Introduction

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• See IntelliJ IDEA 13: Importing Code Formatter Settings from Eclipse for instructions on how to use build-tools/src/main/resource/eclipse-xml-settings.epf.
• The following settings needs manual setup, as these aren't imported from Eclipse:
  • Code styles -> General: Right margin (columns) needs to set to 121 to avoid wrapping 120 length lines 
  • Java
    • Tabs and indents:
      • Continuation indent should be
      4
      • 8.
    • Javadoc: 
      • Do not wrap on line javadoc comment needs to be enabled
      • Preserve line feeds
  • • Import statement
      • Order must be manually defined, see specification above
  • Xml
    • Tabs and Indents: Set continuation indent to 2
    • Other: Disable Align attributes.

Headers

We add the following header to all our Java-files. This is done by using the maven-license-plugin. All headers can be updated by running the license:update-file-header: 

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public JobSupervisor(Provider<JobDAO> jobDaoProvider, Provider<Long> jobTimeoutProvider) {

The Provider<X> interface provides a get() method returning X.  This allows for lazy initialization and/or providing an unknown number of X'es.

Further reading:

• http://www.vogella.com/tutorials/DependencyInjection/article.html
  
• http://square.github.io/dagger/
• http://www.infoq.com/presentations/Dagger

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The general rule is "put declarations only at the beginning of blocks". We allow one exception from this rule, namely declarations that 1) initialize the variable and 2) depend on previous calculations are allowed be further down the block. Example:

void Foo() {
    int i1 = 42;
    int i2 = 0;
    i2 = f(i1);
    int i3 = g(i2);
}

Miscellaneous

Public methods should always check that their arguments follow the JavaDoc restriction with respect to being null, empty, non-negative etc. The ArgumentNotValid class has a number of useful methods for this.

JavaDoc is strongly encouraged, as the code might explain what happens, but not the why; the JavaDoc must describe the intent of the function, including assumptions and invariants as well as expectations of the arguments.   Please add and improve as needed.

Logging

We use the apache.commons.logging framework for logging (currently version 1.0.4), which gives us one unified interface that can be realized with different underlying systems.

However, currently the monitoring component requires the underlying implementation to be Jdk14 logging, since it exposes log messages using a LogHandler implementation for the Jdk14 framework. To use another logging framework, this method would need to be redefined for that framework (for instance an appender for Log4J).

Getting a logger

Retrieving an logger is a straightforward matter. Each class uses the logger interface to obtain a logger, using the class name to identify the logger.

import org.apache.commons.logging.Log;
import org.apache.commons.logging.LogFactory;
public class MyClass {
   // A named logger for this class is retrieved
   protected final Log log LogFactory.getLog(getClass());
}

Using the logger

Logging messages are generated using the level specific logging methods:

• log.fatal("Error situations where the application can not recover" ,Throwable);
• log.error
• log.warn("Error situations where the application may continue to operate" ,Throwable);
• log.info("Information about major modules/functionalities. Like Application data loaded, Application services started. also used, where log.config() was used before" ,Throwable)
• log.debug("Major functionalities within individual packages and classes are reported; Also used for tracing. Information within each method may be displayed" ,Throwable)
• log.trace("Detailed tracing information" ,Throwable)

See http://jakarta.apache.org/commons/logging/guide.html#Logging_a_Message

When we used java.util.logging, we used these levels

• logger.severe("Error situations where the application can not recover")
• logger.warning("Error situations where the application may continue to operate")
• logger.info("Information about major modules/functionalites. Like Application data loaded, Application services started")
• logger.config("Only used to report application configuration information")
• logger.fine("Major functionalities within indvidual packages and classes are reported")
• logger.finer("Used for tracing. Information within each method may be displayed")
• logger.finest("Detailed tracing information")
• logger.log( FINER, "Exception logging", exception)

public class MyClass {
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  public MyClass() {
    logger.trace("Creating MyClass");
    ...
    logger.info("Timeout="+timeout);
  }
  public void aMethod() {
    logger.trace("Entering aMethod");
    try {
      logger.debug("preparing to do something");
      doSomethingThatMayThrowExceptions();
    }
   catch (NullPointerException e) {
    logger.trace("something threw nullpointer exception", e);
    }
   catch (Exception e) {
    logger.trace("something threw an exception", e);
    }
    logger.trace("Leaving aMethod");
  }
}

Logger configuration

The logging levels and handlers are defined using a configuration filelog.prop=. The loglevels mentioned in this configuration file uses loglevels defined by java.util.logging.Level

An example file:

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In order to load the configuration file add the following to the java command lines:

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