Before you start

Apache Geronimo is one of the newest, up-and-coming Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition (J2EE) platforms for building enterprise applications. One of the first things you might want to do with Geronimo is enable it to send e-mail messages to people when they register with your application. Of course, having an application that can send e-mail is useful for many things -- like updating a Web site user about what's new on your site and validating users to make sure the e-mail addresses they gave you are correct -- so this tutorial focuses on acquiring that functionality.

About this tutorial

This tutorial shows you how to build a new-user registration application, complete with a Velocity template-driven e-mail-sending function, using the Geronimo application server as a host system. The tutorial begins with the basics by describing how to build Geronimo from source (which is necessary to set up the build environment correctly), how to install the server, and how to install the Geronimo Maven plug-in. Eclipse is used for this development, and details are provided on how to integrate Maven with Eclipse for simplified building. Learn first-hand how to start a Maven build system that produces output that can be immediately and automatically deployed on a Geronimo server. See how XDoclet can be used with Maven to perform a lot of the code generation you need to simplify the application-development process. And, of course, learn how to configure your application to be able to send e-mail to people. This tutorial focuses on integrating the Sun Microsystems JavaMail reference implementation with Geronimo, which is necessary, in the short term, while Geronimo's JavaMail implementation is being completed.

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Prerequisites

To get the most from this tutorial, you should have experience using Eclipse and Maven and have experience writing J2EE software with an emphasis on Web applications with Struts.

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System requirements

You need the following software to complete this tutorial:

• At least the M5 release of the Geronimo application server to build Geronimo from source. Download the server from Apache, and follow the instructions at the Geronimo wiki.
• A CVS client if you're running Microsoft® Windows®. You can download a good CVS binary. Building Geronimo is discussed briefly in the Build Geronimo section of this tutorial. Keep in mind that if you build Geronimo from the source code of a release version, such as M5, some of the following instructions need to have the version name SNAPSHOT replaced with your version number.
• Maven 1.0.2 from Apache.
• Eclipse 3.1 from Eclipse.org.
• Mevenide Eclipse Plugin 0.4.0, an exceptional addition to the Eclipse IDE that allows you to run Maven from inside Eclipse. Download Mevenide, and get instructions and a description of Mevenide in the Get Eclipse ready section of this tutorial.
• Subversion 1.2.3 version control system command-line client binaries, which are required by the Geronimo build procedure.
• JavaMail 1.3.3.
• JavaBeans Activation Framework 1.0.2 (JAF).
• Velocity 1.4.

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Table of contents

• Before you start
• Create a build platform
• Use the Sun JavaMail reference implementation with Geronimo
• Weave JavaMail into your Geronimo application
• Create a mail delivery service
• Add Velocity templates
• Create a new user registration system
• Summary
• Download
• Resources
• About the author

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