Raible Designs

Dynamic Queries with Hibernate

I have a client that wants the ability to search on all columns in all tables in their database. So far, I've been able to get all the columns, and their friendly labels by getting all the *Form.* keys in my ApplicationResources.properties file. I still need to sort them alphabetically, but that's another issue. Now I have the following UI pretty much done:

I'm happy with the UI, but I'm struggling with getting Hibernate to return my desired results. I'm able to dynamically select the table/column to search on because of values in my "tables/columns" drop-down. However, many of these tables have Id fields - for status fields, type fields, etc. (basically drop-downs). When searching, this is a pain because users are likely to search on "Active" rather than "1". Because of this, my first issue is how do I make the status field's friendly name a part of my POJO (with Hibernate)?

My 2nd issue is regarding Hibernate's Expression API. I want to be able to pass in the criteria (=, contains, <, >), propertyName and value and get my results. However, it seems that the second half of the comparison must be the same datatype as the field. This means if you're searching on "contract amount", and its a Double, I need to do a Double.valueOf(searchTerm). Basically, I'm looking for an easy way to do this:

  Criteria filter = ses.createCriteria(clazz); 
  
  // determine type of expression - I'd love to figure 
  // out a cleaner way to do this but there's only 
  // 5 possible types, so I don't mind typing the 5
  // if statements
  if (expression.equals("=")) { 
    // How do I convert these to the fields' type at run-time?
    // Sure I could do a bunch of if statements again, but it seems ugly.
    filter.add(Expression.eq(field, Double.valueOf(value))); 
  }
 
  List results = filter.list();

Any advice is appreciated - especially considering I estimated this task to take 4-5 hours and I'm going on 8.

Pictures from the Great American Beer Festival

Last weekend, I volunteered to serve up 1 oz. beers at the Great American Beer Festival. It was a great time, and I highly recommend it. I was fortunate enough to be serving beers from the Brooklyn Brewery, which won both a gold and a silver medal. Here are some pics from the event.

My Trip to Nebraska on September 20th-21st

On the Golf Course

Cletus's new house (and future wife?).

Interesting shortcut keys in Safari

I discovered these by accident tonight. By holding down the "Apple" key (or whatever the hell its called) and pressing a number in Safari - it'll open that respective bookmark. So I have vi Reference as my first bookmark, and Apple is second. Apple+1 open vi reference, Apple+2 opens apple.com. Doubt I'll use it much, but interesting to know.

Comments removed temporarily

I received a barrage of porn comments in the last few hours, so I've disabled comments for a while. The sick part this incident is that someone actually spent the time to come to this site, click on "Add a Comment" and copy/paste the text. Sounds like it's time to record the IP address of commenters so we (as Roller users) can block them from commenting in the future. What a bunch of fuckwits.

Time to hook up the Senior J2EE Developers in Denver

This is nuts - I'm getting at least one call or e-mail per day from recruiters and/or friends in Denver. Rather than posting these positions here (with Rates), if you're a Senior J2EE Developer in Denver, let me know. I'm going to start a list of folks with skills like mine so I can hook some brutha's up! I have 2 right now - both for J2EE/Web stuff.

Here are my requirements to get on my list:

• Must know Ant, meaning you've written a build.xml file before. Having read Java Development with Ant is a huge plus.
• Blogging is a plus - it means you're interested in Java and sharing your ideas (implying that you think outside of work).
• You've used Eclipse or IDEA and use one or the other on a regular basis. This implies that you know a good IDE can improve your productivity.
• Must know XHTML and CSS. I do, and I said skills like mine.
• You're able to checkout AppFuse from CVS, build it and run "test-all" with success. README.txt is your friend.

I reserve the right to delete any of your e-mails and resumes, and to hook my friends up over other folks. I don't want to get a flood of e-mails, I'm just trying to hook up good folks with good jobs. If I can get the rates, I'll let you know what they are.

Simple "workaround" for exporting with the displaytag using Tiles

I figured out an easy "workaround" to the fact that the displaytag's export feature (to XML, CSV, and Excel) doesn't work when using Tiles. The happens because the response has already been committed by Tiles (when including previous JSPs) and the displaytag is unable to set the contentType. Here's my workaround:

In struts-config.xml, create a local forward that goes directly to the JSP:

  <forward name="exportList" path="/WEB-INF/pages/userList.jsp"/>

Then in your Action, add a little logic to see if you should forward to the definition or to the list:

  // if exportType is a parameter, forward directly to JSP
  if (request.getParameter("exportType") != null) {
    if (log.isDebugEnabled()) {
      log.debug("export detected, forwarding directly to list jsp");
    }

    return mapping.findForward("exportList");
  } else {
    // return a forward to the user list definition
    return mapping.findForward("list");
  }

Tested with displaytag 0.8.5 on Windows XP and Tomcat 4.1.27. Enjoy!

Update: This workaround will not work with displaytag 1.0b1. There is another solution using a Filter, so we'll try to incorporate that into the 1.0 release.

Packaging Velocity

I've made a number of changes to struts-menu this week, and it now supports the ability to render menus via Velocity templates. This allows for easy customization and basically allows for you to create any type of navigation system you want (i.e. drop-downs, tabs, plain ol' links) etc. One of the issues I'm wrestling with is how should I package Velocity with the distribution. Usually, to integrate struts-menu into a Struts-based application, you only need to include struts-menu.jar. Now, if you want to use Velocity for your menus, you must include velocity.jar and velocity-tools.jar in your application's WEB-INF/lib. I think most users will accept this.

However, in the example app, there's a velocity.properties file and a couple example templates. This seems like an opportunity for many users to forget to include these - so I'm wondering what's the best way to package these. Should I put velocity.properties in the source tree, and initialize my VelocityMenuDisplayer using that? Should I do a check to see if the user has their own velocity.properites in WEB-INF/classes for an optional override?

Another question is should I put the sample templates (simple.html and coolmenus.html so far) in the source tree, and then use Velocity to load them from the struts-menu.jar file? Or should I package them in a menu-templates.jar file?

Basically, it all boils down to this question: If you have a project (.jar) that depends on Velocity and plugs into web applications - what is the best way to distribute your Velocity settings?

BTW, I hope to make an effort to decouple this library from Struts someday - shouldn't be too hard.

The life of a software developer

I've officially worked 31 of the last 37 hours. Ugh. There was 3 hours last night that I got to drive home and have dinner with Julie and Abbie. This was followed by a 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. code-producing extravaganza, followed by 2 hours of sleep, and time enough to commute to work this morning. And I'm still pounding the keyboard...

Update: Finally tally ~ 33 of 39, I think that's a record. Let's hope I don't fall asleep on the way home!

What's up with the Job Market in Denver?

I don't know what the hell is going on, but I feel like it's 2001 all over again. I got 2 calls last week, and 2 calls this week from recruiters or hiring managers. The strange part is that I didn't send them a resume or anything - they called me! I even got a call (last week) from a hiring manager that I submitted my resume to. This is nuts - usually there's nothing. The phone lines have been dead for a quite a few months (if not years). Maybe it's the book? I doubt it - I think it's just a fluke and I should enjoy it while it lasts.

I've asked all of these opportunities to forward me job descriptions so I can post them here, but haven't got anything yet. All local opps - maybe it's a good time to be a Denverite? Or maybe the Java job market is picking up again - let's hope so!