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  • How to use Ninject with XNA?

    - by Rosarch
    I'm having difficulty integrating Ninject with XNA. static class Program { /** * The main entry point for the application. */ static void Main(string[] args) { IKernel kernel = new StandardKernel(NinjectModuleManager.GetModules()); CachedContentLoader content = kernel.Get<CachedContentLoader>(); // stack overflow here MasterEngine game = kernel.Get<MasterEngine>(); game.Run(); } } // constructor for the game public MasterEngine(IKernel kernel) : base(kernel) { this.inputReader = kernel.Get<IInputReader>(); graphicsDeviceManager = kernel.Get<GraphicsDeviceManager>(); Components.Add(kernel.Get<GamerServicesComponent>()); // Tell the loader to look for all files relative to the "Content" directory. Assets = kernel.Get<CachedContentLoader>(); //Sets dimensions of the game window graphicsDeviceManager.PreferredBackBufferWidth = 800; graphicsDeviceManager.PreferredBackBufferHeight = 600; graphicsDeviceManager.ApplyChanges(); IsMouseVisible = false; } Ninject.cs: using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Text; using Ninject.Modules; using HWAlphaRelease.Controller; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework; using Nuclex.DependencyInjection.Demo.Scaffolding; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Content; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Graphics; namespace HWAlphaRelease { public static class NinjectModuleManager { public static NinjectModule[] GetModules() { return new NinjectModule[1] { new GameModule() }; } /// <summary>Dependency injection rules for the main game instance</summary> public class GameModule : NinjectModule { #region class ServiceProviderAdapter /// <summary>Delegates to the game's built-in service provider</summary> /// <remarks> /// <para> /// When a class' constructor requires an IServiceProvider, the dependency /// injector cannot just construct a new one and wouldn't know that it has /// to create an instance of the Game class (or take it from the existing /// Game instance). /// </para> /// <para> /// The solution, then, is this small adapter that takes a Game instance /// and acts as if it was a freely constructable IServiceProvider implementation /// while in reality, it delegates all lookups to the Game's service container. /// </para> /// </remarks> private class ServiceProviderAdapter : IServiceProvider { /// <summary>Initializes a new service provider adapter for the game</summary> /// <param name="game">Game the service provider will be taken from</param> public ServiceProviderAdapter(Game game) { this.gameServices = game.Services; } /// <summary>Retrieves a service from the game service container</summary> /// <param name="serviceType">Type of the service that will be retrieved</param> /// <returns>The service that has been requested</returns> public object GetService(Type serviceType) { return this.gameServices; } /// <summary>Game services container of the Game instance</summary> private GameServiceContainer gameServices; } #endregion // class ServiceProviderAdapter #region class ContentManagerAdapter /// <summary>Delegates to the game's built-in ContentManager</summary> /// <remarks> /// This provides shared access to the game's ContentManager. A dependency /// injected class only needs to require the ISharedContentService in its /// constructor and the dependency injector will automatically resolve it /// to this adapter, which delegates to the Game's built-in content manager. /// </remarks> private class ContentManagerAdapter : ISharedContentService { /// <summary>Initializes a new shared content manager adapter</summary> /// <param name="game">Game the content manager will be taken from</param> public ContentManagerAdapter(Game game) { this.contentManager = game.Content; } /// <summary>Loads or accesses shared game content</summary> /// <typeparam name="AssetType">Type of the asset to be loaded or accessed</typeparam> /// <param name="assetName">Path and name of the requested asset</param> /// <returns>The requested asset from the the shared game content store</returns> public AssetType Load<AssetType>(string assetName) { return this.contentManager.Load<AssetType>(assetName); } /// <summary>The content manager this instance delegates to</summary> private ContentManager contentManager; } #endregion // class ContentManagerAdapter /// <summary>Initializes the dependency configuration</summary> public override void Load() { // Allows access to the game class for any components with a dependency // on the 'Game' or 'DependencyInjectionGame' classes. Bind<MasterEngine>().ToSelf().InSingletonScope(); Bind<NinjectGame>().To<MasterEngine>().InSingletonScope(); Bind<Game>().To<MasterEngine>().InSingletonScope(); // Let the dependency injector construct a graphics device manager for // all components depending on the IGraphicsDeviceService and // IGraphicsDeviceManager interfaces Bind<GraphicsDeviceManager>().ToSelf().InSingletonScope(); Bind<IGraphicsDeviceService>().To<GraphicsDeviceManager>().InSingletonScope(); Bind<IGraphicsDeviceManager>().To<GraphicsDeviceManager>().InSingletonScope(); // Some clever adapters that hand out the Game's IServiceProvider and allow // access to its built-in ContentManager Bind<IServiceProvider>().To<ServiceProviderAdapter>().InSingletonScope(); Bind<ISharedContentService>().To<ContentManagerAdapter>().InSingletonScope(); Bind<IInputReader>().To<UserInputReader>().InSingletonScope().WithConstructorArgument("keyMapping", Constants.DEFAULT_KEY_MAPPING); Bind<CachedContentLoader>().ToSelf().InSingletonScope().WithConstructorArgument("rootDir", "Content"); } } } } NinjectGame.cs /// <summary>Base class for Games making use of Ninject</summary> public class NinjectGame : Game { /// <summary>Initializes a new Ninject game instance</summary> /// <param name="kernel">Kernel the game has been created by</param> public NinjectGame(IKernel kernel) { Type ownType = this.GetType(); if(ownType != typeof(Game)) { kernel.Bind<NinjectGame>().To<MasterEngine>().InSingletonScope(); } kernel.Bind<Game>().To<NinjectGame>().InSingletonScope(); } } } // namespace Nuclex.DependencyInjection.Demo.Scaffolding When I try to get the CachedContentLoader, I get a stack overflow exception. I'm basing this off of this tutorial, but I really have no idea what I'm doing. Help?

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  • apache+mod_wsgi configuration for django project(s) on a quad core

    - by Stefano
    I've been experiment quite some time with a "typical" django setting upon nginx+apache2+mod_wsgi+memcached(+postgresql) (reading the doc and some questions on SO and SF, see comments) Since I'm still unsatisfied with the behavior (definitely because of some bad misconfiguration on my part) I would like to know what a good configuration would look like with these hypotesis: Quad-Core Xeon 2.8GHz 8 gigs memory several django projects (anything special related to this?) These are excerpts form my current confs: apache2 SetEnv VHOST null #WSGIPythonOptimize 2 <VirtualHost *:8082> ServerName subdomain.domain.com ServerAlias www.domain.com SetEnv VHOST subdomain.domain AddDefaultCharset UTF-8 ServerSignature Off LogFormat "%{X-Real-IP}i %u %t \"%r\" %>s %b \"%{Referer}i\" \"%{User-agent}i\"" custom ErrorLog /home/project1/var/logs/apache_error.log CustomLog /home/project1/var/logs/apache_access.log custom AllowEncodedSlashes On WSGIDaemonProcess subdomain.domain user=www-data group=www-data threads=25 WSGIScriptAlias / /home/project1/project/wsgi.py WSGIProcessGroup %{ENV:VHOST} </VirtualHost> wsgi.py import os import sys # setting all the right paths.... _realpath = os.path.realpath(os.path.dirname(__file__)) _public_html = os.path.normpath(os.path.join(_realpath, '../')) sys.path.append(_realpath) sys.path.append(os.path.normpath(os.path.join(_realpath, 'apps'))) sys.path.append(os.path.normpath(_public_html)) sys.path.append(os.path.normpath(os.path.join(_public_html, 'libs'))) sys.path.append(os.path.normpath(os.path.join(_public_html, 'django'))) os.environ['DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE'] = 'settings' import django.core.handlers.wsgi _application = django.core.handlers.wsgi.WSGIHandler() def application(environ, start_response): """ Launches django passing over some environment (domain name) settings """ application_group = environ['mod_wsgi.application_group'] """ wsgi application group is required. It's also used to generate the HOST.DOMAIN.TLD:PORT parameters to pass over """ assert application_group fields = application_group.replace('|', '').split(':') server_name = fields[0] os.environ['WSGI_APPLICATION_GROUP'] = application_group os.environ['WSGI_SERVER_NAME'] = server_name if len(fields) > 1 : os.environ['WSGI_PORT'] = fields[1] splitted = server_name.rsplit('.', 2) assert splitted >= 2 splited.reverse() if len(splitted) > 0 : os.environ['WSGI_TLD'] = splitted[0] if len(splitted) > 1 : os.environ['WSGI_DOMAIN'] = splitted[1] if len(splitted) > 2 : os.environ['WSGI_HOST'] = splitted[2] return _application(environ, start_response)` folder structure in case it matters (slightly shortened actually) /home/www-data/projectN/var/logs /project (contains manage.py, wsgi.py, settings.py) /project/apps (all the project ups are here) /django /libs Please forgive me in advance if I overlooked something obvious. My main question is about the apache2 wsgi settings. Are those fine? Is 25 threads an /ok/ number with a quad core for one only django project? Is it still ok with several django projects on different virtual hosts? Should I specify 'process'? Any other directive which I should add? Is there anything really bad in the wsgi.py file? I've been reading about potential issues with the standard wsgi.py file, should I switch to that? Or.. should this conf just be running fine, and I should look for issues somewhere else? So, what do I mean by "unsatisfied": well, I often get quite high CPU WAIT; but what is worse, is that relatively often apache2 gets stuck. It just does not answer anymore, and has to be restarted. I have setup a monit to take care of that, but it ain't a real solution. I have been wondering if it's an issue with the database access (postgresql) under heavy load, but even if it was, why would the apache2 processes get stuck? Beside these two issues, performance is overall great. I even tried New Relic and got very good average results.

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  • How to save POST&GET headers of a web page with "Wireshark"?

    - by brilliant
    Hello everybody, I've been trying to find a python code that would log in to my mail box on yahoo.com from "Google App Engine". I was given this code: import urllib, urllib2, cookielib url = "https://login.yahoo.com/config/login?" form_data = {'login' : 'my-login-here', 'passwd' : 'my-password-here'} jar = cookielib.CookieJar() opener = urllib2.build_opener(urllib2.HTTPCookieProcessor(jar)) form_data = urllib.urlencode(form_data) # data returned from this pages contains redirection resp = opener.open(url, form_data) # yahoo redirects to http://my.yahoo.com, so lets go there instead resp = opener.open('http://mail.yahoo.com') print resp.read() The author of this script looked into HTML script of yahoo log-in form and came up with this script. That log-in form contains two fields, one for users' Yahoo! ID and another one is for users' password. However, when I tried this code out (substituting mu real Yahoo login for 'my-login-here' and my real password for 'my-password-here'), it just return the log-in form back to me, which means that something didn't work right. Another supporter suggested that I should send an MD5 hash of my password, rather than a plain password. He also noted that in that log-in form there are a lot other hidden fields besides login and password fields (he called them "CSRF protections") that I would also have to deal with: <input type="hidden" name=".tries" value="1"> <input type="hidden" name=".src" value="ym"> <input type="hidden" name=".md5" value=""> <input type="hidden" name=".hash" value=""> <input type="hidden" name=".js" value=""> <input type="hidden" name=".last" value=""> <input type="hidden" name="promo" value=""> <input type="hidden" name=".intl" value="us"> <input type="hidden" name=".bypass" value=""> <input type="hidden" name=".partner" value=""> <input type="hidden" name=".u" value="bd5tdpd5rf2pg"> <input type="hidden" name=".v" value="0"> <input type="hidden" name=".challenge" value="5qUiIPGVFzRZ2BHhvtdGXoehfiOj"> <input type="hidden" name=".yplus" value=""> <input type="hidden" name=".emailCode" value=""> <input type="hidden" name="pkg" value=""> <input type="hidden" name="stepid" value=""> <input type="hidden" name=".ev" value=""> <input type="hidden" name="hasMsgr" value="0"> <input type="hidden" name=".chkP" value="Y"> <input type="hidden" name=".done" value="http://mail.yahoo.com"> He said that I should do the following: Simulate normal login and save login page that I get; Save POST&GET headers with "Wireshark"; Compare login page with those headers and see what fields I need to include with my request; I really don't know how to carry out the first two of these three steps. I have just downloaded "Wireshark" and have tried capturing some packets there. However, I don't know how to "simulate normal login and save the login page". Also, I don't how to save POST$GET headers with "Wireshark". Can anyone, please, guide me through these two steps in "Wireshark"? Or at least tell me what I should start with. Thank You.

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  • Working with PivotTables in Excel

    - by Mark Virtue
    PivotTables are one of the most powerful features of Microsoft Excel.  They allow large amounts of data to be analyzed and summarized in just a few mouse clicks. In this article, we explore PivotTables, understand what they are, and learn how to create and customize them. Note:  This article is written using Excel 2010 (Beta).  The concept of a PivotTable has changed little over the years, but the method of creating one has changed in nearly every iteration of Excel.  If you are using a version of Excel that is not 2010, expect different screens from the ones you see in this article. A Little History In the early days of spreadsheet programs, Lotus 1-2-3 ruled the roost.  Its dominance was so complete that people thought it was a waste of time for Microsoft to bother developing their own spreadsheet software (Excel) to compete with Lotus.  Flash-forward to 2010, and Excel’s dominance of the spreadsheet market is greater than Lotus’s ever was, while the number of users still running Lotus 1-2-3 is approaching zero.  How did this happen?  What caused such a dramatic reversal of fortunes? Industry analysts put it down to two factors:  Firstly, Lotus decided that this fancy new GUI platform called “Windows” was a passing fad that would never take off.  They declined to create a Windows version of Lotus 1-2-3 (for a few years, anyway), predicting that their DOS version of the software was all anyone would ever need.  Microsoft, naturally, developed Excel exclusively for Windows.  Secondly, Microsoft developed a feature for Excel that Lotus didn’t provide in 1-2-3, namely PivotTables.  The PivotTables feature, exclusive to Excel, was deemed so staggeringly useful that people were willing to learn an entire new software package (Excel) rather than stick with a program (1-2-3) that didn’t have it.  This one feature, along with the misjudgment of the success of Windows, was the death-knell for Lotus 1-2-3, and the beginning of the success of Microsoft Excel. Understanding PivotTables So what is a PivotTable, exactly? Put simply, a PivotTable is a summary of some data, created to allow easy analysis of said data.  But unlike a manually created summary, Excel PivotTables are interactive.  Once you have created one, you can easily change it if it doesn’t offer the exact insights into your data that you were hoping for.  In a couple of clicks the summary can be “pivoted” – rotated in such a way that the column headings become row headings, and vice versa.  There’s a lot more that can be done, too.  Rather than try to describe all the features of PivotTables, we’ll simply demonstrate them… The data that you analyze using a PivotTable can’t be just any data – it has to be raw data, previously unprocessed (unsummarized) – typically a list of some sort.  An example of this might be the list of sales transactions in a company for the past six months. Examine the data shown below: Notice that this is not raw data.  In fact, it is already a summary of some sort.  In cell B3 we can see $30,000, which apparently is the total of James Cook’s sales for the month of January.  So where is the raw data?  How did we arrive at the figure of $30,000?  Where is the original list of sales transactions that this figure was generated from?  It’s clear that somewhere, someone must have gone to the trouble of collating all of the sales transactions for the past six months into the summary we see above.  How long do you suppose this took?  An hour?  Ten?  Probably. If we were to track down the original list of sales transactions, it might look something like this: You may be surprised to learn that, using the PivotTable feature of Excel, we can create a monthly sales summary similar to the one above in a few seconds, with only a few mouse clicks.  We can do this – and a lot more too! How to Create a PivotTable First, ensure that you have some raw data in a worksheet in Excel.  A list of financial transactions is typical, but it can be a list of just about anything:  Employee contact details, your CD collection, or fuel consumption figures for your company’s fleet of cars. So we start Excel… …and we load such a list… Once we have the list open in Excel, we’re ready to start creating the PivotTable. Click on any one single cell within the list: Then, from the Insert tab, click the PivotTable icon: The Create PivotTable box appears, asking you two questions:  What data should your new PivotTable be based on, and where should it be created?  Because we already clicked on a cell within the list (in the step above), the entire list surrounding that cell is already selected for us ($A$1:$G$88 on the Payments sheet, in this example).  Note that we could select a list in any other region of any other worksheet, or even some external data source, such as an Access database table, or even a MS-SQL Server database table.  We also need to select whether we want our new PivotTable to be created on a new worksheet, or on an existing one.  In this example we will select a new one: The new worksheet is created for us, and a blank PivotTable is created on that worksheet: Another box also appears:  The PivotTable Field List.  This field list will be shown whenever we click on any cell within the PivotTable (above): The list of fields in the top part of the box is actually the collection of column headings from the original raw data worksheet.  The four blank boxes in the lower part of the screen allow us to choose the way we would like our PivotTable to summarize the raw data.  So far, there is nothing in those boxes, so the PivotTable is blank.  All we need to do is drag fields down from the list above and drop them in the lower boxes.  A PivotTable is then automatically created to match our instructions.  If we get it wrong, we only need to drag the fields back to where they came from and/or drag new fields down to replace them. The Values box is arguably the most important of the four.  The field that is dragged into this box represents the data that needs to be summarized in some way (by summing, averaging, finding the maximum, minimum, etc).  It is almost always numerical data.  A perfect candidate for this box in our sample data is the “Amount” field/column.  Let’s drag that field into the Values box: Notice that (a) the “Amount” field in the list of fields is now ticked, and “Sum of Amount” has been added to the Values box, indicating that the amount column has been summed. If we examine the PivotTable itself, we indeed find the sum of all the “Amount” values from the raw data worksheet: We’ve created our first PivotTable!  Handy, but not particularly impressive.  It’s likely that we need a little more insight into our data than that. Referring to our sample data, we need to identify one or more column headings that we could conceivably use to split this total.  For example, we may decide that we would like to see a summary of our data where we have a row heading for each of the different salespersons in our company, and a total for each.  To achieve this, all we need to do is to drag the “Salesperson” field into the Row Labels box: Now, finally, things start to get interesting!  Our PivotTable starts to take shape….   With a couple of clicks we have created a table that would have taken a long time to do manually. So what else can we do?  Well, in one sense our PivotTable is complete.  We’ve created a useful summary of our source data.  The important stuff is already learned!  For the rest of the article, we will examine some ways that more complex PivotTables can be created, and ways that those PivotTables can be customized. First, we can create a two-dimensional table.  Let’s do that by using “Payment Method” as a column heading.  Simply drag the “Payment Method” heading to the Column Labels box: Which looks like this: Starting to get very cool! Let’s make it a three-dimensional table.  What could such a table possibly look like?  Well, let’s see… Drag the “Package” column/heading to the Report Filter box: Notice where it ends up…. This allows us to filter our report based on which “holiday package” was being purchased.  For example, we can see the breakdown of salesperson vs payment method for all packages, or, with a couple of clicks, change it to show the same breakdown for the “Sunseekers” package: And so, if you think about it the right way, our PivotTable is now three-dimensional.  Let’s keep customizing… If it turns out, say, that we only want to see cheque and credit card transactions (i.e. no cash transactions), then we can deselect the “Cash” item from the column headings.  Click the drop-down arrow next to Column Labels, and untick “Cash”: Let’s see what that looks like…As you can see, “Cash” is gone. Formatting This is obviously a very powerful system, but so far the results look very plain and boring.  For a start, the numbers that we’re summing do not look like dollar amounts – just plain old numbers.  Let’s rectify that. A temptation might be to do what we’re used to doing in such circumstances and simply select the whole table (or the whole worksheet) and use the standard number formatting buttons on the toolbar to complete the formatting.  The problem with that approach is that if you ever change the structure of the PivotTable in the future (which is 99% likely), then those number formats will be lost.  We need a way that will make them (semi-)permanent. First, we locate the “Sum of Amount” entry in the Values box, and click on it.  A menu appears.  We select Value Field Settings… from the menu: The Value Field Settings box appears. Click the Number Format button, and the standard Format Cells box appears: From the Category list, select (say) Accounting, and drop the number of decimal places to 0.  Click OK a few times to get back to the PivotTable… As you can see, the numbers have been correctly formatted as dollar amounts. While we’re on the subject of formatting, let’s format the entire PivotTable.  There are a few ways to do this.  Let’s use a simple one… Click the PivotTable Tools/Design tab: Then drop down the arrow in the bottom-right of the PivotTable Styles list to see a vast collection of built-in styles: Choose any one that appeals, and look at the result in your PivotTable:   Other Options We can work with dates as well.  Now usually, there are many, many dates in a transaction list such as the one we started with.  But Excel provides the option to group data items together by day, week, month, year, etc.  Let’s see how this is done. First, let’s remove the “Payment Method” column from the Column Labels box (simply drag it back up to the field list), and replace it with the “Date Booked” column: As you can see, this makes our PivotTable instantly useless, giving us one column for each date that a transaction occurred on – a very wide table! To fix this, right-click on any date and select Group… from the context-menu: The grouping box appears.  We select Months and click OK: Voila!  A much more useful table: (Incidentally, this table is virtually identical to the one shown at the beginning of this article – the original sales summary that was created manually.) Another cool thing to be aware of is that you can have more than one set of row headings (or column headings): …which looks like this…. You can do a similar thing with column headings (or even report filters). Keeping things simple again, let’s see how to plot averaged values, rather than summed values. First, click on “Sum of Amount”, and select Value Field Settings… from the context-menu that appears: In the Summarize value field by list in the Value Field Settings box, select Average: While we’re here, let’s change the Custom Name, from “Average of Amount” to something a little more concise.  Type in something like “Avg”: Click OK, and see what it looks like.  Notice that all the values change from summed totals to averages, and the table title (top-left cell) has changed to “Avg”: If we like, we can even have sums, averages and counts (counts = how many sales there were) all on the same PivotTable! Here are the steps to get something like that in place (starting from a blank PivotTable): Drag “Salesperson” into the Column Labels Drag “Amount” field down into the Values box three times For the first “Amount” field, change its custom name to “Total” and it’s number format to Accounting (0 decimal places) For the second “Amount” field, change its custom name to “Average”, its function to Average and it’s number format to Accounting (0 decimal places) For the third “Amount” field, change its name to “Count” and its function to Count Drag the automatically created field from Column Labels to Row Labels Here’s what we end up with: Total, average and count on the same PivotTable! Conclusion There are many, many more features and options for PivotTables created by Microsoft Excel – far too many to list in an article like this.  To fully cover the potential of PivotTables, a small book (or a large website) would be required.  Brave and/or geeky readers can explore PivotTables further quite easily:  Simply right-click on just about everything, and see what options become available to you.  There are also the two ribbon-tabs: PivotTable Tools/Options and Design.  It doesn’t matter if you make a mistake – it’s easy to delete the PivotTable and start again – a possibility old DOS users of Lotus 1-2-3 never had. We’ve included an Excel that should work with most versions of Excel, so you can download to practice your PivotTable skills. Download Our Practice Excel File Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Magnify Selected Cells In Excel 2007Share Access Data with Excel in Office 2010Make Excel 2007 Print Gridlines In Workbook FileMake Excel 2007 Always Save in Excel 2003 FormatConvert Older Excel Documents to Excel 2007 Format TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 PCmover Professional Ben & Jerry’s Free Cone Day, 3/23/10 New Stinger from McAfee Helps Remove ‘FakeAlert’ Threats Google Apps Marketplace: Tools & Services For Google Apps Users Get News Quick and Precise With Newser Scan for Viruses in Ubuntu using ClamAV Replace Your Windows Task Manager With System Explorer

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  • Announcing the release of the Windows Azure SDK 2.1 for .NET

    - by ScottGu
    Today we released the v2.1 update of the Windows Azure SDK for .NET.  This is a major refresh of the Windows Azure SDK and it includes some great new features and enhancements. These new capabilities include: Visual Studio 2013 Preview Support: The Windows Azure SDK now supports using the new VS 2013 Preview Visual Studio 2013 VM Image: Windows Azure now has a built-in VM image that you can use to host and develop with VS 2013 in the cloud Visual Studio Server Explorer Enhancements: Redesigned with improved filtering and auto-loading of subscription resources Virtual Machines: Start and Stop VM’s w/suspend billing directly from within Visual Studio Cloud Services: New Emulator Express option with reduced footprint and Run as Normal User support Service Bus: New high availability options, Notification Hub support, Improved VS tooling PowerShell Automation: Lots of new PowerShell commands for automating Web Sites, Cloud Services, VMs and more All of these SDK enhancements are now available to start using immediately and you can download the SDK from the Windows Azure .NET Developer Center.  Visual Studio’s Team Foundation Service (http://tfs.visualstudio.com/) has also been updated to support today’s SDK 2.1 release, and the SDK 2.1 features can now be used with it (including with automated builds + tests). Below are more details on the new features and capabilities released today: Visual Studio 2013 Preview Support Today’s Window Azure SDK 2.1 release adds support for the recent Visual Studio 2013 Preview. The 2.1 SDK also works with Visual Studio 2010 and Visual Studio 2012, and works side by side with the previous Windows Azure SDK 1.8 and 2.0 releases. To install the Windows Azure SDK 2.1 on your local computer, choose the “install the sdk” link from the Windows Azure .NET Developer Center. Then, chose which version of Visual Studio you want to use it with.  Clicking the third link will install the SDK with the latest VS 2013 Preview: If you don’t already have the Visual Studio 2013 Preview installed on your machine, this will also install Visual Studio Express 2013 Preview for Web. Visual Studio 2013 VM Image Hosted in the Cloud One of the requests we’ve heard from several customers has been to have the ability to host Visual Studio within the cloud (avoiding the need to install anything locally on your computer). With today’s SDK update we’ve added a new VM image to the Windows Azure VM Gallery that has Visual Studio Ultimate 2013 Preview, SharePoint 2013, SQL Server 2012 Express and the Windows Azure 2.1 SDK already installed on it.  This provides a really easy way to create a development environment in the cloud with the latest tools. With the recent shutdown and suspend billing feature we shipped on Windows Azure last month, you can spin up the image only when you want to do active development, and then shut down the virtual machine and not have to worry about usage charges while the virtual machine is not in use. You can create your own VS image in the cloud by using the New->Compute->Virtual Machine->From Gallery menu within the Windows Azure Management Portal, and then by selecting the “Visual Studio Ultimate 2013 Preview” template: Visual Studio Server Explorer: Improved Filtering/Management of Subscription Resources With the Windows Azure SDK 2.1 release you’ll notice significant improvements in the Visual Studio Server Explorer. The explorer has been redesigned so that all Windows Azure services are now contained under a single Windows Azure node.  From the top level node you can now manage your Windows Azure credentials, import a subscription file or filter Server Explorer to only show services from particular subscriptions or regions. Note: The Web Sites and Mobile Services nodes will appear outside the Windows Azure Node until the final release of VS 2013. If you have installed the ASP.NET and Web Tools Preview Refresh, though, the Web Sites node will appear inside the Windows Azure node even with the VS 2013 Preview. Once your subscription information is added, Windows Azure services from all your subscriptions are automatically enumerated in the Server Explorer. You no longer need to manually add services to Server Explorer individually. This provides a convenient way of viewing all of your cloud services, storage accounts, service bus namespaces, virtual machines, and web sites from one location: Subscription and Region Filtering Support Using the Windows Azure node in Server Explorer, you can also now filter your Windows Azure services in the Server Explorer by the subscription or region they are in.  If you have multiple subscriptions but need to focus your attention to just a few subscription for some period of time, this a handy way to hide the services from other subscriptions view until they become relevant. You can do the same sort of filtering by region. To enable this, just select “Filter Services” from the context menu on the Windows Azure node: Then choose the subscriptions and/or regions you want to filter by. In the below example, I’ve decided to show services from my pay-as-you-go subscription within the East US region: Visual Studio will then automatically filter the items that show up in the Server Explorer appropriately: With storage accounts and service bus namespaces, you sometimes need to work with services outside your subscription. To accommodate that scenario, those services allow you to attach an external account (from the context menu). You’ll notice that external accounts have a slightly different icon in server explorer to indicate they are from outside your subscription. Other Improvements We’ve also improved the Server Explorer by adding additional properties and actions to the service exposed. You now have access to most of the properties on a cloud service, deployment slot, role or role instance as well as the properties on storage accounts, virtual machines and web sites. Just select the object of interest in Server Explorer and view the properties in the property pane. We also now have full support for creating/deleting/update storage tables, blobs and queues from directly within Server Explorer.  Simply right-click on the appropriate storage account node and you can create them directly within Visual Studio: Virtual Machines: Start/Stop within Visual Studio Virtual Machines now have context menu actions that allow you start, shutdown, restart and delete a Virtual Machine directly within the Visual Studio Server Explorer. The shutdown action enables you to shut down the virtual machine and suspend billing when the VM is not is use, and easily restart it when you need it: This is especially useful in Dev/Test scenarios where you can start a VM – such as a SQL Server – during your development session and then shut it down / suspend billing when you are not developing (and no longer be billed for it). You can also now directly remote desktop into VMs using the “Connect using Remote Desktop” context menu command in VS Server Explorer.  Cloud Services: Emulator Express with Run as Normal User Support You can now launch Visual Studio and run your cloud services locally as a Normal User (without having to elevate to an administrator account) using a new Emulator Express option included as a preview feature with this SDK release.  Emulator Express is a version of the Windows Azure Compute Emulator that runs a restricted mode – one instance per role – and it doesn’t require administrative permissions and uses 40% less resources than the full Windows Azure Emulator. Emulator Express supports both web and worker roles. To run your application locally using the Emulator Express option, simply change the following settings in the Windows Azure project. On the shortcut menu for the Windows Azure project, choose Properties, and then choose the Web tab. Check the setting for IIS (Internet Information Services). Make sure that the option is set to IIS Express, not the full version of IIS. Emulator Express is not compatible with full IIS. On the Web tab, choose the option for Emulator Express. Service Bus: Notification Hubs With the Windows Azure SDK 2.1 release we are adding support for Windows Azure Notification Hubs as part of our official Windows Azure SDK, inside of Microsoft.ServiceBus.dll (previously the Notification Hub functionality was in a preview assembly). You are now able to create, update and delete Notification Hubs programmatically, manage your device registrations, and send push notifications to all your mobile clients across all platforms (Windows Store, Windows Phone 8, iOS, and Android). Learn more about Notification Hubs on MSDN here, or watch the Notification Hubs //BUILD/ presentation here. Service Bus: Paired Namespaces One of the new features included with today’s Windows Azure SDK 2.1 release is support for Service Bus “Paired Namespaces”.  Paired Namespaces enable you to better handle situations where a Service Bus service namespace becomes unavailable (for example: due to connectivity issues or an outage) and you are unable to send or receive messages to the namespace hosting the queue, topic, or subscription. Previously,to handle this scenario you had to manually setup separate namespaces that can act as a backup, then implement manual failover and retry logic which was sometimes tricky to get right. Service Bus now supports Paired Namespaces, which enables you to connect two namespaces together. When you activate the secondary namespace, messages are stored in the secondary queue for delivery to the primary queue at a later time. If the primary container (namespace) becomes unavailable for some reason, automatic failover enables the messages in the secondary queue. For detailed information about paired namespaces and high availability, see the new topic Asynchronous Messaging Patterns and High Availability. Service Bus: Tooling Improvements In this release, the Windows Azure Tools for Visual Studio contain several enhancements and changes to the management of Service Bus messaging entities using Visual Studio’s Server Explorer. The most noticeable change is that the Service Bus node is now integrated into the Windows Azure node, and supports integrated subscription management. Additionally, there has been a change to the code generated by the Windows Azure Worker Role with Service Bus Queue project template. This code now uses an event-driven “message pump” programming model using the QueueClient.OnMessage method. PowerShell: Tons of New Automation Commands Since my last blog post on the previous Windows Azure SDK 2.0 release, we’ve updated Windows Azure PowerShell (which is a separate download) five times. You can find the full change log here. We’ve added new cmdlets in the following areas: China instance and Windows Azure Pack support Environment Configuration VMs Cloud Services Web Sites Storage SQL Azure Service Bus China Instance and Windows Azure Pack We now support the following cmdlets for the China instance and Windows Azure Pack, respectively: China Instance: Web Sites, Service Bus, Storage, Cloud Service, VMs, Network Windows Azure Pack: Web Sites, Service Bus We will have full cmdlet support for these two Windows Azure environments in PowerShell in the near future. Virtual Machines: Stop/Start Virtual Machines Similar to the Start/Stop VM capability in VS Server Explorer, you can now stop your VM and suspend billing: If you want to keep the original behavior of keeping your stopped VM provisioned, you can pass in the -StayProvisioned switch parameter. Virtual Machines: VM endpoint ACLs We’ve added and updated a bunch of cmdlets for you to configure fine-grained network ACL on your VM endpoints. You can use the following cmdlets to create ACL config and apply them to a VM endpoint: New-AzureAclConfig Get-AzureAclConfig Set-AzureAclConfig Remove-AzureAclConfig Add-AzureEndpoint -ACL Set-AzureEndpoint –ACL The following example shows how to add an ACL rule to an existing endpoint of a VM. Other improvements for Virtual Machine management includes Added -NoWinRMEndpoint parameter to New-AzureQuickVM and Add-AzureProvisioningConfig to disable Windows Remote Management Added -DirectServerReturn parameter to Add-AzureEndpoint and Set-AzureEndpoint to enable/disable direct server return Added Set-AzureLoadBalancedEndpoint cmdlet to modify load balanced endpoints Cloud Services: Remote Desktop and Diagnostics Remote Desktop and Diagnostics are popular debugging options for Cloud Services. We’ve introduced cmdlets to help you configure these two Cloud Service extensions from Windows Azure PowerShell. Windows Azure Cloud Services Remote Desktop extension: New-AzureServiceRemoteDesktopExtensionConfig Get-AzureServiceRemoteDesktopExtension Set-AzureServiceRemoteDesktopExtension Remove-AzureServiceRemoteDesktopExtension Windows Azure Cloud Services Diagnostics extension New-AzureServiceDiagnosticsExtensionConfig Get-AzureServiceDiagnosticsExtension Set-AzureServiceDiagnosticsExtension Remove-AzureServiceDiagnosticsExtension The following example shows how to enable Remote Desktop for a Cloud Service. Web Sites: Diagnostics With our last SDK update, we introduced the Get-AzureWebsiteLog –Tail cmdlet to get the log streaming of your Web Sites. Recently, we’ve also added cmdlets to configure Web Site application diagnostics: Enable-AzureWebsiteApplicationDiagnostic Disable-AzureWebsiteApplicationDiagnostic The following 2 examples show how to enable application diagnostics to the file system and a Windows Azure Storage Table: SQL Database Previously, you had to know the SQL Database server admin username and password if you want to manage the database in that SQL Database server. Recently, we’ve made the experience much easier by not requiring the admin credential if the database server is in your subscription. So you can simply specify the -ServerName parameter to tell Windows Azure PowerShell which server you want to use for the following cmdlets. Get-AzureSqlDatabase New-AzureSqlDatabase Remove-AzureSqlDatabase Set-AzureSqlDatabase We’ve also added a -AllowAllAzureServices parameter to New-AzureSqlDatabaseServerFirewallRule so that you can easily add a firewall rule to whitelist all Windows Azure IP addresses. Besides the above experience improvements, we’ve also added cmdlets get the database server quota and set the database service objective. Check out the following cmdlets for details. Get-AzureSqlDatabaseServerQuota Get-AzureSqlDatabaseServiceObjective Set-AzureSqlDatabase –ServiceObjective Storage and Service Bus Other new cmdlets include Storage: CRUD cmdlets for Azure Tables and Queues Service Bus: Cmdlets for managing authorization rules on your Service Bus Namespace, Queue, Topic, Relay and NotificationHub Summary Today’s release includes a bunch of great features that enable you to build even better cloud solutions.  All the above features/enhancements are shipped and available to use immediately as part of the 2.1 release of the Windows Azure SDK for .NET. If you don’t already have a Windows Azure account, you can sign-up for a free trial and start using all of the above features today.  Then visit the Windows Azure Developer Center to learn more about how to build apps with it. Hope this helps, Scott P.S. In addition to blogging, I am also now using Twitter for quick updates and to share links. Follow me at: twitter.com/scottgu

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  • Windows Azure Service Bus Scatter-Gather Implementation

    - by Alan Smith
    One of the more challenging enterprise integration patterns that developers may wish to implement is the Scatter-Gather pattern. In this article I will show the basic implementation of a scatter-gather pattern using the topic-subscription model of the windows azure service bus. I’ll be using the implementation in demos, and also as a lab in my training courses, and the pattern will also be included in the next release of my free e-book the “Windows Azure Service Bus Developer Guide”. The Scatter-Gather pattern answers the following scenario. How do you maintain the overall message flow when a message needs to be sent to multiple recipients, each of which may send a reply? Use a Scatter-Gather that broadcasts a message to multiple recipients and re-aggregates the responses back into a single message. The Enterprise Integration Patterns website provides a description of the Scatter-Gather pattern here.   The scatter-gather pattern uses a composite of the publish-subscribe channel pattern and the aggregator pattern. The publish-subscribe channel is used to broadcast messages to a number of receivers, and the aggregator is used to gather the response messages and aggregate them together to form a single message. Scatter-Gather Scenario The scenario for this scatter-gather implementation is an application that allows users to answer questions in a poll based voting scenario. A poll manager application will be used to broadcast questions to users, the users will use a voting application that will receive and display the questions and send the votes back to the poll manager. The poll manager application will receive the users’ votes and aggregate them together to display the results. The scenario should be able to scale to support a large number of users.   Scatter-Gather Implementation The diagram below shows the overall architecture for the scatter-gather implementation.       Messaging Entities Looking at the scatter-gather pattern diagram it can be seen that the topic-subscription architecture is well suited for broadcasting a message to a number of subscribers. The poll manager application can send the question messages to a topic, and each voting application can receive the question message on its own subscription. The static limit of 2,000 subscriptions per topic in the current release means that 2,000 voting applications can receive question messages and take part in voting. The vote messages can then be sent to the poll manager application using a queue. The voting applications will send their vote messages to the queue, and the poll manager will receive and process the vote messages. The questions topic and answer queue are created using the Windows Azure Developer Portal. Each instance of the voting application will create its own subscription in the questions topic when it starts, allowing the question messages to be broadcast to all subscribing voting applications. Data Contracts Two simple data contracts will be used to serialize the questions and votes as brokered messages. The code for these is shown below.   [DataContract] public class Question {     [DataMember]     public string QuestionText { get; set; } }     To keep the implementation of the voting functionality simple and focus on the pattern implementation, the users can only vote yes or no to the questions.   [DataContract] public class Vote {     [DataMember]     public string QuestionText { get; set; }       [DataMember]     public bool IsYes { get; set; } }     Poll Manager Application The poll manager application has been implemented as a simple WPF application; the user interface is shown below. A question can be entered in the text box, and sent to the topic by clicking the Add button. The topic and subscriptions used for broadcasting the messages are shown in a TreeView control. The questions that have been broadcast and the resulting votes are shown in a ListView control. When the application is started any existing subscriptions are cleared form the topic, clients are then created for the questions topic and votes queue, along with background workers for receiving and processing the vote messages, and updating the display of subscriptions.   public MainWindow() {     InitializeComponent();       // Create a new results list and data bind it.     Results = new ObservableCollection<Result>();     lsvResults.ItemsSource = Results;       // Create a token provider with the relevant credentials.     TokenProvider credentials =         TokenProvider.CreateSharedSecretTokenProvider         (AccountDetails.Name, AccountDetails.Key);       // Create a URI for the serivce bus.     Uri serviceBusUri = ServiceBusEnvironment.CreateServiceUri         ("sb", AccountDetails.Namespace, string.Empty);       // Clear out any old subscriptions.     NamespaceManager = new NamespaceManager(serviceBusUri, credentials);     IEnumerable<SubscriptionDescription> subs =         NamespaceManager.GetSubscriptions(AccountDetails.ScatterGatherTopic);     foreach (SubscriptionDescription sub in subs)     {         NamespaceManager.DeleteSubscription(sub.TopicPath, sub.Name);     }       // Create the MessagingFactory     MessagingFactory factory = MessagingFactory.Create(serviceBusUri, credentials);       // Create the topic and queue clients.     ScatterGatherTopicClient =         factory.CreateTopicClient(AccountDetails.ScatterGatherTopic);     ScatterGatherQueueClient =         factory.CreateQueueClient(AccountDetails.ScatterGatherQueue);       // Start the background worker threads.     VotesBackgroundWorker = new BackgroundWorker();     VotesBackgroundWorker.DoWork += new DoWorkEventHandler(ReceiveMessages);     VotesBackgroundWorker.RunWorkerAsync();       SubscriptionsBackgroundWorker = new BackgroundWorker();     SubscriptionsBackgroundWorker.DoWork += new DoWorkEventHandler(UpdateSubscriptions);     SubscriptionsBackgroundWorker.RunWorkerAsync(); }     When the poll manager user nters a question in the text box and clicks the Add button a question message is created and sent to the topic. This message will be broadcast to all the subscribing voting applications. An instance of the Result class is also created to keep track of the votes cast, this is then added to an observable collection named Results, which is data-bound to the ListView control.   private void btnAddQuestion_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e) {     // Create a new result for recording votes.     Result result = new Result()     {         Question = txtQuestion.Text     };     Results.Add(result);       // Send the question to the topic     Question question = new Question()     {         QuestionText = result.Question     };     BrokeredMessage msg = new BrokeredMessage(question);     ScatterGatherTopicClient.Send(msg);       txtQuestion.Text = ""; }     The Results class is implemented as follows.   public class Result : INotifyPropertyChanged {     public string Question { get; set; }       private int m_YesVotes;     private int m_NoVotes;       public event PropertyChangedEventHandler PropertyChanged;       public int YesVotes     {         get { return m_YesVotes; }         set         {             m_YesVotes = value;             NotifyPropertyChanged("YesVotes");         }     }       public int NoVotes     {         get { return m_NoVotes; }         set         {             m_NoVotes = value;             NotifyPropertyChanged("NoVotes");         }     }       private void NotifyPropertyChanged(string prop)     {         if(PropertyChanged != null)         {             PropertyChanged(this, new PropertyChangedEventArgs(prop));         }     } }     The INotifyPropertyChanged interface is implemented so that changes to the number of yes and no votes will be updated in the ListView control. Receiving the vote messages from the voting applications is done asynchronously, using a background worker thread.   // This runs on a background worker. private void ReceiveMessages(object sender, DoWorkEventArgs e) {     while (true)     {         // Receive a vote message from the queue         BrokeredMessage msg = ScatterGatherQueueClient.Receive();         if (msg != null)         {             // Deserialize the message.             Vote vote = msg.GetBody<Vote>();               // Update the results.             foreach (Result result in Results)             {                 if (result.Question.Equals(vote.QuestionText))                 {                     if (vote.IsYes)                     {                         result.YesVotes++;                     }                     else                     {                         result.NoVotes++;                     }                     break;                 }             }               // Mark the message as complete.             msg.Complete();         }       } }     When a vote message is received, the result that matches the vote question is updated with the vote from the user. The message is then marked as complete. A second background thread is used to update the display of subscriptions in the TreeView, with a dispatcher used to update the user interface. // This runs on a background worker. private void UpdateSubscriptions(object sender, DoWorkEventArgs e) {     while (true)     {         // Get a list of subscriptions.         IEnumerable<SubscriptionDescription> subscriptions =             NamespaceManager.GetSubscriptions(AccountDetails.ScatterGatherTopic);           // Update the user interface.         SimpleDelegate setQuestion = delegate()         {             trvSubscriptions.Items.Clear();             TreeViewItem topicItem = new TreeViewItem()             {                 Header = AccountDetails.ScatterGatherTopic             };               foreach (SubscriptionDescription subscription in subscriptions)             {                 TreeViewItem subscriptionItem = new TreeViewItem()                 {                     Header = subscription.Name                 };                 topicItem.Items.Add(subscriptionItem);             }             trvSubscriptions.Items.Add(topicItem);               topicItem.ExpandSubtree();         };         this.Dispatcher.BeginInvoke(DispatcherPriority.Send, setQuestion);           Thread.Sleep(3000);     } }       Voting Application The voting application is implemented as another WPF application. This one is more basic, and allows the user to vote “Yes” or “No” for the questions sent by the poll manager application. The user interface for that application is shown below. When an instance of the voting application is created it will create a subscription in the questions topic using a GUID as the subscription name. The application can then receive copies of every question message that is sent to the topic. Clients for the new subscription and the votes queue are created, along with a background worker to receive the question messages. The voting application is set to receiving mode, meaning it is ready to receive a question message from the subscription.   public MainWindow() {     InitializeComponent();       // Set the mode to receiving.     IsReceiving = true;       // Create a token provider with the relevant credentials.     TokenProvider credentials =         TokenProvider.CreateSharedSecretTokenProvider         (AccountDetails.Name, AccountDetails.Key);       // Create a URI for the serivce bus.     Uri serviceBusUri = ServiceBusEnvironment.CreateServiceUri         ("sb", AccountDetails.Namespace, string.Empty);       // Create the MessagingFactory     MessagingFactory factory = MessagingFactory.Create(serviceBusUri, credentials);       // Create a subcription for this instance     NamespaceManager mgr = new NamespaceManager(serviceBusUri, credentials);     string subscriptionName = Guid.NewGuid().ToString();     mgr.CreateSubscription(AccountDetails.ScatterGatherTopic, subscriptionName);       // Create the subscription and queue clients.     ScatterGatherSubscriptionClient = factory.CreateSubscriptionClient         (AccountDetails.ScatterGatherTopic, subscriptionName);     ScatterGatherQueueClient =         factory.CreateQueueClient(AccountDetails.ScatterGatherQueue);       // Start the background worker thread.     BackgroundWorker = new BackgroundWorker();     BackgroundWorker.DoWork += new DoWorkEventHandler(ReceiveMessages);     BackgroundWorker.RunWorkerAsync(); }     I took the inspiration for creating the subscriptions in the voting application from the chat application that uses topics and subscriptions blogged by Ovais Akhter here. The method that receives the question messages runs on a background thread. If the application is in receive mode, a question message will be received from the subscription, the question will be displayed in the user interface, the voting buttons enabled, and IsReceiving set to false to prevent more questing from being received before the current one is answered.   // This runs on a background worker. private void ReceiveMessages(object sender, DoWorkEventArgs e) {     while (true)     {         if (IsReceiving)         {             // Receive a question message from the topic.             BrokeredMessage msg = ScatterGatherSubscriptionClient.Receive();             if (msg != null)             {                 // Deserialize the message.                 Question question = msg.GetBody<Question>();                   // Update the user interface.                 SimpleDelegate setQuestion = delegate()                 {                     lblQuestion.Content = question.QuestionText;                     btnYes.IsEnabled = true;                     btnNo.IsEnabled = true;                 };                 this.Dispatcher.BeginInvoke(DispatcherPriority.Send, setQuestion);                 IsReceiving = false;                   // Mark the message as complete.                 msg.Complete();             }         }         else         {             Thread.Sleep(1000);         }     } }     When the user clicks on the Yes or No button, the btnVote_Click method is called. This will create a new Vote data contract with the appropriate question and answer and send the message to the poll manager application using the votes queue. The user voting buttons are then disabled, the question text cleared, and the IsReceiving flag set to true to allow a new message to be received.   private void btnVote_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e) {     // Create a new vote.     Vote vote = new Vote()     {         QuestionText = (string)lblQuestion.Content,         IsYes = ((sender as Button).Content as string).Equals("Yes")     };       // Send the vote message.     BrokeredMessage msg = new BrokeredMessage(vote);     ScatterGatherQueueClient.Send(msg);       // Update the user interface.     lblQuestion.Content = "";     btnYes.IsEnabled = false;     btnNo.IsEnabled = false;     IsReceiving = true; }     Testing the Application In order to test the application, an instance of the poll manager application is started; the user interface is shown below. As no instances of the voting application have been created there are no subscriptions present in the topic. When an instance of the voting application is created the subscription will be displayed in the poll manager. Now that a voting application is subscribing, a questing can be sent from the poll manager application. When the message is sent to the topic, the voting application will receive the message and display the question. The voter can then answer the question by clicking on the appropriate button. The results of the vote are updated in the poll manager application. When two more instances of the voting application are created, the poll manager will display the new subscriptions. More questions can then be broadcast to the voting applications. As the question messages are queued up in the subscription for each voting application, the users can answer the questions in their own time. The vote messages will be received by the poll manager application and aggregated to display the results. The screenshots of the applications part way through voting are shown below. The messages for each voting application are queued up in sequence on the voting application subscriptions, allowing the questions to be answered at different speeds by the voters.

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  • Working with Tile Notifications in Windows 8 Store Apps – Part I

    - by dwahlin
    One of the features that really makes Windows 8 apps stand out from others is the tile functionality on the start screen. While icons allow a user to start an application, tiles provide a more engaging way to engage the user and draw them into an application. Examples of “live” tiles on part of my current start screen are shown next: I’ll admit that if you get enough of these tiles going the start screen can actually be a bit distracting. Fortunately, a user can easily disable a live tile by right-clicking on it or pressing and holding a tile on a touch device and then selecting Turn live tile off from the AppBar: The can also make a wide tile smaller (into a square tile) or make a square tile bigger assuming the application supports both squares and rectangles. In this post I’ll walk through how to add tile notification functionality into an application. Both XAML/C# and HTML/JavaScript apps support live tiles and I’ll show the code for both options.   Understanding Tile Templates The first thing you need to know if you want to add custom tile functionality (live tiles) into your application is that there is a collection of tile templates available out-of-the-box. Each tile template has XML associated with it that you need to load, update with your custom data, and then feed into a tile update manager. By doing that you can control what shows in your app’s tile on the Windows 8 start screen. So how do you learn more about the different tile templates and their respective XML? Fortunately, Microsoft has a nice documentation page in the Windows 8 Store SDK. Visit http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/hh761491.aspx to see a complete list of square and wide/rectangular tile templates that you can use. Looking through the templates you’ll It has the following XML template associated with it:  <tile> <visual> <binding template="TileSquareBlock"> <text id="1">Text Field 1</text> <text id="2">Text Field 2</text> </binding> </visual> </tile> An example of a wide/rectangular tile template is shown next:    <tile> <visual> <binding template="TileWideImageAndText01"> <image id="1" src="image1.png" alt="alt text"/> <text id="1">Text Field 1</text> </binding> </visual> </tile>   To use these tile templates (or others you find interesting), update their content, and get them to show for your app’s tile on the Windows 8 start screen you’ll need to perform the following steps: Define the tile template to use in your app Load the tile template’s XML into memory Modify the children of the <binding> tag Feed the modified tile XML into a new TileNotification instance Feed the TileNotification instance into the Update() method of the TileUpdateManager In the remainder of the post I’ll walk through each of the steps listed above to provide wide and square tile notifications for an application. The wide tile that’s shown will show an image and text while the square tile will only show text. If you’re going to provide custom tile notifications it’s recommended that you provide wide and square tiles since users can switch between the two of them directly on the start screen. Note: When working with tile notifications it’s possible to manipulate and update a tile’s XML template without having to know XML parsing techniques. This can be accomplished using some C# notification extension classes that are available. In this post I’m going to focus on working with tile notifications using an XML parser so that the focus is on the steps required to add notifications to the Windows 8 start screen rather than on external extension classes. You can access the extension classes in the Windows 8 samples gallery if you’re interested.   Steps to Create Custom App Tile Notifications   Step 1: Define the tile template to use in your app Although you can cut-and-paste a tile template’s XML directly into your C# or HTML/JavaScript Windows store app and then parse it using an XML parser, it’s easier to use the built-in TileTemplateType enumeration from the Windows.UI.Notifications namespace. It provides direct access to the XML for the various templates so once you locate a template you like in the documentation (mentioned above), simplify reference it:HTML/JavaScript var notifications = Windows.UI.Notifications; var template = notifications.TileTemplateType.tileWideImageAndText01; .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; }   XAML/C# var template = TileTemplateType.TileWideImageAndText01;   Step 2: Load the tile template’s XML into memory Once the target template’s XML is identified, load it into memory using the TileUpdateManager’s GetTemplateContent() method. This method parses the template XML and returns an XmlDocument object:   HTML/JavaScript   var tileXml = notifications.TileUpdateManager.getTemplateContent(template); .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; }   XAML/C#  var tileXml = TileUpdateManager.GetTemplateContent(template);   Step 3: Modify the children of the <binding> tag Once the XML for a given template is loaded into memory you need to locate the appropriate <image> and/or <text> elements in the XML and update them with your app data. This can be done using standard XML DOM manipulation techniques. The example code below locates the image folder and loads the path to an image file located in the project into it’s inner text. The code also creates a square tile that consists of text, updates it’s <text> element, and then imports and appends it into the wide tile’s XML.   HTML/JavaScript var image = tileXml.selectSingleNode('//image[@id="1"]'); image.setAttribute('src', 'ms-appx:///images/' + imageFile); image.setAttribute('alt', 'Live Tile'); var squareTemplate = notifications.TileTemplateType.tileSquareText04; var squareTileXml = notifications.TileUpdateManager.getTemplateContent(squareTemplate); var squareTileTextAttributes = squareTileXml.selectSingleNode('//text[@id="1"]'); squareTileTextAttributes.appendChild(squareTileXml.createTextNode(content)); var node = tileXml.importNode(squareTileXml.selectSingleNode('//binding'), true); tileXml.selectSingleNode('//visual').appendChild(node); .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; }   XAML/C#var tileXml = TileUpdateManager.GetTemplateContent(template); var text = tileXml.SelectSingleNode("//text[@id='1']"); text.AppendChild(tileXml.CreateTextNode(content)); var image = (XmlElement)tileXml.SelectSingleNode("//image[@id='1']"); image.SetAttribute("src", "ms-appx:///Assets/" + imageFile); image.SetAttribute("alt", "Live Tile"); Debug.WriteLine(image.GetXml()); var squareTemplate = TileTemplateType.TileSquareText04; var squareTileXml = TileUpdateManager.GetTemplateContent(squareTemplate); var squareTileTextAttributes = squareTileXml.SelectSingleNode("//text[@id='1']"); squareTileTextAttributes.AppendChild(squareTileXml.CreateTextNode(content)); var node = tileXml.ImportNode(squareTileXml.SelectSingleNode("//binding"), true); tileXml.SelectSingleNode("//visual").AppendChild(node);  Step 4: Feed the modified tile XML into a new TileNotification instance Now that the XML data has been updated with the desired text and images, it’s time to load the XmlDocument object into a new TileNotification instance:   HTML/JavaScript var tileNotification = new notifications.TileNotification(tileXml); .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; }   XAML/C#var tileNotification = new TileNotification(tileXml);  Step 5: Feed the TileNotification instance into the Update() method of the TileUpdateManager Once the TileNotification instance has been created and the XmlDocument has been passed to its constructor, it needs to be passed to the Update() method of a TileUpdator in order to be shown on the Windows 8 start screen:   HTML/JavaScript notifications.TileUpdateManager.createTileUpdaterForApplication().update(tileNotification); .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; }   XAML/C#TileUpdateManager.CreateTileUpdaterForApplication().Update(tileNotification);    Once the tile notification is updated it’ll show up on the start screen. An example of the wide and square tiles created with the included demo code are shown next:     Download the HTML/JavaScript and XAML/C# sample application here. In the next post in this series I’ll walk through how to queue multiple tiles and clear a queue.

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  • Connecting SceneBuilder edited FXML to Java code

    - by daniel
    Recently I had to answer several questions regarding how to connect an UI built with the JavaFX SceneBuilder 1.0 Developer Preview to Java Code. So I figured out that a short overview might be helpful. But first, let me state the obvious. What is FXML? To make it short, FXML is an XML based declaration format for JavaFX. JavaFX provides an FXML loader which will parse FXML files and from that construct a graph of Java object. It may sound complex when stated like that but it is actually quite simple. Here is an example of FXML file, which instantiate a StackPane and puts a Button inside it: -- <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <?import java.lang.*?> <?import java.util.*?> <?import javafx.scene.control.*?> <?import javafx.scene.layout.*?> <?import javafx.scene.paint.*?> <StackPane prefHeight="150.0" prefWidth="200.0" xmlns:fx="http://javafx.com/fxml"> <children> <Button mnemonicParsing="false" text="Button" /> </children> </StackPane> ... and here is the code I would have had to write if I had chosen to do the same thing programatically: import javafx.scene.control.*; import javafx.scene.layout.*; ... final Button button = new Button("Button"); button.setMnemonicParsing(false); final StackPane stackPane = new StackPane(); stackPane.setPrefWidth(200.0); stackPane.setPrefHeight(150.0); stacPane.getChildren().add(button); As you can see - FXML is rather simple to understand - as it is quite close to the JavaFX API. So OK FXML is simple, but why would I use it?Well, there are several answers to that - but my own favorite is: because you can make it with SceneBuilder. What is SceneBuilder? In short SceneBuilder is a layout tool that will let you graphically build JavaFX user interfaces by dragging and dropping JavaFX components from a library, and save it as an FXML file. SceneBuilder can also be used to load and modify JavaFX scenegraphs declared in FXML. Here is how I made the small FXML file above: Start the JavaFX SceneBuilder 1.0 Developer Preview In the Library on the left hand side, click on 'StackPane' and drag it on the content view (the white rectangle) In the Library, select a Button and drag it onto the StackPane on the content view. In the Hierarchy Panel on the left hand side - select the StackPane component, then invoke 'Edit > Trim To Selected' from the menubar That's it - you can now save, and you will obtain the small FXML file shown above. Of course this is only a trivial sample, made for the sake of the example - and SceneBuilder will let you create much more complex UIs. So, I have now an FXML file. But what do I do with it? How do I include it in my program? How do I write my main class? Loading an FXML file with JavaFX Well, that's the easy part - because the piece of code you need to write never changes. You can download and look at the SceneBuilder samples if you need to get convinced, but here is the short version: Create a Java class (let's call it 'Main.java') which extends javafx.application.Application In the same directory copy/save the FXML file you just created using SceneBuilder. Let's name it "simple.fxml" Now here is the Java code for the Main class, which simply loads the FXML file and puts it as root in a stage's scene. /* * Copyright (c) 2012, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. */ package simple; import java.util.logging.Level; import java.util.logging.Logger; import javafx.application.Application; import javafx.fxml.FXMLLoader; import javafx.scene.Scene; import javafx.scene.layout.StackPane; import javafx.stage.Stage; public class Main extends Application { /** * @param args the command line arguments */ public static void main(String[] args) { Application.launch(Main.class, (java.lang.String[])null); } @Override public void start(Stage primaryStage) { try { StackPane page = (StackPane) FXMLLoader.load(Main.class.getResource("simple.fxml")); Scene scene = new Scene(page); primaryStage.setScene(scene); primaryStage.setTitle("FXML is Simple"); primaryStage.show(); } catch (Exception ex) { Logger.getLogger(Main.class.getName()).log(Level.SEVERE, null, ex); } } } Great! Now I only have to use my favorite IDE to compile the class and run it. But... wait... what does it do? Well nothing. It just displays a button in the middle of a window. There's no logic attached to it. So how do we do that? How can I connect this button to my application logic? Here is how: Connection to code First let's define our application logic. Since this post is only intended to give a very brief overview - let's keep things simple. Let's say that the only thing I want to do is print a message on System.out when the user clicks on my button. To do that, I'll need to register an action handler with my button. And to do that, I'll need to somehow get a handle on my button. I'll need some kind of controller logic that will get my button and add my action handler to it. So how do I get a handle to my button and pass it to my controller? Once again - this is easy: I just need to write a controller class for my FXML. With each FXML file, it is possible to associate a controller class defined for that FXML. That controller class will make the link between the UI (the objects defined in the FXML) and the application logic. To each object defined in FXML we can associate an fx:id. The value of the id must be unique within the scope of the FXML, and is the name of an instance variable inside the controller class, in which the object will be injected. Since I want to have access to my button, I will need to add an fx:id to my button in FXML, and declare an @FXML variable in my controller class with the same name. In other words - I will need to add fx:id="myButton" to my button in FXML: -- <Button fx:id="myButton" mnemonicParsing="false" text="Button" /> and declare @FXML private Button myButton in my controller class @FXML private Button myButton; // value will be injected by the FXMLLoader Let's see how to do this. Add an fx:id to the Button object Load "simple.fxml" in SceneBuilder - if not already done In the hierarchy panel (bottom left), or directly on the content view, select the Button object. Open the Properties sections of the inspector (right panel) for the button object At the top of the section, you will see a text field labelled fx:id. Enter myButton in that field and validate. Associate a controller class with the FXML file Still in SceneBuilder, select the top root object (in our case, that's the StackPane), and open the Code section of the inspector (right hand side) At the top of the section you should see a text field labelled Controller Class. In the field, type simple.SimpleController. This is the name of the class we're going to create manually. If you save at this point, the FXML will look like this: -- <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <?import java.lang.*?> <?import java.util.*?> <?import javafx.scene.control.*?> <?import javafx.scene.layout.*?> <?import javafx.scene.paint.*?> <StackPane prefHeight="150.0" prefWidth="200.0" xmlns:fx="http://javafx.com/fxml" fx:controller="simple.SimpleController"> <children> <Button fx:id="myButton" mnemonicParsing="false" text="Button" /> </children> </StackPane> As you can see, the name of the controller class has been added to the root object: fx:controller="simple.SimpleController" Coding the controller class In your favorite IDE, create an empty SimpleController.java class. Now what does a controller class looks like? What should we put inside? Well - SceneBuilder will help you there: it will show you an example of controller skeleton tailored for your FXML. In the menu bar, invoke View > Show Sample Controller Skeleton. A popup appears, displaying a suggestion for the controller skeleton: copy the code displayed there, and paste it into your SimpleController.java: /** * Sample Skeleton for "simple.fxml" Controller Class * Use copy/paste to copy paste this code into your favorite IDE **/ package simple; import java.net.URL; import java.util.ResourceBundle; import javafx.fxml.FXML; import javafx.fxml.Initializable; import javafx.scene.control.Button; public class SimpleController implements Initializable { @FXML // fx:id="myButton" private Button myButton; // Value injected by FXMLLoader @Override // This method is called by the FXMLLoader when initialization is complete public void initialize(URL fxmlFileLocation, ResourceBundle resources) { assert myButton != null : "fx:id=\"myButton\" was not injected: check your FXML file 'simple.fxml'."; // initialize your logic here: all @FXML variables will have been injected } } Note that the code displayed by SceneBuilder is there only for educational purpose: SceneBuilder does not create and does not modify Java files. This is simply a hint of what you can use, given the fx:id present in your FXML file. You are free to copy all or part of the displayed code and paste it into your own Java class. Now at this point, there only remains to add our logic to the controller class. Quite easy: in the initialize method, I will register an action handler with my button: () { @Override public void handle(ActionEvent event) { System.out.println("That was easy, wasn't it?"); } }); ... -- ... // initialize your logic here: all @FXML variables will have been injected myButton.setOnAction(new EventHandler<ActionEvent>() { @Override public void handle(ActionEvent event) { System.out.println("That was easy, wasn't it?"); } }); ... That's it - if you now compile everything in your IDE, and run your application, clicking on the button should print a message on the console! Summary What happens is that in Main.java, the FXMLLoader will load simple.fxml from the jar/classpath, as specified by 'FXMLLoader.load(Main.class.getResource("simple.fxml"))'. When loading simple.fxml, the loader will find the name of the controller class, as specified by 'fx:controller="simple.SimpleController"' in the FXML. Upon finding the name of the controller class, the loader will create an instance of that class, in which it will try to inject all the objects that have an fx:id in the FXML. Thus, after having created '<Button fx:id="myButton" ... />', the FXMLLoader will inject the button instance into the '@FXML private Button myButton;' instance variable found on the controller instance. This is because The instance variable has an @FXML annotation, The name of the variable exactly matches the value of the fx:id Finally, when the whole FXML has been loaded, the FXMLLoader will call the controller's initialize method, and our code that registers an action handler with the button will be executed. For a complete example, take a look at the HelloWorld SceneBuilder sample. Also make sure to follow the SceneBuilder Get Started guide, which will guide you through a much more complete example. Of course, there are more elegant ways to set up an Event Handler using FXML and SceneBuilder. There are also many different ways to work with the FXMLLoader. But since it's starting to be very late here, I think it will have to wait for another post. I hope you have enjoyed the tour! --daniel

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  • C#/.NET Little Wonders: Interlocked CompareExchange()

    - by James Michael Hare
    Once again, in this series of posts I look at the parts of the .NET Framework that may seem trivial, but can help improve your code by making it easier to write and maintain. The index of all my past little wonders posts can be found here. Two posts ago, I discussed the Interlocked Add(), Increment(), and Decrement() methods (here) for adding and subtracting values in a thread-safe, lightweight manner.  Then, last post I talked about the Interlocked Read() and Exchange() methods (here) for safely and efficiently reading and setting 32 or 64 bit values (or references).  This week, we’ll round out the discussion by talking about the Interlocked CompareExchange() method and how it can be put to use to exchange a value if the current value is what you expected it to be. Dirty reads can lead to bad results Many of the uses of Interlocked that we’ve explored so far have centered around either reading, setting, or adding values.  But what happens if you want to do something more complex such as setting a value based on the previous value in some manner? Perhaps you were creating an application that reads a current balance, applies a deposit, and then saves the new modified balance, where of course you’d want that to happen atomically.  If you read the balance, then go to save the new balance and between that time the previous balance has already changed, you’ll have an issue!  Think about it, if we read the current balance as $400, and we are applying a new deposit of $50.75, but meanwhile someone else deposits $200 and sets the total to $600, but then we write a total of $450.75 we’ve lost $200! Now, certainly for int and long values we can use Interlocked.Add() to handles these cases, and it works well for that.  But what if we want to work with doubles, for example?  Let’s say we wanted to add the numbers from 0 to 99,999 in parallel.  We could do this by spawning several parallel tasks to continuously add to a total: 1: double total = 0; 2:  3: Parallel.For(0, 10000, next => 4: { 5: total += next; 6: }); Were this run on one thread using a standard for loop, we’d expect an answer of 4,999,950,000 (the sum of all numbers from 0 to 99,999).  But when we run this in parallel as written above, we’ll likely get something far off.  The result of one of my runs, for example, was 1,281,880,740.  That is way off!  If this were banking software we’d be in big trouble with our clients.  So what happened?  The += operator is not atomic, it will read in the current value, add the result, then store it back into the total.  At any point in all of this another thread could read a “dirty” current total and accidentally “skip” our add.   So, to clean this up, we could use a lock to guarantee concurrency: 1: double total = 0.0; 2: object locker = new object(); 3:  4: Parallel.For(0, count, next => 5: { 6: lock (locker) 7: { 8: total += next; 9: } 10: }); Which will give us the correct result of 4,999,950,000.  One thing to note is that locking can be heavy, especially if the operation being locked over is trivial, or the life of the lock is a high percentage of the work being performed concurrently.  In the case above, the lock consumes pretty much all of the time of each parallel task – and the task being locked on is relatively trivial. Now, let me put in a disclaimer here before we go further: For most uses, lock is more than sufficient for your needs, and is often the simplest solution!    So, if lock is sufficient for most needs, why would we ever consider another solution?  The problem with locking is that it can suspend execution of your thread while it waits for the signal that the lock is free.  Moreover, if the operation being locked over is trivial, the lock can add a very high level of overhead.  This is why things like Interlocked.Increment() perform so well, instead of locking just to perform an increment, we perform the increment with an atomic, lockless method. As with all things performance related, it’s important to profile before jumping to the conclusion that you should optimize everything in your path.  If your profiling shows that locking is causing a high level of waiting in your application, then it’s time to consider lighter alternatives such as Interlocked. CompareExchange() – Exchange existing value if equal some value So let’s look at how we could use CompareExchange() to solve our problem above.  The general syntax of CompareExchange() is: T CompareExchange<T>(ref T location, T newValue, T expectedValue) If the value in location == expectedValue, then newValue is exchanged.  Either way, the value in location (before exchange) is returned. Actually, CompareExchange() is not one method, but a family of overloaded methods that can take int, long, float, double, pointers, or references.  It cannot take other value types (that is, can’t CompareExchange() two DateTime instances directly).  Also keep in mind that the version that takes any reference type (the generic overload) only checks for reference equality, it does not call any overridden Equals(). So how does this help us?  Well, we can grab the current total, and exchange the new value if total hasn’t changed.  This would look like this: 1: // grab the snapshot 2: double current = total; 3:  4: // if the total hasn’t changed since I grabbed the snapshot, then 5: // set it to the new total 6: Interlocked.CompareExchange(ref total, current + next, current); So what the code above says is: if the amount in total (1st arg) is the same as the amount in current (3rd arg), then set total to current + next (2nd arg).  This check and exchange pair is atomic (and thus thread-safe). This works if total is the same as our snapshot in current, but the problem, is what happens if they aren’t the same?  Well, we know that in either case we will get the previous value of total (before the exchange), back as a result.  Thus, we can test this against our snapshot to see if it was the value we expected: 1: // if the value returned is != current, then our snapshot must be out of date 2: // which means we didn't (and shouldn't) apply current + next 3: if (Interlocked.CompareExchange(ref total, current + next, current) != current) 4: { 5: // ooops, total was not equal to our snapshot in current, what should we do??? 6: } So what do we do if we fail?  That’s up to you and the problem you are trying to solve.  It’s possible you would decide to abort the whole transaction, or perhaps do a lightweight spin and try again.  Let’s try that: 1: double current = total; 2:  3: // make first attempt... 4: if (Interlocked.CompareExchange(ref total, current + i, current) != current) 5: { 6: // if we fail, go into a spin wait, spin, and try again until succeed 7: var spinner = new SpinWait(); 8:  9: do 10: { 11: spinner.SpinOnce(); 12: current = total; 13: } 14: while (Interlocked.CompareExchange(ref total, current + i, current) != current); 15: } 16:  This is not trivial code, but it illustrates a possible use of CompareExchange().  What we are doing is first checking to see if we succeed on the first try, and if so great!  If not, we create a SpinWait and then repeat the process of SpinOnce(), grab a fresh snapshot, and repeat until CompareExchnage() succeeds.  You may wonder why not a simple do-while here, and the reason it’s more efficient to only create the SpinWait until we absolutely know we need one, for optimal efficiency. Though not as simple (or maintainable) as a simple lock, this will perform better in many situations.  Comparing an unlocked (and wrong) version, a version using lock, and the Interlocked of the code, we get the following average times for multiple iterations of adding the sum of 100,000 numbers: 1: Unlocked money average time: 2.1 ms 2: Locked money average time: 5.1 ms 3: Interlocked money average time: 3 ms So the Interlocked.CompareExchange(), while heavier to code, came in lighter than the lock, offering a good compromise of safety and performance when we need to reduce contention. CompareExchange() - it’s not just for adding stuff… So that was one simple use of CompareExchange() in the context of adding double values -- which meant we couldn’t have used the simpler Interlocked.Add() -- but it has other uses as well. If you think about it, this really works anytime you want to create something new based on a current value without using a full lock.  For example, you could use it to create a simple lazy instantiation implementation.  In this case, we want to set the lazy instance only if the previous value was null: 1: public static class Lazy<T> where T : class, new() 2: { 3: private static T _instance; 4:  5: public static T Instance 6: { 7: get 8: { 9: // if current is null, we need to create new instance 10: if (_instance == null) 11: { 12: // attempt create, it will only set if previous was null 13: Interlocked.CompareExchange(ref _instance, new T(), (T)null); 14: } 15:  16: return _instance; 17: } 18: } 19: } So, if _instance == null, this will create a new T() and attempt to exchange it with _instance.  If _instance is not null, then it does nothing and we discard the new T() we created. This is a way to create lazy instances of a type where we are more concerned about locking overhead than creating an accidental duplicate which is not used.  In fact, the BCL implementation of Lazy<T> offers a similar thread-safety choice for Publication thread safety, where it will not guarantee only one instance was created, but it will guarantee that all readers get the same instance.  Another possible use would be in concurrent collections.  Let’s say, for example, that you are creating your own brand new super stack that uses a linked list paradigm and is “lock free”.  We could use Interlocked.CompareExchange() to be able to do a lockless Push() which could be more efficient in multi-threaded applications where several threads are pushing and popping on the stack concurrently. Yes, there are already concurrent collections in the BCL (in .NET 4.0 as part of the TPL), but it’s a fun exercise!  So let’s assume we have a node like this: 1: public sealed class Node<T> 2: { 3: // the data for this node 4: public T Data { get; set; } 5:  6: // the link to the next instance 7: internal Node<T> Next { get; set; } 8: } Then, perhaps, our stack’s Push() operation might look something like: 1: public sealed class SuperStack<T> 2: { 3: private volatile T _head; 4:  5: public void Push(T value) 6: { 7: var newNode = new Node<int> { Data = value, Next = _head }; 8:  9: if (Interlocked.CompareExchange(ref _head, newNode, newNode.Next) != newNode.Next) 10: { 11: var spinner = new SpinWait(); 12:  13: do 14: { 15: spinner.SpinOnce(); 16: newNode.Next = _head; 17: } 18: while (Interlocked.CompareExchange(ref _head, newNode, newNode.Next) != newNode.Next); 19: } 20: } 21:  22: // ... 23: } Notice a similar paradigm here as with adding our doubles before.  What we are doing is creating the new Node with the data to push, and with a Next value being the original node referenced by _head.  This will create our stack behavior (LIFO – Last In, First Out).  Now, we have to set _head to now refer to the newNode, but we must first make sure it hasn’t changed! So we check to see if _head has the same value we saved in our snapshot as newNode.Next, and if so, we set _head to newNode.  This is all done atomically, and the result is _head’s original value, as long as the original value was what we assumed it was with newNode.Next, then we are good and we set it without a lock!  If not, we SpinWait and try again. Once again, this is much lighter than locking in highly parallelized code with lots of contention.  If I compare the method above with a similar class using lock, I get the following results for pushing 100,000 items: 1: Locked SuperStack average time: 6 ms 2: Interlocked SuperStack average time: 4.5 ms So, once again, we can get more efficient than a lock, though there is the cost of added code complexity.  Fortunately for you, most of the concurrent collection you’d ever need are already created for you in the System.Collections.Concurrent (here) namespace – for more information, see my Little Wonders – The Concurent Collections Part 1 (here), Part 2 (here), and Part 3 (here). Summary We’ve seen before how the Interlocked class can be used to safely and efficiently add, increment, decrement, read, and exchange values in a multi-threaded environment.  In addition to these, Interlocked CompareExchange() can be used to perform more complex logic without the need of a lock when lock contention is a concern. The added efficiency, though, comes at the cost of more complex code.  As such, the standard lock is often sufficient for most thread-safety needs.  But if profiling indicates you spend a lot of time waiting for locks, or if you just need a lock for something simple such as an increment, decrement, read, exchange, etc., then consider using the Interlocked class’s methods to reduce wait. Technorati Tags: C#,CSharp,.NET,Little Wonders,Interlocked,CompareExchange,threading,concurrency

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  • Parsing Concerns

    - by Jesse
    If you’ve ever written an application that accepts date and/or time inputs from an external source (a person, an uploaded file, posted XML, etc.) then you’ve no doubt had to deal with parsing some text representing a date into a data structure that a computer can understand. Similarly, you’ve probably also had to take values from those same data structure and turn them back into their original formats. Most (all?) suitably modern development platforms expose some kind of parsing and formatting functionality for turning text into dates and vice versa. In .NET, the DateTime data structure exposes ‘Parse’ and ‘ToString’ methods for this purpose. This post will focus mostly on parsing, though most of the examples and suggestions below can also be applied to the ToString method. The DateTime.Parse method is pretty permissive in the values that it will accept (though apparently not as permissive as some other languages) which makes it pretty easy to take some text provided by a user and turn it into a proper DateTime instance. Here are some examples (note that the resulting DateTime values are shown using the RFC1123 format): DateTime.Parse("3/12/2010"); //Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 GMT DateTime.Parse("2:00 AM"); //Sat, 01 Jan 2011 02:00:00 GMT (took today's date as date portion) DateTime.Parse("5-15/2010"); //Sat, 15 May 2010 00:00:00 GMT DateTime.Parse("7/8"); //Fri, 08 Jul 2011 00:00:00 GMT DateTime.Parse("Thursday, July 1, 2010"); //Thu, 01 Jul 2010 00:00:00 GMT Dealing With Inaccuracy While the DateTime struct has the ability to store a date and time value accurate down to the millisecond, most date strings provided by a user are not going to specify values with that much precision. In each of the above examples, the Parse method was provided a partial value from which to construct a proper DateTime. This means it had to go ahead and assume what you meant and fill in the missing parts of the date and time for you. This is a good thing, especially when we’re talking about taking input from a user. We can’t expect that every person using our software to provide a year, day, month, hour, minute, second, and millisecond every time they need to express a date. That said, it’s important for developers to understand what assumptions the software might be making and plan accordingly. I think the assumptions that were made in each of the above examples were pretty reasonable, though if we dig into this method a little bit deeper we’ll find that there are a lot more assumptions being made under the covers than you might have previously known. One of the biggest assumptions that the DateTime.Parse method has to make relates to the format of the date represented by the provided string. Let’s consider this example input string: ‘10-02-15’. To some people. that might look like ‘15-Feb-2010’. To others, it might be ‘02-Oct-2015’. Like many things, it depends on where you’re from. This Is America! Most cultures around the world have adopted a “little-endian” or “big-endian” formats. (Source: Date And Time Notation By Country) In this context,  a “little-endian” date format would list the date parts with the least significant first while the “big-endian” date format would list them with the most significant first. For example, a “little-endian” date would be “day-month-year” and “big-endian” would be “year-month-day”. It’s worth nothing here that ISO 8601 defines a “big-endian” format as the international standard. While I personally prefer “big-endian” style date formats, I think both styles make sense in that they follow some logical standard with respect to ordering the date parts by their significance. Here in the United States, however, we buck that trend by using what is, in comparison, a completely nonsensical format of “month/day/year”. Almost no other country in the world uses this format. I’ve been fortunate in my life to have done some international travel, so I’ve been aware of this difference for many years, but never really thought much about it. Until recently, I had been developing software for exclusively US-based audiences and remained blissfully ignorant of the different date formats employed by other countries around the world. The web application I work on is being rolled out to users in different countries, so I was recently tasked with updating it to support different date formats. As it turns out, .NET has a great mechanism for dealing with different date formats right out of the box. Supporting date formats for different cultures is actually pretty easy once you understand this mechanism. Pulling the Curtain Back On the Parse Method Have you ever taken a look at the different flavors (read: overloads) that the DateTime.Parse method comes in? In it’s simplest form, it takes a single string parameter and returns the corresponding DateTime value (if it can divine what the date value should be). You can optionally provide two additional parameters to this method: an ‘System.IFormatProvider’ and a ‘System.Globalization.DateTimeStyles’. Both of these optional parameters have some bearing on the assumptions that get made while parsing a date, but for the purposes of this article I’m going to focus on the ‘System.IFormatProvider’ parameter. The IFormatProvider exposes a single method called ‘GetFormat’ that returns an object to be used for determining the proper format for displaying and parsing things like numbers and dates. This interface plays a big role in the globalization capabilities that are built into the .NET Framework. The cornerstone of these globalization capabilities can be found in the ‘System.Globalization.CultureInfo’ class. To put it simply, the CultureInfo class is used to encapsulate information related to things like language, writing system, and date formats for a certain culture. Support for many cultures are “baked in” to the .NET Framework and there is capacity for defining custom cultures if needed (thought I’ve never delved into that). While the details of the CultureInfo class are beyond the scope of this post, so for now let me just point out that the CultureInfo class implements the IFormatInfo interface. This means that a CultureInfo instance created for a given culture can be provided to the DateTime.Parse method in order to tell it what date formats it should expect. So what happens when you don’t provide this value? Let’s crack this method open in Reflector: When no IFormatInfo parameter is provided (i.e. we use the simple DateTime.Parse(string) overload), the ‘DateTimeFormatInfo.CurrentInfo’ is used instead. Drilling down a bit further we can see the implementation of the DateTimeFormatInfo.CurrentInfo property: From this property we can determine that, in the absence of an IFormatProvider being specified, the DateTime.Parse method will assume that the provided date should be treated as if it were in the format defined by the CultureInfo object that is attached to the current thread. The culture specified by the CultureInfo instance on the current thread can vary depending on several factors, but if you’re writing an application where a single instance might be used by people from different cultures (i.e. a web application with an international user base), it’s important to know what this value is. Having a solid strategy for setting the current thread’s culture for each incoming request in an internationally used ASP .NET application is obviously important, and might make a good topic for a future post. For now, let’s think about what the implications of not having the correct culture set on the current thread. Let’s say you’re running an ASP .NET application on a server in the United States. The server was setup by English speakers in the United States, so it’s configured for US English. It exposes a web page where users can enter order data, one piece of which is an anticipated order delivery date. Most users are in the US, and therefore enter dates in a ‘month/day/year’ format. The application is using the DateTime.Parse(string) method to turn the values provided by the user into actual DateTime instances that can be stored in the database. This all works fine, because your users and your server both think of dates in the same way. Now you need to support some users in South America, where a ‘day/month/year’ format is used. The best case scenario at this point is a user will enter March 13, 2011 as ‘25/03/2011’. This would cause the call to DateTime.Parse to blow up since that value doesn’t look like a valid date in the US English culture (Note: In all likelihood you might be using the DateTime.TryParse(string) method here instead, but that method behaves the same way with regard to date formats). “But wait a minute”, you might be saying to yourself, “I thought you said that this was the best case scenario?” This scenario would prevent users from entering orders in the system, which is bad, but it could be worse! What if the order needs to be delivered a day earlier than that, on March 12, 2011? Now the user enters ‘12/03/2011’. Now the call to DateTime.Parse sees what it thinks is a valid date, but there’s just one problem: it’s not the right date. Now this order won’t get delivered until December 3, 2011. In my opinion, that kind of data corruption is a much bigger problem than having the Parse call fail. What To Do? My order entry example is a bit contrived, but I think it serves to illustrate the potential issues with accepting date input from users. There are some approaches you can take to make this easier on you and your users: Eliminate ambiguity by using a graphical date input control. I’m personally a fan of a jQuery UI Datepicker widget. It’s pretty easy to setup, can be themed to match the look and feel of your site, and has support for multiple languages and cultures. Be sure you have a way to track the culture preference of each user in your system. For a web application this could be done using something like a cookie or session state variable. Ensure that the current user’s culture is being applied correctly to DateTime formatting and parsing code. This can be accomplished by ensuring that each request has the handling thread’s CultureInfo set properly, or by using the Format and Parse method overloads that accept an IFormatProvider instance where the provided value is a CultureInfo object constructed using the current user’s culture preference. When in doubt, favor formats that are internationally recognizable. Using the string ‘2010-03-05’ is likely to be recognized as March, 5 2011 by users from most (if not all) cultures. Favor standard date format strings over custom ones. So far we’ve only talked about turning a string into a DateTime, but most of the same “gotchas” apply when doing the opposite. Consider this code: someDateValue.ToString("MM/dd/yyyy"); This will output the same string regardless of what the current thread’s culture is set to (with the exception of some cultures that don’t use the Gregorian calendar system, but that’s another issue all together). For displaying dates to users, it would be better to do this: someDateValue.ToString("d"); This standard format string of “d” will use the “short date format” as defined by the culture attached to the current thread (or provided in the IFormatProvider instance in the proper method overload). This means that it will honor the proper month/day/year, year/month/day, or day/month/year format for the culture. Knowing Your Audience The examples and suggestions shown above can go a long way toward getting an application in shape for dealing with date inputs from users in multiple cultures. There are some instances, however, where taking approaches like these would not be appropriate. In some cases, the provider or consumer of date values that pass through your application are not people, but other applications (or other portions of your own application). For example, if your site has a page that accepts a date as a query string parameter, you’ll probably want to format that date using invariant date format. Otherwise, the same URL could end up evaluating to a different page depending on the user that is viewing it. In addition, if your application exports data for consumption by other systems, it’s best to have an agreed upon format that all systems can use and that will not vary depending upon whether or not the users of the systems on either side prefer a month/day/year or day/month/year format. I’ll look more at some approaches for dealing with these situations in a future post. If you take away one thing from this post, make it an understanding of the importance of knowing where the dates that pass through your system come from and are going to. You will likely want to vary your parsing and formatting approach depending on your audience.

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  • Sharepoint Error: [COMException (0x80004005): Cannot complete this action.

    - by ifunky
    Hi, I've created a site basic definition that uses different master and default pages. Everything works quite well except for whenever I create a new site based on the definition I receive the following error when browsing to the new site: [COMException (0x80004005): Cannot complete this action. Please try again.] Please try again.] Microsoft.SharePoint.Library.SPRequestInternalClass.GetFileAndMetaInfo(String bstrUrl, Byte bPageView, Byte bPageMode, Byte bGetBuildDependencySet, String bstrCurrentFolderUrl, Boolean& pbCanCustomizePages, Boolean& pbCanPersonalizeWebParts, Boolean& pbCanAddDeleteWebParts, Boolean& pbGhostedDocument, Boolean& pbDefaultToPersonal, String& pbstrSiteRoot, Guid& pgSiteId, UInt32& pdwVersion, String& pbstrTimeLastModified, String& pbstrContent, Byte& pVerGhostedSetupPath, UInt32& pdwPartCount, Object& pvarMetaData, Object& pvarMultipleMeetingDoclibRootFolders, String& pbstrRedirectUrl, Boolean& pbObjectIsList, Guid& pgListId, UInt32& pdwItemId, Int64& pllListFlags, Boolean& pbAccessDenied, Guid& pgDocId, Byte& piLevel, UInt64& ppermMask, Object& pvarBuildDependencySet, UInt32& pdwNumBuildDependencies, Object& pvarBuildDependencies, String& pbstrFolderUrl, String& pbstrContentTypeOrder) +0 Microsoft.SharePoint.Library.SPRequest.GetFileAndMetaInfo(String bstrUrl, Byte bPageView, Byte bPageMode, Byte bGetBuildDependencySet, String bstrCurrentFolderUrl, Boolean& pbCanCustomizePages, Boolean& pbCanPersonalizeWebParts, Boolean& pbCanAddDeleteWebParts, Boolean& pbGhostedDocument, Boolean& pbDefaultToPersonal, String& pbstrSiteRoot, Guid& pgSiteId, UInt32& pdwVersion, String& pbstrTimeLastModified, String& pbstrContent, Byte& pVerGhostedSetupPath, UInt32& pdwPartCount, Object& pvarMetaData, Object& pvarMultipleMeetingDoclibRootFolders, String& pbstrRedirectUrl, Boolean& pbObjectIsList, Guid& pgListId, UInt32& pdwItemId, Int64& pllListFlags, Boolean& pbAccessDenied, Guid& pgDocId, Byte& piLevel, UInt64& ppermMask, Object& pvarBuildDependencySet, UInt32& pdwNumBuildDependencies, Object& pvarBuildDependencies, String& pbstrFolderUrl, String& pbstrContentTypeOrder) +219 [SPException: Cannot complete this action. Please try again.] I'm able to work around this by checking out the new master page and checking it back in again and after doing so there are no further issues at all. Any ideas to what could cause this? Thanks Dan ONET.XML module section: <Modules> <Module Name="CustomMasterPage" List="116" Url="_catalogs/masterpage" RootWebOnly="FALSE"> <File Url="Shoes.master" Type="GhostableInLibrary" IgnoreIfAlreadyExists="TRUE" /> </Module> <Module Name="Default" List="116" Url=""> <File Url="default.aspx" Name="default.aspx" NavBarHome="True" IgnoreIfAlreadyExists="FALSE"> <AllUsersWebPart WebPartZoneID="Left" WebPartOrder="1"> &lt;webParts&gt;&lt;webPart xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/WebPart/v3"&gt;&lt;metaData&gt;&lt;type name="BCM.SharePoint.Shoes.ShoesComponents.FooterLinks, BCM.SharePoint.Shoes.ShoesComponents, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=2881713f39360b71" /&gt;&lt;importErrorMessage&gt;Cannot import this Web Part.&lt;/importErrorMessage&gt;&lt;/metaData&gt;&lt;data&gt;&lt;properties&gt;&lt;property name="AllowClose" type="bool"&gt;True&lt;/property&gt;&lt;property name="Width" type="string" /&gt;&lt;property name="MyProperty" type="string"&gt;Hello SharePoint&lt;/property&gt;&lt;property name="AllowMinimize" type="bool"&gt;True&lt;/property&gt;&lt;property name="AllowConnect" type="bool"&gt;True&lt;/property&gt;&lt;property name="ChromeType" type="chrometype"&gt;None&lt;/property&gt;&lt;property name="TitleIconImageUrl" type="string"&gt;/_layouts/images/BCM_SharePoint_Shoes/wp_FooterLinks.gif&lt;/property&gt;&lt;property name="Description" type="string"&gt;FooterLinks Description&lt;/property&gt;&lt;property name="Hidden" type="bool"&gt;False&lt;/property&gt;&lt;property name="TitleUrl" type="string" /&gt;&lt;property name="AllowEdit" type="bool"&gt;True&lt;/property&gt;&lt;property name="Height" type="string" /&gt;&lt;property name="MissingAssembly" type="string"&gt;Cannot import this Web Part.&lt;/property&gt;&lt;property name="HelpUrl" type="string" /&gt;&lt;property name="Title" type="string" /&gt;&lt;property name="CatalogIconImageUrl" type="string"&gt;/_layouts/images/BCM_SharePoint_Shoes/wp_FooterLinks.gif&lt;/property&gt;&lt;property name="Direction" type="direction"&gt;NotSet&lt;/property&gt;&lt;property name="ChromeState" type="chromestate"&gt;Normal&lt;/property&gt;&lt;property name="AllowZoneChange" type="bool"&gt;True&lt;/property&gt;&lt;property name="AllowHide" type="bool"&gt;True&lt;/property&gt;&lt;property name="HelpMode" type="helpmode"&gt;Modeless&lt;/property&gt;&lt;property name="ExportMode" type="exportmode"&gt;All&lt;/property&gt;&lt;/properties&gt;&lt;/data&gt;&lt;/webPart&gt;&lt;/webParts&gt; </AllUsersWebPart> <AllUsersWebPart WebPartZoneID="Left" WebPartOrder="0"> &lt;webParts&gt;&lt;webPart xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/WebPart/v3"&gt;&lt;metaData&gt;&lt;type name="BCM.SharePoint.Shoes.ShoesComponents.SubFooterLinks, BCM.SharePoint.Shoes.ShoesComponents, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=2881713f39360b71" /&gt;&lt;importErrorMessage&gt;Cannot import this Web Part.&lt;/importErrorMessage&gt;&lt;/metaData&gt;&lt;data&gt;&lt;properties&gt;&lt;property name="AllowClose" type="bool"&gt;True&lt;/property&gt;&lt;property name="Width" type="string" /&gt;&lt;property name="MyProperty" type="string"&gt;Hello SharePoint&lt;/property&gt;&lt;property name="AllowMinimize" type="bool"&gt;True&lt;/property&gt;&lt;property name="AllowConnect" type="bool"&gt;True&lt;/property&gt;&lt;property name="ChromeType" type="chrometype"&gt;None&lt;/property&gt;&lt;property name="TitleIconImageUrl" type="string"&gt;/_layouts/images/BCM_SharePoint_Shoes/wp_SubFooterLinks.gif&lt;/property&gt;&lt;property name="Description" type="string"&gt;Shoes home page links (under the hero image)&lt;/property&gt;&lt;property name="Hidden" type="bool"&gt;False&lt;/property&gt;&lt;property name="TitleUrl" type="string" /&gt;&lt;property name="AllowEdit" type="bool"&gt;True&lt;/property&gt;&lt;property name="Height" type="string" /&gt;&lt;property name="MissingAssembly" type="string"&gt;Cannot import this Web Part.&lt;/property&gt;&lt;property name="HelpUrl" type="string" /&gt;&lt;property name="Title" type="string" /&gt;&lt;property name="CatalogIconImageUrl" type="string"&gt;/_layouts/images/BCM_SharePoint_Shoes/wp_SubFooterLinks.gif&lt;/property&gt;&lt;property name="Direction" type="direction"&gt;NotSet&lt;/property&gt;&lt;property name="ChromeState" type="chromestate"&gt;Normal&lt;/property&gt;&lt;property name="AllowZoneChange" type="bool"&gt;True&lt;/property&gt;&lt;property name="AllowHide" type="bool"&gt;True&lt;/property&gt;&lt;property name="HelpMode" type="helpmode"&gt;Modeless&lt;/property&gt;&lt;property name="ExportMode" type="exportmode"&gt;All&lt;/property&gt;&lt;/properties&gt;&lt;/data&gt;&lt;/webPart&gt;&lt;/webParts&gt; </AllUsersWebPart> <NavBarPage Name="$Resources:core,nav_Home;" ID="1002" Position="Start" /> <NavBarPage Name="$Resources:core,nav_Home;" ID="0" Position="Start" /> </File> </Module> </Modules> LOG OUTPUT: 05/21/2010 12:22:55.11 w3wp.exe (0x1E40) 0x18A4 Windows SharePoint Services General 72nz Medium Videntityinfo::isFreshToken reported failure. 05/21/2010 12:22:55.19 w3wp.exe (0x1E40) 0x18A4 Windows SharePoint Services Fields 88yv Medium Creating default lists 05/21/2010 12:22:55.19 w3wp.exe (0x1E40) 0x18A4 Windows SharePoint Services General 72lp Medium Creating directory Lists 05/21/2010 12:22:55.26 w3wp.exe (0x1E40) 0x18A4 Windows SharePoint Services Fields 88yf Medium Creating list "Master Page Gallery" in web "http://mmm-dev-ll/sites/Shoes/test" at URL "_catalogs/masterpage", (setuppath: "C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\12\Template\global\lists\mplib") 05/21/2010 12:22:55.28 w3wp.exe (0x1E40) 0x18A4 Windows SharePoint Services Fields 88y1 Medium No document templates uploaded for list "Master Page Gallery" -- none found for list template "100". 05/21/2010 12:22:55.28 w3wp.exe (0x1E40) 0x18A4 Windows SharePoint Services General 72kc Medium Failed to find generic XML file at "C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\12\Template\xml\onet.xml", falling back to global site definition. 05/21/2010 12:22:56.22 w3wp.exe (0x1E40) 0x18A4 Windows SharePoint Services Fields 88yz Medium Creating default modules at URL "http://mmm-dev-ll/sites/Shoes/test" 05/21/2010 12:22:56.22 w3wp.exe (0x1E40) 0x18A4 Windows SharePoint Services General 8e27 Medium Ensuring module folder _catalogs/masterpage 05/21/2010 12:22:56.89 w3wp.exe (0x1E40) 0x18A4 Windows SharePoint Services General 72h7 Medium Applying template "SubSite#1" to web at URL "http://mmm-dev-ll/sites/Shoes/test". 05/21/2010 12:22:57.09 w3wp.exe (0x1E40) 0x18A4 Windows SharePoint Services Fields 88yy Medium Activating web-scoped features for template "SubSite#1" at URL "http://mmm-dev-ll/sites/Shoes/test" 05/21/2010 12:22:57.12 w3wp.exe (0x1E40) 0x18A4 Windows SharePoint Services General 8l1c Medium Preparing 20 features for activation 05/21/2010 12:22:57.14 w3wp.exe (0x1E40) 0x18A4 Windows SharePoint Services General 8l1d Medium Feature Activation: Batch Activating Features at URL http://mmm-dev-ll/sites/Shoes/test 'AnnouncementsList' (ID: '00bfea71-d1ce-42de-9c63-a44004ce0104'), 'ContactsList' (ID: '00bfea71-7e6d-4186-9ba8-c047ac750105'), 'CustomList' (ID: '00bfea71-de22-43b2-a848-c05709900100'), 'DataSourceLibrary' (ID: '00bfea71-f381-423d-b9d1-da7a54c50110'), 'DiscussionsList' (ID: '00bfea71-6a49-43fa-b535-d15c05500108'), 'DocumentLibrary' (ID: '00bfea71-e717-4e80-aa17-d0c71b360101'), 'EventsList' (ID: '00bfea71-ec85-4903-972d-ebe475780106'), 'GanttTasksList' (ID: '00bfea71-513d-4ca0-96c2-6a47775c0119'), 'GridList' (ID: '00bfea71-3a1d-41d3-a0ee-651d11570120'), 'IssuesList' (ID: '00bfea71-5932-4f9c-ad71-1557e5751100'), 'LinksList' (ID: '00bfea71-2062-426c-90bf-714c59600103'), 'NoCodeWorkflowLibrary' (ID: '00bfe... 05/21/2010 12:22:57.14* w3wp.exe (0x1E40) 0x18A4 Windows SharePoint Services General 8l1d Medium ...a71-f600-43f6-a895-40c0de7b0117'), 'PictureLibrary' (ID: '00bfea71-52d4-45b3-b544-b1c71b620109'), 'SurveysList' (ID: '00bfea71-eb8a-40b1-80c7-506be7590102'), 'TasksList' (ID: '00bfea71-a83e-497e-9ba0-7a5c597d0107'), 'WebPageLibrary' (ID: '00bfea71-c796-4402-9f2f-0eb9a6e71b18'), 'workflowProcessList' (ID: '00bfea71-2d77-4a75-9fca-76516689e21a'), 'WorkflowHistoryList' (ID: '00bfea71-4ea5-48d4-a4ad-305cf7030140'), 'XmlFormLibrary' (ID: '00bfea71-1e1d-4562-b56a-f05371bb0115'), 'TeamCollab' (ID: '00bfea71-4ea5-48d4-a4ad-7ea5c011abe5'), . 05/21/2010 12:22:57.15 w3wp.exe (0x1E40) 0x18A4 Windows SharePoint Services General 8l1f Medium Feature Activation: Batch Activated Features at URL http://mmm-dev-ll/sites/Shoes/test 'AnnouncementsList' (ID: '00bfea71-d1ce-42de-9c63-a44004ce0104'), 'ContactsList' (ID: '00bfea71-7e6d-4186-9ba8-c047ac750105'), 'CustomList' (ID: '00bfea71-de22-43b2-a848-c05709900100'), 'DataSourceLibrary' (ID: '00bfea71-f381-423d-b9d1-da7a54c50110'), 'DiscussionsList' (ID: '00bfea71-6a49-43fa-b535-d15c05500108'), 'DocumentLibrary' (ID: '00bfea71-e717-4e80-aa17-d0c71b360101'), 'EventsList' (ID: '00bfea71-ec85-4903-972d-ebe475780106'), 'GanttTasksList' (ID: '00bfea71-513d-4ca0-96c2-6a47775c0119'), 'GridList' (ID: '00bfea71-3a1d-41d3-a0ee-651d11570120'), 'IssuesList' (ID: '00bfea71-5932-4f9c-ad71-1557e5751100'), 'LinksList' (ID: '00bfea71-2062-426c-90bf-714c59600103'), 'NoCodeWorkflowLibrary' (ID: '00bfea... 05/21/2010 12:22:57.15* w3wp.exe (0x1E40) 0x18A4 Windows SharePoint Services General 8l1f Medium ...71-f600-43f6-a895-40c0de7b0117'), 'PictureLibrary' (ID: '00bfea71-52d4-45b3-b544-b1c71b620109'), 'SurveysList' (ID: '00bfea71-eb8a-40b1-80c7-506be7590102'), 'TasksList' (ID: '00bfea71-a83e-497e-9ba0-7a5c597d0107'), 'WebPageLibrary' (ID: '00bfea71-c796-4402-9f2f-0eb9a6e71b18'), 'workflowProcessList' (ID: '00bfea71-2d77-4a75-9fca-76516689e21a'), 'WorkflowHistoryList' (ID: '00bfea71-4ea5-48d4-a4ad-305cf7030140'), 'XmlFormLibrary' (ID: '00bfea71-1e1d-4562-b56a-f05371bb0115'), 'TeamCollab' (ID: '00bfea71-4ea5-48d4-a4ad-7ea5c011abe5'), . 05/21/2010 12:22:57.15 w3wp.exe (0x1E40) 0x18A4 Windows SharePoint Services General 88jb Medium Feature Activation: Activating Feature 'RadEditorFeatureRichText' (ID: '747755cd-d060-4663-961c-9b0cc43724e9') at URL http://mmm-dev-ll/sites/Shoes/test. 05/21/2010 12:22:57.15 w3wp.exe (0x1E40) 0x18A4 Windows SharePoint Services General 75fb Medium Calling 'FeatureActivated' method of SPFeatureReceiver for Feature 'RadEditorFeatureRichText' (ID: '747755cd-d060-4663-961c-9b0cc43724e9'). 05/21/2010 12:22:57.20 w3wp.exe (0x1E40) 0x18A4 Windows SharePoint Services General 75f8 Medium Feature Activation: Feature 'RadEditorFeatureRichText' (ID: '747755cd-d060-4663-961c-9b0cc43724e9') was activated at URL http://mmm-dev-ll/sites/Shoes/test. 05/21/2010 12:22:57.51 w3wp.exe (0x1E40) 0x18A4 Windows SharePoint Services Fields 88yv Medium Creating default lists 05/21/2010 12:22:57.51 w3wp.exe (0x1E40) 0x18A4 Windows SharePoint Services General 72lp Medium Creating directory Lists 05/21/2010 12:22:57.51 w3wp.exe (0x1E40) 0x18A4 Windows SharePoint Services Fields 88yz Medium Creating default modules at URL "http://mmm-dev-ll/sites/Shoes/test" 05/21/2010 12:22:57.51 w3wp.exe (0x1E40) 0x18A4 Windows SharePoint Services General 8e27 Medium Ensuring module folder _catalogs/masterpage 05/21/2010 12:22:57.56 w3wp.exe (0x1E40) 0x18A4 Windows SharePoint Services General 72ix Medium Not enough information to determine a list for module "Default". Assuming no list for this module. 05/21/2010 12:22:57.87 w3wp.exe (0x1E40) 0x18A4 Windows SharePoint Services General 72h8 Medium Successfully applied template "SubSite#1" to web at URL "http://mmm-dev-ll/sites/Shoes/test". 05/21/2010 12:22:59.48 w3wp.exe (0x1E40) 0x0980 Windows SharePoint Services General 8e2s Medium Unknown SPRequest error occurred. More information: 0x80070057 05/21/2010 12:23:07.06 OWSTIMER.EXE (0x0884) 0x106C Office Server Setup and Upgrade 8u3j High Registry key value {SearchThrottled} was not found under registry hive {Software\Microsoft\Office Server\12.0}. Assuming search sku is not throttled. 05/21/2010 12:23:07.08 OWSTIMER.EXE (0x0884) 0x106C Search Server Common MS Search Administration 90gf Medium SQL: dbo.proc_MSS_PropagationGetQueryServers 05/21/2010 12:23:07.09 OWSTIMER.EXE (0x0884) 0x106C Search Server Common MS Search Administration 8wni High Resuming default catalog with reason 'GPR_PROPAGATION' for application 'SharedServices1'... 05/21/2010 12:23:07.11 OWSTIMER.EXE (0x0884) 0x106C Search Server Common MS Search Administration 8wnj High Resuming anchor text catalog with reason GPR_PROPAGATION' for application 'SharedServices1'... 05/21/2010 12:23:07.14 OWSTIMER.EXE (0x0884) 0x106C Search Server Common MS Search Administration 8dvl Medium Search application '3c6751cc-37b0-470a-bfa2-bfd0b5635fe1': Provision start addresses in default content source. 05/21/2010 12:23:07.15 OWSTIMER.EXE (0x0884) 0x106C Search Server Common MS Search Administration 7hmh High exception in SearchUpgradeProvisioner Keyword Config System.InvalidOperationException: jobServerSearchServiceInstance is null at Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.Administration.SearchUpgradeProvisioner..ctor(SearchServiceInstance searchServiceInstance) at Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.Administration.OSSPrimaryGathererProject.ProvisionContentSources() 05/21/2010 12:23:29.19 OWSTIMER.EXE (0x0884) 0x0FFC SharePoint Portal Server Business Data 79bv High Initiating BDC Cache Invalidation Check in AppDomain 'DefaultDomain' 05/21/2010 12:23:29.19 OWSTIMER.EXE (0x0884) 0x0FFC SharePoint Portal Server Business Data 79bx High Completed BDC Cache Invalidation Check in AppDomain 'DefaultDomain' 05/21/2010 12:23:45.84 OWSTIMER.EXE (0x0884) 0x08A8 SharePoint Portal Server SSO 8inc Medium In SSOService::Synch(), sso database conn string: 05/21/2010 12:23:50.80 OWSTIMER.EXE (0x0884) 0x0F14 Excel Services Excel Services Administration 8tqi Medium ExcelServerSharedWebApplication.Synchronize: Starting synchronize for instance of Excel Services in SSP 'SharedServices1'. 05/21/2010 12:23:50.80 OWSTIMER.EXE (0x0884) 0x0F14 Excel Services Excel Services Administration 8tqj Medium ExcelServerSharedWebApplication.Synchronize: Successfully synchronized instance of Excel Services in SSP 'SharedServices1'. 05/21/2010 12:23:52.31 w3wp.exe (0x1E40) 0x0980 SharePoint Portal Server Runtime 8gp7 Medium Topology cache updated. (AppDomain: /LM/W3SVC/1963195510/Root-1-129188762904047141)

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  • Drupal views pane content not visible

    - by jwandborg
    I have a pane on my front page with one content pane and two views panes. I can't see the content of the third view ($pane->pid = "new-3" / comment: # Senaste bilder). Here's my panel <?php $page = new stdClass; $page->disabled = FALSE; /* Edit this to true to make a default page disabled initially */ $page->api_version = 1; $page->name = 'frontpage'; $page->task = 'page'; $page->admin_title = 'Startsida'; $page->admin_description = ''; $page->path = 'hem'; $page->access = array(); $page->menu = array(); $page->arguments = array(); $page->conf = array(); $page->default_handlers = array(); $handler = new stdClass; $handler->disabled = FALSE; /* Edit this to true to make a default handler disabled initially */ $handler->api_version = 1; $handler->name = 'page_frontpage_panel_context'; $handler->task = 'page'; $handler->subtask = 'frontpage'; $handler->handler = 'panel_context'; $handler->weight = 0; $handler->conf = array( 'title' => 'Panel', 'no_blocks' => FALSE, 'css_id' => '', 'css' => '', 'contexts' => array(), 'relationships' => array(), ); $display = new panels_display; $display->layout = 'onecol'; $display->layout_settings = array(); $display->panel_settings = array(); $display->cache = array(); $display->title = ''; $display->content = array(); $display->panels = array(); # Bild $pane = new stdClass; $pane->pid = 'new-1'; $pane->panel = 'middle'; $pane->type = 'custom'; $pane->subtype = 'custom'; $pane->shown = TRUE; $pane->access = array(); $pane->configuration = array( 'admin_title' => '', 'title' => '', 'body' => '<img src="/sites/all/themes/zen/ils-2010/img/graphics-start-text-v3.png" alt="Hej! Vi vet att du och dina klasskompisar har mycket att tänka på under er sista termin i gymnasiet. Därför har vi samlat några saker som vi tror kommer göra er studenttid lite roligare och lite enklare. Välkommen!" />', 'format' => '2', 'substitute' => TRUE, ); $pane->cache = array(); $pane->style = array(); $pane->css = array(); $pane->extras = array(); $pane->position = 0; $display->content['new-1'] = $pane; $display->panels['middle'][0] = 'new-1'; # Topplista $pane = new stdClass; $pane->pid = 'new-2'; $pane->panel = 'middle'; $pane->type = 'views_panes'; $pane->subtype = 'topplista_terms-panel_pane_1'; $pane->shown = TRUE; $pane->access = array(); $pane->configuration = array( 'link_to_view' => 1, 'more_link' => 0, 'use_pager' => 0, 'pager_id' => '', 'items_per_page' => '10', 'offset' => '0', 'path' => 'flaktavling/topplista/klasser', 'override_title' => 0, 'override_title_text' => '', ); $pane->cache = array(); $pane->style = array(); $pane->css = array(); $pane->extras = array(); $pane->position = 1; $display->content['new-2'] = $pane; $display->panels['middle'][1] = 'new-2'; # Senaste bilder $pane = new stdClass; $pane->pid = 'new-3'; $pane->panel = 'middle'; $pane->type = 'views_panes'; $pane->subtype = 'senaste_bilderna-panel_pane_1'; $pane->shown = TRUE; $pane->access = array(); $pane->configuration = array( 'link_to_view' => 0, 'more_link' => 0, 'use_pager' => 0, 'pager_id' => '', 'items_per_page' => '2', 'offset' => '0', 'path' => 'galleri/senaste-bilder', 'override_title' => 0, 'override_title_text' => '', ); $pane->cache = array(); $pane->style = array(); $pane->css = array( 'css_id' => 'pane-senaste-bilderna', 'css_class' => '', ); $pane->extras = array(); $pane->position = 2; $display->content['new-3'] = $pane; $display->panels['middle'][2] = 'new-3'; $display->hide_title = PANELS_TITLE_FIXED; $display->title_pane = 'new-1'; $handler->conf['display'] = $display; $page->default_handlers[$handler->name] = $handler; Here´s the view senaste_bilderna <?php $view = new view; $view->name = 'senaste_bilderna'; $view->description = ''; $view->tag = ''; $view->view_php = ''; $view->base_table = 'node'; $view->is_cacheable = FALSE; $view->api_version = 2; $view->disabled = FALSE; /* Edit this to true to make a default view disabled initially */ $handler = $view->new_display('default', 'Förvalt', 'default'); $handler->override_option('fields', array( 'field_picture_fid' => array( 'id' => 'field_picture_fid', 'table' => 'node_data_field_picture', 'field' => 'field_picture_fid', ), )); $handler->override_option('sorts', array( 'created' => array( 'order' => 'DESC', 'granularity' => 'second', 'id' => 'created', 'table' => 'node', 'field' => 'created', 'relationship' => 'none', ), )); $handler->override_option('filters', array( 'type' => array( 'operator' => 'in', 'value' => array( 'ils_picture' => 'ils_picture', ), 'group' => '0', 'exposed' => FALSE, 'expose' => array( 'operator' => FALSE, 'label' => '', ), 'id' => 'type', 'table' => 'node', 'field' => 'type', 'override' => array( 'button' => 'Åsidosätt', ), 'relationship' => 'none', ), )); $handler->override_option('access', array( 'type' => 'none', )); $handler->override_option('cache', array( 'type' => 'none', )); $handler->override_option('title', 'Senaste bilderna från galleriet'); $handler->override_option('items_per_page', 2); $handler->override_option('row_options', array( 'inline' => array( 'field_picture_fid' => 'field_picture_fid', ), 'separator' => '', 'hide_empty' => 0, )); $handler = $view->new_display('panel_pane', 'Content pane', 'panel_pane_1'); $handler->override_option('pane_title', ''); $handler->override_option('pane_description', ''); $handler->override_option('pane_category', array( 'name' => 'View panes', 'weight' => 0, )); $handler->override_option('allow', array( 'use_pager' => FALSE, 'items_per_page' => FALSE, 'offset' => FALSE, 'link_to_view' => FALSE, 'more_link' => FALSE, 'path_override' => FALSE, 'title_override' => FALSE, 'exposed_form' => FALSE, )); $handler->override_option('argument_input', array()); $handler->override_option('link_to_view', 0); $handler->override_option('inherit_panels_path', 0); $handler = $view->new_display('page', 'Sida', 'page_1'); $handler->override_option('path', 'galleri/senaste-bilderna'); $handler->override_option('menu', array( 'type' => 'none', 'title' => '', 'description' => '', 'weight' => 0, 'name' => 'navigation', )); $handler->override_option('tab_options', array( 'type' => 'none', 'title' => '', 'description' => '', 'weight' => 0, )); I have edited one views template, here's the code in the file views-view-fields--senaste-bilderna.tpl.php <?php // $Id: views-view-fields.tpl.php,v 1.6 2008/09/24 22:48:21 merlinofchaos Exp $ /** * @file views-view-fields.tpl.php * Default simple view template to all the fields as a row. * * - $view: The view in use. * - $fields: an array of $field objects. Each one contains: * - $field->content: The output of the field. * - $field->raw: The raw data for the field, if it exists. This is NOT output safe. * - $field->class: The safe class id to use. * - $field->handler: The Views field handler object controlling this field. Do not use * var_export to dump this object, as it can't handle the recursion. * - $field->inline: Whether or not the field should be inline. * - $field->inline_html: either div or span based on the above flag. * - $field->separator: an optional separator that may appear before a field. * - $row: The raw result object from the query, with all data it fetched. * * @ingroup views_templates */ ?> <?php foreach ($fields as $id => $field): ?> <?php $result = db_query('SELECT * FROM {files} WHERE fid = ' . $row->node_data_field_picture_field_picture_fid ); ?> <?php $data = db_fetch_object( $result ); ?> <div id="senaste-bilderna-first"><img src="<?= imagecache_create_url('senaste_bilderna_thumbnail', $data->filepath) ?>" alt="" /></div> <?php /* if (!empty($field->separator)): <?php print $field->separator; <?php endif; <<?php print $field->inline_html; class="views-field-<?php print $field->class; "> <?php if ($field->label): <label class="views-label-<?php print $field->class; "> <?php print $field->label; : </label> <?php endif; <?php // $field->element_type is either SPAN or DIV depending upon whether or not // the field is a 'block' element type or 'inline' element type. <<?php print $field->element_type; class="field-content"><?php print $field->content; </<?php print $field->element_type; > </<?php print $field->inline_html;> <?php*/ endforeach; ?> This is the result <div class="panel-separator"> </div> <div class="panel-pane pane-views-panes pane-senaste-bilderna-panel-pane-1" id="pane-senaste-bilderna"> <h2 class="pane-title">Senaste bilderna från galleriet </h2> <div class="pane-content"> <div class="view view-senaste-bilderna view-id-senaste_bilderna view-display-id-panel_pane_1 view-dom-id-2"> <div class="view-content"> <div class="views-row views-row-1 views-row-odd views-row-first"> </div> <div class="views-row views-row-2 views-row-even views-row-last"> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> My Drupal version is 6.16

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  • Linux VirtualBox inside Windows VirtualBox doesn't boot

    - by Tobbe
    I'm trying to run a Linux VirtualBox instance inside a Windows 7 VirtualBox instance, but Linux (tried both Puppy and Mint) doesn't boot. My research says that this should be possible, see here for example: Can you run one virtual machine inside another? but I can't get it to work. Here are a couple of screenshots showing where the boot process stops for Linux Mint and Puppy Linux. What am I doing wrong?

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  • Bind an ip address to Postfix as outgoing ip

    - by jack
    Is that possible to bind all available public ip addresses on a server to one Postfix instance as its outgoing ip pool and let it choose a random ip or specified ip from the pool each time it sends out an email? If above is not possible, can it be configured to listen on one public ip address per instance and each time it delivers a message, it use the binded one as outgoing ip address.

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  • Can IBM IHS server support more than one Websphere Application Server plug-in location?

    - by Spike Williams
    We want http://webserver.com/foo to point to an instance of WAS 6.0, and http://webserver.com/foo2 to point to an instance of WAS 7.0, running on the same server, but with different port numbers. This is a temporary thing, as we need to have both servers running as we transition our applications from running on 6.0 to 7.0. The webserver is IBMIHS (an Apache variant), and it needs to use the WebSphere plugin to connect to the WAS servers. Will this work? Any drawbacks?

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  • How do you transfer AWS RDS snap shot to a different AWS account

    - by Webmonger
    Hi I have an RDS database that I need to transfer a snapshot of to another AWS account. I understand there are issues being able to do this between availability zones so I'm really unsure if this is possible. The RDS instance is mySql. If it's not possible to transfer the snapshot please could you explain how to transfer the data from one RDS instance to another without downloading any if the contents(The DB is over 200GB). Thanks in advance

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  • How do I stop VMware Workstation 6.5 from giving up input focus for no reason on Ubuntu 10.4?

    - by Matt
    After patching some kernel modules, I got VMware Workstation 6.5.4 running on my Ubuntu 10.4 x86_64 machine. However, now my Windows XP SP3 guest instance cannot keep mouse input captured for any length of time. I can sometimes activate a control in the guest if a double click very quickly, but it's not reliable (and extremely annoying). Everything appears to be fine in Unity; the problem just appears when I'm running the instance in the VMware window.

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  • Merge tabs from 2 session of IE8?

    - by MattSlay
    Sometimes I wind up with two or more instances of IE8 running, and each instance has a few tabs open. Is there a way to merge all the tabs from all the IE8 instances into just one instance of IE8, and close all the other IE8 instances?

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  • SQL Server Moved Active Directory Domain

    - by Ollie
    I have changed the AD domain on a SQL Server 2008 box which was setup only for Windows Authentication. Now the domain has changed, I can't log into the SQL Server instance even as the domain's Administrator account. Is there a way of updating the server security settings without logging into the SQL instance first through a command switch / registry setting / etc..

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  • How does Windows Task Scheduler detect that a task is already running?

    - by Dan C
    I have an application on Windows Server 2008 that takes different command-line parameters. For example: myapp.exe /A myapp.exe /B I have created a task scheduler task for each of those. While "myapp.exe /A" is running, I want to prevent another instance of it from starting. However, I still want "myapp.exe /B" to be able to run (again, though only one instance of it at a time). How can I set this up?

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  • mysqld_multi stop doesn't seem to work

    - by gravyface
    mysqld_multi stop 1 followed by (repeatedly, a few moments later) mysqld_multi report 1 returns: Reporting MySQL servers MySQL server from group: mysqld1 is running The instances work fine and when I reboot, I have to start the instances to get them to come back up (a separate issue I need to resolve), but the stop command doesn't seem to do anything. It truly doesn't stop the instance because in the instance log file I see this: 120619 11:12:39 mysqld_safe A mysqld process already exists after trying to run start after.

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  • Bash command to focus a specific window.

    - by D Connors
    Is there a way, in bash command line, to give focus to a specific window of a running process. Assume I know the process' name, number, and anything else I need. For instance, if I have a single instance of Firefox running, but it's minimized (or there's some other window on top of it). I need a bash command that brings up and gives focus to the Firefox window, by making it the active window. Thanks

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