HTTPS connections need to make sure the server 'at the other end' is actually the server it claims to be. This is done using public key certificates. For testing purposes or to save the costs of a commercially issued certificate, it is possible to use a self-issued certificate. This blog post shows how to connect to this kind of servers in IntelliJ IDEA or other Java programs.

Maybe you also observed that maven-release-plugin executes all tests twice when you run release:prepare release:perform. This short HOWTO explains why this happens in the first place and demonstrates how you can get rid of the extra test run and save some time during release.

I'm pleased to announce that the JODReports project has received two brand new mailing lists, one for user and one for developer discussion each. They are hosted by Google Groups and can be posted to by anyone with a valid Google account.

The Java programming language does not support the notion of "self types", that is "type of this". When implementing fluent APIs, this lack of support can lead to significant duplication of boilerplate code. Taking FEST Assertions as an example, this article shows how "self types" can be emulated in Java using Generics.

Using time-dependent data

I stumbled across a piece of code the other day, allowing some versioned entity from our domain model to find out whether it's valid from a certain point in time. The corresponding test failed sporadically, so I went and looked into it.

What's Inside A Violation?

If the validator found a number of violations, what can we do with it? Let's have a look at the simple usages of violation objects.

Learning Test One: Validate a single, primitive attribute

Time to write our first (domain) object and validate something. We'll do this using the TestNG framework to create a tiny test driver showcasing how the most basic validation API calls interact.

Basic Project Setup

I'll use Apache Maven 2.x and IntelliJ IDEA as my primary development tools, so you might want to learn how to use these first if you plan to work through the examples for yourself. All source code and project files for this walkthrough is available from github using

git://github.com/ansgarkonermann/bean-validation-with-jsr303.git

as clone URL.

Seems as if JSR 303 "Bean Validation" specification has been around for a while now. At least long enough to have a look for myself. Curious to learn both the possibilities and the limits of current implementations, I'll simply try out the reference implementation and explain what I'm doing in a step-by step manner.

Yes, I do have a passion for code. Not to say I'm a code addict.

Have you ever experienced this passion for yourself? Then this site is for you!

Don't know why someone would ever claim he's passionate about code? -- Bear with me, I'll explain.