Wednesday May 12, 2004

Learning AppFuse

I've started a new project (yes, I'm moonlighting) and decided to use AppFuse to kickstart the development (that is what it's for!). Matt's tutorials are great, but he hasn't had time (nor health) to get the new Spring Controller Tutorial written. I don't want to use Struts on this project, mostly just so I get to play with a new toy, but now I don't have Matt holding my hand. I've read a bunch of docs on Spring, and the MVC tutorial, but now I'll have to go study them again and try to figure out this crap for myself ;-)

Matt, how could you do this to me?!

Oh yes, I've had some hiccups along the way, largely to do with my text editor not doing a good enough job of replacing "org.appfuse" with the project's package.
( May 12 2004, 09:43:45 PM ) Technology Permalink [Trackback]

A cure for my ills

I don't like running my own mail server, even one as "simple" as JAMES. So it was nice to find aspirin on Java.Net today. I'd like to integrate this into Roller.

Currently the only email Roller sends is Comments, but there are a few other ideas I've had - it's just that my mail server has never been reliable enough for me to want to count on it. I know one popular feature is "subscribe to this blog", which emails subscribers whenever a new entry is posted (seems frivolous to us users of RSS/Atom, but, whatever). Another is the ability to email "password reminders". Hmm, another idea: export entries and email them to owner as a zip file. Post any others you'd like in the comments, please.
( May 12 2004, 08:59:35 AM ) Technology Permalink [Trackback]

Tuesday May 11, 2004

The Infinite Cat Project I don't often post just a link, so I have to say "Contribute to this worthy *ahem* cause!"
( May 11 2004, 10:00:27 PM ) Cats Permalink [Trackback]

Monday May 10, 2004

Hibernate: SessionFactory.close()

I want to explicitly add shutdown behaviour in my ServletContextListener to release all database resources when contextDestroyed() is called. Fortunately, Hibernate's SessionFactory implements a close() method specifically for this purpose. However, in it's JavaDoc it says

It is the responsibility of the application to ensure that there are no open Sessions before calling close().

But there is no means by which to determine if there are any open Sessions. I would have to create my own SessionCache, adding the Session when it is opened and removing the Session when it is closed. This sounds like something the SessionFactory (or someone else in the library) should handle since it is the one handing out Sessions.

At least Hibernate is a step ahead of Castor here (sorry Bruce), in that Castor provides no mechanism to release resources.
( May 10 2004, 11:56:49 AM ) Technology Permalink Comments [1] [Trackback]

Monday May 03, 2004

The Ideal Gasbag Law : for your entertainment

We can make some predictions about how committees will behave so long as we can isolate the values of each variable. This will, I put it to you, help management, government and industry no end. And as originator of this law, which I dub the Ideal Gasbag Law, I get a 2% royalty of the profit each time it is used in the social engineering of modern society.

( May 03 2004, 03:00:36 PM ) Humor? Permalink [Trackback]

Thursday April 29, 2004

A new Comment Spam fighting technique

Or at least it's new to me. Kasia has implemented a rule requiring a referer header from her own site for Commenting. As she points out it won't stop some of the smarter spambots, but has the side benefit of stopping the formmail bots. Something to add to Roller methinks.

Footnote: apparently Kasia's bright idea also stops Trackbacks. Ah well.
Update: Kasia has fixed the Trackback blocking.
( Apr 29 2004, 12:07:42 PM ) Technology Permalink [Trackback]

User Friendly: The Label tag

While still little known, so far as I can tell, use of the <label> tag can greatly aid users trying to click a checkbox or radiobutton (and is a requirement for 508 compliance). But today I ran into a question I cannot readily answer: how do you label the members of a radio group? Each <input type="radio" /> has the same name, what will happen when I click the label? Well, the answer seems to be nothing, at least if one of the buttons is already checked (which is the case for the app in question).

A (non)exhaustive search with Google turned up nothing. But one result, talking about radio button manipulation via javascript, reminded me of the id attribute. Could I leave the radiobuttons with identical names and link the label to the button via the id? A few quick edits (id="rb1", id="rb2", etc) and the answer is Yes - it works.
( Apr 29 2004, 09:06:41 AM ) Technology Permalink Comments [2] [Trackback]

Wednesday April 28, 2004

Fight the Meme! I will not be providing you with "the fifth sentence on page 23" of the book nearest me, nor any other book.
( Apr 28 2004, 10:23:28 AM ) Technology Permalink [Trackback]