Liferay portlet non-liferay JNDI data source null

Question

For a Liferay 6.2 custom portlet accessing a non liferay Oracle database we are running into an issue where the data source returned is null.

We have configured the tomcat/conf/context.xml

<!-- Adding custom New non liferay datasource -->
<Resource name="jdbc/NewPool" 
auth="Container"               
type="javax.sql.DataSource" 
driverClassName="oracle.jdbc.OracleDriver" 
url="jdbc:oracle:thin:@(DESCRIPTION = 
(ADDRESS = (PROTOCOL = TCP)(HOST = dbservernameorip)(PORT = 9999))
(CONNECT_DATA = (SERVER = DEDICATED) 
(SERVICE_NAME = dbSIDorservicename)))"
username="user" 
password="pwd" 
maxActive="35"
maxIdle="10"
maxWait="20000"
removeAbandoned="true"
logAbandoned="true"
minEvictableIdleTimeMillis="3600000"
timeBetweenEvictionRunsMillis="1800000"
testOnBorrow="true"
testOnReturn="false"
/>

The portlet web.xml contains:

<resource-ref>
    <description>Oracle Datasource example</description>
    <res-ref-name>jdbc/NewPool</res-ref-name>
    <res-type>javax.sql.DataSource</res-type>
    <res-auth>Container</res-auth>
</resource-ref>

The code for lookup is:

String JNDI = "jdbc/NewPool"
_log.debug("JNDI Name  is: " + JNDI);
_log.debug("dataSource in dbConnect is :" + dataSource);
Context context = new InitialContext();
Context envContext  = (Context)context.lookup("java:/comp/env");
_log.debug("envContext in dbConnect is :" + envContext);
try {
  DataSource ds = (DataSource)envContext.lookup(JNDI);

Liferay can use the context.xml resource with a similar data source for the Liferay Oracle database successfully.

Is some other wiring needed for Liferay portlet to establish a connection to another database?

The same portlet code works on weblogic without the web.xml change. Similar JNDI data source lookup code and configuration works on vanilla tomcat (without liferay) and a plain war (non liferay portlet) file.

Update:

I have checked db connections on the server with netstat -an|grep dbport. this does not show an established connection.

I have also tried setting the portal.security.manager.strategy=none in portal-ext.properties. This did not work either.

Any insight is much appreciated as we are kind of stuck here.

Thanks!

Did you try to declare your JNDI resource not in Tomcat itself, but in the webapp? I remember I ran into a similar issue, when I tried to install Aperte workflow portlet. — Gevatterjan, Jun 11 '15 at 17:18
No I have not yet tried this but its worth a shot. We also found similar Liferay issues and have also reported it to Liferay support. They have been able to reproduce it but no resolution yet. — VC1, Jun 11 '15 at 18:22

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Jun 10 '15 at 23:13

We also had some problems using the resource and pools. Since we have very few requests to handle and performance were not a concern for our scenario we used a JDBC connection directly without a pool and it's working fine (we are connecting to a MS Sql server)

Connection conn = null;
Statement stmt = null;
ResultSet rs = null;
String url = "jdbc:jtds:sqlserver://host/dbname";
String driver = "net.sourceforge.jtds.jdbc.Driver";
String db_userName = PropsUtil.get("jdbc.default.username");
String db_password = PropsUtil.get("jdbc.default.password");

try {
    Class.forName(driver);
    conn = DriverManager.getConnection(url, db_userName, db_password);

    String sql = "SELECT * FROM Users";
    stmt = conn.createStatement();
    rs = stmt.executeQuery(sql);
    while(rs.next()){
        // DO WHAT YOU WANT
        return true;
    }
    rs.close();
}catch(SQLException se){
    //Handle errors for JDBC
    se.printStackTrace();
}catch(Exception e){
    //Handle errors for Class.forName
    e.printStackTrace();
}finally{
    //finally block used to close resources
    try{
        if(stmt!=null)
            conn.close();
    }catch(SQLException se){
    }// do nothing
    try{
        if(conn!=null)
            conn.close();
    }catch(SQLException se){
        se.printStackTrace();
    }//end finally try
}//end try

And it's working fine. Username and password are configured in portal-ext.properties (We are using the same account used for liferay own db)

Hope this helps

Unfortunately, its not an option for us to do a direct JDBC Connection long term because of the expected load and performance concerns. We also need to load balance the connection pool to the 2 database cluster nodes. — VC1, Jun 11 '15 at 18:25

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Jun 11 '15 at 17:29

I just stumbled over this thread in the Liferay Forum which basically says. oput this in your tomcat/conf/server.xml

<GlobalNamingResources>
<!-- Editable user database that can also be used by
     UserDatabaseRealm to authenticate users
-->
<Resource auth="Container" description="User database that can be updated and saved" factory="org.apache.catalina.users.MemoryUserDatabaseFactory" name="UserDatabase" pathname="conf/tomcat-users.xml" type="org.apache.catalina.UserDatabase"/>

<Resource name="jdbc/XXX" auth="Container" type="javax.sql.DataSource"
          maxActive="20" maxIdle="10" maxWait="5000"
          removeAbandoned="true" removeAbandonedTimeout="250" validationQuery="SELECT 1"
          username="user2" password="pwd2"
          driverClassName="com.mysql.jdbc.Driver"
          url="jdbc:mysql://localhost/myOtherDb"/>

and this in your context.xml:

<ResourceLink name="jdbc/XXX" global="jdbc/XXX" type="javax.sql.DataSource">

It should do the trick. If you really asking WHY Liferay can find the jndi resource, but not your portlet: I have no clue...

score 1 · Answer 3 · answered Jun 15 '15 at 17:51

I believe we found our issue. It seems like it was a typo.

All references to dataSource need to be changed to ds. There was a code changed. It turned out the the variable name was not changed to ds in code after the ds variable was declared during troubleshooting the issue.

String JNDI = "jdbc/NewPool"
_log.debug("JNDI Name  is: " + JNDI);
_log.debug("dataSource in dbConnect is :" + ds);
Context context = new InitialContext();
Context envContext  = (Context)context.lookup("java:/comp/env");
_log.debug("envContext in dbConnect is :" + envContext);
try {
  DataSource ds = (DataSource)envContext.lookup(JNDI);
_log.debug("dataSource in dbConnect is :" + ds)

We need to test this out. I will post the results after the final test.

Liferay portlet non-liferay JNDI data source null

3 Answers3