Annotation driven programming with Eclipse and ...

The last few days I have been working on defining some more fine-grained transaction demarcations with Spring and AspectWerkz. As the project I am currently working on is still using JDK1.4 I backed to using javadoc based annotations. But the good news is that these are not far away from JDK1.5 annotation thanks to AspectWerkz. So let's see: I firstly have to define a Transactionable interface: public interface Transactionable { int propagation(); int isolation(); boolean readOnly(); String[] rollbackForClassNames(); String[] noRollbackForClassNames(); } As you can see this is not so far away from the corresponding annotation: public @interface Transactionable { int propagation() default 1; int isolation() default 1; String[] rollbackForClassNames(); String[] noRollbackForClassNames(); } Yah, you are right, I could write it better: public @interface Transactionable { Propagation propagation() default Propagation.REQUIRED; Isolation isolation() default Isolation.DEFAULT; Class[] rollbackForClasses default {}; Class[] noRollbackForClasses default {}; } where Propagation and Isolation are defined as Enums. (This annotation is already in the Spring codebase: org.springframework.transaction.annotation.Transactional). But let's get back to our business. After defining the interface I need an annotation.properties file where to declare the short name of the annotation: Transactionable=foo.bar.Transactionable so now I am able to write in a source: /** * @Transactionable(propagation = 2, isolation = 2, "", "") */ protected transactionableMethod() { ... } Now, we will have to let AspectWerkz or backport175 weave the annotation into the .class. To do this you have 3 different options:

• use the Eclipse plugin offered by AspectWerkz or backport175 projects
• use the AspectWerkz/backport175 org.codehaus.aspectwerkz.annotation.AnnotationC/org.codehaus.backport175.compiler.AnnotationC from the command line
• use the AspectWerkz/backport175 Ant tasks (org.codehaus.aspectwerkz.annotation.AnnotationCTask, respectively org.codehaus.backport175.compiler.task.AnnotationCTask)

As I wanted not to rely on another plugin I have chosen the 3 solution. Now the question is: is it possible to trigger automatically an Ant task upon project build? And, as you probably already assumed, it is. Right click (or Alt+ENTER) on your project , go to Properties, Builders and define a new builder using an Ant build.xml where you have written the corresponding ant target. Now everytime you'll trigger a build on your project the selected target(s) will be run. After these steps you are done. From now on, all is left to do is to choose correct API offered by either of the above mentioned projects to retrieve a Transactionable instance at runtime (no sources are needed).
Update: a few moments ago I have finished reading the Ramnivas's article where one of the suggested usages is exactly on transactionability demarcation. I am glad I got a confirmation this idea is not stupid [smile/].

Eclipse TestNG plugin public availability

A few days ago we have announced on the TestNG MLs the release candidate of the TestNG-Eclipse plugin. Today, Cedric and myself are very pleased to announce the general public availability of the TestNG Eclipse plugin (in fact this post was meant for yesterday but I was not able to publish it). It can be downloaded from:

• TestNG official site
• TestNG-Eclipse on dev.java.net
• or directly accessed from the CVS (release directory)

Now the official announcement:

Hi all!
The TestNG team is pleased to announce (and distribute also ;-)) the first version of TestNG Eclipse plugin.

Features
========
1/ TestNG View (Window -> Show View -> Other -> Java -> TestNG) featuring
- the Red-Green Bar
- test results statistics
- hierarchical test results presentation
- failures stack traces presentation.

2/ TestNG Launcher (Run ... -> TestNG) featuring
- browse and run a TestNG enabled test class
- browse and run groups defined in the project tests
- browse and run suites

3/ Contextual TestNG Launcher (Right Click -> Run) featuring:
- run class as TestNG test
- run type as TestNG test
- run method as TestNG test
- run suite as TestNG test

The current version is working with Eclipse 3.1M5 (and probably 3.1M4).

Your feedback is welcome (and needed). Enjoy!

--
TestNG Team

You can see a set of nice snapshots on Cedric's announcement.
We hope that this release will bring more pleasure on your experience with TestNG.

Putting GoogleDesktopSearch to work (comment on How to use Gmail as your Second Brain)

Starting from the idea exposed by Adam Boettiger in his entry How to use Gmail as your Second Brain, I thought of the following solution:

1. extract interesting fragments and resend them to yourself (and optionally to the GMail account for backup) using the the Subject labeling idea exposed in the above article
2. define filters to group these mails in a single directory
3. optional: define search folders using the filtering on subject
4. let GoogleDesktopSearch do what it knows best: index your mails

This solution (let's call it improvement) will allow you better search criteria through GoogleDesktopSearch and it's local (doesn't require a connection). Using also the GMail you have access at this info from whatever place you are. Hope you enjoy this (I am just going to test it [blink/]).

Follow Up feature with Thunderbird

One of the nice features of Outlook is the Follow up directory. As I am using for a long time and I don't want to switch from Mozilla or Thunderbird, I was looking to see this feature in it. The following trick will give you something very near the Outlook feature, but unfortunately not as nice as that one.

1. define your favouring filters and mark the mails with one of the Labels available in Mozilla or Thunderbird (Important, Work, Personal, TODO or Later)
2. create a search on your account using as a rule Label is <what_you_want>
3. save the search result as directory

After doing these steps you will have something very similar to Outlook Follow Ups, but without notifications. However, in Mozilla or Thunderbird you will have the possibility to have different types of follow ups according to the chosen Label. You can also manually mark an e-mail with a label by pressing 1 (Important), 2 (Work), 3 (Personal), 4 (TODO), 5 (Later) or 0 to reset any label. Hope you will find this trick usefull and you'll keep using Mozilla or Thunderbird [blink/]. Disclaimer: I am not associated in any ways with Mozilla and/or Thunderbird or any 3rd interested party.