Matt RaibleMatt Raible is a writer with a passion for software. Connect with him on LinkedIn.

The Angular Mini-Book The Angular Mini-Book is a guide to getting started with Angular. You'll learn how to develop a bare-bones application, test it, and deploy it. Then you'll move on to adding Bootstrap, Angular Material, continuous integration, and authentication.

Spring Boot is a popular framework for building REST APIs. You'll learn how to integrate Angular with Spring Boot and use security best practices like HTTPS and a content security policy.

For book updates, follow @angular_book on Twitter.

The JHipster Mini-Book The JHipster Mini-Book is a guide to getting started with hip technologies today: Angular, Bootstrap, and Spring Boot. All of these frameworks are wrapped up in an easy-to-use project called JHipster.

This book shows you how to build an app with JHipster, and guides you through the plethora of tools, techniques and options you can use. Furthermore, it explains the UI and API building blocks so you understand the underpinnings of your great application.

For book updates, follow @jhipster-book on Twitter.

10+ YEARS


Over 10 years ago, I wrote my first blog post. Since then, I've authored books, had kids, traveled the world, found Trish and blogged about it all.

Simplified UI Tags in Struts 2

Struts 2.0.3 contains a much needed simplification of its UI tag libraries. Before 2.0.3, you had to define a property three times (in the value, label and name attributes):

<s:textfield label="%{getText('user.firstName')}" name="user.firstName" 
    value="%{user.firstName}" cssClass="text medium"/>

In 2.0.3+, you can use the "key" attribute to replace all these attributes. For example:

<s:textfield key="user.firstName" cssClass="text medium"/>

One of the things I really like about WebWork/Struts 2 is the previous examples have the ability to write out the entire form row, rather than just an input field. Even better, the markup rendered is customizable via FreeMarker templates.

The bad news is Struts 2.0.3 never got released because the struts-annotations project hasn't had a release yet (good ol' Mavenism). The good news is Struts 2.0.4 is rumored to be out by the end of the month. In the meantime, if you're using Maven 2, you can use AppFuse's repository to get the goods. Here's the repo settings you're need:

<repositories>
    <repository>
        <id>appfuse</id>
        <name>AppFuse Repository</name>
        <url>http://static.appfuse.org/repository</url>
    </repository>
    <repository>
        <id>struts-203-staging</id>
        <name>Apache Struts 2.0.3 Staging Repository</name>
        <url>http://people.apache.org/builds/struts/2.0.3/m2-staging-repository</url>
    </repository>
</repositories>

Yeah, I could just advise you to use AppFuse 2.0 - but we're having a hard enough time supporting our existing users. ;-)

Posted in Java at Jan 23 2007, 06:02:22 PM MST 6 Comments

Abbie can ski all by herself!

We've had a great ski season so far. I think I've skied more this year than the last 2 years combined. The best part is after a few days in Steamboat for Christmas and another long weekend, Abbie can ski all by herself! I'll admit, she did have a 1/2 day lesson, but I don't think she learned much there. Most of her learning occurred with Julie on the bunny slope. "Pizza" and "French Fries" where the encouraging words of the day.

By the time we left last week, Abbie was able to do the Magic Carpet runs all by herself. For those that don't know, the Magic Carpet is a flat escalator that hauls kids up the mountain. It's smaller than a bunny slope, but challenging for those that've never skied before. Jack is unlikely to ski by himself this year, but he's doing a lot better than the first time I took him. He'll actually stand on his own now instead of doing the "wet noodle" thing when I touch him. Click on the pictures below to see Abbie tearing up the bunny slope.

Abbie skiing Day 3 Abbie Abbie on the bunny hill Abbie

Abbie and Julie were going to head up to Keystone for some skiing today, but it's dumping right now and they didn't feel like dealing with the nasty roads and traffic. With my new found freedom, I hope to get some good powder days in before I start my next gig. ;-)

Posted in General at Jan 21 2007, 11:26:18 AM MST 6 Comments

Let's Go DU!

DU's Fisher While I'm a big fan of DU Hockey, I don't know many players names and I rarely know their exact ranking. That all changed when I found the Let's Go DU blog a couple weeks ago.

Last night, I had a great sports-infested evening. A couple of friends and I started by watching DU shutting out the Gophers (the #1 team in the nation) at Braun's in downtown Denver. From there, we went to the Nuggets game and watched them walk all over Labron and the Cavaliers.

There's another DU game at 4:30 today and some excellent football tomorrow. Seems like a good way to get through a cold Denver weekend.

Posted in General at Jan 20 2007, 03:50:03 PM MST 1 Comment

The Adventure is Over

After 1 year and 7 months, the big adventure is over. It was a great ride with lots of really cool people. As of Tuesday, operations at Virtuas have ceased to exist and everyone was let go. It's not a big surprise - most of us knew it was coming. I won't go into the details of why it was shutdown because I don't think it's that important. Suffice to say, it was a great job and I really enjoyed working with the folks I did.

So what does this mean for me? What's next?

I hope to go back to doing independent consulting like I was before Virtuas. When I was doing my own thing, I never had to travel, earned good rates and enjoyed 40-hour work weeks. That sounds pretty nice after the once-a-month traveling I was doing.

What does this mean for AppFuse 2.0? I hope the release schedule won't change, but it might. I was hoping to get a fair bit done this week, but it's been nuts with the shutting down festivities and the "moving out" drama. With any luck, I'll get a gig soon and I can concentrate on AppFuse development (and relaxing) until my start date.

If you're looking to hire an enthusiastic Web + Java Developer, please take a look at my resume or send me an e-mail.

Posted in Java at Jan 18 2007, 09:14:15 PM MST 20 Comments

Broken PowerBook Display

This past week, Julie accidentally dropped her PowerBook (my old 17" G4) and broke the display. 1/4 of the screen still works, but the rest looks like a digitally shattered window. There doesn't appear to be any physical damage to the exterior. The laptop is definitely out of warranty, so I'll probably take it down to The Mac Outlet and see if I can get it fixed. Has anyone experienced a similar situation? If so, how much was it to get repaired?

Posted in Mac OS X at Jan 16 2007, 09:20:53 PM MST 5 Comments

Here it comes!

For the fourth Friday in a row, there's a snow storm hitting Denver. This time, we're up in Steamboat (for Family Snow Festival weekend) and it looks like we might be positioned perfectly:

A HEAVY SNOW WARNING is posted in northwest Colorado, including areas such as Meeker and Craig until 6 a.m. Saturday. Those areas can expect 10 to 20 inches of snow. ... In addition, a SNOW ADVISORY is in place for the area near Steamboat Springs. They should expect 4 to 8 inches of snow there.

Looking out the window, there doesn't appear to be any new snow yet. Here's hoping for some champagne powder this weekend! :-D

Posted in General at Jan 12 2007, 06:48:13 AM MST Add a Comment

Chief Beer Officer

Four Points' Chief Beer Officer has to be one of the best jobs ever created.

Who says drinking beer won't get you anywhere? For those passionate for pilsners or crazy for crafts, your favorite pastime could earn you a fancy new title and a seat at the Board Room Table. In celebration of the simple pleasure of a perfectly poured glass of beer and the launch of its Best Brews program, Four Points by Sheraton hotels today officially kicked-off its Chief Beer Officer (CBO) executive search and began making room in the executive suite for its newest chief.

In the words of Homer Simpson: "Mmmmm... beer".

Posted in General at Jan 08 2007, 10:25:09 AM MST Add a Comment

AppFuse 2.0 Status

Better than Tots We're working hard on AppFuse 2.0. The good news is things are coming along really nicely. There's quite a few developers working on the project now and they've been a tremendous help. If I knew the move to Maven 2 would've inspired so much help, I would've done it a long time ago! We've got most of the archetypes created and we just need to work on documentation for the 2.0 release M1 release. As far as the roadmap is concerned, we've finished most of the code for an M2 release, but we still need to do documentation. I'm hoping to release 2.0 M1 on Thursday of next week.

If you want to try it, you can checkout the Hello World with AppFuse 2.0 video. After that, feel free to take it for a test drive using the QuickStart Guide.

New features in AppFuse 2.0:

  • Maven 2 Integration
  • Upgraded WebWork to Struts 2
  • JDK 5, Annotations, JSP 2.0, Servlet 2.4
  • JPA Support
  • Generic CRUD backend
  • Full Eclipse, IDEA and NetBeans support
  • Fast startup and no deploy with Maven Jetty Plugin
  • Testable on multiple appservers with Cargo and profiles

Speaking of goodies, I uploaded a bunch of AppFuse desktop backgrounds to Flickr. Thanks to Max Hays of Timberline Group for creating these.

Only 26 days left until the AppFuse 2.0 Release Party! Location TBD. :-D

Posted in Java at Jan 06 2007, 01:18:38 AM MST 3 Comments

Congrats to the Boise State Broncos

Back in December, some co-workers and I traveled to Boise for a client engagement. The day we arrived was close to the same day they announced the Boise State Broncos were going to be in the Fiesta Bowl. In a relatively small town like Boise, this was big news. Everyone talked about it, and so did we. In fact, one day, we even ventured to the campus to see the infamous Blue Field. No one was around, and we actually got to walk on the field and marvel at its blueness. I asked many cab drivers that week if the Denver Broncos or the Boise State Broncos were first, but no one knew. It intrigued me because the teams share the same name, colors and mascot. One of them has to be copying the other.

Last night, I watched the Fiesta Bowl between Boise State and Oklahoma. It was one of the best football games I've ever seen. The multiple comebacks (from both teams), the trick plays and good ol' American Underdog Story made for a helluva game. If you like football and you missed it - you shouldn't have. ;-)

Posted in General at Jan 02 2007, 02:32:37 PM MST 2 Comments

Welcome to 2007

Happy New Year everyone! 2007 should be a great year: Julie and I will pass 7 years of marriage, Jack will turn 3 and Abbie will become a 5 year old. In addition to being happy and getting healthier, I hope to learn a lot this year. AppFuse 2.0 will be released, and I hope to develop applications with Grails, GWT, Rails, Seam, Stripes and Wicket. Yeah, it's ambitious - but these frameworks are supposed to be easy to learn, so it shouldn't be too difficult.

Blog stats for 2006: 296 entries and 2,162 comments.[Read More]

Posted in General at Jan 01 2007, 11:18:16 AM MST 2 Comments