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  • Getting code-first Entity Framework to build tables on SQL Azure

    - by NER1808
    I am new the code-first Entity Framework. I have tried a few things now, but can't get EF to construct any tables in the my SQL Azure database. Can anyone advise of some steps and settings I should check. The membership provider has no problems create it's tables. I have added the PersistSecurityInfo=True in the connection string. The connection string is using the main user account for the server. When I implement the tables in the database using sql everything works fine. I have the following in the WebRole.cs //Initialize the database Database.SetInitializer<ReykerSCPContext>(new DbInitializer()); My DbInitializer (which does not get run before I get a "Invalid object name 'dbo.ClientAccountIFAs'." when I try to access the table for the first time. Sometime after startup. public class DbInitializer:DropCreateDatabaseIfModelChanges<ReykerSCPContext> { protected override void Seed(ReykerSCPContext context) { using (context) { //Add Doc Types context.DocTypes.Add(new DocType() { DocTypeId = 1, Description = "Statement" }); context.DocTypes.Add(new DocType() { DocTypeId = 2, Description = "Contract note" }); context.DocTypes.Add(new DocType() { DocTypeId = 3, Description = "Notification" }); context.DocTypes.Add(new DocType() { DocTypeId = 4, Description = "Invoice" }); context.DocTypes.Add(new DocType() { DocTypeId = 5, Description = "Document" }); context.DocTypes.Add(new DocType() { DocTypeId = 6, Description = "Newsletter" }); context.DocTypes.Add(new DocType() { DocTypeId = 7, Description = "Terms and Conditions" }); //Add ReykerAccounttypes context.ReykerAccountTypes.Add(new ReykerAccountType() { ReykerAccountTypeID = 1, Description = "ISA" }); context.ReykerAccountTypes.Add(new ReykerAccountType() { ReykerAccountTypeID = 2, Description = "Trading" }); context.ReykerAccountTypes.Add(new ReykerAccountType() { ReykerAccountTypeID = 3, Description = "SIPP" }); context.ReykerAccountTypes.Add(new ReykerAccountType() { ReykerAccountTypeID = 4, Description = "CTF" }); context.ReykerAccountTypes.Add(new ReykerAccountType() { ReykerAccountTypeID = 5, Description = "JISA" }); context.ReykerAccountTypes.Add(new ReykerAccountType() { ReykerAccountTypeID = 6, Description = "Direct" }); context.ReykerAccountTypes.Add(new ReykerAccountType() { ReykerAccountTypeID = 7, Description = "ISA & Direct" }); //Save the changes context.SaveChanges(); } and my DBContext class looks like public class ReykerSCPContext : DbContext { //set the connection explicitly public ReykerSCPContext():base("ReykerSCPContext"){} //define tables public DbSet<ClientAccountIFA> ClientAccountIFAs { get; set; } public DbSet<Document> Documents { get; set; } public DbSet<DocType> DocTypes { get; set; } public DbSet<ReykerAccountType> ReykerAccountTypes { get; set; } protected override void OnModelCreating(DbModelBuilder modelBuilder) { //Runs when creating the model. Can use to define special relationships, such as many-to-many. } The code used to access the is public List<ClientAccountIFA> GetAllClientAccountIFAs() { using (DataContext) { var caiCollection = from c in DataContext.ClientAccountIFAs select c; return caiCollection.ToList(); } } and it errors on the last line. Help!

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  • Return NSArray from NSDictionary

    - by Jon
    I have a fetch that returns an array with dictionary in it of an attribute of a core data object. Here is my previous question: Create Array From Attribute of NSObject From NSFetchResultsController This is the fetch: NSFetchRequest *request = [[NSFetchRequest alloc] init]; [request setEntity:entity]; [request setResultType:NSDictionaryResultType]; [request setReturnsDistinctResults:NO]; //set to YES if you only want unique values of the property [request setPropertiesToFetch :[NSArray arrayWithObject:@"timeStamp"]]; //name(s) of properties you want to fetch // Execute the fetch. NSError *error; NSArray *objects = [managedObjectContext executeFetchRequest:request error:&error]; When I log the NSArray data, I get this: The content of data is( { timeStamp = "2011-06-14 21:30:03 +0000"; }, { timeStamp = "2011-06-16 21:00:18 +0000"; }, { timeStamp = "2011-06-11 21:00:18 +0000"; }, { timeStamp = "2011-06-23 19:53:35 +0000"; }, { timeStamp = "2011-06-21 19:53:35 +0000"; } ) What I want is an array with this format: [NSArray arrayWithObjects: @"2011-11-01 00:00:00 +0000", @"2011-12-01 00:00:00 +0000", nil];' Edit: This is the method for which I want to replace the data array with my new data array: - (NSArray*)calendarMonthView:(TKCalendarMonthView *)monthView marksFromDate:(NSDate *)startDate toDate:(NSDate *)lastDate { NSLog(@"calendarMonthView marksFromDate toDate"); NSLog(@"Make sure to update 'data' variable to pull from CoreData, website, User Defaults, or some other source."); // When testing initially you will have to update the dates in this array so they are visible at the // time frame you are testing the code. NSArray *data = [NSArray arrayWithObjects: @"2011-01-01 00:00:00 +0000", @"2011-12-01 00:00:00 +0000", nil]; // Initialise empty marks array, this will be populated with TRUE/FALSE in order for each day a marker should be placed on. NSMutableArray *marks = [NSMutableArray array]; // Initialise calendar to current type and set the timezone to never have daylight saving NSCalendar *cal = [NSCalendar currentCalendar]; [cal setTimeZone:[NSTimeZone timeZoneForSecondsFromGMT:0]]; // Construct DateComponents based on startDate so the iterating date can be created. // Its massively important to do this assigning via the NSCalendar and NSDateComponents because of daylight saving has been removed // with the timezone that was set above. If you just used "startDate" directly (ie, NSDate *date = startDate;) as the first // iterating date then times would go up and down based on daylight savings. NSDateComponents *comp = [cal components:(NSMonthCalendarUnit | NSMinuteCalendarUnit | NSYearCalendarUnit | NSDayCalendarUnit | NSWeekdayCalendarUnit | NSHourCalendarUnit | NSSecondCalendarUnit) fromDate:startDate]; NSDate *d = [cal dateFromComponents:comp]; // Init offset components to increment days in the loop by one each time NSDateComponents *offsetComponents = [[NSDateComponents alloc] init]; [offsetComponents setDay:1]; // for each date between start date and end date check if they exist in the data array while (YES) { // Is the date beyond the last date? If so, exit the loop. // NSOrderedDescending = the left value is greater than the right if ([d compare:lastDate] == NSOrderedDescending) { break; } // If the date is in the data array, add it to the marks array, else don't if ([data containsObject:[d description]]) { [marks addObject:[NSNumber numberWithBool:YES]]; } else { [marks addObject:[NSNumber numberWithBool:NO]]; } // Increment day using offset components (ie, 1 day in this instance) d = [cal dateByAddingComponents:offsetComponents toDate:d options:0]; } [offsetComponents release]; return [NSArray arrayWithArray:marks]; }

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  • Image change on mouseover with jQuery..

    - by playahabana
    Hi, I am a comlete beginner to pretty much all things web design and am trying to construct my first website. I am attempting to hand code it without the ue of a CMS in order to learn as much as possible as quickly as possible. I am trying to make an imge change on mouseover for my top nav menu, and have the following jQuery functions: $(document).ready(function(){ $(".navlist img").each(function) { rollsrc = $(this).attr("src"); rollON = rollsrc.replace(/.jpg$/ig,"_link.png"); $("<img>").attr("src",rollON); $(".navlist a").mouseover(function(){ }); imgsrc= $(this).children("img").attr("src"); matches = imgsrc.match(/_link.png); if (!matches) { imgsrcON = imgsrc.replace(/.jpg$/ig,"_link.png"); $(this).children("img").attr("src", imagesrcON); } $(".navlist a").mouseout(function(){ $(this).children("img").attr("src", imgsrc); }); }); my html is as follows: <div id="nav"> <ul class="navmenu"> <li><a href="index.html"><img class="swap" src="images/links/home.jpg" alt="Home" border="none"></a></li> <li><a href="#"><img class="swap" src="images/links/ourbar.jpg" alt="Our Bar" border="none"></a> <ul class="navdrop"> <li ><a href="#"><img class="swap" src="images/links/cockteles.jpg" alt="Our Cocktails" border="none"></a></li> <li ><a href="#"><img class="swap" src="images/links/celebrate.jpg" alt="Celebrate in Style" border="none"></a></li> </ul> </li> <li><a href="#"><img class="swap" src="images/links/ourcigars.jpg" alt="Our Cigars" border="none"></a> <ul class="navdrop"> <li><a href="#"><img class="swap" src="images/links/edicionlimitadas.jpg" alt="Edition Limitadas" border="none"></a></li> <li><a href="our_cigars.html"><img class="swap" src="images/links/cigartasting.jpg" alt="Cigar Tastings" border="none"></a></li> </ul> </li> <li><a href="#"><img class="swap" src="images/links/personalcigar.jpg" alt="Personal Cigar Roller" border="none"></a></li> <li><a href="our_cigars.html"><img class="swap" src="images/links/photogallery.jpg" alt="Photo Gallery" border="none"></a></li> <li><a href="#"><img class="swap" src="images/links/contactus.jpg" alt="Contact Us" border="none"></a></li> </ul></div></div><!--end banner--> the image src for the alt image is in the form eg."images/links/home_link.png" and is the same for every image. I have checked this and checked this, could some body please give me a pointer as to where I am going wrong? Or a pointer to a tutorial for this effect? I have looked at a few and this seems to be the best for what I am attempting, but as I said I don't really know what I'm doing so any advice gratefully received.....

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  • Not sure I am using inheritance/polymorphism issue?

    - by planker1010
    So for this assignment I have to create a car class(parent) and a certifiedpreowned (child) and I need to have the parent class have a method to check if it is still under warranty. *checkWarrantyStatus(). that method calls the boolean isCoveredUnderWarranty() to veryify if the car still has warranty. My issue is in the certifiedpreowned class I have to call the isCoveredUnderWarranty() as well to see if it is covered under the extended warranty and then have it be called via the checkWarrantyStatus() in the car method. I hope this makes sense. So to sum it up I need to in the child class have it check the isCoveredUnderWarranty with extended warranty info. Then it has to move to the parent class so it can be called via checkWarrantyStatus. Here is my code, I have 1 error. public class Car { public int year; public String make; public String model; public int currentMiles; public int warrantyMiles; public int warrantyYears; int currentYear =java.util.Calendar.getInstance().get(java.util.Calendar.YEAR); /** construct car object with specific parameters*/ public Car (int y, String m, String mod, int mi){ this.year = y; this.make = m; this.model = mod; this.currentMiles = mi; } public int getWarrantyMiles() { return warrantyMiles; } public void setWarrantyMiles(int warrantyMiles) { this.warrantyMiles = warrantyMiles; } public int getWarrantyYears() { return warrantyYears; } public void setWarrantyYears(int warrantyYears) { this.warrantyYears = warrantyYears; } public boolean isCoveredUnderWarranty(){ if (currentMiles < warrantyMiles){ if (currentYear < (year+ warrantyYears)) return true; } return false; } public void checkWarrantyStatus(){ if (isCoveredUnderWarranty()){ System.out.println("Your car " + year+ " " + make+ " "+ model+ " With "+ currentMiles +" is still covered under warranty"); } else System.out.println("Your car " + year+ " " + make+ " "+ model+ " With "+ currentMiles +" is out of warranty"); } } public class CertifiedPreOwnCar extends Car{ public CertifiedPreOwnCar(int y, String m, String mod, int mi) { super(mi, m, mod, y); } public int extendedWarrantyYears; public int extendedWarrantyMiles; public int getExtendedWarrantyYears() { return extendedWarrantyYears; } public void setExtendedWarrantyYears(int extendedWarrantyYears) { this.extendedWarrantyYears = extendedWarrantyYears; } public int getExtendedWarrantyMiles() { return extendedWarrantyMiles; } public void setExtendedWarrantyMiles(int extendedWarrantyMiles) { this.extendedWarrantyMiles = extendedWarrantyMiles; } public boolean isCoveredUnderWarranty() { if (currentMiles < extendedWarrantyMiles){ if (currentYear < (year+ extendedWarrantyYears)) return true; } return false; } } public class TestCar { public static void main(String[] args) { Car car1 = new Car(2014, "Honda", "Civic", 255); car1.setWarrantyMiles(60000); car1.setWarrantyYears(5); car1.checkWarrantyStatus(); Car car2 = new Car(2000, "Ferrari", "F355", 8500); car2.setWarrantyMiles(20000); car2.setWarrantyYears(7); car2.checkWarrantyStatus(); CertifiedPreOwnCar car3 = new CertifiedPreOwnCar(2000, "Honda", "Accord", 65000); car3.setWarrantyYears(3); car3.setWarrantyMiles(30000); car3.setExtendedWarrantyMiles(100000); car3.setExtendedWarrantyYears(7); car3.checkWarrantyStatus(); } }

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  • Can I execute a "variable statements" within a function and without defines.

    - by René Nyffenegger
    I am facing a problem that I cannot see how it is solvable without #defines or incuring a performance impact although I am sure that someone can point me to a solution. I have an algorithm that sort of produces a (large) series of values. For simplicity's sake, in the following I pretend it's a for loop in a for loop, although in my code it's more complex than that. In the core of the loop I need to do calculations with the values being produced. Although the algorithm for the values stays the same, the calculations vary. So basically, what I have is: void normal() { // "Algorithm" producing numbers (x and y): for (int x=0 ; x<1000 ; x++) { for (int y=0 ; y<1000 ; y++) { // Calculation with numbers being produced: if ( x+y == 800 && y > 790) { std::cout << x << ", " << y << std::endl; } // end of calculation }} } So, the only part I need to change is if ( x+y == 800 && y > 790) { std::cout << x << ", " << y << std::endl; } So, in order to solve that, I could construct an abstract base class: class inner_0 { public: virtual void call(int x, int y) = 0; }; and derive a "callable" class from it: class inner : public inner_0 { public: virtual void call(int x, int y) { if ( x+y == 800 && y > 790) { std::cout << x << ", " << y << std::endl; } } }; I can then pass an instance of the class to the "algorithm" like so: void O(inner i) { for (int x=0 ; x<1000 ; x++) { for (int y=0 ; y<1000 ; y++) { i.call(x,y); }} } // somewhere else.... inner I; O(I); In my case, I incur a performance hit because there is an indirect call via virtual function table. So I was thinking about a way around it. It's possible with two #defines: #define OUTER \ for (int x=0 ; x<1000 ; x++) { \ for (int y=0 ; y<1000 ; y++) { \ INNER \ }} // later... #define INNER \ if (x + y == 800 && y > 790) \ std::cout << x << ", " << y << std::endl; OUTER While this certainly works, I am not 100% happy with it because I don't necessarly like #defines. So, my question: is there a better way for what I want to achieve?

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  • Generating strongly biased radom numbers for tests

    - by nobody
    I want to run tests with randomized inputs and need to generate 'sensible' random numbers, that is, numbers that match good enough to pass the tested function's preconditions, but hopefully wreak havoc deeper inside its code. math.random() (I'm using Lua) produces uniformly distributed random numbers. Scaling these up will give far more big numbers than small numbers, and there will be very few integers. I would like to skew the random numbers (or generate new ones using the old function as a randomness source) in a way that strongly favors 'simple' numbers, but will still cover the whole range, I.e. extending up to positive/negative infinity (or ±1e309 for double). This means: numbers up to, say, ten should be most common, integers should be more common than fractions, numbers ending in 0.5 should be the most common fractions, followed by 0.25 and 0.75; then 0.125, and so on. A different description: Fix a base probability x such that probabilities will sum to one and define the probability of a number n as xk where k is the generation in which n is constructed as a surreal number1. That assigns x to 0, x2 to -1 and +1, x3 to -2, -1/2, +1/2 and +2, and so on. This gives a nice description of something close to what I want (it skews a bit too much), but is near-unusable for computing random numbers. The resulting distribution is nowhere continuous (it's fractal!), I'm not sure how to determine the base probability x (I think for infinite precision it would be zero), and computing numbers based on this by iteration is awfully slow (spending near-infinite time to construct large numbers). Does anyone know of a simple approximation that, given a uniformly distributed randomness source, produces random numbers very roughly distributed as described above? I would like to run thousands of randomized tests, quantity/speed is more important than quality. Still, better numbers mean less inputs get rejected. Lua has a JIT, so performance can't be reasonably predicted. Jumps based on randomness will break every prediction, and many calls to math.random() will be slow, too. This means a closed formula will be better than an iterative or recursive one. 1 Wikipedia has an article on surreal numbers, with a nice picture. A surreal number is a pair of two surreal numbers, i.e. x := {n|m}, and its value is the number in the middle of the pair, i.e. (for finite numbers) {n|m} = (n+m)/2 (as rational). If one side of the pair is empty, that's interpreted as increment (or decrement, if right is empty) by one. If both sides are empty, that's zero. Initially, there are no numbers, so the only number one can build is 0 := { | }. In generation two one can build numbers {0| } =: 1 and { |0} =: -1, in three we get {1| } =: 2, {|1} =: -2, {0|1} =: 1/2 and {-1|0} =: -1/2 (plus some more complex representations of known numbers, e.g. {-1|1} ? 0). Note that e.g. 1/3 is never generated by finite numbers because it is an infinite fraction – the same goes for floats, 1/3 is never represented exactly.

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  • Templates, interfaces (multiple inheritance) and static functions (named constructors)

    - by fledgling Cxx user
    Setup I have a graph library where I am trying to decompose things as much as possible, and the cleanest way to describe it that I found is the following: there is a vanilla type node implementing only a list of edges: class node { public: int* edges; int edge_count; }; Then, I would like to be able to add interfaces to this whole mix, like so: template <class T> class node_weight { public: T weight; }; template <class T> class node_position { public: T x; T y; }; and so on. Then, the actual graph class comes in, which is templated on the actual type of node: template <class node_T> class graph { protected: node_T* nodes; public: static graph cartesian(int n, int m) { graph r; r.nodes = new node_T[n * m]; return r; } }; The twist is that it has named constructors which construct some special graphs, like a Cartesian lattice. In this case, I would like to be able to add some extra information into the graph, depending on what interfaces are implemented by node_T. What would be the best way to accomplish this? Possible solution I thought of the following humble solution, through dynamic_cast<>: template <class node_T, class weight_T, class position_T> class graph { protected: node_T* nodes; public: static graph cartesian(int n, int m) { graph r; r.nodes = new node_T[n * m]; if (dynamic_cast<node_weight<weight_T>>(r.nodes[0]) != nullptr) { // do stuff knowing you can add weights } if (dynamic_cast<node_position<positionT>>(r.nodes[0]) != nullptr) { // do stuff knowing you can set position } return r; } }; which would operate on node_T being the following: template <class weight_T, class position_T> class node_weight_position : public node, public node_weight<weight_T>, public node_position<position_T> { // ... }; Questions Is this -- philosophically -- the right way to go? I know people don't look nicely at multiple inheritance, though with "interfaces" like these it should all be fine. There are unfortunately problems with this. From what I know at least, dynamic_cast<> involves quite a bit of run-time overhead. Hence, I run into a problem with what I had solved earlier: writing graph algorithms that require weights independently of whether the actual node_T class has weights or not. The solution with this 'interface' approach would be to write a function: template <class node_T, class weight_T> inline weight_T get_weight(node_T const & n) { if (dynamic_cast<node_weight<weight_T>>(n) != nullptr) { return dynamic_cast<node_weight<weight_T>>(n).weight; } return T(1); } but the issue with it is that it works using run-time information (dynamic_cast), yet in principle I would like to decide it at compile-time and thus make the code more efficient. If there is a different solution that would solve both problems, especially a cleaner and better one than what I have, I would love to hear about it!

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  • Alphabetically Ordering an array of words

    - by Genesis
    I'm studying C on my own in preparation for my upcoming semester of school and was wondering what I was doing wrong with my code so far. If Things look weird it is because this is part of a much bigger grab bag of sorting functions I'm creating to get a sense of how to sort numbers,letters,arrays,and the like! I'm basically having some troubles with the manipulation of strings in C currently. Also, I'm quite limited in my knowledge of C at the moment! My main Consists of this: #include <stdio.h> #include <stdio.h> #include <stdlib.h> int numbers[10]; int size; int main(void){ setvbuf(stdout,NULL,_IONBF,0); //This is magical code that allows me to input. int wordNumber; int lengthOfWord = 50; printf("How many words do you want to enter: "); scanf("%i", &wordNumber); printf("%i\n",wordNumber); char words[wordNumber][lengthOfWord]; printf("Enter %i words:",wordNumber); int i; for(i=0;i<wordNumber+1;i++){ //+1 is because my words[0] is blank. fgets(&words[i], 50, stdin); } for(i=1;i<wordNumber+1;i++){ // Same as the above comment! printf("%s", words[i]); //prints my words out! } alphabetize(words,wordNumber); //I want to sort these arrays with this function. } My sorting "method" I am trying to construct is below! This function is seriously flawed, but I'd thought I'd keep it all to show you where my mind was headed when writing this. void alphabetize(char a[][],int size){ // This wont fly. size = size+1; int wordNumber; int lengthOfWord; char sortedWords[wordNumber][lengthOfWord]; //In effort for the for loop int i; int j; for(i=1;i<size;i++){ //My effort to copy over this array for manipulation for(j=1;j<size;j++){ sortedWords[i][j] = a[i][j]; } } //This should be kinda what I want when ordering words alphabetically, right? for(i=1;i<size;i++){ for(j=2;j<size;j++){ if(strcmp(sortedWords[i],sortedWords[j]) > 0){ char* temp = sortedWords[i]; sortedWords[i] = sortedWords[j]; sortedWords[j] = temp; } } } for(i=1;i<size;i++){ printf("%s, ",sortedWords[i]); } } I guess I also have another question as well... When I use fgets() it's doing this thing where I get a null word for the first spot of the array. I have had other issues recently trying to scanf() char[] in certain ways specifically spacing my input word variables which "magically" gets rid of the first null space before the character. An example of this is using scanf() to write "Hello" and getting " Hello" or " ""Hello"... Appreciate any thoughts on this, I've got all summer to study up so this doesn't need to be answered with haste! Also, thank you stack overflow as a whole for being so helpful in the past. This may be my first post, but I have been a frequent visitor for the past couple of years and it's been one of the best places for helpful advice/tips.

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  • ASP.Net MVC 2 Auto Complete Textbox With Custom View Model Attribute & EditorTemplate

    - by SeanMcAlinden
    In this post I’m going to show how to create a generic, ajax driven Auto Complete text box using the new MVC 2 Templates and the jQuery UI library. The template will be automatically displayed when a property is decorated with a custom attribute within the view model. The AutoComplete text box in action will look like the following:   The first thing to do is to do is visit my previous blog post to put the custom model metadata provider in place, this is necessary when using custom attributes on the view model. http://weblogs.asp.net/seanmcalinden/archive/2010/06/11/custom-asp-net-mvc-2-modelmetadataprovider-for-using-custom-view-model-attributes.aspx Once this is in place, make sure you visit the jQuery UI and download the latest stable release – in this example I’m using version 1.8.2. You can download it here. Add the jQuery scripts and css theme to your project and add references to them in your master page. Should look something like the following: Site.Master <head runat="server">     <title><asp:ContentPlaceHolder ID="TitleContent" runat="server" /></title>     <link href="../../Content/Site.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" />     <link href="../../css/ui-lightness/jquery-ui-1.8.2.custom.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" />     <script src="../../Scripts/jquery-1.4.2.min.js" type="text/javascript"></script>     <script src="../../Scripts/jquery-ui-1.8.2.custom.min.js" type="text/javascript"></script> </head> Once this is place we can get started. Creating the AutoComplete Custom Attribute The auto complete attribute will derive from the abstract MetadataAttribute created in my previous post. It will look like the following: AutoCompleteAttribute using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Web.Mvc; using System.Web.Routing; namespace Mvc2Templates.Attributes {     public class AutoCompleteAttribute : MetadataAttribute     {         public RouteValueDictionary RouteValueDictionary;         public AutoCompleteAttribute(string controller, string action, string parameterName)         {             this.RouteValueDictionary = new RouteValueDictionary();             this.RouteValueDictionary.Add("Controller", controller);             this.RouteValueDictionary.Add("Action", action);             this.RouteValueDictionary.Add(parameterName, string.Empty);         }         public override void Process(ModelMetadata modelMetaData)         {             modelMetaData.AdditionalValues.Add("AutoCompleteUrlData", this.RouteValueDictionary);             modelMetaData.TemplateHint = "AutoComplete";         }     } } As you can see, the constructor takes in strings for the controller, action and parameter name. The parameter name will be used for passing the search text within the auto complete text box. The constructor then creates a new RouteValueDictionary which we will use later to construct the url for getting the auto complete results via ajax. The main interesting method is the method override called Process. With the process method, the route value dictionary is added to the modelMetaData AdditionalValues collection. The TemplateHint is also set to AutoComplete, this means that when the view model is parsed for display, the MVC 2 framework will look for a view user control template called AutoComplete, if it finds one, it uses that template to display the property. The View Model To show you how the attribute will look, this is the view model I have used in my example which can be downloaded at the end of this post. View Model using System.ComponentModel; using Mvc2Templates.Attributes; namespace Mvc2Templates.Models {     public class TemplateDemoViewModel     {         [AutoComplete("Home", "AutoCompleteResult", "searchText")]         [DisplayName("European Country Search")]         public string SearchText { get; set; }     } } As you can see, the auto complete attribute is called with the controller name, action name and the name of the action parameter that the search text will be passed into. The AutoComplete Template Now all of this is in place, it’s time to create the AutoComplete template. Create a ViewUserControl called AutoComplete.ascx at the following location within your application – Views/Shared/EditorTemplates/AutoComplete.ascx Add the following code: AutoComplete.ascx <%@ Control Language="C#" Inherits="System.Web.Mvc.ViewUserControl" %> <%     var propertyName = ViewData.ModelMetadata.PropertyName;     var propertyValue = ViewData.ModelMetadata.Model;     var id = Guid.NewGuid().ToString();     RouteValueDictionary urlData =         (RouteValueDictionary)ViewData.ModelMetadata.AdditionalValues.Where(x => x.Key == "AutoCompleteUrlData").Single().Value;     var url = Mvc2Templates.Views.Shared.Helpers.RouteHelper.GetUrl(this.ViewContext.RequestContext, urlData); %> <input type="text" name="<%= propertyName %>" value="<%= propertyValue %>" id="<%= id %>" class="autoComplete" /> <script type="text/javascript">     $(function () {         $("#<%= id %>").autocomplete({             source: function (request, response) {                 $.ajax({                     url: "<%= url %>" + request.term,                     dataType: "json",                     success: function (data) {                         response(data);                     }                 });             },             minLength: 2         });     }); </script> There is a lot going on in here but when you break it down it’s quite simple. Firstly, the property name and property value are retrieved through the model meta data. These are required to ensure that the text box input has the correct name and data to allow for model binding. If you look at line 14 you can see them being used in the text box input creation. The interesting bit is on line 8 and 9, this is the code to retrieve the route value dictionary we added into the model metada via the custom attribute. Line 11 is used to create the url, in order to do this I created a quick helper class which looks like the code below titled RouteHelper. The last bit of script is the code to initialise the jQuery UI AutoComplete control with the correct url for calling back to our controller action. RouteHelper using System.Web.Mvc; using System.Web.Routing; namespace Mvc2Templates.Views.Shared.Helpers {     public static class RouteHelper     {         const string Controller = "Controller";         const string Action = "Action";         const string ReplaceFormatString = "REPLACE{0}";         public static string GetUrl(RequestContext requestContext, RouteValueDictionary routeValueDictionary)         {             RouteValueDictionary urlData = new RouteValueDictionary();             UrlHelper urlHelper = new UrlHelper(requestContext);                          int i = 0;             foreach(var item in routeValueDictionary)             {                 if (item.Value == string.Empty)                 {                     i++;                     urlData.Add(item.Key, string.Format(ReplaceFormatString, i.ToString()));                 }                 else                 {                     urlData.Add(item.Key, item.Value);                 }             }             var url = urlHelper.RouteUrl(urlData);             for (int index = 1; index <= i; index++)             {                 url = url.Replace(string.Format(ReplaceFormatString, index.ToString()), string.Empty);             }             return url;         }     } } See it in action All you need to do to see it in action is pass a view model from your controller with the new AutoComplete attribute attached and call the following within your view: <%= this.Html.EditorForModel() %> NOTE: The jQuery UI auto complete control expects a JSON string returned from your controller action method… as you can’t use the JsonResult to perform GET requests, use a normal action result, convert your data into json and return it as a string via a ContentResult. If you download the solution it will be very clear how to handle the controller and action for this demo. The full source code for this post can be downloaded here. It has been developed using MVC 2 and Visual Studio 2010. As always, I hope this has been interesting/useful. Kind Regards, Sean McAlinden.

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  • Using VLOOKUP in Excel

    - by Mark Virtue
    VLOOKUP is one of Excel’s most useful functions, and it’s also one of the least understood.  In this article, we demystify VLOOKUP by way of a real-life example.  We’ll create a usable Invoice Template for a fictitious company. So what is VLOOKUP?  Well, of course it’s an Excel function.  This article will assume that the reader already has a passing understanding of Excel functions, and can use basic functions such as SUM, AVERAGE, and TODAY.  In its most common usage, VLOOKUP is a database function, meaning that it works with database tables – or more simply, lists of things in an Excel worksheet.  What sort of things?   Well, any sort of thing.  You may have a worksheet that contains a list of employees, or products, or customers, or CDs in your CD collection, or stars in the night sky.  It doesn’t really matter. Here’s an example of a list, or database.  In this case it’s a list of products that our fictitious company sells: Usually lists like this have some sort of unique identifier for each item in the list.  In this case, the unique identifier is in the “Item Code” column.  Note:  For the VLOOKUP function to work with a database/list, that list must have a column containing the unique identifier (or “key”, or “ID”), and that column must be the first column in the table.  Our sample database above satisfies this criterion. The hardest part of using VLOOKUP is understanding exactly what it’s for.  So let’s see if we can get that clear first: VLOOKUP retrieves information from a database/list based on a supplied instance of the unique identifier. Put another way, if you put the VLOOKUP function into a cell and pass it one of the unique identifiers from your database, it will return you one of the pieces of information associated with that unique identifier.  In the example above, you would pass VLOOKUP an item code, and it would return to you either the corresponding item’s description, its price, or its availability (its “In stock” quantity).  Which of these pieces of information will it pass you back?  Well, you get to decide this when you’re creating the formula. If all you need is one piece of information from the database, it would be a lot of trouble to go to to construct a formula with a VLOOKUP function in it.  Typically you would use this sort of functionality in a reusable spreadsheet, such as a template.  Each time someone enters a valid item code, the system would retrieve all the necessary information about the corresponding item. Let’s create an example of this:  An Invoice Template that we can reuse over and over in our fictitious company. First we start Excel… …and we create ourselves a blank invoice: This is how it’s going to work:  The person using the invoice template will fill in a series of item codes in column “A”, and the system will retrieve each item’s description and price, which will be used to calculate the line total for each item (assuming we enter a valid quantity). For the purposes of keeping this example simple, we will locate the product database on a separate sheet in the same workbook: In reality, it’s more likely that the product database would be located in a separate workbook.  It makes little difference to the VLOOKUP function, which doesn’t really care if the database is located on the same sheet, a different sheet, or a completely different workbook. In order to test the VLOOKUP formula we’re about to write, we first enter a valid item code into cell A11: Next, we move the active cell to the cell in which we want information retrieved from the database by VLOOKUP to be stored.  Interestingly, this is the step that most people get wrong.  To explain further:  We are about to create a VLOOKUP formula that will retrieve the description that corresponds to the item code in cell A11.  Where do we want this description put when we get it?  In cell B11, of course.  So that’s where we write the VLOOKUP formula – in cell B11. Select cell B11: We need to locate the list of all available functions that Excel has to offer, so that we can choose VLOOKUP and get some assistance in completing the formula.  This is found by first clicking the Formulas tab, and then clicking Insert Function:   A box appears that allows us to select any of the functions available in Excel.  To find the one we’re looking for, we could type a search term like “lookup” (because the function we’re interested in is a lookup function).  The system would return us a list of all lookup-related functions in Excel.  VLOOKUP is the second one in the list.  Select it an click OK… The Function Arguments box appears, prompting us for all the arguments (or parameters) needed in order to complete the VLOOKUP function.  You can think of this box as the function is asking us the following questions: What unique identifier are you looking up in the database? Where is the database? Which piece of information from the database, associated with the unique identifier, do you wish to have retrieved for you? The first three arguments are shown in bold, indicating that they are mandatory arguments (the VLOOKUP function is incomplete without them and will not return a valid value).  The fourth argument is not bold, meaning that it’s optional:   We will complete the arguments in order, top to bottom. The first argument we need to complete is the Lookup_value argument.  The function needs us to tell it where to find the unique identifier (the item code in this case) that it should be retuning the description of.  We must select the item code we entered earlier (in A11). Click on the selector icon to the right of the first argument: Then click once on the cell containing the item code (A11), and press Enter: The value of “A11” is inserted into the first argument. Now we need to enter a value for the Table_array argument.  In other words, we need to tell VLOOKUP where to find the database/list.  Click on the selector icon next to the second argument: Now locate the database/list and select the entire list – not including the header line.  The database is located on a separate worksheet, so we first click on that worksheet tab: Next we select the entire database, not including the header line: …and press Enter.  The range of cells that represents the database (in this case “’Product Database’!A2:D7”) is entered automatically for us into the second argument. Now we need to enter the third argument, Col_index_num.  We use this argument to specify to VLOOKUP which piece of information from the database, associate with our item code in A11, we wish to have returned to us.  In this particular example, we wish to have the item’s description returned to us.  If you look on the database worksheet, you’ll notice that the “Description” column is the second column in the database.  This means that we must enter a value of “2” into the Col_index_num box: It is important to note that that we are not entering a “2” here because the “Description” column is in the B column on that worksheet.  If the database happened to start in column K of the worksheet, we would still enter a “2” in this field. Finally, we need to decide whether to enter a value into the final VLOOKUP argument, Range_lookup.  This argument requires either a true or false value, or it should be left blank.  When using VLOOKUP with databases (as is true 90% of the time), then the way to decide what to put in this argument can be thought of as follows: If the first column of the database (the column that contains the unique identifiers) is sorted alphabetically/numerically in ascending order, then it’s possible to enter a value of true into this argument, or leave it blank. If the first column of the database is not sorted, or it’s sorted in descending order, then you must enter a value of false into this argument As the first column of our database is not sorted, we enter false into this argument: That’s it!  We’ve entered all the information required for VLOOKUP to return the value we need.  Click the OK button and notice that the description corresponding to item code “R99245” has been correctly entered into cell B11: The formula that was created for us looks like this: If we enter a different item code into cell A11, we will begin to see the power of the VLOOKUP function:  The description cell changes to match the new item code: We can perform a similar set of steps to get the item’s price returned into cell E11.  Note that the new formula must be created in cell E11.  The result will look like this: …and the formula will look like this: Note that the only difference between the two formulae is the third argument (Col_index_num) has changed from a “2” to a “3” (because we want data retrieved from the 3rd column in the database). If we decided to buy 2 of these items, we would enter a “2” into cell D11.  We would then enter a simple formula into cell F11 to get the line total: =D11*E11 …which looks like this… Completing the Invoice Template We’ve learned a lot about VLOOKUP so far.  In fact, we’ve learned all we’re going to learn in this article.  It’s important to note that VLOOKUP can be used in other circumstances besides databases.  This is less common, and may be covered in future How-To Geek articles. Our invoice template is not yet complete.  In order to complete it, we would do the following: We would remove the sample item code from cell A11 and the “2” from cell D11.  This will cause our newly created VLOOKUP formulae to display error messages: We can remedy this by judicious use of Excel’s IF() and ISBLANK() functions.  We change our formula from this…       =VLOOKUP(A11,’Product Database’!A2:D7,2,FALSE) …to this…       =IF(ISBLANK(A11),”",VLOOKUP(A11,’Product Database’!A2:D7,2,FALSE)) We would copy the formulas in cells B11, E11 and F11 down to the remainder of the item rows of the invoice.  Note that if we do this, the resulting formulas will no longer correctly refer to the database table.  We could fix this by changing the cell references for the database to absolute cell references.  Alternatively – and even better – we could create a range name for the entire product database (such as “Products”), and use this range name instead of the cell references.  The formula would change from this…       =IF(ISBLANK(A11),”",VLOOKUP(A11,’Product Database’!A2:D7,2,FALSE)) …to this…       =IF(ISBLANK(A11),”",VLOOKUP(A11,Products,2,FALSE)) …and then copy the formulas down to the rest of the invoice item rows. We would probably “lock” the cells that contain our formulae (or rather unlock the other cells), and then protect the worksheet, in order to ensure that our carefully constructed formulae are not accidentally overwritten when someone comes to fill in the invoice. We would save the file as a template, so that it could be reused by everyone in our company If we were feeling really clever, we would create a database of all our customers in another worksheet, and then use the customer ID entered in cell F5 to automatically fill in the customer’s name and address in cells B6, B7 and B8. If you would like to practice with VLOOKUP, or simply see our resulting Invoice Template, it can be downloaded from here. Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Make Excel 2007 Print Gridlines In Workbook FileMake Excel 2007 Always Save in Excel 2003 FormatConvert Older Excel Documents to Excel 2007 FormatImport Microsoft Access Data Into ExcelChange the Default Font in Excel 2007 TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 Classic Cinema Online offers 100’s of OnDemand Movies OutSync will Sync Photos of your Friends on Facebook and Outlook Windows 7 Easter Theme YoWindoW, a real time weather screensaver Optimize your computer the Microsoft way Stormpulse provides slick, real time weather data

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  • C#/.NET Little Wonders: The Joy of Anonymous Types

    - by James Michael Hare
    Once again, in this series of posts I look at the parts of the .NET Framework that may seem trivial, but can help improve your code by making it easier to write and maintain. The index of all my past little wonders posts can be found here. In the .NET 3 Framework, Microsoft introduced the concept of anonymous types, which provide a way to create a quick, compiler-generated types at the point of instantiation.  These may seem trivial, but are very handy for concisely creating lightweight, strongly-typed objects containing only read-only properties that can be used within a given scope. Creating an Anonymous Type In short, an anonymous type is a reference type that derives directly from object and is defined by its set of properties base on their names, number, types, and order given at initialization.  In addition to just holding these properties, it is also given appropriate overridden implementations for Equals() and GetHashCode() that take into account all of the properties to correctly perform property comparisons and hashing.  Also overridden is an implementation of ToString() which makes it easy to display the contents of an anonymous type instance in a fairly concise manner. To construct an anonymous type instance, you use basically the same initialization syntax as with a regular type.  So, for example, if we wanted to create an anonymous type to represent a particular point, we could do this: 1: var point = new { X = 13, Y = 7 }; Note the similarity between anonymous type initialization and regular initialization.  The main difference is that the compiler generates the type name and the properties (as readonly) based on the names and order provided, and inferring their types from the expressions they are assigned to. It is key to remember that all of those factors (number, names, types, order of properties) determine the anonymous type.  This is important, because while these two instances share the same anonymous type: 1: // same names, types, and order 2: var point1 = new { X = 13, Y = 7 }; 3: var point2 = new { X = 5, Y = 0 }; These similar ones do not: 1: var point3 = new { Y = 3, X = 5 }; // different order 2: var point4 = new { X = 3, Y = 5.0 }; // different type for Y 3: var point5 = new {MyX = 3, MyY = 5 }; // different names 4: var point6 = new { X = 1, Y = 2, Z = 3 }; // different count Limitations on Property Initialization Expressions The expression for a property in an anonymous type initialization cannot be null (though it can evaluate to null) or an anonymous function.  For example, the following are illegal: 1: // Null can't be used directly. Null reference of what type? 2: var cantUseNull = new { Value = null }; 3:  4: // Anonymous methods cannot be used. 5: var cantUseAnonymousFxn = new { Value = () => Console.WriteLine(“Can’t.”) }; Note that the restriction on null is just that you can’t use it directly as the expression, because otherwise how would it be able to determine the type?  You can, however, use it indirectly assigning a null expression such as a typed variable with the value null, or by casting null to a specific type: 1: string str = null; 2: var fineIndirectly = new { Value = str }; 3: var fineCast = new { Value = (string)null }; All of the examples above name the properties explicitly, but you can also implicitly name properties if they are being set from a property, field, or variable.  In these cases, when a field, property, or variable is used alone, and you don’t specify a property name assigned to it, the new property will have the same name.  For example: 1: int variable = 42; 2:  3: // creates two properties named varriable and Now 4: var implicitProperties = new { variable, DateTime.Now }; Is the same type as: 1: var explicitProperties = new { variable = variable, Now = DateTime.Now }; But this only works if you are using an existing field, variable, or property directly as the expression.  If you use a more complex expression then the name cannot be inferred: 1: // can't infer the name variable from variable * 2, must name explicitly 2: var wontWork = new { variable * 2, DateTime.Now }; In the example above, since we typed variable * 2, it is no longer just a variable and thus we would have to assign the property a name explicitly. ToString() on Anonymous Types One of the more trivial overrides that an anonymous type provides you is a ToString() method that prints the value of the anonymous type instance in much the same format as it was initialized (except actual values instead of expressions as appropriate of course). For example, if you had: 1: var point = new { X = 13, Y = 42 }; And then print it out: 1: Console.WriteLine(point.ToString()); You will get: 1: { X = 13, Y = 42 } While this isn’t necessarily the most stunning feature of anonymous types, it can be handy for debugging or logging values in a fairly easy to read format. Comparing Anonymous Type Instances Because anonymous types automatically create appropriate overrides of Equals() and GetHashCode() based on the underlying properties, we can reliably compare two instances or get hash codes.  For example, if we had the following 3 points: 1: var point1 = new { X = 1, Y = 2 }; 2: var point2 = new { X = 1, Y = 2 }; 3: var point3 = new { Y = 2, X = 1 }; If we compare point1 and point2 we’ll see that Equals() returns true because they overridden version of Equals() sees that the types are the same (same number, names, types, and order of properties) and that the values are the same.   In addition, because all equal objects should have the same hash code, we’ll see that the hash codes evaluate to the same as well: 1: // true, same type, same values 2: Console.WriteLine(point1.Equals(point2)); 3:  4: // true, equal anonymous type instances always have same hash code 5: Console.WriteLine(point1.GetHashCode() == point2.GetHashCode()); However, if we compare point2 and point3 we get false.  Even though the names, types, and values of the properties are the same, the order is not, thus they are two different types and cannot be compared (and thus return false).  And, since they are not equal objects (even though they have the same value) there is a good chance their hash codes are different as well (though not guaranteed): 1: // false, different types 2: Console.WriteLine(point2.Equals(point3)); 3:  4: // quite possibly false (was false on my machine) 5: Console.WriteLine(point2.GetHashCode() == point3.GetHashCode()); Using Anonymous Types Now that we’ve created instances of anonymous types, let’s actually use them.  The property names (whether implicit or explicit) are used to access the individual properties of the anonymous type.  The main thing, once again, to keep in mind is that the properties are readonly, so you cannot assign the properties a new value (note: this does not mean that instances referred to by a property are immutable – for more information check out C#/.NET Fundamentals: Returning Data Immutably in a Mutable World). Thus, if we have the following anonymous type instance: 1: var point = new { X = 13, Y = 42 }; We can get the properties as you’d expect: 1: Console.WriteLine(“The point is: ({0},{1})”, point.X, point.Y); But we cannot alter the property values: 1: // compiler error, properties are readonly 2: point.X = 99; Further, since the anonymous type name is only known by the compiler, there is no easy way to pass anonymous type instances outside of a given scope.  The only real choices are to pass them as object or dynamic.  But really that is not the intention of using anonymous types.  If you find yourself needing to pass an anonymous type outside of a given scope, you should really consider making a POCO (Plain Old CLR Type – i.e. a class that contains just properties to hold data with little/no business logic) instead. Given that, why use them at all?  Couldn’t you always just create a POCO to represent every anonymous type you needed?  Sure you could, but then you might litter your solution with many small POCO classes that have very localized uses. It turns out this is the key to when to use anonymous types to your advantage: when you just need a lightweight type in a local context to store intermediate results, consider an anonymous type – but when that result is more long-lived and used outside of the current scope, consider a POCO instead. So what do we mean by intermediate results in a local context?  Well, a classic example would be filtering down results from a LINQ expression.  For example, let’s say we had a List<Transaction>, where Transaction is defined something like: 1: public class Transaction 2: { 3: public string UserId { get; set; } 4: public DateTime At { get; set; } 5: public decimal Amount { get; set; } 6: // … 7: } And let’s say we had this data in our List<Transaction>: 1: var transactions = new List<Transaction> 2: { 3: new Transaction { UserId = "Jim", At = DateTime.Now, Amount = 2200.00m }, 4: new Transaction { UserId = "Jim", At = DateTime.Now, Amount = -1100.00m }, 5: new Transaction { UserId = "Jim", At = DateTime.Now.AddDays(-1), Amount = 900.00m }, 6: new Transaction { UserId = "John", At = DateTime.Now.AddDays(-2), Amount = 300.00m }, 7: new Transaction { UserId = "John", At = DateTime.Now, Amount = -10.00m }, 8: new Transaction { UserId = "Jane", At = DateTime.Now, Amount = 200.00m }, 9: new Transaction { UserId = "Jane", At = DateTime.Now, Amount = -50.00m }, 10: new Transaction { UserId = "Jaime", At = DateTime.Now.AddDays(-3), Amount = -100.00m }, 11: new Transaction { UserId = "Jaime", At = DateTime.Now.AddDays(-3), Amount = 300.00m }, 12: }; So let’s say we wanted to get the transactions for each day for each user.  That is, for each day we’d want to see the transactions each user performed.  We could do this very simply with a nice LINQ expression, without the need of creating any POCOs: 1: // group the transactions based on an anonymous type with properties UserId and Date: 2: byUserAndDay = transactions 3: .GroupBy(tx => new { tx.UserId, tx.At.Date }) 4: .OrderBy(grp => grp.Key.Date) 5: .ThenBy(grp => grp.Key.UserId); Now, those of you who have attempted to use custom classes as a grouping type before (such as GroupBy(), Distinct(), etc.) may have discovered the hard way that LINQ gets a lot of its speed by utilizing not on Equals(), but also GetHashCode() on the type you are grouping by.  Thus, when you use custom types for these purposes, you generally end up having to write custom Equals() and GetHashCode() implementations or you won’t get the results you were expecting (the default implementations of Equals() and GetHashCode() are reference equality and reference identity based respectively). As we said before, it turns out that anonymous types already do these critical overrides for you.  This makes them even more convenient to use!  Instead of creating a small POCO to handle this grouping, and then having to implement a custom Equals() and GetHashCode() every time, we can just take advantage of the fact that anonymous types automatically override these methods with appropriate implementations that take into account the values of all of the properties. Now, we can look at our results: 1: foreach (var group in byUserAndDay) 2: { 3: // the group’s Key is an instance of our anonymous type 4: Console.WriteLine("{0} on {1:MM/dd/yyyy} did:", group.Key.UserId, group.Key.Date); 5:  6: // each grouping contains a sequence of the items. 7: foreach (var tx in group) 8: { 9: Console.WriteLine("\t{0}", tx.Amount); 10: } 11: } And see: 1: Jaime on 06/18/2012 did: 2: -100.00 3: 300.00 4:  5: John on 06/19/2012 did: 6: 300.00 7:  8: Jim on 06/20/2012 did: 9: 900.00 10:  11: Jane on 06/21/2012 did: 12: 200.00 13: -50.00 14:  15: Jim on 06/21/2012 did: 16: 2200.00 17: -1100.00 18:  19: John on 06/21/2012 did: 20: -10.00 Again, sure we could have just built a POCO to do this, given it an appropriate Equals() and GetHashCode() method, but that would have bloated our code with so many extra lines and been more difficult to maintain if the properties change.  Summary Anonymous types are one of those Little Wonders of the .NET language that are perfect at exactly that time when you need a temporary type to hold a set of properties together for an intermediate result.  While they are not very useful beyond the scope in which they are defined, they are excellent in LINQ expressions as a way to create and us intermediary values for further expressions and analysis. Anonymous types are defined by the compiler based on the number, type, names, and order of properties created, and they automatically implement appropriate Equals() and GetHashCode() overrides (as well as ToString()) which makes them ideal for LINQ expressions where you need to create a set of properties to group, evaluate, etc. Technorati Tags: C#,CSharp,.NET,Little Wonders,Anonymous Types,LINQ

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  • How to create a new WCF/MVC/jQuery application from scratch

    - by pjohnson
    As a corporate developer by trade, I don't get much opportunity to create from-the-ground-up web sites; usually it's tweaks, fixes, and new functionality to existing sites. And with hobby sites, I often don't find the challenges I run into with enterprise systems; usually it's starting from Visual Studio's boilerplate project and adding whatever functionality I want to play around with, rarely deploying outside my own machine. So my experience creating a new enterprise-level site was a bit dated, and the technologies to do so have come a long way, and are much more ready to go out of the box. My intention with this post isn't so much to provide any groundbreaking insights, but to just tie together a lot of information in one place to make it easy to create a new site from scratch. Architecture One site I created earlier this year had an MVC 3 front end and a WCF 4-driven service layer. Using Visual Studio 2010, these project types are easy enough to add to a new solution. I created a third Class Library project to store common functionality the front end and services layers both needed to access, for example, the DataContract classes that the front end uses to call services in the service layer. By keeping DataContract classes in a separate project, I avoided the need for the front end to have an assembly/project reference directly to the services code, a bit cleaner and more flexible of an SOA implementation. Consuming the service Even by this point, VS has given you a lot. You have a working web site and a working service, neither of which do much but are great starting points. To wire up the front end and the services, I needed to create proxy classes and WCF client configuration information. I decided to use the SvcUtil.exe utility provided as part of the Windows SDK, which you should have installed if you installed VS. VS also provides an Add Service Reference command since the .NET 1.x ASMX days, which I've never really liked; it creates several .cs/.disco/etc. files, some of which contained hardcoded URL's, adding duplicate files (*1.cs, *2.cs, etc.) without doing a good job of cleaning up after itself. I've found SvcUtil much cleaner, as it outputs one C# file (containing several proxy classes) and a config file with settings, and it's easier to use to regenerate the proxy classes when the service changes, and to then maintain all your configuration in one place (your Web.config, instead of the Service Reference files). I provided it a reference to a copy of my common assembly so it doesn't try to recreate the data contract classes, had it use the type List<T> for collections, and modified the output files' names and .NET namespace, ending up with a command like: svcutil.exe /l:cs /o:MyService.cs /config:MyService.config /r:MySite.Common.dll /ct:System.Collections.Generic.List`1 /n:*,MySite.Web.ServiceProxies http://localhost:59999/MyService.svc I took the generated MyService.cs file and drop it in the web project, under a ServiceProxies folder, matching the namespace and keeping it separate from classes I coded manually. Integrating the config file took a little more work, but only needed to be done once as these settings didn't often change. A great thing Microsoft improved with WCF 4 is configuration; namely, you can use all the default settings and not have to specify them explicitly in your config file. Unfortunately, SvcUtil doesn't generate its config file this way. If you just copy & paste MyService.config's contents into your front end's Web.config, you'll copy a lot of settings you don't need, plus this will get unwieldy if you add more services in the future, each with its own custom binding. Really, as the only mandatory settings are the endpoint's ABC's (address, binding, and contract) you can get away with just this: <system.serviceModel>  <client>    <endpoint address="http://localhost:59999/MyService.svc" binding="wsHttpBinding" contract="MySite.Web.ServiceProxies.IMyService" />  </client></system.serviceModel> By default, the services project uses basicHttpBinding. As you can see, I switched it to wsHttpBinding, a more modern standard. Using something like netTcpBinding would probably be faster and more efficient since the client & service are both written in .NET, but it requires additional server setup and open ports, whereas switching to wsHttpBinding is much simpler. From an MVC controller action method, I instantiated the client, and invoked the method for my operation. As with any object that implements IDisposable, I wrapped it in C#'s using() statement, a tidy construct that ensures Dispose gets called no matter what, even if an exception occurs. Unfortunately there are problems with that, as WCF's ClientBase<TChannel> class doesn't implement Dispose according to Microsoft's own usage guidelines. I took an approach similar to Technology Toolbox's fix, except using partial classes instead of a wrapper class to extend the SvcUtil-generated proxy, making the fix more seamless from the controller's perspective, and theoretically, less code I have to change if and when Microsoft fixes this behavior. User interface The MVC 3 project template includes jQuery and some other common JavaScript libraries by default. I updated the ones I used to the latest versions using NuGet, available in VS via the Tools > Library Package Manager > Manage NuGet Packages for Solution... > Updates. I also used this dialog to remove packages I wasn't using. Given that it's smart enough to know the difference between the .js and .min.js files, I was hoping it would be smart enough to know which to include during build and publish operations, but this doesn't seem to be the case. I ended up using Cassette to perform the minification and bundling of my JavaScript and CSS files; ASP.NET 4.5 includes this functionality out of the box. The web client to web server link via jQuery was easy enough. In my JavaScript function, unobtrusively wired up to a button's click event, I called $.ajax, corresponding to an action method that returns a JsonResult, accomplished by passing my model class to the Controller.Json() method, which jQuery helpfully translates from JSON to a JavaScript object.$.ajax calls weren't perfectly straightforward. I tried using the simpler $.post method instead, but ran into trouble without specifying the contentType parameter, which $.post doesn't have. The url parameter is simple enough, though for flexibility in how the site is deployed, I used MVC's Url.Action method to get the URL, then sent this to JavaScript in a JavaScript string variable. If the request needed input data, I used the JSON.stringify function to convert a JavaScript object with the parameters into a JSON string, which MVC then parses into strongly-typed C# parameters. I also specified "json" for dataType, and "application/json; charset=utf-8" for contentType. For success and error, I provided my success and error handling functions, though success is a bit hairier. "Success" in this context indicates whether the HTTP request succeeds, not whether what you wanted the AJAX call to do on the web server was successful. For example, if you make an AJAX call to retrieve a piece of data, the success handler will be invoked for any 200 OK response, and the error handler will be invoked for failed requests, e.g. a 404 Not Found (if the server rejected the URL you provided in the url parameter) or 500 Internal Server Error (e.g. if your C# code threw an exception that wasn't caught). If an exception was caught and handled, or if the data requested wasn't found, this would likely go through the success handler, which would need to do further examination to verify it did in fact get back the data for which it asked. I discuss this more in the next section. Logging and exception handling At this point, I had a working application. If I ran into any errors or unexpected behavior, debugging was easy enough, but of course that's not an option on public web servers. Microsoft Enterprise Library 5.0 filled this gap nicely, with its Logging and Exception Handling functionality. First I installed Enterprise Library; NuGet as outlined above is probably the best way to do so. I needed a total of three assembly references--Microsoft.Practices.EnterpriseLibrary.ExceptionHandling, Microsoft.Practices.EnterpriseLibrary.ExceptionHandling.Logging, and Microsoft.Practices.EnterpriseLibrary.Logging. VS links with the handy Enterprise Library 5.0 Configuration Console, accessible by right-clicking your Web.config and choosing Edit Enterprise Library V5 Configuration. In this console, under Logging Settings, I set up a Rolling Flat File Trace Listener to write to log files but not let them get too large, using a Text Formatter with a simpler template than that provided by default. Logging to a different (or additional) destination is easy enough, but a flat file suited my needs. At this point, I verified it wrote as expected by calling the Microsoft.Practices.EnterpriseLibrary.Logging.Logger.Write method from my C# code. With those settings verified, I went on to wire up Exception Handling with Logging. Back in the EntLib Configuration Console, under Exception Handling, I used a LoggingExceptionHandler, setting its Logging Category to the category I already had configured in the Logging Settings. Then, from code (e.g. a controller's OnException method, or any action method's catch block), I called the Microsoft.Practices.EnterpriseLibrary.ExceptionHandling.ExceptionPolicy.HandleException method, providing the exception and the exception policy name I had configured in the Exception Handling Settings. Before I got this configured correctly, when I tried it out, nothing was logged. In working with .NET, I'm used to seeing an exception if something doesn't work or isn't set up correctly, but instead working with these EntLib modules reminds me more of JavaScript (before the "use strict" v5 days)--it just does nothing and leaves you to figure out why, I presume due in part to the listener pattern Microsoft followed with the Enterprise Library. First, I verified logging worked on its own. Then, verifying/correcting where each piece wires up to the next resolved my problem. Your C# code calls into the Exception Handling module, referencing the policy you pass the HandleException method; that policy's configuration contains a LoggingExceptionHandler that references a logCategory; that logCategory should be added in the loggingConfiguration's categorySources section; that category references a listener; that listener should be added in the loggingConfiguration's listeners section, which specifies the name of the log file. One final note on error handling, as the proper way to handle WCF and MVC errors is a whole other very lengthy discussion. For AJAX calls to MVC action methods, depending on your configuration, an exception thrown here will result in ASP.NET'S Yellow Screen Of Death being sent back as a response, which is at best unnecessarily and uselessly verbose, and at worst a security risk as the internals of your application are exposed to potential hackers. I mitigated this by overriding my controller's OnException method, passing the exception off to the Exception Handling module as above. I created an ErrorModel class with as few properties as possible (e.g. an Error string), sending as little information to the client as possible, to both maximize bandwidth and mitigate risk. I then return an ErrorModel in JSON format for AJAX requests: if (filterContext.HttpContext.Request.IsAjaxRequest()){    filterContext.Result = Json(new ErrorModel(...));    filterContext.ExceptionHandled = true;} My $.ajax calls from the browser get a valid 200 OK response and go into the success handler. Before assuming everything is OK, I check if it's an ErrorModel or a model containing what I requested. If it's an ErrorModel, or null, I pass it to my error handler. If the client needs to handle different errors differently, ErrorModel can contain a flag, error code, string, etc. to differentiate, but again, sending as little information back as possible is ideal. Summary As any experienced ASP.NET developer knows, this is a far cry from where ASP.NET started when I began working with it 11 years ago. WCF services are far more powerful than ASMX ones, MVC is in many ways cleaner and certainly more unit test-friendly than Web Forms (if you don't consider the code/markup commingling you're doing again), the Enterprise Library makes error handling and logging almost entirely configuration-driven, AJAX makes a responsive UI more feasible, and jQuery makes JavaScript coding much less painful. It doesn't take much work to get a functional, maintainable, flexible application, though having it actually do something useful is a whole other matter.

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  • BING Search using ASP.NET and jQuery Ajax

    - by hajan
    The BING API provides extremely simple way to make search queries using BING. It provides nice way to get the search results as XML or JSON. In this blog post I will show one simple example on how to query BING and get the results as JSON in an ASP.NET website with help of jQuery’s getJSON ajax method. Basically we submit an HTTP GET request with the AppID which you can get in the BING Developer Center. To create new AppID, click here. Once you fill the form, submit it and you will get your AppID. Now, lets make this work in several steps. 1. Open VS.NET or Visual Web Developer.NET, create new sample project (or use existing one) and create new ASPX Web Form with name of your choice. 2. Add the following ASPX in your page body <body>     <form id="form1" runat="server">     <asp:TextBox ID="txtSearch" runat="server" /> <asp:Button ID="btnSearch" runat="server" Text="BING Search" />     <div id="result">          </div>     </form> </body> We have text box for search, button for firing the search event and div where we will place the results. 3. Next, I have created simple CSS style for the search result: <style type="text/css">             .item { width:600px; padding-top:10px; }             .title { background-color:#4196CE; color:White; font-size:18px;              font-family:Calibri, Verdana, Tahoma, Sans-Serif; padding:2px 2px 2px 2px; }     .title a { text-decoration:none; color:white}     .date { font-style:italic; font-size:10px; font-family:Verdana, Arial, Sans-Serif;}             .description { font-family:Verdana, Arial, Sans-Serif; padding:2px 2px 2px 2px; font-size:12px; }     .url { font-size: 10px; font-style:italic; font-weight:bold; color:Gray;}     .url a { text-decoration:none; color:gray;}     #txtSearch { width:450px; border:2px solid #4196CE; } </style> 4. The needed jQuery Scripts (v1.4.4 core jQuery and jQuery template plugin) <script src="http://ajax.aspnetcdn.com/ajax/jQuery/jquery-1.4.4.min.js" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="http://ajax.aspnetcdn.com/ajax/jquery.templates/beta1/jquery.tmpl.min.js" type="text/javascript"></script> Note: I use jQuery Templates plugin in order to avoid foreach loop in the jQuery callback function. JQuery Templates also simplifies the code and allows us to create nice template for the end result. You can read more about jQuery Templates here. 5. Now, lets create another script tag where we will write our BING search script <script language="javascript" type="text/javascript">     $(document).ready(function () {         var bingAPIKey = "<Your-BING-AppID-KEY-HERE>";                  //the rest of the script goes here              }); </script> 6. Before we do any searching, we need to take a look at the search URL that we will call from our Ajax function BING Search URL : http://api.search.live.net/json.aspx?JsonType=callback&JsonCallback=?&AppId={appId}&query={query}&sources={sourceType} The URL in our example is as follows: http://api.search.live.net/json.aspx?JsonType=callback&JsonCallback=?&Appid=" + bingAPIKey + "&query=" + keyWords + "&sources=web Lets split it up with brief explanation on each part of the URL http://api.search.live.net/json.aspx – is the main part of the URL which is used to call when we need to retrieve json result set. JsonType=callback&JsonCallback=? – using JsonType, we can control the format of the response. For more info about this, refer here. Appid=” + bingAPIKey +” – the AppID we’ve got from the BING website, explained previously query=” + keyWords + “ – the search query keywords sources=web – the type of source. Possible source types can be found here. 7. Before we continue with writing the last part of the script, lets see what search result BING will send us back: {"SearchResponse":     {         "Version":"2.2",         "Query":             {                 "SearchTerms":"hajan selmani aspnet weblog"             },         "Web":             {                 "Total":16,                 "Offset":0,                 "Results":[                     {                         "Title":"Hajan's Blog",                         "Description":"microsoft asp.net development blog ... Create nice animation on your ASP.NET Menu control using jQuery by hajan",                         "Url":"http:\/\/weblogs.asp.net\/hajan\/",                         "CacheUrl":"http:\/\/cc.bingj.com\/cache.aspx?q=hajan+selmani+aspnet+weblog&d=4760941354158132&w=c9535fb0,d1d66baa",                         "DisplayUrl":"weblogs.asp.net\/hajan",                         "DateTime":"2011-03-03T18:24:00Z"                     },                     {                         "Title":"codeasp.net",                         "Description":"... social community for ASP.NET bloggers - we are one of                                         the largest ASP.NET blog ... 2\/5\/2011 1:41:00 AM by Hajan Selmani - Comments ...",                         "Url":"http:\/\/codeasp.net\/blogs\/hajan",                         "CacheUrl":"http:\/\/cc.bingj.com\/cache.aspx?q=hajan+selmani+aspnet+weblog&d=4826710187311653&w=5b41c930,676a37f8",                         "DisplayUrl":"codeasp.net\/blogs\/hajan",                         "DateTime":"2011-03-03T07:40:00Z"                     }                     ...                         ]             }     } }  To get to the result of the search response, the path is: SearchResponse.Web.Results, where we have array of objects returned back from BING. 8. The final part of the code that performs the search is $("#<%= btnSearch.ClientID %>").click(function (event) {     event.preventDefault();     var keyWords = $("#<%= txtSearch.ClientID %>").val();     var encodedKeyWords = encodeURIComponent(keyWords);     //alert(keyWords);     var url = "http://api.search.live.net/json.aspx?JsonType=callback&JsonCallback=?&Appid="+ bingAPIKey              + "&query=" + encodedKeyWords              + "&sources=web";     $.getJSON(url, function (data) {         $("#result").html("");         $("#bingSearchTemplate").tmpl(data.SearchResponse.Web.Results).appendTo("#result");     }); }); The search happens once we click the Search Button with id btnSearch. We get the keywords from the Text Box with id txtSearch and then we use encodeURIComponent. The encodeURIComponent is used to encode the special characters such as: , / ? : @ & = + $ #, which might be part of the search query string. Then we construct the URL and call it using HTTP GET. The callback function returns the data, where we first clear the html inside div with id result and after that we render the data.SearchResponse.Web.Results array of objects using template with id bingSearchTemplate and append the result into div with id result. 9. The bingSearchTemplate Template <script id="bingSearchTemplate" type="text/html">     <div class="item">         <div class="title"><a href="${Url}" target="_blank">${Title}</a></div>         <div class="date">${DateTime}</div>         <div class="searchresult">             <div class="description">             ${Description}             </div>             <div class="url">                 <a href="${Url}" target="_blank">${Url}</a>             </div>         </div>     </div> </script> If you paid attention on the search result structure that BING creates for us, you have seen properties like Url, Title, Description, DateTime etc. In the above defined template, you see the same wrapped into template tags. Some are combined to create hyperlinked URLs. 10. THE END RESULT   As you see, it’s quite simple to use BING API and make search queries with ASP.NET and jQuery. In addition, if you want to make instant search, replace this line: $(“#<%= btnSearch.ClientID %>”).click(function(event) {        event.preventDefault(); with $(“#<%= txtSearch.ClientID %>”).keyup(function() { This will trigger search on each key up in your keyboard, so if you use this approach, you won’t event need a search button. If it’s your first time working with BING API, it’s very recommended to read the following API Basics PDF document. Hope this was helpful blog post for you.

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  • 64-bit Archives Needed

    - by user9154181
    A little over a year ago, we received a question from someone who was trying to build software on Solaris. He was getting errors from the ar command when creating an archive. At that time, the ar command on Solaris was a 32-bit command. There was more than 2GB of data, and the ar command was hitting the file size limit for a 32-bit process that doesn't use the largefile APIs. Even in 2011, 2GB is a very large amount of code, so we had not heard this one before. Most of our toolchain was extended to handle 64-bit sized data back in the 1990's, but archives were not changed, presumably because there was no perceived need for it. Since then of course, programs have continued to get larger, and in 2010, the time had finally come to investigate the issue and find a way to provide for larger archives. As part of that process, I had to do a deep dive into the archive format, and also do some Unix archeology. I'm going to record what I learned here, to document what Solaris does, and in the hope that it might help someone else trying to solve the same problem for their platform. Archive Format Details Archives are hardly cutting edge technology. They are still used of course, but their basic form hasn't changed in decades. Other than to fix a bug, which is rare, we don't tend to touch that code much. The archive file format is described in /usr/include/ar.h, and I won't repeat the details here. Instead, here is a rough overview of the archive file format, implemented by System V Release 4 (SVR4) Unix systems such as Solaris: Every archive starts with a "magic number". This is a sequence of 8 characters: "!<arch>\n". The magic number is followed by 1 or more members. A member starts with a fixed header, defined by the ar_hdr structure in/usr/include/ar.h. Immediately following the header comes the data for the member. Members must be padded at the end with newline characters so that they have even length. The requirement to pad members to an even length is a dead giveaway as to the age of the archive format. It tells you that this format dates from the 1970's, and more specifically from the era of 16-bit systems such as the PDP-11 that Unix was originally developed on. A 32-bit system would have required 4 bytes, and 64-bit systems such as we use today would probably have required 8 bytes. 2 byte alignment is a poor choice for ELF object archive members. 32-bit objects require 4 byte alignment, and 64-bit objects require 64-bit alignment. The link-editor uses mmap() to process archives, and if the members have the wrong alignment, we have to slide (copy) them to the correct alignment before we can access the ELF data structures inside. The archive format requires 2 byte padding, but it doesn't prohibit more. The Solaris ar command takes advantage of this, and pads ELF object members to 8 byte boundaries. Anything else is padded to 2 as required by the format. The archive header (ar_hdr) represents all numeric values using an ASCII text representation rather than as binary integers. This means that an archive that contains only text members can be viewed using tools such as cat, more, or a text editor. The original designers of this format clearly thought that archives would be used for many file types, and not just for objects. Things didn't turn out that way of course — nearly all archives contain relocatable objects for a single operating system and machine, and are used primarily as input to the link-editor (ld). Archives can have special members that are created by the ar command rather than being supplied by the user. These special members are all distinguished by having a name that starts with the slash (/) character. This is an unambiguous marker that says that the user could not have supplied it. The reason for this is that regular archive members are given the plain name of the file that was inserted to create them, and any path components are stripped off. Slash is the delimiter character used by Unix to separate path components, and as such cannot occur within a plain file name. The ar command hides the special members from you when you list the contents of an archive, so most users don't know that they exist. There are only two possible special members: A symbol table that maps ELF symbols to the object archive member that provides it, and a string table used to hold member names that exceed 15 characters. The '/' convention for tagging special members provides room for adding more such members should the need arise. As I will discuss below, we took advantage of this fact to add an alternate 64-bit symbol table special member which is used in archives that are larger than 4GB. When an archive contains ELF object members, the ar command builds a special archive member known as the symbol table that maps all ELF symbols in the object to the archive member that provides it. The link-editor uses this symbol table to determine which symbols are provided by the objects in that archive. If an archive has a symbol table, it will always be the first member in the archive, immediately following the magic number. Unlike member headers, symbol tables do use binary integers to represent offsets. These integers are always stored in big-endian format, even on a little endian host such as x86. The archive header (ar_hdr) provides 15 characters for representing the member name. If any member has a name that is longer than this, then the real name is written into a special archive member called the string table, and the member's name field instead contains a slash (/) character followed by a decimal representation of the offset of the real name within the string table. The string table is required to precede all normal archive members, so it will be the second member if the archive contains a symbol table, and the first member otherwise. The archive format is not designed to make finding a given member easy. Such operations move through the archive from front to back examining each member in turn, and run in O(n) time. This would be bad if archives were commonly used in that manner, but in general, they are not. Typically, the ar command is used to build an new archive from scratch, inserting all the objects in one operation, and then the link-editor accesses the members in the archive in constant time by using the offsets provided by the symbol table. Both of these operations are reasonably efficient. However, listing the contents of a large archive with the ar command can be rather slow. Factors That Limit Solaris Archive Size As is often the case, there was more than one limiting factor preventing Solaris archives from growing beyond the 32-bit limits of 2GB (32-bit signed) and 4GB (32-bit unsigned). These limits are listed in the order they are hit as archive size grows, so the earlier ones mask those that follow. The original Solaris archive file format can handle sizes up to 4GB without issue. However, the ar command was delivered as a 32-bit executable that did not use the largefile APIs. As such, the ar command itself could not create a file larger than 2GB. One can solve this by building ar with the largefile APIs which would allow it to reach 4GB, but a simpler and better answer is to deliver a 64-bit ar, which has the ability to scale well past 4GB. Symbol table offsets are stored as 32-bit big-endian binary integers, which limits the maximum archive size to 4GB. To get around this limit requires a different symbol table format, or an extension mechanism to the current one, similar in nature to the way member names longer than 15 characters are handled in member headers. The size field in the archive member header (ar_hdr) is an ASCII string capable of representing a 32-bit unsigned value. This places a 4GB size limit on the size of any individual member in an archive. In considering format extensions to get past these limits, it is important to remember that very few archives will require the ability to scale past 4GB for many years. The old format, while no beauty, continues to be sufficient for its purpose. This argues for a backward compatible fix that allows newer versions of Solaris to produce archives that are compatible with older versions of the system unless the size of the archive exceeds 4GB. Archive Format Differences Among Unix Variants While considering how to extend Solaris archives to scale to 64-bits, I wanted to know how similar archives from other Unix systems are to those produced by Solaris, and whether they had already solved the 64-bit issue. I've successfully moved archives between different Unix systems before with good luck, so I knew that there was some commonality. If it turned out that there was already a viable defacto standard for 64-bit archives, it would obviously be better to adopt that rather than invent something new. The archive file format is not formally standardized. However, the ar command and archive format were part of the original Unix from Bell Labs. Other systems started with that format, extending it in various often incompatible ways, but usually with the same common shared core. Most of these systems use the same magic number to identify their archives, despite the fact that their archives are not always fully compatible with each other. It is often true that archives can be copied between different Unix variants, and if the member names are short enough, the ar command from one system can often read archives produced on another. In practice, it is rare to find an archive containing anything other than objects for a single operating system and machine type. Such an archive is only of use on the type of system that created it, and is only used on that system. This is probably why cross platform compatibility of archives between Unix variants has never been an issue. Otherwise, the use of the same magic number in archives with incompatible formats would be a problem. I was able to find information for a number of Unix variants, described below. These can be divided roughly into three tribes, SVR4 Unix, BSD Unix, and IBM AIX. Solaris is a SVR4 Unix, and its archives are completely compatible with those from the other members of that group (GNU/Linux, HP-UX, and SGI IRIX). AIX AIX is an exception to rule that Unix archive formats are all based on the original Bell labs Unix format. It appears that AIX supports 2 formats (small and big), both of which differ in fundamental ways from other Unix systems: These formats use a different magic number than the standard one used by Solaris and other Unix variants. They include support for removing archive members from a file without reallocating the file, marking dead areas as unused, and reusing them when new archive items are inserted. They have a special table of contents member (File Member Header) which lets you find out everything that's in the archive without having to actually traverse the entire file. Their symbol table members are quite similar to those from other systems though. Their member headers are doubly linked, containing offsets to both the previous and next members. Of the Unix systems described here, AIX has the only format I saw that will have reasonable insert/delete performance for really large archives. Everyone else has O(n) performance, and are going to be slow to use with large archives. BSD BSD has gone through 4 versions of archive format, which are described in their manpage. They use the same member header as SVR4, but their symbol table format is different, and their scheme for long member names puts the name directly after the member header rather than into a string table. GNU/Linux The GNU toolchain uses the SVR4 format, and is compatible with Solaris. HP-UX HP-UX seems to follow the SVR4 model, and is compatible with Solaris. IRIX IRIX has 32 and 64-bit archives. The 32-bit format is the standard SVR4 format, and is compatible with Solaris. The 64-bit format is the same, except that the symbol table uses 64-bit integers. IRIX assumes that an archive contains objects of a single ELFCLASS/MACHINE, and any archive containing ELFCLASS64 objects receives a 64-bit symbol table. Although they only use it for 64-bit objects, nothing in the archive format limits it to ELFCLASS64. It would be perfectly valid to produce a 64-bit symbol table in an archive containing 32-bit objects, text files, or anything else. Tru64 Unix (Digital/Compaq/HP) Tru64 Unix uses a format much like ours, but their symbol table is a hash table, making specific symbol lookup much faster. The Solaris link-editor uses archives by examining the entire symbol table looking for unsatisfied symbols for the link, and not by looking up individual symbols, so there would be no benefit to Solaris from such a hash table. The Tru64 ld must use a different approach in which the hash table pays off for them. Widening the existing SVR4 archive symbol tables rather than inventing something new is the simplest path forward. There is ample precedent for this approach in the ELF world. When ELF was extended to support 64-bit objects, the approach was largely to take the existing data structures, and define 64-bit versions of them. We called the old set ELF32, and the new set ELF64. My guess is that there was no need to widen the archive format at that time, but had there been, it seems obvious that this is how it would have been done. The Implementation of 64-bit Solaris Archives As mentioned earlier, there was no desire to improve the fundamental nature of archives. They have always had O(n) insert/delete behavior, and for the most part it hasn't mattered. AIX made efforts to improve this, but those efforts did not find widespread adoption. For the purposes of link-editing, which is essentially the only thing that archives are used for, the existing format is adequate, and issues of backward compatibility trump the desire to do something technically better. Widening the existing symbol table format to 64-bits is therefore the obvious way to proceed. For Solaris 11, I implemented that, and I also updated the ar command so that a 64-bit version is run by default. This eliminates the 2 most significant limits to archive size, leaving only the limit on an individual archive member. We only generate a 64-bit symbol table if the archive exceeds 4GB, or when the new -S option to the ar command is used. This maximizes backward compatibility, as an archive produced by Solaris 11 is highly likely to be less than 4GB in size, and will therefore employ the same format understood by older versions of the system. The main reason for the existence of the -S option is to allow us to test the 64-bit format without having to construct huge archives to do so. I don't believe it will find much use outside of that. Other than the new ability to create and use extremely large archives, this change is largely invisible to the end user. When reading an archive, the ar command will transparently accept either form of symbol table. Similarly, the ELF library (libelf) has been updated to understand either format. Users of libelf (such as the link-editor ld) do not need to be modified to use the new format, because these changes are encapsulated behind the existing functions provided by libelf. As mentioned above, this work did not lift the limit on the maximum size of an individual archive member. That limit remains fixed at 4GB for now. This is not because we think objects will never get that large, for the history of computing says otherwise. Rather, this is based on an estimation that single relocatable objects of that size will not appear for a decade or two. A lot can change in that time, and it is better not to overengineer things by writing code that will sit and rot for years without being used. It is not too soon however to have a plan for that eventuality. When the time comes when this limit needs to be lifted, I believe that there is a simple solution that is consistent with the existing format. The archive member header size field is an ASCII string, like the name, and as such, the overflow scheme used for long names can also be used to handle the size. The size string would be placed into the archive string table, and its offset in the string table would then be written into the archive header size field using the same format "/ddd" used for overflowed names.

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  • ASPNET WebAPI REST Guidance

    - by JoshReuben
    ASP.NET Web API is an ideal platform for building RESTful applications on the .NET Framework. While I may be more partial to NodeJS these days, there is no denying that WebAPI is a well engineered framework. What follows is my investigation of how to leverage WebAPI to construct a RESTful frontend API.   The Advantages of REST Methodology over SOAP Simpler API for CRUD ops Standardize Development methodology - consistent and intuitive Standards based à client interop Wide industry adoption, Ease of use à easy to add new devs Avoid service method signature blowout Smaller payloads than SOAP Stateless à no session data means multi-tenant scalability Cache-ability Testability   General RESTful API Design Overview · utilize HTTP Protocol - Usage of HTTP methods for CRUD, standard HTTP response codes, common HTTP headers and Mime Types · Resources are mapped to URLs, actions are mapped to verbs and the rest goes in the headers. · keep the API semantic, resource-centric – A RESTful, resource-oriented service exposes a URI for every piece of data the client might want to operate on. A REST-RPC Hybrid exposes a URI for every operation the client might perform: one URI to fetch a piece of data, a different URI to delete that same data. utilize Uri to specify CRUD op, version, language, output format: http://api.MyApp.com/{ver}/{lang}/{resource_type}/{resource_id}.{output_format}?{key&filters} · entity CRUD operations are matched to HTTP methods: · Create - POST / PUT · Read – GET - cacheable · Update – PUT · Delete - DELETE · Use Uris to represent a hierarchies - Resources in RESTful URLs are often chained · Statelessness allows for idempotency – apply an op multiple times without changing the result. POST is non-idempotent, the rest are idempotent (if DELETE flags records instead of deleting them). · Cache indication - Leverage HTTP headers to label cacheable content and indicate the permitted duration of cache · PUT vs POST - The client uses PUT when it determines which URI (Id key) the new resource should have. The client uses POST when the server determines they key. PUT takes a second param – the id. POST creates a new resource. The server assigns the URI for the new object and returns this URI as part of the response message. Note: The PUT method replaces the entire entity. That is, the client is expected to send a complete representation of the updated product. If you want to support partial updates, the PATCH method is preferred DELETE deletes a resource at a specified URI – typically takes an id param · Leverage Common HTTP Response Codes in response headers 200 OK: Success 201 Created - Used on POST request when creating a new resource. 304 Not Modified: no new data to return. 400 Bad Request: Invalid Request. 401 Unauthorized: Authentication. 403 Forbidden: Authorization 404 Not Found – entity does not exist. 406 Not Acceptable – bad params. 409 Conflict - For POST / PUT requests if the resource already exists. 500 Internal Server Error 503 Service Unavailable · Leverage uncommon HTTP Verbs to reduce payload sizes HEAD - retrieves just the resource meta-information. OPTIONS returns the actions supported for the specified resource. PATCH - partial modification of a resource. · When using PUT, POST or PATCH, send the data as a document in the body of the request. Don't use query parameters to alter state. · Utilize Headers for content negotiation, caching, authorization, throttling o Content Negotiation – choose representation (e.g. JSON or XML and version), language & compression. Signal via RequestHeader.Accept & ResponseHeader.Content-Type Accept: application/json;version=1.0 Accept-Language: en-US Accept-Charset: UTF-8 Accept-Encoding: gzip o Caching - ResponseHeader: Expires (absolute expiry time) or Cache-Control (relative expiry time) o Authorization - basic HTTP authentication uses the RequestHeader.Authorization to specify a base64 encoded string "username:password". can be used in combination with SSL/TLS (HTTPS) and leverage OAuth2 3rd party token-claims authorization. Authorization: Basic sQJlaTp5ZWFslylnaNZ= o Rate Limiting - Not currently part of HTTP so specify non-standard headers prefixed with X- in the ResponseHeader. X-RateLimit-Limit: 10000 X-RateLimit-Remaining: 9990 · HATEOAS Methodology - Hypermedia As The Engine Of Application State – leverage API as a state machine where resources are states and the transitions between states are links between resources and are included in their representation (hypermedia) – get API metadata signatures from the response Link header - in a truly REST based architecture any URL, except the initial URL, can be changed, even to other servers, without worrying about the client. · error responses - Do not just send back a 200 OK with every response. Response should consist of HTTP error status code (JQuery has automated support for this), A human readable message , A Link to a meaningful state transition , & the original data payload that was problematic. · the URIs will typically map to a server-side controller and a method name specified by the type of request method. Stuff all your calls into just four methods is not as crazy as it sounds. · Scoping - Path variables look like you’re traversing a hierarchy, and query variables look like you’re passing arguments into an algorithm · Mapping URIs to Controllers - have one controller for each resource is not a rule – can consolidate - route requests to the appropriate controller and action method · Keep URls Consistent - Sometimes it’s tempting to just shorten our URIs. not recommend this as this can cause confusion · Join Naming – for m-m entity relations there may be multiple hierarchy traversal paths · Routing – useful level of indirection for versioning, server backend mocking in development ASPNET WebAPI Considerations ASPNET WebAPI implements a lot (but not all) RESTful API design considerations as part of its infrastructure and via its coding convention. Overview When developing an API there are basically three main steps: 1. Plan out your URIs 2. Setup return values and response codes for your URIs 3. Implement a framework for your API.   Design · Leverage Models MVC folder · Repositories – support IoC for tests, abstraction · Create DTO classes – a level of indirection decouples & allows swap out · Self links can be generated using the UrlHelper · Use IQueryable to support projections across the wire · Models can support restful navigation properties – ICollection<T> · async mechanism for long running ops - return a response with a ticket – the client can then poll or be pushed the final result later. · Design for testability - Test using HttpClient , JQuery ( $.getJSON , $.each) , fiddler, browser debug. Leverage IDependencyResolver – IoC wrapper for mocking · Easy debugging - IE F12 developer tools: Network tab, Request Headers tab     Routing · HTTP request method is matched to the method name. (This rule applies only to GET, POST, PUT, and DELETE requests.) · {id}, if present, is matched to a method parameter named id. · Query parameters are matched to parameter names when possible · Done in config via Routes.MapHttpRoute – similar to MVC routing · Can alternatively: o decorate controller action methods with HttpDelete, HttpGet, HttpHead,HttpOptions, HttpPatch, HttpPost, or HttpPut., + the ActionAttribute o use AcceptVerbsAttribute to support other HTTP verbs: e.g. PATCH, HEAD o use NonActionAttribute to prevent a method from getting invoked as an action · route table Uris can support placeholders (via curly braces{}) – these can support default values and constraints, and optional values · The framework selects the first route in the route table that matches the URI. Response customization · Response code: By default, the Web API framework sets the response status code to 200 (OK). But according to the HTTP/1.1 protocol, when a POST request results in the creation of a resource, the server should reply with status 201 (Created). Non Get methods should return HttpResponseMessage · Location: When the server creates a resource, it should include the URI of the new resource in the Location header of the response. public HttpResponseMessage PostProduct(Product item) {     item = repository.Add(item);     var response = Request.CreateResponse<Product>(HttpStatusCode.Created, item);     string uri = Url.Link("DefaultApi", new { id = item.Id });     response.Headers.Location = new Uri(uri);     return response; } Validation · Decorate Models / DTOs with System.ComponentModel.DataAnnotations properties RequiredAttribute, RangeAttribute. · Check payloads using ModelState.IsValid · Under posting – leave out values in JSON payload à JSON formatter assigns a default value. Use with RequiredAttribute · Over-posting - if model has RO properties à use DTO instead of model · Can hook into pipeline by deriving from ActionFilterAttribute & overriding OnActionExecuting Config · Done in App_Start folder > WebApiConfig.cs – static Register method: HttpConfiguration param: The HttpConfiguration object contains the following members. Member Description DependencyResolver Enables dependency injection for controllers. Filters Action filters – e.g. exception filters. Formatters Media-type formatters. by default contains JsonFormatter, XmlFormatter IncludeErrorDetailPolicy Specifies whether the server should include error details, such as exception messages and stack traces, in HTTP response messages. Initializer A function that performs final initialization of the HttpConfiguration. MessageHandlers HTTP message handlers - plug into pipeline ParameterBindingRules A collection of rules for binding parameters on controller actions. Properties A generic property bag. Routes The collection of routes. Services The collection of services. · Configure JsonFormatter for circular references to support links: PreserveReferencesHandling.Objects Documentation generation · create a help page for a web API, by using the ApiExplorer class. · The ApiExplorer class provides descriptive information about the APIs exposed by a web API as an ApiDescription collection · create the help page as an MVC view public ILookup<string, ApiDescription> GetApis()         {             return _explorer.ApiDescriptions.ToLookup(                 api => api.ActionDescriptor.ControllerDescriptor.ControllerName); · provide documentation for your APIs by implementing the IDocumentationProvider interface. Documentation strings can come from any source that you like – e.g. extract XML comments or define custom attributes to apply to the controller [ApiDoc("Gets a product by ID.")] [ApiParameterDoc("id", "The ID of the product.")] public HttpResponseMessage Get(int id) · GlobalConfiguration.Configuration.Services – add the documentation Provider · To hide an API from the ApiExplorer, add the ApiExplorerSettingsAttribute Plugging into the Message Handler pipeline · Plug into request / response pipeline – derive from DelegatingHandler and override theSendAsync method – e.g. for logging error codes, adding a custom response header · Can be applied globally or to a specific route Exception Handling · Throw HttpResponseException on method failures – specify HttpStatusCode enum value – examine this enum, as its values map well to typical op problems · Exception filters – derive from ExceptionFilterAttribute & override OnException. Apply on Controller or action methods, or add to global HttpConfiguration.Filters collection · HttpError object provides a consistent way to return error information in the HttpResponseException response body. · For model validation, you can pass the model state to CreateErrorResponse, to include the validation errors in the response public HttpResponseMessage PostProduct(Product item) {     if (!ModelState.IsValid)     {         return Request.CreateErrorResponse(HttpStatusCode.BadRequest, ModelState); Cookie Management · Cookie header in request and Set-Cookie headers in a response - Collection of CookieState objects · Specify Expiry, max-age resp.Headers.AddCookies(new CookieHeaderValue[] { cookie }); Internet Media Types, formatters and serialization · Defaults to application/json · Request Accept header and response Content-Type header · determines how Web API serializes and deserializes the HTTP message body. There is built-in support for XML, JSON, and form-urlencoded data · customizable formatters can be inserted into the pipeline · POCO serialization is opt out via JsonIgnoreAttribute, or use DataMemberAttribute for optin · JSON serializer leverages NewtonSoft Json.NET · loosely structured JSON objects are serialzed as JObject which derives from Dynamic · to handle circular references in json: json.SerializerSettings.PreserveReferencesHandling =    PreserveReferencesHandling.All à {"$ref":"1"}. · To preserve object references in XML [DataContract(IsReference=true)] · Content negotiation Accept: Which media types are acceptable for the response, such as “application/json,” “application/xml,” or a custom media type such as "application/vnd.example+xml" Accept-Charset: Which character sets are acceptable, such as UTF-8 or ISO 8859-1. Accept-Encoding: Which content encodings are acceptable, such as gzip. Accept-Language: The preferred natural language, such as “en-us”. o Web API uses the Accept and Accept-Charset headers. (At this time, there is no built-in support for Accept-Encoding or Accept-Language.) · Controller methods can take JSON representations of DTOs as params – auto-deserialization · Typical JQuery GET request: function find() {     var id = $('#prodId').val();     $.getJSON("api/products/" + id,         function (data) {             var str = data.Name + ': $' + data.Price;             $('#product').text(str);         })     .fail(         function (jqXHR, textStatus, err) {             $('#product').text('Error: ' + err);         }); }            · Typical GET response: HTTP/1.1 200 OK Server: ASP.NET Development Server/10.0.0.0 Date: Mon, 18 Jun 2012 04:30:33 GMT X-AspNet-Version: 4.0.30319 Cache-Control: no-cache Pragma: no-cache Expires: -1 Content-Type: application/json; charset=utf-8 Content-Length: 175 Connection: Close [{"Id":1,"Name":"TomatoSoup","Price":1.39,"ActualCost":0.99},{"Id":2,"Name":"Hammer", "Price":16.99,"ActualCost":10.00},{"Id":3,"Name":"Yo yo","Price":6.99,"ActualCost": 2.05}] True OData support · Leverage Query Options $filter, $orderby, $top and $skip to shape the results of controller actions annotated with the [Queryable]attribute. [Queryable]  public IQueryable<Supplier> GetSuppliers()  · Query: ~/Suppliers?$filter=Name eq ‘Microsoft’ · Applies the following selection filter on the server: GetSuppliers().Where(s => s.Name == “Microsoft”)  · Will pass the result to the formatter. · true support for the OData format is still limited - no support for creates, updates, deletes, $metadata and code generation etc · vnext: ability to configure how EditLinks, SelfLinks and Ids are generated Self Hosting no dependency on ASPNET or IIS: using (var server = new HttpSelfHostServer(config)) {     server.OpenAsync().Wait(); Tracing · tracability tools, metrics – e.g. send to nagios · use your choice of tracing/logging library, whether that is ETW,NLog, log4net, or simply System.Diagnostics.Trace. · To collect traces, implement the ITraceWriter interface public class SimpleTracer : ITraceWriter {     public void Trace(HttpRequestMessage request, string category, TraceLevel level,         Action<TraceRecord> traceAction)     {         TraceRecord rec = new TraceRecord(request, category, level);         traceAction(rec);         WriteTrace(rec); · register the service with config · programmatically trace – has helper extension methods: Configuration.Services.GetTraceWriter().Info( · Performance tracing - pipeline writes traces at the beginning and end of an operation - TraceRecord class includes aTimeStamp property, Kind property set to TraceKind.Begin / End Security · Roles class methods: RoleExists, AddUserToRole · WebSecurity class methods: UserExists, .CreateUserAndAccount · Request.IsAuthenticated · Leverage HTTP 401 (Unauthorized) response · [AuthorizeAttribute(Roles="Administrator")] – can be applied to Controller or its action methods · See section in WebApi document on "Claim-based-security for ASP.NET Web APIs using DotNetOpenAuth" – adapt this to STS.--> Web API Host exposes secured Web APIs which can only be accessed by presenting a valid token issued by the trusted issuer. http://zamd.net/2012/05/04/claim-based-security-for-asp-net-web-apis-using-dotnetopenauth/ · Use MVC membership provider infrastructure and add a DelegatingHandler child class to the WebAPI pipeline - http://stackoverflow.com/questions/11535075/asp-net-mvc-4-web-api-authentication-with-membership-provider - this will perform the login actions · Then use AuthorizeAttribute on controllers and methods for role mapping- http://sixgun.wordpress.com/2012/02/29/asp-net-web-api-basic-authentication/ · Alternate option here is to rely on MVC App : http://forums.asp.net/t/1831767.aspx/1

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  • CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, November 24, 2011

    CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, November 24, 2011Popular ReleasesASP.NET Comet Ajax Library (Reverse Ajax - Server Push): ASP.NET Reverse Ajax Samples: Chat, MVC Razor, DesktopClient, Reverse Ajax for VB.NET and C#Windows Azure SDK for PHP: Windows Azure SDK for PHP v4.0.5: INSTALLATION Windows Azure SDK for PHP requires no special installation steps. Simply download the SDK, extract it to the folder you would like to keep it in, and add the library directory to your PHP include_path. INSTALLATION VIA PEAR Maarten Balliauw provides an unofficial PEAR channel via http://www.pearplex.net. Here's how to use it: New installation: pear channel-discover pear.pearplex.net pear install pearplex/PHPAzure Or if you've already installed PHPAzure before: pear upgrade p...Anno 2070 Assistant: Beta v1.0 (STABLE): Anno 2070 Assistant Beta v1.0 Released! Features Included: Complete Building Layouts for Ecos, Tycoons & Techs Complete Production Chains for Ecos, Tycoons & Techs Completed Credits Screen Known Issues: Not all production chains and building layouts may be on the lists because they have not yet been discovered. However, data is still 99.9% complete. Currently the Supply & Demand, including Calculator screen are disabled until version 1.1.Minemapper: Minemapper v0.1.7: Including updated Minecraft Biome Extractor and mcmap to support the new Minecraft 1.0.0 release (new block types, etc).Metro Pandora: Metro Pandora SDK V1: For more information on this release please see Metro Pandora SDK Introduction. Supported platforms: Windows Phone 7 / Silverlight Windows 8 .Net 4.0, WPF, WinformsVisual Leak Detector for Visual C++ 2008/2010: v2.2.1: Enhancements: * strdup and _wcsdup functions support added. * Preliminary support for VS 11 added. Bugs Fixed: * Low performance after upgrading from VLD v2.1. * Memory leaks with static linking fixed (disabled calloc support). * Runtime error R6002 fixed because of wrong memory dump format. * version.h fixed in installer. * Some PVS studio warning fixed.NetSqlAzMan - .NET SQL Authorization Manager: 3.6.0.10: 3.6.0.10 22-Nov-2011 Update: Removed PreEmptive Platform integration (PreEmptive analytics) Removed all PreEmptive attributes Removed PreEmptive.dll assembly references from all projects Added first support to ADAM/AD LDS Thanks to PatBea. Work Item 9775: http://netsqlazman.codeplex.com/workitem/9775Developer Team Article System Management: DTASM v1.3: ?? ??? ???? 3 ????? ???? ???? ????? ??? : - ????? ?????? ????? ???? ?? ??? ???? ????? ?? ??? ? ?? ???? ?????? ???? ?? ???? ????? ?? . - ??? ?? ???? ????? ???? ????? ???? ???? ?? ????? , ?????? ????? ????? ?? ??? . - ??? ??????? ??? ??? ???? ?? ????? ????? ????? .VideoLan DotNet for WinForm, WPF & Silverlight 5: VideoLan DotNet for WinForm, WPF, SL5 - 2011.11.22: The new version contains Silverlight 5 library: Vlc.DotNet.Silverlight. A sample could be tested here The new version add and correct many features : Correction : Reinitialize some variables Deprecate : Logging API, since VLC 1.2 (08/20/2011) Add subitem in LocationMedia (for Youtube videos, ...) Update Wpf sample to use Youtube videos Many others correctionsSharePoint 2010 FBA Pack: SharePoint 2010 FBA Pack 1.2.0: Web parts are now fully customizable via html templates (Issue #323) FBA Pack is now completely localizable using resource files. Thank you David Chen for submitting the code as well as Chinese translations of the FBA Pack! The membership request web part now gives the option of having the user enter the password and removing the captcha (Issue # 447) The FBA Pack will now work in a zone that does not have FBA enabled (Another zone must have FBA enabled, and the zone must contain the me...SharePoint 2010 Education Demo Project: Release SharePoint SP1 for Education Solutions: This release includes updates to the Content Packs for SharePoint SP1. All Content Packs have been updated to install successfully under SharePoint SP1SQL Monitor - managing sql server performance: SQLMon 4.1 alpha 6: 1. improved support for schema 2. added find reference when right click on object list 3. added object rename supportBugNET Issue Tracker: BugNET 0.9.126: First stable release of version 0.9. Upgrades from 0.8 are fully supported and upgrades to future releases will also be supported. This release is now compiled against the .NET 4.0 framework and is a requirement. Because of this the web.config has significantly changed. After upgrading, you will need to configure the authentication settings for user registration and anonymous access again. Please see our installation / upgrade instructions for more details: http://wiki.bugnetproject.c...Free SharePoint 2010 Sites Templates: SharePoint Server 2010 Sites Templates: here is the list of sites templates to be downloadedVsTortoise - a TortoiseSVN add-in for Microsoft Visual Studio: VsTortoise Build 30 Beta: Note: This release does not work with custom VsTortoise toolbars. These get removed every time when you shutdown Visual Studio. (#7940) Build 30 (beta)New: Support for TortoiseSVN 1.7 added. (the download contains both setups, for TortoiseSVN 1.6 and 1.7) New: OpenModifiedDocumentDialog displays conflicted files now. New: OpenModifiedDocument allows to group items by changelist now. Fix: OpenModifiedDocumentDialog caused Visual Studio 2010 to freeze sometimes. Fix: The installer didn...nopCommerce. Open source shopping cart (ASP.NET MVC): nopcommerce 2.30: Highlight features & improvements: • Performance optimization. • Back in stock notifications. • Product special price support. • Catalog mode (based on customer role) To see the full list of fixes and changes please visit the release notes page (http://www.nopCommerce.com/releasenotes.aspx).WPF Converters: WPF Converters V1.2.0.0: support for enumerations, value types, and reference types in the expression converter's equality operators the expression converter now handles DependencyProperty.UnsetValue as argument values correctly (#4062) StyleCop conformance (more or less)Json.NET: Json.NET 4.0 Release 4: Change - JsonTextReader.Culture is now CultureInfo.InvariantCulture by default Change - KeyValurPairConverter no longer cares about the order of the key and value properties Change - Time zone conversions now use new TimeZoneInfo instead of TimeZone Fix - Fixed boolean values sometimes being capitalized when converting to XML Fix - Fixed error when deserializing ConcurrentDictionary Fix - Fixed serializing some Uris returning the incorrect value Fix - Fixed occasional error when...Media Companion: MC 3.423b Weekly: Ensure .NET 4.0 Full Framework is installed. (Available from http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=17718) Ensure the NFO ID fix is applied when transitioning from versions prior to 3.416b. (Details here) Replaced 'Rebuild' with 'Refresh' throughout entire code. Rebuild will now be known as Refresh. mc_com.exe has been fully updated TV Show Resolutions... Resolved issue #206 - having to hit save twice when updating runtime manually Shrunk cache size and lowered loading times f...ASP.net Awesome jQuery Ajax Controls Samples and Tutorials: 1.0 samples: Demos and Tutorials for ASP.net Awesome VS2008 are in .NET 3.5 VS2010 are in .NET 4.0 (demos for the ASP.net Awesome jQuery Ajax Controls)New Projects"My" Search SharePoint 2010 WebParts: Solution consists of two SharePoint 2010 web parts inheriting from core results web part. The "My Core Search Results" webpart and the "Sortable Results" web part.Alerta Mensagens: Projeto de alerta de mensagens.Analyzer GT3000: VU MIF PS1 "Utopine Amnezija" PSI projektasAutoReservation: Miniprojekt an der HSR im Fach MsTechContestMeter: Program for measuring participant scores in programming contests.CountriesWFA: oby ostatniDotNet.Framework.Common: <DotNet.Framework.Common> ASP.NET?????? Esaan Windows Phone 7 Application Compitition: Resource for Esaan Windows Phone 7 Application Excel add-in to enable users View Azure Storage Tables: An Excel 2007 add-in using Azure Storage REST APIs (no Azure libraries required) and Excel custom task pane. Uses of such Office 2007 add-in: 1. Read data from Azure storage, populate that in excel and use it by sorting (not directly available in Azure storage) and so on. 2. Write Sorted data back (in sorted order) back to Azure storage. 3. Have data used frequently (such as dictionary of legal terms, or math formulae, and so on) on Azure storage and let your Office Excel users use th...fastconv: fastconv, a fast charset encoding convertor.gaosu: this is a gaosu projectGems: Gossip-enabled monitoring system.GridIT: GridIT is a Puzzle written in Visual Basic.Habanero Faces: A set of user interface libraries for use with Habanero Core used to build Windows Forms or Visual WebGUI user interfaces for your business objects. HomeSite: HomeSiteHTML to docx Converter: This converts HTML into Word documents (docx format). The code is written in PHP and works with PHPWord.Image Curator: image curation programjLemon: jLemon is an LALR(1) parser generator. Lemon is similar to the much more famous programs "YACC", "BISON" and "LEMON". jLemon is a pure Java program and compatible with "LEMON".jngsoftware: JNG Computer ServicesKinectoid: Kinectoid is a Kinect based pong game based on Neat Game Engine.Linq Accelerator: coming soon!Linq to SSRS (SQL Server Reporting Services): Linq to SSRS allows you as developer generate objects and map them to the repots on SQL Server Reporting Services in linq to sql fashion using lambda expressions and linq notation.MicroBitmap - Image Compressor: MicroBitmap is a image compressor which is different from all other compressors This compressor is focussed at compressing the bitmap and making it so small as possible so fast as possible You can find more information in the source codeOMX_AL_test_environment: OMX application layer simulation/testing environmentShuriken Plugins: Shuriken Plugins is a project for developing plugins for Shuriken, the free launcher app on Windows. Simple Command Line Backup Tool: Simple Command Line Backup Tool automates the backup of files from the command line for use in batch files. Includes file type filters/ recursive/non recursive and number days to keep backups for. Right now this is simply a quick app I created for a client of mine that needed a simple backup utility to go with a product I delivered. .NET 2.0 C# Console Application Hopefully this will morph into a useful utility with features not common in other command line backup utilities.SomethingSpacial: Initially designed via Interact Designer Ariel (http://www.facingblend.com/) Something Spacial as a design was used to help give some look and feel for the Silverlight User Group Starter Kit and then finally used as part of the Seattle Silverlight User Group Community Site.SqlServer Packer: SqlServer???????????????????,?????????。TVDBMetaData: Construct TV Series and Episode XML metadata from TheTvDB database.Ukázkové projekty: Obsahuje ukázkové projekty uživatele TenCoKaciStromy.Uzing Inklude: UI = Uzing + Inklude Uzing : Utility classes for .Net written in C# Inklude : Utility classes written in native C++ It supports very low level communications, but in very simple way. Current Capability - TCP, UDP, Thread in C# & C++ - String in C++ - Shared memory in C# - Communication between C# and C++ via shared memory Dependency: - TBB (http://threadingbuildingblocks.org/) - Boost (http://www.boost.org/) Even though it depends on such heavy libs, end developer does...Visual Studio Project Converter: This project is inspired by the original source code provided by Emmet Gray to convert Visual Studio solution and project files from one version to another (both backwards and forwards). This project has been converted to C# and updated to support new features.WarrantyPrint: WarrantyPrintWordPress???? on Windows Azure: WordPress?????Windows Azure Platform????????。 ???????SQL Azure??????。WPFResumeVideo: Play video on any computer, and resume where you left offWyvern's Depot: Personal code repository.

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  • CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, August 21, 2012

    CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, August 21, 2012Popular ReleasesResX Resource Manager: 1.0.0.1 Visual Studio Extension: Fix: truncated version in VSIX manifest leads to permanent update notifications.MFCMAPI: August 2012 Release: Build: 15.0.0.1035 Full release notes at SGriffin's blog. If you just want to run the MFCMAPI or MrMAPI, get the executables. If you want to debug them, get the symbol files and the source. The 64 bit builds will only work on a machine with Outlook 2010 64 bit installed. All other machines should use the 32 bit builds, regardless of the operating system. Facebook BadgeDocument.Editor: 2013.2: Whats new for Document.Editor 2013.2: New save as Html document Improved Traslate support Minor Bug Fix's, improvements and speed upsSharePoint Dynamic Forms: Version 1.0: Version 1.0 of SharePoint Dynamic Forms Includes 1. List Based Rendering 2. Template Based Rendering 2.1 Supports extensive field validation types including String, Date, Comparison, Content Length, regex etc. 2.2 Support for cross field comparison validation. 2.3 Data entry option for a user who doesn’t have write permission to a list. 2.4 Option to extend the web part by overriding form submission event. 2.5 Option to cancel the form submission and provide custom notification message. 2.6 ...Pulse: Pulse Beta 5: Whats new in this release? Well to start with we now have Wallbase.cc Authentication! so you can access favorites or NSFW. This version requires .NET 4.0, you probably already have it, but if you don't it's a free and easy download from Microsoft. Pulse can bet set to start on Windows startup now too. The Wallpaper setter has settings now, so you can change the background color of the desktop and the Picture Position (Tile/Center/Fill/etc...) I've switched to Windows Forms instead of WPF...HydroDesktop - CUAHSI Hydrologic Information System Desktop Application: 1.5.5 Experimental Release: This is HydroDesktop 1.5.5 Experimental Release We are targeting for a 1.5 Stable Release in August 2012. This experimental version has been published for testing. New Features in 1.5 Time Series Data Import Improved performance of table, graph and edit views Support for online sample project packages (sharing data and analyses) More detailed display of time series metadata Improved extension manager (uninstall extensions, choose extension source) Improved attribute table editor (supports fi...Metro Paint: Metro Paint: Download it now , don't forget to give feedback to me at maitreyavyas@live.com or at my facebook page fb.com/maitreyavyas , Hope you enjoy it.MiniTwitter: 1.80: MiniTwitter 1.80 ???? ?? .NET Framework 4.5 ?????? ?? .NET Framework 4.5 ????????????? "&" ??????????????????? ???????????????????????? 2 ??????????? ReTweet ?????????????????、In reply to ?????????????? URL ???????????? ??????????????????????????????Droid Explorer: Droid Explorer 0.8.8.6 Beta: Device images are now pulled from DroidExplorer Cloud Service refined some issues with the usage statistics Added a method to get the first available value from a list of property names DroidExplorer.Configuration no longer depends on DroidExplorer.Core.UI (it is actually the other way now) fix to the bootstraper to only try to delete the SDK if it is a "local" sdk, not an existing. no longer support the "local" sdk, you must now select an existing SDK checks for sdk if it was ins...Path Copy Copy: 11.0.1: Bugfix release that corrects the following issue: 11365 If you are using Path Copy Copy in a network environment and use the UNC path commands, it is recommended that you upgrade to this version.ExtAspNet: ExtAspNet v3.1.9: +2012-08-18 v3.1.9 -??other/addtab.aspx???JS???BoundField??Tooltip???(Dennis_Liu)。 +??Window?GetShowReference???????????????(︶????、????、???、??~)。 -?????JavaScript?????,??????HTML????????。 -??HtmlNodeBuilder????????????????JavaScript??。 -??????WindowField、LinkButton、HyperLink????????????????????????????。 -???????????grid/griddynamiccolumns2.aspx(?????)。 -?????Type??Reset?????,??????????????????(e??)。 -?????????????????????。 -?????????int,short,double??????????(???)。 +?Window????Ge...AcDown????? - AcDown Downloader Framework: AcDown????? v4.0.1: ?? ●AcDown??????????、??、??????。????,????,?????????????????????????。???????????Acfun、????(Bilibili)、??、??、YouTube、??、???、??????、SF????、????????????。 ●??????AcPlay?????,??????、????????????????。 ● AcDown??????????????????,????????????????????????????。 ● AcDown???????C#??,????.NET Framework 2.0??。?????"Acfun?????"。 ????32??64? Windows XP/Vista/7/8 ??:????????Windows XP???,?????????.NET Framework 2.0???(x86),?????"?????????"??? ??????????????,??????????: ??"AcDown?????"????????? ...Fluent Validation for .NET: 3.4: Changes since 3.3: Make ValidationResut.IsValid virtual Add private no-arg ctor to ValidationFailure to help with serialization Add Turkish error messages Work-around for reflection bug in .NET 4.5 that caused VerificationExceptions Assemblies are now unsigned to ease with versioning/upgrades (especially where other frameworks depend on FV) (Note if you need signed assemblies then you can use the following NuGet packages: FluentValidation-signed, FluentValidation.MVC3-signed, FluentV...DotNetNuke® Feedback: 06.02.01: Official Release - 17th August 2012 Please look at the Release Notes file included in the module packages or available on this page as a separate download for a listing of the bug fixes and enhancements found in this version. NOTE: Feedback v 06.02.00 REQUIRES a minimum DotNetNuke framework version of 06.02.00 as well as ASP.Net 3.5 SP1 and MS SQL Server 2005 or 2008 (Express or standard versions). This release brings some enhancements to the module as well as fixing all known bugs. Bug Fi...AssaultCube Reloaded: 2.5.3 Unnamed Fixed: If you are using deltas, download 2.5.2 first, then overwrite with the delta packages. Linux has Ubuntu 11.10 32-bit precompiled binaries and Ubuntu 10.10 64-bit precompiled binaries, but you can compile your own as it also contains the source. If you are using Mac or other operating systems, please wait while we try to package for those OSes. Try to compile it. If it fails, download a virtual machine. The server pack is ready for both Windows and Linux, but you might need to compile your ...Coding4Fun Tools: Coding4Fun.Phone.Toolkit v1.6.1: Bug Fix release Bug Fixes Better support for transparent images IsFrozen respected if not bound to corrected deadlock stateWPF Application Framework (WAF): WPF Application Framework (WAF) 2.5.0.7: Version: 2.5.0.7 (Milestone 7): This release contains the source code of the WPF Application Framework (WAF) and the sample applications. Requirements .NET Framework 4.0 (The package contains a solution file for Visual Studio 2010) The unit test projects require Visual Studio 2010 Professional Changelog Legend: [B] Breaking change; [O] Marked member as obsolete WAF: Add CollectionHelper.GetNextElementOrDefault method. InfoMan: Support creating a new email and saving it in the Send b...myCollections: Version 2.2.3.0: New in this version : Added setup package. Added Amazon Spain for Apps, Books, Games, Movie, Music, Nds and Tvshow. Added TVDB Spain for Tvshow. Added TMDB Spain for Movies. Added Auto rename files from title. Added more filters when adding files (vob,mpls,ifo...) Improve Books author and Music Artist Credits. Rewrite find duplicates for better performance. You can now add Custom link to items. You can now add type directly from the type list using right mouse button. Bug ...Player Framework by Microsoft: Player Framework for Windows 8 Preview 5 (Refresh): Support for Windows 8 and Visual Studio RTM Support for Smooth Streaming SDK beta 2 Support for live playback New bitrate meter and SD/HD indicators Auto smooth streaming track restriction for snapped mode to conserve bandwidth New "Go Live" button and SeekToLive API Support for offset start times Support for Live position unique from end time Support for multiple audio streams (smooth and progressive content) Improved intellisense in JS version NEW TO PREVIEW 5 REFRESH:Req...TFS Workbench: TFS Workbench v2.2.0.10: Compiled installers for TFS Workbench 2.2.0.10 Bug Fix Fixed bug that stopped the change workspace action from working.New ProjectsAdaptive modeling interface: Ami will be a framework to simplify scientific model development. Keywords: Modeling, C#AlphaDogDemo: A simple XNA gameDnf: Dnf??eProjectSem3: beginFluentGUI: A Silverlight library that enables composition of a type safe Graphical User Interface.Frontrader-IB: Financial test applicationHART Analyzer: HART Analyzer is a tool to monitor the HART protocol between field devices and your PC. It used Hart Communication Protocol Lite for the communication.Hybrid.Net - Light-weight GPU Computing for .NET: Hybrid.Net enables .NET developers to harness the power of GPUs for data- and compute-intense applications using the simple well-known construct: Parallel.ForLoggerz- A .Net Error Logging framework: A new and hopefully exciting error logging framework that will integrate nicely into any windows/web application. MakersEngine: World of Warcraft Emulator Compiling SoftwareMetro Paint: This is Metro Paint app which is a modern ui app for Windows 8 . To test it in your system you will need Visual Studio Express for Windows 8. Hope you love it.mojomo, a modular design framework for mojoPortal CMS: Mojomo is a modular, front end design framework for mojoPortal CMS. My CSharp reminders: Several simple code examples in C #, used as reminders for my future development in C #.MYCoding Codes: anyone can tell me about this?MyExample: testMyGit: my git source libraryNWebsec: NWebsec is a security library for ASP.NET applications. It's built on the philosophy that security should be simple and maintainable.Private cloud DMS: Cloud document management system with workflow support. Free essential version is destined for small companies or any user groups.proEx: just a testQuantoSharp: A Financial Quant library implemented in C# completely to showcase the power of mathematics and its application, aimed for educational purposes only.SharePoint SlideShow: Sharepoint SlideShow customizable webpart in sharepoint 2010. Slideshow from SP 2010 picture library using jquery. Please leave comments about the project.Tool army building for battle: Helper application to build army list for Warhammer BattleWinRT XAML Calendar: WinRT XAML Calendar control ported from the Silverlight Toolkit's Calendar control for Silverlight 4.????: ????? ??? ???? ??? ?????? ?????. ???? so.cl? ???? API? ???? ????? ????! ? ????? ???? ???? ????. ???? ????!..

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  • Connecting SceneBuilder edited FXML to Java code

    - by daniel
    Recently I had to answer several questions regarding how to connect an UI built with the JavaFX SceneBuilder 1.0 Developer Preview to Java Code. So I figured out that a short overview might be helpful. But first, let me state the obvious. What is FXML? To make it short, FXML is an XML based declaration format for JavaFX. JavaFX provides an FXML loader which will parse FXML files and from that construct a graph of Java object. It may sound complex when stated like that but it is actually quite simple. Here is an example of FXML file, which instantiate a StackPane and puts a Button inside it: -- <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <?import java.lang.*?> <?import java.util.*?> <?import javafx.scene.control.*?> <?import javafx.scene.layout.*?> <?import javafx.scene.paint.*?> <StackPane prefHeight="150.0" prefWidth="200.0" xmlns:fx="http://javafx.com/fxml"> <children> <Button mnemonicParsing="false" text="Button" /> </children> </StackPane> ... and here is the code I would have had to write if I had chosen to do the same thing programatically: import javafx.scene.control.*; import javafx.scene.layout.*; ... final Button button = new Button("Button"); button.setMnemonicParsing(false); final StackPane stackPane = new StackPane(); stackPane.setPrefWidth(200.0); stackPane.setPrefHeight(150.0); stacPane.getChildren().add(button); As you can see - FXML is rather simple to understand - as it is quite close to the JavaFX API. So OK FXML is simple, but why would I use it?Well, there are several answers to that - but my own favorite is: because you can make it with SceneBuilder. What is SceneBuilder? In short SceneBuilder is a layout tool that will let you graphically build JavaFX user interfaces by dragging and dropping JavaFX components from a library, and save it as an FXML file. SceneBuilder can also be used to load and modify JavaFX scenegraphs declared in FXML. Here is how I made the small FXML file above: Start the JavaFX SceneBuilder 1.0 Developer Preview In the Library on the left hand side, click on 'StackPane' and drag it on the content view (the white rectangle) In the Library, select a Button and drag it onto the StackPane on the content view. In the Hierarchy Panel on the left hand side - select the StackPane component, then invoke 'Edit > Trim To Selected' from the menubar That's it - you can now save, and you will obtain the small FXML file shown above. Of course this is only a trivial sample, made for the sake of the example - and SceneBuilder will let you create much more complex UIs. So, I have now an FXML file. But what do I do with it? How do I include it in my program? How do I write my main class? Loading an FXML file with JavaFX Well, that's the easy part - because the piece of code you need to write never changes. You can download and look at the SceneBuilder samples if you need to get convinced, but here is the short version: Create a Java class (let's call it 'Main.java') which extends javafx.application.Application In the same directory copy/save the FXML file you just created using SceneBuilder. Let's name it "simple.fxml" Now here is the Java code for the Main class, which simply loads the FXML file and puts it as root in a stage's scene. /* * Copyright (c) 2012, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. */ package simple; import java.util.logging.Level; import java.util.logging.Logger; import javafx.application.Application; import javafx.fxml.FXMLLoader; import javafx.scene.Scene; import javafx.scene.layout.StackPane; import javafx.stage.Stage; public class Main extends Application { /** * @param args the command line arguments */ public static void main(String[] args) { Application.launch(Main.class, (java.lang.String[])null); } @Override public void start(Stage primaryStage) { try { StackPane page = (StackPane) FXMLLoader.load(Main.class.getResource("simple.fxml")); Scene scene = new Scene(page); primaryStage.setScene(scene); primaryStage.setTitle("FXML is Simple"); primaryStage.show(); } catch (Exception ex) { Logger.getLogger(Main.class.getName()).log(Level.SEVERE, null, ex); } } } Great! Now I only have to use my favorite IDE to compile the class and run it. But... wait... what does it do? Well nothing. It just displays a button in the middle of a window. There's no logic attached to it. So how do we do that? How can I connect this button to my application logic? Here is how: Connection to code First let's define our application logic. Since this post is only intended to give a very brief overview - let's keep things simple. Let's say that the only thing I want to do is print a message on System.out when the user clicks on my button. To do that, I'll need to register an action handler with my button. And to do that, I'll need to somehow get a handle on my button. I'll need some kind of controller logic that will get my button and add my action handler to it. So how do I get a handle to my button and pass it to my controller? Once again - this is easy: I just need to write a controller class for my FXML. With each FXML file, it is possible to associate a controller class defined for that FXML. That controller class will make the link between the UI (the objects defined in the FXML) and the application logic. To each object defined in FXML we can associate an fx:id. The value of the id must be unique within the scope of the FXML, and is the name of an instance variable inside the controller class, in which the object will be injected. Since I want to have access to my button, I will need to add an fx:id to my button in FXML, and declare an @FXML variable in my controller class with the same name. In other words - I will need to add fx:id="myButton" to my button in FXML: -- <Button fx:id="myButton" mnemonicParsing="false" text="Button" /> and declare @FXML private Button myButton in my controller class @FXML private Button myButton; // value will be injected by the FXMLLoader Let's see how to do this. Add an fx:id to the Button object Load "simple.fxml" in SceneBuilder - if not already done In the hierarchy panel (bottom left), or directly on the content view, select the Button object. Open the Properties sections of the inspector (right panel) for the button object At the top of the section, you will see a text field labelled fx:id. Enter myButton in that field and validate. Associate a controller class with the FXML file Still in SceneBuilder, select the top root object (in our case, that's the StackPane), and open the Code section of the inspector (right hand side) At the top of the section you should see a text field labelled Controller Class. In the field, type simple.SimpleController. This is the name of the class we're going to create manually. If you save at this point, the FXML will look like this: -- <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <?import java.lang.*?> <?import java.util.*?> <?import javafx.scene.control.*?> <?import javafx.scene.layout.*?> <?import javafx.scene.paint.*?> <StackPane prefHeight="150.0" prefWidth="200.0" xmlns:fx="http://javafx.com/fxml" fx:controller="simple.SimpleController"> <children> <Button fx:id="myButton" mnemonicParsing="false" text="Button" /> </children> </StackPane> As you can see, the name of the controller class has been added to the root object: fx:controller="simple.SimpleController" Coding the controller class In your favorite IDE, create an empty SimpleController.java class. Now what does a controller class looks like? What should we put inside? Well - SceneBuilder will help you there: it will show you an example of controller skeleton tailored for your FXML. In the menu bar, invoke View > Show Sample Controller Skeleton. A popup appears, displaying a suggestion for the controller skeleton: copy the code displayed there, and paste it into your SimpleController.java: /** * Sample Skeleton for "simple.fxml" Controller Class * Use copy/paste to copy paste this code into your favorite IDE **/ package simple; import java.net.URL; import java.util.ResourceBundle; import javafx.fxml.FXML; import javafx.fxml.Initializable; import javafx.scene.control.Button; public class SimpleController implements Initializable { @FXML // fx:id="myButton" private Button myButton; // Value injected by FXMLLoader @Override // This method is called by the FXMLLoader when initialization is complete public void initialize(URL fxmlFileLocation, ResourceBundle resources) { assert myButton != null : "fx:id=\"myButton\" was not injected: check your FXML file 'simple.fxml'."; // initialize your logic here: all @FXML variables will have been injected } } Note that the code displayed by SceneBuilder is there only for educational purpose: SceneBuilder does not create and does not modify Java files. This is simply a hint of what you can use, given the fx:id present in your FXML file. You are free to copy all or part of the displayed code and paste it into your own Java class. Now at this point, there only remains to add our logic to the controller class. Quite easy: in the initialize method, I will register an action handler with my button: () { @Override public void handle(ActionEvent event) { System.out.println("That was easy, wasn't it?"); } }); ... -- ... // initialize your logic here: all @FXML variables will have been injected myButton.setOnAction(new EventHandler<ActionEvent>() { @Override public void handle(ActionEvent event) { System.out.println("That was easy, wasn't it?"); } }); ... That's it - if you now compile everything in your IDE, and run your application, clicking on the button should print a message on the console! Summary What happens is that in Main.java, the FXMLLoader will load simple.fxml from the jar/classpath, as specified by 'FXMLLoader.load(Main.class.getResource("simple.fxml"))'. When loading simple.fxml, the loader will find the name of the controller class, as specified by 'fx:controller="simple.SimpleController"' in the FXML. Upon finding the name of the controller class, the loader will create an instance of that class, in which it will try to inject all the objects that have an fx:id in the FXML. Thus, after having created '<Button fx:id="myButton" ... />', the FXMLLoader will inject the button instance into the '@FXML private Button myButton;' instance variable found on the controller instance. This is because The instance variable has an @FXML annotation, The name of the variable exactly matches the value of the fx:id Finally, when the whole FXML has been loaded, the FXMLLoader will call the controller's initialize method, and our code that registers an action handler with the button will be executed. For a complete example, take a look at the HelloWorld SceneBuilder sample. Also make sure to follow the SceneBuilder Get Started guide, which will guide you through a much more complete example. Of course, there are more elegant ways to set up an Event Handler using FXML and SceneBuilder. There are also many different ways to work with the FXMLLoader. But since it's starting to be very late here, I think it will have to wait for another post. I hope you have enjoyed the tour! --daniel

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  • From HttpRuntime.Cache to Windows Azure Caching (Preview)

    - by Jeff
    I don’t know about you, but the announcement of Windows Azure Caching (Preview) (yes, the parentheses are apparently part of the interim name) made me a lot more excited about using Azure. Why? Because one of the great performance tricks of any Web app is to cache frequently used data in memory, so it doesn’t have to hit the database, a service, or whatever. When you run your Web app on one box, HttpRuntime.Cache is a sweet and stupid-simple solution. Somewhere in the data fetching pieces of your app, you can see if an object is available in cache, and return that instead of hitting the data store. I did this quite a bit in POP Forums, and it dramatically cuts down on the database chatter. The problem is that it falls apart if you run the app on many servers, in a Web farm, where one server may initiate a change to that data, and the others will have no knowledge of the change, making it stale. Of course, if you have the infrastructure to do so, you can use something like memcached or AppFabric to do a distributed cache, and achieve the caching flavor you desire. You could do the same thing in Azure before, but it would cost more because you’d need to pay for another role or VM or something to host the cache. Now, you can use a portion of the memory from each instance of a Web role to act as that cache, with no additional cost. That’s huge. So if you’re using a percentage of memory that comes out to 100 MB, and you have three instances running, that’s 300 MB available for caching. For the uninitiated, a Web role in Azure is essentially a VM that runs a Web app (worker roles are the same idea, only without the IIS part). You can spin up many instances of the role, and traffic is load balanced to the various instances. It’s like adding or removing servers to a Web farm all willy-nilly and at your discretion, and it’s what the cloud is all about. I’d say it’s my favorite thing about Windows Azure. The slightly annoying thing about developing for a Web role in Azure is that the local emulator that’s launched by Visual Studio is a little on the slow side. If you’re used to using the built-in Web server, you’re used to building and then alt-tabbing to your browser and refreshing a page. If you’re just changing an MVC view, you’re not even doing the building part. Spinning up the simulated Azure environment is too slow for this, but ideally you want to code your app to use this fantastic distributed cache mechanism. So first off, here’s the link to the page showing how to code using the caching feature. If you’re used to using HttpRuntime.Cache, this should be pretty familiar to you. Let’s say that you want to use the Azure cache preview when you’re running in Azure, but HttpRuntime.Cache if you’re running local, or in a regular IIS server environment. Through the magic of dependency injection, we can get there pretty quickly. First, design an interface to handle the cache insertion, fetching and removal. Mine looks like this: public interface ICacheProvider {     void Add(string key, object item, int duration);     T Get<T>(string key) where T : class;     void Remove(string key); } Now we’ll create two implementations of this interface… one for Azure cache, one for HttpRuntime: public class AzureCacheProvider : ICacheProvider {     public AzureCacheProvider()     {         _cache = new DataCache("default"); // in Microsoft.ApplicationServer.Caching, see how-to      }         private readonly DataCache _cache;     public void Add(string key, object item, int duration)     {         _cache.Add(key, item, new TimeSpan(0, 0, 0, 0, duration));     }     public T Get<T>(string key) where T : class     {         return _cache.Get(key) as T;     }     public void Remove(string key)     {         _cache.Remove(key);     } } public class LocalCacheProvider : ICacheProvider {     public LocalCacheProvider()     {         _cache = HttpRuntime.Cache;     }     private readonly System.Web.Caching.Cache _cache;     public void Add(string key, object item, int duration)     {         _cache.Insert(key, item, null, DateTime.UtcNow.AddMilliseconds(duration), System.Web.Caching.Cache.NoSlidingExpiration);     }     public T Get<T>(string key) where T : class     {         return _cache[key] as T;     }     public void Remove(string key)     {         _cache.Remove(key);     } } Feel free to expand these to use whatever cache features you want. I’m not going to go over dependency injection here, but I assume that if you’re using ASP.NET MVC, you’re using it. Somewhere in your app, you set up the DI container that resolves interfaces to concrete implementations (Ninject call is a “kernel” instead of a container). For this example, I’ll show you how StructureMap does it. It uses a convention based scheme, where if you need to get an instance of IFoo, it looks for a class named Foo. You can also do this mapping explicitly. The initialization of the container looks something like this: ObjectFactory.Initialize(x =>             {                 x.Scan(scan =>                         {                             scan.AssembliesFromApplicationBaseDirectory();                             scan.WithDefaultConventions();                         });                 if (Microsoft.WindowsAzure.ServiceRuntime.RoleEnvironment.IsAvailable)                     x.For<ICacheProvider>().Use<AzureCacheProvider>();                 else                     x.For<ICacheProvider>().Use<LocalCacheProvider>();             }); If you use Ninject or Windsor or something else, that’s OK. Conceptually they’re all about the same. The important part is the conditional statement that checks to see if the app is running in Azure. If it is, it maps ICacheProvider to AzureCacheProvider, otherwise it maps to LocalCacheProvider. Now when a request comes into your MVC app, and the chain of dependency resolution occurs, you can see to it that the right caching code is called. A typical design may have a call stack that goes: Controller –> BusinessLogicClass –> Repository. Let’s say your repository class looks like this: public class MyRepo : IMyRepo {     public MyRepo(ICacheProvider cacheProvider)     {         _context = new MyDataContext();         _cache = cacheProvider;     }     private readonly MyDataContext _context;     private readonly ICacheProvider _cache;     public SomeType Get(int someTypeID)     {         var key = "somename-" + someTypeID;         var cachedObject = _cache.Get<SomeType>(key);         if (cachedObject != null)         {             _context.SomeTypes.Attach(cachedObject);             return cachedObject;         }         var someType = _context.SomeTypes.SingleOrDefault(p => p.SomeTypeID == someTypeID);         _cache.Add(key, someType, 60000);         return someType;     } ... // more stuff to update, delete or whatever, being sure to remove // from cache when you do so  When the DI container gets an instance of the repo, it passes an instance of ICacheProvider to the constructor, which in this case will be whatever implementation was specified when the container was initialized. The Get method first tries to hit the cache, and of course doesn’t care what the underlying implementation is, Azure, HttpRuntime, or otherwise. If it finds the object, it returns it right then. If not, it hits the database (this example is using Entity Framework), and inserts the object into the cache before returning it. The important thing not pictured here is that other methods in the repo class will construct the key for the cached object, in this case “somename-“ plus the ID of the object, and then remove it from cache, in any method that alters or deletes the object. That way, no matter what instance of the role is processing the request, it won’t find the object if it has been made stale, that is, updated or outright deleted, forcing it to attempt to hit the database. So is this good technique? Well, sort of. It depends on how you use it, and what your testing looks like around it. Because of differences in behavior and execution of the two caching providers, for example, you could see some strange errors. For example, I immediately got an error indicating there was no parameterless constructor for an MVC controller, because the DI resolver failed to create instances for the dependencies it had. In reality, the NuGet packaged DI resolver for StructureMap was eating an exception thrown by the Azure components that said my configuration, outlined in that how-to article, was wrong. That error wouldn’t occur when using the HttpRuntime. That’s something a lot of people debate about using different components like that, and how you configure them. I kinda hate XML config files, and like the idea of the code-based approach above, but you should be darn sure that your unit and integration testing can account for the differences.

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  • Parsing Concerns

    - by Jesse
    If you’ve ever written an application that accepts date and/or time inputs from an external source (a person, an uploaded file, posted XML, etc.) then you’ve no doubt had to deal with parsing some text representing a date into a data structure that a computer can understand. Similarly, you’ve probably also had to take values from those same data structure and turn them back into their original formats. Most (all?) suitably modern development platforms expose some kind of parsing and formatting functionality for turning text into dates and vice versa. In .NET, the DateTime data structure exposes ‘Parse’ and ‘ToString’ methods for this purpose. This post will focus mostly on parsing, though most of the examples and suggestions below can also be applied to the ToString method. The DateTime.Parse method is pretty permissive in the values that it will accept (though apparently not as permissive as some other languages) which makes it pretty easy to take some text provided by a user and turn it into a proper DateTime instance. Here are some examples (note that the resulting DateTime values are shown using the RFC1123 format): DateTime.Parse("3/12/2010"); //Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 GMT DateTime.Parse("2:00 AM"); //Sat, 01 Jan 2011 02:00:00 GMT (took today's date as date portion) DateTime.Parse("5-15/2010"); //Sat, 15 May 2010 00:00:00 GMT DateTime.Parse("7/8"); //Fri, 08 Jul 2011 00:00:00 GMT DateTime.Parse("Thursday, July 1, 2010"); //Thu, 01 Jul 2010 00:00:00 GMT Dealing With Inaccuracy While the DateTime struct has the ability to store a date and time value accurate down to the millisecond, most date strings provided by a user are not going to specify values with that much precision. In each of the above examples, the Parse method was provided a partial value from which to construct a proper DateTime. This means it had to go ahead and assume what you meant and fill in the missing parts of the date and time for you. This is a good thing, especially when we’re talking about taking input from a user. We can’t expect that every person using our software to provide a year, day, month, hour, minute, second, and millisecond every time they need to express a date. That said, it’s important for developers to understand what assumptions the software might be making and plan accordingly. I think the assumptions that were made in each of the above examples were pretty reasonable, though if we dig into this method a little bit deeper we’ll find that there are a lot more assumptions being made under the covers than you might have previously known. One of the biggest assumptions that the DateTime.Parse method has to make relates to the format of the date represented by the provided string. Let’s consider this example input string: ‘10-02-15’. To some people. that might look like ‘15-Feb-2010’. To others, it might be ‘02-Oct-2015’. Like many things, it depends on where you’re from. This Is America! Most cultures around the world have adopted a “little-endian” or “big-endian” formats. (Source: Date And Time Notation By Country) In this context,  a “little-endian” date format would list the date parts with the least significant first while the “big-endian” date format would list them with the most significant first. For example, a “little-endian” date would be “day-month-year” and “big-endian” would be “year-month-day”. It’s worth nothing here that ISO 8601 defines a “big-endian” format as the international standard. While I personally prefer “big-endian” style date formats, I think both styles make sense in that they follow some logical standard with respect to ordering the date parts by their significance. Here in the United States, however, we buck that trend by using what is, in comparison, a completely nonsensical format of “month/day/year”. Almost no other country in the world uses this format. I’ve been fortunate in my life to have done some international travel, so I’ve been aware of this difference for many years, but never really thought much about it. Until recently, I had been developing software for exclusively US-based audiences and remained blissfully ignorant of the different date formats employed by other countries around the world. The web application I work on is being rolled out to users in different countries, so I was recently tasked with updating it to support different date formats. As it turns out, .NET has a great mechanism for dealing with different date formats right out of the box. Supporting date formats for different cultures is actually pretty easy once you understand this mechanism. Pulling the Curtain Back On the Parse Method Have you ever taken a look at the different flavors (read: overloads) that the DateTime.Parse method comes in? In it’s simplest form, it takes a single string parameter and returns the corresponding DateTime value (if it can divine what the date value should be). You can optionally provide two additional parameters to this method: an ‘System.IFormatProvider’ and a ‘System.Globalization.DateTimeStyles’. Both of these optional parameters have some bearing on the assumptions that get made while parsing a date, but for the purposes of this article I’m going to focus on the ‘System.IFormatProvider’ parameter. The IFormatProvider exposes a single method called ‘GetFormat’ that returns an object to be used for determining the proper format for displaying and parsing things like numbers and dates. This interface plays a big role in the globalization capabilities that are built into the .NET Framework. The cornerstone of these globalization capabilities can be found in the ‘System.Globalization.CultureInfo’ class. To put it simply, the CultureInfo class is used to encapsulate information related to things like language, writing system, and date formats for a certain culture. Support for many cultures are “baked in” to the .NET Framework and there is capacity for defining custom cultures if needed (thought I’ve never delved into that). While the details of the CultureInfo class are beyond the scope of this post, so for now let me just point out that the CultureInfo class implements the IFormatInfo interface. This means that a CultureInfo instance created for a given culture can be provided to the DateTime.Parse method in order to tell it what date formats it should expect. So what happens when you don’t provide this value? Let’s crack this method open in Reflector: When no IFormatInfo parameter is provided (i.e. we use the simple DateTime.Parse(string) overload), the ‘DateTimeFormatInfo.CurrentInfo’ is used instead. Drilling down a bit further we can see the implementation of the DateTimeFormatInfo.CurrentInfo property: From this property we can determine that, in the absence of an IFormatProvider being specified, the DateTime.Parse method will assume that the provided date should be treated as if it were in the format defined by the CultureInfo object that is attached to the current thread. The culture specified by the CultureInfo instance on the current thread can vary depending on several factors, but if you’re writing an application where a single instance might be used by people from different cultures (i.e. a web application with an international user base), it’s important to know what this value is. Having a solid strategy for setting the current thread’s culture for each incoming request in an internationally used ASP .NET application is obviously important, and might make a good topic for a future post. For now, let’s think about what the implications of not having the correct culture set on the current thread. Let’s say you’re running an ASP .NET application on a server in the United States. The server was setup by English speakers in the United States, so it’s configured for US English. It exposes a web page where users can enter order data, one piece of which is an anticipated order delivery date. Most users are in the US, and therefore enter dates in a ‘month/day/year’ format. The application is using the DateTime.Parse(string) method to turn the values provided by the user into actual DateTime instances that can be stored in the database. This all works fine, because your users and your server both think of dates in the same way. Now you need to support some users in South America, where a ‘day/month/year’ format is used. The best case scenario at this point is a user will enter March 13, 2011 as ‘25/03/2011’. This would cause the call to DateTime.Parse to blow up since that value doesn’t look like a valid date in the US English culture (Note: In all likelihood you might be using the DateTime.TryParse(string) method here instead, but that method behaves the same way with regard to date formats). “But wait a minute”, you might be saying to yourself, “I thought you said that this was the best case scenario?” This scenario would prevent users from entering orders in the system, which is bad, but it could be worse! What if the order needs to be delivered a day earlier than that, on March 12, 2011? Now the user enters ‘12/03/2011’. Now the call to DateTime.Parse sees what it thinks is a valid date, but there’s just one problem: it’s not the right date. Now this order won’t get delivered until December 3, 2011. In my opinion, that kind of data corruption is a much bigger problem than having the Parse call fail. What To Do? My order entry example is a bit contrived, but I think it serves to illustrate the potential issues with accepting date input from users. There are some approaches you can take to make this easier on you and your users: Eliminate ambiguity by using a graphical date input control. I’m personally a fan of a jQuery UI Datepicker widget. It’s pretty easy to setup, can be themed to match the look and feel of your site, and has support for multiple languages and cultures. Be sure you have a way to track the culture preference of each user in your system. For a web application this could be done using something like a cookie or session state variable. Ensure that the current user’s culture is being applied correctly to DateTime formatting and parsing code. This can be accomplished by ensuring that each request has the handling thread’s CultureInfo set properly, or by using the Format and Parse method overloads that accept an IFormatProvider instance where the provided value is a CultureInfo object constructed using the current user’s culture preference. When in doubt, favor formats that are internationally recognizable. Using the string ‘2010-03-05’ is likely to be recognized as March, 5 2011 by users from most (if not all) cultures. Favor standard date format strings over custom ones. So far we’ve only talked about turning a string into a DateTime, but most of the same “gotchas” apply when doing the opposite. Consider this code: someDateValue.ToString("MM/dd/yyyy"); This will output the same string regardless of what the current thread’s culture is set to (with the exception of some cultures that don’t use the Gregorian calendar system, but that’s another issue all together). For displaying dates to users, it would be better to do this: someDateValue.ToString("d"); This standard format string of “d” will use the “short date format” as defined by the culture attached to the current thread (or provided in the IFormatProvider instance in the proper method overload). This means that it will honor the proper month/day/year, year/month/day, or day/month/year format for the culture. Knowing Your Audience The examples and suggestions shown above can go a long way toward getting an application in shape for dealing with date inputs from users in multiple cultures. There are some instances, however, where taking approaches like these would not be appropriate. In some cases, the provider or consumer of date values that pass through your application are not people, but other applications (or other portions of your own application). For example, if your site has a page that accepts a date as a query string parameter, you’ll probably want to format that date using invariant date format. Otherwise, the same URL could end up evaluating to a different page depending on the user that is viewing it. In addition, if your application exports data for consumption by other systems, it’s best to have an agreed upon format that all systems can use and that will not vary depending upon whether or not the users of the systems on either side prefer a month/day/year or day/month/year format. I’ll look more at some approaches for dealing with these situations in a future post. If you take away one thing from this post, make it an understanding of the importance of knowing where the dates that pass through your system come from and are going to. You will likely want to vary your parsing and formatting approach depending on your audience.

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  • Should one replace the usage addJSONData of jqGrid to the usage of setGridParam(), and trigger('relo

    - by Oleg
    Hi everybody who use jqGrid! I am a new on stackoverflow.com and it seems to me that a lot of peoples who use stackoverflow.com are not only the persons who have a problem which must be quickly solved. A lot of people read stackoverflow.com to look at well-known things from the other side. Sometime perhaps the reason is a self-training (to stay in the good form) during solving of problems other people. For all these gays, who not want only to solve his problem is my question. I wrote recently an answer to the question "jqGrid display default “loading” message when updating a table / on custom update". During writing of the answer I thought: why he uses addJSONData() function for refresh of data in the grid instead of changing URL with respect of setGridParam() and refreshing jqGrid data with respect of trigger('reloadGrid')? At the beginning I wanted to recommend using of 'reloadGrid', but after thinking about this I understood, that I am not quite sure what the best way is. At least I can't explain in two sentences why I prefer the second way. So I decide that it could be an interesting subject of a discussion. So to be exactly: We have a typical situation. We have a web page with at least one jqGrid and some other controls like combo-boxes (selects), checkboxes etc. which give user possibilities to change scope on information displayed in a jqGrid. Typically we define some event handler like jQuery("#selector").change(myRefresh).keyup(myKeyRefresh) and we need reload the jqGrid contain based on users choose. After reading and analyzing of the information from additional users input we can refresh jqGrid contain in at least two ways: Make call of $.ajax() manual and then inside of success or complete handle of $.ajax call jQuery.parseJSON() (or eval) and then call addJSONData function of jqGrid. I found a lot of examples on stackoverflow.com who use addJSONData. Update url of jqGrid based on users input, reset current page number to 1 and optionally change the caption of the grid. All these can be done with respect of setGridParam(), and optionally setCaption() jqGrid methods. At the end one call trigger('reloadGrid') method of the grid. To construct the url, by the way I use mostly jQuery.param function to be sure, that I all url parameters packed correctly with respect of encodeURIComponent. I want that we discuss advantages and disadvantages of both ways. I use currently the second way, so I start with advantages of this one. One can say me: I call existing Web Service, convert received data to the jqGrid format and call addJSONData. This is the reason why I use addJSONData method! OK, I choose another way. jqGrid can make a call of the Web Service directly and fill results inside of grid. There are a lot of jqGrid options, which allow you to customize this process. First of all, one can delete or rename any standard parameter sent to server with respect of prmNames option of jqGrid or add any more additional parameters with respect of postData option (see http://www.trirand.com/jqgridwiki/doku.php?id=wiki:options). One can modify all constructed parameters immediately before jqGrid makes corresponding $.ajax request by defining of serializeGridData() function (one more option of jqGrid). More than that, one can change every $.ajax parameter by setting ajaxGridOptions option of jqGrid. I use ajaxGridOptions: {contentType: "application/json"} for example as a general setting of $.jgrid.defaults. The ajaxGridOptions option is very powerful. With respect of ajaxGridOptions option one can redefine any parameter of $.ajax request sending by jqGrid, like error, complete and beforeSend events. I see potentially interesting to define dataFilter event to be able makes any modification of the row data responded from the server. One more argument for using of trigger('reloadGrid') way is blocking of jqGrid during ajax request processing. Mostly I use parameter loadui: 'block' to block jqGrid during JSON request sending to server. With respect of jQuery blockUI plugin http://malsup.com/jquery/block/ one can block more parts of web page as the grid only. To do this one can call jQuery('#main').block({ message: '<h1>Die Daten werden vom Server geladen...</h1>' }); before calling of trigger('reloadGrid') method and jQuery('#main').unblock() inside of loadComplete and loadError functions. The loadui option could be set to 'disable' in this case. So I don’t see why the function addJSONData() should be used. Can somebody who use addJSONData() function explain me advantages of its usage? Should one replace the usage addJSONData of jqGrid to the usage of setGridParam(), and trigger('reloadGrid')? I am opened to the discussion.

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  • How to configure LocalSessionFactoryBean to release connections after transaction end?

    - by peter
    I am testing an application (Spring 2.5, Hibernate 3.5.0 Beta, Atomikos 3.6.2, and Postgreql 8.4.2) with the configuration for the DAO listed below. The problem that I see is that the pool of 10 connections with the dataSource gets exhausted after the 10's transaction. I know 'hibernate.connection.release_mode' has no effect unless the session is obtained with openSession rather then using a contextual session. I am wandering if anyone has found a way to configure the LocalSessionFactoryBean to release connections after any transaction. Thank you Peter <bean id="dataSource" class="com.atomikos.jdbc.AtomikosDataSourceBean" init-method="init" destroy-method="close"> <property name="uniqueResourceName"><value>XADBMS</value></property> <property name="xaDataSourceClassName"> <value>org.postgresql.xa.PGXADataSource</value> </property> <property name="xaProperties"> <props> <prop key="databaseName">${jdbc.name}</prop> <prop key="serverName">${jdbc.server}</prop> <prop key="portNumber">${jdbc.port}</prop> <prop key="user">${jdbc.username}</prop> <prop key="password">${jdbc.password}</prop> </props> </property> <property name="poolSize"><value>10</value></property> </bean> <bean id="sessionFactory" class="org.springframework.orm.hibernate3.LocalSessionFactoryBean"> <property name="dataSource"> <ref bean="dataSource" /> </property> <property name="mappingResources"> <list> <value>Abc.hbm.xml</value> </list> </property> <property name="hibernateProperties"> <props> <prop key="hibernate.dialect">org.hibernate.dialect.PostgreSQLDialect</prop> <prop key="hibernate.show_sql">on</prop> <prop key="hibernate.format_sql">true</prop> <prop key="hibernate.connection.isolation">3</prop> <prop key="hibernate.current_session_context_class">jta</prop> <prop key="hibernate.transaction.factory_class">org.hibernate.transaction.JTATransactionFactory</prop> <prop key="hibernate.transaction.manager_lookup_class">com.atomikos.icatch.jta.hibernate3.TransactionManagerLookup</prop> <prop key="hibernate.connection.release_mode">auto</prop> <prop key="hibernate.transaction.auto_close_session">true</prop> </props> </property> </bean> <!-- Transaction definition here --> <bean id="userTransactionService" class="com.atomikos.icatch.config.UserTransactionServiceImp" init-method="init" destroy-method="shutdownForce"> <constructor-arg> <props> <prop key="com.atomikos.icatch.service"> com.atomikos.icatch.standalone.UserTransactionServiceFactory </prop> </props> </constructor-arg> </bean> <!-- Construct Atomikos UserTransactionManager, needed to configure Spring --> <bean id="AtomikosTransactionManager" class="com.atomikos.icatch.jta.UserTransactionManager" init-method="init" destroy-method="close" depends-on="userTransactionService"> <property name="forceShutdown" value="false" /> </bean> <!-- Also use Atomikos UserTransactionImp, needed to configure Spring --> <bean id="AtomikosUserTransaction" class="com.atomikos.icatch.jta.UserTransactionImp" depends-on="userTransactionService"> <property name="transactionTimeout" value="300" /> </bean> <!-- Configure the Spring framework to use JTA transactions from Atomikos --> <bean id="txManager" class="org.springframework.transaction.jta.JtaTransactionManager" depends-on="userTransactionService"> <property name="transactionManager" ref="AtomikosTransactionManager" /> <property name="userTransaction" ref="AtomikosUserTransaction" /> </bean> <!-- the transactional advice (what 'happens'; see the <aop:advisor/> bean below) --> <tx:advice id="txAdvice" transaction-manager="txManager"> <tx:attributes> <!-- all methods starting with 'get' are read-only --> <tx:method name="get*" read-only="true" propagation="REQUIRED"/> <!-- other methods use the default transaction settings (see below) --> <tx:method name="*" propagation="REQUIRED"/> </tx:attributes> </tx:advice> <aop:config> <aop:advisor pointcut="execution(* *.*.AbcDao.*(..))" advice-ref="txAdvice"/> </aop:config> <!-- DAO objects --> <bean id="abcDao" class="test.dao.impl.HibernateAbcDao" scope="singleton"> <property name="sessionFactory" ref="sessionFactory"/> </bean>

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  • Boost::Interprocess Container Container Resizing No Default Constructor

    - by CuppM
    Hi, After combing through the Boost::Interprocess documentation and Google searches, I think I've found the reason/workaround to my issue. Everything I've found, as I understand it, seems to be hinting at this, but doesn't come out and say "do this because...". But if anyone can verify this I would appreciate it. I'm writing a series of classes that represent a large lookup of information that is stored in memory for fast performance in a parallelized application. Because of the size of data and multiple processes that run at a time on one machine, we're using Boost::Interprocess for shared memory to have a single copy of the structures. I looked at the Boost::Interprocess documentation and examples, and they typedef classes for shared memory strings, string vectors, int vector vectors, etc. And when they "use" them in their examples, they just construct them passing the allocator and maybe insert one item that they've constructed elsewhere. Like on this page: http://www.boost.org/doc/libs/1_42_0/doc/html/interprocess/allocators_containers.html So following their examples, I created a header file with typedefs for shared memory classes: namespace shm { namespace bip = boost::interprocess; // General/Utility Types typedef bip::managed_shared_memory::segment_manager segment_manager_t; typedef bip::allocator<void, segment_manager_t> void_allocator; // Integer Types typedef bip::allocator<int, segment_manager_t> int_allocator; typedef bip::vector<int, int_allocator> int_vector; // String Types typedef bip::allocator<char, segment_manager_t> char_allocator; typedef bip::basic_string<char, std::char_traits<char>, char_allocator> string; typedef bip::allocator<string, segment_manager_t> string_allocator; typedef bip::vector<string, string_allocator> string_vector; typedef bip::allocator<string_vector, segment_manager_t> string_vector_allocator; typedef bip::vector<string_vector, string_vector_allocator> string_vector_vector; } Then for one of my lookup table classes, it's defined something like this: class Details { public: Details(const shm::void_allocator & alloc) : m_Ids(alloc), m_Labels(alloc), m_Values(alloc) { } ~Details() {} int Read(BinaryReader & br); private: shm::int_vector m_Ids; shm::string_vector m_Labels; shm::string_vector_vector m_Values; }; int Details::Read(BinaryReader & br) { int num = br.ReadInt(); m_Ids.resize(num); m_Labels.resize(num); m_Values.resize(num); for (int i = 0; i < num; i++) { m_Ids[i] = br.ReadInt(); m_Labels[i] = br.ReadString().c_str(); int count = br.ReadInt(); m_Value[i].resize(count); for (int j = 0; j < count; j++) { m_Value[i][j] = br.ReadString().c_str(); } } } But when I compile it, I get the error: 'boost::interprocess::allocator<T,SegmentManager>::allocator' : no appropriate default constructor available And it's due to the resize() calls on the vector objects. Because the allocator types do not have a empty constructor (they take a const segment_manager_t &) and it's trying to create a default object for each location. So in order for it to work, I have to get an allocator object and pass a default value object on resize. Like this: int Details::Read(BinaryReader & br) { shm::void_allocator alloc(m_Ids.get_allocator()); int num = br.ReadInt(); m_Ids.resize(num); m_Labels.resize(num, shm::string(alloc)); m_Values.resize(num, shm::string_vector(alloc)); for (int i = 0; i < num; i++) { m_Ids[i] = br.ReadInt(); m_Labels[i] = br.ReadString().c_str(); int count = br.ReadInt(); m_Value[i].resize(count, shm::string(alloc)); for (int j = 0; j < count; j++) { m_Value[i][j] = br.ReadString().c_str(); } } } Is this the best/correct way of doing it? Or am I missing something. Thanks!

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  • How to solve JAVA menubar, layout and panel problem ?

    - by Berkay
    i'm not a java guy however i start implementing some security tools with java, in these days i'm creating a gui for my security tools : Here is the how my Gui looks: menuBar = new JMenuBar(); // construct menu bar // hash functions fileMenu = new JMenu("HASH FUNCTIONS"); // define file menu fileMenu.setMnemonic('H'); // shortcut hashes = new JMenuItem("Md5&Sha1"); // define file menu options hashes.setMnemonic('M'); hashes.addActionListener(this); fileMenu.add(hashes); menuBar.add(fileMenu); // add file menu to menu bar // symmetric encryption asMenu = new JMenu("SYMMETRIC ENCRYPTION"); // define format menu asMenu.setMnemonic('S'); // shortcut desItem = new JMenuItem("DES"); // define format menu options desItem.setMnemonic('D'); desItem.addActionListener(this); asMenu.add(desItem); ... ... menuBar.add(helpMenu); // add help menu to menu bar setJMenuBar(menuBar); // put menu bar on application textColor = Color.RED; when from the Menu desitem is selected, desvar is just for not showing the panel multiple times, it calls Panels () else if(e.getSource() == desItem && desvar ==1 ) { // make other panels unvisible. if(hashvar!=1) MyPanel.setVisible(false);//hash functions if(rsavar!=1) MyPanel3.setVisible(false);//rsa function if (dhvar!=1) MyPanel4.setVisible(false);//dh diffie hellman hashvar=1; rsavar=1; dhvar=1; ++desvar; desPanel=true; Panels(); } and in Panels() Method: if (hashPanel){ MyPanel.add("West",radioSHA1); MyPanel.add("West",radioMD5); MyPanel.add("Center", inputField); MyPanel.add("East",SubmitButton); MyPanel.add("South",resultHash); add(MyPanel); validate(); hashPanel=false; } i have many panels for example : -hash functions=mypanel1 , des=mypanel2, rsa functions= mypanel3 , dh= mypanel4 However in may other panals such as rsa function: i have to use some layout properties of the java:in this panel i selected to use gridbaglayout if (dhPanel){ System.out.println("rsa panel burda misin"); MyPanel3.add(pqLabel); MyPanel3.add(pLabel); MyPanel3.add(pTextArea); MyPanel3.add(qLabel); ... ... add(MyPanel3); generate_pqButton.addActionListener(this); calculate_nButton.addActionListener(this); ... ... GridBagLayout layout = new GridBagLayout(); GridBagConstraints gbc = new GridBagConstraints(); setLayout(layout); // x, y, w, h, wx, wy gbc.fill = GridBagConstraints.NONE; add (bit_length_label, gbc, 0, 0, 1, 1, 0, 10); add (p, gbc, 0, 1, 1, 1, 0, 10); add (g, gbc, 0, 2, 1, 1, 0, 10); add (a, gbc, 1, 3, 1, 1, 100, 10); add (x, gbc, 0, 4, 1, 1, 0, 10); add (gx, gbc, 0, 5, 1, 1, 0, 10); add (gxy, gbc, 0, 6, 1, 1, 0, 10); add (b, gbc, 1, 7, 1, 1, 100, 10); add (y, gbc, 0, 8, 1, 1, 0, 10); add (gy, gbc, 0, 9, 1, 1, 0, 10); add (gyx, gbc, 0, 10, 1, 1, 0, 10); add (sk, gbc, 1, 11, 1, 1, 100, 10); add (key, gbc, 0, 12, 1, 1, 0, 10); add (status, gbc, 1, 13, 1, 1, 100, 10); add (dhstart, gbc, 1, 14, 1, 1, 100, 10); add (bit_length_value, gbc, 1, 0, 1, 1, 100, 10); add (p_value, gbc, 1, 1, 1, 1, 100, 10); add (g_value, gbc, 1, 2, 1, 1, 100, 10); add (x_value, gbc, 1, 4, 1, 1, 100, 10); add (gx_value, gbc, 1, 5, 1, 1, 100, 10); add (gxy_value, gbc, 1, 6, 1, 1, 100, 10); add (y_value, gbc, 1, 8, 1, 1, 100, 10); add (gy_value, gbc, 1, 9, 1, 1, 100, 10); add (gyx_value, gbc, 1, 10, 1, 1, 100, 10); validate(); repaint(); rsaPanel=false; } Everthing seems okey however when i swith from one menu to another sometimes components are seen or apper in wrong places or mixed. where i'm doing wrong?

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  • How to customize the renders in prefuse. Problem in customize images in prefuse layout

    - by user324926
    HI all, I have written a java application to show the images in different layouts. I am able to show it different layout correctly but some times the images are overlapped. Can you please help me, how to solve this problem. My code is given below `import javax.swing.JFrame; import java.awt.image.BufferedImage; import javax.imageio.ImageIO; import java.util.; import java.io.; import java.awt.Font; import prefuse.Constants; import prefuse.Display; import prefuse.Visualization; import prefuse.action.ActionList; import prefuse.action.RepaintAction; import prefuse.action.assignment.ColorAction; import prefuse.action.assignment.FontAction; import prefuse.action.assignment.DataColorAction; import prefuse.action.layout.graph.ForceDirectedLayout; import prefuse.action.layout.graph.; import prefuse.action.layout.; import prefuse.activity.Activity; import prefuse.controls.DragControl; import prefuse.controls.PanControl; import prefuse.controls.ZoomControl; import prefuse.data.Graph; import prefuse.data.io.DataIOException; import prefuse.data.io.GraphMLReader; import prefuse.render.DefaultRendererFactory; import prefuse.render.LabelRenderer; import prefuse.util.ColorLib; import prefuse.visual.VisualItem; import prefuse.visual.*; import prefuse.util.FontLib; import prefuse.action.assignment.DataSizeAction; import prefuse.data.*; import prefuse.render.ImageFactory; public class LayoutExample { public static void main(String[] argv) throws Exception { Graph graph = null; try { graph = new GraphMLReader().readGraph("/graphs.xml"); } catch ( DataIOException e ) { e.printStackTrace(); System.err.println("Error loading graph. Exiting..."); System.exit(1); } ImageFactory imageFactory = new ImageFactory(100,100); try { //load images and construct imageFactory. String images[] = new String[3]; images[0] = "data/images/switch.png"; images[1] = "data/images/ip_network.png"; images[2] = "data/images/router.png"; String[] names = new String[] {"Switch","Network","Router"}; BufferedImage img = null; for(int i=0; i < images.length ; i++) { try { img = ImageIO.read(new File(images[i])); imageFactory.addImage(names[i],img); } catch (IOException e){ } } } catch(Exception exp) { } Visualization vis = new Visualization(); vis.add("graph", graph); LabelRenderer nodeRenderer = new LabelRenderer("name", "type"); nodeRenderer.setVerticalAlignment(Constants.BOTTOM); nodeRenderer.setHorizontalPadding(0); nodeRenderer.setVerticalPadding(0); nodeRenderer.setImagePosition(Constants.TOP); nodeRenderer.setMaxImageDimensions(100,100); DefaultRendererFactory drf = new DefaultRendererFactory(); drf.setDefaultRenderer(nodeRenderer); vis.setRendererFactory(drf); ColorAction nText = new ColorAction("graph.nodes", VisualItem.TEXTCOLOR); nText.setDefaultColor(ColorLib.gray(100)); ColorAction nEdges = new ColorAction("graph.edges", VisualItem.STROKECOLOR); nEdges.setDefaultColor(ColorLib.gray(100)); // bundle the color actions ActionList draw = new ActionList(); //MAD - changing the size of the nodes dependent on the weight of the people final DataSizeAction dsa = new DataSizeAction("graph.nodes","size"); draw.add(dsa); draw.add(nText); draw.add(new FontAction("graph.nodes", FontLib.getFont("Tahoma",Font.BOLD, 12))); draw.add(nEdges); vis.putAction("draw", draw); ActionList layout = new ActionList(Activity.DEFAULT_STEP_TIME); BalloonTreeLayout balloonlayout = new BalloonTreeLayout("graph",50); layout.add(balloonlayout); Display d = new Display(vis); vis.putAction("layout", layout); // start up the animated layout vis.run("draw"); vis.run("layout"); d.addControlListener(new DragControl()); // pan with left-click drag on background d.addControlListener(new PanControl()); // zoom with right-click drag d.addControlListener(new ZoomControl()); // -- 6. launch the visualization ------------------------------------- // create a new window to hold the visualization JFrame frame = new JFrame("prefuse example"); // ensure application exits when window is closed frame.setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE); frame.add(d); frame.pack(); // layout components in window frame.setVisible(true); // show the window } } ` Can anyone please let me know how to customize the image sizes / renders insuch way that images won't overlapped. Thanks R.Ravikumar

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