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• Dynamically loading Assemblies to reduce Runtime Dependencies

  - by Rick Strahl

  I've been working on a request to the West Wind Application Configuration library to add JSON support. The config library is a very easy to use code-first approach to configuration: You create a class that holds the configuration data that inherits from a base configuration class, and then assign a persistence provider at runtime that determines where and how the configuration data is store. Currently the library supports .NET Configuration stores (web.config/app.config), XML files, SQL records and string storage.About once a week somebody asks me about JSON support and I've deflected this question for the longest time because frankly I think that JSON as a configuration store doesn't really buy a heck of a lot over XML. Both formats require the user to perform some fixup of the plain configuration data - in XML into XML tags, with JSON using JSON delimiters for properties and property formatting rules. Sure JSON is a little less verbose and maybe a little easier to read if you have hierarchical data, but overall the differences are pretty minor in my opinion. And yet - the requests keep rolling in.Hard Link Issues in a Component LibraryAnother reason I've been hesitant is that I really didn't want to pull in a dependency on an external JSON library - in this case JSON.NET - into the core library. If you're not using JSON.NET elsewhere I don't want a user to have to require a hard dependency on JSON.NET unless they want to use the JSON feature. JSON.NET is also sensitive to versions and doesn't play nice with multiple versions when hard linked. For example, when you have a reference to V4.4 in your project but the host application has a reference to version 4.5 you can run into assembly load problems. NuGet's Update-Package can solve some of this *if* you can recompile, but that's not ideal for a component that's supposed to be just plug and play. This is no criticism of JSON.NET - this really applies to any dependency that might change.  So hard linking the DLL can be problematic for a number reasons, but the primary reason is to not force loading of JSON.NET unless you actually need it when you use the JSON configuration features of the library.Enter Dynamic LoadingSo rather than adding an assembly reference to the project, I decided that it would be better to dynamically load the DLL at runtime and then use dynamic typing to access various classes. This allows me to run without a hard assembly reference and allows more flexibility with version number differences now and in the future.But there are also a couple of downsides:No assembly reference means only dynamic access - no compiler type checking or IntellisenseRequirement for the host application to have reference to JSON.NET or else get runtime errorsThe former is minor, but the latter can be problematic. Runtime errors are always painful, but in this case I'm willing to live with this. If you want to use JSON configuration settings JSON.NET needs to be loaded in the project. If this is a Web project, it'll likely be there already.So there are a few things that are needed to make this work:Dynamically create an instance and optionally attempt to load an Assembly (if not loaded)Load types into dynamic variablesUse Reflection for a few tasks like statics/enumsThe dynamic keyword in C# makes the formerly most difficult Reflection part - method calls and property assignments - fairly painless. But as cool as dynamic is it doesn't handle all aspects of Reflection. Specifically it doesn't deal with object activation, truly dynamic (string based) member activation or accessing of non instance members, so there's still a little bit of work left to do with Reflection.Dynamic Object InstantiationThe first step in getting the process rolling is to instantiate the type you need to work with. This might be a two step process - loading the instance from a string value, since we don't have a hard type reference and potentially having to load the assembly. Although the host project might have a reference to JSON.NET, that instance might have not been loaded yet since it hasn't been accessed yet. In ASP.NET this won't be a problem, since ASP.NET preloads all referenced assemblies on AppDomain startup, but in other executable project, assemblies are just in time loaded only when they are accessed.Instantiating a type is a two step process: Finding the type reference and then activating it. Here's the generic code out of my ReflectionUtils library I use for this:/// <summary> /// Creates an instance of a type based on a string. Assumes that the type's /// </summary> /// <param name="typeName">Common name of the type</param> /// <param name="args">Any constructor parameters</param> /// <returns></returns> public static object CreateInstanceFromString(string typeName, params object[] args) { object instance = null; Type type = null; try { type = GetTypeFromName(typeName); if (type == null) return null; instance = Activator.CreateInstance(type, args); } catch { return null; } return instance; } /// <summary> /// Helper routine that looks up a type name and tries to retrieve the /// full type reference in the actively executing assemblies. /// </summary> /// <param name="typeName"></param> /// <returns></returns> public static Type GetTypeFromName(string typeName) { Type type = null; // Let default name binding find it type = Type.GetType(typeName, false); if (type != null) return type; // look through assembly list var assemblies = AppDomain.CurrentDomain.GetAssemblies(); // try to find manually foreach (Assembly asm in assemblies) { type = asm.GetType(typeName, false); if (type != null) break; } return type; } To use this for loading JSON.NET I have a small factory function that instantiates JSON.NET and sets a bunch of configuration settings on the generated object. The startup code also looks for failure and tries loading up the assembly when it fails since that's the main reason the load would fail. Finally it also caches the loaded instance for reuse (according to James the JSON.NET instance is thread safe and quite a bit faster when cached). Here's what the factory function looks like in JsonSerializationUtils:/// <summary> /// Dynamically creates an instance of JSON.NET /// </summary> /// <param name="throwExceptions">If true throws exceptions otherwise returns null</param> /// <returns>Dynamic JsonSerializer instance</returns> public static dynamic CreateJsonNet(bool throwExceptions = true) { if (JsonNet != null) return JsonNet; lock (SyncLock) { if (JsonNet != null) return JsonNet; // Try to create instance dynamic json = ReflectionUtils.CreateInstanceFromString("Newtonsoft.Json.JsonSerializer"); if (json == null) { try { var ass = AppDomain.CurrentDomain.Load("Newtonsoft.Json"); json = ReflectionUtils.CreateInstanceFromString("Newtonsoft.Json.JsonSerializer"); } catch (Exception ex) { if (throwExceptions) throw; return null; } } if (json == null) return null; json.ReferenceLoopHandling = (dynamic) ReflectionUtils.GetStaticProperty("Newtonsoft.Json.ReferenceLoopHandling", "Ignore"); // Enums as strings in JSON dynamic enumConverter = ReflectionUtils.CreateInstanceFromString("Newtonsoft.Json.Converters.StringEnumConverter"); json.Converters.Add(enumConverter); JsonNet = json; } return JsonNet; }This code's purpose is to return a fully configured JsonSerializer instance. As you can see the code tries to create an instance and when it fails tries to load the assembly, and then re-tries loading.Once the instance is loaded some configuration occurs on it. Specifically I set the ReferenceLoopHandling option to not blow up immediately when circular references are encountered. There are a host of other small config setting that might be useful to set, but the default seem to be good enough in recent versions. Note that I'm setting ReferenceLoopHandling which requires an Enum value to be set. There's no real easy way (short of using the cardinal numeric value) to set a property or pass parameters from static values or enums. This means I still need to use Reflection to make this work. I'm using the same ReflectionUtils class I previously used to handle this for me. The function looks up the type and then uses Type.InvokeMember() to read the static property.Another feature I need is have Enum values serialized as strings rather than numeric values which is the default. To do this I can use the StringEnumConverter to convert enums to strings by adding it to the Converters collection.As you can see there's still a bit of Reflection to be done even in C# 4+ with dynamic, but with a few helpers this process is relatively painless.Doing the actual JSON ConversionFinally I need to actually do my JSON conversions. For the Utility class I need serialization that works for both strings and files so I created four methods that handle these tasks two each for serialization and deserialization for string and file.Here's what the File Serialization looks like:/// <summary> /// Serializes an object instance to a JSON file. /// </summary> /// <param name="value">the value to serialize</param> /// <param name="fileName">Full path to the file to write out with JSON.</param> /// <param name="throwExceptions">Determines whether exceptions are thrown or false is returned</param> /// <param name="formatJsonOutput">if true pretty-formats the JSON with line breaks</param> /// <returns>true or false</returns> public static bool SerializeToFile(object value, string fileName, bool throwExceptions = false, bool formatJsonOutput = false) { dynamic writer = null; FileStream fs = null; try { Type type = value.GetType(); var json = CreateJsonNet(throwExceptions); if (json == null) return false; fs = new FileStream(fileName, FileMode.Create); var sw = new StreamWriter(fs, Encoding.UTF8); writer = Activator.CreateInstance(JsonTextWriterType, sw); if (formatJsonOutput) writer.Formatting = (dynamic)Enum.Parse(FormattingType, "Indented"); writer.QuoteChar = '"'; json.Serialize(writer, value); } catch (Exception ex) { Debug.WriteLine("JsonSerializer Serialize error: " + ex.Message); if (throwExceptions) throw; return false; } finally { if (writer != null) writer.Close(); if (fs != null) fs.Close(); } return true; }You can see more of the dynamic invocation in this code. First I grab the dynamic JsonSerializer instance using the CreateJsonNet() method shown earlier which returns a dynamic. I then create a JsonTextWriter and configure a couple of enum settings on it, and then call Serialize() on the serializer instance with the JsonTextWriter that writes the output to disk. Although this code is dynamic it's still fairly short and readable.For full circle operation here's the DeserializeFromFile() version:/// <summary> /// Deserializes an object from file and returns a reference. /// </summary> /// <param name="fileName">name of the file to serialize to</param> /// <param name="objectType">The Type of the object. Use typeof(yourobject class)</param> /// <param name="binarySerialization">determines whether we use Xml or Binary serialization</param> /// <param name="throwExceptions">determines whether failure will throw rather than return null on failure</param> /// <returns>Instance of the deserialized object or null. Must be cast to your object type</returns> public static object DeserializeFromFile(string fileName, Type objectType, bool throwExceptions = false) { dynamic json = CreateJsonNet(throwExceptions); if (json == null) return null; object result = null; dynamic reader = null; FileStream fs = null; try { fs = new FileStream(fileName, FileMode.Open, FileAccess.Read); var sr = new StreamReader(fs, Encoding.UTF8); reader = Activator.CreateInstance(JsonTextReaderType, sr); result = json.Deserialize(reader, objectType); reader.Close(); } catch (Exception ex) { Debug.WriteLine("JsonNetSerialization Deserialization Error: " + ex.Message); if (throwExceptions) throw; return null; } finally { if (reader != null) reader.Close(); if (fs != null) fs.Close(); } return result; }This code is a little more compact since there are no prettifying options to set. Here JsonTextReader is created dynamically and it receives the output from the Deserialize() operation on the serializer.You can take a look at the full JsonSerializationUtils.cs file on GitHub to see the rest of the operations, but the string operations are very similar - the code is fairly repetitive.These generic serialization utilities isolate the dynamic serialization logic that has to deal with the dynamic nature of JSON.NET, and any code that uses these functions is none the wiser that JSON.NET is dynamically loaded.Using the JsonSerializationUtils WrapperThe final consumer of the SerializationUtils wrapper is an actual ConfigurationProvider, that is responsible for handling reading and writing JSON values to and from files. The provider is simple a small wrapper around the SerializationUtils component and there's very little code to make this work now:The whole provider looks like this:/// <summary> /// Reads and Writes configuration settings in .NET config files and /// sections. Allows reading and writing to default or external files /// and specification of the configuration section that settings are /// applied to. /// </summary> public class JsonFileConfigurationProvider<TAppConfiguration> : ConfigurationProviderBase<TAppConfiguration> where TAppConfiguration: AppConfiguration, new() { /// <summary> /// Optional - the Configuration file where configuration settings are /// stored in. If not specified uses the default Configuration Manager /// and its default store. /// </summary> public string JsonConfigurationFile { get { return _JsonConfigurationFile; } set { _JsonConfigurationFile = value; } } private string _JsonConfigurationFile = string.Empty; public override bool Read(AppConfiguration config) { var newConfig = JsonSerializationUtils.DeserializeFromFile(JsonConfigurationFile, typeof(TAppConfiguration)) as TAppConfiguration; if (newConfig == null) { if(Write(config)) return true; return false; } DecryptFields(newConfig); DataUtils.CopyObjectData(newConfig, config, "Provider,ErrorMessage"); return true; } /// <summary> /// Return /// </summary> /// <typeparam name="TAppConfig"></typeparam> /// <returns></returns> public override TAppConfig Read<TAppConfig>() { var result = JsonSerializationUtils.DeserializeFromFile(JsonConfigurationFile, typeof(TAppConfig)) as TAppConfig; if (result != null) DecryptFields(result); return result; } /// <summary> /// Write configuration to XmlConfigurationFile location /// </summary> /// <param name="config"></param> /// <returns></returns> public override bool Write(AppConfiguration config) { EncryptFields(config); bool result = JsonSerializationUtils.SerializeToFile(config, JsonConfigurationFile,false,true); // Have to decrypt again to make sure the properties are readable afterwards DecryptFields(config); return result; } }This incidentally demonstrates how easy it is to create a new provider for the West Wind Application Configuration component. Simply implementing 3 methods will do in most cases.Note this code doesn't have any dynamic dependencies - all that's abstracted away in the JsonSerializationUtils(). From here on, serializing JSON is just a matter of calling the static methods on the SerializationUtils class.Already, there are several other places in some other tools where I use JSON serialization this is coming in very handy. With a couple of lines of code I was able to add JSON.NET support to an older AJAX library that I use replacing quite a bit of code that was previously in use. And for any other manual JSON operations (in a couple of apps I use JSON Serialization for 'blob' like document storage) this is also going to be handy.Performance?Some of you might be thinking that using dynamic and Reflection can't be good for performance. And you'd be right… In performing some informal testing it looks like the performance of the native code is nearly twice as fast as the dynamic code. Most of the slowness is attributable to type lookups. To test I created a native class that uses an actual reference to JSON.NET and performance was consistently around 85-90% faster with the referenced code. This will change though depending on the size of objects serialized - the larger the object the more processing time is spent inside the actual dynamically activated components and the less difference there will be. Dynamic code is always slower, but how much it really affects your application primarily depends on how frequently the dynamic code is called in relation to the non-dynamic code executing. In most situations where dynamic code is used 'to get the process rolling' as I do here the overhead is small enough to not matter.All that being said though - I serialized 10,000 objects in 80ms vs. 45ms so this is hardly slouchy performance. For the configuration component speed is not that important because both read and write operations typically happen once on first access and then every once in a while. But for other operations - say a serializer trying to handle AJAX requests on a Web Server one would be well served to create a hard dependency.Dynamic Loading - Worth it?Dynamic loading is not something you need to worry about but on occasion dynamic loading makes sense. But there's a price to be paid in added code  and a performance hit which depends on how frequently the dynamic code is accessed. But for some operations that are not pivotal to a component or application and are only used under certain circumstances dynamic loading can be beneficial to avoid having to ship extra files adding dependencies and loading down distributions. These days when you create new projects in Visual Studio with 30 assemblies before you even add your own code, trying to keep file counts under control seems like a good idea. It's not the kind of thing you do on a regular basis, but when needed it can be a useful option in your toolset… © Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2013Posted in .NET  C#   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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• More on Map Testing

  - by Michael Stephenson

  I have been chatting with Maurice den Heijer recently about his codeplex project for the BizTalk Map Testing Framework (http://mtf.codeplex.com/). Some of you may remember the article I did for BizTalk 2009 and 2006 about how to test maps but with Maurice's project he is effectively looking at how to improve productivity and quality by building some useful testing features within the framework to simplify the process of testing maps. As part of our discussion we realized that we both had slightly different approaches to how we validate the output from the map. Put simple Maurice does some xpath validation of the data in various nodes where as my approach for most standard cases is to use serialization to allow you to validate the output using normal MSTest assertions. I'm not really going to go into the pro's and con's of each approach because I think there is a place for both and also I'm sure others have various approaches which work too. What would be great is for the map testing framework to provide support for different ways of testing which can cover everything from simple cases to some very specialized scenarios. So as agreed with Maurice I have done the sample which I will talk about in the rest of this article to show how we can use the serialization approach to create and compare the input and output from a map in normal development testing. Prerequisites One of the common patterns I usually implement when developing BizTalk solutions is to use xsd.exe to create .net classes for most of the schemas used within the solution. In the testing pattern I will take advantage of these .net classes. The Map In this sample the map we will use is very simple and just concatenates some data from the input message to the output message. Hopefully the below picture illustrates this well. The Test In the test I'm basically taking the following actions: Use the .net class generated from the schema to create an input message for the map Serialize the input object to a file Run the map from .net using the standard BizTalk test method which was generated for running the map Deserialize the output file from the map execution to a .net class representing the output schema Use MsTest assertions to validate things about the output message The below picture shows this: As you can see the code for this is pretty simple and it's all strongly typed which means changes to my schema which can affect the tests can be easily picked up as compilation errors. I can then chose to have one test which validates most of the output from the map, or to have many specific tests covering individual scenarios within the map. Summary Hopefully this post illustrates a powerful yet simple way of effectively testing many BizTalk mapping scenarios. I will probably have more conversations with Maurice about these approaches and perhaps some of the above will be included in the mapping test framework.   The sample can be downloaded from here: http://cid-983a58358c675769.office.live.com/self.aspx/Blog%20Samples/More%20Map%20Testing/MapTestSample.zip

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• IIS 7.5 truncating POST body containing JSON data with ASP.NET MVC 3

  - by Guneet Sahai

  I'm facing a problem which I hope is a configuration thing with IIS but is right now giving a lot of trouble. Basically I have a controller that accepts a JSON and does some processing. While it generally works fine, but every now and then when the system has some load I get an error. After some painful debugging, we figured the incoming JSON gets truncated which causes the deserialzer to fail. To narrow down the problem - we wrote a simple controller that accepts a JSON and tries to deserialize it. In case it fails it just logs it. This works fine but when I hit it using a load testing tool (JMeter) it throws the same error (truncation) for a few requests. The # of failures increased when I increase parallel connections. It starts showing with 150 concurrent requests. We are running IIS 7 on windows 2008 server with ASP.Net MVC 3 with more or less default configuration of IIS. More information available in my question below http://stackoverflow.com/questions/12662282/content-length-of-http-request-body-size

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• Cannot Add Particular Word to Dictionary

  - by WCWedin

  I am trying to add a particular word to my custom dictionary using Word 2007. (The word happens to be "deserialized".) When I right-click on the word and click Add to Dictionary, the red underline does not go away. When I use the Spelling & Grammar tool from the Review tab on the ribbon, it will stop on that word; clicking the Add to Dictionary button has no effect. Oddly, I am able to add other words to the custom dictionary without a problem. I recently added "deserializes", for instance. I have only encountered this problem with that one particular word. Does anyone know what might be wrong and how I might fix it? Clarifications My document and all its content is set to English (United States). My custom dictionary is set to apply to All Languages, which is the default value. "Serialize" is in the US English default dictionary, but "deserialize" and its various forms is not.

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• Remove redundant xml namespaces from soapenv:Body

  - by drachenstern

  If you can tell me the magic google term that instantly gives me clarification, that would be helpful. Here's the part that's throwing an issue when I try to manually deserialize from a string: xsi:type="ns1:errorObject" xmlns:ns1="http://www.example.org/Version_3.0" xsi:type="ns2:errorObject" xmlns:ns2="http://www.example.org/Version_3.0" xsi:type="ns3:errorObject" xmlns:ns3="http://www.example.org/Version_3.0" Here's how I'm deserializing by hand to test it: (in an aspx.cs page with a label on the front to display the value in that I can verify by reading source) (second block of XML duplicates the first but without the extra namespaces) using System; using System.IO; using System.Text; using System.Xml; using System.Xml.Serialization; public partial class test : System.Web.UI.Page { protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e) { string sourceXml = @"<?xml version=""1.0""?> <InitiateActivityResponse xmlns=""http://www.example.org/Version_3.0""> <InitiateActivityResult> <errorObject errorString=""string 1"" eventTime=""2010-05-21T21:19:15.775Z"" nounType=""Object"" objectID=""object1"" xsi:type=""ns1:errorObject"" xmlns:ns1=""http://www.example.org/Version_3.0"" /> <errorObject errorString=""string 2"" eventTime=""2010-05-21T21:19:15.791Z"" nounType=""Object"" objectID=""object2"" xsi:type=""ns2:errorObject"" xmlns:ns2=""http://www.example.org/Version_3.0"" /> <errorObject errorString=""string 3"" eventTime=""2010-05-21T21:19:15.806Z"" nounType=""Object"" objectID=""object3"" xsi:type=""ns3:errorObject"" xmlns:ns3=""http://www.example.org/Version_3.0"" /> </InitiateActivityResult> </InitiateActivityResponse> "; sourceXml = @"<?xml version=""1.0""?> <InitiateActivityResponse xmlns=""http://www.example.org/Version_3.0""> <InitiateActivityResult> <errorObject errorString=""string 1"" eventTime=""2010-05-21T21:19:15.775Z"" nounType=""Object"" objectID=""object1"" /> <errorObject errorString=""string 2"" eventTime=""2010-05-21T21:19:15.791Z"" nounType=""Object"" objectID=""object2"" /> <errorObject errorString=""string 3"" eventTime=""2010-05-21T21:19:15.806Z"" nounType=""Object"" objectID=""object3"" /> </InitiateActivityResult> </InitiateActivityResponse> "; InitiateActivityResponse fragment = new InitiateActivityResponse(); Type t = typeof( InitiateActivityResponse ); StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder(); TextWriter textWriter = new StringWriter( sb ); TextReader textReader = new StringReader( sourceXml ); XmlTextReader xmlTextReader = new XmlTextReader( textReader ); XmlSerializer xmlSerializer = new XmlSerializer( t ); object obj = xmlSerializer.Deserialize( xmlTextReader ); fragment = (InitiateActivityResponse)obj; xmlSerializer.Serialize( textWriter, fragment ); //I have a field on my public page that I write to from sb.ToString(); } } Consuming a webservice, I have a class like thus: (all examples foreshortened to as little as possible to show the problem, if boilerplate is missing, my apologies) (this is where I think I want to remove the troublespot) [System.Diagnostics.DebuggerStepThroughAttribute()] [System.ComponentModel.DesignerCategoryAttribute( "code" )] [System.Web.Services.WebServiceBindingAttribute( Name = "MyServerSoapSoapBinding", Namespace = "http://www.example.org/Version_3.0" )] public partial class MyServer : System.Web.Services.Protocols.SoapHttpClientProtocol { public MsgHeader msgHeader { get; set; } public MyServer () { this.Url = "localAddressOmittedOnPurpose"; } [System.Web.Services.Protocols.SoapHeaderAttribute( "msgHeader" )] [System.Web.Services.Protocols.SoapDocumentMethodAttribute( "http://www.example.org/Version_3.0/InitiateActivity", RequestNamespace = "http://www.example.org/Version_3.0", ResponseNamespace = "http://www.example.org/Version_3.0", Use = System.Web.Services.Description.SoapBindingUse.Literal, ParameterStyle = System.Web.Services.Protocols.SoapParameterStyle.Wrapped )] [return: System.Xml.Serialization.XmlElementAttribute( "InitiateActivityResponse" )] public InitiateActivityResponse InitiateActivity(string inputVar) { object[] results = Invoke( "InitiateActivity", new object[] { inputVar } ); return ( (InitiateActivityResponse)( results[0] ) ); } } Class descriptions [System.SerializableAttribute] [System.Diagnostics.DebuggerStepThroughAttribute] [System.ComponentModel.DesignerCategoryAttribute( "code" )] [XmlType( Namespace = "http://www.example.org/Version_3.0", TypeName = "InitiateActivityResponse" )] [XmlRoot( Namespace = "http://www.example.org/Version_3.0" )] public class InitiateActivityResponse { [XmlArray( ElementName = "InitiateActivityResult", IsNullable = true )] [XmlArrayItem( ElementName = "errorObject", IsNullable = false )] public errorObject[] errorObject { get; set; } } [System.SerializableAttribute] [System.Diagnostics.DebuggerStepThroughAttribute] [System.ComponentModel.DesignerCategoryAttribute( "code" )] [XmlTypeAttribute( Namespace = "http://www.example.org/Version_3.0" )] public class errorObject { private string _errorString; private System.DateTime _eventTime; private bool _eventTimeSpecified; private string _nounType; private string _objectID; [XmlAttributeAttribute] public string errorString { get { return _errorString; } set { _errorString = value; } } [XmlAttributeAttribute] public System.DateTime eventTime { get { return _eventTime; } set { _eventTime = value; } } [XmlIgnoreAttribute] public bool eventTimeSpecified { get { return _eventTimeSpecified; } set { _eventTimeSpecified = value; } } [XmlAttributeAttribute] public string nounType { get { return _nounType; } set { _nounType = value; } } [XmlAttributeAttribute] public string objectID { get { return _objectID; } set { _objectID = value; } } } SOAP as it's being received (as seen by Fiddler2) <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <soapenv:Envelope xmlns:soapenv="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"> <soapenv:Header> <MsgHeader soapenv:actor="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/actor/next" soapenv:mustUnderstand="0" AppName="AppName" AppVersion="1.0" Company="Company" Pwd="" UserID="" xmlns="http://www.example.org/Version_3.0"/> </soapenv:Header> <soapenv:Body> <InitiateActivityResponse xmlns="http://www.example.org/Version_3.0"> <InitiateActivityResult> <errorObject errorString="Explanatory string for request 1" eventTime="2010-05-24T21:21:37.477Z" nounType="Object" objectID="12345" xsi:type="ns1:errorObject" xmlns:ns1="http://www.example.org/Version_3.0"/> <errorObject errorString="Explanatory string for request 2" eventTime="2010-05-24T21:21:37.493Z" nounType="Object" objectID="45678" xsi:type="ns2:errorObject" xmlns:ns2="http://www.example.org/Version_3.0"/> <errorObject errorString="Explanatory string for request 3" eventTime="2010-05-24T21:21:37.508Z" nounType="Object" objectID="98765" xsi:type="ns3:errorObject" xmlns:ns3="http://www.example.org/Version_3.0"/> </InitiateActivityResult> </InitiateActivityResponse> </soapenv:Body> </soapenv:Envelope> Okay, what should I have not omitted? No I won't post the WSDL, it's hosted behind a firewall, for a vertical stack product. No, I can't change the data sender. Is this somehow automagically handled elsewhere and I just don't know what I don't know? I think I want to do some sort of message sink leading into this method, to intercept the soapenv:Body, but obviously this is for errors, so I'm not going to get errors every time. I'm not entirely sure how to handle this, but some pointers would be nice.

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• Client no longer getting data from Web Service after introducing targetNamespace in XSD

  - by Laurence

  Sorry if there is way too much info in this post – there’s a load of story before I get to the actual problem. I thought I‘d include everything that might be relevant as I don’t have much clue what is wrong. I had a working web service and client (both written with VS 2008 in C#) for passing product data to an e-commerce site. The XSD started like this: <xs:schema id="Ecommerce" elementFormDefault="qualified" xmlns:mstns="http://tempuri.org/Ecommerce.xsd" xmlns:xs="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"> <xs:element name="eur"> <xs:complexType> <xs:sequence> <xs:element ref="sec" minOccurs="1" maxOccurs="1"/> </xs:sequence> etc Here’s a sample document sent from client to service: <eur xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" class="ECommerce_WebService" type="product" method="GetLastDateSent" chunk_no="1" total_chunks="1" date_stamp="2010-03-10T17:16:34.523" version="1.1"> <sec guid="BFBACB3C-4C17-4786-ACCF-96BFDBF32DA5" company_name="Company" version="1.1"> <data /> </sec> </eur> Then, I had to give the service a targetNamespace. Actually I don’t know if I “had” to set it, but I added (to the same VS project) some code to act as a client to a completely unrelated service (which also had no namespace), and the project would not build until I gave my service a namespace. Now the XSD starts like this: <xs:schema id="Ecommerce" elementFormDefault="qualified" xmlns:mstns="http://tempuri.org/Ecommerce.xsd" xmlns:xs="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" targetNamespace="http://www.company.com/ecommerce" xmlns:ecom="http://www. company.com/ecommerce"> <xs:element name="eur"> <xs:complexType> <xs:sequence> <xs:element ref="ecom:sec" minOccurs="1" maxOccurs="1" /> </xs:sequence> etc As you can see above I also updated all the xs:element ref attributes to give them the “ecom” prefix. Now the project builds again. I found the client needed some modification after this. The client uses a SQL stored procedure to generate the XML. This is then de-serialised into an object of the correct type for the service’s “get_data” method. The object’s type used to be “eur” but after updating the web reference to the service, it became “get_dataEur”. And sure enough the parent element in the XML had to be changed to “get_dataEur” to be accepted. Then bizarrely I also had to put the xmlns attribute containing my namespace on the “sec” element (the immediate child of the parent element) rather than the parent element. Here’s a sample document now sent from client to service: <get_dataEur xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" class="ECommerce_WebService" type="product" method="GetLastDateSent" chunk_no="1" total_chunks="1" date_stamp="2010-03-10T18:23:20.653" version="1.1"> <sec xmlns="http://www.company.com/ecommerce" guid="BFBACB3C-4C17-4786-ACCF-96BFDBF32DA5" company_name="Company" version="1.1"> <data /> </sec> </get_dataEur> If in the service’s get_data method I then serialize the incoming object I see this (the parent element is “eur” and the xmlns attribute is on the parent element): <eur xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns="http://www.company.com/ecommerce" class="ECommerce_WebService" type="product" method="GetLastDateSent" chunk_no="1" total_chunks="1" date_stamp="2010-03-10T18:23:20.653" version="1.1"> <sec guid="BFBACB3C-4C17-4786-ACCF-96BFDBF32DA5" company_name="Company" version="1.1"> <data /> </sec> </eur> The service then prepares a reply to go back to the client. The XML looks like this (the important data being sent back is the date_stamp attribute in the last_sent element): <eur xmlns="http://www.company.com/ecommerce" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" class="ECommerce_WebService" type="product" method="GetLastDateSent" chunk_no="1" total_chunks="1" date_stamp="2010-03-10T18:22:57.530" version="1.1"> <sec version="1.1" xmlns=""> <data> <last_sent date_stamp="2010-02-25T15:15:10.193" /> </data> </sec> </eur> Now finally, here’s the problem!!! The client does not see any data – all it sees is the parent element with nothing inside it. If I serialize the reply object in the client code it looks like this: <get_dataResponseEur xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" class="ECommerce_WebService" type="product" method="GetLastDateSent" chunk_no="1" total_chunks="1" date_stamp="2010-03-10T18:22:57.53" version="1.1" /> So, my questions are: why isn’t my client seeing the contents of the reply document? how do I fix it? why do I have to put the xmlns attribute on a child element rather than the parent element in the outgoing document? Here’s a bit more possibly relevant info: The client code (pre-namespace) called the service method like this: XmlSerializer serializer = new XmlSerializer(typeof(eur)); XmlReader reader = xml.CreateReader(); eur eur = (eur)serializer.Deserialize(reader); service.Credentials = new NetworkCredential(login, pwd); service.Url = url; rc = service.get_data(ref eur); After the namespace was added I had to change it to this: XmlSerializer serializer = new XmlSerializer(typeof(get_dataEur)); XmlReader reader = xml.CreateReader(); get_dataEur eur = (get_dataEur)serializer.Deserialize(reader); get_dataResponseEur eur1 = new get_dataResponseEur(); service.Credentials = new NetworkCredential(login, pwd); service.Url = url; rc = service.get_data(eur, out eur1);

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• Font serialization in vb.net

  - by jovany

  Hello all, as the title says , I need to serialize my font. I have tried the following approach unfortunately to no avail. This is what I have and what happens; I have a drawing application and certain variables and properties need to be serialized. (So , Xml.Serialization has been used.) Now this has already been done in a huge portion and I've created some other attributes which needed to be serialized and it works. There is one base class and classes such as drawablestar, drawableeclipse ,etc. all inherit from this class. As does my drawabletextboxclass. The base class is Serializable as can be seen in the sample below. It looks like this... Imports System.Xml.Serialization <Serializable()> _ Public MustInherit Class Drawable ' Drawing characteristics. 'Font characteristics <XmlIgnore()> Public FontFamily As String <XmlIgnore()> Public FontSize As Integer <XmlIgnore()> Public FontType As Integer <XmlIgnore()> Public ForeColor As Color <XmlIgnore()> Public FillColor As Color <XmlAttributeAttribute()> Public LineWidth As Integer = 0 <XmlAttributeAttribute()> Public X1 As Integer <XmlAttributeAttribute()> Public Y1 As Integer <XmlAttributeAttribute()> Public X2 As Integer <XmlAttributeAttribute()> Public Y2 As Integer ' attributes for size textbox <XmlAttributeAttribute()> Public widthLabel As Integer <XmlAttributeAttribute()> Public heightLabel As Integer '<XmlTextAttribute()> Public FontFamily As String '<XmlAttributeAttribute()> Public FontSize As Integer 'this should actually not be here.. <XmlAttributeAttribute()> Public s_InsertLabel As String ' Indicates whether we should draw as selected. <XmlIgnore()> Public IsSelected As Boolean = False ' Constructors. Public Sub New() ForeColor = Color.Black FillColor = Color.White 'FontFamily = "Impact" 'FontSize = 12 End Sub Friend WriteOnly Property _Label() As String Set(ByVal Value As String) s_InsertLabel = Value End Set End Property Public Sub New(ByVal fore_color As Color, ByVal fill_color As Color, Optional ByVal line_width As Integer = 0) LineWidth = line_width ForeColor = fore_color FillColor = fill_color ' FontFamily = Font_Family ' FontSize = Font_Size End Sub ' Property procedures to serialize and ' deserialize ForeColor and FillColor. <XmlAttributeAttribute("ForeColor")> _ Public Property ForeColorArgb() As Integer Get Return ForeColor.ToArgb() End Get Set(ByVal Value As Integer) ForeColor = Color.FromArgb(Value) End Set End Property <XmlAttributeAttribute("BackColor")> _ Public Property FillColorArgb() As Integer Get Return FillColor.ToArgb() End Get Set(ByVal Value As Integer) FillColor = Color.FromArgb(Value) End Set End Property 'Property procedures to serialize and 'deserialize Font <XmlAttributeAttribute("InsertLabel")> _ Public Property InsertLabel_() As String Get Return s_InsertLabel End Get Set(ByVal value As String) s_InsertLabel = value End Set End Property <XmlAttributeAttribute("FontSize")> _ Public Property FontSizeGet() As Integer Get Return FontSize End Get Set(ByVal value As Integer) FontSize = value End Set End Property <XmlAttributeAttribute("FontFamily")> _ Public Property FontFamilyGet() As String Get Return FontFamily End Get Set(ByVal value As String) FontFamily = value End Set End Property <XmlAttributeAttribute("FontType")> _ Public Property FontType_() As Integer Get Return FontType End Get Set(ByVal value As Integer) FontType = value End Set End Property #Region "Methods to override" Public MustOverride Sub Draw(ByVal gr As Graphics) ' Return the object's bounding rectangle. Public MustOverride Function GetBounds() As Rectangle ...... ........ ..... End Class [/code] My textbox class which looks like this , is the one that needs to save it's font. Imports System.Math Imports System.Xml.Serialization Imports System.Windows.Forms <Serializable()> _ Public Class DrawableTextBox Inherits Drawable Private i_StringLength As Integer Private i_StringWidth As Integer Private drawFont As Font = New Font(FontFamily, 12, FontStyle.Regular) Private brsTextColor As Brush = Brushes.Black Private s_insertLabelTextbox As String = "label" ' Constructors. Public Sub New() End Sub Public Sub New(ByVal objCanvas As PictureBox, ByVal fore_color As Color, ByVal fill_color As Color, Optional ByVal line_width As Integer = 0, Optional ByVal new_x1 As Integer = 0, Optional ByVal new_y1 As Integer = 0, Optional ByVal new_x2 As Integer = 1, Optional ByVal new_y2 As Integer = 1) MyBase.New(fore_color, fill_color, line_width) Dim objGraphics As Graphics = objCanvas.CreateGraphics() X1 = new_x1 Y1 = new_y1 'Only rectangles ,circles and stars can resize for now b_Movement b_Movement = True Dim frm As New frmTextbox frm.MyFont = drawFont frm.ShowDialog() If frm.DialogResult = DialogResult.OK Then FontFamily = frm.MyFont.FontFamily.Name FontSize = frm.MyFont.Size FontType = frm.MyFont.Style 'drawFont = frm.MyFont drawFont = New Font(FontFamily, FontSize) drawFont = FontAttributes() brsTextColor = New SolidBrush(frm.txtLabel.ForeColor) s_InsertLabel = frm.txtLabel.Text i_StringLength = s_InsertLabel.Length 'gefixtf Dim objSizeF As SizeF = objGraphics.MeasureString(s_InsertLabel, drawFont, New PointF(X2 - X1, Y2 - Y1), New StringFormat(StringFormatFlags.NoClip)) Dim objPoint As Point = objCanvas.PointToClient(New Point(X1 + objSizeF.Width, Y1 + objSizeF.Height)) widthLabel = objSizeF.Width heightLabel = objSizeF.Height X2 = X1 + widthLabel Y2 = Y1 + heightLabel Else Throw New ApplicationException() End If End Sub ' Draw the object on this Graphics surface. Public Overrides Sub Draw(ByVal gr As System.Drawing.Graphics) ' Make a Rectangle representing this rectangle. Dim rectString As Rectangle rectString = New Rectangle(X1, Y1, widthLabel, heightLabel) rectString = GetBounds() ' See if we're selected. If IsSelected Then gr.DrawString(s_InsertLabel, drawFont, brsTextColor, X1, Y1) 'gr.DrawRectangle(Pens.Black, rect) ' Pens.Transparent gr.DrawRectangle(Pens.Black, rectString) ' Draw grab handles. DrawGrabHandle(gr, X1, Y1) DrawGrabHandle(gr, X1, Y2) DrawGrabHandle(gr, X2, Y2) DrawGrabHandle(gr, X2, Y1) Else gr.DrawString(s_InsertLabel, drawFont, brsTextColor, X1, Y1) 'gr.DrawRectangle(Pens.Black, rect) ' Pens.Transparent gr.DrawRectangle(Pens.Black, rectString) End If End Sub 'get fontattributes Public Function FontAttributes() As Font Return New Font(FontFamily, 12, FontStyle.Regular) End Function ' Return the object's bounding rectangle. Public Overrides Function GetBounds() As System.Drawing.Rectangle Return New Rectangle( _ Min(X1, X1), _ Min(Y1, Y1), _ Abs(widthLabel), _ Abs(heightLabel)) End Function ' Return True if this point is on the object. Public Overrides Function IsAt(ByVal x As Integer, ByVal y As Integer) As Boolean Return (x >= Min(X1, X2)) AndAlso _ (x <= Max(X1, X2)) AndAlso _ (y >= Min(Y1, Y2)) AndAlso _ (y <= Max(Y1, Y2)) End Function ' Move the second point. Public Overrides Sub NewPoint(ByVal x As Integer, ByVal y As Integer) X2 = x Y2 = y End Sub ' Return True if the object is empty (e.g. a zero-length line). Public Overrides Function IsEmpty() As Boolean Return (X1 = X2) AndAlso (Y1 = Y2) End Function End Class The coordinates ( X1 ,X2,Y1, Y2 ) are needed to draw a circle , rectangle etc. ( in the other classes ).This all works. If I load my saved file it shows me the correct location and correct size of drawn objects. If I open my xml file I can see all values are correctly saved ( including my FontFamily ). Also the color which can be adjusted is saved and then properly displayed when I load a previously saved drawing. Of course because the coordinates work, if I insert a textField ,the location where it is being displayed is correct. However here comes the problem , my fontSize and fontfamily don't work. As you can see I created them in the base class, However this does not work. Is my approach completely off? What can I do ? Before saving img14.imageshack.us/i/beforeos.jpg/ After loading the Font jumps back to Sans serif and size 12. I could really use some help here.. Edit: I've been using the sample from this website http://www.vb-helper.com/howto_net_drawing_framework.html

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• Custom ASP.NET Routing to an HttpHandler

  - by Rick Strahl

  As of version 4.0 ASP.NET natively supports routing via the now built-in System.Web.Routing namespace. Routing features are automatically integrated into the HtttpRuntime via a few custom interfaces. New Web Forms Routing Support In ASP.NET 4.0 there are a host of improvements including routing support baked into Web Forms via a RouteData property available on the Page class and RouteCollection.MapPageRoute() route handler that makes it easy to route to Web forms. To map ASP.NET Page routes is as simple as setting up the routes with MapPageRoute:protected void Application_Start(object sender, EventArgs e) { RegisterRoutes(RouteTable.Routes); } void RegisterRoutes(RouteCollection routes) { routes.MapPageRoute("StockQuote", "StockQuote/{symbol}", "StockQuote.aspx"); routes.MapPageRoute("StockQuotes", "StockQuotes/{symbolList}", "StockQuotes.aspx"); } and then accessing the route data in the page you can then use the new Page class RouteData property to retrieve the dynamic route data information:public partial class StockQuote1 : System.Web.UI.Page { protected StockQuote Quote = null; protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e) { string symbol = RouteData.Values["symbol"] as string; StockServer server = new StockServer(); Quote = server.GetStockQuote(symbol); // display stock data in Page View } } Simple, quick and doesn’t require much explanation. If you’re using WebForms most of your routing needs should be served just fine by this simple mechanism. Kudos to the ASP.NET team for putting this in the box and making it easy! How Routing Works To handle Routing in ASP.NET involves these steps: Registering Routes Creating a custom RouteHandler to retrieve an HttpHandler Attaching RouteData to your HttpHandler Picking up Route Information in your Request code Registering routes makes ASP.NET aware of the Routes you want to handle via the static RouteTable.Routes collection. You basically add routes to this collection to let ASP.NET know which URL patterns it should watch for. You typically hook up routes off a RegisterRoutes method that fires in Application_Start as I did in the example above to ensure routes are added only once when the application first starts up. When you create a route, you pass in a RouteHandler instance which ASP.NET caches and reuses as routes are matched. Once registered ASP.NET monitors the routes and if a match is found just prior to the HttpHandler instantiation, ASP.NET uses the RouteHandler registered for the route and calls GetHandler() on it to retrieve an HttpHandler instance. The RouteHandler.GetHandler() method is responsible for creating an instance of an HttpHandler that is to handle the request and – if necessary – to assign any additional custom data to the handler. At minimum you probably want to pass the RouteData to the handler so the handler can identify the request based on the route data available. To do this you typically add  a RouteData property to your handler and then assign the property from the RouteHandlers request context. This is essentially how Page.RouteData comes into being and this approach should work well for any custom handler implementation that requires RouteData. It’s a shame that ASP.NET doesn’t have a top level intrinsic object that’s accessible off the HttpContext object to provide route data more generically, but since RouteData is directly tied to HttpHandlers and not all handlers support it it might cause some confusion of when it’s actually available. Bottom line is that if you want to hold on to RouteData you have to assign it to a custom property of the handler or else pass it to the handler via Context.Items[] object that can be retrieved on an as needed basis. It’s important to understand that routing is hooked up via RouteHandlers that are responsible for loading HttpHandler instances. RouteHandlers are invoked for every request that matches a route and through this RouteHandler instance the Handler gains access to the current RouteData. Because of this logic it’s important to understand that Routing is really tied to HttpHandlers and not available prior to handler instantiation, which is pretty late in the HttpRuntime’s request pipeline. IOW, Routing works with Handlers but not with earlier in the pipeline within Modules. Specifically ASP.NET calls RouteHandler.GetHandler() from the PostResolveRequestCache HttpRuntime pipeline event. Here’s the call stack at the beginning of the GetHandler() call: which fires just before handler resolution. Non-Page Routing – You need to build custom RouteHandlers If you need to route to a custom Http Handler or other non-Page (and non-MVC) endpoint in the HttpRuntime, there is no generic mapping support available. You need to create a custom RouteHandler that can manage creating an instance of an HttpHandler that is fired in response to a routed request. Depending on what you are doing this process can be simple or fairly involved as your code is responsible based on the route data provided which handler to instantiate, and more importantly how to pass the route data on to the Handler. Luckily creating a RouteHandler is easy by implementing the IRouteHandler interface which has only a single GetHttpHandler(RequestContext context) method. In this method you can pick up the requestContext.RouteData, instantiate the HttpHandler of choice, and assign the RouteData to it. Then pass back the handler and you’re done.Here’s a simple example of GetHttpHandler() method that dynamically creates a handler based on a passed in Handler type./// <summary> /// Retrieves an Http Handler based on the type specified in the constructor /// </summary> /// <param name="requestContext"></param> /// <returns></returns> IHttpHandler IRouteHandler.GetHttpHandler(RequestContext requestContext) { IHttpHandler handler = Activator.CreateInstance(CallbackHandlerType) as IHttpHandler; // If we're dealing with a Callback Handler // pass the RouteData for this route to the Handler if (handler is CallbackHandler) ((CallbackHandler)handler).RouteData = requestContext.RouteData; return handler; } Note that this code checks for a specific type of handler and if it matches assigns the RouteData to this handler. This is optional but quite a common scenario if you want to work with RouteData. If the handler you need to instantiate isn’t under your control but you still need to pass RouteData to Handler code, an alternative is to pass the RouteData via the HttpContext.Items collection:IHttpHandler IRouteHandler.GetHttpHandler(RequestContext requestContext) { IHttpHandler handler = Activator.CreateInstance(CallbackHandlerType) as IHttpHandler; requestContext.HttpContext.Items["RouteData"] = requestContext.RouteData; return handler; } The code in the handler implementation can then pick up the RouteData from the context collection as needed:RouteData routeData = HttpContext.Current.Items["RouteData"] as RouteData This isn’t as clean as having an explicit RouteData property, but it does have the advantage that the route data is visible anywhere in the Handler’s code chain. It’s definitely preferable to create a custom property on your handler, but the Context work-around works in a pinch when you don’t’ own the handler code and have dynamic code executing as part of the handler execution. An Example of a Custom RouteHandler: Attribute Based Route Implementation In this post I’m going to discuss a custom routine implementation I built for my CallbackHandler class in the West Wind Web & Ajax Toolkit. CallbackHandler can be very easily used for creating AJAX, REST and POX requests following RPC style method mapping. You can pass parameters via URL query string, POST data or raw data structures, and you can retrieve results as JSON, XML or raw string/binary data. It’s a quick and easy way to build service interfaces with no fuss. As a quick review here’s how CallbackHandler works: You create an Http Handler that derives from CallbackHandler You implement methods that have a [CallbackMethod] Attribute and that’s it. Here’s an example of an CallbackHandler implementation in an ashx.cs based handler:// RestService.ashx.cs public class RestService : CallbackHandler { [CallbackMethod] public StockQuote GetStockQuote(string symbol) { StockServer server = new StockServer(); return server.GetStockQuote(symbol); } [CallbackMethod] public StockQuote[] GetStockQuotes(string symbolList) { StockServer server = new StockServer(); string[] symbols = symbolList.Split(new char[2] { ',',';' },StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries); return server.GetStockQuotes(symbols); } } CallbackHandler makes it super easy to create a method on the server, pass data to it via POST, QueryString or raw JSON/XML data, and then retrieve the results easily back in various formats. This works wonderful and I’ve used these tools in many projects for myself and with clients. But one thing missing has been the ability to create clean URLs. Typical URLs looked like this: http://www.west-wind.com/WestwindWebToolkit/samples/Rest/StockService.ashx?Method=GetStockQuote&symbol=msfthttp://www.west-wind.com/WestwindWebToolkit/samples/Rest/StockService.ashx?Method=GetStockQuotes&symbolList=msft,intc,gld,slw,mwe&format=xml which works and is clear enough, but also clearly very ugly. It would be much nicer if URLs could look like this: http://www.west-wind.com//WestwindWebtoolkit/Samples/StockQuote/msfthttp://www.west-wind.com/WestwindWebtoolkit/Samples/StockQuotes/msft,intc,gld,slw?format=xml (the Virtual Root in this sample is WestWindWebToolkit/Samples and StockQuote/{symbol} is the route)(If you use FireFox try using the JSONView plug-in make it easier to view JSON content) So, taking a clue from the WCF REST tools that use RouteUrls I set out to create a way to specify RouteUrls for each of the endpoints. The change made basically allows changing the above to: [CallbackMethod(RouteUrl="RestService/StockQuote/{symbol}")] public StockQuote GetStockQuote(string symbol) { StockServer server = new StockServer(); return server.GetStockQuote(symbol); } [CallbackMethod(RouteUrl = "RestService/StockQuotes/{symbolList}")] public StockQuote[] GetStockQuotes(string symbolList) { StockServer server = new StockServer(); string[] symbols = symbolList.Split(new char[2] { ',',';' },StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries); return server.GetStockQuotes(symbols); } where a RouteUrl is specified as part of the Callback attribute. And with the changes made with RouteUrls I can now get URLs like the second set shown earlier. So how does that work? Let’s find out… How to Create Custom Routes As mentioned earlier Routing is made up of several steps: Creating a custom RouteHandler to create HttpHandler instances Mapping the actual Routes to the RouteHandler Retrieving the RouteData and actually doing something useful with it in the HttpHandler In the CallbackHandler routing example above this works out to something like this: Create a custom RouteHandler that includes a property to track the method to call Set up the routes using Reflection against the class Looking for any RouteUrls in the CallbackMethod attribute Add a RouteData property to the CallbackHandler so we can access the RouteData in the code of the handler Creating a Custom Route Handler To make the above work I created a custom RouteHandler class that includes the actual IRouteHandler implementation as well as a generic and static method to automatically register all routes marked with the [CallbackMethod(RouteUrl="…")] attribute. Here’s the code:/// <summary> /// Route handler that can create instances of CallbackHandler derived /// callback classes. The route handler tracks the method name and /// creates an instance of the service in a predictable manner /// </summary> /// <typeparam name="TCallbackHandler">CallbackHandler type</typeparam> public class CallbackHandlerRouteHandler : IRouteHandler { /// <summary> /// Method name that is to be called on this route. /// Set by the automatically generated RegisterRoutes /// invokation. /// </summary> public string MethodName { get; set; } /// <summary> /// The type of the handler we're going to instantiate. /// Needed so we can semi-generically instantiate the /// handler and call the method on it. /// </summary> public Type CallbackHandlerType { get; set; } /// <summary> /// Constructor to pass in the two required components we /// need to create an instance of our handler. /// </summary> /// <param name="methodName"></param> /// <param name="callbackHandlerType"></param> public CallbackHandlerRouteHandler(string methodName, Type callbackHandlerType) { MethodName = methodName; CallbackHandlerType = callbackHandlerType; } /// <summary> /// Retrieves an Http Handler based on the type specified in the constructor /// </summary> /// <param name="requestContext"></param> /// <returns></returns> IHttpHandler IRouteHandler.GetHttpHandler(RequestContext requestContext) { IHttpHandler handler = Activator.CreateInstance(CallbackHandlerType) as IHttpHandler; // If we're dealing with a Callback Handler // pass the RouteData for this route to the Handler if (handler is CallbackHandler) ((CallbackHandler)handler).RouteData = requestContext.RouteData; return handler; } /// <summary> /// Generic method to register all routes from a CallbackHandler /// that have RouteUrls defined on the [CallbackMethod] attribute /// </summary> /// <typeparam name="TCallbackHandler">CallbackHandler Type</typeparam> /// <param name="routes"></param> public static void RegisterRoutes<TCallbackHandler>(RouteCollection routes) { // find all methods var methods = typeof(TCallbackHandler).GetMethods(BindingFlags.Instance | BindingFlags.Public); foreach (var method in methods) { var attrs = method.GetCustomAttributes(typeof(CallbackMethodAttribute), false); if (attrs.Length < 1) continue; CallbackMethodAttribute attr = attrs[0] as CallbackMethodAttribute; if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(attr.RouteUrl)) continue; // Add the route routes.Add(method.Name, new Route(attr.RouteUrl, new CallbackHandlerRouteHandler(method.Name, typeof(TCallbackHandler)))); } } } The RouteHandler implements IRouteHandler, and its responsibility via the GetHandler method is to create an HttpHandler based on the route data. When ASP.NET calls GetHandler it passes a requestContext parameter which includes a requestContext.RouteData property. This parameter holds the current request’s route data as well as an instance of the current RouteHandler. If you look at GetHttpHandler() you can see that the code creates an instance of the handler we are interested in and then sets the RouteData property on the handler. This is how you can pass the current request’s RouteData to the handler. The RouteData object also has a  RouteData.RouteHandler property that is also available to the Handler later, which is useful in order to get additional information about the current route. In our case here the RouteHandler includes a MethodName property that identifies the method to execute in the handler since that value no longer comes from the URL so we need to figure out the method name some other way. The method name is mapped explicitly when the RouteHandler is created and here the static method that auto-registers all CallbackMethods with RouteUrls sets the method name when it creates the routes while reflecting over the methods (more on this in a minute). The important point here is that you can attach additional properties to the RouteHandler and you can then later access the RouteHandler and its properties later in the Handler to pick up these custom values. This is a crucial feature in that the RouteHandler serves in passing additional context to the handler so it knows what actions to perform. The automatic route registration is handled by the static RegisterRoutes<TCallbackHandler> method. This method is generic and totally reusable for any CallbackHandler type handler. To register a CallbackHandler and any RouteUrls it has defined you simple use code like this in Application_Start (or other application startup code):protected void Application_Start(object sender, EventArgs e) { // Register Routes for RestService CallbackHandlerRouteHandler.RegisterRoutes<RestService>(RouteTable.Routes); } If you have multiple CallbackHandler style services you can make multiple calls to RegisterRoutes for each of the service types. RegisterRoutes internally uses reflection to run through all the methods of the Handler, looking for CallbackMethod attributes and whether a RouteUrl is specified. If it is a new instance of a CallbackHandlerRouteHandler is created and the name of the method and the type are set. routes.Add(method.Name,           new Route(attr.RouteUrl, new CallbackHandlerRouteHandler(method.Name, typeof(TCallbackHandler) )) ); While the routing with CallbackHandlerRouteHandler is set up automatically for all methods that use the RouteUrl attribute, you can also use code to hook up those routes manually and skip using the attribute. The code for this is straightforward and just requires that you manually map each individual route to each method you want a routed: protected void Application_Start(objectsender, EventArgs e){    RegisterRoutes(RouteTable.Routes);}void RegisterRoutes(RouteCollection routes) { routes.Add("StockQuote Route",new Route("StockQuote/{symbol}",                     new CallbackHandlerRouteHandler("GetStockQuote",typeof(RestService) ) ) );     routes.Add("StockQuotes Route",new Route("StockQuotes/{symbolList}",                     new CallbackHandlerRouteHandler("GetStockQuotes",typeof(RestService) ) ) );}I think it’s clearly easier to have CallbackHandlerRouteHandler.RegisterRoutes() do this automatically for you based on RouteUrl attributes, but some people have a real aversion to attaching logic via attributes. Just realize that the option to manually create your routes is available as well. Using the RouteData in the Handler A RouteHandler’s responsibility is to create an HttpHandler and as mentioned earlier, natively IHttpHandler doesn’t have any support for RouteData. In order to utilize RouteData in your handler code you have to pass the RouteData to the handler. In my CallbackHandlerRouteHandler when it creates the HttpHandler instance it creates the instance and then assigns the custom RouteData property on the handler:IHttpHandler handler = Activator.CreateInstance(CallbackHandlerType) as IHttpHandler; if (handler is CallbackHandler) ((CallbackHandler)handler).RouteData = requestContext.RouteData; return handler; Again this only works if you actually add a RouteData property to your handler explicitly as I did in my CallbackHandler implementation:/// <summary> /// Optionally store RouteData on this handler /// so we can access it internally /// </summary> public RouteData RouteData {get; set; } and the RouteHandler needs to set it when it creates the handler instance. Once you have the route data in your handler you can access Route Keys and Values and also the RouteHandler. Since my RouteHandler has a custom property for the MethodName to retrieve it from within the handler I can do something like this now to retrieve the MethodName (this example is actually not in the handler but target is an instance pass to the processor): // check for Route Data method name if (target is CallbackHandler) { var routeData = ((CallbackHandler)target).RouteData; if (routeData != null) methodToCall = ((CallbackHandlerRouteHandler)routeData.RouteHandler).MethodName; } When I need to access the dynamic values in the route ( symbol in StockQuote/{symbol}) I can retrieve it easily with the Values collection (RouteData.Values["symbol"]). In my CallbackHandler processing logic I’m basically looking for matching parameter names to Route parameters: // look for parameters in the routeif(routeData != null){    string parmString = routeData.Values[parameter.Name] as string;    adjustedParms[parmCounter] = ReflectionUtils.StringToTypedValue(parmString, parameter.ParameterType);} And with that we’ve come full circle. We’ve created a custom RouteHandler() that passes the RouteData to the handler it creates. We’ve registered our routes to use the RouteHandler, and we’ve utilized the route data in our handler. For completeness sake here’s the routine that executes a method call based on the parameters passed in and one of the options is to retrieve the inbound parameters off RouteData (as well as from POST data or QueryString parameters):internal object ExecuteMethod(string method, object target, string[] parameters, CallbackMethodParameterType paramType, ref CallbackMethodAttribute callbackMethodAttribute) { HttpRequest Request = HttpContext.Current.Request; object Result = null; // Stores parsed parameters (from string JSON or QUeryString Values) object[] adjustedParms = null; Type PageType = target.GetType(); MethodInfo MI = PageType.GetMethod(method, BindingFlags.Instance | BindingFlags.Public | BindingFlags.NonPublic); if (MI == null) throw new InvalidOperationException("Invalid Server Method."); object[] methods = MI.GetCustomAttributes(typeof(CallbackMethodAttribute), false); if (methods.Length < 1) throw new InvalidOperationException("Server method is not accessible due to missing CallbackMethod attribute"); if (callbackMethodAttribute != null) callbackMethodAttribute = methods[0] as CallbackMethodAttribute; ParameterInfo[] parms = MI.GetParameters(); JSONSerializer serializer = new JSONSerializer(); RouteData routeData = null; if (target is CallbackHandler) routeData = ((CallbackHandler)target).RouteData; int parmCounter = 0; adjustedParms = new object[parms.Length]; foreach (ParameterInfo parameter in parms) { // Retrieve parameters out of QueryString or POST buffer if (parameters == null) { // look for parameters in the route if (routeData != null) { string parmString = routeData.Values[parameter.Name] as string; adjustedParms[parmCounter] = ReflectionUtils.StringToTypedValue(parmString, parameter.ParameterType); } // GET parameter are parsed as plain string values - no JSON encoding else if (HttpContext.Current.Request.HttpMethod == "GET") { // Look up the parameter by name string parmString = Request.QueryString[parameter.Name]; adjustedParms[parmCounter] = ReflectionUtils.StringToTypedValue(parmString, parameter.ParameterType); } // POST parameters are treated as methodParameters that are JSON encoded else if (paramType == CallbackMethodParameterType.Json) //string newVariable = methodParameters.GetValue(parmCounter) as string; adjustedParms[parmCounter] = serializer.Deserialize(Request.Params["parm" + (parmCounter + 1).ToString()], parameter.ParameterType); else adjustedParms[parmCounter] = SerializationUtils.DeSerializeObject( Request.Params["parm" + (parmCounter + 1).ToString()], parameter.ParameterType); } else if (paramType == CallbackMethodParameterType.Json) adjustedParms[parmCounter] = serializer.Deserialize(parameters[parmCounter], parameter.ParameterType); else adjustedParms[parmCounter] = SerializationUtils.DeSerializeObject(parameters[parmCounter], parameter.ParameterType); parmCounter++; } Result = MI.Invoke(target, adjustedParms); return Result; } The code basically uses Reflection to loop through all the parameters available on the method and tries to assign the parameters from RouteData, QueryString or POST variables. The parameters are converted into their appropriate types and then used to eventually make a Reflection based method call. What’s sweet is that the RouteData retrieval is just another option for dealing with the inbound data in this scenario and it adds exactly two lines of code plus the code to retrieve the MethodName I showed previously – a seriously low impact addition that adds a lot of extra value to this endpoint callback processing implementation. Debugging your Routes If you create a lot of routes it’s easy to run into Route conflicts where multiple routes have the same path and overlap with each other. This can be difficult to debug especially if you are using automatically generated routes like the routes created by CallbackHandlerRouteHandler.RegisterRoutes. Luckily there’s a tool that can help you out with this nicely. Phill Haack created a RouteDebugging tool you can download and add to your project. The easiest way to do this is to grab and add this to your project is to use NuGet (Add Library Package from your Project’s Reference Nodes):   which adds a RouteDebug assembly to your project. Once installed you can easily debug your routes with this simple line of code which needs to be installed at application startup:protected void Application_Start(object sender, EventArgs e) { CallbackHandlerRouteHandler.RegisterRoutes<StockService>(RouteTable.Routes); // Debug your routes RouteDebug.RouteDebugger.RewriteRoutesForTesting(RouteTable.Routes); } Any routed URL then displays something like this: The screen shows you your current route data and all the routes that are mapped along with a flag that displays which route was actually matched. This is useful – if you have any overlap of routes you will be able to see which routes are triggered – the first one in the sequence wins. This tool has saved my ass on a few occasions – and with NuGet now it’s easy to add it to your project in a few seconds and then remove it when you’re done. Routing Around Custom routing seems slightly complicated on first blush due to its disconnected components of RouteHandler, route registration and mapping of custom handlers. But once you understand the relationship between a RouteHandler, the RouteData and how to pass it to a handler, utilizing of Routing becomes a lot easier as you can easily pass context from the registration to the RouteHandler and through to the HttpHandler. The most important thing to understand when building custom routing solutions is to figure out how to map URLs in such a way that the handler can figure out all the pieces it needs to process the request. This can be via URL routing parameters and as I did in my example by passing additional context information as part of the RouteHandler instance that provides the proper execution context. In my case this ‘context’ was the method name, but it could be an actual static value like an enum identifying an operation or category in an application. Basically user supplied data comes in through the url and static application internal data can be passed via RouteHandler property values. Routing can make your application URLs easier to read by non-techie types regardless of whether you’re building Service type or REST applications, or full on Web interfaces. Routing in ASP.NET 4.0 makes it possible to create just about any extensionless URLs you can dream up and custom RouteHanmdler References Sample ProjectIncludes the sample CallbackHandler service discussed here along with compiled versionsof the Westwind.Web and Westwind.Utilities assemblies.  (requires .NET 4.0/VS 2010) West Wind Web Toolkit includes full implementation of CallbackHandler and the Routing Handler West Wind Web Toolkit Source CodeContains the full source code to the Westwind.Web and Westwind.Utilities assemblies usedin these samples. Includes the source described in the post.(Latest build in the Subversion Repository) CallbackHandler Source(Relevant code to this article tree in Westwind.Web assembly) JSONView FireFoxPluginA simple FireFox Plugin to easily view JSON data natively in FireFox.For IE you can use a registry hack to display JSON as raw text.© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2011Posted in ASP.NET  AJAX  HTTP  

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• An Xml Serializable PropertyBag Dictionary Class for .NET

  - by Rick Strahl

  I don't know about you but I frequently need property bags in my applications to store and possibly cache arbitrary data. Dictionary<T,V> works well for this although I always seem to be hunting for a more specific generic type that provides a string key based dictionary. There's string dictionary, but it only works with strings. There's Hashset<T> but it uses the actual values as keys. In most key value pair situations for me string is key value to work off. Dictionary<T,V> works well enough, but there are some issues with serialization of dictionaries in .NET. The .NET framework doesn't do well serializing IDictionary objects out of the box. The XmlSerializer doesn't support serialization of IDictionary via it's default serialization, and while the DataContractSerializer does support IDictionary serialization it produces some pretty atrocious XML. What doesn't work? First off Dictionary serialization with the Xml Serializer doesn't work so the following fails: [TestMethod] public void DictionaryXmlSerializerTest() { var bag = new Dictionary<string, object>(); bag.Add("key", "Value"); bag.Add("Key2", 100.10M); bag.Add("Key3", Guid.NewGuid()); bag.Add("Key4", DateTime.Now); bag.Add("Key5", true); bag.Add("Key7", new byte[3] { 42, 45, 66 }); TestContext.WriteLine(this.ToXml(bag)); } public string ToXml(object obj) { if (obj == null) return null; StringWriter sw = new StringWriter(); XmlSerializer ser = new XmlSerializer(obj.GetType()); ser.Serialize(sw, obj); return sw.ToString(); } The error you get with this is: System.NotSupportedException: The type System.Collections.Generic.Dictionary`2[[System.String, mscorlib, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089],[System.Object, mscorlib, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089]] is not supported because it implements IDictionary. Got it! BTW, the same is true with binary serialization. Running the same code above against the DataContractSerializer does work: [TestMethod] public void DictionaryDataContextSerializerTest() { var bag = new Dictionary<string, object>(); bag.Add("key", "Value"); bag.Add("Key2", 100.10M); bag.Add("Key3", Guid.NewGuid()); bag.Add("Key4", DateTime.Now); bag.Add("Key5", true); bag.Add("Key7", new byte[3] { 42, 45, 66 }); TestContext.WriteLine(this.ToXmlDcs(bag)); } public string ToXmlDcs(object value, bool throwExceptions = false) { var ser = new DataContractSerializer(value.GetType(), null, int.MaxValue, true, false, null); MemoryStream ms = new MemoryStream(); ser.WriteObject(ms, value); return Encoding.UTF8.GetString(ms.ToArray(), 0, (int)ms.Length); } This DOES work but produces some pretty heinous XML (formatted with line breaks and indentation here): <ArrayOfKeyValueOfstringanyType xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/2003/10/Serialization/Arrays" xmlns:i="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"> <KeyValueOfstringanyType> <Key>key</Key> <Value i:type="a:string" xmlns:a="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">Value</Value> </KeyValueOfstringanyType> <KeyValueOfstringanyType> <Key>Key2</Key> <Value i:type="a:decimal" xmlns:a="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">100.10</Value> </KeyValueOfstringanyType> <KeyValueOfstringanyType> <Key>Key3</Key> <Value i:type="a:guid" xmlns:a="http://schemas.microsoft.com/2003/10/Serialization/">2cd46d2a-a636-4af4-979b-e834d39b6d37</Value> </KeyValueOfstringanyType> <KeyValueOfstringanyType> <Key>Key4</Key> <Value i:type="a:dateTime" xmlns:a="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">2011-09-19T17:17:05.4406999-07:00</Value> </KeyValueOfstringanyType> <KeyValueOfstringanyType> <Key>Key5</Key> <Value i:type="a:boolean" xmlns:a="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">true</Value> </KeyValueOfstringanyType> <KeyValueOfstringanyType> <Key>Key7</Key> <Value i:type="a:base64Binary" xmlns:a="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">Ki1C</Value> </KeyValueOfstringanyType> </ArrayOfKeyValueOfstringanyType> Ouch! That seriously hurts the eye! :-) Worse though it's extremely verbose with all those repetitive namespace declarations. It's good to know that it works in a pinch, but for a human readable/editable solution or something lightweight to store in a database it's not quite ideal. Why should I care? As a little background, in one of my applications I have a need for a flexible property bag that is used on a free form database field on an otherwise static entity. Basically what I have is a standard database record to which arbitrary properties can be added in an XML based string field. I intend to expose those arbitrary properties as a collection from field data stored in XML. The concept is pretty simple: When loading write the data to the collection, when the data is saved serialize the data into an XML string and store it into the database. When reading the data pick up the XML and if the collection on the entity is accessed automatically deserialize the XML into the Dictionary. (I'll talk more about this in another post). While the DataContext Serializer would work, it's verbosity is problematic both for size of the generated XML strings and the fact that users can manually edit this XML based property data in an advanced mode. A clean(er) layout certainly would be preferable and more user friendly. Custom XMLSerialization with a PropertyBag Class So… after a bunch of experimentation with different serialization formats I decided to create a custom PropertyBag class that provides for a serializable Dictionary. It's basically a custom Dictionary<TType,TValue> implementation with the keys always set as string keys. The result are PropertyBag<TValue> and PropertyBag (which defaults to the object type for values). The PropertyBag<TType> and PropertyBag classes provide these features: Subclassed from Dictionary<T,V> Implements IXmlSerializable with a cleanish XML format ToXml() and FromXml() methods to export and import to and from XML strings Static CreateFromXml() method to create an instance It's simple enough as it's merely a Dictionary<string,object> subclass but that supports serialization to a - what I think at least - cleaner XML format. The class is super simple to use: [TestMethod] public void PropertyBagTwoWayObjectSerializationTest() { var bag = new PropertyBag(); bag.Add("key", "Value"); bag.Add("Key2", 100.10M); bag.Add("Key3", Guid.NewGuid()); bag.Add("Key4", DateTime.Now); bag.Add("Key5", true); bag.Add("Key7", new byte[3] { 42,45,66 } ); bag.Add("Key8", null); bag.Add("Key9", new ComplexObject() { Name = "Rick", Entered = DateTime.Now, Count = 10 }); string xml = bag.ToXml(); TestContext.WriteLine(bag.ToXml()); bag.Clear(); bag.FromXml(xml); Assert.IsTrue(bag["key"] as string == "Value"); Assert.IsInstanceOfType( bag["Key3"], typeof(Guid)); Assert.IsNull(bag["Key8"]); //Assert.IsNull(bag["Key10"]); Assert.IsInstanceOfType(bag["Key9"], typeof(ComplexObject)); } This uses the PropertyBag class which uses a PropertyBag<string,object> - which means it returns untyped values of type object. I suspect for me this will be the most common scenario as I'd want to store arbitrary values in the PropertyBag rather than one specific type. The same code with a strongly typed PropertyBag<decimal> looks like this: [TestMethod] public void PropertyBagTwoWayValueTypeSerializationTest() { var bag = new PropertyBag<decimal>(); bag.Add("key", 10M); bag.Add("Key1", 100.10M); bag.Add("Key2", 200.10M); bag.Add("Key3", 300.10M); string xml = bag.ToXml(); TestContext.WriteLine(bag.ToXml()); bag.Clear(); bag.FromXml(xml); Assert.IsTrue(bag.Get("Key1") == 100.10M); Assert.IsTrue(bag.Get("Key3") == 300.10M); } and produces typed results of type decimal. The types can be either value or reference types the combination of which actually proved to be a little more tricky than anticipated due to null and specific string value checks required - getting the generic typing right required use of default(T) and Convert.ChangeType() to trick the compiler into playing nice. Of course the whole raison d'etre for this class is the XML serialization. You can see in the code above that we're doing a .ToXml() and .FromXml() to serialize to and from string. The XML produced for the first example looks like this: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <properties> <item> <key>key</key> <value>Value</value> </item> <item> <key>Key2</key> <value type="decimal">100.10</value> </item> <item> <key>Key3</key> <value type="___System.Guid"> <guid>f7a92032-0c6d-4e9d-9950-b15ff7cd207d</guid> </value> </item> <item> <key>Key4</key> <value type="datetime">2011-09-26T17:45:58.5789578-10:00</value> </item> <item> <key>Key5</key> <value type="boolean">true</value> </item> <item> <key>Key7</key> <value type="base64Binary">Ki1C</value> </item> <item> <key>Key8</key> <value type="nil" /> </item> <item> <key>Key9</key> <value type="___Westwind.Tools.Tests.PropertyBagTest+ComplexObject"> <ComplexObject> <Name>Rick</Name> <Entered>2011-09-26T17:45:58.5789578-10:00</Entered> <Count>10</Count> </ComplexObject> </value> </item> </properties>   The format is a bit cleaner than the DataContractSerializer. Each item is serialized into <key> <value> pairs. If the value is a string no type information is written. Since string tends to be the most common type this saves space and serialization processing. All other types are attributed. Simple types are mapped to XML types so things like decimal, datetime, boolean and base64Binary are encoded using their Xml type values. All other types are embedded with a hokey format that describes the .NET type preceded by a three underscores and then are encoded using the XmlSerializer. You can see this best above in the ComplexObject encoding. For custom types this isn't pretty either, but it's more concise than the DCS and it works as long as you're serializing back and forth between .NET clients at least. The XML generated from the second example that uses PropertyBag<decimal> looks like this: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <properties> <item> <key>key</key> <value type="decimal">10</value> </item> <item> <key>Key1</key> <value type="decimal">100.10</value> </item> <item> <key>Key2</key> <value type="decimal">200.10</value> </item> <item> <key>Key3</key> <value type="decimal">300.10</value> </item> </properties>   How does it work As I mentioned there's nothing fancy about this solution - it's little more than a subclass of Dictionary<T,V> that implements custom Xml Serialization and a couple of helper methods that facilitate getting the XML in and out of the class more easily. But it's proven very handy for a number of projects for me where dynamic data storage is required. Here's the code: /// <summary> /// Creates a serializable string/object dictionary that is XML serializable /// Encodes keys as element names and values as simple values with a type /// attribute that contains an XML type name. Complex names encode the type /// name with type='___namespace.classname' format followed by a standard xml /// serialized format. The latter serialization can be slow so it's not recommended /// to pass complex types if performance is critical. /// </summary> [XmlRoot("properties")] public class PropertyBag : PropertyBag<object> { /// <summary> /// Creates an instance of a propertybag from an Xml string /// </summary> /// <param name="xml">Serialize</param> /// <returns></returns> public static PropertyBag CreateFromXml(string xml) { var bag = new PropertyBag(); bag.FromXml(xml); return bag; } } /// <summary> /// Creates a serializable string for generic types that is XML serializable. /// /// Encodes keys as element names and values as simple values with a type /// attribute that contains an XML type name. Complex names encode the type /// name with type='___namespace.classname' format followed by a standard xml /// serialized format. The latter serialization can be slow so it's not recommended /// to pass complex types if performance is critical. /// </summary> /// <typeparam name="TValue">Must be a reference type. For value types use type object</typeparam> [XmlRoot("properties")] public class PropertyBag<TValue> : Dictionary<string, TValue>, IXmlSerializable { /// <summary> /// Not implemented - this means no schema information is passed /// so this won't work with ASMX/WCF services. /// </summary> /// <returns></returns> public System.Xml.Schema.XmlSchema GetSchema() { return null; } /// <summary> /// Serializes the dictionary to XML. Keys are /// serialized to element names and values as /// element values. An xml type attribute is embedded /// for each serialized element - a .NET type /// element is embedded for each complex type and /// prefixed with three underscores. /// </summary> /// <param name="writer"></param> public void WriteXml(System.Xml.XmlWriter writer) { foreach (string key in this.Keys) { TValue value = this[key]; Type type = null; if (value != null) type = value.GetType(); writer.WriteStartElement("item"); writer.WriteStartElement("key"); writer.WriteString(key as string); writer.WriteEndElement(); writer.WriteStartElement("value"); string xmlType = XmlUtils.MapTypeToXmlType(type); bool isCustom = false; // Type information attribute if not string if (value == null) { writer.WriteAttributeString("type", "nil"); } else if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(xmlType)) { if (xmlType != "string") { writer.WriteStartAttribute("type"); writer.WriteString(xmlType); writer.WriteEndAttribute(); } } else { isCustom = true; xmlType = "___" + value.GetType().FullName; writer.WriteStartAttribute("type"); writer.WriteString(xmlType); writer.WriteEndAttribute(); } // Actual deserialization if (!isCustom) { if (value != null) writer.WriteValue(value); } else { XmlSerializer ser = new XmlSerializer(value.GetType()); ser.Serialize(writer, value); } writer.WriteEndElement(); // value writer.WriteEndElement(); // item } } /// <summary> /// Reads the custom serialized format /// </summary> /// <param name="reader"></param> public void ReadXml(System.Xml.XmlReader reader) { this.Clear(); while (reader.Read()) { if (reader.NodeType == XmlNodeType.Element && reader.Name == "key") { string xmlType = null; string name = reader.ReadElementContentAsString(); // item element reader.ReadToNextSibling("value"); if (reader.MoveToNextAttribute()) xmlType = reader.Value; reader.MoveToContent(); TValue value; if (xmlType == "nil") value = default(TValue); // null else if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(xmlType)) { // value is a string or object and we can assign TValue to value string strval = reader.ReadElementContentAsString(); value = (TValue) Convert.ChangeType(strval, typeof(TValue)); } else if (xmlType.StartsWith("___")) { while (reader.Read() && reader.NodeType != XmlNodeType.Element) { } Type type = ReflectionUtils.GetTypeFromName(xmlType.Substring(3)); //value = reader.ReadElementContentAs(type,null); XmlSerializer ser = new XmlSerializer(type); value = (TValue)ser.Deserialize(reader); } else value = (TValue)reader.ReadElementContentAs(XmlUtils.MapXmlTypeToType(xmlType), null); this.Add(name, value); } } } /// <summary> /// Serializes this dictionary to an XML string /// </summary> /// <returns>XML String or Null if it fails</returns> public string ToXml() { string xml = null; SerializationUtils.SerializeObject(this, out xml); return xml; } /// <summary> /// Deserializes from an XML string /// </summary> /// <param name="xml"></param> /// <returns>true or false</returns> public bool FromXml(string xml) { this.Clear(); // if xml string is empty we return an empty dictionary if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(xml)) return true; var result = SerializationUtils.DeSerializeObject(xml, this.GetType()) as PropertyBag<TValue>; if (result != null) { foreach (var item in result) { this.Add(item.Key, item.Value); } } else // null is a failure return false; return true; } /// <summary> /// Creates an instance of a propertybag from an Xml string /// </summary> /// <param name="xml"></param> /// <returns></returns> public static PropertyBag<TValue> CreateFromXml(string xml) { var bag = new PropertyBag<TValue>(); bag.FromXml(xml); return bag; } } } The code uses a couple of small helper classes SerializationUtils and XmlUtils for mapping Xml types to and from .NET, both of which are from the WestWind,Utilities project (which is the same project where PropertyBag lives) from the West Wind Web Toolkit. The code implements ReadXml and WriteXml for the IXmlSerializable implementation using old school XmlReaders and XmlWriters (because it's pretty simple stuff - no need for XLinq here). Then there are two helper methods .ToXml() and .FromXml() that basically allow your code to easily convert between XML and a PropertyBag object. In my code that's what I use to actually to persist to and from the entity XML property during .Load() and .Save() operations. It's sweet to be able to have a string key dictionary and then be able to turn around with 1 line of code to persist the whole thing to XML and back. Hopefully some of you will find this class as useful as I've found it. It's a simple solution to a common requirement in my applications and I've used the hell out of it in the  short time since I created it. Resources You can find the complete code for the two classes plus the helpers in the Subversion repository for Westwind.Utilities. You can grab the source files from there or download the whole project. You can also grab the full Westwind.Utilities assembly from NuGet and add it to your project if that's easier for you. PropertyBag Source Code SerializationUtils and XmlUtils Westwind.Utilities Assembly on NuGet (add from Visual Studio) © Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2011Posted in .NET  CSharp   Tweet (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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• Why is XmlSerializer throwing an InvalidOperationException?

  - by qster

  public void Save() { XmlSerializer Serializer = new XmlSerializer(typeof(DatabaseInformation)); /* A first chance exception of type 'System.IO.FileNotFoundException' occurred in mscorlib.dll A first chance exception of type 'System.IO.FileNotFoundException' occurred in mscorlib.dll A first chance exception of type 'System.InvalidOperationException' occurred in System.Xml.dll */ // .... } This is the whole class if you need it: public class DatabaseInformation { /* Create new database */ public DatabaseInformation(string name) { mName = name; NeedsSaving = true; mFieldsInfo = new List<DatabaseField>(); } /* Read from file */ public static DatabaseInformation DeserializeFromFile(string xml_file_path) { XmlSerializer Serializer = new XmlSerializer(typeof(DatabaseInformation)); TextReader r = new StreamReader(xml_file_path); DatabaseInformation ret = (DatabaseInformation)Serializer.Deserialize(r); r.Close(); ret.NeedsSaving = false; return ret; } /* Save */ public void Save() { XmlSerializer Serializer = new XmlSerializer(typeof(DatabaseInformation)); if (!mNeedsSaving) return; TextWriter w = new StreamWriter(Path.Combine(Program.MainView.CommonDirectory.Get(), Name + ".xml"), false); Serializer.Serialize(w, this); w.Close(); NeedsSaving = false; } private string mName; public string Name { get { return mName; } } private bool mNeedsSaving; public bool NeedsSaving { get { return mNeedsSaving; } set { mNeedsSaving = value; Program.MainView.UpdateTitle(value); } } private bool mHasId; public bool HasId { get { return mHasId; } } List<DatabaseField> mFieldsInfo; }

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• Unable to validate data. at System.Web.Configuration.MachineKeySection.GetDecodedData

  - by Ben Williams

  I have several websites which get approximately 3000 pageviews in total per day, and I get this viewstate error roughly 5-10 times per day, caught in global.asax: System.Web.HttpException: Unable to validate data. at System.Web.Configuration.MachineKeySection.GetDecodedData(Byte[] buf, Byte[] modifier, Int32 start, Int32 length, Int32& dataLength) at System.Web.UI.ObjectStateFormatter.Deserialize(String inputString) I have tried: hard-coding the machine key in web.config for all websites hard-coding the machien key in machine.config adding items to the pages section of the web.config for all websites. Machine key looks like: <machineKey validationKey="key goes here" decryptionKey="key goes here" validation="SHA1" decryption="AES" /> Pages section looks like: <pages renderAllHiddenFieldsAtTopOfForm="true" validateRequest="false" enableEventValidation="false" viewStateEncryptionMode="Never"> The errors are not related to application pool recycling as best I can tell, as the pool is set to recycle at every 100,000 requests. I am not running a web farm or web garden. Quite often I get two or three of these errors in a row, as if a user is getting an error, going back, and then clicking the link again. Anyone have any ideas?

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• Rewind request body stream

  - by Despertar

  I am re-implementing a request logger as Owin Middleware which logs the request url and body of all incoming requests. I am able to read the body, but if I do the body parameter in my controller is null. I'm guessing it's null because the stream position is at the end so there is nothing left to read when it tries to deserialize the body. I had a similar issue in a previous version of Web API but was able to set the Stream position back to 0. This particular stream throws a This stream does not support seek operations exception. In the most recent version of Web API 2.0 I could call Request.HttpContent.ReadAsStringAsync()inside my request logger, and the body would still arrive to the controller in tact. How can I rewind the stream after reading it? or How can I read the request body without consuming it? public class RequestLoggerMiddleware : OwinMiddleware { public RequestLoggerMiddleware(OwinMiddleware next) : base(next) { } public override Task Invoke(IOwinContext context) { return Task.Run(() => { string body = new StreamReader(context.Request.Body).ReadToEnd(); // log body context.Request.Body.Position = 0; // cannot set stream position back to 0 Console.WriteLine(context.Request.Body.CanSeek); // prints false this.Next.Invoke(context); }); } } public class SampleController : ApiController { public void Post(ModelClass body) { // body is now null if the middleware reads it } }

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• Sharing an assembly between ASP.NET and Silverlight

  - by vtortola

  Hi, I've created an assembly to share it between my main app and the silverlight app. At the beginning it looked like it was going to work but now I get this exception: "System.IO.FileNotFoundException was caught, Message="Could not load file or assembly 'System.Xml.Linq". I'm using .NET 3.5 Sp1 and Silverlight 3. That shared assembly uses System.Xml.Linq, and it cannot find it... I think because it is trying to find that version in the .NET framework instead looking in the silverlight one. How can I fix this? Cheers. PS: this is the full exception output: System.IO.FileNotFoundException was caught Message="Could not load file or assembly 'System.Xml.Linq, Version=2.0.5.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35' or one of its dependencies. The system cannot find the file specified." Source="MyApp.Metadata" FileName="System.Xml.Linq, Version=2.0.5.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35" FusionLog="=== Pre-bind state information ===\r\nLOG: User = IIS APPPOOL\DefaultAppPool\r\nLOG: DisplayName = System.Xml.Linq, Version=2.0.5.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35\n (Fully-specified)\r\nLOG: Appbase = file:///C:/Users/vtortola.MyApp/Documents/MyApp/MyAppSAS/WebApplication1/WebApplication1/\r\nLOG: Initial PrivatePath = C:\Users\vtortola.MyApp\Documents\MyApp\MyAppSAS\WebApplication1\WebApplication1\bin\r\nCalling assembly : MyApp.Metadata, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=null.\r\n===\r\nLOG: This bind starts in default load context.\r\nLOG: Using application configuration file: C:\Users\vtortola.MyApp\Documents\MyApp\MyAppSAS\WebApplication1\WebApplication1\web.config\r\nLOG: Using host configuration file: C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework64\v2.0.50727\Aspnet.config\r\nLOG: Using machine configuration file from C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework64\v2.0.50727\config\machine.config.\r\nLOG: Post-policy reference: System.Xml.Linq, Version=2.0.5.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35\r\nLOG: The same bind was seen before, and was failed with hr = 0x80070002.\r\n" StackTrace: at MyApp.Metadata.MyAppEntity.Deserialize(String message)

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• Support for nested model and class validation with ASP.NET MVC 2.0

  - by Diep-Vriezer

  I'm trying to validate a model containing other objects with validation rules using the System.ComponentModel.DataAnnotations attributes was hoping the default MVC implementation would suffice: var obj = js.Deserialize(json, objectInfo.ObjectType); if(!TryValidateModel(obj)) { // Handle failed model validation. } The object is composed of primitive types but also contains other classes which also use DataAnnotications. Like so: public class Entry { [Required] public Person Subscriber { get; set; } [Required] public String Company { get; set; } } public class Person { public String FirstName { get; set;} [Required] public String Surname { get; set; } } The problem is that the ASP.NET MVC validation only goes down 1 level and only evaluates the properties of the top level class, as can be read on digitallycreated.net/Blog/54/deep-inside-asp.net-mvc-2-model-metadata-and-validation. Does anyone know an elegant solution to this? I've tried xVal, but they seem to use a non-recursive pattern (http://blog.stevensanderson.com/2009/01/10/xval-a-validation-framework-for-aspnet-mvc/). Someone must have run into this problem before right? Nesting objects in your model doesn't seem so weird if you're designing a web service.

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• Parsing concatenated, non-delimited XML messages from TCP-stream using C#

  - by thaller

  I am trying to parse XML messages which are send to my C# application over TCP. Unfortunately, the protocol can not be changed and the XML messages are not delimited and no length prefix is used. Moreover the character encoding is not fixed but each message starts with an XML declaration <?xml>. The question is, how can i read one XML message at a time, using C#. Up to now, I tried to read the data from the TCP stream into a byte array and use it through a MemoryStream. The problem is, the buffer might contain more than one XML messages or the first message may be incomplete. In these cases, I get an exception when trying to parse it with XmlReader.Read or XmlDocument.Load, but unfortunately the XmlException does not really allow me to distinguish the problem (except parsing the localized error string). I tried using XmlReader.Read and count the number of Element and EndElement nodes. That way I know when I am finished reading the first, entire XML message. However, there are several problems. If the buffer does not yet contain the entire message, how can I distinguish the XmlException from an actually invalid, non-well-formed message? In other words, if an exception is thrown before reading the first root EndElement, how can I decide whether to abort the connection with error, or to collect more bytes from the TCP stream? If no exception occurs, the XmlReader is positioned at the start of the root EndElement. Casting the XmlReader to IXmlLineInfo gives me the current LineNumber and LinePosition, however it is not straight forward to get the byte position where the EndElement really ends. In order to do that, I would have to convert the byte array into a string (with the encoding specified in the XML declaration), seek to LineNumber,LinePosition and convert that back to the byte offset. I try to do that with StreamReader.ReadLine, but the stream reader gives no public access to the current byte position. All this seams very inelegant and non robust. I wonder if you have ideas for a better solution. Thank you. EDIT: I looked around and think that the situation is as follows (I might be wrong, corrections are welcome): I found no method so that the XmlReader can continue parsing a second XML message (at least not, if the second message has an XmlDeclaration). XmlTextReader.ResetState could do something similar, but for that I would have to assume the same encoding for all messages. Therefor I could not connect the XmlReader directly to the TcpStream. After closing the XmlReader, the buffer is not positioned at the readers last position. So it is not possible to close the reader and use a new one to continue with the next message. I guess the reason for this is, that the reader could not successfully seek on every possible input stream. When XmlReader throws an exception it can not be determined whether it happened because of an premature EOF or because of a non-wellformed XML. XmlReader.EOF is not set in case of an exception. As workaround I derived my own MemoryBuffer, which returns the very last byte as a single byte. This way I know that the XmlReader was really interested in the last byte and the following exception is likely due to a truncated message (this is kinda sloppy, in that it might not detect every non-wellformed message. However, after appending more bytes to the buffer, sooner or later the error will be detected. I could cast my XmlReader to the IXmlLineInfo interface, which gives access to the LineNumber and the LinePosition of the current node. So after reading the first message I remember these positions and use it to truncate the buffer. Here comes the really sloppy part, because I have to use the character encoding to get the byte position. I am sure you could find test cases for the code below where it breaks (e.g. internal elements with mixed encoding). But up to now it worked for all my tests. The parser class follows here -- may it be useful (I know, its very far from perfect...) class XmlParser { private byte[] buffer = new byte[0]; public int Length { get { return buffer.Length; } } // Append new binary data to the internal data buffer... public XmlParser Append(byte[] buffer2) { if (buffer2 != null && buffer2.Length > 0) { // I know, its not an efficient way to do this. // The EofMemoryStream should handle a List<byte[]> ... byte[] new_buffer = new byte[buffer.Length + buffer2.Length]; buffer.CopyTo(new_buffer, 0); buffer2.CopyTo(new_buffer, buffer.Length); buffer = new_buffer; } return this; } // MemoryStream which returns the last byte of the buffer individually, // so that we know that the buffering XmlReader really locked at the last // byte of the stream. // Moreover there is an EOF marker. private class EofMemoryStream: Stream { public bool EOF { get; private set; } private MemoryStream mem_; public override bool CanSeek { get { return false; } } public override bool CanWrite { get { return false; } } public override bool CanRead { get { return true; } } public override long Length { get { return mem_.Length; } } public override long Position { get { return mem_.Position; } set { throw new NotSupportedException(); } } public override void Flush() { mem_.Flush(); } public override long Seek(long offset, SeekOrigin origin) { throw new NotSupportedException(); } public override void SetLength(long value) { throw new NotSupportedException(); } public override void Write(byte[] buffer, int offset, int count) { throw new NotSupportedException(); } public override int Read(byte[] buffer, int offset, int count) { count = Math.Min(count, Math.Max(1, (int)(Length - Position - 1))); int nread = mem_.Read(buffer, offset, count); if (nread == 0) { EOF = true; } return nread; } public EofMemoryStream(byte[] buffer) { mem_ = new MemoryStream(buffer, false); EOF = false; } protected override void Dispose(bool disposing) { mem_.Dispose(); } } // Parses the first xml message from the stream. // If the first message is not yet complete, it returns null. // If the buffer contains non-wellformed xml, it ~should~ throw an exception. // After reading an xml message, it pops the data from the byte array. public Message deserialize() { if (buffer.Length == 0) { return null; } Message message = null; Encoding encoding = Message.default_encoding; //string xml = encoding.GetString(buffer); using (EofMemoryStream sbuffer = new EofMemoryStream (buffer)) { XmlDocument xmlDocument = null; XmlReaderSettings settings = new XmlReaderSettings(); int LineNumber = -1; int LinePosition = -1; bool truncate_buffer = false; using (XmlReader xmlReader = XmlReader.Create(sbuffer, settings)) { try { // Read to the first node (skipping over some element-types. // Don't use MoveToContent here, because it would skip the // XmlDeclaration too... while (xmlReader.Read() && (xmlReader.NodeType==XmlNodeType.Whitespace || xmlReader.NodeType==XmlNodeType.Comment)) { }; // Check for XML declaration. // If the message has an XmlDeclaration, extract the encoding. switch (xmlReader.NodeType) { case XmlNodeType.XmlDeclaration: while (xmlReader.MoveToNextAttribute()) { if (xmlReader.Name == "encoding") { encoding = Encoding.GetEncoding(xmlReader.Value); } } xmlReader.MoveToContent(); xmlReader.Read(); break; } // Move to the first element. xmlReader.MoveToContent(); // Read the entire document. xmlDocument = new XmlDocument(); xmlDocument.Load(xmlReader.ReadSubtree()); } catch (XmlException e) { // The parsing of the xml failed. If the XmlReader did // not yet look at the last byte, it is assumed that the // XML is invalid and the exception is re-thrown. if (sbuffer.EOF) { return null; } throw e; } { // Try to serialize an internal data structure using XmlSerializer. Type type = null; try { type = Type.GetType("my.namespace." + xmlDocument.DocumentElement.Name); } catch (Exception e) { // No specialized data container for this class found... } if (type == null) { message = new Message(); } else { // TODO: reuse the serializer... System.Xml.Serialization.XmlSerializer ser = new System.Xml.Serialization.XmlSerializer(type); message = (Message)ser.Deserialize(new XmlNodeReader(xmlDocument)); } message.doc = xmlDocument; } // At this point, the first XML message was sucessfully parsed. // Remember the lineposition of the current end element. IXmlLineInfo xmlLineInfo = xmlReader as IXmlLineInfo; if (xmlLineInfo != null && xmlLineInfo.HasLineInfo()) { LineNumber = xmlLineInfo.LineNumber; LinePosition = xmlLineInfo.LinePosition; } // Try to read the rest of the buffer. // If an exception is thrown, another xml message appears. // This way the xml parser could tell us that the message is finished here. // This would be prefered as truncating the buffer using the line info is sloppy. try { while (xmlReader.Read()) { } } catch { // There comes a second message. Needs workaround for trunkating. truncate_buffer = true; } } if (truncate_buffer) { if (LineNumber < 0) { throw new Exception("LineNumber not given. Cannot truncate xml buffer"); } // Convert the buffer to a string using the encoding found before // (or the default encoding). string s = encoding.GetString(buffer); // Seek to the line. int char_index = 0; while (--LineNumber > 0) { // Recognize \r , \n , \r\n as newlines... char_index = s.IndexOfAny(new char[] {'\r', '\n'}, char_index); // char_index should not be -1 because LineNumber>0, otherwise an RangeException is // thrown, which is appropriate. char_index++; if (s[char_index-1]=='\r' && s.Length>char_index && s[char_index]=='\n') { char_index++; } } char_index += LinePosition - 1; var rgx = new System.Text.RegularExpressions.Regex(xmlDocument.DocumentElement.Name + "[ \r\n\t]*\\>"); System.Text.RegularExpressions.Match match = rgx.Match(s, char_index); if (!match.Success || match.Index != char_index) { throw new Exception("could not find EndElement to truncate the xml buffer."); } char_index += match.Value.Length; // Convert the character offset back to the byte offset (for the given encoding). int line1_boffset = encoding.GetByteCount(s.Substring(0, char_index)); // remove the bytes from the buffer. buffer = buffer.Skip(line1_boffset).ToArray(); } else { buffer = new byte[0]; } } return message; } }

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• InvalidCastException for two Objects of the same type

  - by LLEA

  hi, I have this weird problem that I cannot handle myself. A class in the model of my mvp-project designed as singleton causes an InvalidCastException. The source of error is found in this code line where the deserialised object is assigned to the instance variable of the class: engineObject = (ENGINE)xSerializer.Deserialize(str); It occurs whenever I try to add one of my UserControls to a Form or to a different UC. All of my UCs have a special presenter that access the above mentioned instance variable of the singleton class. This is what I get when trying to add a UC somewhere: 'System.TypeInitializationException: The type initializer for 'MVP.Model.EngineData' threw an exception. ---- System.InvalidCastException: [A]Engine cannot be cast to [B]Engine. Type A originates from 'MVP.Model, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=null' in the context 'LoadNeither' at location '[...]\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\VisualStudio\9.0\ProjectAssemblies\uankw1hh01\MVP.Model.dll'. Type B originates from 'MVP.Model, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=null' in the context 'LoadNeither' at location '[...]\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\VisualStudio\9.0\ProjectAssemblies\u_hge2de01\MVP.Model.dll'... So I somehow have two assemblies and they are not accessed from my project folder, but from a VS temp folder? I googled a lot and only found this: IronPython Exception: [A]Person cannot be cast to [B]Person. There is a solution offered, but first it concerns IronPhyton and second I don't know where to use it within my project? It would be just great, if u could help me out here :-) thx

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• Issue with VS 2008 designer and usercontrol.

  - by Ram

  Hello, I have created a custom data grid control. I dragged it on windows form and set its properties like column and all & ran the project. It built successfully and I am able to view the grid control on the form. Now if i try to view that form in designer, I am getting following error.. Object reference not set to an instance of an object. Instances of this error (1) 1. Hide Call Stack at Microsoft.VisualStudio.Design.Serialization.CodeDom.XML.CodeDomXmlProcessor.GetMemberTargetObject(XmlElementData xmlElementData, String& member) at Microsoft.VisualStudio.Design.Serialization.CodeDom.XML.CodeDomXmlProcessor.CreateAssignStatement(XmlElementData xmlElement) at Microsoft.VisualStudio.Design.Serialization.CodeDom.XML.CodeDomXmlProcessor.XmlElementData.get_CodeDomElement() at Microsoft.VisualStudio.Design.Serialization.CodeDom.XML.CodeDomXmlProcessor.EndElement(String prefix, String name, String urn) at Microsoft.VisualStudio.Design.Serialization.CodeDom.XML.CodeDomXmlProcessor.Parse(XmlReader reader) at Microsoft.VisualStudio.Design.Serialization.CodeDom.XML.CodeDomXmlProcessor.ParseXml(String xmlStream, CodeStatementCollection statementCollection, String fileName, String methodName) at Microsoft.VisualStudio.Design.Serialization.CodeDom.VSCodeDomParser.OnMethodPopulateStatements(Object sender, EventArgs e) at System.CodeDom.CodeMemberMethod.get_Statements() at System.ComponentModel.Design.Serialization.TypeCodeDomSerializer.Deserialize(IDesignerSerializationManager manager, CodeTypeDeclaration declaration) at System.ComponentModel.Design.Serialization.CodeDomDesignerLoader.PerformLoad(IDesignerSerializationManager manager) at Microsoft.VisualStudio.Design.Serialization.CodeDom.VSCodeDomDesignerLoader.PerformLoad(IDesignerSerializationManager serializationManager) at Microsoft.VisualStudio.Design.Serialization.CodeDom.VSCodeDomDesignerLoader.DeferredLoadHandler.Microsoft.VisualStudio.TextManager.Interop.IVsTextBufferDataEvents.OnLoadCompleted(Int32 fReload) If I ignore the exception, form appears blank with no sign of grid control on it. However I can see the code for the grid in the designer file. Any pointer on this would be a great help.

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• Problem converting a byte array into datatable.

  - by kranthi

  Hi, In my aspx page I have a HTML inputfile type which allows user to browse for a spreadsheet.Once the user choses the file to upload I want to read the content of the spreadsheet and store the content into mysql database table. I am using the following code to read the content of the uploaded file and convert it into a datatable in order into insert it into database table. if (filMyFile.PostedFile != null) { // Get a reference to PostedFile object HttpPostedFile myFile = filMyFile.PostedFile; // Get size of uploaded file int nFileLen = myFile.ContentLength; // make sure the size of the file is > 0 if (nFileLen > 0) { // Allocate a buffer for reading of the file byte[] myData = new byte[nFileLen]; // Read uploaded file from the Stream myFile.InputStream.Read(myData, 0, nFileLen); DataTable dt = new DataTable(); MemoryStream st = new MemoryStream(myData); st.Position = 0; System.Runtime.Serialization.IFormatter formatter = new System.Runtime.Serialization.Formatters.Binary.BinaryFormatter(); dt=(DataTable)formatter.Deserialize(st); } } But I am getting the following error when I am trying to deserialise the byte array into datatable. Binary stream '0' does not contain a valid BinaryHeader. Possible causes are invalid stream or object version change between serialization and deserialization. Could someone please tell me what am I doing wrong? I've also tried converting the bytearray into string ,then converting the string back to byte array and convert into datatable.That is also throwing the same error. Thanks.

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• Working with a large data object between ruby processes

  - by Gdeglin

  I have a Ruby hash that reaches approximately 10 megabytes if written to a file using Marshal.dump. After gzip compression it is approximately 500 kilobytes. Iterating through and altering this hash is very fast in ruby (fractions of a millisecond). Even copying it is extremely fast. The problem is that I need to share the data in this hash between Ruby on Rails processes. In order to do this using the Rails cache (file_store or memcached) I need to Marshal.dump the file first, however this incurs a 1000 millisecond delay when serializing the file and a 400 millisecond delay when serializing it. Ideally I would want to be able to save and load this hash from each process in under 100 milliseconds. One idea is to spawn a new Ruby process to hold this hash that provides an API to the other processes to modify or process the data within it, but I want to avoid doing this unless I'm certain that there are no other ways to share this object quickly. Is there a way I can more directly share this hash between processes without needing to serialize or deserialize it? Here is the code I'm using to generate a hash similar to the one I'm working with: @a = [] 0.upto(500) do |r| @a[r] = [] 0.upto(10_000) do |c| if rand(10) == 0 @a[r][c] = 1 # 10% chance of being 1 else @a[r][c] = 0 end end end @c = Marshal.dump(@a) # 1000 milliseconds Marshal.load(@c) # 400 milliseconds Update: Since my original question did not receive many responses, I'm assuming there's no solution as easy as I would have hoped. Presently I'm considering two options: Create a Sinatra application to store this hash with an API to modify/access it. Create a C application to do the same as #1, but a lot faster. The scope of my problem has increased such that the hash may be larger than my original example. So #2 may be necessary. But I have no idea where to start in terms of writing a C application that exposes an appropriate API. A good walkthrough through how best to implement #1 or #2 may receive best answer credit.

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• MSMQ first Message.Body in queue is OK, all following Message.Body in queue are empty

  - by Andrew A

  I send a handful of identical (except for Id#, obviously) messages to an MSMQ queue on my local machine. The body of the messages is a serialized XElement object. When I try to process the first message in the queue, I am able to successfully de-serialize the Message.Body object and save it to file. However, when trying to process the next (or any subsequent) message, the Message.Body is absent, and an exception is thrown. I have verified the Message ID's are correct for the message attempting to be processed. The XML being serialized is properly formed. Any ideas? I am basing my code on the Microsoft MSMQ Book order sample found here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms180970%28VS.80%29.aspx // Create Envelope XML object XElement envelope = new XElement(env + "Envelope", new XAttribute(XNamespace.Xmlns + "env", env.NamespaceName) <snip> //Send envelope as message body MessageQueue myQueue = new MessageQueue(String.Format(@"FORMATNAME:DIRECT=OS:localhost\private$\mqsample")); myQueue.DefaultPropertiesToSend.Recoverable = true; // Prepare message Message myMessage = new Message(); myMessage.ResponseQueue = new MessageQueue(String.Format(System.Globalization.CultureInfo.InvariantCulture, @"FORMATNAME:DIRECT=TCP:192.168.1.217\private$\mqdemoAck")); myMessage.Body = envelope; // Send the message into the queue. myQueue.Send(myMessage,"message label"); //Retrieve messages from queue LabelIdMapping labelID = (LabelIdMapping)mqlistBox3.SelectedItem; System.Messaging.Message message = mqOrderQueue.ReceiveById(labelID.Id); The Message.Body value I see on the 1st retrieve is as expected: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <string>Some String</string> However, the 2nd and subsequent retrieve operations Message.Body is: "Cannot deserialize the message passed as an argument. Cannot recognize the serialization format." How does this work fine the first time but not after that? I have tried message.Dispose() after retrieving it but it did not help. Thank you very much for any help on this!

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• Debugger Visualizer, ElementHost, and Edit and Continue problems

  - by Frank Fella

  I recently wrote a custom Debugger Visualizer for Visual Studio 2008 for one of the custom types in my application. The UI for the visualizer is written in WPF and is hosted in an element host and shown using the IDialogVisualizerService windowService object. Everything works great, and my visualizer loads and shows the relevant information, but if try to "edit and continue" in my application after loading the visualizer, Visual Studio crashes with no useful error message. In trying to debug this I removed almost all of my code from the solution to the point where I was only serializing a string with the ObjectSource and displaying just an empty element host and I still get the crash on edit and continue. If I remove the element host and show a WinForms control or form there is no crash. Here is the Visualizer code: using System; using System.Drawing; using System.IO; using System.Runtime.Serialization.Formatters.Binary; using System.Windows.Forms; using System.Windows.Forms.Integration; using Microsoft.VisualStudio.DebuggerVisualizers; using ObjectVisualizerShared; using ObjectVisualizerUI; namespace ObjectVisualizer { public class Visualizer : DialogDebuggerVisualizer { protected override void Show(IDialogVisualizerService windowService, IVisualizerObjectProvider objectProvider) { try { Stream stream = objectProvider.GetData(); if (stream.Length > 0) { BinaryFormatter formatter = new BinaryFormatter(); VisualizerNode node = (VisualizerNode)formatter.Deserialize(stream); if (node != null) { VisualizerWindow window = new VisualizerWindow(node); ElementHost host = new ElementHost(); host.Child = window; host.Dock = DockStyle.Fill; host.Size = new Size(800, 600); windowService.ShowDialog(host); } } } catch (Exception ex) { MessageBox.Show(string.Format("Error!\n{0}", ex), "Object Visualizer"); } } } } Any ideas?

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• DataContract Known Types - passing array

  - by Erup

  Im having problems when passing an generic List, trough a WCF operation. In this case, there is a List of int. The example 4 is described here in MSDN. Note that in MSDN sample, is described: // This will serialize and deserialize successfully because the generic List is equivalent to int[], which was added to known types. Above, is the DataContract: [DataContract] [KnownType(typeof(int[]))] [KnownType(typeof(object[]))] public class AccountData { [DataMember] public object accNumber1; [DataMember] public object accNumber2; [DataMember] public object accNumber3; [DataMember] public object accNumber4; } In client side, Im calling the operation like this: DataTransfer.Service.AccountData data = new DataTransfer.Service.AccountData() { accNumber1 = 100, accNumber2 = new int[100], accNumber3 = new List<int>(), accNumber4 = new ArrayList() }; cService.AddAccounts(data); Also, here is the decorations of the generated AccountData obj (WCF proxy): [System.Diagnostics.DebuggerStepThroughAttribute()] [System.CodeDom.Compiler.GeneratedCodeAttribute("System.Runtime.Serialization", "3.0.0.0")] [System.Runtime.Serialization.DataContractAttribute(Name="AccountData", Namespace="http://schemas.datacontract.org/2004/07/DataTransfer.Service")] [System.SerializableAttribute()] [System.Runtime.Serialization.KnownTypeAttribute(typeof(DataTransfer.Client.CustomerServiceReference.PurchaseOrder))] [System.Runtime.Serialization.KnownTypeAttribute(typeof(DataTransfer.Client.CustomerServiceReference.Customer))] [System.Runtime.Serialization.KnownTypeAttribute(typeof(int[]))] [System.Runtime.Serialization.KnownTypeAttribute(typeof(object[]))]

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• unable to read serialzed data as message body in msmq c# 3.0

  - by ltech

  This is my method to send message to a private Q using (MessageQueue msgQ = new MessageQueue(MessageQueueName)) { using (System.Messaging.Message newMessage = new System.Messaging.Message(MessageBody, new System.Messaging.ActiveXMessageFormatter())) { newMessage.Label = MessageLabel; newMessage.Priority = Priority; msgQ.Send(newMessage); } } I have an order object which i serialize and send as message body. The serialized object is <?xml version="1.0"?> <OrderInfo> <OrderID>11111</OrderID> <OrderDetails> <LineItem> <ProductDetails> <Name>qwqwqw</Name> <Manufacturer>asasas</Manufacturer> <UPC>12222222222</UPC> <sku>2132</sku> <Price>12.21</Price> </ProductDetails> <Quantity>1</Quantity> </LineItem> </OrderDetails> </OrderInfo> This is my method to receive that message in a windows service void queue_ReceiveCompleted(object sender, ReceiveCompletedEventArgs asyncResult) { // Connect to the queue. MessageQueue mq = (MessageQueue)sender; // End the asynchronous Receive operation. Message m = mq.EndReceive(asyncResult.AsyncResult); m.Formatter = new System.Messaging.ActiveXMessageFormatter() //Get Filedata from body OrdrInfo qMessage = (OrdrInfo)XMLUtil.Deserialize(m.Body.ToString(), typeof(OrdrInfo)); } when I try to look at m.Body in quickwatch this is what it states m.Body.Message = Cannot find a formatter capable of reading this message. m.Body.StackTrace = at System.Messaging.Message.get_Body()

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• Can i use a different parser for Axis 1.4?

  - by NishM

  The current SAX parser takes a lot of time (20 minutes) and heap memory(around 400mb) to deserialize the response coming from the soap server as per the logs. Our response XMLs are of average size 4 mb. A part of the log when it runs the applicaiton out of heap is below DEBUG (org.apache.axis.encoding.DeserializationContext) Pushing handler org.apache.axis.message.SOAPHandler@16d22f1 DEBUG (org.apache.axis.i18n.ProjectResourceBundle) org.apache.axis.i18n.resource::handleGetObject(newElem00) DEBUG (org.apache.axis.message.MessageElement) New MessageElement (org.apache.axis.message.MessageElement@112c22) named {}name DEBUG (org.apache.axis.encoding.DeserializationContext) Pushing element name DEBUG (org.apache.axis.utils.NSStack) NSPush (32) DEBUG (org.apache.axis.encoding.DeserializationContext) Exit: DeserializationContext::startElement() DEBUG (org.apache.axis.encoding.DeserializationContext) Enter: DeserializationContext::endElement(, name) DEBUG (org.apache.axis.i18n.ProjectResourceBundle) org.apache.axis.i18n.resource::handleGetObject(popHandler00) DEBUG (org.apache.axis.encoding.DeserializationContext) Popping handler org.apache.axis.message.SOAPHandler@16d22f1 DEBUG (org.apache.axis.utils.NSStack) NSPop (32) DEBUG (org.apache.axis.encoding.DeserializationContext) Popped element stack to org.apache.axis.message.MessageElement:property DEBUG (org.apache.axis.encoding.DeserializationContext) Exit: DeserializationContext::endElement() DEBUG (org.apache.axis.encoding.DeserializationContext) Enter: DeserializationContext::startElement(, value) DEBUG (org.apache.axis.i18n.ProjectResourceBundle) org.apache.axis.i18n.resource::handleGetObject(pushHandler00) DEBUG (org.apache.axis.encoding.DeserializationContext) Pushing handler org.apache.axis.message.SOAPHandler@16880ba DEBUG (org.apache.axis.i18n.ProjectResourceBundle) org.apache.axis.i18n.resource::handleGetObject(newElem00) DEBUG (org.apache.axis.message.MessageElement) New MessageElement (org.apache.axis.message.MessageElement@1db74af) named {}value DEBUG (org.apache.axis.encoding.DeserializationContext) Pushing element value DEBUG (org.apache.axis.utils.NSStack) NSPush (32) DEBUG (org.apache.axis.encoding.DeserializationContext) Exit: DeserializationContext::startElement() DEBUG (org.apache.axis.encoding.DeserializationContext) Enter: DeserializationContext::endElement(, value) DEBUG (org.apache.axis.i18n.ProjectResourceBundle) org.apache.axis.i18n.resource::handleGetObject(popHandler00) DEBUG (org.apache.axis.encoding.DeserializationContext) Popping handler org.apache.axis.message.SOAPHandler@16880ba DEBUG (org.apache.axis.utils.NSStack) NSPop (32) I cannot use Axis2 because of technical reasons. I have tried using HTTP Commons client instead of HTTP client but the response time remains the same. How can i link a different parser(example xerces 2.10.0 or xstream 1.3.1?) to Axis 1.4 framework in this context so that memory management and response time is favorable?.

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• externalizing junit stub objects.

  - by Ajay

  Hi!    In my project we created stub files for testing junits in java(factories) itself. However, we have to externalize these stubs. After seeing a number of serializers/deserializers, we settled on using XStream to serialize and deserialize these stub objects. XStream works like a charm. Its pretty good at what it claims to be. Previously, we had a single factory class say AFactory which produced all the stubs needed for testing different test cases. Now when externalizing each of the stub generated, we hit a road block. We had to create 1 xml file for each stub produced by the factory. For example, public final class AFactory{ public static A createStub1(){ /*Code here */} public static A createStub2(){ /*Code here */} public static A createStub3(){ /*Code here */} } Now, when trying to move this stubs to external files, we had to create 1 xml file for each stub created(A-stub1.xml, A-stub2.xml and A-stub3.xml). The problem with this approach is that, it leads to proliferation of xml stub files. I was thinking, how about keeping all the stubs related to a single bean class in a single xml file. <?xml version="1.0"?> <stubs class="A"> <stub id="stub1"> <!-- Here comes the externalized xml stub representation --> </stub> <stub id="stub2"> </stub> </stubs> Is there a framework which allows you keep all the stub in xml representation in a single xml file as above ? Or What do you guys suggest should be the right approach to adhere to ?

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