Raible Designs

RE: Wrox Going Under

Matt hopes for for Professional JSP 2.0:

[Larkware] A couple of weblogs have reported that Wrox is going under. Although at the moment this has to be classed as "credible rumor," it really doesn't surprise me, on two fronts. First, it seems to me that Wrox's strategy for the past year or so has been mainly "throw a lot of stuff at the wall and see what sticks."

I really really hope not. I was looking forward to Professional JSP 2.0...

Yeah, I was really looking forward to this book - my first time being published, busting my hump to write just after having a new daughter, among other things. It just sucks. It doesn't really suck for me, it really sucks for the people that actually worked for Wrox. As for Professional JSP 2.0, who the heck knows what'll happen. I really hope it gets published. I also hope to get paid for writing, but that'll probably never happen. If they don't publish it, they probably don't have to pay the authors. I think the book is done though, maybe we can talk them into publishing it... Let's get a petition going!

Or maybe I'll just sell my chapters on eBay.

Hibernate Enhancements

For you Hibernate users/lovers, here's some good news for you (THANKS GAVIN!):

1. [Hibernate Forum] For XDoclet users its well-worth grabbing a CVS update now, I have fixed a bunch of issues and made improvements including Hibernate2 support (thanks to Matt Raible) and joined-subclass support.

2. [Hibernate Dev List]

 After a bit of research and thinking, I have settled on an approach to
 query by Criteria that hopefully is flexible enough for 80-90% of use
 cases, but still simple enough to fit in sufficiently few lines of code.
 
 The proposed new API is based loosely upon the Cayenne API. Queries may be
 expressed as follows:
 
 
 List cats = session.createCriteria(Cat.class)
     .add( Expression.like("name", "Izi%" ) )
     .add( Expression.between("weight", minWeight, maxWeight) )
     .add( Expression.eq( "mate", mate ) )
     .addOrder( Order.asc("age") )
     .setMaxResults(20)
     .list();
 
 
 Which is approximately equivalent to:
 
 from Cat cat
 where cat.name like 'Izi%'
 and cat.weight between :minWeight and :maxWeight
 and cat.mate = :mate
 order by cat.age
 
 
 This API is marked "experimental", but I would like to stabilize it fairly
 soon, so early feedback is very welcome. This is all in CVS.

How do I remove duplicates in a List?

I have a List that may contain duplicates and I need to filter out the duplicates (so I don't get a foreign key violation when inserting records). Are there any Jakarta' Commons utilities to do this? I can see a few solutions to my problem:

• Present it on the UI. This might be tough since I'm using a select box JavaScript library. Hmmm, I am using a custom setter for the String[] that gets sent in, maybe I can do it there - checking to see if the ArrayList I'm setting already contains the given String.
• Filter it out in the business layer.
• Use a type of List that doesn't allow duplicates, and just ignores a duplicate value when you try to add it.

I just thought of #1 while writing this post. It's cool how talking about your problems can help solve them - no wonder shrinks get paid so much. I'm still interested in any proposed utility classes.

Debugging JUnit tests in Eclipse - how?

Does anyone know how to run JUnit tests using Ant and debug them in Eclipse? I have the JUnit/Ant part figured out, it's the debugging I'm having issues with. I'm able to run debug (using breakpoints) in Eclipse while running Tomcat, but not while running a simple JUnit test from Ant. Man that would be cool. If I could run Ant (from w/in Eclipse or on the command line) and set breakpoints in Eclipse - I could sure speed up my development time.

No Fluff, Just Stuff - I'm In!

If I play my cards right, I'll be either (1) flying back from Florida for this conference, or (2) moving to Florida shortly afterwards.

------------------------------------------------------
Confirmation number: 338104
Name: Matt Raible

------------------------------------------------------
Rocky Mountain Software Symposium 2003: Spring Edition

Date: Friday, May 16, 2003 - Sunday, May 18, 2003

Sheraton Denver West
360 Union Blvd
Lakewood, CO  80228

Struts Validator: Validating Two Fields Match

In the Struts Validator Guide, there is a section on how to create a pluggable validator that matches two fields. I've been using this server-side validator (as shown in the example) to do password/confirm password validation. This has worked great for me, but I've always wanted the Validator to have the client-side JavaScript method for it too. I wrote my own that just compared the two fields, but it's not the same as having one rendered for you (from validator-rules.xml). So yesterday, I did some tinkering and figured out how to add the JavaScript method to validator-rules.xml. So here's how to configure the whole thing (most of this is contained in the Validator Guide, save the JavaScript).

How To Add a TwoFields Validator

Step 1: Create a class with a validateTwoFields method. In my code, my class is ValidationUtil and has the following method:

public static boolean validateTwoFields(Object bean, ValidatorAction va,
                                        Field field, ActionErrors errors,
                                        HttpServletRequest request) {
    String value =
        ValidatorUtil.getValueAsString(bean, field.getProperty());
    String sProperty2 = field.getVarValue("secondProperty");
    String value2 = ValidatorUtil.getValueAsString(bean, sProperty2);

    if (!GenericValidator.isBlankOrNull(value)) {
        try {
            if (!value.equals(value2)) {
                errors.add(field.getKey(),
                           Resources.getActionError(request, va, field));

                return false;
            }
        } catch (Exception e) {
            errors.add(field.getKey(),
                       Resources.getActionError(request, va, field));

            return false;
        }
    }

    return true;
}

Step 2: Edit validator-rules.xml to contain the "twofields" rule.

<validator name="twofields" 
    classname="org.appfuse.webapp.util.ValidationUtil" method="validateTwoFields" 
    methodParams="java.lang.Object,
                  org.apache.commons.validator.ValidatorAction,
                  org.apache.commons.validator.Field,
                  org.apache.struts.action.ActionErrors,
                  javax.servlet.http.HttpServletRequest" 
   depends="required" msg="errors.twofields">
    <javascript><![CDATA[
        function validateTwoFields(form) {
            var bValid = true;
            var focusField = null;
            var i = 0;
            var fields = new Array();
            oTwoFields = new twofields();
            for (x in oTwoFields) {
                var field = form[oTwoFields[x][0]];
                var secondField = form[oTwoFields[x][2]("secondProperty")];
            
                if (field.type == 'text' ||
                    field.type == 'textarea' ||
                    field.type == 'select-one' ||
                    field.type == 'radio' ||
                    field.type == 'password') {
            
                    var value;
                    var secondValue;
                    // get field's value
                    if (field.type == "select-one") {
                        var si = field.selectedIndex;
                        value = field.options[si].value;
                        secondValue = secondField.options[si].value;
                    } else {
                        value = field.value;
                        secondValue = secondField.value;
                    }
                
                    if (value != secondValue) {
                    
                        if (i == 0) {
                            focusField = field;
                        }
                        fields[i++] = oTwoFields[x][1];
                        bValid = false;
                    }
                }
            }
            
            if (fields.length > 0) {
                focusField.focus();
                alert(fields.join('\n'));
            }
            
            return bValid;
        }]]></javascript>
</validator>

Step 3: Configure validation for your form in validation.xml:

<field property="password"
     depends="required,twofields">
  <msg
    name="required"
    key="errors.required"/>
  <msg
    name="twofields"
    key="errors.twofields"/>

  <arg0 key="userForm.password"/>
  <arg1
    key="userForm.confirmPassword"
  />
  <var>
    <var-name>secondProperty</var-name>
    <var-value>confirmPassword</var-value>
  </var>
</field>

Where errors.twofields=The '{0}' field has to have the same value as the '{1}' field. An alternative to Step 3 is to use XDoclet to generate your validation.xml. This requires (1) configuring XDoclet (of course) and (2) adding some @struts tags to your form on the setPassword method.

/**
 * Returns the password.
 * @return String
 *
 * @struts.validator type="required" msgkey="errors.required"
 * @struts.validator type="twofields" msgkey="errors.twofields"
 * @struts.validator-args arg1resource="userForm.password"
 * @struts.validator-args arg1resource="userForm.confirmPassword"
 * @struts.validator-var name="secondProperty" value="confirmPassword"
 */
public String setPassword() {
	return password;
}

I've sent this as a proposal to the struts-dev mailing list yesterday, but haven't heard anything yet. Enjoy!

Update: You'll need to update ValidationUtil.java and validator-rules-custom.xml for Struts 1.2. Full files: ValidationUtil.java and validation-rules-custom.xml.

Hibernate Upgade: 1.2.3 to 2.0 (My Story)

I'm upgrading struts-resume to Hibernate 2.0 tonight. I thought I'd blog my adventure and what I needed to change.

StrutsCX: Updated

I received the following e-mail from Berny, the author of StrutsCX.

Thanks Matt for hosting a StrutsCX sample. As the author of StrutsCX I do have some news for you: There is a new release with support of FOP/PDF, client side XSLT, XSL pipelineing and included Struts Validator. Check out http://it.cappuccinonet.com/strutscx.

Would be great if you could update on the latest version. Would you mind if I put a link on the StrutsCX Homepage to the Demo?

Thanks,
Berny

I actually upgraded my demo site when I received his e-mail on Saturday, but didn't get around to returning his e-mail until today. I dig the Validator stuff - only seems to be server-side though.

Easy Windows Authentication with Tomcat 4.x

The original blog entry by Robert Rasmussen has disappeared from the Internet (cannot find server) so I'm reproducing it here via Google's caching feature. I've made a few changes to pretty up the formatting, but that's about it.

I've been pulled into a little internal project, and one of the requirements is that users should be able to authenticate with their Windows login and password. IIS may or may not be in the picture.

Since the server is a Windows 2000 machine, this turns out to be extremely simple to do thanks to Andy Armstrong's JAAS login modules.

Once you've downloaded the login modules, set your classpath accordingly and make sure that the directory holding NTSystem.dll is in your %PATH% variable. Next, in the "Sample config" folder you'll find a tagish.login file and a java.security.sample file. The last line in the .sample file is significant, and it needs to be in your $JAVA_HOME/jre/lib/security folder (in a file named java.security). You should copy the tagish.login file there as well. If your users will always be logging into the same domain (which is the case in my situation), just set the defaultDomain property in tagish.login, like this:

NTLogin
{
    com.tagish.auth.win32.NTSystemLogin required returnNames=true returnSIDs=false defaultDomain=YOUR_DOMAIN_HERE;
};

Now, all you need to do to use Windows authentication in your webapps is to make one addition to your server.xml file (or to your specific context's definition):

<Realm className="org.apache.catalina.realm.JAASRealm" debug="99"
       appName="NTLogin"
       userClassNames="com.tagish.auth.win32.NTPrincipal"
       roleClassNames="com.tagish.auth.win32.NTPrincipal" />

I'll admit this config is slightly hokey. If you look at the Catalina JAASCallbackHandler (which is hardwired to JAASRealm), the way that I have the realm configured above pretty much counts on the User principal (in effect, the user name) being the first principal returned. This is evil, but it works. It would be nice if either Catalina allowed a pluggable CallbackHandler so that I could take advantage of the NTPrincipal.getType() method or if Andy's code returned subclasses of NTPrincipal like UserPrincipal or GroupPrincipal that I could specify in server.xml.

Once you've got this all configured, the various groups your users belong to equate to role names (so if I belong to an administrators group, my authenticated user will be in role "administrators"), and you can configure security in your webapps using these roles.

Comparative analysis of Struts vs. WebWork vs. Barracuda vs. Maverick?

Does anyone know of a comparative analysis of Struts, WebWork, Barracuda and Maverick. I'd love to find a paragraph or two that I could quote in my chapter on Struts. I'm not at all attempting to say that Struts is better than any of these - I just want to give a fair shake to each one. The reason I'm writing this chapter on Struts is because that's what I'm most familiar with.

Thanks,

Matt