The Baeldung Weekly Review 14
Last updated: October 1, 2021
Mocking is an essential part of unit testing, and the Mockito library makes it easy to write clean and intuitive unit tests for your Java code.
Get started with mocking and improve your application tests using our Mockito guide:
Handling concurrency in an application can be a tricky process with many potential pitfalls. A solid grasp of the fundamentals will go a long way to help minimize these issues.
Get started with understanding multi-threaded applications with our Java Concurrency guide:
Spring 5 added support for reactive programming with the Spring WebFlux module, which has been improved upon ever since. Get started with the Reactor project basics and reactive programming in Spring Boot:
Since its introduction in Java 8, the Stream API has become a staple of Java development. The basic operations like iterating, filtering, mapping sequences of elements are deceptively simple to use.
But these can also be overused and fall into some common pitfalls.
To get a better understanding on how Streams work and how to combine them with other language features, check out our guide to Java Streams:
Explore Spring Boot 3 and Spring 6 in-depth through building a full REST API with the framework:
Yes, Spring Security can be complex, from the more advanced functionality within the Core to the deep OAuth support in the framework.
I built the security material as two full courses - Core and OAuth, to get practical with these more complex scenarios. We explore when and how to use each feature and code through it on the backing project.
You can explore the course here:
Spring Data JPA is a great way to handle the complexity of JPA with the powerful simplicity of Spring Boot.
Get started with Spring Data JPA through the guided reference course:
Refactor Java code safely — and automatically — with OpenRewrite.
Refactoring big codebases by hand is slow, risky, and easy to put off. That’s where OpenRewrite comes in. The open-source framework for large-scale, automated code transformations helps teams modernize safely and consistently.
Each month, the creators and maintainers of OpenRewrite at Moderne run live, hands-on training sessions — one for newcomers and one for experienced users. You’ll see how recipes work, how to apply them across projects, and how to modernize code with confidence.
Join the next session, bring your questions, and learn how to automate the kind of work that usually eats your sprint time.
Java
>> Java 8 Friday: No More Need for ORMs
This joins the old discussion (do I need an ORM?) with new and promising tools – have a look at the code samples and be surprised that this is indeed Java code. Very cool.
>> Yet another way to handle exceptions in JUnit: catch-exception
A solid way of handling exceptions in JUnit tests – the BDD catch-exception library. I’m giving it a try now – as it indeed looks very cool.
>> Garbage Collection Optimization for High-Throughput and Low-Latency Java Applications
Good brush up on tuning Java Garbage Collection for a real-world production environment. Goes over most GC concepts, but does so in a pragmatic, optimization-focused manner, which is a nice change from the standard GC articles out there.
>> Maven Git Flow Plugin for Better Releases
Interesting take on the established Maven Release Plugin, making all the goodies of git flow first class citizen.
>> Java 8 language changes
>> JVM concurrency: Java 8 concurrency basics
IBM Developerworks has two new articles on Java 8 – language changes and concurrency.
>> Apache Tomcat 8 Preview
And finally, a nice webinar introducing the upcoming Tomcat 8 server. If you’re working with Tomcat, this is a good resource to keep up to date with what’s coming down the pipe.
Spring
>> Project Sagan: zero-downtime deployments
Project Sagan – the new reference Spring app – looks more and more interesting, especially considering that it’s powering spring.io. This article illustrate how the code is deployed – very nice series that I’ll be following closely.
>> Tracking Exceptions – Part 4 – Spring’s Mail Sender
If you’ve read any of my last few weekly reviews, you will have seen earlier articles in this series. This kind of application – making sense of log file data – is something that, one way or another, any decent sized project should solve.
>> CSRF protection in Spring MVC, Thymeleaf, Spring Security application
Short and to the point illustration of how a CSRF attack works and how to protect against it with Spring Security (3.2+). Very nice.
Technical
>> TDD Chess Game Part 3: Stumbling and Refactoring
I have talked about this series before – but, perhaps not surprisingly – it is again the read (or watch) of the week. Why do I keep picking it? Simple – it’s one of the few things that has a good shot of getting you over the initial resistance of doing TDD. That took a few years for me, so I know it’s not easy – but the results are huge.
So – straight to the point – if you’re going to only read one article this week, go read this one (actually, reading the first two parts would be better).
>> MongoDB 2.6 is $out
Vlad has a useful overview of the new functionality that came out in MongoDB 2.6.
>> Web APIs and n+1 problem
The infamous n+1 problem exists in Web APIs as well. This article has a lot of information to digest – so take your time with it.
>> Security: Heartbleed vulnerability
Yes, Heartbleed was disclosed this week, and yes, there are a host of articles covering it, but I’m assuming you already read some of them, so I’m including a single one out of many – the github report.
Musings
>> The Cost of Context Switching
I think that we all overestimate our ability to context switch – and the sooner we accept that switches are developer kryptonite – the sooner we can do something about it. This article is a great reminder of that fact.
