JSP 2.0 Article in July JDJ

I got the July issue of JDJ today. In it I found a good article on JSP 2.0 (printable, less ads version). Things I learned from the article:

• JSTL 1.1 will introduce 16 standardized EL functions:
  - fn:length(): Get the length of a collection or a string.
  - fn:toUpperCase(), fn:toLowerCase(): Change the capitalization of a string.
  - fn:substring(), fn:substringBefore(), fn:substringAfter(): Get a subset of a string.
  - fn:trim(): Trim whitespace from a string.
  - fn:replace(): Replace characters in a string.
  - fn:indexOf(), fn:startsWith(), fn:endsWith(), fn:contains(), fn:containsIgnoreCase(): Check if a string contains another string.
  - fn:split(): Split a string into an array.
  - fn:join(): Join a collection into a string.
  - fn:escapeXml(): Escape XML characters in a string.
• The tag libraries in JSTL 1.1 have new URIs (for example, http://java.sun.com/jsp/jstl/core instead of the JSTL 1.0 equivalent http://java.sun.com/jstl/core_rt). The new JSTL 1.1 tag libraries accept request-time expressions for their attributes, and delegate to the JSP container to evaluate EL expressions.

Good stuff to know. I'm ready to start developing JSP 2.0 apps - I hope the Tomcat dev team releases a stable build soon. Or maybe I should just look into using Resin...

Changing Struts' bean:message to JSTL's fmt:message

I converted AppFuse to use JSTL's <fmt:message> tag instead of Struts' <bean:message> tags this morning. It was pretty easy. Here's the steps I took:

1. First, I added the following to metadata/web/seb-settings.xml:

<!-- Define the basename for a resource bundle for I18N -->
<context-param>
    <param-name>javax.servlet.jsp.jstl.fmt.localizationContext</param-name>
    <param-value>ApplicationResources</param-value>
</context-param>

2. Then I added the format tag to web/common/taglibs.jsp:

<%@ taglib uri="http://java.sun.com/jstl/fmt" prefix="fmt" %>

3. Finally, I did find/replace with <bean:message/<fmt:message.

4. I also had to change my title and header keys in web/WEB-INF/tiles-config.xml to remove the . from the bean names. In other words, I converted title.key and heading.key to titleKey and headingKey and also made the appropriate changes in web/layouts/baseLayout.jsp.

Easy as Pie!

[ANNOUNCE] Struts 1.1 Final Released!

The Struts team is proud, and extremely pleased, to announce the Final release of Struts 1.1. This release includes significant new functionality, as well as numerous fixes for bugs which were reported against the previous release, and supersedes the earlier 1.0.2 version as the latest official release of Struts from the Apache Software Foundation.

Download Binary | Download Source | JARs Only | Release Notes

test-all:                                                                                                               
                                                                                                                        
BUILD SUCCESSFUL                                                                                                        
Total time: 8 minutes 10 seconds                                                                                        
[minime:~/projects/appfuse] matt%   

Results look good!

No Fluff, Just Stuff

In the interest of no fluff, just stuff, I've altered my theme. The old theme was 162.7 KB for this entire frontpage (in Mozilla: File -> Save Page As...), while the new one is 101.8. So I've reduced it quite a bit, considering that there's around 50K of pictures from posts and such. Thanks to all who suggested reducing the page size. I don't know how long I'll keep this theme intact, at least until the end of the month probably - in hopes of saving some bandwidth. I hope you like it, and if you don't - let me know why - and then help me improve it.

• IE ignores the "max-width" CSS property, so you might get a width over 1024px for the body - causing the heading background image to look funny.

I'll add to this list as feedback rolls in. If you'd like to add to the list of available stylesheets for this theme, send me an image (1024 x 150) and I'll add it. Here's a simple stylesheet that you can alter to override settings in the basic one (simple.css). This theme has the stylesheet switcher integrated, so it's easy to change to a different stylesheet.

Professional JSP 2.0 Update

Just in case anyone is interested, I thought I'd report on how Professional JSP 2.0 (now being published by Apress) is progressing. I received some initial feedback that my Struts/XDoclet chapter would not be included in the book, but would be a separate download (I'd still get paid for it though). Most of the reasons seemed to be indicating that the chapter was too advanced - newbies wouldn't get it. Personally, I hate reading newbie books, so why would I write a newbie chapter? I also hate simple sample apps, that's why I wrote a fully functional one. Anyway, I convinced them that this chapter did have value and now they are going to include it in the book, but as a case study rather than a regular chapter.

As for the security chapter, they said they really liked the content, but (again) the example was too advanced. I have been asked to remove XDoclet as a dependency since I don't explain it until the Struts chapter. This turned out to be a lot easier than I thought it'd be - only took me about an hour last night. I simply built the project with XDoclet, and then copied the artifacts (web.xml, generated ValidatorForms, struts-config.xml, validation.xml, *.hbm.xml, etc.) back into the source tree. I then tweaked the build.xml file to pick up the artifacts, ran "test-all" and voila - it worked?!

The lesson I learned from all this is that XDoclet is great for rapid development - but possibly only while you you are developing new features. Once an application stabilizes or development is discontinued (I don't plan on further developing security-example), it's pretty easy to strip out the XDoclet dependency and (probably) make it easier for users to understand.

Quit Reading Me!

Just kidding. It's just that the ol' bandwidth issue has reared its ugly head again. I sent the following message to Keith last night:

Am I reading this stats page correctly?

Am I already over my KB limit for the month?

His response:

Wow, you've almost 3/4 million hits already this month....

It looks like it averages about 7.7K per hit, so yep, you appear to be over 5 
GB already this month.

I only have a 5 GB plan, so I asked him how much it would be to move to a 10 GB plan (no response yet). Why don't I just move? Because I like Keith, and ever since I moved to the new server, stability has been awesome. I pay $30/month for the 5 giger, so hopefully I can get the 10 GB for an extra $10/month. Then again, according to this page, 8 GB is $80/month. Maybe I will be moving...

Sending POJOs to the UI instead of ActionForms

I'm starting to think that my Struts-based apps could be simplified if I didn't convert POJOs to Action Forms when retrieving them from the database. By this, I mean to say that I'd like to retrieve and display POJOs on the UI, and then capture their information (as Action Forms) when saving the form. The reason I want to do this is because of Hibernate's Lazy Loading feature and formatting Dates. Basically, Hibernate allows you to load children of an object lazily (i.e. resumes of a User), when the getResumes() method is called. I've created [a page|POJOsToForms] on my wiki to explain further and continue this discussion. Of course, you can always leave comments here if you'd rather - they cross-reference each other. The [RollingWiki|http://www.rollerweblogger.org/wiki/Wiki.jsp?page=RollerWikiPlugin] rocks!

www.mail-archive.com

If you're doing development on an open source project, I recommend that you get your mailing list archived by mail-archive.com. It's pretty easy to setup and offers a nice google-like search interface. I recently added struts-apps, struts-menu-user and the display tag lists. I hope this makes it a lot easier for folks using these applications. I might even add Roller, but I figured Dave could handle that if he really wants it (it's already being done by gname anyway).

Either way, gname or mail-archive.com, if you're using a SourceForge mailing list, you'd better get a better archiving system b/c SourceForge's sucks! Why? No searching! What good is an archive without searching?!

Customizing JSPWiki

I've installed JSPWiki on this server in order to better support collaboration among developers. In particular, I hope to get user's tips and tricks for my demos and downloads. However, JSPWiki out-of-the-box is ugly. Dave has done a good job in making Roller's Wiki look good. So here's my question: How did you do it Dave? Rather than digging for CSS files and what not - can you hook me up with the info. I'll try to document my customization process when it ensues.

SourceForge's Release Process Sucks

Dave asked earlier today if we should move Roller to be hosted at java.net rather than sourceforge.net. I responded with "SourceForge works for me" and didn't see any reason for a move. But after dealing with trying to release 0.8 of appfuse all night, I'm ready for something better. The release process sucks. I have to FTP files to upload.sourceforge.net (anonymously) and then, when the files are completed, selected them as files to release through the web UI.

The problem is that I've been trying to upload for the last 24 hours, and it keeps failing at different points in the upload process. So, here's the worst part - you can't "delete" from the FTP site - you have to release the file, and then delete it. What a pain in the ass - I've done this about 10 times now. My XP machine seems to be the source of my ftp-connection-dropping problem, so I've moved over to my Linux box. So now I'm ready to upload all my files, and look what SF gives me:

We're Sorry.
The SourceForge.net Website is currently down for maintenance.
We will be back shortly

Fuckers.