Stupid Java Tricks

I just registered for Google I/O. Who else is going? Anyone from the DFW area?

Last week I was looking for a Hudson plugin that would hot deploy a web application to a remote container. In the process I managed to find several other useful and, admittedly, fun plugins.
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If you’re reading this then you’re probably aware that the new Spring 3.0 release will have REST support (If you’re not familiar with REST here is a nice intro).  In this article I’m going to describe the basic steps required to quickly get a RESTful XML web service going using the latest Spring 3 release candidate (3.0.0.RC3).  In future follow-up articles I will describe how to switch between JSON and XML using selectors and how to use the Spring REST Template to read RESTful web services.
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According to Sun, the controversial language feature, Closures, that was previously removed from the JDK 7 feature list has now been added in again (via).  I’m looking forward to the JSR on this one.  While I can’t see it being more elegant that using Scala, it will definitely make certain algorithms much nicer to implement in Java.

There are so many useful Java frameworks and utilities out there that are free and open source that it boggles the mind. Here are a few of my recent favorites. Feel free to add your own to the list. There are many many more that I did not add to this list because they are very common (e.g. log4J, JUnit, etc.)
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For a project recently, I had the pleasure of working with both DBUtils and DBCP (Database Connection Pooling) from the Apache commons libraries. Both of these libraries together helped me to quickly create a simple, extensible DAO layer for my project. Both libraries include some great default features that I used right out of the box, without any configuration or fuss. In the post I’ll be talking about, and showing an example of using DBUtils. I will also show a quick and easy way to get a DataSource using DBCP.
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Found this by accident and thought it was hilarious.

How to Pronounce “Subversion”

The 1.6 release of the JDK included a new java.io.Console class, which adds some new features to enhance and simplify command-line applications. Notably, Console includes a method specifically for reading passwords that disables console echo and returns a char array; both important for security.
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I’ve always thought it would be cool to attend a JavaOne conference for a day or two. Unfortunately the location and costs have always deterred me. So, I’m wondering: Is it worth the cost of registration, the cost of a cross-country flight, and potential missed work? If you’ve been in the last few years, I’d like to hear your experiences and your feedback regarding the quality of the content. Thanks.

“The question is, ‘What’s been eating my time?’ Alex.” For those of you who have never watched Jeopardy and therefore didn’t catch the reference, shame on you. Buy a TV and worship watch it.

I’ve been instructed to create Data Link, Network, and Transport layers in my stack. The Data Link layer must use an “asynchronous” bit synchronization technique (start bits, stop bits, sync bits, etc.). This layer must also include a CRC-16 value in the frame. The Network layer is fairly simple, and will run a simple path vector routing protocol to build the forwarding table, and that’s about it. The Transport layer will use the “concurrent logical channels” approach which must implement a form of reliability using ACKs. Sounds fairly easy, but it’s taken me almost a week just to get the data Link layer completed. Luckily, I think it will be the most complex layer. My deadline is encroaching so…debugging tutorial? What debugging tutorial? Yeah, I’m still on it. I’ve actually recorded a few bits of it already. Anyway, back to the stack.