StoKen Projects

stoken-utils - AppInfo for build number automation

2007-05-15T23:11:00.000-04:00

Overview
In my mind there needs to be a simple way to automate build numbers within a project. The stoken-utils project is handy for helping with this using features of ANT and JAVA. It is a small portable library that, among other thing, helps manage project level build numbers.

Project Information
stoken-utils can be downloaded here. You may also find the logger feature of this library also interesting.

Usage
I have already blogged about this approach here. In a nutshell, usage is not to complex.

Add a small XML stub to your build.xml
Modify it with your project specifics (name, description, copyright,....)
Load appinfo.properties via AppInfo.init(...) see javadoc.
Access values using AppInfo static methods.

To look at some code that uses this libarary check out the subversion tab of language-translate.

Final Thoughts
stoken-utils has a simple approach for managing build numbers using ANT and JAVA.

stoken-utils logger

2007-04-16T22:34:00.000-04:00

Overview
On occasion a simple logger comes in handy. Granted log4j rules and will solve all your enterprise level logging needs, but in some cases, you just want something written to a file with minimal fuss. That is where the the logger comes in. It is part of a small library of utilities called stoken-utils.

Project Information
Download: http://code.google.com/p/stoken-utils/

Usage
Using logger is easy. There are several overloaded static methods. The one with the most options is as follows:

public static boolean writeLog(
           String PROGNAME,
           String MODULE,
           TYPE type,
           String msg,
           boolean addblank
           );

PROGNAME - name of your program (or AppInfo.getPROGNAME())
MODULE - usually CLASSNAME::METHOD for me but this is free form.
TYPE - Logger.TYPE enum of Debug, Warn, Error, ....
msg - log message in freeform text.
addblank - adds a blank line after this log message. Usually used before your program shutdown.

The overloaded versions are all described in the javadoc which is downloadable as a zip.

Example
The following

Logger.writeLog("PROGNAME","CLASS::METHOD",TYPE.Debug,"Message",false);

You will end up with a file called PROGNAME.log with the following values:


2007-04-14 00:37:13 [Debug](CLASS::METHOD) Message

File Location
The location where the log files are written can be controlled using several static members.
LOG_FILE_DIR - path to log location like /tmp/logs
LOG_BACKUP_DIR - subdirectory where backups are automatically written (default is "backuplogs/")
LOG_FILE_EXT - extension to add to log file name. (default is ".log")

Behavior
When using Logger, you can expect it to create a backup of your log each day. The backups are placed in the directory pointed to by LOG_BACKUP_DIR. The current log will be appended to always so no data is lost.

I personally like to create a constant in each class called CLASSNAME and a second constant in each method called METHOD. For my MODULE parameter, I can then pass CLASSNAME + "::" + METHOD each time I want to write a log line.

Final Thoughts
I have found this logger to be useful and have used it in many projects (big and small).

Introduction

2007-03-28T18:05:00.000-04:00

Now and then I have various projects I work on. Most of them are technical (programming typically). I plan on using this as a bit of a journal describing my project, their status, and any things that may come up as I complete them.

Expect an occasional rant to :-)