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Setting the correct Java version under MacOS X

By on August 1, 2009 in Apple, CFML, Development, open source

My favorite scripting language is CFML, or as some know it as ColdFusion. I like it because it is very very powerful, easy to use and can do just about everything your xyz language can do.

For many years, ColdFusion was a closed sourced system, where the former Macromedia and now Adobe got the copyright of the code. Luckily, this has changed when OpenBlueDragon (OpenBD) came to play with the first open source CFML application server. So, now the CFML world got a very nice open source CFML language and server. Our very own open source Digital Asset Management – Razuna – runs on OpenBD as well and comes bundled with it.

Anyhow, the reason of this blog post is not CFML, but how to set the correct Java JRE environment under MacOS X. Then why did I mention CFML and OpenBD in the first place, you might ask?

Well, today I downloaded the latest version of OpenBD which runs now on Java 1.6 and is 64 bit. But when I tried to start our server (Tomcat) with the new OpenBD jar I got the following error messages in the log.

at org.apache.catalina.startup.
Bootstrap.main(Bootstrap.java:413) Caused by: java.lang.UnsupportedClassVersionError: Bad version number in .class file (unable to load class com.naryx.tagfusion.cfm.application.cfHttpSessionListener)
at org.apache.catalina.loader.WebappClassLoader.findClassInternal (WebappClassLoader.java:1854)

As we can see from the “Bad version number…” in the above line there must be some misconfiguration of the Java runtime going on. But wait, does my execution of “java -version” not state that I’m running the latest Java version? Reading from those lines, you could think so.

java version “1.6.0_13″
Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.6.0_13-b03-211)
Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (build 11.3-b02-83, mixed mode)

Apparently when one looks into the Java paths of MacOS X we see that the current “JDK” is set to 1.5 and not 1.6. Judging from this, I tend to think that Apple is not setting the JDK right for Java applications. You might say, well then just set it in the “Java Preferences”, right? Wrong, I already did that as the screen below shows).

Java Preferences

So, in order to solve this, I set the correct JRE_HOME variable in my .profile in order for all Java applications to pick up the current JRE. To do that, you simple edit your .profile (with vi ~/.profile) and add the following lines to it:

JRE_HOME=/System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Versions/1.6.0/Home
export JRE_HOME

Save it, open a new terminal window (or close and open one) and start Tomcat. Now Tomcat is picking up the new JRE path and Java application, in my case OpenBD, that depend on the Java 1.6 JRE version will run.

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Configure web server to handle .air files

By on July 21, 2009 in CFML, Development

Recently over at the website of our open source Digital Asset Management company Razuna Ltd., we published a desktop application that was build with Adobe AIR.

Now, while we could easily link to the AIR application, which all end with an extension of “.air”, within the web page it would prompt the user to install the application only under FireFox (both Windows and MacOS X), but users with Safari or Internet Explorer where prompted to download a “.zip” file.

In order to fix this, we had to change the mime type configuration of the web server itself. Now, we figured that there are different solution to this, depending on your web server;

For Apache

Adding the mime type for .air extensions with Apache requires you edit the file “/etc/mime.types” (on RedHat/CentOS) and adding the line:

application/vnd.adobe.air-application-installer-package+zip     .air

Make sure to reboot Apache to apply the changes.

For Tomcat

Adding mime types for your Tomcat installation requires you to edit the file “tomcat/conf/web.xml” and adding a new “mime-mapping” like;

<mime-mapping>
<extension>air</extension>
<mime-type>application/vnd.adobe.air-application-installer-package+zip</mime-type>
</mime-mapping>

Make sure to restart Tomcat to apply the change.

Using .htaccess

If you can’t access the server config files or you simply don’t want to, then the other option is to simply add the mime type to your .htaccess file.  Add the following line to it;

AddType application/vnd.adobe.air-application-installer-package+zip .air

Save it and you should be all set to make it possible to launch the Adobe AIR installer ones your .air file is downloaded.

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HTML5 will make web applications fly

By on February 19, 2009 in Apple, Development, efficiency

The fifth major revision of the HTML markup language (HTML5) brings some real power to web applications and will close the bridge for Online/Offline application.

As an example, Google has just showcased how they would leverage the power of HTML5 with the integrated database and Caching with the use of their famous GMail service. Since I have just posted about Collaboration and especially the Google Apps Services you might find the below video very interesting.

Watch closely, as they present the same application, with the same functions, on the iPhone and on the new Android mobile device. Big times, are coming for web developers (thought, this can already be done now with Adobe AIR and other applications that bring a website down to the desktop).

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