Browse Month by January 2016

MCS: Calling SOAP connector bypassing XML/JSON translator

In the MCS project we are working we have to create some SOAP Connectors to integrate with Siebel. A great thing of MCS is that although we are going to consume a SOAP web service, the XML payload is automatically translated into JSON. You can get more info in MCS Documentation.

I would like to thank Oracle Mobile PM  team, specially Grant Ronald and Frédéric Desbiens for their great help and for sharing best practices about this issue.

As soon as we create a SOAP Connector and try to test it we can see that the body we have to provide is a JSON.

But there are some cases where the translator is not perfect. We had a problem with some services that had an XML structure like this:

The translator seems not to add the  namespaces in the header therefore Siebel cannot parse the request.

The solution is to send a XML instead of a JSON, bypassing the translator.
We can test this in SOAP Connector tester. As we need the required XML, we can get it in any web service client tool like for example SoapUI.

We also have to set “Content-Type: application/xml;charset:UTF-8” and “Accept: application/xml” as header parameters.

If we test the Connector we can see that the web service call is working.

How do we implement the Custom API to send a XML payload to the connector?
The answer is to set the XML we want to send as the body of the request and set the header parameters we previously use to test the connector.

But, is this the recommended approach? Yes it is, but instead of sending a String with the SOAP message it is more secure to send it as a JavaScript object.

In order to implement this we have to follow some steps:

  1. Download and Install Node.js. link
  2. Install xml2js module.
    3. In this example test_rrs is the directory where the package.json file resides.

  3. Add xml2js as a dependency in package.json

  4. Moving to our javascript file, as I already stated before the first idea was to build the SOAP message as a string. This first image is the base implementation and we are going to make some changes to it.

    5. First we need to add var xml2js = require(‘xml2js’); at the top of our implementation.

    This is the tricky part, we need to create a JSON like this.
    ‘ $ ‘ means that we want to add attributes to the XML element.
    ‘ _ ‘ means that we want to have something inside that element.

    The last thing we have to do is to create a xml2js.Builder object and execute buildObject method using the json object we have just create. The result of this method is the body we are going to send.
After the implementation is done we just have to put everything inside the zip file and upload it to MCS.
If you want to know more about xml2js click here.

Oracle Mobile Cloud Service 3 Days Workshop in Madrid

Last week I had the chance to attend a Mobile Cloud Service 3 days workshop in Madrid. This was the first MCS training in Spain where some partners and I were able to get a good insight about what MCS offers and also a complete hands-on.

If you want to know MCS functionality you can check my previous post: Oracle Mobile Cloud Service overview.

Although I already attended Oracle Summer Camps workshop in Lisbon, we are in the middle of a MCS development and  this workshop was a perfect fit for mastering my MCS skills and also any question we made was perfectly answer by Mireille Duroussaud (Senior Principal Product Manager).

We were also able to see some of the features that will bring the next versions of Mobile Cloud Service like Mobile Application Accelerator (Oracle MAX), and hear of others like for example a JavaScript editor for implementing and debugging APIs right in the browser.
I was really impressed about Oracle MAX becasue building a Mobile Application connected to Mobile Cloud Service was just a matter of 10 minutes. Although the things you can do with Oracle MAX are limitted, it is likely possible that we will be able to donwload the source code of the generated application to extend it wich is a nice feature.
I think this is a must-attend workshop it you are planning to start a Mobile Cloud Service project anytime soon. You can also check Oracle Mobile Platform Youtube channel where you can find more than 50 videos about MCS.

ADF: Filtering parent and child nodes in af:tree / af:treeTable

One of our customers required to filter data in a page with a tree component. Using Ashish’s post I am going to show you how to filter both parent and child nodes having just a single filter value. This can also be applied to treeTable component.

The first thing we need is a tree component and data structure, in this case we are going to use Oracle’s hr schema tables: Departments and Employees.

In our page we drag and drop DepartmentsView from datacontrols palette and create a tree component.

The next thing we have to do is to create a View Criteria in Departments View Object (parent).

We also have to crete a View Criteria in Employees View Object (child).

We have to expose setter method of the bind variable in parent View Object.
As we exposed the bind variable in parent, we need  to pass that value to the child by overriding createViewLinkAccessorRS method in parent View Object Implementation class (DepartmentsViewImpl.java)

The last step in the Model is to set a default View Criteria in parent View Object. To set it we have to right click on the View Object instance in our AppModule, click on ‘Edit’, select the View Criteria and click on ‘Ok’ button.

The Model is now finished, we now have to drag and drop the setter method from the data controls palette and create an ‘ADF Parameter Form’ so we can provide the filter value.

This will create ‘setsearchValue’ method binding in the pageDef. We also need to create a Execute operation of the parent View Object and call both operations from the ‘Filter’ button ActionListener.

This is how we should have the page.

If we run the application we can see the if we filter by ‘pat’ we just get values that contains that string.

If now we filter by ‘les’, we can see that we get values with ‘les’ string in both parent and child nodes.

PCS: Form rules in human tasks

In Oracle BPM it is possible to use Oracle ADF to implement Human Tasks, but in Oracle Process Cloud Service you can only create a form using web forms. Creating a form is an easy task and it offers us to define rules that it gives us a lot of flexibility to achieve complex requirements.

Having this simple form. We can navigate to rules clicking on the marked button.

For each of the elements we have a number of properties or events that we can manage,
For example we can manage form load event, or get if a field value is valid…

To build the rules we have to use JavaScript and we can get code snippets if we click on the button next to each of the properties.

Let’s build a couple of rules so you can see how easy it is.
Having this combo with this value.

We can build a rules that populates that combo and also add some kind of value change listener so if its value is “Spain” we can set the country code in Telephone field.

If we have any syntax errors, will be displayed in the bottom of the editor.

Once the error is fixed we can test the form clicking on the marked button.
We can see that the combo is now populated and if we select Spain, the country code is set.