How to Join Threads in Java

In some situations, we will have to wait for the finalization of a thread. For example, we may have a program that will begin initializing the resources it needs before proceeding with the rest of the execution. We can run the initialization tasks as threads and wait for its finalization before continuing with the rest of the program. For this purpose, we can use the join() method of the Thread class. When we call this method using a thread object, it suspends the execution of the calling thread until the object called finishes its execution. In this article, we are going to explore Join method of thread class.

I will Join You in Heaven
I can rephrase this section heading as “I will wait until you die.” That’s right. A thread can wait for another thread to die (or terminate).
Suppose there are two threads, t1 and t2. If the thread t1 executes t2.join(), thread t1 starts waiting until thread t2 is terminated. In other words, the call t2.join() blocks until t2 terminates. Using the join() method in a program is useful if one of the threads cannot proceed until another thread has finished executing.

An example where you want to print a message on the standard output when the program has finished executing. The message to print is “Printing Done.”
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Builder Design Pattern in Java

The builder pattern is a software design pattern. The intention is to abstract steps of construction of objects so that different implementations of these steps can construct different representations of objects. In this article, we look into the implementation of builder pattern in Java with UML diagram as well its real life example.

Builder Pattern vs Factory method pattern
This is the general question or doubt we usually face when we have to decide when to use factory method pattern and builder pattern. If you need to refresh your concept of factory method pattern, check my post on Factory pattern .

A factory is simply a wrapper function around the constructor. The principle difference is that a factory method pattern require the entire object to be built in a single call, will all the parameters pass in on a single line. Then final object will be return.
A real life example can be “meal of the day” in a restaurant. The creation of the meal is a factory pattern, because you tell the kitchen get me the meal of today and the kitchen decide what object to generate based on the hidden criteria.

A builder pattern, whereas is a wrapper object around all the possible parameters you might want to pass to a constructor. This allows you to use setter method to build your own parameter list.
A real life example appears if you order a custom pizza ( any drink). In this case, waiter tell the chef ( TeaBuilder, CoffeeBuilder in our example, you will see soon) I need a pizza; add extra cheese, olives, and corn to it. Therefore, the builder exposes the attributes the generated object should have, but hide how to set them.

The Builder is only needed when an object cannot be produced in one step.
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Lifecycle of Java Server Pages

In this article, we look into the life-cycle of Java Server pages (JSP) along with its phases descriptions. Also, we see the flow of JSP handling the request and in what phases it goes and what would happened at the end after serving request.

Java Server Pages
Java Server Pages (JSPs) are a simple but powerful technology used most often to generate dynamic HTML on the server side. They are a direct extension ofJava servlets with the purpose of allowing the developer to embed Java logic directly into a requested document. Using JSP Expression Language, you can develop powerful dynamic web pages powered by Java servlets without any Java code. A JSP document must end with a .jsp extension.

JSP page is processed in several phases during its lifecycle. Following table will describes all the phases of the JSP lifecycle.

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How to traverse Collection in Java using Iterator, for-each loop and forEach method

In this article, we look into difference method for iterating over the Collection such as Iterator, for-each loop and forEach method of Java 8 with examples. We also see the difference between them.

Most often, you need to access all elements of a collection one at a time. Different types of collections store their elements differently using different types of data structures. Some collections impose ordering on their elements and some do not. The Collections Framework provides the following ways to traverse a collection:

• Using an Iterator
• Using a for-each loop
• Using the forEach() method

Some collections, such as lists, assign each element an index and they let you access their elements using indexes. You can traverse those collectionsusing a regular for-loop statement as well. You can also traverse collections by converting them into streams and performing an aggregate operation on those streams.

Iterator
A collection provides an iterator to iterate over all its elements. Sometimes an iterator is also known as a generator or a cursor. An iterator lets you perform the following three operations on a collection:

• Check if there are elements that have not been yet accessed using this iterator.
• Access the next element in the collection.
• Remove the last accessed element of the collection.

The iterator itself does not impose any ordering in which it returns the elements from a collection. However, if the collection imposes ordering on its elements, the iterator will maintain the same ordering.

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Architecture of Apache Tomcat

In this article, we look into the different component of Apache Tomcat architecture that will help us to understand Tomcat in more detail. The Apache Tomcat server is an open source, Java-based web application container that was created to run servlet and JavaServer Pages (JSP) web applications.

Apache Tomcat is very stable and has all of the features of a commercial web application container – yet comes under Open Source Apache License. Tomcat also provides additional functionality that makes it a great choice for developing a complete web application solution. Some of the additional features provided by Tomcat—other than being open source and free—include the Tomcat Manager application, specialized realm implementations, and Tomcat valves.
Regarding the latest release of Tomcat always check Apache Tomcat site.

The Architecture of Tomcat
Before reading this you should look into tomcat conf/server.xml in order to understand this. Download server.xml file.
A Tomcat instance, or server, is the top-level component in Tomcat’s container hierarchy. Only one Tomcat instance can live in a single Java Virtual Machine (JVM). This approach makes all other Java applications, running on the same physical machine as Tomcat server, safe in case Tomcat and/or its  JVM crashes.
Tomcat instance consists of grouping of the application containers, which exist in the well-defined hierarchy. The key component in that hierarchy is theCatalina servlet engine. Catalina is the actual Java servlet container implementation as specified in Java Servlet API

XML representation of the relationships between the different Tomcat containers.

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Why to use @Override Annotation in Java

If you are new to annotation in Java, then this article will give an exciting example to understand what Annotation actually means in Java. We’ll also understand what is Annotation and why we need them with one example of @Override Annotation.

Annotations were introduced in Java 5. Before I define annotations and discuss their importance in programming, let’s discuss a simple example.

Suppose you have an Employee class, which has a method called setSalary() that sets the salary of an employee. The method accepts a parameter of the type double. The following snippet of code shows a trivial implementation for the Employee class:

A Manager class inherits from the Employee class. You want to set the salary for managers differently. You decide to override the setSalary() method in the Manager class. The code for the Manager class is as follows

Note that there is a mistake in the above code for the Manager class, when you attempt to override the setSalary() method. (You’ll correct the mistake shortly.) You have used the int data type as the parameter type for the incorrectly overridden method. It is time to set the salary for a manager. The following code is used to accomplish this:

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What is the Static Keyword in Java

Enhanced for each loop in Java

Why Character Array is preferred over String for Storing password in Java

 

 

Enhanced for each loop in Java

The for-each loop introduced in Java5. It is mainly used to traverse array or collection elements. The advantage of for-each loop is that it eliminates the possibility of bugs and makes the code more readable. The enhanced for loop is also called the for-each loop, and it offers some advantages over the regularfor loop. It also has some limitations.

To start with, the regular for loop is cumbersome to use when it comes to iterating through a collection or an array. You need to create a looping variable and specify the start and end positions of the collection or the array, even if you want to iterate through the complete collection or list. The enhanced for loopmakes the previously mentioned routine task quite a breeze, as the following example demonstrates for an ArrayList myList:

You can read the colon (:) in a for-each loop as “in”.

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