Generating PDFs with Apache FOP and Velocity

Generating PDF files is a common thing in web applications. For a long time I was using iText to accomplish this task but writing PDF’s content in Java code was a struggle. Nowadays iText is free for non-commercial use only which makes it even less sensible choice.

Queue ajax requests or any function in AngularJS

Sending XHR request on every user's keystroke (i.e. autocomplete) can harm your server performance. For such cases we've got a queuing service for your AngularJS app.

Multiple transactions inside one EJB method

Here is a quick example on how to execute EJB method A in a different transaction than a method B which calls A.

Hibernate, triggers and yo-yo update

While using Hibernate to manage DB operations in your application you may also need to use triggers to perform specific updates directly inside DB. But if you're using both update methods it's essential to protect yourself against yo-yo effect.

Disable font autosizing in Chrome on Android

Chrome on Android has a feature called 'Font Boosting' which resizes text to make it larger once a paragraph of text reaches certain length. This maybe useful for a reader but also can destroy a layout of your web page.

Workaround for LESS Compiler in Intellij IDEA 13

After updating IntelliJ Idea to version 13, plugin which compiles LESS files to CSS stopped working, but we've got it working.

Dreadful 'deleted entity passed to persist' exception

From time to time I encounter the following exception: 'javax.persistence.EntityNotFoundException: deleted entity passed to persist'. It's nasty because its stack trace doesn't suggest a source of the problem. Thankfully it's also very easy to fix.