Grails and JCifs

JCIFS is:

...an Open Source client library that implements the CIFS/SMB networking protocol in 100% Java. CIFS is the standard file sharing protocol on the Microsoft Windows platform.

As part of a project to provide schools and businesses with an open source solution to access their "My Documents" folder anytime/anywhere over the web, I recently had the pleasure of integrating JCIFS into my Grails application.

The obligatory screenshot:


I dropped the latest JCIFS jar file into my $GRAILS-APP/lib folder, and began implementing the "My Documents" feature against a samba server for starters. When I moved to a Windows 2008 server everything fell apart, with all operations started timing out. After some digging around in the rather extensive set of config options, I realized I need the following in my grails config file:

System.setProperty("jcifs.smb.client.dfs.disabled", "true");

Your environment may differ but make sure you take a good look at the JCIFS configuration options at least.

Ok, so here's a simple example of removing a file:

  void removeFile(WorkspacePath p)
  {
    def ntlm = new NtlmPasswordAuthentication("", p.username, p.password);
    SmbFile file = new SmbFile(absoluteFilePath(p.url, p.path), ntlm);
    file.delete();
  }

Note: I pass "" as the first argument to NtlmPasswordAuthentication as the domain is part of p.username (e.g. joel@example.com).

One thing you need to make sure of is always ending directory paths with a "/", otherwise you will get errors. Here's a more complicated example of a "eachFile" method that takes a closure as it's final argument:

  public void eachFile(WorkspacePath p, Closure c)
  {
    println "eachFile ${p.url} - ${p.path}";
    def path = absoluteDirPath(p.url, p.path);
    def ntlm = new NtlmPasswordAuthentication("", p.username, p.password);
    SmbFile file = new SmbFile(path, ntlm);

    // are we dealing with a directory path or just a single file?
    if (!file.isDirectory()) {
      c.call([name: file.name, file: file, path: file.canonicalPath,
              inputStream: { return new SmbFileInputStream(file); },
              outputStream: { return new SmbFileOutputStream(file); } 
             ]);
      return;
    }

    file.listFiles().each { 
      f-> if (f.isDirectory()) return;
      if (f.isHidden()) return;

      c.call([name: f.name, file: f, path: f.canonicalPath,
              inputStream: { return new SmbFileInputStream(f); },
              outputStream: { return new SmbFileOutputStream(f); } 
             ]);
    }
  }

We've been quite pleased with JCIFS and it well its been working in our grails application. We are currently using 1.3.14 with the patches noted here. I just noticed that 1.3.15 is out so I'm interested in trying that as soon as possible!