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Is "White-Board-Coding" inappropriate during interviews?

- by Eoin Campbell

This is a somewhat subjective quesiton but I'd love to hear feedback/opinions from either interviewers/interviewees on the topic. We split our technical part into 4 parts. Write Code, Read & Analyse Code, Design Session & Code on the white board. For the last part what we ask interviewees to do is write a small code snippet (4-5 lines) on the whiteboard and explain as they go through it. Let me be clear the purpose is not to catch people out. We're not looking for perfect syntax. Hell it can even be pseudo-code. but the point is to give them a very simple problem and see if their brain can communicate the solution to us. By simple problems I mean "Reverse a string", "FizzBuzz" etc... EDIT Just with regards the comment about Pseudo-Code. We always ask for an explicit language first. We;re a .NET C# house. we've only said "pseudo-code" where someone has been blanking/really struggling with the code. My question is "Is it innappropriate / unreasonable to expect a programmer to write a code snippet on a whiteboard during an interview ?"

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Why unhandled exceptions are useful

- by Simon Cooper

It’s the bane of most programmers’ lives – an unhandled exception causes your application or webapp to crash, an ugly dialog gets displayed to the user, and they come complaining to you. Then, somehow, you need to figure out what went wrong. Hopefully, you’ve got a log file, or some other way of reporting unhandled exceptions (obligatory employer plug: SmartAssembly reports an application’s unhandled exceptions straight to you, along with the entire state of the stack and variables at that point). If not, you have to try and replicate it yourself, or do some psychic debugging to try and figure out what’s wrong. However, it’s good that the program crashed. Or, more precisely, it is correct behaviour. An unhandled exception in your application means that, somewhere in your code, there is an assumption that you made that is actually invalid. Coding assumptions Let me explain a bit more. Every method, every line of code you write, depends on implicit assumptions that you have made. Take this following simple method, that copies a collection to an array and includes an item if it isn’t in the collection already, using a supplied IEqualityComparer: public static T[] ToArrayWithItem( ICollection<T> coll, T obj, IEqualityComparer<T> comparer) { // check if the object is in collection already // using the supplied comparer foreach (var item in coll) { if (comparer.Equals(item, obj)) { // it's in the collection already // simply copy the collection to an array // and return it T[] array = new T[coll.Count]; coll.CopyTo(array, 0); return array; } } // not in the collection // copy coll to an array, and add obj to it // then return it T[] array = new T[coll.Count+1]; coll.CopyTo(array, 0); array[array.Length-1] = obj; return array; } What’s all the assumptions made by this fairly simple bit of code? coll is never null comparer is never null coll.CopyTo(array, 0) will copy all the items in the collection into the array, in the order defined for the collection, starting at the first item in the array. The enumerator for coll returns all the items in the collection, in the order defined for the collection comparer.Equals returns true if the items are equal (for whatever definition of ‘equal’ the comparer uses), false otherwise comparer.Equals, coll.CopyTo, and the coll enumerator will never throw an exception or hang for any possible input and any possible values of T coll will have less than 4 billion items in it (this is a built-in limit of the CLR) array won’t be more than 2GB, both on 32 and 64-bit systems, for any possible values of T (again, a limit of the CLR) There are no threads that will modify coll while this method is running and, more esoterically: The C# compiler will compile this code to IL according to the C# specification The CLR and JIT compiler will produce machine code to execute the IL on the user’s computer The computer will execute the machine code correctly That’s a lot of assumptions. Now, it could be that all these assumptions are valid for the situations this method is called. But if this does crash out with an exception, or crash later on, then that shows one of the assumptions has been invalidated somehow. An unhandled exception shows that your code is running in a situation which you did not anticipate, and there is something about how your code runs that you do not understand. Debugging the problem is the process of learning more about the new situation and how your code interacts with it. When you understand the problem, the solution is (usually) obvious. The solution may be a one-line fix, the rewrite of a method or class, or a large-scale refactoring of the codebase, but whatever it is, the fix for the crash will incorporate the new information you’ve gained about your own code, along with the modified assumptions. When code is running with an assumption or invariant it depended on broken, then the result is ‘undefined behaviour’. Anything can happen, up to and including formatting the entire disk or making the user’s computer sentient and start doing a good impression of Skynet. You might think that those can’t happen, but at Halting problem levels of generality, as soon as an assumption the code depended on is broken, the program can do anything. That is why it’s important to fail-fast and stop the program as soon as an invariant is broken, to minimise the damage that is done. What does this mean in practice? To start with, document and check your assumptions. As with most things, there is a level of judgement required. How you check and document your assumptions depends on how the code is used (that’s some more assumptions you’ve made), how likely it is a method will be passed invalid arguments or called in an invalid state, how likely it is the assumptions will be broken, how expensive it is to check the assumptions, and how bad things are likely to get if the assumptions are broken. Now, some assumptions you can assume unless proven otherwise. You can safely assume the C# compiler, CLR, and computer all run the method correctly, unless you have evidence of a compiler, CLR or processor bug. You can also assume that interface implementations work the way you expect them to; implementing an interface is more than simply declaring methods with certain signatures in your type. The behaviour of those methods, and how they work, is part of the interface contract as well. For example, for members of a public API, it is very important to document your assumptions and check your state before running the bulk of the method, throwing ArgumentException, ArgumentNullException, InvalidOperationException, or another exception type as appropriate if the input or state is wrong. For internal and private methods, it is less important. If a private method expects collection items in a certain order, then you don’t necessarily need to explicitly check it in code, but you can add comments or documentation specifying what state you expect the collection to be in at a certain point. That way, anyone debugging your code can immediately see what’s wrong if this does ever become an issue. You can also use DEBUG preprocessor blocks and Debug.Assert to document and check your assumptions without incurring a performance hit in release builds. On my coding soapbox… A few pet peeves of mine around assumptions. Firstly, catch-all try blocks: try { ... } catch { } A catch-all hides exceptions generated by broken assumptions, and lets the program carry on in an unknown state. Later, an exception is likely to be generated due to further broken assumptions due to the unknown state, causing difficulties when debugging as the catch-all has hidden the original problem. It’s much better to let the program crash straight away, so you know where the problem is. You should only use a catch-all if you are sure that any exception generated in the try block is safe to ignore. That’s a pretty big ask! Secondly, using as when you should be casting. Doing this: (obj as IFoo).Method(); or this: IFoo foo = obj as IFoo; ... foo.Method(); when you should be doing this: ((IFoo)obj).Method(); or this: IFoo foo = (IFoo)obj; ... foo.Method(); There’s an assumption here that obj will always implement IFoo. If it doesn’t, then by using as instead of a cast you’ve turned an obvious InvalidCastException at the point of the cast that will probably tell you what type obj actually is, into a non-obvious NullReferenceException at some later point that gives you no information at all. If you believe obj is always an IFoo, then say so in code! Let it fail-fast if not, then it’s far easier to figure out what’s wrong. Thirdly, document your assumptions. If an algorithm depends on a non-trivial relationship between several objects or variables, then say so. A single-line comment will do. Don’t leave it up to whoever’s debugging your code after you to figure it out. Conclusion It’s better to crash out and fail-fast when an assumption is broken. If it doesn’t, then there’s likely to be further crashes along the way that hide the original problem. Or, even worse, your program will be running in an undefined state, where anything can happen. Unhandled exceptions aren’t good per-se, but they give you some very useful information about your code that you didn’t know before. And that can only be a good thing.

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Another Twig Improvements

- by Ondrej Brejla

Hi all! We are here again to intorduce you some of our new NetBeans 7.3 features. Today we'll show you some another Twig improvements. So let's start! Code Templates First feature is about Code Templates. We added some basic templates to improve your Editor experience. You will be really fast with it! If someone don't know what Code Templates are, they are piece of code (snippet) which is inserted into editor after typing its abbreviation and pressing Tab key (or another one which you define in Tools -> Options -> Editor -> Code Templates -> Expand Template on) to epxand it. All default Twig Code Templates can be found in Tools -> Options -> Editor -> Code Templates -> Twig Markup. You can add your custom templates there as well. Note: Twig Markup code templates have to be expanded inside Twig delimiters (i.e. { and }). If you try to expand them outside of delimiters, it will not work, because then you are in HTML context. If you want to add a template which will contain Twig delimiter too, you have to add it directly into Tools -> Options -> Editor -> Code Templates -> HTML/XHTML. Don't add them into Twig File, it will not work. Interpolation Coloring The second, minor, feature is, that we know how to colorize Twig Interpolation. It's a small feature, but usefull :-) And that's all for today and as usual, please test it and if you find something strange, don't hesitate to file a new issue (product php, component Twig). Thanks a lot!

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Series On Embedded Development (Part 3) - Runtime Optionality

- by Darryl Mocek

What is runtime optionality? Runtime optionality means writing and packaging your code in such a way that all of the features are available at runtime, but aren't loaded and used if the feature isn't used. The code is separate, and you can even remove the code to save persistent storage if you know the feature will not be used. In native programming terms, it's splitting your application into separate shared libraries so you only have to load what you're using, which means it only impacts volatile memory when enabled at runtime. All the functionality is there, but if it's not used at runtime, it's not loaded. A good example of this in Java is JVMTI, Java's Virtual Machine Tool Interface. On smaller, embedded platforms, these libraries may not be there. If the libraries are not there, there's no effect on the runtime as long as you don't try to use the JVMTI features. There is a trade-off between size/performance and flexibility here. Putting code in separate libraries means loading that code will take longer and it will typically take up more persistent space. However, if the code is rarely used, you can save volatile memory by including it in a separate library. You can also use this method in Java by putting rarely-used code into one or more separate JAR's. Loading a JAR and parsing it takes CPU cycles and volatile memory. Putting all of your application's code into a single JAR means more processing for that JAR. Consider putting rarely-used code in a separate library/JAR.

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iphone: Help with AudioToolbox Leak: Stack trace/code included here...

- by editor guy

Part of this app is a "Scream" button that plays random screams from cast members of a TV show. I have to bang on the app quite a while to see a memory leak in Instruments, but it's there, occasionally coming up (every 45 seconds to 2 minutes.) The leak is 3.50kb when it occurs. Haven't been able to crack it for several hours. Any help appreciated. Instruments says this is the offending code line: [appSoundPlayer play]; that's linked to from line 9 of the below stack trace: 0 libSystem.B.dylib malloc 1 libSystem.B.dylib pthread_create 2 AudioToolbox CAPThread::Start() 3 AudioToolbox GenericRunLoopThread::Start() 4 AudioToolbox AudioQueueNew(bool, AudioStreamBasicDescription const*, TCACallback const&, CACallbackTarget const&, unsigned long, OpaqueAudioQueue*) 5 AudioToolbox AudioQueueNewOutput 6 AVFoundation allocAudioQueue(AVAudioPlayer, AudioPlayerImpl*) 7 AVFoundation prepareToPlayQueue(AVAudioPlayer*, AudioPlayerImpl*) 8 AVFoundation -[AVAudioPlayer prepareToPlay] 9 Scream Queens -[ScreamViewController scream:] /Users/laptop2/Desktop/ScreamQueens Versions/ScreamQueens25/Scream Queens/Classes/../ScreamViewController.m:210 10 CoreFoundation -[NSObject performSelector:withObject:withObject:] 11 UIKit -[UIApplication sendAction:to:from:forEvent:] 12 UIKit -[UIApplication sendAction:toTarget:fromSender:forEvent:] 13 UIKit -[UIControl sendAction:to:forEvent:] 14 UIKit -[UIControl(Internal) _sendActionsForEvents:withEvent:] 15 UIKit -[UIControl touchesEnded:withEvent:] 16 UIKit -[UIWindow _sendTouchesForEvent:] 17 UIKit -[UIWindow sendEvent:] 18 UIKit -[UIApplication sendEvent:] 19 UIKit _UIApplicationHandleEvent 20 GraphicsServices PurpleEventCallback 21 CoreFoundation CFRunLoopRunSpecific 22 CoreFoundation CFRunLoopRunInMode 23 GraphicsServices GSEventRunModal 24 UIKit -[UIApplication _run] 25 UIKit UIApplicationMain 26 Scream Queens main /Users/laptop2/Desktop/ScreamQueens Versions/ScreamQueens25/Scream Queens/main.m:14 27 Scream Queens start Here's .h: #import <UIKit/UIKit.h> #import <AVFoundation/AVFoundation.h> #import <MediaPlayer/MediaPlayer.h> #import <AudioToolbox/AudioToolbox.h> #import <MessageUI/MessageUI.h> #import <MessageUI/MFMailComposeViewController.h> @interface ScreamViewController : UIViewController <UIApplicationDelegate, AVAudioPlayerDelegate, MFMailComposeViewControllerDelegate> { //AudioPlayer related AVAudioPlayer *appSoundPlayer; NSURL *soundFileURL; BOOL interruptedOnPlayback; BOOL playing; //Scream button related IBOutlet UIButton *screamButton; int currentScreamIndex; NSString *currentScream; NSMutableArray *screams; NSMutableArray *personScreaming; NSMutableArray *photoArray; int currentSayingsIndex; NSString *currentButtonSaying; NSMutableArray *funnyButtonSayings; IBOutlet UILabel *funnyButtonSayingsLabel; IBOutlet UILabel *personScreamingField; IBOutlet UIImageView *personScreamingImage; //Mailing the scream related IBOutlet UILabel *mailStatusMessage; IBOutlet UIButton *shareButton; } //AudioPlayer related @property (nonatomic, retain) AVAudioPlayer *appSoundPlayer; @property (nonatomic, retain) NSURL *soundFileURL; @property (readwrite) BOOL interruptedOnPlayback; @property (readwrite) BOOL playing; //Scream button related @property (nonatomic, retain) UIButton *screamButton; @property (nonatomic, retain) NSMutableArray *screams; @property (nonatomic, retain) NSMutableArray *personScreaming; @property (nonatomic, retain) NSMutableArray *photoArray; @property (nonatomic, retain) UILabel *personScreamingField; @property (nonatomic, retain) UIImageView *personScreamingImage; @property (nonatomic, retain) NSMutableArray *funnyButtonSayings; @property (nonatomic, retain) UILabel *funnyButtonSayingsLabel; //Mailing the scream related @property (nonatomic, retain) IBOutlet UILabel *mailStatusMessage; @property (nonatomic, retain) IBOutlet UIButton *shareButton; //Scream Button - (IBAction) scream: (id) sender; //Mail the scream - (IBAction) showPicker: (id)sender; - (void)displayComposerSheet; - (void)launchMailAppOnDevice; @end Here's the top of .m: #import "ScreamViewController.h" //top of code has Audio session callback function for responding to audio route changes (from Apple's code), then my code continues... @implementation ScreamViewController @synthesize appSoundPlayer; // AVAudioPlayer object for playing the selected scream @synthesize soundFileURL; // Path to the scream @synthesize interruptedOnPlayback; // Was application interrupted during audio playback @synthesize playing; // Track playing/not playing state @synthesize screamButton; //Press this button, girls scream. @synthesize screams; //Mutable array holding strings pointing to sound files of screams. @synthesize personScreaming; //Mutable array tracking the person doing the screaming @synthesize photoArray; //Mutable array holding strings pointing to photos of screaming girls @synthesize personScreamingField; //Field updates to announce which girl is screaming. @synthesize personScreamingImage; //Updates to show image of the screamer. @synthesize funnyButtonSayings; //Mutable array holding the sayings @synthesize funnyButtonSayingsLabel; //Label that updates with the funnyButtonSayings @synthesize mailStatusMessage; //did the email go out @synthesize shareButton; //share scream via email Next line begins the block with the offending code: - (IBAction) scream: (id) sender { //Play a click sound effect SystemSoundID soundID; NSString *sfxPath = [[NSBundle mainBundle] pathForResource:@"aClick" ofType:@"caf"]; AudioServicesCreateSystemSoundID((CFURLRef)[NSURL fileURLWithPath:sfxPath],&soundID); AudioServicesPlaySystemSound (soundID); // Because someone may slam the scream button over and over, //must stop current sound, then begin next if ([self appSoundPlayer] != nil) { [[self appSoundPlayer] setDelegate:nil]; [[self appSoundPlayer] stop]; [self setAppSoundPlayer: nil]; } //after selecting a random index in the array (did that in View Did Load), //we move to the next scream on each click. //First check... //Are we past the end of the array? if (currentScreamIndex == [screams count]) { currentScreamIndex = 0; } //Get the string at the index in the personScreaming array currentScream = [screams objectAtIndex: currentScreamIndex]; //Get the string at the index in the personScreaming array NSString *screamer = [personScreaming objectAtIndex:currentScreamIndex]; //Log the string to the console NSLog (@"playing scream: %@", screamer); // Display the string in the personScreamingField field NSString *listScreamer = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"scream by: %@", screamer]; [personScreamingField setText:listScreamer]; // Gets the file system path to the scream to play. NSString *soundFilePath = [[NSBundle mainBundle] pathForResource: currentScream ofType: @"caf"]; // Converts the sound's file path to an NSURL object NSURL *newURL = [[NSURL alloc] initFileURLWithPath: soundFilePath]; self.soundFileURL = newURL; [newURL release]; [[AVAudioSession sharedInstance] setDelegate: self]; [[AVAudioSession sharedInstance] setCategory: AVAudioSessionCategoryPlayback error: nil]; // Registers the audio route change listener callback function AudioSessionAddPropertyListener ( kAudioSessionProperty_AudioRouteChange, audioRouteChangeListenerCallback, self ); // Activates the audio session. NSError *activationError = nil; [[AVAudioSession sharedInstance] setActive: YES error: &activationError]; // Instantiates the AVAudioPlayer object, initializing it with the sound AVAudioPlayer *newPlayer = [[AVAudioPlayer alloc] initWithContentsOfURL: soundFileURL error: nil]; //Error check and continue if (newPlayer != nil) { self.appSoundPlayer = newPlayer; [newPlayer release]; [appSoundPlayer prepareToPlay]; [appSoundPlayer setVolume: 1.0]; [appSoundPlayer setDelegate:self]; //NEXT LINE IS FLAGGED BY INSTRUMENTS AS LEAKY [appSoundPlayer play]; playing = YES; //Get the string at the index in the photoArray array NSString *screamerPic = [photoArray objectAtIndex:currentScreamIndex]; //Log the string to the console NSLog (@"displaying photo: %@", screamerPic); // Display the image of the person screaming personScreamingImage.image = [UIImage imageNamed:screamerPic]; //show the share button shareButton.hidden = NO; mailStatusMessage.hidden = NO; mailStatusMessage.text = @"share!"; //Get the string at the index in the funnySayings array currentSayingsIndex = random() % [funnyButtonSayings count]; currentButtonSaying = [funnyButtonSayings objectAtIndex: currentSayingsIndex]; NSString *theSaying = [funnyButtonSayings objectAtIndex:currentSayingsIndex]; [funnyButtonSayingsLabel setText: theSaying]; currentScreamIndex++; } } Here's my dealloc: - (void)dealloc { [appSoundPlayer stop]; [appSoundPlayer release], appSoundPlayer = nil; [screamButton release], screamButton = nil; [mailStatusMessage release], mailStatusMessage = nil; [personScreamingField release], personScreamingField = nil; [personScreamingImage release], personScreamingImage = nil; [funnyButtonSayings release], funnyButtonSayings = nil; [funnyButtonSayingsLabel release], funnyButtonSayingsLabel = nil; [screams release], screams = nil; [personScreaming release], personScreaming = nil; [soundFileURL release]; [super dealloc]; } @end Thanks so much for reading this far! Any input appreciated.

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Something is making my page perform an Ajax call multiple times... [read: I've never been more frust

- by Jack Webb-Heller

NOTE: This is a long question. I've explained all the 'basics' at the top and then there's some further (optional) information for if you need it. Hi folks Basically last night this started happening at about 9PM whilst I was trying to restructure my code to make it a bit nicer for the designer to add a few bits to. I tried to fix it until 2AM at which point I gave up. Came back to it this morning, still baffled. I'll be honest with you, I'm a pretty bad Javascript developer. Since starting this project Javascript has been completely new to me and I've just learn as I went along. So please forgive me if my code structure is really bad (perhaps give a couple of pointers on how to improve it?). So, to the problem: to reproduce it, visit http://furnace.howcode.com (it's far from complete). This problem is a little confusing but I'd really appreciate the help. So in the second column you'll see three tabs The 'Newest' tab is selected by default. Scroll to the bottom, and 3 further results should be dynamically fetched via Ajax. Now click on the 'Top Rated' tab. You'll see all the results, but ordered by rating Scroll to the bottom of 'Top Rated'. You'll see SIX results returned. This is where it goes wrong. Only a further three should be returned (there are 18 entries in total). If you're observant you'll notice two 'blocks' of 3 returned. The first 'block' is the second page of results from the 'Newest' tab. The second block is what I just want returned. Did that make any sense? Never mind! So basically I checked this out in Firebug. What happens is, from a 'Clean' page (first load, nothing done) it calls ONE POST request to http://furnace.howcode.com/code/loadmore . But every time you load a new one of the tabs, it makes an ADDITIONAL POST request each time where there should normally only be ONE. So, can you help me? I'd really appreciate it! At this point you could start independent investigation or read on for a little further (optional) information. Thanks! Jack Further Info (may be irrelevant but here for reference): It's almost like there's some Javascript code or something being left behind that duplicates it each time. I thought it might be this code that I use to detect when the browser is scrolled to the bottom: var col = $('#col2'); col.scroll(function(){ if (col.outerHeight() == (col.get(0).scrollHeight - col.scrollTop())) loadMore(1); }); So what I thought was that code was left behind, and so every time you scroll #col2 (which contains different data for each tab) it detected that and added it for #newest as well. So, I made each tab click give #col2 a dynamic class - either .newestcol, .featuredcol, or .topratedcol. And then I changed the var col=$('.newestcol');dynamically so it would only detect it individually for each tab (makin' any sense?!). But hey, that didn't do anything. Another useful tidbit: here's the PHP for http://furnace.howcode.com/code/loadmore: $kind = $this->input->post('kind'); if ($kind == 1){ // kind is 1 - newest $start = $this->input->post('currentpage'); $data['query'] = "SELECT code.id AS codeid, code.title AS codetitle, code.summary AS codesummary, code.author AS codeauthor, code.rating AS rating, code.date, code_tags.*, tags.*, users.firstname AS authorname, users.id AS authorid, GROUP_CONCAT(tags.tag SEPARATOR ', ') AS taggroup FROM code, code_tags, tags, users WHERE users.id = code.author AND code_tags.code_id = code.id AND tags.id = code_tags.tag_id GROUP BY code_id ORDER BY date DESC LIMIT $start, 15 "; $this->load->view('code/ajaxlist',$data); } elseif ($kind == 2) { // kind is 2 - featured So my jQuery code sends a variable 'kind'. If it's 1, it runs the query for Newest, etc. etc. The PHP code for furnace.howcode.com/code/ajaxlist is: <?php // Our query base // SELECT * FROM code ORDER BY date DESC $query = $this->db->query($query); foreach($query->result() as $row) { ?> <script type="text/javascript"> $('#title-<?php echo $row->codeid;?>').click(function() { var form_data = { id: <?php echo $row->codeid; ?> }; $('#col3').fadeOut('slow', function() { $.ajax({ url: "<?php echo site_url('code/viewajax');?>", type: 'POST', data: form_data, success: function(msg) { $('#col3').html(msg); $('#col3').fadeIn('fast'); } }); }); }); </script> <div class="result"> <div class="resulttext"> <div id="title-<?php echo $row->codeid; ?>" class="title"> <?php echo anchor('#',$row->codetitle); ?> </div> <div class="summary"> <?php echo $row->codesummary; ?> </div>  <?php include($_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT']."/fivestars/5star.php");?> <div class="bottom"> <div class="author"> Submitted by <?php echo anchor('auth/profile/'.$row->authorid,''.$row->authorname);?> </div> <?php // Now we need to take the GROUP_CONCATted tags and split them using the magic of PHP into seperate tags $tagarray = explode(", ", $row->taggroup); foreach ($tagarray as $tag) { ?> <div class="tagbutton" href="#"> <?php echo $tag; ?> </div> <?php } ?> </div> </div> </div> <?php } echo " ";?> <script type="text/javascript"> var newpage = <?php echo $this->input->post('currentpage') + 15;?>; </script> So that's everything in PHP. The rest you should be able to view with Firebug or by viewing the Source code. I've put all the Tab/clicking/Ajaxloading bits in the tags at the very bottom. There's a comment before it all kicks off. Thanks so much for your help!

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Adding tags to all text nodes between custom self closing tags.

- by Rachel

I have a pair of custom self closing tags s1 and s2 defined in namespace x in my xhtml. For each tag pair s1, s2 having the same id, I want to add span tags to all the text nodes between them. Each s1, s2 tag pair have a unique id. The s1 tag has an attribute 'styleName' which needs to be copied as the class name for the span tags populated for the s1,s2 pair. Within a s1, s2 tag pair, other s1, s2 tags can occur. It is the id attribute of the tags s1 and s2 that help us to find the postion from where we need to start populating the span(for text nodes alone) and the end where we need to stop. In case of common text nodes that is part of the multiple s1, s2 pairs then the span tags needs to be opened and closed appropirately as shown in the sample below. I am not specific with the format of the id populated for the span tag. As long as it is unique it is fine. Can we achieve this kind of a solution using XSL. I am looking for a XSL based solution for the same. I am using Saxon java processor for XSL. I am trying to achieve this using XSL 2.0. Please share your ideas on this. EDIT: I have edited my sample input and output to make my question more clear. Sample input: <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xmlns:x="http://sample.org"> <head> <title>This is my title</title> </head> <body> <h1 align="center">This <x:s1 id="1" styleName="name_1"/>is my <x:s2 id="1" />heading</h1> Sample content <x:s1 id="2" styleName="name_2"/> Some text here. Here you <x:s2 id="2" />go. <x:s1 id="3" styleName="name_3"/>This <x:s1 id="4" styleName="name_4"/>is just a simple text <x:s2 id="4" />Some text here.<x:s2 id="3" /> Some content here. Use this <x:s1 id="5" styleName="name_5"/>space. Indroducing <x:s1 id="6" styleName="name_6"/> more information. Can add some <x:s2 id="6" />more content here. Sample content <x:s2 id="5" />Some text here. Some content here. <x:s1 id="7" styleName="name_7"/>This is a complex data. <x:s1 id="8" styleName="name_8"/>Framing a long sentence to <x:s2 id="7" />accomodate all possible <x:s2 id="8" />scenarios. <x:s1 id="9" styleName="name_9"/>More data can be <x:s1 id="10" styleName="name_10"/>added here. Trying to include here. Modifying <x:s2 id="9" />content <x:s2 id="10" />here. </body> </html> Sample output: <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xmlns:x="http://sample.org"> <head> <title>This is my title</title> </head> <body> <h1 align="center">This is my heading</h1> Sample content Some text here. Here you go. This is just a simple text Some text here. Some content here. Use this space. Indroducing more information. Can add some more content here. Sample content Some text here. Some content here. This is a complex data. Framing a long sentence to accomodate all possible scenarios. More data can be added here. Trying to include here. Modifyingcontent here. </body> </html> Thanks.

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Adding tags to all text nodes between custom self closing tags.

- by Rachel

I have a pair of custom self closing tags s1 and s2 defined in namespace x in my xhtml. For each tag pair s1, s2 having the same id, I want to add span tags to all the text nodes between them. Each s1, s2 tag pair have a unique id. The s1 tag has an attribute 'styleName' which needs to be copied as the class name for the span tags populated for the s1,s2 pair. Within a s1, s2 tag pair, other s1, s2 tags can occur. It is the id attribute of the tags s1 and s2 that help us to find the postion from where we need to start populating the span(for text nodes alone) and the end where we need to stop. In case of common text nodes that is part of the multiple s1, s2 pairs then the span tags needs to be opened and closed appropirately as shown in the sample below. I am not specific with the format of the id populated for the span tag. Along as it is unique it is fine. Can we achive this kind of a solution using XSL. I am using Saxon processor. Sample input: <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xmlns:x="http://sample.org"> <head> <title>This is my title</title> </head> <body> <h1 align="center">This <x:s1 id="1" styleName="name_1"/>is my <x:s2 id="1" />heading</h1> Sample content <x:s1 id="2" styleName="name_2"/> Some text here. Here you <x:s2 id="2" />go. <x:s1 id="3" styleName="name_3"/>This <x:s1 id="4" styleName="name_4"/>is just a simple text <x:s2 id="4" />Some text here.<x:s2 id="3" /> Some content here. Use this <x:s1 id="5" styleName="name_5"/>space. Indroducing <x:s1 id="6" styleName="name_6"/> more information. Can add some <x:s2 id="6" />more content here. Sample content <x:s2 id="5" />Some text here. Some content here. <x:s1 id="7" styleName="name_7"/>This is a complex data. <x:s1 id="8" styleName="name_8"/>Framing a long sentence to <x:s2 id="7" />accomodate all possible <x:s2 id="8" />scenarios. <x:s1 id="9" styleName="name_9"/>More data can be <x:s1 id="10" styleName="name_10"/>added here. Trying to include here. Modifying <x:s2 id="9" />content <x:s2 id="10" />here. </body> </html> Sample output: <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xmlns:x="http://sample.org"> <head> <title>This is my title</title> </head> <body> <h1 align="center">This is my heading</h1> Sample content Some text here. Here you go. This is just a simple text Some text here. Some content here. Use this space. Indroducing more information. Can add some more content here. Sample content Some text here. Some content here. This is a complex data. Framing a long sentence to accomodate all possible scenarios. More data can be added here. Trying to include here. Modifyingcontent here. </body> </html> Thanks.

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SQL University: What and why of database refactoring

- by Mladen Prajdic

This is a post for a great idea called SQL University started by Jorge Segarra also famously known as SqlChicken on Twitter. It’s a collection of blog posts on different database related topics contributed by several smart people all over the world. So this week is mine and we’ll be talking about database testing and refactoring. In 3 posts we’ll cover: SQLU part 1 - What and why of database testing SQLU part 2 - What and why of database refactoring SQLU part 3 - Tools of the trade This is a second part of the series and in it we’ll take a look at what database refactoring is and why do it. Why refactor a database To know why refactor we first have to know what refactoring actually is. Code refactoring is a process where we change module internals in a way that does not change that module’s input/output behavior. For successful refactoring there is one crucial thing we absolutely must have: Tests. Automated unit tests are the only guarantee we have that we haven’t broken the input/output behavior before refactoring. If you haven’t go back ad read my post on the matter. Then start writing them. Next thing you need is a code module. Those are views, UDFs and stored procedures. By having direct table access we can kiss fast and sweet refactoring good bye. One more point to have a database abstraction layer. And no, ORM’s don’t fall into that category. But also know that refactoring is NOT adding new functionality to your code. Many have fallen into this trap. Don’t be one of them and resist the lure of the dark side. And it’s a strong lure. We developers in general love to add new stuff to our code, but hate fixing our own mistakes or changing existing code for no apparent reason. To be a good refactorer one needs discipline and focus. Now we know that refactoring is all about changing inner workings of existing code. This can be due to performance optimizations, changing internal code workflows or some other reason. This is a typical black box scenario to the outside world. If we upgrade the car engine it still has to drive on the road (preferably faster) and not fly (no matter how cool that would be). Also be aware that white box tests will break when we refactor. What to refactor in a database Refactoring databases doesn’t happen that often but when it does it can include a lot of stuff. Let us look at a few common cases. Adding or removing database schema objects Adding, removing or changing table columns in any way, adding constraints, keys, etc… All of these can be counted as internal changes not visible to the data consumer. But each of these carries a potential input/output behavior change. Dropping a column can result in views not working anymore or stored procedure logic crashing. Adding a unique constraint shows duplicated data that shouldn’t exist. Foreign keys break a truncate table command executed from an application that runs once a month. All these scenarios are very real and can happen. With the proper database abstraction layer fully covered with black box tests we can make sure something like that does not happen (hopefully at all). Changing physical structures Physical structures include heaps, indexes and partitions. We can pretty much add or remove those without changing the data returned by the database. But the performance can be affected. So here we use our performance tests. We do have them, right? Just by adding a single index we can achieve orders of magnitude performance improvement. Won’t that make users happy? But what if that index causes our write operations to crawl to a stop. again we have to test this. There are a lot of things to think about and have tests for. Without tests we can’t do successful refactoring! Fixing bad code We all have some bad code in our systems. We usually refer to that code as code smell as they violate good coding practices. Examples of such code smells are SQL injection, use of SELECT *, scalar UDFs or cursors, etc… Each of those is huge code smell and can result in major code changes. Take SELECT * from example. If we remove a column from a table the client using that SELECT * statement won’t have a clue about that until it runs. Then it will gracefully crash and burn. Not to mention the widely unknown SELECT * view refresh problem that Tomas LaRock (@SQLRockstar on Twitter) and Colin Stasiuk (@BenchmarkIT on Twitter) talk about in detail. Go read about it, it’s informative. Refactoring this includes replacing the * with column names and most likely change to application using the database. Breaking apart huge stored procedures Have you ever seen seen a stored procedure that was 2000 lines long? I have. It’s not pretty. It hurts the eyes and sucks the will to live the next 10 minutes. They are a maintenance nightmare and turn into things no one dares to touch. I’m willing to bet that 100% of time they don’t have a single test on them. Large stored procedures (and functions) are a clear sign that they contain business logic. General opinion on good database coding practices says that business logic has no business in the database. That’s the applications part. Refactoring such behemoths requires writing lots of edge case tests for the stored procedure input/output behavior and then start to refactor it. First we split the logic inside into smaller parts like new stored procedures and UDFs. Those then get called from the master stored procedure. Once we’ve successfully modularized the database code it’s best to transfer that logic into the applications consuming it. This only leaves the stored procedure with common data manipulation logic. Of course this isn’t always possible so having a plethora of performance and behavior unit tests is absolutely necessary to confirm we’ve actually improved the codebase in some way. Refactoring is not a popular chore amongst developers or managers. The former don’t like fixing old code, the latter can’t see the financial benefit. Remember how we talked about being lousy at estimating future costs in the previous post? But there comes a time when it must be done. Hopefully I’ve given you some ideas how to get started. In the last post of the series we’ll take a look at the tools to use and an example of testing and refactoring.

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Source-control 'wet-work'?

- by Phil Factor

When a design or creative work is flawed beyond remedy, it is often best to destroy it and start again. The other day, I lost the code to a long and intricate SQL batch I was working on. I’d thought it was impossible, but it happened. With all the technology around that is designed to prevent this occurring, this sort of accident has become a rare event. If it weren’t for a deranged laptop, and my distraction, the code wouldn’t have been lost this time. As always, I sighed, had a soothing cup of tea, and typed it all in again. The new code I hastily tapped in was much better: I’d held in my head the essence of how the code should work rather than the details: I now knew for certain the start point, the end, and how it should be achieved. Instantly the detritus of half-baked thoughts fell away and I was able to write logical code that performed better. Because I could work so quickly, I was able to hold the details of all the columns and variables in my head, and the dynamics of the flow of data. It was, in fact, easier and quicker to start from scratch rather than tidy up and refactor the existing code with its inevitable fumbling and half-baked ideas. What a shame that technology is now so good that developers rarely experience the cleansing shock of losing one’s code and having to rewrite it from scratch. If you’ve never accidentally lost your code, then it is worth doing it deliberately once for the experience. Creative people have, until Technology mistakenly prevented it, torn up their drafts or sketches, threw them in the bin, and started again from scratch. Leonardo’s obsessive reworking of the Mona Lisa was renowned because it was so unusual: Most artists have been utterly ruthless in destroying work that didn’t quite make it. Authors are particularly keen on writing afresh, and the results are generally positive. Lawrence of Arabia actually lost the entire 250,000 word manuscript of ‘The Seven Pillars of Wisdom’ by accidentally leaving it on a train at Reading station, before rewriting a much better version. Now, any writer or artist is seduced by technology into altering or refining their work rather than casting it dramatically in the bin or setting a light to it on a bonfire, and rewriting it from the blank page. It is easy to pick away at a flawed work, but the real creative process is far more brutal. Once, many years ago whilst running a software house that supplied commercial software to local businesses, I’d been supervising an accounting system for a farming cooperative. No packaged system met their needs, and it was all hand-cut code. For us, it represented a breakthrough as it was for a government organisation, and success would guarantee more contracts. As you’ve probably guessed, the code got mangled in a disk crash just a week before the deadline for delivery, and the many backups all proved to be entirely corrupted by a faulty tape drive. There were some fragments left on individual machines, but they were all of different versions. The developers were in despair. Strangely, I managed to re-write the bulk of a three-month project in a manic and caffeine-soaked weekend. Sure, that elegant universally-applicable input-form routine was‘nt quite so elegant, but it didn’t really need to be as we knew what forms it needed to support. Yes, the code lacked architectural elegance and reusability. By dawn on Monday, the application passed its integration tests. The developers rose to the occasion after I’d collapsed, and tidied up what I’d done, though they were reproachful that some of the style and elegance had gone out of the application. By the delivery date, we were able to install it. It was a smaller, faster application than the beta they’d seen and the user-interface had a new, rather Spartan, appearance that we swore was done to conform to the latest in user-interface guidelines. (we switched to Helvetica font to look more ‘Bauhaus’ ). The client was so delighted that he forgave the new bugs that had crept in. I still have the disk that crashed, up in the attic. In IT, we have had mixed experiences from complete re-writes. Lotus 123 never really recovered from a complete rewrite from assembler into C, Borland made the mistake with Arago and Quattro Pro and Netscape’s complete rewrite of their Navigator 4 browser was a white-knuckle ride. In all cases, the decision to rewrite was a result of extreme circumstances where no other course of action seemed possible. The rewrite didn’t come out of the blue. I prefer to remember the rewrite of Minix by young Linus Torvalds, or the rewrite of Bitkeeper by a slightly older Linus. The rewrite of CP/M didn’t do too badly either, did it? Come to think of it, the guy who decided to rewrite the windowing system of the Xerox Star never regretted the decision. I’ll agree that one should often resist calls for a rewrite. One of the worst habits of the more inexperienced programmer is to denigrate whatever code he or she inherits, and then call loudly for a complete rewrite. They are buoyed up by the mistaken belief that they can do better. This, however, is a different psychological phenomenon, more related to the idea of some motorcyclists that they are operating on infinite lives, or the occasional squaddies that if they charge the machine-guns determinedly enough all will be well. Grim experience brings out the humility in any experienced programmer. I’m referring to quite different circumstances here. Where a team knows the requirements perfectly, are of one mind on methodology and coding standards, and they already have a solution, then what is wrong with considering a complete rewrite? Rewrites are so painful in the early stages, until that point where one realises the payoff, that even I quail at the thought. One needs a natural disaster to push one over the edge. The trouble is that source-control systems, and disaster recovery systems, are just too good nowadays. If I were to lose this draft of this very blog post, I know I’d rewrite it much better. However, if you read this, you’ll know I didn’t have the nerve to delete it and start again. There was a time that one prayed that unreliable hardware would deliver you from an unmaintainable mess of a codebase, but now technology has made us almost entirely immune to such a merciful act of God. An old friend of mine with long experience in the software industry has long had the idea of the ‘source-control wet-work’, where one hires a malicious hacker in some wild eastern country to hack into one’s own source control system to destroy all trace of the source to an application. Alas, backup systems are just too good to make this any more than a pipedream. Somehow, it would be difficult to promote the idea. As an alternative, could one construct a source control system that, on doing all the code-quality metrics, would systematically destroy all trace of source code that failed the quality test? Alas, I can’t see many managers buying into the idea. In reading the full story of the near-loss of Toy Story 2, it set me thinking. It turned out that the lucky restoration of the code wasn’t the happy ending one first imagined it to be, because they eventually came to the conclusion that the plot was fundamentally flawed and it all had to be rewritten anyway. Was this an early case of the ‘source-control wet-job’?’ It is very hard nowadays to do a rapid U-turn in a development project because we are far too prone to cling to our existing source-code.

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Refactoring Part 1 : Intuitive Investments

- by Wes McClure

Fear, it’s what turns maintaining applications into a nightmare. Technology moves on, teams move on, someone is left to operate the application, what was green is now perceived brown. Eventually the business will evolve and changes will need to be made. The approach to those changes often dictates the long term viability of the application. Fear of change, lack of passion and a lack of interest in understanding the domain often leads to a paranoia to do anything that doesn’t involve duct tape and bailing twine. Don’t get me wrong, those have a place in the short term viability of a project but they don’t have a place in the long term. Add to it “us versus them” in regards to the original team and those that maintain it, internal politics and other factors and you have a recipe for disaster. This results in code that quickly becomes unmanageable. Even the most clever of designs will eventually become sub optimal and debt will amount that exponentially makes changes difficult. This is where refactoring comes in, and it’s something I’m very passionate about. Refactoring is about improving the process whereby we make change, it’s an exponential investment in the process of change. Without it we will incur exponential complexity that halts productivity. Investments, especially in the long term, require intuition and reflection. How can we tackle new development effectively via evolving the original design and paying off debt that has been incurred? The longer we wait to ask and answer this question, the more it will cost us. Small requests don’t warrant big changes, but realizing when changes now will pay off in the long term, and especially in the short term, is valuable. I have done my fair share of maintaining applications and continuously refactoring as needed, but recently I’ve begun work on a project that hasn’t had much debt, if any, paid down in years. This is the first in a series of blog posts to try to capture the process which is largely driven by intuition of smaller refactorings from other projects. Signs that refactoring could help: Testability How can decreasing test time not pay dividends? One of the first things I found was that a very important piece often takes 30+ minutes to test. I can only imagine how much time this has cost historically, but more importantly the time it might cost in the coming weeks: I estimate at least 10-20 hours per person! This is simply unacceptable for almost any situation. As it turns out, about 6 hours of working with this part of the application and I was able to cut the time down to under 30 seconds! In less than the lost time of one week, I was able to fix the problem for all future weeks! If we can’t test fast then we can’t change fast, nor with confidence. Code is used by end users and it’s also used by developers, consider your own needs in terms of the code base. Adding logic to enable/disable features during testing can help decouple parts of an application and lead to massive improvements. What exactly is so wrong about test code in real code? Often, these become features for operators and sometimes end users. If you cannot run an integration test within a test runner in your IDE, it’s time to refactor. Readability Are variables named meaningfully via a ubiquitous language? Is the code segmented functionally or behaviorally so as to minimize the complexity of any one area? Are aspects properly segmented to avoid confusion (security, logging, transactions, translations, dependency management etc) Is the code declarative (what) or imperative (how)? What matters, not how. LINQ is a great abstraction of the what, not how, of collection manipulation. The Reactive framework is a great example of the what, not how, of managing streams of data. Are constants abstracted and named, or are they just inline? Do people constantly bitch about the code/design? If the code is hard to understand, it will be hard to change with confidence. It’s a large undertaking if the original designers didn’t pay much attention to readability and as such will never be done to “completion.” Make sure not to go over board, instead use this as you change an application, not in lieu of changes (like with testability). Complexity Simplicity will never be achieved, it’s highly subjective. That said, a lot of code can be significantly simplified, tidy it up as you go. Refactoring will often converge upon a simplification step after enough time, keep an eye out for this. Understandability In the process of changing code, one often gains a better understanding of it. Refactoring code is a good way to learn how it works. However, it’s usually best in combination with other reasons, in effect killing two birds with one stone. Often this is done when readability is poor, in which case understandability is usually poor as well. In the large undertaking we are making with this legacy application, we will be replacing it. Therefore, understanding all of its features is important and this refactoring technique will come in very handy. Unused code How can deleting things not help? This is a freebie in refactoring, it’s very easy to detect with modern tools, especially in statically typed languages. We have VCS for a reason, if in doubt, delete it out (ok that was cheesy)! If you don’t know where to start when refactoring, this is an excellent starting point! Duplication Do not pray and sacrifice to the anti-duplication gods, there are excellent examples where consolidated code is a horrible idea, usually with divergent domains. That said, mediocre developers live by copy/paste. Other times features converge and aren’t combined. Tools for finding similar code are great in the example of copy/paste problems. Knowledge of the domain helps identify convergent concepts that often lead to convergent solutions and will give intuition for where to look for conceptual repetition. 80/20 and the Boy Scouts It’s often said that 80% of the time 20% of the application is used most. These tend to be the parts that are changed. There are also parts of the code where 80% of the time is spent changing 20% (probably for all the refactoring smells above). I focus on these areas any time I make a change and follow the philosophy of the Boy Scout in cleaning up more than I messed up. If I spend 2 hours changing an application, in the 20%, I’ll always spend at least 15 minutes cleaning it or nearby areas. This gives a huge productivity edge on developers that don’t. Ironically after a short period of time the 20% shrinks enough that we don’t have to spend 80% of our time there and can move on to other areas. Refactoring is highly subjective, never attempt to refactor to completion! Learn to be comfortable with leaving one part of the application in a better state than others. It’s an evolution, not a revolution. These are some simple areas to look into when making changes and can help get one started in the process. I’ve often found that refactoring is a convergent process towards simplicity that sometimes spans a few hours but often can lead to massive simplifications over the timespan of weeks and months of regular development.

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Source-control 'wet-work'?

- by Phil Factor

When a design or creative work is flawed beyond remedy, it is often best to destroy it and start again. The other day, I lost the code to a long and intricate SQL batch I was working on. I’d thought it was impossible, but it happened. With all the technology around that is designed to prevent this occurring, this sort of accident has become a rare event. If it weren’t for a deranged laptop, and my distraction, the code wouldn’t have been lost this time. As always, I sighed, had a soothing cup of tea, and typed it all in again. The new code I hastily tapped in was much better: I’d held in my head the essence of how the code should work rather than the details: I now knew for certain the start point, the end, and how it should be achieved. Instantly the detritus of half-baked thoughts fell away and I was able to write logical code that performed better. Because I could work so quickly, I was able to hold the details of all the columns and variables in my head, and the dynamics of the flow of data. It was, in fact, easier and quicker to start from scratch rather than tidy up and refactor the existing code with its inevitable fumbling and half-baked ideas. What a shame that technology is now so good that developers rarely experience the cleansing shock of losing one’s code and having to rewrite it from scratch. If you’ve never accidentally lost your code, then it is worth doing it deliberately once for the experience. Creative people have, until Technology mistakenly prevented it, torn up their drafts or sketches, threw them in the bin, and started again from scratch. Leonardo’s obsessive reworking of the Mona Lisa was renowned because it was so unusual: Most artists have been utterly ruthless in destroying work that didn’t quite make it. Authors are particularly keen on writing afresh, and the results are generally positive. Lawrence of Arabia actually lost the entire 250,000 word manuscript of ‘The Seven Pillars of Wisdom’ by accidentally leaving it on a train at Reading station, before rewriting a much better version. Now, any writer or artist is seduced by technology into altering or refining their work rather than casting it dramatically in the bin or setting a light to it on a bonfire, and rewriting it from the blank page. It is easy to pick away at a flawed work, but the real creative process is far more brutal. Once, many years ago whilst running a software house that supplied commercial software to local businesses, I’d been supervising an accounting system for a farming cooperative. No packaged system met their needs, and it was all hand-cut code. For us, it represented a breakthrough as it was for a government organisation, and success would guarantee more contracts. As you’ve probably guessed, the code got mangled in a disk crash just a week before the deadline for delivery, and the many backups all proved to be entirely corrupted by a faulty tape drive. There were some fragments left on individual machines, but they were all of different versions. The developers were in despair. Strangely, I managed to re-write the bulk of a three-month project in a manic and caffeine-soaked weekend. Sure, that elegant universally-applicable input-form routine was‘nt quite so elegant, but it didn’t really need to be as we knew what forms it needed to support. Yes, the code lacked architectural elegance and reusability. By dawn on Monday, the application passed its integration tests. The developers rose to the occasion after I’d collapsed, and tidied up what I’d done, though they were reproachful that some of the style and elegance had gone out of the application. By the delivery date, we were able to install it. It was a smaller, faster application than the beta they’d seen and the user-interface had a new, rather Spartan, appearance that we swore was done to conform to the latest in user-interface guidelines. (we switched to Helvetica font to look more ‘Bauhaus’ ). The client was so delighted that he forgave the new bugs that had crept in. I still have the disk that crashed, up in the attic. In IT, we have had mixed experiences from complete re-writes. Lotus 123 never really recovered from a complete rewrite from assembler into C, Borland made the mistake with Arago and Quattro Pro and Netscape’s complete rewrite of their Navigator 4 browser was a white-knuckle ride. In all cases, the decision to rewrite was a result of extreme circumstances where no other course of action seemed possible. The rewrite didn’t come out of the blue. I prefer to remember the rewrite of Minix by young Linus Torvalds, or the rewrite of Bitkeeper by a slightly older Linus. The rewrite of CP/M didn’t do too badly either, did it? Come to think of it, the guy who decided to rewrite the windowing system of the Xerox Star never regretted the decision. I’ll agree that one should often resist calls for a rewrite. One of the worst habits of the more inexperienced programmer is to denigrate whatever code he or she inherits, and then call loudly for a complete rewrite. They are buoyed up by the mistaken belief that they can do better. This, however, is a different psychological phenomenon, more related to the idea of some motorcyclists that they are operating on infinite lives, or the occasional squaddies that if they charge the machine-guns determinedly enough all will be well. Grim experience brings out the humility in any experienced programmer. I’m referring to quite different circumstances here. Where a team knows the requirements perfectly, are of one mind on methodology and coding standards, and they already have a solution, then what is wrong with considering a complete rewrite? Rewrites are so painful in the early stages, until that point where one realises the payoff, that even I quail at the thought. One needs a natural disaster to push one over the edge. The trouble is that source-control systems, and disaster recovery systems, are just too good nowadays. If I were to lose this draft of this very blog post, I know I’d rewrite it much better. However, if you read this, you’ll know I didn’t have the nerve to delete it and start again. There was a time that one prayed that unreliable hardware would deliver you from an unmaintainable mess of a codebase, but now technology has made us almost entirely immune to such a merciful act of God. An old friend of mine with long experience in the software industry has long had the idea of the ‘source-control wet-work’, where one hires a malicious hacker in some wild eastern country to hack into one’s own source control system to destroy all trace of the source to an application. Alas, backup systems are just too good to make this any more than a pipedream. Somehow, it would be difficult to promote the idea. As an alternative, could one construct a source control system that, on doing all the code-quality metrics, would systematically destroy all trace of source code that failed the quality test? Alas, I can’t see many managers buying into the idea. In reading the full story of the near-loss of Toy Story 2, it set me thinking. It turned out that the lucky restoration of the code wasn’t the happy ending one first imagined it to be, because they eventually came to the conclusion that the plot was fundamentally flawed and it all had to be rewritten anyway. Was this an early case of the ‘source-control wet-job’?’ It is very hard nowadays to do a rapid U-turn in a development project because we are far too prone to cling to our existing source-code.

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[C#] How can we differentiate between SDK class objects and custom class objects?

- by Nayan

To give an idea of my requirement, consider these classes - class A { } class B { string m_sName; public string Name { get { return m_sName; } set { m_sName = value; } } int m_iVal; public int Val { get { return m_iVal; } set { m_iVal = value; } } A m_objA; public A AObject { get { return m_objA; } set { m_objA = value; } } } Now, I need to identify the classes of the objects passed to a function void MyFunc(object obj) { Type type = obj.GetType(); foreach (PropertyInfo pi in type.GetProperties()) { if (pi.PropertyType.IsClass) { //I need objects only if (!type.IsGenericType && type.FullName.ToLower() == "system.string") { object _obj = pi.GetValue(obj, null); //do something } } } } I don't like this piece of code - if (!type.IsGenericType && type.FullName.ToLower() == "system.string") { because then i have to filter out classes like, System.Int16, System.Int32, System.Boolean and so on. Is there an elegant way through which I can find out if the object is of a class defined by me and not of system provided basic classes?

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How to display external database data in VBulletin 4 Forums Custom PHP Block?

- by NJTechGuy

Hi guys! I want to display data feed from an external database in a sidebar in the forums section. PHP Block Code : $host = 'db.123.net'; $dbUser = 'db49'; $dbPass = 'iReVbY'; $db = 'db6578h8'; mysql_connect("$host", "$dbUser", "$dbPass") or die(mysql_error()); mysql_select_db("$db") or die(mysql_error()); ob_start(); $result = mysql_query("SELECT id, title from abc") or die(mysql_error()); while($row = mysql_fetch_array( $result )) { print"<center>"; print "<a href=\"http://abc.com/?id=" . $row['id'] . "\"></a>"; print "</center>"; } $output .= ob_get_contents(); return $output; ob_end_clean(); How do I return an array to display in a PHP block in the sidebar (forums section)? Please help me out of this! Thank you..

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Adding a custom subview (created in a xib) to a view controller's view - What am I doing wrong

- by Fran

I've created a view in a xib (with an activity indicator, a progress view and a label). Then I've created .h/.m files: #import <UIKit/UIKit.h> @interface MyCustomView : UIView { IBOutlet UIActivityIndicatorView *actIndicator; IBOutlet UIProgressView *progressBar; IBOutlet UILabel *statusMsg; } @end #import "MyCustomView.h" @implementation MyCustomView - (id)initWithFrame:(CGRect)frame { if ((self = [super initWithFrame:frame])) { // Initialization code } return self; } - (void)dealloc { [super dealloc]; } @end In IB, I set the file's owner and view identity to MyCustomView and connect the IBOutlet to the File's owner In MyViewController.m, I've: - (void)viewDidLoad { [super viewDidLoad]; UIView *subView = [[MyCustomView alloc] initWithFrame:myTableView.frame]; [subView setBackgroundColor:[UIColor colorWithRed:0.0 green:0.0 blue:0.0 alpha:0.5]]; [myTableView addSubview:subView]; [subView release]; } When I run the app, the view is added, but I can't see the label, the progress bar and the activity indicator. What am I doing wrong?

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How to add custom header to ASMX web service call using jquery?

- by Mike

I have a web service with the following contract: POST /Service/service.asmx HTTP/1.1 Host: xxx.xxx.xxx Content-Type: text/xml; charset=utf-8 Content-Length: length SOAPAction: "xxx.xxx.xxx/Service/Method" <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <soap:Envelope xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns:soap="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/"> <soap:Header> <Request xmlns="xxx.xxx.xxx/Service/"> <transactiontype>string</transactiontype> <username>string</username> <password>string</password> </Request> </soap:Header> <soap:Body> <Method xmlns="xxx.xxx.xxx/Service/"> <xml>xml</xml> </Method> </soap:Body> </soap:Envelope> And I am trying to call the service using jquery. This is my code: $.ajax({ url: serverUrl + 'Method', type: "POST", dataType: "xml", data: { xml: "xml" }, beforeSend: function (req) { req.setRequestHeader('Header', '<Request xmlns="xxx.xxx.xxx/Service/">' +'<transactiontype>4</transactiontype>' +'<agencyName>name</agencyName>' +'<username>user</username>' +'<password>pass</password>' +'</Request>'); }, success: function (data) { alert(data.text); }, error: function (request, status, errorThrown) { alert(status); } }); However, the header content is not passed to the web service? How would I go about passing the header credentials to my web service call?

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Why do I get two clicked or released signals when using a custom slot for a QPushButton ?

- by Chris

here's the main code at first I thought is was the message box but setting a label instead has the same effect. #include <time.h> #include "ui_mainwindow.h" #include <QMessageBox> class MainWindow : public QWidget, private Ui::MainWindow { Q_OBJECT public: MainWindow(QWidget *parent = 0); void makeSum(void); private: int r1; int r2; private slots: void on_pushButton_released(void); }; MainWindow::MainWindow(QWidget *parent) : QWidget(parent) { setupUi(this); } void MainWindow::on_pushButton_released(void) { bool ok; int a = lineEdit->text().toInt(&ok, 10); if (ok) { if (r1+r2==a) { QMessageBox::information( this, "Sums","Correct!" ); } else { QMessageBox::information( this, "Sums","Wrong!" ); } } else { QMessageBox::information( this, "Sums","You need to enter a number" ); } makeSum(); } void MainWindow::makeSum(void) { r1 = rand() % 10 + 1; r2 = rand() % 10 + 1; label->setText(QString::number(r1)); label_3->setText(QString::number(r2)); } int main(int argc, char *argv[]) { srand ( time(NULL) ); QApplication app(argc, argv); MainWindow mw; mw.makeSum(); mw.show(); return app.exec(); } #include "main.moc"

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After I apply custom logic, next UI action crashes my app.

- by DanF

I've got an team (eveningRoster) that I'm making a button add employees to. The team is really a relationship to that night's event, but it's represented with an AC. I wanted to make sure an employee did not belong to the team before it adds, so I added a method to MyDocument to check first. It seems to work, the error logs complete, but after I've added a member, the next time I click anything, the program crashes. Any guesses why? Here's the code: -(IBAction)playsTonight:(id)sender { NSArray *selection = [fullRoster selectedObjects]; NSArray *existing = [eveningRoster arrangedObjects]; //Result will be within each loop. BOOL result; //noDuplicates will stay YES until a duplicate is found. BOOL noDuplicates = YES; //For the loop: int count; for (count = 0; count < [selection count]; count++){ result = [existing containsObject:[selection objectAtIndex:count]]; if (result == YES){ NSLog(@"Duplicate found!"); noDuplicates = NO; } } if (noDuplicates == YES){ [eveningRoster addObjects:[fullRoster selectedObjects]]; NSLog(@"selected objects added."); [eveningTable reloadData]; NSLog(@"Table reloaded."); } [selection release]; [existing release]; return; }

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How can I get a custom made set of checkboxes return values in the postback?

- by AngryHacker

I have the following in an aspx page: <td colspan="2"> <% DisplayParties(); %> </td> In the code behind for the aspx page, i have this (e.g. I build HTML for the checkboxes): public void DisplayParties() { var s = new StringBuilder(); s.Append("<input type=\"checkbox\" id=\"attorney\" value=\"12345\"/>"); s.Append("<input type=\"checkbox\" id=\"attorney\" value=\"67890\"/>"); s.Append("<input type=\"checkbox\" id=\"adjuster\" value=\"125\"/>"); Response.WriteLine(s.ToString()); } Not my proudest moment, but whatever. The problem is that when this page posts back via some event on the page, I never get these tags in the Request.Form collection. Is this simply how ASP.NET works (e.g. only server-side control post back) or am I missing something simple. My understanding was that a postback should bring back all the form variables.

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Is there any way to provide custom factory for .Net Framework creation Entities from EF4 ?

- by ILICH

There are a lot of posts about how cool POCO objects are and how Entity Framework 4 supports them. I decided to try it out with domain driven development oriented architecture and finished with domain entities that has dependencies from services. So far so good. Imagine my Products are POCO objects. When i query for objects like this: NorthwindContext db = new NorthwindContext(); var products = db.Products.ToList(); EF creates instances of products for me. Now I want to inject dependencies in my POCO objects (products) The only way I see is make some method within NorthwindContext that makes something like pseudo-code below: public List<Product> GetProducts(){ var products = database.Products.ToList(); container.BuildUp(products); //inject dependencies return products; } But what if i want to make my repository to be more flexible like this: public ObjectSet<Product> GetProducts() { ... } So, I really need a factory to make it more lazy and linq friendly. Please help !

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How to provide a temporary URL for custom domain in Wordpress multisite install?

- by Milan Babuškov

I have a website with Wordpress 3.0.4 installation, set up as multisite install. Some users register their blogs as something.mydomain.com and that works automatically. However, some users prefer to use their own domain names like something.com. This also works fine once they set up the CNAME record to point to my server. However, it takes 24-48 hours for that change to take effect. I'd like to be able to offer the user a temporary URL that would work out-of-the-box until the DNS changes are propagated, but I have not idea how to do it? For example: something.com should also be accessible as: something.tempdomain.com I have control over "tempdomain" DNS setup. I thought about replacing $_SERVER variables in index.php or .htaccess file when temporary domain is accessed, and this works for the first page load. However, all the links in generated page point to original domain which is not yet ready. UPDATE: I managed to get it working for the site itself by manipulating $_SERVER variables so Wordpress thinks it's creating a page for different site. I did this in index.php, so before any WP code is run I'm using ob_start and ob_get_contents later to get the page generated by Wordpress and then str_replace the links back to temporary domain. The problem I still have is the admin page. Even though the link says: http://site1.tempdomain.com/wp-admin when opened in browser it redirects to maindomain.com/wp-signup.php?new=site1.tempdomain I don't understand how WP detects that I supplied "fake" domain when $_SERVER vars are changed?

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Can a custom MFC window/dialog be a template class?

- by John

There's a bunch of special macros that MFC uses when creating dialogs, and in my quick tests I'm getting weird errors trying to compile a template dialog class. Is this likely to be a big pain to achieve? Here's what I tried: MyDlg.h template <class W> class CMyDlg : public CDialog { typedef CDialog super; DECLARE_DYNAMIC(CMyDlg <W>) public: CMyDlg (CWnd* pParent); // standard constructor virtual ~CMyDlg (); // Dialog Data enum { IDD = IDD_MYDLG }; protected: virtual void DoDataExchange(CDataExchange* pDX); // DDX/DDV support DECLARE_MESSAGE_MAP() private: W *m_pWidget; //W will always be a CDialog }; IMPLEMENT_DYNAMIC(CMyDlg<W>, super) <------------------- template <class W> CMyDlg<W>::CMyDlg(CWnd* pParent) : super(CMyDlg::IDD, pParent) { m_pWidget = new W(this); } I get a whole bunch of errors but main one appears to be: error C2955: 'CMyDlg' : use of class template requires template argument list I tried using some specialised template versions of macros but it doesn't help much, other errors change but this one remains. Note my code is all in one file, since C++ templates don't like .h/.cpp like normal.

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Custom class deallocated as soon as the app starts.

- by Tangrs

Heya, I've added a class object to the nib file. All connections are made. But for some reason, the object is deallocated as soon as it's created. Here's the code: control.h: #import <Foundation/Foundation.h> @interface control : NSObject { IBOutlet UILabel *PlayerScore; } -(IBAction) addPoint: sender; -(void) dealloc; @end control.m: #import "control.h" @implementation control -(IBAction)addPoint: sender { NSLog(@"Ohhai. Didn't crash."); //Doesn't even make it to this stage. int i = [PlayerScore.text intValue]; PlayerScore.text=[NSString stringWithFormat: @"%d",++i]; } -(void) dealloc { NSLog(@"ZOMGWTF?"); [super dealloc]; } @end Here is the console log: [Session started at 2010-06-09 19:47:57 +1000.] 2010-06-09 19:47:58.771 App[91100:207] ZOMGWTF? And after I click the button which messages addPoint, of course, it crashes. 2010-06-09 19:47:59.703 App[91100:207] * -[control] performSelector:withObject:withObject:]: message sent to deallocated instance 0x3843d80 Does anyone have any ideas?

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How to use Jquery UI in my Custom Function? (Autocomplete)

- by bakazero

I want to create a function to simplify configuration of jQuery UI AutoComplete. Here is my function code: (function($) { $.fn.myAutocomplete = function() { var cache = {}; var dataUrl = args.dataUrl; var dataSend = args.dataItem; $.autocomplete({ source: function(request, response) { if (cache.term == request.term && cache.content) { response(cache.content); } if (new RegExp(cache.term).test(request.term) && cache.content && cache.content.length < 13) { var matcher = new RegExp($.ui.autocomplete.escapeRegex(request.term), "i"); response($.grep(cache.content, function(value) { return matcher.test(value.value) })); } $.ajax({ url: dataUrl, dataType: "json", type: "POST", data: dataSend, success: function(data) { cache.term = request.term; cache.content = data; response(data); } }); }, minLength: 2, }); } }) (jQuery); but when I'm using this function like: $("input#tag").myAutocomplete({ dataUrl: "/auto_complete/tag", dataSend: { term: request.term, category: $("input#category").val() } }); It's give me an error: Uncaught ReferenceError: request is not defined

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CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, March 14, 2010

CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, March 14, 2010New ProjectsBeerMath.net: BeerMath.net lets brewers calculate expected values for their recipes. Written entirely in C#, it can be used in any .Net language.Bible Study: Данный проект предусматривает создание программного обеспечения, предоставляющего пользователю гибкие и мощные инструменты для чтения и изучения Пи...E-Messenger: Description détaillé du sujet : Développement d'une application (client lourd) de messagerie instantané et de partage de fichier interne à ESPRIT....Facebook Azure Toolkit: The Facebook Azure Toolit provides a flexible and scalable hosting platform for the smallest and largest of Facebook applications. This toolkit hel...Gherkin editor: A simple text editor to write specifications using Gherkin. The editor supports code completion, syntax highlighting, spell checker and more.Mydra Center: Mydra Center is a Media center with the particularity to be very flexible, allowing developers to extend it and add new features. The philosophy be...MyTwits - A rich Twitter client for Windows powered by WPF: MyTwits is a free Twitter client for Windows XP/Vista/7 powered by WPF which gives you freedom to twit right from your desktop. You can do almost a...na laborke: aaaaaaaaaaaaaaasssssssssssssssddddddddddddddddddddfffffffffffffNMTools: The "Network Management Tools" (NMTools) complete OpenSLIM CMDB capabilities with Network Discovery, Automation and Configuration Managem...orionSRO: This project aims to make a fully functional server.Project Naduvar: Project Naduvar, is a centralized Locking Service in distribute systems. You can use this service in any of your existing distributed application. ...Silverlight Input Keyboard: Silverlight Input Keyboard and Behaviorsuh: uh.py is a command line tool that helps developers porting native projects from a case-insensitive filesystem to a case-sensitive filesystem by sea...New ReleasesAmiBroker Plug-ins with C#. A non official AmiBroker Plug-in SDK: AmiBroker Plug-in SDK v0.0.3: Small changesAmiBroker Plug-ins with C#. A non official AmiBroker Plug-in SDK: AmiBroker Plug-in SDK v0.0.4: Small updatesAStyle AddIn for SharpDevelop (Alex): 2.0 Production: #D 3.* add in with updated GUI elements.Coding Cockerel code samples: Validation with ASP .NET MVC and jQuery: Code sample related to the following blog post, http://codingcockerel.co.uk/consistent-validation-with-asp-net-mvc-and-jquery/.CoreSystem Library: Release - 1.0.3725.10575: This release contains a new class Crypto which makes encryption and descryption of string easy, it uses TripleDESCrystal Mapper: Release - 2.0.3725.11614: This is preview if release 2.0* that I promised, it contains following new features Tracking dirty entities and provide Save function to save all ...Digital Media Processing Project 1: Image Processor: Image Processor Alpha: First Release Features Include: Curve Adjustment Tool Region Growing Segmetation Threshold Segmentation Guassian/Butterworth High/Low pass filter...Exepack.NET: Exepack.NET version 0.03 beta: Exepack.NET is executable file compressor for .NET Framework. It allows to package your .NET application consisting of an executable file and sever...Export code as Code Snippet - Addin for Visual Studio 2008/2010 RC: VS 2010 Release Candidate: This release targets Visual Studio 2010 Release Candidate. It includes full Visual Basic 2010 source code. Fixes already available in previous ve...Facebook Azure Toolkit: 0.9 Beta: This is the initial beta releaseFamily Tree Analyzer: Version 1.0.5.0: Version 1.0.5.0 Change the way Census & Individual reports columns are sized so that user can resize later. Add filter to exclude individuals over...Home Access Plus+: v3.1.2.1: Version 3.1.2.1 Release Change Log: Added SSL SMTP Added SSL Authentication File Changes: ~/bin/CHS Extranet.dll ~/bin/CHS Extranet.pdb ~/we...Home Access Plus+: v3.1.3.1: Version 3.1.3.1 Release Change Log: Fixed Help Desk File Changes: ~/bin/CHS Extranet.dll ~/bin/CHS Extranet.pdb ~/helpdesk/*.htmIceChat: IceChat 2009 Alpha 11.6 Full Install: IceChat 2009 Alpha 11.6 - Full Installer, installs IceChat 2009, and the Emoticons, and will also download .Net Framework 2.0 if needed.IceChat: IceChat 2009 Alpha 11.6 Simple Binaries: This simply the IceChat2009.exe and the IPluginIceChat.dll needed to run IceChat 2009. Is not an installer, does not include emoticons.IceChat: IceChat 2009 Alpha 11.6 Source Code: IceChat 2009 Alpha 11.6 Source CodeLunar Phase Silverlight Gadget: Lunar Phase RC: Stable release. 6 languages Auto refresh. Name / Light problem fixedMiracle OS: Miracle OS Alpha 0.001: Our first release is the Alpha 0.001. Miracle OS doens't work at all, but we work on it. You to? Please help us.MyTwits - A rich Twitter client for Windows powered by WPF: MyTwits BETA 1: I'm happy to release first BETA version of MyTwits. Just download the zip file attached and run setup.exe and you are done! If you've any problem...MyTwits - A rich Twitter client for Windows powered by WPF: MyTwits Source BETA 1: I'm providing you just a project file, I'll upload complete source code once I fine tuned the code.NMock3: NMock3 - Beta 5, .NET 3.5: Hilights of this releaseTutorials have been updated and are in a much better place now. (they compile) Public API is getting locked down. Void me...Project Naduvar: com.declum.naduvar.locking: First ReleaseQueryToGrid Module for DotNetNuke®: QueryToGrid Module version 01.00.01: This module is a proof of concept for both using AJAX in a DotNetNuke® module, and for using SQL in a module. »»» IMPORTANT NOTE ««« Using this mo...SCSI Interface for Multimedia and Block Devices: Release 10 - Almost like a commercial burner!!: I made many changes in the ISOBurn program in this version, making it much more user-friendly than before. You can now add, rename, and delete file...Silverlight Input Keyboard: Initial Release: For more information see http://www.orktane.com/Blog/post/2009/11/09/Virtual-Input-Keyboard-Behaviours-for-Silverlight.aspxThe Silverlight Hyper Video Player [http://slhvp.com]: RC: The release candidate is now in place. Unfortunately, because there are aspects of it that I'm not yet ready to discuss, the code for the RC will...twNowplaying: twNowplaying 1.0.0.3: Press the Twitter icon to get started, don't forget to submit bugs to the issue tracker. What's new This release has some minor UI fixes.uh: 1.0: This is the first stable release. It isn't super full featured but it does the basics.UriTree: UriTree 2.0.0: This release is the WPF version of this application.VCC: Latest build, v2.1.30313.0: Automatic drop of latest buildVr30 OS: Blackra1n: The software was made by blackra1n for jailbreak iphone and ipod touch. Is not the Vr30 OS Team ProjectVr30 OS: Vr30 Operating System Live Cd 1.0: The Operating system linux made by team. For more information go to http://vr30os.tuxfamily.orgWatchersNET.TagCloud: WatchersNET.TagCloud 01.01.00: Whats New Decide between Tags generated from the Search words, or create your own Tag List Custom Tag list changes Small BugfixesZeta Resource Editor: Source code release 2010-03-13: New sources, some small fixes.ZipStorer - A Pure C# Class to Store Files in Zip: ZipStorer 2.35: Improved UTF-8 Support Correct writting of modification time for extracted filesMost Popular ProjectsMetaSharpWBFS ManagerRawrAJAX Control ToolkitMicrosoft SQL Server Product Samples: DatabaseSilverlight ToolkitWindows Presentation Foundation (WPF)ASP.NET Ajax LibraryASP.NETMicrosoft SQL Server Community & SamplesMost Active ProjectsRawrN2 CMSBlogEngine.NETpatterns & practices – Enterprise LibrarySharePoint Team-MailerFasterflect - A Fast and Simple Reflection APICaliburn: An Application Framework for WPF and SilverlightjQuery Library for SharePoint Web ServicesCalcium: A modular application toolset leveraging PrismFarseer Physics Engine

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