Search Results

Search found 6772 results on 271 pages for 'wpf dummy'.

Page 263/271 | < Previous Page | 259 260 261 262 263 264 265 266 267 268 269 270  | Next Page >

• Building the Elusive Windows Phone Panorama Control

  When the Windows Phone 7 Developer SDK was released a couple of weeks ago at MIX10 many people noticed the SDK doesnt include a template for a Panorama control.   Here at Clarity we decided to build our own Panorama control for use in some of our prototypes and I figured I would share what we came up with. There have been a couple of implementations of the Panorama control making their way through the interwebs, but I didnt think any of them really nailed the experience that is shown in the simulation videos.   One of the key design principals in the UX Guide for Windows Phone 7 is the use of motion.  The WP7 OS is fairly stripped of extraneous design elements and makes heavy use of typography and motion to give users the necessary visual cues.  Subtle animations and wide layouts help give the user a sense of fluidity and consistency across the phone experience.  When building the panorama control I was fairly meticulous in recreating the motion as shown in the videos.  The effect that is shown in the application hubs of the phone is known as a Parallax Scrolling effect.  This this pseudo-3D technique has been around in the computer graphics world for quite some time. In essence, the background images move slower than foreground images, creating an illusion of depth in 2D.  Here is an example of the traditional use: http://www.mauriciostudio.com/.  One of the animation gems I've learned while building interactive software is the follow animation.  The premise is straightforward: instead of translating content 1:1 with the interaction point, let the content catch up to the mouse or finger.  The difference is subtle, but the impact on the smoothness of the interaction is huge.  That said, it became the foundation of how I achieved the effect shown below.   Source Code Available HERE Before I briefly describe the approach I took in creating this control..and Ill add some **asterisks ** to the code below as my coding skills arent up to snuff with the rest of my colleagues.  This code is meant to be an interpretation of the WP7 panorama control and is not intended to be used in a production application.  1.  Layout the XAML The UI consists of three main components :  The background image, the Title, and the Content.  You can imagine each  these UI Elements existing on their own plane with a corresponding Translate Transform to create the Parallax effect.  2.  Storyboards + Procedural Animations = Sexy As I mentioned above, creating a fluid experience was at the top of my priorities while building this control.  To recreate the smooth scroll effect shown in the video we need to add some place holder storyboards that we can manipulate in code to simulate the inertia and snapping.  Using the easing functions built into Silverlight helps create a very pleasant interaction.    3.  Handle the Manipulation Events With Silverlight 3 we have some new touch event handlers.  The new Manipulation events makes handling the interactivity pretty straight forward.  There are two event handlers that need to be hooked up to enable the dragging and motion effects: the ManipulationDelta event :  (the most relevant code is highlighted in pink) Here we are doing some simple math with the Manipulation Deltas and setting the TO values of the animations appropriately. Modifying the storyboards dynamically in code helps to create a natural feel.something that cant easily be done with storyboards alone.   And secondly, the ManipulationCompleted event:  Here we take the Final Velocities from the Manipulation Completed Event and apply them to the Storyboards to create the snapping and scrolling effects.  Most of this code is determining what the next position of the viewport will be.  The interesting part (shown in pink) is determining the duration of the animation based on the calculated velocity of the flick gesture.  By using velocity as a variable in determining the duration of the animation we can produce a slow animation for a soft flick and a fast animation for a strong flick. Challenges to the Reader There are a couple of things I didnt have time to implement into this control.  And I would love to see other WPF/Silverlight approaches.  1.  A good mechanism for deciphering when the user is manipulating the content within the panorama control and the panorama itself.   In other words, being able to accurately determine what is a flick and what is click. 2.  Dynamically Sizing the panorama control based on the width of its content.  Right now each control panel is 400px, ideally the Panel items would be measured and then panorama control would update its size accordingly.  3.  Background and content wrapping.  The WP7 UX guidelines specify that the content and background should wrap at the end of the list.  In my code I restrict the drag at the ends of the list (like the iPhone).  It would be interesting to see how this would effect the scroll experience.     Well, Its been fun building this control and if you use it Id love to know what you think.  You can download the Source HERE or from the Expression Gallery  Erik Klimczak  | [email protected] | twitter.com/eklimczDid you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

  Read the article

• Custom Glassfish Security Realm does not work (unable to find LoginModule)

  - by ifischer

  I'm trying to get a Custom Security Realm in Glassfish working (i tried 3.0.1 final and 3.1 B33). I read nearly all tutorials about this, but it doesn not work on my System. I'm getting the error Login failed: javax.security.auth.login.LoginException: unable to find LoginModule class: de.company.security.utility.CustomLoginModule when trying to login. Here is what i did: I created a little Maven project, which contains the needed Realm class, CustomRealm, and the corresponding LoginModule, CustomLoginModule. My pom.xml: <project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 http://maven.apache.org/xsd/maven-4.0.0.xsd"> <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion> <groupId>com.mycompany</groupId> <artifactId>CustomJDBCRealm</artifactId> <version>1.0-SNAPSHOT</version> <packaging>jar</packaging> <name>Custom JDBCRealm</name> <url>http://maven.apache.org</url> <properties> <project.build.sourceEncoding>UTF-8</project.build.sourceEncoding> </properties> <dependencies> <dependency> <groupId>org.glassfish.security</groupId> <artifactId>security</artifactId> <version>3.1-b33</version> </dependency> </dependencies> <build> <plugins> <plugin> <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId> <artifactId>maven-compiler-plugin</artifactId> <configuration> <source>1.6</source> <target>1.6</target> <optimise>true</optimise> <debug>true</debug> <encoding>UTF-8</encoding> </configuration> </plugin> </plugins> </build> </project> My Custom Realm class: package de.company.security.utility; import com.sun.appserv.security.AppservRealm; import com.sun.enterprise.security.auth.realm.BadRealmException; import com.sun.enterprise.security.auth.realm.InvalidOperationException; import com.sun.enterprise.security.auth.realm.NoSuchRealmException; import com.sun.enterprise.security.auth.realm.NoSuchUserException; import java.util.Enumeration; import java.util.Properties; import java.util.Vector; /** * * @author ifischer */ public class CustomRealm extends AppservRealm { Vector<String> groups = new Vector<String>(); private String jaasCtxName; private String startWith; @Override public void init(Properties properties) throws BadRealmException, NoSuchRealmException { jaasCtxName = properties.getProperty("jaas-context", "customRealm"); startWith = properties.getProperty("startWith", "z"); groups.add("dummy"); } @Override public String getAuthType() { return "Custom Realm"; } public String[] authenticate(String username, char[] password) { // if (isValidLogin(username, password)) return (String[]) groups.toArray(); } @Override public Enumeration getGroupNames(String username) throws InvalidOperationException, NoSuchUserException { return groups.elements(); } @Override public String getJAASContext() { return jaasCtxName; } public String getStartWith() { return startWith; } } My LoginModule class: /* * Copyright (c) 2010 ProfitBricks GmbH. All Rights Reserved. */ package de.company.security.utility; import com.sun.appserv.security.AppservPasswordLoginModule; import com.sun.enterprise.security.auth.login.common.LoginException; import java.util.Set; import org.glassfish.security.common.PrincipalImpl; /** * * @author ifischer */ public class CustomLoginModule extends AppservPasswordLoginModule { @Override protected void authenticateUser() throws LoginException { _logger.info("CustomRealm : authenticateUser for " + _username); final CustomRealm realm = (CustomRealm)_currentRealm; if ( (_username == null) || (_username.length() == 0) || !_username.startsWith(realm.getStartWith())) throw new LoginException("Invalid credentials"); String[] grpList = realm.authenticate(_username, getPasswordChar()); if (grpList == null) { throw new LoginException("User not in groups"); } _logger.info("CustomRealm : authenticateUser for " + _username); Set principals = _subject.getPrincipals(); principals.add(new PrincipalImpl(_username)); this.commitUserAuthentication(grpList); } } I compiled this Maven project and copyied the resulting JAR-file to the Glassfish/lib directory. Then i added the Security Realm "customRealm" to my Glassfish with asadmin: asadmin create-auth-realm --classname de.company.security.utility.CustomRealm --property jaas-context=customRealm:startWith=a customRealm I even referenced the LoginModule class for the JAAS context of my Custom Realm, therefore i inserted this into the login.conf of my domain: customRealm { de.company.security.utility.CustomLoginModule required; }; Although this LoginModule SHOULD BE on the Glassfish classpath, as it's classfiled is packaged in the JAR that i put into the Glassfish/lib-dir, it cannot be found when i try to login. For login, i build a really simple JSF-project, which calls the HttpServletRequest-login-method of Servlet 3.0. When trying to login i'm getting the following Exception: 2010-12-24T14:41:31.613+0100|WARNING|glassfish3.0.1| javax.enterprise.system.container.web.com.sun.web.security|_ThreadID=25; _ThreadName=Thread-1;|Web login failed: Login failed: javax.security.auth.login.LoginException: unable to find LoginModule class: de.company.security.utility.CustomLoginModule Anybody got an idea what i can do that Glassfish loads the LoginModule-class?

  Read the article

• Workarounds for supporting MVVM in the Silverlight TreeView Control

  - by cibrax

  MVVM (Model-View-ViewModel) is the pattern that you will typically choose for building testable user interfaces either in WPF or Silverlight. This pattern basically relies on the data binding support in those two technologies for mapping an existing model class (the view model) to the different parts of the UI or view. Unfortunately, MVVM was not threated as first citizen for some of controls released out of the box in the Silverlight runtime or the Silverlight toolkit. That means that using data binding for implementing MVVM is not always something trivial and usually requires some customization in the existing controls. In ran into different problems myself trying to fully support data binding in controls like the tree view or the context menu or things like drag & drop.  For that reason, I decided to write this post to show how the tree view control or the tree view items can be customized to support data binding in many of its properties. In first place, you will typically use a tree view for showing hierarchical data so the view model somehow must reflect that hierarchy. An easy way to implement hierarchy in a model is to use a base item element like this one, public abstract class TreeItemModel { public abstract IEnumerable<TreeItemModel> Children; } You can later derive your concrete model classes from that base class. For example, public class CustomerModel { public string FullName { get; set; } public string Address { get; set; } public IEnumerable<OrderModel> Orders { get; set; } }   public class CustomerTreeItemModel : TreeItemModel { public CustomerTreeItemModel(CustomerModel customer) { }   public override IEnumerable<TreeItemModel> Children { get { // Return orders } } } The Children property in the CustomerTreeItem model implementation can return for instance an ObservableCollection<TreeItemModel> with the orders, so the tree view will automatically subscribe to all the changes in the collection. You can bind this model to the tree view control in the UI by using a Hierarchical data template. <e:TreeView x:Name="TreeView" ItemsSource="{Binding Customers}"> <e:TreeView.ItemTemplate> <sdk:HierarchicalDataTemplate ItemsSource="{Binding Children}"> <!-- TEMPLATE --> </sdk:HierarchicalDataTemplate> </e:TreeView.ItemTemplate> </e:TreeView> An interesting behavior with the Children property and the Hierarchical data template is that the Children property is only invoked before the expansion, so you can use lazy load at this point (The tree view control will not expand the whole tree in the first expansion). The problem with using MVVM in this control is that you can not bind properties in model with specific properties of the TreeView item such as IsSelected or IsExpanded. Here is where you need to customize the existing tree view control to support data binding in tree items. public class CustomTreeView : TreeView { public CustomTreeView() { }   protected override DependencyObject GetContainerForItemOverride() { CustomTreeViewItem tvi = new CustomTreeViewItem(); Binding expandedBinding = new Binding("IsExpanded"); expandedBinding.Mode = BindingMode.TwoWay; tvi.SetBinding(CustomTreeViewItem.IsExpandedProperty, expandedBinding); Binding selectedBinding = new Binding("IsSelected"); selectedBinding.Mode = BindingMode.TwoWay; tvi.SetBinding(CustomTreeViewItem.IsSelectedProperty, selectedBinding); return tvi; } }   public class CustomTreeViewItem : TreeViewItem { public CustomTreeViewItem() { }   protected override DependencyObject GetContainerForItemOverride() { CustomTreeViewItem tvi = new CustomTreeViewItem(); Binding expandedBinding = new Binding("IsExpanded"); expandedBinding.Mode = BindingMode.TwoWay; tvi.SetBinding(CustomTreeViewItem.IsExpandedProperty, expandedBinding); Binding selectedBinding = new Binding("IsSelected"); selectedBinding.Mode = BindingMode.TwoWay; tvi.SetBinding(CustomTreeViewItem.IsSelectedProperty, selectedBinding); return tvi; } } You basically need to derive the TreeView and TreeViewItem controls to manually add a binding for the properties you need. In the example above, I am adding a binding for the “IsExpanded” and “IsSelected” properties in the items. The model for the tree items now needs to be extended to support those properties as well, public abstract class TreeItemModel : INotifyPropertyChanged { bool isExpanded = false; bool isSelected = false;   public abstract IEnumerable<TreeItemModel> Children { get; }   public bool IsExpanded { get { return isExpanded; } set { isExpanded = value; if (PropertyChanged != null) PropertyChanged(this, new PropertyChangedEventArgs("IsExpanded")); } }   public bool IsSelected { get { return isSelected; } set { isSelected = value; if (PropertyChanged != null) PropertyChanged(this, new PropertyChangedEventArgs("IsSelected")); } }   public event PropertyChangedEventHandler PropertyChanged; } However, as soon as you use this custom tree view control, you lose all the automatic styles from the built-in toolkit themes because they are tied to the control type (TreeView in this case).  The only ugly workaround I found so far for this problem is to copy the styles from the Toolkit source code and reuse them in the application.

  Read the article

• International Radio Operators Alphabet in F# &amp; Silverlight &ndash; Part 1

  - by MarkPearl

  So I have been delving into F# more and more and thought the best way to learn the language is to write something useful. I have been meaning to get some more Silverlight knowledge (up to now I have mainly been doing WPF) so I came up with a really simple project that I can actually use at work. Simply put – I often get support calls from clients wanting new activation codes. One of our main app’s was written in VB6 and had its own “security” where it would require about a 45 character sequence for it to be activated. The catch being that each time you reopen the program it would require a different character sequence, which meant that when we activate clients systems we have to do it live! This involves us either referring them to a website, or reading the characters to them over the phone and since nobody in the office knows the IROA off by heart we would come up with some interesting words to represent characters… 9 times out of 10 the client would type in the wrong character and we would have to start all over again… with this app I am hoping to reduce the errors of reading characters over the phone by treating it like a ham radio. My “Silverlight” application will allow for the user to input a series of characters and the system will then generate the equivalent IROA words… very basic stuff e.g. Character Input – abc Words Generated – Alpha Bravo Charlie After listening to Anders Hejlsberg on Dot Net Rocks Show 541 he mentioned that he felt many applications could make use of F# but in an almost silo basis – meaning that you would write modules that leant themselves to Functional Programming in F# and then incorporate it into a solution where the front end may be in C# or where you would have some other sort of glue. I buy into this kind of approach, so in this project I will use F# to do my very intensive “Business Logic” and will use Silverlight/C# to do the front end. F# Business Layer I am no expert at this, so I am sure to get some feedback on way I could improve my algorithm. My approach was really simple. I would need a function that would convert a single character to a string – i.e. ‘A’ –> “Alpha” and then I would need a function that would take a string of characters, convert them into a sequence of characters, and then apply my converter to return a sequence of words… make sense? Lets start with the CharToString function let CharToString (element:char) = match element.ToString().ToLower() with | "1" -> "1" | "5" -> "5" | "9" -> "9" | "2" -> "2" | "6" -> "6" | "0" -> "0" | "3" -> "3" | "7" -> "7" | "4" -> "4" | "8" -> "8" | "a" -> "Alpha" | "b" -> "Bravo" | "c" -> "Charlie" | "d" -> "Delta" | "e" -> "Echo" | "f" -> "Foxtrot" | "g" -> "Golf" | "h" -> "Hotel" | "i" -> "India" | "j" -> "Juliet" | "k" -> "Kilo" | "l" -> "Lima" | "m" -> "Mike" | "n" -> "November" | "o" -> "Oscar" | "p" -> "Papa" | "q" -> "Quebec" | "r" -> "Romeo" | "s" -> "Sierra" | "t" -> "Tango" | "u" -> "Uniform" | "v" -> "Victor" | "w" -> "Whiskey" | "x" -> "XRay" | "y" -> "Yankee" | "z" -> "Zulu" | element -> "Unknown" Quite simple, an element is passed in, this element is them converted to a lowercase single character string and then matched up with the equivalent word. If by some chance a character is not recognized, “Unknown” will be returned… I know need a function that can take a string and can parse each character of the string and generate a new sequence with the converted words… let ConvertCharsToStrings (s:string) = s |> Seq.toArray |> Seq.map(fun elem -> CharToString(elem)) Here… the Seq.toArray converts the string to a sequence of characters. I then searched for some way to parse through every element in the sequence. Originally I tried Seq.iter, but I think my understanding of what iter does was incorrect. Eventually I found Seq.map, which applies a function to every element in a sequence and then creates a new collection with the adjusted processed element. It turned out to be exactly what I needed… To test that everything worked I created one more function that parsed through every element in a sequence and printed it. AT this point I realized the the Seq.iter would be ideal for this… So my testing code is below… let PrintStrings items = items |> Seq.iter(fun x -> Console.Write(x.ToString() + " ")) let newSeq = ConvertCharsToStrings("acdefg123") PrintStrings newSeq Console.ReadLine()   Pretty basic stuff I guess… I hope my approach was right? In Part 2 I will look into doing a simple Silverlight Frontend, referencing the projects together and deploying….

  Read the article

• DBCC CHECKDB (BatmanDb, REPAIR_ALLOW_DATA_LOSS) &ndash; Are you Feeling Lucky?

  - by David Totzke

  I’m currently working for a client on a PowerBuilder to WPF migration.  It’s one of those “I could tell you, but I’d have to kill you” kind of clients and the quick-lime pits are currently occupied by the EMC tech…but I’ve said too much already. At approximately 3 or 4 pm that day users of the Batman[1] application here in Gotham[1] started to experience problems accessing the application.  Batman[2] is a document management system here that also integrates with the ERP system.  Very little goes on here that doesn’t involve Batman in some way.  The errors being received seemed to point to network issues (TCP protocol error, connection forcibly closed by the remote host etc…) but the real issue was much more insidious. Connecting to the database via SSMS and performing selects on certain tables underlying the application areas that were having problems started to reveal the issue.  You couldn’t do a SELECT * FROM MyTable without it bombing and giving the same error noted above.  A run of DBCC CHECKDB revealed 14 tables with corruption.  One of the tables with issues was the Document table.  Pretty central to a “document management” system.  Information was obtained from IT that a single drive in the SAN went bad in the night.  A new drive was in place and was working fine.  The partition that held the Batman database is configured for RAID Level 5 so a single drive failure shouldn’t have caused any trouble and yet, the database is corrupted.  They do hourly incremental backups here so the first thing done was to try a restore.  A restore of the most recent backup failed so they worked backwards until they hit a good point.  This successful restore was for a backup at 3AM – a full day behind.  This time also roughly corresponds with the time the SAN started to report the drive failure.  The plot thickens… I got my hands on the output from DBCC CHECKDB and noticed a pattern.  What’s sad is that nobody that should have noticed the pattern in the DBCC output did notice.  There was a rush to do things to try and recover the data before anybody really understood what was wrong with it in the first place.  Cooler heads must prevail in these circumstances and some investigation should be done and a plan of action laid out or you could end up making things worse[3].  DBCC CHECKDB also told us that: repair_allow_data_loss is the minimum repair level for the errors found by DBCC CHECKDB Yikes.  That means that the database is so messed up that you’re definitely going to lose some stuff when you repair it to get it back to a consistent state.  All the more reason to do a little more investigation into the problem.  Rescuing this database is preferable to having to export all of the data possible from this database into a new one.  This is a fifteen year old application with about seven hundred tables.  There are TRIGGERS everywhere not to mention the referential integrity constraints to deal with.  Only fourteen of the tables have an issue.  We have a good backup that is missing the last 24 hours of business which means we could have a “do-over” of yesterday but that’s not a very palatable option either. All of the affected tables had TEXT columns and all of the errors were about LOB data types and orphaned off-row data which basically means TEXT, IMAGE or NTEXT columns.  If we did a SELECT on an affected table and excluded those columns, we got all of the rows.  We exported that data into a separate database.  Things are looking up.  Working on a copy of the production database we then ran DBCC CHECKDB with REPAIR_ALLOW_DATA_LOSS and that “fixed” everything up.   The allow data loss option will delete the bad rows.  This isn’t too horrible as we have all of those rows minus the text fields from out earlier export.  Now I could LEFT JOIN to the exported data to find the missing rows and INSERT them minus the TEXT column data. We had the restored data from the good 3AM backup that we could now JOIN to and, with fingers crossed, recover the missing TEXT column information.  We got lucky in that all of the affected rows were old and in the end we didn’t lose anything.  :O  All of the row counts along the way worked out and it looks like we dodged a major bullet here. We’ve heard back from EMC and it turns out the SAN firmware that they were running here is apparently buggy.  This thing is only a couple of months old.  Grrr…. They dispatched a technician that night to come and update it .  That explains why RAID didn’t save us. All-in-all this could have been a lot worse.  Given the root cause here, they basically won the lottery in not losing anything. Here are a few links to some helpful posts on the SQL Server Engine blog.  I love the title of the first one: Which part of 'REPAIR_ALLOW_DATA_LOSS' isn't clear? CHECKDB (Part 8): Can repair fix everything? (in fact, read the whole series) Ta da! Emergency mode repair (we didn’t have to resort to this one thank goodness)   Dave Just because I can…   [1] Names have been changed to protect the guilty. [2] I'm Batman. [3] And if I'm the coolest head in the room, you've got even bigger problems...

  Read the article

• Handling HumanTask attachments in Oracle BPM 11g PS4FP+ (II)

  - by ccasares

  Retrieving uploaded attachments -UCM- As stated in my previous blog entry, Oracle BPM 11g 11.1.1.5.1 (aka PS4FP) introduced a new cool feature whereby you can use Oracle WebCenter Content (previously known as Oracle UCM) as the repository for the human task attached documents. For more information about how to use or enable this feature, have a look here. The attachment scope (either TASK or PROCESS) also applies to UCM-attachments. But even with this other feature, one question might arise when using UCM attachments. How can I get them from within the process? The first answer would be to use the same getTaskAttachmentContents() XPath function already explained in my previous blog entry. In fact, that's the way it should be. But in Oracle BPM 11g 11.1.1.5.1 (PS4FP) and 11.1.1.6.0 (PS5) there's a bug that prevents you to do that. If you invoke such function against a UCM-attachment, you'll get a null content response (bug#13907552). Even if the attachment was correctly uploaded. While this bug gets fixed, next I will show a workaround that lets me to retrieve the UCM-attached documents from within a BPM process. Besides, the sample will show how to interact with WCC API from within a BPM process.Aside note: I suggest you to read my previous blog entry about Human Task attachments where I briefly describe some concepts that are used next, such as the execData/attachment[] structure. Sample Process I will be using the following sample process: A dummy UserTask using "HumanTask2" Human Task, followed by an Embedded Subprocess that will retrieve the attachments payload. In this case, and here's the key point of the sample, we will retrieve such payload using WebCenter Content WebService API (IDC): and once retrieved, we will write each of them back to a file in the server using a File Adapter service: In detail:  We will use the same attachmentCollection XSD structure and same BusinessObject definition as in the previous blog entry. However we create a separate variable, named attachmentUCM, based on such BusinessObject. We will still need to keep a copy of the HumanTask output's execData structure. Therefore we need to create a new variable of type TaskExecutionData (different one than the other used for non-UCM attachments): As in the non-UCM attachments flow, in the output tab of the UserTask mapping, we'll keep a copy of the execData structure: Now we get into the embedded subprocess that will retrieve the attachments' payload. First, and using an XSLT transformation, we feed the attachmentUCM variable with the following information: The name of each attachment (from execData/attachment/name element) The WebCenter Content ID of the uploaded attachment. This info is stored in execData/attachment/URI element with the format ecm://<id>. As we just want the numeric <id>, we need to get rid of the protocol prefix ("ecm://"). We do so with some XPath functions as detailed below: with these two functions being invoked, respectively: We, again, set the target payload element with an empty string, to get the <payload></payload> tag created. The complete XSLT transformation is shown below. Remember that we're using the XSLT for-each node to create as many target structures as necessary.  Once we have fed the attachmentsUCM structure and so it now contains the name of each of the attachments along with each WCC unique id (dID), it is time to iterate through it and get the payload. Therefore we will use a new embedded subprocess of type MultiInstance, that will iterate over the attachmentsUCM/attachment[] element: In each iteration we will use a Service activity that invokes WCC API through a WebService. Follow these steps to create and configure the Partner Link needed: Login to WCC console with an administrator user (i.e. weblogic). Go to Administration menu and click on "Soap Wsdls" link. We will use the GetFile service to retrieve a file based on its dID. Thus we'll need such service WSDL definition that can be downloaded by clicking the GetFile link. Save the WSDL file in your JDev project folder. In the BPM project's composite view, drag & drop a WebService adapter to create a new External Reference, based on the just added GetFile.wsdl. Name it UCM_GetFile. WCC services are secured through basic HTTP authentication. Therefore we need to enable the just created reference for that: Right-click the reference and click on Configure WS Policies. Under the Security section, click "+" to add the "oracle/wss_username_token_client_policy" policy The last step is to set the credentials for the security policy. For the sample we will use the admin user for WCC (weblogic/welcome1). Open the composite.xml file and select the Source view. Search for the UCM_GetFile entry and add the following highlighted elements into it:   <reference name="UCM_GetFile" ui:wsdlLocation="GetFile.wsdl">     <interface.wsdl interface="http://www.stellent.com/GetFile/#wsdl.interface(GetFileSoap)"/>     <binding.ws port="http://www.stellent.com/GetFile/#wsdl.endpoint(GetFile/GetFileSoap)"                 location="GetFile.wsdl" soapVersion="1.1">       <wsp:PolicyReference URI="oracle/wss_username_token_client_policy"                            orawsp:category="security" orawsp:status="enabled"/>       <property name="weblogic.wsee.wsat.transaction.flowOption"                 type="xs:string" many="false">WSDLDriven</property>       <property name="oracle.webservices.auth.username"                 type="xs:string">weblogic</property>       <property name="oracle.webservices.auth.password"                 type="xs:string">welcome1</property>     </binding.ws>   </reference> Now the new external reference is ready: Once the reference has just been created, we should be able now to use it from our BPM process. However we find here a problem. The WCC GetFile service operation that we will use, GetFileByID, accepts as input a structure similar to this one, where all element tags are optional: <get:GetFileByID xmlns:get="http://www.stellent.com/GetFile/">    <get:dID>?</get:dID>   <get:rendition>?</get:rendition>   <get:extraProps>      <get:property>         <get:name>?</get:name>         <get:value>?</get:value>      </get:property>   </get:extraProps></get:GetFileByID> and we need to fill up just the <get:dID> tag element. Due to some kind of restriction or bug on WCC, the rest of the tag elements must NOT be sent, not even empty (i.e.: <get:rendition></get:rendition> or <get:rendition/>). A sample request that performs the query just by the dID, must be in the following format: <get:GetFileByID xmlns:get="http://www.stellent.com/GetFile/">   <get:dID>12345</get:dID></get:GetFileByID> The issue here is that the simple mapping in BPM does create empty tags being a sample result as follows: <get:GetFileByID xmlns:get="http://www.stellent.com/GetFile/"> <get:dID>12345</get:dID> <get:rendition/> <get:extraProps/> </get:GetFileByID> Although the above structure is perfectly valid, it is not accepted by WCC. Therefore, we need to bypass the problem. The workaround we use (many others are available) is to add a Mediator component between the BPM process and the Service that simply copies the input structure from BPM but getting rid of the empty tags. Follow these steps to configure the Mediator: Drag & drop a new Mediator component into the composite. Uncheck the creation of the SOAP bindings and use the Interface Definition from WSDL template and select the existing GetFile.wsdl Double click in the mediator to edit it. Add a static routing rule to the GetFileByID operation, of type Service and select References/UCM_GetFile/GetFileByID target service: Create the request and reply XSLT mappers: Make sure you map only the dID element in the request: And do an Auto-mapper for the whole response: Finally, we can now add and configure the Service activity in the BPM process. Drag & drop it to the embedded subprocess and select the NormalizedGetFile service and getFileByID operation: Map both the input: ...and the output: Once this embedded subprocess ends, we will have all attachments (name + payload) in the attachmentsUCM variable, which is the main goal of this sample. But in order to test everything runs fine, we finish the sample writing each attachment to a file. To that end we include a final embedded subprocess to concurrently iterate through each attachmentsUCM/attachment[] element: On each iteration we will use a Service activity that invokes a File Adapter write service. In here we have two important parameters to set. First, the payload itself. The file adapter awaits binary data in base64 format (string). We have to map it using XPath (Simple mapping doesn't recognize a String as a base64-binary valid target): Second, we must set the target filename using the Service Properties dialog box: Again, note how we're making use of the loopCounter index variable to get the right element within the embedded subprocess iteration. Final blog entry about attachments will handle how to inject documents to Human Tasks from the BPM process and how to share attachments between different User Tasks. Will come soon. Again, once I finish will all posts on this matter, I will upload the whole sample project to java.net.

  Read the article

• Adventures in Windows 8: Understanding and debugging design time data in Expression Blend

  - by Laurent Bugnion

  One of my favorite features in Expression Blend is the ability to attach a Visual Studio debugger to Blend. First let’s start by answering the question: why exactly do you want to do that? Note: If you are familiar with the creation and usage of design time data, feel free to scroll down to the paragraph titled “When design time data fails”. Creating design time data for your app When a designer works on an app, he needs to see something to design. For “static” UI such as buttons, backgrounds, etc, the user interface elements are going to show up in Blend just fine. If however the data is fetched dynamically from a service (web, database, etc) or created dynamically, most probably Blend is going to show just an empty element. The classical way to design at that stage is to run the application, navigate to the screen that is under construction (which can involve delays, need to log in, etc…), to measure what is on the screen (colors, margins, width and height, etc) using various tools, going back to Blend, editing the properties of the elements, running again, etc. Obviously this is not ideal. The solution is to create design time data. For more information about the creation of design time data by mocking services, you can refer to two talks of mine “Deep dive MVVM” and “MVVM Applied From Silverlight to Windows Phone to Windows 8”. The source code for these talks is here and here. Design time data in MVVM Light One of the main reasons why I developed MVVM Light is to facilitate the creation of design time data. To illustrate this, let’s create a new MVVM Light application in Visual Studio. Install MVVM Light from here: http://mvvmlight.codeplex.com (use the MSI in the Download section). After installing, make sure to read the Readme that opens up in your favorite browser, you will need one more step to install the Project Templates. Start Visual Studio 2012. Create a new MvvmLight (Win8) app. Run the application. You will see a string showing “Welcome to MVVM Light”. In the Solution explorer, right click on MainPage.xaml and select Open in Blend. Now you should see “Welcome to MVVM Light [Design]” What happens here is that Expression Blend runs different code at design time than the application runs at runtime. To do this, we use design-time detection (as explained in a previous article) and use that information to initialize a different data service at design time. To understand this better, open the ViewModelLocator.cs file in the ViewModel folder and see how the DesignDataService is used at design time, while the DataService is used at runtime. In a real-life applicationm, DataService would be used to connect to a web service, for instance. When design time data fails Sometimes however, the creation of design time data fails. It can be very difficult to understand exactly what is happening. Expression Blend is not giving a lot of information about what happened. Thankfully, we can use a trick: Attaching a debugger to Expression Blend and debug the design time code. In WPF and Silverlight (including Windows Phone 7), you could simply attach the debugger to Blend.exe (using the “Managed (v4.5, v4.0) code” option even for Silverlight!!) In Windows 8 however, things are just a bit different. This is because the designer that renders the actual representation of the Windows 8 app runs in its own process. Let’s illustrate that: Open the file DesignDataService in the Design folder. Modify the GetData method to look like this: public void GetData(Action<DataItem, Exception> callback) { throw new Exception(); // Use this to create design time data var item = new DataItem("Welcome to MVVM Light [design]"); callback(item, null); } Go to Blend and build the application. The build succeeds, but now the page is empty. The creation of the design time data failed, but we don’t get a warning message. We need to investigate what’s wrong. Close MainPage.xaml Go to Visual Studio and select the menu Debug, Attach to Process. Update: Make sure that you select “Managed (v4.5, v4.0) code” in the “Attach to” field. Find the process named XDesProc.exe. You should have at least two, one for the Visual Studio 2012 designer surface, and one for Expression Blend. Unfortunately in this screen it is not obvious which is which. Let’s find out in the Task Manager. Press Ctrl-Alt-Del and select Task Manager Go to the Details tab and sort the processes by name. Find the one that says “Blend for Microsoft Visual Studio 2012 XAML UI Designer” and write down the process ID. Go back to the Attach to Process dialog in Visual Studio. sort the processes by ID and attach the debugger to the correct instance of XDesProc.exe. Open the MainViewModel (in the ViewModel folder) Place a breakpoint on the first line of the MainViewModel constructor. Go to Blend and open the MainPage.xaml again. At this point, the debugger breaks in Visual Studio and you can execute your code step by step. Simply step inside the dataservice call, and find the exception that you had placed there. Visual Studio gives you additional information which helps you to solve the issue. More info and Conclusion I want to thank the amazing people on the Expression Blend team for being very fast in guiding me in that matter and encouraging me to blog about it. More information about the XDesProc.exe process can be found here. I had to work on a Windows 8 app for a few days without design time data because of an Exception thrown somewhere in the code, and it was really painful. With the debugger, finding the issue was a simple matter of stepping into the code until it threw the exception.   Laurent Bugnion (GalaSoft) Subscribe | Twitter | Facebook | Flickr | LinkedIn

  Read the article

• How to keep g++ from taking header file from /usr/include?

  - by WilliamKF

  I am building using zlib.h which I have a local copy to v1.2.5, but in /usr/include/zlib.h there is v1.2.1.2. If I omit adding -I/my/path/to/zlib to my make I get error from using old version which doesn't have Z_FIXED: g++ -g -Werror -Wredundant-decls -D_FILE_OFFSET_BITS=64 -c -o ARCH.linux_26_i86/debug/sysParam.o sysParam.cpp sysParam.cpp: In member function `std::string CSysParamAccess::getCompressionStrategyName() const': sysParam.cpp:1816: error: `Z_FIXED' was not declared in this scope sysParam.cpp: In member function `bool CSysParamAccess::setCompressionStrategy(const std::string&, paramSource)': sysParam.cpp:1849: error: `Z_FIXED' was not declared in this scope Alternatively, if I add the include path to the zlib z1.2.5 I am using, I get double defines, it seems as if the zlib.h is included twice with two different sets of -D values, but I don't see how that is happening: g++ -g -Werror -Wredundant-decls -I../../src/zlib-1.2.5 -D_FILE_OFFSET_BITS=64 -c -o ARCH.linux_26_i86/debug/sysParam.o sysParam.cpp In file included from sysParam.cpp:24: ../../src/zlib-1.2.5/zlib.h:1582: warning: redundant redeclaration of `void* gzopen64(const char*, const char*)' in same scope ../../src/zlib-1.2.5/zlib.h:1566: warning: previous declaration of `void* gzopen64(const char*, const char*)' ../../src/zlib-1.2.5/zlib.h:1583: warning: redundant redeclaration of `long long int gzseek64(void*, long long int, int)' in same scope ../../src/zlib-1.2.5/zlib.h:1567: warning: previous declaration of `off64_t gzseek64(void*, off64_t, int)' ../../src/zlib-1.2.5/zlib.h:1584: warning: redundant redeclaration of `long long int gztell64(void*)' in same scope ../../src/zlib-1.2.5/zlib.h:1568: warning: previous declaration of `off64_t gztell64(void*)' ../../src/zlib-1.2.5/zlib.h:1585: warning: redundant redeclaration of `long long int gzoffset64(void*)' in same scope ../../src/zlib-1.2.5/zlib.h:1569: warning: previous declaration of `off64_t gzoffset64(void*)' ../../src/zlib-1.2.5/zlib.h:1586: warning: redundant redeclaration of `uLong adler32_combine64(uLong, uLong, long long int)' in same scope ../../src/zlib-1.2.5/zlib.h:1570: warning: previous declaration of `uLong adler32_combine64(uLong, uLong, off64_t)' ../../src/zlib-1.2.5/zlib.h:1587: warning: redundant redeclaration of `uLong crc32_combine64(uLong, uLong, long long int)' in same scope ../../src/zlib-1.2.5/zlib.h:1571: warning: previous declaration of `uLong crc32_combine64(uLong, uLong, off64_t)' Here some of the relavent lines from zlib.h referred to above: // This would be line 1558 of zlib.h /* provide 64-bit offset functions if _LARGEFILE64_SOURCE defined, and/or * change the regular functions to 64 bits if _FILE_OFFSET_BITS is 64 (if * both are true, the application gets the *64 functions, and the regular * functions are changed to 64 bits) -- in case these are set on systems * without large file support, _LFS64_LARGEFILE must also be true */ #if defined(_LARGEFILE64_SOURCE) && _LFS64_LARGEFILE-0 ZEXTERN gzFile ZEXPORT gzopen64 OF((const char *, const char *)); ZEXTERN z_off64_t ZEXPORT gzseek64 OF((gzFile, z_off64_t, int)); ZEXTERN z_off64_t ZEXPORT gztell64 OF((gzFile)); ZEXTERN z_off64_t ZEXPORT gzoffset64 OF((gzFile)); ZEXTERN uLong ZEXPORT adler32_combine64 OF((uLong, uLong, z_off64_t)); ZEXTERN uLong ZEXPORT crc32_combine64 OF((uLong, uLong, z_off64_t)); #endif #if !defined(ZLIB_INTERNAL) && _FILE_OFFSET_BITS-0 == 64 && _LFS64_LARGEFILE-0 # define gzopen gzopen64 # define gzseek gzseek64 # define gztell gztell64 # define gzoffset gzoffset64 # define adler32_combine adler32_combine64 # define crc32_combine crc32_combine64 # ifdef _LARGEFILE64_SOURCE ZEXTERN gzFile ZEXPORT gzopen64 OF((const char *, const char *)); ZEXTERN z_off_t ZEXPORT gzseek64 OF((gzFile, z_off_t, int)); ZEXTERN z_off_t ZEXPORT gztell64 OF((gzFile)); ZEXTERN z_off_t ZEXPORT gzoffset64 OF((gzFile)); ZEXTERN uLong ZEXPORT adler32_combine64 OF((uLong, uLong, z_off_t)); ZEXTERN uLong ZEXPORT crc32_combine64 OF((uLong, uLong, z_off_t)); # endif #else ZEXTERN gzFile ZEXPORT gzopen OF((const char *, const char *)); ZEXTERN z_off_t ZEXPORT gzseek OF((gzFile, z_off_t, int)); ZEXTERN z_off_t ZEXPORT gztell OF((gzFile)); ZEXTERN z_off_t ZEXPORT gzoffset OF((gzFile)); ZEXTERN uLong ZEXPORT adler32_combine OF((uLong, uLong, z_off_t)); ZEXTERN uLong ZEXPORT crc32_combine OF((uLong, uLong, z_off_t)); #endif // This would be line 1597 of zlib.h I'm not sure how to track this down further. I tried moving the include of zlib.h to the top and bottom of the includes list of the cpp file, but it made no difference. An excerpt of passing -E to g++ shows in part: extern int inflateInit2_ (z_streamp strm, int windowBits, const char *version, int stream_size); extern int inflateBackInit_ (z_streamp strm, int windowBits, unsigned char *window, const char *version, int stream_size); # 1566 "../../src/zlib-1.2.5/zlib.h" extern gzFile gzopen64 (const char *, const char *); extern off64_t gzseek64 (gzFile, off64_t, int); extern off64_t gztell64 (gzFile); extern off64_t gzoffset64 (gzFile); extern uLong adler32_combine64 (uLong, uLong, off64_t); extern uLong crc32_combine64 (uLong, uLong, off64_t); # 1582 "../../src/zlib-1.2.5/zlib.h" extern gzFile gzopen64 (const char *, const char *); extern long long gzseek64 (gzFile, long long, int); extern long long gztell64 (gzFile); extern long long gzoffset64 (gzFile); extern uLong adler32_combine64 (uLong, uLong, long long); extern uLong crc32_combine64 (uLong, uLong, long long); # 1600 "../../src/zlib-1.2.5/zlib.h" struct internal_state {int dummy;}; Not sure why lines 1566 and 1582 are coming out together in the CPP output, but hence the warning about duplicate declarations.

  Read the article

• Quicktips 1: Windows 7 Libraries; New website

  - by Michael B. McLaughlin

  I’m working on several large posts right now. So in the interim, I’ve decided to do shorter posts that contain something I find very helpful. This is the first. I’ve been using Windows 7 since April 2010. It’s the first OS I’ve ever worked with that I actually enjoy. I’ve used many over the years (KERNAL; PC DOS; MS-DOS 3.x+; Windows 3.0, 3.11, 95, 98, 98 SE, Me, NT 3.51, NT 4, 2000, XP, Vista, 7; various GNU/Linux distros starting with Debian 1.2 – most recently Ubuntu 10.04; ProDOS, Mac OS 9.X, Mac OS X (through 10.4); SunOS, Solaris; AIX, z/OS; OpenVMS). Some were frustrating. Some tolerable. Some were “nice except for…”. OS X actually started out as seemingly “nice” until every single release contained a breaking change to some major API and they then decided to flip-off everyone who had bought a Mac as little as two years earlier with the release of Snow Leopard without PPC support. Windows 7 is the first one that’s just “nice” without any qualifiers. There are so many little features that add up to make it nice. Today’s Quicktip is one of them. Quicktip 1: Create a Library for your Code One thing I particularly like about Windows 7 is the Libraries feature in Explorer. Specifically the fact that you can create custom ones. I used to spend a lot of time opening new Explorer windows and navigating my various Visual Studio projects folders. Custom libraries allowed me to simplify that whole process. I now simply go to my “Code” library and there it all is. Adding a new library is easy. Open an Explorer window. If you aren’t in your Libraries when it opens, navigate to Libraries. Click the “New library” button. Give it a name. Then right click on the new library you created and go to “Properties”. Click the “Include a folder…” button. Choose the folder you want and press “Include folder”. Voilà! If you wish to add more, simply click “Include a folder…” again and repeat. It’s true that this is just a small time saver. But it’s one of those things that just adds a really nice touch. ------------------------ In a separate note, just before Christmas I finally finished and published my new website: http://www.bobtacoindustries.com/ . I waited to post here about it until I found time to incorporate a few things I hadn’t had the time to do when I pushed it out for its “soft open”. Most of them are now done and so my site is now formally open. I have no plans or intentions of moving my blog ( http://blog.bobtacoindustries.com/ points here). I quite like it here, both in terms of the interface and also in terms of the concept (and realization thereof) of pooling geek bloggers to create a pool of knowledge and helpful tips, tricks, techniques, and advice. I created it simply because I felt that it was time to have a website as I venture further into my return to the land of software development. The “For Devs” section should hopefully be useful to developers, particularly the links section. It’s my curated list of sites that I regularly visit to solve problems, to help answer questions on Twitter and the AppHub forums, and to learn new things. I’ll be adding links to it periodically and will be including topic areas as I become acquainted with them enough to form a proper list. WPF will likely be the first topic area added. If there are any links you think I should add to the existing topics, let me know! I warn in advance that I’m less inclined to add blogs; there are simply too many good blogs and I do not want to have hundreds per topic area. So blogs are limited primarily, though not exclusively, to acknowledged experts in the subject area who generally blog regularly about it and who usually are part of the team that develops the product or technology in question. I’m much more amenable to including individual blogs posts in the techniques subcategory in the appropriate topic area. Ultimately, it’s a collection of things I find interesting and helpful. So please no hard feelings if I don’t add a link you think is awesome. I may well think it’s awesome too, but conclude that it doesn’t fit with my goals for the dev links area.

  Read the article

• Composing Silverlight Applications With MEF

  - by PeterTweed

  Anyone who has written an application with complexity enough to warrant multiple controls on multiple pages/forms should understand the benefit of composite application development.  That is defining your application architecture that can be separated into separate pieces each with it’s own distinct purpose that can then be “composed” together into the solution. Composition can be useful in any layer of the application, from the presentation layer, the business layer, common services or data access.  Historically people have had different options to achieve composing applications from distinct well known pieces – their own version of dependency injection, containers to aid with composition like Unity, the composite application guidance for WPF and Silverlight and before that the composite application block. Microsoft has been working on another mechanism to aid composition and extension of applications for some time now – the Managed Extensibility Framework or MEF for short.  With Silverlight 4 it is part of the Silverlight environment.  MEF allows a much simplified mechanism for composition and extensibility compared to other mechanisms – which has always been the primary issue for adoption of the earlier mechanisms/frameworks. This post will guide you through the simple use of MEF for the scenario of composition of an application – using exports, imports and composition.  Steps: 1.     Create a new Silverlight 4 application. 2.     Add references to the following assemblies: System.ComponentModel.Composition.dll System.ComponentModel.Composition.Initialization.dll 3.     Add a new user control called LeftControl. 4.     Replace the LayoutRoot Grid with the following xaml:     <Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot" Background="Beige" Margin="40" >         <Button Content="Left Content" Margin="30"></Button>     </Grid> 5.     Add the following statement to the top of the LeftControl.xaml.cs file using System.ComponentModel.Composition; 6.     Add the following attribute to the LeftControl class     [Export(typeof(LeftControl))]   This attribute tells MEF that the type LeftControl will be exported – i.e. made available for other applications to import and compose into the application. 7.     Add a new user control called RightControl. 8.     Replace the LayoutRoot Grid with the following xaml:     <Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot" Background="Green" Margin="40"  >         <TextBlock Margin="40" Foreground="White" Text="Right Control" FontSize="16" VerticalAlignment="Center" HorizontalAlignment="Center" ></TextBlock>     </Grid> 9.     Add the following statement to the top of the RightControl.xaml.cs file using System.ComponentModel.Composition; 10.   Add the following attribute to the RightControl class     [Export(typeof(RightControl))] 11.   Add the following xaml to the LayoutRoot Grid in MainPage.xaml:         <StackPanel Orientation="Horizontal" HorizontalAlignment="Center">             <Border Name="LeftContent" Background="Red" BorderBrush="Gray" CornerRadius="20"></Border>             <Border Name="RightContent" Background="Red" BorderBrush="Gray" CornerRadius="20"></Border>         </StackPanel>   The borders will hold the controls that will be imported and composed via MEF. 12.   Add the following statement to the top of the MainPage.xaml.cs file using System.ComponentModel.Composition; 13.   Add the following properties to the MainPage class:         [Import(typeof(LeftControl))]         public LeftControl LeftUserControl { get; set; }         [Import(typeof(RightControl))]         public RightControl RightUserControl { get; set; }   This defines properties accepting LeftControl and RightControl types.  The attrributes are used to tell MEF the discovered type that should be applied to the property when composition occurs. 14.   Replace the MainPage constructore with the following code:         public MainPage()         {             InitializeComponent();             CompositionInitializer.SatisfyImports(this);             LeftContent.Child = LeftUserControl;             RightContent.Child = RightUserControl;         }   The CompositionInitializer.SatisfyImports(this) function call tells MEF to discover types related to the declared imports for this object (the MainPage object).  At that point, types matching those specified in the import defintions are discovered in the executing assembly location of the application and instantiated and assigned to the matching properties of the current object. 15.   Run the application and you will see the left control and right control types displayed in the MainPage:   Congratulations!  You have used MEF to dynamically compose user controls into a parent control in a composite application model. In the next post we will build on this topic to cover using MEF to compose Silverlight applications dynamically in download on demand scenarios – so .xap packages can be downloaded only when needed, avoiding large initial download for the main application xap. Take the Slalom Challenge at www.slalomchallenge.com!

  Read the article

• Factorising program not working. Help required.

  - by Ender

  I am working on a factorisation problem using Fermat's Factorization and for small numbers it is working well. I've been able to calculate the factors (getting the answers from Wolfram Alpha) for small numbers, like the one on the Wikipedia page (5959). Just when I thought I had the problem licked I soon realised that my program was not working when it came to larger numbers. The program follows through the examples from the Wikipedia page, printing out the values a, b, a2 and b2; the results printed for large numbers are not correct. I've followed the pseudocode provided on the Wikipedia page, but am struggling to understand where to go next. Along with the Wikipedia page I have been following this guide. Once again, as my Math knowledge is pretty poor I cannot follow what I need to do next. The code I am using so far is as follows: import java.math.BigInteger; /** * * @author AlexT */ public class Fermat { private BigInteger a, b; private BigInteger b2; private static final BigInteger TWO = BigInteger.valueOf(2); public void fermat(BigInteger N) { // floor(sqrt(N)) BigInteger tmp = getIntSqrt(N); // a <- ceil(sqrt(N)) a = tmp.add(BigInteger.ONE); // b2 <- a*a-N b2 = (a.multiply(a)).subtract(N); final int bitLength = N.bitLength(); BigInteger root = BigInteger.ONE.shiftLeft(bitLength / 2); root = root.add(b2.divide(root)).divide(TWO); // while b2 not square root while(!(isSqrt(b2, root))) { // a <- a + 1 a = a.add(BigInteger.ONE); // b2 <- (a * a) - N b2 = (a.multiply(a)).subtract(N); root = root.add(b2.divide(root)).divide(TWO); } b = getIntSqrt(b2); BigInteger a2 = a.pow(2); // Wrong BigInteger sum = (a.subtract(b)).multiply((a.add(b))); //if(sum.compareTo(N) == 0) { System.out.println("A: " + a + "\nB: " + b); System.out.println("A^2: " + a2 + "\nB^2: " + b2); //} } /** * Is the number provided a perfect Square Root? * @param n * @param root * @return */ private static boolean isSqrt(BigInteger n, BigInteger root) { final BigInteger lowerBound = root.pow(2); final BigInteger upperBound = root.add(BigInteger.ONE).pow(2); return lowerBound.compareTo(n) <= 0 && n.compareTo(upperBound) < 0; } public BigInteger getIntSqrt(BigInteger x) { // It returns s where s^2 < x < (s+1)^2 BigInteger s; // final result BigInteger currentRes = BigInteger.valueOf(0); // init value is 0 BigInteger currentSum = BigInteger.valueOf(0); // init value is 0 BigInteger sum = BigInteger.valueOf(0); String xS = x.toString(); // change input x to a string xS int lengthOfxS = xS.length(); int currentTwoBits; int i=0; // index if(lengthOfxS % 2 != 0) {// if odd length, add a dummy bit xS = "0".concat(xS); // add 0 to the front of string xS lengthOfxS++; } while(i < lengthOfxS){ // go through xS two by two, left to right currentTwoBits = Integer.valueOf(xS.substring(i,i+2)); i += 2; // sum = currentSum*100 + currentTwoBits sum = currentSum.multiply(BigInteger.valueOf(100)); sum = sum.add(BigInteger.valueOf(currentTwoBits)); // subtraction loop do { currentSum = sum; // remember the value before subtract // in next 3 lines, we work out // currentRes = sum - 2*currentRes - 1 sum = sum.subtract(currentRes); // currentRes++ currentRes = currentRes.add(BigInteger.valueOf(1)); sum = sum.subtract(currentRes); } while(sum.compareTo(BigInteger.valueOf(0)) >= 0); // the loop stops when sum < 0 // go one step back currentRes = currentRes.subtract(BigInteger.valueOf(1)); currentRes = currentRes.multiply(BigInteger.valueOf(10)); } s = currentRes.divide(BigInteger.valueOf(10)); // go one step back return s; } /** * @param args the command line arguments */ public static void main(String[] args) { Fermat fermat = new Fermat(); //Works //fermat.fermat(new BigInteger("5959")); // Doesn't Work fermat.fermat(new BigInteger("90283")); } } If anyone can help me out with this problem I'll be eternally grateful.

  Read the article

• ReSharper C# Live Template for Read-Only Dependency Property and Routed Event Boilerplate

  - by Bart Read

  Following on from my previous post, where I shared a Live Template for quickly declaring a normal read-write dependency property and its associated property change event boilerplate, here's an unsurprisingly similar template for creating a read-only dependency property.        #region $PROPNAME$ Read-Only Property and Property Change Routed Event        private static readonly DependencyPropertyKey $PROPNAME$PropertyKey =                                             DependencyProperty.RegisterReadOnly(             "$PROPNAME$", typeof ( $PROPTYPE$ ), typeof ( $DECLARING_TYPE$ ),             new PropertyMetadata( $DEF_VALUE$ , On$PROPNAME$Changed ) );       public static readonly DependencyProperty $PROPNAME$Property =                                           $PROPNAME$PropertyKey.DependencyProperty;        public $PROPTYPE$ $PROPNAME$         {             get { return ( $PROPTYPE$ ) GetValue( $PROPNAME$Property ); }             private set { SetValue( $PROPNAME$PropertyKey, value ); }         }       public static readonly RoutedEvent $PROPNAME$ChangedEvent   =                                           EventManager.RegisterRoutedEvent(           "$PROPNAME$Changed",           RoutingStrategy.$ROUTINGSTRATEGY$,           typeof( RoutedPropertyChangedEventHandler< $PROPTYPE$ > ),           typeof( $DECLARING_TYPE$ ) );       public event RoutedPropertyChangedEventHandler< $PROPTYPE$ > $PROPNAME$Changed       {           add { AddHandler( $PROPNAME$ChangedEvent, value ); }           remove { RemoveHandler( $PROPNAME$ChangedEvent, value ); }       }        private static void On$PROPNAME$Changed(           DependencyObject d, DependencyPropertyChangedEventArgs e)         {             var $DECLARING_TYPE_var$ = d as $DECLARING_TYPE$;            var args = new RoutedPropertyChangedEventArgs< $PROPTYPE$ >(               ( $PROPTYPE$ ) e.OldValue,               ( $PROPTYPE$ ) e.NewValue );           args.RoutedEvent    = $DECLARING_TYPE$.$PROPNAME$ChangedEvent;           $DECLARING_TYPE_var$.RaiseEvent( args );$END$        }        #endregion The only real difference here is the addition of the DependencyPropertyKey, which allows your implementation to set the value of the dependency property without exposing the setter code to consumers of your type. You'll probably find that you create read-only dependency properties much less often than read-write properties, but this should still save you some typing when you do need to do so. Technorati Tags: resharper,live template,c#,dependency property,read-only,routed events,property change,boilerplate,wpf

  Read the article

• Stumbling Through: Visual Studio 2010 (Part II)

  I would now like to expand a little on what I stumbled through in part I of my Visual Studio 2010 post and touch on a few other features of VS 2010.  Specifically, I want to generate some code based off of an Entity Framework model and tie it up to an actual data source.  Im not going to take the easy way and tie to a SQL Server data source, though, I will tie it to an XML data file instead.  Why?  Well, why not?  This is purely for learning, there are probably much better ways to get strongly-typed classes around XML but it will force us to go down a path less travelled and maybe learn a few things along the way.  Once we get this XML data and the means to interact with it, I will revisit data binding to this data in a WPF form and see if I cant get reading, adding, deleting, and updating working smoothly with minimal code.  To begin, I will use what was learned in the first part of this blog topic and draw out a data model for the MFL (My Football League) - I dont want the NFL to come down and sue me for using their name in this totally football-related article.  The data model looks as follows, with Teams having Players, and Players having a position and statistics for each season they played: Note that when making the associations between these entities, I was given the option to create the foreign key but I only chose to select this option for the association between Player and Position.  The reason for this is that I am picturing the XML that will contain this data to look somewhat like this: <MFL> <Position/> <Position/> <Position/> <Team>     <Player>         <Statistic/>     </Player> </Team> </MFL> Statistic will be under its associated Player node, and Player will be under its associated Team node no need to have an Id to reference it if we know it will always fall under its parent.  Position, however, is more of a lookup value that will not have any hierarchical relationship to the player.  In fact, the Position data itself may be in a completely different xml file (something Id like to play around with), so in any case, a player will need to reference the position by its Id. So now that we have a simple data model laid out, I would like to generate two things based on it:  A class for each entity with properties corresponding to each entity property An IO class with methods to get data for each entity, either all instances, by Id or by parent. Now my experience with code generation in the past has consisted of writing up little apps that use the code dom directly to regenerate code on demand (or using tools like CodeSmith).  Surely, there has got to be a more fun way to do this given that we are using the Entity Framework which already has built-in code generation for SQL Server support.  Lets start with that built-in stuff to give us a base to work off of.  Right click anywhere in the canvas of our model and select Add Code Generation Item: So just adding that code item seemed to do quite a bit towards what I was intending: It apparently generated a class for each entity, but also a whole ton more.  I mean a TON more.  Way too much complicated code was generated now that code is likely to be a black box anyway so it shouldnt matter, but we need to understand how to make this work the way we want it to work, so lets get ready to do some stumbling through that text template (tt) file. When I open the .tt file that was generated, right off the bat I realize there is going to be trouble there is no color coding, no intellisense no nothing!  That is going to make stumbling through more like groping blindly in the dark while handcuffed and hopping on one foot, which was one of the alternate titles I was considering for this blog.  Thankfully, the community comes to my rescue and I wont have to cast my mind back to the glory days of coding in VI (look it up, kids).  Using the Extension Manager (Available under the Tools menu), I did a quick search for tt editor in the Online Gallery and quickly found the Tangible T4 Editor: Downloading and installing this was a breeze, and after doing so I got some color coding and intellisense while editing the tt files.  If you will be doing any customizing of tt files, I highly recommend installing this extension.  Next, well see if that is enough help for us to tweak that tt file to do the kind of code generation that we wantDid you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

  Read the article

• Visual Tree Enumeration

  - by codingbloke

  I feel compelled to post this blog because I find I’m repeatedly posting this same code in silverlight and windows-phone-7 answers in Stackoverflow. One common task that we feel we need to do is burrow into the visual tree in a Silverlight or Windows Phone 7 application (actually more recently I found myself doing this in WPF as well).  This allows access to details that aren’t exposed directly by some controls.  A good example of this sort of requirement is found in the “Restoring exact scroll position of a listbox in Windows Phone 7”  question on stackoverflow.  This required that the scroll position of the scroll viewer internal to a listbox be accessed. A caveat One caveat here is that we should seriously challenge the need for this burrowing since it may indicate that there is a design problem.  Burrowing into the visual tree or indeed burrowing out to containing ancestors could represent significant coupling between module boundaries and that generally isn’t a good idea. Why isn’t this idea just not cast aside as a no-no?  Well the whole concept of a “Templated Control”, which are in extensive use in these applications, opens the coupling between the content of the visual tree and the internal code of a control.   For example, I can completely change the appearance and positioning of elements that make up a ComboBox.  The ComboBox control relies on specific template parts having set names of a specified type being present in my template.  Rightly or wrongly this does kind of give license to writing code that has similar coupling. Hasn’t this been done already? Yes it has.  There are number of blogs already out there with similar solutions.  In fact if you are using Silverlight toolkit the VisualTreeExtensions class already provides this feature.  However I prefer my specific code because of the simplicity principle I hold to.  Only write the minimum code necessary to give all the features needed.  In this case I add just two extension methods Ancestors and Descendents, note I don’t bother with “Get” or “Visual” prefixes.  Also I haven’t added Parent or Children methods nor additional “AndSelf” methods because all but Children is achievable with the addition of some other Linq methods.  I decided to give Descendents an additional overload for depth hence a depth of 1 is equivalent to Children but this overload is a little more flexible than simply Children. So here is the code:- VisualTreeEnumeration public static class VisualTreeEnumeration {     public static IEnumerable<DependencyObject> Descendents(this DependencyObject root, int depth)     {         int count = VisualTreeHelper.GetChildrenCount(root);         for (int i = 0; i < count; i++)         {             var child = VisualTreeHelper.GetChild(root, i);             yield return child;             if (depth > 0)             {                 foreach (var descendent in Descendents(child, --depth))                     yield return descendent;             }         }     }     public static IEnumerable<DependencyObject> Descendents(this DependencyObject root)     {         return Descendents(root, Int32.MaxValue);     }     public static IEnumerable<DependencyObject> Ancestors(this DependencyObject root)     {         DependencyObject current = VisualTreeHelper.GetParent(root);         while (current != null)         {             yield return current;             current = VisualTreeHelper.GetParent(current);         }     } }   Usage examples The following are some examples of how to combine the above extension methods with Linq to generate the other axis scenarios that tree traversal code might require. Missing Axis Scenarios var parent = control.Ancestors().Take(1).FirstOrDefault(); var children = control.Descendents(1); var previousSiblings = control.Ancestors().Take(1)     .SelectMany(p => p.Descendents(1).TakeWhile(c => c != control)); var followingSiblings = control.Ancestors().Take(1)     .SelectMany(p => p.Descendents(1).SkipWhile(c => c != control).Skip(1)); var ancestorsAndSelf = Enumerable.Repeat((DependencyObject)control, 1)     .Concat(control.Ancestors()); var descendentsAndSelf = Enumerable.Repeat((DependencyObject)control, 1)     .Concat(control.Descendents()); You might ask why I don’t just include these in the VisualTreeEnumerator.  I don’t on the principle of only including code that is actually needed.  If you find that one or more of the above  is needed in your code then go ahead and create additional methods.  One of the downsides to Extension methods is that they can make finding the method you actually want in intellisense harder. Here are some real world usage scenarios for these methods:- Real World Scenarios //Gets the internal scrollviewer of a ListBox ScrollViewer sv = someListBox.Descendents().OfType<ScrollViewer>().FirstOrDefault(); // Get all text boxes in current UserControl:- var textBoxes = this.Descendents().OfType<TextBox>(); // All UIElement direct children of the layout root grid:- var topLevelElements = LayoutRoot.Descendents(0).OfType<UIElement>(); // Find the containing `ListBoxItem` for a UIElement:- var container = elem.Ancestors().OfType<ListBoxItem>().FirstOrDefault(); // Seek a button with the name "PinkElephants" even if outside of the current Namescope:- var pinkElephantsButton = this.Descendents()     .OfType<Button>()     .FirstOrDefault(b => b.Name == "PinkElephants"); //Clear all checkboxes with the name "Selector" in a Treeview foreach (CheckBox checkBox in elem.Descendents()     .OfType<CheckBox>().Where(c => c.Name == "Selector")) {     checkBox.IsChecked = false; }   The last couple of examples above demonstrate a common requirement of finding controls that have a specific name.  FindName will often not find these controls because they exist in a different namescope. Hope you find this useful, if not I’m just glad to be able to link to this blog in future stackoverflow answers.

  Read the article

• On Reflector Pricing

  - by Nick Harrison

  I have heard a lot of outrage over Red Gate's decision to charge for Reflector. In the interest of full disclosure, I am a fan of Red Gate. I have worked with them on several usability tests. They also sponsor Simple Talk where I publish articles. They are a good company. I am also a BIG fan of Reflector. I have used it since Lutz originally released it. I have written my own add-ins. I have written code to host reflector and use its object model in my own code. Reflector is a beautiful tool. The care that Lutz took to incorporate extensibility is amazing. I have never had difficulty convincing my fellow developers that it is a wonderful tool. Almost always, once anyone sees it in action, it becomes their favorite tool. This wide spread adoption and usability has made it an icon and pivotal pillar in the DotNet community. Even folks with the attitude that if it did not come out of Redmond then it must not be any good, still love it. It is ironic to hear everyone clamoring for it to be released as open source. Reflector was never open source, it was free, but you never were able to peruse the source code and contribute your own changes. You could not even use Reflector to view the source code. From the very beginning, it was never anyone's intention for just anyone to examine the source code and make their own contributions aside from the add-in model. Lutz chose to hand over the reins to Red Gate because he believed that they would be able to build on his original vision and keep the product viable and effective. He did not choose to make it open source, hoping that the community would be up to the challenge. The simplicity and elegance may well have been lost with the "design by committee" nature of open source. Despite being a wonderful and beloved tool, Reflector cannot be an easy tool to maintain. Maybe because it is so wonderful and beloved, it is even more difficult to maintain. At any rate, we have high expectations. Reflector must continue to be able to reasonably disassemble every language construct that the framework and core languages dream up. We want it to be fast, and we also want it to continue to be simple to use. No small order. Red Gate tried to keep the core product free. Sadly there was not enough interest in the Pro version to subsidize the rest of the expenses. $35 is a reasonable cost, more than reasonable. I have read the blog posts and forum posts complaining about the time associated with getting the expense approved. I have heard people complain about the cost being unreasonable if you are a developer from certain countries. Let's do the math. How much of a productivity boost is Reflector? How many hours do you think it saves you in a typical project? The next question is a little easier if you are a contractor or a consultant, but what is your hourly rate? If you are not a contractor, you can probably figure out an hourly rate. How long does it take to get a return on your investment? The value added proposition is not a difficult one to make. I have read people clamoring that Red Gate sucks and is evil. They complain about broken promises and conflicts of interest. Relax! Red Gate is not evil. The world is not coming to an end. The sun will come up tomorrow. I am sure that Red Gate will come up with options for volume licensing or site licensing for companies that want to get a licensed copy for their entire team. Don't panic, and I am sure that many great improvements are on the horizon. Switching the UI to WPF and including a tabbed interface opens up lots of possibilities.

  Read the article

• Think before you animate

  - by David Paquette

  Animations are becoming more and more common in our applications.  With technologies like WPF, Silverlight and jQuery, animations are becoming easier for developers to use (and abuse).  When used properly, animation can augment the user experience.  When used improperly, animation can degrade the user experience.  Sometimes, the differences can be very subtle. I have recently made use of animations in a few projects and I very quickly realized how easy it is to abuse animation techniques.  Here are a few things I have learned along the way. 1) Don’t animate for the sake of animating We’ve all seen the PowerPoint slides with annoying slide transitions that animate 20 different ways.  It’s distracting and tacky.  The same holds true for your application.  While animations are fun and becoming easy to implement, resist the urge to use the technology just because you think the technology is amazing.   2) Animations should (and do) have meaning I recently built a simple Windows Phone 7 (WP7) application, Steeped (download it here).  The application has 2 pages.  The first page lists a number of tea types.  When the user taps on one of the tea types, the application navigates to the second page with information about that tea type and some options for the user to choose from.       One of the last things I did before submitting Steeped to the marketplace was add a page transition between the 2 pages.  I choose the Slide / Fade Out transition.  When the user selects a tea type, the main page slides to the left and fades out.  At the same time, the details page slides in from the right and fades in.  I tested it and thought it looked great so I submitted the app.  A few days later, I asked a friend to try the app.  He selected a tea type, and I was a little surprised by how he used the app.  When he wanted to navigate back to the main page, instead of pressing the back button on the phone, he tried to use a swiping gesture.  Of course, the swiping gesture did nothing because I had not implemented that feature.  After thinking about it for a while, I realized that the page transition I had chosen implied a particular behaviour.  As a user, if an action I perform causes an item (in this case the page) to move, then my expectation is that I should be able to move it back.  I have since added logic to handle the swipe gesture and I think the app flows much better now. When using animation, it pays to ask yourself:  What story does this animation tell my users?   3) Watch the replay Some animations might seem great initially but can get annoying over time.  When you use an animation in your application, make sure you try using it over and over again to make sure it doesn’t get annoying.  When I add an animation, I try watch it at least 25 times in a row.  After watching the animation repeatedly, I can make a more informed decision whether or not I should keep the animation.  Often, I end up shortening the length of the animations.   4) Don’t get in the users way An animation should never slow the user down.  When implemented properly, an animation can give a perceived bump in performance.  A good example of this is a the page transitions in most of the built in apps on WP7.  Obviously, these page animations don’t make the phone any faster, but they do provide a more responsive user experience.  Why?  Because most of the animations begin as soon as the user has performed some action.  The destination page might not be fully loaded yet, but the system responded immediately to user action, giving the impression that the system is more responsive.  If the user did not see anything happen until after the destination page was fully loaded, the application would feel clumsy and slow.  Also, it is important to make sure the animation does not degrade the performance (or perceived performance) of the application.   Jut a few things to consider when using animations.  As is the case with many technologies, we often learn how to misuse it before we learn how to use it effectively.

  Read the article

• Data Binding to Attached Properties

  - by Chris Gardner

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/freestylecoding/archive/2013/06/14/data-binding-to-attached-properties.aspx When I was working on my C#/XAML game framework, I discovered I wanted to try to data bind my sprites to background objects. That way, I could update my objects and the draw functionality would take care of the work for me. After a little experimenting and web searching, it appeared this concept was an impossible dream. Of course, when has that ever stopped me? In my typical way, I started to massively dive down the rabbit hole. I created a sprite on a canvas, and I bound it to a background object. <Canvas Name="GameField" Background="Black"> <Image Name="PlayerStrite" Source="Assets/Ship.png" Width="50" Height="50" Canvas.Left="{Binding X}" Canvas.Top="{Binding Y}"/> </Canvas> Now, we wire the UI item to the background item. public MainPage() { this.InitializeComponent(); this.Loaded += StartGame; }   void StartGame( object sender, RoutedEventArgs e ) { BindingPlayer _Player = new BindingPlayer(); _Player.X = Window.Current.Bounds.Height - PlayerSprite.Height; _Player.X = ( Window.Current.Bounds.Width - PlayerSprite.Width ) / 2.0; } Of course, now we need to actually have our background object. public class BindingPlayer : INotifyPropertyChanged { private double m_X; public double X { get { return m_X; } set { m_X = value; NotifyPropertyChanged(); } }   private double m_Y; public double Y { get { return m_Y; } set { m_Y = value; NotifyPropertyChanged(); } }   public event PropertyChangedEventHandler PropertyChanged; protected void NotifyPropertyChanged( [CallerMemberName] string p_PropertyName = null ) { if( PropertyChanged != null ) PropertyChanged( this, new PropertyChangedEventArgs( p_PropertyName ) ); } } I fired this baby up, and my sprite was correctly positioned on the screen. Maybe the sky wasn't falling after all. Wouldn't it be great if that was the case? I created some code to allow me to move the sprite, but nothing happened. This seems odd. So, I start debugging the application and stepping through code. Everything appears to be working. Time to dig a little deeper. After much profanity was spewed, I stumbled upon a breakthrough. The code only looked like it was working. What was really happening is that there was an exception being thrown in the background thread that I never saw. Apparently, the key call was the one to PropertyChanged. If PropertyChanged is not called on the UI thread, the UI thread ignores the call. Actually, it throws an exception and the background thread silently crashes. Of course, you'll never see this unless you're looking REALLY carefully. This seemed to be a simple problem. I just need to marshal this to the UI thread. Unfortunately, this object has no knowledge of this mythical UI Thread in which we speak. So, I had to pull the UI Thread out of thin air. Let's change our PropertyChanged call to look this. public event PropertyChangedEventHandler PropertyChanged; protected void NotifyPropertyChanged( [CallerMemberName] string p_PropertyName = null ) { if( PropertyChanged != null ) Windows.ApplicationModel.Core.CoreApplication.MainView.CoreWindow.Dispatcher.RunAsync( Windows.UI.Core.CoreDispatcherPriority.Normal, new Windows.UI.Core.DispatchedHandler( () => { PropertyChanged( this, new PropertyChangedEventArgs( p_PropertyName ) ); } ) ); } Now, we raised our notification on the UI thread. Everything is fine, people are happy, and the world moves on. You may have noticed that I didn't await my call to the dispatcher. This was intentional. If I am trying to update a slew of sprites, I don't want thread being hung while I wait my turn. Thus, I send the message and move on. It is worth nothing that this is NOT the most efficient way to do this for game programming. We'll get to that in another blog post. However, it is perfectly acceptable for a business app that is running a background task that would like to notify the UI thread of progress on a periodic basis. It is worth noting that this code was written for a Windows Store App. You can do the same thing with WP8 and WPF. The call to the marshaler changes, but it is the same idea.

  Read the article

• Why bother writing an Windows 8 app?

  - by Dennis Vroegop

  So you want to know more about development for Window 8. Great! There are lots of reasons you should be excited about this. Since I don’t know why YOU are interested in this, I’ll make a list of reasons people can choose from. (as a side note: whenever I talk about Win8 development I am referring to the Metro Style / WinRt side of things. Apps for the ‘classic’ desktop side of Win8 on Intel are business as usual…) So… Why would you care about making an app for Windows 8? 1. It’s cool. Let’s not beat around the bush: if you like development for a hobby then you’ll love to work on this new platform. You can create apps in a relative short time (short time as in compared to writing a new CRM system) and that makes it great for a hobby product. 2. You’ll stand out. Hey, we all need an ego boost every now and then. We all need to feel special. So if you can manage to be one of the first to have you app in the Store then you’ll likely to be noticed. Just close your eyes for a moment and image you standing in a bar. It’s crowded, and then you casually say “Oh yeah, I just had my app certified and it’s in the Win8 store now”. People will stop talking, will offer you drinks and beautiful women / gorgeous man / furry creatures from Alpha Centauri (whatever your preferences are) will propose. Or maybe not. Anyway…. 3. Make some cash! IDC predicts there will be about 350,000,000 Windows 8 licenses sold in the next year. Think about that number. 350,000,000. And they all have access to the Store. Where you’re app will be. With one little click they can select it, download and somehow magically $1.00 or $2.00 from their bank account is transferred to yours. Now, I am not saying that all of those people will download and buy your app but what if only 1% of them did? Remember: there aren’t that many apps available yet….. 4. Learn. Creating new small apps is a great way to learn new stuff. Yes, you could read about it (on this blog for instance) but the only way to learn something is to do it. So be prepared for the future and learn something new by doing it.Write an app! Now! 5. The biggie (for me at least): it’s fun. Even if you remove the points above it’s still fun to write for these devices and this platform. Now some of you will say : “But why not write a great app for IOS or Android?” I think this is a valid question. Of course the novelty of the platform wears out and points 2 and 3 from above list will not be as relevant as it is today. But still 1 4 and 5 remain. And don’t forget: if you already work on the Microsoft platform it’s not that hard to learn this new Win8 stuff. If you have done some XAML development (be it WPF or Silverlight) you are almost there in becoming a good Win8 developer. So you’ll be more productive much sooner than when you have to learn Objective C or Java. Even if you’re a HTML / Javascript developer (I say developer here, not designer) you’ll be up to speed on Win8 development pretty soon. Yes, you, that funky Web Developer who lives and breathes HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript / Node.Js / JQuery: you too can be a Win8 developer. A first class Win8 developer! So.. Download the stuff you need from http://dev.windows.com install Windows 8 and Visual Studio 12 and by the time you’re ready I’ll be working on the next article: how to do all this? Happy coding!

  Read the article

• More elegant way to make a C++ member function change different member variables based on template p

  - by Eric Moyer

  Today, I wrote some code that needed to add elements to different container variables depending on the type of a template parameter. I solved it by writing a friend helper class specialized on its own template parameter which had a member variable of the original class. It saved me a few hundred lines of repeating myself without adding much complexity. However, it seemed kludgey. I would like to know if there is a better, more elegant way. The code below is a greatly simplified example illustrating the problem and my solution. It compiles in g++. #include <vector> #include <algorithm> #include <iostream> namespace myNS{ template<class Elt> struct Container{ std::vector<Elt> contents; template<class Iter> void set(Iter begin, Iter end){ contents.erase(contents.begin(), contents.end()); std::copy(begin, end, back_inserter(contents)); } }; struct User; namespace WkNS{ template<class Elt> struct Worker{ User& u; Worker(User& u):u(u){} template<class Iter> void set(Iter begin, Iter end); }; }; struct F{ int x; explicit F(int x):x(x){} }; struct G{ double x; explicit G(double x):x(x){} }; struct User{ Container<F> a; Container<G> b; template<class Elt> void doIt(Elt x, Elt y){ std::vector<Elt> v; v.push_back(x); v.push_back(y); Worker<Elt>(*this).set(v.begin(), v.end()); } }; namespace WkNS{ template<class Elt> template<class Iter> void Worker<Elt>::set(Iter begin, Iter end){ std::cout << "Set a." << std::endl; u.a.set(begin, end); } template<> template<class Iter> void Worker<G>::set(Iter begin, Iter end){ std::cout << "Set b." << std::endl; u.b.set(begin, end); } }; }; int main(){ using myNS::F; using myNS::G; myNS::User u; u.doIt(F(1),F(2)); u.doIt(G(3),G(4)); } User is the class I was writing. Worker is my helper class. I have it in its own namespace because I don't want it causing trouble outside myNS. Container is a container class whose definition I don't want to modify, but is used by User in its instance variables. doIt<F> should modify a. doIt<G> should modify b. F and G are open to limited modification if that would produce a more elegant solution. (As an example of one such modification, in the real application F's constructor takes a dummy parameter to make it look like G's constructor and save me from repeating myself.) In the real code, Worker is a friend of User and member variables are private. To make the example simpler to write, I made everything public. However, a solution that requires things to be public really doesn't answer my question. Given all these caveats, is there a better way to write User::doIt?

  Read the article

• Elegant way for a recursive C++ template to do something different with the leaf class?

  - by Costas

  I have a C++ class template that makes an Array of pointers. This also gets typedefed to make Arrays of Arrays and so on: typedef Array<Elem> ElemArray; typedef Array<ElemArray> ElemArrayArray; typedef Array<ElemArrayArray> ElemArrayArrayArray; I would like to be able to set one leaf node from another by copying the pointer so they both refer to the same Elem. But I also want to be able to set one Array (or Array of Arrays etc) from another. In this case I don't want to copy the pointers, I want to keep the arrays seperate and descend into each one until I get to the leaf node, at where I finally copy the pointers. I have code that does this (below). When you set something in an Array it calls a CopyIn method to do the copying. But because this is templated it also has to call the CopyIn method on the leaf class, which means I have to add a dummy method to every leaf class that just returns false. I have also tried adding a flag to the template to tell it whether it contains Arrays or not, and so whether to call the CopyIn method. This works fine - the CopyIn method of the leaf nodes never gets called, but it still has to be there for the compile to work! Is there a better way to do this? #include <stdio.h> class Elem { public: Elem(int v) : mI(v) {} void Print() { printf("%d\n",mI); } bool CopyIn(Elem *v) { return false; } int mI; }; template < typename T > class Array { public: Array(int size) : mB(0), mN(size) { mB = new T* [size]; for (int i=0; i<mN; i++) mB[i] = new T(mN); } ~Array() { for (int i=0; i<mN; i++) delete mB[i]; delete [] mB; } T* Get(int i) { return mB[i]; } void Set(int i, T* v) { if (! mB[i]->CopyIn(v) ) { // its not an array, so copy the pointer mB[i] = v; } } bool CopyIn(Array<T>* v) { for (int i=0; i<mN; i++) { if (v && i < v->mN ) { if ( ! mB[i]->CopyIn( v->mB[i] )) { // its not an array, so copy the pointer mB[i] = v->mB[i]; } } else { mB[i] = 0; } } return true; // we did the copy, no need to copy pointer } void Print() { for (int i=0; i<mN; i++) { printf("[%d] ",i); mB[i]->Print(); } } private: T **mB; int mN; }; typedef Array<Elem> ElemArray; typedef Array<ElemArray> ElemArrayArray; typedef Array<ElemArrayArray> ElemArrayArrayArray; int main () { ElemArrayArrayArray* a = new ElemArrayArrayArray(2); ElemArrayArrayArray* b = new ElemArrayArrayArray(3); // In this case I need to copy the pointer to the Elem into the ElemArrayArray a->Get(0)->Get(0)->Set(0, b->Get(0)->Get(0)->Get(0)); // in this case I need go down through a and b until I get the to Elems // so I can copy the pointers a->Set(1,b->Get(2)); b->Get(0)->Get(0)->Get(0)->mI = 42; // this will also set a[0,0,0] b->Get(2)->Get(1)->Get(1)->mI = 96; // this will also set a[1,1,1] // should be 42,2, 2,2, 3,3, 3,96 a->Print(); }

  Read the article

• Building a Repository Pattern against an EF 5 EDMX Model - Part 1

  - by Juan

  I am part of a year long plus project that is re-writing an existing application for a client.  We have decided to develop the project using Visual Studio 2012 and .NET 4.5.  The project will be using a number of technologies and patterns to include Entity Framework 5, WCF Services, and WPF for the client UI.This is my attempt at documenting some of the successes and failures that I will be coming across in the development of the application.In building the data access layer we have to access a database that has already been designed by a dedicated dba. The dba insists on using Stored Procedures which has made the use of EF a little more difficult.  He will not allow direct table access but we did manage to get him to allow us to use Views.  Since EF 5 does not have good support to do Code First with Stored Procedures, my option was to create a model (EDMX) against the existing database views.   I then had to go select each entity and map the Insert/Update/Delete functions to their respective stored procedure. The next step after I had completed mapping the stored procedures to the entities in the EDMX model was to figure out how to build a generic repository that would work well with Entity Framework 5.  After reading the blog posts below, I adopted much of their code with some changes to allow for the use of Ninject for dependency injection.http://www.tcscblog.com/2012/06/22/entity-framework-generic-repository/ http://www.tugberkugurlu.com/archive/generic-repository-pattern-entity-framework-asp-net-mvc-and-unit-testing-triangle IRepository.cs public interface IRepository : IDisposable where T : class { void Add(T entity); void Update(T entity, int id); T GetById(object key); IQueryable Query(Expression> predicate); IQueryable GetAll(); int SaveChanges(); int SaveChanges(bool validateEntities); } GenericRepository.cs public abstract class GenericRepository : IRepository where T : class { public abstract void Add(T entity); public abstract void Update(T entity, int id); public abstract T GetById(object key); public abstract IQueryable Query(Expression> predicate); public abstract IQueryable GetAll(); public int SaveChanges() { return SaveChanges(true); } public abstract int SaveChanges(bool validateEntities); public abstract void Dispose(); } One of the issues I ran into was trying to do an update. I kept receiving errors so I posted a question on Stack Overflow http://stackoverflow.com/questions/12585664/an-object-with-the-same-key-already-exists-in-the-objectstatemanager-the-object and came up with the following hack. If someone has a better way, please let me know. DbContextRepository.cs public class DbContextRepository : GenericRepository where T : class { protected DbContext Context; protected DbSet DbSet; public DbContextRepository(DbContext context) { if (context == null) throw new ArgumentException("context"); Context = context; DbSet = Context.Set(); } public override void Add(T entity) { if (entity == null) throw new ArgumentException("Cannot add a null entity."); DbSet.Add(entity); } public override void Update(T entity, int id) { if (entity == null) throw new ArgumentException("Cannot update a null entity."); var entry = Context.Entry(entity); if (entry.State == EntityState.Detached) { var attachedEntity = DbSet.Find(id); // Need to have access to key if (attachedEntity != null) { var attachedEntry = Context.Entry(attachedEntity); attachedEntry.CurrentValues.SetValues(entity); } else { entry.State = EntityState.Modified; // This should attach entity } } } public override T GetById(object key) { return DbSet.Find(key); } public override IQueryable Query(Expression> predicate) { return DbSet.Where(predicate); } public override IQueryable GetAll() { return Context.Set(); } public override int SaveChanges(bool validateEntities) { Context.Configuration.ValidateOnSaveEnabled = validateEntities; return Context.SaveChanges(); } #region IDisposable implementation public override void Dispose() { if (Context != null) { Context.Dispose(); GC.SuppressFinalize(this); } } #endregion IDisposable implementation } At this point I am able to start creating individual repositories that are needed and add a Unit of Work.  Stay tuned for the next installment in my path to creating a Repository Pattern against EF5.

  Read the article

• Multiset of shared_ptrs as a dynamic priority queue: Concept and practice

  - by Sarah

  I was using a vector-based priority queue typedef std::priority_queue< Event, vector< Event >, std::greater< Event > > EventPQ; to manage my Event objects. Now my simulation has to be able to find and delete certain Event objects not at the top of the queue. I'd like to know if my planned work-around can do what I need it to, and if I have the syntax right. I'd also like to know if dramatically better solutions exist. My plan is to make EventPQ a multiset of smart pointers to Event objects: typedef std::multi_set< boost::shared_ptr< Event > > EventPQ; I'm borrowing functions of the Event class from a related post on a multimap priority queue. // Event.h #include <cstdlib> using namespace std; #include <set> #include <boost/shared_ptr.hpp> class Event; typedef std::multi_set< boost::shared_ptr< Event > > EventPQ; class Event { public: Event( double t, int eid, int hid ); ~Event(); void add( EventPQ& q ); void remove(); bool operator < ( const Event & rhs ) const { return ( time < rhs.time ); } bool operator > ( const Event & rhs ) const { return ( time > rhs.time ); } double time; int eventID; int hostID; EventPQ* mq; EventPQ::iterator mIt; }; // Event.cpp Event::Event( double t, int eid, int hid ) { time = t; eventID = eid; hostID = hid; } Event::~Event() {} void Event::add( EventPQ& q ) { mq = &q; mIt = q.insert( boost::shared_ptr<Event>(this) ); } void Event::remove() { mq.erase( mIt ); mq = 0; mIt = EventPQ::iterator(); } I was hoping that by making EventPQ a container of pointers, I could avoid wasting time copying Events into the container and avoid accidentally editing the wrong copy. Would it be dramatically easier to store the Events themselves in EventPQ instead? Does it make more sense to remove the time keys from Event objects and use them instead as keys in a multimap? Assuming the current implementation seems okay, my questions are: Do I need to specify how to sort on the pointers, rather than the objects, or does the multiset automatically know to sort on the objects pointed to? If I have a shared_ptr ptr1 to an Event that also has a pointer in the EventPQ container, how do I find and delete the corresponding pointer in EventPQ? Is it enough to .find( ptr1 ), or do I instead have to find by the key (time)? Is the Event::remove() sufficient for removing the pointer in the EventPQ container? There's a small chance multiple events could be created with the same time (obviously implied in the use of multiset). If the find() works on event times, to avoid accidentally deleting the wrong event, I was planning to throw in a further check on eventID and hostID. Does this seem reasonable? (Dumb syntax question) In Event.h, is the declaration of dummy class Event;, then the EventPQ typedef, and then the real class Event declaration appropriate? I'm obviously an inexperienced programmer with very spotty background--this isn't for homework. Would love suggestions and explanations. Please let me know if any part of this is confusing. Thanks.

  Read the article

• How to make negate_unary work with any type?

  - by Chan

  Hi, Following this question: How to negate a predicate function using operator ! in C++? I want to create an operator ! can work with any functor that inherited from unary_function. I tried: template<typename T> inline std::unary_negate<T> operator !( const T& pred ) { return std::not1( pred ); } The compiler complained: Error 5 error C2955: 'std::unary_function' : use of class template requires template argument list c:\program files\microsoft visual studio 10.0\vc\include\xfunctional 223 1 Graphic Error 7 error C2451: conditional expression of type 'std::unary_negate<_Fn1>' is illegal c:\program files\microsoft visual studio 10.0\vc\include\ostream 529 1 Graphic Error 3 error C2146: syntax error : missing ',' before identifier 'argument_type' c:\program files\microsoft visual studio 10.0\vc\include\xfunctional 222 1 Graphic Error 4 error C2065: 'argument_type' : undeclared identifier c:\program files\microsoft visual studio 10.0\vc\include\xfunctional 222 1 Graphic Error 2 error C2039: 'argument_type' : is not a member of 'std::basic_ostream<_Elem,_Traits>::sentry' c:\program files\microsoft visual studio 10.0\vc\include\xfunctional 222 1 Graphic Error 6 error C2039: 'argument_type' : is not a member of 'std::basic_ostream<_Elem,_Traits>::sentry' c:\program files\microsoft visual studio 10.0\vc\include\xfunctional 230 1 Graphic Any idea? Update Follow "templatetypedef" solution, I got new error: Error 3 error C2831: 'operator !' cannot have default parameters c:\visual studio 2010 projects\graphic\graphic\main.cpp 39 1 Graphic Error 2 error C2808: unary 'operator !' has too many formal parameters c:\visual studio 2010 projects\graphic\graphic\main.cpp 39 1 Graphic Error 4 error C2675: unary '!' : 'is_prime' does not define this operator or a conversion to a type acceptable to the predefined operator c:\visual studio 2010 projects\graphic\graphic\main.cpp 52 1 Graphic Update 1 Complete code: #include <iostream> #include <functional> #include <utility> #include <cmath> #include <algorithm> #include <iterator> #include <string> #include <boost/assign.hpp> #include <boost/assign/std/vector.hpp> #include <boost/assign/std/map.hpp> #include <boost/assign/std/set.hpp> #include <boost/assign/std/list.hpp> #include <boost/assign/std/stack.hpp> #include <boost/assign/std/deque.hpp> struct is_prime : std::unary_function<int, bool> { bool operator()( int n ) const { if( n < 2 ) return 0; if( n == 2 || n == 3 ) return 1; if( n % 2 == 0 || n % 3 == 0 ) return 0; int upper_bound = std::sqrt( static_cast<double>( n ) ); for( int pf = 5, step = 2; pf <= upper_bound; ) { if( n % pf == 0 ) return 0; pf += step; step = 6 - step; } return 1; } }; /* template<typename T> inline std::unary_negate<T> operator !( const T& pred, typename T::argument_type* dummy = 0 ) { return std::not1<T>( pred ); } */ inline std::unary_negate<is_prime> operator !( const is_prime& pred ) { return std::not1( pred ); } template<typename T> inline void print_con( const T& con, const std::string& ms = "", const std::string& sep = ", " ) { std::cout << ms << '\n'; std::copy( con.begin(), con.end(), std::ostream_iterator<typename T::value_type>( std::cout, sep.c_str() ) ); std::cout << "\n\n"; } int main() { using namespace boost::assign; std::vector<int> nums; nums += 1, 3, 5, 7, 9; nums.erase( remove_if( nums.begin(), nums.end(), !is_prime() ), nums.end() ); print_con( nums, "After remove all primes" ); } Thanks, Chan Nguyen

  Read the article

• Stumbling Through: Visual Studio 2010 (Part II)

  I would now like to expand a little on what I stumbled through in part I of my Visual Studio 2010 post and touch on a few other features of VS 2010.  Specifically, I want to generate some code based off of an Entity Framework model and tie it up to an actual data source.  Im not going to take the easy way and tie to a SQL Server data source, though, I will tie it to an XML data file instead.  Why?  Well, why not?  This is purely for learning, there are probably much better ways to get strongly-typed classes around XML but it will force us to go down a path less travelled and maybe learn a few things along the way.  Once we get this XML data and the means to interact with it, I will revisit data binding to this data in a WPF form and see if I cant get reading, adding, deleting, and updating working smoothly with minimal code.  To begin, I will use what was learned in the first part of this blog topic and draw out a data model for the MFL (My Football League) - I dont want the NFL to come down and sue me for using their name in this totally football-related article.  The data model looks as follows, with Teams having Players, and Players having a position and statistics for each season they played: Note that when making the associations between these entities, I was given the option to create the foreign key but I only chose to select this option for the association between Player and Position.  The reason for this is that I am picturing the XML that will contain this data to look somewhat like this: <MFL> <Position/> <Position/> <Position/> <Team>     <Player>         <Statistic/>     </Player> </Team> </MFL> Statistic will be under its associated Player node, and Player will be under its associated Team node no need to have an Id to reference it if we know it will always fall under its parent.  Position, however, is more of a lookup value that will not have any hierarchical relationship to the player.  In fact, the Position data itself may be in a completely different xml file (something Id like to play around with), so in any case, a player will need to reference the position by its Id. So now that we have a simple data model laid out, I would like to generate two things based on it:  A class for each entity with properties corresponding to each entity property An IO class with methods to get data for each entity, either all instances, by Id or by parent. Now my experience with code generation in the past has consisted of writing up little apps that use the code dom directly to regenerate code on demand (or using tools like CodeSmith).  Surely, there has got to be a more fun way to do this given that we are using the Entity Framework which already has built-in code generation for SQL Server support.  Lets start with that built-in stuff to give us a base to work off of.  Right click anywhere in the canvas of our model and select Add Code Generation Item: So just adding that code item seemed to do quite a bit towards what I was intending: It apparently generated a class for each entity, but also a whole ton more.  I mean a TON more.  Way too much complicated code was generated now that code is likely to be a black box anyway so it shouldnt matter, but we need to understand how to make this work the way we want it to work, so lets get ready to do some stumbling through that text template (tt) file. When I open the .tt file that was generated, right off the bat I realize there is going to be trouble there is no color coding, no intellisense no nothing!  That is going to make stumbling through more like groping blindly in the dark while handcuffed and hopping on one foot, which was one of the alternate titles I was considering for this blog.  Thankfully, the community comes to my rescue and I wont have to cast my mind back to the glory days of coding in VI (look it up, kids).  Using the Extension Manager (Available under the Tools menu), I did a quick search for tt editor in the Online Gallery and quickly found the Tangible T4 Editor: Downloading and installing this was a breeze, and after doing so I got some color coding and intellisense while editing the tt files.  If you will be doing any customizing of tt files, I highly recommend installing this extension.  Next, well see if that is enough help for us to tweak that tt file to do the kind of code generation that we wantDid you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

  Read the article

• retrieve data based on date range using mysql ,php [on hold]

  - by preethi

  I am working on WPF where I have two datepickers when I try to retrieve the information on date range it displays only one record on all dates(same record displaying multiple times eg : date chosen from 01/10/2013 - 3/10/2013) where I have 3 different records on each day but my output is the first record displayed 3 times with same date and time. function cpWhitelistStats() { $startDate = $_POST['startDate']; $startDateTime = "$startDate 00:00:00"; $endDate = $_POST['endDate']; $endDateTime = "$endDate 23:59:59"; $cpId = $_POST['id']; $cpName = etCommonCpNameById($cpId); print "<h2 style=\"text-align: center;\">Permitted Vehicle Summary</h2>"; print "<h2 style=\"text-align: center;\">for $cpName</h2>"; $tmpDate = explode("/", $startDate); $startYear = $tmpDate[2]; $startMonth= $tmpDate[1]; $startDay = $tmpDate[0]; $tmpDate = explode("/", $endDate); $endYear = $tmpDate[2]; $endMonth= $tmpDate[1]; $endDay = $tmpDate[0]; $startDateTime = "$startYear-$startMonth-$startDay 00:00:00"; $endDateTime = "$endYear-$endMonth-$endDay 23:59:59"; $custId = $_SESSION['customerID']; $realCustomerId = $_SESSION['realCustomerId']; $maxVal = 0; if ($custId != "") { $conn = &newEtConn($custId); // Get the whitelist plates $staticWhitelistArray = etCommonMkWhitelist($conn, $cpId); array_shift($staticWhitelistArray); $startLoopDate = strtotime($startDateTime); $endLoopDate = strtotime($endDateTime); $oneDay = 60 * 60 * 24; // Get the entries $plateList = array_keys($staticWhitelistArray); $plate_lookup = implode('","', $plateList); $sql = "SELECT plate, entry_datetime, exit_datetime FROM stats WHERE plate IN (\"$plate_lookup\") AND entry_datetime > \"$startDateTime\" AND entry_datetime < \"$endDateTime\" AND carpark_id=\"$cpId\" "; $result = $conn->Execute($sql); if (!$result) { print $conn->ErrorMsg(); exit; } $rows = $result->fields; if ($rows != "") { unset($myArray); foreach($result as $values) { $plate = $values['plate']; $new_platelist[] = $plate; $inDateTime = $values['entry_datetime']; $outDateTime = $values['exit_datetime']; $tmp = explode(' ', $inDateTime); $inDate = $tmp[0]; $in_ts = strtotime($inDateTime); $out_ts = strtotime($outDateTime); $duration = $out_ts - $in_ts; $dur_array = intToDateArray($duration); $dur_string = ''; if ($dur_array['days'] > 0) { $dur_string .= $dur_array['days'] . ' days '; } if ($dur_array['hours'] > 0) { $dur_string .= $dur_array['hours'] . ' hours '; } if ($dur_array['mins'] > 0) { $dur_string .= $dur_array['mins'] . ' minutes '; } if ($dur_array['secs'] > 0) { $dur_string .= $dur_array['secs'] . ' secs '; } $myArray[$plate][] = array($inDateTime, $outDateTime, $inDate, $dur_string); } } while ($startLoopDate < $endLoopDate) { $dayString = strftime("%a, %d %B %Y", $startLoopDate); $dayCheck = strftime("%Y-%m-%d", $startLoopDate); print "<h2>$dayString</h2>"; print "<table width=\"100%\">"; print " <tr>"; print " <th>VRM</th>"; print " <th>Permit Group</th>"; print " <th>Entry Time</th>"; print " <th>Exit Time</th>"; print " <th>Duration</th>"; print " </tr>"; foreach($new_platelist as $wlPlate) { if ($myArray[$wlPlate][0][2] == $dayCheck) { print "<tr>"; print "<td>$wlPlate</td>"; if (isset($myArray[$wlPlate])) { print "<td>".$staticWhitelistArray[$wlPlate]['groupname']."</td>"; print "<td>".$myArray[$wlPlate][0][0]."</td>"; print "<td>".$myArray[$wlPlate][0][1]."</td>"; print "<td>".$myArray[$wlPlate][0][3]."</td>"; } else { print "<td>Vehicle Not Seen</td>"; print "<td>Vehicle Not Seen</td>"; print "<td>Vehicle Not Seen</td>"; } print "</tr>"; } } print "</table>"; $startLoopDate = $startLoopDate + $oneDay; } } }

  Read the article

< Previous Page | 259 260 261 262 263 264 265 266 267 268 269 270  | Next Page >