skill building - Page 376

Applying Unity in dynamic menu

- by Rajarshi

I was going through Unity 2.0 to check if it has an effective use in our new application. My application is a Windows Forms application and uses a traditional bar menu (at the top), currently. My UIs (Windows Forms) more or less support Dependency Injection pattern since they all work with a class (Presentation Model Class) supplied to them via the constructor. The form then binds to the properties of the supplied P Model class and calls methods on the P Model class to perform its duties. Pretty simple and straightforward. How P Model reacts to the UI actions and responds to them by co-ordinating with the Domain Class (Business Logic/Model) is irrelevant here and thus not mentioned. The object creation sequence to show up one UI from menu then goes like this - Create Business Model instance Create Presentation Model instance with Business Model instance passed to P Model constructor. Create UI instance with Presentation Model instance passed to UI constructor. My present solution: To show an UI in the method above from my menu I would have to refer all assemblies (Business, PModel, UI) from my Menu class. Considering I have split the modules into a number of physical assemblies, that would be a dificult task to add references to about 60 different assemblies. Also the approach is not very scalable since I would certainly need to release more modules and with this approach I would have to change the source code every time I release a new module. So primarily to avoid the reference of so many assemblies from my Menu class (assembly) I did as below - Stored all the dependency described above in a database table (SQL Server), e.g. ModuleShortCode | BModelAssembly | BModelFullTypeName | PModelAssembly | PModelFullTypeName | UIAssembly | UIFullTypeName Now used a static class named "Launcher" with a method "Launch" as below - Launcher.Launch("Discount") Launcher.Launch("Customers") The Launcher internally uses data from the dependency table and uses Activator.CreateInstance() to create each of the objects and uses the instance as constructor parameter to the next object being created, till the UI is built. The UI is then shown as a modal dialog. The code inside Launcher is somewhat like - Form frm = ResolveForm("Discount"); frm.ShowDialog(); The ResolveForm does the trick of building the chain of objects. Can Unity help me here? Now when I did that I did not have enough information on Unity and now that I have studied Unity I think I have been doing more or less the same thing. So I tried to replace my code with Unity. However, as soon as I started I hit a block. If I try to resolve UI forms in my Menu as Form customers = myUnityContainer.Resolve(); or Form customers = myUnityContainer.Resolve(typeof(Customers)); Then either way, I need to refer to my UI assembly from my Menu assembly since the target Type "Customers" need to be known for Unity to resolve it. So I am back to same place since I would have to refer all UI assemblies from the Menu assembly. I understand that with Unity I would have to refer fewer assemblies (only UI assemblies) but those references are needed which defeats my objectives below - Create the chain of objects dynamically without any assembly reference from Menu assembly. This is to avoid Menu source code changing every time I release a new module. My Menu also is built dynamically from a table. Be able to supply new modules just by supplying the new assemblies and inserting the new Dependency row in the table by a database patch. At this stage, I have a feeling that I have to do it the way I was doing, i.e. Activator.CreateInstance() to fulfil all my objectives. I need to verify whether the community thinks the same way as me or have a better suggestion to solve the problem. The post is really long and I sincerely thank you if you come til this point. Waiting for your valuable suggestions. Rajarshi

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ASP.NET Login Page Redirection Problem

- by Daniel

Hello everyone! I'm building a silverlight application hosted on ASP.NET Web App. / IIS7 / SSL-enabled website. For security, I put my silverlight page inside a Members folder in the ASP.NET Web Application, and restricted access from anonymous users.(see web.config below) when users try to access pages under Members folder, they get redirected to https://www.ssldemo.com/authenticationtest/login.aspx. (see web.config below) (I've mapped www.ssldemo.com to 127.0.0.1). for security, I'm switching to HTTPS in login.aspx, and back to HTTP after validation. below is the code for login.aspx.cs. protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e) { LoginControl.LoggedIn += new EventHandler(LoginControl_LoggedIn); } void LoginControl_LoggedIn(object sender, EventArgs e) { //for going to ReturnURL & switching back to HTTP string serverName = HttpUtility.UrlEncode(Request.ServerVariables["SERVER_NAME"]); string returnURL = Request["ReturnURL"]; Response.Redirect(ResolveClientUrl("http://" + serverName + returnURL)); } The problem is, when I deploy another application to http://www.ssldemo.com/authenticationtest/members/AnotherApplication/ and open http://www.ssldemo.com/authenticationtest/members/AnotherApplication/default.aspx, Users get redirected to https://www.ssldemo.com/authenticationtest/login.aspx?ReturnUrl=%2fauthenticationtest%2fmembers%2fanotherapplication%2fdefault.aspx. but even when I enter the correct credentials at login page, I get redirected to the same login page again, not to the ReturnUrl. when I looked into fiddler, it said '302 object moved to here.' Thank you for reading! Any input will be much appreciated. <configuration> <connectionStrings> <add name="CompanyDatabase" connectionString="Data Source=192.168.0.2;Initial Catalog=SomeTable;User ID=Username;Password=P@ssword" /> </connectionStrings> <system.web> <compilation debug="true" targetFramework="4.0" /> <authentication mode="Forms"> <forms slidingExpiration="true" timeout="15" loginUrl="https://www.ssldemo.com/authenticationtest/login.aspx" defaultUrl="~/Members/Default.aspx" > </forms> </authentication>  <membership defaultProvider="MyMembershipProvider" userIsOnlineTimeWindow="15"> <providers> <clear /> <add name="MyMembershipProvider" type="AuthenticationTest.Web.MyMembershipProvider" connectionStringName="CompanyDatabase" applicationName="AuthenticationTest.Web"/> </providers> </membership> </system.web>  <location path="Members"> <system.web> <authorization> <deny users="?"/> </authorization> </system.web> </location> </configuration>

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Java algorithm for normalizing audio

- by Marty Pitt

I'm trying to normalize an audio file of speech. Specifically, where an audio file contains peaks in volume, I'm trying to level it out, so the quiet sections are louder, and the peaks are quieter. I know very little about audio manipulation, beyond what I've learnt from working on this task. Also, my math is embarrassingly weak. I've done some research, and the Xuggle site provides a sample which shows reducing the volume using the following code: (full version here) @Override public void onAudioSamples(IAudioSamplesEvent event) { // get the raw audio byes and adjust it's value ShortBuffer buffer = event.getAudioSamples().getByteBuffer().asShortBuffer(); for (int i = 0; i < buffer.limit(); ++i) buffer.put(i, (short)(buffer.get(i) * mVolume)); super.onAudioSamples(event); } Here, they modify the bytes in getAudioSamples() by a constant of mVolume. Building on this approach, I've attempted a normalisation modifies the bytes in getAudioSamples() to a normalised value, considering the max/min in the file. (See below for details). I have a simple filter to leave "silence" alone (ie., anything below a value). I'm finding that the output file is very noisy (ie., the quality is seriously degraded). I assume that the error is either in my normalisation algorithim, or the way I manipulate the bytes. However, I'm unsure of where to go next. Here's an abridged version of what I'm currently doing. Step 1: Find peaks in file: Reads the full audio file, and finds this highest and lowest values of buffer.get() for all AudioSamples @Override public void onAudioSamples(IAudioSamplesEvent event) { IAudioSamples audioSamples = event.getAudioSamples(); ShortBuffer buffer = audioSamples.getByteBuffer().asShortBuffer(); short min = Short.MAX_VALUE; short max = Short.MIN_VALUE; for (int i = 0; i < buffer.limit(); ++i) { short value = buffer.get(i); min = (short) Math.min(min, value); max = (short) Math.max(max, value); } // assign of min/max ommitted for brevity. super.onAudioSamples(event); } Step 2: Normalize all values: In a loop similar to step1, replace the buffer with normalized values, calling: buffer.put(i, normalize(buffer.get(i)); public short normalize(short value) { if (isBackgroundNoise(value)) return value; short rawMin = // min from step1 short rawMax = // max from step1 short targetRangeMin = 1000; short targetRangeMax = 8000; int abs = Math.abs(value); double a = (abs - rawMin) * (targetRangeMax - targetRangeMin); double b = (rawMax - rawMin); double result = targetRangeMin + ( a/b ); // Copy the sign of value to result. result = Math.copySign(result,value); return (short) result; } Questions: Is this a valid approach for attempting to normalize an audio file? Is my math in normalize() valid? Why would this cause the file to become noisy, where a similar approach in the demo code doesn't?

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wordexp followed by strcpy = EXC_BAD_ACCESS + sharedlibrary apply-load-rules-all

- by fyngyrz

The implication is a memory problem. I have static allocations for these: char akdir[400]; char homedir[400]; This crashes on the first strcpy(): void setuplibfoo() { long ii; double x; wordexp_t result; // This obtains the user's home directory // -------------------------------------- homedir[0]=0; // in case wordexp fails switch (wordexp("~/",&result,0)) { case 0: // Successful. We'll fall into deallocate when done. { strcpy(homedir,result.we_wordv[0]); // <<--- CRASH! strcpy(akdir,homedir); strcat(akdir,"ak-plugins/"); vs_status(akdir); } case WRDE_NOSPACE: // If the error was WRDE_NOSPACE, then { // perhaps part of the result was allocated. wordfree (&result); } default: // all other errors do not require deallocation { break; } } ...additional code clipped.. doesn't get there on crash. This is in a shared library I've written that is linked to my application, also something I've written. In this case, it doesn't get very far, although if it starts, it's fine. ...I've read the wordexp docs several times; they say they allocate new objects, so you just set up that type and call them with the address. The switch error model is right from the wordexp docs: http://www.gnu.org/s/libc/manual/html_mono/libc.html#Wordexp-Example It doesn't always crash. Just sometimes, and just under 10.6. Never under 10.5 I'm building debug mode with XCode 3.1.1, under OSX 10.5.8 it seems to run ok, I've not seen a crash -- under 10.6, it crashes... sometimes. But always with that same exception, and always in the same place. The Google has it that this actually means, somehow, that it's too soon to allocate memory. But all the instances I could find were memory errors on the part of the programmer. Overruns, etc. And I can't find any docs on when it IS safe to allocate memory. Now, the path that expands there is nowhere near 400 characters. it's this (it it completes): /Users/flake/ak-plugins/ and this: /Users/flake/ ...if it doesn't. the strcpy... copies 2nd param to first. Theirs to mine. And it works! under 10.5. :/ So is wordexp broke? Is 10.6 broke? Am I cRaZy? Here's the debugger output: 0x00013446 <+0049> call 0xc98da <dyld_stub_wordexp> 0x0001344b <+0054> test %eax,%eax 0x0001344d <+0056> je 0x13454 <setuplibfoo+63> 0x0001344f <+0058> jmp 0x134da <setuplibfoo+197> 0x00013454 <+0063> mov -0x1c(%ebp),%eax 0x00013457 <+0066> mov (%eax),%eax 0x00013459 <+0068> mov %eax,0x4(%esp) 0x0001345d <+0072> lea 0xb6cc2(%ebx),%eax 0x00013463 <+0078> mov (%eax),%eax 0x00013465 <+0080> mov %eax,(%esp) 0x00013468 <+0083> call 0xc9898 <dyld_stub_strcpy> 0x0001346d <+0088> lea 0xb6cc2(%ebx),%eax <<--CRASH!

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Trying to create an image list based on what is defined as the order, and loosing

- by user1691463

I have a custom created module for Joomla 2.5 and within the params of the module, and have a loop that is not outputting as expected. I have the following parameters (fields) int he module: Order Thumb image Image Title Full-size image Now there are 10 sets of these group of 4 params. What I am trying to do is loop through each of the object sets, 10 of them, and on each iteration, build an HTML image list structure. The if statement is building the HTML structure for the sets that have an order value that is greater than 0, and the else is creating the html for those sets that do not have a value greater that 0. The goal is to create two variables and then concatenate the the strings together; the leading set are the sets that have an order defined. This is not happening and every thrid loop seems like it is missing. Here is the order as it is set in the 10 sets Set 1 = 0 Set 2 = 4 Set 3 = 1 Set 4 = 0 Set 5 = 5 Set 6 = 0 Set 7 = 0 Set 8 = 6 Set 9 = 3 Set 10 = 9 However, the outcomes is: 9 5 1 4 6 7 10 Instead of the expected: 3 9 2 5 8 1 (below here are those sets that were not greater than 0 in order of appearance) 4 6 7 whats wrong here that I can not see <?php for ($i = 1; $i <= 10; $i++) { $order = $params->get('order'.$i);#get order for main loop of 10 $active = ""; if ($order > 0) {#Check if greater than 0 for ($n = 1; $n <= 10; $n++) {#loop through all order fields looking and build html lowest to highest; $ordercheck =$params->get('order'.$n); if ($ordercheck == $i) { $img = $params->get('image'.$n); $fimage = $params->get('image'.$n.'fullimage'); $title = $params->get('image'.$n.'alttext'); $active = ""; $active = $active . '<li>'; $active = $active . '<a href="'.$fimage.'" rel="prettyPhoto[gallery1]" title="'.$title.'">'; $active = $active . '<img src="'.$img.'" alt="'.$title.'" />'; $active = $active . '</a>'; $active = $active . '</li>'; $leading = $leading . $active; } } } else { #if the itteration $order was not greater than 0, build in order of accourance $img = $params->get('image'.$i); $fimage = $params->get('image'.$i.'fullimage'); $title = $params->get('image'.$i.'alttext'); $active = $active . '<li>'; $active = $active . '<a href="'.$fimage.'" rel="prettyPhoto[gallery1]" title="'.$title.'">'; $active = $active . '<img src="'.$img.'" alt="'.$title.'" />'; $active = $active . '</a></li>'; $unordered = $unordered . $active; } $imagesList = $leading . $unordered; } ?>

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Muti-Schema Privileges for a Table Trigger in an Oracle Database

- by sisslack

I'm trying to write a table trigger which queries another table that is outside the schema where the trigger will reside. Is this possible? It seems like I have no problem querying tables in my schema but I get: Error: ORA-00942: table or view does not exist when trying trying to query tables outside my schema. EDIT My apologies for not providing as much information as possible the first time around. I was under the impression this question was more simple. I'm trying create a trigger on a table that changes some fields on a newly inserted row based on the existence of some data that may or may not be in a table that is in another schema. The user account that I'm using to create the trigger does have the permissions to run the queries independently. In fact, I've had my trigger print the query I'm trying to run and was able to run it on it's own successfully. I should also note that I'm building the query dynamically by using the EXECUTE IMMEDIATE statement. Here's an example: CREATE OR REPLACE TRIGGER MAIN_SCHEMA.EVENTS BEFORE INSERT ON MAIN_SCHEMA.EVENTS REFERENCING OLD AS OLD NEW AS NEW FOR EACH ROW DECLARE rtn_count NUMBER := 0; table_name VARCHAR2(17) := :NEW.SOME_FIELD; key_field VARCHAR2(20) := :NEW.ANOTHER_FIELD; BEGIN CASE WHEN (key_field = 'condition_a') THEN EXECUTE IMMEDIATE 'select count(*) from OTHER_SCHEMA_A.'||table_name||' where KEY_FIELD='''||key_field||'''' INTO rtn_count; WHEN (key_field = 'condition_b') THEN EXECUTE IMMEDIATE 'select count(*) from OTHER_SCHEMA_B.'||table_name||' where KEY_FIELD='''||key_field||'''' INTO rtn_count; WHEN (key_field = 'condition_c') THEN EXECUTE IMMEDIATE 'select count(*) from OTHER_SCHEMA_C.'||table_name||' where KEY_FIELD='''||key_field||'''' INTO rtn_count; END CASE; IF (rtn_count > 0) THEN -- change some fields that are to be inserted END IF; END; The trigger seams to fail on the EXECUTE IMMEDIATE with the previously mentioned error. EDIT I have done some more research and I can offer more clarification. The user account I'm using to create this trigger is not MAIN_SCHEMA or any one of the OTHER_SCHEMA_Xs. The account I'm using (ME) is given privileges to the involved tables via the schema users themselves. For example (USER_TAB_PRIVS): GRANTOR GRANTEE TABLE_SCHEMA TABLE_NAME PRIVILEGE GRANTABLE HIERARCHY MAIN_SCHEMA ME MAIN_SCHEMA EVENTS DELETE NO NO MAIN_SCHEMA ME MAIN_SCHEMA EVENTS INSERT NO NO MAIN_SCHEMA ME MAIN_SCHEMA EVENTS SELECT NO NO MAIN_SCHEMA ME MAIN_SCHEMA EVENTS UPDATE NO NO OTHER_SCHEMA_X ME OTHER_SCHEMA_X TARGET_TBL SELECT NO NO And I have the following system privileges (USER_SYS_PRIVS): USERNAME PRIVILEGE ADMIN_OPTION ME ALTER ANY TRIGGER NO ME CREATE ANY TRIGGER NO ME UNLIMITED TABLESPACE NO And this is what I found in the Oracle documentation: To create a trigger in another user's schema, or to reference a table in another schema from a trigger in your schema, you must have the CREATE ANY TRIGGER system privilege. With this privilege, the trigger can be created in any schema and can be associated with any user's table. In addition, the user creating the trigger must also have EXECUTE privilege on the referenced procedures, functions, or packages. Here: Oracle Doc So it looks to me like this should work, but I'm not sure about the "EXECUTE privilege" it's referring to in the doc.

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hosting simple python scripts in a container to handle concurrency, configuration, caching, etc.

- by Justin Grant

My first real-world Python project is to write a simple framework (or re-use/adapt an existing one) which can wrap small python scripts (which are used to gather custom data for a monitoring tool) with a "container" to handle boilerplate tasks like: fetching a script's configuration from a file (and keeping that info up to date if the file changes and handle decryption of sensitive config data) running multiple instances of the same script in different threads instead of spinning up a new process for each one expose an API for caching expensive data and storing persistent state from one script invocation to the next Today, script authors must handle the issues above, which usually means that most script authors don't handle them correctly, causing bugs and performance problems. In addition to avoiding bugs, we want a solution which lowers the bar to create and maintain scripts, especially given that many script authors may not be trained programmers. Below are examples of the API I've been thinking of, and which I'm looking to get your feedback about. A scripter would need to build a single method which takes (as input) the configuration that the script needs to do its job, and either returns a python object or calls a method to stream back data in chunks. Optionally, a scripter could supply methods to handle startup and/or shutdown tasks. HTTP-fetching script example (in pseudocode, omitting the actual data-fetching details to focus on the container's API): def run (config, context, cache) : results = http_library_call (config.url, config.http_method, config.username, config.password, ...) return { html : results.html, status_code : results.status, headers : results.response_headers } def init(config, context, cache) : config.max_threads = 20 # up to 20 URLs at one time (per process) config.max_processes = 3 # launch up to 3 concurrent processes config.keepalive = 1200 # keep process alive for 10 mins without another call config.process_recycle.requests = 1000 # restart the process every 1000 requests (to avoid leaks) config.kill_timeout = 600 # kill the process if any call lasts longer than 10 minutes Database-data fetching script example might look like this (in pseudocode): def run (config, context, cache) : expensive = context.cache["something_expensive"] for record in db_library_call (expensive, context.checkpoint, config.connection_string) : context.log (record, "logDate") # log all properties, optionally specify name of timestamp property last_date = record["logDate"] context.checkpoint = last_date # persistent checkpoint, used next time through def init(config, context, cache) : cache["something_expensive"] = get_expensive_thing() def shutdown(config, context, cache) : expensive = cache["something_expensive"] expensive.release_me() Is this API appropriately "pythonic", or are there things I should do to make this more natural to the Python scripter? (I'm more familiar with building C++/C#/Java APIs so I suspect I'm missing useful Python idioms.) Specific questions: is it natural to pass a "config" object into a method and ask the callee to set various configuration options? Or is there another preferred way to do this? when a callee needs to stream data back to its caller, is a method like context.log() (see above) appropriate, or should I be using yield instead? (yeild seems natural, but I worry it'd be over the head of most scripters) My approach requires scripts to define functions with predefined names (e.g. "run", "init", "shutdown"). Is this a good way to do it? If not, what other mechanism would be more natural? I'm passing the same config, context, cache parameters into every method. Would it be better to use a single "context" parameter instead? Would it be better to use global variables instead? Finally, are there existing libraries you'd recommend to make this kind of simple "script-running container" easier to write?

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Passing an address inside a WordPress post to a Google Map elsewhere on the Page

- by ael_ecurai

Background: My client is building their own WordPress site (using a purchased feature-rich theme), and I'm modifying a child theme as necessary to achieve customizations she wants. The theme comes with a Page template that includes a full-width Google Map across the top, which pulls its marker from a single address set within the Theme Options. It's meant to be used for one main "Contact Us" page. The client's business has several locations, and she wants each location's page to include such a map. (Example linked below.) It seems that the ideal solution would be the ability to specify an address within a shortcode in the Post, and have that set the map marker. Here's how the theme makes the map (where $mapAddress is the address from the Theme Options): <?php $mapAddress = ot_get_option( 'map_address' ); $mapHeight = ot_get_option( 'map_height' ); $mapContent = ot_get_option( 'map_content' ); ?> <section id="block-map-wrapper"> <div id="block-map" class="clearfix"> <script type="text/javascript" src="https://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/js?sensor=true"></script> <script> jQuery(document).ready(function(){ // Map Options var mapOptions = { zoom: 15, scrollwheel: false, zoomControl: true, zoomControlOptions: { style: google.maps.ZoomControlStyle.SMALL, position: google.maps.ControlPosition.TOP_LEFT }, mapTypeControl: true, scaleControl: false, panControl: false, mapTypeId: google.maps.MapTypeId.ROADMAP }; // The Map Object var map = new google.maps.Map(document.getElementById("map"), mapOptions); var address = ""; var geocoder = new google.maps.Geocoder(); geocoder.geocode({ "address" : "<?php echo $mapAddress; ?>" }, function (results, status) { if (status == google.maps.GeocoderStatus.OK) { address = results[0].geometry.location; map.setCenter(results[0].geometry.location); var marker = new google.maps.Marker({ position: address, map: map, clickable: true, animation: google.maps.Animation.DROP }); var infowindow = new google.maps.InfoWindow({ content: "<?php echo $mapContent; ?>" }); google.maps.event.addListener(marker, "click", function() { infowindow.open(map, marker); }); } }); }); </script> <div id="map" class = "map" style = "width: 100%; height: <?php echo $mapHeight; ?>px"></div> </div> <div class="shadow-bottom"></div> </section> Here's a test page using a custom Page template I've created. Right now it's using the same map code as above. I've tried creating a shortcode that takes an address attribute and sets it as $mapAddress, but that didn't work. I believe it's because the map is already loaded by the time the Loop gets parsed. How can I tell Maps to "come back" to the post to get the proper address? My specialty lies in HTML & CSS, but Javascript befuddles me fairly easily, so please be explicit when explaining implementation. Bonus: A further goal is to have the locations' parent Page also include such a map, but have multiple markers representing the multiple locations. When taking more than one location, Google Maps only accepts latitude/longitude. I don't want my client to be concerned with coordinates, so I know there's got to be something I can do with the geocoding service so she can just input a list of addresses instead (into the same, or similar, shortcode solution developed for my main question). But I am extra-clueless about how to do that.

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When I try to redefine a variable, I get an index out of bounds error

- by user2770254

I'm building a program to act as a calculator with memory, so you can give variables and their values. Whenever I'm trying to redefine a variable, a = 5, to a = 6, I get an index out of bounds error. public static void main(String args[]) { LinkedHashMap<String,Integer> map = new LinkedHashMap<String,Integer>(); Scanner scan = new Scanner(System.in); ArrayList<Integer> values = new ArrayList<>(); ArrayList<String> variables = new ArrayList<>(); while(scan.hasNextLine()) { String line = scan.nextLine(); String[] tokens = line.split(" "); if(!Character.isDigit(tokens[0].charAt(0)) && !line.equals("clear") && !line.equals("var")) { int value = 0; for(int i=0; i<tokens.length; i++) { if(tokens.length==3) { value = Integer.parseInt(tokens[2]); System.out.printf("%5d\n",value); if(map.containsKey(tokens[0])) { values.set(values.indexOf(tokens[0]), value); variables.set(variables.indexOf(tokens[0]), tokens[0]); } else { values.add(value); } break; } else if(tokens[i].charAt(0) == '+') { value = addition(tokens, value); System.out.printf("%5d\n",value); variables.add(tokens[0]); if(map.containsKey(tokens[0])) { values.set(values.indexOf(tokens[0]), value); variables.set(variables.indexOf(tokens[0]), tokens[0]); } else { values.add(value); } break; } else if(i==tokens.length-1 && tokens.length != 3) { System.out.println("No operation"); break; } } map.put(tokens[0], value); } if(Character.isDigit(tokens[0].charAt(0))) { int value = 0; if(tokens.length==1) { System.out.printf("%5s\n", tokens[0]); } else { value = addition(tokens, value); System.out.printf("%5d\n", value); } } if(line.equals("clear")) { clear(map); } if(line.equals("var")) { variableList(variables, values); } } } public static int addition(String[] a, int b) { for(String item : a) { if(Character.isDigit(item.charAt(0))) { int add = Integer.parseInt(item); b = b + add; } } return b; } public static void clear(LinkedHashMap<String,Integer> b) { b.clear(); } public static void variableList(ArrayList<String> a, ArrayList<Integer> b) { for(int i=0; i<a.size(); i++) { System.out.printf("%5s: %d\n", a.get(i), b.get(i)); } } I included the whole code because I'm not sure where the error is arising from.

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PHP mysql multi-table search returning different table and field data row after row

- by Kinyanjui Kamau

Hi Guys, I am building a social networking site that is dedicated to nightclubs and night events. Among other tables, I have a users table, events table and establishments table. I am really intrigued with how Facebook in particular is able to query and return matches of not just users but also pages, ads etc row after row. Im sure most who are reading this have tried the facebook search My question is in my case, should I: Perform 3 separate LIKE %search% on each of the tables on search.php. Draw up 3 separate tables to show the results of what matches in the relevant queries which are collapsed when empty(on the same search.php) ie In search.php //query users table $query_user = "SELECT user_first_name, user_last_name, username, picture_thumb_url, avatar FROM users JOIN picture ON users.user_id = picture.user_id AND picture.avatar=1 ORDER BY users.user_id"; $result_users = mysql_query($query_user, $connections) or die(mysql_error()); $row_result_users = mysql_fetch_assoc($wid_updates); //query events table $query_event = "SELECT event_thumb_url, event_name, event_venue, event_date FROM event WHERE event_name LIKE '%".$search_value."%'"; $event = mysql_query($query_event, $connections) or die(mysql_error()); $row_event = mysql_fetch_assoc($event); $totalRows_event = mysql_num_rows($event); //query establishments table $query_establishment = "SELECT establishment_thumb_url, establishment_name, location_id, establishment_pricing FROM establishment WHERE establishment_name LIKE '%".$search_value."%'"; $establishment = mysql_query($query_establishment, $connections) or die(mysql_error()); $row_establishment = mysql_fetch_assoc($establishment); $totalRows_establishment = mysql_num_rows($establishment); My html: <table max-width="500" name="users" border="0"> <tr> <td width="50" height="50"></td> <td width="150"></td> <td width="150"></td> <td width="150"></td> </tr> </table> <table width="500" name="events" border="0"> <tr> <td width="50" height="50"><a href="#profile.php"><img src="Images/<?php echo $row_event['event_thumb_url']; ?>" border="0" height="50" width="50"/></a></td> <td width="150"><?php echo $row_event['event_name']; ?></td> <td width="150"><?php echo $row_event['event_venue']; ?></td> <td width="150"><?php echo $row_event['event_date']; ?></td> </tr> </table> <table width="500" name="establishments" border="0"> <tr> <td width="50" height="50"><a href="#profile.php"><img src="Establishment_Images/<?php echo $row_establishment['establishment_thumb_url']; ?>" border="0" height="50" width="50"/></a></td> <td width="150"><?php echo $row_establishment['establishment_name']; ?></td> <td width="150"><?php echo $row_establishment['location_id']; ?></td> <td width="150"><?php echo $row_establishment['establishment_pricing']; ?></td> </tr> </table> I haven't populated the PHP echo's for the user table. This is just to give you an idea of what I am trying to do. Any assistance?

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Many to many self join through junction table

- by Peter

I have an EF model that can self-reference through an intermediary class to define a parent/child relationship. I know how to do a pure many-to-many relationship using the Map command, but for some reason going through this intermediary class is causing problems with my mappings. The intermediary class provides additional properties for the relationship. See the classes, modelBinder logic and error below: public class Equipment { [Key] public int EquipmentId { get; set; } public virtual List<ChildRecord> Parents { get; set; } public virtual List<ChildRecord> Children { get; set; } } public class ChildRecord { [Key] public int ChildId { get; set; } [Required] public int Quantity { get; set; } [Required] public Equipment Parent { get; set; } [Required] public Equipment Child { get; set; } } I've tried building the mappings in both directions, though I only keep one set in at a time: modelBuilder.Entity<ChildRecord>() .HasRequired(x => x.Parent) .WithMany(x => x.Children ) .WillCascadeOnDelete(false); modelBuilder.Entity<ChildRecord>() .HasRequired(x => x.Child) .WithMany(x => x.Parents) .WillCascadeOnDelete(false); OR modelBuilder.Entity<Equipment>() .HasMany(x => x.Parents) .WithRequired(x => x.Child) .WillCascadeOnDelete(false); modelBuilder.Entity<Equipment>() .HasMany(x => x.Children) .WithRequired(x => x.Parent) .WillCascadeOnDelete(false); Regardless of which set I use, I get the error: The foreign key component 'Child' is not a declared property on type 'ChildRecord'. Verify that it has not been explicitly excluded from the model and that it is a valid primitive property. when I try do deploy my ef model to the database. If I build it without the modelBinder logic in place then I get two ID columns for Child and two ID columns for Parent in my ChildRecord table. This makes sense since it tries to auto create the navigation properties from Equipment and doesn't know that there are already properties in ChildRecord to fulfill this need. I tried using Data Annotations on the class, and no modelBuilder code, this failed with the same error as above: [Required] [ForeignKey("EquipmentId")] public Equipment Parent { get; set; } [Required] [ForeignKey("EquipmentId")] public Equipment Child { get; set; } AND [InverseProperty("Child")] public virtual List<ChildRecord> Parents { get; set; } [InverseProperty("Parent")] public virtual List<ChildRecord> Children { get; set; } I've looked at various other answers around the internet/SO, and the common difference seems to be that I am self joining where as all the answers I can find are for two different types. Entity Framework Code First Many to Many Setup For Existing Tables Many to many relationship with junction table in Entity Framework? Creating many to many junction table in Entity Framework

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Using javascript, show a certain amount of divs based on an answer

- by Adam

I'm building a form that first asks if you have 'foo'. If the answer is 'Yes', a div appears and asks 'How many foo do you have'? Based on the quantity answered, I'd like to show only that many divs. Thus if the user answers 1, only the first div will show. If they answer three, the first three will show. I have it set so that if the user answers no, the question of the amount remains hidden, but if they answer yes, they would be prompted for the quantity. This is what I've got so far... <script type="text/javascript"> $(document).ready(function(){ $(window).load(function() { $('#amt_of_foo,.foo_panels').hide(); }); $('#yes_foo').click(function() { $('#amt_of_foo').show(); }); $('#no_foo').click(function() { $('.foo_panels,#amt_of_foo').hide(); }); }); </script> </head> <body> <ul> <li> <div class="panel section_panel"> <h2>Questions About Your Foo</h2> <span>Do you have foo?:</span> <input type="radio" name="foo" id="no_foo" /> No <br /> <input type="radio" name="foo" id="yes_foo" /> Yes:</span></span> <span id="amt_of_foo"> <span>How many foo do you have?:</span> <span><input id="qty_of_foo" type="text" size="5" /> </span> </span> </div> </li>  <div class="foo_panels"> <li> <li> <div class="panel foo_1"> <h1>First foo's information</h1> <span>Foo name: <input type="text" size="20" /></span> </div> </li> <li> <div class="panel foo_2"> <h1>Second foo's information</h1> <span>Foo name: <input type="text" size="20" /></span> </div> </li> <li> <div class="panel foo_3"> <h1>Third foo's information</h1> <span>Foo name: <input type="text" size="20" /></span> </div> </li> </div>  <li> <div class="panel"> <h1>Next Question, if no foo</h1> </div> </li> </ul> The ul is used for a jQuery 'slider' plugin. the 'panel' class is used for global css.

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Gap between Navbar and Jumbotron

- by DDK

I am building I suppose you could call a template for the site I am going to build however I am still pretty new to bootstrap and thus have trouble figuring which CSS rules are affecting elements etc. The problem I am having is I cannot get the Jumbotron unit to sit flush with the bottom of the navbar. I have found a few questions on here about the same problem but the solutions did not work. Here is my code </head> <body> <div class="row"> <div> <img src="http://placehold.it/1600x300" width="100%"> </div>  <div class="navbar navbar-default navbar-static-top" role="navigation"> <div class="container"> <div class="navbar-header"> <button type="button" class="navbar-toggle" data-toggle="collapse" data-target=".navbar-collapse"> <span class="sr-only">Toggle navigation</span> <span class="icon-bar"></span> <span class="icon-bar"></span> <span class="icon-bar"></span> </button> </div> <div class="navbar-collapse collapse"> <ul class="nav nav-justified" id="myNav"> <li class="active"><a href="#">Home</a></li> <li><a href="#about">About</a></li> <li><a href="#contact">Contact</a></li> <li><a href="#contact">Services</a></li> </ul> </div> </div> </div> <div class="jumbotron" id="openingtext"> This is where the opening sale text will go </div> <div class="container">  <div class="row"> <div class="col-md-4"> <h2>Heading</h2> <p>Donec id elit non mi porta gravida at eget metus. Fusce dapibus, tellus ac cursus commodo, tortor mauris condimentum nibh, ut fermentum massa justo sit amet risus. Etiam porta sem malesuada magna mollis euismod. Donec sed odio dui. </p> <p><a class="btn btn-default" href="#" role="button">View details »</a></p> </div> <div class="col-md-4"> <h2>Heading</h2> I would provide the css but as it is all being pulled from an unchanged version of bootstrap and my stylesheet.css has nothing relating to any of these ids etc it seems pointless to do so. I look forward to hearing your solutions guys and girls

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Table Name is null in the sqlite database in android device

- by Mahe

I am building a simple app which stores some contacts and retrieves contacts in android phone device. I have created my own database and a table and inserting the values to the table in phone. My phone is not rooted. So I cannot access the files, but I see that values are stored in the table. And tested on a emulator also. Till here it is fine. Display all the contacts in a list by fetching data from table. This is also fine. But the problem is When I am trying to delete the record, it shows the table name is null in the logcat(not an exception), and the data is not deleted. But in emulator the data is getting deleted from table. I am not able to achieve this through phone. This is my code for deleting, public boolean onContextItemSelected(MenuItem item) { super.onContextItemSelected(item); AdapterView.AdapterContextMenuInfo info = (AdapterView.AdapterContextMenuInfo) item .getMenuInfo(); int menuItemIndex = item.getItemId(); String[] menuItems = getResources().getStringArray(R.array.menu); String menuItemName = menuItems[menuItemIndex]; String listItemName = Customers[info.position]; if (item.getTitle().toString().equalsIgnoreCase("Delete")) { Toast.makeText( context, "Selected List item is: " + listItemName + "MenuItem is: " + menuItemName, Toast.LENGTH_LONG).show(); DB = context.openOrCreateDatabase("CustomerDetails.db", MODE_PRIVATE, null); try { int pos = info.position; pos = pos + 1; Log.d("", "customers[pos]: " + Customers[info.position]); Cursor c = DB .rawQuery( "Select customer_id,first_name,last_name from CustomerInfo", null); int rowCount = c.getCount(); DB.delete(Table_name, "customer_id" + "=" + String.valueOf(pos), null); DB.close(); Log.d("", "" + String.valueOf(pos)); Toast.makeText(context, "Deleted Customer", Toast.LENGTH_LONG) .show(); // Customers[info.position]=null; getCustomers(); } catch (Exception e) { Toast.makeText(context, "Delete unsuccessfull", Toast.LENGTH_LONG).show(); } } this is my logcat, 07-02 10:12:42.976: D/Cursor(1560): Database path: CustomerDetails.db 07-02 10:12:42.976: D/Cursor(1560): Table name : null 07-02 10:12:42.984: D/Cursor(1560): Database path: CustomerDetails.db 07-02 10:12:42.984: D/Cursor(1560): Table name : null Don't know the reason why data is not being deleted. Data exists in the table. This is the specification I have given for creating the table public static String customer_id="customer_id"; public static String site_id="site_id"; public static String last_name="last_name"; public static String first_name="first_name"; public static String phone_number="phone_number"; public static String address="address"; public static String city="city"; public static String state="state"; public static String zip="zip"; public static String email_address="email_address"; public static String custlat="custlat"; public static String custlng="custlng"; public static String Table_name="CustomerInfo"; final SQLiteDatabase DB = context.openOrCreateDatabase( "CustomerDetails.db", MODE_PRIVATE, null); final String CREATE_TABLE = "create table if not exists " + Table_name + " (" + customer_id + " integer primary key autoincrement, " + first_name + " text not null, " + last_name + " text not null, " + phone_number+ " integer not null, " + address+ " text not null, " + city+ " text not null, " + state+ " text not null, " + zip+ " integer not null, " + email_address+ " text not null, " + custlat+ " double, " + custlng+ " double " +" );"; DB.execSQL(CREATE_TABLE); DB.close(); Please correct my code. I am struggling from two days. Any help is appreciated!!

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pass arraylist bean from android to webservice php

- by user1547432

i'm newbie in android with web service i'm trying to pass arraylist from android to webservice php server here's my bean code: public class ExpressionBean { public static final String EXPRESSION_ID = "expressionID"; public static final String EXPRESSION_TEXT = "expressionText"; public static final String ANS_TEXT1 = "ansText1"; public static final String ANS_TEXT2 = "ansText2"; public static final String ASSESSEE_ANSWER = "assesseeAnswer"; private String expressionID; private String expressionText; private String ansText1; private String ansText2; private String assesseeAnswer; public String getExpressionID() { return expressionID; } public void setExpressionID(String expressionID) { this.expressionID = expressionID; } public String getExpressionText() { return expressionText; } public void setExpressionText(String expressionText) { this.expressionText = expressionText; } public String getAnsText1() { return ansText1; } public void setAnsText1(String ansText1) { this.ansText1 = ansText1; } public String getAnsText2() { return ansText2; } public void setAnsText2(String ansText2) { this.ansText2 = ansText2; } public String getAssesseeAnswer() { return assesseeAnswer; } public void setAssesseeAnswer(String assesseeAnswer) { this.assesseeAnswer = assesseeAnswer; } } and here's my doInBackround on async task : protected Boolean doInBackground(Void... params) { // TODO: attempt authentication against a network service. boolean result = false; // test = new TestBean(); // int resultTest = 0; UserFunctions userFunction = new UserFunctions(); Log.d(TAG, "UID : " + mEmail); // Log.d(TAG, "resultTest : " + resultTest); JSONObject jsonTest = userFunction.storeTest(mEmail); Log.d(TAG, "After JSON TEST "); try { if (jsonTest.getString(KEY_SUCCESS) != null) { String res = jsonTest.getString(KEY_SUCCESS); JSONObject testData = jsonTest.getJSONObject(TAG_TEST); test = new TestBean(); test.setTestid(testData.getInt(TAG_TEST_ID)); test.setUid(testData.getInt(TAG_UID)); JSONArray list = new JSONArray(); String list2; for (int position = 0; position < expressionList.size(); position++) { Gson gson = new Gson(); list.put(gson.toJson(expressionList.get(position))); } Log.d(TAG, "JSONArray list coy : " + list); UserFunctions uf = new UserFunctions(); JSONObject jsonHistoryList = new JSONObject(); jsonHistoryList = uf.storeHistoryList(list.toString()); if (Integer.parseInt(res) == 1) { result = true; finish(); } else { result = false; } } } catch (JSONException e) { e.printStackTrace(); return false; } // TODO: register the new account here. return result; } and here's storeHistoryList Method : public JSONObject storeHistoryList(String list) { // Building Parameters List<NameValuePair> params = new ArrayList<NameValuePair>(); params.add(new BasicNameValuePair("tag", storeHistory_tag)); params.add(new BasicNameValuePair("list", list)); JSONObject json = jsonParser.getJSONFromUrl(URL, params); return json; } i want to pass list to web service list is an arraylist ExpressionBean i used gson for convert bean to json but when i execute, the log said "error parsing data... jsonarray cannot be converted to jsonobject what i must to do? thanks

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Only Execute Code on Certain Requests Java

- by BillPull

I am building a little API for class and the teacher supplied us with a link to a tutorial that provided a simple webserver that implements Runnable. I have already written some code that will parse arguments the arguments ( or at least get me the request string ) and some code that will return some simple xml. however I think certain requests like the one for the favicon are sent I think it is messing up my code. I wrapped that in an if else but it does not seem to be working. package server; import java.io.IOException; import java.io.InputStream; import java.io.OutputStream; import java.net.Socket; import java.util.*; import java.io.*; import java.net.*; import parkinglots.*; public class WorkerRunnable implements Runnable{ protected Socket clientSocket = null; protected String serverText = null; public WorkerRunnable(Socket clientSocket, String serverText) { this.clientSocket = clientSocket; this.serverText = serverText; } public Boolean authenticateAPI(String key){ //Authenticate Key against Stored Keys //TODO: Create Stored Keys and Compare return true; } public void run() { try { InputStream input = clientSocket.getInputStream(); OutputStream output = clientSocket.getOutputStream(); long time = System.currentTimeMillis(); //TODO: Parse args and output different formats and Authentication //Parse URL Arguments BufferedReader in = new BufferedReader( new InputStreamReader(clientSocket.getInputStream(), "8859_1")); String request = in.readLine(); //Server gets Favicon Request so skip that and goto args System.out.println(request); if ( request != "GET /favicon.ico HTTP/1.1" && request != "GET / HTTP/1.1" && request != null ){ String format = "", apikey =""; System.out.println("I am Here"); String request_location = request.split(" ")[1]; String request_args = request_location.replace("/",""); request_args = request_args.replace("?",""); String[] queries = request_args.split("&"); System.out.println(queries[0]); for ( int i = 0; i < queries.length; i++ ){ if( queries[i] == "format" ){ format = queries[i].split("=")[1]; } else if( queries[i] == "apikey" ){ apikey = queries[i].split("=")[1]; } } if( apikey == "" ){ apikey = "None"; } if( format == "" ){ format = "xml"; } Boolean auth = authenticateAPI(apikey); if ( auth ){ if ( format == "xml"){ // Retrieve XML Document String xml = LotFromDB.getParkingLotXML(); output.write((xml).getBytes()); }else{ //Retrieve JSON String json = LotFromDB.getParkingLotJSON(); output.write((json).getBytes()); } }else{ output.write(("Access Denied - User is Not Authenticated").getBytes()); } }else{ output.write(("Access Denied Must Pass API Key").getBytes()); } output.close(); input.close(); System.out.println("Request processed: " + time); } catch (IOException e) { //report exceptions e.printStackTrace(); } } } Console output I get I am Here format=json Request processed: 1333516648331 GET /favicon.ico HTTP/1.1 I am Here favicon.ico Request processed: 1333516648332 It always returns the XML as well. This is my first exposure to writing a web server and dealing with networking in Java, which frustrates me a lot in general, So any suggestions here are very appreciated.

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MCV PHP Am I doing the Model right? [closed]

- by Kosmo

I'm trying to create a basic website using MVC in PHP to learn MVC. Its eventually going to be some sort of social networking website but right now I am trying to create a object that can create, delete, update members. What I've done so far for the Model is in the code below, I figure my Controller will take user input and build the array of data that are then passed to this Model. Am I designing this correctly? Should the Controller be the one building the Arrays? <?php class Connection { private $server; private $database; private $user; private $password; private $conn; function __construct($server, $database, $user, $password) { $this->server = $server; $this->database = $database; $this->user = $user; $this->password = $password; } function connect() { $this->conn = mysql_connect($this->server, $this->user, $this->password) or die(mysql_error()); if (!(mysql_select_db($this->database))) { throw new Exception("Could not connect to database!"); } } function deleteMember($memberId) { $queryString = "DELETE FROM Members WHERE MemberId=" . $memberId . ';'; if (!mysql_query($queryString)) { throw new Exception("Failed Deleting Member!"); } } function insertMember($columns) { $queryString = 'INSERT INTO Members'; $keys = '('; $values = '('; $count = 0; foreach($columns as $key => $value) { $keys .= $key; $values .= $value; if (!(++$count == count($columns))) { $keys .= ','; $values .= ','; } } $queryString .= $keys . ')' . ' VALUES ' . $values . ');'; if (!mysql_query($queryString, $this->conn)) { throw new Exception('Failed Inserting Member!'); } else { return mysql_insert_id(); } } function updateMember($memberId, $columns) { $queryString = 'UPDATE Members SET '; $count = 0; foreach($columns as $key => $value) { $queryString .= $key . '=' . $value; if (!(++$count == count($columns))) { $queryString .= ', '; } } $queryString .= ' WHERE MemberId=' . $memberId . ';'; if (!mysql_query($queryString)) { throw new Exception('Failed Updating Member'); } } function getMembers() { $queryString = "SELECT * FROM Members;"; $result = mysql_query($queryString); $memberArray = array(); $count = 0; while ($row = mysql_fetch_array($result)) { $memberArray[$count++] = "Member ID: " . $row['MemberId'] . " Name: " . $row['MemberName'] . " Email: " . $row['MemberEmail']; } return $memberArray; } function disconnect() { mysql_close($this->conn); } }

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WiX 3 Tutorial: Custom EULA License and MSI localization

- by Mladen Prajdic

In this part of the ongoing Wix tutorial series we’ll take a look at how to localize your MSI into different languages. We’re still the mighty SuperForm: Program that takes care of all your label color needs. :) Localizing the MSI With WiX 3.0 localizing an MSI is pretty much a simple and straightforward process. First let look at the WiX project Properties->Build. There you can see "Cultures to build" textbox. Put specific cultures to build into the testbox or leave it empty to build all of them. Cultures have to be in correct culture format like en-US, en-GB or de-DE. Next we have to tell WiX which cultures we actually have in our project. Take a look at the first post in the series about Solution/Project structure and look at the Lang directory in the project structure picture. There we have de-de and en-us subfolders each with its own localized stuff. In the subfolders pay attention to the WXL files Loc_de-de.wxl and Loc_en-us.wxl. Each one has a <String Id="LANG"> under the WixLocalization root node. By including the string with id LANG we tell WiX we want that culture built. For English we have <String Id="LANG">1033</String>, for German <String Id="LANG">1031</String> in Loc_de-de.wxl and for French we’d have to create another file Loc_fr-FR.wxl and put <String Id="LANG">1036</String>. WXL files are localization files. Any string we want to localize we have to put in there. To reference it we use loc keyword like this: !(loc.IdOfTheVariable) => !(loc.MustCloseSuperForm) This is our Loc_en-us.wxl. Note that German wxl has an identical structure but values are in German. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?><WixLocalization Culture="en-us" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/wix/2006/localization" Codepage="1252"> <String Id="LANG">1033</String> <String Id="ProductName">SuperForm</String> <String Id="LicenseRtf" Overridable="yes">\Lang\en-us\EULA_en-us.rtf</String> <String Id="ManufacturerName">My Company Name</String> <String Id="AppNotSupported">This application is is not supported on your current OS. Minimal OS supported is Windows XP SP2</String> <String Id="DotNetFrameworkNeeded">.NET Framework 3.5 is required. Please install the .NET Framework then run this installer again.</String> <String Id="MustCloseSuperForm">Must close SuperForm!</String> <String Id="SuperFormNewerVersionInstalled">A newer version of !(loc.ProductName) is already installed.</String> <String Id="ProductKeyCheckDialog_Title">!(loc.ProductName) setup</String> <String Id="ProductKeyCheckDialogControls_Title">!(loc.ProductName) Product check</String> <String Id="ProductKeyCheckDialogControls_Description">Plese Enter following information to perform the licence check.</String> <String Id="ProductKeyCheckDialogControls_FullName">Full Name:</String> <String Id="ProductKeyCheckDialogControls_Organization">Organization:</String> <String Id="ProductKeyCheckDialogControls_ProductKey">Product Key:</String> <String Id="ProductKeyCheckDialogControls_InvalidProductKey">The product key you entered is invalid. Please call user support.</String> </WixLocalization> As you can see from the file we can use localization variables in other variables like we do for SuperFormNewerVersionInstalled string. ProductKeyCheckDialog* strings are to localize a custom dialog for Product key check which we’ll look at in the next post. Built in dialog text localization Under the de-de folder there’s also the WixUI_de-de.wxl file. This files contains German translations of all texts that are in WiX built in dialogs. It can be downloaded from WiX 3.0.5419.0 Source Forge site. Download the wix3-sources.zip and go to \src\ext\UIExtension\wixlib. There you’ll find already translated all WiX texts in 12 Languages. Localizing the custom EULA license Here it gets ugly. We can override the default EULA license easily by overriding WixUILicenseRtf WiX variable like this: <WixVariable Id="WixUILicenseRtf" Value="License.rtf" /> where License.rtf is the name of your custom EULA license file. The downside of this method is that you can only have one license file which means no localization for it. That’s why we need to make a workaround. License is checked on a dialog name LicenseAgreementDialog. What we have to do is overwrite that dialog and insert the functionality for localization. This is a code for LicenseAgreementDialogOverwritten.wxs, an overwritten LicenseAgreementDialog that supports localization. LicenseAcceptedOverwritten replaces the LicenseAccepted built in variable. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?><Wix xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/wix/2006/wi"> <Fragment> <UI> <Dialog Id="LicenseAgreementDialogOverwritten" Width="370" Height="270" Title="!(loc.LicenseAgreementDlg_Title)"> <Control Id="LicenseAcceptedOverwrittenCheckBox" Type="CheckBox" X="20" Y="207" Width="330" Height="18" CheckBoxValue="1" Property="LicenseAcceptedOverwritten" Text="!(loc.LicenseAgreementDlgLicenseAcceptedCheckBox)" /> <Control Id="Back" Type="PushButton" X="180" Y="243" Width="56" Height="17" Text="!(loc.WixUIBack)" /> <Control Id="Next" Type="PushButton" X="236" Y="243" Width="56" Height="17" Default="yes" Text="!(loc.WixUINext)"> <Publish Event="SpawnWaitDialog" Value="WaitForCostingDlg">CostingComplete = 1</Publish> <Condition Action="disable"> <![CDATA[ LicenseAcceptedOverwritten <> "1" ]]> </Condition> <Condition Action="enable">LicenseAcceptedOverwritten = "1"</Condition> </Control> <Control Id="Cancel" Type="PushButton" X="304" Y="243" Width="56" Height="17" Cancel="yes" Text="!(loc.WixUICancel)"> <Publish Event="SpawnDialog" Value="CancelDlg">1</Publish> </Control> <Control Id="BannerBitmap" Type="Bitmap" X="0" Y="0" Width="370" Height="44" TabSkip="no" Text="!(loc.LicenseAgreementDlgBannerBitmap)" /> <Control Id="LicenseText" Type="ScrollableText" X="20" Y="60" Width="330" Height="140" Sunken="yes" TabSkip="no">    <Text SourceFile="$(var.ProjectDir)\!(loc.LicenseRtf)" />  </Control> <Control Id="Print" Type="PushButton" X="112" Y="243" Width="56" Height="17" Text="!(loc.WixUIPrint)"> <Publish Event="DoAction" Value="WixUIPrintEula">1</Publish> </Control> <Control Id="BannerLine" Type="Line" X="0" Y="44" Width="370" Height="0" /> <Control Id="BottomLine" Type="Line" X="0" Y="234" Width="370" Height="0" /> <Control Id="Description" Type="Text" X="25" Y="23" Width="340" Height="15" Transparent="yes" NoPrefix="yes" Text="!(loc.LicenseAgreementDlgDescription)" /> <Control Id="Title" Type="Text" X="15" Y="6" Width="200" Height="15" Transparent="yes" NoPrefix="yes" Text="!(loc.LicenseAgreementDlgTitle)" /> </Dialog> </UI> </Fragment></Wix> Look at the Control with Id "LicenseText” and read the comments. We’ve changed the original license text source to "$(var.ProjectDir)\!(loc.LicenseRtf)". var.ProjectDir is the directory of the project file. The !(loc.LicenseRtf) is where the magic happens. Scroll up and take a look at the wxl localization file example. We have the LicenseRtf declared there and it’s been made overridable so developers can change it if they want. The value of the LicenseRtf is the path to our localized EULA relative to the WiX project directory. With little hacking we’ve achieved a fully localizable installer package. The final step is to insert the extended LicenseAgreementDialogOverwritten license dialog into the installer GUI chain. This is how it’s done under the <UI> node of course. <UI>  <Publish Dialog="WelcomeDlg" Control="Next" Event="NewDialog" Value="LicenseAgreementDialogOverwritten">1</Publish> <Publish Dialog="LicenseAgreementDialogOverwritten" Control="Back" Event="NewDialog" Value="WelcomeDlg">1</Publish> <Publish Dialog="LicenseAgreementDialogOverwritten" Control="Next" Event="NewDialog" Value="ProductKeyCheckDialog">LicenseAcceptedOverwritten = "1" AND NOT OLDER_VERSION_FOUND</Publish> <Publish Dialog="InstallDirDlg" Control="Back" Event="NewDialog" Value="ProductKeyCheckDialog">1</Publish> </UI> For a thing that should be simple for the end developer to do, localization can be a bit advanced for the novice WiXer. Hope this post makes the journey easier and that next versions of WiX improve this process. WiX 3 tutorial by Mladen Prajdic navigation WiX 3 Tutorial: Solution/Project structure and Dev resources WiX 3 Tutorial: Understanding main wxs and wxi file WiX 3 Tutorial: Generating file/directory fragments with Heat.exe WiX 3 Tutorial: Custom EULA License and MSI localization WiX 3 Tutorial: Product Key Check custom action WiX 3 Tutorial: Building an updater WiX 3 Tutorial: Icons and installer pictures WiX 3 Tutorial: Creating a Bootstrapper

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

- by Stephen Walther

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

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Version Assemblies with TFS 2010 Continuous Integration

- by Steve Michelotti

When I first heard that TFS 2010 had moved to Workflow Foundation for Team Build, I was *extremely* skeptical. I’ve loved MSBuild and didn’t quite understand the reasons for this change. In fact, given that I’ve been exclusively using Cruise Control for Continuous Integration (CI) for the last 5+ years of my career, I was skeptical of TFS for CI in general. However, after going through the learning process for TFS 2010 recently, I’m starting to become a believer. I’m also starting to see some of the benefits with Workflow Foundation for the overall processing because it gives you constructs not available in MSBuild such as parallel tasks, better control flow constructs, and a slightly better customization story. The first customization I had to make to the build process was to version the assemblies of my solution. This is not new. In fact, I’d recommend reading Mike Fourie’s well known post on Versioning Code in TFS before you get started. This post describes several foundational aspects of versioning assemblies regardless of your version of TFS. The main points are: 1) don’t use source control operations for your version file, 2) use a schema like <Major>.<Minor>.<IncrementalNumber>.0, and 3) do not keep AssemblyVersion and AssemblyFileVersion in sync. To do this in TFS 2010, the best post I’ve found has been Jim Lamb’s post of building a custom TFS 2010 workflow activity. Overall, this post is excellent but the primary issue I have with it is that the assembly version numbers produced are based in a date and look like this: “2010.5.15.1”. This is definitely not what I want. I want to be able to communicate to the developers and stakeholders that we are producing the “1.1 release” or “1.2 release” – which would have an assembly version number of “1.1.317.0” for example. In this post, I’ll walk through the process of customizing the assembly version number based on this method – customizing the concepts in Lamb’s post to suit my needs. I’ll also be combining this with the concepts of Fourie’s post – particularly with regards to the standards around how to version the assemblies. The first thing I’ll do is add a file called SolutionAssemblyVersionInfo.cs to the root of my solution that looks like this: 1: using System; 2: using System.Reflection; 3: [assembly: AssemblyVersion("1.1.0.0")] 4: [assembly: AssemblyFileVersion("1.1.0.0")] I’ll then add that file as a Visual Studio link file to each project in my solution by right-clicking the project, “Add – Existing Item…” then when I click the SolutionAssemblyVersionInfo.cs file, making sure I “Add As Link”: Now the Solution Explorer will show our file. We can see that it’s a “link” file because of the black arrow in the icon within all our projects. Of course you’ll need to remove the AssemblyVersion and AssemblyFileVersion attributes from the AssemblyInfo.cs files to avoid the duplicate attributes since they now leave in the SolutionAssemblyVersionInfo.cs file. This is an extremely common technique so that all the projects in our solution can be versioned as a unit. At this point, we’re ready to write our custom activity. The primary consideration is that I want the developer and/or tech lead to be able to easily be in control of the Major.Minor and then I want the CI process to add the third number with a unique incremental number. We’ll leave the fourth position always “0” for now – it’s held in reserve in case the day ever comes where we need to do an emergency patch to Production based on a branched version. Writing the Custom Workflow Activity Similar to Lamb’s post, I’m going to write two custom workflow activities. The “outer” activity (a xaml activity) will be pretty straight forward. It will check if the solution version file exists in the solution root and, if so, delegate the replacement of version to the AssemblyVersionInfo activity which is a CodeActivity highlighted in red below: Notice that the arguments of this activity are the “solutionVersionFile” and “tfsBuildNumber” which will be passed in. The tfsBuildNumber passed in will look something like this: “CI_MyApplication.4” and we’ll need to grab the “4” (i.e., the incremental revision number) and put that in the third position. Then we’ll need to honor whatever was specified for Major.Minor in the SolutionAssemblyVersionInfo.cs file. For example, if the SolutionAssemblyVersionInfo.cs file had “1.1.0.0” for the AssemblyVersion (as shown in the first code block near the beginning of this post), then we want to resulting file to have “1.1.4.0”. Before we do anything, let’s put together a unit test for all this so we can know if we get it right: 1: [TestMethod] 2: public void Assembly_version_should_be_parsed_correctly_from_build_name() 3: { 4: // arrange 5: const string versionFile = "SolutionAssemblyVersionInfo.cs"; 6: WriteTestVersionFile(versionFile); 7: var activity = new VersionAssemblies(); 8: var arguments = new Dictionary<string, object> { 9: { "tfsBuildNumber", "CI_MyApplication.4"}, 10: { "solutionVersionFile", versionFile} 11: }; 12: 13: // act 14: var result = WorkflowInvoker.Invoke(activity, arguments); 15: 16: // assert 17: Assert.AreEqual("1.2.4.0", (string)result["newAssemblyFileVersion"]); 18: var lines = File.ReadAllLines(versionFile); 19: Assert.IsTrue(lines.Contains("[assembly: AssemblyVersion(\"1.2.0.0\")]")); 20: Assert.IsTrue(lines.Contains("[assembly: AssemblyFileVersion(\"1.2.4.0\")]")); 21: } 22: 23: private void WriteTestVersionFile(string versionFile) 24: { 25: var fileContents = "using System.Reflection;\n" + 26: "[assembly: AssemblyVersion(\"1.2.0.0\")]\n" + 27: "[assembly: AssemblyFileVersion(\"1.2.0.0\")]"; 28: File.WriteAllText(versionFile, fileContents); 29: } At this point, the code for our AssemblyVersion activity is pretty straight forward: 1: [BuildActivity(HostEnvironmentOption.Agent)] 2: public class AssemblyVersionInfo : CodeActivity 3: { 4: [RequiredArgument] 5: public InArgument<string> FileName { get; set; } 6: 7: [RequiredArgument] 8: public InArgument<string> TfsBuildNumber { get; set; } 9: 10: public OutArgument<string> NewAssemblyFileVersion { get; set; } 11: 12: protected override void Execute(CodeActivityContext context) 13: { 14: var solutionVersionFile = this.FileName.Get(context); 15: 16: // Ensure that the file is writeable 17: var fileAttributes = File.GetAttributes(solutionVersionFile); 18: File.SetAttributes(solutionVersionFile, fileAttributes & ~FileAttributes.ReadOnly); 19: 20: // Prepare assembly versions 21: var majorMinor = GetAssemblyMajorMinorVersionBasedOnExisting(solutionVersionFile); 22: var newBuildNumber = GetNewBuildNumber(this.TfsBuildNumber.Get(context)); 23: var newAssemblyVersion = string.Format("{0}.{1}.0.0", majorMinor.Item1, majorMinor.Item2); 24: var newAssemblyFileVersion = string.Format("{0}.{1}.{2}.0", majorMinor.Item1, majorMinor.Item2, newBuildNumber); 25: this.NewAssemblyFileVersion.Set(context, newAssemblyFileVersion); 26: 27: // Perform the actual replacement 28: var contents = this.GetFileContents(newAssemblyVersion, newAssemblyFileVersion); 29: File.WriteAllText(solutionVersionFile, contents); 30: 31: // Restore the file's original attributes 32: File.SetAttributes(solutionVersionFile, fileAttributes); 33: } 34: 35: #region Private Methods 36: 37: private string GetFileContents(string newAssemblyVersion, string newAssemblyFileVersion) 38: { 39: var cs = new StringBuilder(); 40: cs.AppendLine("using System.Reflection;"); 41: cs.AppendFormat("[assembly: AssemblyVersion(\"{0}\")]", newAssemblyVersion); 42: cs.AppendLine(); 43: cs.AppendFormat("[assembly: AssemblyFileVersion(\"{0}\")]", newAssemblyFileVersion); 44: return cs.ToString(); 45: } 46: 47: private Tuple<string, string> GetAssemblyMajorMinorVersionBasedOnExisting(string filePath) 48: { 49: var lines = File.ReadAllLines(filePath); 50: var versionLine = lines.Where(x => x.Contains("AssemblyVersion")).FirstOrDefault(); 51: 52: if (versionLine == null) 53: { 54: throw new InvalidOperationException("File does not contain [assembly: AssemblyVersion] attribute"); 55: } 56: 57: return ExtractMajorMinor(versionLine); 58: } 59: 60: private static Tuple<string, string> ExtractMajorMinor(string versionLine) 61: { 62: var firstQuote = versionLine.IndexOf('"') + 1; 63: var secondQuote = versionLine.IndexOf('"', firstQuote); 64: var version = versionLine.Substring(firstQuote, secondQuote - firstQuote); 65: var versionParts = version.Split('.'); 66: return new Tuple<string, string>(versionParts[0], versionParts[1]); 67: } 68: 69: private string GetNewBuildNumber(string buildName) 70: { 71: return buildName.Substring(buildName.LastIndexOf(".") + 1); 72: } 73: 74: #endregion 75: } At this point the final step is to incorporate this activity into the overall build template. Make a copy of the DefaultTempate.xaml – we’ll call it DefaultTemplateWithVersioning.xaml. Before the build and labeling happens, drag the VersionAssemblies activity in. Then set the LabelName variable to “BuildDetail.BuildDefinition.Name + "-" + newAssemblyFileVersion since the newAssemblyFileVersion was produced by our activity. Configuring CI Once you add your solution to source control, you can configure CI with the build definition window as shown here. The main difference is that we’ll change the Process tab to reflect a different build number format and choose our custom build process file: When the build completes, we’ll see the name of our project with the unique revision number: If we look at the detailed build log for the latest build, we’ll see the label being created with our custom task: We can now look at the history labels in TFS and see the project name with the labels (the Assignment activity I added to the workflow): Finally, if we look at the physical assemblies that are produced, we can right-click on any assembly in Windows Explorer and see the assembly version in its properties: Full Traceability We now have full traceability for our code. There will never be a question of what code was deployed to Production. You can always see the assembly version in the properties of the physical assembly. That can be traced back to a label in TFS where the unique revision number matches. The label in TFS gives you the complete snapshot of the code in your source control repository at the time the code was built. This type of process for full traceability has been used for many years for CI – in fact, I’ve done similar things with CCNet and SVN for quite some time. This is simply the TFS implementation of that pattern. The new features that TFS 2010 give you to make these types of customizations in your build process are quite easy once you get over the initial curve.

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Installing UCMA 3.0 and Creating a Communications Server "14"Trusted Application Pool

A lot of setup and administration tasks have gotten a lot easier in Communications Server 14; one of them is building an application server to develop and run your UCMA 3.0 applications on. In this post, Ill walk you through installing the UCMA 3.0 Core SDK and creating a Trusted Application Pool on the server, thus adding it to the Communications Server 14 topology and allowing you to host and run UCMA 3.0 applications on it. Note: These instructions will change slightly as the bits get updated for the eventual Beta release I will update this post as soon as I get a chance to run this setup on a more recent build. Im doing the install on a simple Communications Server 14 topology consisting of the following Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V images: DC Domain Controller ExchangeUM Exchange Server 2010 CS-SE Microsoft Communications Server 2010 Standard Edition TS Development machine Ill walk through setting up UCMA 3.0 on the TS VM, which is a fully patched Windows Server 2008 R2 machine that is joined to the Fabrikam domain. Im also running Visual Studio 2010 on this VM because I intend to use it as a development machine. In a future post, Ill walk through installing just the UCMA 3.0 run time to build a true production UCMA application server. Im making a couple of assumptions here: You have an existing CS 2010 site and cluster configured(well look at this in a future post) Youre starting with a fully patched Windows Server 2008 R2 machine The machine is joined to your domain This walkthrough was done in my Fabrikam VM environment but can easily be modified for your own environment. Installing the UCMA 3.0 SDK Lets start by installing the UCMA 3.0 SDK. Run UcmaSdkWebDownload.msi to kick off the SDK installer package extract process. The installed package is extracted to C: >> Program Files >> Microsoft UCMA 3.0 >> SDK Installer Package. Browse there and run setup.exe. Click Install to install the UCMA 3.0 Core SDK and Workflow SDK. Install Communications Server Core Components UCMA 3.0 introduces a new concept called Auto-provisioning, which is most easily explained from the developer point of view. Remember what your app.config looked it in UCMA 2.0? You had to store the application GRUU, the trusted contact SIP Uri, the port for your application, and the name of the certificate authority. Thats all gone with auto-provisioning all you need in your app.config is your ApplicationId, e.g.: urn:application:MyApplication. How does CS 2010 do this? All of the applications configuration data is associated with the applications id. UCMA also queries a replicated copy of the Central Management Database to retrieve the applications configuration data and also the configuration data for any endpoints. In this step, well run Bootstrapper.exe to install the CS Core components, this checked for the following components and installs them if they are not already present: VcRedist Sqlexpress Sqlnativeclient Sqlbackcompat Ucmaredist OcsCore.msi Open a command window at C: >> Program Files >> Microsoft Communications Server 2010 >> Deployment and run the following command: Bootstrapper.exe /BootstrapReplica /MinCache /SourceDirectory:"%ProgramFiles%\Microsoft UCMA 3.0\SDK Installer Package\Prereq\BootstrapperCache" Create a New Trusted Application Pool The next step is to create a new trusted application pool for the new server. Fire up the Communications Server Management Shell from Start >> Microsoft Communications Server 2010 >> Communications Server Management Shell and enter the following PowerShell command: New-CsTrustedApplicationPool -Identity <FQDN of Server> -Registrar <FQDN of CS Server> -Site <CS Site Name> Verify that the new server was added to the CS topology by running the following PowerShell command: (Get-CsTopology -AsXml).ToString() > Topology.xml This created a file called Topology.xml in the directory that you ran the command from. Open the file and find the Clusters section and look for a node for the new server. The Cluster Fqdn is the name of your server, and note the name of the Site that this Cluster is a part of. <Cluster Fqdn="appsrv.fabrikam.com" RequiresReplication="true" RequiresSetup="true"> <ClusterId SiteId="UcMarketing2" Number="5" /> <Machine OrdinalInCluster="1" Fqdn="appsrv.fabrikam.com"> <NetInterface InterfaceSide="Primary" InterfaceNumber="1" IPAddress="0.0.0.0" /> </Machine> </Cluster> Configure CS Management Store Replication At this point, we have the CS Core components installed and the server configured as a trusted application pool. We now need to set up replication so that the Central Management Store replicates down to the new server. From the Communications Server Management Shell, run the following PowerShell command to enable the Replica service on the new server: Enable-CSReplica The Replica service is enabled, but hasn't done anything yet. This can be verified by running the following PowerShell command to check the replication status for the various servers in the topology: Get-CSManagementStoreReplicationStatus You can see in the screenshot below that the UpToDate property of the new server is still False Run the following PowerShell command to force the replication to run: Invoke-CSManagementStoreReplicationStatus Run Get-CSManagementStoreReplicationStatus again to verify that the new service is now up to date Request and Set a New Certificate The last step in the process is to request a new certificate from the certificate authority on the domain and assign it to the new server. From the Communications Server Management Shell, run the following PowerShell command to request a new certificate: Request-CSCertificate -Action new -Type default -CA <Domain Controller FQDN>\<Certificate Authority> Setting the -Verbose switch on the cmdlet creates an Xml file with its output. Open the Xml file and copy the thumbprint of the generated certificate. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <Action Name="Request-CsCertificate" Time="20100512T212258"> <Action Name="Request-CsCertificate" Time="20100512T212258"> <Info Title="Connection" Time="20100512T212258">Data Source=(local)\rtclocal;Initial Catalog=xds;Integrated Security=True</Info> <Action Time="20100512T212258"> <Info Title="Certificate use" Time="20100512T212258">urn:certref:default</Info> <Info Title="Subject distinguished name" Time="20100512T212258">CN="appsrv2.fabrikam.com"</Info> <Info Time="20100512T212259">The certificate request is submitted to the Certification Authority dc.fabrikam.com\FabrikamCA.</Info> <Info Time="20100512T212259">The certificate was issued.</Info> <Info Time="20100512T212259">The certificate was imported with thumbprint AFC3C46E459C1A39AD06247676F3555826DBF705.</Info> <Complete Time="20100512T212259" /> </Action> <Info Title="command status" Time="20100512T212259">Command execution processing completed</Info> <Action Name="DeploymentXdsCmdlet.SaveCachedItems" Time="20100512T212259"> <Info Time="20100512T212259">0 updates</Info> <Complete Time="20100512T212259" /> </Action> <Info Title="command status" Time="20100512T212259">Command has completed</Info> </Action> </Action> Run the following PowerShell command to set the certificate: Set-CsCertificate -Type Default -Thumbprint <Thumbprint> Wrapping Up You now have a new UCMA 3.0 application server in your Communications Server 2010 server topology. You can provision trusted applications and trusted application endpoints on the new server using the Communications Server 2010 Management Shell. Well take a look at how to do that in another post. Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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September 2011 Release of the Ajax Control Toolkit

- by Stephen Walther

I’m happy to announce the release of the September 2011 Ajax Control Toolkit. This release has several important new features including: Date ranges – When using the Calendar extender, you can specify a start and end date and a user can pick only those dates which fall within the specified range. This was the fourth top-voted feature request for the Ajax Control Toolkit at CodePlex. Twitter Control – You can use the new Twitter control to display recent tweets associated with a particular Twitter user or tweets which match a search query. Gravatar Control – You can use the new Gravatar control to display a unique image for each user of your website. Users can upload custom images to the Gravatar.com website or the Gravatar control can display a unique, auto-generated, image for a user. You can download this release this very minute by visiting CodePlex: http://AjaxControlToolkit.CodePlex.com Alternatively, you can execute the following command from the Visual Studio NuGet console: Improvements to the Ajax Control Toolkit Calendar Control The Ajax Control Toolkit Calendar extender control is one of the most heavily used controls from the Ajax Control Toolkit. The developers on the Superexpert team spent the last sprint focusing on improving this control. There are three important changes that we made to the Calendar control: we added support for date ranges, we added support for highlighting today’s date, and we made fixes to several bugs related to time zones and daylight savings. Using Calendar Date Ranges One of the top-voted feature requests for the Ajax Control Toolkit was a request to add support for date ranges to the Calendar control (this was the fourth most voted feature request at CodePlex). With the latest release of the Ajax Control Toolkit, the Calendar extender now supports date ranges. For example, the following page illustrates how you can create a popup calendar which allows a user only to pick dates between March 2, 2009 and May 16, 2009. <%@ Page Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeBehind="CalendarDateRange.aspx.cs" Inherits="WebApplication1.CalendarDateRange" %> <%@ Register TagPrefix="asp" Namespace="AjaxControlToolkit" Assembly="AjaxControlToolkit" %> <html> <head runat="server"> <title>Calendar Date Range</title> </head> <body> <form id="form1" runat="server"> <asp:ToolkitScriptManager ID="tsm" runat="server" /> <asp:TextBox ID="txtHotelReservationDate" runat="server" /> <asp:CalendarExtender ID="Calendar1" TargetControlID="txtHotelReservationDate" StartDate="3/2/2009" EndDate="5/16/2009" SelectedDate="3/2/2009" runat="server" /> </form> </body> </html> This page contains three controls: an Ajax Control Toolkit ToolkitScriptManager control, a standard ASP.NET TextBox control, and an Ajax Control Toolkit CalendarExtender control. Notice that the Calendar control includes StartDate and EndDate properties which restrict the range of valid dates. The Calendar control shows days, months, and years outside of the valid range as struck out. You cannot select days, months, or years which fall outside of the range. The following video illustrates interacting with the new date range feature: If you want to experiment with a live version of the Ajax Control Toolkit Calendar extender control then you can visit the Calendar Sample Page at the Ajax Control Toolkit Sample Site. Highlighted Today’s Date Another highly requested feature for the Calendar control was support for highlighting today’s date. The Calendar control now highlights the user’s current date regardless of the user’s time zone. Fixes to Time Zone and Daylight Savings Time Bugs We fixed several significant Calendar extender bugs related to time zones and daylight savings time. For example, previously, when you set the Calendar control’s SelectedDate property to the value 1/1/2007 then the selected data would appear as 12/31/2006 or 1/1/2007 or 1/2/2007 depending on the server time zone. For example, if your server time zone was set to Samoa (UTC-11:00), then setting SelectedDate=”1/1/2007” would result in “12/31/2006” being selected in the Calendar. Users of the Calendar extender control found this behavior confusing. After careful consideration, we decided to change the Calendar extender so that it interprets all dates as UTC dates. In other words, if you set StartDate=”1/1/2007” then the Calendar extender parses the date as 1/1/2007 UTC instead of parsing the date according to the server time zone. By interpreting all dates as UTC dates, we avoid all of the reported issues with the SelectedDate property showing the wrong date. Furthermore, when you set the StartDate and EndDate properties, you know that the same StartDate and EndDate will be selected regardless of the time zone associated with the server or associated with the browser. The date 1/1/2007 will always be the date 1/1/2007. The New Twitter Control This release of the Ajax Control Toolkit introduces a new twitter control. You can use the Twitter control to display recent tweets associated with a particular twitter user. You also can use this control to show the results of a twitter search. The following page illustrates how you can use the Twitter control to display recent tweets made by Scott Hanselman: <%@ Page Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeBehind="TwitterProfile.aspx.cs" Inherits="WebApplication1.TwitterProfile" %> <%@ Register TagPrefix="asp" Namespace="AjaxControlToolkit" Assembly="AjaxControlToolkit" %> <html > <head runat="server"> <title>Twitter Profile</title> </head> <body> <form id="form1" runat="server"> <asp:ToolkitScriptManager ID="tsm" runat="server" /> <asp:Twitter ID="Twitter1" ScreenName="shanselman" runat="server" /> </form> </body> </html> This page includes two Ajax Control Toolkit controls: the ToolkitScriptManager control and the Twitter control. The Twitter control is set to display tweets from Scott Hanselman (shanselman): You also can use the Twitter control to display the results of a search query. For example, the following page displays all recent tweets related to the Ajax Control Toolkit: Twitter limits the number of times that you can interact with their API in an hour. Twitter recommends that you cache results on the server (https://dev.twitter.com/docs/rate-limiting). By default, the Twitter control caches results on the server for a duration of 5 minutes. You can modify the cache duration by assigning a value (in seconds) to the Twitter control's CacheDuration property. The Twitter control wraps a standard ASP.NET ListView control. You can customize the appearance of the Twitter control by modifying its LayoutTemplate, StatusTemplate, AlternatingStatusTemplate, and EmptyDataTemplate. To learn more about the new Twitter control, visit the live Twitter Sample Page. The New Gravatar Control The September 2011 release of the Ajax Control Toolkit also includes a new Gravatar control. This control makes it easy to display a unique image for each user of your website. A Gravatar is associated with an email address. You can visit Gravatar.com and upload an image and associate the image with your email address. That way, every website which uses Gravatars (such as the www.ASP.NET website) will display your image next to your name. For example, I visited the Gravatar.com website and associated an image of a Koala Bear with the email address [email protected]. The following page illustrates how you can use the Gravatar control to display the Gravatar image associated with the [email protected] email address: <%@ Page Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeBehind="GravatarDemo.aspx.cs" Inherits="WebApplication1.GravatarDemo" %> <%@ Register TagPrefix="asp" Namespace="AjaxControlToolkit" Assembly="AjaxControlToolkit" %> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <head id="Head1" runat="server"> <title>Gravatar Demo</title> </head> <body> <form id="form1" runat="server"> <asp:ToolkitScriptManager ID="tsm" runat="server" /> <asp:Gravatar ID="Gravatar1" Email="[email protected]" runat="server" /> </form> </body> </html> The page above simply displays the Gravatar image associated with the [email protected] email address: If a user has not uploaded an image to Gravatar.com then you can auto-generate a unique image for the user from the user email address. The Gravatar control supports four types of auto-generated images: Identicon -- A different geometric pattern is generated for each unrecognized email. MonsterId -- A different image of a monster is generated for each unrecognized email. Wavatar -- A different image of a face is generated for each unrecognized email. Retro -- A different 8-bit arcade-style face is generated for each unrecognized email. For example, there is no Gravatar image associated with the email address [email protected]. The following page displays an auto-generated MonsterId for this email address: <%@ Page Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeBehind="GravatarMonster.aspx.cs" Inherits="WebApplication1.GravatarMonster" %> <%@ Register TagPrefix="asp" Namespace="AjaxControlToolkit" Assembly="AjaxControlToolkit" %> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <head id="Head1" runat="server"> <title>Gravatar Monster</title> </head> <body> <form id="form1" runat="server"> <asp:ToolkitScriptManager ID="tsm" runat="server" /> <asp:Gravatar ID="Gravatar1" Email="[email protected]" DefaultImageBehavior="MonsterId" runat="server" /> </form> </body> </html> The page above generates the following image automatically from the supplied email address: To learn more about the properties of the new Gravatar control, visit the live Gravatar Sample Page. ASP.NET Connections Talk on the Ajax Control Toolkit If you are interested in learning more about the changes that we are making to the Ajax Control Toolkit then please come to my talk on the Ajax Control Toolkit at the upcoming ASP.NET Connections conference. In the talk, I will present a summary of the changes that we have made to the Ajax Control Toolkit over the last several months and discuss our future plans. Do you have ideas for new Ajax Control Toolkit controls? Ideas for improving the toolkit? Come to my talk – I would love to hear from you. You can register for the ASP.NET Connections conference by visiting the following website: Register for ASP.NET Connections Summary The previous release of the Ajax Control Toolkit – the July 2011 Release – has had over 100,000 downloads. That is a huge number of developers who are working with the Ajax Control Toolkit. We are really excited about the new features which we added to the Ajax Control Toolkit in the latest September sprint. We hope that you find the updated Calender control, the new Twitter control, and the new Gravatar control valuable when building your ASP.NET Web Forms applications.

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Netflix, jQuery, JSONP, and OData

- by Stephen Walther

At the last MIX conference, Netflix announced that they are exposing their catalog of movie information using the OData protocol. This is great news! This means that you can take advantage of all of the advanced OData querying features against a live database of Netflix movies. In this blog entry, I’ll demonstrate how you can use Netflix, jQuery, JSONP, and OData to create a simple movie lookup form. The form enables you to enter a movie title, or part of a movie title, and display a list of matching movies. For example, Figure 1 illustrates the movies displayed when you enter the value robot into the lookup form. Using the Netflix OData Catalog API You can learn about the Netflix OData Catalog API at the following website: http://developer.netflix.com/docs/oData_Catalog The nice thing about this website is that it provides plenty of samples. It also has a good general reference for OData. For example, the website includes a list of OData filter operators and functions. The Netflix Catalog API exposes 4 top-level resources: Titles – A database of Movie information including interesting movie properties such as synopsis, BoxArt, and Cast. People – A database of people information including interesting information such as Awards, TitlesDirected, and TitlesActedIn. Languages – Enables you to get title information in different languages. Genres – Enables you to get title information for specific movie genres. OData is REST based. This means that you can perform queries by putting together the right URL. For example, if you want to get a list of the movies that were released after 2010 and that had an average rating greater than 4 then you can enter the following URL in the address bar of your browser: http://odata.netflix.com/Catalog/Titles?$filter=ReleaseYear gt 2010&AverageRating gt 4 Entering this URL returns the movies in Figure 2. Creating the Movie Lookup Form The complete code for the Movie Lookup form is contained in Listing 1. Listing 1 – MovieLookup.htm <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <head> <title>Netflix with jQuery</title> <style type="text/css"> #movieTemplateContainer div { width:400px; padding: 10px; margin: 10px; border: black solid 1px; } </style> <script src="http://ajax.microsoft.com/ajax/jquery/jquery-1.4.2.js" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="App_Scripts/Microtemplates.js" type="text/javascript"></script> </head> <body> <label>Search Movies:</label> <input id="movieName" size="50" /> <button id="btnLookup">Lookup</button> <div id="movieTemplateContainer"></div> <script id="movieTemplate" type="text/html"> <div> <img src="<%=BoxArtSmallUrl %>" /> <strong><%=Name%></strong> <p> <%=Synopsis %> </p> </div> </script> <script type="text/javascript"> $("#btnLookup").click(function () { // Build OData query var movieName = $("#movieName").val(); var query = "http://odata.netflix.com/Catalog" // netflix base url + "/Titles" // top-level resource + "?$filter=substringof('" + escape(movieName) + "',Name)" // filter by movie name + "&$callback=callback" // jsonp request + "&$format=json"; // json request // Make JSONP call to Netflix $.ajax({ dataType: "jsonp", url: query, jsonpCallback: "callback", success: callback }); }); function callback(result) { // unwrap result var movies = result["d"]["results"]; // show movies in template var showMovie = tmpl("movieTemplate"); var html = ""; for (var i = 0; i < movies.length; i++) { // flatten movie movies[i].BoxArtSmallUrl = movies[i].BoxArt.SmallUrl; // render with template html += showMovie(movies[i]); } $("#movieTemplateContainer").html(html); } </script> </body> </html> The HTML page in Listing 1 includes two JavaScript libraries: <script src="http://ajax.microsoft.com/ajax/jquery/jquery-1.4.2.js" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="App_Scripts/Microtemplates.js" type="text/javascript"></script> The first script tag retrieves jQuery from the Microsoft Ajax CDN. You can learn more about the Microsoft Ajax CDN by visiting the following website: http://www.asp.net/ajaxLibrary/cdn.ashx The second script tag is used to reference Resig’s micro-templating library. Because I want to use a template to display each movie, I need this library: http://ejohn.org/blog/javascript-micro-templating/ When you enter a value into the Search Movies input field and click the button, the following JavaScript code is executed: // Build OData query var movieName = $("#movieName").val(); var query = "http://odata.netflix.com/Catalog" // netflix base url + "/Titles" // top-level resource + "?$filter=substringof('" + escape(movieName) + "',Name)" // filter by movie name + "&$callback=callback" // jsonp request + "&$format=json"; // json request // Make JSONP call to Netflix $.ajax({ dataType: "jsonp", url: query, jsonpCallback: "callback", success: callback }); This code Is used to build a query that will be executed against the Netflix Catalog API. For example, if you enter the search phrase King Kong then the following URL is created: http://odata.netflix.com/Catalog/Titles?$filter=substringof(‘King%20Kong’,Name)&$callback=callback&$format=json This query includes the following parameters: $filter – You assign a filter expression to this parameter to filter the movie results. $callback – You assign the name of a JavaScript callback method to this parameter. OData calls this method to return the movie results. $format – you assign either the value json or xml to this parameter to specify how the format of the movie results. Notice that all of the OData parameters -- $filter, $callback, $format -- start with a dollar sign $. The Movie Lookup form uses JSONP to retrieve data across the Internet. Because WCF Data Services supports JSONP, and Netflix uses WCF Data Services to expose movies using the OData protocol, you can use JSONP when interacting with the Netflix Catalog API. To learn more about using JSONP with OData, see Pablo Castro’s blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/pablo/archive/2009/02/25/adding-support-for-jsonp-and-url-controlled-format-to-ado-net-data-services.aspx The actual JSONP call is performed by calling the $.ajax() method. When this call successfully completes, the JavaScript callback() method is called. The callback() method looks like this: function callback(result) { // unwrap result var movies = result["d"]["results"]; // show movies in template var showMovie = tmpl("movieTemplate"); var html = ""; for (var i = 0; i < movies.length; i++) { // flatten movie movies[i].BoxArtSmallUrl = movies[i].BoxArt.SmallUrl; // render with template html += showMovie(movies[i]); } $("#movieTemplateContainer").html(html); } The movie results from Netflix are passed to the callback method. The callback method takes advantage of Resig’s micro-templating library to display each of the movie results. A template used to display each movie is passed to the tmpl() method. The movie template looks like this: <script id="movieTemplate" type="text/html"> <div> <img src="<%=BoxArtSmallUrl %>" /> <strong><%=Name%></strong> <p> <%=Synopsis %> </p> </div> </script> This template looks like a server-side ASP.NET template. However, the template is rendered in the client (browser) instead of the server. Summary The goal of this blog entry was to demonstrate how well jQuery works with OData. We managed to use a number of interesting open-source libraries and open protocols while building the Movie Lookup form including jQuery, JSONP, JSON, and OData.

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Processing Email in Outlook

- by Daniel Moth

A. Why Goal 1 = Help others: Have at most a 24-hour response turnaround to internal (from colleague) emails, typically achieving same day response. Goal 2 = Help projects: Not to implicitly pass/miss an opportunity to have impact on electronic discussions around any project on the radar. Not achieving goals 1 & 2 = Colleagues stop relying on you, drop you off conversations, don't see you as a contributing resource or someone that cares, you are perceived as someone with no peripheral vision. Note this is perfect if all you are doing is cruising at your job, trying to fly under the radar, with no ambitions of having impact beyond your absolute minimum 'day job'. B. DON'T: Leave unread email lurking around Don't: Receive or process all incoming emails in a single folder ('inbox' or 'unread mail'). This is actually possible if you receive a small number of emails (e.g. new to the job, not working at a company like Microsoft). Even so, with (your future) success at any level (company, community) comes large incoming email, so learn to deal with it. With large volumes, it is best to let the system help you by doing some categorization and filtering on your behalf (instead of trying to do that in your head as you process the single folder). See later section on how to achieve this. Don't: Leave emails as 'unread' (or worse: read them, then mark them as unread). Often done by individuals who think they possess super powers ("I can mentally cache and distinguish between the emails I chose not to read, the ones that are actually new, and the ones I decided to revisit in the future; the fact that they all show up the same (bold = unread) does not confuse me"). Interactions with this super-powered individuals typically end up with them saying stuff like "I must have missed that email you are talking about (from 2 weeks ago)" or "I am a bit behind, so I haven't read your email, can you remind me". TIP: The only place where you are "allowed" unread email is in your Deleted Items folder. Don't: Interpret a read email as an email that has been processed. Doing that, means you will always end up with fake unread email (that you have actually read, but haven't dealt with completely so you then marked it as unread) lurking between actual unread email. Another side effect is reading the email and making a 'mental' note to action it, then leaving the email as read, so the only thing left to remind you to carry out the action is… you. You are not super human, you will forget. This is a key distinction. Reading (or even scanning) a new email, means you now know what needs to be done with it, in order for it to be truly considered processed. Truly processing an email is to, for example, write an email of your own (e.g. to reply or forward), or take a non-email related action (e.g. create calendar entry, do something on some website), or read it carefully to gain some knowledge (e.g. it had a spec as an attachment), or keep it around as reference etc. 'Reading' means that you know what to do, not that you have done it. An email that is read is an email that is triaged, not an email that is resolved. Sometimes the thing that needs to be done based on receiving the email, you can (and want) to do immediately after reading the email. That is fine, you read the email and you processed it (typically when it takes no longer than X minutes, where X is your personal tolerance – mine is roughly 2 minutes). Other times, you decide that you don't want to spend X minutes at that moment, so after reading the email you need a quick system for "marking" the email as to be processed later (and you still leave it as 'read' in outlook). See later section for how. C. DO: Use Outlook rules and have multiple folders where incoming email is automatically moved to Outlook email rules are very powerful and easy to configure. Use them to automatically file email into folders. Here are mine (note that if a rule catches an email message then no further rules get processed): "personal" Email is either personal or business related. Almost all personal email goes to my gmail account. The personal emails that end up on my work email account, go to a dedicated folder – that is achieved via a rule that looks at the email's 'From' field. For those that slip through, I use the new Outlook 2010 quick step of "Conversation To Folder" feature to let the slippage only occur once per conversation, and then update my rules. "External" and "ViaBlog" The remaining external emails either come from my blog (rule on the subject line) or are unsolicited (rule on the domain name not being microsoft) and they are filed accordingly. "invites" I may do a separate blog post on calendar management, but suffice to say it should be kept up to date. All invite requests end up in this folder, so that even if mail gets out of control, the calendar can stay under control (only 1 folder to check). I.e. so I can let the organizer know why I won't be attending their meeting (or that I will be). Note: This folder is the only one that shows the total number of items in it, instead of the total unread. "Inbox" The only email that ends up here is email sent TO me and me only. Note that this is also the only email that shows up above the systray icon in the notification toast – all other emails cannot interrupt. "ToMe++" Email where I am on the TO line, but there are other recipients as well (on the TO or CC line). "CC" Email where I am on the CC line. I need to read these, but nobody is expecting a response or action from me so they are not as urgent (and if they are and follow up with me, they'll receive a link to this). "@ XYZ" Emails to aliases that are about projects that I directly work on (and I wasn't on the TO or CC line, of course). Test: these projects are in my commitments that I get measured on at the end of the year. "Z Mass" and subfolders under it per distribution list (DL) Emails to aliases that are about topics that I am interested in, but not that I formally own/contribute to. Test: if I unsubscribed from these aliases, nobody could rightfully complain. "Admin" folder, which resides under "Z Mass" folder Emails to aliases that I was added typically by an admin, e.g. broad emails to the floor/group/org/building/division/company that I am a member of. "BCC" folder, which resides under "Z Mass" Emails where I was not on the TO or the CC line explicitly and the alias it was sent to is not one I explicitly subscribed to (or I have been added to the BCC line, which I briefly touched on in another post). When there are only a few quick minutes to catch up on email, read as much as possible from these folders, in this order: Invites, Inbox, ToMe++. Only when these folders are all read (remember that doesn't mean that each email in them has been fully dealt with), we can move on to the @XYZ and then the CC folders. Only when those are read we can go on to the remaining folders. Note that the typical flow in the "Z Mass" subfolders is to scan subject lines and use the new Ctrl+Delete Outlook 2010 feature to ignore conversations. D. DO: Use Outlook Search folders in combination with categories As you process each folder, when you open a new email (i.e. click on it and read it in the preview pane) the email becomes read and stays read and you have to decide whether: It can take 2 minutes to deal with for good, right now, or It will take longer than 2 minutes, so it needs to be postponed with a clear next step, which is one of ToReply – there may be intermediate action steps, but ultimately someone else needs to receive email about this Action – no email is required, but I need to do something ReadLater – no email is required from the quick scan, but this is too long to fully read now, so it needs to be read it later WaitingFor – the email is informing of an intermediate status and 'promising' a future email update. Need to track. SomedayMaybe – interesting but not important, non-urgent, non-time-bound information. I may want to spend part of one of my weekends reading it. For all these 'next steps' use Outlook categories (right click on the email and assign category, or use shortcut key). Note that I also use category 'WaitingFor' for email that I send where I am expecting a response and need to track it. Create a new search folder for each category (I dragged the search folders into my favorites at the top left of Outlook, above my inboxes). So after the activity of reading/triaging email in the normal folders (where the email arrived) is done, the result is a bunch of emails appearing in the search folders (configure them to show the total items, not the total unread items). To actually process email (that takes more than 2 minutes to deal with) process the search folders, starting with ToReply and Action. E. DO: Get into a Routine Now you have a system in place, get into a routine of using it. Here is how I personally use mine, but this part I keep tweaking: Spend short bursts of time (between meetings, during boring but mandatory meetings and, in general, 2-4 times a day) aiming to have no unread emails (and in the process deal with some emails that take less than 2 minutes). Spend around 30 minutes at the end of each day processing most urgent items in search folders. Spend as long as it takes each Friday (or even the weekend) ensuring there is no unnecessary email baggage carried forward to the following week. F. Other resources Official Outlook help on: Create custom actions rules, Manage e-mail messages with rules, creating a search folder. Video on ignoring conversations (Ctrl+Del). Official blog post on Quick Steps and in particular the Move Conversation to folder. If you've read "Getting Things Done" it is very obvious that my approach to email management is driven by GTD. A very similar approach was described previously by ScottHa (also influenced by GTD), worth reading here. He also described how he sets up 2 outlook rules ('invites' and 'external') which I also use – worth reading that too. Comments about this post welcome at the original blog.

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Real Excel Templates I

- by Tim Dexter

As promised, I'm starting to document the new Excel templates that I teased you all with a few weeks back. Leslie is buried in 11g documentation and will not get to officially documenting the templates for a while. I'll do my best to be professional and not ramble on about this and that, although the weather here has finally turned and its 'scorchio' here in Colorado today. Maybe our stand of Aspen will finally come into leaf ... but I digress. Preamble These templates are not actually that new, I helped in a small way to develop them a few years back with Excel 'meistress' Shirley for a company that was trying to use the Report Manager(RR) Excel FSG outputs under EBS 12. The functionality they needed was just not there in the RR FSG templates, the templates are actually XSL that is created from the the RR Excel template builder and fed to BIP for processing. Think of Excel from our RTF templates and you'll be there ie not really Excel but HTML masquerading as Excel. Although still under controlled release in EBS they have now made their way to the standlone release and are willing to share their Excel goodness. You get everything you have with hte Excel Analyzer Excel templates plus so much more. Therein lies a question, what will happen to the Analyzer templates? My understanding is that both will come together into a single Excel template format some time in the post-11g release world. The new XLSX format for Exce 2007/10 is also in the mix too so watch this space. What more do these templates offer? Well, you can structure data in the Excel output. Similar to RTF templates you can create sheets of data that have master-detail n relationships. Although the analyzer templates can do this, you have to get into macros whereas BIP will do this all for you. You can also use native XSL functions in your data to manipulate it prior to rendering. BP functions are not currently supported. The most impressive, for me at least, is the sheet 'bursting'. You can split your hierarchical data across multiple sheets and dynamically name those sheets. Finally, you of course, still get all the native Excel functionality. Pre-reqs You must be on 10.1.3.4.1 plus the latest rollup patch, 9546699. You can patch upa BIP instance running with OBIEE, no problem You need Excel 2000 or above to build the templates Some patience - there is no Excel template builder for these new templates. So its all going to have to be done by hand. Its not that tough but can get a little 'fiddly'. You can not test the template from Excel , it has to be deployed and then run. Limitations The new templates are definitely superior to the Analyzer templates but there are a few limitations. Re-grouping is not supported. You can only follow a data hierarchy not bend it to your will unless you want to get into macros. No support for BIP functions. The templates support native XSL functions only. No template builder Getting Started The templates make the use of named cells and groups of cells to allow BIP to find the insertion point for data points. It also uses a hidden sheet to store calculation mappings from named cells to XML data elements. To start with, in the great BIP tradition, we need some sample XML data. Becasue I wanted to show the master-detail output we need some hierarchical data. If you have not yet gotten into the data templates, now is a good time, I wrote a post a while back starting from the simple to more complex. They generate ideal data sets for these templates. Im working with the following data set: <EMPLOYEES> <LIST_G_DEPT> <G_DEPT> <DEPARTMENT_ID>10</DEPARTMENT_ID> <DEPARTMENT_NAME>Administration</DEPARTMENT_NAME> <LIST_G_EMP> <G_EMP> <EMPLOYEE_ID>200</EMPLOYEE_ID> <EMP_NAME>Jennifer Whalen</EMP_NAME> <EMAIL>JWHALEN</EMAIL> <PHONE_NUMBER>515.123.4444</PHONE_NUMBER> <HIRE_DATE>1987-09-17T00:00:00.000-06:00</HIRE_DATE> <SALARY>4400</SALARY> </G_EMP> </LIST_G_EMP> <TOTAL_EMPS>1</TOTAL_EMPS> <TOTAL_SALARY>4400</TOTAL_SALARY> <AVG_SALARY>4400</AVG_SALARY> <MAX_SALARY>4400</MAX_SALARY> <MIN_SALARY>4400</MIN_SALARY> </G_DEPT> ... <LIST_G_DEPT> <EMPLOYEES> Simple enough to follow and bread and butter stuff for an RTF template. Building the Template For an Excel template we need to start by thinking about how we want to render the data. Come up with a sample output in Excel. Its all dummy data, nothing marked up yet with one row of data for each level. I have the department name and then a repeating row for the employees. You can apply Excel formatting to the layout. The total is going to be derived from a data element. We'll get to Excel functions later. Marking Up Cells Next we need to start marking up the cells with custom names to map them to data elements. The cell names need to follow a specific format: For data grouping, XDO_GROUP_?group_name? For data elements, XDO_?element_name? Notice the question mark delimter, the group_name and element_name are case sensitive. The next step is to find how to name cells; the easiest method is to highlight the cell and then type in the name. You can also find the Name Manager dialog. I use 2007 and its available on the ribbon under the Formulas section Go thorugh the process of naming all the cells for the element values you have. Using my data set from above.You should end up with something like this in your 'Name Manager' dialog. You can update any mistakes you might have made through this dialog. Creating Groups In the image above you can see there are a couple of named group cells. To create these its a simple case of highlighting the cells that make up the group and then naming them. For the EMP group, highlight the employee row and then type in the name, XDO_GROUP?G_EMP? Notice the 10,000 total is outside of the G_EMP group. Its actually named, XDO_?TOTAL_SALARY?, a query calculated value. For the department group, we need to include the department name cell and the sub EMP grouping and name it, XDO_GROUP?G_DEPT? Notice, the 10,000 total is included in the G_DEPT group. This will ensure it repeats at the department level. Lastly, we do need to include a special sheet in the workbook. We will not have anything meaningful in there for now, but it needs to be present. Create a new sheet and name it XDO_METADATA. The name is important as the BIP rendering engine will looking for it. For our current example we do not need anything other than the required stuff in our XDO_METADATA sheet but, it must be present. Easy enough to hide it. Here's what I have: The only cell that is important is the 'Data Constraints:' cell. The rest is optional. To save curious users getting distracted, hide the metadata sheet. Deploying & Running Templates We should now have a usable Excel template. Loading it into a report is easy enough using the browser UI, just like an RTF template. Set the template type to Excel. You will now be able to run the report and hopefully get something like this. You will not get the red highlighting, thats just some conditional formatting I added to the template using Excel functionality. Your dates are probably going to look raw too. I got around this for now using an Excel function on the cell: =--REPLACE(SUBSTITUTE(E8,"T"," "),LEN(E8)-6,6,"") Google to the rescue on that one. Try some other stuff out. To avoid constantly loading the template through the UI. If you have BIP running locally or you can access the reports repository, once you have loaded the template the first time. Just save the template directly into the report folder. I have put together a sample report using a sample data set, available here. Just drop the xml data file, EmpbyDeptExcelData.xml into 'demo files' folder and you should be good to go. Thats the basics, next we'll start using some XSL functions in the template and move onto the 'bursting' across sheets.

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