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  • My sound stopped working today, how can I fix it?

    - by Oli
    This seems to be a problem with pulseaudio. I was logged in over VNC on my phone and started playing a video this caused X to crash (as sometimes happens). I restarted and suddenly the sound doesn't work. I have a Intel HDA/Realtek ALC889 00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) HD Audio Controller alsamixer is detecting this just fine. PulseAudio doesn't detect this alsa device so is using auto_null as the default sink (logs below). When I properly kill PulseAudio (tell it not to auto-start) direct ALSA communication with the sound card works just fine. speaker-test, for example, works. So the hardware and ALSA layers are fine IMO. In the logs, it seems that the card might be "busy" but I really don't know how or why it would be now (and never before). Is there an ALSA lock file somewhere that it still there because of my crash? I just ran sudo fuser /dev/snd/* and saw this: oli@bert:~$ sudo fuser /dev/snd/* /dev/snd/controlC0: 1884 /dev/snd/pcmC0D0c: 1884m /dev/snd/timer: 1884 A look at the process list (ps aux | grep 1884) tells me process 1884 is arecord -c 1 -f S16_LE -r 8000 -t raw. No idea what this is or why it's running. When I try and kill arecord (as root), it just respawns and rebinds on the hardware. I'm in a very annoying situation where I don't know what is going on and don't know how to find out. I'm open to all suggestions to get this working again. Fire away. And here's what I get when I stop PA auto-loading, kill it and then start it with -vvvv. oli@bert:~$ pulseaudio -vvvvv I: main.c: setrlimit(RLIMIT_NICE, (31, 31)) failed: Operation not permitted I: main.c: setrlimit(RLIMIT_RTPRIO, (9, 9)) failed: Operation not permitted D: core-rtclock.c: Timer slack is set to 50 us. D: core-util.c: RealtimeKit worked. I: core-util.c: Successfully gained nice level -11. I: main.c: This is PulseAudio 0.9.21-63-gd3efa-dirty D: main.c: Compilation host: x86_64-pc-linux-gnu D: main.c: Compilation CFLAGS: -g -O2 -g -Wall -O3 -Wall -W -Wextra -pipe -Wno-long-long -Winline -Wvla -Wno-overlength-strings -Wunsafe-loop-optimizations -Wundef -Wformat=2 -Wlogical-op -Wsign-compare -Wformat-security -Wmissing-include-dirs -Wformat-nonliteral -Wold-style-definition -Wpointer-arith -Winit-self -Wdeclaration-after-statement -Wfloat-equal -Wmissing-prototypes -Wstrict-prototypes -Wredundant-decls -Wmissing-declarations -Wmissing-noreturn -Wshadow -Wendif-labels -Wcast-align -Wstrict-aliasing=2 -Wwrite-strings -Wno-unused-parameter -ffast-math -Wp,-D_FORTIFY_SOURCE=2 -fno-common -fdiagnostics-show-option D: main.c: Running on host: Linux x86_64 2.6.38-rc3 #1 SMP Tue Feb 1 10:53:04 GMT 2011 D: main.c: Found 8 CPUs. I: main.c: Page size is 4096 bytes D: main.c: Compiled with Valgrind support: no D: main.c: Running in valgrind mode: no D: main.c: Running in VM: no D: main.c: Optimised build: yes D: main.c: All asserts enabled. I: main.c: Machine ID is 8310740c4729ef474fe5ecec4bbf5a6b. I: main.c: Session ID is 8310740c4729ef474fe5ecec4bbf5a6b-1297338553.571075-1050119523. I: main.c: Using runtime directory /home/oli/.pulse/8310740c4729ef474fe5ecec4bbf5a6b-runtime. I: main.c: Using state directory /home/oli/.pulse. I: main.c: Using modules directory /usr/lib/pulse-0.9.21/modules. I: main.c: Running in system mode: no I: main.c: Fresh high-resolution timers available! Enjoy ol' chap! I: cpu-x86.c: CPU flags: CMOV MMX SSE SSE2 SSE3 SSSE3 SSE4_1 SSE4_2 I: svolume_mmx.c: Initialising MMX optimized functions. I: remap_mmx.c: Initialising MMX optimized remappers. I: svolume_sse.c: Initialising SSE2 optimized functions. I: remap_sse.c: Initialising SSE2 optimized remappers. I: sconv_sse.c: Initialising SSE2 optimized conversions. D: memblock.c: Using shared memory pool with 1024 slots of size 64.0 KiB each, total size is 64.0 MiB, maximum usable slot size is 65472 D: database-tdb.c: Opened TDB database '/home/oli/.pulse/8310740c4729ef474fe5ecec4bbf5a6b-device-volumes.tdb' I: module-device-restore.c: Sucessfully opened database file '/home/oli/.pulse/8310740c4729ef474fe5ecec4bbf5a6b-device-volumes'. I: module.c: Loaded "module-device-restore" (index: #0; argument: ""). D: database-tdb.c: Opened TDB database '/home/oli/.pulse/8310740c4729ef474fe5ecec4bbf5a6b-stream-volumes.tdb' I: module-stream-restore.c: Sucessfully opened database file '/home/oli/.pulse/8310740c4729ef474fe5ecec4bbf5a6b-stream-volumes'. I: module.c: Loaded "module-stream-restore" (index: #1; argument: ""). D: database-tdb.c: Opened TDB database '/home/oli/.pulse/8310740c4729ef474fe5ecec4bbf5a6b-card-database.tdb' I: module-card-restore.c: Sucessfully opened database file '/home/oli/.pulse/8310740c4729ef474fe5ecec4bbf5a6b-card-database'. I: module.c: Loaded "module-card-restore" (index: #2; argument: ""). I: module.c: Loaded "module-augment-properties" (index: #3; argument: ""). D: cli-command.c: Checking for existance of '/usr/lib/pulse-0.9.21/modules/module-udev-detect.so': success D: module-udev-detect.c: /dev/snd/controlC0 is accessible: yes D: module-udev-detect.c: /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1b.0/sound/card0 is busy: yes I: module-udev-detect.c: Found 1 cards. I: module.c: Loaded "module-udev-detect" (index: #4; argument: ""). D: cli-command.c: Checking for existance of '/usr/lib/pulse-0.9.21/modules/module-bluetooth-discover.so': success D: dbus-util.c: Successfully connected to D-Bus system bus ba7c9a1f90b3d49d930bca2100000015 as :1.62 D: bluetooth-util.c: dbus: interface=org.freedesktop.DBus, path=/org/freedesktop/DBus, member=NameAcquired D: bluetooth-util.c: Bluetooth daemon is apparently not available. I: module.c: Loaded "module-bluetooth-discover" (index: #5; argument: ""). D: cli-command.c: Checking for existance of '/usr/lib/pulse-0.9.21/modules/module-esound-protocol-unix.so': success I: module.c: Loaded "module-esound-protocol-unix" (index: #6; argument: ""). I: module.c: Loaded "module-native-protocol-unix" (index: #7; argument: ""). D: cli-command.c: Checking for existance of '/usr/lib/pulse-0.9.21/modules/module-gconf.so': success I: module.c: Loaded "module-gconf" (index: #8; argument: ""). I: module-default-device-restore.c: Saved default sink 'auto_null' not existant, not restoring default sink setting. I: module-default-device-restore.c: Saved default source 'auto_null.monitor' not existant, not restoring default source setting. I: module.c: Loaded "module-default-device-restore" (index: #9; argument: ""). I: module.c: Loaded "module-rescue-streams" (index: #10; argument: ""). D: module-always-sink.c: Autoloading null-sink as no other sinks detected. I: sink.c: Created sink 0 "auto_null" with sample spec s16le 6ch 44100Hz and channel map front-left,front-left-of-center,front-center,front-right,front-right-of-center,rear-center I: sink.c: device.description = "Dummy Output" I: sink.c: device.class = "abstract" I: sink.c: device.icon_name = "audio-card" D: core-subscribe.c: Dropped redundant event due to change event. I: source.c: Created source 0 "auto_null.monitor" with sample spec s16le 6ch 44100Hz and channel map front-left,front-left-of-center,front-center,front-right,front-right-of-center,rear-center I: source.c: device.description = "Monitor of Dummy Output" I: source.c: device.class = "monitor" I: source.c: device.icon_name = "audio-input-microphone" D: module-null-sink.c: Thread starting up I: module.c: Loaded "module-null-sink" (index: #11; argument: "sink_name=auto_null sink_properties='device.description="Dummy Output"'"). I: module.c: Loaded "module-always-sink" (index: #12; argument: ""). I: module.c: Loaded "module-intended-roles" (index: #13; argument: ""). D: module-suspend-on-idle.c: Sink auto_null becomes idle, timeout in 5 seconds. I: module.c: Loaded "module-suspend-on-idle" (index: #14; argument: ""). I: client.c: Created 0 "ConsoleKit Session /org/freedesktop/ConsoleKit/Session1" D: module-console-kit.c: Added new session /org/freedesktop/ConsoleKit/Session1 I: module.c: Loaded "module-console-kit" (index: #15; argument: ""). I: module.c: Loaded "module-position-event-sounds" (index: #16; argument: ""). D: dbus-util.c: Successfully connected to D-Bus session bus efbffc6788fad56cfd64d40c00000018 as :1.182 D: main.c: Got org.pulseaudio.Server! I: main.c: Daemon startup complete. I: client.c: Created 1 "Native client (UNIX socket client)" I: client.c: Created 2 "Native client (UNIX socket client)" D: protocol-native.c: Protocol version: remote 16, local 16 I: protocol-native.c: Got credentials: uid=1000 gid=1000 success=1 D: protocol-native.c: SHM possible: yes D: protocol-native.c: Negotiated SHM: yes D: protocol-native.c: Protocol version: remote 16, local 16 I: protocol-native.c: Got credentials: uid=1000 gid=1000 success=1 D: protocol-native.c: SHM possible: yes D: protocol-native.c: Negotiated SHM: yes D: module-augment-properties.c: Looking for .desktop file for gnome-volume-control-applet D: module-augment-properties.c: Looking for .desktop file for gnome-settings-daemon D: core-subscribe.c: Dropped redundant event due to change event. I: module-suspend-on-idle.c: Sink auto_null idle for too long, suspending ... D: sink.c: Suspend cause of sink auto_null is 0x0004, suspending Note the one section that seems to find the hardware but says it's busy (no idea if this is relevant). D: cli-command.c: Checking for existance of '/usr/lib/pulse-0.9.21/modules/module-udev-detect.so': success D: module-udev-detect.c: /dev/snd/controlC0 is accessible: yes D: module-udev-detect.c: /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1b.0/sound/card0 is busy: yes I: module-udev-detect.c: Found 1 cards.

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  • CodePlex Daily Summary for Wednesday, May 07, 2014

    CodePlex Daily Summary for Wednesday, May 07, 2014Popular ReleasesSeal Report: Seal Report 1.4: New Features: Report Designer: New option to convert a Report Source into a Repository Source. Report Designer: New contextual helper menus to select, remove, copy, prompt elements in a model. Web Server: New option to expand sub-folders displayed in the tree view. Web Server: Web Folder Description File can be a .cshtml file to display a MVC View. Views: additional CSS parameters for some DIVs. NVD3 Chart: Some default configuration values have been changed. Issues Addressed:16 ...Magick.NET: Magick.NET 6.8.9.002: Magick.NET linked with ImageMagick 6.8.9.0.VidCoder: 1.5.22 Beta: Added ability to burn SRT subtitles. Updated to HandBrake SVN 6169. Added checks to prevent VidCoder from running with a database version newer than it expects. Tooltips in the Advanced Video panel now trigger on the field labels as well as the fields themselves. Fixed updating preset/profile/tune/level settings on changing video encoder. This should resolve some problems with QSV encoding. Fixed tunes and profiles getting set to blank when switching between x264 and x265. Fixed co...NuGet: NuGet 2.8.2: We will be releasing a 2.8.2 version of our own NuGet packages and the NuGet.exe command-line tool. The 2.8.2 release will not include updated VS or WebMatrix extensions. NuGet.Server.Extensions.dll needs to be used alongside NuGet-Signed.exe to provide the NuGet.exe mirror functionality.DNN CMS Platform: 07.03.00 BETA (Not For Production Use): DNN 7.3 release is focused on performance and we have made a variety of changes to improve the run-time characteristics of the platform. End users will notice faster page response time and administrators will appreciate a more responsive user experience, especially on larger scale web sites. This is a BETA release and is NOT recommended for production use. There is no upgrade path offered from this release to the final DNN 7.3 release. Known Issues - The Telerik RAD Controls for ASP.NET AJA...babelua: 1.5.3: V1.5.3 - 2014.5.6Stability improvement: support relative path when debugging lua files; improve variable view function in debugger; fix a bug that when a file is loaded at runtime , its breakpoints would not take effect; some other bug fix; New feature: improve tool windows color scheme to look better with different vs themes; comment/uncomment code block easily; some other improve;CTI Text Encryption: CTI Text Encryption 5.0: Improve encryption algorithm. Simplify all-non encryption related mechanism (Simplify user interface)SmartStore.NET - Free ASP.NET MVC Ecommerce Shopping Cart Solution: SmartStore.NET 2.0.2: SmartStore.NET 2.0.2 is primarily a maintenance release for version 2.0.0, which has been released on April 04 2014. It contains several improvements & important fixes. BugfixesIMPORTANT FIX: Memory leak leads to OutOfMemoryException in application after a while Installation fix: some varchar(MAX) columns get created as varchar(4000). Added a migration to fix the column specs. Installation fix: Setup fails with exception Value cannot be null. Parameter name: stream Bugfix for stock iss...Channel9's Absolute Beginner Series: Windows Phone 8.1: Entire source code for Windows Phone 8.1 Absolute Beginner Series.BIDS Helper: BIDS Helper 1.6.6: This BIDS Helper beta release brings support for SQL Server 2014 and SSDTBI for Visual Studio 2013. (Note that SSDTBI for Visual Studio 2013 is currently unavailable to download from Microsoft. We are releasing BIDS Helper support to help those who downloaded it before it became unavailable, and we will recheck BIDS Helper 2014 is compatible after SSDTBI becomes available to download again.) BIDS Helper 2014 Beta Limitations: SQL Server 2014 support for Biml is still in progress, so this bet...Windows Phone IsoStoreSpy (a cool WP8.1 + WP8 Isolated Storage Explorer): IsoStoreSpy WP8.1 3.0.0.0 (Win8 only): 3.0.0.0 + WP8.1 & WP8 device allowed + Local, Roaming or Temp directory Selector for WindowsRuntime apps + Version number in the title :)CS-Script for Notepad++ (C# intellisense and code execution): Release v1.0.24.0: ShortcutMapping panel now allows direct modification of the shortcuts. Custom updater dropped support for MSI installation but it still allows downloading of MSI http://www.csscript.net/npp/codeplex/non_msi_update.pngProDinner - ASP.NET MVC Sample (EF5, N-Tier, jQuery): 8.2: upgrade to mvc 5 upgrade to ASP.net MVC Awesome 4.0, EF 6.1, latest jcrop, Windsor Castle etc. ability to show/hide the dog using tinymce for the feedback page mobile friendly uiASP.net MVC Awesome - jQuery Ajax Helpers: 4.0: version 4.0 ========================== - added InitPopup, InitPopupForm helpers, open initialized popups using awe.open(name, params) - added Tag or Tags for all helpers, usable in mod code - added popup aweclose, aweresize events - popups have api accessible via .data('api'), with methods open, close and destroy - all popups have .awe-popup class - popups can be grouped using .Group(string), only 1 popup in the same group can exist at the same time - added awebeginload event for...SEToolbox: SEToolbox 01.028.008 Release 2: Fixes for drag-drop copying. Added ship joiner, to rejoin a broken ship! Installation of this version will replace older version.ScreenToGif: Release 1.0: What's new: • Small UI tweaks everywhere. • You can add Text, Subtitles and Title Frames. • Processing the gif now takes less time. • Languages: Spanish, Italian and Tamil added. • Single .exe multi language. • Takes less time to apply blur and pixelated efect. • Restart button. • Language picker. (If the user wants to select a diferent language than the system's) • "Encoding Finished" page with a link to open the file. • GreenScreen unchanged pixels to save kilobytes. • "Check for Updates" t...Touchmote: Touchmote 1.0 beta 11: Changes Support for multiple monitor setup Additional settings for analog sticks More reliable pairing Bug fixes and improvementsPowerShell App Deployment Toolkit: PowerShell App Deployment Toolkit v3.1.2: Added Get-IniValue / Set-IniValue functions. Replaces Get-IniContent / Set-IniContent which were a bit unwieldy. The new functions are much easier to use. Added -Value parameter to Get-RegistryKey so that a specific registry value can be retrieved instead of the entire Key as an object Fixed Test-Battery to work with machines that can have multiple batteries Fixed issue where BlockExecution would fail if a Custom Temp Path was specified in the config file Updated examples with latest ...Microsoft Script Analyzer: Microsoft Script Analyzer 1.1: The Script Analyzer scans your current PowerShell script code against some PowerShell best practice rules, and provide suggestions to improve the script quality and readability. By double-clicking the checking result, the relevant script code will be highlighted in the code editor. Script Analyzer result You can configure the Script Analyzer rules in the Settings window of Script Analyzer. Script Analyzer settings The current release includes 5 PowerShell best practice rules. Invoke-...Microsoft Script Browser: Script Browser 1.1: Script Browser for Windows PowerShell ISE was designed and developed in response to many IT Pros’ and MVPs’ feedback during the MVP Global Summit. It puts nearly 10K script examples at IT Pros fingertips when they write scripts to automate their IT tasks. Users can search, learn, download and manage scripts from within their scripting environment - PowerShell ISE - with just a few button clicks. It saves the time of switching back and forth between webpages and scripting environment, and also...New ProjectsAOP.Net: this project is used to implement AOP in .NetARTYKLES: Project articles ASP.NET Identity 2.0 Azure Table Storage: This project provides a high performance cloud solution for ASP.NET Identity 2.0 using Azure Table storage replacing the Entity Framework / MSSQL provider.Associativy Taxonomies Adapter: Administration module for the Associativy (http://associativy.com) Orchard graph platform.BancoSim: BancoSim inicioChaosKit: Chaos theory based time series analysis library, calculating Lyapunov and Hurst exponents and making iterated predictions.ElectrodomesticosAbr2014: Proyecto de ElectrodomesticosGPM: general privilege systemLNTest: LNTestLocal Electrodomésticos 001: Se tiene un local de electrodomésticos que tiene intensión de salir a online. MVC - Filtered TextBox: The project contains MVC Html helper methods for rendering a filtered text box that allows the user to enter only a given set of characters.MvcTrialer: A simple class for .NET 4 MVC to redirect pages if users exceeded a trial period date.NotificationsExtensions.Portable: Portable Class Library Version of the NotificationsExtensions NuGet Packages. Used to Create WinRT/Windows Phone Notification XML.OBD-II: Cross platform library for communicating with OBD-II adapters.Powershell Analyze Robocopy Logs and mail its results: It analyzes a path with Robocopy Log files. It'll create a summary file with information about all log files and it'll mail its results.Proyecto Electrodomesticos: proyecto electrodomesticosPrueba1: asdPVT Library: PVT library for calculating the thermodynamic properties of fluidQuanLyPhongMachThuY: Project serve for .NET CourcseRAMED: project that give some functionalities to ramed projects management like permissions and capabilities to make the management of this type of projects easierSimple Contacts: Simple Contacts Directory application built with ASP.NET MVC and Web API that perform basic CRUD (create, read, update, delete) operations.Stream oriented base64 encoder and decoder: Very simple implementation of stream oriented base64 encoder and decoder, which uses standard .NET Stream decorators. Super Casa de Electronica: no se q escribirTiny Deduplicator: Tiny Deduplicator is a file deduplicator which can scan for duplicate files, and allows the user to control which duplicates they are going to keep or recycle.webdemo: DemonstrationWindows Embedded Compact Edition 2013 File Transfer: A console app for transferring files using TCPIP between Windows Embedded Compact devices, and between them and the desktop. Compact 2013 and Desktop versions.Windows Tile Updater: An simple example of using the Microsoft Universal App to update a tile on the start screen. This was created to accompany a series of blog posts.WMI.NET: WMI.NET Demo Project form Win32 ClassesWumper Thumpers: The ultimate sweg

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  • How to implement fast search on Azure Blob?

    - by Vicky
    I am done with writing the code to upload files (text files) to azure blob storage. Now I want to provide search based on text files content. For ex. If I search for "Hello" then the name of files that contains "Hello" words should appear in search result. Here my code to search class BlobSearch { static void Main(string[] args) { string searchText = "Hello"; CloudStorageAccount account = CloudStorageAccount.Parse(azureConString); CloudBlobClient blobClient = account.CreateCloudBlobClient(); CloudBlobContainer blobContainer = blobClient.GetContainerReference("MyBlobContainer"); blobContainer.FetchAttributes(); var blobItemList = blobContainer.ListBlobs(); foreach (var item in blobItemList) { string line = string.Empty; CloudBlockBlob blockBlob = blobContainer.GetBlockBlobReference(item.Uri.ToString()); if(blockBlob.Name.Contains(".txt")) { int lineno = 1; using (var stream = blockBlob.OpenRead()) { using (StreamReader reader = new StreamReader(stream)) { while ((line = reader.ReadLine()) != null) { if (line.IndexOf(searchText) != -1) { Console.WriteLine("Line : " + lineno +" => "+ blockBlob.Name); } lineno++; } } } } } Console.WriteLine("SEARCH COMPLETE"); Console.ReadLine(); } } Above code is working but it is too slow. Is there any way to do it faster or Can improve above code.

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  • Xml Serialization and the [Obsolete] Attribute

    - by PSteele
    I learned something new today: Starting with .NET 3.5, the XmlSerializer no longer serializes properties that are marked with the Obsolete attribute.  I can’t say that I really agree with this.  Marking something Obsolete is supposed to be something for a developer to deal with in source code.  Once an object is serialized to XML, it becomes data.  I think using the Obsolete attribute as both a compiler flag as well as controlling XML serialization is a bad idea. In this post, I’ll show you how I ran into this and how I got around it. The Setup Let’s start with some make-believe code to demonstrate the issue.  We have a simple data class for storing some information.  We use XML serialization to read and write the data: public class MyData { public int Age { get; set; } public string FirstName { get; set; } public string LastName { get; set; } public List<String> Hobbies { get; set; }   public MyData() { this.Hobbies = new List<string>(); } } Now a few simple lines of code to serialize it to XML: static void Main(string[] args) { var data = new MyData {    FirstName = "Zachary", LastName = "Smith", Age = 50, Hobbies = {"Mischief", "Sabotage"}, }; var serializer = new XmlSerializer(typeof (MyData)); serializer.Serialize(Console.Out, data); Console.ReadKey(); } And this is what we see on the console: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="IBM437"?> <MyData xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"> <Age>50</Age> <FirstName>Zachary</FirstName> <LastName>Smith</LastName> <Hobbies> <string>Mischief</string> <string>Sabotage</string> </Hobbies> </MyData>   The Change So we decided to track the hobbies as a list of strings.  As always, things change and we have more information we need to store per-hobby.  We create a custom “Hobby” object, add a List<Hobby> to our MyData class and we obsolete the old “Hobbies” list to let developers know they shouldn’t use it going forward: public class Hobby { public string Name { get; set; } public int Frequency { get; set; } public int TimesCaught { get; set; }   public override string ToString() { return this.Name; } } public class MyData { public int Age { get; set; } public string FirstName { get; set; } public string LastName { get; set; } [Obsolete("Use HobbyData collection instead.")] public List<String> Hobbies { get; set; } public List<Hobby> HobbyData { get; set; }   public MyData() { this.Hobbies = new List<string>(); this.HobbyData = new List<Hobby>(); } } Here’s the kicker: This serialization is done in another application.  The consumers of the XML will be older clients (clients that expect only a “Hobbies” collection) as well as newer clients (that support the new “HobbyData” collection).  This really shouldn’t be a problem – the obsolete attribute is metadata for .NET compilers.  Unfortunately, the XmlSerializer also looks at the compiler attribute to determine what items to serialize/deserialize.  Here’s an example of our problem: static void Main(string[] args) { var xml = @"<?xml version=""1.0"" encoding=""IBM437""?> <MyData xmlns:xsi=""http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"" xmlns:xsd=""http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema""> <Age>50</Age> <FirstName>Zachary</FirstName> <LastName>Smith</LastName> <Hobbies> <string>Mischief</string> <string>Sabotage</string> </Hobbies> </MyData>"; var serializer = new XmlSerializer(typeof(MyData)); var stream = new StringReader(xml); var data = (MyData) serializer.Deserialize(stream);   if( data.Hobbies.Count != 2) { throw new ApplicationException("Hobbies did not deserialize properly"); } } If you run the code above, you’ll hit the exception.  Even though the XML contains a “<Hobbies>” node, the obsolete attribute prevents the node from being processed.  This will break old clients that use the new library, but don’t yet access the HobbyData collection. The Fix This fix (in this case), isn’t too painful.  The XmlSerializer exposes events for times when it runs into items (Elements, Attributes, Nodes, etc…) it doesn’t know what to do with.  We can hook in to those events and check and see if we’re getting something that we want to support (like our “Hobbies” node). Here’s a way to read in the old XML data with full support of the new data structure (and keeping the Hobbies collection marked as obsolete): static void Main(string[] args) { var xml = @"<?xml version=""1.0"" encoding=""IBM437""?> <MyData xmlns:xsi=""http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"" xmlns:xsd=""http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema""> <Age>50</Age> <FirstName>Zachary</FirstName> <LastName>Smith</LastName> <Hobbies> <string>Mischief</string> <string>Sabotage</string> </Hobbies> </MyData>"; var serializer = new XmlSerializer(typeof(MyData)); serializer.UnknownElement += serializer_UnknownElement; var stream = new StringReader(xml); var data = (MyData)serializer.Deserialize(stream);   if (data.Hobbies.Count != 2) { throw new ApplicationException("Hobbies did not deserialize properly"); } }   static void serializer_UnknownElement(object sender, XmlElementEventArgs e) { if( e.Element.Name != "Hobbies") { return; }   var target = (MyData) e.ObjectBeingDeserialized; foreach(XmlElement hobby in e.Element.ChildNodes) { target.Hobbies.Add(hobby.InnerText); target.HobbyData.Add(new Hobby{Name = hobby.InnerText}); } } As you can see, we hook in to the “UnknownElement” event.  Once we determine it’s our “Hobbies” node, we deserialize it ourselves – as well as populating the new HobbyData collection.  In this case, we have a fairly simple solution to a small change in XML layout.  If you make more extensive changes, it would probably be easier to do some custom serialization to support older data. A sample project with all of this code is available from my repository on bitbucket. Technorati Tags: XmlSerializer,Obsolete,.NET

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  • Youtube video streaming slow

    - by Newbie
    When I try to stream youtube videos on my ubuntu 11.04, they don't stream smoothly. They buffer well and are choppy. Here's my Config: Laptop: Gateway NV58 Ram : 4 GB Ethernet Controller: Broadcom Corp NetLink BCM5784M Gigabit Ethernet PCIe (rev10) Let me know if you need more details. Output of lspci: 00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile 4 Series Chipset Memory Controller Hub (rev 07) 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 4 Series Chipset Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 07) 00:02.1 Display controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 4 Series Chipset Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 07) 00:1a.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #4 (rev 03) 00:1a.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #5 (rev 03) 00:1a.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #2 (rev 03) 00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) HD Audio Controller (rev 03) 00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) PCI Express Port 1 (rev 03) 00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) PCI Express Port 2 (rev 03) 00:1c.2 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) PCI Express Port 3 (rev 03) 00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 03) 00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 03) 00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #3 (rev 03) 00:1d.3 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #6 (rev 03) 00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #1 (rev 03) 00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev 93) 00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation ICH9M LPC Interface Controller (rev 03) 00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation ICH9M/M-E SATA AHCI Controller (rev 03) 00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) SMBus Controller (rev 03) 02:00.0 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation NetLink BCM5784M Gigabit Ethernet PCIe (rev 10) 04:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation WiFi Link 5100

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  • Usage of repository between EF model and code consumer

    - by jim
    I have binary data in my database that I'll have to convert to bitmap at some point. I was thinking whether or not it's appropriate to use a repository and do it there. My consumer, which is a presentation layer, will use this repository. For example: // This is a class I created for modeling the item as is. public class RealItem { public string Name { get; set; } public Bitmap Image { get; set; } } public abstract class BaseRepository { //using Unity (http://unity.codeplex.com) to inject the dependancy of entity context. [Dependency] public Context { get; set; } } public calss ItemRepository : BaseRepository { public List<Items> Select() { IEnumerable<Items> items = from item in Context.Items select item; List<RealItem> lst = new List<RealItem>(); foreach(itm in items) { MemoryStream stream = new MemoryStream(itm.Image); Bitmap image = (Bitmap)Image.FromStream(stream); RealItem ritem = new RealItem{ Name=item.Name, Image=image }; lst.Add(ritem); } return lst; } } Is this a correct way to use the repository pattern? I'm learning this pattern and I've seen a lot of examples online that are using a repository but when I looked at their source code... for example: public IQueryable<object> Select { return from q in base.Context select q; } as you can see no behavior is added to the system by their approach, so I was confused that maybe repository is something else and I got it all wrong. At the end there should be extra benifits of using them right?

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  • My Visual Studio Demo Video Link disappeared &ndash; How do I get it back?

    - by Tarun Arora
    ***Special thanks to Adam Cogan for asking this question and to Andrew Bragdon for answering this question on the ALM Champs list.*** 1. Problem – The link to demo videos will disappear once you have watched the video Learning Visual Studio has become easier than ever with the Visual Studio How to Videos hosted inside of Visual Studio showing up in the context of the task you are trying to achieve. For instance when you click code review in team explorer you can see the link “Streaming Video: Using Code Review to improve quality” when you click this link the video stream is delivered to you right with in Visual Studio. Next time you run Visual Studio you will notice that the home page has a check mark in the video “Using Code Review to improve quality”. If you navigate to code review in the myWork hub in the team explorer, you will notice that the link “Streaming Video: Using Code Review to improve quality” does not show up any more.         2. Solution – How to get the Demo Videos link back Warning: Editing the registry can lead to serious problems if not done correctly.  Always backup your registry before editing. This solution is neither suggested nor supported by Microsoft. Type regedit on the run command prompt to open the Registry editor Navigate to the path Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\11.0\UltimateStartPage\VideoState and notice the newly created folder “TeamExplorer.CodeReview”, notice the key Watched is set to 1.         Change the value of the key ‘Watched’ to 0 Restart Visual Studio and Navigate to Code Review in myWork hub and voila, the link to stream the video is back!            Watch and enjoy the Demo videos to your hearts content!

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  • C# Simple Twitter Update

    - by mroberts
    For what it's worth a simple twitter update. using System; using System.IO; using System.Net; using System.Text; namespace Server.Actions { public class TwitterUpdate { public string Body { get; set; } public string Login { get; set; } public string Password { get; set; } public override void Execute() { try { //encode user name and password string creds = Convert.ToBase64String(Encoding.ASCII.GetBytes(string.Format("{0}:{1}", this.Login, this.Password))); //encode tweet byte[] tweet = Encoding.ASCII.GetBytes("status=" + this.Body); //setup request HttpWebRequest request = (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create("http://twitter.com/statuses/update.xml"); request.Method = "POST"; request.ServicePoint.Expect100Continue = false; request.Headers.Add("Authorization", string.Format("Basic {0}", creds)); request.ContentType = "application/x-www-form-urlencoded"; request.ContentLength = tweet.Length; //write to stream Stream reqStream = request.GetRequestStream(); reqStream.Write(tweet, 0, tweet.Length); reqStream.Close(); //check response HttpWebResponse response = (HttpWebResponse)request.GetResponse(); //... } catch (Exception e) { //... } } } }

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  • How to determine the end of list has been reached?

    - by Sweta Dwivedi
    I'm trying to animate my object according to a set of recorded values from kinect skeleton stream by saving the (x,y,z) stream from the skeletal data into a list and then set my objects x and y position from the x,y of the list. However, once the list end has been reached it starts to animate again from the start. I don't want that - I just want the model position to keep going in the positive X direction. Is there any way I can check if end of the list has been reached and to just update the model position in x direction? Or is there any other way to continue moving my sprite once the points in the list are over... i dont want it to start animating all the way again.. protected override void Update(GameTime gameTime) { //position += spriteSpeed * (float)gameTime.ElapsedGameTime.TotalSeconds; //// TODO: Add your update logic here using (StreamReader r = new StreamReader(f)) { string line; Viewport view = graphics.GraphicsDevice.Viewport; int maxWidth = view.Width; int maxHeight = view.Height; while((line = r.ReadLine()) != null) { string[] temp = line.Split(','); int x = (int) Math.Floor(((float.Parse(temp[0]) * 0.5f) + 0.5f) * maxWidth); int y = (int) Math.Floor(((float.Parse(temp[1]) * -0.5f) + 0.5f) * maxHeight); motion_2.Add(new Point(x, y)); } } position.X = motion_2[i].X; position.Y = motion_2[i].Y; i++; a_butterfly_up.Update(gameTime); a_butterfly_side.Update(gameTime); G_vidPlayer.Play(mossV); base.Update(gameTime); }

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  • Does LINQ require significantly more processing cycles and memory than lower-level data iteration techniques?

    - by Matthew Patrick Cashatt
    Background I am recently in the process of enduring grueling tech interviews for positions that use the .NET stack, some of which include silly questions like this one, and some questions that are more valid. I recently came across an issue that may be valid but I want to check with the community here to be sure. When asked by an interviewer how I would count the frequency of words in a text document and rank the results, I answered that I would Use a stream object put the text file in memory as a string. Split the string into an array on spaces while ignoring punctuation. Use LINQ against the array to .GroupBy() and .Count(), then OrderBy() said count. I got this answer wrong for two reasons: Streaming an entire text file into memory could be disasterous. What if it was an entire encyclopedia? Instead I should stream one block at a time and begin building a hash table. LINQ is too expensive and requires too many processing cycles. I should have built a hash table instead and, for each iteration, only added a word to the hash table if it didn't otherwise exist and then increment it's count. The first reason seems, well, reasonable. But the second gives me more pause. I thought that one of the selling points of LINQ is that it simply abstracts away lower-level operations like hash tables but that, under the veil, it is still the same implementation. Question Aside from a few additional processing cycles to call any abstracted methods, does LINQ require significantly more processing cycles to accomplish a given data iteration task than a lower-level task (such as building a hash table) would?

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  • Web application interacts bi-directional with server program?

    - by Roelof Berkepeis
    I want to write a web application to play chess against the engine Crafty. I'm not new to PHP and javascript, but must learn how to interact with a server process : how can a web application and/or (jQuery) ajax interact bi-directionally with a (linux) program running on the server? At this moment i am developing on (Apache) local host. Crafty is installed on my Ubuntu PC. This well-known chess engine has no GUI, it runs in terminal by the command $ /usr/games/crafty and so you can play chess against it and even see it's calculations. I can make Crafty run by PHP, using the functions proc_open() or exec(), and most documentation i found states that the output stream should be a file .. But i think i don't want such setup, because then the webpage should be constanty polling that file (eg. by ajax) to see if some new data was appended, right? How can Crafty talk to the web page directly, saying "i have calculated another variation" or "i have decided a move" etc, then display this info on the web page and let the user give some counter move, just like in terminal. Isn't it possible to use some session / stream / listener? I have no clue at all, can anybody point me in a right direction?

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  • Getting Error whileInitializing entities [closed]

    - by R76
    I am new'b as WPF Dev. I am developing Window application in WPF using mvvmlight framework. I have created database in Sqlserver compact 4.0. I have made a Ado.net Entity Data Model. When I trying to initialize the Entity object in service it throws the error like: Error 'The invocation of the constructor on type 'PointOfSale.ViewModels.ProductsViewModel' that matches the specified binding constraints threw an exception.' Line number '7' and line position '10'. stack Trace at System.Windows.Markup.XamlReader.RewrapException(Exception e, IXamlLineInfo lineInfo, Uri baseUri) at System.Windows.Markup.WpfXamlLoader.Load(XamlReader xamlReader, IXamlObjectWriterFactory writerFactory, Boolean skipJournaledProperties, Object rootObject, XamlObjectWriterSettings settings, Uri baseUri) at System.Windows.Markup.WpfXamlLoader.LoadBaml(XamlReader xamlReader, Boolean skipJournaledProperties, Object rootObject, XamlAccessLevel accessLevel, Uri baseUri) at System.Windows.Markup.XamlReader.LoadBaml(Stream stream, ParserContext parserContext, Object parent, Boolean closeStream) at System.Windows.Application.LoadComponent(Object component, Uri resourceLocator) at PointOfSale.MainWindow.InitializeComponent() in e:\VarniApplication\PointOfSale\PointOfSale\MainWindow.xaml:line 1 at PointOfSale.MainWindow..ctor() in E:\VarniApplication\PointOfSale\PointOfSale\MainWindow.xaml.cs:line 27 Inner Exception {"Unable to load the specified metadata resource."} My code: xyzEntities entites; public ctor() { entites = new xyzEntities(); //This line throws an error } I have installed sql server compact 4.0 from web installer 3.0. and added the sql server compact toolbox from the extension manager. Tell me if I am missing something to install or missing something to write code.

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  • Using the West Wind Web Toolkit to set up AJAX and REST Services

    - by Rick Strahl
    I frequently get questions about which option to use for creating AJAX and REST backends for ASP.NET applications. There are many solutions out there to do this actually, but when I have a choice - not surprisingly - I fall back to my own tools in the West Wind West Wind Web Toolkit. I've talked a bunch about the 'in-the-box' solutions in the past so for a change in this post I'll talk about the tools that I use in my own and customer applications to handle AJAX and REST based access to service resources using the West Wind West Wind Web Toolkit. Let me preface this by saying that I like things to be easy. Yes flexible is very important as well but not at the expense of over-complexity. The goal I've had with my tools is make it drop dead easy, with good performance while providing the core features that I'm after, which are: Easy AJAX/JSON Callbacks Ability to return any kind of non JSON content (string, stream, byte[], images) Ability to work with both XML and JSON interchangeably for input/output Access endpoints via POST data, RPC JSON calls, GET QueryString values or Routing interface Easy to use generic JavaScript client to make RPC calls (same syntax, just what you need) Ability to create clean URLS with Routing Ability to use standard ASP.NET HTTP Stack for HTTP semantics It's all about options! In this post I'll demonstrate most of these features (except XML) in a few simple and short samples which you can download. So let's take a look and see how you can build an AJAX callback solution with the West Wind Web Toolkit. Installing the Toolkit Assemblies The easiest and leanest way of using the Toolkit in your Web project is to grab it via NuGet: West Wind Web and AJAX Utilities (Westwind.Web) and drop it into the project by right clicking in your Project and choosing Manage NuGet Packages from anywhere in the Project.   When done you end up with your project looking like this: What just happened? Nuget added two assemblies - Westwind.Web and Westwind.Utilities and the client ww.jquery.js library. It also added a couple of references into web.config: The default namespaces so they can be accessed in pages/views and a ScriptCompressionModule that the toolkit optionally uses to compress script resources served from within the assembly (namely ww.jquery.js and optionally jquery.js). Creating a new Service The West Wind Web Toolkit supports several ways of creating and accessing AJAX services, but for this post I'll stick to the lower level approach that works from any plain HTML page or of course MVC, WebForms, WebPages. There's also a WebForms specific control that makes this even easier but I'll leave that for another post. So, to create a new standalone AJAX/REST service we can create a new HttpHandler in the new project either as a pure class based handler or as a generic .ASHX handler. Both work equally well, but generic handlers don't require any web.config configuration so I'll use that here. In the root of the project add a Generic Handler. I'm going to call this one StockService.ashx. Once the handler has been created, edit the code and remove all of the handler body code. Then change the base class to CallbackHandler and add methods that have a [CallbackMethod] attribute. Here's the modified base handler implementation now looks like with an added HelloWorld method: using System; using Westwind.Web; namespace WestWindWebAjax { /// <summary> /// Handler implements CallbackHandler to provide REST/AJAX services /// </summary> public class SampleService : CallbackHandler { [CallbackMethod] public string HelloWorld(string name) { return "Hello " + name + ". Time is: " + DateTime.Now.ToString(); } } } Notice that the class inherits from CallbackHandler and that the HelloWorld service method is marked up with [CallbackMethod]. We're done here. Services Urlbased Syntax Once you compile, the 'service' is live can respond to requests. All CallbackHandlers support input in GET and POST formats, and can return results as JSON or XML. To check our fancy HelloWorld method we can now access the service like this: http://localhost/WestWindWebAjax/StockService.ashx?Method=HelloWorld&name=Rick which produces a default JSON response - in this case a string (wrapped in quotes as it's JSON): (note by default JSON will be downloaded by most browsers not displayed - various options are available to view JSON right in the browser) If I want to return the same data as XML I can tack on a &format=xml at the end of the querystring which produces: <string>Hello Rick. Time is: 11/1/2011 12:11:13 PM</string> Cleaner URLs with Routing Syntax If you want cleaner URLs for each operation you can also configure custom routes on a per URL basis similar to the way that WCF REST does. To do this you need to add a new RouteHandler to your application's startup code in global.asax.cs one for each CallbackHandler based service you create: protected void Application_Start(object sender, EventArgs e) { CallbackHandlerRouteHandler.RegisterRoutes<StockService>(RouteTable.Routes); } With this code in place you can now add RouteUrl properties to any of your service methods. For the HelloWorld method that doesn't make a ton of sense but here is what a routed clean URL might look like in definition: [CallbackMethod(RouteUrl="stocks/HelloWorld/{name}")] public string HelloWorld(string name) { return "Hello " + name + ". Time is: " + DateTime.Now.ToString(); } The same URL I previously used now becomes a bit shorter and more readable with: http://localhost/WestWindWebAjax/HelloWorld/Rick It's an easy way to create cleaner URLs and still get the same functionality. Calling the Service with $.getJSON() Since the result produced is JSON you can now easily consume this data using jQuery's getJSON method. First we need a couple of scripts - jquery.js and ww.jquery.js in the page: <!DOCTYPE html> <html> <head> <link href="Css/Westwind.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" /> <script src="scripts/jquery.min.js" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="scripts/ww.jquery.min.js" type="text/javascript"></script> </head> <body> Next let's add a small HelloWorld example form (what else) that has a single textbox to type a name, a button and a div tag to receive the result: <fieldset> <legend>Hello World</legend> Please enter a name: <input type="text" name="txtHello" id="txtHello" value="" /> <input type="button" id="btnSayHello" value="Say Hello (POST)" /> <input type="button" id="btnSayHelloGet" value="Say Hello (GET)" /> <div id="divHelloMessage" class="errordisplay" style="display:none;width: 450px;" > </div> </fieldset> Then to call the HelloWorld method a little jQuery is used to hook the document startup and the button click followed by the $.getJSON call to retrieve the data from the server. <script type="text/javascript"> $(document).ready(function () { $("#btnSayHelloGet").click(function () { $.getJSON("SampleService.ashx", { Method: "HelloWorld", name: $("#txtHello").val() }, function (result) { $("#divHelloMessage") .text(result) .fadeIn(1000); }); });</script> .getJSON() expects a full URL to the endpoint of our service, which is the ASHX file. We can either provide a full URL (SampleService.ashx?Method=HelloWorld&name=Rick) or we can just provide the base URL and an object that encodes the query string parameters for us using an object map that has a property that matches each parameter for the server method. We can also use the clean URL routing syntax, but using the object parameter encoding actually is safer as the parameters will get properly encoded by jQuery. The result returned is whatever the result on the server method is - in this case a string. The string is applied to the divHelloMessage element and we're done. Obviously this is a trivial example, but it demonstrates the basics of getting a JSON response back to the browser. AJAX Post Syntax - using ajaxCallMethod() The previous example allows you basic control over the data that you send to the server via querystring parameters. This works OK for simple values like short strings, numbers and boolean values, but doesn't really work if you need to pass something more complex like an object or an array back up to the server. To handle traditional RPC type messaging where the idea is to map server side functions and results to a client side invokation, POST operations can be used. The easiest way to use this functionality is to use ww.jquery.js and the ajaxCallMethod() function. ww.jquery wraps jQuery's AJAX functions and knows implicitly how to call a CallbackServer method with parameters and parse the result. Let's look at another simple example that posts a simple value but returns something more interesting. Let's start with the service method: [CallbackMethod(RouteUrl="stocks/{symbol}")] public StockQuote GetStockQuote(string symbol) { Response.Cache.SetExpires(DateTime.UtcNow.Add(new TimeSpan(0, 2, 0))); StockServer server = new StockServer(); var quote = server.GetStockQuote(symbol); if (quote == null) throw new ApplicationException("Invalid Symbol passed."); return quote; } This sample utilizes a small StockServer helper class (included in the sample) that downloads a stock quote from Yahoo's financial site via plain HTTP GET requests and formats it into a StockQuote object. Lets create a small HTML block that lets us query for the quote and display it: <fieldset> <legend>Single Stock Quote</legend> Please enter a stock symbol: <input type="text" name="txtSymbol" id="txtSymbol" value="msft" /> <input type="button" id="btnStockQuote" value="Get Quote" /> <div id="divStockDisplay" class="errordisplay" style="display:none; width: 450px;"> <div class="label-left">Company:</div> <div id="stockCompany"></div> <div class="label-left">Last Price:</div> <div id="stockLastPrice"></div> <div class="label-left">Quote Time:</div> <div id="stockQuoteTime"></div> </div> </fieldset> The final result looks something like this:   Let's hook up the button handler to fire the request and fill in the data as shown: $("#btnStockQuote").click(function () { ajaxCallMethod("SampleService.ashx", "GetStockQuote", [$("#txtSymbol").val()], function (quote) { $("#divStockDisplay").show().fadeIn(1000); $("#stockCompany").text(quote.Company + " (" + quote.Symbol + ")"); $("#stockLastPrice").text(quote.LastPrice); $("#stockQuoteTime").text(quote.LastQuoteTime.formatDate("MMM dd, HH:mm EST")); }, onPageError); }); So we point at SampleService.ashx and the GetStockQuote method, passing a single parameter of the input symbol value. Then there are two handlers for success and failure callbacks.  The success handler is the interesting part - it receives the stock quote as a result and assigns its values to various 'holes' in the stock display elements. The data that comes back over the wire is JSON and it looks like this: { "Symbol":"MSFT", "Company":"Microsoft Corpora", "OpenPrice":26.11, "LastPrice":26.01, "NetChange":0.02, "LastQuoteTime":"2011-11-03T02:00:00Z", "LastQuoteTimeString":"Nov. 11, 2011 4:20pm" } which is an object representation of the data. JavaScript can evaluate this JSON string back into an object easily and that's the reslut that gets passed to the success function. The quote data is then applied to existing page content by manually selecting items and applying them. There are other ways to do this more elegantly like using templates, but here we're only interested in seeing how the data is returned. The data in the object is typed - LastPrice is a number and QuoteTime is a date. Note about the date value: JavaScript doesn't have a date literal although the JSON embedded ISO string format used above  ("2011-11-03T02:00:00Z") is becoming fairly standard for JSON serializers. However, JSON parsers don't deserialize dates by default and return them by string. This is why the StockQuote actually returns a string value of LastQuoteTimeString for the same date. ajaxMethodCallback always converts dates properly into 'real' dates and the example above uses the real date value along with a .formatDate() data extension (also in ww.jquery.js) to display the raw date properly. Errors and Exceptions So what happens if your code fails? For example if I pass an invalid stock symbol to the GetStockQuote() method you notice that the code does this: if (quote == null) throw new ApplicationException("Invalid Symbol passed."); CallbackHandler automatically pushes the exception message back to the client so it's easy to pick up the error message. Regardless of what kind of error occurs: Server side, client side, protocol errors - any error will fire the failure handler with an error object parameter. The error is returned to the client via a JSON response in the error callback. In the previous examples I called onPageError which is a generic routine in ww.jquery that displays a status message on the bottom of the screen. But of course you can also take over the error handling yourself: $("#btnStockQuote").click(function () { ajaxCallMethod("SampleService.ashx", "GetStockQuote", [$("#txtSymbol").val()], function (quote) { $("#divStockDisplay").fadeIn(1000); $("#stockCompany").text(quote.Company + " (" + quote.Symbol + ")"); $("#stockLastPrice").text(quote.LastPrice); $("#stockQuoteTime").text(quote.LastQuoteTime.formatDate("MMM dd, hh:mmt")); }, function (error, xhr) { $("#divErrorDisplay").text(error.message).fadeIn(1000); }); }); The error object has a isCallbackError, message and  stackTrace properties, the latter of which is only populated when running in Debug mode, and this object is returned for all errors: Client side, transport and server side errors. Regardless of which type of error you get the same object passed (as well as the XHR instance optionally) which makes for a consistent error retrieval mechanism. Specifying HttpVerbs You can also specify HTTP Verbs that are allowed using the AllowedHttpVerbs option on the CallbackMethod attribute: [CallbackMethod(AllowedHttpVerbs=HttpVerbs.GET | HttpVerbs.POST)] public string HelloWorld(string name) { … } If you're building REST style API's this might be useful to force certain request semantics onto the client calling. For the above if call with a non-allowed HttpVerb the request returns a 405 error response along with a JSON (or XML) error object result. The default behavior is to allow all verbs access (HttpVerbs.All). Passing in object Parameters Up to now the parameters I passed were very simple. But what if you need to send something more complex like an object or an array? Let's look at another example now that passes an object from the client to the server. Keeping with the Stock theme here lets add a method called BuyOrder that lets us buy some shares for a stock. Consider the following service method that receives an StockBuyOrder object as a parameter: [CallbackMethod] public string BuyStock(StockBuyOrder buyOrder) { var server = new StockServer(); var quote = server.GetStockQuote(buyOrder.Symbol); if (quote == null) throw new ApplicationException("Invalid or missing stock symbol."); return string.Format("You're buying {0} shares of {1} ({2}) stock at {3} for a total of {4} on {5}.", buyOrder.Quantity, quote.Company, quote.Symbol, quote.LastPrice.ToString("c"), (quote.LastPrice * buyOrder.Quantity).ToString("c"), buyOrder.BuyOn.ToString("MMM d")); } public class StockBuyOrder { public string Symbol { get; set; } public int Quantity { get; set; } public DateTime BuyOn { get; set; } public StockBuyOrder() { BuyOn = DateTime.Now; } } This is a contrived do-nothing example that simply echoes back what was passed in, but it demonstrates how you can pass complex data to a callback method. On the client side we now have a very simple form that captures the three values on a form: <fieldset> <legend>Post a Stock Buy Order</legend> Enter a symbol: <input type="text" name="txtBuySymbol" id="txtBuySymbol" value="GLD" />&nbsp;&nbsp; Qty: <input type="text" name="txtBuyQty" id="txtBuyQty" value="10" style="width: 50px" />&nbsp;&nbsp; Buy on: <input type="text" name="txtBuyOn" id="txtBuyOn" value="<%= DateTime.Now.ToString("d") %>" style="width: 70px;" /> <input type="button" id="btnBuyStock" value="Buy Stock" /> <div id="divStockBuyMessage" class="errordisplay" style="display:none"></div> </fieldset> The completed form and demo then looks something like this:   The client side code that picks up the input values and assigns them to object properties and sends the AJAX request looks like this: $("#btnBuyStock").click(function () { // create an object map that matches StockBuyOrder signature var buyOrder = { Symbol: $("#txtBuySymbol").val(), Quantity: $("#txtBuyQty").val() * 1, // number Entered: new Date() } ajaxCallMethod("SampleService.ashx", "BuyStock", [buyOrder], function (result) { $("#divStockBuyMessage").text(result).fadeIn(1000); }, onPageError); }); The code creates an object and attaches the properties that match the server side object passed to the BuyStock method. Each property that you want to update needs to be included and the type must match (ie. string, number, date in this case). Any missing properties will not be set but also not cause any errors. Pass POST data instead of Objects In the last example I collected a bunch of values from form variables and stuffed them into object variables in JavaScript code. While that works, often times this isn't really helping - I end up converting my types on the client and then doing another conversion on the server. If lots of input controls are on a page and you just want to pick up the values on the server via plain POST variables - that can be done too - and it makes sense especially if you're creating and filling the client side object only to push data to the server. Let's add another method to the server that once again lets us buy a stock. But this time let's not accept a parameter but rather send POST data to the server. Here's the server method receiving POST data: [CallbackMethod] public string BuyStockPost() { StockBuyOrder buyOrder = new StockBuyOrder(); buyOrder.Symbol = Request.Form["txtBuySymbol"]; ; int qty; int.TryParse(Request.Form["txtBuyQuantity"], out qty); buyOrder.Quantity = qty; DateTime time; DateTime.TryParse(Request.Form["txtBuyBuyOn"], out time); buyOrder.BuyOn = time; // Or easier way yet //FormVariableBinder.Unbind(buyOrder,null,"txtBuy"); var server = new StockServer(); var quote = server.GetStockQuote(buyOrder.Symbol); if (quote == null) throw new ApplicationException("Invalid or missing stock symbol."); return string.Format("You're buying {0} shares of {1} ({2}) stock at {3} for a total of {4} on {5}.", buyOrder.Quantity, quote.Company, quote.Symbol, quote.LastPrice.ToString("c"), (quote.LastPrice * buyOrder.Quantity).ToString("c"), buyOrder.BuyOn.ToString("MMM d")); } Clearly we've made this server method take more code than it did with the object parameter. We've basically moved the parameter assignment logic from the client to the server. As a result the client code to call this method is now a bit shorter since there's no client side shuffling of values from the controls to an object. $("#btnBuyStockPost").click(function () { ajaxCallMethod("SampleService.ashx", "BuyStockPost", [], // Note: No parameters - function (result) { $("#divStockBuyMessage").text(result).fadeIn(1000); }, onPageError, // Force all page Form Variables to be posted { postbackMode: "Post" }); }); The client simply calls the BuyStockQuote method and pushes all the form variables from the page up to the server which parses them instead. The feature that makes this work is one of the options you can pass to the ajaxCallMethod() function: { postbackMode: "Post" }); which directs the function to include form variable POST data when making the service call. Other options include PostNoViewState (for WebForms to strip out WebForms crap vars), PostParametersOnly (default), None. If you pass parameters those are always posted to the server except when None is set. The above code can be simplified a bit by using the FormVariableBinder helper, which can unbind form variables directly into an object: FormVariableBinder.Unbind(buyOrder,null,"txtBuy"); which replaces the manual Request.Form[] reading code. It receives the object to unbind into, a string of properties to skip, and an optional prefix which is stripped off form variables to match property names. The component is similar to the MVC model binder but it's independent of MVC. Returning non-JSON Data CallbackHandler also supports returning non-JSON/XML data via special return types. You can return raw non-JSON encoded strings like this: [CallbackMethod(ReturnAsRawString=true,ContentType="text/plain")] public string HelloWorldNoJSON(string name) { return "Hello " + name + ". Time is: " + DateTime.Now.ToString(); } Calling this method results in just a plain string - no JSON encoding with quotes around the result. This can be useful if your server handling code needs to return a string or HTML result that doesn't fit well for a page or other UI component. Any string output can be returned. You can also return binary data. Stream, byte[] and Bitmap/Image results are automatically streamed back to the client. Notice that you should set the ContentType of the request either on the CallbackMethod attribute or using Response.ContentType. This ensures the Web Server knows how to display your binary response. Using a stream response makes it possible to return any of data. Streamed data can be pretty handy to return bitmap data from a method. The following is a method that returns a stock history graph for a particular stock over a provided number of years: [CallbackMethod(ContentType="image/png",RouteUrl="stocks/history/graph/{symbol}/{years}")] public Stream GetStockHistoryGraph(string symbol, int years = 2,int width = 500, int height=350) { if (width == 0) width = 500; if (height == 0) height = 350; StockServer server = new StockServer(); return server.GetStockHistoryGraph(symbol,"Stock History for " + symbol,width,height,years); } I can now hook this up into the JavaScript code when I get a stock quote. At the end of the process I can assign the URL to the service that returns the image into the src property and so force the image to display. Here's the changed code: $("#btnStockQuote").click(function () { var symbol = $("#txtSymbol").val(); ajaxCallMethod("SampleService.ashx", "GetStockQuote", [symbol], function (quote) { $("#divStockDisplay").fadeIn(1000); $("#stockCompany").text(quote.Company + " (" + quote.Symbol + ")"); $("#stockLastPrice").text(quote.LastPrice); $("#stockQuoteTime").text(quote.LastQuoteTime.formatDate("MMM dd, hh:mmt")); // display a stock chart $("#imgStockHistory").attr("src", "stocks/history/graph/" + symbol + "/2"); },onPageError); }); The resulting output then looks like this: The charting code uses the new ASP.NET 4.0 Chart components via code to display a bar chart of the 2 year stock data as part of the StockServer class which you can find in the sample download. The ability to return arbitrary data from a service is useful as you can see - in this case the chart is clearly associated with the service and it's nice that the graph generation can happen off a handler rather than through a page. Images are common resources, but output can also be PDF reports, zip files for downloads etc. which is becoming increasingly more common to be returned from REST endpoints and other applications. Why reinvent? Obviously the examples I've shown here are pretty basic in terms of functionality. But I hope they demonstrate the core features of AJAX callbacks that you need to work through in most applications which is simple: return data, send back data and potentially retrieve data in various formats. While there are other solutions when it comes down to making AJAX callbacks and servicing REST like requests, I like the flexibility my home grown solution provides. Simply put it's still the easiest solution that I've found that addresses my common use cases: AJAX JSON RPC style callbacks Url based access XML and JSON Output from single method endpoint XML and JSON POST support, querystring input, routing parameter mapping UrlEncoded POST data support on callbacks Ability to return stream/raw string data Essentially ability to return ANYTHING from Service and pass anything All these features are available in various solutions but not together in one place. I've been using this code base for over 4 years now in a number of projects both for myself and commercial work and it's served me extremely well. Besides the AJAX functionality CallbackHandler provides, it's also an easy way to create any kind of output endpoint I need to create. Need to create a few simple routines that spit back some data, but don't want to create a Page or View or full blown handler for it? Create a CallbackHandler and add a method or multiple methods and you have your generic endpoints.  It's a quick and easy way to add small code pieces that are pretty efficient as they're running through a pretty small handler implementation. I can have this up and running in a couple of minutes literally without any setup and returning just about any kind of data. Resources Download the Sample NuGet: Westwind Web and AJAX Utilities (Westwind.Web) ajaxCallMethod() Documentation Using the AjaxMethodCallback WebForms Control West Wind Web Toolkit Home Page West Wind Web Toolkit Source Code © Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2011Posted in ASP.NET  jQuery  AJAX   Tweet (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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  • Upload File to Windows Azure Blob in Chunks through ASP.NET MVC, JavaScript and HTML5

    - by Shaun
    Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/shaunxu/archive/2013/07/01/upload-file-to-windows-azure-blob-in-chunks-through-asp.net.aspxMany people are using Windows Azure Blob Storage to store their data in the cloud. Blob storage provides 99.9% availability with easy-to-use API through .NET SDK and HTTP REST. For example, we can store JavaScript files, images, documents in blob storage when we are building an ASP.NET web application on a Web Role in Windows Azure. Or we can store our VHD files in blob and mount it as a hard drive in our cloud service. If you are familiar with Windows Azure, you should know that there are two kinds of blob: page blob and block blob. The page blob is optimized for random read and write, which is very useful when you need to store VHD files. The block blob is optimized for sequential/chunk read and write, which has more common usage. Since we can upload block blob in blocks through BlockBlob.PutBlock, and them commit them as a whole blob with invoking the BlockBlob.PutBlockList, it is very powerful to upload large files, as we can upload blocks in parallel, and provide pause-resume feature. There are many documents, articles and blog posts described on how to upload a block blob. Most of them are focus on the server side, which means when you had received a big file, stream or binaries, how to upload them into blob storage in blocks through .NET SDK.  But the problem is, how can we upload these large files from client side, for example, a browser. This questioned to me when I was working with a Chinese customer to help them build a network disk production on top of azure. The end users upload their files from the web portal, and then the files will be stored in blob storage from the Web Role. My goal is to find the best way to transform the file from client (end user’s machine) to the server (Web Role) through browser. In this post I will demonstrate and describe what I had done, to upload large file in chunks with high speed, and save them as blocks into Windows Azure Blob Storage.   Traditional Upload, Works with Limitation The simplest way to implement this requirement is to create a web page with a form that contains a file input element and a submit button. 1: @using (Html.BeginForm("About", "Index", FormMethod.Post, new { enctype = "multipart/form-data" })) 2: { 3: <input type="file" name="file" /> 4: <input type="submit" value="upload" /> 5: } And then in the backend controller, we retrieve the whole content of this file and upload it in to the blob storage through .NET SDK. We can split the file in blocks and upload them in parallel and commit. The code had been well blogged in the community. 1: [HttpPost] 2: public ActionResult About(HttpPostedFileBase file) 3: { 4: var container = _client.GetContainerReference("test"); 5: container.CreateIfNotExists(); 6: var blob = container.GetBlockBlobReference(file.FileName); 7: var blockDataList = new Dictionary<string, byte[]>(); 8: using (var stream = file.InputStream) 9: { 10: var blockSizeInKB = 1024; 11: var offset = 0; 12: var index = 0; 13: while (offset < stream.Length) 14: { 15: var readLength = Math.Min(1024 * blockSizeInKB, (int)stream.Length - offset); 16: var blockData = new byte[readLength]; 17: offset += stream.Read(blockData, 0, readLength); 18: blockDataList.Add(Convert.ToBase64String(BitConverter.GetBytes(index)), blockData); 19:  20: index++; 21: } 22: } 23:  24: Parallel.ForEach(blockDataList, (bi) => 25: { 26: blob.PutBlock(bi.Key, new MemoryStream(bi.Value), null); 27: }); 28: blob.PutBlockList(blockDataList.Select(b => b.Key).ToArray()); 29:  30: return RedirectToAction("About"); 31: } This works perfect if we selected an image, a music or a small video to upload. But if I selected a large file, let’s say a 6GB HD-movie, after upload for about few minutes the page will be shown as below and the upload will be terminated. In ASP.NET there is a limitation of request length and the maximized request length is defined in the web.config file. It’s a number which less than about 4GB. So if we want to upload a really big file, we cannot simply implement in this way. Also, in Windows Azure, a cloud service network load balancer will terminate the connection if exceed the timeout period. From my test the timeout looks like 2 - 3 minutes. Hence, when we need to upload a large file we cannot just use the basic HTML elements. Besides the limitation mentioned above, the simple HTML file upload cannot provide rich upload experience such as chunk upload, pause and pause-resume. So we need to find a better way to upload large file from the client to the server.   Upload in Chunks through HTML5 and JavaScript In order to break those limitation mentioned above we will try to upload the large file in chunks. This takes some benefit to us such as - No request size limitation: Since we upload in chunks, we can define the request size for each chunks regardless how big the entire file is. - No timeout problem: The size of chunks are controlled by us, which means we should be able to make sure request for each chunk upload will not exceed the timeout period of both ASP.NET and Windows Azure load balancer. It was a big challenge to upload big file in chunks until we have HTML5. There are some new features and improvements introduced in HTML5 and we will use them to implement our solution.   In HTML5, the File interface had been improved with a new method called “slice”. It can be used to read part of the file by specifying the start byte index and the end byte index. For example if the entire file was 1024 bytes, file.slice(512, 768) will read the part of this file from the 512nd byte to 768th byte, and return a new object of interface called "Blob”, which you can treat as an array of bytes. In fact,  a Blob object represents a file-like object of immutable, raw data. The File interface is based on Blob, inheriting blob functionality and expanding it to support files on the user's system. For more information about the Blob please refer here. File and Blob is very useful to implement the chunk upload. We will use File interface to represent the file the user selected from the browser and then use File.slice to read the file in chunks in the size we wanted. For example, if we wanted to upload a 10MB file with 512KB chunks, then we can read it in 512KB blobs by using File.slice in a loop.   Assuming we have a web page as below. User can select a file, an input box to specify the block size in KB and a button to start upload. 1: <div> 2: <input type="file" id="upload_files" name="files[]" /><br /> 3: Block Size: <input type="number" id="block_size" value="512" name="block_size" />KB<br /> 4: <input type="button" id="upload_button_blob" name="upload" value="upload (blob)" /> 5: </div> Then we can have the JavaScript function to upload the file in chunks when user clicked the button. 1: <script type="text/javascript"> 1: 2: $(function () { 3: $("#upload_button_blob").click(function () { 4: }); 5: });</script> Firstly we need to ensure the client browser supports the interfaces we are going to use. Just try to invoke the File, Blob and FormData from the “window” object. If any of them is “undefined” the condition result will be “false” which means your browser doesn’t support these premium feature and it’s time for you to get your browser updated. FormData is another new feature we are going to use in the future. It could generate a temporary form for us. We will use this interface to create a form with chunk and associated metadata when invoked the service through ajax. 1: $("#upload_button_blob").click(function () { 2: // assert the browser support html5 3: if (window.File && window.Blob && window.FormData) { 4: alert("Your brwoser is awesome, let's rock!"); 5: } 6: else { 7: alert("Oh man plz update to a modern browser before try is cool stuff out."); 8: return; 9: } 10: }); Each browser supports these interfaces by their own implementation and currently the Blob, File and File.slice are supported by Chrome 21, FireFox 13, IE 10, Opera 12 and Safari 5.1 or higher. After that we worked on the files the user selected one by one since in HTML5, user can select multiple files in one file input box. 1: var files = $("#upload_files")[0].files; 2: for (var i = 0; i < files.length; i++) { 3: var file = files[i]; 4: var fileSize = file.size; 5: var fileName = file.name; 6: } Next, we calculated the start index and end index for each chunks based on the size the user specified from the browser. We put them into an array with the file name and the index, which will be used when we upload chunks into Windows Azure Blob Storage as blocks since we need to specify the target blob name and the block index. At the same time we will store the list of all indexes into another variant which will be used to commit blocks into blob in Azure Storage once all chunks had been uploaded successfully. 1: $("#upload_button_blob").click(function () { 2: // assert the browser support html5 3: ... ... 4: // start to upload each files in chunks 5: var files = $("#upload_files")[0].files; 6: for (var i = 0; i < files.length; i++) { 7: var file = files[i]; 8: var fileSize = file.size; 9: var fileName = file.name; 10:  11: // calculate the start and end byte index for each blocks(chunks) 12: // with the index, file name and index list for future using 13: var blockSizeInKB = $("#block_size").val(); 14: var blockSize = blockSizeInKB * 1024; 15: var blocks = []; 16: var offset = 0; 17: var index = 0; 18: var list = ""; 19: while (offset < fileSize) { 20: var start = offset; 21: var end = Math.min(offset + blockSize, fileSize); 22:  23: blocks.push({ 24: name: fileName, 25: index: index, 26: start: start, 27: end: end 28: }); 29: list += index + ","; 30:  31: offset = end; 32: index++; 33: } 34: } 35: }); Now we have all chunks’ information ready. The next step should be upload them one by one to the server side, and at the server side when received a chunk it will upload as a block into Blob Storage, and finally commit them with the index list through BlockBlobClient.PutBlockList. But since all these invokes are ajax calling, which means not synchronized call. So we need to introduce a new JavaScript library to help us coordinate the asynchronize operation, which named “async.js”. You can download this JavaScript library here, and you can find the document here. I will not explain this library too much in this post. We will put all procedures we want to execute as a function array, and pass into the proper function defined in async.js to let it help us to control the execution sequence, in series or in parallel. Hence we will define an array and put the function for chunk upload into this array. 1: $("#upload_button_blob").click(function () { 2: // assert the browser support html5 3: ... ... 4:  5: // start to upload each files in chunks 6: var files = $("#upload_files")[0].files; 7: for (var i = 0; i < files.length; i++) { 8: var file = files[i]; 9: var fileSize = file.size; 10: var fileName = file.name; 11: // calculate the start and end byte index for each blocks(chunks) 12: // with the index, file name and index list for future using 13: ... ... 14:  15: // define the function array and push all chunk upload operation into this array 16: blocks.forEach(function (block) { 17: putBlocks.push(function (callback) { 18: }); 19: }); 20: } 21: }); 22: }); As you can see, I used File.slice method to read each chunks based on the start and end byte index we calculated previously, and constructed a temporary HTML form with the file name, chunk index and chunk data through another new feature in HTML5 named FormData. Then post this form to the backend server through jQuery.ajax. This is the key part of our solution. 1: $("#upload_button_blob").click(function () { 2: // assert the browser support html5 3: ... ... 4: // start to upload each files in chunks 5: var files = $("#upload_files")[0].files; 6: for (var i = 0; i < files.length; i++) { 7: var file = files[i]; 8: var fileSize = file.size; 9: var fileName = file.name; 10: // calculate the start and end byte index for each blocks(chunks) 11: // with the index, file name and index list for future using 12: ... ... 13: // define the function array and push all chunk upload operation into this array 14: blocks.forEach(function (block) { 15: putBlocks.push(function (callback) { 16: // load blob based on the start and end index for each chunks 17: var blob = file.slice(block.start, block.end); 18: // put the file name, index and blob into a temporary from 19: var fd = new FormData(); 20: fd.append("name", block.name); 21: fd.append("index", block.index); 22: fd.append("file", blob); 23: // post the form to backend service (asp.net mvc controller action) 24: $.ajax({ 25: url: "/Home/UploadInFormData", 26: data: fd, 27: processData: false, 28: contentType: "multipart/form-data", 29: type: "POST", 30: success: function (result) { 31: if (!result.success) { 32: alert(result.error); 33: } 34: callback(null, block.index); 35: } 36: }); 37: }); 38: }); 39: } 40: }); Then we will invoke these functions one by one by using the async.js. And once all functions had been executed successfully I invoked another ajax call to the backend service to commit all these chunks (blocks) as the blob in Windows Azure Storage. 1: $("#upload_button_blob").click(function () { 2: // assert the browser support html5 3: ... ... 4: // start to upload each files in chunks 5: var files = $("#upload_files")[0].files; 6: for (var i = 0; i < files.length; i++) { 7: var file = files[i]; 8: var fileSize = file.size; 9: var fileName = file.name; 10: // calculate the start and end byte index for each blocks(chunks) 11: // with the index, file name and index list for future using 12: ... ... 13: // define the function array and push all chunk upload operation into this array 14: ... ... 15: // invoke the functions one by one 16: // then invoke the commit ajax call to put blocks into blob in azure storage 17: async.series(putBlocks, function (error, result) { 18: var data = { 19: name: fileName, 20: list: list 21: }; 22: $.post("/Home/Commit", data, function (result) { 23: if (!result.success) { 24: alert(result.error); 25: } 26: else { 27: alert("done!"); 28: } 29: }); 30: }); 31: } 32: }); That’s all in the client side. The outline of our logic would be - Calculate the start and end byte index for each chunks based on the block size. - Defined the functions of reading the chunk form file and upload the content to the backend service through ajax. - Execute the functions defined in previous step with “async.js”. - Commit the chunks by invoking the backend service in Windows Azure Storage finally.   Save Chunks as Blocks into Blob Storage In above we finished the client size JavaScript code. It uploaded the file in chunks to the backend service which we are going to implement in this step. We will use ASP.NET MVC as our backend service, and it will receive the chunks, upload into Windows Azure Bob Storage in blocks, then finally commit as one blob. As in the client side we uploaded chunks by invoking the ajax call to the URL "/Home/UploadInFormData", I created a new action under the Index controller and it only accepts HTTP POST request. 1: [HttpPost] 2: public JsonResult UploadInFormData() 3: { 4: var error = string.Empty; 5: try 6: { 7: } 8: catch (Exception e) 9: { 10: error = e.ToString(); 11: } 12:  13: return new JsonResult() 14: { 15: Data = new 16: { 17: success = string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(error), 18: error = error 19: } 20: }; 21: } Then I retrieved the file name, index and the chunk content from the Request.Form object, which was passed from our client side. And then, used the Windows Azure SDK to create a blob container (in this case we will use the container named “test”.) and create a blob reference with the blob name (same as the file name). Then uploaded the chunk as a block of this blob with the index, since in Blob Storage each block must have an index (ID) associated with so that finally we can put all blocks as one blob by specifying their block ID list. 1: [HttpPost] 2: public JsonResult UploadInFormData() 3: { 4: var error = string.Empty; 5: try 6: { 7: var name = Request.Form["name"]; 8: var index = int.Parse(Request.Form["index"]); 9: var file = Request.Files[0]; 10: var id = Convert.ToBase64String(BitConverter.GetBytes(index)); 11:  12: var container = _client.GetContainerReference("test"); 13: container.CreateIfNotExists(); 14: var blob = container.GetBlockBlobReference(name); 15: blob.PutBlock(id, file.InputStream, null); 16: } 17: catch (Exception e) 18: { 19: error = e.ToString(); 20: } 21:  22: return new JsonResult() 23: { 24: Data = new 25: { 26: success = string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(error), 27: error = error 28: } 29: }; 30: } Next, I created another action to commit the blocks into blob once all chunks had been uploaded. Similarly, I retrieved the blob name from the Request.Form. I also retrieved the chunks ID list, which is the block ID list from the Request.Form in a string format, split them as a list, then invoked the BlockBlob.PutBlockList method. After that our blob will be shown in the container and ready to be download. 1: [HttpPost] 2: public JsonResult Commit() 3: { 4: var error = string.Empty; 5: try 6: { 7: var name = Request.Form["name"]; 8: var list = Request.Form["list"]; 9: var ids = list 10: .Split(',') 11: .Where(id => !string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(id)) 12: .Select(id => Convert.ToBase64String(BitConverter.GetBytes(int.Parse(id)))) 13: .ToArray(); 14:  15: var container = _client.GetContainerReference("test"); 16: container.CreateIfNotExists(); 17: var blob = container.GetBlockBlobReference(name); 18: blob.PutBlockList(ids); 19: } 20: catch (Exception e) 21: { 22: error = e.ToString(); 23: } 24:  25: return new JsonResult() 26: { 27: Data = new 28: { 29: success = string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(error), 30: error = error 31: } 32: }; 33: } Now we finished all code we need. The whole process of uploading would be like this below. Below is the full client side JavaScript code. 1: <script type="text/javascript" src="~/Scripts/async.js"></script> 2: <script type="text/javascript"> 3: $(function () { 4: $("#upload_button_blob").click(function () { 5: // assert the browser support html5 6: if (window.File && window.Blob && window.FormData) { 7: alert("Your brwoser is awesome, let's rock!"); 8: } 9: else { 10: alert("Oh man plz update to a modern browser before try is cool stuff out."); 11: return; 12: } 13:  14: // start to upload each files in chunks 15: var files = $("#upload_files")[0].files; 16: for (var i = 0; i < files.length; i++) { 17: var file = files[i]; 18: var fileSize = file.size; 19: var fileName = file.name; 20:  21: // calculate the start and end byte index for each blocks(chunks) 22: // with the index, file name and index list for future using 23: var blockSizeInKB = $("#block_size").val(); 24: var blockSize = blockSizeInKB * 1024; 25: var blocks = []; 26: var offset = 0; 27: var index = 0; 28: var list = ""; 29: while (offset < fileSize) { 30: var start = offset; 31: var end = Math.min(offset + blockSize, fileSize); 32:  33: blocks.push({ 34: name: fileName, 35: index: index, 36: start: start, 37: end: end 38: }); 39: list += index + ","; 40:  41: offset = end; 42: index++; 43: } 44:  45: // define the function array and push all chunk upload operation into this array 46: var putBlocks = []; 47: blocks.forEach(function (block) { 48: putBlocks.push(function (callback) { 49: // load blob based on the start and end index for each chunks 50: var blob = file.slice(block.start, block.end); 51: // put the file name, index and blob into a temporary from 52: var fd = new FormData(); 53: fd.append("name", block.name); 54: fd.append("index", block.index); 55: fd.append("file", blob); 56: // post the form to backend service (asp.net mvc controller action) 57: $.ajax({ 58: url: "/Home/UploadInFormData", 59: data: fd, 60: processData: false, 61: contentType: "multipart/form-data", 62: type: "POST", 63: success: function (result) { 64: if (!result.success) { 65: alert(result.error); 66: } 67: callback(null, block.index); 68: } 69: }); 70: }); 71: }); 72:  73: // invoke the functions one by one 74: // then invoke the commit ajax call to put blocks into blob in azure storage 75: async.series(putBlocks, function (error, result) { 76: var data = { 77: name: fileName, 78: list: list 79: }; 80: $.post("/Home/Commit", data, function (result) { 81: if (!result.success) { 82: alert(result.error); 83: } 84: else { 85: alert("done!"); 86: } 87: }); 88: }); 89: } 90: }); 91: }); 92: </script> And below is the full ASP.NET MVC controller code. 1: public class HomeController : Controller 2: { 3: private CloudStorageAccount _account; 4: private CloudBlobClient _client; 5:  6: public HomeController() 7: : base() 8: { 9: _account = CloudStorageAccount.Parse(CloudConfigurationManager.GetSetting("DataConnectionString")); 10: _client = _account.CreateCloudBlobClient(); 11: } 12:  13: public ActionResult Index() 14: { 15: ViewBag.Message = "Modify this template to jump-start your ASP.NET MVC application."; 16:  17: return View(); 18: } 19:  20: [HttpPost] 21: public JsonResult UploadInFormData() 22: { 23: var error = string.Empty; 24: try 25: { 26: var name = Request.Form["name"]; 27: var index = int.Parse(Request.Form["index"]); 28: var file = Request.Files[0]; 29: var id = Convert.ToBase64String(BitConverter.GetBytes(index)); 30:  31: var container = _client.GetContainerReference("test"); 32: container.CreateIfNotExists(); 33: var blob = container.GetBlockBlobReference(name); 34: blob.PutBlock(id, file.InputStream, null); 35: } 36: catch (Exception e) 37: { 38: error = e.ToString(); 39: } 40:  41: return new JsonResult() 42: { 43: Data = new 44: { 45: success = string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(error), 46: error = error 47: } 48: }; 49: } 50:  51: [HttpPost] 52: public JsonResult Commit() 53: { 54: var error = string.Empty; 55: try 56: { 57: var name = Request.Form["name"]; 58: var list = Request.Form["list"]; 59: var ids = list 60: .Split(',') 61: .Where(id => !string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(id)) 62: .Select(id => Convert.ToBase64String(BitConverter.GetBytes(int.Parse(id)))) 63: .ToArray(); 64:  65: var container = _client.GetContainerReference("test"); 66: container.CreateIfNotExists(); 67: var blob = container.GetBlockBlobReference(name); 68: blob.PutBlockList(ids); 69: } 70: catch (Exception e) 71: { 72: error = e.ToString(); 73: } 74:  75: return new JsonResult() 76: { 77: Data = new 78: { 79: success = string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(error), 80: error = error 81: } 82: }; 83: } 84: } And if we selected a file from the browser we will see our application will upload chunks in the size we specified to the server through ajax call in background, and then commit all chunks in one blob. Then we can find the blob in our Windows Azure Blob Storage.   Optimized by Parallel Upload In previous example we just uploaded our file in chunks. This solved the problem that ASP.NET MVC request content size limitation as well as the Windows Azure load balancer timeout. But it might introduce the performance problem since we uploaded chunks in sequence. In order to improve the upload performance we could modify our client side code a bit to make the upload operation invoked in parallel. The good news is that, “async.js” library provides the parallel execution function. If you remembered the code we invoke the service to upload chunks, it utilized “async.series” which means all functions will be executed in sequence. Now we will change this code to “async.parallel”. This will invoke all functions in parallel. 1: $("#upload_button_blob").click(function () { 2: // assert the browser support html5 3: ... ... 4: // start to upload each files in chunks 5: var files = $("#upload_files")[0].files; 6: for (var i = 0; i < files.length; i++) { 7: var file = files[i]; 8: var fileSize = file.size; 9: var fileName = file.name; 10: // calculate the start and end byte index for each blocks(chunks) 11: // with the index, file name and index list for future using 12: ... ... 13: // define the function array and push all chunk upload operation into this array 14: ... ... 15: // invoke the functions one by one 16: // then invoke the commit ajax call to put blocks into blob in azure storage 17: async.parallel(putBlocks, function (error, result) { 18: var data = { 19: name: fileName, 20: list: list 21: }; 22: $.post("/Home/Commit", data, function (result) { 23: if (!result.success) { 24: alert(result.error); 25: } 26: else { 27: alert("done!"); 28: } 29: }); 30: }); 31: } 32: }); In this way all chunks will be uploaded to the server side at the same time to maximize the bandwidth usage. This should work if the file was not very large and the chunk size was not very small. But for large file this might introduce another problem that too many ajax calls are sent to the server at the same time. So the best solution should be, upload the chunks in parallel with maximum concurrency limitation. The code below specified the concurrency limitation to 4, which means at the most only 4 ajax calls could be invoked at the same time. 1: $("#upload_button_blob").click(function () { 2: // assert the browser support html5 3: ... ... 4: // start to upload each files in chunks 5: var files = $("#upload_files")[0].files; 6: for (var i = 0; i < files.length; i++) { 7: var file = files[i]; 8: var fileSize = file.size; 9: var fileName = file.name; 10: // calculate the start and end byte index for each blocks(chunks) 11: // with the index, file name and index list for future using 12: ... ... 13: // define the function array and push all chunk upload operation into this array 14: ... ... 15: // invoke the functions one by one 16: // then invoke the commit ajax call to put blocks into blob in azure storage 17: async.parallelLimit(putBlocks, 4, function (error, result) { 18: var data = { 19: name: fileName, 20: list: list 21: }; 22: $.post("/Home/Commit", data, function (result) { 23: if (!result.success) { 24: alert(result.error); 25: } 26: else { 27: alert("done!"); 28: } 29: }); 30: }); 31: } 32: });   Summary In this post we discussed how to upload files in chunks to the backend service and then upload them into Windows Azure Blob Storage in blocks. We focused on the frontend side and leverage three new feature introduced in HTML 5 which are - File.slice: Read part of the file by specifying the start and end byte index. - Blob: File-like interface which contains the part of the file content. - FormData: Temporary form element that we can pass the chunk alone with some metadata to the backend service. Then we discussed the performance consideration of chunk uploading. Sequence upload cannot provide maximized upload speed, but the unlimited parallel upload might crash the browser and server if too many chunks. So we finally came up with the solution to upload chunks in parallel with the concurrency limitation. We also demonstrated how to utilize “async.js” JavaScript library to help us control the asynchronize call and the parallel limitation.   Regarding the chunk size and the parallel limitation value there is no “best” value. You need to test vary composition and find out the best one for your particular scenario. It depends on the local bandwidth, client machine cores and the server side (Windows Azure Cloud Service Virtual Machine) cores, memory and bandwidth. Below is one of my performance test result. The client machine was Windows 8 IE 10 with 4 cores. I was using Microsoft Cooperation Network. The web site was hosted on Windows Azure China North data center (in Beijing) with one small web role (1.7GB 1 core CPU, 1.75GB memory with 100Mbps bandwidth). The test cases were - Chunk size: 512KB, 1MB, 2MB, 4MB. - Upload Mode: Sequence, parallel (unlimited), parallel with limit (4 threads, 8 threads). - Chunk Format: base64 string, binaries. - Target file: 100MB. - Each case was tested 3 times. Below is the test result chart. Some thoughts, but not guidance or best practice: - Parallel gets better performance than series. - No significant performance improvement between parallel 4 threads and 8 threads. - Transform with binaries provides better performance than base64. - In all cases, chunk size in 1MB - 2MB gets better performance.   Hope this helps, Shaun All documents and related graphics, codes are provided "AS IS" without warranty of any kind. Copyright © Shaun Ziyan Xu. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons License.

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  • Streamed mp3 only plays for 1 second

    - by angel6
    Hi, I'm using the plaympeg.c (modified) code of smpeg as a media player. I've got ffserver running as a streaming server. I'm a streaming an mp3 file over http. But when I run plaympeg.c, it plays the streamed file only for a second. When I run plaympeg again, it starts off from where it left and plays for 1 second. Does anyone know why this happens an how to fix it? I've tested it out on WMP and it plays the entire file in one go. So, i guess it's not a problem with the streaming or ffserver.conf include include include include /* #ifdef unix */ include include include include include include include define NET_SUPPORT /* General network support */ define HTTP_SUPPORT /* HTTP support */ ifdef NET_SUPPORT include include include include endif include "smpeg.h" ifdef NET_SUPPORT int tcp_open(char * address, int port) { struct sockaddr_in stAddr; struct hostent * host; int sock; struct linger l; memset(&stAddr,0,sizeof(stAddr)); stAddr.sin_family = AF_INET ; stAddr.sin_port = htons(port); if((host = gethostbyname(address)) == NULL) return(0); stAddr.sin_addr = *((struct in_addr *) host-h_addr_list[0]) ; if((sock = socket(AF_INET, SOCK_STREAM, IPPROTO_TCP)) < 0) return(0); l.l_onoff = 1; l.l_linger = 5; if(setsockopt(sock, SOL_SOCKET, SO_LINGER, (char*) &l, sizeof(l)) < 0) return(0); if(connect(sock, (struct sockaddr *) &stAddr, sizeof(stAddr)) < 0) return(0); return(sock); } ifdef HTTP_SUPPORT int http_open(char * arg) { char * host; int port; char * request; int tcp_sock; char http_request[1024]; char c; printf("\nin http_open passed parameter = %s\n",arg); /* Check for URL syntax */ if(strncmp(arg, "http://", strlen("http://"))) return(0); /* Parse URL */ port = 80; host = arg + strlen("http://"); if((request = strchr(host, '/')) == NULL) return(0); request++ = 0; if(strchr(host, ':') != NULL) / port is specified */ { port = atoi(strchr(host, ':') + 1); *strchr(host, ':') = 0; } /* Open a TCP socket */ if(!(tcp_sock = tcp_open(host, port))) { perror("http_open"); return(0); } /* Send HTTP GET request */ sprintf(http_request, "GET /%s HTTP/1.0\r\n" "User-Agent: Mozilla/2.0 (Win95; I)\r\n" "Pragma: no-cache\r\n" "Host: %s\r\n" "Accept: /\r\n" "\r\n", request, host); send(tcp_sock, http_request, strlen(http_request), 0); /* Parse server reply */ do read(tcp_sock, &c, sizeof(char)); while(c != ' '); read(tcp_sock, http_request, 4*sizeof(char)); http_request[4] = 0; if(strcmp(http_request, "200 ")) { fprintf(stderr, "http_open: "); do { read(tcp_sock, &c, sizeof(char)); fprintf(stderr, "%c", c); } while(c != '\r'); fprintf(stderr, "\n"); return(0); } return(tcp_sock); } endif endif void update(SDL_Surface *screen, Sint32 x, Sint32 y, Uint32 w, Uint32 h) { if ( screen-flags & SDL_DOUBLEBUF ) { SDL_Flip(screen); } } /* Flag telling the UI that the movie or song should be skipped */ int done; void next_movie(int sig) { done = 1; } int main(int argc, char *argv[]) { int use_audio, use_video; int fullscreen; int scalesize; int scale_width, scale_height; int loop_play; int i, pause; int volume; Uint32 seek; float skip; int bilinear_filtering; SDL_Surface *screen; SMPEG *mpeg; SMPEG_Info info; char *basefile; SDL_version sdlver; SMPEG_version smpegver; int fd; char buf[32]; int status; printf("\nchecking command line options "); /* Get the command line options */ use_audio = 1; use_video = 1; fullscreen = 0; scalesize = 1; scale_width = 0; scale_height = 0; loop_play = 0; volume = 100; seek = 0; skip = 0; bilinear_filtering = 0; fd = 0; for ( i=1; argv[i] && (argv[i][0] == '-') && (argv[i][1] != 0); ++i ) { if ( strcmp(argv[i], "--fullscreen") == 0 ) { fullscreen = 1; } else if ((strcmp(argv[i], "--seek") == 0)||(strcmp(argv[i], "-S") == 0)) { ++i; if ( argv[i] ) { seek = atol(argv[i]); } } else if ((strcmp(argv[i], "--volume") == 0)||(strcmp(argv[i], "-v") == 0)) { ++i; if (i >= argc) { fprintf(stderr, "Please specify volume when using --volume or -v\n"); return(1); } if ( argv[i] ) { volume = atoi(argv[i]); } if ( ( volume < 0 ) || ( volume 100 ) ) { fprintf(stderr, "Volume must be between 0 and 100\n"); volume = 100; } } else { fprintf(stderr, "Warning: Unknown option: %s\n", argv[i]); } } printf("\nuse video = %d, use audio = %d\n",use_video, use_audio); printf("\ngoing to check input parameters\n"); if defined(linux) || defined(FreeBSD) /* Plaympeg doesn't need a mouse */ putenv("SDL_NOMOUSE=1"); endif /* Play the mpeg files! */ status = 0; for ( ; argv[i]; ++i ) { /* Initialize SDL */ if ( use_video ) { if ((SDL_Init(SDL_INIT_VIDEO) < 0) || !SDL_VideoDriverName(buf, 1)) { fprintf(stderr, "Warning: Couldn't init SDL video: %s\n", SDL_GetError()); fprintf(stderr, "Will ignore video stream\n"); use_video = 0; } printf("\ninitialised video\n"); } if ( use_audio ) { if ((SDL_Init(SDL_INIT_AUDIO) < 0) || !SDL_AudioDriverName(buf, 1)) { fprintf(stderr, "Warning: Couldn't init SDL audio: %s\n", SDL_GetError()); fprintf(stderr, "Will ignore audio stream\n"); use_audio = 0; } } /* Allow Ctrl-C when there's no video output */ signal(SIGINT, next_movie); printf("\nchecking defined supports\n"); /* Create the MPEG stream */ ifdef NET_SUPPORT printf("\ndefined NET_SUPPORT\n"); ifdef HTTP_SUPPORT printf("\ndefined HTTP_SUPPORT\n"); /* Check if source is an http URL */ printf("\nabout to call http_open\n"); printf("\nhere we go\n"); if((fd = http_open(argv[i])) != 0) mpeg = SMPEG_new_descr(fd, &info, use_audio); else endif endif { if(strcmp(argv[i], "-") == 0) /* Use stdin for input */ mpeg = SMPEG_new_descr(0, &info, use_audio); else mpeg = SMPEG_new(argv[i], &info, use_audio); } if ( SMPEG_error(mpeg) ) { fprintf(stderr, "%s: %s\n", argv[i], SMPEG_error(mpeg)); SMPEG_delete(mpeg); status = -1; continue; } SMPEG_enableaudio(mpeg, use_audio); SMPEG_enablevideo(mpeg, use_video); SMPEG_setvolume(mpeg, volume); /* Print information about the video */ basefile = strrchr(argv[i], '/'); if ( basefile ) { ++basefile; } else { basefile = argv[i]; } if ( info.has_audio && info.has_video ) { printf("%s: MPEG system stream (audio/video)\n", basefile); } else if ( info.has_audio ) { printf("%s: MPEG audio stream\n", basefile); } else if ( info.has_video ) { printf("%s: MPEG video stream\n", basefile); } if ( info.has_video ) { printf("\tVideo %dx%d resolution\n", info.width, info.height); } if ( info.has_audio ) { printf("\tAudio %s\n", info.audio_string); } if ( info.total_size ) { printf("\tSize: %d\n", info.total_size); } if ( info.total_time ) { printf("\tTotal time: %f\n", info.total_time); } /* Set up video display if needed */ if ( info.has_video && use_video ) { const SDL_VideoInfo *video_info; Uint32 video_flags; int video_bpp; int width, height; /* Get the "native" video mode */ video_info = SDL_GetVideoInfo(); switch (video_info->vfmt->BitsPerPixel) { case 16: case 24: case 32: video_bpp = video_info->vfmt->BitsPerPixel; break; default: video_bpp = 16; break; } if ( scale_width ) { width = scale_width; } else { width = info.width; } width *= scalesize; if ( scale_height ) { height = scale_height; } else { height = info.height; } height *= scalesize; video_flags = SDL_SWSURFACE; if ( fullscreen ) { video_flags = SDL_FULLSCREEN|SDL_DOUBLEBUF|SDL_HWSURFACE; } video_flags |= SDL_ASYNCBLIT; video_flags |= SDL_RESIZABLE; screen = SDL_SetVideoMode(width, height, video_bpp, video_flags); if ( screen == NULL ) { fprintf(stderr, "Unable to set %dx%d video mode: %s\n", width, height, SDL_GetError()); continue; } SDL_WM_SetCaption(argv[i], "plaympeg"); if ( screen->flags & SDL_FULLSCREEN ) { SDL_ShowCursor(0); } SMPEG_setdisplay(mpeg, screen, NULL, update); SMPEG_scaleXY(mpeg, screen->w, screen->h); } else { SDL_QuitSubSystem(SDL_INIT_VIDEO); } /* Set any special playback parameters */ if ( loop_play ) { SMPEG_loop(mpeg, 1); } /* Seek starting position */ if(seek) SMPEG_seek(mpeg, seek); /* Skip seconds to starting position */ if(skip) SMPEG_skip(mpeg, skip); /* Play it, and wait for playback to complete */ SMPEG_play(mpeg); done = 0; pause = 0; while ( ! done && ( pause || (SMPEG_status(mpeg) == SMPEG_PLAYING) ) ) { SDL_Event event; while ( use_video && SDL_PollEvent(&event) ) { switch (event.type) { case SDL_VIDEORESIZE: { SDL_Surface *old_screen = screen; SMPEG_pause(mpeg); screen = SDL_SetVideoMode(event.resize.w, event.resize.h, screen->format->BitsPerPixel, screen->flags); if ( old_screen != screen ) { SMPEG_setdisplay(mpeg, screen, NULL, update); } SMPEG_scaleXY(mpeg, screen-w, screen-h); SMPEG_pause(mpeg); } break; case SDL_KEYDOWN: if ( (event.key.keysym.sym == SDLK_ESCAPE) || (event.key.keysym.sym == SDLK_q) ) { // Quit done = 1; } else if ( event.key.keysym.sym == SDLK_RETURN ) { // toggle fullscreen if ( event.key.keysym.mod & KMOD_ALT ) { SDL_WM_ToggleFullScreen(screen); fullscreen = (screen-flags & SDL_FULLSCREEN); SDL_ShowCursor(!fullscreen); } } else if ( event.key.keysym.sym == SDLK_UP ) { // Volume up if ( volume < 100 ) { if ( event.key.keysym.mod & KMOD_SHIFT ) { // 10+ volume += 10; } else if ( event.key.keysym.mod & KMOD_CTRL ) { // 100+ volume = 100; } else { // 1+ volume++; } if ( volume 100 ) volume = 100; SMPEG_setvolume(mpeg, volume); } } else if ( event.key.keysym.sym == SDLK_DOWN ) { // Volume down if ( volume 0 ) { if ( event.key.keysym.mod & KMOD_SHIFT ) { volume -= 10; } else if ( event.key.keysym.mod & KMOD_CTRL ) { volume = 0; } else { volume--; } if ( volume < 0 ) volume = 0; SMPEG_setvolume(mpeg, volume); } } else if ( event.key.keysym.sym == SDLK_PAGEUP ) { // Full volume volume = 100; SMPEG_setvolume(mpeg, volume); } else if ( event.key.keysym.sym == SDLK_PAGEDOWN ) { // Volume off volume = 0; SMPEG_setvolume(mpeg, volume); } else if ( event.key.keysym.sym == SDLK_SPACE ) { // Toggle play / pause if ( SMPEG_status(mpeg) == SMPEG_PLAYING ) { SMPEG_pause(mpeg); pause = 1; } else { SMPEG_play(mpeg); pause = 0; } } else if ( event.key.keysym.sym == SDLK_RIGHT ) { // Forward if ( event.key.keysym.mod & KMOD_SHIFT ) { SMPEG_skip(mpeg, 100); } else if ( event.key.keysym.mod & KMOD_CTRL ) { SMPEG_skip(mpeg, 50); } else { SMPEG_skip(mpeg, 5); } } else if ( event.key.keysym.sym == SDLK_LEFT ) { // Reverse if ( event.key.keysym.mod & KMOD_SHIFT ) { } else if ( event.key.keysym.mod & KMOD_CTRL ) { } else { } } else if ( event.key.keysym.sym == SDLK_KP_MINUS ) { // Scale minus if ( scalesize > 1 ) { scalesize--; } } else if ( event.key.keysym.sym == SDLK_KP_PLUS ) { // Scale plus scalesize++; } else if ( event.key.keysym.sym == SDLK_f ) { // Toggle filtering on/off if ( bilinear_filtering ) { SMPEG_Filter *filter = SMPEGfilter_null(); filter = SMPEG_filter( mpeg, filter ); filter-destroy(filter); bilinear_filtering = 0; } else { SMPEG_Filter *filter = SMPEGfilter_bilinear(); filter = SMPEG_filter( mpeg, filter ); filter-destroy(filter); bilinear_filtering = 1; } } break; case SDL_QUIT: done = 1; break; default: break; } } SDL_Delay(1000/2); } SMPEG_delete(mpeg); } SDL_Quit(); if defined(HTTP_SUPPORT) if(fd) close(fd); endif return(status); }

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  • Windows Phone 7 development: Using isolated storage

    - by DigiMortal
    In my previous posting about Windows Phone 7 development I showed how to use WebBrowser control in Windows Phone 7. In this posting I make some other improvements to my blog reader application and I will show you how to use isolated storage to store information to phone. Why isolated storage? Isolated storage is place where your application can save its data and settings. The image on right (that I stole from MSDN library) shows you how application data store is organized. You have no other options to keep your files besides isolated storage because Windows Phone 7 does not allow you to save data directly to other file system locations. From MSDN: “Isolated storage enables managed applications to create and maintain local storage. The mobile architecture is similar to the Silverlight-based applications on Windows. All I/O operations are restricted to isolated storage and do not have direct access to the underlying operating system file system. Ultimately, this helps to provide security and prevents unauthorized access and data corruption.” Saving files from web to isolated storage I updated my RSS-reader so it reads RSS from web only if there in no local file with RSS. User can update RSS-file by clicking a button. Also file is created when application starts and there is no RSS-file. Why I am doing this? I want my application to be able to work also offline. As my code needs some more refactoring I provide it with some next postings about Windows Phone 7. If you want it sooner then please leave me a comment here. Here is the code for my RSS-downloader that downloads RSS-feed and saves it to isolated storage file calles rss.xml. public class RssDownloader {     private string _url;     private string _fileName;       public delegate void DownloadCompleteDelegate();     public event DownloadCompleteDelegate DownloadComplete;       public RssDownloader(string url, string fileName)     {         _url = url;         _fileName = fileName;     }       public void Download()     {         var request = (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create(_url);         var result = (IAsyncResult)request.BeginGetResponse(ResponseCallback, request);            }       private void ResponseCallback(IAsyncResult result)     {         var request = (HttpWebRequest)result.AsyncState;         var response = request.EndGetResponse(result);           using(var stream = response.GetResponseStream())         using(var reader = new StreamReader(stream))         using(var appStorage = IsolatedStorageFile.GetUserStoreForApplication())         using(var file = appStorage.OpenFile("rss.xml", FileMode.OpenOrCreate))         using(var writer = new StreamWriter(file))         {             writer.Write(reader.ReadToEnd());         }           if (DownloadComplete != null)             DownloadComplete();     } } Of course I modified RSS-source for my application to use rss.xml file from isolated storage. As isolated storage files also base on streams we can use them everywhere where streams are expected. Reading isolated storage files As isolated storage files are opened as streams you can read them like usual files in your usual applications. The next code fragment shows you how to open file from isolated storage and how to read it using XmlReader. Previously I used response stream in same place. using(var appStorage = IsolatedStorageFile.GetUserStoreForApplication()) using(var file = appStorage.OpenFile("rss.xml", FileMode.Open)) {     var reader = XmlReader.Create(file);                      // more code } As you can see there is nothing complex. If you have worked with System.IO namespace objects then you will find isolated storage classes and methods to be very similar to these. Also mention that application storage and isolated storage files must be disposed after you are not using them anymore.

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  • 4 Ways Your Brand Can Jump From the Edge of Space

    - by Mike Stiles
    Can your brand’s social media content captivate the world and make it hold its collective breath? Can you put something on the screen that’s so compelling that your audience can’t look away? Will they want to make sure their friends see it so they can talk about it? If not, you’re probably not with Red Bull. I was impressed with Red Bull’s approach to social content even before Felix Baumgartner’s stunning skydive from the edge of space. And then they did this. According to Visible Measures, videos of the jump scored 50 million views in 4 days. 1,700 clips were generated from both official and organic sources. The live stream was the most watched YouTube Stream of all time (8 million concurrent viewers). The 2nd most watched live stream was…Felix’ first attempt Oct. 9. Are you ready to compete with that? I ask that question because some brands are still out there tying themselves up in knots about whether or not they should tweet. The public’s time and attention are scarce commodities, commodities they value greatly. The competition amongst brands for that time and attention is intense and going up like Felix’s capsule. If you still view your press releases as “content,” you won’t even be counted as being among the competition. Here are 5 lessons learned from Red Bull’s big leap: 1. They have a total understanding of their target market and audience. Not only do they have an understanding of it, they do something about it. They act on it. They fill the majority of their thoughts with what the audience wants. They hunger for wild applause from that audience. They want to do things that embrace the audience’s lifestyle and immerse in it so the target will identify the brand as “one of them.” Takeaway: BE your target market. 2. They deliver content that strikes the audience right where they emotionally live. If you want your content to have impact, you have to make your audience’s heart race, or make them tear up, or make them laugh. Label them “data points” all you want, but humans are emotional creatures. No message connects that’s not carried in on an emotion. Takeaway: You’re on the inside. If your content doesn’t make you say “wow,” it’s unlikely it will register with fans. 3. They put aside old school marketing and don’t let their content be degraded into a commercial. Their execs seem to understand the value in keeping a lid on the hard sell. So many brands just can’t bring themselves to disconnect advertising and social content. The result is, otherwise decent content gets contaminated with a desperation the viewer can smell a mile away. Think the Baumgartner skydive didn’t do Red Bull any good since he wasn’t drinking one on the way down while singing a jingle? Analysis company Taykey discovered that at the peak of the skydive buzz, about 1% of all online conversation was about the jump. Mentions of Red Bull constituted 1/3 of 1% of all Internet activity. Views of other Red Bull videos also shot up. Takeaway: Chill out with the ads. Your brand will get full credit for entertaining/informing fans in a relevant way, provided you do it. 4. They don’t hesitate to ask, “What can we do next”? Most corporate cultures are a virtual training facility for “we can’t do that.” Few are encouraged to innovate or think big, if think at all. Thinking big involves faith, and work. It means freedom and letting employees run a little wild with their ideas. There will always be the opportunity to let fear of everything that moves creep in and kill grand visions dead in their tracks. Experimenting must be allowed. Failure must be allowed. Red Bull didn’t think big. They thought mega. They tried to outdo themselves. Felix could have gone ahead and jumped halfway up, thinking, “This is still relatively high up. Good enough.” But that wouldn’t have left us breathless. Takeaway: Go for it. Jump. In putting up social properties and gathering fans of your brand, you’ve basically invited people to a party. A good host doesn’t just set out warm beer and stale chips because that’s inexpensive and easy. Be on the lookout for ways to make your guests walk away saying, “That was epic.”

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  • Coding With Windows Azure IaaS

    - by Hisham El-bereky
    This post will focus on some advanced programming topics concerned with IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) which provided as windows azure virtual machine (with its related resources like virtual disk and virtual network), you know that windows azure started as PaaS cloud platform but regarding to some business cases which need to have full control over their virtual machine, so windows azure directed toward providing IaaS. Sometimes you will need to manage your cloud IaaS through code may be for these reasons: Working on hyper-cloud system by providing bursting connector to windows azure virtual machines Providing multi-tenant system which consume windows azure virtual machine Automated process on your on-premises or cloud service which need to utilize some virtual resources We are going to implement the following basic operation using C# code: List images Create virtual machine List virtual machines Restart virtual machine Delete virtual machine Before going to implement the above operations we need to prepare client side and windows azure subscription to communicate correctly by providing management certificate (x.509 v3 certificates) which permit client access to resources in your Windows Azure subscription, whilst requests made using the Windows Azure Service Management REST API require authentication against a certificate that you provide to Windows Azure More info about setting management certificate located here. And to install .cer on other client machine you will need the .pfx file, or if not exist by exporting .cer as .pfx Note: You will need to install .net 4.5 on your machine to try the code So let start This post built on the post sent by Michael Washam "Advanced Windows Azure IaaS – Demo Code", so I'm here to declare some points and to add new operation which is not exist in Michael's demo The basic C# class object used here as client to azure REST API for IaaS service is HttpClient (Provides a base class for sending HTTP requests and receiving HTTP responses from a resource identified by a URI) this object must be initialized with the required data like certificate, headers and content if required. Also I'd like to refer here that the code is based on using Asynchronous programming with calls to azure which enhance the performance and gives us the ability to work with complex calls which depends on more than one sub-call to achieve some operation The following code explain how to get certificate and initializing HttpClient object with required data like headers and content HttpClient GetHttpClient() { X509Store certificateStore = null; X509Certificate2 certificate = null; try { certificateStore = new X509Store(StoreName.My, StoreLocation.CurrentUser); certificateStore.Open(OpenFlags.ReadOnly); string thumbprint = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["CertThumbprint"]; var certificates = certificateStore.Certificates.Find(X509FindType.FindByThumbprint, thumbprint, false); if (certificates.Count > 0) { certificate = certificates[0]; } } finally { if (certificateStore != null) certificateStore.Close(); }   WebRequestHandler handler = new WebRequestHandler(); if (certificate!= null) { handler.ClientCertificates.Add(certificate); HttpClient httpClient = new HttpClient(handler); //And to set required headers lik x-ms-version httpClient.DefaultRequestHeaders.Add("x-ms-version", "2012-03-01"); httpClient.DefaultRequestHeaders.Accept.Add(new MediaTypeWithQualityHeaderValue("application/xml")); return httpClient; } return null; }  Let us keep the object httpClient as reference object used to call windows azure REST API IaaS service. For each request operation we need to define: Request URI HTTP Method Headers Content body (1) List images The List OS Images operation retrieves a list of the OS images from the image repository Request URI https://management.core.windows.net/<subscription-id>/services/images] Replace <subscription-id> with your windows Id HTTP Method GET (HTTP 1.1) Headers x-ms-version: 2012-03-01 Body None.  C# Code List<String> imageList = new List<String>(); //replace _subscriptionid with your WA subscription String uri = String.Format("https://management.core.windows.net/{0}/services/images", _subscriptionid);  HttpClient http = GetHttpClient(); Stream responseStream = await http.GetStreamAsync(uri);  if (responseStream != null) {      XDocument xml = XDocument.Load(responseStream);      var images = xml.Root.Descendants(ns + "OSImage").Where(i => i.Element(ns + "OS").Value == "Windows");      foreach (var image in images)      {      string img = image.Element(ns + "Name").Value;      imageList.Add(img);      } } More information about the REST call (Request/Response) located here on this link http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsazure/jj157191.aspx (2) Create Virtual Machine Creating virtual machine required service and deployment to be created first, so creating VM should be done through three steps incase hosted service and deployment is not created yet Create hosted service, a container for service deployments in Windows Azure. A subscription may have zero or more hosted services Create deployment, a service that is running on Windows Azure. A deployment may be running in either the staging or production deployment environment. It may be managed either by referencing its deployment ID, or by referencing the deployment environment in which it's running. Create virtual machine, the previous two steps info required here in this step I suggest here to use the same name for service, deployment and service to make it easy to manage virtual machines Note: A name for the hosted service that is unique within Windows Azure. This name is the DNS prefix name and can be used to access the hosted service. For example: http://ServiceName.cloudapp.net// 2.1 Create service Request URI https://management.core.windows.net/<subscription-id>/services/hostedservices HTTP Method POST (HTTP 1.1) Header x-ms-version: 2012-03-01 Content-Type: application/xml Body More details about request body (and other information) are located here http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsazure/gg441304.aspx C# code The following method show how to create hosted service async public Task<String> NewAzureCloudService(String ServiceName, String Location, String AffinityGroup, String subscriptionid) { String requestID = String.Empty;   String uri = String.Format("https://management.core.windows.net/{0}/services/hostedservices", subscriptionid); HttpClient http = GetHttpClient();   System.Text.ASCIIEncoding ae = new System.Text.ASCIIEncoding(); byte[] svcNameBytes = ae.GetBytes(ServiceName);   String locationEl = String.Empty; String locationVal = String.Empty;   if (String.IsNullOrEmpty(Location) == false) { locationEl = "Location"; locationVal = Location; } else { locationEl = "AffinityGroup"; locationVal = AffinityGroup; }   XElement srcTree = new XElement("CreateHostedService", new XAttribute(XNamespace.Xmlns + "i", ns1), new XElement("ServiceName", ServiceName), new XElement("Label", Convert.ToBase64String(svcNameBytes)), new XElement(locationEl, locationVal) ); ApplyNamespace(srcTree, ns);   XDocument CSXML = new XDocument(srcTree); HttpContent content = new StringContent(CSXML.ToString()); content.Headers.ContentType = new System.Net.Http.Headers.MediaTypeHeaderValue("application/xml");   HttpResponseMessage responseMsg = await http.PostAsync(uri, content); if (responseMsg != null) { requestID = responseMsg.Headers.GetValues("x-ms-request-id").FirstOrDefault(); } return requestID; } 2.2 Create Deployment Request URI https://management.core.windows.net/<subscription-id>/services/hostedservices/<service-name>/deploymentslots/<deployment-slot-name> <deployment-slot-name> with staging or production, depending on where you wish to deploy your service package <service-name> provided as input from the previous step HTTP Method POST (HTTP 1.1) Header x-ms-version: 2012-03-01 Content-Type: application/xml Body More details about request body (and other information) are located here http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsazure/ee460813.aspx C# code The following method show how to create hosted service deployment async public Task<String> NewAzureVMDeployment(String ServiceName, String VMName, String VNETName, XDocument VMXML, XDocument DNSXML) { String requestID = String.Empty;     String uri = String.Format("https://management.core.windows.net/{0}/services/hostedservices/{1}/deployments", _subscriptionid, ServiceName); HttpClient http = GetHttpClient(); XElement srcTree = new XElement("Deployment", new XAttribute(XNamespace.Xmlns + "i", ns1), new XElement("Name", ServiceName), new XElement("DeploymentSlot", "Production"), new XElement("Label", ServiceName), new XElement("RoleList", null) );   if (String.IsNullOrEmpty(VNETName) == false) { srcTree.Add(new XElement("VirtualNetworkName", VNETName)); }   if(DNSXML != null) { srcTree.Add(new XElement("DNS", new XElement("DNSServers", DNSXML))); }   XDocument deploymentXML = new XDocument(srcTree); ApplyNamespace(srcTree, ns);   deploymentXML.Descendants(ns + "RoleList").FirstOrDefault().Add(VMXML.Root);     String fixedXML = deploymentXML.ToString().Replace(" xmlns=\"\"", ""); HttpContent content = new StringContent(fixedXML); content.Headers.ContentType = new System.Net.Http.Headers.MediaTypeHeaderValue("application/xml");   HttpResponseMessage responseMsg = await http.PostAsync(uri, content); if (responseMsg != null) { requestID = responseMsg.Headers.GetValues("x-ms-request-id").FirstOrDefault(); }   return requestID; } 2.3 Create Virtual Machine Request URI https://management.core.windows.net/<subscription-id>/services/hostedservices/<cloudservice-name>/deployments/<deployment-name>/roles <cloudservice-name> and <deployment-name> are provided as input from the previous steps Http Method POST (HTTP 1.1) Header x-ms-version: 2012-03-01 Content-Type: application/xml Body More details about request body (and other information) located here http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsazure/jj157186.aspx C# code async public Task<String> NewAzureVM(String ServiceName, String VMName, XDocument VMXML) { String requestID = String.Empty;   String deployment = await GetAzureDeploymentName(ServiceName);   String uri = String.Format("https://management.core.windows.net/{0}/services/hostedservices/{1}/deployments/{2}/roles", _subscriptionid, ServiceName, deployment);   HttpClient http = GetHttpClient(); HttpContent content = new StringContent(VMXML.ToString()); content.Headers.ContentType = new System.Net.Http.Headers.MediaTypeHeaderValue("application/xml"); HttpResponseMessage responseMsg = await http.PostAsync(uri, content); if (responseMsg != null) { requestID = responseMsg.Headers.GetValues("x-ms-request-id").FirstOrDefault(); } return requestID; } (3) List Virtual Machines To list virtual machine hosted on windows azure subscription we have to loop over all hosted services to get its hosted virtual machines To do that we need to execute the following operations: listing hosted services listing hosted service Virtual machine 3.1 Listing Hosted Services Request URI https://management.core.windows.net/<subscription-id>/services/hostedservices HTTP Method GET (HTTP 1.1) Headers x-ms-version: 2012-03-01 Body None. More info about this HTTP request located here on this link http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsazure/ee460781.aspx C# Code async private Task<List<XDocument>> GetAzureServices(String subscriptionid) { String uri = String.Format("https://management.core.windows.net/{0}/services/hostedservices ", subscriptionid); List<XDocument> services = new List<XDocument>();   HttpClient http = GetHttpClient();   Stream responseStream = await http.GetStreamAsync(uri);   if (responseStream != null) { XDocument xml = XDocument.Load(responseStream); var svcs = xml.Root.Descendants(ns + "HostedService"); foreach (XElement r in svcs) { XDocument vm = new XDocument(r); services.Add(vm); } }   return services; }  3.2 Listing Hosted Service Virtual Machines Request URI https://management.core.windows.net/<subscription-id>/services/hostedservices/<service-name>/deployments/<deployment-name>/roles/<role-name> HTTP Method GET (HTTP 1.1) Headers x-ms-version: 2012-03-01 Body None. More info about this HTTP request here http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsazure/jj157193.aspx C# Code async public Task<XDocument> GetAzureVM(String ServiceName, String VMName, String subscriptionid) { String deployment = await GetAzureDeploymentName(ServiceName); XDocument vmXML = new XDocument();   String uri = String.Format("https://management.core.windows.net/{0}/services/hostedservices/{1}/deployments/{2}/roles/{3}", subscriptionid, ServiceName, deployment, VMName);   HttpClient http = GetHttpClient(); Stream responseStream = await http.GetStreamAsync(uri); if (responseStream != null) { vmXML = XDocument.Load(responseStream); }   return vmXML; }  So the final method which can be used to list all virtual machines is: async public Task<XDocument> GetAzureVMs() { List<XDocument> services = await GetAzureServices(); XDocument vms = new XDocument(); vms.Add(new XElement("VirtualMachines")); ApplyNamespace(vms.Root, ns); foreach (var svc in services) { string ServiceName = svc.Root.Element(ns + "ServiceName").Value;   String uri = String.Format("https://management.core.windows.net/{0}/services/hostedservices/{1}/deploymentslots/{2}", _subscriptionid, ServiceName, "Production");   try { HttpClient http = GetHttpClient(); Stream responseStream = await http.GetStreamAsync(uri);   if (responseStream != null) { XDocument xml = XDocument.Load(responseStream); var roles = xml.Root.Descendants(ns + "RoleInstance"); foreach (XElement r in roles) { XElement svcnameel = new XElement("ServiceName", ServiceName); ApplyNamespace(svcnameel, ns); r.Add(svcnameel); // not part of the roleinstance vms.Root.Add(r); } } } catch (HttpRequestException http) { // no vms with cloud service } } return vms; }  (4) Restart Virtual Machine Request URI https://management.core.windows.net/<subscription-id>/services/hostedservices/<service-name>/deployments/<deployment-name>/roles/<role-name>/Operations HTTP Method POST (HTTP 1.1) Headers x-ms-version: 2012-03-01 Content-Type: application/xml Body <RestartRoleOperation xmlns:i="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"> <OperationType>RestartRoleOperation</OperationType> </RestartRoleOperation>  More details about this http request here http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsazure/jj157197.aspx  C# Code async public Task<String> RebootVM(String ServiceName, String RoleName) { String requestID = String.Empty;   String deployment = await GetAzureDeploymentName(ServiceName); String uri = String.Format("https://management.core.windows.net/{0}/services/hostedservices/{1}/deployments/{2}/roleInstances/{3}/Operations", _subscriptionid, ServiceName, deployment, RoleName);   HttpClient http = GetHttpClient();   XElement srcTree = new XElement("RestartRoleOperation", new XAttribute(XNamespace.Xmlns + "i", ns1), new XElement("OperationType", "RestartRoleOperation") ); ApplyNamespace(srcTree, ns);   XDocument CSXML = new XDocument(srcTree); HttpContent content = new StringContent(CSXML.ToString()); content.Headers.ContentType = new System.Net.Http.Headers.MediaTypeHeaderValue("application/xml");   HttpResponseMessage responseMsg = await http.PostAsync(uri, content); if (responseMsg != null) { requestID = responseMsg.Headers.GetValues("x-ms-request-id").FirstOrDefault(); } return requestID; }  (5) Delete Virtual Machine You can delete your hosted virtual machine by deleting its deployment, but I prefer to delete its hosted service also, so you can easily manage your virtual machines from code 5.1 Delete Deployment Request URI https://management.core.windows.net/< subscription-id >/services/hostedservices/< service-name >/deployments/<Deployment-Name> HTTP Method DELETE (HTTP 1.1) Headers x-ms-version: 2012-03-01 Body None. C# code async public Task<HttpResponseMessage> DeleteDeployment( string deploymentName) { string xml = string.Empty; String uri = String.Format("https://management.core.windows.net/{0}/services/hostedservices/{1}/deployments/{2}", _subscriptionid, deploymentName, deploymentName); HttpClient http = GetHttpClient(); HttpResponseMessage responseMessage = await http.DeleteAsync(uri); return responseMessage; }  5.2 Delete Hosted Service Request URI https://management.core.windows.net/<subscription-id>/services/hostedservices/<service-name> HTTP Method DELETE (HTTP 1.1) Headers x-ms-version: 2012-03-01 Body None. C# code async public Task<HttpResponseMessage> DeleteService(string serviceName) { string xml = string.Empty; String uri = String.Format("https://management.core.windows.net/{0}/services/hostedservices/{1}", _subscriptionid, serviceName); Log.Info("Windows Azure URI (http DELETE verb): " + uri, typeof(VMManager)); HttpClient http = GetHttpClient(); HttpResponseMessage responseMessage = await http.DeleteAsync(uri); return responseMessage; }  And the following is the method which can used to delete both of deployment and service async public Task<string> DeleteVM(string vmName) { string responseString = string.Empty;   // as a convention here in this post, a unified name used for service, deployment and VM instance to make it easy to manage VMs HttpClient http = GetHttpClient(); HttpResponseMessage responseMessage = await DeleteDeployment(vmName);   if (responseMessage != null) {   string requestID = responseMessage.Headers.GetValues("x-ms-request-id").FirstOrDefault(); OperationResult result = await PollGetOperationStatus(requestID, 5, 120); if (result.Status == OperationStatus.Succeeded) { responseString = result.Message; HttpResponseMessage sResponseMessage = await DeleteService(vmName); if (sResponseMessage != null) { OperationResult sResult = await PollGetOperationStatus(requestID, 5, 120); responseString += sResult.Message; } } else { responseString = result.Message; } } return responseString; }  Note: This article is subject to be updated Hisham  References Advanced Windows Azure IaaS – Demo Code Windows Azure Service Management REST API Reference Introduction to the Azure Platform Representational state transfer Asynchronous Programming with Async and Await (C# and Visual Basic) HttpClient Class

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  • Creating ASP.NET MVC Negotiated Content Results

    - by Rick Strahl
    In a recent ASP.NET MVC application I’m involved with, we had a late in the process request to handle Content Negotiation: Returning output based on the HTTP Accept header of the incoming HTTP request. This is standard behavior in ASP.NET Web API but ASP.NET MVC doesn’t support this functionality directly out of the box. Another reason this came up in discussion is last week’s announcements of ASP.NET vNext, which seems to indicate that ASP.NET Web API is not going to be ported to the cloud version of vNext, but rather be replaced by a combined version of MVC and Web API. While it’s not clear what new API features will show up in this new framework, it’s pretty clear that the ASP.NET MVC style syntax will be the new standard for all the new combined HTTP processing framework. Why negotiated Content? Content negotiation is one of the key features of Web API even though it’s such a relatively simple thing. But it’s also something that’s missing in MVC and once you get used to automatically having your content returned based on Accept headers it’s hard to go back to manually having to create separate methods for different output types as you’ve had to with Microsoft server technologies all along (yes, yes I know other frameworks – including my own – have done this for years but for in the box features this is relatively new from Web API). As a quick review,  Accept Header content negotiation works off the request’s HTTP Accept header:POST http://localhost/mydailydosha/Editable/NegotiateContent HTTP/1.1 Content-Type: application/json Accept: application/json Host: localhost Content-Length: 76 Pragma: no-cache { ElementId: "header", PageName: "TestPage", Text: "This is a nice header" } If I make this request I would expect to get back a JSON result based on my application/json Accept header. To request XML  I‘d just change the accept header:Accept: text/xml and now I’d expect the response to come back as XML. Now this only works with media types that the server can process. In my case here I need to handle JSON, XML, HTML (using Views) and Plain Text. HTML results might need more than just a data return – you also probably need to specify a View to render the data into either by specifying the view explicitly or by using some sort of convention that can automatically locate a view to match. Today ASP.NET MVC doesn’t support this sort of automatic content switching out of the box. Unfortunately, in my application scenario we have an application that started out primarily with an AJAX backend that was implemented with JSON only. So there are lots of JSON results like this:[Route("Customers")] public ActionResult GetCustomers() { return Json(repo.GetCustomers(),JsonRequestBehavior.AllowGet); } These work fine, but they are of course JSON specific. Then a couple of weeks ago, a requirement came in that an old desktop application needs to also consume this API and it has to use XML to do it because there’s no JSON parser available for it. Ooops – stuck with JSON in this case. While it would have been easy to add XML specific methods I figured it’s easier to add basic content negotiation. And that’s what I show in this post. Missteps – IResultFilter, IActionFilter My first attempt at this was to use IResultFilter or IActionFilter which look like they would be ideal to modify result content after it’s been generated using OnResultExecuted() or OnActionExecuted(). Filters are great because they can look globally at all controller methods or individual methods that are marked up with the Filter’s attribute. But it turns out these filters don’t work for raw POCO result values from Action methods. What we wanted to do for API calls is get back to using plain .NET types as results rather than result actions. That is  you write a method that doesn’t return an ActionResult, but a standard .NET type like this:public Customer UpdateCustomer(Customer cust) { … do stuff to customer :-) return cust; } Unfortunately both OnResultExecuted and OnActionExecuted receive an MVC ContentResult instance from the POCO object. MVC basically takes any non-ActionResult return value and turns it into a ContentResult by converting the value using .ToString(). Ugh. The ContentResult itself doesn’t contain the original value, which is lost AFAIK with no way to retrieve it. So there’s no way to access the raw customer object in the example above. Bummer. Creating a NegotiatedResult This leaves mucking around with custom ActionResults. ActionResults are MVC’s standard way to return action method results – you basically specify that you would like to render your result in a specific format. Common ActionResults are ViewResults (ie. View(vn,model)), JsonResult, RedirectResult etc. They work and are fairly effective and work fairly well for testing as well as it’s the ‘standard’ interface to return results from actions. The problem with the this is mainly that you’re explicitly saying that you want a specific result output type. This works well for many things, but sometimes you do want your result to be negotiated. My first crack at this solution here is to create a simple ActionResult subclass that looks at the Accept header and based on that writes the output. I need to support JSON and XML content and HTML as well as text – so effectively 4 media types: application/json, text/xml, text/html and text/plain. Everything else is passed through as ContentResult – which effecively returns whatever .ToString() returns. Here’s what the NegotiatedResult usage looks like:public ActionResult GetCustomers() { return new NegotiatedResult(repo.GetCustomers()); } public ActionResult GetCustomer(int id) { return new NegotiatedResult("Show", repo.GetCustomer(id)); } There are two overloads of this method – one that returns just the raw result value and a second version that accepts an optional view name. The second version returns the Razor view specified only if text/html is requested – otherwise the raw data is returned. This is useful in applications where you have an HTML front end that can also double as an API interface endpoint that’s using the same model data you send to the View. For the application I mentioned above this was another actual use-case we needed to address so this was a welcome side effect of creating a custom ActionResult. There’s also an extension method that directly attaches a Negotiated() method to the controller using the same syntax:public ActionResult GetCustomers() { return this.Negotiated(repo.GetCustomers()); } public ActionResult GetCustomer(int id) { return this.Negotiated("Show",repo.GetCustomer(id)); } Using either of these mechanisms now allows you to return JSON, XML, HTML or plain text results depending on the Accept header sent. Send application/json you get just the Customer JSON data. Ditto for text/xml and XML data. Pass text/html for the Accept header and the "Show.cshtml" Razor view is rendered passing the result model data producing final HTML output. While this isn’t as clean as passing just POCO objects back as I had intended originally, this approach fits better with how MVC action methods are intended to be used and we get the bonus of being able to specify a View to render (optionally) for HTML. How does it work An ActionResult implementation is pretty straightforward. You inherit from ActionResult and implement the ExecuteResult method to send your output to the ASP.NET output stream. ActionFilters are an easy way to effectively do post processing on ASP.NET MVC controller actions just before the content is sent to the output stream, assuming your specific action result was used. Here’s the full code to the NegotiatedResult class (you can also check it out on GitHub):/// <summary> /// Returns a content negotiated result based on the Accept header. /// Minimal implementation that works with JSON and XML content, /// can also optionally return a view with HTML. /// </summary> /// <example> /// // model data only /// public ActionResult GetCustomers() /// { /// return new NegotiatedResult(repo.Customers.OrderBy( c=> c.Company) ) /// } /// // optional view for HTML /// public ActionResult GetCustomers() /// { /// return new NegotiatedResult("List", repo.Customers.OrderBy( c=> c.Company) ) /// } /// </example> public class NegotiatedResult : ActionResult { /// <summary> /// Data stored to be 'serialized'. Public /// so it's potentially accessible in filters. /// </summary> public object Data { get; set; } /// <summary> /// Optional name of the HTML view to be rendered /// for HTML responses /// </summary> public string ViewName { get; set; } public static bool FormatOutput { get; set; } static NegotiatedResult() { FormatOutput = HttpContext.Current.IsDebuggingEnabled; } /// <summary> /// Pass in data to serialize /// </summary> /// <param name="data">Data to serialize</param> public NegotiatedResult(object data) { Data = data; } /// <summary> /// Pass in data and an optional view for HTML views /// </summary> /// <param name="data"></param> /// <param name="viewName"></param> public NegotiatedResult(string viewName, object data) { Data = data; ViewName = viewName; } public override void ExecuteResult(ControllerContext context) { if (context == null) throw new ArgumentNullException("context"); HttpResponseBase response = context.HttpContext.Response; HttpRequestBase request = context.HttpContext.Request; // Look for specific content types if (request.AcceptTypes.Contains("text/html")) { response.ContentType = "text/html"; if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(ViewName)) { var viewData = context.Controller.ViewData; viewData.Model = Data; var viewResult = new ViewResult { ViewName = ViewName, MasterName = null, ViewData = viewData, TempData = context.Controller.TempData, ViewEngineCollection = ((Controller)context.Controller).ViewEngineCollection }; viewResult.ExecuteResult(context.Controller.ControllerContext); } else response.Write(Data); } else if (request.AcceptTypes.Contains("text/plain")) { response.ContentType = "text/plain"; response.Write(Data); } else if (request.AcceptTypes.Contains("application/json")) { using (JsonTextWriter writer = new JsonTextWriter(response.Output)) { var settings = new JsonSerializerSettings(); if (FormatOutput) settings.Formatting = Newtonsoft.Json.Formatting.Indented; JsonSerializer serializer = JsonSerializer.Create(settings); serializer.Serialize(writer, Data); writer.Flush(); } } else if (request.AcceptTypes.Contains("text/xml")) { response.ContentType = "text/xml"; if (Data != null) { using (var writer = new XmlTextWriter(response.OutputStream, new UTF8Encoding())) { if (FormatOutput) writer.Formatting = System.Xml.Formatting.Indented; XmlSerializer serializer = new XmlSerializer(Data.GetType()); serializer.Serialize(writer, Data); writer.Flush(); } } } else { // just write data as a plain string response.Write(Data); } } } /// <summary> /// Extends Controller with Negotiated() ActionResult that does /// basic content negotiation based on the Accept header. /// </summary> public static class NegotiatedResultExtensions { /// <summary> /// Return content-negotiated content of the data based on Accept header. /// Supports: /// application/json - using JSON.NET /// text/xml - Xml as XmlSerializer XML /// text/html - as text, or an optional View /// text/plain - as text /// </summary> /// <param name="controller"></param> /// <param name="data">Data to return</param> /// <returns>serialized data</returns> /// <example> /// public ActionResult GetCustomers() /// { /// return this.Negotiated( repo.Customers.OrderBy( c=> c.Company) ) /// } /// </example> public static NegotiatedResult Negotiated(this Controller controller, object data) { return new NegotiatedResult(data); } /// <summary> /// Return content-negotiated content of the data based on Accept header. /// Supports: /// application/json - using JSON.NET /// text/xml - Xml as XmlSerializer XML /// text/html - as text, or an optional View /// text/plain - as text /// </summary> /// <param name="controller"></param> /// <param name="viewName">Name of the View to when Accept is text/html</param> /// /// <param name="data">Data to return</param> /// <returns>serialized data</returns> /// <example> /// public ActionResult GetCustomers() /// { /// return this.Negotiated("List", repo.Customers.OrderBy( c=> c.Company) ) /// } /// </example> public static NegotiatedResult Negotiated(this Controller controller, string viewName, object data) { return new NegotiatedResult(viewName, data); } } Output Generation – JSON and XML Generating output for XML and JSON is simple – you use the desired serializer and off you go. Using XmlSerializer and JSON.NET it’s just a handful of lines each to generate serialized output directly into the HTTP output stream. Please note this implementation uses JSON.NET for its JSON generation rather than the default JavaScriptSerializer that MVC uses which I feel is an additional bonus to implementing this custom action. I’d already been using a custom JsonNetResult class previously, but now this is just rolled into this custom ActionResult. Just keep in mind that JSON.NET outputs slightly different JSON for certain things like collections for example, so behavior may change. One addition to this implementation might be a flag to allow switching the JSON serializer. Html View Generation Html View generation actually turned out to be easier than anticipated. Initially I used my generic ASP.NET ViewRenderer Class that can render MVC views from any ASP.NET application. However it turns out since we are executing inside of an active MVC request there’s an easier way: We can simply create a custom ViewResult and populate its members and then execute it. The code in text/html handling code that renders the view is simply this:response.ContentType = "text/html"; if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(ViewName)) { var viewData = context.Controller.ViewData; viewData.Model = Data; var viewResult = new ViewResult { ViewName = ViewName, MasterName = null, ViewData = viewData, TempData = context.Controller.TempData, ViewEngineCollection = ((Controller)context.Controller).ViewEngineCollection }; viewResult.ExecuteResult(context.Controller.ControllerContext); } else response.Write(Data); which is a neat and easy way to render a Razor view assuming you have an active controller that’s ready for rendering. Sweet – dependency removed which makes this class self-contained without any external dependencies other than JSON.NET. Summary While this isn’t exactly a new topic, it’s the first time I’ve actually delved into this with MVC. I’ve been doing content negotiation with Web API and prior to that with my REST library. This is the first time it’s come up as an issue in MVC. But as I have worked through this I find that having a way to specify both HTML Views *and* JSON and XML results from a single controller certainly is appealing to me in many situations as we are in this particular application returning identical data models for each of these operations. Rendering content negotiated views is something that I hope ASP.NET vNext will provide natively in the combined MVC and WebAPI model, but we’ll see how this actually will be implemented. In the meantime having a custom ActionResult that provides this functionality is a workable and easily adaptable way of handling this going forward. Whatever ends up happening in ASP.NET vNext the abstraction can probably be changed to support the native features of the future. Anyway I hope some of you found this useful if not for direct integration then as insight into some of the rendering logic that MVC uses to get output into the HTTP stream… Related Resources Latest Version of NegotiatedResult.cs on GitHub Understanding Action Controllers Rendering ASP.NET Views To String© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2014Posted in MVC  ASP.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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  • Telerik RadEditor filestream/string save to RTF

    - by hoombar
    Hi, The required functionality I am aiming for is to pull out RTF content from a database, edit it through a web interface (with a WYSIWYG editor) and then place the modified text back in to the database (in RTF format). The control that I am using to do this is Telerik RadEditor (we have a license already for these controls). In the most recent version there appears to be functionality to load in RTF content from a string or a stream, but the only method I can see that is exposed for getting RTF back out is exportToRTF(); this method modified the headers and allows you to save a RTF version of the content you have just edited as a file. The functionality to convert from HTML to RTF must exist somewhere within their library as you can export a RTF file, but I can not find any publicly exposed methods to pass this in to a stream or a string. Does anybody know of a way that I can convert the HTML back to RTF using the Telerik libraries without saving out to a file? Thanks

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  • Android RTSP - MediaPlayer init failure / PVMFFailure

    - by Nils
    Hello, I have a camera by Cisco and like to stream it's video stream to my android phone. It's coded in MPEG4 so there should be no problem, but it's not working anymore (it worked with another camera a few weeks ago). Any idea what I might try ? I don't know what's wrong here. I/ActivityManager( 79): Starting activity: Intent { cmp=com.Projekt1/.CameraView } I/System.out(18792): SDPURL - rtsp://10.42.0.103:554/live.sdp I/NotificationService( 79): enqueueToast pkg=com.Projekt1 callback=android.app.ITransientNotification$Stub$Proxy@44a22218 duration=0 D/MediaPlayer(18792): Couldn't open file on client side, trying server side I/ActivityManager( 79): Displayed activity com.Projekt1/.CameraView: 270 ms (total 270 ms) W/MediaPlayer(18792): info/warning (1, 26) I/MediaPlayer(18792): Info (1,26) E/PlayerDriver( 52): Command PLAYER_INIT completed with an error or info PVMFFailure E/MediaPlayer(18792): error (1, -1) E/MediaPlayer(18792): Error (1,-1) D/VideoView(18792): Error: 1,-1 W/PlayerDriver( 52): PVMFInfoErrorHandlingComplete

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  • Multiple Uploadifive in one page is not working

    - by jalf
    Hello I take my chances here at stack, because uploadify forums is not very responsive and full of spam, I am using uploadifive w/ drag and drop it was amazing but multiple upload buttons in one page is not working. Below is my code: HTML <input type="file" name="file_upload_1" id="file_upload_1"/> <input type="file" name="file_upload_2" id="file_upload_2"/> JS $('#file_upload_1').uploadifive({ 'auto' : true, 'method' : 'post', 'queueID' : 'queue', 'fileType' : ['text/x-comma-separated-values', 'text/comma-separated-values', 'application/octet-stream', 'application/vnd.ms-excel', 'application/x-csv', 'text/x-csv', 'text/csv', 'application/csv', 'application/excel', 'application/vnd.msexcel','application/force-download'], 'uploadScript' : 'upload.php', 'onUploadComplete' : function(file, data) { console.log(data); } }); $('#file_upload_2').uploadifive({ 'auto' : true, 'method' : 'post', 'queueID' : 'queue', 'fileType' : ['text/x-comma-separated-values', 'text/comma-separated-values', 'application/octet-stream', 'application/vnd.ms-excel', 'application/x-csv', 'text/x-csv', 'text/csv', 'application/csv', 'application/excel', 'application/vnd.msexcel','application/force-download'], 'uploadScript' : 'upload.php', 'onUploadComplete' : function(file, data) { console.log(data); } });

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  • HttpWebResponse with MJPEG and multipart/x-mixed-replace; boundary=--myboundary response content typ

    - by arri.me
    I have an ASP.NET application that I need to show a video feed from a security camera. The video feed has a content type of 'multipart/x-mixed-replace; boundary=--myboundary' with the image data between the boundaries. I need assistance with passing that stream of data through to my page so that the client side plugin I have can consume the stream just as it would if I browsed to the camera's web interface directly. The following code does not work: //Get response data byte[] data = HtmlParser.GetByteArrayFromStream(response.GetResponseStream()); if (data != null) { HttpContext.Current.Response.OutputStream.Write(data, 0, data.Length); } return;

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  • Drawing a rectangle on a video in C#

    - by Haxed
    Hi I want to draw a rectangle on a video stream(web cam video or loaded saved video) that I have streaming on a picture box. This is a C# application and I am using EmguCV 2.1.0.0. I have been successful in displaying the video stream on the picturebox in the form. Can I use Emgucv to draw on the video or should I use something else ? Can I use Dshownet or something like that ? Thanks for taking the time to read this. Many Thanks

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  • How can I load style resources from a dynamically loaded Silverlight application (XAP)?

    - by Tom
    I've followed Tim Heuer's video for dynamically loading other XAP's (into a 'master' Silverlight application), as well as some other links to tweak the loading of resources and am stuck on the particular issue of loading style resources from within the dynamically loaded XAP (i.e. the contents of Assets\Styles.xaml). When I run the master/hosting applcation, it successfully streams the dynamic XAP and I can read the deployment info etc. and load the assembly parts. However, when I actuall try to create an instance of a form from the Dynamic XAP, it fails with Cannot find a Resource with the Name/Key LayoutRootGridStyle which is in it's Assets\Styles.xaml file (it works if I run it directly so I know it's OK). For some reason these don't show up as application resources - not sure if I've totally got the wrong end of the stick, or am just missing something? Code snippet below (apologies it's a bit messy - just trying to get it working first) ... '' # Here's the code that reads the dynamic XAP from the web server ... '' #... wCli = New WebClient AddHandler wCli.OpenReadCompleted, AddressOf OpenXAPCompleted wCli.OpenReadAsync(New Uri("MyTest.xap", UriKind.Relative)) '' #... '' #Here's the sub that's called when openread is completed '' #... Private Sub OpenXAPCompleted(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As System.Net.OpenReadCompletedEventArgs) Dim sManifest As String = New StreamReader(Application.GetResourceStream(New StreamResourceInfo(e.Result, Nothing), New Uri("AppManifest.xaml", UriKind.Relative)).Stream).ReadToEnd Dim deploymentRoot As XElement = XDocument.Parse(sManifest).Root Dim deploymentParts As List(Of XElement) = _ (From assemblyParts In deploymentRoot.Elements().Elements() Select assemblyParts).ToList() Dim oAssembly As Assembly = Nothing For Each xElement As XElement In deploymentParts Dim asmPart As AssemblyPart = New AssemblyPart() Dim source As String = xElement.Attribute("Source").Value Dim sInfo As StreamResourceInfo = Application.GetResourceStream(New StreamResourceInfo(e.Result, "application/binary"), New Uri(source, UriKind.Relative)) If source = "MyTest.dll" Then oAssembly = asmPart.Load(sInfo.Stream) Else asmPart.Load(sInfo.Stream) End If Next Dim t As Type() = oAssembly.GetTypes() Dim AppClass = (From parts In t Where parts.FullName.EndsWith(".App") Select parts).SingleOrDefault() Dim mykeys As Array If Not AppClass Is Nothing Then Dim a As Application = DirectCast(oAssembly.CreateInstance(AppClass.FullName), Application) For Each strKey As String In a.Resources.Keys If Not Application.Current.Resources.Contains(strKey) Then Application.Current.Resources.Add(strKey, a.Resources(strKey)) End If Next End If Dim objectType As Type = oAssembly.GetType("MyTest.MainPage") Dim ouiel = Activator.CreateInstance(objectType) Dim myData As UIElement = DirectCast(ouiel, UIElement) Me.splMain.Children.Add(myData) Me.splMain.UpdateLayout() End Sub '' #... '' # And here's the line that fails with "Cannot find a Resource with the Name/Key LayoutRootGridStyle" '' # ... System.Windows.Application.LoadComponent(Me, New System.Uri("/MyTest;component/MainPage.xaml", System.UriKind.Relative)) '' #... any thoughts?

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