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Posts tagged Java
Getting enviroment information on Android
Mar 16th
This is a simple program I wrote called Who Am I that shows informations about the device which it is running. Which can be useful for developers and maybe advanced users.

Download:
- WhoAmI.tar.bz2 – Eclipse project. It’s configured for Android platform 4 (1.6) but should work without problems in newer Android platform versions.
- WhoAmI.apk – Application installation Android package.
Main Activity source code:
package net.silveiraneto.whoami; import android.app.Activity; import android.os.Build; import android.os.Bundle; import android.widget.EditText; public class WhoAmI extends Activity { private EditText mEditor; @Override public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) { super.onCreate(savedInstanceState); setContentView(R.layout.whoami); mEditor = (EditText) findViewById(R.id.editor); Object[][] properties = { {"Build.BOARD", Build.BOARD}, {"Build.BRAND", Build.BRAND}, {"Build.CPU_ABI", Build.CPU_ABI}, {"Build.DEVICE", Build.DEVICE}, {"Build.DISPLAY", Build.DISPLAY}, {"Build.FINGERPRINT", Build.FINGERPRINT}, {"Build.HOST", Build.HOST}, {"Build.ID", Build.ID}, {"Build.MANUFACTURER", Build.MANUFACTURER}, {"Build.MODEL", Build.MODEL}, {"Build.PRODUCT", Build.PRODUCT}, {"Build.TAGS", Build.TAGS}, {"Build.TIME", Build.TIME}, {"Build.USER", Build.USER}, }; for(Object[] prop: properties) { mEditor.append(String.format("%s: %s\n", prop[0], prop[1])); } } }
And its Android Manifest:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <manifest xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android" package="net.silveiraneto.whoami"> <application android:label="Who Am I"> <activity android:name="WhoAmI"> <intent-filter> <action android:name="android.intent.action.MAIN" /> <category android:name="android.intent.category.LAUNCHER" /> </intent-filter> </activity> </application> </manifest>
The Caps Lock Java Socket Server
Feb 27th

Here is a simple server for those who are starting studying sockets or just needs a simple socket server example for reuse while writing your own behavior.
Features:
- A client should enter a string and the server would answer the same string, with each symbol in up case, when possible.
- Default port at 8080.
- One client at time.
- No multi threading. I said its a simple server.
import java.io.BufferedReader; import java.io.IOException; import java.io.InputStreamReader; import java.io.OutputStreamWriter; import java.net.ServerSocket; import java.net.Socket; public class Server { private static final int DEFAULT = 8080; public Server() { this(DEFAULT); } public Server(int port) { ServerSocket sock; try { sock = new ServerSocket(port); System.out.println(String.format("Listening on port %d.", port)); while (true) { try { Socket client = sock.accept(); System.out.println("A new connection was accepted."); BufferedReader in = new BufferedReader( new InputStreamReader(client.getInputStream())); OutputStreamWriter out = new OutputStreamWriter(client .getOutputStream()); String input = ""; while (!input.equals("exit")) { input = in.readLine(); if (input.equals("shutdown")) { System.exit(0); } out.write(input.toUpperCase() + "\r\n"); out.flush(); } in.close(); out.close(); client.close(); System.out.println("Connection closed."); } catch (NullPointerException npe) { System.out.println("Connection closed by client."); } } } catch (IOException ioe) { System.err.println(ioe); System.exit(-1); } } public static void main(String[] args) throws IOException { new Server(); } }
Usage:
$ javac Server.java
$ java Server
Listening on port 8080.
In another terminal:
$ telnet localhost 8080
Trying ::1…
Connected to localhost.
Escape character is ‘^]’.
hi
HI
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
THE QUICK BROWN FOX JUMPS OVER THE LAZY DOG.
exi
EXI
exit
EXIT
Connection closed by foreign host.
Beware the locale
Feb 22nd
Today I was programming a toString method for a class widely used in a application, using the very useful String.format that provides a C’s like printf formatter.
@Override public String toString() { return String.format("VO[a: %.1f, b: %.1f, c: %.1f]", a, b, a+b); }
%.1f means a float with one digit precision after the dot separator. The code produces something like:
VO[a: 1.0, b: 2.0, c: 3.0]
The problem arises when running a JUnit test on this method wrote using a regular expression to extract the values from the String to test it correctness. We cannot assume that the dot will be always the separator for displaying a float value, in my locale pt_BR would be a comma. So the output would be:
VO[a: 1,0, b: 2,0, c: 3,0]
For a predictable output we can set a Locale for String.format:
Locale en = new Locale("en"); return String.format(en, "VO[a: %.1f, b: %.1f, c: %.1f]", a, b, a+b);
So it will always use the dot as common separator. Of course you should follow and respect the localization and internationalization efforts in others moments but in this toString case we are using it internally for debug and unitary testing so we can set a English default locale for safety reasons.
Java Font List
Jan 5th
Here’s a program that lists fonts available in your JVM. You can also set the environment variable JAVA_FONTS to specify the font directory.
import java.awt.GraphicsEnvironment; public class ListFonts { public static void main(String args[]){ GraphicsEnvironment e = GraphicsEnvironment.getLocalGraphicsEnvironment(); for(String font:e.getAvailableFontFamilyNames()){ System.out.println(font); } } }
By using pipes you can count how many fonts you have:
java ListFonts|wc -l
On my Ubuntu machine here I got 556 because I use those excellent, free and indispensable Larabie Fonts.
For looking up for a font with “sans” in its name, using a case insensitive grep:
java ListFonts|grep -i “sans”
I get a list like this:
DejaVu Sans
DejaVu Sans Condensed
DejaVu Sans Light
DejaVu Sans Mono
FreeSans
Tiled TMX Map Loader for Pygame
Dec 19th
I’m using the Tiled Map Editor for a while, I even wrote that tutorial about it. It’s a general purpose tile map editor, written in Java but now migrating to C++ with Qt, that can be easily used with my set of free pixelart tiles.

A map done with Tiled is stored in a file with TMX extension. It’s just a XML file, easy to understand.
As I’m creating a map loader for my owns purposes, the procedure I’m doing here works we need some simplifications. I’m handling orthogonal maps only. I’m not supporting tile properties as well. I also don’t want to handle base64 and zlib encoding in this version, so in the Tiled editor, go at the menu Edit → Preferences and in the Saving tab unmark the options “Use binary encoding” and “Compress Layer Data (gzip)”, like this:

When saving a map it will produce a TMX file like this:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <!DOCTYPE map SYSTEM "http://mapeditor.org/dtd/1.0/map.dtd"> <map version="1.0" orientation="orthogonal" width="10" height="10" tilewidth="32" tileheight="32"> <properties> <property name="Author" value="Silveira Neto"/> <property name="Year" value="2009"/> </properties> <tileset name="mytiles" firstgid="1" tilewidth="32" tileheight="32"> <image source="free_tileset_version_10.png"/> </tileset> <layer name="grass" width="10" height="10"> <data> <tile gid="261"/> <tile gid="260"/> ... <tile gid="160"/> <tile gid="0"/> </data> </layer> </map>
For processing it on Python I’m using the event oriented SAX approach for XML. So I create a ContentHandler that handles events the start and end of XML elements. In the first element, map, I know enough to create a Pygame surface with the correct size. I’m also storing the map properties so I can use it later for add some logics or effects on the map. After that we create a instance of the Tileset class from where we will get the each tile by an gid number. Each layer has it’s a bunch of gids in the correct order. So it’s enough information to mount and draw a map.
# Author: Silveira Neto # License: GPLv3 import sys, pygame from pygame.locals import * from pygame import Rect from xml import sax class Tileset: def __init__(self, file, tile_width, tile_height): image = pygame.image.load(file).convert_alpha() if not image: print "Error creating new Tileset: file %s not found" % file self.tile_width = tile_width self.tile_height = tile_height self.tiles = [] for line in xrange(image.get_height()/self.tile_height): for column in xrange(image.get_width()/self.tile_width): pos = Rect( column*self.tile_width, line*self.tile_height, self.tile_width, self.tile_height ) self.tiles.append(image.subsurface(pos)) def get_tile(self, gid): return self.tiles[gid] class TMXHandler(sax.ContentHandler): def __init__(self): self.width = 0 self.height = 0 self.tile_width = 0 self.tile_height = 0 self.columns = 0 self.lines = 0 self.properties = {} self.image = None self.tileset = None def startElement(self, name, attrs): # get most general map informations and create a surface if name == 'map': self.columns = int(attrs.get('width', None)) self.lines = int(attrs.get('height', None)) self.tile_width = int(attrs.get('tilewidth', None)) self.tile_height = int(attrs.get('tileheight', None)) self.width = self.columns * self.tile_width self.height = self.lines * self.tile_height self.image = pygame.Surface([self.width, self.height]).convert() # create a tileset elif name=="image": source = attrs.get('source', None) self.tileset = Tileset(source, self.tile_width, self.tile_height) # store additional properties. elif name == 'property': self.properties[attrs.get('name', None)] = attrs.get('value', None) # starting counting elif name == 'layer': self.line = 0 self.column = 0 # get information of each tile and put on the surface using the tileset elif name == 'tile': gid = int(attrs.get('gid', None)) - 1 if gid <0: gid = 0 tile = self.tileset.get_tile(gid) pos = (self.column*self.tile_width, self.line*self.tile_height) self.image.blit(tile, pos) self.column += 1 if(self.column>=self.columns): self.column = 0 self.line += 1 # just for debugging def endDocument(self): print self.width, self.height, self.tile_width, self.tile_height print self.properties print self.image def main(): if(len(sys.argv)!=2): print 'Usage:\n\t{0} filename'.format(sys.argv[0]) sys.exit(2) pygame.init() screen = pygame.display.set_mode((800, 480)) parser = sax.make_parser() tmxhandler = TMXHandler() parser.setContentHandler(tmxhandler) parser.parse(sys.argv[1]) while 1: for event in pygame.event.get(): if event.type == QUIT: return elif event.type == KEYDOWN and event.key == K_ESCAPE: return screen.fill((255,255,255)) screen.blit(tmxhandler.image, (0,0)) pygame.display.flip() pygame.time.delay(1000/60) if __name__ == "__main__": main()
Here is the result for opening a four layers map file:
That’s it. You can get this code and adapt for your game because next versions will be a lot more coupled for my own purposes and not so general.
Download:
maploader.tar.bz2 It’s the Netbeans 6.7 (Python EA 2) project file but that can be opened or used with another IDE or without one. Also contains the village.tmx map and the tileset.
Java: Accessing Private Members
Nov 14th
Using reflection to change the accessibility of a private object field and access it at runtime.
import java.lang.reflect.Field; class Life { private int meaning = 42; } class Hack { public static void main(String args[]){ Life life = new Life(); try { Field field = life.getClass().getDeclaredField("meaning"); field.setAccessible(true); System.out.println(field.get(life)); } catch (NoSuchFieldException e) { e.printStackTrace(); } catch (IllegalAccessException e){ e.printStackTrace(); } } }
Output:
42













