And now for something completely different: how to mind-map in color with a little help from ruby?

I like to mind-map and the tool I use is FreeMind. You can add icons to your nodes, import pictures etc.etc. You can also add some color to your mind-map; select a node and change the color. For some -strange- reason I wanted to have all my nodes in different colors and after one minute of selecting nodes, changing colors I already abandoned that idea => too tedious. Ruby to the rescue: Freemind stores your mind-maps in XML format and this little ruby script turns your boring mind-map into something colorful:

require 'rexml/document'
include REXML

def traverse_element(element)
    element.elements.each('node') do |e|
        e.attributes['COLOR']= ("#%06x" % rand(0xffffff))
        traverse_element(e)
    end
end

doc = Document.new(File.new("original_boring_mindmap.mm"))
traverse_element(doc.root)
out = File.new("new_colorful_mindmap.mm","w")
out.write(doc)

Nerdy? You bet ya.....

Filed under General | 1 Comment »

In a previous blog I described the minimal basic configuration of the Acegi framework. In this blog I'll show you how easy it is to implement your own security provider. There can be many reasons why you would want to implement such a customized security provider. In my case I had to secure an application using user information that was being maintained by an external php-based application. The user information could only be retrieved using a web service. In this blog I will demonstrate several ways to implement your own security provider.

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How to get started with the Acegi framework and implement your own Security provider?

In the old days folks used the J2EE securing capabilities of the app server. This is of course still an option, but there are superior alternatives like the Acegi framework. Acegi is far from new and with the latest releases it has become a very stable and easy-to-use framework, especially when combined with Spring. I had to implement a custom security provider for a customer and was very surprised how easy this was accomplished. This blog describes the steps I took to get started with Acegi.

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How to use AspectJ to check your code in combination with maven2?

A couple a weeks ago me and some colleagues took a two day course in AOP. The course was given by the excellent teacher Adrian Colyer. In this short blog I want to show you a very nice (not well known) feature of AspectJ and how you can integrate AspectJ in your build using the maven2 plugin.

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Filed under Java | 1 Comment »

You have finished your first iteration in your project and in order to get feedback from the business you wish to have your application deployed on the test environment. In many projects the test environment is maintained by the developers. That is fine, but the acceptance and production environment are not. Why not start packaging and delivering your project artifacts like you would with a production release? This way you have a chance to fine-tune this process. When the time comes that you will have to deliver to an acceptance or production release you will have automated this process, aligned it with the expectations of the department responsible for deployment and, hopefully, made it less fallible. Where to start?

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How to deal with platform environment (Test, Acceptance, Production etc.) specific variables in Java applications?

Applications often need resources like databases, third-company web services, ldap servers and other external systems. It is common practice to externalize the configuration of such resources. In the case of a database dependency the use of a DataSource (hiding the complexity of configuring and connecting to the database) is a good example of this. The details of the configuration are in most cases platform environment specific. So how do we properly externalize the details of the configuration?

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Filed under Java | 8 Comments »