Force JNLP file to update itself - java

This question has been asked before here in many different ways but without a satisfactory answer.
I have made some changes to my JNLP file, which is being used by hundreds of people. As I don't want them all to clear the cache on their local machine (not everyone has strong computer knowledge), I would like the JNLP file to get updated the next time they click on the link to launch the application.
How can I then force the client to download the JNLP file whenever that file changes?
Using JNLP attribute href or codebase is not an option since many of the users have bookmarked the link to the JNLP file.

Setting the Last-Modified header did solve the problem.

Related

Replace Applet in downloading and executing a file

I have an application that has an applet that does two simple things:
Download an executable jar file from our server (if the user doesn't already have it) to an specific folder in the user's PC
Execute the jar file with the corresponding parameters
This jar file monitors an Office file for changes and send it back to our server.
The problem is the war Chrome is creating with Java with this NPAPI thing. So I have until September to think of an alternate technology or stop the Chrome support.
Do you think of some other way to achieve the same result? Just download and execute. Doesn't seem that hard =(. Can HTML 5 do that?
EDIT
I was looking into Java Web Start and became a little happy. It appears that it can do what I want: executing a up to date jar file passing parameters. But I never worked with JWS, so I have some doubts:
Is it possible to pass parameters to it? I read about some JSP files that you can configure to do that, but I'm still unsure.
Theoretically, it should start automatically from a browser link, am I right? I tried this site:
https://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/deployment/webstart/running.html
and it didn't work that way. I had to mark "always open files of that type" on Google Chrome. Is there a way for automatize it?
Thanks again!!
From what I know there are at least two things that allow you to stick with Java.
Webstart
Install4
Webstart is provided by Oracle and allows you to download Java program from the web and execute them. Update mechanisms exist, so you can always provide a current version.
Install4J (or any other installer for Java applications that offers an update mechanism) provides an installer which enables your customer to install an application which afterwards will be kept up to date by the integrated update mechanism. But Install4J comes at a price, there might be freeware / open source alternatives. Install4J and its alternatives are often discussed here on SO, you might want to check here.
I think the FileAPI of HTML5 is limited and can not access arbitrary files because a sandbox prevents this. You might check SO again for details about that.

Open MS Word document from network

Here is the case.
User should be able to open MS Word document which is located somewhere in the network (ie. \remote\machine\documents\document_to_edit.docx) with MS Word 2007 by clicking link in the browser. Browser is IE7+.
Edit the document, close it and save it (no "Save as..." just "Save") in the same place in the network (\remote\machine\documents\document_to_edit.docx)
Is that at all possible? If so how should I do that?
Don't think this is relative, but I'm using JAVA + Wicket for my web application.
EDIT:
Any suggestions are welcome.
Main thing is - open file as it was on your computer and save it after edit.
(Read update below)
Short answer: not possible.
Long answer: When you open anything from a browser, even some local file, it will open the given file from the browser cache (or some temporary download directory) but not the original file linked. Therefore, after you save the changes the copied file will be updated.
Added:
Ok, after I thought about it for a while, there could be some ways to do it in intranet application. Here's how: Java applet: run native code from browser?
So, basically, you will serve the applet which will communicate with your javascript (I guess this way would be easiest to implement) (info on how to do it) and send a network path to the applet. Applet will start winword.exe passing it the required parameters.
Or, there's another option with ActiveX: http://codereflex.net/how-to-run-exe-on-webpage/ . The downside is - it works only with IE, but that seems what you need anyway.
IE can open \\server\share\file.docx type links and it opens the original file, not a downloaded version. You may need to add the domain of your http server to trusted sites in the security settings of IE first though. Have tested this and it does work

Displaying images from outside of java application context.

This was a question about testing file upload functionality using a local java server on Windows 7 platform. Since the question evolved with Marko's input, I have edited it, so that those who run into the same challenge do not waste time on evolution details and reach conclusions sooner.
The challenge was to direct uploaded file to a folder outside of the WAR structure and successfully read it from there. For example: upload an image into c:/tmp/ and then redirect to a confirmation page that displays the image <img src="c:/tmp/test.jpg" />. The upload worked but image would not be displayed. And based on Marko's input, this makes sense because browser sitting at localhost will refuse to load anything from local disk structure using c:. Maybe these are security considerations similar to those with file input control where we cannot set a default path...
The following tag will work in a locally created .html file but when pasted into a jsp, it won't work. And the difference is that browser uses localhost to get to the jsp.
<img src="c:/tmp/test.jpg" />
Solutions
I think that Marko's answer pretty much defines what needs to be done. While I didn't go with that approach, it clearly is the better way to do it and I will accept that as the answer. Thanks, Marko!
For those who don't want to bother installing a Web server and are willing to live with a bit of a hack, here's what I have done. Again, I didn't want to upload files into my WAR structure because I would then need to remember about clearing that folder before deploying to the server. But that upload folder still needs to be accessible, so I simply created another dummy project and put that upload folder under its WebContent. This works for the purposes of my local testing. The only nuisance is that after uploading a file, I need to refresh the dummy project's WebContent in Eclipse.
config.properties
#for uploading files
fileUploadDirectory=C:/javawork/modelsite/tmp/WebContent
#for building html links
publicFileServicePrefix=http://localhost:8080/tmp
<img src="http://localhost:8080/tmp/test.jpg" /> // this works - tmp is the name of my dummy project.
If you are citing literally the HTML that goes to the browser (the one that you access via "vieew source") then this has nothing to do with Java. The browser is the one who interprets these links. If they fail to load, the problem is in the browser/file system.
UPDATE
According to the results of your additional diagnostics, I conclude that the browser (sensibly!) refuses to load anything from your local disk if it is referenced from an HTML file coming from an internet URL, even when that URL is localhost.
UPDATE 2
(Deleted, irrelevant)
UPDATE 3
However you handle the files uploaded to the server, it's definitely not going to look like your solution -- the file is on the server's local filesystem, not client's. This sort of thing can be handled at the Apache HTTP server level -- reserve an URL section for static content and configure Apache with a base directory from which to serve the static content. Even if you run the server locally, on the same machine where you test it, you still need to go through the network interface.

How to upload files with java applet?

I know similar questions have been asked but i have searched for hours and as of yet have not come up with a workable solution.
I have a Java applet which will be a "paint" like application. So, I need the user to be able to upload images from their file system. I first tried using a JFileChooser which works great in the eclipse environment. However, when put online i get a "java.security.AccessControlException: access denied" exception.
I was thinking that perhaps within the applet i could call a script (located on my server) which would prompt the user to select a file - but i have no idea how to do this. I am using zymic web hosting, so the only supported scripting language is PHP.
I also tried signing the applet. Since i don't want to spend money on certificates, i self signed the applet. When i tried running it, I got an error stating "The Publisher Cannot Be Verified By A Trusted Source".
Any help would be greatly appreciated. - Thanks:)
A trusted applet can most certainly load files from the local file-system. The "Publisher Cannot Be Verified By A Trusted Source" message that is produced by self-signed applets is onerous & scary (for good reason), but if the user OKs it, it works just fine.
Here is a small demo. of exactly that.
Since the 'Next Generation' Plug-In, even sand-boxed applets can access the local file system. See the last 2 links on the Applet tag info page for further details.
Here is an applet that uses the Next Generation file abilities.
Unsigned applets can not access the file system for security reasons.
There is a tutorial about uploading files using PHP here
Maybe you can work that into your page in order to allow the file to be uploaded and then load it from your web server with the applet.
Do keep in mind the warning at the end of that example under the section "php - file upload: safe practices"

Java, Tomcat 6: saving files to local HD

I've searching for this for a while now online (Google, and StackOverflow), but haven't yet come across this question. Maybe my query is not correct (please redirect then!)
I've developed and set up a WebApp on TomCat 6 under Linux. Tomcat isn't running in a virtual host environment yet, I have full control over server. Therefore, .war file is saved to Tomcat's standard deploy dir. The issue I have is with images: different web services provide differently-sized images which need to be presented in uniform sizes.
I download them and resize them without problems, but have to store a local copy of the image as this takes some time if done real-time, plus a lot of bandwidth waste. I don't save them under the .war's temp dir under Tomcat, due to case where a server shutdown would force me to reload all images.
I have created a different directory under /home/username/images, which I then serve under a different subdomain through regular Apache, and the HTML code generated in the .jsp is simply a correct URL to the file. Works great if the image doesn't exist. However, due to permission issues, the Tomcat instance cannot remove or overwrite files already created, even though I've marked the folder where images are stored with 777 permissions. As an aside, I don't see need to give it 777 perms, but with 755 (for example), I had permission issues even when trying to save a new file.
So: is there a better solution (I considered database, but the images dir is now 250mb, and I see no need to overload the db so much)?
Don't store the images in the database. Your /home/user/www.example.com/resources approach is in the correct direction, just sort out the privileges issue. Make sure the path is in a group where the user who runs tomcat (tomcat?) belongs in and reduce the 777 because it's too broad.
It is a little unclear as to whether tomcat and another user are writing, or only tomcat.
If it is only tomcat, the directory in question should be owned by tomcat, and the permissions can be either 750 (setting the group to match apache's group) or 755 (the group doesn't matter, anyone on the machine can read the files).
Note that if some other user is writing files, you have to be trickier. In that case, you need 775, user tomcat, group tomcat, and put the additional user(s) in the tomcat group. If those users are in multiple groups, you can use the group sticky bit on the directory to force the group to remain tomcat. In this case, anyone on the machine can read those files.
The documentation for chown and chmod should be of great help.
(Yes, I do realize that this question is very old, but the same principles apply, and no one seemed to give a clear answer).
What specifically is happening with the permissions? Tomcat will be running as some userid (say tomcat1) and will be creating files presumably owned by the same user (tomcat1). If your files are being created with a different owner, then that will explain why you can't overwrite existing downloads and you'll need to work out why the ownership is differen. If it's not ownership, then are the files being created without write permission to the user. In this case, consider explicitly setting the permissions on each file saved to allow the owner to write to it, or change the umask of the user account.

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