Moocha Web Based Moo/Mud

Welcome to the homepage of Moocha a JSP/Servlet based moo/mud server. This project will utilize beanshell for live scripting capabilities, and Derby for persistence.

I corrected the link to the Apache Derby page, and figured out how to access this thing again. Expect more updates in a few weeks.

I've updated the javadoc for the base classes that have been defined so far. I've just been filling in the comments right now, to make the documentation a little easier to follow. More to come!

I've completed the Derby Network Server controller and it works great.  The next item is the web application controller this will handle all the routing of servlets, and displaying of views. I've got a partially formed concept so far, and have been experimenting with code. What I figure, is rather than a welcome page I will have the MainController servlet mapped to the root context. If the controller receives a request with no parameters, then it will redirect to the appropriate context. This could be a procedure like check for an active session, and request parameters if there is no session active, and there are no commands being requested, dispatch the welcome screen. The controller will receive a command that will be mapped via a table in the database. This way we can reconfigure the server on the fly, instead of having to worry about restarting the servlet container, because we made a change to an xml file that only get's read at container startup. So it will give us the flexibility of a framework like struts without it's inheirant inflexibilities. Who knows the framework could become it's own spinoff project. More to come as details emerge. Hopefully we'll have a preliminary code release before too long.

So I've decided to implement my own framework I've already designed the controller for the database. Now all that needs to be designed is the application controller for the servlets, and the views. More details about those later on today.

I've decided to change the project from a MySQL database based project to a Derby based project. The reason for this switch is that I can embed the control of the database server right in the web-app with Derby, and it's compatible with DB2. Also Derby is a java application which means all that is needed is a jar file to include it in the webapp.

For more information on Derby check out the apache derby webpage.

To implement Derby all I that needs to be included are the following jars:

1. derby.jar
2. derbynet.jar
3. derbytools.jar

For the jdbc driver just the universal DB2 drivers from IBM.

1. db2jcc.jar
2. db2jcc_license_c.jar

Then to start up the server it's simple:

import java.net.InetAddress;
import org.apache.derby.drda.NetworkServerControl;

public class...
...
public synchronized startServer()
{

	NetworkServerControl control = null;

	try

	{

		control = new NetworkServerControl(InetAddress.getByName("localhost"),1527);

		control.start(null);

	}

It's a simple as that. ;-) What I did in the project is I made a DBController object, and an agent Servlet that's started at the servlet containers startup. Of course it's not really a servlet. It's a regular class masquerading as a servlet so we can start it up at container bootup.

There's more coming...stay tuned for details of the framework. I've decided to build a custom framework. Mainly because I'm masochistic and enjoy a challenge ;-)

Added a link to the javadoc so far, on the description page.

More to come.

This site is still under construction, and this page at the moment is only a place holder.

Come back soon for updates.