Allan Lykke Christensen » Java

Review: NetBeans IDE 7 Cookbook

Allan Lykke Christensen — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 10:31:02 +0000

I recently got a copy of the newly release NetBeans cookbook from Packt Publishing. Being a huge fan of NetBeans I was excited to see a cookbook on the subject. The book is split into 12 chapters focusing on the main types of applications you can develop in NetBeans. Being a cookbook you can easily jump between the recipes based on what you you’re cooking. This is a great advantage if you want to learn something new in NetBeans without having to trawl through a lot of basic information. There are more than 70 recipes ranging for basic tasks such as debugging classes to more advanced tasks such as profiling your applications. My favourite recipes fall into the category of refactoring. The refactoring recipes saves developers an enormous amount of time. There is something for developers at all levels. Even if you are a seasoned NetBeans developer you’ll find some recipes that you’ve never heard of. For NetBeans newcomers there are many gems that will make your life easier. If you are studying or considering to study for the NetBeans Certification, this book is a great companion. My only critic of the book is that it could contain a few more advanced recipes for the routined NetBeans developers,

You can check out a sample of the book on the Packt Publishing website.

The book is excellent for beginners and because of that I give it 3.5 stars of 5.

Demonstration of the News Wire feature in Converge

Allan Lykke Christensen — Wed, 06 Oct 2010 23:53:45 +0000

Here’s a small video demonstration of the news wire services feature in Converge. The video shows how to subscribe to news wires and how to search subscribed news wires.

Preview of the Compare function in Converge

Allan Lykke Christensen — Tue, 05 Oct 2010 09:02:38 +0000

Oh man, time flies. Lately I’ve had absolutely no time to blog. In August my daughter Mackenzie was born and on top of that, every third week I am in Brussels working for PRO€INVEST (an EU organisation). A few weeks ago I picked up my work on CONVERGE, an Open Source Editorial Content Management System that I’m building for media houses. Last night I put a “Compare” function into the version view of a story. You can check it out here.

Compare preview from Allan Lykke Christensen on Vimeo.

This video previews the compare function in Converge

Review: JBoss AS 5 Development

Allan Lykke Christensen — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 14:55:59 +0000

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!

You can check out a free chapter of the book here

LDAP Explorer 0.4 released

Allan Lykke Christensen — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 02:20:03 +0000

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”

You can find the project site on Google Code: http://code.google.com/p/nb-ldap-explorer/

LDAP Explorer 0.3 and NetBeans Doxia Support

Allan Lykke Christensen — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 00:17:39 +0000

LDAP Explorer

This evening I released the third version of LDAP Explorer. The changes include:

Scrolling in the LDAP tree (could only view very small trees in 0.2 due to missing scrollers)
Replaced Swing-code with NetBeans classes (mainly replacing JTree with NetBeans nodes)
Nicer-looking icons + different icons depending on the type of LDAP entry
Includes an update center for ease of upgrading to future versions

You can grab a copy of the new version from the Google Code project page or the NetBeans Plugin Portal

NetBeans Doxia Support

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.

Previous blog entries about Doxia support:

LDAP Explorer 0.2 released

Allan Lykke Christensen — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 00:22:08 +0000

Over a nice glass of red wine I finished the second release of LDAP Explorer for NetBeans. New in this version:

Support for NetBeans 6.7
Possible to create LDAP connection profiles in the Services window
Cleaner browser window with the option to see attributes in table- or LDIF view.

You can download the new release from the Google Code Project Page or on the NetBeans Plugin Portal.

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.

Enjoy!

NetBeans LDAP Explorer update

Allan Lykke Christensen — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 00:29:10 +0000

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.

If you got some feature requests or comments you are welcome to submit them at the Google Code project site or on the NetBeans Plugin Portal. Thanks.

LDAP Explorer Module for NetBeans

Allan Lykke Christensen — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 01:47:04 +0000

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.

Review: RESTful Java Web Services by Jose Sandoval

Allan Lykke Christensen — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 19:14:36 +0000

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).