Creating a Liberty application client manually

You can create a Liberty application client from the command line.

About this task

You enable the Java™ EE Application Client 7.0 or Java EE Application Client 8.0 feature in the client.xml file only.

Note: The following steps include directions for how to create a Liberty application client manually by using the javaeeClient-7.0 feature. These directions also apply to configurations that use the javaeeClient-8.0 feature.

Procedure

Open a command line, then change directory to the wlp/bin directory.
In the following examples, path_to_liberty specifies the location where you installed Liberty on your operating system.

Example on Windows systems: C:\Users\mo> cd path_to_liberty\wlp\bin

Example on Linux®: mo@machine01:~> cd path_to_liberty/wlp/bin
Run the following command to create a client, where client_name is the name that you want to give your client. If you do not specify a client name, defaultClient is used.

Example on Windows systems: C:\wlp\bin> client create client_name

Example on Linux: mo@machine01:~> client create client_name
```
client create client_name
```
If the client is created successfully, you receive the following message:
```
Client client_name created.
```
You can find the client.xml file in the wlp/usr/clients/client_name directory. The file contains the javaeeClient-7.0 feature.

Attention: If a default client exists, you get an error. If a default client does not exist, defaultClient is created.
Run your client application by preparing an application (.ear) file with a client module (.jar) in it.
Specify a main class in the MANIFEST.MF of the client module, for example:
```
Manifest-Version: 1.0 
Main-Class: com.ibm.ws.addressbook.ContactServiceClient_XMLInject 
```
Place the EAR file under the wlp/usr/clients/client_name/apps directory.

Update the client.xml file to configure your application, for example:

<client>
	<featureManager>
		<feature>javaeeClient-7.0</feature>
	<featureManager>
	<application id="CLIENT_APP" name="CLIENT_APP" type="ear" location="clientApp.ear"/>
</client>

If the specified client already exists, no client is created and you receive an exception message:

CWWKE0005E: The runtime environment could not be launched.
CWWKE0904E: It was not possible to create the client called client_name because 
the client directory C:\wlp\usr\clients\client_name already exists.

What to do next

You can enable security (SSL, CSIv2, JAAS) for your application client by adding the appSecurityClient-1.0 feature to your client.xml file:

<featureManager>
	<feature>javaeeClient-7.0</feature>
	<feature>appSecurityClient-1.0</feature>
</featureManager>

See information about configuring security on the application client.