TorqueBox: The beauty of Ruby with the power of JBoss. Presented at Devnexus 2011.

Bob McWhirter
Presented at DevNexus
22 March 2011
Creative Commons BY-SA 3.0

Bob McWhirter

• Project lead of TorqueBox
• JBoss Fellow
• Founder of The Codehaus
• Founder of Drools
• Been with Red Hat ~4 years

What is TorqueBox?

The mating of JRuby to
JBoss AS.

Goals
• Support Ruby web frameworks
• Rails
• Sinatra
• Rack
• Go beyond the web
• Messaging
• Jobs
• Services

But...

...Java already supports
messaging, jobs and
services.

Why Ruby?

• No compilation
• Low ceremony
• Highly expressive
• Lots of shiny frameworks
• Few specifications (more fun!)
• Meta

Expressive
anything.rb

teams.
collect(&:members).
flatten.uniq.each &:promote!

Uhh...
com/foo/Anything.java

Set<Person> people = new HashSet<Person>();;

for ( Team each : teams ) {
people.addAll( each.getMembers() );;
}

for ( Person each : people ) {
each.promote();;
}

Why JRuby

• Very fast runtime
• Real threads
• Java libraries
• Java tools
• Healthy community

Easy Install. Even on Windows

$ wget http://torquebox.org/torquebox-dev.zip
$ unzip torquebox-dev.zip

$ export TORQUEBOX_HOME=$PWD/torquebox-1*
$ export JBOSS_HOME=$TORQUEBOX_HOME/jboss
$ export JRUBY_HOME=$TORQUEBOX_HOME/jruby

$ export PATH=$JRUBY_HOME/bin:$PATH

Easy Install. Even on Windows

$ wget http://torquebox.org/torquebox-dev.zip
$ unzip torquebox-dev.zip Make sure the jruby
found in your path is in
$JRUBY_HOME/bin.
$ export TORQUEBOX_HOME=$PWD/torquebox-1*
$ export JBOSS_HOME=$TORQUEBOX_HOME/jboss
$ export JRUBY_HOME=$TORQUEBOX_HOME/jruby

$ export PATH=$JRUBY_HOME/bin:$PATH

The Details

Builds upon and requires
JBoss AS 6.x.

Tight integration with the
JBoss stack.

The Competition

Warbler, Trinidad, Unicorn,
Thin, Passenger...

...all address only the web
question.

Web

Run Ruby web-apps within
the context of the Servlet
container.

Without compilation.

A rails application
RAILS_ROOT/ Filename
app/
models/
person.rb
views/
person/
index.html.haml
show.html.haml
controllers/
persons_controller.rb
lib/
my-java-components.jar
config/
database.yml
torquebox.yml

Deploy!
Filename

$ rake torquebox:deploy

But continue editing
Deployment does not create
archives (by default).

Continue live-editing of running
app:

models,views, controllers...

Non-surprising.
Almost boring.

Web (Java Integration)
Filename

class SomeController

def index
session[:password] = 'sw0rdfish'
end

end

Web (Java Integration)
Filename

public class SomeServlet
{
public void doGet(HttpServletRequest req,
HttpServletResponse resp)
{
request.getSession().getValue("password");;
}
}

Clustering

Ruby applications participate
fully in AS clustering.

Can use JBoss mod_cluster.

mod_cluster
A reverse proxy implemented as
an Apache module with JBoss
awareness.

Constantly gathers load statistics
and deployment availability for
intelligent request distribution.

mod_cluster

• Dynamic configuration
• Server-side load factor calculation
• Fine-grained web app lifecycle
• AJP (Apache JServ Protocol) is
optional. HTTP[S] is also supported.

Jobs
app/jobs/newsletter_sender.rb

class NewsletterSender

def run()
subscriptions = Subscription.find(:all)
subscriptions.each do |e|
send_newsletter( e )
end
end

end

Jobs
config/torquebox.yml
jobs:
monthly_newsletter:
description: first of month
job: NewsletterSender
cron: ‘0 0 0 1 * ?’

sandbox:
job: Sandbox
cron: ‘*/5 * * * * ?’

Messaging, Part 1
(async tasks)

Tasks
app/tasks/email_task.rb
class EmailTask < TorqueBox::Messaging::Task

def welcome(payload)
person = payload[:person]
person ||= Person.find_by_id(payload[:id])
if person
# send the email
person.welcomed = true
person.save!
end
end

end

Tasks

EmailTask.async(:welcome, payload )

Tasks

Call them from your
controllers, models, and
observers, or even other
tasks. Even in non-Rails
apps!

Messaging, Part 2
(backgroundable)

Regular Class
Filename
class Something

def foo()
end

def bar()
end

end

Blocking invocations
Filename

something = Something.new

something.foo

something.bar

Backgroundable
Filename
class Something

include TorqueBox::Messaging::Backgroundable

def foo()
end

def bar()
end

end

Non-blocking invocations
Filename


something.background.foo

something.background.bar

Choices
Filename
class Something

include TorqueBox::Messaging::Backgroundable
always_background :foo

def foo()
end

def bar()
end

end

Just do it right.
Filename


something.foo

Messaging, Part 3
(low-level)

Destinations

queues:
/queues/questions:
/queues/answers:
durable: false
topics:
/topics/new_accounts
/topics/notifications

Processors

messaging:
/topics/print: PrintHandler
/queues/popular:
- PopularHandler
- AdultObserver:
filter: "age >= 18"
concurrency: 5
/queues/students:
PrintHandler:
config:
color: true

Processors
app/models/print_handler.rb

include TorqueBox::Messaging

class PrintHandler < MessageProcessor
def initialize(opts)
@color = opts['color']
end
def on_message(body)
puts "Processing #{body} of #{message}"
end
end

Queues
example

include TorqueBox
req = Messaging::Queue.new '/queues/questions'
res = Messaging::Queue.new '/queues/answers'

Thread.new do
req.publish "What time is it?"
puts res.receive( :timeout => 1000 )
end

puts req.receive
res.publish Time.now

Queues
“on the fly”

include TorqueBox

queue = Messaging::Queue.new '/queues/foo'
queue.create
...
queue.destroy

Topics

• behavior is different, but interface is
the same.
• all subscribers of a topic see each
message, but only one subscriber
will see any message from a queue
• use TorqueBox::Messaging::Topic

Services
run along, lil’ daemon

Services

Long-running, non-web
“daemons” that share the
runtime environment and
deployment lifecycle of your
app.

Services

• Represented as a class with
optional initialize(Hash),
start() and stop() methods,
which should each return quickly.
• Typically will start a long-running
loop in a thread and respond to
external events.

Services

services:
IrcBot:
server: freenode.net
channel: #torquebox
publish: /topics/irc

MyMudServer:

SomeOtherService:

Services
app/{models,etc}/my_service.rb

class MyService
def initialize opts={}
name = opts[:publish]
@queue = Messaging::Queue.new(name)
end
def start
Thread.new { run }
end
def stop
@done = true
end
end

Services
app/{models,etc}/my_service.rb

class MyService
def run
until @done
@queue.publish(Time.now)
sleep(1)
end
end
end

Caching NoSQL

Integration with JBoss
Infinispan, a distributed/
replicated object store.

Transparent Infinispan

Easily used for all of the
implicit caching within Rails.

Replace in-memory, or
memcached caches.

Opaque Infinispan
Filename

include ActiveSupport::Cache

myCache = TorqueBoxStore.new(:name => 'MyCache',
:mode => :replicated,
:sync => true)

I N J E C T I O N
(we must go deeper)

Injection?

Letting the container figure
out how to help you wire up
complex component models.

aka

Inversion of Control

Guice, PicoContainer, JBoss Microcontainer

Java CDI
package com.mycorp;; Filename

@ApplicationScoped
class Something {
@Inject
private Else elsewise;;
}

@ApplicationScoped
class Else {

}

CDI Injection

class MyService
@thing = cdi(com.mycorp.Something)
end
end

But there's more than
just CDI you can inject.
There's also heroin,
queues, topics and
other things.

But not really heroin.
(Drugs are bad, m'kay?)

Destination Injection

class MyService
@inbound = topic( "/topics/questions" )
@outbound = queue( "/queues/answers" )
end
end

JNDI Injection

class MyService
@factory = naming("java:comp/env/jdbc/myDS")
end
end

JBossMC Injection

class MyService
@heroin = mc( "SomeMCBean" )
end
end

Why MC Beans?
All internal plumbing of
JBoss AS is stitched
together using MC.

Grab the WebServer, the
CacheManager, whatevs.

BackStage

Dashboard to inspect and
control Ruby components.

And a RESTful API.

StompBox

Easy Heroku-esque
git-based deployments.

BENchmarks
Real-world Rail application:
Redmine
Comparisons:
TorqueBox, Trinidad, Passenger,
Unicorn, Glassfish, Thin
Runtimes:
JRuby, MRI, RubyEE

Roadmap
May - 1.0.0.Final
Then...
AS7
Authentication
Transactions
Drools/jBPM/etc
Mobicents

Resources

• http://torquebox.org/
• http://github.com/torquebox
• #torquebox on FreeNode
• @torquebox

Thanks, and don't
forget to pick up
some stickers.

TorqueBox: The beauty of Ruby with the power of JBoss. Presented at Devnexus 2011.

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