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  • JSON error Caused by: java.lang.NullPointerException

    - by user3821853
    im trying to make a register page on android using JSON. everytime i press register button on avd, i get an error "unfortunately database has stopped". i have a error on my logcat that i cannot understand. this my code. please someone help me. this my register.java import android.app.Activity; import android.app.ProgressDialog; import android.os.AsyncTask; import android.os.Bundle; import android.util.Log; import android.view.View; import android.view.View.OnClickListener; import android.widget.Button; import android.widget.EditText; import android.widget.Toast; import org.apache.http.NameValuePair; import org.apache.http.message.BasicNameValuePair; import org.json.JSONException; import org.json.JSONObject; import java.util.ArrayList; import java.util.List; public class Register extends Activity implements OnClickListener{ private EditText user, pass; private Button mRegister; // Progress Dialog private ProgressDialog pDialog; // JSON parser class JSONParser jsonParser = new JSONParser(); //php register script //localhost : //testing on your device //put your local ip instead, on windows, run CMD > ipconfig //or in mac's terminal type ifconfig and look for the ip under en0 or en1 // private static final String REGISTER_URL = "http://xxx.xxx.x.x:1234/webservice/register.php"; //testing on Emulator: private static final String REGISTER_URL = "http://10.0.2.2:1234/webservice/register.php"; //testing from a real server: //private static final String REGISTER_URL = "http://www.mybringback.com/webservice/register.php"; //ids private static final String TAG_SUCCESS = "success"; private static final String TAG_MESSAGE = "message"; @Override protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) { // TODO Auto-generated method stub super.onCreate(savedInstanceState); setContentView(R.layout.register); user = (EditText)findViewById(R.id.username); pass = (EditText)findViewById(R.id.password); mRegister = (Button)findViewById(R.id.register); mRegister.setOnClickListener(this); } @Override public void onClick(View v) { // TODO Auto-generated method stub new CreateUser().execute(); } class CreateUser extends AsyncTask<String, String, String> { @Override protected void onPreExecute() { super.onPreExecute(); pDialog = new ProgressDialog(Register.this); pDialog.setMessage("Creating User..."); pDialog.setIndeterminate(false); pDialog.setCancelable(true); pDialog.show(); } @Override protected String doInBackground(String... args) { // TODO Auto-generated method stub // Check for success tag int success; String username = user.getText().toString(); String password = pass.getText().toString(); try { // Building Parameters List<NameValuePair> params = new ArrayList<NameValuePair>(); params.add(new BasicNameValuePair("username", username)); params.add(new BasicNameValuePair("password", password)); Log.d("request!", "starting"); //Posting user data to script JSONObject json = jsonParser.makeHttpRequest( REGISTER_URL, "POST", params); // full json response Log.d("Registering attempt", json.toString()); // json success element success = json.getInt(TAG_SUCCESS); if (success == 1) { Log.d("User Created!", json.toString()); finish(); return json.getString(TAG_MESSAGE); }else{ Log.d("Registering Failure!", json.getString(TAG_MESSAGE)); return json.getString(TAG_MESSAGE); } } catch (JSONException e) { e.printStackTrace(); } return null; } protected void onPostExecute(String file_url) { // dismiss the dialog once product deleted pDialog.dismiss(); if (file_url != null){ Toast.makeText(Register.this, file_url, Toast.LENGTH_LONG).show(); } } } } this is JSONparser.java import android.util.Log; import org.apache.http.HttpEntity; import org.apache.http.HttpResponse; import org.apache.http.NameValuePair; import org.apache.http.client.ClientProtocolException; import org.apache.http.client.entity.UrlEncodedFormEntity; import org.apache.http.client.methods.HttpGet; import org.apache.http.client.methods.HttpPost; import org.apache.http.client.utils.URLEncodedUtils; import org.apache.http.impl.client.DefaultHttpClient; import org.json.JSONException; import org.json.JSONObject; import java.io.BufferedReader; import java.io.IOException; import java.io.InputStream; import java.io.InputStreamReader; import java.io.UnsupportedEncodingException; import java.util.List; public class JSONParser { static InputStream is = null; static JSONObject jObj = null; static String json = ""; // constructor public JSONParser() { } public JSONObject getJSONFromUrl(final String url) { // Making HTTP request try { // Construct the client and the HTTP request. DefaultHttpClient httpClient = new DefaultHttpClient(); HttpPost httpPost = new HttpPost(url); // Execute the POST request and store the response locally. HttpResponse httpResponse = httpClient.execute(httpPost); // Extract data from the response. HttpEntity httpEntity = httpResponse.getEntity(); // Open an inputStream with the data content. is = httpEntity.getContent(); } catch (UnsupportedEncodingException e) { e.printStackTrace(); } catch (ClientProtocolException e) { e.printStackTrace(); } catch (IOException e) { e.printStackTrace(); } try { // Create a BufferedReader to parse through the inputStream. BufferedReader reader = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader( is, "iso-8859-1"), 8); // Declare a string builder to help with the parsing. StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder(); // Declare a string to store the JSON object data in string form. String line = null; // Build the string until null. while ((line = reader.readLine()) != null) { sb.append(line + "\n"); } // Close the input stream. is.close(); // Convert the string builder data to an actual string. json = sb.toString(); } catch (Exception e) { Log.e("Buffer Error", "Error converting result " + e.toString()); } // Try to parse the string to a JSON object try { jObj = new JSONObject(json); } catch (JSONException e) { Log.e("JSON Parser", "Error parsing data " + e.toString()); } // Return the JSON Object. return jObj; } // function get json from url // by making HTTP POST or GET mehtod public JSONObject makeHttpRequest(String url, String method, List<NameValuePair> params) { // Making HTTP request try { // check for request method if(method == "POST"){ // request method is POST // defaultHttpClient DefaultHttpClient httpClient = new DefaultHttpClient(); HttpPost httpPost = new HttpPost(url); httpPost.setEntity(new UrlEncodedFormEntity(params)); HttpResponse httpResponse = httpClient.execute(httpPost); HttpEntity httpEntity = httpResponse.getEntity(); is = httpEntity.getContent(); }else if(method == "GET"){ // request method is GET DefaultHttpClient httpClient = new DefaultHttpClient(); String paramString = URLEncodedUtils.format(params, "utf-8"); url += "?" + paramString; HttpGet httpGet = new HttpGet(url); HttpResponse httpResponse = httpClient.execute(httpGet); HttpEntity httpEntity = httpResponse.getEntity(); is = httpEntity.getContent(); } } catch (UnsupportedEncodingException e) { e.printStackTrace(); } catch (ClientProtocolException e) { e.printStackTrace(); } catch (IOException e) { e.printStackTrace(); } try { BufferedReader reader = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader( is, "iso-8859-1"), 8); StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder(); String line = null; while ((line = reader.readLine()) != null) { sb.append(line + "\n"); } is.close(); json = sb.toString(); } catch (Exception e) { Log.e("Buffer Error", "Error converting result " + e.toString()); } // try parse the string to a JSON object try { jObj = new JSONObject(json); } catch (JSONException e) { Log.e("JSON Parser", "Error parsing data " + e.toString()); } // return JSON String return jObj; } } and this my error 08-18 23:40:02.381 2000-2018/com.example.blackcustomzier.database E/Buffer Error? Error converting result java.lang.NullPointerException: lock == null 08-18 23:40:02.381 2000-2018/com.example.blackcustomzier.database E/JSON Parser? Error parsing data org.json.JSONException: End of input at character 0 of 08-18 23:40:02.391 2000-2018/com.example.blackcustomzier.database W/dalvikvm? threadid=15: thread exiting with uncaught exception (group=0xb0f37648) 08-18 23:40:02.391 2000-2018/com.example.blackcustomzier.database E/AndroidRuntime? FATAL EXCEPTION: AsyncTask #4 java.lang.RuntimeException: An error occured while executing doInBackground() at android.os.AsyncTask$3.done(AsyncTask.java:299) at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask.finishCompletion(FutureTask.java:352) at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask.setException(FutureTask.java:219) at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask.run(FutureTask.java:239) at android.os.AsyncTask$SerialExecutor$1.run(AsyncTask.java:230) at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor.runWorker(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:1080) at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:573) at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:841) Caused by: java.lang.NullPointerException at com.example.blackcustomzier.database.Register$CreateUser.doInBackground(Register.java:108) at com.example.blackcustomzier.database.Register$CreateUser.doInBackground(Register.java:74) at android.os.AsyncTask$2.call(AsyncTask.java:287) at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask.run(FutureTask.java:234)             at android.os.AsyncTask$SerialExecutor$1.run(AsyncTask.java:230)             at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor.runWorker(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:1080)             at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:573)             at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:841) 08-18 23:40:02.501 2000-2000/com.example.blackcustomzier.database W/EGL_emulation? eglSurfaceAttrib not implemented 08-18 23:40:02.591 2000-2000/com.example.blackcustomzier.database W/EGL_emulation? eglSurfaceAttrib not implemented 08-18 23:40:02.981 2000-2000/com.example.blackcustomzier.database E/WindowManager? Activity com.example.blackcustomzier.database.Register has leaked window com.android.internal.policy.impl.PhoneWindow$DecorView{b1294c60 V.E..... R......D 0,0-1026,288} that was originally added here android.view.WindowLeaked: Activity com.example.blackcustomzier.database.Register has leaked window com.android.internal.policy.impl.PhoneWindow$DecorView{b1294c60 V.E..... R......D 0,0-1026,288} that was originally added here at android.view.ViewRootImpl.<init>(ViewRootImpl.java:345) at android.view.WindowManagerGlobal.addView(WindowManagerGlobal.java:239) at android.view.WindowManagerImpl.addView(WindowManagerImpl.java:69) at android.app.Dialog.show(Dialog.java:281) at com.example.blackcustomzier.database.Register$CreateUser.onPreExecute(Register.java:85) at android.os.AsyncTask.executeOnExecutor(AsyncTask.java:586) at android.os.AsyncTask.execute(AsyncTask.java:534) at com.example.blackcustomzier.database.Register.onClick(Register.java:70) at android.view.View.performClick(View.java:4240) at android.view.View.onKeyUp(View.java:7928) at android.widget.TextView.onKeyUp(TextView.java:5606) at android.view.KeyEvent.dispatch(KeyEvent.java:2647) at android.view.View.dispatchKeyEvent(View.java:7343) at android.view.ViewGroup.dispatchKeyEvent(ViewGroup.java:1393) at android.view.ViewGroup.dispatchKeyEvent(ViewGroup.java:1393) at android.view.ViewGroup.dispatchKeyEvent(ViewGroup.java:1393) at android.view.ViewGroup.dispatchKeyEvent(ViewGroup.java:1393) at com.android.internal.policy.impl.PhoneWindow$DecorView.superDispatchKeyEvent(PhoneWindow.java:1933) at com.android.internal.policy.impl.PhoneWindow.superDispatchKeyEvent(PhoneWindow.java:1408) at android.app.Activity.dispatchKeyEvent(Activity.java:2384) at com.android.internal.policy.impl.PhoneWindow$DecorView.dispatchKeyEvent(PhoneWindow.java:1860) at android.view.ViewRootImpl$ViewPostImeInputStage.processKeyEvent(ViewRootImpl.java:3791) at android.view.ViewRootImpl$ViewPostImeInputStage.onProcess(ViewRootImpl.java:3774) at android.view.ViewRootImpl$InputStage.deliver(ViewRootImpl.java:3379) at android.view.ViewRootImpl$InputStage.onDeliverToNext(ViewRootImpl.java:3429) at android.view.ViewRootImpl$InputStage.forward(ViewRootImpl.java:3398) at android.view.ViewRootImpl$AsyncInputStage.forward(ViewRootImpl.java:3483) at android.view.ViewRootImpl$InputStage.apply(ViewRootImpl.java:3406) at android.view.ViewRootImpl$AsyncInputStage.apply(ViewRootImpl.java:3540) at android.view.ViewRootImpl$InputStage.deliver(ViewRootImpl.java:3379) at android.view.ViewRootImpl$InputStage.onDeliverToNext(ViewRootImpl.java:3429) at android.view.ViewRootImpl$InputStage.forward(ViewRootImpl.java:3398) at android.view.ViewRootImpl$InputStage.apply(ViewRootImpl.java:3406) at android.view.ViewRootImpl$InputStage.deliver(ViewRootImpl.java:3379) at android.view.ViewRootImpl$InputStage.onDeliverToNext(ViewRootImpl.java:3429) at android.view.ViewRootImpl$InputStage.forward(ViewRootImpl.java:3398) at android.view.ViewRootImpl$AsyncInputStage.forward(ViewRootImpl.java:3516) at android.view.ViewRootImpl$ImeInputStage.onFinishedInputEvent(ViewRootImpl.java:3666) at android.view.inputmethod.InputMethodManager$PendingEvent.run(InputMethodManager.java:1982) at android.view.inputmethod.InputMethodManager.invokeFinishedInputEventCallback(InputMethodManager.java:1698) at android.view.inputmethod.InputMethodManager.finishedInputEvent(InputMethodManager.java:1689) at android.view.inputmethod.InputMethodManager$ImeInputEventSender.onInputEventFinished(InputMethodManager.java:1959) at android.view.InputEventSender.dispatchInputEventFinished(InputEventSender.java:141) at android.os.MessageQueue.nativePollOnce(Native Method) at android.os.MessageQueue.next(MessageQueue.java:132) at android.os.Looper.loop(Looper.java:124) at android.app.ActivityThread.main(ActivityThread.java:5103) at java.lang.reflect.Method.invokeNative(Native Method) at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:525) at com.android.internal.os.ZygoteInit$MethodAndArgsCal please help me to solve this thx

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  • setting up bind to work with nsupdate (SERVFAIL)

    - by funny_ha_ha
    I'm trying to update my DNS-Server dynamically using nsupdate. Prerequisite I'm using Debian 6 on my DNS-Server and Debian 4 on my client. I created a public/private key pair using: dnssec-keygen -C -a HMAC-MD5 -b 512 -n USER sub.example.com. I then edited my named.conf.local to contain my public key and the new zone i wish to update. It now looks like this (note: I also tried allow-update { any; }; without success): zone "example.com" { type master; file "/etc/bind/primary/example.com"; notify yes; allow-update { none; }; allow-query { any; }; }; zone "sub.example.com" { type master; file "/etc/bind/primary/sub.example.com"; notify yes; allow-update { key "sub.example.com."; }; allow-query { any; }; }; key sub.example.com. { algorithm HMAC-MD5; secret "xxxx xxxx"; }; Next, I copied the private key file (key.private) to another server I want to update the zone from. I also created a textfile (update) on this server which contained the update information (note: I tried toying around with this stuff too. no success): server example.com zone sub.example.com update add sub.example.com. 86400 A 10.10.10.1 show send Now I'm trying to update the zone using: nsupdate -k key.private -v update The Problem Said command gives me the following output: Outgoing update query: ;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: UPDATE, status: NOERROR, id: 0 ;; flags: ; ZONE: 0, PREREQ: 0, UPDATE: 0, ADDITIONAL: 0 ;; ZONE SECTION: ;sub.example.com. IN SOA ;; UPDATE SECTION: sub.example.com. 86400 IN A 10.10.10.1 update failed: SERVFAIL named debug Level 3 gives me the following information when I issue the nsupdate command on the remote server (note: I obfuscated the client IP): 06-Aug-2012 14:51:33.977 client X.X.X.X#33182: new TCP connection 06-Aug-2012 14:51:33.977 client X.X.X.X#33182: replace 06-Aug-2012 14:51:33.978 clientmgr @0x2ada3c7ee760: createclients 06-Aug-2012 14:51:33.978 clientmgr @0x2ada3c7ee760: recycle 06-Aug-2012 14:51:33.978 client @0x2ada475f1120: accept 06-Aug-2012 14:51:33.978 client X.X.X.X#33182: read 06-Aug-2012 14:51:33.978 client X.X.X.X#33182: TCP request 06-Aug-2012 14:51:33.978 client X.X.X.X#33182: request has valid signature 06-Aug-2012 14:51:33.978 client X.X.X.X#33182: recursion not available 06-Aug-2012 14:51:33.978 client X.X.X.X#33182: update 06-Aug-2012 14:51:33.978 client X.X.X.X#33182: send 06-Aug-2012 14:51:33.978 client X.X.X.X#33182: sendto 06-Aug-2012 14:51:33.979 client X.X.X.X#33182: senddone 06-Aug-2012 14:51:33.979 client X.X.X.X#33182: next 06-Aug-2012 14:51:33.979 client X.X.X.X#33182: endrequest 06-Aug-2012 14:51:33.979 client X.X.X.X#33182: read 06-Aug-2012 14:51:33.986 client X.X.X.X#33182: next 06-Aug-2012 14:51:33.986 client X.X.X.X#33182: request failed: end of file 06-Aug-2012 14:51:33.986 client X.X.X.X#33182: endrequest 06-Aug-2012 14:51:33.986 client X.X.X.X#33182: closetcp But it doesn't do anything. The zone isn't updated, nor does my nsupdate change anything. I'm not sure if the file /etc/bind/primary/sub.example.com should exist prior to the first update or not. I tried it without the file, with an empty file and with a pre-configured zone file. Without success. The sparse information I found on the net pointed me towards file and folder permissions regarding the bind working directory, so I changed the permissions of both /etc/bind and /var/cache/bind (which is the home dir of my "bind" user). I'm not a 100% sure if the permissions are correct.. but it looks good to me: ls -lah /var/cache/bind/ total 224K drwxrwxr-x 2 bind bind 4.0K Aug 6 03:13 . drwxr-xr-x 12 root root 4.0K Jul 21 11:27 .. -rw-r--r-- 1 bind bind 211K Aug 6 03:21 named.run ls -lah /etc/bind/ total 72K drwxr-sr-x 3 bind bind 4.0K Aug 6 14:41 . drwxr-xr-x 87 root root 4.0K Jul 30 01:24 .. -rw------- 1 bind bind 125 Aug 6 02:54 key.public -rw------- 1 bind bind 156 Aug 6 02:54 key.private -rw-r--r-- 1 bind bind 2.5K Aug 6 03:07 bind.keys -rw-r--r-- 1 bind bind 237 Aug 6 03:07 db.0 -rw-r--r-- 1 bind bind 271 Aug 6 03:07 db.127 -rw-r--r-- 1 bind bind 237 Aug 6 03:07 db.255 -rw-r--r-- 1 bind bind 353 Aug 6 03:07 db.empty -rw-r--r-- 1 bind bind 270 Aug 6 03:07 db.local -rw-r--r-- 1 bind bind 3.0K Aug 6 03:07 db.root -rw-r--r-- 1 bind bind 493 Aug 6 03:32 named.conf -rw-r--r-- 1 bind bind 490 Aug 6 03:07 named.conf.default-zones -rw-r--r-- 1 bind bind 1.2K Aug 6 14:18 named.conf.local -rw-r--r-- 1 bind bind 666 Jul 29 22:51 named.conf.options drwxr-sr-x 2 bind bind 4.0K Aug 6 03:57 primary/ -rw-r----- 1 root bind 77 Mar 19 02:57 rndc.key -rw-r--r-- 1 bind bind 1.3K Aug 6 03:07 zones.rfc1918 ls -lah /etc/bind/primary/ total 20K drwxr-sr-x 2 bind bind 4.0K Aug 6 03:57 . drwxr-sr-x 3 bind bind 4.0K Aug 6 14:41 .. -rw-r--r-- 1 bind bind 356 Jul 30 00:45 example.com

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  • Adventures in MVVM &ndash; My ViewModel Base

    - by Brian Genisio's House Of Bilz
    More Adventures in MVVM First, I’d like to say: THIS IS NOT A NEW MVVM FRAMEWORK. I tend to believe that MVVM support code should be specific to the system you are building and the developers working on it.  I have yet to find an MVVM framework that does everything I want it to without doing too much.  Don’t get me wrong… there are some good frameworks out there.  I just like to pick and choose things that make sense for me.  I’d also like to add that some of these features only work in WPF.  As of Silveright 4, they don’t support binding to dynamic properties, so some of the capabilities are lost. That being said, I want to share my ViewModel base class with the world.  I have had several conversations with people about the problems I have solved using this ViewModel base.  A while back, I posted an article about some experiments with a “Rails Inspired ViewModel”.  What followed from those ideas was a ViewModel base class that I take with me and use in my projects.  It has a lot of features, all designed to reduce the friction in writing view models. I have put the code out on Codeplex under the project: ViewModelSupport. Finally, this article focuses on the ViewModel and only glosses over the View and the Model.  Without all three, you don’t have MVVM.  But this base class is for the ViewModel, so that is what I am focusing on. Features: Automatic Command Plumbing Property Change Notification Strongly Typed Property Getter/Setters Dynamic Properties Default Property values Derived Properties Automatic Method Execution Command CanExecute Change Notification Design-Time Detection What about Silverlight? Automatic Command Plumbing This feature takes the plumbing out of creating commands.  The common pattern for commands in a ViewModel is to have an Execute method as well as an optional CanExecute method.  To plumb that together, you create an ICommand Property, and set it in the constructor like so: Before public class AutomaticCommandViewModel { public AutomaticCommandViewModel() { MyCommand = new DelegateCommand(Execute_MyCommand, CanExecute_MyCommand); } public void Execute_MyCommand() { // Do something } public bool CanExecute_MyCommand() { // Are we in a state to do something? return true; } public DelegateCommand MyCommand { get; private set; } } With the base class, this plumbing is automatic and the property (MyCommand of type ICommand) is created for you.  The base class uses the convention that methods be prefixed with Execute_ and CanExecute_ in order to be plumbed into commands with the property name after the prefix.  You are left to be expressive with your behavior without the plumbing.  If you are wondering how CanExecuteChanged is raised, see the later section “Command CanExecute Change Notification”. After public class AutomaticCommandViewModel : ViewModelBase { public void Execute_MyCommand() { // Do something } public bool CanExecute_MyCommand() { // Are we in a state to do something? return true; } }   Property Change Notification One thing that always kills me when implementing ViewModels is how to make properties that notify when they change (via the INotifyPropertyChanged interface).  There have been many attempts to make this more automatic.  My base class includes one option.  There are others, but I feel like this works best for me. The common pattern (without my base class) is to create a private backing store for the variable and specify a getter that returns the private field.  The setter will set the private field and fire an event that notifies the change, only if the value has changed. Before public class PropertyHelpersViewModel : INotifyPropertyChanged { private string text; public string Text { get { return text; } set { if(text != value) { text = value; RaisePropertyChanged("Text"); } } } protected void RaisePropertyChanged(string propertyName) { var handlers = PropertyChanged; if(handlers != null) handlers(this, new PropertyChangedEventArgs(propertyName)); } public event PropertyChangedEventHandler PropertyChanged; } This way of defining properties is error-prone and tedious.  Too much plumbing.  My base class eliminates much of that plumbing with the same functionality: After public class PropertyHelpersViewModel : ViewModelBase { public string Text { get { return Get<string>("Text"); } set { Set("Text", value);} } }   Strongly Typed Property Getters/Setters It turns out that we can do better than that.  We are using a strongly typed language where the use of “Magic Strings” is often frowned upon.  Lets make the names in the getters and setters strongly typed: A refinement public class PropertyHelpersViewModel : ViewModelBase { public string Text { get { return Get(() => Text); } set { Set(() => Text, value); } } }   Dynamic Properties In C# 4.0, we have the ability to program statically OR dynamically.  This base class lets us leverage the powerful dynamic capabilities in our ecosystem. (This is how the automatic commands are implemented, BTW)  By calling Set(“Foo”, 1), you have now created a dynamic property called Foo.  It can be bound against like any static property.  The opportunities are endless.  One great way to exploit this behavior is if you have a customizable view engine with templates that bind to properties defined by the user.  The base class just needs to create the dynamic properties at runtime from information in the model, and the custom template can bind even though the static properties do not exist. All dynamic properties still benefit from the notifiable capabilities that static properties do. For any nay-sayers out there that don’t like using the dynamic features of C#, just remember this: the act of binding the View to a ViewModel is dynamic already.  Why not exploit it?  Get over it :) Just declare the property dynamically public class DynamicPropertyViewModel : ViewModelBase { public DynamicPropertyViewModel() { Set("Foo", "Bar"); } } Then reference it normally <TextBlock Text="{Binding Foo}" />   Default Property Values The Get() method also allows for default properties to be set.  Don’t set them in the constructor.  Set them in the property and keep the related code together: public string Text { get { return Get(() => Text, "This is the default value"); } set { Set(() => Text, value);} }   Derived Properties This is something I blogged about a while back in more detail.  This feature came from the chaining of property notifications when one property affects the results of another, like this: Before public class DependantPropertiesViewModel : ViewModelBase { public double Score { get { return Get(() => Score); } set { Set(() => Score, value); RaisePropertyChanged("Percentage"); RaisePropertyChanged("Output"); } } public int Percentage { get { return (int)(100 * Score); } } public string Output { get { return "You scored " + Percentage + "%."; } } } The problem is: The setter for Score has to be responsible for notifying the world that Percentage and Output have also changed.  This, to me, is backwards.    It certainly violates the “Single Responsibility Principle.” I have been bitten in the rear more than once by problems created from code like this.  What we really want to do is invert the dependency.  Let the Percentage property declare that it changes when the Score Property changes. After public class DependantPropertiesViewModel : ViewModelBase { public double Score { get { return Get(() => Score); } set { Set(() => Score, value); } } [DependsUpon("Score")] public int Percentage { get { return (int)(100 * Score); } } [DependsUpon("Percentage")] public string Output { get { return "You scored " + Percentage + "%."; } } }   Automatic Method Execution This one is extremely similar to the previous, but it deals with method execution as opposed to property.  When you want to execute a method triggered by property changes, let the method declare the dependency instead of the other way around. Before public class DependantMethodsViewModel : ViewModelBase { public double Score { get { return Get(() => Score); } set { Set(() => Score, value); WhenScoreChanges(); } } public void WhenScoreChanges() { // Handle this case } } After public class DependantMethodsViewModel : ViewModelBase { public double Score { get { return Get(() => Score); } set { Set(() => Score, value); } } [DependsUpon("Score")] public void WhenScoreChanges() { // Handle this case } }   Command CanExecute Change Notification Back to Commands.  One of the responsibilities of commands that implement ICommand – it must fire an event declaring that CanExecute() needs to be re-evaluated.  I wanted to wait until we got past a few concepts before explaining this behavior.  You can use the same mechanism here to fire off the change.  In the CanExecute_ method, declare the property that it depends upon.  When that property changes, the command will fire a CanExecuteChanged event, telling the View to re-evaluate the state of the command.  The View will make appropriate adjustments, like disabling the button. DependsUpon works on CanExecute methods as well public class CanExecuteViewModel : ViewModelBase { public void Execute_MakeLower() { Output = Input.ToLower(); } [DependsUpon("Input")] public bool CanExecute_MakeLower() { return !string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(Input); } public string Input { get { return Get(() => Input); } set { Set(() => Input, value);} } public string Output { get { return Get(() => Output); } set { Set(() => Output, value); } } }   Design-Time Detection If you want to add design-time data to your ViewModel, the base class has a property that lets you ask if you are in the designer.  You can then set some default values that let your designer see what things might look like in runtime. Use the IsInDesignMode property public DependantPropertiesViewModel() { if(IsInDesignMode) { Score = .5; } }   What About Silverlight? Some of the features in this base class only work in WPF.  As of version 4, Silverlight does not support binding to dynamic properties.  This, in my opinion, is a HUGE limitation.  Not only does it keep you from using many of the features in this ViewModel, it also keeps you from binding to ViewModels designed in IronRuby.  Does this mean that the base class will not work in Silverlight?  No.  Many of the features outlined in this article WILL work.  All of the property abstractions are functional, as long as you refer to them statically in the View.  This, of course, means that the automatic command hook-up doesn’t work in Silverlight.  You need to plumb it to a static property in order for the Silverlight View to bind to it.  Can I has a dynamic property in SL5?     Good to go? So, that concludes the feature explanation of my ViewModel base class.  Feel free to take it, fork it, whatever.  It is hosted on CodePlex.  When I find other useful additions, I will add them to the public repository.  I use this base class every day.  It is mature, and well tested.  If, however, you find any problems with it, please let me know!  Also, feel free to suggest patches to me via the CodePlex site.  :)

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  • Restful Services, oData, and Rest Sharp

    - by jkrebsbach
    After a great presentation by Jason Sheehan at MDC about RestSharp, I decided to implement it. RestSharp is a .Net framework for consuming restful data sources via either Json or XML. My first step was to put together a Restful data source for RestSharp to consume.  Staying entirely withing .Net, I decided to use Microsoft's oData implementation, built on System.Data.Services.DataServices.  Natively, these support Json, or atom+pub xml.  (XML with a few bells and whistles added on) There are three main steps for creating an oData data source: 1)  override CreateDSPMetaData This is where the metadata data is returned.  The meta data defines the structure of the data to return.  The structure contains the relationships between data objects, along with what properties the objects expose.  The meta data can and should be somehow cached so that the structure is not rebuild with every data request. 2) override CreateDataSource The context contains the data the data source will publish.  This method is the conduit which will populate the metadata objects to be returned to the requestor. 3) implement static InitializeService At this point we can set up security, along with setting up properties of the web service (versioning, etc)   Here is a web service which publishes stock prices for various Products (stocks) in various Categories. namespace RestService {     public class RestServiceImpl : DSPDataService<DSPContext>     {         private static DSPContext _context;         private static DSPMetadata _metadata;         /// <summary>         /// Populate traversable data source         /// </summary>         /// <returns></returns>         protected override DSPContext CreateDataSource()         {             if (_context == null)             {                 _context = new DSPContext();                 Category utilities = new Category(0);                 utilities.Name = "Electric";                 Category financials = new Category(1);                 financials.Name = "Financial";                                 IList products = _context.GetResourceSetEntities("Products");                 Product electric = new Product(0, utilities);                 electric.Name = "ABC Electric";                 electric.Description = "Electric Utility";                 electric.Price = 3.5;                 products.Add(electric);                 Product water = new Product(1, utilities);                 water.Name = "XYZ Water";                 water.Description = "Water Utility";                 water.Price = 2.4;                 products.Add(water);                 Product banks = new Product(2, financials);                 banks.Name = "FatCat Bank";                 banks.Description = "A bank that's almost too big";                 banks.Price = 19.9; // This will never get to the client                 products.Add(banks);                 IList categories = _context.GetResourceSetEntities("Categories");                 categories.Add(utilities);                 categories.Add(financials);                 utilities.Products.Add(electric);                 utilities.Products.Add(electric);                 financials.Products.Add(banks);             }             return _context;         }         /// <summary>         /// Setup rules describing published data structure - relationships between data,         /// key field, other searchable fields, etc.         /// </summary>         /// <returns></returns>         protected override DSPMetadata CreateDSPMetadata()         {             if (_metadata == null)             {                 _metadata = new DSPMetadata("DemoService", "DataServiceProviderDemo");                 // Define entity type product                 ResourceType product = _metadata.AddEntityType(typeof(Product), "Product");                 _metadata.AddKeyProperty(product, "ProductID");                 // Only add properties we wish to share with end users                 _metadata.AddPrimitiveProperty(product, "Name");                 _metadata.AddPrimitiveProperty(product, "Description");                 EntityPropertyMappingAttribute att = new EntityPropertyMappingAttribute("Name",                     SyndicationItemProperty.Title, SyndicationTextContentKind.Plaintext, true);                 product.AddEntityPropertyMappingAttribute(att);                 att = new EntityPropertyMappingAttribute("Description",                     SyndicationItemProperty.Summary, SyndicationTextContentKind.Plaintext, true);                 product.AddEntityPropertyMappingAttribute(att);                 // Define products as a set of product entities                 ResourceSet products = _metadata.AddResourceSet("Products", product);                 // Define entity type category                 ResourceType category = _metadata.AddEntityType(typeof(Category), "Category");                 _metadata.AddKeyProperty(category, "CategoryID");                 _metadata.AddPrimitiveProperty(category, "Name");                 _metadata.AddPrimitiveProperty(category, "Description");                 // Define categories as a set of category entities                 ResourceSet categories = _metadata.AddResourceSet("Categories", category);                 att = new EntityPropertyMappingAttribute("Name",                     SyndicationItemProperty.Title, SyndicationTextContentKind.Plaintext, true);                 category.AddEntityPropertyMappingAttribute(att);                 att = new EntityPropertyMappingAttribute("Description",                     SyndicationItemProperty.Summary, SyndicationTextContentKind.Plaintext, true);                 category.AddEntityPropertyMappingAttribute(att);                 // A product has a category, a category has products                 _metadata.AddResourceReferenceProperty(product, "Category", categories);                 _metadata.AddResourceSetReferenceProperty(category, "Products", products);             }             return _metadata;         }         /// <summary>         /// Based on the requesting user, can set up permissions to Read, Write, etc.         /// </summary>         /// <param name="config"></param>         public static void InitializeService(DataServiceConfiguration config)         {             config.SetEntitySetAccessRule("*", EntitySetRights.All);             config.DataServiceBehavior.MaxProtocolVersion = DataServiceProtocolVersion.V2;             config.DataServiceBehavior.AcceptProjectionRequests = true;         }     } }     The objects prefixed with DSP come from the samples on the oData site: http://www.odata.org/developers The products and categories objects are POCO business objects with no special modifiers. Three main options are available for defining the MetaData of data sources in .Net: 1) Generate Entity Data model (Potentially directly from SQL Server database).  This requires the least amount of manual interaction, and uses the edmx WYSIWYG editor to generate a data model.  This can be directly tied to the SQL Server database and generated from the database if you want a data access layer tightly coupled with your database. 2) Object model decorations.  If you already have a POCO data layer, you can decorate your objects with properties to statically inform the compiler how the objects are related.  The disadvantage is there are now tags strewn about your business layer that need to be updated as the business rules change.  3) Programmatically construct metadata object.  This is the object illustrated above in CreateDSPMetaData.  This puts all relationship information into one central programmatic location.  Here business rules are constructed when the DSPMetaData response object is returned.   Once you have your service up and running, RestSharp is designed for XML / Json, along with the native Microsoft library.  There are currently some differences between how Jason made RestSharp expect XML with how atom+pub works, so I found better results currently with the Json implementation - modifying the RestSharp XML parser to make an atom+pub parser is fairly trivial though, so use what implementation works best for you. I put together a sample console app which calls the RestSvcImpl.svc service defined above (and assumes it to be running on port 2000).  I used both RestSharp as a client, and also the default Microsoft oData client tools. namespace RestConsole {     class Program     {         private static DataServiceContext _ctx;         private enum DemoType         {             Xml,             Json         }         static void Main(string[] args)         {             // Microsoft implementation             _ctx = new DataServiceContext(new System.Uri("http://localhost:2000/RestServiceImpl.svc"));             var msProducts = RunQuery<Product>("Products").ToList();             var msCategory = RunQuery<Category>("/Products(0)/Category").AsEnumerable().Single();             var msFilteredProducts = RunQuery<Product>("/Products?$filter=length(Name) ge 4").ToList();             // RestSharp implementation                          DemoType demoType = DemoType.Json;             var client = new RestClient("http://localhost:2000/RestServiceImpl.svc");             client.ClearHandlers(); // Remove all available handlers             // Set up handler depending on what situation dictates             if (demoType == DemoType.Json)                 client.AddHandler("application/json", new RestSharp.Deserializers.JsonDeserializer());             else if (demoType == DemoType.Xml)             {                 client.AddHandler("application/atom+xml", new RestSharp.Deserializers.XmlDeserializer());             }                          var request = new RestRequest();             if (demoType == DemoType.Json)                 request.RootElement = "d"; // service root element for json             else if (demoType == DemoType.Xml)             {                 request.XmlNamespace = "http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom";             }                              // Return all products             request.Resource = "/Products?$orderby=Name";             RestResponse<List<Product>> productsResp = client.Execute<List<Product>>(request);             List<Product> products = productsResp.Data;             // Find category for product with ProductID = 1             request.Resource = string.Format("/Products(1)/Category");             RestResponse<Category> categoryResp = client.Execute<Category>(request);             Category category = categoryResp.Data;             // Specialized queries             request.Resource = string.Format("/Products?$filter=ProductID eq {0}", 1);             RestResponse<Product> productResp = client.Execute<Product>(request);             Product product = productResp.Data;                          request.Resource = string.Format("/Products?$filter=Name eq '{0}'", "XYZ Water");             productResp = client.Execute<Product>(request);             product = productResp.Data;         }         private static IEnumerable<TElement> RunQuery<TElement>(string queryUri)         {             try             {                 return _ctx.Execute<TElement>(new Uri(queryUri, UriKind.Relative));             }             catch (Exception ex)             {                 throw ex;             }         }              } }   Feel free to step through the code a few times and to attach a debugger to the service as well to see how and where the context and metadata objects are constructed and returned.  Pay special attention to the response object being returned by the oData service - There are several properties of the RestRequest that can be used to help troubleshoot when the structure of the response is not exactly what would be expected.

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  • A SpecTECHular follow-up: Windows Server 2012 #HyperV, #SysCtr 2012 and #Windows8

    - by KeithMayer
    Last week, I had the pleasure of presenting at the New Horizons SpecTECHular events (www.spectechular.com) in Cincinnati and Dayton OH.  It was great meeting some very engaged IT Pros and discussing the new features of Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V, System Center 2012 / Private Cloud, and Windows 8.  Since there was so much interest in these topics, I've posted my decks online at the following link locations: What's New in Windows Server 2012 & Hyper-V What's New in Windows 8 for IT Professionals Building Private Clouds with System Center 2012 Once you've had a chance to review each deck, let me know if there's specific topics in which you have more interest.  If you have an IT Pro technical community located in the US Heartland, I'd also be happy to discuss presenting these topics at one of your upcoming events! - Keithhttp://keithmayer.com | Twitter: @KeithMayer | LinkedIn: http://linkedin.com/in/KeithM

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  • ASP.NET List Control

    - by Ricardo Peres
    Today I developed a simple control for generating lists in ASP.NET, something that the base class library does not contain; it allows for nested lists where the list item types and images can be configured on a list by list basis. Since it was a great fun to develop, I'd like to share it here. Here is the code: [ParseChildren(true)] [PersistChildren(false)] public class List: WebControl { public List(): base("ul") { this.Items = new List(); this.ListStyleType = ListStyleType.Auto; this.ListStyleImageUrl = String.Empty; this.CommonCssClass = String.Empty; this.ContainerCssClass = String.Empty; } [DefaultValue(ListStyleType.Auto)] public ListStyleType ListStyleType { get; set; } [DefaultValue("")] [UrlProperty("*.png;*.gif;*.jpg")] public String ListStyleImageUrl { get; set; } [DefaultValue("")] [CssClassProperty] public String CommonCssClass { get; set; } [DefaultValue("")] [CssClassProperty] public String ContainerCssClass { get; set; } [Browsable(false)] [PersistenceModeAttribute(PersistenceMode.InnerProperty)] public List Items { private set; get; } protected override void Render(HtmlTextWriter writer) { String cssClass = String.Join(" ", new String [] { this.CssClass, this.ContainerCssClass }); if (cssClass.Trim().Length != 0) { this.CssClass = cssClass; } if (String.IsNullOrEmpty(this.ListStyleImageUrl) == false) { this.Style[ HtmlTextWriterStyle.ListStyleImage ] = String.Format("url('{0}')", this.ResolveClientUrl(this.ListStyleImageUrl)); } if (this.ListStyleType != ListStyleType.Auto) { switch (this.ListStyleType) { case ListStyleType.Circle: case ListStyleType.Decimal: case ListStyleType.Disc: case ListStyleType.None: case ListStyleType.Square: this.Style [ HtmlTextWriterStyle.ListStyleType ] = this.ListStyleType.ToString().ToLower(); break; case ListStyleType.LowerAlpha: this.Style [ HtmlTextWriterStyle.ListStyleType ] = "lower-alpha"; break; case ListStyleType.LowerRoman: this.Style [ HtmlTextWriterStyle.ListStyleType ] = "lower-roman"; break; case ListStyleType.UpperAlpha: this.Style [ HtmlTextWriterStyle.ListStyleType ] = "upper-alpha"; break; case ListStyleType.UpperRoman: this.Style [ HtmlTextWriterStyle.ListStyleType ] = "upper-roman"; break; } } base.Render(writer); } protected override void RenderChildren(HtmlTextWriter writer) { foreach (ListItem item in this.Items) { this.writeItem(item, this, 0); } base.RenderChildren(writer); } private void writeItem(ListItem item, Control control, Int32 depth) { HtmlGenericControl li = new HtmlGenericControl("li"); control.Controls.Add(li); if (String.IsNullOrEmpty(this.CommonCssClass) == false) { String cssClass = String.Join(" ", new String [] { this.CommonCssClass, this.CommonCssClass + depth }); li.Attributes [ "class" ] = cssClass; } foreach (String key in item.Attributes.Keys) { li.Attributes[key] = item.Attributes [ key ]; } li.InnerText = item.Text; if (item.ChildItems.Count != 0) { HtmlGenericControl ul = new HtmlGenericControl("ul"); li.Controls.Add(ul); if (String.IsNullOrEmpty(this.ContainerCssClass) == false) { ul.Attributes["class"] = this.ContainerCssClass; } if ((item.ListStyleType != ListStyleType.Auto) || (String.IsNullOrEmpty(item.ListStyleImageUrl) == false)) { if (String.IsNullOrEmpty(item.ListStyleImageUrl) == false) { ul.Style[HtmlTextWriterStyle.ListStyleImage] = String.Format("url('{0}');", this.ResolveClientUrl(item.ListStyleImageUrl)); } if (item.ListStyleType != ListStyleType.Auto) { switch (this.ListStyleType) { case ListStyleType.Circle: case ListStyleType.Decimal: case ListStyleType.Disc: case ListStyleType.None: case ListStyleType.Square: ul.Style[ HtmlTextWriterStyle.ListStyleType ] = item.ListStyleType.ToString().ToLower(); break; case ListStyleType.LowerAlpha: ul.Style [ HtmlTextWriterStyle.ListStyleType ] = "lower-alpha"; break; case ListStyleType.LowerRoman: ul.Style [ HtmlTextWriterStyle.ListStyleType ] = "lower-roman"; break; case ListStyleType.UpperAlpha: ul.Style [ HtmlTextWriterStyle.ListStyleType ] = "upper-alpha"; break; case ListStyleType.UpperRoman: ul.Style [ HtmlTextWriterStyle.ListStyleType ] = "upper-roman"; break; } } } foreach (ListItem childItem in item.ChildItems) { this.writeItem(childItem, ul, depth + 1); } } } } [Serializable] [ParseChildren(true, "ChildItems")] public class ListItem: IAttributeAccessor { public ListItem() { this.ChildItems = new List(); this.Attributes = new Dictionary(); this.Text = String.Empty; this.Value = String.Empty; this.ListStyleType = ListStyleType.Auto; this.ListStyleImageUrl = String.Empty; } [DefaultValue(ListStyleType.Auto)] public ListStyleType ListStyleType { get; set; } [DefaultValue("")] [UrlProperty("*.png;*.gif;*.jpg")] public String ListStyleImageUrl { get; set; } [DefaultValue("")] public String Text { get; set; } [DefaultValue("")] public String Value { get; set; } [Browsable(false)] public List ChildItems { get; private set; } [Browsable(false)] public Dictionary Attributes { get; private set; } String IAttributeAccessor.GetAttribute(String key) { return (this.Attributes [ key ]); } void IAttributeAccessor.SetAttribute(String key, String value) { this.Attributes [ key ] = value; } } [Serializable] public enum ListStyleType { Auto = 0, Disc, Circle, Square, Decimal, LowerRoman, UpperRoman, LowerAlpha, UpperAlpha, None } SyntaxHighlighter.config.clipboardSwf = 'http://alexgorbatchev.com/pub/sh/2.0.320/scripts/clipboard.swf'; SyntaxHighlighter.brushes.CSharp.aliases = ['c#', 'c-sharp', 'csharp']; SyntaxHighlighter.all();

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  • Invariant code contracts – using class-wide contracts

    - by DigiMortal
    It is possible to define invariant code contracts for classes. Invariant contracts should always hold true whatever member of class is called. In this posting I will show you how to use invariant code contracts so you understand how they work and how they should be tested. This is my randomizer class I am using to demonstrate code contracts. I added one method for invariant code contracts. Currently there is one contract that makes sure that random number generator is not null. public class Randomizer {     private IRandomGenerator _generator;       private Randomizer() { }       public Randomizer(IRandomGenerator generator)     {         _generator = generator;     }       public int GetRandomFromRangeContracted(int min, int max)     {         Contract.Requires<ArgumentOutOfRangeException>(             min < max,             "Min must be less than max"         );           Contract.Ensures(             Contract.Result<int>() >= min &&             Contract.Result<int>() <= max,             "Return value is out of range"         );           return _generator.Next(min, max);     }       [ContractInvariantMethod]     private void ObjectInvariant()     {         Contract.Invariant(_generator != null);     } } Invariant code contracts are define in methods that have ContractInvariantMethod attribute. Some notes: It is good idea to define invariant methods as private. Don’t call invariant methods from your code because code contracts system does not allow it. Invariant methods are defined only as place where you can keep invariant contracts. Invariant methods are called only when call to some class member is made! The last note means that having invariant method and creating Randomizer object with null as argument does not automatically generate exception. We have to call at least one method from Randomizer class. Here is the test for generator. You can find more about contracted code testing from my posting Code Contracts: Unit testing contracted code. There is also explained why the exception handling in test is like it is. [TestMethod] [ExpectedException(typeof(Exception))] public void Should_fail_if_generator_is_null() {     try     {         var randomizer = new Randomizer(null);         randomizer.GetRandomFromRangeContracted(1, 4);     }     catch (Exception ex)     {         throw new Exception(ex.Message, ex);     } } Try out this code – with unit tests or with test application to see that invariant contracts are checked as soon as you call some member of Randomizer class.

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  • Best methods for Lazy Initialization with properties

    - by Stuart Pegg
    I'm currently altering a widely used class to move as much of the expensive initialization from the class constructor into Lazy Initialized properties. Below is an example (in c#): Before: public class ClassA { public readonly ClassB B; public void ClassA() { B = new ClassB(); } } After: public class ClassA { private ClassB _b; public ClassB B { get { if (_b == null) { _b = new ClassB(); } return _b; } } } There are a fair few more of these properties in the class I'm altering, and some are not used in certain contexts (hence the Laziness), but if they are used they're likely to be called repeatedly. Unfortunately, the properties are often also used inside the class. This means there is a potential for the private variable (_b) to be used directly by a method without it being initialized. Is there a way to make only the public property (B) available inside the class, or even an alternative method with the same initialized-when-needed?

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  • Detecting Idle Time with Global Mouse and Keyboard Hooks in WPF

    - by jdanforth
    Years and years ago I wrote this blog post about detecting if the user was idle or active at the keyboard (and mouse) using a global hook. Well that code was for .NET 2.0 and Windows Forms and for some reason I wanted to try the same in WPF and noticed that a few things around the keyboard and mouse hooks didn’t work as expected in the WPF environment. So I had to change a few things and here’s the code for it, working in .NET 4. I took the liberty and refactored a few things while at it and here’s the code now. I’m sure I will need it in the far future as well. using System; using System.Diagnostics; using System.Runtime.InteropServices; namespace Irm.Tim.Snapper.Util { public class ClientIdleHandler : IDisposable { public bool IsActive { get; set; } int _hHookKbd; int _hHookMouse; public delegate int HookProc(int nCode, IntPtr wParam, IntPtr lParam); public event HookProc MouseHookProcedure; public event HookProc KbdHookProcedure; //Use this function to install thread-specific hook. [DllImport("user32.dll", CharSet = CharSet.Auto, CallingConvention = CallingConvention.StdCall)] public static extern int SetWindowsHookEx(int idHook, HookProc lpfn, IntPtr hInstance, int threadId); //Call this function to uninstall the hook. [DllImport("user32.dll", CharSet = CharSet.Auto, CallingConvention = CallingConvention.StdCall)] public static extern bool UnhookWindowsHookEx(int idHook); //Use this function to pass the hook information to next hook procedure in chain. [DllImport("user32.dll", CharSet = CharSet.Auto, CallingConvention = CallingConvention.StdCall)] public static extern int CallNextHookEx(int idHook, int nCode, IntPtr wParam, IntPtr lParam); //Use this hook to get the module handle, needed for WPF environment [DllImport("kernel32.dll", CharSet = CharSet.Auto)] public static extern IntPtr GetModuleHandle(string lpModuleName); public enum HookType : int { GlobalKeyboard = 13, GlobalMouse = 14 } public int MouseHookProc(int nCode, IntPtr wParam, IntPtr lParam) { //user is active, at least with the mouse IsActive = true; Debug.Print("Mouse active"); //just return the next hook return CallNextHookEx(_hHookMouse, nCode, wParam, lParam); } public int KbdHookProc(int nCode, IntPtr wParam, IntPtr lParam) { //user is active, at least with the keyboard IsActive = true; Debug.Print("Keyboard active"); //just return the next hook return CallNextHookEx(_hHookKbd, nCode, wParam, lParam); } public void Start() { using (var currentProcess = Process.GetCurrentProcess()) using (var mainModule = currentProcess.MainModule) { if (_hHookMouse == 0) { // Create an instance of HookProc. MouseHookProcedure = new HookProc(MouseHookProc); // Create an instance of HookProc. KbdHookProcedure = new HookProc(KbdHookProc); //register a global hook _hHookMouse = SetWindowsHookEx((int)HookType.GlobalMouse, MouseHookProcedure, GetModuleHandle(mainModule.ModuleName), 0); if (_hHookMouse == 0) { Close(); throw new ApplicationException("SetWindowsHookEx() failed for the mouse"); } } if (_hHookKbd == 0) { //register a global hook _hHookKbd = SetWindowsHookEx((int)HookType.GlobalKeyboard, KbdHookProcedure, GetModuleHandle(mainModule.ModuleName), 0); if (_hHookKbd == 0) { Close(); throw new ApplicationException("SetWindowsHookEx() failed for the keyboard"); } } } } public void Close() { if (_hHookMouse != 0) { bool ret = UnhookWindowsHookEx(_hHookMouse); if (ret == false) { throw new ApplicationException("UnhookWindowsHookEx() failed for the mouse"); } _hHookMouse = 0; } if (_hHookKbd != 0) { bool ret = UnhookWindowsHookEx(_hHookKbd); if (ret == false) { throw new ApplicationException("UnhookWindowsHookEx() failed for the keyboard"); } _hHookKbd = 0; } } #region IDisposable Members public void Dispose() { if (_hHookMouse != 0 || _hHookKbd != 0) Close(); } #endregion } } The way you use it is quite simple, for example in a WPF application with a simple Window and a TextBlock: <Window x:Class="WpfApplication2.MainWindow" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation" xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml" Title="MainWindow" Height="350" Width="525"> <Grid> <TextBlock Name="IdleTextBox"/> </Grid> </Window> And in the code behind we wire up the ClientIdleHandler and a DispatcherTimer that ticks every second: public partial class MainWindow : Window { private DispatcherTimer _dispatcherTimer; private ClientIdleHandler _clientIdleHandler; public MainWindow() { InitializeComponent(); } private void Window_Loaded(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e) { //start client idle hook _clientIdleHandler = new ClientIdleHandler(); _clientIdleHandler.Start(); //start timer _dispatcherTimer = new DispatcherTimer(); _dispatcherTimer.Tick += TimerTick; _dispatcherTimer.Interval = new TimeSpan(0, 0, 0, 1); _dispatcherTimer.Start(); } private void TimerTick(object sender, EventArgs e) { if (_clientIdleHandler.IsActive) { IdleTextBox.Text = "Active"; //reset IsActive flag _clientIdleHandler.IsActive = false; } else IdleTextBox.Text = "Idle"; } } Remember to reset the ClientIdleHandle IsActive flag after a check.

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  • Skinny controller in ASP.NET MVC 4

    - by thangchung
    Rails community are always inspire a lot of best ideas. I really love this community by the time. One of these is "Fat models and skinny controllers". I have spent a lot of time on ASP.NET MVC, and really I did some miss-takes, because I made the controller so fat. That make controller is really dirty and very hard to maintain in the future. It is violate seriously SRP principle and KISS as well. But how can we achieve that in ASP.NET MVC? That question is really clear after I read "Manning ASP.NET MVC 4 in Action". It is simple that we can separate it into ActionResult, and try to implementing logic and persistence data inside this. In last 2 years, I have read this from Jimmy Bogard blog, but in that time I never had a consideration about it. That's enough for talking now. I just published a sample on ASP.NET MVC 4, implemented on Visual Studio 2012 RC at here. I used EF framework at here for implementing persistence layer, and also use 2 free templates from internet to make the UI for this sample. In this sample, I try to implementing the simple magazine website that managing all articles, categories and news. It is not finished at all in this time, but no problems, because I just show you about how can we make the controller skinny. And I wanna hear more about your ideas. The first thing, I am abstract the base ActionResult class like this:    public abstract class MyActionResult : ActionResult, IEnsureNotNull     {         public abstract void EnsureAllInjectInstanceNotNull();     }     public abstract class ActionResultBase<TController> : MyActionResult where TController : Controller     {         protected readonly Expression<Func<TController, ActionResult>> ViewNameExpression;         protected readonly IExConfigurationManager ConfigurationManager;         protected ActionResultBase (Expression<Func<TController, ActionResult>> expr)             : this(DependencyResolver.Current.GetService<IExConfigurationManager>(), expr)         {         }         protected ActionResultBase(             IExConfigurationManager configurationManager,             Expression<Func<TController, ActionResult>> expr)         {             Guard.ArgumentNotNull(expr, "ViewNameExpression");             Guard.ArgumentNotNull(configurationManager, "ConfigurationManager");             ViewNameExpression = expr;             ConfigurationManager = configurationManager;         }         protected ViewResult GetViewResult<TViewModel>(TViewModel viewModel)         {             var m = (MethodCallExpression)ViewNameExpression.Body;             if (m.Method.ReturnType != typeof(ActionResult))             {                 throw new ArgumentException("ControllerAction method '" + m.Method.Name + "' does not return type ActionResult");             }             var result = new ViewResult             {                 ViewName = m.Method.Name             };             result.ViewData.Model = viewModel;             return result;         }         public override void ExecuteResult(ControllerContext context)         {             EnsureAllInjectInstanceNotNull();         }     } I also have an interface for validation all inject objects. This interface make sure all inject objects that I inject using Autofac container are not null. The implementation of this as below public interface IEnsureNotNull     {         void EnsureAllInjectInstanceNotNull();     } Afterwards, I am just simple implementing the HomePageViewModelActionResult class like this public class HomePageViewModelActionResult<TController> : ActionResultBase<TController> where TController : Controller     {         #region variables & ctors         private readonly ICategoryRepository _categoryRepository;         private readonly IItemRepository _itemRepository;         private readonly int _numOfPage;         public HomePageViewModelActionResult(Expression<Func<TController, ActionResult>> viewNameExpression)             : this(viewNameExpression,                    DependencyResolver.Current.GetService<ICategoryRepository>(),                    DependencyResolver.Current.GetService<IItemRepository>())         {         }         public HomePageViewModelActionResult(             Expression<Func<TController, ActionResult>> viewNameExpression,             ICategoryRepository categoryRepository,             IItemRepository itemRepository)             : base(viewNameExpression)         {             _categoryRepository = categoryRepository;             _itemRepository = itemRepository;             _numOfPage = ConfigurationManager.GetAppConfigBy("NumOfPage").ToInteger();         }         #endregion         #region implementation         public override void ExecuteResult(ControllerContext context)         {             base.ExecuteResult(context);             var cats = _categoryRepository.GetCategories();             var mainViewModel = new HomePageViewModel();             var headerViewModel = new HeaderViewModel();             var footerViewModel = new FooterViewModel();             var mainPageViewModel = new MainPageViewModel();             headerViewModel.SiteTitle = "Magazine Website";             if (cats != null && cats.Any())             {                 headerViewModel.Categories = cats.ToList();                 footerViewModel.Categories = cats.ToList();             }             mainPageViewModel.LeftColumn = BindingDataForMainPageLeftColumnViewModel();             mainPageViewModel.RightColumn = BindingDataForMainPageRightColumnViewModel();             mainViewModel.Header = headerViewModel;             mainViewModel.DashBoard = new DashboardViewModel();             mainViewModel.Footer = footerViewModel;             mainViewModel.MainPage = mainPageViewModel;             GetViewResult(mainViewModel).ExecuteResult(context);         }         public override void EnsureAllInjectInstanceNotNull()         {             Guard.ArgumentNotNull(_categoryRepository, "CategoryRepository");             Guard.ArgumentNotNull(_itemRepository, "ItemRepository");             Guard.ArgumentMustMoreThanZero(_numOfPage, "NumOfPage");         }         #endregion         #region private functions         private MainPageRightColumnViewModel BindingDataForMainPageRightColumnViewModel()         {             var mainPageRightCol = new MainPageRightColumnViewModel();             mainPageRightCol.LatestNews = _itemRepository.GetNewestItem(_numOfPage).ToList();             mainPageRightCol.MostViews = _itemRepository.GetMostViews(_numOfPage).ToList();             return mainPageRightCol;         }         private MainPageLeftColumnViewModel BindingDataForMainPageLeftColumnViewModel()         {             var mainPageLeftCol = new MainPageLeftColumnViewModel();             var items = _itemRepository.GetNewestItem(_numOfPage);             if (items != null && items.Any())             {                 var firstItem = items.First();                 if (firstItem == null)                     throw new NoNullAllowedException("First Item".ToNotNullErrorMessage());                 if (firstItem.ItemContent == null)                     throw new NoNullAllowedException("First ItemContent".ToNotNullErrorMessage());                 mainPageLeftCol.FirstItem = firstItem;                 if (items.Count() > 1)                 {                     mainPageLeftCol.RemainItems = items.Where(x => x.ItemContent != null && x.Id != mainPageLeftCol.FirstItem.Id).ToList();                 }             }             return mainPageLeftCol;         }         #endregion     }  Final step, I get into HomeController and add some line of codes like this [Authorize]     public class HomeController : BaseController     {         [AllowAnonymous]         public ActionResult Index()         {             return new HomePageViewModelActionResult<HomeController>(x=>x.Index());         }         [AllowAnonymous]         public ActionResult Details(int id)         {             return new DetailsViewModelActionResult<HomeController>(x => x.Details(id), id);         }         [AllowAnonymous]         public ActionResult Category(int id)         {             return new CategoryViewModelActionResult<HomeController>(x => x.Category(id), id);         }     } As you see, the code in controller is really skinny, and all the logic I move to the custom ActionResult class. Some people said, it just move the code out of controller and put it to another class, so it is still hard to maintain. Look like it just move the complicate codes from one place to another place. But if you have a look and think it in details, you have to find out if you have code for processing all logic that related to HttpContext or something like this. You can do it on Controller, and try to delegating another logic  (such as processing business requirement, persistence data,...) to custom ActionResult class. Tell me more your thinking, I am really willing to hear all of its from you guys. All source codes can be find out at here. 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="http://weblogs.asp.net//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs");

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  • Scaling-out Your Services by Message Bus based WCF Transport Extension &ndash; Part 1 &ndash; Background

    - by Shaun
    Cloud computing gives us more flexibility on the computing resource, we can provision and deploy an application or service with multiple instances over multiple machines. With the increment of the service instances, how to balance the incoming message and workload would become a new challenge. Currently there are two approaches we can use to pass the incoming messages to the service instances, I would like call them dispatcher mode and pulling mode.   Dispatcher Mode The dispatcher mode introduces a role which takes the responsible to find the best service instance to process the request. The image below describes the sharp of this mode. There are four clients communicate with the service through the underlying transportation. For example, if we are using HTTP the clients might be connecting to the same service URL. On the server side there’s a dispatcher listening on this URL and try to retrieve all messages. When a message came in, the dispatcher will find a proper service instance to process it. There are three mechanism to find the instance: Round-robin: Dispatcher will always send the message to the next instance. For example, if the dispatcher sent the message to instance 2, then the next message will be sent to instance 3, regardless if instance 3 is busy or not at that moment. Random: Dispatcher will find a service instance randomly, and same as the round-robin mode it regardless if the instance is busy or not. Sticky: Dispatcher will send all related messages to the same service instance. This approach always being used if the service methods are state-ful or session-ful. But as you can see, all of these approaches are not really load balanced. The clients will send messages at any time, and each message might take different process duration on the server side. This means in some cases, some of the service instances are very busy while others are almost idle. For example, if we were using round-robin mode, it could be happened that most of the simple task messages were passed to instance 1 while the complex ones were sent to instance 3, even though instance 1 should be idle. This brings some problem in our architecture. The first one is that, the response to the clients might be longer than it should be. As it’s shown in the figure above, message 6 and 9 can be processed by instance 1 or instance 2, but in reality they were dispatched to the busy instance 3 since the dispatcher and round-robin mode. Secondly, if there are many requests came from the clients in a very short period, service instances might be filled by tons of pending tasks and some instances might be crashed. Third, if we are using some cloud platform to host our service instances, for example the Windows Azure, the computing resource is billed by service deployment period instead of the actual CPU usage. This means if any service instance is idle it is wasting our money! Last one, the dispatcher would be the bottleneck of our system since all incoming messages must be routed by the dispatcher. If we are using HTTP or TCP as the transport, the dispatcher would be a network load balance. If we wants more capacity, we have to scale-up, or buy a hardware load balance which is very expensive, as well as scaling-out the service instances. Pulling Mode Pulling mode doesn’t need a dispatcher to route the messages. All service instances are listening to the same transport and try to retrieve the next proper message to process if they are idle. Since there is no dispatcher in pulling mode, it requires some features on the transportation. The transportation must support multiple client connection and server listening. HTTP and TCP doesn’t allow multiple clients are listening on the same address and port, so it cannot be used in pulling mode directly. All messages in the transportation must be FIFO, which means the old message must be received before the new one. Message selection would be a plus on the transportation. This means both service and client can specify some selection criteria and just receive some specified kinds of messages. This feature is not mandatory but would be very useful when implementing the request reply and duplex WCF channel modes. Otherwise we must have a memory dictionary to store the reply messages. I will explain more about this in the following articles. Message bus, or the message queue would be best candidate as the transportation when using the pulling mode. First, it allows multiple application to listen on the same queue, and it’s FIFO. Some of the message bus also support the message selection, such as TIBCO EMS, RabbitMQ. Some others provide in memory dictionary which can store the reply messages, for example the Redis. The principle of pulling mode is to let the service instances self-managed. This means each instance will try to retrieve the next pending incoming message if they finished the current task. This gives us more benefit and can solve the problems we met with in the dispatcher mode. The incoming message will be received to the best instance to process, which means this will be very balanced. And it will not happen that some instances are busy while other are idle, since the idle one will retrieve more tasks to make them busy. Since all instances are try their best to be busy we can use less instances than dispatcher mode, which more cost effective. Since there’s no dispatcher in the system, there is no bottleneck. When we introduced more service instances, in dispatcher mode we have to change something to let the dispatcher know the new instances. But in pulling mode since all service instance are self-managed, there no extra change at all. If there are many incoming messages, since the message bus can queue them in the transportation, service instances would not be crashed. All above are the benefits using the pulling mode, but it will introduce some problem as well. The process tracking and debugging become more difficult. Since the service instances are self-managed, we cannot know which instance will process the message. So we need more information to support debug and track. Real-time response may not be supported. All service instances will process the next message after the current one has done, if we have some real-time request this may not be a good solution. Compare with the Pros and Cons above, the pulling mode would a better solution for the distributed system architecture. Because what we need more is the scalability, cost-effect and the self-management.   WCF and WCF Transport Extensibility Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) is a framework for building service-oriented applications. In the .NET world WCF is the best way to implement the service. In this series I’m going to demonstrate how to implement the pulling mode on top of a message bus by extending the WCF. I don’t want to deep into every related field in WCF but will highlight its transport extensibility. When we implemented an RPC foundation there are many aspects we need to deal with, for example the message encoding, encryption, authentication and message sending and receiving. In WCF, each aspect is represented by a channel. A message will be passed through all necessary channels and finally send to the underlying transportation. And on the other side the message will be received from the transport and though the same channels until the business logic. This mode is called “Channel Stack” in WCF, and the last channel in the channel stack must always be a transport channel, which takes the responsible for sending and receiving the messages. As we are going to implement the WCF over message bus and implement the pulling mode scaling-out solution, we need to create our own transport channel so that the client and service can exchange messages over our bus. Before we deep into the transport channel, let’s have a look on the message exchange patterns that WCF defines. Message exchange pattern (MEP) defines how client and service exchange the messages over the transportation. WCF defines 3 basic MEPs which are datagram, Request-Reply and Duplex. Datagram: Also known as one-way, or fire-forgot mode. The message sent from the client to the service, and no need any reply from the service. The client doesn’t care about the message result at all. Request-Reply: Very common used pattern. The client send the request message to the service and wait until the reply message comes from the service. Duplex: The client sent message to the service, when the service processing the message it can callback to the client. When callback the service would be like a client while the client would be like a service. In WCF, each MEP represent some channels associated. MEP Channels Datagram IInputChannel, IOutputChannel Request-Reply IRequestChannel, IReplyChannel Duplex IDuplexChannel And the channels are created by ChannelListener on the server side, and ChannelFactory on the client side. The ChannelListener and ChannelFactory are created by the TransportBindingElement. The TransportBindingElement is created by the Binding, which can be defined as a new binding or from a custom binding. For more information about the transport channel mode, please refer to the MSDN document. The figure below shows the transport channel objects when using the request-reply MEP. And this is the datagram MEP. And this is the duplex MEP. After investigated the WCF transport architecture, channel mode and MEP, we finally identified what we should do to extend our message bus based transport layer. They are: Binding: (Optional) Defines the channel elements in the channel stack and added our transport binding element at the bottom of the stack. But we can use the build-in CustomBinding as well. TransportBindingElement: Defines which MEP is supported in our transport and create the related ChannelListener and ChannelFactory. This also defines the scheme of the endpoint if using this transport. ChannelListener: Create the server side channel based on the MEP it’s. We can have one ChannelListener to create channels for all supported MEPs, or we can have ChannelListener for each MEP. In this series I will use the second approach. ChannelFactory: Create the client side channel based on the MEP it’s. We can have one ChannelFactory to create channels for all supported MEPs, or we can have ChannelFactory for each MEP. In this series I will use the second approach. Channels: Based on the MEPs we want to support, we need to implement the channels accordingly. For example, if we want our transport support Request-Reply mode we should implement IRequestChannel and IReplyChannel. In this series I will implement all 3 MEPs listed above one by one. Scaffold: In order to make our transport extension works we also need to implement some scaffold stuff. For example we need some classes to send and receive message though out message bus. We also need some codes to read and write the WCF message, etc.. These are not necessary but would be very useful in our example.   Message Bus There is only one thing remained before we can begin to implement our scaling-out support WCF transport, which is the message bus. As I mentioned above, the message bus must have some features to fulfill all the WCF MEPs. In my company we will be using TIBCO EMS, which is an enterprise message bus product. And I have said before we can use any message bus production if it’s satisfied with our requests. Here I would like to introduce an interface to separate the message bus from the WCF. This allows us to implement the bus operations by any kinds bus we are going to use. The interface would be like this. 1: public interface IBus : IDisposable 2: { 3: string SendRequest(string message, bool fromClient, string from, string to = null); 4:  5: void SendReply(string message, bool fromClient, string replyTo); 6:  7: BusMessage Receive(bool fromClient, string replyTo); 8: } There are only three methods for the bus interface. Let me explain one by one. The SendRequest method takes the responsible for sending the request message into the bus. The parameters description are: message: The WCF message content. fromClient: Indicates if this message was came from the client. from: The channel ID that this message was sent from. The channel ID will be generated when any kinds of channel was created, which will be explained in the following articles. to: The channel ID that this message should be received. In Request-Reply and Duplex MEP this is necessary since the reply message must be received by the channel which sent the related request message. The SendReply method takes the responsible for sending the reply message. It’s very similar as the previous one but no “from” parameter. This is because it’s no need to reply a reply message again in any MEPs. The Receive method takes the responsible for waiting for a incoming message, includes the request message and specified reply message. It returned a BusMessage object, which contains some information about the channel information. The code of the BusMessage class is 1: public class BusMessage 2: { 3: public string MessageID { get; private set; } 4: public string From { get; private set; } 5: public string ReplyTo { get; private set; } 6: public string Content { get; private set; } 7:  8: public BusMessage(string messageId, string fromChannelId, string replyToChannelId, string content) 9: { 10: MessageID = messageId; 11: From = fromChannelId; 12: ReplyTo = replyToChannelId; 13: Content = content; 14: } 15: } Now let’s implement a message bus based on the IBus interface. Since I don’t want you to buy and install the TIBCO EMS or any other message bus products, I will implement an in process memory bus. This bus is only for test and sample purpose. It can only be used if the service and client are in the same process. Very straightforward. 1: public class InProcMessageBus : IBus 2: { 3: private readonly ConcurrentDictionary<Guid, InProcMessageEntity> _queue; 4: private readonly object _lock; 5:  6: public InProcMessageBus() 7: { 8: _queue = new ConcurrentDictionary<Guid, InProcMessageEntity>(); 9: _lock = new object(); 10: } 11:  12: public string SendRequest(string message, bool fromClient, string from, string to = null) 13: { 14: var entity = new InProcMessageEntity(message, fromClient, from, to); 15: _queue.TryAdd(entity.ID, entity); 16: return entity.ID.ToString(); 17: } 18:  19: public void SendReply(string message, bool fromClient, string replyTo) 20: { 21: var entity = new InProcMessageEntity(message, fromClient, null, replyTo); 22: _queue.TryAdd(entity.ID, entity); 23: } 24:  25: public BusMessage Receive(bool fromClient, string replyTo) 26: { 27: InProcMessageEntity e = null; 28: while (true) 29: { 30: lock (_lock) 31: { 32: var entity = _queue 33: .Where(kvp => kvp.Value.FromClient == fromClient && (kvp.Value.To == replyTo || string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(kvp.Value.To))) 34: .FirstOrDefault(); 35: if (entity.Key != Guid.Empty && entity.Value != null) 36: { 37: _queue.TryRemove(entity.Key, out e); 38: } 39: } 40: if (e == null) 41: { 42: Thread.Sleep(100); 43: } 44: else 45: { 46: return new BusMessage(e.ID.ToString(), e.From, e.To, e.Content); 47: } 48: } 49: } 50:  51: public void Dispose() 52: { 53: } 54: } The InProcMessageBus stores the messages in the objects of InProcMessageEntity, which can take some extra information beside the WCF message itself. 1: public class InProcMessageEntity 2: { 3: public Guid ID { get; set; } 4: public string Content { get; set; } 5: public bool FromClient { get; set; } 6: public string From { get; set; } 7: public string To { get; set; } 8:  9: public InProcMessageEntity() 10: : this(string.Empty, false, string.Empty, string.Empty) 11: { 12: } 13:  14: public InProcMessageEntity(string content, bool fromClient, string from, string to) 15: { 16: ID = Guid.NewGuid(); 17: Content = content; 18: FromClient = fromClient; 19: From = from; 20: To = to; 21: } 22: }   Summary OK, now I have all necessary stuff ready. The next step would be implementing our WCF message bus transport extension. In this post I described two scaling-out approaches on the service side especially if we are using the cloud platform: dispatcher mode and pulling mode. And I compared the Pros and Cons of them. Then I introduced the WCF channel stack, channel mode and the transport extension part, and identified what we should do to create our own WCF transport extension, to let our WCF services using pulling mode based on a message bus. And finally I provided some classes that need to be used in the future posts that working against an in process memory message bus, for the demonstration purpose only. In the next post I will begin to implement the transport extension step by step.   Hope this helps, Shaun All documents and related graphics, codes are provided "AS IS" without warranty of any kind. Copyright © Shaun Ziyan Xu. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons License.

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  • Unity – Part 5: Injecting Values

    - by Ricardo Peres
    Introduction This is the fifth post on Unity. You can find the introductory post here, the second post, on dependency injection here, a third one on Aspect Oriented Programming (AOP) here and the latest so far, on writing custom extensions, here. This time we will talk about injecting simple values. An Inversion of Control (IoC) / Dependency Injector (DI) container like Unity can be used for things other than injecting complex class dependencies. It can also be used for setting property values or method/constructor parameters whenever a class is built. The main difference is that these values do not have a lifetime manager associated with them and do not come from the regular IoC registration store. Unlike, for instance, MEF, Unity won’t let you register as a dependency a string or an integer, so you have to take a different approach, which I will describe in this post. Scenario Let’s imagine we have a base interface that describes a logger – the same as in previous examples: 1: public interface ILogger 2: { 3: void Log(String message); 4: } And a concrete implementation that writes to a file: 1: public class FileLogger : ILogger 2: { 3: public String Filename 4: { 5: get; 6: set; 7: } 8:  9: #region ILogger Members 10:  11: public void Log(String message) 12: { 13: using (Stream file = File.OpenWrite(this.Filename)) 14: { 15: Byte[] data = Encoding.Default.GetBytes(message); 16: 17: file.Write(data, 0, data.Length); 18: } 19: } 20:  21: #endregion 22: } And let’s say we want the Filename property to come from the application settings (appSettings) section on the Web/App.config file. As usual with Unity, there is an extensibility point that allows us to automatically do this, both with code configuration or statically on the configuration file. Extending Injection We start by implementing a class that will retrieve a value from the appSettings by inheriting from ValueElement: 1: sealed class AppSettingsParameterValueElement : ValueElement, IDependencyResolverPolicy 2: { 3: #region Private methods 4: private Object CreateInstance(Type parameterType) 5: { 6: Object configurationValue = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings[this.AppSettingsKey]; 7:  8: if (parameterType != typeof(String)) 9: { 10: TypeConverter typeConverter = this.GetTypeConverter(parameterType); 11:  12: configurationValue = typeConverter.ConvertFromInvariantString(configurationValue as String); 13: } 14:  15: return (configurationValue); 16: } 17: #endregion 18:  19: #region Private methods 20: private TypeConverter GetTypeConverter(Type parameterType) 21: { 22: if (String.IsNullOrEmpty(this.TypeConverterTypeName) == false) 23: { 24: return (Activator.CreateInstance(TypeResolver.ResolveType(this.TypeConverterTypeName)) as TypeConverter); 25: } 26: else 27: { 28: return (TypeDescriptor.GetConverter(parameterType)); 29: } 30: } 31: #endregion 32:  33: #region Public override methods 34: public override InjectionParameterValue GetInjectionParameterValue(IUnityContainer container, Type parameterType) 35: { 36: Object value = this.CreateInstance(parameterType); 37: return (new InjectionParameter(parameterType, value)); 38: } 39: #endregion 40:  41: #region IDependencyResolverPolicy Members 42:  43: public Object Resolve(IBuilderContext context) 44: { 45: Type parameterType = null; 46:  47: if (context.CurrentOperation is ResolvingPropertyValueOperation) 48: { 49: ResolvingPropertyValueOperation op = (context.CurrentOperation as ResolvingPropertyValueOperation); 50: PropertyInfo prop = op.TypeBeingConstructed.GetProperty(op.PropertyName); 51: parameterType = prop.PropertyType; 52: } 53: else if (context.CurrentOperation is ConstructorArgumentResolveOperation) 54: { 55: ConstructorArgumentResolveOperation op = (context.CurrentOperation as ConstructorArgumentResolveOperation); 56: String args = op.ConstructorSignature.Split('(')[1].Split(')')[0]; 57: Type[] types = args.Split(',').Select(a => Type.GetType(a.Split(' ')[0])).ToArray(); 58: ConstructorInfo ctor = op.TypeBeingConstructed.GetConstructor(types); 59: parameterType = ctor.GetParameters().Where(p => p.Name == op.ParameterName).Single().ParameterType; 60: } 61: else if (context.CurrentOperation is MethodArgumentResolveOperation) 62: { 63: MethodArgumentResolveOperation op = (context.CurrentOperation as MethodArgumentResolveOperation); 64: String methodName = op.MethodSignature.Split('(')[0].Split(' ')[1]; 65: String args = op.MethodSignature.Split('(')[1].Split(')')[0]; 66: Type[] types = args.Split(',').Select(a => Type.GetType(a.Split(' ')[0])).ToArray(); 67: MethodInfo method = op.TypeBeingConstructed.GetMethod(methodName, types); 68: parameterType = method.GetParameters().Where(p => p.Name == op.ParameterName).Single().ParameterType; 69: } 70:  71: return (this.CreateInstance(parameterType)); 72: } 73:  74: #endregion 75:  76: #region Public properties 77: [ConfigurationProperty("appSettingsKey", IsRequired = true)] 78: public String AppSettingsKey 79: { 80: get 81: { 82: return ((String)base["appSettingsKey"]); 83: } 84:  85: set 86: { 87: base["appSettingsKey"] = value; 88: } 89: } 90: #endregion 91: } As you can see from the implementation of the IDependencyResolverPolicy.Resolve method, this will work in three different scenarios: When it is applied to a property; When it is applied to a constructor parameter; When it is applied to an initialization method. The implementation will even try to convert the value to its declared destination, for example, if the destination property is an Int32, it will try to convert the appSettings stored string to an Int32. Injection By Configuration If we want to configure injection by configuration, we need to implement a custom section extension by inheriting from SectionExtension, and registering our custom element with the name “appSettings”: 1: sealed class AppSettingsParameterInjectionElementExtension : SectionExtension 2: { 3: public override void AddExtensions(SectionExtensionContext context) 4: { 5: context.AddElement<AppSettingsParameterValueElement>("appSettings"); 6: } 7: } And on the configuration file, for setting a property, we use it like this: 1: <appSettings> 2: <add key="LoggerFilename" value="Log.txt"/> 3: </appSettings> 4: <unity xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/practices/2010/unity"> 5: <container> 6: <register type="MyNamespace.ILogger, MyAssembly" mapTo="MyNamespace.ConsoleLogger, MyAssembly"/> 7: <register type="MyNamespace.ILogger, MyAssembly" mapTo="MyNamespace.FileLogger, MyAssembly" name="File"> 8: <lifetime type="singleton"/> 9: <property name="Filename"> 10: <appSettings appSettingsKey="LoggerFilename"/> 11: </property> 12: </register> 13: </container> 14: </unity> If we would like to inject the value as a constructor parameter, it would be instead: 1: <unity xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/practices/2010/unity"> 2: <sectionExtension type="MyNamespace.AppSettingsParameterInjectionElementExtension, MyAssembly" /> 3: <container> 4: <register type="MyNamespace.ILogger, MyAssembly" mapTo="MyNamespace.ConsoleLogger, MyAssembly"/> 5: <register type="MyNamespace.ILogger, MyAssembly" mapTo="MyNamespace.FileLogger, MyAssembly" name="File"> 6: <lifetime type="singleton"/> 7: <constructor> 8: <param name="filename" type="System.String"> 9: <appSettings appSettingsKey="LoggerFilename"/> 10: </param> 11: </constructor> 12: </register> 13: </container> 14: </unity> Notice the appSettings section, where we add a LoggerFilename entry, which is the same as the one referred by our AppSettingsParameterInjectionElementExtension extension. For more advanced behavior, you can add a TypeConverterName attribute to the appSettings declaration, where you can pass an assembly qualified name of a class that inherits from TypeConverter. This class will be responsible for converting the appSettings value to a destination type. Injection By Attribute If we would like to use attributes instead, we need to create a custom attribute by inheriting from DependencyResolutionAttribute: 1: [Serializable] 2: [AttributeUsage(AttributeTargets.Parameter | AttributeTargets.Property, AllowMultiple = false, Inherited = true)] 3: public sealed class AppSettingsDependencyResolutionAttribute : DependencyResolutionAttribute 4: { 5: public AppSettingsDependencyResolutionAttribute(String appSettingsKey) 6: { 7: this.AppSettingsKey = appSettingsKey; 8: } 9:  10: public String TypeConverterTypeName 11: { 12: get; 13: set; 14: } 15:  16: public String AppSettingsKey 17: { 18: get; 19: private set; 20: } 21:  22: public override IDependencyResolverPolicy CreateResolver(Type typeToResolve) 23: { 24: return (new AppSettingsParameterValueElement() { AppSettingsKey = this.AppSettingsKey, TypeConverterTypeName = this.TypeConverterTypeName }); 25: } 26: } As for file configuration, there is a mandatory property for setting the appSettings key and an optional TypeConverterName  for setting the name of a TypeConverter. Both the custom attribute and the custom section return an instance of the injector AppSettingsParameterValueElement that we implemented in the first place. Now, the attribute needs to be placed before the injected class’ Filename property: 1: public class FileLogger : ILogger 2: { 3: [AppSettingsDependencyResolution("LoggerFilename")] 4: public String Filename 5: { 6: get; 7: set; 8: } 9:  10: #region ILogger Members 11:  12: public void Log(String message) 13: { 14: using (Stream file = File.OpenWrite(this.Filename)) 15: { 16: Byte[] data = Encoding.Default.GetBytes(message); 17: 18: file.Write(data, 0, data.Length); 19: } 20: } 21:  22: #endregion 23: } Or, if we wanted to use constructor injection: 1: public class FileLogger : ILogger 2: { 3: public String Filename 4: { 5: get; 6: set; 7: } 8:  9: public FileLogger([AppSettingsDependencyResolution("LoggerFilename")] String filename) 10: { 11: this.Filename = filename; 12: } 13:  14: #region ILogger Members 15:  16: public void Log(String message) 17: { 18: using (Stream file = File.OpenWrite(this.Filename)) 19: { 20: Byte[] data = Encoding.Default.GetBytes(message); 21: 22: file.Write(data, 0, data.Length); 23: } 24: } 25:  26: #endregion 27: } Usage Just do: 1: ILogger logger = ServiceLocator.Current.GetInstance<ILogger>("File"); And off you go! A simple way do avoid hardcoded values in component registrations. Of course, this same concept can be applied to registry keys, environment values, XML attributes, etc, etc, just change the implementation of the AppSettingsParameterValueElement class. Next stop: custom lifetime managers.

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  • Delegate performance of Roslyn Sept 2012 CTP is impressive

    - by dotneteer
    I wanted to dynamically compile some delegates using Roslyn. I came across this article by Piotr Sowa. The article shows that the delegate compiled with Roslyn CTP was not very fast. Since the article was written using the Roslyn June 2012, I decided to give Sept 2012 CTP a try. There are significant changes in Roslyn Sept 2012 CTP in both C# syntax supported as well as API. I found Anoop Madhisidanan’s article that has an example of the new API. With that, I was able to put together a comparison. In my test, the Roslyn compiled delegate is as fast as C# (VS 2012) compiled delegate. See the source code below and give it a try. using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Text; using System.Diagnostics; using Roslyn.Compilers; using Roslyn.Scripting.CSharp; using Roslyn.Scripting; namespace RoslynTest { class Program { public Func del; static void Main(string[] args) { Stopwatch stopWatch = new Stopwatch(); Program p = new Program(); p.SetupDel(); //Comment out this line and uncomment the next line to compare //p.SetupScript(); stopWatch.Start(); int result = DoWork(p.del); stopWatch.Stop(); Console.WriteLine(result); Console.WriteLine("Time elapsed {0}", stopWatch.ElapsedMilliseconds); Console.Read(); } private void SetupDel() { del = (s, i) => ++s; } private void SetupScript() { //Create the script engine //Script engine constructor parameters go changed var engine=new ScriptEngine(); //Let us use engine's Addreference for adding the required //assemblies new[] { typeof (Console).Assembly, typeof (Program).Assembly, typeof (IEnumerable<>).Assembly, typeof (IQueryable).Assembly }.ToList().ForEach(asm => engine.AddReference(asm)); new[] { "System", "System.Linq", "System.Collections", "System.Collections.Generic" }.ToList().ForEach(ns=>engine.ImportNamespace(ns)); //Now, you need to create a session using engine's CreateSession method, //which can be seeded with a host object var session = engine.CreateSession(); var submission = session.CompileSubmission>("new Func((s, i) => ++s)"); del = submission.Execute(); //- See more at: http://www.amazedsaint.com/2012/09/roslyn-september-ctp-2012-overview-api.html#sthash.1VutrWiW.dpuf } private static int DoWork(Func del) { int result = Enumerable.Range(1, 1000000).Aggregate(del); return result; } } }  Since Roslyn Sept 2012 CTP is already over a year old, I cannot wait to see a new version coming out.

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  • Adding an Admin user to an ASP.NET MVC 4 application using a single drop-in file

    - by Jon Galloway
    I'm working on an ASP.NET MVC 4 tutorial and wanted to set it up so just dropping a file in App_Start would create a user named "Owner" and assign them to the "Administrator" role (more explanation at the end if you're interested). There are reasons why this wouldn't fit into most application scenarios: It's not efficient, as it checks for (and creates, if necessary) the user every time the app starts up The username, password, and role name are hardcoded in the app (although they could be pulled from config) Automatically creating an administrative account in code (without user interaction) could lead to obvious security issues if the user isn't informed However, with some modifications it might be more broadly useful - e.g. creating a test user with limited privileges, ensuring a required account isn't accidentally deleted, or - as in my case - setting up an account for demonstration or tutorial purposes. Challenge #1: Running on startup without requiring the user to install or configure anything I wanted to see if this could be done just by having the user drop a file into the App_Start folder and go. No copying code into Global.asax.cs, no installing addition NuGet packages, etc. That may not be the best approach - perhaps a NuGet package with a dependency on WebActivator would be better - but I wanted to see if this was possible and see if it offered the best experience. Fortunately ASP.NET 4 and later provide a PreApplicationStartMethod attribute which allows you to register a method which will run when the application starts up. You drop this attribute in your application and give it two parameters: a method name and the type that contains it. I created a static class named PreApplicationTasks with a static method named, then dropped this attribute in it: [assembly: PreApplicationStartMethod(typeof(PreApplicationTasks), "Initializer")] That's it. One small gotcha: the namespace can be a problem with assembly attributes. I decided my class didn't need a namespace. Challenge #2: Only one PreApplicationStartMethod per assembly In .NET 4, the PreApplicationStartMethod is marked as AllMultiple=false, so you can only have one PreApplicationStartMethod per assembly. This was fixed in .NET 4.5, as noted by Jon Skeet, so you can have as many PreApplicationStartMethods as you want (allowing you to keep your users waiting for the application to start indefinitely!). The WebActivator NuGet package solves the multiple instance problem if you're in .NET 4 - it registers as a PreApplicationStartMethod, then calls any methods you've indicated using [assembly: WebActivator.PreApplicationStartMethod(type, method)]. David Ebbo blogged about that here:  Light up your NuGets with startup code and WebActivator. In my scenario (bootstrapping a beginner level tutorial) I decided not to worry about this and stick with PreApplicationStartMethod. Challenge #3: PreApplicationStartMethod kicks in before configuration has been read This is by design, as Phil explains. It allows you to make changes that need to happen very early in the pipeline, well before Application_Start. That's fine in some cases, but it caused me problems when trying to add users, since the Membership Provider configuration hadn't yet been read - I got an exception stating that "Default Membership Provider could not be found." The solution here is to run code that requires configuration in a PostApplicationStart method. But how to do that? Challenge #4: Getting PostApplicationStartMethod without requiring WebActivator The WebActivator NuGet package, among other things, provides a PostApplicationStartMethod attribute. That's generally how I'd recommend running code that needs to happen after Application_Start: [assembly: WebActivator.PostApplicationStartMethod(typeof(TestLibrary.MyStartupCode), "CallMeAfterAppStart")] This works well, but I wanted to see if this would be possible without WebActivator. Hmm. Well, wait a minute - WebActivator works in .NET 4, so clearly it's registering and calling PostApplicationStartup tasks somehow. Off to the source code! Sure enough, there's even a handy comment in ActivationManager.cs which shows where PostApplicationStartup tasks are being registered: public static void Run() { if (!_hasInited) { RunPreStartMethods(); // Register our module to handle any Post Start methods. But outside of ASP.NET, just run them now if (HostingEnvironment.IsHosted) { Microsoft.Web.Infrastructure.DynamicModuleHelper.DynamicModuleUtility.RegisterModule(typeof(StartMethodCallingModule)); } else { RunPostStartMethods(); } _hasInited = true; } } Excellent. Hey, that DynamicModuleUtility seems familiar... Sure enough, K. Scott Allen mentioned it on his blog last year. This is really slick - a PreApplicationStartMethod can register a new HttpModule in code. Modules are run right after application startup, so that's a perfect time to do any startup stuff that requires configuration to be read. As K. Scott says, it's this easy: using System; using System.Web; using Microsoft.Web.Infrastructure.DynamicModuleHelper; [assembly:PreApplicationStartMethod(typeof(MyAppStart), "Start")] public class CoolModule : IHttpModule { // implementation not important // imagine something cool here } public static class MyAppStart { public static void Start() { DynamicModuleUtility.RegisterModule(typeof(CoolModule)); } } Challenge #5: Cooperating with SimpleMembership The ASP.NET MVC Internet template includes SimpleMembership. SimpleMembership is a big improvement over traditional ASP.NET Membership. For one thing, rather than forcing a database schema, it can work with your database schema. In the MVC 4 Internet template case, it uses Entity Framework Code First to define the user model. SimpleMembership bootstrap includes a call to InitializeDatabaseConnection, and I want to play nice with that. There's a new [InitializeSimpleMembership] attribute on the AccountController, which calls \Filters\InitializeSimpleMembershipAttribute.cs::OnActionExecuting(). That comment in that method that says "Ensure ASP.NET Simple Membership is initialized only once per app start" which sounds like good advice. I figured the best thing would be to call that directly: new Mvc4SampleApplication.Filters.InitializeSimpleMembershipAttribute().OnActionExecuting(null); I'm not 100% happy with this - in fact, it's my least favorite part of this solution. There are two problems - first, directly calling a method on a filter, while legal, seems odd. Worse, though, the Filter lives in the application's namespace, which means that this code no longer works well as a generic drop-in. The simplest workaround would be to duplicate the relevant SimpleMembership initialization code into my startup code, but I'd rather not. I'm interested in your suggestions here. Challenge #6: Module Init methods are called more than once When debugging, I noticed (and remembered) that the Init method may be called more than once per page request - it's run once per instance in the app pool, and an individual page request can cause multiple resource requests to the server. While SimpleMembership does have internal checks to prevent duplicate user or role entries, I'd rather not cause or handle those exceptions. So here's the standard single-use lock in the Module's init method: void IHttpModule.Init(HttpApplication context) { lock (lockObject) { if (!initialized) { //Do stuff } initialized = true; } } Putting it all together With all of that out of the way, here's the code I came up with: using Mvc4SampleApplication.Filters; using System.Web; using System.Web.Security; using WebMatrix.WebData; [assembly: PreApplicationStartMethod(typeof(PreApplicationTasks), "Initializer")] public static class PreApplicationTasks { public static void Initializer() { Microsoft.Web.Infrastructure.DynamicModuleHelper.DynamicModuleUtility .RegisterModule(typeof(UserInitializationModule)); } } public class UserInitializationModule : IHttpModule { private static bool initialized; private static object lockObject = new object(); private const string _username = "Owner"; private const string _password = "p@ssword123"; private const string _role = "Administrator"; void IHttpModule.Init(HttpApplication context) { lock (lockObject) { if (!initialized) { new InitializeSimpleMembershipAttribute().OnActionExecuting(null); if (!WebSecurity.UserExists(_username)) WebSecurity.CreateUserAndAccount(_username, _password); if (!Roles.RoleExists(_role)) Roles.CreateRole(_role); if (!Roles.IsUserInRole(_username, _role)) Roles.AddUserToRole(_username, _role); } initialized = true; } } void IHttpModule.Dispose() { } } The Verdict: Is this a good thing? Maybe. I think you'll agree that the journey was undoubtedly worthwhile, as it took us through some of the finer points of hooking into application startup, integrating with membership, and understanding why the WebActivator NuGet package is so useful Will I use this in the tutorial? I'm leaning towards no - I think a NuGet package with a dependency on WebActivator might work better: It's a little more clear what's going on Installing a NuGet package might be a little less error prone than copying a file A novice user could uninstall the package when complete It's a good introduction to NuGet, which is a good thing for beginners to see This code either requires either duplicating a little code from that filter or modifying the file to use the namespace Honestly I'm undecided at this point, but I'm glad that I can weigh the options. If you're interested: Why are you doing this? I'm updating the MVC Music Store tutorial to ASP.NET MVC 4, taking advantage of a lot of new ASP.NET MVC 4 features and trying to simplify areas that are giving people trouble. One change that addresses both needs us using the new OAuth support for membership as much as possible - it's a great new feature from an application perspective, and we get a fair amount of beginners struggling with setting up membership on a variety of database and development setups, which is a distraction from the focus of the tutorial - learning ASP.NET MVC. Side note: Thanks to some great help from Rick Anderson, we had a draft of the tutorial that was looking pretty good earlier this summer, but there were enough changes in ASP.NET MVC 4 all the way up to RTM that there's still some work to be done. It's high priority and should be out very soon. The one issue I ran into with OAuth is that we still need an Administrative user who can edit the store's inventory. I thought about a number of solutions for that - making the first user to register the admin, or the first user to use the username "Administrator" is assigned to the Administrator role - but they both ended up requiring extra code; also, I worried that people would use that code without understanding it or thinking about whether it was a good fit.

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  • Salt and hash a password in .NET

    - by Jon Canning
    I endeavoured to follow the CrackStation rules: Salted Password Hashing - Doing it Right    public class SaltedHash     {         public string Hash { get; private set; }         public string Salt { get; private set; }         public SaltedHash(string password)         {             var saltBytes = new byte[32];             new RNGCryptoServiceProvider().GetNonZeroBytes(saltBytes);             Salt = ConvertToBase64String(saltBytes);             var passwordAndSaltBytes = Concat(password, saltBytes);             Hash = ComputeHash(passwordAndSaltBytes);         }         static string ConvertToBase64String(byte[] bytes)         {             return Convert.ToBase64String(bytes);         }         static string ComputeHash(byte[] bytes)         {             return ConvertToBase64String(SHA256.Create().ComputeHash(bytes));         }         static byte[] Concat(string password, byte[] saltBytes)         {             var passwordBytes = Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(password);             return passwordBytes.Concat(saltBytes).ToArray();         }         public static bool Verify(string salt, string hash, string password)         {             var saltBytes = Convert.FromBase64String(salt);             var passwordAndSaltBytes = Concat(password, saltBytes);             var hashAttempt = ComputeHash(passwordAndSaltBytes);             return hash == hashAttempt;         }     }

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  • Why is String Templating Better Than String Concatenation from an Engineering Perspective?

    - by stephen
    I once read (I think it was in "Programming Pearls") that one should use templates instead of building the string through the use of concatenation. For example, consider the template below (using C# razor library) <in a properties file> Browser Capabilities Type = @Model.Type Name = @Model.Browser Version = @Model.Version Supports Frames = @Model.Frames Supports Tables = @Model.Tables Supports Cookies = @Model.Cookies Supports VBScript = @Model.VBScript Supports Java Applets = @Model.JavaApplets Supports ActiveX Controls = @Model.ActiveXControls and later, in a separate code file private void Button1_Click(object sender, System.EventArgs e) { BrowserInfoTemplate = Properties.Resources.browserInfoTemplate; // see above string browserInfo = RazorEngine.Razor.Parse(BrowserInfoTemplate, browser); ... } From a software engineering perspective, how is this better than an equivalent string concatentation, like below: private void Button1_Click(object sender, System.EventArgs e) { System.Web.HttpBrowserCapabilities browser = Request.Browser; string s = "Browser Capabilities\n" + "Type = " + browser.Type + "\n" + "Name = " + browser.Browser + "\n" + "Version = " + browser.Version + "\n" + "Supports Frames = " + browser.Frames + "\n" + "Supports Tables = " + browser.Tables + "\n" + "Supports Cookies = " + browser.Cookies + "\n" + "Supports VBScript = " + browser.VBScript + "\n" + "Supports JavaScript = " + browser.EcmaScriptVersion.ToString() + "\n" + "Supports Java Applets = " + browser.JavaApplets + "\n" + "Supports ActiveX Controls = " + browser.ActiveXControls + "\n" ... }

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  • Graphics module: Am I going the right way?

    - by Paul
    I'm trying to write the graphics module of my engine. That is, this part of the code only provides an interface through which to load images, fonts, etc and draw them on the screen. It is also a wrapper for the library I'm using (SDL in this case). Here are the interfaces for my Image, Font and GraphicsRenderer classes. Please tell me if I'm going the right way. Image class Image { public: Image(); Image(const Image& other); Image(const char* file); ~Image(); bool load(const char* file); void free(); bool isLoaded() const; Image& operator=(const Image& other); private: friend class GraphicsRenderer; void* data_; }; Font class Font { public: Font(); Font(const Font& other); Font(const char* file, int ptsize); ~Font(); void load(const char* file, int ptsize); void free(); bool isLoaded() const; Font& operator=(const Font& other); private: friend class GraphicsRenderer; void* data_; }; GrapphicsRenderer class GraphicsRenderer { public: static GraphicsRenderer* Instance(); void blitImage(const Image& img, int x, int y); void blitText(const char* string, const Font& font, int x, int y); void render(); protected: GraphicsRenderer(); GraphicsRenderer(const GraphicsRenderer& other); GraphicsRenderer& operator=(const GraphicsRenderer& other); ~GraphicsRenderer(); private: void* screen_; bool initialize(); void finalize(); };

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  • A Generic, IDisposable WCF Service Client

    - by Steve Wilkes
    WCF clients need to be cleaned up properly, but as they're usually auto-generated they don't implement IDisposable. I've been doing a fair bit of WCF work recently, so I wrote a generic WCF client wrapper which effectively gives me a disposable service client. The ServiceClientWrapper is constructed using a WebServiceConfig instance, which contains a Binding, an EndPointAddress, and whether the client should ignore SSL certificate errors - pretty useful during testing! The Binding can be created based on configuration data or entirely programmatically - that's not the client's concern. Here's the service client code: using System; using System.Net; using System.Net.Security; using System.ServiceModel; public class ServiceClientWrapper<TService, TChannel> : IDisposable     where TService : ClientBase<TChannel>     where TChannel : class {     private readonly WebServiceConfig _config;     private TService _serviceClient;     public ServiceClientWrapper(WebServiceConfig config)     {         this._config = config;     }     public TService CreateServiceClient()     {         this.DisposeExistingServiceClientIfRequired();         if (this._config.IgnoreSslErrors)         {             ServicePointManager.ServerCertificateValidationCallback =                 (obj, certificate, chain, errors) => true;         }         else         {             ServicePointManager.ServerCertificateValidationCallback =                 (obj, certificate, chain, errors) => errors == SslPolicyErrors.None;         }         this._serviceClient = (TService)Activator.CreateInstance(             typeof(TService),             this._config.Binding,             this._config.Endpoint);         if (this._config.ClientCertificate != null)         {             this._serviceClient.ClientCredentials.ClientCertificate.Certificate =                 this._config.ClientCertificate;         }         return this._serviceClient;     }     public void Dispose()     {         this.DisposeExistingServiceClientIfRequired();     }     private void DisposeExistingServiceClientIfRequired()     {         if (this._serviceClient != null)         {             try             {                 if (this._serviceClient.State == CommunicationState.Faulted)                 {                     this._serviceClient.Abort();                 }                 else                 {                     this._serviceClient.Close();                 }             }             catch             {                 this._serviceClient.Abort();             }             this._serviceClient = null;         }     } } A client for a particular service can then be created something like this: public class ManagementServiceClientWrapper :     ServiceClientWrapper<ManagementServiceClient, IManagementService> {     public ManagementServiceClientWrapper(WebServiceConfig config)         : base(config)     {     } } ...where ManagementServiceClient is the auto-generated client class, and the IManagementService is the auto-generated WCF channel class - and used like this: using(var serviceClientWrapper = new ManagementServiceClientWrapper(config)) {     serviceClientWrapper.CreateServiceClient().CallService(); } The underlying WCF client created by the CreateServiceClient() will be disposed after the using, and hey presto - a disposable WCF service client.

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  • Why is a fully transparent pixel still rendered?

    - by Mr Bell
    I am trying to make a pixel shader that achieves an effect similar to this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1uZvurrhig&feature=related My basic idea is render the scene to a temp render target then Render the previously rendered image with a slight fade on to another temp render target Draw the current scene on top of that Draw the results on to a render target that persists between draws Draw the results on to the screen But I am having problems with the fading portion. If I have my pixel shader return a color with its A component set to 0, shouldn't that basically amount to drawing nothing? (Assuming that sprite batch blend mode is set to AlphaBlend) To test this I have my pixel shader return a transparent red color. Instead of nothing being drawn, it draws a partially transparent red box. I hope that my question makes sense, but if it doesnt please ask me to clarify Here is the drawing code public override void Draw(GameTime gameTime) { GraphicsDevice.SamplerStates[1] = SamplerState.PointWrap; drawImageOnClearedRenderTarget(presentationTarget, tempRenderTarget, fadeEffect); drawImageOnRenderTarget(sceneRenderTarget, tempRenderTarget); drawImageOnClearedRenderTarget(tempRenderTarget, presentationTarget); GraphicsDevice.SetRenderTarget(null); drawImage(backgroundTexture); drawImage(presentationTarget); base.Draw(gameTime); } private void drawImage(Texture2D image, Effect effect = null) { spriteBatch.Begin(0, BlendState.AlphaBlend, SamplerState.PointWrap, null, null, effect); spriteBatch.Draw(image, new Rectangle(0, 0, width, height), Color.White); spriteBatch.End(); } private void drawImageOnRenderTarget(Texture2D image, RenderTarget2D target, Effect effect = null) { GraphicsDevice.SetRenderTarget(target); drawImage(image, effect); } private void drawImageOnClearedRenderTarget(Texture2D image, RenderTarget2D target, Effect effect = null) { GraphicsDevice.SetRenderTarget(target); GraphicsDevice.Clear(Color.Transparent); drawImage(image, effect); } Here is the fade pixel shader sampler TextureSampler : register(s0); float4 PixelShaderFunction(float2 texCoord : TEXCOORD0) : COLOR0 { float4 c = 0; c = tex2D(TextureSampler, texCoord); //c.a = clamp(c.a - 0.05, 0, 1); c.r = 1; c.g = 0; c.b = 0; c.a = 0; return c; } technique Fade { pass Pass1 { PixelShader = compile ps_2_0 PixelShaderFunction(); } }

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  • Visual Studio Little Wonders: Box Selection

    - by James Michael Hare
    So this week I decided I’d do a Little Wonder of a different kind and focus on an underused IDE improvement: Visual Studio’s Box Selection capability. This is a handy feature that many people still don’t realize was made available in Visual Studio 2010 (and beyond).  True, there have been other editors in the past with this capability, but now that it’s fully part of Visual Studio we can enjoy it’s goodness from within our own IDE. So, for those of you who don’t know what box selection is and what it allows you to do, read on! Sometimes, we want to select beyond the horizontal… The problem with traditional text selection in many editors is that it is horizontally oriented.  Sure, you can select multiple rows, but if you do you will pull in the entire row (at least for the middle rows).  Under the old selection scheme, if you wanted to select a portion of text from each row (a “box” of text) you were out of luck.  Box selection rectifies this by allowing you to select a box of text that bounded by a selection rectangle that you can grow horizontally or vertically.  So let’s think a situation that could occur where this comes in handy. Let’s say, for instance, that we are defining an enum in our code that we want to be able to translate into some string values (possibly to be stored in a database, output to screen, etc.). Perhaps such an enum would look like this: 1: public enum OrderType 2: { 3: Buy, // buy shares of a commodity 4: Sell, // sell shares of a commodity 5: Exchange, // exchange one commodity for another 6: Cancel, // cancel an order for a commodity 7: } 8:  Now, let’s say we are in the process of creating a Dictionary<K,V> to translate our OrderType: 1: var translator = new Dictionary<OrderType, string> 2: { 3: // do I really want to retype all this??? 4: }; Yes the example above is contrived so that we will pull some garbage if we do a multi-line select. I could select the lines above using the traditional multi-line selection: And then paste them into the translator code, which would result in this: 1: var translator = new Dictionary<OrderType, string> 2: { 3: Buy, // buy shares of a commodity 4: Sell, // sell shares of a commodity 5: Exchange, // exchange one commodity for another 6: Cancel, // cancel an order for a commodity 7: }; But I have a lot of junk there, sure I can manually clear it out, or use some search and replace magic, but if this were hundreds of lines instead of just a few that would quickly become cumbersome. The Box Selection Now that we have the ability to create box selections, we can select the box of text to delete!  Most of us are familiar with the fact we can drag the mouse (or hold [Shift] and use the arrow keys) to create a selection that can span multiple rows: Box selection, however, actually allows us to select a box instead of the typical horizontal lines: Then we can press the [delete] key and the pesky comments are all gone! You can do this either by holding down [Alt] while you select with your mouse, or by holding down [Alt+Shift] and using the arrow keys on the keyboard to grow the box horizontally or vertically. So now we have: 1: var translator = new Dictionary<OrderType, string> 2: { 3: Buy, 4: Sell, 5: Exchange, 6: Cancel, 7: }; Which is closer, but we still need an opening curly, the string to translate to, and the closing curly and comma. Fortunately, again, this is easy with box selections due to the fact box selection can even work for a zero-width selection! That is, hold down [Alt] and either drag down with no width, or hold down [Alt+Shift] and arrow down and you will define a selection range with no width, essentially, a vertical line selection: Notice the faint selection line on the right? So why is this useful? Well, just like with any selected range, we can type and it will replace the selection. What does this mean for box selections? It means that we can insert the same text all the way down on each line! If we have the same selection above, and type a curly and a space, we’d get: Imagine doing this over hundreds of lines and think of what a time saver it could be! Now make a zero-width selection on the other side: And type a curly and a comma, and we’d get: So close! Now finally, imagine we’ve already defined these strings somewhere and want to paste them in: 1: const private string BuyText = "Buy Shares"; 2: const private string SellText = "Sell Shares"; 3: const private string ExchangeText = "Exchange"; 4: const private string CancelText = "Cancel"; We can, again, use our box selection to pull out the constant names: And clicking copy (or [CTRL+C]) and then selecting a range to paste into: And finally clicking paste (or [CTRL+V]) to get the final result: 1: var translator = new Dictionary<OrderType, string> 2: { 3: { Buy, BuyText }, 4: { Sell, SellText }, 5: { Exchange, ExchangeText }, 6: { Cancel, CancelText }, 7: };   Sure, this was a contrived example, but I’m sure you’ll agree that it adds myriad possibilities of new ways to copy and paste vertical selections, as well as inserting text across a vertical slice. Summary: While box selection has been around in other editors, we finally get to experience it in VS2010 and beyond. It is extremely handy for selecting columns of information for cutting, copying, and pasting. In addition, it allows you to create a zero-width vertical insertion point that can be used to enter the same text across multiple rows. Imagine the time you can save adding repetitive code across multiple lines!  Try it, the more you use it, the more you’ll love it! Technorati Tags: C#,CSharp,.NET,Visual Studio,Little Wonders,Box Selection

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  • Having a hard time having consecutive animations for an attack

    - by Kelby Styler
    So I've been trying to figure this out for about 8 hours now...It's driving me nuts because I am pretty sure that it is something dead simple that I am just not understanding. I had everything working fine when I was just cycling through the animation: Idle - Attack - Attack 1 - Attack 2. Just in an infinite loop. The problem now is that I want it to go Attack - check if x time passes if ctrl pressed before x passes move to Attack 1, if not move back to Idle - Then either Attack 1 or Idle depending on how long has passed. I've almost gotten it a few time, but something always happens where it falls apart if I press ctrl too fast or after multiple cycles of the animation. Any help would be appreciated, I'm just at my wits end on this one. I've been looking at this so long that I just don't know where to go anymore. Code is below, here is the controller using UnityEngine; using System.Collections; public class MeleeAttack : MonoBehaviour { public int damage; public bool Attack; public bool Attack1; public bool Attack2; public bool Idle; private Animator animator; private int attnum = 0; private float count = 2f; private float timeLeft; //Gives value to damage output void MAttackDmg () { if (Input.GetKeyDown (KeyCode.RightControl) || Input.GetKeyDown (KeyCode.LeftControl)) { switch (attnum) { case (0): Attack = true; damage = 2; animator.SetBool ("Attack", Attack); attnum++; Idle = false; animator.SetBool ("Idle", Idle); timeLeft = count; break; case (1): Attack1 = true; damage = 2; animator.SetBool ("Attack1", Attack1); attnum++; Idle = false; animator.SetBool ("Idle", Idle); timeLeft = count; break; case (2): Attack2 = true; damage = 2; animator.SetBool ("Attack2", Attack2); attnum = 0; Idle = false; animator.SetBool ("Idle", Idle); timeLeft = count; break; } } if (Input.GetKeyUp (KeyCode.RightControl) || Input.GetKeyUp (KeyCode.LeftControl)) { switch (attnum) { case (0): Debug.Log ("false"); damage = 0; if (timeLeft <= 0f) { Attack2 = false; animator.SetBool ("Attack2", Attack2); Debug.Log ("t1"); Idle = true; animator.SetBool ("Idle", Idle); attnum = 0; timeLeft = count; } break; case (1): Debug.Log ("false1"); damage = 0; if (timeLeft <= 0f) { Debug.Log ("t2"); Attack = false; animator.SetBool ("Attack", Attack); Idle = true; animator.SetBool ("Idle", Idle); attnum = 0; timeLeft = count; } break; case (2): Debug.Log ("false2"); damage = 0; if (timeLeft <= 0f) { Attack1 = false; animator.SetBool ("Attack1", Attack1); Debug.Log ("t3"); Idle = true; animator.SetBool ("Idle", Idle); attnum = 0; timeLeft = count; } break; } } } // Use this for initialization void Awake () { animator = GetComponent<Animator> (); } // Update is called once per frame void Update () { timeLeft -= Time.deltaTime;; MAttackDmg (); } void Start (){ timeLeft = count; } }

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  • .NET 4: &ldquo;Slim&rdquo;-style performance boost!

    - by Vitus
    RTM version of .NET 4 and Visual Studio 2010 is available, and now we can do some test with it. Parallel Extensions is one of the most valuable part of .NET 4.0. It’s a set of good tools for easily consuming multicore hardware power. And it also contains some “upgraded” sync primitives – Slim-version. For example, it include updated variant of widely known ManualResetEvent. For people, who don’t know about it: you can sync concurrency execution of some pieces of code with this sync primitive. Instance of ManualResetEvent can be in 2 states: signaled and non-signaled. Transition between it possible by Set() and Reset() methods call. Some shortly explanation: Thread 1 Thread 2 Time mre.Reset(); mre.WaitOne(); //code execution 0 //wating //code execution 1 //wating //code execution 2 //wating //code execution 3 //wating mre.Set(); 4 //code execution //… 5 Upgraded version of this primitive is ManualResetEventSlim. The idea in decreasing performance cost in case, when only 1 thread use it. Main concept in the “hybrid sync schema”, which can be done as following:   internal sealed class SimpleHybridLock : IDisposable { private Int32 m_waiters = 0; private AutoResetEvent m_waiterLock = new AutoResetEvent(false);   public void Enter() { if (Interlocked.Increment(ref m_waiters) == 1) return; m_waiterLock.WaitOne(); }   public void Leave() { if (Interlocked.Decrement(ref m_waiters) == 0) return; m_waiterLock.Set(); }   public void Dispose() { m_waiterLock.Dispose(); } } It’s a sample from Jeffry Richter’s book “CLR via C#”, 3rd edition. Primitive SimpleHybridLock have two public methods: Enter() and Leave(). You can put your concurrency-critical code between calls of these methods, and it would executed in only one thread at the moment. Code is really simple: first thread, called Enter(), increase counter. Second thread also increase counter, and suspend while m_waiterLock is not signaled. So, if we don’t have concurrent access to our lock, “heavy” methods WaitOne() and Set() will not called. It’s can give some performance bonus. ManualResetEvent use the similar idea. Of course, it have more “smart” technics inside, like a checking of recursive calls, and so on. I want to know a real difference between classic ManualResetEvent realization, and new –Slim. I wrote a simple “benchmark”: class Program { static void Main(string[] args) { ManualResetEventSlim mres = new ManualResetEventSlim(false); ManualResetEventSlim mres2 = new ManualResetEventSlim(false);   ManualResetEvent mre = new ManualResetEvent(false);   long total = 0; int COUNT = 50;   for (int i = 0; i < COUNT; i++) { mres2.Reset(); Stopwatch sw = Stopwatch.StartNew();   ThreadPool.QueueUserWorkItem((obj) => { //Method(mres, true); Method2(mre, true); mres2.Set(); }); //Method(mres, false); Method2(mre, false);   mres2.Wait(); sw.Stop();   Console.WriteLine("Pass {0}: {1} ms", i, sw.ElapsedMilliseconds); total += sw.ElapsedMilliseconds; }   Console.WriteLine(); Console.WriteLine("==============================="); Console.WriteLine("Done in average=" + total / (double)COUNT); Console.ReadLine(); }   private static void Method(ManualResetEventSlim mre, bool value) { for (int i = 0; i < 9000000; i++) { if (value) { mre.Set(); } else { mre.Reset(); } } }   private static void Method2(ManualResetEvent mre, bool value) { for (int i = 0; i < 9000000; i++) { if (value) { mre.Set(); } else { mre.Reset(); } } } } I use 2 concurrent thread (the main thread and one from thread pool) for setting and resetting ManualResetEvents, and try to run test COUNT times, and calculate average execution time. Here is the results (I get it on my dual core notebook with T7250 CPU and Windows 7 x64): ManualResetEvent ManualResetEventSlim Difference is obvious and serious – in 10 times! So, I think preferable way is using ManualResetEventSlim, because not always on calling Set() and Reset() will be called “heavy” methods for working with Windows kernel-mode objects. It’s a small and nice improvement! ;)

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  • Getting fingerprint from Apache certificate (combined with key)

    - by Alois Mahdal
    I have just created a certificate for my Apache SSL host using: make-ssl-cert /usr/share/ssl-cert/ssleay.cnf /etc/ssl/private/myhost.crt Now that is the correct way to get the fingerprint out of it? (So I can keep it in other place for visual comparison---in case I need to connect and really don't trust the network?) openssl sha1 /etc/ssl/private/myhost.crt returns different SHA1 than Opera tells me about the cert. Is this because it's combined with the key? (...or am I spoofed already? :-)).

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  • Log Debug Messages without Debug Serial on Shipped Device

    - by Kate Moss' Open Space
    Debug message is one of the ancient but useful way for problem resolving. Message is redirected to PB if KITL is enabled otherwise it goes to default debug port, usually a serial port on most of the platform but it really depends on how OEMWriteDebugString and OEMWriteDebugByte are implemented. For many reasons, we don't want to have a debug serial port, for example, we don't have enough spare serial ports and it can affect the performance. So some of the BSP designers decide to dump the messages into other media, could be a log file, shared memory or any solution that is suitable for the need. In CE 5.0 and previous, OAL and Kernel are linked into one binaries; in the other word, you can use whatever function in kernel, such as SC_CreateFileW to access filesystem in OAL, even this is strongly not recommended. But since the OAL is being a standalone executable in CE 6.0, we no longer can use this back door but only interface exported in NKGlobal which just provides enough for OAL but no more. Accessing filesystem or using sync object to communicate to other drivers or application is even not an option. Sounds like the kernel lock itself up; of course, OAL is in kernel space, you can still do whatever you want to hack into kernel, but once again, it is not only make it a dirty solution but also fragile. So isn't there an elegant solution? Let's see how a debug message print out. In private\winceos\COREOS\nk\kernel\printf.c, the OutputDebugStringW is the one for pumping out the messages; most of the code is for error handling and serialization but what really interesting is the following code piece     if (g_cInterruptsOff) {         OEMWriteDebugString ((unsigned short *)str);     } else {         g_pNKGlobal->pfnWriteDebugString ((unsigned short *)str);     }     CELOG_OutputDebugString(dwActvProcId, dwCurThId, str); It outputs the message to default debug output (is redirected to KITL when available) or OAL when needed but note that highlight part, it also invokes CELOG_OutputDebugString. Follow the thread to private\winceos\COREOS\nk\logger\CeLogInstrumentation.c, this function dump whatever input to CELOG. So whatever the debug message is we always got a clone in CELOG. General speaking, all of the debug message is logged to CELOG already, so what you need to do is using celogflush.exe with CELZONE_DEBUG zone, and then viewing the data using the by Readlog tool. Here are some information about these tools CELOG - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee479818.aspx READLOG - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee481220.aspx Also for advanced reader, I encourage you to dig into private\winceos\COREOS\nk\celog\celogdll, the source of CELOG.DLL and use it as a starting point to create a more lightweight debug message logger for your own device!

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  • How to stop a tap event from propagating in a XNA / Silverlight game

    - by Mech0z
    I have a game with Silverlight / XNA game where text and buttons are created in Silverlight while 3d is done in XNA. The Silverlight controls are drawn ontop of the 3D and I dont want a click on a button to interact with the 3D underneath So I have private void ButtonPlaceBrick_Tap(object sender, GestureEventArgs e) { e.Handled = true; But my gesture handling on the 3d objects still runs even though I have set handled to true. private void OnUpdate(object sender, GameTimerEventArgs e) { while (TouchPanel.IsGestureAvailable) { // Read the next gesture GestureSample gesture = TouchPanel.ReadGesture(); switch (gesture.GestureType) How am I supposed to stop it from propagating?

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