Counting the Days Between Two Java Dates using a Gregorian Calendar
Dec 2nd
Today I needed to figure out a way to count the number of days between two dates in Java. There are no API methods that will do this for you so a little work is required to achieve this. This post illustrates the solution I came up with.
Ignoring Files and Directories in a Subversion Project
Dec 1st
Configuring Subversion to ignore files can sometimes cause confusion. Like most things though, if you understand the basic principles, then its not tricky at all. In this post I’ll demonstrate just how you should go about ignoring files in a subversion project.
A Unix Command to Recursively Delete all .svn Folders
Nov 25th
I recently needed to check out a project from Subversion and then delete all of the .svn files from the project directories. Google found me a few different ways to do this, but none of them seemed to deal with a case where some of the directory and file names had spaces or quotes in them – as mine did. After a little experimenting, I figured out how some simple Unix commands that could be combined using pipes to do this.
The Details of Member Level Inner Class Syntax
Nov 17th
Inner classes offer are a powerful extension to Java’s object model. However, the syntax for some of the more advanced features of member inner classes is quite tricky to get to grips with. In this article I’ll explain the full details of this syntax.
An Explanation of ‘this’ in Java
Nov 8th
As every Java programmer should know, code within any non-static method can access the current object via a special reference called ‘this’. Just how this works may not be immediately obvious so I’ve taken a moment to explain it here.
Programming with Inner Classes in Java
Nov 8th
Inner classes are an advanced programming feature in Java. They add another dimension to the concept of Object Oriented programming by allowing objects to not only reside alongside one another, but also within one another too. In this post I’ll explain how inner classes work with the help of an example that illustrates their most common use: Swing GUI programming.
Branching and Merging with Subversion (SVN)
Nov 1st
Working in the head revision of a versioning system isn’t a great idea. It’s much better to work in a branch and to merge the changes once you’re convinced they are stable. This post demonstrates how to do this with Subversion.
How to strip accents from Strings using Java 6
Oct 23rd
I recently needed a function for stripping characters from a String in Java to make searching for words in a text simpler.
Luckily I was using Java 6 which has a new class in the java.text package that provides a really simple solution for doing this: the Normalizer.
The Normalizer class is capable of performing decomposition of [...]
Formatting the Grails RichUI AutoComplete component
Oct 22nd
The RichUI component plug-in for Grails is great! It provides a really simple means of accessing rich Ajax functionality in a Grails application. I used this plug-in recently to implement an AutoComplete text field but needed to apply some formatting to the results. This post explains how I did this.
Using the JForum SSO plug-in from Grails
Oct 19th
How to apply Single Sign On (SSO) to JForum from within a Grails application.
