Configuring a client to use HA-JNDI is a matter of ensuring the correct set of naming environment properties are available when a new
InitialContext is created. How this is done varies depending on whether the client is running inside JBoss Enterprise Web Platform itself or is in another VM.
If you want to access HA-JNDI from inside the Enterprise Web Platform, you must explicitly configure your
InitialContext by passing in JNDI properties to the constructor. The following code shows how to create a naming Context bound to HA-JNDI:
Properties p = new Properties();
p.put(Context.INITIAL_CONTEXT_FACTORY, "org.jnp.interfaces.NamingContextFactory");
p.put(Context.URL_PKG_PREFIXES, "jboss.naming:org.jnp.interfaces");
// HA-JNDI is listening on the address passed to JBoss via -b
String bindAddress = System.getProperty("jboss.bind.address", "localhost");
p.put(Context.PROVIDER_URL, bindAddress + ":1100"); // HA-JNDI address and port.
return new InitialContext(p);
The Context.PROVIDER_URL property points to the HA-JNDI service configured in the
deploy/cluster/hajndi-jboss-beans.xml file (see Section 18.3, “JBoss configuration”). By default this service listens on the interface named via the jboss.bind.address system property, which itself is set to whatever value you assign to the -b command line option when you start JBoss Enterprise Web Platform (or localhost if not specified). The above code shows an example of accessing this property.
However, this does not work in all cases, especially when running several JBoss Enterprise Web Platform instances on the same machine and bound to the same IP address, but configured to use different ports. A safer method is to not specify the Context.PROVIDER_URL but instead allow the
InitialContext to statically find the in-VM HA-JNDI by specifying the jnp.partitionName property:
Properties p = new Properties();
p.put(Context.INITIAL_CONTEXT_FACTORY, "org.jnp.interfaces.NamingContextFactory");
p.put(Context.URL_PKG_PREFIXES, "jboss.naming:org.jnp.interfaces");
// HA-JNDI is registered under the partition name passed to JBoss via -g
String partitionName = System.getProperty("jboss.partition.name", "DefaultPartition");
p.put("jnp.partitionName", partitionName);
return new InitialContext(p);
This example uses the
jboss.partition.name system property to identify the partition with which the HA-JNDI service works. This system property is set to whatever value you assign to the -g command line option when you start JBoss Enterprise Web Platform (or DefaultPartition if not specified).
Do not attempt to simplify things by placing a
jndi.properties file in your deployment or by editing the Enterprise Web Platform's conf/jndi.properties file. Doing either will almost certainly break things for your application and quite possibly across the server. If you want to externalize your client configuration, one approach is to deploy a properties file not named jndi.properties, and then programatically create a Properties object that loads that file's contents.
If your HA-JNDI client is a servlet, the least intrusive way to configure the lookup of resources is to bind the resources to the environment naming context of the bean or webapp performing the lookup. The binding can then be configured to use HA-JNDI instead of a local mapping.
Why do this programmatically and not just put this in a jndi.properties file?
The JBoss Enterprise Web Platform's internal naming environment is controlled by the
conf/jndi.properties file, which should not be edited.
No other
jndi.properties file should be deployed inside the Enterprise Web Platform. If another jndi.properties file is deployed, it may be found on the classpath when it is not intended for use and disrupt the internal operation of the server.
Go into the the jmx-console and execute the
list operation on the jboss:service=JNDIView mbean. Towards the bottom of the results, the contents of the "HA-JNDI Namespace" are listed. Typically this will be empty; if any of your own deployments are shown there and you didn't explicitly bind them there, there's probably an improper jndi.properties file on the classpath.