Question

What is the best way for a JavaEE application to determine whether it is running on a development or production Glassfish server?

Answer 1

You can use JNDI for this. Do the following:

Create an resources file:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> 
<!DOCTYPE resources PUBLIC "-//Sun Microsystems Inc.//DTD Application Server 9.0 Domain//EN" "*<install directory>/lib/dtds/sun-resources_1_3.dtd*">

<resources>
    <custom-resource 
        res-type="java.lang.Boolean" 
        jndi-name="production" 
        factory-class="org.glassfish.resources.custom.factory.PrimitivesAndStringFactory">
            <description>Determines, wether the Frontend is running in Production or not. AFTER CHANGING, FRONTEND NEEDS TO BE REDEPLOYED</description>
            <property name="value" value="true"/> <!-- Change the value as needed -->
    </custom-resource>

</resources>

Then add it to your domain via asadmin

asadmin add-resources resources-file.xml

See http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E18930_01/html/821-2416/gixps.html for details on this.

To query the actual resource value:

javax.naming.InitialContext ic = new javax.naming.InitialContext();

if ((Boolean) ic.lookup("production")){
     // PRODUCTION
} else {
     // DEVELOPMENT
}

If you need to differentiate between more environments, use a String instead of a Boolean.

HTH