XML Naming Conventions (Best Practices)

XML is the base of Web 2.0 development. While writing a web service to integrate products, I learned some best practices with XML naming conventions.

An XML element is everything from (including) the element's start tag to (including) the element's end tag.

An element can contain other elements, simple text or a mixture of both. Elements can also have attributes.

<bookstore>
<book category="CHILDREN">
<author>J K. Rowling</author>
<year>2005</year>
<price>29.99</price>
</book>
<book category="WEB">
<author>Erik T. Ray</author>>
<year>2003</year>
<price>39.95</price>
</book>
</bookstore>>

In the example above, and have element contents, because they contain other elements. has text content because it contains text.

In the example above only has an attribute (category="CHILDREN").

XML Naming Rules

XML elements must follow these naming rules:

1. Names can contain letters, numbers, and other characters
2. Names cannot start with a number or punctuation character
3. Names cannot start with the letters xml (or XML, or Xml, etc)
4. Names cannot contain spaces

Any name can be used, no words are reserved.

Best Naming Practices

1. Make names descriptive. Names with an underscore separator are nice: , .
2. Names should be short and simple, like this: not like this: .
3. Avoid "-" characters. If you name something "first-name," some software may think you want to subtract name from first.
4. Avoid "." characters. If you name something "first.name," some software may think that "name" is a property of the object "first."
5. Avoid ":" characters. Colons are reserved to be used for something called namespaces (more later).
6. XML documents often have a corresponding database. A good practice is to use the naming rules of your database for the elements in the XML documents.
7. Non-English letters like éòá are perfectly legal in XML, but watch out for problems if your software vendor doesn't support them.

Reference : http://www.w3schools.com/xml/xml_elements.asp

Apache AXIS2 Web Service Client

This article covers details about writing a web service client using Apache AXIS2 API. The article explains the various API using code snippets and covers parameters require by various methods of web service client API.

Apache AXIS2 web service API mainly consists of two type of objects ServiceClient and OperationClient. ServiceClient provides basic APIs to send and receive SOAP messages, for advanced methods you require Operation Client.

To provide target URL you need to define a EndPointReference type of object.

EndpointReference targetEPR = new EndpointReference(http://localhost:8080/axis2/services/helloworld);

Various options can be given to web service client by creating an Options object. The reference point defined is set into the options along with the Transport protocol.

Options options = new

Options();

options.setTo(targetEPR);

options.setTransportInProtocol(Constants.TRANSPORT_HTTP);

Now create a service client and pass these options to service client using setOptions API of service client.

ServiceClient sender = new ServiceClient();

sender.setOptions(options);

So, till now we have created a service client and provided the various options to it, next step is creating the payload of SOAP message that will be send in the web service call. AXIS2 provides AXIOM (AXIS Object model) to create XML Structure. Following code snippet creates the payload message.

OMFactory fac = OMAbstractFactory.getOMFactory();

OMNamespace omNs = fac.createOMNamespace("http://ws.apache.org/axis2", "");

OMElement method = fac.createOMElement("sayHello", omNs); //Method to be invoked.

OMElement value = fac.createOMElement("parameter1", omNs);

value.addChild(fac.createOMText(value, "Sachin" ));

method.addChild(value);

value = fac.createOMElement("parameter2", omNs);

value.addChild(fac.createOMText(value, "Thapa" ));

method.addChild(value);

Finally use the sendReceive API of ServiceClient to send SOAP request and receive response.

OMElement result = sender.sendReceive(method);

System.out.println(result);

The result object contains the response received from the server.

Project Properties Holder - Singleton Design Pattern Example

A very common requirement in most of the project is managing project specific properties. Certain properties that are required at various points of flow in a project. Mostly people would like to have a solution in which to change these properties they dont have to dig out the code and change the values. Instead they would like to have some file external to the code, so that anybody with or without knowledge of code can change it. A few examples for such properties can be:

a) A project connects to a 3rd party, one may like to store the URL for the connection in a properties file.

b) A project generates a output file, one may like to store the prefix or naming convention pattern in the properties file.

There can be many more examples. Now we need to look out for a solution so that we have single point to fetch these properties. The answer comes from Singleton design pattern.

Create a singleton class PropertiesHolder.java as shown below:

import java.io.IOException;
import java.util.Properties;

import org.apache.commons.logging.Log;
import org.apache.commons.logging.LogFactory;

public class PropertiesHolder
{
private final Log log = LogFactory.getLog(PropertiesHolder.class);
private Properties properties = null;
private static PropertiesHolder holder = null;


public static PropertiesHolder getInstance()
{
if(holder == null)
{
holder = new PropertiesHolder();
holder.init();
}
return holder;
}
private PropertiesHolder()
{

}
private synchronized void init()
{
if(properties == null)
{
try
{
properties = new Properties();
properties.load(PropertiesHolder.class.getResourceAsStream("/project.properties"));
}
catch (IOException e)
{
log.error("Error loading runtime properties file.", e);
}
}
}

public String getProperty(String propertyName)
{
return properties.getProperty(propertyName).trim();
}
}

Project properties will be loaded once when first call is made to get a property. Any properties that are required to be changed are to be changed in project.properties file.

You may like to have a method to set property as well, the set property method will be required to update the Properties object and write that to file as well. In case the number of properties are too many and required to managed by an Admin, you can provide a UI over it as well.

Deploying Web Service in Apache AXIS2

The purpose of this article is to talk about how to write web service and deploy it in Apache AXIS2.

First step is downloading and installing apache axis2. There are two ways to use Apache AXIS2.

1. Install AXIS2 as a standalone server using the Standard Binary Distribution.
2. Deploy axis2.war and deploy it in a servlet container.

We will be using the 2nd method in the article. To check the installation open the url http://localhost:8080/axis2 and you should be able to see the home page of apache axis2.

Please locate the folder axis2\WEB-INF\services in exploded war file of axis2. This is the folder where you will copy the code of your service and it will get deployed in apache axis2.

Lets us take a simple example. Write your service class.

public class HelloWorld
{
public String sayHello(String firstName, String lastName)
{
System.out.println("Hello World Invoked");
MessageContext incomingContext = MessageContext.getCurrentMessageContext();
FileDataSource dataSource = new FileDataSource("c:/YServer.txt");
DataHandler dataHandler = new DataHandler(dataSource);
incomingContext.addAttachment("contentID", dataHandler);

String data = DataProvider.getData();
return "Hello " + firstName + " " + lastName + " " + data;
}
public String getServiceName()
{
return "test service";
}
}

Write a services.xml file.

<service>
<description>
This is my first service, which says hello
</description>
<parameter name="ServiceClass">HelloWorld</parameter>
<operation name="sayHello">
<messageReceiver class="org.apache.axis2.rpc.receivers.RPCMessageReceiver"/>
</operation>
<operation name="getServiceName">
<messageReceiver class="org.apache.axis2.rpc.receivers.RPCMessageReceiver"/>
</operation>
</service>

In case you want to receive the SOAP payload as XML Message in the service you need to specify XML Message receiver instead of RPCMessageReceiver in services.xml file. To specify XML Message receiver put the following line as child of <operation> tag in your services.xml.

<messageReceiver

class="org.apache.axis2.receivers.RawXMLINOutMessageReceiver"/>

Also, since the service will receive XML Message as input parameter you need to change the signature of the method of service.

public OMElement sayHello(OMElement element)

OMElement object contains the XML Message, OMElement Object is provided by AXIOM. AXIOM stands for AXis Object Model (also known as OM - Object Model) and refers to the XML infoset model that was initially developed for Apache Axis2.


Bundle your class file, services.xml in the hierarchy as shown in the figure below. See helloworld folder in image below.



Copy your service into the services folder of axis2 as shown in figure, start web server. Open the URL http://localhost:8080/axis2.

On the displayed page Click on services, you should be able to see the name of service you specified in services.xml in the list of web services.

Getting Started with Apache Lucene

Apache Lucene is a high-performance, full-featured text search engine library.

The API of lucene is very simple to use. Here is overview of some of the objects required to start using Apache Lucene.

Document and Fields

The class "org.apache.lucene.document.Document" is necessary container for the index. Lucene requires all indexed objects to provide an instance of Document. Each document defines one or several fields ( (org.apache.lucene.document.Field). Fields contain classified information about the document or metadata related to document. A sample classification is for example the creation date of a file, author of the document etc. These fields allow you to search later for a specific information in this classification.


IndexWriter

The class org.apache.lucene.index.IndexWriter creates the index. Via the method addDocument you can add an existing Document to the index. The constructor for IndexWriter expects the directory to store the index, and the analyzer for the content of the files. In addition a boolean flag is handed over which indicates if the index should be created new or if an existing index should be extended.

Analyser

The class org.apache.lucene.analysis.standard.StandardAnalyzer provides a standard analyzer. This part is responsible to analyse the text and to filter out certain fill-words, e.g. "and".

Searcher and Query

The class org.apache.lucene.search.Searcher provides the search functionality. org.apache.lucene.search.IndexSearcher searches over an index. What is to be searched is provided via the query (org.apache.lucene.search.Query) class. The search allows wildcard search, e.g. *, ?, logical operations (AND, OR, NOT) and much more, e.g. fussy.

Here's a simple example how to use Lucene for indexing and searching.

public class TestMyLucene
{
public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception
{
Analyzer analyzer = new StandardAnalyzer();

// Store the index in memory:
Directory directory = new RAMDirectory();

// To store an index on disk, use this instead (note that the
// parameter true will overwrite the index in that directory
// if one exists):
//Directory directory = FSDirectory.getDirectory("/tmp/testindex", true);
IndexWriter iwriter = new IndexWriter(directory, analyzer, true);
iwriter.setMaxFieldLength(25000);

Document doc = new Document();
String text = "This is the text to be indexed.";
doc.add(new Field("fieldname", text, Field.Store.YES, Field.Index.TOKENIZED));
iwriter.addDocument(doc);
iwriter.close();

// Now search the index:
IndexSearcher isearcher = new IndexSearcher(directory);

// Parse a simple query that searches for "text":
Query query = QueryParser.parse("text", "fieldname", analyzer);
Hits hits = isearcher.search(query);
System.out.println(hits.length());

// Iterate through the results:
for (int i = 0; i < hits.length(); i++)
{
Document hitDoc = hits.doc(i);
System.out.println(hitDoc.get("fieldname"));
}

isearcher.close();
directory.close();
}
}

In the above example, hits return the matching documents for the query provided.

Calling Struts Action by Javascript

To call a struts action by Javascript on an event, you need to write a function which is invoked when the event occurs and this function makes an AJAX call. The AJAX call can send a request to the same URL which is provided in action attribute of form tag or html:form tag.

e.g. In case your action URL is something like
"/registerUserAction.do?action=forgetPasswordForward"
that you provide in action attribute of html:form, you can pass the same url to the mentioned code snippet below:


function makeRequest(url, callbackfunction)
{
var http_request = getXMLHttpObject();
url = url + "isComingFromAjax=true";

if (url.indexOf('?') != -1)
{
url = url + "&" ;
}
else
{
url = url + "?" ;
}

url = url + "isComingFromAjax=true";
http_request.onreadystatechange = callbackfunction;
http_request.open('POST', url.substring(0, url.indexOf('?')), true);
http_request.setRequestHeader('Content-Type', 'application/x-www-form-urlencoded');
http_request.send(url.substring(url.indexOf('?') + 1));
}

Some of points to be considered in given code snippet:
1. callbackfunction is the function which will be invoked when response is received
2. "isComingFromAjax=true" parameter has been added as a extra parameter to differentiate between the normal action request and the AJAX request to do any special handling on the server side.

I have not covered details of creating XMLHttpRequest Object and other AJAX related things assuming you know it. You can write the logic for handling the response received from server in callbackfunction.

Oracle - Rank Function

Rank calculates the rank of a value in a group of values. Rows with equal values for the ranking criteria receive the same rank. Oracle then adds the number of tied rows to the tied rank to calculate the next rank. Therefore, the ranks may not be consecutive numbers.

Consider the following Schema

CREATE TABLE USER_TEST
(
user_id numeric(12),
first_name varchar2(32),
last_name varchar2(32),
age numeric(3),
salary numeric(7)
);

insert into user_test values(1, 'Pardeep', 'Kumar', 26, 20000);
insert into user_test values(2, 'Raj', 'Sharma', 23, 15000);
insert into user_test values(3, 'Jai', 'Singh', 30, 30000);
insert into user_test values(4, 'Rana', 'Pratap', 32, 35000);
insert into user_test values(5, 'Nakul', 'Gupta', 23, 16000);
insert into user_test values(6, 'Ritu', 'Kumar', 22, 10000);
insert into user_test values(7, 'Sita', 'Dikshit', 27, 22000);
insert into user_test values(8, 'Gurpal', 'Bhatia', 38, 49000);
insert into user_test values(9, 'Bhim', 'Kumar', 23, 19000);
insert into user_test values(10, 'Lokesh', 'Shriram', 22, 11500);

Aggregation

As an aggregate function, RANK calculates the rank of a hypothetical row identified by the arguments of the function with respect to a given sort specification.

The constant argument expressions and the expressions provided in the ORDER BY clause of the aggregate match by position. Therefore, the number of arguments must be the same and their types must be compatible.

Single Column RANK as Aggregation Function

Syntax:

RANK () WITHIN GROUP (ORDER BY NULLS )

Example:
The following query returns the rank for a user with salary 10,000SELECT RANK(20000) WITHIN GROUP
(ORDER BY salary DESC NULLS LAST) SAL_RANK
FROM user_test;

Result: SAL_RANK = 5

Multiple Column RANK as Aggregation Function

RANK () WITHIN GROUP (ORDER BY NULLS )

The following query returns the rank of a user a salary of 15,000 and age 23 years.

SELECT RANK(23, 15000) WITHIN GROUP
(ORDER BY age desc, salary desc) RANK
FROM user_test;

Result: Rank = 8


Analytic

As an analytic function, RANK computes the rank of each row returned from a query with respect to the other rows returned by the query, based on the values of the value_exprs in the order_by_clause.

RANK Analytic Function

RANK () OVER ()

Find the user with the 2nd highest salarySELECT * FROM (SELECT user_id, first_name, last_name, salary, RANK() OVER (ORDER BY salary DESC) userrank
FROM user_test) WHERE userrank = 2;

Result:

USER_ID FIRST_NAME LAST_NAME SALARY USERRANK
4 Rana Pratap 35000 2 RANK() OVER ( )

Arrange table by age and then salary

SELECT user_id,first_name, last_name, age, salary,
RANK() OVER (PARTITION BY age ORDER BY salary DESC) RANK
FROM user_test;

Result:

USER_ID FIRST_NAME LAST_NAME AGE SALARY RANK
10 Lokesh Shriram 22 11500 1
6 Ritu Kumar 22 10000 2
9 Bhim Kumar 23 19000 1
5 Nakul Gupta 23 16000 2
2 Raj Sharma 23 15000 3
1 Pardeep Kumar 26 20000 1
7 Sita Dikshit 27 22000 1
3 Jai Singh 30 30000 1
4 Rana Pratap 32 35000 1
8 Gurpal Bhatia 38 49000 1


Return all users with age 23 ordered by salary

SELECT user_id,first_name, last_name, age, salary,
RANK() OVER (PARTITION BY age ORDER BY salary DESC) RANK
FROM user_test where age = 23;

USER_ID FIRST_NAME LAST_NAME AGE SALARY RANK
9 Bhim Kumar 23 19000 1
5 Nakul Gupta 23 16000 2
2 Raj Sharma 23 15000 3

Although the examples quoted here may looks like that we are paying more cost for the same things that can be done by simple order by, but simple examples have been chosen to make it easy to understand how to use RANK.