Congrats to Geert and the rest of the RIFE development team on the 1.0 release. I keep saying that I’ll take a close look at RIFE, but other stuff keeps getting in the way, like Wicket.
RIFE is an interesting way to build web applications, but it’s more than a web app framework. It includes stuff like persistence, scheduler, CMS framework and syndication. On second thought, I did look at RIFE and it was overwhelming. 
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After reading Matt’s post about CSRF (cross-site request forgeries), I’m curious to know what Java developers are doing to prevent against AJAX-based attacks on their sites. Do the popular AJAX frameworks (are they called frameworks?) provide any defense?
CSRF has been around for years, but will the eagerness to implement AJAX make life easier for attackers?
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Over the last few months, I’ve spoken with a number of first-time authors that became extremely frustrated with the book process, usually because of the review or editing process. What these people fail to realize is that, by creating a book for a publisher, you’re essentially building a product for a company. Think of it more like writing a large software application: you get a spec, implement it, and get feedback from the users. Wash, rinse, repeat.
If you get hung up on having your creativity directed by others, you’re not going to enjoy writing professionally very much.
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Patrick and I will be hanging out on the JavaRanch forums this week to promote our book, “Hibernate Quickly”.
Have you ordered your copy yet? The holidays will be here before you know it and they make great gifts!
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Looks like I’m not the only one looking for time tracking software. At least I could let Matt do the leg work for me. Our time reporting requirements have increased and I decided to go with ActiTIME for a web-based solution.
It’s a Struts app, with MySQL on the backend. The install is painless and supports almost all of the features I need. The only thing that’s lacking is a file upload for projects and tasks.
Of the Java-based solutions listed on Matt’s site, ActiTIME was the only one that had a UI that didn’t make me sick from looking at it.
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I just got a call from a client looking for a few senior level Java developers for a long-term contract in Madison, WI. If you’re interested, send me a resume at (resumes at systemmobile dot com). I’ll post more details when I get them.
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Wicket’s conversion setup is pretty simple and offers two java.util.Date converters: one to convert from an Object to a Date and another to convert a Date to a String. The default converters use the user’s Locale, which is great if you don’t want to standardize on a date format.
If you do, you’ll need to provide your own implementation of DateConverter and DateToStringConverter and register it with the IConverterFactory. Details on registering your own converters can be found here: http://wicket.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Using_custom_converters.
The DateToStringConverter has to be registered with the StringConverter:
stringConverter.set(java.util.Date.class, myDateToStringConverter);
stringConverter.set(java.sql.Date.class, myDateToStringConverter);
stringConverter.set(java.sql.Timestamp.class, myDateToStringConverter);
The DateConverter just needs to be set on the Converter object:
converter.set(java.util.Data.class, new MyDateConverter());
The next thing I need to figure out is the DatePicker component.
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We’re currently looking for some Java developers with some J2EE and B2B experience. The position requires 100% travel: 4 days per week throughout the US. The rate is $50-$60USD/hr; expenses are covered.
If selected for the engagement, you will need to attend a week of training in California. After the training is completed, you’ll work on 4-6 month projects, but the contract is ongoing. If you’re interested in this kind of position and can attend training next week, please send a resume to (resumes at systemmobile dot com).
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We’ve been tearing the blog project apart and we’re very close to being code-complete. Then the designer comes in and breaks everything we’ve been putting together.
Wrapping up this project opens up our schedule for new projects and clients. We never seem to have a problem keeping busy, but we’re also looking to have new clients.
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I spent some time over the weekend reading about IBM’s notion of autonomic computing. While it looks interesting, it doesn’t appear to have gotten much traction yet. Anybody using this in real-world applications?
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After examining Roller and Blosjom, we just decided to roll our own blog application. Neither of the available applications supported the features we needed and hacking up their code, especially Roller, wasn’t very appealing.
In less than half the time it would’ve taken to modify existing apps, we’ve created a multi-user, multi-role blogging application using Struts, Spring and Hibernate, under Java 5. A month ahead of schedule and well under budget.
Once it goes live, I’ll post some screenshots.
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David Oranchak responded to my message on the Tomcat Users mailing list about this problem. My app had jsp-api.jar in the classpath, which was getting copied into the generated WAR file. That was the source of the problem and it’s now been fixed. Thanks Dave!
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Apple is coming out with a new mouse. Too bad the only thing helping their share price is the iPod.
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