claes mogren - Developer IT

How to convince my boss that quality is a good thing to have in code?

- by Kristof Claes

My boss came to me today to ask me if we could implement a certain feature in 1.5 days. I had a look at it and told him that 2 to 3 days would be more realistic. He then asked me: "And what if we do it quick and dirty?" I asked him to explain what he meant with "quick and dirty". It turns out, he wants us to write code as quickly as humanly possible by (for example) copying bits and pieces from other projects, putting all code in the code-behind of the WebForms pages, stop caring about DRY and SOLID and assuming that the code and functionalities will never ever have to be modified or changed. What's even worse, he doesn't want us do it for just this one feature, but for all the code we write. We can make more profit when we do things quick and dirty. Clients don't want to pay for you taking into account that something might change in the future. The profits for us are in delivering code as quick as possible. As long as the application does what it needs to do, the quality of the code doesn't matter. They never see the code. I have tried to convince him that this is a bad way to think as the manager of a software company, but he just wouldn't listen to my arguments: Developer motivation: I explained that it is hard to keep developers motivated when they are constantly under pressure of unrealistic deadlines and budget to write sloppy code very quickly. Readability: When a project gets passed on to another developer, cleaner and better structured code will be easier to read and understand. Maintainability: It is easier, safer and less time consuming to adapt, extend or change well written code. Testability: It is usually easier to test and find bugs in clean code. My co-workers are as baffled as I am by my boss' standpoint, but we can't seem to get to him. He keeps on saying that by making things more quickly, we can sell more projects, ask a lower price for them while still making a bigger profit. And in the end these projects pay the developer's salaries. What more can I say to make him see he is wrong? I want to buy him copies of Peopleware and The Mythical Man-Month, but I have a feeling they won't change his mind either. A lot of you will probably say something like "Run! Get out of there now!" or "I'd quit!", but that's not really an option since .NET web development jobs are rather rare in the region where I live...

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When following SRP, how should I deal with validating and saving entities?

- by Kristof Claes

I've been reading Clean Code and various online articles about SOLID lately, and the more I read about it, the more I feel like I don't know anything. Let's say I'm building a web application using ASP.NET MVC 3. Let's say I have a UsersController with a Create action like this: public class UsersController : Controller { public ActionResult Create(CreateUserViewModel viewModel) { } } In that action method I want to save a user to the database if the data that was entered is valid. Now, according to the Single Responsibility Principle an object should have a single responsibility, and that responsibility should be entirely encapsulated by the class. All its services should be narrowly aligned with that responsibility. Since validation and saving to the database are two separate responsibilities, I guess I should create to separate class to handle them like this: public class UsersController : Controller { private ICreateUserValidator validator; private IUserService service; public UsersController(ICreateUserValidator validator, IUserService service) { this.validator = validator; this.service= service; } public ActionResult Create(CreateUserViewModel viewModel) { ValidationResult result = validator.IsValid(viewModel); if (result.IsValid) { service.CreateUser(viewModel); return RedirectToAction("Index"); } else { foreach (var errorMessage in result.ErrorMessages) { ModelState.AddModelError(String.Empty, errorMessage); } return View(viewModel); } } } That makes some sense to me, but I'm not at all sure that this is the right way to handle things like this. It is for example entirely possible to pass an invalid instance of CreateUserViewModel to the IUserService class. I know I could use the built in DataAnnotations, but what when they aren't enough? Image that my ICreateUserValidator checks the database to see if there already is another user with the same name... Another option is to let the IUserService take care of the validation like this: public class UserService : IUserService { private ICreateUserValidator validator; public UserService(ICreateUserValidator validator) { this.validator = validator; } public ValidationResult CreateUser(CreateUserViewModel viewModel) { var result = validator.IsValid(viewModel); if (result.IsValid) { // Save the user } return result; } } But I feel I'm violating the Single Responsibility Principle here. How should I deal with something like this?

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SQL query to translate a list of numbers matched against several ranges, to a list of values

- by Claes Mogren

I need to convert a list of numbers that fall within certain ranges into a list of values, ordered by a priority column. The table has the following values: | YEAR | R_MIN | R_MAX | VAL | PRIO | ------------------------------------ 2010 18000 90100 52 6 2010 240000 240099 82 3 2010 250000 259999 50 5 2010 260000 260010 92 1 2010 330000 330010 73 4 2010 330011 370020 50 5 2010 380000 380050 84 2 The ranges will be different for different years. The ranges within one year will never overlap. The input will be a year and a list of numbers that might fall within one these ranges. The list of input number will be small, 1 to 10 numbers. Example of input numbers: (20000, 240004, 375000, 255000) With that input I would like to get a list ordered by the priority column, or a single value: 82 50 52 The only value I'm interested in here is 82, so UNIQUE and MAX_RESULTS=1 would do. It can easily be done with one query per number, and then sorting it in the Java code, but I would prefer to do it in a single SQL query. What SQL query, to be run in an Oracle database, would give me the desired result?

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Requests are making it to my app server, but not into node.js -- why?

- by Zane Claes

I detailed in this question on StackOverflow how some random requests are not making it from the client to my Node.js app server, resulting in a gateway timeout. In summary, identical requests are, at random, not even making it far enough to trigger a console.log() in my first line of express middleware. I need to narrow down the problem, though, to find out WHERE the traffic is being lost and it was suggested that I try a packet sniffer on my app servers. Here's my setup: 2x Load Balancers (m1.larges) 2x node.js servers (also m1.large) Here's what's interesting/unusual: the node.js servers started as PHP servers with an Apache stack and continue to serve PHP files for my domain (streamified.me). However, I use a little httpd.conf magic on the app servers so that requests to api.streamified.me get routed over port 8888 to the node.js server: RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^api.streamified.me RewriteRule ^(.*) http://localhost:8888$1 [P] So, the request hits the load balancer = goes to an app server = gets routed to port 8888 if it's intended for the API = gets handled by node.js So, in the same httpd.conf file, I turned on RewriteLogLevel 5 and then created a simple PHP+CURL script on my localhost to hit my api.streamified.me with a random URL (which should cause node.js to trigger a simple "not found" response) until it resulted in a Gateway timeout. Here, you can see that it has happened -- and the rewrite log shows that the request was definitely received by the app server and forwarded to port 8888... but it was never received by node.js (or, at least, the first line of code in the first line of middleware never gets it...) Image Link: http://i.stack.imgur.com/3OQxS.png

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Navigate to prev and next pdf file?

- by Claes Gustavsson

I got a pdf viewer in a uiwebview, from Daniel Barry http://github.com/danberry/PDF-Viewer and it works really well, it displays a pdf doc that you can scroll up and down. Now I would like to display just one page at the time and also have a menu underneat the pdf page with a prev and next button. Can anybody help a newbe to figure out how? Thanks!

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How should I model the database for this problem? And which ORM can handle it?

- by Kristof Claes

I need to build some sort of a custom CMS for a client of ours. These are some of the functional requirements: Must be able to manage the list of Pages in the site Each Page can contain a number of ColumnGroups A ColumnGroup is nothing more than a list of Columns in a certain ColumnGroupLayout. For example: "one column taking up the entire width of the page", "two columns each taking up half of the width", ... Each Column can contain a number ContentBlocks Examples of a ContentBlock are: TextBlock, NewsBlock, PictureBlock, ... ContentBlocks can be given a certain sorting within a Column A ContentBlock can be put in different Columns so that content can be reused without having to be duplicated. My first quick draft of how this could look like in C# code (we're using ASP.NET 4.0 to develop the CMS) can be found at the bottom of my question. One of the technical requirements is that it must be as easy as possible to add new types of ContentBlocks to the CMS. So I would like model everything as flexible as possible. Unfortunately, I'm already stuck at trying to figure out how the database should look like. One of the problems I'm having has to do with sorting different types of ContentBlocks in a Column. I guess each type of ContentBlock (like TextBlock, NewsBlock, PictureBlock, ...) should have it's own table in the database because each has it's own different fields. A TextBlock might only have a field called Text whereas a NewsBlock might have fields for the Text, the Summary, the PublicationDate, ... Since one Column can have ContentBlocks located in different tables, I guess I'll have to create a many-to-many association for each type of ContentBlock. For example: ColumnTextBlocks, ColumnNewsBlocks and ColumnPictureBlocks. The problem I have with this setup is the sorting of the different ContentBlocks in a column. This could be something like this: TextBlock NewsBlock TextBlock TextBlock PictureBlock Where do I store the sorting number? If I store them in the associaton tables, I'll have to update a lot of tables when changing the sorting order of ContentBlocks in a Column. Is this a good approach to the problem? Basically, my question is: What is the best way to model this keeping in mind that it should be easy to add new types of ContentBlocks? My next question is: What ORM can deal with that kind of modeling? To be honest, we are ORM-virgins at work. I have been reading a bit about Linq-to-SQL and NHibernate, but we have no experience with them. Because of the IList in the Column class (see code below) I think we can rule out Linq-to-SQL, right? Can NHibernate handle the mapping of data from many different tables to one IList? Also keep in mind that this is just a very small portion of the domain. Other parts are Users belonging to a certain UserGroup having certain Permissions on Pages, ColumnGroups, Columns and ContentBlocks. The code (just a quick first draft): public class Page { public int PageID { get; set; } public string Title { get; set; } public string Description { get; set; } public string Keywords { get; set; } public IList<ColumnGroup> ColumnGroups { get; set; } } public class ColumnGroup { public enum ColumnGroupLayout { OneColumn, HalfHalf, NarrowWide, WideNarrow } public int ColumnGroupID { get; set; } public ColumnGroupLayout Layout { get; set; } public IList<Column> Columns { get; set; } } public class Column { public int ColumnID { get; set; } public IList<IContentBlock> ContentBlocks { get; set; } } public interface IContentBlock { string GetSummary(); } public class TextBlock : IContentBlock { public string GetSummary() { return "I am a piece of text."; } } public class NewsBlock : IContentBlock { public string GetSummary() { return "I am a news item."; } }

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scale down pdf to fit in iframe in uiwebview

- by Claes Gustavsson

I have a uiwebview that loads a iframe to display a pdf file. But only the top left corner of the pdf file i visible, I need to fit the pdf file inside then iframe, that is, I need to scale down the pdf file so that all of it is visible. I know that with webpages you can open a pdf and set the starting scale on it like this page1.pdf#zoom=25 but that doesnt work in the webview. Does anybody know what to do?

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Using Everyauth/Express and Multiple Configurations?

- by Zane Claes

I'm successfully using Node.js + Express + Everyauth ( https://github.com/abelmartin/Express-And-Everyauth/blob/master/app.js ) to login to Facebook, Twitter, etc. from my application. The problem I'm trying to wrap my head around is that Everyauth seems to be "configure and forget." I set up a single everyauth object and configure it to act as middleware for express, and then forget about it. For example, if I want to create a mobile Facebook login I do: var app = express.createServer(); everyauth.facebook .appId('AAAA') .appSecret('BBBB') .entryPath('/login/facebook') .callbackPath('/callback/facebook') .mobile(true); // mobile! app.use(everyauth.middleware()); everyauth.helpExpress(app); app.listen(8000); Here's the problem: Both mobile and non-mobile clients will connect to my server, and I don't know which is connecting until the connection is made. Even worse, I need to support multiple Facebook app IDs (and, again, I don't know which one I will want to use until the client connects and I partially parse the input). Because everyauth is a singleton which in configured once, I cannot see how to make these changes to the configuration based upon the request that is made. What it seems like is that I need to create some sort of middleware which acts before the everyauth middleware to configure the everyauth object, such that everyauth subsequently uses the correct appId/appSecret/mobile parameters. I have no clue how to go about this... Suggestions? Here's the best idea I have so far, though it seems terrible: Create an everyauth object for every possible configuration using a different entryPath for each...

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set target.id to div id and a number?

- by Claes Gustavsson

The target id below is map_external, but I would like to get map_external(and a number) I have this: $('#jqt').bind('pageAnimationStart', function(e, info){ if (e.target.id == 'map_external') { if (info.direction =='in') { localiser(); } and it works, and my target page looks like this: <div id="map_external"> content.... </div> but I would like to have a random number aswell, like this: <div id="map_external<%=asp random number%>"> content.... </div> so how do i write if (e.target.id == 'map_external') so that it gets map_external and a number(any number)? Thanks!

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