When people face problem that can't be addressed by native ALSB actions the most popular remedy is Java Call-outs. Basically you can write piece of Java code, package it in jar and add to ALSB project. Then java code can be executed from ALSB with certain limitations on passed and returned types. There are plenty of blogposts on this subj so I won't elaborate. My opinion is that Java callouts are acceptable for more or less common functionality (like XML-JSON conversion) or big chunks of complex logic that you would prefer to keep in Java.

But for some reasons java call-outs were not enough for me so I crafted solution that allows me to reinforce ALSB with groovy scriplets. Apparent advantage is that I do not need to touch jars when I need new sophisticated functionality. The other good point is ability to use conventional ALSB variables as parameters. Return objects convey normal XmlObjects that is native to ALSB.

First lets start with GroovyCallout class itself

Method callX evaluates passed as parameter Groovy script. The other parameter is ALSB variable which is known to be apache XmlObject. For ease of use we bind it to groovy shell 'XmlSlurped'. Method callX returns array containing two objects: Binding and object that was returned from Groovy script. Methods callXB() and callXR() will serialise one of them and ignore the other. Most time I will use returned object but ... you know, just in case...

XmlSerialiser groovy class is responsible for conversion arbitrary groovy object to XmlObject. At the moment it only capable to convert classes that I needed so far. Feel free to write your own or extend it.

That is all for Java. Now let see what we've got in ALSB.

First you need to add into ALSB project your groovy-callout jar, commons-beanutils, groovy-all along with any other dependencies that you need in groovy scripts.

Proxy service for testing groovy-callout is extremely simple. Java Callout is invocation of GroovyCallout.callXB() method:

with quite meaningless groovy-style "Hello world" script. There are few types of objects to see how serialisation works. As you can see closures work as well. As you noticed "context" variable represents passed parameter and gives access to all guts via XmlSlurper:

And finally here is screenshot of rest-client showing incoming and outgoing payload:

There are couple of other trivial methods that I'm keeping for next post..

Easy and short passwords easy to hack. Good passowrds hard to remember. Once written down the password became compromised. One of solutions to this problem is Savernova cards. Basically it is a way how to keep written passwords that only you can read. Choose starting point on the card and pattern for reading. For example, the password you memorise is"Start from G8, read 5 to the right, 2 down, 5 to the left".  Which gives you effective passowrd "jqBS1X8iozF".  Some banks do allow special characters, some not. Sometimes you may not use digits. So you probably need to have several cards in your wallet. I have icluded simple JavaScript snippet that you can use for generating yours Savernova cards.

Twiddla. A free online collaboration tool which has a number of very nice features. One it’s free. Two, it’s got a no-brainer interface which makes it really easy to set up and run a group collaboration. You can set meetings up as private or public, and there are a bunch of useful tools available, including annotation icons and shapes.

Basically it’s a great product for whiteboarding or testing out website designs with teams of remote people, without having to deal with a clunky or complex interface. And three, text chat comes as default, but there’s also a voice chat button which links directly to the Java based Phonefromhere voice conferencing service. Nice feature.

Unfortunately it’s very much an early beta work, and this translates into a very sluggish feel, at least when I used it. It can take ages for a mouse click to translate into action, and some actions take literally more than a minute to manifest. It may be my browser (Firefox) or some peculiarity of my set up (i.e. Firefox plugins clash), but I found it a bit frustrating.

But it’s definitely got great potential as an application, no question, and one that I can see lots of people using once the kinks are ironed out. And the coolest thing about the app is the team behind it, Expat Software. Nice!

Simplest solution for this problem is combining all JS files into one chunk and serving them in one go.

When you include it in the page you need to pass as parameter f all JS files you need comma separated.

One common solution is to have one more submit button hidden by use of CSS and located before of any visible submit buttons. It works fine in FireFox but no IE. Internet Explorer 7 understands that button is not visible and does not send it's value.

Alternative approach is to sprinkle some JavaScript that will listen to keyboard events, stop event propagation when Enter is pressed and emulate click on desired button. Now when you have such beautiful libraries as Prototype and jQuery it became very simple and elegant:

Now you need to add CSS class 'defaultSubmit' to any submit button and call assignDefaultSubmitButtons when document is loaded. You can have several forms on one page and each of them can have it's own default submit button.
Since we use both libraries jQuery and Prototype, do not forget to add this row:

After upload we take list of remote files in temp file and check if our just uploaded file exists there. If not we raise an error that will be logged iin java code.

However Spring WebFlow has many aspects that would stop you from using it for entire site. Click-around navigation and SWF do not play well together.
So what I need is ability to define OGNL expression in Spring coonfig without using SWF. What looked scarry on first sight turned to be extremely easy task.
I did some prototyping of idea and here is what I got in spring config file:

Not as clear as in SWF maybe but enough to prove the idea. It is concise, it does the job. You do not have to write FormActions for trivial things.
Here is what I have in GenericFormController:

When I have time I will do something more production grade. For now I just glad to know that it is achievable and quite simple actualy.

Add user tomcat. Please note that it is normal user with his own home. Many times it was very useful.

Set JAVA_HOME for all users in /etc/profile.d/java.sh . When we run ’su - tomcat’ this script will set up our environment:

Give enough permissions to tomacat:

Now you are able to run tomcat with

The last thing is to run it when system boots:

Done

There is other approach that is much more concise and programmer friendly (tm:) . The trick is to construct and submit form on-the-fly. Let's start with JavaScript function that exploits Prototype:

Code is pretty much self explanatory hence not optimal. You can easily make it twice shorter if you need. Now is time to make a JSP tag that will expose our function in a nice way.

One thing to mention. We can have optional parameter 'confirmMessage' that will ask user if he really wants to submit the form. It is necessary whenever you place buttons 'Remove', 'Delete', 'Make-Something-Horrible' buttons. After plugging you JSP tag you will be able to have on the page something like:

It is even simpler and better than
<a href=""> HTML tag!

Don't thank me. At least yet. There is one more feature. Assume that you want to include really dynamic parameters in this POST. Let say you have number of products on the page and under each product there is 'quanity' field and 'Add to Cart' button. Solution is quite simple again. These is updated version of JS function:

So now we can have such peace of HTML:

Done.