Grok

Java/Spring web applications security, Part 1

samitgaur — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 00:39:07 +0000

I recently worked on a Java and Spring based web application for a top Manhattan bank. Obviously, security was a prime concern and we had to take special care to plug any holes. In this series, I will present a list of the most important security concerns that every internet facing application must (ideally) handle. I will also present the solutions for a Java + Spring MVC based web application. Please feel free to add to the list or suggest alternate solutions through comments.

In this part, I discuss CSS (Cross-site scripting or script injection) attacks and the way around them.

Why are Strings immutable?

samitgaur — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 21:27:53 +0000

String in Java represents an immutable sequence of characters. When a String object is created, its value must be specified and it’s set in stone. Behind the scenes, a character array of the exact required size is created and initialized. String class does provide methods that seem to manipulate the value represented by the String [...]

Compile-time constants – conditional compilation and other uses

samitgaur — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 15:54:34 +0000

First of all, what exactly is a constant in Java? A constant in Java is rather an immutable variable – a variable that once initialized, is not allowed to change its value throughout its lifetime. You declare such a variable using final modifier and set it to its constant value using an initializer expression. Once [...]

Type conversions between primitive types

samitgaur — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 07:57:05 +0000

Type conversions between Java primitive types can be broadly categorized as follows: Widening conversions (implicit or explicit) Implicit narrowing conversions Explicit narrowing conversions Numeric promotion Following are the contexts in which these conversions can occur: Assignments Parameter passing during method invocation Arithmetic expression evaluation boolean is not type-compatible with any other primitive data type i.e. boolean values can’t [...]

Evaluation order of operators

samitgaur — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 21:33:33 +0000

In this post, we discuss the effect of Java's rules related to precedence and associativity of operators and their effect on the evaluation of an expression