Coaching for people managers

Write a Java program to read console data using bufferedreader API

2020-04-23T18:46:00.003+05:30

BufferedReader is a class which simplifies reading text from a character input stream. It buffers the characters in order to enable efficient reading of text data.

The buffer size may be specified, or the default size may be used. The default is large enough for most purposes.

In general, each read request made of a Reader causes a corresponding read request to be made of the underlying character or byte stream. It is therefore advisable to wrap a BufferedReader around any Reader whose read() operations may be costly, such as FileReaders and InputStreamReaders. For example,

 // BufferedReader in = new BufferedReader(new FileReader("foo.in"));

will buffer the input from the specified file. Without buffering, each invocation of read() or readLine() could cause bytes to be read from the file, converted into characters, and then returned, which can be very inefficient.

import java.io.BufferedReader;

import java.io.IOException;
import java.io.InputStreamReader;

public class BufferedReaderExample {

public static void main(String[] s) throws IOException {

// Wrap System.in with InputStreamReader followed by BufferedReader

BufferedReader bufferedReader = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(System.in));
System.out.print("Enter Name: ");

// Finally read from bufferedReader

String name = bufferedReader.readLine();

System.out.println("Name: " + name);

}
}

Absorbing Feedback

2020-01-30T11:21:00.004+05:30

We all want to improve, absorbing feedback is the most important step in the process of improvement. Even when we get feedback, we don't know how to act on it.

We have good techniques for giving feedback like SBI (Situation, Behavior, Impact) however, it took me some time to develop a good framework to absorb and act on feedback. Let me start with a real-life situation:

A couple of years back, I received feedback, however incapable of acting on it. I was struggling to make any improvement. During this phase, I developed the framework which helped me.

This framework has two attributes "Understand Deeply" and "Act Swiftly".

Understand Deeply is about understanding the feedback and situations where behaviour is depicted so that you can relate to the situation. Some situations bring out the same undesired behaviour. It is also very important to understand the intent of the feedback.

Act Swiftly talks about acting on feedback, taking steps to implement the feedback and correct the behaviour. It is really important to act promptly on feedback, people are more likely to give feedback if they see action on it.

These behaviours don't work in isolation but rather has an amplifier impact when combined together.

Let's start with the first quadrant on the top left corner and go anti-clockwise.

Insincere quadrant, in this quadrant feedback, is well understood however not ready to act. There could be multiple reasons for not acting on a feedback example it requires some fundamental behaviour change, requires too much effort etc. One way to change is to try to divide the feedback into smaller pieces and tackle a piece at a time.

Indifferent quadrant this is the hardest quarter to be in where you don't (want to) understand the feedback because the intent to act on the feedback is missing. Change needed in this situation is fundamental. Burnout, de-motivation or lack of interest could be some of the reasons. Taking a break sometimes help, if its a team, work or manager related issue changing the team or even the company might also help.

Next comes Frustrated quadrant where feedback is being acted upon is not getting addressed and all the is going waste. It's best to take a step back to try and understand the feedback more deeply. Same feedback in a different situation could have very different meanings.

True and lasting change happens when we understand the feedback and act upon it promptly to go through change-learn-improve cycles. Remember when the feedback is well understood it becomes easy to incrementally improve.

Hope this helps.

Grow faster by making yourself redundant!

2019-05-28T05:32:00.001+05:30

Redundant! but why? What about job security? Shouldn't we be consolidating our position instead of going redundant? All these questions are obvious when you read the title of this article. Don't worry, we are not talking about how to get yourself fired but opposite, how to grow faster by making yourself redundant in a role. In a job, we are expected to play roles that are needed from us e.g. program manager, project manager, people manager, technical lead are few roles engineering managers play to be successful. This article talks about how we can progressively outgrow in our current role and start learning (or mastering) the new roles. Transferring responsibilities to people you are managing are the best way of making space for learning something new. Over the past couple of years as an engineering manager, I have been following this philosophy to learn new things. Let's take an example of leading a project to understand this better.

Engineering Managers are the backbone of the team. However, they are also the weakest link in the team, often they are the single point of failure. The team rely on them to make crucial decisions. In a normal situation, nothing is wrong with this arrangement but when they are away (in conferences, multi-day-meetings, holidays or sick) projects gets derailed due to decrease in decision making velocity and lack of process ownership in the team.

If EM spends too much time on project execution, they won't have enough time for people (call it 100% harvesting and no investing). In my experience, time spent on people is directly proportional to the happiness of the team which has a flywheel effect on deliverables. On the other hand, unhappy teams lead to lower development velocity and error-prone deliverables, which results in managers spending more time on execution.

This cycle leads to burnout in managers and also results in unhappy teams which have a domino effect on deliverables (poor in both quantity and quality).

To avoid this situation the most important step for the managers is to automate the execution and funnel more-time in people management and product planning. However, it's not a trivial task and involves rolling out well-orchestrated process changes in small implement-and-improve iterations. For me, it took 6 months to achieve a sustainable execution model.

This article will take you through the journey of "making myself redundant".

Phase 1: "Doing all the things an EM should be doing! Well, I want to change it!"

Identifying delegation worthy responsibilities!

Question: What are the responsibilities my team can own and run?
Planning? Retrospective? They do it fortnightly hence have a very good understanding which means they can be independent on this quite quickly.
Question: Who should own it? Do we need a new role? What should be the responsibilities of this new role?
Probably we need a feature/project lead. Who should be a Lead?
A-Team member.
Why don't I ask my team, what they think they should be doing as a Lead?

Time for brainstorming:
We as a team gathered in a room and listed responsibilities which will be owned by the lead. E.g. updating the project status, finalizing implementation approach, sprint planning,
~~retro, demos~~ (team rotates these) etc. Point worth noting, we didn't define everything, like how to manage external dependencies or how to distribute work. The plan was to start with something small and keep on increasing the responsibilities.

Why not define comprehensive roles and responsibilities?

Defining clear R&R in one go is very easy and leads to very clear paths however it also means decoupled roles which are recipe for disaster when you starting something this big. We can compare it with athlete training, they can't run a marathon in the first week but the distance is increased gradually over a sustainable duration. Similarly, we decided on some base responsibilities with adequate checks in place e.g. leads can always reassign part or whole of responsibility to me (EM) at any moment after discussion.

Is this a good model?
There are multiple ways a lead can be trained onto new responsibilities:

Coach a lead on everything before handing over the responsibility
"Throw them in water and let them learn how-to-swim" give them responsibility and let them ask for help.
Start small take a step at a time, keep on adding responsibilities.

I personally like the third option as it leads to sustainable handover where everyone gets the time to adjust and iterate.

Phase 2: "Attending all the team meetings as a participant."

Feature lead is starting to onboard on new responsibilities and taking ownership more and more meetings. However, it will start eating into the capacity of the lead which could be a problem. So, apart from defining some basic responsibilities, we also finalized on a rule "lead should start with 20% time on leading". The idea here is to increase the responsibility and not to make them unproductive.

The right mix!

As discussed above, listing role and responsibilities help, however it can also be over-prescriptive. Agreeing on "What needs to be done", "When it needs to be done" in important whereas "How" can be left open.
Ask pointed questions, to make sure things are on track, it will surface the trade-offs and flaws. Follow five Whys approach if and needed.

Phase 3: "Coaching the lead!"

As lead is taking responsibilities, start spending more time with them to make sure they understand why we are doing something instead of just doing it for the sake of it. This will lead conversations on "why this and not that", addressing these questions is like laying the foundation of the leadership, answering every question sincerely will help in developing a good leader for your team.

A healthy team is built on healthy processes

"Processes are the building blocks of trust in a team".
"Teams who learn to rely on each-other can solve any problem".
"If we can define a problem, we can solve it and if we can solve it once, we should solve it efficiently the next time".
Healthy team need lightweight (healthy) processes to make sure everything runs smoothly. You can rely on the team and processes to take care of everything.

Phase 4:"Give up the power, not the control!"

The last piece of the puzzle is patience.
Following meetings if well run can help a lot:

Planning
Stand-up
Retrospectives
Health-monitors
SWOT

If teams is not happy and motivated you can't deliver anything worthwhile. Listening to the team's concerns is the easiest way to address the problems. If team is raising a concern it should be fixed, don't apply filters without understanding the problem first. Team will always be motivated if you remove (or help them remove) the impediments, remember motivation is key to the successful delivery. I believe the most important part of my job is to keep the team motivated. I get the real sense of how we are doing as a team from the meetings listed above.

Right Now!

Phase 5: "Close to doing nothing related to a project execution! \o/

Focus on long-term strategy and career planning for the team!"

We successfully delivered the project without delay, covering more than we anticipated and removing all the major blockers we faced.
As an EM, I need to be do something to keep my anxiety in check.
So, I am making sure:

Scope is fixed
Team stays away from distractions
Focus on one thing at a time, minimize context switching
Taking discussions irrelevant to the team away from them
Address action items on priority

Giving away your responsibilities is not easy and people would be making mistakes like you did when you started. However, how to make this learning rewarding is the challenge. Remember you are learning as much as the other person, you are learning to be patience, you are learning to give away control, you are learning to diagnose problems early, so much learning is involved in this process. These are the building blocks of being a leader, if you can't delegate you can't scale.

In the end, learning is an essential part of the growth for everyone. Focus on growing people in your team for the unforeseen results. Encouraging leadership in your team is the best way of growing your team.

Try being redundant, its addictive!

Engineering Leader: How to make a difference?

2017-05-25T13:47:00.001+05:30

Being an engineering leader is not an easy task, especially when you are stepping into this role as a first-timer. Seldom you go through a training, however in most situations you are expected to figure it out yourself with little or no guidance. Often leadership demands you to play following roles:

People Manager
Product/Business knowledge
Architect/Senior Developer
Vision for technology

I will be writing separate blogs to cover the first two roles. For a beginner, last two roles are very important to gain credibility of the team which is the most important factor in succeeding at your job.
As a technical leader, you will be facing the challenges from all the directions like decision making, improving team efficiency and choosing the technology roadmap for your team. However, I hope adopting following patterns can help you sail through these challenges.

Decision Making: When hit with the problem, as a techie you rely on your technical skills and often start suggesting solutions immediately which is fine in few situations, however in my experience better way would be to ask pointed questions to lead your team in driving the right decision. Questions should be repeatedly asked to highlight the blemishes in the suggested design. For example, "How would you take care of security?", "How are you addressing scalability?", "How would application behave under these circumstances?" and many more.

It's easier to jump to the solution by picking up the first suggestion by trusting the loudest (not literally) person in the room. However, as a coach, you should be involving everyone in the decision-making process. Find out what is missing in the room, is it the knowledge, the skill or the participation. You need to create enough opportunities for everyone to participate. To do that you need to think about various factors like structure of the team, personalities in the team etc. These factors can be neutralized to an extent by bringing everyone to a common understanding of the problem. In my experience, following preparation before hosting an important meeting would make it easier:

Share a document explaining the problem which can educate the team before the discussion
During the meeting, explain the problem in detail so that team can align their understanding
Do your homework before going to the meeting. This will help you in asking the right questions and guiding the meeting towards the solution.

Improving Efficiency: Team delivers to the full potential if they are not disturbed and allowed to focus on the problem. As a leader, think about how the team is getting distracted, how can you make them focus on stories or task in hand? Improve the development processes so that you can minimize the impact on the team. For example, in a production issue churn out the non-technical part and direct developer towards solving the technical problem.

Vision for Technology: Successful teams stay ahead of the technology curve. As a coach, you need to ensure that your team is adapting to changing landscape of the technology world. While working with your team to strengthen the technology muscle, you need to start focusing on what should be the future technology platform for your team. If you are not thinking at least 3-months down the line, you will lose the war while you were busy fighting battles.
Be sensitive to what role you are playing in your team. You are not a developer anymore, you are a coach and coaching means understanding before suggesting, listening before speaking, advising rather than commenting.

As a beginner, starting in the world of unknown unknowns of management, I hope my secret sauce can help you prepare the right dish for your team!!!

Play framework 1.2.x excel export with I18n and custom filename

2015-01-23T08:55:00.002+05:30

play-excel is a very well written plugin of Play-framework for exporting excel from java objects.

I used this plugin for my requirement of generating the I18n supported xls with custom names. This blog will explain this in details so that I can use it later :).

Line# 4: will basically make the play-excel to take the rendering functionality in play. (you can also use xlsx instead of "xls")

Line# 5: Will set the exported filename to given name i.e. "downloadUsers.xls"

Line# 6&7: pick up the template from views//users_.xls.

2.  public static void users() {
3.          List users = User.findAll();
4.          request.format = "xls";
5.          renderArgs.put("__FILE_NAME__", "downloadUsers.xls");
6.          String template = "users-" + Lang.get() + ".xls";
7.          renderTemplate(template, users);
8.    }

That's it you are done. Happy coding :).

Gear 2 and Gear 2 Neo working with Nexus 5

2014-06-19T10:03:00.000+05:30

Gear 2 and Gear 2 Neo are working perfectly with Nexus 5. Please go to the following URL:

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2677686

and download the "Galaxy Gear Manager" app on your phone.

Launch the gear manager app and select your gear device and you are good to go. For receiving additional notifications, goto Gear Manager and select Notification item and select from the list of apps you want to receive notification from.

Simplest iterative algorithm Post order traversal

2013-07-30T22:37:00.002+05:30

package com.test;

import java.util.Stack;

public class PostOrderTraversal {

static class Node {

int data;

Node left, right;

Node(int item) {

data = item;

left = right;

}

}

private void pfIterate(Node root) {

Node prev = null;

Stack stack = new Stack<>();

stack.push(root);

while (!stack.isEmpty()) {

root = stack.pop();

if (root.left == null && root.right == null) {

System.out.print(root.data + " ");

prev = root;

} else if (prev == root.left || prev == root.right) {

System.out.print(root.data + " ");

prev = root;

} else {

stack.push(root);

if (root.right != null)

stack.push(root.right);

if (root.left != null)

stack.push(root.left);

}

}

}

public static void main(String[] args) {

// Let us create trees shown in above diagram

Node root = new Node(1);

root.left = new Node(2);

root.right = new Node(3);

root.left.left = new Node(4);

root.left.right = new Node(5);

root.right.left = new Node(6);

root.right.right = new Node(7);

new PostOrderTraversal().pfIterate(root);

}

}

How to inject multiple endpoint in SEI using Camel's @EndpointInject

2013-07-24T19:49:00.004+05:30

By default you can inject annotation on single method of an interface like:

public interface MyListener {

@EndpointInject(uri="activemq:foo.bar")

String sayHello(String name);

}

what if you need multiple methods like this with @EndpointInjection happening over them for each endpoint e.g.:

public interface MyListener {

@EndpointInject(uri="direct:foo")

String sayHelloFoo(String name);

@EndpointInject(uri="direct:bar")

String sayHelloBar(String name);

}

The simple solution i have working involved spring's FactoryBean implementation.

It need following steps:



<bean id="r" class="MyListener" />



<camelContext xmlns="http://camel.apache.org/schema/spring">

        <template id="producerTemplate" />

        <routeBuilder ref="r"/>

    </camelContext>



<bean id="definedCamel" class="CamelFactoryBean">

        <constructor-arg index="0" value="MyListener" />

        <constructor-arg index="1" ref="producerTemplate" />

</bean>

The FactoryBean will create instance of custom InvocationHandler and return it which will invoke the endpoint on the ProducerTemplate instance.

Use recipientList for dynamic routes

2013-02-27T16:36:00.000+05:30

I was writing the route in which "to" endpoint was need to be configured dynamically with the URL coming in the body.

I was trying to use simple expression language (e.g. ${in.header.test} where test is the property set in the in-message header) also with header method (e.g. header(test)). The routes for the same were:

from("direct:test").to("${in.header.test}");

&

from("direct:test").to(header("test"));

after literally every thing i could have. I figured out recipientlist can do the trick e.g.

from("direct:test").recipientList("${in.header.test}");

&

from("direct:test").recipientList(header("test"));

Hope this works for you too.

Spring: implements interface not working in @Controller

2013-02-20T22:24:00.000+05:30

Guys, I had a @Controller in which I was trying to implement an interface. But i was getting the following error message:

PageNotFound WARN No mapping found for HTTP request with URI [/test/form] in DispatcherServlet with name 'Spring MVC Dispatcher Servlet'

where "/test" (at class level) and "/form" (at method level) where my @RequestMapping args.

The issue is described at following link:

http://forum.springsource.org/showthread.php?92303-Spring-Servlet-MVC-RequestMapping-breaks-with-AOP-Advice

Now you may not find anything wrong with your spring.xml but should check all the xml used by used in the project in out case metrics was causing the problem.

The aop config was overridden by metrics here:

https://github.com/ryantenney/metrics-spring#xml-config

By default JDK proxy are created using interface and if controller implements an interface the RequestMapping annotation gets ignored as the targetClass is not being using.

http://static.springsource.org/spring/docs/3.2.x/spring-framework-reference/html/aop.html#aop-proxying

So, fix required i my case is:

proxy-target-class="true" ... />

Hope this helps.

60 days at expedia India

2012-09-20T23:49:00.001+05:30

About to complete 60 days at Expedia, Gurgaon and till now the ride has been a rollercoaster.

I joined Expedia hoping for challenging work, participating in building a good team and workplace full of amazing people. To be frank, everything is as close to reality as I imagined.

The experience is amazing, people are awesome, the new office is great, the parties are crazy, but the most important thing is the freedom to express yourself and asking questions. And people around you listen (even leaders) and have enough patience to make you feel comfortable.

Work-wise finishing user-stories (part of the onboarding process), building a team by interviewing the brightest mind in the industry and ideating about the new ideas to make it a better workplace and best technology platform. It's a great learning opportunity to contribute to one of the fastest-growing company's in the technology and travel industry.

I hope this answers some of your initial questions about joining Expedia.

Looking forward to seeing you onboard \o/.

Java references in nutshell

2012-07-18T01:08:00.001+05:30

Java developers struggle to use java references and i don't blame them. The topic seldom covered by text books and even code reviews rarely give emphasis on usage of references. Why the topic is important at all? and if everybody (atleast people i have come across) is coding without it why the hell you need it?

Since you are reading this, either you are already aware of them or for the interview. Anyways, knowing references helps you manage memory better because you are able to define the behavior of the object when GC (garbage collector) is run.

Type of references:

1. Strong Reference: The normal reference in the java code is strong reference and the object referenced by strong reference is eligible for GC as soon as scope ends or reference started pointing to null in the code.

E.g. Person p = new Person();

p = null; // will make object initialized above eligible for GC

2. Weak Reference: As name suggest these reference are weaker than the strong references. Their are couple of ways to use them one via WeakReference call which can wrap your object and you can access the object through WeakReference.get API. Get API will be returning null id the object is GCed. (You can also use WeakHashMap)

Usage: These objects stay in the memory till the time they are referenced from any strong reference in the memory. In other words as soon as they loose accessibility from strong reference they become eligible for GC.

3. Soft Reference: Soft reference is similar to weak reference however weaker than weak references. They put the additional check on there GC eligibility, which is if GC needs space. So basically they sits in memory still the time memory is available. Use the SoftReference API for this type of references.

Usage: These find good usage in building cache because if memory is available they don't discard the object and hence saves you the additional reload.

4. Phantom Reference: This type of reference is used to track the object if it has been garbage collected. PhantomReference get API always returns null. Object cannot be obtained from it unlike finalize() API.

Usage: So, if your object needs to be freed only when object using it becomes garbage collected than you should be using this API. Another use case is before loading large object you want to check if the other larger object currently in memory is GCed which will help you avoid the out of memory exception.

Hope this helps :)

CXF-RS adding custom response code

2012-03-29T12:00:00.000+05:30

Following snippet show how to return the custom Response code as http response code while returning the response:

import javax.ws.rs.Consumes;
import javax.ws.rs.POST;
import javax.ws.rs.Path;
import javax.ws.rs.Produces;
import javax.ws.rs.core.Response;

@Path("/")
@Consumes("application/xml")
@Produces("application/xml")
public class Test {

public Test () {
}

@POST
public Response test() {
Response response = Response.status(4xx).entity("Testing").build();
return response;
}
}

CXF-RS Hiding JAXRS Service Endpoints Listing

2012-03-13T16:40:00.001+05:30

You may come across a scenario where you want to stop listing of the exposed service from given endpoint. This can be achieved by setting the property "org.apache.cxf.endpoint.private" to true as shown in following snippet:

<jaxrs:server id="serivceId" address="/test">
.
.
.
<jaxrs:properties>
<entry key="org.apache.cxf.endpoint.private" value="true"/>
</jaxrs:properties>
</jaxrs:server>

This will stop the listing of the service when url http://server:port/test is typed in the browser.

Eclipse Tips: Escape string while pasting in the editor

2012-02-23T09:17:00.000+05:30

Escape string while pasting in the editor

Go to Window > Preferences, type escape in the search field. Go to Java > Editor > Typing preference page. In last group label "String literals" select the "Escape text when pasting into a string literal".

CXF JSON Generation remove @ prefix

2012-02-16T18:40:00.000+05:30

Working with CXF-RS if you want to generate the json response along with xml than it becomes pain in cases where your xml is a mixture of attributes and elements. Problem comes because of default jettison json provider which is configured in cxf-rs. The jettison appends the '@' prefix with the attributes. However, I needed json free from any prefixes. To achieve this i had configure jackson as json provider like this:


        <jaxrs:providers>
            <ref bean="jaxbProvider" />
            <ref class="org.codehaus.jackson.jaxrs.JacksonJsonProvider"/>
        </jaxrs:providers>




That's it and you should be free from prefixes.

CXF-RS: Java Code Generation from xml/xsd

2012-02-03T22:54:00.001+05:30

Cleaner approach is to use xjc like this:

Continue to dirty approach below if u need to:

When working with CXF-RS services often we start with XML message that will be served. After that we go through endless iteration of generating the right Java POJO's for the XML. The library like apache XMLBeans generate the Java code but the code generated is not what a developer would write and generally tedious to modify and understand.

I have come across a work around for generating Java classes from XSD (xml) which is very close to what a developer with decent experience will write.

Follow the steps given below to explore the solution:

1. Generate the wsdl from from xsd as given in at this link (http://cxf.apache.org/docs/xsd-to-wsdl.html).

2. The Java classes can be generated from wsdl from maven plugin entry below find complete details here http://cxf.apache.org/docs/maven-cxf-codegen-plugin-wsdl-to-java.html


 org.apache.cxf
 cxf-codegen-plugin
 ${cxf.version}
 
  
   generate-sources
   generate-sources
   
    ${project.build.directory}/generated/cxf
    
     
      ${basedir}/src/main/wsdl/myService.wsdl
     
    
   
   
    wsdl2java

Hope this reduce your headache. Happy coding :)

Spring Roo is amazing

2011-12-23T08:29:00.000+05:30

Developer spend 75% of their time working on boiler-plate code. Spring Roo do amazing job of doing that for you and gets you started really-2 fast. After that you can follow the application curve if writing the business logic.

Why Roo?

Define the class and its relation it will generate the DB using hibernate
you can generate the controller's ( and UI) from the same classes with CURD operation supported
test code is also gets generated
code generated is clean and easy to modify
dependency resolution happens through maven
once you are done projects are eclipse ready
easy to get rid of metadata for production

Other tools:

I came across Grails but i needed a framework which will generate the java so roo was the better choice for me

Video helped me get started: http://s3.springsource.com/MRKT/roo/2010-01-Five_Minutes_Roo.mov

Netbeans or Eclipse which one to choose

2011-12-20T10:30:00.000+05:30

There are so many articles on the web discussing this, what I am going to do is just briefly explain the pros and cons of each which will help you choose better.

	Description	Netbeans	Eclipse
Plugins	It helps you extend the reach of your IDE to newer technologies without changing the IDE	Good	Good
Code Refactor	Reflects the change made in all the references	Decent	Good
Getting Started	The time it takes to get going on with your application	Good	Decent
Enterprise Support	Usage in big companies, spending effort in eclipse	Decent	Good
Debugging	Easy in which you can find a problem	Decent	Good
UI	Looks old	Decent	Good
Spell Check		Not Present	Decent
Code Generators		Good	Good

Hope this will help you in making a choice.

First CXF-RS service with Tomcat web-container

2011-12-19T23:19:00.002+05:30

Looking to get started on CXF-RS, well that was what i was looking for and there are load of articles doing however none of them provide sufficient bullet points to make me understand how the control is following are how to debug the application if something is not working. Well that's what i am going to write here.

Following are components you need to get started with first CXF-RS:

Tomcat
Eclipse (or some equivalent IDE)
Spring

Create a dynamic web project in the eclipse (this is nothing but a simple web project which can deployed and can run when deployed in the web container like Tomcat).

Keep your eye on the bold terms featuring in the files...

Start will writing the web.xml descriptor file.

contextConfigLocation

WEB-INF/deploy-context.xml

org.springframework.web.context.ContextLoaderListener

CXFServlet

CXF Servlet

org.apache.cxf.transport.servlet.CXFServlet

CXFServlet

Second step is writing the deploy-context.xml and keep it in WEB-INF folder.

Java classes needed for the this:

1. com.test.User.java
import javax.xml.bind.annotation.XmlRootElement;

@XmlRootElement(name = "user")
public class User {

private Integer id;

private String name;

public User() {
}

public User(Integer id, String name) {
this.id = id;
this.name = name;
}

public Integer getId() {
return id;
}

public void setId(Integer id) {
this.id = id;
}

public void setName(String name) {
this.name = name;
}

public String getName() {
return name;
}

@Override
public String toString() {
return String.format("{id=%s,name=%s}", id, name);
}
}

----------------------------------------------------------------------

2. com.test.UserCollection.java

import java.util.Collection;

import javax.xml.bind.annotation.XmlElement;
import javax.xml.bind.annotation.XmlElementWrapper;
import javax.xml.bind.annotation.XmlRootElement;

@XmlRootElement
public class UserCollection {

private Collection users;

public UserCollection() {
}

public UserCollection(Collection users) {
this.users = users;
}

@XmlElement(name="user")
@XmlElementWrapper(name="users")
public Collection getUsers() {
return users;
}
}

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

3. com.test.IService.java

import javax.ws.rs.core.Response;

public interface IService {

UserCollection getUsers();

User getCustomer(Integer id);

Response getBadRequest();

}

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

4. com.test.ServiceImpl

import java.util.HashMap;

import java.util.Map;

import javax.ws.rs.GET;

import javax.ws.rs.Path;

import javax.ws.rs.PathParam;

import javax.ws.rs.Produces;

import javax.ws.rs.core.Response;

import javax.ws.rs.core.Response.Status;

@Path("/myservice/")

@Produces("application/json")

public class ServiceImpl implements IService {

private static Map users = new HashMap();

static {

users.put(1, new User(1, "foo"));

users.put(2, new User(2, "bar"));

users.put(3, new User(3, "baz"));

}

public ServiceImpl() {

System.out.println("hello");

}

@GET

@Path("/users")

public UserCollection getUsers() {

return new UserCollection(users.values());

}

@GET

@Path("/user/{id}")

public User getCustomer(@PathParam("id") Integer id) {

return users.get(id);

}

@GET

@Path("/users/bad")

public Response getBadRequest() {

return Response.status(Status.BAD_REQUEST).build();

}

That's it you are done. Your app structure would look similar to this:

App

--WEB-INF

----lib

----classes

----web.xml

----deploy-context.xml

Deploy this app in the tomcat server and try hitting following urs:

http://localhost:8080/TextCXF/hello/myservice/users

http://localhost:8080/TextCXF/hello/myservice/user/1

Get Rid of scrollbars on Scroller

2011-09-23T08:32:00.002+05:30

If you are working on flex mobile project. You would be facing the feature of scrollbars appearing whenever you scroll through the list or widget with-in the scroller component. If these has become a problem for you and you need to get rid of the feature follow the steps mentioned here:

Right a new script extending from the scroller
Observe vertical and horizontal scrollbars tags which are auto generated
modify them and insert the property alpha=0
Include this skin in your scroller and you are done

New in Dolphin - Java 7

2011-08-08T15:51:00.000+05:30

With Dolphin java introduced cool new features like:

1. Strings in “switch” block

     switch(s) {
          case “Apple”:
          // do something;

          case “Orange”:
          // do something;

          default :
     }

     2. <> (Diamond) operator – Type inference for generic instance creation
E.g List > list = new ArrayList>();
vis-à-vis
List > list = new ArrayList <> ();
Empty diamond braces is required and it's not a typo :).

     3. Single Catch for multiple Exceptions with "|" operator
          try {
          // Reflective operations calling Class.forName,
          // Class.newInstance, Class.getMethod, Method.invoke, etc.
     } catch (final ClassNotFoundException |      InstantiationException | NoSuchMethodException |      InvocationTargetException e) {
          log(e)
          throw e;
     }

     4. Also in Java 7, this will work
     public void rethrowException(String exceptionName) throws FirstException, SecondException {
          try { // ...
          } catch (Exception e) {
          throw e;
     }
}

     5. Try-with-resources statement – basic objective is to facilitate automatic resource management, simplify coding and highlight pertinent exceptions e.g.
     try (InputStream in = new FileInputStream(src);
     OutputStream out = new FileOutputStream(dest);) {
          byte buf = new byte[8192];
          int n;
          while ((n = in.read(buf)) >= 0)
               out.write(buf, 0, n);
          }

Convert XML to ArrayCollection

2011-07-29T13:11:00.001+05:30

If you have an XML and want to use it in the spark's list component, than you need to first convert it into ArrayCollection and that's what we are doing in this example:

Lets assume you have following XML:

varstrXML:XML = <blog>
<item>
   <title>Blog by Subodh Gupta
   <author>Subodh Guptaauthor>
  </item>
</blog> ;

var xml:XML = new XML(strXML);
var xmlDoc:XMLDocument = new XMLDocument(xml);
var decoder:SimpleXMLDecoder = new SimpleXMLDecoder(true);
var resultObj:Object = decoder.decodeXML(xmlDoc);
var ac:ArrayCollection ;

if(resultObj.blog.hasOwnProperty("item")) {
  if(resultObj.blog.item is ArrayCollection)
  {
  ac = resultObj.root.element;
}
}

that's it you are done. Cheers.

Divide and Conquer by Java Threads

2011-06-15T22:56:00.002+05:30

Suppose you have task which collects the data the from various sources and creates a Object containing all this information e.g. information is distributes over various databases, websites and some you need to calculate based on that data. The single threaded application works fine with small amount of data however as data starts growing single threads shows its limitation.

There is a interesting property of threads which comes to our rescue. Thread maintains the private copy of object on which it operates called as working copy in which it keeps the local modification which are made to the object. While main memory contains the master copy of every object.

After all threads stop executing all the working copies are merged into the master copy. This becomes the curse in case of multiple objects modify the same field in the object because merging back creates the confusion and results in a unpredictable behavior. However if each thread works on the different field of the object merging won't cause a conflict and hence state remains consistent and predictable.

This improves the performance many folds and hence application gain scalability which was missing in the single threaded application.

Snippet:

import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.List;

public class Test {

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        final List list = new ArrayList();
        Person person = null;
        for (int i = 0; i < 100; i++) {
            person = new Person();
            Runnable runnable = createFirstRunnable(person);
            Runnable run = createSecondRunnable(person);
            Thread thread = new Thread(runnable);
            Thread tt = new Thread(run);
            thread.start();
            tt.start();
            list.add(person);
        }

        for (Person p : list) {
            System.out.println("This is " + p.getFirstName() + " " + p.getLastName() + "'s Blog.");
        }
    }

    private static Runnable createSecondRunnable(final Person person) {
        Runnable run = new Runnable() {

            @Override
            public void run() {
                person.setLastName("Gupta");

            }
        };
        return run;
    }

    private static Runnable createFirstRunnable(final Person person) {
        Runnable runnable = new Runnable() {
            @Override
            public void run() {
                person.setFirstName("Subodh");
            }
        };
        return runnable;
    }

    private static class Person {
        private String firstName = null;
        private String lastName = null;

        public Person() {
        }

        public String getFirstName() {
            return firstName;
        }

        public void setFirstName(String firstName) {
            this.firstName = firstName;
        }

        public String getLastName() {
            return lastName;
        }

        public void setLastName(String lastName) {
            this.lastName = lastName;
        }
    }
}

Cool solution for Cross domain

2011-05-24T22:51:00.001+05:30

Just follow these steps to make it work:

Compose your response as an JSON let say responseObject variable represent this JSON string/object
Wrap the JSON response as an argument to a method call e.g. helloMethod(responseObject); where helloMethod is the method name
Define this method(helloMethod) which handles this response in the client side

Lets take complete working sample:

assume JSON Object as str = {"user":{"fname":"subodh","lname":"gupta","type":"blog","category":"tech"}}
handleUser(str);
function handleUser(str){ alert(str.user.fname);}

just to complete the solution look at call below:

jQuery.getJSON("http://subodh.blog.com/servlet?user=subodh&responseType=JSON",
function(str) {
alert(str.user.fname);
});

Look at this link for details jQuery.getJSON.

http://subodh.blog.com/servlet?user=subodh&responseType=JSON this could be replaced by your service returning JSON response.

That's it you are done. :)