The Loop - Blog

Will WADL provide a second wind for REST uptake in enterprise?

2008-11-06T20:47:00Z

Any one who has ever implemented a SOAP consuming client service will appreciate that the tooling for various languages is a very welcome feather in SOAP’s cap. Without the WSDL tooling that web service developers are accustomed to, a large portion of those developers would probably struggle to use the said service as the sher verbosity of the SOAP entity payload is simply overwhelming.

REST: A idealist view of the web or serious technology?

When REST came onto the scene it appeared to be met with two very different view points. The open source communities and web purists rejoiced… a resource orientated architecture which allowed them to scrap there verbose SOAP and XML-RPC service flow. However, from what I saw first-hand, the reaction from enterprise was somewhat different; namely, one of “So now we have to implement clients by hand? Sod that!”.

For a number of developers, including myself, we could see that REST was a much better architectural style for distributed computing on the web, but with ever decreasing budgets and squeezed time scales the added overhead of creating totally bespoke services – and therefore clients – was one that proved somewhat of a bitter pill to swallow.

WADL: Here to save the day?

Recently, WADL is coming to the fore as a structured way for providing description and automated development workflow for using REST services. WADL is based around similar principles to WSDL in that it provides a contract of service between service resource and the client.

If WADL can provide a robust framework for automated tooling with REST, I really think that we’ll see REST pick up a second wind of uptake in the enterprise setting. With players like Yahoo! leading by example, how long will it be before others follow suit?

Only time will tell…

Adding JASYPT encryption to your scala JPA entity classes

2008-10-27T00:58:00Z

I’ve recently been looking at how best to make sensitive user data encrpytable within JPA models when in use with lift. I came accross JASYPT and it seems to be a really nice encryption tool. If you want to add it to your scala JPA models, do something like this:



package eu.getintheloop.bloglite.model

import javax.persistence._
import java.util.Date
import org.jasypt.util.password.BasicPasswordEncryptor

@Entity
@Table(){val name="users"}
class User extends BaseEntity {
  @Id
  @GeneratedValue(){val strategy = GenerationType.IDENTITY}
  @Column(){val insertable = false, val unique = true}
  var id: Long = _

  @Column{val nullable = true}
  var first_name: String = "" 

  @Column{val nullable = true}
  var last_name: String = "" 

  @Column{val unique = true, val nullable = false}
  var username: String = "" 

  @Column{val nullable = false}
  var password_hash: String = "" 

  @Column{val unique = false, val nullable = false}
  var email: String = "" 

  @Column{val unique = false, val nullable = false}
  var is_active: Boolean = false

  def password: String = this.password_hash

  def password_=(in: String) = this.password_hash = encrypt(in)

  def authenticate(in: String): Boolean = {
    new BasicPasswordEncryptor().checkPassword(in, password) 
      && is_active
  }

  private def encrypt(in: String): String = 
    new BasicPasswordEncryptor().encryptPassword(in)

}

Explictially Setting Application DocType with Lift

2008-10-01T10:02:00Z

As you might know, I use the lift framework a lot – I recently came across a strange issue where I couldnt set my own doctype in the layout template. Maybe this nugget of information will be usefull for someone:


ResponseInfo.docType = { 
      case _ if S.getDocType._1 => S.getDocType._2 
      case _ => Full(DocType.xhtmlStrict) 
    }

/*
Avalible options are:

xhtmlTransitional
xhtmlStrict
xhtmlFrameset
xhtml11
xhtmlMobile

*/

Free your mind with FreeMind

2008-09-30T23:44:00Z

Check out this great open source mind mapping tool called FreeMind – I recently came accross it whilst reading this article about hibernate 2nd level caching.

A true testament to the power of OSS and the great software it can produce.

World First: XMPie Dashboard Application for Apple iPhone

2008-08-26T17:57:00Z

Readers of my blog will know that I love macs. Absolutely anything to do with Apple interests me; to that end, it will not surprise you that I have been doing some iPhone development.

For kicks I decided to write a mobile XMPie Dashboard application which would let you control XMPie uProduce whilst out and about. Whilst this is a sheer technology demonstration, its fairly functional and a great example of how with the right knowledge and skill, absolutly anything is possible within the XMPie toolset.

Below is a quick screencast demonstrating the application in all its glory!....

Im interested in your thoughts, so please comment below if you feel so inclined…

Running Resin Alongside Microsoft IIS

2008-08-24T01:10:00Z

I recently thought that it would be good to run a Servlet container alongside IIS which is so well embedded in the clients that I deal with as they are mainly .NET types…

Anyone who has read my blog before will now that I have somewhat of a penchant for Resin – so once again, this was my choice of servlet container. Luckily for me, Caucho are awesome enough to supply an ISAPI filter which drops right into your IIS system, making Resin just an other ISAPI filter! Very sweet.

If you too would like to have some Java sweetness on your M$ box, then check out this walkthrough

I Want To Be A Rocket Man!

2008-08-23T15:05:00Z

I just came across this on DIGG. I wouldn’t usually blog about this type of thing, but its truly amazing… can you imagine if they massed produced these one day – we might be flying to work!

Hessian Kit Framework for Objective-C Released

2008-08-09T16:54:00Z

This sweet new cocoa framework is now available for download from Sourceforge – if your writing anything for mac that involves client <-> server interplay, then this is certainly worth a look.

Small, fast and lightweight. What more could you want?

Enterprise Social Messaging

2008-08-08T11:06:00Z

Here’s an interesting video that explains ESME which runs on the lift framework, backend by SAP NetWeaver. Very, very cool.

Enjoy!

Programatically adding Applications to the Login Items

2008-07-28T14:27:00Z

Its taking some kicking around, but here is the fruit of my labour… using core foundation over the RC bridge.



require 'osx/cocoa'

loginItems = OSX::CFPreferencesCopyValue(
      "AutoLaunchedApplicationDictionary", 
      "loginwindow", 
      OSX::KCFPreferencesCurrentUser, 
      OSX::KCFPreferencesAnyHost)

application_path = File.expand_path("~/path/to/your.app")
application_hidden = false

loginItems << OSX::NSDictionary.dictionaryWithObjects_forKeys(
    [ application_path, application_hidden ], 
    [ :Path, :Hide ])

# puts loginItems

OSX::CFPreferencesSetValue(
    "AutoLaunchedApplicationDictionary", 
    loginItems, 
    "loginwindow", 
    OSX::KCFPreferencesCurrentUser, 
    OSX::KCFPreferencesAnyHost)

OSX::CFPreferencesSynchronize("loginwindow", 
        OSX::KCFPreferencesCurrentUser, 
        OSX::KCFPreferencesAnyHost)

With any luck this might help someone :-)

Checking Network Connectivity with Ruby

2008-07-25T10:53:00Z

I’ve just been playing around with a few things and stumbled accross a really neat ruby lib called ‘timeout’. I used it to make a quick check for network connectivity like so:



require 'timeout'
require 'socket'

begin
  timeout(10) do
    TCPSocket.new("www.rubyforge.org", 80)
  end
    puts true
rescue
  puts false
end

For so few lines thats a really neat; I thought so at least! :-)

Great guide for people interested in Scala

2008-07-17T17:33:00Z

I just came across a great Scala presentation from JavaOne. If your not looking at learning Scala, then this presentation will give you a whole heap of reasons to get up and do something about it.

Download the article from here

The Website Is Down!

2008-07-09T11:57:00Z

A friend of mine sent this to me – anyone working in IT will appreciate the funny side of this!!

Bongtastic load testing!!

2008-07-08T22:56:00Z

My mind escapes me at this late hour on a Tuesday eve, but Im fairly sure i’ve blogged about the httperf tool from HP Labs before.

Anyway, if I havent, thats a different story, as today, I want to point you good reader to the wonderfull tool that is Bong

httperf has somewhat cryptic command syntax, and bong is a really nice wrapper around it which make leveraging the full power of httperf a breeze.

Check out the Bong home page for more info – I’ll put up a quick tutorial when its not so late and my brain is functioning properly.

How to use Photoshop Smart Object

2008-06-28T13:02:00Z

I just stumbled accross this article – the subject matter certainly puts questions over the sanity of the author, but, never the less it is actually quite a good example (or tutorial if you can go that far) of how to use Smart Objects within Photoshop.