delahuntyware

Grails Error: No thread-bound request found

2013-02-03T18:28:00.000-08:00

No thread-bound request found: Are you referring to request attributes outside of an actual web request, or processing a request outside of the originally receiving thread? If you are actually operating within a web request and still receive this message, your code is probably running outside of DispatcherServlet/DispatcherPortlet: In this case, use RequestContextListener or RequestContextFilter to expose the current request.

Sometime you get this error with spring security. Most common when upgrading grails because all the dependencies have to be re downloaded.

To fix just clean and compile your grails project. Then run run-app twice. Seem to fix the issue.

403 AWS elastics bean stalk

2013-02-03T16:55:00.000-08:00

This is for anyone having a problem with seeing 403 errors on AWS.

The problem is when your minimum number of instances does not match the availability Zone number. So if one of your instances goes down in the AZ the load balancer seems to still try to send connections to it and that strangely results in a 403.

So it is easily fixed. Just make sure your min instance count number matches the Any values eg

Min instance count = 1
AZ = Any1

Min instance count = 2
AZ = Any2

Min instance count = 3
AZ = Any3

Hope this helps someone. It was a pain for me to track this down.

My latest Web service is LIVE

2011-08-29T18:43:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since i last posted. But i have been busy working on this new service.

http://www.hugglehub.com

The service is all about making it easy to share you photos with your parents.

Check it out let me know what you think.

User tracking logging in Grails

2011-05-16T06:54:00.001-07:00

Hi peeps

Thought i would just do a quick post about how to create a custom logging filter for logging which pages a user went to.

First setup log4j config to add a new apppender nd logger called utlog (usage tracking)

 def utLog = "${System.properties.getProperty('catalina.base')}${File.separator}logs${File.separator}utlog.log"  
 println utLog  
 log4j = {  
  appenders {  
   rollingFile name: 'utlog', file: utLog, layout: pattern(conversionPattern: '%d{dd-MM-yyyy HH:mm:ss,SSS}|%p|%c{1}|%X{userId}|%X{sessionId}|%m%n'), maxFileSize: '10MB', threshold: org.apache.log4j.Level.DEBUG  
   console name: 'stdout', layout:pattern(conversionPattern: '%d{dd-MM-yyyy HH:mm:ss,SSS}|%p|%c{1}|%X{userId}|%X{sessionId}|%m%n'), threshold: org.apache.log4j.Level.DEBUG  
  }  
  error 'org.codehaus.groovy.grails.web.servlet', // controllers  
      'org.codehaus.groovy.grails.web.pages', // GSP  
      'org.codehaus.groovy.grails.web.sitemesh', // layouts  
      'org.codehaus.groovy.grails.web.mapping.filter', // URL mapping  
      'org.codehaus.groovy.grails.web.mapping', // URL mapping  
      'org.codehaus.groovy.grails.commons', // core / classloading  
      'org.codehaus.groovy.grails.plugins', // plugins  
      'org.codehaus.groovy.grails.orm.hibernate', // hibernate integration  
      'org.springframework',  
      'org.hibernate',  
      'net.sf.ehcache.hibernate'  
  warn 'org.mortbay.log'    
  info utlog: ['ut'],additivity:true  
 }

Next create a filter that uses Spring security plugin to fetch the current logged in user:

 class UsageTrackingFilters {  
   def springSecurityService  
   private static final Log usagetrackingLog = LogFactory.getLog('ut')  
   def filters = {  
     all(controller: '*', action: '*') {  
       before = {  
         String sessionId = RequestContextHolder.getRequestAttributes()?.getSessionId()  
         if (sessionId) {  
           MDC.put('sessionId', sessionId)  
         }  
         if (springSecurityService.isLoggedIn()) {  
           def userId = springSecurityService.getPrincipal().id  
           MDC.put('userId', userId + "")  
         }else{  
           MDC.put('userId', "0")  
         }  
         usagetrackingLog.info(request.getRequestURI())  
       }  
       after = {  
       }  
       afterView = {  
         MDC.remove('sessionId')  
         MDC.remove('userId')  
       }  
     }  
   }  
 }

That is it

Setup Amazon linux for Grails

2011-02-26T20:42:00.000-08:00

Install mysql

yum install mysql mysql-server mysql-libs
service mysqld start
chkconfig --levels 235 mysqld on
mysql_secure_installation

Install apache

sudo yum install httpd httpd-devel

add /etc/httpd/conf.d/proxy_ajp.conf

With this in it:

<Ifmodule mod_proxy_ajp.c>
ProxyRequests On
ProxyVia On

<Location />
Order allow,deny
Allow from all
ProxyPass ajp://localhost:8009/
ProxyPassReverse ajp://localhost:8009/
</Location>

</Ifmodule>

Grails GORM trick: Use read() rather than get() on updates

2010-10-20T05:11:00.000-07:00

Hi

So i discovered that it might be a good idea use read() on your update method.

So use

def person = Person.read(params.id)

instead of

def person = Person.get(params.id)

The consequence of this is that hibernate dirty checking is turned off. So to save your domain object you MUST call save(). So if you cancel the update for any reason without calling save() you do not have to to worry about grails persisting things automatically due to dirty checking :)

Hope this helps

GORM gotcha: Many to Many mapping causing new Domain to be saved

2010-10-17T19:03:00.000-07:00

Hi All

I came across a new Grails GORM subtle gotcha this week.

I was creating a new Domain object and it was still getting persisted to the database even though i was not calling save().

This is not normal behavior for NEW objects. As you may or may not be aware this is the behavior when updating objects though. So i was quite surprised by this and did some trials in trying to fix the problem.

First calling discard() on my NEW object was the first try. But that was a guess and i knew really it would not work. Because that object not yet associated with the session. And it didn't. So i finally found the problem.

This was all to do the the many to many relationship that was setup on the domain object.

So for example i have somethings like this:

class Location {

static hasMany = [posters:Poster]

String name

}

class Poster {

static belongsTo = [Location]

static hasMany = [locations:Location]

String name

}

So in my controller i allow a user to select multiple locations. These locations all get added to the new Poster in this line of code:

Poster poster = new Poster(params)

So if i then have some business logic that decides that i do not want to create this new Poster i just need to not call save right. Turns out that is wrong.

Because of the many to many relationship between Location and Poster. Poster has been assoiated with the locations. So the locations are now dirty and will get persisted at the end of the transaction. This will cascade to my new Poster and save it.

So to fix this you need to discard the Location objects so they do not save your Poster object.

Poster poster = new Poster(params)

if(businessLogicValidate() == false){

poster.locations.each{Location l ->
l.discard();
}

}else{

poster.save()

}

Hope this helps someone.

Stored procedures on Amazon RDS

2010-10-14T03:27:00.001-07:00

Been a long time since i blogged but need to document this pain in the arse.

So for a new project i need to create a mysql function (same for stored proc) on amazon RDS.

When i tried to install it i got this error:

ERROR 1419 (HY000) at line 3: You do not have the SUPER privilege and binary logging is enabled (you *might* want to use the less safe log_bin_trust_function_creators variable)

So to get them to install you need to set that database parameter to ON. However to do that is not so simple.

Lucky for you people i have found out how to do it and here are the steps:

1) Install the RDS CLI tools. I installed these on my EC2 instance.

Download from here:
http://developer.amazonwebservices.com/connect/entry.jspa?categoryID=294&externalID=2928

They are java based and so you need have Java running. Plus they need your amazon key and secret key. Once you have them installed following the readme do the following:

Important!! make sure you set the AWS region you are working in.
Eg export EC2_REGION=ap-southeast-1

2) create a new parameter group

rds-create-db-parameter-group peters-params -f mysql5.1 -d "peters params"

3) modify the log_bin_trust_function_creators to be set to ON

rds-modify-db-parameter-group peters-params --parameters="name=log_bin_trust_function_creators, value=on, method=immediate"

4) change your running db instance to use the new param group

rds-modify-db-instance petersdbinstance --db-parameter-group-name=peters-params

5) restart the instance

rds-reboot-db-instance petersdbinstance

That will allow you to create a function or stored procedure:

Some point about the function / stored proc:

You need to specify the DETERMINISTIC stuff and you need to add a DEFINER=CURRENT_USER

DELIMITER $$
DROP FUNCTION IF EXISTS `sayhello`$$
CREATE DEFINER=CURRENT_USER FUNCTION `sayhello`(param1 VARCHAR(120))
RETURNS VARCHAR(120)
NOT DETERMINISTIC
READS SQL DATA
BEGIN
RETURN CONCAT('Hello, ',s,'!');

END$$
DELIMITER ;

This works for me hope it helps

how to setup clover with multi-module maven project and build with bamboo

2009-11-02T18:42:00.000-08:00

Ok so i figured how to setup clover with maven on a mulit-module project with putting the config in a maven profile:

<profile>
   <id>clover</id>
   <build>
       <plugins>
           <plugin>
               <groupId>com.atlassian.maven.plugins</groupId>
               <artifactId>maven-clover2-plugin</artifactId>
               <configuration>
                   <targetPercentage>${clover.coverage.percent}</targetPercentage>
                   <snapshot>/development/build-server/clover/${groupId}-${artifactId}/clover.snapshot</snapshot>
                   <generateHtml>true</generateHtml>
                   <generateXml>true</generateXml>
                   <baseDir>${project.basedir}</baseDir>
                   <licenseLocation>/development/build-server/clover/clover.license</licenseLocation>
               </configuration>
               <executions>
                         <execution>
                             <id>clover</id>
                             <goals>
                                 <goal>setup</goal>
                                 <goal>snapshot</goal>
                             </goals>
                         </execution>
                         <execution>
                             <phase>verify</phase>
                             <goals>
                                 <goal>aggregate</goal>
                                 <goal>clover</goal>
                                 <goal>check</goal>
                             </goals>
                         </execution>
                     </executions>
           </plugin>

       </plugins>
   </build>
</profile>

Simply drop that into your profiles section in your pom. You will need to change the paths of where you have put your clover licence and where you want the snapshots to be stored. Then when you want to run it use this command.

mvn -P clover install

Bamboo

Setup bamboo as normal but make sure you don't let bamboo clear out your build directory each time or clover won't work. So untick the option to clean out the build directory each time.

Grails: the Iron Man suit for the Tony Stark developer

2009-10-15T15:13:00.000-07:00

Just thought i would put a response together for this post:

Grails dark side

In my opinion the Grails sweet spot is for developers who already have years of experience of building web app with spring/hibernate/sitemesh and java.

Basically it is the "iron man suit" for an already established "Tony Stark" developer. The iron man suit is at its most powerful when it is controlled by Tony Stark. A man who has years of experience of solving problems. The suit simply enhances him :)

I have years of experience of using the spring/hibernate/sitemesh/java stack along with deploying java web apps on java app servers. So Grails is my "Iron Man Suit"

For me Grails is essentially the same core deployed in the same way. The difference is that Grails + Groovy is literally super glue for these components. Almost like comparing assembling your own Ikea furniture vs carving your own out of wood. Except the end quality is even better.

So thinking that you can get the absolute most out of Grails without knowing anything about spring or hibernate etc is ignorant. And actually being ignorant of the underline technologies often leads to assumption that a bug with the underline technology (eg hibernate) is a bug with Grails.

Turn off caching in Liferay (development mode)

2009-09-16T16:56:00.000-07:00

Hi All

Long time no post. But here is a little snippit of a trick I discovered but had to do some serious google searches to find.

To turn off the liferay caching in Liferay for when you are developing all you have to do is this:

Find this file:

$LIFERAY_HOME/tomcat-6.0.18/webapps/ROOT/WEB-INF/classes/portal-developer.properties

Can copy it and rename it to:

$LIFERAY_HOME/tomcat-6.0.18/webapps/ROOT/WEB-INF/classes/portal-ext.properties

This will disable all caching in Liferay such as css, javascript and vm templates.

Hope this helps.

Workaround to a nasty Grails 1.1.1 bug

2009-07-21T09:50:00.000-07:00

Hi all

Just wanted to post quickly about a workaround to a Grails bug I dropped into to my application lately. There seems to some strange problem with Grails not binding the GORM methods to the domain objects intermittently.
Eg horrible errors like this


groovy.lang.MissingPropertyException: No such property: save for class: XXXXX

I only seem to get this problem in production on a Tomcat 6.0 server. I super quick fix that seemed to solve it at the time was to restart the tomcat server after a deployment. But that was too shaky for me.

Unfortunately is happening on a really important piece of my application. When i take payment. So i end up taking payment via my provider Paypal but not saving the transaction details in my own database.

Anyway after some searching around it seems like the problem it might have been fixed in the upcoming Grails 1.1.2

But for now this seems to do the trick. Someone posted this quick fix on the forums. The problem is with the hibernate only lazily adding the GORM method and some problem with groovy not recognising them.

So the trick is to get Hibernate plugin to register them at start up. So in your bootstrap.groovy add the following:

class BootStrap {

   def grailsApplication

   def init = {servletContext ->

     
       switch (grails.util.GrailsUtil.environment) {
         
           case "production":
               grailsApplication.domainClasses.each{
                   def clazz = it.clazz
                   println "Clazz: $clazz count: " + clazz.count();
               }
           break;
         
           case "development":
               // dev stuff
           break;  
       }
   }
 
}

This simply calls count on all domain objects and prints out the count. You don't have to print out the count it was just nice for me.

Hope this helps

Grails developer available: Get them while there hot

2009-07-07T02:38:00.000-07:00

Hi Peeps

This is just quick shout out to the community. I will be available to start a Grails contract from 20th July. So if you have any new cool projects coming up and are looking for a developer then let me know.

You can get me on peter.delahunty@gmail.com

Deploying a Grails app on EC2 from scratch.

2009-06-30T01:19:00.000-07:00

Hi All

Ok so i have found some time write up how to deploy a Grails app onto EC2. This is a step by step guide to setting up Apache, Tomcat, Mysql, Java on an ubuntu Ec2 Box

For those who do not know. EC2 is Amazon's (that's right the one famous for books) hosting service of its webservice suite. It allows you to run virtual server images on it amazingly scaleable infrastructure. Plus you only pay for what you use. If your server is up for 4 hours you pay for 4 hours. $0.10 per hour (about). You can build your own server as i will show you in the steps below and manange it on their infrastructure.

These are the steps i have taken and they work for me. I am sure there are hundreds of ways to skin a cat (so the cat skinners say) but this is my way. Take it or leave it :)

Pre-Requisites

1) Get Firefox i am sure you have it already if you don't get it you will need it. As of writing this i am using 3.0.11 download here

2) Install the EC2 Firefox plugin (Elasticfox) download here

3) Install the S3 firefox plugin download here

4) Open an amazon account. This is a five min job requiring a valid credit card. Signup here
Once you have an account you then need to open a EC2 account and an S3 account.

5) Then next step is for you get familiar with the tools. You can do this by following the getting started guides in this ebook.

Gettings started

IMPORTANT !!!

You need to read the getting started guide and get familiar with things before you read the rest of this blog post. Otherwise it will not make sense. I am assuming from here onwards you have read an tried out the service.

Setting up a server to run a Grails app.

By now you should have terminated any test instances you had running on EC2 and be ready start a fresh.

1) Start with a baseline Linux image

Ok i have decided to host my application on Linux basically because there was no descion to be made. I would only ever host a serious website on Linux and never windows.

The base linux version i used is Ubuntu 8.10 (intrepid) i am also using a 32bit and not 64 bit. You can find the AMI codes here

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/EC2StartersGuide

I have chosen to go with AMI ami-5059be39 because it is based in the US and is 32Bit. If you want to run your servers in Europe then go with this ami-80c0e8f4

Ok now you should have a running instance of the ubuntu basic server. Connect to the server using an SSH terminal

Create a directory called downloads in side your home directory /home/ubuntu and cd into it.

2) Next you want to install Java

You should be in the downloads directory you created above

Download java 1.6. Right that now happens to be JDK 6 update 14. To do this i goto the java download website .

Choose JDK 6 update 14
Choose linux
Then copy the download link for the NON rpm version the second link

Now on your EC2 machine run the following command

wget <THE JDK DOWNLOAD URL>

This will now download the JDK install file onto the box

NOTE you might want to rename the file:

mv <NAME OF THE FILE>  jdk-6u14-linux-i586.bin

Next copy the file to /usr/local

sudo cp jdk-6u14-linux-i586.bin /usr/local

Change the permissions


sudo chmod +x jdk-6u14-linux-i586.bin

Then run the install file


sudo ./jdk-6u14-linux-i586.bin

This should unpack the java file to this directory /usr/local/jdk1.6.0_14

Next create a symbolic link to the directory called java


sudo ln -s /usr/local/jdk1.6.0_14 /usr/local/java

That is java installed.

3) Next install MYSQL

Download mysql via the same way you downloaded java above using wget you get the download link here

Choose the Linux (x86) download

Copy the mysql tar file into /usr/local


sudo cp mysql-5.1.35-linux-i686-glibc23.tar.gz /usr/local

Delete any existing mysql directories. (this maybe optional)


sudo rm -rf /etc/mysql

Next follow these commands to install it. IMPORTANT: Don't follow any of the step that are listed by the mysql_install_db script they will be covered later.


sudo groupadd mysql
sudo useradd -g mysql mysql
sudo cp mysql-5.1.35-linux-i686-glibc23.tar.gz /usr/local
sudo cd /usr/local
sudo gunzip mysql-5.1.35-linux-i686-glibc23.tar.gz
sudo tar -xvf mysql-5.1.35-linux-i686-glibc23.tar
sudo mv /usr/local/mysql-5.1.35-linux-i686-glibc23 /usr/local/mysql 
sudo cd mysql 
sudo mkdir logs
sudo chown -R mysql . 
sudo chgrp -R mysql . 
sudo scripts/mysql_install_db --user=mysql 
sudo chown -R root . 
sudo chown -R mysql data 
sudo bin/mysqld_safe --user=mysql &

Right now you should have running mysql instance

Copy the standard startup script into the linux startup area


sudo cp /usr/local/mysql/support_files/mysql.server /etc/init.d/mysql

Setup mysql to run at all levels


sudo update-rc.d mysql defaults

Set a root password


sudo /usr/local/mysql/bin/mysqladmin -u root password 'new-password'
sudo /usr/local/mysql/bin/mysqladmin -u root -h 'localhost' password 'new-password'

Ok now you have a running mysql instance

4) Next you want to move the Mysql installation on to an amazon EBS.

You should already know about an EBS from reading the EC2 getting start guide above.

Create a new EBS using Elastic fox and attach it to your EC2 instance. You will be asked to enter a device when you are attaching the EBS to your running EC2 instance. Enter the following:


/dev/sdh

Once you have done that you want to mount and format that diskspace. I am simply following the instructions found here but have modified it bit as my paths are different

Install XFS. This is a secure file system.


sudo apt-get install -y xfsprogs

Setup the mount and fomat the disk


sudo modprobe xfs
sudo mkfs.xfs /dev/sdh

echo "/dev/sdh /vol xfs noatime 0 0" | sudo tee -a /etc/fstab
sudo mkdir /vol
sudo mount /vol

You should now have a new filesystem under /vol

Stop mysql if running


sudo /etc/init.d/mysql stop

Move all the mysql files


sudo mkdir -p /vol/usr/local/mysql

sudo mv /usr/local/mysql /vol/usr/local

Remount the mysql directory to the volume


sudo mkdir /usr/local/mysql

echo "/vol/usr/local/mysql /usr/local/mysql     none bind" | sudo tee -a /etc/fstab
sudo mount /usr/local/mysql

Restart mysql

Stop mysql if running


sudo /etc/init.d/mysql start

You now have mysql running from an EBS

Setup mysql database user and backup script


/usr/local/mysql/bin/mysql -p -u root

create database


CREATE DATABASE demodb CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_general_ci;

create app user and backup user and give access:


CREATE USER 'demouser'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'demouser123';
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON demodb.* TO 'demouser'@'localhost' WITH GRANT OPTION;

CREATE USER 'backup'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'backup123';
GRANT LOCK TABLES, SELECT ON demodb.* TO 'backup'@'localhost';

Setup db backup:

Download the mysql backup script:


http://sourceforge.net/projects/automysqlbackup/

For putting files in s3 use this


http://s3tools.org/s3cmd

apt-get install s3cmd

6) Install Tomcat

This is easy to install
Download tomcat 6 into your /home/ubuntu/downloads using wget
Copy the jar file it to /usr/local

Use the java jar command to unpack tomcat zip


sudo /usr/local/java/bin/jar -xvf /usr/local/tomcatXXX.zip

Create a symbolic link to Tomcat


sudo ln -s /usr/local/tomcatXXXX /usr/local/tomcat

Next create tomcat user to run tomcat


sudo groupadd tomcat
sudo useradd -m -s /bin/bash -g tomcat tomcat

Change to tomcat user and edit the .profile to add java in the PATH


sudo su - tomcat
vi /home/tomcat/.profile

Edit the file using vi to contain


export JAVA_HOME=/usr/local/java
PATH=$JAVA_HOME/bin:$PATH

configure the server.xml to use an AJP connector to work with apache.

save your old /usr/local/tomcat/conf/server.xml to server.xml.orig


cp /usr/local/tomcat/conf/server.xml /usr/local/tomcat/conf/server.xml.orig

edit a new server.xml


vi /usr/local/tomcat/conf/server.xml

copy this config in there:

<?xml version='1.0' encoding='utf-8'?>
<Server port="8005" shutdown="SHUTDOWN">

  <Listener className="org.apache.catalina.core.AprLifecycleListener" SSLEngine="on" />
  <Listener className="org.apache.catalina.core.JasperListener" />
  <Listener className="org.apache.catalina.mbeans.ServerLifecycleListener" />
  <Listener className="org.apache.catalina.mbeans.GlobalResourcesLifecycleListener" />

  <Service name="Catalina">

        <!--
    <Connector port="8080" protocol="HTTP/1.1"
               connectionTimeout="20000"
               redirectPort="8443" />
        -->

        <Connector      port="8009"
                                protocol="AJP/1.3"
                                redirectPort="8443"
                                connectionTimeout="300000"
                                maxThreads="200"
                                backlog="50"
                                enableLookups="true"
                                emptySessionPath="true"

        />

        <Engine name="Catalina" defaultHost="localhost">

      <Host name="localhost"  appBase="webapps"
            unpackWARs="true" autoDeploy="true"
            xmlValidation="false" xmlNamespaceAware="false">

      </Host>
    </Engine>
  </Service>
</Server>

That is tomcat setup. You can run it if you like to see it working.

Now just run tomcat


sudo su - tomcat
/usr/local/tomcat/bin/startup.sh

6) Install Apache

This is easy


sudo apt-get install apache2

Enable AJP mod


sudo a2enmod proxy_ajp

Create a new site to configure AJP with tomcat. You can change the to whatever you want.


sudo vi /etc/apache2/sites-available/webapp

add the following config to link apache to tomcat

<ifmodule>
ProxyRequests On
ProxyVia On

<location>
Order allow,deny
Allow from all
ProxyPass ajp://localhost:8009/
ProxyPassReverse ajp://localhost:8009/
</location>

</ifmodule>

Enable your site


sudo a2ensite webapp

disable the default apache config


sudo a2dissite default

start or restart apache


sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

That is basic apache installed

To secure apache with basic authenication:


sudo mkdir /etc/apache2/passwd
cd /etc/apache2/passwd
sudo htpasswd -c site-access

add these lines to the webapp config to secure:

<Location />
Order allow,deny
Allow from all

AuthType Basic
AuthName "Restricted area"
AuthUserFile /etc/apache2/passwd/site-access
Require valid-user

ProxyPass ajp://localhost:8009/
ProxyPassReverse ajp://localhost:8009/
</Location>

To enable SSL on the apache instance:

Enable ssl mod


sudo a2enmod ssl

generate your .key and .crt files. The company who you bought your SSL certs from should tell you how to do this.

make a new director to put the .key and .crt file in:


sudo mkdir /etc/apache2/ssl

copy the .key and .crt files into that directory. eg:


/etc/apache2/ssl/www.mydomain.com.crt
/etc/apache2/ssl/www.mydomain.com.key

Create a new site to configure ssl.


sudo vi /etc/apache2/sites-available/ssl

copy this config

<VirtualHost *:443>
DocumentRoot /var/www/

<IfModule mod_proxy_ajp.c>

ProxyRequests On
ProxyVia On

<Location />
Order allow,deny
Allow from all
#AuthType Basic
#AuthName "Restricted area"
#AuthUserFile /etc/apache2/passwd/site-access
#Require valid-user
ProxyPass ajp://localhost:8009/
ProxyPassReverse ajp://localhost:8009/
</Location>


</IfModule>

<IfModule mod_ssl.c>

SSLEngine On
SSLCertificateFile /etc/apache2/ssl/www.mydomain.com.crt
SSLCertificateKeyFile /etc/apache2/ssl/www.mydomain.com.key

</IfModule>
</VirtualHost>

Just change the paths at the bottom to point to your .crt and .key files.

Ok few that was long ish for me to write...

By now you should have Tomcat running with Apache and Mysql.

UPDATE:

Extra steps i take for Grails:

Going live with grails

Hope this helps someone....

Paypal Pro Plugin documentation done

2009-06-29T08:28:00.000-07:00

Hi

I have release the Paypal Pro plugin. Basically this is NOT a replacement for the existing Grails paypal plugin. It allows you to directly interface with a Paypal Webpayment Pro account. This is a service provided by Paypal that you have to pay for each month but it allows you to take payments on your website via forms on your website without the customer ever getting redirected to Paypal.

The plugin is all working and i have been using it on www.ebookstamper.com for the last few weeks.

Check it out here:

http://grails.org/plugin/paypal-pro

Peace

Grails Super File Upload plugin complete and uploaded (mind the pun!)

2009-06-18T05:01:00.000-07:00

Ho ho ho

I have uploaded and released my latest Grails plugin

Super File Upload

Finally you can easily style your file upload control and have a fully working progress bar with it.

If you want to see it action then head to my new website www.ebookstamper.com

Enjoy :)

Going live with your Grails app part 1 of X

2009-06-12T01:36:00.001-07:00

So I thought I would right up some problem/solutions I had with deploying a Grails app into production.

First step is reducing grails WAR file size.

I have depolyed my latest app http://www.ebookstamper.com on Amazon EC2 (i will do a later step by step post for EC2 deployment). After a few round trips i realised that i was getting pi**ed off with the time it was taking to upload my 20-30meg war file to my server. So after a bit of digging around on the web and some trial and error I devised a way to reduce my WAR size. Here are the steps below:

1) Use Tomcat 6.X
I won't bother giving arguments for using Tomcat 6. Let me just say if you are developing a new app then take it from me this is what you want to be using for your app server. I worked on a large project for the last 12 month getting this website live http://www.carphonewarehouse.com/ and we really squeezed out the performace of Tomcat and the sun JDK1.6 with great results.

2) Set up a shared library in tomcat

Make a directory called shared/lib under tomcat home directory

mkdir -p $TOMCAT_HOME/shared/lib

3) Tell tomcat about this lib

Find the file $TOMCAT_HOME/conf/catalina.properties

Change this line

shared.loader=

shared.loader=${catalina.base}/shared/lib,${catalina.base}/shared/lib/*.jar

4) Build your Grails war file

Ok first off you should build your grails war file as normal to get all the jars.

grails war

Or if you going to deploy the app as root context "/" on tomcat do this

grails war ROOT.war

The main point of this exercise is to have grails build a complete WAR file including all the jar librarys you need. These jars come from all over. Grails home/dist, Grails home/lib, plugins and your app lib. So instead of you manually going to find all these jar files just have grails do it for you.

So once you have your WAR file you will have all the jars you need for your app inside the war file in WEB-INF/lib.

5) Copy all the jar files to $TOMCAT_HOME/shared/lib

So unpack the war file and copy all the jar files to the $TOMCAT_HOME/shared/lib directory you created earlier. My simple technique for this was.

a) Upload the ROOT.war file to your server and put it in the $TOMCAT_HOME/webapps directory. This way it is one (a big one) file to upload.

b) Start tomcat and have it deploy your application. This will get tomcat to unpack the war file for you.

c) Stop tomat then go into the unpacked war lib directory $TOMCAT_HOME/webapps/ROOT/WEB-INF/lib and move all the jar files in there to $TOMCAT_HOME/shared/lib. You can then delete the contents of webapps.

6) Next build yourself an empty war file

Now this is the magic bit that i found somewhere out on the web. The --nojars arguement.

grails war --nojars ROOT.war

The --nojars argument will build a grails war file without any jars in the WEB-INF/lib directory in the war file. You should see that this will reduce the war file size by rather pleaseable amount.

7) Redeploy your new lightweight ROOT.war on tomcat
You can then redeploy your new war on tomcat and have a new working app

Next time around you only need to build the war without any jar file.

Now this should be obvious but i will point it out anyway. If you add a new plugin, upgrade grails or add a new lib jar to your app then you should repeat all of this from the start to avoid class not found problems.

Enjoy

Love Grails? Give something back to the community

2009-06-11T06:21:00.000-07:00

Hi All

Been thinking today how important it to the success of the Grails eco system that people give back as much as they take. Grails is simply a revolutionary full stack web development framework. It personally saves me so much development time that it is simply my only choice for web development now.

Anyway I have been using Grails on and off for about 2-3 years. I think is started dabbling with it from version 0.3 but have seen it grow from strength to strength upto its current release of 1.1.1.

The projects I built in grails were most beta ideas and most never seen light of day. They are in my great ideas hardrive graveyard. Anyway one of them has finally seen the light of day: www.ebookstamper.com

Throughout the development of this site I came accross a few missing features in grails that I would only have found from building a commercial website. So I decide to build these features myself in the form of a plugin. I have to tell you it one the best decicions i made.

Grails makes it so easy to create a new plugin and release it that it seem criminal not to. Anyone can apply for a grails plugin developer account and Graeme will probably grant it in 5 mins from his iphone. Then you can check in your work and hey presto you can call yourself a grails plugin developer.

So what can a plugin be. Well anything really. Have you written some code in your Grails app that you think can be made more general. Well do it and refactor it out it into a plugin.

Here are some good ideas for plugins:

Wrap an existing java library as a grails plugin.
There are so many great java libs out there that do specific cool things. Make them available in grails as a plugin. Some good examples of this already are the amazon s3 plugin or the awesome searchable plugin or even the quartz plugin.

Wrap an existing javascript library
This the same as the java lib example above. There are some many javascript utils out there. If you use one think about making it into a plugin for grails. I did this with the super file upload plugin i wrote. I also see it with the grails ui plugin.

Wrap up a handler for new protocol
Have you had to write your own protocol handler for your grails app release it as a plugin. New xml protocols come out all the time.

Wrap up some cool algorithim you have written
So you have written some code that does something cool. If you think it can be useful to someone else then release it as a plugin.

Create a taglib library
Have you written some cool tag libs that you use again and again. Why not package them up as a plugin. I have done this with my paypal pro plugin. You can use the tag libs to create credit card fields such as country select box, credit card type select box, and expriy date etc

Finally rememeber, this all about Karma. If you give good things wil always happen in some shape or form.

So start today: See what code you can give back to your Grails Communtity :)

Peace

My new Grails site finally goes live www.ebookstamper.com

2009-06-11T04:49:00.000-07:00

Hi all

So i finally put my new grails built website live this week.

http://www.ebookstamper.com

The elevator pitch is:

On demand stamping of PDF ebooks with your customers name and email

The long description is:

A web based service providing on demand stamping of PDF ebooks with your customers name and email. Helps protect your intellectual property by providing a deterrent against file sharing.

People who write ebooks and self publish will know what I am talking about.

I have been working on it in my spare time (is there such thing as spare time) for the last few months. Recently I took some quality time out and worked on it full time to get it out the door. The good new is that I have developed 4 grails plugins that have come out of building this website.

I love grails and it has help me so much in getting things out the door as soon as possible so I feel it is only right to give back to the community. So I have released these four plugins:

These are:

Javascript validator plugin
Grails template engine plugin

Super file upload plugin
Paypal Pro plugin

Although the code for the last 2 is checked in i have not found time to write up the docs. But will get to that asap. If you want to see the Super file upload plugin (SFU) in action go to my new website above and click on the demo button. The styled red browse button you see there is using the SFU plugin. When you upload a PDF you get the upload progress bar showing too.

Also I am hosting the whole thing on Amazon EC2 so will write up some posts on running grails apps on EC2. Some ticky bits worth documenting.

Peace...

Instant Admin Interface with Grails 1.1

2009-05-27T06:38:00.000-07:00

Hi All

I think I have just had a great idea for an instant admin interface for my new Grails app. I have almost completed my new web app and was just thinking that I could really do with simple admin interface. So I came up with this idea.

I can pull out my current domain classes out into a plugin. I can then install this plugin into the main application. Then the main app is back to normal

Then i can create a new app called XXX-admin. I then install the domain classes plugin into the admin app then generate scaffold controllers/views for the domain.

This then gives me an instant admin interface.

Gonna try this out and will write again about how it goes.

Peace...

Grails magical second act: The plugin ecosystem

2009-05-26T01:44:00.000-07:00

So as you might have gathered I love the Grails framework. The full stack framework is nothing short of magic compared to anything else in its domain. Since the arrival of the core framework (the first act) it has completely transformed my web development: Better, Faster, Smarter,

Anyway it just occurred to me over the weekend that Grails is in fact now on its second act. That in someways is more spectacular than the first. So what is this second act that tops the first one.

The plugin architecture:

I have always thought that the plugin architecture is "tres kool" and I have even written and released my own (Javascript Validator, Grails Template Engine). But it wasn't until i used the S3 Plugin this weekend that it really dawned on my how powerful the plugins are (and can be).

The S3 plugin is the first "full stack" plugin that i have used. It comes with a domain class, tag lib and background tasks. All aimed at seamlessly adding S3 support to your application in no time. I took me about 3-4 hours to integrate and test the plugin into my new app.

With its sync and async modes the plugin is very will written. Also keeping with the Grails philosophy it simply sprinkles magic groovy dust over an existing java framework (jets3)

Anyway just thought I would share this with you all. I think that the awesomeness of the the potential in grails plugins is just beginning and that we can expect to see some really cool stuff coming.

Peace...

New Grails Plugin Grails Template Engine

2009-05-21T05:56:00.000-07:00

Hello Alpha Geeks

I put a small grails plugin out today.

http://www.grails.org/plugin/grails-template-engine

The plugin simply exposes the GSP render engine as a service for backend GSP template rendering . It also adds a new convenient method to the controllers called renderWithTemplateEngine

The implementation was mostly lifed from Graeme's mail plugin. Now it is available standalone.

Hopefully this is useful to someone out there :)

Call to arms for Rails to Grails plugin porting

2009-05-06T02:29:00.001-07:00

One more thing while I am on a role braindumping on my blog.

I am currently now sharing offices in London with a good friend of mine and others. Anyway this good friend of mine is a Ruby on Rails Developer and a very good one at that.

So I quizzed him a bit about Rails to find out some info. Anyway one of the strong points of Rails is its plugins. They have loads and some really really good ones.

So got me thinking. From what I can see these plugins are all possible in Grails (if they don't already exist) so why don't we replicate them. The Rails guys are basically solving the same problems as the Grails guys and the fact that a Rails plugins exists means that it is a helpful tool to someone.

So anyway I am going to start this porting off. Here are some of my first targets:

http://github.com/technoweenie/acts_as_paranoid
http://thoughtbot.com/projects/paperclip

Next I guess I search for "Top 10 Rails plugins"

http://thetacom.info/2008/02/17/my-10-favorite-rails-plugins/

Pete :)

Dave Klien reviews my Javascript validator plugin in Groovy Mag (April)

2009-05-06T01:58:00.000-07:00

So having popped my head up after an intensive month or so of major S**t going on in my life and trying to ship my new on-line service (written in grails of course). Anyway I just seen Mr Dave Klien has done a wonderful review of my Javascript Validation grails plug-in. So I bought the mag. It is actually very good so I recommend you do too. Anyway in his own words:

This plug-in has great potential. It will already save
significant development time in setting up client-side
validation and I’m sure it’s going to keep getting better.
Stop by the Grails Plugin Portal and check it out. You
can leave a comment with enhancement suggestions or
if you’ve tried it out, let others know what you think
with a rating. I’m giving it 5 stars!

I am really happy about this. It is nice to see that the things you do help other people. I guess that is what the open source community is all about. Anyway just wanted to express another thought.

I think the best things, the ones that rise above come from passion and believing "there has to be a better way". That's where the grails framework came from, where groovy came from, where Spring came from, Hibernate, hell even Java too one upon a time.

However another ingredient that means the difference between longevity or 15 seconds of fame is "coming from the trenches"... You can see that with grails.

Graeme Rocher built grails from is own real life experience of using web frameworks. That is why even now I find little gems of goodness in there. The framework helps you all the way from development to production. That is something special.

I guess with my own little javascript validator plug-in in a much much smaller way that same is true for me. I needed client side validation and I had used Sprig'svalang before with spring mvc and really missed it with Grails. So I built it. When I say built it a really mean I made the "glue of convenience" that glues together some already established fantastic framework patterns (grails constraints, i18n, commons validator js libs). Then guess what. I actually used it on my own project as a user. I made it fit my own needs while trying to keep it generic. Anyway I think that's why people love it.

One last final thought... I love this quote just can't remember who said it.

A reasonable man changes and adapts to the world around him. The unreasonable man changes and adapts the world around him. Therefore all the innovation in the world lies in the hands of the unreasonable man :)

Ps. I have two new plug ins coming out this week. Again the came from the trenches of a need for them in my own app. I am sure you will love them.

Nullable vs Blank sorted i forgot to post about it

2009-05-06T01:53:00.000-07:00

Hi All

I just realise i forgot to post about the solution to the Nullable Vs Blank problem. Well after consulting lost of people for input I decided on a simple rule.

If the blank constraint and the nullable constraint are both used for a String attribute then the blank constraint wins.

The simple solution always wins :) (Occam's razor)