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  • How to force my method to accept objects from external software?

    - by Roman
    I have a method which needs to take a callback object as an argument and then (at the moment when it's needed) my method will call a specific method of the callback object. I wrote a class called Manager which has a method called addListener. As the argument for this method I need to use a callback object which is defined by the external software. So, I define the addListener in the following way: public void addListener(Listener listener). Of course Eclipse complains because it does not know what Listener is (because the Listener is defined by the external software). The only think that I know (should know) about the Listener is that it has a method called doSomething. So, to pleasure Eclipse I add an interface before my Manager class: interface Listener { void doSomething(); } public class CTManager { ... The problem seems to be solved but then I try to test my software. So, I create a class called test. In this class I create an instance of the Manager class and try to use addListener method of this instance. I also create a class Listener, instantiate it and give the instance to the addListener. And it's the place where the problem appears. Eclipse writes that addListener is not applicable to the given argument. I think it's because it expect something from my Listenr interface but gets something from the Listener class. How can I solve this problem?

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  • Member function overloading/template specialization issue

    - by Ferruccio
    I've been trying to call the overloaded table::scan_index(std::string, ...) member function without success. For the sake of clarity, I have stripped out all non-relevant code. I have a class called table which has an overloaded/templated member function named scan_index() in order to handle strings as a special case. class table : boost::noncopyable { public: template <typename T> void scan_index(T val, std::function<bool (uint recno, T val)> callback) { // code } void scan_index(std::string val, std::function<bool (uint recno, std::string val)> callback) { // code } }; Then there is a hitlist class which has a number of templated member functions which call table::scan_index(T, ...) class hitlist { public: template <typename T> void eq(uint fieldno, T value) { table* index_table = db.get_index_table(fieldno); // code index_table->scan_index<T>(value, [&](uint recno, T n)->bool { // code }); } }; And, finally, the code which kicks it all off: hitlist hl; // code hl.eq<std::string>(*fieldno, p1.to_string()); The problem is that instead of calling table::scan_index(std::string, ...), it calls the templated version. I have tried using both overloading (as shown above) and a specialized function template (below), but nothing seems to work. After staring at this code for a few hours, I feel like I'm missing something obvious. Any ideas? template <> void scan_index<std::string>(std::string val, std::function<bool (uint recno, std::string val)> callback) { // code }

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  • Read data from form

    - by Superhuman
    This is a strange question, I've never tried to do this before. I have a repetitive process requiring that I copy and paste data from text boxes in one program into another program for further processing. I'd like to automate this process using VB .NET. The application from which the data is gathered isn't mine, so I don't have ActiveX-like access to its controls. How would you write an application to gain access to a form from another application, to be able to find the controls on the form, and gather the values from them? Just experimenting, I've used the following code. This resulted in only the name of the form to which this code belongs. It didn't find the names of any other forms I have open, and I have a lot open to choose from. This is frustrating because it's only step one of what I'll need to do to make my life easier... Public Declare Function EnumWindows Lib "user32" (ByVal lpEnumFunc As CallBack, ByVal lParam As Integer) As Integer Public Delegate Function CallBack(ByVal hwnd As IntPtr, ByVal lParam As IntPtr) As Boolean Private Sub Button1_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles Button1.Click Dim cb As New CallBack(AddressOf MyCallBack) EnumWindows(cb, 8) End Sub Public Function MyCallBack(ByVal hwnd As Long, ByVal lparam As Long) As Boolean Dim frm As System.Windows.Forms.Control frm = System.Windows.Forms.Form.FromHandle(hwnd) If frm Is Nothing Then Return True If frm.Text <> "" Then TextBox1.Text += frm.Text & ", " End If Return True End Function Does anyone have a recommendation? Thanks, SH

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  • How to solve a deallocated connection in iPhone SDK 3.1.3? - Streams - CFSockets

    - by Christian
    Hi everyone, Debugging my implementation I found a memory leak issue. I know where is the issue, I tried to solve it but sadly without success. I will try to explain you, maybe someone of you can help with this. First I have two classes involved in the issue, the publish class (where publishing the service and socket configuration is done) and the connection (where the socket binding and the streams configuration is done). The main issue is in the connection via native socket. In the 'publish' class the "server" accepts a connection with a callback. The callback has the native-socket information. Then, a connection with native-socket information is created. Next, the socket binding and the streams configuration is done. When those actions are successful the instance of the connection is saved in a mutable array. Thus, the connection is established. static void AcceptCallback(CFSocketRef socket, CFSocketCallBackType type, CFDataRef address, const void *data, void *info) { Publish *rePoint = (Publish *)info; if ( type != kCFSocketAcceptCallBack) { return; } CFSocketNativeHandle nativeSocketHandle = *((CFSocketNativeHandle *)data); NSLog(@"The AcceptCallback was called, a connection request arrived to the server"); [rePoint handleNewNativeSocket:nativeSocketHandle]; } - (void)handleNewNativeSocket:(CFSocketNativeHandle)nativeSocketHandle{ Connection *connection = [[[Connection alloc] initWithNativeSocketHandle:nativeSocketHandle] autorelease]; // Create the connection if (connection == nil) { close(nativeSocketHandle); return; } NSLog(@"The connection from the server was created now try to connect"); if ( ! [connection connect]) { [connection close]; return; } [clients addObject:connection]; //save the connection trying to avoid the deallocation } The next step is receive the information from the client, thus a read-stream callback is triggered with the information of the established connection. But when the callback-handler tries to use this connection the error occurs, it says that such connection is deallocated. The issue here is that I don't know where/when the connection is deallocated and how to know it. I am using the debugger, but after some trials, I don't see more info. void myReadStreamCallBack (CFReadStreamRef stream, CFStreamEventType eventType, void *info) { NSAutoreleasePool *pool = [[NSAutoreleasePool alloc] init]; Connection *handlerEv = [[(Connection *)info retain] autorelease]; // The error -[Connection retain]: message sent to deallocated instance 0x1f5ef0 (Where 0x1f5ef0 is the reference to the established connection) [handlerEv readStreamHandleEvent:stream andEvent:eventType]; [pool drain]; } void myWriteStreamCallBack (CFWriteStreamRef stream, CFStreamEventType eventType, void *info){ NSAutoreleasePool *p = [[NSAutoreleasePool alloc] init]; Connection *handlerEv = [[(Connection *)info retain] autorelease]; //Sometimes the error also happens here, I tried without the pool, but it doesn't help neither. [handlerEv writeStreamHandleEvent:eventType]; [p drain]; } Something strange is that when I run the debugger(with breakpoints) everything goes well, the connection is not deallocated and the callbacks work fine and the server is able to receive the message. I will appreciate any hint!

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  • What is the cause of exception in wcf peer-to-peer service with callbacks ?

    - by miensol
    I've been playing around with WCF peer to peer, one way operation contract and callbacks. I have a following service: [ServiceContract(CallbackContract = typeof(ICodeFoundCallback))] public interface ICodeSearch { [OperationContract(IsOneWay = true)] void Search(string searchQuery); } public interface ICodeFoundCallback { [OperationContract(IsOneWay = true)] void Found(string found); } public class CodeSearchService : ServiceWithCallback<ICodeFoundCallback>, ICodeSearch { public void Search(string searchQuery) { Console.WriteLine("Searching for :" + searchQuery); Callback(t=> t.Found(searchQuery)); } } public class ServiceWithCallback<T> { protected void Callback(Action<T> call) { var callbackChanel = OperationContext.Current.GetCallbackChannel<T>(); call(callbackChanel); } } with such config on server <system.serviceModel> <services> <service name="CodeSearch.Service.CodeSearchService" behaviorConfiguration="CodeSearchServiceBehavior"> <host> <baseAddresses> <add baseAddress="net.p2p://CodeSearchService"/> </baseAddresses> </host> <endpoint name="CodeSearchServiceEndpoint" address="" binding="netPeerTcpBinding" bindingConfiguration="BindingUnsecure" contract="CodeSearch.Service.ICodeSearch" /> </service> </services> <behaviors> <serviceBehaviors> <behavior name="CodeSearchServiceBehavior"> <serviceMetadata /> </behavior> </serviceBehaviors> </behaviors> <bindings> <netPeerTcpBinding> <binding name="BindingUnsecure"> <security mode="None"/> <resolver mode="Pnrp"/> </binding> </netPeerTcpBinding> <customBinding> <binding name="CodeSearchServiceEndpoint"> <binaryMessageEncoding maxReadPoolSize="64" maxWritePoolSize="16" maxSessionSize="2048"> <readerQuotas maxDepth="32" maxStringContentLength="8192" maxArrayLength="16384" maxBytesPerRead="4096" maxNameTableCharCount="16384" /> </binaryMessageEncoding> <peerTransport maxBufferPoolSize="524288" maxReceivedMessageSize="65536" port="0"> <security mode="None" /> </peerTransport> </binding> </customBinding> </bindings> <system.serviceModel> And simple client generated by Visual studio tooling. When I run two or more servers, and client invokes Search method: search method is called on each server first server calls client callback properly second server throws ArgumentException "A property with the name 'TransactionFlowProperty' already exists" when invoking client callback (Found method) I've no idea what is going on since as far as I know transaction flow is by default set to none. Could anyone help me solve this issue ?

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  • Trouble with setting entry point for GWT service

    - by Xorty
    Hello. I've followed serveral tutorials and read official docs at code.google.com, but still didn't manage to resolve this thing. I am creating simple service that'll check if user can be logged. CLIENT SIDE: public interface LoginService extends RemoteService { /** * Checks, if user has valid login. * @param user User's login. * @return True if such a login is in the database. */ boolean isValidUser(User user); } And here is Async interface: public interface LoginServiceAsync { /** * Checks, if user has valid login. * @param user User's login. * @param callback the callback to return True if such a login is in the database. */ void isValidUser(User user, AsyncCallback<Boolean> callback); } SERVER SIDE: public class LoginServiceImpl extends RemoteServiceServlet implements LoginService { /** * serial version UID */ private static final long serialVersionUID = 1044980345057997696L; /**{@inheritDoc} */ @Override public boolean isValidUser(User user) { boolean success = true; //TODO change } } Now I have entry point class MailClient.java. I append here widget like: CustomWidgets.getLoginWidget(this); // access rootPanel and append widget Now I need to make actual call to my service, and here is problem: LoginServiceAsync loginService = (LoginServiceAsync) GWT.create(LoginService.class); User user = new User(boxName.getText(), boxPassword.getText()); AsyncCallback<Boolean> callback = new AsyncCallback<Boolean>() { @Override public void onFailure(Throwable caught) { Window.alert(caught.getMessage()); //TODO change } @Override public void onSuccess(Boolean result) { Window.alert("success"); //TODO change } }; ((ServiceDefTarget) loginService).setServiceEntryPoint(GWT.getModuleBaseURL()+"login"); // dunno what should be here So to recap, I don't know how to set service's entry point. Here's my MailClient.gwt.xml file: <module> <inherits name="com.google.gwt.user.User"/> <inherits name="com.google.gwt.user.theme.standard.Standard"/> <entry-point class="com.xorty.mailclient.client.MailClient"/> <servlet path="/login" class="com.xorty.mailclient.server.servlets.LoginServiceImpl" /> <inherits name="com.xorty.mailclient.MailClient"/> <inherits name="com.xorty.mailclient.MailClient"/> <inherits name="com.xorty.mailclient.MailClient"/> <inherits name="com.xorty.mailclient.MailClient"/> <inherits name="com.xorty.mailclient.MailClient"/> </module> My web.xml file: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <web-app version="2.4" xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/j2ee" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/j2ee http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/j2ee/web-app_2_4.xsd"> <!-- Default page to serve --> <welcome-file-list> <welcome-file>MailClient.html</welcome-file> </welcome-file-list> <servlet> <servlet-name>LoginService</servlet-name> <servlet-class>com.xorty.mailclient.server.servlets.LoginServiceImpl</servlet-class> </servlet> <servlet-mapping> <servlet-name>LoginService</servlet-name> <url-pattern>/com.xorty.mailclient.MailClient/login</url-pattern> </servlet-mapping> </web-app> And here is screenshot of project structure:

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  • Need to determine button clicked in a JQuery mobile popup and perform actions based thereon

    - by Clifford
    I am having a problem with a JQM popup. The popup has 3 buttons, and the action taken in the main program depends on which button is clicked. The code in the main program is run more than once and I am not sure why. The simple example below uses an alert to display which button on the popup was clicked. When the popup is called the first time, it works as hoped, the 2nd time, the alert is displayed twice, the 3rd time, the alert is displayed 3 times, etc. <html> <head> <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1"> <link rel="stylesheet" href="css/jquery.mobile-1.3.2.min.css" /> <script type="text/javascript" charset="utf-8" src="cordova-2.6.0.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="js/jquery-1.9.1.min.js"/></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="js/jquery.mobile-1.3.2.min.js"></script> <script> function doCustomDialog(text1,button1,button2,button3,callback) { $("#customDialog .customDialogDesc").text(text1); $("#customDialog .customDialogOption1").text(button1).on("click.customDialog", function(){ callback("option1"); }); $("#customDialog .customDialogOption2").text(button2).on("click.customDialog", function(){ callback("option2"); }); $("#customDialog .customDialogOption3").text(button3).on("click.customDialog", function(){ callback("option3"); }); $("#customDialog").popup("open"); } </script> </head> <body> <div data-role="page" id="mainPage"> <div data-role="content"> <INPUT type="button" id="confirm" value="Save data" /> <div data-role="popup" id="customDialog" data-title="Are you sure?" class="ui-content"> <p class ="customDialogDesc">???</p> <a href="#" class ="customDialogOption1" data-role="button" data-theme="b" data-rel="back">Yes</a> <a href="#" class ="customDialogOption2" data-role="button" data-theme="b" data-rel="back">No</a> <a href="#" class ="customDialogOption3" data-role="button" data-theme="b" data-rel="back">Cancel</a> </div> </div> </div> <script> $("#mainPage").on("pageshow", function(e) { $("#confirm").click(function() { doCustomDialog("A similar record already exists. Do you want to Update the existing record or Add a new record?", "Update", "Add", "Cancel", function( returned ) { //Do things depending on the button clicked, for now just display which button was clicked alert(returned); }); }); }); </script> </body> </html>

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  • Sucky MSTest and the "WaitAll for multiple handles on a STA thread is not supported" Error

    - by Anne Bougie
    If you are doing any multi-threading and are using MSTest, you will probably run across this error. For some reason, MSTest by default runs in STA threading mode. WTF, Microsoft! Why so stuck in the old COM world?  When I run the same test using NUnit, I don't have this problem. Unfortunately, my company has chosen MSTest, so I have a lot of testing problems. NUnit is so much better, IMO. After determining that I wasn't referencing any unmanaged code that would flip the thread into STA, which can also cause this error, the only thing left was the testing suite I was using. I dug around a little and found this obscure setting for the Test Run Config settings file that you can't set using its interface. You have to open it up as a text file and add the following setting:  <ExecutionThread apartmentState="MTA" /> This didn't break any other tests, so I'm not sure why it's not the default, or why there is nothing in the test run configuration app to change this setting. Here is the code I was testing:  public void ProcessTest(ProcessInfo[] infos) {    WaitHandle[] waits = new WaitHandle[infos.Length];    int i = 0;    foreach (ProcessInfo info in infos)    {       AutoResetEvent are = new AutoResetEvent(false);       info.Are = are;       waits[i++] = are;         Processor pr = new Processor();       WaitCallback callback = pr.ProcessTest;       ThreadPool.QueueUserWorkItem(callback, info);    }      WaitHandle.WaitAll(waits); }

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  • Glenn Fiedler's fixed timestep with fake threads

    - by kaoD
    I've implemented Glenn Fiedler's Fix Your Timestep! quite a few times in single-threaded games. Now I'm facing a different situation: I'm trying to do this in JavaScript. I know JS is single-threaded, but I plan on using requestAnimationFrame for the rendering part. This leaves me with two independent fake threads: simulation and rendering (I suppose requestAnimationFrame isn't really threaded, is it? I don't think so, it would BREAK JS.) Timing in these threads is independent too: dt for simulation and render is not the same. If I'm not mistaken, simulation should be up to Fiedler's while loop end. After the while loop, accumulator < dt so I'm left with some unspent time (dt) in the simulation thread. The problem comes in the draw/interpolation phase: const double alpha = accumulator / dt; State state = currentState*alpha + previousState * ( 1.0 - alpha ); render( state ); In my render callback, I have the current timestamp to which I can subtract the last-simulated-in-physics-timestamp to have a dt for the current frame. Should I just forget about this dt and draw using the physics thread's dt? It seems weird, since, well, I want to interpolate for the unspent time between simulation and render too, right? Of course, I want simulation and rendering to be completely independent, but I can't get around the fact that in Glenn's implementation the renderer produces time and the simulation consumes it in discrete dt sized chunks. A similar question was asked in Semi Fixed-timestep ported to javascript but the question doesn't really get to the point, and answers there point to removing physics from the render thread (which is what I'm trying to do) or just keeping physics in the render callback too (which is what I'm trying to avoid.)

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  • How are events in games handled?

    - by Alex
    In may games that I have played, I have seen events being triggered, such as when you walk into a certain land area while holding a specific object, it will trigger a special creature to spawn. I was wondering, how do games deal with events such as this? Not in a specific game, but in general among games. The first thought I had was that each place has a hard-coded set of events that it will call when something happens there. However, that would be too inefficient to maintain, as when something new is added, that would require modification of every part of the game that would potentially cause the event to be called. Next up, I had the idea of maybe how GUI programming works. In all of the GUI programming I've done, you create a component and a callback function, or a listener. Then, when the user interacts when the button, the callback function is called, allowing you to do something with it. So, I was thinking that in terms of a game, when a land area gets loaded the game loops over a list of all events, creating instances of them and calling public methods to bind them to the current scene. The events themselves then handle what scene it is, and if it is a scene that pertains to the event, will call the public method of the scene to bind the event to an action. Then, when the action takes place, the scene would call all events that are bound to that action. However, I'm sure that's not how games would operate either, as that would require a lot of creating of events all the time. So how to video games handle events, are either of those methods correct, or is it something completely different?

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  • PLINQ Adventure Land - WaitForAll

    - by adweigert
    PLINQ is awesome for getting a lot of work done fast, but one thing I haven't figured out yet is how to start work with PLINQ but only let it execute for a maximum amount of time and react if it is taking too long. So, as I must admit I am still learning PLINQ, I created this extension in that ignorance. It behaves similar to ForAll<> but takes a timeout and returns false if the threads don't complete in the specified amount of time. Hope this helps someone else take PLINQ further, it definitely has helped for me ...  public static bool WaitForAll<T>(this ParallelQuery<T> query, TimeSpan timeout, Action<T> action) { Contract.Requires(query != null); Contract.Requires(action != null); var exception = (Exception)null; var cts = new CancellationTokenSource(); var forAllWithCancellation = new Action(delegate { try { query.WithCancellation(cts.Token).ForAll(action); } catch (OperationCanceledException) { // NOOP } catch (AggregateException ex) { exception = ex; } }); var mrs = new ManualResetEvent(false); var callback = new AsyncCallback(delegate { mrs.Set(); }); var result = forAllWithCancellation.BeginInvoke(callback, null); if (mrs.WaitOne(timeout)) { forAllWithCancellation.EndInvoke(result); if (exception != null) { throw exception; } return true; } else { cts.Cancel(); return false; } }

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  • Displaying the Saved Pictures in the Windows Phone 8 emulator

    - by Laurent Bugnion
    One cool feature of the Windows Phone emulator is that it allows you to select pictures from your app (using the PhotoChooserTask) without having to try your app on a physical device. For example, this code (which I used in some of my recent presentations) will trigger the Photo Chooser UI to be displayed on the emulator too: private Action<IEnumerable<IImageFileInfo>> _callback; public void SelectFiles(Action<IEnumerable<IImageFileInfo>> callback) { var task = new PhotoChooserTask { ShowCamera = true }; task.Completed += TaskCompleted; _callback = callback; task.Show(); } void TaskCompleted(object sender, PhotoResult e) { if (e.Error == null && e.ChosenPhoto != null && _callback != null) { var fileName = e.OriginalFileName .Substring(e.OriginalFileName.LastIndexOf("\\") + 1); var info = new FileViewModel(e.ChosenPhoto, fileName); var infos = new List<IImageFileInfo> { info }; _callback(infos); } } In Windows Phone 8 however, when you execute this code, you will be shown an almost empty Photo Chooser UI: Notice that the “Saved Pictures” album is missing. At first I thought it was just not there at all, but you can actually restore it with the following steps: Press on the Windows button On the main screen, press on Photos Press on Albums Open the so called “8” photo album Press Back until you are back into your app and try again. This time you will see the saved pictures, and can perform your tests in more realistic conditions! Happy coding! Laurent   Laurent Bugnion (GalaSoft) Subscribe | Twitter | Facebook | Flickr | LinkedIn

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  • Marshalling the value of a char* ANSI string DLL API parameter into a C# string

    - by Brian Biales
    For those who do not mix .NET C# code with legacy DLL's that use char* pointers on a regular basis, the process to convert the strings one way or the other is non-obvious. This is not a comprehensive article on the topic at all, but rather an example of something that took me some time to go find, maybe it will save someone else the time. I am utilizing a third party too that uses a call back function to inform my application of its progress.  This callback includes a pointer that under some circumstances is a pointer to an ANSI character string.  I just need to marshal it into a C# string variable.  Seems pretty simple, yes?  Well, it is, (as are most things, once you know how to do them). The parameter of my callback function is of type IntPtr, which implies it is an integer representation of a pointer.  If I know the pointer is pointing to a simple ANSI string, here is a simple static method to copy it to a C# string: private static string GetStringFromCharStar(IntPtr ptr) {     return System.Runtime.InteropServices.Marshal.PtrToStringAnsi(ptr); } The System.Runtime.InteropServices is where to look any time you are mixing legacy unmanaged code with your .NET application.

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  • Clients with multiple proxy and multithreading callbacks

    - by enzom83
    I created a sessionful web service using WCF, and in particular I used the NetTcpBinding binding. In addition to methods to initiate and terminate a session, other methods allow the client to send to one or more tasks to be performed (the results are returned via callback, so the service is duplex), but they also allow you to know the status of the service. Assuming you activate the same service on multiple endpoints, and assuming that the client knows these endpoints (for example, it could maintain a List of endpoints), the client should connect with one or more replicas of the same service. The client periodically updates the status of the service, so when it needs to perform a new task (the task is submitted by the user via UI), it selects the service currently less loaded and sends the task to it. Periodically, the client also initiates a maintenance procedure in order to disconnect from one or more overloaded service and in order to connect with new services. I created a client proxy using the svcutil tool. I wish each proxy can be used simultaneously by different threads, for example, in addition to the thread that submits the tasks using a proxy, there are also the following two threads which act periodically: a thread that periodically sends a request to the service in order to obtain the updated state; a thread that periodically selects a proxy to close and instantiates a new proxy to replace the closed one. To achieve these objectives, is it sufficient to create an array of proxies and manage their opening and closing in separate threads? I think I read that the proxy method calls are thread safe, so I would not need to perform a lock before requesting updates to the service. However, when the maintenance procedure (which is activated on its own thread) decides to close a proxy, should I perform a lock? Finally, each proxy is also associated with an object that implements the callback interface for the service: are the callbacks (invoked on the client) executed on different threads on the client? I would like to wrap the management of the proxy in one or more classes so that it can then easily manage within a WPF application.

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  • (LWJGL) Pixel Unpack Buffer Object is Disabled? (glTextImage2D)

    - by OstlerDev
    I am trying to create a render target for my game so that I can re-render at a different screen size. But I am receiving the following error: Exception in thread "main" org.lwjgl.opengl.OpenGLException: Cannot use offsets when Pixel Unpack Buffer Object is disabled Here is the source code for my Render method: // clear screen GL11.glClear(GL11.GL_COLOR_BUFFER_BIT | GL11.GL_DEPTH_BUFFER_BIT); // Start FBO Rendering Code // The framebuffer, which regroups 0, 1, or more textures, and 0 or 1 depth buffer. int FramebufferName = GL30.glGenFramebuffers(); GL30.glBindFramebuffer(GL30.GL_FRAMEBUFFER, FramebufferName); // The texture we're going to render to int renderedTexture = glGenTextures(); // "Bind" the newly created texture : all future texture functions will modify this texture glBindTexture(GL_TEXTURE_2D, renderedTexture); // Give an empty image to OpenGL ( the last "0" ) glTexImage2D(GL_TEXTURE_2D, 0,GL_RGB, 1024, 768, 0,GL_RGB, GL_UNSIGNED_BYTE, 0); // Poor filtering. Needed ! glTexParameteri(GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL_TEXTURE_MAG_FILTER, GL_NEAREST); glTexParameteri(GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL_TEXTURE_MIN_FILTER, GL_NEAREST); // Set "renderedTexture" as our colour attachement #0 GL32.glFramebufferTexture(GL30.GL_FRAMEBUFFER, GL30.GL_COLOR_ATTACHMENT0, renderedTexture, 0); // Set the list of draw buffers. IntBuffer drawBuffer = BufferUtils.createIntBuffer(20 * 20); GL20.glDrawBuffers(drawBuffer); // Always check that our framebuffer is ok if(GL30.glCheckFramebufferStatus(GL30.GL_FRAMEBUFFER) != GL30.GL_FRAMEBUFFER_COMPLETE){ System.out.println("Framebuffer was not created successfully! Exiting!"); return; } // Resets the current viewport GL11.glViewport(0, 0, scaleWidth*scale, scaleHeight*scale); GL11.glMatrixMode(GL11.GL_MODELVIEW); GL11.glLoadIdentity(); // let subsystem paint if (callback != null) { callback.frameRendering(); } // update window contents Display.update(); It is crashing on this line: glTexImage2D(GL_TEXTURE_2D, 0,GL_RGB, 1024, 768, 0,GL_RGB, GL_UNSIGNED_BYTE, 0); I am not really sure why it is crashing and looking around I have not been able to find out why. Any help or insight would be greatly welcome.

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  • Using LINQ to Twitter OAuth with Windows 8

    - by Joe Mayo
    In previous posts, I explained how to use LINQ to Twitter with Windows 8, but the example was a Twitter Search, which didn’t require authentication. Much of the Twitter API requires authentication, so this post will explain how you can perform OAuth authentication with LINQ to Twitter in a Windows 8 Metro-style application. Getting Started I have earlier posts on how to create a Windows 8 app and add pages, so I’ll assume it isn’t necessary to repeat here. One difference is that I’m using Visual Studio 2012 RC and some of the terminology and/or library code might be slightly different.  Here are steps to get started: Create a new Windows metro style app, selecting the Blank App project template. Create a new Basic Page and name it OAuth.xaml.  Note: You’ll receive a prompt window for adding files and you should click Yes because those files are necessary for this demo. Add a new Basic Page named TweetPage.xaml. Open App.xaml.cs and change !rootFrame.Navigate(typeof(MainPage)) to !rootFrame.Navigate(typeof(TweetPage)). Now that the project is set up you’ll see the reason why authentication is required by setting up the TweetPage. Setting Up to Tweet a Status In this section, I’ll show you how to set up the XAML and code-behind for a tweet.  The tweet logic will check to see if the user is authenticated before performing the tweet. To tweet, I put a TextBox and Button on the XAML page. The following code omits most of the page, concentrating primarily on the elements of interest in this post: <StackPanel Grid.Row="1"> <TextBox Name="TweetTextBox" Margin="15" /> <Button Name="TweetButton" Content="Tweet" Click="TweetButton_Click" Margin="15,0" /> </StackPanel> Given the UI above, the user types the message they want to tweet, and taps Tweet. This invokes TweetButton_Click, which checks to see if the user is authenticated.  If the user is not authenticated, the app navigates to the OAuth page.  If they are authenticated, LINQ to Twitter does an UpdateStatus to post the user’s tweet.  Here’s the TweetButton_Click implementation: void TweetButton_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e) { PinAuthorizer auth = null; if (SuspensionManager.SessionState.ContainsKey("Authorizer")) { auth = SuspensionManager.SessionState["Authorizer"] as PinAuthorizer; } if (auth == null || !auth.IsAuthorized) { Frame.Navigate(typeof(OAuthPage)); return; } var twitterCtx = new TwitterContext(auth); Status tweet = twitterCtx.UpdateStatus(TweetTextBox.Text); new MessageDialog(tweet.Text, "Successful Tweet").ShowAsync(); } For authentication, this app uses PinAuthorizer, one of several authorizers available in the LINQ to Twitter library. I’ll explain how PinAuthorizer works in the next section. What’s important here is that LINQ to Twitter needs an authorizer to post a Tweet. The code above checks to see if a valid authorizer is available. To do this, it uses the SuspensionManager class, which is part of the code generated earlier when creating OAuthPage.xaml. The SessionState property is a Dictionary<string, object> and I’m using the Authorizer key to store the PinAuthorizer.  If the user previously authorized during this session, the code reads the PinAuthorizer instance from SessionState and assigns it to the auth variable. If the user is authorized, auth would not be null and IsAuthorized would be true. Otherwise, the app navigates the user to OAuthPage.xaml, which I’ll discuss in more depth in the next section. When the user is authorized, the code passes the authorizer, auth, to the TwitterContext constructor. LINQ to Twitter uses the auth instance to build OAuth signatures for each interaction with Twitter.  You no longer need to write any more code to make this happen. The code above accepts the tweet just posted in the Status instance, tweet, and displays a message with the text to confirm success to the user. You can pull the PinAuthorizer instance from SessionState, instantiate your TwitterContext, and use it as you need. Just remember to make sure you have a valid authorizer, like the code above. As shown earlier, the code navigates to OAuthPage.xaml when a valid authorizer isn’t available. The next section shows how to perform the authorization upon arrival at OAuthPage.xaml. Doing the OAuth Dance This section shows how to authenticate with LINQ to Twitter’s built-in OAuth support. From the user perspective, they must be navigated to the Twitter authentication page, add credentials, be navigated to a Pin number page, and then enter that Pin in the Windows 8 application. The following XAML shows the relevant elements that the user will interact with during this process. <StackPanel Grid.Row="2"> <WebView x:Name="OAuthWebBrowser" HorizontalAlignment="Left" Height="400" Margin="15" VerticalAlignment="Top" Width="700" /> <TextBlock Text="Please perform OAuth process (above), enter Pin (below) when ready, and tap Authenticate:" Margin="15,15,15,5" /> <TextBox Name="PinTextBox" Margin="15,0,15,15" Width="432" HorizontalAlignment="Left" IsEnabled="False" /> <Button Name="AuthenticatePinButton" Content="Authenticate" Margin="15" IsEnabled="False" Click="AuthenticatePinButton_Click" /> </StackPanel> The WebView in the code above is what allows the user to see the Twitter authentication page. The TextBox is for entering the Pin, and the Button invokes code that will take the Pin and allow LINQ to Twitter to complete the authentication process. As you can see, there are several steps to OAuth authentication, but LINQ to Twitter tries to minimize the amount of code you have to write. The two important parts of the code to make this happen are the part that starts the authentication process and the part that completes the authentication process. The following code, from OAuthPage.xaml.cs, shows a couple events that are instrumental in making this process happen: public OAuthPage() { this.InitializeComponent(); this.Loaded += OAuthPage_Loaded; OAuthWebBrowser.LoadCompleted += OAuthWebBrowser_LoadCompleted; } The OAuthWebBrowser_LoadCompleted event handler enables UI controls when the browser is done loading – notice that the TextBox and Button in the previous XAML have their IsEnabled attributes set to False. When the Page.Loaded event is invoked, the OAuthPage_Loaded handler starts the OAuth process, shown here: void OAuthPage_Loaded(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e) { auth = new PinAuthorizer { Credentials = new InMemoryCredentials { ConsumerKey = "", ConsumerSecret = "" }, UseCompression = true, GoToTwitterAuthorization = pageLink => Dispatcher.RunAsync(CoreDispatcherPriority.Normal, () => OAuthWebBrowser.Navigate(new Uri(pageLink, UriKind.Absolute))) }; auth.BeginAuthorize(resp => Dispatcher.RunAsync(CoreDispatcherPriority.Normal, () => { switch (resp.Status) { case TwitterErrorStatus.Success: break; case TwitterErrorStatus.RequestProcessingException: case TwitterErrorStatus.TwitterApiError: new MessageDialog(resp.Error.ToString(), resp.Message).ShowAsync(); break; } })); } The PinAuthorizer, auth, a field of this class instantiated in the code above, assigns keys to the Credentials property. These are credentials that come from registering an application with Twitter, explained in the LINQ to Twitter documentation, Securing Your Applications. Notice how I use Dispatcher.RunAsync to marshal the web browser navigation back onto the UI thread. Internally, LINQ to Twitter invokes the lambda expression assigned to GoToTwitterAuthorization when starting the OAuth process.  In this case, we want the WebView control to navigate to the Twitter authentication page, which is defined with a default URL in LINQ to Twitter and passed to the GoToTwitterAuthorization lambda as pageLink. Then you need to start the authorization process by calling BeginAuthorize. This starts the OAuth dance, running asynchronously.  LINQ to Twitter invokes the callback assigned to the BeginAuthorize parameter, allowing you to take whatever action you need, based on the Status of the response, resp. As mentioned earlier, this is where the user performs the authentication process, enters the Pin, and clicks authenticate. The handler for authenticate completes the process and saves the authorizer for subsequent use by the application, as shown below: void AuthenticatePinButton_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e) { auth.CompleteAuthorize( PinTextBox.Text, completeResp => Dispatcher.RunAsync(CoreDispatcherPriority.Normal, () => { switch (completeResp.Status) { case TwitterErrorStatus.Success: SuspensionManager.SessionState["Authorizer"] = auth; Frame.Navigate(typeof(TweetPage)); break; case TwitterErrorStatus.RequestProcessingException: case TwitterErrorStatus.TwitterApiError: new MessageDialog(completeResp.Error.ToString(), completeResp.Message).ShowAsync(); break; } })); } The PinAuthorizer CompleteAuthorize method takes two parameters: Pin and callback. The Pin is from what the user entered in the TextBox prior to clicking the Authenticate button that invoked this method. The callback handles the response from completing the OAuth process. The completeResp holds information about the results of the operation, indicated by a Status property of type TwitterErrorStatus. On success, the code assigns auth to SessionState. You might remember SessionState from the previous description of TweetPage – this is where the valid authorizer comes from. After saving the authorizer, the code navigates the user back to TweetPage, where they can type in a message, click the Tweet button, and observe that they have successfully tweeted. Summary You’ve seen how to get started with using LINQ to Twitter in a Metro-style application. The generated code contained a SuspensionManager class with way to manage information across multiple pages via its SessionState property. You also saw how LINQ to Twitter performs authorization in two steps of starting the process and completing the process when the user provides a Pin number. Remember to marshal callback thread back onto the UI – you saw earlier how to use Dispatcher.RunAsync to accomplish this. There were a few steps in the process, but LINQ to Twitter did minimize the amount of code you needed to write to make it happen. You can download the MetroOAuthDemo.zip sample on the LINQ to Twitter Samples Page.   @JoeMayo

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  • Windows Phone 7 : Dragging and flicking UI controls

    - by TechTwaddle
    Who would want to flick and drag UI controls!? There might not be many use cases but I think some concepts here are worthy of a post. So we will create a simple silverlight application for windows phone 7, containing a canvas element on which we’ll place a button control and an image and then, as the title says, drag and flick the controls. Here’s Mainpage.xaml, <Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot" Background="Transparent">   <Grid.RowDefinitions>     <RowDefinition Height="Auto"/>     <RowDefinition Height="*"/>   </Grid.RowDefinitions>     <!--TitlePanel contains the name of the application and page title-->   <StackPanel x:Name="TitlePanel" Grid.Row="0" Margin="12,17,0,28">     <TextBlock x:Name="ApplicationTitle" Text="KINETICS" Style="{StaticResource PhoneTextNormalStyle}"/>     <TextBlock x:Name="PageTitle" Text="drag and flick" Margin="9,-7,0,0" Style="{StaticResource PhoneTextTitle1Style}"/>   </StackPanel>     <!--ContentPanel - place additional content here-->   <Grid x:Name="ContentPanel" Grid.Row="1" >     <Canvas x:Name="MainCanvas" HorizontalAlignment="Stretch" VerticalAlignment="Stretch">       <Canvas.Background>         <LinearGradientBrush StartPoint="0 0" EndPoint="0 1">           <GradientStop Offset="0" Color="Black"/>           <GradientStop Offset="1.5" Color="BlanchedAlmond"/>         </LinearGradientBrush>       </Canvas.Background>     </Canvas>   </Grid> </Grid> the second row in the main grid contains a canvas element, MainCanvas, with its horizontal and vertical alignment set to stretch so that it occupies the entire grid. The canvas background is a linear gradient brush starting with Black and ending with BlanchedAlmond. We’ll add the button and image control to this canvas at run time. Moving to Mainpage.xaml.cs the Mainpage class contains the following members, public partial class MainPage : PhoneApplicationPage {     Button FlickButton;     Image FlickImage;       FrameworkElement ElemToMove = null;     double ElemVelX, ElemVelY;       const double SPEED_FACTOR = 60;       DispatcherTimer timer; FlickButton and FlickImage are the controls that we’ll add to the canvas. ElemToMove, ElemVelX and ElemVelY will be used by the timer callback to move the ui control. SPEED_FACTOR is used to scale the velocities of ui controls. Here’s the Mainpage constructor, // Constructor public MainPage() {     InitializeComponent();       AddButtonToCanvas();       AddImageToCanvas();       timer = new DispatcherTimer();     timer.Interval = TimeSpan.FromMilliseconds(35);     timer.Tick += new EventHandler(OnTimerTick); } We’ll look at those AddButton and AddImage functions in a moment. The constructor initializes a timer which fires every 35 milliseconds, this timer will be started after the flick gesture completes with some inertia. Back to AddButton and AddImage functions, void AddButtonToCanvas() {     LinearGradientBrush brush;     GradientStop stop1, stop2;       Random rand = new Random(DateTime.Now.Millisecond);       FlickButton = new Button();     FlickButton.Content = "";     FlickButton.Width = 100;     FlickButton.Height = 100;       brush = new LinearGradientBrush();     brush.StartPoint = new Point(0, 0);     brush.EndPoint = new Point(0, 1);       stop1 = new GradientStop();     stop1.Offset = 0;     stop1.Color = Colors.White;       stop2 = new GradientStop();     stop2.Offset = 1;     stop2.Color = (Application.Current.Resources["PhoneAccentBrush"] as SolidColorBrush).Color;       brush.GradientStops.Add(stop1);     brush.GradientStops.Add(stop2);       FlickButton.Background = brush;       Canvas.SetTop(FlickButton, rand.Next(0, 400));     Canvas.SetLeft(FlickButton, rand.Next(0, 200));       MainCanvas.Children.Add(FlickButton);       //subscribe to events     FlickButton.ManipulationDelta += new EventHandler<ManipulationDeltaEventArgs>(OnManipulationDelta);     FlickButton.ManipulationCompleted += new EventHandler<ManipulationCompletedEventArgs>(OnManipulationCompleted); } this function is basically glorifying a simple task. After creating the button and setting its height and width, its background is set to a linear gradient brush. The direction of the gradient is from top towards bottom and notice that the second stop color is the PhoneAccentColor, which changes along with the theme of the device. The line,     stop2.Color = (Application.Current.Resources["PhoneAccentBrush"] as SolidColorBrush).Color; does the magic of extracting the PhoneAccentBrush from application’s resources, getting its color and assigning it to the gradient stop. AddImage function is straight forward in comparison, void AddImageToCanvas() {     Random rand = new Random(DateTime.Now.Millisecond);       FlickImage = new Image();     FlickImage.Source = new BitmapImage(new Uri("/images/Marble.png", UriKind.Relative));       Canvas.SetTop(FlickImage, rand.Next(0, 400));     Canvas.SetLeft(FlickImage, rand.Next(0, 200));       MainCanvas.Children.Add(FlickImage);       //subscribe to events     FlickImage.ManipulationDelta += new EventHandler<ManipulationDeltaEventArgs>(OnManipulationDelta);     FlickImage.ManipulationCompleted += new EventHandler<ManipulationCompletedEventArgs>(OnManipulationCompleted); } The ManipulationDelta and ManipulationCompleted handlers are same for both the button and the image. OnManipulationDelta() should look familiar, a similar implementation was used in the previous post, void OnManipulationDelta(object sender, ManipulationDeltaEventArgs args) {     FrameworkElement Elem = sender as FrameworkElement;       double Left = Canvas.GetLeft(Elem);     double Top = Canvas.GetTop(Elem);       Left += args.DeltaManipulation.Translation.X;     Top += args.DeltaManipulation.Translation.Y;       //check for bounds     if (Left < 0)     {         Left = 0;     }     else if (Left > (MainCanvas.ActualWidth - Elem.ActualWidth))     {         Left = MainCanvas.ActualWidth - Elem.ActualWidth;     }       if (Top < 0)     {         Top = 0;     }     else if (Top > (MainCanvas.ActualHeight - Elem.ActualHeight))     {         Top = MainCanvas.ActualHeight - Elem.ActualHeight;     }       Canvas.SetLeft(Elem, Left);     Canvas.SetTop(Elem, Top); } all it does is calculate the control’s position, check for bounds and then set the top and left of the control. OnManipulationCompleted() is more interesting because here we need to check if the gesture completed with any inertia and if it did, start the timer and continue to move the ui control until it comes to a halt slowly, void OnManipulationCompleted(object sender, ManipulationCompletedEventArgs args) {     FrameworkElement Elem = sender as FrameworkElement;       if (args.IsInertial)     {         ElemToMove = Elem;           Debug.WriteLine("Linear VelX:{0:0.00}  VelY:{1:0.00}", args.FinalVelocities.LinearVelocity.X,             args.FinalVelocities.LinearVelocity.Y);           ElemVelX = args.FinalVelocities.LinearVelocity.X / SPEED_FACTOR;         ElemVelY = args.FinalVelocities.LinearVelocity.Y / SPEED_FACTOR;           timer.Start();     } } ManipulationCompletedEventArgs contains a member, IsInertial, which is set to true if the manipulation was completed with some inertia. args.FinalVelocities.LinearVelocity.X and .Y will contain the velocities along the X and Y axis. We need to scale down these values so they can be used to increment the ui control’s position sensibly. A reference to the ui control is stored in ElemToMove and the velocities are stored as well, these will be used in the timer callback to access the ui control. And finally, we start the timer. The timer callback function is as follows, void OnTimerTick(object sender, EventArgs e) {     if (null != ElemToMove)     {         double Left, Top;         Left = Canvas.GetLeft(ElemToMove);         Top = Canvas.GetTop(ElemToMove);           Left += ElemVelX;         Top += ElemVelY;           //check for bounds         if (Left < 0)         {             Left = 0;             ElemVelX *= -1;         }         else if (Left > (MainCanvas.ActualWidth - ElemToMove.ActualWidth))         {             Left = MainCanvas.ActualWidth - ElemToMove.ActualWidth;             ElemVelX *= -1;         }           if (Top < 0)         {             Top = 0;             ElemVelY *= -1;         }         else if (Top > (MainCanvas.ActualHeight - ElemToMove.ActualHeight))         {             Top = MainCanvas.ActualHeight - ElemToMove.ActualHeight;             ElemVelY *= -1;         }           Canvas.SetLeft(ElemToMove, Left);         Canvas.SetTop(ElemToMove, Top);           //reduce x,y velocities gradually         ElemVelX *= 0.9;         ElemVelY *= 0.9;           //when velocities become too low, break         if (Math.Abs(ElemVelX) < 1.0 && Math.Abs(ElemVelY) < 1.0)         {             timer.Stop();             ElemToMove = null;         }     } } if ElemToMove is not null, we get the top and left values of the control and increment the values with their X and Y velocities. Check for bounds, and if the control goes out of bounds we reverse its velocity. Towards the end, the velocities are reduced by 10% every time the timer callback is called, and if the velocities reach too low values the timer is stopped and ElemToMove is made null. Here’s a short video of the program, the video is a little dodgy because my display driver refuses to run the animations smoothly. The flicks aren’t always recognised but the program should run well on an actual device (or a pc with better configuration), You can download the source code from here: ButtonDragAndFlick.zip

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  • API Class with intensive network requests

    - by Marco Acierno
    I'm working an API which works as "intermediary" between a REST API and the developer. In this way, when the programmer do something like this: User user = client.getUser(nickname); it will execute a network request to download from the service the data about the user and then the programmer can use the data by doing things like user.getLocation(); user.getDisplayName(); and so on. Now there are some methods like getFollowers() which execute another network request and i could do it in two ways: Download all the data in the getUser method (and not only the most important) but in this way the request time could be very long since it should execute the request to various urls Download the data when the user calls the method, it looks like the best way and to improve it i could cache the result so the next call to getFollowers returns immediately with the data already download instead of execute again the request. What is the best way? And i should let methods like getUser and getFollowers stop the code execution until the data is ready or i should implement a callback so when the data is ready the callback gets fired? (this looks like Javascript)

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  • Non-blocking ORM issues

    - by Nikolay Fominyh
    Once I had question on SO, and found that there are no non-blocking ORMs for my favorite framework. I mean ORM with callback support for asynchronous retrieval. The ORM would be supplied with a callback or some such to "activate" when data has been received. Otherwise ORM needs to be split of in a separate thread to guarantee UI responsiveness. I want to create one, but I have some questions that blocking me from starting development: What issues we can meet when developing ORM? Does word "non-blocking" before word "ORM" will dramatically increase complexity of ORM? Why there are not much non-blocking ORMs around? Update: It looks, that I have to improve my question. We have solutions that already allows us to receive data in non-blocking way. And I believe that not all companies that use such solutions - using raw SQL. We want to create more generic solution, that we can reuse in future projects. What difficulties we can meet?

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  • Persisting high score table in flash game without a network. (Featuring: HttpListenerException)

    - by bearcdp
    Hi everyone, this question is very programming-centric, but it's for a game so I figured I might as well post it here. I'm doing polishing work on a GGJ '11 game because it will be shown at an indie arcade tomorrow afternoon, and they're expecting our final build in the morning. We'd like to have a high score table that displays during attract mode, but since it's Flash (Flixel) it would require some networking, Mochi, or something to keep a record of these scores. Only problem is the machine we'd be running on probably won't have network access. As a quick solution, I thought I'd just write up a dinky little high score server in C#/.NET that could take basic GET requests for submitting scores and getting the score list. We're talking REAL basic, like blocking while waiting for an incoming request, run & forget console app, etc. There's no guarantee that our .swf won't get reloaded, and we'd like the scores to persist, so this server would pretty much exists to keep a safe copy of the scores that the game can add to and request, and occasionally the server will write the scores to a flat text file. But, HttpListener is giving me Error Code 87 'The parameter is incorrect.' Have any idea what I'm doing wrong? Or better yet, am I barking up the wrong tree and missing an obviously simpler solution? This is all I've got so far in my Main(): HttpListener listener = new HttpListener(); listener.Prefixes.Add("http://localhost:66666/"); listener.Start(); The exception happens at listener.Start(); and the stack trace is: at System.Net.HttpListener.AddAllPrefixes() at System.Net.HttpListener.Start() at WOSEBCE_ScoreServer.Program.Main(String[] args) in C:\Users\Michael\Documents\Visual Studio 2010\VS2010 Projects\WOSEBCE_ScoreServer\WOSEBCE_ScoreServer\Program.cs:line 24 at System.AppDomain._nExecuteAssembly(RuntimeAssembly assembly, String[] args) at System.AppDomain.ExecuteAssembly(String assemblyFile, Evidence assemblySecurity, String[] args) at Microsoft.VisualStudio.HostingProcess.HostProc.RunUsersAssembly() at System.Threading.ThreadHelper.ThreadStart_Context(Object state) at System.Threading.ExecutionContext.Run(ExecutionContext executionContext, ContextCallback callback, Object state, Boolean ignoreSyncCtx) at System.Threading.ExecutionContext.Run(ExecutionContext executionContext, ContextCallback callback, Object state) at System.Threading.ThreadHelper.ThreadStart()

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  • questions regarding the use of A* with the 15-square puzzle

    - by Cheeso
    I'm trying to build an A* solver for a 15-square puzzle. The goal is to re-arrange the tiles so that they appear in their natural positions. You can only slide one tile at a time. Each possible state of the puzzle is a node in the search graph. For the h(x) function, I am using an aggregate sum, across all tiles, of the tile's dislocation from the goal state. In the above image, the 5 is at location 0,0, and it belongs at location 1,0, therefore it contributes 1 to the h(x) function. The next tile is the 11, located at 0,1, and belongs at 2,2, therefore it contributes 3 to h(x). And so on. EDIT: I now understand this is what they call "Manhattan distance", or "taxicab distance". I have been using a step count for g(x). In my implementation, for any node in the state graph, g is just +1 from the prior node's g. To find successive nodes, I just examine where I can possibly move the "hole" in the puzzle. There are 3 neighbors for the puzzle state (aka node) that is displayed: the hole can move north, west, or east. My A* search sometimes converges to a solution in 20s, sometimes 180s, and sometimes doesn't converge at all (waited 10 mins or more). I think h is reasonable. I'm wondering if I've modeled g properly. In other words, is it possible that my A* function is reaching a node in the graph via a path that is not the shortest path? Maybe have I not waited long enough? Maybe 10 minutes is not long enough? For a fully random arrangement, (assuming no parity problems), What is the average number of permutations an A* solution will examine? (please show the math) I'm going to look for logic errors in my code, but in the meantime, Any tips? (ps: it's done in Javascript). Also, no, this isn't CompSci homework. It's just a personal exploration thing. I'm just trying to learn Javascript. EDIT: I've found that the run-time is highly depend upon the heuristic. I saw the 10x factor applied to the heuristic from the article someone mentioned, and it made me wonder - why 10x? Why linear? Because this is done in javascript, I could modify the code to dynamically update an html table with the node currently being considered. This allowd me to peek at the algorithm as it was progressing. With a regular taxicab distance heuristic, I watched as it failed to converge. There were 5's and 12's in the top row, and they kept hanging around. I'd see 1,2,3,4 creep into the top row, but then they'd drop out, and other numbers would move up there. What I was hoping to see was 1,2,3,4 sort of creeping up to the top, and then staying there. I thought to myself - this is not the way I solve this personally. Doing this manually, I solve the top row, then the 2ne row, then the 3rd and 4th rows sort of concurrently. So I tweaked the h(x) function to more heavily weight the higher rows and the "lefter" columns. The result was that the A* converged much more quickly. It now runs in 3 minutes instead of "indefinitely". With the "peek" I talked about, I can see the smaller numbers creep up to the higher rows and stay there. Not only does this seem like the right thing, it runs much faster. I'm in the process of trying a bunch of variations. It seems pretty clear that A* runtime is very sensitive to the heuristic. Currently the best heuristic I've found uses the summation of dislocation * ((4-i) + (4-j)) where i and j are the row and column, and dislocation is the taxicab distance. One interesting part of the result I got: with a particular heuristic I find a path very quickly, but it is obviously not the shortest path. I think this is because I am weighting the heuristic. In one case I got a path of 178 steps in 10s. My own manual effort produce a solution in 87 moves. (much more than 10s). More investigation warranted. So the result is I am seeing it converge must faster, and the path is definitely not the shortest. I have to think about this more. Code: var stop = false; function Astar(start, goal, callback) { // start and goal are nodes in the graph, represented by // an array of 16 ints. The goal is: [1,2,3,...14,15,0] // Zero represents the hole. // callback is a method to call when finished. This runs a long time, // therefore we need to use setTimeout() to break it up, to avoid // the browser warning like "Stop running this script?" // g is the actual distance traveled from initial node to current node. // h is the heuristic estimate of distance from current to goal. stop = false; start.g = start.dontgo = 0; // calcHeuristic inserts an .h member into the array calcHeuristicDistance(start); // start the stack with one element var closed = []; // set of nodes already evaluated. var open = [ start ]; // set of nodes to evaluate (start with initial node) var iteration = function() { if (open.length==0) { // no more nodes. Fail. callback(null); return; } var current = open.shift(); // get highest priority node // update the browser with a table representation of the // node being evaluated $("#solution").html(stateToString(current)); // check solution returns true if current == goal if (checkSolution(current,goal)) { // reconstructPath just records the position of the hole // through each node var path= reconstructPath(start,current); callback(path); return; } closed.push(current); // get the set of neighbors. This is 3 or fewer nodes. // (nextStates is optimized to NOT turn directly back on itself) var neighbors = nextStates(current, goal); for (var i=0; i<neighbors.length; i++) { var n = neighbors[i]; // skip this one if we've already visited it if (closed.containsNode(n)) continue; // .g, .h, and .previous get assigned implicitly when // calculating neighbors. n.g is nothing more than // current.g+1 ; // add to the open list if (!open.containsNode(n)) { // slot into the list, in priority order (minimum f first) open.priorityPush(n); n.previous = current; } } if (stop) { callback(null); return; } setTimeout(iteration, 1); }; // kick off the first iteration iteration(); return null; }

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  • Upload File to Windows Azure Blob in Chunks through ASP.NET MVC, JavaScript and HTML5

    - by Shaun
    Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/shaunxu/archive/2013/07/01/upload-file-to-windows-azure-blob-in-chunks-through-asp.net.aspxMany people are using Windows Azure Blob Storage to store their data in the cloud. Blob storage provides 99.9% availability with easy-to-use API through .NET SDK and HTTP REST. For example, we can store JavaScript files, images, documents in blob storage when we are building an ASP.NET web application on a Web Role in Windows Azure. Or we can store our VHD files in blob and mount it as a hard drive in our cloud service. If you are familiar with Windows Azure, you should know that there are two kinds of blob: page blob and block blob. The page blob is optimized for random read and write, which is very useful when you need to store VHD files. The block blob is optimized for sequential/chunk read and write, which has more common usage. Since we can upload block blob in blocks through BlockBlob.PutBlock, and them commit them as a whole blob with invoking the BlockBlob.PutBlockList, it is very powerful to upload large files, as we can upload blocks in parallel, and provide pause-resume feature. There are many documents, articles and blog posts described on how to upload a block blob. Most of them are focus on the server side, which means when you had received a big file, stream or binaries, how to upload them into blob storage in blocks through .NET SDK.  But the problem is, how can we upload these large files from client side, for example, a browser. This questioned to me when I was working with a Chinese customer to help them build a network disk production on top of azure. The end users upload their files from the web portal, and then the files will be stored in blob storage from the Web Role. My goal is to find the best way to transform the file from client (end user’s machine) to the server (Web Role) through browser. In this post I will demonstrate and describe what I had done, to upload large file in chunks with high speed, and save them as blocks into Windows Azure Blob Storage.   Traditional Upload, Works with Limitation The simplest way to implement this requirement is to create a web page with a form that contains a file input element and a submit button. 1: @using (Html.BeginForm("About", "Index", FormMethod.Post, new { enctype = "multipart/form-data" })) 2: { 3: <input type="file" name="file" /> 4: <input type="submit" value="upload" /> 5: } And then in the backend controller, we retrieve the whole content of this file and upload it in to the blob storage through .NET SDK. We can split the file in blocks and upload them in parallel and commit. The code had been well blogged in the community. 1: [HttpPost] 2: public ActionResult About(HttpPostedFileBase file) 3: { 4: var container = _client.GetContainerReference("test"); 5: container.CreateIfNotExists(); 6: var blob = container.GetBlockBlobReference(file.FileName); 7: var blockDataList = new Dictionary<string, byte[]>(); 8: using (var stream = file.InputStream) 9: { 10: var blockSizeInKB = 1024; 11: var offset = 0; 12: var index = 0; 13: while (offset < stream.Length) 14: { 15: var readLength = Math.Min(1024 * blockSizeInKB, (int)stream.Length - offset); 16: var blockData = new byte[readLength]; 17: offset += stream.Read(blockData, 0, readLength); 18: blockDataList.Add(Convert.ToBase64String(BitConverter.GetBytes(index)), blockData); 19:  20: index++; 21: } 22: } 23:  24: Parallel.ForEach(blockDataList, (bi) => 25: { 26: blob.PutBlock(bi.Key, new MemoryStream(bi.Value), null); 27: }); 28: blob.PutBlockList(blockDataList.Select(b => b.Key).ToArray()); 29:  30: return RedirectToAction("About"); 31: } This works perfect if we selected an image, a music or a small video to upload. But if I selected a large file, let’s say a 6GB HD-movie, after upload for about few minutes the page will be shown as below and the upload will be terminated. In ASP.NET there is a limitation of request length and the maximized request length is defined in the web.config file. It’s a number which less than about 4GB. So if we want to upload a really big file, we cannot simply implement in this way. Also, in Windows Azure, a cloud service network load balancer will terminate the connection if exceed the timeout period. From my test the timeout looks like 2 - 3 minutes. Hence, when we need to upload a large file we cannot just use the basic HTML elements. Besides the limitation mentioned above, the simple HTML file upload cannot provide rich upload experience such as chunk upload, pause and pause-resume. So we need to find a better way to upload large file from the client to the server.   Upload in Chunks through HTML5 and JavaScript In order to break those limitation mentioned above we will try to upload the large file in chunks. This takes some benefit to us such as - No request size limitation: Since we upload in chunks, we can define the request size for each chunks regardless how big the entire file is. - No timeout problem: The size of chunks are controlled by us, which means we should be able to make sure request for each chunk upload will not exceed the timeout period of both ASP.NET and Windows Azure load balancer. It was a big challenge to upload big file in chunks until we have HTML5. There are some new features and improvements introduced in HTML5 and we will use them to implement our solution.   In HTML5, the File interface had been improved with a new method called “slice”. It can be used to read part of the file by specifying the start byte index and the end byte index. For example if the entire file was 1024 bytes, file.slice(512, 768) will read the part of this file from the 512nd byte to 768th byte, and return a new object of interface called "Blob”, which you can treat as an array of bytes. In fact,  a Blob object represents a file-like object of immutable, raw data. The File interface is based on Blob, inheriting blob functionality and expanding it to support files on the user's system. For more information about the Blob please refer here. File and Blob is very useful to implement the chunk upload. We will use File interface to represent the file the user selected from the browser and then use File.slice to read the file in chunks in the size we wanted. For example, if we wanted to upload a 10MB file with 512KB chunks, then we can read it in 512KB blobs by using File.slice in a loop.   Assuming we have a web page as below. User can select a file, an input box to specify the block size in KB and a button to start upload. 1: <div> 2: <input type="file" id="upload_files" name="files[]" /><br /> 3: Block Size: <input type="number" id="block_size" value="512" name="block_size" />KB<br /> 4: <input type="button" id="upload_button_blob" name="upload" value="upload (blob)" /> 5: </div> Then we can have the JavaScript function to upload the file in chunks when user clicked the button. 1: <script type="text/javascript"> 1: 2: $(function () { 3: $("#upload_button_blob").click(function () { 4: }); 5: });</script> Firstly we need to ensure the client browser supports the interfaces we are going to use. Just try to invoke the File, Blob and FormData from the “window” object. If any of them is “undefined” the condition result will be “false” which means your browser doesn’t support these premium feature and it’s time for you to get your browser updated. FormData is another new feature we are going to use in the future. It could generate a temporary form for us. We will use this interface to create a form with chunk and associated metadata when invoked the service through ajax. 1: $("#upload_button_blob").click(function () { 2: // assert the browser support html5 3: if (window.File && window.Blob && window.FormData) { 4: alert("Your brwoser is awesome, let's rock!"); 5: } 6: else { 7: alert("Oh man plz update to a modern browser before try is cool stuff out."); 8: return; 9: } 10: }); Each browser supports these interfaces by their own implementation and currently the Blob, File and File.slice are supported by Chrome 21, FireFox 13, IE 10, Opera 12 and Safari 5.1 or higher. After that we worked on the files the user selected one by one since in HTML5, user can select multiple files in one file input box. 1: var files = $("#upload_files")[0].files; 2: for (var i = 0; i < files.length; i++) { 3: var file = files[i]; 4: var fileSize = file.size; 5: var fileName = file.name; 6: } Next, we calculated the start index and end index for each chunks based on the size the user specified from the browser. We put them into an array with the file name and the index, which will be used when we upload chunks into Windows Azure Blob Storage as blocks since we need to specify the target blob name and the block index. At the same time we will store the list of all indexes into another variant which will be used to commit blocks into blob in Azure Storage once all chunks had been uploaded successfully. 1: $("#upload_button_blob").click(function () { 2: // assert the browser support html5 3: ... ... 4: // start to upload each files in chunks 5: var files = $("#upload_files")[0].files; 6: for (var i = 0; i < files.length; i++) { 7: var file = files[i]; 8: var fileSize = file.size; 9: var fileName = file.name; 10:  11: // calculate the start and end byte index for each blocks(chunks) 12: // with the index, file name and index list for future using 13: var blockSizeInKB = $("#block_size").val(); 14: var blockSize = blockSizeInKB * 1024; 15: var blocks = []; 16: var offset = 0; 17: var index = 0; 18: var list = ""; 19: while (offset < fileSize) { 20: var start = offset; 21: var end = Math.min(offset + blockSize, fileSize); 22:  23: blocks.push({ 24: name: fileName, 25: index: index, 26: start: start, 27: end: end 28: }); 29: list += index + ","; 30:  31: offset = end; 32: index++; 33: } 34: } 35: }); Now we have all chunks’ information ready. The next step should be upload them one by one to the server side, and at the server side when received a chunk it will upload as a block into Blob Storage, and finally commit them with the index list through BlockBlobClient.PutBlockList. But since all these invokes are ajax calling, which means not synchronized call. So we need to introduce a new JavaScript library to help us coordinate the asynchronize operation, which named “async.js”. You can download this JavaScript library here, and you can find the document here. I will not explain this library too much in this post. We will put all procedures we want to execute as a function array, and pass into the proper function defined in async.js to let it help us to control the execution sequence, in series or in parallel. Hence we will define an array and put the function for chunk upload into this array. 1: $("#upload_button_blob").click(function () { 2: // assert the browser support html5 3: ... ... 4:  5: // start to upload each files in chunks 6: var files = $("#upload_files")[0].files; 7: for (var i = 0; i < files.length; i++) { 8: var file = files[i]; 9: var fileSize = file.size; 10: var fileName = file.name; 11: // calculate the start and end byte index for each blocks(chunks) 12: // with the index, file name and index list for future using 13: ... ... 14:  15: // define the function array and push all chunk upload operation into this array 16: blocks.forEach(function (block) { 17: putBlocks.push(function (callback) { 18: }); 19: }); 20: } 21: }); 22: }); As you can see, I used File.slice method to read each chunks based on the start and end byte index we calculated previously, and constructed a temporary HTML form with the file name, chunk index and chunk data through another new feature in HTML5 named FormData. Then post this form to the backend server through jQuery.ajax. This is the key part of our solution. 1: $("#upload_button_blob").click(function () { 2: // assert the browser support html5 3: ... ... 4: // start to upload each files in chunks 5: var files = $("#upload_files")[0].files; 6: for (var i = 0; i < files.length; i++) { 7: var file = files[i]; 8: var fileSize = file.size; 9: var fileName = file.name; 10: // calculate the start and end byte index for each blocks(chunks) 11: // with the index, file name and index list for future using 12: ... ... 13: // define the function array and push all chunk upload operation into this array 14: blocks.forEach(function (block) { 15: putBlocks.push(function (callback) { 16: // load blob based on the start and end index for each chunks 17: var blob = file.slice(block.start, block.end); 18: // put the file name, index and blob into a temporary from 19: var fd = new FormData(); 20: fd.append("name", block.name); 21: fd.append("index", block.index); 22: fd.append("file", blob); 23: // post the form to backend service (asp.net mvc controller action) 24: $.ajax({ 25: url: "/Home/UploadInFormData", 26: data: fd, 27: processData: false, 28: contentType: "multipart/form-data", 29: type: "POST", 30: success: function (result) { 31: if (!result.success) { 32: alert(result.error); 33: } 34: callback(null, block.index); 35: } 36: }); 37: }); 38: }); 39: } 40: }); Then we will invoke these functions one by one by using the async.js. And once all functions had been executed successfully I invoked another ajax call to the backend service to commit all these chunks (blocks) as the blob in Windows Azure Storage. 1: $("#upload_button_blob").click(function () { 2: // assert the browser support html5 3: ... ... 4: // start to upload each files in chunks 5: var files = $("#upload_files")[0].files; 6: for (var i = 0; i < files.length; i++) { 7: var file = files[i]; 8: var fileSize = file.size; 9: var fileName = file.name; 10: // calculate the start and end byte index for each blocks(chunks) 11: // with the index, file name and index list for future using 12: ... ... 13: // define the function array and push all chunk upload operation into this array 14: ... ... 15: // invoke the functions one by one 16: // then invoke the commit ajax call to put blocks into blob in azure storage 17: async.series(putBlocks, function (error, result) { 18: var data = { 19: name: fileName, 20: list: list 21: }; 22: $.post("/Home/Commit", data, function (result) { 23: if (!result.success) { 24: alert(result.error); 25: } 26: else { 27: alert("done!"); 28: } 29: }); 30: }); 31: } 32: }); That’s all in the client side. The outline of our logic would be - Calculate the start and end byte index for each chunks based on the block size. - Defined the functions of reading the chunk form file and upload the content to the backend service through ajax. - Execute the functions defined in previous step with “async.js”. - Commit the chunks by invoking the backend service in Windows Azure Storage finally.   Save Chunks as Blocks into Blob Storage In above we finished the client size JavaScript code. It uploaded the file in chunks to the backend service which we are going to implement in this step. We will use ASP.NET MVC as our backend service, and it will receive the chunks, upload into Windows Azure Bob Storage in blocks, then finally commit as one blob. As in the client side we uploaded chunks by invoking the ajax call to the URL "/Home/UploadInFormData", I created a new action under the Index controller and it only accepts HTTP POST request. 1: [HttpPost] 2: public JsonResult UploadInFormData() 3: { 4: var error = string.Empty; 5: try 6: { 7: } 8: catch (Exception e) 9: { 10: error = e.ToString(); 11: } 12:  13: return new JsonResult() 14: { 15: Data = new 16: { 17: success = string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(error), 18: error = error 19: } 20: }; 21: } Then I retrieved the file name, index and the chunk content from the Request.Form object, which was passed from our client side. And then, used the Windows Azure SDK to create a blob container (in this case we will use the container named “test”.) and create a blob reference with the blob name (same as the file name). Then uploaded the chunk as a block of this blob with the index, since in Blob Storage each block must have an index (ID) associated with so that finally we can put all blocks as one blob by specifying their block ID list. 1: [HttpPost] 2: public JsonResult UploadInFormData() 3: { 4: var error = string.Empty; 5: try 6: { 7: var name = Request.Form["name"]; 8: var index = int.Parse(Request.Form["index"]); 9: var file = Request.Files[0]; 10: var id = Convert.ToBase64String(BitConverter.GetBytes(index)); 11:  12: var container = _client.GetContainerReference("test"); 13: container.CreateIfNotExists(); 14: var blob = container.GetBlockBlobReference(name); 15: blob.PutBlock(id, file.InputStream, null); 16: } 17: catch (Exception e) 18: { 19: error = e.ToString(); 20: } 21:  22: return new JsonResult() 23: { 24: Data = new 25: { 26: success = string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(error), 27: error = error 28: } 29: }; 30: } Next, I created another action to commit the blocks into blob once all chunks had been uploaded. Similarly, I retrieved the blob name from the Request.Form. I also retrieved the chunks ID list, which is the block ID list from the Request.Form in a string format, split them as a list, then invoked the BlockBlob.PutBlockList method. After that our blob will be shown in the container and ready to be download. 1: [HttpPost] 2: public JsonResult Commit() 3: { 4: var error = string.Empty; 5: try 6: { 7: var name = Request.Form["name"]; 8: var list = Request.Form["list"]; 9: var ids = list 10: .Split(',') 11: .Where(id => !string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(id)) 12: .Select(id => Convert.ToBase64String(BitConverter.GetBytes(int.Parse(id)))) 13: .ToArray(); 14:  15: var container = _client.GetContainerReference("test"); 16: container.CreateIfNotExists(); 17: var blob = container.GetBlockBlobReference(name); 18: blob.PutBlockList(ids); 19: } 20: catch (Exception e) 21: { 22: error = e.ToString(); 23: } 24:  25: return new JsonResult() 26: { 27: Data = new 28: { 29: success = string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(error), 30: error = error 31: } 32: }; 33: } Now we finished all code we need. The whole process of uploading would be like this below. Below is the full client side JavaScript code. 1: <script type="text/javascript" src="~/Scripts/async.js"></script> 2: <script type="text/javascript"> 3: $(function () { 4: $("#upload_button_blob").click(function () { 5: // assert the browser support html5 6: if (window.File && window.Blob && window.FormData) { 7: alert("Your brwoser is awesome, let's rock!"); 8: } 9: else { 10: alert("Oh man plz update to a modern browser before try is cool stuff out."); 11: return; 12: } 13:  14: // start to upload each files in chunks 15: var files = $("#upload_files")[0].files; 16: for (var i = 0; i < files.length; i++) { 17: var file = files[i]; 18: var fileSize = file.size; 19: var fileName = file.name; 20:  21: // calculate the start and end byte index for each blocks(chunks) 22: // with the index, file name and index list for future using 23: var blockSizeInKB = $("#block_size").val(); 24: var blockSize = blockSizeInKB * 1024; 25: var blocks = []; 26: var offset = 0; 27: var index = 0; 28: var list = ""; 29: while (offset < fileSize) { 30: var start = offset; 31: var end = Math.min(offset + blockSize, fileSize); 32:  33: blocks.push({ 34: name: fileName, 35: index: index, 36: start: start, 37: end: end 38: }); 39: list += index + ","; 40:  41: offset = end; 42: index++; 43: } 44:  45: // define the function array and push all chunk upload operation into this array 46: var putBlocks = []; 47: blocks.forEach(function (block) { 48: putBlocks.push(function (callback) { 49: // load blob based on the start and end index for each chunks 50: var blob = file.slice(block.start, block.end); 51: // put the file name, index and blob into a temporary from 52: var fd = new FormData(); 53: fd.append("name", block.name); 54: fd.append("index", block.index); 55: fd.append("file", blob); 56: // post the form to backend service (asp.net mvc controller action) 57: $.ajax({ 58: url: "/Home/UploadInFormData", 59: data: fd, 60: processData: false, 61: contentType: "multipart/form-data", 62: type: "POST", 63: success: function (result) { 64: if (!result.success) { 65: alert(result.error); 66: } 67: callback(null, block.index); 68: } 69: }); 70: }); 71: }); 72:  73: // invoke the functions one by one 74: // then invoke the commit ajax call to put blocks into blob in azure storage 75: async.series(putBlocks, function (error, result) { 76: var data = { 77: name: fileName, 78: list: list 79: }; 80: $.post("/Home/Commit", data, function (result) { 81: if (!result.success) { 82: alert(result.error); 83: } 84: else { 85: alert("done!"); 86: } 87: }); 88: }); 89: } 90: }); 91: }); 92: </script> And below is the full ASP.NET MVC controller code. 1: public class HomeController : Controller 2: { 3: private CloudStorageAccount _account; 4: private CloudBlobClient _client; 5:  6: public HomeController() 7: : base() 8: { 9: _account = CloudStorageAccount.Parse(CloudConfigurationManager.GetSetting("DataConnectionString")); 10: _client = _account.CreateCloudBlobClient(); 11: } 12:  13: public ActionResult Index() 14: { 15: ViewBag.Message = "Modify this template to jump-start your ASP.NET MVC application."; 16:  17: return View(); 18: } 19:  20: [HttpPost] 21: public JsonResult UploadInFormData() 22: { 23: var error = string.Empty; 24: try 25: { 26: var name = Request.Form["name"]; 27: var index = int.Parse(Request.Form["index"]); 28: var file = Request.Files[0]; 29: var id = Convert.ToBase64String(BitConverter.GetBytes(index)); 30:  31: var container = _client.GetContainerReference("test"); 32: container.CreateIfNotExists(); 33: var blob = container.GetBlockBlobReference(name); 34: blob.PutBlock(id, file.InputStream, null); 35: } 36: catch (Exception e) 37: { 38: error = e.ToString(); 39: } 40:  41: return new JsonResult() 42: { 43: Data = new 44: { 45: success = string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(error), 46: error = error 47: } 48: }; 49: } 50:  51: [HttpPost] 52: public JsonResult Commit() 53: { 54: var error = string.Empty; 55: try 56: { 57: var name = Request.Form["name"]; 58: var list = Request.Form["list"]; 59: var ids = list 60: .Split(',') 61: .Where(id => !string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(id)) 62: .Select(id => Convert.ToBase64String(BitConverter.GetBytes(int.Parse(id)))) 63: .ToArray(); 64:  65: var container = _client.GetContainerReference("test"); 66: container.CreateIfNotExists(); 67: var blob = container.GetBlockBlobReference(name); 68: blob.PutBlockList(ids); 69: } 70: catch (Exception e) 71: { 72: error = e.ToString(); 73: } 74:  75: return new JsonResult() 76: { 77: Data = new 78: { 79: success = string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(error), 80: error = error 81: } 82: }; 83: } 84: } And if we selected a file from the browser we will see our application will upload chunks in the size we specified to the server through ajax call in background, and then commit all chunks in one blob. Then we can find the blob in our Windows Azure Blob Storage.   Optimized by Parallel Upload In previous example we just uploaded our file in chunks. This solved the problem that ASP.NET MVC request content size limitation as well as the Windows Azure load balancer timeout. But it might introduce the performance problem since we uploaded chunks in sequence. In order to improve the upload performance we could modify our client side code a bit to make the upload operation invoked in parallel. The good news is that, “async.js” library provides the parallel execution function. If you remembered the code we invoke the service to upload chunks, it utilized “async.series” which means all functions will be executed in sequence. Now we will change this code to “async.parallel”. This will invoke all functions in parallel. 1: $("#upload_button_blob").click(function () { 2: // assert the browser support html5 3: ... ... 4: // start to upload each files in chunks 5: var files = $("#upload_files")[0].files; 6: for (var i = 0; i < files.length; i++) { 7: var file = files[i]; 8: var fileSize = file.size; 9: var fileName = file.name; 10: // calculate the start and end byte index for each blocks(chunks) 11: // with the index, file name and index list for future using 12: ... ... 13: // define the function array and push all chunk upload operation into this array 14: ... ... 15: // invoke the functions one by one 16: // then invoke the commit ajax call to put blocks into blob in azure storage 17: async.parallel(putBlocks, function (error, result) { 18: var data = { 19: name: fileName, 20: list: list 21: }; 22: $.post("/Home/Commit", data, function (result) { 23: if (!result.success) { 24: alert(result.error); 25: } 26: else { 27: alert("done!"); 28: } 29: }); 30: }); 31: } 32: }); In this way all chunks will be uploaded to the server side at the same time to maximize the bandwidth usage. This should work if the file was not very large and the chunk size was not very small. But for large file this might introduce another problem that too many ajax calls are sent to the server at the same time. So the best solution should be, upload the chunks in parallel with maximum concurrency limitation. The code below specified the concurrency limitation to 4, which means at the most only 4 ajax calls could be invoked at the same time. 1: $("#upload_button_blob").click(function () { 2: // assert the browser support html5 3: ... ... 4: // start to upload each files in chunks 5: var files = $("#upload_files")[0].files; 6: for (var i = 0; i < files.length; i++) { 7: var file = files[i]; 8: var fileSize = file.size; 9: var fileName = file.name; 10: // calculate the start and end byte index for each blocks(chunks) 11: // with the index, file name and index list for future using 12: ... ... 13: // define the function array and push all chunk upload operation into this array 14: ... ... 15: // invoke the functions one by one 16: // then invoke the commit ajax call to put blocks into blob in azure storage 17: async.parallelLimit(putBlocks, 4, function (error, result) { 18: var data = { 19: name: fileName, 20: list: list 21: }; 22: $.post("/Home/Commit", data, function (result) { 23: if (!result.success) { 24: alert(result.error); 25: } 26: else { 27: alert("done!"); 28: } 29: }); 30: }); 31: } 32: });   Summary In this post we discussed how to upload files in chunks to the backend service and then upload them into Windows Azure Blob Storage in blocks. We focused on the frontend side and leverage three new feature introduced in HTML 5 which are - File.slice: Read part of the file by specifying the start and end byte index. - Blob: File-like interface which contains the part of the file content. - FormData: Temporary form element that we can pass the chunk alone with some metadata to the backend service. Then we discussed the performance consideration of chunk uploading. Sequence upload cannot provide maximized upload speed, but the unlimited parallel upload might crash the browser and server if too many chunks. So we finally came up with the solution to upload chunks in parallel with the concurrency limitation. We also demonstrated how to utilize “async.js” JavaScript library to help us control the asynchronize call and the parallel limitation.   Regarding the chunk size and the parallel limitation value there is no “best” value. You need to test vary composition and find out the best one for your particular scenario. It depends on the local bandwidth, client machine cores and the server side (Windows Azure Cloud Service Virtual Machine) cores, memory and bandwidth. Below is one of my performance test result. The client machine was Windows 8 IE 10 with 4 cores. I was using Microsoft Cooperation Network. The web site was hosted on Windows Azure China North data center (in Beijing) with one small web role (1.7GB 1 core CPU, 1.75GB memory with 100Mbps bandwidth). The test cases were - Chunk size: 512KB, 1MB, 2MB, 4MB. - Upload Mode: Sequence, parallel (unlimited), parallel with limit (4 threads, 8 threads). - Chunk Format: base64 string, binaries. - Target file: 100MB. - Each case was tested 3 times. Below is the test result chart. Some thoughts, but not guidance or best practice: - Parallel gets better performance than series. - No significant performance improvement between parallel 4 threads and 8 threads. - Transform with binaries provides better performance than base64. - In all cases, chunk size in 1MB - 2MB gets better performance.   Hope this helps, Shaun All documents and related graphics, codes are provided "AS IS" without warranty of any kind. Copyright © Shaun Ziyan Xu. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons License.

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  • Custom ASP.NET Routing to an HttpHandler

    - by Rick Strahl
    As of version 4.0 ASP.NET natively supports routing via the now built-in System.Web.Routing namespace. Routing features are automatically integrated into the HtttpRuntime via a few custom interfaces. New Web Forms Routing Support In ASP.NET 4.0 there are a host of improvements including routing support baked into Web Forms via a RouteData property available on the Page class and RouteCollection.MapPageRoute() route handler that makes it easy to route to Web forms. To map ASP.NET Page routes is as simple as setting up the routes with MapPageRoute:protected void Application_Start(object sender, EventArgs e) { RegisterRoutes(RouteTable.Routes); } void RegisterRoutes(RouteCollection routes) { routes.MapPageRoute("StockQuote", "StockQuote/{symbol}", "StockQuote.aspx"); routes.MapPageRoute("StockQuotes", "StockQuotes/{symbolList}", "StockQuotes.aspx"); } and then accessing the route data in the page you can then use the new Page class RouteData property to retrieve the dynamic route data information:public partial class StockQuote1 : System.Web.UI.Page { protected StockQuote Quote = null; protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e) { string symbol = RouteData.Values["symbol"] as string; StockServer server = new StockServer(); Quote = server.GetStockQuote(symbol); // display stock data in Page View } } Simple, quick and doesn’t require much explanation. If you’re using WebForms most of your routing needs should be served just fine by this simple mechanism. Kudos to the ASP.NET team for putting this in the box and making it easy! How Routing Works To handle Routing in ASP.NET involves these steps: Registering Routes Creating a custom RouteHandler to retrieve an HttpHandler Attaching RouteData to your HttpHandler Picking up Route Information in your Request code Registering routes makes ASP.NET aware of the Routes you want to handle via the static RouteTable.Routes collection. You basically add routes to this collection to let ASP.NET know which URL patterns it should watch for. You typically hook up routes off a RegisterRoutes method that fires in Application_Start as I did in the example above to ensure routes are added only once when the application first starts up. When you create a route, you pass in a RouteHandler instance which ASP.NET caches and reuses as routes are matched. Once registered ASP.NET monitors the routes and if a match is found just prior to the HttpHandler instantiation, ASP.NET uses the RouteHandler registered for the route and calls GetHandler() on it to retrieve an HttpHandler instance. The RouteHandler.GetHandler() method is responsible for creating an instance of an HttpHandler that is to handle the request and – if necessary – to assign any additional custom data to the handler. At minimum you probably want to pass the RouteData to the handler so the handler can identify the request based on the route data available. To do this you typically add  a RouteData property to your handler and then assign the property from the RouteHandlers request context. This is essentially how Page.RouteData comes into being and this approach should work well for any custom handler implementation that requires RouteData. It’s a shame that ASP.NET doesn’t have a top level intrinsic object that’s accessible off the HttpContext object to provide route data more generically, but since RouteData is directly tied to HttpHandlers and not all handlers support it it might cause some confusion of when it’s actually available. Bottom line is that if you want to hold on to RouteData you have to assign it to a custom property of the handler or else pass it to the handler via Context.Items[] object that can be retrieved on an as needed basis. It’s important to understand that routing is hooked up via RouteHandlers that are responsible for loading HttpHandler instances. RouteHandlers are invoked for every request that matches a route and through this RouteHandler instance the Handler gains access to the current RouteData. Because of this logic it’s important to understand that Routing is really tied to HttpHandlers and not available prior to handler instantiation, which is pretty late in the HttpRuntime’s request pipeline. IOW, Routing works with Handlers but not with earlier in the pipeline within Modules. Specifically ASP.NET calls RouteHandler.GetHandler() from the PostResolveRequestCache HttpRuntime pipeline event. Here’s the call stack at the beginning of the GetHandler() call: which fires just before handler resolution. Non-Page Routing – You need to build custom RouteHandlers If you need to route to a custom Http Handler or other non-Page (and non-MVC) endpoint in the HttpRuntime, there is no generic mapping support available. You need to create a custom RouteHandler that can manage creating an instance of an HttpHandler that is fired in response to a routed request. Depending on what you are doing this process can be simple or fairly involved as your code is responsible based on the route data provided which handler to instantiate, and more importantly how to pass the route data on to the Handler. Luckily creating a RouteHandler is easy by implementing the IRouteHandler interface which has only a single GetHttpHandler(RequestContext context) method. In this method you can pick up the requestContext.RouteData, instantiate the HttpHandler of choice, and assign the RouteData to it. Then pass back the handler and you’re done.Here’s a simple example of GetHttpHandler() method that dynamically creates a handler based on a passed in Handler type./// <summary> /// Retrieves an Http Handler based on the type specified in the constructor /// </summary> /// <param name="requestContext"></param> /// <returns></returns> IHttpHandler IRouteHandler.GetHttpHandler(RequestContext requestContext) { IHttpHandler handler = Activator.CreateInstance(CallbackHandlerType) as IHttpHandler; // If we're dealing with a Callback Handler // pass the RouteData for this route to the Handler if (handler is CallbackHandler) ((CallbackHandler)handler).RouteData = requestContext.RouteData; return handler; } Note that this code checks for a specific type of handler and if it matches assigns the RouteData to this handler. This is optional but quite a common scenario if you want to work with RouteData. If the handler you need to instantiate isn’t under your control but you still need to pass RouteData to Handler code, an alternative is to pass the RouteData via the HttpContext.Items collection:IHttpHandler IRouteHandler.GetHttpHandler(RequestContext requestContext) { IHttpHandler handler = Activator.CreateInstance(CallbackHandlerType) as IHttpHandler; requestContext.HttpContext.Items["RouteData"] = requestContext.RouteData; return handler; } The code in the handler implementation can then pick up the RouteData from the context collection as needed:RouteData routeData = HttpContext.Current.Items["RouteData"] as RouteData This isn’t as clean as having an explicit RouteData property, but it does have the advantage that the route data is visible anywhere in the Handler’s code chain. It’s definitely preferable to create a custom property on your handler, but the Context work-around works in a pinch when you don’t’ own the handler code and have dynamic code executing as part of the handler execution. An Example of a Custom RouteHandler: Attribute Based Route Implementation In this post I’m going to discuss a custom routine implementation I built for my CallbackHandler class in the West Wind Web & Ajax Toolkit. CallbackHandler can be very easily used for creating AJAX, REST and POX requests following RPC style method mapping. You can pass parameters via URL query string, POST data or raw data structures, and you can retrieve results as JSON, XML or raw string/binary data. It’s a quick and easy way to build service interfaces with no fuss. As a quick review here’s how CallbackHandler works: You create an Http Handler that derives from CallbackHandler You implement methods that have a [CallbackMethod] Attribute and that’s it. Here’s an example of an CallbackHandler implementation in an ashx.cs based handler:// RestService.ashx.cs public class RestService : CallbackHandler { [CallbackMethod] public StockQuote GetStockQuote(string symbol) { StockServer server = new StockServer(); return server.GetStockQuote(symbol); } [CallbackMethod] public StockQuote[] GetStockQuotes(string symbolList) { StockServer server = new StockServer(); string[] symbols = symbolList.Split(new char[2] { ',',';' },StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries); return server.GetStockQuotes(symbols); } } CallbackHandler makes it super easy to create a method on the server, pass data to it via POST, QueryString or raw JSON/XML data, and then retrieve the results easily back in various formats. This works wonderful and I’ve used these tools in many projects for myself and with clients. But one thing missing has been the ability to create clean URLs. Typical URLs looked like this: http://www.west-wind.com/WestwindWebToolkit/samples/Rest/StockService.ashx?Method=GetStockQuote&symbol=msfthttp://www.west-wind.com/WestwindWebToolkit/samples/Rest/StockService.ashx?Method=GetStockQuotes&symbolList=msft,intc,gld,slw,mwe&format=xml which works and is clear enough, but also clearly very ugly. It would be much nicer if URLs could look like this: http://www.west-wind.com//WestwindWebtoolkit/Samples/StockQuote/msfthttp://www.west-wind.com/WestwindWebtoolkit/Samples/StockQuotes/msft,intc,gld,slw?format=xml (the Virtual Root in this sample is WestWindWebToolkit/Samples and StockQuote/{symbol} is the route)(If you use FireFox try using the JSONView plug-in make it easier to view JSON content) So, taking a clue from the WCF REST tools that use RouteUrls I set out to create a way to specify RouteUrls for each of the endpoints. The change made basically allows changing the above to: [CallbackMethod(RouteUrl="RestService/StockQuote/{symbol}")] public StockQuote GetStockQuote(string symbol) { StockServer server = new StockServer(); return server.GetStockQuote(symbol); } [CallbackMethod(RouteUrl = "RestService/StockQuotes/{symbolList}")] public StockQuote[] GetStockQuotes(string symbolList) { StockServer server = new StockServer(); string[] symbols = symbolList.Split(new char[2] { ',',';' },StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries); return server.GetStockQuotes(symbols); } where a RouteUrl is specified as part of the Callback attribute. And with the changes made with RouteUrls I can now get URLs like the second set shown earlier. So how does that work? Let’s find out… How to Create Custom Routes As mentioned earlier Routing is made up of several steps: Creating a custom RouteHandler to create HttpHandler instances Mapping the actual Routes to the RouteHandler Retrieving the RouteData and actually doing something useful with it in the HttpHandler In the CallbackHandler routing example above this works out to something like this: Create a custom RouteHandler that includes a property to track the method to call Set up the routes using Reflection against the class Looking for any RouteUrls in the CallbackMethod attribute Add a RouteData property to the CallbackHandler so we can access the RouteData in the code of the handler Creating a Custom Route Handler To make the above work I created a custom RouteHandler class that includes the actual IRouteHandler implementation as well as a generic and static method to automatically register all routes marked with the [CallbackMethod(RouteUrl="…")] attribute. Here’s the code:/// <summary> /// Route handler that can create instances of CallbackHandler derived /// callback classes. The route handler tracks the method name and /// creates an instance of the service in a predictable manner /// </summary> /// <typeparam name="TCallbackHandler">CallbackHandler type</typeparam> public class CallbackHandlerRouteHandler : IRouteHandler { /// <summary> /// Method name that is to be called on this route. /// Set by the automatically generated RegisterRoutes /// invokation. /// </summary> public string MethodName { get; set; } /// <summary> /// The type of the handler we're going to instantiate. /// Needed so we can semi-generically instantiate the /// handler and call the method on it. /// </summary> public Type CallbackHandlerType { get; set; } /// <summary> /// Constructor to pass in the two required components we /// need to create an instance of our handler. /// </summary> /// <param name="methodName"></param> /// <param name="callbackHandlerType"></param> public CallbackHandlerRouteHandler(string methodName, Type callbackHandlerType) { MethodName = methodName; CallbackHandlerType = callbackHandlerType; } /// <summary> /// Retrieves an Http Handler based on the type specified in the constructor /// </summary> /// <param name="requestContext"></param> /// <returns></returns> IHttpHandler IRouteHandler.GetHttpHandler(RequestContext requestContext) { IHttpHandler handler = Activator.CreateInstance(CallbackHandlerType) as IHttpHandler; // If we're dealing with a Callback Handler // pass the RouteData for this route to the Handler if (handler is CallbackHandler) ((CallbackHandler)handler).RouteData = requestContext.RouteData; return handler; } /// <summary> /// Generic method to register all routes from a CallbackHandler /// that have RouteUrls defined on the [CallbackMethod] attribute /// </summary> /// <typeparam name="TCallbackHandler">CallbackHandler Type</typeparam> /// <param name="routes"></param> public static void RegisterRoutes<TCallbackHandler>(RouteCollection routes) { // find all methods var methods = typeof(TCallbackHandler).GetMethods(BindingFlags.Instance | BindingFlags.Public); foreach (var method in methods) { var attrs = method.GetCustomAttributes(typeof(CallbackMethodAttribute), false); if (attrs.Length < 1) continue; CallbackMethodAttribute attr = attrs[0] as CallbackMethodAttribute; if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(attr.RouteUrl)) continue; // Add the route routes.Add(method.Name, new Route(attr.RouteUrl, new CallbackHandlerRouteHandler(method.Name, typeof(TCallbackHandler)))); } } } The RouteHandler implements IRouteHandler, and its responsibility via the GetHandler method is to create an HttpHandler based on the route data. When ASP.NET calls GetHandler it passes a requestContext parameter which includes a requestContext.RouteData property. This parameter holds the current request’s route data as well as an instance of the current RouteHandler. If you look at GetHttpHandler() you can see that the code creates an instance of the handler we are interested in and then sets the RouteData property on the handler. This is how you can pass the current request’s RouteData to the handler. The RouteData object also has a  RouteData.RouteHandler property that is also available to the Handler later, which is useful in order to get additional information about the current route. In our case here the RouteHandler includes a MethodName property that identifies the method to execute in the handler since that value no longer comes from the URL so we need to figure out the method name some other way. The method name is mapped explicitly when the RouteHandler is created and here the static method that auto-registers all CallbackMethods with RouteUrls sets the method name when it creates the routes while reflecting over the methods (more on this in a minute). The important point here is that you can attach additional properties to the RouteHandler and you can then later access the RouteHandler and its properties later in the Handler to pick up these custom values. This is a crucial feature in that the RouteHandler serves in passing additional context to the handler so it knows what actions to perform. The automatic route registration is handled by the static RegisterRoutes<TCallbackHandler> method. This method is generic and totally reusable for any CallbackHandler type handler. To register a CallbackHandler and any RouteUrls it has defined you simple use code like this in Application_Start (or other application startup code):protected void Application_Start(object sender, EventArgs e) { // Register Routes for RestService CallbackHandlerRouteHandler.RegisterRoutes<RestService>(RouteTable.Routes); } If you have multiple CallbackHandler style services you can make multiple calls to RegisterRoutes for each of the service types. RegisterRoutes internally uses reflection to run through all the methods of the Handler, looking for CallbackMethod attributes and whether a RouteUrl is specified. If it is a new instance of a CallbackHandlerRouteHandler is created and the name of the method and the type are set. routes.Add(method.Name,           new Route(attr.RouteUrl, new CallbackHandlerRouteHandler(method.Name, typeof(TCallbackHandler) )) ); While the routing with CallbackHandlerRouteHandler is set up automatically for all methods that use the RouteUrl attribute, you can also use code to hook up those routes manually and skip using the attribute. The code for this is straightforward and just requires that you manually map each individual route to each method you want a routed: protected void Application_Start(objectsender, EventArgs e){    RegisterRoutes(RouteTable.Routes);}void RegisterRoutes(RouteCollection routes) { routes.Add("StockQuote Route",new Route("StockQuote/{symbol}",                     new CallbackHandlerRouteHandler("GetStockQuote",typeof(RestService) ) ) );     routes.Add("StockQuotes Route",new Route("StockQuotes/{symbolList}",                     new CallbackHandlerRouteHandler("GetStockQuotes",typeof(RestService) ) ) );}I think it’s clearly easier to have CallbackHandlerRouteHandler.RegisterRoutes() do this automatically for you based on RouteUrl attributes, but some people have a real aversion to attaching logic via attributes. Just realize that the option to manually create your routes is available as well. Using the RouteData in the Handler A RouteHandler’s responsibility is to create an HttpHandler and as mentioned earlier, natively IHttpHandler doesn’t have any support for RouteData. In order to utilize RouteData in your handler code you have to pass the RouteData to the handler. In my CallbackHandlerRouteHandler when it creates the HttpHandler instance it creates the instance and then assigns the custom RouteData property on the handler:IHttpHandler handler = Activator.CreateInstance(CallbackHandlerType) as IHttpHandler; if (handler is CallbackHandler) ((CallbackHandler)handler).RouteData = requestContext.RouteData; return handler; Again this only works if you actually add a RouteData property to your handler explicitly as I did in my CallbackHandler implementation:/// <summary> /// Optionally store RouteData on this handler /// so we can access it internally /// </summary> public RouteData RouteData {get; set; } and the RouteHandler needs to set it when it creates the handler instance. Once you have the route data in your handler you can access Route Keys and Values and also the RouteHandler. Since my RouteHandler has a custom property for the MethodName to retrieve it from within the handler I can do something like this now to retrieve the MethodName (this example is actually not in the handler but target is an instance pass to the processor): // check for Route Data method name if (target is CallbackHandler) { var routeData = ((CallbackHandler)target).RouteData; if (routeData != null) methodToCall = ((CallbackHandlerRouteHandler)routeData.RouteHandler).MethodName; } When I need to access the dynamic values in the route ( symbol in StockQuote/{symbol}) I can retrieve it easily with the Values collection (RouteData.Values["symbol"]). In my CallbackHandler processing logic I’m basically looking for matching parameter names to Route parameters: // look for parameters in the routeif(routeData != null){    string parmString = routeData.Values[parameter.Name] as string;    adjustedParms[parmCounter] = ReflectionUtils.StringToTypedValue(parmString, parameter.ParameterType);} And with that we’ve come full circle. We’ve created a custom RouteHandler() that passes the RouteData to the handler it creates. We’ve registered our routes to use the RouteHandler, and we’ve utilized the route data in our handler. For completeness sake here’s the routine that executes a method call based on the parameters passed in and one of the options is to retrieve the inbound parameters off RouteData (as well as from POST data or QueryString parameters):internal object ExecuteMethod(string method, object target, string[] parameters, CallbackMethodParameterType paramType, ref CallbackMethodAttribute callbackMethodAttribute) { HttpRequest Request = HttpContext.Current.Request; object Result = null; // Stores parsed parameters (from string JSON or QUeryString Values) object[] adjustedParms = null; Type PageType = target.GetType(); MethodInfo MI = PageType.GetMethod(method, BindingFlags.Instance | BindingFlags.Public | BindingFlags.NonPublic); if (MI == null) throw new InvalidOperationException("Invalid Server Method."); object[] methods = MI.GetCustomAttributes(typeof(CallbackMethodAttribute), false); if (methods.Length < 1) throw new InvalidOperationException("Server method is not accessible due to missing CallbackMethod attribute"); if (callbackMethodAttribute != null) callbackMethodAttribute = methods[0] as CallbackMethodAttribute; ParameterInfo[] parms = MI.GetParameters(); JSONSerializer serializer = new JSONSerializer(); RouteData routeData = null; if (target is CallbackHandler) routeData = ((CallbackHandler)target).RouteData; int parmCounter = 0; adjustedParms = new object[parms.Length]; foreach (ParameterInfo parameter in parms) { // Retrieve parameters out of QueryString or POST buffer if (parameters == null) { // look for parameters in the route if (routeData != null) { string parmString = routeData.Values[parameter.Name] as string; adjustedParms[parmCounter] = ReflectionUtils.StringToTypedValue(parmString, parameter.ParameterType); } // GET parameter are parsed as plain string values - no JSON encoding else if (HttpContext.Current.Request.HttpMethod == "GET") { // Look up the parameter by name string parmString = Request.QueryString[parameter.Name]; adjustedParms[parmCounter] = ReflectionUtils.StringToTypedValue(parmString, parameter.ParameterType); } // POST parameters are treated as methodParameters that are JSON encoded else if (paramType == CallbackMethodParameterType.Json) //string newVariable = methodParameters.GetValue(parmCounter) as string; adjustedParms[parmCounter] = serializer.Deserialize(Request.Params["parm" + (parmCounter + 1).ToString()], parameter.ParameterType); else adjustedParms[parmCounter] = SerializationUtils.DeSerializeObject( Request.Params["parm" + (parmCounter + 1).ToString()], parameter.ParameterType); } else if (paramType == CallbackMethodParameterType.Json) adjustedParms[parmCounter] = serializer.Deserialize(parameters[parmCounter], parameter.ParameterType); else adjustedParms[parmCounter] = SerializationUtils.DeSerializeObject(parameters[parmCounter], parameter.ParameterType); parmCounter++; } Result = MI.Invoke(target, adjustedParms); return Result; } The code basically uses Reflection to loop through all the parameters available on the method and tries to assign the parameters from RouteData, QueryString or POST variables. The parameters are converted into their appropriate types and then used to eventually make a Reflection based method call. What’s sweet is that the RouteData retrieval is just another option for dealing with the inbound data in this scenario and it adds exactly two lines of code plus the code to retrieve the MethodName I showed previously – a seriously low impact addition that adds a lot of extra value to this endpoint callback processing implementation. Debugging your Routes If you create a lot of routes it’s easy to run into Route conflicts where multiple routes have the same path and overlap with each other. This can be difficult to debug especially if you are using automatically generated routes like the routes created by CallbackHandlerRouteHandler.RegisterRoutes. Luckily there’s a tool that can help you out with this nicely. Phill Haack created a RouteDebugging tool you can download and add to your project. The easiest way to do this is to grab and add this to your project is to use NuGet (Add Library Package from your Project’s Reference Nodes):   which adds a RouteDebug assembly to your project. Once installed you can easily debug your routes with this simple line of code which needs to be installed at application startup:protected void Application_Start(object sender, EventArgs e) { CallbackHandlerRouteHandler.RegisterRoutes<StockService>(RouteTable.Routes); // Debug your routes RouteDebug.RouteDebugger.RewriteRoutesForTesting(RouteTable.Routes); } Any routed URL then displays something like this: The screen shows you your current route data and all the routes that are mapped along with a flag that displays which route was actually matched. This is useful – if you have any overlap of routes you will be able to see which routes are triggered – the first one in the sequence wins. This tool has saved my ass on a few occasions – and with NuGet now it’s easy to add it to your project in a few seconds and then remove it when you’re done. Routing Around Custom routing seems slightly complicated on first blush due to its disconnected components of RouteHandler, route registration and mapping of custom handlers. But once you understand the relationship between a RouteHandler, the RouteData and how to pass it to a handler, utilizing of Routing becomes a lot easier as you can easily pass context from the registration to the RouteHandler and through to the HttpHandler. The most important thing to understand when building custom routing solutions is to figure out how to map URLs in such a way that the handler can figure out all the pieces it needs to process the request. This can be via URL routing parameters and as I did in my example by passing additional context information as part of the RouteHandler instance that provides the proper execution context. In my case this ‘context’ was the method name, but it could be an actual static value like an enum identifying an operation or category in an application. Basically user supplied data comes in through the url and static application internal data can be passed via RouteHandler property values. Routing can make your application URLs easier to read by non-techie types regardless of whether you’re building Service type or REST applications, or full on Web interfaces. Routing in ASP.NET 4.0 makes it possible to create just about any extensionless URLs you can dream up and custom RouteHanmdler References Sample ProjectIncludes the sample CallbackHandler service discussed here along with compiled versionsof the Westwind.Web and Westwind.Utilities assemblies.  (requires .NET 4.0/VS 2010) West Wind Web Toolkit includes full implementation of CallbackHandler and the Routing Handler West Wind Web Toolkit Source CodeContains the full source code to the Westwind.Web and Westwind.Utilities assemblies usedin these samples. Includes the source described in the post.(Latest build in the Subversion Repository) CallbackHandler Source(Relevant code to this article tree in Westwind.Web assembly) JSONView FireFoxPluginA simple FireFox Plugin to easily view JSON data natively in FireFox.For IE you can use a registry hack to display JSON as raw text.© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2011Posted in ASP.NET  AJAX  HTTP  

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  • Solaris 11.1 changes building of code past the point of __NORETURN

    - by alanc
    While Solaris 11.1 was under development, we started seeing some errors in the builds of the upstream X.Org git master sources, such as: "Display.c", line 65: Function has no return statement : x_io_error_handler "hostx.c", line 341: Function has no return statement : x_io_error_handler from functions that were defined to match a specific callback definition that declared them as returning an int if they did return, but these were calling exit() instead of returning so hadn't listed a return value. These had been generating warnings for years which we'd been ignoring, but X.Org has made enough progress in cleaning up code for compiler warnings and static analysis issues lately, that the community turned up the default error levels, including the gcc flag -Werror=return-type and the equivalent Solaris Studio cc flags -v -errwarn=E_FUNC_HAS_NO_RETURN_STMT, so now these became errors that stopped the build. Yet on Solaris, gcc built this code fine, while Studio errored out. Investigation showed this was due to the Solaris headers, which during Solaris 10 development added a number of annotations to the headers when gcc was being used for the amd64 kernel bringup before the Studio amd64 port was ready. Since Studio did not support the inline form of these annotations at the time, but instead used #pragma for them, the definitions were only present for gcc. To resolve this, I fixed both sides of the problem, so that it would work for building new X.Org sources on older Solaris releases or with older Studio compilers, as well as fixing the general problem before it broke more software building on Solaris. To the X.Org sources, I added the traditional Studio #pragma does_not_return to recognize that functions like exit() don't ever return, in patches such as this Xserver patch. Adding a dummy return statement was ruled out as that introduced unreachable code errors from compilers and analyzers that correctly realized you couldn't reach that code after a return statement. And on the Solaris 11.1 side, I updated the annotation definitions in <sys/ccompile.h> to enable for Studio 12.0 and later compilers the annotations already existing in a number of system headers for functions like exit() and abort(). If you look in that file you'll see the annotations we currently use, though the forms there haven't gone through review to become a Committed interface, so may change in the future. Actually getting this integrated into Solaris though took a bit more work than just editing one header file. Our ELF binary build comparison tool, wsdiff, actually showed a large number of differences in the resulting binaries due to the compiler using this information for branch prediction, code path analysis, and other possible optimizations, so after comparing enough of the disassembly output to be comfortable with the changes, we also made sure to get this in early enough in the release cycle so that it would get plenty of test exposure before the release. It also required updating quite a bit of code to avoid introducing new lint or compiler warnings or errors, and people building applications on top of Solaris 11.1 and later may need to make similar changes if they want to keep their build logs similarly clean. Previously, if you had a function that was declared with a non-void return type, lint and cc would warn if you didn't return a value, even if you called a function like exit() or panic() that ended execution. For instance: #include <stdlib.h> int callback(int status) { if (status == 0) return status; exit(status); } would previously require a never executed return 0; after the exit() to avoid lint warning "function falls off bottom without returning value". Now the compiler & lint will both issue "statement not reached" warnings for a return 0; after the final exit(), allowing (or in some cases, requiring) it to be removed. However, if there is no return statement anywhere in the function, lint will warn that you've declared a function returning a value that never does so, suggesting you can declare it as void. Unfortunately, if your function signature is required to match a certain form, such as in a callback, you not be able to do so, and will need to add a /* LINTED */ to the end of the function. If you need your code to build on both a newer and an older release, then you will either need to #ifdef these unreachable statements, or, to keep your sources common across releases, add to your sources the corresponding #pragma recognized by both current and older compiler versions, such as: #pragma does_not_return(exit) #pragma does_not_return(panic) Hopefully this little extra work is paid for by the compilers & code analyzers being able to better understand your code paths, giving you better optimizations and more accurate errors & warning messages.

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  • Drupal JSON POST from PhoneGap

    - by abritez
    I am trying to send a POST request to Drupal's Services module & JSON_Server module, however I am getting { "#error": true, "#data": "Invalid method " } Since PhoneGap runs html files from locally on the phone, should i need to worry about JSONP. The issue I have with that is that I must POST data, and JSONP only allows for GET. Any ideas would be helpful. Thanks! //SEND REQUEST AND CALLBACK FUNCTION var req; DrupalService.prototype.request = function(dataObject, callback){ req = false; var url = DRUPAL_JSON_URL; var params = "data="+dataObject; try { req = new XMLHttpRequest(); } catch(e) { req = false; } if(req) { req.onreadystatechange = function() {//Call a function when the state changes. if(req.readyState == 4 && req.status == 200) { console.log(" "+req.responseText); } } req.open("POST", url, false); req.send(params); } }

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