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• System.Timers.Timer leaking due to "direct delegate roots"

  - by alimbada

  Apologies for the rather verbose and long-winded post, but this problem's been perplexing me for a few weeks now so I'm posting as much information as I can in order to get this resolved quickly. We have a WPF UserControl which is being loaded by a 3rd party app. The 3rd party app is a presentation application which loads and unloads controls on a schedule defined by an XML file which is downloaded from a server. Our control, when it is loaded into the application makes a web request to a web service and uses the data from the response to display some information. We're using an MVVM architecture for the control. The entry point of the control is a method that is implementing an interface exposed by the main app and this is where the control's configuration is set up. This is also where I set the DataContext of our control to our MainViewModel. The MainViewModel has two other view models as properties and the main UserControl has two child controls. Depending on the data received from the web service, the main UserControl decides which child control to display, e.g. if there is a HTTP error or the data received is not valid, then display child control A, otherwise display child control B. As you'd expect, these two child controls bind two separate view models each of which is a property of MainViewModel. Now child control B (which is displayed when the data is valid) has a RefreshService property/field. RefreshService is an object that is responsible for updating the model in a number of ways and contains 4 System.Timers.Timers; a _modelRefreshTimer a _viewRefreshTimer a _pageSwitchTimer a _retryFeedRetrievalOnErrorTimer (this is only enabled when something goes wrong with retrieving data). I should mention at this point that there are two types of data; the first changes every minute, the second changes every few hours. The controls' configuration decides which type we are using/displaying. If data is of the first type then we update the model quite frequently (every 30 seconds) using the _modelRefreshTimer's events. If the data is of the second type then we update the model after a longer interval. However, the view still needs to be refreshed every 30 seconds as stale data needs to be removed from the view (hence the _viewRefreshTimer). The control also paginates the data so we can see more than we can fit on the display area. This works by breaking the data up into Lists and switching the CurrentPage (which is a List) property of the view model to the right List. This is done by handling the _pageSwitchTimer's Elapsed event. Now the problem My problem is that the control, when removed from the visual tree doesn't dispose of it's timers. This was first noticed when we started getting an unusually high number of requests on the web server end very soon after deploying this control and found that requests were being made at least once a second! We found that the timers were living on and not stopping hours after the control had been removed from view and that the more timers there were the more requests piled up at the web server. My first solution was to implement IDisposable for the RefreshService and do some clean up when the control's UnLoaded event was fired. Within the RefreshServices Dispose method I've set Enabled to false for all the timers, then used the Stop() method on all of them. I've then called Dispose() too and set them to null. None of this worked. After some reading around I found that event handlers may hold references to Timers and prevent them from being disposed and collected. After some more reading and researching I found that the best way around this was to use the Weak Event Pattern. Using this blog and this blog I've managed to work around the shortcomings in the Weak Event pattern. However, none of this solves the problem. Timers are still not being disabled or stopped (let alone disposed) and web requests are continuing to build up. Mem Profiler tells me that "This type has N instances that are directly rooted by a delegate. This can indicate the delegate has not been properly removed" (where N is the number of instances). As far as I can tell though, all listeners of the Elapsed event for the timers are being removed during the cleanup so I can't understand why the timers continue to run. Thanks for reading. Eagerly awaiting your suggestions/comments/solutions (if you got this far :-p)

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• (C++) Linking with namespaces causes duplicate symbol error

  - by user577072

  Hello. For the past few days, I have been trying to figure out how to link the files for a CLI gaming project I have been working on. There are two halves of the project, the Client and the Server code. The client needs two libraries I've made. The first is a general purpose game board. This is split between GameEngine.h and GameEngine.cpp. The header file looks something like this namespace gfdGaming { // struct sqr_size { // Index x; // Index y; // }; typedef struct { Index x, y; } sqr_size; const sqr_size sPos = {1, 1}; sqr_size sqr(Index x, Index y); sqr_size ePos; class board { // Prototypes / declarations for the class } } And the CPP file is just giving everything content #include "GameEngine.h" type gfdGaming::board::functions The client also has game-specific code (in this case, TicTacToe) split into declarations and definitions (TTT.h, Client.cpp). TTT.h is basically #include "GameEngine.h" #define TTTtar "localhost" #define TTTport 2886 using namespace gfdGaming; void* turnHandler(void*); namespace nsTicTacToe { GFDCON gfd; const char X = 'X'; const char O = 'O'; string MPhostname, mySID; board TTTboard; bool PlayerIsX = true, isMyTurn; char Player = X, Player2 = O; int recon(string* datHolder = NULL, bool force = false); void initMP(bool create = false, string hn = TTTtar); void init(); bool isTie(); int turnPlayer(Index loc, char lSym = Player); bool checkWin(char sym = Player); int mainloop(); int mainloopMP(); }; // NS I made the decision to put this in a namespace to group it instead of a class because there are some parts that would not work well in OOP, and it's much easier to implement later on. I have had trouble linking the client in the past, but this setup seems to work. My server is also split into two files, Server.h and Server.cpp. Server.h contains exactly: #include "../TicTacToe/TTT.h" // Server needs a full copy of TicTacToe code class TTTserv; struct TTTachievement_requirement { Index id; Index loc; bool inUse; }; struct TTTachievement_t { Index id; bool achieved; bool AND, inSameGame; bool inUse; bool (*lHandler)(TTTserv*); char mustBeSym; int mustBePlayer; string name, description; TTTachievement_requirement steps[safearray(8*8)]; }; class achievement_core_t : public GfdOogleTech { public: // May be shifted to private TTTachievement_t list[safearray(8*8)]; public: achievement_core_t(); int insert(string name, string d, bool samegame, bool lAnd, int lSteps[8*8], int mbP=0, char mbS=0); }; struct TTTplayer_t { Index id; bool inUse; string ip, sessionID; char sym; int desc; TTTachievement_t Ding[8*8]; }; struct TTTgame_t { TTTplayer_t Player[safearray(2)]; TTTplayer_t Spectator; achievement_core_t achievement_core; Index cTurn, players; port_t roomLoc; bool inGame, Xused, Oused, newEvent; }; class TTTserv : public gSserver { TTTgame_t Game; TTTplayer_t *cPlayer; port_t conPort; public: achievement_core_t *achiev; thread threads[8]; int parseit(string tDat, string tsIP); Index conCount; int parseit(string tDat, int tlUser, TTTplayer_t** retval); private: int parseProto(string dat, string sIP); int parseProto(string dat, int lUser); int cycleTurn(); void setup(port_t lPort = 0, bool complete = false); public: int newEvent; TTTserv(port_t tlPort = TTTport, bool tcomplete = true); TTTplayer_t* userDC(Index id, Index force = false); int sendToPlayers(string dat, bool asMSG = false); int mainLoop(volatile bool *play); }; // Other void* userHandler(void*); void* handleUser(void*); And in the CPP file I include Server.h and provide main() and the contents of all functions previously declared. Now to the problem at hand I am having issues when linking my server. More specifically, I get a duplicate symbol error for every variable in nsTicTacToe (and possibly in gfdGaming as well). Since I need the TicTacToe functions, I link Client.cpp ( without main() ) when building the server ld: duplicate symbol nsTicTacToe::PlayerIsX in Client.o and Server.o collect2: ld returned 1 exit status Command /Developer/usr/bin/g++-4.2 failed with exit code 1 It stops once a problem is encountered, but if PlayerIsX is removed / changed temporarily than another variable causes an error Essentially, I am looking for any advice on how to better organize my code to hopefully fix these errors. Disclaimers: -I apologize in advance if I provided too much or too little information, as it is my first time posting -I have tried using static and extern to fix these problems, but apparently those are not what I need Thank you to anyone who takes the time to read all of this and respond =)

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• New cast exception with VS2010/.Net 4

  - by Trevor

  [ Updated 25 May 2010 ] I've recently upgraded from VS2008 to VS2010, and at the same time upgraded to .Net 4. I've recompiled an existing solution of mine and I'm encountering a Cast exception I did not have before. The structure of the code is simple (although the actual implementation somewhat more complicated). Basically I have: public class SomeClass : ISomeClass { // Stuff } public static class ClassFactory { public static IInterface GetClassInstance<IInterface>(Type classType) { return (IInterface)Activator.CreateInstance(classType); // This throws a cast exception } } // Call the factory with: ISomeClass anInstance = ClassFactory.GetClassInstance<ISomeClass>(typeof(SomeClass)); Ignore the 'sensibleness' of the above - its provides just a representation of the issue rather than the specifics of what I'm doing (e.g. constructor parameters have been removed). The marked line throws the exception: Unable to cast object of type 'Namespace.SomeClass' to type 'Namespace.ISomeClass'. I suspect it may have something to do with the additional DotNet security (and in particular, explicit loading of assemblies, as this is something my app does). The reason I suspect this is that I have had to add to the config file the setting: <runtime> <loadFromRemoteSources enabled="true" /> </runtime> .. but I'm unsure if this is related. Update I see (from comments) that my basic code does not reproduce the issue by itself. Not surprising I suppose. It's going to be tricky to identify which part of a largish 3-tier CQS system is relevant to this problem. One issue might be that there are multiple assemblies involved. My static class is actually a factory provider, and the 'SomeClass' is a class factory (relevant in that the factories are 'registered' within the app via explicit assembly/type loading - see below) . Upfront I use reflection to 'register' all factories (i.e. classes that implement a particular interface) and that I do this when the app starts by identifying the relevant assemblies, loading them and adding them to a cache using (in essence): Loop over (file in files) { Assembly assembly = Assembly.LoadFile(file); baseAssemblyList.Add(assembly); } Then I cache the available types in these assemblies with: foreach (Assembly assembly in _loadedAssemblyList) { Type[] assemblyTypes = assembly.GetTypes(); _loadedTypesCache.AddRange(assemblyTypes); } And then I use this cache to do a variety of reflection operations, including 'registering' of factories, which involves looping through all loaded (cached) types and finding those that implement the (base) Factory interface. I've experienced what may be a similar problem in the past (.Net 3.5, so not exactly the same) with an architecture that involved dynamically creating classes on the server and streaming the compiled binary of those classes to the client app. The problem came when trying to deserialize an instance of the dynamic class on the client from a remote call: the exception said the class type was not know, even though the source and destination types were exactly the same name (including namespace). Basically the cross boundry versions of the class were not recognised as being the same. I solved that by intercepting the deserialization process and explicitly defining the deseriazation class type in the context of the local assemblies. This experience is what makes me think the types are considered mismatched because (somehow) the interface of the actual SomeClass object, and the interface of passed into the Generic method are not considered the same type. So (possibly) my question for those more knowledgable about C#/DotNet is: How does the class loading work that somehow my app thinks there are two versions/types of the interface type and how can I fit that? [ whew ... anyone who got here is quite patient .. thanks ]

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• Something like a manual refresh is needed angularjs, and a $digest() iterations error

  - by Tony Ennis

  (post edited again, new comments follow this line) I'm changing the title of this posting since it was misleading - I was trying to fix a symptom. I was unable to figure out why the code was breaking with a $digest() iterations error. A plunk of my code worked fine. I was totally stuck, so I decided to make my code a little more Angular-like. One anti-pattern I had implemented was to hide my model behind my controller by adding getters/setters to the controller. I tore all that out and instead put the model into the $scope since I had read that was proper Angular. To my surprise, the $digest() iterations error went away. I do not exactly know why and I do not have the intestinal fortitude to put the old code back and figure it out. I surmise that by involving the controller in the get/put of the data I added a dependency under the hood. I do not understand it. edit #2 ends here. (post edited, see EDIT below) I was working through my first Error: 10 $digest() iterations reached. Aborting! error today. I solved it this way: <div ng-init="lineItems = ctrl.getLineItems()"> <tr ng-repeat="r in lineItems"> <td>{{r.text}}</td> <td>...</td> <td>{{r.price | currency}}</td> </tr </div> Now a new issue has arisen - the line items I'm producing can be modified by another control on the page. It's a text box for a promo code. The promo code adds a discount to the lineItem array. It would show up if I could ng-repeat over ctrl.getLineItems(). Since the ng-repeat is looking at a static variable, not the actual model, it doesn't see that the real line items have changed and thus the promotional discount doesn't get displayed until I refresh the browser. Here's the HTML for the promo code: <input type="text" name="promo" ng-model="ctrl.promoCode"/> <button ng-click="ctrl.applyPromoCode()">apply promo code</button> The input tag is writing the value to the model. The bg-click in the button is invoking a function that will apply the code. This could change the data behind the lineItems. I have been advised to use $scope.apply(...). However, since this is applied as a matter of course by ng-click is isn't going to do anything. Indeed, if I add it to ctrl.applyPromoCode(), I get an error since an .apply() is already in progress. I'm at a loss. EDIT The issue above is probably the result of me fixing of symptom, not a problem. Here is the original HTML that was dying with the 10 $digest() iterations error. <table> <tr ng-repeat="r in ctrl.getLineItems()"> <td>{{r.text}}</td> <td>...</td> <td>{{r.price | currency}}</td> </tr> </table> The ctrl.getLineItems() function doesn't do much but invoke a model. I decided to keep the model out of the HTML as much as I could. this.getLineItems = function() { var total = 0; this.lineItems = []; this.lineItems.push({text:"Your quilt will be "+sizes[this.size].block_size+" squares", price:sizes[this.size].price}); total = sizes[this.size].price; this.lineItems.push({text: threads[this.thread].narrative, price:threads[this.thread].price}); total = total + threads[this.thread].price; if (this.sashing) { this.lineItems.push({text:"Add sashing", price: this.getSashingPrice()}); total = total + sizes[this.size].sashing; } else { this.lineItems.push({text:"No sashing", price:0}); } if(isNaN(this.promo)) { this.lineItems.push({text:"No promo code", price:0}); } else { this.lineItems.push({text:"Promo code", price: promos[this.promo].price}); total = total + promos[this.promo].price; } this.lineItems.push({text:"Shipping", price:this.shipping}); total = total + this.shipping; this.lineItems.push({text:"Order Total", price:total}); return this.lineItems; }; And the model code assembled an array of objects based upon the items selected. I'll abbreviate the class as it croaks as long as the array has a row. function OrderModel() { this.lineItems = []; // Result of the lineItems call ... this.getLineItems = function() { var total = 0; this.lineItems = []; ... this.lineItems.push({text:"Order Total", price:total}); return this.lineItems; }; }

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• Element.appendChild() hosed in IE .. workaround? (related to innerText vs textContent)

  - by Rowe Morehouse

  I've heard that using el.innerText||el.textContent can yield unreliable cross-browswer results, so I'm walking the DOM tree to collect text nodes recursively, and write them into tags in the HTML body. What this script does is read hash substring valus from the window.location and write them into the HTML. This script is working for me in Chrome & Firefox, but choking in IE. I call the page with an URL syntax like this: http://example.com/pagename.html#dyntext=FOO&dynterm=BAR&dynimage=FRED UPDATE UPDATE UPDATE Solution: I moved the scripts to before </body> (where they should have been) then removed console.log(sPageURL); and now it's working in Chrome, Firefox, IE8 and IE9. This my workaround for the innerText vs textContent crossbrowser issue when you are just placing text rather than getting text. In this case, getting hash substring values from the window.location and writing them into the page. <html> <body> <span id="dyntext-span" style="font-weight: bold;"></span><br /> <span id="dynterm-span" style="font-style: italic;"></span><br /> <span id="dynimage-span" style="text-decoration: underline;"></span><br /> <script src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.8/jquery.min.js"></script> <script> $(document).ready(function() { var tags = ["dyntext", "dynterm", "dynimage"]; for (var i = 0; i < tags.length; ++i) { var param = GetURLParameter(tags[i]); if (param) { var dyntext = GetURLParameter('dyntext'); var dynterm = GetURLParameter('dynterm'); var dynimage = GetURLParameter('dynimage'); } } var elem = document.getElementById("dyntext-span"); var text = document.createTextNode(dyntext); elem.appendChild(text); var elem = document.getElementById("dynterm-span"); var text = document.createTextNode(dynterm); elem.appendChild(text); var elem = document.getElementById("dynimage-span"); var text = document.createTextNode(dynimage); elem.appendChild(text); }); function GetURLParameter(sParam) { var sPageURL = window.location.hash.substring(1); var sURLVariables = sPageURL.split('&'); for (var i = 0; i < sURLVariables.length; i++) { var sParameterName = sURLVariables[i].split('='); if (sParameterName[0] == sParam) { return sParameterName[1]; } } } </script> </body> </html> FINAL UPDATE If your hash substring values require spaces (like a linguistic phrase with three words, for example) then separate the words with the + character in your URI, and replace the unicode \u002B character with a space when you create each text node, like this: var elem = document.getElementById("dyntext-span"); var text = document.createTextNode(dyntext.replace(/\u002B/g, " ")); elem.appendChild(text); var elem = document.getElementById("dynterm-span"); var text = document.createTextNode(dynterm.replace(/\u002B/g, " ")); elem.appendChild(text); var elem = document.getElementById("dynimage-span"); var text = document.createTextNode(dynimage.replace(/\u002B/g, " ")); elem.appendChild(text); Now form your URI like this: http://example.com/pagename.html#dyntext=FOO+MAN+CHU&dynterm=BAR+HOPPING&dynimage=FRED+IS+DEAD

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• can a python script know that another instance of the same script is running... and then talk to it?

  - by Justin Grant

  I'd like to prevent multiple instances of the same long-running python command-line script from running at the same time, and I'd like the new instance to be able to send data to the original insance before the new instance commits suicide. How can I do this in a cross-platform way? Specifically, I'd like to enable the following behavior: "foo.py" is launched from the command line, and it will stay running for a long time-- days or weeks until the machine is rebooted or the parent process kills it. every few minutes the same script is launched again, but with different command-line parameters when launched, the script should see if any other instances are running. if other instances are running, then instance #2 should send its command-line parameters to instance #1, and then instance #2 should exit. instance #1, if it receives command-line parameters from another script, should spin up a new thread and (using the command-line parameters sent in the step above) start performing the work that instance #2 was going to perform. So I'm looking for two things: how can a python program know another instance of itself is running, and then how can one python command-line program communicate with another? Making this more complicated, the same script needs to run on both Windows and Linux, so ideally the solution would use only the Python standard library and not any OS-specific calls. Although if I need to have a Windows codepath and an *nix codepath (and a big if statement in my code to choose one or the other), that's OK if a "same code" solution isn't possible. I realize I could probably work out a file-based approach (e.g. instance #1 watches a directory for changes and each instance drops a file into that directory when it wants to do work) but I'm a little concerned about cleaning up those files after a non-graceful machine shutdown. I'd ideally be able to use an in-memory solution. But again I'm flexible, if a persistent-file-based approach is the only way to do it, I'm open to that option. More details: I'm trying to do this because our servers are using a monitoring tool which supports running python scripts to collect monitoring data (e.g. results of a database query or web service call) which the monitoring tool then indexes for later use. Some of these scripts are very expensive to start up but cheap to run after startup (e.g. making a DB connection vs. running a query). So we've chosen to keep them running in an infinite loop until the parent process kills them. This works great, but on larger servers 100 instances of the same script may be running, even if they're only gathering data every 20 minutes each. This wreaks havoc with RAM, DB connection limits, etc. We want to switch from 100 processes with 1 thread to one process with 100 threads, each executing the work that, previously, one script was doing. But changing how the scripts are invoked by the monitoring tool is not possible. We need to keep invocation the same (launch a process with different command-line parameters) but but change the scripts to recognize that another one is active, and have the "new" script send its work instructions (from the command line params) over to the "old" script.

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• Understanding the passing of data/life of a script in web development/CodeIgniter

  - by Pete Jodo

  I hope I worded the title accurately enough but I typically use Java and don't have much experience in Web Development/PHP/CodeIgniter. I have a difficult time understanding the life cycle of a script as I found out trying to implement a certain feature to a website I am developing (as a means of learning how to). I'll first describe the feature I tried implementing and then the problem I ran into that made me question my fundamental understanding of how scripts work since I'm used to typical OOP. Ok so here goes... I have a webpage that has 2 basic tasks a user can do, create and delete an entry. What I attempted to implement was a way to time a user how long it takes them to complete a certain task. The way I did this was have a homepage where there would be a list of tasks a user to choose from (in this case 2, create and delete). A user would click a task which would link to the 'true' homepage where the user then would be expected to complete the task. My script looks like this: <?php class Site extends CI_Controller { var $task1; var $tasks = array( "task1" => NULL, "date1" => 0, "date2" => 0, "diff" => 0); function __construct() { parent::__construct(); include 'timetask.php'; $this->task1 = new TimeTask("create"); } function index() { $this->tasks['task1'] = $this->task1->getTask(); $this->tasks['diff'] = $this->task1->getTimeDiff(); if($this->tasks['diff'] == NULL) { $this->tasks['diff'] = 0; } $this->load->view('usability_test', $this->tasks); } function origIndex() { $this->task1->setDate1(new DateTime()); $this->tasks['date1'] = $this->task1->getDate1()->getTimestamp(); $data = array(); if($q = $this->site_model->get_records()) { $data['records'] = $q; } $this->load->view('options_view', $data); } function create() { $this->task1->setDate2(new DateTime()); $this->tasks['date2'] = $this->task1->getDate2()->getTimestamp(); $data = array( 'author' => $this->input->post('author'), 'title' => $this->input->post('title'), 'contents' => $this->input->post('contents') ); $this->site_model->add_record($data); $this->index(); } I only included create to keep it short. Then I also have the TimeTask class, that actually another StackOverflow so kindly helped me with: <?php class TimeTask { private $task; /** * @var DateTime */ private $date1, $date2; function __construct($currTask) { $this->task = $currTask; } public function getTimeDiff() { $hasDiff = $this->date1 && $this->date2; if ($hasDiff) { return $this->date2->getTimestamp() - $this->date1->getTimestamp(); } else { return NULL; } } public function __toString() { return (string) $this->getTimeDiff(); } /** * @return \DateTime */ public function getDate1() { return $this->date1; } /** * @param \DateTime $date1 */ public function setDate1(DateTime $date1) { $this->date1 = $date1; } /** * @return \DateTime */ public function getDate2() { return $this->date2; } /** * @param \DateTime $date2 */ public function setDate2(DateTime $date2) { $this->date2 = $date2; } /** * @return get current task */ public function getTask() { return $this->task; } } ?> I don't think posting the views is necessary for the question but here is atleast how the links are made. ...and... id", $row-title); ? Now there's no error in the code but it doesn't do what I expect of it and the reason I assume why is because that each time a function of the script is called via a new page it is NOT the same instance of the script called previously so any previously created objects are no longer there. This confuses me and leaves me quite unsure of how to implement this gracefully. Some ways I would guess of how to do this is by passing the necessary data through the URL or have data saved in a database and retrieve it later to compare the times. What would be a recommended way to do, not just this, but anything that needs previously created data? Also, am I correct to think that a script is only 'alive' for one webpage at a time? Thanks!

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• Need a hand understanding this Java code please :-)

  - by Brian

  Hi all, Just wondering if anyone would be able to take a look at this code for implementing the quicksort algorithm and answer me a few questions, please :-) public class Run { /*************************************************************************** * Quicksort code from Sedgewick 7.1, 7.2. **************************************************************************/ public static void quicksort(double[] a) { //shuffle(a); // to guard against worst-case quicksort(a, 0, a.length - 1, 0); } static void quicksort(final double[] a, final int left, final int right, final int tdepth) { if (right <= left) return; final int i = partition(a, left, right); if ((tdepth < 4) && ((i - left) > 1000)) { final Thread t = new Thread() { public void run() { quicksort(a, left, i - 1, tdepth + 1); } }; t.start(); quicksort(a, i + 1, right, tdepth + 1); try { t.join(); } catch (InterruptedException e) { throw new RuntimeException("Cancelled", e); } } else { quicksort(a, left, i - 1, tdepth); quicksort(a, i + 1, right, tdepth); } } // partition a[left] to a[right], assumes left < right private static int partition(double[] a, int left, int right) { int i = left - 1; int j = right; while (true) { while (less(a[++i], a[right])) // find item on left to swap ; // a[right] acts as sentinel while (less(a[right], a[--j])) // find item on right to swap if (j == left) break; // don't go out-of-bounds if (i >= j) break; // check if pointers cross exch(a, i, j); // swap two elements into place } exch(a, i, right); // swap with partition element return i; } // is x < y ? private static boolean less(double x, double y) { return (x < y); } // exchange a[i] and a[j] private static void exch(double[] a, int i, int j) { double swap = a[i]; a[i] = a[j]; a[j] = swap; } // shuffle the array a[] private static void shuffle(double[] a) { int N = a.length; for (int i = 0; i < N; i++) { int r = i + (int) (Math.random() * (N - i)); // between i and N-1 exch(a, i, r); } } // test client public static void main(String[] args) { int N = 5000000; // Integer.parseInt(args[0]); // generate N random real numbers between 0 and 1 long start = System.currentTimeMillis(); double[] a = new double[N]; for (int i = 0; i < N; i++) a[i] = Math.random(); long stop = System.currentTimeMillis(); double elapsed = (stop - start) / 1000.0; System.out.println("Generating input: " + elapsed + " seconds"); // sort them start = System.currentTimeMillis(); quicksort(a); stop = System.currentTimeMillis(); elapsed = (stop - start) / 1000.0; System.out.println("Quicksort: " + elapsed + " seconds"); } } My questions are: What is the purpose of the variable tdepth? Is this considered a "proper" implementation of a parallel quicksort? I ask becuase it doesn't use implements Runnable or extends Thread... If it doesn't already, is it possible to modify this code to use multiple threads? By passing in the number of threads you want to use as a parameter, for example...? Many thanks, Brian

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• Webkit browser jQuery transformations/transitions not working with jSplitSlider

  - by user3689793

  I am helping to build a site and i'm having an issue with the functionality of an add-in called jsplitslider when running it in chrome. Right now, when I navigate between the slides, the div's get stuck on top of each other and never clear the webkit transformations/animations: <div class="sl-content-slice" style="transition: all 800ms ease-in-out; -webkit-transition: all 800ms ease-in-out;"> I think the problem is due to timing of the functions, but I can't seem to figure out where I would need to add a setTimeout(). I only think this because I exhausted a lot of the other options like display: inline-block, notransitions css, etc. I'm desperate to figure out how to make this work in chrome. It works in FF and IE(surprisingly enough). I'm not great at webcoding, so any help will be appreciated! The code on the site isn't minimized. Here is the jQuery where I think the problem lies: var cssStyle = config.orientation === 'horizontal' ? { marginTop : -this.size.height / 2 } : { marginLeft : -this.size.width / 2 }, // default slide's slices style resetStyle = { 'transform' : 'translate(0%,0%) rotate(0deg) scale(1)', opacity : 1 }, // slice1 style slice1Style = config.orientation === 'horizontal' ? { 'transform' : 'translateY(-' + this.options.translateFactor + '%) rotate(' + config.slice1angle + 'deg) scale(' + config.slice1scale + ')' } : { 'transform' : 'translateX(-' + this.options.translateFactor + '%) rotate(' + config.slice1angle + 'deg) scale(' + config.slice1scale + ')' }, // slice2 style slice2Style = config.orientation === 'horizontal' ? { 'transform' : 'translateY(' + this.options.translateFactor + '%) rotate(' + config.slice2angle + 'deg) scale(' + config.slice2scale + ')' } : { 'transform' : 'translateX(' + this.options.translateFactor + '%) rotate(' + config.slice2angle + 'deg) scale(' + config.slice2scale + ')' }; if( this.options.optOpacity ) { slice1Style.opacity = 0; slice2Style.opacity = 0; } // we are adding the classes sl-trans-elems and sl-trans-back-elems to the slide that is either coming "next" // or going "prev" according to the direction. // the idea is to make it more interesting by giving some animations to the respective slide's elements //( dir === 'next' ) ? $nextSlide.addClass( 'sl-trans-elems' ) : $currentSlide.addClass( 'sl-trans-back-elems' ); $currentSlide.removeClass( 'sl-trans-elems' ); var transitionProp = { 'transition' : 'all ' + this.options.speed + 'ms ease-in-out' }; // add the 2 slices and animate them $movingSlide.css( 'z-index', this.slidesCount ) .find( 'div.sl-content-wrapper' ) .wrap( $( '<div class="sl-content-slice" />' ).css( transitionProp ) ) .parent() .cond( dir === 'prev', function() { var slice = this; this.css( slice1Style ); setTimeout( function() { slice.css( resetStyle ); }, 150 ); }, function() { var slice = this; setTimeout( function() { slice.css( slice1Style ); }, 150 ); } ) .clone() .appendTo( $movingSlide ) .cond( dir === 'prev', function() { var slice = this; this.css( slice2Style ); setTimeout( function() { $currentSlide.addClass( 'sl-trans-back-elems' ); if( self.support ) { slice.css( resetStyle ).on( self.transEndEventName, function() { self._onEndNavigate( slice, $currentSlide, dir ); } ); } else { self._onEndNavigate( slice, $currentSlide, dir ); } }, 150 ); }, function() { var slice = this; setTimeout( function() { $nextSlide.addClass( 'sl-trans-elems' ); if( self.support ) { slice.css( slice2Style ).on( self.transEndEventName, function() { self._onEndNavigate( slice, $currentSlide, dir ); } ); } else { self._onEndNavigate( slice, $currentSlide, dir ); } }, 150 ); } ) .find( 'div.sl-content-wrapper' ) .css( cssStyle ); $nextSlide.show(); }, _validateValues : function( config ) { // OK, so we are restricting the angles and scale values here. // This is to avoid the slices wrong sides to be shown. // you can adjust these values as you wish but make sure you also ajust the // paddings of the slides and also the options.translateFactor value and scale data attrs if( config.slice1angle > this.options.maxAngle || config.slice1angle < -this.options.maxAngle ) { config.slice1angle = this.options.maxAngle; } if( config.slice2angle > this.options.maxAngle || config.slice2angle < -this.options.maxAngle ) { config.slice2angle = this.options.maxAngle; } if( config.slice1scale > this.options.maxScale || config.slice1scale <= 0 ) { config.slice1scale = this.options.maxScale; } if( config.slice2scale > this.options.maxScale || config.slice2scale <= 0 ) { config.slice2scale = this.options.maxScale; } if( config.orientation !== 'vertical' && config.orientation !== 'horizontal' ) { config.orientation = 'horizontal' } }, _onEndNavigate : function( $slice, $oldSlide, dir ) { // reset previous slide's style after next slide is shown var $slide = $slice.parent(), removeClasses = 'sl-trans-elems sl-trans-back-elems'; // remove second slide's slice $slice.remove(); // unwrap.. $slide.css( 'z-index', 10 ) .find( 'div.sl-content-wrapper' ) .unwrap(); // hide previous current slide $oldSlide.hide().removeClass( removeClasses ); $slide.removeClass( removeClasses ); // now we can navigate again.. this.isAnimating = false; this.options.onAfterChange( $slide, this.current ); }, Sorry if I missed any conventions when posting, this is my first S.O. post. Thanks in advance for any help.

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• Changing multiple objects with a new class name using Jquery

  - by liquilife

  I'd like to click on a trigger and show a specific image. There are multiple triggers which would show a specific image related to it within a set. There are 4 sets The challenge for me is toggling the other images to hide only in this 'set' when one of these triggers are clicked, as there can only be one image showing at a time in each set. Here is the HTML I've put together thus far: <!-- Thumbnails which can be clicked on to toggle the larger preview image --> <div class="materials"> <a href="javascript:;" id="shirtgrey"><img src="/grey_shirt.png" height="122" width="122" /></a> <a href="javascript:;" id="shirtred"><img src="red_shirt.png" height="122" width="122" /></a> <a href="javascript:;" id="shirtblue"><img src="hblue_shirt.png" height="122" width="122" /></a> <a href="javascript:;" id="shirtgreen"><img src="green_shirt.png" height="122" width="122" /></a> </div> <div class="collars"> <a href="javascript:;" id="collargrey"><img src="grey_collar.png" height="122" width="122" /></a> <a href="javascript:;" id="collarred"><img src="red_collar.png" height="122" width="122" /></a> <a href="javascript:;" id="collarblue"><img src="blue_collar.png" height="122" width="122" /></a> <a href="javascript:;" id="collargreen"><img src="green_collar.png" height="122" width="122" /></a> </div> <div class="cuffs"> <a href="javascript:;" id="cuffgrey"><img src="grey_cuff.png" height="122" width="122" /></a> <a href="javascript:;" id="cuffred"><img src="red_cuff.png" height="122" width="122" /></a> <a href="javascript:;" id="cuffblue"><img src="blue_cuff.png" height="122" width="122" /></a> <a href="javascript:;" id="cuffgreen"><img src="/green_cuff.png" height="122" width="122" /></a> </div> <div class="pockets"> <a href="javascript:;" id="pocketgrey"><img src="grey_pocket.png" height="122" width="122" /></a> <a href="javascript:;" id="pocketred"><img src=".png" height="122" width="122" /></a> <a href="javascript:;" id="pocketblue"><img src="blue_pocket.png" height="122" width="122" /></a> <a href="javascript:;" id="pocketgreen"><img src="green_pocket.png" height="122" width="122" /></a> </div> <!-- The larger images where one from each set should be viewable at one time, triggered by the thumb clicked above --> <div class="selectionimg"> <div class="selectShirt"> <img src="grey_shirt.png" height="250" width="250" class="selectShirtGrey show" /> <img src="red_shirt.png" height="250" width="250" class="selectShirtRed hide" /> <img src="blue_shirt.png" height="250" width="250" class="selectShirtBlue hide" /> <img src="green_shirt.png" height="250" width="250" class="selectShirtGreen hide" /> </div> <div class="selectCollar"> <img src="grey_collar.png" height="250" width="250" class="selectCollarGrey show" /> <img src="red_collar.png" height="250" width="250" class="selectCollarRed hide" /> <img src="blue_collar.png" height="250" width="250" class="selectCollarBlue hide" /> <img src="green_collar.png" height="250" width="250" class="selectCollarGreen hide" /> </div> <div class="selectCuff"> <img src="grey_cuff.png" height="250" width="250" class="selectCuffGrey show" /> <img src="red_cuff.png" height="250" width="250" class="selectCuffRed hide" /> <img src="blue_cuff.png" height="250" width="250" class="selectCuffBlue hide" /> <img src="green_cuff.png" height="250" width="250" class="selectCuffGreen hide" /> </div> <div class="selectPocket"> <img src="grey_pocket.png" height="250" width="250" class="selectPocketGrey show" /> <img src="hred_pocket.png" height="250" width="250" class="selectPocketRed hide" /> <img src="blue_pocket.png" height="250" width="250" class="selectPocketBlue hide" /> <img src="green_pocket.png" height="250" width="250" class="selectPocketGreen hide" /> </div> </div> How can jQuery be used to change a class of an image to "show" and ensure that all other images in that same div are set to a class of "hide"? First time posting here. I'm very efficient with HTML and CSS and have a basic understanding of jQuery. I'm learning and this just seems a little bit beyond my abilities at the moment. I hope this all makes sense. Thanks for any help.

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• HTML 5 <video> tag vs Flash video. What are the pros and cons?

  - by Vilx-

  Seems like the new <video> tag is all the hype these days, especially since Firefox now supports it. News of this are popping up in blogs all over the place, and everyone seems to be excited. But what about? As much as I searched I could not find anything that would make it better than the good old Flash video. In fact, I see only problems with it: It will still be some time before all the browsers start supporting it, and much more time before most people upgrade; Flash is available already and everyone has it; You can couple Flash with whatever fancy UI you want for controlling the playback. I gather that the tag will be controllable as well (via JavaScript probably), but will it be able to go fullscreen? The only two pros for a <video> tag that I can see are: It is more "semantic" - which probably holds no importance to a whole lot of people, including me; It is not dependent on a single commercial 3rd party entity (Adobe) - which I also don't see as a compelling reason to switch, because free players and video converters are already available, and Adobe is not hindering the whole process in any way (it's not in their interests even). So... what's the big deal? Added: OK, so there is one more Pro... maybe. Support for mobile devices. Hard to say though. A number of thoughts race through my head about the subject: How many mobile devices are actually able to decode video at a decent speed anyway, Flash or otherwise? How long until mainstream mobile devices get the <video> support? Even if it is available through updates, how many people actually do that? How many people watch videos on web pages on their mobile phones at all? As for the semantics part - I understand that search engines might be able to detect videos better now, but... what will they do with them anyway? OK, so they know that there is a video in the page. And? They can't index a video! I'd like some more arguments here. Added: Just thought of another Cons. This opens up a whole new area of cross-browser incompatibility. HTML and CSS is quite messy already in this aspect. Flash at least is the same everywhere. But it's enough for at least one major browser vendor to decide against the <video> tag (can anyone say "Internet Explorer"?) and we have a nice new area of hell to explore. Added: A Pro just came in. More competition = more innovation. That's true. Giving Adobe more competition will probably force them to improve Flash in areas it has been lacking so far. Linux seems to be a weak spot for it, cited by many.

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• Making CSS Render in a simialr way on FireFox 3.0.15/IE 6.0 & 7.0

  - by R.R

  Following css renders differently depends on the browser (mainly with Firefox) Firefox: the border-left-style:dashed does not seem to take effect as desired and black lines are shown instead. Also font seems to be another issue using em as they respond relatively better in cross browser. When i used pixel its a mess but not sure em is better or not. I am not a CSS expert and working with CSS makes me feel worse than dealing with a second hand car dealer. .Main { font-family: Arial, "Trebuchet MS", Sans-Serif; font-size: 0.8em; border:0px; } .Header { font-family: Arial, "Trebuchet MS", Sans-Serif; font-size: 1.2em; color:#666; background : url("../images/header.jpg") repeat-x top left; padding-left: 10px; padding:4px; text-transform:uppercase; border:1px; border-left-style:dashed; border-bottom-width:thin; border-collapse:collapse } .Footer { color:#666; font-family: Arial, "Trebuchet MS", Sans-Serif; font-size: 0.7em; } .Footer td { border-style:none; text-align:center; } .Footer span { color:#666; font-family: Arial, "Trebuchet MS", Sans-Serif; font-size: 0.7em; font-weight:bold; text-decoration:underline; border-style:none; } .Footer a { font-family: Arial, "Trebuchet MS", Sans-Serif; font-size: 0.7em; color:#666; } .Results-Item td { margin-left: 10px; vertical-align:middle; color:#666; background-color: white; font-size: 1.2em; padding:4px; font-family: Arial, "Trebuchet MS", Sans-Serif; padding-left: 10px; line-height: 20px; border:1px; border-left-style:dashed; border-bottom-width:thin; border-collapse:collapse; } .Results-AltItem td { margin-left: 10px; vertical-align:middle; color:#666; font-size: 1.2em; /* _font-size: 1.2em; /* IE6 hack */ padding:4px; font-family: Arial, "Trebuchet MS", Sans-Serif; background-color: #ccc; padding-left: 10px; line-height: 20px; border:1px; border:1px; border-left-style:dashed; border-bottom-width:thin; border-collapse:collapse; } Amount { text-align:right; }

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• Setting background image in asp.net (Master page)

  - by JRC

  I'm new in asp.net. And I am having trouble setting my background image. Here's the master page source: <%@ Master Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeFile="Master.master.cs" Inherits="Master"%> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <head runat="server"> <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="scripts/style.css"/> <title>Tracker</title> <asp:ContentPlaceHolder id="head" runat="server"> </asp:ContentPlaceHolder> </head> <body> <form id="form1" runat="server"> <div> <div class="container"> <a href="#"><img src="images/cross-header.gif" alt="Insert Logo Here" width="100%" id="Insert_logo" style="background: #C6D580; display:block;" /></a> <div class="sidebar1"> <nav> <ul> <li><a href="#">Home</a></li> <li><a href="#">LINK</a></li> <li><a href="#">LINK</a></li> <li><a href="#"><span style="font-weight:italic">LINK</span></a></li> <li><a href="#"><span style="font-weight:italic">LINK</span></a></li> </ul> </nav> <p>SOME LABEL</p> <p>SOME QUOTE HERE</p> <p></p> </div> </div> <footer> <a href="#">LINK HERE</a> | <a href="#">LINK HERE</a> | <a href="contact.php">CONTACT</a> | <a href="register.php">REGISTER</a> | <a href="login.php">LOGIN</a> <address> Copyright 2012 @JRC </address> </footer> </div> </form> </body> </html> The image that I am trying to use is located at the folder image. I don't know whats wrong. And here's what the style.css source: body { font: 100%/1.4 Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; margin: 0; padding: 0; background-image:url('images/background.jpg'); background-repeat:no-repeat; background-attachment:scroll; background-position:repeat-x; } I also tried this url('image/background.jpeg') etc. but still fails.

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• jQuery .find() doesn't return data in IE but does in Firefox and Chrome

  - by Steve Hiner

  I helped a friend out by doing a little web work for him. Part of what he needed was an easy way to change a couple pieces of text on his site. Rather than having him edit the HTML I decided to provide an XML file with the messages in it and I used jQuery to pull them out of the file and insert them into the page. It works great... In Firefox and Chrome, not so great in IE7. I was hoping one of you could tell me why. I did a fair but of googling but couldn't find what I'm looking for. Here's the XML: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?> <messages> <message type="HeaderMessage"> This message is put up in the header area. </message> <message type="FooterMessage"> This message is put in the lower left cell. </message> </messages> And here's my jQuery call: <script type="text/javascript"> $(document).ready(function() { $.get('messages.xml', function(d) { //I have confirmed that it gets to here in IE //and it has the xml loaded. //alert(d); gives me a message box with the xml text in it //alert($(d).find('message')); gives me "[object Object]" //alert($(d).find('message')[0]); gives me "undefined" //alert($(d).find('message').Length); gives me "undefined" $(d).find('message').each(function() { //But it never gets to here in IE var $msg = $(this); var type = $msg.attr("type"); var message = $msg.text(); switch (type) { case "HeaderMessage": $("#HeaderMessageDiv").html(message); break; case "FooterMessage": $("#footermessagecell").html(message); break; default: } }); }); }); </script> Is there something I need to do differently in IE? Based on the message box with [object Object] I'm assumed that .find was working in IE but since I can't index into the array with [0] or check it's Length I'm guessing that means .find isn't returning any results. Any reason why that would work perfectly in Firefox and Chrome but fail in IE? I'm a total newbie with jQuery so I hope I haven't just done something stupid. That code above was scraped out of a forum and modified to suit my needs. Since jQuery is cross-platform I figured I wouldn't have to deal with this mess. Edit: I've found that if I load the page in Visual Studio 2008 and run it then it will work in IE. So it turns out it always works when run through the development web server. Now I'm thinking IE just doesn't like doing .find in XML loaded off of my local drive so maybe when this is on an actual web server it will work OK. I have confirmed that it works fine when browsed from a web server. Must be a peculiarity with IE. I'm guessing it's because the web server sets the mime type for the xml data file transfer and without that IE doesn't parse the xml correctly.

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• insert xml into sql server

  - by JonDog

  ok, so I know there are a bunch of other post on importing xml to sql server but I just cant seem to figure it out. I think my problem may have to do with having multi-levels. Can anyone help please. My xml, sql table, and the code i've tried. thanks in advance. <items> <item> <sku> <value> the_sku </value> </sku> <short_dis2> <value> short_discription2 <value/> </short_dis2> <short_dis1> <value> short_discription1 </value> </short_dis1> <title> <value> product_title </value> </title> <detailSpec> <value> detailed_specification_html </value> </detailSpec> <basicSpec> <value> basic_overview_html </value> </basicSpec> <basicSpecHeading> <value> besic_spec_heading </value> </basicSpecHeading> <detailSpecHeading> <value> detailed_specifications_heading </value> </detailSpecHeading> <model> <value> the_model_number </value> </model> <image_file_name> <value> the_image_url </value> </image_file_name> </item> ... CREATE TABLE [dbo].[products]( [sku] [nchar](15) NOT NULL, [model] [nvarchar](50) NULL, [title] [ntext] NULL, [short_dis1] [ntext] NULL, [short_dis2] [ntext] NULL, [basicSpecHeading] [ntext] NULL, [basicSpec] [ntext] NULL, [detailSpecHeading] [ntext] NULL, [detailSpec] [ntext] NULL, [image_file_name] [nchar](100) NULL INSERT INTO products (sku, short_dis2,short_dis1,title,detailSpec,basicSpec,basicSpecHeading,detailSpecHeading,model,image_file_name) SELECT X.product.query('sku').value('.', 'nchar(15)'), X.product.query('short_dis2').value('.', 'nvarchar(max)'), X.product.query('short_dis1').value('.', 'nvarchar(max)'), X.product.query('title').value('.', 'nvarchar(max)'), X.product.query('detailSpec').value('.', 'nvarchar(max)'), X.product.query('basicSpec').value('.', 'nvarchar(max)'), X.product.query('basicSpecHeading').value('.', 'nvarchar(max)'), X.product.query('detailSpecHeading').value('.', 'nvarchar(max)'), X.product.query('model').value('.', 'nvarchar(max)'), X.product.query('image_file_name').value('.', 'nvarchar(max)') FROM ( SELECT CAST(x AS XML) FROM OPENROWSET( BULK 'C:\users\me\desktop\xml_sample.xml', SINGLE_BLOB) AS T(x) ) AS T(x) CROSS APPLY x.nodes('Products/Product') AS X(product);

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• SOA Suite 11g Native Format Builder Complex Format Example

  - by bob.webster

  This rather long posting details the steps required to process a grouping of fixed length records using Format Builder.   If it’s 10 pm and you’re feeling beat you might want to leave this until tomorrow.  But if it’s 10 pm and you need to get a Format Builder Complex template done, read on… The goal is to process individual orders from a file using the 11g File Adapter and Format Builder Sample Data =========== 001Square Widget            0245.98 102Triagular Widget         1120.00 403Circular Widget           0099.45 ORD8898302/01/2011 301Hexagon Widget         1150.98 ORD6735502/01/2011 The records are fixed length records representing a number of logical Order records. Each order record consists of a number of item records starting with a 3 digit number, followed by a single Summary Record which starts with the constant ORD. How can this file be processed so that the first poll returns the first order? 001Square Widget            0245.98 102Triagular Widget         1120.00 403Circular Widget           0099.45 ORD8898302/01/2011 And the second poll returns the second order? 301Hexagon Widget           1150.98 ORD6735502/01/2011 Note: if you need more than one order per poll, that’s also possible, see the “Multiple Messages” field in the “File Adapter Step 6 of 9” snapshot further down.   To follow along with this example you will need - Studio Edition Version 11.1.1.4.0    with the   - SOA Extension for JDeveloper 11.1.1.4.0 installed Both can be downloaded from here:  http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/middleware/soasuite/downloads/index.html You will not need a running WebLogic Server domain to complete the steps and Format Builder tests in this article.     Start with a SOA Composite containing a File Adapter The Format Builder is part of the File Adapter so start by creating a new SOA Project and Composite. Here is a quick summary for those not familiar with these steps - Start JDeveloper - From the Main Menu choose File->New - In the New Gallery window that opens Expand the “General” category and Select the Applications node.   Then choose SOA Application from the Items section on the right.  Finally press the OK button. - In Step 1 of the “Create SOA Application wizard” that appears enter an Application Name and an Directory of your     choice,   then press the Next button. - In Step 2 of the “Create SOA Application wizard”, press the Next button leaving all entries as defaulted. - In Step 3 of the “Create SOA Application wizard”, Enter a composite name of your choice and Press the Finish   Button These steps result in a new Application and SOA Project. The SOA Project contains a composite.xml file which is opened and shown below. For our example we have not defined a Mediator or a BPEL process to minimize the steps, but one or the other would eventually be needed to use the File Adapter we are about to create. Drag and drop the File Adapter icon from the Component Pallette onto either the LEFT side of the diagram under “Exposed Services” or the right side under “External References”.  (See the Green Circle in the image below).  Placing the adapter on the left side would indicate the file being processed is inbound to the composite, if the adapter is placed on the right side then the data is outbound to a file.     Note that the same Format Builder definition can be used in both directions.  For example we could use the format with a File Adapter on the left side of the composite to parse fixed data into XML, modify the data in our Composite or BPEL process and then use the same Format Builder definition with a File adapter on the right side of the composite to write the data back out in the same fixed data format When the File Adapter is dropped on the Composite the File Adapter Wizard Appears. Skip Past the first page, Step 1 of 9 by pressing the Next button. In Step 2 enter a service name of your choice as shown below, then press Next   When the Native Format Builder appears, skip the welcome page by pressing next. Also press the Next button to accept the settings on Step 3 of 9 On Step 4, select Read File and press the Next button as shown below.   On Step 5 enter a directory that will contain a file with the input data, then  Press the Next button as shown below. In step 6, enter *.txt or another file format to select input files from the input directory mentioned in step 5. ALSO check the “Files contain Multiple Messages” checkbox and set the “Publish Messages in Batches of” field to 1.  The value can be set higher to increase the number of logical order group records returned on each poll of the file adapter.  In other words, it determines the number of Orders that will be sent to each instance of a Mediator or Composite processing using the File Adapter.   Skip Step 7 by pressing the Next button In Step 8 press the Gear Icon on the right side to load the Native Format Builder.       Native Format Builder  appears Before diving into the format, here is an overview of the process. Approach - Bottom up Assuming an Order is a grouping of item records and a summary record…. - Define a separate  Complex Type for each Record Type found in the group.    (One for itemRecord and one for summaryRecord) - Define a Complex Type to contain the Group of Record types defined above   (LogicalOrderRecord) - Define a top level element to represent an order.  (order)   The order element will be of type LogicalOrderRecord   Defining the Format In Step 1 select   “Create new”  and  “Complex Type” and “Next”   In Step two browse to and select a file containing the test data shown at the start of this article. A link is provided at the end of this article to download a file containing the test data. Press the Next button     In Step 3 Complex types must be define for each type of input record. Select the Root-Element and Click on the Add Complex Type icon This creates a new empty complex type definition shown below. The fastest way to create the definition is to highlight the first line of the Sample File data and drag the line onto the  <new_complex_type> Format Builder introspects the data and provides a grid to define additional fields. Change the “Complex Type Name” to  “itemRecord” Then click on the ruler to indicate the position of fixed columns.  Drag the red triangle icons to the exact columns if necessary. Double click on an existing red triangle to remove an unwanted entry. In the case below fields are define in columns 0-3, 4-28, 29-eol When the field definitions are correct, press the “Generate Fields” button. Field entries named C1, C2 and C3 will be created as shown below. Click on the field names and rename them from C1->itemNum, C2->itemDesc and C3->itemCost  When all the fields are correctly defined press OK to save the complex type.        Next, the process is repeated to define a Complex Type for the SummaryRecord. Select the Root-Element in the schema tree and press the new complex type icon Then highlight and drag the Summary Record from the sample data onto the <new_complex_type>   Change the complex type name to “summaryRecord” Mark the fixed fields for Order Number and Order Date. Press the Generate Fields button and rename C1 and C2 to itemNum and orderDate respectively.   The last complex type to be defined is a type to hold the group of items and the summary record. Select the Root-Element in the schema tree and click the new complex type icon Select the “<new_complex_type>” entry and click the pencil icon   On the Complex Type Details page change the name and type of each input field. Change line 1 to be named item and set the Type  to “itemRecord” Change line 2 to be named summary and set the Type to “summaryRecord” We also need to indicate that itemRecords repeat in the input file. Click the pencil icon at the right side of the item line. On the Edit Details page change the “Max Occurs” entry from 1 to UNBOUNDED. We also need to indicate how to identify an itemRecord.  Since each item record has “.” in column 32 we can use this fact to differentiate an item record from a summary record. Change the “Look Ahead” field to value 32 and enter a period in the “Look For” field Press the OK button to save entry.     Finally, its time to create a top level element to represent an order. Select the “Root-Element” in the schema tree and press the New element icon Click on the <new_element> and press the pencil icon.   Set the Element Name to “order” and change the Data Type to “logicalOrderRecord” Press the OK button to save the element definition.   The final definition should match the screenshot below. Press the Next Button to view the definition source.     Press the Test Button to test the definition   Press the Green Triangle Icon to run the test.   And we are presented with an unwelcome error. The error states that the processor ran out of data while working through the definition. The processor was unable to differentiate between itemRecords and summaryRecords and therefore treated the entire file as a list of itemRecords.  At end of file, the “summary” portion of the logicalOrderRecord remained unprocessed but mandatory.   This root cause of this error is the loss of our “lookAhead” definition used to identify itemRecords. This appears to be a bug in the  Native Format Builder 11.1.1.4.0 Luckily, a simple workaround exists. Press the Cancel button and return to the “Step 4 of 4” Window. Manually add    nxsd:lookAhead="32" nxsd:lookFor="."   attributes after the maxOccurs attribute of the item element. as shown in the highlighted text below.   When the lookAhead and lookFor attributes have been added Press the Test button and on the Test page press the Green Triangle. The test is now successful, the first order in the file is returned by the File Adapter.     Below is a complete listing of the Result XML from the right column of the screen above   Try running it The downloaded input test file and completed schema file can be used for testing without following all the Native Format Builder steps in this example. Use the following link to download a file containing the sample data. Download Sample Input Data This is the best approach rather than cutting and pasting the input data at the top of the article.  Since the data is fixed length it’s very important to watch out for trailing spaces in the data and to ensure an eol character at the end of every line. The download file is correctly formatted. The final schema definition can be downloaded at the following link Download Completed Schema Definition   - Save the inputData.txt file to a known location like the xsd folder in your project. - Save the inputData_6.xsd file to the xsd folder in your project. - At step 1 in the Native Format Builder wizard  (as shown above) check the “Edit existing” radio button,    then browse and select the inputData_6.xsd file - At step 2 of the Format Builder configuration Wizard (as shown above) supply the path and filename for    the inputData.txt file. - You can then proceed to the test page and run a test. - Remember the wizard bug will drop the lookAhead and lookFor attributes,  you will need to manually add   nxsd:lookAhead="32" nxsd:lookFor="."    after the maxOccurs attribute of the item element in the   LogicalOrderRecord Complex Type.  (as shown above)   Good Luck with your Format Project

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• Ajax Control Toolkit July 2011 Release and the New HTML Editor Extender

  - by Stephen Walther

  I’m happy to announce the July 2011 release of the Ajax Control Toolkit which includes important bug fixes and a completely new HTML Editor Extender control. You can download the July 2011 Release by visiting the Ajax Control Toolkit CodePlex site at: http://AjaxControlToolkit.CodePlex.com Using the New HTML Editor Extender Control You can use the new HTML Editor Extender to extend any standard ASP.NET TextBox control so that it supports rich formatting such as bold, italics, bulleted lists, numbered lists, typefaces and different foreground and background colors. The following code illustrates how you can extend a standard ASP.NET TextBox control with the HtmlEditorExtender: <%@ Page Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeBehind="Simple.aspx.cs" Inherits="WebApplication1.Simple" %> <%@ Register TagPrefix="asp" Namespace="AjaxControlToolkit" Assembly="AjaxControlToolkit" %> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <head runat="server"> <title>Simple</title> </head> <body> <form id="form1" runat="server"> <asp:ToolkitScriptManager runat="Server" /> <asp:TextBox ID="txtComments" TextMode="MultiLine" Columns="60" Rows="8" runat="server" /> <asp:HtmlEditorExtender TargetControlID="txtComments" runat="server" /> </form> </body> </html> This page has the following three controls: ToolkitScriptManager – The ToolkitScriptManager renders all of the scripts required by the Ajax Control Toolkit. TextBox – The TextBox control is a standard ASP.NET TextBox which is set to display multiple lines (a TextArea instead of an Input element). HtmlEditorExtender – The HtmlEditorExtender is set to extend the TextBox control. You can use the standard TextBox Text property to read the rich text entered into the TextBox control on the server. Lightweight and HTML5 The HTML Editor Extender works on all modern browsers including the most recent versions of Mozilla Firefox (Firefox 5), Google Chrome (Chrome 12), and Apple Safari (Safari 5). Furthermore, the HTML Editor Extender is compatible with Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 and newer. The HTML Editor Extender is very lightweight. It takes advantage of the HTML5 ContentEditable attribute so it does not require an iframe or complex browser workarounds. If you select View Source in your browser while using the HTML Editor Extender, we hope that you will be pleasantly surprised by how little markup and script is generated by the HTML Editor Extender. Customizable Toolbar Buttons Depending on the web application that you are building, you will want to display different toolbar buttons with the HTML Editor Extender. One of the design goals of the HTML Editor Extender was to make it very easy for you to customize the toolbar buttons. Imagine, for example, that you want to use the HTML Editor Extender when accepting comments on blog posts. In that case, you might want to restrict the type of formatting that a user can display. You might want to enable a user to format text as bold or italic but you do not want the user to make any other formatting changes. The following page illustrates how you can customize the HTML Editor Extender toolbar: <%@ Page Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeBehind="CustomToolbar.aspx.cs" Inherits="WebApplication1.CustomToolbar" %> <%@ Register TagPrefix="asp" Namespace="AjaxControlToolkit" Assembly="AjaxControlToolkit" %> <html> <head runat="server"> <title>Custom Toolbar</title> </head> <body> <form id="form1" runat="server"> <asp:ToolkitScriptManager Runat="server" /> <asp:TextBox ID="txtComments" TextMode="MultiLine" Columns="50" Rows="10" Text="Hello <b>world!</b>" Runat="server" /> <asp:HtmlEditorExtender TargetControlID="txtComments" runat="server"> <Toolbar> <asp:Bold /> <asp:Italic /> </Toolbar> </asp:HtmlEditorExtender> </form> </body> </html> Notice that the HTML Editor Extender in the page above has a Toolbar subtag. You can list the toolbar buttons which you want to appear within the subtag. In the case above, only Bold and Italic buttons are displayed. Here is a complete list of the Toolbar buttons currently supported by the HTML Editor Extender: Undo Redo Bold Italic Underline StrikeThrough Subscript Superscript JustifyLeft JustifyCenter JustifyRight JustifyFull InsertOrderedList InsertUnorderedList CreateLink UnLink RemoveFormat SelectAll UnSelect Delete Cut Copy Paste BackgroundColorSelector ForeColorSelector FontNameSelector FontSizeSelector Indent Outdent InsertHorizontalRule HorizontalSeparator Of course the HTML Editor Extender was designed to be extensible. You can create your own buttons and add them to the control. Compatible with the AntiXSS Library When using the HTML Editor Extender on a public facing website, we strongly recommend that you use the HTML Editor Extender with the AntiXSS Library. If you allow users to submit arbitrary HTML, and you don’t take any action to strip out malicious markup, then you are opening your website to Cross-Site Scripting Attacks (XSS attacks). The HTML Editor Extender uses the Provider Model to support different Sanitizer Providers. The July 2011 release of the Ajax Control Toolkit ships with a single Sanitizer Provider which uses the AntiXSS library (see http://AntiXss.CodePlex.com ). A Sanitizer Provider is responsible for sanitizing HTML markup by removing any malicious elements, attributes, and attribute values. For example, the AntiXss Sanitizer Provider will take the following block of HTML: <b><a href=""javascript:doEvil()"">Visit Grandma</a></b> <script>doEvil()</script> And return the following sanitized block of HTML: <b><a href="">Visit Grandma</a></b> Notice that the JavaScript href and <SCRIPT> tag are both stripped out. Be aware that there are a depressingly large number of ways to sneak evil markup into your HTML. You definitely want a Sanitizer as a safety net. Before you can use the AntiXSS Sanitizer Provider, you must add three assemblies to your web application: AntiXSSLibrary.dll, HtmlSanitizationLibrary.dll, and SanitizerProviders.dll. All three assemblies are included with the CodePlex download of the Ajax Control Toolkit in the SanitizerProviders folder. Here’s how you modify your web.config file to use the AntiXSS Sanitizer Provider: <configuration> <configSections> <sectionGroup name="system.web"> <section name="sanitizer" requirePermission="false" type="AjaxControlToolkit.Sanitizer.ProviderSanitizerSection, AjaxControlToolkit"/> </sectionGroup> </configSections> <system.web> <compilation targetFramework="4.0" debug="true"/> <sanitizer defaultProvider="AntiXssSanitizerProvider"> <providers> <add name="AntiXssSanitizerProvider" type="AjaxControlToolkit.Sanitizer.AntiXssSanitizerProvider"></add> </providers> </sanitizer> </system.web> </configuration> You can detect whether the HTML Editor Extender is using the AntiXSS Sanitizer Provider by checking the HtmlEditorExtender SanitizerProvider property like this: if (MyHtmlEditorExtender.SanitizerProvider == null) { throw new Exception("Please enable the AntiXss Sanitizer!"); } When the SanitizerProvider property has the value null, you know that a Sanitizer Provider has not been configured in the web.config file. Because the AntiXSS library requires Full Trust, you cannot use the AntiXSS Sanitizer Provider with most shared website hosting providers. Because most shared hosting providers only support Medium Trust and not Full Trust, we do not recommend using the HTML Editor Extender with a public website hosted with a shared hosting provider. Why a New HTML Editor Control? The Ajax Control Toolkit now includes two HTML Editor controls. Why did we introduce a new HTML Editor control when there was already an existing HTML Editor? We think you will like the new HTML Editor much more than the previous one. We had several goals with the new HTML Editor Extender: Lightweight – We wanted to leverage HTML5 to create a lightweight HTML Editor. The new HTML Editor generates much less markup and script than the previous HTML Editor. Secure – We wanted to make it easy to integrate the AntiXSS library with the HTML Editor. If you are creating a public facing website, we strongly recommend that you use the AntiXSS Provider. Customizable – We wanted to make it easy for users to customize the toolbar buttons displayed by the HTML Editor. Compatibility – We wanted to ensure that the HTML Editor will work with the latest versions of the most popular browsers (including Internet Explorer 6 and higher). The old HTML Editor control is still included in the Ajax Control Toolkit and continues to live in the AjaxControlToolkit.HTMLEditor namespace. We have not modified the control and you can continue to use the control in the same way as you have used it in the past. However, we hope that you will consider migrating to the new HTML Editor Extender for the reasons listed above. Summary We’ve introduced a new Ajax Control Toolkit control with this release. I want to thank the developers and testers on the Superexpert team for the huge amount of work which they put into this control. It was a non-trivial task to build an entirely new control which has the complexity of the HTML Editor in less than 6 weeks. Please let us know what you think! We want to hear your feedback. If you discover issues with the new HTML Editor Extender control, or you have questions about the control, or you have ideas for how it can be improved, then please post them to this blog. Tomorrow starts a new sprint

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• Using jQuery to Insert a New Database Record

  - by Stephen Walther

  The goal of this blog entry is to explore the easiest way of inserting a new record into a database using jQuery and .NET. I’m going to explore two approaches: using Generic Handlers and using a WCF service (In a future blog entry I’ll take a look at OData and WCF Data Services). Create the ASP.NET Project I’ll start by creating a new empty ASP.NET application with Visual Studio 2010. Select the menu option File, New Project and select the ASP.NET Empty Web Application project template. Setup the Database and Data Model I’ll use my standard MoviesDB.mdf movies database. This database contains one table named Movies that looks like this: I’ll use the ADO.NET Entity Framework to represent my database data: Select the menu option Project, Add New Item and select the ADO.NET Entity Data Model project item. Name the data model MoviesDB.edmx and click the Add button. In the Choose Model Contents step, select Generate from database and click the Next button. In the Choose Your Data Connection step, leave all of the defaults and click the Next button. In the Choose Your Data Objects step, select the Movies table and click the Finish button. Unfortunately, Visual Studio 2010 cannot spell movie correctly :) You need to click on Movy and change the name of the class to Movie. In the Properties window, change the Entity Set Name to Movies. Using a Generic Handler In this section, we’ll use jQuery with an ASP.NET generic handler to insert a new record into the database. A generic handler is similar to an ASP.NET page, but it does not have any of the overhead. It consists of one method named ProcessRequest(). Select the menu option Project, Add New Item and select the Generic Handler project item. Name your new generic handler InsertMovie.ashx and click the Add button. Modify your handler so it looks like Listing 1: Listing 1 – InsertMovie.ashx using System.Web; namespace WebApplication1 { /// <summary> /// Inserts a new movie into the database /// </summary> public class InsertMovie : IHttpHandler { private MoviesDBEntities _dataContext = new MoviesDBEntities(); public void ProcessRequest(HttpContext context) { context.Response.ContentType = "text/plain"; // Extract form fields var title = context.Request["title"]; var director = context.Request["director"]; // Create movie to insert var movieToInsert = new Movie { Title = title, Director = director }; // Save new movie to DB _dataContext.AddToMovies(movieToInsert); _dataContext.SaveChanges(); // Return success context.Response.Write("success"); } public bool IsReusable { get { return true; } } } } In Listing 1, the ProcessRequest() method is used to retrieve a title and director from form parameters. Next, a new Movie is created with the form values. Finally, the new movie is saved to the database and the string “success” is returned. Using jQuery with the Generic Handler We can call the InsertMovie.ashx generic handler from jQuery by using the standard jQuery post() method. The following HTML page illustrates how you can retrieve form field values and post the values to the generic handler: Listing 2 – Default.htm <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <head> <title>Add Movie</title> <script src="http://ajax.microsoft.com/ajax/jquery/jquery-1.4.2.js" type="text/javascript"></script> </head> <body> <form> <label>Title:</label> <input name="title" /> <br /> <label>Director:</label> <input name="director" /> </form> <button id="btnAdd">Add Movie</button> <script type="text/javascript"> $("#btnAdd").click(function () { $.post("InsertMovie.ashx", $("form").serialize(), insertCallback); }); function insertCallback(result) { if (result == "success") { alert("Movie added!"); } else { alert("Could not add movie!"); } } </script> </body> </html>     When you open the page in Listing 2 in a web browser, you get a simple HTML form: Notice that the page in Listing 2 includes the jQuery library. The jQuery library is included with the following SCRIPT tag: <script src="http://ajax.microsoft.com/ajax/jquery/jquery-1.4.2.js" type="text/javascript"></script> The jQuery library is included on the Microsoft Ajax CDN so you can always easily include the jQuery library in your applications. You can learn more about the CDN at this website: http://www.asp.net/ajaxLibrary/cdn.ashx When you click the Add Movie button, the jQuery post() method is called to post the form data to the InsertMovie.ashx generic handler. Notice that the form values are serialized into a URL encoded string by calling the jQuery serialize() method. The serialize() method uses the name attribute of form fields and not the id attribute. Notes on this Approach This is a very low-level approach to interacting with .NET through jQuery – but it is simple and it works! And, you don’t need to use any JavaScript libraries in addition to the jQuery library to use this approach. The signature for the jQuery post() callback method looks like this: callback(data, textStatus, XmlHttpRequest) The second parameter, textStatus, returns the HTTP status code from the server. I tried returning different status codes from the generic handler with an eye towards implementing server validation by returning a status code such as 400 Bad Request when validation fails (see http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec10.html ). I finally figured out that the callback is not invoked when the textStatus has any value other than “success”. Using a WCF Service As an alternative to posting to a generic handler, you can create a WCF service. You create a new WCF service by selecting the menu option Project, Add New Item and selecting the Ajax-enabled WCF Service project item. Name your WCF service InsertMovie.svc and click the Add button. Modify the WCF service so that it looks like Listing 3: Listing 3 – InsertMovie.svc using System.ServiceModel; using System.ServiceModel.Activation; namespace WebApplication1 { [ServiceBehavior(IncludeExceptionDetailInFaults=true)] [ServiceContract(Namespace = "")] [AspNetCompatibilityRequirements(RequirementsMode = AspNetCompatibilityRequirementsMode.Allowed)] public class MovieService { private MoviesDBEntities _dataContext = new MoviesDBEntities(); [OperationContract] public bool Insert(string title, string director) { // Create movie to insert var movieToInsert = new Movie { Title = title, Director = director }; // Save new movie to DB _dataContext.AddToMovies(movieToInsert); _dataContext.SaveChanges(); // Return movie (with primary key) return true; } } }   The WCF service in Listing 3 uses the Entity Framework to insert a record into the Movies database table. The service always returns the value true. Notice that the service in Listing 3 includes the following attribute: [ServiceBehavior(IncludeExceptionDetailInFaults=true)] You need to include this attribute if you want to get detailed error information back to the client. When you are building an application, you should always include this attribute. When you are ready to release your application, you should remove this attribute for security reasons. Using jQuery with the WCF Service Calling a WCF service from jQuery requires a little more work than calling a generic handler from jQuery. Here are some good blog posts on some of the issues with using jQuery with WCF: http://encosia.com/2008/06/05/3-mistakes-to-avoid-when-using-jquery-with-aspnet-ajax/ http://encosia.com/2008/03/27/using-jquery-to-consume-aspnet-json-web-services/ http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2007/04/04/json-hijacking-and-how-asp-net-ajax-1-0-mitigates-these-attacks.aspx http://www.west-wind.com/Weblog/posts/896411.aspx http://www.west-wind.com/weblog/posts/324917.aspx http://professionalaspnet.com/archive/tags/WCF/default.aspx The primary requirement when calling WCF from jQuery is that the request use JSON: The request must include a content-type:application/json header. Any parameters included with the request must be JSON encoded. Unfortunately, jQuery does not include a method for serializing JSON (Although, oddly, jQuery does include a parseJSON() method for deserializing JSON). Therefore, we need to use an additional library to handle the JSON serialization. The page in Listing 4 illustrates how you can call a WCF service from jQuery. Listing 4 – Default2.aspx <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <head> <title>Add Movie</title> <script src="http://ajax.microsoft.com/ajax/jquery/jquery-1.4.2.js" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="Scripts/json2.js" type="text/javascript"></script> </head> <body> <form> <label>Title:</label> <input id="title" /> <br /> <label>Director:</label> <input id="director" /> </form> <button id="btnAdd">Add Movie</button> <script type="text/javascript"> $("#btnAdd").click(function () { // Convert the form into an object var data = { title: $("#title").val(), director: $("#director").val() }; // JSONify the data data = JSON.stringify(data); // Post it $.ajax({ type: "POST", contentType: "application/json; charset=utf-8", url: "MovieService.svc/Insert", data: data, dataType: "json", success: insertCallback }); }); function insertCallback(result) { // unwrap result result = result["d"]; if (result === true) { alert("Movie added!"); } else { alert("Could not add movie!"); } } </script> </body> </html> There are several things to notice about Listing 4. First, notice that the page includes both the jQuery library and Douglas Crockford’s JSON2 library: <script src="Scripts/json2.js" type="text/javascript"></script> You need to include the JSON2 library to serialize the form values into JSON. You can download the JSON2 library from the following location: http://www.json.org/js.html When you click the button to submit the form, the form data is converted into a JavaScript object: // Convert the form into an object var data = { title: $("#title").val(), director: $("#director").val() }; Next, the data is serialized into JSON using the JSON2 library: // JSONify the data var data = JSON.stringify(data); Finally, the form data is posted to the WCF service by calling the jQuery ajax() method: // Post it $.ajax({   type: "POST",   contentType: "application/json; charset=utf-8",   url: "MovieService.svc/Insert",   data: data,   dataType: "json",   success: insertCallback }); You can’t use the standard jQuery post() method because you must set the content-type of the request to be application/json. Otherwise, the WCF service will reject the request for security reasons. For details, see the Scott Guthrie blog post: http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2007/04/04/json-hijacking-and-how-asp-net-ajax-1-0-mitigates-these-attacks.aspx The insertCallback() method is called when the WCF service returns a response. This method looks like this: function insertCallback(result) {   // unwrap result   result = result["d"];   if (result === true) {       alert("Movie added!");   } else {     alert("Could not add movie!");   } } When we called the jQuery ajax() method, we set the dataType to JSON. That causes the jQuery ajax() method to deserialize the response from the WCF service from JSON into a JavaScript object automatically. The following value is passed to the insertCallback method: {"d":true} For security reasons, a WCF service always returns a response with a “d” wrapper. The following line of code removes the “d” wrapper: // unwrap result result = result["d"]; To learn more about the “d” wrapper, I recommend that you read the following blog posts: http://encosia.com/2009/02/10/a-breaking-change-between-versions-of-aspnet-ajax/ http://encosia.com/2009/06/29/never-worry-about-asp-net-ajaxs-d-again/ Summary In this blog entry, I explored two methods of inserting a database record using jQuery and .NET. First, we created a generic handler and called the handler from jQuery. This is a very low-level approach. However, it is a simple approach that works. Next, we looked at how you can call a WCF service using jQuery. This approach required a little more work because you need to serialize objects into JSON. We used the JSON2 library to perform the serialization. In the next blog post, I want to explore how you can use jQuery with OData and WCF Data Services.

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, February 25, 2010

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, February 25, 2010New ProjectsAptusSoftware.Threading: AptusSoftware.Threading is a class library designed primarily to assist in the development of multi-threaded WinForm applications, although there i...AxiomGameDesigner: It is going to be a universal scene editor for Axiom 3D game engine. It is in pure C# and will be kept portable to MONO for compatibility with linu...Badger - Unity Productivity Extensions: A set of Microsoft Unity Extensions. Why Badger? Because I love badgers.Business & System Analysis Templates and Best Practices for Russian: http://saway.codeplex.com/Conectayas: Conectayas is an open source "Connect Four" alike game but transformable to "Tic-Tac-Toe" and to a lot of similar games that uses mouse. Written in...FastCode: .NET 3.5 Extensions set to increase coding speed.Hundiyas: Hundiyas is an open source "Battleship" alike game totally written in DHTML (JavaScript, CSS and HTML) that uses mouse. This cross-platform and cro...Icelandic Online Banking: Icelandic Online Banking is project defining a web service interface for online banking.IE8 AddOns XML Creator: Application that helps on creating the xml files for IE8 Accelerators, Search Providers and the markup for Web Slices.iKnowledge: a asp.net mvc demoLearn ASP.NET MVC: Learn ASP.NET MVC is a project for the members of the Peer Learning group in Silicon Valley. It contains the SportsStore solution from the Pro ASP...Live at Education Meta Web-Service: Live at Education Meta Web-Service is intended to abstract from several technologies that are included in Live@edu set of services. This web-ser...Low level wave sound output for VB.NET: Low level sound output class for VB.NET using platform invocation services to call winmm.dllMailQ: MailQ makes it easier for developers to send mail messages from an application. The system sends mails based on a database queue system (store, se...Managed DXGI: Managed DXGI library is Fully managed wrapper writen on C# for DXGI 1.0 and 1.1 technology. It makes easier to support DXGI in managed application....Multivalue AutoComplete WinForms TextBox in C#: This project is a sample application that demonstrates how to create a multivalue WinForms textbox in C# using .NET Framework 3.5.Nifty CSharp Tools: Nifty CSharp Tools, will contain various tools and snippets. IRCBot, splashscreens, linq, world of warcraft log parsing, screenshot uploaders, twi...PHP MPQ: A port of StormLib to PHP for handling Blizzard MPQ files.RedDevils strategy - Project Hoshimi Programming Battle: Source Code of RedDevils strategy. Imagine Cup 2008 - Project Hoshimi Programming Battle.RNUNIT: rNunit is a distributed Nunit project. Many application these days are client-server application, distributed application and regular unit testing ...Samar Solution: Samar Solutions is a business system for office automation.Silverlight OOMRPG Game Engine: Silverlight OOMRPG Game EngineSimulator: GPSSimulatorSLARToolkit - Silverlight Augmented Reality Toolkit: SLARToolkit is a flexible Augmented Reality library for Silverlight with the aim to make real time Augmented Reality applications with Silverlight ...Spiral Architecture Driven Development (SADD) for Russian: Это русская версия сайта sadd.codeplex.comSQLSnapshotManager: Easily manage SQL Server database snapshots in a easy to use visual interface.Twilio with VB.NET MVC: Twilio with VB.NET MVC is a sample application for developing with Twilio's REST based telephony API. It includes an XML Schema of the TwiML respon...Ultra Speed Dial: UltraSpeedDial.com - Online Speed Dial Page.Visual HTML Editor justHTML: justHTML - is simle windows-application WYSIWYG editor that allow everyone - without any knowledge of HTML - to create and edit web-pages. It supp...WinMTR.NET: .NET Clone of the popular Windows clone of the popular Linux Matt's TracerouteWPF Dialogs: "WPF Dialogs" is a library for different Dialogs in WPF (e.g. FolderBrowseDialog, SaveFileDialog, OpenFileDialog etc.). These Dialogs are written i...WPFLogin: A small Login window in WPF and C#XNA PerformanceTimers: CPU Timers for Windows and Xbox360. Can track multiple threads, and presents output as a log on-screen.New ReleasesAptusSoftware.Threading: 2.0.0: First public release. This release is in production as part of several commercial applications and is stable. The source code download includes a...BizTalk Software Factory: BizTalk Software Factory v2.1: This is a service release for the BizTalk Software Factory for BizTalk Server 2009, containing so far: Fix for x64: the SN.EXE tool is now locate...Business & System Analysis Templates and Best Practices for Russian: R00 The Place reserver: Just to reserve the place Will be filled out soonChronos WPF: Chronos v1.0 Beta 2: Added a new SplashScreen Added a new Login View and implemented Log Off Added a new PasswordBoxHelper (http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/371...dotNetTips: dotNetTips.Utility 3.5 R2: This is a new release (version 3.5.0.3) compatible with .NET 3.5. Lots of new classes/features!! Requires SP1 if using the Entity Framework extensi...fleXdoc: template-based server-side document generator (docx): fleXdoc 1.0 beta 3: The third and final beta of fleXdoc. fleXdoc consists of a webservice and a (test)client for the service. Make sure you also download the testclien...FluentPS: FluentPS v1.0: - FluentPS is moved from ASMX to WCF interface of the Project Server Interface (PSI) - Impersonation changes to work in compliance with WCF interfa...FolderSize: FolderSize.Win32.1.0.4.0: FolderSize.Win32.1.0.3.0 A simple utility intended to be used to scan harddrives for the folders that take most place and display this to the user...iTuner - The iTunes Companion: iTuner 1.1.3707 Beta 3: As promised, the iTuner Automated Librarian is now available. 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• Mauritius Software Craftsmanship Community

  There we go! I finally managed to push myself forward and pick up an old, actually too old, idea since I ever arrived here in Mauritius more than six years ago. I'm talking about a community for all kind of ICT connected people. In the past (back in Germany), I used to be involved in various community activities. For example, I was part of the Microsoft Community Leader/Influencer Program (CLIP) in Germany due to an FAQ on Visual FoxPro, actually Active FoxPro Pages (AFP) to be more precise. Then in 2003/2004 I addressed the responsible person of the dFPUG user group in Speyer in order to assist him in organising monthly user group meetings. Well, he handed over management completely, and attended our meetings regularly. Why did it take you so long? Well, I don't want to bother you with the details but short version is that I was too busy on either job (building up new companies) or private life (got married and we have two lovely children, eh 'monsters') or even both. But now is the time where I was starting to look for new fields given the fact that I gained some spare time. My businesses are up and running, the kids are in school, and I am finally in a position where I can commit myself again to community activities. And I love to do that! Why a new user group? Good question... And 'easy' to answer. Since back in 2007 I did my usual research, eh Google searches, to see whether there existing user groups in Mauritius and in which field of interest. And yes, there are! If I recall this correctly, then there are communities for PHP, Drupal, Python (just recently), Oracle, and Linux (which used to be even two). But... either they do not exist anymore, they are dormant, or there is only a low heart-beat, frankly speaking. And yes, I went to meetings of the Linux User Group Meta (Mauritius) back in 2010/2011 and just recently. I really like the setup and the way the LUGM is organised. It's just that I have a slightly different point of view on how a user group or community should organise itself and how to approach future members. Don't get me wrong, I'm not criticizing others doing a very good job, I'm only saying that I'd like to do it differently. The last meeting of the LUGM was awesome; read my feedback about it. Ok, so what's up with 'Mauritius Software Craftsmanship Community' or short: MSCC? As I've already written in my article on 'Communities - The importance of exchange and discussion' I think it is essential in a world of IT to stay 'connected' with a good number of other people in the same field. There is so much dynamic and every day's news that it is almost impossible to keep on track with all of them. The MSCC is going to provide a common platform to exchange experience and share knowledge between each other. You might be a newbie and want to know what to expect working as a software developer, or as a database administrator, or maybe as an IT systems administrator, or you're an experienced geek that loves to share your ideas or solutions that you implemented to solve a specific problem, or you're the business (or HR) guy that is looking for 'fresh' blood to enforce your existing team. Or... you're just interested and you'd like to communicate with like-minded people. Meetup of 26.06.2013 @ L'arabica: Of course there are laptops around. Free WiFi, power outlet, coffee, code and Linux in one go. The MSCC is technology-agnostic and spans an umbrella over any kind of technology. Simply because you can't ignore other technologies anymore in a connected IT world as we have. A front-end developer for iOS applications should have the chance to connect with a Python back-end coder and eventually with a DBA for MySQL or PostgreSQL and exchange their experience. Furthermore, I'm a huge fan of cross-platform development, and it is very pleasant to have pure Web developers - with all that HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript and JS libraries stuff - and passionate C# or Java coders at the same table. This diversity of knowledge can assist and boost your personal situation. And last but not least, there are projects and open positions 'flying' around... People might like to hear others opinion about an employer or get new impulses on how to tackle down an issue at their workspace, etc. This is about community. And that's how I see the MSCC in general - free of any limitations be it by programming language or technology. Having the chance to exchange experience and to discuss certain aspects of technology saves you time and money, and it's a pleasure to enjoy. Compared to dusty books and remote online resources. It's human! Organising meetups (meetings, get-together, gatherings - you name it!) As of writing this article, the MSCC is currently meeting every Wednesday for the weekly 'Code & Coffee' session at various locations (suggestions are welcome!) in Mauritius. This might change in the future eventually but especially at the beginning I think it is very important to create awareness in the Mauritian IT world. Yes, we are here! Come and join us! ;-) The MSCC's main online presence is located at Meetup.com because it allows me to handle the organisation of events and meeting appointments very easily, and any member can have a look who else is involved so that an exchange of contacts is given at any time. In combination with the other entities (G+ Communities, FB Pages or in Groups) I advertise and manage all future activities here: Mauritius Software Craftsmanship Community This is a community for those who care and are proud of what they do. For those developers, regardless how experienced they are, who want to improve and master their craft. This is a community for those who believe that being average is just not good enough. I know, there are not many 'craftsmen' yet but it's a start... Let's see how it looks like by the end of the year. There are free smartphone apps for Android and iOS from Meetup.com that allow you to keep track of meetings and to stay informed on latest updates. And last but not least, there is a Trello workspace to collect and share ideas and provide downloads of slides, etc. Trello is also available as free smartphone app. Sharing is caring! As mentioned, the #MSCC is present in various social media networks in order to cover as many people as possible here in Mauritius. Following is an overview of the current networks: Twitter - Latest updates and quickies Google+ - Community channel Facebook - Community Page LinkedIn - Community Group Trello - Collaboration workspace to share and develop ideas Hopefully, this covers the majority of computer-related people in Mauritius. Please spread the word about the #MSCC between your colleagues, your friends and other interested 'geeks'. Your future looks bright Running and participating in a user group or any kind of community usually provides quite a number of advantages for anyone. On the one side it is very joyful for me to organise appointments and get in touch with people that might be interested to present a little demo of their projects or their recent problems they had to tackle down, and on the other side there are lots of companies that have various support programs or sponsorships especially tailored for user groups. At the moment, I already have a couple of gimmicks that I would like to hand out in small contests or raffles during one of the upcoming meetings, and as said, companies provide all kind of goodies, books free of charge, or sometimes even licenses for communities. Meeting other software developers or IT guys also opens up your point of view on the local market and there might be interesting projects or job offers available, too. A community like the Mauritius Software Craftsmanship Community is great for freelancers, self-employed, students and of course employees. Meetings will be organised on a regular basis, and I'm open to all kind of suggestions from you. Please leave a comment here in blog or join the conversations in the above mentioned social networks. Let's get this community up and running, my fellow Mauritians! Recent updates The MSCC is now officially participating in the O'Reilly UK User Group programm and we are allowed to request review or recension copies of recent titles. Additionally, we have a discount code for any books or ebooks that you might like to order on shop.oreilly.com. More applications for user group sponsorship programms are pending and I'm looking forward to a couple of announcement very soon. And... we need some kind of 'corporate identity' - Over at the MSCC website there is a call for action (or better said a contest with prizes) to create a unique design for the MSCC. This would include a decent colour palette, a logo, graphical banners for Meetup, Google+, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. and of course badges for our craftsmen to add to their personal blogs and websites. Please spread the word and contribute. Thanks!

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• Turn Photos and Home Videos into Movies with Windows Live Movie Maker

  - by DigitalGeekery

  Are you looking for an easy way to take your digital photos and videos and turn them into a movie or slideshow? Today we’ll take a detailed look at how to do use Windows Live Movie Maker. Installation Windows Live Movie Maker comes bundled as part of the Windows Live Essentials suite (link below). However, you don’t have to install any of the programs you may not want. Take notice of the You’re almost done screen. Before clicking Continue, be sure to uncheck the boxes to set your search provider and homepage. Adding Pictures and Videos Open Windows Live Movie Maker. You can add videos or photos by simply dragging and dropping them onto the storyboard area. You can also click on the storyboard area or on the Add videos and photos button on the Home tab to browse for videos and photos. Windows Live Movie Maker supports most video, image, and audio file types. Select your files and add click Open to add them to Windows Live Movie Maker. By default WLMM doesn’t allow you to add files from network locations…so check out our article on how to add network support to Windows Live MovieMaker if the files you want to add are on a network drive. Layout All of your added clips will appear in the storyboard area on the right, while the currently selected clip will appear in the preview window on the left. You can adjust the size of the two areas by clicking and dragging the dividing line in the middle.    Make the clips on the storyboard bigger or smaller by clicking on the thumbnail size icon. The slider at the lower right adjusts the zoom time scale.   Previewing your Movie At any time, you can playback your movie and preview how it will look in the Preview window by clicking the space bar, or by pushing the play button under the preview window. You can also manually move the preview bar slider across the storyboard to view the clips as the video progresses. Adjusting Clips on the Storyboard You can click and drag clips on the storyboard to change the order in which the photos and videos appear.   Adding Music Nothing brings a movie to life quite like music. Selecting Add music will add your music to the beginning of the movie. Select Add music at the current point to include it in the movie to the current location of your preview bar slider, then browse for your music clip. WLMM supports many common audio files such as WAV, MP3, M4A, WMA, AIFF, and ASF. The music clip will appear above the video / photos clips on the storyboard.   You can change the location of music clips by clicking and dragging them to a different location on the storyboard. Add Titles, Captions, and Credits To add a Title screen to your movie, click the Title button on the Home tab. Type your title directly into the text box on the preview screen. The title will be placed at the location of the preview slider on the storyboard. However, you can change the location by clicking and dragging title to other areas of the storyboard. On the Format tab, there are a handful of text settings. You can change the font, color, size, alignment,  and transparency. The Adjust group allows you to change the background color, edit the text, and set the length of time the Title will appear in the movie.   The Effects group on the Format tab allows you to select an effect for your title screen. By hovering your cursor over each option, you will get a live preview of how each effect will appear in the preview window. Click to apply any of the effects. For captions, select where you want your caption to appear with the preview slider on the storyboard, then click the captions button on the Home tab. Just like the title, you type your caption directly into the text box on the preview screen, and you can make any adjustments by using the Font and Paragraph, Adjust, and Effects groups above. Credits are done the same as titles and captions, except they are automatically placed at the end of the movie.   Transitions Go to the Animation tab on the ribbon to apply transitions. Select a clip from the storyboard and hover over one of the transition to see it in the preview window. Click on the transition to apply it to the clip. You can apply transitions separately to clips or hold down Ctrl button while clicking to select multiple clips to which to apply the same transition. Pan and zoom effects are also located on the Animations tab, but can be applied to photos only. Like transition, you can apply them individually to a clip or hold down Ctrl button while clicking to select multiple clips to which to apply the same pan and zoom effect. Once applied, you can adjust the duration of the transitions and pan and zoom effects. You can also click the dropdown for additional transitions or effects. Visual Effects Similar to Pan and Zoom and Transitions, you can apply a variety of Visual Effects to individual or multiple clips. Editing Video and Music Note: This does not actually edit the original video you imported into your Windows Live Movie Maker project, only how it appears in your WLMM project. There are some very basic editing tools located on the Home tab. The Rotate left and Rotate right button will adjust any clip that may be oriented incorrectly. The Fit to music button will automatically adjust the duration of the photos (if you have any in your project) to fit the length of the music in your movie. Audio mix allows you to change the volume level   You can also do some slightly more advanced editing from the Edit tab. Select the video clip on the storyboard and click the Trim tool to edit or remove portions of a video clip. Next, click and drag the sliders in the preview windows to select the are you wish to keep. For example, the area outside the sliders is the area trimmed from the movie. The area inside is the section that is kept in the movie. You can also adjust the Start and End points manually on the ribbon.   When you are finished, click Save trim. You can also split your video clips. Move the preview slider to the location in the video clip where you’d like to split it, and select Split. Your video will be split into separate sections. Now you can apply different effects or move them to different locations on the storyboard. Editing Music Clips Select the music clip on the storyboard and then the Options tab on the ribbon. You can adjust the music volume by moving the slider right and left.   You can also choose to have your music clip fade in or out at the beginning and end of your movie. From the Fade in and Fade out dropdowns, select None, Slow, Medium, or Fast. To adjust the sound of your audio clips, click on the Edit tab, select the Video volume button, and adjust the slider. Move it all the way to the left to mute any background noise in your video clips.   AutoMovie As you have seen, Windows Live Movie Maker allows you to add effects, transitions, titles, and more. If you don’t want to do any of that stuff yourself, AutoMovie will automatically add title, credits, cross fade transitions between items, pan and zoom effects to photos, and fit your project to the music. Just select the AutoMovie button on the Home tab. You can go from zero to movie in literally a couple minutes.   Uploading to YouTube You can share your video on YouTube directly from Windows Live Movie Maker. Click on the YouTube icon in the Sharing group on the Home tab. You’ll be prompted for your YouTube username and password. Fill in the details about your movie and click Publish. The movie will be converted to WMV before being uploaded to YouTube. As soon as the YouTube conversion is complete, you’re new movie is live and ready to be viewed. Saving your Movie as a Video File Select the icon at the top left, then select Save movie. As you hover your mouse over each of the options, you will see the output display size, aspect ratio, and estimated file size per minute of video. All of these settings will output your movie as a WMV file. (Unfortunately, the only option is to save a movie as a WMV file.) The only difference is how they are encoded based on preset common settings. The Burn to DVD option also outputs a WMV file, but then opens Windows DVD Maker and walks you through the process of creating and burning a DVD.   If you choose the Burn to DVD option, close this window when the WMV file conversion is complete and the Windows DVD Maker will prompt you to begin. When your movie is finished, it’s time to relax and enjoy.   Conclusion Windows Live Movie Maker makes it easy for the average person to quickly churn out nice looking movies and slideshows from there own pictures and videos. However, long time users of previous editions (formerly called Windows Movie Maker) will likely be disappointed by some features missing in Windows Live Movie Maker that existed in earlier editions. Looking for details on burning your new project to DVD, check out our article on how to create and author DVDs with Windows DVD Maker. Download Windows Live Movie Maker Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Family Fun: Share Photos with Photo Gallery and Windows Live SpacesCreate and Author DVDs in Windows 7Rotate a Video 90 degrees with VLC or Windows Live Movie MakerInstall Windows Live Essentials In Windows 7How to Make/Edit a movie with Windows Movie Maker in Windows Vista TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for Windows Home Server Snagit 10 VMware Workstation 7 Acronis Online Backup Windows Firewall with Advanced Security – How To Guides Sculptris 1.0, 3D Drawing app AceStock, a Tiny Desktop Quote Monitor Gmail Button Addon (Firefox) Hyperwords addon (Firefox) Backup Outlook 2010

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• Silverlight 4 Training Kit

  - by ScottGu

  We recently released a new free Silverlight 4 Training Kit that walks you through building business applications with Silverlight 4.  You can browse the training kit online or alternatively download an entire offline version of the training kit.  The training material is structured on teaching how to use the new Silverlight 4 features to build an end to end business application. The training kit includes 8 modules, 25 videos, and several hands on labs. Below is a breakdown and links to all of the content. [In addition to blogging, I am also now using Twitter for quick updates and to share links. Follow me at: twitter.com/scottgu] Module 1: Introduction Click here to watch this module. In this video John Papa and Ian Griffiths discuss the key areas that the Building Business Applications with Silverlight 4 course focuses on. This module is the overview of the course and covers many key scenarios that are faced when building business applications, and how Silverlight can help address them. Module 2: WCF RIA Services Click here to explore this module. In this lab, you will create a web site for managing conferences that will be the basis for the other labs in this course. Don’t worry if you don’t complete a particular lab in the series – all lab manual instructions are accompanied by completed solutions, so you can either build your own solution from start to finish, or dive straight in at any point using the solutions provided as a starting point. In this lab you will learn how to set up WCF RIA Services, create bindings to the domain context, filter using the domain data source, and create domain service queries. Online Link Download Source Download Lab Document Videos Module 2.1 - WCF RIA Services Ian Griffiths sets up the Entity Framework and WCF RIA Services for the sample Event Manager application for the course. He covers how to set up the services, how the Domain Services work and the role that the DomainContext plays in the sample application. He also reviews the metadata classes and integrating the navigation framework. Module 2.2 – Using WCF RIA Services to Edit Entities Ian Griffiths discusses how he adds the ability to edit and create individual entities with the features built into WCF RIA Services into the sample Event Manager application. He covers data binding fundamentals, IQueryable, LINQ, the DomainDataSource, navigation to a single entity using the navigation framework, and how to use the Visual Studio designer to do much of the work . Module 2.3 – Showing Master/Details Records Using WCF RIA Services Ian Griffiths reviews how to display master/detail records for the sample Event Manager application using WCF RIA Services. He covers how to use the Include attribute to indicate which elements to serialize back to the client. Ian also demonstrates how to use the Data Sources window in the designer to add and bind controls to specific data elements. He wraps up by showing how to create custom services to the Domain Services. Module 3 – Authentication, Validation, MVVM, Commands, Implicit Styles and RichTextBox Click here to visit this module. This lab demonstrates how to build a login screen, integrate ASP.NET authentication, and perform validation on data elements. Model-View-ViewModel (MVVM) is introduced and used in this lab as a pattern to help separate the UI and business logic. You will also learn how to use implicit styling and the new RichTextBox control. Online Link Download Source Download Lab Document Videos Module 3.1 – Authentication Ian Griffiths covers how to integrate a login screen and authentication into the sample Event Manager application. Ian shows how to use the ASP.NET authentication and integrate it into WCF RIA Services and the Silverlight presentation layer. Module 3.2 – MVVM Ian Griffiths covers how to Model-View-ViewModel (MVVM) patterns into the sample Event Manager application. He discusses why MVVM exists, what separated presentation means, and why it is important. He shows how to connect the View to the ViewModel, why data binding is important in this symbiosis, and how everything fits together in the overall application. Module 3.3 –Validation Ian Griffiths discusses how validation of user input can be integrated into the sample Event Manager application. He demonstrates how to use the DataAnnotations, the INotifyDataErrorInfo interface, binding markup extensions, and WCF RIA Services in concert to achieve great validation in the sample application. He discusses how this technique allows for property level validation, entity level validation, and asynchronous server side validation. Module 3.4 – Implicit Styles Ian Griffiths discusses how why implicit styles are important and how they can be integrated into the sample Event Manager application. He shows how implicit styles defined in a resource dictionary can be applied to all elements of a particular kind throughout the application. Module 3.5 – RichTextBox Ian Griffiths discusses how the new RichTextBox control and it can be integrated into the sample Event Manager application. He demonstrates how the RichTextBox can provide editing for the event information and how it can display the rich text for selection and copying. Module 4 – User Profiles, Drop Targets, Webcam and Clipboard Click here to visit this module. This lab builds new features into the sample application to take the user's photo. It teaches you how to use the webcam to capture an image, use Silverlight as a drop target, and take advantage of programmatic access to the clipboard. Link Download Source Download Lab Document Videos Module 4.1 – Webcam Ian Griffiths demonstrates how the webcam adds value to the sample Event Manager application by capturing an image of the attendee. He discusses the VideoCaptureDevice, the CaptureDviceConfiguration, and the CaptureSource classes and how they allow audio and video to be captured so you can grab an image from the capture device and save it. Module 4.2 - Drag and Drop in Silverlight Ian Griffiths demonstrates how to capture and handle the Drop in the sample Event Manager application so the user can drag a photo from a file and drop it into the application. Ian reviews the AllowDrop property, the Drop event, how to access the file that can be dropped, and the other drag related events. He also reviews how to make this work across browsers and the challenges for this. Module 5 – Schedule Planner and Right Mouse Click Click here to visit this module. This lab builds on the application to allow grouping in the DataGrid and implement right mouse click features to add context menu support. Link Download Source Download Lab Document Videos Module 5.1 – Grouping and Binding Ian Griffiths demonstrates how to use the grouping features for data binding in the DataGrid and how it applies to the sample Event Manager application. He reviews the role of the CollectionViewSource in grouping, customizing the templates for headers, and how to work with grouping with ItemsControls. Module 5.2 – Layout Visual States Ian Griffiths demonstrates how to use the Fluid UI animation support for visual states in the ListBox control DataGrid and how it applies to the sample Event Manager application. He reviews the 3 visual states of BeforeLoaded, AfterLoaded, and BeforeUnloaded. Module 5.3 – Right Mouse Click Ian Griffiths demonstrates how to add support for handling the right mouse button click event to display a context menu for the Event Manager application. He demonstrates how to handle the event, show a custom context menu control, and integrate it into the scheduling portion of the application. Module 6 – Printing the Schedule Click here to visit this module. This lab teaches how to use the new printing features in Silverlight 4. The lab walks through the PrintDocument class and the ViewBox control, while showing how to print multiple pages of content using them. Link Download Source Download Lab Document Videos Module 6.1 – Printing and the Viewbox Ian Griffiths demonstrates how to add the ability to print the schedule to the sample Event Manager application. He walks through the importance of the PrintDocument class and its members. He also shows how to handle printing the visual tree and how the ViewBox control can help. Module 6.2 – Multi Page Printing Ian Griffiths expands on his printing discussion by showing how to handle printing multiple pages of content for the sample Event Manager application. He shows how to paginate the content and points out various tips to keep in mind when determining the printable area. Module 7 – Running the Event Dashboard Out of Browser Click here to visit this module. This lab builds a dashboard for the sample application while explaining the fundamentals of the out of browser features, how to handle authentication, displaying notifications (toasts), and how to use native integration to use COM Interop with Silverlight. Link Download Source Download Lab Document Videos Module 7.1 – Out of Browser Ian Griffiths discusses the role of an Out of Browser application for administrators to manage the events and users in the sample Event Manager application. He discusses several reasons why out of browser applications may better suit your needs including custom chrome, toasts, window placement, cross domain access, and file access. He demonstrates the basic technique to take your application and make it work out of browser using the tools. Module 7.2 – NotificationWindow (Toasts) for Elevated Trust Out of Browser Applications Ian Griffiths discusses the how toasts can be used in the sample Event Manager application to show information that may require the user's attention. Ian covers how to create a toast using the NotificationWindow, security implications, and how to make the toast appear as needed. Module 7.3 – Out of Browser Window Placement Ian Griffiths discusses the how to manage the window positioning when building an out of browser application, handling the windows state, and controlling and handling activation of the window. Module 7.4 – Out of Browser Elevated Trust Application Overview Ian Griffiths discusses the implications of creating trusted out of browser application for the Event Manager sample application. He reviews why you might want to use elevated trust, what features is opens to you, and how to take advantage of them. Topics Ian covers include the dynamic keyword in C# 4, the AutomationFactory class, the API to check if you are in a trusted application, and communicating with Excel. Module 8 – Advanced Out of Browser and MEF Click here to visit this module. This hands-on lab walks through the creation of a trusted out of browser application and the new functionality that comes with that. You will learn to use COM Automation, handle the window closing event, set custom window chrome, digitally sign your Silverlight out of browser trusted application, create a silent install option, and take advantage of MEF. Link Download Source Download Lab Document Videos Module 8.1 – Custom Window Chrome for Elevated Trust Out of Browser Applications Ian Griffiths discusses how to replace the standard operating system window chrome with customized chrome for an elevated trusted out of browser application. He covers how it is important to handle close, resize, minimize, and maximize events. Ian mentions that the tooling was not ready when he shot this video, but the good news is that the tooling now supports setting the custom chrome directly from the property page for the Silverlight application. Module 8.2 – Window Closing Event for Out of Browser Applications Ian Griffiths discusses the WindowClosing event and how to handle and optionally cancel the event. Module 8.3 – Silent Install of Out of Browser Applications Ian Griffiths discusses how to use the SLLauncher executable to install an out of browser application. He discusses the optional command line switches that can be set including how the emulate switch can help you emulate the install process. Ian also shows how to setup a shortcut for the application and tell the application where it should look for future updates online. Module 8.4 – Digitally Signing Out of Browser Application Ian Griffiths discusses how and why to digitally sign an out of browser application using the signtool program. He covers what trusted certificates are, the implications of signing (or not signing), and the effect on the user experience. Module 8.5 – The Value of MEF with Silverlight Ian Griffiths discusses what MEF is, how your application can benefit from it, and the fundamental features it puts at your disposal. He covers the 3 step import, export and compose process as well as how to dynamically import XAP files using MEF. Summary As you can probably tell from the long list above – this series contains a ton of great content, and hopefully provides a nice end-to-end walkthrough that helps explain how to take advantage of Silverlight 4 (and all its new features).  Hope this helps, Scott

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• Adding Unobtrusive Validation To MVCContrib Fluent Html

  - by srkirkland

  ASP.NET MVC 3 includes a new unobtrusive validation strategy that utilizes HTML5 data-* attributes to decorate form elements.  Using a combination of jQuery validation and an unobtrusive validation adapter script that comes with MVC 3, those attributes are then turned into client side validation rules. A Quick Introduction to Unobtrusive Validation To quickly show how this works in practice, assume you have the following Order.cs class (think Northwind) [If you are familiar with unobtrusive validation in MVC 3 you can skip to the next section]: public class Order : DomainObject { [DataType(DataType.Date)] public virtual DateTime OrderDate { get; set; }   [Required] [StringLength(12)] public virtual string ShipAddress { get; set; }   [Required] public virtual Customer OrderedBy { get; set; } } .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } Note the System.ComponentModel.DataAnnotations attributes, which provide the validation and metadata information used by ASP.NET MVC 3 to determine how to render out these properties.  Now let’s assume we have a form which can edit this Order class, specifically let’s look at the ShipAddress property: @Html.LabelFor(x => x.Order.ShipAddress) @Html.EditorFor(x => x.Order.ShipAddress) @Html.ValidationMessageFor(x => x.Order.ShipAddress) .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } Now the Html.EditorFor() method is smart enough to look at the ShipAddress attributes and write out the necessary unobtrusive validation html attributes.  Note we could have used Html.TextBoxFor() or even Html.TextBox() and still retained the same results. If we view source on the input box generated by the Html.EditorFor() call, we get the following: <input type="text" value="Rua do Paço, 67" name="Order.ShipAddress" id="Order_ShipAddress" data-val-required="The ShipAddress field is required." data-val-length-max="12" data-val-length="The field ShipAddress must be a string with a maximum length of 12." data-val="true" class="text-box single-line input-validation-error"> .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } As you can see, we have data-val-* attributes for both required and length, along with the proper error messages and additional data as necessary (in this case, we have the length-max=”12”). And of course, if we try to submit the form with an invalid value, we get an error on the client: Working with MvcContrib’s Fluent Html The MvcContrib project offers a fluent interface for creating Html elements which I find very expressive and useful, especially when it comes to creating select lists.  Let’s look at a few quick examples: @this.TextBox(x => x.FirstName).Class("required").Label("First Name:") @this.MultiSelect(x => x.UserId).Options(ViewModel.Users) @this.CheckBox("enabled").LabelAfter("Enabled").Title("Click to enable.").Styles(vertical_align => "middle")   @(this.Select("Order.OrderedBy").Options(Model.Customers, x => x.Id, x => x.CompanyName) .Selected(Model.Order.OrderedBy != null ? Model.Order.OrderedBy.Id : "") .FirstOption(null, "--Select A Company--") .HideFirstOptionWhen(Model.Order.OrderedBy != null) .Label("Ordered By:")) .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } These fluent html helpers create the normal html you would expect, and I think they make life a lot easier and more readable when dealing with complex markup or select list data models (look ma: no anonymous objects for creating class names!). Of course, the problem we have now is that MvcContrib’s fluent html helpers don’t know about ASP.NET MVC 3’s unobtrusive validation attributes and thus don’t take part in client validation on your page.  This is not ideal, so I wrote a quick helper method to extend fluent html with the knowledge of what unobtrusive validation attributes to include when they are rendered. Extending MvcContrib’s Fluent Html Before posting the code, there are just a few things you need to know.  The first is that all Fluent Html elements implement the IElement interface (MvcContrib.FluentHtml.Elements.IElement), and the second is that the base System.Web.Mvc.HtmlHelper has been extended with a method called GetUnobtrusiveValidationAttributes which we can use to determine the necessary attributes to include.  With this knowledge we can make quick work of extending fluent html: public static class FluentHtmlExtensions { public static T IncludeUnobtrusiveValidationAttributes<T>(this T element, HtmlHelper htmlHelper) where T : MvcContrib.FluentHtml.Elements.IElement { IDictionary<string, object> validationAttributes = htmlHelper .GetUnobtrusiveValidationAttributes(element.GetAttr("name"));   foreach (var validationAttribute in validationAttributes) { element.SetAttr(validationAttribute.Key, validationAttribute.Value); }   return element; } } .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } The code is pretty straight forward – basically we use a passed HtmlHelper to get a list of validation attributes for the current element and then add each of the returned attributes to the element to be rendered. The Extension In Action Now let’s get back to the earlier ShipAddress example and see what we’ve accomplished.  First we will use a fluent html helper to render out the ship address text input (this is the ‘before’ case): @this.TextBox("Order.ShipAddress").Label("Ship Address:").Class("class-name") .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } And the resulting HTML: <label id="Order_ShipAddress_Label" for="Order_ShipAddress">Ship Address:</label> <input type="text" value="Rua do Paço, 67" name="Order.ShipAddress" id="Order_ShipAddress" class="class-name"> Now let’s do the same thing except here we’ll use the newly written extension method: @this.TextBox("Order.ShipAddress").Label("Ship Address:") .Class("class-name").IncludeUnobtrusiveValidationAttributes(Html) .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } And the resulting HTML: <label id="Order_ShipAddress_Label" for="Order_ShipAddress">Ship Address:</label> <input type="text" value="Rua do Paço, 67" name="Order.ShipAddress" id="Order_ShipAddress" data-val-required="The ShipAddress field is required." data-val-length-max="12" data-val-length="The field ShipAddress must be a string with a maximum length of 12." data-val="true" class="class-name"> .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } Excellent!  Now we can continue to use unobtrusive validation and have the flexibility to use ASP.NET MVC’s Html helpers or MvcContrib’s fluent html helpers interchangeably, and every element will participate in client side validation. Wrap Up Overall I’m happy with this solution, although in the best case scenario MvcContrib would know about unobtrusive validation attributes and include them automatically (of course if it is enabled in the web.config file).  I know that MvcContrib allows you to author global behaviors, but that requires changing the base class of your views, which I am not willing to do. Enjoy!

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• How Expedia Made My New Bride Cry

  - by Lance Robinson

  Tweet this? Email Expedia and ask them to give me and my new wife our honeymoon? When Expedia followed up their failure with our honeymoon trip with a complete and total lack of acknowledgement of any responsibility for the problem and endless loops of explaining the issue over and over again - I swore that they would make it right. When they brought my new bride to tears, I got an immediate and endless supply of motivation. I hope you will help me make them make it right by posting our story on Twitter, Facebook, your blog, on Expedia itself, and when talking to your friends in person about their own travel plans.   If you are considering using them now for an important trip - reconsider. Short summary: We arrived early for a flight - but Expedia had made a mistake with the data they supplied to JetBlue and Emirates, which resulted in us not being able to check in (one leg of our trip was missing)!  At the time of this post, three people (myself, my wife, and an exceptionally patient JetBlue employee named Mary) each spent hours on the phone with Expedia.  I myself spent right at 3 hours (according to iPhone records), Lauren spent an hour and a half or so, and poor Mary was probably on the phone for a good 3.5 hours.  This is after 5 hours total at the airport.  If you add up our phone time, that is nearly 8 hours of phone time over a 5 hour period with little or no help, stall tactics (?), run-around, denial, shifting of blame, and holding. Details below (times are approximate): First, my wife and I were married yesterday - June 18th, the 3 year anniversary of our first date. She is awesome. She is the nicest person I have ever known, a ton of fun, absolutely beautiful in every way. Ok enough mushy - here are the dirty details. 2:30 AM - Early Check-in Attempt - we attempted to check-in for our flight online. Some sort of technology error on website, instructed to checkin at desk. 4:30 AM - Arrive at airport. Try to check-in at kiosk, get the same error. We got to the JetBlue desk at RDU International Airport, where Mary helped us. Mary discovered that the Expedia provided itinerary does not match the Expedia provided tickets. We are informed that when that happens American, JetBlue, and others that use the same software cannot check you in for the flight because. Why? Because the itinerary was missing a leg of our flight! Basically we were not shown in the system as definitely being able to make it home. Mary called Expedia and was put on hold by their automated system. 4:55 AM - Mary, myself, and my brand new bride all waited for about 25 minutes when finally I decided I would make a call myself on my iPhone while Mary was on the airport phone. In their automated system, I chose "make a new reservation", thinking they might answer a little more quickly than "customer service". Not surprisingly I was connected to an Expedia person within 1 minute. They informed me that they would have to forward me to a customer service specialist. I explained to them that we were already on hold for that and had been for nearly half an hour, that we were going on our honeymoon and that our flight would be leaving soon - could they please help us. "Yes, I will help you". I hand the phone to JetBlue Mary who explains the situation 3 or 4 times. Obviously I couldn't hear both ends of the conversation at this point, but the Expedia person explained what the problem was by stating exactly what Mary had just spent 15 minutes explaining. Mary calmly confirms that this is the problem, and asks Expedia to re-issue the itinerary. Expedia tells Mary that they'll have to transfer her to customer service. Mary asks for someone specific so that we get an answer this time, and goes on hold. Mary get's connected, explains the situation, and then Mary's connection gets terminated. 5:10 AM - Mary calls back to the Expedia automated system again, and we wait for about 5 minutes on hold this time before I pick up my iPhone and call Expedia again myself. Again I go to sales, a person picks up the phone in less than a minute. I explain the situation and let them know that we are now very close to missing our flight for our honeymoon, could they please help us. "Yes, I will help you". Again I give the phone to Mary who provides them with a call back number in case we get disconnected again and explains the situation again. More back and forth with Expedia doing nothing but repeating the same questions, Mary answering the questions with the same information she provided in the original explanation, and Expedia simply restating the problem. Mary again asks them to re-issue the itinerary, and explains that doing so will fix the problem. Expedia again repeats the problem instead of fixing it, and Mary's connection gets terminated. 5:20 AM - Mary again calls back to Expedia. My beautiful bride also calls on her own phone. At this point she is struggling to hold back her tears, stumbling through an explanation of all that has happened and that we are about to miss our flight. Please help us. "Yes, I will help". My beautiful bride's connection gets terminated. Ok, maybe this disconnection isn't an accident. We've now been disconnected 3 times on two different phones. 5:45 AM - I walk away and pleadingly beg a person to help me. They "escalate" the issue to "Rosy" (sp?) at Expedia. I go through the whole song and dance again with Rosy, who gives me the same treatment Mary was given. Rosy blames JetBlue for now having the correct data. Meanwhile Mary is on the phone with Emirates Air (the airline for the second leg of our trip), who agrees with JetBlue that Expedia's data isn't up to date. We are informed by two airport employees that issues like this with Expedia are not uncommon, and that the fix is simple. On the phone iwth Rosy, I ask her to re-issue the itinerary because we are about to miss our flight. She again explains the problem to me. At this point, I am standing at the window, pleading with Rosy to help us get to our honeymoon, watching our airplane. Then our airplane leaves without us. 6:03 AM - At this point we have missed our flight. Re-issuing the itinerary is no longer a solution. I ask Rosy to start from the beginning and work us up a new trip. She says that she cannot do that. She says that she needs to talk to JetBlue and Emirates and find out why we cannot check-in for our flight. I remind Rosy that our flight has already left - I just watched it taxi away - it no longer matters why (not to mention the fact that we already knew why, and have known why since 4:30 AM), and have known the solution since 4:30 AM. Rosy, can you please book a new trip? Yes, but it will cost $400. Excuse me? Now you can, but it will cost ME to fix your mistake? Rosy says that she can escalate the situation to her supervisor but that will take 1.5 hours. 6:15 AM - I told Rosy that if they had re-issued the itinerary as JetBlue asked (at 4:30 AM), my new wife and I might be on the airplane now instead of dealing with this on the phone and missing the beginning (and how much more?) of our honeymoon. Rosy said that it was not necessary to re-issue the itinerary. Out of curiosity, i asked Rosy if there was some financial burden on them to re-issue the itinerary. "No", said Rosy. I asked her if it was a large time burden on Expedia to re-issue the itinerary. "No", said Rosy. I directly asked Rosy: Why wouldn't Expedia have re-issued the itinerary when JetBlue asked? No answer. I asked Rosy: If you had re-issued the itinerary at 4:30, isn't it possible that I would be on that flight right now? She actually surprised me by answering "Yes" to that question. So I pointed out that it followed that Expedia was responsible for the fact that we missed out flight, and she immediately went into more about how the problem was with JetBlue - but now it was ALSO an Emirates Air problem as well. I tell Rosy to go ahead and escalate the issue again, and please call me back in that 1.5 hours (which how is about 1 hour and 10 minutes away). 6:30 AM - I start tweeting my frustration with iPhone. It's now pretty much impossible for us to make it to The Maldives by 3pm, which is the time at which we would need to arrive in order to be allowed service to the actual island where we are staying. Expedia has now given me the run-around for 2 hours, caused me to miss my flight, and worst of all caused my amazing new wife Lauren to miss our honeymoon. You think I was mad? No. Furious. Its ok to make mistakes - but to refuse to fix them and to ruin our honeymoon? No, not ok, Expedia. I swore right then that Expedia would make this right. 7:45 AM - JetBlue mary is still talking her tail off to other people in JetBlue and Emirates Air. Mary works it out so that if Expedia simply books a new trip, JetBlue and Emirates will both waive all the fees. Now we just have to convince Expedia to fix their mistake and get us on our way! Around this time Expedia Rosy calls me back! I inform her of the excellent work of JetBlue Mary - that JetBlue and Emirates both will waive the fees so Expedia can fix their mistake and get us going on our way. She says that she sees documentation of this in her system and that she needs to put me on hold "for 1 to 10 minutes" to talk to Emirates Air (why I'm not exactly sure). I say ok. 8:45 AM - After an hour on hold, Rosy comes on the line and asks me to hold more. I ask her to call me back. 9:35 AM - I put down the iPhone Twitter app and picks up the laptop. You think I made some noise with my iPhone? Heh 11:25 AM - Expedia follows me and sends a canned "We're sorry, DM us the details".  If you look at their Twitter feed, 16 out of the most recent 20 tweets are exactly the same canned response.  The other 4?  Ads.  Um - #MultiFAIL? To Expedia:  You now have had (as explained above) 8 hours of 3 different people explaining our situation, you know the email address of our Expedia account, you know my web blog, you know my Twitter address, you know my phone number.  You also know how upset you have made both me and my new bride by treating us with such a ... non caring, scripted, uncooperative, argumentative, and possibly even deceitful manner.  In the wise words of the great Kenan Thompson of SNL: "FIX IT!".  And no, I'm NOT going away until you make this right. Period. 11:45 AM - Expedia corporate office called.  The woman I spoke to was very nice and apologetic.  She listened to me tell the story again, she says she understands the problem and she is going to work to resolve it.  I don't have any details on what exactly that resolution might me, she said she will call me back in 20 minutes.  She found out about the problem via Twitter.  Thank you Twitter, and all of you who helped.  Hopefully social media will win my wife and I our honeymoon, and hopefully Expedia will encourage their customer service teams treat their customers properly. 12:22 PM - Spoke to Fran again from Expedia corporate office.  She has a flight for us tonight.  She is booking it now.  We will arrive at our honeymoon destination of beautiful Veligandu Island Resort only 1 day late.  She cannot confirm today, but she expects that Expedia will pay for the lost honeymoon night.  Thank you everyone for your help.  I will reflect more on this whole situation and confirm its resolution after our flight is 100% confirmed.  For now, I'm going to take a breather and go kiss my wonderful wife! 1:50 PM - Have not yet received the promised phone call.  We did receive an email with a new itinerary for a flight but the booking is not for specific seats, so there is no guarantee that my wife and I will be able to sit together.  With the original booking I carefully selected our seats for every segment of our trip.  I decided to call into the phone number that Fran from the Expedia corporate office gave me.  Its automated voice system identified itself as "Tier 3 Support".  I am currently still on hold with them, I have not gotten through to a human yet. 1:55 PM - Fran from Expedia called me back.  She confirmed us as booked.  She called the airlines to confirm.  Unfortunately, Expedia was unwilling or unable to allow us any type of seat selection.  It is possible that i won't get to sit next to the woman I married less than a day ago on our 40 total hours of flight time (there and back).  In addition, our seats could be the worst seats on the planes, with no reclining seat back or right next to the restroom.  Despite this fact (which in my opinion is huge), the horrible inconvenience, the hours at the airport, and the negative Internet publicity that Expedia is receiving, Expedia declined to offer us any kind of upgrade or to mark us as SFU (suitable for upgrade).  Since they didn't offer - I asked, and was rejected.  I am grateful to finally be heading in the right direction, but not only did Expedia horribly botch this job from the very beginning, they followed that botch job with near zero customer service, followed by a verbally apologetic but otherwise half-hearted resolution.  If this works out favorably for us, great.  If not - I'm not done making noise, Expedia.  You owe us, and I expect you to make it right.  You haven't quite done that yet. Thanks - Thank you to Twitter.  Thanks to all those who sympathize with us and helped us get the attention of Expedia, since three people (one of them an airline employee) using Expedia's normal channels of communication for many hours didn't help.  Thanks especially to my PowerShell and Sharepoint friends, my local friends, and those connectors who encouraged me and spread my story. 5:15 PM - Love Wins - After all this, Lauren and I are exhausted.  We both took a short nap, and when we woke up we talked about the last 24 hours.  It was a big, amazing, story-filled 24 hours.  I said that Expedia won, but Lauren said no.  She pointed out how lucky we are.  We are in love and married.  We have wonderful family and friends.  We are both hard-working successful people who love what they do.  We get to go to an amazing exotic destination for our honeymoon like Veligandu in The Maldives...  That's a lot of good.  Expedia didn't win.  This was (is) a big loss for Expedia.  It is a public blemish for all to see.  But Lauren and I did win, big time.  Expedia may not have made things right - but things are right for us.  Post in progress... I will relay any further comments (or lack of) from Expedia soon, as well as an update on confirmation of their repayment of our lost resort room rates.  I'll also post a picture of us on our honeymoon as soon as I can!

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• Host AngularJS (Html5Mode) in ASP.NET vNext

  - by Shaun

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/shaunxu/archive/2014/06/10/host-angularjs-html5mode-in-asp.net-vnext.aspxMicrosoft had announced ASP.NET vNext in BUILD and TechED recently and as a developer, I found that we can add features into one ASP.NET vNext application such as MVC, WebAPI, SignalR, etc.. Also it's cross platform which means I can host ASP.NET on Windows, Linux and OS X.   If you are following my blog you should knew that I'm currently working on a project which uses ASP.NET WebAPI, SignalR and AngularJS. Currently the AngularJS part is hosted by Express in Node.js while WebAPI and SignalR are hosted in ASP.NET. I was looking for a solution to host all of them in one platform so that my SignalR can utilize WebSocket. Currently AngularJS and SignalR are hosted in the same domain but different port so it has to use ServerSendEvent. It can be upgraded to WebSocket if I host both of them in the same port.   Host AngularJS in ASP.NET vNext Static File Middleware ASP.NET vNext utilizes middleware pattern to register feature it uses, which is very similar as Express in Node.js. Since AngularJS is a pure client side framework in theory what I need to do is to use ASP.NET vNext as a static file server. This is very easy as there's a build-in middleware shipped alone with ASP.NET vNext. Assuming I have "index.html" as below. 1: <html data-ng-app="demo"> 2: <head> 3: <script type="text/javascript" src="angular.js" /> 4: <script type="text/javascript" src="angular-ui-router.js" /> 5: <script type="text/javascript" src="app.js" /> 6: </head> 7: <body> 8: <h1>ASP.NET vNext with AngularJS</h1> 9: <div> 10: <a href="javascript:void(0)" data-ui-sref="view1">View 1</a> | 11: <a href="javascript:void(0)" data-ui-sref="view2">View 2</a> 12: </div> 13: <div data-ui-view></div> 14: </body> 15: </html> And the AngularJS JavaScript file as below. Notices that I have two views which only contains one line literal indicates the view name. 1: 'use strict'; 2:  3: var app = angular.module('demo', ['ui.router']); 4:  5: app.config(['$stateProvider', '$locationProvider', function ($stateProvider, $locationProvider) { 6: $stateProvider.state('view1', { 7: url: '/view1', 8: templateUrl: 'view1.html', 9: controller: 'View1Ctrl' }); 10:  11: $stateProvider.state('view2', { 12: url: '/view2', 13: templateUrl: 'view2.html', 14: controller: 'View2Ctrl' }); 15: }]); 16:  17: app.controller('View1Ctrl', function ($scope) { 18: }); 19:  20: app.controller('View2Ctrl', function ($scope) { 21: }); All AngularJS files are located in "app" folder and my ASP.NET vNext files are besides it. The "project.json" contains all dependencies I need to host static file server. 1: { 2: "dependencies": { 3: "Helios" : "0.1-alpha-*", 4: "Microsoft.AspNet.FileSystems": "0.1-alpha-*", 5: "Microsoft.AspNet.Http": "0.1-alpha-*", 6: "Microsoft.AspNet.StaticFiles": "0.1-alpha-*", 7: "Microsoft.AspNet.Hosting": "0.1-alpha-*", 8: "Microsoft.AspNet.Server.WebListener": "0.1-alpha-*" 9: }, 10: "commands": { 11: "web": "Microsoft.AspNet.Hosting server=Microsoft.AspNet.Server.WebListener server.urls=http://localhost:22222" 12: }, 13: "configurations" : { 14: "net45" : { 15: }, 16: "k10" : { 17: "System.Diagnostics.Contracts": "4.0.0.0", 18: "System.Security.Claims" : "0.1-alpha-*" 19: } 20: } 21: } Below is "Startup.cs" which is the entry file of my ASP.NET vNext. What I need to do is to let my application use FileServerMiddleware. 1: using System; 2: using Microsoft.AspNet.Builder; 3: using Microsoft.AspNet.FileSystems; 4: using Microsoft.AspNet.StaticFiles; 5:  6: namespace Shaun.AspNet.Plugins.AngularServer.Demo 7: { 8: public class Startup 9: { 10: public void Configure(IBuilder app) 11: { 12: app.UseFileServer(new FileServerOptions() { 13: EnableDirectoryBrowsing = true, 14: FileSystem = new PhysicalFileSystem(System.IO.Path.Combine(AppDomain.CurrentDomain.BaseDirectory, "app")) 15: }); 16: } 17: } 18: } Next, I need to create "NuGet.Config" file in the PARENT folder so that when I run "kpm restore" command later it can find ASP.NET vNext NuGet package successfully. 1: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> 2: <configuration> 3: <packageSources> 4: <add key="AspNetVNext" value="https://www.myget.org/F/aspnetvnext/api/v2" /> 5: <add key="NuGet.org" value="https://nuget.org/api/v2/" /> 6: </packageSources> 7: <packageSourceCredentials> 8: <AspNetVNext> 9: <add key="Username" value="aspnetreadonly" /> 10: <add key="ClearTextPassword" value="4d8a2d9c-7b80-4162-9978-47e918c9658c" /> 11: </AspNetVNext> 12: </packageSourceCredentials> 13: </configuration> Now I need to run "kpm restore" to resolve all dependencies of my application. Finally, use "k web" to start the application which will be a static file server on "app" sub folder in the local 22222 port.   Support AngularJS Html5Mode AngularJS works well in previous demo. But you will note that there is a "#" in the browser address. This is because by default AngularJS adds "#" next to its entry page so ensure all request will be handled by this entry page. For example, in this case my entry page is "index.html", so when I clicked "View 1" in the page the address will be changed to "/#/view1" which means it still tell the web server I'm still looking for "index.html". This works, but makes the address looks ugly. Hence AngularJS introduces a feature called Html5Mode, which will get rid off the annoying "#" from the address bar. Below is the "app.js" with Html5Mode enabled, just one line of code. 1: 'use strict'; 2:  3: var app = angular.module('demo', ['ui.router']); 4:  5: app.config(['$stateProvider', '$locationProvider', function ($stateProvider, $locationProvider) { 6: $stateProvider.state('view1', { 7: url: '/view1', 8: templateUrl: 'view1.html', 9: controller: 'View1Ctrl' }); 10:  11: $stateProvider.state('view2', { 12: url: '/view2', 13: templateUrl: 'view2.html', 14: controller: 'View2Ctrl' }); 15:  16: // enable html5mode 17: $locationProvider.html5Mode(true); 18: }]); 19:  20: app.controller('View1Ctrl', function ($scope) { 21: }); 22:  23: app.controller('View2Ctrl', function ($scope) { 24: }); Then let's went to the root path of our website and click "View 1" you will see there's no "#" in the address. But the problem is, if we hit F5 the browser will be turn to blank. This is because in this mode the browser told the web server I want static file named "view1" but there's no file on the server. So underlying our web server, which is built by ASP.NET vNext, responded 404. To fix this problem we need to create our own ASP.NET vNext middleware. What it needs to do is firstly try to respond the static file request with the default StaticFileMiddleware. If the response status code was 404 then change the request path value to the entry page and try again. 1: public class AngularServerMiddleware 2: { 3: private readonly AngularServerOptions _options; 4: private readonly RequestDelegate _next; 5: private readonly StaticFileMiddleware _innerMiddleware; 6:  7: public AngularServerMiddleware(RequestDelegate next, AngularServerOptions options) 8: { 9: _next = next; 10: _options = options; 11:  12: _innerMiddleware = new StaticFileMiddleware(next, options.FileServerOptions.StaticFileOptions); 13: } 14:  15: public async Task Invoke(HttpContext context) 16: { 17: // try to resolve the request with default static file middleware 18: await _innerMiddleware.Invoke(context); 19: Console.WriteLine(context.Request.Path + ": " + context.Response.StatusCode); 20: // route to root path if the status code is 404 21: // and need support angular html5mode 22: if (context.Response.StatusCode == 404 && _options.Html5Mode) 23: { 24: context.Request.Path = _options.EntryPath; 25: await _innerMiddleware.Invoke(context); 26: Console.WriteLine(">> " + context.Request.Path + ": " + context.Response.StatusCode); 27: } 28: } 29: } We need an option class where user can specify the host root path and the entry page path. 1: public class AngularServerOptions 2: { 3: public FileServerOptions FileServerOptions { get; set; } 4:  5: public PathString EntryPath { get; set; } 6:  7: public bool Html5Mode 8: { 9: get 10: { 11: return EntryPath.HasValue; 12: } 13: } 14:  15: public AngularServerOptions() 16: { 17: FileServerOptions = new FileServerOptions(); 18: EntryPath = PathString.Empty; 19: } 20: } We also need an extension method so that user can append this feature in "Startup.cs" easily. 1: public static class AngularServerExtension 2: { 3: public static IBuilder UseAngularServer(this IBuilder builder, string rootPath, string entryPath) 4: { 5: var options = new AngularServerOptions() 6: { 7: FileServerOptions = new FileServerOptions() 8: { 9: EnableDirectoryBrowsing = false, 10: FileSystem = new PhysicalFileSystem(System.IO.Path.Combine(AppDomain.CurrentDomain.BaseDirectory, rootPath)) 11: }, 12: EntryPath = new PathString(entryPath) 13: }; 14:  15: builder.UseDefaultFiles(options.FileServerOptions.DefaultFilesOptions); 16:  17: return builder.Use(next => new AngularServerMiddleware(next, options).Invoke); 18: } 19: } Now with these classes ready we will change our "Startup.cs", use this middleware replace the default one, tell the server try to load "index.html" file if it cannot find resource. The code below is just for demo purpose. I just tried to load "index.html" in all cases once the StaticFileMiddleware returned 404. In fact we need to validation to make sure this is an AngularJS route request instead of a normal static file request. 1: using System; 2: using Microsoft.AspNet.Builder; 3: using Microsoft.AspNet.FileSystems; 4: using Microsoft.AspNet.StaticFiles; 5: using Shaun.AspNet.Plugins.AngularServer; 6:  7: namespace Shaun.AspNet.Plugins.AngularServer.Demo 8: { 9: public class Startup 10: { 11: public void Configure(IBuilder app) 12: { 13: app.UseAngularServer("app", "/index.html"); 14: } 15: } 16: } Now let's run "k web" again and try to refresh our browser and we can see the page loaded successfully. In the console window we can find the original request got 404 and we try to find "index.html" and return the correct result.   Summary In this post I introduced how to use ASP.NET vNext to host AngularJS application as a static file server. I also demonstrated how to extend ASP.NET vNext, so that it supports AngularJS Html5Mode. You can download the source code here.   Hope this helps, Shaun All documents and related graphics, codes are provided "AS IS" without warranty of any kind. Copyright © Shaun Ziyan Xu. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons License.

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