Creating an automatic backup script for mysql
Ok this is really step by step. There’s nothing complicated
1. Created a backup folder as ROOT
> sudo su enter password > cd / > mkdir backup > cd backup
now create a shell script I use NANO to do this. (don’t forget to change the username and password to match yours)
> nano backup.sh cd /backup mysqldump -u username -ppassword --all-databases>backup`date +%a`.sql
Save the file. backup.sh
Now edit the cron table
> crontab -e 01 02 * * * /backup/backup.sh
and save.
This will cause your backup to happen every morning at 2am.
It’s a good idea to test your backup routine sh backup.sh before leaving it to cron to do the work.
Building a processing application with EJB’s (don’t use THREADS!)
I have for some time had to build processing applications. These normally consist of thread based things that run off and do a lot of calculations and database work. These days however I use EJB’s and the @Asynchrounous tag above a routine to make it work asynchronously.
To make it work you need to create 2 stateless session beans.
One will hold your routines that you wish to run, lets call this runnerBean, you need to create a local interface to it.
Second, create the timer bean that will start off the threads in runner bean.
In the timerBean that starts all the threads off create an @Schedule routine and a reference to the runnerBean.
@EJB
private doRunnerLocal doRunner;
@Schedule(second = “*/5″, minute = “*”, hour = “*”, persistent = false)
private void importThreadManager() {
while (true) {
List serialNos=new ArrayList();
try {
serialNos.em.createNativeQuery(“select * from serialnos where processed<1″,SerialNos.class).getResultList();
} catch (Exception e) {
}
if (serialNos.isEmpty()) {
// Have a sleep for a while if nothing found
try {
Thread.sleep(10000);
} catch (InterruptedException x) {
}
} else {
for (i=0;i<serialNos.size();++i) {
doRunner.doSomething((String)serialNos.get(i));
}
}
}
In the runner bean then create your Async threads really simply.
@Asynchronous
public void doSomthing(String serialNo) {
// Process serial numbers
}
Job Done!
Creating ‘mini-caches’ in Java to speed up database calls.
Java has a cool construct called a Hashmap, this can be used to cache the result of a routine using a key.
For example.
Map cache=new HashMap();
public String getUnitsAtSite(String siteCode) {
// is the sitecode already in the cache?
if (cache.containsKey(siteCode)) return (String)cache.get(siteCode);
String getSites=.... < get data from data base
cache.put(siteCode,getSites);
return getSites;
}
Now ofcourse there are downsides, if the data changes we won't see it - ofcourse we could do a cache.clear(); or cache.delete(key) on save of a change of record.
The WONDERFUL Apache Server
So, I had a liferay server running on a Virtual Server on tomcat, then my boss announces that he’s not buying another server and I have to run PHP on it as well.
Fantastic APACHE comes to the rescue. Using virtual hosts it is not only possible to run PHP on a server but also forward domains off to a liferay server.
Ok all you have to do (it really is this simple), is to modify the https.conf file and restart apache.
Here’s some examples
1. Redirect to an external server
<VirtualHost 12.34.56.78:80> ServerName www.mydomainname.com ProxyPass / http://www.theotherdomainname.co.uk/ ProxyPassReverse / http://www.theotherdomainname.co.uk/ </VirtualHost>
(note this is NOT a redirect in fact but proxying the remote server – so you keep the same domain name! great!) BUT note that you could get the same effect by changing the A record on the domain in the DNS! But this is a great shortcut for placeholding until I have something to put there.
Proxying to a liferay server
<VirtualHost 12.34.56.78:80> ServerName www.liferayserver.com ProxyPass / http://12.34.56.78:8080/ ProxyPassReverse / http://12.34.56.78:8080/ </VirtualHost>
And finally running a local PHP/Apache combination
<VirtualHost 12.34.56.78:80> ServerName www.myphpserver.com DocumentRoot /var/www/ </VirtualHost>
12.34.56.78 = the servers IP (don’t think I’d give out a real IP !)
Don’t forget to restart your APACHE server after doing the changes
/etc/init.d/apache2 restart
Starting a glassfish server on a VPS, solving Memory Problems.
1. Check your hosts file – if your glassfish server constantly says ports are occupied make sure
/etc/hosts
the localhost entries are first
2. Make sure your host is called localhost
hostname localhost
3. Solve memory problems
| export _JAVA_OPTIONS=”-Xms20m -Xmx64m -XX:MinHeapFreeRatio=20 -XX:MaxHeapFreeRatio=40 -XX:NewSize=10m -XX:MaxNewSize=10m -XX:SurvivorRatio=6 -XX:TargetSurvivorRatio=80 -XX:+CMSClassUnloadingEnabled -XX:+CMSPermGenSweepingEnabled” |
before you start your server.
Using threading to do processing. Improving the User Experience.
One great thing about Java is that it’s easy to create Threads. My UML diagrams are showing how I am now splitting processing away from the user interface.
Why make a user wait, when a background thread could be fired to do a calculation, produce a report and it’s not only users that can benefit from background processing. I have a comms routine which basically get’s a UDP message, puts it in a database and responds to the unit. Then, in the background, runs a thread that processes the data into the system.
To create a thread is very easy. You can either use an EJB timer function to start a threaded routine, or create a class that extends a Thread, and then use new Thread(new yourClass()).start();
Finding out where I am without an external API.
My work is incredibly interesting. I do a LOT of mapping and location software, often it’s easy to plug in to something like Google Maps who provide their awesome API for programmers to hack. But sometimes this isn’t possible.
Of of my projects involves a world map with a plot of different devices locations. However in this case, as it was run in a back end query it would not be covered by any web api’s license. My own solution was needed. The first thing I did was to get some data, a cities table with 2.6 million entries is available free on the internet, and a countries table, I modified the cities table to include the country name.
Then I simply used a nested query on the cities table.
select * from cities where (lat>4.3142004 and lat<4.7142) and (cities.long>-74.0833 and cities.long<-73.683304) limit 1
This effectively is a box surrounding the point I’m looking for. Note that if the box fails to find anything I can just increase the parameters and rerun the query.
You can see that the figures form a box around the point I’m looking for, in this case I did not need the address, just what country it was in. (returned the whole record for testing).
Incidentally the cities table is pretty interesting, you wouldn’t believe how many London’s there are!
The cities file can be downloaded here
Primefaces Tree in a layout or panel doesn’t work
I must be losing more hair than anything. The tree function in a layout doesn’t work, although the backing bean is called the selectedItems array passed to it is empty. So here’s the fix.
Your code now looks like this probably (or something like it).
<p:panel style="height:80%"> <p:tree selection="#{indextree.selectedNodes}"
update="Map" propagateSelectionUp="true" propagateSelectionDown="true"
nodeSelectListener="#{indextree.onNodeSelect}" id="tree"
style="font-size:12pt" selectionMode="checkbox" value="#{indextree.root}" var="node"> <p:treeNode> <h:outputText value="#{node}"/> </p:treeNode>
</p:tree>
</p:panel>
So simply create another xhtml file and put the tree in it on it’s own. In this case I called it treeTest.xhtml
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xmlns:p="http://primefaces.prime.com.tr/ui" xmlns:h="http://java.sun.com/jsf/html"
xmlns:c="http://java.sun.com/jsp/jstl/core"
xmlns:f="http://java.sun.com/jsf/core">
<f:view contentType="text/html"><h:head>
<title>Tracking</title>
</h:head>
<h:body style="font-size:8pt" >
<h:form id="boris" enctype="multipart/form-data">
<p:tree selection="#{indextree.selectedNodes}" update="Map" propagateSelectionUp="true" propagateSelectionDown="true" nodeSelectListener="#{indextree.onNodeSelect}" id="tree" style="font-size:12pt" selectionMode="checkbox" value="#{indextree.root}" var="node">
<p:treeNode>
<h:outputText value="#{node}"/>
</p:treeNode>
</p:tree></h:form></h:body>
</f:view>
</html>
Now in your original file replace your tree code with an iframe! Tada, it all works! (note it should have < at the start and > at the end but wordpress goes a bit mad if I do that.
iframe src="treeTest.xhtml" style="height:80%;border-style:none;border-width:1px;" ></iframe
By the way this is fixed in the latest V3.0M
Now that’s clever.
OK,
So to upgrade my iPhone to IOS 5 I decided to go to the pub, have a nice meal and a pint of cider. Great idea you say. But, due to the cider I unplugged my iPhone before it had finished syncing the apps. No problem, I thought I’ll just sync it in the morning. Some of the apps were missing some would not work when I touched them.
Morning comes, upgrade iPad…and guess what… all my apps are working, seems little iPhone synced itself with the cloud and fixed itself…scary wonderful technology.
Well done Apple. Steve would be proud because I know I am.
IOS 5 out NOW but…
I think their servers are suffering, 16 hours on a broad band line for the iPhone version 53 minutes though for the iPad version ….
Apple, you should have started the update WHILE THE USA WAS ASLEEP! silly.
Ok some of us have been sitting in iTunes and hitting Check for Update all day…
