Shaun Abram
Java and Technology weblog
Subscribe to RSS FeedURL Encoding
URL encoding, also known as percent encoding, takes certain “reserved” characters and standardizes (or canonicalizes) them.
Why? This is normally done when transmitting data in html forms. For example, the # character has a special purpose in html (as an html anchor) and so is converted to make it clear that it is part of that data, not part of the html document where it is to be displayed.
Another (related) use is for prevention of XSS attacks. If your web page allows a user to enter text (for example, a comments box on a blog), it would be very easy for a motivated user to enter malicious text that will be interpreted as a script.
Tags: helloworld, springboot, urldecoding, urlencoding, webdev
Copying keys to a new laptop
If you use GPG (which I have written about before) and start using a new laptop, you will need to copy your keys over.
While it is possible to copy just your personal key, I prefer to also copy other people’s (public) keys too, and my entire trust database. To do this is fairly simple…
Tags: encryption, gnupg, gpg, pgp, security
Git revert a merged branch
The article discusses how to revert changes that have already been pushed to your remote git branch, particularly reverting the changes that come from a branch merge.
Tags: git, github, gitpr, gitreset, gitrevert
Don’t use “kill -9”
In the past, any time I wanted to stop an errant process on unix, I just used “kill -9”. By default. Without thinking about it much.
Then a colleague commented to me that you should never use kill -9. It terminates the process with no chance to shutdown in an orderly manner, and so can leave things in a bad state, such as corrupting files. “But what else am I supposed to do!?” I naively asked.
There are of course many other options for the kill command (see links below), but here are some alternatives you can try, in the order you may want to try them.
Tags: bash, commandline, kill, unix
Creating a Maven multi module project
There is no easy way, or simple archetype, to create a maven multi module project. The approach below is the best way I’ve found so far.
“Ship It!” talk at the Boise Code Camp
Slides for my “Ship It!” talk at the Boise Code Camp in Boise State University today: https://www.slideshare.net/shaunabram/ship-it-boise
Tags: boidecodecamp, codecamp, devops, mytalks, production, shipit, talks
Copy & Paste buffer
Why be only limited to have a single item in your Copy & Paste buffer?! There are several tools out there that can do this, but my favorite (on the mac at least) is Butler.
Tags: keyboardshortcuts, productivity
Switched to HTTPS
I recently switched the WordPress and domain name hosting for this blog from Bluehost to SiteGround, and enabled https in the process.
Tags: hosting, https, ssl, tls, wordpress
GPG
I use GPG (Gnu Privacy Guard) for email encryption. GPG is an OpenPGP implementation. If you would like to send me an encrypted email, my public key can be found at https://keybase.io/shaunabram. I also have some keybase invites available, if you are interested.
Tags: encryption, gnupg, gpg, pgp, security
Continuous integration / Continuous Delivery / Continuous Deployment
The terms Continuous Integration, Continuous Delivery and Continuous Deployment can still confuse. Even Jez Humble, author of the book Continuous Delivery commented that there is “confusion around the terms continuous delivery versus continuous deployment and my own thinking and definitions have changed”.(1)
This is my attempt to distinguish, based on the sources listed below.
Tags: ci, continuousdelivery, continuousdeployment, continuousintegration, devops