IIS connector issue?

[Jamie Robert Thompson <ja...@gmail.com>]

Hi, I'm currently stuck at the last hurdle of a task which involves
integrating JavaHelp into an ASP.net application. I know little about Java,
even less about JSP, but my boss likes server-side JavaHelp *sigh*. I chose
Tomcat 6.0.18 and the connector (1.2.26) as my path to integrating it with
our application. Now, I've set everything up on my XP workstation (IIS5) and
it all works fine, but when I test it on the deployment servers (Win2K3
Server with IIS6), I have a strange problem. Namely, if I go directly to the
Tomcat URL first i.e. "http://localhost:8080/test/Help/help.jsp", it works,
and continues to work if I then go to IIS via "
http://localhost/test/Help/help.jsp". If I go to IIS first however, and then
Tomcat, then both fail with nulls being returned from the help objects.
Something is causing the object to be created differently.....

Now, the reason I get the same response thereafter is probably because the
help objects are being persisted in the session (or so I take it from the
Java bean stuff in the JSP), but I don't know why I get different outcomes
depending on the initial access route.

I'd like to be able to debug this, but as I say, I've not experience with
Java (and no-one else here does), and accordingly, I haven't the foggiest
how to set up a debugger to dig into the matter. Settings-wise, everything
is set to the defaults, and my connector settings are as given in the
associated tutorial (except I changed the uri worker map to only handle jsp
files). Only bit of magic is that I've added a context node to the localhost
in server.xml to match up with the virtual directories used in our IIS
setup.

Can anyone think of things I can try to get this working?

- Jamie

Re: IIS connector issue?

[Jamie Robert Thompson <ja...@gmail.com>]

2008/9/1 Jamie Robert Thompson <ja...@gmail.com>

> Hi, I'm currently stuck at the last hurdle of a task which involves
> integrating JavaHelp into an ASP.net application. I know little about Java,
> even less about JSP, but my boss likes server-side JavaHelp *sigh*. I chose
> Tomcat 6.0.18 and the connector (1.2.26) as my path to integrating it with
> our application. Now, I've set everything up on my XP workstation (IIS5) and
> it all works fine, but when I test it on the deployment servers (Win2K3
> Server with IIS6), I have a strange problem. Namely, if I go directly to the
> Tomcat URL first i.e. "http://localhost:8080/test/Help/help.jsp", it
> works, and continues to work if I then go to IIS via "
> http://localhost/test/Help/help.jsp". If I go to IIS first however, and
> then Tomcat, then both fail with nulls being returned from the help objects.
> Something is causing the object to be created differently.....
>
> Now, the reason I get the same response thereafter is probably because the
> help objects are being persisted in the session (or so I take it from the
> Java bean stuff in the JSP), but I don't know why I get different outcomes
> depending on the initial access route.
>
> I'd like to be able to debug this, but as I say, I've not experience with
> Java (and no-one else here does), and accordingly, I haven't the foggiest
> how to set up a debugger to dig into the matter. Settings-wise, everything
> is set to the defaults, and my connector settings are as given in the
> associated tutorial (except I changed the uri worker map to only handle jsp
> files). Only bit of magic is that I've added a context node to the localhost
> in server.xml to match up with the virtual directories used in our IIS
> setup.
>
> Can anyone think of things I can try to get this working?
>
> - Jamie
>

Replying to my own message as I hate it when people solve their problems and
leaves threads dangling without the helpful conclusion.

Basically, the problem was that IIS 6 didn't have a MIME type assigned to
the map file (*.jhm) and thus JavaHelp silently failed when it was unable to
construct that part of the HelpSet object. At least when the helpset
definition (*.hs) didn't have a MIME type the failure was reported. Anyway,
hopefully that will help someone at some point. Drove me nuts working out
what was going wrong and I now know far more Java than I was hoping to for
this task...

- Jamie