After writing some Java code for validating certificate-based digital signatures I go into daydream mood. Only for geeks, with apologies. Continue »

I’m a Java ecosystem person but most of the code I write is Groovy. There are occasional patches of Java, but my mind is tuned in to Groovy. In a recent project I had to stay all-Java for a while. A little data structure turned up that I decided would benefit from being converted to JSON and then stored in a database.

If you didn’t know, converting to/from JSON are one-liners i Groovy. You hardly even think about it. I had to search the ‘Net to find out how it’s done in Java these days. Gson seemed a solid candidate, but I was in for a surprise. In the end I chose a completely different approach which is also an editor’s choice.
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My new workhorse laptop (running Ubuntu Linux) had disturbing symptoms. Never have I had to use the power button so often to shut down a Linux box. Mystery. Linux traditionally has been a bedrock of stability. It took me a while to realize that a handful of problems point in the same direction: systemd.
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A previous post introduced the filestat package for accessing low-level file attributes from Java on a Unix/Linux platform. The recently released Java 7 includes functionality for doing that job and a lot more.
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This post is good news for some Java programmers. Once in a while you wish you knew a bit more about the files you access from Java. The java.io.File class offers only a bare minimum of visibility.

If you are wrestling with this problem, and if you are on a Linux/Unix platform, download the filestat package from this website and get going. This post introduces the package briefly.
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