring("Hi there"));
print $bean->getValue(), "n";

Thats all there is. Notice that all we had to tell Java::Import about was java.rmi.Naming, this is because it was the only class we used by name in our Perl code, every other Java class (the objects held by $bean and $remote_interface) was returned by some other method call originating from java.rmi.Naming.

In order to run this example we have to make sure everything is in its place. We start by compiling the client code. Assuming that we have been given a Stub class file (RemoteObject_Stub.class) we can do the following:

gcj -C SomeBean.java RemoteInterface.java
fastjar -cvf client.jar SomeBean.class RemoteInterface.class RemoteObject_Stub.class

Making sure our server is reachable we can then run the client code:

CLASSPATH=client.jar perl client.pl

Thats it, you should then see the message returned by your server.