Uberconf Impressions, Day 1

Last week a group of us from eCollege attended the Uberconf presentation here in the Denver area.  I figured I'd post a few impressions:

First off - the venue - the Westin in Westminster, CO.  Nice place.  Really awesome food whether you are a vegetarian or a carnivore.  Free drinks all day.  Decent coffee, although the cups were oddly small.  One note to the Westin - people operate better at temperatures higher than 58 degrees.  It was FREAKING COLD in there.

Now on the conference organization.  This was one of the best flows of any conference I've attended.  There weren't too many people working the conference, and it still went well.  Easy registration process, good marketing materials (4GB USB stick - not bad), and two t-shirts I would be super embarrassed about wearing.  Easy to figure out what sessions were coming up and where they were going to be.  One minor nit - it's a developer conference, which means laptops - next time, get more power strips in the rooms, at least for the workshops.

And, finally the important stuff - the sessions (day 1):

Patterns of Modular Architecture - This was not quite what I had hoped.  I was looking for patterns, and instead got a fairly basic explanation of how to make your dependencies fairly one-way and isolated.  Neat I guess?  A decent refresher, but definitely nothing earth-shattering, and the most interesting part was OSGI, which the presenter covered for literally two minutes at the end of the presentation.  It did look promising, though.

Common Antipatterns and how to Avoid Them - This was well presented, but it was still a little light.  Good reminders on some common sense things NOT to do, and some reasonably interesting stuff out there - that this presentation was really hitting home with some of the attendees scared me - some of these were things that just shouldn't be happening now, and they obviously still are!

Architect for Scale - This was a good session - lots of 'things you should be doing when you get to this size/load'.  There were a fair amount of good notes about what was not enough, what was too much, and how to move up without huge disruptions

Automated Deployment with Maven - This was a huge win.  It was a discussion about how to use Maven plugins to streamline and automate the numerous steps that go into releasing a module of code.  With maven, it involves updating poms, branching, integrating, labeling, etc, and many manual steps.  With some of the tips in the presentation, I was able to make a releasable unit this morning in about 10 minutes with the help of some maven doc.  Why were we not doing this!?!?  Oh well - awesome.  Worth the price of the registration itself.

Architecture - Non-functional Requirements - This was more of a 'what goes into architecture' talk, than something specifically about non-functionals, but very interesting nonetheless.  As someone who is headed down that path, it validated much of what I think architecture is about.  There was some great back and forth in this presentation from the presenter of this session and the presenter of the earlier Antipattern session.

Grails Wizardry: Mocking all your web services with Grails

Background

At work, we are using EC2 to run capacity tests on our environment, which would normally be pretty trivial, but we are a big SAAS shop with tons and tons of endpoints internally.  Without setting up EVERYTHING in the cloud, we can't really run our tests...or can we?  We would love to use Amazon VPC for EC2, but it requires a fair amount of intervention from your network team.  That will be a great alternative down the road - being able to point back into the internal network to access machines rather than deploying them in the cloud.  So, plan b - Using grails, I was able to mock every single .NET service that our application talks to in about three hours.  Here are the details:

We use SOAP services that return some XML, I simply used Fiddler to see what responses are sent back over the wire for each service, and I was ready to rock.  There are two main pieces to the puzzle:

MarkupBuilders


Generating XML is almost too easy in Groovy.  Using the instructions here, I was able to write some code that spits out some xml based on info passed in.  For instance this sample Grails controller will take a login and company and return an XML document with a user id and company id:

import groovy.xml.MarkupBuilder

class UserController {

  /**
  * /MyService/users/getuser?login=myuser&company=mycompany
  */
  def returnUser = {

        def user = params.login
        def comp = params.company

        def writer = new StringWriter()
        def xml = getXMLBuilder( writer )

        xml.'user'('xmlns:xsi': getNsXsi(), 'xmlns:xsd': getXsd(), 'xmlns': getXmlNs() ) {
          userId( "${comp }@${user}" )
          compId( "${comp}@compId" )
        }

        render( text: writer.toString(), contentType:"text/xml", encoding:"UTF-8" )
  }

  def getXMLBuilder( StringWriter writer ) {

        writer.append(  "" )

        return new MarkupBuilder( writer )
  }

  def getNsXsi() {
        return "http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
  }

  def getXsd() {
        return "http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"
  }

  def getXmlNs() {
        return "http://yourcompany.com/UserStuff/2009/11/01"
  }
}

Now that you have defined your controller, you need to make it so your application can make its normal request to the url it has configured but still get to your controller.  That's where the URLMappings.groovy class comes in:

UrlMappings

The UrlMappings file already exists by default when creating a project.  This file is built to map external urls to your controllers - you can use it to create nice shiny RESTful URLs, or just to do some utilitarian mappings for backwards compatibility, etc.  Obviously not every project's requirements map to the grails conventions on how urls map to controllers.  To add access to your controller from a different url, you just need to add the following snippet - this will allow Grails to map your request from something like

/MyService/users/getuser?login=me&company=acme

to

/user?login=me&company=acme 

    "/MyService/users/getuser" {
          controller = "user"
          action = "returnUser"
    }

More information can be found at this link.

At this point, you have a service running that will return the valid XML for your service, and will respond to a call at a URL that doesn't actually match.  Now you can rinse and repeat for each service that you need to mock out.  Happy Grailing!

PowerMock - Mocking Statics - Supplemental Documentation

I have recently suffered through a bit of pain working with PowerMock.  It seemed extremely promising, as it sits on top of EasyMock, which we use for mock objects in our unit tests (it also works with Mockito, apparently), and promises to give you the tools to mock those pesky static calls that kill testability.  I had a few issues getting started, and they centered around jUnit 3.

PowerMock with jUnit 3

All the examples and documentation seem to be based on jUnit 4. This page has great examples on how to run your static mocking tests when running on jUnit 4, but how to do it on jUnit 3??  An extremely simple example of how to do this in jUnit 4 is here:

@RunWith(PowerMockRunner.class)
public class AwesomeTest {

  @PrepareForTest(StaticClass.class)
  public void testDoExecute() throws Exception {
    ...
    PowerMock.mockStatic(StaticClass.class);

    expect( StaticClass.doStuff( param ) ).andReturn( "yo!" );
    replay( StaticClass.class );

    //test some stuff!
  }
}

To accomplish the same thing in jUnit 3, without the annotation support, you can do this:

public class MyPowerMockSuite extends PowerMockSuite {

  public static TestSuite suite() throws Exception {
  
    return new PowerMockSuite(AwesomeTest.class);
  }
 
  public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
  
    junit.textui.TestRunner.run( suite() );
  }  
}

public class AwesomeTest {

  @PrepareForTest(StaticClass.class)
  public void testDoExecute() throws Exception {
    ...
    PowerMock.mockStatic(StaticClass.class);

    expect( StaticClass.doStuff( param ) ).andReturn( "yo!" );
    replay( StaticClass.class );

    //test some stuff!
  }
}

PowerMock and Multiple Classes

To mock methods from multiple classes, you will need to amend the '@PrepareForTest' annotation, just passing a string array like so:

public class MyPowerMockSuite extends PowerMockSuite {

  public static TestSuite suite() throws Exception {
  
    return new PowerMockSuite(AwesomeTest.class);
  }
 
  public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
  
    junit.textui.TestRunner.run( suite() );
  }  
}

public class AwesomeTest {

  @PrepareForTest({StaticClass.class,StaticClassier.class})
  public void testDoExecute() throws Exception {
    ...
    PowerMock.mockStatic(StaticClass.class);

    expect( StaticClass.doStuff( param ) ).andReturn( "yo!" );
    replay( StaticClass.class );

    PowerMock.mockStatic(StaticClassier.class);

    expect( StaticClassier.doStuff( param ) ).andReturn( "yo!" );
    replay( StaticClassier.class );

    //test some stuff!
  }
}

Gotchas

PowerMock 1.3.7 only works with EasyMock 2.5.2, which we have had some issues with.  I had to move back to PowerMock 1.2.5 to use EasyMock 2.4.  I didn't find a lot of issues with using this version, though we had some odd calls that were required where it told me not to stub a return when the method returned something, or where I had to stub out calls that didn't seem like they should be required.  With a simple static method that didn't really call many other static methods, it seems to work like a charm.

How Five Guys Got Big...by being Awesome

About once a month when I was young (late 80s into the 90s), my dad and I went to this ratty little burger shop to get the most delicious burgers and out of this world fries at a place called 'Five Guys'.  The people were always friendly, and the order was always perfect.  It was no frills but they promised delicious burgers and fries, and it's what they delivered, without exception.

Fast forward to today, and Five Guys is EVERYWHERE.  It's growing in leaps and bounds - they even have them here in Colorado, with 400 to come in California!  Read the story in Inc. Magazine about how they got here.  You can really learn a lot from the way this business is run.

In an age when we understand that eating burgers and fries is not good for you, if you are going to do it, don't do it at McDonald's.  Go get something worth splurging on.

Grails Wizardry: FCKEditor

So I am working on this side project, and obviously I chose Groovy and Grails to do the work.  I continuously marvel at how awesome, easy-to-use, and powerful the framework is, but lately I've been even more amazed at the plugins and how many there are now, how well documented (most) are, and how the quality has increased greatly.

We are using rich editors, and the FCKeditor was a no-brainer.  I was delighted to find out that it was available as a grails plugin.  I pulled it into my project, and defining an editor in one of my views was as hard as this:

<fckeditor:editor
id="materials"
name="materials"
width="70%"
height="200"
toolbar="Standard"
fileBrowser="default"
value="${fieldValue(bean:mybean, field:'materials').decodeHTML()}">               ${fieldValue(bean:contentInstance, field:'materials').decodeHTML()}
</fckeditor:editor>

The important parts here are:

1. toolbar:  This gives you the ability to choose the set of tools for your editor.  More on this one later
2. value: You can identify the preset value.  If this is html that was saved, then you must include the decodeHTML() call or else the value you will see is raw html.

The rest is pretty much boilerplate - obviously the height/width will depend on your site.

To customize the contents of your toolbar, you will need to specify a custom configuration file, which is in the form of javascript.  Your gsp page must contain:

<fckeditor:config CustomConfigurationsPath="${resource(dir:'js',file:'myconfig.js')}"/>

This file looks like this:

FCKConfig.ToolbarSets["ed-limited"] = [
   ['Cut','Copy','Paste'],
   ['Undo','Redo','-','Bold','Italic','Underline','StrikeThrough'],
   '/',
   ['OrderedList','UnorderedList','-','Outdent','Indent'],
   ['Link'],
   //'/',
   ['Style'],
   ['Table','Image','SpecialChar'],
   ['About']
   ];

You can define as many of these as you want.  See this link for configuration details.

Once you defined this, you can simply update the toolbar attribute on the FCKeditor to point to your new toolbar, in this case 'ed-limited'.

One big gotcha is that this uses 2.6 currently, while the newest stable version seems to be 3.1.

The Brilliance of Southwest

When watching the yearly installation of March Madness, CEOs of all the major airlines not named Southwest must be furious.  Nearly every commercial break during the games features an advertisement touting Southwest's baggage policy.  In fact, most Southwest ads feature ridicule of other airlines.  I fly almost exclusively on Southwest.  Make no mistake - it's not perfect.  Sometimes flights are late.  Sometimes you have to too much taxiing, or to wait a while for a gate assignment.  The difference between Southwest and the rest is clear:  Southwest makes it a bit easier to deal with the stressful travel day by being cordial, helpful, and by performing their jobs professionally and with a smile.  Because of this advantage, Southwest can charge a little more than the bargain carriers, and not charge for baggage.

The CEOs of United, American, et al. can only be furious at themselves.  Jena and I were talking about how the show 'Undercover Boss' (which we love by the way) should feature a CEO of an airline, but then we joked that they would have to shut down the entire operation after all employees in the airport were fired by the undercover boss for being surly, unpleasant, and incompetent.

An example of the rank ineptitude:  'The Rest' has employed a baggage fee policy that encourages people to cram all their stuff into oversized baggage that they attempt, usually unsuccessfully, to cram into an overhead bin.  After being berated by the rude airplane staff (who let them on the plane with the large bag in the first place), the thrifty passengers are allowed to check their bags FOR FREE.  Now the people who played by the rules are mad because they had to pay and the people who cheated didn't.  The people who didn't pay aren't happy because they have been treated rudely by the flight attendants.  All of the people are wondering why they didn't fly another airline, like...hmmm...Southwest maybe?

Lesson to any managers of any company, any size, any industry, any location:  there is no excuse for rude, unprofessional behavior, no matter how hard or stressful your job may be.  If this behavior is tolerated, then it becomes accepted practice, and all of a sudden a few years pass by and you can't watch basketball without your company being made fun of by a company that never accepted that sort of behavior.

What's That You're Reading?? February '10 Edition

Well once again, the days have become weeks, weeks have become a month, and I haven't checked in on my blog...sigh.  I need a personal assistant to hound me into keeping up with this thing.  It's not for lack of ideas of what to write about that I let my poor journal languish...I seem to always find something else to do.

So for an awesome Christmas/Birthday present, my mom got me a Kindle!  This is the perfect gift for a serial reader like myself.  It's easy to read, easy to use, has free wireless internet (super handy for those of us without iphones/androids), has incredible battery life, and delivers me books in under a minute.  It's so awesome!  I fired it up, and immediately ordered...

The Lost Symbol - This is Dan Brown's latest Robert Langdon tale, and what can I say...it's obviously interesting in its conspiracy theory stylings, similar to Angels and Demons and The Da Vinci Code, but this one really seemed to fall short.  I loved that it all took place in DC, and down the street from our old house.  I liked the initial plot.  It's pretty much everything else that took place that really didn't do it for me.  I thought it was too long, that the badguy was almost comical, and that the way everything shook out was just a little over the top, even for a fiction.  The ending wasn't even earth-shattering.  Sigh.

The Last Dickens: A Novel - this was a novel by Matthew Pearl who also wrote the Dante Club, which I really enjoyed.  This one is about Dickens' last manuscript, and the trials and tribulations of a small publishing house in Boston that held the rights to Dickens publishing in the US.  It's a pretty decent mystery until the end, when it all of a sudden turns out that the entire story was based on a premise that more ridiculous than I ever could have imagined.  Fairly disappointing book for the last 20-30 pages...

SuperFreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes, and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance - this followup to the big blockbuster Freakonomics is more of the same - irreverent discussion of real-life things and how they relate to economics.  It's worth a read, quick, and provides a reader with a few more decent 'hmm didn't think of that' moments, but certainly not anything astoundingly good.  I'd say it's well written but not really extremely well thought out stuff.

Simple Genius - Ahh, another David Baldacci book.  No need to write much.  They are always pretty good without being great.

The Whiskey Rebels - Another historical fiction from David Liss, whose books I really enjoy.  This one is a story about a couple that is tricked into buying a plot of useless land in western Pennsylvania after the Revolution, and a disgraced spy in Philadelphia who gets roped into a crazy plot to bring down Alexander Hamilton's Bank of the United States.  Inevitably and rather smartly, the two plot lines intersect in what is a very enjoyable novel.  David Liss really has mastered the historical novel (and the non-historical, as evidenced by another book I really liked - The Ethical Assassin).

The Girl Who Played with Fire - This was another really good book by Stieg Larsson.  The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was an immensely enjoyable novel about a disgraced investigative writer in Sweden on the trail of a really juicy story, and his collaboration with the young and troubled investigator Lisbeth Salander.  That book was very well written with great character development, and had a great cliffhanger of an ending.  This book was even better!  A great story that fell into place at a nice pace, with more great writing, interesting characters, and a crazy ending.  I can't wait to read Larsson's third (and sadly last) book soon.

Now that I finished those, I am working on these:

The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World - this is a (so far) easy to read history of currency.  The first fifty pages have been full of interesting information and it's delivered in a very accessible manner.

All the Pretty Horses

The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals - All you can say every time you finish a chapter of this book is 'WOW'.  I can't believe that the things we eat have such a colorful (and mostly disgusting) history.  Really makes you think about the things you eat.