Superhero Ninja

Category: Tips

  • Pretty print XML on Linux Command Line BASH

    It’s quite handy to indent XML when you need to read it with the human eye, but on a terminal it’s often not as easily readible.
    Fortunatly there’s a command which’ll indent it so you can actually read it;
    xmllint –format file.xml
    This will show you how ugly it could be:
     

    Screenshot Unformatted XML on terminal
    Screenshot Unformatted XML on terminal

     
    And behold the indented beauty of this little gem:
    Screenshot indented XML on terminal
    Screenshot indented XML on terminal

  • Listen to streaming internet radio via terminal on Ubuntu

    Okay, so this might be a tad geeky, but I dislike overhead when I’m working on my work laptop.. And since I couldn’t find a streaming music player with a low memory footprint I loved this mplayer solution which can play your internet streams via a bash terminal.
    Apt-get install mplayer or mplayer2 and then just execute this command in any terminal

    mplayer http://pr320.pinguinradio.nl:80/

    Which will result in the following:

    Screenshot Mplayer in Terminal on Ubuntu
    Screenshot Mplayer in Terminal on Ubuntu

    And it will update the stream title through the console so you can still see which artist and song are playing! A thing of beauty, isn’t it!?

  • Validate XML to XSD with XMLLINT on CLI

    Awesome-ness!!
    I was looking for a nice tool to validate my XML messages against an XML Schema, when I ran into this command where you can really easily validate on the command line. That’s really cool since we’re becoming CLI ninjas anyway!
    Update: This also works on Windows with this little gem.
    The command is as follows:

    xmllint --noout --schema schema.xsd ./message.xml

    Which delivered the following output:

    joris@jorislatitude:~/workspaces/_examples/XSD$ xmllint --noout --schema sample_schema.xsd ./messageone.xml
./messageone.xml:2: element S_UNB: Schemas validity error : Element 'S_UNB': This element is not expected. Expected is ( INSDES ).
./messageone.xml fails to validate

    As shown in above message, my example failed to validate, which is what I suspected, but now I can send my integration partner a better and really precise explanation! As said above: Awesomeness! 🙂

  • Windows 7 – Downloads folder refreshes really slowly

    So this is a nuisance for quite a while, when you open the Downloads folder on Windows 7 it takes a long time before the contents is displayed. It keeps taking longer and longer when there are more and more items there.
    Apparently this is because the folder is optimized for Pictures. You can change this setting by right clicking the Downloads folder and choose properties. Then select the tab “Custimize” and look at the setting “Optimize this folder for:”
    The folder contents is instantanious when you change that to “General Items”.
    Image

  • Mark or colour NULL values in SQL Developer

    By default SQL Developer shows null values in the following way:

    Screenshot - SQL Developer - Default Null value
    Screenshot – SQL Developer – Default Null value

    This is not very notable, so we’ll change it to the following markup:
    Screenshot - SQL Developer - What an awesome NULL color!
    Screenshot – SQL Developer – What an awesome NULL color!

    To do this, we need to go to Preferences – Database – Advanced and change the value for “Display Null Using Background Color”
    Screenshot - SQL Developer - Settings for colouring NULL values
    Screenshot – SQL Developer – Settings for colouring NULL values

  • Format Painter shortcut in Microsoft Excel

    I’ve been working in Excel a lot the past weeks and often need to fix the formatting. A nice little trick to copy the formatting for a cell, row or column is the format painter, but it’s a hassle to keep clicking on all the ribbons to actually press the button! It was one of the few things in Excel where I would use the mouse.
     

    Screenshot - Microsoft Excel - Format Painter
    Screenshot – Microsoft Excel – Format Painter

     
    There is an easier way to “Format Paint”:
    Right click Format Painter, and click “Add to Quick Access Toolbar”, as shown in the next screenshot:
     
    Screenshot - Microsoft Excel - Format Painter - Add to QAT
    Screenshot – Microsoft Excel – Format Painter – Add to QAT

     
    After this step, you will have a small button at the top of your screen with the Format Painter, which you can access via “Alt + <<NUMBER>>”,
    in my case it’s “ALT + 4”:
     
    Screenshot - Microsoft Excel - Format Painter in the QAT
    Screenshot – Microsoft Excel – Format Painter in the QAT

     

  • Fake SMTP server! Great for testing email / SMTP!

    Often in projects you will be asked to send an email when an error occurs, or as a part of the functional process.
    Unfortunatly it is sometimes a bit cumbersome to make sure you are not sending mail to real email addresses.. I’ve recently found a nice solution for this problem: a fake SMTP server!
    This way, you only have to change the IP address on your SMTP endpoint instead of checking every emailaddress or disabling all the actual email functionality.
     
    The application is called “FakeSMTP” (What’s in a name?) 🙂 and can be found through this link: http://nilhcem.github.com/FakeSMTP/index.html

    Screenshot - FakeSMTP Main screen
    Screenshot – FakeSMTP Main screen

    As you can see in the screenshot, the program runs on the port you assign to it, acting as an email server with all the correct responses, with the only difference that it does not actually send out the emails. The emails are stored in a folder which you can specify. You can also double click on the message row in the program to open the email in your email client (in my case Outlook) which worked great for testing purposes.
    I was quite pleased when I found this solution :-), hope it will help you guys too!

  • Oracle Service Bus SFTP: BEA-381801 InvalidHostFileException

    I have just been working on an OSB SFTP business service, and got this error while testing the service.
    While googling, I found out that you need to create a known_hosts file inside your OSB domain. The easiest way of creating a known_hosts file for me, was to use Cygwin and create a ssh (or sftp) connection to the destination.

    Steps for the solution:

    • Cygwin: log in to remote system via ssh (or sftp)
    • Copy known_hosts file from ~/.ssh to OSB directory
    • Test business service

    Cygwin: login to remote system

    Use this command to login to the remote system:

    ssh username@hostname

    Optionally: Type ‘yes’ when asked if you trust this host
    This will create an entry in your known_hosts file in the .ssh folder in your cygwin home directory
    This is a (scrambled) contents of the known_hosts file:

    joris@jorisworkstation/cygdrive/c/Oracle/Middleware/user_projects/domains/joris_domain/config/osb
$ cat ~/.ssh/known_hosts
10.200.242.65 ssh-rsa <<INSERT A LOT OF GARBLEGARBLE>>

    Copy the known_hosts file to OSB

    First we need to create the SFTP transports directory in the domain home:
    Go to <<domain_home>>/config/osb and create this structure: (Only create the directories in RED)

    - <<domain_home>>
    - config
    - osb
    - transports
    - sftp

    We are now ready to copy the known_hosts file:
    In cygwin:

     cp ~/.ssh/known_hosts /cygdrive/c/Oracle/Middleware/user_projects/domains/joris_domain/config/osb/transports/sftp

    In Windows: Find known_hosts in your cygwin home folder (in my case: in C:\development\program\cygwin\home\joris.visscher\.ssh\known_hosts) and copy it to the newly created “sftp” folder in your domain home.

    Test business service

    All steps are now done, we can test the business service!

    Additional information:

    You will encounter the following error in your logs when this error occurs:
    com.sshtools.j2ssh.transport.InvalidHostFileException

    ####<18-ott-2012 10.57.33 CEST> <Error> <SFTPTransport> <JORISWORKSTATION> <osb_server1> <[ACTIVE] ExecuteThread: '0' for queue: 'weblogic.kernel.Default (self-tuning)'> <<anonymous>> <> <cef9dbcf0859648a:31ba6f:13a730795ec:-8000-000000000000014f> <1350550653493> <BEA-381801> <Si ▒ verificato un errore per l'endpoint com.bea.wli.sb.transports.TransportException: com.sshtools.j2ssh.transport.InvalidHostFileException: Il file known_hosts non esiste o non dispone di autorizzazioni di lettura.
 com.bea.wli.sb.transports.TransportException: com.sshtools.j2ssh.transport.InvalidHostFileException: Il file known_hosts non esiste o non dispone di autorizzazioni di lettura.
 at com.bea.wli.sb.transports.sftp.connector.SFTPTransportProvider.sendMessage(SFTPTransportProvider.java:155)
 at com.bea.wli.sb.transports.sftp.connector.SFTPTransportProvider.sendMessageAsync(SFTPTransportProvider.java:110)
 at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method)
 at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(NativeMethodAccessorImpl.java:39)
 at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:25)
 at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:597)
 at com.bea.wli.sb.transports.Util$1.invoke(Util.java:83)
 at $Proxy122.sendMessageAsync(Unknown Source)
 at com.bea.wli.sb.transports.LoadBalanceFailoverListener.sendMessageAsync(LoadBalanceFailoverListener.java:148)
 at com.bea.wli.sb.transports.LoadBalanceFailoverListener.sendMessageToServiceAsync(LoadBalanceFailoverListener.java:603)
 at com.bea.wli.sb.transports.LoadBalanceFailoverListener.sendMessageToService(LoadBalanceFailoverListener.java:538)
 at com.bea.wli.sb.transports.TransportManagerImpl.sendMessageToService(TransportManagerImpl.java:566)
 at com.bea.wli.sb.transports.TransportManagerImpl.sendMessageAsync(TransportManagerImpl.java:434)
 at com.bea.wli.sb.test.service.ServiceMessageSender.send0(ServiceMessageSender.java:380)
 at com.bea.wli.sb.test.service.ServiceMessageSender.access$000(ServiceMessageSender.java:79)
 at com.bea.wli.sb.test.service.ServiceMessageSender$1.run(ServiceMessageSender.java:137)
 at com.bea.wli.sb.test.service.ServiceMessageSender$1.run(ServiceMessageSender.java:135)
 at weblogic.security.acl.internal.AuthenticatedSubject.doAs(AuthenticatedSubject.java:363)
 at weblogic.security.service.SecurityManager.runAs(SecurityManager.java:146)
 at com.bea.wli.sb.security.WLSSecurityContextService.runAs(WLSSecurityContextService.java:55)
 at com.bea.wli.sb.test.service.ServiceMessageSender.send(ServiceMessageSender.java:140)
 at com.bea.wli.sb.test.service.ServiceProcessor.invoke(ServiceProcessor.java:454)
 at com.bea.wli.sb.test.TestServiceImpl.invoke(TestServiceImpl.java:172)
 at com.bea.wli.sb.test.client.ejb.TestServiceEJBBean.invoke(TestServiceEJBBean.java:167)
 at com.bea.wli.sb.test.client.ejb.TestService_sqr59p_EOImpl.__WL_invoke(Unknown Source)
 at weblogic.ejb.container.internal.SessionRemoteMethodInvoker.invoke(SessionRemoteMethodInvoker.java:40)
 at com.bea.wli.sb.test.client.ejb.TestService_sqr59p_EOImpl.invoke(Unknown Source)
 at com.bea.wli.sb.test.client.ejb.TestService_sqr59p_EOImpl_WLSkel.invoke(Unknown Source)
 at weblogic.rmi.internal.BasicServerRef.invoke(BasicServerRef.java:667)
 at weblogic.rmi.cluster.ClusterableServerRef.invoke(ClusterableServerRef.java:230)
 at weblogic.rmi.internal.BasicServerRef$1.run(BasicServerRef.java:522)
 at weblogic.security.acl.internal.AuthenticatedSubject.doAs(AuthenticatedSubject.java:363)
 at weblogic.security.service.SecurityManager.runAs(SecurityManager.java:146)
 at weblogic.rmi.internal.BasicServerRef.handleRequest(BasicServerRef.java:518)
 at weblogic.rmi.internal.wls.WLSExecuteRequest.run(WLSExecuteRequest.java:118)
 at weblogic.work.ExecuteThread.execute(ExecuteThread.java:252)
 at weblogic.work.ExecuteThread.run(ExecuteThread.java:221)
 Caused By: com.sshtools.j2ssh.transport.InvalidHostFileException: Il file known_hosts non esiste o non dispone di autorizzazioni di lettura.
at com.bea.wli.sb.transports.sftp.client.KnownHostVerifier.validateKnownHosts(KnownHostVerifier.java:144)
at com.bea.wli.sb.transports.sftp.client.SFTPClient.authenticate(SFTPClient.java:108)
 at com.bea.wli.sb.transports.sftp.connector.SFTPResource.<init>(SFTPResource.java:78)
 at com.bea.wli.sb.transports.sftp.resource.SFTPUtils.createSFTPResource(SFTPUtils.java:170)
 at com.bea.wli.sb.transports.sftp.resource.SFTPConnectionPool.getResource(SFTPConnectionPool.java:104)
 at com.bea.wli.sb.transports.sftp.connector.SFTPTransportProvider.getSFTPResource(SFTPTransportProvider.java:958)
 at com.bea.wli.sb.transports.sftp.connector.SFTPTransportProvider.sendMessage(SFTPTransportProvider.java:145)
 at com.bea.wli.sb.transports.sftp.connector.SFTPTransportProvider.sendMessageAsync(SFTPTransportProvider.java:110)
 at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method)
 at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(NativeMethodAccessorImpl.java:39)
 at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:25)
 at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:597)
 at com.bea.wli.sb.transports.Util$1.invoke(Util.java:83)
 at $Proxy122.sendMessageAsync(Unknown Source)
 at com.bea.wli.sb.transports.LoadBalanceFailoverListener.sendMessageAsync(LoadBalanceFailoverListener.java:148)
 at com.bea.wli.sb.transports.LoadBalanceFailoverListener.sendMessageToServiceAsync(LoadBalanceFailoverListener.java:603)
 at com.bea.wli.sb.transports.LoadBalanceFailoverListener.sendMessageToService(LoadBalanceFailoverListener.java:538)
 at com.bea.wli.sb.transports.TransportManagerImpl.sendMessageToService(TransportManagerImpl.java:566)
 at com.bea.wli.sb.transports.TransportManagerImpl.sendMessageAsync(TransportManagerImpl.java:434)
 at com.bea.wli.sb.test.service.ServiceMessageSender.send0(ServiceMessageSender.java:380)
 at com.bea.wli.sb.test.service.ServiceMessageSender.access$000(ServiceMessageSender.java:79)
 at com.bea.wli.sb.test.service.ServiceMessageSender$1.run(ServiceMessageSender.java:137)
 at com.bea.wli.sb.test.service.ServiceMessageSender$1.run(ServiceMessageSender.java:135)
 at weblogic.security.acl.internal.AuthenticatedSubject.doAs(AuthenticatedSubject.java:363)
 at weblogic.security.service.SecurityManager.runAs(SecurityManager.java:146)
 at com.bea.wli.sb.security.WLSSecurityContextService.runAs(WLSSecurityContextService.java:55)
 at com.bea.wli.sb.test.service.ServiceMessageSender.send(ServiceMessageSender.java:140)
 at com.bea.wli.sb.test.service.ServiceProcessor.invoke(ServiceProcessor.java:454)
 at com.bea.wli.sb.test.TestServiceImpl.invoke(TestServiceImpl.java:172)
 at com.bea.wli.sb.test.client.ejb.TestServiceEJBBean.invoke(TestServiceEJBBean.java:167)
 at com.bea.wli.sb.test.client.ejb.TestService_sqr59p_EOImpl.__WL_invoke(Unknown Source)
 at weblogic.ejb.container.internal.SessionRemoteMethodInvoker.invoke(SessionRemoteMethodInvoker.java:40)
 at com.bea.wli.sb.test.client.ejb.TestService_sqr59p_EOImpl.invoke(Unknown Source)
 at com.bea.wli.sb.test.client.ejb.TestService_sqr59p_EOImpl_WLSkel.invoke(Unknown Source)
 at weblogic.rmi.internal.BasicServerRef.invoke(BasicServerRef.java:667)
 at weblogic.rmi.cluster.ClusterableServerRef.invoke(ClusterableServerRef.java:230)
 at weblogic.rmi.internal.BasicServerRef$1.run(BasicServerRef.java:522)
 at weblogic.security.acl.internal.AuthenticatedSubject.doAs(AuthenticatedSubject.java:363)
 at weblogic.security.service.SecurityManager.runAs(SecurityManager.java:146)
 at weblogic.rmi.internal.BasicServerRef.handleRequest(BasicServerRef.java:518)
 at weblogic.rmi.internal.wls.WLSExecuteRequest.run(WLSExecuteRequest.java:118)
 at weblogic.work.ExecuteThread.execute(ExecuteThread.java:252)
 at weblogic.work.ExecuteThread.run(ExecuteThread.java:221)

  • Create sample XML message from XSD in Eclipse (Free solution!)

    On an Oracle Service Bus project you are often supplied with XSD’s or WSDL’s when you’re integrating with clients. The customer or client expects you to test their web service but before you do, you might want to take a look at the XML which should be sent to make sure you’re sending compliant XML.
    One way to do this is by importing the WSDL in SoapUI and creating sample test requests, this comes in quite handy when you are actually using a WSDL, but what if the customer only supplies an XSD? SoapUI does not support creating sample XML from an XSD element.
    There are several commercial products which can solve this problem but if you’re only looking for generating sample XML messages from XSD, you might want to look at using Eclipse’s built in XML generating option:
    First step is to import the XSD in your project, the right click the Schema and select “Generate” and then “XML”

    Screenshot - Eclipse - Generate XML from XSD
    Screenshot – Eclipse – Generate XML from XSD

    You will be presented with a “New XML file” dialogue which lets you save your new XML sample. Choose any location you want, and click “Next”. Then you will be presented with the options for your new XML sample. Select the options you desire and press “Finish”
    Screenshot - Generate XML - New file dialogue
    Screenshot – Generate XML – New file dialogue

    Your new XML file has been generated and ofcourse is compliant with your XSD right now!

  • Unlock HR user and schema in Oracle Database

    In an Oracle database there is a sample user called “HR”. This user comes with a schema which contains data which is quite convenient for demo purposes.
    You can unlock this user using the following steps:

    1. Connect to your database with the system user
    2. Execute the following command (Note: replace “password” with your password) 
      ALTER USER HR IDENTIFIED BY password ACCOUNT UNLOCK;
    3. Log in to the database with the HR user and your specified password

    You can use this user for tutorials / demo’s in almost all Oracle databases since the tables are all equal.

    Screenshot - Tables, Views and Procedures for the HR user
    Screenshot – Tables, Views and Procedures for the HR user

    Ps. I’ve posted this small tutorial mainly because it will serve as a prerequisite for other tutorials.