http://www.gotobject.com a quickmix of random thoughts Fri, 16 Jul 2010 19:48:05 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en I am still here, with less time than ever, but still here. I will start blogging again very soon (hopefully using the vim editor). http://www.gotobject.com/2010/04/still-alive-2/ Wow, version 0.3 of FilterQ has been released and is available at filterq.googlecode.com. Several cool features have been added, several bugs have been fixed. But the best of all things, at least for me, is that I am using it in my JUnit 4.5 extensions project. FilterQ is my lightweight ... http://www.gotobject.com/2009/07/filterq-a-lightweight-filtering-api-for-iterable-objects/ VarArgs Null checking? This should be easy, right? All we need to do is put a "VarArgs".length == 0 check before the important method's body and we are set (See Checker class), correct? [code language='java'] class Checker { public void check(Arg... args){ if(args.length == 0) return; final List someArgs = Arrays.asList(args); for(Arg each: someArgs){ System.out.println("checked:" + ... http://www.gotobject.com/2009/05/varargs-null-checking/ This post will show you how to use the for-each loop for reading files.  This approach tried to replace the following approach [sourcecode language='java'] try { BufferedReader in = new BufferedReader(new FileReader("infilename")); ... http://www.gotobject.com/2009/01/reading-files-a-la-foreach-loop/ I am still here, with less time than ever, but still here. I will start blogging again very soon. http://www.gotobject.com/2009/01/still-alive/ By expanding (more like enhancing :) ) the filter pattern described here and borrowing some of the beauties of the matcher pattern in Guice, I coded a more concise version of this filter pattern. Now this pattern's implementation has a fluent API for combining other filters together, a place where ... http://www.gotobject.com/2008/10/more-on-filters-first-class-functions/ As you know when it comes to casting a la Java 1.4 a developer will have to write, typically, something like this: [sourcecode language='java'] Object a = "iron man"; String b = (String)a; [/sourcecode] Well, there is nothing wrong with this code. However, it is not pretty :). With Java 5.0 the ... http://www.gotobject.com/2008/07/class-cast-and-generics-a-powerful-combination/ Do you want to build a community around your products? If you do, there is a new site in town that allows you to do that. It is called ProductStory. ProductStory's idea is very neat and simple. You just pick your favorite product and start your own story around it. ... http://www.gotobject.com/2008/06/building-stories-from-every-angle/ Jesse described a technique for handling methods that always throws. This is a very interesting technique. Having written that, would it not be nice to encourage the use of this technique, in our Java coding conventions, as a way to document DRY exceptions? Honestly, I'd' think we should. It would ... http://www.gotobject.com/2008/05/documenting-exceptions-via-factory-methods/ I've found the Cache Management Pattern very useful in more than a couple of projects that needed a simple caching mechanism. Now that we have Generics at our disposal, I think this pattern deserves a tiny change. Something like a generic structure or code that we can follow or use ... http://www.gotobject.com/2008/05/do-you-need-to-cache-your-objects/