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  • Avoiding bloated Domain Objects

    - by djcredo
    We're trying to move data from our bloated Service layer into our Domain layer using a DDD approach. We currently have a lot of business logic in our services, which is spread out all over the place and doesn't benefit from inheritance. We have a central Domain class which is the focus of most of our work - a Trade. The Trade object will know how to price itself, how to estimate risk, validate itself, etc. We can then replace conditionals with polymorphism. Eg: SimpleTrade will price itself one way, but ComplexTrade will price itself another. However, we are worried that this will bloat the Trade class(s). It really should be in charge of its own processing but the class size is going to increase exponentially as more features are added. So we have choices: Put processing logic in Trade class. Processing logic is now polymorphic based on the type of the trade, but Trade class is now has multiple responsibilites (pricing, risk, etc) and is large Put processing logic into other class such as TradePricingService. No longer polymorphic with the Trade inheritance tree, but classes are smaller and easier to test. What would be the suggested approach?

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  • How can one find software development work that involves directly the final end user?

    - by RJa
    I've worked in software development for 15 years and, while there have been signficant personal achievements and a lot of experience, I've always felt detached from the man/woman-on-the-street, the every day person, how it affects their lives, in a number of ways: the technologies: embedded software, hidden away, stuff not seen by the everyday person. Or process technology supporting manufactured products the size of the systems, meaning many jobs, divided up, work is abstract, not one person can see the whole picture the organisations: large, with departments dealing with different areas, the software, the hardware, the marketing, the sales, the customer support the locations and hours: out-of-town business parks away from the rest of society, fixed locations, inflexible: 9-5 everyday This to me seems typical of the companies I worked for and see elsewhere. Granted, there are positives such as the technology itself and usually being among high calibre co-workers, but the above points frustrate me about the industry because they detach the work from its meaning. How can one: change these things in an existing job, or compensate for them? find other work that avoids these and connects with the final end user? Job designs tend to focus on the job content and technical requirements rather than how the job aims to fulfil end user needs, is meaningful.

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  • Game programming : C# or C++?

    - by Chronix
    Ok so the faq says : "What language should I learn next? (Unless you have a specific requirement and don't know which language meets that requirement.)" so I guess this is not against the rules of questions. So, I've decided what I really want is to do Game Programming. So the question is, as a 18 years old who wants to learn self taught programming, what is the most suited programming language between C# and C++? ( I should state that I don't care about unix because I believe windows will be still the most used os ) I know the basics of C++, but none about C#. I know that C++ has more tutorials guides, dlls and stuff like that, while C# doesn't, but it's far easier to learn and to use for a single person to develop a program, but I've read even if the program is obfuscated it's easy to get the source of it. Well, I kinda want to focus on basic a lot first, I must say that I have a preference for C++ just because it feels more suitable to me, but I must consider that I work alone.. So even if I like it, it may not be the best thing to do. I am really not sure of which one to go for, i've read a lot of threads on various websites and it looks like C# is becoming more popular than C++. But yeah, that said, I also specified I want to do Game Programming. So I need to know some better points than just "C# is easier because of .net memory handling while C++ isnt" because I couldn't just find it. I hope the thread won't be closed because I've read the faq and I have a specific requirement. Thank you, and if you need more details you're free to ask me, but I think just by saying game programming and that I'd work alone should be enough!

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  • How to do integrated testing?

    - by Enthusiastic Programmer
    So I have been reading up on a lot of books surrounding testing. But all the books I've read have the same flaws. They will all tell you the definitions of testing. But I have not found a single book that will guide you into integration testing (or pretty much anything higher then unit testing). Is integration testing that elusive or am I reading the wrong books? I'm a hands on person, so I would appreciate it if someone could help me with a simple program: Let's say you need to make some sort of calculation program that calculates something (doesn't matter what) and exports it to *.txt file. Let's assume we use the Model View Controller design principle. And one class for the actual calculating which you'll use in the model and one for writing the textfile. So: View = Controller = Model = CalculationClass, FileClass So for unittesting: You'd test the calculationClass, I'd personally focus most of my unit tests there. And less time on unit testing the view/controller/FileClass. I personally wouldn't see the use of unittesting those unless you want a really robust program. Integration testing: Now this is where I run into a wall. What would I have to test to call it an integration test? I could stub the view and feed the controller data which it would pass on to the model and so forth. And then check what the view gets back in the end. But ... Couldn't I just run the (in this case small) program then and test it manually? Would this be considered a integration test too, or does it have to be automated? Also, can I check multiple items to see if they are correct? I cannot seem to find any book that offers a hands on approach to methods of integration testing.

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  • Why don't windows of the same application behave as they should in Oneiric?

    - by Yuttadhammo
    Somewhere along the upgrade path, Unity has developed some strange logic behind window layering. First, before Oneiric, there was a way to see all the windows of an application - I think it was when you click on the icon in the launcher. Now, clicking on the icon often does nothing. Suppose I have two terminals open, one behind this Firefox window, and one in front of it. Clicking on the launcher does nothing - the only way to find the second terminal, afaics, is to move the Firefox window or use the task switcher (which has a whole slew of problems of its own). Secondly, once I have both terminals on top, then I decide to close one of them, suddenly they both disappear (the second one, for some reason, has gone into hiding behind the Firefox window). Third (though I can't pin it down now), sometimes when a window is on top, focus is still on a window in back; I click on the top x to close the window in front, only to find I've closed an important window in the back. I can't really believe these are bugs, since they seem too obvious to not have been fixed by now. My question is, am I missing something? Some compiz option I can set to make it act like it used to? Or is this really how Unity is supposed to act?

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  • Complex, yet simple crafting system model

    - by KatShot
    I'm working on some arcade shooter/slasher, and the main logline is "Kick'em with everything you want". There's not so many enemies in GDD, main focus is on tons of weapons and gadgets to cause mayhem. To get weapon, you need to craft it, and now crafting system looks simple, like: 1) You got three slots for weapon parts (like A, B, C) 2) You collect misc weapon parts, and when you got atleast one for every slot, you can craft a weapon (for example, if you got A1, B1, B2, B3 and C1, you can craft such models - A1B1C1, A1B2C1, A1B3C1) As for me, this crafting system is too simple, because weapon parts will just fall from the top of screen, often enough. That's why I'm thinking about adding some more crafting system levels, like resources (collect 10 scrap pieces to make part A1 or C3), etc. My question is: How can i add some more complex, still simple, transparent levels in crafting system? upd. For example, in Minecraft or Terraria, first 5-10 crafting recipies quite transparent and simple IMHO. But then it turns into huge mess to understand, how to craft this or that (for example, fishing rod)

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  • How to progress far enough in a year [on hold]

    - by xCasper
    So I came to a realization the other day, I graduate in a year. I will have completed my four year degree in about two and a half (I went to a school that goes full time year round). Anyway, I want to get a job, as a programmer, when I graduate. The problem is, I feel like I am no where near ready. In the last year I cant say I have made any spectacular projects. I know that my advanced programming courses are coming up, but by the time I take them, I will be graduating in 6 months. Not nearly enough time to really take what I learn, apply it, and create something to show for myself. I want to push myself ahead of the game; mainly because my major is Computer Information Systems, so the focus is not programming. In fact, I only get, 4 programming classes. Before anyone says anything, CIS is the closest to a programming major at my school that I am able to do. So the questions come down to this: 1) What can I do to really step up the speed at which I progress (on my own) 2) Should I be aiming for a certain amount of projects in my "Portfolio." 2a) Should they be big projects? P.S: The language we have used in school in c++, I do take a Java class in the spring, and .net over Summer; if any of that matters for anything.

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  • Programmatically closing a dialog box - win32 [migrated]

    - by user1697579
    I'm working on an application to detect a pop-up dialog and then automatically dismiss it. I'm writing this as a C++/Win32 app. The dialog box is generated by IE 7 and I can detect the window, but several methods to get the OK button to "click" have failed. Doing searches for other people's solutions, sending these messages to the button handle seems to have worked in a lot of situations: PostMessage( handle, WM_LBUTTONDOWN, 0, 0 ); PostMessage( handle, WM_LBUTTONUP, 0, 0 ); PostMessage( handle, BM_SETSTATE, 1, 0 ); It has no effect on the button state in my tests though. I can send tab characters to the main window and see that the OK button gets focus, but then sending return characters does nothing. To learn more about this I used Spy++ to get information about the window hierarchy and what messages are delievered when I manually click the OK button. Looking at the message log and reading about WM_MOUSEACTIVATE seamed to offer a solution. The log info shows that 0002166C was the button window. So in my code I tried this: GetClassNameA( handle, str, str_size ); if( strcmp( str, "Internet Explorer_Server" ) != 0 ) return TRUE; // Not the window we're interested in. // Send a message to activate the button window and have it process a mouse click. PostMessage( handle, WM_MOUSEACTIVATE, (WPARAM) dialog_handle, MAKELPARAM( HTCLIENT, WM_LBUTTONDOWN ); Based on the window hierarchy and message log, I think the window with the class name "Internet Explorer_Server" is the button. Maybe I'm wrong, because it does seem like an odd class name for a button... Below is a link to the window hierarchy image, message log when I manually click the OK button. Last is the code that's executed on a 1 second timer ticket, looking for the window. Any insight and help is appreciated! Image of the window hierarchy, source, window messages, and test dialog source are available here: https://sites.google.com/site/matthewmillersmiscellanea/Home/

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  • Overlapping text on top menu in Unity 12.04

    - by mercury
    So I'm new to Linux but am basically blown away by Ubuntu 12.04 and could definitely see this becoming my main desktop over time One small annoyance for me is a tendency for the global menu on the top bar to partially over-write the text description of the active window in the top panel. e.g. I focus on the "Ubuntu Software Centre" window which writes out that label in the leftmost corner of the top menu bar. If I then move the cursor up to the top menu bar to access the "file menu", this will partially overwrite the window name leaving just "Ubuntu" visible. This is a little slice of ugliness I don't want to see every day! Much easier on the eye for me would be to display the active window name at the centre of the top panel, using some of that free space and then have the global menu stay where it is, just to the right of the app launcher. I've found a solution to disable the global menu but I would prefer to keep it and instead move (or disable) the active window name in the top panel. Any way to do this?

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  • When and how does one become a good programmer these days? [closed]

    - by YoungMoney
    I mean, good enough to make software people want and get paid for it. Maybe even good enough to launch a company or something. I'm also concerned that I'm not applying the finer points of my algorithms/data structures/software design knowledge. Background: I'm 20 and have been struggling with programming for about two years now, trying to become a software engineer. I started with a few university courses that I did quite poorly in. I learned how to make websites with HTML/JavaScript and PHP/MySQL, but feel like I know very relevant theory for making good databases - how does something like Facebook serve hundreds of millions of people? What would be smart ways to store data? I don't know. Now I'm doing some android application development, but again I have no idea about good Java design theory (I use static variables like they're going out of fashion) and feel more like I'm gluing stuff together and letting Eclipse slowly autocomplete my project. In short, I'm not sure if I'm becoming a legitimate software developer or just "doing what's cool". At least I've taken some data structures and Algorithms courses and plan to take more in the next years. But I'm having a really tough time applying this stuff to my fun little apps that I'm building. Every language higher level than C++ seems to have its own quicksort function already built-in, for example. Similarly, I can't remember ever needing to implement a linked-list, heap, binary tree, or or worry about pointers and memory management. But maybe this is a good thing so that I focus on other things? I'm not too sure what those other things are though. Hopefully something more than building another photo sharing app. Anyways that's it for me, I look forward to your responses!

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  • Should developers do their own software releases (if there is a prod support team in place)?

    - by leora
    I know there are going to always be differences depending on the particular size, staff etc, but i wanted to get feedback in general around: In an environment where you have a production support team doing first line support and release management, is it better to simply have developers manage their own releases instead? In this case, its internal software at an insurance company but the question should be valid at any company, size, etc I think. Currently, we have our production team do releases but there is an argument that its inefficient and that if you allowed developers the ability to do it, they will focus more on making it simple and efficient and avoid basically passing on scripts, etc to run to another team. The counter argument is that if you don't have a check and balance, you could get a software team (or an individual) that doesn't a very hacky job about getting their software out there (making on the fly changes, not documenting the process, etc) and that by forcing the prod support team to do the actual release, it enforces consistency and proper checks and balances. I know this is not a black or white issue but I wanted to see what folks thought on this so the discipline and consistency is there but without the feeling that an inefficient process is in place.

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  • MySQL December Webinars

    - by Bertrand Matthelié
    We'll be running 3 webinars next week and hope many of you will be able to join us: MySQL Replication: Simplifying Scaling and HA with GTIDs Wednesday, December 12, at 15.00 Central European TimeJoin the MySQL replication developers for a deep dive into the design and implementation of Global Transaction Identifiers (GTIDs) and how they enable users to simplify MySQL scaling and HA. GTIDs are one of the most significant new replication capabilities in MySQL 5.6, making it simple to track and compare replication progress between the master and slave servers. Register Now MySQL 5.6: Building the Next Generation of Web/Cloud/SaaS/Embedded Applications and Services Thursday, December 13, at 9.00 am Pacific Time As the world's most popular web database, MySQL has quickly become the leading cloud database, with most providers offering MySQL-based services. Indeed, built to deliver web-based applications and to scale out, MySQL's architecture and features make the database a great fit to deliver cloud-based applications. In this webinar we will focus on the improvements in MySQL 5.6 performance, scalability, and availability designed to enable DBA and developer agility in building the next generation of web-based applications. Register Now Getting the Best MySQL Performance in Your Products: Part IV, Partitioning Friday, December 14, at 9.00 am Pacific Time We're adding Partitioning to our extremely popular "Getting the Best MySQL Performance in Your Products" webinar series. Partitioning can greatly increase the performance of your queries, especially when doing full table scans over large tables. Partitioning is also an excellent way to manage very large tables. It's one of the best ways to build higher performance into your product's embedded or bundled MySQL, and particularly for hardware-constrained appliances and devices. Register Now We have live Q&A during all webinars so you'll get the opportunity to ask your questions!

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  • If the bug is 5+ years old, then is it a feature?

    - by Job
    Allow me to add details: I work at an institutional place with many coders, testers, QA analysts, product owners, etc. and here is something that bugs me: We have been able to sell crappy (albeit pretty functional) software for over a decade. It has many features and the product is competitive, but there are a some serious bugs out there, as well as thousands of "paper cuts" - little annoyances that clients need to get used to. It pains me to look at some of the things because I firmly believe that if computers do not help to make our lives easier, then we should not use them. I have confidence in my colleagues - they are smart, able, and can improve things when the focus is on doing that. But, it can be difficult to file bugs against some old functionality without seeing them closed or forgotten. "It worked like that for ions" is a typical answer. Also, when QA does regression, they tend to look for anything that is different as much as anything that does not seem right. So, a fix to an old problem can be written up as a bug, because "it has been like that before even my time". The young coder in me thinks: rewrite this freaking thing! As someone who had the opportunity to be close to sales, clients, I want to give a benefit of a doubt to this approach. I am interested in your opinion/experience as well. Please try to consider risk, cost-to-benefit, and other non-technical factors.

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  • Why is the camera not following the player? [on hold]

    - by Homer_Simpson
    I use the following code to create Parallax Scrolling: http://www.david-gouveia.com/portfolio/2d-camera-with-parallax-scrolling-in-xna/ Parallax Scrolling is working but I don't know how to focus the camera on the player. If the player moves, then the camera doesn't follow the player. The player leaves the screen when I'm moving it. I use the following code(as described in the tutorial), but it's not working: // Updates my camera to lock on the character _camera.LookAt(player.Playerposition); What can I do so that the player is always in the center of the screen/camera? My player class: public class Player { Texture2D Playertex; public Vector2 Playerposition = new Vector2(400, 240); private Game1 game1; public Player(Game1 game) { game1 = game; } public void Load(ContentManager content) { Playertex = content.Load<Texture2D>("8bitmario"); TouchPanel.EnabledGestures = GestureType.HorizontalDrag; } public void Update(GameTime gameTime) { while (TouchPanel.IsGestureAvailable) { GestureSample gs = TouchPanel.ReadGesture(); switch (gs.GestureType) { case GestureType.HorizontalDrag: Playerposition.X += 3f; break; } } } public void Render(SpriteBatch batch) { batch.Draw(Playertex, new Vector2(Playerposition.X - Playertex.Width / 2, Playerposition.Y - Playertex.Height / 2), Color.White); } } In Game1, I update the player and camera class: protected override void Update(GameTime gameTime) { // Updates my character's position player.Update(gameTime); // Updates my camera to lock on the character _camera.LookAt(player.Playerposition); base.Update(gameTime); } protected override void Draw(GameTime gameTime) { GraphicsDevice.Clear(Color.CornflowerBlue); foreach (Layer layer in _layers) layer.Draw(spriteBatch); spriteBatch.Begin(SpriteSortMode.Deferred, null, null, null, null, null, _camera.GetViewMatrix(new Vector2(0.0f, 0.0f))); player.Render(spriteBatch); spriteBatch.End(); base.Draw(gameTime); }

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  • Arguments for discouraging satellite sites?

    - by Jjdelc
    I am working with a client who's read about satellite sites on a SEP book and has been building hundreds of keyword reach domains (buytoyotacorona1989cheap.com, brandnewsuvinred.com) with specific content about such domains. They all link to a main domain (CompanyName.com) where most of the information is either repeated(from other sites) or new. I told him to drop all the other domains and only focus on building good content for the main site as it is too difficult to maintain so many websites, plus they might look like link farms to Google. He told me to make a Google search for "Buy Toyota cheap " and two of his websites were listed among top 10. So it's seem to be doing some good, but I get the feeling that what he is doing is wrong. What other arguments are there to discourage this practice? or is he doing the right thing? My arguments have helped him to decide go down from hundreds to close to one hundred (because cost of maintainance) but I believe he should only have one or two sites. PS: The business is not actually about cars.

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  • Parallelism in .NET – Part 15, Making Tasks Run: The TaskScheduler

    - by Reed
    In my introduction to the Task class, I specifically made mention that the Task class does not directly provide it’s own execution.  In addition, I made a strong point that the Task class itself is not directly related to threads or multithreading.  Rather, the Task class is used to implement our decomposition of tasks.  Once we’ve implemented our tasks, we need to execute them.  In the Task Parallel Library, the execution of Tasks is handled via an instance of the TaskScheduler class. The TaskScheduler class is an abstract class which provides a single function: it schedules the tasks and executes them within an appropriate context.  This class is the class which actually runs individual Task instances.  The .NET Framework provides two (internal) implementations of the TaskScheduler class. Since a Task, based on our decomposition, should be a self-contained piece of code, parallel execution makes sense when executing tasks.  The default implementation of the TaskScheduler class, and the one most often used, is based on the ThreadPool.  This can be retrieved via the TaskScheduler.Default property, and is, by default, what is used when we just start a Task instance with Task.Start(). Normally, when a Task is started by the default TaskScheduler, the task will be treated as a single work item, and run on a ThreadPool thread.  This pools tasks, and provides Task instances all of the advantages of the ThreadPool, including thread pooling for reduced resource usage, and an upper cap on the number of work items.  In addition, .NET 4 brings us a much improved thread pool, providing work stealing and reduced locking within the thread pool queues.  By using the default TaskScheduler, our Tasks are run asynchronously on the ThreadPool. There is one notable exception to my above statements when using the default TaskScheduler.  If a Task is created with the TaskCreationOptions set to TaskCreationOptions.LongRunning, the default TaskScheduler will generate a new thread for that Task, at least in the current implementation.  This is useful for Tasks which will persist for most of the lifetime of your application, since it prevents your Task from starving the ThreadPool of one of it’s work threads. The Task Parallel Library provides one other implementation of the TaskScheduler class.  In addition to providing a way to schedule tasks on the ThreadPool, the framework allows you to create a TaskScheduler which works within a specified SynchronizationContext.  This scheduler can be retrieved within a thread that provides a valid SynchronizationContext by calling the TaskScheduler.FromCurrentSynchronizationContext() method. This implementation of TaskScheduler is intended for use with user interface development.  Windows Forms and Windows Presentation Foundation both require any access to user interface controls to occur on the same thread that created the control.  For example, if you want to set the text within a Windows Forms TextBox, and you’re working on a background thread, that UI call must be marshaled back onto the UI thread.  The most common way this is handled depends on the framework being used.  In Windows Forms, Control.Invoke or Control.BeginInvoke is most often used.  In WPF, the equivelent calls are Dispatcher.Invoke or Dispatcher.BeginInvoke. As an example, say we’re working on a background thread, and we want to update a TextBlock in our user interface with a status label.  The code would typically look something like: // Within background thread work... string status = GetUpdatedStatus(); Dispatcher.BeginInvoke(DispatcherPriority.Normal, new Action( () => { statusLabel.Text = status; })); // Continue on in background method .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } This works fine, but forces your method to take a dependency on WPF or Windows Forms.  There is an alternative option, however.  Both Windows Forms and WPF, when initialized, setup a SynchronizationContext in their thread, which is available on the UI thread via the SynchronizationContext.Current property.  This context is used by classes such as BackgroundWorker to marshal calls back onto the UI thread in a framework-agnostic manner. The Task Parallel Library provides the same functionality via the TaskScheduler.FromCurrentSynchronizationContext() method.  When setting up our Tasks, as long as we’re working on the UI thread, we can construct a TaskScheduler via: TaskScheduler uiScheduler = TaskScheduler.FromCurrentSynchronizationContext(); We then can use this scheduler on any thread to marshal data back onto the UI thread.  For example, our code above can then be rewritten as: string status = GetUpdatedStatus(); (new Task(() => { statusLabel.Text = status; })) .Start(uiScheduler); // Continue on in background method This is nice since it allows us to write code that isn’t tied to Windows Forms or WPF, but is still fully functional with those technologies.  I’ll discuss even more uses for the SynchronizationContext based TaskScheduler when I demonstrate task continuations, but even without continuations, this is a very useful construct. In addition to the two implementations provided by the Task Parallel Library, it is possible to implement your own TaskScheduler.  The ParallelExtensionsExtras project within the Samples for Parallel Programming provides nine sample TaskScheduler implementations.  These include schedulers which restrict the maximum number of concurrent tasks, run tasks on a single threaded apartment thread, use a new thread per task, and more.

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  • A Look Back at 2010 Predictions

    - by David Dorf
    Now is the time of year people make their predictions for next year, but before I start thinking about 2011 it's worth a look back to see how my predictions for 2010 fared. 1. Borders and Blockbuster bite the dust. I would have never predicted a strong brand such as Circuit City could die, but now I know it can happen to anyone. Borders has lost the battle with Barnes & Noble and Blockbuster has lost to Netflix. And just to be sure, Amazon put an extra nail in each coffin. Borders received additional investment from Bennett LeBow to keep it afloat, but the stock is down around $1.25 with no profits in sight. Blockbuster filed for bankruptcy back in September. 2. Every retailer finally has a page on Facebook... but very few figure out how to keep fans engaged. Retailer postings become noise, and fans start to unsubscribe. Twitter goes in the same direction. A few standout retailers will figure out how to use social media, and the rest will remain dumbfounded. Most retailers are on the Facebook bandwagon, and their fan bases seem to be increasing thanks to promotions like The Gap's logo redesign, Lowes' black Friday sneak peak, and Walmart's Crowd Savers. There are several examples of f-commerce advancements, including some interesting integrations from Amazon.3. Smartphones consolidate and grow. More and more people will step-up to smartphones, most of which will choose iPhone, Blackberry, and Android phones. Other smartphones will vanish, and networks will start to strain. But retailers will finally embrace mobile as the next big channel. Retail marketing departments will build mobile apps without the help of their IT department, and eventually they will get into a bind. Android has been on a tear lately stealing market share from Blackberry. Palm and Microsoft are trending down, and Apple is holding steady. Smartphone sales are up 15% and expected to continue. Retailers understand the importance of mobile, and some innovative applications have been produced this year. 4. Google helps the little guys. Google will push its Favorite Places project to help give exposure to small retailers and restaurants. They will enable small retailers to act like big ones by providing storefronts, detailed product information, and coupons for consumers. Google will find a way to bring augmented reality to the masses. I can't say I've seen much new from Google regarding Favorite Places, but they've continued to push local product search. From the PC or smartphone, consumers can search for products and see which nearby stores have it stock. Oracle Retail even productized an integration to Google to support this effort. I suppose if Google ever buys Groupon then it will bring them even closer to local shopping. Google talked about augmented humanity, but that has nothing to do with augmented reality. 5. Steve Jobs Is Bugs Bunny and Steve Ballmer is Elmer Fudd. (OK, I stole that headline from an InformationWeek article. I couldn't resist.) Both Apple and Microsoft will continue to open new stores, but only Apple will show real growth. POSReady 2009 (formerly WEPOS) will continue to share the POS market with Linux. The iPhone and iPod will continue to capture market share, but there won't be an Apple tablet. There won't be an Apple tablet? What was I thinking? While Apple has well over 300 stores, there are less than 10 Microsoft stores. Initial impressions show that even though Microsoft is locating its store near Apple Stores, they are not converting customers, with shoppers citing a lack of assortment and high prices. 6. Consolidation of e-commerce software providers. Software vendors in the areas of search, reviews, online call-centers, payments, and e-commerce will consolidate, partly driven by the success of m-commerce and SaaS. Amazon will find someone else to buy, and eBay will continue to lose momentum. Consolidation of e-commerce providers continued with IBM acquiring Sterling Commerce and CoreMetrics, and Oracle recently announcing the acquisition of ATG. Amazon grabbed Zappos, Woot, and Diapers.com to continue its dominance of online selling. While eBay's Marketplace growth may have slowed, its PayPal division is doing quite well, fueled in part by demand for mobile payments. 7. Book publishers mirror music labels. Just as the iPod brought digital downloads to the masses, the Kindle and Nook will power the e-book revolution. Books will continue to use DRM for a few more years before following the path of music. Publishers will try to preserve the margins of hardbacks by associating e-book releases with paperbacks. Amazon has done a good job providing e-reader clients for smartphones, PCs, and tablets. Competition from Barnes & Noble has forced Amazon to support book loaning, and both companies are making it easier for people to publish ebooks (with or without DRM). Progress is slow but steady. 8. NFC makes inroads, RFID treads water. Near Field Communications start to appear in mobile phones, and retailers beta test its use for payments and loyalty programs. RFID tag costs come down a bit, but not enough to spur accelerated adoption.Nokia announced plans to offer NFC-enabled phones in 2011, and rumors are swirling about NFC in the upcoming iPhone.  I think NFC is heading in the right direction, and I've heard more interest from retailers about specialized uses for RFID.9. Digital Signage goes the way of augmented reality. People use their camera phones to leave geo-tagged notes all over cities, rating stores and restaurants, and "painting" graffiti. But people get tired of holding their phones in front of their faces, so AR glasses are offered in much the same way bluetooth headsets emerged. Retailers experiement with in-store advertising using AR. Several retailers like Pizza Hut, Benetton, and Target have experimented with AR but its still somewhat of a gimmick used by marketing.  I think this prediction is a year or two too early. 10. JDA flip-flops again. After announcing their embracing of the .Net architecture, then switching to J2EE after the Manugistics acquisition, JDA will finally decide to standardize on Apple's Objective C. Everything will be ported to the iPhone and be available on the AppStore. After all, there's not much left to try. This was, of course, a joke but the sentiment is still valid.  JDA seems more supply-chain focused than retail focused, which is a an outcrop if their i2 acquisition.  Of the 10 predictions, I'm going to say I got 6 somewhat correct.  (Don't you just love grading your own paper?)  Soon I'll post my predictions for 2011 so be on the lookout.  Until then here's one more prediction:  Va Tech beats Stanford in the Orange Bowl -- count on it!

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  • Need help in filtering the data with various condition and filling in scroll window GP

    - by Rahul
    Hi all, I am filtering the data and displaying in scroll window. There are many combination to display this data by customer id, customer id and itemnumber, customer id, itemnumber, work and history condition. And from date and To date condition. My query is when I am selecting the customer id and work or history table it should display the corresponding data. Like select * from price history where customerid=’custid’ and name=’Work’. It should display in scroll only these values none other it the same way history condition should work. Work and History are in check box. In my case whatever range I am selecting whether Work and History always loading with entire data, so it’s not filtering properly. My second problem is if I select from date and keep empty to date …in this case all the data should display from selected from date to end of table data. But I am not getting….pls somebody help me here is my entire coding: if empty('Customer Number') then warning "Select Customer ID"; focus 'Customer Number'; abort script; end if; if '(L) RadioGroup4' of window Window1 of form 'Customer Pricing Inquiry'=1 then if empty(Date) then abort script; focus Date; end if; end if; if not empty('(L) Date') then if '(L) Date' {if not empty(Date) and empty('(L) Date') then warning"Please enter To Date"; focus field '(L) Date'; abort script; end if;} range clear table Display_Pricing_Temp; clear field 'Customer Number' of table Display_Pricing_Temp; range start table Display_Pricing_Temp; fill field 'Customer Number' of table Display_Pricing_Temp; range end table Display_Pricing_Temp; remove range table Display_Pricing_Temp; range clear table Display_Pricing; if '(L) Checkbox0' =true and '(L) Checkbox2'=true and empty('Item Code' of window Window1 of form 'Customer Pricing Inquiry') and str(Date of window Window1 of form 'Customer Pricing Inquiry')="0/0/0000" then {range clear table Display_Pricing;} range table Display_Pricing where physicalname('Customer Number' of table Display_Pricing) + "= '" + str('Customer Number' of window Window1) + "' and ("+ physicalname(Name of table Display_Pricing)+ "='History' or "+ physicalname(Name of table Display_Pricing)+ "='Work')"; {range clear table Display_Pricing;} end if; if '(L) Checkbox0' =true or '(L) Checkbox2'=true then {{Only Item No is there} if not empty('Item Code') and '(L) Checkbox0' =false and '(L) Checkbox2'=false and str('(L) Date')="0/0/0000" then range table Display_Pricing where physicalname('Customer Number' of table Display_Pricing) + "= '" + str('Customer Number' of window Window1) + "' and "+ physicalname('Item Number' of table Display_Pricing)+ "='"+ str('Item Code')+"'"; end if; } if empty('(L) Date') and not empty(Date) then {date work hist item} if not empty('Item Code') and '(L) Checkbox0' =true and '(L) Checkbox2'=true and str(Date)<"0/0/0000" then range clear table Display_Pricing; range table Display_Pricing where physicalname('Customer Number' of table Display_Pricing) + "= '" + str('Customer Number' of window Window1) + "' and "+ physicalname('Item Number' of table Display_Pricing)+ "='"+ str('Item Code')+"' and ("+ physicalname(Name of table Display_Pricing)+ "='Work' or " +physicalname(Name of table Display_Pricing)+ "='History')and convert(datetime,convert(varchar(20)," +physicalname(Date of table Display_Pricing)+"),102) convert(datetime,convert(varchar(20),'"+ str(Date of window Window1 of form 'Customer Pricing Inquiry')+ "'),102)" ; range clear table Display_Pricing; end if; {date work hist } if empty('Item Code') and '(L) Checkbox0' =true and '(L) Checkbox2'=true and str(Date)<"0/0/0000" then range clear table Display_Pricing; range table Display_Pricing where physicalname('Customer Number' of table Display_Pricing) + "= '" + str('Customer Number' of window Window1) + "' and ("+ physicalname(Name of table Display_Pricing)+ "='Work' or " +physicalname(Name of table Display_Pricing)+ "='History')and convert(datetime,convert(varchar(20)," +physicalname(Date of table Display_Pricing)+"),102) convert(datetime,convert(varchar(20),'"+ str(Date of window Window1 of form 'Customer Pricing Inquiry')+ "'),102)" ; range clear table Display_Pricing; end if; {date,work,item code} if not empty('Item Code') and '(L) Checkbox0' =true and '(L) Checkbox2'=false and str(Date)<"0/0/0000" then range clear table Display_Pricing; range table Display_Pricing where physicalname('Customer Number' of table Display_Pricing) + "= '" + str('Customer Number' of window Window1) + "' and "+ physicalname('Item Number' of table Display_Pricing)+ "='"+ str('Item Code')+"' and "+ physicalname(Name of table Display_Pricing)+ "='Work' and convert(datetime,convert(varchar(20)," +physicalname(Date of table Display_Pricing)+"),102) convert(datetime,convert(varchar(20),'"+ str(Date of window Window1 of form 'Customer Pricing Inquiry')+ "'),102)" ; range clear table Display_Pricing; end if; {date history item code} if not empty('Item Code') and '(L) Checkbox0' =false and '(L) Checkbox2'=true and str(Date)<"0/0/0000" then range clear table Display_Pricing; range table Display_Pricing where physicalname('Customer Number' of table Display_Pricing) + "= '" + str('Customer Number' of window Window1) + "' and "+ physicalname('Item Number' of table Display_Pricing)+ "='"+ str('Item Code')+"' and "+ physicalname(Name of table Display_Pricing)+ "='History' and convert(datetime,convert(varchar(20)," +physicalname(Date of table Display_Pricing)+"),102) convert(datetime,convert(varchar(20),'"+ str(Date of window Window1 of form 'Customer Pricing Inquiry')+ "'),102)" ; range clear table Display_Pricing; end if; {date,work} if empty('Item Code') and '(L) Checkbox0' =true and '(L) Checkbox2'=false and not empty(Date) then range clear table Display_Pricing; range table Display_Pricing where physicalname('Customer Number' of table Display_Pricing) + "= '" + str('Customer Number' of window Window1) + "' and "+ physicalname(Name of table Display_Pricing)+ "='Work' and convert(datetime,convert(varchar(20)," +physicalname(Date of table Display_Pricing)+"),102) convert(datetime,convert(varchar(20),'"+ str(Date of window Window1 of form 'Customer Pricing Inquiry')+ "'),102) "; range clear table Display_Pricing; end if; {date history } if empty('Item Code') and '(L) Checkbox0' =false and '(L) Checkbox2'=true and str(Date)<"0/0/0000" then range clear table Display_Pricing; range table Display_Pricing where physicalname('Customer Number' of table Display_Pricing) + "= '" + str('Customer Number' of window Window1) + "' and "+ physicalname(Name of table Display_Pricing)+ "='History' and convert(datetime,convert(varchar(20)," +physicalname(Date of table Display_Pricing)+"),102) convert(datetime,convert(varchar(20),'"+ str(Date of window Window1 of form 'Customer Pricing Inquiry')+ "'),102)" ; range clear table Display_Pricing; end if; end if; if not empty('(L) Date') and not empty(Date) then {Only Item No is there and work} if not empty('Item Code') and '(L) Checkbox0' =true and '(L) Checkbox2'=false and str(Date)="0/0/0000" then range clear table Display_Pricing; range table Display_Pricing where physicalname('Customer Number' of table Display_Pricing) + "= '" + str('Customer Number' of window Window1) + "' and "+ physicalname('Item Number' of table Display_Pricing)+ "='"+ str('Item Code')+"' and "+ physicalname(Name of table Display_Pricing)+ "='Work'"; range clear table Display_Pricing; end if; if not empty('Item Code') and '(L) Checkbox0' =true and '(L) Checkbox2'=true and str(Date)="0/0/0000" then range clear table Display_Pricing; range table Display_Pricing where physicalname('Customer Number' of table Display_Pricing) + "= '" + str('Customer Number' of window Window1) + "' and "+ physicalname('Item Number' of table Display_Pricing)+ "='"+ str('Item Code')+"' and ("+ physicalname(Name of table Display_Pricing)+ "='Work' or " +physicalname(Name of table Display_Pricing)+ "='History')"; range clear table Display_Pricing; end if; {date work hist item} if not empty('Item Code') and '(L) Checkbox0' =true and '(L) Checkbox2'=true and str(Date)<"0/0/0000" then range clear table Display_Pricing; range table Display_Pricing where physicalname('Customer Number' of table Display_Pricing) + "= '" + str('Customer Number' of window Window1) + "' and "+ physicalname('Item Number' of table Display_Pricing)+ "='"+ str('Item Code')+"' and ("+ physicalname(Name of table Display_Pricing)+ "='Work' or " +physicalname(Name of table Display_Pricing)+ "='History')and convert(datetime,convert(varchar(20)," +physicalname(Date of table Display_Pricing)+"),102) between convert(datetime,convert(varchar(20),'"+ str(Date of window Window1 of form 'Customer Pricing Inquiry')+ "'),102) and convert(datetime,convert(varchar(20),'"+ str('(L) Date' of window Window1 of form 'Customer Pricing Inquiry') +"'),102)"; range clear table Display_Pricing; end if; {date work hist } if empty('Item Code') and '(L) Checkbox0' =true and '(L) Checkbox2'=true and str(Date)<"0/0/0000" then range clear table Display_Pricing; range table Display_Pricing where physicalname('Customer Number' of table Display_Pricing) + "= '" + str('Customer Number' of window Window1) + "' and ("+ physicalname(Name of table Display_Pricing)+ "='Work' or " +physicalname(Name of table Display_Pricing)+ "='History')and convert(datetime,convert(varchar(20)," +physicalname(Date of table Display_Pricing)+"),102) between convert(datetime,convert(varchar(20),'"+ str(Date of window Window1 of form 'Customer Pricing Inquiry')+ "'),102) and convert(datetime,convert(varchar(20),'"+ str('(L) Date' of window Window1 of form 'Customer Pricing Inquiry') +"'),102)"; range clear table Display_Pricing; end if; {date,work,item code} if not empty('Item Code') and '(L) Checkbox0' =true and '(L) Checkbox2'=false and str(Date)<"0/0/0000" then range clear table Display_Pricing; range table Display_Pricing where physicalname('Customer Number' of table Display_Pricing) + "= '" + str('Customer Number' of window Window1) + "' and "+ physicalname('Item Number' of table Display_Pricing)+ "='"+ str('Item Code')+"' and "+ physicalname(Name of table Display_Pricing)+ "='Work' and convert(datetime,convert(varchar(20)," +physicalname(Date of table Display_Pricing)+"),102) between convert(datetime,convert(varchar(20),'"+ str(Date of window Window1 of form 'Customer Pricing Inquiry')+ "'),102) and convert(datetime,convert(varchar(20),'"+ str('(L) Date' of window Window1 of form 'Customer Pricing Inquiry') +"'),102)"; range clear table Display_Pricing; end if; {date history item code} if not empty('Item Code') and '(L) Checkbox0' =false and '(L) Checkbox2'=true and str(Date)<"0/0/0000" then range clear table Display_Pricing; range table Display_Pricing where physicalname('Customer Number' of table Display_Pricing) + "= '" + str('Customer Number' of window Window1) + "' and "+ physicalname('Item Number' of table Display_Pricing)+ "='"+ str('Item Code')+"' and "+ physicalname(Name of table Display_Pricing)+ "='History' and convert(datetime,convert(varchar(20)," +physicalname(Date of table Display_Pricing)+"),102) between convert(datetime,convert(varchar(20),'"+ str(Date of window Window1 of form 'Customer Pricing Inquiry')+ "'),102) and convert(datetime,convert(varchar(20),'"+ str('(L) Date' of window Window1 of form 'Customer Pricing Inquiry') +"'),102)"; range clear table Display_Pricing; end if; {date work} {date,work} if empty('Item Code') and '(L) Checkbox0' =true and '(L) Checkbox2'=false and not empty(Date) then range clear table Display_Pricing; range table Display_Pricing where physicalname('Customer Number' of table Display_Pricing) + "= '" + str('Customer Number' of window Window1) + "' and "+ physicalname(Name of table Display_Pricing)+ "='Work' and convert(datetime,convert(varchar(20)," +physicalname(Date of table Display_Pricing)+"),102) between convert(datetime,convert(varchar(20),'"+ str(Date of window Window1 of form 'Customer Pricing Inquiry')+ "'),102) and convert(datetime,convert(varchar(20),'"+ str('(L) Date' of window Window1 of form 'Customer Pricing Inquiry') +"'),102)"; range clear table Display_Pricing; end if; {date history } if empty('Item Code') and '(L) Checkbox0' =false and '(L) Checkbox2'=true and str(Date)<"0/0/0000" then range clear table Display_Pricing; range table Display_Pricing where physicalname('Customer Number' of table Display_Pricing) + "= '" + str('Customer Number' of window Window1) + "' and "+ physicalname(Name of table Display_Pricing)+ "='History' and convert(datetime,convert(varchar(20)," +physicalname(Date of table Display_Pricing)+"),102) between convert(datetime,convert(varchar(20),'"+ str(Date of window Window1 of form 'Customer Pricing Inquiry')+ "'),102) and convert(datetime,convert(varchar(20),'"+ str('(L) Date' of window Window1 of form 'Customer Pricing Inquiry') +"'),102)"; range clear table Display_Pricing; end if; end if; {Only Item No is there and hist} if not empty('Item Code') and '(L) Checkbox0' =false and '(L) Checkbox2'=true and str(Date)="0/0/0000" then range clear table Display_Pricing; range table Display_Pricing where physicalname('Customer Number' of table Display_Pricing) + "= '" + str('Customer Number' of window Window1) + "' and "+ physicalname('Item Number' of table Display_Pricing)+ "='"+ str('Item Code')+"' and "+ physicalname(Name of table Display_Pricing)+ "='History'"; range clear table Display_Pricing; end if; {for only work table } if empty('Item Code') and '(L) Checkbox0' =true and '(L) Checkbox2'=false and str(Date)="0/0/0000" then range clear table Display_Pricing; range table Display_Pricing where physicalname('Customer Number' of table Display_Pricing) + "= '" + str('Customer Number' of window Window1) + "' and "+ physicalname(Name of table Display_Pricing)+ "='Work'"; range clear table Display_Pricing; end if; {for only hist table } if empty('Item Code') and '(L) Checkbox0' =false and '(L) Checkbox2'=true and str(Date)="0/0/0000" then range clear table Display_Pricing; range table Display_Pricing where physicalname('Customer Number' of table Display_Pricing) + "= '" + str('Customer Number' of window Window1) + "' and "+ physicalname(Name of table Display_Pricing)+ "='History'"; range clear table Display_Pricing; end if; get first table Display_Pricing; if err() = OKAY then repeat copy from table Display_Pricing to table Display_Pricing_Temp; save table Display_Pricing_Temp; get next table Display_Pricing; until err() = EOF; else clear window Price_Scroll of form 'Customer Pricing Inquiry'; end if; else clear window Price_Scroll of form 'Customer Pricing Inquiry'; end if; fill window Price_Scroll table Display_Pricing_Temp by number 1;

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  • I am having a problem of class cast exception. Can anyone please help me out?

    - by Piyush
    This is my code: package com.example.userpage; import android.app.Activity; import android.content.Intent; import android.os.Bundle; import android.view.View; import android.widget.Button; import android.widget.EditText; import android.widget.TextView; public class UserPage extends Activity { String tv,tv1; EditText name,pass; TextView x,y; /** Called when the activity is first created. */ @Override public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) { super.onCreate(savedInstanceState); setContentView(R.layout.main); Button button = (Button) findViewById(R.id.widget44); button.setOnClickListener(new View.OnClickListener() { public void onClick(View v) { name.setText(" "); pass.setText(" "); } }); x = (TextView) findViewById(R.id.widget46); y = (TextView) findViewById(R.id.widget47); name = (EditText)findViewById(R.id.widget41); pass = (EditText)findViewById(R.id.widget42); Button button1 = (Button) findViewById(R.id.widget45); button1.setOnClickListener(new View.OnClickListener() { public void onClick(View v) { tv= name.getText().toString(); tv1 = pass.getText().toString(); x.setText(tv); y.setText(tv1); } }); } } And this is my log cat: 02-16 12:24:30.488: DEBUG/AndroidRuntime(973): >>>>>>>>>>>>>> AndroidRuntime START <<<<<<<<<<<<<< 02-16 12:24:30.488: DEBUG/AndroidRuntime(973): CheckJNI is ON 02-16 12:24:31.208: DEBUG/AndroidRuntime(973): --- registering native functions --- 02-16 12:24:33.498: DEBUG/AndroidRuntime(973): Shutting down VM 02-16 12:24:33.537: DEBUG/dalvikvm(973): Debugger has detached; object registry had 1 entries 02-16 12:24:33.537: INFO/AndroidRuntime(973): NOTE: attach of thread 'Binder Thread #3' failed 02-16 12:24:34.917: DEBUG/AndroidRuntime(981): >>>>>>>>>>>>>> AndroidRuntime START <<<<<<<<<<<<<< 02-16 12:24:34.927: DEBUG/AndroidRuntime(981): CheckJNI is ON 02-16 12:24:35.617: DEBUG/AndroidRuntime(981): --- registering native functions --- 02-16 12:24:38.029: INFO/ActivityManager(67): Starting activity: Intent { act=android.intent.action.MAIN cat=[android.intent.category.LAUNCHER] flg=0x10000000 cmp=com.example.userpage/.UserPage } 02-16 12:24:38.129: DEBUG/AndroidRuntime(981): Shutting down VM 02-16 12:24:38.160: DEBUG/dalvikvm(981): Debugger has detached; object registry had 1 entries 02-16 12:24:38.168: INFO/AndroidRuntime(981): NOTE: attach of thread 'Binder Thread #3' failed 02-16 12:25:12.028: DEBUG/AndroidRuntime(990): >>>>>>>>>>>>>> AndroidRuntime START <<<<<<<<<<<<<< 02-16 12:25:12.038: DEBUG/AndroidRuntime(990): CheckJNI is ON 02-16 12:25:12.708: DEBUG/AndroidRuntime(990): --- registering native functions --- 02-16 12:25:15.178: DEBUG/dalvikvm(176): GC_EXPLICIT freed 114 objects / 5880 bytes in 115ms 02-16 12:25:15.318: DEBUG/PackageParser(67): Scanning package: /data/app/vmdl25170.tmp 02-16 12:25:15.588: INFO/PackageManager(67): Removing non-system package:com.example.userpage 02-16 12:25:15.597: INFO/ActivityManager(67): Force stopping package com.example.userpage uid=10036 02-16 12:25:15.648: INFO/Process(67): Sending signal. PID: 916 SIG: 9 02-16 12:25:15.877: INFO/UsageStats(67): Unexpected resume of com.android.launcher while already resumed in com.example.userpage 02-16 12:25:17.028: WARN/InputManagerService(67): Window already focused, ignoring focus gain of: com.android.internal.view.IInputMethodClient$Stub$Proxy@4400ecf8 02-16 12:25:17.928: DEBUG/PackageManager(67): Scanning package com.example.userpage 02-16 12:25:17.949: INFO/PackageManager(67): Package com.example.userpage codePath changed from /data/app/com.example.userpage-1.apk to /data/app/com.example.userpage-2.apk; Retaining data and using new 02-16 12:25:17.987: INFO/PackageManager(67): /data/app/com.example.userpage-2.apk changed; unpacking 02-16 12:25:18.037: DEBUG/installd(35): DexInv: --- BEGIN '/data/app/com.example.userpage-2.apk' --- 02-16 12:25:18.737: DEBUG/dalvikvm(997): DexOpt: load 81ms, verify 112ms, opt 6ms 02-16 12:25:18.768: DEBUG/installd(35): DexInv: --- END '/data/app/com.example.userpage-2.apk' (success) --- 02-16 12:25:18.799: INFO/ActivityManager(67): Force stopping package com.example.userpage uid=10036 02-16 12:25:18.808: WARN/PackageManager(67): Code path for pkg : com.example.userpage changing from /data/app/com.example.userpage-1.apk to /data/app/com.example.userpage-2.apk 02-16 12:25:18.839: WARN/PackageManager(67): Resource path for pkg : com.example.userpage changing from /data/app/com.example.userpage-1.apk to /data/app/com.example.userpage-2.apk 02-16 12:25:18.868: DEBUG/PackageManager(67): Activities: com.example.userpage.UserPage 02-16 12:25:19.297: INFO/installd(35): move /data/dalvik-cache/data@[email protected]@classes.dex -> /data/dalvik-cache/data@[email protected]@classes.dex 02-16 12:25:19.297: DEBUG/PackageManager(67): New package installed in /data/app/com.example.userpage-2.apk 02-16 12:25:19.598: DEBUG/dalvikvm(67): GC_FOR_MALLOC freed 7979 objects / 516856 bytes in 246ms 02-16 12:25:20.498: INFO/ActivityManager(67): Force stopping package com.example.userpage uid=10036 02-16 12:25:20.708: DEBUG/dalvikvm(129): GC_EXPLICIT freed 124 objects / 5672 bytes in 157ms 02-16 12:25:21.838: DEBUG/dalvikvm(67): GC_EXPLICIT freed 4208 objects / 236264 bytes in 419ms 02-16 12:25:21.918: WARN/RecognitionManagerService(67): no available voice recognition services found 02-16 12:25:22.127: INFO/installd(35): unlink /data/dalvik-cache/data@[email protected]@classes.dex 02-16 12:25:22.478: DEBUG/AndroidRuntime(990): Shutting down VM 02-16 12:25:22.488: DEBUG/dalvikvm(990): Debugger has detached; object registry had 1 entries 02-16 12:25:22.588: INFO/AndroidRuntime(990): NOTE: attach of thread 'Binder Thread #3' failed 02-16 12:25:24.137: DEBUG/AndroidRuntime(1003): >>>>>>>>>>>>>> AndroidRuntime START <<<<<<<<<<<<<< 02-16 12:25:24.147: DEBUG/AndroidRuntime(1003): CheckJNI is ON 02-16 12:25:24.817: DEBUG/AndroidRuntime(1003): --- registering native functions --- 02-16 12:25:27.450: INFO/ActivityManager(67): Starting activity: Intent { act=android.intent.action.MAIN cat=[android.intent.category.LAUNCHER] flg=0x10000000 cmp=com.example.userpage/.UserPage } 02-16 12:25:27.628: DEBUG/AndroidRuntime(1003): Shutting down VM 02-16 12:25:27.780: INFO/AndroidRuntime(1003): NOTE: attach of thread 'Binder Thread #3' failed 02-16 12:25:28.018: DEBUG/dalvikvm(1003): Debugger has detached; object registry had 1 entries 02-16 12:25:28.148: INFO/ActivityManager(67): Start proc com.example.userpage for activity com.example.userpage/.UserPage: pid=1010 uid=10036 gids={} 02-16 12:25:30.308: DEBUG/AndroidRuntime(1010): Shutting down VM 02-16 12:25:30.308: WARN/dalvikvm(1010): threadid=1: thread exiting with uncaught exception (group=0x4001d800) 02-16 12:25:30.388: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(1010): FATAL EXCEPTION: main 02-16 12:25:30.388: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(1010): java.lang.RuntimeException: Unable to start activity ComponentInfo{com.example.userpage/com.example.userpage.UserPage}: java.lang.ClassCastException: android.widget.TextView 02-16 12:25:30.388: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(1010): at android.app.ActivityThread.performLaunchActivity(ActivityThread.java:2663) 02-16 12:25:30.388: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(1010): at android.app.ActivityThread.handleLaunchActivity(ActivityThread.java:2679) 02-16 12:25:30.388: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(1010): at android.app.ActivityThread.access$2300(ActivityThread.java:125) 02-16 12:25:30.388: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(1010): at android.app.ActivityThread$H.handleMessage(ActivityThread.java:2033) 02-16 12:25:30.388: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(1010): at android.os.Handler.dispatchMessage(Handler.java:99) 02-16 12:25:30.388: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(1010): at android.os.Looper.loop(Looper.java:123) 02-16 12:25:30.388: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(1010): at android.app.ActivityThread.main(ActivityThread.java:4627) 02-16 12:25:30.388: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(1010): at java.lang.reflect.Method.invokeNative(Native Method) 02-16 12:25:30.388: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(1010): at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:521) 02-16 12:25:30.388: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(1010): at com.android.internal.os.ZygoteInit$MethodAndArgsCaller.run(ZygoteInit.java:868) 02-16 12:25:30.388: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(1010): at com.android.internal.os.ZygoteInit.main(ZygoteInit.java:626) 02-16 12:25:30.388: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(1010): at dalvik.system.NativeStart.main(Native Method) 02-16 12:25:30.388: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(1010): Caused by: java.lang.ClassCastException: android.widget.TextView 02-16 12:25:30.388: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(1010): at com.example.userpage.UserPage.onCreate(UserPage.java:35) 02-16 12:25:30.388: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(1010): at android.app.Instrumentation.callActivityOnCreate(Instrumentation.java:1047) 02-16 12:25:30.388: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(1010): at android.app.ActivityThread.performLaunchActivity(ActivityThread.java:2627) 02-16 12:25:30.388: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(1010): ... 11 more 02-16 12:25:30.438: WARN/ActivityManager(67): Force finishing activity com.example.userpage/.UserPage 02-16 12:25:31.088: WARN/ActivityManager(67): Activity pause timeout for HistoryRecord{43f164f8 com.example.userpage/.UserPage} 02-16 12:25:32.588: DEBUG/dalvikvm(292): GC_EXPLICIT freed 46 objects / 2240 bytes in 6282ms 02-16 12:25:35.267: INFO/Process(1010): Sending signal. PID: 1010 SIG: 9 02-16 12:25:35.468: WARN/InputManagerService(67): Window already focused, ignoring focus gain of: com.android.internal.view.IInputMethodClient$Stub$Proxy@43e60a90 02-16 12:25:35.900: INFO/ActivityManager(67): Process com.example.userpage (pid 1010) has died. 02-16 12:25:38.278: DEBUG/dalvikvm(176): GC_EXPLICIT freed 172 objects / 12280 bytes in 127ms 02-16 12:25:43.011: WARN/ActivityManager(67): Activity destroy timeout for HistoryRecord{43f164f8 com.example.userpage/.UserPage} 02-16 12:28:12.698: DEBUG/AndroidRuntime(1019): >>>>>>>>>>>>>> AndroidRuntime START <<<<<<<<<<<<<< 02-16 12:28:12.711: DEBUG/AndroidRuntime(1019): CheckJNI is ON 02-16 12:28:13.367: DEBUG/AndroidRuntime(1019): --- registering native functions --- 02-16 12:28:15.998: DEBUG/dalvikvm(176): GC_EXPLICIT freed 114 objects / 5888 bytes in 183ms 02-16 12:28:16.539: DEBUG/PackageParser(67): Scanning package: /data/app/vmdl25171.tmp 02-16 12:28:16.867: INFO/PackageManager(67): Removing non-system package:com.example.userpage 02-16 12:28:16.867: INFO/ActivityManager(67): Force stopping package com.example.userpage uid=10036 02-16 12:28:17.277: DEBUG/PackageManager(67): Scanning package com.example.userpage 02-16 12:28:17.308: INFO/PackageManager(67): Package com.example.userpage codePath changed from /data/app/com.example.userpage-2.apk to /data/app/com.example.userpage-1.apk; Retaining data and using new 02-16 12:28:17.328: INFO/PackageManager(67): /data/app/com.example.userpage-1.apk changed; unpacking 02-16 12:28:17.367: DEBUG/installd(35): DexInv: --- BEGIN '/data/app/com.example.userpage-1.apk' --- 02-16 12:28:18.357: DEBUG/dalvikvm(1026): DexOpt: load 85ms, verify 114ms, opt 6ms 02-16 12:28:18.398: DEBUG/installd(35): DexInv: --- END '/data/app/com.example.userpage-1.apk' (success) --- 02-16 12:28:18.428: INFO/ActivityManager(67): Force stopping package com.example.userpage uid=10036 02-16 12:28:18.438: WARN/PackageManager(67): Code path for pkg : com.example.userpage changing from /data/app/com.example.userpage-2.apk to /data/app/com.example.userpage-1.apk 02-16 12:28:18.477: WARN/PackageManager(67): Resource path for pkg : com.example.userpage changing from /data/app/com.example.userpage-2.apk to /data/app/com.example.userpage-1.apk 02-16 12:28:18.477: DEBUG/PackageManager(67): Activities: com.example.userpage.UserPage 02-16 12:28:18.977: INFO/installd(35): move /data/dalvik-cache/data@[email protected]@classes.dex -> /data/dalvik-cache/data@[email protected]@classes.dex 02-16 12:28:18.988: DEBUG/PackageManager(67): New package installed in /data/app/com.example.userpage-1.apk 02-16 12:28:19.528: DEBUG/dalvikvm(67): GC_FOR_MALLOC freed 6733 objects / 459728 bytes in 211ms 02-16 12:28:20.138: INFO/ActivityManager(67): Force stopping package com.example.userpage uid=10036 02-16 12:28:20.368: DEBUG/dalvikvm(129): GC_EXPLICIT freed 892 objects / 48744 bytes in 175ms 02-16 12:28:21.317: WARN/RecognitionManagerService(67): no available voice recognition services found 02-16 12:28:22.827: DEBUG/dalvikvm(67): GC_EXPLICIT freed 3877 objects / 241128 bytes in 452ms 02-16 12:28:22.979: INFO/installd(35): unlink /data/dalvik-cache/data@[email protected]@classes.dex 02-16 12:28:23.277: DEBUG/AndroidRuntime(1019): Shutting down VM 02-16 12:28:23.307: DEBUG/dalvikvm(1019): Debugger has detached; object registry had 1 entries 02-16 12:28:23.328: INFO/AndroidRuntime(1019): NOTE: attach of thread 'Binder Thread #3' failed 02-16 12:28:24.989: DEBUG/AndroidRuntime(1032): >>>>>>>>>>>>>> AndroidRuntime START <<<<<<<<<<<<<< 02-16 12:28:24.989: DEBUG/AndroidRuntime(1032): CheckJNI is ON 02-16 12:28:25.888: DEBUG/AndroidRuntime(1032): --- registering native functions --- 02-16 12:28:28.588: INFO/ActivityManager(67): Starting activity: Intent { act=android.intent.action.MAIN cat=[android.intent.category.LAUNCHER] flg=0x10000000 cmp=com.example.userpage/.UserPage } 02-16 12:28:28.888: DEBUG/AndroidRuntime(1032): Shutting down VM 02-16 12:28:28.997: DEBUG/dalvikvm(1032): Debugger has detached; object registry had 1 entries 02-16 12:28:29.038: INFO/AndroidRuntime(1032): NOTE: attach of thread 'Binder Thread #3' failed 02-16 12:28:30.417: INFO/ActivityManager(67): Start proc com.example.userpage for activity com.example.userpage/.UserPage: pid=1039 uid=10036 gids={} 02-16 12:28:32.588: DEBUG/AndroidRuntime(1039): Shutting down VM 02-16 12:28:32.598: WARN/dalvikvm(1039): threadid=1: thread exiting with uncaught exception (group=0x4001d800) 02-16 12:28:32.648: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(1039): FATAL EXCEPTION: main 02-16 12:28:32.648: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(1039): java.lang.RuntimeException: Unable to start activity ComponentInfo{com.example.userpage/com.example.userpage.UserPage}: java.lang.ClassCastException: android.widget.TextView 02-16 12:28:32.648: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(1039): at android.app.ActivityThread.performLaunchActivity(ActivityThread.java:2663) 02-16 12:28:32.648: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(1039): at android.app.ActivityThread.handleLaunchActivity(ActivityThread.java:2679) 02-16 12:28:32.648: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(1039): at android.app.ActivityThread.access$2300(ActivityThread.java:125) 02-16 12:28:32.648: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(1039): at android.app.ActivityThread$H.handleMessage(ActivityThread.java:2033) 02-16 12:28:32.648: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(1039): at android.os.Handler.dispatchMessage(Handler.java:99) 02-16 12:28:32.648: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(1039): at android.os.Looper.loop(Looper.java:123) 02-16 12:28:32.648: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(1039): at android.app.ActivityThread.main(ActivityThread.java:4627) 02-16 12:28:32.648: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(1039): at java.lang.reflect.Method.invokeNative(Native Method) 02-16 12:28:32.648: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(1039): at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:521) 02-16 12:28:32.648: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(1039): at com.android.internal.os.ZygoteInit$MethodAndArgsCaller.run(ZygoteInit.java:868) 02-16 12:28:32.648: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(1039): at com.android.internal.os.ZygoteInit.main(ZygoteInit.java:626) 02-16 12:28:32.648: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(1039): at dalvik.system.NativeStart.main(Native Method) 02-16 12:28:32.648: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(1039): Caused by: java.lang.ClassCastException: android.widget.TextView 02-16 12:28:32.648: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(1039): at com.example.userpage.UserPage.onCreate(UserPage.java:34) 02-16 12:28:32.648: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(1039): at android.app.Instrumentation.callActivityOnCreate(Instrumentation.java:1047) 02-16 12:28:32.648: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(1039): at android.app.ActivityThread.performLaunchActivity(ActivityThread.java:2627) 02-16 12:28:32.648: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(1039): ... 11 more 02-16 12:28:32.698: WARN/ActivityManager(67): Force finishing activity com.example.userpage/.UserPage 02-16 12:28:32.967: DEBUG/dalvikvm(292): GC_EXPLICIT freed 46 objects / 2240 bytes in 6840ms 02-16 12:28:33.247: WARN/ActivityManager(67): Activity pause timeout for HistoryRecord{43ee7b70 com.example.userpage/.UserPage} 02-16 12:28:36.947: INFO/Process(1039): Sending signal. PID: 1039 SIG: 9 02-16 12:28:37.017: INFO/ActivityManager(67): Process com.example.userpage (pid 1039) has died. 02-16 12:28:37.128: WARN/InputManagerService(67): Window already focused, ignoring focus gain of: com.android.internal.view.IInputMethodClient$Stub$Proxy@43e872f8 02-16 12:28:42.087: DEBUG/dalvikvm(176): GC_EXPLICIT freed 156 objects / 11488 bytes in 145ms 02-16 12:28:45.391: WARN/ActivityManager(67): Activity destroy timeout for HistoryRecord{43ee7b70 com.example.userpage/.UserPage} 02-16 12:28:47.177: DEBUG/SntpClient(67): request time failed: java.net.SocketException: Address family not supported by protocol

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  • Where does ASP.NET Web API Fit?

    - by Rick Strahl
    With the pending release of ASP.NET MVC 4 and the new ASP.NET Web API, there has been a lot of discussion of where the new Web API technology fits in the ASP.NET Web stack. There are a lot of choices to build HTTP based applications available now on the stack - we've come a long way from when WebForms and Http Handlers/Modules where the only real options. Today we have WebForms, MVC, ASP.NET Web Pages, ASP.NET AJAX, WCF REST and now Web API as well as the core ASP.NET runtime to choose to build HTTP content with. Web API definitely squarely addresses the 'API' aspect - building consumable services - rather than HTML content, but even to that end there are a lot of choices you have today. So where does Web API fit, and when doesn't it? But before we get into that discussion, let's talk about what a Web API is and why we should care. What's a Web API? HTTP 'APIs' (Microsoft's new terminology for a service I guess)  are becoming increasingly more important with the rise of the many devices in use today. Most mobile devices like phones and tablets run Apps that are using data retrieved from the Web over HTTP. Desktop applications are also moving in this direction with more and more online content and synching moving into even traditional desktop applications. The pending Windows 8 release promises an app like platform for both the desktop and other devices, that also emphasizes consuming data from the Cloud. Likewise many Web browser hosted applications these days are relying on rich client functionality to create and manipulate the browser user interface, using AJAX rather than server generated HTML data to load up the user interface with data. These mobile or rich Web applications use their HTTP connection to return data rather than HTML markup in the form of JSON or XML typically. But an API can also serve other kinds of data, like images or other binary files, or even text data and HTML (although that's less common). A Web API is what feeds rich applications with data. ASP.NET Web API aims to service this particular segment of Web development by providing easy semantics to route and handle incoming requests and an easy to use platform to serve HTTP data in just about any content format you choose to create and serve from the server. But .NET already has various HTTP Platforms The .NET stack already includes a number of technologies that provide the ability to create HTTP service back ends, and it has done so since the very beginnings of the .NET platform. From raw HTTP Handlers and Modules in the core ASP.NET runtime, to high level platforms like ASP.NET MVC, Web Forms, ASP.NET AJAX and the WCF REST engine (which technically is not ASP.NET, but can integrate with it), you've always been able to handle just about any kind of HTTP request and response with ASP.NET. The beauty of the raw ASP.NET platform is that it provides you everything you need to build just about any type of HTTP application you can dream up from low level APIs/custom engines to high level HTML generation engine. ASP.NET as a core platform clearly has stood the test of time 10+ years later and all other frameworks like Web API are built on top of this ASP.NET core. However, although it's possible to create Web APIs / Services using any of the existing out of box .NET technologies, none of them have been a really nice fit for building arbitrary HTTP based APIs. Sure, you can use an HttpHandler to create just about anything, but you have to build a lot of plumbing to build something more complex like a comprehensive API that serves a variety of requests, handles multiple output formats and can easily pass data up to the server in a variety of ways. Likewise you can use ASP.NET MVC to handle routing and creating content in various formats fairly easily, but it doesn't provide a great way to automatically negotiate content types and serve various content formats directly (it's possible to do with some plumbing code of your own but not built in). Prior to Web API, Microsoft's main push for HTTP services has been WCF REST, which was always an awkward technology that had a severe personality conflict, not being clear on whether it wanted to be part of WCF or purely a separate technology. In the end it didn't do either WCF compatibility or WCF agnostic pure HTTP operation very well, which made for a very developer-unfriendly environment. Personally I didn't like any of the implementations at the time, so much so that I ended up building my own HTTP service engine (as part of the West Wind Web Toolkit), as have a few other third party tools that provided much better integration and ease of use. With the release of Web API for the first time I feel that I can finally use the tools in the box and not have to worry about creating and maintaining my own toolkit as Web API addresses just about all the features I implemented on my own and much more. ASP.NET Web API provides a better HTTP Experience ASP.NET Web API differentiates itself from the previous Microsoft in-box HTTP service solutions in that it was built from the ground up around the HTTP protocol and its messaging semantics. Unlike WCF REST or ASP.NET AJAX with ASMX, it’s a brand new platform rather than bolted on technology that is supposed to work in the context of an existing framework. The strength of the new ASP.NET Web API is that it combines the best features of the platforms that came before it, to provide a comprehensive and very usable HTTP platform. Because it's based on ASP.NET and borrows a lot of concepts from ASP.NET MVC, Web API should be immediately familiar and comfortable to most ASP.NET developers. Here are some of the features that Web API provides that I like: Strong Support for URL Routing to produce clean URLs using familiar MVC style routing semantics Content Negotiation based on Accept headers for request and response serialization Support for a host of supported output formats including JSON, XML, ATOM Strong default support for REST semantics but they are optional Easily extensible Formatter support to add new input/output types Deep support for more advanced HTTP features via HttpResponseMessage and HttpRequestMessage classes and strongly typed Enums to describe many HTTP operations Convention based design that drives you into doing the right thing for HTTP Services Very extensible, based on MVC like extensibility model of Formatters and Filters Self-hostable in non-Web applications  Testable using testing concepts similar to MVC Web API is meant to handle any kind of HTTP input and produce output and status codes using the full spectrum of HTTP functionality available in a straight forward and flexible manner. Looking at the list above you can see that a lot of functionality is very similar to ASP.NET MVC, so many ASP.NET developers should feel quite comfortable with the concepts of Web API. The Routing and core infrastructure of Web API are very similar to how MVC works providing many of the benefits of MVC, but with focus on HTTP access and manipulation in Controller methods rather than HTML generation in MVC. There’s much improved support for content negotiation based on HTTP Accept headers with the framework capable of detecting automatically what content the client is sending and requesting and serving the appropriate data format in return. This seems like such a little and obvious thing, but it's really important. Today's service backends often are used by multiple clients/applications and being able to choose the right data format for what fits best for the client is very important. While previous solutions were able to accomplish this using a variety of mixed features of WCF and ASP.NET, Web API combines all this functionality into a single robust server side HTTP framework that intrinsically understands the HTTP semantics and subtly drives you in the right direction for most operations. And when you need to customize or do something that is not built in, there are lots of hooks and overrides for most behaviors, and even many low level hook points that allow you to plug in custom functionality with relatively little effort. No Brainers for Web API There are a few scenarios that are a slam dunk for Web API. If your primary focus of an application or even a part of an application is some sort of API then Web API makes great sense. HTTP ServicesIf you're building a comprehensive HTTP API that is to be consumed over the Web, Web API is a perfect fit. You can isolate the logic in Web API and build your application as a service breaking out the logic into controllers as needed. Because the primary interface is the service there's no confusion of what should go where (MVC or API). Perfect fit. Primary AJAX BackendsIf you're building rich client Web applications that are relying heavily on AJAX callbacks to serve its data, Web API is also a slam dunk. Again because much if not most of the business logic will probably end up in your Web API service logic, there's no confusion over where logic should go and there's no duplication. In Single Page Applications (SPA), typically there's very little HTML based logic served other than bringing up a shell UI and then filling the data from the server with AJAX which means the business logic required for data retrieval and data acceptance and validation too lives in the Web API. Perfect fit. Generic HTTP EndpointsAnother good fit are generic HTTP endpoints that to serve data or handle 'utility' type functionality in typical Web applications. If you need to implement an image server, or an upload handler in the past I'd implement that as an HTTP handler. With Web API you now have a well defined place where you can implement these types of generic 'services' in a location that can easily add endpoints (via Controller methods) or separated out as more full featured APIs. Granted this could be done with MVC as well, but Web API seems a clearer and more well defined place to store generic application services. This is one thing I used to do a lot of in my own libraries and Web API addresses this nicely. Great fit. Mixed HTML and AJAX Applications: Not a clear Choice  For all the commonality that Web API and MVC share they are fundamentally different platforms that are independent of each other. A lot of people have asked when does it make sense to use MVC vs. Web API when you're dealing with typical Web application that creates HTML and also uses AJAX functionality for rich functionality. While it's easy to say that all 'service'/AJAX logic should go into a Web API and all HTML related generation into MVC, that can often result in a lot of code duplication. Also MVC supports JSON and XML result data fairly easily as well so there's some confusion where that 'trigger point' is of when you should switch to Web API vs. just implementing functionality as part of MVC controllers. Ultimately there's a tradeoff between isolation of functionality and duplication. A good rule of thumb I think works is that if a large chunk of the application's functionality serves data Web API is a good choice, but if you have a couple of small AJAX requests to serve data to a grid or autocomplete box it'd be overkill to separate out that logic into a separate Web API controller. Web API does add overhead to your application (it's yet another framework that sits on top of core ASP.NET) so it should be worth it .Keep in mind that MVC can generate HTML and JSON/XML and just about any other content easily and that functionality is not going away, so just because you Web API is there it doesn't mean you have to use it. Web API is not a full replacement for MVC obviously either since there's not the same level of support to feed HTML from Web API controllers (although you can host a RazorEngine easily enough if you really want to go that route) so if you're HTML is part of your API or application in general MVC is still a better choice either alone or in combination with Web API. I suspect (and hope) that in the future Web API's functionality will merge even closer with MVC so that you might even be able to mix functionality of both into single Controllers so that you don't have to make any trade offs, but at the moment that's not the case. Some Issues To think about Web API is similar to MVC but not the Same Although Web API looks a lot like MVC it's not the same and some common functionality of MVC behaves differently in Web API. For example, the way single POST variables are handled is different than MVC and doesn't lend itself particularly well to some AJAX scenarios with POST data. Code Duplication I already touched on this in the Mixed HTML and Web API section, but if you build an MVC application that also exposes a Web API it's quite likely that you end up duplicating a bunch of code and - potentially - infrastructure. You may have to create authentication logic both for an HTML application and for the Web API which might need something different altogether. More often than not though the same logic is used, and there's no easy way to share. If you implement an MVC ActionFilter and you want that same functionality in your Web API you'll end up creating the filter twice. AJAX Data or AJAX HTML On a recent post's comments, David made some really good points regarding the commonality of MVC and Web API's and its place. One comment that caught my eye was a little more generic, regarding data services vs. HTML services. David says: I see a lot of merit in the combination of Knockout.js, client side templates and view models, calling Web API for a responsive UI, but sometimes late at night that still leaves me wondering why I would no longer be using some of the nice tooling and features that have evolved in MVC ;-) You know what - I can totally relate to that. On the last Web based mobile app I worked on, we decided to serve HTML partials to the client via AJAX for many (but not all!) things, rather than sending down raw data to inject into the DOM on the client via templating or direct manipulation. While there are definitely more bytes on the wire, with this, the overhead ended up being actually fairly small if you keep the 'data' requests small and atomic. Performance was often made up by the lack of client side rendering of HTML. Server rendered HTML for AJAX templating gives so much better infrastructure support without having to screw around with 20 mismatched client libraries. Especially with MVC and partials it's pretty easy to break out your HTML logic into very small, atomic chunks, so it's actually easy to create small rendering islands that can be used via composition on the server, or via AJAX calls to small, tight partials that return HTML to the client. Although this is often frowned upon as to 'heavy', it worked really well in terms of developer effort as well as providing surprisingly good performance on devices. There's still plenty of jQuery and AJAX logic happening on the client but it's more manageable in small doses rather than trying to do the entire UI composition with JavaScript and/or 'not-quite-there-yet' template engines that are very difficult to debug. This is not an issue directly related to Web API of course, but something to think about especially for AJAX or SPA style applications. Summary Web API is a great new addition to the ASP.NET platform and it addresses a serious need for consolidation of a lot of half-baked HTTP service API technologies that came before it. Web API feels 'right', and hits the right combination of usability and flexibility at least for me and it's a good fit for true API scenarios. However, just because a new platform is available it doesn't meant that other tools or tech that came before it should be discarded or even upgraded to the new platform. There's nothing wrong with continuing to use MVC controller methods to handle API tasks if that's what your app is running now - there's very little to be gained by upgrading to Web API just because. But going forward Web API clearly is the way to go, when building HTTP data interfaces and it's good to see that Microsoft got this one right - it was sorely needed! Resources ASP.NET Web API AspConf Ask the Experts Session (first 5 minutes) © Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2012Posted in Web Api   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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  • Adding Client Validation To DataAnnotations DataType Attribute

    - by srkirkland
    The System.ComponentModel.DataAnnotations namespace contains a validation attribute called DataTypeAttribute, which takes an enum specifying what data type the given property conforms to.  Here are a few quick examples: public class DataTypeEntity { [DataType(DataType.Date)] public DateTime DateTime { get; set; }   [DataType(DataType.EmailAddress)] public string EmailAddress { get; set; } } .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } This attribute comes in handy when using ASP.NET MVC, because the type you specify will determine what “template” MVC uses.  Thus, for the DateTime property if you create a partial in Views/[loc]/EditorTemplates/Date.ascx (or cshtml for razor), that view will be used to render the property when using any of the Html.EditorFor() methods. One thing that the DataType() validation attribute does not do is any actual validation.  To see this, let’s take a look at the EmailAddress property above.  It turns out that regardless of the value you provide, the entity will be considered valid: //valid new DataTypeEntity {EmailAddress = "Foo"}; .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } Hmmm.  Since DataType() doesn’t validate, that leaves us with two options: (1) Create our own attributes for each datatype to validate, like [Date], or (2) add validation into the DataType attribute directly.  In this post, I will show you how to hookup client-side validation to the existing DataType() attribute for a desired type.  From there adding server-side validation would be a breeze and even writing a custom validation attribute would be simple (more on that in future posts). Validation All The Way Down Our goal will be to leave our DataTypeEntity class (from above) untouched, requiring no reference to System.Web.Mvc.  Then we will make an ASP.NET MVC project that allows us to create a new DataTypeEntity and hookup automatic client-side date validation using the suggested “out-of-the-box” jquery.validate bits that are included with ASP.NET MVC 3.  For simplicity I’m going to focus on the only DateTime field, but the concept is generally the same for any other DataType. Building a DataTypeAttribute Adapter To start we will need to build a new validation adapter that we can register using ASP.NET MVC’s DataAnnotationsModelValidatorProvider.RegisterAdapter() method.  This method takes two Type parameters; The first is the attribute we are looking to validate with and the second is an adapter that should subclass System.Web.Mvc.ModelValidator. Since we are extending DataAnnotations we can use the subclass of ModelValidator called DataAnnotationsModelValidator<>.  This takes a generic argument of type DataAnnotations.ValidationAttribute, which lucky for us means the DataTypeAttribute will fit in nicely. So starting from there and implementing the required constructor, we get: public class DataTypeAttributeAdapter : DataAnnotationsModelValidator<DataTypeAttribute> { public DataTypeAttributeAdapter(ModelMetadata metadata, ControllerContext context, DataTypeAttribute attribute) : base(metadata, context, attribute) { } } .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } Now you have a full-fledged validation adapter, although it doesn’t do anything yet.  There are two methods you can override to add functionality, IEnumerable<ModelValidationResult> Validate(object container) and IEnumerable<ModelClientValidationRule> GetClientValidationRules().  Adding logic to the server-side Validate() method is pretty straightforward, and for this post I’m going to focus on GetClientValidationRules(). Adding a Client Validation Rule Adding client validation is now incredibly easy because jquery.validate is very powerful and already comes with a ton of validators (including date and regular expressions for our email example).  Teamed with the new unobtrusive validation javascript support we can make short work of our ModelClientValidationDateRule: public class ModelClientValidationDateRule : ModelClientValidationRule { public ModelClientValidationDateRule(string errorMessage) { ErrorMessage = errorMessage; ValidationType = "date"; } } .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } If your validation has additional parameters you can the ValidationParameters IDictionary<string,object> to include them.  There is a little bit of conventions magic going on here, but the distilled version is that we are defining a “date” validation type, which will be included as html5 data-* attributes (specifically data-val-date).  Then jquery.validate.unobtrusive takes this attribute and basically passes it along to jquery.validate, which knows how to handle date validation. Finishing our DataTypeAttribute Adapter Now that we have a model client validation rule, we can return it in the GetClientValidationRules() method of our DataTypeAttributeAdapter created above.  Basically I want to say if DataType.Date was provided, then return the date rule with a given error message (using ValidationAttribute.FormatErrorMessage()).  The entire adapter is below: public class DataTypeAttributeAdapter : DataAnnotationsModelValidator<DataTypeAttribute> { public DataTypeAttributeAdapter(ModelMetadata metadata, ControllerContext context, DataTypeAttribute attribute) : base(metadata, context, attribute) { }   public override System.Collections.Generic.IEnumerable<ModelClientValidationRule> GetClientValidationRules() { if (Attribute.DataType == DataType.Date) { return new[] { new ModelClientValidationDateRule(Attribute.FormatErrorMessage(Metadata.GetDisplayName())) }; }   return base.GetClientValidationRules(); } } .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } Putting it all together Now that we have an adapter for the DataTypeAttribute, we just need to tell ASP.NET MVC to use it.  The easiest way to do this is to use the built in DataAnnotationsModelValidatorProvider by calling RegisterAdapter() in your global.asax startup method. DataAnnotationsModelValidatorProvider.RegisterAdapter(typeof(DataTypeAttribute), typeof(DataTypeAttributeAdapter)); .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } Show and Tell Let’s see this in action using a clean ASP.NET MVC 3 project.  First make sure to reference the jquery, jquery.vaidate and jquery.validate.unobtrusive scripts that you will need for client validation. Next, let’s make a model class (note we are using the same built-in DataType() attribute that comes with System.ComponentModel.DataAnnotations). public class DataTypeEntity { [DataType(DataType.Date, ErrorMessage = "Please enter a valid date (ex: 2/14/2011)")] public DateTime DateTime { get; set; } } .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } Then we make a create page with a strongly-typed DataTypeEntity model, the form section is shown below (notice we are just using EditorForModel): @using (Html.BeginForm()) { @Html.ValidationSummary(true) <fieldset> <legend>Fields</legend>   @Html.EditorForModel()   <p> <input type="submit" value="Create" /> </p> </fieldset> } .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } The final step is to register the adapter in our global.asax file: DataAnnotationsModelValidatorProvider.RegisterAdapter(typeof(DataTypeAttribute), typeof(DataTypeAttributeAdapter)); Now we are ready to run the page: Looking at the datetime field’s html, we see that our adapter added some data-* validation attributes: <input type="text" value="1/1/0001" name="DateTime" id="DateTime" data-val-required="The DateTime field is required." data-val-date="Please enter a valid date (ex: 2/14/2011)" data-val="true" class="text-box single-line valid"> .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } Here data-val-required was added automatically because DateTime is non-nullable, and data-val-date was added by our validation adapter.  Now if we try to add an invalid date: Our custom error message is displayed via client-side validation as soon as we tab out of the box.  If we didn’t include a custom validation message, the default DataTypeAttribute “The field {0} is invalid” would have been shown (of course we can change the default as well).  Note we did not specify server-side validation, but in this case we don’t have to because an invalid date will cause a server-side error during model binding. Conclusion I really like how easy it is to register new data annotations model validators, whether they are your own or, as in this post, supplements to existing validation attributes.  I’m still debating about whether adding the validation directly in the DataType attribute is the correct place to put it versus creating a dedicated “Date” validation attribute, but it’s nice to know either option is available and, as we’ve seen, simple to implement. I’m also working through the nascent stages of an open source project that will create validation attribute extensions to the existing data annotations providers using similar techniques as seen above (examples: Email, Url, EqualTo, Min, Max, CreditCard, etc).  Keep an eye on this blog and subscribe to my twitter feed (@srkirkland) if you are interested for announcements.

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  • Passing multiple POST parameters to Web API Controller Methods

    - by Rick Strahl
    ASP.NET Web API introduces a new API for creating REST APIs and making AJAX callbacks to the server. This new API provides a host of new great functionality that unifies many of the features of many of the various AJAX/REST APIs that Microsoft created before it - ASP.NET AJAX, WCF REST specifically - and combines them into a whole more consistent API. Web API addresses many of the concerns that developers had with these older APIs, namely that it was very difficult to build consistent REST style resource APIs easily. While Web API provides many new features and makes many scenarios much easier, a lot of the focus has been on making it easier to build REST compliant APIs that are focused on resource based solutions and HTTP verbs. But  RPC style calls that are common with AJAX callbacks in Web applications, have gotten a lot less focus and there are a few scenarios that are not that obvious, especially if you're expecting Web API to provide functionality similar to ASP.NET AJAX style AJAX callbacks. RPC vs. 'Proper' REST RPC style HTTP calls mimic calling a method with parameters and returning a result. Rather than mapping explicit server side resources or 'nouns' RPC calls tend simply map a server side operation, passing in parameters and receiving a typed result where parameters and result values are marshaled over HTTP. Typically RPC calls - like SOAP calls - tend to always be POST operations rather than following HTTP conventions and using the GET/POST/PUT/DELETE etc. verbs to implicitly determine what operation needs to be fired. RPC might not be considered 'cool' anymore, but for typical private AJAX backend operations of a Web site I'd wager that a large percentage of use cases of Web API will fall towards RPC style calls rather than 'proper' REST style APIs. Web applications that have needs for things like live validation against data, filling data based on user inputs, handling small UI updates often don't lend themselves very well to limited HTTP verb usage. It might not be what the cool kids do, but I don't see RPC calls getting replaced by proper REST APIs any time soon.  Proper REST has its place - for 'real' API scenarios that manage and publish/share resources, but for more transactional operations RPC seems a better choice and much easier to implement than trying to shoehorn a boatload of endpoint methods into a few HTTP verbs. In any case Web API does a good job of providing both RPC abstraction as well as the HTTP Verb/REST abstraction. RPC works well out of the box, but there are some differences especially if you're coming from ASP.NET AJAX service or WCF Rest when it comes to multiple parameters. Action Routing for RPC Style Calls If you've looked at Web API demos you've probably seen a bunch of examples of how to create HTTP Verb based routing endpoints. Verb based routing essentially maps a controller and then uses HTTP verbs to map the methods that are called in response to HTTP requests. This works great for resource APIs but doesn't work so well when you have many operational methods in a single controller. HTTP Verb routing is limited to the few HTTP verbs available (plus separate method signatures) and - worse than that - you can't easily extend the controller with custom routes or action routing beyond that. Thankfully Web API also supports Action based routing which allows you create RPC style endpoints fairly easily:RouteTable.Routes.MapHttpRoute( name: "AlbumRpcApiAction", routeTemplate: "albums/{action}/{title}", defaults: new { title = RouteParameter.Optional, controller = "AlbumApi", action = "GetAblums" } ); This uses traditional MVC style {action} method routing which is different from the HTTP verb based routing you might have read a bunch about in conjunction with Web API. Action based routing like above lets you specify an end point method in a Web API controller either via the {action} parameter in the route string or via a default value for custom routes. Using routing you can pass multiple parameters either on the route itself or pass parameters on the query string, via ModelBinding or content value binding. For most common scenarios this actually works very well. As long as you are passing either a single complex type via a POST operation, or multiple simple types via query string or POST buffer, there's no issue. But if you need to pass multiple parameters as was easily done with WCF REST or ASP.NET AJAX things are not so obvious. Web API has no issue allowing for single parameter like this:[HttpPost] public string PostAlbum(Album album) { return String.Format("{0} {1:d}", album.AlbumName, album.Entered); } There are actually two ways to call this endpoint: albums/PostAlbum Using the Model Binder with plain POST values In this mechanism you're sending plain urlencoded POST values to the server which the ModelBinder then maps the parameter. Each property value is matched to each matching POST value. This works similar to the way that MVC's  ModelBinder works. Here's how you can POST using the ModelBinder and jQuery:$.ajax( { url: "albums/PostAlbum", type: "POST", data: { AlbumName: "Dirty Deeds", Entered: "5/1/2012" }, success: function (result) { alert(result); }, error: function (xhr, status, p3, p4) { var err = "Error " + " " + status + " " + p3; if (xhr.responseText && xhr.responseText[0] == "{") err = JSON.parse(xhr.responseText).message; alert(err); } }); Here's what the POST data looks like for this request: The model binder and it's straight form based POST mechanism is great for posting data directly from HTML pages to model objects. It avoids having to do manual conversions for many operations and is a great boon for AJAX callback requests. Using Web API JSON Formatter The other option is to post data using a JSON string. The process for this is similar except that you create a JavaScript object and serialize it to JSON first.album = { AlbumName: "PowerAge", Entered: new Date(1977,0,1) } $.ajax( { url: "albums/PostAlbum", type: "POST", contentType: "application/json", data: JSON.stringify(album), success: function (result) { alert(result); } }); Here the data is sent using a JSON object rather than form data and the data is JSON encoded over the wire. The trace reveals that the data is sent using plain JSON (Source above), which is a little more efficient since there's no UrlEncoding that occurs. BTW, notice that WebAPI automatically deals with the date. I provided the date as a plain string, rather than a JavaScript date value and the Formatter and ModelBinder both automatically map the date propertly to the Entered DateTime property of the Album object. Passing multiple Parameters to a Web API Controller Single parameters work fine in either of these RPC scenarios and that's to be expected. ModelBinding always works against a single object because it maps a model. But what happens when you want to pass multiple parameters? Consider an API Controller method that has a signature like the following:[HttpPost] public string PostAlbum(Album album, string userToken) Here I'm asking to pass two objects to an RPC method. Is that possible? This used to be fairly straight forward either with WCF REST and ASP.NET AJAX ASMX services, but as far as I can tell this is not directly possible using a POST operation with WebAPI. There a few workarounds that you can use to make this work: Use both POST *and* QueryString Parameters in Conjunction If you have both complex and simple parameters, you can pass simple parameters on the query string. The above would actually work with: /album/PostAlbum?userToken=sekkritt but that's not always possible. In this example it might not be a good idea to pass a user token on the query string though. It also won't work if you need to pass multiple complex objects, since query string values do not support complex type mapping. They only work with simple types. Use a single Object that wraps the two Parameters If you go by service based architecture guidelines every service method should always pass and return a single value only. The input should wrap potentially multiple input parameters and the output should convey status as well as provide the result value. You typically have a xxxRequest and a xxxResponse class that wraps the inputs and outputs. Here's what this method might look like:public PostAlbumResponse PostAlbum(PostAlbumRequest request) { var album = request.Album; var userToken = request.UserToken; return new PostAlbumResponse() { IsSuccess = true, Result = String.Format("{0} {1:d} {2}", album.AlbumName, album.Entered,userToken) }; } with these support types:public class PostAlbumRequest { public Album Album { get; set; } public User User { get; set; } public string UserToken { get; set; } } public class PostAlbumResponse { public string Result { get; set; } public bool IsSuccess { get; set; } public string ErrorMessage { get; set; } }   To call this method you now have to assemble these objects on the client and send it up as JSON:var album = { AlbumName: "PowerAge", Entered: "1/1/1977" } var user = { Name: "Rick" } var userToken = "sekkritt"; $.ajax( { url: "samples/PostAlbum", type: "POST", contentType: "application/json", data: JSON.stringify({ Album: album, User: user, UserToken: userToken }), success: function (result) { alert(result.Result); } }); I assemble the individual types first and then combine them in the data: property of the $.ajax() call into the actual object passed to the server, that mimics the structure of PostAlbumRequest server class that has Album, User and UserToken properties. This works well enough but it gets tedious if you have to create Request and Response types for each method signature. If you have common parameters that are always passed (like you always pass an album or usertoken) you might be able to abstract this to use a single object that gets reused for all methods, but this gets confusing too: Overload a single 'parameter' too much and it becomes a nightmare to decipher what your method actual can use. Use JObject to parse multiple Property Values out of an Object If you recall, ASP.NET AJAX and WCF REST used a 'wrapper' object to make default AJAX calls. Rather than directly calling a service you always passed an object which contained properties for each parameter: { parm1: Value, parm2: Value2 } WCF REST/ASP.NET AJAX would then parse this top level property values and map them to the parameters of the endpoint method. This automatic type wrapping functionality is no longer available directly in Web API, but since Web API now uses JSON.NET for it's JSON serializer you can actually simulate that behavior with a little extra code. You can use the JObject class to receive a dynamic JSON result and then using the dynamic cast of JObject to walk through the child objects and even parse them into strongly typed objects. Here's how to do this on the API Controller end:[HttpPost] public string PostAlbum(JObject jsonData) { dynamic json = jsonData; JObject jalbum = json.Album; JObject juser = json.User; string token = json.UserToken; var album = jalbum.ToObject<Album>(); var user = juser.ToObject<User>(); return String.Format("{0} {1} {2}", album.AlbumName, user.Name, token); } This is clearly not as nice as having the parameters passed directly, but it works to allow you to pass multiple parameters and access them using Web API. JObject is JSON.NET's generic object container which sports a nice dynamic interface that allows you to walk through the object's properties using standard 'dot' object syntax. All you have to do is cast the object to dynamic to get access to the property interface of the JSON type. Additionally JObject also allows you to parse JObject instances into strongly typed objects, which enables us here to retrieve the two objects passed as parameters from this jquery code:var album = { AlbumName: "PowerAge", Entered: "1/1/1977" } var user = { Name: "Rick" } var userToken = "sekkritt"; $.ajax( { url: "samples/PostAlbum", type: "POST", contentType: "application/json", data: JSON.stringify({ Album: album, User: user, UserToken: userToken }), success: function (result) { alert(result); } }); Summary ASP.NET Web API brings many new features and many advantages over the older Microsoft AJAX and REST APIs, but realize that some things like passing multiple strongly typed object parameters will work a bit differently. It's not insurmountable, but just knowing what options are available to simulate this behavior is good to know. Now let me say here that it's probably not a good practice to pass a bunch of parameters to an API call. Ideally APIs should be closely factored to accept single parameters or a single content parameter at least along with some identifier parameters that can be passed on the querystring. But saying that doesn't mean that occasionally you don't run into a situation where you have the need to pass several objects to the server and all three of the options I mentioned might have merit in different situations. For now I'm sure the question of how to pass multiple parameters will come up quite a bit from people migrating WCF REST or ASP.NET AJAX code to Web API. At least there are options available to make it work.© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2012Posted in Web Api   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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  • CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, January 01, 2011

    CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, January 01, 2011Popular ReleasesBloodSim: BloodSim - 1.3.0.0: - Added tally for number of boss swings and swing avoids - Removed a large number of options that were carried over from Beta and are no longer relevant - Changed stat entry to use Rating format for Dodge, Parry, Haste and Mastery - Rearranged Settings interface - BloodSim will now check for updates on startup and notify the user if a new version is available - Added option to Show/Hide the Simulation Log to increase speed during large simulationsEnhSim: EnhSim 2.2.8 ALPHA: 2.2.8 ALPHAThis release supports WoW patch 4.03a at level 85 To use this release, you must have the Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 Redistributable Package installed. This can be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=A7B7A05E-6DE6-4D3A-A423-37BF0912DB84 To use the GUI you must have the .NET 4.0 Framework installed. This can be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=9cfb2d51-5ff4-4491-b0e5-b386f32c0992 Rebuilt Feral Spir...CBM-Command: Version 2.0 Beta 2 - 2010-12-31: This version fixes three major bugs in Version 2.0 Beta 1 Changes(64, 128, Plus/4) Changed the timing code back to version 1.7 because the clock() function in cc65 does not reflect accurate timing. (VIC, PET) The time(NULL) function is not available on these targets and thus had to be removed. Help Hot-Key Fixed - Now when you press either F1 or H you get the help file (if the CBM-Command disk is in the drive you started CBM-Command from). Updated Help File - the new help file by popmi...Free Silverlight & WPF Chart Control - Visifire: Visifire SL and WPF Charts v3.6.6 Released: Hi, Today we are releasing final version of Visifire, v3.6.6 with the following new feature: * TextDecorations property is implemented in Title for Chart. * TitleTextDecorations property is implemented in Axis. * MinPointHeight property is now applicable for Column and Bar Charts. Also this release includes few bug fixes: * ToolTipText property of DataSeries was not getting applied from Style. * Chart threw exception if IndicatorEnabled property was set to true and Too...StyleCop Compliant Visual Studio Code Snippets: Visual Studio Code Snippets - January 2011: StyleCop Compliant Visual Studio Code Snippets Visual Studio 2010 provides C# developers with 38 code snippets, enhancing developer productivty and increasing the consistency of the code. Within this project the original code snippets have been refactored to provide StyleCop compliant versions of the original code snippets while also adding many new code snippets. Within the January 2011 release you'll find 82 code snippets to make you more productive and the code you write more consistent!...WPF Application Framework (WAF): WPF Application Framework (WAF) 2.0.0.2: Version: 2.0.0.2 (Milestone 2): This release contains the source code of the WPF Application Framework (WAF) and the sample applications. Requirements .NET Framework 4.0 (The package contains a solution file for Visual Studio 2010) The unit test projects require Visual Studio 2010 Professional Remark The sample applications are using Microsoft’s IoC container MEF. However, the WPF Application Framework (WAF) doesn’t force you to use the same IoC container in your application. You can use ...eCompany: eCompany v0.2.0 Build 63: Version 0.2.0 Build 63: Added Splash screen & about box Added downloading of currencies when eCompany launched for the first time (must close any bug caused by no currency rate existing) Added corp creation when eCompany launched for the first time (for now, you didn't need to edit the company.xml file manually) You just need to decompress file "eCompany v0.2.0.63.zip" into your current eCompany install directory.SQL Monitor - tracking sql server activities: SQL Monitor 3.0 alpha 8: 1. added truncate table/defrag index/check db functions 2. improved alert 3. fixed problem with alert causing config file corrupted(hopefully)Temporary Data Storage Folder: TDS Folder version 0.2 Beta: In this release following bugs are fixed: 'Send to' entry bug fixed Preferences bug fixedSilverlight File Upload and Download with Interlink: HSS Interlink v.2.1.300: Latest Release 2.1.300 - December 29th 2010 Change Log DownloadFileDialog Modified to support an absolute uri for the DownloadUri property, which is required for OOB support UploadFileDialog Modified to support an absolute uri for the UploadUri property, which is required for OOB support For existing users be sure to uninstall the older version prior to installing this version Note: The demo application is NOT included with the installer but can be reviewed here Stable release and ready...RDPAddins .NET: RDPAddins Alpha 2 (0.2.0.0): Second alpha release... Breaking changes (now this project has 0.2 version): now addin should implement RDPAddins.Common.IAddin and should me exported with RDPAddins.Common.AddinMetadataAtrribute !!!most of all old Addin base class method you can fide in IChannel or IUI interfeces see FileTransferAddin Now RDPAddins.Common.dll just provide interfaces for addin, channel, ui, and export metadata Whole implementation is in RDPAddins.exe RDPAddins.Common.dll has some documentation :) why all this...DocX: DocX v1.0.0.11: Building Examples projectTo build the Examples project, download DocX.dll and add it as a reference to the project. OverviewThis version of DocX contains many bug fixes, it is a serious step towards a stable release. Added1) Unit testing project, 2) Examples project, 3) To many bug fixes to list here, see the source code change list history.Cosmos (C# Open Source Managed Operating System): 71406: This is the second release supporting the full line of Visual Studio 2010 editions. Changes since release 71246 include: Debug info is now stored in a single .cpdb file (which is a Firebird database) Keyboard input works now (using Console.ReadLine) Console colors work (using Console.ForegroundColor and .BackgroundColor)AutoLoL: AutoLoL v1.5.0: Added the all new Masteries Browser which replaces the Quick Open combobox AutoLoL will now attemt to create file associations for mastery (*.lolm) files Each Mastery Build can now contain keywords that the Masteries Browser will use for filtering Changed the way AutoLoL detects if another instance is already running Changed the format of the mastery files to allow more information stored in* Dialogs will now focus the Ok or Cancel button which allows the user to press Return to clo...Paint.NET PSD Plugin: 1.6.0: Handling of layer masks has been greatly improved. Improved reliability. Many PSD files that previously loaded in as garbage will now load in correctly. Parallelized loading. PSD files containing layer masks will load in a bit quicker thanks to the removal of the sequential bottleneck. Hidden layers are no longer made visible on save. Many thanks to the users who helped expose the layer masks problem: Rob Horowitz, M_Lyons10. Please keep sending in those bug reports and PSD repro files!Facebook C# SDK: 4.1.1: From 4.1.1 Release: Authentication bug fix caused by facebook change (error with redirects in Safari) Authenticator fix, always returning true From 4.1.0 Release Lots of bug fixes Removed Dynamic Runtime Language dependencies from non-dynamic platforms. Samples included in release for ASP.NET, MVC, Silverlight, Windows Phone 7, WPF, WinForms, and one Visual Basic Sample Changed internal serialization to use Json.net BREAKING CHANGE: Canvas Session is no longer supported. Use Signed...Catel - WPF and Silverlight MVVM library: 1.0.0: And there it is, the final release of Catel, and it is no longer a beta version!Euro for Windows XP: ChangeRegionalSettings 1..0: *Rocket Framework (.Net 4.0): Rocket Framework for Windows V 1.0.0: Architecture is reviewed and adjusted in a way so that I can introduce the Web version and WPF version of this framework next. - Rocket.Core is introduced - Controller button functions revisited and updated - DB is renewed to suite the implemented features - Create New button functionality is changed - Add Question Handling featuresFlickr Wallpaper Rotator (for Windows desktop): Wallpaper Flickr 1.1: Some minor bugfixes (mostly covering when network connection is flakey, so I discovered them all while at my parents' house for Christmas).New Projects7-Up: PowerShell Scripts for Upgrading SharePoint 2007 to 2010: PowerShell scripts to automate the upgrade of SharePoint 2007 to SharePoint 2010 using a content database or hybrid upgrade approach.Apple Wireless Keyboard: Helper that Allows people use the Apple Wireless (or Wired possibly) Keyboard under Windows 7 without loosing the mac functionalityckTest: testtesttesttesttesttesttesttesttesttesttesttesttesttesttesttesttesttesttesttesttesttesttesttesttesttesttesttesttesttesttesttesttesttesttesttesttesttesttesttesttesttesttesttesttesttesttesttesttesttesttesttesttesttesttesttesttesttesttesttesttesttesttesttesttesttesttesttesttesttestCrude - .Net Dependency Management: Crude is light dependency management for .net, there was no dependency management solution for .net as Maven or Ivy until now. DeepTime: Event tacking, management and plotting site.Dev/Test Cloud Platform: Dev/Test Cloud Platform is implemented by Beyondsoft and Microsoft. The platform is dedicated to software development and test scenarios. With Dev/Test Cloud you can save your cost, improve work efficiency, and improve product quality.Image Viewer (wpf version): Image viewer helps windows users to review images on their computer. It is written i Csharp and wpf.LNOne: All common code, framework code, utility code in one.LOGL::GLib: LOGL::GLib is an OpenGL game library written in C++ that allows new C++/OpenGL programmers to focus more on the game and less on the details.MAPI.GUI: Graphical program uses function from mcopyapi.codeplex.com and mdeleteapi.codeplex.com console programs. Program support longPath (above 259 chars and less 32000 chars)Movie Collection Manager: Gerenciador que ajuda a manusear coleção de filmes. Possui uma interface super atraente e simples de usar. Ferramentas e tecnologias usadas: - Visual C# 2010 Express - SQL Server 2008 R2 Express - Windows Forms - Entity Framework OBS: Projeto concorrente do Desafio .NETMyStudioServer.com: Source code for the DotNetNuke http://MyStudioServer.com websiteNusya Tester: A software to create and use various tests with right answers explanations to help one in self-education. It's developed in C#Project Zylaphon: Project Zylaphon is a C# GPL Open Source Computer Aided Music Composition System. Its design goals include highly interactive composition, music computation, and analysis; system control to be provided by an A.I. goal based agenda and quasi Blackboard for maximum flexibility.Remember The Task: RememberTheTask makes it easier to remember what you have been doing the last hour. It's developed in Visual Basic.Rent Payments Scheduling: Register rent schedules and keep track of them.Simple MVVM Toolkit for Silverlight: Simple MVVM Toolkit makes it easier to develop Silverlight applications using the Model-View-ViewModel design pattern.Sparrow.NET HtmlTemplate: Its a template engine for generating web pages.(?????HTML?????,??????html Tag???????html????。)SQLDiagUI: SQLDiagUI provides a GUI for Microsoft SQlDiag Utility which allows users to create a configuration file and start/stop/schedule SQLDiag against a SQL Server.Test Control: testing frameworkTwicko: Simple twitter client.Unity3D Utilities: Unity3D Utilities provides additional functionality to Unity3D (3.0+) via extensions, utilities, mini-frameworks, etc.VBA Composite Controls Object Model: VBA Composite Controls encapsulate complex event-driven interactions between ActiveX controls and other objects in Microsoft Office. It's uses are limited only by the imagination, from binding controls together for updating, to creating unique user interfaces!World of Warcraft Backit up(wow backit up): a project that helps you backup and restore your settings in wow easilyYamma: Yet Another Money Management Application. Build in .NET 4, SQLCE, LINQ and the Entity Framework.

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  • CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, March 05, 2012

    CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, March 05, 2012Popular ReleasesSimple Injector: Simple Injector v1.4.1: This release adds two small improvements to the SimpleInjector.Extensions.dll. No changes have been made to the core library. New features and improvements in this release for the SimpleInjector.Extensions.dll The RegisterManyForOpenGeneric extension methods now accept non-generic decorator, as long as they implement the given open generic service type. GetTypesToRegister methods added to the OpenGenericBatchRegistrationExtensions class which allows to customize the behavior. Note that the...SQL Scriptz Runner: Application: Scriptz Runner source code and applicationCommonLibrary: Code: CodePowerGUI Visual Studio Extension: PowerGUI VSX 1.5.2: Added support for PowerGUI 3.2.Path Copy Copy: 10.0: New version with the following biggest new features: Regular expression support in custom commands (see this work item) Import/export feature for custom commands (see this work item) This version also addresses the following work items: 11353 11348 This version is a recommended upgrade for all users. Note: new custom commands that user regular expressions won't be compatible with earlier versions (if installed by registry manipulation or via network installation), but everything else is ...VidCoder: 1.3.1: Updated HandBrake core to 0.9.6 release (svn 4472). Removed erroneous "None" container choice. Change some logic and help text to stop assuming you have to pick the VIDEO_TS folder for a DVD scan. This should make previewing DVD titles on the Queue Multiple Titles window possible when you've picked the root DVD directory.ASP.NET MVC Framework - Abstracting Data Annotations, HTML5, Knockout JS techs: Version 1.0: Please download the source code. I am not associating any dll for release.ExtAspNet: ExtAspNet v3.1.0: ExtAspNet - ?? ExtJS ??? ASP.NET 2.0 ???,????? AJAX ?????????? ExtAspNet ????? ExtJS ??? ASP.NET 2.0 ???,????? AJAX ??????????。 ExtAspNet ??????? JavaScript,?? CSS,?? UpdatePanel,?? ViewState,?? WebServices ???????。 ??????: IE 7.0, Firefox 3.6, Chrome 3.0, Opera 10.5, Safari 3.0+ ????:Apache License 2.0 (Apache) ??:http://extasp.net/ ??:http://bbs.extasp.net/ ??:http://extaspnet.codeplex.com/ ??:http://sanshi.cnblogs.com/ ????: +2012-03-04 v3.1.0 -??Hidden???????(〓?〓)。 -?PageManager??...AcDown????? - Anime&Comic Downloader: AcDown????? v3.9.1: ?? ●AcDown??????????、??、??????,????1M,????,????,?????????????????????????。???????????Acfun、????(Bilibili)、??、??、YouTube、??、???、??????、SF????、????????????。??????AcPlay?????,??????、????????????????。 ● AcDown???????????????????????????,???,???????????????????。 ● AcDown???????C#??,????.NET Framework 2.0??。?????"Acfun?????"。 ????32??64? Windows XP/Vista/7/8 ????????????? ??:????????Windows XP???,?????????.NET Framework 2.0???(x86),?????"?????????"??? ??????????????,??????????: ??"AcDo...Windows Phone Commands for VS2010: Version 1.0: Initial Release Version 1.0 Connect from device or emulator (Monitors the connection) Show Device information (Plataform, build , version, avaliable memory, total memory, architeture Manager installed applications (Launch, uninstall and explorer isolate storage files) Manager core applications (Launch blocked applications from emulator (Office, Calculator, alarm, calendar , etc) Manager blocked settings from emulator (Airplane Mode, Celullar Network, Wifi, etc) Deploy and update ap...DNN Metro7 style Skin package: Metro7 style Skin for DotNetNuke 06.01.00: Changes on Version 06.01.00 Fixed issue on GraySmallTitle container, that breaks the layout Fixed issue on Blue Metro7 Skin where the Search, Login, Register, Date is missing Fixed issue with the Version numbers on the target file Fixed issue where the jQuery and jQuery-UI files not deleted on upgrade from Version 01.00.00 Added a internal page where the Image Slider would be replaces with a BannerPaneMedia Companion: MC 3.433b Release: General More GUI tweaks (mostly imperceptible!) Updates for mc_com.exe TV The 'Watched' button has been re-instigated Added TV Menu sub-option to search ALL for new Episodes (includes locked shows) Movies Added 'Source' field (eg DVD, Bluray, HDTV), customisable in Advanced Preferences (try it out, let us know how it works!) Added HTML <<format>> tag with optional parameters for video container, source, and resolution (updated HTML tags to be added to Documentation shortly) Known Issu...Picturethrill: Version 2.3.2.0: Release includes Self-Update feature for Picturethrill. What that means for users is that they are always guaranteed to have a fresh copy of Picturethrill on their computers with all latest fixes. When Picturethrill adds a new website to get pictures from, you will get it too!Simple MVVM Toolkit for Silverlight, WPF and Windows Phone: Simple MVVM Toolkit v3.0.0.0: Added support for Silverlight 5.0 and Windows Phone 7.1. Upgraded project templates and samples. Upgraded installer. There are some new prerequisites required for this version, namely Silverlight 5 Tools, Expression Blend Preview for Silverlight 5 (until the SDK is released), Windows Phone 7.1 SDK. Because it is in the experimental band, I have also removed the dependency on the Silverlight Testing Framework. You can use it if you wish, but the Ria Services project template no longer uses ...CODE Framework: 4.0.20301: The latest version adds a number of new features to the WPF system (such as stylable and testable messagebox support) as well as various new features throughout the system (especially in the Utilities namespace).MyRouter (Virtual WiFi Router): MyRouter 1.0.2 (Beta): A friendlier User Interface. A logger file to catch exceptions so you may send it to use to improve and fix any bugs that may occur. A feedback form because we always love hearing what you guy's think of MyRouter. Check for update menu item for you to stay up to date will the latest changes. Facebook fan page so you may spread the word and share MyRouter with friends and family And Many other exciting features were sure your going to love!WPF Sound Visualization Library: WPF SVL 0.3 (Source, Binaries, Examples, Help): Version 0.3 of WPFSVL. This includes three new controls: an equalizer, a digital clock, and a time editor.Orchard Project: Orchard 1.4: Please read our release notes for Orchard 1.4: http://docs.orchardproject.net/Documentation/Orchard-1-4-Release-NotesNetSqlAzMan - .NET SQL Authorization Manager: 3.6.0.15: 3.6.0.15 28-Feb-2012 • Fix: The communication object, System.ServiceModel.Channels.ServiceChannel, cannot be used for communication because it is in the Faulted state. Work Item 10435: http://netsqlazman.codeplex.com/workitem/10435 • Fix: Made StorageCache thread safe. Thanks to tangrl. • Fix: Members property of SqlAzManApplicationGroup is not functioning. Thanks to tangrl. Work Item 10267: http://netsqlazman.codeplex.com/workitem/10267 • Fix: Indexer are making database calls. Thanks to t...SCCM Client Actions Tool: Client Actions Tool v1.1: SCCM Client Actions Tool v1.1 is the latest version. It comes with following changes since last version: Added stop button to stop the ongoing process. Added action "Query update status". Added option "saveOnlineComputers" in config.ini to enable saving list of online computers from last session. Default value for "LatestClientVersion" set to SP2 R3 (4.00.6487.2157). Wuauserv service manual startup mode is considered healthy on Windows 7. Errors are now suppressed in checkReleases...New ProjectsAbsolute Risk Game: Risk Game is a classic "World Domination Risk" game where you try to conquer the world.Architecture Document Catalog: The Architecture Document Catalog is a catalog for various documentation used by software solution architects. The initial architecture framework supported is from Rozanski and Woods, also called Viewpoints and Perspectives. It's in C#, Silverlight, WCF RIA Services.Background Worker Job Execution & Job Scheduler: Background worker is a multi-threaded job execution and scheduling engine. Very similar to Quartz, but with a slightly different focus.BWOS: preparing a new operating system. and name BWOS. CommonLibrary: Common modules and componentesCustomizeTool: CustomizeToolData Foundry: Data Foundry is a Swiss army knife for database administrator. With capabilities to cross reference check data between tables to find orphaned data and table relations.Data Grid Extensions: Modular extensions for the DataGrid control. Attach filtering capabilities to your existing DataGrid.dk.Helper: dk.Helper makes it easier for tribal wars game players (divoke-kmene.sk) to manage common activities in game. It's developed in C#.ExEn: ExEn is a high-performance implementation of a subset of the XNA API that runs on Silverlight, iOS and Android.Extended Methods for .NET: Developed in VB.NET, this DLL includes some functions I came across over the internet. Originally they were functions. I made some changes to suit my work and recreated them as Extended methods. Currently includes two extended methods for the Image class and one extended method for the String class. I will update it with new methods as I go along.GestionarComenzi: Gestioneaza Comenzi - Firma transporturiGIS Library Management: GIS Library Management System.iFinity Cache Master for DotNetNuke: The iFinity DotNetNuke Cache Master is an Administration module for DotNetNuke. This module allows administrators to inspect the current contents of the ASP.NET Cache in their running DotNetNuke installation. A very useful tool for developers working with the DotNetNuke cache.intelliEssay Document Format Checker: This is a product that tries to check a document's format to see if it conforms to certain given standard.Just T[he]IP: "Just The IP" leverages the Bing API v2 and the ip: Bing Advanced Operator to list the other web sites hosted at this IP Address (that are indexed by Bing).KTool: Ktool is a tool for learning japanese kanji. This program is still in developed. Current version can only display and find a kanji word (Press ctrl-F on main screen for search). Developed in WPF, .NET 4.0Lab Checker: Lab Checker makes it easy for teacher to check students' programs. It allows a student to test his program on a set of test cases which eliminates the need to run the program manually.MeoBox Vera Control Plugin: This is my project for creating a plugin to control my MeoBox ( Scientific Atlanta ) using Vera ( www.micasaverde.com ) Should work with other TV2Client boxesNUnitTestHelper: NUnitTestHelper is a helper class for developing unit tests for C# applications with NUnit framework. This helper library provides set of classes and method which can be used for accomplishing faster unit test development for any kind of project. NUnitTestBase – Supports basic functionality for writing a unit test with NUnit framework. This base class provides built in support for mocking framework. This version provides support for Rhino mocking framework.OnlineExam: Common online examination system based on Asp.net MVC3 can used for knowledge test, I/Q test, college test or most other test project.Orchard Code Generation Extensions: Code Generation Extensions module for Orchard.OrchardTranstion_CN: Orchar?? OsAvatar: to next step showOwnTools: About my toolsPhone Finder App: PhoneFinder will be a Windows Phone platform app alternative for finding a lost or stolen phone. Our plan is to have additional functionality the Windows software does not include. It will be developed using ASP.NET MVC, SQL Server, C#, etc.PoshChat: PoshChat is a client/server chat program written in PowerShell. Supports multiple client connections to a single server to chat.Process Attachment And Secure Text: ProcessAttachmentAndSecureText is an Exchange Transport Agent DLL and associated ASPX page. It is used to 1) strip out attachments and send them to an upload portal, and 2) to strip out text from emails and send it to an upload portal. It is currently coded for Exchange 2010Resource Viewer - Visual Studio Extension: Simply put the “resource viewer extension” enables you to visually view your ResourceDictionary. To open it go to: View – Other Windows – Resource Viewer. When working with WPF/Silverlight you put your reusable resources in a common ResourceDictionary, those resources might be of type Style, SolidColorBrush, DrawingBrush, BitmapImage and more. The problems starts when you have that ResourceDictionary you have no way to see how your resources look like, making the work process (of both t...Scumm XNA: Scumm XNA is an engine that runs old school LucasArts graphical adventure games. It is written completely in C# and will run on PC, Xbox 360 and Windows phone. The code is inspired by ScummVM but this project is not a port, it is a complete rewrite in order to optimize the engine for the CLR. Of course, you will need to own the orinigal games in order to use it. Currently, I will focus my work on the great "Day of Tentacle" game specifically the CD version.SDX DataGrid: SDXDataGrid is a comprehensive data grid component for Microsoft .NET 3.5 web application developers. It is designed to ease the exhausting process of implementing the necessary code for sorting, navigation, grouping, searching and data editing in a data representation object.SQL Scriptz Runner: Features are : Drag And Drop script files Run a directory of script files Sql Script out put messages during execution Script passed or failed that are colored green and red (yellow for running) Stop on error option Open script on error option Run report with time taken for each uComponents Demo: A demo for the code of running uComponents in Umbraco siteUnixTable: UnixTable makes it easier to realize application to access database, with no code but only with visual instrument at runtime. You'll no longer have to write query or code to read table from database. It's developed in Visual Basic for .NET 4. VOA Player.NET: VOA Player is a lightweight windows client for listening VOA Special English. Because of GFW blocking it fetch RSS data via rss2proxy.appspot.com indirectly. User can view article page and listen MP3 stream. The project is a C# implementation of voaplayer.sinaapp.com.Windows Metafile Library: The library supports reading and writing WMF files. Source code is written in pure .NET from scratch following the Windows Metafile Format Specification.Windows Phone 7.1 + MicroFramework (a phone device as remote control): Windows Phone 7.1 + .Net MicroFramework (How use a windows phone device as remote control of a Fez Panda II/MicroFramework board). A windows phone device can be connected to a wifi network (for example a wifi router). If you have also a MicroFramework board connected to the wifi network; you can send some http rest commands from the windows phone device to the MicroFramework board. The microframework board, it must support the tcp/ip protocol through a connect shield. In this exaple it will...XBMC Cache Manager: A Windows Service to manage a shared XBMC MySQL database and shared cache folder.

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  • CLSF & CLK 2013 Trip Report by Jeff Liu

    - by jamesmorris
    This is a contributed post from Jeff Liu, lead XFS developer for the Oracle mainline Linux kernel team. Recently, I attended both the China Linux Storage and Filesystem workshop (CLSF), and the China Linux Kernel conference (CLK), which were held in Shanghai. Here are the highlights for both events. CLSF - 17th October XFS update (led by Jeff Liu) XFS keeps rapid progress with a lot of changes, especially focused on the infrastructure/performance improvements as well as  new feature development.  This can be reflected with a sample statistics among XFS/Ext4+JBD2/Btrfs via: # git diff --stat --minimal -C -M v3.7..v3.12-rc4 -- fs/xfs|fs/ext4+fs/jbd2|fs/btrfs XFS: 141 files changed, 27598 insertions(+), 19113 deletions(-) Ext4+JBD2: 39 files changed, 10487 insertions(+), 5454 deletions(-) Btrfs: 70 files changed, 19875 insertions(+), 8130 deletions(-) What made up those changes in XFS? Self-describing metadata(CRC32c). This is a new feature and it contributed about 70% code changes, it can be enabled via `mkfs.xfs -m crc=1 /dev/xxx` for v5 superblock. Transaction log space reservation improvements. With this change, we can calculate the log space reservation at mount time rather than runtime to reduce the the CPU overhead. User namespace support. So both XFS and USERNS can be enabled on kernel configuration begin from Linux 3.10. Thanks Dwight Engen's efforts for this thing. Split project/group quota inodes. Originally, project quota can not be enabled with group quota at the same time because they were share the same quota file inode, now it works but only for v5 super block. i.e, CRC enabled. CONFIG_XFS_WARN, an new lightweight runtime debugger which can be deployed in production environment. Readahead log object recovery, this change can speed up the log replay progress significantly. Speculative preallocation inode tracking, clearing and throttling. The main purpose is to deal with inodes with post-EOF space due to speculative preallocation, support improved quota management to free up a significant amount of unwritten space when at or near EDQUOT. It support backgroup scanning which occurs on a longish interval(5 mins by default, tunable), and on-demand scanning/trimming via ioctl(2). Bitter arguments ensued from this session, especially for the comparison between Ext4 and Btrfs in different areas, I have to spent a whole morning of the 1st day answering those questions. We basically agreed on XFS is the best choice in Linux nowadays because: Stable, XFS has a good record in stability in the past 10 years. Fengguang Wu who lead the 0-day kernel test project also said that he has observed less error than other filesystems in the past 1+ years, I own it to the XFS upstream code reviewer, they always performing serious code review as well as testing. Good performance for large/small files, XFS does not works very well for small files has already been an old story for years. Best choice (maybe) for distributed PB filesystems. e.g, Ceph recommends delopy OSD daemon on XFS because Ext4 has limited xattr size. Best choice for large storage (>16TB). Ext4 does not support a single file more than around 15.95TB. Scalability, any objection to XFS is best in this point? :) XFS is better to deal with transaction concurrency than Ext4, why? The maximum size of the log in XFS is 2038MB compare to 128MB in Ext4. Misc. Ext4 is widely used and it has been proved fast/stable in various loads and scenarios, XFS just need more customers, and Btrfs is still on the road to be a manhood. Ceph Introduction (Led by Li Wang) This a hot topic.  Li gave us a nice introduction about the design as well as their current works. Actually, Ceph client has been included in Linux kernel since 2.6.34 and supported by Openstack since Folsom but it seems that it has not yet been widely deployment in production environment. Their major work is focus on the inline data support to separate the metadata and data storage, reduce the file access time, i.e, a file access need communication twice, fetch the metadata from MDS and then get data from OSD, and also, the small file access is limited by the network latency. The solution is, for the small files they would like to store the data at metadata so that when accessing a small file, the metadata server can push both metadata and data to the client at the same time. In this way, they can reduce the overhead of calculating the data offset and save the communication to OSD. For this feature, they have only run some small scale testing but really saw noticeable improvements. Test environment: Intel 2 CPU 12 Core, 64GB RAM, Ubuntu 12.04, Ceph 0.56.6 with 200GB SATA disk, 15 OSD, 1 MDS, 1 MON. The sequence read performance for 1K size files improved about 50%. I have asked Li and Zheng Yan (the core developer of Ceph, who also worked on Btrfs) whether Ceph is really stable and can be deployed at production environment for large scale PB level storage, but they can not give a positive answer, looks Ceph even does not spread over Dreamhost (subject to confirmation). From Li, they only deployed Ceph for a small scale storage(32 nodes) although they'd like to try 6000 nodes in the future. Improve Linux swap for Flash storage (led by Shaohua Li) Because of high density, low power and low price, flash storage (SSD) is a good candidate to partially replace DRAM. A quick answer for this is using SSD as swap. But Linux swap is designed for slow hard disk storage, so there are a lot of challenges to efficiently use SSD for swap. SWAPOUT swap_map scan swap_map is the in-memory data structure to track swap disk usage, but it is a slow linear scan. It will become a bottleneck while finding many adjacent pages in the use of SSD. Shaohua Li have changed it to a cluster(128K) list, resulting in O(1) algorithm. However, this apporoach needs restrictive cluster alignment and only enabled for SSD. IO pattern In most cases, the swap io is in interleaved pattern because of mutiple reclaimers or a free cluster is shared by all reclaimers. Even though block layer can merge interleaved IO to some extent, but we cannot count on it completely. Hence the per-cpu cluster is added base on the previous change, it can help reclaimer do sequential IO and the block layer will be easier to merge IO. TLB flush: If we're reclaiming one active page, we should first move the page from active lru list to inactive lru list, and then reclaim the page from inactive lru to swap it out. During the process, we need to clear PTE twice: first is 'A'(ACCESS) bit, second is 'P'(PRESENT) bit. Processors need to send lots of ipi which make the TLB flush really expensive. Some works have been done to improve this, including rework smp_call_functiom_many() or remove the first TLB flush in x86, but there still have some arguments here and only parts of works have been pushed to mainline. SWAPIN: Page fault does iodepth=1 sync io, but it's a little waste if only issue a page size's IO. The obvious solution is doing swap readahead. But the current in-kernel swap readahead is arbitary(always 8 pages), and it always doesn't perform well for both random and sequential access workload. Shaohua introduced a new flag for madvise(MADV_WILLNEED) to do swap prefetch, so the changes happen in userspace API and leave the in-kernel readahead unchanged(but I think some improvement can also be done here). SWAP discard As we know, discard is important for SSD write throughout, but the current swap discard implementation is synchronous. He changed it to async discard which allow discard and write run in the same time. Meanwhile, the unit of discard is also optimized to cluster. Misc: lock contention For many concurrent swapout and swapin , the lock contention such as anon_vma or swap_lock is high, so he changed the swap_lock to a per-swap lock. But there still have some lock contention in very high speed SSD because of swapcache address_space lock. Zproject (led by Bob Liu) Bob gave us a very nice introduction about the current memory compression status. Now there are 3 projects(zswap/zram/zcache) which all aim at smooth swap IO storm and promote performance, but they all have their own pros and cons. ZSWAP It is implemented based on frontswap API and it uses a dynamic allocater named Zbud to allocate free pages. Zbud means pairs of zpages are "buddied" and it can only store at most two compressed pages in one page frame, so the max compress ratio is 50%. Each page frame is lru-linked and can do shink in memory pressure. If the compressed memory pool reach its limitation, shink or reclaim happens. It decompress the page frame into two new allocated pages and then write them to real swap device, but it can fail when allocating the two pages. ZRAM Acts as a compressed ramdisk and used as swap device, and it use zsmalloc as its allocator which has high density but may have fragmentation issues. Besides, page reclaim is hard since it will need more pages to uncompress and free just one page. ZRAM is preferred by embedded system which may not have any real swap device. Now both ZRAM and ZSWAP are in driver/staging tree, and in the mm community there are some disscussions of merging ZRAM into ZSWAP or viceversa, but no agreement yet. ZCACHE Handles file page compression but it is removed out of staging recently. From industry (led by Tang Jie, LSI) An LSI engineer introduced several new produces to us. The first is raid5/6 cards that it use full stripe writes to improve performance. The 2nd one he introduced is SandForce flash controller, who can understand data file types (data entropy) to reduce write amplification (WA) for nearly all writes. It's called DuraWrite and typical WA is 0.5. What's more, if enable its Dynamic Logical Capacity function module, the controller can do data compression which is transparent to upper layer. LSI testing shows that with this virtual capacity enables 1x TB drive can support up to 2x TB capacity, but the application must monitor free flash space to maintain optimal performance and to guard against free flash space exhaustion. He said the most useful application is for datebase. Another thing I think it's worth to mention is that a NV-DRAM memory in NMR/Raptor which is directly exposed to host system. Applications can directly access the NV-DRAM via a memory address - using standard system call mmap(). He said that it is very useful for database logging now. This kind of NVM produces are beginning to appear in recent years, and it is said that Samsung is building a research center in China for related produces. IMHO, NVM will bring an effect to current os layer especially on file system, e.g. its journaling may need to redesign to fully utilize these nonvolatile memory. OCFS2 (led by Canquan Shen) Without a doubt, HuaWei is the biggest contributor to OCFS2 in the past two years. They have posted 46 upstream patches and 39 patches have been merged. Their current project is based on 32/64 nodes cluster, but they also tried 128 nodes at the experimental stage. The major work they are working is to support ATS (atomic test and set), it can be works with DLM at the same time. Looks this idea is inspired by the vmware VMFS locking, i.e, http://blogs.vmware.com/vsphere/2012/05/vmfs-locking-uncovered.html CLK - 18th October 2013 Improving Linux Development with Better Tools (Andi Kleen) This talk focused on how to find/solve bugs along with the Linux complexity growing. Generally, we can do this with the following kind of tools: Static code checkers tools. e.g, sparse, smatch, coccinelle, clang checker, checkpatch, gcc -W/LTO, stanse. This can help check a lot of things, simple mistakes, complex problems, but the challenges are: some are very slow, false positives, may need a concentrated effort to get false positives down. Especially, no static checker I found can follow indirect calls (“OO in C”, common in kernel): struct foo_ops { int (*do_foo)(struct foo *obj); } foo->do_foo(foo); Dynamic runtime checkers, e.g, thread checkers, kmemcheck, lockdep. Ideally all kernel code would come with a test suite, then someone could run all the dynamic checkers. Fuzzers/test suites. e.g, Trinity is a great tool, it finds many bugs, but needs manual model for each syscall. Modern fuzzers around using automatic feedback, but notfor kernel yet: http://taviso.decsystem.org/making_software_dumber.pdf Debuggers/Tracers to understand code, e.g, ftrace, can dump on events/oops/custom triggers, but still too much overhead in many cases to run always during debug. Tools to read/understand source, e.g, grep/cscope work great for many cases, but do not understand indirect pointers (OO in C model used in kernel), give us all “do_foo” instances: struct foo_ops { int (*do_foo)(struct foo *obj); } = { .do_foo = my_foo }; foo>do_foo(foo); That would be great to have a cscope like tool that understands this based on types/initializers XFS: The High Performance Enterprise File System (Jeff Liu) [slides] I gave a talk for introducing the disk layout, unique features, as well as the recent changes.   The slides include some charts to reflect the performances between XFS/Btrfs/Ext4 for small files. About a dozen users raised their hands when I asking who has experienced with XFS. I remembered that when I asked the same question in LinuxCon/Japan, only 3 people raised their hands, but they are Chris Mason, Ric Wheeler, and another attendee. The attendee questions were mainly focused on stability, and comparison with other file systems. Linux Containers (Feng Gao) The speaker introduced us that the purpose for those kind of namespaces, include mount/UTS/IPC/Network/Pid/User, as well as the system API/ABI. For the userspace tools, He mainly focus on the Libvirt LXC rather than us(LXC). Libvirt LXC is another userspace container management tool, implemented as one type of libvirt driver, it can manage containers, create namespace, create private filesystem layout for container, Create devices for container and setup resources controller via cgroup. In this talk, Feng also mentioned another two possible new namespaces in the future, the 1st is the audit, but not sure if it should be assigned to user namespace or not. Another is about syslog, but the question is do we really need it? In-memory Compression (Bob Liu) Same as CLSF, a nice introduction that I have already mentioned above. Misc There were some other talks related to ACPI based memory hotplug, smart wake-affinity in scheduler etc., but my head is not big enough to record all those things. -- Jeff Liu

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