Tag Archives: Java

Java Best Practices- String literals at left

It is always a good practice in Java to place String literals at left while comparing a String lteral with a String variable using equals or equalsIgnoreCase. The idea is if you keep variables at left, it might result in null pointer exception.

For example

String a=null;
System.out.println("0".equals(a)); //works fine
System.out.println(a.equals("0"	)); //results in null pointer exception

Initialize a matrix – efficiently

A simple code to initialize a matrix of N*N elements with all same number can be to create 2 for loops from 0 to N and set element to the required number. A silght improvement can be done to this code by

 for (int i = 0; i < N / 2; i++)
      for (int j = i; j < N - i; j++) {
        arr[i][j] = 0;
        arr[j][i] = 0;
        arr[N - 1 - i][N - 1 - j] = 0;
        arr[N - 1 - j][N - 1 - i] = 0;
 }

Using CheckStyle with Eclipse

CheckStyle is a development tool which helps you format your Java code with respect to industry accepted standards. You can create your own check list to format and check style of code, or simply use one provided by checkstyle.

For eclipse it is easy to install plugin that is available. Go help->Eclipse MarketPlace-> serach for checkstyle.

Once eclipse plugin is added, you will see option on right click of project or a file to run a checkstyle which will show error messages in panel (Window->Show View-> Others-> Search Checkstyle).

If you want eclipse to format (Ctrl+Shift+F) the code in desired format, you can add formatter XML by Project->Properties->Formatter->Import. One such default XML can be found at – https://github.com/sevntu-checkstyle/sevntu.checkstyle/blob/master/sevntu-checks/CheckstyleFormatterForEclipse.xml

Mybatis- Using SelectProvider and ResultMap

I recently wrote about how a basic mybatis application can be set with Spring.

But there are situations when queries can be a bit complex than a simple insert or select. In such cases

@SelectProvider

can help us build a dynamic query.

For example, in my user mapper, I need to search based on Id OR status.

@SelectProvider(type = UserSQLBuilder.class, method = "getUsersProvider") 
@ResultMap(MyConfig.USER_MAP)
public List searchUser(@Param("id") String id,@Param("status")  String status);

My UserSQLBuilder class would have a method called getUsersProvider which will create a dynamic query based on paramaters I am passing here.

public class UserSQLBuilder {

	public String getUsersProvider(Map parameters) {
		
		String id = (String) parameters.get("id");
		String status = (String) parameters.get("status");
		
		StringBuilder query = new StringBuilder();
		query.append("select id, user_name, user_address, status from users");
		if (status.equals("NA") && !id.equals("NA")) {
			query.append(" where id like '%" + id + "%'");
		} else if (!status.equals("NA") && id.equals("NA")) {
			query.append(" where status ='" + status + "'");
	        return query.toString();
	}
}

Another important thing to note here is that I am using @ResultMap to map result of query to my User (List) object. If we look at the query, it returns user_name, user_address etc. Whereas in my User class I have userName, userAddress and so on. The challenge is to map query values to object values.

There are actually multiple ways.

1. I can simply modify my query – select user_name as userName, user_address as userAddress from users.
2. Explicitly tell my mapper to map the values from column to object like

@SelectProvider(type = UserSQLBuilder.class, method = "getUsersProvider") 
@Results({ @Result(property = "userName", column = "user_name"),
@Result(property = "userAddress", column = "user_address") })
public List searchUser(@Param("id") String id,@Param("status")  String status);

3. Create a @ResultMap which can be reused, useful in cases when same mapping has to be done more than once.
@ResultMap(MyConfig.USER_MAP)
statement tells the mapper to look for a map in config file.

in MyConfig.java, I will define

public static final String REPORT_MAP = "com.test.mapper.UserMapper.user";
//code here

private void registerUserMap(org.apache.ibatis.session.Configuration config) {
		// registering result maps
		List flags = new ArrayList();
		List resultMappings = new ArrayList();
		flags.add(ResultFlag.ID);

		org.apache.ibatis.mapping.ResultMapping.Builder resultBuilder = new org.apache.ibatis.mapping.ResultMapping.Builder(
				config, "userName", "user_name", String.class);
		resultBuilder.flags(flags);
		resultMappings.add(resultBuilder.build());

		resultBuilder = new org.apache.ibatis.mapping.ResultMapping.Builder(config, "userAddess",
				"user_address", String.class);
		resultBuilder.flags(flags);
		resultMappings.add(resultBuilder.build());

		Builder resultMapBuilder = null;
		resultMapBuilder = new Builder(config, "com.gcp.dao.mapper.ReportMapper.report", Report.class, resultMappings, true);
		config.addResultMap(resultMapBuilder.build());
	
	}

And while defining my session factory, I will register this Map.

 @Bean
		public SqlSessionFactory sqlSessionFactory() throws Exception {
			org.apache.ibatis.mapping.Environment environment = new org.apache.ibatis.mapping.Environment("",
					new JdbcTransactionFactory(), getDataSource());
			org.apache.ibatis.session.Configuration config = new org.apache.ibatis.session.Configuration(environment);

			registerReportMap(config);

			return new SqlSessionFactoryBuilder().build(config);
		}

HTTP verbs implementation for REST webservices

A REST webservice would normally support four HTTP verbs GET, POST, PUT and DELETE.

Simply putting, the verbs have following function.

GET: requests some information from server.
POST: sends/ posts some data to application.
PUT: requests that sent data to be put under given URI location.
DELETE: Deletes the given entity.

Most common of these are GET and POST, as they can mostly handle all the requests.

Another interesting debate is when to use PUT and POST as both tend to send some data to server. Ideally, when we know exactly where to add the data, we will use put, and if we want application to take a call, we will use post. For example if I want to add/ edit user id 112, I will use PUT. But if I just say add a user and let application assign the id, I will use POST.

More on PUT vs POST-
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/630453/put-vs-post-in-rest?rq=1

A simple Email Validator Java Utility

public class EmailValidator {

	private static Pattern pattern;
	private static Matcher matcher;

	private static final String EMAIL_PATTERN = "^[_A-Za-z0-9-\\+]+(\\.[_A-Za-z0-9-]+)*@"
			+ "[A-Za-z0-9-]+(\\.[A-Za-z0-9]+)*(\\.[A-Za-z]{2,})$";
	
	static{
		pattern = Pattern.compile(EMAIL_PATTERN);
	}

	public EmailValidator() {
		
	}

	/**
	 * Validate hex with regular expression
	 * 
	 * @param hex
	 *            hex for validation
	 * @return true valid hex, false invalid hex
	 */
	public static boolean validate(final String hex) {

		matcher = pattern.matcher(hex);
		return matcher.matches();

	}
}

Using Mybatis with Spring

Mybatis is Java Persistence framework, build upn JDBC. I look at it mostly as a bridge between conventional JDBC and an ORM solution like hibernate. The flexibility Mybatis provide is to write queries similar to JDBC, yet takes away all the complexity and boilerplate code for creating and maintaining connections and transactions. It can also map your objects to Tables like ORM solution, without getting into complexities of an ORM fraework, but at a cost of some additional code.

Mappers: Mappers are core of Mybatis implementation. A Mapper class would contain queries to be executed by mybatis. A good practice is to create a mapper for each table in database.

Here is a simple Mapper class

public interface UserMapper {

	/**
	 * This method validates the credentials for any user.
	 * 
	 * @param userName
	 * @param password
	 * @return
	 */
	@Select("select id from myuser where username=#{userName} and password=#{password}")
	public Integer verifyAdminUser(@Param("userName") String userName,
			@Param("password") String password);

	/**
	 * This method returns list of all users.
	 * 
	 * @return
	 */
	@Select("select username, password from myuser")
	public List getUsers();

In the getUsers method, you can see mybatis will automatically convert the results into a Java List with User objects.

Coming to Setting up Mybatis with Spring, if you are using Java based configuration, all you need to add is

@MapperScan("com.test.mapper")

and tell location of your mappers package(s).

In addition you would want spring to manage transactions for you by

@MapperScan("com.test.mapper")
public class MyConfig implements TransactionManagementConfigurer{

//JNDI lookup for database
private DataSource getDataSource() {
		InitialContext ic;
		DataSource ds = null;
		try {
			ic = new InitialContext();
			String jndiName ="jndi";
			ds = (DataSource) ic.lookup(jndiName);
		} 
		catch(Exception e)
		{
			e.printStackTrace();
		}
		return ds;
	}

	 @Bean
		public SqlSessionFactory sqlSessionFactory() throws Exception {
			org.apache.ibatis.mapping.Environment environment = new org.apache.ibatis.mapping.Environment("",
					new JdbcTransactionFactory(), getDataSource());
			org.apache.ibatis.session.Configuration config = new org.apache.ibatis.session.Configuration(environment);

			return new SqlSessionFactoryBuilder().build(config);
		}

	@Override
	public PlatformTransactionManager annotationDrivenTransactionManager() {
		return  new DataSourceTransactionManager(getDataSource());
	}

You are all set to use Mappers just by Autowiring in any class.

Spring Security- with Java Configuration

Recently I wrote about getting started with Spring Security. In that, I used XML configurations for spring security. As a Java developer, I normally prefer Java configuration with Spring than XML. So here is how we can move from XML configuration to Java configuration.

Firstly I tell my web.xml that I want to use Java file based configuration and provide configuration class.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1" ?>

<web-app xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/j2ee" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
    xsi:schemaLocation="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/j2ee http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/j2ee/web-app_2_4.xsd"
    version="2.4">

    <context-param>
        <param-name>contextClass</param-name>
        <param-value>org.springframework.web.context.support.AnnotationConfigWebApplicationContext</param-value>
    </context-param>
    <context-param>
        <param-name>spring.profiles.active</param-name>
        <param-value>javaee</param-value>
    </context-param>
    <context-param>
        <param-name>contextConfigLocation</param-name>
        <param-value>com.myapp.config.MyConfig</param-value>
    </context-param>


    <listener>
        <listener-class>org.springframework.web.context.ContextLoaderListener</listener-class>
    </listener>

    <filter>
        <filter-name>springSecurityFilterChain</filter-name>
        <filter-class>org.springframework.web.filter.DelegatingFilterProxy</filter-class>
    </filter>
    <filter-mapping>
        <filter-name>springSecurityFilterChain</filter-name>
        <url-pattern>/*</url-pattern>
        <dispatcher>ERROR</dispatcher>
        <dispatcher>REQUEST</dispatcher>
    </filter-mapping>

    <servlet>
        <servlet-name>dispatcherServlet</servlet-name>
        <servlet-class>org.springframework.web.servlet.DispatcherServlet</servlet-class>
        <init-param>
            <param-name>contextClass</param-name>
            <param-value>org.springframework.web.context.support.AnnotationConfigWebApplicationContext</param-value>
        </init-param>
        <init-param>
            <param-name>contextConfigLocation</param-name>
            <param-value>com.myapp.config.MyConfig</param-value>
        </init-param>
        <load-on-startup>1</load-on-startup>
    </servlet>

    <servlet-mapping>
        <servlet-name>dispatcherServlet</servlet-name>
        <url-pattern>/service/*</url-pattern>
    </servlet-mapping>

</web-app>

Here is a simple contoller path which I need to secure

package com.myapp.test;

import java.io.IOException;

import javax.servlet.ServletException;

import org.springframework.stereotype.Controller;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.PathVariable;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RequestMapping;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RequestMethod;
import org.springframework.web.servlet.ModelAndView;

@Controller
@RequestMapping("/sample")
public class SampleService {
	@RequestMapping(method = RequestMethod.GET, value = "/hello")
	public ModelAndView LepService(@PathVariable("id") String id)
			throws ServletException, IOException {

		ModelAndView mv = new ModelAndView("hello");
		// Do something here
		return mv;
	}
}

As you can see this simply redirects to hello view (hello.jsp).

And here the configuration file.

@Configuration
@EnableWebMvc
@EnableWebSecurity
@ComponentScan(basePackages = "com.myapp.test")
public class MyConfig extends WebSecurityConfigurerAdapter {

	@Bean
	public UrlBasedViewResolver urlBasedViewResolver() {
		UrlBasedViewResolver res = new InternalResourceViewResolver();
		res.setViewClass(JstlView.class);
		res.setPrefix("/WEB-INF/");
		res.setSuffix(".jsp");

		return res;
	}

	@Override
	public void configure(WebSecurity web) throws Exception {
		web.ignoring().antMatchers("/resources/**");
	}

	@Autowired
	public void configureGlobal(AuthenticationManagerBuilder auth)
			throws Exception {
		auth.inMemoryAuthentication().withUser("user").password("password")
				.roles("USER");
	}

	@Override
	protected void configure(HttpSecurity http) throws Exception {
		http.authorizeRequests().antMatchers("/").permitAll()
				.antMatchers("/sample/**").hasRole("USER").anyRequest().authenticated()
				.and().formLogin();
	}
}

Spring Security- Getting started

In last post I wrote about implementing a simple authentication and authorization code using filters to provide security to your web application.

Well, Spring security is there to make our life easier.

Lets take a very simple example of hello world application.

Simply create a new web application (in eclipse dynamic web application, cover to maven application to use maven).

Modify Web.xml

<servlet>
<servlet-name>controlServlet</servlet-name>
<servlet-class>com.spring.test.HelloWorld</servlet-class>
</servlet>

<servlet-mapping>
<servlet-name>controlServlet</servlet-name>
<url-pattern>/*</url-pattern>
</servlet-mapping>

And create HelloWorld.java

package com.spring.test;
import java.io.IOException;
import javax.servlet.annotation.WebServlet;
import javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet;
import javax.servlet.http.HttpServletRequest;
import javax.servlet.http.HttpServletResponse;


@WebServlet (urlPatterns ={"/hello" } )
public class HelloWorld extends HttpServlet {

@Override
public void doGet (HttpServletRequest request , HttpServletResponse response){
try {
response.getWriter( ).write( "Hello World" ) ;
} catch(IOException e) {
e.printStackTrace( ) ;
}
}
}

Only dependency added to maven

<dependency>
<groupId>javax.servlet</groupId>
<artifactId>javax.servlet-api</artifactId>
<version>3.0.1</version>
</dependency>

Build using maven and execute on any webserver. The /hello url will show a Hello World Message.

Lets add some security to this application now using Spring Security.

Tell your maven about Spring Jars

<dependency>
<groupId>org.springframework.security</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-security-core</artifactId>
<version>3.1.3.RELEASE</version>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.springframework.security</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-security-config</artifactId>
<version>3.1.3.RELEASE</version>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.springframework.security</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-security-web</artifactId>
<version>3.1.3.RELEASE</version>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>commons-logging</groupId>
<artifactId>commons-logging</artifactId>
<version>1.1.1</version>
</dependency>

Add to web.xml

<listener>
<listener-class>
org.springframework.web.context.ContextLoaderListener
</listener-class>
</listener>
<context-param>
<param-name>contextConfigLocation</param-name>
<param-value>
/WEB-INF/spring-security.xml
</param-value>
</context-param>

<filter>
<filter-name>springSecurityFilterChain</filter-name>
<filter-class>
org.springframework.web.filter.DelegatingFilterProxy
</filter-class>
</filter>
<filter-mapping>
<filter-name>springSecurityFilterChain</filter-name>
<url-pattern>/*</url-pattern>
</filter-mapping>

And create spring-security.xml inside WEB-INF

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
xmlns:security="http://www.springframework.org/schema/security"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans
http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans-3.0.xsd
http://www.springframework.org/schema/security
http://www.springframework.org/schema/security/spring-security-3.1.xsd">
<security:http auto-config="true">
<security:intercept-url pattern="/hello" access="ROLE_ADMIN" />
</security:http>
<security:authentication-manager>
<security:authentication-provider>
<security:user-service>
<security:user authorities="ROLE_ADMIN" name="kamal" password="kamal" />
<security:user authorities="ROLE_ADMIN" name="admin" password="admin" />
</security:user-service>
</security:authentication-provider>
</security:authentication-manager>
</beans>

JVM: Memory management and Garbage collection

If you have looked into server configuration files, you would have seen terms like –

-Xms512m -Xmx1536m -XX:NewSize=512m -XX:MaxNewSize=512m -XX:PermSize=786m -XX:MaxPermSize=1024m -XX:+UseConcMarkSweepGC

These are parameters we use to set up heap memory use by JVM to store objects in memory and make sure effective usage of garbage collection.

Garbage Collection:
Garbage collection or GC in Java is a way in which JVM reclaims the space in heap occupied by objects no longer in use. This is achived by Java in Mark and Delete approach (Mark objects no longer in use and then delete the marked objects, optionally compacting the survived objects to make all available space together for better usage).

Heap Memory: All the objects created by JVM are added to heap memory. -Xms512m defines the minumum heap memory requested by JVM and -Xmx1536m defines maximum.

Yound and Old Generation: Further heap memory is divided into 2 blocks- young generation and old generation for optimum GC. Young generation memory contains the newly generated objects and old generation contains older objects. The idea is that the newly created objects will be more prone to GC. The objects which have survived a few GC cycles (they are still in use), have more probability of surviving future GC cycles. A minor GC runs frequently which will clean up the young generation heap. The major GC runs less frequently and cleans up whole healp including old generation area.

-XX:NewSize=512m and -XX:MaxNewSize=512m defines memory setting for young generation GC.

Eden and Survivor: Young generation heap area is further divided into Eden space and survivor space. A newly created object is placed in Eden space and moves to survivor space if it survives a GC. A survivor space object which has survived multiple GCs is then moved to Old Generation area.

Stack memory: Apart from Heap memory, JVM also has stack memory which is allocated to a thread of execution and store local primitive variable and reference to variables in heap for that particular thread. Stack memory works in LIFO fashion and is short lived. Normally it is very small in size ~1mb by default, but can be set using -Xss flag.

Error:
OutOfMemoryError is thrown by JVM when it runs out of heap and StackOverFlowError is thrown when stack memory is full.

Permanent Generation:
Perm Gen is area where JVM defines application metadata about classes and methods. This is not part of heap memory. Can be set using -XX:PermSize=786m and -XX:MaxPermSize=1024m

GC Algorithms:
There are various algorithms which can be used by JVM while GC. For example -XX:+UseConcMarkSweepGCin above cofiguration tells JVM to use concurrent mark sweep algo, which helps GC in parallel to application execution, hence low impact visible on application – read here. With Java 7, we have Garbage-First Collector option, which helps further by splitting heap in multiple areas and doing GC with minimum impact on application- read here.

Useful reads

http://pubs.vmware.com/vfabric52/index.jsp?topic=/com.vmware.vfabric.em4j.1.2/em4j/conf-heap-management.html

http://www.journaldev.com/2856/java-jvm-memory-model-and-garbage-collection-monitoring-tuning

https://blog.codecentric.de/en/2014/01/useful-jvm-flags-part-8-gc-logging/