Java Applet logging

The last couple of days I have been working on logging from our applet. Frustrating indeed, but finally it works, almost as planned.

Our first approach was to do the configuration programatically, something like:

//get the root logger
Logger logger = Logger.getLogger("");
//create a ConsoleHandler
Handler handler = new ConsoleHandler();
handler.setLevel(Level.FINE);
logger.addHandler(handler);
logger.setLevel(Level.FINE);

Now, this works very well in the Applet Viewer, but when you run your applet in a browser you'll get an exception, since the applet can not change the Handler configuration.

Well, there is the getAnonymusLogger() function, which is designed for use in applets. An anonymous logger would mean that we miss much of the benefits of the flexibel configuration, which is based on named loggers, but I guess it is better than nothing. But while using this method makes it possible to the the level on the Logger, you still can not configure the handler, so you will not get any logging output still.

So, we had to go for the configuration file. This is actually not so bad. You find the logging.properties file (it is under jre.lib) and configure your logging there. For console logging, you have to change the level of the ConsoleHandler (configured by default, but set to INFO level):

java.util.logging.ConsoleHandler.level = FINE


If you want logging to file, you can add the FileHandler instead:

handlers= java.util.logging.FileHandler, java.util.logging.ConsoleHandler

And of course, you turn your logging on:

com.xx.package.level = FINE

Now on my Windows PC this works both in applet viewer and in browser. But when I try the ConsoleHandler on my Mac, there is another gotcha, Bug ID 6585429 LoggerTraceListener causes infinite loop under some circumstances. On my mac the console simply loops and writes the same message over and over again. Seems like this is a known bug, and there should be a fix available, but for now we are stuck with logging to file on the Mac.

Shopping List gadget updated

My shopping list gadget was one of my first, and is still my most popular. It was originally written as an inline gadget, and has been inline all the time, up till a few days ago. But lately I had complaints about problems with it. So this weekend a took a look. It seems like inline gadgets do not work as before anymore. Inline is actually not supported for new gadgets, so this is not a surprise. So I had to rewrite it and change the type. I also removed all the __MODULE_ID__, which are no longer needed, since it is rendered in an IFRAME.

Web site revised

I have spent some hours on revising my private web site jubic.se. The new site is based on css positioning instead of the old one, based on html tables. Much esiser to maintain and hopefully a bit more modern look. Some changes to the content too, mainly on the main page, which is re-written. The site contains motsly material on my Google gadgets. I hope to have the time to add some more the following weeks, and possibly also some MySql material later.

Blogger problem solved!!

At last I manged to get my javascript code into blogger. The problem was with < and > which Blogger don't like. So i had to create small strings and use instead:

var lt = String.fromCharCode(60);
var gt = String.fromCharCode(62);

And now everything works as it should! Check it out at http://rockpopfavorites.blogspot.com/

It is behind the YouTube search at the right, which is actually a Google gadget (not yet published) where parameters are set dynamically.

Blogger hates me.....

I have been trying most of the week to add some HTML and javascript code to a blog. It looks OK in the edit window but every time I save it, Blogger destroys my beautiful javascript code... It tries to format it, moves fragments of code around and destroys it completely. Escpecially special chars (including the not so special " and ' chars and whitespace!!!) seems almost impossible. I have spent several hours of my precious spare time on this.

Applet lifecycle

Lately I have been working with applets. This is new to me, since I have been mostly a server and web guy, with J2EE and servlets as my specialities, and some J2ME. And now I have run into a strange problem....

An applet's life cycle has four methods:
- init() when it is created
- start() when it is shown
- stop() when it is no longer shown
- destroy() for releasing resources

There is an old exception to this, that som browsers (Internet Explorer, possibly some other too) sometimes i9nvokes init() more than once. We had some problems with our applet which seemed to be caused by this. But when it made a fix for this, it did not help...

Some more investigation showed that actually Internet Explorer did not only invoke init() twice but also created two instances and invoked both init() and start() on both. This seems to happen the first time an applet is run, but possibly not the second. Very strange indeed....