New Web Application, Spring v2.5, changed default dispatcher to ‘springapp’

created a custom landing page – edit web.xml welcome page to make it the default.

Look at the springapp-servlet.xml and the indexController.

class="org.springframework.web.servlet.mvc.ParameterizableViewController"
p:viewName="index" />

Looking around on the internet it seems this may have been around for a while, so I was mystified as to why I hadn’t come across it before. However it seems like the kind of bug which stops occuring when I create my new Spring Web Application with another project already open in the Project Group. Don’t ask me why, and this may change in the future – but if you’re stuck on this it may be worth a try.

Again a SELECT statement with a WHERE clause is needed. The  method below will give the statement for the start and end times of the statement. Unlike the earlier example this has a DateFormat to supply the String required to generate the SQL statement.

GregorianCalendar calStart = new GregorianCalendar() ;
 calStart.set( Calendar.HOUR_OF_DAY, 18 ) ;
 calStart.set( Calendar.MINUTE, 1 ) ;
 String sql = "SELECT * FROM " + dbh.userTable.tableName +
          " WHERE status=1 AND "
          + SQLStrings.getWhereBetweenDates( "signup_time", calStart ) ;

.....

public static String getWhereBetweenDates( String columnName, GregorianCalendar calStart)
{
    GregorianCalendar now = new GregorianCalendar() ;
    StringBuffer sb = new StringBuffer( columnName + " BETWEEN " ) ;
    SimpleDateFormat df = new SimpleDateFormat( "yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss" ) ;
    String beforeDateString = df.format( calStart.getTime() ) ;
    String afterDateString = df.format( now.getTime() ) ;
    sb.append( beforeDateString + " AND " + afterDateString ) ;
    return sb.toString() ;
}

Note that the DateFormat String here was determined by what was present in the MySQL database for that particular column. YMMV – so if there are problems maybe check your database table to see what particular format that column takes.

This can be achived using the following.

String sql =
“SELECT * FROM orders WHERE day(time_outgoing)=” + day ;
Statement st = con.createStatement() ;
ResultSet rs = st.executeQuery(sql) ;

Something similar can be done for months and years, and Java’s Calender class provides fields for moth access. However note that the java.util.Calender fields for months are indexed from 0, so the actual integer value of Calender.MAY is 4 and not 5.

int month = Calender.MAY ; //want entries for may

//increase the month by 1 to access values

String sql =
“SELECT * FROM orders WHERE month(time_outgoing)=” + (month+1) ;
Statement st = con.createStatement() ;
ResultSet rs = st.executeQuery(sql) ;

OR

SELECT *
FROM optout75308
WHERE logtime
BETWEEN “2010-05-21″
AND “2010-05-22″
AND (
contact_method = ‘ODWBPRESS1′
OR contact_method = ‘SERV2OWDBy’
)

Java provides a java.sql.Timestamp class that can be used to read and alter timestamp values.

So if your database column is called signup_time, it can be read out as follows

import java.sql.Timestamp;

…

        Statement st = con.createStatement() ;
        ResultSet rs = st.executeQuery(  “SELECT * FROM subscribers”  ) ;
        StandardSubscriptionUser users[] = new StandardSubscriptionUser[ count ] ;
        rs.beforeFirst() ;
        while( rs.next() && count>0 )
        {

               signupTime = rs.getTimestamp("signup_time") ;

        }

The Timestamp class is a subclass of java.util.Date. However there is not quite a match between how java.util.Date and java.sql.Timetamp store the time. This means that a Timestamp object should not be used where Date objects are required in functions. As the API says “The inheritance relationship between Timestamp and java.util.Date really denotes implementation inheritance, and not type inheritance.”

However it does mean that the standard Date API methods can be used to do things with the Timestamp object, meaning there is a set of standard methods to manipulate and access the values with.

As ever a SELECT statement with a WHERE clause is needed. The following will give you a range of dates from the first to the last. Note that without times specified it is the start of each day. So although 2008-08-31 is specifed no entries on that date will actually be included in the returned results.

String sqlWhereDate =
                " order_placed BETWEEN \”1995-05-01\” AND \”2008-08-31\” ” ;

String sql = “SELECT * FROM orders WHERE ” + sqlWhereDate ;

// <editor-fold desc="This section of the code deals with the item.">
 Your code goes here...
// </editor-fold>

These are just the basics. More information is available from the Netbeans page.

My first attempt with jQuery involved using an autocomplete  plugin provided by Pengoworks. Autocomplete is where you start typing in a few letters and the text box will come up with some suggestions. There was a tutorial for this present on the jquery autocomplete page, but it didn’t quite meet my needs, and maybe it doesn’t meet yours.

There are two ways in which to use the auto complete functionality. If there are a few options (ie upto 50) the list of suggestions can be embedded in the web page itself, but if there are many options (1000s) the suggestions need to come back from a server. It was this second process that the tutorial did not cover, and hence the reason for providing a step by step guide to doing it here.

In partcular, I’m working from Java in Netbeans 6.8.

Server Side:Put data in the database/class in which it will reside

The list of suggestions will live on a server somewhere. If working with 1000′s of items you will need to run it in a database.

Server Side: Provide a class that will take a substring and find matches from your word list

Returning your data as type List is useful.


public List getAutoCompleteMatches( String starter ) throws SQLException


Another handy bit of info here is to use a regular expression in any SELECT statement being generated to match the start of a word.

String sql = "SELECT * FROM tablename WHERE name REGEXP '^" + starter + "' " ;

String sql = "SELECT * FROM tablename WHERE name LIKE '" + starter + "'" ;

Server Side: Provide A Web Page Containing the results of such a query

Your web page will need somewhere to call to get its results. This will take the form of a servlet or JSP page. The code for either is easy – here is the code as a JSP page.


<%@page import="java.util.Iterator"%>
<%@page import="java.util.List"%>
<%@page import="com.rishistar.mirbaseUtils.MirBaseMatches"%>
<%
MirBaseMatches m = new MirBaseMatches() ;
String query = request.getParameter( "q" ) ;
List matches = m.getAutoCompleteMatches( query ) ;
Iterator iterator = matches.iterator() ;
while( iterator.hasNext() )
{
out.println( (String)iterator.next() ) ;
}
%>


Client Side:Include the jQuery Script

Obviously if you are going to use jQuery to do the job of autocompletion and fetching results from the server you’ll need to include it in the generated web page. Simple enough…download the latest version from jQuery.com and include it. There are two versions – one to use during development to allow debugging and one to use on a live site – the ‘min’ version. Change the below to meet your path requirements.

<script type="text/javascript" src="jquery.1.4.2.js">
</script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="jquery.autocomplete.js">
</script>

Client Side:Include the code to get your autocomplete box

So the final bit is putting the autocomplete box into your page.

<input id="mirna" name="mirna" type="text" />

<script type="text/javascript">

     $("#mirna").autocomplete("getmirmatch.jsp") ;

</script>

As I have some projects looming up and have to think about maintenance down the line, I have decided to make the switch to Eclipse – specifically I am using the MyEclipse platform. Its not free as in beer, but comes with lots of neat addons tied in with it, so I am putting this through its paces.

Not good for futureproofing!

Its replacement can be found using the relevant class from Apache Commons library. This is in the Codec suite of the Apache Commons library.