Matt's Blog

New topic for jeff

mpayne — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 17:29:12 +0000

Here is my entry

Adding a hint to indicate links are external

mpayne — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 04:17:57 +0000

Good tip from — >
http://www.learningjquery.com/2008/08/quick-tip-dynamically-add-an-icon-for-external-links#more-103

$(document).ready(function() {
$(‘#extlinks a’).filter(function() {
return this.hostname && this.hostname !== location.hostname;
}).after(‘ ’);
});

Struts2 needs better Sitemesh Support

mpayne — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 16:26:51 +0000

If one looks at the sitemesh 2.3 example application, an application can have both Freemarker and JSP decorators.

In addition, one has very flexible usage of sitemesh tag libs from with a decorator.

For instance one can reference freemarker’s taglib within freemarker via.
<#assign page=JspTaglibs["/WEB-INF/sitemesh-page.tld"]>

This allows one to include decorated external content from within a freemarker decorator.
e.g. <@page.applyDecorator page=”/google.html” name=”panel” />

—> more complete example that works in Sitemesh “Vanilla”.

<#assign page=JspTaglibs["/WEB-INF/sitemesh-page.tld"]>

Freemarker Decorator - ${title}

${head}

${title}

${body}
<@page.applyDecorator page=”/google.html” name=”panel” />

There does not have look like there has been much movement one these issues. Once fixed I am hoping we can

Common maven Archetypes to keep a reference to

mpayne — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 18:20:57 +0000

Need to keep this site handy.

Eclipse P2= Epic Fail

mpayne — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 13:51:16 +0000

On both my windows work machine and Linux Desktop at home the p2 update manager was not able to cut it. Halfway though re-installing various I used to, I used to linked in via external folder(using the .link method), P2 got into an unresolvable dependency problem that pretty much locked it from doing any further updates. This happened twice(e.g. both machines).

By looking p2 removal note, I used the script provided in this bug issue.
You pretty much put downloaded eclipse archive(s) in the “source” folder and let the script do its thing.

With the p2 deleted from my eclipse installations, updates seem to go smooth again.

Given the popularity of the bug, I am going to guess that I am not the only one who is having a problem.

Dealing with unmapped fields in XStream

mpayne — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 15:10:33 +0000

There is a jira patch proposed here for handling XML. However that patch still needs to mature(see limitations) and gain acceptances.

What might not be obvious(a.k.a poorly documented), is that stock XStream already has the
capability to handling this for many use cases.

The test class com.thoughtworks.acceptance.CustomMapperTest
Contains a method that demonstrates such an example.

   public void testCanBeUsedToOmitUnexpectedElements() {
        String expectedXml = “” +
                “\n” +
                “ 1.0\n” +
                “ Joe\n” +
                “ XStream\n” +
                “”;

xstream = new XStream() {

protected MapperWrapper wrapMapper(MapperWrapper next) {
return new MapperWrapper(next) {

                    public boolean shouldSerializeMember(Class definedIn, String fieldName) {
                        return definedIn != Object.class ? super.shouldSerializeMember(definedIn, fieldName) : false;
                    }

                };
            }

        };
        xstream.alias(”software”, Software.class);

        Software out = (Software) xstream.fromXML(expectedXml);
        assertEquals(”Joe”, out.vendor);
        assertEquals(”XStream”, out.name);
    }

In the example above the Software class consists of properties.

public String vendor;
public String name;

Without the “MapperWrapper” the xml node “1.0” would generate an exception.

Several years later and NetBeans still doesn’t do it for me

mpayne — Wed, 28 May 2008 02:48:40 +0000

I was hoping it would. I would like to use it to play around with some ruby development. I still may. However, for Java development it seems like its missing some fairly basic functionality that I have become use to in eclipse.

One of the basic things I was trying to do is setup more than one run profile for a project. In this particular project there are several main class that take command line arguments. In eclipse setting such profiles is fairly trivial. However, netbeans seems like it only wants one per project or right click on a file “Run” with no arguments.

What makes jQuery a Good choice?

mpayne — Thu, 01 May 2008 20:21:26 +0000

Found this blog post on What Makes jQuery a Good Choice?
Thought this provided a pretty good summary.

There is a response here. I don’t have a problem with prototype, though I have latched on to jQuery(probably aided by its better documentation).

My bad experiences root from Dojo, its bloat and the way its was bundled with Struts2

Changing plugs on my 2001 Xterra

mpayne — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 15:03:55 +0000

@78800 miles I changes 5 of the six plugs. With daylight quickly disappearing, I decided to punt on doing the six plug till I found out some more information about it.

I found this guide, for changing plugs. I will have to take another crack at it when the weather is nice.

There is also this guide for changing the diff fuild.

Struts2 needs a new AliasInterceptor

mpayne — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 15:00:20 +0000

The original aliasInteceptor works fine for gluing together actions with different parameter names that need to be clued together. The limitation with the existing solution is that properties for both name an alias need to exist in the stack.

The world keeps evolving though. Developers make frequent use of richer javascript widgets such as jQuery’s flexgrid or jqGrid. These widgets can consume a specific JSON response and dish out their own unique set of named parameters to the server side. This presents a challenge when trying to leverage existing back end code that works great, it just doesn’t match up name wise to the parameters names coming in for a specific view.

Assume one has a some abstract PagingQueryAction(children just set query/queryCount implementations) that can accept incoming parameters of:

    int pageSize = 10; // results per page, default 10
    int currentPage;
    String filter;
    String sortorder = “asc”;
    String sortname = “”;

This works fine and dandy for some existing web views, but if one wanted to make use of FlexGrid, they would create setters named.

page 3

qtype name

query

rp 15

sortname iso

sortorder asc

jqGrid has yet another set of name parameters that its submits.

Making new implementations of things because some UI widgets is hardcoded to respond with a specfic set can be a PITA.

If there existed an AliasInterceptor that would allow one to adapt to these widget requirements people would have another solution at their disposal.

example of a mapping:

#{ ‘incomingName’ : ‘actionPropertyName’}
–>


                15
                #{ ‘query’ : ‘filter’, ‘rp’:'pageSize’,'page’:'currentPage’ }

                    json-pageSummary.ftl


                    json-pageSummary.ftl



If one wanted to adapt the paging action for jqGrid, they’d simply need to
supply an alias parameter of:
#{ ’searchString’ : ‘filter’,'page’:'currentPage’, ’sord’:’sortorder’, ’sidx’:’sortname’ }

(Note the freemarker template producing the JSON response may need to differ slighty as well)

This proposed alias interceptor looks for the alias within “invocationParameters” instead of the stack.
Perhaps we need to rename things. The old AliasInterceptor is name ChainingAliasInterceptor
and the new one is ParameterAliasInterceptor.
Or perhaps the alias functionality should just be built in to the existing ParameterInterceptor.

snippet below
@Override
public String intercept(ActionInvocation invocation) throws Exception {

ActionConfig config = invocation.getProxy().getConfig();
ActionContext ac = invocation.getInvocationContext();

    // get the action’s parameters
    final Map configParameters = config.getParams();
    final Map invocationParameters = ac.getParameters();

if (configParameters.containsKey(aliasesKey)) {

        String aliasExpression = (String) configParameters.get(aliasesKey);
        OgnlValueStack stack = (OgnlValueStack) ac.getValueStack();
        Object obj = stack.findValue(aliasExpression);

        if (obj != null && obj instanceof Map) {
        // override
        Map aliases = (Map) obj;
        Iterator itr = aliases.entrySet().iterator();
        while (itr.hasNext()) {
            Map.Entry entry = (Map.Entry) itr.next();
            String alias = entry.getKey().toString();
            String setterName = (String) entry.getValue();

            Object value = invocationParameters.get(alias);
            if (null != value) {
            stack.setValue(setterName, value);

            }
        }
        } else {
        log.debug(”invalid alias expression:” + aliasesKey);
        }
    }

return invocation.invoke();
}