SyntaxHighlighter integration in Blogger.com

In a earlier blogpost, we've talked about using SyntaxHighlighter to make your programming code snippets more readable on your web pages. This blogpost will integrate SyntaxHighlighter into a blog hosted on blogger.com (like this blog).

Simply said, SyntaxHighligther is a set of JavaScript/CSS files you have to include on your webpage. You can host it on your private server, or you can use the scripts already online. I linked to the files in the online SVN repository of SyntaxHighlighter: http://syntaxhighlighter.googlecode.com/svn-history/trunk/.

The first step is to edit the HTML template of your blog. Starting from your dashboard, go to Design and then Edit HTML. This will present a page where you can edit the template. Scroll to the end of the code, paste the following piece of code just before the </body>-tag:

<!-- START SyntaxHighlighter -->
<link href='http://alexgorbatchev.com/pub/sh/2.1.364/styles/shCore.css' rel='stylesheet' type='text/css'/> 
<link href='http://alexgorbatchev.com/pub/sh/2.1.364/styles/shThemeDefault.css' rel='stylesheet' type='text/css'/> 
<script src='http://alexgorbatchev.com/pub/sh/2.1.364/scripts/shCore.js' type='text/javascript'></script> 
<script src='http://alexgorbatchev.com/pub/sh/2.1.364/scripts/shBrushCpp.js' type='text/javascript'></script> 
<script src='http://alexgorbatchev.com/pub/sh/2.1.364/scripts/shBrushCSharp.js' type='text/javascript'></script> 
<script src='http://alexgorbatchev.com/pub/sh/2.1.364/scripts/shBrushCss.js' type='text/javascript'></script> 
<script src='http://alexgorbatchev.com/pub/sh/2.1.364/scripts/shBrushJava.js' type='text/javascript'></script> 
<script src='http://alexgorbatchev.com/pub/sh/2.1.364/scripts/shBrushJScript.js' type='text/javascript'></script> 
<script src='http://alexgorbatchev.com/pub/sh/2.1.364/scripts/shBrushPhp.js' type='text/javascript'></script> 
<script src='http://alexgorbatchev.com/pub/sh/2.1.364/scripts/shBrushPython.js' type='text/javascript'></script> 
<script src='http://alexgorbatchev.com/pub/sh/2.1.364/scripts/shBrushRuby.js' type='text/javascript'></script> 
<script src='http://alexgorbatchev.com/pub/sh/2.1.364/scripts/shBrushSql.js' type='text/javascript'></script> 
<script src='http://alexgorbatchev.com/pub/sh/2.1.364/scripts/shBrushVb.js' type='text/javascript'></script> 
<script src='http://alexgorbatchev.com/pub/sh/2.1.364/scripts/shBrushXml.js' type='text/javascript'></script> 
<script src='http://alexgorbatchev.com/pub/sh/2.1.364/scripts/shBrushPerl.js' type='text/javascript'></script> 
<script language='javascript'> 
SyntaxHighlighter.config.bloggerMode = true;
SyntaxHighlighter.config.clipboardSwf = 'http://alexgorbatchev.com/pub/sh/2.1.364/scripts/clipboard.swf';
SyntaxHighlighter.all();
</script>
<!-- END SyntaxHighlighter -->

This piece of code will load the SyntaxHighlighter files, and update the markup of your code snippets enclosed by <pre> or <textarea>. Before it works, you have to mark them as code by supplying the following attributes to the mentioned two tags, like this:

<pre class="java" name="code"> ... </pre>

I have not included every syntax file available. If you need support for other programming languages, you have to extend the JavaScript code above to include them. The available scipts can be found here: http://syntaxhighlighter.googlecode.com/svn-history/trunk/Scripts/

Configuring project JDK in IntelliJ IDEA on a Mac

When you install the IntelliJ IDEA, a Java IDE, for the first time, it will not detect the default JDK that comes with Mac OS X automatically. When prompted to choose a default JDK use the following path to the default JDK:

/System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.Framework/Versions/CurrentJDK/Home

Most popular programming language of 2010?

TIOBE Software published its annual TIOBE Programming Community Index. The Java programming language still leads, but the programming language Python wins the TIOBE Programming Language Award of 2010!

Python is the successor of Perl as a system programming language. It is easy to learn, and that is the reason more universities use Python to teach programming languages.

Read more about this here.

Converting a database CLOB into a String

I've seen code that converts database CLOBs to String by using CharacterStreams and BufferedReaders to read CLOBs in a loop until the CLOB is fully read. A simpler way is using the getSubString() method of the Clob object. While knowing the length or size of the CLOB, you can read the whole CLOB into a String like this:

DataSource ds = ...
Connection c = null;
PreparedStatement s = null;
ResultSet r = null;

try {
  c = ds.getConnection();
  s = c.prepareStatement("SELECT clobColumn FROM someTable");
  r = s.executeQuery();

  while (r.next()) {
    Clob clob = r.getClob(1);

    if (clob != null) {

      if ((int) clob.length() > 0) {
        String s = clob.getSubString(1, (int) clob.length());
        // Do something with string.
      }
    }
   }
} catch (SQLException e) {
  // Handle exception.
} finally {
  // Close Connection, PreparedStatement, and ResultSet.
}

Beware if the data in the CLOB is really large (larger than Integer.MAX_VALUE). In that case, you'll still need a streaming method.

Piwik - Web Analytics

Piwik is the open source alternative to Google Analytics. It's a GPL-licensed, real time web analytics software run on PHP and MySQL. It's not a SAAS (Software As A Service), so you have to download and install it on your own webserver.

The installation takes about five minute to complete. At the end, a JavaScript code is generated, which you need to include in the page you want to track.

For more information: http://piwik.org