Simple Token Authentication for Java Apps
JSON Web Tokens have quickly become the standard for securing web applications, superseding older technologies like cookies and sessions. Used properly, they address a range of security concerns, including cross-site scripting attacks (XSS), man-in-the-middle attacks (MITM), and cross-site request forgery (CSRF). They also give us the benefit of inspectable metadata and strong cryptographic signatures. In this post, I’ll take a deep dive into JWTs. First, I’ll cover some theoretical ground explaining how they work. After...
Get Started with Blazor and WebAssembly
If you’re a modern web dev, you’re probably using JavaScript. Until recently, it was the only serious choice for more web development. For those of us who may not have JS as their primary language competency (but who are still interested in building web apps) that world is beginning to change. Today, we have WebAssembly (Wasm). WebAssembly is an alternative way of developing web applications, and it doesn’t require you to know any JavaScript. WebAssembly...
Build a Simple Web App with Express, React and GraphQL
GraphQL and React have both become quite popular in the last few years, and it’s safe to say they go together like avocado and toast. A GraphQL server can be written in Node and lets you easily create a flexible API using JavaScript classes and functions. When a frontend developer queries the server, only the information asked for gets processed. This means you can make the backend as robust as you want while keeping the...
Build a Mobile App with React Native and Spring Boot
React Native is a framework for building mobile applications with React. React allows you to use a declarative style of programming to describe how your UI should look. It uses embedded HTML (called JSX) to render buttons, lists, scrollable views, and many other components. I’m a seasoned Java and JavaScript developer that loves Spring and TypeScript. Some might call me a Java hipster because I like JavaScript. In this post, I’m going to show you...
Add User Authentication to Your Spring Boot App in 15 Minutes
When’s the last time you had fun building a web application? We love Spring Boot because it makes it super easy to build a rich Java web application, and it can even be pretty fun. By combining Spring, Spring Boot, and Gradle, we have a complete build system that can develop, test, run, and deploy Spring applications in minutes. But what about user authentication and authorization, you’re probably thinking. Maybe with a sneer. Surely that’s...
Test Your GitHub Repositories with Docker in 5 Minutes
How many times have you checked your code into GitHub, just to have someone else check it out and find out there was some dependency missing so they could not get it to run? I rely heavily on Docker for my build environment, and before I release anything to a teammate, I like to run it through a quick test in Docker to make sure everything is working properly. This approach is simple and only...
Build a Simple API Service with Express and GraphQL
GraphQL has become an immensely popular alternative to REST APIs. The flexibility you get from using GraphQL makes it easier for developers to get any information they need for an app, and just the information they need for that portion of the app. That gives you the feel of a very customized API and can help cut down on bandwidth. In this tutorial, I’ll show you how to write a custom GraphQL API using Node...
Build a Web App with Spring Boot and Spring Security in 15 Minutes
Developers know that securing web apps can be a pain. Doing it right is tough. The worst part is that “right” is a moving target. Security protocols change. Vulnerabilities are found in dependencies and patches are released. Tons of often complex boilerplate code has to be generated. The software-as-service paradigm has proliferated over the last decade, and while I love reinventing the wheel as much as the next developer (because, clearly, I’m gonna write it...
Full Stack Reactive with Spring WebFlux, WebSockets, and React
Spring WebFlux can be used to create a REST API with streaming data. Spring WebFlux can also be integrated with WebSockets to provide notifications that clients can listen to. Combining the two is a powerful way to provide real-time data streaming to JavaScript or mobile clients. Add React to the mix and you have an excellent foundation for a full-stack reactive architecture. React is a UI toolkit (similar to GWT) that lets you build components...
Build Reactive APIs with Spring WebFlux
Spring Boot 2.0 was a long-awaited release from the good folks at Pivotal. One of its new features is reactive web programming support with Spring WebFlux. Spring WebFlux is a web framework that’s built on top of Project Reactor, to give you asynchronous I/O, and allow your application to perform better. If you’re familiar with Spring MVC and building REST APIs, you’ll enjoy Spring WebFlux. There’s just a few basic concepts that are different. Once...