Joe's blog

Using Java’s HttpClient to send a PUT

Joe — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 21:18:19 +0000

After a lot of searching the net, I wrote this method a few weeks back to write a string (or file) to a web server using Java’s HttpClient. It seemed ridiculous that I couldn’t find an example to cut and paste. So here it is for the next person.

Cheers.

public boolean store (final String file) { HttpClient client = new HttpClient(); PutMethod method = new PutMethod("http://localhost:80");


  method.setPath("/path");
  try {

    RequestEntity re = new RequestEntity() {

      @Override

      public boolean isRepeatable() {

        return false;

      }
      @Override

      public void writeRequest(OutputStream outputStream) throws IOException {

        PrintWriter pr = new PrintWriter(outputStream);

        pr.println(file);

        pr.flush();

      }
      @Override

      public long getContentLength() {

        return source.getBytes().length;

      }
      @Override

      public String getContentType() {

        return "application/json";

      }

    };
    method.setRequestEntity(re);
    //Execute the method

    int statusCode = client.executeMethod(method);
    switch(statusCode) {

      case HttpStatus.SC_CREATED:

        return true;
      default:

        log.error("Unhandeled result code {}", statusCode);

        log.error(new String(method.getResponseBody()));

        break;

    }
    return false;

  } catch (HttpException ex) {

    log.error("Fatal protocol violation: {}", ex.getMessage());

    log.error(ex.getMessage(), ex);

  } catch (IOException ex) {

    log.error("Fatal transport error: {}", ex.getMessage());

    log.error(ex.getMessage(), ex);

  } finally {

    // Release the connection.

    method.releaseConnection();

  }

return false; }

Bay Area dot coms

Joe — Sun, 25 Sep 2011 01:43:19 +0000

So today I spent the afternoon driving around Mountain View. After going to the Computer History Museum (which was awesome mind you) I stopped by Google, Apple and Facebook world headquarters. Food for thought, all of the campuses were non-descript. Nothing like the amazing and older IBM, Oracle or Microsoft campuses. Google had these what appeared to be free bikes everyplace for general use. What a neat idea… anyhow… what I found most interesting were the kind of cars parked in the parking lots. Apple and Google might have been anyplace. Mostly empty said for a few random normal vehicles. Facebook’s parking lot on the other hand was chocked full (and I mean really full) of Mini Coopers, Range Rovers and BMWs… on a Saturday afternoon at that.

The perception of vendor lock in

Joe — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 16:27:16 +0000

So I have this perception of my Android phone being more open and DRM free, and my Apple/iTunes account not being. I had an interesting experience this morning that I thought was best shared.

So, I just frustratingly bought an album a second time as apposed to trying to migrate it from my android phone to iTunes. About 6 months ago I purchased “O’ Brother Where Art Thou?” through my phone via Amazon.

I started by plugging my phone into my computer and browsing to the media folder. Given a list of 1000 or so songs, with no apparent way to grab one ‘album’ that I know I purchased from Amazon. I started browsing around for tools to sort through this, but all I really wanted to do was listen to a few songs from a particular album on my computer and not through my phone. After about 60 seconds, I’m just like “This isn’t worth it”. For 10$, I purchased the album again and had it playing 20 seconds later in iTunes.

I found it odd. For all of the openness and DRM freeness of the Android platform, I felt locked in, in this case by the lack of ease of use of the tools.

In iTunes, to copy an album, I create an MP3 versions of the track and then drag and drop. Would have taken 30 seconds.

UTF Character encoding in MySQL

Joe — Mon, 22 Nov 2010 17:15:05 +0000

I’ve had on going issues with mySQL not defaulting to UTF8 and instead using Latin1 constantly. After searching around a bit on the mySQL forums, I seem to have found a series of settings that put a halt to the problem once and for all. Just add these settings to your my.cnf file:

[mysqld] default-character-set=utf8 default-collation=utf8_bin collation_server=utf8_bin [mysql] default-character-set=utf8

Cheers

Just look at this Bananagram

Joe — Sat, 16 Oct 2010 21:34:45 +0000

Just look at it

Comcast VS FCC

Joe — Sun, 02 May 2010 22:56:19 +0000

Ouch, I don’t know how I missed this. So Comcast wins the right to tell you what data packets (That you paid for) come to your computer first.

Basically, a site like Hulu (who might have a partnership with Comcast) will work well, but Youtube (Google owned) may not. They now have the right to throttle network traffic as they see fit. This brings up some really interesting implications with the NBC merger. “… when the same company produces the programs and runs the pipes that bring us those programs, we have a reason to be nervous…”

I would switch ISPs if Comcast wasn’t the only game in town. How is this not a monopoly?

Obama, please fix this.

Teamcity status macro for Trac

Joe — Tue, 19 May 2009 19:10:16 +0000

I had a need to print the build status of our teamcity server in trac. After researching various solutions, I figured a trac macro would best fit. It was a surprisingly simple solution so I figured I would share it here.

I created a file called “TeamCityStatus.py” and placed it into my trac/plugins folder.

from urllib import urlopen
from trac.wiki.macros import WikiMacroBase

class TeamCityStatusMacro(WikiMacroBase):
“”"Inserts the current build status into the wiki page.”"”

def expand_macro(self, formatter, name, args):
res=urlopen(’example.org/teamcity/externalStatus.html?withCss=true’).read()
return res

Obviously change the URL open line to match your teamcity installed location.

Then inside any wiki page on your trac site, just place the macro command “[[TeamCityStatus]]”. You should be good to go!

Oldest object ever observed

Joe — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 23:11:38 +0000

Occurring only 630 million years after the Big Bang, GRB 090423 detonated so early that astronomers had no direct evidence that anything explodable even existed back then. The faint infrared afterglow of GRB 090423 was recovered by large ground telescopes within minutes of being discovered. The afterglow is circled in the above picture taken by the large Gemini North Telescope in Hawaii, USA

Craziness.

f my life…

Joe — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 17:04:21 +0000

I’ve found a new pass time.

http://www.fmylife.com/

“Today, my friend drove me me to catch the 8 pm train. Running late, we screeched into the parking lot at 7:57, stopped the car in a ‘no stop’ zone. I said goodbye to my friend, sprinted to my train and barely made it. Then, with the train in motion, I noticed my friend’s car keys in my hand. FML”

Other people’s misery somehow always makes you feel better.

Pepper the Attack cat

Joe — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 17:43:56 +0000

Finally got around to posting this. It’s a bit on a long side as I tried to make the video fit the song. If I knew what I was doing, I would have shortened the song.