Planet NetBeans

Geertjan's Blog: NetBeans Shisha Integration

Tue, 06 Jan 2009 16:48:15 +0000

One of the top 10 features of Egypt is, of course, the shisha (more specifically, the contents thereof). Here is me last night outside a cafe in Cairo with Hamada, Amr, and Khaled, applying the default shisha usecase:

The discussion obviously turned to the need for tight integration between shisha and NetBeans IDE. Initial brainstorms around powering NetBeans IDE via a shisha were briefly assessed and then rejected as brilliant but impractical. Then, as if out of thin air, the concept of a NetBeans plugin for shishas was born. Here is a first implementation—shisha cursor:

package org.netbeans.shisha; import
      java.awt.Cursor; import java.awt.Image; import java.awt.Point; import java.awt.Toolkit; import javax.swing.ImageIcon; import javax.swing.JFrame; import javax.swing.SwingUtilities; import org.openide.modules.ModuleInstall; import org.openide.windows.WindowManager; public class Installer extends ModuleInstall { @Override public void restored() { SwingUtilities.invokeLater(new Runnable() { public void run() { //Create the cursor: Toolkit tk = Toolkit.getDefaultToolkit(); ImageIcon
      shishaImageIcon = new javax.swing.ImageIcon(getClass().getResource("/org/netbeans/shisha/shisha.png")); Image shishaImage = shishaImageIcon.getImage(); Cursor shishaCursor= tk.createCustomCursor(shishaImage, new Point(10,10), "Shisha"); //Use the cursor in the main window: JFrame frame = (JFrame) WindowManager.getDefault().getMainWindow(); frame.setCursor(shishaCursor); } }); } }

And this is how the source structure looks, together with the shisha cursor installed into the IDE:

Even tighter integration can be achieved by setting the shisha cursor in the editor too, by changing the caret to use the same icon. Further steps could involve extending the Options window with a selection of different shishas from which the user can select their preferred model. In this case, unfortunately, the content thereof is irrelevant.

-c o r n u c o p i a-: Getting my feet wet

Tue, 06 Jan 2009 14:37:58 +0000

I have been getting my feet wet working with the Python support in NetBeans for sometime now. After a couple of commits on my behalf by Tor and Jean-Yves, I did the first push myself after I got access to the 'main' repository. Woohoo!

Tor's quick Mercurial tip IS a life saver: http://blogs.sun.com/tor/entry/mercurial_tip_checking_in_regularly

I am all set to get drenched.

NetBeans Community Docs Blog: Community-Contributed Docs Statistics

Tue, 06 Jan 2009 13:35:36 +0000

Statistics: Year 2007-08

Year 2007

Contributions- 76 (10 Months)
Unique Authors- 55

Analysis: This states that nearly every month, 8 docs were contributed to our project, and there were 5-6 authors joining the project every month..

Year 2008

Contributions- 203 (12 Months)
Unique Authors- 60

Analysis: This states that nearly every month, 17 docs were contributed to our project, and there were nearly 5 authors joining the project every month..

Comparative Study

From the above figures, one can infer that in the year 2008, there was 62.56% increase in the no. of contributions.. However, the rate of authors joining the project remained the same..

What Next?

This is your project and you are the driving force, so if you have any suggestions for betterment of this project, let us know.. We hope to see the same enthusiasm again this year, wish you good luck and thank you for your contributions till date..

Happy New Year :)

Miles to go ...: TOTD #60: Configure MySQL 6.0.x-alpha to NetBeans 6.5

Tue, 06 Jan 2009 13:00:00 +0000

This Tip Of The Day answers the following comment on my blog:

How to Configure a MySql database to be able to connect
      Netbeans6.5.?

I've tried using mysql Server 6 many times, but it fails.
Please, let me know how to fix that problem.

Download MySQL 6.0 from here.
Install and start MySQL 6.0 on Mac OSX using the clearly written installation instructions.

Basically the download is available in .tar or .dmg format. Using .dmg format is the easiest way, double-click and follow the instructions taking all defaults.

MySQL is installed in "/usr/local/mysql-6.0.8-alpha-osx10.5-x86_64" and the soft link is adjusted so that its available from "/usr/local/mysql". The directory structure looks like:

lrwxr-xr-x   1 root  wheel   32 Jan  5 14:00 mysql -> mysql-6.0.8-alpha-osx10.5-x86_64
drwxr-xr-x   3 root  wheel  102 Jan  5 14:00 mysql-5.0.45-osx10.4-i686
drwxr-xr-x  17 root  wheel  578 Nov  3 21:02 mysql-6.0.8-alpha-osx10.5-x86_64

Start MySQL server as: "sudo mysqld_safe" to see the output as:

~ >sudo mysqld_safe
090105 14:20:51 mysqld_safe Logging to '/usr/local/mysql/data/dhcp-usca14-133-38.SFBay.Sun.COM.err'.
090105 14:20:52 mysqld_safe Starting mysqld daemon with databases from /usr/local/mysql/data

In NetBeans 6.5, Services tab, right-click on "Databases" and click on "Register MySQL Server..." as shown below:
Take the default values, if your MySQL instance is running on the default ports, as shown below:

and click on "OK". If your database is already running then NetBeans will automatically connect with the database. If the database is not running then start it as explained above, right-click on the newly added database as shown below:

and the default databases are then shown as:

More details about configuring MySQL in NetBeans 6.5 are explained in the official documentation.

Please leave suggestions on other TOTD (Tip Of The Day) that you'd like to see. An archive of all the tips is available here.

Technorati: totd netbeans mysql

Adam Bien: Mapping JPA Entities To SQL Views - It Works Even With Derby

Tue, 06 Jan 2009 10:08:54 +0000

SQL Views can be considered either as best practice or an anti-pattern. It depends on the perspective. Sometimes, however, it is required to provide an efficient way to iterate over an excerpt or even a set of related entities, but return a different “view” to the client. This can be achieved by fetching the entities with EntityManager and merging them together inside a Session Bean (a Service). This approach is neither fast, nor easy to maintain. Especially the merging and extraction of entity data is error-prone and can become quite complex. Another possibility is the execution of more complex native SQL-statements and mapping them into existing entities or TOs. The query could become complex and the filter criteria highly repetitive. You will need the filter in all related queries which return the particular subset. Especially in the context of pagination, where the data is mostly retrieved for read-only purposes, database views are the easier and more efficient alternative. Instead of implementing a lot of plumbing on the “Java-side” all the work could be easily done in the database. You have just to create a SQL View – it is a part of the SQL standard and is even supported by the Derby DB shipped with Java:

CREATE VIEW APP.V_CUSTOMER(NAME,CITY) AS SELECT NAME,CITY FROM APP.CUSTOMER

For SQL queries there is no difference between views and tables, so you can easily map a JPA entity to a view transparently. The code on the Java side remains clean and simple – and you will even get better performance. There is a drawback: not all views are updatable. Whether a view is updatable or not highly depends on the complexity and particular database. E.g. in Derby DB all views are not updatable.

[It is an excerpt from my current book "Productive Java EE - Rethinking Best Practices]

NetBeans for PHP: Defining a variable type in comment

Tue, 06 Jan 2009 08:42:17 +0000

Yesterday was the first day at work this year and we committed new feature, which allow to define a type for a variable in a comment. The comment has to be defined in specific form as is displayed on the picture.

The comment has to be /* @var $variable type */ . If the comment is written in the right form, then the var tag has bold font.

You can use this helper, when NetBeans is not able to recognize the type of the variable. On the picture below you can see that NetBeans recognizes that the variable $media in the echo statement is Book type. But then another object is assigned to the $media variable through the getLastMovie() function. This function defines the return type Movie, so from this line NetBeans knows that $media variable contains an object of Movie type.

NetBeans handles the variable name and the type from the comment helper as are handled in PHP Doc. So for example mark occurrences works as usual.

Next time I will show you how NetBeans can help you with writing the comment helper.

Inspiration and Expression » Netbeans: Java Penetration Statistics

Tue, 06 Jan 2009 08:01:08 +0000

This Java statistics is based on http://www.kiyut.com (not this blog, this blog is tracked separately). Basically, it is a B2C sites which specialize in Java Desktop Application.

If you are wondering how do we track Java version, please visit this step by step guide on how to track java version using google analytics at
http://cowwoc.blogspot.com/2008/11/tracking-java-versions-using-google.html

Here is our Java visitor stats, it is fresh from Google Analytics data 05 December 2008 - 05 January 2009

(more…)

Tor Norbye's Weblog: NetBeans Screenshot of the Week #40: Python Test Runner UI

Mon, 05 Jan 2009 20:51:41 +0000

In the 7.0 builds, we have a dedicated unit test runner for Python now. Running a file as a test, or running the test project action, will open a test runner with the output docked on its right hand side, instead of just the output window (click for full size screenshot):

Here's the test runner itself:

What you want to see in the output is a single green line which says "All n Tests Passed", where n is hopefully a large number. But when one or more of the tests fail, you see something like the above. Running the Next Error action (Cmd-.) will jump to the next failed test, just like it normally jumps to the next error in the current output window, or the next task in the tasklist.

One thing to notice (and this is new in 7.0) is that we now include the failure message right there in the test summary for each test, so you don't have to drill into an individual test to see the failure message. You can also hover over a test and any output from that test is shown in a tooltip. You can also right click on tests and select "Run Again" to run just one specific test over again.

This is the same window as the one we have for Ruby. In fact, Erno, who wrote the Ruby test runner, has modularized the code now such that it's the same implementation for both languages - we just have language specific plugins to actually hook into the various testing frameworks. Currently, for Python we support the two builtin testing frameworks: unittest and doctest. The above screenshot showed a regular unittest run. Here's a doctest:

One important thing to note is that you don't have to instrument your code with any test running code. As long as you place doctests in your docstrings, or as long as you have any classes extending unittest.TestCase, the test runner will find them. All you have to do is run Test Project:

and when you have done that, both unittests and doctests are found and included in the same test run - here's both failing doctests and unit tests:

Once again, kudos to Erno for writing the excellent test runner support! And as usual, let us know of any problems.

P.S. Jean-Yves Mengant has also done some excellent work recently. In addition to some cool new quickfixes in the Python editor for NetBeans, he has just integrated a multithreaded debugger for Python!

Van Couvering Is Not a Verb: Twitter overload - help!

Mon, 05 Jan 2009 19:53:24 +0000

This keeps happening - the community I need to stay engaged with keeps jumping on new forms of communication, and if you want to stay in tune, you need to jump on too.

This first happened with blogging, and then with Facebook. These I actually don't mind. I like writing and reading blogs, and Google Reader has made it fairly easy for me to quickly digest what's going on.

Facebook is nice because I keep in touch with friends. It's not so much about work but about getting a little more connected, particularly to old friends who I don't see much any more.

But this Twitter thing - I really don't like it. Sorry. I subscribe to someone's Twitter feed because I value their thoughts, but then it's serious drinking from a firehose. Many of these Thought Leaders are just constantly (I mean constantly, like I don't know how they get any work done) pushing stuff onto Twitter, and my head just spins. I just un-followed Tim O'Reilly, I just couldn't take it any more. I tried Guy Kawasaki for less than a day - that was mind numbing.

The problem is, these guys aren't blogging any more. Tim Bray has gone almost completely radio silent on his blog. Now Brian Aker's going to do the same thing. I never hear anything from James Governor's blog any more, but his Twitter feed is really overwhelming, and I had to sign off. It's a bummer, I really like what these guys have to say, but I just can't take it.

Those of you who follow people on Twitter, how do you do it? How do you process all this information, get the gold, and get on with your life? I am at a loss...

There's something else - blogs can have a Quality that Twitter doesn't. A good blog has me laughing or nodding my head or both, and when I'm done reading it, I have this quiet smile and a feeling of gratitude, like I just received something both entertaining and valuable. 150-character blaps on Twitter just don't have the same feel, sorry. So I miss that and am saddened that people are moving off of the blog format.

Posted via email from David Van Couvering's Posterous

Toni Epple: Quick Tip 7: Icon Branding: GIF or PNG?

Mon, 05 Jan 2009 14:45:26 +0000

To replace the default icon of an action, you need to find out where your icon of interest comes from, create a folder named like the modules jar file with the same folder structure as in the original module, and place an icon that’s named exactly like the one you want to replace (a more detailed description is here).

That’s easy, but most platform icons are in GIF format and you might want to use icons that are in a different format, e.g. the popular Nuvola Icon Set that comes in PNG format. I didn’t want to convert a whole bunch of files manually, and I was to lazy to write a script, so I tried ot what happens when I simply rename those PNGs to .gif. And it worked. Quite useful when you have to replace a large set of icons…

Seapegasus Blog: The Cube! It's alive! (continued)

Mon, 05 Jan 2009 13:09:43 +0000

Happy new year everybody! Previously I mentioned that the NetBeans mascot, NekoBean has already been incarnated as plush toy, pendant, etc. Thiara went yet another step further: She posted instructions how to cut and paste (literally) a 3-dimensional NekoBean — as office decoration. :-D

If you don't read German, here's the translation:

Print the NekoBean template (PDF) on scrap paper, cut out the shape, and draw the outline on the backside of construction paper — unless your printer can handle fancier kinds of paper directly. The shape consists of the body, 4 legs, tail and 2 ears.
Cut slots into the body: Two on the sides for the arms, two on top of the head for the ears, and one into the backside for the tail. Insert the arms, ears, and tail, and glue or tape them on the inside of the body.
Draw the NekoBean's face on the frontside with a felttip pen. Here you find some faces for inspiration.
Glue the sides of the body together to form a cube -- when closing the cube, don't forget the legs: Make them stick out of the edge between the backside and the bottom.

End result: Meet my first makeshift Nekobean! (It was born solely of office materials... I colored the paper with a flipchart marker and glued it together with sticky tape...)

It hangs on nicely to a notebook screen, and it is equally well able to stand on flat surfaces. Thanks to Thiara for this hilarious tip!

PS: Now create your own and post photos!

Bistro!: Happy 2009! ... while I was away

Mon, 05 Jan 2009 12:16:20 +0000

Wishing you all the very best for 2009 !

While I was away (as everyone else) here are the few things that caught my attention:
• My GlassFish article on JavaLobby made it into the top 10 most read of 2008. Nice. Top rated too :)
• Someone created mod_v8. Makes sense, but who cares? Performances is reported to be better vs. Rhino. Would love to see some numbers.
• Messages on the French developpez.com online forum for GlassFish has now more threads than WebLogic (stats). Next up: WebSphere number of messages. The GlassFish forum started years after all others. Many people mention GlassFish in EJB, JSF, and other sub-forums.
• sherod made his TwitterFX client available. Still early days, rough edges, etc... but very functional. As the author puts it: "I started on the 9th of December, not knowing JavaFX - it's been about 1-3 hours a day through until now."

Adam Bien: Netbeans 6.5 With Visual Ice Faces - Installation, Test, EJB 3 Integration, An Error And Solution

Mon, 05 Jan 2009 07:35:29 +0000

The installation of icefaces is very smooth. You don't even have to restart Netbeans 6.5 (and this without OSGI :-)) . It takes few minutes / seconds - it depends on your bandwidth (9MB). IceFaces installation enhances the web-project type, so you will get two additional choices in the "Frameworks" tab: ICEFaces and Visual Web ICEFaces. The latter choice let you design your page visually with drag and drop vrom pallette etc. - very much like woodstock. The first choice is for source editor only. Don't select both frameworks - it will not work...

First impressions:

Visual Designer works really good - as already known from Woodstock.
Page Flow designer works.
EJB 3 injection of Stateless and Stateful Session Beans into managed beans works.
Deployment to Glassfish v2 works.
Declarative Data Binding (Value Binding) between ICEFaces components and JavaBeans (JPA-entities) works.
"Start Page" support doesn not work. It generates in the web.xml something like this:

<welcome-file-list>
        <welcome-file>index.html</welcome-file>
        <welcome-file>faces/Page1.jsp</welcome-file>
    </welcome-file-list>

This will cause an error in case you will try to "Run" the application.

java.lang.NullPointerException
        at com.sun.faces.renderkit.RenderKitImpl.createResponseWriter(RenderKitImpl.java:169)
        at com.icesoft.faces.renderkit.D2DRenderKit.createResponseWriter(D2DRenderKit.java:82)
        at com.sun.faces.application.ViewHandlerImpl.renderView(ViewHandlerImpl.java:168)
        at com.icesoft.faces.application.D2DViewHandler.renderView(D2DViewHandler.java:151)
        at com.sun.rave.web.ui.appbase.faces.ViewHandlerImpl.renderView(ViewHandlerImpl.java:283)
        at com.sun.faces.lifecycle.RenderResponsePhase.execute(RenderResponsePhase.java:106)
        at com.sun.faces.lifecycle.LifecycleImpl.phase(LifecycleImpl.java:251)
        at com.sun.faces.lifecycle.LifecycleImpl.render(LifecycleImpl.java:144)
        at javax.faces.webapp.FacesServlet.service(FacesServlet.java:245)

Solution: Just delete the section <welcome-file-list> and change the Page1.jsp into Page1.iface. The URL should looks like: http://localhost:8080/[WAR_NAME]/Page1.iface. If you want to "Run" your application, put the Page1.iface (or your actual welcome page) into the Relative URL box in the Properties (Run) of your project.

I lost about one hour for finding a solution for the problem above, so my overall impression is just good and not very good :-).

NetBeans Zone - The social network for developers: Updated NetBeans Java Editor Refcard for NetBeans IDE 6.5!

Sun, 04 Jan 2009 20:07:02 +0000

The NetBeans Java Editor Refcard has been updated to 6.5. Go here to download it. Based on a lot of useful comments received for the first release of this Refcard, which was for NetBeans IDE 6.1, several changes have been made. Some, in hindsight, superfluous sections have been removed, and this overview graphic has been added:

N, Varun » NetBeans: Phase 3 | NetBeans Community Docs

Sun, 04 Jan 2009 16:47:48 +0000

Hi,

I am yet again blogging about Community Docs, this time not blogging personal experience but would like to give you a recap of events that brought changes to the way program was being driven and lot more news..

What exactly do we mean by Phase(s)?

Well, it all started when James and Amit started up official weblog for NetBeans Community Docs and announced that they are gearing up for “Phase II“, as they were done with getting 100 community-contributed docs..

So, there was no “Phase I”, I mean there was no articulation of it that they were in “Phase I” and are aiming for future phases. If they did have something, then I was not privileged enough to have that information

I was neither in the NetBeans Community Docs Team nor in the NetBeans Dream Team..

Phase II | Blog and Groups..

Well, I can think of phases, as of how the project evolved? So, James announced lot of stuff for “Phase II” and soon, social networking began outside your inbox at a much larger scale..

my.netbeans.org and other established social networking sites translate into more ways for NetBeans community members to communicate with each other, start exciting projects, be in the know about NetBeans, and help to keep the NetBeans community strong and active.

Revolution was taking place and many people joined Facebook group, while few joined MySpace..

Midway through Phase II..

Changes in the team management took place, when I became Contribution Coordinator as Amit K. Saha moved into employment at Sun Microsystems, India..

Since then, lot has changed and I have kept you all updated with my personal experiences on being aboard the management of NetBeans Community Docs..

Phase III | Newsletters, Evangelists and More..

Phase III kicked off when we got 200 docs.. finally, we come towards “Phase III and again there wasn’t any specific articulation I could point you to, where we could have listed what all we would do..

Instead, our team had a Skype chat session and thereafter, we started executing the discussed ideas steadily, not at one-go!

Today, I can proudly say that all our ideas have resulted in timely goods.. Of course, community members were always there to support our ideas and helped us in realizing them..

Weekly Newsletters (20, 8, 7)

20 (20) English, 8 (20) Spanish and 7 (20) German were published.. We will be launching “Monthly Newsletters”, soon..

Blog Series- NetBeans Dream Team Docs

The posts of this special series were highlighted in weekly newsletters..

Special News Item Archive

and, some More Updates..

Whats Next?

We are 21 docs away from beginning the next phase of this amazing project/program, whatever you call it.. You would soon see some more out-of-the-box thinking taking place, at our side..

New Year has just begun and you’re in for many more surprises..
Stay tuned for more..

Posted in Community Docs, NetBeans, Phase II, Phase III

Geertjan's Blog: Cairo on the NetBeans Platform!

Sun, 04 Jan 2009 16:08:58 +0000

Today was day two of a three day NetBeans Platform Training in Cairo. The training is being held at the University of Cairo, but many of the students are from many other places—and most are either from software companies creating desktop applications or are teachers from universities and colleges. The course was organized via the Egyptian JUG, where you can find more pics (here).

Here's a pic of part of the group at the end of the 1st day:

The program of the course is as follows:

Day 1:
- Getting Started with the NetBeans Platform
- Lookup API
- System FileSystem API
Day 2:
- Window System API
- Nodes API and Explorer & Property Sheet API
- Visual Library API
Day 3:
- Extending NetBeans IDE
- Other Interesting NetBeans APIs
- Ideas for Modules

I think this three day structure is much better than our normal two day course. But, maybe, sometime in the future, we could hold a workshop oriented course here, which would build on top of this one. It could take 5 days and at the end the students would have a complete application on top of the NetBeans Platform.

Interested in becoming trained to use the NetBeans Platform too? Write to users AT edu DOT netbeans DOT org. Especially schools, colleges, and universities interested in integrating this course into their standard curriculum are encouraged to invite us along: we'll come for free, depending on where you're located. NetBeans Platform trainers are found in many parts of the world, as you can read here on NetBeans Zone. And maybe you'd like to become a NetBeans Platform trainer too?

Adam Bien: Best Of / Most Popular Entries (>10k views) In This Blog

Sun, 04 Jan 2009 08:54:12 +0000

January: Domain Driven Design, EJB 3, JPA, Glassfish v2, JSF (Model View Presenter), Data Binding, Java DB ...or sports for Java Hackers [13203 views]
February: Nice, but hidden, CRUD wizard in Netbeans 6.0 [17038 views]
March: Eclipse 3.3 or NetBeans 6.0 - with surprising result [44679 views]
April: High Level thinking about the introduction of closures in Java [12728 views]
May: java.net@JavaONE: Which Programming Language J. Gosling would use now, except Java? [40156 views]
June: First Indicators of Overengineering in Your Project [20027 views]
July: First Week With Netbeans 6.5M1 - Some Smoke - But Interesting Directions [32204 views]
August: First Week With Netbeans 6.5M1 - Some Smoke - But Interesting Directions [13744 views] and Useful Explanation: "iBATIS, Hibernate, and JPA: Which is right for you?", Strange Conclusion [12725 views]
September: New UMLKit Available For Netbeans 6.5 - First Tests - Reverse Engineering Of EJB 3 Rocks [17808 views] and EJB 3.X ...the Consultants Killer [15303 views]
October: Productive Java EE 6 - Rethinking Best Practices, Planned For San Jose, Takes Place in Krakow (JDD) ...and Netbeans Days, or Poland the "Java Land"? [4342 views]
November: Eclipse RCP vs. Netbeans RCP - and what really counts [20086 views]
December: Top Eight, Non Java, Netbeans 6.5 Features [31852 views]

So the winner seems to be: Eclipse 3.3 or NetBeans 6.0 - with surprising result [44679 views]

The views above are monthly results - not overall views. The actual number should be much higher. RSS-Feed results are even not included in this statistic. What suprised me is the high number of visits a day. The daily average ranged from 3k - 4.5k. Thanks to all readers / subscriber and especially for constructive comments! Feedback is highly appreciated.

Some overall stats:

Summary by Month
Month	Daily Avg				Monthly Totals
Month	Hits	Files	Pages	Visits	Hosts	KBytes	Visits	Pages	Files	Hits
Dec 2008	19955	17350	11225	4570	32264	15695635	141681	347996	537880	618631
Nov 2008	15402	12319	9027	3349	19468	13240661	100479	270832	369593	462074
Oct 2008	14753	11585	9620	3287	16059	14005297	101909	298234	359157	457344
Sep 2008	17825	14265	10173	3573	19249	15068533	107211	305198	427963	534777
Aug 2008	17280	13630	9521	3590	20059	14621088	111317	295165	422560	535694
Jul 2008	19936	15732	10770	3906	23417	15021836	121093	333888	487707	618040
Jun 2008	19545	15536	11399	3838	22382	13927917	115157	341970	466104	586360
May 2008	20966	16934	11208	4154	26671	16597906	128804	347458	524962	649954
Apr 2008	21220	16665	10834	4130	27886	19052403	123913	325020	499973	636600
Mar 2008	18901	13811	10210	3385	24515	13900018	104956	316533	428155	585932
Feb 2008	17751	12187	10756	3240	22073	12407522	93975	311945	353444	514799
Totals						164067617	1254834	3506066	4891411	6217440

The drop of traffic in October and November was caused by my Roller / Glassfish experiments, some offline-hours and many broken links :-).

Geertjan's Blog: "NetBeans greatly simplifies plugin development" -- Jeff Friesen

Sat, 03 Jan 2009 18:59:14 +0000

Jeff Friesen (whose great book "Beginning Java SE 6 Platform: From Novice to Professional" I reviewed here on Javalobby) has written a great article, freshly published in JavaWorld:

The last sections of the article show you how to create a NetBeans plugin from scratch. These sections are prefaced by these words, which I thought were quite nice: "After trying out the previously discussed NetBeans plugins and others that you download from the NetBeans Plugins Portal, you'll probably want to create your own. If you're new to this task, you might find it somewhat intimidating. Fortunately, NetBeans greatly simplifies plugin development."

Go read it, right now!

Adam Bien: Netbeans 6.5 Quicktip: Changing The Archive (EJB-JAR) Name, Deploying RARs

Sat, 03 Jan 2009 08:32:53 +0000

Go to: [PROJECT_NAME]/nbproject/project.properties (using CTRL+2)
The property: jar.name specifies the archive name which is going to be deployed to the server and copied into: [PROJECT_NAME]/dist as well.

Tip: if you change the ending from .jar to .rar you can misuse an EJB project to develop, debug and redeploy JCA connectors to Glassfish v2 - its really convenient.

Hulles - NetBeans: ...And Sorry For The Long Lines!

Sat, 03 Jan 2009 05:52:46 +0000

I try to remember to be RSS feed-friendly but my blog site editor wraps the lines when I preview the post and I have to manually cut them up for them to display correctly when I post. Obviously I forgot to do that with the last entry. That's probably why I'm on the blutwurst-refried beans-watery beer diet: it was preemptive retribution. -- Hulles

Hulles - NetBeans: NB 6.5 Twitter SaaS Bug

Sat, 03 Jan 2009 04:06:55 +0000

This post concerns a bug in the Twitter SaaS service in NetBeans 6.5.

If you're using or have tried to use the Twitter SaaS service in NetBeans 6.5, you may have encountered a bug in NetBeans that gives you an error that looks something like this:

javax.xml.bind.UnmarshalException: unexpected element (uri:"", local:"nilclasses"). Expected elements are
      <{}authenticated>,<{}authorized>,< {}direct-messages>,<{}direct_message>,<{}friends>,< {}hash>,<{}nil-classes>,<{}ok>, <{}status>,<{}statuses>,<{}user> at com.sun.xml.internal.bind.v2.runtime.unmarshaller.UnmarshallingContext... at com.sun.xml.internal.bind.v2.runtime.unmarshaller.Loader.reportError(Lo... at com.sun.xml.internal.bind.v2.runtime.unmarshaller.Loader.reportError(Lo... at
      com.sun.xml.internal.bind.v2.runtime.unmarshaller.Loader.reportUnexpe... at com.sun.xml.internal.bind.v2.runtime.unmarshaller.UnmarshallingContex... at com.sun.xml.internal.bind.v2.runtime.unmarshaller.UnmarshallingContex... ...

I reported the bug via the official NetBeans channel but it's my first occasion to do that. Hopefully I did it correctly and will not be harshly reprimanded by the NetBeans Ministry of Love and put on a diet of blutwurst, refried beans and watery beer. Although come to think of it I'm on that diet anyway; I must have done something else bad recently to warrant it.

The error results from a small bug in the updated Twitter SaaS service code in NetBeans 6.5. It occurs when you (for example) try to get direct messages and there are no new ones. Under these circumstances Twitter now replies with a 200 (everything went swell) code but returns NilClasses, whereas it used to give a 310 error code. I can only imagine that someone somewhere is trying to migrate away from returning error codes when things happen normally so that consumer code doesn't throw exceptions.

Speaking of which, if you mask out the exception handling in the caller function you won't see the above message, you'll just get anomalous results in your direct messages (e.g.). This drove me crazy for a couple of days until I tracked down the result. "Bogofilter!" I muttered. "Ogg Vorbis!" (I swear when I'm frustrated.) Hence this short article to pass along the hard-won information.

I am also including a modified TwitterResponse.jar that you can plug into your code as a workaround until the bug is fixed by the NetBeans folks. Please note that you use it at your own risk. It was a simple change and I've used it without a hitch many many times since I created it, but it hasn't gone through the (presumably) rigorous QA process that happens at NetBeans HQ, wherever the hell that is. So my recommendation is that you should only download and install the jar if you work in a production environment and need the fix to stay productive; otherwise I strongly urge you to wait for the official fix. Also, if you don't already know what to do with the attached jar file you should probably wait as well. This patch is just to keep the fires burning for American industry until the real fix. You non-Americans can use the patch as well of course but you should delay installing it for a bit so that we in the United States can get a much-needed head start toward regaining our technical edge.

I hope this helps any others out there (American or not) who are currently muttering "Bogofilter!" to themselves. Let me know how it goes. Namaste.

-- Hulles

Tor Norbye's Weblog: Ruby Code Coverage in the builds now

Fri, 02 Jan 2009 19:37:54 +0000

I've checked the Ruby code coverage code into the trunk now, so if you grab a recent daily 7.0 build, it should be there. I found a Windows-specific bug in the Python code coverage code as well, so grab a new build if you're on that platform.

I've had some fun with Java2D lately. Instead of the ugly coverage bars I showed in my screenshots a couple of weeks ago, the coverage bars now have proper gradients, drop shadows behind the text etc.:

Another thing I added is a bar in the editor footer (while code coverage is enabled) which lists the coverage percentage for the current file, along with actions to quickly run the tests again, or bring up the coverage report, or clear the results, or finish the coverage mode. As well as warn you when your data is older than your code.

And finally, I updated the built-in and extra color themes to also have color definitions for the coverage highlights. Here's the Dark Pastels color theme with coverage data enabled:

Please let me know of any problems while this code is still fresh in my mind :)

N, Varun » NetBeans: Building Pizza with Lookup (Part 1)

Fri, 02 Jan 2009 18:01:38 +0000

Recently, I announced a blog series on making use of Lookup API along with some design patterns in RCP Apps. So, I thought why not get started by porting some basic code snippets onto NetBeans Platform and then I shall see how to go about evolving them.

Builder Pattern

I will be beginning with Builder Pattern (a type of Creational Patterns). It does seem obvious with the title of the post- “Building” Pizza with Lookup.

Definition

The intention is to abstract steps of construction of object so that different implementations of these steps can construct different representations of objects.

Why Pizza?

Well, I came across a code sample which creates different types of Pizza using Builder Pattern. Hey, I have never made any Pizza on my own, but this seems to be a golden chance and that too through coding

Getting Started

Run “NetBeans IDE” (I am using 6.5) which I had installed using JDK 1.5.10.
Next, press Ctrl + Shift + N or goto File > New Project…

New Project Wizard opens…

Choose NetBeans Modules as Category and NetBeans Platform Application as Project.

Name and Location Wizard opens…

Fill relevant information, and you would see project opens up in NetBeans Project Window (Ctrl + 1).

Right-click Project Node and see Project Properties, then select Libraries from visible Categories.

Now, you would see on the right-hand side, only some of the modules of platform9 cluster that are included by default in a RCP Application. Java Platform pointing to JDK 1.5.10 by default.

Overview of the Code Sample

The existing code sample has 6 classes, out of which 5 fit into Builder Pattern and the remaining class just runs the code sample to construct one of the types of pizza.

Builder (PizzaBuilder)

Abstract interface for creating objects (product).

Concrete Builder (HawaiianPizzaBuilder, SpicyPizzaBuilder)

Provide implementation for Builder. Construct and assemble parts to build the objects.

Director (Cook)

The Director class is responsible for managing the correct sequence of object creation. It receives a Concrete Builder as a parameter and executes the necessary operations on it.

Product (Pizza)

The final object that will be created by the Director using Builder.

The code above could be split into 6 separate “.java” files and stored under single package OR they could be inside a single “.java” file, wherein the filename would be same as that of the Main class.

Porting to NetBeans Platform

I have ported that sample into 4 modules which fits into the class diagram representation of Builder Pattern. The task of porting is simplified because of the Lookup API (Service Provider approach).

Assuming you have followed the guidelines stated in “Getting Started” section and have created a default NetBeans Platform Application (I have named it PizzaBeans) with “No Modules”. Now, we will create 3 modules and finally, move towards creating the 4th module, the one that interacts with the client.

To be continued…

Posted in Java, nb-65, NetBeans, Platform

Adam Bien: Softskills and Other Semi-Serious Posts

Fri, 02 Jan 2009 12:12:22 +0000

I'm refining now the slides for my first (at probably last :-)) "softskills" session for the OOP 2009 conference in Munich. It is based on some older posts from this blog:

Big Al's Blog: Christmas present from Sun

Fri, 02 Jan 2009 01:08:50 +0000

Just as the year was ended I got a great Christmas present from Sun Microsystems.

1) A cool NetBeans 10 year anniversary T-shirt for participating in the community acceptance test programme for NetBeans 6.5 (NetCAT)

2) A pass on my exam to become Sun Certified Specialist for NetBeans IDE

The exam was special to me as it was my first ever certification exam. My score was 82%, with the least score in questions about building Java SE applications. I guess it shows that I've never build Java SE applications on NetBeans. Otherwise I think the exam was great. Studying for the exam revealed a lot of useful features that I had never used before, but now wondering how I could ever live without. I can highly recommend doing the exam!

Thanks Sun!

N, Varun » NetBeans: New Year, New Beginning!

Thu, 01 Jan 2009 14:44:59 +0000

For the past few days, I have been receiving mails, lots of them from friends, relatives and mailing lists, with their greetings for the new year.. I replied, forwarded and even chatted (with some) to greet them for vacation break and new year..

Blogosphere

I even saw Amit and James blogging about how the year 2008 was, as they wait to see newer challenges in the near future..

Indeed, today its a New Year, New Beginning! So, expect the unexpected.. As I take you down my memory lane, to recapture some of the defining moments of my life this year..

Well, I missed blogging yesterday as I was busy preparing for a written exam that took place yesterday, before I could celebrate the new year.. Actually, this was my 8th (incl. of viva’s, presentations, exams) in almost 4 weeks time

Started with Emails..

2008 was an amazing year, so many up’s and down’s. It can’t get better than this..

Mails, Contests, T-shirts and DVDs..

I started off this year writing mails to dev@usersguide.netbeans.org and organizing events for JIIT Sun Club (later transformed into JIIT OSUM).

Soon, I shifted focus on competitions like Code For Freedom and NetBeans Innovator Grants.. succeeding in former one as NetBeans Community Significant Contributor and failing in the qualifying stages of the latter one

Also, I received some NetBeans T-shirts, some 6.0 DVDs for distribution and the rewards for above achievements.

Coordinator, Blog Contest and Dream Team..

Of course, how can I forget being appointed as Contribution Coordinator in May and tasting success along with some hiccups..

Also, during tough times I managed to come close to winning an international blog contest, though I ended as a runner-up

Then, an interview on my way to rising from ashes, made me feel good as I looked forward to more opportunities..

I feel lucky to have got the opportunity of becoming a NetBeans Dream Team Member, I am probably the youngest member of the team and still undergraduate

Reviews, Judgements, NetCAT and Projects..

While I joined “NetBeans Dream Team”, I reviewed “Dzone RefCardz”, judged some of the “NetBeans Innovator Grant” projects and qualified for participation in the “NetCAT Program” for the first time ever and it was an amazing experience..

Probably, this was the year I wouldn’t like to remember for the university and few other projects that involved coding as I couldn’t complete even a single project the whole year.. Strange!

I came close to finishing them all, but somehow circumstances forced me not to go further.. Simultaneously, I shifted focus from writing mails to blogging and as already mentioned, I was the runner-up at one of the contests as I looked for more..

NetBeans Birthday, Recognition and More…

“NetBeans Birthday Week” was something I will remember for a long, long time.. As I got recognized once again when “NetBeans Community Docs Program” got fully deserved recognition..

On the final day, I was looking forward to see the webpage dedicated to acknowledge people involved with NetBeans Project since its inception..

I was in for a surprise, as I saw my name amongst the list of outstanding community members for my leadership in “NetBeans Community Docs Program”..

Ended with Exams..

Coming back to yesterday’s exam, I was preparing for it for quite some time and indeed, its the first time that my friends from other colleges are on vacation, while I am still having classes the entire month of December, 2008..

Anyways, it will get over soon as I look forward to my internship at an Indian IT company this January.. There’s lot more coming up, stay tuned to my blog, as of today its a New Year, New Beginning!

Happy New Year

Posted in Events, NetBeans, Personal, Reviews

NetBeans Zone - The social network for developers: Tor Norbye on NetBeans Code Coverage (Part 2)

Thu, 01 Jan 2009 13:49:27 +0000

Tor Norbye presents a new feature for NetBeans 7.0: Code Coverage support! Part 1 showed the Python version, while in this screencast you will see the Ruby version. Note that the Ruby support isn't integrated into the 7.0 builds just yet.

NetBeans Community Docs Blog: NBCD Weekly Newsletter #20 (Spanish)

Thu, 01 Jan 2009 13:05:33 +0000

Últimos Documentos de la Comunidad

Trucos & Sugerencias

Aristides Villarreal Bravo

Dec 24 | Cambiar el formato de fecha de jXDatePicker

Trucos & Sugerencias

Anton Epple

Dec 24 | Create your own Platform versions

Dec 24 | Fix Navigator Mode in NetBeans Platform Applications

Dec 23 | NetBeans on USB Stick

Tutorial

Vaibhav Choudhary

Dec 26 | Getting Started with JavaFX (NB 6.1)

Noticias Especiales

Nuevo Contribuidor..
Vaibhav Choudhary es el último contribuidor del Programa NetBeans Community Docs .

Documentos JavaFX..

Hoy, James escribio en su blog acerca de la última contribución realizada por Vaibhav en Java FX, él escribio apasionadamente acerca de Java FX en su blogs. Deseando más documentos de él, así como de usted y a la comunidad de NetBeans. Rock on!!

Que es lo Nuevo..

Esta ese la última edición de nuestro Weekly Newsletters y desde Enero de 2009 en adelante, usted comenzara a recibir el Boletin Mensualmente... Por lo tanto , hemos comenzado a archivar arctículos de noticias seleccionados desde el boletin semanal publicados anteriormente al 19 y esta edición sera la última.

Esperando a todos ustedes han disfrutado de nuestra dosis semanal de últimas noticias de nuestro programa de documentos de comunidad NetBeans multilingüe y esperamos con interés con su cooperación en el año nuevo así.

Saludos de temporada

Esperando que todos ustedes hayan disfrutado nuestra dosis semanal de las últimas noticias desde nuestro Multilingual NetBeans Community Docs Program y esperamos con interés su cooperación en el Nuevo Año también.

Para finalizar, James Branam (NetBeans Community Docs Program Manager) ha escrito un special post para este programa y la comunidadand en el éxito del proyecto y un año lleno de acontecimientos, también discutiendo lo que se encuentra en el futuro..

Esta edición ha sido presentada a usted por;
Aristides Villarreal Bravo

___________________________________________________________
Available Languages: English , German, Spanish

Hulles - NetBeans: Guerrilla Software Developers' Reality Check

Thu, 01 Jan 2009 04:23:22 +0000

In my last two articles (NetBeans Tip: Prism Break and More About Prism And NetBeans) I discussed using the Mozilla Labs Prism application to create dedicated "mini-browser" windows to reduce the overhead involved in (e.g.) looking up JavaDocs within the NetBeans IDE. My primary stated reason for using Prism from within NetBeans was to improve the performance of Lucille II, my aging laptop, bless her little 1.6GHz CPU.

However, one mustn't lose sight of one's overall goals as one mucks about in the fascinating but stinky cesspool of software development, and if results matter the number one rule for improving the performance of any piece of software should be: throw hardware at it. This is because since the 70's hardware costs have trended dramatically downward and software (i.e. people) costs have done the reverse until recently. It is nearly always a better idea economically to upgrade hardware before even thinking about software solutions, let alone discussing such solutions, let alone actually implementing them.

To reinforce this point, I'd like to point out that a certain unnamed consumer electronics retail chain is currently offering what seems to be a Best Buy for laptop owners like myself: 1GB memory modules for US$19.99. To max out Lucille's memory at 2GB (currently she packs 512MB under her skirt) costs under US$40! That is substantially less than it cost me to write this blog entry in terms of person costs, assuming that I had something better to do.

The moral of the story is that if you're a guerrilla software developer or otherwise work in the real world you should keep the big picture in mind and Do The Right Thing, no matter how attractive it might otherwise be to f*** around with the latest and greatest SSB or any of my other blog posts for that matter (except this one). If on the other hand you work for Sun you probably couldn't care less. I understand they actually pay you guys to write blogs! (Hire me and I'll quit giving you shit and go back to making fun of Microsoft Windows operating systems.)

Namaste and Happy New Year!

-- Hulles

P.S. Of course the purpose for my writing these articles is to entertain and elucidate, as opposed to trying to stroke and bore your Sony VAIO so that it kicks the ass of all the other laptops in your coffee shop. But still... US$40! I'm off to buy memory, which at my age is an unexpected luxury.

NetBeans Adventures, Java and more: SQE - New Year's Eve and 2009

Wed, 31 Dec 2008 18:14:44 +0000

Again - after a long quiet period here some news from SQE - the last one for 2008.

Still, the actual main goal of SQE is to provide a stable release for NetBeans 6.5 .

Here is a list what we have already achieved and what will be part of the next binary drop. It will take a few more days before we can upload it - to allow us to ensure everything is working as expected after the major rewrite we did during Devoxx 2008.

Bug fixes:

Fixes for numerous NPE, CCE
use NetBeans 6.5 features where possible (Option Panel...)

New features

codedefect history is now working
further UI enhancements
- windowgroup for codedefect results
- move codedefect history to control center
select checkstyle.xml to use
even better sorting capability for PMD and Checkstyle results

Updates

Update FindBugs to 1.3.6
Update PMD to 4.2.4

Upcoming (new things or things already planned)

Support for configuration of FindBugs and PMD based on Maven pom's
Refresh on save/compile (especially useful for tasklist)
NetBeans 7.0?
PMD 5.0

Any other ideas, comments, wishes? Just leave your comment here or send an e-mail to the user list at sqe.dev.java.net.

... and don't forget we will be going full OpenSource at http://sqe.kenai.com in 2009 (promised) using Maven as build tool. This possibly allows us to provide different binary drops (e.g. PMD 4.x / PMD 5.x series) and many other exciting things.

Happy New Year 2009 to all of you - and see you in 2009!