Jeroens blog

chrome search engines

2011-02-20T05:30:00.000-08:00

I've switched for quite some time now to chrome. However one oddity remained with chrome after I came back from holiday in Turkey: entering search terms in the address / search bar would lead me to the turkish google site, displaying turkish sites first, and all google information in Turkish.

I do like Turkish pizza, and I wish good health and good fortune to the Turkish people and I even don't mind when the Turkish become member of the European Union but having my search results in Turkish is just over the edge. This is where my love for Turkey stops.

Problem was to change this behavior I tried setting locale, but nothing was wrong with that (or maybe resetting did not solve it).
Until half an hour ago: I found the search engine option under the manage key at the basic preference panel. There I could not edit the default google search engine, so I tried to add an entry, but I found no way to add that entry to the default search engine part. I then removed google but alas I was not able to restore that leaving me only with bing or yahoo as a valid option.

I tried reinstalling chrome: to no avail as the user data settings are not updated. Removing the whole user data setting part (under ~/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/Default) Did solve my problem but that also removed all my local settings. Only removing the Web Data file was the accurate and spot on solution. This appears to be a sqlite datafile so I may be able to change it from there, but chrome is just capable of restoring this file to its original state and that solved my issue.

file api with jquery

2011-01-19T09:44:00.000-08:00

I have been working on a pure html website last year called iscriptdesign. It focuses on parameterized design with svg. Templates with svg and javascript code are processed, so that the user input gets evaluated by embedded javascript producing the svg. The svg can be exported, and you can use the output for a laser cutter or water cutter. Check it out ! One of the major shortcomings is the fact that it is not easy to display templates yourself. I was not able to load the template contents by a file uri, and so I had to rely on the templates on the same server as the html/javascript code for iscriptdesign resided. In the back of my mind I was looking for a more cms like approach to allow for personal uploads from third parties.

Until recently I started to realize the possibilities of the html5 file api. How sweet would it be if people could just drag n drop a template from their local filesystem on a drop spot of iscriptesign? Yesterday I started working on the project and now it's finished.

One of the real challenges was to incorporate it in jquery. Okay not really necessary of course but having the greater part of my website in jquery does make it somewhat desirable and you overtyping an example is not challenging is it?
help from stackoverflow and javaranch gave me head start (now that is challenging).

code


jQuery.fn.initDrop = function() {
  return this.each(function () {
    $(this).bind("dragover", function () {$(this).addClass('focus');$(".drop_container").addClass('focus'); return false;});
    $(this).bind("dragleave",function () {  $(this).removeClass('focus');$(".drop_container").removeClass('focus'); return false;}); 
    $(this).bind("drop",function(e) {
      $(".focus").removeClass("focus");
      $(".drop_container").addClass('focus');
      e.preventDefault();  
      var file = e.originalEvent.dataTransfer.files[0];  
      var reader = new FileReader();  
      reader.onload = function (evt) {
        digestRaw(evt.target.result, true);
      }; 
      reader.readAsText(file);  
    });
    $(this).prepend('
');
  });
};

The div label dropspot is a simple div tag.


  <div class="dropspot" id="dropspot">Drop Spot</div>

Which gets its drop behavior by:


        $("#dropspot").initDrop();

Lessons

Unfortunately I only found this working for Firefox (Mac and Windows) and Chrome (Mac, Windows not tested). Safari is not supporting this yet.

dropevent needs to be unwrapped by retrieving e.orginalevent.

dragend is not working should be dragleave.

In my case i need to remove linefeed/carriage return characters for windows(msdos) files I need to do a text.replace("result.replace(/\r\n?|\n/g, "");

Eclipse galileo

2009-07-02T03:30:00.000-07:00

Just installed Eclipse Galileo the latest and gratest as I type.
with some quirks.
I need to set the proxy, by default it sets it to a native active provider, I had to change it to a manual "active provider".
Installation of subversive from polarion went fine allthough I forgot to add connectors
(available from http://community.polarion.com/projects/subversive/download/eclipse/2.0/galileo-site)
m2eclipse for maven support (http://m2eclipse.sonatype.org/update, exclude subclipse handler optional,and maven project configurators.
spring ide (http://springide.org/updatesite)

Than I run into a

Get repository folder children operation failed.
svn: OPTIONS of '/svn/restofurl': 500 Server Error (http://serverrr.itc.intranet:8083)
svn: OPTIONS request failed on '/svn/restofurl'

Error, which was solved by adding the serverrr.itc.intranet to the list of "bypass from proxy" in the proxy pane in the preferences

mvn create artifacts

2009-02-04T08:39:00.000-08:00

Just played around with the wicket quickstart.
all well and fun however importing it in eclipse is not making it a web project.
for eclipse ganymede, mvn eclipse:eclipse -Dwtpversion=2.0 worked almost.
It still gives an error in eclipse:

Java compiler level does not match the version of the installed Java project facet. Unknown Faceted Project Problem (Java Version Mismatch)

I fixed that by 1: in the compiler properties downgrading to java version 1.4, and than in projects facets setting the java version back to 5.0
et voila!

mysql with launchd

2008-12-07T11:33:00.000-08:00

Just tried to install mysql on ox leopard. Instead of the documented 'MySQL Startup Item' I've chosen to go the mac road: launchd, as I understand mac's equivalent of windows services. It's something unique to mac and apparantly very flexible, check it out.

Mysql installs fine from the pkg distribution, however it gets installed under root:wheel.
bringing the file: com.mysql.mysqld.plist in /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.mysql.mysqld.plist will make it automatically pick it up during startup, you may manually control it by sudo launchctl (un)load com.mysql.mysqld.plist.

 <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
 <key>GroupName</key>
 <string>admin</string>
 <key>KeepAlive</key>
 <true/>
 <key>Label</key>
 <string>com.mysql.mysqld</string>
 <key>OnDemand</key>
 <false/>
 <key>Program</key>
 <string>/usr/local/mysql/bin/mysqld</string>
 <key>RunAtLoad</key>
 <true/>
 <key>UserName</key>
 <string>jeroen</string>
 <key>WorkingDirectory</key>
 <string>/usr/local/mysql</string>
</dict>
</plist>

starting mysql under the user mysql. However logging to mysql to change the password: mysqladmin -u root password 'secret' fails with the message:

error: 'Access denied for user 'root'@'localhost' (using password: NO)'

I've not been able to solve the problem, the documentation failes on this point. I could not manually start mysqld because, it was installed under root:wheel. So the only way to get it right: reinstall it, chmod -R jeroen:admin /usr/local/mysql*.
Than do the mysqladmin -u root password 'secret'. After that update the com.mysql.mysqld.plist file to jeroen/admin for group/userid.
Hopefully this works

motor in de garage.

2008-11-22T08:58:00.000-08:00

Ik heb een motor en die staat mooi en droog in de garage. Alleen als ik de motor eruit wil halen ben ik enorm aan sleuren en trekken. Niet heel erg handig. Vanochtend heb ik een plateau gemaakt van de aanrechtbladen die eerder vervangen zijn (niet alles meteen weggooien), en 3 kleine transport-tableautjes verkrijgbaar bij de praxis voor 10 euro per stuk. Ik was bang dat 60 cm niet genoeg zou zijn om de motor op zijn standaard te laten staan, en heb dus een plateautje wat laten uitsteken, was achteraf niet nodig. Goed om je te realiseren dat het tableau erg beweeglijk is op het moment dat je de motor erop rijdt, veranker het aan de voor- en achterkant. Als de motor er eenmaal opstaat en je versnelt zal het plateau veel sneller wegschieten dan de motor (wet van impuls denk ik). Zorg ook bij wegrijden dat het tableau aan de achterkant gezekerd is.

blazeds

2008-11-22T08:46:00.000-08:00

Last week I tried downloading blazeds to get it to work with flex, I compiled the source and followed the documentation to build it. However as usual the adobe documentation was not up to date: Here's what I had to do on mac (ox tiger).

Could not load definitions from resource net/sf/antcontrib/antcontrib.properties. Solution download ant-contrib from sourceforge, and select ant-contrib from the package. Store the obtained jar in /Developer/Java/apache-ant-1.7.0/bin/lib. And do sudo ln -ns /Developer/Java/apache-ant-1.7.0/bin/ant /usr/bin/ant to make a symbolic link.

Permgen error. Gave export ANT_OPTS="-XX:MaxPermSize=512m", which does the trick

some of the files ant generates can not be removed, making ant main to fail. I had to "sudo ant main" to make it all work..

netstat on mac

2008-10-19T02:30:00.000-07:00

On windows I was able to find ports in use by doing netstat, on the mac (ox Tiger) I can give lsof -i TCP:8080 see here for other os variants.

Logging problems

2008-03-07T06:19:00.000-08:00

Doing some unittests I could not get the logger to behave as expected. turned out that somewhere on the classpath commons-logging.properties was present.

System.out.println(this.getClass().getClassLoader().getResource("commons-logging.properties").toString());
System.out.println(this.getClass().getClassLoader().getResource("log4.jeroen").toString());
System.out.println(this.getClass().getClassLoader().getResource("log4j.properties").toString());
System.out.println(this.getClass().getClassLoader().getResource("org/apache/log4j/Logger.class").toString());
System.out.println(this.getClass().getClassLoader().getResource("org/apache/commons/logging/Log.class").toString());

Adding this file to the root of src/test/java folder fixed this problem.
contents of file is:
org.apache.commons.logging.LogFactory=org.apache.commons.logging.impl.LogFactoryImpl
org.apache.commons.logging.Log=org.apache.commons.logging.impl.Log4JLogger
I've not been able to locate this file, can be on Websphere, Spring or god knows.

The combination of commons-logging, log4j is influencing a successful display of org.hibernate.type. The priority is set to trace, for this package name, but after log4j-1.2.12 is trace and debug separated, so debug is not working. This combination of log4j and commons-logging working for me is:

jar:file:/C:/projects/apache-log4j-1.2.15/log4j-1.2.15.jar!/org/apache/log4j/Logger.class
jar:file:/C:/projects/commons-logging-1.0.2/commons-logging-api.jar!/org/apache/commons/logging/Log.class
log4j.logger.org.hibernate.type=DEBUG, A1

It's getting trickier and trickier, maybe the introduction of commons-logging was a bad idea, especially in combination with Websphere.
logging information can be forced with log4j.debug=true

firefox, hetnet, netmail en delete

2008-03-05T08:02:00.000-08:00

Op het werk (en thuis ook, eigenlijk alleen mac os x) kan ik alleen firefox gebruiken omdat alle opties op IE ongedaan zijn gemaakt. Nu heeft de firefox variant van netmail geen multiple select om items weg te mikken, wat het voor netmail van hetnet allemaal wat tijdrovend en rsi gevoelig maakt.
Een korte zoektocht op internet leverde echter de volgende url op
Helaas nog niet helemaal geschikt om op hetnet te gebruiken maar wel bijna: Ten eerste sleep de button die daar staat naar de bookmark balk van firefox, of klik gewoon nieuw bookmark aan onder bookmarks.
zet nu in de url van deze bookmark (te bereiken via "properties")


javascript:(function(){ function toggle(box){ temp=box.onchange; box.onchange=null; box.checked=!box.checked; box.onchange=temp; } var x,k,f,j; elements=window.frames["viewer"].document.forms; for (k=0; k<elements.length; ++k) { f=elements[k]; for (j=0;j<f.length;++j) if (f[j].type.toLowerCase() == "checkbox") toggle(f[j]); } })();

Als je nu deze bookmark kiest worden alle checkboxes getoggled, de bookmark kan ook in de bookmarkbar worden geplaatst, en is dan meteen te gebruiken.
Ik vermoed dat het ook voor Safari werkt maar daar heb ik net te weinig ervaring mee, mijn eerste poging faalde, helaas.

emacs trailing slash

2008-03-02T09:19:00.001-08:00

is op windows default / wat natuurlijk vervelend is:
(add-hook 'shell-mode-hook

'(lambda () (setq comint-completion-addsuffix '("\\" . "")))

t)
zet m naar backslash.

windows processing message

2008-03-02T09:10:00.000-08:00

sinds een tijd krijg ik een foutboodschap bij het aanmelden bij windows.
Windows - Geen schijf
exception Processing Message c00000a3 Parameters 75b6bf9c 75b6bf9c 75b6bf9c.
Weet niet waarom die boodschap er nu plotseling is, maar in mijn geval blijkt het te maken te hebben met de card readers die in mijn pc zitten.
Ik heb ze uitgezet met configuratie scherm -> systeem -> hardware -> apparaat beheer -> Medion Flash XL (CF USB, MS USB en SM USB)
Nu krijg ik de boodschap niet meer.

Websphere Security

2007-12-31T03:10:00.001-08:00

Currently I'm trying to port an application from WAS5.1 to WAS6.1. IBM's reputation of problem free migration and well supported and ducumented migration plans once again proves to be below the imaginary. The problem I run into lately was security: I ported over the settings for the ldap server. However that did not work out well, I even managed to cut of the branch I was sitting: I could not start the server anymore, and there for I could not modify the settings I just applied. The server quit with:

[31-12-07 12:06:23:222 CET] 0000000a ServiceLogger I com.ibm.ws.ffdc.IncidentStreamImpl resetIncidentStream FFDC0010I: FFDC closed incident stream file c:\Program Files\IBM\WebSphere\AppServer\profiles\profile1\logs\ffdc\server1_0000000a_07.12.31_12.06.23_6.txt
[31-12-07 12:06:23:191 CET] 0000000a ContextManage E SECJ0270E: Failed to get actual credentials. The exception is javax.naming.NameNotFoundException: [LDAP: error code 32 - No Such Object]; remaining name ''
at com.sun.jndi.ldap.LdapCtx.mapErrorCode(LdapCtx.java:3025)
at com.sun.jndi.ldap.LdapCtx.processReturnCode(LdapCtx.java:2946)
at com.sun.jndi.ldap.LdapCtx.processReturnCode(LdapCtx.java:2752)
at com.sun.jndi.ldap.LdapCtx.searchAux(LdapCtx.java:1823)
at com.sun.jndi.ldap.LdapCtx.c_search(LdapCtx.java:1746)
at com.sun.jndi.toolkit.ctx.ComponentDirContext.p_search(ComponentDirContext.java:383)
at com.sun.jndi.toolkit.ctx.PartialCompositeDirContext.search(PartialCompositeDirContext.java:353)

Turned out that the copy paste action of the groupMemberId (advanced properties under ldap settings) from nsRole:nsRole to groupOfUniqueNames:uniqueMember was one bridge to far.

websphere act as part of local os.

2007-12-27T05:00:00.000-08:00

Currently fighting with WAS 6.1, security. The manual (http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/wasinfo/v6r1/index.jsp?topic=/com.ibm.websphere.nd.doc/info/ae/ae/tsec_localos.html) states: Act as part of the operating system.
Which is quite easy according to MS: Computer Configuration\Windows Settings\Security Settings\Local Policies\User Rights Assignment\.
Unfortunately this option is disabled under my account @ work. However secpol.msc does get me there.
To stop mcafee do: net stop mcshield

Eclipse workspaces on the mac.

2007-10-07T02:51:00.000-07:00

to create a new eclipse app with a preconfigured workspace:
go to /Applications/eclipse
copy the Eclipse icon.
ctrl (right) click on the new one, and chose show package contents. Go to plist, and change the -data value.
(http://lists.apple.com/archives/Java-dev/2005/Jan/msg00475.html)

jsf Solutions for many2many

2007-10-02T11:41:00.001-07:00

Introduction many to many

A challenging and interesting usecase for me has been the implementation of a many-to-many relations in a user interface. I havent found too much documentation or examples on the internet, so I thought I just publish my own efforts here. Note that here is quite some documentation on the ejb (jpa) modelling, but the actual gui implementation is missing in most cases.
Please note that this example is part of my "project" accountancy for sportclubs, see earliest blog for more details.

Technology

The versions used in this example: jboss 4.2 (ejb3), seam 1.2.1, mysql 5.0m icefaces 1.6.0 and jsf-ri (?.?)

Use case description & data model

I have a subject (which may be of interest to our club: a person, store selling us volleybals, the room landlord etc) Furter I have roles, some of the roles will be connected to posts on the balance sheets (like credit, trainer, rent or debitor: compition player, recreational player). A subject performing a role becomes an actor. Of course a role maybe played by many actors, and a subject may fulfill many roles.
The actor is a period based entity, during a season, the next season he may give up his role as trainer, or give up his role as competition member.

In ejb3 the possibility exists to directly indicate a many-to-many relation ship using an annotation with the same name and indicating a join-table. However I'm not convinced this is the way to go to map many-to-many relations. You loose control over your join table (in my use case, an actor exists for a certain period, for a new period the actor must be cloned), see also this blog, where the author introduces some life in the join table. However in the end it turns out to be dead meat (see question 6 and 7).

So instead of modeling a many2many relationship I modeled 2 one-to-many relationships. I'm not completely sure this is the right approach but for me it worked well. The 2 one-2-many relationships are intuitively mapped in the entities Subject, Actor and Role. See code below.

Gui

We're approaching our final goal: how to display this in a gui. I have chosen for a master detail view: A list of all subjects, clicking on one subject presents you the subject in focus and the possibility to edit the subject's attributes. I'll leave vanilla attributes out of scope, and only look on how to select the roles the user wishes the subject to fulfill (role creation is left out of this use case). For this list I have tried two different implementations a ice:selectManyListbox and an ice:dataTable toegether with ice:rowSelector. Both having pros and cons which will be explained in (earlier) posts below and summarized in the last section. For now have fun with the generated entity classes.

Thanks to

This blog wouldn't definitely have made it without the jboss seam and iceface guys, Thanks! Also thanks to the contributors of both forums who have helped me out on numerous occasions. Thanks also to my colleagues Bertram and Faizal who have helped me out on the "elegant" query. And finally to Ellen who has withstood all my swearing and cursing on the css and the blogspot templates. And was patient enough to let me it all figure out...
Jeroen.

Subject.java

001 package nl.jeroen.testdb.persist;
002 // Generated Dec 23, 2006 5:43:17 PM by Hibernate Tools 3.2.0.snapshotb9
003
004 import java.util.ArrayList;
024 import ....;
024 import org.jboss.seam.log.Log;
025
026 /**
027 * Subject generated by hbm2java
028 */
029 @Name("subject")
030 @Entity
031 @Scope(ScopeType.SESSION)
032 @Table(name = "subject", catalog = "seam", uniqueConstraints = {})
033 public class Subject implements java.io.Serializable {
034
035 // Fields
036 @org.jboss.seam.annotations.Logger
037 private Log logger;
038 private int subjectid;
039 private String info;
040 private String firstname;
041 private String lastname;
042 private String email;
043 private List<Actor> actors = new ArrayList<Actor>(0);
044
119 @OneToMany(cascade = CascadeType.ALL, fetch = FetchType.LAZY, mappedBy = "subject")
120 public List<Actor> getActors() {
121 return this.actors;
122 }
123
124 public void setActors(List<Actor> actors) {
125 this.actors = actors;
126 }
127
128 }

Actor.java

001 package nl.jeroen.testdb.persist;
002
003 import java.util.HashSet;
015 import ..;
016 import org.hibernate.validator.NotNull;
017
018 /**
019 * Actor generated by hbm2java
020 */
021 @Entity
022 @Table(name = "actor", catalog = "seam", uniqueConstraints = {@UniqueConstraint(columnNames = {
023 "roleid", "subjectid", "periodid"})})
024 public class Actor implements java.io.Serializable {
025
026 // Fields
027
028 private int actorid;
029 private Period period;
030 private Role role;
031 private Subject subject;
032 private Set<Transaction> transactionsForDestinationid = new HashSet<Transaction>(
033 0);
034 private Set<Transaction> transactionsForSourceid = new HashSet<Transaction>(
035 0);
036
037 // Constructors
038
039 /** default constructor */
040 public Actor() {
041 }
042
043 /** minimal constructor */
044 public Actor(int actorid, Period period, Role role, Subject subject) {
045 this.actorid = actorid;
046 this.period = period;
047 this.role = role;
048 this.subject = subject;
049 }
050 /** full constructor */
051 public Actor(int actorid, Period period, Role role, Subject subject,
052 Set<Transaction> transactionsForDestinationid,
053 Set<Transaction> transactionsForSourceid) {
054 this.actorid = actorid;
055 this.period = period;
056 this.role = role;
057 this.subject = subject;
058 this.transactionsForDestinationid = transactionsForDestinationid;
059 this.transactionsForSourceid = transactionsForSourceid;
060 }
061
062 // Property accessors
063 @Id @GeneratedValue
064 @Column(name = "actorid", unique = true, nullable = false)
065 @NotNull
066 public int getActorid() {
067 return this.actorid;
068 }
069
070 public void setActorid(int actorid) {
071 this.actorid = actorid;
072 }
073 @ManyToOne(fetch = FetchType.LAZY)
074 @JoinColumn(name = "periodid", nullable = false)
075 @NotNull
076 public Period getPeriod() {
077 return this.period;
078 }
079
080 public void setPeriod(Period period) {
081 this.period = period;
082 }
083 @ManyToOne(fetch = FetchType.LAZY)
084 @JoinColumn(name = "roleid", nullable = false)
085 @NotNull
086 public Role getRole() {
087 return this.role;
088 }
089
090 public void setRole(Role role) {
091 this.role = role;
092 }
093 @ManyToOne(fetch = FetchType.LAZY)
094 @JoinColumn(name = "subjectid", nullable = false)
095 @NotNull
096 public Subject getSubject() {
097 return this.subject;
098 }
099
100 public void setSubject(Subject subject) {
101 this.subject = subject;
102 }
103 @OneToMany(cascade = CascadeType.ALL, fetch = FetchType.LAZY, mappedBy = "actorByDestinationid")
104 public Set<Transaction> getTransactionsForDestinationid() {
105 return this.transactionsForDestinationid;
106 }
107
108 public void setTransactionsForDestinationid(
109 Set<Transaction> transactionsForDestinationid) {
110 this.transactionsForDestinationid = transactionsForDestinationid;
111 }
112 @OneToMany(cascade = CascadeType.ALL, fetch = FetchType.LAZY, mappedBy = "actorBySourceid")
113 public Set<Transaction> getTransactionsForSourceid() {
114 return this.transactionsForSourceid;
115 }
116
117 public void setTransactionsForSourceid(
118 Set<Transaction> transactionsForSourceid) {
119 this.transactionsForSourceid = transactionsForSourceid;
120 }
121
122 }

Role.java

001 package nl.jeroen.testdb.persist;
002 // Generated Dec 23, 2006 5:43:17 PM by Hibernate Tools 3.2.0.snapshotb9
003
004 import java.util.HashSet;
012 import ..;
018 import org.hibernate.validator.NotNull;
019
020 /**
021 * Role generated by hbm2java
022 */
023 @Entity
024 @Table(name = "role", catalog = "seam", uniqueConstraints = {})
025 public class Role implements java.io.Serializable {
026 /**
027 *
028 */
029 private static final long serialVersionUID = -1996329923962792444L;
030
031 private static final org.apache.commons.logging.Log logger = org.apache.commons.logging.LogFactory
032 .getLog(Role.class);
033 // Fields
034
035 private int roleid;
036 private String info;
037 private Integer parentid;
038 private String name;
039 private Set<Actor> actors = new HashSet<Actor>(0);
040
041 // Constructors
103 @OneToMany(cascade = CascadeType.ALL, fetch = FetchType.LAZY, mappedBy = "role")
104 public Set<Actor> getActors() {
105 return this.actors;
106 }
107
108 public void setActors(Set<Actor> actors) {
109 this.actors = actors;
110 }
111
112 @Override
113 public int hashCode() {
114 return roleid;
115 }
116
117 @Override
118 public boolean equals(Object obj) {
119 final String methodName = "equals";
120 if (logger.isTraceEnabled()) {
121 logger.trace(LogUtil.getLogMessage(LogUtil.VERSION, methodName
122 ,"start '" + "'"));
123 }
124 if (obj == null) {
125 return false;
126 }
127 if (this == obj) {
128 return true;
129 }
130 if (obj instanceof Role
131 && ((Role)obj).getRoleid() == roleid) {
132 return true;
133 }
134 return false;
135 }
136 }

Java2html

jsf Solutions for many2many: the selectManyListBox

2007-10-02T10:58:00.000-07:00

SelectManyListbox.

The selectManyListBox is an ordinary dropdown listbox with a list of selected values opposed to the single value for its SelectOneListbox sibbling. Unfortunately at the moment of implementing the ice:selectManyListbox was still buggy: the menurenderer.convertSelectValue didnot call the associated converter for multiple values. Apparently things have been ironed out in icefaces 1.6.1 Check the iceforum for a more detailed explanation.

<h2>Roles</h2>
<ice:selectManyListbox id="selectedRoles" value="#{subjectMgr.selectedRoles}" converter="#{subjectMgr.roleConverter}" size="5">
<f:selectItems value="#{subjectMgr.allAvailableRoles}"/>
</ice:selectManyListbox>

You need 2 lists for selectmany listbox: a list with all available roles, individually stored into a selectitem and (2) a list with the selected roles. A converter (I think there is a seam tag, to circumvent the converter but at the moment of experimenting that was still in beta) to convert the values inside the selectitem tag to some unique serializable key (string) for rendering in the select tag and vice versa (in my case ordinary findById methods).
A successful display of the selectmanylistbox is not that hard, the hardest part is storing the selected and deleting the unselected roles.

Check the code below for SubjectMgrBean.setSelectedRoles. The implementation I came up with was a maintenance of three lists: the new list (originating from the selectManyListBox component), the list with actors to remove (A map with a Role - Actor mapping). And the list with actors to be created. The rolesToAdd and the rolesToRemove lists are initialized by the current roles on the subject in focus. For the removal we take the presentRoles (roles to Remove) exclude all roles in the newly selected roles, and we're are on our own with the roles which are up for deletion. An iteration is needed because in jpa-ql it is not possible to do a cascaded delete on a parent entity.
A similar operation is used for the roles to add. All roles appearing in the presentRoles, are removed from the selected roles leaving a collection with roles to add. Every Role is attached to the subject in focus, by creating a new Actor and adding it the set of existing actors. A final merge on the entity manager is sufficient to store all roles (actors) at once.
As you have noticed the code for the selectmanylistbox may not be the world's cleanest code. But I'm convinced that a lot of plumbing is needed to get this to work. The amount of code for such a simple use case is also contra intuitive Also major drawback is the big bug in icefaces forcing you to either hack their code or using the reference-jsf's selectmanylistbox implemention. Particular caveat is the implementation of the equals method of the entity beans. However the most annoying feature is the gui element automatically disselect all choices in the box when the user hits a wrong element without the cmd key pressed (on iMac), leaving nothing but the cancel button to the user. If i would have realized this feature earlier I probably would have never taken the selectmanylistbox for this use case.
PS the last part can be found in September.

SubjectMgrBean.java

001 package nl.jeroen.testdb.persist;
002
003 import java.io.Serializable;
038 import org.jboss.seam.annotations.datamodel.DataModelSelection;
039 import ....;
041 import com.icesoft.util.DebugException;
042
043 @Scope(ScopeType.CONVERSATION)
044 @Stateful
045 @Name("subjectMgr")
046 public class SubjectMgrBean implements SubjectMgr, Serializable {
047     @Logger
048     Log logger;
049
050     public static final String EMPTY = "__EMPTY__";
051     private static final long serialVersionUID = 8523599219865145149L;
052     private Map<String, Role> roleValues;
053     private List<SelectItem> allAvailableRoles;
054     private List<Role> selectedRoles;
055
056     @In(required=true)
057     IApplicationSession sessionstore;
058
059     @PersistenceContext(type=PersistenceContextType.EXTENDED)
060     private EntityManager em;
061
062     @In(required=false)
063     @Out(required=false)
064     private Subject subject;
065
066     @DataModel(value="subjectList")
067     List<Subject> subjectList;
068     @DataModelSelection(value="subjectList")
069     @Out(required=false, value="focusSubject")
070     private Subject focusSubject;
071
072     public List<SelectItem> getAllAvailableRoles() {
073         final String methodName = "getAllAvailableRoles: ";
074         if (logger.isTraceEnabled()) {
075             logger.trace(LogUtil.getLogMessage(methodName, LogUtil.VERSION,
076                     "starting '" + "'"));
077         }
078         boolean populateRoleValues = false;
079 //        List<SelectItem> result = null;
080         if (allAvailableRoles == null || allAvailableRoles.size() == 0) {
081             List<Role> l = em.createQuery("from Role role").getResultList();
082             allAvailableRoles = new ArrayList<SelectItem>(l.size());
083             if (roleValues == null) {
084                 populateRoleValues = true;
085                 roleValues = new TreeMap<String, Role>();
086             }
087             for (Role r : l) {
088                 SelectItem item = new SelectItem(r,r.getName());
089                 allAvailableRoles.add(item);
090                 if (populateRoleValues) {
091                     roleValues.put(r.getName(),r);
092                 }
093             }
094
095         }
096         if (logger.isDebugEnabled()) {
097             logger.debug(LogUtil.getLogMessage(methodName, LogUtil.VERSION,
098                 "ending with  '" + allAvailableRoles.size() + "' in available roles"));
099         }
100         return allAvailableRoles;
101     }
102     public void setAllAvailableRoles(List<SelectItem> allAvailableRoles) {
103         this.allAvailableRoles = allAvailableRoles;
104     }
105
106     public List<Role> getSelectedRoles() {
107         final String methodName = "getSelectedRoles: ";
108         if (logger.isTraceEnabled()) {
109             logger.trace(LogUtil.getLogMessage(methodName, LogUtil.VERSION,
110                     "starting '" + focusSubject.getSubjectid() + "'"));
111         }
112         selectedRoles = em.createQuery("Select r from Role r, in (r.actors) a where a.subject = :subject")
113             .setParameter("subject", focusSubject).getResultList();
114         if (logger.isDebugEnabled()) {
115             logger.debug(LogUtil.getLogMessage(methodName, LogUtil.VERSION, "returning '" + selectedRoles.size() + "'"));
116         }
117         return selectedRoles;
118     }
119     public void setSelectedRoles(List<Role> sltdRoles) {
120         final String methodName = "setSelectedRoles: ";
121         if (logger.isDebugEnabled()) {
122             logger.debug(LogUtil.getLogMessage(methodName,
123                     LogUtil.VERSION, "starting '" + sltdRoles.size() + "'"));
124         }
125         try {
126             if (logger.isDebugEnabled()) {
127                 for (Role r : sltdRoles) {
128                     logger.debug(LogUtil.getLogMessage(methodName,
129                             LogUtil.VERSION, "selected roles: '" + r.getName() +  "' (" + r + ")"));
130                 }
131             }
132             Period prd = sessionstore.getFocusPeriod();
133             logger.info("focust period is #0 name is '#1'", prd.getPeriodid(), prd.getInfo());
134             Map<Role,Actor> presentRolesToRemove = new HashMap<Role, Actor>();
135             Set<Role> presentRolesToCreate = new HashSet<Role>();
136             for (Actor act :focusSubject.getActors()) {
137                 presentRolesToRemove.put(act.getRole(), act);
138                 presentRolesToCreate.add(act.getRole());
139             }
140             presentRolesToRemove.keySet().removeAll(sltdRoles);
141             for (Role r : presentRolesToRemove.keySet()) {
142                 Actor act = presentRolesToRemove.get(r);
143                 focusSubject.getActors().remove(act);
144                 em.remove(act);
145             }
146             sltdRoles.removeAll(presentRolesToCreate);
147             for (Role r : sltdRoles) {
148                 focusSubject.getActors().add(new Actor(-1,sessionstore.getFocusPeriod(), r, focusSubject));
149             }
150             em.merge(focusSubject);
151         } catch (Throwable e) {
152             logger.error("error ocurrued", e);
153         }
154     }
155
156     public Converter getRoleConverter() {
157         return new Converter (){
158
159             public Object getAsObject(FacesContext arg0, UIComponent arg1, String arg2) throws ConverterException {
160                 final String methodName = "getAsObject";
161                 if (logger.isTraceEnabled()) {
162                     logger.trace(LogUtil.getLogMessage(LogUtil.VERSION, methodName
163                         , "start with argument '" + arg2 + "'"));
164                 }
165                 if (arg2 == null || arg2.equals("") || arg2.equals(EMPTY)) {
166                     return null;
167                 }
168                 try {
169                     int roleid = Integer.parseInt(arg2);
170                     Iterator<SelectItem> iter = allAvailableRoles.iterator();
171                     boolean found = false;
172                     Role result = null;
173                     while (!found && iter.hasNext()) {
174                         result = (Role) iter.next().getValue();
175                         if (result.getRoleid() == roleid)
176                             found = true;
177                     }
178                     try {
179                         EntityManager em1 = (EntityManager) Component.getInstance("entityManager", true);
180                         em1.find(Role.class, roleid);
181                     } catch (Exception e) {
182                         logger.error(LogUtil.getLogMessage(methodName,
183                                 LogUtil.VERSION, "Error occured retrieving them from inner class."), e);
184                     }
185                     if (logger.isDebugEnabled()) {
186                         logger.debug(LogUtil.getLogMessage(methodName,
187                                 LogUtil.VERSION, "'" + roleid + "'"));
188                     }
189                     return result;
190                 } catch (NumberFormatException nfe) {
191                     logger.error(LogUtil.getLogMessage(LogUtil.VERSION, methodName
192                         , "passed argument '" + arg2 + "' cannot converted to int"), nfe);
193                 }
194                 return null;
195             }
196
197             public String getAsString(FacesContext arg0, UIComponent arg1, Object arg2) throws ConverterException {
198                 final String methodName = "getAsString";
199                 if (logger.isTraceEnabled()) {
200                     logger.trace(LogUtil.getLogMessage(LogUtil.VERSION, methodName
201                         , "start '" + arg2 + "' of type '" + (arg2 != null ? arg2.getClass() : "") + "'"));
202                 }
203                 if (arg2 == null) return EMPTY;
204                 if ("-1".equals(arg2)) return EMPTY;
205                 if (arg2 instanceof Role) {
206                     return "" + ((Role)arg2).getRoleid();
207                 } else {
208                     logger.error(LogUtil.getLogMessage(LogUtil.VERSION, methodName
209                         , "argument is not expected type Role returning _EMPTY"));
210                 }
211                 return EMPTY;
212             }
213         };
214
215     }
216
217
218     public Role findRoleById(Integer id) {
219         return (Role) em.createQuery("r from Role r where r.roleid = :id").setParameter("id", id).getSingleResult();
220     }
221

Java2html

ldap on mac os x

2007-09-26T01:11:00.000-07:00

to start openldap:
jdijkmeijer [/usr/libexec]$sudo ./slapd

apache directory studio:
localhost:389 anonymous binding.
to be continued.

Ok the continue: For some reason I could not get the openldap to work correctly slapadd etc all seemed to work but login in with the rootdn and password supplied, gave an error 49 invalid credentials. I do suspect the berkeley db is screwed but i'm not sure.
Anyhow I'm about to reinstall openldap hopefull that will work without installing the prefigured ldap /usr/libexec/slapd Im also woondering what will happen to the slap* cmds. Anyhow just installed the berkeleydb 4.6. It would have been nice if the installation script at http://www.oracle.com/technology/documentation/berkeley-db/db/ref/build_unix/intro.html
would have made a indication that
sudo ln -s /usr/local/BerkeleyDB.4.6/include/db.h /usr/include/db.h would have been useful for tools like openldap. Again to be continued..
configuration of the sources failed with:
checking for db.h... yes
checking for Berkeley DB major version... 1
checking for Berkeley DB minor version... 0
checking for Berkeley DB link (-ldb1)... no
checking for Berkeley DB link (-ldb-1)... no
checking for Berkeley DB link (default)... yes
checking for Berkeley DB version match... yes
checking for Berkeley DB thread support... no

the installed version of berkeleydb must be explicitly indicated by the cppflags:
env CPPFLAGS="-I/usr/local/BerkeleyDB.4.6/include" LDFLAGS="-L/usr/local/BerkeleyDB.4.6/lib" ./configure
openldap is reinstalled and is located in /usr/local/libexec
time to get jboss listen to ldap...

jsf Solutions for many2many: the dataTable

2007-09-19T03:18:00.000-07:00

The datatable with rowselector.

Icefaces has extended the datatable with the possibility of a rowselector allowing remote method call of a listener method (Ajax). This feature wonderfully and intuitivily integrates with seam's datamodel and, even more important, seam's datamodelselection. The datamodel for a datamodelselection is a list with objects, which must have a isSelected method. No interface or super class is needed as this method is textual mentioned in the rowselector's value property. Check the roleItem code for a complete implementation.
Having learned a few things from jpa-ql and hibernate ql, and with the help of 2 colleagues I have been able to define an elegant query to populate a list with all the roles, and if present the actor for the subject having focus. In the same query I also construct the roleItem (See the RoleSubjectMgrBean.roleitms() code below), no list manipulation needed afterwards. I'm currently unaware whether the used syntax is allowed jpa-ql? Persisting the selection is a piece of cake (See the RoleSubjectMgrBean.rowSelection..) I only had to change the sessionbeans from session to conversation scope.

<ice:dataTable value="#{subjectRoleList}"
var="roleItem" rendered="${focusSubject.subjectid gt 0}">
<ice:column>
<ice:rowSelector selectionListener="#{roleSubjectMgr.rowSelection}" value="#{roleItem.selected}" multiple="true" selectedClass="selected"/>
<f:facet name="header"><h:outputLabel value="#{msgs['spuyt.subject.edit.role.list']}"/></f:facet>
<h:outputText value="#{roleItem.role.name}"/>
</ice:column>
</ice:dataTable>

Alas some drawbacks of this approach:

The cursor doesn't change when hovering over the items.

The subject in focus must be created before the datamodelselection can save its attached roles. This forces a conditional render of the datamodel

By selecting a row the update is immediately executed on the database. Of course the cancel button gets a complete new meaning(less).

Used query may not be jpa compliant

RoleSubjectMgrBean.java
001 package nl.jeroen.testdb.persist;
002
003 import java.io.Serializable;
004 import ..;
028 import org.jboss.seam.log.Log;
029
030 import com.icesoft.faces.component.ext.RowSelectorEvent;
031
032 @Scope(ScopeType.CONVERSATION)
033 @Stateful
034 @Name("roleSubjectMgr")
035 public class RoleSubjectMgrBean implements Serializable, RoleSubjectMgr {
036     private static final long serialVersionUID = -9145745003284315431L;
037
038     @Logger
039     Log logger;
040
041     @In(required=false)
042     private Subject focusSubject;
043
044     @In(required=true)
045     IApplicationSession sessionstore;
046
047     @DataModel(value="subjectRoleList")
048     private List<RoleItem> subjectRoleList;
049
050     @DataModelSelection(value="subjectRoleList")
051     @Out(required=false, value="focusSubjectRoleList")
052     private RoleItem focusSubjectRoleList;
053
054     @PersistenceContext(type=PersistenceContextType.EXTENDED)
055     private EntityManager em;
056
057     @Factory("subjectRoleList")
058     public void roleItems() {
059         //http://opensource.atlassian.com/projects/hibernate/browse/HHH-2772
060          subjectRoleList = em.createQuery("select new nl.jeroen.spuyt.util.RoleItem (r, a)
        from Role r left join r.actors as a with a.subject.subjectid = :subject")
061             .setParameter("subject", focusSubject.getSubjectid()).getResultList();
062     }
063
064     @Destroy @Remove
065     public void destroy() {
066     }
067
068     public void rowSelection(RowSelectorEvent e) {
069         final String methodName = "rowSelection: ";
070         if (logger.isDebugEnabled()) {
071             logger.debug(LogUtil.getLogMessage(methodName, LogUtil.VERSION, "'"
072                     + focusSubjectRoleList + "'"));
073         }
074         if (focusSubjectRoleList.isSelected() ) {
075             // it was selected and now we're going to remove it.
076             focusSubject.getActors().remove(focusSubjectRoleList.getActor());
077             em.remove(focusSubjectRoleList.getActor());
078             focusSubjectRoleList.setActor(null);
079         } else {
080             // creating a new actor
081             Actor act = new Actor();
082             em.merge(focusSubject);
083             act.setPeriod(sessionstore.getFocusPeriod());
084             act.setRole(focusSubjectRoleList.getRole());
085             act.setSubject(focusSubject);
086             em.persist(act);
087             focusSubjectRoleList.setActor(act);
088         }
089     }
090
091     public String persist() {
092         final String methodName = "persist: ";
093         if (logger.isTraceEnabled()) {
094             logger.trace(LogUtil.getLogMessage(methodName, LogUtil.VERSION,
095                     "starting '" + "'"));
096         }
097         try {
098             if (focusSubject.getSubjectid() == 0) {
099                 em.persist(focusSubject);
100                 return "selectSubject";
101             }
102             em.merge(focusSubject);
103         } catch (Exception e) {
104             logger.error("error occured:", e);
105             FacesContext.getCurrentInstance().addMessage("error on saving", new FacesMessage("error on saving"));
106         }
107         return "listSubject";
108     }
109 }

RoleItem.java
01 package nl.jeroen.spuyt.util;
02
03 import nl.jeroen.testdb.persist.Actor;
04 import nl.jeroen.testdb.persist.Role;
05
06 public class RoleItem {
07     Role role;
08     Actor actor;
09
10     public RoleItem(Role r, Actor a) {
11         role = r;
12         actor = a;
13     }
14
15     @Override
16     public String toString() {
17         return "name: '" + role.getName() + "' roleid " + role.getRoleid() + " actor " + actor;
18     }
19
20     public boolean isSelected() {
21         return (actor != null);
22     }
23
24     public void setSelected(boolean selected) {
25     }
26
27     public Role getRole() {
28         return role;
29     }
30
31     public void setRole(Role role) {
32         this.role = role;
33     }
34
35     public Actor getActor() {
36         return actor;
37     }
38
39     public void setActor(Actor actor) {
40         this.actor = actor;
41     }
42
43 }

Java2html

icefaces 163

2007-04-22T09:12:00.000-07:00

Just downloaded the 163 release from icesoft appeared they have fixed the bug I blogged about before. I tried to use it in my project but it doesnot start yet.
First I had to copy over 2 jars: Class not found: FileUploadBase$FileSizeLimitExceededException (commons fileupload), and facelets-icefaces not that exciting, jboss starts and ear deploys but I dont see my datatable now. Query gets excecuted. But no field generation, nada nothing.
First I'm going to see whether its possible to switch to jsf1.2 (Apparant changing the myfaces impl jars to the jsf ref ones).

implementing many2many

2007-04-17T13:31:00.000-07:00

I'm currently trying to implement a many2many relationship. Using jsf's selectMany thingy. Apparantly jboss seam does have something similar integrated in seam, now I've to use selectitems, converters and what's more. I tried the seam implementation a while ago, but I couldnt get it to work it also had a beta in the name, which is discouraging.

As the myfaces/icefaces combination also has shown some weird behavior I decided to download both and add them as projects in eclipse, so I can do some debugging, and add logging. A feature with both products seriously lack.
Myfaces is build with maven :

D:\projects\seamice\myfaces\core> d:\programs\maven-2.0.4\bin\mvn

produces the api and impl files, which can be copied:

 copy /Y  impl\target\myfaces-impl-1.1.6-SNAPSHOT.jar d:\programs\jboss-4.0.5.GA\server\default\deploy\jbossweb-tomcat55.sar\jsf-libs\myfaces-impl.jar

(and repeat cmd above for the api jars, donot copy the source jars).

The first obstacle I encountered was the output.
I did do something like:
SelectItem item = new SelectItem();
item.setLabel(role.getName());
item.setValue(role.getValue());
But the output in the html both value and label as the label.

IceFaces:
codesnippet MenuRenderer:


if (logger.isTraceEnabled()) {
logger.trace(LogUtil.getLogMsg(methodName, LogUtil.VERSION
,"start to render option for '" + uiComponent.getId() + "' and item label '" + selectItem.getLabel() + "' and itemvalue '" + selectItem.getValue() + "'"));
}
   DOMContext domContext =
           DOMContext.attachDOMContext(facesContext, uiComponent);

   Element select = (Element) domContext.getRootNode();
   Element option = domContext.createElement("option");

   if (optionGroup == null) {
       select.appendChild(option);
   } else {
       optionGroup.appendChild(option);
   }

   String valueString = formatComponentValue(facesContext, uiComponent,
                                             selectItem.getValue());
   if (logger.isDebugEnabled()) {
logger.debug(LogUtil.getLogMsg(methodName, LogUtil.VERSION
, "created option gets value assigned of '" + valueString + "'"));
}

And the logging output:


15:16:05,593 TRACE [com.icesoft.faces.renderkit.dom_html_basic.MenuRenderer] renderOption[0.1]:start to render option for '_id61' and item label 'Spuyt' and itemvalue '1'
15:16:05,656 TRACE [javax.faces.component.UISelectMany] getValueBinding[0.1]:start with 'converter'
15:16:05,671 INFO  [nl.jeroen.testdb.persist.SubjectMgrBean]   getting as string  for '1' class java.lang.Integer'
15:16:05,671 INFO  [nl.jeroen.testdb.persist.SubjectMgrBean]   getting as string  for '1' class java.lang.Integer'
15:16:05,671 DEBUG [nl.jeroen.testdb.persist.SubjectMgrBean] [getRoleValues: ]0.1: starting ''
15:16:05,687 DEBUG [com.icesoft.faces.renderkit.dom_html_basic.MenuRenderer] renderOption[0.1]:created option gets value assigned of 'Spuyt'

In between something is going wrong and apparantly its the converter.getAsString method is being called, and this nicely retrieves the role with the passed argument as id, and returns the name.
But this is exactly why I switched back to Integers instead of the Roles because the conversion back (getAsObject) is not working as expected.
Because after submitting the form, I'd expect the getAsObject method to be called before the HTMLSelectManyListbox(UISelectMany).validateValue() (part of myfaces) but that's not happening.
validateValue's signature is:


validateValue(FacesContext context, Object convertedValues)

but my own logging states:


validateValue[0.1]:validate Value '[2, 6]'

convertedValues would expect that the values have been converter.getAsObject(..) but alas..
iceface's blocking servlet is doing in rendercycle, lifecycle.execute();

UISelectMany does contain a getConvertedValue method which delegates the conversion of the submitted values to a renderer (MenuRender in our case). This menurenderer is not calling the converter.getAsObject so there's the error!

Why is eclipse code formatter putting all the operands on the end of the line? I would prefer it to put at the start of the line, in case of long lines you don't have to scroll right. (I use the term operands here for characters like + . , etc)

Icefaces seam and all

2007-04-17T13:16:00.000-07:00

Hopefully an effort which will last to monitor my progress on my journey into jboss seam, icefaces and other relevant technologies. In the far past I used to be the treasurer of my volleybalclub, and I made a nice webapplication for maintaining all my expenses, credits debets etc. This application was made in Silverstream my employer at that time, but Silverstream went out of business or novell took over or god knows what and I havent been able to maintain the application or even migrate the application.
Of course my suceessor used Excel again and nothing wrong with Excel but I still have the feeling that there might be some business in a small treasure like application for small / medium sized clubs or institutes. I'm not really hindred by a bookkeeping or economic background, so that is not an obstacle.
Since 4 or 5 years I've been carrying the idea of reimplementing the application using the various opensource java techniques available at time. EJB 1.1, 2, struts, jsp, jsf, tapestry jsf etc. All without much result, I just haven't been able to master the technologies without proper guidance or education in my own spare time. Looking at the ejb3 comments its probably not really a shame, but It felt like it and finally I dare to speak out openly.
Lately I discovered seam and jboss and I have the feeling that this combination with jsf (icefaces) may work out. Hopefully I'm capable of keeping this blog up to date so people may benifit from it and otherwise it might be a worthwile resource for me to look back.