10 Tips to Become a Better Java Developer in 2022 [UPDATED]

I often receive emails from my readers about how they can become better Java developers, what things they should learn, and which areas they can work on to become a Rockstar Java developer. After answering them individually over the last few years, I thought to jot down a couple of points, which I think will make you a better Java Programmer and Application developer. But, before going into that, I would like to stress that a better programmer is always a better Java developer, and that's why all the tips I have shared before to improve your programming skill and become a better programmer still hold true. If you haven't read them yet, you can understand them after this article; they will help you to improve your programming and coding skills, which is essential to becoming a better Java developer.

Top 10 Computer Programming, Artificial Intelligence, and Sci-Fi Movies for Programmers and Tech geeks

Hello guys, being a computer programmer, I love movies that are based on programmers' life, work, and concept. Thankfully Hollywood is no short of films based on computers, programming, and geeky technical stuff. Another day, I was pretty bored, and when I look back to my DVD collection, I found Inception, Matrix Reloaded, and The Social Network, this all movies are in some way related to computers and technology, which strike me the idea to publish my list of Top 10 Computer programming movies.

Where and How to download Spring Framework JAR file (Spring 5.0 or Spring 4.0) without Maven, Gradle

One of the easiest and oldest ways to run a Java program which depends on an external library or framework is to download dependency JAR files, put them on the classpath and then run the program by creating a Main class with the main() method. This is simple but not as easy as you think, there are many challenges down the road e.g. you need to find the right version of JAR files and their dependencies e.g. Spring might have a dependency on other third-party libraries like Log4j. So, when the build tool like Maven and Gradle comes, everybody stopped downloading the JAR file manually.

How HTTP Basic Authentication works in Spring Security?

In the last article, you have learned how to enable Http basic authentication in Spring security-based Java application, and now we'll go one step further to understand how exactly http basic authentication works in Spring security. If you remember, when you use HTTP Basic for authentication purposes, the client, like a browser or a rest client sends login credentials in the http request header. The header is aptly named "Authorization," and it contains a Base64 encoded string, which is created by concatenating username and password using a colon. For example, if the username is "johnsmith" and the password is "JOHN3214" then they will be concatenated as "johnsmith:JOHN3214" before encoded using base 64 encoding algorithms.

How to enable Spring Security in Java Web application?

Spring Security is one of the most popular open-source frameworks to implement security in Java web applications in a declarative way. It provides several essential security features like LDAP authentication, authorization, role-based access control,  remembers the password, URL protection, concurrent active sessions management, etc. To enable Spring security in Java Web application, you need to configure three things -  declare a delegating proxy filter in web.xml, add the ContextLoaderListener in web.xml and provide actual security constraints on applicationContext-Security.xml file. Since Spring security uses a chain of filters to implement various security constraints, also known as Spring's "security chain filter", it relies on web container for the initialization of delegating filter proxy.

How to limit number of concurrent session in a Java web application using Spring Security?

If you don't know, Spring security can limit the number of sessions a user can have in a Java web application. If you are developing a web application especially a secure web application in Java JEE then you must have come up with the requirement similar to many online banking portals have like only one session per user at a time or no concurrent session per user. If the user tries to open a new session then either an alert is shown or his previous session is closed. Even though you can also implement this functionality without using spring security but with Spring security, it's just a piece of cake with coffee :). 

2 Ways to setup LDAP Active Directory Authentication in Java - Spring Security Example Tutorial

The LDAP authentication is one of the most popular authentication mechanism around the world for enterprise application and Active directory (an LDAP implementation by Microsoft for Windows) is another widely used LDAP server. In many projects, we need to authenticate against active directory using LDAP by credentials provided in the login screen. Sometimes this simple task gets tricky because of various issues faced during implementation and integration and no standard way of doing LDAP authentication in a Java web application. Even though Java provides LDAP support but in this article, I will mostly talk about spring security because of it's my preferred Java framework for authentication, authorization, and security-related stuff.

How to enable HTTP Basic Authentication in Spring Security using Java and XML Configuration

In the last article, I have shown you how to enable Spring security in Java application and today we'll talk about how to enable Basic HTTP authentication in your Java web application using Spring Security. I'll show you how to do that using both the Java configuration and XML configuration if you are using Spring Security 3.1 or lower version, but before that let's understand what is Http basic authentication and why do you need that? One of the most common ways to authenticate a user in a web application is by using a form login like you provide a login page and the user will enter his username and password for authentication. This works great for human users but sometimes there are situations where you can't use a login form for authentication.

What is SecurityContext and SecurityContextHolder in Spring Security?

The SecurityContext and SecurityContextHolder are two fundamental classes of Spring Security. The SecurityContext is used to store the details of the currently authenticated user, also known as a principle. So, if you have to get the username or any other user details, you need to get this SecurityContext first. The SecurityContextHolder is a helper class, which provides access to the security context. By default, it uses a ThreadLocal object to store security context, which means that the security context is always available to methods in the same thread of execution, even if you don't pass the SecurityContext object around. Don't worry about the ThreadLocal memory leak in web application though, Spring Security takes care of cleaning ThreadLocal.

Role based Access control using Spring Security and MVC, Mapping LDAP Groups to Authorities for Authorization

Authentication and Authorization is an integral part of any Java enterprise or web application. Since most of the company uses LDAP Active directory for authentication, authorization, and Role-based access control (RBAC), it's good to know How to implement Role-based access control using Spring MVC and Spring Security. This is the second part of my articles on using Spring Security for authentication and authorization in Spring MVC based Java application. In the last part, we have learned about doing LDAP authentication against Windows active directory, and in this Spring Security tutorial, we will learn How to map LDAP groups to authorities for implementing Role-based access control or authorization.

JDBC Database Connection Pool in Spring Framework – How to Setup Example

Setting up JDBC Database Connection Pool in Spring framework is easy for any Java application, just matter of changing a few configurations in the spring configuration file. If you are writing core java application and not running on any web or application server like Tomcat or  Weblogic,  Managing Database connection pool using Apache Commons DBCP and Commons Pool along-with Spring framework is a nice choice but if you have the luxury of having web server and managed J2EE Container, consider using Connection pool managed by J2EE server those are a better option in terms of maintenance, flexibility and also help to prevent java.lang.OutofMemroyError: PermGen Space in tomcat by avoiding loading of JDBC driver in web-app class-loader.

How to call Stored Procedures from Java using IN and OUT parameter - Spring Framework Example Tutorial

Spring Framework provides excellent support to call stored procedures from Java application. In fact, there are multiple ways to call stored procedures in Spring Framework, e.g. you can use one of the query() method from JdbcTemplate to call stored procedures, or you can extend abstract class StoredProcedure to call stored procedures from Java. In this Java Spring tutorial, we will see the second approach to call a stored procedure. It's more object-oriented, but at the same time requires more coding. StoredProcedure class allows you to declare IN and OUT parameters and call stored procedure using it's various execute() method, which has protected access and can only be called from a subclass.

Difference between Setter vs Constructor Injection in Spring

Spring Setter vs. Constructor Injection

Spring supports two types of dependency Injection, using a setter method, e.g. setXXX(), where XXX is a dependency or via a constructor argument. The first way of dependency injection is known as setter injection while later is known as constructor injection. Both approaches of Injecting dependency on Spring bean has there pros and cons, which we will see in this Spring framework article. The difference between Setter Injection and Constructor Injection in Spring is also a popular Spring framework interview question. 

How to delete from a table using JOIN in SQL Server

It's a little bit tricky to delete from a table while using any type of JOIN in SQL like Inner Join, Left Outer Join, or Right Outer Join. The obvious syntax doesn't work as shown below:

delete from #Expired e INNER JOIN 
Deals d ON e.DealId = d.DealId
Where d.Brand = 'Sony'

here I have a table with a list of expired deals that I want to delete from the Deals tables, but only for Sony.