Ballerina IBM CICS Transaction Gateway connector

IBM CICS Transaction Gateway (CTG) is a robust middleware solution that facilitates communication between distributed applications and IBM CICS Transaction Servers.

The ballerinax/ibm.ctg package provides an API to connect to an IBM CICS Transaction Gateway using Ballerina. The current connector is compatible with IBM CICS Transaction Gateway version 9.3.

Quickstart

To use the IBM CTG connector in your Ballerina application, modify the .bal file as follows:

Step 1: Import the connector

Import ballerinax/ibm.ctg module into your Ballerina project.

import ballerinax/ibm.ctg;

Step 2: Add IBM MQ driver

Add ccf2, cicsjee, and ctgclient as platform dependencies to the Ballerina.toml.

[[platform.java17.dependency]]
groupId = "ibm"
artifactId = "ccf2"
version = "9.3"
path = "./<path-to>/ccf2.jar"

[[platform.java17.dependency]]
groupId = "ibm"
artifactId = "cicsjee"
version = "9.3"
path = "./<path-to>/cicsjee.jar"

[[platform.java17.dependency]]
groupId = "ibm"
artifactId = "ctgclient"
version = "9.3"
path = "./<path-to>/ctgclient.jar"

Step 3: Instantiate a new connector

Create an ctg:Client instance by giving IBM MQ configuration.

configurable string host = ?;
configurable int port = ?;
configurable string cicsServer = ?;
configurable string userId = ?;
configurable string password = ?;

ctg:Client ctg = check new({
    host,
    port,
    cicsServer,
    auth: {
        userId,
        password
    }
});

Step 4: Invoke the connector operations

Now, utilize the available connector operations.

// set the CICS program name here
string programName = ...;
// set the input payload
byte[] inputPayload = ...;
byte[]? outputPayload = ctg->execute(programName = programName, commArea = inputPayload);

Step 5: Run the Ballerina application

bal run

Build from the source

Setting up the prerequisites

1. Download and install Java SE Development Kit (JDK) version 17. You can download it from either of the following sources:

   • Oracle JDK
   • OpenJDK

   Note: After installation, remember to set the JAVA_HOME environment variable to the directory where JDK was installed.

2. Download and install Ballerina Swan Lake.

3. Download and install Docker.

   Note: Ensure that the Docker daemon is running before executing any tests.

4. Export Github Personal access token with read package permissions as follows,

   export packageUser=<Username>
   export packagePAT=<Personal access token>

Build options

Execute the commands below to build from the source.

1. To build the package:

   ./gradlew clean build

2. To run the tests:

   ./gradlew clean test

3. To build the without the tests:

   ./gradlew clean build -x test

4. To run tests against different environments:

   ./gradlew clean test -Pgroups=<Comma separated groups/test cases>

5. To debug the package with a remote debugger:

   ./gradlew clean build -Pdebug=<port>

6. To debug with the Ballerina language:

   ./gradlew clean build -PbalJavaDebug=<port>

7. Publish the generated artifacts to the local Ballerina Central repository:

   ./gradlew clean build -PpublishToLocalCentral=true

8. Publish the generated artifacts to the Ballerina Central repository:

   ./gradlew clean build -PpublishToCentral=true

Contribute to Ballerina

As an open-source project, Ballerina welcomes contributions from the community.

For more information, go to the contribution guidelines.

Code of conduct

All the contributors are encouraged to read the Ballerina Code of Conduct.

Useful links

• For more information go to the ibm.ctg package.
• For example demonstrations of the usage, go to Ballerina By Examples.
• Chat live with us via our Discord server.
• Post all technical questions on Stack Overflow with the #ballerina tag.