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Showing posts from January, 2018

Decorator design pattern

Greetings! Decorator is a structural design pattern. When we need to add extra functionality to an object it is normal to do it through inheritance. Depending on the number of functionalities we may end up higher number of class hierarchy which leads to maintenance nightmare. Using Decorators we can add additional responsibilities using composition at run time. We do not have to modify existing class but we can "decorate" it to add extra functionalities. Inheritance is one form of extension, but not necessarily the best way to achieve flexibility in our designs. "Attach additional responsibilities to an object dynamically. Decorators provide a flexible alternative to sub classing for extending functionality." Image source wikipedia Let's see a sample, Classes should be open for extension but closed for modification.

Template method design pattern

Greetings! Template Method pattern is a behavioral pattern. When we have a common steps to do something but some steps vary, we can do it using bunch of if else statements. But the problem is things are tightly coupled and when new things need to be added we have to change our class. This leads our class difficult to main. For these kind of problems Template Method can be used. We can have a super class to handle our common steps and let sub classes to define their own implements. "Defines the skeleton of an algorithm in a method, deferring some steps to sub-classes. Template Method lets sub-classes redefine certain steps of an algorithm without changing the algorithm's structure."                          Image source wikipedia A sample code Don't call us, we'll call you. - allow low-level components to hook themselves into a system, but the high-level components determine when they are need and how.

Singleton design pattern

Greetings! Singleton design pattern is one of the most commonly used pattern. It falls under creational patterns. "Ensure a class only has one instance and provide a global point of access to it." There are multiple ways to create a singleton class. Eagerly initialization - instance of class is always created, whether we use it or not. (anyway we are creating a class to use it aren't we?) Lazily initialization - create the instance at first call. we have to deal with threading issues. Use of a holder - Bill Pugh method. use an inner class to create the instance hence create the instance lazily and can avoid threading issues. There are ways to break singleton behavior by force and few tricks to prevent them. Cloning - implement clone() and throw an exception to prevent this Reflection - throws an exception in constructor to solve this Different class loaders - implement getClass()

Observer design pattern

Greetings! Observer design pattern falls into behavioral category. This is useful when multiple objects(observers) needs to be updated according to another object's changes(subject). Subject and observers are loosely coupled and have no knowledge of each other. Subject(one) -> Observer(many) "Define a one-to-many dependency between objects so that when one object changes state, all its dependencies are notified and updated automatically." Image source wikipedia Strive for loosely coupled designs between objects that interact.

Strategy design pattern

Greetings! Strategy pattern is a behavioral pattern. It is one of the easiest patterns to learn. From wikipedia A class should be configured with an algorithm instead of implementing an algorithm directly. An algorithm should be selected and exchanged at run time. Algorithm here is not necessarily a mathematical algorithm. It is usually defined as a procedure that takes some value as input, performs a finite number of steps and produces some value as output. Simply a method that does a specific thing. "Defines a family of algorithms, encapsulates each one, and makes them interchangeable. Strategy lets the algorithm vary independently from clients that use it." Image source  wikipedia Let's have a sample, Encapsulate what varies. Favor composition over inheritance. Program to interface, not implementation.

Spring Generic RestTemplate

Greetings! Springs comes with handy RestTemplate to consume REST APIs. ( baeldung site has a good resource about RestTemplate.) I thought to create a generic wrapper to hide the RestTemplate usage so that others can use it without thinking about RestTemplate. Here is the code. (in my case this is enough for now :) )

Introduction to Node

Node.js Node.js is an open-source, cross-platform, JavaScript runtime built on Chrome's V8 Javascript engine that allows developers to create all kinds of server-side tools and applications in JavaScript. Node.js was developed by Ryan Dahl in 2009. https://nodejs.org/en/ Javascript everywhere Great performance Asynchronous and event driven Single threaded Node package manager (npm) provides access to thousands of reusable packages. Portable Express Express is an un-opinionated, minimalist web framework for Node.js https://expressjs.com/ Setting up the Node environment Install Node $ curl -sL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_8.x | sudo -E bash - $ sudo apt-get install -y nodejs $ node -v Install express generator The express application generator tool generates an Express application skeleton. $ npm install express-generator -g (-g flag installs the tool globally) Create skeleton project $ express --ejs --git hellonode $ cd hellonode $ npm install $...

Layouts in express ejs

Greetings! This is the 5th part of our Node EMS. In my last post I used the same html layout for all the views. But it is still repeating. So one solution for it to use a layout engine. For express ejs we can use express-ejs-layouts . $ git clone https://github.com/slmanju/node-ems.git $ cd node-ems $ npm install $ npm run devstart If you like to check the changes done in this tutorial $ git checkout layout-with-ejs Installation $ npm install express-ejs-layouts --save Usage in app.js we add following, var expressLayouts = require('express-ejs-layouts'); app.use(expressLayouts); app.set('layout', 'layout/main'); Then we create main layout file and use <%-body%> to generate final html. All other html files will have only the body content. out final main.ejs

Creating views with EJS

Greetings! This is the 4th part of Node EMS. Express uses Jade/ Pug as default view template engine. But it is not pure html which is difficult for a non-ui guy. We can change the view engine to EJS using --ejs option when creating the project. Complete code for this tutorial, $ git clone https://github.com/slmanju/node-ems.git $ cd node-ems $ git checkout create-views EJS EJS is a simple templating engine that generate HTML with plain JavaScript. There is no special thing about that since it uses plain HTML and uses JavaScript like syntax to generate dynamic contents. Supports includes, filtters, etc Tags <% 'Scriptlet' tag, for control-flow, no output <%= Outputs the value into the template (HTML escaped) <%- Outputs the unescaped value into the template <%# Comment tag, no execution, no output <%% Outputs a literal '<%' %> Plain ending tag -%> Trim-mode ('newline slurp') tag, trims following newline Create view...

Creating a controller in Node

Greetings! In this 3rd part of the tutorial, we are going to connect our employee schema with the controller. (this is incomplete without views on next tutorial) We are going to use mongoose's built in methods to access database and do our operations. Update employee controller as follow.

Creating models with mongoose

Greetings! This is the 2nd part of our Node employee management system. In this part, we are going to create our model. MongoDB MongoDB is an open source NoSQL database that stores data as documents in JSON like structure. A "collection" of "documents", in a MongoDB database, is analogous to a "table" of "rows" in a relational database. This combination is extremely popular because it helps to use same structure in entire application. (thus creating stacks like MEAN) Mongoose Mongoose is an Object Document Mapper(ODM) for Node. (like Hibernate for Java). It allows us to access MongoDB commands simply and easily. https://www.npmjs.com/package/mongoose Initialize database * You need to have installed Mongo in your computer. go to the terminal and do this, $ mongo > use nodeems; > db.employees.insert({    firstName: 'Manjula',    lastName: 'Jayawardana',    email: 'manjula121@gmail.com',    passwor...

Node employee management system

Greetings! Let's do some practical thing using Node. In this Node tutorial series we are going to build an Employee Management System. Node introduction Node Employee Management System (EMS) setup Creating models with mongoose Creating a controller in Node Creating views with EJS Creating layouts get the complete code $ git clone https://github.com/slmanju/node-ems.git $ cd node-ems $ npm run devstart navigate to http://localhost:3000 home page employees page Generate the project $ express --ejs --git node-ems $ cd node-ems $ npm install $ npm install nodemon --save    update scripts: "devstart": "node ./bin/www" $ npm run devstart   quickly check the setup: http://localhost:3000/ Let's modify the folder structure a bit. $ mkdir server $ mv routes/ server/ $ mv views/ server/ $ mkdir server/controllers $ mkdir server/models > you need to modify the app.js to pick routes, views from server folder no...

Logging with logback

Greetings! It is important to add proper loggers into our application because when something bad happens, it is the way to gather related information. There are multiple libraries for logging in Java like JUL, log4j, logback. Spring uses logback as the default library. When we add any starter dependency that will add starter-logging as well since it depends transitively on the logging starter. howto-configure-logback-for-logging Complete source code,  todoapp $ git clone https://github.com/slmanju/todoapp.git $ cd todoapp $ gradle clean bootrun Log Levels Log messages can be used in several levels. ALL < DEBUG < INFO < WARN < ERROR < FATAL < OFF If WARN is enabled, then WARN, ERROR, FATAL will be logged Appenders Appenders responsible for writing log statements. ConsoleAppender – writes messages to the system console FileAppender – appends messages to a file RollingFileAppender – extends the FileAppender with the ability to roll over log fi...

REST tutorial : security with JWT token

Greetings! This is the last part of our security tutorial. Complete source code $ git clone https://github.com/slmanju/todoapp.git $ cd todoapp $ git checkout security follow the complete tutorial JWT JSON Web Token is an open standard that defines a compact and self-contained way for securely sharing data between parties using a JSON object. Compact - smaller size Self-contained - payload contains all the required information Typically contains, Header - consists of the type of the token, hashing algorithm being used Payload - contains the claims. Signature A token fields are separated by dots like this, xxx.yyy.zzz https://jwt.io/introduction/ Since we already have added token support in our previes tutorial, we only have to modify it to a JWT token. Sample Header {   "alg": "HS512" } Sample Payload {   "sub": "manjula",   "userId": "1",   "role": "ADMIN",   ...

REST tutorial : security

Greetings! So far we have created a nice looking REST API with Java tech stack. But it is missing a crucial piece. Security!!! Complete source code,  todoapp $ git clone https://github.com/slmanju/todoapp.git $ cd todoapp $ git checkout security Spring Security Spring Security is a powerful and highly customizable authentication and access-control framework. It is the de-facto standard for securing Spring-based applications. spring-security Lets add spring security starter to our project. compile('org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter-security') $ gradle clean bootrun $ curl -i http://localhost:8080/todos You will get a message like this, {"timestamp":1515304279482,"status":401,"error":"Unauthorized","message":"Full authentication is required to access this resource","path":"/todos"} With just adding the library Spring has secured our application! Have a look at the con...

REST tutorial : validations

Greetings! Our API is all good but it currently accepts empty Todos. Let's fix that with validations. You can find the complete source code here Todoapp Hibernate Validator Hibernate Validator allows to express and validate application constraints. Implements JSR 380 bean validation api. Hibernate validator is entirely separate from the persistence aspects of Hibernate. http://hibernate.org/validator/ Hibernate Validator 6.0 is the Reference Implementation of the Bean Validation 2.0 specification. Steps: Update gradle compile('javax.validation:validation-api:2.0.1.Final') compile('org.hibernate:hibernate-validator:6.0.7.Final') Update controller method to add @Valid check Update TodoDto with validators Catch validation exception in global exception handler (MethodArgumentNotValidException) Useful annotations @Length(min=, max=) - check if the string length match the range @Max(value=) - check if the value is less than or equals to max @Min(...

REST tutorial : error handling

Greetings! So far we have neglected error scenarios in our API. Any application without proper error handling is a disaster. You can find the complete source code here Todoapp Try these URLs and see the output. http://localhost:8080/todoss http://localhost:8080/todos/abcd Spring has handled errors for us!! but the messages are not interesting enough. Global exception handling With Spring's @ControllerAdvice we can handle exception globally.  ResponseEntityExceptionHandler : A convenient base class for @ControllerAdvice classes that wish to provide centralized exception handling across all @RequestMapping methods through @ExceptionHandler methods.  @RestControllerAdvice is a new feature of Spring Framework 4.3, an annotation with combined @ControllerAdvice + @ResponseBody Enable spring.mvc.throw-exception-if-no-handler-found to customize 404 error Note that our TodoService is also updated to throw a custom exception. See the complete code in error-...

REST tutorial : Controller layer

Greetings! This is the last post of our RESTful webservice section 1 ;) . Previous part is here We still have to implement error handling, security etc You can find the complete source code here  Todoapp Step 1: Create TodoController annotated with @RestController Step 2: Implement our methods. Spring will do the REST ;) Let's test our service using Postman. start the server, gradle clean bootrun Test 1: Empty Todos Note the status: since we do not have any Todos yet, it is 404 Test 2: Create a Todo We get the 201 status and created Todo's location in header Test 3: List Todos Test 4: Update a Todo Test 5: Delete a Todo That is all for now, though it is working we are yet to handle errors properly and secure our end points.

REST tutorial : Create service layer

Greetings! Welcome to 3rd part of our tutorial series. Previous part is here Let's quickly build our service. You can find the complete source code here  Todoapp Step 1: Create DTO Step 2: Update model to create from/ to DTO Step 3: Define service interface Step 4: Implement services That is all for our services.

REST tutorial : Create repository

Greetings! This is the 2nd post of our tutorial series. Previous part is here In this part let's create our domain quickly. You can find the complete source code here  Todoapp Spring Data JPA Spring Data JPA improves the implementation of data access layers by reducing boilerplate codes. For the repository interfaces Spring provides the implementation automatically. https://projects.spring.io/spring-data-jpa/ Lombok Lombok reduces boilerplate code for model objects. It can generate getter, setter, toString, hashCode, equals, constructors for you. https://projectlombok.org To make it simple, we will have Todo with Id, title and summary. Step 1: Modify database properties Step 2: Create Todo model NOTE: Lombok will eliminate getter, setter, toString, hashCode burden. Step 3 : Create Todo repository With magic of Spring that is all ;)

REST tutorial introduction

Greetings! In this tutorial series, we are going to study RESTful services with Spring. We are going to build a TodoApp in this series since it is one of the easiest way to touch the technical stack. You can find the complete source code here Todoapp For the simplicity i'm going split tutorial into smaller parts. Section 1: CRUD Introduction Repository layer Service layer Controller layer Section 2: Error handling Exception handling Validations Section 3: Security Add token authentication Enhance token with JWT Section 4: User interface Section 5 : Miscellaneous Logging with logback Goal Create a RESTful service using Java tech stack. What you need Java 8 Gradle 4 IDE REST REST stands for REpresentational State Transfer. It is an architectural style rather than a strict protocol. Not a standard but a set of constraints, such as being stateless, having a client/server relationship, and a uniform interface. rest wiki Spring Framewor...