Karl Varga's Developer Notes

RSpec 2 matcher to test layout rendering in Rails 3

2011-05-13T14:16:00.000-07:00

In Rails 3 there seems to be no way to determine which layout(s) were rendered. There is assert_template but it doesn't seem to accept the :layout option like the source code would suggest. And where do you call that method anyway? So I wrote a custom matcher along with a bit that integrates into ActionView so that we can detect when a layout is rendered and store a reference to it on the controller.

Not that this doesn't support multiple layout rendering. Only the last layout rendered is stored.

Take a look at the Example Usage in the comments above the matcher for usage information.

[solved] installing passenger 3.0.5 apache2 module on OS X gives 'missing required architecture ppc64 in file'

2011-03-28T11:46:00.000-07:00

I was getting odd compilation errors trying to install the Passenger 3.0.5 apache2 module on my Mac running OS X. I worked through the problems and you just need to edit a couple of files to solve the problem.

gem install passenger rvmsudo passenger-install-apache2-module

mkdir -p ext/apache2/module_libboost_oxt
g++ -Iext -fPIC -fvisibility=hidden -DVISIBILITY_ATTRIBUTE_SUPPORTED -DDARWIN -DSIGPROCMASK_SETS_THREAD_MASK -I/usr/include/apr-1 -I/usr/include/apr-1 -I/usr/include/apache2 -arch i386 -arch ppc -arch x86_64 -arch ppc64 -D_REENTRANT -I/usr/local/include -DHASH_NAMESPACE="__gnu_cxx" -DHASH_FUN_H="" -DHAS_SFENCE -DHAS_LFENCE -Wall -g -DPASSENGER_DEBUG -DBOOST_DISABLE_ASSERTS -o ext/apache2/module_libboost_oxt/aggregate.o -c ext/apache2/module_libboost_oxt/aggregate.cpp
mkdir -p ext/apache2/module_libboost_oxt
rm -rf ext/apache2/module_libboost_oxt.a
ar cru ext/apache2/module_libboost_oxt.a ext/apache2/module_libboost_oxt/aggregate.o
ranlib ext/apache2/module_libboost_oxt.a
gcc -Iext -Iext/common -fPIC -fvisibility=hidden -DVISIBILITY_ATTRIBUTE_SUPPORTED -DDARWIN -DSIGPROCMASK_SETS_THREAD_MASK -I/usr/include/apr-1 -I/usr/include/apr-1 -I/usr/include/apache2 -arch i386 -arch ppc -arch x86_64 -arch ppc64 -D_REENTRANT -I/usr/local/include -DHASH_NAMESPACE="__gnu_cxx" -DHASH_FUN_H="" -DHAS_SFENCE -DHAS_LFENCE -Wall -g -DPASSENGER_DEBUG -DBOOST_DISABLE_ASSERTS -o ext/apache2/mod_passenger.o -c ext/apache2/mod_passenger.c
g++ -Iext -Iext/common -fPIC -fvisibility=hidden -DVISIBILITY_ATTRIBUTE_SUPPORTED -DDARWIN -DSIGPROCMASK_SETS_THREAD_MASK -I/usr/include/apr-1 -I/usr/include/apr-1 -I/usr/include/apache2 -arch i386 -arch ppc -arch x86_64 -arch ppc64 -D_REENTRANT -I/usr/local/include -DHASH_NAMESPACE="__gnu_cxx" -DHASH_FUN_H="" -DHAS_SFENCE -DHAS_LFENCE -Wall -g -DPASSENGER_DEBUG -DBOOST_DISABLE_ASSERTS -o ext/apache2/Configuration.o -c ext/apache2/Configuration.cpp
g++ -Iext -Iext/common -fPIC -fvisibility=hidden -DVISIBILITY_ATTRIBUTE_SUPPORTED -DDARWIN -DSIGPROCMASK_SETS_THREAD_MASK -I/usr/include/apr-1 -I/usr/include/apr-1 -I/usr/include/apache2 -arch i386 -arch ppc -arch x86_64 -arch ppc64 -D_REENTRANT -I/usr/local/include -DHASH_NAMESPACE="__gnu_cxx" -DHASH_FUN_H="" -DHAS_SFENCE -DHAS_LFENCE -Wall -g -DPASSENGER_DEBUG -DBOOST_DISABLE_ASSERTS -o ext/apache2/Bucket.o -c ext/apache2/Bucket.cpp
g++ -Iext -Iext/common -fPIC -fvisibility=hidden -DVISIBILITY_ATTRIBUTE_SUPPORTED -DDARWIN -DSIGPROCMASK_SETS_THREAD_MASK -I/usr/include/apr-1 -I/usr/include/apr-1 -I/usr/include/apache2 -arch i386 -arch ppc -arch x86_64 -arch ppc64 -D_REENTRANT -I/usr/local/include -DHASH_NAMESPACE="__gnu_cxx" -DHASH_FUN_H="" -DHAS_SFENCE -DHAS_LFENCE -Wall -g -DPASSENGER_DEBUG -DBOOST_DISABLE_ASSERTS -o ext/apache2/Hooks.o -c ext/apache2/Hooks.cpp
g++ -flat_namespace -bundle -undefined dynamic_lookup ext/apache2/Configuration.o ext/apache2/Bucket.o ext/apache2/Hooks.o ext/apache2/mod_passenger.o -fPIC -o ext/apache2/mod_passenger.so -fPIC -fvisibility=hidden -DVISIBILITY_ATTRIBUTE_SUPPORTED -DDARWIN -DSIGPROCMASK_SETS_THREAD_MASK -I/usr/include/apr-1 -I/usr/include/apr-1 -I/usr/include/apache2 -arch i386 -arch ppc -arch x86_64 -arch ppc64 -D_REENTRANT -I/usr/local/include -DHASH_NAMESPACE="__gnu_cxx" -DHASH_FUN_H="" -DHAS_SFENCE -DHAS_LFENCE -Wall -g -DPASSENGER_DEBUG -DBOOST_DISABLE_ASSERTS ext/apache2/module_libpassenger_common.a ext/apache2/module_libboost_oxt.a -fPIC -L/usr/lib -lapr-1 -L/usr/lib -laprutil-1 -lpthread  
ld: warning: in /usr/lib/bundle1.o, missing required architecture ppc64 in file
ld: warning: in /usr/lib/libapr-1.dylib, missing required architecture ppc64 in file
ld: warning: in /usr/lib/libaprutil-1.dylib, missing required architecture ppc64 in file
ld: warning: in /usr/lib/libpthread.dylib, missing required architecture ppc64 in file
ld: warning: in /usr/lib/gcc/powerpc-apple-darwin10/4.2.1/libstdc++.dylib, missing required architecture ppc64 in file
ld: warning: in /usr/lib/libSystemStubs.a, missing required architecture ppc64 in file
ld: warning: in /usr/lib/libSystem.dylib, missing required architecture ppc64 in file
ld: symbol dyld_stub_binding_helper not defined (usually in crt1.o/dylib1.o/bundle1.o) for architecture ppc64
collect2: ld returned 1 exit status
lipo: can't open input file: /var/tmp//ccPTqixF.out (No such file or directory)
rake aborted!
Command failed with status (1): [g++ -flat_namespace -bundle -undefined dyn...]

Fix the compilation errror

cd /Users/karl/.rvm/gems/ree-1.8.7-2010.02/gems/passenger-3.0.5 vi ./lib/phusion_passenger/platform_info/apache.rb

Change line 215 to: architectures = ["-arch i386 -arch x86_64"] Then restart Apache. Now in your apache logs you might see the following error:

/Users/karl/.rvm/gems/ree-1.8.7-2010.02/gems/passenger-3.0.5/lib/phusion_passenger/platform_info/ruby.rb:166:in `expand_path': couldn't find HOME environment -- expanding `~/.rvm' (ArgumentError)
 from /Users/karl/.rvm/gems/ree-1.8.7-2010.02/gems/passenger-3.0.5/lib/phusion_passenger/platform_info/ruby.rb:166:in `_unmemoized_rvm_path'
 from /Users/karl/.rvm/gems/ree-1.8.7-2010.02/gems/passenger-3.0.5/lib/phusion_passenge

Fix the missing HOME env variable

Hard-code the path to your HOME directory.

vi /Users/karl/.rvm/gems/ree-1.8.7-2010.02/gems/passenger-3.0.5/lib/phusion_passenger/platform_info/ruby.rb

Edit #164 to [ENV['rvm_path'], "/Users/karl/.rvm", "/usr/local/rvm"].each do |path| Now restart Apache with sudo apachectl -k restart and everything should be working fine!

To find the location of your gem files you can echo $GEM_HOME. Keep in mind you will need to substitute your own HOME path in the above command.

Authenticate your Authlogic users in Rails Metal

2009-12-15T22:59:00.000-08:00

Update 2010-03-17: Don't fail in test mode if we can't find a user

I haven't been able to find any information on authenticating users in Rails Metal controllers. So I took a look at what was available in the session and worked with that. I'm not an expert on Authlogic (I did write an Authlogic Add-On a while ago) but this seems like a good solution. Let me know if you know of any problems with this approach.

I added a method to UserSession (or add it to whatever class you use for your sessions) that takes the Metal env and checks the authentication parameters and returns the user record. I don't bother with updating the user's last_request_at attributes or anything. I had to bypass the Authlogic session entirely because Authlogic needs to be activated with a controller before you can use the session stuff. I considered dummying the controller by including authlogic/test_case but I don't know enough about what the dummy controller does regarding authentication to go this route.

And the code...

Here's the Metal "controller":

A couple neat things in the Metal controller are the use of ActionController::Request.new(env) so we have access to request.remote_ip and other helper methods this class provides.

The part where I validate the user is:

Silence the Rails logger as well as the SQL logs

2009-12-08T04:47:00.000-08:00

It's one thing to turn off logging in Rails, it's another to prevent SQL statements from appearing in your logs.

I've written a Rake helper to silence both. You can adapt it for other uses, but I think it's mostly relevant in Rake tasks.

# lib/rake_helpers.rb
module Rake
  module Helpers
    # Silence the Rails logger as well as the SQL logger
    # Call with a block e.g
    # silent { my block code }
    def silent
      ActiveRecord::ConnectionAdapters::AbstractAdapter.class_eval do
        alias_method :original_log_info, :log_info
        def silent_log_info(*args); end
        alias_method :log_info, :silent_log_info
      end
      @@old_logger = ActiveRecord::Base.logger
      ActiveRecord::Base.logger = Class.new { def method_missing(*args); end; }.new
      yield
      ActiveRecord::Base.logger = @@old_logger
      ActiveRecord::ConnectionAdapters::AbstractAdapter.class_eval do
        alias_method :log_info, :original_log_info
      end 
    end
  end
end

And sample usage:

# lib/tasks/db.rake
require 'rake_helpers'
include Rake::Helpers

namespace :db do
  namespace :update do

    desc "Update counter caches"
    task :counters => :environment do
      silent do
        ActiveRecord::Base.transaction do
          [Artist, Album].each do |model| 
            model.find_in_batches(:batch_size => 5000) do |batch|
              batch.each { |record| record.update_counts }
            end
          end
        end
      end
    end
  end
end

Rails Metal real-world example with RSpec integration test

2009-12-04T02:46:00.001-08:00

There's not that much information out there about Rails Metal, and even less about how to test Metal classes using RSpec. If I had time I would create a new RSpec ExampleGroup with a lot of the goodness of the ControllerExampleGroup, but alas I don't.

So integration tests will have to do. I had problems with using response.should be_success. The docs say it exists, but it doesn't for me. YMMV.

Anyways, here is my Metal class along with the integration test:

Bash script to easily check and switch between Rails environments. Usage: renv [p|d|t|s]

2009-12-03T20:57:00.000-08:00

When I'm on our deployment server I'm constantly checking the RAILS_ENV environment variable to make sure that I don't accidentally do something on the production database when I meant to do it on the staging database. (Incidentally I’ve added some stuff to the Rakefile to guard against such a thing: Rakefile: Prevent destructive rake tasks in the production environment.). So I created this handy Bash function to check and switch between your Rails environments easily.

Sample usage:

$ renv
RAILS_ENV is unset
$ renv p
RAILS_ENV set to production
$ renv d
RAILS_ENV set to development
$ renv s
RAILS_ENV set to staging
$ renv t
RAILS_ENV set to test
$ renv
RAILS_ENV is test

And the code:

# Put this in your ~/.profile
function renv() {
  rails_env_p="production" 
  rails_env_d="development" 
  rails_env_s="staging" 
  rails_env_t="test" 

  if [ $1 ];then
    eval 'rails_env=${rails_env_'"${1}"'}' 
    export RAILS_ENV=$rails_env
    echo "RAILS_ENV set to $RAILS_ENV" 
  elif [ $RAILS_ENV ];then
    echo "RAILS_ENV is $RAILS_ENV" 
  else
    echo "RAILS_ENV is unset" 
  fi
}

Rakefile: Prevent destructive rake tasks in the production environment.

2009-12-03T20:15:00.000-08:00

We are using the same server for our staging and production deploys. The problem is that the default RAILS_ENV is set to production so when I go to the staging app and start messing about with rake db:seed (or worse, rake db:reset) I am almost always a hair's breadth away from imminent death.

(Here's a handy bash script I wrote to easily switch between your Rails environments.)

So I decided to do something about it and protect destructive or database altering rake tasks from being run in the production environment. I really like this approach and I think I'll use it in future projects regardless of the setup. The fact is you only do a rake db:reset in production once, during the cold deploy of your app. It allows rake db:migrate and its variants, but not rake db:migrate:reset. Look at the code for the full list of restricted rake tasks. The tasks in PROTECT_SOME are matched explicitly, PROTECT_ALL restricts all variants of that task.

This shows the warning message and confirmation that appear. If you know what you are doing, or you want to automate things with Capistrano and need to run one of the protected tasks just pass FORCE=true to the task.

[deployer@rails1 ~/rails_apps/rails1.creagency.com.au/current] echo $RAILS_ENV
production
[deployer@rails1 ~/rails_apps/rails1.creagency.com.au/current] rake db:reset
(in /www/rails_apps/rails1.creagency.com.au/releases/20091204033227)
****************************************************************************
* WARNING! You are in the PRODUCTION environment and are running a Rake task 
* that will DESTROY your PRODUCTION database!
* 
* If you know what you are doing you can run this task with FORCE=true to
* prevent this message appearing.
****************************************************************************

Are you sure? (Yes|No) [No]

Quitting.
[deployer@rails1 ~/rails_apps/rails1.creagency.com.au/current]

And here is the code. Just add it to the bottom of your application's Rakefile:

Solved: Capistro deploy fails with 'Permission denied (publickey).' but you know you have your permissions setup correctly

2009-12-03T19:32:00.000-08:00

I spent a couple hours scratching me head one day when I couldn't deploy to the production server, but I could a little while ago.

The Capistrano deployment recipe had been changed to forward the ssh agent (which means that my local ssh key is the one that will be used by the deployment server to checkout the updated code from Git):

  ssh_options[:forward_agent] = true

Capistrano was complaining:

    servers: ["10.5.23.203"]
    [10.5.23.203] executing command
 ** [10.5.23.203 :: out] Permission denied (publickey).
 ** [10.5.23.203 :: out] fatal: The remote end hung up unexpectedly

The solution was just to add my SSH key to my local SSH agent:

$ ssh-add

Simple enough. Turns out you have to do that every time you restart your machine tho, which is a bit annoying. Any way to avoid that?

Cheers, Karl

Git: how to keep the master branch tidy, even if you've been working on it

2009-12-02T00:10:00.000-08:00

In order to keep the master branch clean we want to avoid merges and "noisy" commits.

As you probably know, the best thing to do is to develop in a branch and rebase against master often (never rebase a remote branch). This ensures that your changes are always the latest changes applied to the index. And because they're applied on top of the index, when you merge them into the master branch and push, it's just a fast-forward update and you will never have to do a merge.

But what happens if you've been working on the master branch for a while? Is it too late? I just encountered this myself, and here's how you can keep the master merge-free in this situation.

On master

git fetch # have there been changes to master since you last fetched/pulled?  if not, you can just commit and push, otherwise...

git commit -a -m "awesome message here" # commit your changes
git branch wip           # create a new branch with your changes
git reset --hard HEAD~1  # reset the master branch to before your commit(s)
git checkout wip
continue working...
git fetch origin master
git rebase origin/master # rebase your changes on top of master often
all done...
git rebase -i origin/master # preferably squash your commits
git checkout master
git pull                 # make sure master has the latest code
git merge wip            # apply your fast-forward changes to the index
git push                 # quick before someone else does!

Can this process be shortened? Let me know if you have ideas.

Here are some excellent articles explaining some Git best-practices. There is some excellent info here, even from Linus himself!

Let me know if you have good Git articles. I'm still learning about Git, but now that I'm getting my head around it, it's getting better and better!

Karl

Sass sprite mixin: making sprites super easy to use!

2009-11-15T04:48:00.001-08:00

If you're like me, you love Haml and Sass!. And if you're a serious web developer trying to squeeze every last bit of performance out of your web application (let's pretend :), then you are already using image sprites, right?

I won't go into the benefits of using sprites, but apart from the obvious, I kinda like how they keep things organized. I don't need to worry about adding another small image to my application because it's not going to be yet another resource to bog things down, it goes in the sprite and probably only takes 1K. So that's nice. But they're just not as easy to use as a simple image...until now!

With my Sass mixin you can use a sprite image with just two lines of Sass.

The mixin:

// Add styles to an element to show the image in *image* at the given *x_pos* and *y_pos*.
// If the optional *x_size* or *y_size* arguments are passed in, the width and/or height 
// is set to that value.
=sprite(!image, !x_pos, !y_pos, !x_size=0, !y_size=0)
  :background-image = url(!image)
  :background-position = !x_pos !y_pos
  @if !x_size > 0
    :width = !x_size
  @if !y_size > 0
    :height = !y_size

I'd recommend wrapping the mixin for your sprite image, because you're going to use it a lot. For example:

=player_sprite(!x_pos, !y_pos, !x_size=0, !y_size=0)
  +sprite("/images/player-sprite.png", !x_pos, !y_pos, !x_size, !y_size)
  
// Now define some styles using the player sprite
.playlists-icon
  +player_sprite(-600px, 0, 18px, 18px)
.recently-played-icon
  +player_sprite(-700px, 0, 18px, 18px)
.playing-now-icon
  +player_sprite(-800px, 0, 18px, 18px)

This will generate the following CSS

.playlists-icon {
  background-image: url('/images/player-sprite.png');
  background-position: -600px 0;
  width: 18px;
  height: 18px; }

.recently-played-icon {
  background-image: url('/images/player-sprite.png');
  background-position: -700px 0;
  width: 18px;
  height: 18px; }

.playing-now-icon {
  background-image: url('/images/player-sprite.png');
  background-position: -800px 0;
  width: 18px;
  height: 18px; }

And your Haml to display the divs with the images is as simple as:

.playlists-icon
.recently-played-icon
.playing-now-icon

Awesome! Now that's easy!

If you found this useful, let me know!

jQuery plugin to escape CSS selectors

2009-06-04T23:03:00.000-07:00

Sometimes in jQuery you need to find an element(s) using a selector that contains special characters, for instance #, or .. I'm quite baffled that jQuery doesn't include a CSS selector escape function. Not that you should use special characters in your class/id attributes, but hey, sometimes you don't have control over the content.

My escape function uses a couple of neat JavaScript techniques like closures (very, very useful once you get the hang of 'em!) and regular expressions. I use Simon Willison's Escaping regular expression characters in JavaScript Regex extension a lot. For more on closures check out Mark Wubben's Getting Funky With Scopes and Closures.

As an extreme example, say we have something as crazy as:

<div id='#;&,.+*~":!^$[]()=>|/'> Hello World! </div>

We can match that with this jQuery:

$('#' + jQuery.escapeSelector('#;&,.+*~":!^$[]()=>|/'))

Try it out:

Here's the code

/**
 * jQuery static function extensions.
 */
 
jQuery.extend(jQuery, {
  /**
   * Escape all special jQuery CSS selector characters in *selector*.
   * Useful when you have a class or id which contains special characters
   * which you need to include in a selector.
   */
  escapeSelector: (function() {
    var specials = [
      '#', '&', '~', '=', '>', 
      "'", ':', '"', '!', ';', ','
    ];
    var regexSpecials = [
      '.', '*', '+', '|', '[', ']', '(', ')', '/', '^', '$'
    ];
    var sRE = new RegExp(
      '(' + specials.join('|') + '|\\' + regexSpecials.join('|\\') + ')', 'g'
    );

    return function(selector) {
      return selector.replace(sRE, '\\$1');
    }
  })()
});

How to setup an ad-blocking proxy in 10 minutes and block ads in all your favorite browsers!

2009-05-24T03:38:00.000-07:00

Quick links

Benefits
Getting started
Setup Apache

Download ad-blocker.zip
Configure the virtual host
Start Apache

Configure your browsers

Firefox
Opera
Safari

Technical: The PAC file

For a long time now I've been content using Opera's built-in ad blocker, an example of which you can see below. This approach has worked for me for a while, but has some major shortcomings: I can't use expressions to filter multiple URLs from the same server, and obviously all my hard work blocking ads in Opera doesn't do anything for me in Firefox or Safari.

Opera's Ad Blocker

The best solution to these problems lies in setting up a proxy to filter requests by URL. I had read about doing something like this a couple years ago, but couldn't be bothered to figure out all the details of setting it up. It turns out the be remarkably easy, as I'll show you! With my setup files and instructions you can be browsing ad-free in 10 minutes. And trust me, it's worth it!

The benefits of the proxy approach

Block ads in every browser with a single configuration file.
Filter URLs using Regular Expressions (I've added some methods so you don't have to).
Configuration files are in JavaScript for easy scripting and customization.
Blocks HTML ads, image ads, flash ads, you name it.
Faster browsing because you don't wait for ads to load (and ads are usually given first priority in the loading sequence when you visit commercial websites, so your pages render faster).

You're going to need to be running a webserver that will serve a blank page for the blocked ads. Without this your browser will report a 404 error because it can't access the blocked pages, and your webpages will have 404 errors rendered where the ads used to be - not so pretty to look at. If you're on Mac, you've already got Apache installed and ready to go. If you're on Windows, you're going to have to set that up and then come back here when you're done.

[ Aside: I've been thinking that you don't really need to run a local webserver at all, if you have access to one on the web. That would allow any number of people on any network to benefit from a single filter file. ]

Getting started

Webpage with Ads

Webpage without Ads

First off, here's a little taste of how your new browsing experience will look. On the left is a regular webpage followed by the same page minus the ads. Ad free goodness!

The setup is simple.

You have an Apache virtual host listening on a non-standard port, say 61111. The virtual host does only one thing: it rewrites all requests to point to an empty HTML file, which I have named response.html.
You also have a proxy configuration file, or PAC, which you configure your browser to use. All requests from the browser are sent to this PAC file. The PAC file examines the request and if it looks like it's an advertisement it sends the request to our apache virtual host (which will render a blank page...so no ad will display). Otherwise the request is served by the browser in the normal fashion.

Setup Apache

You're going to need to modify the paths according to where you put these files, and the setup of your machine. These instructions are particular to Mac OS X, but the Windows setup is analagous.

On Mac, I think the easiest place to put our PAC file and the response.html file is in your Public/ directory which is under your home directory. Extract this archive (ad-blocker.zip) which contains four files: favicon.ico, proxy.conf, response.html as well as a copy of ad-blocker.conf (the Apache virtual host configuration file).

Configure the virtual host

You should have a directory under /etc/apache2/ called other/. You can define virtual hosts in their own conf files here and they will be read by Apache on startup.

In /etc/apache2/other/ create a file called ad-blocker.conf with the following contents (this file is also contained in ad-blocker.zip):

  ## Use Listen directives and not Port directive if server will handle
  ## requests from multiple ports.
  Listen 127.0.0.1:61111

  <VirtualHost *:61111>
  DocumentRoot "/Users/Karl/Public/ad-blocker"
  <directory "/Users/Karl/Public/ad-blocker">
    Order allow,deny
    Allow from all
    Options +Indexes
  </directory>
  ErrorLog /var/log/apache2/error_log_ads
  SetEnvIf Request_URI .* no-access-log
  CustomLog /dev/null common env=!no-access-log
  RewriteEngine on
  RewriteRule ^(.*) /Users/Karl/Public/ad-blocker/response.html
  </VirtualHost>

Now modify the DocumentRoot and <directory ...> with the full path to the ad-blocker directory you added to Public, and modify the RewriteRule directive to point to the response.html file.

Start Apache

Mac OSX: Enable Web Sharing

On Mac, just enable Web Sharing under System Preferences -> Sharing. Apache will start, and if you visit http://127.0.0.1:61111 you should see a blank page (with no errors or anything else). If you get an error like You don't have permissions to access / on this server you may permissions problems on your ad-blocker directory, you may have messed up your <directory ...> directive path, or you may need to enable File Sharing on the directory and give permissions to Everyone to Read.

Apache should be up and running and ready to serve ads.

Now the easy part.

Configure your browsers

We need to configure the browser to use our proxy configuration file (PAC file). For each browser, open your Preferences and configure the path to the proxy.conf file for your machine using my screenshots as a guide.

Firefox

Open Preferences->Advanced->Network. Then under Connection, click 'Settings...'

Select 'Automatic proxy configuration URL' and enter the path to the proxy.conf file

Opera

Open Preferences->Advanced->Network and click on 'Proxy Servers'

Select 'Use automatic proxy configuration' and enter the path to the proxy.conf file

Safari

Open Preferences->Advanced and click 'Proxies: Change Settings...'

This should bring up your OS X Network->Proxies settings. Select 'Configure Proxies: Using a PAC file' and enter the path to the proxy.conf file

Alternatively you can get there from OS X System Preferences->Network click on 'Advanced' then 'Proxies'

The PAC file

Here's the proxy configuration (PAC) file if you just want to have a look at how it's setup. I've modified the original file that I reference in the comments by adding two really useful JavaScript functions, domainMatch() and subdomainMatch(). These perform regular expression matching on the URL and can filter URLs by domain e.g. domainMatch('doubleclick.net') or by subdomain e.g. subdomainMatch('ads'). This makes it much cleaner and more powerful than calling shExpMatch(host, ...) every time and using sub-par pattern matching.

Here's the code...

  /**
   * Proxy configuration file to block ads.
   * 
   * From <http://hydra.nac.uci.edu/indiv/ehood/gems/ad-blocking.html>
   * Host matching adapted from hostname list at
   *    <http://www.ecst.csuchico.edu/~atman/spam/adblock.shtml>
   * Regular-expression matching functions added by Karl Varga
   *    <kjvarga.blogspot.com>
   *
   * The proxy is assumed to be listening on 127.0.0.1:61111.  Change
   * the return "PROXY ..." statement near the end of the file to
   * suit your local configuration.
   */



  /**
   * Add an escape function to the RegExp object.
   * 
   * @see http://simonwillison.net/2006/Jan/20/escape/
   */
  RegExp.escape = function(text) {
    if (!arguments.callee.sRE) {
      var specials = [
        '/', '.', '*', '+', '?', '|',
        '(', ')', '[', ']', '{', '}', '\\'
      ];
      arguments.callee.sRE = new RegExp(
        '(\\' + specials.join('|\\') + ')', 'g'
      );
    }
    return text.replace(arguments.callee.sRE, '\\$1');
  }

  /**
   * A domain is matched if it is preceeded by one or more subdomains,
   * or no subdomains.  A domain does not match a similar domain with text
   * prepended.
   */
  function domainMatch(host, domain) {
    var regex = new RegExp('^([^.]+\\.)*' + RegExp.escape(domain) + '$', 'i');
    return regex.test(host);
  }

  /**
   * Match any subdomain.
   */
  function subdomainMatch(host, subdomain) {
    var regex = new RegExp('^.*[.]' + RegExp.escape(subdomain) 
        + '[.].*$|^' + RegExp.escape(subdomain) + '[.].*$', 'i');
    return regex.test(host);
  }

  /**
   * Called by the browser to determine whether to proxy the request or not.
   */
  function FindProxyForURL(url, host) {

    if (

      /**
       * Domains.
       */
      domainMatch(host, "PostMasterBannerNet.com") ||
      domainMatch(host, "adbureau.net") ||
      domainMatch(host, "admaximize.com") ||
      domainMatch(host, "admex.com") ||
      domainMatch(host, "alladvantage.com") ||
      domainMatch(host, "avenuea.com") ||
      domainMatch(host, "bizservers.com") ||
      domainMatch(host, "burstnet.com") ||
      domainMatch(host, "click2net.com") ||
      domainMatch(host, "clicktrade.com") ||
      domainMatch(host, "commision-junction.com") ||
      domainMatch(host, "digitalriver.com") ||
      domainMatch(host, "doubleclick.net") ||
      domainMatch(host, "eads.com") ||
      domainMatch(host, "extreme-dm.com") ||
      domainMatch(host, "flycast.com") ||
      domainMatch(host, "focalink.com") ||
      domainMatch(host, "freestats.com") ||
      domainMatch(host, "hitbox.com") ||
      domainMatch(host, "iadnet.com") ||
      domainMatch(host, "imaginemedia.com") ||
      domainMatch(host, "imgis.com") ||
      domainMatch(host, "link4ads.com") ||
      domainMatch(host, "mediaplex.com") ||
      domainMatch(host, "netdirect.nl") ||
      domainMatch(host, "ngadcenter.net") ||
      domainMatch(host, "oneandonlynetwork.com") ||
      domainMatch(host, "preferences.com") ||
      domainMatch(host, "targetshop.com") ||
      domainMatch(host, "teknosurf2.com") ||
      domainMatch(host, "teknosurf3.com") ||
      domainMatch(host, "trix.net") ||
      domainMatch(host, "valueclick.com") ||
      domainMatch(host, "websitefinancing.com") ||
      domainMatch(host, "2mdn.net") ||
      domainMatch(host, "brandreachsys.com") ||
      domainMatch(host, "fastclick.net") ||
      domainMatch(host, "eyewonder.com") ||
      domainMatch(host, "clicktorrent.info") ||
      // domainMatch(host, "yimg.com") ||
      domainMatch(host, "pop6.com") ||
      domainMatch(host, "adinterax.com") ||
      domainMatch(host, "atdmt.com") ||
      domainMatch(host, "fling.com") ||
      domainMatch(host, "serving-sys.com") ||
      domainMatch(host, "fuelbuck.com") ||
      domainMatch(host, "blogads.com") ||
      domainMatch(host, "doublepimp.com") ||
      domainMatch(host, "etology.com") ||
      domainMatch(host, "adshuffle.com") ||
      domainMatch(host, "awempire.com") ||
      domainMatch(host, "adjuggler.com") ||
      domainMatch(host, "atdmt.com") ||
      domainMatch(host, "edgesuite.net") ||

      /**
       * Subdomains
       */
      subdomainMatch(host, "ads") ||
      subdomainMatch(host, "ads0") ||
      subdomainMatch(host, "ads1") ||
      subdomainMatch(host, "ads2") ||
      subdomainMatch(host, "ads3") ||
      subdomainMatch(host, "ads4") ||
      subdomainMatch(host, "ads5") ||
      subdomainMatch(host, "banners") ||
      subdomainMatch(host, "banner") ||
      subdomainMatch(host, "adcontroller") ||
      subdomainMatch(host, "click") ||

      /**
       * Hostname Patterns
       */
      shExpMatch(host, "*-ad.*") ||
      shExpMatch(host, "*adlink.*") ||
      shExpMatch(host, "ad-*.com") ||
      shExpMatch(host, "ad.*") ||
      shExpMatch(host, "ad0*") ||
      shExpMatch(host, "adcontroller*") ||
      shExpMatch(host, "adcreatives*") ||
      shExpMatch(host, "adex*") ||
      shExpMatch(host, "adforce*") ||
      shExpMatch(host, "adfu.*") ||
      shExpMatch(host, "adimage*") ||
      shExpMatch(host, "adimg*") ||
      shExpMatch(host, "admedia*") ||
      shExpMatch(host, "adpick*") ||
      shExpMatch(host, "adremote*") ||
      shExpMatch(host, "ngads*") ||
      shExpMatch(host, "nsads*") ||
      shExpMatch(host, "ph-ad*") ||
      shExpMatch(host, "realads*") ||

      /**
       * URLs
       */
      shExpMatch(url, "*.weather.com/*/ads/*") ||
      shExpMatch(url, "*/adimages/*") ||
      shExpMatch(url, "*/adsmanager/*") ||

      false   
    ) {

      // Proxy the request
      return "PROXY 127.0.0.1:61111";

    }

    // Let the browser handle it
    return "DIRECT";
  }

makePositioned: A jQuery extension function to dynamically position an element near another element

2009-05-22T00:03:00.000-07:00

I've recently been working on a dynamic select/auto-complete list (which I'll post about soon) and I had to position the dynamically-created div under the input when the user enters some text. jQuery makes it quite easy to position elements in this manner because you have access to elements position and size, but who wants to go to the hassle every time?

So I've created a jQuery extension function called makePositioned which is called on the element you want to position and accepts two arguments: the alignment position (either top, right, bottom or left) and the element to position it against. You would usually use this for positioning dynamically created content, for instance help popups beside form input fields, ajax feedback icons etc.

Let me know if you find this useful, or if you add support for more alignment options. top aligns above left, right aligns top right, bottom aligns bottom left, and left aligns top left. It doesn't do any fancy checking to see if there is room in the viewport below the element, but that would be a nice feature to add.

Here's a demo. Check out the code below.

Click the buttons to position this div.

The Code

<script type="text/javascript">
/** 
 * Extend jQuery.
 *
 */
jQuery.fn.extend({

  /**
   * Position the first element in the jQuery list near another element 
   * using absolute positioning. The element should already have the 
   * proper z-Index set.
   * 
   * @param string align 'bottom' for bottom left, or 'right' for top right,
   *    'left' for top left, 'top' for above left.
   */
  makePositioned: function(align, element) {
    var first = this.eq(0);
    var pos, height, width, left, top, thisHeight, thisWidth;
    pos = element.offset();
    height = element.outerHeight(), width = element.outerWidth();
    left = pos.left, top = pos.top;
    thisHeight = first.outerHeight(), thisWidth = first.outerWidth();
    
    switch (align) { 
      case 'bottom':
        top += height;
      break;
      case 'right':
        left += width;
      break;
      case 'left':
        left = left - thisWidth;
      break;
      case 'top':
        top = top - thisHeight;
      break;
    }

    first.css({ 
      top: parseInt(top)+'px', 
      left: parseInt(left)+'px',
      position: 'absolute'
    });
    
    return this;
  }

});
</script>

Keep using TextMate unregistered, indefinitely (forever, aka eternity)

2009-05-06T17:42:00.000-07:00

Ok, this one is real easy. I didn't come up with it, but I often forget where the file is that I'm supposed to delete so I thought I'd put a note here and never forget again...until next month :)

This is a one-step process. Not two, not three. Just one. Delete the following file:

~/Library/Preferences/com.macromates.textmate.plist

Done already? You'll lose your preferences, but if you're too skint to buy this stuff then you don't deserve to have preferences.

If you're wondering what will happen next, you'll get 30 more days to evaluate TextMate. See you in 30 days :)

jQuery extensions to support highlight effects on hidden elements

2009-04-29T01:50:00.000-07:00

I was disappointed with the lack of support for show, hide, fade and highlight effects on hidden elements in jQuery. By hidden I mean that they have visibility: hidden and not display: none (so they still take up space in the DOM but are not "visible"). Almost all of jQuery's functions to hide and show elements toggle their states between display: block; and display: none;. This is alright in some cases, but sometimes you want the element to still take up DOM space.

Even the :hidden selector doesn't work on visibility: hidden elements. So I've added an extension function called hidden() which returns a jQuery list of elements with visibility: hidden. So if you want to test if something is hidden you can do if ($('#element').hidden().length) { ... }, as well as call regular jQuery methods on the result like so $('#table td:hidden').show();.

Because most of the time I want to highlight elements when I show/hide, the extension functions I have written use the jQuery Highlight effect. So you will need that to run this code. You will also need the UI Core (required for all effects) and of course the jQuery library.

Another annoying thing is that the jQuery UI highlight effects don't work on table rows. I suspect it's because table rows have a display mode of display: table-row; as opposed to the usual display: none;. Because I often need to highlight show/hide table rows, I've added support for them in my extension functions.

There are four highlight methods:

highlightShow: highlight and fade in (show) an element or elements.
highlightFade: highlight and fade out (to visibility: hidden) an element or elements.
highlightHide: highlight, fade out and hide (display: none) an element or elements.
highlightRemove: highlight, fade out and remove from the DOM an element or elements.

Let me know if you've found this useful! Enjoy the slick JavaSripty goodness!

The Demo

A Regular DIV

Wrapper
This is the text we will fade in and out.

A Table

Name	Occupation	Height	Remove	Fade
Karl Varga	Programmer	6'
Karl Varga	Programmer	6'
John Edward	Student	10' 5"

The JavaScript code for the table effects uses event delegation to bind events to the checkboxes. This means that you can bind an event handler to a top-level element. When sub-elements receive events they bubble up the DOM to the parent, which handles it. This way, I just have to write a handler for the remove and fade events on the table and when I add new rows to the table those new rows will also support the remove and fade events because the handler is not bound to each individual checkbox, but rather to the parent table. Neat!

It uses the jQuery Listen plugin and here is the JavaScript snippet:

<script type="text/javascript">

$().ready(function() {

  $('#demo-table').listen('click', 'input.remove', function(e) {
    $(this).closest('tr').highlightRemove(2000); 
  });
  
  $('#demo-table').listen('click', 'input.fade', function(e) {
    $(this).closest('tr').highlightFade(2000); 
  });
  
  $('#add-row').click(function() {
    var hidden = $('#demo-table tr:hidden'); 
    var clone = hidden.clone(); 
    hidden.after(clone); 
    clone.highlightShow(2000); 
  });
  
});
</script>

The Code

Here are my jQuery extensions. If you are using jQuery in no conflict mode you will have to include this JavaScript before your noConflict call, or do a search-and-replace on the $ function.

<script type="text/javascript">

jQuery.fn.extend({
  
  /**
   * Highlight and fade out an element to visibility: hidden so that it still takes up DOM space.
   * Works for table rows (which use display: table-row as opposed to the usual display: block).
   *
   */
  highlightFade: function(speed) {
    this.each(function() { 
    $(this).effect('highlight', { mode: 'hide' }, speed, function() {
      // retore the elements visibility and display type
      this.style.visibility = "hidden";
      if ($(this).is('tr')) {
        this.style.display = 'table-row';
      } else {
        this.style.display = 'block';
      }
    });
  });
  return this;
  },

  /**
   * Highlight and fade out an element to display: none.  Just a wrapper for effect('highlight', ...)
   * for completeness.  Use highlightFade() to highlight and fade but still maintain visibility.
   */
  highlightHide: function(speed) {
    this.effect('highlight', { mode: 'hide' }, speed);
  return this;
  },

  /**
   * Highlight and fade in an element.  Works for visibility: hidden elements as well 
   * as elements with display: none.  jQuery highlight doesn't work on table rows, so
   * we apply the effect to the row cells.
   */
  highlightShow: function(speed) {
    this.each(function() {
    if ($(this).hidden().length) {
      this.style.display = "none";         // highlight only works when display is none
      this.style.visibility = "visible";
    }
    var apply_to = $(this);
    if ($(this).is('tr')) {
      apply_to = apply_to.find('td');
    }
    apply_to.effect('highlight', {}, speed);
  });
  return this;
  },

  /**
   * Highlight fade out and remove.  jQuery highlight doesn't work on table rows, so
   * we apply the effect to the row cells.
   */
  highlightRemove: function(speed, callback) {
  this.each(function() {
    var original_target = $(this);
    var apply_to = original_target;
    if ($(this).is('tr')) {
      apply_to = apply_to.find('td');
    }
    apply_to.effect("highlight", {mode: 'hide'}, speed, function() { 
      original_target.remove();
      if (callback != undefined) {
        callback.call(this);
      }
    });
  });
  return this;
  },

  /**
   * Return elements which have visibility: hidden.
   * The jQuery :hidden selector only matches elements with display: none.
   */
  hidden: function() {
  var hidden = [];
  this.each(function() {
    if (this.style.visibility == 'hidden') {
      hidden.push(this);
    }
  });
  return $(hidden);
  }
});'

</script>

Output JavaScript date in human-readable format (Day Month DD YYYY HH:MM:SS PM)

2009-04-22T00:28:00.000-07:00

You often need to display the user's current date and time on a website in a custom format. Unfortunately JavaScript doesn't have (many) date formatting functions built-in so you either have to use someone else's JS date formatting "library" or roll your own.

For simplicity I rolled my own. And since this is common thing that we all need to do from time to time I thought I would share my code in case you find it useful.

The Demo

(The format the date appears in is Day Month DD YYYY HH:MM:SS PM.)

The date and time right now is

The Code

Simple JavaScript expanding text input

2009-04-21T23:36:00.000-07:00

Today my colleague had a requirement for a simple expanding text input on a website form. By expanding I don't mean that it gets bigger as you type, just that when you click/focus into the text input it appears to grow giving you a larger multi-line textarea in which to post a comment. Unfortunately I couldn't whip out jQuery (which is my new favourity JS library after using Prototype for some time) because we just needed this one bit of DHTML.

Requirements

When user clicks/focuses on the input show a larger textarea.
The textarea must appear above the other form elements but leave some of the submit button showing.

The Demo

Click in the input to see it grow.

The Code



<style type="text/css">

/**
 * Styles for the expanding / contracting input
 */

#smallInput {
 height: 30px;
 width: 250px;
 overflow: hidden;

}
#largeInput {
 display: none;
 height: 80px;
 width: 350px;
 overflow-x: hidden;
 overflow-y: auto;
 word-wrap: break-word;
 z-index: 1000;
}

</style>

AppleScript / Automator: Import AVI video to iTunes as a TV Show or Movie

2009-03-24T05:49:00.000-07:00

This is a sweet AppleScript / Automator Workflow that I created which totally automates the task of importing an AVI video into iTunes.

Select one or more video files to import. Works on AVI as well as other formats like M4V.
Adds metadata to the AVI files to make them iTunes compatible.
Prompts if you would like to import into Movies or TV Shows.
Sets iTunes metadata to identify the video as Movie or TV Show depending on your choice.

Here is a screenshot of my workflow and here is the workflow file (in a tarball...workflows actually are directories it seems...).

Installing

To install as a Finder plugin (so you can select files in Finder then secondary-click / control-click and choose Automator -> Import to iTunes), open the .workflow file in Automator and choose Save As Plug-in, then in Plug-in for select Finder and Save.
To install as an application so you can drag and drop files onto the application, open the .workflow file in Automator and choose File -> Save As and in File Format choose Application.

The AppleScript code is here if you want to copy and paste it:

on run {input, parameters}
 set videoType to button returned of (display dialog ("What type of video are you importing?") buttons {"Movie", "TV Show"} default button {"TV Show"})
 repeat with i in input
  try
   tell application "Finder" to set file type of file i to "MooV"
  end try
  tell application "iTunes"
   set newAddition to (add (i as alias))
   if videoType = "TV Show" then
    tell newAddition to set video kind to TV show
   end if
  end tell
 end repeat
 return input
end run

Recursive chmod on files or directories

2009-03-23T23:18:00.000-07:00

This is useful when, for example, you need to set execute permissions on every PHP or Ruby file in all directories below your current directory.

Just replace the '*.php' with the name pattern you want to match. Works on Mac OS X 10.5.6.

find . -type f -name '*.php' -exec chmod 755 {} \;

To see which files will be changed use:

find . -type f -name '*.php' -exec echo {} \;

The {} braces are replaced with each filename as find finds each file that matches your pattern. To find directories use -type d.

Using iText to convert TIFF to PDF and to combine multiple PDFs into one PDF

2008-12-19T14:19:00.000-08:00

We recently had the requirement to take a Microsoft Excel file as well as one or more PDF "attachments" and 1) convert the Excel file to PDF, and 2) combine all the PDFs into a single PDF.

Unfortunately we were unable to find an open source Java solution for converting the Excel file to PDF. If you want to extract information from the Excel file you can do so using Apache POI. You can then generate a PDF file from this data using iText. This wasn't an appropriate solution for us. An alternative solution in the interim was to print the Excel file to TIFF using the Microsoft Document Image Writer and then convert the TIFF to PDF using iText. The results look alright, not ideal, but workable.

Here are two Java methods to do it. Let me know if you find a free Java solution to converting Excel to PDF.

import java.io.ByteArrayOutputStream;
import java.io.File;
import java.io.FileOutputStream;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.net.MalformedURLException;
import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.List;

import com.lowagie.text.Document;
import com.lowagie.text.DocumentException;
import com.lowagie.text.Image;
import com.lowagie.text.PageSize;
import com.lowagie.text.pdf.PRAcroForm;
import com.lowagie.text.pdf.PdfCopy;
import com.lowagie.text.pdf.PdfImportedPage;
import com.lowagie.text.pdf.PdfReader;
import com.lowagie.text.pdf.PdfWriter;
import com.lowagie.text.pdf.SimpleBookmark;

public class FileConversions {

    /**
     * Convert a TIFF file to a PDF.
     * 
     * @param tiffFile
     * @return
     * @throws DocumentException
     * @throws MalformedURLException
     * @throws IOException
     */
    public static byte[] convertTiffToPdf(byte[] tiffFile) 
            throws DocumentException, MalformedURLException, IOException {

        ByteArrayOutputStream outfile = new ByteArrayOutputStream();
        Document document = new Document(PageSize.A4.rotate());
        PdfWriter writer = PdfWriter.getInstance(document, outfile);
        writer.setStrictImageSequence(true);
        document.open();
        Image tiff = Image.getInstance(tiffFile);
        tiff.scaleToFit(800, 600);
        document.add(tiff);
        document.close();
        outfile.flush();
        return outfile.toByteArray();
    }

    /**
     * Combine multiple PDFs into a single PDF.
     *
     * @param pdfs
     * @param combinedPdfFile TODO
     * @throws IOException
     * @see http://itext.ugent.be/library/com/lowagie/examples/general/copystamp/Concatenate.java
     */
    public static void combinePdfFiles(List<byte[]> pdfs, File combinedPdfFile) throws Exception {

        PdfReader reader = null;
        Document document = null;
        PdfCopy  writer = null;
        ArrayList master = new ArrayList();
        int pageOffset = 0;

        for (byte[] pdf : pdfs) {
            int size = pdf.length;
            reader = new PdfReader(pdf);
            reader.consolidateNamedDestinations();
            int n = reader.getNumberOfPages();
            List bookmarks = SimpleBookmark.getBookmark(reader);
            if (bookmarks != null) {
                if (pageOffset != 0) {
                    SimpleBookmark.shiftPageNumbers(bookmarks, pageOffset, null);
                }
                master.addAll(bookmarks);
            }
            pageOffset += n;

            if (document == null) {
                // step 1: creation of a document-object
                document = new Document(reader.getPageSizeWithRotation(1));
                // step 2: we create a writer that listens to the document
                writer = new PdfCopy(document, new FileOutputStream(combinedPdfFile));
                // step 3: we open the document
                document.open();
            }
            // step 4: we add content
            PdfImportedPage page;
            for (int i = 0; i < n; ) {
                ++i;
                page = writer.getImportedPage(reader, i);
                writer.addPage(page);
            }
            PRAcroForm form = reader.getAcroForm();
            if (form != null) {
                writer.copyAcroForm(reader);
            }
        }
        if (!master.isEmpty()) {
            writer.setOutlines(master);
        }
        if (document != null) {
            document.close();
        }
    }
}

Simple request benchmarking of a Ruby on Rails application using ApacheBenchmarker

2008-12-18T13:23:00.000-08:00

You can use ApacheBenchmarker which comes with your default Apache install. You can find the ab.exe executable in C:\Program Files\Apache Group\Apache2\bin on Windows.

Usage: ab [options] [http://]hostname[:port]/path
Options are:
  -n requests     Number of requests to perform
  -c concurrency  Number of multiple requests to make
  -t timelimit    Seconds to max. wait for responses
  -p postfile     File containing data to POST
  -T content-type Content-type header for POSTing
  -v verbosity    How much troubleshooting info to print
  -w              Print out results in HTML tables
  -i              Use HEAD instead of GET
  -x attributes   String to insert as table attributes
  -y attributes   String to insert as tr attributes
  -z attributes   String to insert as td or th attributes
  -C attribute    Add cookie, eg. 'Apache=1234. (repeatable)
  -H attribute    Add Arbitrary header line, eg. 'Accept-Encoding: gzip'
                  Inserted after all normal header lines. (repeatable)
  -A attribute    Add Basic WWW Authentication, the attributes
                  are a colon separated username and password.
  -P attribute    Add Basic Proxy Authentication, the attributes
                  are a colon separated username and password.
  -X proxy:port   Proxyserver and port number to use
  -V              Print version number and exit
  -k              Use HTTP KeepAlive feature
  -d              Do not show percentiles served table.
  -S              Do not show confidence estimators and warnings.
  -g filename     Output collected data to gnuplot format file.
  -e filename     Output CSV file with percentages served
  -h              Display usage information (this message)

My simple benchmarking tests for my Ruby on Rails website. I wanted to compare the performance of RoR over CGI with a new server instance created on each request versus requests over CGI proxied to a single long-running mongrel_rails server. These tests do 10 individual requests, then 100 requests, 5 concurrently. Results are output in HTML.

ab -n 10 -c 1 -w http://new.varzyfamily.com/ > 10-requests.html ab -n 100 -c 5 -w http://new.varzyfamily.com/ > 100-5-concurrent-requests.html

For your information I'm running my mongrel_rails using God on port 3000 and I am proxying requests using the standard RoR .htaccess file as follows:

RewriteEngine On RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^new.varzyfamily.com$ RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://127.0.0.1:3000%{REQUEST_URI} [P,QSA,L]

I have to adopt such an arcane setup because my host HostGator only supports RoR over CGI, which is not very performant.

The test results basically tell me what I already: never, ever run a RoR app over CGI where you're starting the server on every request! Holy smokes! For 100 requests (5 concurrent) over CGI average total request time was 16437 ms (ouch!!!) serving 0.3 reqs/sec. Talking to a proxied mongrel server fared much better with average total request time being 565 ms serving 8.61 reqs/sec.

Here is the output from the latter test.

This is ApacheBench, Version 2.0.41-dev <$Revision: 1.121.2.12 $> apache-2.0 Copyright (c) 1996 Adam Twiss, Zeus Technology Ltd, http://www.zeustech.net/ Copyright (c) 2006 The Apache Software Foundation, http://www.apache.org/

..done

Connnection Times (ms)
Server Software:		Mongrel
Server Hostname:		new.varzyfamily.com
Server Port:		80
Document Path:		/
Document Length:		4174 bytes
Concurrency Level:		5
Time taken for tests:		0.11609 seconds
Complete requests:		100
Failed requests:		0
Total transferred:		457200 bytes
HTML transferred:		417400 bytes
Requests per second:		8.61
Transfer rate:		39.38 kb/s received
	min	avg	max
Connect:	62	107	3062
Processing:	188	458	703
Total:	250	565	3765

Starting tomcat from Eclipse gives error "Can't load server.xml"

2008-12-15T16:23:00.000-08:00

I am using Eclipse Gannymede and I am trying to start a Tomcat 5.5 and/or Tomcat 6.0 server.

Problem: When trying to start the Tomcat server from within Eclipse you get an error stating that Eclipse cannot load the server.xml file:

WARNING: Can't load server.xml from C:\projects\workspace-gannymede\.metadata\.plugins\org.eclipse.wst.server.core\tmp0\conf\server.xml
Dec 15, 2008 3:52:51 PM org.apache.catalina.startup.Catalina load
WARNING: Can't load server.xml from C:\projects\workspace-gannymede\.metadata\.plugins\org.eclipse.wst.server.core\tmp0\conf\server.xml
Dec 15, 2008 3:52:51 PM org.apache.catalina.startup.Catalina start
INFO: Server startup in 0 ms
java.lang.reflect.InvocationTargetException
 at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method)
 at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(NativeMethodAccessorImpl.java:39)
 at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:25)
 at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:585)
 at org.apache.catalina.startup.Bootstrap.start(Bootstrap.java:295)
 at org.apache.catalina.startup.Bootstrap.main(Bootstrap.java:433)
Caused by: java.lang.NullPointerException
 at org.apache.catalina.startup.Catalina.await(Catalina.java:616)
 at org.apache.catalina.startup.Catalina.start(Catalina.java:576)
 ... 6 more

If I try to look at the server.xml file that Eclipse is trying to read, it does not exist on the filesystem.

Solution: I tried a number of things such as deleting all my server configurations as well as the contents of the .metadata\.plugins\org.eclipse.wst.server.core\ directory. Nothing worked. The solution is to create a new Server Runtime Environment (Window -> Preferences -> Server -> Runtime Environments). Then in your Servers view (Window -> Show View -> Servers) add a new server configuration (right-click and select New -> Server) but DO NOT ADD ANY PROJECTS TO IT. Double click the new server configuration to bring up the Server Overview page which looks like this:

Under Server Locations select Use Tomcat installation. Save. You should be able to start your server now (assuming you can start it fine from the command line). Now add your project to the server and you're ready to go.

OC4J 10.1.3.* does not support JSF 1.2

2008-12-12T11:54:00.000-08:00

I spent a very frustrating day wading through the version soup that is JavaServer Faces and trying to deploy a JSF 1.2 app on on OC4J 10.1.3 container. To save you a lot of time, OC4J DOES NOT SUPPORT JSF 1.2.

This technical paper explains that OC4J 10.1.3 (all versions) supports Servlet 2.4, JSP 2.0 and JSF 1.1.

And this handy webpage explains that "JSF 1.2 is the latest release and it works with servlet 2.5 and jsp 2.1". So obviously it's not compatible. It also details all the versions of Java technologies that each JSF version relies upon.

So don't waste your time like I did.

Custom Scriptaculous Ajax InPlaceEditor

2008-11-26T23:01:00.000-08:00

The following code demonstrates how to customize the Scriptaculous library's InPlaceEditor to make it look and feel exctly how you want. It also demonstrates the general techniques that can be used to extend any of the Scriptaculous Event classes as well as the Prototype base classes (as I will demonstrate in a later post). All of my customizations are controlled by options passed in when creating your IPE instance and do not alter the original behaviour of the IPE classes.

My intention here is to isolate my customizations so that the libraries can be updated at will and my modifications will continue to work.

I will post a sample of the code in action and describe what I am doing here at a later time. For now, here's the code.

// Custom controls.  Must be loaded after prototype & scriptaculous.

Object.extend(Ajax.InPlaceEditor.DefaultOptions, {
  showHighlight: true,  // false/true
  showSaving: true,     // false/true
  lockoutOnSave: true   // false/true
});

/**
 * The following fixes are from http://www.mail-archive.com/rubyonrails-spinoffs@googlegroups.com/msg11429.html  
 * They fix the cancelling/escape issues with the IPE.
 *
 */

/**
 * Removed the checkForEscapeOrReturn binding on keydown because it doesn't
 * do anything attached to the span element.
 */
Ajax.InPlaceEditor.Listeners = {
  click: 'enterEditMode',
  mouseover: 'enterHover',
  mouseout: 'leaveHover'
};
 
Ajax.InPlaceEditor.prototype.initialize = Ajax.InPlaceEditor.prototype.initialize.wrap( function(){
  var args = $A(arguments), proceed = args.shift();
  //proceed(args[0], args[1], args[2] ? args[2] : null);
  proceed.apply(null, args);
  this._boundKeyListener = this.checkForEscapeOrReturn.bindAsEventListener(this);
});

Ajax.InPlaceEditor.prototype.enterEditMode = Ajax.InPlaceEditor.prototype.enterEditMode.wrap( function(){
  var args = $A(arguments), proceed = args.shift();
  var e = args[0] ? args[0] : null;
  //proceed(); // args[0] ? args[0] : null 
  proceed.apply(null, args);
  // The form won't exist if we are saving, so check before setting the key listener
  if (this._controls.editor) {
    this._controls.editor.observe('keydown', this._boundKeyListener);
    if (e.rangeOffset != undefined) {
      setCaretTo(this._controls.editor, e.rangeOffset);
    }
    
  }
});

Ajax.InPlaceEditor.prototype.removeForm = Ajax.InPlaceEditor.prototype.removeForm.wrap( function(){
  var args = $A(arguments), proceed = args.shift();
  if (this._controls.editor) {
    this._controls.editor.stopObserving('keydown', this._boundKeyListener);
  }
  proceed.apply(null, args);
});

/**
 * Don't submit the form if nothing has changed.
 *
 */
 
Ajax.InPlaceEditor.prototype.handleFormSubmission = Ajax.InPlaceEditor.prototype.handleFormSubmission.wrap( function() {
  var args = $A(arguments), proceed = args.shift();
  var e = args[0] ? args[0] : null;
  //proceed(e);
  //return;
  //alert($A(arguments));
  var value = $F(this._controls.editor);
  var original_value = this.getText();
  //alert("Original value is: " + original_value + ", new value is " + value + ", values are equal? " + (original_value == value));
  if (original_value == value) {
    alert("nothing changed");
    // Stop the event and return.  Prepare submission removes the form and does
    // some cleanup that we need to do.
    this.prepareSubmission();
    if (e) Event.stop(e);
    return;
  } else {
    alert("submitting ajax request");
    proceed.apply(null, args);
  }
});

/**
 * Don't prevent the user from editing the field while the value is being saved.
 */

Ajax.InPlaceEditor.prototype.prepareSubmission = Ajax.InPlaceEditor.prototype.prepareSubmission.wrap( function() {
  var args = $A(arguments), proceed = args.shift();
  proceed.apply(null, args);
  if (!this.options.lockoutOnSave) {
    this._saving = false;
  }
});


/**
 * Don't show "Saving..." if showSaving is turned off.
 */

Ajax.InPlaceEditor.prototype.showSaving = Ajax.InPlaceEditor.prototype.showSaving.wrap(function() {
  if (!this.options.showSaving) {
    this._boundWrapperHandler();
    return;
  } else {
    var args = $A(arguments), proceed = args.shift();
    proceed.apply(null, args);
  }
});
  
/**
 * Don't highlight if highlighting is turned off.
 */
 
var checkIfHighlighting = function() {
  //alert("check if highlighting: " + this.options.hoverClassName);
  if (!this.options.showHighlight) return;
  var args = $A(arguments), proceed = args.shift();
  proceed.apply(null, args);
};

Debugging applications running in OC4J in Eclipse

2008-11-26T17:18:00.000-08:00

Being able to breakpoint your Java code and step through it in Eclipse is essential for timely development. But every time I go to create a new OC4J debugger instance in Eclipse I don't know where to start! And nothing on the web helped me out. So here are my settings which work for me. Hopefully they will work for you too.

A note on versions. I am using Eclipse 3.3.2 and OC4J 10.1.3.2.0 which I have installed at C:\appservers\oc4j10.1.3.2.0. My Java version is 1.5.0_11.

Click Run -> Open Debug Dialog. Create a new Java Application and give it a name. Now configure each tab according to the screenshots. The project I'm debugging is called regis. I don't know if you have to supply the project or not, but obviously whereever you see regis you'll want to replace that with your own project.

(Click on the screenshots to see a larger version.)

Some of the arguments here are optional. -Xmx512M just gives more memory to the process.

The libraries I have on the Source tab are also optional. They're useful though when you want to step into Struts method calls etc.

Hopefully after duplicating my settings you are now ready to debug!

SVN tips

2008-10-29T18:03:00.000-07:00

I'm going to keep track of some SVN tips here. For instance I always get confused about when I'm supposed to use a URL and when I'm supposed to use a path with SVN. And I always have to recreate those annoying trunk/ branch/ and tag/ directories every time I want to import a project and sometimes if you do it wrong you're truly screwed. Hopefully this will help you (and me) out in future.

Create a repository and import a project

svnadmin create --fs-type fsfs /home/kjvarga/svnroot svn import newproject file:///home/kjvarga/svnroot/newproject/

Some things to notice

The triple slash on the local file URL.
Specifying the file store type as fsfs. I'm on a shared host and apparently it's really not a good idea to use the BerkleyDB in this scenario. I found out the hard way when after about 4 months of no problems I was suddenly unable to access my repository (something about a BDB version mismatch).
In this scenario newproject has the structure newproject/trunk tags branches.
Don't forget to append the directory name to the SVNROOT in the import. Otherwise the contents of newproject/ will be imported to the root of your SVNROOT, which isn't very useful.

Verify your import with svn list file:///home/kjvarga/svnroot/newproject/

Checkout your import

The next logical step is to checkout the project you just checked in.

svn checkout file:///home/kjvarga/svnroot/newproject/trunk svnproject

Don't forget that you're checking out the trunk/ directory!

If you're not checking out the project locally you will need to supply a URL pointing to the repository resource.

I'm on a shared host which doesn't allow any direct access to SVN so I have to connect using ssh+svn. In taht case your checkout would look something like this:

svn checkout svn+ssh://kjvarga@varzyfamily.com/home/kjvarga/svnroot/newproject/trunk newproject

CSS Tips and Tricks

2008-10-17T13:14:00.001-07:00

Every time I get back into CSS I forget some of the basic rules about inline and block level elements, positioning and box models. I'm not a fan of browser hacks, so you won't find any of those here.

Inline Elements

Can have width, padding-left, padding-right, margin-left and margin-right applied. However height, padding-top, padding-bottom, margin-top and margin-bottom are not applied.
To set the height you can use the line-height property.

Vertically Centered Text

An easy way center text vertically within an element is to use the line-height property. If the line-height is greater than the font size, the extra space is distributed evenly above and below the text.

Horzontally Centered Elements

Set a width and margin: 0 auto; on an element to have it horizontally centered.

Clearing Floats

Clearing floats with clear: left; clear: right; or clear: both; will clear all floats that precede the element in the document model. So use floats wisely because you will probably end up clearing floats on other parts of the page which you did not intent to clear.

Absolute vs Relative Positioned Elements

A relatively positioned element's margins will collapse (the margin will be the maximum of the two adjacent element's margins). However an absolutely positioned element will start a new block formatting context and its margins will not collapse with adjoining elements.
An absolutely positioned element is taken out of the document flow and positioned relative to the first positioned (rel or abs) ancestor.

100% Height Divs

Assigning height: 100% to a div will have no effect without a height defined on the parent.

How to determine your hourly rate as a contractor

2008-10-07T17:06:00.000-07:00

This is a useful bit of information I pulled off of salary.com about how to derive your hourly rate as a contractor based on your current salary:

Independent contractor fees. If you work as an independent contractor without going through an agency, you have some leeway in establishing your professional fees, but you should charge close to market. To calculate this rate, start with the prevailing full-time salary for that job. Then divide by 2080, the number of work hours in a year (2080 = 52 X 40). This is the hourly rate for your job if benefits are being paid for by the employer.
But as a contractor, you need to pay for your own benefits, as well as additional Social Security contributions, so the number needs to be higher. Salary.com uses an adjustment factor of 30 percent to convert an hourly wage for a salaried employee to an hourly wage for a contract employee. Multiply your unadjusted hourly rate by (1 + 0.3) to get your adjusted hourly rate. For example, if your unadjusted hourly rate comes out to $20 per hour, your contract rate should be $20 * (1.3) = $26.
An example shows how this works for a senior-level web designer in Kansas City. A Web designer III working in Kansas City makes $66,244. The unadjusted hourly rate for this position is $66,244/2,080, or $31.85. Adjusted by 30 percent, the contract rate comes to $41.40.
Contract fee for a Web designer III in Kansas City
Salary $66,244

Hourly rate, unadjusted $31.85

Adjustment factor 30%

Hourly rate, adjusted $41.40

Source: Salary.com, May 2002.

BPEL fails with WSIF exception on multiple simultaneous requests

2008-08-12T14:39:00.000-07:00

Occasionally we run into what appear to be concurrency issues with BPEL whereby WSIF calls to our EJB are failing sporadically, reporting that the method we are trying to call cannot be found. Which is obviously incorrect because the deployed EJB has not been modified, and subsequent BPEL processes are not faulted. Usually we get this error when we are processing multiple records simultaneously.

Today I discovered the conditions that manifest the problem. If one of the BPEL processes is modfied and deployed and then - without refreshing the WSDL cache - two requests are processed concurrently, the first will always fail. If the WSDL cache is cleared, both are processed without problems.

So it appears to be a problem related to caching that only comes up if multiple requests are processed concurrently. So always refresh your WSDL cache after deploying BPEL processes to avoid any such issues.

<2008-08-12 13:19:50,125> <DEBUG> <default.collaxa.cube.ws> <WSIFInvocationHandler::invoke> Fault happened
org.collaxa.thirdparty.apache.wsif.WSIFException: No method named 'findSearchFile' found that match the parts specified
 at com.collaxa.cube.ws.wsif.providers.ejb.WSIFOperation_EJB.executeRequestResponseOperation(WSIFOperation_EJB.java:938)
 at com.collaxa.cube.ws.WSIFInvocationHandler.invoke(WSIFInvocationHandler.java:435)
 at com.collaxa.cube.ws.WSInvocationManager.invoke2(WSInvocationManager.java:443)
 at com.collaxa.cube.ws.WSInvocationManager.invoke(WSInvocationManager.java:251)
 at com.collaxa.cube.engine.ext.wmp.BPELInvokeWMP.__invoke(BPELInvokeWMP.java:727)
 at com.collaxa.cube.engine.ext.wmp.BPELInvokeWMP.__executeStatements(BPELInvokeWMP.java:366)
 at com.collaxa.cube.engine.ext.wmp.BPELActivityWMP.perform(BPELActivityWMP.java:195)

Extract the original entity from a (Hibernate) CGLIB proxy class

2008-08-01T13:32:00.000-07:00

Ed: this is a rewrite of another post that deals with the same problem but with a less technical description.

If you have a polymorphic class structure then when Hibernate instantiates instances of your sub-classes and wraps them in a proxy class, the proxy is actually an instance of the root class in the hierarchy. This introduces some problems because you can no longer rely on instanceof and class casts because they will not work. You can implement a visitor pattern to work around these shortcomings.

The following code shows you how to retrieve the persisted concrete instance of your sub-class from the proxy class. This is useful for those occasions when you want access to the concrete instance, but don't want to implement a full visitor pattern:

if (proxy instanceof HibernateProxy){ 
   return ((HibernateProxy)proxy).getHibernateLazyInitializer().getImplementation(); 
}

Access the target object from a Hibernate CGLIB proxy

2008-07-29T18:40:00.001-07:00

Sometimes in Hibernate when you have Lazy Loaded lists of objects you will end up interacting with a proxied instance of the object rather than the object itself, even if you access members of the object so that you know it's been loaded from the database.

This situation can be tricky because your object walks like a duck and talks like a duck...but it's a proxy. You want the duck! You can do something like the following to lure it out:

if (asset instanceof org.hibernate.proxy.HibernateProxy) {
    BankAccount ss = (BankAccount) ((HibernateProxy)asset).getHibernateLazyInitializer().getImplementation();
    String desc = asset.getDescriptionTxt();
}

Pass an encoded message resource in a redirect URL

2008-07-25T13:59:00.000-07:00

Often you need to display a message/error on a JSP page but you want to redirect to the page so that it can be refreshed without reposting the form. If you simply set redirect="true" in your struts-config.xml action forward you end up losing the request-scoped message when struts issues the redirect.

So what you need to do is 1) construct the message from a resource file, 2) encode the message, 3) issue a redirect and 4) display the message in the target JSP.

Access the MessageResources.properties bundle

org.apache.struts.util.MessageResources mr = getResources(request);
String message = mr.getMessage("the.message.key", optionalInterpolationArgument);

URL encode the message and issue a redirect

message = "message=" + java.net.URLEncoder.encode(message, "UTF-8");
response.sendRedirect(request.getContextPath() + "/targetAction.do?" + message);

Display the message

Note the use of <c:out /> here. If you just write out the message without doing any HTML escaping on it you open yourself up to an HTML-injection attack.

<c:if test="${!empty param.message}">
  <c:out value="${param.message}" />
</c:if>

Lookup message resources in a JSP file

Sometimes it may be better to just pass the message key itself and have the target JSP lookup the message and display it. The following snippet shows you how to lookup a message key:

<bean:message key="simple.message.key"/>
<bean:message key="interpolated.message.key" arg0="argument.value"/>

Installing MySQL and Apache as Windows services

2008-07-22T18:16:00.000-07:00

To install Apache as a service

From the Apache bin directory (usually C:\Program Files\Apache Group\Apache2\bin):

C:\Program Files\Apache Group\Apache2\bin>Apache.exe -k install -n "This is the service name"

Other options are
-k uninstall to uninstall the service,
-k start,
-k stop and
-k restart to control the apache server.

To install MySQL as a service

From the MySQL bin directory (usually C:\Program Files\MySQL\MySQL Server 5.0\bin):

C:\Program Files\MySQL\MySQL Server 5.0\bin>mysqld --install "This is the service name" --defaults-file=C:/custom/path/to/my.ini

The example above sets the --defaults-file option which allows you to specify a non-standard options file location. The server will read options from the [mysqld] group.

To control the server you can use mysqladmin --port=3306 -u root shutdown to shutdown the server. 3306 is the default port. I put in the --port option as an example for when you need to specify a non-standard port. mysqld --remove removes the service. There are many other useful commands, to see them use the --help option.

Shut down Windows XP from the command line

2008-07-22T14:37:00.000-07:00

You can use following built-in utility to shutdown Windows and then the machine itself:

C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\TSSHUTDN.EXE 0 /POWERDOWN /DELAY:secs

To reboot use the following option:

C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\TSSHUTDN.EXE 0 /REBOOT /DELAY:secs

To see a list of command options type tsshutdn /?

DELAY is in seconds.

30 minutes = 1800 seconds
1 hour = 3600 seconds
2 hours = 7200 seconds
3 hours = 10800 seconds

Disable Windows Update restart reminders

2008-05-28T20:30:00.000-07:00

So you don't think getting automatic updates is a bad thing, but you don't want that damn annoying dialogue popping up every 5 minutes telling you to restart? Follow these simple steps:

Start / Run / gpedit.msc / Local Computer Policy / Computer Configuration / Administrative Templates / Windows Components / Windows Update / Re-prompt for restart with scheduled installations Set to Disabled.

Then you need to disable the Windows Update service for this session with the following command.

sc stop wuauserv

Your changes will take effect on reboot.

Debugging javascript errors in IE7 on WinXP

2008-05-22T14:22:00.000-07:00

As you may have noticed, the built-in Script Debugger in WinXP cannot be used to debug javascipt errors in Internet Explorer 7. It used to work in IE6, but doesn't work with IE7 because it can no longer bind to the browser process.

But fear not, it is possible! You have to download Microsoft's Visual Web Developer 2008 Express Edition which is freely available. Then you create a new project and select Debug-> Start Debugger. This will open a new IE7 window with the debugger attached. You can now access the site or pages that you want to debug, and because the debugger is attached, when the (ridiculously unhelpful) Error dialog pops up you can select 'Yes' to debug and you will be taken to the VWD debugger.

Check out this blog for a step-by-step guide.

Accessing a HostGator SVN repository via SVN+SSH on Windows

2008-04-30T15:58:00.000-07:00

This information should be helpful to anyone trying to access an svn repository stored on a remote (shared) server which does not expose an svn server.

My host is HostGator (good speeds, reliable ssh, cgi-only, MyISAM-only, decent support, non-existent knowledgebase). HostGator runs SSH over port 2222 which presents a few problems when trying to use traditional methods to connect to an SVN repository via SSH.

For these steps you will need Putty. Just get the whole suite.

Generate an RSA key using PuttyGen
Copy the public key into your ~/.ssh/authorized_keys file on the server.
Prepend your key with (so it's all on one line):
command="/usr/bin/svnserve -t"

This sets up svnserve to run in tunnel mode. The ramification of this is that you can no longer use this RSA key to auto-login on the shell. There is some information out there about creating an svn.mydomain.com subdomain and only having this rule apply to that subdomain, which solves that problem. On *nix machines this involves adding a simple rule to your SSH keystore that says "use key X when connecting to svn.mydomain.com and key Y when connecting to mydomain.com". Then you would have two entries in your authorized_keys file, one with the svnserve command for connections to svn.mydomain.com using key X and one without for key Y.

Now load your private key into Pageant
Create a new Putty connection called mydomain.com.
- Set the the Auto-login username.
- Ensure that SSH->Auth->Attempt authentication using Pageant is checked.
- Create an SSH tunnel which forwards LOCAL port 22 to mydomain.com port 2222.
SAVE the connection and then test it by opening it. You should be logged in without having to provide a password.
SVN should now be working when you use TortoiseSVN (or a similar client I assume). However, svn from the command line will not work and will report "Can't create tunnel..."
Now to get SVN working from the command line.
Create an SVN_SSH environment variable with value (keep the quotes and use forward slashes):
"C:/Program Files/PuTTY/plink.exe"

SVN will now use plink to try to connect to the svn repository. This will only work if the domain of your svn root's URL is named the same as the Putty connection you created i.e. mydomain.com.

If you find that you are getting errors when running "svn info" on a URL I found that version 1.4.2 works for Windows but 1.4.6 does not.

Oracle 10g timezones and setting the Java timezone

2008-04-25T14:39:00.000-07:00

To see your session and database timezones:

SELECT sessiontimezone, dbtimezone FROM dual;

To set them:

ALTER database SET TIME_ZONE = '-07:00';
ALTER session SET TIME_ZONE = '-07:00';

Alternatively you can set it by supplying a region which exists in the following list:

SELECT tzname, tzabbrev FROM V$TIMEZONE_NAMES;

To set the JVM timezone append the following option when calling java:

-Duser.timezone=Asia/Japan

Java stores the supported timezones in files located at:

c:\path\to\jdk1.5.0_12\jre\lib\zi\

To set the timezone within your code, which is sometimes neccessary because OC4J seems to ignore my -Duser.timezone option:

java.util.TimeZone tz = java.util.TimeZone.getTimeZone("America/Vancouver");
java.util.TimeZone.setDefault(tz);

Here is a JSP page to display some time and timezone related information:

<%@ page language=\"java\" contentType=\"text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1\"
    pageEncoding=\"ISO-8859-1\"%>
<%@ page import=\"
  java.util.*,
  java.text.DateFormat\" %>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN\" \"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd\">
<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1\">
<title>TimeZone Test</title>
</head>
<body>
Your current timezone is: <%= java.util.TimeZone.getDefault().toString() %>
<p>
The current time is: <%= (new java.util.Date()).toString() %>
<p>
The value of the user.timezone property is: <%= System.getProperty(\"user.timezone\") %>
<p>
The date using DateFormat is: <%= DateFormat.getDateTimeInstance(DateFormat.FULL, DateFormat.FULL).format(new Date()) %>
</body>
</html>

oc4j 10.1.3.2.0 is missing a required rmi class PropagatedIdentity

2008-04-16T19:52:00.000-07:00

Today I was getting an error on the console which I have included below. The error prevents the BPEL server from calling our application server via rmi, which results in some BPEL processes not being executed.

Oc4j10.1.3.2.0 is missing the oracle.oc4j.rmi.interceptors.PropagatedIdentity class which should be in C:/appservers/oc4j10.1.3.2.0/j2ee/home/lib/oc4j-internal.jar.

The required class was found in C:\appservers\famsbpel1013\j2ee\home\oc4jclient.jar. I copied the oracle.oc4j.rmi.interceptors class folder from oc4jclient.jar to oc4j-internal.jar and everything worked fine with no errors.

If everything is running 10.1.3.3.0 you should be ok.

Here's the error:

08/04/16 18:24:20 SEVERE: RMIInterceptorManagerImpl.readInterceptorContexts unable to recover remote context:

         Missing class: oracle.oc4j.rmi.interceptors.PropagatedIdentity
       Dependent class: com.evermind.io.ClassLoaderObjectInputStream
                Loader: oc4j:10.1.3
           Code-Source: /C:/appservers/oc4j10.1.3.2.0/j2ee/home/lib/oc4j-internal.jar
         Configuration: <code-source> in META-INF/boot.xml in C:\appservers\oc4j10.1.3.2.0\j2ee\home\oc4j.jar

This load was initiated at fams.root:0.0.0 using the Class.forName() method.

The missing class is not available from any code-source or loader in the system.

08/04/16 18:24:20 SEVERE: RMIInterceptorManagerImpl.readInterceptorContexts unable to recover remote context:

         Missing class: oracle.oc4j.rmi.interceptors.PropagatedIdentity
       Dependent class: com.evermind.io.ClassLoaderObjectInputStream
                Loader: oc4j:10.1.3
           Code-Source: /C:/appservers/oc4j10.1.3.2.0/j2ee/home/lib/oc4j-internal.jar
         Configuration: <code-source> in META-INF/boot.xml in C:\appservers\oc4j10.1.3.2.0\j2ee\home\oc4j.jar

This load was initiated at fams.root:0.0.0 using the Class.forName() method.

The missing class is not available from any code-source or loader in the system.

08/04/16 18:24:20 SEVERE: RMIInterceptorManagerImpl.readInterceptorContexts unable to recover remote context:

         Missing class: oracle.oc4j.rmi.interceptors.PropagatedIdentity
       Dependent class: com.evermind.io.ClassLoaderObjectInputStream
                Loader: oc4j:10.1.3
           Code-Source: /C:/appservers/oc4j10.1.3.2.0/j2ee/home/lib/oc4j-internal.jar
         Configuration: <code-source> in META-INF/boot.xml in C:\appservers\oc4j10.1.3.2.0\j2ee\home\oc4j.jar

This load was initiated at fams.root:0.0.0 using the Class.forName() method.

Salary	$66,244
Hourly rate, unadjusted	$31.85
Adjustment factor	30%
Hourly rate, adjusted	$41.40