how can I access endpoint properties set in faces-config.xml programmatically?

Question

I am using the IBM Social Business Toolkit. I have defined a connection for my Notes app via endpoints in the faces-config xml file. I wonder how I can access this file pro grammatically since I could not find a service that returns me the base url of IBM Connections.

Answer 1

It's useful to remember that an endpoint definition is really just creating a managed bean. The managed bean has a variable name you refer to it - the managed-bean-name property. You can access this directly from SSJS or via ExtLibUtil.resolveVariable() in Java. The definition also tells you the Java class that's being used, eg com.ibm.sbt.services.endpoints.ConnectionsBasicEndpoint. That really gives you all the information you need to get or set the properties.

So from SSJS you can just cast it to the class name, eg

var myService:com.ibm.sbt.services.endpoints.ConnectionsBasicEndpoint = connections

So the bit after the colon will be the managed-bean-class value and the bit after the equals sign will be the managed-bean-name. In Java, you can use

ConnectionsBasicEndpoint myService = (ConnectionsBasicEndpoint) ExtLibUtil.resolveVariable(ExtLibUtil.getXspContext().getFacesContext(), "connections");

You'll then have access to all the methods of the class, so you should be able to retrieve what you need.

Answer 2

The properties are part of the Java class, who are referred to in the Faces-Config.xml. So get the class by his fully qualified name or by bean name and set or get the properties

Answer 3

I think the best route will most likely be what Paul is suggesting: resolve the variable by its name and use the getters to get the effective properties that way.

Sven's suggestion is a good one to keep in mind for other situations. By accessing the faces-config.xml file as a resource, you could load it into an XML parser and find the values using XPath. I'm doing much that sort of technique in the next version of the OpenNTF Domino API, which will have a set of methods for manipulating the Faces config. However, one key aspect there is that reading the XML file directly will just get you the string values, which may be EL expressions, whereas going the resolveVariable route will get you the real current properties.