Raible Designs

Tomcat FAQ

I stumbled upon the Tomcat FAQ project at SourceForge today. Actually, someone from the tomcat-user list (that I can't unsubscribe from) pointed me to it. Looks like a great reference for the Tomcat users of the world.

Pinning Elements to your pages with CSS

I found this great example of how to pin elements of a page so they stay fixed at a certain location in a browser window. The bad part? It doesn't work in IE 5.5/6.0 on Windows. Since this is the most popular browser, it kinda makes me lose hope. The reason I'm intrigued by this CSS is because I have a requirement right now that I need to keep the footer of my page "pinned" to the bottom of the browser window. I suppose I could use frames, but I'd rather not. A workaround for IE might be to use a floating layer, but all the scripts I found seemed to fail when I added an XHTML DOCENGINE. That is why I curse IE today.

Update: I recieved a solution for my Experts-Exchange posting on this topic. It looks like I'll be able to use CSS expressions in IE to make this happen. Sweet! My latest code works in IE 6, Mozilla and Opera 7 - I hope it works in IE 5.5 and Opera 6.

Blogging motivated by Broadband?

It is my personal little theory that most bloggers have high-bandwidth internet connections. I am seriously de-motivated from surfing and blogging on a dial-up connection. Even worse, our dial-up connection has been on the fritz, and with no connection - I don't even try. I don't even care to read anyone's blogs and I'm starting to wonder if blogging is all that it's cracked up to be. java.blogs is not even interesting to me anymore. I've got to get my internet connection fixed! I'm talking like a crazy man! ;-)

The good news is our ISP called Julie this morning and we're scheduled for an upgrade on the 14th. They also (finally) admitted that there have been sporadic internet connection issues in our area. They've been so damn arrogant this whole time that it "wasn't their problem" - it's nice to see them admit fault. My mom is in town all week at a conference and my dad is flying in on Wednesday, so I'd expect a pretty light week of blogging until next Monday (the 14th).

Use XForms now with XMLForm

Remember XForms (the next generation of HTML Forms)? How about XMLForm? From their homepage:

This is a standalone servlet toolkit inspired by Apache Struts / JavaServer Faces and W3C XForms. The toolkit is derived from Apache Cocoon and a best effort will be made to maintain the features in sync with the Cocoon module.

For an introduction to the concepts, see: XML Forms, Web Services and Apache Cocoon

XMLForm uses W3C XForms based markup and automated server-side binding to JavaBeans, XML/DOM, JDOM and DynaBeans data models. It also allows easy deployment of REST style Web Services, with maximum code reuse between human facing and machine interfaces.

Wow! Sounds very cool. Thanks to Vic for the link.

Struts Training: Week 5

I'm dialed in and listening to Don Brown presenting on Struts and XML/XSL. Don is a lucky guy - he's presenting from Hawaii this morning, where I'm assuming he lives. The bad part for him - it's 5:30 in the morning there. Don is one of the developers of Stxx and has also developed a Cocoon plugin for Struts. He works for DigitalNet and currently is working on a contract for the Navy. Hmmm, wonder if they're hiring - I'm willing to bet that Julie would consider moving to Hawaii! Enough dreaming - onto the presentation.

The following are types of XML/XSL Extensions for Struts:

• XSL-based
    - stxx
    - StrutsCX
• XML pipeline-based
    - Cocoon Plugin

stxx: features
  - replaces JSP with XSL
  - in action, create XML manually, or get it from another source
  - stylesheet selection based on criteria like browser type
  - automatic serialization of ActionErrors, resources, and request objects
  - extendable to support any object serialization or XML transformation technology
  - supports both Struts 1.0 and Struts 1.1

Pretty cool - for Struts 1.1, there's a Stxx plugin, and you use a .dox extension to indicate it needs transformations. In a stxx-transformations.xml, you define "transformations" that define XSL stylesheets, where to run at (client|server), and mimeTypes (html|xml|pdf). Sweet - maybe I can use this sucker for struts-resume! I wonder how Stxx compares with StrutsCX. Since Stxx can be plugged-in and can co-exist with JSPs, it might be the right path for me.

Advantages of Stxx: Simple, use of caching makes tranformations quick, can be used with Velocity or Cocoon, lighweight, very extendable.

Disadvantages: XML pipeline very limited, poor scaling of message resources (if ApplicationResources.properties in huge - i.e. > 1MB), requires all data to be gathered in Action (MVC-push).

Compared to StrutsCX - Don says that it's very similar, except that StrutsCX supports the Validator. As for the Cocoon Plugin, it supports all the features of Cocoon. Describing the features of this plugin seems pointless as I would just be describing features of Cocoon. For the Cocoon PlugIn, you define it the same as a regular plugin, and then change your path to point to an XHTML-compliant JSP. Apparently, Don has modified the struts-example app to use the Cocoon PlugIn, so hopefully I can provide a link to the download.

Here are some resource links from Don's presentation that might interested you:

• stxx - http://stxx.sf.net
• StrutsCX - http://it.cappuccinonet.com/strutscx/
• Cocoon - http://cocoon.apache.org
• Cocoon Plugin - http://www.twdata.org/struts/
• Database Layer - http://www.ibatis.com
• XML-RPC via JavaScript - http://www.vcdn.org/Public/XMLRPC

As for my presentation on Remember Me and XDoclet, you can find those slides here. The slides (and lab) uses a simple JSTL-based app I whipped up last weekend. I'm planning on hooking it into a database eventually to allow online editing of a presentation, but I probably won't do that until I give another presentation.

Bad Cables?

I'm still experiencing issues with my Internet Connection, and I'm still blaming my ISP. Especially since I went out and bought a new router and everything. Now I have internet access, but it's intermittent and flaky. It's so flaky, in fact, that anytime I've needed to ssh into this site's server or check in to CVS at SourceForge, I've had to dial-up. However, an ingenious idea hit me this morning. Since the original problem was a bad cable between my ISP's bridge and my router, maybe more cables could be bad. So I stuck one of my wireless cards in my box, and Voila! I'm surfing like the wind again. I guess I'll have to stop at a store and see if they have an "ethernet cable tester".

I'm off to work. I'll be broadcasting my presentation (via WebEx) from there today since I didn't trust this connection up until now.

[ANNOUNCE] Struts Resume and AppFuse 0.7 Released!

There's nothing like tootin' your own horn. What's even worse is checking all this stuff into CVS and then uploading it on a dial-up connection. Anyway, here it is - the latest and greatest version of struts-resume and (finally) a version of appfuse. AppFuse is basically struts-resume w/o any resume stuff. There's not much new that's visible for struts-resume, the only real things are User Administration (no add, just list/delete/assign roles) and a smart-menu that stays expanded based on your previous selections. Here is a full list of what's new in 0.7 (both apps):

Features in 0.7
===============
- Upgraded to Hibernate 2.0 Beta 4.
- Upgraded to Struts 1.1 nightly build (2003.03.26) to fix Validator issue.
(http://tinyurl.com/87xa)
- Upgraded DBUnit to 1.6-dev to fix batchStatement error in Ant task.
(http://tinyurl.com/8ei2)
- Upgraded Canoo WebTest from build265 to build276.
- Upgraded XDoclet to nightly build (2003.03.28) for Hibernate 2.0
compatibility. Apache module is still customized for POJO -> ActionForms.
- Upgraded Display Tag Library to version 0.8.5.
- Renamed "test-canoo" task to "test-jsp".
- Added "db-load" as a dependency to running unit tests to get a fresh
database each time.
- In LoginServlet.java and BreadCrumbFilter.java, pre-pended contextPath
to authURL (i.e. "j_security_check") to get absolute path.
- Added User Administrator to list/edit/delete users. This feature
includes using indexedProperties on a form - still using XDoclet, but using
a subclass of UserForm, called UserFormEx to hold the getter/setters for
the indexedProperties.
- Wrote more Cactus and Canoo Tests to verify Resume editing and User
Administration functioned properly.
- Added icons to success and error messages template (common/messages.jsp).
- Implemented role-based Permissions on menu by adding
permissions="rolesAdapter" to in menu.jsp.

I've put a line through the renaming of "test-canoo" to "test-jsp" because it's in the README (part of the download) and I don't want to re-upload just because of one stinkin' line.

Tomorrow, I'm actually presenting for the Struts Training class, so I won't be able to give a full review. One of the gents who wrote Stxx will be presenting first at 8:30 MST, and then I'm up for my preso. I'm going to do some short and sweet stuff on Remember Me and XDoclet with Struts. If you're interested, you can do the labs I put together. I'll post the slides when I'm done presenting.

How do I implement password rules?

Does anyone know of any open source packages or techniques for implementing password rules. For instance, I need to implement the following rules for password in my application:

Passwords must be made up of at least three (3) of the four (4) following 
classes of characters: Lowercase letters, Uppercase letters, Numbers, Special 
Characters.

I can probably whip up some JavaScript for this, but I'd need server-side code to catch if JavaScript is disabled. I'm guessing this is not possible with regular expressions.

New Job, New Computers

Have you see what Chris is getting at his new job? Holy shit - I was lucky to even get a machine at my current contract!

• Pentium 4 3GHz with 1GB RAM, 120GB disk, etc, and a 20" flat panel display
• New G4 Tower (maybe dual proc? not sure yet), 1GB RAM, 20" flat panel display
• 15" Ti Powerbook

Sounds like either 1) a great company to work for, or 2) a company that won't be around very long. But it sounds like a good company...

The new job will be way more stable (think big company, but not evil company ;) pay a lot more, have stock that's actually worth something, and rockin' benefits.

Man am I jealous!

Mozilla going to Phoenix

The coolest part about Mozilla moving to the Phoenix codebase is that Matt Croydon got quoted. I've been using Phoenix ever since it came out over Phoenix. If you've been using Mozilla over Phoenix, you're losing precious seconds, possibly minutes throughout the day. It's soooo much faster. I used to be die hard IE user - but Phoenix blows it out of the water. I don't know that it's faster, but if not, it's only milliseconds. And once you're addicted to tabbed browsing, it's tough to go back. The best part about the move is that (hopefully) Phoenix will get better. It's already got way more themes, which allows you to make it look as cool as you want.