A Java geek

Nicolas Fränkel's blog
microservices spring boot

Going the microservices way - part 1

This is the 1st post in the Going the microservices way focus series. <div class='paragraph'> <p><a href='https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microservices' target='_blank' rel='noopener'>Microservices</a>, are trending right now, whether you like it or not. There are good reasons for that as it resolves many issues organizations are faced with. It also opens a Pandora box as new issues pop up every now and then…​ But that is a story for another day: in the end, micr
android dagger singleton

True singletons with Dagger 2

I’ve written some time ago about Dagger 2. However, I still don’t understand every nook and cranny. In particular, the @Singleton annotation can be quite misleading as user Zhuiden was kind enough to point out: If you create a new ApplicationComponent each time you inject, you will get a new instance in every place where you inject; and you will not actually have singletons where you expect singletons. An ApplicationComponent should be managed by the Application and made accessibl
blog cloudfront github hosting HTTPS jekyll wordpress

Running your domain on HTTPS for free

This blog runs on HTTP for a long time as there is no transaction taking place so no security is needed (I use SFTP for file transfer). However, since Google’s latest search algorithm change, I’ve noticed a sharp decrease in the number of monthly visits, from more than 20k to around 13k. While my goal has never been to have the highest number of visits, it’s still good feedback to me (as well as a nice warm feeling). As it seems turning on HTTPS didn’t seem like a big de
rx test thread

Creative Rx usage in testing setup

I don’t know if events became part of software engineering since Graphical-User Interface interactions, but for sure they are a very convenient way of modeling them. With more and more interconnected systems, asynchronous event management has become an important issue to tackle. With Functional-Programming also on the raise, this gave birth to libraries such as RxJava. However, modeling a problem as the handling of a stream of events shouldn’t be restricted to system events handling.

android dagger dependency injection

Compile-time dependency injection tradeoffs in Android

As a backend software developer, I’m used to Spring as my favorite Dependency Injection engine. Alternatives include Java EE’s CDI which achieves the same result - in a different way. However, both inject at runtime: that means that there’s a definite performance cost to pay at the start of the application, the time it takes for all dependencies to be fulfilled. On an application server, where the application lifespan is measured in days (if not weeks), the start time overhead i
devops spring boot

More DevOps for Spring Boot

I think Spring Boot brings something new to the table, especially concerning DevOps - and I’ve already written a post about it. However, there’s more than metrics and healthchecks. In one of another of my previous post, I described how to provide versioning information for Maven-built applications. This article will describe how this later post is not necessary when using Spring Boot. As a reminder, just adding adding the spring-boot-starter-actuator dependency in the POM, enable

android continuous integration gradle jenkins puppet

Fully automated Android build pipeline

In the course of my current job, I had to automate jobs for building Android applications. This post aims at describing the pain points I encountered in order for you readers not to waste your time if you intend to do so. The environment is the following: Puppet to automate the infrastructureJenkins for the CI serverThe Android projectA Gradle build file to build itRobolectric as the main testing framework Puppet and Jenkins My starting point was quite sound, indeed. Colleagues had already
test unit test

Improve your tests with Mockito's capture

Unit Testing mandates to test the unit in isolation. In order to achieve that, the general consensus is to design our classes in a decoupled way using DI. In this paradigm, whether using a framework or not, whether using compile-time or runtime compilation, object instantiation is the responsibility of dedicated factories. In particular, this means the new keyword should be used only in those factories. Sometimes, however, having a dedicated factory just doesn’t fit. This is the case when