For up-to-date product documentation, see the IBM MobileFirst Foundation Developer Center.

Calling the mfpadm Ant task

We can use the mfpadm Ant task and its associated commands to administer MobileFirst applications.

Syntax

Call the mfpadm Ant task as follows:

<mfpadm url=... user=... password=...|passwordfile=... [secure=...]>
    some commands
</mfpadm>

Attributes

The mfpadm Ant task has the following attributes:

Table 1. List of <mfpadm> attributes

Attribute	Description	Required	Default
url	The base URL of the MobileFirst web application for administration services	Yes
secure	Whether to avoid operations with security risks	No	true
user	The user name for accessing the MobileFirst administration services	Yes
password	The password for the user	Either one is required
passwordfile	The file that contains the password for the user
timeout	Timeout for the entire REST service access, in seconds	No
connectTimeout	Timeout for establishing a network connection, in seconds	No
socketTimeout	Timeout for detecting the loss of a network connection, in seconds	No
connectionRequestTimeout	Timeout for obtaining an entry from a connection request pool, in seconds	No
lockTimeout	Timeout for acquiring a lock	No

url

The base URL preferably uses the HTTPS protocol. For example, if we use default ports and context roots, use the following URL.

• For WebSphere® Application Server: https://server:9443/worklightadmin
• For Tomcat: https://server:8443/worklightadmin

secure

The default value is true. Setting secure="false" might have the following effects:

• The user and password might be transmitted in an unsecured way, possibly even through unencrypted HTTP.
• The server's SSL certificates are accepted even if self-signed or if they were created for a different host name than the specified server's host name.

password

Specify the password either in the Ant script, through the password attribute, or in a separate file that you pass through the passwordfile attribute. The password is sensitive information and therefore needs to be protected. You must prevent other users on the same computer from knowing this password. To secure the password, before you enter the password into a file, remove the read permissions of the file for users other than yourself. For example, we can use one of the following commands:

• On UNIX: chmod 600 adminpassword.txt
• On Windows: cacls adminpassword.txt /P Administrators:F %USERDOMAIN%\%USERNAME%:F

Additionally, you might want to obfuscate the password to hide it from an occasional glimpse. To do so, use the mfpadm config password command to store the obfuscated password in a configuration file. Then, we can copy and paste the obfuscated password to the Ant script or to the password file.

The mfpadm call contains commands that are encoded in inner elements. These commands are executed in the order in which they are listed. If one of the commands fails, the remaining commands are not executed, and the mfpadm call fails.

Elements

We can use the following elements in mfpadm calls:

Table 2. Elements that can be used in <mfpadm>

Element	Description	Count
show-info	Shows user and configuration information	0..∞
show-global-config	Shows global configuration information	0..∞
show-diagnostics	Shows diagnostics information	0..∞
show-versions	Shows versions information	0..∞
unlock	Releases the general-purpose lock	0..∞
list-runtimes	Lists the runtimes	0..∞
show-runtime	Shows information about a runtime	0..∞
delete-runtime	Deletes a runtime	0..∞
show-user-config	Shows the user configuration of a runtime	0..∞
set-user-config	Specifies the user configuration of a runtime	0..∞
show-confidential-clients	Shows the configurations of confidential clients of a runtime	0..∞
set-confidential-clients	Specifies the configurations of confidential clients of a runtime	0..∞
set-confidential-clients-rule	Specifies a rule for the confidential clients configuration of a runtime	0..∞
list-adapters	Lists the adapters	0..∞
deploy-adapter	Deploys an adapter	0..∞
show-adapter	Shows information about an adapter	0..∞
delete-adapter	Deletes an adapter	0..∞
adapter	Other operations on an adapter	0..∞
list-apps	Lists the apps	0..∞
deploy-app	Deploys an app	0..∞
show-app	Shows information about an app	0..∞
delete-app	Deletes an app	0..∞
show-app-version	Shows information about an app version	0..∞
delete-app-version	Delete a version of an app	0..∞
app	Other operations on an app	0..∞
app-version	Other operations on an app version	0..∞
list-devices	Lists the devices	0..∞
remove-device	Removes a device	0..∞
device	Other operations for a device	0..∞
list-farm-members	Lists the members of the server farm	0..∞
remove-farm-member	Removes a server farm member	0..∞

XML Format

The output of most commands is in XML, and the input to specific commands, such as <set-accessrule>, is in XML too. We can find the XML schemas of these XML formats in the product_install_dir/MobileFirstServer/mfpadm-schemas/ directory. The commands that receive an XML response from the server verify that this response conforms to the specific schema. We can disable this check by specifying the attribute xmlvalidation="none".

Output character set

Normal output from the mfpadm Ant task is encoded in the encoding format of the current locale. On Windows, this encoding format is the so-called "ANSI code page". The effects are as follows:

• Characters outside of this character set are converted to question marks when they are output.
• When the output goes to a Windows command prompt window (cmd.exe), non-ASCII characters are incorrectly displayed because such windows assume characters to be encoded in the so-called "OEM code page".

To work around this limitation:

• On operating systems other than Windows, use a locale whose encoding is UTF-8. This locale is the default locale on Red Hat Linux and OS X. Many other operating systems have the en_US.UTF-8 locale.
• Or use the attribute output="some file name" to redirect the output of a mfpadm command to a file.

Parent topic: Administering MobileFirst applications through Ant