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20030728 Monday July 28, 2003

Monday Morning Mayhem My Inbox was attacked over the weekend with all kinds of good links and fun stuff to post. So here it is:

  • LogWeb was released. A fully functional web interface for the runtime configuration of log4j within servlet containers and j2ee application servers. I won't use it, as I've never been inclined to change my logging configuration at run-time. And if I do need to change it, reloading my app isn't a big deal with Tomcat. Although, it might be nice to view your apps' configuration with this tool.
  • Mozilla and XUL for Cross-Platform User Interfaces, a Tutorial. Quick, easy and works with Mozilla Firebird. I did the examples.
  • StrutsDoc 0.3 was released. StrutsDoc is an Ant task that generates JavaDoc-like documentation from a Struts configuration file. StrutsDoc currently only supports the 1.1 version of Struts. [StrutsDoc Example] This might be helpful for documentation (a.k.a. impressing management) and bringing new developers up to speed.
  • Rowell has approved the use of his theme in Roller. I'll make sure and add a "designed by Rowell Sotto" to the bottom of the theme. Theme names are welcome. Currently, it's named "sotto."
  • Tomcat 5.0.5 Alpha was released. I'll comment here later today.

The best part of the day (so far)? My bike ride to work went from 1 1/2 hours (one-way) to 45 minutes - I just gained an hour and a half in every weekday! Posted in Java at Jul 28 2003, 08:46:33 AM MDT 1 Comment

Comments:

I already built something similar to the features you describe for LogWeb. All of my objects have toString() and toString( boolean useHTML ) methods, where toString() defaults to an HTML view of the object. I have a servlet that reads the contents of the HttpSssion and the ServletContext and calls toString() on all the objects. By using some smart colorization I can view instantly the status of all the objects currently loaded. VERY useful! Especially for remote debugging of issues with a customer. Secondly, I have a servlet that outputs my application log file (not the container log). If I need to add debugging, I just send log messages with my object.toString( false ) they show up in the log file. Also very useful. But, because I have different levels of logging, I can change at run-time what level of logging to show. The reason that this is useful is because I don't have control of my container. We have a WebLogic Enterprise server and only an Admin deploy or make changes on the production machine. I understand the reasoning but for a developer that pretty much sucks, hence my need for the run-time log-level filter change. Another feature I'm looking at is being able to have a serlvet list all currently active sessions and "tag" particular ones for different log levels. Because we require user logins on all sessions, I can reach into the session and grab the "user" object that all users have and get their name and role for display next to the session IDs. This just goes to show that a feature may look stupid but have a really valid reason for being there, even though it's not useful to everyone.

Posted by Gerry on July 28, 2003 at 11:42 AM MDT #

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Matt Raible is a Web Architecture Consultant specializing in open source frameworks.
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