NSIS - How to Detect Whether Java is Installed in the System

While writing my installer I wanted to install JRE (embed JRE installer in my installer) only if Java is not installed already. So I had to detect whether Java is already installed.

My previous post on NSIS points to a quick start guide (in Harshani's blog) for NSIS, including how to install NSIS and how to write a simple installer. So at this point you should have installed NSIS and been somewhat familiar with NSIS scripting (sections, etc..). So here I am posting the piece of script I used to detect whether Java is installed in the system.

Section "find java" FINDJAVA

  StrCpy $1 "SOFTWARE\JavaSoft\Java Runtime Environment"
  StrCpy $2 0
  ReadRegStr $2 HKLM "$1" "CurrentVersion"
  StrCmp $2 "" DetectTry2
  ReadRegStr $5 HKLM "$1\$2" "JavaHome"
  StrCmp $5 "" DetectTry2
  goto done

  DetectTry2:
  ReadRegStr $2 HKLM "SOFTWARE\JavaSoft\Java Development Kit" "CurrentVersion"
  StrCmp $2 "" NoJava
  ReadRegStr $5 HKLM "SOFTWARE\JavaSoft\Java Development Kit\$2" "JavaHome"
  StrCmp $5 "" NoJava done

  done:
  ;All done. 

  NoJava:
  ;Write the script to install Java here

SectionEnd

In 3rd line of the script, it copies the path "Software\JavaSoft\Java Runtime Environment" to the variable 1. It is the Windows registry entry in which we should look for Java. In line 5 it reads the value of registry attribute "Current Version" which belongs to "SOFRWARE\JavaSoft\Java Runtime Environment", to the variable 2. ReadRegStr is the command used to read the registry. Here, "HKLM" means that it should look for this key under "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE" registry main key. 

In line 6 the command StrCmp compares the value of var 2 with "empty". If it is empty then that means there is no JRE installed in the system. So it passes the control to label "DetectTry2" which tries to detect if there is any Jdk installed. Line 7 is executed only if there is a value for JRE version. If so it tries to find the value for JavaHome attribute in key "Software\JavaSoft\Java Runtime Environment\1.x.x". In line 8 it checks whether JavaHome is null and if so, then again it jumps to label "DetectTry2". If it is not null that means there is a JRE installed and line 9 passes it to label "done".

Now let's see what "DetectTry2" label does. It is executed only if there is no JRE installed. In line 12 it reads the value of  "CurrentVersion" attribute of key "SOFTWARE\JavaSoft\Java Development Kit". In line 13 it checks whether the value it got is empty. If so it will hit the label "NoJava" means that neither JRE nor JDK is installed. If it is not empty then line 14 will check whether JavaHome is empty like before. Again, if JavaHome is empty it jumps to "NoJava". If not it jumps to "done".

If we ever hit "done" then that means either JRE or JDK is installed in the system. So there is nothing to do there. If we hit NoJava then we are going to install Java. I will post the script for that in a later post, NSIS - How to embed some other installer in your own installer.

This is valid for any other software like .NET framework, MS Office, etc as long as you know the correct registry entries to look in. 

Nullsoft Scriptable Install System (NSIS) - A Really Good Windows Installation System

I wanted to write an installation for IFRI data entry application which is currently being used to enter forest data to their database. The existing installation had some inconsistencies like users had to install the other required software themselves, some permission issues etc. So I had to search for a pretty stable installation system with all those features I wanted.

While searching I found this Harshani's blog about NSIS and thought to give it a try and  decided to write IFRI installer using NSIS. First it was not pretty simple and straight forward. I had to learn NSIS scripting language , tested examples in NSIS site. NSIS documentation was pretty helpful too. So finally I was able to write an installer for IFRI with all the features they expected and NSIS helped me a lot on that. I think it wouldn't be this easy and stable if I used another installation system other than NSIS.

So I'll post some tips and tricks I found  in NSIS scripting later. However Harshani's blog post about NSIS (stated above) is a nice post and shows how to build a simple installer. It will be a good first step on NSIS.

How to Print from Java (JPS) - javax.print Package

javax.print package is available in JDKs 1.4 and above. Formerly Java AWT printing API was used to perform basic printing and now it is enhanced with advanced options like printer service discovery, in javax.print API.

I am posting a simple example showing how to perform a basic print using javax.print API.

import java.io.*;
import javax.print.*;

public class PrintTest {
 public static void main(String[] args) throws IOException {
  //we are going to print "printtest.txt" file which is inside working directory
  File file = new File("printtest.txt");
  InputStream is = new BufferedInputStream(new FileInputStream(file));
  
  //Discover the default print service. If you call PrintServiceLookup.lookupPrintServices
  //then it will return an array of print services available and you can choose a
  //printer from them
  PrintService service = PrintServiceLookup.lookupDefaultPrintService();
  
  //Doc flavor specifies the output format of the file (Mime type + Char encoding)
  //You can retrieve doc flavors supported by the printer, like this
  //DocFlavor [] supportedFlavors = service.getSupportedDocFlavors();
  DocFlavor flavor = DocFlavor.INPUT_STREAM.TEXT_PLAIN_US_ASCII;  
  
  
  // Create the print job
  DocPrintJob job = service.createPrintJob();
  //Create the Doc. You can pass set of attributes(type of PrintRequestAttributeSet) as the 
  //3rd parameter specifying the page setup, orientation, no. of copies, etc instead of null. 
  Doc doc = new SimpleDoc(is, flavor, null);

  //Order to print, (can pass attributes instead of null)
  try {
   job.print(doc, null);
  } catch (PrintException e) {
   e.printStackTrace();
  }  

  //DocPrintJob.print() is not guaranteed to be synchronous. So it's better to wait on completion
  //of the print job before closing the stream. (See the link below)
  is.close();
  System.out.println("Printing done....");
 }

}

This example shows how to create a Print job watcher. You can create an object from PrintJobWatcher in your PrintTest class and call waitForDone() before closing the stream.

You can find documentation on javax.print API here.

The DocFlavor I have used in this example (INPUT_STREAM.TEXT_PLAIN_US_ASCII) wont work on Windows. The PrintService doesn't discover this flavor as a supported one for some reason. Yes, this Java Print Service facility is still buggy (in JDK 1.6). It is weird that we can't print ASCII formatted files while we can print any JPEG or PNG.  I used INPUT_STREAM.AUTOSENSE flavor which uses mime type "application/octet-stream", to print on Windows. Then the printer will print just the octets coming from the stream.However it works fine.

How to Fetch MP3 from YouTube Videos

I found a nice site to fetch mp3s from YouTube videos. The process is pretty simple and fast. Check it out, you'd love it.

How to Find which Process Runs on which Port in Windows

netstat -ab

shows which process runs on which port. If you need to find a process which runs on a particular port, the command can be used as follows

netstat -ab | find ":8080 "

How to Remove Duplicate Records from a Table, Considering a Subset of Columns - Sql

I wanted to delete some duplicate records from a table. "Duplicate" doesn't mean identical records in this scenario. I wanted to check whether the values in a subset of columns are identical and if so, to remove additional records keeping just one record in the table. 

Let's assume we have a table called Person like below

Id	Name	Age	City
10	Sunil	24	Matara
11	Sandun	25	Colombo
12	Nimali	23	Matara
13	Dilani	25	Matara
14	Savini	25	Galle

Say we need only one person from one city. Then we have to remove two records having Matara as the city.

To do that we can write a query like below

DELETE FROM Person WHERE Id > (SELECT MIN(Id) FROM Person p where p.City = Person.City)

We used Id as a controller to decide which records to delete and to keep just one record (by checking min Id).

After executing the query, the table will look like this

Id	Name	Age	City
10	Sunil	24	Matara
11	Sandun	25	Colombo
14	Savini	25	Galle

How to merge multiple images into one image - Java ImageIO

My previous post shows how to split an image into chunks. Now let's see how to merge multiple images into one image. Say we need to concatenate following four image chunks. I got these chunks by splitting the image in the right hand side, using the image splitter.

 

Following code shows how to concatenate the image chunks above into one image.

int rows = 2;   //we assume the no. of rows and cols are known and each chunk has equal width and height
        int cols = 2;
        int chunks = rows * cols;

        int chunkWidth, chunkHeight;
        int type;
        //fetching image files
        File[] imgFiles = new File[chunks];
        for (int i = 0; i < chunks; i++) {
            imgFiles[i] = new File("archi" + i + ".jpg");
        }

       //creating a bufferd image array from image files
        BufferedImage[] buffImages = new BufferedImage[chunks];
        for (int i = 0; i < chunks; i++) {
            buffImages[i] = ImageIO.read(imgFiles[i]);
        }
        type = buffImages[0].getType();
        chunkWidth = buffImages[0].getWidth();
        chunkHeight = buffImages[0].getHeight();

        //Initializing the final image
        BufferedImage finalImg = new BufferedImage(chunkWidth*cols, chunkHeight*rows, type);

        int num = 0;
        for (int i = 0; i < rows; i++) {
            for (int j = 0; j < cols; j++) {
                finalImg.createGraphics().drawImage(buffImages[num], chunkWidth * j, chunkHeight * i, null);
                num++;
            }
        }
        System.out.println("Image concatenated.....");
        ImageIO.write(finalImg, "jpeg", new File("finalImg.jpg"));

How to Split an Image into Chunks - Java ImageIO

Image splitting and concatenating and other image manipulation techniques are important in parallel computing. Say we are receiving small chunks of an Image which is being manipulated parallely. In such scenarios, we need to concatenate those chunks together and vice versa.

There is a pretty straight forward way to split an image using Java imageio package. Say you need to split following image into several chunks (you should decide the no. of rows and columns needed).

Now I am going to split this image into 16 chunks (4 rows and 4 columns). I have shown the code snippet below.

import javax.imageio.ImageIO;
import java.awt.image.BufferedImage;
import java.io.*;
import java.awt.*;

public class ImageSplitTest {
    public static void main(String[] args) throws IOException {

        File file = new File("bear.jpg"); // I have bear.jpg in my working directory
        FileInputStream fis = new FileInputStream(file);
        BufferedImage image = ImageIO.read(fis); //reading the image file

        int rows = 4; //You should decide the values for rows and cols variables
        int cols = 4;
        int chunks = rows * cols;

        int chunkWidth = image.getWidth() / cols; // determines the chunk width and height
        int chunkHeight = image.getHeight() / rows;
        int count = 0;
        BufferedImage imgs[] = new BufferedImage[chunks]; //Image array to hold image chunks
        for (int x = 0; x < rows; x++) {
            for (int y = 0; y < cols; y++) {
                //Initialize the image array with image chunks
                imgs[count] = new BufferedImage(chunkWidth, chunkHeight, image.getType());

                // draws the image chunk
                Graphics2D gr = imgs[count++].createGraphics();
                gr.drawImage(image, 0, 0, chunkWidth, chunkHeight, chunkWidth * y, chunkHeight * x, chunkWidth * y + chunkWidth, chunkHeight * x + chunkHeight, null);
                gr.dispose();
            }
        }
        System.out.println("Splitting done");

        //writing mini images into image files
        for (int i = 0; i < imgs.length; i++) {
            ImageIO.write(imgs[i], "jpg", new File("img" + i + ".jpg"));
        }
        System.out.println("Mini images created");
    }
}

 Parameter list of "drawImage()" (See line 28)

--   image - The source image

--   0, 0  - X,Y coordinates of the 1st corner of destination image

--   chunkWidth, chunkHeight - X,Y coordinates of the opposite corner of destination image 

--   chunkWidth * y, chunkHeight * x - X,Y coordinates of the 1st corner of source image block

--   chunkWidth * y + chunkWidth, chunkHeight * x + chunkHeight - X,Y coordinates of 

             the opposite corner of source image block

Now you'll see 16 image chunks formed in your working directory.

How to Write a Custom Class Loader to Load Classes from a Jar

A custom class loader is needed when the developer needs to load classes from some custom repositories, to implement hot deployment features and to allow unloading of classes.

According to Java2 class loading system, a custom class loader should subclass java.lang.ClassLoader and overrride findClass() method which is responsible for loading the class bytes and returning a defined class.

Following code is a custom class loader which loads classes from jars, inside the directory called "jar".

public class JarClassLoader extends ClassLoader {
    private String jarFile = "jar/test.jar"; //Path to the jar file
    private Hashtable classes = new Hashtable(); //used to cache already defined classes

    public JarClassLoader() {
        super(JarClassLoader.class.getClassLoader()); //calls the parent class loader's constructor
    }

    public Class loadClass(String className) throws ClassNotFoundException {
        return findClass(className);
    }

    public Class findClass(String className) {
        byte classByte[];
        Class result = null;

        result = (Class) classes.get(className); //checks in cached classes
        if (result != null) {
            return result;
        }

        try {
            return findSystemClass(className);
        } catch (Exception e) {
        }

        try {
            JarFile jar = new JarFile(jarFile);
            JarEntry entry = jar.getJarEntry(className + ".class");
            InputStream is = jar.getInputStream(entry);
            ByteArrayOutputStream byteStream = new ByteArrayOutputStream();
            int nextValue = is.read();
            while (-1 != nextValue) {
                byteStream.write(nextValue);
                nextValue = is.read();
            }

            classByte = byteStream.toByteArray();
            result = defineClass(className, classByte, 0, classByte.length, null);
            classes.put(className, result);
            return result;
        } catch (Exception e) {
            return null;
        }
    }

}

This code can be improved to
* Load classes from any jar inside the directory
* Dynamically pick up classes if the jar is updated (by keeping a modified time field)

Code Plugin for Blogger - How to Install Syntaxhighlighter

I found a nice blog post explaining how to install Syntaxhighlighter code plugin to blogger. It is very simple and works great.

Some additions
1. If your browser is Firefox, you should add the styles manually
    * copy the stylesheet at the location http://syntaxhighlighter.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/Styles/SyntaxHighlighter.css
    * Go to Layout --> Edit HTML
    * Paste the stylesheet before ]]> tag
    * Save the template

2. Other relevant scripts (Other than Cpp) are located here

How to Plot Moving Graphs Using Flot Library

Plotting a moving graph is nothing other than plotting an instance of a varying data set at each refresh. However, to get the moving effect you need to change the data set as stated below

1. Discard the leftmost Y value of the previous step
2. Shift the remaining Y values to the left
3. Add the new coming value as the rightmost Y value

























Flot is an opensource Javascript plotting library for jQuery. Now let's see how to do this using Flot.

Firs you need to download flot library and add followings to your js folder.
1.jquery.js
2.jquery.flot.js
3.excanvas.js (This is needed if your browser is IE)

Now let's create the html page

<html>
<head>
    <!--Include the css file and flot libs-->
    <LINK REL=StyleSheet HREF="css/layout.css" TYPE="text/css">

    <script language="javascript" type="text/javascript" src="js/jquery.js"></script>
    <script language="javascript" type="text/javascript" src="js/jquery.flot.js"></script>
    <script language="javascript" type="text/javascript" src="js/excanvas.js"></script>
    ....
    ....                                                                 
    .... 

Here is the CSS file used

body {
  font-family: sans-serif;
  font-size: 16px;
  margin: 50px;
  max-width: 800px;
  background-color:#000000;
}

div.graph {
    width:500px;
    height:300px;
} 

Let's include javascript functions inside HEAD

....
....
<script id="source" language="javascript" type="text/javascript">
        var running = false;
        var array;
        var xscale = 100; 

        //this function does the plotting 
        function draw() {
           //shift the values to left
            for (var i = 0; i < this.xscale - 1; i++) {
                this.array[i] = [i,this.array[i + 1][1]];  // (x,y)
            }

            //add the new coming value to the last postion
            this.array[this.xscale - 1] = [this.xscale - 1,Math.random()];

                $.plot($("#graphdiv"), [
                    {
                        label: "Y vs X",
                        data: this.array,
                        lines: { show: true, fill: true, fillColor: "rgba(249, 28, 61,0.3)",lineWidth: 3.5 },
                        color:"rgba(249, 28, 61,1)"
                    }
                ],
                {
                    xaxis: {
                        ticks: generateTicks(),
                        min: 0

                    },
                    yaxis: {
                        ticks: [0 , 0.2, 0.4, 0.6, 0.8, 1.0, 1.2],
                        min: 0
                    },
                    
                    //placing a grid
                    grid: {
                        show: true,
                        color: '#474747',
                        tickColor: '#474747',
                        borderWidth: 1,
                        autoHighlight: true,
                        mouseActiveRadius: 2
                      }


                });
        }


        //This creates the data array with 0.0 inital Y values at the initialization time
        function initialize() {
            this.array = new Array();
            for (var i = 0; i < xscale; i++) {
                this.array[i] = [i, 0.0];
            }
        }

        //This is used to generate ticks for X axis (value 0 will be on the right)
        function generateTicks() {
            var tickArray = [];
            var startTick = 20;
            var i = startTick - 1;
            var weight = this.xscale / 20;
            do {
                var t = (startTick - i) * weight - 1;
                var v = i * weight;
                if (v == 0) {
                    v = "0";
                }
                tickArray.push([t, v]);
                i--;
            } while (i > -1);
            return tickArray;
        }

        //This function is called once per every 1000ms
        function refreshStat() {
            if (!running) {
                running = true;
                draw();
                running = false;
            }
        }

        $(document).ready(function () {
            initialize();
            refreshStat();
            setInterval("refreshStat()", 1000);
        });

    </script>
</head>

Now here goes the BODY of the html

<body>
<table cellspacing="50">
    <tr>
        <td>
            <div id="graphdiv" class="graph"></div>
        </td>
    </tr>
</table>
</body>
</html>

Then you'll get a moving graph. I've posted some still instances of the graph below

You can customize the graphs as your wish. Flot API will help you on that. This is pretty simple and straight. Just give a try.

Abdera Client - Using teardown()

I was working on a program which makes several requests to Abdera back end from the client. The client was designed to use a new AbderaClient per request and teardown method was not used on AbderaClient instance after using.

This led to an exception when I run it concurrently (by using about 100 threads). AbderaClient uses HTTPClient and MultiThreadedHttpConnectionManager. Teardown method is the one who shuts down this connection manager and the best practice is to call teardown after using AbderaClient instance.

AbderaClient abderaClient = new AbderaClient(new Abdera());
// make the call
abderaClient.teardown();

Sharing a single instance of AbderaClient among all request is another option but some times it goes to a deadlock state (keeping a connection open for a long time is not recommended anyway).

Midi to Mp3 Converter

Here is a cool midi to mp3 converter which is so simple and user friendly.

Direct MIDI to MP3 Converter 5.0

Making Good SOA Great - WSO2 Carbon

WSO2 Carbon is the industry's first fully componentized SOA platform. It is built on OSGi. Other WSO2 products such as WSO2Registry, WSO2 Enterprise Service Bus (ESB), WSO2 Web Services Application Server (WSAS) and WSO2 Business Process Server (BPS) are Carbon based.

Why Carbon? This e book says it all.

WSO2 Registry 2.0 Released

WSO2 Registry is a user friendly resource management solution available under Apache2 license. The new release of WSO2Registry is based on WSO2Carbon, which is meant to be the first fully componentized SOA framework in the industry.

As the new release of WSO2Registry is based on Carbon, it uses a unified GUI which supports other carbon components too. Another new feature included to the 2.0 release is Registry's web services API. As Registry has exposed the API methods as web services, the Registry API can be remotely accessed through web services.

Apart from these the new release includes many useful features and a considerable performance improvement.

IE6 Doesn't Support application/atom+xml Mime Type

Internet Explorer 6 is having a problem with displaying atom feed documents which's mime type is "application/atom+xml". The browser attempts to download the file instead of rendering it. Simply this happens because browser does not accept or recognize the mime type.

A simple hack can be done to avoid this issue from the server side. That is changing the mime type to appication/xml or text/plain, only if the user agent is IE6 in the HTTP header. Changing the mime type will not fix the problem but at least the browser will display the raw XML content.

The back end application or the server can be configured to send the correct mime type to the relevant browser by looking at the User-Agent header in the HTTP request.

How to Replace Strings in Java - Using java.util.regex package

Replacing a charater in a String is just a matter of adding a one line to the code.

originalString.replace(oldChar, newChar)

ex.

String originalString = "This/is/my/string";
System.out.println(originalString.replace('/', '|'));

Then the output will be "This|is|my|string"


Anyway how can we replace a character or number of characters(a substring) with another string. This can be done using the regex package in Java.


If we need to replace "my" with "your" we can do it in the following way.

import java.util.regex.*;  

String originalString = "This is my string";
Pattern pat = Pattern.compile("my"); 
Matcher mat = pat.matcher(originalString);
System.out.println(mat.replaceAll("your")); 
mat.reset();

The output will be "This is your string"

How to Telnet to a Web Server - HTTP Requests through Telnet

A web server, responding to a HTTP GET request sends the required content to the client. Normally we don't see what is sent between the web client and the server. However we can easily see what is sent by the server by telneting to that web server.

To connect to the web server - open a command line and type the command
telnet host port
eg. telnet www.wso2.com 80

Then you'll get connected to the particular web server and then you can enter any HTTP command you want such as GET, HEAD.

If you need to request for a web page from the web server you can type the HTTP request as follows.

GET pageName HTTP/1.0
eg. GET /products HTTP/1.0

Hit enter twice. Then you will get a response (if page exists)as follows.

HTTP/1.0 200 OK
Date: Thu, 30 Oct 2008 18:17:16 GMT
Server: Apache/2.2.9
X-Powered-By: PHP/5.2.6
Set-Cookie: PHPSESSID=5322082bf473207961031e3df1f45a22; path=/
Expires: Thu, 19 Nov 1981 08:52:00 GMT
Cache-Control: no-store, no-cache, must-revalidate, post-check=0, pre-check=0
Pragma: no-cache
X-Pingback: http://wso2.com/xmlrpc.php
Connection: close
Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8

content goes here
.
.
.


You'll get a 404 status if page not found, 301 if the page is moved permanently and 401 if you are not authorized to access the page. More HTTP status codes can be found here.

You can follow a similar way to issue other HTTP commands with the relevant content.

How to Play .ram Files in Ubuntu

Files having the .ram extension actually don't give any meaning to the word "Play" as they are realplayer meta files only, referring to the actual audio files. To play .ram files you should be connected to the Internet as they are streamed and played.

In Ubuntu, you can get a .ram file to play by following the steps below.

1. Install Realplayer and the plugin for Mozilla Firefox. (The way to install is well described in Ubuntu - Hardy user guide)

2. Grab the URL inside the .ram file.

3. Create a .html page including a single line containing the URL. (ex. <a href="http://www.blogger.com/URL">My file</a>).

4. Open the html page and just click on the link - My file.

Installing Fonts in Ubuntu 8.04 - Hardy Heron

The way of installing fonts is bit different (must say it is pretty simple too) in Ubuntu 8.04.

You just have to create a .fonts folder (if it does not exist) in your home folder and copy the TTF to that folder.

Well. Thats it :)