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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Wednesday, October 24, 2012

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Wednesday, October 24, 2012Popular ReleasesfastJSON: v2.0.9: - added support for root level DataSet and DataTable deserialize (you have to do ToObject<DataSet>(...) ) - added dataset testsInfo Gempa BMKG: Info Gempa BMKG v 1.0.0.3: Release perdana aplikasi pembaca informasi gempa dari data feeder BMKG.Microsoft Ajax Minifier: Microsoft Ajax Minifier 4.72: Fix for Issue #18819 - bad optimization of return/assign operator.DNN Module Creator: 01.01.00: Updated templates for DNN7 ( ie. DAL2, Web Service API ). Numerous bug fixes and enhancements.WPF Application Framework (WAF): WPF Application Framework (WAF) 2.5.0.390: Version 2.5.0.390 (Release Candidate): This release contains the source code of the WPF Application Framework (WAF) and the sample applications. Requirements .NET Framework 4.0 (The package contains a solution file for Visual Studio 2010) The unit test projects require Visual Studio 2010 Professional Changelog Legend: [B] Breaking change; [O] Marked member as obsolete WAF: Fix recent file list remove issue. WAF: Minor code improvements. BookLibrary: Fix Blend design time support o...ltxml.js - LINQ to XML for JavaScript: 1.0 - Beta 1: First release!ZXMAK2: Version 2.6.6.0: + fix refresh debugger after open RZX file + add NoFlic video filterEPiServer CMS ElencySolutions.MultipleProperty: ElencySolutions.MultipleProperty v1.6.3: The ElencySolutions.MulitpleProperty property controls have been developed by Lee Crowe a technical developer at Fortune Cookie (London). Installation notes The property copy page can be locked down by adding the following location element, the path of this will be different depending on whether you use the embedded or non embedded resource version. When installing the nuget package these will be added automatically, examples below: Embedded: <location path="util/ElencySolutionsMultipleP...Fiskalizacija za developere: FiskalizacijaDev 1.1: Ovo je prva nadogradnja ovog projekta nakon inicijalnog predstavljanja - dodali smo nekoliko feature-a, bilo zato što smo sami primijetili da bi ih bilo dobro dodati, bilo na osnovu vaših sugestija - hvala svima koji su se ukljucili :) Ovo su stvari riješene u v1.1.: 1. Bilo bi dobro da se XML dokument koji se šalje u CIS može snimiti u datoteku (http://fiskalizacija.codeplex.com/workitem/612) 2. Podrška za COM DLL (VB6) (http://fiskalizacija.codeplex.com/workitem/613) 3. Podrška za DOS (unu...MCEBuddy 2.x: MCEBuddy 2.3.4: Changelog for 2.3.4 (32bit and 64bit) 1. Fixed a bug introduced in 2.3.3 that would cause HD recordings and recordings with multiple audio channels to fail. 2. Updated <encoder-unsupported> option to compare with all Audio tracks for videos with multiple audio tracks. 3. Fixed a bug with SRT and EDL files, when input and output directory are the same the files are not preserved.Liberty: v3.4.0.0 Release 20th October 2012: Change Log -Added -Halo 4 support (invincibility, ammo editing) -Reach A warning dialog now shows up when you first attempt to swap a weapon -Fixed -A few minor bugsFoxOS: Stable Fox: Stable Fox Versione 0.0.0.1 Richiede .NET Framework 3.5 o superioriDoctor Reg: Doctor Reg V1.0: Doctor Reg V1.0 PT-PTkv: kv 1.0: if it were any more stable it would be a barn.LINQ for C++: cpplinq-20121020: LINQ for C++ is an attempt to bring LINQ-like list manipulation to C++11. This release includes just the source code. What's new in this release: join range operators: Inner Joins two ranges using a key selector reverse range operator distinct range operator union_with range operator intersect_with range operator except range operator concat range operator sequence_equal range aggregator to_lookup range aggregator This is a sample on how to use cpplinq: #include "cpplinq.h...helferlein_Form: 02.03.05: Requirements.Net 4.0 DotNetNuke 05.06.07 or higher, maybe it works with lower versions, but I developed it on this one and tested it on DotNetNuke 06.02.00 as well helferlein_BabelFish version 01.01.03 - please upgrade this first! Issues fixed Fixed issue with all users from all portals are listed as Host users in the sender options (E-Mail Options - Sender - ALL Users Listed) Registered postback-button for Excel-Export on Form submission edit control Changed behaviour Due to some mis...ClosedXML - The easy way to OpenXML: ClosedXML 0.68.1: ClosedXML now resolves formulas! Yes it finally happened. If you call cell.Value and it has a formula the library will try to evaluate the formula and give you the result. For example: var wb = new XLWorkbook(); var ws = wb.AddWorksheet("Sheet1"); ws.Cell("A1").SetValue(1).CellBelow().SetValue(1); ws.Cell("B1").SetValue(1).CellBelow().SetValue(1); ws.Cell("C1").FormulaA1 = "\"The total value is: \" & SUM(A1:B2)"; var...Orchard Project: Orchard 1.6 RC: RELEASE NOTES This is the Release Candidate version of Orchard 1.6. You should use this version to prepare your current developments to the upcoming final release, and report problems. Please read our release notes for Orchard 1.6 RC: http://docs.orchardproject.net/Documentation/Orchard-1-6-Release-Notes Please do not post questions as reviews. Questions should be posted in the Discussions tab, where they will usually get promptly responded to. If you post a question as a review, you wil...Rawr: Rawr 5.0.1: This is the Downloadable WPF version of Rawr!For web-based version see http://elitistjerks.com/rawr.php You can find the version notes at: http://rawr.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=VersionNotes Rawr Addon (NOT UPDATED YET FOR MOP)We now have a Rawr Official Addon for in-game exporting and importing of character data hosted on Curse. The Addon does not perform calculations like Rawr, it simply shows your exported Rawr data in wow tooltips and lets you export your character to Rawr (including ba...Yahoo! UI Library: YUI Compressor for .Net: Version 2.1.1.0 - Sartha (BugFix): - Revered back the embedding of the 2x assemblies.New ProjectsASP.NET DatePicker (Persian/Gregorian): This is just another DatePicker for ASP.NET that supports both Persian (Jalali/Shamsi/Solar) and Gregorian Calendar.AspectMap: AspectMap is an Aspect Oriented framework built on top of the StructureMap IoC framework.Building a Pinterest like Image Crawler: More about it here : http://www.alexpeta.ro/article/building-a-pinterest-like-image-crawlerCRM 2011 client scripting TypeScript definition file: xrm crm 2011 typescript javascript definition fileDarkSky Commerce: DarkSky Commerce is an Orchard module that provides a generic and extensible set of core commerce features and servicesDarkSky Learning: An Orchard module providing E-learning authoring tools and engines.Dusk Consulting: Dusk Consulting provides automation scripts to help IT Professionals and Developers alike.Edi: Edi is a an IDE based editor that is currently focused on text based editing (other editors may follow). This project is based on AvalonDock 2.0 and AvalonEdit.Entity Framework Extensions: This project includes extensions for the entity framework, includes unit of work pattern with event support, repository pattern with event support, and so on.EPiBoost (EPiServer 7 MVC Toolkit): Coming SoonExtended Guid: Easilly create version 5 guids. Converts an arbitrary string to a guid given a specific work area, or namespace.FileToText: pour la création de liste de fichierFilmBook, Film and Photo Archival Management: FilmBook is a simple image gallery and organization application. It's goal is to help identify the location of negatives in an archival page.FridgeBoard: Este proyecto está siendo realizado por alumnos de informática. No nos hacemos responsables de la mala calidad del mismo.GIV_P1: testyIQTool: Provide a set of tools to generate reports capturing the state of a server. This is written in powershell to allow easy modification / update of the scriptsLeaving Application System: have a good time.Leaving Management System: optimize work flow of staff work attendance managementltxml.js - LINQ to XML for JavaScript: ltxml.js is an XML processing library for JavaScript that is inspired by and largely similar to the LINQ to XML library for .NET.Microsoft .NET SDK For Hadoop: A collection of API's, tools and samples for using .NET with Apache Hadoop.MyLib: This is my personal library of various tidbits that I have been using regularly. Includes a generic repository with EF and MongoDB implementations.Parlez MVC: A multi-lingual implementation for the ASP.NET MVC 4 framework to make it easier to build websites that are viewable in different languages.Perfect Sport Nutrition: Proyecto realizado por la Empresa de Desarrollo Software SoftwareHC E.I.R.LScale Model Database: This project is a work of databasesSliding Block Puzzle: This is a simple (not very good) game for Windows Phone 7.1 (Mango). The point of it is to show off how to do different things in WP7.1.SmallBasic Extension Manager: SXM, or the SmallBasic Extension Manager, is a program intended for use with the Small Basic programming language from Microsoft.SQL Azure Federation Backup to Azure Blob Storage using Azure Worker: Azure Worker project, that will backup any number of Azure SQL Databases to any selected Azure Blob containers. Config in XML. Automatic 7z compression.TeF: A framework for running tests with a plenty of features and ease of use.Testge: testTwittOracle: This project is a prototype project intended to be submitted in a competition. The details will be updated later as things are finalized.uMembership - Alternative Umbraco Member Api: uMembership is an alternative and faster way of dealing with Members in Umbraco when you have 1000's or even 100Variedades Silverlight 5: Varidades Silverlight 5Website d?t tour du lich: Ð? án môn ASP.NET Xây d?ng website d?t tour du l?ch d?a trên mô hình MVCWPF About Box: WPF About Box is simple and free about box for WPF using MVVM pattern. Several properties can be set. Some properties are read from assembly, automatically.WTUnion: WTUnionXML Cleaner: Console app for batch cleaning XML files containing ilegal caracters. It can be useful for cleaning XML files before importing them to SOLR or something similarXmlToObject: XmlToObject is a .Net library for object serialization with use of XPath expressions applied to class fields and properties via custom attributes.XNAGalcon: This Project will create Galcon Game for XNA version

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• algorithm q: Fuzzy matching of structured data

  - by user86432

  I have a fairly small corpus of structured records sitting in a database. Given a tiny fraction of the information contained in a single record, submitted via a web form (so structured in the same way as the table schema), (let us call it the test record) I need to quickly draw up a list of the records that are the most likely matches for the test record, as well as provide a confidence estimate of how closely the search terms match a record. The primary purpose of this search is to discover whether someone is attempting to input a record that is duplicate to one in the corpus. There is a reasonable chance that the test record will be a dupe, and a reasonable chance the test record will not be a dupe. The records are about 12000 bytes wide and the total count of records is about 150,000. There are 110 columns in the table schema and 95% of searches will be on the top 5% most commonly searched columns. The data is stuff like names, addresses, telephone numbers, and other industry specific numbers. In both the corpus and the test record it is entered by hand and is semistructured within an individual field. You might at first blush say "weight the columns by hand and match word tokens within them", but it's not so easy. I thought so too: if I get a telephone number I thought that would indicate a perfect match. The problem is that there isn't a single field in the form whose token frequency does not vary by orders of magnitude. A telephone number might appear 100 times in the corpus or 1 time in the corpus. The same goes for any other field. This makes weighting at the field level impractical. I need a more fine-grained approach to get decent matching. My initial plan was to create a hash of hashes, top level being the fieldname. Then I would select all of the information from the corpus for a given field, attempt to clean up the data contained in it, and tokenize the sanitized data, hashing the tokens at the second level, with the tokens as keys and frequency as value. I would use the frequency count as a weight: the higher the frequency of a token in the reference corpus, the less weight I attach to that token if it is found in the test record. My first question is for the statisticians in the room: how would I use the frequency as a weight? Is there a precise mathematical relationship between n, the number of records, f(t), the frequency with which a token t appeared in the corpus, the probability o that a record is an original and not a duplicate, and the probability p that the test record is really a record x given the test and x contain the same t in the same field? How about the relationship for multiple token matches across multiple fields? Since I sincerely doubt that there is, is there anything that gets me close but is better than a completely arbitrary hack full of magic factors? Barring that, has anyone got a way to do this? I'm especially keen on other suggestions that do not involve maintaining another table in the database, such as a token frequency lookup table :). This is my first post on StackOverflow, thanks in advance for any replies you may see fit to give.

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• Termite colony simulator using java

  - by ashii

  hi everyone, i hve to design a simulator that will maintain an environment, which consists of a collection of patches arranged in a rectangular grid of arbitrary size. Each patch contains zero or more wood chips. A patch may be occupied by one or more termites or predators, which are mobile entities that live within the world and behave according to simple rules. A TERMITE can pick up a wood chip from the patch that it is currently on, or drop a wood chip that it is carrying. Termites travel around the grid by moving randomly from their current patch to a neighbouring patch, in one of four possible directions. New termites may hatch from eggs, and this is simulated by the appearance of a new termite at a random patch within the environment. A PREDATOR moves in a similar way to termites, and if a predator moves onto a patch that is occupied by a termite, then the predator eats the termite. At initialization, the termites, predators, and wood chips are distributed randomly in the environment. Simulation then proceeds in a loop, and the new state of the environment is obtained at each iteration. i have designed the arena using jpanel but im not able to randomnly place wood,termite and predator in that arena. can any one help me out?? my code for the arena is as following: 01 import java.awt.*; 02 import javax.swing.*; 03 04 public class Arena extends JPanel 05 { 06 private static final int Rows = 8; 07 private static final int Cols = 8; 08 public void paint(Graphics g) 09 { 10 Dimension d = this.getSize(); 11 // don't draw both sets of squares, when you can draw one 12 // fill in the entire thing with one color 13 g.setColor(Color.WHITE); 14 // make the background 15 g.fillRect(0,0,d.width,d.height); 16 // draw only black 17 g.setColor(Color.BLACK); 18 // pick a square size based on the smallest dimension 19 int sqsize = ((d.width<d.height) ? d.width/Cols : d.height/Rows); 20 // loop for rows 21 for (int row=0; row<Rows; row++) 22 { 23 int y = row*sqsize; // y stays same for entire row, set here 24 int x = (row%2)*sqsize; // x starts at 0 or one square in 25 for (int i=0; i<Cols/2; i++) 26 { 27 // you will only be drawing half the squares per row 28 // draw square 29 g.fillRect(x,y,sqsize,sqsize); 30 // move two square sizes over 31 x += sqsize*2; 32 } 33 } 34 35 } 36 37 38 39 public void update(Graphics g) { paint(g); } 40 41 42 43 public static void main (String[] args) 44 { 45 46 JFrame frame = new JFrame("Arena"); 47 frame.setSize(600,400); 48 frame.setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE); 49 frame.setContentPane(new Arena()); 50 frame.setVisible(true); 51 } 52 53 }

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• How can I keep my MVC Views, models, and model binders as clean as possible?

  - by MBonig

  I'm rather new to MVC and as I'm getting into the whole framework more and more I'm finding the modelbinders are becoming tough to maintain. Let me explain... I am writing a basic CRUD-over-database app. My domain models are going to be very rich. In an attempt to keep my controllers as thin as possible I've set it up so that on Create/Edit commands the parameter for the action is a richly populated instance of my domain model. To do this I've implemented a custom model binder. As a result, though, this custom model binder is very specific to the view and the model. I've decided to just override the DefaultModelBinder that ships with MVC 2. In the case where the field being bound to my model is just a textbox (or something as simple), I just delegate to the base method. However, when I'm working with a dropdown or something more complex (the UI dictates that date and time are separate data entry fields but for the model it is one Property), I have to perform some checks and some manual data munging. The end result of this is that I have some pretty tight ties between the View and Binder. I'm architecturally fine with this but from a code maintenance standpoint, it's a nightmare. For example, my model I'm binding here is of type Log (this is the object I will get as a parameter on my Action). The "ServiceStateTime" is a property on Log. The form values of "log.ServiceStartDate" and "log.ServiceStartTime" are totally arbitrary and come from two textboxes on the form (Html.TextBox("log.ServiceStartTime",...)) protected override object GetPropertyValue(ControllerContext controllerContext, ModelBindingContext bindingContext, PropertyDescriptor propertyDescriptor, IModelBinder propertyBinder) { if (propertyDescriptor.Name == "ServiceStartTime") { string date = bindingContext.ValueProvider.GetValue("log.ServiceStartDate").ConvertTo(typeof (string)) as string; string time = bindingContext.ValueProvider.GetValue("log.ServiceStartTime").ConvertTo(typeof (string)) as string; DateTime dateTime = DateTime.Parse(date + " " + time); return dateTime; } if (propertyDescriptor.Name == "ServiceEndTime") { string date = bindingContext.ValueProvider.GetValue("log.ServiceEndDate").ConvertTo(typeof(string)) as string; string time = bindingContext.ValueProvider.GetValue("log.ServiceEndTime").ConvertTo(typeof(string)) as string; DateTime dateTime = DateTime.Parse(date + " " + time); return dateTime; } The Log.ServiceEndTime is a similar field. This doesn't feel very DRY to me. First, if I refactor the ServiceStartTime or ServiceEndTime into different field names, the text strings may get missed (although my refactoring tool of choice, R#, is pretty good at this sort of thing, it wouldn't cause a build-time failure and would only get caught by manual testing). Second, if I decided to arbitrarily change the descriptors "log.ServiceStartDate" and "log.ServiceStartTime", I would run into the same problem. To me, runtime silent errors are the worst kind of error out there. So, I see a couple of options to help here and would love to get some input from people who have come across some of these issues: Refactor any text strings in common between the view and model binders out into const strings attached to the ViewModel object I pass from controller to the aspx/ascx view. This pollutes the ViewModel object, though. Provide unit tests around all of the interactions. I'm a big proponent of unit tests and haven't started fleshing this option out but I've got a gut feeling that it won't save me from foot-shootings. If it matters, the Log and other entities in the system are persisted to the database using Fluent NHibernate. I really want to keep my controllers as thin as possible. So, any suggestions here are greatly welcomed! Thanks

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• Is it possible to shuffle a 2D matrix while preserving row AND column frequencies?

  - by j_random_hacker

  Suppose I have a 2D array like the following: GACTG AGATA TCCGA Each array element is taken from a small finite set (in my case, DNA nucleotides -- {A, C, G, T}). I would like to randomly shuffle this array somehow while preserving both row and column nucleotide frequencies. Is this possible? Can it be done efficiently? [EDIT]: By this I mean I want to produce a new matrix where each row has the same number of As, Cs, Gs and Ts as the corresponding row of the original matrix, and where each column has the same number of As, Cs, Gs and Ts as the corresponding column of the original matrix. Permuting the rows or columns of the original matrix will not achieve this in general. (E.g. for the example above, the top row has 2 Gs, and 1 each of A, C and T; if this row was swapped with row 2, the top row in the resulting matrix would have 3 As, 1 G and 1 T.) It's simple enough to preserve just column frequencies by shuffling a column at a time, and likewise for rows. But doing this will in general alter the frequencies of the other kind. My thoughts so far: If it's possible to pick 2 rows and 2 columns so that the 4 elements at the corners of this rectangle have the pattern XY YX for some pair of distinct elements X and Y, then replacing these 4 elements with YX XY will maintain both row and column frequencies. In the example at the top, this can be done for (at least) rows 1 and 2 and columns 2 and 5 (whose corners give the 2x2 matrix AG;GA), and for rows 1 and 3 and columns 1 and 4 (whose corners give GT;TG). Clearly this could be repeated a number of times to produce some level of randomisation. Generalising a bit, any "subrectangle" induced by a subset of rows and a subset of columns, in which the frequencies of all rows are the same and the frequencies of all columns are the same, can have both its rows and columns permuted to produce a valid complete rectangle. (Of these, only those subrectangles in which at least 1 element is changed are actually interesting.) Big questions: Are all valid complete matrices reachable by a series of such "subrectangle rearrangements"? I suspect the answer is yes. Are all valid subrectangle rearrangements decomposable into a series of 2x2 swaps? I suspect the answer is no, but I hope it's yes, since that would seem to make it easier to come up with an efficient algorithm. Can some or all of the valid rearrangements be computed efficiently? This question addresses a special case in which the set of possible elements is {0, 1}. The solutions people have come up with there are similar to what I have come up with myself, and are probably usable, but not ideal as they require an arbitrary amount of backtracking to work correctly. Also I'm concerned that only 2x2 swaps are considered. Finally, I would ideally like a solution that can be proven to select a matrix uniformly at random from the set of all matrices having identical row frequencies and column frequencies to the original. I know, I'm asking for a lot :)

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• Delaying execution of Javascript function relative to Google Maps / geoxml3 parser?

  - by Terra Fimeira

  I'm working on a implementing a Google map on a website with our own tiles overlays and KML elements. I've been previously requested to create code so that, for instance, when the page is loaded from a specific URL, it would initialize with one of the tile overlays already enabled. Recently, I've been requested to do the same for the buildings which are outlined by KML elements so that, arriving at the page with a specific URL, it would automatically zoom, center, and display information on the building. However, while starting with the tile overlays work, the building KML does not. After doing some testing, I've determined that when the code which checks the URL executes, the page is still loading the KML elements and thus do not exist for the code to compare to or use: Code for evaluating URL (placed at the end of onLoad="initialize()") function urlClick() { var currentURL = window.location.href; //Retrieve page URL var URLpiece = currentURL.slice(-6); //pull the last 6 digits (for testing) if (URLpiece === "access") { //If the resulting string is "access": access_click(); //Display accessibility overlay } else if (URLpiece === "middle") { //Else if the string is "middle": facetClick('Middle College'); //Click on building "Middle College" }; }; facetClick(); function facetClick(name) { //Convert building name to building ID. for (var i = 0; i < active.placemarks.length; i++) { if (active.placemarks[i].name === name) { sideClick(i) //Click building whose id matches "Middle College" }; }; }; Firebug Console Error active is null for (var i = 0; i < active.placemarks.length; i++) { active.placemarks is which KML elements are loaded on the page, and being null, means no KML has been loaded yet. In short, I have a mistiming and I can't seem to find a suitable place to place the URL code to execute after the KMl has loaded. As noted above, I placed it at the end of onLoad="initialize()", but it would appear that, instead of waiting for the KML to completely load earlier in the function, the remainder of the function is executed: onLoad="initialize()" information(); //Use the buttons variables inital state to set up description buttons(); //and button state button_hover(0); //and button description to neutral. //Create and arrange the Google Map. //Create basic tile overlays. //Set up parser to work with KML elements. myParser = new geoXML3.parser({ //Parser: Takes KML and converts to JS. map: map, //Applies parsed KML to the map singleInfoWindow: true, afterParse: useTheData //Allows us to use the parsed KML in a function }); myParser.parse(['/maps/kml/shapes.kml','/maps/kml/shapes_hidden.kml']); google.maps.event.addListener(map, 'maptypeid_changed', function() { autoOverlay(); }); //Create other tile overlays to appear over KML elements. urlClick(); I suspect one my issues lies in using the geoxml3 parser (http://code.google.com/p/geoxml3/) which converts our KML files to Javascript. While the page has completed loading all of the elements, the map on the page is still loading, including the KML elements. I have also tried placing urlClick() in the parser itself in various places which appear to execute after all the shapes have been parsed, but I've had no success there either. While I've been intending to strip out the parser, I would like to know if there is any way of executing the "urlClick" after the parser has returned the KML shapes. Ideally, I don't want to use an arbitrary means of defining a time to wait, such as "wait 3 seconds, and go", as my various browsers all load the page at different times; rather, I'm looking for some way to say "when the parser is done, execute" or "when the Google map is completely loaded, execute" or perhaps even "hold until the parser is complete before advancing to urlClick".

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• C++ linked list based tree structure. Sanely copy nodes between lists.

  - by krunk

  edit Clafification: The intention is not to remove the node from the original list. But to create an identical node (data and children wise) to the original and insert that into the new list. In other words, a "move" does not imply a "remove" from the original. endedit The requirements: Each Node in the list must contain a reference to its previous sibling Each Node in the list must contain a reference to its next sibling Each Node may have a list of child nodes Each child Node must have a reference to its parent node Basically what we have is a tree structure of arbitrary depth and length. Something like: -root(NULL) --Node1 ----ChildNode1 ------ChildOfChild --------AnotherChild ----ChildNode2 --Node2 ----ChildNode1 ------ChildOfChild ----ChildNode2 ------ChildOfChild --Node3 ----ChildNode1 ----ChildNode2 Given any individual node, you need to be able to either traverse its siblings. the children, or up the tree to the root node. A Node ends up looking something like this: class Node { Node* previoius; Node* next; Node* child; Node* parent; } I have a container class that stores these and provides STL iterators. It performs your typical linked list accessors. So insertAfter looks like: void insertAfter(Node* after, Node* newNode) { Node* next = after->next; after->next = newNode; newNode->previous = after; next->previous = newNode; newNode->next = next; newNode->parent = after->parent; } That's the setup, now for the question. How would one move a node (and its children etc) to another list without leaving the previous list dangling? For example, if Node* myNode exists in ListOne and I want to append it to listTwo. Using pointers, listOne is left with a hole in its list since the next and previous pointers are changed. One solution is pass by value of the appended Node. So our insertAfter method would become: void insertAfter(Node* after, Node newNode); This seems like an awkward syntax. Another option is doing the copying internally, so you'd have: void insertAfter(Node* after, const Node* newNode) { Node *new_node = new Node(*newNode); Node* next = after->next; after->next = new_node; new_node->previous = after; next->previous = new_node; new_node->next = next; new_node->parent = after->parent; } Finally, you might create a moveNode method for moving and prevent raw insertion or appending of a node that already has been assigned siblings and parents. // default pointer value is 0 in constructor and a operator bool(..) // is defined for the Node bool isInList(const Node* node) const { return (node->previous || node->next || node->parent); } // then in insertAfter and friends if(isInList(newNode) // throw some error and bail I thought I'd toss this out there and see what folks came up with.

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• Suggestions for lightweight, thread-safe scheduler

  - by nirvanai

  I am trying to write a round-robin scheduler for lightweight threads (fibers). It must scale to handle as many concurrently-scheduled fibers as possible. I also need to be able to schedule fibers from threads other than the one the run loop is on, and preferably unschedule them from arbitrary threads as well (though I could live with only being able to unschedule them from the run loop). My current idea is to have a circular doubly-linked list, where each fiber is a node and the scheduler holds a reference to the current node. This is what I have so far: using Interlocked = System.Threading.Interlocked; public class Thread { internal Future current_fiber; public void RunLoop () { while (true) { var fiber = current_fiber; if (fiber == null) { // block the thread until a fiber is scheduled continue; } if (fiber.Fulfilled) fiber.Unschedule (); else fiber.Resume (); //if (current_fiber == fiber) current_fiber = fiber.next; Interlocked.CompareExchange<Future> (ref current_fiber, fiber.next, fiber); } } } public abstract class Future { public bool Fulfilled { get; protected set; } internal Future previous, next; // this must be thread-safe // it inserts this node before thread.current_fiber // (getting the exact position doesn't matter, as long as the // chosen nodes haven't been unscheduled) public void Schedule (Thread thread) { next = this; // maintain circularity, even if this is the only node previous = this; try_again: var current = Interlocked.CompareExchange<Future> (ref thread.current_fiber, this, null); if (current == null) return; var target = current.previous; while (target == null) { // current was unscheduled; negotiate for new current_fiber var potential = current.next; var actual = Interlocked.CompareExchange<Future> (ref thread.current_fiber, potential, current); current = (actual == current? potential : actual); if (current == null) goto try_again; target = current.previous; } // I would lock "current" and "target" at this point. // How can I do this w/o risk of deadlock? next = current; previous = target; target.next = this; current.previous = this; } // this would ideally be thread-safe public void Unschedule () { var prev = previous; if (prev == null) { // already unscheduled return; } previous = null; if (next == this) { next = null; return; } // Again, I would lock "prev" and "next" here // How can I do this w/o risk of deadlock? prev.next = next; next.previous = prev; } public abstract void Resume (); } As you can see, my sticking point is that I cannot ensure the order of locking, so I can't lock more than one node without risking deadlock. Or can I? I don't want to have a global lock on the Thread object, since the amount of lock contention would be extreme. Plus, I don't especially care about insertion position, so if I lock each node separately then Schedule() could use something like Monitor.TryEnter and just keep walking the list until it finds an unlocked node. Overall, I'm not invested in any particular implementation, as long as it meets the requirements I've mentioned. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated. Thanks! P.S- For the curious, this is for an open source project I'm starting at http://github.com/nirvanai/Cirrus

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• Referencing variables in a structure / C++

  - by user1628622

  Below, I provided a minimal example of code I created. I managed to get this code working, but I'm not sure if the practice being employed is sound. In essence, what I am trying to do is have the 'Parameter' class reference select elements in the 'States' class, so variables in States can be changed via Parameters. Questions I have: is the approach taken OK? If not, is there a better way to achieve what I am aiming for? Example code: struct VAR_TYPE{ public: bool is_fixed; // If is_fixed = true, then variable is a parameter double value; // Numerical value std::string name; // Description of variable (to identify it by name) }; struct NODE{ public: VAR_TYPE X, Y, Z; /* VAR_TYPE is a structure of primitive types */ }; class States{ private: std::vector <NODE_ptr> node; // shared ptr to struct NODE std::vector <PROP_DICTIONARY_ptr> property; // CAN NOT be part of Parameter std::vector <ELEMENT_ptr> element; // CAN NOT be part of Parameter public: /* ect */ void set_X_reference ( Parameter &T , int i ) { T.push_var( &node[i]->X ); } void set_Y_reference ( Parameter &T , int i ) { T.push_var( &node[i]->Y ); } void set_Z_reference ( Parameter &T , int i ) { T.push_var( &node[i]->Z ); } bool get_node_bool_X( int i ) { return node[i]->X.is_fixed; } // repeat for Y and Z }; class Parameter{ private: std::vector <VAR_TYPE*> var; public: /* ect */ }; int main(){ States S; Parameter P; /* Here I initialize and set S, and do other stuff */ // Now I assign components in States to Parameters for(int n=0 ; n<S.size_of_nodes() ; n++ ){ if ( S.get_node_bool_X(n)==true ){ S.set_X_reference ( P , n ); }; // repeat if statement for Y and Z }; /* Now P points selected to data in S, and I can * modify the contents of S through P */ return 0; }; Update The reason this issue cropped up is I am working with Fortran legacy code. To sum up this Fotran code - it's a numerical simulation of a flight vehicle. This code has a fairly rigid procedural framework one must work within, which comes with a pre-defined list of allowable Fortran types. The Fortran glue code can create an instance of a C++ object (in actuality, a reference from the perspective of Fortran), but is not aware what is contained in it (other means are used to extract C++ data into Fortran). The problem that I encountered is when a C++ module is dynamically linked to the Fortran glue code, C++ objects have to be initialized each instance the C++ code is called. This happens by virtue of how the Fortran template is defined. To avoid this cycle of re-initializing objects, I plan to use 'State' as a container class. The Fortran code allows a 'State' object, which has an arbitrary definition; but I plan to use it to harness all relevant information about the model. The idea is to use the Parameters class (which is exposed and updated by the Fortran code) to update variables in States.

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• What is New in ASP.NET 4.0 Code Access Security

  - by Xiaohong

  ASP.NET Code Access Security (CAS) is a feature that helps protect server applications on hosting multiple Web sites, ASP.NET lets you assign a configurable trust level that corresponds to a predefined set of permissions. ASP.NET has predefined ASP.NET Trust Levels and Policy Files that you can assign to applications, you also can assign custom trust level and policy files. Most web hosting companies run ASP.NET applications in Medium Trust to prevent that one website affect or harm another site etc. As .NET Framework's Code Access Security model has evolved, ASP.NET 4.0 Code Access Security also has introduced several changes and improvements. The main change in ASP.NET 4.0 CAS In ASP.NET v4.0 partial trust applications, application domain can have a default partial trust permission set as opposed to being full-trust, the permission set name is defined in the <trust /> new attribute permissionSetName that is used to initialize the application domain . By default, the PermissionSetName attribute value is "ASP.Net" which is the name of the permission set you can find in all predefined partial trust configuration files. <trust level="Something" permissionSetName="ASP.Net" /> This is ASP.NET 4.0 new CAS model. For compatibility ASP.NET 4.0 also support legacy CAS model where application domain still has full trust permission set. You can specify new legacyCasModel attribute on the <trust /> element to indicate whether the legacy CAS model is enabled. By default legacyCasModel is false which means that new 4.0 CAS model is the default. <trust level="Something" legacyCasModel="true|false" /> In .Net FX 4.0 Config directory, there are two set of predefined partial trust config files for each new CAS model and legacy CAS model, trust config files with name legacy.XYZ.config are for legacy CAS model: New CAS model: Legacy CAS model: web_hightrust.config legacy.web_hightrust.config web_mediumtrust.config legacy.web_mediumtrust.config web_lowtrust.config legacy.web_lowtrust.config web_minimaltrust.config legacy.web_minimaltrust.config   The figure below shows in ASP.NET 4.0 new CAS model what permission set to grant to code for partial trust application using predefined partial trust levels and policy files:    There also some benefits that comes with the new CAS model: You can lock down a machine by making all managed code no-execute by default (e.g. setting the MyComputer zone to have no managed execution code permissions), it should still be possible to configure ASP.NET web applications to run as either full-trust or partial trust. UNC share doesn’t require full trust with CASPOL at machine-level CAS policy. Side effect that comes with the new CAS model: processRequestInApplicationTrust attribute is deprecated  in new CAS model since application domain always has partial trust permission set in new CAS model.   In ASP.NET 4.0 legacy CAS model or ASP.NET 2.0 CAS model, even though you assign partial trust level to a application but the application domain still has full trust permission set. The figure below shows in ASP.NET 4.0 legacy CAS model (or ASP.NET 2.0 CAS model) what permission set to grant to code for partial trust application using predefined partial trust levels and policy files:     What $AppDirUrl$, $CodeGen$, $Gac$ represents: $AppDirUrl$ The application's virtual root directory. This allows permissions to be applied to code that is located in the application's bin directory. For example, if a virtual directory is mapped to C:\YourWebApp, then $AppDirUrl$ would equate to C:\YourWebApp. $CodeGen$ The directory that contains dynamically generated assemblies (for example, the result of .aspx page compiles). This can be configured on a per application basis and defaults to %windir%\Microsoft.NET\Framework\{version}\Temporary ASP.NET Files. $CodeGen$ allows permissions to be applied to dynamically generated assemblies. $Gac$ Any assembly that is installed in the computer's global assembly cache (GAC). This allows permissions to be granted to strong named assemblies loaded from the GAC by the Web application.   The new customization of CAS Policy in ASP.NET 4.0 new CAS model 1. Define which named permission set in partial trust configuration files By default the permission set that will be assigned at application domain initialization time is the named "ASP.Net" permission set found in all predefined partial trust configuration files. However ASP.NET 4.0 allows you set PermissionSetName attribute to define which named permission set in a partial trust configuration file should be the one used to initialize an application domain. Example: add "ASP.Net_2" named permission set in partial trust configuration file: <PermissionSet class="NamedPermissionSet" version="1" Name="ASP.Net_2"> <IPermission class="FileIOPermission" version="1" Read="$AppDir$" PathDiscovery="$AppDir$" /> <IPermission class="ReflectionPermission" version="1" Flags ="RestrictedMemberAccess" /> <IPermission class="SecurityPermission " version="1" Flags ="Execution, ControlThread, ControlPrincipal, RemotingConfiguration" /></PermissionSet> Then you can use "ASP.Net_2" named permission set for the application domain permission set: <trust level="Something" legacyCasModel="false" permissionSetName="ASP.Net_2" /> 2. Define a custom set of Full Trust Assemblies for an application By using the new fullTrustAssemblies element to configure a set of Full Trust Assemblies for an application, you can modify set of partial trust assemblies to full trust at the machine, site or application level. The configuration definition is shown below: <fullTrustAssemblies> <add assemblyName="MyAssembly" version="1.1.2.3" publicKey="hex_char_representation_of_key_blob" /></fullTrustAssemblies> 3. Define <CodeGroup /> policy in partial trust configuration files ASP.NET 4.0 new CAS model will retain the ability for developers to optionally define <CodeGroup />with membership conditions and assigned permission sets. The specific restriction in ASP.NET 4.0 new CAS model though will be that the results of evaluating custom policies can only result in one of two outcomes: either an assembly is granted full trust, or an assembly is granted the partial trust permission set currently associated with the running application domain. It will not be possible to use custom policies to create additional custom partial trust permission sets. When parsing the partial trust configuration file: Any assemblies that match to code groups associated with "PermissionSet='FullTrust'" will run at full trust. Any assemblies that match to code groups associated with "PermissionSet='Nothing'" will result in a PolicyError being thrown from the CLR. This is acceptable since it provides administrators with a way to do a blanket-deny of managed code followed by selectively defining policy in a <CodeGroup /> that re-adds assemblies that would be allowed to run. Any assemblies that match to code groups associated with other permissions sets will be interpreted to mean the assembly should run at the permission set of the appdomain. This means that even though syntactically a developer could define additional "flavors" of partial trust in an ASP.NET partial trust configuration file, those "flavors" will always be ignored. Example: defines full trust in <CodeGroup /> for my strong named assemblies in partial trust config files: <CodeGroup class="FirstMatchCodeGroup" version="1" PermissionSetName="Nothing"> <IMembershipCondition    class="AllMembershipCondition"    version="1" /> <CodeGroup    class="UnionCodeGroup"    version="1"    PermissionSetName="FullTrust"    Name="My_Strong_Name"    Description="This code group grants code signed full trust. "> <IMembershipCondition      class="StrongNameMembershipCondition" version="1"       PublicKeyBlob="hex_char_representation_of_key_blob" /> </CodeGroup> <CodeGroup   class="UnionCodeGroup" version="1" PermissionSetName="ASP.Net">   <IMembershipCondition class="UrlMembershipCondition" version="1" Url="$AppDirUrl$/*" /> </CodeGroup> <CodeGroup class="UnionCodeGroup" version="1" PermissionSetName="ASP.Net">   <IMembershipCondition class="UrlMembershipCondition" version="1" Url="$CodeGen$/*"   /> </CodeGroup></CodeGroup>   4. Customize CAS policy at runtime in ASP.NET 4.0 new CAS model ASP.NET 4.0 new CAS model allows to customize CAS policy at runtime by using custom HostSecurityPolicyResolver that overrides the ASP.NET code access security policy. Example: use custom host security policy resolver to resolve partial trust web application bin folder MyTrustedAssembly.dll to full trust at runtime: You can create a custom host security policy resolver and compile it to assembly MyCustomResolver.dll with strong name enabled and deploy in GAC: public class MyCustomResolver : HostSecurityPolicyResolver{ public override HostSecurityPolicyResults ResolvePolicy(Evidence evidence) { IEnumerator hostEvidence = evidence.GetHostEnumerator(); while (hostEvidence.MoveNext()) { object hostEvidenceObject = hostEvidence.Current; if (hostEvidenceObject is System.Security.Policy.Url) { string assemblyName = hostEvidenceObject.ToString(); if (assemblyName.Contains(“MyTrustedAssembly.dll”) return HostSecurityPolicyResult.FullTrust; } } //default fall-through return HostSecurityPolicyResult.DefaultPolicy; }} Because ASP.NET accesses the custom HostSecurityPolicyResolver during application domain initialization, and a custom policy resolver requires full trust, you also can add a custom policy resolver in <fullTrustAssemblies /> , or deploy in the GAC. You also need configure a custom HostSecurityPolicyResolver instance by adding the HostSecurityPolicyResolverType attribute in the <trust /> element: <trust level="Something" legacyCasModel="false" hostSecurityPolicyResolverType="MyCustomResolver, MyCustomResolver" permissionSetName="ASP.Net" />   Note: If an assembly policy define in <CodeGroup/> and also in hostSecurityPolicyResolverType, hostSecurityPolicyResolverType will win. If an assembly added in <fullTrustAssemblies/> then the assembly has full trust no matter what policy in <CodeGroup/> or in hostSecurityPolicyResolverType.   Other changes in ASP.NET 4.0 CAS Use the new transparency model introduced in .Net Framework 4.0 Change in dynamically compiled code generated assemblies by ASP.NET: In new CAS model they will be marked as security transparent level2 to use Framework 4.0 security transparent rule that means partial trust code is treated as completely Transparent and it is more strict enforcement. In legacy CAS model they will be marked as security transparent level1 to use Framework 2.0 security transparent rule for compatibility. Most of ASP.NET products runtime assemblies are also changed to be marked as security transparent level2 to switch to SecurityTransparent code by default unless SecurityCritical or SecuritySafeCritical attribute specified. You also can look at Security Changes in the .NET Framework 4 for more information about these security attributes. Support conditional APTCA If an assembly is marked with the Conditional APTCA attribute to allow partially trusted callers, and if you want to make the assembly both visible and accessible to partial-trust code in your web application, you must add a reference to the assembly in the partialTrustVisibleAssemblies section: <partialTrustVisibleAssemblies> <add assemblyName="MyAssembly" publicKey="hex_char_representation_of_key_blob" />/partialTrustVisibleAssemblies>   Most of ASP.NET products runtime assemblies are also changed to be marked as conditional APTCA to prevent use of ASP.NET APIs in partial trust environments such as Winforms or WPF UI controls hosted in Internet Explorer.   Differences between ASP.NET new CAS model and legacy CAS model: Here list some differences between ASP.NET new CAS model and legacy CAS model ASP.NET 4.0 legacy CAS model  : Asp.net partial trust appdomains have full trust permission Multiple different permission sets in a single appdomain are allowed in ASP.NET partial trust configuration files Code groups Machine CAS policy is honored processRequestInApplicationTrust attribute is still honored    New configuration setting for legacy model: <trust level="Something" legacyCASModel="true" ></trust><partialTrustVisibleAssemblies> <add assemblyName="MyAssembly" publicKey="hex_char_representation_of_key_blob" /></partialTrustVisibleAssemblies>   ASP.NET 4.0 new CAS model: ASP.NET will now run in homogeneous application domains. Only full trust or the app-domain's partial trust grant set, are allowable permission sets. It is no longer possible to define arbitrary permission sets that get assigned to different assemblies. If an application currently depends on fine-tuning the partial trust permission set using the ASP.NET partial trust configuration file, this will no longer be possible. processRequestInApplicationTrust attribute is deprecated Dynamically compiled assemblies output by ASP.NET build providers will be updated to explicitly mark assemblies as transparent. ASP.NET partial trust grant sets will be independent from any enterprise, machine, or user CAS policy levels. A simplified model for locking down web servers that only allows trusted managed web applications to run. Machine policy used to always grant full-trust to managed code (based on membership conditions) can instead be configured using the new ASP.NET 4.0 full-trust assembly configuration section. The full-trust assembly configuration section requires explicitly listing each assembly as opposed to using membership conditions. Alternatively, the membership condition(s) used in machine policy can instead be re-defined in a <CodeGroup /> within ASP.NET's partial trust configuration file to grant full-trust.   New configuration setting for new model: <trust level="Something" legacyCASModel="false" permissionSetName="ASP.Net" hostSecurityPolicyResolverType=".NET type string" ></trust><fullTrustAssemblies> <add assemblyName=”MyAssembly” version=”1.0.0.0” publicKey="hex_char_representation_of_key_blob" /></fullTrustAssemblies><partialTrustVisibleAssemblies> <add assemblyName="MyAssembly" publicKey="hex_char_representation_of_key_blob" /></partialTrustVisibleAssemblies>     Hope this post is helpful to better understand the ASP.Net 4.0 CAS. Xiaohong Tang ASP.NET QA Team

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• Using JSON.NET for dynamic JSON parsing

  - by Rick Strahl

  With the release of ASP.NET Web API as part of .NET 4.5 and MVC 4.0, JSON.NET has effectively pushed out the .NET native serializers to become the default serializer for Web API. JSON.NET is vastly more flexible than the built in DataContractJsonSerializer or the older JavaScript serializer. The DataContractSerializer in particular has been very problematic in the past because it can't deal with untyped objects for serialization - like values of type object, or anonymous types which are quite common these days. The JavaScript Serializer that came before it actually does support non-typed objects for serialization but it can't do anything with untyped data coming in from JavaScript and it's overall model of extensibility was pretty limited (JavaScript Serializer is what MVC uses for JSON responses). JSON.NET provides a robust JSON serializer that has both high level and low level components, supports binary JSON, JSON contracts, Xml to JSON conversion, LINQ to JSON and many, many more features than either of the built in serializers. ASP.NET Web API now uses JSON.NET as its default serializer and is now pulled in as a NuGet dependency into Web API projects, which is great. Dynamic JSON Parsing One of the features that I think is getting ever more important is the ability to serialize and deserialize arbitrary JSON content dynamically - that is without mapping the JSON captured directly into a .NET type as DataContractSerializer or the JavaScript Serializers do. Sometimes it isn't possible to map types due to the differences in languages (think collections, dictionaries etc), and other times you simply don't have the structures in place or don't want to create them to actually import the data. If this topic sounds familiar - you're right! I wrote about dynamic JSON parsing a few months back before JSON.NET was added to Web API and when Web API and the System.Net HttpClient libraries included the System.Json classes like JsonObject and JsonArray. With the inclusion of JSON.NET in Web API these classes are now obsolete and didn't ship with Web API or the client libraries. I re-linked my original post to this one. In this post I'll discus JToken, JObject and JArray which are the dynamic JSON objects that make it very easy to create and retrieve JSON content on the fly without underlying types. Why Dynamic JSON? So, why Dynamic JSON parsing rather than strongly typed parsing? Since applications are interacting more and more with third party services it becomes ever more important to have easy access to those services with easy JSON parsing. Sometimes it just makes lot of sense to pull just a small amount of data out of large JSON document received from a service, because the third party service isn't directly related to your application's logic most of the time - and it makes little sense to map the entire service structure in your application. For example, recently I worked with the Google Maps Places API to return information about businesses close to me (or rather the app's) location. The Google API returns a ton of information that my application had no interest in - all I needed was few values out of the data. Dynamic JSON parsing makes it possible to map this data, without having to map the entire API to a C# data structure. Instead I could pull out the three or four values I needed from the API and directly store it on my business entities that needed to receive the data - no need to map the entire Maps API structure. Getting JSON.NET The easiest way to use JSON.NET is to grab it via NuGet and add it as a reference to your project. You can add it to your project with: PM> Install-Package Newtonsoft.Json From the Package Manager Console or by using Manage NuGet Packages in your project References. As mentioned if you're using ASP.NET Web API or MVC 4 JSON.NET will be automatically added to your project. Alternately you can also go to the CodePlex site and download the latest version including source code: http://json.codeplex.com/ Creating JSON on the fly with JObject and JArray Let's start with creating some JSON on the fly. It's super easy to create a dynamic object structure with any of the JToken derived JSON.NET objects. The most common JToken derived classes you are likely to use are JObject and JArray. JToken implements IDynamicMetaProvider and so uses the dynamic  keyword extensively to make it intuitive to create object structures and turn them into JSON via dynamic object syntax. Here's an example of creating a music album structure with child songs using JObject for the base object and songs and JArray for the actual collection of songs:[TestMethod] public void JObjectOutputTest() { // strong typed instance var jsonObject = new JObject(); // you can explicitly add values here using class interface jsonObject.Add("Entered", DateTime.Now); // or cast to dynamic to dynamically add/read properties dynamic album = jsonObject; album.AlbumName = "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap"; album.Artist = "AC/DC"; album.YearReleased = 1976; album.Songs = new JArray() as dynamic; dynamic song = new JObject(); song.SongName = "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap"; song.SongLength = "4:11"; album.Songs.Add(song); song = new JObject(); song.SongName = "Love at First Feel"; song.SongLength = "3:10"; album.Songs.Add(song); Console.WriteLine(album.ToString()); } This produces a complete JSON structure: { "Entered": "2012-08-18T13:26:37.7137482-10:00", "AlbumName": "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap", "Artist": "AC/DC", "YearReleased": 1976, "Songs": [ { "SongName": "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap", "SongLength": "4:11" }, { "SongName": "Love at First Feel", "SongLength": "3:10" } ] } Notice that JSON.NET does a nice job formatting the JSON, so it's easy to read and paste into blog posts :-). JSON.NET includes a bunch of configuration options that control how JSON is generated. Typically the defaults are just fine, but you can override with the JsonSettings object for most operations. The important thing about this code is that there's no explicit type used for holding the values to serialize to JSON. Rather the JSON.NET objects are the containers that receive the data as I build up my JSON structure dynamically, simply by adding properties. This means this code can be entirely driven at runtime without compile time restraints of structure for the JSON output. Here I use JObject to create a album 'object' and immediately cast it to dynamic. JObject() is kind of similar in behavior to ExpandoObject in that it allows you to add properties by simply assigning to them. Internally, JObject values are stored in pseudo collections of key value pairs that are exposed as properties through the IDynamicMetaObject interface exposed in JSON.NET's JToken base class. For objects the syntax is very clean - you add simple typed values as properties. For objects and arrays you have to explicitly create new JObject or JArray, cast them to dynamic and then add properties and items to them. Always remember though these values are dynamic - which means no Intellisense and no compiler type checking. It's up to you to ensure that the names and values you create are accessed consistently and without typos in your code. Note that you can also access the JObject instance directly (not as dynamic) and get access to the underlying JObject type. This means you can assign properties by string, which can be useful for fully data driven JSON generation from other structures. Below you can see both styles of access next to each other:// strong type instance var jsonObject = new JObject(); // you can explicitly add values here jsonObject.Add("Entered", DateTime.Now); // expando style instance you can just 'use' properties dynamic album = jsonObject; album.AlbumName = "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap"; JContainer (the base class for JObject and JArray) is a collection so you can also iterate over the properties at runtime easily:foreach (var item in jsonObject) { Console.WriteLine(item.Key + " " + item.Value.ToString()); } The functionality of the JSON objects are very similar to .NET's ExpandObject and if you used it before, you're already familiar with how the dynamic interfaces to the JSON objects works. Importing JSON with JObject.Parse() and JArray.Parse() The JValue structure supports importing JSON via the Parse() and Load() methods which can read JSON data from a string or various streams respectively. Essentially JValue includes the core JSON parsing to turn a JSON string into a collection of JsonValue objects that can be then referenced using familiar dynamic object syntax. Here's a simple example:public void JValueParsingTest() { var jsonString = @"{""Name"":""Rick"",""Company"":""West Wind"", ""Entered"":""2012-03-16T00:03:33.245-10:00""}"; dynamic json = JValue.Parse(jsonString); // values require casting string name = json.Name; string company = json.Company; DateTime entered = json.Entered; Assert.AreEqual(name, "Rick"); Assert.AreEqual(company, "West Wind"); } The JSON string represents an object with three properties which is parsed into a JObject class and cast to dynamic. Once cast to dynamic I can then go ahead and access the object using familiar object syntax. Note that the actual values - json.Name, json.Company, json.Entered - are actually of type JToken and I have to cast them to their appropriate types first before I can do type comparisons as in the Asserts at the end of the test method. This is required because of the way that dynamic types work which can't determine the type based on the method signature of the Assert.AreEqual(object,object) method. I have to either assign the dynamic value to a variable as I did above, or explicitly cast ( (string) json.Name) in the actual method call. The JSON structure can be much more complex than this simple example. Here's another example of an array of albums serialized to JSON and then parsed through with JsonValue():[TestMethod] public void JsonArrayParsingTest() { var jsonString = @"[ { ""Id"": ""b3ec4e5c"", ""AlbumName"": ""Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap"", ""Artist"": ""AC/DC"", ""YearReleased"": 1976, ""Entered"": ""2012-03-16T00:13:12.2810521-10:00"", ""AlbumImageUrl"": ""http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61kTaH-uZBL._AA115_.jpg"", ""AmazonUrl"": ""http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/…ASIN=B00008BXJ4"", ""Songs"": [ { ""AlbumId"": ""b3ec4e5c"", ""SongName"": ""Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap"", ""SongLength"": ""4:11"" }, { ""AlbumId"": ""b3ec4e5c"", ""SongName"": ""Love at First Feel"", ""SongLength"": ""3:10"" }, { ""AlbumId"": ""b3ec4e5c"", ""SongName"": ""Big Balls"", ""SongLength"": ""2:38"" } ] }, { ""Id"": ""7b919432"", ""AlbumName"": ""End of the Silence"", ""Artist"": ""Henry Rollins Band"", ""YearReleased"": 1992, ""Entered"": ""2012-03-16T00:13:12.2800521-10:00"", ""AlbumImageUrl"": ""http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51FO3rb1tuL._SL160_AA160_.jpg"", ""AmazonUrl"": ""http://www.amazon.com/End-Silence-Rollins-Band/dp/B0000040OX/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1302232195&sr=8-5"", ""Songs"": [ { ""AlbumId"": ""7b919432"", ""SongName"": ""Low Self Opinion"", ""SongLength"": ""5:24"" }, { ""AlbumId"": ""7b919432"", ""SongName"": ""Grip"", ""SongLength"": ""4:51"" } ] } ]"; JArray jsonVal = JArray.Parse(jsonString) as JArray; dynamic albums = jsonVal; foreach (dynamic album in albums) { Console.WriteLine(album.AlbumName + " (" + album.YearReleased.ToString() + ")"); foreach (dynamic song in album.Songs) { Console.WriteLine("\t" + song.SongName); } } Console.WriteLine(albums[0].AlbumName); Console.WriteLine(albums[0].Songs[1].SongName); } JObject and JArray in ASP.NET Web API Of course these types also work in ASP.NET Web API controller methods. If you want you can accept parameters using these object or return them back to the server. The following contrived example receives dynamic JSON input, and then creates a new dynamic JSON object and returns it based on data from the first:[HttpPost] public JObject PostAlbumJObject(JObject jAlbum) { // dynamic input from inbound JSON dynamic album = jAlbum; // create a new JSON object to write out dynamic newAlbum = new JObject(); // Create properties on the new instance // with values from the first newAlbum.AlbumName = album.AlbumName + " New"; newAlbum.NewProperty = "something new"; newAlbum.Songs = new JArray(); foreach (dynamic song in album.Songs) { song.SongName = song.SongName + " New"; newAlbum.Songs.Add(song); } return newAlbum; } The raw POST request to the server looks something like this: POST http://localhost/aspnetwebapi/samples/PostAlbumJObject HTTP/1.1User-Agent: FiddlerContent-type: application/jsonHost: localhostContent-Length: 88 {AlbumName: "Dirty Deeds",Songs:[ { SongName: "Problem Child"},{ SongName: "Squealer"}]} and the output that comes back looks like this: {  "AlbumName": "Dirty Deeds New",  "NewProperty": "something new",  "Songs": [    {      "SongName": "Problem Child New"    },    {      "SongName": "Squealer New"    }  ]} The original values are echoed back with something extra appended to demonstrate that we're working with a new object. When you receive or return a JObject, JValue, JToken or JArray instance in a Web API method, Web API ignores normal content negotiation and assumes your content is going to be received and returned as JSON, so effectively the parameter and result type explicitly determines the input and output format which is nice. Dynamic to Strong Type Mapping You can also map JObject and JArray instances to a strongly typed object, so you can mix dynamic and static typing in the same piece of code. Using the 2 Album jsonString shown earlier, the code below takes an array of albums and picks out only a single album and casts that album to a static Album instance.[TestMethod] public void JsonParseToStrongTypeTest() { JArray albums = JArray.Parse(jsonString) as JArray; // pick out one album JObject jalbum = albums[0] as JObject; // Copy to a static Album instance Album album = jalbum.ToObject<Album>(); Assert.IsNotNull(album); Assert.AreEqual(album.AlbumName,jalbum.Value<string>("AlbumName")); Assert.IsTrue(album.Songs.Count > 0); } This is pretty damn useful for the scenario I mentioned earlier - you can read a large chunk of JSON and dynamically walk the property hierarchy down to the item you want to access, and then either access the specific item dynamically (as shown earlier) or map a part of the JSON to a strongly typed object. That's very powerful if you think about it - it leaves you in total control to decide what's dynamic and what's static. Strongly typed JSON Parsing With all this talk of dynamic let's not forget that JSON.NET of course also does strongly typed serialization which is drop dead easy. Here's a simple example on how to serialize and deserialize an object with JSON.NET:[TestMethod] public void StronglyTypedSerializationTest() { // Demonstrate deserialization from a raw string var album = new Album() { AlbumName = "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap", Artist = "AC/DC", Entered = DateTime.Now, YearReleased = 1976, Songs = new List<Song>() { new Song() { SongName = "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap", SongLength = "4:11" }, new Song() { SongName = "Love at First Feel", SongLength = "3:10" } } }; // serialize to string string json2 = JsonConvert.SerializeObject(album,Formatting.Indented); Console.WriteLine(json2); // make sure we can serialize back var album2 = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<Album>(json2); Assert.IsNotNull(album2); Assert.IsTrue(album2.AlbumName == "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap"); Assert.IsTrue(album2.Songs.Count == 2); } JsonConvert is a high level static class that wraps lower level functionality, but you can also use the JsonSerializer class, which allows you to serialize/parse to and from streams. It's a little more work, but gives you a bit more control. The functionality available is easy to discover with Intellisense, and that's good because there's not a lot in the way of documentation that's actually useful. Summary JSON.NET is a pretty complete JSON implementation with lots of different choices for JSON parsing from dynamic parsing to static serialization, to complex querying of JSON objects using LINQ. It's good to see this open source library getting integrated into .NET, and pushing out the old and tired stock .NET parsers so that we finally have a bit more flexibility - and extensibility - in our JSON parsing. Good to go! Resources Sample Test Project http://json.codeplex.com/© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2012Posted in .NET  Web Api  AJAX   Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

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• Using an alternate JSON Serializer in ASP.NET Web API

  - by Rick Strahl

  The new ASP.NET Web API that Microsoft released alongside MVC 4.0 Beta last week is a great framework for building REST and AJAX APIs. I've been working with it for quite a while now and I really like the way it works and the complete set of features it provides 'in the box'. It's about time that Microsoft gets a decent API for building generic HTTP endpoints into the framework. DataContractJsonSerializer sucks As nice as Web API's overall design is one thing still sucks: The built-in JSON Serialization uses the DataContractJsonSerializer which is just too limiting for many scenarios. The biggest issues I have with it are: No support for untyped values (object, dynamic, Anonymous Types) MS AJAX style Date Formatting Ugly serialization formats for types like Dictionaries To me the most serious issue is dealing with serialization of untyped objects. I have number of applications with AJAX front ends that dynamically reformat data from business objects to fit a specific message format that certain UI components require. The most common scenario I have there are IEnumerable query results from a database with fields from the result set rearranged to fit the sometimes unconventional formats required for the UI components (like jqGrid for example). Creating custom types to fit these messages seems like overkill and projections using Linq makes this much easier to code up. Alas DataContractJsonSerializer doesn't support it. Neither does DataContractSerializer for XML output for that matter. What this means is that you can't do stuff like this in Web API out of the box:public object GetAnonymousType() { return new { name = "Rick", company = "West Wind", entered= DateTime.Now }; } Basically anything that doesn't have an explicit type DataContractJsonSerializer will not let you return. FWIW, the same is true for XmlSerializer which also doesn't work with non-typed values for serialization. The example above is obviously contrived with a hardcoded object graph, but it's not uncommon to get dynamic values returned from queries that have anonymous types for their result projections. Apparently there's a good possibility that Microsoft will ship Json.NET as part of Web API RTM release.  Scott Hanselman confirmed this as a footnote in his JSON Dates post a few days ago. I've heard several other people from Microsoft confirm that Json.NET will be included and be the default JSON serializer, but no details yet in what capacity it will show up. Let's hope it ends up as the default in the box. Meanwhile this post will show you how you can use it today with the beta and get JSON that matches what you should see in the RTM version. What about JsonValue? To be fair Web API DOES include a new JsonValue/JsonObject/JsonArray type that allow you to address some of these scenarios. JsonValue is a new type in the System.Json assembly that can be used to build up an object graph based on a dictionary. It's actually a really cool implementation of a dynamic type that allows you to create an object graph and spit it out to JSON without having to create .NET type first. JsonValue can also receive a JSON string and parse it without having to actually load it into a .NET type (which is something that's been missing in the core framework). This is really useful if you get a JSON result from an arbitrary service and you don't want to explicitly create a mapping type for the data returned. For serialization you can create an object structure on the fly and pass it back as part of an Web API action method like this:public JsonValue GetJsonValue() { dynamic json = new JsonObject(); json.name = "Rick"; json.company = "West Wind"; json.entered = DateTime.Now; dynamic address = new JsonObject(); address.street = "32 Kaiea"; address.zip = "96779"; json.address = address; dynamic phones = new JsonArray(); json.phoneNumbers = phones; dynamic phone = new JsonObject(); phone.type = "Home"; phone.number = "808 123-1233"; phones.Add(phone); phone = new JsonObject(); phone.type = "Home"; phone.number = "808 123-1233"; phones.Add(phone); //var jsonString = json.ToString(); return json; } which produces the following output (formatted here for easier reading):{ name: "rick", company: "West Wind", entered: "2012-03-08T15:33:19.673-10:00", address: { street: "32 Kaiea", zip: "96779" }, phoneNumbers: [ { type: "Home", number: "808 123-1233" }, { type: "Mobile", number: "808 123-1234" }] } If you need to build a simple JSON type on the fly these types work great. But if you have an existing type - or worse a query result/list that's already formatted JsonValue et al. become a pain to work with. As far as I can see there's no way to just throw an object instance at JsonValue and have it convert into JsonValue dictionary. It's a manual process. Using alternate Serializers in Web API So, currently the default serializer in WebAPI is DataContractJsonSeriaizer and I don't like it. You may not either, but luckily you can swap the serializer fairly easily. If you'd rather use the JavaScriptSerializer built into System.Web.Extensions or Json.NET today, it's not too difficult to create a custom MediaTypeFormatter that uses these serializers and can replace or partially replace the native serializer. Here's a MediaTypeFormatter implementation using the ASP.NET JavaScriptSerializer:using System; using System.Net.Http.Formatting; using System.Threading.Tasks; using System.Web.Script.Serialization; using System.Json; using System.IO; namespace Westwind.Web.WebApi { public class JavaScriptSerializerFormatter : MediaTypeFormatter { public JavaScriptSerializerFormatter() { SupportedMediaTypes.Add(new System.Net.Http.Headers.MediaTypeHeaderValue("application/json")); } protected override bool CanWriteType(Type type) { // don't serialize JsonValue structure use default for that if (type == typeof(JsonValue) || type == typeof(JsonObject) || type== typeof(JsonArray) ) return false; return true; } protected override bool CanReadType(Type type) { if (type == typeof(IKeyValueModel)) return false; return true; } protected override System.Threading.Tasks.Taskobject OnReadFromStreamAsync(Type type, System.IO.Stream stream, System.Net.Http.Headers.HttpContentHeaders contentHeaders, FormatterContext formatterContext) { var task = Taskobject.Factory.StartNew(() = { var ser = new JavaScriptSerializer(); string json; using (var sr = new StreamReader(stream)) { json = sr.ReadToEnd(); sr.Close(); } object val = ser.Deserialize(json,type); return val; }); return task; } protected override System.Threading.Tasks.Task OnWriteToStreamAsync(Type type, object value, System.IO.Stream stream, System.Net.Http.Headers.HttpContentHeaders contentHeaders, FormatterContext formatterContext, System.Net.TransportContext transportContext) { var task = Task.Factory.StartNew( () = { var ser = new JavaScriptSerializer(); var json = ser.Serialize(value); byte[] buf = System.Text.Encoding.Default.GetBytes(json); stream.Write(buf,0,buf.Length); stream.Flush(); }); return task; } } } Formatter implementation is pretty simple: You override 4 methods to tell which types you can handle and then handle the input or output streams to create/parse the JSON data. Note that when creating output you want to take care to still allow JsonValue/JsonObject/JsonArray types to be handled by the default serializer so those objects serialize properly - if you let either JavaScriptSerializer or JSON.NET handle them they'd try to render the dictionaries which is very undesirable. If you'd rather use Json.NET here's the JSON.NET version of the formatter:// this code requires a reference to JSON.NET in your project #if true using System; using System.Net.Http.Formatting; using System.Threading.Tasks; using System.Web.Script.Serialization; using System.Json; using Newtonsoft.Json; using System.IO; using Newtonsoft.Json.Converters; namespace Westwind.Web.WebApi { public class JsonNetFormatter : MediaTypeFormatter { public JsonNetFormatter() { SupportedMediaTypes.Add(new System.Net.Http.Headers.MediaTypeHeaderValue("application/json")); } protected override bool CanWriteType(Type type) { // don't serialize JsonValue structure use default for that if (type == typeof(JsonValue) || type == typeof(JsonObject) || type == typeof(JsonArray)) return false; return true; } protected override bool CanReadType(Type type) { if (type == typeof(IKeyValueModel)) return false; return true; } protected override System.Threading.Tasks.Taskobject OnReadFromStreamAsync(Type type, System.IO.Stream stream, System.Net.Http.Headers.HttpContentHeaders contentHeaders, FormatterContext formatterContext) { var task = Taskobject.Factory.StartNew(() = { var settings = new JsonSerializerSettings() { NullValueHandling = NullValueHandling.Ignore, }; var sr = new StreamReader(stream); var jreader = new JsonTextReader(sr); var ser = new JsonSerializer(); ser.Converters.Add(new IsoDateTimeConverter()); object val = ser.Deserialize(jreader, type); return val; }); return task; } protected override System.Threading.Tasks.Task OnWriteToStreamAsync(Type type, object value, System.IO.Stream stream, System.Net.Http.Headers.HttpContentHeaders contentHeaders, FormatterContext formatterContext, System.Net.TransportContext transportContext) { var task = Task.Factory.StartNew( () = { var settings = new JsonSerializerSettings() { NullValueHandling = NullValueHandling.Ignore, }; string json = JsonConvert.SerializeObject(value, Formatting.Indented, new JsonConverter[1] { new IsoDateTimeConverter() } ); byte[] buf = System.Text.Encoding.Default.GetBytes(json); stream.Write(buf,0,buf.Length); stream.Flush(); }); return task; } } } #endif   One advantage of the Json.NET serializer is that you can specify a few options on how things are formatted and handled. You get null value handling and you can plug in the IsoDateTimeConverter which is nice to product proper ISO dates that I would expect any Json serializer to output these days. Hooking up the Formatters Once you've created the custom formatters you need to enable them for your Web API application. To do this use the GlobalConfiguration.Configuration object and add the formatter to the Formatters collection. Here's what this looks like hooked up from Application_Start in a Web project:protected void Application_Start(object sender, EventArgs e) { // Action based routing (used for RPC calls) RouteTable.Routes.MapHttpRoute( name: "StockApi", routeTemplate: "stocks/{action}/{symbol}", defaults: new { symbol = RouteParameter.Optional, controller = "StockApi" } ); // WebApi Configuration to hook up formatters and message handlers // optional RegisterApis(GlobalConfiguration.Configuration); } public static void RegisterApis(HttpConfiguration config) { // Add JavaScriptSerializer formatter instead - add at top to make default //config.Formatters.Insert(0, new JavaScriptSerializerFormatter()); // Add Json.net formatter - add at the top so it fires first! // This leaves the old one in place so JsonValue/JsonObject/JsonArray still are handled config.Formatters.Insert(0, new JsonNetFormatter()); } One thing to remember here is the GlobalConfiguration object which is Web API's static configuration instance. I think this thing is seriously misnamed given that GlobalConfiguration could stand for anything and so is hard to discover if you don't know what you're looking for. How about WebApiConfiguration or something more descriptive? Anyway, once you know what it is you can use the Formatters collection to insert your custom formatter. Note that I insert my formatter at the top of the list so it takes precedence over the default formatter. I also am not removing the old formatter because I still want JsonValue/JsonObject/JsonArray to be handled by the default serialization mechanism. Since they process in sequence and I exclude processing for these types JsonValue et al. still get properly serialized/deserialized. Summary Currently DataContractJsonSerializer in Web API is a pain, but at least we have the ability with relatively limited effort to replace the MediaTypeFormatter and plug in our own JSON serializer. This is useful for many scenarios - if you have existing client applications that used MVC JsonResult or ASP.NET AJAX results from ASMX AJAX services you can plug in the JavaScript serializer and get exactly the same serializer you used in the past so your results will be the same and don't potentially break clients. JSON serializers do vary a bit in how they serialize some of the more complex types (like Dictionaries and dates for example) and so if you're migrating it might be helpful to ensure your client code doesn't break when you switch to ASP.NET Web API. Going forward it looks like Microsoft is planning on plugging in Json.Net into Web API and make that the default. I think that's an awesome choice since Json.net has been around forever, is fast and easy to use and provides a ton of functionality as part of this great library. I just wish Microsoft would have figured this out sooner instead of now at the last minute integrating with it especially given that Json.Net has a similar set of lower level JSON objects JsonValue/JsonObject etc. which now will end up being duplicated by the native System.Json stuff. It's not like we don't already have enough confusion regarding which JSON serializer to use (JavaScriptSerializer, DataContractJsonSerializer, JsonValue/JsonObject/JsonArray and now Json.net). For years I've been using my own JSON serializer because the built in choices are both limited. However, with an official encorsement of Json.Net I'm happily moving on to use that in my applications. Let's see and hope Microsoft gets this right before ASP.NET Web API goes gold.© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2012Posted in Web Api  AJAX  ASP.NET   Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

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• Where does ASP.NET Web API Fit?

  - by Rick Strahl

  With the pending release of ASP.NET MVC 4 and the new ASP.NET Web API, there has been a lot of discussion of where the new Web API technology fits in the ASP.NET Web stack. There are a lot of choices to build HTTP based applications available now on the stack - we've come a long way from when WebForms and Http Handlers/Modules where the only real options. Today we have WebForms, MVC, ASP.NET Web Pages, ASP.NET AJAX, WCF REST and now Web API as well as the core ASP.NET runtime to choose to build HTTP content with. Web API definitely squarely addresses the 'API' aspect - building consumable services - rather than HTML content, but even to that end there are a lot of choices you have today. So where does Web API fit, and when doesn't it? But before we get into that discussion, let's talk about what a Web API is and why we should care. What's a Web API? HTTP 'APIs' (Microsoft's new terminology for a service I guess)  are becoming increasingly more important with the rise of the many devices in use today. Most mobile devices like phones and tablets run Apps that are using data retrieved from the Web over HTTP. Desktop applications are also moving in this direction with more and more online content and synching moving into even traditional desktop applications. The pending Windows 8 release promises an app like platform for both the desktop and other devices, that also emphasizes consuming data from the Cloud. Likewise many Web browser hosted applications these days are relying on rich client functionality to create and manipulate the browser user interface, using AJAX rather than server generated HTML data to load up the user interface with data. These mobile or rich Web applications use their HTTP connection to return data rather than HTML markup in the form of JSON or XML typically. But an API can also serve other kinds of data, like images or other binary files, or even text data and HTML (although that's less common). A Web API is what feeds rich applications with data. ASP.NET Web API aims to service this particular segment of Web development by providing easy semantics to route and handle incoming requests and an easy to use platform to serve HTTP data in just about any content format you choose to create and serve from the server. But .NET already has various HTTP Platforms The .NET stack already includes a number of technologies that provide the ability to create HTTP service back ends, and it has done so since the very beginnings of the .NET platform. From raw HTTP Handlers and Modules in the core ASP.NET runtime, to high level platforms like ASP.NET MVC, Web Forms, ASP.NET AJAX and the WCF REST engine (which technically is not ASP.NET, but can integrate with it), you've always been able to handle just about any kind of HTTP request and response with ASP.NET. The beauty of the raw ASP.NET platform is that it provides you everything you need to build just about any type of HTTP application you can dream up from low level APIs/custom engines to high level HTML generation engine. ASP.NET as a core platform clearly has stood the test of time 10+ years later and all other frameworks like Web API are built on top of this ASP.NET core. However, although it's possible to create Web APIs / Services using any of the existing out of box .NET technologies, none of them have been a really nice fit for building arbitrary HTTP based APIs. Sure, you can use an HttpHandler to create just about anything, but you have to build a lot of plumbing to build something more complex like a comprehensive API that serves a variety of requests, handles multiple output formats and can easily pass data up to the server in a variety of ways. Likewise you can use ASP.NET MVC to handle routing and creating content in various formats fairly easily, but it doesn't provide a great way to automatically negotiate content types and serve various content formats directly (it's possible to do with some plumbing code of your own but not built in). Prior to Web API, Microsoft's main push for HTTP services has been WCF REST, which was always an awkward technology that had a severe personality conflict, not being clear on whether it wanted to be part of WCF or purely a separate technology. In the end it didn't do either WCF compatibility or WCF agnostic pure HTTP operation very well, which made for a very developer-unfriendly environment. Personally I didn't like any of the implementations at the time, so much so that I ended up building my own HTTP service engine (as part of the West Wind Web Toolkit), as have a few other third party tools that provided much better integration and ease of use. With the release of Web API for the first time I feel that I can finally use the tools in the box and not have to worry about creating and maintaining my own toolkit as Web API addresses just about all the features I implemented on my own and much more. ASP.NET Web API provides a better HTTP Experience ASP.NET Web API differentiates itself from the previous Microsoft in-box HTTP service solutions in that it was built from the ground up around the HTTP protocol and its messaging semantics. Unlike WCF REST or ASP.NET AJAX with ASMX, it’s a brand new platform rather than bolted on technology that is supposed to work in the context of an existing framework. The strength of the new ASP.NET Web API is that it combines the best features of the platforms that came before it, to provide a comprehensive and very usable HTTP platform. Because it's based on ASP.NET and borrows a lot of concepts from ASP.NET MVC, Web API should be immediately familiar and comfortable to most ASP.NET developers. Here are some of the features that Web API provides that I like: Strong Support for URL Routing to produce clean URLs using familiar MVC style routing semantics Content Negotiation based on Accept headers for request and response serialization Support for a host of supported output formats including JSON, XML, ATOM Strong default support for REST semantics but they are optional Easily extensible Formatter support to add new input/output types Deep support for more advanced HTTP features via HttpResponseMessage and HttpRequestMessage classes and strongly typed Enums to describe many HTTP operations Convention based design that drives you into doing the right thing for HTTP Services Very extensible, based on MVC like extensibility model of Formatters and Filters Self-hostable in non-Web applications  Testable using testing concepts similar to MVC Web API is meant to handle any kind of HTTP input and produce output and status codes using the full spectrum of HTTP functionality available in a straight forward and flexible manner. Looking at the list above you can see that a lot of functionality is very similar to ASP.NET MVC, so many ASP.NET developers should feel quite comfortable with the concepts of Web API. The Routing and core infrastructure of Web API are very similar to how MVC works providing many of the benefits of MVC, but with focus on HTTP access and manipulation in Controller methods rather than HTML generation in MVC. There’s much improved support for content negotiation based on HTTP Accept headers with the framework capable of detecting automatically what content the client is sending and requesting and serving the appropriate data format in return. This seems like such a little and obvious thing, but it's really important. Today's service backends often are used by multiple clients/applications and being able to choose the right data format for what fits best for the client is very important. While previous solutions were able to accomplish this using a variety of mixed features of WCF and ASP.NET, Web API combines all this functionality into a single robust server side HTTP framework that intrinsically understands the HTTP semantics and subtly drives you in the right direction for most operations. And when you need to customize or do something that is not built in, there are lots of hooks and overrides for most behaviors, and even many low level hook points that allow you to plug in custom functionality with relatively little effort. No Brainers for Web API There are a few scenarios that are a slam dunk for Web API. If your primary focus of an application or even a part of an application is some sort of API then Web API makes great sense. HTTP ServicesIf you're building a comprehensive HTTP API that is to be consumed over the Web, Web API is a perfect fit. You can isolate the logic in Web API and build your application as a service breaking out the logic into controllers as needed. Because the primary interface is the service there's no confusion of what should go where (MVC or API). Perfect fit. Primary AJAX BackendsIf you're building rich client Web applications that are relying heavily on AJAX callbacks to serve its data, Web API is also a slam dunk. Again because much if not most of the business logic will probably end up in your Web API service logic, there's no confusion over where logic should go and there's no duplication. In Single Page Applications (SPA), typically there's very little HTML based logic served other than bringing up a shell UI and then filling the data from the server with AJAX which means the business logic required for data retrieval and data acceptance and validation too lives in the Web API. Perfect fit. Generic HTTP EndpointsAnother good fit are generic HTTP endpoints that to serve data or handle 'utility' type functionality in typical Web applications. If you need to implement an image server, or an upload handler in the past I'd implement that as an HTTP handler. With Web API you now have a well defined place where you can implement these types of generic 'services' in a location that can easily add endpoints (via Controller methods) or separated out as more full featured APIs. Granted this could be done with MVC as well, but Web API seems a clearer and more well defined place to store generic application services. This is one thing I used to do a lot of in my own libraries and Web API addresses this nicely. Great fit. Mixed HTML and AJAX Applications: Not a clear Choice  For all the commonality that Web API and MVC share they are fundamentally different platforms that are independent of each other. A lot of people have asked when does it make sense to use MVC vs. Web API when you're dealing with typical Web application that creates HTML and also uses AJAX functionality for rich functionality. While it's easy to say that all 'service'/AJAX logic should go into a Web API and all HTML related generation into MVC, that can often result in a lot of code duplication. Also MVC supports JSON and XML result data fairly easily as well so there's some confusion where that 'trigger point' is of when you should switch to Web API vs. just implementing functionality as part of MVC controllers. Ultimately there's a tradeoff between isolation of functionality and duplication. A good rule of thumb I think works is that if a large chunk of the application's functionality serves data Web API is a good choice, but if you have a couple of small AJAX requests to serve data to a grid or autocomplete box it'd be overkill to separate out that logic into a separate Web API controller. Web API does add overhead to your application (it's yet another framework that sits on top of core ASP.NET) so it should be worth it .Keep in mind that MVC can generate HTML and JSON/XML and just about any other content easily and that functionality is not going away, so just because you Web API is there it doesn't mean you have to use it. Web API is not a full replacement for MVC obviously either since there's not the same level of support to feed HTML from Web API controllers (although you can host a RazorEngine easily enough if you really want to go that route) so if you're HTML is part of your API or application in general MVC is still a better choice either alone or in combination with Web API. I suspect (and hope) that in the future Web API's functionality will merge even closer with MVC so that you might even be able to mix functionality of both into single Controllers so that you don't have to make any trade offs, but at the moment that's not the case. Some Issues To think about Web API is similar to MVC but not the Same Although Web API looks a lot like MVC it's not the same and some common functionality of MVC behaves differently in Web API. For example, the way single POST variables are handled is different than MVC and doesn't lend itself particularly well to some AJAX scenarios with POST data. Code Duplication I already touched on this in the Mixed HTML and Web API section, but if you build an MVC application that also exposes a Web API it's quite likely that you end up duplicating a bunch of code and - potentially - infrastructure. You may have to create authentication logic both for an HTML application and for the Web API which might need something different altogether. More often than not though the same logic is used, and there's no easy way to share. If you implement an MVC ActionFilter and you want that same functionality in your Web API you'll end up creating the filter twice. AJAX Data or AJAX HTML On a recent post's comments, David made some really good points regarding the commonality of MVC and Web API's and its place. One comment that caught my eye was a little more generic, regarding data services vs. HTML services. David says: I see a lot of merit in the combination of Knockout.js, client side templates and view models, calling Web API for a responsive UI, but sometimes late at night that still leaves me wondering why I would no longer be using some of the nice tooling and features that have evolved in MVC ;-) You know what - I can totally relate to that. On the last Web based mobile app I worked on, we decided to serve HTML partials to the client via AJAX for many (but not all!) things, rather than sending down raw data to inject into the DOM on the client via templating or direct manipulation. While there are definitely more bytes on the wire, with this, the overhead ended up being actually fairly small if you keep the 'data' requests small and atomic. Performance was often made up by the lack of client side rendering of HTML. Server rendered HTML for AJAX templating gives so much better infrastructure support without having to screw around with 20 mismatched client libraries. Especially with MVC and partials it's pretty easy to break out your HTML logic into very small, atomic chunks, so it's actually easy to create small rendering islands that can be used via composition on the server, or via AJAX calls to small, tight partials that return HTML to the client. Although this is often frowned upon as to 'heavy', it worked really well in terms of developer effort as well as providing surprisingly good performance on devices. There's still plenty of jQuery and AJAX logic happening on the client but it's more manageable in small doses rather than trying to do the entire UI composition with JavaScript and/or 'not-quite-there-yet' template engines that are very difficult to debug. This is not an issue directly related to Web API of course, but something to think about especially for AJAX or SPA style applications. Summary Web API is a great new addition to the ASP.NET platform and it addresses a serious need for consolidation of a lot of half-baked HTTP service API technologies that came before it. Web API feels 'right', and hits the right combination of usability and flexibility at least for me and it's a good fit for true API scenarios. However, just because a new platform is available it doesn't meant that other tools or tech that came before it should be discarded or even upgraded to the new platform. There's nothing wrong with continuing to use MVC controller methods to handle API tasks if that's what your app is running now - there's very little to be gained by upgrading to Web API just because. But going forward Web API clearly is the way to go, when building HTTP data interfaces and it's good to see that Microsoft got this one right - it was sorely needed! Resources ASP.NET Web API AspConf Ask the Experts Session (first 5 minutes) © Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2012Posted in Web Api   Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, April 01, 2010

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, April 01, 2010New ProjectsASP.NET Bing Maps: Extensible and easy to use, this is ASP.NET Bing Maps Control. Drag & Drop and is ready to go. You can configure map mode, map style, add a PushPin...Bricks' Bane: Bricks' Bane is a brick breaker game developed using XNA and published on XBox Live Indy Games. Source code includes a C# library useful for game d...cURL for dotnet: Another dotnet binding for libcurl see http://curl.haxx.se for more info about cURL/libcurlCustom Functoid que acessa o banco de dados SQL: Functoid para Biztalk Server 2006 utilizando dados do SQL Server 2005FEI STU Pharmacy e-shop: Elektronicky obchod s liekmi Vytvorte jednoduchú klient-server aplikáciu, ktorá bude realizovať elektronický obchod s liekmi. Moduly: 1. e-shop f...Flavours of Wix: Investigating building DSL's to create installers based on WIXFulcrum: Fulcrum is a code generation framework built on top of the T4 technology in Visual Studio. GreviousAngel: New team projectHabanero Inferno: Habanero Inferno coming soon.Kawo Pounga !: A useless game !!!LetsXNA!!: This is a project created by members of Linked In group Lets XNA!! to build a XNA game and have fun in the process. The goal is to build a simple ...Linq To Naver , Custom Linq Provider for Naver searchengine OpenAPI: <project name>Linq to Naver </project name> <programming language>C#, CSharp</programming language>LocoSync: LocoSync is a file Syncronization/Backup/Archiver program, which is easily extendable. It is easy to add new syncronization methods using C# code.Natural Language Processing: Natural Language ProcessingNop Commerce Azure: Ce projet vous permet de mettre en place rapidement et simplement votre site d'e-commerce en ligne en bénéficiant de tous les avantages de la plate...Nwinsock: Nwinsock is a component for network , Object Transfer, Pocket Compression, Support TCP,UDP Protocol, Thread Base OnTime: OnTime is a simple program from that matching game back in the day just to bring light to programming techniques. It's developed in C#.?OpenGL ES 2.0 Compact Framework Wrapper: OpenGL ES 2.0 wrapper for .NET Compact Framework. Developed on HTC HD 2 device but should run on any Windows Mobile device that has the correct lib...ortaknokta: bu proje: birkaç kişinin bir araya gelip, istedikleri konularda tartışma yapmalarına olanak saglamak icin hazırlanmaya çalışıl maktadır. P-Data: P-Data es una herramienta que permite obtener información procedente de archivos de datos (Data Profiling) a través de consultas SQL, automatizando...PowerAuras: Addon for World of Warcraft - Displays effects on screen at different conditionsPowerShell ToodleDo Module: PowerShell Module for interacting with toodledo.com online To-Do list site. RSS Reader for Windows Phone 7: This RSS Reader application for windows 7Streamlet Containers: This is my implement of STL-style containers, including a dynamic array, a double-linked list and an r-b-tree. Just for practice. Please feel free...Troav: Social encyclopedia built using c# and the Orchard frameworkUmbraco App_Code/Usercontrol Editor: Package for Umbraco to add App_Code and usercontrol editing to the Developer section of the Umbraco administration system. Will support GeSHi editi...Vczh Reactive Programming Library: Reactive programming library provide a stream or state machine view to use .NET eventsWhoIs XML API: The project uses the public WhoIs XML API service (http://www.whoisxmlapi.com/) to obtain detailed details. The project is written in C# and serial...WPF FlowDocument Examples for VS2008 and VS2010: WPF Text Samples (especially FlowDocument) on the various possible effects: sub- and super-script, ruby (a.k.a. furigana), and various others...You are here (for Windows Mobile): This sample shows you how to play a *.wav file on your device with Compact Framework 2.0. There is better support for playing music on Compact F...New Releases( λunula ): Lunula 0.4.0: Changelog Implemented a virtual machine. Implemented a compiler for the virtual machine. Added first-class continuations (call/cc) Removed co...Alter gear SQL index Management: Setup 1.0.1: Changes Test connection - successful message Connection string timeout property added Setup Project added to project source code Possible issu...ASP.NET Bing Maps: ASP.NET Bing Maps 0.1b: Project Description Extensible and easy to use, this is ASP.NET Bing Maps Control. Drag & Drop and is ready to go. You can configure map mode, map ...ASP.NET MVC Validation Library: ASP.NET MVC Validation Library 1.3: Changes since 1.2: - Support remote validation - Support custom server-side validation - The design of validation attribute is improved Note: test...BigDays 2010: HelfenHelfen - v1: PLEASE NOTE: This project is published under the Microsoft Public License (Ms-PL). http://bigdays10.codeplex.com/license IT IS A DEMO SOLUTION FOR...Caps - Manage your collection!: Caps Console 0.1.4.0 Alpha: This is preview release (Alpha quality). This release contains only limited amount of fixes and new features from user point of view. Major focus f...CSharpQuery: Version 1.0: This version is stable. Please report any possible bugs. The next release will include a sample project and index management tools. Until then pl...Custom Functoid que acessa o banco de dados SQL: Custom Functoid SQL Server: Solução do Visual Studio com código fonte e script SQL do functoid em BiztalkDawf: Dual Audio Workflow: Beta 3: Suppose if two good audio events overlap in time with a videoevent of interest. (This can only happen if PluralEyes isn't used on everything). Befo...Dirac codec user interface: Dirac User Interface (checkin 37132): Same as 36795 version, but done with the last source code.DotNetNuke® Blog: 04.00.00 RC 3: PLEASE NOTE: You may upgrade an RC 2 install. But please do not upgrade previous version of the Beta releases - please start from RC 2 or 03.05.0...DotNetNuke® Skinning Extensions: SimpleTitle Skin Object: This is an example skin object that only renders the "page name" if used in a skin and the "module title" if used in a container. No extra spans, c...Fulcrum: Fulcrum v0.9: Initial release of FulcrumHelloTipi Photos Uploader: Version 2010.03.31: De toute petites corrections : - Correction du bouton envoyer - Impossible d'interagir avec l'application quand on uploadkdar: KDAR 0.0.18: KDAR - Kernel Debugger Anti Rootkit - dispacth table's signature bases updated ( many driver's) - scripts refactored - some bug fixedLegend: Legend Libraries: The latest release.Linq To Naver , Custom Linq Provider for Naver searchengine OpenAPI: Linq to Naver: Linq to NaverLive at Education Meta Web-Service: Live at Education Meta Web Service v. 1.0: We're happy to publish final version of Live at Education Meta Web Serivce (LAEMWS). In this release: Huge list of Windows Live ID enabled servic...Live@edu SSO WebPart for MOSS 2007: WebPart 2.0: This release is based on Live@edu Meta Web Service (laemws - http://laemws.codeplex.com). It is highly recomended to use laemws version of webpart,...LocoSync: LocoSync v0.1r2010.03.31 installer: This is the first public release. Unzip and run setup. Or if you have .net 3.5 runtime available download the exetutable and try...Natural Language Processing: test1: testNop Commerce Azure: Nop Commerce Azure: Nop Commerce Full Sources with additionnals Azure Projects.Nwinsock: NWinsock: Nwinsock version 1.0 is hereOpen NFe: DANFe v1.9.8: Correção CSTOpenGL ES 2.0 Compact Framework Wrapper: v0.1 Sources: First rough release. It has a working sample application which renders a triangle with rotation. Don't expect anything great. Just a very early ...patterns & practices - Windows Azure Guidance: Code Drop 3: Second iteration of a-Expense on Azure. This release builds on the previous one and mainly focuses on replacing SQL Azure by Table Storage. We hav...Posh4DNN: Posh4DNN Scripts 2.0: This release greatly increases the speed of installation and incorporates the use of IIS and SQL Server Snap-ins for managing those services. Inst...Process Enactment Tool Framework: PET 1.1: PET Core new intermediate model with arbitrary "clean" relations among objects and several updates of the object fields (see DependencyInterfacesA...Project Tru Tiên: Elements-test V1-fix (v1): Là Elements-test V1 đã được fix các vấn đề sau: - Fix lỗi hiển thị thú cưỡi Hổ Kỳ Lân - Fix hiển thị tab tiếng trung --> sang tiếng việt - Fix hiể...Sentinel - Log Viewer: Sentinel 0.8.1 (nLog support): Build of the 0.8.1 code (svn revision 36823) which included support for both nLog and log4net that has been in SVN for a while but didn't have a bi...sgMotion Animation Library: SgMotion v1.1 (For Sunburn 1.3.1): SgMotion v1.1 (For Sunburn 1.3.1) This release includes both a Windows & Xbox sample. The sample is set to default at Forward rendering, but can e...sTASKedit: sTASKedit 44538 (Developer Alpha): + nearly all fields are viewed in this release for task verification and identifying of unknownsTest Project (ignore): asdf asdf asdf asdf asdf asdf asdf sadf sdf asdf a: ;dlf jkasdf ;lkasjdf ;dlf jkasdf ;lkasjdf ;dlf jkasdf ;lkasjdf ;dlf jkasdf ;lkasjdf ;dlf jkasdf ;lkasjdf ;dlf jkasdf ;lkasjdf ;dlf jkasdf ;lkasjdf ...Test Project (ignore): cdscs: csdcacacTroav: Traov20100331 Source Pre-Alpah: This is some experiements with implementing custom modules with Microsoft's Orchard frame work. This is very preliminary, and subject to change.Weather Report WebControls: WebWeatherReport: 主要文件的源代码WhoIs XML API: Initial Release: Initial ReleaseYou are here (for Windows Mobile): CAB file and Source Code: You can find more Controls and samples for Windows Mobile developers at: http://www.beemobile4.netMost Popular ProjectshmrEngineRawrWBFS ManagerASP.NET Ajax LibraryMicrosoft SQL Server Product Samples: DatabaseSilverlight ToolkitAJAX Control ToolkitWindows Presentation Foundation (WPF)ASP.NETLiveUpload to FacebookMost Active ProjectsRawrGraffiti CMSBase Class LibrariesjQuery Library for SharePoint Web ServicesBlogEngine.NETMicrosoft Biology FoundationN2 CMSLINQ to TwitterManaged Extensibility FrameworkFarseer Physics Engine

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, April 20, 2010

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, April 20, 2010New ProjectsASP.NET MVC Extensibility: ASP.NET MVC Extensibility.ASP.NET MVC Starter: Tekpub's ASP.NET MVC 2.0 Starter Site, as put together by Rob Conery in Episode 15 of Mastering ASP.NET MVC (http://tekpub.com/production/starter)AzureDemo: An internal Azure demo and test bed for some projects. After demo is complete this project will be closed.Basic Sprite Sheet Creator: A basic c# program to create sprite sheets. CodeDefender: Protect your .Net codes easily with this smart obfuscator!Crawlr: Tema 2 projectDocument Session Manager - Visual Studio addin: Document Session Manager is a Visual Studio 2008 addin for saving and restoring the list of opened documents (xml files, source files, winforms, et...Esferatec.Text.RegularExpressions: assembly to build regular expression patternsFIFA World Cup 2010 Mobile Sticker Checklist: FIFA World Cup 2010 Mobile Sticker Checklist is a small application for Windows Mobile developed in CF 3.5 to keep tracking of your sticker album. ...Finia.net: 追忆 游乐网·幻之大地FusspawnsAI: Fusspawns UT AI is a small test engine for a classic ut remote bot api. intending to improve ut's ai to a god like level without cheating bots(bots...G.A.E.T.: This is a Graphical Asymmetric Encryption Tool based on R.S.A. algorithm with the help of Java Language.Even though, this may be a small applicatio...ItzyBitzySpider: Webcrawler project from computer science at UCN.JingQiao.Ads: My DDD NTier Architecture example project.Managed Meizu SDK Demo: In this project we are sharing the source code to demonstrate the usage of managed SDK for Meizu cell phones, currently for M8. With the help of th...MaxxUtils.MaxxTagger: MaxxTagger: An Mp3 Tag Editor.. Add /Edit/Remove MP3 ID3 V1 and 2.3 Tags like Title, Artist, Album, Album Art, Genre. Besides tag editing, it also ...Maya Project Management: The Maya Project Management is a clone of RedMine with all its functions and plug-in support, using the following technologies: Microsoft .net Fra...MessageBoxLib: A simple, robust library for Xbox 360 and Windows development using the XNA Game Studio that makes using the Guide class's message box functionalit...MyWSAT - ASP.NET Membership Administration Tool: MyWSAT aka ASP.NET WSAT is a WebForms based website Starter Kit for the ASP.NET Membership Provider. It is a feature rich application that takes ca...OntologyCreator: this is my thesis and it is not finished yetPOS for .Net Handheld Products Service Object: POS for .Net Service Object Handheld Products Bar Code ScannerPostBinder: PostBinder is a small helper library that deserializes ASP.NET requests into C# classes. This eliminates having to write repeated hand wiring co...PostSharp for ASP.NET Web Sites: Adds support for PostSharp 2.0 on ASP.NET Web Sites.Rapid Dictionary: * Rapid Dictionary is a Translation Dictionary initialized by language learning network http://wordsteps.com. * Dictionary developed in C# and Co...ROrganizer: If you feel your movie files are kept in messy way, try out the ROrganizer which helps you rearrange them.RoRoWoBlog: 萝萝窝个人博客开源项目SPGroupDeflector - Explicitly deny groups to webs within your Site Collection: Secure webs within your MOSS or WSS Portal by explicitly denying access to specific users in SharePoint groups.SSIS ShapeFileSource: SSIS ShapeFileSource imports ESRI Shapefiles, and the associated attribute file (.dbf). The component based on the free Shapefile C Library.StoreManagement: University assignment. The task is to build an application that can perform basic CRUD operations on a property and use an arbitrary database. ...Surfium: TODO ;-)TaskCleaner: This is a Windows Forms project created to kill some running process in order to enhace the performance of Windows execution. Sometimes it is desi...The Expert Calendar: The Expert Calendar is a MOSS 2007 webpart which allows to connect to a Event Item List and display event items in a small design customizable cale...Visual Studio Find Results Window Tweak: This is a Visual Studio 2010 add-in which enables you to adjust the format of the Find Results Window. It is written in C#, .NET 4.0 and requires ...Weightlifting Sinclair coeficient calculator: Weightlifting Sinclair coeficient calculator for competitors (for Windows Mobile platform)Windows Azure Web Storage Explorer: Windows Azure Web Storage Explorer makes it easier for developers to browse and manage Blobs, Queues and Tables from Windows Azure Storage account....New Releases#SNMP - C# Based Open Source SNMP for .NET and Mono: CatPaw (5.0) Beta 1: SNMP v3 support in snmpd is complete.ASP.Net MVC Crud with JqGrid: Mvc Crud with JqGrid 0.3.0: Fairly major reworking of the GenericDataGrid (with alot of work from James). Most noticeable is the replacing of Edit and Delete with action butt...Basic Sprite Sheet Creator: Sprite Tool v1.1: Fixed the progress bar, it now correctly displays text and progress. Also download will now come with an installer and an executable so you don't h...Basic Sprite Sheet Creator: Sprite Tool Version 1.0: Program used to make basic sprite sheets. please visit http://coderplex.blogspot.com for more infoBraintree Client Library: Braintree-1.2.1: Escape all XMLCodeDefender: CodeDefender v0.1: Protect your .Net exe and dll files with this smart tool.ColinTesting: test: testColinTesting: test2: test2ColinTesting: test3: test3ColinTesting: test4: test4ColinTesting: test6: test6CycleMania Starter Kit EAP - ASP.NET 4 Problem - Design - Solution: Cyclemania 0.08.63: See Source Code tab for recent change history.Document Session Manager - Visual Studio addin: Release v0.45948: Release v0.45948DotNetNuke® Community Edition: 05.04.00: Major Highlights Fixed issue where portal settings were not saved per portal. Fixed issue with importing page templates. Fixed issue with...DotNetNuke® Postgres Data Provider: DNN PG Provider 01.00.00 Beta2: Fixes problems with deprecated datatype money in Postgres. Upgrades DotnetNuke code base to 04.09.05 It comes with a patch for the DotNetNuke insta...FIFA World Cup 2010 Mobile Sticker Checklist: FIFA World Cup 2010 Mobile Sticker Checklist v0.1b: FIFA World Cup 2010 Mobile Sticker Checklist v0.1b First beta release. Requires Microsoft Compact Framework 3.5. It was tested on an HTC Touch Viva...FIFA World Cup 2010 Mobile Sticker Checklist: FIFA World Cup 2010 Mobile Sticker Checklist v0.2b: FIFA World Cup 2010 Mobile Sticker Checklist v0.2b Second beta release. Requires Microsoft Compact Framework 3.5. It was tested on an HTC Touch Viv...Fluent Ribbon Control Suite: Fluent Ribbon Control Suite 1.2: Fluent Ribbon Control Suite 1.2(supports .NET 3.5 and .NET 4 RTM) Includes: Fluent.dll (with .pdb and .xml) Showcase Application Samples Found...G.A.E.T.: Graphical Asymmetric Encryption Tool: User Interface The GAET User Interface is a window with five buttons. Each button is explained the following sections. Each button has a functional...HTML Ruby: 6.21.7: As long as I don't find anything else that I can improve, this will be submitted to Mozilla for review tomorrow. Added back process inserted conten...IBCSharp: IBCSharp 1.03: What IBCSharp 1.03.zip unzips to: http://i43.tinypic.com/24ffbqr.png Note: The above solution has MSTest, Typemock Isolator, and Microsoft CHESS c...LogikBug's IoC Container: Second Release: This project is dependent upon Microsoft.Practices.ServiceLocation and must be referenced when referencing LogikBug.Injection. Click here to view d...Managed Meizu SDK Demo: Library and Demo: Library and DemoMaxxUtils.MaxxTagger: MaxxUtils.MaxxTagger: Version: 1.0.0 (Beta) Instructions: Unzip the files to a folder and then dbl click on the exe. Known Issues: 1. When u copy or move a folde...OrthoLab: Cellule: Compile with Autodesk Maya 2008 32bit and 2010 64bit.OWASP Code Crawler: OWASP Code Crawler 2.7: Code Crawler 2.7 DescriptionIn terms of functionality there is not much new stuff in this release. We transplanted the new engine. Code Crawler is ...PerceptiveMCAPI - A .NET wrapper for the MailChimp Api: V1.2.3 PerceptiveMCAPI .Net Wrapper [Beta 2]: PerceptiveMCAPI – v 1.2.3 Change logFunctionality through MailChimp API announce v1.2.5 on 15-Feb-2010 .NET Wrapper New wrapper directives; api_Me...POS for .Net Handheld Products Service Object: POS for .Net Handhelp Products Service Object: The Service Object contained herein is a work in progress. This Service Object's is written as VS 2008 C# Project. The Target Platform is x86. ...PostSharp for ASP.NET Web Sites: R1: First release.Rich Ajax empowered Web/Cloud Applications: 6.4 beta 2c: A revisiov to the first fully featured version of Visual webGui offering web/cloud development tool that puts all ASP.NET Ajax limits behind with e...Should: Beta - 1.0: This is the initial release of the Should assertions extensions.Shrinkr: v1.0: First public release.Site Directory for SharePoint 2010 (from Microsoft Consulting Services, UK): v1.2: Address a bug found in v1.1 relating to the Delete Site Listings job not incrementing the 'Site Missing Count' for some SharePoint sites.Software Localization Tool: SharpSLT 1.0: New functions Backup before saving Delete entries Undo deletion Added more comments in the codeSPGroupDeflector - Explicitly deny groups to webs within your Site Collection: SPGroupDeflector: Download the source code, the wsp solution package, and Setup.docSSIS ShapeFileSource: Version 0.1: Short Preview of SSIS ShapeFileSource ComponentStarter Kit Mytrip.Mvc.Entity: Mytrip.Mvc.Entity 1.0: Warning Install MySql Connector/Net 6.3 MySQL Membership MSSQL Membership XML Membership UserManager FileManager Localization Captcha ...Surfium: Linux Expo Prebuild: First public releaseTaskCleaner: Initial Working Version: In this version we have all the features listed in the project description working fine. Built under Framework 3.5.Text to HTML: 0.4.5.0: CambiosSustitución de los siguientes caracteres: Anteriores: " < > ¡ © º ¿ Á Ä É Í Ñ Ó Ö Ú Ü ß á ä é í ñ ó ö ú ü € Nuevos: & ´ ≈ ¦ • ¸ ˆ ↓ ð … ∫ ...TS3QueryLib.Net: TS3QueryLib.Net Version 0.21.16.0: This release contains a bugfix for a bug that caused connection problems when connecting using an IP for some cases. So it's strongly recommended t...Tweety - Twitter Client: Tweety - 0.96: Form activation from system tray improved. General fixes. General code refactor.Web/Cloud Applications Development Framework | Visual WebGui: 6.4 Beta 2c: A revision to the first fully featured version of Visual webGui offering unique developer/designer interface and enhanced extensibility and customi...Windows Azure - PHP contributions: PhpAzureExtensions (Azure Drives) - 0.2.0: Extension for use with Windows Azure SDK 1.1! Breaking changes! Documentation can be found at http://phpazurecontrib.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=A...WoW Character Viewer: Viewer (40545): New setup build for 40545.Xrns2XMod: Xrns2XMod 0.0.5.3: Major Source code optimization: >> Separated logical code of xm/mod conversion from renoiseSong xml. Now all necessary renoise song data code is st...XsltDb - DotNetNuke XSLT module: 01.00.99: callable tag is introduced - create javascript ajax functions more easy import/export bug is fixed mdo:ajax checkbox processing is now the same...Most Popular ProjectsRawrWBFS ManagerSilverlight ToolkitAJAX Control ToolkitMicrosoft SQL Server Product Samples: DatabaseWindows Presentation Foundation (WPF)ASP.NETpatterns & practices – Enterprise LibraryPHPExcelMicrosoft SQL Server Community & SamplesMost Active ProjectsRawrpatterns & practices – Enterprise LibraryIndustrial DashboardIonics Isapi Rewrite FilterFarseer Physics EngineBlogEngine.NETPHPExcelCaliburn: An Application Framework for WPF and SilverlightNB_Store - Free DotNetNuke Ecommerce Catalog ModuleTweetSharp

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• ASP.NET and HTML5 Local Storage

  - by Stephen Walther

  My favorite feature of HTML5, hands-down, is HTML5 local storage (aka DOM storage). By taking advantage of HTML5 local storage, you can dramatically improve the performance of your data-driven ASP.NET applications by caching data in the browser persistently. Think of HTML5 local storage like browser cookies, but much better. Like cookies, local storage is persistent. When you add something to browser local storage, it remains there when the user returns to the website (possibly days or months later). Importantly, unlike the cookie storage limitation of 4KB, you can store up to 10 megabytes in HTML5 local storage. Because HTML5 local storage works with the latest versions of all modern browsers (IE, Firefox, Chrome, Safari), you can start taking advantage of this HTML5 feature in your applications right now. Why use HTML5 Local Storage? I use HTML5 Local Storage in the JavaScript Reference application: http://Superexpert.com/JavaScriptReference The JavaScript Reference application is an HTML5 app that provides an interactive reference for all of the syntax elements of JavaScript (You can read more about the application and download the source code for the application here). When you open the application for the first time, all of the entries are transferred from the server to the browser (all 300+ entries). All of the entries are stored in local storage. When you open the application in the future, only changes are transferred from the server to the browser. The benefit of this approach is that the application performs extremely fast. When you click the details link to view details on a particular entry, the entry details appear instantly because all of the entries are stored on the client machine. When you perform key-up searches, by typing in the filter textbox, matching entries are displayed very quickly because the entries are being filtered on the local machine. This approach can have a dramatic effect on the performance of any interactive data-driven web application. Interacting with data on the client is almost always faster than interacting with the same data on the server. Retrieving Data from the Server In the JavaScript Reference application, I use Microsoft WCF Data Services to expose data to the browser. WCF Data Services generates a REST interface for your data automatically. Here are the steps: Create your database tables in Microsoft SQL Server. For example, I created a database named ReferenceDB and a database table named Entities. Use the Entity Framework to generate your data model. For example, I used the Entity Framework to generate a class named ReferenceDBEntities and a class named Entities. Expose your data through WCF Data Services. I added a WCF Data Service to my project and modified the data service class to look like this:   using System.Data.Services; using System.Data.Services.Common; using System.Web; using JavaScriptReference.Models; namespace JavaScriptReference.Services { [System.ServiceModel.ServiceBehavior(IncludeExceptionDetailInFaults = true)] public class EntryService : DataService<ReferenceDBEntities> { // This method is called only once to initialize service-wide policies. public static void InitializeService(DataServiceConfiguration config) { config.UseVerboseErrors = true; config.SetEntitySetAccessRule("*", EntitySetRights.All); config.DataServiceBehavior.MaxProtocolVersion = DataServiceProtocolVersion.V2; } // Define a change interceptor for the Products entity set. [ChangeInterceptor("Entries")] public void OnChangeEntries(Entry entry, UpdateOperations operations) { if (!HttpContext.Current.Request.IsAuthenticated) { throw new DataServiceException("Cannot update reference unless authenticated."); } } } }     The WCF data service is named EntryService. Notice that it derives from DataService<ReferenceEntitites>. Because it derives from DataService<ReferenceEntities>, the data service exposes the contents of the ReferenceEntitiesDB database. In the code above, I defined a ChangeInterceptor to prevent un-authenticated users from making changes to the database. Anyone can retrieve data through the service, but only authenticated users are allowed to make changes. After you expose data through a WCF Data Service, you can use jQuery to retrieve the data by performing an Ajax call. For example, I am using an Ajax call that looks something like this to retrieve the JavaScript entries from the EntryService.svc data service: $.ajax({ dataType: "json", url: “/Services/EntryService.svc/Entries”, success: function (result) { var data = callback(result["d"]); } });     Notice that you must unwrap the data using result[“d”]. After you unwrap the data, you have a JavaScript array of the entries. I’m transferring all 300+ entries from the server to the client when the application is opened for the first time. In other words, I transfer the entire database from the server to the client, once and only once, when the application is opened for the first time. The data is transferred using JSON. Here is a fragment: { "d" : [ { "__metadata": { "uri": "http://superexpert.com/javascriptreference/Services/EntryService.svc/Entries(1)", "type": "ReferenceDBModel.Entry" }, "Id": 1, "Name": "Global", "Browsers": "ff3_6,ie8,ie9,c8,sf5,es3,es5", "Syntax": "object", "ShortDescription": "Contains global variables and functions", "FullDescription": "<p>\nThe Global object is determined by the host environment. In web browsers, the Global object is the same as the windows object.\n</p>\n<p>\nYou can use the keyword <code>this</code> to refer to the Global object when in the global context (outside of any function).\n</p>\n<p>\nThe Global object holds all global variables and functions. For example, the following code demonstrates that the global <code>movieTitle</code> variable refers to the same thing as <code>window.movieTitle</code> and <code>this.movieTitle</code>.\n</p>\n<pre>\nvar movieTitle = \"Star Wars\";\nconsole.log(movieTitle === this.movieTitle); // true\nconsole.log(movieTitle === window.movieTitle); // true\n</pre>\n", "LastUpdated": "634298578273756641", "IsDeleted": false, "OwnerId": null }, { "__metadata": { "uri": "http://superexpert.com/javascriptreference/Services/EntryService.svc/Entries(2)", "type": "ReferenceDBModel.Entry" }, "Id": 2, "Name": "eval(string)", "Browsers": "ff3_6,ie8,ie9,c8,sf5,es3,es5", "Syntax": "function", "ShortDescription": "Evaluates and executes JavaScript code dynamically", "FullDescription": "<p>\nThe following code evaluates and executes the string \"3+5\" at runtime.\n</p>\n<pre>\nvar result = eval(\"3+5\");\nconsole.log(result); // returns 8\n</pre>\n<p>\nYou can rewrite the code above like this:\n</p>\n<pre>\nvar result;\neval(\"result = 3+5\");\nconsole.log(result);\n</pre>", "LastUpdated": "634298580913817644", "IsDeleted": false, "OwnerId": 1 } … ]} I worried about the amount of time that it would take to transfer the records. According to Google Chome, it takes about 5 seconds to retrieve all 300+ records on a broadband connection over the Internet. 5 seconds is a small price to pay to avoid performing any server fetches of the data in the future. And here are the estimated times using different types of connections using Fiddler: Notice that using a modem, it takes 33 seconds to download the database. 33 seconds is a significant chunk of time. So, I would not use the approach of transferring the entire database up front if you expect a significant portion of your website audience to connect to your website with a modem. Adding Data to HTML5 Local Storage After the JavaScript entries are retrieved from the server, the entries are stored in HTML5 local storage. Here’s the reference documentation for HTML5 storage for Internet Explorer: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc197062(VS.85).aspx You access local storage by accessing the windows.localStorage object in JavaScript. This object contains key/value pairs. For example, you can use the following JavaScript code to add a new item to local storage: <script type="text/javascript"> window.localStorage.setItem("message", "Hello World!"); </script>   You can use the Google Chrome Storage tab in the Developer Tools (hit CTRL-SHIFT I in Chrome) to view items added to local storage: After you add an item to local storage, you can read it at any time in the future by using the window.localStorage.getItem() method: <script type="text/javascript"> window.localStorage.setItem("message", "Hello World!"); </script>   You only can add strings to local storage and not JavaScript objects such as arrays. Therefore, before adding a JavaScript object to local storage, you need to convert it into a JSON string. In the JavaScript Reference application, I use a wrapper around local storage that looks something like this: function Storage() { this.get = function (name) { return JSON.parse(window.localStorage.getItem(name)); }; this.set = function (name, value) { window.localStorage.setItem(name, JSON.stringify(value)); }; this.clear = function () { window.localStorage.clear(); }; }   If you use the wrapper above, then you can add arbitrary JavaScript objects to local storage like this: var store = new Storage(); // Add array to storage var products = [ {name:"Fish", price:2.33}, {name:"Bacon", price:1.33} ]; store.set("products", products); // Retrieve items from storage var products = store.get("products");   Modern browsers support the JSON object natively. If you need the script above to work with older browsers then you should download the JSON2.js library from: https://github.com/douglascrockford/JSON-js The JSON2 library will use the native JSON object if a browser already supports JSON. Merging Server Changes with Browser Local Storage When you first open the JavaScript Reference application, the entire database of JavaScript entries is transferred from the server to the browser. Two items are added to local storage: entries and entriesLastUpdated. The first item contains the entire entries database (a big JSON string of entries). The second item, a timestamp, represents the version of the entries. Whenever you open the JavaScript Reference in the future, the entriesLastUpdated timestamp is passed to the server. Only records that have been deleted, updated, or added since entriesLastUpdated are transferred to the browser. The OData query to get the latest updates looks like this: http://superexpert.com/javascriptreference/Services/EntryService.svc/Entries?$filter=(LastUpdated%20gt%20634301199890494792L) If you remove URL encoding, the query looks like this: http://superexpert.com/javascriptreference/Services/EntryService.svc/Entries?$filter=(LastUpdated gt 634301199890494792L) This query returns only those entries where the value of LastUpdated > 634301199890494792 (the version timestamp). The changes – new JavaScript entries, deleted entries, and updated entries – are merged with the existing entries in local storage. The JavaScript code for performing the merge is contained in the EntriesHelper.js file. The merge() method looks like this:   merge: function (oldEntries, newEntries) { // concat (this performs the add) oldEntries = oldEntries || []; var mergedEntries = oldEntries.concat(newEntries); // sort this.sortByIdThenLastUpdated(mergedEntries); // prune duplicates (this performs the update) mergedEntries = this.pruneDuplicates(mergedEntries); // delete mergedEntries = this.removeIsDeleted(mergedEntries); // Sort this.sortByName(mergedEntries); return mergedEntries; },   The contents of local storage are then updated with the merged entries. I spent several hours writing the merge() method (much longer than I expected). I found two resources to be extremely useful. First, I wrote extensive unit tests for the merge() method. I wrote the unit tests using server-side JavaScript. I describe this approach to writing unit tests in this blog entry. The unit tests are included in the JavaScript Reference source code. Second, I found the following blog entry to be super useful (thanks Nick!): http://nicksnettravels.builttoroam.com/post/2010/08/03/OData-Synchronization-with-WCF-Data-Services.aspx One big challenge that I encountered involved timestamps. I originally tried to store an actual UTC time as the value of the entriesLastUpdated item. I quickly discovered that trying to work with dates in JSON turned out to be a big can of worms that I did not want to open. Next, I tried to use a SQL timestamp column. However, I learned that OData cannot handle the timestamp data type when doing a filter query. Therefore, I ended up using a bigint column in SQL and manually creating the value when a record is updated. I overrode the SaveChanges() method to look something like this: public override int SaveChanges(SaveOptions options) { var changes = this.ObjectStateManager.GetObjectStateEntries( EntityState.Modified | EntityState.Added | EntityState.Deleted); foreach (var change in changes) { var entity = change.Entity as IEntityTracking; if (entity != null) { entity.LastUpdated = DateTime.Now.Ticks; } } return base.SaveChanges(options); }   Notice that I assign Date.Now.Ticks to the entity.LastUpdated property whenever an entry is modified, added, or deleted. Summary After building the JavaScript Reference application, I am convinced that HTML5 local storage can have a dramatic impact on the performance of any data-driven web application. If you are building a web application that involves extensive interaction with data then I recommend that you take advantage of this new feature included in the HTML5 standard.

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• eBooks on iPad vs. Kindle: More Debate than Smackdown

  - by andrewbrust

  When the iPad was presented at its San Francisco launch event on January 28th, Steve Jobs spent a significant amount of time explaining how well the device would serve as an eBook reader. He showed the iBooks reader application and iBookstore and laid down the gauntlet before Amazon and its beloved Kindle device. Almost immediately afterwards, criticism came rushing forth that the iPad could never beat the Kindle for book reading. The curious part of that criticism is that virtually no one offering it had actually used the iPad yet. A few weeks later, on April 3rd, the iPad was released for sale in the United States. I bought one on that day and in the few additional weeks that have elapsed, I’ve given quite a workout to most of its capabilities, including its eBook features. I’ve also spent some time with the Kindle, albeit a first-generation model, to see how it actually compares to the iPad. I had some expectations going in, but I came away with conclusions about each device that were more scenario-based than absolute. I present my findings to you here.   Vital Statistics Let’s start with an inventory of each device’s underlying technology. The iPad has a color, backlit LCD screen and an on-screen keyboard. It has a battery which, on a full charge, lasts anywhere from 6-10 hours. The Kindle offers a monochrome, reflective E Ink display, a physical keyboard and a battery that on my first gen loaner unit can go up to a week between charges (Amazon claims the battery on the Kindle 2 can last up to 2 weeks on a single charge). The Kindle connects to Amazon’s Kindle Store using a 3G modem (the technology and network vary depending on the model) that incurs no airtime service charges whatsoever. The iPad units that are on-sale today work over WiFi only. 3G-equipped models will be on sale shortly and will command a $130 premium over their WiFi-only counterparts. 3G service on the iPad, in the U.S. from AT&T, will be fee-based, with a 250MB plan at $14.99 per month and an unlimited plan at $29.99. No contract is required for 3G service. All these tech specs aside, I think a more useful observation is that the iPad is a multi-purpose Internet-connected entertainment device, while the Kindle is a dedicated reading device. The question is whether those differences in design and intended use create a clear-cut winner for reading electronic publications. Let’s take a look at each device, in isolation, now.   Kindle To me, what’s most innovative about the Kindle is its E Ink display. E Ink really looks like ink on a sheet of paper. It requires no backlight, it’s fully visible in direct sunlight and it causes almost none of the eyestrain that LCD-based computer display technology (like that used on the iPad) does. It’s really versatile in an all-around way. Forgive me if this sounds precious, but reading on it is really a joy. In fact, it’s a genuinely relaxing experience. Through the Kindle Store, Amazon allows users to download books (including audio books), magazines, newspapers and blog feeds. Books and magazines can be purchased either on a single-issue basis or as an annual subscription. Books, of course, are purchased singly. Oddly, blogs are not free, but instead carry a monthly subscription fee, typically $1.99. To me this is ludicrous, but I suppose the free 3G service is partially to blame. Books and magazine issues download quickly. Magazine and blog subscriptions cause new issues or posts to be pushed to your device on an automated basis. Available blogs include 9000-odd feeds that Amazon offers on the Kindle Store; unless I missed something, arbitrary RSS feeds are not supported (though there are third party workarounds to this limitation). The shopping experience is integrated well, has an huge selection, and offers certain graphical perks. For example, magazine and newspaper logos are displayed in menus, and book cover thumbnails appear as well. A simple search mechanism is provided and text entry through the physical keyboard is relatively painless. It’s very easy and straightforward to enter the store, find something you like and start reading it quickly. If you know what you’re looking for, it’s even faster. Given Kindle’s high portability, very reliable battery, instant-on capability and highly integrated content acquisition, it makes reading on whim, and in random spurts of downtime, very attractive. The Kindle’s home screen lists all of your publications, and easily lets you select one, then start reading it. Once opened, publications display in crisp, attractive text that is adjustable in size. “Turning” pages is achieved through buttons dedicated to the task. Notes can be recorded, bookmarks can be saved and pages can be saved as clippings. I am not an avid book reader, and yet I found the Kindle made it really fun, convenient and soothing to read. There’s something about the easy access to the material and the simplicity of the display that makes the Kindle seduce you into chilling out and reading page after page. On the other hand, the Kindle has an awkward navigation interface. While menus are displayed clearly on the screen, the method of selecting menu items is tricky: alongside the right-hand edge of the main display is a thin column that acts as a second display. It has a white background, and a scrollable silver cursor that is moved up or down through the use of the device’s scrollwheel. Picking a menu item on the main display involves scrolling the silver cursor to a position parallel to that menu item and pushing the scrollwheel in. This navigation technique creates a disconnect, literally. You don’t really click on a selection so much as you gesture toward it. I got used to this technique quickly, but I didn’t love it. It definitely created a kind of anxiety in me, making me feel the need to speed through menus and get to my destination document quickly. Once there, I could calm down and relax. Books are great on the Kindle. Magazines and newspapers much less so. I found the rendering of photographs, and even illustrations, to be unacceptably crude. For this reason, I expect that reading textbooks on the Kindle may leave students wanting. I found that the original flow and layout of any publication was sacrificed on the Kindle. In effect, browsing a magazine or newspaper was almost impossible. Reading the text of individual articles was enjoyable, but having to read this way made the whole experience much more “a la carte” than cohesive and thematic between articles. I imagine that for academic journals this is ideal, but for consumer publications it imposes a stripped-down, low-fidelity experience that evokes a sense of deprivation. In general, the Kindle is great for reading text. For just about anything else, especially activity that involves exploratory browsing, meandering and short-attention-span reading, it presents a real barrier to entry and adoption. Avid book readers will enjoy the Kindle (if they’re not already). It’s a great device for losing oneself in a book over long sittings. Multitaskers who are more interested in periodicals, be they online or off, will like it much less, as they will find compromise, and even sacrifice, to be palpable.   iPad The iPad is a very different device from the Kindle. While the Kindle is oriented to pages of text, the iPad orbits around applications and their interfaces. Be it the pinch and zoom experience in the browser, the rich media features that augment content on news and weather sites, or the ability to interact with social networking services like Twitter, the iPad is versatile. While it shares a slate-like form factor with the Kindle, it’s effectively an elegant personal computer. One of its many features is the iBook application and integration of the iBookstore. But it’s a multi-purpose device. That turns out to be good and bad, depending on what you’re reading. The iBookstore is great for browsing. It’s color, rich animation-laden user interface make it possible to shop for books, rather than merely search and acquire them. Unfortunately, its selection is rather sparse at the moment. If you’re looking for a New York Times bestseller, or other popular titles, you should be OK. If you want to read something more specialized, it’s much harder. Unlike the awkward navigation interface of the Kindle, the iPad offers a nearly flawless touch-screen interface that seduces the user into tinkering and kibitzing every bit as much as the Kindle lulls you into a deep, concentrated read. It’s a dynamic and interactive device, whereas the Kindle is static and passive. The iBook reader is slick and fun. Use the iPad in landscape mode and you can read the book in 2-up (left/right 2-page) display; use it in portrait mode and you can read one page at a time. Rather than clicking a hardware button to turn pages, you simply drag and wipe from right-to-left to flip the single or right-hand page. The page actually travels through an animated path as it would in a physical book. The intuitiveness of the interface is uncanny. The reader also accommodates saving of bookmarks, searching of the text, and the ability to highlight a word and look it up in a dictionary. Pages display brightly and clearly. They’re easy to read. But the backlight and the glare made me less comfortable than I was with the Kindle. The knowledge that completely different applications (including the Web and email and Twitter) were just a few taps away made me antsy and very tempted to task-switch. The knowledge that battery life is an issue created subtle discomfort. If the Kindle makes you feel like you’re in a library reading room, then the iPad makes you feel, at best, like you’re under fluorescent lights at a Barnes and Noble or Borders store. If you’re lucky, you’d be on a couch or at a reading table in the store, but you might also be standing up, in the aisles. Clearly, I didn’t find this conducive to focused and sustained reading. But that may have more to do with my own tendency to read periodicals far more than books, and my neurotic . And, truth be known, the book reading experience, when not explicitly compared to Kindle’s, was still pleasant. It is also important to point out that Kindle Store-sourced books can be read on the iPad through a Kindle reader application, from Amazon, specific to the device. This offered a less rich experience than the iBooks reader, but it was completely adequate. Despite the Kindle brand of the reader, however, it offered little in terms of simulating the reading experience on its namesake device. When it comes to periodicals, the iPad wins hands down. Magazines, even if merely scanned images of their print editions, read on the iPad in a way that felt similar to reading hard copy. The full color display, touch navigation and even the ability to render advertisements in their full glory makes the iPad a great way to read through any piece of work that is measured in pages, rather than chapters. There are many ways to get magazines and newspapers onto the iPad, including the Zinio reader, and publication-specific applications like the Wall Street Journal’s and Popular Science’s. The New York Times’ free Editors’ Choice application offers a Times Reader-like interface to a subset of the Gray Lady’s daily content. The completely Web-based but iPad-optimized Times Skimmer site (at www.nytimes.com/timesskimmer) works well too. Even conventional Web sites themselves can be read much like magazines, given the iPad’s ability to zoom in on the text and crop out advertisements on the margins. While the Kindle does have an experimental Web browser, it reminded me a lot of early mobile phone browsers, only in a larger size. For text-heavy sites with simple layout, it works fine. For just about anything else, it becomes more trouble than it’s worth. And given the way magazine articles make me think of things I want to look up online, I think that’s a real liability for the Kindle.   Summing Up What I came to realize is that the Kindle isn’t so much a computer or even an Internet device as it is a printer. While it doesn’t use physical paper, it still renders its content a page at a time, just like a laser printer does, and its output appears strikingly similar. You can read the rendered text, but you can’t interact with it in any way. That’s why the navigation requires a separate cursor display area. And because of the page-oriented rendering behavior, turning pages causes a flash on the display and requires a sometimes long pause before the next page is rendered. The good side of this is that once the page is generated, no battery power is required to display it. That makes for great battery life, optimal viewing under most lighting conditions (as long as there is some light) and low-eyestrain text-centric display of content. The Kindle is highly portable, has an excellent selection in its store and is refreshingly distraction-free. All of this is ideal for reading books. And iPad doesn’t offer any of it. What iPad does offer is versatility, variety, richness and luxury. It’s flush with accoutrements even if it’s low on focused, sustained text display. That makes it inferior to the Kindle for book reading. But that also makes it better than the Kindle for almost everything else. As such, and given that its book reading experience is still decent (even if not superior), I think the iPad will give Kindle a run for its money. True book lovers, and people on a budget, will want the Kindle. People with a robust amount of discretionary income may want both devices. Everyone else who is interested in a slate form factor e-reading device, especially if they also wish to have leisure-friendly Internet access, will likely choose the iPad exclusively. One thing is for sure: iPad has reduced Kindle’s market, and may have shifted its mass market potential to a mere niche play. If Amazon is smart, it will improve its iPad-based Kindle reader app significantly. It can then leverage the iPad channel as a significant market for the Kindle Store. After all, selling the eBooks themselves is what Amazon should care most about.

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• Auto blocking attacking IP address

  - by dong

  This is to share my PowerShell code online. I original asked this question on MSDN forum (or TechNet?) here: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/winserversecurity/thread/f950686e-e3f8-4cf2-b8ec-2685c1ed7a77 In short, this is trying to find attacking IP address then add it into Firewall block rule. So I suppose: 1, You are running a Windows Server 2008 facing the Internet. 2, You need to have some port open for service, e.g. TCP 21 for FTP; TCP 3389 for Remote Desktop. You can see in my code I’m only dealing with these two since that’s what I opened. You can add further port number if you like, but the way to process might be different with these two. 3, I strongly suggest you use STRONG password and follow all security best practices, this ps1 code is NOT for adding security to your server, but reduce the nuisance from brute force attack, and make sys admin’s life easier: i.e. your FTP log won’t hold megabytes of nonsense, your Windows system log will not roll back and only can tell you what happened last month. 4, You are comfortable with setting up Windows Firewall rules, in my code, my rule has a name of “MY BLACKLIST”, you need to setup a similar one, and set it to BLOCK everything. 5, My rule is dangerous because it has the risk to block myself out as well. I do have a backup plan i.e. the DELL DRAC5 so that if that happens, I still can remote console to my server and reset the firewall. 6, By no means the code is perfect, the coding style, the use of PowerShell skills, the hard coded part, all can be improved, it’s just that it’s good enough for me already. It has been running on my server for more than 7 MONTHS. 7, Current code still has problem, I didn’t solve it yet, further on this point after the code. :)    #Dong Xie, March 2012  #my simple code to monitor attack and deal with it  #Windows Server 2008 Logon Type  #8: NetworkCleartext, i.e. FTP  #10: RemoteInteractive, i.e. RDP    $tick = 0;  "Start to run at: " + (get-date);    $regex1 = [regex] "192\.168\.100\.(?:101|102):3389\s+(\d+\.\d+\.\d+\.\d+)";  $regex2 = [regex] "Source Network Address:\t(\d+\.\d+\.\d+\.\d+)";    while($True) {   $blacklist = @();     "Running... (tick:" + $tick + ")"; $tick+=1;    #Port 3389  $a = @()  netstat -no | Select-String ":3389" | ? { $m = $regex1.Match($_); `    $ip = $m.Groups[1].Value; if ($m.Success -and $ip -ne "10.0.0.1") {$a = $a + $ip;} }  if ($a.count -gt 0) {    $ips = get-eventlog Security -Newest 1000 | Where-Object {$_.EventID -eq 4625 -and $_.Message -match "Logon Type:\s+10"} | foreach { `      $m = $regex2.Match($_.Message); $ip = $m.Groups[1].Value; $ip; } | Sort-Object | Tee-Object -Variable list | Get-Unique    foreach ($ip in $a) { if ($ips -contains $ip) {      if (-not ($blacklist -contains $ip)) {        $attack_count = ($list | Select-String $ip -SimpleMatch | Measure-Object).count;        "Found attacking IP on 3389: " + $ip + ", with count: " + $attack_count;        if ($attack_count -ge 20) {$blacklist = $blacklist + $ip;}      }      }    }  }      #FTP  $now = (Get-Date).AddMinutes(-5); #check only last 5 mins.     #Get-EventLog has built-in switch for EventID, Message, Time, etc. but using any of these it will be VERY slow.  $count = (Get-EventLog Security -Newest 1000 | Where-Object {$_.EventID -eq 4625 -and $_.Message -match "Logon Type:\s+8" -and `              $_.TimeGenerated.CompareTo($now) -gt 0} | Measure-Object).count;  if ($count -gt 50) #threshold  {     $ips = @();     $ips1 = dir "C:\inetpub\logs\LogFiles\FPTSVC2" | Sort-Object -Property LastWriteTime -Descending `       | select -First 1 | gc | select -Last 200 | where {$_ -match "An\+error\+occured\+during\+the\+authentication\+process."} `        | Select-String -Pattern "(\d+\.\d+\.\d+\.\d+)" | select -ExpandProperty Matches | select -ExpandProperty value | Group-Object `        | where {$_.Count -ge 10} | select -ExpandProperty Name;       $ips2 = dir "C:\inetpub\logs\LogFiles\FTPSVC3" | Sort-Object -Property LastWriteTime -Descending `       | select -First 1 | gc | select -Last 200 | where {$_ -match "An\+error\+occured\+during\+the\+authentication\+process."} `        | Select-String -Pattern "(\d+\.\d+\.\d+\.\d+)" | select -ExpandProperty Matches | select -ExpandProperty value | Group-Object `        | where {$_.Count -ge 10} | select -ExpandProperty Name;     $ips += $ips1; $ips += $ips2; $ips = $ips | where {$_ -ne "10.0.0.1"} | Sort-Object | Get-Unique;         foreach ($ip in $ips) {       if (-not ($blacklist -contains $ip)) {        "Found attacking IP on FTP: " + $ip;        $blacklist = $blacklist + $ip;       }     }  }        #Firewall change <# $current = (netsh advfirewall firewall show rule name="MY BLACKLIST" | where {$_ -match "RemoteIP"}).replace("RemoteIP:", "").replace(" ","").replace("/255.255.255.255",""); #inside $current there is no \r or \n need remove. foreach ($ip in $blacklist) { if (-not ($current -match $ip) -and -not ($ip -like "10.0.0.*")) {"Adding this IP into firewall blocklist: " + $ip; $c= 'netsh advfirewall firewall set rule name="MY BLACKLIST" new RemoteIP="{0},{1}"' -f $ip, $current; Invoke-Expression $c; } } #>    foreach ($ip in $blacklist) {    $fw=New-object –comObject HNetCfg.FwPolicy2; # http://blogs.technet.com/b/jamesone/archive/2009/02/18/how-to-manage-the-windows-firewall-settings-with-powershell.aspx    $myrule = $fw.Rules | where {$_.Name -eq "MY BLACKLIST"} | select -First 1; # Potential bug here?    if (-not ($myrule.RemoteAddresses -match $ip) -and -not ($ip -like "10.0.0.*"))      {"Adding this IP into firewall blocklist: " + $ip;         $myrule.RemoteAddresses+=(","+$ip);      }  }    Wait-Event -Timeout 30 #pause 30 secs    } # end of top while loop.   Further points: 1, I suppose the server is listening on port 3389 on server IP: 192.168.100.101 and 192.168.100.102, you need to replace that with your real IP. 2, I suppose you are Remote Desktop to this server from a workstation with IP: 10.0.0.1. Please replace as well. 3, The threshold for 3389 attack is 20, you don’t want to block yourself just because you typed your password wrong 3 times, you can change this threshold by your own reasoning. 4, FTP is checking the log for attack only to the last 5 mins, you can change that as well. 5, I suppose the server is serving FTP on both IP address and their LOG path are C:\inetpub\logs\LogFiles\FPTSVC2 and C:\inetpub\logs\LogFiles\FPTSVC3. Change accordingly. 6, FTP checking code is only asking for the last 200 lines of log, and the threshold is 10, change as you wish. 7, the code runs in a loop, you can set the loop time at the last line. To run this code, copy and paste to your editor, finish all the editing, get it to your server, and open an CMD window, then type powershell.exe –file your_powershell_file_name.ps1, it will start running, you can Ctrl-C to break it. This is what you see when it’s running: This is when it detected attack and adding the firewall rule: Regarding the design of the code: 1, There are many ways you can detect the attack, but to add an IP into a block rule is no small thing, you need to think hard before doing it, reason for that may include: You don’t want block yourself; and not blocking your customer/user, i.e. the good guy. 2, Thus for each service/port, I double check. For 3389, first it needs to show in netstat.exe, then the Event log; for FTP, first check the Event log, then the FTP log files. 3, At three places I need to make sure I’m not adding myself into the block rule. –ne with single IP, –like with subnet.   Now the final bit: 1, The code will stop working after a while (depends on how busy you are attacked, could be weeks, months, or days?!) It will throw Red error message in CMD, don’t Panic, it does no harm, but it also no longer blocking new attack. THE REASON is not confirmed with MS people: the COM object to manage firewall, you can only give it a list of IP addresses to the length of around 32KB I think, once it reaches the limit, you get the error message. 2, This is in fact my second solution to use the COM object, the first solution is still in the comment block for your reference, which is using netsh, that fails because being run from CMD, you can only throw it a list of IP to 8KB. 3, I haven’t worked the workaround yet, some ideas include: wrap that RemoteAddresses setting line with error checking and once it reaches the limit, use the newly detected IP to be the list, not appending to it. This basically reset your block rule to ground zero and lose the previous bad IPs. This does no harm as it sounds, because given a certain period has passed, any these bad IPs still not repent and continue the attack to you, it only got 30 seconds or 20 guesses of your password before you block it again. And there is the benefit that the bad IP may turn back to the good hands again, and you are not blocking a potential customer or your CEO’s home pc because once upon a time, it’s a zombie. Thus the ZEN of blocking: never block any IP for too long. 4, But if you insist to block the ugly forever, my other ideas include: You call MS support, ask them how can we set an arbitrary length of IP addresses in a rule; at least from my experiences at the Forum, they don’t know and they don’t care, because they think the dynamic blocking should be done by some expensive hardware. Or, from programming perspective, you can create a new rule once the old is full, then you’ll have MY BLACKLIST1, MY  BLACKLIST2, MY BLACKLIST3, … etc. Once in a while you can compile them together and start a business to sell your blacklist on the market! Enjoy the code! p.s. (PowerShell is REALLY REALLY GREAT!)

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Wednesday, February 09, 2011

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Wednesday, February 09, 2011Popular ReleasesWatchersNET.TagCloud: WatchersNET.TagCloud 01.09.03: Whats NewAdded New Skin TagTastic http://www.watchersnet.de/Portals/0/screenshots/dnn/TagCloud-TagTastic-Skin.jpg Added New Skin RoundedButton http://www.watchersnet.de/Portals/0/screenshots/dnn/TagCloud-RoundedButton-Skin.jpg changes Tag Count fixed on Tag Source Referrals Fixed Tag Count when multiple Tag Sources are usedFolder Space Quota: com_folderspacequotaV1.1: Correct Language String settingWinXound: WinXound 3.4.x (Windows - OsX - Linux): Release Notes (3.4.x) for all platforms: New: Added an internal audio player (it is automatically called when rendering to an audio file or called by the user with Ctrl+P); New: Reimplemented the orc/sco file editor (and of course also the ability to convert them to the csd format) - The default open action can be changed in the settings; New: The new untitled or imported files are now automatically saved into a temporary directory (no more need to save them before to compile); New: Add...ExtremeML: ExtremeML v1.0 Beta 3: VS solution source code updated for compatibility with VS2010 (accommodates VS2010 breaking changes in T4 template support).People's Note: People's Note 0.23: Sorry for the long pause between updates — I had my hands full. Version 0.23 makes fairly significant improvements: A bug with local note deletion has been fixed. Synchronization has been improved. A single failed note no longer stops the whole process. Unsynchronized notes are now highlighted. Added an option to display notebook title; thanks to Vovansky for the idea. Text colour has been fixed for people whose default is not black; thanks to JZerr for pointing this out. Incorrect ...Finestra Virtual Desktops: 1.1: This release adds a few more performance and graphical enhancements to 1.0. Switching desktops is now about as fast as you can blink. Desktop switching optimizations New welcome wizard for Vista/7 Fixed a few minor bugs Added a few more options to the options dialog (including ability to disable the taskbar switching)youtubeFisher: youtubeFisher 3.0 [beta]: What's new: Supports YouTube's new layout Complete internal refactoringNearforums - ASP.NET MVC forum engine: Nearforums v5.0: Version 5.0 of the ASP.NET MVC Forum Engine, containing the following improvements: .NET 4.0 as target framework using ASP.NET MVC 3. All views migrated to Razor for cleaner markup. Alternate template (Layout file) for mobile devices 4 Bug Fixes since Version 4.1 Visit the project Roadmap for more details.fuv: 1.0 release, codename Chopper Joe: features: search/replace :o to open file :s to save file :q to quitASP.NET MVC Project Awesome, jQuery Ajax helpers (controls): 1.7: A rich set of helpers (controls) that you can use to build highly responsive and interactive Ajax-enabled Web applications. These helpers include Autocomplete, AjaxDropdown, Lookup, Confirm Dialog, Popup Form, Popup and Pager html generation optimized new features for the lookup (add additional search data ) live demo went aeroEnhSim: EnhSim 2.3.6 BETA: 2.3.6 BETAThis release supports WoW patch 4.06 at level 85 To use this release, you must have the Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 Redistributable Package installed. This can be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=A7B7A05E-6DE6-4D3A-A423-37BF0912DB84 To use the GUI you must have the .NET 4.0 Framework installed. This can be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=9cfb2d51-5ff4-4491-b0e5-b386f32c0992 Changes since 2.3.0 ...TestApi - a library of Test APIs: TestApi v0.6: TestApi v0.6 comes with the following changes: TestApi code development has been moved to Codeplex: Moved TestApi soluton to VS 2010; Moved all source code to Codeplex. All development work is done there now. Fault Injection API: Integrated the unmanaged FaultInjectionEngine.dll COM component in the build; Cleaned up FaultInjectionEngine.dll to build at warning level 4; Implemented “FaultScope” which allows for in-process fault injection; Added automation scripts & sample program; ...AutoLoL: AutoLoL v1.5.5: AutoChat now allows up to 6 items. Items with nr. 7-0 will be removed! News page url's are now opened in the default browser Added a context menu to the system tray icon (thanks to Alex Banagos) AutoChat now allows configuring the Chat Keys and the Modifier Key The recent files list now supports compact and full mode Fix: Swapped mouse buttons are now properly detected Fix: Sometimes the Play button was pressed while still greyed out Champion: Karma Note: You can also run the u...mojoPortal: 2.3.6.2: see release notes on mojoportal.com http://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-2362-released.aspx Note that we have separate deployment packages for .NET 3.5 and .NET 4.0 The deployment package downloads on this page are pre-compiled and ready for production deployment, they contain no C# source code. To download the source code see the Source Code Tab I recommend getting the latest source code using TortoiseHG, you can get the source code corresponding to this release here.Rawr: Rawr 4.0.19 Beta: Rawr is now web-based. The link to use Rawr4 is: http://elitistjerks.com/rawr.phpThis is the Cataclysm Beta Release. More details can be found at the following link http://rawr.codeplex.com/Thread/View.aspx?ThreadId=237262 As of the 4.0.16 release, you can now also begin using the new Downloadable WPF version of Rawr!This is a pre-alpha release of the WPF version, there are likely to be a lot of issues. If you have a problem, please follow the Posting Guidelines and put it into the Issue Trac...IronRuby: 1.1.2: IronRuby 1.1.2 is a servicing release that keeps on improving compatibility with Ruby 1.9.2 and includes IronRuby integration to Visual Studio 2010. We decided to drop 1.8.6 compatibility mode in all post-1.0 releases. We recommend using IronRuby 1.0 if you need 1.8.6 compatibility. In this release we fixed several major issues: - problems that blocked Gem installation in certain cases - regex syntax: the parser was replaced with a new one that is much more compatible with Ruby 1.9.2 - cras...MVVM Light Toolkit: MVVM Light Toolkit V3 SP1 (4): There was a small issue with the previous release that caused errors when installing the templates in VS10 Express. This release corrects the error. Only use this if you encountered issues when installing the previous release. No changes in the binaries.Facebook C# SDK: 5.0.2 (BETA): PLEASE TAKE A FEW MINUTES TO GIVE US SOME FEEDBACK: Facebook C# SDK Survey This is third BETA release of the version 5 branch of the Facebook C# SDK. Remember this is a BETA build. Some things may change or not work exactly as planned. We are absolutely looking for feedback on this release to help us improve the final 5.X.X release. This release contains some breaking changes. Particularly with authentication. After spending time reviewing the trouble areas that people are having using th...ASP.NET MVC SiteMap provider: MvcSiteMapProvider 3.0.0 for MVC3: Using NuGet?MvcSiteMapProvider is also listed in the NuGet feed. Learn more... Like the project? Consider a donation!Donate via PayPal via PayPal. ChangelogTargeting ASP.NET MVC 3 and .NET 4.0 Additional UpdatePriority options for generating XML sitemaps Allow to specify target on SiteMapTitleAttribute One action with multiple routes and breadcrumbs Medium Trust optimizations Create SiteMapTitleAttribute for setting parent title IntelliSense for your sitemap with MvcSiteMapSchem...patterns & practices SharePoint Guidance: SharePoint Guidance 2010 Hands On Lab: SharePoint Guidance 2010 Hands On Lab consists of six labs: one for logging, one for service location, and four for application setting manager. Each lab takes about 20 minutes to walk through. Each lab consists of a PDF document. You can go through the steps in the doc to create solution and then build/deploy the solution and run the lab. For those of you who wants to save the time, we included the final solution so you can just build/deploy the solution and run the lab.New Projects.NET Proxy (netProxy): ASP.NET and Javascript proxies for accessing external content. The ASPX file can be used for returning external content over the current channel (HTTP/SSL). Used with the ASPX, the JS file can provide remote server access (no "same origin policy") with XMLHttpRequest syntax.CalCheck: CalCheck is a Calendar Checking Tool for Outlook. It opens the default Calendar and checks the items in the calendar for known problems, and for certain logic problems, etc.CBM11: CBM11 makes use of the Cosmos C# operating system project, and 6502 CPU emulation code, to provide an bootable 6502 CPU environment, complete with simulated RAM, and a built-in ML monitor.Ela, functional language: Ela is a modern functional programming language that runs on CLR and Mono. It's developed in C#.Framework for Image Processing: This is small framework of image processing tools.fuv: fuv is a programmer's editor that is an excellent replacement for vim. *All* editing is done by searching and replacing over the existing text, using regular expressions.HD44780-compatible Character LCD class: LCD class for .NET Micro Framework provides everything needed to work with HD44780-compatible Character LCD.Home Budget Planner: Home Budget PlannerMath training program: The math training program. Great for kids who started to learn addition and multiplication tables. Easy interface, friendly design. Features timer. Number of equations and a math sign are set up by user. It's developed in C#.Mefisto.NET CMS: Mefisto.NET CMS is a project of CMS, developped in ASP.NET MVC3, coupled with MEF and ENTITY FRAMEWORK. This project is respectful of good practice: - accessible - based on jquery - using css - expandable with mef Now you're interested, contact me !MongoMapper: A .NET Object Mapper for MongoDB over MongoDB C# DriverMoshpit: A companion WP7 app for Microsoft Student Partners and students interested in everything Microsoft has to offer in the Academic space.myproject_0023: test firstNonHealthServicePageSample: NonHealthServicePageSample shows how to create a HealthVault Online application without deriving from HealthServicePage. This is developed in C#.Pokemon Battle System: A battle system for a roleplaying forums. Putting Data in Cold Storage with Windows Azure Table: Historical records and blobs are two examples of data that aren't necessarily kept in relational storage forever. Use Windows Azure Table to put "completed" records into cold storage. See a detailed explanation of this C# project at: http://tinyurl.com/4ocy2aj.Python library to read/write ooxml document files: Python library to read/write ooxml document filesRemoteLogMonitor: A tool which can monitor logs in remote computer realtimeRetete: Aplicatia gestioneaza stocul unui restaurant pe baza de retete. Materia prima este introdusa in sistem prin receptii si inventar, iar la vanzare este consumata in functie de retetele configurate. Vanzarile pot fi inregistrate pe o casa de marcat folosind driver-ul DocPrint. SilverDiagram Extensions: Tutorials, utilities and samples for Silver Diagram, a fast and extendable client framework for diagrams.SoPrism: SoPrism is a Solution Visual Studio Template using best practices to build a Silverlight composite application. This template generate a full Silverlight application based on a solid architecture including the Model-View-ViewModel (MVVM) pattern and PRISM framework.TempProject: Temp project hostingWCF Data Services Toolkit: The WCF Data Services Toolkit is a set of extensions to WCF Data Services (the .NET implementation of OData) that attempt to make it easier to create OData services on top of arbitrary data stores without having deep knowledge of LINQ.Web Browser BOT.NET: To automate to manipulate form using .NET codeZombie Blogger: Zombie Blog Engine

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• Flow-Design Cheat Sheet &ndash; Part I, Notation

  - by Ralf Westphal

  You want to avoid the pitfalls of object oriented design? Then this is the right place to start. Use Flow-Oriented Analysis (FOA) and –Design (FOD or just FD for Flow-Design) to understand a problem domain and design a software solution. Flow-Orientation as described here is related to Flow-Based Programming, Event-Based Programming, Business Process Modelling, and even Event-Driven Architectures. But even though “thinking in flows” is not new, I found it helpful to deviate from those precursors for several reasons. Some aim at too big systems for the average programmer, some are concerned with only asynchronous processing, some are even not very much concerned with programming at all. What I was looking for was a design method to help in software projects of any size, be they large or tiny, involing synchronous or asynchronous processing, being local or distributed, running on the web or on the desktop or on a smartphone. That´s why I took ideas from all of the above sources and some additional and came up with Event-Based Components which later got repositioned and renamed to Flow-Design. In the meantime this has generated some discussion (in the German developer community) and several teams have started to work with Flow-Design. Also I´ve conducted quite some trainings using Flow-Orientation for design. The results are very promising. Developers find it much easier to design software using Flow-Orientation than OOAD-based object orientation. Since Flow-Orientation is moving fast and is not covered completely by a single source like a book, demand has increased for at least an overview of the current state of its notation. This page is trying to answer this demand by briefly introducing/describing every notational element as well as their translation into C# source code. Take this as a cheat sheet to put next to your whiteboard when designing software. However, please do not expect any explanation as to the reasons behind Flow-Design elements. Details on why Flow-Design at all and why in this specific way you´ll find in the literature covering the topic. Here´s a resource page on Flow-Design/Event-Based Components, if you´re able to read German. Notation Connected Functional Units The basic element of any FOD are functional units (FU): Think of FUs as some kind of software code block processing data. For the moment forget about classes, methods, “components”, assemblies or whatever. See a FU as an abstract piece of code. Software then consists of just collaborating FUs. I´m using circles/ellipses to draw FUs. But if you like, use rectangles. Whatever suites your whiteboard needs best.   The purpose of FUs is to process input and produce output. FUs are transformational. However, FUs are not called and do not call other FUs. There is no dependency between FUs. Data just flows into a FU (input) and out of it (output). From where and where to is of no concern to a FU.   This way FUs can be concatenated in arbitrary ways:   Each FU can accept input from many sources and produce output for many sinks:   Flows Connected FUs form a flow with a start and an end. Data is entering a flow at a source, and it´s leaving it through a sink. Think of sources and sinks as special FUs which conntect wires to the environment of a network of FUs.   Wiring Details Data is flowing into/out of FUs through wires. This is to allude to electrical engineering which since long has been working with composable parts. Wires are attached to FUs usings pins. They are the entry/exit points for the data flowing along the wires. Input-/output pins currently need not be drawn explicitly. This is to keep designing on a whiteboard simple and quick.   Data flowing is of some type, so wires have a type attached to them. And pins have names. If there is only one input pin and output pin on a FU, though, you don´t need to mention them. The default is Process for a single input pin, and Result for a single output pin. But you´re free to give even single pins different names.   There is a shortcut in use to address a certain pin on a destination FU:   The type of the wire is put in parantheses for two reasons. 1. This way a “no-type” wire can be easily denoted, 2. this is a natural way to describe tuples of data.   To describe how much data is flowing, a star can be put next to the wire type:   Nesting – Boards and Parts If more than 5 to 10 FUs need to be put in a flow a FD starts to become hard to understand. To keep diagrams clutter free they can be nested. You can turn any FU into a flow: This leads to Flow-Designs with different levels of abstraction. A in the above illustration is a high level functional unit, A.1 and A.2 are lower level functional units. One of the purposes of Flow-Design is to be able to describe systems on different levels of abstraction and thus make it easier to understand them. Humans use abstraction/decomposition to get a grip on complexity. Flow-Design strives to support this and make levels of abstraction first class citizens for programming. You can read the above illustration like this: Functional units A.1 and A.2 detail what A is supposed to do. The whole of A´s responsibility is decomposed into smaller responsibilities A.1 and A.2. FU A thus does not do anything itself anymore! All A is responsible for is actually accomplished by the collaboration between A.1 and A.2. Since A now is not doing anything anymore except containing A.1 and A.2 functional units are devided into two categories: boards and parts. Boards are just containing other functional units; their sole responsibility is to wire them up. A is a board. Boards thus depend on the functional units nested within them. This dependency is not of a functional nature, though. Boards are not dependent on services provided by nested functional units. They are just concerned with their interface to be able to plug them together. Parts are the workhorses of flows. They contain the real domain logic. They actually transform input into output. However, they do not depend on other functional units. Please note the usage of source and sink in boards. They correspond to input-pins and output-pins of the board.   Implicit Dependencies Nesting functional units leads to a dependency tree. Boards depend on nested functional units, they are the inner nodes of the tree. Parts are independent, they are the leafs: Even though dependencies are the bane of software development, Flow-Design does not usually draw these dependencies. They are implicitly created by visually nesting functional units. And they are harmless. Boards are so simple in their functionality, they are little affected by changes in functional units they are depending on. But functional units are implicitly dependent on more than nested functional units. They are also dependent on the data types of the wires attached to them: This is also natural and thus does not need to be made explicit. And it pertains mainly to parts being dependent. Since boards don´t do anything with regard to a problem domain, they don´t care much about data types. Their infrastructural purpose just needs types of input/output-pins to match.   Explicit Dependencies You could say, Flow-Orientation is about tackling complexity at its root cause: that´s dependencies. “Natural” dependencies are depicted naturally, i.e. implicitly. And whereever possible dependencies are not even created. Functional units don´t know their collaborators within a flow. This is core to Flow-Orientation. That makes for high composability of functional units. A part is as independent of other functional units as a motor is from the rest of the car. And a board is as dependend on nested functional units as a motor is on a spark plug or a crank shaft. With Flow-Design software development moves closer to how hardware is constructed. Implicit dependencies are not enough, though. Sometimes explicit dependencies make designs easier – as counterintuitive this might sound. So FD notation needs a ways to denote explicit dependencies: Data flows along wires. But data does not flow along dependency relations. Instead dependency relations represent service calls. Functional unit C is depending on/calling services on functional unit S. If you want to be more specific, name the services next to the dependency relation: Although you should try to stay clear of explicit dependencies, they are fundamentally ok. See them as a way to add another dimension to a flow. Usually the functionality of the independent FU (“Customer repository” above) is orthogonal to the domain of the flow it is referenced by. If you like emphasize this by using different shapes for dependent and independent FUs like above. Such dependencies can be used to link in resources like databases or shared in-memory state. FUs can not only produce output but also can have side effects. A common pattern for using such explizit dependencies is to hook a GUI into a flow as the source and/or the sink of data: Which can be shortened to: Treat FUs others depend on as boards (with a special non-FD API the dependent part is connected to), but do not embed them in a flow in the diagram they are depended upon.   Attributes of Functional Units Creation and usage of functional units can be modified with attributes. So far the following have shown to be helpful: Singleton: FUs are by default multitons. FUs in the same of different flows with the same name refer to the same functionality, but to different instances. Think of functional units as objects that get instanciated anew whereever they appear in a design. Sometimes though it´s helpful to reuse the same instance of a functional unit; this is always due to valuable state it holds. Signify this by annotating the FU with a “(S)”. Multiton: FUs on which others depend are singletons by default. This is, because they usually are introduced where shared state comes into play. If you want to change them to be a singletons mark them with a “(M)”. Configurable: Some parts need to be configured before the can do they work in a flow. Annotate them with a “(C)” to have them initialized before any data items to be processed by them arrive. Do not assume any order in which FUs are configured. How such configuration is happening is an implementation detail. Entry point: In each design there needs to be a single part where “it all starts”. That´s the entry point for all processing. It´s like Program.Main() in C# programs. Mark the entry point part with an “(E)”. Quite often this will be the GUI part. How the entry point is started is an implementation detail. Just consider it the first FU to start do its job.   Patterns / Standard Parts If more than a single wire is attached to an output-pin that´s called a split (or fork). The same data is flowing on all of the wires. Remember: Flow-Designs are synchronous by default. So a split does not mean data is processed in parallel afterwards. Processing still happens synchronously and thus one branch after another. Do not assume any specific order of the processing on the different branches after the split.   It is common to do a split and let only parts of the original data flow on through the branches. This effectively means a map is needed after a split. This map can be implicit or explicit.   Although FUs can have multiple input-pins it is preferrable in most cases to combine input data from different branches using an explicit join: The default output of a join is a tuple of its input values. The default behavior of a join is to output a value whenever a new input is received. However, to produce its first output a join needs an input for all its input-pins. Other join behaviors can be: reset all inputs after an output only produce output if data arrives on certain input-pins

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• 7u10: JavaFX packaging tools update

  - by igor

  Last weeks were very busy here in Oracle. JavaOne 2012 is next week. Come to see us there! Meanwhile i'd like to quickly update you on recent developments in the area of packaging tools. This is an area of ongoing development for the team, and we are  continuing to refine and improve both the tools and the process. Thanks to everyone who shared experiences and suggestions with us. We are listening and fixed many of reported issues. Please keep them coming as comments on the blog or (even better) file issues directly to the JIRA. In this post i'll focus on several new packaging features added in JDK 7 update 10: Self-Contained Applications: Select Java Runtime to bundle Self-Contained Applications: Create Package without Java Runtime Self-Contained Applications: Package non-JavaFX application Option to disable proxy setup in the JavaFX launcher Ability to specify codebase for WebStart application Option to update existing jar file Self-Contained Applications: Specify application icon Self-Contained Applications: Pass parameters on the command line All these features and number of other important bug fixes are available in the developer preview builds of JDK 7 update 10 (build 8 or later). Please give them a try and share your feedback! Self-Contained Applications: Select Java Runtime to bundle Packager tools in 7u6 assume current JDK (based on java.home property) is the source for embedded runtime. This is useful simplification for many scenarios but there are cases where ability to specify what to embed explicitly is handy. For example IDE may be using fixed JDK to build the project and this is not the version you want to bundle into your application. To make it more flexible we now allow to specify location of base JDK explicitly. It is optional and if you do not specify it then current JDK will be used (i.e. this change is fully backward compatible). New 'basedir' attribute was added to <fx:platform> tag. Its value is location of JDK to be used. It is ok to point to either JRE inside the JDK or JDK top level folder. However, it must be JDK and not JRE as we need other JDK tools for proper packaging and it must be recent version of JDK that is bundled with JavaFX (i.e. Java 7 update 6 or later). Here are examples (<fx:platform> is part of <fx:deploy> task): <fx:platform basedir="${java.home}"/> <fx:platform basedir="c:\tools\jdk7"/> Hint: this feature enables you to use packaging tools from JDK 7 update 10 (and benefit from bug fixes and other features described below) to create application package with bundled FCS version of JRE 7 update 6. Self-Contained Applications: Create Package without Java Runtime This may sound a bit puzzling at first glance. Package without embedded Java Runtime is not really self-contained and obviously will not help with: Deployment on fresh systems. JRE need to be installed separately (and this step will require admin permissions). Possible compatibility issues due to updates of system runtime. However, these packages are much much smaller in size. If download size matters and you are confident that user have recommended system JRE installed then this may be good option to consider if you want to improve user experience for install and launch. Technically, this is implemented as an extension of previous feature. Pass empty string as value for 'basedir' attribute and this will be treated as request to not bundle Java runtime, e.g. <fx:platform basedir=""/> Self-Contained Applications: Package non-JavaFX application One of popular questions people ask about self-contained applications - can i package my Java application as self-contained application? Absolutely. This is true even for tools shipped with JDK 7 update 6. Simply follow steps for creating package for Swing application with integrated JavaFX content and they will work even if your application does not use JavaFX. What's wrong with it? Well, there are few caveats: bundle size is larger because JavaFX is bundled whilst it is not really needed main application jar needs to be packaged to comply to JavaFX packaging requirements(and this may be not trivial to achieve in your existing build scripts) javafx application launcher may not work well with startup logic of your application (for example launcher will initialize networking stack and this may void custom networking settings in your application code) In JDK 7 update 6 <fx:deploy> was updated to accept arbitrary executable jar as an input. Self-contained application package will be created preserving input jar as-is, i.e. no JavaFX launcher will be embedded. This does not help with first point above but resolves other two. More formally following assertions must be true for packaging to succeed: application can be launched as "java -jar YourApp.jar" from the command line  mainClass attribute of <fx:application> refers to application main class <fx:resources> lists all resources needed for the application To give you an example lets assume we need to create a bundle for application consisting of 3 jars:     dist/javamain.jar     dist/lib/somelib.jar    dist/morelibs/anotherlib.jar where javamain.jar has manifest with      Main-Class: app.Main     Class-Path: lib/somelib.jar morelibs/anotherlib.jar Here is sample ant code to package it: <target name="package-bundle"> <taskdef resource="com/sun/javafx/tools/ant/antlib.xml" uri="javafx:com.sun.javafx.tools.ant" classpath="${javafx.tools.ant.jar}"/> <fx:deploy nativeBundles="all" width="100" height="100" outdir="native-packages/" outfile="MyJavaApp"> <info title="Sample project" vendor="Me" description="Test built from Java executable jar"/> <fx:application id="myapp" version="1.0" mainClass="app.Main" name="MyJavaApp"/> <fx:resources> <fx:fileset dir="dist"> <include name="javamain.jar"/> <include name="lib/somelib.jar"/> <include name="morelibs/anotherlib.jar"/> </fx:fileset> </fx:resources> </fx:deploy> </target> Option to disable proxy setup in the JavaFX launcher Since JavaFX 2.2 (part of JDK 7u6) properly packaged JavaFX applications  have proxy settings initialized according to Java Runtime configuration settings. This is handy for most of the application accessing network with one exception. If your application explicitly sets networking properties (e.g. socksProxyHost) then they must be set before networking stack is initialized. Proxy detection will initialize networking stack and therefore your custom settings will be ignored. One way to disable proxy setup by the embedded JavaFX launcher is to pass "-Djavafx.autoproxy.disable=true" on the command line. This is good for troubleshooting (proxy detection may cause significant startup time increases if network is misconfigured) but not really user friendly. Now proxy setup will be disabled if manifest of main application jar has "JavaFX-Feature-Proxy" entry with value "None". Here is simple example of adding this entry using <fx:jar> task: <fx:jar destfile="dist/sampleapp.jar"> <fx:application refid="myapp"/> <fx:resources refid="myresources"/> <fileset dir="build/classes"/> <manifest> <attribute name="JavaFX-Feature-Proxy" value="None"/> </manifest> </fx:jar> Ability to specify codebase for WebStart application JavaFX applications do not need to specify codebase (i.e. absolute location where application code will be deployed) for most of real world deployment scenarios. This is convenient as application does not need to be modified when it is moved from development to deployment environment. However, some developers want to ensure copies of their application JNLP file will redirect to master location. This is where codebase is needed. To avoid need to edit JNLP file manually <fx:deploy> task now accepts optional codebase attribute. If attribute is not specified packager will generate same no-codebase files as before. If codebase value is explicitly specified then generated JNLP files (including JNLP content embedded into web page) will use it.  Here is an example: <fx:deploy width="600" height="400" outdir="Samples" codebase="http://localhost/codebaseTest" outfile="TestApp"> .... </fx:deploy> Option to update existing jar file JavaFX packaging procedures are optimized for new application that can use ant or command line javafxpackager utility. This may lead to some redundant steps when you add it to your existing build process. One typical situation is that you might already have a build procedure that produces executable jar file with custom manifest. To properly package it as JavaFX executable jar you would need to unpack it and then use javafxpackager or <fx:jar> to create jar again (and you need to make sure you pass all important details from your custom manifest). We added option to pass jar file as an input to javafxpackager and <fx:jar>. This simplifies integration of JavaFX packaging tools into existing build  process as postprocessing step. By the way, we are looking for ways to simplify this further. Please share your suggestions! On the technical side this works as follows. Both <fx:jar> and javafxpackager will attempt to update existing jar file if this is the only input file. Update process will add JavaFX launcher classes and update the jar manifest with JavaFX attributes. Your custom attributes will be preserved. Update could be performed in place or result may be saved to a different file. Main-Class and Class-Path elements (if present) of manifest of input jar file will be used for JavaFX application  unless they are explicitly overriden in the packaging command you use. E.g. attribute mainClass of <fx:application> (or -appclass in the javafxpackager case) overrides existing Main-Class in the jar manifest. Note that class specified in the Main-Class attribute could either extend JavaFX Application or provide static main() method. Here are examples of updating jar file using javafxpackager: Create new JavaFX executable jar as a copy of given jar file javafxpackager -createjar -srcdir dist -srcfiles fish_proto.jar -outdir dist -outfile fish.jar  Update existing jar file to be JavaFX executable jar and use test.Fish as main application class javafxpackager -createjar -srcdir dist -appclass test.Fish -srcfiles fish.jar -outdir dist -outfile fish.jar  And here is example of using <fx:jar> to create new JavaFX executable jar from the existing fish_proto.jar: <fx:jar destfile="dist/fish.jar"> <fileset dir="dist"> <include name="fish_proto.jar"/> </fileset> </fx:jar> Self-Contained Applications: Specify application icon The only way to specify application icon for self-contained application using tools in JDK 7 update 6 is to use drop-in resources. Now this bug is resolved and you can also specify icon using <fx:icon> tag. Here is an example: <fx:deploy ...> <fx:info> <fx:icon href="default.png"/> </fx:info> ... </fx:deploy> Few things to keep in mind: Only default kind of icon is applicable to self-contained applications (as of now) Icon should follow platform specific rules for sizes and image format (e.g. .ico on Windows and .icns on Mac) Self-Contained Applications: Pass parameters on the command line JavaFX applications support two types of application parameters: named and unnamed (see the API for Application.Parameters). Static named parameters can be added to the application package using <fx:param> and unnamed parameters can be added using <fx:argument>. They are applicable to all execution modes including standalone applications. It is also possible to pass parameters to a JavaFX application from a Web page that hosts it, using <fx:htmlParam>.  Prior to JavaFX 2.2, this was only supported for embedded applications. Starting from JavaFX 2.2, <fx:htmlParam> is applicable to Web Start applications also. See JavaFX deployment guide for more details on this. However, there was no way to pass dynamic parameters to the self-contained application. This has been improved and now native launchers will  delegate parameters from command line to the application code. I.e. to pass parameter to the application you simply need to run it as "myapp.exe somevalue" and then use getParameters().getUnnamed().get(0) to get "somevalue".

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, October 25, 2011

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, October 25, 2011Popular ReleasesScrum Task Board Card Creator: TaskCardCreator 2.5.0.0: What's New: UX improvement: Loading of work items is done in a worker thread Use memory, not the file system, when creating reports for better performance UI improvement: Better parent/child relation between the TeamProjectPicker and MainWindow Microsoft Visual Studio Scrum 1.0: Dedicated Impediment card added Supported Templates: Microsoft Visual Studio Scrum 1.0 Product Backlog Item, Task, Impediment, and Bug MSF for Agile Software Development v5.0 User Story, Task, and BugSubtitleTools: SubtitleTools 1.9: - Improved: Some DVD players need a mandatory UTF8-BOM (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byteordermark) at the beginning of the file to show RTL subtitles correctly.THE NVL Maker: The NVL Maker Ver 3.06: 3.06 ??? ??3.04，???CG MODE?? ??3.05—— ??????????????????????????????? ?????????config.tjs????????（??????????????????????????） ????config.tjs???，????????????，????????????Config.tjs。（???????，?????????，???KAGConfig??） ???????“????”??，??????????????????（Data） ??????????????????? ???????????，????????，??????????? ?fadeoutbgm?????????，???????????????，?????????? ????????，???“??????”??。（??????????macro_edu.ks??） ????????，????????A??????，???“??????”。 ?????????????，???????B??????，???“...Xomega Framework: Xomega.Framework 1.2: Release 1.2 of Xomega Framework refactors projects to allow generating assemblies for different target frameworks and profiles and allows deploying it as a NuGet package. It also includes some small fixes to the service and presentation layer classes.People's Note: People's Note 0.31: Added note tag editing. Changed note edit conflict resolution to keep the latest version. To install: copy the appropriate CAB file onto your WM device and run it.Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows Phone: Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows Phone v1.3.1: Upgraded Windows Azure projects to Windows Azure Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 1.5 – September 2011 Upgraded the tools tools to support the Windows Phone Developer Tools RTW Update SQL Azure only scenarios to use ASP.NET Universal Providers (through the System.Web.Providers v1.0.1 NuGet package) Changed Shared Access Signature service interface to support more operations Refactored Blobs API to have a similar interface and usage to that provided by the Windows Azure SDK Stor...xUnit.net Contrib: xunitcontrib-resharper 0.4.4 (dotCover): xunitcontrib release 0.4.4 (ReSharper runner) This release provides a test runner plugin for Resharper 6.0 RTM, targetting all versions of xUnit.net. (See the xUnit.net project to download xUnit.net itself.) This release addresses the following issues:Support for dotCover code coverage 4132 Note that this build work against ALL VERSIONS of xunit. The files are compiled against xunit.dll 1.8 - DO NOT REPLACE THIS FILE. Thanks to xunit's version independent runner system, this package can r...BookShop: BookShop: BookShop WP7 clientRibbon Editor for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011: Ribbon Editor (0.1.2122.266): Added CodePlex and PayPal links New icon Bug fix: can't connect to an IFD deployment when the discovery service url has been customizedDotNet.Framework.Common: DotNet.Framework.Common 4.0: ??????????，????????????XML Explorer: XML Explorer 4.0.5: Changes in 4.0.5: Added 'Copy Attribute XPath to Address Bar' feature. Added methods for decoding node text and value from Base64 encoded strings, and copying them to the clipboard. Added 'ChildNodeDefinitions' to the options, which allows for easier navigation of parent-child and ID-IDREF relationships. Discovery happens on-demand, as nodes are expanded and child nodes are added. Nodes can now have 'virtual' child nodes, defined by an xpath to select an identifier (usually relative to ...Media Companion: MC 3.419b Weekly: A couple of minor bug fixes, but the important fix in this release is to tackle the extremely long load times for users with large TV collections (issue #130). A note has been provided by developer Playos: "One final note, you will have to suffer one final long load and then it should be fixed... alternatively you can delete the TvCache.xml and rebuild your library... The fix was to include the file extension so it doesn't have to look for the video file (checking to see if a file exists is a...CODE Framework: 4.0.11021.0: This build adds a lot of our WPF components, including our MVVC and MVC components as well as a "Metro" and "Battleship" style.GridLibre para Visual FoxPro: GridLibre para Visual FoxPro v3.5: GridLibre Para Visual FoxPro: esta herramienta ayudara a los usuarios y programadores en los manejos de los datos, como Filtrar, multiseleccion y el autoformato a las columnas como la asignacion del controlsource.WiX Toolset: WiX v3.6 Beta: First beta release of WiX v3.6. The primary focus is on Burn but there are also many small bug fixes to the core toolset. For more information see: http://robmensching.com/blog/posts/2011/10/24/WiX-v3.6-Beta-releasedUmbraco CMS: Umbraco 5.0 CMS Alpha 3: Umbraco 5 Alpha 3Umbraco 5 (aka Jupiter) will be the next version of everyone's favourite, friendly ASP.NET CMS that already powers over 100,000 websites worldwide. Try out the Alpha of v5 today! If you're new to Umbraco and would like to get a low-down on our popular and easy-to-learn approach to content management, check out our intro video. What's Alpha 3?This is our third Alpha release. It's intended for developers looking to become familiar with the codebase & architecture, or for thos...Vkontakte WP: Vkontakte: source codeWay2Sms Applications for Android, Desktop/Laptop & Java enabled phones: Way2SMS Desktop App v2.0: 1. Fixed issue with sending messages due to changes to Way2Sms site 2. Updated the character limit to 160 from 140GART - Geo Augmented Reality Toolkit: 1.0.1: About Release 1.0.1 Release 1.0.1 is a service release that addresses several issues and improves performance. As always, check the Documentation tab for instructions on how to get started. If you don't have the Windows Phone SDK yet, grab it here. Breaking Change Please note: There is a breaking change in this release. As noted below, the WorldCalculationMode property of ARItem has been replaced by a user-definable function. ARItem is now automatically wired up with a function that perform...Microsoft Ajax Minifier: Microsoft Ajax Minifier 4.32: Fix for issue #16710 - string literals in "constant literal operations" which contain ASP.NET substitutions should not be considered "constant." Move the JS1284 error (Misplaced Function Declaration) so it only fires when in strict mode. I got a couple complaints that people didn't like that error popping up in their existing code when they could verify that the location of that function, although not strict JS, still functions as expected cross-browser.New ProjectsApiDiff.Net: API Difference/Reporting project written in C# using the wonderful Cecil engine (http://www.mono-project.com/Cecil) to show differences between versions of a public API. Something like the unsupported MS tool "libcheck"Aspect Oriented Programming with .Net: Demo project using PostSharp for AOP in .Net.CCBBAA: CCBBAACdf.Iris.MiniProjetCalculateur: Application Client / Serveur calculateur en langage CCmjSiverlight: a silverlight libraryCSharpKaartSpel: Super Kaart Spel.Developer Team Article System Management: Developer Team Article System Management Makes it easier for Authors to publish their articles . It developed in VB.NET .DirectoryMonitor: DirectoryMonitorDNN Administrador de Tareas: Un Proyecto de codigo abierto Domek: Taki sobie domekEDXGraphics: This is Edward(Shiqiu) Liu's personal code repository. Projects here are primarily about Graphics, AI and Algorithms. For more introduction, please visit [url:www.edxgraphics.com] Enterprise SSIS Framework: The Enterprise SSIS Framework is a project intended to simplify the management of an organization’s administration and ETL assets by abstracting the coordination and control flow into metadata. This project consists of the four parts: - Core SSIS Packages: A set of packages that are responsible for workflow within the framework - SQL Server 2008 DB: Holds all the metadata necessary to drive the application - Administration App: A web-based front end to facilitate managing assets running ...FIM Task Sequencer "RunJob": Runjob is a simple batch controller for FIM (MIIS and ILM) for starting and monitoring the execution of FIM Run Profiles that allows for complex (looping and branching) sequences to be put together with a simple XML 'task' file. Key features include: * Works with MIIS / ILM / FIM * Optionally Connects to the SQL database to verify that run profiles exist * Can execute arbitrary tasks via a command line. * Based on the results of command line or previous run history can loop and jump ...Ham Bone Soup amateur radio software and electronic log: Ham Bone Soup is a open source software written for satisfying the needs of Amateur Radio operators. The central feature is an especially flexible logging system for acommodating contests and general purpose logs, but will grow to include many other vital Amateur radio features. It doesn't do anything yet, we are just geting started.H? th?ng qu?n lý chi tiêu - windows phone: H? th?ng qu?n lý chi tiêu - windows phoneJavascript Editor for SharePoint: Javascript Editor for SharePoint is a lightweight, in-browser editor that lets you quickly prototype and test custom javascript code in SharePointLegoWeb: Open source Web CMS base on ASP.NET Webparts + MARCXML metadata: LegoWeb is an open source web content management solution developed base on combination of ASP.NET 2.0 Webparts and MARCXML Metadata. It is very simple and very flexible. LuaXna: An simple engine that allow to devolop in LUA for XNA. It have logging feature and cycles.Manager Game: Student project for game developement course. Using XNA 4.0 for Windows platform.Metroed: A Metro version of the PhoneyTools (a WP7 toolkit) for use with C#/VB WinRT applications.My Masters Sample Project for Sharepoint 2010: The feature stabling example project which is provide to deploy custom master page to personel sites on Sharepoint 2010 The solution is anwering fallowing questions : * How to deploy a custom master page ? * How to customize a masterpage ? * How to attach custom master page to personal sites using stabling feature ? NDepend TFS 2010 integration: NDepend TFS 2010 integration provides build activities, a build report customization addin, and extends the TFS Warehouse in order to leverage NDepend quality statistics for your projects. Open Source Renderer: Open Source RendererPearTunes: Peartunes is a university project.Plugin Framework Web: Lighweight plugin framework for web applicationsQTP TFS Generic Test Integration: In Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 there is a Generic Test type that allows you to integrate with automation tools like QTP. I have created a pretty simple solution that allows you to use your existing QTP automation scripts within the Microsoft Visual Studio testing framework and here's a sample below. The key part of this solution is transforming HP's QTP format to Microsoft’s Generic Test format so that you can publish the results to TFS. The added benefit of this integration is that you c...RequiemDream: the project for manage workflow records reexecute to helping developers for debugging.Rift Addon Studio 2010: Rift AddOn Studio (AOS) is an open source development environment designed to bring a Visual Studio-like experience to building Rift AddOns. For more information on exactly what AOS does, check out the list of features below. Small Database Tools: This is a project for me to create small tools I created for database related functions.SQL Azure Membership, Profile, Role provider starter kit for MVC3 project: When you use out of box MVC 3 site template the Membership, Profile and Role provider DB is created as attached MDF file by the name AspNetDB.mdf. This project has needed steps to easily migrate this DB into SQL Azure. This is a complete MVC3 Starter site project and could be used for your next 'Big Thing' as soon as properly setup. Enjoy :)SQL Server BareMetal Hands-on-Labs: The SQL Server BareMetal Hands-on-Labs project allows you to build a SQL Server Hands-on-Lab Enviroment from scratch, using Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 Hyper-V. State Theater Website: Building a website designed to provide information about live theater throughout a state. Basically, it a port of NJTheater.com from classic ASP to Asp.Net making it customizable to any state along the way.Static web generator: Zoltar let you generate your website (blog, personl website,etc) from a set of md files. Ukulele Chord Finder: Ukulele Chord FinderUser Profile Cleaner: This application allows you to manage via GUI or command line user profiles, removed the profiles no longer used by a number of days. The application allows you to set a list of profiles that can be excluded from deletion. Virtual Visit: This project have made the virtual visite for your siteWP7 Open source project collection by eLite: ??Windows Phone????????zebrawebservice: ??AWB，??OPS??

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• Abstracting functionality

  - by Ralf Westphal

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/theArchitectsNapkin/archive/2014/08/22/abstracting-functionality.aspxWhat is more important than data? Functionality. Yes, I strongly believe we should switch to a functionality over data mindset in programming. Or actually switch back to it. Focus on functionality Functionality once was at the core of software development. Back when algorithms were the first thing you heard about in CS classes. Sure, data structures, too, were important - but always from the point of view of algorithms. (Niklaus Wirth gave one of his books the title “Algorithms + Data Structures” instead of “Data Structures + Algorithms” for a reason.) The reason for the focus on functionality? Firstly, because software was and is about doing stuff. Secondly because sufficient performance was hard to achieve, and only thirdly memory efficiency. But then hardware became more powerful. That gave rise to a new mindset: object orientation. And with it functionality was devalued. Data took over its place as the most important aspect. Now discussions revolved around structures motivated by data relationships. (John Beidler gave his book the title “Data Structures and Algorithms: An Object Oriented Approach” instead of the other way around for a reason.) Sure, this data could be embellished with functionality. But nevertheless functionality was second. When you look at (domain) object models what you mostly find is (domain) data object models. The common object oriented approach is: data aka structure over functionality. This is true even for the most modern modeling approaches like Domain Driven Design. Look at the literature and what you find is recommendations on how to get data structures right: aggregates, entities, value objects. I´m not saying this is what object orientation was invented for. But I´m saying that´s what I happen to see across many teams now some 25 years after object orientation became mainstream through C++, Delphi, and Java. But why should we switch back? Because software development cannot become truly agile with a data focus. The reason for that lies in what customers need first: functionality, behavior, operations. To be clear, that´s not why software is built. The purpose of software is to be more efficient than the alternative. Money mainly is spent to get a certain level of quality (e.g. performance, scalability, security etc.). But without functionality being present, there is nothing to work on the quality of. What customers want is functionality of a certain quality. ASAP. And tomorrow new functionality needs to be added, existing functionality needs to be changed, and quality needs to be increased. No customer ever wanted data or structures. Of course data should be processed. Data is there, data gets generated, transformed, stored. But how the data is structured for this to happen efficiently is of no concern to the customer. Ask a customer (or user) whether she likes the data structured this way or that way. She´ll say, “I don´t care.” But ask a customer (or user) whether he likes the functionality and its quality this way or that way. He´ll say, “I like it” (or “I don´t like it”). Build software incrementally From this very natural focus of customers and users on functionality and its quality follows we should develop software incrementally. That´s what Agility is about. Deliver small increments quickly and often to get frequent feedback. That way less waste is produced, and learning can take place much easier (on the side of the customer as well as on the side of developers). An increment is some added functionality or quality of functionality.[1] So as it turns out, Agility is about functionality over whatever. But software developers’ thinking is still stuck in the object oriented mindset of whatever over functionality. Bummer. I guess that (at least partly) explains why Agility always hits a glass ceiling in projects. It´s a clash of mindsets, of cultures. Driving software development by demanding small increases in functionality runs against thinking about software as growing (data) structures sprinkled with functionality. (Excuse me, if this sounds a bit broad-brush. But you get my point.) The need for abstraction In the end there need to be data structures. Of course. Small and large ones. The phrase functionality over data does not deny that. It´s not functionality instead of data or something. It´s just over, i.e. functionality should be thought of first. It´s a tad more important. It´s what the customer wants. That´s why we need a way to design functionality. Small and large. We need to be able to think about functionality before implementing it. We need to be able to reason about it among team members. We need to be able to communicate our mental models of functionality not just by speaking about them, but also on paper. Otherwise reasoning about it does not scale. We learned thinking about functionality in the small using flow charts, Nassi-Shneiderman diagrams, pseudo code, or UML sequence diagrams. That´s nice and well. But it does not scale. You can use these tools to describe manageable algorithms. But it does not work for the functionality triggered by pressing the “1-Click Order” on an amazon product page for example. There are several reasons for that, I´d say. Firstly, the level of abstraction over code is negligible. It´s essentially non-existent. Drawing a flow chart or writing pseudo code or writing actual code is very, very much alike. All these tools are about control flow like code is.[2] In addition all tools are computationally complete. They are about logic which is expressions and especially control statements. Whatever you code in Java you can fully (!) describe using a flow chart. And then there is no data. They are about control flow and leave out the data altogether. Thus data mostly is assumed to be global. That´s shooting yourself in the foot, as I hope you agree. Even if it´s functionality over data that does not mean “don´t think about data”. Right to the contrary! Functionality only makes sense with regard to data. So data needs to be in the picture right from the start - but it must not dominate the thinking. The above tools fail on this. Bottom line: So far we´re unable to reason in a scalable and abstract manner about functionality. That´s why programmers are so driven to start coding once they are presented with a problem. Programming languages are the only tool they´ve learned to use to reason about functional solutions. Or, well, there might be exceptions. Mathematical notation and SQL may have come to your mind already. Indeed they are tools on a higher level of abstraction than flow charts etc. That´s because they are declarative and not computationally complete. They leave out details - in order to deliver higher efficiency in devising overall solutions. We can easily reason about functionality using mathematics and SQL. That´s great. Except for that they are domain specific languages. They are not general purpose. (And they don´t scale either, I´d say.) Bummer. So to be more precise we need a scalable general purpose tool on a higher than code level of abstraction not neglecting data. Enter: Flow Design. Abstracting functionality using data flows I believe the solution to the problem of abstracting functionality lies in switching from control flow to data flow. Data flow very naturally is not about logic details anymore. There are no expressions and no control statements anymore. There are not even statements anymore. Data flow is declarative by nature. With data flow we get rid of all the limiting traits of former approaches to modeling functionality. In addition, nomen est omen, data flows include data in the functionality picture. With data flows, data is visibly flowing from processing step to processing step. Control is not flowing. Control is wherever it´s needed to process data coming in. That´s a crucial difference and needs some rewiring in your head to be fully appreciated.[2] Since data flows are declarative they are not the right tool to describe algorithms, though, I´d say. With them you don´t design functionality on a low level. During design data flow processing steps are black boxes. They get fleshed out during coding. Data flow design thus is more coarse grained than flow chart design. It starts on a higher level of abstraction - but then is not limited. By nesting data flows indefinitely you can design functionality of any size, without losing sight of your data. Data flows scale very well during design. They can be used on any level of granularity. And they can easily be depicted. Communicating designs using data flows is easy and scales well, too. The result of functional design using data flows is not algorithms (too low level), but processes. Think of data flows as descriptions of industrial production lines. Data as material runs through a number of processing steps to be analyzed, enhances, transformed. On the top level of a data flow design might be just one processing step, e.g. “execute 1-click order”. But below that are arbitrary levels of flows with smaller and smaller steps. That´s not layering as in “layered architecture”, though. Rather it´s a stratified design à la Abelson/Sussman. Refining data flows is not your grandpa´s functional decomposition. That was rooted in control flows. Refining data flows does not suffer from the limits of functional decomposition against which object orientation was supposed to be an antidote. Summary I´ve been working exclusively with data flows for functional design for the past 4 years. It has changed my life as a programmer. What once was difficult is now easy. And, no, I´m not using Clojure or F#. And I´m not a async/parallel execution buff. Designing the functionality of increments using data flows works great with teams. It produces design documentation which can easily be translated into code - in which then the smallest data flow processing steps have to be fleshed out - which is comparatively easy. Using a systematic translation approach code can mirror the data flow design. That way later on the design can easily be reproduced from the code if need be. And finally, data flow designs play well with object orientation. They are a great starting point for class design. But that´s a story for another day. To me data flow design simply is one of the missing links of systematic lightweight software design. There are also other artifacts software development can produce to get feedback, e.g. process descriptions, test cases. But customers can be delighted more easily with code based increments in functionality. ? No, I´m not talking about the endless possibilities this opens for parallel processing. Data flows are useful independently of multi-core processors and Actor-based designs. That´s my whole point here. Data flows are good for reasoning and evolvability. So forget about any special frameworks you might need to reap benefits from data flows. None are necessary. Translating data flow designs even into plain of Java is possible. ?

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, January 20, 2011

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, January 20, 2011Popular ReleasesAutoLoL: AutoLoL v1.5.4: Added champion: Renekton Removed automatic file association Fix: The recent files combobox didn't always open a file when an item was selected Fix: Removing a recently opened file caused an errorRazorEngine: RazorEngine v2.0: IMPORTANT RazorEngine v2 is a complete rewrite of the templating framework. Because of this, there are no guarantees that code written around v1.2 will run without modification. The v2 framework is cleaner and refined. Please check the forthcoming codeplex site updates which will detail the new functionality. Features in v2: ASP.NET Medium Trust Support Custom Template Activation with Dependency Injection Support Subtemplating using the new @Include method. Known issues: @Include doe...AutoSPInstaller: AutoSPInstaller for SharePoint 2010 (v2 Beta): New package consisting of AutoSPInstaller v2 files. If you have not previously downloaded AutoSPInstaller, or are interested in the new functionality and format, this is the recommended release.DotNetNuke® Community Edition: 05.06.01: Major Highlights Fixed issue to remove preCondition checks when upgrading to .Net 4.0 Fixed issue where some valid domains were failing email validation checks. Fixed issue where editing Host menu page settings assigns the page to a Portal. Fixed issue which caused XHTML validation problems in 5.6.0 Fixed issue where an aspx page in any subfolder was inaccessible. Fixed issue where Config.Touch method signature had an unintentional breaking change in 5.6.0 Fixed issue which caused...MiniTwitter: 1.65: MiniTwitter 1.65 ???? ?? List ????? in-reply-to ???????? ????????????????????????? ?? OAuth ????????????????????????????Opalis Community Releases: Integration Pack for Windows Tasks: NOTE: There are two objects in this Integration Pack, each one has multiple uses. Each object comes with its own documentation. See below for a brief description of each: The Integration Pack Object - File System MaintenanceThis object extends the current Foundation Object Functionality within OIS. Specifically, this object extends the functionality of the Delete File, Delete Folder, and Get File Status Objects. It also works well with many of the Foundation Objects which can process the inf...ASP.net Ribbon: Version 2.1: Tadaaa... So Version 2.1 brings a lot of things... Have a look at the homepage to see what's new. Also, I wanted to (really) improve the Designer. I wanted to add great things... but... it took to much time. And as some of you were waiting for fixes, I decided just to fix bugs and add some features. So have a look at the demo app to see new features. Thanks ! (You can expect some realeses if bugs are not fixed correctly... 2.2, 2.3, 2.4....)iTracker Asp.Net Starter Kit: Version 3.0.0: This is the inital release of the version 3.0.0 Visual Studio 2010 (.Net 4.0) remake of the ITracker application. I connsider this a working, stable application but since there are still some features missing to make it "complete" I'm leaving it listed as a "beta" release. I am hoping to make it feature complete for v3.1.0 but anything is possible.mytrip.mvc (CMS & e-Commerce): mytrip.mvc 1.0.52.1 beta 2: New MVC3 RTM fix bug: Dropdown select fix bug: Add Store/Department and Add Store/Produser WEB.mytrip.mvc 1.0.52.1 Web for install hosting System Requirements: NET 4.0, MSSQL 2008 or MySql (auto creation table to database) if .\SQLEXPRESS auto creation database (App_Data folder) SRC.mytrip.mvc 1.0.52.1 System Requirements: Visual Studio 2010 or Web Deweloper 2010 MSSQL 2008 or MySql (auto creation table to database) if .\SQLEXPRESS auto creation database (App_Data folder) Connector/Net...ASP.NET MVC Project Awesome, jQuery Ajax helpers (controls): 1.6.1: A rich set of helpers (controls) that you can use to build highly responsive and interactive Ajax-enabled Web applications. These helpers include Autocomplete, AjaxDropdown, Lookup, Confirm Dialog, Popup Form, Popup and Pager changes: RenderView controller extension works for razor also live demo switched to razorBloodSim: BloodSim - 1.3.3.1: - Priority update to resolve a bug that was causing Boss damage to ignore Blood Shields entirelyRawr: Rawr 4.0.16 Beta: Rawr is now web-based. The link to use Rawr4 is: http://elitistjerks.com/rawr.phpThis is the Cataclysm Beta Release. More details can be found at the following link http://rawr.codeplex.com/Thread/View.aspx?ThreadId=237262 As of this release, you can now also begin using the new Downloadable WPF version of Rawr!This is a pre-alpha release of the WPF version, there are likely to be a lot of issues. If you have a problem, please follow the Posting Guidelines and put it into the Issue Tracker. W...MvcContrib: an Outer Curve Foundation project: MVC 3 - 3.0.51.0: Please see the Change Log for a complete list of changes. MVC BootCamp Description of the releases: MvcContrib.Release.zip MvcContrib.dll MvcContrib.TestHelper.dll MvcContrib.Extras.Release.zip T4MVC. The extra view engines / controller factories and other functionality which is in the project. This file includes the main MvcContrib assembly. Samples are included in the release. You do not need MvcContrib if you download the Extras.N2 CMS: 2.1.1: N2 is a lightweight CMS framework for ASP.NET. It helps you build great web sites that anyone can update. 2.1.1 Maintenance release List of changes 2.1 Major Changes Support for auto-implemented properties ({get;set;}, based on contribution by And Poulsen) File manager improvements (multiple file upload, resize images to fit) New image gallery Infinite scroll paging on news Content templates First time with N2? Try the demo site Download one of the template packs (above) and open...DNN Menu Provider: 01.00.00 (DNN 5.X and newer): DNN Menu Provider v1.0.0Our first release build is a stable release. It requires at least DotNetNuke 5.1.0. Previous DNN versions are not suported. Major Highlights: Easy to use template system build on a selfmade and powerful engine. Ready for multilingual websites. A flexible translation integration based on the ASP.NET Provider Model as well as an build in provider for DNN Localization (DNN 5.5.X > required) and an provider for EALO Translation API. Advanced in-memory caching function...TweetSharp: TweetSharp v2.0.0.0 - Preview 8: Documentation for this release may be found at http://tweetsharp.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=UserGuide&referringTitle=Documentation. Note: This code is currently preview quality. Preview 8 ChangesUpgraded library references to address reported regressions Third Party Library VersionsHammock v1.1.6: http://hammock.codeplex.com Json.NET 4.0 Release 1: http://json.codeplex.comVidCoder: 0.8.1: Adds ability to choose an arbitrary range (in seconds or frames) to encode. Adds ability to override the title number in the output file name when enqueing multiple titles. Updated presets: Added iPhone 4, Apple TV 2, fixed some existing presets that should have had weightp=0 or trellis=0 on them. Added {parent} option to auto-name format. Use {parent:2} to refer to a folder 2 levels above the input file. Added {title:2} option to auto-name format. Adds leading zeroes to reach the sp...Microsoft SQL Server Product Samples: Database: AdventureWorks2008R2 without filestream: This download contains a version of the AdventureWorks2008R2 OLTP database without FILESTREAM properties. You do not need to have filestream enabled to attach this database. No additional schema or data changes have been made. To install the version of AdventureWorks2008R2 that includes filestream, use the SR1 installer available here. Prerequisites: Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 must be installed. Full-Text Search must be enabled. Installing the AdventureWorks2008R2 OLTP database: 1. Cl...ASP.NET: ASP.NET MVC 3 Application Upgrader: This standalone application upgrades ASP.NET MVC 2 applications to ASP.NET MVC 3. It works for both ASP.NET MVC 3 RC 2 and RTM. The tool only supports Visual Studio 2010 solutions and MVC 2 projects targeting .NET 4. It will not work with VS 2008 solutions, MVC 1 projects, or projects targeting .NET 3.5. Those projects will first have to be upgraded using Visual Studio 2010 and/or retargeted for .NET 4. The tool will: Create a backup of your entire solution Update all Web Applications and ...NuGet: NuGet 1.0 RTM: NuGet is a free, open source developer focused package management system for the .NET platform intent on simplifying the process of incorporating third party libraries into a .NET application during development. This release is a Visual Studio 2010 extension and contains the the Package Manager Console and the Add Package Dialog. The URL to the package OData feed is: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=206669New ProjectsAnyDbTest: AnyDbTest is the first and only automated DB unit testing tool available using XML as test case. AnyDbTest is just designed for DBA/DB developers. It supports all kinds of popular database, such as Oracle, SQL Server, MySQL, and PostgreSQL etc. BizTalk Context Adder Pipeline Component: Context Property Adder pipeline component, which utilize XML configuration.BOQ: Bill Of Quantity... WinForms ProjectCascading System: The cascading components of the CASA simulation system. This is to be used with the CASA System.Condobook: Projeto para estudo de ASP.NET MVC do grupo SharpShooters.Crystal Report WCF Services: This project is a mini WCF web services i built which allow web-server which does not have Crystal report server installed to generate crystal report via WCFCultiv Photometadata for Umbraco: The PhotoMetaData package will extract meta data from images that you upload in your Umbraco media section. Dots and Boxes: boxesEasy Sound Miage: Projet d'année M1File Encoding Checker: File Encoding Checker is a GUI tool that allows you to validate the text encoding of one or more files. The tool can display the encoding for all selected files, or only the files that do not have the encodings you specify. File Encoding Checker requires .NET 2 or above to run.Intuition Logic C++ Library: A C++ library of computer vision, machine learning and optimization, etc. based on design patterns that make it easy to integrate to your existing project. LingDong: LingDong is an open-source search engine implanted by C#&ASP.NET. It includes Index, Rank and Query, but not Crawler.LiveSpaceBackupTool: This tool helps you to back up your Windows Live Spaces blogs and comments before they are forever gone. Options offered by Microsoft are to download a local copy or migrate to wordpress.com, but unfortunately some details will be lost if you do that. Use this tool to avoid it.My IE Accelerators: 1. dict.cn ie accelaratorOrchard Anti Spam Module: The Orchard Anti Spam Module is an API used by other Orchard modules to prevent users from entering messages categorized as spam in forms. It uses online spam services like Akismet and TypePad.Orchard Contact User Module: Orchard module for users to be able to contact each other through messages.PortfolioEngine.Net: PortfolioEngine.Net is an easy to use showcase engine to present the projects you worked on. It is developed in C#, using asp.net mvc 2 on top of .Net 3.5PoshWSUS: This is a module designed to help fill in a gap where a System Administrator can perform WSUS commands against the server via the command line vs working using the GUI. Script Helper: Easily run large and continuously changing batches of scripts.SetDefaultAudioEndpoint: SetDefaultAudioEndpoint (Set Default Audio Endpoint) allows users to set the default audio playback device using computer code. The solution opens the Sound Control Panel and uses the Microsoft UI Automation accessibility framework to make changes.SharePoint 2010 Acknowledgement Page: SharePoint 2010 Acknowledgement Solution. Solution deploys an acknowledgement page using HTTP module to check SharePoint 2010 user profile every time user goes to site and presents users with acknowledgement page they must accept prior to accessing site.SimpleML: SimpleML is an efficient non-extractive parser for an XML-like markup language. It supports navigation similar to SAX and DOM, ability to add/delete elements, and full macro expansion similar to PHP using Lua. It is programmed in C++ and is fully Unicode compliant.SLRTC#: To be continuedStreamBase Community Extensions: StreamBase Community Extensions (SBCX) is aimed at providing a Microsoft Rx-based .NET class library, code-generator (like SQL metal), and a widely useful set of Windows PowerShell cmdlets, providers, aliases, filters, functions and scripts for StreamBase.VS2010 Context Menu Fix: This utility fixes annoying quirk of context menu in VS2010 Document Editor which impedes context menu navigation via keyboard.WinEye: A combonation between spy++ and hawkeye, its meant to pull apart native and managed windows for further investigation

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, February 28, 2011

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, February 28, 2011Popular ReleasesFacebook Graph Toolkit: Facebook Graph Toolkit 1.0: Refer to http://computerbeacon.net for Documentation and Tutorial New features:added FQL support added Expires property to Api object added support for publishing to a user's friend / Facebook Page added support for posting and removing comments on posts added support for adding and removing likes on posts and comments added static methods for Page class added support for Iframe Application Tab of Facebook Page added support for obtaining the user's country, locale and age in If...ASP.NET MVC Project Awesome, jQuery Ajax helpers (controls): 1.7.1: A rich set of helpers (controls) that you can use to build highly responsive and interactive Ajax-enabled Web applications. These helpers include Autocomplete, AjaxDropdown, Lookup, Confirm Dialog, Popup Form, Popup and Pager small improvements for some helpers and AjaxDropdown has Data like the Lookup except it's value gets reset and list refilled if any element from data gets changedManaged Extensibility Framework: MEF 2 Preview 3: This release aims .net 4.0 and Silverlight 4.0. Accordingly, there are two solutions files. The assemblies are named System.ComponentModel.Composition.Codeplex.dll as a way to avoid clashing with the version shipped with the 4th version of the framework. Introduced CompositionOptions to container instantiation CompositionOptions.DisableSilentRejection makes MEF throw an exception on composition errors. Useful for diagnostics Support for open generics Support for attribute-less registr...PHPExcel: PHPExcel 1.7.6 Production: DonationsDonate via PayPal via PayPal. If you want to, we can also add your name / company on our Donation Acknowledgements page. PEAR channelWe now also have a full PEAR channel! Here's how to use it: New installation: pear channel-discover pear.pearplex.net pear install pearplex/PHPExcel Or if you've already installed PHPExcel before: pear upgrade pearplex/PHPExcel The official page can be found at http://pearplex.net. Want to contribute?Please refer the Contribute page.WPF Application Framework (WAF): WPF Application Framework (WAF) 2.0.0.4: Version: 2.0.0.4 (Milestone 4): This release contains the source code of the WPF Application Framework (WAF) and the sample applications. Requirements .NET Framework 4.0 (The package contains a solution file for Visual Studio 2010) The unit test projects require Visual Studio 2010 Professional Remark The sample applications are using Microsoft’s IoC container MEF. However, the WPF Application Framework (WAF) doesn’t force you to use the same IoC container in your application. You can use ...VidCoder: 0.8.2: Updated auto-naming to handle seconds and frames ranges as well. Deprecated the {chapters} token for auto-naming in favor of {range}. Allowing file drag to preview window and enabling main window shortcut keys to work no matter what window is focused. Added option in config to enable giving custom names to audio tracks. (Note that these names will only show up certain players like iTunes or on the iPod. Players that support custom track names normally may not show them.) Added tooltips ...SQL Server Compact Toolbox: Standalone version 2.0 for SQL Server Compact 4.0: Download the Visual Studio add-in for SQL Server Compact 4.0 and 3.5 from here Standalone version of (most of) the same functionality as the add-in, for SQL Server Compact 4.0. Useful for anyone not having Visual Studio Professional or higher installed. Requires .NET 4.0. Any feedback much appreciated.Chiave File Encryption: Chiave 0.9.2: Release Notes Application for file encryption and decryption using 512 Bit rijndael encyrption algorithm with simple to use UI. Its written in C# and compiled in .Net version 3.5. It incorporates features of Windows 7 like Jumplists, Taskbar progress and Aero Glass. Now with added support to Windows XP! Change Log from 0.9.1 to 0.9.2: ==================== Added: > Now it displays number of files added in the wizard to the Window Title bar. > Added support to Windows XP. > Minor UI tweaks. I...Claims Based Identity & Access Control Guide: Drop 1 - Claims Identity Guide V2: Highlights of drop #1 This is the first drop of the new "Claims Identity Guide" edition. In this release you will find: All previous samples updated and enhanced. All code upgraded to .NET 4 and Visual Studio 2010. Extensive cleanup. Refactored Simulated Issuers: each solution now gets its own issuers. This results in much cleaner and simpler to understand code. Added Single Sign Out support. Added first sample using ACS ("ACS as a Federation Provider"). This sample extends the ori...Simple Notify: Simple Notify Beta 2011-02-25: Feature: host the service with a single click in console Feature: host the service as a windows service Feature: notification cient application Feature: push client application Feature: push notifications from your powershell script Feature: C# wrapper libraries for your applicationsMono.Addins: Mono.Addins 0.6: The 0.6 release of Mono.Addins includes many improvements, bug fixes and new features: Add-in engine Add-in name and description can now be localized. There are new custom attributes for defining them, and can also be specified as xml elements in an add-in manifest instead of attributes. Support for custom add-in properties. It is now possible to specify arbitrary properties in add-ins, which can be queried at install time (using the Mono.Addins.Setup API) or at run-time. Custom extensio...patterns & practices: Project Silk: Project Silk Community Drop 3 - 25 Feb 2011: IntroductionWelcome to the third community drop of Project Silk. For this drop we are requesting feedback on overall application architecture, code review of the JavaScript Conductor and Widgets, and general direction of the application. Project Silk provides guidance and sample implementations that describe and illustrate recommended practices for building modern web applications using technologies such as HTML5, jQuery, CSS3 and Internet Explorer 9. This guidance is intended for experien...PhoneyTools: Initial Release (0.1): This is the 0.1 version for preview of the features.Minemapper: Minemapper v0.1.5: Now supports new Minecraft beta v1.3 map format, thanks to updated mcmap. Disabled biomes, until Minecraft Biome Extractor supports new format.Umbraco CMS: Umbraco 4.7: Service release fixing 31 issues. A full changelog will be available with the final stable release of 4.7 Important when upgradingUpgrade as if it was a patch release (update /bin, /umbraco and /umbraco_client). For general upgrade information follow the guide found at http://our.umbraco.org/wiki/install-and-setup/upgrading-an-umbraco-installation 4.7 requires the .NET 4.0 framework Web.Config changes Update the web web.config to include the 4 changes found in (they're clearly marked in...HubbleDotNet - Open source full-text search engine: V1.1.0.0: Add Sqlite3 DBAdapter Add App Report when Query Cache is Collecting. Improve the performance of index through Synchronize. Add top 0 feature so that we can only get count of the result. Improve the score calculating algorithm of match. Let the score of the record that match all items large then others. Add MySql DBAdapter Improve performance for multi-fields sort . Using hash table to access the Payload data. The version before used bin search. Using heap sort instead of qui...Silverlight????[???]: silverlight????[???]2.0: ???????，?????，????????silverlight??????。DBSourceTools: DBSourceTools_1.3.0.0: Release 1.3.0.0 Changed editors from FireEdit to ICSharpCode.TextEditor. Complete re-vamp of Intellisense ( further testing needed). Hightlight Field and Table Names in sql scripts. Added field dropdown on all tables and views in DBExplorer. Added data option for viewing data in Tables. Fixed comment / uncomment bug as reported by tareq. Included Synonyms in scripting engine ( nickt_ch ).IronPython: 2.7 Release Candidate 1: We are pleased to announce the first Release Candidate for IronPython 2.7. This release contains over two dozen bugs fixed in preparation for 2.7 Final. See the release notes for 60193 for details and what has already been fixed in the earlier 2.7 prereleases. - IronPython TeamCaliburn Micro: A Micro-Framework for WPF, Silverlight and WP7: Caliburn.Micro 1.0 RC: This is the official Release Candicate for Caliburn.Micro 1.0. The download contains the binaries, samples and VS templates. VS Templates The templates included are designed for situations where the Caliburn.Micro source needs to be embedded within a single project solution. This was targeted at government and other organizations that expressed specific requirements around using an open source project like this. NuGet This release does not have a corresponding NuGet package. The NuGet pack...New ProjectsAutoDiff: High-performance and high-accuracy automatic function-differentiation library suitable for optimization and numeric computing. Eburgfoto: fotoserviceE-Mail Marketing Server: Criação de um E-Mail Marketing Server Tecnologias Aplicacadas: ASP.NET VB.NET Entity Framework 4 DevExpress Components Integração com SmarterMail Precisamos de Ajuda para: - Layouts CSS - E-Mail Templates F# WPF Application Template with Themes: An F# Template which generates a simple WPF application with themes.FAST Search for Sharepoint 2010 Query Logger: The FS4SP query logger will make it easier for developers and IT pro's to debug user queries.FoxPress CMS: FoxPress is a totally free and Open Source Content Management System (CMS) you can use to create a beautiful website. From Fortune 500 site to busy e-commerce shopping hub to personal blog, FoxPress is simple to use and simple to implement. Performance and scalability are key.IISAppPoolTM: IISAppPoolTM allows you to control IIS 7.0 application pool right from you windows system tray. You no longer have to go through IIS management console and to manage your application pool. Do it directly from you Windows taskbar! IISAppPoolTM is developed in C#.JobTrends: Job TrendsLondon: Project "London" is a futuristic crowd-sourcing system. We are currently in development and expect to ship in the summer of 2011.pgnSoft Framework: Complete Framework for Busines, games and casual system developers.Prompt Instantiator - Simple Dependency Injector: Prompt Instantiator is simple lightweight dependency injector for .NET and Silverlight.SjscV5: Sjsc Application V5SSIS Batch Geocoder: SSIS Batch Geocoder is a SQL Server 2008 R2 Integration Services (SSIS) data flow transformation that geocodes addresses in the pipeline using the Bing Maps Geocode Dataflow. SurveySL: SurveyUser authentication against active directory: Portable tool, winform. Check user name and password against active directory. Green software (no installation). XAMLtoMVC dynamic image generator: XAMLtoMVC was created to ease tasks in web development when you have something to display that is impossible (or nearly impossible) with html. And especially with images you want to use, but you realize you can't because they are too static to reflect even the smallest changes.Xray - for your Ioc: Visualise the contents of an IoC container. this is a developer tool to show the dependency graph registered in the IoC container.???????????: ???????? «???????????», ???????????? ? ?????? ?????????????? ??????????? ???????? ?? C#. ???????? ?? C#.??C#??SEED????????: ???????????????????, ??C#???SEED(The Standard for the Exchange of Earthquake Data)????????, ????????????,??? ??SEED ???????、????????。

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