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  • How to store a file on a server(web container) through a Java EE web application?

    - by Yatendra Goel
    I have developed a Java EE web application. This application allows a user to upload a file with the help of a browser. Once the user has uploaded his file, this application first stores the uploaded file on the server (on which it is running) and then processes it. At present, I am storing the file on the server as follows: try { FormFile formFile = programForm.getTheFile(); // formFile represents the uploaded file String path = getServlet().getServletContext().getRealPath("") + "/" + formFile.getFileName(); System.out.println(path); file = new File(path); outputStream = new FileOutputStream(file); outputStream.write(formFile.getFileData()); } where, the formFile represents the uploaded file. Now, the problem is that it is running fine on some servers but on some servers the getServlet().getServletContext().getRealPath("") is returning null so the final path that I am getting is null/filename and the file doesn't store on the server. When I checked the API for ServletContext.getRealPath() method, I found the following: public java.lang.String getRealPath(java.lang.String path) Returns a String containing the real path for a given virtual path. For example, the path "/index.html" returns the absolute file path on the server's filesystem would be served by a request for "http://host/contextPath/index.html", where contextPath is the context path of this ServletContext. The real path returned will be in a form appropriate to the computer and operating system on which the servlet container is running, including the proper path separators. This method returns null if the servlet container cannot translate the virtual path to a real path for any reason (such as when the content is being made available from a .war archive). So, Is there any other way by which I can store files on those servers also which is returning null for getServlet().getServletContext().getRealPath("")

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  • ASP.NET MVC WAP, SharePoint Designer and SVN

    - by David Lively
    All, I'm starting a new ASP.NET MVC project which requires some content management capabilities. The people who will be managing the content prefer to use SharePoint Designer (successor to FrontPage) to modify content. I'd like to allow them to keep doing that. The issues are: Since I'd like this to be a WAP, not a website project, how can I allow them to see their changes in action without requiring them to have Visual Studio on their local machines? Can I specify a "default" action for a controller so that given a url like /products/new_view_here Can I let them save pages (views) and see them in the browser without having to go through the check-in/build/deploy process? I'd like their changes to be stored in SVN; SharePoint designer seems to only support Visual SourceSafe (ugh) directly. The ideas I've come up with so far are Write an HTTP handler that implements the FrontPage Server Extensions protocol. This sounds time consuming, but I haven't yet looked at the protocol spec. However, it would allow me to perform whatever operations I want on the server side, including checking files into SVN. Ditch the WAP in favor of a website project. I do not like having the source present on the server, however. Also, will MVC work in a website project? Surely someone has tackled this problem before?

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  • Characters in usernames that cause trouble

    - by acidzombie24
    I am testing out security and reliability issues on my site. I have made \n and \r illegal. I created a user with null in the name which caused my PM system to not message the user. However \b worked and \t didnt allow copy/paste to work correctly. The browser (firefox which i am testing with) copied the tab as a single space causing the name not to be the same thus not recognizing the username. Since i cant copy paste easily i'll probably disallow it. \f works as well although i do see a symbol in the title but nowhere else because of the \f. What else should i try? It appears 0-31 127-159 (i dont understand this range) are illegal. What characters in legal range might i want to disallow? I heard there was a 0 width character space. That may be something i want to disallow? What else is there?

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  • Java UnknownHostException When and Why?

    - by interstar
    I'm trying to post to a website from a Processing Sketch. (Processing is basically Java running in a fancy environment). I'm using this library : http://libraries.seltar.org/postToWeb/ but I don't know if that makes a difference. You can see from the stack trace below that this is just a wrapper for the Java standard library. Anyway, the important point is that the host "mysite.com" is up and running. I am seeing it from the browser. But when I try to post to it from Java I just get the UnknownHostException appearing. Given that the site is up. What else might this mean? The program is currently running inside the Processing environment. Presumably as an Applet. java.net.UnknownHostException: mysite.com at java.net.PlainSocketImpl.connect(PlainSocketImpl.java:195) at java.net.SocksSocketImpl.connect(SocksSocketImpl.java:366) at java.net.Socket.connect(Socket.java:529) at java.net.Socket.connect(Socket.java:478) at sun.net.NetworkClient.doConnect(NetworkClient.java:163) at sun.net.www.http.HttpClient.openServer(HttpClient.java:394) at sun.net.www.http.HttpClient.openServer(HttpClient.java:529) at sun.net.www.http.HttpClient.<init>(HttpClient.java:233) at sun.net.www.http.HttpClient.New(HttpClient.java:306) at sun.net.www.http.HttpClient.New(HttpClient.java:323) at sun.net.www.protocol.http.HttpURLConnection.getNewHttpClient(HttpURLConnection.java:970) at sun.net.www.protocol.http.HttpURLConnection.plainConnect(HttpURLConnection.java:911) at sun.net.www.protocol.http.HttpURLConnection.connect(HttpURLConnection.java:836) at sun.net.www.protocol.http.HttpURLConnection.getOutputStream(HttpURLConnection.java:1014) at org.seltar.Bytes2Web.PostToWeb._post(PostToWeb.java:90) at org.seltar.Bytes2Web.ByteToWeb.post(ByteToWeb.java:66) at experimentPostToWeb.keyPressed(experimentPostToWeb.java:35) at processing.core.PApplet.handleKeyEvent(Unknown Source) at processing.core.PApplet.dequeueKeyEvents(Unknown Source) at processing.core.PApplet.handleDraw(Unknown Source) at processing.core.PApplet.run(Unknown Source) at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:662)

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  • Debugging a Google Web Toolkit application that has an error when deployed on Google App Engine

    - by gerdemb
    I have a Google Web Toolkit application that I am deploying to Google App Engine. In the deployed application, I am getting a JavaScript error Uncaught TypeError: Cannot read property 'f' of null. This sounds like the JavaScript equivalent of a Java NullPointerException. The problem is that the GWT JavaScript is obfuscated, so it's impossible to debug in the browser and I can't reproduce the same problem in hosted mode where I could use the Java debugger. I think the reason I'm only seeing the error on the deployed application is that the database I'm using on the GAE server is triggering something differently than the test database I'm using during testing and development. So, any ideas about the best way to proceed? I've thought of the following things: Deploy a non-obsfucated version of my application. Despite a lot of Googling, I can't figure out how to do this using the automatic deploy script provided with the Google Eclipse Plugin. Does anyone know? Download and copy my GAE data to the local server Somehow point my development code to use the GAE server for data instead of the local test database. This seems like the best idea... Can anyone suggest how to proceed here? Finally, is there a way to catch these JavaScript errors on the production server and log them somewhere? Without logging, I won't have anyway to know if my users are having errors that don't occur on the server. The GWT.log() function is automatically stripped out of the production code...

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  • UTF-8 HTML and CSS files with BOM (and how to remove the BOM with Python)

    - by Cameron
    First, some background: I'm developing a web application using Python. All of my (text) files are currently stored in UTF-8 with the BOM. This includes all my HTML templates and CSS files. These resources are stored as binary data (BOM and all) in my DB. When I retrieve the templates from the DB, I decode them using template.decode('utf-8'). When the HTML arrives in the browser, the BOM is present at the beginning of the HTTP response body. This generates a very interesting error in Chrome: Extra <html> encountered. Migrating attributes back to the original <html> element and ignoring the tag. Chrome seems to generate an <html> tag automatically when it sees the BOM and mistakes it for content, making the real <html> tag an error. So, using Python, what is the best way to remove the BOM from my UTF-8 encoded templates (if it exists -- I can't guarantee this in the future)? For other text-based files like CSS, will major browsers correctly interpret (or ignore) the BOM? They are being sent as plain binary data without .decode('utf-8'). Note: I am using Python 2.5. Thanks!

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  • Ruby on Rails Mongrel web server stuck when MySQL service is running

    - by Marcos Buarque
    Hi, I am a Ruby on Rails newbie and already have a problem. I have started the Mongrel web server and it works fine when MySQL service isn't running. But when MySQL is on, Mongrel stucks. It ceases from serving the pages. So far, I have tested the localhost:3000 URL. When MySQL is off, it serves the page. When I click "about application's environment", I get the messasge (of course) "Can't connect to MySQL server on 'localhost' (10061)". After starting the MySQL service and refreshing, I get no more answer and Mongrel does not serve the webpage. It gets stuck with no answer to the browser. Then I have to stop the webserver and restart it. I have installed mysql2 gem with the command gem install mysql2. I was able to create the _test and _development databases with the command line rake db:create. I have tested with MySQL root user and blank password and also tried with a superuser user I have created. No success. Here is the server log: ======================== Started GET "/rails/info/properties" for 127.0.0.1 at Fri Dec 24 17:41:25 -0200 2010 Mysql2::Error (Can't connect to MySQL server on 'localhost' (10061)): Rendered C:/Ruby187/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/actionpack-3.0.3/lib/action_dispatch/middleware/templates/rescues/_trace.erb (1.0ms) Rendered C:/Ruby187/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/actionpack-3.0.3/lib/action_dispatch/middleware/templates/rescues/_request_and_response.erb (5.0ms) Rendered C:/Ruby187/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/actionpack-3.0.3/lib/action_dispatch/middleware/templates/rescues/diagnostics.erb within rescues/layout (35.0ms) ================= I am running on a Windows 7 environment with firewall down.

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  • architecture and tools for a remote control application?

    - by slothbear
    I'm working on the design of a remote control application. From my iPhone or a web browser, I'll send a few commands. Soon my home computer will perform the commands and send back results. I know there are remote desktop apps, but I want something programmable, something simpler, and something that I wrote. My current direction is to use Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS) as the message bus. The iPhone places some messages in a queue. My local Java/JRuby program notices the messages on the queue, performs the work and sends back status via a different queue. This will be a very low-volume application. At $1.00 for a million requests (plus a handful of data transfer charges), Amazon SQS looks a lot more affordable than having my own server of any type. And super reliable, that's important for me too. Are there better/standard toolkits or architectures for this kind of remote control? Cost is not a big issue, but I prefer the tons I learn by doing it myself. I'm moderately concerned about security, but doubt it will be a problem. The list of commands recognized will be very short, and only recognized in specific contexts. No "erase hard drive" stuff. update: I'll probably distribute these programs to some other people who want the same function, but who don't have Amazon SQS accounts. For now, they'll use anonymous access to my queues, with random 80-character queue names.

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  • apache web server configuration problem

    - by mohit
    i want to have apache server to serve only /var/www/ directory now it serves all my files on system from directory "/" i tried to edit httpd.conf placed in /etc/apache2 and placed the folllowing content in it(intially it was empty) <Directory /> Options None AllowOverride None </Directory> DocumentRoot "/var/www" <Directory "/var/www"> Options Indexes FollowSymLinks AllowOverride None Order allow,deny Allow from all </Directory> then saved it,restarted apache server put the location /var/www in the web browser address bar,still it shows the higher level directories too then i edited the file Default,Default-ssl in the sites-available folder repeated the same process still apache serves all files on my system 2.when i try to use the following command gedit httpd.conf I get the error gedit:2696): EggSMClient-WARNING **: Failed to connect to the session manager: None of the authentication protocols specified are supported GConf Error: Failed to contact configuration server; some possible causes are that you need to enable TCP/IP networking for ORBit, or you have stale NFS locks due to a system crash. See http://projects.gnome.org/gconf/ for information. (Details - 1: Failed to get connection to session: Did not receive a reply. Possible causes include: the remote application did not send a reply, the message bus security policy blocked the reply, the reply timeout expired, or the network connection was broken.)

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  • Execute javascript in PHP

    - by Andreas Bonini
    I'm generating your typical Web 2.0 HTML page with PHP: it contains a lot of <script> tags and javascript code that will substantially change the DOM after the load event. Is there a way to get the final HTML code directly from PHP, without opening the page with any browser? For example, let's say the HTML for the page is (it's just an example): <html> <head> <script>...the jquery library code...</script> <script>$(document).ready(function() { $("body").append("<p>Hi!</p>");</script> </head> <body> </body> </html> This HTML is saved in the $html PHP variable. Now, I want to pass that variable to some function that will return $result = <html>....<body><p>Hi!</p></body></html>. Is this possible?

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  • Radio buttons being reset in FF on cache-refresh

    - by Andrew Song
    (This is technically an addendum to an earlier StackOverflow question I had posted, but my original post asked a different question which doesn't really cover this topic -- I don't want to edit my older question as I feel this is different enough to merit its own page) While browsing my website in Firefox 3.5 (and only FF3.5), I come across a page with two radio buttons that have the following HTML code: <input id="check1" type="radio" value="True" name="check" checked="checked"/> <input id="check2" type="radio" value="False" name="check"/> This page renders as expected, with 'check1' checked and 'check2' unchecked. When I then go to refresh the page by pressing Control + R, the two radio buttons render, but they are both unchecked even though the raw HTML code is the same (as above). If I do a cache-miss refresh (via Control + F5 or Control + Shift + R), the page returns back to the way you'd expect it. This is not a problem in any other browser I've tried except FF3.5. What is causing these radio buttons to be reset on a normal refresh? How can I avoid this?

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  • Cookie blocked/not saved in IFRAME in Internet Explorer

    - by Piskvor
    I have two websites, let's say they're example.com and anotherexample.net. On anotherexample.net/page.html, I have an IFRAME SRC="http://example.com/someform.asp". That IFRAME displays a form for the user to fill out and submit to http://example.com/process.asp. When I open the form ("someform.asp") in its own browser window, all works well. However, when I load someform.asp as an IFRAME in IE 6 or IE 7, the cookies for example.com are not saved. In Firefox this problem doesn't appear. For testing purposes, I've created a similar setup on http://newmoon.wz.cz/test/page.php . example.com uses cookie-based sessions (and there's nothing I can do about that), so without cookies, process.asp won't execute. How do I force IE to save those cookies? Results of sniffing the HTTP traffic: on GET /someform.asp response, there's a valid per-session Set-Cookie header (e.g. Set-Cookie: ASPKSJIUIUGF=JKHJUHVGFYTTYFY), but on POST /process.asp request, there is no Cookie header at all. Edit3: some AJAX+serverside scripting is apparently capable to sidestep the problem, but that looks very much like a bug, plus it opens a whole new set of security holes. I don't want my applications to use a combination of bug+security hole just because it's easy. Edit: the P3P policy was the root cause, full explanation below.

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  • Best way to sign data in web form with user certificate

    - by salgiza
    We have a C# web app where users will connect using a digital certificate stored in their browsers. From the examples that we have seen, verifying their identity will be easy once we enable SSL, as we can access the fields in the certificate, using Request.ClientCertificate, to check the user's name. We have also been requested, however, to sign the data sent by the user (a few simple fields and a binary file) so that we can prove, without doubt, which user entered each record in our database. Our first thought was creating a small text signature including the fields (and, if possible, the md5 of the file) and encrypt it with the private key of the certificate, but... As far as I know we can't access the private key of the certificate to sign the data, and I don't know if there is any way to sign the fields in the browser, or we have no other option than using a Java applet. And if it's the latter, how we would do it (Is there any open source applet we can use? Would it be better if we create one ourselves?) Of course, it would be better if there was any way to "sign" the fields received in the server, using the data that we can access from the user's certificate. But if not, any info on the best way to solve the problem would be appreciated.

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  • Why is my JavaScript function "a" not defined?

    - by 4l3x
    When I call my JavaScript function B, the javascript console in firefox said that function A is not defined, but on chrome browser if defined. And when I call function "A" in body segment: <input type="button" onclick="A()" value=" ..A.. "> , firefox said that function B is not defined? :S <html> <head> <script language="javascript" type="text/javascript"> function B(){ alert(" hi B "); document.write('<br><br><input type="button" onClick="A()" value=" ..A..">'); }; function A(){ alert(" hi A"); document.write('<br><br><input type="button" onclick="B()" value=" ..b..">'); if (window.WebCL == undefined) { alert("Unfortunately your system does not support WebCL. "); return false; } } </script> </head> <body> <input type="button" onclick="B()" value=" ..B.. "> </body> </html>

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  • visual analysis of web pages in ruby

    - by Clint Miller
    I'm looking to write some code that does visual analysis of web pages, preferably using Ruby. My code will need to be able to determine the top, left, width, height, background color, color, and font size for all the elements in the DOM. Of course, these values can only be calculated once all CSS is applied. So, I don't think that Nokogiri is up for the job. Ultimately, I'm trying to use this data in a VIPS-like (Vision-Based Page Segmentation) algorithm in an attempt to find the main content in downloaded news articles. I've considered using Watir to drive Chrome or Firefox and then extract the data. The problem is that browsers can't be run headless through Watir (I think). Ultimately, this code will be running on an array of Linux servers in a data center. So, the code won't have easy access to an X Server for displaying the browser. I suppose one solution is to use Watir and run a headless X Server on the Linux servers. That's a bit of a pain, but it looks like my best option right now. Does anyone have any better ideas?

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  • Images not shown when publishing MVC application to virtual directory inside default web-site

    - by Michael Sagalovich
    Hi! I am developing an application using ASP.NET MVC 1 and VS2008. When I deploy it to the default web-site in my IIS6 on WinXP, all images are shown correctly, path to any given image is localhost/Content/ImagesUI/[image].[ext] When I deploy it to the virtual directory, created inside the same site, any image request returns IIS standard 404 error page, while the path is localhost/[DirectoryName]/Content/ImagesUI/[image].[ext] - that seems to be correct, true? I am mapping .* to c:\windows\microsoft.net\framework\v2.0.50727\aspnet_isapi.dll in both site and directory configurations. When this mapping is removed, images are shown correctly. However, all other URLs do not work, of course. When I am trying to open an image in browser using the URL to it, aspnet_wp.exe process is not even started (I restarted IIS to test it) - I merely get 404 or the image, depending on the presence of * mapping. Thus, I suppose it has nothing to do neither with routes registered for MVC, nor with ASP. The solution that I found is to make Content folder a virtual directory and remove * mapping from its configuration. While that's OK to some extent, I want a better solution, which will explain and eliminate the cause of the problem, not just workaround it. Thanks for your help!

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  • Expose webservice directly to webclients or keep a thin server-side script layer in between?

    - by max
    Hi, I'm developing a REST webservice (Java, Jersey). The people I'm doing this for want to directly access the webservice via Javascript. Some instinct tells me this is not a good idea, but I cannot really explain that instinct. My natural approach would have been to have the webservice do the real logic and database access, but also have some (relatively thin) server-side script layer (e.g. in PHP). Clients would talk to the PHP layer which in turn would talk to the webservice. (The webservice would be pretty local to the apache/PHP server and implicitly trust calls from the script layer. The script layer would take care of session management.) (Btw, I am not talking about just hiding the webservice behind an Apache which simply redirects calls.) But as I find myself at a lack of words/arguments to explain my instinct, I wonder whether my instinct is right - note that while I have been developing all kinds of software in all kinds of languages and frameworks for like 17 years, this is the first time I develop a webservice. So my question is basically: what are your opinions? Are there any standard setups? Is my instinct totally wrong? Or partially? ;P Many thanks, Max PS: I might add a few bits of information about the planned usage of the whole application: will be accessed by different kinds of users, partly general public, partly privileged thus, all major OS/browser combinations can be expected as clients however, writing the client is not my responsibility will potentially have very high load/traffic logic of webservice will later be massively expanded for another product which is basically a superset of the functionality of the current project there is a significant likelihood that at some point an API should be exposed which can be used by 3rd party developers - obviously, with some restrictions at some point, the public view of the product should become accessible via smartphones, too (in other words, maybe a customized version of the site to adapt to the smaller display and different input methods)

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  • How to format dates in Jahia 6 CMS?

    - by dpb
    I am helping a friend of mine put up a site for his business. I’ve read different posts and sites trying to find the ideal CMS tool, but people have different views of what is the best, so I finally just picked one of them at random. So I went for an evaluation of Jahia 6.0-CE. As you’ve probably guessed by now, I don’t have so much experience with CMS tools. I just want to setup the CMS, write the templates for the site and let my friend manage the content from there on. So I extracted the sources from SVN and went for a test drive. I managed to create some simple templates to get a hang of things but now I have an issue with a date format. In my definitions.cnd I declared the field like so: date myDateField (datetimepicker[format='dd.MM.yyyy']) This is formatted in the page and the selector also presents this in the dd.MM.yyyy format when inserting the content. But how about sites in other countries, countries that represent the date as MM.dd.yyyy for example? If I specify the format in the CND, hard coded, how can I change this later on so that it adapts based on the browser’s language? Do I extract the content from the repository and format it by hand in the JSP template based on a Locale, or is there a better way? Thank you.

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  • Sys. engineer has decided to dynamically transform all XSLs into DLLs on website build process. DLL

    - by John Sullivan
    Hello, OS: Win XP. Here is my situation. I have a browser based application. It is "wrapped" in a Visual Basic application. Our "Systems Engineer Senior" has decided to spawn DLL files from all of our XSL pages (many of which have duplicate names) upon building a new instance of the website and have the active server pages (ASPX) use the DLL instead. This has created a "known issue" in which ~200 DLL naming conflicts occur and, thus, half of our application is broken. I think a solution to this problem is that, thankfully, we're generating the names of the DLLs and linking them up with our application dynamically. Therefore we can do something kludgy like generate a hash and append it to the end of the DLL file name when we build our website, then always reference the DLL that had some kind of random string / hash appended to its name. Aside from outright renaming the DLLs, is there another way to have multiple DLLs with the same name register for one application? I think the answer is "No, only between different applications using a special technique." Please confirm. Another question I have on my mind is whether this whole idea is a good practice -- converting our XSL pages (which we use in mass -- every time a response from our web app occurs) into DLL functions that call a "function" to do what the XSL page did via an active server page (ASPX), when we were before just sending an XML response to an XSL page via aspx.

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  • JavaScript: When does JavaScript evaluate a function, onload or when the function is called?

    - by Benj
    When does JavaScript evaluate a function? Is it on page load or when the function is called? The reason why I ask is because I have the following code: function scriptLoaded() { // one of our scripts finished loading, detect which scripts are available: var jQuery = window.jQuery; var maps = window.google && google.maps; if (maps && !requiresGmaps.called) { requiresGmaps.called = true; requiresGmaps(); } if (jQuery && !requiresJQuery.called) { requiresJQuery.called = true; requiresJQuery(); } if (maps && jQuery && !requiresBothJQueryGmaps.called) { requiresBothJQueryGmaps.called = true; requiresBothJQueryGmaps(); } } // asynch download of script function addScript(url) { var script = document.createElement('script'); script.src = url; // older IE... script.onreadystatechange=function () { if (this.readyState == 'complete') scriptLoaded.call(this); } script.onload=scriptLoaded; document.getElementsByTagName('head')[0].appendChild(script); } addScript('http://google.com/gmaps.js'); addScript('http://jquery.com/jquery.js'); // define some function dependecies function requiresJQuery() { // create JQuery objects } function requiresGmaps() { // create Google Maps object, etc } function requiresBothJQueryGmaps() { ... } What I want to do is perform asynchronous download of my JavaScript and start at the earliest possible time to begin executing those scripts but my code has dependencies on when the scripted have been obviously downloaded and loaded. When I try the code above, it appears that my browser is still attempting to evaluate code within my require* functions even before those functions have been called. Is this correct? Or am I misunderstanding what's wrong with my code?

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

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

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  • Back to Basics: When does a .NET Assembly Dependency get loaded

    - by Rick Strahl
    When we work on typical day to day applications, it's easy to forget some of the core features of the .NET framework. For me personally it's been a long time since I've learned about some of the underlying CLR system level services even though I rely on them on a daily basis. I often think only about high level application constructs and/or high level framework functionality, but the low level stuff is often just taken for granted. Over the last week at DevConnections I had all sorts of low level discussions with other developers about the inner workings of this or that technology (especially in light of my Low Level ASP.NET Architecture talk and the Razor Hosting talk). One topic that came up a couple of times and ended up a point of confusion even amongst some seasoned developers (including some folks from Microsoft <snicker>) is when assemblies actually load into a .NET process. There are a number of different ways that assemblies are loaded in .NET. When you create a typical project assemblies usually come from: The Assembly reference list of the top level 'executable' project The Assembly references of referenced projects Dynamically loaded at runtime via AppDomain/Reflection loading In addition .NET automatically loads mscorlib (most of the System namespace) the boot process that hosts the .NET runtime in EXE apps, or some other kind of runtime hosting environment (runtime hosting in servers like IIS, SQL Server or COM Interop). In hosting environments the runtime host may also pre-load a bunch of assemblies on its own (for example the ASP.NET host requires all sorts of assemblies just to run itself, before ever routing into your user specific code). Assembly Loading The most obvious source of loaded assemblies is the top level application's assembly reference list. You can add assembly references to a top level application and those assembly references are then available to the application. In a nutshell, referenced assemblies are not immediately loaded - they are loaded on the fly as needed. So regardless of whether you have an assembly reference in a top level project, or a dependent assembly assemblies typically load on an as needed basis, unless explicitly loaded by user code. The same is true of dependent assemblies. To check this out I ran a simple test: I have a utility assembly Westwind.Utilities which is a general purpose library that can work in any type of project. Due to a couple of small requirements for encoding and a logging piece that allows logging Web content (dependency on HttpContext.Current) this utility library has a dependency on System.Web. Now System.Web is a pretty large assembly and generally you'd want to avoid adding it to a non-Web project if it can be helped. So I created a Console Application that loads my utility library: You can see that the top level Console app a reference to Westwind.Utilities and System.Data (beyond the core .NET libs). The Westwind.Utilities project on the other hand has quite a few dependencies including System.Web. I then add a main program that accesses only a simple utillity method in the Westwind.Utilities library that doesn't require any of the classes that access System.Web: static void Main(string[] args) { Console.WriteLine(StringUtils.NewStringId()); Console.ReadLine(); } StringUtils.NewStringId() calls into Westwind.Utilities, but it doesn't rely on System.Web. Any guesses what the assembly list looks like when I stop the code on the ReadLine() command? I'll wait here while you think about it… … … So, when I stop on ReadLine() and then fire up Process Explorer and check the assembly list I get: We can see here that .NET has not actually loaded any of the dependencies of the Westwind.Utilities assembly. Also not loaded is the top level System.Data reference even though it's in the dependent assembly list of the top level project. Since this particular function I called only uses core System functionality (contained in mscorlib) there's in fact nothing else loaded beyond the main application and my Westwind.Utilities assembly that contains the method accessed. None of the dependencies of Westwind.Utilities loaded. If you were to open the assembly in a disassembler like Reflector or ILSpy, you would however see all the compiled in dependencies. The referenced assemblies are in the dependency list and they are loadable, but they are not immediately loaded by the application. In other words the C# compiler and .NET linker are smart enough to figure out the dependencies based on the code that actually is referenced from your application and any dependencies cascading down into the dependencies from your top level application into the referenced assemblies. In the example above the usage requirement is pretty obvious since I'm only calling a single static method and then exiting the app, but in more complex applications these dependency relationships become very complicated - however it's all taken care of by the compiler and linker figuring out what types and members are actually referenced and including only those assemblies that are in fact referenced in your code or required by any of your dependencies. The good news here is: That if you are referencing an assembly that has a dependency on something like System.Web in a few places that are not actually accessed by any of your code or any dependent assembly code that you are calling, that assembly is never loaded into memory! Some Hosting Environments pre-load Assemblies The load behavior can vary however. In Console and desktop applications we have full control over assembly loading so we see the core CLR behavior. However other environments like ASP.NET for example will preload referenced assemblies explicitly as part of the startup process - primarily to minimize load conflicts. Specifically ASP.NET pre-loads all assemblies referenced in the assembly list and the /bin folder. So in Web applications it definitely pays to minimize your top level assemblies if they are not used. Understanding when Assemblies Load To clarify and see it actually happen what I described in the first example , let's look at a couple of other scenarios. To see assemblies loading at runtime in real time lets create a utility function to print out loaded assemblies to the console: public static void PrintAssemblies() { var assemblies = AppDomain.CurrentDomain.GetAssemblies(); foreach (var assembly in assemblies) { Console.WriteLine(assembly.GetName()); } } Now let's look at the first scenario where I have class method that references internally uses System.Web. In the first scenario lets add a method to my main program like this: static void Main(string[] args) { Console.WriteLine(StringUtils.NewStringId()); Console.ReadLine(); PrintAssemblies(); } public static void WebLogEntry() { var entry = new WebLogEntry(); entry.UpdateFromRequest(); Console.WriteLine(entry.QueryString); } UpdateFromWebRequest() internally accesses HttpContext.Current to read some information of the ASP.NET Request object so it clearly needs a reference System.Web to work. In this first example, the method that holds the calling code is never called, but exists as a static method that can potentially be called externally at some point. What do you think will happen here with the assembly loading? Will System.Web load in this example? No - it doesn't. Because the WebLogEntry() method is never called by the mainline application (or anywhere else) System.Web is not loaded. .NET dynamically loads assemblies as code that needs it is called. No code references the WebLogEntry() method and so System.Web is never loaded. Next, let's add the call to this method, which should trigger System.Web to be loaded because a dependency exists. Let's change the code to: static void Main(string[] args) { Console.WriteLine(StringUtils.NewStringId()); Console.WriteLine("--- Before:"); PrintAssemblies(); WebLogEntry(); Console.WriteLine("--- After:"); PrintAssemblies(); Console.ReadLine(); } public static void WebLogEntry() { var entry = new WebLogEntry(); entry.UpdateFromRequest(); Console.WriteLine(entry.QueryString); } Looking at the code now, when do you think System.Web will be loaded? Will the before list include it? Yup System.Web gets loaded, but only after it's actually referenced. In fact, just until before the call to UpdateFromRequest() System.Web is not loaded - it only loads when the method is actually called and requires the reference in the executing code. Moral of the Story So what have we learned - or maybe remembered again? Dependent Assembly References are not pre-loaded when an application starts (by default) Dependent Assemblies that are not referenced by executing code are never loaded Dependent Assemblies are just in time loaded when first referenced in code All of this is nothing new - .NET has always worked like this. But it's good to have a refresher now and then and go through the exercise of seeing it work in action. It's not one of those things we think about everyday, and as I found out last week, I couldn't remember exactly how it worked since it's been so long since I've learned about this. And apparently I'm not the only one as several other people I had discussions with in relation to loaded assemblies also didn't recall exactly what should happen or assumed incorrectly that just having a reference automatically loads the assembly. The moral of the story for me is: Trying at all costs to eliminate an assembly reference from a component is not quite as important as it's often made out to be. For example, the Westwind.Utilities module described above has a logging component, including a Web specific logging entry that supports pulling information from the active HTTP Context. Adding that feature requires a reference to System.Web. Should I worry about this in the scope of this library? Probably not, because if I don't use that one class of nearly a hundred, System.Web never gets pulled into the parent process. IOW, System.Web only loads when I use that specific feature and if I am, well I clearly have to be running in a Web environment anyway to use it realistically. The alternative would be considerably uglier: Pulling out the WebLogEntry class and sticking it into another assembly and breaking up the logging code. In this case - definitely not worth it. So, .NET definitely goes through some pretty nifty optimizations to ensure that it loads only what it needs and in most cases you can just rely on .NET to do the right thing. Sometimes though assembly loading can go wrong (especially when signed and versioned local assemblies are involved), but that's subject for a whole other post…© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2012Posted in .NET  CSharp   Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

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  • Azure git deployment - missing references in 2nd assembly

    - by Dan
    I'm trying to setup Bitbucket deployment to an Azure website. I successfully have Bitbucket and Azure linked, but when I push to Bitbucket, I get the following error on the Azure site: If I click on 'View Log', it shows the following compile errors: D:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v4.0.30319\Microsoft.Common.targets(1578,5): warning MSB3245: Could not resolve this reference. Could not locate the assembly "System.Web.Mvc, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35, processorArchitecture=MSIL". Check to make sure the assembly exists on disk. If this reference is required by your code, you may get compilation errors. [C:\DWASFiles\Sites\<projname>\VirtualDirectory0\site\repository\<projname>.Common\<projname>.Common.csproj] D:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v4.0.30319\Microsoft.Common.targets(1578,5): warning MSB3245: Could not resolve this reference. Could not locate the assembly "WebMatrix.WebData, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35, processorArchitecture=MSIL". Check to make sure the assembly exists on disk. If this reference is required by your code, you may get compilation errors. [C:\DWASFiles\Sites\<projname>\VirtualDirectory0\site\repository\<projname>.Common\<projname>.Common.csproj] CustomMembershipProvider.cs(5,7): error CS0246: The type or namespace name 'WebMatrix' could not be found (are you missing a using directive or an assembly reference?) [C:\DWASFiles\Sites\<projname>\VirtualDirectory0\site\repository\<projname>.Common\<projname>.Common.csproj] CustomMembershipProvider.cs(9,38): error CS0246: The type or namespace name 'ExtendedMembershipProvider' could not be found (are you missing a using directive or an assembly reference?) [C:\DWASFiles\Sites\<projname>\VirtualDirectory0\site\repository\<projname>.Common\<projname>.Common.csproj] Models\AccountModels.cs(3,18): error CS0234: The type or namespace name 'Mvc' does not exist in the namespace 'System.Web' (are you missing an assembly reference?) [C:\DWASFiles\Sites\<projname>\VirtualDirectory0\site\repository\<projname>.Common\<projname>.Common.csproj] CustomMembershipProvider.cs(198,37): error CS0246: The type or namespace name 'OAuthAccountData' could not be found (are you missing a using directive or an assembly reference?) [C:\DWASFiles\Sites\<projname>\VirtualDirectory0\site\repository\<projname>.Common\<projname>.Common.csproj] Models\AccountModels.cs(40,10): error CS0246: The type or namespace name 'Compare' could not be found (are you missing a using directive or an assembly reference?) [C:\DWASFiles\Sites\<projname>\VirtualDirectory0\site\repository\<projname>.Common\<projname>.Common.csproj] Models\AccountModels.cs(40,10): error CS0246: The type or namespace name 'CompareAttribute' could not be found (are you missing a using directive or an assembly reference?) [C:\DWASFiles\Sites\<projname>\VirtualDirectory0\site\repository\<projname>.Common\<projname>.Common.csproj] Models\AccountModels.cs(73,10): error CS0246: The type or namespace name 'Compare' could not be found (are you missing a using directive or an assembly reference?) [C:\DWASFiles\Sites\<projname>\VirtualDirectory0\site\repository\<projname>.Common\<projname>.Common.csproj] Models\AccountModels.cs(73,10): error CS0246: The type or namespace name 'CompareAttribute' could not be found (are you missing a using directive or an assembly reference?) [C:\DWASFiles\Sites\<projname>\VirtualDirectory0\site\repository\<projname>.Common\<projname>.Common.csproj] Note that these compile errors are against another assembly in my project (the assembly where I put the business logic). When Googling, the only mention I found was about having to set the "local copy" flag to true for those references. I've tried this, but still got the same errors. This all compiles fine locally. Any ideas?

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  • WCF Contract Name 'IMyService' could not be found?

    - by M3NTA7
    The contract name 'IMyService' could not be found in the list of contracts implemented by the service 'MyService'.. --- System.InvalidOperationException: The contract name 'IMyService' could not be found in the list of contracts implemented by the service 'MyService'. This is driving me crazy. I have a WCF web service that works on my dev machine, but when I copy it to a Virtual Machine that I am using for testing, I get the error that seems to indicate that I am not implementing the interface, but it does not make sense because the service does work on my windows xp IIS. the Virtual machine uses Windows Server 2003 IIS. Any ideas? One thing to note here is that I get this error on my VM even while just trying to access the service in a web browser as the client. Note: I am using principalPermissionMode="UseWindowsGroups", but that is not a problem on my local machine. I just add myself to the appropriate windows group. But no luck on my VM. system.serviceModel: <diagnostics> <messageLogging logEntireMessage="false" maxSizeOfMessageToLog="2147483647" /> </diagnostics> <services> <service behaviorConfiguration="MyServiceBehaviors" name="MyService"> <endpoint binding="basicHttpBinding" bindingConfiguration="basicHttpBinding" name="MyService" bindingName="basicHttpBinding" bindingNamespace="http://my.test.com" contract="IMyService"> </endpoint> </service> </services> <bindings> <basicHttpBinding> <binding name="basicHttpBinding" maxReceivedMessageSize="2147483647"> <readerQuotas maxStringContentLength="2147483647" /> <security mode="TransportCredentialOnly"> <transport clientCredentialType="Windows" proxyCredentialType="None" /> </security> </binding> </basicHttpBinding> <netTcpBinding> <binding name="WindowsClientOverTcp" maxReceivedMessageSize="2147483647"> <readerQuotas maxStringContentLength="2147483647" /> </binding> </netTcpBinding> <wsHttpBinding> <binding name="wsHttpBinding" maxReceivedMessageSize="2147483647"> <readerQuotas maxDepth="32" maxStringContentLength="2147483647" maxArrayLength="16384" maxBytesPerRead="4096" maxNameTableCharCount="16384" /> </binding> </wsHttpBinding> </bindings> <behaviors> <serviceBehaviors> <behavior name="MyServiceBehaviors"> <serviceMetadata httpGetEnabled="true" /> <serviceAuthorization principalPermissionMode="UseWindowsGroups" impersonateCallerForAllOperations="false" /> <serviceCredentials /> </behavior> </serviceBehaviors> </behaviors> Thanks, Glen

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  • What browser is sending user agent beginning mozilla/5.0+, tramslates & into &amp;

    - by Patrick
    We've got a website which has been running for a few years now. One of our customers has just started having an intermittent problem. Looking at our iis6.0 logs the service works correctly when they have a user agent beginning "mozilla/4.0+" but fails when the user agent begins "mozilla/5.0+". The particular customer only started having this problem on Wednesday. Does anyone know the browser/upgrade which changes the 4.0 to 5.0? The actual problem caused is that an "&" in a url parameter list is being encoded as "&amp;". Anyone seen anything similar? We have other users sending from browsers with the 5.0+ user agent without trouble. Sorry about the tags but don't have the rep to create new ones. Thanks in advance, Patrick Edit: hi Viper_sb, It is most probably a custom script (I'm primarily a c++ developer so don't really understand). Our site services requests from other customer developed sites, this one was done in Java script as far as I know. we're actually getting a variety of user agents (presumably depending on which of our customers customers is accessing the service), here's a few: Mozilla/5.0+(Windows;+U;+Windows+NT+6.1;+fr;+rv:1.9.1.11)+Gecko/20100701+Firefox/3.5.11 Mozilla/5.0+(Windows;+U;+Windows+NT+5.1;+en-US)+AppleWebKit/533.4+(KHTML,+like+Gecko)+Chrome/5.0.375.126+Safari/533.4 302 0 0 Mozilla/5.0+(Macintosh;+U;+PPC+Mac+OS+X;+fr)+AppleWebKit/523.12+(KHTML,+like+Gecko)+Version/3.0.4+Safari/523.12 Mozilla/5.0+(Windows;+U;+Windows+NT+5.1;+en-US;+rv:1.9.2.8)+Gecko/20100722+Firefox/3.6.8 Mozilla/5.0+(Windows;+U;+Windows+NT+5.1;+fr;+rv:1.9.2.8)+Gecko/20100722+Firefox/3.6.8+(.NET+CLR+3.5.30729)

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