Written on April 2, 2010 by Allan Lykke Christensen
Back in January I was about to embark on a new Java enterprise project. For the past few years I’ve mainly been doing Glassfish-based projects, but being frustrated with some of its features I decided to look into the JBoss Application Server. Prior to JavaEE 5 I used JBoss (4.0) and was very happy with it. Its ability to configure every aspect of the application server using XML files is fantastic when exercising continuous integration/deployment. Anyway, I changed to Glassfish due to its support for JavaEE5. So to catch up on the latest development in JBoss I decided to get “JBoss AS 5 Development” by Francesco Marchioni from Packt Publishing. Wow, was I surprised. The book was really excellent. The book starts with instructions on how to setup JBoss and get started. This was followed with a chapter on the new features of JBoss 5. The remaining of the book focuses on developing JavaEE5 components and configuring JBoss to get the most out of your applications. One of the things I really liked about this book was how many of the advice could easily be applied to other application servers. The main reason why I think this book is awesome is because it is great for developers who want to tweak and understand their application server. Many developers are use to having other people setup their application in production environments, but with this book you’ll gain the confidence to configure your application and server for a production environment.
Every application server should have a book like this!
Written on March 6, 2010 by Allan Lykke Christensen
I managed to put the 0.4 release together before the original deadline of 13. March. In version 0.4 you’ll find:
Attributes are now sortable by clicking the column headings
Possible to give each LDAP server connection a label
Fixed NamingException when having more than one server connection / window open
Added connection timeout setting to LDAP server connection
More friendly attribute names
Support for Lotus Notes object classes
Silently accepts self-signed SSL certificates
Basic filtering
For the next release the UI will be changed slightly to accommodate query building and displaying of search results.
Note: From version 0.3 an update center was automatically created upon installation. To upgrade simply go to Tools – Plugins – Updates and click “Reload Catalog” followed by selecting the new version and clicking “Upgrade”
In August 2009 I started a “NetBeans Goodies” project at Kenai.com where I intended to collect a bunch of NetBeans modules. The first Goodie would be support for APT files (Maven Doxia). If you’ve been reading my blog you’ll know that I got the basic code hacked together but then ran into some problems with defining the APT language in JavaCC. Anyway, This week I got prompted to continue the development of Doxia support by a keen user. I’ve therefore transfer the code from Kenai to Google Code and intent to pick up the coding in the upcoming weeks. You can find the project at Google Code. I haven’t released any versions of Doxia support yet, so if you want to give it a go you’ll have to check out the code from the Mercurial repository.
If you find any bugs or would like to see your favourite features in the module, please go ahead add it to the project page or as comments to this post.
Written on February 16, 2010 by Allan Lykke Christensen
Isn’t it just typical. You want to spend a few hours implementing a few features in your application and before you know it its 1 in the morning. Following my basic implementation of an LDAP Explorer in NetBeans, I wrote down a list of features I want to implement. Among the features were a registry of LDAP servers (so one doesn’t have to keep entering the connection details). So, if you look in the source repository you’ll find that I’ve implemented a registry of LDAP servers (accessible through the Services window). Activating the nodes will create a new window and connection to the directory service. With that in place, I’ve also removed the “LDAP Explorer” from the Window menu. Lastly I’ve also changed the NetBeans API dependency so that it is now compatible with NetBeans 6.7.
Next, I want to clean up the Explorer window (no need to display the connection details there anymore), followed by implementing an interface for conducting custom queries and executing LDIF commands.
Written on February 14, 2010 by Allan Lykke Christensen
This is a short post (as I’m wasted and want to get some sleep). Recently I’ve been working with a lot of LDAP service and though it would be a nice addition to NetBeans if I could make simple lookups and browse LDAP directory services directly from NetBeans. Therefore I created a small module today (LDAP Explorer) which I’ll hopefully be able to maintain. The project is hosted at Google Code (Sun/Oracle is so confused about the future of Kenai.com and Java.net that I decided to scrap it for now – also, Kenai with Jira is just bloody slow). The project can be found at http://code.google.com/p/nb-ldap-explorer/. With the code currently in the repository you can make anonymous connections to an LDAP service and browse the nodes available under the Base DN. If you are interested in co-maintaining this module, please let me know. That is all for now.
Written on January 15, 2010 by Allan Lykke Christensen
I’ve been wanting to learn more about RESTful web services for a long time. I was introduced to the topic a long time ago but never really got time to look into the details of implementing neither clients nor services. For ages I’ve been trying to read articles and blogs about RESTful services but none of them really enticed me. So during my Christmas holiday I read RESTful Java Web Services by Jose Sandoval. The book is very concise and straight to the point in regards to familiarising the reader with RESTful service APIs. I was very pleased with the book as it got me started quickly and gained understanding of both the concepts of REST aswell as Java options for building RESTful services. There were a few things missing from the book however:
a) No examination of RESTful client APIs such as the Jersey Client API. The author may not have felt that it was necessary since RESTful clients can be implemented using a plain Java HttpURLConnection or the Commons HTTP Clients API (Used in the book).
b) Security aspects are only mentioned in the passing. It would have been very helpful to the reader if there were a few actual examples of protecting a RESTful service using security realms and SSL, followed by examples on how to access protected services.
c) Lastly integration with EJBs is not discussed. It is simply mentioned that they can be integrated. I was shocked to find that in the reference implementation of Java Enterprise 6 there is no dependency injection of EJBs into a restful service using the @EJB annotation. Instead one would have to manually connect to the EJB using JNDI, or implement the RESTful service as an EJB (this problem is not the authors fault!! but it would have saved me a few hours if this short coming was explained in the book).
Overall I’m very pleased with the book, it is great and easy to read. It has given me (a RESTful noob) confidence in using and implementing RESTful services in a production setup.
3.5 of 5 stars!
In my next post I will try to uncover some of the shortcomings of the books with examples for JavaEE 6 (GlassFish).
Written on December 7, 2009 by Allan Lykke Christensen
Blogging is like a drug – once you get started it is hard to stop. Before going to bed, I just wanted to drop a link to a site that I’ve been working on for the past month. It’s for the world famous ceramics company Kähler Design. The site with built with Joomla and VirtueMart. I had to seriously customise and modify the VirtueMart component code to make it work the way I wanted, but I’m quite happy with the outcome. Still working on the site (British version coming next week). Anyway, the website is http://www.kahlerdesign.com. Let me know what you think.
Written on December 7, 2009 by Allan Lykke Christensen
On man – I’ve been lost in the blogosphere for that past four months. Back in August we bought our first house and let me tell you, it is no joke! The house needed a lot of work. A lot more work than I anticipated. It is just a week ago since the bathrooms were completed. For the past few months we have had a port-a-potty outside the house. It feels luxurious not having to get out in the cold early in the morning to shower. Anyway, since August all my time has gone into painting, cleaning, gardening, demolishing (loved that!), decorating, and spending countless amounts of cash of all sorts of stuff you’ll never need when living in a rented apartment. Most of the house things are coming together now, which means that I’ll once again have some spare time to blog about my passion for computer programming.
I’ve always loved JavaServer Faces. I believe it is the closest you get to writing real object-oriented web-based solutions. Don’t get me wrong, I use and like many web frameworks, but JSF has to be my favourite. However, one of the big problems with JSF is that it is pretty basic out-of-the-box. This is completely intended as JSF is supposed to solve the low-level issues in developing web-based solutions, and leave the sophisticated user interface components to component developers, much like Swing. What makes JSF really powerful are component libraries like JBoss RichFaces, ICEFaces, and PrimeFaces. There has been a ton of books focusing on the core of JavaServer Faces (my personal favourite is JSF in Action by Kito Mann) but they all seem to stop when it is getting interesting; using component libraries to enhance your applications. It was therefore a pleasure to read and review this book about RichFaces 3.3.
The book is a good 273 pages well-suited for JSF beginners and experts alike. The book assumes that you are already familiar with JSF, so if you don’t already grasp the topics of managed beans, page navigation, validators and converters, you might want to start somewhere else. It starts out explaining how RichFaces fits in the JSF world and how to set up your own environment for developing RichFaces applications. Once you’ve gotten started Demetrio takes the reader through a “Contact manager” case study, spanning eight chapters, touching on all the essential areas of RichFaces. One of the great things about this book is that Demetrio carefully explains each step and technique used so that the reader doesn’t get confused or left wondering. All too often you read books where you have to consult Google before getting it, but this is not one of those books. My two favourite chapters are Chapter 9 and 11, which explains how to create a new skin for your RichFaces applications and how to develop custom components respectively. Both these areas are overlooked by many developers who end up writing twice as much code to style their components or provide frequently used composite components. In my opinion the only drawback is that many of the code examples is based on JBoss Seam rather than plain JSF.
I can strongly recommend this book to any JSF developer who wants to take their application to the next level with RichFaces. Four and a half stars out of five!
Written on August 18, 2009 by Allan Lykke Christensen
Thanks to Milos Kleint, I’ve got the APT rendered view working for the APT Editor. Hopefully this mean that I’ll be able to release version 1 of the module in the very near future. Still need to improve a bit on the JavaCC grammar, provide an APT code palette, and clean up the code. Anyway, here is a small video demonstrating the rendered view:
