Create keypair for Tomcat SSL and import same to Java keystore

Create the keypair:
keytool -genkeypair -alias tomcat -keyalg RSA -keysize 2048 -keystore tomcat-keystore.jks -validity 730

Export the certificate:
keytool -export -alias tomcat -file tomcat-keystore.cer -keystore tomcat-keystore.jks

Import to Java keystore:
keytool -import -alias tomcat -file tomcat-keystore.cer -keystore C:\jdk1.7.0_51\jre\lib\security\cacerts

Add it to Tomcat's server.xml:

    <Connector SSLEnabled="true" acceptCount="100" clientAuth="false"
disableUploadTimeout="true" enableLookups="false" maxThreads="25"
    port="8443" keystoreFile="/path/to/tomcat-keystore.jks" keystorePass="password"
    protocol="org.apache.coyote.http11.Http11NioProtocol" scheme="https"
    secure="true" sslProtocol="TLS" />

Now you can avoid errors in java programs like:

sun.security.validator.ValidatorException: PKIX path building failed: sun.security.provider.certpath.SunCertPathBuilderException: unable to find valid certification path to requested target; nested exception is javax.net.ssl.SSLHandshakeException: sun.security.validator.ValidatorException: PKIX path building failed...

References:
https://dzone.com/articles/setting-ssl-tomcat-5-minutes
https://stackoverflow.com/a/7812567/1714485

Eclipse Classpath Run Configurations being overwritten

Encountered a strange issue with eclipse (both Luna and Mars) on certain run configurations. What happened was when launching I would almost immediately (after some messages from loading classes) get "Error: Could not find or load [name of the class]" or in some other run configuration a java.lang.ClassNotFoundException and then a stack trace.

This would happen despite cleaning the project, recreating the run configuration, or running eclipse  with the -clean option. The project depended on another project to which I traced the unfound class. This told me that it was a classpath issue; however, the project was clearly listed in the Classpath tab of the run configuration. I even tried exporting the project to a jar and adding it to the local client project build path but that didn't work either.

I then decided to examine the running JVM process. I ran JConsole, attached to the failing process and opened the VM Summary tab. There were a huge number of VM arguments which I scrolled through to get to the Class path entry. The Class path entry had only one entry in it, a single jar file used by the application. There should have been more entries though. I then created a new run configuration using the reverse-engineered items from the output of wmic to get the full command line (see http://serverfault.com/questions/323795/display-complete-command-line-including-arguments-for-windows-process). I tried obtaining it from Process Explorer via save but it truncated it because it was very long I guess. The reverse configured run configuration also produced the same errors.

The I did a search for the single jar file that was assigned to the classpath in the long command line figuring it had to be set there somehow. Sure enough it was being assigned via the -Djava.class.path vm argument. Since the jar was already being loaded via the build path I removed the java.class.path argument -- and that resolved the error. Apparently, adding that argument was causing Eclipse to ignore the Classpath as shown in the Classpath tab of the run configuration. This would only happen though using that particular set of VM arguments. If I only added a few VM arguments in addition to the java.class.path argument Eclipse would run the config and no errors would result. Interestingly JConsole would show only the VM arguments other than java.class.path so apparently Eclipse cleans it up, perhaps recognizing whether the entry is needed or already is reflected in the run configuration classpath (update: this seems to indicate java.class.path is not settable; and I wasn't able to prove otherwise, i.e that it was settable, when using test projects and configurations with classpath tweaking by removing the default classpath and adding my own under "User entries").

My guess regarding the error is that the replacing of the run configuration classpath with the value added to java.class.path vm argument is due to either 1) the vm argument list I was using was too long or 2) the vm argument list was corrupted somehow. This cause would be in addition to an existing eclipse state -- most likely the state of the plugins installed. The reason why is that some eclipse installations worked given the same set of vm arguments and all else being equal while other eclipse installations failed. It did so happen that when I uninstalled one custom plugin that did custom run configurations and reinstalled an earlier version of the plugin this solved the issue. However repeating the steps did not solve the issue on other eclipse installations so I could not pinpoint it to the plugin. It therefore must be a combination of plugin installation or absence of and the above faulty set of vm arguments containing the java.class.path entry...


refs:
http://www.javahotchocolate.com/tutorials/bad-output-folder.html

Creating a sequence diagram from a stack trace

Install AmaterasUML:
- download AmaterasUML from http://amateras.sourceforge.jp/cgi-bin/fswiki_en/wiki.cgi?page=AmaterasUML

- unzip AmaterasUML_1.3.4.zip

- copy the three jars to eclipse plugin folder, e.g. D:\App\eclipse-jee-luna-R-win32-x86_64\eclipse\plugins

- install Graphical Editing Framework eclipse plugin. It was already installed in mine, maybe through a dependency on BPMN2 Modeler or something else.

- restart eclipse

Get the stack trace

- in Eclipse put a breakpoint in some method you want to analyze via sequence diagram

- start debug 

- in the debug view right-click the Daemon Thread and click Copy Stack

- paste into text editor

Fix up stack trace

- remove unwanted lines including lines that end with "line: 1" or start with "Daemon Thread" or "owns:" leaving only the lines that start with entities to be added to the sequence diagram

- save the file e.g. D:\work\AmaterasPrepWork\MyStackTrace.txt

- create a second text file and paste into it the following awk script:
{
str = $0;\
sub(/^\t/, "", str);\
sub(/\(.*\./,".",str);\
sub(/\$.*\./,".",str);\
match(str, /(.*)\./, arr);\
sub(/^/, "at ", str);\
#print str;\
sub(/\([^\)]*\)/, "(", str);\
sub(/ line: /, arr[1]".java:", str);\
sub(/$/, ")", str);\
sub(/\t\)$/, ")", str);\
print str}

- save the file as e.g. D:\work\AmaterasPrepWork\AmaterasPrepProg.txt

- download gawk and run file e.g. gawk-3.1.6-1-setup.exe

- open a command prompt and cd to e.g. D:\work\AmaterasPrepWork
- execute the following commands:
D:\AmaterasPrepWork>set path=%path%;D:\Program Files (x86)\GnuWin32\bin
D:\AmaterasPrepWork>echo awk -f AmaterasPrepProg.txt MyStackTrace.txt ^> out.txt > run.bat
D:\AmaterasPrepWork>run.bat

Make sequence diagram in eclipse

- Do Window, Show View, AmaterasUML, Stack Trace Sample, OK

- paste the contents of D:\AmaterasPrepWork\out.txt into the window

- click the 'i' (image of lower case 'i') button in upper right-hand corner of the Stack Trace Sample view

- select a folder in your project as the destination of new sequence

- refresh the folder in eclipse

- open sequence.sqd

- do finishing touches. It appears e.g. that some entities weren't added and need to be added?? will check on this...

- save the file as MySequence.sqd or save sequence.sqd and refactor to another name because AmaterasUML uses sequence.sqd as the target file name evidently.

ref:

 https://oopsnullpointer.wordpress.com/2010/04/08/creating-uml-sequence-diagrams-from-debug-stack-traces/
http://www.programering.com/a/MjN0kjMwATY.html

Solving Sruts2 Core Jar File Conflict

I was adding a Struts2 application to an embedded Tomcat 6 instance by adding the context and assigning the path to the Struts2 application programmatically. The Struts2 application's WEB-INF/lib was empty similar to what's known as a "skinny war." When attempting to access a jsp page though I would get the error: "/struts-tags" not found.

This was solved by adding struts2-core-2.3.4.1.jar to the WEB-INF/lib. However then application would not load and I would get:
Bean type class com.opensymphony.xwork2.ObjectFactory with the name xwork has already been loaded by bean - jar:file:C:/MyCustomContainer/plugins/struts2-core-2.3.4.1.jar!/struts-default.xml:29:72 - bean - jar:file:/D:/temp/configs/pings/strutssd/WEB-INF/lib/struts2-core-2.3.4.1.jar!/struts-default.xml:29:72

So I removed struts2-core-2.3.4.1.jar from the plugins dir leaving only the copy in the WEB-INF/lib. This fixed the problem and the Struts2 application finally worked.

Note this could cause problems if I were to add another Struts2 application to the container although I haven't tried it.

Related problems with workarounds including removing struts-tags.tld and putting in WEB-INF, or adding Class-Path entries  to MANIFEST.MF:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/19380836/skinny-war-libraries-in-ear-struts-tags-not-found-error
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6339323/file-struts-tags-not-found-in-struts-1-3
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/19666413/what-is-the-right-way-to-package-struts2-jar-files
http://docs.codehaus.org/display/MAVENUSER/Solving+the+Skinny+Wars+problem

Deploy Small Java App to OpenShift

This is the code deploy method. For deploying an existing WAR there are other methods will plenty of how-tos on the web.

- Create a JBoss Application Server 7 app preferably from the rhc client.
- Create a file TestBean.java under src\main\java\action and paste in the sample TestBean class from this tutorial on JSP actions: http://www.tutorialspoint.com/jsp/jsp_actions.htm
- Create a folder "classes" under src\main\webapp\WEB-INF (although I'm not sure this step is necessary)
- Create a file "main.jsp" under src\main\webapp and paste in the corresponding sample code from the above referenced tutorial
- Git add, commit, and push it up.
- Load it in the browser e.g. http://jbossas-<your namespace>.rhcloud.com/main.jsp

see also: http://awgjournal.blogspot.com/2014/03/tomcat-openshift-projects.html

Using vb2js

This is one of the only tools I've found to automatically convert VBA files to .js files. YMMV.

- Download via svn. see https://code.google.com/p/vb2js/source/checkout

- Download Guava (currently guava-14.0.1.jar)  - https://code.google.com/p/guava-libraries/; place downloaded file in 'src' folder of vb2js download

- Open a text editor and insert this code

package com.google.vb2js;
import java.util.*;
import java.io.*;

public class MyVbaJsConverter {
  public static void main(String[] args) throws FileNotFoundException, IOException {
    if (args.length == 2) {
   String entireFileText = new Scanner(new File(args[0]))
  .useDelimiter("\\A").next();
   FileWriter fstream = new FileWriter(args[1]);
   BufferedWriter out = new BufferedWriter(fstream);
   out.write(VbaJsConverter.convert(entireFileText));
   out.close();

    }
  }
}

- Save the file as "MyVbaJsConverter.java" in the same directory as the unpacked vb2js java files (e.g. in D:\temp\vb2js-read-only\src\com\google\vb2js) - Create a text file with the following content. Save it as ...\src\testInput.bas

Dim MyList As String
Dim MyNum As Integer

- Make sure JDK is installed and JDK bin folder is in path environment variable - Open a command prompt and change to src folder. - Execute the following commands:

d:\temp\vb2js-read-only\src>javac -cp guava-14.0.1.jar com\google\vb2js\*.java
D:\temp\vb2js-read-only\src>java -cp .;guava-14.0.1.jar com.google.vb2js.MyVbaJsConverter testInput.bas testOutput.js

- Open testOutput.js and verify that VBA was converted.

refs: http://abhinandanmk.blogspot.com/2012/05/java-how-to-read-complete-text-file.html
http://www.roseindia.net/java/beginners/java-write-to-file.shtml

Tomcat Hello World Servlet

Here's a no-IDE quick-start how-to. Create the following directories:

c:\users\John Smith\Documents\scratch\helloTomcat\src
c:\users\John Smith\Documents\scratch\helloTomcat\dist\WEB-INF

open NotePad++ and create the following two files.

c:\users\John Smith\Documents\scratch\helloTomcat\dist\WEB-INF\web.xml

<!DOCTYPE web-app PUBLIC
  '-//Sun Microsystems, Inc.//DTD Web Application 2.3//EN'
  'http://java.sun.com/dtd/web-app_2_3.dtd'>
<web-app>
  <servlet>
    <servlet-name>mihello</servlet-name>
    <servlet-class>HelloServlet</servlet-class>
  </servlet>

  <servlet-mapping>
    <servlet-name>mihello</servlet-name>
    <url-pattern>/mihello</url-pattern>
  </servlet-mapping>
</web-app>

c:\users\John Smith\Documents\scratch\helloTomcat\src\HelloServlet.java

import java.io.*;

import javax.servlet.http.*;
import javax.servlet.*;

public class HelloServlet extends HttpServlet {
  public void doGet (HttpServletRequest req,
                                         HttpServletResponse res)
        throws ServletException, IOException
  {
        PrintWriter out = res.getWriter();
        out.println("Hello, You!");
        out.close();
  }
}

Open a command prompt

C:\Users\John Smith\Documents\scratch\helloTomcat\src>javac -cp "C:\Program Files\Apache Software Foundation\Tomcat 7.0\lib\servlet-api.jar" HelloServlet.java
C:\Users\John Smith\Documents\scratch\helloTomcat\src>mkdir ..\dist\WEB-INF\classes
C:\Users\John Smith\Documents\scratch\helloTomcat\src>copy *.class ..\dist\WEB-INF\classes
C:\Users\John Smith\Documents\scratch\helloTomcat\src>cd ..\dist
C:\Users\John Smith\Documents\scratch\helloTomcat\dist>jar cvf web-arc-test.war

Open a command prompt as Administrator

C:\Users\John Smith\Documents\scratch\helloTomcat\dist>copy web-arc-test.war "C
:\Program Files\Apache Software Foundation\Tomcat 7.0\webapps"

open browser and browse to http://localhost:8085/web-arc-test/mihello
Note: change port to whatever tomcat is running on.
Refs:
http://keyboardsamurais.de/2004/01/15/tomcat_tutorial_helloworld_for_complete_fools_-_english/
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/7924687/compiling-a-simple-hello-world-servlet-into-a-war-for-tomcat
http://www.avajava.com/tutorials/lessons/how-do-i-create-a-war-file-using-the-jar-command.html