Page History

This page is intended to be the root of Cookbook, FAQ, Tips, Tricks, HowTo, etc.
You may find supplementary useful informations at Old OFBiz wiki and Opentaps's OFBiz cookbooks part but note that this information may be outdated...

Tables of content

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Accounting

• MISC Accounting Links
• Billing Account
• If you get accounting related issues and are not interested in posting accounting transactions, see here
• Show prices with VAT included in including VAT in eCommerce (retail, B2C)
• How are managed transactions in different currencies from the one of GL ?
• glAccountClass vs glAccountType : follow the links
• A thread about glAccountType
• Sage payment integration

Apache HTTPD (Apache Web server)

• How to use mod_proxy_ajp

• Apache ProxyPassReverse Directive advices
• Beware of HTTP ETag
• Sticky session load balancing with Apache and mod_balancer on Ubuntu Linux
• Install OFBiz with MariaDB, Apache2 Proxy and SSL

Ajax - Javascript - Json

• Integrate OFBiz with Yui-Ext

• An easy way to get a data structure from server to Javascript in client browser
• You can also take Take a look at DWR. I found this really easy to integrate with OFBiz. No complicated Javascript/JSON. Also, its Apache V2 licensed.
• Disabling right click: document.oncontextmenu=new Function("return false")
• Restrict your user to go back: window.history.forward(0)

Applications server

• How to run inside a non embedded application server
• How to make redirection inside an application server without using mod_rewrite
• How to run multiple ofbiz instances on one PC and technical production setup guide, see section URL and Port Settings

Asset Maintenance

• Asset Maintenance Setup

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• Setting Up CAS with OFBiz (PDF) (This document speaks about OFBiz release 5, this release will never exist but will certainly be 9.4 or hopefully at least 9.x (x<=12)...)existed but that should not be a problem)
• Same but dynamic Same but dynamic up to date help in trunk

Certificate

• Some details about SSL and X.509
• How to set SSL
• How to set up certificates for RMI
• How to configure authorize.net certificates
• Google Checkout Integration
• Here is a pretty good tutorial on getting your SSL certificate setup

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• Magnolia CMS Integration Guide (note though that the recommended way in OFBiz is still to use the content component...)

CSS

• OFBiz maincss.css HTML Element Collection Styles
• If you get this problem The horizontal menu in the right column is causing the HTML elements below it to drop down to the bottom of the screen

DataBase

• Derby

  • Change a field type in Derby

  • Switching from a Derby database to another
  • Browse a Derby database and more using SQuirrel

• Miscellaneous

  • OFBiz's Data File Tools Some tips from Jacopo

  • How to use EntityWhereString A tip from GrimTim
  • How to troubleshoot SQL errors A tip from Chris Lombardi
  •  How to measure SQL queries durations
  •  How to use OFBiz on read only database
    
  • Tips for View Entities A tip from SkipDever
  • How to connect to an External Database A tip from Adrian Crum
  • How to save customised data for import as demo data A tip from Raj Saini
  • Is it possible to delete products, categories, catalogs, etc., that are no longer needed?
  • About lastUpdatedStamp, lastUpdatedTxStamp (transaction), createdStamp, and createdTxStamp
  • Why primary keys are VAR_CHAR type in OFBiz ? A tip from David E. Jones

• MySQL

  • MySQL Issues

• Oracle

  • Some tips from Jacopo

• PostgreSQL

  • Tune your PostgreSQL installation a tip from Mike <mz4wheeler@gmail.com>

  • Setup OFBiz version 16.11.02 with PostgresSQL on Windows (from Do Nhu Vy)

• MariaDB

  • Install OFBiz with MariaDB, Apache2 Proxy and SSL

Development tips

• From Ant to Gradle

• How to run multiple ofbiz instances on one PC: see technical production setup guide, section URL and Port Settings

• What is the best practice to modify an existing component or create a new one?

• What is considered the best practice in creating a custom web application with OFBIZ?
• How to Extend an existing component in customized application?
• How to manage your source differences?
• Variables always available in screen context
• Tips & Tricks while working with Groovy
• Deprecating entities
• Add a WAR file
• Using locale XSD files instead of OFBiz remote (at http://ofbiz.apache.org/dtds) for validation and content completion
• UBPL Introduction
• Ofbiz as a development framework - release 9.04
• Ofbiz as a development framework - upcoming release 10.04
• Field Description tooltip help
• How to not have a string escaped for html : org.ofbiz.base.util.StringUtil.wrapString(uiLabelMap.yourString)
• Turning Firefox cache on/off (mostly for javascript testing)
• Validation in forms
• How to change the default messages
• Profiling Ofbiz with YourKit in Eclipse
• Note on creating a view-entity using entity or view-entity from other components
• When and when not restarting
• What is the difference between [+0] and [] in a widget screen file?

Eclipse IDE

• Running and Debugging OFBiz in Eclipse

• Eclipse Tips
• Browsing Derby Database in Eclipse
• Profiling Ofbiz with YourKit in Eclipse

Geographic Information Systems (GIS)

• Setting up PostGIS spatially-enabled PostgreSQL database

• Connecting OFBiz to PostGIS spatially-enabled database

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• Setup Intellij IDEA IDE for OFBiz Framework - Guide applicable for OFBiz 16.11.x and above, and for Linux-based or Mac working environment.

• Running and Debugging OFBiz in Intellij IDEA - Guide applicable for OFBiz 16.11.x and above.

Known issues

• Dash vs "en dash" in Gradle commands

Licences

• Apache Software Foundation

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• Contact List How To
• As Is Communication Event Process Flow
• Sending mails to contact lists
• Issue with createAcctgTransAndEntries service
• Steps to process a Configurable Product
• How to display all information of a single party
• Product Promotion Example
• What is the difference between Event and Service?
• SECAs and Error/Failure Management

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• VeriSign PayFlow Pro set up
• Use cvv codes in OFBiz
• Using gift-card in OFBiz

POS (the POS is deprecated and has been put in Attic)

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• Monitoring and Maintaining the database
• Cleaning the database from unimportant data
• Users with disabled accounts are still able to login
• How to make redirection inside an application server without using mod_rewrite
• Handling of External data
• OAGIS
• How to hide products in eCommerce ?
• Performance : Server Hardware for Ofbiz hosting
• Load balance across multiple instances of OFBiz
• Custom Components in OFBiz
• Take advantages of a custom component
• How to use the Setup application It's a bit long ot load has it must create dynamically the documentation. You may prefer to simply use the Help in OFBiz itself...
• how to set the Distributed Entity Cache Clear Mechanism

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• Getting and Running OFBiz in 5 steps (look, there are more Quick Start Guides under Jacopo's Wiki space)

RMI

• This RMI error on client side?, click to see the tip

  Code Block
  Caused by: java.util.MissingResourceException: Can't find bundle for base name cache, locale en_US

  
  

  
  

• How to use RMI without SSL
• How to test easily if RMI is working (using a simple client)
• Somethings you should know about RMI

Reporting tools

• Birt Flexible Reports
• Birt : how to integrate in OFBiz
• Jasper : how to integrate in OFBiz

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• Plugin search tools for Firefox using Nabble or Mark Mail
• To search in OFBiz spaces instead of all Apache Wiki (Apache cwiki is shared among Apache projects) use the OFBiz wiki search

Selenium

• Some Selenium tips

Soap / XML-RPC / REST

• How to use SOAP in OFBiz
  • A tutorial from Vincenzo Di Lorenzo, see Attachements uses Axis 1.4, deprecated since r892712 which introduced Axis2 in OFBiz
  • A tutorial from Opentaps documentation (version 0.9v5), see Attachements uses Axis 1.4, deprecated since r892712 which introduced Axis2 in OFBiz
  • Export Ofbiz Services that use complex type parameters via SOAP using AXIS2 deprecated since r892712 which introduced Axis2 in OFBiz
  • You could also be interested by these linksComplex typesdeprecated since r892712 which introduced Axis2 in OFBiz{
  • Export Ofbiz Services that use complex type parameters via SOAP using AXIS2 - since r892712+ - start here if you want to use SOAP
  • Using XMLRPC as an alternative to SOAP
  • Using XMLRPC with Flex client
  • Export service using REST

Another approach deprecated since r892712
For those who are familiar with Spring, you may be interested by Apache CXF instead of AXIS2. You will find a quick comparaison between AXIS2 and CXF here deprecated since r892712

SSL

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r89271

Themes

• Visual Themes Gallery
• Visual Themes - How to

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• To unsubscribe You certainly forgot how you subscribed, it's easy to forgot if you use a Nabble forum to subscribe.

Windows

• Patch on Windows

• Run OFBiz as a Windows service
• Export to Excel
• Import from Excel
• Windows 10

Workflow Engines

• What's the recommended workflow engine in OFBiz? Is it Shark?

XSL:FO (FOP)

• Is there any WYSIWYG editors for XSL:FO ?

• Fonts in FOP

ZK (work in progress)

A tuto (screencast) for a ZK view handler

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in the 443 VirtualHost. This will give acces to your svn repsoitory (supposed to be declared as <Location /svn>) only through https. If you need also access through https, do the same in the 80 VirtualHost.

Change a field type in Derby

Change a field type in Derby

1. Export the table to xml
2. Drop the table
3. Start OFBiz - table recreated with new structure
4. Import xml data from #1

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Then you are ready to create order and to specify the GC as a payment method.

A tip from Rashko Rejmer 

Ajax : Integrate OFBiz with Yui-Ext

http://www.nabble.com/Re%3A-integrate-OFBiz-with-Yui-Ext-p11131937.html

A tip from Jason Wu

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I let you find the tools with google :Eclipse/Subclipse, Tortoise, Subversion client, patch.exe, todos.exe, etc.

Applying patches

To patch on Windows you have to download patch.exe. But you may encouter EOL problems with patch.exe. That's why I prefer to use Eclipse's "Apply Patch" option wich is great to use with clipboard. If you get issue with Subclipse and work on Windows you may try Tortoise's "Apply Patch" option. If I get problems with Tortoise I then use the patch command. Something to understand is that Tortoise actually use "SVN merge" so in certains cases problems arise. To avoid EOL problems with the patch command, I use a bat file patchdos.bat :

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• You need JavaService.exeThis is freely available at http://javaservice.objectweb.org/.
  Documentation and example code are also available
  Unzip the JavaService-bin-1.2.x.zip (or JavaService-2.0.x.zip)

• Where should the expanded files be located?
  Set up and run your script with the appropriate path. Ex:

  Code Block
  javaservice -install OFBiz %java_home%\jre\bin\server\jvm.dll -Xms256M -Xmx512M -Djava.class.path=%java_home%\lib\tools.jar;%ofbiz_home%\ofbiz.jar -start org.ofbiz.base.start.Start -out %ofbiz_home%\logs\serviceLog.txt -err %ofbiz_home%\logs\serviceErr.txt -current %ofbiz_home% -manual

  
  

  
  Note: If your java sdk is installed under a directory with a space in it, the service will install, but not start properly, unless you change java_home to the DOS 8.3 name. For example, if your java sdk is installed in C:\Program Files\Java\j2sdk1.4.2_xx then you would set java_home=C:\PROGRA~1\Java\j2sdk1.4.2_xx* Go to the win2k services app and you should now find a service 'OFBiz' set up to run manually (this of course can be changed to run automatically if so desired).

• Alternatively, the service can be started with the command:net start OFBiz
• And the service can then be stopped with the command:net stop OFBiz

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If you receive an SQL error in ofbiz, it doesn't show the error from the database itself. Instead, it shows a general error which isn't neccessarily clear. Run the SQL directly on the database get a more helpful error message. 

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    <datasource name="localderby"
            helper-class="org.apache.ofbiz.entity.datasource.ReadOnlyHelperDAO"
            schema-name="OFBIZ"
            field-type-name="derby">...

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This should load your modified data along with the seed data and without any demo data.

How to run inside a non embedded application server

Have a look at framework/appserver/README file. You might be also interested by Run OFBiz under outside Application Servers (WASCE 2.0.0.1, Geronimo 2.0.3, Tomcat 5.5 and 6, JBoss 4.2.2)

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Issue with createAcctgTransAndEntries service

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Issue with createAcctgTransAndEntries service

If you see errors like

Error:Error trying to begin transaction, could not process method: The
current transaction is marked for rollback, not beginning a new
transaction
and aborting current operation; the rollbackOnly was caused by: Service
createAcctgTransAndEntries threw an unexpected
exception/errororg.ofbiz.service.ServiceValidationException: The following
required parameter is missing: OUT
createAcctgTransAndEntries.acctgTransId (The following required
parameter
is missing: OUT createAcctgTransAndEntries.acctgTransId) calling
service
balanceInventoryItems in receiveInventoryProduct

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If you really need to do it, think about these 4 points before...

Show prices with VAT included in eCommerce (B2C)

For that you must :

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In order to show the prices including VAT in the store for consumers, you need to take following steps:

1. in the accounting component:
   1. adjust the data for the appropriate Tax Authority so that 'Include Tax in Price' = 'Y'
   2. associate the appropriate product categories under the 'Categories' tab of the Tax Authority
   3. set the appropriate product rate (for Value Added Tax)
   4. optionally set the flag for 'Tax Promotions'
   5. optionally set the flag for 'Tax Shipping'
2. in the catalog component for the appropriate store (in the section 'TAX':
   1. set the flag 'Show prices with VAT tax included' to 'Y'
   2. set the appropriate Vat Tax Auth Geo ID
   3. set the appropriate Vat Tax Auth Party ID

For now you can't set a different VAT rate for shipping, see last comment of

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If the caches are on (ie not on dev mode), it's the same (you don't need to recompile) but you need to clear the caches. See at ...webtools/control/FindUtilCache You might even clear only the cache where things changed (production performance). 

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Debug.logTiming("Ran query in "

gradlew "ofbiz --load-data readers=seed,seed-initial,ext,ext-demo"