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• 'template' .SWF that uses other .swf's and .jpg's in it (by xml generated in .php) works only locall

  - by Andy

  My problem is that a .swf I would like to put on my website works only when requested locally. When requested from my home web server or company web server it doesn't work. I believe all files are in the proper folders and all links are well, otherwise it wouldn't work locally. Now, the SWF I place on the html page has several shapes, fonts, texts, buttons, scripts and frames. The scripts are in v1.0 and descrive how the SWF should behave. The SWF uses 2 different JPG's and 3 different SWF's. It also has a .php file with xml in it which tells the main SWF which JPG's and SWF's to use and where to find them. The main script in the main SWF also links to this .php file. So everything works properly when opening the SWF locally in IE like U:\common\templates\dynamic.swf Everythins shows perfectly. When requesting exactly the same file, but with a domain (as I can access the web server folder like a local drive) only the main .swf shows which is black with some test forms etc in it. PHP is enabled on the server. This is my code in the .php I just edited some links to conceal domains and file names: <?xml version="1.0" ?><dynamic_content> <item blurb="Text 1" content_timer="8000" cycle="true" content_border_color="0x" content_bg_image="" tab_hl_color="0x000000" tab_border_color="0x000000" tab_color="0x000000" tab_arrow_color="0xFFFFFF" tab_text_color="0xFFFFFF" tab_image="/template/images/file.jpg" tab_highlight_color="0x" tab_highlight_text_color="0x" tab_highlight_image="" content_url="http://sub.domain.com" content_source="/template/images/file.swf" content_target="_self" ></item> <item blurb="Text 2" content_timer="5000" cycle="true" content_border_color="0x" content_bg_image="" tab_hl_color="0xFFFFFF" tab_border_color="0xFFFFFF" tab_color="0xFFFFFF" tab_arrow_color="0xFFFFFF" tab_text_color="0xFFFFFF" tab_image="/template/images/file.jpg" tab_highlight_color="0x" tab_highlight_text_color="0x" tab_highlight_image="" content_url="http://www.domain.com/" content_source="/template/images/file.swf" content_target="_self" ></item> <item blurb="Text 3" content_timer="5000" cycle="true" content_border_color="0x" content_bg_image="" tab_hl_color="0xFFFFFF" tab_border_color="0xFFFFFF" tab_color="0xFFFFFF" tab_arrow_color="0xFFFFFF" tab_text_color="0xFFFFFF" tab_image="/template/images/file.jpg" tab_highlight_color="0x" tab_highlight_text_color="0x" tab_highlight_image="" content_url="http://www.domain.com/page.html" content_source="/template/images/file.swf" content_target="_self" ></item></dynamic_content> So you understand, it's a dynamic SWF that is built up by other pics and swf's. It's easier to change the php and put new files on the server than build a new flash file everytime etc and it's quite difficult to built some functionality in one swf when using other swf files. What could be the problem here that it works well when incurred locally but not from a server (using the domain etc) Any help is much appreciated. Thanks! EDIT: When I open the .swf in firefox by using the direct link to the .swf, the status bars hangs on 'Waiting for www.domain.com... (domain = mydomain) Maybe this is of any help?

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• Fixed point math in c#?

  - by x4000

  Hi there, I was wondering if anyone here knows of any good resources for fixed point math in c#? I've seen things like this (http://2ddev.72dpiarmy.com/viewtopic.php?id=156) and this (http://stackoverflow.com/questions/79677/whats-the-best-way-to-do-fixed-point-math), and a number of discussions about whether decimal is really fixed point or actually floating point (update: responders have confirmed that it's definitely floating point), but I haven't seen a solid C# library for things like calculating cosine and sine. My needs are simple -- I need the basic operators, plus cosine, sine, arctan2, PI... I think that's about it. Maybe sqrt. I'm programming a 2D RTS game, which I have largely working, but the unit movement when using floating-point math (doubles) has very small inaccuracies over time (10-30 minutes) across multiple machines, leading to desyncs. This is presently only between a 32 bit OS and a 64 bit OS, all the 32 bit machines seem to stay in sync without issue, which is what makes me think this is a floating point issue. I was aware from this as a possible issue from the outset, and so have limited my use of non-integer position math as much as possible, but for smooth diagonal movement at varying speeds I'm calculating the angle between points in radians, then getting the x and y components of movement with sin and cos. That's the main issue. I'm also doing some calculations for line segment intersections, line-circle intersections, circle-rect intersections, etc, that also probably need to move from floating-point to fixed-point to avoid cross-machine issues. If there's something open source in Java or VB or another comparable language, I could probably convert the code for my uses. The main priority for me is accuracy, although I'd like as little speed loss over present performance as possible. This whole fixed point math thing is very new to me, and I'm surprised by how little practical information on it there is on google -- most stuff seems to be either theory or dense C++ header files. Anything you could do to point me in the right direction is much appreciated; if I can get this working, I plan to open-source the math functions I put together so that there will be a resource for other C# programmers out there. UPDATE: I could definitely make a cosine/sine lookup table work for my purposes, but I don't think that would work for arctan2, since I'd need to generate a table with about 64,000x64,000 entries (yikes). If you know any programmatic explanations of efficient ways to calculate things like arctan2, that would be awesome. My math background is all right, but the advanced formulas and traditional math notation are very difficult for me to translate into code.

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• Minimalistic tools for developer documentation

  - by Pekka

  I am currently working on a large PHP CMS / Framework and documenting it extensively as I go along. In addition to phpdoc-style inline comments, I need to document XML structures, details on concepts and practices, write HOWTOs and so on. At the moment, I am using simple OpenOffice documents for that, but I'm unhappy with it and looking for a "real" documentation system. So, I am looking for recommendations for robust, minimalistic, easy-to-use documentation software. I have tried a number of Wikis, most prominently Dokuwiki. I like the open-minded approach, the freedom in editing, and the simplicity, but they provide little support in structuring a multi-chapter documentation, and make basic reorganisation tasks very difficult (e.g. moving pages to a different namespace). Working with the plugins is Cumbersome, and they are not really easy to use. Open Source would be a plus but is not a requirement. Thanks for all the suggestions. I have not had time to look into each one in detail. I will be trying Sphinx, especially because it provides so much support for a good structure. I may update this post later when I'm done and report how it worked out. The suggestions Trac's built-in wiki which is great but for my taste provides too little support for keeping a structure - it's perfect though for "normal", smaller size project documentation Markdown my current favourite because of its minimalism, however not sure yet whether maintaining a structure will be easy enough. A Markdown-Based system would of course be very easy to extend, e.g. to look up cross references from the project's code base. Of course it would be great to find something that already has that out of the box. The DocBook format and to edit, the commercial Oxygen XML Editor - a great standard for building documentation, no doubt. Maybe too "technical" for my purposes as I need something to open quickly, write into and go on coding. Still always worth a mention. Sphinx an Open Source, Python based documentation generator, promising structured documentation and extensive cross-referencing. Interesting and will take a look. Confluence a commercial but very affordable Wiki. XWiki, an Open Source playing in Confluence's league with numerous extensions and connectors to Eclipse and Microsoft Office. TiddlyWiki an open-source Wiki.

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• How do I create a partial function with generics in scala?

  - by Matteo Caprari

  Hello. I'm trying to write a performance measurements library for Scala. My idea is to transparently 'mark' sections so that the execution time can be collected. Unfortunately I wasn't able to bend the compiler to my will. An admittedly contrived example of what I have in mind: // generate a timing function val myTimer = mkTimer('myTimer) // see how the timing function returns the right type depending on the // type of the function it is passed to it val act = actor { loop { receive { case 'Int => val calc = myTimer { (1 to 100000).sum } val result = calc + 10 // calc must be Int self reply (result) case 'String => val calc = myTimer { (1 to 100000).mkString } val result = calc + " String" // calc must be String self reply (result) } Now, this is the farthest I got: trait Timing { def time[T <: Any](name: Symbol)(op: => T) :T = { val start = System.nanoTime val result = op val elapsed = System.nanoTime - start println(name + ": " + elapsed) result } def mkTimer[T <: Any](name: Symbol) : (() => T) => () => T = { type c = () => T time(name)(_ : c) } } Using the time function directly works and the compiler correctly uses the return type of the anonymous function to type the 'time' function: val bigString = time('timerBigString) { (1 to 100000).mkString("-") } println (bigString) Great as it seems, this pattern has a number of shortcomings: forces the user to reuse the same symbol at each invocation makes it more difficult to do more advanced stuff like predefined project-level timers does not allow the library to initialize once a data structure for 'timerBigString So here it comes mkTimer, that would allow me to partially apply the time function and reuse it. I use mkTimer like this: val myTimer = mkTimer('aTimer) val myString= myTimer { (1 to 100000).mkString("-") } println (myString) But I get a compiler error: error: type mismatch; found : String required: () => Nothing (1 to 100000).mkString("-") I get the same error if I inline the currying: val timerBigString = time('timerBigString) _ val bigString = timerBigString { (1 to 100000).mkString("-") } println (bigString) This works if I do val timerBigString = time('timerBigString) (_: String), but this is not what I want. I'd like to defer typing of the partially applied function until application. I conclude that the compiler is deciding the return type of the partial function when I first create it, chosing "Nothing" because it can't make a better informed choice. So I guess what I'm looking for is a sort of late-binding of the partially applied function. Is there any way to do this? Or maybe is there a completely different path I could follow? Well, thanks for reading this far -teo

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• Java Nimbus LAF with transparent text fields

  - by Software Monkey

  I have an application that uses disabled JTextFields in several places which are intended to be transparent - allowing the background to show through instead of the text field's normal background. When running the new Nimbus LAF these fields are opaque (despite setting setOpaque(false)), and my UI is broken. It's as if the LAF is ignoring the opaque property. Setting a background color explicitly is both difficult in several places, and less than optimal due to background images actually doesn't work - it still paints it's LAF default background over the top, leaving a border-like appearance (the splash screen below has the background explicitly set to match the image). Any ideas on how I can get Nimbus to not paint the background for a JTextField? Note: I need a JTextField, rather than a JLabel, because I need the thread-safe setText(), and wrapping capability. Note: My fallback position is to continue using the system LAF, but Nimbus does look substantially better. See example images below. Conclusions The surprise at this behavior is due to a misinterpretation of what setOpaque() is meant to do - from the Nimbus bug report: This is a problem the the orginal design of Swing and how it has been confusing for years. The issue is setOpaque(false) has had a side effect in exiting LAFs which is that of hiding the background which is not really what it is ment for. It is ment to say that the component my have transparent parts and swing should paint the parent component behind it. It's unfortunate that the Nimbus components also appear not to honor setBackground(null) which would otherwise be the recommended way to stop the background painting. Setting a fully transparent background seems unintuitive to me. In my opinion, setOpaque()/isOpaque() is a faulty public API choice which should have been only: public boolean isFullyOpaque(); I say this, because isOpaque()==true is a contract with Swing that the component subclass will take responsibility for painting it's entire background - which means the parent can skip painting that region if it wants (which is an important performance enhancement). Something external cannot directly change this contract (legitimately), whose fulfillment may be coded into the component. So the opacity of the component should not have been settable using setOpaque(). Instead something like setBackground(null) should cause many components to "no long have a background" and therefore become not fully opaque. By way of example, in an ideal world most components should have an isOpaque() that looks like this: public boolean isOpaque() { return (background!=null); }

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• Calculating multiple column average in SQLite3

  - by Benjamin Oakes

  I need to average some values in a row-wise fashion, rather than a column-wise fashion. (If I were doing a column-wise average, I could just use avg()). My specific application of this requires me ignore NULLs in averaging. It's pretty straightforward logic, but seems awfully difficult to do in SQL. Is there an elegant way of doing my calculation? I'm using SQLite3, for what it's worth. Details If you need more details, here's an illustration: I have a a table with a survey: | q1 | q2 | q3 | ... | q144 | |----|-------|-------|-----|------| | 1 | 3 | 7 | ... | 2 | | 4 | 2 | NULL | ... | 1 | | 5 | NULL | 2 | ... | 3 | (Those are just some example values and simple column names. The valid values are 1 through 7 and NULL.) I need to calculate some averages like so: q7 + q33 + q38 + q40 + ... + q119 / 11 as domain_score_1 q10 + q11 + q34 + q35 + ... + q140 / 13 as domain_score_2 ... q2 + q5 + q13 + q25 + ... + q122 / 12 as domain_score_14 ...but i need to pull out the nulls and average based on the non-nulls. So, for domain_score_1 (which has 11 items), I would need to do: Input: 3, 5, NULL, 7, 2, NULL, 3, 1, 5, NULL, 1 (3 + 5 + 7 + 2 + 3 + 1 + 5 + 1) / (11 - 3) 27 / 8 3.375 A simple algorithm I'm considering is: Input: 3, 5, NULL, 7, 2, NULL, 3, 1, 5, NULL, 1 Coalesce each value to 0 if NULL: 3, 5, 0, 7, 2, 0, 3, 1, 5, 0, 1 Sum: 27 Get the number of non-zeros by converting values 0 to 1 and sum: 3, 5, 0, 7, 2, 0, 3, 1, 5, 0, 1 1, 1, 0, 1, 1, 0, 1, 1, 1, 0, 1 8 Divide those two numbers 27 / 8 3.375 But that seems like a lot more programming than this should take. Is there an elegant way of doing this that I'm not aware of? Update: Unless I'm misunderstanding something, avg() won't work for this. Example of what I would want to do: select avg(q7, q33, q38, ..., q119) from survey; Output: SQL error near line 3: wrong number of arguments to function avg()

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• Suggestions for designing large-scale Java webapp from the group up

  - by Chris Thompson

  Hi all, I'm about to start developing a large-scale system and I'm struggling with which direction to proceed. I've done plenty of Java web apps before and I have plenty of experience with servlet containers and GWT and some experience with Spring. The problem is most of my webapps have been thrown together just to be a proof of concept and what I'm struggling with is what set of frameworks to use. I need to have both a browser based application as well as a web service designed to support access from mobile devices (Android and iPhone for now). Ideally, I'd like to design this system in such a way that I don't end up rewriting all of my servlets for each client (browser and phone) although I don't mind having some small checks in there to properly format the data. In addition, although I'm the only developer now, that won't necessarily be the case down the road and I'd like to design something that scales well both with regards to traffic and number of developers (isn't just a nightmare to maintain). So where I am now is planning on using GWT to design the browser-based interface but I'm struggling with how to reuse that code with to present the interface (most likely xml) for the mobile devices. Using GWT RPC would, I think, make it relatively easy to do all of the AJAX in the browser, but might make generating xml for the mobile phones difficult. In addition, I like the idea of using something like Hibernate for persistence and Spring Security to secure the whole thing. Again, I'm not sure how well those will cooperate with GWT (I think Hibernate should be fine...) There's obviously a lot more to this than I've presented here, but I've tried to give you the 5-minute overview. I'm a bit stumped and was wondering if anybody in the community had any experience starting from this place. Does what I'm trying to do make sense? Is it realistic? I have no doubt I can make all of these frameworks speak the same language, I'm just wondering if it's worth my time to fight with them. Also, am I missing a framework that would be really beneficial? Thanks in advance and sorry for the relatively broad question... Chris

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• Becoming a professional programmer / software engineer

  - by Matt

  This isn't strictly about programming, more about being a programmer, so I'm sorry if its not the right kind of question to ask on this forum (mod, please delete if it isn't) I'm a computer tech in the US Army, and once I'm out I'll have eight years on the job. I'm about to start a degree through an online school (the only way I can get the army to pay for it while I'm still in), and I'm seriously looking at getting a computer science degree. I'm great with computers. I can take one apart and put it back together with my eyes closed. I'm A+ and Network+ certified and I'm getting a couple other CompTIA certs before I get out. I can work Windows as well as anyone on this planet and I'm not terrible with Linux. A job in computers is something I've always wanted. But, aside from being a computer technician, it seems that every job in the field requires programming ability. I like programming as a hobby. I programmed TI BASIC in high school and I'm teaching myself Python, but that's as far as my experience goes. That sort of brings me to my questions: I've always heard that the first language is the most difficult, and once you learn it well then all the others sort of fall into place for you. Is that true? Like, if I spend the next eight months mastering Python, will I pretty much be able to pick up at least fair proficiency in any other OO language within a month of studying it or whatever? How easy is it to burn out? the biggest thing I'm afraid of is just burning out on programming. I can go all day long if I'm programming strictly for my own personal desire, but I can imagine it being really easy to burn out after a few years of programming to deadlines and certain specifications. Especially if its a big project involving a dozen different designers. From what I told you about myself, would I already be qualified to work as a regular technician (geek squad type or maybe running a computer repair shop). Is Python a good base to learn from? I've heard that it makes you hate other languages because they feel more convoluted when learning, but also that its a great beginner language. If you're a professional programmer, did you have any of the same fears? Would you recommend that I stick to computer repair and Python rather than try to get into corporate programming? (just from what you've read in this thread, anyway) Thanks for taking the time to read all this and answer (if you did)

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• Am I using EJBs properly?

  - by kgrad

  I am using a JEE6 stack including JPA 2.0, JSF 2.0, EJB 3.1 etc. The way my architecture is setup is the following: I have JPA annotated DAOs using hibernate as my JPA provider. I have JSF Managed beans which correspond to my facelet/xhtml pages. I have EJBs that handle all of my database requests. My XHTML pages have JSF EL which make calls to my Managed beans. My managed beans contain references to my DAO entities which are managed by EJBs. For example, I have a user entity which is mapped to a db table. I have a user EJB which handles all CRUD operations that return Users. I have a page that edits a user. The highlevel workflow would be: navigate to user edit page - EL calls a method located in the managed bean that loads a user. The method calls userEJB.loadUser(user) from the EJB to get the user from the database. The user is edited and submit - a function is called in the managed bean which calls a function in the EJB to save the user. etc. I am running into issues accessing my data within my JSF pages using EJBs. I am having a lot of problems with lazy initialization errors, which I believe is due to how I have set things up. For example, I have a Client entity that has a List of users which are lazily loaded. In order to get a client I call a method in my EJB which goes to the database, finds a client and returns it. Later on i wish to access this clients list of users, in order to do so i have to go back to the EJB by calling some sort of method in order to load those users (since they are lazily loaded). This means that I have to create a method such as public List<User> getUserListByClient(Client c) { c = em.merge(c); return c.getUserList(); } The only purpose of this method is to load the users (and I'm not even positive this approach is good or works). If i was doing session management myself, I would like just leave the session open for the entire request and access the property directly, this would be fine as the session would be open anyway, there seems to be this one extra layer of indirection in EJBs which is making things difficult for me. I do like EJBs as I like the fact that they are controlled by the container, pooled, offer transaction management for free etc. However, I get the feeling that I am using them incorrectly, or I have set up my JSF app incorrectly. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated. thanks,

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• CSS to Replace Table Layout for Forms

  - by Erick

  I've looked at other questions and am unable to find the solution to this. Consider this image: I want to wrap divs and stack them vertically. The GREEN div would be a wrapper on a line. The BLUE div would contain an html label and maybe icon for a tooltip. The ORANGE div would contain some sort of entry (input, select, textarea). Several of these would be stacked vertically to make up a form. I am doing this now, but I have to specify a height for the container div and that really needs to change depending on the content - considering any entry could land there. Images and other stuff could land here, as well. I have a width set on the BLUE div and the ORANGE is float:left. How can I get rid of the height on divs and let that be determined by content? Is there a better way? Changing all to something else would be difficult and would prefer a way to style all elements or something. The code I'm using is like: <div class=EntLine> <div class=EntLbl> <label for="Name">Name</label> </div> <div class=EntFld> <input type=text id="Name" /> </div> </div> The CSS looks like: .EntLine { height: 20px; position: relative; margin-top: 2px; text-align: left; white-space: nowrap; } .EntLbl { float: left; width: 120px; padding: 3px 0px 0px 3px; min-width: 120px; max-width: 120px; vertical-align: text-top; } .EntFld { float: left; height: 20px; padding: 0px; width: 200px; } Thanks!

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• NSTimer as a self-targeting ivar.

  - by Matt Wilding

  I have come across an awkward situation where I would like to have a class with an NSTimer instance variable that repeatedly calls a method of the class as long as the class is alive. For illustration purposes, it might look like this: // .h @interface MyClock : NSObject { NSTimer* _myTimer; } - (void)timerTick; @end - // .m @implementation MyClock - (id)init { self = [super init]; if (self) { _myTimer = [[NSTimer scheduledTimerWithTimeInterval:1.0f target:self selector:@selector(timerTick) userInfo:nil repeats:NO] retain]; } return self; } - (void)dealloc { [_myTimer invalidate]; [_myTImer release]; [super dealloc]; } - (void)timerTick { // Do something fantastic. } @end That's what I want. I don't want to to have to expose an interface on my class to start and stop the internal timer, I just want it to run while the class exists. Seems simple enough. But the problem is that NSTimer retains its target. That means that as long as that timer is active, it is keeping the class from being dealloc'd by normal memory management methods because the timer has retained it. Manually adjusting the retain count is out of the question. This behavior of NSTimer seems like it would make it difficult to ever have a repeating timer as an ivar, because I can't think of a time when an ivar should retain its owning class. This leaves me with the unpleasant duty of coming up with some method of providing an interface on MyClock that allows users of the class to control when the timer is started and stopped. Besides adding unneeded complexity, this is annoying because having one owner of an instance of the class invalidate the timer could step on the toes of another owner who is counting on it to keep running. I could implement my own pseudo-retain-count-system for keeping the timer running but, ...seriously? This is way to much work for such a simple concept. Any solution I can think of feels hacky. I ended up writing a wrapper for NSTimer that behaves exactly like a normal NSTimer, but doesn't retain its target. I don't like it, and I would appreciate any insight.

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• Declare private static members in F#?

  - by acidzombie24

  I decided to port the class in C# below to F# as an exercise. It was difficult. I only notice three problems 1) Greet is visible 2) I can not get v to be a static class variable 3) I do not know how to set the greet member in the constructor. How do i fix these? The code should be similar enough that i do not need to change any C# source. ATM only Test1.v = 21; does not work C# using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Text; namespace CsFsTest { class Program { static void Main(string[] args) { Test1.hi("stu"); new Test1().hi(); Test1.v = 21; var a = new Test1("Stan"); a.hi(); a.a = 9; Console.WriteLine("v = {0} {1} {2}", a.a, a.b, a.NotSTATIC()); } } class Test1 { public int a; public int b { get { return a * 2; } } string greet = "User"; public static int v; public Test1() {} public Test1(string name) { greet = name; } public static void hi(string greet) { Console.WriteLine("Hi {0}", greet); } public void hi() { Console.WriteLine("Hi {0} #{1}", greet, v); } public int NotSTATIC() { return v; } } } F# namespace CsFsTest type Test1 = (* public int a; public int b { get { return a * 2; } } string greet = "User"; public static int v; *) [<DefaultValue>] val mutable a : int member x.b = x.a * 2 member x.greet = "User" (*!! Needs to be private *) [<DefaultValue>] val mutable v : int (*!! Needs to be static *) (* public Test1() {} public Test1(string name) { greet = name; } *) new () = {} new (name) = { } (* public static void hi(string greet) { Console.WriteLine("Hi {0}", greet); } public void hi() { Console.WriteLine("Hi {0} #{1}", greet, v); } public int NotSTATIC() { return v; } *) static member hi(greet) = printfn "hi %s" greet member x.hi() = printfn "hi %s #%i" x.greet x.v member x.NotSTATIC() = x.v

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• Hidden Features of PHP?

  - by George Mauer

  EDIT: This didn't really start as a hidden features of PHP topic, but thats what it ended up as, so go nuts. I know this sounds like a point-whoring question but let me explain where I'm coming from. Out of college I got a job at a PHP shop. I worked there for a year and a half and thought that I had learned all there was to learn about programming. Then I got a job as a one-man internal development shop at a sizable corporation where all the work was in C#. In my commitment to the position I started reading a ton of blogs and books and quickly realized how wrong I was to think I knew everything. I learned about unit testing, dependency injection and decorator patterns, the design principle of loose coupling, the composition over inheritance debate, and so on and on and on - I am still very much absorbing it all. Needless to say my programming style has changed entirely in the last year. Now I find myself picking up a php project doing some coding for a friend's start-up and I feel completely constrained as opposed to programming in C#. It really bothers me that all variables at a class scope have to be referred to by appending '$this-' . It annoys me that none of the IDEs that I've tried have very good intellisense and that my SimpleTest unit tests methods have to start with the word 'test'. It drives me crazy that dynamic typing keeps me from specifying implicitly which parameter type a method expects, and that you have to write a switch statement to do method overloads. I can't stand that you can't have nested namespaces and have to use the :: operator to call the base class's constructor. Now I have no intention of starting a PHP vs C# debate, rather what I mean to say is that I'm sure there are some PHP features that I either don't know about or know about yet fail to use properly. I am set in my C# universe and having trouble seeing outside the glass bowl. So I'm asking, what are your favorite features of PHP? What are things you can do in it that you can't or are more difficult in the .Net languages?

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• Generate reasonable length license key with asymmetric encryption?

  - by starkos

  I've been looking at this all day. I probably should have walked away from it hours ago; I might be missing something obvious at this point. Short version: Is there a way to generate and boil down an asymmetrically encrypted hash to a reasonable number of unambiguous, human readable characters? Long version: I want to generate license keys for my software. I would like these keys to be of a reasonable length (25-36 characters) and easily read and entered by a human (so avoid ambiguous characters like the number 0 and the capital letter O). Finally--and this seems to be the kicker--I'd really like to use asymmetric encryption to make it more difficult to generate new keys. I've got the general approach: concatenate my information (user name, product version, a salt) into a string and generate a SHA1() hash from that, then encrypt the hash with my private key. On the client, build the SHA1() hash from the same information, then decrypt the license with the public key and see if I've got a match. Since this is a Mac app, I looked at AquaticPrime, but that generates a relatively large license file rather than a string. I can work with that if I must, but as a user I really like the convenience of a license key that I can read and print. I also looked at CocoaFob which does generate a key, but it is so long that I'd want to deliver it as a file anyway. I fooled around with OpenSSL for a while but couldn't come up with anything of a reasonable length. So...am I missing something obvious here? Is there a way to generate and boil down an asymmetrically encrypted hash to a reasonable number of unambiguous, human readable characters? I'm open to buying a solution. But I work on a number of different of platforms, so I'd want something portable. Everything I've looked at so far has been platform specific. Many, many thanks for a solution! PS - Yes, I know it will still be cracked. I'm trying to come up with something reasonable that, as a user, I would still find friendly.

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• Alternatives to requiring users to register for an account?

  - by jamieb

  I'm working on a side project to build a new web app idea of mine. For the sake of discussion, let's say this app displays a random photograph of a famous work of art. On a scale of 1 to 5, users are asked to rate how well they like each piece of art, and then are shown the next photo. Eventually, the app is able to get an sense of the person's style and is able to recommend artwork that he/she may find pleasing. The whole concept is similar to Netflix. I understand how to do all the preference matching logic (although not as sophisticated as Netflix). But I'd like to find a way to do this without requiring that users create an account first. This is a novelty website that a typical user might use only a handful of times. Requiring registration is overkill and will likely drastically reduce it's utility. I'd like to allow people to begin rating artwork within five seconds of their initial pageview, yet maintain the integrity of the voting (since recommendations are predicated on how other people have rated the various pieces of artwork). Can it be done? Some ideas: OpenID. The perfect solution except for the fact that it's not wildly used and my target audience isn't the most technically adept demographic. Text message. User inputs phone number and is texted a four digit code to key into the web app. Quick, easy, and great way to limit abuse. However, privacy concerns abound... people are probably even less likely to give me their phone number than their email address. Facebook login. I personally don't have a Facebook account due to privacy concerns. And I'd really hate to support such a proprietary platform. Hash code/Bookmark. Vistor's initial pageview generates a 5 or 6 digit alphanumeric code that is embedded in each subsequent URL. They can bookmark any page to save their state. Good: Very simple system that doesn't require any user action. Bad: Very easy to stuff the ballot box, might be difficult to account for users sharing the link containing their ID code via email or social networking sites.

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• Verify Authenticode signature as being from our company for automatic updater

  - by James Johnston

  I am implementing an automatic update feature and need some advice on how to do this securely using best practices. I would like to use the downloaded file's Authenticode signature to verify that it is safe to run (i.e. originates from our company and hasn't been tampered with). My question is very similar to question #2008519. The bottom-line question: what's the best, most secure way to check Authenticode signatures for an automatic update feature? What fields in the certificate should be checked? Requirements being: (1) check signature is valid, (2) check it's my signature, (3) old clients can still update when my certificate expires and I get a new one. Here's some background information / ideas from my research: I believe this could be broken into two steps: Verify that the signature is valid. I believe this should be easy using WinVerifyTrust as outlined in http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa382384(VS.85).aspx - I don't expect problems here. Verify that the signature corresponds to our company, and not another company. This seems to be a more difficult question to answer: One possibility is to check some of the strings in the signature. Could be obtained via code at MS KB article #323809, but this article doesn't make recommendations on what fields should be checked for this type of application (or any other, for that matter). Question #1072540 also illustrates how to get some certificate info, but again doesn't recommend what fields to actually check. My concern is that the strings might not be the best check: what if another person is able to obtain a certificate with the same name, for example? Or if there's a valid reason for us to change the strings in the future? The person at question #2008519 has a very similar requirement. His need for a "TrustedByUs" function is identical to mine. However, he goes about doing the check by comparing public keys. While this would work in the short-term, it seems like it won't work for an automatic update feature. This is because code signing certificates are only valid for 2 - 3 years max. Therefore, in the future, when we buy a new certificate in 2 years, the old clients wouldn't be able to update any more due to the change in public key.

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• Parsing a .NET DataSet returned from a .NET Web Service in Java

  - by Chris Dail

  I have to consume a .NET hosted web service from a Java application. Interoperability between the two is usually very good. The problem I'm running into is that the .NET application developer chose to expose data using the .NET DataSet object. There are lots of articles written as to why you should not do this and how it makes interoperability difficult: http://www.hanselman.com/blog/ReturningDataSetsFromWebServicesIsTheSpawnOfSatanAndRepresentsAllThatIsTrulyEvilInTheWorld.aspx http://www.lhotka.net/weblog/ThoughtsOnPassingDataSetObjectsViaWebServices.aspx http://aspnet.4guysfromrolla.com/articles/051805-1.aspx http://www.theserverside.net/tt/articles/showarticle.tss?id=Top5WSMistakes My problem is that despite this not being recommended practice, I am stuck with having to consume a web service returning a DataSet with Java. When you generate a proxy for something like this with anything other than .NET you basically end up with an object that looks like this: @XmlElement(namespace = "http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema", required = true) protected Schema schema; @XmlAnyElement(lax = true) protected Object any; This first field is the actual schema that should describe the DataSet. When I process this using JAX-WS and JAXB in Java, it bring all of XS-Schema in as Java objects to be represented here. Walking the object tree of JAXB is possible but not pretty. The any field represents the raw XML for the DataSet that is in the schema specified by the schema. The structure of the dataset is pretty consistent but the data types do change. I need access to the type information and the schema does vary from call to call. I've though of a few options but none seem like 'good' options. Trying to generate Java objects from the schema using JAXB at runtime seems to be a bad idea. This would be way too slow since it would need to happen everytime. Brute force walk the schema tree using the JAXB objects that JAX-WS brought in. Maybe instead of using JAXB to parse the schema it would be easier to deal with it as XML and use XPath to try and find the type information I need. Are there other options I have not considered? Is there a Java library to parse DataSet objects easily? What have other people done who may have similar situations?

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• What to do when you need more verbs in REST

  - by Richard Levasseur

  There is another similar question to mine, but the discussion veered away from the problem I'm encounting. Say I have a system that deals with expense reports (ER). You can create and edit them, add attachments, and approve/reject them. An expense report might look like this: GET /er/1 => {"title": "Trip to NY", "totalcost": "400 USD", "comments": [ "john: Please add the total cost", "mike: done, can you approve it now?" ], "approvals": [ {"john": "Pending"}, {"finance-group": "Pending"}] } That looks fine, right? Thats what an expense report document looks like. If you want to update it, you can do this: POST /er/1 {"title": "Trip to NY 2010"} If you want to approve it, you can do this: POST /er/1/approval {"approved": true} But, what if you want to update the report and approve it at the same time? How do we do that? If you only wanted to approve, then doing a POST to something like /er/1/approval makes sense. We could put a flag in the URL, POST /er/1?approve=1, and send the data changes as the body, but that flag doesn't seem RESTful. We could put special field to be submitted, too, but that seems a bit hacky, too. If we did that, then why not send up data with attributes like set_title or add_to_cost? We could create a new resource for updating and approving, but (1) I can't think of how to name it without verbs, and (2) it doesn't seem right to name a resource based on what actions can be done to it (what happens if we add more actions?) We could have an X-Approve: True|False header, but headers seem like the wrong tool for the job. It'd also be difficult to get set headers without using javascript in a browser. We could use a custom media-type, application/approve+yes, but that seems no better than creating a new resource. We could create a temporary "batch operations" url, /er/1/batch/A. The client then sends multiple requests, perhaps POST /er/1/batch/A to update, then POST /er/1/batch/A/approval to approve, then POST /er/1/batch/A/status to end the batch. On the backend, the server queues up all the batch requests somewhere, then processes them in the same backend-transaction when it receives the "end batch processing" request. The downside with this is, obviously, that it introduces a lot of complexity. So, what is a good, general way to solve the problem of performing multiple actions in a single request? General because its easy to imagine additional actions that might be done in the same request: Suppress or send notifications (to email, chat, another system, whatever) Override some validation (maximum cost, names of dinner attendees) Trigger backend workflow that doesn't have a representation in the document.

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• get_or_create generic relations in Django & python debugging in general

  - by rabidpebble

  I ran the code to create the generically related objects from this demo: http://www.djangoproject.com/documentation/models/generic_relations/ Everything is good intially: >>> bacon.tags.create(tag="fatty") <TaggedItem: fatty> >>> tag, newtag = bacon.tags.get_or_create(tag="fatty") >>> tag <TaggedItem: fatty> >>> newtag False But then the use case that I'm interested in for my app: >>> tag, newtag = bacon.tags.get_or_create(tag="wholesome") Traceback (most recent call last): File "<console>", line 1, in <module> File "/usr/local/lib/python2.6/dist-packages/django/db/models/manager.py", line 123, in get_or_create return self.get_query_set().get_or_create(**kwargs) File "/usr/local/lib/python2.6/dist-packages/django/db/models/query.py", line 343, in get_or_create raise e IntegrityError: app_taggeditem.content_type_id may not be NULL I tried a bunch of random things after looking at other code: >>> tag, newtag = bacon.tags.get_or_create(tag="wholesome", content_type=TaggedItem) ValueError: Cannot assign "<class 'generics.app.models.TaggedItem'>": "TaggedItem.content_type" must be a "ContentType" instance. or: >>> tag, newtag = bacon.tags.get_or_create(tag="wholesome", content_type=TaggedItem.content_type) InterfaceError: Error binding parameter 3 - probably unsupported type. etc. I'm sure somebody can give me the correct syntax, but the real problem here is that I have no idea what is going on. I have developed in strongly typed languages for over ten years (x86 assembly, C++ and C#) but am new to Python. I find it really difficult to follow what is going on in Python when things like this break. In the languages I mentioned previously it's fairly straightforward to figure things like this out -- check the method signature and check your parameters. Looking at the Django documentation for half an hour left me just as lost. Looking at the source for get_or_create(self, **kwargs) didn't help either since there is no method signature and the code appears very generic. A next step would be to debug the method and try to figure out what is happening, but this seems a bit extreme... I seem to be missing some fundamental operating principle here... what is it? How do I resolve issues like this on my own in the future?

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• Using JUnit as an acceptance test framework

  - by Chris Knight

  OK, so I work for a company who has openly adopted agile practices for development in recent years. Our unit tests and code quality are improving. One area we still are working on is to find what works best for us in the automated acceptance test arena. We want to take our well formed user stories and use these to drive the code in a test driven manner. This will also give us acceptance level tests for each user story which we can then automate. To date, we've tried Fit, Fitnesse and Selenium. Each have their advantages, but we've also had real issues with them as well. With Fit and Fitnesse, we can't help but feel they overcomplicate things and we've had many technical issues using them. The business haven't fully bought in these tools and aren't particularly keen on maintaining the scripts all the time (and aren't big fans of the table style). Selenium is really good, but slow and relies on real time data and resources. One approach we are now considering is the use of the JUnit framework to provide similiar functionality. Rather than testing just a small unit of work using JUnit, why not use it to write a test (using the JUnit framework) to cover an acceptance level swath of the application? I.e. take a new story ("As a user I would like to see basic details of my policy...") and write a test in JUnit which starts executing application code at the point of entry for the policy details link but covers all code and logic down to the stubbed data access layer and back to the point of forwarding to the next page in the application, asserting on what data the user should see on that page. This seems to me to have the following advantages: Simplicity (no additional frameworks required) Zero effort to integrate with our Continuous Integration build server (since it already handles our JUnit tests) Full skillset already present in the team (its just a JUnit test after all) And the downsides being: Less customer involvement (though they are heavily involved in writing the user stories in the first place from which the acceptance tests will be written) Perhaps more difficult to understand (or make understood) the user story and acceptance criteria in a JUnit class verses a freetext specification ala Fit or Fitnesse So, my question is really, have you ever tried this method? Ever considered it? What are your thoughts? What do you like and dislike about this approach? Finally, please only mention alternative frameworks if you can say why you like or dislike them more than this approach.

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• Cocoa NSOutputStream send to a connection

  - by Chuck

  Hi, I am new to Cocoa, but managed to get a connection (to a FTP) up and running, and I've set up an eventhandler for the NSInputStream iStream to alert every response (which also works). What I manage to get is simply the hello message and a connection timeout 60 sec, closing control connection. After searching stackoverflow and finding a lot of NSOutputStream write problems (e.g. http://stackoverflow.com/questions/703729/how-to-use-nsoutputstreams-write-message) and a lot of confusion in my google hits, I figured I'd try to ask my own question: I've tried reading the developer.apple.com doc on OutputStream, but it seems almost impossible for me to send some data (in this case just a string) to the "connection" via the NSOutputStream oStream. - (IBAction) send_something: sender { const char *send_command_char = [@"USER foo" UTF8String]; send_command_buffer = [NSMutableData dataWithBytes:send_command_char length:strlen(send_command_char) + 1]; uint8_t *readBytes = (uint8_t *)[send_command_buffer mutableBytes]; NSInteger byteIndex = 0; readBytes += byteIndex; int data_len = [send_command_buffer length]; unsigned int len = ((data_len - byteIndex >= 1024) ? 1024 : (data_len-byteIndex)); uint8_t buf[len]; (void)memcpy(buf, readBytes, len); len = [oStream write:(const uint8_t *)buf maxLength:len]; byteIndex += len; } the above seems not to result in any useable events. typing it under NSStreamEventHasSpaceAvailable sometimes give a response if I spam the ftp by keep creating new connection instances and keep sending some command whenever oStream has free space. In other words, nothing "right" and so I'm still unclear how to properly send a command to the connection. Should I open - write - close every time i want to write to oStream (and thus to the ftp) and can I then expect a reply (hasBytesAvailable event on iStream)? For some reason I find it very difficult to find any clear tutorials on this matter. Seems like there are more than a few in the same position as me: unclear how to use oStream write? Any little bit that can help clear this up is greatly appreciated! If needed I can write the rest of the code. Chuck

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• Android: dynamically setting links to text in strings.xml

  - by Martyn

  I'm trying to make an app with localisation built in, but I want a way that I can create a web link within the text, the URL being defined elsewhere (for ease of maintenance). So, I have my links in res/values/strings.xml: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <resources> ... <string name="link1">http://some.link.com</string> <string name="link2">http://some.link2.com</string> </resources> and my localised text in res/values-en-rGB/strings.xml <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <resources> ... <string name="sampleText">Sample text\nMore text and link1\nMore text and link2.</string> </resources> I've not tested this bit, but from the localization section of developer.android.com it says that this approach to reducing content duplication should work, although I'm not sure what folder I should put Italian, for example. Would it be in 'res/values-it-rIT/strings.xml'? Lets assume that I have various other languages too. I'm looking for a way of taking the base localised 'sampleText' and inserting my html links in, and getting them to work when clicked on. I've tried two approaches so far: 1, Putting some formatting in the 'sampleText' (%s): <string name="sampleText">Sample text\nMore text and <a href="%s">link1</a>\nMore text and <a href="%s">link2</a>.</string> and then processing the text like this: TextView tv = (TextView) findViewById(R.id.textHolder); tv.setText(getResources().getString(R.string.sampleText, getResources().getString(R.string.link1), getResources().getString(R.string.link2))); But this didn't work when I click on the link, even though the link text is being put in to the correct places. 2, I tried to use Linkify but the regular expression route may be difficult as I'm looking at supporting non-Latin based languages. I tried to put a custom xml tag around the link text and then do something like this: Pattern wordMatcher = Pattern.compile("<span1>.*</span1>"); String viewURL = "content://" + getResources().getString(R.string.someLink); Linkify.addLinks(tv, wordMatcher , viewURL ); But this didn't work either. So, I'd like to know if there's a way of dynamically adding multiple URLs to different sections of the same text which will link to web content? Thank you, Martyn

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• Suggestions for designing large-scale Java webapp from the ground up

  - by Chris Thompson

  Hi all, I'm about to start developing a large-scale system and I'm struggling with which direction to proceed. I've done plenty of Java web apps before and I have plenty of experience with servlet containers and GWT and some experience with Spring. The problem is most of my webapps have been thrown together just to be a proof of concept and what I'm struggling with is what set of frameworks to use. I need to have both a browser based application as well as a web service designed to support access from mobile devices (Android and iPhone for now). Ideally, I'd like to design this system in such a way that I don't end up rewriting all of my servlets for each client (browser and phone) although I don't mind having some small checks in there to properly format the data. In addition, although I'm the only developer now, that won't necessarily be the case down the road and I'd like to design something that scales well both with regards to traffic and number of developers (isn't just a nightmare to maintain). So where I am now is planning on using GWT to design the browser-based interface but I'm struggling with how to reuse that code with to present the interface (most likely xml) for the mobile devices. Using GWT RPC would, I think, make it relatively easy to do all of the AJAX in the browser, but might make generating xml for the mobile phones difficult. In addition, I like the idea of using something like Hibernate for persistence and Spring Security to secure the whole thing. Again, I'm not sure how well those will cooperate with GWT (I think Hibernate should be fine...) There's obviously a lot more to this than I've presented here, but I've tried to give you the 5-minute overview. I'm a bit stumped and was wondering if anybody in the community had any experience starting from this place. Does what I'm trying to do make sense? Is it realistic? I have no doubt I can make all of these frameworks speak the same language, I'm just wondering if it's worth my time to fight with them. Also, am I missing a framework that would be really beneficial? Thanks in advance and sorry for the relatively broad question... Chris

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• Scala actors: receive vs react

  - by jqno

  Let me first say that I have quite a lot of Java experience, but have only recently become interested in functional languages. Recently I've started looking at Scala, which seems like a very nice language. However, I've been reading about Scala's Actor framework in Programming in Scala, and there's one thing I don't understand. In chapter 30.4 it says that using react instead of receive makes it possible to re-use threads, which is good for performance, since threads are expensive in the JVM. Does this mean that, as long as I remember to call react instead of receive, I can start as many Actors as I like? Before discovering Scala, I've been playing with Erlang, and the author of Programming Erlang boasts about spawning over 200,000 processes without breaking a sweat. I'd hate to do that with Java threads. What kind of limits am I looking at in Scala as compared to Erlang (and Java)? Also, how does this thread re-use work in Scala? Let's assume, for simplicity, that I have only one thread. Will all the actors that I start run sequentially in this thread, or will some sort of task-switching take place? For example, if I start two actors that ping-pong messages to each other, will I risk deadlock if they're started in the same thread? According to Programming in Scala, writing actors to use react is more difficult than with receive. This sounds plausible, since react doesn't return. However, the book goes on to show how you can put a react inside a loop using Actor.loop. As a result, you get loop { react { ... } } which, to me, seems pretty similar to while (true) { receive { ... } } which is used earlier in the book. Still, the book says that "in practice, programs will need at least a few receive's". So what am I missing here? What can receive do that react cannot, besides return? And why do I care? Finally, coming to the core of what I don't understand: the book keeps mentioning how using react makes it possible to discard the call stack to re-use the thread. How does that work? Why is it necessary to discard the call stack? And why can the call stack be discarded when a function terminates by throwing an exception (react), but not when it terminates by returning (receive)? I have the impression that Programming in Scala has been glossing over some of the key issues here, which is a shame, because otherwise it's a truly excellent book.

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• Bullet indents in PowerPoint 2007 compatibility mode via .NET interop issue

  - by L. Shaydariv

  Hello. I've got a really difficult bug and I can't see the fix. The subject drives me insane for real for a long time. Let's consider the following scenario: 1) There is a PowerPoint 2003 presentation. It contains the only slide and the only shape, but the shape contains a text frame including a bulleted list with a random textual representation structure. 2) There is a requirement to get bullet indents for every bulletted paragraph using PowerPoint 2007. I can satisfy the requirement opening the presentation in the compatibility mode and applying the following VBA script: With ActivePresentation Dim sl As Slide: Set sl = .Slides(1) Dim sh As Shape: Set sh = sl.Shapes(1) Dim i As Integer For i = 1 To sh.TextFrame.TextRange.Paragraphs.Count Dim para As TextRange: Set para = sh.TextFrame.TextRange.Paragraphs(i, 1) Debug.Print para.Text; para.indentLevel, sh.TextFrame.Ruler.Levels(para.indentLevel).FirstMargin Next i End With that produces the following output: A 1 0 B 1 0 C 2 24 D 3 60 E 5 132 Obviously, everything is perfect indeed: it has shown the proper list item text, list item level and its bullet indent. But I can't see the way of how I can reach the same result using C#. Let's add a COM-reference to Microsoft.Office.Interop.PowerPoint 2.9.0.0 (taken from MSPPT.OLB, MS Office 12): // presentation = ...("presentation.ppt")... // a PowerPoint 2003 presentation Slide slide = presentation.Slides[1]; Shape shape = slide.Shapes[1]; for (int i = 1; i<=shape.TextFrame.TextRange.Paragraphs(-1, -1).Count; i++) { TextRange paragraph = shape.TextFrame.TextRange.Paragraphs(i, 1); Console.WriteLine("{0} {1} {2}", paragraph.Text, paragraph.IndentLevel, shape.TextFrame.Ruler.Levels[paragraph.IndentLevel].FirstMargin); } Oh, man... What's it? I've got problems here. First, the paragraph.Text value is trimmed until the '\r' character is found (however paragraph.Text[0] really returns the first character O_o). But it's ok, I can shut my eyes to this. But... But, second, I can't understand why the first margins are always zero and it does not matter which level they belong to. They are always zero in the compatibility mode... It's hard to believe it... :) So is there any way to fix it or just to find a workaround? I'd like to accept any help regarding to the solution of the subject. I can't even find any article related to the issue. :( Probably you have ever been face to face with it... Or is it just a bug with no fix and must it be reported to Microsoft? Thanks you.

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