Getting resources in database as stream in XPages (SSJS / Java)

Some time back I was trying to get the resources in database (to be precise image resource) in my SSJS / Java code. I tried a lot of options like ClassLoader.getResourceAsStream, MyClass.class.getResourceAsStream but no success. Then today while going through the sample database of Extension Library I ran into a piece of code which got the image resource as stream using a single line of code.

var inStream:java.io.InputStream = facesContext.getExternalContext().getResourceAsStream("<RESOURCE NAME>");

As simple as that. In case of Java you would write like this:

InputStream inStream = FacesContext.getCurrentInstance().getExternalContext().getResourceAsStream("<RESOURCE NAME>");

In my tests this worked for getting image resources, file resource and style sheets as streams.

Import image resources via LotusScript & Java

People have created various versions where you can import image resources in a NSF database using LotusScript. Basically you mimic the functionality of "Import Image Resource" button present in Domino Designer via code.

Some of the examples can be found here and here. Here is my version of doing this same thing using combination of LotusSciript & Java with LS2J.

Accessing XPages global objects in Java

Update 24-Dec-2011: Added method to access session and database.

Update 10-Mar-2012: Updated the view object as it was pointing to a super class. Thanks to Tom pointing that one out.

Update 22-May-2012: Rectified the code to get viewScope. Thanks to Jens Winkelmann for pointing it out.

Update 16-Mar-2013: Added link to get getComponent equivalent in Java.

Tim Tripcony in his reply to one of the questions in the Notes/Domino XPages development forum had suggested using Java over SSJS to improve XPages performance. He basically said – “...Minimize the use of SSJS (server-side JavaScript). Every time any SSJS expression is evaluated, Domino parses the expression in realtime into an abstract syntax tree, then runs Java code that is a rough approximation of how the JavaScript specification states that code matching the detected syntax should run. The more you move your logic directly into true Java classes, the less expensive it is to execute, so it runs faster...”

So I started thinking about how can we access various XPages Global Objects like – facesContext, sessionScope, context, etc. from Java classes.

Well... here's how we can access it: