My Blog Hits 50K Pageviews

When I check the stats of audience of my blog (My first time to do so), I was surprise to find out that one third of the readers of my blog is from United States. The diagram above is showing countries that have greater than 1,000 pageviews.

Many thanks for your interest to my blog posts and I hope the information I shared here is useful to you.

The followings are the most popular blog posts (above 1,000 pageviews) of my blog:

• Kick Off JQuery Form Builder Plugin Project (12,387 Pageviews)  
• Request For Comment: JQuery Form Builder Plugin (3,197 Pageviews) 
• JQuery and Grails Form Builder Plugin 0.1 Coordinated Released (1,439 Pageviews)  
• FreeMarker vs. GSP for Dynamic Template Rendering (1,291 Pageviews)  
• JQuery Validation UI Plugin 1.2 Released - Client Side Validation without writing JavaScript (1,210 Pageviews)

May I know what topics would you like to see more in my writing? I'd love to hear your comments!

Application Skeleton of Vaadin, Spring, JPA and Liferay

I have chance to pick up Vaadin last week, I start with their official tutorial: Address Book Sample. Thanks to Vaadin community created such a great tutorial. The tutorial mainly focus on Vaadin front-end only, this blog post is about integration to Spring technology stack as the back-end that run independent from or in Liferay Portal 6.

The back-end code such as PersonService, PersonRepository and configurations such as persistence.xml, applicationContext.xml, Maven's pom.xml, etc. was generated by Spring Roo. The Spring-Vaadin integration was enabled by Spring Stuff add-on, many thanks to Archie Cobbs created this add-on.

Vaadin Address Book Standalone Sample

Picture above is how the sample look like when it run standalone. You are welcome to fork the code at github, any changes contribute back to the main code base is very much appreciated. Bear in mind that the sample code is far from perfect, but it works. Many works need to be done to become a great application skeleton, you are encourage to look at the outstanding issues, or create one for bug or enhancement.

Edited on 22-Jun-2012: Many thanks to Iwein Fuld for his fixes to enabled the sample run with in-memory HSQLDB instead of MySQL DB.

Vaadin Address Book Sample In Liferay

Picture above is how the sample look like when it run in Liferay. You are welcome to fork the code at liferay branch here.

I hope the sample code is useful to you. I'd love to hear your comments!

Grails Adoption In Malaysia

In my opinion, Grails Framework is great, matured and the most productive technology stack for web application development in Java platform.

I still remembered that I conducted a demo session for Grails in a training room to my fellow developers in 2007, the framework was version 0.6, but I saw it great potential to make web development in Java platform so much simple compares to other alternatives available at that time. It is a big leap forward, not a small improvement. I agreed with the tagline of Grails, "the search is over". Now, my thought remain the same.

What is the reality out there? The reality of Java technology adoption in Malaysia was slow and dominated and lead by big technology companies like IBM and Oracle. I find out that the current status of Grails adoption in Malaysia is like SpringFramework in 2003. It is cool technology that adopted by minority. As per today, SpringFramework is mainstream technology stack that adopted by many Java shops after I spoken to few software managers.

As my base was in Malaysia and I have no plan for relocation or to work oversea, I being forced to stick with SpringFramework and pick up Spring Roo recently even I think Grails is a superior framework for web application development in Java platform in term of simplicity and productivity. I'd love hear your comments if you have different opinions.

The challenge is "How do we, as lead developer, project manager or team lead improve the adoption of new technology stack like Grails in Malaysia?". What do you think?

Lastly, thanks for taking your time to read this post and if you have plan to launch a web application project and free of choice for technology stack [you know my preference ;-)], I'm ready to listen to your plan and happy to work with you. Kindly contact me at limcheekin@vobject.com.


Note: A discussion topic related to this post at OSDC.my Mailing List.
Disclaimer: I am not working for SpringSource and have no association with SpringSource.

JQuery Validation UI Plugin 1.2.3 Released - Client Side Validation without writing JavaScript

I would like to announce the JQuery Validation UI Plugin 1.2.3 Released.

The JQuery Validation UI Plugin will bring Javascript Validator, Custom Constraints, Remote Constraints, jQuery Validation plugin and qTip (jQuery tooltip plugin) under the same root and deliver comprehensive client-side validation solution.

Special thanks to Brian Saville, the release of 1.2.3 for items of What's New section below is his kindly contribution, otherwise you won't see this release news. Brian, welcome you to the project team!

What's New:

• Fixed Issue #19: Allow overriding of submitHandler in generated validation block.
• Fixed Issue #20: Add module definitions to use with the resources plugin.
• First published with the project code at GitHub.
• Converted documentation to Grails Docs (no longer at Google Code).

Known Issue:

• The Person Sample Application is broken in Grails 2.0.0.

Find Out More:

• Source code: https://github.com/limcheekin/jquery-validation-ui
• Documentation: http://limcheekin.github.com/jquery-validation-ui
• Support: https://github.com/limcheekin/jquery-validation-ui/issues
• Older Issues: http://code.google.com/p/jquery-validation-ui-plugin/issues/list
• Discussion Forum: http://groups.google.com/group/jquery-validation-ui-plugin

The Grails Activiti Plugin 5.8.1 Released

I would like to announce the Grails Activiti Plugin 5.8.1 released.

Grails Activiti Plugin was created to integrate Activiti BPM Suite and workflow system to Grails Framework. With the Grails Activiti Plugin, workflow application can be created at your fingertips!

What's New:

• Fixed Issue 21 : Activiti 5.8 controller reloading broken in Grails 2.0.0.

Find Out More:

• Project Site and Documentation: http://code.google.com/p/grails-activiti-plugin/
• Support: http://code.google.com/p/grails-activiti-plugin/issues/list
• Discussion Forum: http://groups.google.com/group/grails-activiti-plugin