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• How to handle failure to release a resource which is contained in a smart pointer?

  - by cj

  How should an error during resource deallocation be handled, when the object representing the resource is contained in a shared pointer? Smart pointers are a useful tool to manage resources safely. Examples of such resources are memory, disk files, database connections, or network connections. // open a connection to the local HTTP port boost::shared_ptr<Socket> socket = Socket::connect("localhost:80"); In a typical scenario, the class encapsulating the resource should be noncopyable and polymorphic. A good way to support this is to provide a factory method returning a shared pointer, and declare all constructors non-public. The shared pointers can now be copied from and assigned to freely. The object is automatically destroyed when no reference to it remains, and the destructor then releases the resource. /** A TCP/IP connection. */ class Socket { public: static boost::shared_ptr<Socket> connect(const std::string& address); virtual ~Socket(); protected: Socket(const std::string& address); private: // not implemented Socket(const Socket&); Socket& operator=(const Socket&); }; But there is a problem with this approach. The destructor must not throw, so a failure to release the resource will remain undetected. A common way out of this problem is to add a public method to release the resource. class Socket { public: virtual void close(); // may throw // ... }; Unfortunately, this approach introduces another problem: Our objects may now contain resources which have already been released. This complicates the implementation of the resource class. Even worse, it makes it possible for clients of the class to use it incorrectly. The following example may seem far-fetched, but it is a common pitfall in multi-threaded code. socket->close(); // ... size_t nread = socket->read(&buffer[0], buffer.size()); // wrong use! Either we ensure that the resource is not released before the object is destroyed, thereby losing any way to deal with a failed resource deallocation. Or we provide a way to release the resource explicitly during the object's lifetime, thereby making it possible to use the resource class incorrectly. There is a way out of this dilemma. But the solution involves using a modified shared pointer class. These modifications are likely to be controversial. Typical shared pointer implementations, such as boost::shared_ptr, require that no exception be thrown when their object's destructor is called. Generally, no destructor should ever throw, so this is a reasonable requirement. These implementations also allow a custom deleter function to be specified, which is called in lieu of the destructor when no reference to the object remains. The no-throw requirement is extended to this custom deleter function. The rationale for this requirement is clear: The shared pointer's destructor must not throw. If the deleter function does not throw, nor will the shared pointer's destructor. However, the same holds for other member functions of the shared pointer which lead to resource deallocation, e.g. reset(): If resource deallocation fails, no exception can be thrown. The solution proposed here is to allow custom deleter functions to throw. This means that the modified shared pointer's destructor must catch exceptions thrown by the deleter function. On the other hand, member functions other than the destructor, e.g. reset(), shall not catch exceptions of the deleter function (and their implementation becomes somewhat more complicated). Here is the original example, using a throwing deleter function: /** A TCP/IP connection. */ class Socket { public: static SharedPtr<Socket> connect(const std::string& address); protected: Socket(const std::string& address); virtual Socket() { } private: struct Deleter; // not implemented Socket(const Socket&); Socket& operator=(const Socket&); }; struct Socket::Deleter { void operator()(Socket* socket) { // Close the connection. If an error occurs, delete the socket // and throw an exception. delete socket; } }; SharedPtr<Socket> Socket::connect(const std::string& address) { return SharedPtr<Socket>(new Socket(address), Deleter()); } We can now use reset() to free the resource explicitly. If there is still a reference to the resource in another thread or another part of the program, calling reset() will only decrement the reference count. If this is the last reference to the resource, the resource is released. If resource deallocation fails, an exception is thrown. SharedPtr<Socket> socket = Socket::connect("localhost:80"); // ... socket.reset();

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• HTML + javascript mouse over, mouseout, onclick not working in firefox.

  - by lucky

  Hello Everyone, My question is to get onMouseover,onMouseout,onMousedown,onClick on a table row. For which i am calling javascript userdefined functions. onMouseover --- Background color should change. onMouseout --- Reset to original color onClick --- First column checkbox/radio button should be set and background color should change onMousedown --- background color should change. My code in html is:- <tr onMouseOver="hover(this)" onMouseOut="hover_out(this)" onMouseDown="get_first_state(this)" onClick="checkit(this)" > and the methods in javascripts are:- var first_state = false; var oldcol = '#ffffff'; var oldcol_cellarray = new Array(); function hover(element) { if (! element) element = this; while (element.tagName != 'TR') { element = element.parentNode; } if (element.style.fontWeight != 'bold') { for (var i = 0; i<element.cells.length; i++) { if (element.cells[i].className != "no_hover") { oldcol_cellarray[i] = element.cells[i].style.backgroundColor; element.cells[i].style.backgroundColor='#e6f6f6'; } } } } // ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- function hover_out(element) { if (! element) element = this; while (element.tagName != 'TR') { element = element.parentNode; } if (element.style.fontWeight != 'bold') { for (var i = 0; i<element.cells.length; i++) { if (element.cells[i].className != "no_hover") { if (typeof oldcol_cellarray != undefined) { element.cells[i].style.backgroundColor=oldcol_cellarray[i]; } else { element.cells[i].style.backgroundColor='#ffffff'; } //var oldcol_cellarray = new Array(); } } } } // ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- function get_first_state(element) { while (element.tagName != 'TR') { element = element.parentNode; } first_state = element.cells[0].firstChild.checked; } // ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- function checkit (element) { while (element.tagName != 'TR') { element = element.parentNode; } if (element.cells[0].firstChild.type == 'radio') { var typ = 0; } else if (element.cells[0].firstChild.type == 'checkbox') { typ = 1; } if (element.cells[0].firstChild.checked == true && typ == 1) { if (element.cells[0].firstChild.checked == first_state) { element.cells[0].firstChild.checked = false; } set_rowstyle(element, element.cells[0].firstChild.checked); } else { if (typ == 0 || element.cells[0].firstChild.checked == first_state) { element.cells[0].firstChild.checked = true; } set_rowstyle(element, element.cells[0].firstChild.checked); } if (typ == 0) { var table = element.parentNode; if (table.tagName != "TABLE") { table = table.parentNode; } if (table.tagName == "TABLE") { table=table.tBodies[0].rows; //var table = document.getElementById("js_tb").tBodies[0].rows; for (var i = 1; i< table.length; i++) { if (table[i].cells[0].firstChild.checked == true && table[i] != element) { table[i].cells[0].firstChild.checked = false; } if (table[i].cells[0].firstChild.checked == false) { set_rowstyle(table[i], false); } } } } } function set_rowstyle(r, on) { if (on == true) { for (var i =0; i < r.cells.length; i++) { r.style.fontWeight = 'bold'; r.cells[i].style.backgroundColor = '#f2f2c2'; } } else { for ( i =0; i < r.cells.length; i++) { r.style.fontWeight = 'normal'; r.cells[i].style.backgroundColor = '#ffffff'; } } } It is working as expected in IE. But coming to firefox i am surprised on seeing the output after so much of coding. In Firefox:-- onMouseOver is working as expected. color change of that particular row. onClick -- Setting the background color permenantly..eventhough i do onmouseover on different rows. the clicked previous row color is not reset to white. -- not as expected onclick on 2 rows..the background of both the rows is set..Only the latest row color should be set. other rows that are selected before should be set back..not as expected i.e if i click on all the rows..background color of everything is changed... Eventhough i click on the row. First column i.e radio button or checkbox is not set.. Please help me to solve this issue in firefox. Do let me know where my code needs to be changed... Thanks in advance!!

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• timer_getoverrun() doesn't behave as expected when using sleep()

  - by dlp

  Here is a program that uses a POSIX per-process timer alongside the sleep subroutine. The signal used by the timer has been set to SIGUSR1 rather than SIGALRM, since SIGALRM may be used internally by sleep, but it still doesn't seem to work. I have run the program using the command line timer-overruns -d 1 -n 10000000 (1 cs interval) so, in theory, we should expect 100 overruns between calls to sigwaitinfo. However, timer_getoverrun returns 0. I have also tried a version using a time-consuming for loop to introduce the delay. In this case, overruns are recorded. Does anyone know why this happens? I am running a 3.4 Linux kernel. Program source /* * timer-overruns.c */ #include <unistd.h> #include <stdlib.h> #include <stdio.h> #include <signal.h> #include <time.h> // Signal to be used for timer expirations #define TIMER_SIGNAL SIGUSR1 int main(int argc, char **argv) { int opt; int d = 0; int r = 0; // Repeat indefinitely struct itimerspec its; its.it_interval.tv_sec = 0; its.it_interval.tv_nsec = 0; // Parse arguments while ((opt = getopt(argc, argv, "d:r:s:n:")) != -1) { switch (opt) { case 'd': // Delay before calling sigwaitinfo() d = atoi(optarg); break; case 'r': // Number of times to call sigwaitinfo() r = atoi(optarg); break; case 's': // Timer interval (seconds) its.it_interval.tv_sec = its.it_value.tv_sec = atoi(optarg); break; case 'n': // Timer interval (nanoseconds) its.it_interval.tv_nsec = its.it_value.tv_nsec = atoi(optarg); break; default: /* '?' */ fprintf(stderr, "Usage: %s [-d signal_accept_delay] [-r repetitions] [-s interval_seconds] [-n interval_nanoseconds]\n", argv[0]); exit(EXIT_FAILURE); } } // Check sanity of command line arguments short e = 0; if (d < 0) { fprintf(stderr, "Delay (-d) cannot be negative!\n"); e++; } if (r < 0) { fprintf(stderr, "Number of repetitions (-r) cannot be negative!\n"); e++; } if (its.it_interval.tv_sec < 0) { fprintf(stderr, "Interval seconds value (-s) cannot be negative!\n"); e++; } if (its.it_interval.tv_nsec < 0) { fprintf(stderr, "Interval nanoseconds value (-n) cannot be negative!\n"); e++; } if (its.it_interval.tv_nsec > 999999999) { fprintf(stderr, "Interval nanoseconds value (-n) must be < 1 second.\n"); e++; } if (e > 0) exit(EXIT_FAILURE); // Set default values if not specified if (its.it_interval.tv_sec == 0 && its.it_interval.tv_nsec == 0) { its.it_interval.tv_sec = its.it_value.tv_sec = 1; its.it_value.tv_nsec = 0; } printf("Running with timer delay %d.%09d seconds\n", (int) its.it_interval.tv_sec, (int) its.it_interval.tv_nsec); // Will be waiting for signals synchronously, so block the one in use. sigset_t sigset; sigemptyset(&sigset); sigaddset(&sigset, TIMER_SIGNAL); sigprocmask(SIG_BLOCK, &sigset, NULL ); // Create and arm the timer struct sigevent sev; timer_t timer; sev.sigev_notify = SIGEV_SIGNAL; sev.sigev_signo = TIMER_SIGNAL; sev.sigev_value.sival_ptr = timer; timer_create(CLOCK_REALTIME, &sev, &timer); timer_settime(timer, TIMER_ABSTIME, &its, NULL ); // Signal handling loop int overruns; siginfo_t si; // Make the loop infinite if r = 0 if (r == 0) r = -1; while (r != 0) { // Sleeping should cause overruns if (d > 0) sleep(d); sigwaitinfo(&sigset, &si); // Check that the signal is from the timer if (si.si_code != SI_TIMER) continue; overruns = timer_getoverrun(timer); if (overruns > 0) { printf("Timer overrun occurred for %d expirations.\n", overruns); } // Decrement r if not repeating indefinitely if (r > 0) r--; } return EXIT_SUCCESS; }

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• Is multithreading the right way to go for my case?

  - by Julien Lebosquain

  Hello, I'm currently designing a multi-client / server application. I'm using plain good old sockets because WCF or similar technology is not what I need. Let me explain: it isn't the classical case of a client simply calling a service; all clients can 'interact' with each other by sending a packet to the server, which will then do some action, and possible re-dispatch an answer message to one or more clients. Although doable with WCF, the application will get pretty complex with hundreds of different messages. For each connected client, I'm of course using asynchronous methods to send and receive bytes. I've got the messages fully working, everything's fine. Except that for each line of code I'm writing, my head just burns because of multithreading issues. Since there could be around 200 clients connected at the same time, I chose to go the fully multithreaded way: each received message on a socket is immediately processed on the thread pool thread it was received, not on a single consumer thread. Since each client can interact with other clients, and indirectly with shared objects on the server, I must protect almost every object that is mutable. I first went with a ReaderWriterLockSlim for each resource that must be protected, but quickly noticed that there are more writes overall than reads in the server application, and switched to the well-known Monitor to simplify the code. So far, so good. Each resource is protected, I have helper classes that I must use to get a lock and its protected resource, so I can't use an object without getting a lock. Moreover, each client has its own lock that is entered as soon as a packet is received from its socket. It's done to prevent other clients from making changes to the state of this client while it has some messages being processed, which is something that will happen frequently. Now, I don't just need to protect resources from concurrent accesses. I must keep every client in sync with the server for some collections I have. One tricky part that I'm currently struggling with is the following: I have a collection of clients. Each client has its own unique ID. When a client connects, it must receive the IDs of every connected client, and each one of them must be notified of the newcomer's ID. When a client disconnects, every other client must know it so that its ID is no longer valid for them. Every client must always have, at a given time, the same clients collection as the server so that I can assume that everybody knows everybody. This way if I'm sending a message to client #1 telling "Client #2 has done something", I know that it will always be correctly interpreted: Client 1 will never wonder "but who is Client 2 anyway?". My first attempt for handling the connection of a new client (let's call it X) was this pseudo-code (remember that newClient is already locked here): lock (clients) { foreach (var client in clients) { lock (client) { client.Send("newClient with id X has connected"); } } clients.Add(newClient); newClient.Send("the list of other clients"); } Now imagine that in the same time, another client has sent a packet that translates into a message that must be broadcasted to every connected client, the pseudo-code will be something like this (remember that the current client - let's call it Y - is already locked here): lock (clients) { foreach (var client in clients) { lock (client) { client.Send("something"); } } } An obvious deadlock occurs here: on one thread X is locked, the clients lock has been entered, started looping through the clients, and at one moment must get Y's lock... which is already acquired on the second thread, itself waiting for the clients collection lock to be released! This is not the only case like this in the server application. There are other collections which must be kept in sync with the clients, some properties on a client can be changed by another one, etc. I tried other types of locks, lock-free mechanisms and a bunch of other things. Either there were obvious deadlocks when I'm using too much locks for safety, or obvious race conditions otherwise. When I finally find a good middle point between the two, it usually comes with very subtle race conditions / dead locks and other multi-threading issues... my head hurts very quickly since for any single line of code I'm writing I have to review almost the whole application to ensure everything will behave correctly with any number of threads. So here's my final question: how would you resolve this specific case, the general case, and more importantly: aren't I going the wrong way here? I have little problems with the .NET framework, C#, simple concurrency or algorithms in general. Still, I'm lost here. I know I could use only one thread processing the incoming requests and everything will be fine. However, that won't scale well at all with more clients... But I'm thinking more and more to go this simple way. What do you think? Thanks in advance to you, StackOverflow people which have taken the time to read this huge question. I really had to explain the whole context if I want to get some help.

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• How do you overide a class that is called by another class with parent::method

  - by dan.codes

  I am trying to extend Mage_Catalog_Block_Product_View I have it setup in my local directory as its own module and everything works fine, I wasn't getting the results that I wanted. I then saw that another class extended that class as well. The method I am trying to override is the protected function _prepareLayout() This is the function class Mage_Review_Block_Product_View extends Mage_Catalog_Block_Product_View protected function _prepareLayout() { $this-&gt;getLayout()-&gt;createBlock('catalog/breadcrumbs'); $headBlock = $this-&gt;getLayout()-&gt;getBlock('head'); if ($headBlock) { $title = $this-&gt;getProduct()-&gt;getMetaTitle(); if ($title) { $headBlock-&gt;setTitle($title); } $keyword = $this-&gt;getProduct()-&gt;getMetaKeyword(); $currentCategory = Mage::registry('current_category'); if ($keyword) { $headBlock-&gt;setKeywords($keyword); } elseif($currentCategory) { $headBlock-&gt;setKeywords($this-&gt;getProduct()-&gt;getName()); } $description = $this-&gt;getProduct()-&gt;getMetaDescription(); if ($description) { $headBlock-&gt;setDescription( ($description) ); } else { $headBlock-&gt;setDescription( $this-&gt;getProduct()-&gt;getDescription() ); } } return parent::_prepareLayout(); } I am trying to modify it just a bit with the following, keep in mind I know there is a title prefix and suffix but I needed it only for the product page and also I needed to add text to the description. class MyCompany_Catalog_Block_Product_View extends Mage_Catalog_Block_Product_View protected function _prepareLayout() { $storeId = Mage::app()-&gt;getStore()-&gt;getId(); $this-&gt;getLayout()-&gt;createBlock('catalog/breadcrumbs'); $headBlock = $this-&gt;getLayout()-&gt;getBlock('head'); if ($headBlock) { $title = $this-&gt;getProduct()-&gt;getMetaTitle(); if ($title) { if($storeId == 2){ $title = "Pool Supplies Fast - " .$title; $headBlock-&gt;setTitle($title); } $headBlock-&gt;setTitle($title); }else{ $path = Mage::helper('catalog')-&gt;getBreadcrumbPath(); foreach ($path as $name =&gt; $breadcrumb) { $title[] = $breadcrumb['label']; } $newTitle = "Pool Supplies Fast - " . join($this-&gt;getTitleSeparator(), array_reverse($title)); $headBlock-&gt;setTitle($newTitle); } $keyword = $this-&gt;getProduct()-&gt;getMetaKeyword(); $currentCategory = Mage::registry('current_category'); if ($keyword) { $headBlock-&gt;setKeywords($keyword); } elseif($currentCategory) { $headBlock-&gt;setKeywords($this-&gt;getProduct()-&gt;getName()); } $description = $this-&gt;getProduct()-&gt;getMetaDescription(); if ($description) { if($storeId == 2){ $description = "Pool Supplies Fast - ". $this-&gt;getProduct()-&gt;getName() . " - " . $description; $headBlock-&gt;setDescription( ($description) ); }else{ $headBlock-&gt;setDescription( ($description) ); } } else { if($storeId == 2){ $description = "Pool Supplies Fast: ". $this-&gt;getProduct()-&gt;getName() . " - " . $this-&gt;getProduct()-&gt;getDescription(); $headBlock-&gt;setDescription( ($description) ); }else{ $headBlock-&gt;setDescription( $this-&gt;getProduct()-&gt;getDescription() ); } } } return Mage_Catalog_Block_Product_Abstract::_prepareLayout(); } This executs fine but then I notice that the following class Mage_Review_Block_Product_View_List extends which extends Mage_Review_Block_Product_View and that extends Mage_Catalog_Block_Product_View as well. Inside this class they call the _prepareLayout as well and call the parent with parent::_prepareLayout() class Mage_Review_Block_Product_View_List extends Mage_Review_Block_Product_View protected function _prepareLayout() { parent::_prepareLayout(); if ($toolbar = $this-&gt;getLayout()-&gt;getBlock('product_review_list.toolbar')) { $toolbar-&gt;setCollection($this-&gt;getReviewsCollection()); $this-&gt;setChild('toolbar', $toolbar); } return $this; } So obviously this just calls the same class I am extending and runs the function I am overiding but it doesn't get to my class because it is not in my class hierarchy and since it gets called after my class all the stuff in the parent class override what I have set. I'm not sure about the best way to extend this type of class and method, there has to be a good way to do this, I keep finding I am running into issues when trying to overide these prepare methods that are derived from the abstract classes, there seems to be so many classes overriding them and calling parent::method. What is the best way to override these functions?

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• pagination in php error

  - by fusion

  i've implemented this pagination class for my webpage in a separate file called class.pagination.php, but when i execute the page, nothing happens. it just displays a blank page. this is my search.php file, where i'm calling this class: <?php include 'config.php'; require ('class.pagination.php'); $search_result = ""; $search_result = $_GET["q"]; $search_result = trim($search_result); //Check if the string is empty if ($search_result == "") { echo "<p class='error'>Search Error. Please Enter Your Search Query.</p>" ; exit(); } //search query for multiple keywords if(!empty($search_result)) { // the table to search $table = "thquotes"; // explode search words into an array $arraySearch = explode(" ", $search_result); // table fields to search $arrayFields = array(0 => "cQuotes"); $countSearch = count($arraySearch); $a = 0; $b = 0; $query = "SELECT cQuotes, vAuthor, cArabic, vReference FROM ".$table." WHERE ("; $countFields = count($arrayFields); while ($a < $countFields) { while ($b < $countSearch) { $query = $query."$arrayFields[$a] LIKE '%$arraySearch[$b]%'"; $b++; if ($b < $countSearch) { $query = $query." AND "; } } $b = 0; $a++; if ($a < $countFields) { $query = $query.") OR ("; } } $query = $query.")"; $result = mysql_query($query, $conn) or die ('Error: '.mysql_error()); $totalrows = mysql_num_rows($result); if($totalrows < 1) { echo '<span class="error2">No matches found for "'.$search_result.'"</span>'; } else { ?> <div class="caption">Search Results</div> <div class="center_div"> <table> <?php while ($row= mysql_fetch_array($result, MYSQL_ASSOC)) { $cQuote = highlightWords(htmlspecialchars($row['cQuotes']), $search_result); ?> <tr> <td style="text-align:right; font-size:15px;"><?php h($row['cArabic']); ?></td> <td style="font-size:16px;"><?php echo $cQuote; ?></td> <td style="font-size:12px;"><?php h($row['vAuthor']); ?></td> <td style="font-size:12px; font-style:italic; text-align:right;"><?php h($row['vReference']); ?></td> </tr> <?php } ?> </table> </div> <?php } } else { exit(); } //Setting Pagination $pagination = new pagination(); $pagination->byPage = 5; $pagination->rows = $totalrows; // number of records in a table-back mysql_num_rows () instance or another, you have to play $from = $pagination->fromPagination(); // sql used for applications such LIMIT $ from, $ pagination-> byPage $pages = $pagination->pages(); if(isset($pages)) {?> <div class="pagination"> <?foreach ($pages as $key){?> <?if($key['current'] == 1) {?> <a href="?p=<?=$key['p']?>" class="active"><?=$key['page']?></a> <?} else {?> <a href="?p=<?=$key['p']?>" class="inactive"><?=$key['page']?></a> <?}?> <?}?> </div> <?} //End Pagination ?>

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• Fastest way to move records from a oracle DB into MS sql server after processing

  - by user347748

  Hi.. Ok this is the scenario...I have a table in Oracle that acts like a queue... A VB.net program reads the queue and calls a stored proc in MS SQL Server that processes and then inserts the message into another SQL server table and then deletes the record from the oracle table. We use a datareader to read the records from Oracle and then call the stored proc for each of the records. The program seems to be a little slow. The stored procedure itself isnt slow. The SP by itself when called in a loop can process about 2000 records in 20 seconds. BUt when called from the .Net program, the execution time is about 5 records per second. I have seen that most of the time consumed is in calling the stored procedure and waiting for it to return. Is there a better way of doing this? Here is a snippet of the actual code Function StartDataXfer() As Boolean Dim status As Boolean = False Try SqlConn.Open() OraConn.Open() c.ErrorLog(Now.ToString & "--Going to Get the messages from oracle", 1) If GetMsgsFromOracle() Then c.ErrorLog(Now.ToString & "--Got messages from oracle", 1) If ProcessMessages() Then c.ErrorLog(Now.ToString & "--Finished Processing all messages in the queue", 0) status = True Else c.ErrorLog(Now.ToString & "--Failed to Process all messages in the queue", 0) status = False End If Else status = True End If StartDataXfer = status Catch ex As Exception Finally SqlConn.Close() OraConn.Close() End Try End Function Private Function GetMsgsFromOracle() As Boolean Try OraDataAdapter = New OleDb.OleDbDataAdapter OraDataTable = New System.Data.DataTable OraSelCmd = New OleDb.OleDbCommand GetMsgsFromOracle = False With OraSelCmd .CommandType = CommandType.Text .Connection = OraConn .CommandText = GetMsgSql End With OraDataAdapter.SelectCommand = OraSelCmd OraDataAdapter.Fill(OraDataTable) If OraDataTable.Rows.Count > 0 Then GetMsgsFromOracle = True End If Catch ex As Exception GetMsgsFromOracle = False End Try End Function Private Function ProcessMessages() As Boolean Try ProcessMessages = False PrepareSQLInsert() PrepOraDel() i = 0 Dim Method As Integer Dim OraDataRow As DataRow c.ErrorLog(Now.ToString & "--Going to call message sending procedure", 2) For Each OraDataRow In OraDataTable.Rows With OraDataRow Method = GetMethod(.Item(0)) SQLInsCmd.Parameters("RelLifeTime").Value = c.RelLifetime SQLInsCmd.Parameters("Param1").Value = Nothing SQLInsCmd.Parameters("ID").Value = GenerateTransactionID() ' Nothing SQLInsCmd.Parameters("UID").Value = Nothing SQLInsCmd.Parameters("Param").Value = Nothing SQLInsCmd.Parameters("Credit").Value = 0 SQLInsCmd.ExecuteNonQuery() 'check the return value If SQLInsCmd.Parameters("ReturnValue").Value = 1 And SQLInsCmd.Parameters("OutPutParam").Value = 0 Then 'success 'delete the input record from the source table once it is logged c.ErrorLog(Now.ToString & "--Moved record successfully", 2) OraDataAdapter.DeleteCommand.Parameters("P(0)").Value = OraDataRow.Item(6) OraDataAdapter.DeleteCommand.ExecuteNonQuery() c.ErrorLog(Now.ToString & "--Deleted record successfully", 2) OraDataAdapter.Update(OraDataTable) c.ErrorLog(Now.ToString & "--Committed record successfully", 2) i = i + 1 Else 'failure c.ErrorLog(Now.ToString & "--Failed to exec: " & c.DestIns & "Status: " & SQLInsCmd.Parameters("OutPutParam").Value & " and TrackId: " & SQLInsCmd.Parameters("TrackID").Value.ToString, 0) End If If File.Exists("stop.txt") Then c.ErrorLog(Now.ToString & "--Stop File Found", 1) 'ProcessMessages = True 'Exit Function Exit For End If End With Next OraDataAdapter.Update(OraDataTable) c.ErrorLog(Now.ToString & "--Updated Oracle Table", 1) c.ErrorLog(Now.ToString & "--Moved " & i & " records from Oracle to SQL Table", 1) ProcessMessages = True Catch ex As Exception ProcessMessages = False c.ErrorLog(Now.ToString & "--MoveMsgsToSQL: " & ex.Message, 0) Finally OraDataTable.Clear() OraDataTable.Dispose() OraDataAdapter.Dispose() OraDelCmd.Dispose() OraDelCmd = Nothing OraSelCmd = Nothing OraDataTable = Nothing OraDataAdapter = Nothing End Try End Function Public Function GenerateTransactionID() As Int64 Dim SeqNo As Int64 Dim qry As String Dim SqlTransCmd As New OleDb.OleDbCommand qry = " select seqno from StoreSeqNo" SqlTransCmd.CommandType = CommandType.Text SqlTransCmd.Connection = SqlConn SqlTransCmd.CommandText = qry SeqNo = SqlTransCmd.ExecuteScalar If SeqNo > 2147483647 Then qry = "update StoreSeqNo set seqno=1" SqlTransCmd.CommandText = qry SqlTransCmd.ExecuteNonQuery() GenerateTransactionID = 1 Else qry = "update StoreSeqNo set seqno=" & SeqNo + 1 SqlTransCmd.CommandText = qry SqlTransCmd.ExecuteNonQuery() GenerateTransactionID = SeqNo End If End Function Private Function PrepareSQLInsert() As Boolean 'function to prepare the insert statement for the insert into the SQL stmt using 'the sql procedure SMSProcessAndDispatch Try Dim dr As DataRow SQLInsCmd = New OleDb.OleDbCommand With SQLInsCmd .CommandType = CommandType.StoredProcedure .Connection = SqlConn .CommandText = SQLInsProc .Parameters.Add("ReturnValue", OleDb.OleDbType.Integer) .Parameters("ReturnValue").Direction = ParameterDirection.ReturnValue .Parameters.Add("OutPutParam", OleDb.OleDbType.Integer) .Parameters("OutPutParam").Direction = ParameterDirection.Output .Parameters.Add("TrackID", OleDb.OleDbType.VarChar, 70) .Parameters.Add("RelLifeTime", OleDb.OleDbType.TinyInt) .Parameters("RelLifeTime").Direction = ParameterDirection.Input .Parameters.Add("Param1", OleDb.OleDbType.VarChar, 160) .Parameters("Param1").Direction = ParameterDirection.Input .Parameters.Add("TransID", OleDb.OleDbType.VarChar, 70) .Parameters("TransID").Direction = ParameterDirection.Input .Parameters.Add("UID", OleDb.OleDbType.VarChar, 20) .Parameters("UID").Direction = ParameterDirection.Input .Parameters.Add("Param", OleDb.OleDbType.VarChar, 160) .Parameters("Param").Direction = ParameterDirection.Input .Parameters.Add("CheckCredit", OleDb.OleDbType.Integer) .Parameters("CheckCredit").Direction = ParameterDirection.Input .Prepare() End With Catch ex As Exception c.ErrorLog(Now.ToString & "--PrepareSQLInsert: " & ex.Message) End Try End Function Private Function PrepOraDel() As Boolean OraDelCmd = New OleDb.OleDbCommand Try PrepOraDel = False With OraDelCmd .CommandType = CommandType.Text .Connection = OraConn .CommandText = DelSrcSQL .Parameters.Add("P(0)", OleDb.OleDbType.VarChar, 160) 'RowID .Parameters("P(0)").Direction = ParameterDirection.Input .Prepare() End With OraDataAdapter.DeleteCommand = OraDelCmd PrepOraDel = True Catch ex As Exception PrepOraDel = False End Try End Function WHat i would like to know is, if there is anyway to speed up this program? Any ideas/suggestions would be highly appreciated... Regardss, Chetan

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• Trying to draw textured triangles on device fails, but the emulator works. Why?

  - by Dinedal

  I have a series of OpenGL-ES calls that properly render a triangle and texture it with alpha blending on the emulator (2.0.1). When I fire up the same code on an actual device (Droid 2.0.1), all I get are white squares. This suggests to me that the textures aren't loading, but I can't figure out why they aren't loading. All of my textures are 32-bit PNGs with alpha channels, under res/raw so they aren't optimized per the sdk docs. Here's how I am loading my textures: private void loadGLTexture(GL10 gl, Context context, int reasource_id, int texture_id) { //Get the texture from the Android resource directory Bitmap bitmap = BitmapFactory.decodeResource(context.getResources(), reasource_id, sBitmapOptions); //Generate one texture pointer... gl.glGenTextures(1, textures, texture_id); //...and bind it to our array gl.glBindTexture(GL10.GL_TEXTURE_2D, textures[texture_id]); //Create Nearest Filtered Texture gl.glTexParameterf(GL10.GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL10.GL_TEXTURE_MIN_FILTER, GL10.GL_NEAREST); gl.glTexParameterf(GL10.GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL10.GL_TEXTURE_MAG_FILTER, GL10.GL_LINEAR); //Different possible texture parameters, e.g. GL10.GL_CLAMP_TO_EDGE gl.glTexParameterf(GL10.GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL10.GL_TEXTURE_WRAP_S, GL10.GL_REPEAT); gl.glTexParameterf(GL10.GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL10.GL_TEXTURE_WRAP_T, GL10.GL_REPEAT); //Use the Android GLUtils to specify a two-dimensional texture image from our bitmap GLUtils.texImage2D(GL10.GL_TEXTURE_2D, 0, bitmap, 0); //Clean up bitmap.recycle(); } Here's how I am rendering the texture: //Clear gl.glClear(GL10.GL_COLOR_BUFFER_BIT | GL10.GL_DEPTH_BUFFER_BIT); //Enable vertex buffer gl.glEnableClientState(GL10.GL_VERTEX_ARRAY); gl.glEnableClientState(GL10.GL_TEXTURE_COORD_ARRAY); gl.glVertexPointer(3, GL10.GL_FLOAT, 0, vertexBuffer); gl.glTexCoordPointer(2, GL10.GL_FLOAT, 0, textureBuffer); //Push transformation matrix gl.glPushMatrix(); //Transformation matrices gl.glTranslatef(x, y, 0.0f); gl.glScalef(scalefactor, scalefactor, 0.0f); gl.glColor4f(1.0f,1.0f,1.0f,1.0f); //Bind the texture gl.glBindTexture(GL10.GL_TEXTURE_2D, textures[textureid]); //Draw the vertices as triangles gl.glDrawElements(GL10.GL_TRIANGLES, indices.length, GL10.GL_UNSIGNED_BYTE, indexBuffer); //Pop the matrix back to where we left it gl.glPopMatrix(); //Disable the client state before leaving gl.glDisableClientState(GL10.GL_VERTEX_ARRAY); gl.glDisableClientState(GL10.GL_TEXTURE_COORD_ARRAY); And here are the options I have enabled: gl.glShadeModel(GL10.GL_SMOOTH); //Enable Smooth Shading gl.glEnable(GL10.GL_DEPTH_TEST); //Enables Depth Testing gl.glDepthFunc(GL10.GL_LEQUAL); //The Type Of Depth Testing To Do gl.glEnable(GL10.GL_TEXTURE_2D); gl.glEnable(GL10.GL_BLEND); gl.glBlendFunc(GL10.GL_SRC_ALPHA,GL10.GL_ONE_MINUS_SRC_ALPHA); Edit: I just tried supplying a BitmapOptions to the BitmapFactory.decodeResource() call, but this doesn't seem to fix the issue, despite manually setting the same preferredconfig, density, and targetdensity. Edit2: As requested, here is a screenshot of the emulator working. The underlaying triangles are shown with a circle texture rendered onto it, the transparency is working because you can see the black background. Here is a shot of what the droid does with the exact same code on it: Edit3: Here are my BitmapOptions, updated the call above with how I am now calling the BitmapFactory, still the same results as below: sBitmapOptions.inPreferredConfig = Bitmap.Config.RGB_565; sBitmapOptions.inDensity = 160; sBitmapOptions.inTargetDensity = 160; sBitmapOptions.inScreenDensity = 160; sBitmapOptions.inDither = false; sBitmapOptions.inSampleSize = 1; sBitmapOptions.inScaled = false; Here are my vertices, texture coords, and indices: /** The initial vertex definition */ private static final float vertices[] = { -1.0f, -1.0f, 0.0f, 1.0f, -1.0f, 0.0f, -1.0f, 1.0f, 0.0f, 1.0f, 1.0f, 0.0f }; /** The initial texture coordinates (u, v) */ private static final float texture[] = { //Mapping coordinates for the vertices 0.0f, 1.0f, 1.0f, 1.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f, 1.0f, 0.0f }; /** The initial indices definition */ private static final byte indices[] = { //Faces definition 0,1,3, 0,3,2 }; Is there anyway to dump the contents of the texture once it's been loaded into OpenGL ES? Maybe I can compare the emulator's loaded texture with the actual device's loaded texture? I did try with a different texture (the default android icon) and again, it works fine for the emulator but fails to render on the actual phone. Edit4: Tried switching around when I do texture loading. No luck. Tried using a constant offset of 0 to glGenTextures, no change. Is there something that I'm using that the emulator supports that the actual phone does not? Edit5: Per Ryan below, I resized my texture from 200x200 to 256x256, and the issue was NOT resolved. Edit: As requested, added the calls to glVertexPointer and glTexCoordPointer above. Also, here is the initialization of vertexBuffer, textureBuffer, and indexBuffer: ByteBuffer byteBuf = ByteBuffer.allocateDirect(vertices.length * 4); byteBuf.order(ByteOrder.nativeOrder()); vertexBuffer = byteBuf.asFloatBuffer(); vertexBuffer.put(vertices); vertexBuffer.position(0); byteBuf = ByteBuffer.allocateDirect(texture.length * 4); byteBuf.order(ByteOrder.nativeOrder()); textureBuffer = byteBuf.asFloatBuffer(); textureBuffer.put(texture); textureBuffer.position(0); indexBuffer = ByteBuffer.allocateDirect(indices.length); indexBuffer.put(indices); indexBuffer.position(0); loadGLTextures(gl, this.context);

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• Error when call 'qb.query(db, projection, selection, selectionArgs, null, null, orderBy);'

  - by smalltalk1960s

  Hi all, I make a content provider named 'DictionaryProvider' (Based on NotepadProvider). When my program run to command 'qb.query(db, projection, selection, selectionArgs, null, null, orderBy);', error happen. I don't know how to fix. please help me. Below is my code // file main calling DictionnaryProvider @Override public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) { super.onCreate(savedInstanceState); setContentView(R.layout.dictionary); final String[] PROJECTION = new String[] { DicColumns._ID, // 0 DicColumns.KEY_WORD, // 1 DicColumns.KEY_DEFINITION // 2 }; Cursor c = managedQuery(DicColumns.CONTENT_URI, PROJECTION, null, null, DicColumns.DEFAULT_SORT_ORDER); String str = ""; if (c.moveToFirst()) { int wordColumn = c.getColumnIndex("KEY_WORD"); int defColumn = c.getColumnIndex("KEY_DEFINITION"); do { // Get the field values str = ""; str += c.getString(wordColumn); str +="\n"; str +=c.getString(defColumn); } while (c.moveToNext()); } Toast.makeText(this, str, Toast.LENGTH_SHORT).show(); } // file DictionaryProvider.java package com.example.helloandroid; import java.util.HashMap; import android.content.ContentProvider; import android.content.ContentValues; import android.content.UriMatcher; import android.database.Cursor; import android.database.sqlite.SQLiteDatabase; import android.database.sqlite.SQLiteQueryBuilder; import android.net.Uri; import android.text.TextUtils; import com.example.helloandroid.Dictionary.DicColumns; public class DictionaryProvider extends ContentProvider { //private static final String TAG = "DictionaryProvider"; private DictionaryOpenHelper dbdic; static final int DATABASE_VERSION = 1; static final String DICTIONARY_DATABASE_NAME = "dictionarydb"; static final String DICTIONARY_TABLE_NAME = "dictionary"; private static final UriMatcher sUriMatcher; private static HashMap<String, String> sDicProjectionMap; @Override public int delete(Uri arg0, String arg1, String[] arg2) { // TODO Auto-generated method stub return 0; } @Override public String getType(Uri arg0) { // TODO Auto-generated method stub return null; } @Override public Uri insert(Uri arg0, ContentValues arg1) { // TODO Auto-generated method stub return null; } @Override public boolean onCreate() { // TODO Auto-generated method stub dbdic = new DictionaryOpenHelper(getContext(), DICTIONARY_DATABASE_NAME, null, DATABASE_VERSION); return true; } @Override public Cursor query(Uri uri, String[] projection, String selection, String[] selectionArgs, String sortOrder) { SQLiteQueryBuilder qb = new SQLiteQueryBuilder(); qb.setTables(DICTIONARY_TABLE_NAME); switch (sUriMatcher.match(uri)) { case 1: qb.setProjectionMap(sDicProjectionMap); break; case 2: qb.setProjectionMap(sDicProjectionMap); qb.appendWhere(DicColumns._ID + "=" + uri.getPathSegments().get(1)); break; default: throw new IllegalArgumentException("Unknown URI " + uri); } // If no sort order is specified use the default String orderBy; if (TextUtils.isEmpty(sortOrder)) { orderBy = DicColumns.DEFAULT_SORT_ORDER; } else { orderBy = sortOrder; } // Get the database and run the query SQLiteDatabase db = dbdic.getReadableDatabase(); Cursor c = qb.query(db, projection, selection, selectionArgs, null, null, orderBy); // Tell the cursor what uri to watch, so it knows when its source data changes c.setNotificationUri(getContext().getContentResolver(), uri); return c; } @Override public int update(Uri uri, ContentValues values, String selection, String[] selectionArgs) { // TODO Auto-generated method stub return 0; } static { sUriMatcher = new UriMatcher(UriMatcher.NO_MATCH); sUriMatcher.addURI(Dictionary.AUTHORITY, "dictionary", 1); sUriMatcher.addURI(Dictionary.AUTHORITY, "dictionary/#", 2); sDicProjectionMap = new HashMap<String, String>(); sDicProjectionMap.put(DicColumns._ID, DicColumns._ID); sDicProjectionMap.put(DicColumns.KEY_WORD, DicColumns.KEY_WORD); sDicProjectionMap.put(DicColumns.KEY_DEFINITION, DicColumns.KEY_DEFINITION); // Support for Live Folders. /*sLiveFolderProjectionMap = new HashMap<String, String>(); sLiveFolderProjectionMap.put(LiveFolders._ID, NoteColumns._ID + " AS " + LiveFolders._ID); sLiveFolderProjectionMap.put(LiveFolders.NAME, NoteColumns.TITLE + " AS " + LiveFolders.NAME);*/ // Add more columns here for more robust Live Folders. } } // file Dictionary.java package com.example.helloandroid; import android.net.Uri; import android.provider.BaseColumns; /** * Convenience definitions for DictionaryProvider */ public final class Dictionary { public static final String AUTHORITY = "com.example.helloandroid.provider.Dictionary"; // This class cannot be instantiated private Dictionary() {} /** * Dictionary table */ public static final class DicColumns implements BaseColumns { // This class cannot be instantiated private DicColumns() {} /** * The content:// style URL for this table */ public static final Uri CONTENT_URI = Uri.parse("content://" + AUTHORITY + "/dictionary"); /** * The MIME type of {@link #CONTENT_URI} providing a directory of notes. */ //public static final String CONTENT_TYPE = "vnd.android.cursor.dir/vnd.google.note"; /** * The MIME type of a {@link #CONTENT_URI} sub-directory of a single note. */ //public static final String CONTENT_ITEM_TYPE = "vnd.android.cursor.item/vnd.google.note"; /** * The default sort order for this table */ public static final String DEFAULT_SORT_ORDER = "modified DESC"; /** * The key_word of the dictionary * <P>Type: TEXT</P> */ public static final String KEY_WORD = "KEY_WORD"; /** * The key_definition of word * <P>Type: TEXT</P> */ public static final String KEY_DEFINITION = "KEY_DEFINITION"; } } thanks so much

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• how to save state of dynamically created editTexts

  - by user922531

  I'm stuck at how to save the state of my EditTexts on screen orientation. Currently if text is inputted into the EditTexts and the screen is orientated, the fields are wiped (as expected). I am already calling onSaveInstanceState and saving a String, but I have no clue on how to save the EditTexts which are created in code and then retrieve them and add them to the EditTexts when redrawing the activity. Snippet of my code: My main activity is as follows: public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) { super.onCreate(savedInstanceState); setContentView(R.layout.main); // get the multidim array b = getIntent().getBundleExtra("obj"); m = (Methods) b.getSerializable("Methods"); // method to draw the layout InitialiseUI(); // Restore UI state from the savedInstanceState. if (savedInstanceState != null) { String strValue = savedInstanceState.getString("light"); if (strValue != null) { FLight = strValue; } } try { mCamera = Camera.open(); if (FLight.equals("true")) { flashLight(); } } catch (Exception e) { Log.d(TAG, "Thrown exception onCreate() camera: " + e); } } // end onCreate /** Called when the back button is pressed. */ @Override public void onResume() { super.onResume(); try { mCamera = Camera.open(); if (FLight.equals("true")) { flashLight(); } } catch (Exception e) { Log.d(TAG, "Thrown exception onCreate() camera: " + e); } } // end onCreate /** saves data before leaving the screen */ @Override protected void onSaveInstanceState(Bundle outState) { super.onSaveInstanceState(outState); outState.putString("light", FLight); } /** called when exiting / leaving the screen */ @Override protected void onPause() { super.onPause(); Log.d(TAG, "onPause()"); if (mCamera != null) { mCamera.stopPreview(); mCamera.release(); mCamera = null; } } /* * set up the UI elements - add click listeners to buttons used in * onCreate() and onConfigurationChanged() * * Set the editTexts fields to show the previous readings as Hints */ public void InitialiseUI() { Log.d(TAG, "Start of InitialiseUI, Main activity"); // get a reference to the TableLayout final TableLayout myTLreads = (TableLayout) findViewById(R.id.myTLreads); // Create arrays to hold the TVs and ETs final TextView[] myTextViews = new TextView[m.getNoRows()]; // create an empty array; final EditText[] myEditTexts = new EditText[m.getNoRows()]; // create an empty array; for(int i =0; i<=m.getNoRows()-1;i++ ){ TableRow tr=new TableRow(this); tr.setLayoutParams(new LayoutParams( LayoutParams.MATCH_PARENT, LayoutParams.WRAP_CONTENT)); // create a new textview / editText final TextView rowTextView = new TextView(this); final EditText rowEditText = new EditText(this); // setWidth is needed otherwise my landscape layout is OFF rowEditText.setWidth(400); // this stops the keyboard taking up the whole screen in landscape layout rowEditText.setImeOptions(EditorInfo.IME_FLAG_NO_EXTRACT_UI); // add some padding to the right of the TV rowTextView.setPadding(0,0,10,0); // set colors to white rowTextView.setTextColor(Color.parseColor("#FFFFFF")); rowEditText.setTextColor(Color.parseColor("#FFFFFF")); // if readings already sent today set color to yellow if(m.getTransmit(i+1)==false){ rowEditText.setEnabled(false); rowEditText.setHintTextColor(Color.parseColor("#FFFF00")); } // set the text of the TV to the meter name rowTextView.setText(m.getMeterName(i+1)); // set the hint of the ET to the last submitted reading rowEditText.setHint(m.getLastReadString(i+1)); // add the textview to the linearlayout rowEditText.setInputType(InputType.TYPE_CLASS_PHONE);//InputType.TYPE_NUMBER_FLAG_DECIMAL); tr.addView(rowTextView); tr.addView(rowEditText); myTLreads.addView(tr); // add a reference to the textView myTextViews[i] = rowTextView; myEditTexts[i] = rowEditText; } final Button submit = (Button) findViewById(R.id.submitReadings); // add a click listener to the button try { submit.setOnClickListener(new View.OnClickListener() { public void onClick(View v) { Log.d(TAG, "Submit button clicked, Main activity"); preSubmitCheck(m.getAccNo(), m.getPostCode(), myEditTexts); // method to do HTML getting and sending } }); } catch (Exception e) { Log.d(TAG, "Exceptions (submit button)" + e.toString()); } }// end of InitialiseUI I don't need to do anything with these values until a button is clicked. Would it be easier if they were a ListView, i'm guessing I would still have the problem of saving them and retrieving them on rotation. If it helps I have an object m which is a string[][] I could temporarily somehow store them in

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• Fastest way to move records from an Oracle database into SQL Server

  - by user347748

  Ok this is the scenario... I have a table in Oracle that acts like a queue... A VB.net program reads the queue and calls a stored proc in SQL Server that processes and then inserts the message into another SQL Server table and then deletes the record from the oracle table. We use a DataReader to read the records from Oracle and then call the stored proc for each of the records. The program seems to be a little slow. The stored procedure itself isn't slow. The SP by itself when called in a loop can process about 2000 records in 20 seconds. But when called from the .Net program, the execution time is about 5 records per second. I have seen that most of the time consumed is in calling the stored procedure and waiting for it to return. Is there a better way of doing this? Here is a snippet of the actual code Function StartDataXfer() As Boolean Dim status As Boolean = False Try SqlConn.Open() OraConn.Open() c.ErrorLog(Now.ToString & "--Going to Get the messages from oracle", 1) If GetMsgsFromOracle() Then c.ErrorLog(Now.ToString & "--Got messages from oracle", 1) If ProcessMessages() Then c.ErrorLog(Now.ToString & "--Finished Processing all messages in the queue", 0) status = True Else c.ErrorLog(Now.ToString & "--Failed to Process all messages in the queue", 0) status = False End If Else status = True End If StartDataXfer = status Catch ex As Exception Finally SqlConn.Close() OraConn.Close() End Try End Function Private Function GetMsgsFromOracle() As Boolean Try OraDataAdapter = New OleDb.OleDbDataAdapter OraDataTable = New System.Data.DataTable OraSelCmd = New OleDb.OleDbCommand GetMsgsFromOracle = False With OraSelCmd .CommandType = CommandType.Text .Connection = OraConn .CommandText = GetMsgSql End With OraDataAdapter.SelectCommand = OraSelCmd OraDataAdapter.Fill(OraDataTable) If OraDataTable.Rows.Count > 0 Then GetMsgsFromOracle = True End If Catch ex As Exception GetMsgsFromOracle = False End Try End Function Private Function ProcessMessages() As Boolean Try ProcessMessages = False PrepareSQLInsert() PrepOraDel() i = 0 Dim Method As Integer Dim OraDataRow As DataRow c.ErrorLog(Now.ToString & "--Going to call message sending procedure", 2) For Each OraDataRow In OraDataTable.Rows With OraDataRow Method = GetMethod(.Item(0)) SQLInsCmd.Parameters("RelLifeTime").Value = c.RelLifetime SQLInsCmd.Parameters("Param1").Value = Nothing SQLInsCmd.Parameters("ID").Value = GenerateTransactionID() ' Nothing SQLInsCmd.Parameters("UID").Value = Nothing SQLInsCmd.Parameters("Param").Value = Nothing SQLInsCmd.Parameters("Credit").Value = 0 SQLInsCmd.ExecuteNonQuery() 'check the return value If SQLInsCmd.Parameters("ReturnValue").Value = 1 And SQLInsCmd.Parameters("OutPutParam").Value = 0 Then 'success 'delete the input record from the source table once it is logged c.ErrorLog(Now.ToString & "--Moved record successfully", 2) OraDataAdapter.DeleteCommand.Parameters("P(0)").Value = OraDataRow.Item(6) OraDataAdapter.DeleteCommand.ExecuteNonQuery() c.ErrorLog(Now.ToString & "--Deleted record successfully", 2) OraDataAdapter.Update(OraDataTable) c.ErrorLog(Now.ToString & "--Committed record successfully", 2) i = i + 1 Else 'failure c.ErrorLog(Now.ToString & "--Failed to exec: " & c.DestIns & "Status: " & SQLInsCmd.Parameters("OutPutParam").Value & " and TrackId: " & SQLInsCmd.Parameters("TrackID").Value.ToString, 0) End If If File.Exists("stop.txt") Then c.ErrorLog(Now.ToString & "--Stop File Found", 1) 'ProcessMessages = True 'Exit Function Exit For End If End With Next OraDataAdapter.Update(OraDataTable) c.ErrorLog(Now.ToString & "--Updated Oracle Table", 1) c.ErrorLog(Now.ToString & "--Moved " & i & " records from Oracle to SQL Table", 1) ProcessMessages = True Catch ex As Exception ProcessMessages = False c.ErrorLog(Now.ToString & "--MoveMsgsToSQL: " & ex.Message, 0) Finally OraDataTable.Clear() OraDataTable.Dispose() OraDataAdapter.Dispose() OraDelCmd.Dispose() OraDelCmd = Nothing OraSelCmd = Nothing OraDataTable = Nothing OraDataAdapter = Nothing End Try End Function Public Function GenerateTransactionID() As Int64 Dim SeqNo As Int64 Dim qry As String Dim SqlTransCmd As New OleDb.OleDbCommand qry = " select seqno from StoreSeqNo" SqlTransCmd.CommandType = CommandType.Text SqlTransCmd.Connection = SqlConn SqlTransCmd.CommandText = qry SeqNo = SqlTransCmd.ExecuteScalar If SeqNo > 2147483647 Then qry = "update StoreSeqNo set seqno=1" SqlTransCmd.CommandText = qry SqlTransCmd.ExecuteNonQuery() GenerateTransactionID = 1 Else qry = "update StoreSeqNo set seqno=" & SeqNo + 1 SqlTransCmd.CommandText = qry SqlTransCmd.ExecuteNonQuery() GenerateTransactionID = SeqNo End If End Function Private Function PrepareSQLInsert() As Boolean 'function to prepare the insert statement for the insert into the SQL stmt using 'the sql procedure SMSProcessAndDispatch Try Dim dr As DataRow SQLInsCmd = New OleDb.OleDbCommand With SQLInsCmd .CommandType = CommandType.StoredProcedure .Connection = SqlConn .CommandText = SQLInsProc .Parameters.Add("ReturnValue", OleDb.OleDbType.Integer) .Parameters("ReturnValue").Direction = ParameterDirection.ReturnValue .Parameters.Add("OutPutParam", OleDb.OleDbType.Integer) .Parameters("OutPutParam").Direction = ParameterDirection.Output .Parameters.Add("TrackID", OleDb.OleDbType.VarChar, 70) .Parameters.Add("RelLifeTime", OleDb.OleDbType.TinyInt) .Parameters("RelLifeTime").Direction = ParameterDirection.Input .Parameters.Add("Param1", OleDb.OleDbType.VarChar, 160) .Parameters("Param1").Direction = ParameterDirection.Input .Parameters.Add("TransID", OleDb.OleDbType.VarChar, 70) .Parameters("TransID").Direction = ParameterDirection.Input .Parameters.Add("UID", OleDb.OleDbType.VarChar, 20) .Parameters("UID").Direction = ParameterDirection.Input .Parameters.Add("Param", OleDb.OleDbType.VarChar, 160) .Parameters("Param").Direction = ParameterDirection.Input .Parameters.Add("CheckCredit", OleDb.OleDbType.Integer) .Parameters("CheckCredit").Direction = ParameterDirection.Input .Prepare() End With Catch ex As Exception c.ErrorLog(Now.ToString & "--PrepareSQLInsert: " & ex.Message) End Try End Function Private Function PrepOraDel() As Boolean OraDelCmd = New OleDb.OleDbCommand Try PrepOraDel = False With OraDelCmd .CommandType = CommandType.Text .Connection = OraConn .CommandText = DelSrcSQL .Parameters.Add("P(0)", OleDb.OleDbType.VarChar, 160) 'RowID .Parameters("P(0)").Direction = ParameterDirection.Input .Prepare() End With OraDataAdapter.DeleteCommand = OraDelCmd PrepOraDel = True Catch ex As Exception PrepOraDel = False End Try End Function WHat i would like to know is, if there is anyway to speed up this program? Any ideas/suggestions would be highly appreciated... Regardss, Chetan

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• Couldn't match expected type - Haskell Code

  - by wvyar

  I'm trying to learn Haskell, but the small bit of sample code I tried to write is running into a fairly large amount of "Couldn't match expected type" errors. Can anyone give me some guidance as to what I'm doing wrong/how I should go about this? These are the errors, but I'm not really sure how I should be writing my code. toDoSchedulerSimple.hs:6:14: Couldn't match expected type `[t0]' with actual type `IO String' In the return type of a call of `readFile' In a stmt of a 'do' block: f <- readFile inFile In the expression: do { f <- readFile inFile; lines f } toDoSchedulerSimple.hs:27:9: Couldn't match expected type `[a0]' with actual type `IO ()' In the return type of a call of `putStr' In a stmt of a 'do' block: putStr "Enter task name: " In the expression: do { putStr "Enter task name: "; task <- getLine; return inFileArray : task } toDoSchedulerSimple.hs:34:9: Couldn't match expected type `IO ()' with actual type `[a0]' In a stmt of a 'do' block: putStrLn "Your task is: " ++ (inFileArray !! i) In the expression: do { i <- randomRIO (0, (length inFileArray - 1)); putStrLn "Your task is: " ++ (inFileArray !! i) } In an equation for `getTask': getTask inFileArray = do { i <- randomRIO (0, (length inFileArray - 1)); putStrLn "Your task is: " ++ (inFileArray !! i) } toDoSchedulerSimple.hs:41:9: Couldn't match expected type `[a0]' with actual type `IO ()' In the return type of a call of `putStr' In a stmt of a 'do' block: putStr "Enter the task you would like to end: " In the expression: do { putStr "Enter the task you would like to end: "; task <- getLine; filter (endTaskCheck task) inFileArray } toDoSchedulerSimple.hs:60:53: Couldn't match expected type `IO ()' with actual type `[String] -> IO ()' In a stmt of a 'do' block: schedulerSimpleMain In the expression: do { (getTask inFileArray); schedulerSimpleMain } In a case alternative: "get-task" -> do { (getTask inFileArray); schedulerSimpleMain } This is the code itself. I think it's fairly straightforward, but the idea is to run a loop, take input, and perform actions based off of it by calling other functions. import System.Random (randomRIO) import Data.List (lines) initializeFile :: [char] -> [String] initializeFile inFile = do f <- readFile inFile let parsedFile = lines f return parsedFile displayHelp :: IO() displayHelp = do putStrLn "Welcome to To Do Scheduler Simple, written in Haskell." putStrLn "Here are some commands you might find useful:" putStrLn " 'help' : Display this menu." putStrLn " 'quit' : Exit the program." putStrLn " 'new-task' : Create a new task." putStrLn " 'get-task' : Randomly select a task." putStrLn " 'end-task' : Mark a task as finished." putStrLn " 'view-tasks' : View all of your tasks." quit :: IO() quit = do putStrLn "We're very sad to see you go...:(" putStrLn "Come back soon!" createTask :: [String] -> [String] createTask inFileArray = do putStr "Enter task name: " task <- getLine return inFileArray:task getTask :: [String] -> IO() getTask inFileArray = do i <- randomRIO (0, (length inFileArray - 1)) putStrLn "Your task is: " ++ (inFileArray !! i) endTaskCheck :: String -> String -> Bool endTaskCheck str1 str2 = str1 /= str2 endTask :: [String] -> [String] endTask inFileArray = do putStr "Enter the task you would like to end: " task <- getLine return filter (endTaskCheck task) inFileArray viewTasks :: [String] -> IO() viewTasks inFileArray = case inFileArray of [] -> do putStrLn "\nEnd of tasks." _ -> do putStrLn (head inFileArray) viewTasks (tail inFileArray) schedulerSimpleMain :: [String] -> IO() schedulerSimpleMain inFileArray = do putStr "SchedulerSimple> " input <- getLine case input of "help" -> displayHelp "quit" -> quit "new-task" -> schedulerSimpleMain (createTask inFileArray) "get-task" -> do (getTask inFileArray); schedulerSimpleMain "end-task" -> schedulerSimpleMain (endTask inFileArray) "view-tasks" -> do (viewTasks inFileArray); schedulerSimpleMain _ -> do putStrLn "Invalid input."; schedulerSimpleMain main :: IO() main = do putStr "What is the name of the schedule? " sName <- getLine schedulerSimpleMain (initializeFile sName) Thanks, and apologies if this isn't the correct place to be asking such a question.

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• How to optimize method's that track metrics in 3rd party application?

  - by WulfgarPro

  Hi, I have two listboxes that keep updated lists of various objects roaming in a 3rd party application. When a user selects an object from a listbox, an event handler is fired, calling a method that gathers various metrics belonging to that object from the 3rd party application for displaying in a set of textboxes. This is slow! I am not sure how to optimize this functionality to facilitate greater speeds.. private void lsbUavs_SelectedIndexChanged(object sender, EventArgs e) { if (_ourSelectedUavFromListBox != null) { UtilStkScenario.ChangeUavColourOnScenario(_ourSelectedUavFromListBox.UavName, false); } if (lsbUavs.SelectedItem != null) { Uav ourUav = UtilStkScenario.FindUavFromScenarioBasedOnName(lsbUavs.SelectedItem.ToString()); hsbThrottle.Value = (int)ourUav.ThrottleValue; UtilStkScenario.ChangeUavColourOnScenario(ourUav.UavName, true); _ourSelectedUavFromListBox = ourUav; // we don't want this thread spawning many times if (tUpdateMetricInformationInTabControl != null) { if (tUpdateMetricInformationInTabControl.IsAlive) { tUpdateMetricInformationInTabControl.Abort(); } } tUpdateMetricInformationInTabControl = new Thread(UpdateMetricInformationInTabControl); tUpdateMetricInformationInTabControl.Name = "UpdateMetricInformationInTabControlUavs"; tUpdateMetricInformationInTabControl.IsBackground = true; tUpdateMetricInformationInTabControl.Start(lsbUavs); } } delegate string GetNameOfListItem(ListBox listboxId); delegate void SetTextBoxValue(TextBox textBoxId, string valueToSet); private void UpdateMetricInformationInTabControl(object listBoxToUpdate) { ListBox theListBoxToUpdate = (ListBox)listBoxToUpdate; GetNameOfListItem dGetNameOfListItem = new GetNameOfListItem(GetNameOfSelectedListItem); SetTextBoxValue dSetTextBoxValue = new SetTextBoxValue(SetNamedTextBoxValue); try { foreach (KeyValuePair<string, IAgStkObject> entity in UtilStkScenario._totalListOfAllStkObjects) { if (entity.Key.ToString() == (string)theListBoxToUpdate.Invoke(dGetNameOfListItem, theListBoxToUpdate)) { while ((string)theListBoxToUpdate.Invoke(dGetNameOfListItem, theListBoxToUpdate) == entity.Key.ToString()) { if (theListBoxToUpdate.Name == "lsbEntities") { double[] latLonAndAltOfEntity = UtilStkScenario.FindMetricsOfStkObjectOnScenario(UtilStkScenario._stkObjectRoot.CurrentTime, entity.Value); SetEntityOrUavMetricValuesInTextBoxes(dSetTextBoxValue, "Entity", entity.Key, "", "", "", "", latLonAndAltOfEntity[4].ToString(), latLonAndAltOfEntity[3].ToString()); } else if (theListBoxToUpdate.Name == "lsbUavs") { double[] latLonAndAltOfEntity = UtilStkScenario.FindMetricsOfStkObjectOnScenario(UtilStkScenario._stkObjectRoot.CurrentTime, entity.Value); SetEntityOrUavMetricValuesInTextBoxes(dSetTextBoxValue, "UAV", entity.Key, entity.Value.ClassName.ToString(), latLonAndAltOfEntity[0].ToString(), latLonAndAltOfEntity[1].ToString(), latLonAndAltOfEntity[2].ToString(), latLonAndAltOfEntity[4].ToString(), latLonAndAltOfEntity[3].ToString()); } } } } } catch (Exception e) { // selected entity was deleted(end-of-life) in STK - remove LLA information from GUI if (theListBoxToUpdate.Name == "lsbEntities") { SetEntityOrUavMetricValuesInTextBoxes(dSetTextBoxValue, "Entity", "", "", "", "", "", "", ""); UtilLog.Log(e.Message.ToString(), e.GetType().ToString(), "UpdateMetricInformationInTabControl", UtilLog.logWriter); } else if (theListBoxToUpdate.Name == "lsbUavs") { SetEntityOrUavMetricValuesInTextBoxes(dSetTextBoxValue, "UAV", "", "", "", "", "", "", ""); UtilLog.Log(e.Message.ToString(), e.GetType().ToString(), "UpdateMetricInformationInTabControl", UtilLog.logWriter); } } } internal static double[] FindMetricsOfStkObjectOnScenario(object timeToFindMetricState, IAgStkObject stkObject) { double[] stkObjectMetrics = null; try { stkObjectMetrics = new double[5]; object latOfStkObject, lonOfStkObject; double altOfStkObject, headingOfStkObject, velocityOfStkObject; IAgProvideSpatialInfo spatial = stkObject as IAgProvideSpatialInfo; IAgVeSpatialInfo spatialInfo = spatial.GetSpatialInfo(false); IAgSpatialState spatialState = spatialInfo.GetState(timeToFindMetricState); spatialState.FixedPosition.QueryPlanetodetic(out latOfStkObject, out lonOfStkObject, out altOfStkObject); double[] stkObjectheadingAndVelocity = FindHeadingAndVelocityOfStkObjectFromScenario(stkObject.InstanceName); headingOfStkObject = stkObjectheadingAndVelocity[0]; velocityOfStkObject = stkObjectheadingAndVelocity[1]; stkObjectMetrics[0] = (double)latOfStkObject; stkObjectMetrics[1] = (double)lonOfStkObject; stkObjectMetrics[2] = altOfStkObject; stkObjectMetrics[3] = headingOfStkObject; stkObjectMetrics[4] = velocityOfStkObject; } catch (Exception e) { UtilLog.Log(e.Message.ToString(), e.GetType().ToString(), "FindMetricsOfStkObjectOnScenario", UtilLog.logWriter); } return stkObjectMetrics; } private static double[] FindHeadingAndVelocityOfStkObjectFromScenario(string stkObjectName) { double[] stkObjectHeadingAndVelocity = new double[2]; IAgStkObject stkUavObject = null; try { string typeOfObject = CheckIfStkObjectIsEntityOrUav(stkObjectName); if (typeOfObject == "UAV") { stkUavObject = _stkObjectRootToIsolateForUavs.CurrentScenario.Children[stkObjectName]; IAgDataProviderGroup group = (IAgDataProviderGroup)stkUavObject.DataProviders["Heading"]; IAgDataProvider provider = (IAgDataProvider)group.Group["Fixed"]; IAgDrResult result = ((IAgDataPrvTimeVar)provider).ExecSingle(_stkObjectRootToIsolateForUavs.CurrentTime); stkObjectHeadingAndVelocity[0] = (double)result.DataSets[1].GetValues().GetValue(0); stkObjectHeadingAndVelocity[1] = (double)result.DataSets[4].GetValues().GetValue(0); } else if (typeOfObject == "Entity") { IAgStkObject stkEntityObject = _stkObjectRootToIsolateForEntities.CurrentScenario.Children[stkObjectName]; IAgDataProviderGroup group = (IAgDataProviderGroup)stkEntityObject.DataProviders["Heading"]; IAgDataProvider provider = (IAgDataProvider)group.Group["Fixed"]; IAgDrResult result = ((IAgDataPrvTimeVar)provider).ExecSingle(_stkObjectRootToIsolateForEntities.CurrentTime); stkObjectHeadingAndVelocity[0] = (double)result.DataSets[1].GetValues().GetValue(0); stkObjectHeadingAndVelocity[1] = (double)result.DataSets[4].GetValues().GetValue(0); } } catch (Exception e) { UtilLog.Log(e.Message.ToString(), e.GetType().ToString(), "FindHeadingAndVelocityOfStkObjectFromScenario", UtilLog.logWriter); } return stkObjectHeadingAndVelocity; } Any help would be really appreciated. From my knowledge, I cant really see any issues with the C#. Maybe it has to do with the methodology I'm using.. maybe some kind of caching mechanism is required - this is not natively available. WulfgarPro

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• OpenSwan IPsec connection drops after 30 seconds

  - by drcore

  I'm trying to connection from my Linux Mint 16 box to a CloudStack server. Building up the connection works (pings work across the tunnel). However 30 seconds later the IPsec tunnel gets terminated out of the blue. What could cause this consistent behaviour and how to fix it? The tunnel is setup using OpenSwan (U2.6.38/K(no kernel code presently loaded)) with the L2TP IPsec VPN manager from Werner Jaeger 1.0.9. The client is behind a NAT'ed router and the server is on public IP (CloudStack 4.2) Running ipsec verify complains about IPsec support in kernel. Not sure if this is a problem as the connection is being build up: Checking your system to see if IPsec got installed and started correctly: Version check and ipsec on-path [OK] Linux Openswan U2.6.38/K(no kernel code presently loaded) Checking for IPsec support in kernel [FAILED] SAref kernel support [N/A] Checking that pluto is running [FAILED] whack: Pluto is not running (no "/var/run/pluto/pluto.ctl") Checking for 'ip' command [OK] Checking /bin/sh is not /bin/dash [WARNING] Checking for 'iptables' command [OK] Opportunistic Encryption Support [DISABLED] Tunnel config: version 2.0 # conforms to second version of ipsec.conf specification config setup # plutodebug="parsing emitting control private" plutodebug=none strictcrlpolicy=no nat_traversal=yes interfaces=%defaultroute oe=off # which IPsec stack to use. netkey,klips,mast,auto or none protostack=netkey conn %default keyingtries=3 pfs=no rekey=yes type=transport left=%defaultroute leftprotoport=17/1701 rightprotoport=17/1701 conn Tunnel1 authby=secret right=37.48.75.97 rightid="" auto=add Log file of VPN connection build up: aug. 23 17:12:54.708 ipsec_setup: Starting Openswan IPsec U2.6.38/K3.11.0-12-generic... aug. 23 17:12:55.155 ipsec_setup: multiple ip addresses, using 192.168.178.32 on eth0 aug. 23 17:12:55.165 ipsec__plutorun: Starting Pluto subsystem... aug. 23 17:12:55.174 ipsec__plutorun: adjusting ipsec.d to /etc/ipsec.d aug. 23 17:12:55.177 recvref[30]: Protocol not available aug. 23 17:12:55.177 xl2tpd[14339]: This binary does not support kernel L2TP. aug. 23 17:12:55.178 Starting xl2tpd: xl2tpd. aug. 23 17:12:55.178 xl2tpd[14345]: xl2tpd version xl2tpd-1.3.1 started on desktopmint PID:14345 aug. 23 17:12:55.178 xl2tpd[14345]: Written by Mark Spencer, Copyright (C) 1998, Adtran, Inc. aug. 23 17:12:55.179 xl2tpd[14345]: Forked by Scott Balmos and David Stipp, (C) 2001 aug. 23 17:12:55.179 xl2tpd[14345]: Inherited by Jeff McAdams, (C) 2002 aug. 23 17:12:55.179 xl2tpd[14345]: Forked again by Xelerance (www.xelerance.com) (C) 2006 aug. 23 17:12:55.180 xl2tpd[14345]: Listening on IP address 0.0.0.0, port 1701 aug. 23 17:12:55.214 ipsec__plutorun: 002 added connection description "Tunnel1" aug. 23 17:13:15.532 104 "Tunnel1" #1: STATE_MAIN_I1: initiate aug. 23 17:13:15.532 003 "Tunnel1" #1: ignoring unknown Vendor ID payload [4f45755c645c6a795c5c6170] aug. 23 17:13:15.532 003 "Tunnel1" #1: received Vendor ID payload [Dead Peer Detection] aug. 23 17:13:15.533 003 "Tunnel1" #1: received Vendor ID payload [RFC 3947] method set to=115 aug. 23 17:13:15.533 106 "Tunnel1" #1: STATE_MAIN_I2: sent MI2, expecting MR2 aug. 23 17:13:15.534 003 "Tunnel1" #1: NAT-Traversal: Result using draft-ietf-ipsec-nat-t-ike (MacOS X): i am NATed aug. 23 17:13:15.534 108 "Tunnel1" #1: STATE_MAIN_I3: sent MI3, expecting MR3 aug. 23 17:13:15.534 010 "Tunnel1" #1: STATE_MAIN_I3: retransmission; will wait 20s for response aug. 23 17:13:15.545 003 "Tunnel1" #1: received Vendor ID payload [CAN-IKEv2] aug. 23 17:13:15.547 004 "Tunnel1" #1: STATE_MAIN_I4: ISAKMP SA established {auth=OAKLEY_PRESHARED_KEY cipher=aes_128 prf=oakley_sha group=modp2048} aug. 23 17:13:15.547 117 "Tunnel1" #2: STATE_QUICK_I1: initiate aug. 23 17:13:15.547 010 "Tunnel1" #2: STATE_QUICK_I1: retransmission; will wait 20s for response aug. 23 17:13:15.548 004 "Tunnel1" #2: STATE_QUICK_I2: sent QI2, IPsec SA established transport mode {ESP=>0x0ecef28b <0x3e1fbe3b xfrm=AES_128-HMAC_SHA1 NATOA=none NATD=none DPD=none} aug. 23 17:13:16.549 xl2tpd[14345]: Connecting to host <VPN gateway>, port 1701 aug. 23 17:13:18.576 xl2tpd[14345]: Connection established to <VPN gateway>, 1701. Local: 21163, Remote: 12074 (ref=0/0). aug. 23 17:13:18.576 xl2tpd[14345]: Calling on tunnel 21163 aug. 23 17:13:18.577 xl2tpd[14345]: check_control: Received out of order control packet on tunnel 12074 (got 0, expected 1) aug. 23 17:13:18.577 xl2tpd[14345]: handle_packet: bad control packet! aug. 23 17:13:18.577 xl2tpd[14345]: check_control: Received out of order control packet on tunnel 12074 (got 0, expected 1) aug. 23 17:13:18.577 xl2tpd[14345]: handle_packet: bad control packet! aug. 23 17:13:18.599 xl2tpd[14345]: Call established with <VPN gateway>, Local: 39035, Remote: 57266, Serial: 1 (ref=0/0) aug. 23 17:13:18.605 xl2tpd[14345]: start_pppd: I'm running: aug. 23 17:13:18.605 xl2tpd[14345]: "/usr/sbin/pppd" aug. 23 17:13:18.606 xl2tpd[14345]: "passive" aug. 23 17:13:18.606 xl2tpd[14345]: "nodetach" aug. 23 17:13:18.606 xl2tpd[14345]: ":" aug. 23 17:13:18.606 xl2tpd[14345]: "file" aug. 23 17:13:18.606 xl2tpd[14345]: "/etc/ppp/Tunnel1.options.xl2tpd" aug. 23 17:13:18.606 xl2tpd[14345]: "ipparam" aug. 23 17:13:18.607 xl2tpd[14345]: "<VPN gateway>" aug. 23 17:13:18.607 xl2tpd[14345]: "/dev/pts/4" aug. 23 17:13:18.607 pppd[14438]: Plugin passprompt.so loaded. aug. 23 17:13:18.607 pppd[14438]: pppd 2.4.5 started by root, uid 0 aug. 23 17:13:18.608 pppd[14438]: Using interface ppp0 aug. 23 17:13:18.608 pppd[14438]: Connect: ppp0 <--> /dev/pts/4 aug. 23 17:13:21.650 pppd[14438]: CHAP authentication succeeded: Access granted aug. 23 17:13:21.651 pppd[14438]: CHAP authentication succeeded aug. 23 17:13:21.692 pppd[14438]: local IP address 10.1.2.2 aug. 23 17:13:21.693 pppd[14438]: remote IP address 10.1.2.1 aug. 23 17:13:21.693 pppd[14438]: primary DNS address 10.1.2.1 aug. 23 17:13:21.694 pppd[14438]: secondary DNS address 10.1.2.1 aug. 23 17:13:46.528 Stopping xl2tpd: xl2tpd. aug. 23 17:13:46.528 xl2tpd[14345]: death_handler: Fatal signal 15 received aug. 23 17:13:46.529 pppd[14438]: Modem hangup aug. 23 17:13:46.529 pppd[14438]: Connect time 0.5 minutes. aug. 23 17:13:46.529 pppd[14438]: Sent 1866 bytes, received 1241 bytes. aug. 23 17:13:46.529 pppd[14438]: Connection terminated. aug. 23 17:13:46.562 ipsec_setup: Stopping Openswan IPsec... aug. 23 17:13:46.576 pppd[14438]: Exit.

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• Varnish default.vcl grace period

  - by Vladimir

  These are my settings for a grace period (/etc/varnish/default.vcl) sub vcl_recv { .... set req.grace = 360000s; ... } sub vcl_fetch { ... set beresp.grace = 360000s; ... } I tested Varnish using localhost and nodejs as a server. I started localhost, the site was up. Then I disconnected server and the site got disconnected in less than 2 min. It says: Error 503 Service Unavailable Service Unavailable Guru Meditation: XID: 1890127100 Varnish cache server Could you tell me what could be the problem? sub vcl_fetch { if (beresp.ttl < 120s) { ##std.log("Adjusting TTL"); set beresp.ttl = 36000s; ##120s; } # Do not cache the object if the backend application does not want us to. if (beresp.http.Cache-Control ~ "(no-cache|no-store|private|must-revalidate)") { return(hit_for_pass); } # Do not cache the object if the status is not in the 200s if (beresp.status >= 300) { # Remove the Set-Cookie header #remove beresp.http.Set-Cookie; return(hit_for_pass); } # # Everything below here should be cached # # Remove the Set-Cookie header ####remove beresp.http.Set-Cookie; # Set the grace time ## set beresp.grace = 1s; //change this to minutes in case of app shutdown set beresp.grace = 360000s; ## 10 hour - reduce if it has negative impact # Static assets - browser caches tpiphem for a long time. if (req.url ~ "\.(css|js|.js|jpg|jpeg|gif|ico|png)\??\d*$") { /* Remove Expires from backend, it's not long enough */ unset beresp.http.expires; /* Set the clients TTL on this object */ set beresp.http.cache-control = "public, max-age=31536000"; /* marker for vcl_deliver to reset Age: */ set beresp.http.magicmarker = "1"; } else { set beresp.http.Cache-Control = "private, max-age=0, must-revalidate"; set beresp.http.Pragma = "no-cache"; } if (req.url ~ "\.(css|js|min|)\??\d*$") { set beresp.do_gzip = true; unset beresp.http.expires; set beresp.http.cache-control = "public, max-age=31536000"; set beresp.http.expires = beresp.ttl; set beresp.http.age = "0"; } ##do not duplicate these settings if (req.url ~ ".css") { set beresp.do_gzip = true; unset beresp.http.expires; set beresp.http.cache-control = "public, max-age=31536000"; set beresp.http.expires = beresp.ttl; set beresp.http.age = "0"; } if (req.url ~ ".js") { set beresp.do_gzip = true; unset beresp.http.expires; set beresp.http.cache-control = "public, max-age=31536000"; set beresp.http.expires = beresp.ttl; set beresp.http.age = "0"; } if (req.url ~ ".min") { set beresp.do_gzip = true; unset beresp.http.expires; set beresp.http.cache-control = "public, max-age=31536000"; set beresp.http.expires = beresp.ttl; set beresp.http.age = "0"; } ## If the request to the backend returns a code other than 200, restart the loop ## If the number of restarts reaches the value of the parameter max_restarts, ## the request will be error'ed. max_restarts defaults to 4. This prevents ## an eternal loop in the event that, e.g., the object does not exist at all. if (beresp.status != 200 && beresp.status != 403 && beresp.status != 404) { return(restart); } if (beresp.status == 302) { return(deliver); } # Never cache posts if (req.url ~ "\/post\/" || req.url ~ "\/submit\/" || req.url ~ "\/ask\/" || req.url ~ "\/add\/") { return(hit_for_pass); } ##check this setting to ensure that it does not cause issues for browsers with no gzip if (beresp.http.content-type ~ "text") { set beresp.do_gzip = true; } if (beresp.http.Set-Cookie) { return(deliver); } ##if (req.url == "/index.html") { set beresp.do_esi = true; ##} ## check if this is needed or should be used # return(deliver); the object return(deliver); } sub vcl_recv { ##avoid leeching of images call hot_link; set req.grace = 360000s; ##2m ## if one backend is down - use another if (req.restarts == 0) { set req.backend = cache_director; ##we can specify individual VMs } else if (req.restarts == 1) { set req.backend = cache_director; } ## post calls should not be cached - add cookie for these requests if using micro-caching # Pass requests that are not GET or HEAD if (req.request != "GET" && req.request != "HEAD") { return(pass); ## return(pass) goes to backend - not cache } # Don't cache the result of a redirect if (req.http.Referer ~ "redir" || req.http.Origin ~ "jumpto") { return(pass); } # Don't cache the result of a redirect (asking for logon) if (req.http.Referer ~ "post" || req.http.Referer ~ "submit" || req.http.Referer ~ "add" || req.http.Referer ~ "ask") { return(pass); } # Never cache posts - ensure that we do not use these strings in our URLs' that need to be cached if (req.url ~ "\/post\/" || req.url ~ "\/submit\/" || req.url ~ "\/ask\/" || req.url ~ "\/add\/") { return(pass); } ## if (req.http.Authorization || req.http.Cookie) { if (req.http.Authorization) { /* Not cacheable by default */ return (pass); } # Handle compression correctly. Different browsers send different # "Accept-Encoding" headers, even though they mostly all support the same # compression mechanisms. By consolidating these compression headers into # a consistent format, we can reduce the size of the cache and get more hits. # @see: http:// varnish.projects.linpro.no/wiki/FAQ/Compression if (req.http.Accept-Encoding) { if (req.url ~ "\.(jpg|png|gif|gz|tgz|bz2|tbz|mp3|ogg|ico)$") { # No point in compressing these remove req.http.Accept-Encoding; } else if (req.http.Accept-Encoding ~ "gzip") { # If the browser supports it, we'll use gzip. set req.http.Accept-Encoding = "gzip"; } else if (req.http.Accept-Encoding ~ "deflate") { # Next, try deflate if it is supported. set req.http.Accept-Encoding = "deflate"; } else { # Unknown algorithm. Remove it and send unencoded. unset req.http.Accept-Encoding; } } # lookup graphics, css, js & ico files in the cache if (req.url ~ "\.(png|gif|jpg|jpeg|css|.js|ico)$") { return(lookup); } ##added on 0918 - check if it causes issues with user specific content if (req.request == "GET" && req.http.cookie) { return(lookup); } # Pipe requests that are non-RFC2616 or CONNECT which is weird. if (req.request != "GET" && req.request != "HEAD" && req.request != "PUT" && req.request != "POST" && req.request != "TRACE" && req.request != "OPTIONS" && req.request != "DELETE") { ##closing connection and calling pipe return(pipe); } ##purge content via localhost only if (req.request == "PURGE") { if (!client.ip ~ purge) { error 405 "Not allowed."; } return(lookup); } ## do we need this? ## return(lookup); }

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• Connect ps/2->usb keyboard to linux?

  - by Daniel

  I have a lovely ancient ergonomic keyboard (no name SK - 6000) connected via a DIN-ps/2 adapter to a ps/2-usb adapter to my docking station. After Grub it stops working. It takes either suspending and waking up or replugging it while Linux is running to get it to work. No extra kernel modules get loaded for this. When it works and I restart without power off, it will work immediately. Even when it does not work, it is visible (lsusb device number varies but output is identical whether working or not): $ lsusb -v -s 001:006 Bus 001 Device 006: ID 0a81:0205 Chesen Electronics Corp. PS/2 Keyboard+Mouse Adapter Device Descriptor: bLength 18 bDescriptorType 1 bcdUSB 1.10 bDeviceClass 0 (Defined at Interface level) bDeviceSubClass 0 bDeviceProtocol 0 bMaxPacketSize0 8 idVendor 0x0a81 Chesen Electronics Corp. idProduct 0x0205 PS/2 Keyboard+Mouse Adapter bcdDevice 0.10 iManufacturer 1 CHESEN iProduct 2 PS2 to USB Converter iSerial 0 bNumConfigurations 1 Configuration Descriptor: bLength 9 bDescriptorType 2 wTotalLength 59 bNumInterfaces 2 bConfigurationValue 1 iConfiguration 2 PS2 to USB Converter bmAttributes 0xa0 (Bus Powered) Remote Wakeup MaxPower 100mA Interface Descriptor: bLength 9 bDescriptorType 4 bInterfaceNumber 0 bAlternateSetting 0 bNumEndpoints 1 bInterfaceClass 3 Human Interface Device bInterfaceSubClass 1 Boot Interface Subclass bInterfaceProtocol 1 Keyboard iInterface 0 HID Device Descriptor: bLength 9 bDescriptorType 33 bcdHID 1.10 bCountryCode 0 Not supported bNumDescriptors 1 bDescriptorType 34 Report wDescriptorLength 64 Report Descriptors: ** UNAVAILABLE ** Endpoint Descriptor: bLength 7 bDescriptorType 5 bEndpointAddress 0x81 EP 1 IN bmAttributes 3 Transfer Type Interrupt Synch Type None Usage Type Data wMaxPacketSize 0x0008 1x 8 bytes bInterval 10 Interface Descriptor: bLength 9 bDescriptorType 4 bInterfaceNumber 1 bAlternateSetting 0 bNumEndpoints 1 bInterfaceClass 3 Human Interface Device bInterfaceSubClass 1 Boot Interface Subclass bInterfaceProtocol 2 Mouse iInterface 0 HID Device Descriptor: bLength 9 bDescriptorType 33 bcdHID 1.10 bCountryCode 0 Not supported bNumDescriptors 1 bDescriptorType 34 Report wDescriptorLength 148 Report Descriptors: ** UNAVAILABLE ** Endpoint Descriptor: bLength 7 bDescriptorType 5 bEndpointAddress 0x82 EP 2 IN bmAttributes 3 Transfer Type Interrupt Synch Type None Usage Type Data wMaxPacketSize 0x0008 1x 8 bytes bInterval 10 Device Status: 0x0000 (Bus Powered) $ ll -R /sys/bus/hid/drivers/ /sys/bus/hid/drivers/: total 0 drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 0 Jul 8 2012 generic-usb/ /sys/bus/hid/drivers/generic-usb: total 0 lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 Jul 7 23:33 0003:046D:C03D.0003 -> ../../../../devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1a.0/usb1/1-1/1-1.2/1-1.2.2/1-1.2.2:1.0/0003:046D:C03D.0003/ lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 Jul 7 23:33 0003:0A81:0205.0001 -> ../../../../devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1a.0/usb1/1-1/1-1.2/1-1.2.1/1-1.2.1:1.0/0003:0A81:0205.0001/ lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 Jul 7 23:33 0003:0A81:0205.0002 -> ../../../../devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1a.0/usb1/1-1/1-1.2/1-1.2.1/1-1.2.1:1.1/0003:0A81:0205.0002/ --w------- 1 root root 4096 Jul 7 23:32 bind lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 Jul 7 23:33 module -> ../../../../module/usbhid/ --w------- 1 root root 4096 Jul 7 23:32 new_id --w------- 1 root root 4096 Jul 8 2012 uevent --w------- 1 root root 4096 Jul 7 23:32 unbind When replugging, dmesg shows this (which except for the 1st line and different input numbers already came at boot time): [ 1583.295385] usb 1-1.2.1: new low-speed USB device number 6 using ehci_hcd [ 1583.446514] input: CHESEN PS2 to USB Converter as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1a.0/usb1/1-1/1-1.2/1-1.2.1/1-1.2.1:1.0/input/input17 [ 1583.446817] generic-usb 0003:0A81:0205.0001: input,hidraw0: USB HID v1.10 Keyboard [CHESEN PS2 to USB Converter] on usb-0000:00:1a.0-1.2.1/input0 [ 1583.454764] input: CHESEN PS2 to USB Converter as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1a.0/usb1/1-1/1-1.2/1-1.2.1/1-1.2.1:1.1/input/input18 [ 1583.455534] generic-usb 0003:0A81:0205.0002: input,hidraw1: USB HID v1.10 Mouse [CHESEN PS2 to USB Converter] on usb-0000:00:1a.0-1.2.1/input1 [ 1583.455578] usbcore: registered new interface driver usbhid [ 1583.455584] usbhid: USB HID core driver So I tried $ sudo udevadm test /sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1a.0/usb1/1-1/1-1.2/1-1.2.1/1-1.2.1:1.0/0003:0A81:0205.0001/hidraw/hidraw0 run_command: calling: test adm_test: version 175 This program is for debugging only, it does not run any program, specified by a RUN key. It may show incorrect results, because some values may be different, or not available at a simulation run. parse_file: reading '/lib/udev/rules.d/40-crda.rules' as rules file parse_file: reading '/lib/udev/rules.d/40-fuse.rules' as rules file ... parse_file: reading '/lib/udev/rules.d/40-usb-media-players.rules' as rules file parse_file: reading '/lib/udev/rules.d/40-usb_modeswitch.rules' as rules file ... parse_file: reading '/lib/udev/rules.d/42-qemu-usb.rules' as rules file ... parse_file: reading '/lib/udev/rules.d/69-cd-sensors.rules' as rules file add_rule: IMPORT found builtin 'usb_id', replacing /lib/udev/rules.d/69-cd-sensors.rules:76 ... parse_file: reading '/lib/udev/rules.d/77-mm-usb-device-blacklist.rules' as rules file ... parse_file: reading '/lib/udev/rules.d/85-usbmuxd.rules' as rules file ... parse_file: reading '/lib/udev/rules.d/95-upower-hid.rules' as rules file parse_file: reading '/lib/udev/rules.d/95-upower-wup.rules' as rules file parse_file: reading '/lib/udev/rules.d/97-bluetooth-hid2hci.rules' as rules file udev_rules_new: rules use 271500 bytes tokens (22625 * 12 bytes), 44331 bytes buffer udev_rules_new: temporary index used 76320 bytes (3816 * 20 bytes) udev_device_new_from_syspath: device 0x7f78a5e4d2d0 has devpath '/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1a.0/usb1/1-1/1-1.2/1-1.2.1/1-1.2.1:1.0/0003:0A81:0205.0001/hidraw/hidraw0' udev_device_new_from_syspath: device 0x7f78a5e5f820 has devpath '/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1a.0/usb1/1-1/1-1.2/1-1.2.1/1-1.2.1:1.0/0003:0A81:0205.0001/hidraw/hidraw0' udev_device_read_db: device 0x7f78a5e5f820 filled with db file data udev_device_new_from_syspath: device 0x7f78a5e60270 has devpath '/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1a.0/usb1/1-1/1-1.2/1-1.2.1/1-1.2.1:1.0/0003:0A81:0205.0001' udev_device_new_from_syspath: device 0x7f78a5e609c0 has devpath '/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1a.0/usb1/1-1/1-1.2/1-1.2.1/1-1.2.1:1.0' udev_device_new_from_syspath: device 0x7f78a5e61160 has devpath '/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1a.0/usb1/1-1/1-1.2/1-1.2.1' udev_device_new_from_syspath: device 0x7f78a5e61960 has devpath '/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1a.0/usb1/1-1/1-1.2' udev_device_new_from_syspath: device 0x7f78a5e62150 has devpath '/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1a.0/usb1/1-1' udev_device_new_from_syspath: device 0x7f78a5e62940 has devpath '/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1a.0/usb1' udev_device_new_from_syspath: device 0x7f78a5e630f0 has devpath '/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1a.0' udev_device_new_from_syspath: device 0x7f78a5e638a0 has devpath '/devices/pci0000:00' udev_event_execute_rules: no node name set, will use kernel supplied name 'hidraw0' udev_node_add: creating device node '/dev/hidraw0', devnum=251:0, mode=0600, uid=0, gid=0 udev_node_mknod: preserve file '/dev/hidraw0', because it has correct dev_t udev_node_mknod: preserve permissions /dev/hidraw0, 020600, uid=0, gid=0 node_symlink: preserve already existing symlink '/dev/char/251:0' to '../hidraw0' udev_device_update_db: created empty file '/run/udev/data/c251:0' for '/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1a.0/usb1/1-1/1-1.2/1-1.2.1/1-1.2.1:1.0/0003:0A81:0205.0001/hidraw/hidraw0' ACTION=add DEVNAME=/dev/hidraw0 DEVPATH=/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1a.0/usb1/1-1/1-1.2/1-1.2.1/1-1.2.1:1.0/0003:0A81:0205.0001/hidraw/hidraw0 MAJOR=251 MINOR=0 SUBSYSTEM=hidraw UDEV_LOG=6 USEC_INITIALIZED=969079051 The later lines sound like it's already there. And none of these awakes the keyboard: $ sudo udevadm trigger --verbose --sysname-match=usb* /sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1a.0/usb1 /sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1a.0/usbmon/usbmon1 /sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1d.0/usb2 /sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1d.0/usbmon/usbmon2 /sys/devices/virtual/usbmon/usbmon0 $ sudo udevadm trigger --verbose --sysname-match=hidraw0 /sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1a.0/usb1/1-1/1-1.2/1-1.2.1/1-1.2.1:1.0/0003:0A81:0205.0001/hidraw/hidraw0 $ sudo udevadm trigger I also tried this to no avail: # echo -n 0003:0A81:0205.0001 > /sys/bus/hid/drivers/generic-usb/bind ksh: echo: write to 1 failed [No such device] # echo -n 0003:0A81:0205.0001 > /sys/bus/hid/drivers/generic-usb/unbind # echo -n 0003:0A81:0205.0001 > /sys/bus/hid/drivers/generic-usb/bind # echo usb1 >/sys/bus/usb/drivers/usb/unbind # echo usb1 >/sys/bus/usb/drivers/usb/bind What else should I try to get the same result as replugging or suspending, by just issuing a command?

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• Integrating JavaScript Unit Tests with Visual Studio

  - by Stephen Walther

  Modern ASP.NET web applications take full advantage of client-side JavaScript to provide better interactivity and responsiveness. If you are building an ASP.NET application in the right way, you quickly end up with lots and lots of JavaScript code. When writing server code, you should be writing unit tests. One big advantage of unit tests is that they provide you with a safety net that enable you to safely modify your existing code – for example, fix bugs, add new features, and make performance enhancements -- without breaking your existing code. Every time you modify your code, you can execute your unit tests to verify that you have not broken anything. For the same reason that you should write unit tests for your server code, you should write unit tests for your client code. JavaScript is just as susceptible to bugs as C#. There is no shortage of unit testing frameworks for JavaScript. Each of the major JavaScript libraries has its own unit testing framework. For example, jQuery has QUnit, Prototype has UnitTestJS, YUI has YUI Test, and Dojo has Dojo Objective Harness (DOH). The challenge is integrating a JavaScript unit testing framework with Visual Studio. Visual Studio and Visual Studio ALM provide fantastic support for server-side unit tests. You can easily view the results of running your unit tests in the Visual Studio Test Results window. You can set up a check-in policy which requires that all unit tests pass before your source code can be committed to the source code repository. In addition, you can set up Team Build to execute your unit tests automatically. Unfortunately, Visual Studio does not provide “out-of-the-box” support for JavaScript unit tests. MS Test, the unit testing framework included in Visual Studio, does not support JavaScript unit tests. As soon as you leave the server world, you are left on your own. The goal of this blog entry is to describe one approach to integrating JavaScript unit tests with MS Test so that you can execute your JavaScript unit tests side-by-side with your C# unit tests. The goal is to enable you to execute JavaScript unit tests in exactly the same way as server-side unit tests. You can download the source code described by this project by scrolling to the end of this blog entry. Rejected Approach: Browser Launchers One popular approach to executing JavaScript unit tests is to use a browser as a test-driver. When you use a browser as a test-driver, you open up a browser window to execute and view the results of executing your JavaScript unit tests. For example, QUnit – the unit testing framework for jQuery – takes this approach. The following HTML page illustrates how you can use QUnit to create a unit test for a function named addNumbers(). <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd"> <html> <head> <title>Using QUnit</title> <link rel="stylesheet" href="http://github.com/jquery/qunit/raw/master/qunit/qunit.css" type="text/css" /> </head> <body> <h1 id="qunit-header">QUnit example</h1> <h2 id="qunit-banner"></h2> <div id="qunit-testrunner-toolbar"></div> <h2 id="qunit-userAgent"></h2> <ol id="qunit-tests"></ol> <div id="qunit-fixture">test markup, will be hidden</div> <script type="text/javascript" src="http://code.jquery.com/jquery-latest.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="http://github.com/jquery/qunit/raw/master/qunit/qunit.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript"> // The function to test function addNumbers(a, b) { return a+b; } // The unit test test("Test of addNumbers", function () { equals(4, addNumbers(1,3), "1+3 should be 4"); }); </script> </body> </html> This test verifies that calling addNumbers(1,3) returns the expected value 4. When you open this page in a browser, you can see that this test does, in fact, pass. The idea is that you can quickly refresh this QUnit HTML JavaScript test driver page in your browser whenever you modify your JavaScript code. In other words, you can keep a browser window open and keep refreshing it over and over while you are developing your application. That way, you can know very quickly whenever you have broken your JavaScript code. While easy to setup, there are several big disadvantages to this approach to executing JavaScript unit tests: You must view your JavaScript unit test results in a different location than your server unit test results. The JavaScript unit test results appear in the browser and the server unit test results appear in the Visual Studio Test Results window. Because all of your unit test results don’t appear in a single location, you are more likely to introduce bugs into your code without noticing it. Because your unit tests are not integrated with Visual Studio – in particular, MS Test -- you cannot easily include your JavaScript unit tests when setting up check-in policies or when performing automated builds with Team Build. A more sophisticated approach to using a browser as a test-driver is to automate the web browser. Instead of launching the browser and loading the test code yourself, you use a framework to automate this process. There are several different testing frameworks that support this approach: · Selenium – Selenium is a very powerful framework for automating browser tests. You can create your tests by recording a Firefox session or by writing the test driver code in server code such as C#. You can learn more about Selenium at http://seleniumhq.org/. LTAF – The ASP.NET team uses the Lightweight Test Automation Framework to test JavaScript code in the ASP.NET framework. You can learn more about LTAF by visiting the project home at CodePlex: http://aspnet.codeplex.com/releases/view/35501 jsTestDriver – This framework uses Java to automate the browser. jsTestDriver creates a server which can be used to automate multiple browsers simultaneously. This project is located at http://code.google.com/p/js-test-driver/ TestSwam – This framework, created by John Resig, uses PHP to automate the browser. Like jsTestDriver, the framework creates a test server. You can open multiple browsers that are automated by the test server. Learn more about TestSwarm by visiting the following address: https://github.com/jeresig/testswarm/wiki Yeti – This is the framework introduced by Yahoo for automating browser tests. Yeti uses server-side JavaScript and depends on Node.js. Learn more about Yeti at http://www.yuiblog.com/blog/2010/08/25/introducing-yeti-the-yui-easy-testing-interface/ All of these frameworks are great for integration tests – however, they are not the best frameworks to use for unit tests. In one way or another, all of these frameworks depend on executing tests within the context of a “living and breathing” browser. If you create an ASP.NET Unit Test then Visual Studio will launch a web server before executing the unit test. Why is launching a web server so bad? It is not the worst thing in the world. However, it does introduce dependencies that prevent your code from being tested in isolation. One of the defining features of a unit test -- versus an integration test – is that a unit test tests code in isolation. Another problem with launching a web server when performing unit tests is that launching a web server can be slow. If you cannot execute your unit tests quickly, you are less likely to execute your unit tests each and every time you make a code change. You are much more likely to fall into the pit of failure. Launching a browser when performing a JavaScript unit test has all of the same disadvantages as launching a web server when performing an ASP.NET unit test. Instead of testing a unit of JavaScript code in isolation, you are testing JavaScript code within the context of a particular browser. Using the frameworks listed above for integration tests makes perfect sense. However, I want to consider a different approach for creating unit tests for JavaScript code. Using Server-Side JavaScript for JavaScript Unit Tests A completely different approach to executing JavaScript unit tests is to perform the tests outside of any browser. If you really want to test JavaScript then you should test JavaScript and leave the browser out of the testing process. There are several ways that you can execute JavaScript on the server outside the context of any browser: Rhino – Rhino is an implementation of JavaScript written in Java. The Rhino project is maintained by the Mozilla project. Learn more about Rhino at http://www.mozilla.org/rhino/ V8 – V8 is the open-source Google JavaScript engine written in C++. This is the JavaScript engine used by the Chrome web browser. You can download V8 and embed it in your project by visiting http://code.google.com/p/v8/ JScript – JScript is the JavaScript Script Engine used by Internet Explorer (up to but not including Internet Explorer 9), Windows Script Host, and Active Server Pages. Internet Explorer is still the most popular web browser. Therefore, I decided to focus on using the JScript Script Engine to execute JavaScript unit tests. Using the Microsoft Script Control There are two basic ways that you can pass JavaScript to the JScript Script Engine and execute the code: use the Microsoft Windows Script Interfaces or use the Microsoft Script Control. The difficult and proper way to execute JavaScript using the JScript Script Engine is to use the Microsoft Windows Script Interfaces. You can learn more about the Script Interfaces by visiting http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/t9d4xf28(VS.85).aspx The main disadvantage of using the Script Interfaces is that they are difficult to use from .NET. There is a great series of articles on using the Script Interfaces from C# located at http://www.drdobbs.com/184406028. I picked the easier alternative and used the Microsoft Script Control. The Microsoft Script Control is an ActiveX control that provides a higher level abstraction over the Window Script Interfaces. You can download the Microsoft Script Control from here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=d7e31492-2595-49e6-8c02-1426fec693ac After you download the Microsoft Script Control, you need to add a reference to it to your project. Select the Visual Studio menu option Project, Add Reference to open the Add Reference dialog. Select the COM tab and add the Microsoft Script Control 1.0. Using the Script Control is easy. You call the Script Control AddCode() method to add JavaScript code to the Script Engine. Next, you call the Script Control Run() method to run a particular JavaScript function. The reference documentation for the Microsoft Script Control is located at the MSDN website: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa227633%28v=vs.60%29.aspx Creating the JavaScript Code to Test To keep things simple, let’s imagine that you want to test the following JavaScript function named addNumbers() which simply adds two numbers together: MvcApplication1\Scripts\Math.js function addNumbers(a, b) { return 5; } Notice that the addNumbers() method always returns the value 5. Right-now, it will not pass a good unit test. Create this file and save it in your project with the name Math.js in your MVC project’s Scripts folder (Save the file in your actual MVC application and not your MVC test application). Creating the JavaScript Test Helper Class To make it easier to use the Microsoft Script Control in unit tests, we can create a helper class. This class contains two methods: LoadFile() – Loads a JavaScript file. Use this method to load the JavaScript file being tested or the JavaScript file containing the unit tests. ExecuteTest() – Executes the JavaScript code. Use this method to execute a JavaScript unit test. Here’s the code for the JavaScriptTestHelper class: JavaScriptTestHelper.cs   using System; using System.IO; using Microsoft.VisualStudio.TestTools.UnitTesting; using MSScriptControl; namespace MvcApplication1.Tests { public class JavaScriptTestHelper : IDisposable { private ScriptControl _sc; private TestContext _context; /// <summary> /// You need to use this helper with Unit Tests and not /// Basic Unit Tests because you need a Test Context /// </summary> /// <param name="testContext">Unit Test Test Context</param> public JavaScriptTestHelper(TestContext testContext) { if (testContext == null) { throw new ArgumentNullException("TestContext"); } _context = testContext; _sc = new ScriptControl(); _sc.Language = "JScript"; _sc.AllowUI = false; } /// <summary> /// Load the contents of a JavaScript file into the /// Script Engine. /// </summary> /// <param name="path">Path to JavaScript file</param> public void LoadFile(string path) { var fileContents = File.ReadAllText(path); _sc.AddCode(fileContents); } /// <summary> /// Pass the path of the test that you want to execute. /// </summary> /// <param name="testMethodName">JavaScript function name</param> public void ExecuteTest(string testMethodName) { dynamic result = null; try { result = _sc.Run(testMethodName, new object[] { }); } catch { var error = ((IScriptControl)_sc).Error; if (error != null) { var description = error.Description; var line = error.Line; var column = error.Column; var text = error.Text; var source = error.Source; if (_context != null) { var details = String.Format("{0} \r\nLine: {1} Column: {2}", source, line, column); _context.WriteLine(details); } } throw new AssertFailedException(error.Description); } } public void Dispose() { _sc = null; } } }     Notice that the JavaScriptTestHelper class requires a Test Context to be instantiated. For this reason, you can use the JavaScriptTestHelper only with a Visual Studio Unit Test and not a Basic Unit Test (These are two different types of Visual Studio project items). Add the JavaScriptTestHelper file to your MVC test application (for example, MvcApplication1.Tests). Creating the JavaScript Unit Test Next, we need to create the JavaScript unit test function that we will use to test the addNumbers() function. Create a folder in your MVC test project named JavaScriptTests and add the following JavaScript file to this folder: MvcApplication1.Tests\JavaScriptTests\MathTest.js /// <reference path="JavaScriptUnitTestFramework.js"/> function testAddNumbers() { // Act var result = addNumbers(1, 3); // Assert assert.areEqual(4, result, "addNumbers did not return right value!"); }   The testAddNumbers() function takes advantage of another JavaScript library named JavaScriptUnitTestFramework.js. This library contains all of the code necessary to make assertions. Add the following JavaScriptnitTestFramework.js to the same folder as the MathTest.js file: MvcApplication1.Tests\JavaScriptTests\JavaScriptUnitTestFramework.js var assert = { areEqual: function (expected, actual, message) { if (expected !== actual) { throw new Error("Expected value " + expected + " is not equal to " + actual + ". " + message); } } }; There is only one type of assertion supported by this file: the areEqual() assertion. Most likely, you would want to add additional types of assertions to this file to make it easier to write your JavaScript unit tests. Deploying the JavaScript Test Files This step is non-intuitive. When you use Visual Studio to run unit tests, Visual Studio creates a new folder and executes a copy of the files in your project. After you run your unit tests, your Visual Studio Solution will contain a new folder named TestResults that includes a subfolder for each test run. You need to configure Visual Studio to deploy your JavaScript files to the test run folder or Visual Studio won’t be able to find your JavaScript files when you execute your unit tests. You will get an error that looks something like this when you attempt to execute your unit tests: You can configure Visual Studio to deploy your JavaScript files by adding a Test Settings file to your Visual Studio Solution. It is important to understand that you need to add this file to your Visual Studio Solution and not a particular Visual Studio project. Right-click your Solution in the Solution Explorer window and select the menu option Add, New Item. Select the Test Settings item and click the Add button. After you create a Test Settings file for your solution, you can indicate that you want a particular folder to be deployed whenever you perform a test run. Select the menu option Test, Edit Test Settings to edit your test configuration file. Select the Deployment tab and select your MVC test project’s JavaScriptTest folder to deploy. Click the Apply button and the Close button to save the changes and close the dialog. Creating the Visual Studio Unit Test The very last step is to create the Visual Studio unit test (the MS Test unit test). Add a new unit test to your MVC test project by selecting the menu option Add New Item and selecting the Unit Test project item (Do not select the Basic Unit Test project item): The difference between a Basic Unit Test and a Unit Test is that a Unit Test includes a Test Context. We need this Test Context to use the JavaScriptTestHelper class that we created earlier. Enter the following test method for the new unit test: [TestMethod] public void TestAddNumbers() { var jsHelper = new JavaScriptTestHelper(this.TestContext); // Load JavaScript files jsHelper.LoadFile("JavaScriptUnitTestFramework.js"); jsHelper.LoadFile(@"..\..\..\MvcApplication1\Scripts\Math.js"); jsHelper.LoadFile("MathTest.js"); // Execute JavaScript Test jsHelper.ExecuteTest("testAddNumbers"); } This code uses the JavaScriptTestHelper to load three files: JavaScripUnitTestFramework.js – Contains the assert functions. Math.js – Contains the addNumbers() function from your MVC application which is being tested. MathTest.js – Contains the JavaScript unit test function. Next, the test method calls the JavaScriptTestHelper ExecuteTest() method to execute the testAddNumbers() JavaScript function. Running the Visual Studio JavaScript Unit Test After you complete all of the steps described above, you can execute the JavaScript unit test just like any other unit test. You can use the keyboard combination CTRL-R, CTRL-A to run all of the tests in the current Visual Studio Solution. Alternatively, you can use the buttons in the Visual Studio toolbar to run the tests: (Unfortunately, the Run All Impacted Tests button won’t work correctly because Visual Studio won’t detect that your JavaScript code has changed. Therefore, you should use either the Run Tests in Current Context or Run All Tests in Solution options instead.) The results of running the JavaScript tests appear side-by-side with the results of running the server tests in the Test Results window. For example, if you Run All Tests in Solution then you will get the following results: Notice that the TestAddNumbers() JavaScript test has failed. That is good because our addNumbers() function is hard-coded to always return the value 5. If you double-click the failing JavaScript test, you can view additional details such as the JavaScript error message and the line number of the JavaScript code that failed: Summary The goal of this blog entry was to explain an approach to creating JavaScript unit tests that can be easily integrated with Visual Studio and Visual Studio ALM. I described how you can use the Microsoft Script Control to execute JavaScript on the server. By taking advantage of the Microsoft Script Control, we were able to execute our JavaScript unit tests side-by-side with all of our other unit tests and view the results in the standard Visual Studio Test Results window. You can download the code discussed in this blog entry from here: http://StephenWalther.com/downloads/Blog/JavaScriptUnitTesting/JavaScriptUnitTests.zip Before running this code, you need to first install the Microsoft Script Control which you can download from here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=d7e31492-2595-49e6-8c02-1426fec693ac

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• Why is Java EE 6 better than Spring ?

  - by arungupta

  Java EE 6 was released over 2 years ago and now there are 14 compliant application servers. In all my talks around the world, a question that is frequently asked is Why should I use Java EE 6 instead of Spring ? There are already several blogs covering that topic: Java EE wins over Spring by Bill Burke Why will I use Java EE instead of Spring in new Enterprise Java projects in 2012 ? by Kai Waehner (more discussion on TSS) Spring to Java EE migration (Part 1 and 2, 3 and 4 coming as well) by David Heffelfinger Spring to Java EE - A Migration Experience by Lincoln Baxter Migrating Spring to Java EE 6 by Bert Ertman and Paul Bakker at NLJUG Moving from Spring to Java EE 6 - The Age of Frameworks is Over at TSS Java EE vs Spring Shootout by Rohit Kelapure and Reza Rehman at JavaOne 2011 Java EE 6 and the Ewoks by Murat Yener Definite excuse to avoid Spring forever - Bert Ertman and Arun Gupta I will try to share my perspective in this blog. First of all, I'd like to start with a note: Thank you Spring framework for filling the interim gap and providing functionality that is now included in the mainstream Java EE 6 application servers. The Java EE platform has evolved over the years learning from frameworks like Spring and provides all the functionality to build an enterprise application. Thank you very much Spring framework! While Spring was revolutionary in its time and is still very popular and quite main stream in the same way Struts was circa 2003, it really is last generation's framework - some people are even calling it legacy. However my theory is "code is king". So my approach is to build/take a simple Hello World CRUD application in Java EE 6 and Spring and compare the deployable artifacts. I started looking at the official tutorial Developing a Spring Framework MVC Application Step-by-Step but it is using the older version 2.5. I wasn't able to find any updated version in the current 3.1 release. Next, I downloaded Spring Tool Suite and thought that would provide some template samples to get started. A least a quick search did not show any handy tutorials - either video or text-based. So I searched and found a link to their SVN repository at src.springframework.org/svn/spring-samples/. I tried the "mvc-basic" sample and the generated WAR file was 4.43 MB. While it was named a "basic" sample it seemed to come with 19 different libraries bundled but it was what I could find: ./WEB-INF/lib/aopalliance-1.0.jar./WEB-INF/lib/hibernate-validator-4.1.0.Final.jar./WEB-INF/lib/jcl-over-slf4j-1.6.1.jar./WEB-INF/lib/joda-time-1.6.2.jar./WEB-INF/lib/joda-time-jsptags-1.0.2.jar./WEB-INF/lib/jstl-1.2.jar./WEB-INF/lib/log4j-1.2.16.jar./WEB-INF/lib/slf4j-api-1.6.1.jar./WEB-INF/lib/slf4j-log4j12-1.6.1.jar./WEB-INF/lib/spring-aop-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar./WEB-INF/lib/spring-asm-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar./WEB-INF/lib/spring-beans-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar./WEB-INF/lib/spring-context-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar./WEB-INF/lib/spring-context-support-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar./WEB-INF/lib/spring-core-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar./WEB-INF/lib/spring-expression-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar./WEB-INF/lib/spring-web-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar./WEB-INF/lib/spring-webmvc-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar./WEB-INF/lib/validation-api-1.0.0.GA.jar And it is not even using any database! The app deployed fine on GlassFish 3.1.2 but the "@Controller Example" link did not work as it was missing the context root. With a bit of tweaking I could deploy the application and assume that the account got created because no error was displayed in the browser or server log. Next I generated the WAR for "mvc-ajax" and the 5.1 MB WAR had 20 JARs (1 removed, 2 added): ./WEB-INF/lib/aopalliance-1.0.jar./WEB-INF/lib/hibernate-validator-4.1.0.Final.jar./WEB-INF/lib/jackson-core-asl-1.6.4.jar./WEB-INF/lib/jackson-mapper-asl-1.6.4.jar./WEB-INF/lib/jcl-over-slf4j-1.6.1.jar./WEB-INF/lib/joda-time-1.6.2.jar./WEB-INF/lib/jstl-1.2.jar./WEB-INF/lib/log4j-1.2.16.jar./WEB-INF/lib/slf4j-api-1.6.1.jar./WEB-INF/lib/slf4j-log4j12-1.6.1.jar./WEB-INF/lib/spring-aop-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar./WEB-INF/lib/spring-asm-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar./WEB-INF/lib/spring-beans-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar./WEB-INF/lib/spring-context-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar./WEB-INF/lib/spring-context-support-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar./WEB-INF/lib/spring-core-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar./WEB-INF/lib/spring-expression-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar./WEB-INF/lib/spring-web-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar./WEB-INF/lib/spring-webmvc-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar./WEB-INF/lib/validation-api-1.0.0.GA.jar 2 more JARs for just doing Ajax. Anyway, deploying this application gave the following error: Caused by: java.lang.NoSuchMethodError: org.codehaus.jackson.map.SerializationConfig.<init>(Lorg/codehaus/jackson/map/ClassIntrospector;Lorg/codehaus/jackson/map/AnnotationIntrospector;Lorg/codehaus/jackson/map/introspect/VisibilityChecker;Lorg/codehaus/jackson/map/jsontype/SubtypeResolver;)V    at org.springframework.samples.mvc.ajax.json.ConversionServiceAwareObjectMapper.<init>(ConversionServiceAwareObjectMapper.java:20)    at org.springframework.samples.mvc.ajax.json.JacksonConversionServiceConfigurer.postProcessAfterInitialization(JacksonConversionServiceConfigurer.java:40)    at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.applyBeanPostProcessorsAfterInitialization(AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.java:407) Seems like some incorrect repos in the "pom.xml". Next one is "mvc-showcase" and the 6.49 MB WAR now has 28 JARs as shown below: ./WEB-INF/lib/aopalliance-1.0.jar./WEB-INF/lib/aspectjrt-1.6.10.jar./WEB-INF/lib/commons-fileupload-1.2.2.jar./WEB-INF/lib/commons-io-2.0.1.jar./WEB-INF/lib/el-api-2.2.jar./WEB-INF/lib/hibernate-validator-4.1.0.Final.jar./WEB-INF/lib/jackson-core-asl-1.8.1.jar./WEB-INF/lib/jackson-mapper-asl-1.8.1.jar./WEB-INF/lib/javax.inject-1.jar./WEB-INF/lib/jcl-over-slf4j-1.6.1.jar./WEB-INF/lib/jdom-1.0.jar./WEB-INF/lib/joda-time-1.6.2.jar./WEB-INF/lib/jstl-api-1.2.jar./WEB-INF/lib/jstl-impl-1.2.jar./WEB-INF/lib/log4j-1.2.16.jar./WEB-INF/lib/rome-1.0.0.jar./WEB-INF/lib/slf4j-api-1.6.1.jar./WEB-INF/lib/slf4j-log4j12-1.6.1.jar./WEB-INF/lib/spring-aop-3.1.0.RELEASE.jar./WEB-INF/lib/spring-asm-3.1.0.RELEASE.jar./WEB-INF/lib/spring-beans-3.1.0.RELEASE.jar./WEB-INF/lib/spring-context-3.1.0.RELEASE.jar./WEB-INF/lib/spring-context-support-3.1.0.RELEASE.jar./WEB-INF/lib/spring-core-3.1.0.RELEASE.jar./WEB-INF/lib/spring-expression-3.1.0.RELEASE.jar./WEB-INF/lib/spring-web-3.1.0.RELEASE.jar./WEB-INF/lib/spring-webmvc-3.1.0.RELEASE.jar./WEB-INF/lib/validation-api-1.0.0.GA.jar The app at least deployed and showed results this time. But still no database! Next I tried building "jpetstore" and got the error: [ERROR] Failed to execute goal on project org.springframework.samples.jpetstore:Could not resolve dependencies for project org.springframework.samples:org.springframework.samples.jpetstore:war:1.0.0-SNAPSHOT: Failed to collect dependencies for [commons-fileupload:commons-fileupload:jar:1.2.1 (compile), org.apache.struts:com.springsource.org.apache.struts:jar:1.2.9 (compile), javax.xml.rpc:com.springsource.javax.xml.rpc:jar:1.1.0 (compile), org.apache.commons:com.springsource.org.apache.commons.dbcp:jar:1.2.2.osgi (compile), commons-io:commons-io:jar:1.3.2 (compile), hsqldb:hsqldb:jar:1.8.0.7 (compile), org.apache.tiles:tiles-core:jar:2.2.0 (compile), org.apache.tiles:tiles-jsp:jar:2.2.0 (compile), org.tuckey:urlrewritefilter:jar:3.1.0 (compile), org.springframework:spring-webmvc:jar:3.0.0.BUILD-SNAPSHOT (compile), org.springframework:spring-orm:jar:3.0.0.BUILD-SNAPSHOT (compile), org.springframework:spring-context-support:jar:3.0.0.BUILD-SNAPSHOT (compile), org.springframework.webflow:spring-js:jar:2.0.7.RELEASE (compile), org.apache.ibatis:com.springsource.com.ibatis:jar:2.3.4.726 (runtime), com.caucho:com.springsource.com.caucho:jar:3.2.1 (compile), org.apache.axis:com.springsource.org.apache.axis:jar:1.4.0 (compile), javax.wsdl:com.springsource.javax.wsdl:jar:1.6.1 (compile), javax.servlet:jstl:jar:1.2 (runtime), org.aspectj:aspectjweaver:jar:1.6.5 (compile), javax.servlet:servlet-api:jar:2.5 (provided), javax.servlet.jsp:jsp-api:jar:2.1 (provided), junit:junit:jar:4.6 (test)]: Failed to read artifact descriptor for org.springframework:spring-webmvc:jar:3.0.0.BUILD-SNAPSHOT: Could not transfer artifact org.springframework:spring-webmvc:pom:3.0.0.BUILD-SNAPSHOT from/to JBoss repository (http://repository.jboss.com/maven2): Access denied to: http://repository.jboss.com/maven2/org/springframework/spring-webmvc/3.0.0.BUILD-SNAPSHOT/spring-webmvc-3.0.0.BUILD-SNAPSHOT.pom It appears the sample is broken - maybe I was pulling from the wrong repository - would be great if someone were to point me at a good target to use here. With a 50% hit on samples in this repository, I started searching through numerous blogs, most of which have either outdated information (using XML-heavy Spring 2.5), some piece of configuration (which is a typical "feature" of Spring) is missing, or too much complexity in the sample. I finally found this blog that worked like a charm. This blog creates a trivial Spring MVC 3 application using Hibernate and MySQL. This application performs CRUD operations on a single table in a database using typical Spring technologies.  I downloaded the sample code from the blog, deployed it on GlassFish 3.1.2 and could CRUD the "person" entity. The source code for this application can be downloaded here. More details on the application statistics below. And then I built a similar CRUD application in Java EE 6 using NetBeans wizards in a couple of minutes. The source code for the application can be downloaded here and the WAR here. The Spring Source Tool Suite may also offer similar wizard-driven capabilities but this blog focus primarily on comparing the runtimes. The lack of STS tutorials was slightly disappointing as well. NetBeans however has tons of text-based and video tutorials and tons of material even by the community. One more bit on the download size of tools bundle ... NetBeans 7.1.1 "All" is 211 MB (which includes GlassFish and Tomcat) Spring Tool Suite  2.9.0 is 347 MB (~ 65% bigger) This blog is not about the tooling comparison so back to the Java EE 6 version of the application .... In order to run the Java EE version on GlassFish, copy the MySQL Connector/J to glassfish3/glassfish/domains/domain1/lib/ext directory and create a JDBC connection pool and JDBC resource as: ./bin/asadmin create-jdbc-connection-pool --datasourceclassname \\ com.mysql.jdbc.jdbc2.optional.MysqlDataSource --restype \\ javax.sql.DataSource --property \\ portNumber=3306:user=mysql:password=mysql:databaseName=mydatabase \\ myConnectionPool ./bin/asadmin create-jdbc-resource --connectionpoolid myConnectionPool jdbc/myDataSource I generated WARs for the two projects and the table below highlights some differences between them: Java EE 6 Spring WAR File Size 0.021030 MB 10.87 MB (~516x) Number of files 20 53 (> 2.5x) Bundled libraries 0 36 Total size of libraries 0 12.1 MB XML files 3 5 LoC in XML files 50 (11 + 15 + 24) 129 (27 + 46 + 16 + 11 + 19) (~ 2.5x) Total .properties files 1 Bundle.properties 2 spring.properties, log4j.properties Cold Deploy 5,339 ms 11,724 ms Second Deploy 481 ms 6,261 ms Third Deploy 528 ms 5,484 ms Fourth Deploy 484 ms 5,576 ms Runtime memory ~73 MB ~101 MB Some points worth highlighting from the table ... 516x WAR file, 10x deployment time - With 12.1 MB of libraries (for a very basic application) bundled in your application, the WAR file size and the deployment time will naturally go higher. The WAR file for Spring-based application is 516x bigger and the deployment time is double during the first deployment and ~ 10x during subsequent deployments. The Java EE 6 application is fully portable and will run on any Java EE 6 compliant application server. 36 libraries in the WAR - There are 14 Java EE 6 compliant application servers today. Each of those servers provide all the functionality like transactions, dependency injection, security, persistence, etc typically required of an enterprise or web application. There is no need to bundle 36 libraries worth 12.1 MB for a trivial CRUD application. These 14 compliant application servers provide all the functionality baked in. Now you can also deploy these libraries in the container but then you don't get the "portability" offered by Spring in that case. Does your typical Spring deployment actually do that ? 3x LoC in XML - The number of XML files is about 1.6x and the LoC is ~ 2.5x. So much XML seems circa 2003 when the Java language had no annotations. The XML files can be further reduced, e.g. faces-config.xml can be replaced without providing i18n, but I just want to compare stock applications. Memory usage - Both the applications were deployed on default GlassFish 3.1.2 installation and any additional memory consumed as part of deployment/access was attributed to the application. This is by no means scientific but at least provides an initial ballpark. This area definitely needs more investigation. Another table that compares typical Java EE 6 compliant application servers and the custom-stack created for a Spring application ... Java EE 6 Spring Web Container ? 53 MB (tcServer 2.6.3 Developer Edition) Security ? 12 MB (Spring Security 3.1.0) Persistence ? 6.3 MB (Hibernate 4.1.0, required) Dependency Injection ? 5.3 MB (Framework) Web Services ? 796 KB (Spring WS 2.0.4) Messaging ? 3.4 MB (RabbitMQ Server 2.7.1) 936 KB (Java client 936) OSGi ? 1.3 MB (Spring OSGi 1.2.1) GlassFish and WebLogic (starting at 33 MB) 83.3 MB There are differentiating factors on both the stacks. But most of the functionality like security, persistence, and dependency injection is baked in a Java EE 6 compliant application server but needs to be individually managed and patched for a Spring application. This very quickly leads to a "stack explosion". The Java EE 6 servers are tested extensively on a variety of platforms in different combinations whereas a Spring application developer is responsible for testing with different JDKs, Operating Systems, Versions, Patches, etc. Oracle has both the leading OSS lightweight server with GlassFish and the leading enterprise Java server with WebLogic Server, both Java EE 6 and both with lightweight deployment options. The Web Container offered as part of a Java EE 6 application server not only deploys your enterprise Java applications but also provide operational management, diagnostics, and mission-critical capabilities required by your applications. The Java EE 6 platform also introduced the Web Profile which is a subset of the specifications from the entire platform. It is targeted at developers of modern web applications offering a reasonably complete stack, composed of standard APIs, and is capable out-of-the-box of addressing the needs of a large class of Web applications. As your applications grow, the stack can grow to the full Java EE 6 platform. The GlassFish Server Web Profile starting at 33MB (smaller than just the non-standard tcServer) provides most of the functionality typically required by a web application. WebLogic provides battle-tested functionality for a high throughput, low latency, and enterprise grade web application. No individual managing or patching, all tested and commercially supported for you! Note that VMWare does have a server, tcServer, but it is non-standard and not even certified to the level of the standard Web Profile most customers expect these days. Customers who choose this risk proprietary lock-in since VMWare does not seem to want to formally certify with either Java EE 6 Enterprise Platform or with Java EE 6 Web Profile but of course it would be great if they were to join the community and help their customers reduce the risk of deploying on VMWare software. Some more points to help you decide choose between Java EE 6 and Spring ... Freedom to choose container - There are 14 Java EE 6 compliant application servers today, with a variety of open source and commercial offerings. A Java EE 6 application can be deployed on any of those containers. So if you deployed your application on GlassFish today and would like to scale up with your demands then you can deploy the same application to WebLogic. And because of the portability of a Java EE 6 application, you can even take it a different vendor altogether. Spring requires a runtime which could be any of these app servers as well. But why use Spring when all the required functionality is already baked into the application server itself ? Spring also has a different definition of portability where they claim to bundle all the libraries in the WAR file and move to any application server. But we saw earlier how bloated that archive could be. The equivalent features in Spring runtime offerings (mainly tcServer) are not all open source, not as mature, and often require manual assembly.  Vendor choice - The Java EE 6 platform is created using the Java Community Process where all the big players like Oracle, IBM, RedHat, and Apache are conritbuting to make the platform successful. Each application server provides the basic Java EE 6 platform compliance and has its own competitive offerings. This allows you to choose an application server for deploying your Java EE 6 applications. If you are not happy with the support or feature of one vendor then you can move your application to a different vendor because of the portability promise offered by the platform. Spring is a set of products from a single company, one price book, one support organization, one sustaining organization, one sales organization, etc. If any of those cause a customer headache, where do you go ? Java EE, backed by multiple vendors, is a safer bet for those that are risk averse. Production support - With Spring, typically you need to get support from two vendors - VMWare and the container provider. With Java EE 6, all of this is typically provided by one vendor. For example, Oracle offers commercial support from systems, operating systems, JDK, application server, and applications on top of them. VMWare certainly offers complete production support but do you really want to put all your eggs in one basket ? Do you really use tcServer ? ;-) Maintainability - With Spring, you are likely building your own distribution with multiple JAR files, integrating, patching, versioning, etc of all those components. Spring's claim is that multiple JAR files allow you to go à la carte and pick the latest versions of different components. But who is responsible for testing whether all these versions work together ? Yep, you got it, its YOU! If something does not work, who patches and maintains the JARs ? Of course, you! Commercial support for such a configuration ? On your own! The Java EE application servers manage all of this for you and provide a well-tested and commercially supported bundle. While it is always good to realize that there is something new and improved that updates and replaces older frameworks like Spring, the good news is not only does a Java EE 6 container offer what is described here, most also will let you deploy and run your Spring applications on them while you go through an upgrade to a more modern architecture. End result, you get the best of both worlds - keeping your legacy investment but moving to a more agile, lightweight world of Java EE 6. A message to the Spring lovers ... The complexity in J2EE 1.2, 1.3, and 1.4 led to the genesis of Spring but that was in 2004. This is 2012 and the name has changed to "Java EE 6" :-) There are tons of improvements in the Java EE platform to make it easy-to-use and powerful. Some examples: Adding @Stateless on a POJO makes it an EJB EJBs can be packaged in a WAR with no special packaging or deployment descriptors "web.xml" and "faces-config.xml" are optional in most of the common cases Typesafe dependency injection is now part of the Java EE platform Add @Path on a POJO allows you to publish it as a RESTful resource EJBs can be used as backing beans for Facelets-driven JSF pages providing full MVC Java EE 6 WARs are known to be kilobytes in size and deployed in milliseconds Tons of other simplifications in the platform and application servers So if you moved away from J2EE to Spring many years ago and have not looked at Java EE 6 (which has been out since Dec 2009) then you should definitely try it out. Just be at least aware of what other alternatives are available instead of restricting yourself to one stack. Here are some workshops and screencasts worth trying: screencast #37 shows how to build an end-to-end application using NetBeans screencast #36 builds the same application using Eclipse javaee-lab-feb2012.pdf is a 3-4 hours self-paced hands-on workshop that guides you to build a comprehensive Java EE 6 application using NetBeans Each city generally has a "spring cleanup" program every year. It allows you to clean up the mess from your house. For your software projects, you don't need to wait for an annual event, just get started and reduce the technical debt now! Move away from your legacy Spring-based applications to a lighter and more modern approach of building enterprise Java applications using Java EE 6. Watch this beautiful presentation that explains how to migrate from Spring -> Java EE 6: List of files in the Java EE 6 project: ./index.xhtml./META-INF./person./person/Create.xhtml./person/Edit.xhtml./person/List.xhtml./person/View.xhtml./resources./resources/css./resources/css/jsfcrud.css./template.xhtml./WEB-INF./WEB-INF/classes./WEB-INF/classes/Bundle.properties./WEB-INF/classes/META-INF./WEB-INF/classes/META-INF/persistence.xml./WEB-INF/classes/org./WEB-INF/classes/org/javaee./WEB-INF/classes/org/javaee/javaeemysql./WEB-INF/classes/org/javaee/javaeemysql/AbstractFacade.class./WEB-INF/classes/org/javaee/javaeemysql/Person.class./WEB-INF/classes/org/javaee/javaeemysql/Person_.class./WEB-INF/classes/org/javaee/javaeemysql/PersonController$1.class./WEB-INF/classes/org/javaee/javaeemysql/PersonController$PersonControllerConverter.class./WEB-INF/classes/org/javaee/javaeemysql/PersonController.class./WEB-INF/classes/org/javaee/javaeemysql/PersonFacade.class./WEB-INF/classes/org/javaee/javaeemysql/util./WEB-INF/classes/org/javaee/javaeemysql/util/JsfUtil.class./WEB-INF/classes/org/javaee/javaeemysql/util/PaginationHelper.class./WEB-INF/faces-config.xml./WEB-INF/web.xml List of files in the Spring 3.x project: ./META-INF ./META-INF/MANIFEST.MF./WEB-INF./WEB-INF/applicationContext.xml./WEB-INF/classes./WEB-INF/classes/log4j.properties./WEB-INF/classes/org./WEB-INF/classes/org/krams ./WEB-INF/classes/org/krams/tutorial ./WEB-INF/classes/org/krams/tutorial/controller ./WEB-INF/classes/org/krams/tutorial/controller/MainController.class ./WEB-INF/classes/org/krams/tutorial/domain ./WEB-INF/classes/org/krams/tutorial/domain/Person.class ./WEB-INF/classes/org/krams/tutorial/service ./WEB-INF/classes/org/krams/tutorial/service/PersonService.class ./WEB-INF/hibernate-context.xml ./WEB-INF/hibernate.cfg.xml ./WEB-INF/jsp ./WEB-INF/jsp/addedpage.jsp ./WEB-INF/jsp/addpage.jsp ./WEB-INF/jsp/deletedpage.jsp ./WEB-INF/jsp/editedpage.jsp ./WEB-INF/jsp/editpage.jsp ./WEB-INF/jsp/personspage.jsp ./WEB-INF/lib ./WEB-INF/lib/antlr-2.7.6.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/aopalliance-1.0.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/c3p0-0.9.1.2.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/cglib-nodep-2.2.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/commons-beanutils-1.8.3.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/commons-collections-3.2.1.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/commons-digester-2.1.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/commons-logging-1.1.1.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/dom4j-1.6.1.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/ejb3-persistence-1.0.2.GA.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/hibernate-annotations-3.4.0.GA.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/hibernate-commons-annotations-3.1.0.GA.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/hibernate-core-3.3.2.GA.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/javassist-3.7.ga.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/jstl-1.1.2.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/jta-1.1.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/junit-4.8.1.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/log4j-1.2.14.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/mysql-connector-java-5.1.14.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/persistence-api-1.0.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/slf4j-api-1.6.1.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/slf4j-log4j12-1.6.1.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/spring-aop-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/spring-asm-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/spring-beans-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/spring-context-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/spring-context-support-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/spring-core-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/spring-expression-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/spring-jdbc-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/spring-orm-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/spring-tx-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/spring-web-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/spring-webmvc-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/standard-1.1.2.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/xml-apis-1.0.b2.jar ./WEB-INF/spring-servlet.xml ./WEB-INF/spring.properties ./WEB-INF/web.xml So, are you excited about Java EE 6 ? Want to get started now ? Here are some resources: Java EE 6 SDK (including runtime, samples, tutorials etc) GlassFish Server Open Source Edition 3.1.2 (Community) Oracle GlassFish Server 3.1.2 (Commercial) Java EE 6 using WebLogic 12c and NetBeans (Video) Java EE 6 with NetBeans and GlassFish (Video) Java EE with Eclipse and GlassFish (Video)

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• Integrating HTML into Silverlight Applications

  - by dwahlin

  Looking for a way to display HTML content within a Silverlight application? If you haven’t tried doing that before it can be challenging at first until you know a few tricks of the trade.  Being able to display HTML is especially handy when you’re required to display RSS feeds (with embedded HTML), SQL Server Reporting Services reports, PDF files (not actually HTML – but the techniques discussed will work), or other HTML content.  In this post I'll discuss three options for displaying HTML content in Silverlight applications and describe how my company is using these techniques in client applications. Displaying HTML Overlays If you need to display HTML over a Silverlight application (such as an RSS feed containing HTML data in it) you’ll need to set the Silverlight control’s windowless parameter to true. This can be done using the object tag as shown next: <object data="data:application/x-silverlight-2," type="application/x-silverlight-2" width="100%" height="100%"> <param name="source" value="ClientBin/HTMLAndSilverlight.xap"/> <param name="onError" value="onSilverlightError" /> <param name="background" value="white" /> <param name="minRuntimeVersion" value="4.0.50401.0" /> <param name="autoUpgrade" value="true" /> <param name="windowless" value="true" /> <a href="http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=149156&v=4.0.50401.0" style="text-decoration:none"> <img src="http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=161376" alt="Get Microsoft Silverlight" style="border-style:none"/> </a> </object> By setting the control to “windowless” you can overlay HTML objects by using absolute positioning and other CSS techniques. Keep in mind that on Windows machines the windowless setting can result in a performance hit when complex animations or HD video are running since the plug-in content is displayed directly by the browser window. It goes without saying that you should only set windowless to true when you really need the functionality it offers. For example, if I want to display my blog’s RSS content on top of a Silverlight application I could set windowless to true and create a user control that grabbed the content and output it using a DataList control: <style type="text/css"> a {text-decoration:none;font-weight:bold;font-size:14pt;} </style> <div style="margin-top:10px; margin-left:10px;margin-right:5px;"> <asp:DataList ID="RSSDataList" runat="server" DataSourceID="RSSDataSource"> <ItemTemplate> <a href='<%# XPath("link") %>'><%# XPath("title") %></a> <br /> <%# XPath("description") %> <br /> </ItemTemplate> </asp:DataList> <asp:XmlDataSource ID="RSSDataSource" DataFile="http://weblogs.asp.net/dwahlin/rss.aspx" XPath="rss/channel/item" CacheDuration="60" runat="server" /> </div> The user control can then be placed in the page hosting the Silverlight control as shown below. This example adds a Close button, additional content to display in the overlay window and the HTML generated from the user control. <div id="RSSDiv"> <div style="background-color:#484848;border:1px solid black;height:35px;width:100%;"> <img alt="Close Button" align="right" src="Images/Close.png" onclick="HideOverlay();" style="cursor:pointer;" /> </div> <div style="overflow:auto;width:800px;height:565px;"> <div style="float:left;width:100px;height:103px;margin-left:10px;margin-top:5px;"> <img src="http://weblogs.asp.net/blogs/dwahlin/dan2008.jpg" style="border:1px solid Gray" /> </div> <div style="float:left;width:300px;height:103px;margin-top:5px;"> <a href="http://weblogs.asp.net/dwahlin" style="margin-left:10px;font-size:20pt;">Dan Wahlin's Blog</a> </div> <br /><br /><br /> <div style="clear:both;margin-top:20px;"> <uc:BlogRoller ID="BlogRoller" runat="server" /> </div> </div> </div> Of course, we wouldn’t want the RSS HTML content to be shown until requested. Once it’s requested the absolute position of where it should show above the Silverlight control can be set using standard CSS styles. The following ID selector named #RSSDiv handles hiding the overlay div shown above and determines where it will be display on the screen. #RSSDiv { background-color:White; position:absolute; top:100px; left:300px; width:800px; height:600px; border:1px solid black; display:none; } Now that the HTML content to display above the Silverlight control is set, how can we show it as a user clicks a HyperlinkButton or other control in the application? Fortunately, Silverlight provides an excellent HTML bridge that allows direct access to content hosted within a page. The following code shows two JavaScript functions that can be called from Siverlight to handle showing or hiding HTML overlay content. The two functions rely on jQuery (http://www.jQuery.com) to make it easy to select HTML objects and manipulate their properties: function ShowOverlay() { rssDiv.css('display', 'block'); } function HideOverlay() { rssDiv.css('display', 'none'); } Calling the ShowOverlay function is as simple as adding the following code into the Silverlight application within a button’s Click event handler: private void OverlayHyperlinkButton_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e) { HtmlPage.Window.Invoke("ShowOverlay"); } The result of setting the Silverlight control’s windowless parameter to true and showing the HTML overlay content is shown in the following screenshot:   Thinking Outside the Box to Show HTML Content Setting the windowless parameter to true may not be a viable option for some Silverlight applications or you may simply want to go about showing HTML content a different way. The next technique I’ll show takes advantage of simple HTML, CSS and JavaScript code to handle showing HTML content while a Silverlight application is running in the browser. Keep in mind that with Silverlight’s HTML bridge feature you can always pop-up HTML content in a new browser window using code similar to the following: System.Windows.Browser.HtmlPage.Window.Navigate( new Uri("http://silverlight.net"), "_blank"); For this example I’ll demonstrate how to hide the Silverlight application while maximizing a container div containing the HTML content to show. This allows HTML content to take up the full screen area of the browser without having to set windowless to true and when done right can make the user feel like they never left the Silverlight application. The following HTML shows several div elements that are used to display HTML within the same browser window as the Silverlight application: <div id="JobPlanDiv"> <div style="vertical-align:middle"> <img alt="Close Button" align="right" src="Images/Close.png" onclick="HideJobPlanIFrame();" style="cursor:pointer;" /> </div> <div id="JobPlan_IFrame_Container" style="height:95%;width:100%;margin-top:37px;"></div> </div> The JobPlanDiv element acts as a container for two other divs that handle showing a close button and hosting an iframe that will be added dynamically at runtime. JobPlanDiv isn’t visible when the Silverlight application loads due to the following ID selector added into the page: #JobPlanDiv { position:absolute; background-color:#484848; overflow:hidden; left:0; top:0; height:100%; width:100%; display:none; } When the HTML content needs to be shown or hidden the JavaScript functions shown next can be used: var jobPlanIFrameID = 'JobPlan_IFrame'; var slHost = null; var jobPlanContainer = null; var jobPlanIFrameContainer = null; var rssDiv = null; $(document).ready(function () { slHost = $('#silverlightControlHost'); jobPlanContainer = $('#JobPlanDiv'); jobPlanIFrameContainer = $('#JobPlan_IFrame_Container'); rssDiv = $('#RSSDiv'); }); function ShowJobPlanIFrame(url) { jobPlanContainer.css('display', 'block'); $('<iframe id="' + jobPlanIFrameID + '" src="' + url + '" style="height:100%;width:100%;" />') .appendTo(jobPlanIFrameContainer); slHost.css('width', '0%'); } function HideJobPlanIFrame() { jobPlanContainer.css('display', 'none'); $('#' + jobPlanIFrameID).remove(); slHost.css('width', '100%'); } ShowJobPlanIFrame() handles showing the JobPlanDiv div and adding an iframe into it dynamically. Once JobPlanDiv is shown, the Silverlight control host has its width set to a value of 0% to allow the control to stay alive while making it invisible to the user. I found that this technique works better across multiple browsers as opposed to manipulating the Silverlight control host div’s display or visibility properties. Now that you’ve seen the code to handle showing and hiding the HTML content area, let’s switch focus to the Silverlight application. As a user clicks on a link such as “View Report” the ShowJobPlanIFrame() JavaScript function needs to be called. The following code handles that task: private void ReportHyperlinkButton_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e) { ShowBrowser(_BaseUrl + "/Report.aspx"); } public void ShowBrowser(string url) { HtmlPage.Window.Invoke("ShowJobPlanIFrame", url); } Any URL can be passed into the ShowBrowser() method which handles invoking the JavaScript function. This includes standard web pages or even PDF files. We’ve used this technique frequently with our SmartPrint control (http://www.smartwebcontrols.com) which converts Silverlight screens into PDF documents and displays them. Here’s an example of the content generated:   Silverlight 4’s WebBrowser Control Both techniques shown to this point work well when Silverlight is running in-browser but not so well when it’s running out-of-browser since there’s no host page that you can access using the HTML bridge. Fortunately, Silverlight 4 provides a WebBrowser control that can be used to perform the same functionality quite easily. We’re currently using it in client applications to display PDF documents, SSRS reports and standard HTML content. Using the WebBrowser control simplifies the application quite a bit since no JavaScript is required if the application only runs out-of-browser. Here’s a simple example of defining the WebBrowser control in XAML. I typically define it in MainPage.xaml when a Silverlight Navigation template is used to create the project so that I can re-use the functionality across multiple screens. <Grid x:Name="WebBrowserGrid" HorizontalAlignment="Stretch" VerticalAlignment="Stretch" Visibility="Collapsed"> <StackPanel HorizontalAlignment="Stretch" VerticalAlignment="Stretch"> <Border Background="#484848" HorizontalAlignment="Stretch" Height="40"> <Image x:Name="WebBrowserImage" Width="100" Height="33" Cursor="Hand" HorizontalAlignment="Right" Source="/HTMLAndSilverlight;component/Assets/Images/Close.png" MouseLeftButtonDown="WebBrowserImage_MouseLeftButtonDown" /> </Border> <WebBrowser x:Name="JobPlanReportWebBrowser" HorizontalAlignment="Stretch" VerticalAlignment="Stretch" /> </StackPanel> </Grid> Looking through the XAML you can see that a close image is defined along with the WebBrowser control. Because the URL that the WebBrowser should navigate to isn’t known at design time no value is assigned to the control’s Source property. If the XAML shown above is left “as is” you’ll find that any HTML content assigned to the WebBrowser doesn’t display properly. This is due to no height or width being set on the control. To handle this issue the following code is added into the XAML’s code-behind file to dynamically determine the height and width of the page and assign it to the WebBrowser. This is done by handling the SizeChanged event. void MainPage_SizeChanged(object sender, SizeChangedEventArgs e) { WebBrowserGrid.Height = JobPlanReportWebBrowser.Height = ActualHeight; WebBrowserGrid.Width = JobPlanReportWebBrowser.Width = ActualWidth; } When the user wants to view HTML content they click a button which executes the code shown in next: public void ShowBrowser(string url) { if (Application.Current.IsRunningOutOfBrowser) { JobPlanReportWebBrowser.NavigateToString("<html><body><iframe src='" + url + "' style='width:100%;height:97%;' /></body></html>"); WebBrowserGrid.Visibility = Visibility.Visible; } else { HtmlPage.Window.Invoke("ShowJobPlanIFrame", url); } } private void WebBrowserImage_MouseLeftButtonDown(object sender, MouseButtonEventArgs e) { WebBrowserGrid.Visibility = Visibility.Collapsed; }   Looking through the code you’ll see that it checks to see if the Silverlight application is running out-of-browser and then either displays the WebBrowser control or runs the JavaScript function discussed earlier. Although the WebBrowser control’s Source property could be assigned the URI of the page to navigate to, by assigning HTML content using the NavigateToString() method and adding an iframe, content can be shown from any site including cross-domain sites. This is especially handy when you need to grab a page from a reporting site that’s in a different domain than the Silverlight application. Here’s an example of viewing  PDF file inside of an out-of-browser application. The first image shows the application running out-of-browser before the user clicks a PDF HyperlinkButton.  The second image shows the PDF being displayed.   While there are certainly other techniques that can be used, the ones shown here have worked well for us in different applications and provide the ability to display HTML content in-browser or out-of-browser. Feel free to add a comment if you have another tip or trick you like to use when working with HTML content in Silverlight applications.   Download Code Sample   For more information about onsite, online and video training, mentoring and consulting solutions for .NET, SharePoint or Silverlight please visit http://www.thewahlingroup.com.

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• SimpleMembership, Membership Providers, Universal Providers and the new ASP.NET 4.5 Web Forms and ASP.NET MVC 4 templates

  - by Jon Galloway

  The ASP.NET MVC 4 Internet template adds some new, very useful features which are built on top of SimpleMembership. These changes add some great features, like a much simpler and extensible membership API and support for OAuth. However, the new account management features require SimpleMembership and won't work against existing ASP.NET Membership Providers. I'll start with a summary of top things you need to know, then dig into a lot more detail. Summary: SimpleMembership has been designed as a replacement for traditional the previous ASP.NET Role and Membership provider system SimpleMembership solves common problems people ran into with the Membership provider system and was designed for modern user / membership / storage needs SimpleMembership integrates with the previous membership system, but you can't use a MembershipProvider with SimpleMembership The new ASP.NET MVC 4 Internet application template AccountController requires SimpleMembership and is not compatible with previous MembershipProviders You can continue to use existing ASP.NET Role and Membership providers in ASP.NET 4.5 and ASP.NET MVC 4 - just not with the ASP.NET MVC 4 AccountController The existing ASP.NET Role and Membership provider system remains supported as is part of the ASP.NET core ASP.NET 4.5 Web Forms does not use SimpleMembership; it implements OAuth on top of ASP.NET Membership The ASP.NET Web Site Administration Tool (WSAT) is not compatible with SimpleMembership The following is the result of a few conversations with Erik Porter (PM for ASP.NET MVC) to make sure I had some the overall details straight, combined with a lot of time digging around in ILSpy and Visual Studio's assembly browsing tools. SimpleMembership: The future of membership for ASP.NET The ASP.NET Membership system was introduces with ASP.NET 2.0 back in 2005. It was designed to solve common site membership requirements at the time, which generally involved username / password based registration and profile storage in SQL Server. It was designed with a few extensibility mechanisms - notably a provider system (which allowed you override some specifics like backing storage) and the ability to store additional profile information (although the additional  profile information was packed into a single column which usually required access through the API). While it's sometimes frustrating to work with, it's held up for seven years - probably since it handles the main use case (username / password based membership in a SQL Server database) smoothly and can be adapted to most other needs (again, often frustrating, but it can work). The ASP.NET Web Pages and WebMatrix efforts allowed the team an opportunity to take a new look at a lot of things - e.g. the Razor syntax started with ASP.NET Web Pages, not ASP.NET MVC. The ASP.NET Web Pages team designed SimpleMembership to (wait for it) simplify the task of dealing with membership. As Matthew Osborn said in his post Using SimpleMembership With ASP.NET WebPages: With the introduction of ASP.NET WebPages and the WebMatrix stack our team has really be focusing on making things simpler for the developer. Based on a lot of customer feedback one of the areas that we wanted to improve was the built in security in ASP.NET. So with this release we took that time to create a new built in (and default for ASP.NET WebPages) security provider. I say provider because the new stuff is still built on the existing ASP.NET framework. So what do we call this new hotness that we have created? Well, none other than SimpleMembership. SimpleMembership is an umbrella term for both SimpleMembership and SimpleRoles. Part of simplifying membership involved fixing some common problems with ASP.NET Membership. Problems with ASP.NET Membership ASP.NET Membership was very obviously designed around a set of assumptions: Users and user information would most likely be stored in a full SQL Server database or in Active Directory User and profile information would be optimized around a set of common attributes (UserName, Password, IsApproved, CreationDate, Comment, Role membership...) and other user profile information would be accessed through a profile provider Some problems fall out of these assumptions. Requires Full SQL Server for default cases The default, and most fully featured providers ASP.NET Membership providers (SQL Membership Provider, SQL Role Provider, SQL Profile Provider) require full SQL Server. They depend on stored procedure support, and they rely on SQL Server cache dependencies, they depend on agents for clean up and maintenance. So the main SQL Server based providers don't work well on SQL Server CE, won't work out of the box on SQL Azure, etc. Note: Cory Fowler recently let me know about these Updated ASP.net scripts for use with Microsoft SQL Azure which do support membership, personalization, profile, and roles. But the fact that we need a support page with a set of separate SQL scripts underscores the underlying problem. Aha, you say! Jon's forgetting the Universal Providers, a.k.a. System.Web.Providers! Hold on a bit, we'll get to those... Custom Membership Providers have to work with a SQL-Server-centric API If you want to work with another database or other membership storage system, you need to to inherit from the provider base classes and override a bunch of methods which are tightly focused on storing a MembershipUser in a relational database. It can be done (and you can often find pretty good ones that have already been written), but it's a good amount of work and often leaves you with ugly code that has a bunch of System.NotImplementedException fun since there are a lot of methods that just don't apply. Designed around a specific view of users, roles and profiles The existing providers are focused on traditional membership - a user has a username and a password, some specific roles on the site (e.g. administrator, premium user), and may have some additional "nice to have" optional information that can be accessed via an API in your application. This doesn't fit well with some modern usage patterns: In OAuth and OpenID, the user doesn't have a password Often these kinds of scenarios map better to user claims or rights instead of monolithic user roles For many sites, profile or other non-traditional information is very important and needs to come from somewhere other than an API call that maps to a database blob What would work a lot better here is a system in which you were able to define your users, rights, and other attributes however you wanted and the membership system worked with your model - not the other way around. Requires specific schema, overflow in blob columns I've already mentioned this a few times, but it bears calling out separately - ASP.NET Membership focuses on SQL Server storage, and that storage is based on a very specific database schema. SimpleMembership as a better membership system As you might have guessed, SimpleMembership was designed to address the above problems. Works with your Schema As Matthew Osborn explains in his Using SimpleMembership With ASP.NET WebPages post, SimpleMembership is designed to integrate with your database schema: All SimpleMembership requires is that there are two columns on your users table so that we can hook up to it – an “ID” column and a “username” column. The important part here is that they can be named whatever you want. For instance username doesn't have to be an alias it could be an email column you just have to tell SimpleMembership to treat that as the “username” used to log in. Matthew's example shows using a very simple user table named Users (it could be named anything) with a UserID and Username column, then a bunch of other columns he wanted in his app. Then we point SimpleMemberhip at that table with a one-liner: WebSecurity.InitializeDatabaseFile("SecurityDemo.sdf", "Users", "UserID", "Username", true); No other tables are needed, the table can be named anything we want, and can have pretty much any schema we want as long as we've got an ID and something that we can map to a username. Broaden database support to the whole SQL Server family While SimpleMembership is not database agnostic, it works across the SQL Server family. It continues to support full SQL Server, but it also works with SQL Azure, SQL Server CE, SQL Server Express, and LocalDB. Everything's implemented as SQL calls rather than requiring stored procedures, views, agents, and change notifications. Note that SimpleMembership still requires some flavor of SQL Server - it won't work with MySQL, NoSQL databases, etc. You can take a look at the code in WebMatrix.WebData.dll using a tool like ILSpy if you'd like to see why - there places where SQL Server specific SQL statements are being executed, especially when creating and initializing tables. It seems like you might be able to work with another database if you created the tables separately, but I haven't tried it and it's not supported at this point. Note: I'm thinking it would be possible for SimpleMembership (or something compatible) to run Entity Framework so it would work with any database EF supports. That seems useful to me - thoughts? Note: SimpleMembership has the same database support - anything in the SQL Server family - that Universal Providers brings to the ASP.NET Membership system. Easy to with Entity Framework Code First The problem with with ASP.NET Membership's system for storing additional account information is that it's the gate keeper. That means you're stuck with its schema and accessing profile information through its API. SimpleMembership flips that around by allowing you to use any table as a user store. That means you're in control of the user profile information, and you can access it however you'd like - it's just data. Let's look at a practical based on the AccountModel.cs class in an ASP.NET MVC 4 Internet project. Here I'm adding a Birthday property to the UserProfile class. [Table("UserProfile")] public class UserProfile { [Key] [DatabaseGeneratedAttribute(DatabaseGeneratedOption.Identity)] public int UserId { get; set; } public string UserName { get; set; } public DateTime Birthday { get; set; } } Now if I want to access that information, I can just grab the account by username and read the value. var context = new UsersContext(); var username = User.Identity.Name; var user = context.UserProfiles.SingleOrDefault(u => u.UserName == username); var birthday = user.Birthday; So instead of thinking of SimpleMembership as a big membership API, think of it as something that handles membership based on your user database. In SimpleMembership, everything's keyed off a user row in a table you define rather than a bunch of entries in membership tables that were out of your control. How SimpleMembership integrates with ASP.NET Membership Okay, enough sales pitch (and hopefully background) on why things have changed. How does this affect you? Let's start with a diagram to show the relationship (note: I've simplified by removing a few classes to show the important relationships): So SimpleMembershipProvider is an implementaiton of an ExtendedMembershipProvider, which inherits from MembershipProvider and adds some other account / OAuth related things. Here's what ExtendedMembershipProvider adds to MembershipProvider: The important thing to take away here is that a SimpleMembershipProvider is a MembershipProvider, but a MembershipProvider is not a SimpleMembershipProvider. This distinction is important in practice: you cannot use an existing MembershipProvider (including the Universal Providers found in System.Web.Providers) with an API that requires a SimpleMembershipProvider, including any of the calls in WebMatrix.WebData.WebSecurity or Microsoft.Web.WebPages.OAuth.OAuthWebSecurity. However, that's as far as it goes. Membership Providers still work if you're accessing them through the standard Membership API, and all of the core stuff  - including the AuthorizeAttribute, role enforcement, etc. - will work just fine and without any change. Let's look at how that affects you in terms of the new templates. Membership in the ASP.NET MVC 4 project templates ASP.NET MVC 4 offers six Project Templates: Empty - Really empty, just the assemblies, folder structure and a tiny bit of basic configuration. Basic - Like Empty, but with a bit of UI preconfigured (css / images / bundling). Internet - This has both a Home and Account controller and associated views. The Account Controller supports registration and login via either local accounts and via OAuth / OpenID providers. Intranet - Like the Internet template, but it's preconfigured for Windows Authentication. Mobile - This is preconfigured using jQuery Mobile and is intended for mobile-only sites. Web API - This is preconfigured for a service backend built on ASP.NET Web API. Out of these templates, only one (the Internet template) uses SimpleMembership. ASP.NET MVC 4 Basic template The Basic template has configuration in place to use ASP.NET Membership with the Universal Providers. You can see that configuration in the ASP.NET MVC 4 Basic template's web.config: <profile defaultProvider="DefaultProfileProvider"> <providers> <add name="DefaultProfileProvider" type="System.Web.Providers.DefaultProfileProvider, System.Web.Providers, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35" connectionStringName="DefaultConnection" applicationName="/" /> </providers> </profile> <membership defaultProvider="DefaultMembershipProvider"> <providers> <add name="DefaultMembershipProvider" type="System.Web.Providers.DefaultMembershipProvider, System.Web.Providers, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35" connectionStringName="DefaultConnection" enablePasswordRetrieval="false" enablePasswordReset="true" requiresQuestionAndAnswer="false" requiresUniqueEmail="false" maxInvalidPasswordAttempts="5" minRequiredPasswordLength="6" minRequiredNonalphanumericCharacters="0" passwordAttemptWindow="10" applicationName="/" /> </providers> </membership> <roleManager defaultProvider="DefaultRoleProvider"> <providers> <add name="DefaultRoleProvider" type="System.Web.Providers.DefaultRoleProvider, System.Web.Providers, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35" connectionStringName="DefaultConnection" applicationName="/" /> </providers> </roleManager> <sessionState mode="InProc" customProvider="DefaultSessionProvider"> <providers> <add name="DefaultSessionProvider" type="System.Web.Providers.DefaultSessionStateProvider, System.Web.Providers, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35" connectionStringName="DefaultConnection" /> </providers> </sessionState> This means that it's business as usual for the Basic template as far as ASP.NET Membership works. ASP.NET MVC 4 Internet template The Internet template has a few things set up to bootstrap SimpleMembership: \Models\AccountModels.cs defines a basic user account and includes data annotations to define keys and such \Filters\InitializeSimpleMembershipAttribute.cs creates the membership database using the above model, then calls WebSecurity.InitializeDatabaseConnection which verifies that the underlying tables are in place and marks initialization as complete (for the application's lifetime) \Controllers\AccountController.cs makes heavy use of OAuthWebSecurity (for OAuth account registration / login / management) and WebSecurity. WebSecurity provides account management services for ASP.NET MVC (and Web Pages) WebSecurity can work with any ExtendedMembershipProvider. There's one in the box (SimpleMembershipProvider) but you can write your own. Since a standard MembershipProvider is not an ExtendedMembershipProvider, WebSecurity will throw exceptions if the default membership provider is a MembershipProvider rather than an ExtendedMembershipProvider. Practical example: Create a new ASP.NET MVC 4 application using the Internet application template Install the Microsoft ASP.NET Universal Providers for LocalDB NuGet package Run the application, click on Register, add a username and password, and click submit You'll get the following execption in AccountController.cs::Register: To call this method, the "Membership.Provider" property must be an instance of "ExtendedMembershipProvider". This occurs because the ASP.NET Universal Providers packages include a web.config transform that will update your web.config to add the Universal Provider configuration I showed in the Basic template example above. When WebSecurity tries to use the configured ASP.NET Membership Provider, it checks if it can be cast to an ExtendedMembershipProvider before doing anything else. So, what do you do? Options: If you want to use the new AccountController, you'll either need to use the SimpleMembershipProvider or another valid ExtendedMembershipProvider. This is pretty straightforward. If you want to use an existing ASP.NET Membership Provider in ASP.NET MVC 4, you can't use the new AccountController. You can do a few things: Replace  the AccountController.cs and AccountModels.cs in an ASP.NET MVC 4 Internet project with one from an ASP.NET MVC 3 application (you of course won't have OAuth support). Then, if you want, you can go through and remove other things that were built around SimpleMembership - the OAuth partial view, the NuGet packages (e.g. the DotNetOpenAuthAuth package, etc.) Use an ASP.NET MVC 4 Internet application template and add in a Universal Providers NuGet package. Then copy in the AccountController and AccountModel classes. Create an ASP.NET MVC 3 project and upgrade it to ASP.NET MVC 4 using the steps shown in the ASP.NET MVC 4 release notes. None of these are particularly elegant or simple. Maybe we (or just me?) can do something to make this simpler - perhaps a NuGet package. However, this should be an edge case - hopefully the cases where you'd need to create a new ASP.NET but use legacy ASP.NET Membership Providers should be pretty rare. Please let me (or, preferably the team) know if that's an incorrect assumption. Membership in the ASP.NET 4.5 project template ASP.NET 4.5 Web Forms took a different approach which builds off ASP.NET Membership. Instead of using the WebMatrix security assemblies, Web Forms uses Microsoft.AspNet.Membership.OpenAuth assembly. I'm no expert on this, but from a bit of time in ILSpy and Visual Studio's (very pretty) dependency graphs, this uses a Membership Adapter to save OAuth data into an EF managed database while still running on top of ASP.NET Membership. Note: There may be a way to use this in ASP.NET MVC 4, although it would probably take some plumbing work to hook it up. How does this fit in with Universal Providers (System.Web.Providers)? Just to summarize: Universal Providers are intended for cases where you have an existing ASP.NET Membership Provider and you want to use it with another SQL Server database backend (other than SQL Server). It doesn't require agents to handle expired session cleanup and other background tasks, it piggybacks these tasks on other calls. Universal Providers are not really, strictly speaking, universal - at least to my way of thinking. They only work with databases in the SQL Server family. Universal Providers do not work with Simple Membership. The Universal Providers packages include some web config transforms which you would normally want when you're using them. What about the Web Site Administration Tool? Visual Studio includes tooling to launch the Web Site Administration Tool (WSAT) to configure users and roles in your application. WSAT is built to work with ASP.NET Membership, and is not compatible with Simple Membership. There are two main options there: Use the WebSecurity and OAuthWebSecurity API to manage the users and roles Create a web admin using the above APIs Since SimpleMembership runs on top of your database, you can update your users as you would any other data - via EF or even in direct database edits (in development, of course)

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• Introducing the Earthquake Locator – A Bing Maps Silverlight Application, part 1

  - by Bobby Diaz

  Update: Live demo and source code now available!  The recent wave of earthquakes (no pun intended) being reported in the news got me wondering about the frequency and severity of earthquakes around the world. Since I’ve been doing a lot of Silverlight development lately, I decided to scratch my curiosity with a nice little Bing Maps application that will show the location and relative strength of recent seismic activity. Here is a list of technologies this application will utilize, so be sure to have everything downloaded and installed if you plan on following along. Silverlight 3 WCF RIA Services Bing Maps Silverlight Control * Managed Extensibility Framework (optional) MVVM Light Toolkit (optional) log4net (optional) * If you are new to Bing Maps or have not signed up for a Developer Account, you will need to visit www.bingmapsportal.com to request a Bing Maps key for your application. Getting Started We start out by creating a new Silverlight Application called EarthquakeLocator and specify that we want to automatically create the Web Application Project with RIA Services enabled. I cleaned up the web app by removing the Default.aspx and EarthquakeLocatorTestPage.html. Then I renamed the EarthquakeLocatorTestPage.aspx to Default.aspx and set it as my start page. I also set the development server to use a specific port, as shown below. RIA Services Next, I created a Services folder in the EarthquakeLocator.Web project and added a new Domain Service Class called EarthquakeService.cs. This is the RIA Services Domain Service that will provide earthquake data for our client application. I am not using LINQ to SQL or Entity Framework, so I will use the <empty domain service class> option. We will be pulling data from an external Atom feed, but this example could just as easily pull data from a database or another web service. This is an important distinction to point out because each scenario I just mentioned could potentially use a different Domain Service base class (i.e. LinqToSqlDomainService<TDataContext>). Now we can start adding Query methods to our EarthquakeService that pull data from the USGS web site. Here is the complete code for our service class: using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.IO; using System.Linq; using System.ServiceModel.Syndication; using System.Web.DomainServices; using System.Web.Ria; using System.Xml; using log4net; using EarthquakeLocator.Web.Model;   namespace EarthquakeLocator.Web.Services {     /// <summary>     /// Provides earthquake data to client applications.     /// </summary>     [EnableClientAccess()]     public class EarthquakeService : DomainService     {         private static readonly ILog log = LogManager.GetLogger(typeof(EarthquakeService));           // USGS Data Feeds: http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/catalogs/         private const string FeedForPreviousDay =             "http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/catalogs/1day-M2.5.xml";         private const string FeedForPreviousWeek =             "http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/catalogs/7day-M2.5.xml";           /// <summary>         /// Gets the earthquake data for the previous week.         /// </summary>         /// <returns>A queryable collection of <see cref="Earthquake"/> objects.</returns>         public IQueryable<Earthquake> GetEarthquakes()         {             var feed = GetFeed(FeedForPreviousWeek);             var list = new List<Earthquake>();               if ( feed != null )             {                 foreach ( var entry in feed.Items )                 {                     var quake = CreateEarthquake(entry);                     if ( quake != null )                     {                         list.Add(quake);                     }                 }             }               return list.AsQueryable();         }           /// <summary>         /// Creates an <see cref="Earthquake"/> object for each entry in the Atom feed.         /// </summary>         /// <param name="entry">The Atom entry.</param>         /// <returns></returns>         private Earthquake CreateEarthquake(SyndicationItem entry)         {             Earthquake quake = null;             string title = entry.Title.Text;             string summary = entry.Summary.Text;             string point = GetElementValue<String>(entry, "point");             string depth = GetElementValue<String>(entry, "elev");             string utcTime = null;             string localTime = null;             string depthDesc = null;             double? magnitude = null;             double? latitude = null;             double? longitude = null;             double? depthKm = null;               if ( !String.IsNullOrEmpty(title) && title.StartsWith("M") )             {                 title = title.Substring(2, title.IndexOf(',')-3).Trim();                 magnitude = TryParse(title);             }             if ( !String.IsNullOrEmpty(point) )             {                 var values = point.Split(' ');                 if ( values.Length == 2 )                 {                     latitude = TryParse(values[0]);                     longitude = TryParse(values[1]);                 }             }             if ( !String.IsNullOrEmpty(depth) )             {                 depthKm = TryParse(depth);                 if ( depthKm != null )                 {                     depthKm = Math.Round((-1 * depthKm.Value) / 100, 2);                 }             }             if ( !String.IsNullOrEmpty(summary) )             {                 summary = summary.Replace("</p>", "");                 var values = summary.Split(                     new string[] { "<p>" },                     StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries);                   if ( values.Length == 3 )                 {                     var times = values[1].Split(                         new string[] { "<br>" },                         StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries);                       if ( times.Length > 0 )                     {                         utcTime = times[0];                     }                     if ( times.Length > 1 )                     {                         localTime = times[1];                     }                       depthDesc = values[2];                     depthDesc = "Depth: " + depthDesc.Substring(depthDesc.IndexOf(":") + 2);                 }             }               if ( latitude != null && longitude != null )             {                 quake = new Earthquake()                 {                     Id = entry.Id,                     Title = entry.Title.Text,                     Summary = entry.Summary.Text,                     Date = entry.LastUpdatedTime.DateTime,                     Url = entry.Links.Select(l => Path.Combine(l.BaseUri.OriginalString,                         l.Uri.OriginalString)).FirstOrDefault(),                     Age = entry.Categories.Where(c => c.Label == "Age")                         .Select(c => c.Name).FirstOrDefault(),                     Magnitude = magnitude.GetValueOrDefault(),                     Latitude = latitude.GetValueOrDefault(),                     Longitude = longitude.GetValueOrDefault(),                     DepthInKm = depthKm.GetValueOrDefault(),                     DepthDesc = depthDesc,                     UtcTime = utcTime,                     LocalTime = localTime                 };             }               return quake;         }           private T GetElementValue<T>(SyndicationItem entry, String name)         {             var el = entry.ElementExtensions.Where(e => e.OuterName == name).FirstOrDefault();             T value = default(T);               if ( el != null )             {                 value = el.GetObject<T>();             }               return value;         }           private double? TryParse(String value)         {             double d;             if ( Double.TryParse(value, out d) )             {                 return d;             }             return null;         }           /// <summary>         /// Gets the feed at the specified URL.         /// </summary>         /// <param name="url">The URL.</param>         /// <returns>A <see cref="SyndicationFeed"/> object.</returns>         public static SyndicationFeed GetFeed(String url)         {             SyndicationFeed feed = null;               try             {                 log.Debug("Loading RSS feed: " + url);                   using ( var reader = XmlReader.Create(url) )                 {                     feed = SyndicationFeed.Load(reader);                 }             }             catch ( Exception ex )             {                 log.Error("Error occurred while loading RSS feed: " + url, ex);             }               return feed;         }     } }   The only method that will be generated in the client side proxy class, EarthquakeContext, will be the GetEarthquakes() method. The reason being that it is the only public instance method and it returns an IQueryable<Earthquake> collection that can be consumed by the client application. GetEarthquakes() calls the static GetFeed(String) method, which utilizes the built in SyndicationFeed API to load the external data feed. You will need to add a reference to the System.ServiceModel.Web library in order to take advantage of the RSS/Atom reader. The API will also allow you to create your own feeds to serve up in your applications. Model I have also created a Model folder and added a new class, Earthquake.cs. The Earthquake object will hold the various properties returned from the Atom feed. Here is a sample of the code for that class. Notice the [Key] attribute on the Id property, which is required by RIA Services to uniquely identify the entity. using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Runtime.Serialization; using System.ComponentModel.DataAnnotations;   namespace EarthquakeLocator.Web.Model {     /// <summary>     /// Represents an earthquake occurrence and related information.     /// </summary>     [DataContract]     public class Earthquake     {         /// <summary>         /// Gets or sets the id.         /// </summary>         /// <value>The id.</value>         [Key]         [DataMember]         public string Id { get; set; }           /// <summary>         /// Gets or sets the title.         /// </summary>         /// <value>The title.</value>         [DataMember]         public string Title { get; set; }           /// <summary>         /// Gets or sets the summary.         /// </summary>         /// <value>The summary.</value>         [DataMember]         public string Summary { get; set; }           // additional properties omitted     } }   View Model The recent trend to use the MVVM pattern for WPF and Silverlight provides a great way to separate the data and behavior logic out of the user interface layer of your client applications. I have chosen to use the MVVM Light Toolkit for the Earthquake Locator, but there are other options out there if you prefer another library. That said, I went ahead and created a ViewModel folder in the Silverlight project and added a EarthquakeViewModel class that derives from ViewModelBase. Here is the code: using System; using System.Collections.ObjectModel; using System.ComponentModel.Composition; using System.ComponentModel.Composition.Hosting; using Microsoft.Maps.MapControl; using GalaSoft.MvvmLight; using EarthquakeLocator.Web.Model; using EarthquakeLocator.Web.Services;   namespace EarthquakeLocator.ViewModel {     /// <summary>     /// Provides data for views displaying earthquake information.     /// </summary>     public class EarthquakeViewModel : ViewModelBase     {         [Import]         public EarthquakeContext Context;           /// <summary>         /// Initializes a new instance of the <see cref="EarthquakeViewModel"/> class.         /// </summary>         public EarthquakeViewModel()         {             var catalog = new AssemblyCatalog(GetType().Assembly);             var container = new CompositionContainer(catalog);             container.ComposeParts(this);             Initialize();         }           /// <summary>         /// Initializes a new instance of the <see cref="EarthquakeViewModel"/> class.         /// </summary>         /// <param name="context">The context.</param>         public EarthquakeViewModel(EarthquakeContext context)         {             Context = context;             Initialize();         }           private void Initialize()         {             MapCenter = new Location(20, -170);             ZoomLevel = 2;         }           #region Private Methods           private void OnAutoLoadDataChanged()         {             LoadEarthquakes();         }           private void LoadEarthquakes()         {             var query = Context.GetEarthquakesQuery();             Context.Earthquakes.Clear();               Context.Load(query, (op) =>             {                 if ( !op.HasError )                 {                     foreach ( var item in op.Entities )                     {                         Earthquakes.Add(item);                     }                 }             }, null);         }           #endregion Private Methods           #region Properties           private bool autoLoadData;         /// <summary>         /// Gets or sets a value indicating whether to auto load data.         /// </summary>         /// <value><c>true</c> if auto loading data; otherwise, <c>false</c>.</value>         public bool AutoLoadData         {             get { return autoLoadData; }             set             {                 if ( autoLoadData != value )                 {                     autoLoadData = value;                     RaisePropertyChanged("AutoLoadData");                     OnAutoLoadDataChanged();                 }             }         }           private ObservableCollection<Earthquake> earthquakes;         /// <summary>         /// Gets the collection of earthquakes to display.         /// </summary>         /// <value>The collection of earthquakes.</value>         public ObservableCollection<Earthquake> Earthquakes         {             get             {                 if ( earthquakes == null )                 {                     earthquakes = new ObservableCollection<Earthquake>();                 }                   return earthquakes;             }         }           private Location mapCenter;         /// <summary>         /// Gets or sets the map center.         /// </summary>         /// <value>The map center.</value>         public Location MapCenter         {             get { return mapCenter; }             set             {                 if ( mapCenter != value )                 {                     mapCenter = value;                     RaisePropertyChanged("MapCenter");                 }             }         }           private double zoomLevel;         /// <summary>         /// Gets or sets the zoom level.         /// </summary>         /// <value>The zoom level.</value>         public double ZoomLevel         {             get { return zoomLevel; }             set             {                 if ( zoomLevel != value )                 {                     zoomLevel = value;                     RaisePropertyChanged("ZoomLevel");                 }             }         }           #endregion Properties     } }   The EarthquakeViewModel class contains all of the properties that will be bound to by the various controls in our views. Be sure to read through the LoadEarthquakes() method, which handles calling the GetEarthquakes() method in our EarthquakeService via the EarthquakeContext proxy, and also transfers the loaded entities into the view model’s Earthquakes collection. Another thing to notice is what’s going on in the default constructor. I chose to use the Managed Extensibility Framework (MEF) for my composition needs, but you can use any dependency injection library or none at all. To allow the EarthquakeContext class to be discoverable by MEF, I added the following partial class so that I could supply the appropriate [Export] attribute: using System; using System.ComponentModel.Composition;   namespace EarthquakeLocator.Web.Services {     /// <summary>     /// The client side proxy for the EarthquakeService class.     /// </summary>     [Export]     public partial class EarthquakeContext     {     } }   One last piece I wanted to point out before moving on to the user interface, I added a client side partial class for the Earthquake entity that contains helper properties that we will bind to later: using System;   namespace EarthquakeLocator.Web.Model {     /// <summary>     /// Represents an earthquake occurrence and related information.     /// </summary>     public partial class Earthquake     {         /// <summary>         /// Gets the location based on the current Latitude/Longitude.         /// </summary>         /// <value>The location.</value>         public string Location         {             get { return String.Format("{0},{1}", Latitude, Longitude); }         }           /// <summary>         /// Gets the size based on the Magnitude.         /// </summary>         /// <value>The size.</value>         public double Size         {             get { return (Magnitude * 3); }         }     } }   View Now the fun part! Usually, I would create a Views folder to place all of my View controls in, but I took the easy way out and added the following XAML code to the default MainPage.xaml file. Be sure to add the bing prefix associating the Microsoft.Maps.MapControl namespace after adding the assembly reference to your project. The MVVM Light Toolkit project templates come with a ViewModelLocator class that you can use via a static resource, but I am instantiating the EarthquakeViewModel directly in my user control. I am setting the AutoLoadData property to true as a way to trigger the LoadEarthquakes() method call. The MapItemsControl found within the <bing:Map> control binds its ItemsSource property to the Earthquakes collection of the view model, and since it is an ObservableCollection<T>, we get the automatic two way data binding via the INotifyCollectionChanged interface. <UserControl x:Class="EarthquakeLocator.MainPage"     xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"     xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"     xmlns:d="http://schemas.microsoft.com/expression/blend/2008"     xmlns:mc="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/markup-compatibility/2006"     xmlns:bing="clr-namespace:Microsoft.Maps.MapControl;assembly=Microsoft.Maps.MapControl"     xmlns:vm="clr-namespace:EarthquakeLocator.ViewModel"     mc:Ignorable="d" d:DesignWidth="640" d:DesignHeight="480" >     <UserControl.Resources>         <DataTemplate x:Key="EarthquakeTemplate">             <Ellipse Fill="Red" Stroke="Black" StrokeThickness="1"                      Width="{Binding Size}" Height="{Binding Size}"                      bing:MapLayer.Position="{Binding Location}"                      bing:MapLayer.PositionOrigin="Center">                 <ToolTipService.ToolTip>                     <StackPanel>                         <TextBlock Text="{Binding Title}" FontSize="14" FontWeight="Bold" />                         <TextBlock Text="{Binding UtcTime}" />                         <TextBlock Text="{Binding LocalTime}" />                         <TextBlock Text="{Binding DepthDesc}" />                     </StackPanel>                 </ToolTipService.ToolTip>             </Ellipse>         </DataTemplate>     </UserControl.Resources>       <UserControl.DataContext>         <vm:EarthquakeViewModel AutoLoadData="True" />     </UserControl.DataContext>       <Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot">           <bing:Map x:Name="map" CredentialsProvider="--Your-Bing-Maps-Key--"                   Center="{Binding MapCenter, Mode=TwoWay}"                   ZoomLevel="{Binding ZoomLevel, Mode=TwoWay}">             <bing:MapItemsControl ItemsSource="{Binding Earthquakes}"                                   ItemTemplate="{StaticResource EarthquakeTemplate}" />         </bing:Map>       </Grid> </UserControl>   The EarthquakeTemplate defines the Ellipse that will represent each earthquake, the Width and Height that are determined by the Magnitude, the Position on the map, and also the tooltip that will appear when we mouse over each data point. Running the application will give us the following result (shown with a tooltip example): That concludes this portion of our show but I plan on implementing additional functionality in later blog posts. Be sure to come back soon to see the next installments in this series. Enjoy!   Additional Resources USGS Earthquake Data Feeds Brad Abrams shows how RIA Services and MVVM can work together

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• Metro: Declarative Data Binding

  - by Stephen.Walther

  The goal of this blog post is to describe how declarative data binding works in the WinJS library. In particular, you learn how to use both the data-win-bind and data-win-bindsource attributes. You also learn how to use calculated properties and converters to format the value of a property automatically when performing data binding. By taking advantage of WinJS data binding, you can use the Model-View-ViewModel (MVVM) pattern when building Metro style applications with JavaScript. By using the MVVM pattern, you can prevent your JavaScript code from spinning into chaos. The MVVM pattern provides you with a standard pattern for organizing your JavaScript code which results in a more maintainable application. Using Declarative Bindings You can use the data-win-bind attribute with any HTML element in a page. The data-win-bind attribute enables you to bind (associate) an attribute of an HTML element to the value of a property. Imagine, for example, that you want to create a product details page. You want to show a product object in a page. In that case, you can create the following HTML page to display the product details: <!DOCTYPE html> <html> <head> <meta charset="utf-8"> <title>Application1</title> <!-- WinJS references --> <link href="//Microsoft.WinJS.0.6/css/ui-dark.css" rel="stylesheet"> <script src="//Microsoft.WinJS.0.6/js/base.js"></script> <script src="//Microsoft.WinJS.0.6/js/ui.js"></script> <!-- Application1 references --> <link href="/css/default.css" rel="stylesheet"> <script src="/js/default.js"></script> </head> <body> <h1>Product Details</h1> <div class="field"> Product Name: <span data-win-bind="innerText:name"></span> </div> <div class="field"> Product Price: <span data-win-bind="innerText:price"></span> </div> <div class="field"> Product Picture: <br /> <img data-win-bind="src:photo;alt:name" /> </div> </body> </html> The HTML page above contains three data-win-bind attributes – one attribute for each product property displayed. You use the data-win-bind attribute to set properties of the HTML element associated with the data-win-attribute. The data-win-bind attribute takes a semicolon delimited list of element property names and data source property names: data-win-bind=”elementPropertyName:datasourcePropertyName; elementPropertyName:datasourcePropertyName;…” In the HTML page above, the first two data-win-bind attributes are used to set the values of the innerText property of the SPAN elements. The last data-win-bind attribute is used to set the values of the IMG element’s src and alt attributes. By the way, using data-win-bind attributes is perfectly valid HTML5. The HTML5 standard enables you to add custom attributes to an HTML document just as long as the custom attributes start with the prefix data-. So you can add custom attributes to an HTML5 document with names like data-stephen, data-funky, or data-rover-dog-is-hungry and your document will validate. The product object displayed in the page above with the data-win-bind attributes is created in the default.js file: (function () { "use strict"; var app = WinJS.Application; app.onactivated = function (eventObject) { if (eventObject.detail.kind === Windows.ApplicationModel.Activation.ActivationKind.launch) { var product = { name: "Tesla", price: 80000, photo: "/images/TeslaPhoto.png" }; WinJS.Binding.processAll(null, product); } }; app.start(); })(); In the code above, a product object is created with a name, price, and photo property. The WinJS.Binding.processAll() method is called to perform the actual binding (Don’t confuse WinJS.Binding.processAll() and WinJS.UI.processAll() – these are different methods). The first parameter passed to the processAll() method represents the root element for the binding. In other words, binding happens on this element and its child elements. If you provide the value null, then binding happens on the entire body of the document (document.body). The second parameter represents the data context. This is the object that has the properties which are displayed with the data-win-bind attributes. In the code above, the product object is passed as the data context parameter. Another word for data context is view model.  Creating Complex View Models In the previous section, we used the data-win-bind attribute to display the properties of a simple object: a single product. However, you can use binding with more complex view models including view models which represent multiple objects. For example, the view model in the following default.js file represents both a customer and a product object. Furthermore, the customer object has a nested address object: (function () { "use strict"; var app = WinJS.Application; app.onactivated = function (eventObject) { if (eventObject.detail.kind === Windows.ApplicationModel.Activation.ActivationKind.launch) { var viewModel = { customer: { firstName: "Fred", lastName: "Flintstone", address: { street: "1 Rocky Way", city: "Bedrock", country: "USA" } }, product: { name: "Bowling Ball", price: 34.55 } }; WinJS.Binding.processAll(null, viewModel); } }; app.start(); })(); The following page displays the customer (including the customer address) and the product. Notice that you can use dot notation to refer to child objects in a view model such as customer.address.street. <!DOCTYPE html> <html> <head> <meta charset="utf-8"> <title>Application1</title> <!-- WinJS references --> <link href="//Microsoft.WinJS.0.6/css/ui-dark.css" rel="stylesheet"> <script src="//Microsoft.WinJS.0.6/js/base.js"></script> <script src="//Microsoft.WinJS.0.6/js/ui.js"></script> <!-- Application1 references --> <link href="/css/default.css" rel="stylesheet"> <script src="/js/default.js"></script> </head> <body> <h1>Customer Details</h1> <div class="field"> First Name: <span data-win-bind="innerText:customer.firstName"></span> </div> <div class="field"> Last Name: <span data-win-bind="innerText:customer.lastName"></span> </div> <div class="field"> Address: <address> <span data-win-bind="innerText:customer.address.street"></span> <br /> <span data-win-bind="innerText:customer.address.city"></span> <br /> <span data-win-bind="innerText:customer.address.country"></span> </address> </div> <h1>Product</h1> <div class="field"> Name: <span data-win-bind="innerText:product.name"></span> </div> <div class="field"> Price: <span data-win-bind="innerText:product.price"></span> </div> </body> </html> A view model can be as complicated as you need and you can bind the view model to a view (an HTML document) by using declarative bindings. Creating Calculated Properties You might want to modify a property before displaying the property. For example, you might want to format the product price property before displaying the property. You don’t want to display the raw product price “80000”. Instead, you want to display the formatted price “$80,000”. You also might need to combine multiple properties. For example, you might need to display the customer full name by combining the values of the customer first and last name properties. In these situations, it is tempting to call a function when performing binding. For example, you could create a function named fullName() which concatenates the customer first and last name. Unfortunately, the WinJS library does not support the following syntax: <span data-win-bind=”innerText:fullName()”></span> Instead, in these situations, you should create a new property in your view model that has a getter. For example, the customer object in the following default.js file includes a property named fullName which combines the values of the firstName and lastName properties: (function () { "use strict"; var app = WinJS.Application; app.onactivated = function (eventObject) { if (eventObject.detail.kind === Windows.ApplicationModel.Activation.ActivationKind.launch) { var customer = { firstName: "Fred", lastName: "Flintstone", get fullName() { return this.firstName + " " + this.lastName; } }; WinJS.Binding.processAll(null, customer); } }; app.start(); })(); The customer object has a firstName, lastName, and fullName property. Notice that the fullName property is defined with a getter function. When you read the fullName property, the values of the firstName and lastName properties are concatenated and returned. The following HTML page displays the fullName property in an H1 element. You can use the fullName property in a data-win-bind attribute in exactly the same way as any other property. <!DOCTYPE html> <html> <head> <meta charset="utf-8"> <title>Application1</title> <!-- WinJS references --> <link href="//Microsoft.WinJS.0.6/css/ui-dark.css" rel="stylesheet"> <script src="//Microsoft.WinJS.0.6/js/base.js"></script> <script src="//Microsoft.WinJS.0.6/js/ui.js"></script> <!-- Application1 references --> <link href="/css/default.css" rel="stylesheet"> <script src="/js/default.js"></script> </head> <body> <h1 data-win-bind="innerText:fullName"></h1> <div class="field"> First Name: <span data-win-bind="innerText:firstName"></span> </div> <div class="field"> Last Name: <span data-win-bind="innerText:lastName"></span> </div> </body> </html> Creating a Converter In the previous section, you learned how to format the value of a property by creating a property with a getter. This approach makes sense when the formatting logic is specific to a particular view model. If, on the other hand, you need to perform the same type of formatting for multiple view models then it makes more sense to create a converter function. A converter function is a function which you can apply whenever you are using the data-win-bind attribute. Imagine, for example, that you want to create a general function for displaying dates. You always want to display dates using a short format such as 12/25/1988. The following JavaScript file – named converters.js – contains a shortDate() converter: (function (WinJS) { var shortDate = WinJS.Binding.converter(function (date) { return date.getMonth() + 1 + "/" + date.getDate() + "/" + date.getFullYear(); }); // Export shortDate WinJS.Namespace.define("MyApp.Converters", { shortDate: shortDate }); })(WinJS); The file above uses the Module Pattern, a pattern which is used through the WinJS library. To learn more about the Module Pattern, see my blog entry on namespaces and modules: http://stephenwalther.com/blog/archive/2012/02/22/windows-web-applications-namespaces-and-modules.aspx The file contains the definition for a converter function named shortDate(). This function converts a JavaScript date object into a short date string such as 12/1/1988. The converter function is created with the help of the WinJS.Binding.converter() method. This method takes a normal function and converts it into a converter function. Finally, the shortDate() converter is added to the MyApp.Converters namespace. You can call the shortDate() function by calling MyApp.Converters.shortDate(). The default.js file contains the customer object that we want to bind. Notice that the customer object has a firstName, lastName, and birthday property. We will use our new shortDate() converter when displaying the customer birthday property: (function () { "use strict"; var app = WinJS.Application; app.onactivated = function (eventObject) { if (eventObject.detail.kind === Windows.ApplicationModel.Activation.ActivationKind.launch) { var customer = { firstName: "Fred", lastName: "Flintstone", birthday: new Date("12/1/1988") }; WinJS.Binding.processAll(null, customer); } }; app.start(); })(); We actually use our shortDate converter in the HTML document. The following HTML document displays all of the customer properties: <!DOCTYPE html> <html> <head> <meta charset="utf-8"> <title>Application1</title> <!-- WinJS references --> <link href="//Microsoft.WinJS.0.6/css/ui-dark.css" rel="stylesheet"> <script src="//Microsoft.WinJS.0.6/js/base.js"></script> <script src="//Microsoft.WinJS.0.6/js/ui.js"></script> <!-- Application1 references --> <link href="/css/default.css" rel="stylesheet"> <script src="/js/default.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="js/converters.js"></script> </head> <body> <h1>Customer Details</h1> <div class="field"> First Name: <span data-win-bind="innerText:firstName"></span> </div> <div class="field"> Last Name: <span data-win-bind="innerText:lastName"></span> </div> <div class="field"> Birthday: <span data-win-bind="innerText:birthday MyApp.Converters.shortDate"></span> </div> </body> </html> Notice the data-win-bind attribute used to display the birthday property. It looks like this: <span data-win-bind="innerText:birthday MyApp.Converters.shortDate"></span> The shortDate converter is applied to the birthday property when the birthday property is bound to the SPAN element’s innerText property. Using data-win-bindsource Normally, you pass the view model (the data context) which you want to use with the data-win-bind attributes in a page by passing the view model to the WinJS.Binding.processAll() method like this: WinJS.Binding.processAll(null, viewModel); As an alternative, you can specify the view model declaratively in your markup by using the data-win-datasource attribute. For example, the following default.js script exposes a view model with the fully-qualified name of MyWinWebApp.viewModel: (function () { "use strict"; var app = WinJS.Application; app.onactivated = function (eventObject) { if (eventObject.detail.kind === Windows.ApplicationModel.Activation.ActivationKind.launch) { // Create view model var viewModel = { customer: { firstName: "Fred", lastName: "Flintstone" }, product: { name: "Bowling Ball", price: 12.99 } }; // Export view model to be seen by universe WinJS.Namespace.define("MyWinWebApp", { viewModel: viewModel }); // Process data-win-bind attributes WinJS.Binding.processAll(); } }; app.start(); })(); In the code above, a view model which represents a customer and a product is exposed as MyWinWebApp.viewModel. The following HTML page illustrates how you can use the data-win-bindsource attribute to bind to this view model: <!DOCTYPE html> <html> <head> <meta charset="utf-8"> <title>Application1</title> <!-- WinJS references --> <link href="//Microsoft.WinJS.0.6/css/ui-dark.css" rel="stylesheet"> <script src="//Microsoft.WinJS.0.6/js/base.js"></script> <script src="//Microsoft.WinJS.0.6/js/ui.js"></script> <!-- Application1 references --> <link href="/css/default.css" rel="stylesheet"> <script src="/js/default.js"></script> </head> <body> <h1>Customer Details</h1> <div data-win-bindsource="MyWinWebApp.viewModel.customer"> <div class="field"> First Name: <span data-win-bind="innerText:firstName"></span> </div> <div class="field"> Last Name: <span data-win-bind="innerText:lastName"></span> </div> </div> <h1>Product</h1> <div data-win-bindsource="MyWinWebApp.viewModel.product"> <div class="field"> Name: <span data-win-bind="innerText:name"></span> </div> <div class="field"> Price: <span data-win-bind="innerText:price"></span> </div> </div> </body> </html> The data-win-bindsource attribute is used twice in the page above: it is used with the DIV element which contains the customer details and it is used with the DIV element which contains the product details. If an element has a data-win-bindsource attribute then all of the child elements of that element are affected. The data-win-bind attributes of all of the child elements are bound to the data source represented by the data-win-bindsource attribute. Summary The focus of this blog entry was data binding using the WinJS library. You learned how to use the data-win-bind attribute to bind the properties of an HTML element to a view model. We also discussed several advanced features of data binding. We examined how to create calculated properties by including a property with a getter in your view model. We also discussed how you can create a converter function to format the value of a view model property when binding the property. Finally, you learned how to use the data-win-bindsource attribute to specify a view model declaratively.

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• Rendering ASP.NET MVC Views to String

  - by Rick Strahl

  It's not uncommon in my applications that I require longish text output that does not have to be rendered into the HTTP output stream. The most common scenario I have for 'template driven' non-Web text is for emails of all sorts. Logon confirmations and verifications, email confirmations for things like orders, status updates or scheduler notifications - all of which require merged text output both within and sometimes outside of Web applications. On other occasions I also need to capture the output from certain views for logging purposes. Rather than creating text output in code, it's much nicer to use the rendering mechanism that ASP.NET MVC already provides by way of it's ViewEngines - using Razor or WebForms views - to render output to a string. This is nice because it uses the same familiar rendering mechanism that I already use for my HTTP output and it also solves the problem of where to store the templates for rendering this content in nothing more than perhaps a separate view folder. The good news is that ASP.NET MVC's rendering engine is much more modular than the full ASP.NET runtime engine which was a real pain in the butt to coerce into rendering output to string. With MVC the rendering engine has been separated out from core ASP.NET runtime, so it's actually a lot easier to get View output into a string. Getting View Output from within an MVC Application If you need to generate string output from an MVC and pass some model data to it, the process to capture this output is fairly straight forward and involves only a handful of lines of code. The catch is that this particular approach requires that you have an active ControllerContext that can be passed to the view. This means that the following approach is limited to access from within Controller methods. Here's a class that wraps the process and provides both instance and static methods to handle the rendering:/// <summary> /// Class that renders MVC views to a string using the /// standard MVC View Engine to render the view. /// /// Note: This class can only be used within MVC /// applications that have an active ControllerContext. /// </summary> public class ViewRenderer { /// <summary> /// Required Controller Context /// </summary> protected ControllerContext Context { get; set; } public ViewRenderer(ControllerContext controllerContext) { Context = controllerContext; } /// <summary> /// Renders a full MVC view to a string. Will render with the full MVC /// View engine including running _ViewStart and merging into _Layout /// </summary> /// <param name="viewPath"> /// The path to the view to render. Either in same controller, shared by /// name or as fully qualified ~/ path including extension /// </param> /// <param name="model">The model to render the view with</param> /// <returns>String of the rendered view or null on error</returns> public string RenderView(string viewPath, object model) { return RenderViewToStringInternal(viewPath, model, false); } /// <summary> /// Renders a partial MVC view to string. Use this method to render /// a partial view that doesn't merge with _Layout and doesn't fire /// _ViewStart. /// </summary> /// <param name="viewPath"> /// The path to the view to render. Either in same controller, shared by /// name or as fully qualified ~/ path including extension /// </param> /// <param name="model">The model to pass to the viewRenderer</param> /// <returns>String of the rendered view or null on error</returns> public string RenderPartialView(string viewPath, object model) { return RenderViewToStringInternal(viewPath, model, true); } public static string RenderView(string viewPath, object model, ControllerContext controllerContext) { ViewRenderer renderer = new ViewRenderer(controllerContext); return renderer.RenderView(viewPath, model); } public static string RenderPartialView(string viewPath, object model, ControllerContext controllerContext) { ViewRenderer renderer = new ViewRenderer(controllerContext); return renderer.RenderPartialView(viewPath, model); } protected string RenderViewToStringInternal(string viewPath, object model, bool partial = false) { // first find the ViewEngine for this view ViewEngineResult viewEngineResult = null; if (partial) viewEngineResult = ViewEngines.Engines.FindPartialView(Context, viewPath); else viewEngineResult = ViewEngines.Engines.FindView(Context, viewPath, null); if (viewEngineResult == null) throw new FileNotFoundException(Properties.Resources.ViewCouldNotBeFound); // get the view and attach the model to view data var view = viewEngineResult.View; Context.Controller.ViewData.Model = model; string result = null; using (var sw = new StringWriter()) { var ctx = new ViewContext(Context, view, Context.Controller.ViewData, Context.Controller.TempData, sw); view.Render(ctx, sw); result = sw.ToString(); } return result; } } The key is the RenderViewToStringInternal method. The method first tries to find the view to render based on its path which can either be in the current controller's view path or the shared view path using its simple name (PasswordRecovery) or alternately by its full virtual path (~/Views/Templates/PasswordRecovery.cshtml). This code should work both for Razor and WebForms views although I've only tried it with Razor Views. Note that WebForms Views might actually be better for plain text as Razor adds all sorts of white space into its output when there are code blocks in the template. The Web Forms engine provides more accurate rendering for raw text scenarios. Once a view engine is found the view to render can be retrieved. Views in MVC render based on data that comes off the controller like the ViewData which contains the model along with the actual ViewData and ViewBag. From the View and some of the Context data a ViewContext is created which is then used to render the view with. The View picks up the Model and other data from the ViewContext internally and processes the View the same it would be processed if it were to send its output into the HTTP output stream. The difference is that we can override the ViewContext's output stream which we provide and capture into a StringWriter(). After rendering completes the result holds the output string. If an error occurs the error behavior is similar what you see with regular MVC errors - you get a full yellow screen of death including the view error information with the line of error highlighted. It's your responsibility to handle the error - or let it bubble up to your regular Controller Error filter if you have one. To use the simple class you only need a single line of code if you call the static methods. Here's an example of some Controller code that is used to send a user notification to a customer via email in one of my applications:[HttpPost] public ActionResult ContactSeller(ContactSellerViewModel model) { InitializeViewModel(model); var entryBus = new busEntry(); var entry = entryBus.LoadByDisplayId(model.EntryId); if ( string.IsNullOrEmpty(model.Email) ) entryBus.ValidationErrors.Add("Email address can't be empty.","Email"); if ( string.IsNullOrEmpty(model.Message)) entryBus.ValidationErrors.Add("Message can't be empty.","Message"); model.EntryId = entry.DisplayId; model.EntryTitle = entry.Title; if (entryBus.ValidationErrors.Count > 0) { ErrorDisplay.AddMessages(entryBus.ValidationErrors); ErrorDisplay.ShowError("Please correct the following:"); } else { string message = ViewRenderer.RenderView("~/views/template/ContactSellerEmail.cshtml",model, ControllerContext); string title = entry.Title + " (" + entry.DisplayId + ") - " + App.Configuration.ApplicationName; AppUtils.SendEmail(title, message, model.Email, entry.User.Email, false, false)) } return View(model); } Simple! The view in this case is just a plain MVC view and in this case it's a very simple plain text email message (edited for brevity here) that is created and sent off:@model ContactSellerViewModel @{ Layout = null; }re: @Model.EntryTitle @Model.ListingUrl @Model.Message ** SECURITY ADVISORY - AVOID SCAMS ** Avoid: wiring money, cross-border deals, work-at-home ** Beware: cashier checks, money orders, escrow, shipping ** More Info: @(App.Configuration.ApplicationBaseUrl)scams.html Obviously this is a very simple view (I edited out more from this page to keep it brief) -  but other template views are much more complex HTML documents or long messages that are occasionally updated and they are a perfect fit for Razor rendering. It even works with nested partial views and _layout pages. Partial Rendering Notice that I'm rendering a full View here. In the view I explicitly set the Layout=null to avoid pulling in _layout.cshtml for this view. This can also be controlled externally by calling the RenderPartial method instead: string message = ViewRenderer.RenderPartialView("~/views/template/ContactSellerEmail.cshtml",model, ControllerContext); with this line of code no layout page (or _viewstart) will be loaded, so the output generated is just what's in the view. I find myself using Partials most of the time when rendering templates, since the target of templates usually tend to be emails or other HTML fragment like output, so the RenderPartialView() method is definitely useful to me. Rendering without a ControllerContext The preceding class is great when you're need template rendering from within MVC controller actions or anywhere where you have access to the request Controller. But if you don't have a controller context handy - maybe inside a utility function that is static, a non-Web application, or an operation that runs asynchronously in ASP.NET - which makes using the above code impossible. I haven't found a way to manually create a Controller context to provide the ViewContext() what it needs from outside of the MVC infrastructure. However, there are ways to accomplish this,  but they are a bit more complex. It's possible to host the RazorEngine on your own, which side steps all of the MVC framework and HTTP and just deals with the raw rendering engine. I wrote about this process in Hosting the Razor Engine in Non-Web Applications a long while back. It's quite a process to create a custom Razor engine and runtime, but it allows for all sorts of flexibility. There's also a RazorEngine CodePlex project that does something similar. I've been meaning to check out the latter but haven't gotten around to it since I have my own code to do this. The trick to hosting the RazorEngine to have it behave properly inside of an ASP.NET application and properly cache content so templates aren't constantly rebuild and reparsed. Anyway, in the same app as above I have one scenario where no ControllerContext is available: I have a background scheduler running inside of the app that fires on timed intervals. This process could be external but because it's lightweight we decided to fire it right inside of the ASP.NET app on a separate thread. In my app the code that renders these templates does something like this:var model = new SearchNotificationViewModel() { Entries = entries, Notification = notification, User = user }; // TODO: Need logging for errors sending string razorError = null; var result = AppUtils.RenderRazorTemplate("~/views/template/SearchNotificationTemplate.cshtml", model, razorError); which references a couple of helper functions that set up my RazorFolderHostContainer class:public static string RenderRazorTemplate(string virtualPath, object model,string errorMessage = null) { var razor = AppUtils.CreateRazorHost(); var path = virtualPath.Replace("~/", "").Replace("~", "").Replace("/", "\\"); var merged = razor.RenderTemplateToString(path, model); if (merged == null) errorMessage = razor.ErrorMessage; return merged; } /// <summary> /// Creates a RazorStringHostContainer and starts it /// Call .Stop() when you're done with it. /// /// This is a static instance /// </summary> /// <param name="virtualPath"></param> /// <param name="binBasePath"></param> /// <param name="forceLoad"></param> /// <returns></returns> public static RazorFolderHostContainer CreateRazorHost(string binBasePath = null, bool forceLoad = false) { if (binBasePath == null) { if (HttpContext.Current != null) binBasePath = HttpContext.Current.Server.MapPath("~/"); else binBasePath = AppDomain.CurrentDomain.BaseDirectory; } if (_RazorHost == null || forceLoad) { if (!binBasePath.EndsWith("\\")) binBasePath += "\\"; //var razor = new RazorStringHostContainer(); var razor = new RazorFolderHostContainer(); razor.TemplatePath = binBasePath; binBasePath += "bin\\"; razor.BaseBinaryFolder = binBasePath; razor.UseAppDomain = false; razor.ReferencedAssemblies.Add(binBasePath + "ClassifiedsBusiness.dll"); razor.ReferencedAssemblies.Add(binBasePath + "ClassifiedsWeb.dll"); razor.ReferencedAssemblies.Add(binBasePath + "Westwind.Utilities.dll"); razor.ReferencedAssemblies.Add(binBasePath + "Westwind.Web.dll"); razor.ReferencedAssemblies.Add(binBasePath + "Westwind.Web.Mvc.dll"); razor.ReferencedAssemblies.Add("System.Web.dll"); razor.ReferencedNamespaces.Add("System.Web"); razor.ReferencedNamespaces.Add("ClassifiedsBusiness"); razor.ReferencedNamespaces.Add("ClassifiedsWeb"); razor.ReferencedNamespaces.Add("Westwind.Web"); razor.ReferencedNamespaces.Add("Westwind.Utilities"); _RazorHost = razor; _RazorHost.Start(); //_RazorHost.Engine.Configuration.CompileToMemory = false; } return _RazorHost; } The RazorFolderHostContainer essentially is a full runtime that mimics a folder structure like a typical Web app does including caching semantics and compiling code only if code changes on disk. It maps a folder hierarchy to views using the ~/ path syntax. The host is then configured to add assemblies and namespaces. Unfortunately the engine is not exactly like MVC's Razor - the expression expansion and code execution are the same, but some of the support methods like sections, helpers etc. are not all there so templates have to be a bit simpler. There are other folder hosts provided as well to directly execute templates from strings (using RazorStringHostContainer). The following is an example of an HTML email template @inherits RazorHosting.RazorTemplateFolderHost <ClassifiedsWeb.SearchNotificationViewModel> <html> <head> <title>Search Notifications</title> <style> body { margin: 5px;font-family: Verdana, Arial; font-size: 10pt;} h3 { color: SteelBlue; } .entry-item { border-bottom: 1px solid grey; padding: 8px; margin-bottom: 5px; } </style> </head> <body> Hello @Model.User.Name,<br /> <p>Below are your Search Results for the search phrase:</p> <h3>@Model.Notification.SearchPhrase</h3> <small>since @TimeUtils.ShortDateString(Model.Notification.LastSearch)</small> <hr /> You can see that the syntax is a little different. Instead of the familiar @model header the raw Razor  @inherits tag is used to specify the template base class (which you can extend). I took a quick look through the feature set of RazorEngine on CodePlex (now Github I guess) and the template implementation they use is closer to MVC's razor but there are other differences. In the end don't expect exact behavior like MVC templates if you use an external Razor rendering engine. This is not what I would consider an ideal solution, but it works well enough for this project. My biggest concern is the overhead of hosting a second razor engine in a Web app and the fact that here the differences in template rendering between 'real' MVC Razor views and another RazorEngine really are noticeable. You win some, you lose some It's extremely nice to see that if you have a ControllerContext handy (which probably addresses 99% of Web app scenarios) rendering a view to string using the native MVC Razor engine is pretty simple. Kudos on making that happen - as it solves a problem I see in just about every Web application I work on. But it is a bummer that a ControllerContext is required to make this simple code work. It'd be really sweet if there was a way to render views without being so closely coupled to the ASP.NET or MVC infrastructure that requires a ControllerContext. Alternately it'd be nice to have a way for an MVC based application to create a minimal ControllerContext from scratch - maybe somebody's been down that path. I tried for a few hours to come up with a way to make that work but gave up in the soup of nested contexts (MVC/Controller/View/Http). I suspect going down this path would be similar to hosting the ASP.NET runtime requiring a WorkerRequest. Brrr…. The sad part is that it seems to me that a View should really not require much 'context' of any kind to render output to string. Yes there are a few things that clearly are required like paths to the virtual and possibly the disk paths to the root of the app, but beyond that view rendering should not require much. But, no such luck. For now custom RazorHosting seems to be the only way to make Razor rendering go outside of the MVC context… Resources Full ViewRenderer.cs source code from Westwind.Web.Mvc library Hosting the Razor Engine for Non-Web Applications RazorEngine on GitHub© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2012Posted in ASP.NET   ASP.NET  MVC   Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

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• Deploy ASP.NET Web Applications with Web Deployment Projects

  - by Ben Griswold

  One may quickly build and deploy an ASP.NET web application via the Publish option in Visual Studio.  This option works great for most simple deployment scenarios but it won’t always cut it.  Let’s say you need to automate your deployments. Or you have environment-specific configuration settings. Or you need to execute pre/post build operations when you do your builds.  If so, you should consider using Web Deployment Projects. The Web Deployment Project type doesn’t come out-of-the-box with Visual Studio 2008.  You’ll need to Download Visual Studio® 2008 Web Deployment Projects – RTW and install if you want to follow along with this tutorial. I’ve created a shiny new ASP.NET MVC project.  Web Deployment Projects work with websites, web applications and MVC projects so feel free to go with any web project type you’d like.  Once your web application is in place, it’s time to add the Web Deployment project.  You can hunt and peck around the File > New > New Project… dialogue as long as you’d like, but you aren’t going to find what you need.  Instead, select the web project and then choose the “Add Web Deployment Project…” hiding behind the Build menu option. I prefer to name my projects based on the environment in which I plan to deploy.  In this case, I’ll be rolling to the QA machine. Don’t expect too much to happen at this point.  A seemingly empty project with a funny icon will be added to your solution.  That’s it. I want to take a minute and talk about configuration settings before we continue.  Some of the common settings which might change from environment to environment are appSettings, connectionStrings and mailSettings.  Here’s a look at my updated web.config: <appSettings>   <add key="MvcApplication293.Url" value="http://localhost:50596/" />     </appSettings> <connectionStrings>   <add name="ApplicationServices"        connectionString="data source=.\SQLEXPRESS;Integrated Security=SSPI;AttachDBFilename=|DataDirectory|aspnetdb.mdf;User Instance=true"        providerName="System.Data.SqlClient"/> </connectionStrings>   <system.net>   <mailSettings>     <smtp from="[email protected]">         <network host="server.com" userName="username" password="password" port="587" defaultCredentials="false"/>     </smtp>   </mailSettings> </system.net> I want to update these values prior to deploying to the QA environment.  There are variations to this approach, but I like to maintain environment-specific settings for each of the web.config sections in the Config/[Environment] project folders.  I’ve provided a screenshot of the QA environment settings below. It may be obvious what one should include in each of the three files.  Basically, it is a copy of the associated web.config section with updated setting values.  For example, the AppSettings.config file may include a reference to the QA web url, the DB.config would include the QA database server and login information and the StmpSettings.config would include a QA Stmp server and user information. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?> <appSettings>   <add key="MvcApplication293.Url" value="http://qa.MvcApplicatinon293.com/" /> </appSettings> AppSettings.config  <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?> <connectionStrings>   <add name="ApplicationServices"        connectionString="server=QAServer;integrated security=SSPI;database=MvcApplication293"        providerName="System.Data.SqlClient"/>   </connectionStrings> Db.config  <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?> <smtp from="[email protected]">     <network host="qaserver.com" userName="qausername" password="qapassword" port="587" defaultCredentials="false"/> </smtp> SmtpSettings.config  I think our web project is ready to deploy.  Now, it’s time to concentrate on the Web Deployment Project itself.  Right-click on the project file and open the Property Pages. The first thing to call out is the Configuration dropdown.  I only deploy a project which is built in Release Mode so I only setup the Web Deployment Project for this mode.  (This is when you change the Configuration selection to “Release.”)  I typically keep the Output Folder default value – .\Release\.  When the application is built, all artifacts will be dropped in the .\Release\ folder relative to the Web Deployment Project root.  The final option may be up for some debate.  I like to roll out updatable websites so I select the “Allow this precompiled site to be updatable” option.  I really do like to follow standard SDLC processes when I release my software but there are those times when you just have to make a hotfix to production and I like to keep this option open if need be.  If you are strongly opposed to this idea, please, by all means, don’t check the box. The next tab is boring.  I don’t like to deploy a crazy number of DLLs so I merge all outputs to a single assembly.  Again, you may have another option and feel free to change this selection if you so wish. If you follow my lead, take care when choosing a single assembly name.  The Assembly Name can not be the same as the website or any other project in your solution otherwise you’ll receive a circular reference build error.  In other words, I can’t name the assembly MvcApplication293 or my output window would start yelling at me. Remember when we called out our QA configuration files?  Click on the Deployment tab and you’ll see how where going to use them.  Notice the Web.config file section replacements value.  All this does is swap called out web.config sections with the content of the Config\QA\* files.  You can reduce or extend this list as you deem fit.  Did you see the “Use external configuration source file” option?  You know how you can point any of your web.config sections to an external file via the configSource attribute?  This option allows you to leverage that technique and instead of replacing the content of the sections, you will replace the configSource attribute value instead. <appSettings configSource="Config\QA\AppSettings.config" /> Go ahead and Apply your changes.  I’d like to take a look at the project file we just updated.  Right-click on the Web Deployment Project and select “Open Project File.” One of the first configuration blocks reflects core Release build settings.  There are a couple of points I’d like to call out here: DebugSymbols=false ensures the compilation debug attribute in your web.config is flipped to false as part of build process.  There’s some crumby (more likely old) documentation which implies you need a ToggleDebugCompilation task to make this happen.  Nope. Just make sure the DebugSymbols is set to false.  EnableUpdateable implies a single dll for the web application rather than a dll for each object and and empty view file. I think updatable applications are cleaner and include the benefit (or risk based on your perspective) that portions of the application can be updated directly on the server.  I called this out earlier but I wanted to reiterate. <PropertyGroup Condition=" '$(Configuration)|$(Platform)' == 'Release|AnyCPU' ">     <DebugSymbols>false</DebugSymbols>     <OutputPath>.\Release</OutputPath>     <EnableUpdateable>true</EnableUpdateable>     <UseMerge>true</UseMerge>     <SingleAssemblyName>MvcApplication293</SingleAssemblyName>     <DeleteAppCodeCompiledFiles>true</DeleteAppCodeCompiledFiles>     <UseWebConfigReplacement>true</UseWebConfigReplacement>     <ValidateWebConfigReplacement>true</ValidateWebConfigReplacement>     <DeleteAppDataFolder>true</DeleteAppDataFolder>   </PropertyGroup> The next section is self-explanatory.  The content merely reflects the replacement value you provided via the Property Pages. <ItemGroup Condition="'$(Configuration)|$(Platform)' == 'Release|AnyCPU'">     <WebConfigReplacementFiles Include="Config\QA\AppSettings.config">       <Section>appSettings</Section>     </WebConfigReplacementFiles>     <WebConfigReplacementFiles Include="Config\QA\Db.config">       <Section>connectionStrings</Section>     </WebConfigReplacementFiles>     <WebConfigReplacementFiles Include="Config\QA\SmtpSettings.config">       <Section>system.net/mailSettings/smtp</Section>     </WebConfigReplacementFiles>   </ItemGroup> You’ll want to extend the ItemGroup section to include the files you wish to exclude from the build.  The sample ExcludeFromBuild nodes exclude all obj, svn, csproj, user, pdb artifacts from the build. Enough though they files aren’t included in your web project, you’ll need to exclude them or they’ll show up along with required deployment artifacts.  <ItemGroup Condition="'$(Configuration)|$(Platform)' == 'Release|AnyCPU'">     <WebConfigReplacementFiles Include="Config\QA\AppSettings.config">       <Section>appSettings</Section>     </WebConfigReplacementFiles>     <WebConfigReplacementFiles Include="Config\QA\Db.config">       <Section>connectionStrings</Section>     </WebConfigReplacementFiles>     <WebConfigReplacementFiles Include="Config\QA\SmtpSettings.config">       <Section>system.net/mailSettings/smtp</Section>     </WebConfigReplacementFiles>     <ExcludeFromBuild Include="$(SourceWebPhysicalPath)\obj\**\*.*" />     <ExcludeFromBuild Include="$(SourceWebPhysicalPath)\**\.svn\**\*.*" />     <ExcludeFromBuild Include="$(SourceWebPhysicalPath)\**\.svn\**\*" />     <ExcludeFromBuild Include="$(SourceWebPhysicalPath)\**\*.csproj" />     <ExcludeFromBuild Include="$(SourceWebPhysicalPath)\**\*.user" />     <ExcludeFromBuild Include="$(SourceWebPhysicalPath)\bin\*.pdb" />     <ExcludeFromBuild Include="$(SourceWebPhysicalPath)\Notes.txt" />   </ItemGroup> Pre/post build and Pre/post merge tasks are added to the final code block.  By default, your project file should look like the following – a completely commented out section. <!– To modify your build process, add your task inside one of        the targets below and uncomment it. Other similar extension        points exist, see Microsoft.WebDeployment.targets.   <Target Name="BeforeBuild">   </Target>   <Target Name="BeforeMerge">   </Target>   <Target Name="AfterMerge">   </Target>   <Target Name="AfterBuild">   </Target>   –> Update the section to remove all temporary Config folders and files after the build.  <!– To modify your build process, add your task inside one of        the targets below and uncomment it. Other similar extension        points exist, see Microsoft.WebDeployment.targets.     <Target Name="BeforeMerge">   </Target>   <Target Name="AfterMerge">   </Target>     <Target Name="BeforeBuild">      </Target>       –>   <Target Name="AfterBuild">     <!– WebConfigReplacement requires the Config files. Remove after build. –>     <RemoveDir Directories="$(OutputPath)\Config" />   </Target> That’s it for setup.  Save the project file, flip the solution to Release Mode and build.  If there’s an issue, consult the Output window for details.  If all went well, you will find your deployment artifacts in your Web Deployment Project folder like so. Both the code source and published application will be there. Inside the Release folder you will find your “published files” and you’ll notice the Config folder is no where to be found.  In the Source folder, all project files are found with the exception of the items which were excluded from the build. I’ll wrap up this tutorial by calling out a little Web Deployment pet peeve of mine: there doesn’t appear to be a way to add an existing web deployment project to a solution.  The best I can come up with is create a new web deployment project and then copy and paste the contents of the existing project file into the new project file.  It’s not a big deal but it bugs me. Download the Solution

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• Guidance: A Branching strategy for Scrum Teams

  - by Martin Hinshelwood

  Having a good branching strategy will save your bacon, or at least your code. Be careful when deviating from your branching strategy because if you do, you may be worse off than when you started! This is one possible branching strategy for Scrum teams and I will not be going in depth with Scrum but you can find out more about Scrum by reading the Scrum Guide and you can even assess your Scrum knowledge by having a go at the Scrum Open Assessment. You can also read SSW’s Rules to Better Scrum using TFS which have been developed during our own Scrum implementations. Acknowledgements Bill Heys – Bill offered some good feedback on this post and helped soften the language. Note: Bill is a VS ALM Ranger and co-wrote the Branching Guidance for TFS 2010 Willy-Peter Schaub – Willy-Peter is an ex Visual Studio ALM MVP turned blue badge and has been involved in most of the guidance including the Branching Guidance for TFS 2010 Chris Birmele – Chris wrote some of the early TFS Branching and Merging Guidance. Dr Paul Neumeyer, Ph.D Parallel Processes, ScrumMaster and SSW Solution Architect – Paul wanted to have feature branches coming from the release branch as well. We agreed that this is really a spin-off that needs own project, backlog, budget and Team. Scenario: A product is developed RTM 1.0 is released and gets great sales.  Extra features are demanded but the new version will have double to price to pay to recover costs, work is approved by the guys with budget and a few sprints later RTM 2.0 is released.  Sales a very low due to the pricing strategy. There are lots of clients on RTM 1.0 calling out for patches. As I keep getting Reverse Integration and Forward Integration mixed up and Bill keeps slapping my wrists I thought I should have a reminder: You still seemed to use reverse and/or forward integration in the wrong context. I would recommend reviewing your document at the end to ensure that it agrees with the common understanding of these terms merge (forward integration) from parent to child (same direction as the branch), and merge  (reverse integration) from child to parent (the reverse direction of the branch). - one of my many slaps on the wrist from Bill Heys.   As I mentioned previously we are using a single feature branching strategy in our current project. The single biggest mistake developers make is developing against the “Main” or “Trunk” line. This ultimately leads to messy code as things are added and never finished. Your only alternative is to NEVER check in unless your code is 100%, but this does not work in practice, even with a single developer. Your ADD will kick in and your half-finished code will be finished enough to pass the build and the tests. You do use builds don’t you? Sadly, this is a very common scenario and I have had people argue that branching merely adds complexity. Then again I have seen the other side of the universe ... branching  structures from he... We should somehow convince everyone that there is a happy between no-branching and too-much-branching. - Willy-Peter Schaub, VS ALM Ranger, Microsoft   A key benefit of branching for development is to isolate changes from the stable Main branch. Branching adds sanity more than it adds complexity. We do try to stress in our guidance that it is important to justify a branch, by doing a cost benefit analysis. The primary cost is the effort to do merges and resolve conflicts. A key benefit is that you have a stable code base in Main and accept changes into Main only after they pass quality gates, etc. - Bill Heys, VS ALM Ranger & TFS Branching Lead, Microsoft The second biggest mistake developers make is branching anything other than the WHOLE “Main” line. If you branch parts of your code and not others it gets out of sync and can make integration a nightmare. You should have your Source, Assets, Build scripts deployment scripts and dependencies inside the “Main” folder and branch the whole thing. Some departments within MSFT even go as far as to add the environments used to develop the product in there as well; although I would not recommend that unless you have a massive SQL cluster to house your source code. We tried the “add environment” back in South-Africa and while it was “phenomenal”, especially when having to switch between environments, the disk storage and processing requirements killed us. We opted for virtualization to skin this cat of keeping a ready-to-go environment handy. - Willy-Peter Schaub, VS ALM Ranger, Microsoft   I think people often think that you should have separate branches for separate environments (e.g. Dev, Test, Integration Test, QA, etc.). I prefer to think of deploying to environments (such as from Main to QA) rather than branching for QA). - Bill Heys, VS ALM Ranger & TFS Branching Lead, Microsoft   You can read about SSW’s Rules to better Source Control for some additional information on what Source Control to use and how to use it. There are also a number of branching Anti-Patterns that should be avoided at all costs: You know you are on the wrong track if you experience one or more of the following symptoms in your development environment: Merge Paranoia—avoiding merging at all cost, usually because of a fear of the consequences. Merge Mania—spending too much time merging software assets instead of developing them. Big Bang Merge—deferring branch merging to the end of the development effort and attempting to merge all branches simultaneously. Never-Ending Merge—continuous merging activity because there is always more to merge. Wrong-Way Merge—merging a software asset version with an earlier version. Branch Mania—creating many branches for no apparent reason. Cascading Branches—branching but never merging back to the main line. Mysterious Branches—branching for no apparent reason. Temporary Branches—branching for changing reasons, so the branch becomes a permanent temporary workspace. Volatile Branches—branching with unstable software assets shared by other branches or merged into another branch. Note   Branches are volatile most of the time while they exist as independent branches. That is the point of having them. The difference is that you should not share or merge branches while they are in an unstable state. Development Freeze—stopping all development activities while branching, merging, and building new base lines. Berlin Wall—using branches to divide the development team members, instead of dividing the work they are performing. -Branching and Merging Primer by Chris Birmele - Developer Tools Technical Specialist at Microsoft Pty Ltd in Australia   In fact, this can result in a merge exercise no-one wants to be involved in, merging hundreds of thousands of change sets and trying to get a consolidated build. Again, we need to find a happy medium. - Willy-Peter Schaub on Merge Paranoia Merge conflicts are generally the result of making changes to the same file in both the target and source branch. If you create merge conflicts, you will eventually need to resolve them. Often the resolution is manual. Merging more frequently allows you to resolve these conflicts close to when they happen, making the resolution clearer. Waiting weeks or months to resolve them, the Big Bang approach, means you are more likely to resolve conflicts incorrectly. - Bill Heys, VS ALM Ranger & TFS Branching Lead, Microsoft   Figure: Main line, this is where your stable code lives and where any build has known entities, always passes and has a happy test that passes as well? Many development projects consist of, a single “Main” line of source and artifacts. This is good; at least there is source control . There are however a couple of issues that need to be considered. What happens if: you and your team are working on a new set of features and the customer wants a change to his current version? you are working on two features and the customer decides to abandon one of them? you have two teams working on different feature sets and their changes start interfering with each other? I just use labels instead of branches? That's a lot of “what if’s”, but there is a simple way of preventing this. Branching… In TFS, labels are not immutable. This does not mean they are not useful. But labels do not provide a very good development isolation mechanism. Branching allows separate code sets to evolve separately (e.g. Current with hotfixes, and vNext with new development). I don’t see how labels work here. - Bill Heys, VS ALM Ranger & TFS Branching Lead, Microsoft   Figure: Creating a single feature branch means you can isolate the development work on that branch.   Its standard practice for large projects with lots of developers to use Feature branching and you can check the Branching Guidance for the latest recommendations from the Visual Studio ALM Rangers for other methods. In the diagram above you can see my recommendation for branching when using Scrum development with TFS 2010. It consists of a single Sprint branch to contain all the changes for the current sprint. The main branch has the permissions changes so contributors to the project can only Branch and Merge with “Main”. This will prevent accidental check-ins or checkouts of the “Main” line that would contaminate the code. The developers continue to develop on sprint one until the completion of the sprint. Note: In the real world, starting a new Greenfield project, this process starts at Sprint 2 as at the start of Sprint 1 you would have artifacts in version control and no need for isolation.   Figure: Once the sprint is complete the Sprint 1 code can then be merged back into the Main line. There are always good practices to follow, and one is to always do a Forward Integration from Main into Sprint 1 before you do a Reverse Integration from Sprint 1 back into Main. In this case it may seem superfluous, but this builds good muscle memory into your developer’s work ethic and means that no bad habits are learned that would interfere with additional Scrum Teams being added to the Product. The process of completing your sprint development: The Team completes their work according to their definition of done. Merge from “Main” into “Sprint1” (Forward Integration) Stabilize your code with any changes coming from other Scrum Teams working on the same product. If you have one Scrum Team this should be quick, but there may have been bug fixes in the Release branches. (we will talk about release branches later) Merge from “Sprint1” into “Main” to commit your changes. (Reverse Integration) Check-in Delete the Sprint1 branch Note: The Sprint 1 branch is no longer required as its useful life has been concluded. Check-in Done But you are not yet done with the Sprint. The goal in Scrum is to have a “potentially shippable product” at the end of every Sprint, and we do not have that yet, we only have finished code.   Figure: With Sprint 1 merged you can create a Release branch and run your final packaging and testing In 99% of all projects I have been involved in or watched, a “shippable product” only happens towards the end of the overall lifecycle, especially when sprints are short. The in-between releases are great demonstration releases, but not shippable. Perhaps it comes from my 80’s brain washing that we only ship when we reach the agreed quality and business feature bar. - Willy-Peter Schaub, VS ALM Ranger, Microsoft Although you should have been testing and packaging your code all the way through your Sprint 1 development, preferably using an automated process, you still need to test and package with stable unchanging code. This is where you do what at SSW we call a “Test Please”. This is first an internal test of the product to make sure it meets the needs of the customer and you generally use a resource external to your Team. Then a “Test Please” is conducted with the Product Owner to make sure he is happy with the output. You can read about how to conduct a Test Please on our Rules to Successful Projects: Do you conduct an internal "test please" prior to releasing a version to a client?   Figure: If you find a deviation from the expected result you fix it on the Release branch. If during your final testing or your “Test Please” you find there are issues or bugs then you should fix them on the release branch. If you can’t fix them within the time box of your Sprint, then you will need to create a Bug and put it onto the backlog for prioritization by the Product owner. Make sure you leave plenty of time between your merge from the development branch to find and fix any problems that are uncovered. This process is commonly called Stabilization and should always be conducted once you have completed all of your User Stories and integrated all of your branches. Even once you have stabilized and released, you should not delete the release branch as you would with the Sprint branch. It has a usefulness for servicing that may extend well beyond the limited life you expect of it. Note: Don't get forced by the business into adding features into a Release branch instead that indicates the unspoken requirement is that they are asking for a product spin-off. In this case you can create a new Team Project and branch from the required Release branch to create a new Main branch for that product. And you create a whole new backlog to work from.   Figure: When the Team decides it is happy with the product you can create a RTM branch. Once you have fixed all the bugs you can, and added any you can’t to the Product Backlog, and you Team is happy with the result you can create a Release. This would consist of doing the final Build and Packaging it up ready for your Sprint Review meeting. You would then create a read-only branch that represents the code you “shipped”. This is really an Audit trail branch that is optional, but is good practice. You could use a Label, but Labels are not Auditable and if a dispute was raised by the customer you can produce a verifiable version of the source code for an independent party to check. Rare I know, but you do not want to be at the wrong end of a legal battle. Like the Release branch the RTM branch should never be deleted, or only deleted according to your companies legal policy, which in the UK is usually 7 years.   Figure: If you have made any changes in the Release you will need to merge back up to Main in order to finalise the changes. Nothing is really ever done until it is in Main. The same rules apply when merging any fixes in the Release branch back into Main and you should do a reverse merge before a forward merge, again for the muscle memory more than necessity at this stage. Your Sprint is now nearly complete, and you can have a Sprint Review meeting knowing that you have made every effort and taken every precaution to protect your customer’s investment. Note: In order to really achieve protection for both you and your client you would add Automated Builds, Automated Tests, Automated Acceptance tests, Acceptance test tracking, Unit Tests, Load tests, Web test and all the other good engineering practices that help produce reliable software.     Figure: After the Sprint Planning meeting the process begins again. Where the Sprint Review and Retrospective meetings mark the end of the Sprint, the Sprint Planning meeting marks the beginning. After you have completed your Sprint Planning and you know what you are trying to achieve in Sprint 2 you can create your new Branch to develop in. How do we handle a bug(s) in production that can’t wait? Although in Scrum the only work done should be on the backlog there should be a little buffer added to the Sprint Planning for contingencies. One of these contingencies is a bug in the current release that can’t wait for the Sprint to finish. But how do you handle that? Willy-Peter Schaub asked an excellent question on the release activities: In reality Sprint 2 starts when sprint 1 ends + weekend. Should we not cater for a possible parallelism between Sprint 2 and the release activities of sprint 1? It would introduce FI’s from main to sprint 2, I guess. Your “Figure: Merging print 2 back into Main.” covers, what I tend to believe to be reality in most cases. - Willy-Peter Schaub, VS ALM Ranger, Microsoft I agree, and if you have a single Scrum team then your resources are limited. The Scrum Team is responsible for packaging and release, so at least one run at stabilization, package and release should be included in the Sprint time box. If more are needed on the current production release during the Sprint 2 time box then resource needs to be pulled from Sprint 2. The Product Owner and the Team have four choices (in order of disruption/cost): Backlog: Add the bug to the backlog and fix it in the next Sprint Buffer Time: Use any buffer time included in the current Sprint to fix the bug quickly Make time: Remove a Story from the current Sprint that is of equal value to the time lost fixing the bug(s) and releasing. Note: The Team must agree that it can still meet the Sprint Goal. Cancel Sprint: Cancel the sprint and concentrate all resource on fixing the bug(s) Note: This can be a very costly if the current sprint has already had a lot of work completed as it will be lost. The choice will depend on the complexity and severity of the bug(s) and both the Product Owner and the Team need to agree. In this case we will go with option #2 or #3 as they are uncomplicated but severe bugs. Figure: Real world issue where a bug needs fixed in the current release. If the bug(s) is urgent enough then then your only option is to fix it in place. You can edit the release branch to find and fix the bug, hopefully creating a test so it can’t happen again. Follow the prior process and conduct an internal and customer “Test Please” before releasing. You can read about how to conduct a Test Please on our Rules to Successful Projects: Do you conduct an internal "test please" prior to releasing a version to a client?   Figure: After you have fixed the bug you need to ship again. You then need to again create an RTM branch to hold the version of the code you released in escrow.   Figure: Main is now out of sync with your Release. We now need to get these new changes back up into the Main branch. Do a reverse and then forward merge again to get the new code into Main. But what about the branch, are developers not working on Sprint 2? Does Sprint 2 now have changes that are not in Main and Main now have changes that are not in Sprint 2? Well, yes… and this is part of the hit you take doing branching. But would this scenario even have been possible without branching?   Figure: Getting the changes in Main into Sprint 2 is very important. The Team now needs to do a Forward Integration merge into their Sprint and resolve any conflicts that occur. Maybe the bug has already been fixed in Sprint 2, maybe the bug no longer exists! This needs to be identified and resolved by the developers before they continue to get further out of Sync with Main. Note: Avoid the “Big bang merge” at all costs.   Figure: Merging Sprint 2 back into Main, the Forward Integration, and R0 terminates. Sprint 2 now merges (Reverse Integration) back into Main following the procedures we have already established.   Figure: The logical conclusion. This then allows the creation of the next release. By now you should be getting the big picture and hopefully you learned something useful from this post. I know I have enjoyed writing it as I find these exploratory posts coupled with real world experience really help harden my understanding.  Branching is a tool; it is not a silver bullet. Don’t over use it, and avoid “Anti-Patterns” where possible. Although the diagram above looks complicated I hope showing you how it is formed simplifies it as much as possible.   Technorati Tags: Branching,Scrum,VS ALM,TFS 2010,VS2010

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