To all you Game of Thrones Fans out there...

My new Jenkins failure notification email template...

The Future of Flex? This Graph might give you a hint

Recently I've been meeting many Flex developers who are trying to figure out where's the Flex job market going, mostly asking themselves if it's time to switch to HTML5 or other client technologies. This graph might give you a hint. The graph displays the percentage of jobs found for each search terms on indeed.com. According to this graph, demand for Flex developers is obviously taking a huge fall while demand for HTML5 is rising in an amazing rate.

source: Indeed.com

I find two possible explanations to the graph, each one is also introducing a different forecast :

• [Pessimistic] Flex is vanishing from the industry, in a couple of years it will no longer be used for new projects, Flex developers will still be able to find jobs maintaining existing projects, very much like developer of other technologies that have vanished form the job market.

• [Optimistic] The market is over reacting to Adobe's recent Flex related strategy. Yes, some companies are avoiding the use of Flex for new projects and are exploring new technologies, but soon those companies will find out the obvious, HTML5\JS Are not mature enough and at this point can not offer companies a real alternative to Flex. Many of these companies will soon understand that leaving Flex was a mistake. They will get back to hiring Flex developers.

Which one of these forecasts is the right one? we'll just have to wait and see.

Tips for working with Spring Roo on STS

In my current project I do lots of use of Roo 1.2 under the SpringSource Tool Suite, Roo is becoming one of my favorite tools, especially after the recently added layering in version 1.2. Roo and it's support on the STS is still in it's early stages, there are a number of roo bugs that make the work process a little rigid. Here are a two tips which will help you get more from Roo on STS

• Use the Navigator view on the tree, this way you'll be able to see the AJ code that roo generates and not only the Java classes. goto Window > Show View > Other > Navigator

• When you start STS, make sure you open Roo shell so roo will update AJ files while you code. To do this right click the project on the tree > Spring Tools > Open Roo Shell

Looking back at Swing

I am currently using a Java third party library that uses Swing classes. I had to perform a simple task today, which included creating a Label with an Icon, using Swing's ImageIcon class. I looked into swing six years ago. Then, at the time I was the first Flex person in a Java developer’s team. The company I was working for was switching from Swing to Flex. It is interesting to look at Swing and learn how the concept of productivity in a GUI development environment has changed over such a short time period. For instance, this is how the Swing manual suggests that you create a label with an Icon:

ImageIcon icon = createImageIcon("images/middle.gif",
                            "a pretty but meaningless splat");
label1 = new JLabel("Image and Text", icon, JLabel.CENTER);
...
label3 = new JLabel(icon);

/** Returns an ImageIcon, or null if the path was invalid. */
protected ImageIcon createImageIcon(String path,
                                      String description) {
java.net.URL imgURL = getClass().getResource(path);
if (imgURL != null) {
   return new ImageIcon(imgURL, description);
} else {
   System.err.println("Couldn't find file: " + path);
   return null;
}
}

Can you imagine? All this code is required for a simple Label with an Icon! Software
development has changed in the last few years. Platforms and languages are expected to be more efficient and require less code and time from the developer.

STS with Maven - java.lang.OutOfMemoryError: Java heap space

I've recently started using SpringSource Tool Suite (STS) for a large Flex on Java project, In the recent configuration I used eclipse to code and launched Maven using command line. STS provides a built in Maven launcher which really makes more sense to use (STS use m2eclipse to fully integrate maven with eclipse). The only problem is that once I tried to run mvn clean install I ran into the good old heap space issue:

java.lang.OutOfMemoryError: Java heap space
at java.io.BufferedWriter.(BufferedWriter.java:87)
at java.io.BufferedWriter.(BufferedWriter.java:70)
at java.io.PrintStream.init(PrintStream.java:83)
at java.io.PrintStream.(PrintStream.java:100)
at java.io.PrintStream.(PrintStream.java:62)
at org.aspectj.weaver.bcel.LazyClassGen.toLongString(LazyClassGen.java:764)
at org.aspectj.weaver.bcel.BcelWeaver.weave(BcelWeaver.java:1837)
at org.aspectj.weaver.bcel.BcelWeaver.weaveWithoutDump(BcelWeaver.java:1755)
at org.aspectj.weaver.bcel.BcelWeaver.weaveAndNotify(BcelWeaver.java:1515)
at org.aspectj.weaver.bcel.BcelWeaver.weave(BcelWeaver.java:1322)
at org.aspectj.ajdt.internal.compiler.AjPipeliningCompilerAdapter.weaveQueuedEntries(AjPipeliningCompilerAdapter.java:435)
at org.aspectj.ajdt.internal.compiler.AjPipeliningCompilerAdapter.queueForWeaving(AjPipeliningCompilerAdapter.java:371)
at org.aspectj.ajdt.internal.compiler.AjPipeliningCompilerAdapter.afterProcessing(AjPipeliningCompilerAdapter.java:358)
at org.aspectj.ajdt.internal.compiler.CompilerAdapter.ajc$after$org_aspectj_ajdt_internal_compiler_CompilerAdapter$5$6b855184(CompilerAdapter.aj:98)
at org.aspectj.org.eclipse.jdt.internal.compiler.Compiler.process(Compiler.java:652)
at org.aspectj.org.eclipse.jdt.internal.compiler.Compiler.compile(Compiler.java:392)
at org.aspectj.ajdt.internal.core.builder.AjBuildManager.performCompilation(AjBuildManager.java:1007)
at org.aspectj.ajdt.internal.core.builder.AjBuildManager.performBuild(AjBuildManager.java:268)
at org.aspectj.ajdt.internal.core.builder.AjBuildManager.batchBuild(AjBuildManager.java:182)
at org.aspectj.ajdt.ajc.AjdtCommand.doCommand(AjdtCommand.java:112)
at org.aspectj.ajdt.ajc.AjdtCommand.runCommand(AjdtCommand.java:60)
at org.aspectj.tools.ajc.Main.run(Main.java:355)
at org.aspectj.tools.ajc.Main.runMain(Main.java:234)
at org.codehaus.mojo.aspectj.AbstractAjcCompiler.execute(AbstractAjcCompiler.java:378)
at org.apache.maven.plugin.DefaultPluginManager.executeMojo(DefaultPluginManager.java:490)
at org.apache.maven.lifecycle.DefaultLifecycleExecutor.executeGoals(DefaultLifecycleExecutor.java:694)
at org.apache.maven.lifecycle.DefaultLifecycleExecutor.executeGoalWithLifecycle(DefaultLifecycleExecutor.java:556)
at org.apache.maven.lifecycle.DefaultLifecycleExecutor.executeGoal(DefaultLifecycleExecutor.java:535)
at org.apache.maven.lifecycle.DefaultLifecycleExecutor.executeGoalAndHandleFailures(DefaultLifecycleExecutor.java:387)
at org.apache.maven.lifecycle.DefaultLifecycleExecutor.executeTaskSegments(DefaultLifecycleExecutor.java:348)
at org.apache.maven.lifecycle.DefaultLifecycleExecutor.execute(DefaultLifecycleExecutor.java:180)
at org.apache.maven.DefaultMaven.doExecute(DefaultMaven.java:328)

The solution obviously is to increase the maximum heap size which is represented by the JVM -Xmx argument. Now there are a number of places you can find this argument (STS.ini is one of them) , but here's the one place I found that really makes the difference.

• Goto the 'Run Configurations' popup of the current maven run you are trying to use (can be accesed by right clicking your project and selecting 'Run As')
• Select your current run under 'Maven Build' in the tree
• Select the the JVM tab and add your requested -Xmx settings (I chose -Xmx512m)
• Press 'Apply' and 'Run'

You should now be able to run your Maven project.

Using relative url with RESTEasy path annotation

I ran into the following problem in the office this week, I'm working on a WAR project that exposes multiple services of different types (SOAP, REST, AMF). The REST part was written using Jboss's RESTEasy, after I renamed the REST servlet RESTEasy's services were no longer working. I was surprised to find out that the servlet name was hard coded into the code as part of the @Path annotation content, in order to update RESTEasy with the new servlet name, I was supposed to change the annotation content in a number of classes. Luckily there's a work around for this, and it's one that in my opinion you should always use, RESTEasy lets you specify the path prefix as a context variable, all you have to do is declare it in your web.xml in the following way...

in my code I have the following Path deceleration:

@Path("/rest-api/user")

rest-api is the servlet name, I'd like to make sure it's no longer hard coded in my application..

I will add the "mapping prefix" into my web.xml:

<web-app>
<servlet>
   <servlet-name>rest-servlet</servlet-name>
   <servlet-class>org.jboss.resteasy.plugins.server.servlet.HttpServletDispatcher</servlet-class>
</servlet>
<servlet-mapping>
   <servlet-name>rest-servlet</servlet-name>
   <url-pattern>/rest-api/*</url-pattern>
</servlet-mapping>
<context-param>
   <param-name>resteasy.servlet.mapping.prefix</param-name>
   <param-value>/rest-api</param-value>
</context-param>
.
.
.
</web-app>

Now when I've added the mapping prefix to the web.xml I can drop the servlet name from all path annotations:

@Path("/user")

In case I'de like to rename my servlet or for some reason change a part of the service URL, all I need to do is update the mapping prefix variable in the web.xml

Roo Flex Addon Tutorial

I ran a workshop today at Tikal exploring the new Roo Flex Addon, during this workshop My colleagues Haim Raman, Shay Gabay prepared a short tutorial for using Roo Flex Addon. If you are interested in the full post including our thoughts and conclusion on Roo goto the post page on Tikal's website. Below I've listed the basic steps you need to go through in order to run a simple Roo Flex Application

Getting Required Software

Spring Roo addon is still in early development so using it is tricky, it's not entirely compatible with different Roo versions. In order to run this tutorial you need to get the following artifacts and versions:

spring-roo-1.1.1.RELEASE
Latest running Roo Flex Addon

Installing the software

• Unzip spring-roo-1.1.1.RELEASE.zip to a desired folder (this will be declared later as your ROO_HOME)
• Copy the addon jar to ROO_HOME\bundle directory

Make the following changes to your environment variables

• ROO_HOME = installed roo dir
• Add ROO_HOME\bin to your path variable

Now open a command shell and create a new directory

mkdir voteFlex
cd voteFle

Open roo shell by typing "roo"

Once the shell is open, you can copy\paste the entire following script, sit back relax and let Roo do it's magic and work for you.

project --topLevelPackage com.tikalk.fuseday.roo --projectName voteFlex
persistence setup --provider HIBERNATE --database HYPERSONIC_PERSISTENT
flex setup
entity --class ~.domain.Choice --testAutomatically
field string namingChoice --notNull --sizeMin 1 --sizeMax 30
field string description --sizeMax 80
entity --class Vote --testAutomatically
field reference choice --type Choice
field string ip --notNull
field date registered --type java.util.Date --notNull --past
flex remoting all --package ~.service

Exit from roo using the exit command and run your new application by calling

mvn tomcat:run

Chances are that you will get some missing dependencies, in order to solve this go edit the /voteFlex/pom.xml and add the following repository to it

<repository>
<id>spring-snapshot</id>
<name>Spring Portfolio Snapshot Repository</name>
<url>http://maven.springframework.org/snapshot</url>
<releases>
<enabled>false</enabled>
</releases>
<snapshots>
<enabled>true</enabled>
</snapshots>
</repository>

Thanks to Ken Rimple for solving the above issue.

Now, let go through the script rows and try to understand what Roo is doing

project --topLevelPackage com.tikalk.fuseday.roo --projectName voteFlex

Creates a new Spring Roo project for a given name and top level package name, this line will add the basic files that are required for the project.

persistence setup --provider HIBERNATE --database HYPERSONIC_PERSISTENT

Sets up your persistence layer, use Hibernate as ORM, use Hypersonic as a DB.

flex setup

Setup the project to use Flex as GUI, this line will add Flex dependencies to the project's pom and add a number of Flex features to the build.

entity --class ~.domain.Choice --testAutomatically
field string namingChoice --notNull --sizeMin 1 --sizeMax 30
field string description --sizeMax 80
entity --class Vote --testAutomatically
field reference choice --type Choice
field string ip --notNull
field date registered --type java.util.Date --notNull –past

The above lines create entities and add fields to these entities. These lines will create Hibernate entities, relevant AspectJ scripts and so on.

flex remoting all --package ~.service

The above does the real work, it scafolds the entities and creates Flex GUI that will represent them, it also creates services in the specified ".service" package. It also adds BlazeDS and configures it.

once your tomcat is up and running to go to http://localhost:8080/voteFlex/voteFlex_scaffold.html And see your running application, you can edit and modify both vote and choice entities from your auto created Flex screen.