ROME Parsing RSS

by GarciaPL on Sunday 30 August 2015

A few days I was looking for some library to parsing RSS feeds in Java mainly for Android purpose. For me it was quite obvious that I will pick up library called ROME because of I have still a pretty good feeling about it from previous projects. Below you can find my piece of code which is very similar to this one on ROME website.

URL url = new URL("https://www.centralbank.ie/Pages/RSSFeedDisplay.aspx?FeedID=20");
SyndFeedInput input = new SyndFeedInput();
SyndFeed feed = input.build(new XmlReader(url));
List entries = feed.getEntries();

logger.info("Size : " + entries.size());
Iterator iterator = entries.iterator();
while (iterator.hasNext()) {
      SyndEntry entry = (SyndEntry) iterator.next();
      logger.info("Entry : " + entry.getTitle() + " " + entry.getAuthor() + " " + entry.getLink());
}

If you will use official ROME library [1] on Android you will be faced with this error :
ERROR/AndroidRuntime(263): java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: [Ljava.beans.PropertyDescriptor;
This error occurred due to lack of libraries on Android platform related to java.beans package. Fortunately there is a way to parse this RSS on Android platform properly. Only what you need to do is download fork of ROME library called AndroidROMEFeedReader [2] and apply jdom-1.1.1-android-fork.jar and android-rome-feed-reader-1.0.0.jar to your project in Android Studio. From this moment you will be able to fetch and parse RSS without including java.beans package to your project.

Reference: [1] ROME [2] GitHub AndroidROMEFeedReader [3] Docs Oracle Java Beans

Recruitment Tech Test #2

by GarciaPL on Saturday 15 August 2015

Some time ago I have solved another technical test for one company. As the same before this test was performed for recruitment process.

This application is dedicated for tellers which provides functionalities like :

  1. Create account(s) - a user can create an account, associate a name with it, give it a unique account number, add a starting balance etc.
  2. Make lodgement - a user can lodge an amount into an account (balance increase)
  3. Make transfer - a user can transfer an amount from one account to another (balance transfer)
  4. View transactions - a user can view recent, or all, transactions for an account (statement)
Application was developed using Java 7 and Spring Framework 4.0.1. Below you can find out what libraries were used in application :

  • Spring Beans – 4.0.1.RELEASE
  • Spring Tx – 4.0.1.RELEASE
  • Spring Context – 4.0.1.RELEASE
  • Spring Context Support – 4.0.1.RELEASE
  • Spring Orm – 4.0.1.RELEASE
  • Spring Jdbc – 4.0.1.RELEASE
  • Spring Web – 4.0.1.RELEASE
  • Spring Web MVC – 4.0.1.RELEASE
  • Spring Test - 4.0.1.RELEASE
  • Joda Money - 0.10.0
  • Jackson Core - 2.5.0
  • Jackson Databind - 2.5.0
  • Jackson Annotations - 2.5.0
  • Javax Servlet API – 3.1.0
  • JSTL – 1.2
  • Hibernate Core - 4.3.5.Final
  • Hibernate Entitymanager - 4.3.5.Final
  • HSQLDB - 2.3.3
  • SLF4J - 1.7.8
  • Commons Logging - 1.2
  • JUnit - 4.10
  • Mockito - 1.9.5
  • Hamcrest - 1.3
  • Twitter Bootstrap - 3.3.4
  • DataTables - 1.10.7
  • jqBootstrapValidation - 1.3.6


Home screen


Create new account

Deposit money


Transfer money

Transactions


Application for tellers has also built-in Jetty web sever container which allows you run it very quickly using command mvn jetty:run in directory of project. After that application should be accessible under context http://localhost:9090/banknow/.
You can also build own WAR file using command mvn war:war in directory of project. War will be accessible under directory /target and called banknow.war.
Reference :
[1] GarciaPL Github.com BankNow
[2] Jetty
[3] HSQLDB
[4] jQuery DataTables
[5] jQuery jqBootstrapValidation