custom attributes - Page 207

How do I automatically update hundreds of images in an HTML page using jquery?

- by Chris

I have an HTML page where I want to refresh a lot of images every 30 seconds after the HTML page has been downloaded. I understand how to do this with Jquery and a single image, but I want to use about 200 custom urls to determine the current image to display for over 200 images. I need to find an efficient way to have jquery call the custom url associated with each image to download the url for the needed image as it changes, and then update the image in the page when it changes. Current hyperlink example to demonstrate the custom urls. <A href="/urlThatReturnsCurrentImageURL/1234/4567">link to url for image</A> Each custom url will return an image tag like this (or any other text that makes this simpler for jquery) <img src="/static/someImage.jpg"> What is the simplest way to have jquery call the custom url for each image to download the image url, image html, or some other text that jquery can use to download the right image every 30 seconds? Please keep in mind that I will have about 200 of these on a page.

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Update a collection_select with user made field

- by Flexo

I have a collection_select that i want user to add custom fields to. I have a jQuery script that detects if the row "Custom" is chosen and adds a textfield to the page so the user can enter a custom name. How can i store that custom made name in the db and update the collection_select? <%= f.collection_select :kind_id, Kind.find(:all, :order => "created_at DESC"), :id, :name, {:prompt => "Select a Type" }, {:id => "selector", :onchange => "type_change(this)"} %>

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undefined method `new_record?' for nil:NilClass

- by TopperH

In rails 3.2 I created a post controller. Each post can have a different number of paperclip attachments. To achieve this I created a assets model where each asset has a paperclip attachment. One post has_many assets and assets belong_to post. Asset model class Asset < ActiveRecord::Base belongs_to :post has_attached_file :photo, :styles => { :thumb => "200x200>" } end Post model class Post < ActiveRecord::Base attr_accessible :content, :title has_many :assets, :dependent => :destroy validates_associated :assets after_update :save_assets def new_asset_attributes=(asset_attributes) asset_attributes.each do |attributes| assets.build(attributes) end end def existing_asset_attributes=(asset_attributes) assets.reject(&:new_record?).each do |asset| attributes = asset_attributes[asset.id.to_s] if attributes asset.attributes = attributes else asset.delete(asset) end end end def save_assets assets.each do |asset| asset.save(false) end end end Posts helper module PostsHelper def add_asset_link(name) link_to_function name do |post| post.insert_html :bottom, :assets, :partial => 'asset', :object => Asset.new end end end Form for post <%= form_for @post, :html => { :multipart => true } do |f| %> <% if @post.errors.any? %> <div id="error_explanation"> <h2><%= pluralize(@post.errors.count, "error") %> prohibited this post from being saved:</h2> <ul> <% @post.errors.full_messages.each do |msg| %> <li><%= msg %></li> <% end %> </ul> </div> <% end %> <div class="field"> <%= f.label :title %><br /> <%= f.text_field :title %> </div> <div class="field"> <%= f.label :content %><br /> <%= f.text_area :content %> </div> <div id="assets"> Attach a file or image<br /> <%= render 'asset', :collection => @post.assets %> </div> <div class="actions"> <%= f.submit %> </div> <% end %> Asset partial <div class="asset"> <% new_or_existing = asset.new_record? ? 'new' : 'existing' %> <% prefix = "post[#{new_or_existing}_asset_attributes][]" %> <% fields_for prefix, asset do |asset_form| -%> <p> Asset: <%= asset_form.file_field :photo %> <%= link_to_function "remove", "$(this).up('.asset').remove()" %> </p> <% end -%> </div> Most of the code is taken from here: https://gist.github.com/33011 and I understand this is a rails2 app, anyway I don't understand what this error means: undefined method `new_record?' for nil:NilClass Extracted source (around line #2): 1: <div class="asset"> 2: <% new_or_existing = asset.new_record? ? 'new' : 'existing' %> 3: <% prefix = "post[#{new_or_existing}_asset_attributes][]" %> 4: 5: <% fields_for prefix, asset do |asset_form| -%>

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Generic Event Generator and Handler from User Supplied Types?

- by JaredBroad

I'm trying to allow the user to supply custom data and manage the data with custom types. The user's algorithm will get time synchronized events pushed into the event handlers they define. I'm not sure if this is possible but here's the "proof of concept" code I'd like to build. It doesn't detect T in the for loop: "The type or namespace name 'T' could not be found" class Program { static void Main(string[] args) { Algorithm algo = new Algorithm(); Dictionary<Type, string[]> userDataSources = new Dictionary<Type, string[]>(); // "User" adding custom type and data source for algorithm to consume userDataSources.Add(typeof(Weather), new string[] { "temperature data1", "temperature data2" }); for (int i = 0; i < 2; i++) { foreach (Type T in userDataSources.Keys) { string line = userDataSources[typeof(T)][i]; //Iterate over CSV data.. var userObj = new T(line); algo.OnData < typeof(T) > (userObj); } } } //User's algorithm pattern. interface IAlgorithm<TData> where TData : class { void OnData<TData>(TData data); } //User's algorithm. class Algorithm : IAlgorithm<Weather> { //Handle Custom User Data public void OnData<Weather>(Weather data) { Console.WriteLine(data.date.ToString()); Console.ReadKey(); } } //Example "user" custom type. public class Weather { public DateTime date = new DateTime(); public double temperature = 0; public Weather(string line) { Console.WriteLine("Initializing weather object with: " + line); date = DateTime.Now; temperature = -1; } } }

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WiX 3 Tutorial: Understanding main WXS and WXI file

- by Mladen Prajdic

In the previous post we’ve taken a look at the WiX solution/project structure and project properties. We’re still playing with our super SuperForm application and today we’ll take a look at the general parts of the main wxs file, SuperForm.wxs, and the wxi include file. For wxs file we’ll just go over the general description of what each part does in the code comments. The more detailed descriptions will be in future posts about features themselves. WXI include file Include files are exactly what their name implies. To include a wxi file into the wxs file you have to put the wxi at the beginning of each .wxs file you wish to include it in. If you’ve ever worked with C++ you can think of the include files as .h files. For example if you include SuperFormVariables.wxi into the SuperForm.wxs, the variables in the wxi won’t be seen in FilesFragment.wxs or RegistryFragment.wxs. You’d have to include it manually into those two wxs files too. For preprocessor variable $(var.VariableName) to be seen by every file in the project you have to include them in the WiX project properties->Build->“Define preprocessor variables” textbox. This is why I’ve chosen not to go this route because in multi developer teams not everyone has the same directory structure and having a single variable would mean each developer would have to checkout the wixproj file to edit the variable. This is pretty much unacceptable by my standards. This is why we’ve added a System Environment variable named SuperFormFilesDir as is shown in the previous Wix Tutorial post. Because the FilesFragment.wxs is autogenerated on every project build we don’t want to change it manually each time by adding the include wxi at the beginning of the file. This way we couldn’t recreate it in each pre-build event. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?><Include>  <?define MajorVersion="1" ?> <?define MinorVersion="0" ?> <?define BuildVersion="0" ?>  <?define Revision="0" ?>  <?define VersionNumber="$(var.MajorVersion).$(var.MinorVersion).$(var.BuildVersion).$(var.Revision)" ?>  <?define UpgradeCode="YOUR-GUID-HERE" ?>  <?define ResourcesDir="$(var.ProjectDir)\Resources" ?>  <?define ExeProcessName="SuperForm.MainApp.exe" ?></Include> For now there’s no way to tell WiX in Visual Studio to have a wxi include file available to the whole project, so you have to include it in each file separately. Only variables set in “Define preprocessor variables” or System Environment variables are accessible to the whole project for now. The main WXS file: SuperForm.wxs We’ll only take a look at the general structure of the main SuperForm.wxs and not its the details. We’ll cover the details in future posts. The code comments should provide plenty info about what each part does in general. Basically there are 5 major parts. The update part, the conditions and actions part, the UI install sequence, the directory structure and the features we want to include. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><Wix xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/wix/2006/wi" xmlns:util="http://schemas.microsoft.com/wix/UtilExtension">  <?include $(sys.CURRENTDIR)Includes\SuperFormVariables.wxi ?>  <Product Id="*" Name="!(loc.ProductName) $(var.VersionNumber)" Language="!(loc.LANG)" Version="$(var.VersionNumber)" Manufacturer="!(loc.ManufacturerName)" UpgradeCode="$(var.UpgradeCode)">  <Package InstallerVersion="300" Compressed="yes" InstallScope="perMachine"/> <Media Id="1" Cabinet="media1.cab" EmbedCab="yes" />  <Upgrade Id="$(var.UpgradeCode)"> <UpgradeVersion OnlyDetect="yes" Minimum="$(var.VersionNumber)" IncludeMinimum="no" Property="NEWER_VERSION_FOUND" /> <UpgradeVersion Minimum="0.0.0.0" IncludeMinimum="yes" Maximum="$(var.VersionNumber)" IncludeMaximum="no" Property="OLDER_VERSION_FOUND" /> </Upgrade>  <PropertyRef Id="NETFRAMEWORK35"/>  <Condition Message="!(loc.DotNetFrameworkNeeded)"> <![CDATA[Installed OR NETFRAMEWORK35]]> </Condition> <Condition Message="!(loc.AppNotSupported)"> <![CDATA[Installed OR ((VersionNT >= 501 AND ServicePackLevel >= 2) OR (VersionNT >= 502))]]> </Condition>  <CustomAction Id="NewerVersionFound" Error="!(loc.SuperFormNewerVersionInstalled)" /> <InstallExecuteSequence>  <Custom Action="NewerVersionFound" After="FindRelatedProducts"> <![CDATA[NEWER_VERSION_FOUND]]> </Custom>  <RemoveExistingProducts After="InstallInitialize"/>  <Custom Action="WixCloseApplications" Before="InstallInitialize" /> </InstallExecuteSequence>  <util:CloseApplication Id="CloseSuperForm" CloseMessage="no" Description="!(loc.MustCloseSuperForm)" ElevatedCloseMessage="no" RebootPrompt="no" Target="$(var.ExeProcessName)" />  <UIRef Id="WixUI_InstallDir" /> <UI>  <DialogRef Id="FilesInUse" /> <DialogRef Id="MsiRMFilesInUse" />  </UI>  <Icon Id="SuperFormIcon.ico" SourceFile="$(var.ResourcesDir)\Exclam.ico" /> <Property Id="ARPPRODUCTICON" Value="SuperFormIcon.ico" />   <Directory Id="TARGETDIR" Name="SourceDir"> <Directory Id="ProgramFilesFolder"> <Directory Id="INSTALLLOCATION" Name="!(loc.ProductName)" /> </Directory> </Directory>  <Property Id="WIXUI_INSTALLDIR" Value="INSTALLLOCATION" />  <Feature Id="SuperFormFeature" Title="!(loc.ProductName)" Level="1"> <ComponentGroupRef Id="SuperFormFiles" /> <ComponentRef Id="cmpVersionInRegistry" /> <ComponentRef Id="cmpIsThisUpdateInRegistry" /> </Feature> </Product></Wix> For more info on what certain attributes mean you should look into the WiX Documentation. WiX 3 tutorial by Mladen Prajdic navigation WiX 3 Tutorial: Solution/Project structure and Dev resources WiX 3 Tutorial: Understanding main wxs and wxi file WiX 3 Tutorial: Generating file/directory fragments with Heat.exe

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Using LINQ Distinct: With an Example on ASP.NET MVC SelectListItem

- by Joe Mayo

One of the things that might be surprising in the LINQ Distinct standard query operator is that it doesn’t automatically work properly on custom classes. There are reasons for this, which I’ll explain shortly. The example I’ll use in this post focuses on pulling a unique list of names to load into a drop-down list. I’ll explain the sample application, show you typical first shot at Distinct, explain why it won’t work as you expect, and then demonstrate a solution to make Distinct work with any custom class. The technologies I’m using are LINQ to Twitter, LINQ to Objects, Telerik Extensions for ASP.NET MVC, ASP.NET MVC 2, and Visual Studio 2010. The function of the example program is to show a list of people that I follow. In Twitter API vernacular, these people are called “Friends”; though I’ve never met most of them in real life. This is part of the ubiquitous language of social networking, and Twitter in particular, so you’ll see my objects named accordingly. Where Distinct comes into play is because I want to have a drop-down list with the names of the friends appearing in the list. Some friends are quite verbose, which means I can’t just extract names from each tweet and populate the drop-down; otherwise, I would end up with many duplicate names. Therefore, Distinct is the appropriate operator to eliminate the extra entries from my friends who tend to be enthusiastic tweeters. The sample doesn’t do anything with the drop-down list and I leave that up to imagination for what it’s practical purpose could be; perhaps a filter for the list if I only want to see a certain person’s tweets or maybe a quick list that I plan to combine with a TextBox and Button to reply to a friend. When the program runs, you’ll need to authenticate with Twitter, because I’m using OAuth (DotNetOpenAuth), for authentication, and then you’ll see the drop-down list of names above the grid with the most recent tweets from friends. Here’s what the application looks like when it runs: As you can see, there is a drop-down list above the grid. The drop-down list is where most of the focus of this article will be. There is some description of the code before we talk about the Distinct operator, but we’ll get there soon. This is an ASP.NET MVC2 application, written with VS 2010. Here’s the View that produces this screen: <%@ Page Language="C#" MasterPageFile="~/Views/Shared/Site.Master" Inherits="System.Web.Mvc.ViewPage<TwitterFriendsViewModel>" %> <%@ Import Namespace="DistinctSelectList.Models" %> <asp:Content ID="Content1" ContentPlaceHolderID="TitleContent" runat="server"> Home Page </asp:Content><asp:Content ID="Content2" ContentPlaceHolderID="MainContent" runat="server"> <fieldset> <legend>Twitter Friends</legend> <div> <%= Html.DropDownListFor( twendVM => twendVM.FriendNames, Model.FriendNames, "<All Friends>") %> </div> <div> <% Html.Telerik().Grid<TweetViewModel>(Model.Tweets) .Name("TwitterFriendsGrid") .Columns(cols => { cols.Template(col => { %> <img src="<%= col.ImageUrl %>" alt="<%= col.ScreenName %>" /> <% }); cols.Bound(col => col.ScreenName); cols.Bound(col => col.Tweet); }) .Render(); %> </div> </fieldset> </asp:Content> As shown above, the Grid is from Telerik’s Extensions for ASP.NET MVC. The first column is a template that renders the user’s Avatar from a URL provided by the Twitter query. Both the Grid and DropDownListFor display properties that are collections from a TwitterFriendsViewModel class, shown below: using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Web.Mvc; namespace DistinctSelectList.Models { /// /// For finding friend info on screen /// public class TwitterFriendsViewModel { /// /// Display names of friends in drop-down list /// public List FriendNames { get; set; } /// /// Display tweets in grid /// public List Tweets { get; set; } } } I created the TwitterFreindsViewModel. The two Lists are what the View consumes to populate the DropDownListFor and Grid. Notice that FriendNames is a List of SelectListItem, which is an MVC class. Another custom class I created is the TweetViewModel (the type of the Tweets List), shown below: namespace DistinctSelectList.Models { /// /// Info on friend tweets /// public class TweetViewModel { /// /// User's avatar /// public string ImageUrl { get; set; } /// /// User's Twitter name /// public string ScreenName { get; set; } /// /// Text containing user's tweet /// public string Tweet { get; set; } } } The initial Twitter query returns much more information than we need for our purposes and this a special class for displaying info in the View. Now you know about the View and how it’s constructed. Let’s look at the controller next. The controller for this demo performs authentication, data retrieval, data manipulation, and view selection. I’ll skip the description of the authentication because it’s a normal part of using OAuth with LINQ to Twitter. Instead, we’ll drill down and focus on the Distinct operator. However, I’ll show you the entire controller, below, so that you can see how it all fits together: using System.Linq; using System.Web.Mvc; using DistinctSelectList.Models; using LinqToTwitter; namespace DistinctSelectList.Controllers { [HandleError] public class HomeController : Controller { private MvcOAuthAuthorization auth; private TwitterContext twitterCtx; /// /// Display a list of friends current tweets /// /// public ActionResult Index() { auth = new MvcOAuthAuthorization(InMemoryTokenManager.Instance, InMemoryTokenManager.AccessToken); string accessToken = auth.CompleteAuthorize(); if (accessToken != null) { InMemoryTokenManager.AccessToken = accessToken; } if (auth.CachedCredentialsAvailable) { auth.SignOn(); } else { return auth.BeginAuthorize(); } twitterCtx = new TwitterContext(auth); var friendTweets = (from tweet in twitterCtx.Status where tweet.Type == StatusType.Friends select new TweetViewModel { ImageUrl = tweet.User.ProfileImageUrl, ScreenName = tweet.User.Identifier.ScreenName, Tweet = tweet.Text }) .ToList(); var friendNames = (from tweet in friendTweets select new SelectListItem { Text = tweet.ScreenName, Value = tweet.ScreenName }) .Distinct() .ToList(); var twendsVM = new TwitterFriendsViewModel { Tweets = friendTweets, FriendNames = friendNames }; return View(twendsVM); } public ActionResult About() { return View(); } } } The important part of the listing above are the LINQ to Twitter queries for friendTweets and friendNames. Both of these results are used in the subsequent population of the twendsVM instance that is passed to the view. Let’s dissect these two statements for clarification and focus on what is happening with Distinct. The query for friendTweets gets a list of the 20 most recent tweets (as specified by the Twitter API for friend queries) and performs a projection into the custom TweetViewModel class, repeated below for your convenience: var friendTweets = (from tweet in twitterCtx.Status where tweet.Type == StatusType.Friends select new TweetViewModel { ImageUrl = tweet.User.ProfileImageUrl, ScreenName = tweet.User.Identifier.ScreenName, Tweet = tweet.Text }) .ToList(); The LINQ to Twitter query above simplifies what we need to work with in the View and the reduces the amount of information we have to look at in subsequent queries. Given the friendTweets above, the next query performs another projection into an MVC SelectListItem, which is required for binding to the DropDownList. This brings us to the focus of this blog post, writing a correct query that uses the Distinct operator. The query below uses LINQ to Objects, querying the friendTweets collection to get friendNames: var friendNames = (from tweet in friendTweets select new SelectListItem { Text = tweet.ScreenName, Value = tweet.ScreenName }) .Distinct() .ToList(); The above implementation of Distinct seems normal, but it is deceptively incorrect. After running the query above, by executing the application, you’ll notice that the drop-down list contains many duplicates. This will send you back to the code scratching your head, but there’s a reason why this happens. To understand the problem, we must examine how Distinct works in LINQ to Objects. Distinct has two overloads: one without parameters, as shown above, and another that takes a parameter of type IEqualityComparer<T>. In the case above, no parameters, Distinct will call EqualityComparer<T>.Default behind the scenes to make comparisons as it iterates through the list. You don’t have problems with the built-in types, such as string, int, DateTime, etc, because they all implement IEquatable<T>. However, many .NET Framework classes, such as SelectListItem, don’t implement IEquatable<T>. So, what happens is that EqualityComparer<T>.Default results in a call to Object.Equals, which performs reference equality on reference type objects. You don’t have this problem with value types because the default implementation of Object.Equals is bitwise equality. However, most of your projections that use Distinct are on classes, just like the SelectListItem used in this demo application. So, the reason why Distinct didn’t produce the results we wanted was because we used a type that doesn’t define its own equality and Distinct used the default reference equality. This resulted in all objects being included in the results because they are all separate instances in memory with unique references. As you might have guessed, the solution to the problem is to use the second overload of Distinct that accepts an IEqualityComparer<T> instance. If you were projecting into your own custom type, you could make that type implement IEqualityComparer<T>, but SelectListItem belongs to the .NET Framework Class Library. Therefore, the solution is to create a custom type to implement IEqualityComparer<T>, as in the SelectListItemComparer class, shown below: using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Web.Mvc; namespace DistinctSelectList.Models { public class SelectListItemComparer : EqualityComparer { public override bool Equals(SelectListItem x, SelectListItem y) { return x.Value.Equals(y.Value); } public override int GetHashCode(SelectListItem obj) { return obj.Value.GetHashCode(); } } } The SelectListItemComparer class above doesn’t implement IEqualityComparer<SelectListItem>, but rather derives from EqualityComparer<SelectListItem>. Microsoft recommends this approach for consistency with the behavior of generic collection classes. However, if your custom type already derives from a base class, go ahead and implement IEqualityComparer<T>, which will still work. EqualityComparer is an abstract class, that implements IEqualityComparer<T> with Equals and GetHashCode abstract methods. For the purposes of this application, the SelectListItem.Value property is sufficient to determine if two items are equal. Since SelectListItem.Value is type string, the code delegates equality to the string class. The code also delegates the GetHashCode operation to the string class.You might have other criteria in your own object and would need to define what it means for your object to be equal. Now that we have an IEqualityComparer<SelectListItem>, let’s fix the problem. The code below modifies the query where we want distinct values: var friendNames = (from tweet in friendTweets select new SelectListItem { Text = tweet.ScreenName, Value = tweet.ScreenName }) .Distinct(new SelectListItemComparer()) .ToList(); Notice how the code above passes a new instance of SelectListItemComparer as the parameter to the Distinct operator. Now, when you run the application, the drop-down list will behave as you expect, showing only a unique set of names. In addition to Distinct, other LINQ Standard Query Operators have overloads that accept IEqualityComparer<T>’s, You can use the same techniques as shown here, with SelectListItemComparer, with those other operators as well. Now you know how to resolve problems with getting Distinct to work properly and also have a way to fix problems with other operators that require equality comparisons. @JoeMayo

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July 2013 Release of the Ajax Control Toolkit

- by Stephen.Walther

I’m super excited to announce the July 2013 release of the Ajax Control Toolkit. You can download the new version of the Ajax Control Toolkit from CodePlex (http://ajaxControlToolkit.CodePlex.com) or install the Ajax Control Toolkit from NuGet: With this release, we have completely rewritten the way the Ajax Control Toolkit combines, minifies, gzips, and caches JavaScript files. The goal of this release was to improve the performance of the Ajax Control Toolkit and make it easier to create custom Ajax Control Toolkit controls. Improving Ajax Control Toolkit Performance Previous releases of the Ajax Control Toolkit optimized performance for a single page but not multiple pages. When you visited each page in an app, the Ajax Control Toolkit would combine all of the JavaScript files required by the controls in the page into a new JavaScript file. So, even if every page in your app used the exact same controls, visitors would need to download a new combined Ajax Control Toolkit JavaScript file for each page visited. Downloading new scripts for each page that you visit does not lead to good performance. In general, you want to make as few requests for JavaScript files as possible and take maximum advantage of caching. For most apps, you would get much better performance if you could specify all of the Ajax Control Toolkit controls that you need for your entire app and create a single JavaScript file which could be used across your entire app. What a great idea! Introducing Control Bundles With this release of the Ajax Control Toolkit, we introduce the concept of Control Bundles. You define a Control Bundle to indicate the set of Ajax Control Toolkit controls that you want to use in your app. You define Control Bundles in a file located in the root of your application named AjaxControlToolkit.config. For example, the following AjaxControlToolkit.config file defines two Control Bundles: <ajaxControlToolkit> <controlBundles> <controlBundle> <control name="CalendarExtender" /> <control name="ComboBox" /> </controlBundle> <controlBundle name="CalendarBundle"> <control name="CalendarExtender"></control> </controlBundle> </controlBundles> </ajaxControlToolkit> The first Control Bundle in the file above does not have a name. When a Control Bundle does not have a name then it becomes the default Control Bundle for your entire application. The default Control Bundle is used by the ToolkitScriptManager by default. For example, the default Control Bundle is used when you declare the ToolkitScriptManager like this: <ajaxToolkit:ToolkitScriptManager runat=”server” /> The default Control Bundle defined in the file above includes all of the scripts required for the CalendarExtender and ComboBox controls. All of the scripts required for both of these controls are combined, minified, gzipped, and cached automatically. The AjaxControlToolkit.config file above also defines a second Control Bundle with the name CalendarBundle. Here’s how you would use the CalendarBundle with the ToolkitScriptManager: <ajaxToolkit:ToolkitScriptManager runat="server"> <ControlBundles> <ajaxToolkit:ControlBundle Name="CalendarBundle" /> </ControlBundles> </ajaxToolkit:ToolkitScriptManager> In this case, only the JavaScript files required by the CalendarExtender control, and not the ComboBox, would be downloaded because the CalendarBundle lists only the CalendarExtender control. You can use multiple named control bundles with the ToolkitScriptManager and you will get all of the scripts from both bundles. Support for ControlBundles is a new feature of the ToolkitScriptManager that we introduced with this release. We extended the ToolkitScriptManager to support the Control Bundles that you can define in the AjaxControlToolkit.config file. Let me be explicit about the rules for Control Bundles: 1. If you do not create an AjaxControlToolkit.config file then the ToolkitScriptManager will download all of the JavaScript files required for all of the controls in the Ajax Control Toolkit. This is the easy but low performance option. 2. If you create an AjaxControlToolkit.config file and create a ControlBundle without a name then the ToolkitScriptManager uses that Control Bundle by default. For example, if you plan to use only the CalendarExtender and ComboBox controls in your application then you should create a default bundle that lists only these two controls. 3. If you create an AjaxControlToolkit.config file and create one or more named Control Bundles then you can use these named Control Bundles with the ToolkitScriptManager. For example, you might want to use different subsets of the Ajax Control Toolkit controls in different sections of your app. I should also mention that you can use the AjaxControlToolkit.config file with custom Ajax Control Toolkit controls – new controls that you write. For example, here is how you would register a set of custom controls from an assembly named MyAssembly: <ajaxControlToolkit> <controlBundles> <controlBundle name="CustomBundle"> <control name="MyAssembly.MyControl1" assembly="MyAssembly" /> <control name="MyAssembly.MyControl2" assembly="MyAssembly" /> </controlBundle> </ajaxControlToolkit> What about ASP.NET Bundling and Minification? The idea of Control Bundles is similar to the idea of Script Bundles used in ASP.NET Bundling and Minification. You might be wondering why we didn’t simply use Script Bundles with the Ajax Control Toolkit. There were several reasons. First, ASP.NET Bundling does not work with scripts embedded in an assembly. Because all of the scripts used by the Ajax Control Toolkit are embedded in the AjaxControlToolkit.dll assembly, ASP.NET Bundling was not an option. Second, Web Forms developers typically think at the level of controls and not at the level of individual scripts. We believe that it makes more sense for a Web Forms developer to specify the controls that they need in an app (CalendarExtender, ToggleButton) instead of the individual scripts that they need in an app (the 15 or so scripts required by the CalenderExtender). Finally, ASP.NET Bundling does not work with older versions of ASP.NET. The Ajax Control Toolkit needs to support ASP.NET 3.5, ASP.NET 4.0, and ASP.NET 4.5. Therefore, using ASP.NET Bundling was not an option. There is nothing wrong with using Control Bundles and Script Bundles side-by-side. The ASP.NET 4.0 and 4.5 ToolkitScriptManager supports both approaches to bundling scripts. Using the AjaxControlToolkit.CombineScriptsHandler Browsers cache JavaScript files by URL. For example, if you request the exact same JavaScript file from two different URLs then the exact same JavaScript file must be downloaded twice. However, if you request the same JavaScript file from the same URL more than once then it only needs to be downloaded once. With this release of the Ajax Control Toolkit, we have introduced a new HTTP Handler named the AjaxControlToolkit.CombineScriptsHandler. If you register this handler in your web.config file then the Ajax Control Toolkit can cache your JavaScript files for up to one year in the future automatically. You should register the handler in two places in your web.config file: in the <httpHandlers> section and the <system.webServer> section (don’t forget to register the handler for the AjaxFileUpload while you are there!). <httpHandlers> <add verb="*" path="AjaxFileUploadHandler.axd" type="AjaxControlToolkit.AjaxFileUploadHandler, AjaxControlToolkit" /> <add verb="*" path="CombineScriptsHandler.axd" type="AjaxControlToolkit.CombineScriptsHandler, AjaxControlToolkit" /> </httpHandlers> <system.webServer> <validation validateIntegratedModeConfiguration="false" /> <handlers> <add name="AjaxFileUploadHandler" verb="*" path="AjaxFileUploadHandler.axd" type="AjaxControlToolkit.AjaxFileUploadHandler, AjaxControlToolkit" /> <add name="CombineScriptsHandler" verb="*" path="CombineScriptsHandler.axd" type="AjaxControlToolkit.CombineScriptsHandler, AjaxControlToolkit" /> </handlers> <system.webServer> The handler is only used in release mode and not in debug mode. You can enable release mode in your web.config file like this: <compilation debug=”false”> You also can override the web.config setting with the ToolkitScriptManager like this: <act:ToolkitScriptManager ScriptMode=”Release” runat=”server”/> In release mode, scripts are combined, minified, gzipped, and cached with a far future cache header automatically. When the handler is not registered, scripts are requested from the page that contains the ToolkitScriptManager: When the handler is registered in the web.config file, scripts are requested from the handler: If you want the best performance, always register the handler. That way, the Ajax Control Toolkit can cache the bundled scripts across page requests with a far future cache header. If you don’t register the handler then a new JavaScript file must be downloaded whenever you travel to a new page. Dynamic Bundling and Minification Previous releases of the Ajax Control Toolkit used a Visual Studio build task to minify the JavaScript files used by the Ajax Control Toolkit controls. The disadvantage of this approach to minification is that it made it difficult to create custom Ajax Control Toolkit controls. Starting with this release of the Ajax Control Toolkit, we support dynamic minification. The JavaScript files in the Ajax Control Toolkit are minified at runtime instead of at build time. Scripts are minified only when in release mode. You can specify release mode with the web.config file or with the ToolkitScriptManager ScriptMode property. Because of this change, the Ajax Control Toolkit now depends on the Ajax Minifier. You must include a reference to AjaxMin.dll in your Visual Studio project or you cannot take advantage of runtime minification. If you install the Ajax Control Toolkit from NuGet then AjaxMin.dll is added to your project as a NuGet dependency automatically. If you download the Ajax Control Toolkit from CodePlex then the AjaxMin.dll is included in the download. This change means that you no longer need to do anything special to create a custom Ajax Control Toolkit. As an open source project, we hope more people will contribute to the Ajax Control Toolkit (Yes, I am looking at you.) We have been working hard on making it much easier to create new custom controls. More on this subject with the next release of the Ajax Control Toolkit. A Single Visual Studio Solution We also made substantial changes to the Visual Studio solution and projects used by the Ajax Control Toolkit with this release. This change will matter to you only if you need to work directly with the Ajax Control Toolkit source code. In previous releases of the Ajax Control Toolkit, we maintained separate solution and project files for ASP.NET 3.5, ASP.NET 4.0, and ASP.NET 4.5. Starting with this release, we now support a single Visual Studio 2012 solution that takes advantage of multi-targeting to build ASP.NET 3.5, ASP.NET 4.0, and ASP.NET 4.5 versions of the toolkit. This change means that you need Visual Studio 2012 to open the Ajax Control Toolkit project downloaded from CodePlex. For details on how we setup multi-targeting, please see Budi Adiono’s blog post: http://www.budiadiono.com/2013/07/25/visual-studio-2012-multi-targeting-framework-project/ Summary You can take advantage of this release of the Ajax Control Toolkit to significantly improve the performance of your website. You need to do two things: 1) You need to create an AjaxControlToolkit.config file which lists the controls used in your app and 2) You need to register the AjaxControlToolkit.CombineScriptsHandler in the web.config file. We made substantial changes to the Ajax Control Toolkit with this release. We think these changes will result in much better performance for multipage apps and make the process of building custom controls much easier. As always, we look forward to hearing your feedback.

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ASP.NET GZip Encoding Caveats

- by Rick Strahl

GZip encoding in ASP.NET is pretty easy to accomplish using the built-in GZipStream and DeflateStream classes and applying them to the Response.Filter property. While applying GZip and Deflate behavior is pretty easy there are a few caveats that you have watch out for as I found out today for myself with an application that was throwing up some garbage data. But before looking at caveats let’s review GZip implementation for ASP.NET. ASP.NET GZip/Deflate Basics Response filters basically are applied to the Response.OutputStream and transform it as data is written to it through the ASP.NET Response object. So a Response.Write eventually gets written into the output stream which if a filter is also written through the filter stream’s interface. To perform the actual GZip (and Deflate) encoding typically used by Web pages .NET includes the GZipStream and DeflateStream stream classes which can be readily assigned to the Repsonse.OutputStream. With these two stream classes in place it’s almost trivially easy to create a couple of reusable methods that allow you to compress your HTTP output. In my standard WebUtils utility class (from the West Wind West Wind Web Toolkit) created two static utility methods – IsGZipSupported and GZipEncodePage – that check whether the client supports GZip encoding and then actually encodes the current output (note that although the method includes ‘Page’ in its name this code will work with any ASP.NET output). /// <summary> /// Determines if GZip is supported /// </summary> /// <returns></returns> public static bool IsGZipSupported() { string AcceptEncoding = HttpContext.Current.Request.Headers["Accept-Encoding"]; if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(AcceptEncoding) && (AcceptEncoding.Contains("gzip") || AcceptEncoding.Contains("deflate"))) return true; return false; } /// <summary> /// Sets up the current page or handler to use GZip through a Response.Filter /// IMPORTANT: /// You have to call this method before any output is generated! /// </summary> public static void GZipEncodePage() { HttpResponse Response = HttpContext.Current.Response; if (IsGZipSupported()) { string AcceptEncoding = HttpContext.Current.Request.Headers["Accept-Encoding"]; if (AcceptEncoding.Contains("deflate")) { Response.Filter = new System.IO.Compression.DeflateStream(Response.Filter, System.IO.Compression.CompressionMode.Compress); Response.Headers.Remove("Content-Encoding"); Response.AppendHeader("Content-Encoding", "deflate"); } else { Response.Filter = new System.IO.Compression.GZipStream(Response.Filter, System.IO.Compression.CompressionMode.Compress); Response.Headers.Remove("Content-Encoding"); Response.AppendHeader("Content-Encoding", "gzip"); } } } As you can see the actual assignment of the Filter is as simple as: Response.Filter = new DeflateStream(Response.Filter, System.IO.Compression.CompressionMode.Compress); which applies the filter to the OutputStream. You also need to ensure that your response reflects the new GZip or Deflate encoding and ensure that any pages that are cached in Proxy servers can differentiate between pages that were encoded with the various different encodings (or no encoding). To use this utility function now is trivially easy: In any ASP.NET code that wants to compress its Response output you simply use: protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e) { WebUtils.GZipEncodePage(); Entry = WebLogFactory.GetEntry(); var entries = Entry.GetLastEntries(App.Configuration.ShowEntryCount, "pk,Title,SafeTitle,Body,Entered,Feedback,Location,ShowTopAd", "TEntries"); if (entries == null) throw new ApplicationException("Couldn't load WebLog Entries: " + Entry.ErrorMessage); this.repEntries.DataSource = entries; this.repEntries.DataBind(); } Here I use an ASP.NET page, but the above WebUtils.GZipEncode() method call will work in any ASP.NET application type including HTTP Handlers. The only requirement is that the filter needs to be applied before any other output is sent to the OutputStream. For example, in my CallbackHandler service implementation by default output over a certain size is GZip encoded. The output that is generated is JSON or XML and if the output is over 5k in size I apply WebUtils.GZipEncode(): if (sbOutput.Length > GZIP_ENCODE_TRESHOLD) WebUtils.GZipEncodePage(); Response.ContentType = ControlResources.STR_JsonContentType; HttpContext.Current.Response.Write(sbOutput.ToString()); Ok, so you probably get the idea: Encoding GZip/Deflate content is pretty easy. Hold on there Hoss –Watch your Caching Or is it? There are a few caveats that you need to watch out for when dealing with GZip content. The fist issue is that you need to deal with the fact that some clients don’t support GZip or Deflate content. Most modern browsers support it, but if you have a programmatic Http client accessing your content GZip/Deflate support is by no means guaranteed. For example, WinInet Http clients don’t support GZip out of the box – it has to be explicitly implemented. Other low level HTTP clients on other platforms too don’t support GZip out of the box. The problem is that your application, your Web Server and Proxy Servers on the Internet might be caching your generated content. If you return content with GZip once and then again without, either caching is not applied or worse the wrong type of content is returned back to the client from a cache or proxy. The result is an unreadable response for *some clients* which is also very hard to debug and fix once in production. You already saw the issue of Proxy servers addressed in the GZipEncodePage() function: // Allow proxy servers to cache encoded and unencoded versions separately Response.AppendHeader("Vary", "Content-Encoding"); This ensures that any Proxy servers also check for the Content-Encoding HTTP Header to cache their content – not just the URL. The same thing applies if you do OutputCaching in your own ASP.NET code. If you generate output for GZip on an OutputCached page the GZipped content will be cached (either by ASP.NET’s cache or in some cases by the IIS Kernel Cache). But what if the next client doesn’t support GZip? She’ll get served a cached GZip page that won’t decode and she’ll get a page full of garbage. Wholly undesirable. To fix this you need to add some custom OutputCache rules by way of the GetVaryByCustom() HttpApplication method in your global_ASAX file: public override string GetVaryByCustomString(HttpContext context, string custom) { // Override Caching for compression if (custom == "GZIP") { string acceptEncoding = HttpContext.Current.Response.Headers["Content-Encoding"]; if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(acceptEncoding)) return ""; else if (acceptEncoding.Contains("gzip")) return "GZIP"; else if (acceptEncoding.Contains("deflate")) return "DEFLATE"; return ""; } return base.GetVaryByCustomString(context, custom); } In a page that use Output caching you then specify: <%@ OutputCache Duration="180" VaryByParam="none" VaryByCustom="GZIP" %> To use that custom rule. It’s all Fun and Games until ASP.NET throws an Error Ok, so you’re up and running with GZip, you have your caching squared away and your pages that you are applying it to are jamming along. Then BOOM, something strange happens and you get a lovely garbled page that look like this: Lovely isn’t it? What’s happened here is that I have WebUtils.GZipEncode() applied to my page, but there’s an error in the page. The error falls back to the ASP.NET error handler and the error handler removes all existing output (good) and removes all the custom HTTP headers I’ve set manually (usually good, but very bad here). Since I applied the Response.Filter (via GZipEncode) the output is now GZip encoded, but ASP.NET has removed my Content-Encoding header, so the browser receives the GZip encoded content without a notification that it is encoded as GZip. The result is binary output. Here’s what Fiddler says about the raw HTTP header output when an error occurs when GZip encoding was applied: HTTP/1.1 500 Internal Server Error Cache-Control: private Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8 Date: Sat, 30 Apr 2011 22:21:08 GMT Content-Length: 2138 Connection: close ?`I?%&/m?{J?J??t??` … binary output striped here Notice: no Content-Encoding header and that’s why we’re seeing this garbage. ASP.NET has stripped the Content-Encoding header but left our filter intact. So how do we fix this? In my applications I typically have a global Application_Error handler set up and in this case I’ve been using that. One thing that you can do in the Application_Error handler is explicitly clear out the Response.Filter and set it to null at the top: protected void Application_Error(object sender, EventArgs e) { // Remove any special filtering especially GZip filtering Response.Filter = null; … } And voila I get my Yellow Screen of Death or my custom generated error output back via uncompressed content. BTW, the same is true for Page level errors handled in Page_Error or ASP.NET MVC Error handling methods in a controller. Another and possibly even better solution is to check whether a filter is attached just before the headers are sent to the client as pointed out by Adam Schroeder in the comments: protected void Application_PreSendRequestHeaders() { // ensure that if GZip/Deflate Encoding is applied that headers are set // also works when error occurs if filters are still active HttpResponse response = HttpContext.Current.Response; if (response.Filter is GZipStream && response.Headers["Content-encoding"] != "gzip") response.AppendHeader("Content-encoding", "gzip"); else if (response.Filter is DeflateStream && response.Headers["Content-encoding"] != "deflate") response.AppendHeader("Content-encoding", "deflate"); } This uses the Application_PreSendRequestHeaders() pipeline event to check for compression encoding in a filter and adjusts the content accordingly. This is actually a better solution since this is generic – it’ll work regardless of how the content is cleaned up. For example, an error Response.Redirect() or short error display might get changed and the filter not cleared and this code actually handles that. Sweet, thanks Adam. It’s unfortunate that ASP.NET doesn’t natively clear out Response.Filters when an error occurs just as it clears the Response and Headers. I can’t see where leaving a Filter in place in an error situation would make any sense, but hey - this is what it is and it’s easy enough to fix as long as you know where to look. Riiiight! IIS and GZip I should also mention that IIS 7 includes good support for compression natively. If you can defer encoding to let IIS perform it for you rather than doing it in your code by all means you should do it! Especially any static or semi-dynamic content that can be made static should be using IIS built-in compression. Dynamic caching is also supported but is a bit more tricky to judge in terms of performance and footprint. John Forsyth has a great article on the benefits and drawbacks of IIS 7 compression which gives some detailed performance comparisons and impact reviews. I’ll post another entry next with some more info on IIS compression since information on it seems to be a bit hard to come by. Related Content Built-in GZip/Deflate Compression in IIS 7.x HttpWebRequest and GZip Responses © Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2011Posted in ASP.NET IIS7

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ASP.NET Web Forms Extensibility: Providers

- by Ricardo Peres

Introduction This will be the first of a number of posts on ASP.NET extensibility. At this moment I don’t know exactly how many will be and I only know a couple of subjects that I want to talk about, so more will come in the next days. I have the sensation that the providers offered by ASP.NET are not widely know, although everyone uses, for example, sessions, they may not be aware of the extensibility points that Microsoft included. This post won’t go into details of how to configure and extend each of the providers, but will hopefully give some pointers on that direction. Canonical These are the most widely known and used providers, coming from ASP.NET 1, chances are, you have used them already. Good support for invoking client side, either from a .NET application or from JavaScript. Lots of server-side controls use them, such as the Login control for example. Membership The Membership provider is responsible for managing registered users, including creating new ones, authenticating them, changing passwords, etc. ASP.NET comes with two implementations, one that uses a SQL Server database and another that uses the Active Directory. The base class is Membership and new providers are registered on the membership section on the Web.config file, as well as parameters for specifying minimum password lengths, complexities, maximum age, etc. One reason for creating a custom provider would be, for example, storing membership information in a different database engine. 1: <membership defaultProvider="MyProvider"> 2: <providers> 3: <add name="MyProvider" type="MyClass, MyAssembly"/> 4: </providers> 5: </membership> Role The Role provider assigns roles to authenticated users. The base class is Role and there are three out of the box implementations: XML-based, SQL Server and Windows-based. Also registered on Web.config through the roleManager section, where you can also say if your roles should be cached on a cookie. If you want your roles to come from a different place, implement a custom provider. 1: <roleManager defaultProvider="MyProvider"> 2: <providers> 3: <add name="MyProvider" type="MyClass, MyAssembly" /> 4: </providers> 5: </roleManager> Profile The Profile provider allows defining a set of properties that will be tied and made available to authenticated or even anonymous ones, which must be tracked by using anonymous authentication. The base class is Profile and the only included implementation stores these settings in a SQL Server database. Configured through profile section, where you also specify the properties to make available, a custom provider would allow storing these properties in different locations. 1: <profile defaultProvider="MyProvider"> 2: <providers> 3: <add name="MyProvider" type="MyClass, MyAssembly"/> 4: </providers> 5: </profile> Basic OK, I didn’t know what to call these, so Basic is probably as good as a name as anything else. Not supported client-side (doesn’t even make sense). Session The Session provider allows storing data tied to the current “session”, which is normally created when a user first accesses the site, even when it is not yet authenticated, and remains all the way. The base class and only included implementation is SessionStateStoreProviderBase and it is capable of storing data in one of three locations: In the process memory (default, not suitable for web farms or increased reliability); A SQL Server database (best for reliability and clustering); The ASP.NET State Service, which is a Windows Service that is installed with the .NET Framework (ok for clustering). The configuration is made through the sessionState section. By adding a custom Session provider, you can store the data in different locations – think for example of a distributed cache. 1: <sessionState customProvider=”MyProvider”> 2: <providers> 3: <add name=”MyProvider” type=”MyClass, MyAssembly” /> 4: </providers> 5: </sessionState> Resource A not so known provider, allows you to change the origin of localized resource elements. By default, these come from RESX files and are used whenever you use the Resources expression builder or the GetGlobalResourceObject and GetLocalResourceObject methods, but if you implement a custom provider, you can have these elements come from some place else, such as a database. The base class is ResourceProviderFactory and there’s only one internal implementation which uses these RESX files. Configuration is through the globalization section. 1: <globalization resourceProviderFactoryType="MyClass, MyAssembly" /> Health Monitoring Health Monitoring is also probably not so well known, and actually not a good name for it. First, in order to understand what it does, you have to know that ASP.NET fires “events” at specific times and when specific things happen, such as when logging in, an exception is raised. These are not user interface events and you can create your own and fire them, nothing will happen, but the Health Monitoring provider will detect it. You can configure it to do things when certain conditions are met, such as a number of events being fired in a certain amount of time. You define these rules and route them to a specific provider, which must inherit from WebEventProvider. Out of the box implementations include sending mails, logging to a SQL Server database, writing to the Windows Event Log, Windows Management Instrumentation, the IIS 7 Trace infrastructure or the debugger Trace. Its configuration is achieved by the healthMonitoring section and a reason for implementing a custom provider would be, for example, locking down a web application in the event of a significant number of failed login attempts occurring in a small period of time. 1: <healthMonitoring> 2: <providers> 3: <add name="MyProvider" type="MyClass, MyAssembly"/> 4: </providers> 5: </healthMonitoring> Sitemap The Sitemap provider allows defining the site’s navigation structure and associated required permissions for each node, in a tree-like fashion. Usually this is statically defined, and the included provider allows it, by supplying this structure in a Web.sitemap XML file. The base class is SiteMapProvider and you can extend it in order to supply you own source for the site’s structure, which may even be dynamic. Its configuration must be done through the siteMap section. 1: <siteMap defaultProvider="MyProvider"> 2: <providers><add name="MyProvider" type="MyClass, MyAssembly" /> 3: </providers> 4: </siteMap> Web Part Personalization Web Parts are better known by SharePoint users, but since ASP.NET 2.0 they are included in the core Framework. Web Parts are server-side controls that offer certain possibilities of configuration by clients visiting the page where they are located. The infrastructure handles this configuration per user or globally for all users and this provider is responsible for just that. The base class is PersonalizationProvider and the only included implementation stores settings on SQL Server. Add new providers through the personalization section. 1: <webParts> 2: <personalization defaultProvider="MyProvider"> 3: <providers> 4: <add name="MyProvider" type="MyClass, MyAssembly"/> 5: </providers> 6: </personalization> 7: </webParts> Build The Build provider is responsible for compiling whatever files are present on your web folder. There’s a base class, BuildProvider, and, as can be expected, internal implementations for building pages (ASPX), master pages (Master), user web controls (ASCX), handlers (ASHX), themes (Skin), XML Schemas (XSD), web services (ASMX, SVC), resources (RESX), browser capabilities files (Browser) and so on. You would write a build provider if you wanted to generate code from any kind of non-code file so that you have strong typing at development time. Configuration goes on the buildProviders section and it is per extension. 1: <buildProviders> 2: <add extension=".ext" type="MyClass, MyAssembly” /> 3: </buildProviders> New in ASP.NET 4 Not exactly new since they exist since 2010, but in ASP.NET terms, still new. Output Cache The Output Cache for ASPX pages and ASCX user controls is now extensible, through the Output Cache provider, which means you can implement a custom mechanism for storing and retrieving cached data, for example, in a distributed fashion. The base class is OutputCacheProvider and the only implementation is private. Configuration goes on the outputCache section and on each page and web user control you can choose the provider you want to use. 1: <caching> 2: <outputCache defaultProvider="MyProvider"> 3: <providers> 4: <add name="MyProvider" type="MyClass, MyAssembly"/> 5: </providers> 6: </outputCache> 7: </caching> Request Validation A big change introduced in ASP.NET 4 (and refined in 4.5, by the way) is the introduction of extensible request validation, by means of a Request Validation provider. This means we are not limited to either enabling or disabling event validation for all pages or for a specific page, but we now have fine control over each of the elements of the request, including cookies, headers, query string and form values. The base provider class is RequestValidator and the configuration goes on the httpRuntime section. 1: <httpRuntime requestValidationType="MyClass, MyAssembly" /> Browser Capabilities The Browser Capabilities provider is new in ASP.NET 4, although the concept exists from ASP.NET 2. The idea is to map a browser brand and version to its supported capabilities, such as JavaScript version, Flash support, ActiveX support, and so on. Previously, this was all hardcoded in .Browser files located in %WINDIR%\Microsoft.NET\Framework(64)\vXXXXX\Config\Browsers, but now you can have a class inherit from HttpCapabilitiesProvider and implement your own mechanism. Register in on the browserCaps section. 1: <browserCaps provider="MyClass, MyAssembly" /> Encoder The Encoder provider is responsible for encoding every string that is sent to the browser on a page or header. This includes for example converting special characters for their standard codes and is implemented by the base class HttpEncoder. Another implementation takes care of Anti Cross Site Scripting (XSS) attacks. Build your own by inheriting from one of these classes if you want to add some additional processing to these strings. The configuration will go on the httpRuntime section. 1: <httpRuntime encoderType="MyClass, MyAssembly" /> Conclusion That’s about it for ASP.NET providers. It was by no means a thorough description, but I hope I managed to raise your interest on this subject. There are lots of pointers on the Internet, so I only included direct references to the Framework classes and configuration sections. Stay tuned for more extensibility!

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Ajax Control Toolkit November 2011 Release

- by Stephen Walther

I’m happy to announce the November 2011 Release of the Ajax Control Toolkit. This release introduces a new Balloon Popup control and several enhancements to the existing Tabs control including support for on-demand loading of tab content, support for vertical tabs, and support for keyboard tab navigation. We also fixed the top-voted bugs associated with the Tabs control reported at CodePlex.com. You can download the new release by visiting the CodePlex website: http://AjaxControlToolkit.CodePlex.com Alternatively, the fast and easy way to get the latest release of the Ajax Control Toolkit is to use NuGet. Open your Library Package Manager console in Visual Studio 2010 and type: After you install the Ajax Control Toolkit through NuGet, please do a Rebuild of your project (the menu option Build, Rebuild). After you do a Rebuild, the ajaxToolkit prefix will appear in Intellisense: Using the Balloon Popup Control Why a new Balloon Popup control? The Balloon Popup control is the second most requested new feature for the Ajax Control Toolkit according to CodePlex votes: The Balloon Popup displays a message in a balloon when you shift focus to a control, click a control, or hover over a control. You can use the Balloon Popup, for example, to display instructions for TextBoxes which appear in a form: Here’s the code used to create the Balloon Popup: <ajaxToolkit:ToolkitScriptManager ID="tsm1" runat="server" /> <asp:TextBox ID="txtFirstName" Runat="server" /> <asp:Panel ID="pnlFirstNameHelp" runat="server"> Please enter your first name </asp:Panel> <ajaxToolkit:BalloonPopupExtender TargetControlID="txtFirstName" BalloonPopupControlID="pnlFirstNameHelp" BalloonSize="Small" UseShadow="true" runat="server" /> You also can use the Balloon Popup to explain hard to understand words in a text document: Here’s how you display the Balloon Popup when you hover over the link: The point of the conversation was <asp:HyperLink ID="lnkObfuscate" Text="obfuscated" CssClass="hardWord" runat="server" /> by his incessant coughing. <ajaxToolkit:ToolkitScriptManager ID="tsm1" runat="server" /> <asp:Panel id="pnlObfuscate" Runat="server"> To bewilder or render something obscure </asp:Panel> <ajaxToolkit:BalloonPopupExtender TargetControlID="lnkObfuscate" BalloonPopupControlID="pnlObfuscate" BalloonStyle="Cloud" UseShadow="true" DisplayOnMouseOver="true" Runat="server" /> There are four important properties which you need to know about when using the Balloon Popup control: BalloonSize – The three balloon sizes are Small, Medium, and Large. BalloonStyle -- The two built-in styles are Rectangle and Cloud. UseShadow – When true, a drop shadow appears behind the popup. Position – Can have the values Auto, BottomLeft, BottomRight, TopLeft, TopRight. When set to Auto, which is the default, the Balloon Popup will appear where it has the most screen real estate. The following screenshots illustrates how these settings affect the appearance of the Balloon Popup: Customizing the Balloon Popup You can customize the appearance of the Balloon Popup by creating your own Cascading Style Sheet and Sprite. The Ajax Control Toolkit sample site includes a sample of a custom Oval Balloon Popup style: This custom style was created by using a custom Cascading Style Sheet and image. You point the Balloon Popup at a custom Cascading Style Sheet and Cascading Style Sheet class by using the CustomCssUrl and CustomClassName properties like this: <asp:TextBox ID="txtCustom" autocomplete="off" runat="server" /> <br /> <asp:Panel ID="Panel3" runat="server"> This is a custom BalloonPopupExtender style created with a custom Cascading Style Sheet. </asp:Panel> <ajaxToolkit:BalloonPopupExtender ID="bpe1" TargetControlID="txtCustom" BalloonPopupControlID="Panel3" BalloonStyle="Custom" CustomCssUrl="CustomStyle/BalloonPopupOvalStyle.css" CustomClassName="oval" UseShadow="true" runat="server" /> Learn More about the Balloon Popup To learn more about the Balloon Popup control, visit the sample page for the Balloon Popup at the Ajax Control Toolkit sample site: http://www.asp.net/ajaxLibrary/AjaxControlToolkitSampleSite/BalloonPopup/BalloonPopupExtender.aspx Improvements to the Tabs Control In this release, we introduced several important new features for the existing Tabs control. We also fixed all of the top-voted bugs for the Tabs control. On-Demand Loading of Tab Content Here is the scenario. Imagine that you are using the Tabs control in a Web Forms page. The Tabs control displays two tabs: Customers and Products. When you click the Customers tab then you want to see a list of customers and when you click on the Products tab then you want to see a list of products. In this scenario, you don’t want the list of customers and products to be retrieved from the database when the page is initially opened. The user might never click on the Products tab and all of the work to load the list of products from the database would be wasted. In this scenario, you want the content of a tab panel to be loaded on demand. The products should only be loaded from the database and rendered to the browser when you click the Products tab and not before. The Tabs control in the November 2011 Release of the Ajax Control Toolkit includes a new property named OnDemand. When OnDemand is set to the value True, a tab panel won’t be loaded until you click its associated tab. Here is the code for the aspx page: <ajaxToolkit:ToolkitScriptManager ID="tsm1" runat="server" /> <ajaxToolkit:TabContainer ID="tabs" OnDemand="false" runat="server"> <ajaxToolkit:TabPanel HeaderText="Customers" runat="server"> <ContentTemplate> <h2>Customers</h2> <asp:GridView ID="grdCustomers" DataSourceID="srcCustomers" runat="server" /> <asp:SqlDataSource ID="srcCustomers" SelectCommand="SELECT * FROM Customers" ConnectionString="<%$ ConnectionStrings:StoreDB %>" runat="server" /> </ContentTemplate> </ajaxToolkit:TabPanel> <ajaxToolkit:TabPanel HeaderText="Products" runat="server"> <ContentTemplate> <h2>Products</h2> <asp:GridView ID="grdProducts" DataSourceID="srcProducts" runat="server" /> <asp:SqlDataSource ID="srcProducts" SelectCommand="SELECT * FROM Products" ConnectionString="<%$ ConnectionStrings:StoreDB %>" runat="server" /> </ContentTemplate> </ajaxToolkit:TabPanel> </ajaxToolkit:TabContainer> Notice that the TabContainer includes an OnDemand=”True” property. The Tabs control contains two Tab Panels. The first tab panel uses a DataGrid and SqlDataSource to display a list of customers and the second tab panel uses a DataGrid and SqlDataSource to display a list of products. And here is the code-behind for the page: using System; using System.Diagnostics; using System.Web.UI.WebControls; namespace ACTSamples { public partial class TabsOnDemand : System.Web.UI.Page { protected override void OnInit(EventArgs e) { srcProducts.Selecting += new SqlDataSourceSelectingEventHandler(srcProducts_Selecting); } void srcProducts_Selecting(object sender, SqlDataSourceSelectingEventArgs e) { Debugger.Break(); } } } The code-behind file includes an event handler for the Products SqlDataSource Selecting event. The handler breaks into the debugger by calling the Debugger.Break() method. That way, we can know when the Products SqlDataSource actually retrieves the list of products. When the OnDemand property has the value False then the Selecting event handler is called immediately when the page is first loaded. The contents of all of the tabs are loaded (and the contents of the unselected tabs are hidden) when the page is first loaded. When the OnDemand property has the value True then the Selecting event handler is not called when the page is first loaded. The event handler is not called until you click on the Products tab. If you never click on the Products tab then the list of products is never retrieved from the database. If you want even more control over when the contents of a tab panel gets loaded then you can use the TabPanel OnDemandMode property. This property accepts the following three values: None – Never load the contents of the tab panel again after the page is first loaded. Once – Wait until the tab is selected to load the contents of the tab panel Always – Load the contents of the tab panel each and every time you select the tab. There is a live demonstration of the OnDemandMode property here in the sample page for the Tabs control: http://www.asp.net/ajaxLibrary/AjaxControlToolkitSampleSite/Tabs/Tabs.aspx Displaying Vertical Tabs With the November 2011 Release, the Tabs control now supports vertical tabs. To create vertical tabs, just set the TabContainer UserVerticalStripPlacement property to the value True like this: <ajaxToolkit:TabContainer ID="tabs" OnDemand="false" UseVerticalStripPlacement="true" runat="server"> <ajaxToolkit:TabPanel ID="TabPanel1" HeaderText="First Tab" runat="server"> <ContentTemplate> <p> Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Maecenas porttitor congue massa. Fusce posuere, magna sed pulvinar ultricies, purus lectus malesuada libero, sit amet commodo magna eros quis urna. </p> </ContentTemplate> </ajaxToolkit:TabPanel> <ajaxToolkit:TabPanel ID="TabPanel2" HeaderText="Second Tab" runat="server"> <ContentTemplate> <p> Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Maecenas porttitor congue massa. Fusce posuere, magna sed pulvinar ultricies, purus lectus malesuada libero, sit amet commodo magna eros quis urna. </p> </ContentTemplate> </ajaxToolkit:TabPanel> </ajaxToolkit:TabContainer> In addition, you can use the TabStripPlacement property to control whether the tab strip appears at the left or right or top or bottom of the tab panels: Tab Keyboard Navigation Another highly requested feature for the Tabs control is support for keyboard navigation. The Tabs control now supports the arrow keys and the Home and End keys. In order for the arrow keys to work, you must first move focus to the tab control on the page by either clicking on a tab with your mouse or repeatedly hitting the Tab key. You can try out the new keyboard navigation support by trying any of the demos included in the Tabs sample page: http://www.asp.net/ajaxLibrary/AjaxControlToolkitSampleSite/Tabs/Tabs.aspx Summary I hope that you take advantage of the new Balloon Popup control and the new features which we introduced for the Tabs control. We added a lot of new features to the Tabs control in this release including support for on-demand tabs, support for vertical tabs, and support for tab keyboard navigation. I want to thank the developers on the Superexpert team for all of the hard work which they put into this release.

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CodePlex Daily Summary for Wednesday, April 07, 2010

CodePlex Daily Summary for Wednesday, April 07, 2010New ProjectsAStar.net: AStar.net is a project for compute the A* path finding algorithm. It expose classes and interface that can be used for all purpose with multi-threa...Auto Complete for MOSS 2007: Auto Complete for MOSS 2007 (WSS 3.0) makes it easier for all user to fill list of nessesary string in the field. AutoPoco: AutoPoco is a framework with the purpose of fluently building test data from Plain Old CLR ObjectsBlueProject: BlueProjectColor Picker for MOSS 2007: Color picker for MOSS 2007 (WSS 3.0) makes it easier for some user to choose color in the field. ComBrowser2: ComBrowser2DCommunication: Communication Components and Software By Delphi On Windows.DirST: Allows one to replicate a DIRectory STructure without copying files. Written in C#.Discussion column for MOSS 2007: Discussion column for MOSS 2007/ (WSS 3.0) is a field column for different type lists such as Custom List, Document Library, Issue Tracking, not on...Effect Custom Tool for Visual Studio: Effect Custom Tool for Visual Studio is a visual studio 2008 extension that helps you generate c# classes from effect (*.fx) files for use with Xna...Energon: Energon is a framework to create and run software energy consumption tests. Requires a couple of PC with a TCP connections, a phidgets ammeter and ...Fiansa: Proyecto FiansaFirstSpark: FirstSpark is a sample Spark View Engine projectISOM: Internetowy System Obsługi Magisterek La Carta Mas Alta: La Carta Mas Alta is an open source card game totally written in PHP and HTML. This cross-platform and cross-browser game was tested under BeOS, Li...Near forums - ASP.NET MVC forum engine: Open source SEO friendly ASP.NET MVC forum engine. Features: Navigation in forums, topics and tags; login with Facebook Connect and Single sign-on;...PEC: Still editingPowershell Zip Export/Import Cmdlet Module: Powershellzip is a powershell module with a set of Cmdlets for zip file export, import and processingProgress bar for MOSS 2007: Progress bar for MOSS 2007 (WSS 3.0) makes it easier for some user to display progress in the field in percent (0-100%). SharePoint Accelerators: This project delivers a number of SharePoint accelerators that make your every-day SharePoint life easier.Shweet: SharePoint 2010 Team Messaging built with Pex: Shweet is a simple SharePoint Foundation 2010 application that allows teams to do messaging and subscriptions in the style similar to twitter. De...SilverlightEncoder: Video and audio encoder for Silverlight 4 Out-of-BrowserStarMath: Static Array Math Library: While there are already countless math libraries for performing common matrix/array functions, StarMath is distinguished by its simplicity and flex...StringToNumber: StringToNumber is a .NET library for parsing numbers in their written form into their numeric equivalent. It's developed in C#. It was created to...SubstitutionITIS: <project name="Substitution" language="c-sharp" to="myschool" whatdo="manageSubstitutionTeachers" />TamTam.SharePoint2010.LinkedIn: SP2010 and LinkedIn working togetherThink And Explore: Think my own wayusenet-o-matic: small mobile optimised webscript to search various NZB sources like newzbin and NZBmatrix and send donwloads to your SABnzbd server. Valid HTML5 Templates for VisualStudio: This project will host valid HTML templates for Visual Studio. The primary focus however will be on the newer standard HTML5 and Visual Studio 2010XSS Attack: This tool will simulate an attack on your database and update up to 5000 rows in every table and replace your strings in your database with random ...Yazgelistir Beta: Yazgelistir'in beta sitesiNew ReleasesAStar.net: AStar.net 1.0 downloads: AStar.net 1.0 downloadsAvalaible downloads:Astar.net dll - Runtime library ready to be included in a project. Astar.net source project - The Visu...AutoPoco: 0.1 - Initial Release: This is the initial release, changes pending, lots left to do, check it out though!Bag of Tricks: Bag of Tricks - WPF - Libraries and Sample App: Here is a drop of the Bag of Tricks. It targets the 3.5 Client Profile.Boxee Launcher: Boxee Launcher 1.0.1.4: Taskbar will now be hiddenDesignit Umbraco Newsletter Package: ver 1.0.0 beta1: Please remember this is a beta version. If you have any problems or issues, don't hesitate to use the issue tracker and/or forum on this site. Ple...Effect Custom Tool for Visual Studio: Effect Custom Tool for Visual Studio 2008: Effect Custom Tool for Visual Studio is a visual studio 2008 extension that helps you generate c# classes from effect (*.fx) files for use with Xna...Fluent Ribbon Control Suite: Fluent Ribbon Control Suite 1.1: Fluent Ribbon Control Suite 1.1 Includes: Fluent.dll (with .pdb and .xml) Showcase Application Samples Foundation (Tabs, Groups, Contextual Tab...GsGrid: gsgrid 1.6.5: gsgrid 1.6.5Home Access Plus+: v3.2.5.2: v3.2.5.1 Release Change Log: Attempt to fix Domain Admin Lookup box File Changes: ~/bin/CHS Extranet.dll ~/bin/CHS Extranet.pdbHulu Launcher: Hulu Launcher 1.0.1.4: Will now hide taskbar.Icarus Scene Engine: Icarus Professional 2 Alpha 2a v 1.10.404.936: Alpha release 2 of Icarus Professional. This release includes: IcarusX: The ActiveX-based browser control for rendering IPX projects online. Icaru...kdar: KDAR 0.0.19: KDAR - Kernel Debugger Anti Rootkit - thread start notifier routine check added - registry callback сheck added - NDIS6 checks added - some bug i...Mobile Device Browser File: Mobile Device Browser File (2010-04-07): The Mobile Browser Definition File contains definitions for individual mobile devices and browsers. At run time, ASP.NET uses the information in th...MvcContrib: a Codeplex Foundation project: Portable Area Template: Use this Visual Studio 2008 Project template to create new portable areas. Drop this file in your Documents\Visual Studio 2008\Templates\ProjectTe...Office Apps: 0.8.8: new ui for Document.Viewer bug fix'sProtoforma | Tactica Adversa: Skilful 0.3.4.477: RC1ROOT Builder: ROOT Builder 1.41: Simplifies building of ROOT on the windows platform by generating a Visual Studio C make project that will build and run (and debug ROOT). See Inst...SharePoint Accelerators: Search AutoComplete for SharePoint Lists: Search AutoComplete for SharePoint List is a Web Part that allows you to search contents of a SharePoint. Search is interactive and offers you resu...SharePoint Labs: SPLab4002A-FRA-Level100: SPLab4002A-FRA-Level100 This SharePoint Lab will teach you the 2nd best practice you should apply when writing code with the SharePoint API. Lab La...SharePoint Labs: SPLab4003A-FRA-Level100: SPLab4003A-FRA-Level100 This SharePoint Lab will teach you the 3rd best practice you should apply when writing code with the SharePoint API. Lab La...SQL Compact data and schema script utility: Version 3.0: This release contains 4 downloadable files: - SSMS 2008 scripting add-in - SQL Server 2005/2008 command line utility to generate a script with sch...StarMath: Static Array Math Library: StarMath Source Files: The source file package includes the main library StarMath.dll (and it's source files), and an example exe project to invoke commands from StarMath.stefvanhooijdonk.com: Powershell Solution Install Script: Powershell Example script to install a SP2010 Solution, which actually waits for the Retraction and Deployment jobs.TamTam.SharePoint2010.LinkedIn: 0.0.0.1: How to use/install Small instruction to use this code/solution step 1 Add the Farm Solution to your SP2010 installation step 2 Go to the MySite H...usenet-o-matic: V 0.2: supports Newzbin and NZBmatrix as index sources and SABnzbd as download serverVCC: Latest build, v2.1.30406.0: Automatic drop of latest buildVisual Studio DSite: E-Z Image To PDF Converter Beta: This simple little program can convert all common image formats into pdfs and can even encrypt the pdf with an encrpytion key.Web and Load Test Plugins for Visual Studio Team Test: Release 2.0: Release 2.0 is targeted at VS 2010. VS 2010 exposes major new extensibility points: 1) Recorder plugins enable you to do custom correlations and o...Wicked Compression ASP.NET HTTP Module: WickedCompressionModule 4.0 Alpha: New Features, New Enhancements! - Visual Studio 2010 Projects! - Support for ASP.NET 2.0, 3.5, and 4.0 - AJAX Support for ASP.NET 3.5 and 4.0 - Bu...x5s - test encodings and character transformations to find XSS hotspots: x5s v1.0.0 beta: This is the v1.0 beta release of x5s. All feedback welcome in planning for the next release. Make sure Fiddler is installed prior to running th...xvanneste: Silverlight SharePoint: Fichiers du webcast sur silverlight: Silverlight OM Silverlight Webpart Silverlight Embedded ressource Silverlight List ViewYet Another Web App Monitoring Tool (YAWAMT): yawamt v0.5: A new release has seen the light :-) I've lowered the release to version 0.5 but changed some major things: - deletion of URLS works - settings can...Zinc Launcher: Zinc Launcher 1.0.1.1: Taskbar will now be hidden Delay to show Zinc was reduced to improve responsiveness.Most Popular ProjectsRawrWBFS ManagerMicrosoft SQL Server Product Samples: DatabaseASP.NET Ajax LibrarySilverlight ToolkitAJAX Control ToolkitWindows Presentation Foundation (WPF)ASP.NETMicrosoft SQL Server Community & SamplesFacebook Developer ToolkitMost Active ProjectsGraffiti CMSnopCommerce. Open Source online shop e-commerce solution.RawrFacebook Developer ToolkitShweet: SharePoint 2010 Team Messaging built with Pexpatterns & practices – Enterprise LibraryNcqrs Framework - The CQRS framework for .NETjQuery Library for SharePoint Web ServicesIonics Isapi Rewrite FilterAcadsys

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Unity – Part 5: Injecting Values

- by Ricardo Peres

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

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Using Table-Valued Parameters With SQL Server Reporting Services

- by Jesse

In my last post I talked about using table-valued parameters to pass a list of integer values to a stored procedure without resorting to using comma-delimited strings and parsing out each value into a TABLE variable. In this post I’ll extend the “Customer Transaction Summary” report example to see how we might leverage this same stored procedure from within an SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) report. I’ve worked with SSRS off and on for the past several years and have generally found it to be a very useful tool for building nice-looking reports for end users quickly and easily. That said, I’ve been frustrated by SSRS from time to time when seemingly simple things are difficult to accomplish or simply not supported at all. I thought that using table-valued parameters from within a SSRS report would be simple, but unfortunately I was wrong. Customer Transaction Summary Example Let’s take the “Customer Transaction Summary” report example from the last post and try to plug that same stored procedure into an SSRS report. Our report will have three parameters: Start Date – beginning of the date range for which the report will summarize customer transactions End Date – end of the date range for which the report will summarize customer transactions Customer Ids – One or more customer Ids representing the customers that will be included in the report The simplest way to get started with this report will be to create a new dataset and point it at our Customer Transaction Summary report stored procedure (note that I’m using SSRS 2012 in the screenshots below, but there should be little to no difference with SSRS 2008): When you initially create this dataset the SSRS designer will try to invoke the stored procedure to determine what the parameters and output fields are for you automatically. As part of this process the following dialog pops-up: Obviously I can’t use this dialog to specify a value for the ‘@customerIds’ parameter since it is of the IntegerListTableType user-defined type that we created in the last post. Unfortunately this really throws the SSRS designer for a loop, and regardless of what combination of Data Type, Pass Null Value, or Parameter Value I used here, I kept getting this error dialog with the message, "Operand type clash: nvarchar is incompatible with IntegerListTableType". This error message makes some sense considering that the nvarchar type is indeed incompatible with the IntegerListTableType, but there’s little clue given as to how to remedy the situation. I don’t know for sure, but I think that behind-the-scenes the SSRS designer is trying to give the @customerIds parameter an nvarchar-typed SqlParameter which is causing the issue. When I first saw this error I figured that this might just be a limitation of the dataset designer and that I’d be able to work around the issue by manually defining the parameters. I know that there are some special steps that need to be taken when invoking a stored procedure with a table-valued parameter from ADO .NET, so I figured that I might be able to use some custom code embedded in the report to create a SqlParameter instance with the needed properties and value to make this work, but the “Operand type clash" error message persisted. The Text Query Approach Just because we’re using a stored procedure to create the dataset for this report doesn’t mean that we can’t use the ‘Text’ Query Type option and construct an EXEC statement that will invoke the stored procedure. In order for this to work properly the EXEC statement will also need to declare and populate an IntegerListTableType variable to pass into the stored procedure. Before I go any further I want to make one point clear: this is a really ugly hack and it makes me cringe to do it. Simply put, I strongly feel that it should not be this difficult to use a table-valued parameter with SSRS. With that said, let’s take a look at what we’ll have to do to make this work. Manually Define Parameters First, we’ll need to manually define the parameters for report by right-clicking on the ‘Parameters’ folder in the ‘Report Data’ window. We’ll need to define the ‘@startDate’ and ‘@endDate’ as simple date parameters. We’ll also create a parameter called ‘@customerIds’ that will be a mutli-valued Integer parameter: In the ‘Available Values’ tab we’ll point this parameter at a simple dataset that just returns the CustomerId and CustomerName of each row in the Customers table of the database or manually define a handful of Customer Id values to make available when the report runs. Once we have these parameters properly defined we can take another crack at creating the dataset that will invoke the ‘rpt_CustomerTransactionSummary’ stored procedure. This time we’ll choose the ‘Text’ query type option and put the following into the ‘Query’ text area: 1: exec('declare @customerIdList IntegerListTableType ' + @customerIdInserts + 2: ' EXEC rpt_CustomerTransactionSummary 3: @startDate=''' + @startDate + ''', 4: @endDate='''+ @endDate + ''', 5: @customerIds=@customerIdList') By using the ‘Text’ query type we can enter any arbitrary SQL that we we want to and then use parameters and string concatenation to inject pieces of that query at run time. It can be a bit tricky to parse this out at first glance, but from the SSRS designer’s point of view this query defines three parameters: @customerIdInserts – This will be a Text parameter that we use to define INSERT statements that will populate the @customerIdList variable that is being declared in the SQL. This parameter won’t actually ever get passed into the stored procedure. I’ll go into how this will work in a bit. @startDate – This is a simple date parameter that will get passed through directly into the @startDate parameter of the stored procedure on line 3. @endDate – This is another simple data parameter that will get passed through into the @endDate parameter of the stored procedure on line 4. At this point the dataset designer will be able to correctly parse the query and should even be able to detect the fields that the stored procedure will return without needing to specify any values for query when prompted to. Once the dataset has been correctly defined we’ll have a @customerIdInserts parameter listed in the ‘Parameters’ tab of the dataset designer. We need to define an expression for this parameter that will take the values selected by the user for the ‘@customerIds’ parameter that we defined earlier and convert them into INSERT statements that will populate the @customerIdList variable that we defined in our Text query. In order to do this we’ll need to add some custom code to our report using the ‘Report Properties’ dialog: Any custom code defined in the Report Properties dialog gets embedded into the .rdl of the report itself and (unfortunately) must be written in VB .NET. Note that you can also add references to custom .NET assemblies (which could be written in any language), but that’s outside the scope of this post so we’ll stick with the “quick and dirty” VB .NET approach for now. Here’s the VB .NET code (note that any embedded code that you add here must be defined in a static/shared function, though you can define as many functions as you want): 1: Public Shared Function BuildIntegerListInserts(ByVal variableName As String, ByVal paramValues As Object()) As String 2: Dim insertStatements As New System.Text.StringBuilder() 3: For Each paramValue As Object In paramValues 4: insertStatements.AppendLine(String.Format("INSERT {0} VALUES ({1})", variableName, paramValue)) 5: Next 6: Return insertStatements.ToString() 7: End Function This method takes a variable name and an array of objects. We use an array of objects here because that is how SSRS will pass us the values that were selected by the user at run-time. The method uses a StringBuilder to construct INSERT statements that will insert each value from the object array into the provided variable name. Once this method has been defined in the custom code for the report we can go back into the dataset designer’s Parameters tab and update the expression for the ‘@customerIdInserts’ parameter by clicking on the button with the “function” symbol that appears to the right of the parameter value. We’ll set the expression to: 1: =Code.BuildIntegerListInserts("@customerIdList ", Parameters!customerIds.Value) In order to invoke our custom code method we simply need to invoke “Code.<method name>” and pass in any needed parameters. The first parameter needs to match the name of the IntegerListTableType variable that we used in the EXEC statement of our query. The second parameter will come from the Value property of the ‘@customerIds’ parameter (this evaluates to an object array at run time). Finally, we’ll need to edit the properties of the ‘@customerIdInserts’ parameter on the report to mark it as a nullable internal parameter so that users aren’t prompted to provide a value for it when running the report. Limitations And Final Thoughts When I first started looking into the text query approach described above I wondered if there might be an upper limit to the size of the string that can be used to run a report. Obviously, the size of the actual query could increase pretty dramatically if you have a parameter that has a lot of potential values or you need to support several different table-valued parameters in the same query. I tested the example Customer Transaction Summary report with 1000 selected customers without any issue, but your mileage may vary depending on how much data you might need to pass into your query. If you think that the text query hack is a lot of work just to use a table-valued parameter, I agree! I think that it should be a lot easier than this to use a table-valued parameter from within SSRS, but so far I haven’t found a better way. It might be possible to create some custom .NET code that could build the EXEC statement for a given set of parameters automatically, but exploring that will have to wait for another post. For now, unless there’s a really compelling reason or requirement to use table-valued parameters from SSRS reports I would probably stick with the tried and true “join-multi-valued-parameter-to-CSV-and-split-in-the-query” approach for using mutli-valued parameters in a stored procedure.

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ASP.NET Connections Spring 2012 Talks and Code

- by Stephen.Walther

Thank you everyone who attended my ASP.NET Connections talks last week in Las Vegas. I’ve attached the slides and code for the three talks that I delivered: Using jQuery to interact with the Server through Ajax – In this talk, I discuss the different ways to communicate information between browser and server using Ajax. I explain the difference between the different types of Ajax calls that you can make with jQuery. I also discuss the differences between the JavaScriptSerializer, the DataContractJsonSerializer, and the JSON.NET serializer. ASP.NET Validation In-Depth – In this talk, I distinguish between View Model Validation and Domain Model Validation. I demonstrate how you can use the validation attributes (including the new .NET 4.5 validation attributes), the jQuery Validation library, and the HTML5 input validation attributes to perform View Model Validation. I then demonstrate how you can use the IValidatableObject interface with the Entity Framework to perform Domain Model Validation. Using the MVVM Pattern with JavaScript Views – In this talk, I discuss how you can create single page applications (SPA) by taking advantage of the open-source KnockoutJS library and the ASP.NET Web API. Be warned that the sample code is contained in Visual Studio 11 Beta projects. If you don’t have this version of Visual Studio, then you will need to open the code samples in Notepad. Also, I apologize for getting the code for these talks posted so slowly. I’ve been down with a nasty case of the flu for the past week and haven’t been able to get to a computer.

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ASP.NET Connections Spring 2012 Talks and Code

- by Stephen.Walther

Thank you everyone who attended my ASP.NET Connections talks last week in Las Vegas. I’ve attached the slides and code for the three talks that I delivered: Using jQuery to interact with the Server through Ajax– In this talk, I discuss the different ways to communicate information between browser and server using Ajax. I explain the difference between the different types of Ajax calls that you can make with jQuery. I also discuss the differences between the JavaScriptSerializer, the DataContractJsonSerializer, and the JSON.NET serializer. ASP.NET Validation In-Depth– In this talk, I distinguish between View Model Validation and Domain Model Validation. I demonstrate how you can use the validation attributes (including the new .NET 4.5 validation attributes), the jQuery Validation library, and the HTML5 input validation attributes to perform View Model Validation. I then demonstrate how you can use the IValidatableObject interface with the Entity Framework to perform Domain Model Validation. Using the MVVM Pattern with JavaScript Views – In this talk, I discuss how you can create single page applications (SPA) by taking advantage of the open-source KnockoutJS library and the ASP.NET Web API. Be warned that the sample code is contained in Visual Studio 11 Beta projects. If you don’t have this version of Visual Studio, then you will need to open the code samples in Notepad. Also, I apologize for getting the code for these talks posted so slowly. I’ve been down with a nasty case of the flu for the past week and haven’t been able to get to a computer.

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Duck checker in Python: does one exist?

- by elliot42

Python uses duck-typing, rather than static type checking. But many of the same concerns ultimately apply: does an object have the desired methods and attributes? Do those attributes have valid, in-range values? Whether you're writing constraints in code, or writing test cases, or validating user input, or just debugging, inevitably somewhere you'll need to verify that an object is still in a proper state--that it still "looks like a duck" and "quacks like a duck." In statically typed languages you can simply declare "int x", and anytime you create or mutate x, it will always be a valid int. It seems feasible to decorate a Python object to ensure that it is valid under certain constraints, and that every time that object is mutated it is still valid under those constraints. Ideally there would be a simple declarative syntax to express "hasattr length and length is non-negative" (not in those words. Not unlike Rails validators, but less human-language and more programming-language). You could think of this as ad-hoc interface/type system, or you could think of it as an ever-present object-level unit test. Does such a library exist to declare and validate constraint/duck-checking on Python-objects? Is this an unreasonable tool to want? :) (Thanks!) Contrived example: rectangle = {'length': 5, 'width': 10} # We live in a fictional universe where multiplication is super expensive. # Therefore any time we multiply, we need to cache the results. def area(rect): if 'area' in rect: return rect['area'] rect['area'] = rect['length'] * rect['width'] return rect['area'] print area(rectangle) rectangle['length'] = 15 print area(rectangle) # compare expected vs. actual output! # imagine the same thing with object attributes rather than dictionary keys.

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'Binary XML' for game data?

- by bluescrn

I'm working on a level editing tool that saves its data as XML. This is ideal during development, as it's painless to make small changes to the data format, and it works nicely with tree-like data. The downside, though, is that the XML files are rather bloated, mostly due to duplication of tag and attribute names. Also due to numeric data taking significantly more space than using native datatypes. A small level could easily end up as 1Mb+. I want to get these sizes down significantly, especially if the system is to be used for a game on the iPhone or other devices with relatively limited memory. The optimal solution, for memory and performance, would be to convert the XML to a binary level format. But I don't want to do this. I want to keep the format fairly flexible. XML makes it very easy to add new attributes to objects, and give them a default value if an old version of the data is loaded. So I want to keep with the hierarchy of nodes, with attributes as name-value pairs. But I need to store this in a more compact format - to remove the massive duplication of tag/attribute names. Maybe also to give attributes native types, so, for example floating-point data is stored as 4 bytes per float, not as a text string. Google/Wikipedia reveal that 'binary XML' is hardly a new problem - it's been solved a number of times already. Has anyone here got experience with any of the existing systems/standards? - are any ideal for games use - with a free, lightweight and cross-platform parser/loader library (C/C++) available? Or should I reinvent this wheel myself? Or am I better off forgetting the ideal, and just compressing my raw .xml data (it should pack well with zip-like compression), and just taking the memory/performance hit on-load?

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7u45 Caller-Allowable-Codebase and Trusted-Library

- by costlow

Java 7 update 45 (October 2013) changed the interactions between JavaScript and Java Applets made through LiveConnect. The 7u45 update is a critical patch update that has also raised the security baseline and users are strongly recommended to upgrade. Versions below the security baseline used to apply the Trusted-Library Manifest attribute to call between sandboxed code and higher-privileged code. The Trusted-Library value was a Boolean true or false. Security changes for the current security baseline (7u45) introduced a different Caller-Allowable-Codebase that indicates precisely where these LiveConnect calls can originate. For example, LiveConnect calls should not necessarily originate from 3rd party components of a web page or other DOM-based browser manipulations (pdf). Additional information about these can be located at “JAR File Manifest Attributes for Security.” The workaround for end-user dialogs is described on the 7u45 release notes, which explains removing the Trusted-Library attribute for LiveConnect calls in favor of Caller-Allowable-Codebase. This provides necessary protections (without warnings) for all users at or above the security baseline. Client installations automatically detect updates to the secure baseline and prompt users to upgrade. Warning dialogs above or below Both of these attributes should work together to support the various versions of client installations. We are aware of the issue that modifying the Manifest to use the newer Caller-Allowable-Codebase causes warnings for users below the security baseline and that not doing it displays a warning for users above. Manifest Attribute 7u45 7u40 and below Only Caller-Allowable-Codebase No dialog Displays prompt Only Trusted-Library Displays prompt No dialog Both Displays prompt (*) No dialog This will be fixed in a future release so that both attributes can co-exist. The current work-around would be to favor using Caller-Allowable-Codebase over the old Trusted-Library call. For users who need to stay below the security baseline System Administrators that schedule software deployments across managed computers may consider applying a Deployment Rule Set as described in Option 1 of “What to do if your applet is blocked or warns of mixed code.” System Administrators may also sign up for email notifications of Critical Patch Updates.

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Using the OAM Mobile & Social SDK to secure native mobile apps - Part 2 : OAM Mobile & Social Server configuration

- by kanishkmahajan

Objective In the second part of this blog post I'll now cover configuration of OAM to secure our sample native apps developed using the iOS SDK. First, here are some key server side concepts: Application Profiles: An application profile is a logical representation of your application within OAM server. It could be a web (html/javascript) or native (iOS or Android) application. Applications may have different requirements for AuthN/AuthZ, and therefore each application that interacts with OAM Mobile & Social REST services must be uniquely defined. Service Providers: Service providers represent the back end services that are accessed by applications. With OAM Mobile & Social these services are in the areas of authentication, authorization and user profile access. A Service Provider then defines a type or class of service for authentication, authorization or user profiles. For example, the JWTAuthentication provider performs authentication and returns JWT (JSON Web Tokens) to the application. In contrast, the OAMAuthentication also provides authentication but uses OAM SSO tokens Service Profiles: A Service Profile is a logical envelope that defines a service endpoint URL for a service provider for the OAM Mobile & Social Service. You can create multiple service profiles for a service provider to define token capabilities and service endpoints. Each service provider instance requires atleast one corresponding service profile.The OAM Mobile & Social Service includes a pre-configured service profile for each pre-configured service provider. Service Domains: Service domains bind together application profiles and service profiles with an optional security handler. So now let's configure the OAM server. Additional details are in the OAM Documentation and this post simply provides an outline of configuration tasks required to configure OAM for securing native apps. Configuration Create The Application Profile Log on to the Oracle Access Management console and from System Configuration -> Mobile and Social -> Mobile Services, select "Create" under Application Profiles. You would do this step twice - once for each of the native apps - AvitekInventory and AvitekScheduler. Enter the parameters for the new Application profile: Name: The application name. In this example we use 'InventoryApp' for the AvitekInventory app and 'SchedulerApp' for the AvitekScheduler app. The application name configured here must match the application name in the settings for the deployed iOS application. BaseSecret: Enter a password here. This does not need to match any existing password. It is used as an encryption key between the client and the OAM server. Mobile Configuration: Enable this checkbox for any mobile applications. This enables the SDK to collect and send Mobile specific attributes to the OAM server. Webview: Controls the type of browser that the iOS application will use. The embedded browser (default) will render the browser within the application. External will use the system standalone browser. External can sometimes be preferable for debugging URLScheme: The URL scheme associated with the iOS apps that is also used as a custom URL scheme to register O/S handlers that will take control when OAM transfers control to device. For the AvitekInventory and the AvitekScheduler apps I used osa:// and client:// respectively. You set this scheme in Xcode while developing your iOS Apps under Info->URL Types. Bundle Identifier : The fully qualified name of your iOS application. You typically set this when you create a new Xcode project or under General->Identity in Xcode. For the AvitekInventory and AvitekScheduler apps these were com.us.oracle.AvitekInventory and com.us.oracle.AvitekScheduler respectively. Create The Service Domain Select create under Service domains. Create a name for your domain (AvitekDomain is what I've used). The name configured must match the service domain set in the iOS application settings. Under "Application Profile Selection" click the browse button. Choose the application profiles that you created in the previous step one by one. Set the InventoryApp as the SSO agent (with an automatic priority of 1) and the SchedulerApp as the SSO client. This associates these applications with this service domain and configures them in a 'circle of trust'. Advance to the next page of the wizard to configure the services for this domain. For this example we will use the following services: Authentication: This will use the JWT (JSON Web Token) format authentication provider. The iOS application upon successful authentication will receive a signed JWT token from OAM Mobile & Social service. This token will be used in subsequent calls to OAM. Use 'MobileOAMAuthentication' here. Authorization: The authorization provider. The SDK makes calls to this provider endpoint to obtain authorization decisions on resource requests. Use 'OAMAuthorization' here. User Profile Service: This is the service that provides user profile services (attribute lookup, attribute modification). It can be any directory configured as a data source in OAM. And that's it! We're done configuring our native apps. In the next section, let's look at some additional features that were mentioned in the earlier post that are automated by the SDK for the app developer i.e. these are areas that require no additional coding by the app developer when developing with the SDK as they only require server side configuration: Additional Configuration Offline Authentication Select this option in the service domain configuration to allow users to log in and authenticate to the application locally. Clear the box to block users from authenticating locally. Strong Authentication By simply selecting the OAAMSecurityHandlerPlugin while configuring mobile related Service Domains, the OAM Mobile&Social service allows sophisticated device and client application registration logic as well as the advanced risk and fraud analysis logic found in OAAM to be applied to mobile authentication. Let's look at some scenarios where the OAAMSecurityHandlerPlugin gets used. First, when we configure OAM and OAAM to integrate together using the TAP scheme, then that integration kicks off by selecting the OAAMSecurityHandlerPlugin in the mobile service domain. This is how the mobile device is now prompted for KBA,OTP etc depending on the TAP scheme integration and the OAM users registered in the OAAM database. Second, when we configured the service domain, there were claim attributes there that are already pre-configured in OAM Mobile&Social service and we simply accepted the default values- these are the set of attributes that will be fetched from the device and passed to the server during registration/authentication as device profile attributes. When a mobile application requests a token through the Mobile Client SDK, the SDK logic will send the Device Profile attributes as a part of an HTTP request. This set of Device Profile attributes enhances security by creating an audit trail for devices that assists device identification. When the OAAM Security Plug-in is used, a particular combination of Device Profile attribute values is treated as a device finger print, known as the Digital Finger Print in the OAAM Administration Console. Each finger print is assigned a unique fingerprint number. Each OAAM session is associated with a finger print and the finger print makes it possible to log (and audit) the devices that are performing authentication and token acquisition. Finally, if the jail broken option is selected while configuring an application profile, the SDK detects a device is jail broken based on configured policy and if the OAAM handler is configured the plug-in can allow or block access to client device depending on the OAAM policy as well as detect blacklisted, lost or stolen devices and send a wipeout command that deletes all the mobile &social relevant data and blocks the device from future access. 1024x768 Social Logins Finally, let's complete this post by adding configuration to configure social logins for mobile applications. Although the Avitek sample apps do not demonstrate social logins this would be an ideal exercise for you based on the sample code provided in the earlier post. I'll cover the server side configuration here (with Facebook as an example) and you can retrofit the code to accommodate social logins by following the steps outlined in "Invoking Authentication Services" and add code in LoginViewController and maybe create a new delegate - AvitekRPDelegate based on the description in the previous post. So, here all you will need to do is configure an application profile for social login, configure a new service domain that uses the social login application profile, register the app on Facebook and finally configure the Facebook OAuth provider in OAM with those settings. Navigate to Mobile and Social, click on "Internet Identity Services" and create a new application profile. Here are the relevant parameters for the new application profile (-also we're not registering the social user in OAM with this configuration below, however that is a key feature as well): Name: The application name. This must match the name of the of mobile application profile created for your application under Mobile Services. We used InventoryApp for this example. SharedSecret: Enter a password here. This does not need to match any existing password. It is used as an encryption key between the client and the OAM Mobile and Social service. Mobile Application Return URL: After the Relying Party (social) login, the OAM Mobile & Social service will redirect to the iOS application using this URI. This is defined under Info->URL type and we used 'osa', so we define this here as 'osa://' Login Type: Choose to allow only internet identity authentication for this exercise. Authentication Service Endpoint : Make sure that /internetidentityauthentication is selected. Login to http://developers.facebook.com using your Facebook account and click on Apps and register the app as InventoryApp. Note that the consumer key and API secret gets generated automatically by the Facebook OAuth server. Navigate back to OAM and under Mobile and Social, click on "Internet Identity Services" and edit the Facebook OAuth Provider. Add the consumer key and API secret from the Facebook developers site to the Facebook OAuth Provider: Navigate to Mobile Services. Click on New to create a new service domain. In this example we call the domain "AvitekDomainRP". The type should be 'Mobile Application' and the application credential type 'User Token'. Add the application "InventoryApp" to the domain. Advance the next page of the wizard. Select the default service profiles but ensure that the Authentication Service is set to 'InternetIdentityAuthentication'. Finish the creation of the service domain.

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Forum engine with full LDAP integration [closed]

- by Andrian Nord

We are looking for forum engine which may actually maintain user data into LDAP, maybe via mods. Core point is about ability to maintain the data, i.e. all user profile settings, like nickname, password, email, avatar, birthday and others (preferably configurable). One example of good ldap integration, level of which I'm expecting, is drupal's ldap integration, which allows to map any user's attribute into ldap and keeps it in sync with database. Year ago I've done a small research over existing Free&FOSS engines and find out few forum engines with LDAP integration, namely SFM, phpBB and something else. The most maintained solution were provided by phpBB3, which supports LDAP integration out-of-box, but it is unable to sync data with changes in LDAP server made by other software. Actually it wasn't even propagating changes back, I'm not saying about ability to map additional attributes (other than name/password/email). Also, I haven't found any forum with architecture which have proper abstraction over user settings, thus I doubt that this engines (including phpBB) are possible to mod such functionality without introducing dramatic changes into core codebase. More recent research showed that even some commercial software, like IPB is unable to keep it's database synced with LDAP directory and map additional attributes. In other words, all support I've seen so far is simple user creation upon first user's login, which is not good for us, as forum is not primary site and should not maintain it's own users base (to reduce risk of possible collisions). LDAP import is required due to many other services (ftp, email, jabber, drupal site) using same users base. Currently we have forum embedded into Drupal site, but we are unsatisfied with it's features. BTW, we are using Linux and this is not duplicate of this question, as it's author seems to be satisfied with behaviour described above. So, my question is: Are there any (preferably FOSS&free) forum engines that may import, export, keep in sync, or otherwise integrade with LDAP user database (preferably with ability to map additional fields to ldap attributes)?

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Calling COM from Intel Fortran?

- by user57460

I'm trying to get COM working from my Fortran application. I do a "COMINITIALIZE" followed by a "COMCreateObjectByProgID". Both of these appear to be successful and return a status of zero. However, when I try to use the COM object, I get "Unhandled exception at 0x00000000 in FortranProg01.exe: 0xC0000005: Access violation." I realize that this error can mean almost anything, but has anyone got some suggestions of common problems with COM that produce this problem? Here are some more details. My program code: program FortranProg01 use myolepg implicit none integer*4 comInitStatus integer:: comCreateStatus INTEGER(INT_PTR_KIND()) $OBJECT INTEGER(4) funcResult REAL(8) pkgVersion call COMINITIALIZE(comInitStatus) print *, comInitStatus call COMCreateObjectByProgID('MyOlePg.MyOlePkg', $OBJECT, comCreateStatus) print *, comCreateStatus funcResult = IMyOlePkg_GetPackageVersion($OBJECT, pkgVersion) print *, funcResult call COMUNINITIALIZE() end program FortranProg01 The wizard-generated interface code: INTERFACE !property PackageVersion INTEGER(4) FUNCTION IMyOlePkg_GetPackageVersion($OBJECT, pVal) INTEGER(INT_PTR_KIND()), INTENT(IN) :: $OBJECT ! Object Pointer !DEC$ ATTRIBUTES VALUE :: $OBJECT REAL(8), INTENT(OUT) :: pVal !DEC$ ATTRIBUTES REFERENCE :: pVal !DEC$ ATTRIBUTES STDCALL :: IMyOlePkg_GetPackageVersion END FUNCTION IMyOlePkg_GetPackageVersion END INTERFACE Any help would be much appreciated! Thanks! Brad.

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How to draw an E-R diagram?

- by Appy

I am learning DBMS in my college. Recently I was given an assignment to draw a E-R Model of a Bus Reservation system which handles Reservations, Ticketing and cancellations. I understand the theory about E-R model when I study from a book, but it gets confusing when I try to draw one from scratch. How should one proceed? There seem to be a lot of ways to model a E-R diagram for a particular requirement. It's really confusing. Can anyone explain taking Bus reservation System as an example? Here is the model I made (But I am not confident with it because at every step, I could think of many more alternatives!) - Entity_Set Passenger(passengerID,name,age,gender) Entity_Set Ticket(ticketID,status) //Status is either WaitingList , Confirmed or Cancelled Entity_Set Bus (busID,MaxSeats,Type) //Type is Ac or Non-AC Entity_Set Route(routeID,ArrivalTime,DepartureTime,Source,Destination) And a Ternary relationship between Passenger, Ticket and Bus with attributes as passengerID, ticketID, busID . Binary relationship between Bus and Route with attributes as busID, routeID . I have few doubts regarding - 1 . Should we take Time as a composite attribute with Arrival and Departure as its attributes (What's the difference if we take that way?) 2 . The same with Source and Destination. Should they be made into a composite attribute "Place" or something like "Location"? 3. Are there any weak entity sets here? Can you please 'create' a weak entity set and explain? Because I have no idea at all what to take as a Weak entity set?

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Thematic map contd.

- by jsharma

The previous post (creating a thematic map) described the use of an advanced style (color ranged-bucket style). The bucket style definition object has an attribute ('classification') which specifies the data classification scheme to use. It's values can be one of {'equal', 'quantile', 'logarithmic', 'custom'}. We use logarithmic in the previous example. Here we'll describe how to use a custom algorithm for classification. Specifically the Jenks Natural Breaks algorithm. We'll use the Javascript implementation in geostats.js The sample code above needs a few changes which are listed below. Include the geostats.js file after or before including oraclemapsv2.js <script src="geostats.js"></script> Modify the bucket style definition to use custom classification Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} bucketStyleDef = { numClasses : colorSeries[colorName].classes, classification: 'custom', //'logarithmic', // use a logarithmic scale algorithm: jenksFromGeostats, styles: theStyles, gradient: useGradient? 'linear' : 'off' }; The function, which implements the custom classification scheme, is specified as the algorithm attribute value. It must accept two input parameters, an array of OM.feature and the name of the feature attribute (e.g. TOTPOP) to use in the classification, and must return an array of buckets (i.e. an array of or OM.style.Bucket or OM.style.RangedBucket in this case). However the algorithm also needs to know the number of classes (i.e. the number of buckets to create). So we use a global to pass that info in. (Note: This bug/oversight will be fixed and the custom algorithm will be passed 3 parameters: the features array, attribute name, and number of classes). So createBucketColorStyle() has the following changes Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} var numClasses ; function createBucketColorStyle( colorName, colorSeries, rangeName, useGradient) { var theBucketStyle; var bucketStyleDef; var theStyles = []; //var numClasses ; numClasses = colorSeries[colorName].classes; ... and the function jenksFromGeostats is defined as Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} function jenksFromGeostats(featureArray, columnName) { var items = [] ; // array of attribute values to be classified $.each(featureArray, function(i, feature) { items.push(parseFloat(feature.getAttributeValue(columnName))); }); // create the geostats object var theSeries = new geostats(items); // call getJenks which returns an array of bounds var theClasses = theSeries.getJenks(numClasses); if(theClasses) { theClasses[theClasses.length-1]=parseFloat(theClasses[theClasses.length-1])+1; } else { alert(' empty result from getJenks'); } var theBuckets = [], aBucket=null ; for(var k=0; k<numClasses; k++) { aBucket = new OM.style.RangedBucket( {low:parseFloat(theClasses[k]), high:parseFloat(theClasses[k+1]) }); theBuckets.push(aBucket); } return theBuckets; } A screenshot of the resulting map with 5 classes is shown below. It is also possible to simply create the buckets and supply them when defining the Bucket style instead of specifying the function (algorithm). In that case the bucket style definition object would be bucketStyleDef = { numClasses : colorSeries[colorName].classes, classification: 'custom', buckets: theBuckets, //since we are supplying all the buckets styles: theStyles, gradient: useGradient? 'linear' : 'off' };

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Guidelines for creating referentially transparent callables

- by max

In some cases, I want to use referentially transparent callables while coding in Python. My goals are to help with handling concurrency, memoization, unit testing, and verification of code correctness. I want to write down clear rules for myself and other developers to follow that would ensure referential transparency. I don't mind that Python won't enforce any rules - we trust ourselves to follow them. Note that we never modify functions or methods in place (i.e., by hacking into the bytecode). Would the following make sense? A callable object c of class C will be referentially transparent if: Whenever the returned value of c(...) depends on any instance attributes, global variables, or disk files, such attributes, variables, and files must not change for the duration of the program execution; the only exception is that instance attributes may be changed during instance initialization. When c(...) is executed, no modifications to the program state occur that may affect the behavior of any object accessed through its "public interface" (as defined by us). If we don't put any restrictions on what "public interface" includes, then rule #2 becomes: When c(...) is executed, no objects are modified that are visible outside the scope of c.__call__. Note: I unsuccessfully tried to ask this question on SO, but I'm hoping it's more appropriate to this site.

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Identifying elements from data feeds generated by affiliate sites

- by SPI

I am working with data feeds from affiliate sites. The basic idea is to provide an interface where the user can paste a link to an XML datafeed (these are huge btw, around 60 mb) that would then be streamed, parsed into small chunks, and mined for the required data which would then be stored in the database. The problem is that different affiliate sites have different Schemas for their XML's. It is a little hard mapping the elements in an XML to your database attributes when you don't actually know which element contains what. My Solution: Use XPath to traverse through the first set of parent and it's descendent's, fetch the elements as well as the data and and ask the user to map this data to the attributes in the database by selecting from a set of radio buttons that represent the attributes from the database. This will be done just once for each new Feed, once the system know's what's what it will automatically upload the data from the XML to the database. Does this sound viable? Is there a better solution? I realize this leaves an uncomfortable opening for human error.. Thanks.

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