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  • Is there a better way to consume an ASP.NET Web API call in an MVC controller?

    - by davidisawesome
    In a new project I am creating for my work I am creating a fairly large ASP.NET Web API. The api will be in a separate visual studio solution that also contains all of my business logic and database interactions, Model classes as well. In the test application I am creating (which is asp.net mvc4), I want to be able to hit an api url I defined from the control and cast the return JSON to a Model class. The reason behind this is that I want to take advantage of strongly typing my views to a Model. This is all still in a proof of concept stage, so I have not done any performance testing on it, but I am curious if what I am doing is a good practice, or if I am crazy for even going down this route. Here is the code on the client controller: public class HomeController : Controller { protected string dashboardUrlBase = "http://localhost/webapi/api/StudentDashboard/"; public ActionResult Index() //This view is strongly typed against User { //testing against Joe Bob string adSAMName = "jBob"; WebClient client = new WebClient(); string url = dashboardUrlBase + "GetUserRecord?userName=" + adSAMName; //'User' is a Model class that I have defined. User result = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<User>(client.DownloadString(url)); return View(result); } . . . } If I choose to go this route another thing to note is I am loading several partial views in this page (as I will also do in subsequent pages). The partial views are loaded via an $.ajax call that hits this controller and does basically the same thing as the code above: Instantiate a new WebClient Define the Url to hit Deserialize the result and cast it to a Model Class. So it is possible (and likely) I could be performing the same actions 4-5 times for a single page. Is there a better method to do this that will: Let me keep strongly typed views. Do my work on the server rather than on the client (this is just a preference since I can write C# faster than I can write javascript).

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  • Strings are UTF-16&hellip;. There is an error in XML document (1, 1).

    - by Shawn Cicoria
    I had a situation today where an xml document had a directive indicating it was utf-8.  So, the code in question was reading in the “string” of that xml then attempting to de-serialize it using an Xsd generated type. What you end up with is an exception indicating that there’s an error in the Xml document at (1,1) or something to that effect. The fix is, run it through a memory stream – which reads the string, but at utf8 bytes – if you have things that fall outside of 8 bit chars, you’ll get an exception.   //Need to read it to bytes, to undo the fact that strings are UTF-16 all the time. //We want it to handle it as UTF8. byte[] bytes = Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(_myXmlString); TargetType myInstance = null; using (MemoryStream memStream = new MemoryStream(bytes)) { XmlSerializer tokenSerializer = new XmlSerializer(typeof(TargetType)); myInstance = (TargetType)tokenSerializer.Deserialize(memStream); }   Writing is similar – also, adding the default namespace prevents the additional xmlns additions that aren’t necessary:   XmlWriterSettings settings = new XmlWriterSettings() { Encoding = Encoding.UTF8, Indent = true, NewLineOnAttributes = true, }; XmlSerializerNamespaces xmlnsEmpty = new XmlSerializerNamespaces(); xmlnsEmpty.Add("", "http://www.wow.thisworks.com/2010/05"); MemoryStream memStr = new MemoryStream(); using (XmlWriter writer = XmlTextWriter.Create(memStr, settings)) { XmlSerializer tokenSerializer = new XmlSerializer(typeof(TargetType)); tokenSerializer.Serialize(writer, theInstance, xmlnsEmpty); }

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  • Is it okay to just add a page or two PHP page to add some functionality to a Drupal site?

    - by Zaemz
    I'm not familiar with Drupal, really. I can dig around the admin interface and navigate the directories and find the files that I need to just fine as well. What I'm really not familiar with is adding modules or extending modules. The site currently takes an order and sets up recurring payments through Ubercart and uses Authorize.net as a gateway. Right now, when a payment fails, a single e-mail gets sent out to the admin. We'd like to extend it to send an e-mail to the user and let them change their payment information through another page on the site. Authorize has a service called Silent Post URL that basically just posts a carbon copy in XML to whatever URL you give it. We'd like to accept that XML, deserialize it, parse the data, send a notice to the user and give them the page for updating their information. So, I guess it'll be two PHP pages. One for the XML API call from Authorize.net, and then one for the page for the users' to update their payment information. Could I just create two simple pages each handling their own tasks, or should I check out properly extending a module? If it's appropriate for me to write up the pages and not have to hook them into the module, what would be the best way to handle setting up what needs to get done? (The most experience I've had with extending a PHP site has been hacking away at someone else' poorly constructed, custom framework, so if anyone has any good resources perhaps on PHP best practices that they could share through a PM or a comment, I'd appreciate It) (Also, I'm still getting the hang of Stack Exchange, so if this isn't appropriate please let me know. I'll delete it.)

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  • Microsoft SyncFramework - Sync different tables into one

    - by evnu
    Hello, we are trying to get the Microsoft SyncFramework running in our application to synchronize an oracle db with a mobile device. Problem The queries that we need to gather the data on the oracle db take much time (and we haven't found a way to speed them up yet), so we try to split them up in as much portions as possible. One big part of the whole problem is, that we need different information out of one big table, that bloats a query if combined. Unfortunately, the SyncFramework allows only one TableAdapter per SyncTable. Now this is a problem for our application: If we were able to use more than one TableAdapter per SyncTable, we could easily spread the queries in a more efficient way. Using one query per Table which combines all the needed data takes way too much time. Ideas I thought of creating different TableAdapters for each one of the required queries and then merge the resulting datasets afterwards (preferably on the server). This seems to work, but is a rather awkward solution. Does someone of you know a better solution? Or do you have some ideas that could help? Thanks in advance, evnu EDIT: So, I implemented the merge solution. If you are interested, take a look at the following code. I'll give more details if there are questions. <WebMethod()> _ Public Function GetChanges(ByVal groupMetadata As SyncGroupMetadata, ByVal syncSession As SyncSession) As SyncContext Dim stream As MemoryStream Dim format As BinaryFormatter = New BinaryFormatter Dim anchors As Dictionary(Of String, Byte()) ' keep track of the tables that will be updated Dim addTables As Dictionary(Of String, List(Of SyncTableMetadata)) = New Dictionary(Of String, List(Of SyncTableMetadata)) ' list of all present anchors Dim allAnchors As Dictionary(Of String, Byte()) = New Dictionary(Of String, Byte()) ' fill allAnchors - deserialize all given anchors For Each Table As SyncTableMetadata In groupMetadata.TablesMetadata If Table.LastReceivedAnchor Is Nothing Or Table.LastReceivedAnchor.IsNull Then Continue For stream = New MemoryStream(Table.LastReceivedAnchor.Anchor) anchors = format.Deserialize(stream) For Each item As KeyValuePair(Of String, Byte()) In anchors allAnchors.Add(item.Key, item.Value) Next stream.Dispose() Next For Each Table As SyncTableMetadata In groupMetadata.TablesMetadata If allAnchors.ContainsKey(Table.TableName) Then Table.LastReceivedAnchor.Anchor = allAnchors(Table.TableName) End If Dim addSyncTables As List(Of SyncTableMetadata) If syncSession.SyncParameters.Contains(Table.TableName) Then Dim tableNames() As String = syncSession.SyncParameters(Table.TableName).Value.ToString.Split(":") addSyncTables = New List(Of SyncTableMetadata) For Each tableName As String In tableNames Dim newSynctable As SyncTableMetadata = New SyncTableMetadata newSynctable.TableName = tableName If allAnchors.ContainsKey(tableName) Then Dim anker As SyncAnchor = New SyncAnchor(allAnchors(tableName)) newSynctable.LastReceivedAnchor = anker Else newSynctable.LastReceivedAnchor = Nothing End If newSynctable.SyncDirection = Table.SyncDirection addSyncTables.Add(newSynctable) Next addTables.Add(Table.TableName, addSyncTables) End If Next ' add the newly created synctables For Each item As KeyValuePair(Of String, List(Of SyncTableMetadata)) In addTables For Each Table As SyncTableMetadata In item.Value groupMetadata.TablesMetadata.Add(Table) Next Next ' fire queries Dim context As SyncContext = servSyncProvider.GetChanges(groupMetadata, syncSession) ' merge resulting datasets For Each item As KeyValuePair(Of String, List(Of SyncTableMetadata)) In addTables For Each Table As SyncTableMetadata In item.Value If context.DataSet.Tables.Contains(Table.TableName) Then If Not context.DataSet.Tables.Contains(item.Key) Then Dim tmp As DataTable = context.DataSet.Tables(Table.TableName).Copy tmp.TableName = item.Key context.DataSet.Tables.Add(tmp) Else context.DataSet.Tables(item.Key).Merge(context.DataSet.Tables(Table.TableName)) context.DataSet.Tables.Remove(Table.TableName) End If End If Next Next ' create new anchors Dim allAnchorsDict As Dictionary(Of String, Byte()) = New Dictionary(Of String, Byte()) For Each Table As SyncTableMetadata In groupMetadata.TablesMetadata allAnchorsDict.Add(Table.TableName, context.NewAnchor.Anchor) Next stream = New MemoryStream format.Serialize(stream, allAnchorsDict) context.NewAnchor.Anchor = stream.ToArray stream.Dispose() Return context End Function

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  • Issue allowing custom Xml Serialization/Deserialization on certain types of field

    - by sw1sh
    I've been working with Xml Serialization/Deserialization in .net and wanted a method where the serialization/deserialization process would only be applied to certain parts of an Xml fragment. This is so I can keep certain parts of the fragment in Xml after the deserialization process. To do this I thought it would be best to create a new class (XmlLiteral) that implemented IXmlSerializable and then wrote specific code for handling the IXmlSerializable.ReadXml and IXmlSerializable.WriteXml methods. In my example below this works for Serializing, however during the Deserialization process it fails to run for multiple uses of my XmlLiteral class. In my example below sTest1 gets populated correctly, but sTest2 and sTest3 are empty. I'm guessing I must be going wrong with the following lines but can't figure out why.. Any ideas at all? Private Sub ReadXml(ByVal reader As System.Xml.XmlReader) Implements IXmlSerializable.ReadXml Dim StringType As String = "" If reader.IsEmptyElement OrElse reader.Read() = False Then Exit Sub End If _src = reader.ReadOuterXml() End Sub Full listing: Imports System Imports System.Xml.Serialization Imports System.Xml Imports System.IO Imports System.Text Public Class XmlLiteralExample Inherits System.Web.UI.Page Protected Sub Page_Load(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles Me.Load Dim MyObjectInstance As New MyObject MyObjectInstance.aProperty = "MyValue" MyObjectInstance.XmlLiteral1 = New XmlLiteral("<test1>Some Value</test1>") MyObjectInstance.XmlLiteral2 = New XmlLiteral("<test2>Some Value</test2>") MyObjectInstance.XmlLiteral3 = New XmlLiteral("<test3>Some Value</test3>") ' quickly serialize the object to Xml Dim sw As New StringWriter(New StringBuilder()) Dim s As New XmlSerializer(MyObjectInstance.[GetType]()), xmlnsEmpty As New XmlSerializerNamespaces xmlnsEmpty.Add("", "") s.Serialize(sw, MyObjectInstance, xmlnsEmpty) Dim XElement As XElement = XElement.Parse(sw.ToString()) ' XElement reads as the following, so serialization works OK '<MyObject> ' <aProperty>MyValue</aProperty> ' <XmlLiteral1> ' <test1>Some Value</test1> ' </XmlLiteral1> ' <XmlLiteral2> ' <test2>Some Value</test2> ' </XmlLiteral2> ' <XmlLiteral3> ' <test3>Some Value</test3> ' </XmlLiteral3> '</MyObject> ' quickly deserialize the object back to an instance of MyObjectInstance2 Dim MyObjectInstance2 As New MyObject Dim xmlReader As XmlReader, x As XmlSerializer xmlReader = XElement.CreateReader x = New XmlSerializer(MyObjectInstance2.GetType()) MyObjectInstance2 = x.Deserialize(xmlReader) Dim sProperty As String = MyObjectInstance2.aProperty ' equal to "MyValue" Dim sTest1 As String = MyObjectInstance2.XmlLiteral1.Text ' contains <test1>Some Value</test1> Dim sTest2 As String = MyObjectInstance2.XmlLiteral2.Text ' is empty Dim sTest3 As String = MyObjectInstance2.XmlLiteral3.Text ' is empty ' sTest3 and sTest3 should be populated but are not? xmlReader = Nothing End Sub Public Class MyObject Private _aProperty As String Private _XmlLiteral1 As XmlLiteral Private _XmlLiteral2 As XmlLiteral Private _XmlLiteral3 As XmlLiteral Public Property aProperty As String Get Return _aProperty End Get Set(ByVal value As String) _aProperty = value End Set End Property Public Property XmlLiteral1 As XmlLiteral Get Return _XmlLiteral1 End Get Set(ByVal value As XmlLiteral) _XmlLiteral1 = value End Set End Property Public Property XmlLiteral2 As XmlLiteral Get Return _XmlLiteral2 End Get Set(ByVal value As XmlLiteral) _XmlLiteral2 = value End Set End Property Public Property XmlLiteral3 As XmlLiteral Get Return _XmlLiteral3 End Get Set(ByVal value As XmlLiteral) _XmlLiteral3 = value End Set End Property Public Sub New() _XmlLiteral1 = New XmlLiteral _XmlLiteral2 = New XmlLiteral _XmlLiteral3 = New XmlLiteral End Sub End Class <System.Xml.Serialization.XmlRootAttribute(Namespace:="", IsNullable:=False)> _ Public Class XmlLiteral Implements IXmlSerializable Private _src As String Public Property Text() As String Get Return _src End Get Set(ByVal value As String) _src = value End Set End Property Public Sub New() _src = "" End Sub Public Sub New(ByVal Text As String) _src = Text End Sub #Region "IXmlSerializable Members" Private Function GetSchema() As System.Xml.Schema.XmlSchema Implements IXmlSerializable.GetSchema Return Nothing End Function Private Sub ReadXml(ByVal reader As System.Xml.XmlReader) Implements IXmlSerializable.ReadXml Dim StringType As String = "" If reader.IsEmptyElement OrElse reader.Read() = False Then Exit Sub End If _src = reader.ReadOuterXml() End Sub Private Sub WriteXml(ByVal writer As System.Xml.XmlWriter) Implements IXmlSerializable.WriteXml writer.WriteRaw(_src) End Sub #End Region End Class End Class

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  • Deserializing Metafile

    - by Kildareflare
    I have an application that works with Enhanced Metafiles. I am able to create them, save them to disk as .emf and load them again no problem. I do this by using the gdi32.dll methods and the DLLImport attribute. However, to enable Version Tolerant Serialization I want to save the metafile in an object along with other data. This essentially means that I need to serialize the metafile data as a byte array and then deserialize it again in order to reconstruct the metafile. The problem I have is that the deserialized data would appear to be corrupted in some way, since the method that I use to reconstruct the Metafile raises a "Parameter not valid exception". At the very least the pixel format and resolutions have changed. Code use is below. [DllImport("gdi32.dll")] public static extern uint GetEnhMetaFileBits(IntPtr hemf, uint cbBuffer, byte[] lpbBuffer); [DllImport("gdi32.dll")] public static extern IntPtr SetEnhMetaFileBits(uint cbBuffer, byte[] lpBuffer); [DllImport("gdi32.dll")] public static extern bool DeleteEnhMetaFile(IntPtr hemf); The application creates a metafile image and passes it to the method below. private byte[] ConvertMetaFileToByteArray(Image image) { byte[] dataArray = null; Metafile mf = (Metafile)image; IntPtr enhMetafileHandle = mf.GetHenhmetafile(); uint bufferSize = GetEnhMetaFileBits(enhMetafileHandle, 0, null); if (enhMetafileHandle != IntPtr.Zero) { dataArray = new byte[bufferSize]; GetEnhMetaFileBits(enhMetafileHandle, bufferSize, dataArray); } DeleteEnhMetaFile(enhMetafileHandle); return dataArray; } At this point the dataArray is inserted into an object and serialized using a BinaryFormatter. The saved file is then deserialized again using a BinaryFormatter and the dataArray retrieved from the object. The dataArray is then used to reconstruct the original Metafile using the following method. public static Image ConvertByteArrayToMetafile(byte[] data) { Metafile mf = null; try { IntPtr hemf = SetEnhMetaFileBits((uint)data.Length, data); mf = new Metafile(hemf, true); } catch (Exception ex) { System.Windows.Forms.MessageBox.Show(ex.Message); } return (Image)mf; } The reconstructed metafile is then saved saved to disk as a .emf (Model) at which point it can be accessed by the Presenter for display. private static void SaveFile(Image image, String filepath) { try { byte[] buffer = ConvertMetafileToByteArray(image); File.WriteAllBytes(filepath, buffer); //will overwrite file if it exists } catch (Exception ex) { System.Windows.Forms.MessageBox.Show(ex.Message); } } The problem is that the save to disk fails. If this same method is used to save the original Metafile before it is serialized everything is OK. So something is happening to the data during serialization/deserializtion. Indeed if I check the Metafile properties in the debugger I can see that the ImageFlags, PropertyID, resolution and pixelformats change. Original Format32bppRgb changes to Format32bppArgb Original Resolution 81 changes to 96 I've trawled though google and SO and this has helped me get this far but Im now stuck. Does any one have enough experience with Metafiles / serialization to help..? EDIT: If I serialize/deserialize the byte array directly (without embedding in another object) I get the same problem.

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  • WCF: Configuring Known Types

    - by jerbersoft
    I want to know as to how to configure known types in WCF. For example, I have a Person class and an Employee class. The Employee class is a sublass of the Person class. Both class are marked with a [DataContract] attribute. I dont want to hardcode the known type of a class, like putting a [ServiceKnownType(typeof(Employee))] at the Person class so that WCF will know that Employee is a subclass of Person. Now, I added to the host's App.config the following XML configuration: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?> <configuration> <system.runtime.serialization> <dataContractSerializer> <declaredTypes> <add type="Person, WCFWithNoLibrary, Version=1.0.0.0,Culture=neutral,PublicKeyToken=null"> <knownType type="Employee, WCFWithNoLibrary, Version=1.0.0.0,Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=null" /> </add> </declaredTypes> </dataContractSerializer> </system.runtime.serialization> <system.serviceModel> ....... </system.serviceModel> </configuration> I compiled it, run the host, added a service reference at the client and added some code and run the client. But an error occured: The formatter threw an exception while trying to deserialize the message: There was an error while trying to deserialize parameter http://www.herbertsabanal.net:person. The InnerException message was 'Error in line 1 position 247. Element 'http://www.herbertsabanal.net:person' contains data of the 'http://www.herbertsabanal.net/Data:Employee' data contract. The deserializer has no knowledge of any type that maps to this contract. Add the type corresponding to 'Employee' to the list of known types - for example, by using the KnownTypeAttribute attribute or by adding it to the list of known types passed to DataContractSerializer.'. Please see InnerException for more details. Below are the data contracts: [DataContract(Namespace="http://www.herbertsabanal.net/Data", Name="Person")] class Person { string _name; int _age; [DataMember(Name="Name", Order=0)] public string Name { get { return _name; } set { _name = value; } } [DataMember(Name="Age", Order=1)] public int Age { get { return _age; } set { _age = value; } } } [DataContract(Namespace="http://www.herbertsabanal.net/Data", Name="Employee")] class Employee : Person { string _id; [DataMember] public string ID { get { return _id; } set { _id = value; } } } Btw, I didn't use class libraries (WCF class libraries or non-WCF class libraries) for my service. I just plain coded it in the host project. I guess there must be a problem at the config file (please see config file above). Or I must be missing something. Any help would be pretty much appreciated.

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  • Recursive XSD Help

    - by Alon
    Hi, i'm trying to learn a little bit XSD and I'm trying to create a XSD for this xml: <Document> <TextBox Name="Username" /> <TextBox Name="Password" /> </Document> ... so there's an element, which is an abstract complex type. Every element have elements and so on. Document and TextBox are extending Element. I trid this: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?> <xs:schema xmlns:xs="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"> <xs:element name="Document"> <xs:complexType> <xs:complexContent> <xs:extension base="Element"> </xs:extension> </xs:complexContent> </xs:complexType> </xs:element> <xs:complexType name="Element" abstract="true"> <xs:sequence minOccurs="0" maxOccurs="unbounded"> <xs:element name="Element" type="Element"></xs:element> </xs:sequence> </xs:complexType> <xs:complexType name="TextBox"> <xs:complexContent> <xs:extension base="Element"> <xs:attribute name="Name" type="xs:string" /> </xs:extension> </xs:complexContent> </xs:complexType> </xs:schema> I compiled it to C# with Xsd2Code, and now I try to deserialize it: var serializer = new XmlSerializer(typeof(Document)); var document = (Document)serializer.Deserialize(new FileStream("Document1.xml", FileMode.Open)); foreach (var element in document.Element1) { Console.WriteLine(((TextBox)element).Name); } Console.ReadLine(); and it dosen't print anything. When I try to serialize it like so: var serializer = new XmlSerializer(typeof(Document)); var document = new Document(); document.Element1 = new List<Element>(); document.Element1.Add(new TextBox() { Name = "abc" }); serializer.Serialize(new FileStream("d.xml", FileMode.Create), document); ...the output is: <?xml version="1.0"?> <Document xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"> <Element1> <Element xsi:type="TextBox"> <Element1 /> <Name>abc</Name> </Element> </Element1> </Document> When it should be: <Document> <TextBox Name="abc" /> </Document> Any ideas how to fix the xsd or another code generator? Thanks.

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  • String from Httpresponse not passing full value.

    - by Shekhar_Pro
    HI i am in desperate need for help here, I am making a web request and getting a json string with Response.ContentLenth=2246 but when i parse it in a string it gives only few 100 characters, i traked it down that it is only getting values less than 964. strings length is still 2246 but remaining values are just (\0) null characters. Its also giving an error Unterminated string passed in. (2246): at following line FacebookFeed feed = sr.Deserialize<FacebookFeed>(data); It works fine if the response stream contains characters less than 964 chars. Following is the extract from the full code error encountered in last line. System.Web.Script.Serialization.JavaScriptSerializer sr = new System.Web.Script.Serialization.JavaScriptSerializer(); System.Net.HttpWebRequest req = (System.Net.HttpWebRequest)System.Net.HttpWebRequest.Create(@"https://graph.facebook.com/100000570310973_181080451920964"); req.Method = "GET"; System.Net.HttpWebResponse res = (System.Net.HttpWebResponse)req.GetResponse(); byte[] resp = new byte[(int)res.ContentLength]; res.GetResponseStream().Read(resp, 0, (int)res.ContentLength); string data = Encoding.UTF8.GetString(resp); FacebookFeed feed = sr.Deserialize<FacebookFeed>(data); error given is Unterminated string passed in. (2246): {"id":"100000570310973_1810804519209........ (with rest of data in the string data including null chars) following is the shape of classes used in my code: public class FacebookFeed { public string id { get; set; } public NameIdPair from { get; set; } public NameIdPair to { get; set; } public string message { get; set; } public Uri link{get;set;} public string name{get; set;} public string caption { get; set; } public Uri icon { get; set; } public NameLinkPair[] actions { get; set; } public string type { get; set; } public NameIdPair application { get; set; } //Mentioned in Graph API as attribution public DateTime created_time { get; set; } public DateTime updated_time { get; set; } public FacebookPostLikes likes { get; set; } } public class NameIdPair { public string name { get; set; } public string id { get; set; } } public class NameLinkPair { public string name { get; set; } public Uri link{get; set;} } public class FacebookPostLikes { public NameIdPair[] data { get; set; } public int count { get; set; } }

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  • Using JSON.NET for dynamic JSON parsing

    - by Rick Strahl
    With the release of ASP.NET Web API as part of .NET 4.5 and MVC 4.0, JSON.NET has effectively pushed out the .NET native serializers to become the default serializer for Web API. JSON.NET is vastly more flexible than the built in DataContractJsonSerializer or the older JavaScript serializer. The DataContractSerializer in particular has been very problematic in the past because it can't deal with untyped objects for serialization - like values of type object, or anonymous types which are quite common these days. The JavaScript Serializer that came before it actually does support non-typed objects for serialization but it can't do anything with untyped data coming in from JavaScript and it's overall model of extensibility was pretty limited (JavaScript Serializer is what MVC uses for JSON responses). JSON.NET provides a robust JSON serializer that has both high level and low level components, supports binary JSON, JSON contracts, Xml to JSON conversion, LINQ to JSON and many, many more features than either of the built in serializers. ASP.NET Web API now uses JSON.NET as its default serializer and is now pulled in as a NuGet dependency into Web API projects, which is great. Dynamic JSON Parsing One of the features that I think is getting ever more important is the ability to serialize and deserialize arbitrary JSON content dynamically - that is without mapping the JSON captured directly into a .NET type as DataContractSerializer or the JavaScript Serializers do. Sometimes it isn't possible to map types due to the differences in languages (think collections, dictionaries etc), and other times you simply don't have the structures in place or don't want to create them to actually import the data. If this topic sounds familiar - you're right! I wrote about dynamic JSON parsing a few months back before JSON.NET was added to Web API and when Web API and the System.Net HttpClient libraries included the System.Json classes like JsonObject and JsonArray. With the inclusion of JSON.NET in Web API these classes are now obsolete and didn't ship with Web API or the client libraries. I re-linked my original post to this one. In this post I'll discus JToken, JObject and JArray which are the dynamic JSON objects that make it very easy to create and retrieve JSON content on the fly without underlying types. Why Dynamic JSON? So, why Dynamic JSON parsing rather than strongly typed parsing? Since applications are interacting more and more with third party services it becomes ever more important to have easy access to those services with easy JSON parsing. Sometimes it just makes lot of sense to pull just a small amount of data out of large JSON document received from a service, because the third party service isn't directly related to your application's logic most of the time - and it makes little sense to map the entire service structure in your application. For example, recently I worked with the Google Maps Places API to return information about businesses close to me (or rather the app's) location. The Google API returns a ton of information that my application had no interest in - all I needed was few values out of the data. Dynamic JSON parsing makes it possible to map this data, without having to map the entire API to a C# data structure. Instead I could pull out the three or four values I needed from the API and directly store it on my business entities that needed to receive the data - no need to map the entire Maps API structure. Getting JSON.NET The easiest way to use JSON.NET is to grab it via NuGet and add it as a reference to your project. You can add it to your project with: PM> Install-Package Newtonsoft.Json From the Package Manager Console or by using Manage NuGet Packages in your project References. As mentioned if you're using ASP.NET Web API or MVC 4 JSON.NET will be automatically added to your project. Alternately you can also go to the CodePlex site and download the latest version including source code: http://json.codeplex.com/ Creating JSON on the fly with JObject and JArray Let's start with creating some JSON on the fly. It's super easy to create a dynamic object structure with any of the JToken derived JSON.NET objects. The most common JToken derived classes you are likely to use are JObject and JArray. JToken implements IDynamicMetaProvider and so uses the dynamic  keyword extensively to make it intuitive to create object structures and turn them into JSON via dynamic object syntax. Here's an example of creating a music album structure with child songs using JObject for the base object and songs and JArray for the actual collection of songs:[TestMethod] public void JObjectOutputTest() { // strong typed instance var jsonObject = new JObject(); // you can explicitly add values here using class interface jsonObject.Add("Entered", DateTime.Now); // or cast to dynamic to dynamically add/read properties dynamic album = jsonObject; album.AlbumName = "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap"; album.Artist = "AC/DC"; album.YearReleased = 1976; album.Songs = new JArray() as dynamic; dynamic song = new JObject(); song.SongName = "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap"; song.SongLength = "4:11"; album.Songs.Add(song); song = new JObject(); song.SongName = "Love at First Feel"; song.SongLength = "3:10"; album.Songs.Add(song); Console.WriteLine(album.ToString()); } This produces a complete JSON structure: { "Entered": "2012-08-18T13:26:37.7137482-10:00", "AlbumName": "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap", "Artist": "AC/DC", "YearReleased": 1976, "Songs": [ { "SongName": "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap", "SongLength": "4:11" }, { "SongName": "Love at First Feel", "SongLength": "3:10" } ] } Notice that JSON.NET does a nice job formatting the JSON, so it's easy to read and paste into blog posts :-). JSON.NET includes a bunch of configuration options that control how JSON is generated. Typically the defaults are just fine, but you can override with the JsonSettings object for most operations. The important thing about this code is that there's no explicit type used for holding the values to serialize to JSON. Rather the JSON.NET objects are the containers that receive the data as I build up my JSON structure dynamically, simply by adding properties. This means this code can be entirely driven at runtime without compile time restraints of structure for the JSON output. Here I use JObject to create a album 'object' and immediately cast it to dynamic. JObject() is kind of similar in behavior to ExpandoObject in that it allows you to add properties by simply assigning to them. Internally, JObject values are stored in pseudo collections of key value pairs that are exposed as properties through the IDynamicMetaObject interface exposed in JSON.NET's JToken base class. For objects the syntax is very clean - you add simple typed values as properties. For objects and arrays you have to explicitly create new JObject or JArray, cast them to dynamic and then add properties and items to them. Always remember though these values are dynamic - which means no Intellisense and no compiler type checking. It's up to you to ensure that the names and values you create are accessed consistently and without typos in your code. Note that you can also access the JObject instance directly (not as dynamic) and get access to the underlying JObject type. This means you can assign properties by string, which can be useful for fully data driven JSON generation from other structures. Below you can see both styles of access next to each other:// strong type instance var jsonObject = new JObject(); // you can explicitly add values here jsonObject.Add("Entered", DateTime.Now); // expando style instance you can just 'use' properties dynamic album = jsonObject; album.AlbumName = "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap"; JContainer (the base class for JObject and JArray) is a collection so you can also iterate over the properties at runtime easily:foreach (var item in jsonObject) { Console.WriteLine(item.Key + " " + item.Value.ToString()); } The functionality of the JSON objects are very similar to .NET's ExpandObject and if you used it before, you're already familiar with how the dynamic interfaces to the JSON objects works. Importing JSON with JObject.Parse() and JArray.Parse() The JValue structure supports importing JSON via the Parse() and Load() methods which can read JSON data from a string or various streams respectively. Essentially JValue includes the core JSON parsing to turn a JSON string into a collection of JsonValue objects that can be then referenced using familiar dynamic object syntax. Here's a simple example:public void JValueParsingTest() { var jsonString = @"{""Name"":""Rick"",""Company"":""West Wind"", ""Entered"":""2012-03-16T00:03:33.245-10:00""}"; dynamic json = JValue.Parse(jsonString); // values require casting string name = json.Name; string company = json.Company; DateTime entered = json.Entered; Assert.AreEqual(name, "Rick"); Assert.AreEqual(company, "West Wind"); } The JSON string represents an object with three properties which is parsed into a JObject class and cast to dynamic. Once cast to dynamic I can then go ahead and access the object using familiar object syntax. Note that the actual values - json.Name, json.Company, json.Entered - are actually of type JToken and I have to cast them to their appropriate types first before I can do type comparisons as in the Asserts at the end of the test method. This is required because of the way that dynamic types work which can't determine the type based on the method signature of the Assert.AreEqual(object,object) method. I have to either assign the dynamic value to a variable as I did above, or explicitly cast ( (string) json.Name) in the actual method call. The JSON structure can be much more complex than this simple example. Here's another example of an array of albums serialized to JSON and then parsed through with JsonValue():[TestMethod] public void JsonArrayParsingTest() { var jsonString = @"[ { ""Id"": ""b3ec4e5c"", ""AlbumName"": ""Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap"", ""Artist"": ""AC/DC"", ""YearReleased"": 1976, ""Entered"": ""2012-03-16T00:13:12.2810521-10:00"", ""AlbumImageUrl"": ""http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61kTaH-uZBL._AA115_.jpg"", ""AmazonUrl"": ""http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/…ASIN=B00008BXJ4"", ""Songs"": [ { ""AlbumId"": ""b3ec4e5c"", ""SongName"": ""Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap"", ""SongLength"": ""4:11"" }, { ""AlbumId"": ""b3ec4e5c"", ""SongName"": ""Love at First Feel"", ""SongLength"": ""3:10"" }, { ""AlbumId"": ""b3ec4e5c"", ""SongName"": ""Big Balls"", ""SongLength"": ""2:38"" } ] }, { ""Id"": ""7b919432"", ""AlbumName"": ""End of the Silence"", ""Artist"": ""Henry Rollins Band"", ""YearReleased"": 1992, ""Entered"": ""2012-03-16T00:13:12.2800521-10:00"", ""AlbumImageUrl"": ""http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51FO3rb1tuL._SL160_AA160_.jpg"", ""AmazonUrl"": ""http://www.amazon.com/End-Silence-Rollins-Band/dp/B0000040OX/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1302232195&sr=8-5"", ""Songs"": [ { ""AlbumId"": ""7b919432"", ""SongName"": ""Low Self Opinion"", ""SongLength"": ""5:24"" }, { ""AlbumId"": ""7b919432"", ""SongName"": ""Grip"", ""SongLength"": ""4:51"" } ] } ]"; JArray jsonVal = JArray.Parse(jsonString) as JArray; dynamic albums = jsonVal; foreach (dynamic album in albums) { Console.WriteLine(album.AlbumName + " (" + album.YearReleased.ToString() + ")"); foreach (dynamic song in album.Songs) { Console.WriteLine("\t" + song.SongName); } } Console.WriteLine(albums[0].AlbumName); Console.WriteLine(albums[0].Songs[1].SongName); } JObject and JArray in ASP.NET Web API Of course these types also work in ASP.NET Web API controller methods. If you want you can accept parameters using these object or return them back to the server. The following contrived example receives dynamic JSON input, and then creates a new dynamic JSON object and returns it based on data from the first:[HttpPost] public JObject PostAlbumJObject(JObject jAlbum) { // dynamic input from inbound JSON dynamic album = jAlbum; // create a new JSON object to write out dynamic newAlbum = new JObject(); // Create properties on the new instance // with values from the first newAlbum.AlbumName = album.AlbumName + " New"; newAlbum.NewProperty = "something new"; newAlbum.Songs = new JArray(); foreach (dynamic song in album.Songs) { song.SongName = song.SongName + " New"; newAlbum.Songs.Add(song); } return newAlbum; } The raw POST request to the server looks something like this: POST http://localhost/aspnetwebapi/samples/PostAlbumJObject HTTP/1.1User-Agent: FiddlerContent-type: application/jsonHost: localhostContent-Length: 88 {AlbumName: "Dirty Deeds",Songs:[ { SongName: "Problem Child"},{ SongName: "Squealer"}]} and the output that comes back looks like this: {  "AlbumName": "Dirty Deeds New",  "NewProperty": "something new",  "Songs": [    {      "SongName": "Problem Child New"    },    {      "SongName": "Squealer New"    }  ]} The original values are echoed back with something extra appended to demonstrate that we're working with a new object. When you receive or return a JObject, JValue, JToken or JArray instance in a Web API method, Web API ignores normal content negotiation and assumes your content is going to be received and returned as JSON, so effectively the parameter and result type explicitly determines the input and output format which is nice. Dynamic to Strong Type Mapping You can also map JObject and JArray instances to a strongly typed object, so you can mix dynamic and static typing in the same piece of code. Using the 2 Album jsonString shown earlier, the code below takes an array of albums and picks out only a single album and casts that album to a static Album instance.[TestMethod] public void JsonParseToStrongTypeTest() { JArray albums = JArray.Parse(jsonString) as JArray; // pick out one album JObject jalbum = albums[0] as JObject; // Copy to a static Album instance Album album = jalbum.ToObject<Album>(); Assert.IsNotNull(album); Assert.AreEqual(album.AlbumName,jalbum.Value<string>("AlbumName")); Assert.IsTrue(album.Songs.Count > 0); } This is pretty damn useful for the scenario I mentioned earlier - you can read a large chunk of JSON and dynamically walk the property hierarchy down to the item you want to access, and then either access the specific item dynamically (as shown earlier) or map a part of the JSON to a strongly typed object. That's very powerful if you think about it - it leaves you in total control to decide what's dynamic and what's static. Strongly typed JSON Parsing With all this talk of dynamic let's not forget that JSON.NET of course also does strongly typed serialization which is drop dead easy. Here's a simple example on how to serialize and deserialize an object with JSON.NET:[TestMethod] public void StronglyTypedSerializationTest() { // Demonstrate deserialization from a raw string var album = new Album() { AlbumName = "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap", Artist = "AC/DC", Entered = DateTime.Now, YearReleased = 1976, Songs = new List<Song>() { new Song() { SongName = "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap", SongLength = "4:11" }, new Song() { SongName = "Love at First Feel", SongLength = "3:10" } } }; // serialize to string string json2 = JsonConvert.SerializeObject(album,Formatting.Indented); Console.WriteLine(json2); // make sure we can serialize back var album2 = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<Album>(json2); Assert.IsNotNull(album2); Assert.IsTrue(album2.AlbumName == "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap"); Assert.IsTrue(album2.Songs.Count == 2); } JsonConvert is a high level static class that wraps lower level functionality, but you can also use the JsonSerializer class, which allows you to serialize/parse to and from streams. It's a little more work, but gives you a bit more control. The functionality available is easy to discover with Intellisense, and that's good because there's not a lot in the way of documentation that's actually useful. Summary JSON.NET is a pretty complete JSON implementation with lots of different choices for JSON parsing from dynamic parsing to static serialization, to complex querying of JSON objects using LINQ. It's good to see this open source library getting integrated into .NET, and pushing out the old and tired stock .NET parsers so that we finally have a bit more flexibility - and extensibility - in our JSON parsing. Good to go! Resources Sample Test Project http://json.codeplex.com/© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2012Posted in .NET  Web Api  AJAX   Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

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  • Using an alternate JSON Serializer in ASP.NET Web API

    - by Rick Strahl
    The new ASP.NET Web API that Microsoft released alongside MVC 4.0 Beta last week is a great framework for building REST and AJAX APIs. I've been working with it for quite a while now and I really like the way it works and the complete set of features it provides 'in the box'. It's about time that Microsoft gets a decent API for building generic HTTP endpoints into the framework. DataContractJsonSerializer sucks As nice as Web API's overall design is one thing still sucks: The built-in JSON Serialization uses the DataContractJsonSerializer which is just too limiting for many scenarios. The biggest issues I have with it are: No support for untyped values (object, dynamic, Anonymous Types) MS AJAX style Date Formatting Ugly serialization formats for types like Dictionaries To me the most serious issue is dealing with serialization of untyped objects. I have number of applications with AJAX front ends that dynamically reformat data from business objects to fit a specific message format that certain UI components require. The most common scenario I have there are IEnumerable query results from a database with fields from the result set rearranged to fit the sometimes unconventional formats required for the UI components (like jqGrid for example). Creating custom types to fit these messages seems like overkill and projections using Linq makes this much easier to code up. Alas DataContractJsonSerializer doesn't support it. Neither does DataContractSerializer for XML output for that matter. What this means is that you can't do stuff like this in Web API out of the box:public object GetAnonymousType() { return new { name = "Rick", company = "West Wind", entered= DateTime.Now }; } Basically anything that doesn't have an explicit type DataContractJsonSerializer will not let you return. FWIW, the same is true for XmlSerializer which also doesn't work with non-typed values for serialization. The example above is obviously contrived with a hardcoded object graph, but it's not uncommon to get dynamic values returned from queries that have anonymous types for their result projections. Apparently there's a good possibility that Microsoft will ship Json.NET as part of Web API RTM release.  Scott Hanselman confirmed this as a footnote in his JSON Dates post a few days ago. I've heard several other people from Microsoft confirm that Json.NET will be included and be the default JSON serializer, but no details yet in what capacity it will show up. Let's hope it ends up as the default in the box. Meanwhile this post will show you how you can use it today with the beta and get JSON that matches what you should see in the RTM version. What about JsonValue? To be fair Web API DOES include a new JsonValue/JsonObject/JsonArray type that allow you to address some of these scenarios. JsonValue is a new type in the System.Json assembly that can be used to build up an object graph based on a dictionary. It's actually a really cool implementation of a dynamic type that allows you to create an object graph and spit it out to JSON without having to create .NET type first. JsonValue can also receive a JSON string and parse it without having to actually load it into a .NET type (which is something that's been missing in the core framework). This is really useful if you get a JSON result from an arbitrary service and you don't want to explicitly create a mapping type for the data returned. For serialization you can create an object structure on the fly and pass it back as part of an Web API action method like this:public JsonValue GetJsonValue() { dynamic json = new JsonObject(); json.name = "Rick"; json.company = "West Wind"; json.entered = DateTime.Now; dynamic address = new JsonObject(); address.street = "32 Kaiea"; address.zip = "96779"; json.address = address; dynamic phones = new JsonArray(); json.phoneNumbers = phones; dynamic phone = new JsonObject(); phone.type = "Home"; phone.number = "808 123-1233"; phones.Add(phone); phone = new JsonObject(); phone.type = "Home"; phone.number = "808 123-1233"; phones.Add(phone); //var jsonString = json.ToString(); return json; } which produces the following output (formatted here for easier reading):{ name: "rick", company: "West Wind", entered: "2012-03-08T15:33:19.673-10:00", address: { street: "32 Kaiea", zip: "96779" }, phoneNumbers: [ { type: "Home", number: "808 123-1233" }, { type: "Mobile", number: "808 123-1234" }] } If you need to build a simple JSON type on the fly these types work great. But if you have an existing type - or worse a query result/list that's already formatted JsonValue et al. become a pain to work with. As far as I can see there's no way to just throw an object instance at JsonValue and have it convert into JsonValue dictionary. It's a manual process. Using alternate Serializers in Web API So, currently the default serializer in WebAPI is DataContractJsonSeriaizer and I don't like it. You may not either, but luckily you can swap the serializer fairly easily. If you'd rather use the JavaScriptSerializer built into System.Web.Extensions or Json.NET today, it's not too difficult to create a custom MediaTypeFormatter that uses these serializers and can replace or partially replace the native serializer. Here's a MediaTypeFormatter implementation using the ASP.NET JavaScriptSerializer:using System; using System.Net.Http.Formatting; using System.Threading.Tasks; using System.Web.Script.Serialization; using System.Json; using System.IO; namespace Westwind.Web.WebApi { public class JavaScriptSerializerFormatter : MediaTypeFormatter { public JavaScriptSerializerFormatter() { SupportedMediaTypes.Add(new System.Net.Http.Headers.MediaTypeHeaderValue("application/json")); } protected override bool CanWriteType(Type type) { // don't serialize JsonValue structure use default for that if (type == typeof(JsonValue) || type == typeof(JsonObject) || type== typeof(JsonArray) ) return false; return true; } protected override bool CanReadType(Type type) { if (type == typeof(IKeyValueModel)) return false; return true; } protected override System.Threading.Tasks.Taskobject OnReadFromStreamAsync(Type type, System.IO.Stream stream, System.Net.Http.Headers.HttpContentHeaders contentHeaders, FormatterContext formatterContext) { var task = Taskobject.Factory.StartNew(() = { var ser = new JavaScriptSerializer(); string json; using (var sr = new StreamReader(stream)) { json = sr.ReadToEnd(); sr.Close(); } object val = ser.Deserialize(json,type); return val; }); return task; } protected override System.Threading.Tasks.Task OnWriteToStreamAsync(Type type, object value, System.IO.Stream stream, System.Net.Http.Headers.HttpContentHeaders contentHeaders, FormatterContext formatterContext, System.Net.TransportContext transportContext) { var task = Task.Factory.StartNew( () = { var ser = new JavaScriptSerializer(); var json = ser.Serialize(value); byte[] buf = System.Text.Encoding.Default.GetBytes(json); stream.Write(buf,0,buf.Length); stream.Flush(); }); return task; } } } Formatter implementation is pretty simple: You override 4 methods to tell which types you can handle and then handle the input or output streams to create/parse the JSON data. Note that when creating output you want to take care to still allow JsonValue/JsonObject/JsonArray types to be handled by the default serializer so those objects serialize properly - if you let either JavaScriptSerializer or JSON.NET handle them they'd try to render the dictionaries which is very undesirable. If you'd rather use Json.NET here's the JSON.NET version of the formatter:// this code requires a reference to JSON.NET in your project #if true using System; using System.Net.Http.Formatting; using System.Threading.Tasks; using System.Web.Script.Serialization; using System.Json; using Newtonsoft.Json; using System.IO; using Newtonsoft.Json.Converters; namespace Westwind.Web.WebApi { public class JsonNetFormatter : MediaTypeFormatter { public JsonNetFormatter() { SupportedMediaTypes.Add(new System.Net.Http.Headers.MediaTypeHeaderValue("application/json")); } protected override bool CanWriteType(Type type) { // don't serialize JsonValue structure use default for that if (type == typeof(JsonValue) || type == typeof(JsonObject) || type == typeof(JsonArray)) return false; return true; } protected override bool CanReadType(Type type) { if (type == typeof(IKeyValueModel)) return false; return true; } protected override System.Threading.Tasks.Taskobject OnReadFromStreamAsync(Type type, System.IO.Stream stream, System.Net.Http.Headers.HttpContentHeaders contentHeaders, FormatterContext formatterContext) { var task = Taskobject.Factory.StartNew(() = { var settings = new JsonSerializerSettings() { NullValueHandling = NullValueHandling.Ignore, }; var sr = new StreamReader(stream); var jreader = new JsonTextReader(sr); var ser = new JsonSerializer(); ser.Converters.Add(new IsoDateTimeConverter()); object val = ser.Deserialize(jreader, type); return val; }); return task; } protected override System.Threading.Tasks.Task OnWriteToStreamAsync(Type type, object value, System.IO.Stream stream, System.Net.Http.Headers.HttpContentHeaders contentHeaders, FormatterContext formatterContext, System.Net.TransportContext transportContext) { var task = Task.Factory.StartNew( () = { var settings = new JsonSerializerSettings() { NullValueHandling = NullValueHandling.Ignore, }; string json = JsonConvert.SerializeObject(value, Formatting.Indented, new JsonConverter[1] { new IsoDateTimeConverter() } ); byte[] buf = System.Text.Encoding.Default.GetBytes(json); stream.Write(buf,0,buf.Length); stream.Flush(); }); return task; } } } #endif   One advantage of the Json.NET serializer is that you can specify a few options on how things are formatted and handled. You get null value handling and you can plug in the IsoDateTimeConverter which is nice to product proper ISO dates that I would expect any Json serializer to output these days. Hooking up the Formatters Once you've created the custom formatters you need to enable them for your Web API application. To do this use the GlobalConfiguration.Configuration object and add the formatter to the Formatters collection. Here's what this looks like hooked up from Application_Start in a Web project:protected void Application_Start(object sender, EventArgs e) { // Action based routing (used for RPC calls) RouteTable.Routes.MapHttpRoute( name: "StockApi", routeTemplate: "stocks/{action}/{symbol}", defaults: new { symbol = RouteParameter.Optional, controller = "StockApi" } ); // WebApi Configuration to hook up formatters and message handlers // optional RegisterApis(GlobalConfiguration.Configuration); } public static void RegisterApis(HttpConfiguration config) { // Add JavaScriptSerializer formatter instead - add at top to make default //config.Formatters.Insert(0, new JavaScriptSerializerFormatter()); // Add Json.net formatter - add at the top so it fires first! // This leaves the old one in place so JsonValue/JsonObject/JsonArray still are handled config.Formatters.Insert(0, new JsonNetFormatter()); } One thing to remember here is the GlobalConfiguration object which is Web API's static configuration instance. I think this thing is seriously misnamed given that GlobalConfiguration could stand for anything and so is hard to discover if you don't know what you're looking for. How about WebApiConfiguration or something more descriptive? Anyway, once you know what it is you can use the Formatters collection to insert your custom formatter. Note that I insert my formatter at the top of the list so it takes precedence over the default formatter. I also am not removing the old formatter because I still want JsonValue/JsonObject/JsonArray to be handled by the default serialization mechanism. Since they process in sequence and I exclude processing for these types JsonValue et al. still get properly serialized/deserialized. Summary Currently DataContractJsonSerializer in Web API is a pain, but at least we have the ability with relatively limited effort to replace the MediaTypeFormatter and plug in our own JSON serializer. This is useful for many scenarios - if you have existing client applications that used MVC JsonResult or ASP.NET AJAX results from ASMX AJAX services you can plug in the JavaScript serializer and get exactly the same serializer you used in the past so your results will be the same and don't potentially break clients. JSON serializers do vary a bit in how they serialize some of the more complex types (like Dictionaries and dates for example) and so if you're migrating it might be helpful to ensure your client code doesn't break when you switch to ASP.NET Web API. Going forward it looks like Microsoft is planning on plugging in Json.Net into Web API and make that the default. I think that's an awesome choice since Json.net has been around forever, is fast and easy to use and provides a ton of functionality as part of this great library. I just wish Microsoft would have figured this out sooner instead of now at the last minute integrating with it especially given that Json.Net has a similar set of lower level JSON objects JsonValue/JsonObject etc. which now will end up being duplicated by the native System.Json stuff. It's not like we don't already have enough confusion regarding which JSON serializer to use (JavaScriptSerializer, DataContractJsonSerializer, JsonValue/JsonObject/JsonArray and now Json.net). For years I've been using my own JSON serializer because the built in choices are both limited. However, with an official encorsement of Json.Net I'm happily moving on to use that in my applications. Let's see and hope Microsoft gets this right before ASP.NET Web API goes gold.© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2012Posted in Web Api  AJAX  ASP.NET   Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

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  • Setting up and using Bing Translate API Service for Machine Translation

    - by Rick Strahl
    Last week I spent quite a bit of time trying to set up the Bing Translate API service. I can honestly say this was one of the most screwed up developer experiences I've had in a long while - specifically related to the byzantine sign up process that Microsoft has in place. Not only is it nearly impossible to find decent documentation on the required signup process, some of the links in the docs are just plain wrong, and some of the account pages you need to access the actual account information once signed up are not linked anywhere from the administration UI. To make things even harder is the fact that the APIs changed a while back, with a completely new authentication scheme that's described and not directly linked documentation topic also made for a very frustrating search experience. It's a bummer that this is the case too, because the actual API itself is easy to use and works very well - fast and reasonably accurate (as accurate as you can expect machine translation to be). But the sign up process is a pain in the ass doubtlessly leaving many people giving up in frustration. In this post I'll try to hit all the points needed to set up to use the Bing Translate API in one place since such a document seems to be missing from Microsoft. Hopefully the API folks at Microsoft will get their shit together and actually provide this sort of info on their site… Signing Up The first step required is to create a Windows Azure MarketPlace account. Go to: https://datamarket.azure.com/ Sign in with your Windows Live Id If you don't have an account you will be taken to a registration page which you have to fill out. Follow the links and complete the registration. Once you're signed in you can start adding services. Click on the Data Link on the main page Select Microsoft Translator from the list This adds the Microsoft Bing Translator to your services. Pricing The page shows the pricing matrix and the free service which provides 2 megabytes for translations a month for free. Prices go up steeply from there. Pricing is determined by actual bytes of the result translations used. Max translations are 1000 characters so at minimum this means you get around 2000 translations a month for free. However most translations are probable much less so you can expect larger number of translations to go through. For testing or low volume translations this should be just fine. Once signed up there are no further instructions and you're left in limbo on the MS site. Register your Application Once you've created the Data association with Translator the next step is registering your application. To do this you need to access your developer account. Go to https://datamarket.azure.com/developer/applications/register Provide a ClientId, which is effectively the unique string identifier for your application (not your customer id!) Provide your name The client secret was auto-created and this becomes your 'password' For the redirect url provide any https url: https://microsoft.com works Give this application a description of your choice so you can identify it in the list of apps Now, once you've registered your application, keep track of the ClientId and ClientSecret - those are the two keys you need to authenticate before you can call the Translate API. Oddly the applications page is hidden from the Azure Portal UI. I couldn't find a direct link from anywhere on the site back to this page where I can examine my developer application keys. To find them you can go to: https://datamarket.azure.com/developer/applications You can come back here to look at your registered applications and pick up the ClientID and ClientSecret. Fun eh? But we're now ready to actually call the API and do some translating. Using the Bing Translate API The good news is that after this signup hell, using the API is pretty straightforward. To use the translation API you'll need to actually use two services: You need to call an authentication API service first, before you can call the actual translator API. These two APIs live on different domains, and the authentication API returns JSON data while the translator service returns XML. So much for consistency. Authentication The first step is authentication. The service uses oAuth authentication with a  bearer token that has to be passed to the translator API. The authentication call retrieves the oAuth token that you can then use with the translate API call. The bearer token has a short 10 minute life time, so while you can cache it for successive calls, the token can't be cached for long periods. This means for Web backend requests you typically will have to authenticate each time unless you build a more elaborate caching scheme that takes the timeout into account (perhaps using the ASP.NET Cache object). For low volume operations you can probably get away with simply calling the auth API for every translation you do. To call the Authentication API use code like this:/// /// Retrieves an oAuth authentication token to be used on the translate /// API request. The result string needs to be passed as a bearer token /// to the translate API. /// /// You can find client ID and Secret (or register a new one) at: /// https://datamarket.azure.com/developer/applications/ /// /// The client ID of your application /// The client secret or password /// public string GetBingAuthToken(string clientId = null, string clientSecret = null) { string authBaseUrl = https://datamarket.accesscontrol.windows.net/v2/OAuth2-13; if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(clientId) || string.IsNullOrEmpty(clientSecret)) { ErrorMessage = Resources.Resources.Client_Id_and_Client_Secret_must_be_provided; return null; } var postData = string.Format("grant_type=client_credentials&client_id={0}" + "&client_secret={1}" + "&scope=http://api.microsofttranslator.com", HttpUtility.UrlEncode(clientId), HttpUtility.UrlEncode(clientSecret)); // POST Auth data to the oauth API string res, token; try { var web = new WebClient(); web.Encoding = Encoding.UTF8; res = web.UploadString(authBaseUrl, postData); } catch (Exception ex) { ErrorMessage = ex.GetBaseException().Message; return null; } var ser = new JavaScriptSerializer(); var auth = ser.Deserialize<BingAuth>(res); if (auth == null) return null; token = auth.access_token; return token; } private class BingAuth { public string token_type { get; set; } public string access_token { get; set; } } This code basically takes the client id and secret and posts it at the oAuth endpoint which returns a JSON string. Here I use the JavaScript serializer to deserialize the JSON into a custom object I created just for deserialization. You can also use JSON.NET and dynamic deserialization if you are already using JSON.NET in your app in which case you don't need the extra type. In my library that houses this component I don't, so I just rely on the built in serializer. The auth method returns a long base64 encoded string which can be used as a bearer token in the translate API call. Translation Once you have the authentication token you can use it to pass to the translate API. The auth token is passed as an Authorization header and the value is prefixed with a 'Bearer ' prefix for the string. Here's what the simple Translate API call looks like:/// /// Uses the Bing API service to perform translation /// Bing can translate up to 1000 characters. /// /// Requires that you provide a CLientId and ClientSecret /// or set the configuration values for these two. /// /// More info on setup: /// http://www.west-wind.com/weblog/ /// /// Text to translate /// Two letter culture name /// Two letter culture name /// Pass an access token retrieved with GetBingAuthToken. /// If not passed the default keys from .config file are used if any /// public string TranslateBing(string text, string fromCulture, string toCulture, string accessToken = null) { string serviceUrl = "http://api.microsofttranslator.com/V2/Http.svc/Translate"; if (accessToken == null) { accessToken = GetBingAuthToken(); if (accessToken == null) return null; } string res; try { var web = new WebClient(); web.Headers.Add("Authorization", "Bearer " + accessToken); string ct = "text/plain"; string postData = string.Format("?text={0}&from={1}&to={2}&contentType={3}", HttpUtility.UrlEncode(text), fromCulture, toCulture, HttpUtility.UrlEncode(ct)); web.Encoding = Encoding.UTF8; res = web.DownloadString(serviceUrl + postData); } catch (Exception e) { ErrorMessage = e.GetBaseException().Message; return null; } // result is a single XML Element fragment var doc = new XmlDocument(); doc.LoadXml(res); return doc.DocumentElement.InnerText; } The first of this code deals with ensuring the auth token exists. You can either pass the token into the method manually or let the method automatically retrieve the auth code on its own. In my case I'm using this inside of a Web application and in that situation I simply need to re-authenticate every time as there's no convenient way to manage the lifetime of the auth cookie. The auth token is added as an Authorization HTTP header prefixed with 'Bearer ' and attached to the request. The text to translate, the from and to language codes and a result format are passed on the query string of this HTTP GET request against the Translate API. The translate API returns an XML string which contains a single element with the translated string. Using the Wrapper Methods It should be pretty obvious how to use these two methods but here are a couple of test methods that demonstrate the two usage scenarios:[TestMethod] public void TranslateBingWithAuthTest() { var translate = new TranslationServices(); string clientId = DbResourceConfiguration.Current.BingClientId; string clientSecret = DbResourceConfiguration.Current.BingClientSecret; string auth = translate.GetBingAuthToken(clientId, clientSecret); Assert.IsNotNull(auth); string text = translate.TranslateBing("Hello World we're back home!", "en", "de",auth); Assert.IsNotNull(text, translate.ErrorMessage); Console.WriteLine(text); } [TestMethod] public void TranslateBingIntegratedTest() { var translate = new TranslationServices(); string text = translate.TranslateBing("Hello World we're back home!","en","de"); Assert.IsNotNull(text, translate.ErrorMessage); Console.WriteLine(text); } Other API Methods The Translate API has a number of methods available and this one is the simplest one but probably also the most common one that translates a single string. You can find additional methods for this API here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff512419.aspx Soap and AJAX APIs are also available and documented on MSDN: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd576287.aspx These links will be your starting points for calling other methods in this API. Dual Interface I've talked about my database driven localization provider here in the past, and it's for this tool that I added the Bing localization support. Basically I have a localization administration form that allows me to translate individual strings right out of the UI, using both Google and Bing APIs: As you can see in this example, the results from Google and Bing can vary quite a bit - in this case Google is stumped while Bing actually generated a valid translation. At other times it's the other way around - it's pretty useful to see multiple translations at the same time. Here I can choose from one of the values and driectly embed them into the translated text field. Lost in Translation There you have it. As I mentioned using the API once you have all the bureaucratic crap out of the way calling the APIs is fairly straight forward and reasonably fast, even if you have to call the Auth API for every call. Hopefully this post will help out a few of you trying to navigate the Microsoft bureaucracy, at least until next time Microsoft upends everything and introduces new ways to sign up again. Until then - happy translating… Related Posts Translation method Source on Github Translating with Google Translate without Google API Keys Creating a data-driven ASP.NET Resource Provider© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2013Posted in Localization  ASP.NET  .NET   Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

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  • Windows Azure Service Bus Scatter-Gather Implementation

    - by Alan Smith
    One of the more challenging enterprise integration patterns that developers may wish to implement is the Scatter-Gather pattern. In this article I will show the basic implementation of a scatter-gather pattern using the topic-subscription model of the windows azure service bus. I’ll be using the implementation in demos, and also as a lab in my training courses, and the pattern will also be included in the next release of my free e-book the “Windows Azure Service Bus Developer Guide”. The Scatter-Gather pattern answers the following scenario. How do you maintain the overall message flow when a message needs to be sent to multiple recipients, each of which may send a reply? Use a Scatter-Gather that broadcasts a message to multiple recipients and re-aggregates the responses back into a single message. The Enterprise Integration Patterns website provides a description of the Scatter-Gather pattern here.   The scatter-gather pattern uses a composite of the publish-subscribe channel pattern and the aggregator pattern. The publish-subscribe channel is used to broadcast messages to a number of receivers, and the aggregator is used to gather the response messages and aggregate them together to form a single message. Scatter-Gather Scenario The scenario for this scatter-gather implementation is an application that allows users to answer questions in a poll based voting scenario. A poll manager application will be used to broadcast questions to users, the users will use a voting application that will receive and display the questions and send the votes back to the poll manager. The poll manager application will receive the users’ votes and aggregate them together to display the results. The scenario should be able to scale to support a large number of users.   Scatter-Gather Implementation The diagram below shows the overall architecture for the scatter-gather implementation.       Messaging Entities Looking at the scatter-gather pattern diagram it can be seen that the topic-subscription architecture is well suited for broadcasting a message to a number of subscribers. The poll manager application can send the question messages to a topic, and each voting application can receive the question message on its own subscription. The static limit of 2,000 subscriptions per topic in the current release means that 2,000 voting applications can receive question messages and take part in voting. The vote messages can then be sent to the poll manager application using a queue. The voting applications will send their vote messages to the queue, and the poll manager will receive and process the vote messages. The questions topic and answer queue are created using the Windows Azure Developer Portal. Each instance of the voting application will create its own subscription in the questions topic when it starts, allowing the question messages to be broadcast to all subscribing voting applications. Data Contracts Two simple data contracts will be used to serialize the questions and votes as brokered messages. The code for these is shown below.   [DataContract] public class Question {     [DataMember]     public string QuestionText { get; set; } }     To keep the implementation of the voting functionality simple and focus on the pattern implementation, the users can only vote yes or no to the questions.   [DataContract] public class Vote {     [DataMember]     public string QuestionText { get; set; }       [DataMember]     public bool IsYes { get; set; } }     Poll Manager Application The poll manager application has been implemented as a simple WPF application; the user interface is shown below. A question can be entered in the text box, and sent to the topic by clicking the Add button. The topic and subscriptions used for broadcasting the messages are shown in a TreeView control. The questions that have been broadcast and the resulting votes are shown in a ListView control. When the application is started any existing subscriptions are cleared form the topic, clients are then created for the questions topic and votes queue, along with background workers for receiving and processing the vote messages, and updating the display of subscriptions.   public MainWindow() {     InitializeComponent();       // Create a new results list and data bind it.     Results = new ObservableCollection<Result>();     lsvResults.ItemsSource = Results;       // Create a token provider with the relevant credentials.     TokenProvider credentials =         TokenProvider.CreateSharedSecretTokenProvider         (AccountDetails.Name, AccountDetails.Key);       // Create a URI for the serivce bus.     Uri serviceBusUri = ServiceBusEnvironment.CreateServiceUri         ("sb", AccountDetails.Namespace, string.Empty);       // Clear out any old subscriptions.     NamespaceManager = new NamespaceManager(serviceBusUri, credentials);     IEnumerable<SubscriptionDescription> subs =         NamespaceManager.GetSubscriptions(AccountDetails.ScatterGatherTopic);     foreach (SubscriptionDescription sub in subs)     {         NamespaceManager.DeleteSubscription(sub.TopicPath, sub.Name);     }       // Create the MessagingFactory     MessagingFactory factory = MessagingFactory.Create(serviceBusUri, credentials);       // Create the topic and queue clients.     ScatterGatherTopicClient =         factory.CreateTopicClient(AccountDetails.ScatterGatherTopic);     ScatterGatherQueueClient =         factory.CreateQueueClient(AccountDetails.ScatterGatherQueue);       // Start the background worker threads.     VotesBackgroundWorker = new BackgroundWorker();     VotesBackgroundWorker.DoWork += new DoWorkEventHandler(ReceiveMessages);     VotesBackgroundWorker.RunWorkerAsync();       SubscriptionsBackgroundWorker = new BackgroundWorker();     SubscriptionsBackgroundWorker.DoWork += new DoWorkEventHandler(UpdateSubscriptions);     SubscriptionsBackgroundWorker.RunWorkerAsync(); }     When the poll manager user nters a question in the text box and clicks the Add button a question message is created and sent to the topic. This message will be broadcast to all the subscribing voting applications. An instance of the Result class is also created to keep track of the votes cast, this is then added to an observable collection named Results, which is data-bound to the ListView control.   private void btnAddQuestion_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e) {     // Create a new result for recording votes.     Result result = new Result()     {         Question = txtQuestion.Text     };     Results.Add(result);       // Send the question to the topic     Question question = new Question()     {         QuestionText = result.Question     };     BrokeredMessage msg = new BrokeredMessage(question);     ScatterGatherTopicClient.Send(msg);       txtQuestion.Text = ""; }     The Results class is implemented as follows.   public class Result : INotifyPropertyChanged {     public string Question { get; set; }       private int m_YesVotes;     private int m_NoVotes;       public event PropertyChangedEventHandler PropertyChanged;       public int YesVotes     {         get { return m_YesVotes; }         set         {             m_YesVotes = value;             NotifyPropertyChanged("YesVotes");         }     }       public int NoVotes     {         get { return m_NoVotes; }         set         {             m_NoVotes = value;             NotifyPropertyChanged("NoVotes");         }     }       private void NotifyPropertyChanged(string prop)     {         if(PropertyChanged != null)         {             PropertyChanged(this, new PropertyChangedEventArgs(prop));         }     } }     The INotifyPropertyChanged interface is implemented so that changes to the number of yes and no votes will be updated in the ListView control. Receiving the vote messages from the voting applications is done asynchronously, using a background worker thread.   // This runs on a background worker. private void ReceiveMessages(object sender, DoWorkEventArgs e) {     while (true)     {         // Receive a vote message from the queue         BrokeredMessage msg = ScatterGatherQueueClient.Receive();         if (msg != null)         {             // Deserialize the message.             Vote vote = msg.GetBody<Vote>();               // Update the results.             foreach (Result result in Results)             {                 if (result.Question.Equals(vote.QuestionText))                 {                     if (vote.IsYes)                     {                         result.YesVotes++;                     }                     else                     {                         result.NoVotes++;                     }                     break;                 }             }               // Mark the message as complete.             msg.Complete();         }       } }     When a vote message is received, the result that matches the vote question is updated with the vote from the user. The message is then marked as complete. A second background thread is used to update the display of subscriptions in the TreeView, with a dispatcher used to update the user interface. // This runs on a background worker. private void UpdateSubscriptions(object sender, DoWorkEventArgs e) {     while (true)     {         // Get a list of subscriptions.         IEnumerable<SubscriptionDescription> subscriptions =             NamespaceManager.GetSubscriptions(AccountDetails.ScatterGatherTopic);           // Update the user interface.         SimpleDelegate setQuestion = delegate()         {             trvSubscriptions.Items.Clear();             TreeViewItem topicItem = new TreeViewItem()             {                 Header = AccountDetails.ScatterGatherTopic             };               foreach (SubscriptionDescription subscription in subscriptions)             {                 TreeViewItem subscriptionItem = new TreeViewItem()                 {                     Header = subscription.Name                 };                 topicItem.Items.Add(subscriptionItem);             }             trvSubscriptions.Items.Add(topicItem);               topicItem.ExpandSubtree();         };         this.Dispatcher.BeginInvoke(DispatcherPriority.Send, setQuestion);           Thread.Sleep(3000);     } }       Voting Application The voting application is implemented as another WPF application. This one is more basic, and allows the user to vote “Yes” or “No” for the questions sent by the poll manager application. The user interface for that application is shown below. When an instance of the voting application is created it will create a subscription in the questions topic using a GUID as the subscription name. The application can then receive copies of every question message that is sent to the topic. Clients for the new subscription and the votes queue are created, along with a background worker to receive the question messages. The voting application is set to receiving mode, meaning it is ready to receive a question message from the subscription.   public MainWindow() {     InitializeComponent();       // Set the mode to receiving.     IsReceiving = true;       // Create a token provider with the relevant credentials.     TokenProvider credentials =         TokenProvider.CreateSharedSecretTokenProvider         (AccountDetails.Name, AccountDetails.Key);       // Create a URI for the serivce bus.     Uri serviceBusUri = ServiceBusEnvironment.CreateServiceUri         ("sb", AccountDetails.Namespace, string.Empty);       // Create the MessagingFactory     MessagingFactory factory = MessagingFactory.Create(serviceBusUri, credentials);       // Create a subcription for this instance     NamespaceManager mgr = new NamespaceManager(serviceBusUri, credentials);     string subscriptionName = Guid.NewGuid().ToString();     mgr.CreateSubscription(AccountDetails.ScatterGatherTopic, subscriptionName);       // Create the subscription and queue clients.     ScatterGatherSubscriptionClient = factory.CreateSubscriptionClient         (AccountDetails.ScatterGatherTopic, subscriptionName);     ScatterGatherQueueClient =         factory.CreateQueueClient(AccountDetails.ScatterGatherQueue);       // Start the background worker thread.     BackgroundWorker = new BackgroundWorker();     BackgroundWorker.DoWork += new DoWorkEventHandler(ReceiveMessages);     BackgroundWorker.RunWorkerAsync(); }     I took the inspiration for creating the subscriptions in the voting application from the chat application that uses topics and subscriptions blogged by Ovais Akhter here. The method that receives the question messages runs on a background thread. If the application is in receive mode, a question message will be received from the subscription, the question will be displayed in the user interface, the voting buttons enabled, and IsReceiving set to false to prevent more questing from being received before the current one is answered.   // This runs on a background worker. private void ReceiveMessages(object sender, DoWorkEventArgs e) {     while (true)     {         if (IsReceiving)         {             // Receive a question message from the topic.             BrokeredMessage msg = ScatterGatherSubscriptionClient.Receive();             if (msg != null)             {                 // Deserialize the message.                 Question question = msg.GetBody<Question>();                   // Update the user interface.                 SimpleDelegate setQuestion = delegate()                 {                     lblQuestion.Content = question.QuestionText;                     btnYes.IsEnabled = true;                     btnNo.IsEnabled = true;                 };                 this.Dispatcher.BeginInvoke(DispatcherPriority.Send, setQuestion);                 IsReceiving = false;                   // Mark the message as complete.                 msg.Complete();             }         }         else         {             Thread.Sleep(1000);         }     } }     When the user clicks on the Yes or No button, the btnVote_Click method is called. This will create a new Vote data contract with the appropriate question and answer and send the message to the poll manager application using the votes queue. The user voting buttons are then disabled, the question text cleared, and the IsReceiving flag set to true to allow a new message to be received.   private void btnVote_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e) {     // Create a new vote.     Vote vote = new Vote()     {         QuestionText = (string)lblQuestion.Content,         IsYes = ((sender as Button).Content as string).Equals("Yes")     };       // Send the vote message.     BrokeredMessage msg = new BrokeredMessage(vote);     ScatterGatherQueueClient.Send(msg);       // Update the user interface.     lblQuestion.Content = "";     btnYes.IsEnabled = false;     btnNo.IsEnabled = false;     IsReceiving = true; }     Testing the Application In order to test the application, an instance of the poll manager application is started; the user interface is shown below. As no instances of the voting application have been created there are no subscriptions present in the topic. When an instance of the voting application is created the subscription will be displayed in the poll manager. Now that a voting application is subscribing, a questing can be sent from the poll manager application. When the message is sent to the topic, the voting application will receive the message and display the question. The voter can then answer the question by clicking on the appropriate button. The results of the vote are updated in the poll manager application. When two more instances of the voting application are created, the poll manager will display the new subscriptions. More questions can then be broadcast to the voting applications. As the question messages are queued up in the subscription for each voting application, the users can answer the questions in their own time. The vote messages will be received by the poll manager application and aggregated to display the results. The screenshots of the applications part way through voting are shown below. The messages for each voting application are queued up in sequence on the voting application subscriptions, allowing the questions to be answered at different speeds by the voters.

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  • JSON.NET "System.OutOfMemoryException" when deserializing into a DataSet

    - by Tiago
    Very new to C# and JSON. I have been struggling with this problem for about a day and can't figure it out. JSONLint states both JSON strings are valid. Trying to deserialize the following {"items":[{"id":"1122267","quantity":"1","bundle":"1"}],"seconds_ago":"1"} throws the exception An unhandled exception of type 'System.OutOfMemoryException' occurred in Newtonsoft.Json.dll If I try {"items":[{"id":"1122267","quantity":"1","bundle":"1"}]} it works. I'm reading the JSON string from a textbox and then deserializing using the following string json = textBox1.Text; DataSet dataSet = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<DataSet>(json);

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  • DataContractJsonSerializer ReadObject Exception

    - by Dan Appleyard
    I am following the accepted answer of ASP.NET MVC How to pass JSON object from View to Controller as Parameter. Like the original question, I have a simple POCO. Everthing works fine for me up until the DataContractJsonSerializer.ReadObject method. I am getting the following exception: Expecting element 'root' from namespace ''.. Encountered 'None' with name '', namespace ''. Public Overrides Sub OnActionExecuting(ByVal filterContext As ActionExecutingContext) If filterContext.HttpContext.Request.ContentType.Contains("application/json") Then Dim s As System.IO.Stream = filterContext.HttpContext.Request.InputStream Dim o = New DataContractJsonSerializer(RootType).ReadObject(s) filterContext.ActionParameters(Param) = o Else Dim xmlRoot = XElement.Load(New StreamReader(filterContext.HttpContext.Request.InputStream, filterContext.HttpContext.Request.ContentEncoding)) Dim o As Object = New XmlSerializer(RootType).Deserialize(xmlRoot.CreateReader) filterContext.ActionParameters(Param) = o End If End Sub Any ideas? Thanks

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  • PHP SOAP Error: maximum string content length quota (8192) has been exceeded while reading XML data

    - by Sadi
    I am trying to use bing with PHP SOAP. It works fine for short strings. But for larger string I get following error: Fatal error: Uncaught SoapFault exception: [a:DeserializationFailed] The formatter threw an exception while trying to deserialize the message: Error in deserializing body of request message for operation 'Translate'. The maximum string content length quota (8192) has been exceeded while reading XML data. This quota may be increased by changing the MaxStringContentLength property on the XmlDictionaryReaderQuotas object used when creating the XML reader. Line 9, position 227. in ........ I am using XAMPP in windows 7. All the solution I found are for .net not the PHP. PHP has no web.config file as far as I concern. Any idea how can I solve it. Thank you Sadi

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  • XML Serialization in C# without XML attribute nodes

    - by Alex Marshall
    Hello, I have an XML document format from a legacy system that I have to support in a future application. I want to be able to both serialize and deserialize the XML between XML and C# objects, however, using the objects generated by xsd.exe, the C# serialization includes the xmlns:xsi..., xsi:... etc XML attributes on the root element of the document that gets generated. Is there anyway to disable this so that absolutely no XML attribute nodes get put out in the resulting XML ? The XML document should be elements only. Duplicate? XmlSerializer: remove unnecessary xsi and xsd namespaces

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  • wcf - maximum array length quota

    - by dav.evans
    Im writing a small wcf/wpf app to resize images but wcf is giving me grief when I try to send an image of size 28K to my service from the client. The service works fine when I send it smaller images. I immediately assumed that this was a configuration issue and I've trawled the web looking at posts regarding the MaxArrayLength property in my binding configuration. Ive upped the limits on these settings on both the client and server to the maximum 2147483647 but still I get the following error: {"The formatter threw an exception while trying to deserialize the message: There was an error while trying to deserialize parameter http://mywebsite.com/services/servicecontracts/2009/01:OriginalImage. The InnerException message was 'There was an error deserializing the object of type System.Drawing.Image. The maximum array length quota (16384) has been exceeded while reading XML data. This quota may be increased by changing the MaxArrayLength property on the XmlDictionaryReaderQuotas object used when creating the XML reader.'. Please see InnerException for more details."} Ive made my client and server configs the same and they look like the following: Server: <system.serviceModel> <bindings> <netTcpBinding> <binding name="NetTcpBinding_ImageResizerServiceContract" closeTimeout="00:01:00" openTimeout="00:01:00" receiveTimeout="00:10:00" sendTimeout="00:01:00" transactionFlow="false" transferMode="Buffered" transactionProtocol="OleTransactions" hostNameComparisonMode="StrongWildcard" listenBacklog="10" maxBufferPoolSize="2147483647" maxBufferSize="2147483647" maxConnections="10" maxReceivedMessageSize="2147483647"> <readerQuotas maxDepth="32" maxStringContentLength="2147483647" maxArrayLength="2147483647" maxBytesPerRead="2147483647" maxNameTableCharCount="2147483647" /> <reliableSession ordered="true" inactivityTimeout="00:10:00" enabled="false" /> <security mode="Transport"> <transport clientCredentialType="Windows" protectionLevel="EncryptAndSign" /> <message clientCredentialType="Windows" /> </security> </binding> </netTcpBinding> </bindings> <behaviors> <serviceBehaviors> <behavior name="ServiceBehavior"> <serviceMetadata httpGetEnabled="true" /> <serviceDebug includeExceptionDetailInFaults="false" /> </behavior> </serviceBehaviors> </behaviors> <services> <service name="LogoResizer.WCF.ServiceTypes.ImageResizerService" behaviorConfiguration="ServiceBehavior"> <host> <baseAddresses> <add baseAddress="http://localhost:900/mex/"/> <add baseAddress="net.tcp://localhost:9000/" /> </baseAddresses> </host> <endpoint binding="netTcpBinding" contract="LogoResizer.WCF.ServiceContracts.IImageResizerService" /> <endpoint address="mex" binding="mexHttpBinding" contract="IMetadataExchange"/> </service> </services> </system.serviceModel> and my client config looks like: <system.serviceModel> <bindings> <netTcpBinding> <binding name="NetTcpBinding_ImageResizerServiceContract" closeTimeout="00:01:00" openTimeout="00:01:00" receiveTimeout="00:10:00" sendTimeout="00:01:00" transactionFlow="false" transferMode="Buffered" transactionProtocol="OleTransactions" hostNameComparisonMode="StrongWildcard" listenBacklog="10" maxBufferPoolSize="2147483647" maxBufferSize="2147483647" maxConnections="10" maxReceivedMessageSize="2147483647"> <readerQuotas maxDepth="32" maxStringContentLength="2147483647" maxArrayLength="2147483647" maxBytesPerRead="2147483647" maxNameTableCharCount="2147483647" /> <reliableSession ordered="true" inactivityTimeout="00:10:00" enabled="false" /> <security mode="Transport"> <transport clientCredentialType="Windows" protectionLevel="EncryptAndSign" /> <message clientCredentialType="Windows" /> </security> </binding> </netTcpBinding> </bindings> <client> <endpoint address="net.tcp://localhost:9000/" binding="netTcpBinding" bindingConfiguration="NetTcpBinding_ImageResizerServiceContract" contract="ImageResizerService.ImageResizerServiceContract" name="NetTcpBinding_ImageResizerServiceContract"> <identity> <userPrincipalName value="[email protected]" /> </identity> </endpoint> </client> </system.serviceModel> It seems no matter what I set these values to I still get an error saying wcf cannot serialize my file because its greater than 16384. Any ideas? edit: the email address in the userPrincipalName tag has been altered for my privacy

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  • Convert xml as string

    - by hakish
    i have a scenario where in i need to send an xml as a tag content in a SOAP request message to a webservice for example <arg_1><xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><sometag><somemoretag>abcd</somemoretag></sometag></arg_1></code> arg_1 happens to be an String parameter to a webservice. So i bring in a CDATA section for this <arg_1><![CDATA[<xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><sometag><somemoretag>abcd</somemoretag></sometag>]]></arg_1> But this keeps throwing me an exception org.xml.sax.SAXException: WSWS3084E: Error: SimpleDeserializer encountered a child element, which is NOT expected, in something it was trying to deserialize. Message being parsed: I keep getting this exception. Has anyone seen this before??

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  • Serialize struct with pointers to NSData

    - by leolobato
    Hey guys, I need to add some kind of archiving functionality to a Objective-C Trie implementation (NDTrie on github), but I have very little experience with C and it's data structures. struct trieNode { NSUInteger key; NSUInteger count, size; id object; __strong struct trieNode ** children; __strong struct trieNode * parent; }; @interface NDTrie (Private) - (struct trieNode*)root; @end What I need is to create an NSData with the tree structure from that root - or serialize/deserialize the whole tree some other way (conforming to NSCoding?), but I have no clue how to work with NSData and a C struct containing pointers. Performance on deserializing the resulting object would be crucial, as this is an iPhone project and I will need to load it in the background every time the app starts. What would be the best way to achieve this? Thanks!

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  • XML Deserialization in VB/VBA

    - by oharab
    I have a set of VBA classes in an MS Access database. I have an xml string with data I want to create new classes with. Other than setting each property individually, is there an easy way to deserialize the XML into my object? I've seen the code using the TypeLib library Public Sub ISerializable_Deserialize(xml As IXMLDOMNode) Dim tTLI As TLIApplication Dim tInvoke As InvokeKinds Dim tName As String Dim tMem As MemberInfo tInvoke = VbLet For Each tMem In TLI.ClassInfoFromObject(Me).Members tName = LCase(tMem.Name) CallByName Me, tMem.Name, VbLet, xml.Attributes.getNamedItem(tName).Text Next tMem End Sub but this doesn't seem to work with the standard class modules. I get a 429 error: ActiveX Component Cannot Be Created Can anyone else help me out? I'd rather not have to set each propery by hand if I can help it, some of these classes are huge!

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  • C# "Enum" Serialization - Deserialization to Static Instance

    - by Walt W
    Suppose you have the following class: class Test : ISerializable { public static Test Instance1 = new Test { Value1 = "Hello" ,Value2 = 86 }; public static Test Instance2 = new Test { Value1 = "World" ,Value2 = 26 }; public String Value1 { get; private set; } public int Value2 { get; private set; } public void GetObjectData(SerializationInfo info, StreamingContext context) { //Serialize an indicator of which instance we are - Currently //I am using the FieldInfo for the static reference. } } I was wondering if it is possible / elegant to deserialize to the static instances of the class? Since the deserialization routines (I'm using BinaryFormatter, though I'd imagine others would be similar) look for a constructor with the same argument list as GetObjectData(), it seems like this can't be done directly . . Which I would presume means that the most elegant solution would be to actually use an enum, and then provide some sort of translation mechanism for turning an enum value into an instance reference. How might one go about this?

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  • XML deserialization problem (attribute with a namespace)

    - by Johnny
    hi, I'm trying to deserialize the following XML node (RDF actually) into a class. <rdf:Description rdf:about="http://d.opencalais.com/genericHasher-1/dae360d4-25f1-34a7-9c70-d5f7e4cfe175"> <rdf:type rdf:resource="http://s.opencalais.com/1/type/em/e/Country"/> <c:name>Egypt</c:name> </rdf:Description> [Serializable] [XmlRoot(Namespace = "http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#", ElementName = "Description")] public class BasicEntity { [XmlElement(Namespace = "http://s.opencalais.com/1/pred/", ElementName = "name")] public string Name { get; set; } [XmlAttribute("about", Namespace = "http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#")] public string Uri { get; set; } } The name element is parsed correctly but the about attribute isn't. What am I doing wrong?

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  • WCF MessageContract Help - MessageBodyMember with hyphenated name

    - by Hcabnettek
    Hi All, I need a bit of WCF help. This project uses message contracts. The transport seems to work ok. I have this code for a response type. namespace tpoke.Contracts { [MessageContract(IsWrapped = true)] public class AuthenticationResponseMC { [MessageBodyMember(Name = "authentication-token")] public Guid AuthenticationToken; } } Now when I run the operation that returns this, I try to deserialize using the XmlSerializer. The is not what I'm needing. I need it to be <authentication-token xmlns="http://tpoke.wcf.com">e13xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxx</authentication-token> How can I make this work correctly? Do I need to add the namespace to MessageBodyMember? Why is the hyphen being stripped out? Any tips or advice is certainly appreciated. Thanks, ~ck in San Diego

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  • Is there a way to export an XSD schema from a DataContract

    - by Eric
    I'm using DataContractSerializer to serialize/deserialize my classes to/from XML. Everything works fine, but at some point I'd like to establish a standard schema for the format of these XML files independent of the actual code. That way if something breaks in the serialization process I can always go back and check what the standard schema should be. Or if I do need to modify the schema the modification is an explicit decision rather then just a later affect of modifying my code. In addition, other people may be writing other software that may not be .NET based that would need to read from these XML files. I'd like to be able to provide them with some kind of documentation of the schema. Is there some relationship between a DataContract and an XSD schema. Is there a way to export the DataContract attributes in classes as an XSD schema?

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