_TC

How to use Maven behing a proxy with authentication

2011-12-16T20:47:00.001+01:00

Maven doesn't work with NTLM authentication. It means that you can try to use the settings.xml file as long as you want, you'll not go threw your proxy.

There is a simple fix to use Maven behind a NTLM authentication proxy : install a relay proxy that will take care of authentication on your machine.

First, download NTLMAPS from Sourceforge.
You need Python to run it.

Configure NTLMAPS startup batch :

@echo off
"PATH_TO_PYTHON/python.exe" "PATH_TO_NTLMAPS/main.py"

In NTLMAPS configuration file server.cfg, set values as below :

Dans la section [GENERAL] :

LISTEN_PORT:5865 #leave default port or set an authorised port
PARENT_PROXY:ADRESS_PROXY => #proxy adress
PARENT_PROXY_PORT:PORT_PROXY => #proxy port

Dans la section [NTLM_AUTH] :

NT_DOMAIN:DOMAIN_NT #your domain
USER:USER_NT  #your user
PASSWORD:PASSWORD_NT #your password

Start NTLMAPS with runserver.bat.
Finally configure Maven to use the relay proxy. In your settings.xml :

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<settings xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/SETTINGS/1.0.0"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/SETTINGS/1.0.0
http://maven.apache.org/xsd/settings-1.0.0.xsd">


...

<proxies>
<proxy>
<active>true</active>
<protocol>http</protocol> => your protocol
<host>localhost</host>
<port>5865</port> => port in server.cfg
</proxy>
</proxies>


...
</settings>

And enjoy.

Documentation update for Sitebricks

2011-12-16T20:24:00.001+01:00

If you don't know Sitebricks for you Java web application, you should visit sitebricks.org and give it a try. I've released a bunch of basic documentation to the website. My small contribution to this great project.

Online Java Regex tester

2011-12-12T20:59:00.000+01:00

As I was lazy to build a small program to test a regular expression, I've found this website. More than useful !

RegEx: online regular expression testing

How to use Apache HttpClient with JVM proxy settings ?

2011-12-09T23:38:00.001+01:00

I usualy try to stay close to sitebricks core functionnality. When I faced the issue of accessing a distant website threw a post request, I tried to use sitebricks webclient as described on official website :

The current version is not ready to use as it doesn't support proxy (or at least I didn't find how to make in work) and also HTTPS request.
After a few search on google, I started to use Apache HttpClient, part of HttpComponents.
I notice that this implementation is not taking care of proxy settings in the JVM. I did that function to use them anyway.
Please notice that my final goal was to use a HTTPS distant website.

private DefaultHttpClient initHttpClient() {
  
  DefaultHttpClient client = new DefaultHttpClient();
  
  String proxyHost = System.getProperty("https.proxyHost");
  if(proxyHost == null) {
   proxyHost = System.getProperty("http.proxyHost");
  }
  
  if(proxyHost != null) {
   
   String proxyUser = System.getProperty("https.proxyUser");
   if(proxyUser == null) {
    proxyUser = System.getProperty("http.proxyUser");
   }
   
   String proxyPassword = System.getProperty("https.proxyPassword");
   if(proxyPassword == null) {
    proxyPassword = System.getProperty("http.proxyPassword");
   }
   
   if(proxyUser != null && proxyPassword != null) {
    client.getCredentialsProvider().setCredentials(
                     new AuthScope("localhost", 8080), 
                     new UsernamePasswordCredentials(proxyUser, proxyPassword));
   }
   
   String proxyPort = System.getProperty("https.proxyPort");
   if(proxyPort == null) {
    proxyPort = System.getProperty("http.proxyPort");
   }
   if(proxyPort == null) {
    proxyPort = "80";
   }
   
   HttpHost proxy = new HttpHost(proxyHost, Integer.parseInt(proxyPort));
            
            client.getParams().setParameter(ConnRoutePNames.DEFAULT_PROXY, proxy);
  }
  
  return client;

Finaly really easy to do.

Do you know GraphViz support from Google Chart API ?

2011-11-28T19:35:00.001+01:00

Google Chart API as a beta support for GraphViz that is not well known.

More or less all GraphViz options are supported. The only limitation I've seen is special fonts (only the default one is supported) and number of nodes/edges (200/400).

Google provide a web UI to generate an image map to turn your static graph into a fully linked nodes graph. In fact the algorithm is really simple. Here is an example with jQuery :

var fullUrl = 'URL_TO_BUILD_GRAPHVIZ_CHART';

// get it in Json format
$.get(fullUrl+'&chof=json', function(data) {
    // create a Map element
    var mapElement = $('<map>').attr('name','graph_map');
    var chart = data.chartshape;
    for (var i = 0; i < chart.length; i++) {
        // do nothing with edges
        if(chart[i].name.indexOf('unlabel') == -1) {
        var areaElement = $('<area>').attr('name',chart[i].name)
            .attr('shape',chart[i].type)
            .attr('coords',chart[i].coords.join(","))
            .attr('href','YOUR_LINK')
            .attr('title',chart[i].name);
            mapElement.append(areaElement);
        }
    }
    $('#google-chart').after(mapElement);
    $('#google-chart').attr('usemap','#graph_map');
}, 'json');

Canvas/jQuery graph library

2011-11-19T13:51:00.001+01:00

A very light and easy to use graph library to use with jQuery and a HTML5 canvas element.

http://arborjs.org/

jQuery UI Autocomplete Widget with a POST request

2011-11-09T17:42:00.003+01:00

The jQuery UI autocomplete plugin missed a 'method':'post' options to work with the remote page 'source' option. Hopefully, there is a trick to go threw :

$('#searchInput').autocomplete({
 source: function(request, response) {
  $.post( "/dosomething", { searchInput: request.term }, function( data ) {
   response(data)
  }
  , 'json'); 
 },
 minLength: 2,
 cache: false,
 select: function( event, ui ) {
  window.location.href = 'a_page';
 }
});

The trick is to provide a function as the source option. This function will perform to Post request to server a get a JSON response : [{'id':'1', 'label':'label1', 'value':'value1'}, {...}, ...].

How to upload a file using SiteBricks ?

2011-11-09T17:42:00.001+01:00

It is supposed to work that way :

@Post
public Reply<?> upload(Request req) {
 try {
  File tmp = File.createTempFile("upload", ".csv");
  OutputStream out = new FileOutputStream(tmp);
  req.readTo(out);
  out.close();
    
  // do something with tmp
   
 }
 catch (IOException e) {
  e.printStackTrace();
 }
 
 return Reply.saying().ok();
}

But in fact the tmp File will not only contain the sent file but also all the request details (User Agent, others parameters, ...). As I needed a way to have the sent file and only it, I did it with a more regular Servlet Way. First add the commons-fileupload to your path.

<dependency>
 <groupId>commons-fileupload</groupId>
 <artifactId>commons-fileupload</artifactId>
 <version>1.2.2</version>
</dependency>

Then Inject the HttpServletRequest in your @Show or @Service class.

@Inject
private HttpServletRequest request;

Finaly, use the commons-fileupload methods to get your file :


try {
 boolean isMultipart = ServletFileUpload.isMultipartContent(request);
 if(isMultipart) {
  ServletFileUpload upload = new ServletFileUpload(new DiskFileItemFactory());
  List items = upload.parseRequest(request);
  for(Object obj : items) {
   if(obj instanceof FileItem) {
    FileItem item = (FileItem)obj;
    if(item.getFieldName().equals("my-file-field-name")) {
     // do something with item.getInputStream()
    }
   }

  }
 }
}
catch(FileUploadException e) {
 e.printStackTrace();
}
catch (IOException e) {
 e.printStackTrace();
}

Load jQuery UI theme from Google

2011-11-09T17:41:00.001+01:00

The Google Libraries API allows you to load jQuery and jQuery UI. What is not documented is that you can also load jQuery UI theme with a simple <link> tag.

<head><script src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.6.4/jquery.min.js">
</script>
<script src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jqueryui/1.8.16/jquery-ui.min.js">
</script>
<link href="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jqueryui/1.8.16/themes/redmond/jquery-ui.css" rel="Stylesheet" type="text/css"></link>
...
</head>

That's it.

Build a hierarchical list with jQuery

2011-11-06T22:29:00.001+01:00

Here is a little plugin jQuery I made to auto format hierarchical list.

The plugin code :

(function( $ ) {
  $.fn.hierarchical = function(options) {
   
   var settings = {
       'openImage' : 'none',
       'closeImage' : 'none',
       'imageWidth' : '0'
     };
   
   if(options) { 
    $.extend( settings, options );
   }
   
   indent(this, 0, settings.openImage, settings.closeImage, settings.imageWidth);
   return this;
  };
})( jQuery );


function indent(list, indentation, openImage, closeImage, imageWidth) {
 $(list).children('li').each(function() {
  if($(this).children('div').size() == 1) {
   
   $(this).children('div')
     .css('margin-left', indentation + 'px')
     .css('padding-left', imageWidth + 'px')
     .css('background', 'url(' + closeImage + ') no-repeat top left')
     .css('cursor','pointer')
     .click(function() {
      if($(this).parent().children('ul').css('display')=='none') {
       $(this).parent().children('ul').css('display', 'block');
       $(this).css('background', 'url(' + openImage + ') no-repeat top left')
      }
      else {
       $(this).parent().children('ul').css('display', 'none');
       $(this).css('background', 'url(' + closeImage + ') no-repeat top left')
      }
     });
   
   $(this).children('ul')
     .css('display', 'none')
     .css('margin-left',(indentation + 16) + 'px');
   
   indent($(this).children('ul'), (indentation + 5), openImage, closeImage, 16);
   
  }
  else {
   $(this).css('margin-left', indentation + 'px');
  }
 });
}

The list architecture should follow the architecture below. Each li element should have a title inside a div element and a content inside a ul element.

<ul class="hierarchical-list">
   <li>
      <div>First Element Title</div>
      <ul>
         <li>
            <div>Second Level Element Title</div>
            <ul>
               <li>
                  <div>Third Element Title</div>
                  <ul>
                      <li>Simple element.</li>
                  </ul>
               </li>
            </ul>
         </li>
      </ul>
   </li>
</ul>

Last thing to do is to call the plugin on your list :

$(document).ready(function() {
   $('.hierarchical-list').hierarchical({
    'openImage' : images/open.png',
        'closeImage' : images/close.png',
        'imageWidth' : '16'
   });
  });

And that's it. jQuery is really a write less do more lib.

Use Sitebricks with Freemarker

2011-11-03T16:52:00.002+01:00

Few months ago, I've started to use Guice and Sitebricks for my web applications instead of the Spring MVC architecture I was working with for years. And I have to say I'm now a Guice addict. Sitebricks is a really great framework but there is one thing I don't get use to it : the default MVEL based templating engine. I've switch to Freemarker and here is how I did it.

If you want to switch to Sitebricks, you should also know that there is a lack of documentation but the user group is really active.

Here is the Renderable interface I've designed :

public interface Renderable {

 public Map<String, Object> getModel();
 public String getTemplate();
 
}

Each Renderable object can be process by the TemplateEngine :

public class TemplateEngine {

 private Configuration configuration;
 
 public TemplateEngine() {
  this.configuration = new Configuration();
  this.configuration.setClassForTemplateLoading(this.getClass(), "/");
  this.configuration.setObjectWrapper(new DefaultObjectWrapper()); 
 }
 
 public String render(Renderable renderable) {
  try {
   Template template = configuration.getTemplate(renderable.getTemplate());
   Writer out = new StringWriter();
   template.setEncoding("UTF-8");
   template.process(renderable.getModel(), out);
         out.flush();
         return out.toString();
  }
  catch (IOException e) {
   e.printStackTrace();
  }
  catch (TemplateException e) {
   e.printStackTrace();
  }
  return "Templating Error";
 }
 
}

The trick is to transform all your Sitebricks pages annotated with @Show into a service annotated with @Service. Each service will implement the Renderable interface and the method getTemplate() should return the value previously given as parameter to @Show.
Then use the Reply API to send your template back to the browser.

Reply.with(templateEngine.render(this)).type("text/html; charset=utf-8");

For example :

@Service
public class TestService implements Renderable {

 @Get
 public Reply<String> get() {
  // do something
  return Reply.with(templateEngine.render(this)).type("text/html; charset=utf-8");
 }

 @Override
 public Map<String, Object> getModel() {
  Map<String, Object> model = initModel();
  model.put("test", "test");
  return model;
 }

 @Override
 public String getTemplate() {
  return "test.ftl";
 }

}

And here you are. Freemarker is now your templating engine in Sitebricks.