An implementation of the producer-consumer pattern using BlockingQueues

Should you test private methods in MS Test, and if so, how do you perform them? Here is a step-by-step guide.

If you're using Go and working with Semantic Versioning you'll sometimes need to compare versions. Here we take a look at two community packages that do this.

How to put Spring, Spring Boot, and Spring Cloud together to create a microservice.

Dialog is like any other window that pops up in front of current window, used to show some short message, taking user input or to ask user decisions.

You can start using Apache Camel routes in Java EE components by integrating Camel with the WildFly App Server, using the WildFly-Camel Subsystem.

Take your first steps in using JUnit to unit test your Java code with the help of tools like Maven, a build tool, and IntelliJ IDEA, a popular IDE.

H2 as a memory database for Spring-based applications is lightweight, easy to use, and emulates other RDBMS with the help of JPA and Hibernate.

IBM WebSphere Liberty Profile is a really fast and easy to to use application server that is now Java EE 6 Web Profile-certified.

The JAX-RS specification defines sensible defaults for the HTTP OPTIONS command. I actually stumbled upon this by chance!

Learn how to make your test automation framework better through Page Objects, Facades, and Singletons.

Sending SMS via HTTP GET Sending SMS via HTTP GET package com.simpleget; import java.io.IOException; import java.net.URI; import org.apache.http.HttpEntity; import org.apache.http.client.methods.CloseableHttpResponse; import org.apache.http.client.methods.HttpGet; import org.apache.http.client.utils.URIBuilder; import org.apache.http.impl.client.CloseableHttpClient; import org.apache.http.impl.client.HttpClients; import org.apache.http.util.EntityUtils; public class simpleGet { public static void main(String[] args) { //Create Http client CloseableHttpClient httpclient = HttpClients.createDefault(); HttpGet httpGet = null; CloseableHttpResponse response = null; HttpEntity entity = null; try{ //Create GET URL URI uri = new URIBuilder() .setScheme("http") .setHost("localhost:13003") .setPath("/cgi-bin/sendsms") .setParameter("username", "abc") // kannel username .setParameter("password", "xyz") // kannel password .setParameter("smsc", "send") // smsc name .setParameter("dlr-mask", "31") .setParameter("from", "Test") // sender of message (can be any string or number) .setParameter("to", "980010.....") // destination (must be a mobile number) .setParameter("text", "hello sending test message") // message to send .build(); httpGet = new HttpGet(uri); LOG.info(httpGet.getURI()); httpGet.setHeader("content-type", "text/plain"); response = httpclient.execute(httpGet); LOG.info(response.getStatusLine()); entity = response.getEntity(); EntityUtils.consume(entity); } catch (Exception e) { e.printStackTrace(); } finally { try { response.close(); } catch (IOException e) { e.printStackTrace(); } } } } Sending SMS via HTTP POST package com.simplepost; import java.io.IOException; import java.io.InputStream; import org.apache.commons.io.IOUtils; import org.apache.http.Consts; import org.apache.http.client.methods.CloseableHttpResponse; import org.apache.http.client.methods.HttpPost; import org.apache.http.entity.ContentType; import org.apache.http.entity.StringEntity; import org.apache.http.impl.client.CloseableHttpClient; import org.apache.http.impl.client.HttpClients; import org.apache.http.util.EntityUtils; public class SimplePost { public static void main(String[] args) { String url = "http://localhost:13013/cgi-bin/sendsms"; CloseableHttpClient httpClient = HttpClients.createDefault(); HttpPost httpPost = new HttpPost(url); CloseableHttpResponse response = null; StringEntity entity = null; //For sending SMS using POST method requires whole message to be in xml string format. It has all the parameters that are in get only in xml format. String inputXML= "9780.....Test SenderHello +estingabcxyzsend"; // While using HTTP POST you have to set content type to "text/xml" or else it wont work InputStream in ; entity = new StringEntity(inputXML, ContentType.create("text/xml", Consts.UTF_8)); entity.setChunked(true); try { httpPost = new HttpPost(url); httpPost.setEntity(entity); response = httpClient.execute(httpPost); System.out.println(response.getStatusLine()); in=response.getEntity().getContent(); String body = IOUtils.toString(in); System.out.println(body); EntityUtils.consume(entity); } catch (Exception e) { e.printStackTrace(); } finally { try { response.close(); } catch (IOException e) { e.printStackTrace(); } } } } Kannel is an open source SMS Gateway which is used widely for sending SMS (single or bulk SMS). You can get most of the information about how to configure and use kannel in the user guide The code snippet provided above have simple way to send SMS using Kannel via HTTP POST and HTTP GET.

In this article, excerpted from the book Docker in Action, I will show you how to open access to shared memory between containers. Linux provides a few tools for sharing memory between processes running on the same computer. This form of inter-process communication (IPC) performs at memory speeds. It is often used when the latency associated with network or pipe based IPC drags software performance below requirements. The best examples of shared memory based IPC usage is in scientific computing and some popular database technologies like PostgreSQL. Docker creates a unique IPC namespace for each container by default. The Linux IPC namespace partitions shared memory primitives like named shared memory blocks and semaphores, as well as message queues. It is okay if you are not sure what these are. Just know that they are tools used by Linux programs to coordinate processing. The IPC namespace prevents processes in one container from accessing the memory on the host or in other containers. Sharing IPC Primitives Between Containers I’ve created an image named allingeek/ch6_ipc that contains both a producer and consumer. They communicate using shared memory. Listing 1 will help you understand the problem with running these in separate containers. Listing 1: Launch a Communicating Pair of Programs # start a producer docker -d -u nobody --name ch6_ipc_producer \ allingeek/ch6_ipc -producer # start the consumer docker -d -u nobody --name ch6_ipc_consumer \ allingeek/ch6_ipc -consumer Listing 1 starts two containers. The first creates a message queue and starts broadcasting messages on it. The second should pull from the message queue and write the messages to the logs. You can see what each is doing by using the following commands to inspect the logs of each: docker logs ch6_ipc_producer docker logs ch6_ipc_consumer If you executed the commands in Listing 1 something should be wrong. The consumer never sees any messages on the queue. Each process used the same key to identify the shared memory resource but they referred to different memory. The reason is that each container has its own shared memory namespace. If you need to run programs that communicate with shared memory in different containers, then you will need to join their IPC namespaces with the --ipc flag. The --ipc flag has a container mode that will create a new container in the same IPC namespace as another target container. Listing 2: Joining Shared Memory Namespaces # remove the original consumer docker rm -v ch6_ipc_consumer # start a new consumer with a joined IPC namespace docker -d --name ch6_ipc_consumer \ --ipc container:ch6_ipc_producer \ allingeek/ch6_ipc -consumer Listing 2 rebuilds the consumer container and reuses the IPC namespace of the ch6_ipc_producer container. This time the consumer should be able to access the same memory location where the server is writing. You can see this working by using the following commands to inspect the logs of each: docker logs ch6_ipc_producer docker logs ch6_ipc_consumer Remember to cleanup your running containers before moving on: # remember: the v option will clean up volumes, # the f option will kill the container if it is running, # and the rm command takes a list of containers docker rm -vf ch6_ipc_producer ch6_ipc_consumer There are obvious security implications to reusing the shared memory namespaces of containers. But this option is available if you need it. Sharing memory between containers is safer alternative to sharing memory with the host.

Wondering how you can map a complex JSON structure to another JSON structure using Java? Read this awesome tutorial on mapping complex JSON structures.

Today I encountered a strance error opening both Java Mission Control and VisualVM: “Could not open PerfMemory” and “Local Java applications cannot be monitored”: After searching and testing for quite a while, I read the solution at the VisualVM troubleshooting guide: Local Applications Cannot Be Monitored (Error Dialog On Startup) Description: An error dialog saying that local applications cannot be monitored is shown immediately after VisualVM startup. Locally running Java applications are displayed as (pid ###). Resolution: This can happen on Windows systems if the username contains capitalized letters. In this case, username is UserName but the jvmstat directory created by JDK is %TMP%\hsperfdata_username. To workaround the problem, exit all Java applications, delete the %TMP%\hsperfdata_username directory and create new %TMP%\hsperfdata_UserName directory. That's it for this post. Hope I helped someone searching a little less for a solution for this little bugger. :)

This technical tip explains how to add a watermark to a document in Microsoft Word document inside Android Applications. Sometimes you need to insert a watermark into a Word document, for instance if you would like to print a draft document or mark it as confidential. In Microsoft Word, you can quickly insert a watermark using the Insert Watermark command. Not many people using this command realize that such “watermark” is just a shape with text inserted into a header or footer and positioned in the centre of the page. While Aspose.Words doesn't have a single insert watermark command like Microsoft Word, it is very easy to insert any shape or image into a header or footer and thus create a watermark of any imaginable type. The code below inserts a watermark into a Word document. [Java Code Sample] package AddWatermark; import java.awt.Color; import java.io.File; import java.net.URI; import com.aspose.words.Document; import com.aspose.words.Shape; import com.aspose.words.ShapeType; import com.aspose.words.RelativeHorizontalPosition; import com.aspose.words.RelativeVerticalPosition; import com.aspose.words.WrapType; import com.aspose.words.VerticalAlignment; import com.aspose.words.HorizontalAlignment; import com.aspose.words.Paragraph; import com.aspose.words.Section; import com.aspose.words.HeaderFooterType; import com.aspose.words.HeaderFooter; public class Program { public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception { // Sample infrastructure. URI exeDir = Program.class.getResource("").toURI(); String dataDir = new File(exeDir.resolve("../../Data")) + File.separator; Document doc = new Document(dataDir + "TestFile.doc"); insertWatermarkText(doc, "CONFIDENTIAL"); doc.save(dataDir + "TestFile Out.doc"); } /** * Inserts a watermark into a document. * * @param doc The input document. * @param watermarkText Text of the watermark. */ private static void insertWatermarkText(Document doc, String watermarkText) throws Exception { // Create a watermark shape. This will be a WordArt shape. // You are free to try other shape types as watermarks. Shape watermark = new Shape(doc, ShapeType.TEXT_PLAIN_TEXT); // Set up the text of the watermark. watermark.getTextPath().setText(watermarkText); watermark.getTextPath().setFontFamily("Arial"); watermark.setWidth(500); watermark.setHeight(100); // Text will be directed from the bottom-left to the top-right corner. watermark.setRotation(-40); // Remove the following two lines if you need a solid black text. watermark.getFill().setColor(Color.GRAY); // Try LightGray to get more Word-style watermark watermark.setStrokeColor(Color.GRAY); // Try LightGray to get more Word-style watermark // Place the watermark in the page center. watermark.setRelativeHorizontalPosition(RelativeHorizontalPosition.PAGE); watermark.setRelativeVerticalPosition(RelativeVerticalPosition.PAGE); watermark.setWrapType(WrapType.NONE); watermark.setVerticalAlignment(VerticalAlignment.CENTER); watermark.setHorizontalAlignment(HorizontalAlignment.CENTER); // Create a new paragraph and append the watermark to this paragraph. Paragraph watermarkPara = new Paragraph(doc); watermarkPara.appendChild(watermark); // Insert the watermark into all headers of each document section. for (Section sect : doc.getSections()) { // There could be up to three different headers in each section, since we want // the watermark to appear on all pages, insert into all headers. insertWatermarkIntoHeader(watermarkPara, sect, HeaderFooterType.HEADER_PRIMARY); insertWatermarkIntoHeader(watermarkPara, sect, HeaderFooterType.HEADER_FIRST); insertWatermarkIntoHeader(watermarkPara, sect, HeaderFooterType.HEADER_EVEN); } } private static void insertWatermarkIntoHeader(Paragraph watermarkPara, Section sect, int headerType) throws Exception { HeaderFooter header = sect.getHeadersFooters().getByHeaderFooterType(headerType); if (header == null) { // There is no header of the specified type in the current section, create it. header = new HeaderFooter(sect.getDocument(), headerType); sect.getHeadersFooters().add(header); } // Insert a clone of the watermark into the header. header.appendChild(watermarkPara.deepClone(true)); } }

In this article I will tell you how Apache Camel can turn a full-stack Linux microcomputer (like Raspberry Pi) into a device collecting the GPS coordinates.

You’re sitting at your desk, trying to “track” down a bug that’s been reported, when it happens. The hunt takes you into some method that inspires you to do a double take. It’s about 1,200 lines long, it has switch statements nested three deep, and you think (but you aren’t sure) that it does the same thing two or three times in a row for no particular reason. You look at the source control history and see that this is another “Bob special.” After seeing this, you start thinking about finally having a long overdue talk with Bob so that you don’t have to keep cleaning up these messes. That sure won’t be a fun talk. So how do you approach it? Philosophically Speaking Let’s be clear about something up front. Getting really good at telling teammates that their code is littered with problems is like getting really good at breaking into your car after locking yourself out of it: it’s tactically useful in the moment but indicative that you need a better overall strategy. Your goal shouldn’t be to master gently telling coworkers about their bad code but rather to make the mastery unnecessary. And I say that not as some kind of meta cop-out, but rather to put your strategy into context as an attempt to start or further a relationship. “Getting really good at telling teammates that their code is littered with problems is like getting really good at breaking into your car after locking yourself out of it.” Tweet This Quote When you’re part of a team, someone on your team who is committing bad code is a failure of everyone on the team—yourself included. So as you prepare for the intervention you’re planning with the person in question, keep in mind that you aren’t some kind of neutral crime scene investigator, sizing things up antiseptically. You’re part of the problem, and you share in the responsibility. Your team. Your code. Your problem. The good news is that if you approach this conversation constructively, you’re taking the first step toward fixing the problem, the code, and thus the team. So the key is making it constructive. 5 Ways to Not Make Code Criticism Constructive Before I go into detail about how to approach this conversation, I’ll give you a quick rundown of 5 things not to do. Don’t have the conversation when you’re frustrated or angry. Instead, wait until you’re calm and rational. Don’t get into this unless there’s a demonstrable problem. If you and he just have different casing preferences or something, the tension you create is probably going to nullify the benefits of standardization. Cosmetic coding standards and other relatively minor concerns can and should be addressed with automated static analysis. Don’t rely on seniority or status in any way. There’s no faster way to breed resentment than forcing people to do things they don’t agree with “because you say so.” Don’t expect to revolutionize someone’s entire approach in a single sitting and make the conversation a marathon affair. You want to have a clear and relatively concise message so that you get your point across without exhausting the other person. Improvement will happen over the long haul. Finally, don’t say that the code is “” That’s a useless, subjective way to categorize. Everything in software is about trade offs, so what you want to do is show Bob that he’s paying for quick and dirty coding with maintenance headaches for the rest of the team. Build A Constructive Code Strategy and Environment You’ve already prepared a bit by reading what not to do, so now it’s time to complement that with what to do. There needs to be three main components to this preparation: (1) the gaps you want to address (2) the support for your argument (3) the outcome for which you’re hoping. These three things are going to frame the discussion you intend to have. The gaps are actual, specific problems with Bob’s code. You don’t want to stroll over to Bob’s desk, pull up a chair, sit on it backwards and say, “So, Bob, you’re pretty bad at this programming thing…great talk!” You need to decide what tangible items you want to address during this discussion. What’s the most egregious source of problems? Is it the gigantic methods? The nested switch statements? The duplicate code? Pick one or maybe two of these things to cover. Just as you don’t want to be critical and vague, you also don’t want to be critical and devastatingly specific, reading off 95 of Bob’s greatest coding flaws like some kind of departmental Martin Luther. There may be 95 things wrong with Bob’s code. But if you want to fix all of them, it’s important to lay the groundwork for a mentoring relationship because you’re definitely not going to fix all of them in one day. Building Support: Do Your Research. Let’s say that you’ve decided to focus on method length as the topic to address. The next thing to do is build support for your argument. It’s a lot more credible to cite some supporting studies or widely respected industry figures on the matter than to march over to Bob and declare that his methods are too long. Build a case with evidence for the principle that you want to cover, and then also find specific, problematic instances in the code base to discuss. The last thing you want is to be hand-wavy about the problem—you want to be able to point at it and say, “for instance, this right here is a really big method.” The Outcome Should Be Actionable Having picked your issue and built a case, the last thing to do is choose an outcome toward which to steer the conversation. So you’ve shown Bob a giant method that he wrote and convinced him of the evils of giant methods. “Uh, okay,” he’ll say. “So what now?” Decide ahead of time that you want to work together to break the method into X number of smaller methods or that you want to leave the code in a state where no refactored method is longer than Y lines. Whatever it is, pick something actionable so that you and Bob can cap the conversation off with a joint win. Be courteous At this point, you’re ready to have the hard conversation. If you do it right, it won’t be nearly as hard as you might think, and it will serve as a productive starting point for a series of subsequent conversations that will be easier and perhaps even pleasant. This article originally appeared at SmartBear's Blog, written by Erik Dietrich.

Using Permutations, you can try all combinations of an input set.

The loop is the classic way of processing collections, but with the greater adoption of first-class functions in programming languages the collection pipeline is an appealing alternative. In this article I look at refactoring loops to collection pipelines with a series of small examples. I'm publishing this article in installments. This adds an example of refactoring a loop that summarizes flight delay data for each destination airport. A common task in programming is processing a list of objects. Most programmers naturally do this with a loop, as it's one of the basic control structures we learn with our very first programs. But loops aren't the only way to represent list processing, and in recent years more people are making use of another approach, which I call the collection pipeline. This style is often considered to be part of functional programming, but I used it heavily in Smalltalk. As OO languages support lambdas and libraries that make first class functions easier to program with, then collection pipelines become an appealing choice. Refactoring a Simple Loop into a Pipeline I'll start with a simple example of a loop and show the basic way I refactor one into a collection pipeline. Let's imagine we have a list of authors, each of which has the following data structure. class Author... public string Name { get; set; } public string TwitterHandle { get; set;} public string Company { get; set;} This example uses C# Here is the loop. class Author... static public IEnumerable TwitterHandles(IEnumerable authors, string company) { var result = new List (); foreach (Author a in authors) { if (a.Company == company) { var handle = a.TwitterHandle; if (handle != null) result.Add(handle); } } return result; } My first step in refactoring a loop into a collection pipeline is to apply Extract Variable on the loop collection. class Author... static public IEnumerable TwitterHandles(IEnumerable authors, string company) { var result = new List (); var loopStart = authors; foreach (Author a in loopStart) { if (a.Company == company) { var handle = a.TwitterHandle; if (handle != null) result.Add(handle); } } return result; } This variable gives me a starting point for pipeline operations. I don't have a good name for it right now, so I'll use one that makes sense for the moment, expecting to rename it later. I then start looking at bits of behavior in the loop. The first thing I see is a conditional check, I can move this to the pipeline with a . class Author... static public IEnumerable TwitterHandles(IEnumerable authors, string company) { var result = new List (); var loopStart = authors .Where(a => a.Company == company); foreach (Author a in loopStart) { if (a.Company == company) { var handle = a.TwitterHandle; if (handle != null) result.Add(handle); } } return result; } I see the next part of the loop operates on the twitter handle, rather than the author, so I can use a a . class Author... static public IEnumerable TwitterHandles(IEnumerable authors, string company) { var result = new List (); var loopStart = authors .Where(a => a.Company == company) .Select(a => a.TwitterHandle); foreach (string handle in loopStart) { var handle = a.TwitterHandle; if (handle != null) result.Add(handle); } return result; } Next in the loop as another conditional, which again I can move to a filter operation. class Author... static public IEnumerable TwitterHandles(IEnumerable authors, string company) { var result = new List (); var loopStart = authors .Where(a => a.Company == company) .Select(a => a.TwitterHandle) .Where (h => h != null); foreach (string handle in loopStart) { if (handle != null) result.Add(handle); } return result; } All the loop now does is add everything in its loop collection into the result collection, so I can remove the loop and just return the pipeline result. class Author... static public IEnumerable TwitterHandles(IEnumerable authors, string company) { var result = new List (); return authors .Where(a => a.Company == company) .Select(a => a.TwitterHandle) .Where (h => h != null); foreach (string handle in loopStart) { result.Add(handle); } return result; } Here's the final state of the code class Author... static public IEnumerable TwitterHandles(IEnumerable authors, string company) { return authors .Where(a => a.Company == company) .Select(a => a.TwitterHandle) .Where (h => h != null); } What I like about collection pipelines is that I can see the flow of logic as the elements of the list pass through the pipeline. For me it reads very closely to how I'd define the outcome of the loop "take the authors, choose those who have a company, and get their twitter handles removing any null handles". Furthermore, this style of code is familiar even in different languages who have different syntaxes and different names for pipeline operators. Java public List twitterHandles(List authors, String company) { return authors.stream() .filter(a -> a.getCompany().equals(company)) .map(a -> a.getTwitterHandle()) .filter(h -> null != h) .collect(toList()); } Ruby def twitter_handles authors, company authors .select {|a| company == a.company} .map {|a| a.twitter_handle} .reject {|h| h.nil?} end while this matches the other examples, I would replace the final reject with compact Clojure (defn twitter-handles [authors company] (->> authors (filter #(= company (:company %))) (map :twitter-handle) (remove nil?))) F# let twitterHandles (authors : seq, company : string) = authors |> Seq.filter(fun a -> a.Company = company) |> Seq.map(fun a -> a.TwitterHandle) |> Seq.choose (fun h -> h) again, if I wasn't concerned about matching the structure of the other examples I would combine the map and choose into a single step I've found that once I got used to thinking in terms of pipelines I could apply them quickly even in an unfamiliar language. Since the fundamental approach is the same it's relatively easy to translate from even unfamiliar syntax and function names. Refactoring within the Pipeline, and to a Comprehension Once you have some behavior expressed as a pipeline, there are potential refactorings you can do by reordering steps in the pipeline. One such move is that if you have a map followed by a filter, you can usually move the filter before the map like this. class Author... static public IEnumerable TwitterHandles(IEnumerable authors, string company) { return authors .Where(a => a.Company == company) .Where (a => a.TwitterHandle != null) .Select(a => a.TwitterHandle); } When you have two adjacent filters, you can combine them using a conjunction. class Author... static public IEnumerable TwitterHandles(IEnumerable authors, string company) { return authors .Where(a => a.Company == company && a.TwitterHandle != null) .Select(a => a.TwitterHandle); } Once I have a C# collection pipeline in the form of a simple filter and map like this, I can replace it with a Linq expression class Author... static public IEnumerable TwitterHandles(IEnumerable authors, string company) { return from a in authors where a.Company == company && a.TwitterHandle != null select a.TwitterHandle; } I consider Linq expressions to be a form of , and similarly you can do something like this with any language that supports list comprehensions. It's a matter of taste whether you prefer the list comprehension form, or the pipeline form (I prefer pipelines). In general pipelines are more powerful, in that you can't refactor all pipelines into comprehensions.