Java 10 and Local-Variable Type Inference

Robert Rice Articles, Development Technologies & Tools, Java Leave a Comment

JDK 10, an implementation of Java Standard Edition, was released in March 2018. It brought with it Local-Variable Type Inference to help simplify the writing of Java applications.

Basically, it’s a new syntax meant to reduce some of Java’s verbosity, while still maintaining the enforcement of static type safety. In simpler terms, you are able to declare variables, but won’t necessarily have to specify the type.

In this blog, I give recommendations for best practice when using Local-Variable Type Inference in JDK 10 with an eye for common var pitfalls…

Angular and Swagger: Experiences Learned

RJ Dela-Cruz Angular, Articles, Development Technologies & Tools, JavaScript 2 Comments

Recently I was fortunate enough to be a part of a project where we were building an application from scratch into an Angular front-end application with Microservices in the back end. Swagger was used as the contract between the UI and Microservices.

In this blog, I talk about the things I learned from this project experience, like how to use Swagger to define the endpoints of the Microservices, integrating Swagger-generated code into Angular, and working with configuration (including oAuth2 tokens), among other “gotchas…”

Getting Started with React and JSX

Chris Shatrov Articles, Development Technologies & Tools, JavaScript, React Leave a Comment

I have been with Keyhole Software for nearly four years. Every time I write a new blog post it is about a new framework that I had to pick up and learn that year.

I write a lot of JavaScript daily, but previously never had the chance to start coding a project with React. But this year, I worked on a project with React. So as expected, I wanted to share my thoughts and my experiences with React.

In this post, I will give a quick introduction to React and talk about its main, most important, components. We will also take a peek at JSX and explain it, and show some code examples, which will help you have a better understanding of this library before you can move on to more complex things…

The Wonderful Wide World of webpack: Unpacking Awesomeness

Aaron Diffenderfer Articles, Development Technologies & Tools, JavaScript Leave a Comment

In the past couple of years, webpack has come a long way. It continues to rapidly evolve and revolutionize the way we bundle JavaScript and more. For some of us that have been doing development for more than a few years, seeing an amazing tool like webpack and all of its abilities is mind-blowing. If only it had come into existence a bit sooner…

If you’re like me, you may have stumbled across webpack, hearing about its gazillion configuration options, along with a bunch of plugins, numerous ways to optimize your bundle, and more. So much that it all makes your head spin and you begin to feel overwhelmed as you attempt to make sense of it. That’s honestly how my journey began with Webpack.

My first exposure to it…Ejecting the webpack.config.js file from an AngularCLI project just to see what the all the hype was about and to see what I had been missing out on the past few years. After getting past the initial shock of the number of lines of code and the seemingly large structure (how I felt after my first few glances, having to shield my eyes and take a few deep breaths), I started to see many of the benefits. This continued as I read through the webpack documentation, various blogs, and StackOverflow (every developer’s most-accessed site) and as I began trying out a variety of configurations for some actual projects.

As I discovered, webpack can be used with zero config or configured literally in 8,675,309 ways, plus or minus a handful. And there about just as many blogs that cover all of the variations and flavors.

In this post, however, the goal is to highlight some tips & tricks along with features I’ve found to be particularly useful and reasons why you should be using webpack – if you haven’t already started…

OWASP Dependency Check for Vulnerability Reporting

John Hoestje Articles, Development Technologies & Tools, Java, Security, Tutorial Leave a Comment

TL;DR: Add OWASP Dependency-Check to your build process to get insight into your dependency vulnerabilities.

Recent major data losses and security vulnerabilities in open source frameworks *(and the applications that use them)* have caused the companies that use those frameworks to have elevated concerns regarding vulnerabilities. The elevated awareness is for good reason, too. After all, no one wants to be the next one to lose sensitive data, be the punching bag of others, or be the example of what *not* to do security-wise.

If you happen to be in a group that doesn’t have any open source vulnerability reporting, OWASP Dependency-Check may be your short-term answer to get at least something in place. Adding OWASP Dependency-Check into your build process takes a relatively low effort. Other than not having the technology that stack Dependency-Check can help you with, there isn’t a reason not to at least add Dependency-Check to give a little insight into your open source dependencies.

The following parts will help you get Dependency-Check integrated into your Java project’s build process. The instructions will be adaptable to the other technologies Dependency-Check supports, like Gradle or JavaScript. Dependency-Check is also available as a command line tool for your favorite OS. In this example, I’ll use a Java project with Maven….