21 Feb 2005
One of the web applications I maintain had a need to have fields trimmed. I had previously just relied on validation to return an invalid field if it had
been left in an untrimmed state by the end user. Not necessarily the most ideal situation so I looked for a way to automatically trim fields requiring as
little code as possible (hey, i’m putting this together in the middle of the night).
Haven’t done too much with custom request processors but they looked like the best choice.
So i started out writing a request processor with an implementation for processActionForward. It didn’t work as expected so I tried implementing a differe
nt method. A short while later I had a custom RequestProcessor with an implementation for processPopulate. The jist of the implementation was the functio
n would loop through the parameters in the http request object, manipulate the string arrays, trim the desired value and put it back in the request. It a
ctually worked like a charm and was easily implemented once I figured out the nuances of the request processor.
19 Feb 2005
I’m toying with the idea of totally using delicious and Foxylicious (the Firefox plug-in) as my bookmark system.
Part of my problem is that I use multiple machines (laptop and desktop at work, couple desktops at home) and I like to have synchronized bookmarks at each.
I’ve been using delicious for awhile but just haven’t been in a good habit of assigning proper tags. I’ve fixed that issue and I think i’m ready for the j
ump.
To date I’ve been using the firefox bookmark synchronizer that works over ftp. It has worked well, but the added benefit of delicious is that I can also l
og into it over the web. Its trivial to add new items to it and as an asside you get the # of other references to it. Helps give you an idea regarding un
iqueness of content.
Anyways, I think I’ll make the switch. Anyone else done the same?
17 Feb 2005
At work we’ve been toying with the idea of replacing Bugzilla with something a little more flexible, nicer looking, and easier to use.
I’ve been meaning to look into JIRA for some time, having come across it many times in the oss world.
So today I decided to spend 15 minutes and sign-up and download the Professional version of JIRA. Nice sign-up process, didn’t even ask for my company ph
# and address. Hopefully that means that i won’t get annoying sales people calling 30 days from now.
Decided to download the entire package and deploy it with its pre-packed tomcat instance and hsql. All went well.
Within 10 minutes of downloading I had a working installation of JIRA. The next step was to see how difficult it would be to migrate our existing bugzilla
content. Quick google search, piece of cake, JIRA provides built-in support for that. I was expecting some offline tool that I would run to do the dat
a conversion, nice touch to see it built into the application.
So now, I’ve got it all installed, I think I’ve given it my blessing as a cool system to work with and I have passed it off to the bug keepers for their i
nput. The idea is to hopefully be able to extend the software enough to easily support bug tracking, feature requests, etc for fairly large and diverse pr
ojects.
I assume I’ll get buy in on the system, and there are probably other features that I would like to check out myself. I notice some CVS integration, so I’l
l have to do a bit of reading on that.
Anyways, just thought I would share my comments on JIRA after spending a bit of time installing and experimenting with it. Dead simple registration and i
nstallation process.