Haven’t we ignored such herds before? (remember demands of referendum/freedom?). If Anna’s group is able to arm-twist a government, then tomorrow we should be ready for other such “civic societies” coming up with their own sets of demands, we are opening a pandora’s box really. Imagine the mining mafia coming in thousands and forcing a reinstatement of their favorite leader. IMHO, it should be OK in a democratic setup to debate, oppose, resist, pressurize against, differ or agree with other’s views but we cannot ignore that ultimately the laws should be made by the elected representatives of the nation and not by the members of society, who lead but won’t contest elections to join active politics. When they are sitting on the fence we don’t even know which political party/ideology they might be representing, or whose business interests might be behind them. Why is not a single MP or MLA part of Anna’s team? (we cannot just say that none o the politicians want this bill, that’s an easy way out. Anna’s team should have the capability to convince the parliamentarians, they cannot wage a war to get their things done.)

PMD comes with a set of handy rules, which more than often are sufficient for any project. In fact in many cases we would probably need to exclude some default rules being enforced, to avoid noise in the reports. However, in real life projects you also need some custom rules.

Though custom PMD rules can be written as Java code as well, this article talks about writing them using XPath queries, which is evidently an easier way to adopt. With XPath, we simply write a rule by specifying a code sample and an XPath query to verify that the violation is indeed detected. Of course PMD doesn’t apply the query on the Java code itself but rather on the Abstract Syntax Tree, which is a tree representation of the source code. More details on the AST can be found here.

Thankfully PMD also comes with a visual editor for writing the rules. This tool can be run using the designer.bat under /bin. If you are using Eclipse and have the PMD plugin installed then the designer is accessible under Eclipse Preferences > PMD. Lets now try writing a custom PMD rule. The particular rule we plan to write to enforce the use of StringBuilder instead of StringBuffer (where there are no concurrency issues, of course). For this we first write a code snippet, as follows, in the “Source code” box of the designer.

public class SomeClass {
     //Consider using StringBuilder, if there
     //are no concurrency issues expected
     StringBuffer sb = new StringBuffer("c");

     public void someMethod(){
         //Some code here
         StringBuffer sb = new StringBuffer("d");
     }
}

The next task is to write the XPath expression. Before we do that, we press the “Go” button under “XPath Query” section first. This will generated the corresponding AST in the box and help us write the query well. And since we haven’t written any XPath query as of now, the result section below the “XPath Query” section says “XPath Query field is empty”. Now, we want to detect the presence of a StringBuffer variable, whether at class or method level. If you see the generated AST we can easily detect that the following XPath expression will find the matching lines. We use the @Image attribute to specify the name we want to detect.

//AllocationExpression/ClassOrInterfaceType
[@Image='StringBuffer']

If we press the “Go” button again, the results of running the XPath query are displayed in the box below the “XPath Query” section. In our code we should get two matches, and we should see the exact matched strings if we click on the individual lines in the result Pane. We can refine the XPath query this way till we get the exact matches.

Lets now try to write another custom rule. This particular one will report a violation if the developer writes any non static method is a Utils class. We don’t want the Utils class to be instantiated for its methods to be used. Here, we assume that all our Utils class names end with the word “Utils”. As we did last time, we first insert the following code snippet:

public class MyUtils {
      //Any Utility class ending with "Utils" (note, its
      //not "Util") is regarded as a Utils class
      public static void myStaticUtilMethod(String x){
          //this is a static method as expected
      }

      public void myNonStaticUtilMethod(){
          //this method should be static and violates our rule
      }
}

The XPath query in this case, as follows, is quite straight forward. We are only checking for Classes (and skipping Interfaces) that end with the suffix “Utils” and then verify if there are any non-static methods in there. Click the Go button and it should detect a violation as our class does have a non-static method. To verify, change the method signature for myNonStaticUtilMethod() to make it static and press “Go” again. PMD should not report any violation now, confirming that our rule works.

//ClassOrInterfaceDeclaration
[@Interface='false'
and (ends-with(@Image, 'Utils'))
and (count(.//MethodDeclaration) > count(.//MethodDeclaration[@Static='true']))
]

The last step in getting our custom defined rules being used by PMD is to add them to a ruleset. Details on creating your own ruleset are provided here. The designer again will help you in creating the rule XMLs that you can easily copy paste in your ruleset file.

Lets create one for the last custom rule we created. To do this click Actions > Create Rule XML on the designer. You will get a pop-up which will ask you to specify the rule name and any description that goes along. For our ruleset we use the rule name as “OnlyStaticMethodsInUtilsClass” and the message text as “In Utility (ending with ‘Utils’) classes, all methods should be declared static.” which will show up as tool-tip on the IDE with violation report. We may also specify a description. Press “Create Rule XML” button and the designer will do so for you (see the screen grab below).

Note that the designer specifies the class for the rule as “net.sourceforge.pmd.rules.XPathRule” on its own. The rule priority is specified at default value of 3, but you can change that. PMD users would know that priority figures of 1 = error, high priority, 2 = error, normal priority, 3 = warning, high priority, 4 = warning, normal priority and 5 = information.

Before PMD could be used with Eclipse it must be imported in your IDE. On Eclipse Preferences under “PMD” select “Import Rule Set”, browse to the ruleset file you saved the custom rules to and you would notice them being imported. Of course, we can use the ruleset from the command line as well from our build script.

With our custom rules, our favourite code quality check tool is now even more useful.

You may see the plugin in action here.

If you wish to display a custom photograph to go with the Author’s Profile you may install the User Photo. In absence of this plugin the ‘Author Spotlight” widget will fall-back to displaying the gravatar associated with the user.

Update (Oct 2010): From V2.0 onwards this plugin also supports the excellent “Co-Authors Plus” plugin. If your blog posts have multiple authors we recommend using the co-authors plus plugin. When this plugin is used “Author Spotlight” will display all co-author profiles on the sidebar for the blog-post.

Note that using either the “User Photo” or the  “Co-Author Plus” plugin is purely optional and our widget will work fine even without these plugins, but they are nice to have.

For installation instructions and details on the widget please visit the widget page on WordPress. If you face any issues with the plugin or have any suggestion/feature requests please do submit there at this place.

Author Profile WordPress Widget

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They say that life begins at forty. May be that’s true, but everything else starts to wear out or fall out. Why, I’m still too young to consider that, but God knows why, I feel like getting older than my age. Premature..err..ageing?

So you ask what evidence? Mere faazil dost..there are three signs of old age. The first is loss of memory, the other two..I forget. The case is not so serious though like some of my other friends who sometimes find themselves on the landing of the stairs and can’t remember whether they were on their way up or way down.

So what does a married man like me who took to his heel from his 6 years young ‘illustrious’ sales career grunting over in IT with colleagues fit to address him ‘uncle’. Uncle sam? Or the temptation to surf the Net (that ultimately lets you gain so much weight, because at almost every site they give you a “Cookie”) or was it the inability to decide regarding ‘com’ or zyada. The decision to jump in the IT-bandwagon, clever or not, apna raam thinks with Rayben clarity that philhaal work is a lot less fun-and fun is a lot more work (so now you know folks why I did a bunk from parties and never even stroll in the vicinity of Basketball stadium). Imman se, is umra main caution is the only thing I care to exercise.

Still people envy me? I could smell that! They feel that girls flock me. Trust this bhaisaab, one should start realizing that he is getting older when the girls at the office started confiding in him. And you thought.. shiv..shiv..shiv..

So back to the issue of me feeling that I have arrived the stage of taking longer to rest than to get tired. Boss, it’s been ages when I stopped growing at both ends (and begun to grow in the middle). Frankly I never have had this choice of two temptations and choosing the one that will get me home earlier. But you know which one I would have chosen. Reason perhaps, half of the guys who shake hand with me in morning will complain “Arre tu itna dheela kyon rehta hai yaar?”

May God forgive the nadaans for the folly of not their own because even I wake up with that morning-after feeling, while I didn’t do anything the night before. So that’s it guys! It’s a pity you are compelled to cope up with a veteran. But remember even Microsoft gives DOS with windows. When you can have faith in India winning a gold in next Olympics at least I can expect a bit for me..as for now please note that tomorrow I may be late because meri kamar mein dard hai..Ouch..

Abbreviations (abbs) were invented as essential AIDS to memory and their application surfaced as equally contagious as the capitalized word; memory-aid that has to be mugged up to successfully clear any GK test. Many, if not most, of the abbs are funny or at least can be given a witty bend, which ironically may also be their true face.

In earlier times abbs were the hallmarks for cherished degrees – BA, BSc, M.A, MSc, LLB… And no body perhaps expected that the newborn MBAs from IIMs would steal the limelight from the formidable PhDs and IITs so much so that even the ordinary bosses metamorphosed in to CEOs and COOs. Incidently the PhDs were the people with solemn looks and thick lenses on their noses because all their life they Patiently Hoping for a Degree and had no energy left to recoil with josh when they were Phinally Done. It’s another thing that the most coveted three letter word still remain as IAS, though the buzurgs could hardly locate the halo that surrounded its predecessor – with the middle component as ‘Civil’ instead of ‘Administrative’, reminiscent of the Indian Cancer Society. Sad indeed for the Indian Forest Services and the Indian Foreign Services, who had to settle down for the common IFS.

Abbs could have brought ease to the public works department after it became PWD but for the people, who find the more notorious name of Public Wastes Department easy to remember. The DMs and the DCs took a cue from this and acquired a credo of Don’t Mingle with the public and then Don’t Care for them too. VIPs gained more limelight as VVIPs and then shied away as ZVIPs. Post-tehelka, PMO’s doctrine appeared to be “Pehle Maal phir Office ka kaam”.

Americans are infamous abbs enthusiast. A laudable World Wildlife Fund has been reduced to World Wrestling Federation. You have the US of A, NASA, NATO and the toe licking UNO, UNICEF and WHO knows what not. Their FBI simply became Feds perhaps protesting against their over-exposure in Hollywood movies. Our own RAW is no match for ISI and even though the institution has been re-christened the Bureau of Indian Standards, most people want the ISI-approved products.

Speaking of demand, think of the time people acquired cardio-vascular ailments or did the P.C.Sorkar trick if you mentioned IT raids. Strange times I tell you, the same people talk about jumping into the IT bandwagon now. Simple earthly desire, this? Chanakya, backed up by his erudition from HTML to WML, from SAP to WAP to SOAP, from EJB to CORBA, and armed with colossal MCP, MCSE & SCJP certifications, simply wants to go phoren and turn out to be chunki, not mentioning the neighborhood Manakya who would better not go for a similar feat. The guy OTOH would rather be J using the net-abbs in the chat forums.

Brain drain was bye-product of the angrez education system, realized the swadeshis. By introducing the lessons of Socially Useful Productive Work, SUPW they wanted us to transform into Anna Hazare ASAP. Students, bunking the classes to see a HAHK, DDLJ, DTPH and the more recent KNPH with their GFs, however thought differently. To them these sessions remained Some Useful Periods Wasted. In colleges doing a bunk have become, the more sophisticated, GT. Here, the preparation for GK test helps during ragging when it would be a KLPD you couldn’t expand on the newly acquired geographical wisdom on JAPAN and HP.

Finally, not all abbs are enduring happy anecdotes to bring smile to a face. A bad ECG, DD’s newscasts, the mighty-September 11-fall of the twin towers of WTC, FM’s budget proposals, MPEB’s bills and the thinning index at BSE and NASDAQ are bound to cause dropped jaws.