Developing with JAX-RS 2.0 for WebLogic Server 12.1.3

In an earlier post on the topic of Using JAX-RS 2.0 with WebLogic Server 12.1.3, I described that we've utilized the shared-library model to distribute and enable it.

This approach exposes the JAX-RS 2.0 API and enlists the Jersey 2.x implementation on the target server, allowing applications to make use of it as when they are deployed through a library reference in a weblogic deployment descriptor.

The one resulting consideration here from a development perspective is that since this API is not part of the javaee-api-6.jar nor is it a default API of the server, it's not available in the usual development API libraries that WebLogic provides.

For instance the $ORACLE_HOME/wlserver/server/lib/api.jar doesn't contain a reference to the JAX-RS 2.0 API, nor do the set of maven artifacts we produce and push to a repository via the oracle-maven-sync plugin contain the javax.ws.rs-api-2.0.jar library.

To develop an application using JAX-RS 2.0 to deploy to WebLogic Server 12.1.3, the javax.ws.rs-api-2.0.jar needs to be sourced and added to the development classpath.

Using maven, this is very simple to do by adding an additional dependency for the javax.ws.rs:javax.ws.rs-api:2.0 artifact that is hosted in public maven repositories:

    <dependency>
        <groupid>javax.ws.rs</groupid>
        <artifactid>javax.ws.rs-api</artifactid>
        <version>2.0</version>
        <scope>provided</scope>
    </dependency>

Note here that the scope is set to provided since the library will be realized at runtime through jax-rs-2.0.war shared-library that it deployed to the target server and referenced by the application. It doesn't need to be packaged with the application to deploy to WebLogic Server 12.1.3.

For other build systems using automated dependency management such as Gradle or Ant/Ivy, the same sort of approach can be used.

For Ant based build systems, the usual approach of obtaining the necessary API libraries and adding them to the development CLASSPATH will work. Be mindful that there is no need to bundle the jax.ws.rs-ap-2.0.jar in the application itself as it will be available from the server when correctly deployed and referenced in the weblogic deployment descriptor.