Debugging Dynamic Web App in Eclipse

[shall]

Hello,

I was able to successfully access an example java application on a Tomcat v7 web server.

Now, I want to be able to the same thing for an application that I created (called PuzzleApp).

I initially tried to do so by updating the jnlp file and replacing the jar file with my PuzzleApp application. When I try to access the file using firefox, Webstart starts up, but then vanishes after a short while with no exception dialog box being displayed.

I need to debug what's going on between the Tomcat server and my application, but I don't know how to set up that debug environment in Eclipse.

Could some please point me in the right direction.

Thanks,
Stephen

[Tolls]

I doubt you can, since the app isn't starting up.
Does your app have any logging in it?
What happens when you try and start your app from the command line (I'm assuming it's a jar)?

[shall]

Thanks for the reply.

It runs fine in Netbeans, but, just now when ran it from the command line the following exception occurs: Exception in thread "AWT-EventQueue-0" java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: URI is not hierarchical

The following code is at that line:

doc = docBuilder.parse(new File(bookXmlURI));

bookXmlURI as a string is (as run in Netbeans):
file:/C:/Users/earth/Documents/NetBeansProjects/PuzzleApp/build/classes/puzzleapp/PuzzlePieces/PuzzlePiecesInfo.xml

The absolute path may be a problem for the jar file.

How do I correct the problem?

[Tolls]

You cannot access files in a jar file using the normal file system methods, as it is not a file system.
You need to access them using the <class>.getResource() or getResourceAsStream() methods.

[shall]

Actually, I did use getResource. Here's some more of the code:

DocumentBuilderFactory docBuilderFactory = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance();
DocumentBuilder docBuilder;

docBuilder = docBuilderFactory.newDocumentBuilder();

URL bookXmlURL = this.getClass().getResource(resourceName);

URI bookXmlURI = bookXmlURL.toURI();

doc = docBuilder.parse(new File(bookXmlURI));

[shall]

Yahoooooo! (and I don't mean the website).

Thanks a lot. you pointed me in the right direction.

I replaced that big block of code above with the following:
InputStream is = getClass().getResourceAsStream(resourceName);
doc = docBuilder.parse(is);

After that modification, webstart was able to run the puzzleapp.

Running Jar files just do not act the same way as running class files.

Stephen

[Tolls]

Yep, it was because you were taking the URI for the resource (which points to a thing in the jar file) and then hand that to a File, which will look for it on the file system.

[shall]

Thanks for the explanation.