WSDL

As discussed in my previous blog, WSDL is an XML format that describes network services. It defines endpoints and their request and response formats.

WSDL files contain schemas to describe those request and response objects. A single WSDL file could contain multiple schemas. This is commonly used to share some objects between different network services. Such as to define some common types.

Example

You may have two WSDL files.

One describes a shopping service, and the other defines a checkout service. In the checkout service, you might buy things you shopped for. …

Messages.properties

You’ve probably already read about the messages.properties file. It allows you to define any strings you wish to present to an end-user.

messages.properties:

To retrieve one of these strings in code you first need to get a MessageSource. This is provided via spring dependency injection.

Constructor injection:

@Service // Or some other `Component` annotation
class SomeService( private val messageSource: MessageSource )

Property injection:

@Autowired private lateinit var messageSource: MessageSource

Then you can call getMessage:

messageSource.getMessage("title.example", null, LocaleContextHolder.getLocale())

args can be provided for string replacement. For example:

messageSource.getMessage("message.hello", arrayOf("Joe Bloggs"), LocaleContextHolder.getLocale())

Internationalization

Notice above, we pass LocaleContextHolder.getLocale() as a Locale to…

WSDL

WSDL (Web Services Description Language) is an XML format. It describes network services, their endpoints and the corresponding request and response formats.

WSDL is commonly used in conjunction with a SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) API. Soap can be thought of as a way of structuring your API. Similar to what REST (REpresentational State Transfer) is.

WSDL File

Typically, the result of using WSDL is a .wsdl file. You may have multiple files, one for each service, and these can come in handy when trying to consume an API.

Since a .wsdl file describes exactly what the API looks like, you can…

AnimatedVectorDrawable

Android SDK 21 introduced both the VectorDrawable and the AnimatedVectorDrawable. This allowed you to use vector assets within your app, and even animate them.

They’ve iterated on these since then, but AnimatedVectorDrawable was still missing something. You couldn’t manipulate and control the animation. There was no pause or seek functionality.

Core-Animation

The Android team has been hard at work backporting the framework Animator APIs. They have created a separate unbundled AndroidX library called Core-Animation.

The Animator APIs have been around for some time. But they didn’t provide the capabilities needed for this pause and seek functionality. …

Material Design

The material design system will be familiar to most, as one of the most widely used design systems. It’s a visual language that represents good design principles whilst allowing expressive branding.

Foundationally, it is based on the physics of the world. This makes it natural and familiar to users. It models the way objects move and how they interact with each other.

Motion

Motion can celebrate the completion of a task, delight the user, or help to drive the user through a flow. The way objects move and interact can bring a touch of class and express your brand.

You can…

Certificate Pinning

Pinning certificates is a common practice when interacting with remote APIs. It is the act of constraining which certificates you trust. This helps to defend against attacks on certificate authorities. It also helps combat man-in-the-middle attacks.

There is a multitude of information available about certificate pinning. Here is some to get you started:

- https://owasp.org/www-community/controls/Certificate_and_Public_Key_Pinning

- https://labs.nettitude.com/tutorials/tls-certificate-pinning-101/

- https://docs.broadcom.com/docs/certificate-pinning-en

Kotlin Multiplatform

Kotlin Multiplatform (KMP) is a way of writing cross-platform code in Kotlin. It is not about compiling all code for all platforms, and it doesn’t limit you to a subset of common APIs. …

Kotlin Multiplatform

Kotlin Multiplatform (KMP) is a way of writing cross-platform code in Kotlin. It is not about compiling all code for all platforms, and it doesn’t limit you to a subset of common APIs. KMP provides mechanisms for writing platform-specific implementations for a common API.

Culture

Culture is a big focus for many companies. We want to be in and build meaningful places to work. We want to be collaborative and make things better together.

However, we also like to feel part of a community. …

Testing

Code quality is very important, and testing is a huge part of code quality. You want to ensure the code you write behaves as expected. It also needs to work under a variety of conditions.

I use the Given When Then approach to testing across all our Small, Medium and Large tests. It’s a useful way of structuring tests. I also rely on mocking within my tests. I want to ensure the only thing I am testing is the class(es) I intended.

Kotlin Multiplatform

Testing within Kotlin Multiplatform is well supported and will feel very familiar.

implementation "org.jetbrains.kotlin:kotlin-test-common:$kotlin_version"
implementation "org.jetbrains.kotlin:kotlin-test-annotations-common:$kotlin_version"

Kotlin provides…