Develop Reference

Java how to determine application directory when creating simple installer

I need to create a log file in application directory. Currently I'm using hard-coded absolute path, like
public class Transformer
{
static String LOG_DIR = "ABSOLUTE_PATH_TO_THE_APPLICATION_DIRECTORY";
File log = new File(log_DIR, "log");
}
If someone else have my code, he will has to go the source code, change the LOG_DIR and then recompile. I just know a little about GNU make. My question is, how can I create a "installer" that works like:
./config
make install
and what's the standard/better way of achieving this?
Currently I have:
String path = Transformer.class.getProtectionDomain().getCodeSource().getLocation().getPath()
Best way to load application settings
With 2, I think I can use a shell script to generate a .properties file.
update
Sorry about the confusing "log file", but I actually mean a regular file, it just happen to containing some sort of log information.

You could define the "app.logs.dir" property on application start and refer to it in the log4j configuration:
main(String[] args) {
...
final String appRootDir = /* Detect app location. */;
System.setProperty("app.logs.dir", appRootDir);
// Now we can use the logger.
...
}
And in "log4j.properties":
log4j.appender.filelog.file=${app.logs.dir}/myapp.log
UPDATE
Option #1, the getProtectionDomain() one, might not work depending on the JVM's SecurityManager settings so the best way probably is option #2 - your installer script should store the application installation location in the application configuration file.
And to keep the number of component references low you can read the configuration file into System properties just like I showed above.
File log = new File(System.getProperty("app.logs.dir"), "log");

Nutch - fetch new discovered domains

We're using nutch 1.6 to crawl web. According to nutch configuration, one should give the seedlist and domain url-filter to traverse across specified domains. However, we want to fetch newly discovered urls if their extension is, let's say, co.uk (only for this extension) We can manage it by adding newly discovered url's domains to a file - or db, whatever -, stop crawler, update domain url-filters and seedlist, then restart it. But how can we do it dynamically, w/o stopping the crawler?
Thanks in advance.
P.S : co.uk domain extension is just an example, we also could add more than one extension to allow.

Got it.
You can add suffixes to domain-urlfilter.txt like "gov.uk" as DomainURLFilter source code on lines 186-189:
if (domainSet.contains(suffix) || domainSet.contains(domain)
|| domainSet.contains(host)) {
return url;
}
it checks for suffix, domain and host.
Also, you may keep domain urls in an HBase table and manage them via your own filter plugin instead of using DomainURLFilter.

Scala Lift - Reading a file from "/resources/toserve"

I'm attempting to provide a StreamingResponse for files stored under Lifts resources/toserve directory, in order to authorize access for different users.
I can access an image for example with:
localhost:8080/classpath/images/test.jpg
But when I try and actually read the file using scala I keep getting file not found exceptions:
val file = new java.io.FileInputStream("/classpath/images/test.jpg")
Is there a specific method to reading files located on classpath?
Thanks in advance, much appreciated :)

To read resources from the toserve-directory you need to do a call like
LiftRules.getResource("/toserve/images/test.jpg")
If you try to use 'classpath' instead of 'toserve' you will receive an empty box.
By default, Lift uses two different path-prefixes to locate resources either programmatically within the server or through a link-element from HTML. For the former, you will use the 'toserve'-prefix, for the latter the 'classpath'-prefix.
This behavior is specified in the objects net.liftweb.http.LiftRules and net.liftweb.http.ResourceServer. In particular, you can there specify (i.e. replace) the path to the resources. The relevant code is:
/** (from net.liftweb.http.ResourceServer)
* The base package for serving resources. This way, resource names can't be spoofed
*/
var baseResourceLocation = "toserve"
You might also want to look at the following method in LiftRules, which allows you to redefine the name used to serve resources through the server:
/** (from net.liftweb.http.LiftRules)
* The path to handle served resources
*/
#volatile var resourceServerPath = "classpath"
If you wish to use the same prefix to refer both to resources you can use either (or both) of these settings to achieve your purpose.

Have you tried:
LiftRules.getResource("/classpath/images/test.jpg")
That should return a java.net.URL to the item you are looking for.
This may also have more information on what you are looking to do: http://exploring.liftweb.net/master/index-9.html#lst:streaming-download

Is it possible to supply a new PropertiesConfiguration file at runtime?

Background:
I have a requirement that messages displayed to the user must vary both by language and by company division. Thus, I can't use out of the box resource bundles, so I'm essentially writing my own version of resource bundles using PropertiesConfiguration files.
In addition, I have a requirement that messages must be modifiable dynamically in production w/o doing restarts.
I'm loading up three different iterations of property files:
-basename_division.properties
-basename_2CharLanguageCode.properties
-basename.properties
These files exist in the classpath. This code is going into a tag library to be used by multiple portlets in a Portal.
I construct the possible .properties files, and then try to load each of them via the following:
PropertiesConfiguration configurationProperties;
try {
configurationProperties = new PropertiesConfiguration(propertyFileName);
configurationProperties.setReloadingStrategy(new FileChangedReloadingStrategy());
} catch (ConfigurationException e) {
/* This is ok -- it just means that the specific configuration file doesn't
exist right now, which will often be true. */
return(null);
}
If it did successfully locate a file, it saves the created PropertiesConfiguration into a hashmap for reuse, and then tries to find the key. (Unlike regular resource bundles, if it doesn't find the key, it then tries to find the more general file to see if the key exists in that file -- so that only override exceptions need to be put into language/division specific property files.)
The Problem:
If a file did not exist the first time it was checked, it throws the expected exception. However, if at a later time a file is then later dropped into the classpath and this code is then re-run, the exception is still thrown. Restarting the portal obviously clears the problem, but that's not useful to me -- I need to be able to allow them to drop new messages in place for language/companyDivision overrides w/o a restart. And I'm not that interested in creating blank files for all possible divisions, since there are quite a few divisions.
I'm assuming this is a classLoader issue, in that it determines that the file did not exist in the classpath the first time, and caches that result when trying to reload the same file. I'm not interested in doing anything too fancy w/ the classLoader. (I'd be the only one who would be able to understand/maintain that code.) The specific environment is WebSphere Portal.
Any ways around this or am I stuck?

My guess is that I am not sure if Apache's FileChangedReloadingStrategy also reports the events of ENTRY_CREATE on a file system directory.
If you're using Java 7, I propose to try the following. Simply, implement a new ReloadingStrategy using Java 7 WatchService. In this way, every time either a file is changed in your target directories or a new property file is placed there, you poll for the event and able to add the properties to your application.
If not on Java 7, maybe using a library such as JNotify would be a better solution to get the event of a new entry in a directory. But again, you need to implement the ReloadingStrategy.
UPDATE for Java 6:
PropertiesConfiguration configurationProperties;
try {
configurationProperties = new PropertiesConfiguration(propertyFileName);
configurationProperties.setReloadingStrategy(new FileChangedReloadingStrategy());
} catch (ConfigurationException e) {
JNotify.addWatch(propertyFileDirectory, JNotify.FILE_CREATED, false, new FileCreatedListener());
}
where
class FileCreatedListener implements JNotifyListener {
// other methods
public void fileCreated(int watchId, String rootPath, String fileName) {
configurationProperties = new PropertiesConfiguration(rootPath + "/" + fileName);
configurationProperties.setReloadingStrategy(new FileChangedReloadingStrategy());
// or any other business with configurationProperties
}
}

How can I control the usage of a custom jar library?

I need a way to essentially secure my jar library to allow registered apps to use it in their projects and deny usage to apps that weren't approved by me.
It is fine if I hard code things in the lib for each distribution. I currently have this jar obfuscated.
What are good approaches to restrict the usage of a jar?
One idea was to lock the lib to a specific package so if the developer tries to use it in another project they can't. But I'm not sure if they can easily provide a custom fake Context to make it work...

To me the best approach if you would like your library to stay standalone (without involving the network for checking or downloading pieces of the library, I mean) would be to make mandatory the use of an initializer class that would receive a token from the client application.
This would be crackable as the token validity test would be performed by your lib: one may modify the lib in a way is would just skip that test, but this would be made harder by the obfuscation. But this is probably sufficient, unless using your lib without having registered it is a really critical issue.
So you would have something like:
boolean Initializer.initLib(String passcode)
That would prevent the lib to work unless passcode is correct.
You can make the obfuscation more efficient by avoiding checking that way:
public void initLib(String passcode) {
if (passcode == A_GIVEN_PUBLIC_STATIC_THAT_STORESTHE_CODE) {
// do the proper initializations
}
else {
throw new RuntimeException("Bad passcode, sorry!");
}
}
But doing that way instead:
public void initLib(String passcode) {
final char[] PASS_ENCRYPTED = "f5uhjgf56ik8kv214d5".toCharArray();
final char[] PASS_MINUSMASK = "bc".toCharArray();
final int PASS_SHIFT = 11;
final int PASS_MASK_MINUS = 2;
for (int ctr = 0; ctr < PASS_MINUSMASK.length; ++ctr) {
final char next = PASS_ENCRYPTED[PASS_SHIFT + ctr - PASS_MASK_MINUS];
if (passcode.charAt(ctr) != next - (PASS_MINUSMASK[ctr] - 'a')) {
// make the lib unusable by some inits. But it should look as a proper initialization
return;
}
}
// make the lib usable by some inits.
}
This looks stupid, but if you have a look at the obfuscated code, you will see a big difference. This code is just an example (it accepts "hi" as a valid passcode), any algorithm would be fine as long as its obfuscated version is not too straightforward to reverse.
Now the question is: what passcode?
As the library's protection concerns the developpers of the client apps that will use it, and not the final users of these apps, you cannot rely on any piece of data specific to the devices on which the applications will run. So no IMEI or anything like that.
If these developpers are trustworthy that's fine. A fixed passcode is sufficient.
But if they are subject to give this passcode to other people to allow them using your library, this is more difficult. In this case I don't think you can solve it without a real "industrial" process such as registering the client apps and their code checksums, for example. Such a process needs a specific design and cannot be solved "just by the code", but as it also has a cost (time, resources, involvment of the client...) you can only consider this if the use of library is very critical.

Can't you make your jar call your server with a specific code and the application name, to check if they are registered ?

When you build an Android app with a jar, that jar is compiled into the app and becomes a part of it. You can't just copy the jar out of the package and use it elsewhere. Unless I'm not understanding the question, this shouldn't be an issue you need to worry about.