Raible Designs

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.

String Tag Library 1.0.1

Jakarta's String Tag Library version 1.0.1 was released about a month ago. I found out today. I'm telling you here because you might be able to use it if you need to manipulate Strings for your UI. The only tag I'm using (from this library) <s:replace>, which can be very handy indeed. For instance, a common task with JSPs is the need to replace a new-line (\n) with an HTML new-line (<br />). With the String TL, it's easy (JSP 2.0 Syntax):

<s:replace replace="NL" with="&lt;br /&gt;NL" 
    newlineToken="NL">${myForm.text}</s:replace>

DBUnit and CLEAN_INSERT

A few days ago I was trying to hook DBUnit into my test process so that my database would contain the same data before my JUnit tests are run. I had some issues getting it to work and later found that there was a bug in DBUnit's ant task. Basically, it was not allowing me to disable batch statements. Anyway, it's been fixed in CVS and now my JUnit tests (all run through a common test-module task) depend on a "db-load" task. Pretty cool and awful easy to configure. I'll be updating struts-resume/appfuse in the next few days to contain this slick trick. In the meantime, here's my db-load target. The file sample-data.xml is also built using Ant via DBUnit's "export" task.

<target name="db-load" description="Loads database from exported DBUnit file">
    <property name="operation" value="CLEAN_INSERT"/>
    <property name="file" value="metadata/sql/sample-data.xml"/>
    <dbunit driver="${hibernate.connection.driver_class}"
        supportBatchStatement="false"
        url="${hibernate.connection.url}"
        userid="${hibernate.connection.username}"
        password="${hibernate.connection.password}"
        schema="${hibernate.connection.schema}">
        <operation type="${operation}" src="${file}" format="xml"/>
    </dbunit>
</target>

[ANNOUNCE] Display Tag Library 0.8.5 Released!

I spent some time yesterday assembling the release notes, enhancing the build process, and updating the documentation for the display tag library. The result is a new release!

This release is primarily a bug-fixing release and also represents the first release from the project at SourceForge. If you would like to have a say in the future direction of this project, please join one of the mailing lists. [Release Notes] [Download]

Enjoy! I updated two projects with this new release today and it helped eliminate a lot of "workaround" code I had. The next thing I'd like to see - the ability to specify ResourceBundle keys for column titles.

Update: Ed Hill has updated this project's homepage with the latest examples and documentation.

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.

RE: Sony Ericsson Communicam

After a bit of research and a couple comments/e-mails, I've found that there's a few different models of Communicams. There's the MCA-25 ($100), the MC-68 ($70) and the MCA-10. What's the diff?

Struts Resume on Tomcat 4.1.18 LE

I discovered some issues with struts-resume 0.6. Thanks to Thomas Fabbricante for the tip. The first bug I found is that you need to change the following line in your database.properties file:

hibernate.connection.url = jdbc:mysql://localhost:3306/struts-resume?autoReconnect=true   

to:

hibernate.connection.url = jdbc:mysql://localhost:3306/resume?autoReconnect=true

As for running struts-resume on Tomcat LE, you'll first need to put mail.jar and activation.jar in $CATALINA_HOME/common/lib - or you can comment out the mail-related stuff. These files include metadata/web/struts-resume.xml (JNDI Mail Session) and web/WEB-INF/classes/log4j.properties (SMTPAppender configuration). Then it all seems to work great! Sweet - that was a lot easier than I thought it'd be. I'll release a 0.6.1 in order to update the database.properties.sample to have a valid db url.

Update: I've uploaded the files for 0.6.1, you can download them here. Alos, here's a demo and a project link for your clicking pleasure.

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.

Flash and J2EE and Apache 2.0.44

Erik hooks us up with some small but cool headlines on this early Tuesday morning.

Enhance your J2EE presentation layer. Flash Remoting introduces an alternative. Apache 2.0.44. A security and bug fix release.

While you're here (if you are actually viewing this post through a browser), check out the cool help tip on the picture of red rocks. Click and read. To see how I did this, check webfx.nu.