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• Saving an xml file without

  - by little

  Hi, How do I work with an xml file that when updating it, after saving the commented lines would still be present. Here's my code snippet for saving the file: public static void WriteSettings(Settings settings, string path) { XmlSerializer serializer = new XmlSerializer(typeof(Settings)); TextWriter writer = new StreamWriter(path); serializer.Serialize(writer, settings); writer.Close(); }

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• Using FiddlerCore to capture HTTP Requests with .NET

  - by Rick Strahl

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

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• Prepping a conference

  - by Laurent Bugnion

  I have had the chance to talk at many conferences these past few years, and came up with a way to prepare them which works really well for me. Most importantly, it would make it quite easy to overcome an emergency (for example if my laptop would suddenly lose data). The whole code as well as the slides and other documents are in the cloud. I also use source control for my demos, so that I always have the latest and the greatest, but also a history of changes I made to my demos. Finally I have a system of code snippets which works great, and I often had very positive remarks from the audience regarding that. Putting everything in the cloud The one thing I used to be the most scared of was a sudden crash of my laptop, and being unable to restore in time for a conference. Most conferences ask speakers to send slides a few days (or weeks…) in advance, but let's face it, we all have last minute changes to our talks and I always come in the conference with updated slides that I pass to the management team. The answer to that dilemma used to be working off memory sticks, and that worked not bad. However last year I started putting all the documents relating to a conference in a DropBox folder, and that works great too. Obviously DropBox works only if you have connectivity, so if I for instance update slides while on an international flight, I cannot save to the cloud. The obvious answer to that is to backup everything on a memory stick… but I have to admit, I have been trusting my luck and working off my laptop HD and then synching everything to the cloud after landing. Of course on some US national flights you get WiFi on board, so in that case it is even simpler :) Usually after the conference is done, I remove the files from DropBox and copy them to their "final destination". They are backed up from there to BackBlaze, the great online backup service I am using routinely (I currently have about 90GB of data in BackBlaze). Outlining the presentations I like to have a written outline of my presentations written somewhere. I keep it simple, just write the various sections of the presentation with timing. I guess it is a remnant of the time when I was a private pilot, and using checklists for flight preparation. For example: Demo about designability 15' (0:37) Switch to Blend Open MainPage.xaml Create a DataTemplate ... Here I can immediately see during the presentation if I am taking too much time for my demo (0:37 is where I need to be when I am done with this section of the presentation, and 15' is the time that this particular section takes). I keep these sections reasonable, I don't detail every step of the preparation. Typically I have one such section for every 10-15 minutes of my talks. Yes, I am timing my presentations. I keep adjusting these numbers when I rehearse, and this really helps to feel more confident during the presentations. This is especially important for presentations that are long, like my MIX11 demo which clocked at 57 minutes (I had a lot of stuff to show…). Such presentations are risky, because if anything goes wrong, you will have to cut stuff, so the answer to that is: Rehearse, rehearse and when you're done rehearsing, rehearse a little more. I also have a "Preparation" section where I outline what I need to do before a presentation. For instance: Preparation Reboot in VHD Make sure MSN and Twitter are not running. Open VS10 and load demo Open Blend and load demo Run the WP7 emulator ... I typically start preparing my laptop an hour before the talk, starting everything I need to start and then putting my laptop to sleep. Saving and printing the outline, Timing Printing is a real problem because it is really hard to find a printer at most conference venues, and also quite hard in hotels. To solve that, I simply write everything in OneNote (synched to the cloud, now you start to know what I like ;) and then I print it to a PDF (I use CutePDFWriter) that I save to my Kindle. During the presentation, I read the outline off the Kindle (I mostly just need a quick check to see how I am timing). For timing during the presentation, I use the free tool ChronoGPS on my Windows Phone 7, but of course any phone these days has a clock/chrono application. In some conferences, they even have timers that the presenters can see, but they tend to count down and I prefer to count up… so I just use my own :) Source control for demos For demos, I create a separate folder and use Mercurial as source control. Mercurial has the huge advantage (over SVN or TFS) to work offline too, so I can commit while on a plane, and all the history is saved. Then when I have connectivity I push everything to the cloud (I am using the fantastic Trunksapp.com for my private repositories). Here too the obvious downside is the risk of losing my last changes if my laptop crashes before I can push to the cloud, and here too the obvious answer would be to work from a memory stick… though I have to admit I didn't do that lately (except when I was writing Silverlight 4 Unleashed, where I was really paranoid…) And code snippets? I am one of these presenters who hates to type in front of an audience. I can type really fast (writing two books has this advantage, it really teaches you to touch type and be fast at it) but in the context of an audience, on a stage where it is often damn cold (an issue I had a lot in past conferences, air conditioning can freeze your fingers and make it really hard to type), it doesn't work as well. I don't know for you, but I really dislike seeing a presentation where the speaker uses the backspace key more often than others ;) To solve that, I like to have my code ready in snippets, and drag them to the screen. Then I can spend time explaining each code snippet, while highlighting portions of the code (always highlight what you talk about, the audience often doesn't even see the cursor and doesn't know where you are on the screen!) Over the years I have used various solutions for code snippets, and now I have one which works really well… if you take a few precautions! I use the Visual Studio Toolbox. Preparing the code snippets You can store code snippets in the Toolbox for anything, XAML, C# etc. I arrange the snippets in the order in which I need them, which is a great way to remember what comes next in the presentation. I also separate them by topic, to make it easier to find them, for example when I switch to the slides and then back to the code. Remember that no matter how experienced you are, you will feel more nervous on stage than while you are preparing, so any way to make it easier for you is going to be beneficial to the audience. To store a code snippet, I do the following: Open the final demo that you want to show to the audience in Visual Studio. In your code, select a snippet of code that you want to explain in particular. Make sure that the Visual Studio Toolbox is open (menu View, Toolbox or Ctrl-Alt-X). Drag the selected snippet from the code window to the toolbox. (if needed) drag the snippet to the correct location (for example between two other code snippets so that you can access it as you speak through the demo). Right click on the snippet and select Rename Item from the context menu. Select a meaningful name. For me I use the following conventions: If it is a method, I use the method's name. If it is not a whole method, I use a descriptive name. If it is the content of a method (i.e. the body only, without the method's signature), I use "-> MethodName". This reminds me during the presentation that this is only the body, and that I need to insert that into an existing signature. This is the case, for instance, when I use Visual Studio to automatically generate the members of an interface’s implementation; then I only need to insert my snippet inside the generated method body. Saving the snippets This is the most important!! It happened to me a few times that VS10 lost its settings. When that happens, the snippets are lost too! Yeah that really sucks, especially (as it happened once) when this is the case about an hour before a talk… Stress and sweat follows, not good conditions to start a talk in front of an audience believe me. Thankfully, saving snippets is really easy with the following steps: Select the menu Tools, Import and Export Settings. Select Export selected environment settings and press Next. Uncheck All Settings. Then expand General Settings and select Toolbox (only!). Press Next. Select your source control folder and save under a meaningful name (for instance Snippets.vssettings). Commit to source control and push to the cloud. By the way, this also has the advantage of applying source control to the snippets file (which is an XML file), so you get history for free on that file! Reimporting the snippets If VS loses its settings and you need to reimport the snippets, this can be done super easily and very fast. Make sure that the Toolbox is empty. When you import snippets, they are merged with existing ones, they do not replace the content of the Toolbox. Unless merging is really what you want, make sure that your Toolbox is clean before you import, it is really easier. Select the menu Tools, Import and Export Settings. Select Import selected environment settings and press Next. Select No, just import new settings and press Next. Press Browse and select the Snippets.vssettings file. Press Finish. Et voila, all your snippets appear again in the Toolbox. Whew, the worst was averted and you can start your demo without sweating! (I had to do that once literally 5 minutes before the start of a demo, while my laptop was already hooked to the projector, and it went just fine). What about special tools? When using special tools (for example beta versions of tools you have an early access to), or a special configuration of your laptop, things can get tricky because you cannot really be sure that you will get a laptop with the same tools and the same configuration at the conference. To solve that, I use the following precautions: I make my demos from a Virtual Hard Disk. The great John Papa made a very easy-to-follow web page where he explains how to create a VHD and install Win7 to it. This gives you the full power of your laptop (as fast as booting from the metal). For me, I have a basic configuration that I saved on a USB harddrive (Win7 plus drivers, basic settings for desktop, folder options, taskbar etc) and Visual Studio 2010 SP1 on it. When preparing, I start by copying this "basis VHD" to my laptop. I install additional tools and configurations. I save the VHD back to the USB harddrive in a different folder. This would allow me to reinstall my demo environment quite fast, for example in case of harddrive failure. Replace the harddrive, copy the VHD to it, configure the BCD and you can start. Unfortunately this only works if the laptop itself still works. In the worst case of total failure, my security is to back all the installers up: The installers I use are synched on all my laptops and backed up to BackBlaze. If the worst happens and my laptop is absolutely broken, I can download the installer from BackBlaze and install on another laptop. This of course takes some time, and if that happens 5 minutes before a presentation, well… I don't have an answer to that, except of course crossing my fingers. Still, all that gives me additional security. Conclusion Remember folks, talking to an audience, large or small, will make you nervous. Just ask Scott Hanselman :) The goal here is to create the best possible conditions for you, and to create an environment where everything is saved and easy to restore, where everything is well known and provides you with additional confidence. The cooler you feel before the presentation (and during ;)), the better your presentation will be. Here too, the goal is to provide the best user experience you can have, which in turn will make it more enjoyable for your audience! Happy presenting :) Laurent   Laurent Bugnion (GalaSoft) Subscribe | Twitter | Facebook | Flickr | LinkedIn

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• How to Use Images as Navigation with innerfade Slideshow?

  - by Katie

  I am very new to JavaScript and only have the most basic understanding of how it works, so please bear with me. :) I'm using the jquery.innerfade.js script to create a slideshow with fade transitions for a website I'm developing, and I have added navigation buttons (which are set as background-images) that navigate between the “slides”. The navigation buttons have three states: default/off, hover, and on (each state is a separate image). I created a separate JavaScript document to set the buttons to “on” when they are clicked. The “hover” state is achieved through the CSS. Both the slideshow and the navigation buttons work well. There is just one thing I want to add: I would like the appropriate navigation button to display as “on” while the related “slide” is “playing”. Here's the HTML: <div id="mainFeature"> <ul id="theFeature"> <li id="the1feature"><a href="#" name="#promo1"><img src="_images/carousel/promo1.jpg" /></a></li> <li id="the2feature"><a href="#" name="#promo2"><img src="_images/carousel/promo2.jpg" /></a></li> <li id="the3feature"><a href="#" name="#promo3"><img src="_images/carousel/promo3.jpg" /></a></li> </ul> <div id="promonav-con"> <div id="primarypromonav"> <ul class="links"> <li id="the1title" class="promotop"><a rel="1" href="#promo1" class="promo1" id="promo1" onMouseDown="promo1on()"><strong>Botox Cosmetic</strong></a></li> <li id="the2title" class="promotop"><a rel="2" href="#promo2" class="promo2" id="promo2" onMouseDown="promo2on()"><strong>Promo 2</strong></a></li> <li id="the3title" class="promotop"><a rel="3" href="#promo3" class="promo3" id="promo3" onMouseDown="promo3on()"><strong>Promo 3</strong></a></li> </ul> </div> </div> And here is the jquery.innerfade.js, with my changes: (function($) { $.fn.innerfade = function(options) { return this.each(function() { $.innerfade(this, options); }); }; $.innerfade = function(container, options) { var settings = { 'speed': 'normal', 'timeout': 2000, 'containerheight': 'auto', 'runningclass': 'innerfade', 'children': null }; if (options) $.extend(settings, options); if (settings.children === null) var elements = $(container).children(); else var elements = $(container).children(settings.children); if (elements.length > 1) { $(container).css('position', 'relative').css('height', settings.containerheight).addClass(settings.runningclass); for (var i = 0; i < elements.length; i++) { $(elements[i]).css('z-index', String(elements.length-i)).css('position', 'absolute').hide(); }; this.ifchanger = setTimeout(function() { $.innerfade.next(elements, settings, 1, 0); }, settings.timeout); $(elements[0]).show(); } }; $.innerfade.next = function(elements, settings, current, last) { $(elements[last]).fadeOut(settings.speed); $(elements[current]).fadeIn(settings.speed, function() { removeFilter($(this)[0]); }); if ((current + 1) < elements.length) { current = current + 1; last = current - 1; } else { current = 0; last = elements.length - 1; } this.ifchanger = setTimeout((function() { $.innerfade.next(elements, settings, current, last); }), settings.timeout); }; })(jQuery); // **** remove Opacity-Filter in ie **** function removeFilter(element) { if(element.style.removeAttribute){ element.style.removeAttribute('filter'); } } jQuery(document).ready(function() { jQuery('ul#theFeature').innerfade({ speed: 1000, timeout: 7000, containerheight: '291px' }); // jQuery('#mainFeature .links').children('li').children('a').attr('href', 'javascript:void(0);'); jQuery('#mainFeature .links').children('li').children('a').click(function() { clearTimeout(jQuery.innerfade.ifchanger); for(i=1;i<5;i++) { jQuery('#the'+i+'feature').css("display", "none"); //jQuery('#the'+i+'title').children('a').css("background-color","#226478"); } // if(the_widths[(jQuery(this).attr('rel')-1)]==960) { // jQuery("#vic").hide(); // } else { // jQuery("#vic").show(); // } // jQuery('#the'+(jQuery(this).attr('rel'))+'title').css("background-color", "#286a7f"); jQuery('#the'+(jQuery(this).attr('rel'))+'feature').css("display", "block"); clearTimeout(jQuery.innerfade.ifchanger); }); }); And the separate JavaScript that I created: function promo1on() {document.getElementById("promo1").className="promo1on"; document.getElementById("promo2").className="promo2"; document.getElementById("promo2").className="promo2"; } function promo2on() {document.getElementById("promo2").className="promo2on"; document.getElementById("promo1").className="promo1"; document.getElementById("promo3").className="promo3"; } function promo3on() {document.getElementById("promo3").className="promo3on"; document.getElementById("promo1").className="promo1"; document.getElementById("promo2").className="promo2"; } And, finally, the CSS: #mainFeature {float: left; width: 672px; height: 290px; margin: 0 0 9px 0; list-style: none;} #mainFeature li {list-style: none;} #mainFeature #theFeature {margin: 0; padding: 0; position: relative;} #mainFeature #theFeature li {position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0;} #promonav-con {width: 463px; height: 26px; padding: 0; margin: 0; position: absolute; z-index: 900; top: 407px; left: 283px;} #primarypromonav {padding: 0; margin: 0;} #mainFeature .links {padding: 0; margin: 0; list-style: none; position: relative; font-family: arial, verdana, sans-serif; width: 463px; height: 26px;} #mainFeature .links li.promotop {list-style: none; display: block; float: left; display: inline; margin: 0; padding: 0;} #mainFeature .links li a {display: block; float: left; display: inline; height: 26px; text-decoration: none; margin: 0; padding: 0; cursor: pointer;} #mainFeature .links li a strong {margin-left: -9999px;} #mainFeature .links li a.promo1 {background: url(../_images/carouselnav/promo1.gif); width: 155px;} #mainFeature .links li:hover a.promo1 {background: url(../_images/carouselnav/promo1_hover.gif); width: 155px;} #mainFeature .links li a.promo1:hover {background: url(../_images/carouselnav/promo1_hover.gif); width: 155px;} .promo1on {background: url(../_images/carouselnav/promo1_on.gif); width: 155px;} #mainFeature .links li a.promo2 {background: url(../_images/carouselnav/promo2.gif); width: 153px;} #mainFeature .links li:hover a.promo2 {background: url(../_images/carouselnav/promo2_hover.gif); width: 153px;} #mainFeature .links li a.promo2:hover {background: url(../_images/carouselnav/promo2_hover.gif); width: 153px;} .promo2on {background: url(../_images/carouselnav/promo2_on.gif); width: 153px;} #mainFeature .links li a.promo3 {background: url(../_images/carouselnav/promo3.gif); width: 155px;} #mainFeature .links li:hover a.promo3 {background: url(../_images/carouselnav/promo3_hover.gif); width: 155px;} #mainFeature .links li a.promo3:hover {background: url(../_images/carouselnav/promo3_hover.gif); width: 155px;} .promo3on {background: url(../_images/carouselnav/promo3_on.gif); width: 155px;} Hopefully this makes sense! Again, I'm very new to JavaScript/JQuery, so I apologize if this is a mess. I'm very grateful for any suggestions. Thanks!

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• [GEEK SCHOOL] Network Security 2: Preventing Disaster with User Account Control

  - by Ciprian Rusen

  In this second lesson in our How-To Geek School about securing the Windows devices in your network, we will talk about User Account Control (UAC). Users encounter this feature each time they need to install desktop applications in Windows, when some applications need administrator permissions in order to work and when they have to change different system settings and files. UAC was introduced in Windows Vista as part of Microsoft’s “Trustworthy Computing” initiative. Basically, UAC is meant to act as a wedge between you and installing applications or making system changes. When you attempt to do either of these actions, UAC will pop up and interrupt you. You may either have to confirm you know what you’re doing, or even enter an administrator password if you don’t have those rights. Some users find UAC annoying and choose to disable it but this very important security feature of Windows (and we strongly caution against doing that). That’s why in this lesson, we will carefully explain what UAC is and everything it does. As you will see, this feature has an important role in keeping Windows safe from all kinds of security problems. In this lesson you will learn which activities may trigger a UAC prompt asking for permissions and how UAC can be set so that it strikes the best balance between usability and security. You will also learn what kind of information you can find in each UAC prompt. Last but not least, you will learn why you should never turn off this feature of Windows. By the time we’re done today, we think you will have a newly found appreciation for UAC, and will be able to find a happy medium between turning it off completely and letting it annoy you to distraction. What is UAC and How Does it Work? UAC or User Account Control is a security feature that helps prevent unauthorized system changes to your Windows computer or device. These changes can be made by users, applications, and sadly, malware (which is the biggest reason why UAC exists in the first place). When an important system change is initiated, Windows displays a UAC prompt asking for your permission to make the change. If you don’t give your approval, the change is not made. In Windows, you will encounter UAC prompts mostly when working with desktop applications that require administrative permissions. For example, in order to install an application, the installer (generally a setup.exe file) asks Windows for administrative permissions. UAC initiates an elevation prompt like the one shown earlier asking you whether it is okay to elevate permissions or not. If you say “Yes”, the installer starts as administrator and it is able to make the necessary system changes in order to install the application correctly. When the installer is closed, its administrator privileges are gone. If you run it again, the UAC prompt is shown again because your previous approval is not remembered. If you say “No”, the installer is not allowed to run and no system changes are made. If a system change is initiated from a user account that is not an administrator, e.g. the Guest account, the UAC prompt will also ask for the administrator password in order to give the necessary permissions. Without this password, the change won’t be made. Which Activities Trigger a UAC Prompt? There are many types of activities that may trigger a UAC prompt: Running a desktop application as an administrator Making changes to settings and files in the Windows and Program Files folders Installing or removing drivers and desktop applications Installing ActiveX controls Changing settings to Windows features like the Windows Firewall, UAC, Windows Update, Windows Defender, and others Adding, modifying, or removing user accounts Configuring Parental Controls in Windows 7 or Family Safety in Windows 8.x Running the Task Scheduler Restoring backed-up system files Viewing or changing the folders and files of another user account Changing the system date and time You will encounter UAC prompts during some or all of these activities, depending on how UAC is set on your Windows device. If this security feature is turned off, any user account or desktop application can make any of these changes without a prompt asking for permissions. In this scenario, the different forms of malware existing on the Internet will also have a higher chance of infecting and taking control of your system. In Windows 8.x operating systems you will never see a UAC prompt when working with apps from the Windows Store. That’s because these apps, by design, are not allowed to modify any system settings or files. You will encounter UAC prompts only when working with desktop programs. What You Can Learn from a UAC Prompt? When you see a UAC prompt on the screen, take time to read the information displayed so that you get a better understanding of what is going on. Each prompt first tells you the name of the program that wants to make system changes to your device, then you can see the verified publisher of that program. Dodgy software tends not to display this information and instead of a real company name, you will see an entry that says “Unknown”. If you have downloaded that program from a less than trustworthy source, then it might be better to select “No” in the UAC prompt. The prompt also shares the origin of the file that’s trying to make these changes. In most cases the file origin is “Hard drive on this computer”. You can learn more by pressing “Show details”. You will see an additional entry named “Program location” where you can see the physical location on your hard drive, for the file that’s trying to perform system changes. Make your choice based on the trust you have in the program you are trying to run and its publisher. If a less-known file from a suspicious location is requesting a UAC prompt, then you should seriously consider pressing “No”. What’s Different About Each UAC Level? Windows 7 and Windows 8.x have four UAC levels: Always notify – when this level is used, you are notified before desktop applications make changes that require administrator permissions or before you or another user account changes Windows settings like the ones mentioned earlier. When the UAC prompt is shown, the desktop is dimmed and you must choose “Yes” or “No” before you can do anything else. This is the most secure and also the most annoying way to set UAC because it triggers the most UAC prompts. Notify me only when programs/apps try to make changes to my computer (default) – Windows uses this as the default for UAC. When this level is used, you are notified before desktop applications make changes that require administrator permissions. If you are making system changes, UAC doesn’t show any prompts and it automatically gives you the necessary permissions for making the changes you desire. When a UAC prompt is shown, the desktop is dimmed and you must choose “Yes” or “No” before you can do anything else. This level is slightly less secure than the previous one because malicious programs can be created for simulating the keystrokes or mouse moves of a user and change system settings for you. If you have a good security solution in place, this scenario should never occur. Notify me only when programs/apps try to make changes to my computer (do not dim my desktop) – this level is different from the previous in in the fact that, when the UAC prompt is shown, the desktop is not dimmed. This decreases the security of your system because different kinds of desktop applications (including malware) might be able to interfere with the UAC prompt and approve changes that you might not want to be performed. Never notify – this level is the equivalent of turning off UAC. When using it, you have no protection against unauthorized system changes. Any desktop application and any user account can make system changes without your permission. How to Configure UAC If you would like to change the UAC level used by Windows, open the Control Panel, then go to “System and Security” and select “Action Center”. On the column on the left you will see an entry that says “Change User Account Control settings”. The “User Account Control Settings” window is now opened. Change the position of the UAC slider to the level you want applied then press “OK”. Depending on how UAC was initially set, you may receive a UAC prompt requiring you to confirm this change. Why You Should Never Turn Off UAC If you want to keep the security of your system at decent levels, you should never turn off UAC. When you disable it, everything and everyone can make system changes without your consent. This makes it easier for all kinds of malware to infect and take control of your system. It doesn’t matter whether you have a security suite or antivirus installed or third-party antivirus, basic common-sense measures like having UAC turned on make a big difference in keeping your devices safe from harm. We have noticed that some users disable UAC prior to setting up their Windows devices and installing third-party software on them. They keep it disabled while installing all the software they will use and enable it when done installing everything, so that they don’t have to deal with so many UAC prompts. Unfortunately this causes problems with some desktop applications. They may fail to work after you enable UAC. This happens because, when UAC is disabled, the virtualization techniques UAC uses for your applications are inactive. This means that certain user settings and files are installed in a different place and when you turn on UAC, applications stop working because they should be placed elsewhere. Therefore, whatever you do, do not turn off UAC completely! Coming up next … In the next lesson you will learn about Windows Defender, what this tool can do in Windows 7 and Windows 8.x, what’s different about it in these operating systems and how it can be used to increase the security of your system.

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• apache virtual host to work with django

  - by khelll

  My project is under: /home/projects/testing and I'm adding this to the buttom of my /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf file on Centos machine, but that is not working, <Location "/testing/"> SetHandler python-program PythonHandler django.core.handlers.modpython SetEnv DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE testing.settings PythonOption django.root /testing PythonDebug On PythonPath "['/home/projects/'] + sys.path" </Location> but when requesting http://localhost/testing/jobs for example, I get: Mod_python error: "PythonHandler django.core.handlers.modpython" Traceback (most recent call last): File "/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/mod_python/apache.py", line 299, in HandlerDispatch result = object(req) ............. File "/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/Django-1.1.1-py2.4.egg/django/conf/__init__.py", line 75, in __init__ raise ImportError, "Could not import settings '%s' (Is it on sys.path? Does it have syntax errors?): %s" % (self.SETTINGS_MODULE, e) ImportError: Could not import settings 'testing.settings' (Is it on sys.path? Does it have syntax errors?): No module named testing.settings

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• per build configuration files on iPhone ?

  - by Matt

  I'm looking for the best way to store per-Build configuration information for an iPhone app. In my iPhone app there are several url's and storage location settings that are specific to a particular build (DEBUG RELEASE etc) Currently i have three recipients for my app, QA/Test, myself and the customer, each has specific settings for the url's and storage locations mentioned above. whats the best way to do this? NOTE: they don't necessarily have to be defined in the build but what im looking for is advice on the best way to store alternate configuration settings. ALSO NOTE: i do not want these settings to be editable through the settings app thanks

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• Multiple forms in delphi

  - by Hendriksen123

  In my Delphi Project i want to have a 'Settings' button that when clicked, opens a second form (i think this is the correct term, i essentially want a new window to open) for settings. When the user has finished changing the settings on this new form, i want the form to close on a button click. The settings the user types in will also need to be accessible to the first, 'main' form. So, for example, if my programme consisted of a main form, that calculated 'A' + 'B' (A and B being integer variables), with the settings form allowing the user to set values for A and B, how would i do this?

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• How to test css property in rspec?

  - by Senthil

  I'm using tabnav plugin for Rails and I want to use rpsec to make sure it highlights properly. describe 'account navigation links' do it 'should have account settings link' do get '/account/settings' response.should have_tag("li", :text => "Account Settings") end it 'should be highlighted' do get '/account/settings' response.should have_tag("li", :color => "Account Settings") end end However the above code doesn't seem to work. I'm using webrat with rspec btw. Any help? Thanks.

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• MVVM- View Model-View Model Communications

  - by user275561

  How do I go about having two view models communicate with one another using MVVM Light. I know how to use the messenger class and register etc.. Here is my Scenario A Settings View ---> a Settings View Model . . . A MainPage View ---> A MainPage ViewModel If something changes in the Settings View it will Message back to the Settings View Model. So then I want the Settings View Model to communicate to the MainPage View Model about what changed. THe MainPage ViewModel will then tell the View.

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• Turn off depreciated errors php 5.3

  - by atwellpub

  Hello, My server is running php 5.3 and My wordpress install is spitting these errors out on me causing the my session_start() to break. Deprecated: Assigning the return value of new by reference is deprecated in /home//public_html/hub/wp-settings.php on line 647 Deprecated: Assigning the return value of new by reference is deprecated in /home//public_html/hub/wp-settings.php on line 662 Deprecated: Assigning the return value of new by reference is deprecated in /home//public_html/hub/wp-settings.php on line 669 Deprecated: Assigning the return value of new by reference is deprecated in /home//public_html/hub/wp-settings.php on line 676 Deprecated: Assigning the return value of new by reference is deprecated in /home//public_html/hub/wp-settings.php on line 712 This is annoying, but I do not want to turn off on screen error reporting. How do I disable these bothersome depreciated warnings? Running Wordpress 2.9.2. Gracious!

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• zsh for loop exclusion

  - by ABach

  This is somewhat of a simple question, but for the life of me, I cannot figure out how to exclude something from a zsh for loop. For instance, let's say we have this: for $package in /home/user/settings/* do # do stuff done Let's say that in /home/user/settings/, there is a particular directory ("os") that I want to ignore. Logically, I tried the following variations: for $package in /home/user/settings/^os (works w/ "ls", but not with a foor loop) for $package in /home/user/settings/*^os for $package in /home/user/settings/^os* ...but none of those seem to work. Could someone steer my syntax in the right direction?

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• Query for value where a default namespace node exists

  - by Jay

  I have the following XML that is provided to me and I cannot change it: <Parent> <Settings Version="1234" xmlns="urn:schemas-stuff-com"/> </Parent> I am trying to retrieve the "Version" attribute value using XPath. It appears since the xmlns is defined without an alias it automatically assigns that xmlns to the Settings node. When I read this XML into an XMLDocument and view the namespaceURI value for the Settings node it is set to "urn:schemas-stuff-com". I have tried: //Parent/Settings/@Version - returns Null //Parent/urn:schemas-stuff-com:Settings/@Version - invalid syntax

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• Python: How can I override one module in a package with a modified version that lives outside the pa

  - by zlovelady

  I would like to update one module in a python package with my own version of the module, with the following conditions: I want my updated module to live outside of the original package (either because I don't have access to the package source, or because I want to keep my local modifications in a separate repo, etc). I want import statements that refer to original package/module to resolve to my local module Here's an example of what I'd like to do using specifics from django, because that's where this problem has arisen for me: Say this is my project structure django/ ... the original, unadulterated django package ... local_django/ conf/ settings.py myproject/ __init__.py myapp/ myfile.py And then in myfile.py # These imports should fetch modules from the original django package from django import models from django.core.urlresolvers import reverse # I would like this following import statement to grab a custom version of settings # that I define in local_django/conf/settings.py from django.conf import settings def foo(): return settings.some_setting Can I do some magic with the __import__ statement in myproject/__init__.py to accomplish this? Is there a more "pythonic" way to achieve this?

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• MySQL query to find the most popular value in a column joined by another value in a second table

  - by Budove

  I have two tables: users: user_id, user_zip settings: user_id, pref_ex_loc I need to find the single most popular 'pref_ex_loc' from the settings table based on a particular user_zip, which will be specified as the variable $userzip. Here is the query that I have now and obviously it doesn't work. $popularexloc = "SELECT pref_ex_loc, user_id COUNT(pref_ex_loc) AS countloc FROM settings FULL OUTER JOIN users ON settings.user_id = users.user_id WHERE users.user_zip='$userzip' GROUP BY settings.pref_ex_loc ORDER BY countloc LIMIT 1"; $popexloc = mysql_query($popularexloc) or die('SQL Error :: '.mysql_error()); $exlocrow = mysql_fetch_array($popexloc); $mostpopexloc=$exlocrow[0]; echo '<option value="'.$mostpopexloc.'">'.$mostpopexloc.'</option>'; What am I doing wrong here? I'm not getting any kind of error from this either.

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• Creating a Build Definition using the TFS 2010 API

  - by Jakob Ehn

  In this post I will show how to create a new build definition in TFS 2010 using the TFS API. When creating a build definition manually, using Team Explorer, the necessary steps are lined out in the New Build Definition Wizard:     So, lets see how the code looks like, using the same order. To start off, we need to connect to TFS and get a reference to the IBuildServer object: TfsTeamProjectCollection server = newTfsTeamProjectCollection(newUri("http://<tfs>:<port>/tfs")); server.EnsureAuthenticated(); IBuildServer buildServer = (IBuildServer) server.GetService(typeof (IBuildServer)); General First we create a IBuildDefinition object for the team project and set a name and description for it: var buildDefinition = buildServer.CreateBuildDefinition(teamProject); buildDefinition.Name = "TestBuild"; buildDefinition.Description = "description here..."; Trigger Next up, we set the trigger type. For this one, we set it to individual which corresponds to the Continuous Integration - Build each check-in trigger option buildDefinition.ContinuousIntegrationType = ContinuousIntegrationType.Individual; Workspace For the workspace mappings, we create two mappings here, where one is a cloak. Note the user of $(SourceDir) variable, which is expanded by Team Build into the sources directory when running the build. buildDefinition.Workspace.AddMapping("$/Path/project.sln", "$(SourceDir)", WorkspaceMappingType.Map); buildDefinition.Workspace.AddMapping("$/OtherPath/", "", WorkspaceMappingType.Cloak); Build Defaults In the build defaults, we set the build controller and the drop location. To get a build controller, we can (for example) use the GetBuildController method to get an existing build controller by name: buildDefinition.BuildController = buildServer.GetBuildController(buildController); buildDefinition.DefaultDropLocation = @\\SERVER\Drop\TestBuild; Process So far, this wasy easy. Now we get to the tricky part. TFS 2010 Build is based on Windows Workflow 4.0. The build process is defined in a separate .XAML file called a Build Process Template. By default, every new team team project containtwo build process templates called DefaultTemplate and UpgradeTemplate. In this sample, we want to create a build definition using the default template. We use te QueryProcessTemplates method to get a reference to the default for the current team project   //Get default template var defaultTemplate = buildServer.QueryProcessTemplates(teamProject).Where(p => p.TemplateType == ProcessTemplateType.Default).First(); buildDefinition.Process = defaultTemplate;   There are several build process templates that can be set for the default build process template. Only one of these are required, the ProjectsToBuild parameters which contains the solution(s) and configuration(s) that should be built. To set this info, we use the ProcessParameters property of thhe IBuildDefinition interface. The format of this property is actually just a serialized dictionary (IDictionary<string, object>) that maps a key (parameter name) to a value which can be any kind of object. This is rather messy, but fortunately, there is a helper class called WorkflowHelpers inthe Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Build.Workflow namespace, that simplifies working with this persistence format a bit. The following code shows how to set the BuildSettings information for a build definition: //Set process parameters varprocess = WorkflowHelpers.DeserializeProcessParameters(buildDefinition.ProcessParameters); //Set BuildSettings properties BuildSettings settings = newBuildSettings(); settings.ProjectsToBuild = newStringList("$/pathToProject/project.sln"); settings.PlatformConfigurations = newPlatformConfigurationList(); settings.PlatformConfigurations.Add(newPlatformConfiguration("Any CPU", "Debug")); process.Add("BuildSettings", settings); buildDefinition.ProcessParameters = WorkflowHelpers.SerializeProcessParameters(process); The other build process parameters of a build definition can be set using the same approach   Retention  Policy This one is easy, we just clear the default settings and set our own: buildDefinition.RetentionPolicyList.Clear(); buildDefinition.AddRetentionPolicy(BuildReason.Triggered, BuildStatus.Succeeded, 10, DeleteOptions.All); buildDefinition.AddRetentionPolicy(BuildReason.Triggered, BuildStatus.Failed, 10, DeleteOptions.All); buildDefinition.AddRetentionPolicy(BuildReason.Triggered, BuildStatus.Stopped, 1, DeleteOptions.All); buildDefinition.AddRetentionPolicy(BuildReason.Triggered, BuildStatus.PartiallySucceeded, 10, DeleteOptions.All); Save It! And we’re done, lets save the build definition: buildDefinition.Save(); That’s it!

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• Windows Azure PowerShell for Node.js

  - by shiju

  The Windows Azure PowerShell for Node.js is a command-line tool that  allows the Node developers to build and deploy Node.js apps in Windows Azure using Windows PowerShell cmdlets. Using Windows Azure PowerShell for Node.js, you can develop, test, deploy and manage Node based hosted service in Windows Azure. For getting the PowerShell for Node.js, click All Programs, Windows Azure SDK Node.js and run  Windows Azure PowerShell for Node.js, as Administrator. The followings are the few PowerShell cmdlets that lets you to work with Node.js apps in Windows Azure Create New Hosted Service New-AzureService <HostedServiceName> The below cmdlet will created a Windows Aazure hosted service named NodeOnAzure in the folder C:\nodejs and this will also create ServiceConfiguration.Cloud.cscfg, ServiceConfiguration.Local.cscfg and ServiceDefinition.csdef and deploymentSettings.json files for the hosted service. PS C:\nodejs> New-AzureService NodeOnAzure The below picture shows the files after creating the hosted service Create Web Role Add-AzureNodeWebRole <RoleName> The following cmdlet will create a hosted service named MyNodeApp along with web.config file. PS C:\nodejs\NodeOnAzure> Add-AzureNodeWebRole MyNodeApp The below picture shows the files after creating the web role app. Install Node Module npm install <NodeModule> The following command will install Node Module Express onto your web role app. PS C:\nodejs\NodeOnAzure\MyNodeApp> npm install Express Run Windows Azure Apps Locally in the Emulator Start-AzureEmulator -launch The following cmdlet will create a local package and run Windows Azure app locally in the emulator PS C:\nodejs\NodeOnAzure\MyNodeApp> Start-AzureEmulator -launch Stop Windows Azure Emulator Stop-AzureEmulator The following cmdlet will stop your Windows Azure in the emulator. PS C:\nodejs\NodeOnAzure\MyNodeApp> Stop-AzureEmulator Download Windows Azure Publishing Settings Get-AzurePublishSettings The following cmdlet will redirect to Windows Azure portal where we can download Windows Azure publish settings PS C:\nodejs\NodeOnAzure\MyNodeApp> Get-AzurePublishSettings Import Windows Azure Publishing Settings Import-AzurePublishSettings <Location of .publishSettings file> The following cmdlet will import the publish settings file from the location c:\nodejs PS C:\nodejs\NodeOnAzure\MyNodeApp>  Import-AzurePublishSettings c:\nodejs\shijuvar.publishSettings Publish Apps to Windows Azure Publish-AzureService –name <Name> –location <Location of Data centre> The following cmdlet will publish the app to Windows Azure with name “NodeOnAzure” in the location Southeast Asia. Please keep in mind that the service name should be unique. PS C:\nodejs\NodeOnAzure\MyNodeApp> Publish-AzureService –name NodeonAzure –location "Southeast Asia” –launch Stop Windows Azure Service Stop-AzureService The following cmdlet will stop your service which you have deployed previously. PS C:\nodejs\NodeOnAzure\MyNodeApp> Stop-AzureService Remove Windows Azure Service Remove-AzureService The following cmdlet will remove your service from Windows Azure. PS C:\nodejs\NodeOnAzure\MyNodeApp> Remove-AzureService Quick Summary for PowerShell cmdlets Create  a new Hosted Service New-AzureService <HostedServiceName> Create a Web Role Add-AzureNodeWebRole <RoleName> Install Node Module npm install <NodeModule> Running Windows Azure Apps Locally in Emulator Start-AzureEmulator -launch Stop Windows Azure Emulator Stop-AzureEmulator Download Windows Azure Publishing Settings Get-AzurePublishSettings Import Windows Azure Publishing Settings Import-AzurePublishSettings <Location of .publishSettings file> Publish Apps to Windows Azure Publish-AzureService –name <Name> –location <Location of Data centre> Stop Windows Azure Service Stop-AzureService Remove Windows Azure Service Remove-AzureService

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• Custom Templates: Using user exits

  - by Anthony Shorten

  One of the features of Oracle Utilities Application Framework V4.1 is the ability to use templates and user exits to extend the base configuration files. The configuration files used by the product are based upon a set of templates shipped with the product. When the configureEnv utility asks for configuration settings they are stored in a configuration file ENVIRON.INI which outlines the environment settings. These settings are then used by the initialSetup utility to populate the various configuration files used by the product using templates located in the templates directory of the installation. Now, whilst the majority of the installations at any site are non-production and the templates provided are generally adequate for that need, there are circumstances where extension of templates are needed to take advantage of more advanced facilities (such as advanced security and environment settings). The issue then becomes that if you alter the configuration files manually (directly or indirectly) then you may lose all your custom settings the next time you run initialSetup. To counter this we allow customers to either override templates with their own template or we now provide user exits in the templates to add fragments of configuration unique to that part of the configuration file. The latter means that the base template is still used but additions are included to provide the extensions. The provision of custom templates is supported but as soon as you use a custom template you are then responsible for reflecting any changes we put in the base template over time. Not a big task but annoying if you have to do it for multiple copies of the product. I prefer to use user exits as they seem to represent the least effort solution. The way to find the user exits available is to either read the Server Administration Guide that comes with your product or look at individual templates and look for the lines: #ouaf_user_exit <user exit name> Where <user exit name> is the name of the user exit. User exits are not always present but are in places that we feel are the most likely to be changed. If a user exit does not exist the you can always use a custom template instead. Now lets show an example. By default, the product generates a config.xml file to be used with Oracle WebLogic. This configuration file has the basic setting contained in it to manage the product. If you want to take advantage of the Oracle WebLogic advanced settings, you can use the console to make those changes and it will be reflected in the config.xml automatically. To retain those changes across invocations of initialSetup, you need to alter the template that generates the config.xml or use user exits. The technique is this. Make the change in the console and when you save the change, WebLogic will reflect it in the config.xml for you. Compare the old version and new version of the config.xml and determine what to add and then find the user exit to put it in by examining the base template. For example, by default, the console is not automatically deployed (it is deployed on demand) in the base config.xml. To make the console deploy, you can add the following line to the templates/CM_config.xml.win.exit_3.include file (for windows) or templates/CM_config.xml.exit_3.include file (for linux/unix): <internal-apps-deploy-on-demand-enabled>false</internal-apps-deploy-on-demand-enabled> Now run initialSetup to reflect the change and if you check the splapp/config/config.xml file you will see the change applied for you. Now how did I know which include file? I check the template for config.xml and found there was an user exit at the right place. I prefixed my include filename with "CM_" to denote it as a custom user exit. This will tell the upgrade tools to leave that file alone whenever you decide to upgrade (or even apply fixes). User exits can be powerful and allow customizations to be added for advanced configuration. You will see products using Oracle Utilities Application Framework use this exits themselves (usually prefixed with the product code). You are also taking advantage of them.

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• Asp.net Webdeployment Project override applicationSettings

  - by citronas

  I got a web deyploment project for a web application project in vs 2008. While building the web deployment project, I want to replace properties in the web.config. My settings are autogenrated by the deisgner. <applicationSettings> <NAMESPACE.Properties.Settings> <setting name="Testenvironment" serializeAs="String"> <value>True</value> </setting> </NAMESPACE.Properties.Settings> </applicationSettings> In the config file which contains the settings for the specific server looks like the following: <?xml version="1.0"?> <applicationSettings> <NAMESPACE.Properties.Settings> <setting name="Testenvironment" serializeAs="String"> <value>False</value> </setting> </NAMESPACE.Properties.Settings> </applicationSettings> Sadly, this does not work. I get an error "The format of a configSource file must be an element containing the name of the section" that highlights the second line (2nd example code). How must the Tag be named in order to make evertything work? Edit: Deleting the "applicationSetting"-Tags does not work either.

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• Programmatically Set Proxy Address, Port, User, Password throught Windows Registry

  - by Fábio Antunes

  I'm writing a small C# application that will use Internet Explorer to interact with a couple a websites, with help from WatiN. However, it will also require from time to time to use a proxy. I've came across Programmatically Set Browser Proxy Settings in C#, but this only enables me to enter a proxy address, and I also need to enter a Proxy username and password. How can I do that? Note: It doesn't matter if a solution changes the entire system Internet settings. However, I would prefer to change only IE proxy settings (for any connection). The solution has to work with IE8 and Windows XP SP3 or higher. I'd like to have the possibility to read the Proxy settings first, so that later I can undo my changes. EDIT With the help of the Windows Registry accessible through Microsoft.Win32.RegistryKey, i was able to apply a proxy something like this: RegistryKey registry = Registry.CurrentUser.OpenSubKey("Software\\Microsoft\\Windows\\CurrentVersion\\Internet Settings", true); registry.SetValue("ProxyEnable", 1); registry.SetValue("ProxyServer", "127.0.0.1:8080"); But how can i specify a username and a password to login at the proxy server? I also noticed that IE doesn't refresh the Proxy details for its connections once the registry was changed how can i order IE to refresh its connection settings from the registry? Thanks

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• Deserialize generic collections - coming up empty

  - by AC

  I've got a settings object for my app that has two collections in it. The collections are simple List generics that contain a collection of property bags. When I serialize it, everything is saved with no problem: XmlSerializer x = new XmlSerializer(settings.GetType()); TextWriter tw = new StreamWriter(@"c:\temp\settings.cpt"); x.Serialize(tw, settings); However when I deserialize it, everything is restored except for the two collections (verified by setting a breakpoint on the setters: XmlSerializer x = new XmlSerializer(typeof(CourseSettings)); XmlReader tr = XmlReader.Create(@"c:\temp\settings.cpt"); this.DataContext = (CourseSettings)x.Deserialize(tr); What would cause this? Everything is pretty vanilla... here's a snippet from the settings object... omitting most of it. The PresentationSourceDirectory works just fine, but the PresentationModules' setter isn't hit: private string _presentationSourceDirectory = string.Empty; public string PresentationSourceDirectory { get { return _presentationSourceDirectory; } set { if (_presentationSourceDirectory != value) { OnPropertyChanged("PresentationSourceDirectory"); _presentationSourceDirectory = value; } } } private List<Module> _presentationModules = new List<Module>(); public List<Module> PresentationModules { get { var sortedModules = from m in _presentationModules orderby m.ModuleOrder select m; return sortedModules.ToList<Module>(); } set { if (_presentationModules != value) { _presentationModules = value; OnPropertyChanged("PresentationModules"); } } }

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• MVC Form and Dictionary Type

  - by Brian Schmitt

  I am attempting to use a property on my model that is of type Dictionary<string, string>. This dictionary is one of several other properties on the model, and I am using the dictionary as a key/value store to produce a 'dynamic' form. E.G.: User Name Settings A B I want to be able to submit and save any changes to settings A and B. I can submit the form and get my posted values in all my other fields, however the dictionary gets set to null. <%=Html.LabelFor(m => m.Name)%> <%=Html.DisplayFor(m => m.Name)%> <%=Html.LabelFor(m => m.Settings["A"])%> <%=Html.TextBoxFor(m => m.Settings["A"])%> <%=Html.LabelFor(m => m.Settings["B"])%> <%=Html.TextBoxFor(m => m.Settings["B"])%> Is there a better way to produce the dynamic form with a key/value pair? The actual code will be using partials (there several hundred variations), and the above is only a contrived example.

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• T-SQL Table Joins - Unique Situation

  - by Dimitri

  Hello Everyone. This is my first time encountering the case like this and don't quite know how to handle. Situation: I have one table tblSettingsDefinition, with fields: ID, GroupID, Name, typeID, DefaultValue. Then I have tblSettingtypes with fields TypeID, Name. And I have final table, tblUserSettings with fields SettingID, SettingDefinitionID, UserID, Value. The whole point of this is to have customizable settings. Setting can be defined for a Group or as global setting (if GroupID is NULL). It will have a default value, but if user modifies the setting, an entry is added to tblUserSettings that stores new value. I want to have a query that grabs user settings by first looking at the tblUserSettings, and if it has records for the given user, grabs them, if not retrieves default settings. But the trick is that no matter if user has settings or not, I need to have fields from other two table retrieved to know the setting's Type, Name etc... (which are stored in those other tables). I'm writing query something like this: SELECT * FROM tblSettingDefinition SD LEFT JOIN tblUserSettings US ON SD.SettingID = US.SettingDefinitionID JOIN tblSettingTypes ST ON SD.TypeID=ST.ID WHERE US.UserID=@UserID OR ((SD.GroupID IS NULL) OR (SD.GroupID=(SELECT GroupID FROM tblUser WHERE ID=@UserID))) but it retrieves settings for all users from tblUserSettings instead of just ones that match current @UserID. And if @UserID has no records in tblUserSettings, still, all user settings are retrieved instead of the defaults from tblSettingDefinition. Hope I made myself clear. Any help would be highly appreciated. Thank you.

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• Gadget vista error var with flyout

  - by Jiinn

  hello ! i have a problem with a variable for the flyout : var friendsUser = ""; var friendsMdp = ""; System.Gadget.Settings.write("variableName", variableName); System.Gadget.settingsUI = "Settings.html"; System.Gadget.onSettingsClosed = SettingsClosed; System.Gadget.Flyout.visible = SettingsClosed; function SettingsClosed() { variableName = System.Gadget.Settings.read("variableName"); friendsUser = System.Gadget.Settings.read("friendUser"); friendsMdp = System.Gadget.Settings.read("friendMdp"); setContentText(); } function flyFriends() { System.Gadget.Flyout.file = 'friends.htm'; System.Gadget.Flyout.show = true ; var flyoutDiv = System.Gadget.Flyout.document.parentWindow; flyoutDiv.gMyVar = friendsUser; flyoutDiv.gMyVar2 = friendsMdp; } If i use this my flyout var is undefined , and if i write : var friendsUser = "test"; i have Test in var and after use setting i have nothing ... if i write var in flyoutDiv before System.Gadget.Flyout.show = true ; gadget bug . my settings dont have a problem, but the refresh of the var ... have you a idea ? thank you for all !

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• Unable to change URL for .NET reference to dynamic web service

  - by Malvineous

  Hi all, I have a web reference added to a C# .NET project. The URL for the web reference needs to change depending on whether I'm building for a development, staging or production environment. I've set the web service to be dynamic, which supposedly means it takes the URL from my app.config file. When I perform a build it overwrites the app.config with the required file which contains the correct URL (different file for each of dev/staging/production.) I then go into the solution properties and make sure the Settings.settings file is updated with the app.config changes. However when I view the properties for the web service, it is still showing the old URL, despite it being dynamic, and supposed to be reading from my settings file (even after closing and reopening the project/solution.) The app.config and the settings file all have the new URL, but the web reference doesn't notice it has changed. If I do a build it ignores the URL in the settings file and tries to connect to the last URL manually typed into the web reference's properties. Typing a URL into these properties correctly updates the app.config and .settings files, so the link is definitely there. I'm a bit new to .NET but it seems to me the purpose of setting the service to be dynamic is so that you can change the URL elsewhere, but when I do this it just gets ignored! Am I doing something wrong?

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