Category Archives: Web Applications

Java, Programming, Web Applications

Notes on NetBeans 6.1

I am working on an exciting web prototype project at the moment and I am using NetBeans 6.1 rather than my usual Eclipse environment. Overall I am very happy with the experience. The good points are:

  • NetBeans seamlessly integrated with my existing Tomcat instance, configured it correctly and makes it easy to build and deploy my application making my build-compile-deploy cycle as quick as it has ever been
  • The Javascript support is excellent and allowed to discover the JQuery API with no problems
  • It has been easy to define libraries and have them brought in to the project
  • The built-in XSLT validation and one-click transform of a test file is really powerful and very simple to use
  • Associating a web project with different deployment servers is easy
  • The GUIs for writing Java Web App configuration files is great
  • Managing NetBean Modules is easy and the interface is good
  • NetBeans 6.1 is fast, really noticably faster than 6.0.1

That is a whole lot of positive, so what hasn’t been so good?

  • Code templates complete on a different keystroke to code completion. The seperation doesn’t make sense to me. Both things are about completing what I have typed.
  • The window of opportunity for completing a code template is too narrow. If you don’t complete while typing the template stub then it doesn’t work.
  • When entering the parameters of a generated method you have to hit return too much. If the auto-generated code has aready correctly assigned variables to the parameter position then I’m done. At the moment though you have to hit return for each parameter otherwise the code generator gets in a tizzy and often opens brackets on the line below the current method.
  • Really gnarly HTML can take a long time to parse for the navigator windows and the slowdown is noticeable across the whole IDE. XML blazes by comparision.
  • There’s a lot of magic going on to make the project work automagically and there isn’t a good “raw” representation of the project that would make it easy to work from CI and the command-line.

Essentially most of these problems are to do with the interface being too fussy and in some cases too specialised. However I do thing I am getting the benefit of the integrated development environment and while it may not be as fast as Rails it is some of the fastest Java web development I have ever done.

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Programming, Ruby, Scripting, Web Applications

Sinatra and Haml

On Monday I was meant to be learning how to use the Grails framework (following up the impressive Grails site that Sky has launched) but I instead got distracted into scratching another itch, using Sinatra with JRuby. Since I was doing a little REST application I thought I would also give Haml a go as it promised a far easier way of generating HTML responses.

Installing both Gems was easy as ever and Sinatra was really easy to understand conceptually. Put the HTTP method name, the URI pattern you want to match and then the return value of the block is what goes back to the client in the response.

So for example to map “/hello” to the plain text response “Hello World” you simply have.

get "/hello" do
  "Hello World"
end

Fire up the script (with necessary requires) and a HTTP server is set up and running. It really couldn’t be simpler. You can use a :symbol in the URI matcher and then access it through the params hash. Within half an hour I was starting to add resources into my served HTML and I felt like master of the REST UNIVERSE.

Sinatra is a really smart piece of code that makes it simple to write a basic web application. I have loads of ideas of how it could be useful but one of my first thoughts was that it actually does a good job of solving the issue of GUI platforms.

My next project is to see how it works with posting data back to the app but on the face of it it all seems straight-forward.

Haml is another story. It is undoubtedly a good idea and on the right track. A DSL for creating HTML the method html for example creates a block html tag  while p “Hello World” creates a paragraph tag with the parameter as the content. Hash parameters sent to the method become attributes of the class.

It is much quicker than generating the HTML by hand but often not by much. That is because Haml has not found the same easy metaphor for code and content that Sinatra has. It is very picky, constantly harping about two-space indentation (no more, no less, don’t dare use tabs you bastardo!) for example, it sometimes throws a stack trace that failed to make it to Sinatra leading to a blank screen on the browser and hunt into the console for a clue as to what has gone wrong.

The documentation is to poor to figure out why the library doesn’t accept what you are doing and I am still baffled as to whether the module handles inline tags or whether you are meant to devolve all of that to Textile. Passing parameters to Haml templates seems unnecessarily complex (the only way I could get it to work is with normal string interpolation, it’s a solution but it seems to break the DSL concept) and mixing inline formatting with parameters baffles me still.

Haml makes more sense to me than RHTML style templating but its claim to simplicity and enjoyment seems to come only with a deep understanding and long experience with using it. It took me 20 minutes to fall in love with Sinatra but it took 20 minutes for me to get a working Haml page. And I didn’t enjoy myself doing it.

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Blogging, Web Applications

Twit or Twitter?

The last couple of days I have been struggling as to whether I should join Twitter or not. There’s a lot of buzz around it but how cool can your web app be when it features on the Today programme? The other issue is that I couldn’t find that many people using it.

However last week when I discovered that The Slip was available and the only place I had seen the news was in people’s Tweets (isn’t Twits more accurate though?) I knew I had to get on-board.

The secret of Twitter seems to be that you have to follow cool people’s Tweets for it to work. You also have to follow only a couple of people with twitteria, otherwise you’re going to drown in their search for meaning.

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Web Applications

Google Sites: What I would like

I am not going to deny that the basic Wiki functionality is all there but there are a few things that I would like to see. Now I know it is a free service but I would actually be prepared to pay for some of this on a WordPress model (i.e. buy what you want when you need it).

  • Categories or page tagging
  • The ability to send a page to Google Docs or alternatively the ability to export to external formats as you can for a Google Document.
  • The comments section should collapse if there are no comments; ditto the attachments. If something does not apply to my page then I just need a simple text link to add it.
  • Most of all, proper HTML markup rather than a massive paragraph consisting of my whole page, with a BR tag… if I’m lucky. If I want to reuse my content then I cannot export it and its not even decent HTML. Blogger is no better but crazily Google Pages does the right thing!

As with Blogger I think Google is having some major integration issues with all the companies it has bought up. If one of the applications or systems has a cool feature then I think it is natural to assume that it will be available in all Google branded applications.

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Web Applications

Try our new, new services!

So on Friday not one but two long awaited beta service invitations arrived. The first was the announcement of the addition of Jotspot to Google Apps (finally) and the other about the Amazon Simple DB service. Typical buses…

I didn’t have a lot of time this weekend so I plumped for signing up for Google Apps and trying the new wiki functionality as I was hoping for a beefed up version of Pages. The Simple DB service also needs me to beef up my Web Service scripting fu.

It is too early to say much about either service but after signing up for a Google Apps account (apparently you cannot simply drive one off your regular Google Account). I was slightly underwhelmed by the new Google Sites service. It has taken how long to make a basic and acceptable wiki service available?

Still you can have a lot of separate wiki sites and you have a lot of flexibility on how you share and collaborate on them so maybe I need to build up some content first and then try to share it around. I would like to know whether you can hook Analytics up to some Sites content. That would be useful for some of the content that otherwise would go on something like a WordPress page.

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Web Applications

Charting the Rails promise

There is a lot of swearing, pulling of hair and head scratching involved in learning Rails. It is nowhere as easy or intuitive as the hype makes out. Every now and then, though, you have a moment when the promise is lived up to in all its glory. One such moment for me has been adding the Google Charting plugin to the application, passing the new object my existing data and having it Just Work.

The only way it could have been improved would be if Google defaulted to an x-value that included all the labels. Other than that a lot of respect to everyone involved in providing a solution and allowing me to ignore a lot of code and get on with developing the parts of the application that are different from other web applications rather than the same.

If you haven’t seen the Google Charts API take a look at it because it is very cool and while you might not want to use it in production you can profitably use it everywhere else.

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Java, Ruby, Web Applications, Work

Working with Rails

I have recently struggled to try and get a prototype web application done with Ruby on Rails. It has been a really great experience and like all such experiences consists of both good and bad moments. Things that are particularly striking coming from a Java Web environment:

  • Integrated console
  • No recompile/build/deploy cycle
  • No mix and match components
  • No real programming language skill required.

It is also remarkable how quickly people revert to the level of thought, planning and execution that you might use for a shell script. Even I have found myself getting caught up in “playing” with the app interactively rather than being focussed on creating behaviour and functionality in a structured way.

Elaborating on these points; in Java web development the first issue is usually building up your component stack. Some people just choose Spring  but those people are idjits! If you are working purely in a web tier without any need for any backend interaction then it is probably a good bet but generally you want to put some thought into how you are going to assemble your various stacks. You tend to have to choose your MVC web framework, your persistence framework and your service framework (if appropriate). You often have to give some thought to your caching and messaging frameworks if they are relevant.

With Rails you just use the appropriate Active Module or Rails built-in features. If there is something that is going to ease some pain for you then it is going be operating as a plugin. That’s it, no framework holy war. It also means that there are a lot of applications that are just not going to be suitable for a Rails application as all those Java components have various strengths for different environments. I certainly wouldn’t want to tackle a legacy database with ActiveRecord for example. Not that it couldn’t be done but I wouldn’t want to do it.

The zero-turnaround is impressive after the build-deploy-check cycle. It was a wow factor last year when I saw the Phobos framework being demonstrated by Sun and its not lost any of its shine. By separating its deployment environments so ruthlessly Rails is able to deliver a really positive developer experience.

The interactive console takes a bit of getting used to in terms of faking browser requests but once you get used to doing so it is another tool that you wonder how you’ve managed without for so long. It’s much more intuitive to use than setting up a remote Java debugging instance (although admittedly you do similar tasks in both). It allows you to scratch those itchy “why?” questions.

And finally that lack of programming skill? A bit controversial perhaps? Well I feel that in recent weeks what I have been learning is how to manipulate Rails. The fact that it is implemented on Ruby may allow a lot of features to be implemented in the way they that they are but you are very rarely called upon to show Ruby madskillz. Instead the majority of the time you are simply plugging little customisations into the Rails framework. It is called Rails for a reason after all, when you are on them you are amazingly productive but if you can’t package your problem into a Rails solution then you are out of luck, you’re going to have to develop your own solution and that is going to be hard work. I have been trying to develop my Ruby skills (that is a whole other story) but the truth is you can bang out something that is acceptable with very little Ruby knowledge. You can go a lot of the way purely by mastering Ruby’s hash syntax.

So have I been converted? Well for all its problems I do have a hankering to get back to my great big Java applications with their holy wars and heavyweight processing. After all being on the Rails is fine for getting things done quickly but it can feel claustrophobic. I am also really glad that after getting distracted by the whole JSF controversy the challenge Rails presents to the status quo of web development means that a lot of the Java frameworks are starting to respond to the real problems faced in web development and ensuring that the easy stuff should be easy.

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Web Applications

CSS Table borders hiccup

Question: why do my HTML table cells have a space around them? Why don’t the join up like a normal table?

Answer: the border-spacing attribute is not set to zero by default. Try setting it explicitly to 0em in the style sheet.

I can’t believe this has caught me out twice! I don’t understand why you would not want the border spacing to anything other than zero by default.

I found this site to be really helpful for understanding the table model in CSS.

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Blogging, Web Applications

Social Networking Scatter

Last Christmas I was having a discussion with a friend who is devotee of LiveJournal. LJ people tend to by LJ4Life and a lot of their online existence revolves around the site and its numerous features.

At the time I rather inarticulatly started voicing my objection to “social hub” sites in preference to having a collection of social networking sites. If I want to chat about music I don’t necessarily want the latest boardgame news or to review my book wishlist.

My preference is for highly specialised very specific sites that do one thing and do it well rather than broad, sloppy, ill-defined hubs like MySpace, Facebook or indeed LJ.

Recently though the large number of sites I am member of it has been a bit awkward since if I am dealing with music I now have three links I would probably want to share with people RYM, Sellaband and E-Fields (my music blog). Getting all three to refer to one another is relatively easy but it still would probably be easier to refer to a link of links. Which means setting up a static page, possibly on this blog or on my own static pages on SDF-EU. What I’d like to do is have more than one link possible on each profile in each site. Most however simply allow one link to one personal page.

So do I really want a hub site to consolidate my interests? Well currently my answer is still no. The point of the web is create links between data and I don’t want to link everything to everything without any organisation. I want to link together my related sites. I also want to be able to flick between my interests as I see fit. If I want to go and update my wants list on Library Thing I don’t want to simultaneously IM via Facebook or see if there is some gig news on MySpace. I want to be able to control my flow of data and choose what I am going to work with.

Therefore despite the proliferation I’m still not ready to be assimilated.

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