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• Becoming A Great Developer

  - by Lee Brandt

  Image via Wikipedia I’ve been doing the whole programming thing for awhile and reading and watching some of the best in the business. I have come to notice that the really great developers do a few things that (I think) makes them great. Now don’t get me wrong, I am not saying that I am one of these few. I still struggle with doing some of the things that makes one great at development. Coincidently, many of these things also make you a better person period. Believe That Guidance Is Better Than Answers This is one I have no problem with. I prefer guidance any time I am learning from another developer. Answers may get you going, but guidance will leave you stranded. At some point, you will come across a problem that can only be solved by thinking for yourself and this is where that guidance will really come in handy. You can use that guidance and extrapolate whatever technology to salve that problem (if it’s the right tool for solving that problem). The problem is, lots of developers simply want someone to tell them, “Do this, then this, then set that, and write this.” Favor thinking and learn the guidance of doing X and don’t ask someone to show you how to do X, if that makes sense. Read, Read and Read If you don’t like reading, you’re probably NOT going to make it into the Great Developer group. Great developers read books, they read magazines and they read code. Open source playgrounds like SourceForge, CodePlex and GitHub, have made it extremely easy to download code from developers you admire and see how they do stuff. Chances are, if you read their blog too, they’ll even explain WHY they did what they did (see “Guidance” above). MSDN and Code Magazine have not only code samples, but explanations of how to use certain technologies and sometimes even when NOT to use that same technology. Books are also out on just about every topic. I still favor the less technology centric books. For instance, I generally don’t buy books like, “Getting Started with Jiminy Jappets”. I look for titles like, “How To Write More Effective Code” (again, see guidance). The Addison-Wesley Signature Series is a great example of these types of books. They teach technology-agnostic concepts. Head First Design Patterns is another great guidance book. It teaches the "Gang Of Four" Design Patterns in a very easy-to-understand, picture-heavy way (I LIKE pictures). Hang Your Balls Out There Even though the advice came from a 3rd-shift Kinko’s attendant, doesn’t mean it’s not sound advice. Write some code and put it out for others to read, criticize and castigate you for. Understand that there are some real jerks out there who are absolute geniuses. Don’t be afraid to get some great advice wrapped in some really nasty language. Try to take what’s good about it and leave what’s not. I have a tough time with this myself. I don’t really have any code out there that is available for review (other than my demo code). It takes some guts to do, but in the end, there is no substitute for getting a community of developers to critique your code and give you ways to improve. Get Involved Speaking of community, the local and online user groups and discussion forums are a great place to hear about technologies and techniques you might never come across otherwise. Mostly because you might not know to look. But, once you sit down with a bunch of other developers and start discussing what you’re interested in, you may open up a whole new perspective on it. Don’t just go to the UG meetings and watch the presentations either, get out there and talk, socialize. I realize geeks weren’t meant to necessarily be social creatures, but if you’re amongst other geeks, it’s much easier. I’ve learned more in the last 3-4 years that I have been involved in the community that I did in my previous 8 years of coding without it. Socializing works, even if socialism doesn’t. Continuous Improvement Lean proponents might call this “Kaizen”, but I call it progress. We all know, especially in the technology realm, if you’re not moving ahead, you’re falling behind. It may seem like drinking from a fire hose, but step back and pick out the technologies that speak to you. The ones that may you’re little heart go pitter-patter. Concentrate on those. If you’re still overloaded, pick the best of the best. Just know that if you’re not looking at the code you wrote last week or at least last year with some embarrassment, you’re probably stagnating. That’s about all I can say about that, cause I am all out of clichés to throw at it. :0) Write Code Great painters paint, great writers write, and great developers write code. The most sure-fire way to improve your coding ability is to continue writing code. Don’t just write code that your work throws on you, pick that technology you love or are curious to know more about and walk through some blog demo examples. Take the language you use everyday and try to get it to do something crazy. Who knows, you might create the next Google search algorithm! All in all, being a great developer is about finding yourself in all this code. If it is just a job to you, you will probably never be one of the “Great Developers”, but you’re probably okay with that. If, on the other hand, you do aspire to greatness, get out there and GET it. No one’s going hand it to you.

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• Kendo UI Mobile with Knockout for Master-Detail Views

  - by Steve Michelotti

  Lately I’ve been playing with Kendo UI Mobile to build iPhone apps. It’s similar to jQuery Mobile in that they are both HTML5/JavaScript based frameworks for buildings mobile apps. The primary thing that drew me to investigate Kendo UI was its innate ability to adaptively render a native looking app based on detecting the device it’s currently running on. In other words, it will render to look like a native iPhone app if it’s running on an iPhone and it will render to look like a native Droid app if it’s running on a Droid. This is in contrast to jQuery Mobile which looks the same on all devices and, therefore, it can never quite look native for whatever device it’s running on. My first impressions of Kendo UI were great. Using HTML5 data-* attributes to define “roles” for UI elements is easy, the rendering looked great, and the basic navigation was simple and intuitive. However, I ran into major confusion when trying to figure out how to “correctly” build master-detail views. Since I was already very family with KnockoutJS, I set out to use that framework in conjunction with Kendo UI Mobile to build the following simple scenario: I wanted to have a simple “Task Manager” application where my first screen just showed a list of tasks like this:   Then clicking on a specific task would navigate to a detail screen that would show all details of the specific task that was selected:   Basic navigation between views in Kendo UI is simple. The href of an <a> tag just needs to specify a hash tag followed by the ID of the view to navigate to as shown in this jsFiddle (notice the href of the <a> tag matches the id of the second view):   Direct link to jsFiddle: here. That is all well and good but the problem I encountered was: how to pass data between the views? Specifically, I need the detail view to display all the details of whichever task was selected. If I was doing this with my typical technique with KnockoutJS, I know exactly what I would do. First I would create a view model that had my collection of tasks and a property for the currently selected task like this: 1: function ViewModel() { 2: var self = this; 3: self.tasks = ko.observableArray(data); 4: self.selectedTask = ko.observable(null); 5: } Then I would bind my list of tasks to the unordered list - I would attach a “click” handler to each item (each <li> in the unordered list) so that it would select the “selectedTask” for the view model. The problem I found is this approach simply wouldn’t work for Kendo UI Mobile. It completely ignored the click handlers that I was trying to attach to the <a> tags – it just wanted to look at the href (at least that’s what I observed). But if I can’t intercept this, then *how* can I pass data or any context to the next view? The only thing I was able to find in the Kendo documentation is that you can pass query string arguments on the view name you’re specifying in the href. This enabled me to do the following: Specify the task ID in each href – something like this: <a href=”#taskDetail?id=3></a> Attach an “init method” (via the “data-show” attribute on the details view) that runs whenever the view is activated Inside this “init method”, grab the task ID passed from the query string to look up the item from my view model’s list of tasks in order to set the selected task I was able to get all that working with about 20 lines of JavaScript as shown in this jsFiddle. If you click on the Results tab, you can navigate between views and see the the detail screen is correctly binding to the selected item:   Direct link to jsFiddle: here.   With all that being done, I was very happy to get it working with the behavior I wanted. However, I have no idea if that is the “correct” way to do it or if there is a “better” way to do it. I know that Kendo UI comes with its own data binding framework but my preference is to be able to use (the well-documented) KnockoutJS since I’m already familiar with that framework rather than having to learn yet another new framework. While I think my solution above is probably “acceptable”, there are still a couple of things that bug me about it. First, it seems odd that I have to loop through my items to *find* my selected item based on the ID that was passed on the query string - normally, with Knockout I can just refer directly to my selected item from where it was used. Second, it didn’t feel exactly right that I had to rely on the “data-show” method of the details view to set my context – normally with Knockout, I could just attach a click handler to the <a> tag that was actually clicked by the user in order to set the “selected item.” I’m not sure if I’m being too picky. I know there are many people that have *way* more expertise in Kendo UI compared to me – I’d be curious to know if there are better ways to achieve the same results.

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• Modifying Service URLs with LINQ to Twitter

  - by Joe Mayo

  It’s funny that two posts so close together speak about flexibility with the LINQ to Twitter provider.  There are certain things you know from experience on when to make software more flexible and when to save time.  This is another one of those times when I got lucky and made the right choice up front. I’m talking about the ability to switch URLs. It only makes sense that Twitter should begin versioning their API as it matures.  In fact, most of the entire API has moved to the v1 URL at “https://api.twitter.com/1/”, except for search and trends.  Recently, Twitter introduced the available and local trends, but hung them off the new v1, and left the rest of the trends API on the old URL. To implement this, I muscled my way into the expression tree during CreateRequestProcessor to figure out which trend I was dealing with; perhaps not elegant, but the code is in the right place and that’s what factories are for.  Anyway, the point is that I wouldn’t have to do this kind of stuff (as much fun as it is), if Twitter would have more consistency. Having went to Chirp last week and seeing the evolution of the API, it looks like my wish is coming true.  …now if they would just get their stuff together on the mess they made with geo-location and places… but again, that’s all transparent if your using LINQ to Twitter because I pulled all of that together in a consistent way so that you don’t have to. Normally, when Twitter makes a change, code breaks and I have to scramble to get the fixes in-place.  This time, in the case of a URL change, the adjustment is easy and no-one has to wait for me.  Essentially, all you need to do is change the URL passed to the TwitterContext constructor.  Here’s an example of instantiating a TwitterContext now: using (var twitterCtx = new TwitterContext(auth, "https://api.twitter.com/1/", "https://search.twitter.com/")) The third parameter constructor is the SearchUrl, which is used for Search and Trend APIs. You probably know what’s coming next; another constructor, but with the SearchUrl parameter set to the new URL as follows: using (var twitterCtx = new TwitterContext(auth, "https://api.twitter.com/1/", "https://api.twitter.com/1/")) One consequence of setting the URL this way is that you set the URL for both Trends and Search.  Since Search is still using the old URL, this is going to break for Search queries. You could always instantiate a special TwitterContext instance for Search queries, with the old URL set. Alternatively, you can use the TwitterContext’s SearchUrl property. Here’s an example: twitterCtx.SearchUrl = "https://api.twitter.com/1/"; var trends = (from trend in twitterCtx.Trends where trend.Type == TrendType.Daily && trend.Date == DateTime.Now.AddDays(-2).Date select trend) .ToList(); Notice how I set the SearchUrl property just-in-time for the query. This allows you to target the URL for each specific query. Whichever way you prefer to configure the URL, it’s your choice. So, now you know how to set the URL to be used for Trend queries and how to prevent whacking your Search queries. I’ll be updating the Trend API to use same URL as all other APIs soon, so the only API left to use the SearchUrl will be Search, but for the short term, it’s Trends and Search. Until I make this change, you’ll have a viable work-around by setting the URL yourself, as explained above. These were the Search and Trend URLs, but you might be curious about the second parameter of the TwitterContext constructor; that’s the URL for all other APIs (the BaseUrl), except for Trend and Search. Similarly, you can use the TwitterContext’s BaseUrl property to set the BaseUrl. Setting the BaseUrl can be useful when communicating with other services. In addition to Twitter changing URLs, the Twitter API has been adopted by other companies, such as Identi.ca, Tumblr, and  WordPress.  This capability lets you use LINQ to Twitter with any of these services.  This is a testament to the success of the Twitter API and it’s popularity. No doubt we’ll have hills and valleys to traverse as the Twitter API matures, but hopefully there will be enough flexibility in LINQ to Twitter to make these changes as transparent as possible for you. @JoeMayo

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• Fun With the Chrome JavaScript Console and the Pluralsight Website

  - by Steve Michelotti

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/michelotti/archive/2013/07/24/fun-with-the-chrome-javascript-console-and-the-pluralsight-website.aspxI’m currently working on my third course for Pluralsight. Everyone already knows that Scott Allen is a “dominating force” for Pluralsight but I was curious how many courses other authors have published as well. The Pluralsight Authors page - http://pluralsight.com/training/Authors – shows all 146 authors and you can click on any author’s page to see how many (and which) courses they have authored. The problem is: I don’t want to have to click into 146 pages to get a count for each author. With this in mind, I figured I could write a little JavaScript using the Chrome JavaScript console to do some “detective work.” My first step was to figure out how the HTML was structured on this page so I could do some screen-scraping. Right-click the first author - “Inspect Element”. I can see there is a primary <div> with a class of “main” which contains all the authors. Each author is in an <h3> with an <a> tag containing their name and link to their page:     This web page already has jQuery loaded so I can use $ directly from the console. This allows me to just use jQuery to inspect items on the current page. Notice this is a multi-line command. In order to use multiple lines in the console you have to press SHIFT-ENTER to go to the next line:     Now I can see I’m extracting data just fine. At this point I want to follow each URL. Then I want to screen-scrape this next page to see how many courses each author has done. Let’s take a look at the author detail page:       I can see we have a table (with a css class of “course”) that contains rows for each course authored. This means I can get the number of courses pretty easily like this:     Now I can put this all together. Back on the authors page, I want to follow each URL, extract the returned HTML, and grab the count. In the code below, I simply use the jQuery $.get() method to get the author detail page and the “data” variable that is in the callback contains the HTML. A nice feature of jQuery is that I can simply put this HTML string inside of $() and I can use jQuery selectors directly on it in conjunction with the find() method:     Now I’m getting somewhere. I have every Pluralsight author and how many courses each one has authored. But that’s not quite what I’m after – what I want to see are the authors that have the MOST courses in the library. What I’d like to do is to put all of the data in an array and then sort that array descending by number of courses. I can add an item to the array after each author detail page is returned but the catch here is that I can’t perform the sort operation until ALL of the author detail pages have executed. The jQuery $.get() method is naturally an async method so I essentially have 146 async calls and I don’t want to perform my sort action until ALL have completed (side note: don’t run this script too many times or the Pluralsight servers might think your an evil hacker attempting a DoS attack and deny you). My C# brain wants to use a WaitHandle WaitAll() method here but this is JavaScript. I was able to do this by using the jQuery Deferred() object. I create a new deferred object for each request and push it onto a deferred array. After each request is complete, I signal completion by calling the resolve() method. Finally, I use a $.when.apply() method to execute my descending sort operation once all requests are complete. Here is my complete console command: 1: var authorList = [], 2: defList = []; 3: $(".main h3 a").each(function() { 4: var def = $.Deferred(); 5: defList.push(def); 6: var authorName = $(this).text(); 7: var authorUrl = $(this).attr('href'); 8: $.get(authorUrl, function(data) { 9: var courseCount = $(data).find("table.course tbody tr").length; 10: authorList.push({ name: authorName, numberOfCourses: courseCount }); 11: def.resolve(); 12: }); 13: }); 14: $.when.apply($, defList).then(function() { 15: console.log("*Everything* is complete"); 16: var sortedList = authorList.sort(function(obj1, obj2) { 17: return obj2.numberOfCourses - obj1.numberOfCourses; 18: }); 19: for (var i = 0; i < sortedList.length; i++) { 20: console.log(authorList[i]); 21: } 22: });   And here are the results:     WOW! John Sonmez has 44 courses!! And Matt Milner has 29! I guess Scott Allen isn’t the only “dominating force”. I would have assumed Scott Allen was #1 but he comes in as #3 in total course count (of course Scott has 11 courses in the Top 50, and 14 in the Top 100 which is incredible!). Given that I’m in the middle of producing only my third course, I better get to work!

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• Official and unofficial apps in the iOS, WP7, and Android marketplaces

  - by Bil Simser

  The last few months have seen people complaining about the lack of "official" apps in the Windows Phone marketplace. In fact a couple of months ago I wrote about this very thing here and if we really needed these official apps or could get by with third-party solutions. Recently a list of "Top 100 Mobile Apps" crossed my desk and it was curious. 40 iPhone apps, 40 Android apps, 10 WP7 apps, and 10 BlackBerry apps. Really? 10 for WP7? So I wondered if the media was just playing this up and maybe continuing to do what I think most vendors are doing which is treating Windows Phone as the red-headed step-child you keep in the basement while all along there's nothing wrong with them. I put together the list and went digging to see how many of the top 40 iOS and Android apps were also on the Windows Phone platform (sorry BlackBerry, you should just shut your doors right now). Here's the results. Note, these are all *free* apps. There might be other pay apps that have official representation across all mobile devices, I just chose to hunt these ones down because I'm cheap. In the top 40, I easily plucked out 20 that had official apps on all three platforms. These were: Amazon Mobile, ESPN Score Centre, Evernote, Facebook, Foursquare, Google Search, IMDB, Kindle, Shazam, Skype (yes, I know, in beta on WP7), SlackerRadio, The Weather Channel, TripIt, Twitter, Yelp, Flixster, Netflix, TuneIn Radio, Dictionary.com, Angry Birds, and Groupon. Hey, that's pretty good IMHO. 20 or so apps, all free, and all fully functional and supported (and in some cases, even better looking on the Windows Phone platform than the other platforms). A dozen or so more apps had official apps on some platforms but not all, so yes, there are gaps here. Here's a rundown of the hangers-on: Adobe Photoshop Express This looks great on the iOS platform and there's even an official version on droid. Hope Adobe brings this to WP7. There are other photo editing programs though if you go looking (maybe we can get Paint.NET to be ported to the phone?) BBC News A few apps offer news feeds but nothing official on the Windows Phone. The feeds are good but without video this app needs some WP7 love. Dropbox Again Windows Phone looses out here with no official app. There are a few third party ones that will help you along and offer most of the functionality that you need but no integration that an official app might bring. Epicurious Droid seems to be the trailer here as there are apps for it but nothing official (from what I can tell). Both iOS and WP7 have them. Flipboard It's sad with Flipboard as it's such a great newsreader. The only offiical app is for iOS but frankly the iPhone version looks horrible so without a tablet the experience here isn't that hot. Maybe with WP8. Currently there's nothing even remotely similar to this on the other platforms. Google+ Is anyone still using this? No official app for WP7 but some clones. Apparently there's no API so people are just screen scraping. Ugh. Mint.com This app has all kinds of buzz and a lot of votes on the application requests site. Official apps for iOS and droid. No WP7 love (yet). TED Quite a few TED apps on WP7 but nothing official. I think the third party ones suffice and some are pretty nice looking, taking advantage of the Metro interface and making for a good show. WebMD There's a third party app on WP7 here but nothing official. It seems to contain all the same information and functionality the official apps do so not sure if an official one is needed but its here for inclusion. The other apps in the top 40 were either very specific to the platform (for example all three of them have a "Find my Phone" app). There are others that are missing out on the WP7 platform like ooVoo, Words With Friends, and some of the Google apps (Google Voice for example). Since you can integrate your GMail account right into the Windows Phone (via linked inboxes) I'm not sure if there's a need for an official GMail app here. Looking at the numbers Windows Phone still gets the worst of the deal here with half a dozen highly popular "offical" apps that exist on the other mobile platforms and in some cases, nothing even remotely similar to the official app to compare. This doesn't include things like Instagram, PInterest, and others (don't get me started on those). Still, with over 20+ highly popular free apps all represented on all three mobile platforms I don't think it's a bad place to be in. The Windows Phone platform could get a little more love from the vendors missing here, or at least open up your APIs so the third party crowd can step in and take up the slack. P.S. these are just my observations and I might have got a few items wrong. Feel free to chime in with missing or incorrect information. I am after all human. Well, most of me is.

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• Subterranean IL: Generics and array covariance

  - by Simon Cooper

  Arrays in .NET are curious beasts. They are the only built-in collection types in the CLR, and SZ-arrays (single dimension, zero-indexed) have their own commands and IL syntax. One of their stranger properties is they have a kind of built-in covariance long before generic variance was added in .NET 4. However, this causes a subtle but important problem with generics. First of all, we need to briefly recap on array covariance. SZ-array covariance To demonstrate, I'll tweak the classes I introduced in my previous posts: public class IncrementableClass { public int Value; public virtual void Increment(int incrementBy) { Value += incrementBy; } } public class IncrementableClassx2 : IncrementableClass { public override void Increment(int incrementBy) { base.Increment(incrementBy); base.Increment(incrementBy); } } In the CLR, SZ-arrays of reference types are implicitly convertible to arrays of the element's supertypes, all the way up to object (note that this does not apply to value types). That is, an instance of IncrementableClassx2[] can be used wherever a IncrementableClass[] or object[] is required. When an SZ-array could be used in this fashion, a run-time type check is performed when you try to insert an object into the array to make sure you're not trying to insert an instance of IncrementableClass into an IncrementableClassx2[]. This check means that the following code will compile fine but will fail at run-time: IncrementableClass[] array = new IncrementableClassx2[1]; array[0] = new IncrementableClass(); // throws ArrayTypeMismatchException These checks are enforced by the various stelem* and ldelem* il instructions in such a way as to ensure you can't insert a IncrementableClass into a IncrementableClassx2[]. For the rest of this post, however, I'm going to concentrate on the ldelema instruction. ldelema This instruction pops the array index (int32) and array reference (O) off the stack, and pushes a pointer (&) to the corresponding array element. However, unlike the ldelem instruction, the instruction's type argument must match the run-time array type exactly. This is because, once you've got a managed pointer, you can use that pointer to both load and store values in that array element using the ldind* and stind* (load/store indirect) instructions. As the same pointer can be used for both input and output to the array, the type argument to ldelema must be invariant. At the time, this was a perfectly reasonable restriction, and maintained array type-safety within managed code. However, along came generics, and with it the constrained callvirt instruction. So, what happens when we combine array covariance and constrained callvirt? .method public static void CallIncrementArrayValue() { // IncrementableClassx2[] arr = new IncrementableClassx2[1] ldc.i4.1 newarr IncrementableClassx2 // arr[0] = new IncrementableClassx2(); dup newobj instance void IncrementableClassx2::.ctor() ldc.i4.0 stelem.ref // IncrementArrayValue<IncrementableClass>(arr, 0) // here, we're treating an IncrementableClassx2[] as IncrementableClass[] dup ldc.i4.0 call void IncrementArrayValue<class IncrementableClass>(!!0[],int32) // ... ret } .method public static void IncrementArrayValue<(IncrementableClass) T>( !!T[] arr, int32 index) { // arr[index].Increment(1) ldarg.0 ldarg.1 ldelema !!T ldc.i4.1 constrained. !!T callvirt instance void IIncrementable::Increment(int32) ret } And the result: Unhandled Exception: System.ArrayTypeMismatchException: Attempted to access an element as a type incompatible with the array. at IncrementArrayValue[T](T[] arr, Int32 index) at CallIncrementArrayValue() Hmm. We're instantiating the generic method as IncrementArrayValue<IncrementableClass>, but passing in an IncrementableClassx2[], hence the ldelema instruction is failing as it's expecting an IncrementableClass[]. On features and feature conflicts What we've got here is a conflict between existing behaviour (ldelema ensuring type safety on covariant arrays) and new behaviour (managed pointers to object references used for every constrained callvirt on generic type instances). And, although this is an edge case, there is no general workaround. The generic method could be hidden behind several layers of assemblies, wrappers and interfaces that make it a requirement to use array covariance when calling the generic method. Furthermore, this will only fail at runtime, whereas compile-time safety is what generics were designed for! The solution is the readonly. prefix instruction. This modifies the ldelema instruction to ignore the exact type check for arrays of reference types, and so it lets us take the address of array elements using a covariant type to the actual run-time type of the array: .method public static void IncrementArrayValue<(IncrementableClass) T>( !!T[] arr, int32 index) { // arr[index].Increment(1) ldarg.0 ldarg.1 readonly. ldelema !!T ldc.i4.1 constrained. !!T callvirt instance void IIncrementable::Increment(int32) ret } But what about type safety? In return for ignoring the type check, the resulting controlled mutability pointer can only be used in the following situations: As the object parameter to ldfld, ldflda, stfld, call and constrained callvirt instructions As the pointer parameter to ldobj or ldind* As the source parameter to cpobj In other words, the only operations allowed are those that read from the pointer; stind* and similar that alter the pointer itself are banned. This ensures that the array element we're pointing to won't be changed to anything untoward, and so type safety within the array is maintained. This is a typical example of the maxim that whenever you add a feature to a program, you have to consider how that feature interacts with every single one of the existing features. Although an edge case, the readonly. prefix instruction ensures that generics and array covariance work together and that compile-time type safety is maintained. Tune in next time for a look at the .ctor generic type constraint, and what it means.

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• Summit reflections

  - by Rob Farley

  So far, my three PASS Summit experiences have been notably different to each other. My first, I wasn’t on the board and I gave two regular sessions and a Lightning Talk in which I told jokes. My second, I was a board advisor, and I delivered a precon, a spotlight and a Lightning Talk in which I sang. My third (last week), I was a full board director, and I didn’t present at all. Let’s not talk about next year. I’m not sure there are many options left. This year, I noticed that a lot more people recognised me and said hello. I guess that’s potentially because of the singing last year, but could also be because board elections can bring a fair bit of attention, and because of the effort I’ve put in through things like 24HOP... Yeah, ok. It’d be the singing. My approach was very different though. I was watching things through different eyes. I looked for the things that seemed to be working and the things that didn’t. I had staff there again, and was curious to know how their things were working out. I knew a lot more about what was going on behind the scenes to make various things happen, and although very little about the Summit was actually my responsibility (based on not having that portfolio), my perspective had moved considerably. Before the Summit started, Board Members had been given notebooks – an idea Tom (who heads up PASS’ marketing) had come up with after being inspired by seeing Bill walk around with a notebook. The plan was to take notes about feedback we got from people. It was a good thing, and the notebook forms a nice pair with the SQLBits one I got a couple of years ago when I last spoke there. I think one of the biggest impacts of this was that during the first keynote, Bill told everyone present about the notebooks. This set a tone of “we’re listening”, and a number of people were definitely keen to tell us things that would cause us to pull out our notebooks. PASSTV was a new thing this year. Justin, the host, featured on the couch and talked a lot of people about a lot of things, including me (he talked to me about a lot of things, I don’t think he talked to a lot people about me). Reaching people through online methods is something which interests me a lot – it has huge potential, and I love the idea of being able to broadcast to people who are unable to attend in person. I’m keen to see how this medium can be developed over time. People who know me will know that I’m a keen advocate of certification – I've been SQL certified since version 6.5, and have even been involved in creating exams. However, I don’t believe in studying for exams. I think training is worthwhile for learning new skills, but the goal should be on learning those skills, not on passing an exam. Exams should be for proving that the skills are there, not a goal in themselves. The PASS Summit is an excellent place to take exams though, and with an attitude of professional development throughout the event, why not? So I did. I wasn’t expecting to take one, but I was persuaded and took the MCM Knowledge Exam. I hadn’t even looked at the syllabus, but tried it anyway. I was very tired, and even fell asleep at one point during it. I’ll find out my result at some point in the future – the Prometric site just says “Tested” at the moment. As I said, it wasn’t something I was expecting to do, but it was good to have something unexpected during the week. Of course it was good to catch up with old friends and make new ones. I feel like every time I’m in the US I see things develop a bit more, with more and more people knowing who I am, who my staff are, and recognising the LobsterPot brand. I missed being a presenter, but I definitely enjoyed seeing many friends on the list of presenters. I won’t try to list them, because there are so many these days that people might feel sad if I don’t mention them. For those that I managed to see, I was pleased to see that the majority of them have lifted their presentation skills since I last saw them, and I happily told them as much. One person who I will mention was Paul White, who travelled from New Zealand to his first PASS Summit. He gave two sessions (a regular session and a half-day), packed large rooms of people, and had everyone buzzing with enthusiasm. I spoke to him after the event, and he told me that his expectations were blown away. Paul isn’t normally a fan of crowds, and the thought of 4000 people would have been scary. But he told me he had no idea that people would welcome him so well, be so friendly and so down to earth. He’s seen the significance of the SQL Server community, and says he’ll be back. It’ll be good to see him there. Will you be there too?

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• Migrating Core Data to new UIManagedDocument in iOS 5

  - by samerpaul

  I have an app that has been on the store since iOS 3.1, so there is a large install base out there that still uses Core Data loaded up in my AppDelegate. In the most recent set of updates, I raised the minimum version to 4.3 but still kept the same way of loading the data. Recently, I decided it's time to make the minimum version 5.1 (especially with 6 around the corner), so I wanted to start using the new fancy UIManagedDocument way of using Core Data. The issue with this though is that the old database file is still sitting in the iOS app, so there is no migrating to the new document. You have to basically subclass UIManagedDocument with a new model class, and override a couple of methods to do it for you. Here's a tutorial on what I did for my app TimeTag.  Step One: Add a new class file in Xcode and subclass "UIManagedDocument" Go ahead and also add a method to get the managedObjectModel out of this class. It should look like:   @interface TimeTagModel : UIManagedDocument   - (NSManagedObjectModel *)managedObjectModel;   @end   Step two: Writing the methods in the implementation file (.m) I first added a shortcut method for the applicationsDocumentDirectory, which returns the URL of the app directory.  - (NSURL *)applicationDocumentsDirectory {     return [[[NSFileManagerdefaultManager] URLsForDirectory:NSDocumentDirectoryinDomains:NSUserDomainMask] lastObject]; }   The next step was to pull the managedObjectModel file itself (.momd file). In my project, it's called "minimalTime". - (NSManagedObjectModel *)managedObjectModel {     NSString *path = [[NSBundlemainBundle] pathForResource:@"minimalTime"ofType:@"momd"];     NSURL *momURL = [NSURL fileURLWithPath:path];     NSManagedObjectModel *managedObjectModel = [[NSManagedObjectModel alloc] initWithContentsOfURL:momURL];          return managedObjectModel; }   After that, I need to check for a legacy installation and migrate it to the new UIManagedDocument file instead. This is the overridden method: - (BOOL)configurePersistentStoreCoordinatorForURL:(NSURL *)storeURL ofType:(NSString *)fileType modelConfiguration:(NSString *)configuration storeOptions:(NSDictionary *)storeOptions error:(NSError **)error {     // If legacy store exists, copy it to the new location     NSURL *legacyPersistentStoreURL = [[self applicationDocumentsDirectory] URLByAppendingPathComponent:@"minimalTime.sqlite"];          NSFileManager* fileManager = [NSFileManagerdefaultManager];     if ([fileManager fileExistsAtPath:legacyPersistentStoreURL.path])     {         NSLog(@"Old db exists");         NSError* thisError = nil;         [fileManager replaceItemAtURL:storeURL withItemAtURL:legacyPersistentStoreURL backupItemName:niloptions:NSFileManagerItemReplacementUsingNewMetadataOnlyresultingItemURL:nilerror:&thisError];     }          return [superconfigurePersistentStoreCoordinatorForURL:storeURL ofType:fileType modelConfiguration:configuration storeOptions:storeOptions error:error]; }   Basically what's happening above is that it checks for the minimalTime.sqlite file inside the app's bundle on the iOS device.  If the file exists, it tells you inside the console, and then tells the fileManager to replace the storeURL (inside the method parameter) with the legacy URL. This basically gives your app access to all the existing data the user has generated (otherwise they would load into a blank app, which would be disastrous). It returns a YES if successful (by calling it's [super] method). Final step: Actually load this database Due to how my app works, I actually have to load the database at launch (instead of shortly after, which would be ideal). I call a method called loadDatabase, which looks like this: -(void)loadDatabase {     static dispatch_once_t onceToken;          // Only do this once!     dispatch_once(&onceToken, ^{         // Get the URL         // The minimalTimeDB name is just something I call it         NSURL *url = [[selfapplicationDocumentsDirectory] URLByAppendingPathComponent:@"minimalTimeDB"];         // Init the TimeTagModel (our custom class we wrote above) with the URL         self.timeTagDB = [[TimeTagModel alloc] initWithFileURL:url];           // Setup the undo manager if it's nil         if (self.timeTagDB.undoManager == nil){             NSUndoManager *undoManager = [[NSUndoManager  alloc] init];             [self.timeTagDB setUndoManager:undoManager];         }                  // You have to actually check to see if it exists already (for some reason you can't just call "open it, and if it's not there, create it")         if ([[NSFileManagerdefaultManager] fileExistsAtPath:[url path]]) {             // If it does exist, try to open it, and if it doesn't open, let the user (or at least you) know!             [self.timeTagDB openWithCompletionHandler:^(BOOL success){                 if (!success) {                     // Handle the error.                     NSLog(@"Error opening up the database");                 }                 else{                     NSLog(@"Opened the file--it already existed");                     [self refreshData];                 }             }];         }         else {             // If it doesn't exist, you need to attempt to create it             [self.timeTagDBsaveToURL:url forSaveOperation:UIDocumentSaveForCreatingcompletionHandler:^(BOOL success){                 if (!success) {                     // Handle the error.                     NSLog(@"Error opening up the database");                 }                 else{                     NSLog(@"Created the file--it did not exist");                     [self refreshData];                 }             }];         }     }); }   If you're curious what refreshData looks like, it sends out a NSNotification that the database has been loaded: -(void)refreshData {     NSNotification* refreshNotification = [NSNotificationnotificationWithName:kNotificationCenterRefreshAllDatabaseData object:self.timeTagDB.managedObjectContext  userInfo:nil];     [[NSNotificationCenter defaultCenter] postNotification:refreshNotification];     }   The kNotificationCenterRefreshAllDatabaseData is just a constant I have defined elsewhere that keeps track of all the NSNotification names I use. I pass the managedObjectContext of the newly created file so that my view controllers can have access to it, and start passing it around to one another. The reason we do this as a Notification is because this is being run in the background, so we can't know exactly when it finishes. Make sure you design your app for this! Have some kind of loading indicator, or make sure your user can't attempt to create a record before the database actually exists, because it will crash the app.

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• Summit reflections

  - by Rob Farley

  So far, my three PASS Summit experiences have been notably different to each other. My first, I wasn’t on the board and I gave two regular sessions and a Lightning Talk in which I told jokes. My second, I was a board advisor, and I delivered a precon, a spotlight and a Lightning Talk in which I sang. My third (last week), I was a full board director, and I didn’t present at all. Let’s not talk about next year. I’m not sure there are many options left. This year, I noticed that a lot more people recognised me and said hello. I guess that’s potentially because of the singing last year, but could also be because board elections can bring a fair bit of attention, and because of the effort I’ve put in through things like 24HOP... Yeah, ok. It’d be the singing. My approach was very different though. I was watching things through different eyes. I looked for the things that seemed to be working and the things that didn’t. I had staff there again, and was curious to know how their things were working out. I knew a lot more about what was going on behind the scenes to make various things happen, and although very little about the Summit was actually my responsibility (based on not having that portfolio), my perspective had moved considerably. Before the Summit started, Board Members had been given notebooks – an idea Tom (who heads up PASS’ marketing) had come up with after being inspired by seeing Bill walk around with a notebook. The plan was to take notes about feedback we got from people. It was a good thing, and the notebook forms a nice pair with the SQLBits one I got a couple of years ago when I last spoke there. I think one of the biggest impacts of this was that during the first keynote, Bill told everyone present about the notebooks. This set a tone of “we’re listening”, and a number of people were definitely keen to tell us things that would cause us to pull out our notebooks. PASSTV was a new thing this year. Justin, the host, featured on the couch and talked a lot of people about a lot of things, including me (he talked to me about a lot of things, I don’t think he talked to a lot people about me). Reaching people through online methods is something which interests me a lot – it has huge potential, and I love the idea of being able to broadcast to people who are unable to attend in person. I’m keen to see how this medium can be developed over time. People who know me will know that I’m a keen advocate of certification – I've been SQL certified since version 6.5, and have even been involved in creating exams. However, I don’t believe in studying for exams. I think training is worthwhile for learning new skills, but the goal should be on learning those skills, not on passing an exam. Exams should be for proving that the skills are there, not a goal in themselves. The PASS Summit is an excellent place to take exams though, and with an attitude of professional development throughout the event, why not? So I did. I wasn’t expecting to take one, but I was persuaded and took the MCM Knowledge Exam. I hadn’t even looked at the syllabus, but tried it anyway. I was very tired, and even fell asleep at one point during it. I’ll find out my result at some point in the future – the Prometric site just says “Tested” at the moment. As I said, it wasn’t something I was expecting to do, but it was good to have something unexpected during the week. Of course it was good to catch up with old friends and make new ones. I feel like every time I’m in the US I see things develop a bit more, with more and more people knowing who I am, who my staff are, and recognising the LobsterPot brand. I missed being a presenter, but I definitely enjoyed seeing many friends on the list of presenters. I won’t try to list them, because there are so many these days that people might feel sad if I don’t mention them. For those that I managed to see, I was pleased to see that the majority of them have lifted their presentation skills since I last saw them, and I happily told them as much. One person who I will mention was Paul White, who travelled from New Zealand to his first PASS Summit. He gave two sessions (a regular session and a half-day), packed large rooms of people, and had everyone buzzing with enthusiasm. I spoke to him after the event, and he told me that his expectations were blown away. Paul isn’t normally a fan of crowds, and the thought of 4000 people would have been scary. But he told me he had no idea that people would welcome him so well, be so friendly and so down to earth. He’s seen the significance of the SQL Server community, and says he’ll be back. It’ll be good to see him there. Will you be there too?

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• New hire expectations... (Am I being unreasonable?)

  - by user295841

  I work for a very small custom software shop. We currently consist me and my boss. My boss is an old FoxPro DOS developer and OOP makes him uncomfortable. He is planning on taking a back seat in the next few years to hopefully enjoy a “partial retirement”. I will be taking over the day to day operations and we are now desperately looking for more help. We tried Monster.com, Dice.com, and others a few years ago when we started our search. We had no success. We have tried outsourcing overseas (total disaster), hiring kids right out of college (mostly a disaster but that’s where I came from), interns (good for them, not so good for us) and hiring laid off “experienced” developers (there was a reason they were laid off). I have heard hiring practices discussed on podcasts, blogs, etc... and have tried a few. The “Fizz Buzz” test was a good one. One kid looked physically ill before he finally gave up. I think my problem is that I have grown so much as a developer since I started here that I now have a high standard. I hear/read very intelligent people podcasts and blogs and I know that there are lots of people out there that can do the job. I don’t want to settle for less than a “good” developer. Perhaps my expectations are unreasonable. I expect any good developer (entry level or experienced) to be billable (at least paying their own wage) in under one month. I expect any good developer to be able to be productive (at least dangerous) in any language or technology with only a few days of research/training. I expect any good developer to be able to take a project from initial customer request to completion with little or no help from others. Am I being unreasonable? What constitutes a valuable developer? What should be expected of an entry level developer? What should be expected of an experienced developer? I realize that everyone is different but there has to be some sort of expectations standard, right? I have been giving the test project below to potential canidates to weed them out. Good idea? Too much? Too little? Please let me know what you think. Thanks. Project ID: T00001 Description: Order Entry System Deadline: 1 Week Scope The scope of this project is to develop a fully function order entry system. Screen/Form design must be user friendly and promote efficient data entry and modification. User experience (Navigation, Screen/Form layouts, Look and Feel…) is at the developer’s discretion. System may be developed using any technologies that conform to the technical and system requirements. Deliverables Complete source code Database setup instructions (Scripts or restorable backup) Application installation instructions (Installer or installation procedure) Any necessary documentation Technical Requirements Server Platform – Windows XP / Windows Server 2003 / SBS Client Platform – Windows XP Web Browser (If applicable) – IE 8 Database – At developer’s discretion (Must be a relational SQL database.) Language – At developer’s discretion All data must be normalized. (+) All data must maintain referential integrity. (++) All data must be indexed for optimal performance. System must handle concurrency. System Requirements Customer Maintenance Customer records must have unique ID. Customer data will include Name, Address, Phone, etc. User must be able to perform all CRUD (Create, Read, Update, and Delete) operations on the Customer table. User must be able to enter a specific Customer ID to edit. User must be able to pull up a sortable/queryable search grid/utility to find a customer to edit. Validation must be performed prior to database commit. Customer record cannot be deleted if the customer has an order in the system. (++) Inventory Maintenance Part records must have unique ID. Part data will include Description, Price, UOM (Unit of Measure), etc. User must be able to perform all CRUD operations on the part table. User must be able to enter a specific Part ID to edit. User must be able to pull up a sortable/queryable search grid/utility to find a part to edit. Validation must be performed prior to database commit. Part record cannot be deleted if the part has been used in an order. (++) Order Entry Order records must have a unique auto-incrementing key (Order Number). Order data must be split into a header/detail structure. (+) Order can contain an infinite number of detail records. Order header data will include Order Number, Customer ID (++), Order Date, Order Status (Open/Closed), etc. Order detail data will include Part Number (++), Quantity, Price, etc. User must be able to perform all CRUD operations on the order tables. User must be able to enter a specific Order Number to edit. User must be able to pull up a sortable/queryable search grid/utility to find an order to edit. User must be able to print an order form from within the order entry form. Validation must be performed prior to database commit. Reports Customer Listing – All Customers in the system. Inventory Listing – All parts in the system. Open Order Listing – All open orders in system. Customer Order Listing – All orders for specific customer. All reports must include sorts and filter functions where applicable. Ex. Customer Listing by range of Customer IDs. Open Order Listing by date range.

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• Pinning a Java application to the Windows 7 taskbar

  - by Paul Lammertsma

  Original question I use Launch4j as a wrapper for my Java application under Windows 7, which, to my understanding, in essence forks an instance of javaw.exe that in turn interprets the Java code. As a result, when attempting to pin my application to the task bar, Windows instead pins javaw.exe. Without the required command line, my application will then not run. As you can see, Windows also does not realize that Java is the host application: the application itself is described as "Java(TM) Platform SE binary". I have tried altering the registry key HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Applications\javaw.exe to add the value IsHostApp. This alters the behavior by disabling pinning of my application altogether; clearly not what I want. After reading about how Windows interprets instances of a single application (and a phenomenon discussed in this question), I became interested in embedding a Application User Model ID (AppUserModelID) into my Java application. I believe that I can resolve this by passing a unique AppUserModelID to Windows. There is a shell32 method for this, SetAppID(). (Or SetCurrentProcessExplicitAppUserModelID?) Is it possible to call it via JNI? If so, would this even resolve the issue? On a side note, I was curious if any of the APIs discussed in this article could be implemented for a Java application. Edit after implementing JNA, as Gregory Pakosz suggested I've now implemented the following in an attempt to have my application recognized as a separate instance of javaw.exe: NativeLibrary lib; try { lib = NativeLibrary.getInstance("shell32"); } catch (Error e) { Logger.out.error("Could not load Shell32 library."); return; } Object[] args = { "Vendor.MyJavaApplication" }; String functionName = "SetCurrentProcessExplicitAppUserModelID"; try { Function function = lib.getFunction(functionName); int ret = function.invokeInt(args); if (ret != 0) { Logger.out.error(function.getName() + " returned error code " + ret + "."); } } catch (UnsatisfiedLinkError e) { Logger.out.error(functionName + " was not found in " + lib.getFile().getName() + "."); // Function not supported } This appears to have no effect, but the function returns without error. Diagnosing why is something of a mystery to me. Any suggestions? Working implementation The final implementation that worked is the answer to my follow-up question concerning how to pass the AppID using JNA. I had awarded the bounty to Gregory Pakosz' brilliant answer for JNI that set me on the right track.

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• WebKit "Refused to set unsafe header "content-length"

  - by Paul

  I am trying to implement simple xhr abstraction, and am getting this warning when trying to set the headers for a POST. I think it might have something to do with setting the headers in a separate js file, because when i set them in the <script> tag in the .html file, it worked fine. The POST request is working fine, but I get this warning, and am curious why. I get this warning for both content-length and connection headers, but only in WebKit browsers (Chrome 5 beta and Safari 4). In Firefox, I don't get any warnings, the Content-Length header is set to the correct value, but the Connection is set to keep-alive instead of close, which makes me think that it is also ignoring my setRequestHeader calls and generating it's own. I have not tried this code in IE. Here is the markup & code: test.html: <!DOCTYPE html> <html> <head> <script src="jsfile.js"></script> <script> var request = new Xhr('POST', 'script.php', true, 'data=somedata', function(data) { console.log(data.text); }); </script> </head> <body> </body> </html> jsfile.js: function Xhr(method, url, async, data, callback) { var x; if(window.XMLHttpRequest) { x = new XMLHttpRequest(); x.open(method, url, async); x.onreadystatechange = function() { if(x.readyState === 4) { if(x.status === 200) { var data = { text: x.responseText, xml: x.responseXML }; callback.call(this, data); } } } if(method.toLowerCase() === "post") { x.setRequestHeader("Content-Type", "application/x-www-form-urlencoded"); x.setRequestHeader("Content-Length", data.length); x.setRequestHeader("Connection", "close"); } x.send(data); } else { // ... implement IE code here ... } return x; }

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• Revisiting .NET, but what should I focus on?

  - by Wayne M

  After about a two-year hiatus, I'm brushing up on my .NET skills to find a .NET job (my previous two positions have very little development, or development using legacy technologies, so apart from a few very minor apps I have not touched .NET in close to two years). I'm aware of things like ASP.NET MVC, and I have previously read on things like NHibernate and DI/IOC, albeit I have yet to use them apart from very trivial "Hello World" type applications. I have a subscription to Rob Conery's Tekpub website and occasionally watch these videos when I have free time. My concern is this: I don't live in a very technical area. I would be surprised if any but the most tech-savvy companies have heard of, let alone use, ASP.NET MVC, NHibernate (or even LINQ/EF), or know about IoC. I would be willing to bet a large sum of money that 95% of the possible jobs I could obtain will use the following: Visual Source Safe, if any VCS at all ASP.NET 2.0 Webforms (3.5 if lucky) Raw ADO.NET on top of a very thin implementation of the Gateway pattern Stored Procedures in the database for most CRUD operations Gratuitous use of code-behind, with a Service layer if I'm lucky If I were extremely lucky, I might find a shop that has heard of ORMs and either uses one, or has wrote their own data abstraction. Also if I were lucky, the company would be using Model-View-Presenter. In light of this I'm not sure what I should focus on learning. Personally, I would prefer to be using the latest stuff - ASP.NET MVC, NHibernate, jQuery, WCF etc. Reality says I should go back to the basics, since it looks like most potential opportunities aren't going to be anywhere near the cutting edge, or anywhere close to it. And, as much as I would like to find a position and start to show the other developers the benefits, in my past experience this has usually resulted in my being fired for "not being a team player" and doing things the bad old way. So, I am curious how you would approach a situation like this? What should I focus on, in order to A) Reaquaint myself with .NET, and B) Prepare myself to obtain a .NET job again that is more than likely going to use techniques that I and most other knowledgeable developers will scoff at?

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• 'NoneType' object has no attribute 'get' error using SQLAlchemy

  - by Az

  I've been trying to map an object to a database using SQLAlchemy but have run into a snag. Version info if handy: [OS: Mac OSX 10.5.8 | Python: 2.6.4 | SQLAlchemy: 0.5.8] The class I'm going to map: class Student(object): def __init__(self, name, id): self.id = id self.name = name self.preferences = collections.defaultdict(set) self.allocated_project = None self.allocated_rank = 0 def __repr__(self): return str(self) def __str__(self): return "%s %s" %(self.id, self.name) Background: Now, I've got a function that reads in the necessary information from a text database into these objects. The function more or less works and I can easily access the information from the objects. Before the SQLAlchemy code runs, the function will read in the necessary info and store it into the Class. There is a dictionary called students which stores this as such: students = {} students[id] = Student(<all the info from the various "reader" functions>) Afterwards, there is an "allocation" algorithm that will allocate projects to student. It does that well enough. The allocated_project remains as None if a student is unsuccessful in getting a project. SQLAlchemy bit: So after all this happens, I'd like to map my object to a database table. Using the documentation, I've used the following code to only map certain bits. I also begin to create a Session. from sqlalchemy import * from sqlalchemy.orm import * engine = create_engine('sqlite:///:memory:', echo=False) metadata = MetaData() students_table = Table('studs', metadata, Column('id', Integer, primary_key=True), Column('name', String) ) metadata.create_all(engine) mapper(Student, students_table) Session = sessionmaker(bind=engine) sesh = Session() Now after that, I was curious to see if I could print out all the students from my students dictionary. for student in students.itervalues(): print student What do I get but an error: Traceback (most recent call last): File "~/FYP_Tests/FYP_Tests.py", line 140, in <module> print student File "/~FYP_Tests/Parties.py", line 30, in __str__ return "%s %s" %(self.id, self.name) File "/opt/local/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.6/lib/python2.6/site-packages/SQLAlchemy-0.5.8-py2.6.egg/sqlalchemy/orm/attributes.py", line 158, in __get__ return self.impl.get(instance_state(instance), instance_dict(instance)) AttributeError: 'NoneType' object has no attribute 'get' I'm at a loss as to how to resolve this issue, if it is an issue. If more information is required, please ask and I will provide it.

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• Best Practice for Images with Codeigniter : Generating Thumbs or Resizing on the Fly

  - by Steve K

  Hi all, I know there’s been a good deal written on thumbnail generation and the like with CI, but I wanted to explain what I’ve made and see what kind of best-practice advice I could find. Here’s my story… Currently, I have a site which allows users to upload collections of photos to projects they’ve created after first creating an account. Upon account creation, the site generates folders for the users in the following fashion for each of five pre-defined projects: /students/username/project_num/images/thumbs/ (This is to say that within a pre-created students folder, the username, project_num, images and thumbs folders are created recursively five times.) When a user uploads images to a project, I have a gallery controller which uploads the full images into the images folder for the project_num, and then creates a smaller thumbnail which maintains its ratio. So far so good. On the index page of the site, where these thumbnails and full images are displayed, I had a bit of a brain lapse, thinking I could simply output the full image while resizing it via css for a ‘medium-size’ image which would lead to the full-size image when clicked. (To be clear, the path is: Click on thumbnail— Load scaled full-size (medium-size) image via ajax into a display area above thumbs— Click on medium-sized image— Load full size image via lightbox, or something of that nature.) I have everything working to this point, except, as one might imagine, resizing the full-sized images with css doesn’t maintain aspect ratio for the thumbs, which means I need to find the best way to resize these. In thinking about it, I figured I had two options: I could resize the image on the fly when the user clicks a thumbnail to load the medium-sized image via ajax. (I have a method ‘get_image($url)’ in my gallery controller which simply loads a view with an image tag and the image source passed to it, etc.) I thought perhaps I could send it first to my gallery model, resize it there on the fly, and send it on to the view. The problem I’m having is that resizing it on the fly and echoing it out gives me the raw image data (I apologize, I don’t know that’s the right term). I’ve tried using data_uris to format the raw data into something echoable, but with no success. Is this method possible? The second option I considered was to generate a second medium-sized thumbnail when the user uploads the image with maintain_ratio set to true. This method is slightly less ideal, given that when providing a way for the user to delete their projects, I’ll need to scan for an additional set of images to delete. Not a huge deal, definitely, but something I figured could be avoided by generating the medium-sized image on the fly. I hope I’ve been clear in my explanations, if long-winded! I’m very curious to see what suggestions folks have about the best way to handle this. Much thanks for reading, and any suggestions are much-appreciated! Steve K.

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• Getting uninitialized constant error when trying to run tests

  - by Ethan

  I just updated all my gems and I'm finding that I'm getting errors when trying to run Test::Unit tests. I'm getting the error copied below. That comes from creating new, empty Rails project, scaffolding a simple model, and running rake test. Tried Googling "uninitialized constant" and TestResultFailureSupport. The only thing I found was this bug report from 2007. I'm using OS X. These are the gems that I updated right before the tests stopped working: $ sudo gem outdated Password: RedCloth (4.2.1 < 4.2.2) RubyInline (3.8.1 < 3.8.2) ZenTest (4.1.1 < 4.1.3) bluecloth (2.0.4 < 2.0.5) capistrano (2.5.5 < 2.5.8) haml (2.0.9 < 2.2.1) hoe (2.2.0 < 2.3.2) json (1.1.6 < 1.1.7) mocha (0.9.5 < 0.9.7) rest-client (1.0.2 < 1.0.3) thoughtbot-factory_girl (1.2.1 < 1.2.2) thoughtbot-shoulda (2.10.1 < 2.10.2) Has anyone else seen this issue? Any troubleshooting suggestions? UPDATE On a hunch I downgraded ZenTest from 4.1.3 back to 4.1.1 and now everything works again. Still curious to know if anyone else has seen this or has any interesting comments or insights. $ rake test (in /Users/me/foo) /usr/local/bin/ruby -I"lib:test" "/usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/rake-0.8.7/lib/rake/rake_test_loader.rb" "test/unit/helpers/users_helper_test.rb" "test/unit/user_test.rb" /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/activesupport-2.3.2/lib/active_support/dependencies.rb:105:in `const_missing': uninitialized constant Test::Unit::TestResult::TestResultFailureSupport (NameError) from /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/test-unit-2.0.2/lib/test/unit/testresult.rb:28 from /usr/local/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/rubygems/custom_require.rb:31:in `gem_original_require' from /usr/local/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/rubygems/custom_require.rb:31:in `require' from /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/activesupport-2.3.2/lib/active_support/dependencies.rb:158:in `require' from /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/test-unit-2.0.2/lib/test/unit/ui/testrunnermediator.rb:9 from /usr/local/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/rubygems/custom_require.rb:31:in `gem_original_require' from /usr/local/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/rubygems/custom_require.rb:31:in `require' from /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/activesupport-2.3.2/lib/active_support/dependencies.rb:158:in `require' ... 6 levels... from /usr/local/lib/ruby/1.8/test/unit/autorunner.rb:214:in `run' from /usr/local/lib/ruby/1.8/test/unit/autorunner.rb:12:in `run' from /usr/local/lib/ruby/1.8/test/unit.rb:278 from /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/rake-0.8.7/lib/rake/rake_test_loader.rb:5 /usr/local/bin/ruby -I"lib:test" "/usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/rake-0.8.7/lib/rake/rake_test_loader.rb" "test/functional/users_controller_test.rb"

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• Synchronized Enumerator in C#

  - by Dan Bryant

  I'm putting together a custom SynchronizedCollection<T> class so that I can have a synchronized Observable collection for my WPF application. The synchronization is provided via a ReaderWriterLockSlim, which, for the most part, has been easy to apply. The case I'm having trouble with is how to provide thread-safe enumeration of the collection. I've created a custom IEnumerator<T> nested class that looks like this: private class SynchronizedEnumerator : IEnumerator<T> { private SynchronizedCollection<T> _collection; private int _currentIndex; internal SynchronizedEnumerator(SynchronizedCollection<T> collection) { _collection = collection; _collection._lock.EnterReadLock(); _currentIndex = -1; } #region IEnumerator<T> Members public T Current { get; private set;} #endregion #region IDisposable Members public void Dispose() { var collection = _collection; if (collection != null) collection._lock.ExitReadLock(); _collection = null; } #endregion #region IEnumerator Members object System.Collections.IEnumerator.Current { get { return Current; } } public bool MoveNext() { var collection = _collection; if (collection == null) throw new ObjectDisposedException("SynchronizedEnumerator"); _currentIndex++; if (_currentIndex >= collection.Count) { Current = default(T); return false; } Current = collection[_currentIndex]; return true; } public void Reset() { if (_collection == null) throw new ObjectDisposedException("SynchronizedEnumerator"); _currentIndex = -1; Current = default(T); } #endregion } My concern, however, is that if the Enumerator is not Disposed, the lock will never be released. In most use cases, this is not a problem, as foreach should properly call Dispose. It could be a problem, however, if a consumer retrieves an explicit Enumerator instance. Is my only option to document the class with a caveat implementer reminding the consumer to call Dispose if using the Enumerator explicitly or is there a way to safely release the lock during finalization? I'm thinking not, since the finalizer doesn't even run on the same thread, but I was curious if there other ways to improve this.

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• F#: Advantages of converting top-level functions to member methods?

  - by J Cooper

  Earlier I requested some feedback on my first F# project. Before closing the question because the scope was too large, someone was kind enough to look it over and leave some feedback. One of the things they mentioned was pointing out that I had a number of regular functions that could be converted to be methods on my datatypes. Dutifully I went through changing things like let getDecisions hand = let (/=/) card1 card2 = matchValue card1 = matchValue card2 let canSplit() = let isPair() = match hand.Cards with | card1 :: card2 :: [] when card1 /=/ card2 -> true | _ -> false not (hasState Splitting hand) && isPair() let decisions = [Hit; Stand] let split = if canSplit() then [Split] else [] let doubleDown = if hasState Initial hand then [DoubleDown] else [] decisions @ split @ doubleDown to this: type Hand // ...stuff... member hand.GetDecisions = let (/=/) (c1 : Card) (c2 : Card) = c1.MatchValue = c2.MatchValue let canSplit() = let isPair() = match hand.Cards with | card1 :: card2 :: [] when card1 /=/ card2 -> true | _ -> false not (hand.HasState Splitting) && isPair() let decisions = [Hit; Stand] let split = if canSplit() then [Split] else [] let doubleDown = if hand.HasState Initial then [DoubleDown] else [] decisions @ split @ doubleDown Now, I don't doubt I'm an idiot, but other than (I'm guessing) making C# interop easier, what did that gain me? Specifically, I found a couple *dis*advantages, not counting the extra work of conversion (which I won't count, since I could have done it this way in the first place, I suppose, although that would have made using F# Interactive more of a pain). For one thing, I'm now no longer able to work with function "pipelining" easily. I had to go and change some |> chained |> calls to (some |> chained).Calls etc. Also, it seemed to make my type system dumber--whereas with my original version, my program needed no type annotations, after converting largely to member methods, I got a bunch of errors about lookups being indeterminate at that point, and I had to go and add type annotations (an example of this is in the (/=/) above). I hope I haven't come off too dubious, as I appreciate the advice I received, and writing idiomatic code is important to me. I'm just curious why the idiom is the way it is :) Thanks!

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• The Skyline Problem.

  - by zeroDivisible

  I just came across this little problem on UVA's Online Judge and thought, that it may be a good candidate for a little code-golf. The problem: You are to design a program to assist an architect in drawing the skyline of a city given the locations of the buildings in the city. To make the problem tractable, all buildings are rectangular in shape and they share a common bottom (the city they are built in is very flat). The city is also viewed as two-dimensional. A building is specified by an ordered triple (Li, Hi, Ri) where Li and Ri are left and right coordinates, respectively, of building i and Hi is the height of the building. In the diagram below buildings are shown on the left with triples (1,11,5), (2,6,7), (3,13,9), (12,7,16), (14,3,25), (19,18,22), (23,13,29), (24,4,28) and the skyline, shown on the right, is represented by the sequence: 1, 11, 3, 13, 9, 0, 12, 7, 16, 3, 19, 18, 22, 3, 23, 13, 29, 0 The output should consist of the vector that describes the skyline as shown in the example above. In the skyline vector (v1, v2, v3, ... vn) , the vi such that i is an even number represent a horizontal line (height). The vi such that i is an odd number represent a vertical line (x-coordinate). The skyline vector should represent the "path" taken, for example, by a bug starting at the minimum x-coordinate and traveling horizontally and vertically over all the lines that define the skyline. Thus the last entry in the skyline vector will be a 0. The coordinates must be separated by a blank space. If I will not count declaration of provided (test) buildings and including all spaces and tab characters, my solution, in Python, is 223 characters long. Here is the condensed version: B=[[1,11,5],[2,6,7],[3,13,9],[12,7,16],[14,3,25],[19,18,22],[23,13,29],[24,4,28]] # Solution. R=range v=[0 for e in R(max([y[2] for y in B])+1)] for b in B: for x in R(b[0], b[2]): if b[1]>v[x]: v[x]=b[1] p=1 k=0 for x in R(len(v)): V=v[x] if p and V==0: continue elif V!=k: p=0 print "%s %s" % (str(x), str(V)), k=V I think that I didn't made any mistake but if so - feel free to criticize me. EDIT I don't have much reputation, so I will pay only 100 for a bounty - I am curious, if anyone could try to solve this in less than .. lets say, 80 characters. Solution posted by cobbal is 101 characters long and currently it is the best one. ANOTHER EDIT I thought, that 80 characters is a sick limit for this kind of problem. cobbal, with his 46 character solution totaly amazed me - though I must admit, that I spent some time reading his explanation before I partially understood what he had written.

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• dojo.require() prevents Firefox from rendering the page

  - by Eduard Wirch

  Im experiencing strange behavior with Firefox and Dojo. I have a html page with these lines in the <head> section: ... <script type="text/javascript" src="dojo.js" djconfig="parseOnLoad: true, locale: 'de'"></script> <script type="text/javascript"> dojo.require("dojo.number"); </script> ... Sometimes the page loads normally. But sometimes it won't. Firefox will fetch the whole html page but not render it. I see only a gray window. After some experiments I figured out that the rendering problem has something to do with the load time of the html. Firefox starts evaluating the html page while loading it. If the page takes too long to load the above javascript will be executed BEFORE the html finishes loading. If this happens I'll get the gray window. Advising Firefox to show me the source code of the page will display the correct complete html code. BUT: if I save the page to disk (File-Save Page As...) the html code will be truncated and the above part will look like this: ... <script type="text/javascript" src="dojo.js" djconfig="parseOnLoad: true, locale: 'de'"></script> <script type="text/javascript"> dojo.require("dojo.number"); </script></head><body></body></html> This explains why I get to see a gray area. But why does this code appear there? I assume the require() method of Dojo does something "evil". But I can't figure out what. There is no write.document("</head><body></body></html>"); in the Dojo code. I checked for it. The problem would be fixed, if I'd place the dojo.require("dojo.number"); statement in the window.load event: <script type="text/javascript"> window.load=function() { dojo.require("dojo.number"); } </script> But I'm curious why this happens. Is there a Javasctript function which forces Firefox to stop evaluating the page? Does Dojo do somethig "bad"? Can anyone explain this behavior to me? EDIT: Dojo 1.3.1, no JS errors or warnings.

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• EJB3 Transaction Propogation

  - by Matt S.

  I have a stateless bean something like: @Stateless public class MyStatelessBean implements MyStatelessLocal, MyStatelessRemote { @PersistenceContext(unitName="myPC") private EntityManager mgr; @TransationAttribute(TransactionAttributeType.SUPPORTED) public void processObjects(List<Object> objs) { // this method just processes the data; no need for a transaction for(Object obj : objs) { this.process(obj); } } @TransationAttribute(TransactionAttributeType.REQUIRES_NEW) public void process(Object obj) { // do some work with obj that must be in the scope of a transaction this.mgr.merge(obj); // ... this.mgr.merge(obj); // ... this.mgr.flush(); } } The typically usage then is the client would call processObjects(...), which doesn't actually interact with the entity manager. It does what it needs to do and calls process(...) individually for each object to process. The duration of process(...) is relatively short, but processObjects(...) could take a very long time to run through everything. Therefore I don't want it to maintain an open transaction. I do need the individual process(...) operations to operate within their own transaction. This should be a new transaction for every call. Lastly I'd like to keep the option open for the client to call process(...) directly. I've tried a number of different transaction types: never, not supported, supported (on processObjects) and required, requires new (on process) but I get TransactionRequiredException every time merge() is called. I've been able to make it work by splitting up the methods into two different beans: @Stateless @TransationAttribute(TransactionAttributeType.NOT_SUPPORTED) public class MyStatelessBean1 implements MyStatelessLocal1, MyStatelessRemote1 { @EJB private MyStatelessBean2 myBean2; public void processObjects(List<Object> objs) { // this method just processes the data; no need for a transaction for(Object obj : objs) { this.myBean2.process(obj); } } } @Stateless public class MyStatelessBean2 implements MyStatelessLocal2, MyStatelessRemote2 { @PersistenceContext(unitName="myPC") private EntityManager mgr; @TransationAttribute(TransactionAttributeType.REQUIRES_NEW) public void process(Object obj) { // do some work with obj that must be in the scope of a transaction this.mgr.merge(obj); // ... this.mgr.merge(obj); // ... this.mgr.flush(); } } but I'm still curious if it's possible to accomplish this in one class. It looks to me like the transaction manager only operates at the bean level, even when individual methods are given more specific annotations. So if I mark one method in a way to prevent the transaction from starting calling other methods within that same instance will also not create a transaction, no matter how they're marked? I'm using JBoss Application Server 4.2.1.GA, but non-specific answers are welcome / preferred.

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• CSS Background-Images Loading after HTML Images (Involves Javascript)

  - by Kevin C.

  I threw together a quick little microsite that you can see at http://monterraauction.com. If you don't have a super-fast connection (and nothing's cached), the very last items to load are the background-images that are used for CSS image-text replacement (primarily, that h1#head at the top, with a 7kb background image). Nothing debilitating, but it looks slightly awkward. And I'm asking this question as a matter of curiosity more than anything else ;) Also, please note that this occurs in Firefox, but not Chrome. Now, underneath the h1#head I have a jquery.cycle.lite-powered slideshow in div#photo. In the HTML markup there are a total of 13, heavy image files that make up each of the slides. If I remove all but the first slide, then the problem goes away! So the CSS background-images are loading after...those HTML images are done? But here's what's confusing: I check it out in YSlow...the CSS background-images have a much lower response time than all of the slides in #photo. Right after all the JS files finish loading, in fact. So why aren't they showing up first? I tried $('#photo img:last-child').load(function() { alert('Locked and Loaded!')});, but the background-images pop up a while before the alert does, so I'm assuming it's not waiting until the last slide has loaded (admittedly I'm a bit of JS noob so maybe I'm just making a wrong assumption). I also tried commenting out all the jquery.cycle.lite stuff, so that I knew I didn't have any JS manipulating the DOM elements in #photo, but that wasn't the problem. I tried putting all the JS at the bottom of the document, right before </body>, but that didn't work. Lastly, I tried turning off javascript, and of course the css background-image loads way before the images in #photo, so it's definitely a JS thing (amirite?) I guess the obvious solution here is to mark the slides up as LINKS rather than IMGs, and have Javascript insert those 12 extra slideshow images after the DOM is ready--users without javascript shouldn't need to download the extra images anyways. But again, I'm curious: Why does removing the extra HTML images from within #photo solve the problem? And why are the CSS background-images showing up after the HTML images have loaded, even though YSlow says the css background-images loaded first? Seeing as how it happens in FF but not Chrome, is it simply a browser issue? I appreciate any insight you guys could give me!

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• Drawing performance with CGImageCreateWithJPEGDataProvider?

  - by Rnegi

  I've actually curious about this for the iPhone. I am getting an MJPEG stream from a server and trying to render it natively on the iphone (without the use of safari class). Reasons for this is because the safari class while CAN render MJPEG natively, does not do so at the framerate I would like. So I tried drawing it natively, but I've come up with performance issues, namely a syncing issue between what I'm getting from the server and what I am able to draw onto the screen of the phone. (There should be a little lag, but the drift gets really bad, which is what I want to avoid). So I have a connection set up to my server and I do get the JPEGS. It's just data I insert into a NSMutableArray buffer CFMutableDataRef _t_data_ref = (CFMutableDataRef)[_buffer_array objectAtIndex:0]; //CGDataProviderRef imgDataProvider = CGDataProviderCreateWithCFData (_cf_buffer_data); CGDataProviderRef imgDataProvider = CGDataProviderCreateWithCFData(_t_data_ref); CGImageRef image = CGImageCreateWithJPEGDataProvider(imgDataProvider, NULL, true, kCGRenderingIntentDefault); CGImageRef imgRef = image; CGContextDrawImage(context, CGRectMake(0, 17, 380, 285), imgRef); CGImageRelease(image); CGDataProviderRelease(imgDataProvider); please note this is the gist of my code, but it should summarize what I am trying to accomplish with regards to drawing. Also in order to get the framerate in sync, I had to detach a separate thread that sleeps X seconds and calls [self setNeedsDisplay]. NSAutoreleasePool *pool = [[NSAutoreleasePool alloc] init]; // Top-level pool while(1) { //[NSThread sleepForTimeInterval:TIMER_REFRESH_VALUE]; //sleep(unsigned int ); usleep(MICRO_REFRESH_VALUE); if ([_buffer_array count] > 10) { //NSLog(@"stuff %d", [_buffer_array count]); //[self setNeedsDisplay]; [self performSelectorOnMainThread:@selector(setNeedsDisplay) withObject:nil waitUntilDone:NO]; } } [pool release]; // Release the objects in the pool. My buffer of jpeg data actually fills up quite quick, but I can't seem to actually consume what i'm getting at the same rate, actually much slower. Are there any documents that can describe what kind of performance tuning I can do to make it go faster when rendering the JPEG to the screen? Or am I kind of stuck here? Thanks!

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• MS Access 2003 - Unbound Form uses INSERT statement to save to table; what about subforms?

  - by Justin

  So I have an unbound form that I use to save data to a table on button click. Is there a way I can have subforms for entry that will allow me to save data to the table within that same button click? Basically I want to add more entry options for the user, and while I know other ways to do it, I am particularly curious about doing it this way (if it can be done). So lets say the 'parent form' is frmMain. And there are two child forms "sub1" and "sub2". Just for example sake lets say on frmMain there are two text boxes: txtTitle & txtAuthor. sub1 and sub2 both have a text Box on them that represent something like prices. The idea is Title & author of a book, and then a price at each store (simplified). So I tried this (because I thought it was worth a shot): Dim db as DAO.database Dim sql as String sql = "INSERT INTO (Title, Author, PriceA, PriceB) VALUES (" if not isnull(me.txtTitle) then sql = sql & """" & me.txtTitle & """," Else sql = sql & " NULL," End If if not IsNull(me.txtAuthor) then sql = sql & " """ & me.txtAuthor & """," else sql = sql & " NULL," end if if not IsNull (forms!sub1.txtPrice) then sql = sql & " """ & forms!sub1.txtPrice & """," else sql = sql & " NULL," end if without finishing the code, i think you may see the GOTCHA i am headed for. I tried this and got an "Access cannot find the form "" ". I think I can pretty much see why on this approach too, because when I click the button that calls the new sub form into the parent form, the values that were just entered are not held/saved as sub1 closes and sub2 opens. I should mention that the idea above is not intended to be a one or the other approach, rather both sub forms used everytime. so this is an example. i want to use this method (if possible) to have about 7 different sub form choices in one form, and be able to save to a table via a SQL statement. I realize that there may be better ways, but I am just wondering if I can get there with this approach out of curiousity. Thanks as always!

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• Help organising controllers logically

  - by kenny99

  Hi guys, I'm working on a site which i'm developing using an MVC structure. My models will represent all of data in the site, but i'm struggling a bit to decide on a good controller structure. The site will allow users to login/register and see personal data on a number of pages, but also still have access to public pages, e.g FAQs, Contact page etc. This is what I have at the moment... A Template Controller which handles main template display. The basic template for the site will remain the same whether or not you are logged in. A main Website Controller which extends the Template Controller and handles basic authentication. If the user is logged in, a User::control_panel() method is called from the constructor and this builds the control panel which will be present throughout the authenticated session. If user is not logged in, then a different view is loaded instead of the control panel, e.g with a login form. All protected/public page related controllers will extend the website controller. The user homepage has a number of widgets I want to display, which I'm doing via a Home Controller which extends the Website Controller. This controller generates these widgets via the following static calls: $this->template->content->featured_pet = Pet::featured(); $this->template->content->popular_names = Pet::most_popular(); $this->template->content->owner_map = User::generate_map(); $this->template->content->news = News::snippet(); I suppose the first thing I'm unsure about is if the above static calls to controllers (e.g Pet and User) are ok to remain static - these static methods will return views which are loaded into the main template. This is the way I've done things in the past but I'm curious to find out if this is a sensible approach. Other protected pages for signed in users will be similar to the Home Controller. Static pages will be handled by a Page Controller which will also extend the Website Controller, so that it will know whether or not the user control panel or login form should be shown on the left hand side of the template. The protected member only pages will not be routed to the Page Controller, this controller will only handle publicly available pages. One problem I have at the moment, is that if both public and protected pages extend the Website Controller, how do I avoid an infinite loop - for example, the idea is that the website controller should handle authentication then redirect to the requested controller (URL), but this will cause an infinite redirect loop, so i need to come up with a better way of dealing with this. All in all, does this setup make any sense?! Grateful for any feedback.

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