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Flickr Camera Finder

Flickr Camera FinderSo simple yet so interesting: Flickr Camera Finder.

Flickr Camera Finder indexes the camera models used in the images uploaded into the Flickr. It is effective and truly objective way to measure the popularity of the different camera models. Well, of course it is only the popularity among the Flickr members and considering that:

The graphs are only accurate to the extent that we can automatically detect the camera used to take the photo (about 2/3rds of the time). That is not usually possible with cameraphone photos and cameraphones are therefore under-represented.

If you are looking for a new camera, it is easy to find photos taken by different brands and models to compare them with each other.

Flickr Camera Finder Read More »

Minimal Free Fonts And Typography Resources

Minimal Free Fonts And Typography Resources Read More »

Minimal Web Services with XFire, Spring and PHP

If you have a Java web application implemented with Java 5 and Spring Framework, it is really easy to expose your POJOs as web services. In this example I use XFire and JSR 181 annotations for that. I’ll also make a small web service client example with PHP. The goal is to add web services to the existing Java code with absolute minimal code addition. I was about to add web service authentication with Acegi Security, but instead for now, there is no authentication in this example.

XFire has a quite versatile but scarce user’s guide. But it is a good start, so start with overview and quick start. Add XFire libraries and the depencies with the help of a Depency quide. This example works at least with the following libraries:

  • xfire-all-1.2.2
  • activation-1.1
  • commons-codec-1.3
  • commons-httpclient-3.0
  • commons.logging-1.0.4
  • mail-1.4
  • jaxen-1.1-beta-9
  • jdom-1.0
  • junit-3.8.1
  • servlet-api-2.3
  • spring-2.0
  • stax-api-1.0.1
  • wsdl4j-1.5.2
  • xbean-spring-2.5
  • wstx-3.0.1
  • XmlSchema-1.1
  • xfire-jsr181-api-1.0-M1
  • jaxb-xjc-2.0.1
  • jaxb-impl-2.0.1
  • jaxb-api-2.0
  • aopalliance-1.0
  • commons-beanutils-1.7.0

XFire 1.2.2 package comes with xbean-spring-2.6. There can be some problems with that version but at least version 2.5 is working with Spring 2.0.

First, add xfire-servlet.xml into WEB-INF directory. Here are the default settings from the user’s manual:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE beans PUBLIC "-//SPRING//DTD BEAN//EN"
    "http://www.springframework.org/dtd/spring-beans.dtd">
<beans>
  <import resource="classpath:org/codehaus/xfire/spring/xfire.xml"/>
    <bean id="jaxbTypeMappingRegistry"
        class="org.codehaus.xfire.jaxb2.JaxbTypeRegistry"
        init-method="createDefaultMappings" singleton="true"/>
    <bean id="webAnnotations"
        class="org.codehaus.xfire.annotations.jsr181.Jsr181WebAnnotations"/>
    <bean id="handlerMapping"
        class="org.codehaus.xfire.spring.remoting.Jsr181HandlerMapping">
      <property name="typeMappingRegistry">
        <ref bean="jaxbTypeMappingRegistry"/>
      </property>
      <property name="xfire">
        <ref bean="xfire"/>
      </property>
      <property name="webAnnotations">
        <ref bean="webAnnotations"/>
      </property>
    </bean>
    <bean class="org.springframework.web.servlet.handler.SimpleUrlHandlerMapping">
      <property name="urlMap">
        <map>
          <entry key="/">
            <ref bean="handlerMapping"/>
          </entry>
        </map>
      </property>
    </bean>
</beans>

Add xfire-servlet.xml into the Spring’s contextConfigLocation and XFireServlet in web.xml file:

<context-param>
  <param-name>contextConfigLocation</param-name>
  <param-value>
    /WEB-INF/applicationContext.xml
    /WEB-INF/xfire-servlet.xml
  </param-value>
</context-param>
 
<servlet>
  <servlet-name>XFireServlet</servlet-name>
  <display-name>XFire Servlet</display-name>
  <servlet-class>org.codehaus.xfire.spring.XFireSpringServlet</servlet-class>
</servlet>
 
<servlet-mapping>
  <servlet-name>XFireServlet</servlet-name>
  <url-pattern>/servlet/XFireServlet/*</url-pattern>
</servlet-mapping>
 
<servlet-mapping>
  <servlet-name>XFireServlet</servlet-name>
  <url-pattern>/services/v1/*</url-pattern>
</servlet-mapping>

Let’s have a simply MinimizrFacade.java Java interface:

package com.minimizr.service;
 
import java.util.List;
import com.minimizr.service.domain.ExampleObject;
 
public interface MinimizrFacade {
  String getString();
  String echoString(String string);
  ExampleObject echoObject(ExampleObject exampleObject);
  List<exampleObject> loadExampleObjectList();
}

And let’s have another MinimizrService.java Java interface for web services:

package com.minimizr.service;
 
import java.util.List;
import javax.jws.WebService;
import com.minimizr.service.domain.ExampleObject;
 
@WebService
public interface MinimizrService {
  String getString();
  String echoString(String string);
  ExampleObject echoObject(ExampleObject exampleObject);
  List<exampleObject> loadExampleObjectList();
}

And for this example a ExampleObject.java Java object:

package com.minimizr.service;
 
public class ExampleObject {
  private String name;
  private Integer age;
 
  public Integer getAge() {
    return age;
  }
 
  public void setAge(Integer age) {
    this.age = age;
  }
 
  public String getName() {
    return name;
  }
 
  public void setName(String name) {
    this.name = name;
  }
}

And finally a MinimizrImpl.java Java implementation for the interfaces:

package com.minimizr.domain.logic;
 
import java.util.List;
import javax.jws.WebService;
import com.minimizr.service.ExampleObject;
import com.minimizr.service.MinimizrService;
 
@WebService(serviceName = "MinimizrService",
    endpointInterface = "com.minimizr.service.MinimizrService")
public class MinimizrImpl implements MinimizrFacade, MinimizrService {
  public String getString() {
    return "Example string";
  }
 
  public String echoString(String string) {
    return string;
  }
 
  public ExampleObject echoObject(ExampleObject exampleObject) {
    return exampleObject;
  }
 
  public List loadExampleObjectList() {
    /* Here you would get list of ExampleObjects for example from database
    and return it instead of null */
    return null;
  }
}

XFire does not support RPC-encoding but you can use XFire web services with PHP with document/literal style of SOAP.

Here is a really simple example to use all the exposed java web services in this example with NuSOAP PHP SOAP library. There are no checks for errors in the code:

<?php
require("../lib/nusoap.php");
$soapClient = new soapclient(
    "https://minimizr.com/ws/services/v1/MinimizrService?wsdl", "wsdl");
$proxyClass = $soapClient->getProxy();
 
// getString
$string = $proxyClass->getString();
print("<b>String:</b> " . $string["out"] . "<hr/>");
 
// echoString
$string = $proxyClass->echoString(array("in0" => "ABC"));
print("<b>String:</b> " . $string["out"] . "<hr/>");
 
// echoObject
$requestObject = array("name" => "John", "age" => 50);
$result = $proxyClass->echoObject(array("in0" => $requestObject));
$resultObject = $result["out"];
print("<b>Object:</b> name: " . $resultObject["name"]);
print(", age: " . $resultObject["age"] . "<hr/>");
 
// loadExampleObjectList
$exampleObjectList = $proxyClass->loadExampleObjectList();
foreach ($exampleObjectList["out"]["ExampleObject"] as $key => $value) {
  print($value["name"] . " " . $value["age"] . "<br/>");
}
?>

Authentication

Added November 14, 2006: Well, easiest and most straightforward way to secure web service is to use HTTP Authentication. It doesn’t need any additional code in the server side. While still looking for solution to use easily Acegi Security, I’ll add HTTP Authentication to this example. On the server side you’ll have to add security constraint into web.xml:

<security-constraint>
  <web-resource-collection>
    <web-resource-name>Protected Minimizr Web Services</web-resource-name>
    <url-pattern>/services/v1/*</url-pattern>
  </web-resource-collection>
  <auth-constraint>
    <role-name>minimizr.webservices.client</role-name>
  </auth-constraint>
</security-constraint>
 
<login-config>
  <auth-method>BASIC</auth-method>
  <realm-name>Minimizr Realm</realm-name>
</login-config>
 
<security-role>
  <description>Required roles to use the Web Services</description>
  <role-name>minimizr.webservices.client</role-name>
</security-role>

And couple more lines into the PHP file. Credentials must be added into the wsdl url and proxy class. Notice that it is quite necessary to use SSL connection (https) with basic authentication since username and password are in clear text. You can use useHTTPPersistentConnection method to use persistent connection, if possible:

<?php
require("../lib/nusoap.php");
 
$username = "username";
$password = "password";
$method = "basic";
 
$soapClient = new soapclient(
  "https://$username:$password@www.minimizr.com/ws/services/v1/MinimizrService?wsdl",
  "wsdl");
$proxyClass = $soapClient->getProxy();
$proxyClass->setCredentials($username, $password, $method);
$proxyClass->useHTTPPersistentConnection();
...

Conclusion

It is no brainer to expose Java POJOs as web services with Spring, XFire and JSR-181 annotations. And it is as easy use those web services with Java or PHP or other platforms. I guess integrating Acegi Security with XFire web services needs a little bit more work. Any suggestions for the easiest way to implement it?

Additional recourses

Minimal Web Services with XFire, Spring and PHP Read More »

Easy Screen Capturing with FastStone Capture

FastStone CaptureFastStone Capture is one of many screen capture programs. It is for Windows and free for home users. It can capture windows, objects, full screen, rectangle regions, freehand-selected regions and scrolling windows/web pages. It has some integrated functions like resizing, cropping, text annotation, printing and more. You can save the captured images in many different image formats. Capture has also a screen magnifier and a screen color capture.

What makes FastStone Capture an excellent program is it’s good features, very clean, minimal and easy interface.

Easy Screen Capturing with FastStone Capture Read More »

PageAddict Firefox Add-on for Internet Addicted and Statisticians

PageAddict is a Firefox extension, wrote by two neuroscientists, that monitors your Internet browsing and displays a summary of the time you’ve spend time on each web site for the day and shows graph of your web surfing habits history. You can be surprised about results.

PageAddict add-on is actually Greasemonkey script and it stores all the data locally. Here is what site says about privacy:

Details of the web sites that you have visited are stored in your browser and are not sent to any external websites. PageAddict is designed such that external websites cannot access this information and does not use cookies.

If you want to focus your web browsing you can add categories for sites and restrict how much time you spend in each category in a day.

More Firefox add-ons.

PageAddict Firefox Add-on for Internet Addicted and Statisticians Read More »

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