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Let’s try…

Java is not working.

Dammit!

Now I have to waste half an hour for discovering the problem and solve it.

Let’s see, How do I use Java with the Google Chrome browser?

Chrome and Linux
Starting with Chrome version 35, NPAPI (Netscape Plug-in API) support was removed for the Linux platform. For more information, see Chrome and NPAPI (blog.chromium.org).

Firefox is the recommended browser for Java on Linux.

No problem, let’s use Firefox. But…

Java Security

Sometimes I miss Windows and its closed environment.

Don’t give up. In the error page, the details shows the Java Console:

Java Plug-in 11.40.2.25

And the more information link leads to the instructions to handle the Java Security via the Control Panel. Including a link to the configuration of the Exception Site List.

But…

Find the Java Control Panel
» Windows
» Mac OS X

Where is the Java Control Panel on Linux?!!!

Keep calm and open the Terminal:

$ whereis java
java: /usr/bin/java
$ ls -la /usr/bin/java
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 22 may  8  2014 /usr/bin/java -> /etc/alternatives/java
$ cd /usr/lib/jvm/java-8-oracle/jre/bin
$ ls
ControlPanel  javaws.real  keytool  policytool   servertool
java          jcontrol     orbd     rmid         tnameserv
javaws        jjs          pack200  rmiregistry  unpack200
$ ./ControlPanel

Now, you can follow the instructions:

Java Control Panel

Go to the Security tab:

Java Control Panel: Security tab

Press Edit Site List…

Exception Site List

Add the location:

Exception Site List: add URL

Ok. Ok.

Now re-try:

I’m really tired

I’ve spent too much time with you, so I accept the risk

Horray!

Piece of cake.

It’s been fun and annoying at the same time.

See an example:

Terminal kermit-green and black on Ubuntu

But now let’s see what tools I want to have installed in any computer I use for my daily work as Java EE developer, regardless the particular project.

As a side note, I alternate Operating Systems whenever I can. Windows is the prefered for most of the companies. I like Ubuntu and I love my Mac Book Pro, so I make the effort of using all of them. Besides, it allows me to test if my applications are really WORA.

• A Java IDE: Eclipse (Spring Tool Suite), NetBeans or IntelliJ IDEA. Now I’m trying all of them just for fun.
• Text editor: Sublime Text is my choice, but in Windows I used to love UltraEdit and I use a lot Notepad++.
• A web browser, mainly Chrome. I use Firefox a lot too, and from time to time, my beloved Opera. There’s also time for IE on Windows and Safari on OS X.
• A password manager: KeePass or 1Password on OS X.
• I love to use the terminal. On Windows I use Console 2.
• Java
• Spring Framework
• Maven
• Git. I love GitHub.
• YouTube. It provides me tutorials, music and some fun when I need a little rest.

I also have to mention Google and stackoverflow, nowadays I can’t imagine to work without them.

And what about application servers? Since I want to title the POST “10 tools…” they fall from the list. But to talk about a little bit of them, in each project I have to use the application server in which the application will be deployed, but I always use Tomcat for local tests. For anything beyond servlets and JSPs I use open source projects (ActiveMQ if I need JMS, for instance). There is always a targeted server in development environment, so I’ve never used GlassFish or TomEE, but I want to try WildFly.

tomcat 7 org.apache.jasper.JasperException: The absolute uri: http://java.sun.com/jsp/jstl/core cannot be resolved in either web.xml or the jar files deployed with this application

You can dive into our beloved stackoverflow.com to find out that Tomcat doesn’t include JSTL,not even in Tomcat 8, in spite that they have an implementation of the JSP Standard Tag Library (JSTL) specification, versions 1.0, 1.1 and 1.2.

Of course, I have the correct taglib in the JSPs (note the /jsp within the URI):

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

I don’t want to include the JSTL jar included in the war, because it works in GlassFish (time to move to this server, or even try WildFly). Find here some interesting instructions if it is not your case.

Thus, it’s time to copy the JSTL.jar (available almost anywhere)

In NetBeans, you can go to Services (Window -> Services), find the Servers entry, right click in Apache Tomcat 8.0.3.0 to see its properties. This is the long way to discover where Tomcat is installed. In my case: /usr/local/apache-tomcat-8.0.3.

So I copied one of the available maven dependencies that I used to have and after restarting Tomcat, everything went OK.

$ cd /usr/local/apache-tomcat-8.0.3
$ sudo cp ~/.m2/repository/javax/servlet/jstl/1.2/jstl-1.2.jar .

But it’s possible to use another framework easily thanks to the existing binding process for most of the popular frameworks.

Log4J

If you want to use the classic and popular framework it’s very easy, since Log4J can be used directly with JCL (I’d rather commons-logging, BTW)

Just add the dependency, no need of excluding anything from Spring. For instance, in a maven project:

<dependencies>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-context</artifactId>
            <version>4.0.6.RELEASE</version>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>log4j</groupId>
            <artifactId>log4j</artifactId>
            <version>1.2.17</version>
        </dependency>

Don’t forget to put a configuration file ( log4j.properties or log4j.xml) in the root of the classpath.

SLF4J with Logback

These two frameworks have became my favourite ones for Java logging.

However, in order to use them, you have to make a little bit more changes.

1. Exclude CL from Spring
2. Bridging legacy logging APIs, that is, redirect log4j and java.util.logging calls to SLF4J.
3. Include the SLF4J API dependency
4. Include the Logback dependency

Since Logback implements SLF4J natively, there is no need of further binding.

<dependency>
            <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-context</artifactId>
            <version>4.0.6.RELEASE</version>
            <exclusions>
                <exclusion>
                    <groupId>commons-logging</groupId>
                    <artifactId>commons-logging</artifactId>
                </exclusion>
            </exclusions>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.slf4j</groupId>
            <artifactId>jcl-over-slf4j</artifactId>
            <version>1.7.7</version>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.slf4j</groupId>
            <artifactId>log4j-over-slf4j</artifactId>
            <version>1.7.7</version>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.slf4j</groupId>
            <artifactId>slf4j-api</artifactId>
            <version>1.7.7</version>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>ch.qos.logback</groupId>
            <artifactId>logback-classic</artifactId>
            <version>1.1.2</version>
        </dependency>

Finally, you can configure logback with a logback.groovy in the classpath, a logback-test.xml in the classpath, a logback.xml in the classpath or using the BasicConfigurator.

Spring provides instructions to use SLF4J with Log4J and there is a great explanation for the bindings at SLF4J logging with Log4J and JCL

Now I want to highlight three of the books because they are my reference reading when I work with Spring, and I’ve been using Spring since 2006, being 1.2.8 the first release I work with. Since then, I use the framework on a daily basis.

Spring in action

I own the first and the (upcoming) fourth editions. It’s a very funny and well explained book that provides the basic knowledge about the framework itself and their main concepts: dependency injection and bean factory, including simple but representative samples.

It’s the recommended book if you want to learn from the square one the Spring framework ecosystem.

Pro Spring

I own the second edition (aka Pro Spring 3) and the upcoming third edition.

It’s a very useful step by step explanation of all the Spring concepts, including a sample project that worth it.

It has the best explanation of concepts like AOP and data access. Besides, it has a chapter for MyBatis that I haven’t found elsewhere.

I recommend it if you want a deep knowledge of the framework and if you have enough time to devote to reading it.

Spring recipes: A Problem-Solution Approach

It’s my favourite Spring book.

I own the three editions of the book and I love its approach to the framework.

It’s not a book no to read from the beginning to the end, instead, the best way to read it is to use the index and find the topic for what you want to use Spring.

Just read a single chapter and you will know how to use the Spring for a particular problem that you have to face.

But the best is that every chapter introduces the way that you would use Java if you haven’t had Spring framework. You can learn Java by reading this books (for instance, I used this book to learn JMX)

It’s the recommended book to be used during the build of a real system for addressing the topics or problems that you have when you’re developing.

An exciting question, indeed.

The general context

He’s working for a company since 2008. To work for a company for a long time has a lot of pros, but a couple of drawbacks, being one of them a little bit worrying: the chance of obsolescence.

If you’re using the same environment along the years, let’s say IBM products, you’ll loose the chance to discover other approaches, for instance Oracle solutions, or even better, open source projects.

Even worst, if the company are not willing to upgrade their products (that is very reasonable if there are budget concerns) or their libraries (that is really unwise, or the direct consequence that you don’t have a good testing process) suddenly you find yourself that you’re out of the market.

This is not really a problem as long as your current technology is the best technology for your needs, but sooner or later you have to face to the technical debt (a really interesting topic that you should care about). This day will happen when you’re spending more time in fixing issues than in adding new features to your software.

The problem continues if you try to reinventing the wheel or if you don’t realize that the plane is already invented. It’s 21st century, you can fly with the appropriate machine.

The particular concern

As I said at the beginning of this entry, he is a Java EE developer that uses Spring Framework in his daily work. But he still has to program for WebSphere Application Server 6.1 (a.k.a. WAS 6.1, that is Java EE 1.4 compliance using Java 5 SE) using Spring framework 3 (2.5 for some projects)

At the time of this writing, Java EE 7 is already released and the current version of Spring Framework is 4.0.6. Not mentioning that Java 8 is now with us.

Thus, he wants to get up to date for improving the way he writes code that will be profitable for the company he works for.

I appreciate his request, because I’ll have to review what I really know.

Well. Enough introduction. In coming posts I will write about my particular thoughts of what you can do to know Java a little better.

Next, a summary of the topics that I want to talk about:

Suggested topics

• Java SE

The Java EE platform is built on top of the Java SE platform. The Java EE platform provides a particular API for server programming. So,it’s very reasonable to have a good knowledge of Java SE.

In particular, I assume that you have basic knowledge of Java.

But if you want to improve, you need to know the new features that have been published during the last years:

• Java 5

Generics, enhanced loops, autoboxing, enums (I love them), varargs, static import, and maybe the most important: annotations (they change our life as Java developers)

• Java 6

JDBC 4.0, Support for the Web Services stack and XML processing, and many more.

• Java 7

A quite handy features for developing like Strings in switch statements, Binary integral literals and underscores in numeric literals, Multi-catch and more precise rethrow, diamond operator, try-with-resources, Simplified varargs method invocation.

As Java 8 has been released very recently, you can skip it for a little while.

• Java Concurrency

Why a specific section for Java SE Concurrency?

Because in Java SE 5 everything changed. Concurrency in Java was improved in a way that provides a more natural approach to multi-threading (I had great joy with two of the enhancement of Java 5: Generics and Callable) and at the same time it avoids the long-term errors that the concurrency library had: the method Thread.stop() (actually, it already exists, and I don’t know why)

Not only you need to try not using Thread.start() anymore, try ExceutorService instead, you also need to know about Future and the new way to synchronize threads for understanding new features for concurrency of Java EE 7.

Besides, it’s really an improvement to know about Executor Framework in Java.

There are a couple of good Java Concurrency tutorials:

• Vogella’s Java concurrency (multi-threading) – Tutorial
• Jenkov’s Java Concurrency / Multithreading Tutorial and Java Concurrency Utilities
• Java EE 7

In spite of there are only a few Java EE 7 compatible servers, it’s time to know about the exciting new features that will allow you to create better and faster applications:

• HTML5 (WebSockets and JSON)
• Simplified JMS 2.0 API
• Batch applications
• Concurrency utilities (at last JSR 236 is finished)
• Context Dependency Injection (CDI. Yeah, introduced in Java EE 6, it has been enhanced to compete with Spring’s @Autowired)
• Java API for RESTful Web Services (JAX-RS) 2.0 (webservices, clients and more)
• Servlet 3.1
• Spring Projects

I want to create particular blog entries for each Spring project that I’ve worked with, but in the meantime, the best way to getting started would be to take a look to the guides that they provide.

• Other technologies good to know

Since you’re using Java for writing programs to build solutions for business, it’s good to know the new environments that provides modern approaches for the current challenges.

You have to take a look to NoSQL, being MongoDB the most popular, with good documentation, including programming with Java.

The next step should be Big Data. Hadoop is the project that you have to pay attention for, but it’s so big, with several related projects, and so complex, that I still haven’t found a good introductory tutorial.

Finally, Asynchronous I/O, that is the new solution for a problem that has been created by the new economy based on the internet of the things, that is, the need of handle scaling transactions from hundreds, thousands, even millions of users and the requirement of high-performance, high-speed for these operations.

There are several new frameworks that are worth it: Akka, Vert.x, Reactor (a foundational framework for asynchronous applications on the JVM, by Spring, but it’s not part of the portfolio) and Node.js (yes, it’s JavaScript)

That’s all for now. I hope my colleague finds this entry interesting and I wish it is the first of a series of articles.

Let’s see.

I’m a Java EE developer, so I have to work with HTML/CSS/JavaScript/JQuery on a regular basis. But I’m not a web designer. Actually, I’m really bad at designing.

But I love programming and one day I discovered Yeoman (the web’s scaffolding tool for modern webapps, as they claim)

The problem here is the usual when you discover a new tool, suddenly you need to know a lot of related stuff. That is, Node.js, NPM, Grunt, Bower, and a lot of intimidating names.

Youtube to the rescue. Find this video “Yeoman tutorial – Master Front-End Workflow with Yeomaman, Grunt and Bower” and you will have your website up and running in a few minutes.

That’s not totally true. I’ve had to download jpegtran-bin and I’ve spent a lot of time with minor details with some layouts.

Well, it’s been funny to work as web developer by editing my HTML files, testing them locally (with the server created by grunt server) and then uploading the files to the server (after creating a minified site with grunt build)

And here it is: Malsolo website.

What does ‘malsolo’ mean?

Malsolo is a name that is the composition of two Spanish words: “mal” and “solo”. They mean bad and alone respectively. So, the meaning is more or less “it’s bad to be alone”.

Actually, the real story for the name is that I like a lot Star Wars, I mean the first three movies, specially the return of the Jedi, and I chose “Jansolo” as a user account for hotmail. Well, jansolo69, since the original was not available. “Jansolo” it’s more or less the Spanish pronunciation for Han Solo. I presume you know who is Solo in the saga.

On the other hand, I like as well the movie “Serenity“, and the “Firefly” TV series. The main character was Malcom Reynolds, or Mal.

Well, it isn’t so misterious at the end.

About the blog name

I’m a Java EE programmer (another day I’ll dedicate a moment to explain what’s that) There are a lot of programs, libraries, apis and frameworks involved, but one of the most famous, and one of the most recommended, is log for Java or log4J.

It’s a simple, powerfull and easy configurable library for creating logs within your Java program. Logs is one of the foundation of any program development, no matter which language you use to do so.

Again, I pretend to be funny with the name, because my first goal with this blog is to put down in words my experiences with the Java language programming.

Let’s see in next posts.

Sooner or later I’ll start real blogging!