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• PrgressDialog when load a WebView crash issue

  - by AndreaF

  I have an Activity with a WeView that load an url, and I want to display a little waiting dialog during the load of the site, so I have tried this: private ProgressDialog dialog = new ProgressDialog(MyNameActivity.this); @Override public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) { super.onCreate(savedInstanceState); StrictMode.ThreadPolicy policy = new StrictMode.ThreadPolicy.Builder() .permitAll().build(); StrictMode.setThreadPolicy(policy); setContentView(R.layout.web_view_activity); WebView wv; wv = (WebView) findViewById(R.id.areaWebSolver); wv.setWebViewClient(new WebViewClient() { @Override public boolean shouldOverrideUrlLoading(WebView view, String url) { view.loadUrl(url); return true; } @Override public void onPageFinished(WebView view, String url) { if (dialog.isShowing()) { dialog.dismiss(); } } }); dialog.setMessage("Loading..Please wait."); dialog.setCanceledOnTouchOutside(false); dialog.show(); wv.loadUrl(url); WebSettings webSettings = wv.getSettings(); webSettings.setJavaScriptEnabled(true); } Unfortunately doesn't works and the app crashes with a source not found... If I try to remove the Progress dialog code the activity works. What's wrong? How could I fix this?

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• how to start activity of the positive button?

  - by Wisnuardi

  when I click an item in maps, it will appears positive button that reads "Route to". Question, how do I start activity from that positive button? I also use like this, dialog.setPositiveButton("Tampilkan Rute", new DialogInterface.OnClickListener() { @Override public void onClick(DialogInterface dialog, int Button) { Intent i = new Intent(this, Rute.class); startActivity(i); } }); to startactivity into Rute class but it always say "remove argument to match intent()" then I don't know what to do. here is my code @Override protected boolean onTap(int index) { OverlayItem item = items.get(0); AlertDialog.Builder dialog = new AlertDialog.Builder(mContext); dialog.setTitle(item.getTitle()); dialog.setMessage(item.getSnippet()); dialog.setPositiveButton("Tampilkan Rute", new DialogInterface.OnClickListener() { @Override public void onClick(DialogInterface dialog, int Button) { Intent i = new Intent(this, Rute.class); startActivity(i); } }); dialog.setNegativeButton("Kembali", new DialogInterface.OnClickListener() { @Override public void onClick(DialogInterface dialog, int Button) { dialog.cancel(); } }); dialog.show(); return true; } Any suggestions will be greatly appreciated. Thank's i'm sorry if my english is bad :(

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• QMetaMethod for regular methods missing?

  - by oleks

  Hi, I'm new in QT, and I'm just testing out the MOC. For a given class: class Counter : public QObject { Q_OBJECT int m_value; public: Counter() {m_value = 0;} ~Counter() {} int value() {return m_value;} public slots: void setValue(int value); signals: void valueChanged(int newValue); }; I want to get a list of all methods in a class, but seem to only be getting a list of signals and slots, although the documentation says it should be all methods? Here's my code: #include <QCoreApplication> #include <QObject> #include <QMetaMethod> #include <iostream> using std::cout; using std::endl; int main(int argc, char *argv[]) { QCoreApplication app(argc, argv); const QMetaObject cntmo = Counter::staticMetaObject; for(int i = 0; i != cntmo.methodCount(); ++i) { QMetaMethod qmm(cntmo.method(i)); cout << qmm.signature() << endl; } return app.exec(); } Please beware this is my best c/p, perhaps I forgot to include some headers. My output: destroyed(QObject*) destroyed() deleteLater() _q_reregisterTimers(void*) valueChanged(int) setValue(int) Does anyone know why this is happening? Does qt not recognise int value() {return m_value;} as a valid method? If so, is there a macro I've forgotten or something like that? P.S. I'm using 4.6.2

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• Force the use of interface instead of concrete implementation in declaration (.NET)

  - by gammelgul

  In C++, you can do the following: class base_class { public: virtual void do_something() = 0; }; class derived_class : public base_class { private: virtual void do_something() { std::cout << "do_something() called"; } }; The derived_class overrides the method do_something() and makes it private. The effect is, that the only way to call this method is like this: base_class *object = new derived_class(); object->do_something(); If you declare the object as of type derived_class, you can't call the method because it's private: derived_class *object = new derived_class(); object->do_something(); // --> error C2248: '::derived_class::do_something' : cannot access private member declared in class '::derived_class' I think this is quite nice, because if you create an abstract class that is used as an interface, you can make sure that nobody accidentally declares a field as the concrete type, but always uses the interface class. Since in C# / .NET in general, you aren't allowed to narrow the access from public to private when overriding a method, is there a way to achieve a similar effect here?

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• Problem in thread pool implementation(C#3.0)

  - by Newbie

  Hi Experts, I have done the below thread pool program but the problem is that the WaitCallBackMethod(here ThreadPoolCallback) is getting called 2 times(which ideally should be called 1ce). what is the misktake I am making? public class Calculation { #region Private variable declaration ManualResetEvent[] factorManualResetEvent = null; #endregion public void Compute() { factorManualResetEvent = new ManualResetEvent[2]; for (int i = 0; i < 2; i++){ factorManualResetEvent[i] = new ManualResetEvent(false); ThreadPool.QueueUserWorkItem(ThreadPoolCallback, i);} //Wait for all the threads to complete WaitHandle.WaitAll(factorManualResetEvent); //Proceed with the next task(s) NEXT_TASK_TO_BE_EXECUTED(); } #region Private Methods // Wrapper method for use with thread pool. public void ThreadPoolCallback(Object threadContext) { int threadIndex = (int)threadContext; Method1(); Method2(); factorManualResetEvent[threadIndex].Set(); } private void Method1 () { //Code of method 1} private void Method2 () { //Code of method 2 } #endregion } I am using C#3.0 Thanks

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• java:25: '.class' expected error while merging arrays

  - by user3677712

  Here is my code, it is asking me to call a class, I am confused as to do this. Noob to java, so any help would be greatly appreciated. line 25 is where the error occurs. This program is merging two arrays together into a new array. public class Merge{ public static void main(String[] args){ int[] a = {1, 1, 4, 5, 7}; int[] b = {2, 4, 6, 8}; int[] mergedArray = merge(a, b); for(int i = 0; i < mergedArray.length; i++){ System.out.print(mergedArray[i] + " "); } } public static int[] merge(int[] a, int[] b){ // WRITE CODE HERE int[] mergedArray = new int[a.length[] + b.length[]]; int i = 0, j = 0, k = 0; while (i < a.length() && j < b.length()) //error occurs at this line { if (a[i] < b[j]) { mergedArray[k] = a[i]; i++; } else { mergedArray[k] = b[j]; j++; } k++; } while (i < a.length()) { mergedArray[k] = a[i]; i++; k++; } while (j < b.length()) { mergedArray[k] = b[j]; j++; k++; } return mergedArray; } } This program is merging two arrays together into a new array.

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• Virtual functions - base class pointer

  - by user980411

  I understood why a base class pointer is made to point to a derived class object. But, I fail to understand why we need to assign to it, a base class object, when it is a base class object by itself. Can anyone please explain that? #include <iostream> using namespace std; class base { public: virtual void vfunc() { cout << "This is base's vfunc().\n"; } }; class derived1 : public base { public: void vfunc() { cout << "This is derived1's vfunc().\n"; } }; int main() { base *p, b; derived1 d1; // point to base p = &b; p->vfunc(); // access base's vfunc() // point to derived1 p = &d1; p->vfunc(); // access derived1's vfunc() return 0; }

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• Java variables across methods

  - by NardCake

  I'm making a basic text editor, and I have 2 methods the first one is triggered when a user click 'Open' and it prompts the user to pick a file and it opens the file fine. I just want to access the same file path which is in a variable in the method that is triggered when the user clicks save. My methods are public, Iv'e tried accessing it through a class, still no. Please help! Code: public void open(){ try{ //Open file JFileChooser fc = new JFileChooser(); fc.showOpenDialog(null); File file = fc.getSelectedFile(); String haha = file.getPath(); BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader(new FileReader(file.getPath())); String line; while((line = br.readLine()) != null){ text.append(line + "\n"); } } catch (FileNotFoundException e){ e.printStackTrace(); }catch (IOException e){ } } public void save(){ try { BufferedWriter bw = new BufferedWriter(new FileWriter(file.filePath)); bw.write(text.getText()); bw.close(); } catch (IOException e) { e.printStackTrace(); } }

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• static_cast from Derived* to void* to Base*

  - by Roberto

  I would like to cast a pointer to a member of a derived class to void* and from there to a pointer of the base class, like in the example below: #include <iostream> class Base { public: void function1(){std::cout<<"1"<<std::endl;} virtual void function2()=0; }; class Derived : public Base { public: virtual void function2(){std::cout<<"2"<<std::endl;} }; int main() { Derived d; void ptr* = static_cast<void*>(&d); Base* baseptr=static_cast<Base*>(ptr); baseptr->function1(); baseptr->function2(); } This compiles and gives the desired result (prints 1 and 2 respectively), but is it guaranteed to work? The description of static_cast I found here: http://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/language/static_cast only mentions conversion to void* and back to a pointer to the same class (point 10).

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• getting duplicate array output - java

  - by dowln

  Hello, Can someone could be kind and help me out here. Thanks in advance... My code below outputs the string as duplicates. I don't want to use Sets or ArrayList. I am using java.util.Random. I am trying to write a code that checks if string has already been randomly outputted and if it does, then it won't display. Where I am going wrong and how do I fix this. public class Worldcountries { private static Random nums = new Random(); private static String[] countries = { "America", "Candada", "Chile", "Argentina" }; public static int Dice() { return (generator.nums.nextInt(6) + 1); } public String randomCounties() { String aTemp = " "; int numOfTimes = Dice(); int dup = 0; for(int i=0 ; i<numOfTimes; i++) { // I think it's in the if statement where I am going wrong. if (!countries[i].equals(countries[i])) { i = i + 1; } else { dup--; } // and maybe here aTemp = aTemp + countries[nums.nextInt(countries.length)]; aTemp = aTemp + ","; } return aTemp; } } So the output I am getting (randomly) is, "America, America, Chile" when it should be "America, Chile".

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• Friendly way to override `const`-overloaded member function?

  - by xtofl

  Given a base class class A { int i; public: int& f(){ return i;} const int& f() const { return i;} }; And a sub class class ConstA : private A { public: const int& f() const { return A::f(); } }; Is there a wrist-friendly way to access the ConstA::f method on a non-const variable? ConstA ca; int i = ca.f(); // compile error: int& A::f() is not accessible since A is privately inherited int j = static_cast<const ConstA&>(ca).f(); // this works, but it hurts a little... Or is it so ugly since hiding A::f generally is a bad idea, violating the Liskov Substitution Principle: any subclass of A must at least be capable of all A's functionality? void set( A& a, int i ) { a.f() = i; } class ConstA2 : public A { private: int& f(){ return A::f(); } }; ConstA2 ca2; set( ca2, 1 ); (Note: this question popped up while thinking about this question)

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• C++11 decltype requires instantiated object

  - by snipes83

  I was experimenting a little with the C++11 standard and came up with this problem: In C++11 you can use auto and decltype to automatically get return type for a function as, for example the begin() and end() functions below: #include <vector> template <typename T> class Container { private: std::vector<T> v; public: auto begin() -> decltype(v.begin()) { return v.begin(); }; auto end() -> decltype(v.end()) { return v.end(); }; }; My problem here is that I have to declare the private vector<T> v before the public declarations which is against my coding style. I would like to declare all my private members after my public members. You have to declare the vector before the function declaration because the expression in decltype is a call to vector member function begin() and requires an instance of the object. Is there a way around this?

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• Generic list/sublist handling

  - by user628661

  Let's say we have a class class ComplexCls { public int Fld1; public string Fld2; //could be more fields } class Cls { public int SomeField; } and then some code class ComplexClsList: List<ComplexCls>; ComplexClsList myComplexList; // fill myComplexList // same for Cls class ClsList : List<Cls>; ClsList myClsList; We want to populate myClsList from myComplexList, something like (pseudocode): foreach Complexitem in myComplexList { Cls ClsItem = new Cls(); ClsItem.SomeField = ComplexItem.Fld1; } The code to do this is easy and will be put in some method in myClsList. However I'd like to design this as generic as possible, for generic ComplexCls. Note that the exact ComplexCls is known at the moment of using this code, only the algorithm shd be generic. I know it can be done using (direct) reflection but is there other solution? Let me know if the question is not clear enough. (probably isn't). [EDIT] Basically, what I need is this: having myClsList, I need to specify a DataSource (ComplexClsList) and a field from that DataSource (Fld1) that will be used to populate my SomeField

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• Using FiddlerCore to capture HTTP Requests with .NET

  - by Rick Strahl

  Over the last few weeks I’ve been working on my Web load testing utility West Wind WebSurge. One of the key components of a load testing tool is the ability to capture URLs effectively so that you can play them back later under load. One of the options in WebSurge for capturing URLs is to use its built-in capture tool which acts as an HTTP proxy to capture any HTTP and HTTPS traffic from most Windows HTTP clients, including Web Browsers as well as standalone Windows applications and services. To make this happen, I used Eric Lawrence’s awesome FiddlerCore library, which provides most of the functionality of his desktop Fiddler application, all rolled into an easy to use library that you can plug into your own applications. FiddlerCore makes it almost too easy to capture HTTP content! For WebSurge I needed to capture all HTTP traffic in order to capture the full HTTP request – URL, headers and any content posted by the client. The result of what I ended up creating is this semi-generic capture form: In this post I’m going to demonstrate how easy it is to use FiddlerCore to build this HTTP Capture Form.  If you want to jump right in here are the links to get Telerik’s Fiddler Core and the code for the demo provided here. FiddlerCore Download FiddlerCore on NuGet Show me the Code (WebSurge Integration code from GitHub) Download the WinForms Sample Form West Wind Web Surge (example implementation in live app) Note that FiddlerCore is bound by a license for commercial usage – see license.txt in the FiddlerCore distribution for details. Integrating FiddlerCore FiddlerCore is a library that simply plugs into your application. You can download it from the Telerik site and manually add the assemblies to your project, or you can simply install the NuGet package via:       PM> Install-Package FiddlerCore The library consists of the FiddlerCore.dll as well as a couple of support libraries (CertMaker.dll and BCMakeCert.dll) that are used for installing SSL certificates. I’ll have more on SSL captures and certificate installation later in this post. But first let’s see how easy it is to use FiddlerCore to capture HTTP content by looking at how to build the above capture form. Capturing HTTP Content Once the library is installed it’s super easy to hook up Fiddler functionality. Fiddler includes a number of static class methods on the FiddlerApplication object that can be called to hook up callback events as well as actual start monitoring HTTP URLs. In the following code directly lifted from WebSurge, I configure a few filter options on Form level object, from the user inputs shown on the form by assigning it to a capture options object. In the live application these settings are persisted configuration values, but in the demo they are one time values initialized and set on the form. Once these options are set, I hook up the AfterSessionComplete event to capture every URL that passes through the proxy after the request is completed and start up the Proxy service:void Start() { if (tbIgnoreResources.Checked) CaptureConfiguration.IgnoreResources = true; else CaptureConfiguration.IgnoreResources = false; string strProcId = txtProcessId.Text; if (strProcId.Contains('-')) strProcId = strProcId.Substring(strProcId.IndexOf('-') + 1).Trim(); strProcId = strProcId.Trim(); int procId = 0; if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(strProcId)) { if (!int.TryParse(strProcId, out procId)) procId = 0; } CaptureConfiguration.ProcessId = procId; CaptureConfiguration.CaptureDomain = txtCaptureDomain.Text; FiddlerApplication.AfterSessionComplete += FiddlerApplication_AfterSessionComplete; FiddlerApplication.Startup(8888, true, true, true); } The key lines for FiddlerCore are just the last two lines of code that include the event hookup code as well as the Startup() method call. Here I only hook up to the AfterSessionComplete event but there are a number of other events that hook various stages of the HTTP request cycle you can also hook into. Other events include BeforeRequest, BeforeResponse, RequestHeadersAvailable, ResponseHeadersAvailable and so on. In my case I want to capture the request data and I actually have several options to capture this data. AfterSessionComplete is the last event that fires in the request sequence and it’s the most common choice to capture all request and response data. I could have used several other events, but AfterSessionComplete is one place where you can look both at the request and response data, so this will be the most common place to hook into if you’re capturing content. The implementation of AfterSessionComplete is responsible for capturing all HTTP request headers and it looks something like this:private void FiddlerApplication_AfterSessionComplete(Session sess) { // Ignore HTTPS connect requests if (sess.RequestMethod == "CONNECT") return; if (CaptureConfiguration.ProcessId > 0) { if (sess.LocalProcessID != 0 && sess.LocalProcessID != CaptureConfiguration.ProcessId) return; } if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(CaptureConfiguration.CaptureDomain)) { if (sess.hostname.ToLower() != CaptureConfiguration.CaptureDomain.Trim().ToLower()) return; } if (CaptureConfiguration.IgnoreResources) { string url = sess.fullUrl.ToLower(); var extensions = CaptureConfiguration.ExtensionFilterExclusions; foreach (var ext in extensions) { if (url.Contains(ext)) return; } var filters = CaptureConfiguration.UrlFilterExclusions; foreach (var urlFilter in filters) { if (url.Contains(urlFilter)) return; } } if (sess == null || sess.oRequest == null || sess.oRequest.headers == null) return; string headers = sess.oRequest.headers.ToString(); var reqBody = sess.GetRequestBodyAsString(); // if you wanted to capture the response //string respHeaders = session.oResponse.headers.ToString(); //var respBody = session.GetResponseBodyAsString(); // replace the HTTP line to inject full URL string firstLine = sess.RequestMethod + " " + sess.fullUrl + " " + sess.oRequest.headers.HTTPVersion; int at = headers.IndexOf("\r\n"); if (at < 0) return; headers = firstLine + "\r\n" + headers.Substring(at + 1); string output = headers + "\r\n" + (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(reqBody) ? reqBody + "\r\n" : string.Empty) + Separator + "\r\n\r\n"; BeginInvoke(new Action<string>((text) => { txtCapture.AppendText(text); UpdateButtonStatus(); }), output); } The code starts by filtering out some requests based on the CaptureOptions I set before the capture is started. These options/filters are applied when requests actually come in. This is very useful to help narrow down the requests that are captured for playback based on options the user picked. I find it useful to limit requests to a certain domain for captures, as well as filtering out some request types like static resources – images, css, scripts etc. This is of course optional, but I think it’s a common scenario and WebSurge makes good use of this feature. AfterSessionComplete like other FiddlerCore events, provides a Session object parameter which contains all the request and response details. There are oRequest and oResponse objects to hold their respective data. In my case I’m interested in the raw request headers and body only, as you can see in the commented code you can also retrieve the response headers and body. Here the code captures the request headers and body and simply appends the output to the textbox on the screen. Note that the Fiddler events are asynchronous, so in order to display the content in the UI they have to be marshaled back the UI thread with BeginInvoke, which here simply takes the generated headers and appends it to the existing textbox test on the form. As each request is processed, the headers are captured and appended to the bottom of the textbox resulting in a Session HTTP capture in the format that Web Surge internally supports, which is basically raw request headers with a customized 1st HTTP Header line that includes the full URL rather than a server relative URL. When the capture is done the user can either copy the raw HTTP session to the clipboard, or directly save it to file. This raw capture format is the same format WebSurge and also Fiddler use to import/export request data. While this code is application specific, it demonstrates the kind of logic that you can easily apply to the request capture process, which is one of the reasonsof why FiddlerCore is so powerful. You get to choose what content you want to look up as part of your own application logic and you can then decide how to capture or use that data as part of your application. The actual captured data in this case is only a string. The user can edit the data by hand or in the the case of WebSurge, save it to disk and automatically open the captured session as a new load test. Stopping the FiddlerCore Proxy Finally to stop capturing requests you simply disconnect the event handler and call the FiddlerApplication.ShutDown() method:void Stop() { FiddlerApplication.AfterSessionComplete -= FiddlerApplication_AfterSessionComplete; if (FiddlerApplication.IsStarted()) FiddlerApplication.Shutdown(); } As you can see, adding HTTP capture functionality to an application is very straight forward. FiddlerCore offers tons of features I’m not even touching on here – I suspect basic captures are the most common scenario, but a lot of different things can be done with FiddlerCore’s simple API interface. Sky’s the limit! The source code for this sample capture form (WinForms) is provided as part of this article. Adding Fiddler Certificates with FiddlerCore One of the sticking points in West Wind WebSurge has been that if you wanted to capture HTTPS/SSL traffic, you needed to have the full version of Fiddler and have HTTPS decryption enabled. Essentially you had to use Fiddler to configure HTTPS decryption and the associated installation of the Fiddler local client certificate that is used for local decryption of incoming SSL traffic. While this works just fine, requiring to have Fiddler installed and then using a separate application to configure the SSL functionality isn’t ideal. Fortunately FiddlerCore actually includes the tools to register the Fiddler Certificate directly using FiddlerCore. Why does Fiddler need a Certificate in the first Place? Fiddler and FiddlerCore are essentially HTTP proxies which means they inject themselves into the HTTP conversation by re-routing HTTP traffic to a special HTTP port (8888 by default for Fiddler) and then forward the HTTP data to the original client. Fiddler injects itself as the system proxy in using the WinInet Windows settings  which are the same settings that Internet Explorer uses and that are configured in the Windows and Internet Explorer Internet Settings dialog. Most HTTP clients running on Windows pick up and apply these system level Proxy settings before establishing new HTTP connections and that’s why most clients automatically work once Fiddler – or FiddlerCore/WebSurge are running. For plain HTTP requests this just works – Fiddler intercepts the HTTP requests on the proxy port and then forwards them to the original port (80 for HTTP and 443 for SSL typically but it could be any port). For SSL however, this is not quite as simple – Fiddler can easily act as an HTTPS/SSL client to capture inbound requests from the server, but when it forwards the request to the client it has to also act as an SSL server and provide a certificate that the client trusts. This won’t be the original certificate from the remote site, but rather a custom local certificate that effectively simulates an SSL connection between the proxy and the client. If there is no custom certificate configured for Fiddler the SSL request fails with a certificate validation error. The key for this to work is that a custom certificate has to be installed that the HTTPS client trusts on the local machine. For a much more detailed description of the process you can check out Eric Lawrence’s blog post on Certificates. If you’re using the desktop version of Fiddler you can install a local certificate into the Windows certificate store. Fiddler proper does this from the Options menu: This operation does several things: It installs the Fiddler Root Certificate It sets trust to this Root Certificate A new client certificate is generated for each HTTPS site monitored Certificate Installation with FiddlerCore You can also provide this same functionality using FiddlerCore which includes a CertMaker class. Using CertMaker is straight forward to use and it provides an easy way to create some simple helpers that can install and uninstall a Fiddler Root certificate:public static bool InstallCertificate() { if (!CertMaker.rootCertExists()) { if (!CertMaker.createRootCert()) return false; if (!CertMaker.trustRootCert()) return false; } return true; } public static bool UninstallCertificate() { if (CertMaker.rootCertExists()) { if (!CertMaker.removeFiddlerGeneratedCerts(true)) return false; } return true; } InstallCertificate() works by first checking whether the root certificate is already installed and if it isn’t goes ahead and creates a new one. The process of creating the certificate is a two step process – first the actual certificate is created and then it’s moved into the certificate store to become trusted. I’m not sure why you’d ever split these operations up since a cert created without trust isn’t going to be of much value, but there are two distinct steps. When you trigger the trustRootCert() method, a message box will pop up on the desktop that lets you know that you’re about to trust a local private certificate. This is a security feature to ensure that you really want to trust the Fiddler root since you are essentially installing a man in the middle certificate. It’s quite safe to use this generated root certificate, because it’s been specifically generated for your machine and thus is not usable from external sources, the only way to use this certificate in a trusted way is from the local machine. IOW, unless somebody has physical access to your machine, there’s no useful way to hijack this certificate and use it for nefarious purposes (see Eric’s post for more details). Once the Root certificate has been installed, FiddlerCore/Fiddler create new certificates for each site that is connected to with HTTPS. You can end up with quite a few temporary certificates in your certificate store. To uninstall you can either use Fiddler and simply uncheck the Decrypt HTTPS traffic option followed by the remove Fiddler certificates button, or you can use FiddlerCore’s CertMaker.removeFiddlerGeneratedCerts() which removes the root cert and any of the intermediary certificates Fiddler created. Keep in mind that when you uninstall you uninstall the certificate for both FiddlerCore and Fiddler, so use UninstallCertificate() with care and realize that you might affect the Fiddler application’s operation by doing so as well. When to check for an installed Certificate Note that the check to see if the root certificate exists is pretty fast, while the actual process of installing the certificate is a relatively slow operation that even on a fast machine takes a few seconds. Further the trust operation pops up a message box so you probably don’t want to install the certificate repeatedly. Since the check for the root certificate is fast, you can easily put a call to InstallCertificate() in any capture startup code – in which case the certificate installation only triggers when a certificate is in fact not installed. Personally I like to make certificate installation explicit – just like Fiddler does, so in WebSurge I use a small drop down option on the menu to install or uninstall the SSL certificate:   This code calls the InstallCertificate and UnInstallCertificate functions respectively – the experience with this is similar to what you get in Fiddler with the extra dialog box popping up to prompt confirmation for installation of the root certificate. Once the cert is installed you can then capture SSL requests. There’s a gotcha however… Gotcha: FiddlerCore Certificates don’t stick by Default When I originally tried to use the Fiddler certificate installation I ran into an odd problem. I was able to install the certificate and immediately after installation was able to capture HTTPS requests. Then I would exit the application and come back in and try the same HTTPS capture again and it would fail due to a missing certificate. CertMaker.rootCertExists() would return false after every restart and if re-installed the certificate a new certificate would get added to the certificate store resulting in a bunch of duplicated root certificates with different keys. What the heck? CertMaker and BcMakeCert create non-sticky CertificatesI turns out that FiddlerCore by default uses different components from what the full version of Fiddler uses. Fiddler uses a Windows utility called MakeCert.exe to create the Fiddler Root certificate. FiddlerCore however installs the CertMaker.dll and BCMakeCert.dll assemblies, which use a different crypto library (Bouncy Castle) for certificate creation than MakeCert.exe which uses the Windows Crypto API. The assemblies provide support for non-windows operation for Fiddler under Mono, as well as support for some non-Windows certificate platforms like iOS and Android for decryption. The bottom line is that the FiddlerCore provided bouncy castle assemblies are not sticky by default as the certificates created with them are not cached as they are in Fiddler proper. To get certificates to ‘stick’ you have to explicitly cache the certificates in Fiddler’s internal preferences. A cache aware version of InstallCertificate looks something like this:public static bool InstallCertificate() { if (!CertMaker.rootCertExists()) { if (!CertMaker.createRootCert()) return false; if (!CertMaker.trustRootCert()) return false; App.Configuration.UrlCapture.Cert = FiddlerApplication.Prefs.GetStringPref("fiddler.certmaker.bc.cert", null); App.Configuration.UrlCapture.Key = FiddlerApplication.Prefs.GetStringPref("fiddler.certmaker.bc.key", null); } return true; } public static bool UninstallCertificate() { if (CertMaker.rootCertExists()) { if (!CertMaker.removeFiddlerGeneratedCerts(true)) return false; } App.Configuration.UrlCapture.Cert = null; App.Configuration.UrlCapture.Key = null; return true; } In this code I store the Fiddler cert and private key in an application configuration settings that’s stored with the application settings (App.Configuration.UrlCapture object). These settings automatically persist when WebSurge is shut down. The values are read out of Fiddler’s internal preferences store which is set after a new certificate has been created. Likewise I clear out the configuration settings when the certificate is uninstalled. In order for these setting to be used you have to also load the configuration settings into the Fiddler preferences *before* a call to rootCertExists() is made. I do this in the capture form’s constructor:public FiddlerCapture(StressTestForm form) { InitializeComponent(); CaptureConfiguration = App.Configuration.UrlCapture; MainForm = form; if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(App.Configuration.UrlCapture.Cert)) { FiddlerApplication.Prefs.SetStringPref("fiddler.certmaker.bc.key", App.Configuration.UrlCapture.Key); FiddlerApplication.Prefs.SetStringPref("fiddler.certmaker.bc.cert", App.Configuration.UrlCapture.Cert); }} This is kind of a drag to do and not documented anywhere that I could find, so hopefully this will save you some grief if you want to work with the stock certificate logic that installs with FiddlerCore. MakeCert provides sticky Certificates and the same functionality as Fiddler But there’s actually an easier way. If you want to skip the above Fiddler preference configuration code in your application you can choose to distribute MakeCert.exe instead of certmaker.dll and bcmakecert.dll. When you use MakeCert.exe, the certificates settings are stored in Windows so they are available without any custom configuration inside of your application. It’s easier to integrate and as long as you run on Windows and you don’t need to support iOS or Android devices is simply easier to deal with. To integrate into your project, you can remove the reference to CertMaker.dll (and the BcMakeCert.dll assembly) from your project. Instead copy MakeCert.exe into your output folder. To make sure MakeCert.exe gets pushed out, include MakeCert.exe in your project and set the Build Action to None, and Copy to Output Directory to Copy if newer. Note that the CertMaker.dll reference in the project has been removed and on disk the files for Certmaker.dll, as well as the BCMakeCert.dll files on disk. Keep in mind that these DLLs are resources of the FiddlerCore NuGet package, so updating the package may end up pushing those files back into your project. Once MakeCert.exe is distributed FiddlerCore checks for it first before using the assemblies so as long as MakeCert.exe exists it’ll be used for certificate creation (at least on Windows). Summary FiddlerCore is a pretty sweet tool, and it’s absolutely awesome that we get to plug in most of the functionality of Fiddler right into our own applications. A few years back I tried to build this sort of functionality myself for an app and ended up giving up because it’s a big job to get HTTP right – especially if you need to support SSL. FiddlerCore now provides that functionality as a turnkey solution that can be plugged into your own apps easily. The only downside is FiddlerCore’s documentation for more advanced features like certificate installation which is pretty sketchy. While for the most part FiddlerCore’s feature set is easy to work with without any documentation, advanced features are often not intuitive to gleam by just using Intellisense or the FiddlerCore help file reference (which is not terribly useful). While Eric Lawrence is very responsive on his forum and on Twitter, there simply isn’t much useful documentation on Fiddler/FiddlerCore available online. If you run into trouble the forum is probably the first place to look and then ask a question if you can’t find the answer. The best documentation you can find is Eric’s Fiddler Book which covers a ton of functionality of Fiddler and FiddlerCore. The book is a great reference to Fiddler’s feature set as well as providing great insights into the HTTP protocol. The second half of the book that gets into the innards of HTTP is an excellent read for anybody who wants to know more about some of the more arcane aspects and special behaviors of HTTP – it’s well worth the read. While the book has tons of information in a very readable format, it’s unfortunately not a great reference as it’s hard to find things in the book and because it’s not available online you can’t electronically search for the great content in it. But it’s hard to complain about any of this given the obvious effort and love that’s gone into this awesome product for all of these years. A mighty big thanks to Eric Lawrence  for having created this useful tool that so many of us use all the time, and also to Telerik for picking up Fiddler/FiddlerCore and providing Eric the resources to support and improve this wonderful tool full time and keeping it free for all. Kudos! Resources FiddlerCore Download FiddlerCore NuGet Fiddler Capture Sample Form Fiddler Capture Form in West Wind WebSurge (GitHub) Eric Lawrence’s Fiddler Book© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2014Posted in .NET  HTTP   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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• Rendering ASP.NET Script References into the Html Header

  - by Rick Strahl

  One thing that I’ve come to appreciate in control development in ASP.NET that use JavaScript is the ability to have more control over script and script include placement than ASP.NET provides natively. Specifically in ASP.NET you can use either the ClientScriptManager or ScriptManager to embed scripts and script references into pages via code. This works reasonably well, but the script references that get generated are generated into the HTML body and there’s very little operational control for placement of scripts. If you have multiple controls or several of the same control that need to place the same scripts onto the page it’s not difficult to end up with scripts that render in the wrong order and stop working correctly. This is especially critical if you load script libraries with dependencies either via resources or even if you are rendering referenced to CDN resources. Natively ASP.NET provides a host of methods that help embedding scripts into the page via either Page.ClientScript or the ASP.NET ScriptManager control (both with slightly different syntax): RegisterClientScriptBlock Renders a script block at the top of the HTML body and should be used for embedding callable functions/classes. RegisterStartupScript Renders a script block just prior to the </form> tag and should be used to for embedding code that should execute when the page is first loaded. Not recommended – use jQuery.ready() or equivalent load time routines. RegisterClientScriptInclude Embeds a reference to a script from a url into the page. RegisterClientScriptResource Embeds a reference to a Script from a resource file generating a long resource file string All 4 of these methods render their <script> tags into the HTML body. The script blocks give you a little bit of control by having a ‘top’ and ‘bottom’ of the document location which gives you some flexibility over script placement and precedence. Script includes and resource url unfortunately do not even get that much control – references are simply rendered into the page in the order of declaration. The ASP.NET ScriptManager control facilitates this task a little bit with the abililty to specify scripts in code and the ability to programmatically check what scripts have already been registered, but it doesn’t provide any more control over the script rendering process itself. Further the ScriptManager is a bear to deal with generically because generic code has to always check and see if it is actually present. Some time ago I posted a ClientScriptProxy class that helps with managing the latter process of sending script references either to ClientScript or ScriptManager if it’s available. Since I last posted about this there have been a number of improvements in this API, one of which is the ability to control placement of scripts and script includes in the page which I think is rather important and a missing feature in the ASP.NET native functionality. Handling ScriptRenderModes One of the big enhancements that I’ve come to rely on is the ability of the various script rendering functions described above to support rendering in multiple locations: /// <summary> /// Determines how scripts are included into the page /// </summary> public enum ScriptRenderModes { /// <summary> /// Inherits the setting from the control or from the ClientScript.DefaultScriptRenderMode /// </summary> Inherit, /// Renders the script include at the location of the control /// </summary> Inline, /// <summary> /// Renders the script include into the bottom of the header of the page /// </summary> Header, /// <summary> /// Renders the script include into the top of the header of the page /// </summary> HeaderTop, /// <summary> /// Uses ClientScript or ScriptManager to embed the script include to /// provide standard ASP.NET style rendering in the HTML body. /// </summary> Script, /// <summary> /// Renders script at the bottom of the page before the last Page.Controls /// literal control. Note this may result in unexpected behavior /// if /body and /html are not the last thing in the markup page. /// </summary> BottomOfPage } This enum is then applied to the various Register functions to allow more control over where scripts actually show up. Why is this useful? For me I often render scripts out of control resources and these scripts often include things like a JavaScript Library (jquery) and a few plug-ins. The order in which these can be loaded is critical so that jQuery.js always loads before any plug-in for example. Typically I end up with a general script layout like this: Core Libraries- HeaderTop Plug-ins: Header ScriptBlocks: Header or Script depending on other dependencies There’s also an option to render scripts and CSS at the very bottom of the page before the last Page control on the page which can be useful for speeding up page load when lots of scripts are loaded. The API syntax of the ClientScriptProxy methods is closely compatible with ScriptManager’s using static methods and control references to gain access to the page and embedding scripts. For example, to render some script into the current page in the header: // Create script block in header ClientScriptProxy.Current.RegisterClientScriptBlock(this, typeof(ControlResources), "hello_function", "function helloWorld() { alert('hello'); }", true, ScriptRenderModes.Header); // Same again - shouldn't be rendered because it's the same id ClientScriptProxy.Current.RegisterClientScriptBlock(this, typeof(ControlResources), "hello_function", "function helloWorld() { alert('hello'); }", true, ScriptRenderModes.Header); // Create a second script block in header ClientScriptProxy.Current.RegisterClientScriptBlock(this, typeof(ControlResources), "hello_function2", "function helloWorld2() { alert('hello2'); }", true, ScriptRenderModes.Header); // This just calls ClientScript and renders into bottom of document ClientScriptProxy.Current.RegisterStartupScript(this,typeof(ControlResources), "call_hello", "helloWorld();helloWorld2();", true); which generates: <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" > <head><title> </title> <script type="text/javascript"> function helloWorld() { alert('hello'); } </script> <script type="text/javascript"> function helloWorld2() { alert('hello2'); } </script> </head> <body> … <script type="text/javascript"> //<![CDATA[ helloWorld();helloWorld2();//]]> </script> </form> </body> </html> Note that the scripts are generated into the header rather than the body except for the last script block which is the call to RegisterStartupScript. In general I wouldn’t recommend using RegisterStartupScript – ever. It’s a much better practice to use a script base load event to handle ‘startup’ code that should fire when the page first loads. So instead of the code above I’d actually recommend doing: ClientScriptProxy.Current.RegisterClientScriptBlock(this, typeof(ControlResources), "call_hello", "$().ready( function() { alert('hello2'); });", true, ScriptRenderModes.Header); assuming you’re using jQuery on the page. For script includes from a Url the following demonstrates how to embed scripts into the header. This example injects a jQuery and jQuery.UI script reference from the Google CDN then checks each with a script block to ensure that it has loaded and if not loads it from a server local location: // load jquery from CDN ClientScriptProxy.Current.RegisterClientScriptInclude(this, typeof(ControlResources), "http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.3.2/jquery.min.js", ScriptRenderModes.HeaderTop); // check if jquery loaded - if it didn't we're not online string scriptCheck = @"if (typeof jQuery != 'object') document.write(unescape(""%3Cscript src='{0}' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E""));"; string jQueryUrl = ClientScriptProxy.Current.GetWebResourceUrl(this, typeof(ControlResources), ControlResources.JQUERY_SCRIPT_RESOURCE); ClientScriptProxy.Current.RegisterClientScriptBlock(this, typeof(ControlResources), "jquery_register", string.Format(scriptCheck,jQueryUrl),true, ScriptRenderModes.HeaderTop); // Load jquery-ui from cdn ClientScriptProxy.Current.RegisterClientScriptInclude(this, typeof(ControlResources), "http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jqueryui/1.7.2/jquery-ui.min.js", ScriptRenderModes.Header); // check if we need to load from local string jQueryUiUrl = ResolveUrl("~/scripts/jquery-ui-custom.min.js"); ClientScriptProxy.Current.RegisterClientScriptBlock(this, typeof(ControlResources), "jqueryui_register", string.Format(scriptCheck, jQueryUiUrl), true, ScriptRenderModes.Header); // Create script block in header ClientScriptProxy.Current.RegisterClientScriptBlock(this, typeof(ControlResources), "hello_function", "$().ready( function() { alert('hello'); });", true, ScriptRenderModes.Header); which in turn generates this HTML: <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" > <head> <script src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.3.2/jquery.min.js" type="text/javascript"></script> <script type="text/javascript"> if (typeof jQuery != 'object') document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='/WestWindWebToolkitWeb/WebResource.axd?d=DIykvYhJ_oXCr-TA_dr35i4AayJoV1mgnQAQGPaZsoPM2LCdvoD3cIsRRitHKlKJfV5K_jQvylK7tsqO3lQIFw2&t=633979863959332352' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E")); </script> <title> </title> <script src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jqueryui/1.7.2/jquery-ui.min.js" type="text/javascript"></script> <script type="text/javascript"> if (typeof jQuery != 'object') document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='/WestWindWebToolkitWeb/scripts/jquery-ui-custom.min.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E")); </script> <script type="text/javascript"> $().ready(function() { alert('hello'); }); </script> </head> <body> …</body> </html> As you can see there’s a bit more control in this process as you can inject both script includes and script blocks into the document at the top or bottom of the header, plus if necessary at the usual body locations. This is quite useful especially if you create custom server controls that interoperate with script and have certain dependencies. The above is a good example of a useful switchable routine where you can switch where scripts load from by default – the above pulls from Google CDN but a configuration switch may automatically switch to pull from the local development copies if your doing development for example. How does it work? As mentioned the ClientScriptProxy object mimicks many of the ScriptManager script related methods and so provides close API compatibility with it although it contains many additional overloads that enhance functionality. It does however work against ScriptManager if it’s available on the page, or Page.ClientScript if it’s not so it provides a single unified frontend to script access. There are however many overloads of the original SM methods like the above to provide additional functionality. The implementation of script header rendering is pretty straight forward – as long as a server header (ie. it has to have runat=”server” set) is available. Otherwise these routines fall back to using the default document level insertions of ScriptManager/ClientScript. Given that there is a server header it’s relatively easy to generate the script tags and code and append them to the header either at the top or bottom. I suspect Microsoft didn’t provide header rendering functionality precisely because a runat=”server” header is not required by ASP.NET so behavior would be slightly unpredictable. That’s not really a problem for a custom implementation however. Here’s the RegisterClientScriptBlock implementation that takes a ScriptRenderModes parameter to allow header rendering: /// <summary> /// Renders client script block with the option of rendering the script block in /// the Html header /// /// For this to work Header must be defined as runat="server" /// </summary> /// <param name="control">any control that instance typically page</param> /// <param name="type">Type that identifies this rendering</param> /// <param name="key">unique script block id</param> /// <param name="script">The script code to render</param> /// <param name="addScriptTags">Ignored for header rendering used for all other insertions</param> /// <param name="renderMode">Where the block is rendered</param> public void RegisterClientScriptBlock(Control control, Type type, string key, string script, bool addScriptTags, ScriptRenderModes renderMode) { if (renderMode == ScriptRenderModes.Inherit) renderMode = DefaultScriptRenderMode; if (control.Page.Header == null || renderMode != ScriptRenderModes.HeaderTop && renderMode != ScriptRenderModes.Header && renderMode != ScriptRenderModes.BottomOfPage) { RegisterClientScriptBlock(control, type, key, script, addScriptTags); return; } // No dupes - ref script include only once const string identifier = "scriptblock_"; if (HttpContext.Current.Items.Contains(identifier + key)) return; HttpContext.Current.Items.Add(identifier + key, string.Empty); StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder(); // Embed in header sb.AppendLine("\r\n<script type=\"text/javascript\">"); sb.AppendLine(script); sb.AppendLine("</script>"); int? index = HttpContext.Current.Items["__ScriptResourceIndex"] as int?; if (index == null) index = 0; if (renderMode == ScriptRenderModes.HeaderTop) { control.Page.Header.Controls.AddAt(index.Value, new LiteralControl(sb.ToString())); index++; } else if(renderMode == ScriptRenderModes.Header) control.Page.Header.Controls.Add(new LiteralControl(sb.ToString())); else if (renderMode == ScriptRenderModes.BottomOfPage) control.Page.Controls.AddAt(control.Page.Controls.Count-1,new LiteralControl(sb.ToString())); HttpContext.Current.Items["__ScriptResourceIndex"] = index; } Note that the routine has to keep track of items inserted by id so that if the same item is added again with the same key it won’t generate two script entries. Additionally the code has to keep track of how many insertions have been made at the top of the document so that entries are added in the proper order. The RegisterScriptInclude method is similar but there’s some additional logic in here to deal with script file references and ClientScriptProxy’s (optional) custom resource handler that provides script compression /// <summary> /// Registers a client script reference into the page with the option to specify /// the script location in the page /// </summary> /// <param name="control">Any control instance - typically page</param> /// <param name="type">Type that acts as qualifier (uniqueness)</param> /// <param name="url">the Url to the script resource</param> /// <param name="ScriptRenderModes">Determines where the script is rendered</param> public void RegisterClientScriptInclude(Control control, Type type, string url, ScriptRenderModes renderMode) { const string STR_ScriptResourceIndex = "__ScriptResourceIndex"; if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(url)) return; if (renderMode == ScriptRenderModes.Inherit) renderMode = DefaultScriptRenderMode; // Extract just the script filename string fileId = null; // Check resource IDs and try to match to mapped file resources // Used to allow scripts not to be loaded more than once whether // embedded manually (script tag) or via resources with ClientScriptProxy if (url.Contains(".axd?r=")) { string res = HttpUtility.UrlDecode( StringUtils.ExtractString(url, "?r=", "&", false, true) ); foreach (ScriptResourceAlias item in ScriptResourceAliases) { if (item.Resource == res) { fileId = item.Alias + ".js"; break; } } if (fileId == null) fileId = url.ToLower(); } else fileId = Path.GetFileName(url).ToLower(); // No dupes - ref script include only once const string identifier = "script_"; if (HttpContext.Current.Items.Contains( identifier + fileId ) ) return; HttpContext.Current.Items.Add(identifier + fileId, string.Empty); // just use script manager or ClientScriptManager if (control.Page.Header == null || renderMode == ScriptRenderModes.Script || renderMode == ScriptRenderModes.Inline) { RegisterClientScriptInclude(control, type,url, url); return; } // Retrieve script index in header int? index = HttpContext.Current.Items[STR_ScriptResourceIndex] as int?; if (index == null) index = 0; StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder(256); url = WebUtils.ResolveUrl(url); // Embed in header sb.AppendLine("\r\n<script src=\"" + url + "\" type=\"text/javascript\"></script>"); if (renderMode == ScriptRenderModes.HeaderTop) { control.Page.Header.Controls.AddAt(index.Value, new LiteralControl(sb.ToString())); index++; } else if (renderMode == ScriptRenderModes.Header) control.Page.Header.Controls.Add(new LiteralControl(sb.ToString())); else if (renderMode == ScriptRenderModes.BottomOfPage) control.Page.Controls.AddAt(control.Page.Controls.Count-1, new LiteralControl(sb.ToString())); HttpContext.Current.Items[STR_ScriptResourceIndex] = index; } There’s a little more code here that deals with cleaning up the passed in Url and also some custom handling of script resources that run through the ScriptCompressionModule – any script resources loaded in this fashion are automatically cached based on the resource id. Raw urls extract just the filename from the URL and cache based on that. All of this to avoid doubling up of scripts if called multiple times by multiple instances of the same control for example or several controls that all load the same resources/includes. Finally RegisterClientScriptResource utilizes the previous method to wrap the WebResourceUrl as well as some custom functionality for the resource compression module: /// <summary> /// Returns a WebResource or ScriptResource URL for script resources that are to be /// embedded as script includes. /// </summary> /// <param name="control">Any control</param> /// <param name="type">A type in assembly where resources are located</param> /// <param name="resourceName">Name of the resource to load</param> /// <param name="renderMode">Determines where in the document the link is rendered</param> public void RegisterClientScriptResource(Control control, Type type, string resourceName, ScriptRenderModes renderMode) { string resourceUrl = GetClientScriptResourceUrl(control, type, resourceName); RegisterClientScriptInclude(control, type, resourceUrl, renderMode); } /// <summary> /// Works like GetWebResourceUrl but can be used with javascript resources /// to allow using of resource compression (if the module is loaded). /// </summary> /// <param name="control"></param> /// <param name="type"></param> /// <param name="resourceName"></param> /// <returns></returns> public string GetClientScriptResourceUrl(Control control, Type type, string resourceName) { #if IncludeScriptCompressionModuleSupport // If wwScriptCompression Module through Web.config is loaded use it to compress // script resources by using wcSC.axd Url the module intercepts if (ScriptCompressionModule.ScriptCompressionModuleActive) { string url = "~/wwSC.axd?r=" + HttpUtility.UrlEncode(resourceName); if (type.Assembly != GetType().Assembly) url += "&t=" + HttpUtility.UrlEncode(type.FullName); return WebUtils.ResolveUrl(url); } #endif return control.Page.ClientScript.GetWebResourceUrl(type, resourceName); } This code merely retrieves the resource URL and then simply calls back to RegisterClientScriptInclude with the URL to be embedded which means there’s nothing specific to deal with other than the custom compression module logic which is nice and easy. What else is there in ClientScriptProxy? ClientscriptProxy also provides a few other useful services beyond what I’ve already covered here: Transparent ScriptManager and ClientScript calls ClientScriptProxy includes a host of routines that help figure out whether a script manager is available or not and all functions in this class call the appropriate object – ScriptManager or ClientScript – that is available in the current page to ensure that scripts get embedded into pages properly. This is especially useful for control development where controls have no control over the scripting environment in place on the page. RegisterCssLink and RegisterCssResource Much like the script embedding functions these two methods allow embedding of CSS links. CSS links are appended to the header or to a form declared with runat=”server”. LoadControlScript Is a high level resource loading routine that can be used to easily switch between different script linking modes. It supports loading from a WebResource, a url or not loading anything at all. This is very useful if you build controls that deal with specification of resource urls/ids in a standard way. Check out the full Code You can check out the full code to the ClientScriptProxyClass here: ClientScriptProxy.cs ClientScriptProxy Documentation (class reference) Note that the ClientScriptProxy has a few dependencies in the West Wind Web Toolkit of which it is part of. ControlResources holds a few standard constants and script resource links and the ScriptCompressionModule which is referenced in a few of the script inclusion methods. There’s also another useful ScriptContainer companion control  to the ClientScriptProxy that allows scripts to be placed onto the page’s markup including the ability to specify the script location and script minification options. You can find all the dependencies in the West Wind Web Toolkit repository: West Wind Web Toolkit Repository West Wind Web Toolkit Home Page© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2010Posted in ASP.NET  JavaScript  

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• Creating Custom Ajax Control Toolkit Controls

  - by Stephen Walther

  The goal of this blog entry is to explain how you can extend the Ajax Control Toolkit with custom Ajax Control Toolkit controls. I describe how you can create the two halves of an Ajax Control Toolkit control: the server-side control extender and the client-side control behavior. Finally, I explain how you can use the new Ajax Control Toolkit control in a Web Forms page. At the end of this blog entry, there is a link to download a Visual Studio 2010 solution which contains the code for two Ajax Control Toolkit controls: SampleExtender and PopupHelpExtender. The SampleExtender contains the minimum skeleton for creating a new Ajax Control Toolkit control. You can use the SampleExtender as a starting point for your custom Ajax Control Toolkit controls. The PopupHelpExtender control is a super simple custom Ajax Control Toolkit control. This control extender displays a help message when you start typing into a TextBox control. The animated GIF below demonstrates what happens when you click into a TextBox which has been extended with the PopupHelp extender. Here’s a sample of a Web Forms page which uses the control: <%@ Page Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeBehind="ShowPopupHelp.aspx.cs" Inherits="MyACTControls.Web.Default" %> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> <html > <head runat="server"> <title>Show Popup Help</title> </head> <body> <form id="form1" runat="server"> <div> <act:ToolkitScriptManager ID="tsm" runat="server" /> <%-- Social Security Number --%> <asp:Label ID="lblSSN" Text="SSN:" AssociatedControlID="txtSSN" runat="server" /> <asp:TextBox ID="txtSSN" runat="server" /> <act:PopupHelpExtender id="ph1" TargetControlID="txtSSN" HelpText="Please enter your social security number." runat="server" /> <%-- Social Security Number --%> <asp:Label ID="lblPhone" Text="Phone Number:" AssociatedControlID="txtPhone" runat="server" /> <asp:TextBox ID="txtPhone" runat="server" /> <act:PopupHelpExtender id="ph2" TargetControlID="txtPhone" HelpText="Please enter your phone number." runat="server" /> </div> </form> </body> </html> In the page above, the PopupHelp extender is used to extend the functionality of the two TextBox controls. When focus is given to a TextBox control, the popup help message is displayed. An Ajax Control Toolkit control extender consists of two parts: a server-side control extender and a client-side behavior. For example, the PopupHelp extender consists of a server-side PopupHelpExtender control (PopupHelpExtender.cs) and a client-side PopupHelp behavior JavaScript script (PopupHelpBehavior.js). Over the course of this blog entry, I describe how you can create both the server-side extender and the client-side behavior. Writing the Server-Side Code Creating a Control Extender You create a control extender by creating a class that inherits from the abstract ExtenderControlBase class. For example, the PopupHelpExtender control is declared like this: public class PopupHelpExtender: ExtenderControlBase { } The ExtenderControlBase class is part of the Ajax Control Toolkit. This base class contains all of the common server properties and methods of every Ajax Control Toolkit extender control. The ExtenderControlBase class inherits from the ExtenderControl class. The ExtenderControl class is a standard class in the ASP.NET framework located in the System.Web.UI namespace. This class is responsible for generating a client-side behavior. The class generates a call to the Microsoft Ajax Library $create() method which looks like this: <script type="text/javascript"> $create(MyACTControls.PopupHelpBehavior, {"HelpText":"Please enter your social security number.","id":"ph1"}, null, null, $get("txtSSN")); }); </script> The JavaScript $create() method is part of the Microsoft Ajax Library. The reference for this method can be found here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb397487.aspx This method accepts the following parameters: type – The type of client behavior to create. The $create() method above creates a client PopupHelpBehavior. Properties – Enables you to pass initial values for the properties of the client behavior. For example, the initial value of the HelpText property. This is how server property values are passed to the client. Events – Enables you to pass client-side event handlers to the client behavior. References – Enables you to pass references to other client components. Element – The DOM element associated with the client behavior. This will be the DOM element associated with the control being extended such as the txtSSN TextBox. The $create() method is generated for you automatically. You just need to focus on writing the server-side control extender class. Specifying the Target Control All Ajax Control Toolkit extenders inherit a TargetControlID property from the ExtenderControlBase class. This property, the TargetControlID property, points at the control that the extender control extends. For example, the Ajax Control Toolkit TextBoxWatermark control extends a TextBox, the ConfirmButton control extends a Button, and the Calendar control extends a TextBox. You must indicate the type of control which your extender is extending. You indicate the type of control by adding a [TargetControlType] attribute to your control. For example, the PopupHelp extender is declared like this: [TargetControlType(typeof(TextBox))] public class PopupHelpExtender: ExtenderControlBase { } The PopupHelp extender can be used to extend a TextBox control. If you try to use the PopupHelp extender with another type of control then an exception is thrown. If you want to create an extender control which can be used with any type of ASP.NET control (Button, DataView, TextBox or whatever) then use the following attribute: [TargetControlType(typeof(Control))] Decorating Properties with Attributes If you decorate a server-side property with the [ExtenderControlProperty] attribute then the value of the property gets passed to the control’s client-side behavior. The value of the property gets passed to the client through the $create() method discussed above. The PopupHelp control contains the following HelpText property: [ExtenderControlProperty] [RequiredProperty] public string HelpText { get { return GetPropertyValue("HelpText", "Help Text"); } set { SetPropertyValue("HelpText", value); } } The HelpText property determines the help text which pops up when you start typing into a TextBox control. Because the HelpText property is decorated with the [ExtenderControlProperty] attribute, any value assigned to this property on the server is passed to the client automatically. For example, if you declare the PopupHelp extender in a Web Form page like this: <asp:TextBox ID="txtSSN" runat="server" /> <act:PopupHelpExtender id="ph1" TargetControlID="txtSSN" HelpText="Please enter your social security number." runat="server" />   Then the PopupHelpExtender renders the call to the the following Microsoft Ajax Library $create() method: $create(MyACTControls.PopupHelpBehavior, {"HelpText":"Please enter your social security number.","id":"ph1"}, null, null, $get("txtSSN")); You can see this call to the JavaScript $create() method by selecting View Source in your browser. This call to the $create() method calls a method named set_HelpText() automatically and passes the value “Please enter your social security number”. There are several attributes which you can use to decorate server-side properties including: ExtenderControlProperty – When a property is marked with this attribute, the value of the property is passed to the client automatically. ExtenderControlEvent – When a property is marked with this attribute, the property represents a client event handler. Required – When a value is not assigned to this property on the server, an error is displayed. DefaultValue – The default value of the property passed to the client. ClientPropertyName – The name of the corresponding property in the JavaScript behavior. For example, the server-side property is named ID (uppercase) and the client-side property is named id (lower-case). IDReferenceProperty – Applied to properties which refer to the IDs of other controls. URLProperty – Calls ResolveClientURL() to convert from a server-side URL to a URL which can be used on the client. ElementReference – Returns a reference to a DOM element by performing a client $get(). The WebResource, ClientResource, and the RequiredScript Attributes The PopupHelp extender uses three embedded resources named PopupHelpBehavior.js, PopupHelpBehavior.debug.js, and PopupHelpBehavior.css. The first two files are JavaScript files and the final file is a Cascading Style sheet file. These files are compiled as embedded resources. You don’t need to mark them as embedded resources in your Visual Studio solution because they get added to the assembly when the assembly is compiled by a build task. You can see that these files get embedded into the MyACTControls assembly by using Red Gate’s .NET Reflector tool: In order to use these files with the PopupHelp extender, you need to work with both the WebResource and the ClientScriptResource attributes. The PopupHelp extender includes the following three WebResource attributes. [assembly: WebResource("PopupHelp.PopupHelpBehavior.js", "text/javascript")] [assembly: WebResource("PopupHelp.PopupHelpBehavior.debug.js", "text/javascript")] [assembly: WebResource("PopupHelp.PopupHelpBehavior.css", "text/css", PerformSubstitution = true)] These WebResource attributes expose the embedded resource from the assembly so that they can be accessed by using the ScriptResource.axd or WebResource.axd handlers. The first parameter passed to the WebResource attribute is the name of the embedded resource and the second parameter is the content type of the embedded resource. The PopupHelp extender also includes the following ClientScriptResource and ClientCssResource attributes: [ClientScriptResource("MyACTControls.PopupHelpBehavior", "PopupHelp.PopupHelpBehavior.js")] [ClientCssResource("PopupHelp.PopupHelpBehavior.css")] Including these attributes causes the PopupHelp extender to request these resources when you add the PopupHelp extender to a page. If you open View Source in a browser which uses the PopupHelp extender then you will see the following link for the Cascading Style Sheet file: <link href="/WebResource.axd?d=0uONMsWXUuEDG-pbJHAC1kuKiIMteQFkYLmZdkgv7X54TObqYoqVzU4mxvaa4zpn5H9ch0RDwRYKwtO8zM5mKgO6C4WbrbkWWidKR07LD1d4n4i_uNB1mHEvXdZu2Ae5mDdVNDV53znnBojzCzwvSw2&amp;t=634417392021676003" type="text/css" rel="stylesheet" /> You also will see the following script include for the JavaScript file: <script src="/ScriptResource.axd?d=pIS7xcGaqvNLFBvExMBQSp_0xR3mpDfS0QVmmyu1aqDUjF06TrW1jVDyXNDMtBHxpRggLYDvgFTWOsrszflZEDqAcQCg-hDXjun7ON0Ol7EXPQIdOe1GLMceIDv3OeX658-tTq2LGdwXhC1-dE7_6g2&amp;t=ffffffff88a33b59" type="text/javascript"></script> The JavaScrpt file returned by this request to ScriptResource.axd contains the combined scripts for any and all Ajax Control Toolkit controls in a page. By default, the Ajax Control Toolkit combines all of the JavaScript files required by a page into a single JavaScript file. Combining files in this way really speeds up how quickly all of the JavaScript files get delivered from the web server to the browser. So, by default, there will be only one ScriptResource.axd include for all of the JavaScript files required by a page. If you want to disable Script Combining, and create separate links, then disable Script Combining like this: <act:ToolkitScriptManager ID="tsm" runat="server" CombineScripts="false" /> There is one more important attribute used by Ajax Control Toolkit extenders. The PopupHelp behavior uses the following two RequirdScript attributes to load the JavaScript files which are required by the PopupHelp behavior: [RequiredScript(typeof(CommonToolkitScripts), 0)] [RequiredScript(typeof(PopupExtender), 1)] The first parameter of the RequiredScript attribute represents either the string name of a JavaScript file or the type of an Ajax Control Toolkit control. The second parameter represents the order in which the JavaScript files are loaded (This second parameter is needed because .NET attributes are intrinsically unordered). In this case, the RequiredScript attribute will load the JavaScript files associated with the CommonToolkitScripts type and the JavaScript files associated with the PopupExtender in that order. The PopupHelp behavior depends on these JavaScript files. Writing the Client-Side Code The PopupHelp extender uses a client-side behavior written with the Microsoft Ajax Library. Here is the complete code for the client-side behavior: (function () { // The unique name of the script registered with the // client script loader var scriptName = "PopupHelpBehavior"; function execute() { Type.registerNamespace('MyACTControls'); MyACTControls.PopupHelpBehavior = function (element) { /// <summary> /// A behavior which displays popup help for a textbox /// </summmary> /// <param name="element" type="Sys.UI.DomElement">The element to attach to</param> MyACTControls.PopupHelpBehavior.initializeBase(this, [element]); this._textbox = Sys.Extended.UI.TextBoxWrapper.get_Wrapper(element); this._cssClass = "ajax__popupHelp"; this._popupBehavior = null; this._popupPosition = Sys.Extended.UI.PositioningMode.BottomLeft; this._popupDiv = null; this._helpText = "Help Text"; this._element$delegates = { focus: Function.createDelegate(this, this._element_onfocus), blur: Function.createDelegate(this, this._element_onblur) }; } MyACTControls.PopupHelpBehavior.prototype = { initialize: function () { MyACTControls.PopupHelpBehavior.callBaseMethod(this, 'initialize'); // Add event handlers for focus and blur var element = this.get_element(); $addHandlers(element, this._element$delegates); }, _ensurePopup: function () { if (!this._popupDiv) { var element = this.get_element(); var id = this.get_id(); this._popupDiv = $common.createElementFromTemplate({ nodeName: "div", properties: { id: id + "_popupDiv" }, cssClasses: ["ajax__popupHelp"] }, element.parentNode); this._popupBehavior = new $create(Sys.Extended.UI.PopupBehavior, { parentElement: element }, {}, {}, this._popupDiv); this._popupBehavior.set_positioningMode(this._popupPosition); } }, get_HelpText: function () { return this._helpText; }, set_HelpText: function (value) { if (this._HelpText != value) { this._helpText = value; this._ensurePopup(); this._popupDiv.innerHTML = value; this.raisePropertyChanged("Text") } }, _element_onfocus: function (e) { this.show(); }, _element_onblur: function (e) { this.hide(); }, show: function () { this._popupBehavior.show(); }, hide: function () { if (this._popupBehavior) { this._popupBehavior.hide(); } }, dispose: function() { var element = this.get_element(); $clearHandlers(element); if (this._popupBehavior) { this._popupBehavior.dispose(); this._popupBehavior = null; } } }; MyACTControls.PopupHelpBehavior.registerClass('MyACTControls.PopupHelpBehavior', Sys.Extended.UI.BehaviorBase); Sys.registerComponent(MyACTControls.PopupHelpBehavior, { name: "popupHelp" }); } // execute if (window.Sys && Sys.loader) { Sys.loader.registerScript(scriptName, ["ExtendedBase", "ExtendedCommon"], execute); } else { execute(); } })();   In the following sections, we’ll discuss how this client-side behavior works. Wrapping the Behavior for the Script Loader The behavior is wrapped with the following script: (function () { // The unique name of the script registered with the // client script loader var scriptName = "PopupHelpBehavior"; function execute() { // Behavior Content } // execute if (window.Sys && Sys.loader) { Sys.loader.registerScript(scriptName, ["ExtendedBase", "ExtendedCommon"], execute); } else { execute(); } })(); This code is required by the Microsoft Ajax Library Script Loader. You need this code if you plan to use a behavior directly from client-side code and you want to use the Script Loader. If you plan to only use your code in the context of the Ajax Control Toolkit then you can leave out this code. Registering a JavaScript Namespace The PopupHelp behavior is declared within a namespace named MyACTControls. In the code above, this namespace is created with the following registerNamespace() method: Type.registerNamespace('MyACTControls'); JavaScript does not have any built-in way of creating namespaces to prevent naming conflicts. The Microsoft Ajax Library extends JavaScript with support for namespaces. You can learn more about the registerNamespace() method here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb397723.aspx Creating the Behavior The actual Popup behavior is created with the following code. MyACTControls.PopupHelpBehavior = function (element) { /// <summary> /// A behavior which displays popup help for a textbox /// </summmary> /// <param name="element" type="Sys.UI.DomElement">The element to attach to</param> MyACTControls.PopupHelpBehavior.initializeBase(this, [element]); this._textbox = Sys.Extended.UI.TextBoxWrapper.get_Wrapper(element); this._cssClass = "ajax__popupHelp"; this._popupBehavior = null; this._popupPosition = Sys.Extended.UI.PositioningMode.BottomLeft; this._popupDiv = null; this._helpText = "Help Text"; this._element$delegates = { focus: Function.createDelegate(this, this._element_onfocus), blur: Function.createDelegate(this, this._element_onblur) }; } MyACTControls.PopupHelpBehavior.prototype = { initialize: function () { MyACTControls.PopupHelpBehavior.callBaseMethod(this, 'initialize'); // Add event handlers for focus and blur var element = this.get_element(); $addHandlers(element, this._element$delegates); }, _ensurePopup: function () { if (!this._popupDiv) { var element = this.get_element(); var id = this.get_id(); this._popupDiv = $common.createElementFromTemplate({ nodeName: "div", properties: { id: id + "_popupDiv" }, cssClasses: ["ajax__popupHelp"] }, element.parentNode); this._popupBehavior = new $create(Sys.Extended.UI.PopupBehavior, { parentElement: element }, {}, {}, this._popupDiv); this._popupBehavior.set_positioningMode(this._popupPosition); } }, get_HelpText: function () { return this._helpText; }, set_HelpText: function (value) { if (this._HelpText != value) { this._helpText = value; this._ensurePopup(); this._popupDiv.innerHTML = value; this.raisePropertyChanged("Text") } }, _element_onfocus: function (e) { this.show(); }, _element_onblur: function (e) { this.hide(); }, show: function () { this._popupBehavior.show(); }, hide: function () { if (this._popupBehavior) { this._popupBehavior.hide(); } }, dispose: function() { var element = this.get_element(); $clearHandlers(element); if (this._popupBehavior) { this._popupBehavior.dispose(); this._popupBehavior = null; } } }; The code above has two parts. The first part of the code is used to define the constructor function for the PopupHelp behavior. This is a factory method which returns an instance of a PopupHelp behavior: MyACTControls.PopupHelpBehavior = function (element) { } The second part of the code modified the prototype for the PopupHelp behavior: MyACTControls.PopupHelpBehavior.prototype = { } Any code which is particular to a single instance of the PopupHelp behavior should be placed in the constructor function. For example, the default value of the _helpText field is assigned in the constructor function: this._helpText = "Help Text"; Any code which is shared among all instances of the PopupHelp behavior should be added to the PopupHelp behavior’s prototype. For example, the public HelpText property is added to the prototype: get_HelpText: function () { return this._helpText; }, set_HelpText: function (value) { if (this._HelpText != value) { this._helpText = value; this._ensurePopup(); this._popupDiv.innerHTML = value; this.raisePropertyChanged("Text") } }, Registering a JavaScript Class After you create the PopupHelp behavior, you must register the behavior as a class by using the Microsoft Ajax registerClass() method like this: MyACTControls.PopupHelpBehavior.registerClass('MyACTControls.PopupHelpBehavior', Sys.Extended.UI.BehaviorBase); This call to registerClass() registers PopupHelp behavior as a class which derives from the base Sys.Extended.UI.BehaviorBase class. Like the ExtenderControlBase class on the server side, the BehaviorBase class on the client side contains method used by every behavior. The documentation for the BehaviorBase class can be found here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb311020.aspx The most important methods and properties of the BehaviorBase class are the following: dispose() – Use this method to clean up all resources used by your behavior. In the case of the PopupHelp behavior, the dispose() method is used to remote the event handlers created by the behavior and disposed the Popup behavior. get_element() -- Use this property to get the DOM element associated with the behavior. In other words, the DOM element which the behavior extends. get_id() – Use this property to the ID of the current behavior. initialize() – Use this method to initialize the behavior. This method is called after all of the properties are set by the $create() method. Creating Debug and Release Scripts You might have noticed that the PopupHelp behavior uses two scripts named PopupHelpBehavior.js and PopupHelpBehavior.debug.js. However, you never create these two scripts. Instead, you only create a single script named PopupHelpBehavior.pre.js. The pre in PopupHelpBehavior.pre.js stands for preprocessor. When you build the Ajax Control Toolkit (or the sample Visual Studio Solution at the end of this blog entry), a build task named JSBuild generates the PopupHelpBehavior.js release script and PopupHelpBehavior.debug.js debug script automatically. The JSBuild preprocessor supports the following directives: #IF #ELSE #ENDIF #INCLUDE #LOCALIZE #DEFINE #UNDEFINE The preprocessor directives are used to mark code which should only appear in the debug version of the script. The directives are used extensively in the Microsoft Ajax Library. For example, the Microsoft Ajax Library Array.contains() method is created like this: $type.contains = function Array$contains(array, item) { //#if DEBUG var e = Function._validateParams(arguments, [ {name: "array", type: Array, elementMayBeNull: true}, {name: "item", mayBeNull: true} ]); if (e) throw e; //#endif return (indexOf(array, item) >= 0); } Notice that you add each of the preprocessor directives inside a JavaScript comment. The comment prevents Visual Studio from getting confused with its Intellisense. The release version, but not the debug version, of the PopupHelpBehavior script is also minified automatically by the Microsoft Ajax Minifier. The minifier is invoked by a build step in the project file. Conclusion The goal of this blog entry was to explain how you can create custom AJAX Control Toolkit controls. In the first part of this blog entry, you learned how to create the server-side portion of an Ajax Control Toolkit control. You learned how to derive a new control from the ExtenderControlBase class and decorate its properties with the necessary attributes. Next, in the second part of this blog entry, you learned how to create the client-side portion of an Ajax Control Toolkit control by creating a client-side behavior with JavaScript. You learned how to use the methods of the Microsoft Ajax Library to extend your client behavior from the BehaviorBase class. Download the Custom ACT Starter Solution

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• SQLAuthority News – SQLPASS Nov 8-11, 2010-Seattle – An Alternative Look at Experience

  - by pinaldave

  I recently attended most prestigious SQL Server event SQLPASS between Nov 8-11, 2010 at Seattle. I have only one expression for the event - Best Summit Ever This year the summit was at its best. Instead of writing about my usual routine or the event, I am going to write about the interesting things I did and how I felt about it! Best Summit Ever Trip to Seattle! This was my second trip to Seattle this year and the journey is always long. Here is the travel stats on how long it takes to get to Seattle: 24 hours official air time 36 hours total travel time (connection waits and airport commute) Every time I travel to USA I gain a day and when I travel back to home, I lose a day. However, the total traveling time is around 3 days. The journey is long and very exhausting. However, it is all worth it when you’re attending an event like SQLPASS. Here are few things I carry when I travel for a long journey: Dry Snack packs – I like to have some good Indian Dry Snacks along with me in my backpack so I can have my own snack when I want Amazon Kindle – Loaded with 80+ books A physical book – This is usually a very easy to read book I do not watch movies on the plane and usually spend my time reading something quick and easy. If I can go to sleep, I go for it. I prefer to not to spend time in conversation with the guy sitting next to me because usually I end up listening to their biography, which I cannot blog about. Sheraton Seattle SQLPASS In any case, I love to go to Seattle as the city is great and has everything a brilliant metropolis has to offer. The new Light Train is extremely convenient, and I can take it directly from the airport to the city center. My hotel, the Sheraton, was only few meters (in the USA people count in blocks – 3 blocks) away from the train station. This time I saved USD 40 each round trip due to the Light Train. Sessions I attended! Well, I really wanted to attend most of the sessions but there was great dilemma of which ones to choose. There were many, many sessions to be attended and at any given time there was more than one good session being presented. I had decided to attend sessions in area performance tuning and I attended quite a few sessions this year, compared to what I was able to do last year. Here are few names of the speakers whose sessions I attended (please note, following great speakers are not listed in any order. I loved them and I enjoyed their sessions): Conor Cunningham Rushabh Mehta Buck Woody Brent Ozar Jonathan Kehayias Chris Leonard Bob Ward Grant Fritchey I had great fun attending their sessions. The sessions were meaningful and enlightening. It is hard to rate any session but I have found that the insights learned in Conor Cunningham’s sessions are the highlight of the PASS Summit. Rushabh Mehta at Keynote SQLPASS   Bucky Woody and Brent Ozar I always like the sessions where the speaker is much closer to the audience and has real world experience. I think speakers who have worked in the real world deliver the best content and most useful information. Sessions I did not like! Indeed there were few sessions I did not like it and I am not going to name them here. However, there were strong reasons I did not like their sessions, and here is why: Sessions were all theory and had no real world connections. All technical questions ended with confusing answers (lots of “I will get back to you on it,” “it depends,” “let us take this offline” and many more…) “I am God” kind of attitude in the speakers For example, I attended a session of one very well known speaker who is a specialist for one particular area. I was bit late for the session and was surprised to see that in a room that could hold 350 people there were only 30 attendees. After sitting there for 15 minutes, I realized why lots of people left. Very soon I found I preferred to stare out the window instead of listening to that particular speaker. One on One Talk! Many times people ask me what I really like about PASS. I always say the experience of meeting SQL legends and spending time with them one on one and LEARNING! Here is the quick list of the people I met during this event and spent more than 30 minutes with each of them talking about various subjects: Pinal Dave and Brad Shulz Pinal Dave and Rushabh Mehta Michael Coles and Pinal Dave Rushabh Mehta – It is always pleasure to meet with him. He is a man with lots of energy and a passion for community. He recently told me that he really wanted to turn PASS into resource for learning for every SQL Server Developer and Administrator in the world. I had great in-depth discussion regarding how a single person can contribute to a community. Michael Coles – I consider him my best friend. It is always fun to meet him. He is funny and very knowledgeable. I think there are very few people who are as expert as he is in encryption and spatial databases. Worth meeting him every single time. Glenn Berry – A real friend of everybody. He is very a simple person and very true to his heart. I think there is not a single person in whole community who does not like him. He is a friends of all and everybody likes him very much. I once again had time to sit with him and learn so much from him. As he is known as Dr. DMV, I can be his nurse in the area of DMV. Brad Schulz – I always wanted to meet him but never got chance until today. I had great time meeting him in person and we have spent considerable amount of time together discussing various T-SQL tricks and tips. I do not know where he comes up with all the different ideas but I enjoy reading his blog and sharing his wisdom with me. Jonathan Kehayias – He is drill sergeant in US army. If you get the impression that he is a giant with very strong personality – you are wrong. He is very kind and soft spoken DBA with strong performance tuning skills. I asked him how he has kept his two jobs separate and I got very good answer – just work hard and have passion for what you do. I attended his sessions and his presentation style is very unique.  I feel like he is speaking in a language I understand. Louis Davidson – I had never had a chance to sit with him and talk about technology before. He has so much wisdom and he is very kind. During the dinner, I had talked with him for long time and without hesitation he started to draw a schema for me on the menu. It was a wonderful experience to learn from a master at the dinner table. He explained to me the real and practical differences between third normal form and forth normal form. Honestly I did not know earlier, but now I do. Erland Sommarskog – This man needs no introduction, he is very well known and very clear in conveying his ideas. I learned a lot from him during the course of year. Every time I meet him, I learn something new and this time was no exception. Joe Webb – Joey is all about community and people, we had interesting conversation about community, MVP and how one can be helpful to community without losing passion for long time. It is always pleasant to talk to him and of course, I had fun time. Ross Mistry – I call him my brother many times because he indeed looks like my cousin. He provided me lots of insight of how one can write book and how he keeps his books simple to appeal to all the readers. A wonderful person and great friend. Ola Hallgren - I did not know he was coming to the summit. I had great time meeting him and had a wonderful conversation with him regarding his scripts and future community activities. Blythe Morrow – She used to be integrated part of SQL Server Community and PASS HQ. It was wonderful to meet her again and re-connect. She is wonderful person and I had a great time talking to her. Solid Quality Mentors – It is difficult to decide who to mention here. Instead of writing all the names, I am going to include a photo of our meeting. I had great fun meeting various members of our global branches. This year I was sitting with my Spanish speaking friends and had great fun as Javier Loria from Solid Quality translated lots of things for me. Party, Party and Parties Every evening there were various parties. I did attend almost all of them. Every party had different theme but the goal of all the parties the same – networking. Here are the few parties where I had lots of fun: Dell Reception Party Exhibitor Party Solid Quality Fun Party Red Gate Friends Party MVP Dinner Microsoft Party MVP Dinner Quest Party Gameworks PASS Party Volunteer Party at Garage Solid Quality Mentors (10 Members out of 120) They were all great networking opportunities and lots of fun. I really had great time meeting people at the various parties. There were few people everywhere – well, I will say I am among them – who hopped parties. NDA – Not Decided Agenda During the event there were few meetings marked “NDA.” Someone asked me “why are these things NDA?”  My response was simple: because they are not sure themselves. NDA stands for Not Decided Agenda. Toys, Giveaways and Luggage I admit, I was like child in Gameworks and was playing to win soft toys. I was doing it for my daughter. I must thank all of the people who gave me their cards to try my luck. I won 4 soft-toys for my daughter and it was fun. Also, thanks to Angel who did a final toy swap with me to get the desired toy for my daughter. I also collected ducks from Idera, as my daughter really loves them. Solid Quality Booth Each of the exhibitors was giving away something and I got so much stuff that my luggage got quite a bit bigger when I returned. Best Exhibitor Idera had SQLDoctor (a real magician and fun guy) to promote their new tool SQLDoctor. I really had a great time participating in the magic myself. At one point, the magician made my watch disappear.  I have seen better magic before, but this time it caught me unexpectedly and I was taken by surprise. I won many ducks again. The Common Question I heard the following common questions: I have seen you somewhere – who are you? – I am Pinal Dave. I did not know that Pinal is your first name and Dave is your last name, how do you pronounce your last name again? – Da-way How old are you? – I am as old as I can be. Are you an Indian because you look like one? – I did not answer this one. Where are you from? This question was usually asked after looking at my badge which says India. So did you really fly from India? – Yes, because I have seasickness so I do not prefer the sea journey. How long was the journey? – 24/36/12 (air travel time/total travel time/time zone difference) Why do you write on SQLAuthority.com? – Because I want to. I remember your daughter looks like you. – Is this even a question? Of course, she is daddy’s little girl. There were so many other questions, I will have to write another blog post about it. SQLPASS Again, Best Summit Ever! Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: About Me, Pinal Dave, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLAuthority Author Visit, T SQL, Technology Tagged: SQLPASS

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• Microsoft Declares the Future of ASP.NET is Web API

  - by sbwalker

  Sitting on a plane on my way home from Tech Ed 2012 in Orlando, I thought it would be a good time to jot down some key takeaways from this year’s conference. Some of these items I have known since the Microsoft MVP Summit which occurred in Redmond in late February ( but due to NDA restrictions I could not share them with the developer community at large ) and some of them are a result of insightful conversations with a wide variety of industry insiders and Microsoft employees at the conference. First, let’s travel back in time 4 years to the Microsoft MVP Summit in 2008. Microsoft was facing some heat from market newcomer Ruby on Rails and responded with a new web development framework of its own, ASP.NET MVC. At the Summit they estimated that MVC would only be applicable for ~10% of all new web development projects. Based on that prediction I questioned why they were investing such considerable resources for such a relative edge case, but my guess is that they felt it was an important edge case at the time as some of the more vocal .NET evangelists as well as some very high profile start-ups ( ie. Twitter ) had publicly announced their intent to use Rails. Microsoft made a lot of noise about MVC. In fact, they focused so much of their messaging and marketing hype around MVC that it appeared that WebForms was essentially dead. Yes, it may have been true that Microsoft continued to invest in WebForms, but from an outside perspective it really appeared that MVC was the only framework getting any real attention. As a result, MVC started to gain market share. An inside source at Microsoft told me that MVC usage has grown at a rate of about 5% per year and now sits at ~30%. Essentially by focusing so much marketing effort on MVC, Microsoft actually created a larger market demand for it.  This is because in the Microsoft ecosystem there is somewhat of a bandwagon mentality amongst developers. If Microsoft spends a lot of time talking about a specific technology, developers get the perception that it must be really important. So rather than choosing the right tool for the job, they often choose the tool with the most marketing hype and then try to sell it to the customer. In 2010, I blogged about the fact that MVC did not make any business sense for the DotNetNuke platform. This was because our ecosystem relied on third party extensions which were dependent on the WebForms model. If we migrated the core to MVC it would mean that all of the third party extensions would no longer be compatible, which would be an irresponsible business decision for us to make at the expense of our users and customers. However, this did not stop the debate from continuing to occur in our ecosystem. Clearly some developers had drunk Microsoft’s Kool-Aid about MVC and were of the mindset, to paraphrase an old Scottish saying, “If its not MVC, it’s crap”. Now, this is a rather ignorant position to take as most of the benefits of MVC can be achieved in WebForms with solid architecture and responsible coding practices. Clean separation of concerns, unit testing, and direct control over page output are all possible in the WebForms model – it just requires diligence and discipline. So over the past few years some horror stories have begun to bubble to the surface of software development projects focused on ground-up rewrites of web applications for the sole purpose of migrating from WebForms to MVC. These large scale rewrites were typically initiated by engineering teams with only a single argument driving the business decision, that Microsoft was promoting MVC as “the future”. These ill-fated rewrites offered no benefit to end users or customers and in fact resulted in a less stable, less scalable and more complicated systems – basically taking one step forward and two full steps back. A case in point is the announcement earlier this week that a popular open source .NET CMS provider has decided to pull the plug on their new MVC product which has been under active development for more than 18 months and revert back to WebForms. The availability of multiple server-side development models has deeply fragmented the Microsoft developer community. Some folks like to compare it to the age-old VB vs. C# language debate. However, the VB vs. C# language debate was ultimately more of a religious war because at least the two dominant programming languages were compatible with one another and could be used interchangeably. The issue with WebForms vs. MVC is much more challenging. This is because the messaging from Microsoft has positioned the two solutions as being incompatible with one another and as a result web developers feel like they are forced to choose one path or another. Yes, it is true that it has always been technically possible to use WebForms and MVC in the same project, but the tooling support has always made this feel “dirty”. The fragmentation has also made it difficult to attract newcomers as the perceived barrier to entry for learning ASP.NET has become higher. As a result many new software developers entering the market are gravitating to environments where the development model seems more simple and intuitive ( ie. PHP or Ruby ). At the same time that the Web Platform team was busy promoting ASP.NET MVC, the Microsoft Office team has been promoting Sharepoint as a platform for building internal enterprise web applications. Sharepoint has great penetration in the enterprise and over time has been enhanced with improved extensibility capabilities for software developers. But, like many other mature enterprise ASP.NET web applications, it is built on the WebForms development model. Similar to DotNetNuke, Sharepoint leverages a rich third party ecosystem for both generic web controls and more specialized WebParts – both of which rely on WebForms. So basically this resulted in a situation where the Web Platform group had headed off in one direction and the Office team had gone in another direction, and the end customer was stuck in the middle trying to figure out what to do with their existing investments in Microsoft technology. It really emphasized the perception that the left hand was not speaking to the right hand, as strategically speaking there did not seem to be any high level plan from Microsoft to ensure consistency and continuity across the different product lines. With the introduction of ASP.NET MVC, it also made some of the third party control vendors scratch their heads, and wonder what the heck Microsoft was thinking. The original value proposition of ASP.NET over Classic ASP was the ability for web developers to emulate the highly productive desktop development model by using abstract components for creating rich, interactive web interfaces. Web control vendors like Telerik, Infragistics, DevExpress, and ComponentArt had all built sizable businesses offering powerful user interface components to WebForms developers. And even after MVC was introduced these vendors continued to improve their products, offering greater productivity and a superior user experience via AJAX to what was possible in MVC. And since many developers were comfortable and satisfied with these third party solutions, the demand remained strong and the third party web control market continued to prosper despite the availability of MVC. While all of this was going on in the Microsoft ecosystem, there has also been a fundamental shift in the general software development industry. Driven by the explosion of Internet-enabled devices, the focus has now centered on service-oriented architecture (SOA). Service-oriented architecture is all about defining a public API for your product that any client can consume; whether it’s a native application running on a smart phone or tablet, a web browser taking advantage of HTML5 and Javascript, or a rich desktop application running on a PC. REST-based services which utilize the less verbose characteristics of JSON as a transport mechanism, have become the preferred approach over older, more bloated SOAP-based techniques. SOA also has the benefit of producing a cross-platform API, as every major technology stack is able to interact with standard REST-based web services. And for web applications, more and more developers are turning to robust Javascript libraries like JQuery and Knockout for browser-based client-side development techniques for calling web services and rendering content to end users. In fact, traditional server-side page rendering has largely fallen out of favor, resulting in decreased demand for server-side frameworks like Ruby on Rails, WebForms, and (gasp) MVC. In response to these new industry trends, Microsoft did what it always does – it immediately poured some resources into developing a solution which will ensure they remain relevant and competitive in the web space. This work culminated in a new framework which was branded as Web API. It is convention-based and designed to embrace native HTTP standards without copious layers of abstraction. This framework is designed to be the ultimate replacement for both the REST aspects of WCF and ASP.NET MVC Web Services. And since it was developed out of band with a dependency only on ASP.NET 4.0, it means that it can be used immediately in a variety of production scenarios. So at Tech Ed 2012 it was made abundantly clear in numerous sessions that Microsoft views Web API as the “Future of ASP.NET”. In fact, one Microsoft PM even went as far as to say that if we look 3-4 years into the future, that all ASP.NET web applications will be developed using the Web API approach. This is a fairly bold prediction and clearly telegraphs where Microsoft plans to allocate its resources going forward. Currently Web API is being delivered as part of the MVC4 package, but this is only temporary for the sake of convenience. It also sounds like there are still internal discussions going on in terms of how to brand the various aspects of ASP.NET going forward – perhaps the moniker of “ASP.NET Web Stack” coined a couple years ago by Scott Hanselman and utilized as part of the open source release of ASP.NET bits on Codeplex a few months back will eventually stick. Web API is being positioned as the unification of ASP.NET – the glue that is able to pull this fragmented mess back together again. The  “One ASP.NET” strategy will promote the use of all frameworks - WebForms, MVC, and Web API, even within the same web project. Basically the message is utilize the appropriate aspects of each framework to solve your business problems. Instead of navigating developers to a fork in the road, the plan is to educate them that “hybrid” applications are a great strategy for delivering solutions to customers. In addition, the service-oriented approach coupled with client-side development promoted by Web API can effectively be used in both WebForms and MVC applications. So this means it is also relevant to application platforms like DotNetNuke and Sharepoint, which means that it starts to create a unified development strategy across all ASP.NET product lines once again. And so what about MVC? There have actually been rumors floated that MVC has reached a stage of maturity where, similar to WebForms, it will be treated more as a maintenance product line going forward ( MVC4 may in fact be the last significant iteration of this framework ). This may sound alarming to some folks who have recently adopted MVC but it really shouldn’t, as both WebForms and MVC will continue to play a vital role in delivering solutions to customers. They will just not be the primary area where Microsoft is spending the majority of its R&D resources. That distinction will obviously go to Web API. And when the question comes up of why not enhance MVC to make it work with Web API, you must take a step back and look at this from the higher level to see that it really makes no sense. MVC is a server-side page compositing framework; whereas, Web API promotes client-side page compositing with a heavy focus on web services. In order to make MVC work well with Web API, would require a complete rewrite of MVC and at the end of the day, there would be no upgrade path for existing MVC applications. So it really does not make much business sense. So what does this have to do with DotNetNuke? Well, around 8-12 months ago we recognized the software industry trends towards web services and client-side development. We decided to utilize a “hybrid” model which would provide compatibility for existing modules while at the same time provide a bridge for developers who wanted to utilize more modern web techniques. Customers who like the productivity and familiarity of WebForms can continue to build custom modules using the traditional approach. However, in DotNetNuke 6.2 we also introduced a new Service Framework which is actually built on top of MVC2 ( we chose to leverage MVC because it had the most intuitive, light-weight REST implementation in the .NET stack ). The Services Framework allowed us to build some rich interactive features in DotNetNuke 6.2, including the Messaging and Notification Center and Activity Feed. But based on where we know Microsoft is heading, it makes sense for the next major version of DotNetNuke ( which is expected to be released in Q4 2012 ) to migrate from MVC2 to Web API. This will likely result in some breaking changes in the Services Framework but we feel it is the best approach for ensuring the platform remains highly modern and relevant. The fact that our development strategy is perfectly aligned with the “One ASP.NET” strategy from Microsoft means that our customers and developer community can be confident in their current and future investments in the DotNetNuke platform.

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• Syncing Data with a Server using Silverlight and HTTP Polling Duplex

  - by dwahlin

  Many applications have the need to stay in-sync with data provided by a service. Although web applications typically rely on standard polling techniques to check if data has changed, Silverlight provides several interesting options for keeping an application in-sync that rely on server “push” technologies. A few years back I wrote several blog posts covering different “push” technologies available in Silverlight that rely on sockets or HTTP Polling Duplex. We recently had a project that looked like it could benefit from pushing data from a server to one or more clients so I thought I’d revisit the subject and provide some updates to the original code posted. If you’ve worked with AJAX before in Web applications then you know that until browsers fully support web sockets or other duplex (bi-directional communication) technologies that it’s difficult to keep applications in-sync with a server without relying on polling. The problem with polling is that you have to check for changes on the server on a timed-basis which can often be wasteful and take up unnecessary resources. With server “push” technologies, data can be pushed from the server to the client as it changes. Once the data is received, the client can update the user interface as appropriate. Using “push” technologies allows the client to listen for changes from the data but stay 100% focused on client activities as opposed to worrying about polling and asking the server if anything has changed. Silverlight provides several options for pushing data from a server to a client including sockets, TCP bindings and HTTP Polling Duplex.  Each has its own strengths and weaknesses as far as performance and setup work with HTTP Polling Duplex arguably being the easiest to setup and get going.  In this article I’ll demonstrate how HTTP Polling Duplex can be used in Silverlight 4 applications to push data and show how you can create a WCF server that provides an HTTP Polling Duplex binding that a Silverlight client can consume.   What is HTTP Polling Duplex? Technologies that allow data to be pushed from a server to a client rely on duplex functionality. Duplex (or bi-directional) communication allows data to be passed in both directions.  A client can call a service and the server can call the client. HTTP Polling Duplex (as its name implies) allows a server to communicate with a client without forcing the client to constantly poll the server. It has the benefit of being able to run on port 80 making setup a breeze compared to the other options which require specific ports to be used and cross-domain policy files to be exposed on port 943 (as with sockets and TCP bindings). Having said that, if you’re looking for the best speed possible then sockets and TCP bindings are the way to go. But, they’re not the only game in town when it comes to duplex communication. The first time I heard about HTTP Polling Duplex (initially available in Silverlight 2) I wasn’t exactly sure how it was any better than standard polling used in AJAX applications. I read the Silverlight SDK, looked at various resources and generally found the following definition unhelpful as far as understanding the actual benefits that HTTP Polling Duplex provided: "The Silverlight client periodically polls the service on the network layer, and checks for any new messages that the service wants to send on the callback channel. The service queues all messages sent on the client callback channel and delivers them to the client when the client polls the service." Although the previous definition explained the overall process, it sounded as if standard polling was used. Fortunately, Microsoft’s Scott Guthrie provided me with a more clear definition several years back that explains the benefits provided by HTTP Polling Duplex quite well (used with his permission): "The [HTTP Polling Duplex] duplex support does use polling in the background to implement notifications – although the way it does it is different than manual polling. It initiates a network request, and then the request is effectively “put to sleep” waiting for the server to respond (it doesn’t come back immediately). The server then keeps the connection open but not active until it has something to send back (or the connection times out after 90 seconds – at which point the duplex client will connect again and wait). This way you are avoiding hitting the server repeatedly – but still get an immediate response when there is data to send." After hearing Scott’s definition the light bulb went on and it all made sense. A client makes a request to a server to check for changes, but instead of the request returning immediately, it parks itself on the server and waits for data. It’s kind of like waiting to pick up a pizza at the store. Instead of calling the store over and over to check the status, you sit in the store and wait until the pizza (the request data) is ready. Once it’s ready you take it back home (to the client). This technique provides a lot of efficiency gains over standard polling techniques even though it does use some polling of its own as a request is initially made from a client to a server. So how do you implement HTTP Polling Duplex in your Silverlight applications? Let’s take a look at the process by starting with the server. Creating an HTTP Polling Duplex WCF Service Creating a WCF service that exposes an HTTP Polling Duplex binding is straightforward as far as coding goes. Add some one way operations into an interface, create a client callback interface and you’re ready to go. The most challenging part comes into play when configuring the service to properly support the necessary binding and that’s more of a cut and paste operation once you know the configuration code to use. To create an HTTP Polling Duplex service you’ll need to expose server-side and client-side interfaces and reference the System.ServiceModel.PollingDuplex assembly (located at C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SDKs\Silverlight\v4.0\Libraries\Server on my machine) in the server project. For the demo application I upgraded a basketball simulation service to support the latest polling duplex assemblies. The service simulates a simple basketball game using a Game class and pushes information about the game such as score, fouls, shots and more to the client as the game changes over time. Before jumping too far into the game push service, it’s important to discuss two interfaces used by the service to communicate in a bi-directional manner. The first is called IGameStreamService and defines the methods/operations that the client can call on the server (see Listing 1). The second is IGameStreamClient which defines the callback methods that a server can use to communicate with a client (see Listing 2).   [ServiceContract(Namespace = "Silverlight", CallbackContract = typeof(IGameStreamClient))] public interface IGameStreamService { [OperationContract(IsOneWay = true)] void GetTeamData(); } Listing 1. The IGameStreamService interface defines server operations that can be called on the server.   [ServiceContract] public interface IGameStreamClient { [OperationContract(IsOneWay = true)] void ReceiveTeamData(List<Team> teamData); [OperationContract(IsOneWay = true, AsyncPattern=true)] IAsyncResult BeginReceiveGameData(GameData gameData, AsyncCallback callback, object state); void EndReceiveGameData(IAsyncResult result); } Listing 2. The IGameStreamClient interfaces defines client operations that a server can call.   The IGameStreamService interface is decorated with the standard ServiceContract attribute but also contains a value for the CallbackContract property.  This property is used to define the interface that the client will expose (IGameStreamClient in this example) and use to receive data pushed from the service. Notice that each OperationContract attribute in both interfaces sets the IsOneWay property to true. This means that the operation can be called and passed data as appropriate, however, no data will be passed back. Instead, data will be pushed back to the client as it’s available.  Looking through the IGameStreamService interface you can see that the client can request team data whereas the IGameStreamClient interface allows team and game data to be received by the client. One interesting point about the IGameStreamClient interface is the inclusion of the AsyncPattern property on the BeginReceiveGameData operation. I initially created this operation as a standard one way operation and it worked most of the time. However, as I disconnected clients and reconnected new ones game data wasn’t being passed properly. After researching the problem more I realized that because the service could take up to 7 seconds to return game data, things were getting hung up. By setting the AsyncPattern property to true on the BeginReceivedGameData operation and providing a corresponding EndReceiveGameData operation I was able to get around this problem and get everything running properly. I’ll provide more details on the implementation of these two methods later in this post. Once the interfaces were created I moved on to the game service class. The first order of business was to create a class that implemented the IGameStreamService interface. Since the service can be used by multiple clients wanting game data I added the ServiceBehavior attribute to the class definition so that I could set its InstanceContextMode to InstanceContextMode.Single (in effect creating a Singleton service object). Listing 3 shows the game service class as well as its fields and constructor.   [ServiceBehavior(ConcurrencyMode = ConcurrencyMode.Multiple, InstanceContextMode = InstanceContextMode.Single)] public class GameStreamService : IGameStreamService { object _Key = new object(); Game _Game = null; Timer _Timer = null; Random _Random = null; Dictionary<string, IGameStreamClient> _ClientCallbacks = new Dictionary<string, IGameStreamClient>(); static AsyncCallback _ReceiveGameDataCompleted = new AsyncCallback(ReceiveGameDataCompleted); public GameStreamService() { _Game = new Game(); _Timer = new Timer { Enabled = false, Interval = 2000, AutoReset = true }; _Timer.Elapsed += new ElapsedEventHandler(_Timer_Elapsed); _Timer.Start(); _Random = new Random(); }} Listing 3. The GameStreamService implements the IGameStreamService interface which defines a callback contract that allows the service class to push data back to the client. By implementing the IGameStreamService interface, GameStreamService must supply a GetTeamData() method which is responsible for supplying information about the teams that are playing as well as individual players.  GetTeamData() also acts as a client subscription method that tracks clients wanting to receive game data.  Listing 4 shows the GetTeamData() method. public void GetTeamData() { //Get client callback channel var context = OperationContext.Current; var sessionID = context.SessionId; var currClient = context.GetCallbackChannel<IGameStreamClient>(); context.Channel.Faulted += Disconnect; context.Channel.Closed += Disconnect; IGameStreamClient client; if (!_ClientCallbacks.TryGetValue(sessionID, out client)) { lock (_Key) { _ClientCallbacks[sessionID] = currClient; } } currClient.ReceiveTeamData(_Game.GetTeamData()); //Start timer which when fired sends updated score information to client if (!_Timer.Enabled) { _Timer.Enabled = true; } } Listing 4. The GetTeamData() method subscribes a given client to the game service and returns. The key the line of code in the GetTeamData() method is the call to GetCallbackChannel<IGameStreamClient>().  This method is responsible for accessing the calling client’s callback channel. The callback channel is defined by the IGameStreamClient interface shown earlier in Listing 2 and used by the server to communicate with the client. Before passing team data back to the client, GetTeamData() grabs the client’s session ID and checks if it already exists in the _ClientCallbacks dictionary object used to track clients wanting callbacks from the server. If the client doesn’t exist it adds it into the collection. It then pushes team data from the Game class back to the client by calling ReceiveTeamData().  Since the service simulates a basketball game, a timer is then started if it’s not already enabled which is then used to randomly send data to the client. When the timer fires, game data is pushed down to the client. Listing 5 shows the _Timer_Elapsed() method that is called when the timer fires as well as the SendGameData() method used to send data to the client. void _Timer_Elapsed(object sender, ElapsedEventArgs e) { int interval = _Random.Next(3000, 7000); lock (_Key) { _Timer.Interval = interval; _Timer.Enabled = false; } SendGameData(_Game.GetGameData()); } private void SendGameData(GameData gameData) { var cbs = _ClientCallbacks.Where(cb => ((IContextChannel)cb.Value).State == CommunicationState.Opened); for (int i = 0; i < cbs.Count(); i++) { var cb = cbs.ElementAt(i).Value; try { cb.BeginReceiveGameData(gameData, _ReceiveGameDataCompleted, cb); } catch (TimeoutException texp) { //Log timeout error } catch (CommunicationException cexp) { //Log communication error } } lock (_Key) _Timer.Enabled = true; } private static void ReceiveGameDataCompleted(IAsyncResult result) { try { ((IGameStreamClient)(result.AsyncState)).EndReceiveGameData(result); } catch (CommunicationException) { // empty } catch (TimeoutException) { // empty } } LIsting 5. _Timer_Elapsed is used to simulate time in a basketball game. When _Timer_Elapsed() fires the SendGameData() method is called which iterates through the clients wanting to be notified of changes. As each client is identified, their respective BeginReceiveGameData() method is called which ultimately pushes game data down to the client. Recall that this method was defined in the client callback interface named IGameStreamClient shown earlier in Listing 2. Notice that BeginReceiveGameData() accepts _ReceiveGameDataCompleted as its second parameter (an AsyncCallback delegate defined in the service class) and passes the client callback as the third parameter. The initial version of the sample application had a standard ReceiveGameData() method in the client callback interface. However, sometimes the client callbacks would work properly and sometimes they wouldn’t which was a little baffling at first glance. After some investigation I realized that I needed to implement an asynchronous pattern for client callbacks to work properly since 3 – 7 second delays are occurring as a result of the timer. Once I added the BeginReceiveGameData() and ReceiveGameDataCompleted() methods everything worked properly since each call was handled in an asynchronous manner. The final task that had to be completed to get the server working properly with HTTP Polling Duplex was adding configuration code into web.config. In the interest of brevity I won’t post all of the code here since the sample application includes everything you need. However, Listing 6 shows the key configuration code to handle creating a custom binding named pollingDuplexBinding and associate it with the service’s endpoint.   <bindings> <customBinding> <binding name="pollingDuplexBinding"> <binaryMessageEncoding /> <pollingDuplex maxPendingSessions="2147483647" maxPendingMessagesPerSession="2147483647" inactivityTimeout="02:00:00" serverPollTimeout="00:05:00"/> <httpTransport /> </binding> </customBinding> </bindings> <services> <service name="GameService.GameStreamService" behaviorConfiguration="GameStreamServiceBehavior"> <endpoint address="" binding="customBinding" bindingConfiguration="pollingDuplexBinding" contract="GameService.IGameStreamService"/> <endpoint address="mex" binding="mexHttpBinding" contract="IMetadataExchange" /> </service> </services>   Listing 6. Configuring an HTTP Polling Duplex binding in web.config and associating an endpoint with it. Calling the Service and Receiving “Pushed” Data Calling the service and handling data that is pushed from the server is a simple and straightforward process in Silverlight. Since the service is configured with a MEX endpoint and exposes a WSDL file, you can right-click on the Silverlight project and select the standard Add Service Reference item. After the web service proxy is created you may notice that the ServiceReferences.ClientConfig file only contains an empty configuration element instead of the normal configuration elements created when creating a standard WCF proxy. You can certainly update the file if you want to read from it at runtime but for the sample application I fed the service URI directly to the service proxy as shown next: var address = new EndpointAddress("http://localhost.:5661/GameStreamService.svc"); var binding = new PollingDuplexHttpBinding(); _Proxy = new GameStreamServiceClient(binding, address); _Proxy.ReceiveTeamDataReceived += _Proxy_ReceiveTeamDataReceived; _Proxy.ReceiveGameDataReceived += _Proxy_ReceiveGameDataReceived; _Proxy.GetTeamDataAsync(); This code creates the proxy and passes the endpoint address and binding to use to its constructor. It then wires the different receive events to callback methods and calls GetTeamDataAsync().  Calling GetTeamDataAsync() causes the server to store the client in the server-side dictionary collection mentioned earlier so that it can receive data that is pushed.  As the server-side timer fires and game data is pushed to the client, the user interface is updated as shown in Listing 7. Listing 8 shows the _Proxy_ReceiveGameDataReceived() method responsible for handling the data and calling UpdateGameData() to process it.   Listing 7. The Silverlight interface. Game data is pushed from the server to the client using HTTP Polling Duplex. void _Proxy_ReceiveGameDataReceived(object sender, ReceiveGameDataReceivedEventArgs e) { UpdateGameData(e.gameData); } private void UpdateGameData(GameData gameData) { //Update Score this.tbTeam1Score.Text = gameData.Team1Score.ToString(); this.tbTeam2Score.Text = gameData.Team2Score.ToString(); //Update ball visibility if (gameData.Action != ActionsEnum.Foul) { if (tbTeam1.Text == gameData.TeamOnOffense) { AnimateBall(this.BB1, this.BB2); } else //Team 2 { AnimateBall(this.BB2, this.BB1); } } if (this.lbActions.Items.Count > 9) this.lbActions.Items.Clear(); this.lbActions.Items.Add(gameData.LastAction); if (this.lbActions.Visibility == Visibility.Collapsed) this.lbActions.Visibility = Visibility.Visible; } private void AnimateBall(Image onBall, Image offBall) { this.FadeIn.Stop(); Storyboard.SetTarget(this.FadeInAnimation, onBall); Storyboard.SetTarget(this.FadeOutAnimation, offBall); this.FadeIn.Begin(); } Listing 8. As the server pushes game data, the client’s _Proxy_ReceiveGameDataReceived() method is called to process the data. In a real-life application I’d go with a ViewModel class to handle retrieving team data, setup data bindings and handle data that is pushed from the server. However, for the sample application I wanted to focus on HTTP Polling Duplex and keep things as simple as possible.   Summary Silverlight supports three options when duplex communication is required in an application including TCP bindins, sockets and HTTP Polling Duplex. In this post you’ve seen how HTTP Polling Duplex interfaces can be created and implemented on the server as well as how they can be consumed by a Silverlight client. HTTP Polling Duplex provides a nice way to “push” data from a server while still allowing the data to flow over port 80 or another port of your choice.   Sample Application Download

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• How to create Custom ListForm WebPart

  - by DipeshBhanani

  Mostly all who works extensively on SharePoint (including meJ) don’t like to use out-of-box list forms (DispForm.aspx, EditForm.aspx, NewForm.aspx) as interface. Actually these OOB list forms bind hands of developers for the customization. It gives headache to developers to add just one post back event, for a dropdown field and to populate other fields in NewForm.aspx or EditForm.aspx. On top of that clients always ask such stuff. So here I am going to give you guys a flight for SharePoint Customization world. In this blog, I will explain, how to create CustomListForm WebPart. In my next blogs, I am going to explain easy deployment of List Forms through features and last, guidance on using SharePoint web controls. 1.       First thing, create a class library project through Visual Studio and inherit the class with WebPart class.     public class CustomListForm : WebPart   2.       Declare the public variables and properties which we are going to use throughout the class. You will get to know these once you see them in use.         #region "Variable Declaration"           Table spTableCntl;         FormToolBar formToolBar;         Literal ltAlertMessage;         Guid SiteId;         Guid ListId;         int ItemId;         string ListName;           #endregion           #region "Properties"           SPControlMode _ControlMode = SPControlMode.New;         [Personalizable(PersonalizationScope.Shared),          WebBrowsable(true),          WebDisplayName("Control Mode"),          WebDescription("Set Control Mode"),          DefaultValue(""),          Category("Miscellaneous")]         public SPControlMode ControlMode         {             get { return _ControlMode; }             set { _ControlMode = value; }         }           #endregion     The property “ControlMode” is used to identify the mode of the List Form. The property is of type SPControlMode which is an enum type with values (Display, Edit, New and Invalid). When we will add this WebPart to DispForm.aspx, EditForm.aspx and NewForm.aspx, we will set the WebPart property “ControlMode” to Display, Edit and New respectively.     3.       Now, we need to override the CreateChildControl method and write code to manually add SharePoint Web Controls related to each list fields as well as ToolBar controls.         protected override void CreateChildControls()         {             base.CreateChildControls();               try             {                 SiteId = SPContext.Current.Site.ID;                 ListId = SPContext.Current.ListId;                 ListName = SPContext.Current.List.Title;                   if (_ControlMode == SPControlMode.Display || _ControlMode == SPControlMode.Edit)                     ItemId = SPContext.Current.ItemId;                   SPSecurity.RunWithElevatedPrivileges(delegate()                 {                     using (SPSite site = new SPSite(SiteId))                     {                         //creating a new SPSite with credentials of System Account                         using (SPWeb web = site.OpenWeb())                         {                               //<Custom Code for creating form controls>                         }                     }                 });             }             catch (Exception ex)             {                 ShowError(ex, "CreateChildControls");             }         }   Here we are assuming that we are developing this WebPart to plug into List Forms. Hence we will get the List Id and List Name from the current context. We can have Item Id only in case of Display and Edit Mode. We are putting our code into “RunWithElevatedPrivileges” to elevate privileges to System Account. Now, let’s get deep down into the main code and expand “//<Custom Code for creating form controls>”. Before initiating any SharePoint control, we need to set context of SharePoint web controls explicitly so that it will be instantiated with elevated System Account user. Following line does the job.     //To create SharePoint controls with new web object and System Account credentials     SPControl.SetContextWeb(Context, web);   First thing, let’s add main table as container for all controls.     //Table to render webpart     Table spTableMain = new Table();     spTableMain.CellPadding = 0;     spTableMain.CellSpacing = 0;     spTableMain.Width = new Unit(100, UnitType.Percentage);     this.Controls.Add(spTableMain);   Now we need to add Top toolbar with Save and Cancel button at top as you see in the below screen shot.       // Add Row and Cell for Top ToolBar     TableRow spRowTopToolBar = new TableRow();     spTableMain.Rows.Add(spRowTopToolBar);     TableCell spCellTopToolBar = new TableCell();     spRowTopToolBar.Cells.Add(spCellTopToolBar);     spCellTopToolBar.Width = new Unit(100, UnitType.Percentage);         ToolBar toolBarTop = (ToolBar)Page.LoadControl("/_controltemplates/ToolBar.ascx");     toolBarTop.CssClass = "ms-formtoolbar";     toolBarTop.ID = "toolBarTbltop";     toolBarTop.RightButtons.SeparatorHtml = "<td class=ms-separator> </td>";       if (_ControlMode != SPControlMode.Display)     {         SaveButton btnSave = new SaveButton();         btnSave.ControlMode = _ControlMode;         btnSave.ListId = ListId;           if (_ControlMode == SPControlMode.New)             btnSave.RenderContext = SPContext.GetContext(web);         else         {             btnSave.RenderContext = SPContext.GetContext(this.Context, ItemId, ListId, web);             btnSave.ItemContext = SPContext.GetContext(this.Context, ItemId, ListId, web);             btnSave.ItemId = ItemId;         }         toolBarTop.RightButtons.Controls.Add(btnSave);     }       GoBackButton goBackButtonTop = new GoBackButton();     toolBarTop.RightButtons.Controls.Add(goBackButtonTop);     goBackButtonTop.ControlMode = SPControlMode.Display;       spCellTopToolBar.Controls.Add(toolBarTop);   Here we have use “SaveButton” and “GoBackButton” which are internal SharePoint web controls for save and cancel functionality. I have set some of the properties of Save Button with if-else condition because we will not have Item Id in case of New Mode. Item Id property is used to identify which SharePoint List Item need to be saved. Now, add Form Toolbar to the page which contains “Attach File”, “Delete Item” etc buttons.       // Add Row and Cell for FormToolBar     TableRow spRowFormToolBar = new TableRow();     spTableMain.Rows.Add(spRowFormToolBar);     TableCell spCellFormToolBar = new TableCell();     spRowFormToolBar.Cells.Add(spCellFormToolBar);     spCellFormToolBar.Width = new Unit(100, UnitType.Percentage);       FormToolBar formToolBar = new FormToolBar();     formToolBar.ID = "formToolBar";     formToolBar.ListId = ListId;     if (_ControlMode == SPControlMode.New)         formToolBar.RenderContext = SPContext.GetContext(web);     else     {         formToolBar.RenderContext = SPContext.GetContext(this.Context, ItemId, ListId, web);         formToolBar.ItemContext = SPContext.GetContext(this.Context, ItemId, ListId, web);         formToolBar.ItemId = ItemId;     }     formToolBar.ControlMode = _ControlMode;     formToolBar.EnableViewState = true;       spCellFormToolBar.Controls.Add(formToolBar);     The ControlMode property will take care of which button to be displayed on the toolbar. E.g. “Attach files”, “Delete Item” in new/edit forms and “New Item”, “Edit Item”, “Delete Item”, “Manage Permissions” etc in display forms. Now add main section which contains form field controls.     //Create Form Field controls and add them in Table "spCellCntl"     CreateFieldControls(web);     //Add public variable "spCellCntl" containing all form controls to the page     spRowCntl.Cells.Add(spCellCntl);     spCellCntl.Width = new Unit(100, UnitType.Percentage);     spCellCntl.Controls.Add(spTableCntl);       //Add a Blank Row with height of 5px to render space between ToolBar table and Control table     TableRow spRowLine1 = new TableRow();     spTableMain.Rows.Add(spRowLine1);     TableCell spCellLine1 = new TableCell();     spRowLine1.Cells.Add(spCellLine1);     spCellLine1.Height = new Unit(5, UnitType.Pixel);     spCellLine1.Controls.Add(new LiteralControl("<IMG SRC='/_layouts/images/blank.gif' width=1 height=1 alt=''>"));       //Add Row and Cell for Form Controls Section     TableRow spRowCntl = new TableRow();     spTableMain.Rows.Add(spRowCntl);     TableCell spCellCntl = new TableCell();       //Create Form Field controls and add them in Table "spCellCntl"     CreateFieldControls(web);     //Add public variable "spCellCntl" containing all form controls to the page     spRowCntl.Cells.Add(spCellCntl);     spCellCntl.Width = new Unit(100, UnitType.Percentage);     spCellCntl.Controls.Add(spTableCntl);       TableRow spRowLine2 = new TableRow();     spTableMain.Rows.Add(spRowLine2);     TableCell spCellLine2 = new TableCell();     spRowLine2.Cells.Add(spCellLine2);     spCellLine2.CssClass = "ms-formline";     spCellLine2.Controls.Add(new LiteralControl("<IMG SRC='/_layouts/images/blank.gif' width=1 height=1 alt=''>"));       // Add Blank row with height of 5 pixel     TableRow spRowLine3 = new TableRow();     spTableMain.Rows.Add(spRowLine3);     TableCell spCellLine3 = new TableCell();     spRowLine3.Cells.Add(spCellLine3);     spCellLine3.Height = new Unit(5, UnitType.Pixel);     spCellLine3.Controls.Add(new LiteralControl("<IMG SRC='/_layouts/images/blank.gif' width=1 height=1 alt=''>"));   You can add bottom toolbar also to get same look and feel as OOB forms. I am not adding here as the blog will be much lengthy. At last, you need to write following lines to allow unsafe updates for Save and Delete button.     // Allow unsafe update on web for save button and delete button     if (this.Page.IsPostBack && this.Page.Request["__EventTarget"] != null         && (this.Page.Request["__EventTarget"].Contains("IOSaveItem")         || this.Page.Request["__EventTarget"].Contains("IODeleteItem")))     {         SPContext.Current.Web.AllowUnsafeUpdates = true;     }   So that’s all. We have finished writing Custom Code for adding field control. But something most important is skipped. In above code, I have called function “CreateFieldControls(web);” to add SharePoint field controls to the page. Let’s see the implementation of the function:     private void CreateFieldControls(SPWeb pWeb)     {         SPList listMain = pWeb.Lists[ListId];         SPFieldCollection fields = listMain.Fields;           //Main Table to render all fields         spTableCntl = new Table();         spTableCntl.BorderWidth = new Unit(0);         spTableCntl.CellPadding = 0;         spTableCntl.CellSpacing = 0;         spTableCntl.Width = new Unit(100, UnitType.Percentage);         spTableCntl.CssClass = "ms-formtable";           SPContext controlContext = SPContext.GetContext(this.Context, ItemId, ListId, pWeb);           foreach (SPField listField in fields)         {             string fieldDisplayName = listField.Title;             string fieldInternalName = listField.InternalName;               //Skip if the field is system field or hidden             if (listField.Hidden || listField.ShowInVersionHistory == false)                 continue;               //Skip if the control mode is display and field is read-only             if (_ControlMode != SPControlMode.Display && listField.ReadOnlyField == true)                 continue;               FieldLabel fieldLabel = new FieldLabel();             fieldLabel.FieldName = listField.InternalName;             fieldLabel.ListId = ListId;               BaseFieldControl fieldControl = listField.FieldRenderingControl;             fieldControl.ListId = ListId;             //Assign unique id using Field Internal Name             fieldControl.ID = string.Format("Field_{0}", fieldInternalName);             fieldControl.EnableViewState = true;               //Assign control mode             fieldLabel.ControlMode = _ControlMode;             fieldControl.ControlMode = _ControlMode;             switch (_ControlMode)             {                 case SPControlMode.New:                     fieldLabel.RenderContext = SPContext.GetContext(pWeb);                     fieldControl.RenderContext = SPContext.GetContext(pWeb);                     break;                 case SPControlMode.Edit:                 case SPControlMode.Display:                     fieldLabel.RenderContext = controlContext;                     fieldLabel.ItemContext = controlContext;                     fieldLabel.ItemId = ItemId;                       fieldControl.RenderContext = controlContext;                     fieldControl.ItemContext = controlContext;                     fieldControl.ItemId = ItemId;                     break;             }               //Add row to display a field row             TableRow spCntlRow = new TableRow();             spTableCntl.Rows.Add(spCntlRow);               //Add the cells for containing field lable and control             TableCell spCellLabel = new TableCell();             spCellLabel.Width = new Unit(30, UnitType.Percentage);             spCellLabel.CssClass = "ms-formlabel";             spCntlRow.Cells.Add(spCellLabel);             TableCell spCellControl = new TableCell();             spCellControl.Width = new Unit(70, UnitType.Percentage);             spCellControl.CssClass = "ms-formbody";             spCntlRow.Cells.Add(spCellControl);               //Add the control to the table cells             spCellLabel.Controls.Add(fieldLabel);             spCellControl.Controls.Add(fieldControl);               //Add description if there is any in case of New and Edit Mode             if (_ControlMode != SPControlMode.Display && listField.Description != string.Empty)             {                 FieldDescription fieldDesc = new FieldDescription();                 fieldDesc.FieldName = fieldInternalName;                 fieldDesc.ListId = ListId;                 spCellControl.Controls.Add(fieldDesc);             }               //Disable Name(Title) in Edit Mode             if (_ControlMode == SPControlMode.Edit && fieldDisplayName == "Name")             {                 TextBox txtTitlefield = (TextBox)fieldControl.Controls[0].FindControl("TextField");                 txtTitlefield.Enabled = false;             }         }         fields = null;     }   First of all, I have declared List object and got list fields in field collection object called “fields”. Then I have added a table for the container of all controls and assign CSS class as "ms-formtable" so that it gives consistent look and feel of SharePoint. Now it’s time to navigate through all fields and add them if required. Here we don’t need to add hidden or system fields. We also don’t want to display read-only fields in new and edit forms. Following lines does this job.             //Skip if the field is system field or hidden             if (listField.Hidden || listField.ShowInVersionHistory == false)                 continue;               //Skip if the control mode is display and field is read-only             if (_ControlMode != SPControlMode.Display && listField.ReadOnlyField == true)                 continue;   Let’s move to the next line of code.             FieldLabel fieldLabel = new FieldLabel();             fieldLabel.FieldName = listField.InternalName;             fieldLabel.ListId = ListId;               BaseFieldControl fieldControl = listField.FieldRenderingControl;             fieldControl.ListId = ListId;             //Assign unique id using Field Internal Name             fieldControl.ID = string.Format("Field_{0}", fieldInternalName);             fieldControl.EnableViewState = true;               //Assign control mode             fieldLabel.ControlMode = _ControlMode;             fieldControl.ControlMode = _ControlMode;   We have used “FieldLabel” control for displaying field title. The advantage of using Field Label is, SharePoint automatically adds red star besides field label to identify it as mandatory field if there is any. Here is most important part to understand. The “BaseFieldControl”. It will render the respective web controls according to type of the field. For example, if it’s single line of text, then Textbox, if it’s look up then it renders dropdown. Additionally, the “ControlMode” property tells compiler that which mode (display/edit/new) controls need to be rendered with. In display mode, it will render label with field value. In edit mode, it will render respective control with item value and in new mode it will render respective control with empty value. Please note that, it’s not always the case when dropdown field will be rendered for Lookup field or Choice field. You need to understand which controls are rendered for which list fields. I am planning to write a separate blog which I hope to publish it very soon. Moreover, we also need to assign list field specific properties like List Id, Field Name etc to identify which SharePoint List field is attached with the control.             switch (_ControlMode)             {                 case SPControlMode.New:                     fieldLabel.RenderContext = SPContext.GetContext(pWeb);                     fieldControl.RenderContext = SPContext.GetContext(pWeb);                     break;                 case SPControlMode.Edit:                 case SPControlMode.Display:                     fieldLabel.RenderContext = controlContext;                     fieldLabel.ItemContext = controlContext;                     fieldLabel.ItemId = ItemId;                       fieldControl.RenderContext = controlContext;                     fieldControl.ItemContext = controlContext;                     fieldControl.ItemId = ItemId;                     break;             }   Here, I have separate code for new mode and Edit/Display mode because we will not have Item Id to assign in New Mode. We also need to set CSS class for cell containing Label and Controls so that those controls get rendered with SharePoint theme.             spCellLabel.CssClass = "ms-formlabel";             spCellControl.CssClass = "ms-formbody";   “FieldDescription” control is used to add field description if there is any.    Now it’s time to add some more customization,               //Disable Name(Title) in Edit Mode             if (_ControlMode == SPControlMode.Edit && fieldDisplayName == "Name")             {                 TextBox txtTitlefield = (TextBox)fieldControl.Controls[0].FindControl("TextField");                 txtTitlefield.Enabled = false;             }   The above code will disable the title field in edit mode. You can add more code here to achieve more customization according to your requirement. Some of the examples are as follow:             //Adding post back event on UserField to auto populate some other dependent field             //in new mode and disable it in edit mode             if (_ControlMode != SPControlMode.Display && fieldDisplayName == "Manager")             {                 if (fieldControl.Controls[0].FindControl("UserField") != null)                 {                     PeopleEditor pplEditor = (PeopleEditor)fieldControl.Controls[0].FindControl("UserField");                     if (_ControlMode == SPControlMode.New)                         pplEditor.AutoPostBack = true;                     else                         pplEditor.Enabled = false;                 }             }               //Add JavaScript Event on Dropdown field. Don't forget to add the JavaScript function on the page.             if (_ControlMode == SPControlMode.Edit && fieldDisplayName == "Designation")             {                 DropDownList ddlCategory = (DropDownList)fieldControl.Controls[0];                 ddlCategory.Attributes.Add("onchange", string.Format("javascript:DropdownChangeEvent('{0}');return false;", ddlCategory.ClientID));             }    Following are the screenshots of my Custom ListForm WebPart. Let’s play a game, check out your OOB List forms of SharePoint, compare with these screens and find out differences.   DispForm.aspx:   EditForm.aspx:   NewForm.aspx:   Enjoy the SharePoint Soup!!! ­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­

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• Office 2010: It&rsquo;s not just DOC(X) and XLS(X)

  - by andrewbrust

  Office 2010 has released to manufacturing.  The bits have left the (product team’s) building.  Will you upgrade? This version of Office is officially numbered 14, a designation that correlates with the various releases, through the years, of Microsoft Word.  There were six major versions of Word for DOS, during whose release cycles came three 16-bit Windows versions.  Then, starting with Word 95 and counting through Word 2007, there have been six more versions – all for the 32-bit Windows platform.  Skip version 13 to ward off folksy bad luck (and, perhaps, the bugs that could come with it) and that brings us to version 14, which includes implementations for both 32- and 64-bit Windows platforms.  We’ve come a long way baby.  Or have we? As it does every three years or so, debate will now start to rage on over whether we need a “14th” version the PC platform’s standard word processor, or a “13th” version of the spreadsheet.  If you accept the premise of that question, then you may be on a slippery slope toward answering it in the negative.  Thing is, that premise is valid for certain customers and not others. The Microsoft Office product has morphed from one that offered core word processing, spreadsheet, presentation and email functionality to a suite of applications that provides unique, new value-added features, and even whole applications, in the context of those core services.  The core apps thus grow in mission: Excel is a BI tool.  Word is a collaborative editorial system for the production of publications.  PowerPoint is a media production platform for for live presentations and, increasingly, for delivering more effective presentations online.  Outlook is a time and task management system.  Access is a rich client front-end for data-driven self-service SharePoint applications.  OneNote helps you capture ideas, corral random thoughts in a semi-structured way, and then tie them back to other, more rigidly structured, Office documents. Google Docs and other cloud productivity platforms like Zoho don’t really do these things.  And there is a growing chorus of voices who say that they shouldn’t, because those ancillary capabilities are over-engineered, over-produced and “under-necessary.”  They might say Microsoft is layering on superfluous capabilities to avoid admitting that Office’s core capabilities, the ones people really need, have become commoditized. It’s hard to take sides in that argument, because different people, and the different companies that employ them, have different needs.  For my own needs, it all comes down to three basic questions: will the new version of Office save me time, will it make the mundane parts of my job easier, and will it augment my services to customers?  I need my time back.  I need to spend more of it with my family, and more of it focusing on my own core capabilities rather than the administrative tasks around them.  And I also need my customers to be able to get more value out of the services I provide. Help me triage my inbox, help me get proposals done more quickly and make them easier to read.  Let me get my presentations done faster, make them more effective and make it easier for me to reuse materials from other presentations.  And, since I’m in the BI and data business, help me and my customers manage data and analytics more easily, both on the desktop and online. Those are my criteria.  And, with those in mind, Office 2010 is looking like a worthwhile upgrade.  Perhaps it’s not earth-shattering, but it offers a combination of incremental improvements and a few new major capabilities that I think are quite compelling.  I provide a brief roundup of them here.  It’s admittedly arbitrary and not comprehensive, but I think it tells the Office 2010 story effectively. Across the Suite More than any other, this release of Office aims to give collaboration a real workout.  In certain apps, for the first time, documents can be opened simultaneously by multiple users, with colleagues’ changes appearing in near real-time.  Web-browser-based versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote will be available to extend collaboration to contributors who are off the corporate network. The ribbon user interface is now more pervasive (for example, it appears in OneNote and in Outlook’s main window).  It’s also customizable, allowing users to add, easily, buttons and options of their choosing, into new tabs, or into new groups within existing tabs. Microsoft has also taken the File menu (which was the “Office Button” menu in the 2007 release) and made it into a full-screen “Backstage” view where document-wide operations, like saving, printing and online publishing are performed. And because, more and more, heavily formatted content is cut and pasted between documents and applications, Office 2010 makes it easier to manage the retention or jettisoning of that formatting right as the paste operation is performed.  That’s much nicer than stripping it off, or adding it back, afterwards. And, speaking of pasting, a number of Office apps now make it especially easy to insert screenshots within their documents.  I know that’s useful to me, because I often document or critique applications and need to show them in action.  For the vast majority of users, I expect that this feature will be more useful for capturing snapshots of Web pages, but we’ll have to see whether this feature becomes popular.   Excel At first glance, Excel 2010 looks and acts nearly identically to the 2007 version.  But additional glances are necessary.  It’s important to understand that lots of people in the working world use Excel as more of a database, analytics and mathematical modeling tool than merely as a spreadsheet.  And it’s also important to understand that Excel wasn’t designed to handle such workloads past a certain scale.  That all changes with this release. The first reason things change is that Excel has been tuned for performance.  It’s been optimized for multi-threaded operation; previously lengthy processes have been shortened, especially for large data sets; more rows and columns are allowed and, for the first time, Excel (and the rest of Office) is available in a 64-bit version.  For Excel, this means users can take advantage of more than the 2GB of memory that the 32-bit version is limited to. On the analysis side, Excel 2010 adds Sparklines (tiny charts that fit into a single cell and can therefore be presented down an entire column or across a row) and Slicers (a more user-friendly filter mechanism for PivotTables and charts, which visually indicates what the filtered state of a given data member is).  But most important, Excel 2010 supports the new PowerPIvot add-in which brings true self-service BI to Office.  PowerPivot allows users to import data from almost anywhere, model it, and then analyze it.  Rather than forcing users to build “spreadmarts” or use corporate-built data warehouses, PowerPivot models function as true columnar, in-memory OLAP cubes that can accommodate millions of rows of data and deliver fast drill-down performance. And speaking of OLAP, Excel 2010 now supports an important Analysis Services OLAP feature called write-back.  Write-back is especially useful in financial forecasting scenarios for which Excel is the natural home.  Support for write-back is long overdue, but I’m still glad it’s there, because I had almost given up on it.   PowerPoint This version of PowerPoint marks its progression from a presentation tool to a video and photo editing and production tool.  Whether or not it’s successful in this pursuit, and if offering this is even a sensible goal, is another question. Regardless, the new capabilities are kind of interesting.  A greatly enhanced set of slide transitions with 3D effects; in-product photo and video editing; accommodation of embedded videos from services such as YouTube; and the ability to save a presentation as a video each lay testimony to PowerPoint’s transformation into a media tool and away from a pure presentation tool. These capabilities also recognize the importance of the Web as both a source for materials and a channel for disseminating PowerPoint output. Congruent with that is PowerPoint’s new ability to broadcast a slide presentation, using a quickly-generated public URL, without involving the hassle or expense of a Web meeting service like GoToMeeting or Microsoft’s own LiveMeeting.  Slides presented through this broadcast feature retain full color fidelity and transitions and animations are preserved as well.   Outlook Microsoft’s ubiquitous email/calendar/contact/task management tool gains long overdue speed improvements, especially against POP3 email accounts.  Outlook 2010 also supports multiple Exchange accounts, rather than just one; tighter integration with OneNote; and a new Social Connector providing integration with, and presence information from, online social network services like LinkedIn and Facebook (not to mention Windows Live).  A revamped conversation view now includes messages that are part of a given thread regardless of which folder they may be stored in. I don’t know yet how well the Social Connector will work or whether it will keep Outlook relevant to those who live on Facebook and LinkedIn.  But among the other features, there’s very little not to like.   OneNote To me, OneNote is the part of Office that just keeps getting better.  There is one major caveat to this, which I’ll cover in a moment, but let’s first catalog what new stuff OneNote 2010 brings.  The best part of OneNote, is the way each of its versions have managed hierarchy: Notebooks have sections, sections have pages, pages have sub pages, multiple notes can be contained in either, and each note supports infinite levels of indentation.  None of that is new to 2010, but the new version does make creation of pages and subpages easier and also makes simple work out of promoting and demoting pages from sub page to full page status.  And relationships between pages are quite easy to create now: much like a Wiki, simply typing a page’s name in double-square-brackets (“[[…]]”) creates a link to it. OneNote is also great at integrating content outside of its notebooks.  With a new Dock to Desktop feature, OneNote becomes aware of what window is displayed in the rest of the screen and, if it’s an Office document or a Web page, links the notes you’re typing, at the time, to it.  A single click from your notes later on will bring that same document or Web page back on-screen.  Embedding content from Web pages and elsewhere is also easier.  Using OneNote’s Windows Key+S combination to grab part of the screen now allows you to specify the destination of that bitmap instead of automatically creating a new note in the Unfiled Notes area.  Using the Send to OneNote buttons in Internet Explorer and Outlook result in the same choice. Collaboration gets better too.  Real-time multi-author editing is better accommodated and determining author lineage of particular changes is easily carried out. My one pet peeve with OneNote is the difficulty using it when I’m not one a Windows PC.  OneNote’s main competitor, Evernote, while I believe inferior in terms of features, has client versions for PC, Mac, Windows Mobile, Android, iPhone, iPad and Web browsers.  Since I have an Android phone and an iPad, I am practically forced to use it.  However, the OneNote Web app should help here, as should a forthcoming version of OneNote for Windows Phone 7.  In the mean time, it turns out that using OneNote’s Email Page ribbon button lets you move a OneNote page easily into EverNote (since every EverNote account gets a unique email address for adding notes) and that Evernote’s Email function combined with Outlook’s Send to OneNote button (in the Move group of the ribbon’s Home tab) can achieve the reverse.   Access To me, the big change in Access 2007 was its tight integration with SharePoint lists.  Access 2010 and SharePoint 2010 continue this integration with the introduction of SharePoint’s Access Services.  Much as Excel Services provides a SharePoint-hosted experience for viewing (and now editing) Excel spreadsheet, PivotTable and chart content, Access Services allows for SharePoint browser-hosted editing of Access data within the forms that are built in the Access client itself. To me this makes all kinds of sense.  Although it does beg the question of where to draw the line between Access, InfoPath, SharePoint list maintenance and SharePoint 2010’s new Business Connectivity Services.  Each of these tools provide overlapping data entry and data maintenance functionality. But if you do prefer Access, then you’ll like  things like templates and application parts that make it easier to get off the blank page.  These features help you quickly get tables, forms and reports built out.  To make things look nice, Access even gets its own version of Excel’s Conditional Formatting feature, letting you add data bars and data-driven text formatting.   Word As I said at the beginning of this post, upgrades to Office are about much more than enhancing the suite’s flagship word processing application. So are there any enhancements in Word worth mentioning?  I think so.  The most important one has to be the collaboration features.  Essentially, when a user opens a Word document that is in a SharePoint document library (or Windows Live SkyDrive folder), rather than the whole document being locked, Word has the ability to observe more granular locks on the individual paragraphs being edited.  Word also shows you who’s editing what and its Save function morphs into a sync feature that both saves your changes and loads those made by anyone editing the document concurrently. There’s also a new navigation pane that lets you manage sections in your document in much the same way as you manage slides in a PowerPoint deck.  Using the navigation pane, you can reorder sections, insert new ones, or promote and demote sections in the outline hierarchy.  Not earth shattering, but nice.   Other Apps and Summarized Findings What about InfoPath, Publisher, Visio and Project?  I haven’t looked at them yet.  And for this post, I think that’s fine.  While those apps (and, arguably, Access) cater to specific tasks, I think the apps we’ve looked at in this post service the general purpose needs of most users.  And the theme in those 2010 apps is clear: collaboration is key, the Web and productivity are indivisible, and making data and analytics into a self-service amenity is the way to go.  But perhaps most of all, features are still important, as long as they get you through your day faster, rather than adding complexity for its own sake.  I would argue that this is true for just about every product Microsoft makes: users want utility, not complexity.

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• apt-get update error after removing apt-key

  - by Caterpillar

  After Running apt-get update on ubuntu 10.04 server, I found this issue, Can any help me to solve this issue. Before this I had remove apt-key. Where can I get this apt-key to add it again. apt-get update Get:1 http://security.ubuntu.com lucid-security Release.gpg [198B] Ign http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ lucid-security/main Translation-en_IN Ign http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ lucid-security/restricted Translation-en_IN Get:2 http://in.archive.ubuntu.com lucid Release.gpg [189B] Ign http://in.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ lucid/main Translation-en_IN Ign http://in.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ lucid/restricted Translation-en_IN Ign http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ lucid-security/universe Translation-en_IN Ign http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ lucid-security/multiverse Translation-en_IN Get:3 http://security.ubuntu.com lucid-security Release [44.7kB] Err http://security.ubuntu.com lucid-security Release Ign http://in.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ lucid/universe Translation-en_IN Ign http://in.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ lucid/multiverse Translation-en_IN Get:4 http://in.archive.ubuntu.com lucid-updates Release.gpg [198B] Ign http://in.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ lucid-updates/main Translation-en_IN Ign http://in.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ lucid-updates/restricted Translation-en_IN Ign http://in.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ lucid-updates/universe Translation-en_IN Ign http://in.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ lucid-updates/multiverse Translation-en_IN Hit http://in.archive.ubuntu.com lucid Release Ign http://in.archive.ubuntu.com lucid Release Get:5 http://in.archive.ubuntu.com lucid-updates Release [44.7kB] Err http://in.archive.ubuntu.com lucid-updates Release Hit http://in.archive.ubuntu.com lucid/main Packages Hit http://in.archive.ubuntu.com lucid/restricted Packages Hit http://in.archive.ubuntu.com lucid/main Sources Hit http://in.archive.ubuntu.com lucid/restricted Sources Hit http://in.archive.ubuntu.com lucid/universe Packages Hit http://in.archive.ubuntu.com lucid/universe Sources Hit http://in.archive.ubuntu.com lucid/multiverse Packages Hit http://in.archive.ubuntu.com lucid/multiverse Sources Fetched 587B in 1s (465B/s) Reading package lists... Done W: A error occurred during the signature verification. The repository is not updated and the previous index files will be used.GPG error: http://security.ubuntu.com lucid-security Release: The following signatures couldn't be verified because the public key is not available: NO_PUBKEY 40976EAF437D05B5 W: GPG error: http://in.archive.ubuntu.com lucid Release: The following signatures couldn't be verified because the public key is not available: NO_PUBKEY 40976EAF437D05B5 W: A error occurred during the signature verification. The repository is not updated and the previous index files will be used.GPG error: http://in.archive.ubuntu.com lucid-updates Release: The following signatures couldn't be verified because the public key is not available: NO_PUBKEY 40976EAF437D05B5 W: Failed to fetch http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/lucid-security/Release W: Failed to fetch http://in.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/lucid-updates/Release W: Some index files failed to download, they have been ignored, or old ones used instead.

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• Watchguard Firewall - Issues with SSLVPN

  - by David W

  I have a client who has a WatchGuard XTM 23 device on site as their primary firewall. I just upgraded its firmware a couple days ago to the latest version for that series, 11.6.6. The problem is that I haven't successfully been able to setup a VPN connection for them. Using the instructions at http://www.watchguard.com/help/docs/webui/11_XTM/en-US/index.html#en-US/mvpn/ssl/configure_fb_for_mvpn_ssl_c.html, I'm trying to setup a VPN with SSL connection: From the firewall web GUI / Dashboard, I go to VPN - Mobile VPN with SSL, I enable it, add the organization's public IP address to which the firewall is connected. I've setup a group in Active Directory named "SSLVPN-Users", verified that the WatchGuard box can talk to the Active Directory Server, and added myself to that group. I then downloaded the WatchGuard Mobile VPN with SSL client onto my own Windows 7 machine, walked to the client's 2nd building across the street (which has a different public internet connection), and tried to connect to the VPN. When I do try to connect with the client, I get the following errors: 2013-06-24T15:41:32.119 Launching WatchGuard Mobile VPN with SSL client. Version 11.6.0 (Build 343814) Built:Jun 13 2012 01:42:55 2013-06-24T15:41:37.595 Requesting client configuration from 184.174.143.176:443 2013-06-24T15:41:50.106 FAILED:Cannot perform http request, timeout 12002 2013-06-24T15:41:50.106 failed to get domain name I discovered today the Firebox System Manager, and its "Traffic Monitor" which gives current log information (refreshes every 5 seconds). Unfortunately, it doesn't look like the client has setup any sort of WatchGuard / Firebox logging server, so actually recording server-side logs to file hasn't been done. I can work on implementing that if I need to. I noticed that if I try to ping the client's public IP address from an outside source, I don't get a response back (unless I added a policy into the firewall to allow ICMP traffic from "External", which I successfully did a few seconds ago for testing purposes - that rule has since been reverted to not respond to external ping requests). There's a policy in the firewall for allowing SSLVPN Traffic authentication requests coming from any external source TO the Firebox, and then to do the authentication / actually allow the VPN traffic, there's a policy allowing traffic for anyone in the SSLVPN-Users group to flow between that user and the inside network. So my questions are: Has anyone seen these errors before from the Watchguard VPN Client, and/or do you have any suggestions on how I can resolve that error? If I need to setup logging server to grab the firewall logs (in order to further troubleshoot this issue), how complicated a task is that and does it require a lot of system resources? The organization I'm consulting with only has 1 server and not a lot of resources or technical know-how.

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• Why isn't ICMP routing with iptables nat routing

  - by Scott Forsyth - MVP

  I'm using iptables on Ubuntu server to route a public IP to a private IP. I want to nat all traffic, including 80, 443 and ICMP. However, it appears that ICMP isn't routing. I have a steady ping going to the public IP and it never stops, even with NAT pointing to a bogus IP. Here are the rules that I'm using: iptables -t nat -I PREROUTING -d 206.72.119.76 -j DNAT --to-destination 10.240.5.5 iptables -t nat -I POSTROUTING -s 10.240.5.5 -j SNAT --to-source 206.72.119.76 I tried with rules for ICMP specifically, but no such luck: iptables -t nat -I PREROUTING -d 206.72.119.76 - icmp --icmp-type echo-request -j DNAT --to-destination 10.240.5.5 Any ideas?

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• What does it mean when ARP shows <incomplete> on eth1

  - by Geoff Dalgas

  We have been using HAProxy along with heartbeat from the Linux-HA project. We are using two linux instances to provide a failover. Each server has with their own public IP and a single IP which is shared between the two using a virtual interface (eth1:1) at IP: 69.59.196.211 The virtual interface (eth1:1) IP 69.59.196.211 is configured as the gateway for the windows servers behind them and we use ip_forwarding to route traffic. We are experiencing an occasional network outage on one of our windows servers behind our linux gateways. HAProxy will detect the server is offline which we can verify by remoting to the failed server and attempting to ping the gateway: Pinging 69.59.196.211 with 32 bytes of data: Reply from 69.59.196.220: Destination host unreachable. Running arp -a on this failed server shows that there is no entry for the gateway address (69.59.196.211): Interface: 69.59.196.220 --- 0xa Internet Address Physical Address Type 69.59.196.161 00-26-88-63-c7-80 dynamic 69.59.196.210 00-15-5d-0a-3e-0e dynamic 69.59.196.212 00-21-5e-4d-45-c9 dynamic 69.59.196.213 00-15-5d-00-b2-0d dynamic 69.59.196.215 00-21-5e-4d-61-1a dynamic 69.59.196.217 00-21-5e-4d-2c-e8 dynamic 69.59.196.219 00-21-5e-4d-38-e5 dynamic 69.59.196.221 00-15-5d-00-b2-0d dynamic 69.59.196.222 00-15-5d-0a-3e-09 dynamic 69.59.196.223 ff-ff-ff-ff-ff-ff static 224.0.0.22 01-00-5e-00-00-16 static 224.0.0.252 01-00-5e-00-00-fc static 225.0.0.1 01-00-5e-00-00-01 static On our linux gateway instances arp -a shows: peak-colo-196-220.peak.org (69.59.196.220) at <incomplete> on eth1 stackoverflow.com (69.59.196.212) at 00:21:5e:4d:45:c9 [ether] on eth1 peak-colo-196-215.peak.org (69.59.196.215) at 00:21:5e:4d:61:1a [ether] on eth1 peak-colo-196-219.peak.org (69.59.196.219) at 00:21:5e:4d:38:e5 [ether] on eth1 peak-colo-196-222.peak.org (69.59.196.222) at 00:15:5d:0a:3e:09 [ether] on eth1 peak-colo-196-209.peak.org (69.59.196.209) at 00:26:88:63:c7:80 [ether] on eth1 peak-colo-196-217.peak.org (69.59.196.217) at 00:21:5e:4d:2c:e8 [ether] on eth1 Why would arp occasionally set the entry for this failed server as <incomplete>? Should we be defining our arp entries statically? I've always left arp alone since it works 99% of the time, but in this one instance it appears to be failing. Are there any additional troubleshooting steps we can take help resolve this issue? THINGS WE HAVE TRIED I added a static arp entry for testing on one of the linux gateways which still didn't help. root@haproxy2:~# arp -a peak-colo-196-215.peak.org (69.59.196.215) at 00:21:5e:4d:61:1a [ether] on eth1 peak-colo-196-221.peak.org (69.59.196.221) at 00:15:5d:00:b2:0d [ether] on eth1 stackoverflow.com (69.59.196.212) at 00:21:5e:4d:45:c9 [ether] on eth1 peak-colo-196-219.peak.org (69.59.196.219) at 00:21:5e:4d:38:e5 [ether] on eth1 peak-colo-196-209.peak.org (69.59.196.209) at 00:26:88:63:c7:80 [ether] on eth1 peak-colo-196-217.peak.org (69.59.196.217) at 00:21:5e:4d:2c:e8 [ether] on eth1 peak-colo-196-220.peak.org (69.59.196.220) at 00:21:5e:4d:30:8d [ether] PERM on eth1 root@haproxy2:~# arp -i eth1 -s 69.59.196.220 00:21:5e:4d:30:8d root@haproxy2:~# ping 69.59.196.220 PING 69.59.196.220 (69.59.196.220) 56(84) bytes of data. --- 69.59.196.220 ping statistics --- 7 packets transmitted, 0 received, 100% packet loss, time 6006ms Rebooting the windows web server solves this issue temporarily with no other changes to the network but our experience shows this issue will come back. Swapping network cards and switches I noticed the link light on the port of the switch for the failed windows server was running at 100Mb instead of 1Gb on the failed interface. I moved the cable to several other open ports and the link indicated 100Mb for each port that I tried. I also swapped the cable with the same result. I tried changing the properties of the network card in windows and the server locked up and required a hard reset after clicking apply. This windows server has two physical network interfaces so I have swapped the cables and network settings on the two interfaces to see if the problem follows the interface. If the public interface goes down again we will know that it is not an issue with the network card. (We also tried another switch we have on hand, no change) Changing network hardware driver versions We've had the same problem with the latest Broadcom driver, as well as the built-in driver that ships in Windows Server 2008 R2. Replacing network cables As a last ditch effort we remembered another change that occurred was the replacement of all of the patch cords between our servers / switch. We had purchased two sets, one green of lengths 1ft - 3ft for the private interfaces and another set of red cables for the public interfaces. We swapped out all of the public interface patch cables with a different brand and ran our servers without issue for a full week ... aaaaaand then the problem recurred. Disable checksum offload, remove TProxy We also tried disabling TCP/IP checksum offload in the driver, no change. We're now pulling out TProxy and moving to a more traditional x-forwarded-for network arrangement without any fancy IP address rewriting. We'll see if that helps.

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