Use simple code to Check for WebSphere Portal iFixes and Fixpacks

As the internet didn't seem to know how to programatically lookup the installed iFixes and Fixpacks for a PortalServer, I'm going to share my solution, it the hope that someone can point me to a better way.

What I was able to work out from trawling the net and poking around at the WebSphere portal installation is that the install history for iFixes and Fixpacks for Portal are stored in the directory %PORTAL_HOME%/version/history. This makes the process of finding the fix level a case of:

1. Lookup the Portal home.
2. List the files in the version history directory.

Lookup the Portal Home

To lookup the portal home, use the fact that there is a WPS_HOME environment variable set in the WebSphere environment. Unfortunately looking up values in the WebSphere environment is non-trivial. The WebSphere environment is not made directly available, to access it you need to go through the WebSphere Admin service, and the WebSphere management mbeans.

The code to do this is:

com.ibm.websphere.management.AdminService as =
com.ibm.websphere.management.AdminServiceFactory.getAdminService();
String server = as.getProcessName();
javax.management.ObjectName serverName =
new javax.management.ObjectName("*:*,type=AdminOperations,process=" + server);
Set objectNames = as.queryNames(servName, null);
javax.management.ObjectName objectName =
(javax.management.ObjectName) objectNames.iterator().next();
Object[] args = new Object[] {"${WPS_HOME}"};
String[] signature = new String[] {"java.lang.String"};
String wpsHome = as.invoke(objectName,"expandVariable",args, signature);

The wpsHome variable will contain the string path to the websphere portal home directory.
List the Files in the Version History Directory

After retrieving the portal home, it is possible to lookup the fixpacks in the ${WPS_HOME}/version/history directory.

The following code does this:

File f = new File(wpsHome + File.separatorChar +
"version" + File.separatorChar + "history");
String[] children = f.list();
for (int i=0;i out.println(children[i]);
}

In summary the full code snippet for this is:

com.ibm.websphere.management.AdminService as =
com.ibm.websphere.management.AdminServiceFactory.getAdminService();
String server = as.getProcessName();
javax.management.ObjectName serverName =
new javax.management.ObjectName("*:*,type=AdminOperations,process=" + server);
Set objectNames = as.queryNames(servName, null);
javax.management.ObjectName objectName =
(javax.management.ObjectName) objectNames.iterator().next();
Object[] args = new Object[] {"${WPS_HOME}"};
String[] signature = new String[] {"java.lang.String"};
String wpsHome = as.invoke(objectName,"expandVariable",args, signature);

File f = new File(wpsHome + File.separatorChar +
"version" + File.separatorChar + "history");
String[] children = f.list();
for (int i=0;i out.println(children[i]);
}

The work of mapping file names to the installed fix packs/iFixes is left as an exercise for the reader.

Does anyone know if there is a better way of dong this?