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For those who are looking for a Java library which can read/write to Microsoft's spreadsheet formats (.xls, and the newer .xlsx), I recently stumbled upon a library called the Apache POI Project. It's not particularly a new project, but it is still under active development and maintained. As an added bonus, Apache POI also supports word documents, power point presentations, and other document formats.

To me, one of the main benefits of Apache POI is the support for Microsoft Office ...

Although scripting languages seem like dime a dozen, there is always that learning curve to become familiar (let alone an expert) with a new language. For those who are more familiar with java - enter groovy. Groovy is a powerful higher level language based upon java, making certain tasks trivial to accomplish relative to the low level java equivalent. The power of groovy comes into play in its ability to plug-into java, and be plugged into from java. Groovy can access class files and libraries, ...

Sometimes it's valuable to determine if a certain key is being pressed. This is especially valuable if you have multiple Swing components and you don't want to mess with keeping track of boolean flags across different objects, but is absolutely necessary if you're trying to get keypresses which are not received by any of your Swing components.

In the forums, I've recommended writing JNI code which would allow the Java code to poll the hardware for key states, but never actually got ...

Logging is a great method to monitor the progress of a program while at the same time maintaining flexibility to control the output. Simply put, logging is just printing out statements during the runtime of an application. In another blog I described a simplistic method for logging - using System.out.println. More advanced logging libraries however go beyond just printing to the console - their flexibility allows control of when, how, and where to log.

Many logging libraries exist, ...

So I'm going to try something new here: small, miniature tips which can help people improve their code. The focus will probably be towards the beginner/intermediate level, though there may be a few advanced tips every now and then.

So let's get started!

Static imports allow you to import static members of another class into your class. The main reason for this is to allow you to use those members without the long, drawn-out declaration of where that static member came ...