Pavol Pitoňák's Blog

Red Hat Developer Conference 2012

2012-02-29T00:07:00.000+01:00

Hi! I was talking on Red Hat Developer Conference in Brno about how we test RichFaces on mobile devices. For this, I updated RichRates application:

template was changed to generate HTML 5 pages;
mobile version of RichRates was created;
Arquillian tests were created; and
application was tested with newest JBoss AS 7.1.0.Final (released just one day before conference).

I uploaded my slides to slideshare.net for anyone interested in testing web apps on Android.

RichFaces - Testing on Mobile Devices

View more presentations from Pavol Pitoňák

RichRates - Even Better with RichFaces 4

2012-01-11T23:04:00.001+01:00

Hi! It's over a year since I blogged about our RichFaces sample application RichRates converting various currencies from/to Euros. Since then RichFaces 4.0 and 4.1 were released and so I updated the application to JSF 2, RichFaces 4 and CDI. Moreover, I migrated the application to Github. I tried to preserve application's look and feel as much as possible. Most of things that should be considered when migrating from RichFaces 3 to 4 are described in RichFaces Migration Guide.

Although the original application was using JSF 2, there were some limitations when using RichFaces 3.3.3.Final with JSF 2. E.g. it was not possible to use VDL (Facelets) built in JSF 2. Since RichFaces 4 is a JSF 2 framework, it's possible to use all features introduced in JSF 2, such as new f:ajax tag, implicit navigation, and bean annotations to name few. Moreover, there are many more options when you're building your application using CDI.

I’d like to publish a series of blog posts on various technologies used in the application. Especially I'd like to show how to enhance JSF applications using CDI extensions, show you how to test your application and how to deploy it to the cloud. Until a following post is published, you can try the application and play with it a bit.

You need to clone RichRates' git repository and checkout the 4.1.0.Final tag.The following commands builds the project and produces richrates.war artifact that can be deployed into JBoss AS 7.0.2 or JBoss AS 7.1.0.CR1.

git clone git@github.com:qa/richrates.git
cd richrates
git checkout 4.1.0.Final
mvn package

Unzip JBoss AS distribution ZIP and deploy the application:

unzip jboss-as-7.1.0.CR1.zip
cp <richrates-home>/target/richrates.war <jboss-home>/standalone/deployments
sh <jboss-home>/bin/standalone.sh

Now you just need to open you web browser and point it to localhost:8080/richrates. Enjoy!

Syntax Highlighting Test

2010-05-21T22:07:00.000+02:00

Java

int add(int x, int y) {
    return x + y;
}

XML

<pre class="brush: java;"> 
int add(int x, int y) {
    return x + y;
}
</pre>

New RichFaces Sample Applications

2010-03-05T09:50:00.010+01:00

Yesterday, three new RichFaces sample applications were published (Prabhat's announcement here). Tic-tac-toe and RichRates were created by me and jabber client Ribber was created by my colleague Lukáš Fryč.

Tic-Tac-Toe

Tic-Tac-Toe is a simple implementation of a well known game for two players. It shows usage of graphic image, ajax, tab panel, inplace input and some standard JSF components. It allows to play two humans, human vs. computer or you can let two computer players play. For simplicity it contains only one strategy for computer. If you are interested in portals, a portlet was created from this application.

RichRates

RichRates is a currency convertor which converts Euros to about 30 foreign currencies and vice versa. It shows how to use 25 different RichFaces components. This application is fully skinable as you can see on the following screenshots.

The application consists of three pages. Since the application is based on JSF2, it uses JSF's new feature - implicit navigation. On the first page there is a convertor for currencies and the second page contains a table with all exchange rates on given day. It uses a data table with data scroller so that the table is paginated and all columns are sortable.

The last page renders a chart for selected currency and date. The currency can be changed by dragging and dropping a flag from the list on the right. The chart is based on JavaScript library Flot which is wrapped to JSF components by JSFlot (http://code.google.com/p/jsflot).

As you can see, the application is highly dependent on calendar component. Internally the application uses as many JSF2 features as possible. Unfortunatelly, there are some limitations in RichFaces 3.3.3 when used with JSF2 (see JBoss wiki). I would like to thank Ilya Shaikovsky who found some bugs in this application.

Ribber

The last application is a simple Jabber client. Ribber demonstrates the usage of JSF2, RichFaces 3.3.3 and Weld, reference implementation of a new Java specification - Contexts and Dependency Injection.

We plan to port all these applications to RichFaces 4 as soon as it contains all needed visual components. Since RichFaces 4 will fully implement Java Server Faces 2, application will be able to use all new features of JSF2.

RichFaces 3.3.2.GA Released

2009-10-06T10:16:00.004+02:00

Yesterday Richfaces 3.3.2.GA was released. You can download it here. Full changelog can be found in project's Jira. More info can be found in Jay Balunas' blog.

Clicking an input with Selenium

2009-06-29T15:49:00.007+02:00

Today I needed to click an input of type image with Selenium.


<input type='image' ...>

I tried Selenium's click and clickAt methods. It didn't work. Nor firing an click event helped. However, it works when you fire a mousedown event.


selenium.fireEvent("mylocator", "mousedown");

Tomáš Hudák's World

2009-04-02T22:55:00.002+02:00

Do you want to learn something about Slovakia and what's happening at the moment? There is one funny video...

Money As Debt

2009-03-10T14:05:00.002+01:00

Yesterday I decided I would expand my economic knowledge. Don't you know where do money come from? Neither did I...

Building NetBeans IDE

2008-10-10T13:07:00.020+02:00

To build NetBeans IDE you need JDK 1.5, Apache Ant 1.7.0 and Mercurial 1.0 or newer. To download sources type hg clone http://hg.netbeans.org/main. To download changes in sourcer type hg pull in 'main' directory. After that you need to type hg update to get your working copy.

Now you can start building. To start building you just type 'ant' (it will automatically use
build.xml). I had several problems during the installation.

No supported regular expression matcher found: java.lang.ClassNotFoundException:
org.apache.tools.ant.util.regexp.Jdk14RegexpMatcher

To fix this problem in Suse you have to install a package called ant-apache-regexp. It is
dependent on package regexp which will be installed automatically.

BUILD FAILED
/data/src/NetBeans/main/nbbuild/build.xml:720: The following error occurred while executing this line:
/data/src/NetBeans/main/nbbuild/build.xml:715: The following error occurred while executing this line:
/data/src/NetBeans/main/nbbuild/build.xml:750: The following error occurred while executing this line:
/data/src/NetBeans/main/nbbuild/build.xml:733: The following error occurred while executing this line:
/data/src/NetBeans/main/nbbuild/build.xml:715: The following error occurred while executing this line:
/data/src/NetBeans/main/nbbuild/build.xml:761: The following error occurred while executing this line:
/data/src/NetBeans/main/nbbuild/default.xml:127: Problem: failed to create task or type propertyfile
Cause: the class org.apache.tools.ant.taskdefs.optional.PropertyFile was not found.
This looks like one of Ant's optional components.
Action: Check that the appropriate optional JAR exists in
-/usr/share/ant/lib
-/home/paliboy/.ant/lib
-a directory added on the command line with the -lib argument

Do not panic, this is a common problem.
The commonest cause is a missing JAR.

This is not a bug; it is a configuration problem

This problem can be fixed by installing optional ant tasks. It can be found in package ant-nodeps.

The last problem was with JDK 1.5. There is also JDK 6 in my computer and ant uses it to build
projects. If you want to use JDK 1.5 for building NetBeans you should put
nbjdk.home=<path_to_jdk_15> into NetBeans/main/nbbuild/user.build.properties. In my computer, JDK 1.5 is installed in /usr/java/jdk1.5.0_15.

Now it should start compiling. Be prepared it takes a (longer) while the first time. More information can be found on wiki.netbeans.org.

Creating database pools in Glassfish

2008-09-27T21:00:00.043+02:00

In most web applications, each request needs a database connection. You can create a Connection object directly, but it is very expensive and exhausts system resources. Solution for this problems is called 'connection pooling'. It is a technology for 'recycling' database connections. Application server creates more connections and when servlet needs a connection, it gets it from this pool. When servlet finishes its work it returns the connection back to pool and it can be used by another object. This improves application performance significantly.

I assume you have Glassfish v2 installed and configured. If you haven't copied database drivers to Glassfish's lib directory yet do it now. Driver for Oracle 10 XE is in file /usr/lib/oracle/xe/app/oracle/product/10.2.0/server/jdbc/lib/ojdbc14.jar. Driver fo MySQL can be found here. I don't use the newest driver because there are some problems with it. You need to copy jar to lib directory. On my computer it is /usr/local/glassfish-v2ur2/lib. After copying it is advisable to restart Glassfish.

Now you are ready to login to Glassfish's admin console. You can usually find it on address localhost:4848. In the case you didn't set password during the installation name is 'admin' and password 'adminadmin'.

Go to Resources -> JDBC -> Connection Pools as shown on the following picture:

Click on New and fill in the following form. Choose name according to your naming conventions. For Oracle you need also change Database Vendor. Click Next.

On the following page you can set minimum and maximum pool size, idle timeout, transaction isolation... For small project default values should be OK. Scroll down to additional properties. Assuming you have database installed on computer where Glassfish is installed, you need to set databaseName, user and password for MySQL. For Oracle you have to specify also URL, e.g. jdbc:oracle:thin:@localhost:1521:XE. Click Finish.

Go to Resources -> JDBC -> Connection Pools and click on name of created pool. On the top there is a button 'Ping'. If you configured everything right you should see 'Ping Succeeded'.

Now we will create a JNDI name for our pool. Go to Resources -> JDBC -> JDBC Resources and click on New. Choose a JNDI name. It should start with jdbc, e.g. jdbc/oracle, jdbc/mysql... In pool name choose the pool you have just created. Now only click OK and you have a new database connection pool accessible using its JNDI.

Syntax highlighting

2008-04-03T18:09:00.014+02:00

Today I was googling syntax highlighting usable here in blogger. After a while I found an interesting Java Script. It's called SyntaxHighlighter and here is a howto. It supports C, C++, C#, Delphi, Pascal, Java, Java Script, XML and some other languages.

An example in Java


class Hello {
    public static void main(String [] args) {
        System.out.println("Hello World!");
    }
}

And the same thing in C++


#include <iostream>

int main(int argc, char * argv[]) {
    std::cout << "Hello World!" << std::endl;
    return 0;
}

Qt Jambi's documentation in NetBeans

2008-03-17T10:54:00.003+01:00

Yesterday I didn't know how to use Trolltech's documentation in NetBeans IDE. Today I found out it is as simple as adding new library to your project. To be able to use documentation you only need to click Tools->Libraries, then select QtJambi from the list on the left. Select the Javadoc tab and click Add Zip/Folder. Choose the directory 'doc' from Qt Jambi's directory. Enjoy.

Hello Qt Jambi in NetBeans

2008-03-16T15:12:00.013+01:00

Qt is a multiplatform C++ GUI development framework. For java developers who like Qt and don't like Swing programs' look in Linux, Qt Jambi could be a good choice. It hasn't been developed as long as Qt but Trolltech's sites claim it provides all the functionality of Qt. The latest version was released on March 13 and version 4.4 is on the way.

There is a plugin for Eclipse IDE. It should provide access to the Qt Jambi documentation and Qt Designer from within the Eclipse. But what about NetBeans? I've just installed NetBeans 6.1 Beta which is much better than 6.0.1 I was using before. It would be fine to have full integration of Qt Jambi in NetBeans but it's still possible to use it for everything except designing GUI. You simply run Qt Designer, create UI and write code in NetBeans. You will probably also miss a resources manager (for adding pictures, sound files ... to your project). I don't know how to use Trolltech's documentation in NetBeans.

There are quite a lot of examples and tutorials on Trolltech's sites (as part of documentation). So let's try to write a 'Hello World!' program. Launch NetBeans and create a new project (Java -> Java Application) called e.g. HelloWorld.

Let's write method main:

Now we can see NetBeans does not know Qt's classes. Download Qt Jambi from here and extract it. Select Tools->Libraries from NetBeans' menu. Click 'New Library ...' and choose and type the name of library, e.g. QtJambi. Now click 'Add JAR/Folder ...', navigate to the directory where you extracted the library and choose file qtjambi.jar. Now click on Libraries in your project and choose Add Library. In following dialog choose QtJambi.

Now we can add imports in usual way.

Now we are prepared to run our first java program using Qt. In Linux (KDE) it will look like this:

Amazon MP3 Downloader

2008-03-01T10:13:00.002+01:00

Amazon finally released Linux version of its MP3 Downloader. You can download it here. There are packages for openSUSE, Ubuntu, Debian, and Fedora.

Now it has only one bug

Amazon MP3 Purchases are limited to U.S. customers.

Celebration

2008-02-27T23:33:00.002+01:00

Here I wrote about new keyboard layouts for KTouch. It lasted longer than I expected but after some communication problems it became part of KDE4. It is SVN commit 780062 by annma - my first bigger contribution to OSS.

A Windows Break-up Letter

2008-02-27T14:44:00.002+01:00

Dear Windows Professional Service Pack 2:I didn't want to tell you this in person, because I thought it might be too complicated, and might take too long. After all, we've been together for a long time, almost five years and running now ...

read more | digg story

Linux user in Vista land.

2008-02-26T19:35:00.002+01:00

5+ year Linux user (straight Linux, no Windows on the desktop) spends 4 months with Vista as his desktop. Read how he got comfy (Getting Konsole running, WinMover and booting out Outlook) and his disappointments.

read more | digg story

New keyboard layouts for KTouch

2008-02-18T12:40:00.009+01:00

KTouch is a program for learning how to type. I use version 1.7.1 which use KDE4. It is pretty usable but it misses a lot of keyboard layouts. Last weekend I had some time so I did Slovak, Czech and Russian keyboard layouts. I made both qwerty and qwertz Slovak and Czech layouts.

I hope it will be in svn soon but till then you can download it here. How to use it:


su
#type your password
cp ktouch-layouts.tar.bz2  /usr/share/kde4/apps/ktouch
cd /usr/share/kde4/apps/ktouch
tar -xvjf ktouch-layouts.tar.bz2
rm ktouch-layouts.tar.bz2

Google Sponsors Wine Improvements

2008-02-15T02:50:00.002+01:00

"Perhaps the biggest news is that we hired Codeweavers to make Photoshop CS and CS2 work better under Wine. Photoshop is one of those applications that Desktop linux users are constantly clamoring for, and we're happy to say they work pretty well now. Perhaps not coincidentally, apps like Flash 8 are now starting to work in Wine, too."

read more | digg story

37% of Google AdSense Publishers Earned Over a $1,000 in 07

2008-02-13T21:04:00.002+01:00

An interesting survey about AdSence. Using AdSence, 70% of people make either less than $50 or more than $1000.

read more | digg story

Microsoft Responds to Yahoo! Announcement

2008-02-12T23:08:00.001+01:00

It is unfortunate that Yahoo! has not embraced our full and fair proposal to combine our companies. Based on conversations with stakeholders of both companies, we are confident that moving forward promptly to consummate a transaction is in the best interests of all parties.

read more | digg story

Sun Buys Innotek Maker of VirtualBox

2008-02-12T22:56:00.001+01:00

Sun is on an Open Source buying spree! After buying MySQL, Sun Microsystems decided to buy also Innotek - the maker of VirtualBox.

read more | digg story