[[Application_Client_Reference]]
= Application Client Reference

As a Jakarta EE compliant server, WildFly {wildflyVersion} contains an application
client. An application client is essentially a cut down server instance,
that allows you to use EE features such as injection in a client side
program.

[NOTE]

This article is not a tutorial on application client development, rather
it covers the specifics of the WildFly application client. There are
tutorials available elsewhere that cover application client basics, such
as
https://www.jasondl.ee/posts/2011/java-ees-buried-treasure-the-application-client-container.html[this
one].

[IMPORTANT]

Note that the application client is different from the Jakarta Enterprise Beans client
libraries, it is perfectly possible to write a client application that does
not use the application client, but instead uses the jboss-ejb-client
library directly.

[[getting-started]]
== Getting Started

To launch the application client use the `appclient.sh` or
`appclient.bat` script in the bin directory. For example:

[source,options="nowrap"]
----
./appclient.sh --host=10.0.0.1 myear.ear#appClient.jar arg1
----

The `--host` argument tells the appclient the server to connect to. The
next argument is the application client deployment to use, application
clients can only run a single deployment, and this deployment must also
be deployed on the full server instance that the client is connecting
too.

Any arguments after the deployment to use are passed directly through to
the application clients `main` function.

[[connecting-to-more-than-one-host]]
== Connecting to more than one host

If you want to connect to more than one host or make use of the
clustering functionality then you need to specify a
jboss-ejb-client.properties file rather than a host:

[source,options="nowrap"]
----
./appclient.sh --ejb-client-properties=my-jboss-ejb-client.properties myear.ear#appClient.jar arg1
----

[[example-application-client-reference]]
== Example

A simple example of how to package an application client and use it with
WildFly can be within the quickstart
https://github.com/wildfly/quickstart/tree/master/app-client[appclient]
which is located on Github .
