4.5. JBoss Deployer Architecture
JBoss has an extensible deployment architecture that allows one to incorporate components into the bare JBoss JMX microkernel. The MainDeployer is the deployment entry point. Requests to deploy a component are sent to the MainDeployer and it determines if there is a subdeployer capable of handling the deployment, and if there is, it delegates the deployment to the subdeployer. We saw an example of this when we looked at how the MainDeployer used the SARDeployer to deploy MBean services. Among the deployers provided with JBoss are:
AbstractWebDeployer: This subdeployer handles web application archives (WARs). It accepts deployment archives and directories whose name ends with a war suffix. WARs must have a WEB-INF/web.xml descriptor and may have a WEB-INF/jboss-web.xml descriptor.
EARDeployer: This subdeployer handles enterprise application archives (EARs). It accepts deployment archives and directories whose name ends with an ear suffix. EARs must have a META-INF/application.xml descriptor and may have a META-INF/jboss-app.xml descriptor.
EJBDeployer: This subdeployer handles enterprise bean jars. It accepts deployment archives and directories whose name ends with a jar suffix. EJB jars must have a META-INF/ejb-jar.xml descriptor and may have a META-INF/jboss.xml descriptor.
JARDeployer: This subdeployer handles library JAR archives. The only restriction it places on an archive is that it cannot contain a WEB-INF directory.
RARDeployer: This subdeployer handles JCA resource archives (RARs). It accepts deployment archives and directories whose name ends with a rar suffix. RARs must have a META-INF/ra.xml descriptor.
SARDeployer: This subdeployer handles JBoss MBean service archives (SARs). It accepts deployment archives and directories whose name ends with a sar suffix, as well as standalone XML files that end with service.xml. SARs that are jars must have a META-INF/jboss-service.xml descriptor.
XSLSubDeployer: This subdeployer deploys arbitrary XML files. JBoss uses the XSLSubDeployer to deploy ds.xml files and transform them into service.xml files for the SARDeployer. However, it is not limited to just this task.
HARDeployer: This subdeployer deploys hibernate archives (HARs). It accepts deployment archives and directories whose name ends with a har suffix. HARs must have a META-INF/hibernate-service.xml descriptor.
AspectDeployer: This subdeployer deploys AOP archives. It accepts deployment archives and directories whose name ends with an aop suffix as well as aop.xml files. AOP archives must have a META-INF/jboss-aop.xml descriptor.
ClientDeployer: This subdeployer deploys J2EE application clients. It accepts deployment archives and directories whose name ends with a jar suffix. J2EE clients must have a META-INF/application-client.xml descriptor and may have a META-INF/jboss-client.xml descriptor.
BeanShellSubDeployer: This subdeployer deploys bean shell scripts as MBeans. It accepts files whose name ends with a bsh suffix.
The MainDeployer, JARDeployer and SARDeployer are hard coded deployers in the JBoss server core. All other deployers are MBean services that register themselves as deployers with the MainDeployer using the addDeployer(SubDeployer) operation.
The MainDeployer communicates information about the component to be deployed the SubDeployer using a DeploymentInfo object. The DeploymentInfo object is a data structure that encapsulates the complete state of a deployable component.
When the MainDeployer receives a deployment request, it iterates through its registered subdeployers and invokes the accepts(DeploymentInfo) method on the subdeployer. The first subdeployer to return true is chosen. The MainDeployer will delegate the init, create, start, stop and destroy deployment life cycle operations to the subdeployer.