Raible Designs

The Verge Web Framework

After reading this post on the Server Side, I'd hate to be the guy who invented Verge. He's getting pounded like a rabbit during mating season!

Personally, I don't think there's anything wrong with another web framework. Competition is good. The funny thing is that I've never had a need to migrate away from Struts. I do admit that the IoC (Inversion of Control) in WebWork looks cool, but I don't have a need. After reading most of Rod Johnson's J2EE Design and Development, I do understand IoC (I didn't have a clue before), but I still don't see how I need it. I've never run into a problem with Struts that I couldn't solve. Maybe it helps that I've written my own app to make Struts development simpler.

Even though I do like Struts, and I do find it easy to develop with, I also plan on stuffing my head in a couple of books and learning all about Spring, Tapestry and WebWork. Why? Mainly because I'm a fool and I can't be happy just sitting on the couch and watching TV (which would probably help my blood pressure and make my family happier). I'm a fool because I'd rather learn than relax. Back to the point - why do I want to learn these "big 3?" To be honest, it's primarily because some big names (and folks I'd consider friends) are saying they're cool and they'll make my job easier. If only I wasn't so easily influenced...

What I hate about all of this is that as soon as I decide to integrate Spring into AppFuse, it becomes more complicated. Yes, an XML BeanFactory file is more complicated than Interface i = new InterfaceImpl(), especially for newbies.

Furthermore, I'm willing to bet that I'll end up writing workarounds for issues I encounter in Tapestry and WebWork. I'll even put my money where my mouth is - if your framework doesn't require me to write any workarounds, I'll donate $100 to the project. Heck, if it really is that cool - I'll donate money regardless of workarounds.

The worst part is that there's really no reason to convert my Struts webapp to these newer, cooler frameworks. About the only good reason is so I can say "I know the XXX Framework." I doubt XXX Framework will make anything easier, but it certainly might make my webapp a whole lot cooler.

AppFuse on DB2 and WebSphere

I did some trial-and-error this morning, and with the help of a lot of handy-dandy unit tests, I got [Appuse working on DB2|AppFuseOnDB2]. I learned that I need to figure out how to create a database with page size = 8 by default - anyone got a SQL script to create DB2 databases (with reasonably sized table spaces) lying around?

Next up: Getting AppFuse running on WebSphere 5.1, this should be fun. Especially considering that they only seem to support .ear files, not .war files. I've only glanced at the thing for 5 minutes - any advice/links would be awesome.

Should I buy a PowerBook or a PC?

I received the following e-mail from Jason Boutwell a couple of days ago (published here with his permission).

I'm in the market for a new development laptop, either a P4 or a G4. I see from some of your older blog posts that you went through the same thing last year. First you went with a P4, then ended up with a PowerBook, so you've done both.

Since we seem to have similar professional interests (jobs where you BYOL, developing J2EE apps with tools like Hibernate, Struts, XDoclet, IDEA, etc.), you seem an ideal person to ask.

It's as simple as this: you can't beat the form-factor of the PowerBook. The fact that it's so small and light really make it a killer laptop. iPhoto, iMovie and iTunes are all killer apps and make digital photography and video so much easer. However, as a development environment - it sucks. It's sooooo much slower that my Windows XP desktop (that only cost $800).

My perspective of the speed difference might not be fair though - desktops (most likely) will always be faster than laptops. However, to run "ant deploy" for AppFuse takes 23 seconds on my 2.6 GHz CPU / 1.5 GB RAM desktop and 36 seconds on the PowerBook (1.33 GHz CPU / 1 GB RAM). It is difficult for me to develop on the Mac after developing on my PC for awhile, it's just so much slower. That being said, I don't think I'd be happy with a PC laptop - they're too ugly and bulky (for the 17" models) and don't offer the slick digital hub integration that the Mac does.

Don't expect the PowerBook to be a desktop replacement. And if you've never used a Mac, prepare to be frustrated. I've been a Windows user for 10+ years and getting used to the way a Mac works is not easy. It's been most frustrating for me because I can navigate around and do stuff on Windows really fast - it's almost like second nature. On the Mac, I have to think about how to do stuff. I think that Mac or Linux users migrating to Windows would feel the same frustration.

Above all else, you need to experience a Mac first hand. Go to your local Apple Store and play around with one. Download your favorite IDE and checkout an open source project from SourceForge. Download and install Ant and try compiling the project. You're gonna love the feel of the Mac, but you might find it's a bit slower than you're used to.

The one problem with not buying a PowerBook is that you'll always long for one. ;-) Would I buy a PowerBook again? Definitely. Would I give up my Windows desktop for a Mac desktop? No. Why should I give up all my years of becoming an efficient Windows user to be a slow-ass frustrated Mac user - it just doesn't make sense.

The Battle of the GZip Filters

When I first added a Compression/GZip filter to AppFuse, I used the one from Roller, which I believe Lance found in this book. This has worked fairly well since I added it in July last year. When I discovered that there were issues with it on Resin, I chaulked it up as "no big deal" since I don't use Resin anyway. But yesterday, when I discovered that it stopped my apps from displaying my 403 <error-code> page, that was the last straw. I remembered seeing the "Two Servlet Filters Every Web Application Should Have" article on ONJava.com about a different implementation, so decided to download the source and try it out.

I quickly discovered that this Filter does work on Resin, so that's quite a bonus. I've had issues getting Roller to work on Resin with the Filter enabled, so I might have to replace Roller's CompressionFilter. However, I did still have to change a few things to convince this Filter to satisfy my needs.

Here are a few things I discovered about this GZIPFilter vs. Roller's CompressionFilter:

• Don't download the GZIPFilter from the article. There is a newer version of the code. Not much has changed, save for an almost completely re-written GZipResponseStream.java file. This one supposedly does better handling of large files.
• This Filter has the same problem I experienced with Roller's CompressionFilter: JSP pages don't finish rendering when running my Canoo WebTests. I'm assuming that this is because the buffer hasn't finished spitting out HTML. I ended up writing a new isGZIPSupported() method (in GZIPFilter.java) to do the check for GZip support. This allows my webtests to run smoothly by disabling the filter for HttpUnit.
• This Filter shares another issue that I found in the CompressionFilter yesterday. When my webapp returns an HttpServletResponse.SC_FORBIDDEN error code (from trying to access a method that denies the users role), the Filter suppresses the error and the user is not served up the 403 error page defined in my web.xml. To fix this, I overrode sendError() in GZIPResponseWrapper.java and added a check for this error code in the getWriter() method.

Overall, I'm pleased with this code because I love the concept of GZip Filtering, and now it's not causing any conflicts in my app or targeted appservers.

GZIPFilter.isGZIPSupported(HttpServletRequest):

GZIPResponseWrapper.sendError(int, java.lang.String):

GZIPResponseWrapper.getWriter():

Hacked (Again)

This morning, a reader was kind enough to let me know that this website has been hacked.

The web pages at http://raibledesigns.com/tomcat/ with information about Apache, Tomcat and load balancing have been defaced.

I've contacted my sys admin and will hopefully get these files restored in the next few hours. I could do it myself, but I want to 1) see if this is a widespread problem (i.e. not just me) and 2) make sure all my defaced files are replaced. I got hacked a couple of months ago too, and I believe the same files were defaced. If it's another ISP issue, vs. someone logging in as me - it might be time to make the leap.

[IDEA 4.0] Favorite Feature = Package View

My favorite feature of IDEA 4.0 is the package view. Since I keep my src and test trees separate, but their package structures identical, this is the view I've been longing for. Hopefully it's possible with Eclipse and I just haven't figured it out. What it does is allow me to see tests right next to my classes. In Eclipse, I have to constantly navigate between the two trees to edit tests and such.

Does this mean I like IDEA better than Eclipse? No, it simply means that I wish Eclipse had this feature, and I appreciate IDEA for adding it.

A little EL Lovin' for the DisplayTag

Tim McCune submitted a patch for the Display Tag Library to add Expression Language support. I committed it today, along with a few other enhancements. You can read more on the displaytag-devel mailing list. Tim's patch was a nice clean approach to adding EL support. He just subclassed the existing tags and then evaluated the expressions. All I did to integrate was to create an "el" package under "tags" and added an additional .tld file. So there's really nothing that's taken away from the original tag library, and if you want EL support, you simply need to use the "*-el.tld" in your web.xml or change your URI to "http://jakarta.apache.org/taglibs/display-el". Of course, you'll need to include JSTL's JARs (standard.jar and jstl.jar) in your WEB-INF/lib to make this work. This patch included the ability to specify a titleKey attribute - a much asked-for feature.

I like Tim's approach so much, I might have to use it for Struts Menu. It's a slick way of supporting JSP 1.1 containers, and adding optional EL support for JSP 1.2 containers. I haven't had any feedback from the dev team, but hopefully this will make it into the next release.

Roller Tips: Titles as Permalinks and Category Display

A few more tips for your Roller blog. You can edit your "_day" template to make your titles permalinks. I just added this feature to this site - try it now by clicking on this title for any post. To enable this feature, simply wrap your $entry.title element with a permalink URL. For example, change <b>$entry.title</b> to the following:

<a href="$baseURL/page/$userName?anchor=$entry.anchor" 
   style="font-style: bold; color: black">$entry.title</a>

Adjust the style as appropriate for your theme. The second tip is to add the ability for users to see the category you've posted to. Simply add the following under the $entry.title entry to display the category name in the top right corner of the post:

<span class="dateStamp" style="float: right">
    Category: $entry.category.name</span>

Again, the CSS for the span may depend on your theme. Lastly, if you click on a permalink for your blog and you're not routed to the specific entry you expect, for the love of God add the following before your $entry.title.

<a name="$entry.anchor" id="$entry.anchor"></a>

Send a Fax from Java?

I'm looking for a (hopefully free) way to send a Fax from a Java program. I think the easiest way would be to send an e-mail to some sort of service that processes it and faxes it the recipient. Any suggestions?

Useless Tag Library?

Inspired by this post, I wrote a tag library to expose the fields of my Contants.java class to my JSPs. It allows a user to specify a single variable using:

<appfuse:constants var="USER_KEY"/>

Or all variables:

<appfuse:constants/>

By default, it exposes the values from the Contants class imported into the tag library, but also allows a className variable to specify a different class. The main reason I wrote this was to prove it was possible. The second reason was to get around importing my Contants class (and using <%=Contants.VARNAME%>).

Interested? Read More ...