How do I lookup a JNDI Datasource from outside a web container?

Question

I have the following environment set up:

• Java 1.5
• Sun Application Server 8.2
• Oracle 10 XE
• Struts 2
• Hibernate

Answer 1

Try Simple-JNDI. It gives you an in-memory implementation of a JNDI Service and allows you to populate the JNDI environment with objects defined in property files. There is also support for loading datasources or connection pools configured in a file.

To get a connection pool you have to create a file like this:

type=javax.sql.DataSource
driver=com.sybase.jdbc3.jdbc.SybDriver
pool=myDataSource
url=jdbc:sybase:Tds:servername:5000
user=user
password=password

In your application you can access the pool via

Context ctx = new InitialContext();
DataSource ds = (DataSource) ctx.lookup("path/to/your/connectionPool");

I haved used Simple-JNDI for this purpose for years now. But it is not under active development anymore. Because I found some issues concerning shared contexts (especially using datasources), I decided to branch the original project and to add some new features. Now there is a 0.13.0. You can find more about it at https://github.com/h-thurow/Simple-JNDI.