The Apache Felix Web Console is a simple tool to inspect and manage OSGi framework instances using your favourite Web Browser.

Requirements

The Web Console only has a single required dependency on the framework: A running implementation of the OSGi Http Service Specification. The reason for this is, that the Web Console is implemented as a servlet (actually just a gateway servlet dispatching to Web Console plugins) which is registered with the Http Service. If your framework does not yet have a Http Service installed, you might select from a variety of such implementations. The following is just an incomplete list:

• Apache Felix HTTP Service. This is a very basic implementation of the OSGi Http Service based on Jetty 6.1.7. The Apache Felix HTTP Service has not been released yet, so you would have to build it yourself.
• PAX Web Service. The PAX Web Service is the basis for a whole range of additions from the OPS4J project. The PAX Web Service is also based on Jetty 6 and may be dowloaded from the OPS4J PAX Web page.
• Equinox HTTP Service implementation. You can get more information on the Equinox implementation from the Server-Side Equinox page.

Apart from that Web Console has the following dependencies, which do not need to be satisfied. In this case the respective functionality is just missing.

• OSGi Log Service – The Log Service is used for logging. If the service is not available the Web Console prints logging to the standard output
• OSGi Configuration Admin Service and OSGi Metatype Service – The Configuration Admin and Metatype services are used to support simple form based configuration administration
• Apache Felix Declarative Services – If your framework uses the Apache Felix Declarative Services implementation, you can use to the Web Console to inspect the declared components available from the various bundles and managed by the Service Component Runtime.

Note, that the Apache Felix Declarative Services implementation is the only Apache Felix dependency contained in the Web Console. If you do not use the Apache Felix Declarative Services implementation, you just cannot inspect the declared components (because there is no official public API for this). Otherwise the Web Console perfectly operates without any problems.

Installation

To install just use your favourite current means of installing new bundles in to the OSGi framework. For example using the Apache Felix shell console you might do:

> install http://mirror.switch.ch/mirror/apache/dist/felix/org.apache.felix.webconsole-1.0.0.jar
bundle x
> start x

where x is the bundle number printed by the Shell Console indicating the Bundle ID of the Web Console bundle.

Browser Compliance

The goal of the Web Console is to support as big a range of Web Browsers as possible. As it stands now, Firefox (versions 2 and 3), Opera and Internet Explorer (versions 6 and 7) seem to be capable of using the Web Console. Should you encounter any problems with your particular browser, please report an issue for the Web Console in our issue tracking system (JIRA).

Issues

Should you have any questions using the Web Console, please send a note to one of our Mailing Lists.

Please report any issues with the Web Console in our issue tracking system (JIRA) and be sure to report for the Web Console component. See our Issue Tracking page for more details.