Planet NetBeans

NetBeans DZone: WSDL Customization Issues and Workarounds in Java EE 6 Applications in NetBeans

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 05:36:41 +0000

I've found a couple issues when using NetBeans to generate a WSDL file for an EE 6 web service, and then customizing that WSDL file. Some other users have reported them as well, so I thought I'd share them with the community.

Geertjan's Blog: Database Design & Synchronization Software on the NetBeans Platform

Tue, 09 Mar 2010 20:12:37 +0000

DbWrench, which is database design and synchronization software, is clearly an application created on top of the NetBeans Platform:

And, someone out there is making money on the NetBeans Platform in this case, since purchasing this application will cost you $145, while a trial version is also available.

Quite a lot of work seems to have gone into this application, primarily in the porting from a previous incarnation (shown here):

Must be nice, as a developer of this application, to suddenly have a free docking framework out of the box. :-)

Note: Nowhere on the DbWrench website will you see a reference to the NetBeans Platform. Nothing wrong with that. But it clearly means that it's hard to make an estimate about the actual popularity of the NetBeans Platform. However, from the screenshots page one can safely conclude that the NetBeans Platform is broadly adopted across all sectors developing industrial software applications.

Many thanks to Andrea Cisternino for identifying this application as yet another NetBeans Platform application! Others out there? Let me know!

The Aquarium: Surviving GlassFish Without your IDE

Tue, 09 Mar 2010 13:05:00 +0000

Yesterday morning the USERS mailing list of GlassFish had a thread asking How to start and run GlassFishV3 without Netbeans... so, Alexis wrote and posted a quick Survival Guide on using GlassFish without an IDE .

From question to documentation in a few hours: self-publishing, no webmaster to contact, all links to online documentation... and no lawyer to check with :-)

NetBeans DZone: OpenOffice on the NetBeans Platform on Ubuntu

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 22:36:36 +0000

Here's where I am with my OpenOffice integration on the NetBeans Platform: OpenOffice opens in a TopComponent and I've copied a bunch of code into the document. Clearly, that's what one would hope to have as a result of this integration. Problems that remain are that the document isn't editable, the heavyweight/lightweight thing, and when I close the window OpenOffice crashes.

The Aquarium: GlassFish Jobs Spike at Indeed.COM after CiC

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 19:41:44 +0000

Indeed.COM shows a spike in the number of GlassFish-related jobs around end of January (snapshot, live); the date roughly coincides with the reassuring noises from Oracle on CiC. The absolute job numbers are still small, but I expect them to continue to grow, specially as we release our detailed Roadmap.

In other good adoption indicators:
• Mail traffic at USERS@GlassFish ; see MarkMail
• Google Trends (snapshot, live).

And, before you ask; the roadmap is very close...

NetBeans DZone: R.I.P. Felipe Gaúcho: DZone MVB & Tireless Java Advocate

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 17:13:56 +0000

R.I.P. Felipe Gaúcho: DZone MVB & Tireless Java Advocate The DZone team was very sad to read the news that Felipe Gaúcho had passed away this weekend. Felipe has been an active member of JavaLobby for many years, as well as being a key JUG leader.

Bistro!: GlassFish without the IDE (quick survival guide)

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 16:57:57 +0000

A lot of people experiment GlassFish for the first time via an IDE (most likely NetBeans, but maybe also with Eclipse) and feel a bit lost when it comes to use GlassFish without the tool driving it for them. So here are a few (mostly basic) CLI asadmin hints for GlassFish v3 :

* Start/Stop *
Start GlassFish (need this to access the admin console on default port http://localhost:4848) :
     % GLASSFISH_HOME/bin/asadmin start-domain     (assumes there's only one domain)
     % asadmin start-domain domain1     (explicitly reference a given domain)
     % asadmin start-domain -v domain     (will cause the log to be dumped to the standard output)
     % java -jar modules/glassfish.jar     (may be useful in certain circumstance (explicit java version for instance)

Stop GlassFish :
% asadmin stop-domain {domain1}

List existing instances (including stopped/started status)
% asadmin list-domains

You can also create additional domains with % asadmin create-domain ... (and I would suggest using the -portbase option).

* Resources *
If the IDE has created connection pools and datasources, you will certainly find the following create-jdbc-connection-pool and create-jdbc-resource commands useful. Note also that asadmin has a "closest match" feature for misspelled commands and extensive online documentation : % ~/glassfishv3/bin/asadmin create CLI001 Invalid Command: create Closest matching local and remote command(s): create-admin-object create-audit-module create-auth-realm create-connector-connection-pool create-connector-resource create-connector-security-map create-connector-work-security-map create-custom-resource create-domain create-file-user create-http create-http-listener create-iiop-listener create-javamail-resource create-jdbc-connection-pool create-jdbc-resource create-jms-host create-jms-resource create-jmsdest create-jndi-resource create-jvm-options create-lifecycle-module create-message-security-provider create-network-listener create-password-alias create-profiler create-protocol create-resource-adapter-config create-resource-ref create-service create-ssl create-system-properties create-threadpool create-transport create-virtual-server

Almost every bits of configuration is located in the glassfish/domains/domain1/config/domain.xml config file but you really should be using asadmin or the admin console and not edit this by hand.

* (auto)deployment *
The explicit deployment is based on the asadmin deploy app.{ear|war|jar} command. Listing deployed applications is as easy as asadmin list-application (notice how GlassFish tells you which containers are at work for a given app), and undeployment simply requires a asadmin undeploy app-name.

While these commands have lots of options (asadmin deploy --help for details), you may find it convenient to simply drop your application in the domain1/autodeploy directory. Deleting the file will trigger the undeployment.

All the details for the asadmin CLI can be found in the official "Using the asadmin Utility" documentation.

NetBeans for PHP: New Download/Upload dialog

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 16:13:39 +0000

Hi, today it will be again a very short blog post about a feature we just added to the development version of NetBeans. Many of you requested this change so we hope that you will like this change:

The behavior should be as expected, it means that if one checks a directory, all folders and files underneath the directory are checked as well.

However, if anyone of you still prefer the current dialog (a "table"), start NetBeans with -J-Dnb.php.transfer.ui.table=true and leave a comment why do you think it's better, an option could be added for it (probably in Tools > Options > PHP).

That's all for today, as always, please test it and report all the issues or enhancements you find in NetBeans IssueZilla (component php, subcomponent FTP Support).

Geertjan's Blog: Hello Again OpenOffice.org API

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 10:05:24 +0000

First step to integrating OpenOffice into the NetBeans Platform (yes, trying that again) is to get it working outside of the NetBeans Platform.

I started by downloading NetBeans IDE 6.5, installed the OpenOffice.org API plugin, then moved the OfficeBean sample from the OpenOffice SDK into the OpenOffice Client project type which I then opened in a NetBeans IDE 6.9 development build:

Running it, I see this:

The next step is to open OpenOffice via the OfficeBean into a NetBeans Platform TopComponent. This blog entry will probably be very useful.

Adam Bien: How To Kill An OSGi Project - With 10 Questions

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 09:28:52 +0000

OSGi focusses on modularity and it is right now (future may change it) the only viable way to split your application into modules with well-defined dependencies. It solves, however, "only" the technical problem - which is actually relatively easy. Before you going to introduce OSGi into your project, answer the following questions:

What is your versioning scheme for modules(bundles)? Do you care about minor versions, major versions etc?
Whats your scm strategy - do you plan to open and maintain a branch for every version of a module? How many branches do you plan to maintain? (with svn? :-))
How many versioned modules will be active at the same time in production?
How the system is going to be tested? Each module and all the combination of modules. Every version will increase the complexity significantly.
What is your release-management strategy? Do you really plan to provide customer-specific module combinations? What is your bug-fixing / patch strategy (trunk, branch)?
Do you really want to replace modules in running system? If it is a serverside system - what happens with in-flight transactions?
If it is an Eclipse-RCP application - are you even allowed to expose the plugins to the end-user? (in the majority of my projects, we had to disable the update manager in production :-))
What is your software distribution system - many companies have already a software-distribution system in place. Often not only the application, but also the JVM are packaged into one binary file and entirely installed. Incremental updates are often impossible.
What is exactly the contract between the modules? Only a Java-Interface? If so - what to do with direct relations between JPA-entities. If you disallow direct JPA-relations - you will probably see a huge "domain" package with all domain objects inside it. You will need to provide "friend" relations between modules as well.
Is maven the canonical representation of modules, OSGi, or both? A single representation would be the best. Will maven module versions be reflected in the OSGi bundle versions?

The major OSGi-challenge is not the technology, rather than the governance of your modules and bundles. The problem is very similar to SOA.

For most enterprise applications you will get only one variant of your business logic, or even UI - so you will end up with modules, which will probably never be replaced. Because of additional complexity - you will probably test and deliver the whole system at once.

If you are building an IDE, platform or a server - governance, modularization and versioning are a major part of your problem domain / functional requirements. You will have to solve that anyway. It is far more likely, that someone will have to install a new driver to an application server, or even maintain different versions of the driver at the same time. IDEs without plugins are also extremely rare.

Replacing an algorithm in a business application is far more uncommon - often even not allowed. Its just crazy to introduce a modularization solution and then not use it.

[See also "Real World Java EE Patterns, Rethinking Best Practices" book, Page 253, (Premature Encapsulation Is the Root of All Evil) for more in-depth discussion]

The Aquarium: Remembering Felipe Gaúcho

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 08:00:23 +0000

Our friend Felipe Gaúcho died of a heart attack this last Friday . Felipe was one of the founders of CEJUG, the Ceará JUG, and created the Premio Universitario Java. You probably know Felipe from his active blog where he covered many topics - his last post was just Thursday.

I last saw Felipe during JavaOne - full of enthusiasm as always - and we had exchanged email this Tuesday; we will all miss him sorely. Many other people also had the luck to work with him - see the notes from Hildeberto, PeterP, Claudio and Kevin.

My condolences to Felipe's family. If you knew Felipe, please consider leaving a comment in the CEJUG Notice.

Netbeans for the Coffee Drinker » Netbeans: Netbeans 6.9…. Woodstock is BACK!

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 07:50:04 +0000

Great News,

To my surprise, upon installing Netbeans 6.9, I find the woodstock plugins back inside and working great. This is amazingly good news for us as we are often building complex screens and laying it out in raw, naked jsp is just too much and too time consuming!

Great Job!

Now – perhaps we should get back to supporting it somehow?

Adam Bien: Killing Some Bloat in Gothenburg - With Java EE 6

Sun, 07 Mar 2010 21:28:55 +0000

I will spend few hours in Gothenburg at the SDC 2010 conference and give a talk with the title "Lightweight Killer Apps with Nothing But Vanilla Java EE 6". I'm really curious whether my first slide will look familiar to you - people outside Sweden are thinking, that it is the Golden Gate Bridge, what is entirely wrong.

I will have some time after the session. So if you have some questions, want to discuss, or hack some code - just ping me. I planned to spend more time in Gothenburg - a really nice city. Because of the project (over)load, probably caused by the general Java EE 6 take off :-), - I will only spend few hours.

Adam Bien: What Is www.sun.com/ponytails/ ?

Sat, 06 Mar 2010 11:51:31 +0000

An interesting URL: http://www.sun.com/ponytails. It gets resolved to: http://www.sun.com/software/opensource/. Now the question - why ponytail? :-)

Allan Lykke Christensen » NetBeans: LDAP Explorer 0.4 released

Sat, 06 Mar 2010 02:20:03 +0000

I managed to put the 0.4 release together before the original deadline of 13. March. In version 0.4 you’ll find:

Attributes are now sortable by clicking the column headings
Possible to give each LDAP server connection a label
Fixed NamingException when having more than one server connection / window open
Added connection timeout setting to LDAP server connection
More friendly attribute names
Support for Lotus Notes object classes
Silently accepts self-signed SSL certificates
Basic filtering

For the next release the UI will be changed slightly to accommodate query building and displaying of search results.

Note: From version 0.3 an update center was automatically created upon installation. To upgrade simply go to Tools – Plugins – Updates and click “Reload Catalog” followed by selecting the new version and clicking “Upgrade”

You can find the project site on Google Code: http://code.google.com/p/nb-ldap-explorer/

Geertjan's Blog: Generate a NetBeans Platform Installer with NetBeans IDE 6.9

Fri, 05 Mar 2010 16:03:39 +0000

If you've been looking through the last few development builds of the upcoming NetBeans IDE 6.9, this'll not be news to you:

Yes, you'll be able to use the IDE to generate the installers of your NetBeans Platform applications.

After making a selection in the above dialog, you'll right-click on the application's project node in the Projects window and then choose this menu item:

And then, after a few moments, you'll have a new installer ready to be distributed to your end users:

The installer is created on the same infrastructure as the installer used by NetBeans IDE, so you'll not be surprised at the result:

In the end, your users will have your application installed via this installer generated by NetBeans IDE.

The one remaining question I have is to what extent the installer can be customized—can the icon be changed, can the text be modified, can additional panels be added to the generated installer? Hoping to find out soon.

Adam Bien: Best of 2009 - Most Popular Posts (Dead DAOs, Bloat Without EJBs, Java EE vs. Spring, VOs vs. DTOs)

Fri, 05 Mar 2010 08:56:49 +0000

January: In The Age Of DRYness - Do We Really Need Naming Conventions For Interfaces? (11288 Views)
February: DAOs Aren't Dead - But They Either Collapsed Or Disappeared (9565 reads)
March: What You Can Build In 50 Minutes With Java EE 5/6? (25942 views)
April: Lean service architectures with Java EE 6 - And EJB 3 in particular (4304 views)
May: Netbeans 6.7 Beta + Maven = Heaven (more than promising) (11697 views)
June: Real World Java EE Patterns - Rethinking Best Practices Book And Project (15456 views)
July: Lean Java EE 6 Without Spring And Spring 3.0 In Java EE 6 World: Summary and Conclusion (eJug Session) (16203 views)
August: Value Object vs. Data Transfer Object (VO vs. DTO) (15928 views)
September: Why Oracle Should Continue To Push NetBeans (18974 views)
October: (JSF + JPA) - EJB = Bloat (17436 views)
November: Two Amazing NetBeans 6.8Beta Features (8877 views)
December: Java FX Composer / Designer for NetBeans 6.8 - First Smoke Test (15276 views)

The views above are monthly results - not overall views. The actual number should be much higher. RSS/Atom-Feed results are not even included in this statistic. The daily average ranged from 4.5k - 8k.

The stats for the year 2010 are more than promising. February is already the best month ever. Thanks for reading and especially the constructive 2.5k (!) comments.

NetBeans DZone: NetBeans IDE Java Editor Reference Guide

Fri, 05 Mar 2010 07:20:48 +0000

The purpose of any IDE is to maximize productivity and support seamless development from a single tool. This reference document describes useful code assistance features, customization options, and navigation capabilities of the NetBeans IDE's Java Editor, which is free and open source. Most of these features have been available in versions earlier than NetBeans IDE 6.8. However, this guide has...

The Aquarium: GlassFish in February

Fri, 05 Mar 2010 03:44:10 +0000

The breadth and depth of the community is nicely illustrated by the variety of recent GlassFish-related blog posts. First, long time GlassFish supporter Masoud has a very detailed (it's actually a chapter of a book) OpenMQ from A to Z entry. On the operations side, Byron has a set of two posts on How to Run GlassFish V3 as a Service on Linux Ubuntu/Debian and a follow-up on using a non-root Service (see also thisGentoo variation by Jason), while Felipe's on provisioning GlassFish v3 resources with asadmin.

In the "nice words" category, Juliano has a nicely written "Java Enterprise Development - 2010 style" piece and Maksim says "GlassFish is becoming new de facto standard in Java applications. Development with new GlassFish v3 server and Eclipse now is really fast and comfortable. Server starts within a second, JEE6 is fully supported and hot code replacement works as it should.".

On the Java EE 6 and web tier side we have Bobby sharing a tool for exploring the platform, Aleksey discussing a "Grizzly 2.0: simple authentication example", while Justin puts GlassFish embedded to work with Wicket. Rene has a two-part article on running a Java EE 6 Client Application with Netbeans 6.8 and GlassFish V3 - Part 1: Creating a Basic Application and Part 2: Enhancing and Deploying the Application while Jacob goes through the simple setup to have GlassFish and Intellij 9 work together.

So while we wait for the GlassFish roadmap, we've seen one of the busiest month ever for February on the user mailing list and this recent message from the GlassFish Product Management "GlassFish, and by extension, Metro, are strategic Oracle products". Exciting times ahead!

Toni Epple: NetBeans Platform Training in Belgrade

Thu, 04 Mar 2010 13:57:26 +0000

If you’re a java developer in Serbia have a look here:

NetBeans Training at Faculty of Organisational Sciences NetBeans User Group Serbia.

It’s the first time I’ll be in Belgrade. The NetBeans User Group there looks like a really nice bunch:

http://www.netbeans-serbia.org/

The training is on March 13 - 15. So we’ve got plenty of time to do workshops and hands-on trainings… Geertjan and I are looking forward to meet you there.

Geertjan's Blog: Serbia on the NetBeans Platform?

Thu, 04 Mar 2010 09:45:01 +0000

Looking forward to a trip to Belgrade next week, together with Toni, where the local NetBeans group will be porting Neuroph to the NetBeans Platform. Here's their page:

URL: http://www.netbeans-serbia.org/

Note: We'll be delivering a NetBeans Platform Certified Training there, i.e., at the University of Belgrade. Have you had a look at our large library of NetBeans Platform training slides? You're free to use them yourself to deliver trainings, either for fun or for profit.

NetBeans DZone: What's the Best Way to Mavenize a Large NetBeans Platform Application?

Thu, 04 Mar 2010 07:34:03 +0000

If you've been following my blog on java.net, you'll know that I've completed the Mavenization of the blueMarine Core. It's refreshing to see the thing running again, together with the new software factory, after so much work. In fact, I started the conversion to Maven about nine months ago. Of course, I wasn't working on it fulltime and I had to learn a lot of new things, also related to the...

NetBeans DZone: On the NetBeans Platform Build System (Part 4)

Wed, 03 Mar 2010 21:08:55 +0000

In part 1 and part 2 and part 3 of this series, you were introduced to various topics relating to the NetBeans Platform build system by Hermien Pellissier, from Saab Systems Grintek in Johannesburg (read about their NetBeans Platform work for the South African National Defence Force here).

Geertjan's Blog: Visual Thesaurus Software on the NetBeans Platform

Wed, 03 Mar 2010 13:48:34 +0000

"Semtinel is a thesaurus analysis software that provides various visualisation and analysis techniques to supervise and enhance the quality of your thesaurus. Thus, the main users are thesaurus developers and developers of applications that use a thesaurus internally."

The above is a direct quote from http://www.semtinel.org.

And here's a screenshot of Semtinel Workbench, indicating that we're dealing with yet another application on the NetBeans Platform:

The application originates from the University of Mannheim, in Germany. In fact, you can do your thesis there (with prior NetBeans Platform experience being listed as "great") by working on this application. Here's another description of the software, together with an indication as to the reason why the NetBeans Platform was chosen:

"With our Semtinel software, we analyse the results of automatic indexing systems that map documents to appropriate thesaurus terms. For demonstration purposes, we need a simple implementation of an automatic indexing system integrated in Semtinel. The system should be somewhat modular, so that further improvements like different stemmers can easily be integrated."

Hurray again for the NetBeans Platform.

NetBeans DZone: How to Create a Tabbed Toolbar on the NetBeans Platform

Tue, 02 Mar 2010 12:01:57 +0000

One of the many enviable features of the Maltego client, the NetBeans Platform app that is part of some very powerful intelligence gathering software, is its really cool tabbed toolbar:

Geertjan's Blog: Radio Propagation Simulator on the NetBeans Platform

Tue, 02 Mar 2010 10:53:52 +0000

RaPSor is a simulator of radio propagation channels, based on more than 10 years of research. It is used both in research and for educational purpose at the University of Poitiers in France. Go to the RaPSor site on SourceForge and you will learn that one of RaPSor's main advantages is "its extensibility, allowing anyone to add new geometric primitives, new simulation algorithms, new usage of simulation results, or new kinds of antennas".

Here are some screenshots I took after installing this cool application and opening one of the "scene" files (an XML format) included in the download:

With the mouse, I was able to move around the scene, which is available in 2D, as well as 3D format:

And why was the NetBeans Platform chosen as the starting point of this application? The PDF available on the SourceForge site is quite explicit:

"RaPSor ought to be an extensible, modular, and open-source tool. For portability, we chose the Java programing language, leading to an application running on many architectures and systems, like Unix, Linux, Windows or MacOs. In order to concentrate developers efforts on the business work, we first chose a Rich Client Platform (a.k.a. RCP). Due to the educational aspects of this project, we chose to work with NetBeans RCP, since our students have some courses with it.
Such a platform provides all the redundant programming tools and methods that any developer should write in their application, such as the file and window management, connecting actions to menu items, toolbars... NetBeans RCP comes with many functionalities and provides a reliable and flexible application architecture. Its modularity allows to select the functionalities a developer wants to keep and allows even the users to add or remove new or unnecessary tools. Moreover, users can write new tools, or plugins, using either the NetBeans IDE or another IDE, adding the new tools later into RaPSor."

The NetBeans Lookup API, which enables modules to be decoupled from each other, is also referred to repeatedly in the document. You can read the whole PDF by clicking here (or, if the PDF moves sometime in the future, just go to the RaPSor site on SourceForge).

Geertjan's Blog: Plasmid Microarray Designer on the NetBeans Platform

Mon, 01 Mar 2010 19:39:27 +0000

PLASMID is a tool for designing plasmid microarrays by using existing mixed microarray data or using virtual microarray data. PLASMID combines clustering methods, probe ranking methods, and stepwise discriminant analysis to aid in the design of optimized, mixed-plasmid microarrays. These microarrays can be used subsequently for classification and comparative genetics of plasmids.

The above information I copied from the page where you can freely download PLASMID, which is a Swing application based on the NetBeans Platform. The page claims that the application currently supports Windows only, but it seems to work fine on Ubuntu too, based on these screenshots I took after downloading the application and following the startup scenario:

First, open the sample dataset file:

Then, process the file via a wizard in the application:

Finally, view (and save) the result:

More about the application can be read in "A Java-based tool for the design of classification microarrays". Why was the NetBeans Platform used as the basis of this application, according to this document? Well, here you go:

"The NetBeans platform was chosen for development because addition of new functions is easily implemented. Also, many of the tasks common to desktop applications are provided by NetBeans. These include user interface management (e.g., menus and toolbars), user settings management, storage management (saving and loading any kind of data), window management, and wizard framework (supporting step-by-step dialogs). Each function is implemented as a NetBeans module and can be installed or removed easily without affecting existing functions. Java is a platform-independent programming language, so although PLASMID has been developed using the Windows operating system, it will be relatively easy to adapt it to other operating systems. We intend to extend PLASMID to both the Linux and Mac OS X operating systems. In addition to Java, PLASMID uses code written using the C++ programming language. C++ is needed for computationally intensive tasks that require greater speed and efficiency. The use of two different programming languages is transparent to the user."

Hurray, yet another NetBeans Platform application!

Bistro!: Just say no to Scarlett Johansson, Brad Pitt and the rest (but say yes to Bean Validation)!

Mon, 01 Mar 2010 10:22:15 +0000

Every single application with user interaction needs some sort of validation. Java EE 6 now has its very own standard Bean Validation API (JSR 303) with a number of easy-to-use built-in constraints (@NotNull, @Size, ...). GlassFish v3 ships with the Hibernate Validator reference implementation which offers some additional annotations such as @Email. I've decided for the sake of this blog entry that it was not good enough for me as it considers null, empty and foo@barcom as all valid (and does the check as part of the ConstraintValidator, not in the definition of the @Email annotation).

So here's my new implementation of a constraint to check for valid email addresses with the additional feature of rejecting dummy data, such as angelina.jolie@foo.bar (too bad it it was the real one trying to post a comment to your blog or mine!). In my implementation the annotation constraint is called @EmailAddress and defined as follows :

@Size(min=5, message="{foo.bar.min_size}") @NotNull(message="{foo.bar.cannot_be_null}") @Pattern(regexp="[a-z0-9!#$%&'*+/=?^_`{|}~-]+(?:\\.[a-z0-9!#$%&'*+/=?^_`{|}~-]+)*" + "@" + "(?:[a-z0-9](?:[a-z0-9-]*[a-z0-9])?\\.)+[a-z0-9](?:[a-z0-9-]*[a-z0-9])?", message="{foo.bar.fails_regexp_validation}") @Constraint(validatedBy=EmailValidator.class) @Documented @Target({ElementType.ANNOTATION_TYPE, ElementType.METHOD, ElementType.FIELD}) @Retention(RetentionPolicy.RUNTIME) public @interface EmailAddress { String message() default "{foo.bar.invalid_email}"; Class[] groups() default {}; Class[] payload() default {}; }

Things to note:
• A constrained value can fail one or more validation tests in no particular order. Each failure will be reported and available upon validation. In particular you cannot assume that the data passed to the constraint validator will not be null (and the use of @NotNull could arguably be removed since nullability is tested in the validation code below).
• I'm using the @Pattern annotation here rather than manipulating the regex in the explicit validation code (the regex itself comes from a slightly simplified version of the one defined by RFC 2822).
• error messages use externalized strings located in a resources bundle ValidationMessages.properties file.

Here's the rather straightforward validation code (see @Constraint above) :

public class EmailValidator implements ConstraintValidator<EmailAddress, String> { ArrayList<String> blackListedDomains; ArrayList<String> blackListedNames; public void initialize(EmailAddress constraintAnnotation) { // a better implementation would probably retrieve data // from a file, a database or a web service. blackListedDomains = new ArrayList<String>(); blackListedDomains.add("guerrillamail.com"); blackListedDomains.add("mailinator.com"); blackListedDomains.add("foo.com"); blackListedDomains.add("foo.bar"); blackListedNames = new ArrayList<String>(); blackListedNames.add("james.bond"); blackListedNames.add("jamesbond"); blackListedNames.add("nicole.kidman"); blackListedNames.add("brad.pitt"); blackListedNames.add("scarlett.johansson"); blackListedNames.add("angelina.jolie"); blackListedNames.add("foo"); blackListedNames.add("bar"); blackListedNames.add("foo.bar"); blackListedNames.add("foobar"); blackListedNames.add("toto"); blackListedNames.add("titi"); } public boolean isValid(String value, ConstraintValidatorContext context) { int at = value.indexOf('@'); if (value == null || "".equals(value) || at<0 ) return false; String username = value.substring(0, at).toLowerCase(); String domainname = value.substring(at+1).toLowerCase(); if ( blackListedDomains.contains(domainname) ) return false; if ( blackListedNames.contains(username)) return false; return true; } }

The main thing to notice in the code above is the use of generics in ConstraintValidator interface which in turn defines the argument types in the initialize() and isValid() methods.

This newly defined @EmailAddress constraint can now be applied to class attributes or getters. In the case of JPA entities or JSF attributes there is no extra step, all the glue is provided to validate data upon calling the JPA life-cycle methods and applying the JSF request life-cycle, with error messages surfaced to the user via those two APIs. In other cases, Bean Validation offers API to explicitly validate the data illustrated in this sample unit test :

public class TestEmailConstraint { Validator validator; Customer myCustomer; @Before public void setUp() { ValidatorFactory factory = Validation.buildDefaultValidatorFactory(); validator = factory.getValidator(); myCustomer = new Customer(); } @Test public void testEmailBV() { myCustomer.setEmail("angelina.jolie@oracle.com"); Set<ConstraintViolation<Customer>> violations = validator.validate(myCustomer); for (ConstraintViolation<Customer> violation : violations) { System.out.print(violation.getInvalidValue() + " => "); System.out.println(violation.getMessage()); } assertTrue(violations.size() > 0); } }

NetBeans DZone: Rewritten NetBeans Platform Paint Application in NetBeans IDE 6.9

Mon, 01 Mar 2010 10:14:38 +0000

Tim Boudreau has rewritten parts of the NetBeans Platform Paint Application (which is a NetBeans Platform sample distributed with NetBeans IDE). The changed Paint Application (together with updated tutorial) will be part of the release of NetBeans IDE 6.9. Two parts have changed significantly, both relating to the "Save" feature of the Paint application, all of it within the...

NetBeans DZone: On the NetBeans Platform Build System (Part 3)

Mon, 01 Mar 2010 09:35:33 +0000

In part 1 and part 2 of this series, Hermien Pellissier, from Saab Systems Grintek in Johannesburg (read about their work for the South African National Defence Force here), discussed the structure of the NetBeans Platform build system. In this part, she addresses three related areas that you should be aware of when working with the NetBeans Platform build system.