NcML AIS: Build a BES Handler

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Back: AIS Using NcML

A UML Class diagram for a Simple BES Handler
The UML class diagram with far more detail regarding classes specific to the DAP

There are several ways to build a shell BES handler and then add specific functionality to it. One way is to use the besCreadeModule script that is included in the BES source code. A second way is to copy and modify the csv handler software that's also included in the BES source code. In each case it's important to know that the BES is an object-oriented framework and as such, you will be specializing classes that the framework defines and then adding new classes and/or functions that are specific to your handler. With that in mind a static class diagram can help show how the BES's classes are related to each other and to the software you must write. Shown to the left is a UML class diagram that includes the most important of the BES classes when writing a new data handler.

Also, be sure to look over THE BES documentation files included on this design's main page and on in the Hyrax documentation. Especially useful is the BES Handler tutorial that covers building the Hello, World and CSV handlers. It's so useful I'll repeat it here: Extending the OLFS: Writing Custom Dispatch Handlers.

Explanation of the Classes in the Diagram

Basic operation of the BES Framework

The BES is a daemon that waits for connections and, when one is detected, reads the commands and executes the appropriate methods in either the BES framework or one of the handlers that are loaded into the BES during initialization. In a very general sense, the BES follows this workflow:

  • Parse the command associate with the current request
  • Decide which handler should be used to satisfy the request
  • Use the handler to build a response
  • Return the response

It's possible to define new commands and new ways of transmitting data for various protocols, but those uses of the BES are beyond what a simple data handler that works with Hyrax needs. A data handler to be used with Hyrax that only needs to support the basic BES command (e.g., show version), the DAP commands and return responses using HTTP, does not need to specialize the command set, the response types or the transmitter classes.

Classes that are Provided

In the diagram, all of the classes whose names start with BES are part of the BES framework. You don't have to write anything to use them and for several, you don't even have to directly use them at all and instead just need to know they exist.

For all of the classes listed below, I'll mention which two require specialization here and in a following section, where the specialization will be described in detail. Note that all of the BES classes have BESObj as a parent, so all can passed using a pointer to a BESObj.

BESCommandInterface
Used to pass information from a method you've written in a child of BESRequestHandler to a response handler
BESResponseHandler
This class builds a BESResponseObject and then transmits it.
BESDapResponseObject and the various children
These holds specific types of responses for the DAP
BESTransmitter
Used by BESResponseHandler to transmit a ResponseObject. For DAP, the BESBasicHttpTransmitter class is actually used.
BESCatalog
A catalog is a way of getting listings (catalogs) of things
BESCatalogDirecotry
A catalog for a disk directory. This is used to build the Hyrax server's directory pages.
BESCatalogList
This class is used to for a list that the BES searches when it needs to find a specific catalog that's mentioned in a command. It's one of the singleton objects discussed later
BESContainerStorageCatalog
Not really sure...
BESContainerStorageList
A list of ...

Classes that must be Specialized

There are two classes that must be specialized to build a new DAP data handler:

BESAbstratModule
This class defined the interface for teh BES handler (aka Module). It contains two key methods: initialize() and terminate()
BESRequestHandler
This class is (typically) specialized to include five new methods for a DAP data handler, one for each of the DAP response objects (DAS, DDS, DataDDS, version, and help). The constructor for the specialization (again, typically) uses BESRequestHandler
:add_handler(...) to bind each of the five methods to a string so that the BES can figure out which of the methods should be called to handle a request for one of the five DAP responses

BES Framework Singleton Objects

The BES uses singleton objects to store lists of things that will be searched to sort out how a given request should be handled. In some ways these lists are like symbol tables in a compiler or interpreter. Once an object is defined and bound to a name it can be added to the correct list and later found and used as commands are parsed and executed. The singleton classes shown in the UML diagram are:

BESRequestHandlerList
A list of known request handlers
BESCatalogList
A list of the known catalog objects
BESContainerStorageList
A list of the known container objects

The specialization of BESAbstractModule populates these lists, first by making a specialized instance of BESRequestHandler and then adding that to the request handler list. once that's done, the container storage and catalog lists are used to store their respective object types. These three activities are carried out by the module's initialize() method. By adding the request handler object to the global (singleton) request handler list, a handler's code to process certain requests is mad available to the BES's command processing software. Similarly, any containers or catalog objects defined by a handler are added to the corresponding global lists and can thus be accessed by the command processing software.

Build a null Handler

Use the besCreatModule script to build a simple DAP module with now new commands or responses.

  1. Create a directory, something like ncml_module
  2. from the command line run besCreateModule
  3. Answer the questions as follows:
    1. ncml
      • This will be the name of the module
    2. NCML
      • This is the prefix to all of the classes that get created. For example, NCMLModule
    3. <enter>
      • You are not handling any other responses, just the dap2 responses
    4. <enter>
      • You are not adding any additional commands to your module

Running besCreateModule will create all the files that you will need for the NCML module. This includes:

  • NCMLModule - this class implements the initialize and terminate methods for you, registers the request handler for this module, and registers a debug context for the module called "ncml". With this debug context you can add debug statements to your code as follows:
BESDEBUG( "ncml", "some debug info " << somevar << endl )

The second part of the function would be something that would be sent to a C++ ostream object like cerr or a fstream.

A terminate method is also created and removes the request handler. Check out the code. This is where specialized extensions would be added to the BES Framework.

  • NCMLRequestHandler - this class is where the NCML file will be parsed, containers retrieved, etc... Please refer back to the main documentation of AIS for detailed design.

In addition to the classes being build, a configure.ac, Makefile.am, sample COPYING, COPYRIGHT, NEWS and README files are created. A sample .spec file is also created for building the rpm for this module. The script bes-ncml-data.sh is created, which is used to add this module to the BES configuration file.

Once all of the files are created, configure is run and the code is built. It should all build properly.