Andrew Beacock's Blog

Back in July I blogged about how to do AND/OR type SQL queries using Hibernate AND/OR JPA using disjunctions . If you looked at the example code you will have seen that I was appending "%" as the wildcard operator in my Restrictions . Since then I've used Restrictions a couple more times and wondered if there was a better way of specifying them other than string concatenation. Well there is and it's with the use of the MatchMode class. Rather than this code: import org.hibernate.Criteria; import org.hibernate.Session; import org.hibernate.criterion.Restrictions; Criteria criteria = session.createCriteria(Product.class); criteria.add( Restrictions.disjunction() .add(Restrictions.ilike("code", codeOrName + "%")) .add(Restrictions.ilike("name", "%" + codeOrName + "%")) ); return criteria.list(); You can now write: import org.hibernate.Criteria; import org.hibernate.Session; import org.hibernate.crite

When you are coding JSP pages using JSTL one thing you use a lot is the <c:foreach> tag . This tag a great for iterating over Lists or Sets but what do you do when you want to display the contents of a Map ? Firstly you need to decide how you are going to use the Map. Do you want to access a 'value' stored within the Map based on a known key or iterate over the Map displaying both key and value? Access a Map based on a 'key' This one is pretty straight forward you just need to know the JSTL syntax: ${aMapFullOfKeysAndValues[yourKnownKey]} Two key points: The key is an existing JSTL variable or a quoted string You use square brackets at the end of the Map name Iterate over a Map pulling out the 'key' & 'value' This is a little more complex, note the name of the variable that is filled on each pass through the Map ('entry'): ${entry.key} - ${entry.value} Four key points: The name of the Map is placed as the 'i

Part 5 can be found here So what can you do about root context beans not being wired correctly? One solution is to ensure that all your root context beans have their autowiring specified via XML, either with explicit elements or autowire="byType" or autowire="byName" XML attributes, but this is a bit of a backward step considering how annotation centric Spring is becoming. You could enable component scanning (via the XML element) and go through the beans marking them with the @Component family of annotations so that the @Autowired statements are picked up. You will also need to remove the XML-based bean definitions from the context files otherwise you will end up with two conflicting beans - one loaded due to the XML declaration and another loaded due to component scanning. Or you could switch on 'annotation awareness' by adding a XML element to your root application context files. In fact you only need to add it to one of the root context fil

Part 4 can be found here It's not clearly stated in the Spring documentation but the auto-wiring stage for DispatcherServlets only scan through the beans within it's specific application context searching for autowiring annotations (@Autowired, @Qualifier, etc.), it does not venture into the root application context to wire those beans. It sometimes appears that it does cross that root context boundary if you have root bean classes annotated with one of the @Component family and you enable your web application's component scanning to include that package. What happens is that the bean is loaded into the root application context and then an overwritten version is loaded into the WebApplicationContext . This overlaid version is then auto-wired as it lives inside the WebApplicationContext . Part 6 can be found here

Part 3 can be found here Spring loads beans into application contexts. Any beans declared in XML files or any annotated classes found via component scanning are placed into a suitable application context - either the root application context or one specific to the web application that the bean is declared in. Any beans declared (or scanned for) which are not DispatcherServlet related (i.e. not -servlet.xml files) are placed into one big root application context bucket, the support for separate XML application context files is purely a convenience for you to manage the logical separation of the beans. Each DispatcherServlet gets it's own WebApplicationContext which inherits all the beans from the root application context, overlaying all the beans defined within it's web application scope (i.e. any beans within -servlet.xml) . Once all the DispatcherServlet's beans are loaded it will attempt to autowire them together and this is where the potential problems start. Par

Part 2 can be found here Having a load of beans instantiated in an application context is one thing, having them wired together so that they know about each other is another. Wiring can be done either using XML or via the @Autowired annotation . The annotations on their own don't cause Spring to wire the beans, you need to turn on annotation support for Spring to find them: <context:annotation-config/> When added to an application context XML file it instructs Spring to look through all the loaded beans in the relevant application context for annotations like @Autowired, @Qualifier & @Required. In a reasonably mature Spring application you could have the beans being wired together in a number of ways: Explicit <property> XML elements referencing other beans The addition of autowire="byType" or autowire="byName" XML attributes @Autowired annotations inside normal classes declared as beans in XML @Autowired annotations inside @Component

Part 1 can be found here Instead of adding explicit beans to your XML files, Spring 2.5 introduced the @Component annotation family ( @Service , @Controller , @Repository – all children of the @Component parent annotation). Simply add these object-level annotations to your class definitions to mark what type of Spring bean they are. Then add the following XML snippet to the application context XML file to tell Spring where to look: <context:component-scan base-package="com.andrewbeacock"/> Spring now scans through the whole classpath for the specified package (and sub-packages) looking for @Component-based classes. Any found are created as beans and placed in the application context. This purely adds the beans to the relevant application context, it doesn't look inside the class for other annotations until it's finished loading all the remaining beans into the context. Part 3 can be found here

Let's set the scene a little: You're a developer on a long-running Spring -based web application. It's a reasonably large application developed before annotations were a twinkle in Spring's eye and so uses XML to declare the beans and wiring. Over time the use of annotations has grown - particularly in the area of annotated controllers - and you've started to add @Autowired annotations rather than explicitly defining the wiring in the XML application context files. So now you've got a good mix of XML-defined beans and annotated ones, sometimes mixing the two together; a bean is declared in the XML context file but it's wirings are defined using @Autowired statements rather than the usual XML elements. Everything is working perfectly... You've never had a problem adding @Autowired annotations to beans until now, but a particular bean's members don't seem to get wired (you get a NullPointerException at runtime) but you don't get a wi

I'm going to try something new, a multi-post feature which is basically an article I've written for an open source journal but broken up into bite-sized pieces and posted over a couple of weeks (or so). Please comment if you like it, find it annoying, my content is completely wrong, etc. I'd like to hear from you. My series is on "Spring Autowiring & Component Scanning Problems"

Not sure if you are aware of this but Google have added a rather funky dropdown account selector to a number of their applications, more details are here: Access two Gmail accounts at once in the same browser A damn fine invention if you ask me!

If you have been using Hibernate or JPA for a while you will know that the Criteria and Restrictions classes are very handy for querying the database without writing any SQL code and without worrying about the real column names (these are all captured in the annotations that you have applied to the domain objects). This is fine when you want to search for objects (rows) which are a combination of columns such as forename = "Andrew" AND surname = "Beacock" but what if you want to search for all people who either have a forename of Andrew and/or a surname of Beacock? This is where a " disjunction " comes in. This is one of the types hanging off the Restrictions class and deals with AND/OR situations. The code below is looking through the 'products' table for any product that has a code or name starting with the text supplied: import org.hibernate.Criteria; import org.hibernate.Session; import org.hibernate.criterion.Restrictions; Criteri

I've been using the excellent Password Composer Greasemonkey script for Firefox for over 2 years now - it's a great way to ensure that your master password isn't spread around the web yet never gets in the way of accessing a site. My collegue Andy Kayley recently pointed out that there is an iPhone version available so that you can easily access your Password Composer encrypted passwords whilst on the move!  It's written by Jon Parise and not only does he include a link to his version but also goes into excellent detail on how he developed the iPhone application! Now I just need to get myself an iPhone... ;)

This might be old news now but Google now have the ability to use 'gmail.com' for UK people rather than the awkward 'googlemail.com': Why did you change the name from Google Mail to Gmail? A little more than a year after Gmail first launched, Google changed the name of its webmail service in the United Kingdom to "Google Mail" due to negotiations over a trademark dispute. We have reached a settlement, so we are happily changing the name back to Gmail, and offering @gmail.com addresses to all Google Mail users in the UK. Plus, it's shorter and easier to type this way :) There's more information about it here: Google Mail is becoming Gmail in the UK Technorati Tags: Google , Gmail , Andrew Beacock

I thought everyone knew this, but after a chat with a couple of colleagues this week it seems that most don't know that... ...if you use Firebug (in Firefox ) on a jQuery -enabled website, Firebug 's console can handle jQuery selectors and other jQuery magic . To see for yourself, make sure you have Firebug installed, then visit the jQuery home page . Ensure that the console is enabled and type the following and hit return: $('#jq-content').fadeOut() You should hopefully see most of jQuery's home page gently fade out! This feature is invaluable when investigating & debugging jQuery javascript code, make sure you install Firebug into Firefox today! Technorati Tags: jQuery , Firebug , Firefox , Andrew Beacock

I was messing around with jQuery today combined with a Spring form-backed bean and was finding that my jQuery was failing to work. The id of the input field bound to my Spring form was person.id . Trying to get the value entered into the input box was failing, this is what I was trying: $('#person.id').val(); The problem here is the period - '.' - jQuery see these as CSS notation and so fails to find an element with that id, what you need to do is add two backslashes ('\\') before the period to escape it, like this: $('#person\\.id').val(); See the jQuery FAQ for more details. Technorati Tags: jQuery , Spring , Andrew Beacock

Found an interesting little gotcha at work last week, I was adding form validation to an annotated Spring controller , creating a custom Validator to do the work and wiring it in to the controller's method signature with the use of the BindingResult parameter (I just tacked it on the end of my existing parameters): @RequestMapping(method=RequestMethod.POST, params="action=person") public String createPerson(@ModelAttribute("person") PersonForm person, ModelMap model, BindingResult result) { // code goes here... } This resulted in a slightly odd error message: java.lang.IllegalStateException: Errors/BindingResult argument declared without preceding model attribute. Check your handler method signature! I was a little confused by this message, it was indicating that I didn't have the form's model attribute declared before the BindingResult but I certainly have. After some google searching for this error message I found a website created by a coll

I really enjoyed last night's Open Source Central user group meeting in Manchester. Both speakers were excellent and there were a lot of good ideas to take away.  Here is my summary of the evening: "Spring BlazeDS Integration" by Rick Evans He started with an overview of why build web applications with Flex & Flash : rich internet applications which look like a desktop application rather than a bunch of web pages. He then suggested that Flex & Flash applications client applications could be powered by a Spring server backend by using BlazeDS . Flex is a framework for building rich internet applications. You get the same looking application regardless of operating system or browser which can't be said for regular web-based applications. Flex applications can be deployed into the standard flash player embedded in the browser or as a desktop application via Adobe AIR.  You write Flex applications in ActionScript which is an OO language enabling a simpl

I blogged a month ago about the main topic of the next Open Source Central User Group meeting in Manchester.  I recently received details of the second topic so I thought I'd better update you all. Jan Machacek will be talking about how to turn a regular Spring-based web application into an iPhone app, here's what he's going to do: I will show you how to take your regular Spring web application and turn it into optimised iPhone web application that feels nearly like a native application with just one Java class and a bit of JavaScript and CSS. Sounds pretty cool and having worked for a number of years in the mobile industry it's something I'm quite keen to find out about. Make sure you register for the event which will take place on Wednesday 24th March. Technorati Tags: Spring , iPhone , Jan Machacek , Andrew Beacock

The next Open Source Central User Group (Manchester) meeting (formally the North West Spring User Group) is meeting on Wednesday 24th March. It's in the usual place and Rick Evans will be speaking about "Lex And Spring Integration: Introducing Spring BlazeDS Integration". To ensure you have a seat make sure you register for the event ! Technorati Tags: Spring , Rick Evans , Andrew Beacock

Ever since I started developing using Unix machines I've wanted symbolic links in Windows XP.  A recent pursuit of backup solutions left me really wanting symbolic links so I started the search.  This blog post gave me everything I needed, using a tool from Microsoft's website called junction . This command line tool created junction points between a symbolic name and a real folder on your hard drive (sorry network drives cannot be linked to). I downloaded it and placed the junction.exe file in my C:\WINDOWS\system32 directory so it would be on my system path. Below is my little walk-through of how to use junction . I created a folder on my desktop called "junction test" and created a folder inside that called "folder": I created a text file called "README.txt" inside the "folder" directory: I opened a Windows DOS prompt (cmd) and navigated to the "junction test" folder on my desktop, then I ran the junction co

We recently noticed that the profile that we had marked as default in our Maven settings.xml file was not being set as the default. Like many examples on the web we had the following XML element set in the appropriate profile: <profiles> <profile> <activation> <activeByDefault/> </activation> </profile> </profiles> After some searching we found this maven-users mailing list post detailing the solution . <activeByDefault/> isn't enough to set the value, you need to explicitly set the boolean value to true: <activeByDefault>true</activeByDefault> Once we saved that change in our settings.xml file the profile was picked up as the default. Technorati Tags: Maven , Andrew Beacock

I found this JUnit tip recently over on Joe Walnes's blog , a rather nifty (and different) way to assert whether two Lists contain the same items: JUnit/TestNG tip: Diffing Lists Technorati Tags: JUnit , Joe Walnes , Andrew Beacock