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  • How to set message when I get Exception

    - by user1748932
    public class XMLParser { // constructor public XMLParser() { } public String getXmlFromUrl(String url) { String responseBody = null; getset d1 = new getset(); String d = d1.getData(); // text String y = d1.getYear(); // year String c = d1.getCircular(); String p = d1.getPage(); List<NameValuePair> nameValuePairs = new ArrayList<NameValuePair>(); nameValuePairs.add(new BasicNameValuePair("YearID", y)); nameValuePairs.add(new BasicNameValuePair("CircularNo", c)); nameValuePairs.add(new BasicNameValuePair("SearchText", d)); nameValuePairs.add(new BasicNameValuePair("pagenumber", p)); try { HttpClient httpclient = new DefaultHttpClient(); HttpPost httppost = new HttpPost(url); httppost.setEntity(new UrlEncodedFormEntity(nameValuePairs)); HttpResponse response = httpclient.execute(httppost); HttpEntity entity = response.getEntity(); responseBody = EntityUtils.toString(entity); } catch (UnsupportedEncodingException e) { e.printStackTrace(); } catch (ClientProtocolException e) { e.printStackTrace(); } catch (IOException e) { e.printStackTrace(); } // return XML return responseBody; } public Document getDomElement(String xml) { Document doc = null; DocumentBuilderFactory dbf = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance(); try { DocumentBuilder db = dbf.newDocumentBuilder(); InputSource is = new InputSource(); is.setCharacterStream(new StringReader(xml)); doc = db.parse(is); } catch (ParserConfigurationException e) { Log.e("Error: ", e.getMessage()); return null; } catch (SAXException e) { Log.e("Error: ", e.getMessage()); // i m getting Exception here return null; } catch (IOException e) { Log.e("Error: ", e.getMessage()); return null; } return doc; } /** * Getting node value * * @param elem * element */ public final String getElementValue(Node elem) { Node child; if (elem != null) { if (elem.hasChildNodes()) { for (child = elem.getFirstChild(); child != null; child = child .getNextSibling()) { if (child.getNodeType() == Node.TEXT_NODE) { return child.getNodeValue(); } } } } return ""; } /** * Getting node value * * @param Element * node * @param key * string * */ public String getValue(Element item, String str) { NodeList n = item.getElementsByTagName(str); return this.getElementValue(n.item(0)); } } I am getting Exception in this class for parsing data. I want print this message in another class which extends from Activity. Can you please tell me how? I tried much but not able to do.. public class AndroidXMLParsingActivity extends Activity { public int currentPage = 1; public ListView lisView1; static final String KEY_ITEM = "docdetails"; static final String KEY_NAME = "heading"; public Button btnNext; public Button btnPre; public static String url = "http://dev.taxmann.com/TaxmannService/TaxmannService.asmx/GetNotificationList"; @Override public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) { super.onCreate(savedInstanceState); setContentView(R.layout.main); // listView1 lisView1 = (ListView) findViewById(R.id.listView1); // Next btnNext = (Button) findViewById(R.id.btnNext); // Perform action on click btnNext.setOnClickListener(new View.OnClickListener() { public void onClick(View v) { currentPage = currentPage + 1; ShowData(); } }); // Previous btnPre = (Button) findViewById(R.id.btnPre); // Perform action on click btnPre.setOnClickListener(new View.OnClickListener() { public void onClick(View v) { currentPage = currentPage - 1; ShowData(); } }); ShowData(); } public void ShowData() { XMLParser parser = new XMLParser(); String xml = parser.getXmlFromUrl(url); // getting XML Document doc = parser.getDomElement(xml); // getting DOM element NodeList nl = doc.getElementsByTagName(KEY_ITEM); int displayPerPage = 5; // Per Page int TotalRows = nl.getLength(); int indexRowStart = ((displayPerPage * currentPage) - displayPerPage); int TotalPage = 0; if (TotalRows <= displayPerPage) { TotalPage = 1; } else if ((TotalRows % displayPerPage) == 0) { TotalPage = (TotalRows / displayPerPage); } else { TotalPage = (TotalRows / displayPerPage) + 1; // 7 TotalPage = (int) TotalPage; // 7 } int indexRowEnd = displayPerPage * currentPage; // 5 if (indexRowEnd > TotalRows) { indexRowEnd = TotalRows; } // Disabled Button Next if (currentPage >= TotalPage) { btnNext.setEnabled(false); } else { btnNext.setEnabled(true); } // Disabled Button Previos if (currentPage <= 1) { btnPre.setEnabled(false); } else { btnPre.setEnabled(true); } // Load Data from Index int RowID = 1; ArrayList<HashMap<String, String>> menuItems = new ArrayList<HashMap<String, String>>(); HashMap<String, String> map; // RowID if (currentPage > 1) { RowID = (displayPerPage * (currentPage - 1)) + 1; } for (int i = indexRowStart; i < indexRowEnd; i++) { Element e = (Element) nl.item(i); // adding each child node to HashMap key => value map = new HashMap<String, String>(); map.put("RowID", String.valueOf(RowID)); map.put(KEY_NAME, parser.getValue(e, KEY_NAME)); // adding HashList to ArrayList menuItems.add(map); RowID = RowID + 1; } SimpleAdapter sAdap; sAdap = new SimpleAdapter(AndroidXMLParsingActivity.this, menuItems, R.layout.list_item, new String[] { "RowID", KEY_NAME }, new int[] { R.id.ColRowID, R.id.ColName }); lisView1.setAdapter(sAdap); } } This my class where I want to Print that message

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  • SElinux integrety check

    - by Alex
    How can i check (with SELinux) access to the file by process name? For examle: we have 2 process: * /usr/bin/foo1 * /usr/bin/foo2 They are run under account with username userA and try to open for modify file: /home/userA/test.txt I want that if foo1 try to open file - it's ok. But if foo2 try to open this file - i have message about this in /var/log Problem is that both processes have the same user ID. And i cant use RBAC by username.

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  • phpMySql connection

    - by Eiriko Pedroza
    PL = VB.net Issue: format of the initialization string does not conform to specification starting at index 17 connection string: objconn.ConnectionString = ("server=" & txtServer.Text & ";" _ & "user id=" & "'" & txtUserId.Text & ";" _ & "password=" & txtPassword.Text & ";" _ & "database=try") Try objconn.Open() MsgBox("Connected") objconn.Close() Catch ex As Exception MsgBox(ex.ToString) End Try -objconn is declared as new mysqlconnection every time I run the application and try to login, i keep on receiving this error message, I already double checked my line of connection string. im using 'localhost' as server and 'root' as username, password is blank. thank you in advance for your response

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  • How to get full query string parameters not UrlDecoded

    - by developerit
    Introduction While developing Developer IT’s website, we came across a problem when the user search keywords containing special character like the plus ‘+’ char. We found it while looking for C++ in our search engine. The request parameter output in ASP.NET was “c “. I found it strange that it removed the ‘++’ and replaced it with a space… Analysis After a bit of Googling and Reflection, it turns out that ASP.NET calls UrlDecode on each parameters retreived by the Request(“item”) method. The Request.Params property is affected by this two since it mashes all QueryString, Forms and other collections into a single one. Workaround Finally, I solve the puzzle usign the Request.RawUrl property and parsing it with the same RegEx I use in my url re-writter. The RawUrl not affected by anything. As its name say it, it’s raw. Published on http://www.developerit.com/

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  • Hosting the Razor Engine for Templating in Non-Web Applications

    - by Rick Strahl
    Microsoft’s new Razor HTML Rendering Engine that is currently shipping with ASP.NET MVC previews can be used outside of ASP.NET. Razor is an alternative view engine that can be used instead of the ASP.NET Page engine that currently works with ASP.NET WebForms and MVC. It provides a simpler and more readable markup syntax and is much more light weight in terms of functionality than the full blown WebForms Page engine, focusing only on features that are more along the lines of a pure view engine (or classic ASP!) with focus on expression and code rendering rather than a complex control/object model. Like the Page engine though, the parser understands .NET code syntax which can be embedded into templates, and behind the scenes the engine compiles markup and script code into an executing piece of .NET code in an assembly. Although it ships as part of the ASP.NET MVC and WebMatrix the Razor Engine itself is not directly dependent on ASP.NET or IIS or HTTP in any way. And although there are some markup and rendering features that are optimized for HTML based output generation, Razor is essentially a free standing template engine. And what’s really nice is that unlike the ASP.NET Runtime, Razor is fairly easy to host inside of your own non-Web applications to provide templating functionality. Templating in non-Web Applications? Yes please! So why might you host a template engine in your non-Web application? Template rendering is useful in many places and I have a number of applications that make heavy use of it. One of my applications – West Wind Html Help Builder - exclusively uses template based rendering to merge user supplied help text content into customizable and executable HTML markup templates that provide HTML output for CHM style HTML Help. This is an older product and it’s not actually using .NET at the moment – and this is one reason I’m looking at Razor for script hosting at the moment. For a few .NET applications though I’ve actually used the ASP.NET Runtime hosting to provide templating and mail merge style functionality and while that works reasonably well it’s a very heavy handed approach. It’s very resource intensive and has potential issues with versioning in various different versions of .NET. The generic implementation I created in the article above requires a lot of fix up to mimic an HTTP request in a non-HTTP environment and there are a lot of little things that have to happen to ensure that the ASP.NET runtime works properly most of it having nothing to do with the templating aspect but just satisfying ASP.NET’s requirements. The Razor Engine on the other hand is fairly light weight and completely decoupled from the ASP.NET runtime and the HTTP processing. Rather it’s a pure template engine whose sole purpose is to render text templates. Hosting this engine in your own applications can be accomplished with a reasonable amount of code (actually just a few lines with the tools I’m about to describe) and without having to fake HTTP requests. It’s also much lighter on resource usage and you can easily attach custom properties to your base template implementation to easily pass context from the parent application into templates all of which was rather complicated with ASP.NET runtime hosting. Installing the Razor Template Engine You can get Razor as part of the MVC 3 (RC and later) or Web Matrix. Both are available as downloadable components from the Web Platform Installer Version 3.0 (!important – V2 doesn’t show these components). If you already have that version of the WPI installed just fire it up. You can get the latest version of the Web Platform Installer from here: http://www.microsoft.com/web/gallery/install.aspx Once the platform Installer 3.0 is installed install either MVC 3 or ASP.NET Web Pages. Once installed you’ll find a System.Web.Razor assembly in C:\Program Files\Microsoft ASP.NET\ASP.NET Web Pages\v1.0\Assemblies\System.Web.Razor.dll which you can add as a reference to your project. Creating a Wrapper The basic Razor Hosting API is pretty simple and you can host Razor with a (large-ish) handful of lines of code. I’ll show the basics of it later in this article. However, if you want to customize the rendering and handle assembly and namespace includes for the markup as well as deal with text and file inputs as well as forcing Razor to run in a separate AppDomain so you can unload the code-generated assemblies and deal with assembly caching for re-used templates little more work is required to create something that is more easily reusable. For this reason I created a Razor Hosting wrapper project that combines a bunch of this functionality into an easy to use hosting class, a hosting factory that can load the engine in a separate AppDomain and a couple of hosting containers that provided folder based and string based caching for templates for an easily embeddable and reusable engine with easy to use syntax. If you just want the code and play with the samples and source go grab the latest code from the Subversion Repository at: http://www.west-wind.com:8080/svn/articles/trunk/RazorHosting/ or a snapshot from: http://www.west-wind.com/files/tools/RazorHosting.zip Getting Started Before I get into how hosting with Razor works, let’s take a look at how you can get up and running quickly with the wrapper classes provided. It only takes a few lines of code. The easiest way to use these Razor Hosting Wrappers is to use one of the two HostContainers provided. One is for hosting Razor scripts in a directory and rendering them as relative paths from these script files on disk. The other HostContainer serves razor scripts from string templates… Let’s start with a very simple template that displays some simple expressions, some code blocks and demonstrates rendering some data from contextual data that you pass to the template in the form of a ‘context’. Here’s a simple Razor template: @using System.Reflection Hello @Context.FirstName! Your entry was entered on: @Context.Entered @{ // Code block: Update the host Windows Form passed in through the context Context.WinForm.Text = "Hello World from Razor at " + DateTime.Now.ToString(); } AppDomain Id: @AppDomain.CurrentDomain.FriendlyName Assembly: @Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().FullName Code based output: @{ // Write output with Response object from code string output = string.Empty; for (int i = 0; i < 10; i++) { output += i.ToString() + " "; } Response.Write(output); } Pretty easy to see what’s going on here. The only unusual thing in this code is the Context object which is an arbitrary object I’m passing from the host to the template by way of the template base class. I’m also displaying the current AppDomain and the executing Assembly name so you can see how compiling and running a template actually loads up new assemblies. Also note that as part of my context I’m passing a reference to the current Windows Form down to the template and changing the title from within the script. It’s a silly example, but it demonstrates two-way communication between host and template and back which can be very powerful. The easiest way to quickly render this template is to use the RazorEngine<TTemplateBase> class. The generic parameter specifies a template base class type that is used by Razor internally to generate the class it generates from a template. The default implementation provided in my RazorHosting wrapper is RazorTemplateBase. Here’s a simple one that renders from a string and outputs a string: var engine = new RazorEngine<RazorTemplateBase>(); // we can pass any object as context - here create a custom context var context = new CustomContext() { WinForm = this, FirstName = "Rick", Entered = DateTime.Now.AddDays(-10) }; string output = engine.RenderTemplate(this.txtSource.Text new string[] { "System.Windows.Forms.dll" }, context); if (output == null) this.txtResult.Text = "*** ERROR:\r\n" + engine.ErrorMessage; else this.txtResult.Text = output; Simple enough. This code renders a template from a string input and returns a result back as a string. It  creates a custom context and passes that to the template which can then access the Context’s properties. Note that anything passed as ‘context’ must be serializable (or MarshalByRefObject) – otherwise you get an exception when passing the reference over AppDomain boundaries (discussed later). Passing a context is optional, but is a key feature in being able to share data between the host application and the template. Note that we use the Context object to access FirstName, Entered and even the host Windows Form object which is used in the template to change the Window caption from within the script! In the code above all the work happens in the RenderTemplate method which provide a variety of overloads to read and write to and from strings, files and TextReaders/Writers. Here’s another example that renders from a file input using a TextReader: using (reader = new StreamReader("templates\\simple.csHtml", true)) { result = host.RenderTemplate(reader, new string[] { "System.Windows.Forms.dll" }, this.CustomContext); } RenderTemplate() is fairly high level and it handles loading of the runtime, compiling into an assembly and rendering of the template. If you want more control you can use the lower level methods to control each step of the way which is important for the HostContainers I’ll discuss later. Basically for those scenarios you want to separate out loading of the engine, compiling into an assembly and then rendering the template from the assembly. Why? So we can keep assemblies cached. In the code above a new assembly is created for each template rendered which is inefficient and uses up resources. Depending on the size of your templates and how often you fire them you can chew through memory very quickly. This slighter lower level approach is only a couple of extra steps: // we can pass any object as context - here create a custom context var context = new CustomContext() { WinForm = this, FirstName = "Rick", Entered = DateTime.Now.AddDays(-10) }; var engine = new RazorEngine<RazorTemplateBase>(); string assId = null; using (StringReader reader = new StringReader(this.txtSource.Text)) { assId = engine.ParseAndCompileTemplate(new string[] { "System.Windows.Forms.dll" }, reader); } string output = engine.RenderTemplateFromAssembly(assId, context); if (output == null) this.txtResult.Text = "*** ERROR:\r\n" + engine.ErrorMessage; else this.txtResult.Text = output; The difference here is that you can capture the assembly – or rather an Id to it – and potentially hold on to it to render again later assuming the template hasn’t changed. The HostContainers take advantage of this feature to cache the assemblies based on certain criteria like a filename and file time step or a string hash that if not change indicate that an assembly can be reused. Note that ParseAndCompileTemplate returns an assembly Id rather than the assembly itself. This is done so that that the assembly always stays in the host’s AppDomain and is not passed across AppDomain boundaries which would cause load failures. We’ll talk more about this in a minute but for now just realize that assemblies references are stored in a list and are accessible by this ID to allow locating and re-executing of the assembly based on that id. Reuse of the assembly avoids recompilation overhead and creation of yet another assembly that loads into the current AppDomain. You can play around with several different versions of the above code in the main sample form:   Using Hosting Containers for more Control and Caching The above examples simply render templates into assemblies each and every time they are executed. While this works and is even reasonably fast, it’s not terribly efficient. If you render templates more than once it would be nice if you could cache the generated assemblies for example to avoid re-compiling and creating of a new assembly each time. Additionally it would be nice to load template assemblies into a separate AppDomain optionally to be able to be able to unload assembli es and also to protect your host application from scripting attacks with malicious template code. Hosting containers provide also provide a wrapper around the RazorEngine<T> instance, a factory (which allows creation in separate AppDomains) and an easy way to start and stop the container ‘runtime’. The Razor Hosting samples provide two hosting containers: RazorFolderHostContainer and StringHostContainer. The folder host provides a simple runtime environment for a folder structure similar in the way that the ASP.NET runtime handles a virtual directory as it’s ‘application' root. Templates are loaded from disk in relative paths and the resulting assemblies are cached unless the template on disk is changed. The string host also caches templates based on string hashes – if the same string is passed a second time a cached version of the assembly is used. Here’s how HostContainers work. I’ll use the FolderHostContainer because it’s likely the most common way you’d use templates – from disk based templates that can be easily edited and maintained on disk. The first step is to create an instance of it and keep it around somewhere (in the example it’s attached as a property to the Form): RazorFolderHostContainer Host = new RazorFolderHostContainer(); public RazorFolderHostForm() { InitializeComponent(); // The base path for templates - templates are rendered with relative paths // based on this path. Host.TemplatePath = Path.Combine(Environment.CurrentDirectory, TemplateBaseFolder); // Add any assemblies you want reference in your templates Host.ReferencedAssemblies.Add("System.Windows.Forms.dll"); // Start up the host container Host.Start(); } Next anytime you want to render a template you can use simple code like this: private void RenderTemplate(string fileName) { // Pass the template path via the Context var relativePath = Utilities.GetRelativePath(fileName, Host.TemplatePath); if (!Host.RenderTemplate(relativePath, this.Context, Host.RenderingOutputFile)) { MessageBox.Show("Error: " + Host.ErrorMessage); return; } this.webBrowser1.Navigate("file://" + Host.RenderingOutputFile); } You can also render the output to a string instead of to a file: string result = Host.RenderTemplateToString(relativePath,context); Finally if you want to release the engine and shut down the hosting AppDomain you can simply do: Host.Stop(); Stopping the AppDomain and restarting it (ie. calling Stop(); followed by Start()) is also a nice way to release all resources in the AppDomain. The FolderBased domain also supports partial Rendering based on root path based relative paths with the same caching characteristics as the main templates. From within a template you can call out to a partial like this: @RenderPartial(@"partials\PartialRendering.cshtml", Context) where partials\PartialRendering.cshtml is a relative to the template root folder. The folder host example lets you load up templates from disk and display the result in a Web Browser control which demonstrates using Razor HTML output from templates that contain HTML syntax which happens to me my target scenario for Html Help Builder.   The Razor Engine Wrapper Project The project I created to wrap Razor hosting has a fair bit of code and a number of classes associated with it. Most of the components are internally used and as you can see using the final RazorEngine<T> and HostContainer classes is pretty easy. The classes are extensible and I suspect developers will want to build more customized host containers for their applications. Host containers are the key to wrapping up all functionality – Engine, BaseTemplate, AppDomain Hosting, Caching etc in a logical piece that is ready to be plugged into an application. When looking at the code there are a couple of core features provided: Core Razor Engine Hosting This is the core Razor hosting which provides the basics of loading a template, compiling it into an assembly and executing it. This is fairly straightforward, but without a host container that can cache assemblies based on some criteria templates are recompiled and re-created each time which is inefficient (although pretty fast). The base engine wrapper implementation also supports hosting the Razor runtime in a separate AppDomain for security and the ability to unload it on demand. Host Containers The engine hosting itself doesn’t provide any sort of ‘runtime’ service like picking up files from disk, caching assemblies and so forth. So my implementation provides two HostContainers: RazorFolderHostContainer and RazorStringHostContainer. The FolderHost works off a base directory and loads templates based on relative paths (sort of like the ASP.NET runtime does off a virtual). The HostContainers also deal with caching of template assemblies – for the folder host the file date is tracked and checked for updates and unless the template is changed a cached assembly is reused. The StringHostContainer similiarily checks string hashes to figure out whether a particular string template was previously compiled and executed. The HostContainers also act as a simple startup environment and a single reference to easily store and reuse in an application. TemplateBase Classes The template base classes are the base classes that from which the Razor engine generates .NET code. A template is parsed into a class with an Execute() method and the class is based on this template type you can specify. RazorEngine<TBaseTemplate> can receive this type and the HostContainers default to specific templates in their base implementations. Template classes are customizable to allow you to create templates that provide application specific features and interaction from the template to your host application. How does the RazorEngine wrapper work? You can browse the source code in the links above or in the repository or download the source, but I’ll highlight some key features here. Here’s part of the RazorEngine implementation that can be used to host the runtime and that demonstrates the key code required to host the Razor runtime. The RazorEngine class is implemented as a generic class to reflect the Template base class type: public class RazorEngine<TBaseTemplateType> : MarshalByRefObject where TBaseTemplateType : RazorTemplateBase The generic type is used to internally provide easier access to the template type and assignments on it as part of the template processing. The class also inherits MarshalByRefObject to allow execution over AppDomain boundaries – something that all the classes discussed here need to do since there is much interaction between the host and the template. The first two key methods deal with creating a template assembly: /// <summary> /// Creates an instance of the RazorHost with various options applied. /// Applies basic namespace imports and the name of the class to generate /// </summary> /// <param name="generatedNamespace"></param> /// <param name="generatedClass"></param> /// <returns></returns> protected RazorTemplateEngine CreateHost(string generatedNamespace, string generatedClass) { Type baseClassType = typeof(TBaseTemplateType); RazorEngineHost host = new RazorEngineHost(new CSharpRazorCodeLanguage()); host.DefaultBaseClass = baseClassType.FullName; host.DefaultClassName = generatedClass; host.DefaultNamespace = generatedNamespace; host.NamespaceImports.Add("System"); host.NamespaceImports.Add("System.Text"); host.NamespaceImports.Add("System.Collections.Generic"); host.NamespaceImports.Add("System.Linq"); host.NamespaceImports.Add("System.IO"); return new RazorTemplateEngine(host); } /// <summary> /// Parses and compiles a markup template into an assembly and returns /// an assembly name. The name is an ID that can be passed to /// ExecuteTemplateByAssembly which picks up a cached instance of the /// loaded assembly. /// /// </summary> /// <param name="namespaceOfGeneratedClass">The namespace of the class to generate from the template</param> /// <param name="generatedClassName">The name of the class to generate from the template</param> /// <param name="ReferencedAssemblies">Any referenced assemblies by dll name only. Assemblies must be in execution path of host or in GAC.</param> /// <param name="templateSourceReader">Textreader that loads the template</param> /// <remarks> /// The actual assembly isn't returned here to allow for cross-AppDomain /// operation. If the assembly was returned it would fail for cross-AppDomain /// calls. /// </remarks> /// <returns>An assembly Id. The Assembly is cached in memory and can be used with RenderFromAssembly.</returns> public string ParseAndCompileTemplate( string namespaceOfGeneratedClass, string generatedClassName, string[] ReferencedAssemblies, TextReader templateSourceReader) { RazorTemplateEngine engine = CreateHost(namespaceOfGeneratedClass, generatedClassName); // Generate the template class as CodeDom GeneratorResults razorResults = engine.GenerateCode(templateSourceReader); // Create code from the codeDom and compile CSharpCodeProvider codeProvider = new CSharpCodeProvider(); CodeGeneratorOptions options = new CodeGeneratorOptions(); // Capture Code Generated as a string for error info // and debugging LastGeneratedCode = null; using (StringWriter writer = new StringWriter()) { codeProvider.GenerateCodeFromCompileUnit(razorResults.GeneratedCode, writer, options); LastGeneratedCode = writer.ToString(); } CompilerParameters compilerParameters = new CompilerParameters(ReferencedAssemblies); // Standard Assembly References compilerParameters.ReferencedAssemblies.Add("System.dll"); compilerParameters.ReferencedAssemblies.Add("System.Core.dll"); compilerParameters.ReferencedAssemblies.Add("Microsoft.CSharp.dll"); // dynamic support! // Also add the current assembly so RazorTemplateBase is available compilerParameters.ReferencedAssemblies.Add(Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().CodeBase.Substring(8)); compilerParameters.GenerateInMemory = Configuration.CompileToMemory; if (!Configuration.CompileToMemory) compilerParameters.OutputAssembly = Path.Combine(Configuration.TempAssemblyPath, "_" + Guid.NewGuid().ToString("n") + ".dll"); CompilerResults compilerResults = codeProvider.CompileAssemblyFromDom(compilerParameters, razorResults.GeneratedCode); if (compilerResults.Errors.Count > 0) { var compileErrors = new StringBuilder(); foreach (System.CodeDom.Compiler.CompilerError compileError in compilerResults.Errors) compileErrors.Append(String.Format(Resources.LineX0TColX1TErrorX2RN, compileError.Line, compileError.Column, compileError.ErrorText)); this.SetError(compileErrors.ToString() + "\r\n" + LastGeneratedCode); return null; } AssemblyCache.Add(compilerResults.CompiledAssembly.FullName, compilerResults.CompiledAssembly); return compilerResults.CompiledAssembly.FullName; } Think of the internal CreateHost() method as setting up the assembly generated from each template. Each template compiles into a separate assembly. It sets up namespaces, and assembly references, the base class used and the name and namespace for the generated class. ParseAndCompileTemplate() then calls the CreateHost() method to receive the template engine generator which effectively generates a CodeDom from the template – the template is turned into .NET code. The code generated from our earlier example looks something like this: //------------------------------------------------------------------------------ // <auto-generated> // This code was generated by a tool. // Runtime Version:4.0.30319.1 // // Changes to this file may cause incorrect behavior and will be lost if // the code is regenerated. // </auto-generated> //------------------------------------------------------------------------------ namespace RazorTest { using System; using System.Text; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.IO; using System.Reflection; public class RazorTemplate : RazorHosting.RazorTemplateBase { #line hidden public RazorTemplate() { } public override void Execute() { WriteLiteral("Hello "); Write(Context.FirstName); WriteLiteral("! Your entry was entered on: "); Write(Context.Entered); WriteLiteral("\r\n\r\n"); // Code block: Update the host Windows Form passed in through the context Context.WinForm.Text = "Hello World from Razor at " + DateTime.Now.ToString(); WriteLiteral("\r\nAppDomain Id:\r\n "); Write(AppDomain.CurrentDomain.FriendlyName); WriteLiteral("\r\n \r\nAssembly:\r\n "); Write(Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().FullName); WriteLiteral("\r\n\r\nCode based output: \r\n"); // Write output with Response object from code string output = string.Empty; for (int i = 0; i < 10; i++) { output += i.ToString() + " "; } } } } Basically the template’s body is turned into code in an Execute method that is called. Internally the template’s Write method is fired to actually generate the output. Note that the class inherits from RazorTemplateBase which is the generic parameter I used to specify the base class when creating an instance in my RazorEngine host: var engine = new RazorEngine<RazorTemplateBase>(); This template class must be provided and it must implement an Execute() and Write() method. Beyond that you can create any class you chose and attach your own properties. My RazorTemplateBase class implementation is very simple: public class RazorTemplateBase : MarshalByRefObject, IDisposable { /// <summary> /// You can pass in a generic context object /// to use in your template code /// </summary> public dynamic Context { get; set; } /// <summary> /// Class that generates output. Currently ultra simple /// with only Response.Write() implementation. /// </summary> public RazorResponse Response { get; set; } public object HostContainer {get; set; } public object Engine { get; set; } public RazorTemplateBase() { Response = new RazorResponse(); } public virtual void Write(object value) { Response.Write(value); } public virtual void WriteLiteral(object value) { Response.Write(value); } /// <summary> /// Razor Parser implements this method /// </summary> public virtual void Execute() {} public virtual void Dispose() { if (Response != null) { Response.Dispose(); Response = null; } } } Razor fills in the Execute method when it generates its subclass and uses the Write() method to output content. As you can see I use a RazorResponse() class here to generate output. This isn’t necessary really, as you could use a StringBuilder or StringWriter() directly, but I prefer using Response object so I can extend the Response behavior as needed. The RazorResponse class is also very simple and merely acts as a wrapper around a TextWriter: public class RazorResponse : IDisposable { /// <summary> /// Internal text writer - default to StringWriter() /// </summary> public TextWriter Writer = new StringWriter(); public virtual void Write(object value) { Writer.Write(value); } public virtual void WriteLine(object value) { Write(value); Write("\r\n"); } public virtual void WriteFormat(string format, params object[] args) { Write(string.Format(format, args)); } public override string ToString() { return Writer.ToString(); } public virtual void Dispose() { Writer.Close(); } public virtual void SetTextWriter(TextWriter writer) { // Close original writer if (Writer != null) Writer.Close(); Writer = writer; } } The Rendering Methods of RazorEngine At this point I’ve talked about the assembly generation logic and the template implementation itself. What’s left is that once you’ve generated the assembly is to execute it. The code to do this is handled in the various RenderXXX methods of the RazorEngine class. Let’s look at the lowest level one of these which is RenderTemplateFromAssembly() and a couple of internal support methods that handle instantiating and invoking of the generated template method: public string RenderTemplateFromAssembly( string assemblyId, string generatedNamespace, string generatedClass, object context, TextWriter outputWriter) { this.SetError(); Assembly generatedAssembly = AssemblyCache[assemblyId]; if (generatedAssembly == null) { this.SetError(Resources.PreviouslyCompiledAssemblyNotFound); return null; } string className = generatedNamespace + "." + generatedClass; Type type; try { type = generatedAssembly.GetType(className); } catch (Exception ex) { this.SetError(Resources.UnableToCreateType + className + ": " + ex.Message); return null; } // Start with empty non-error response (if we use a writer) string result = string.Empty; using(TBaseTemplateType instance = InstantiateTemplateClass(type)) { if (instance == null) return null; if (outputWriter != null) instance.Response.SetTextWriter(outputWriter); if (!InvokeTemplateInstance(instance, context)) return null; // Capture string output if implemented and return // otherwise null is returned if (outputWriter == null) result = instance.Response.ToString(); } return result; } protected virtual TBaseTemplateType InstantiateTemplateClass(Type type) { TBaseTemplateType instance = Activator.CreateInstance(type) as TBaseTemplateType; if (instance == null) { SetError(Resources.CouldnTActivateTypeInstance + type.FullName); return null; } instance.Engine = this; // If a HostContainer was set pass that to the template too instance.HostContainer = this.HostContainer; return instance; } /// <summary> /// Internally executes an instance of the template, /// captures errors on execution and returns true or false /// </summary> /// <param name="instance">An instance of the generated template</param> /// <returns>true or false - check ErrorMessage for errors</returns> protected virtual bool InvokeTemplateInstance(TBaseTemplateType instance, object context) { try { instance.Context = context; instance.Execute(); } catch (Exception ex) { this.SetError(Resources.TemplateExecutionError + ex.Message); return false; } finally { // Must make sure Response is closed instance.Response.Dispose(); } return true; } The RenderTemplateFromAssembly method basically requires the namespace and class to instantate and creates an instance of the class using InstantiateTemplateClass(). It then invokes the method with InvokeTemplateInstance(). These two methods are broken out because they are re-used by various other rendering methods and also to allow subclassing and providing additional configuration tasks to set properties and pass values to templates at execution time. In the default mode instantiation sets the Engine and HostContainer (discussed later) so the template can call back into the template engine, and the context is set when the template method is invoked. The various RenderXXX methods use similar code although they create the assemblies first. If you’re after potentially cashing assemblies the method is the one to call and that’s exactly what the two HostContainer classes do. More on that in a minute, but before we get into HostContainers let’s talk about AppDomain hosting and the like. Running Templates in their own AppDomain With the RazorEngine class above, when a template is parsed into an assembly and executed the assembly is created (in memory or on disk – you can configure that) and cached in the current AppDomain. In .NET once an assembly has been loaded it can never be unloaded so if you’re loading lots of templates and at some time you want to release them there’s no way to do so. If however you load the assemblies in a separate AppDomain that new AppDomain can be unloaded and the assemblies loaded in it with it. In order to host the templates in a separate AppDomain the easiest thing to do is to run the entire RazorEngine in a separate AppDomain. Then all interaction occurs in the other AppDomain and no further changes have to be made. To facilitate this there is a RazorEngineFactory which has methods that can instantiate the RazorHost in a separate AppDomain as well as in the local AppDomain. The host creates the remote instance and then hangs on to it to keep it alive as well as providing methods to shut down the AppDomain and reload the engine. Sounds complicated but cross-AppDomain invocation is actually fairly easy to implement. Here’s some of the relevant code from the RazorEngineFactory class. Like the RazorEngine this class is generic and requires a template base type in the generic class name: public class RazorEngineFactory<TBaseTemplateType> where TBaseTemplateType : RazorTemplateBase Here are the key methods of interest: /// <summary> /// Creates an instance of the RazorHost in a new AppDomain. This /// version creates a static singleton that that is cached and you /// can call UnloadRazorHostInAppDomain to unload it. /// </summary> /// <returns></returns> public static RazorEngine<TBaseTemplateType> CreateRazorHostInAppDomain() { if (Current == null) Current = new RazorEngineFactory<TBaseTemplateType>(); return Current.GetRazorHostInAppDomain(); } public static void UnloadRazorHostInAppDomain() { if (Current != null) Current.UnloadHost(); Current = null; } /// <summary> /// Instance method that creates a RazorHost in a new AppDomain. /// This method requires that you keep the Factory around in /// order to keep the AppDomain alive and be able to unload it. /// </summary> /// <returns></returns> public RazorEngine<TBaseTemplateType> GetRazorHostInAppDomain() { LocalAppDomain = CreateAppDomain(null); if (LocalAppDomain == null) return null; /// Create the instance inside of the new AppDomain /// Note: remote domain uses local EXE's AppBasePath!!! RazorEngine<TBaseTemplateType> host = null; try { Assembly ass = Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly(); string AssemblyPath = ass.Location; host = (RazorEngine<TBaseTemplateType>) LocalAppDomain.CreateInstanceFrom(AssemblyPath, typeof(RazorEngine<TBaseTemplateType>).FullName).Unwrap(); } catch (Exception ex) { ErrorMessage = ex.Message; return null; } return host; } /// <summary> /// Internally creates a new AppDomain in which Razor templates can /// be run. /// </summary> /// <param name="appDomainName"></param> /// <returns></returns> private AppDomain CreateAppDomain(string appDomainName) { if (appDomainName == null) appDomainName = "RazorHost_" + Guid.NewGuid().ToString("n"); AppDomainSetup setup = new AppDomainSetup(); // *** Point at current directory setup.ApplicationBase = AppDomain.CurrentDomain.BaseDirectory; AppDomain localDomain = AppDomain.CreateDomain(appDomainName, null, setup); return localDomain; } /// <summary> /// Allow unloading of the created AppDomain to release resources /// All internal resources in the AppDomain are released including /// in memory compiled Razor assemblies. /// </summary> public void UnloadHost() { if (this.LocalAppDomain != null) { AppDomain.Unload(this.LocalAppDomain); this.LocalAppDomain = null; } } The static CreateRazorHostInAppDomain() is the key method that startup code usually calls. It uses a Current singleton instance to an instance of itself that is created cross AppDomain and is kept alive because it’s static. GetRazorHostInAppDomain actually creates a cross-AppDomain instance which first creates a new AppDomain and then loads the RazorEngine into it. The remote Proxy instance is returned as a result to the method and can be used the same as a local instance. The code to run with a remote AppDomain is simple: private RazorEngine<RazorTemplateBase> CreateHost() { if (this.Host != null) return this.Host; // Use Static Methods - no error message if host doesn't load this.Host = RazorEngineFactory<RazorTemplateBase>.CreateRazorHostInAppDomain(); if (this.Host == null) { MessageBox.Show("Unable to load Razor Template Host", "Razor Hosting", MessageBoxButtons.OK, MessageBoxIcon.Exclamation); } return this.Host; } This code relies on a local reference of the Host which is kept around for the duration of the app (in this case a form reference). To use this you’d simply do: this.Host = CreateHost(); if (host == null) return; string result = host.RenderTemplate( this.txtSource.Text, new string[] { "System.Windows.Forms.dll", "Westwind.Utilities.dll" }, this.CustomContext); if (result == null) { MessageBox.Show(host.ErrorMessage, "Template Execution Error", MessageBoxButtons.OK, MessageBoxIcon.Exclamation); return; } this.txtResult.Text = result; Now all templates run in a remote AppDomain and can be unloaded with simple code like this: RazorEngineFactory<RazorTemplateBase>.UnloadRazorHostInAppDomain(); this.Host = null; One Step further – Providing a caching ‘Runtime’ Once we can load templates in a remote AppDomain we can add some additional functionality like assembly caching based on application specific features. One of my typical scenarios is to render templates out of a scripts folder. So all templates live in a folder and they change infrequently. So a Folder based host that can compile these templates once and then only recompile them if something changes would be ideal. Enter host containers which are basically wrappers around the RazorEngine<t> and RazorEngineFactory<t>. They provide additional logic for things like file caching based on changes on disk or string hashes for string based template inputs. The folder host also provides for partial rendering logic through a custom template base implementation. There’s a base implementation in RazorBaseHostContainer, which provides the basics for hosting a RazorEngine, which includes the ability to start and stop the engine, cache assemblies and add references: public abstract class RazorBaseHostContainer<TBaseTemplateType> : MarshalByRefObject where TBaseTemplateType : RazorTemplateBase, new() { public RazorBaseHostContainer() { UseAppDomain = true; GeneratedNamespace = "__RazorHost"; } /// <summary> /// Determines whether the Container hosts Razor /// in a separate AppDomain. Seperate AppDomain /// hosting allows unloading and releasing of /// resources. /// </summary> public bool UseAppDomain { get; set; } /// <summary> /// Base folder location where the AppDomain /// is hosted. By default uses the same folder /// as the host application. /// /// Determines where binary dependencies are /// found for assembly references. /// </summary> public string BaseBinaryFolder { get; set; } /// <summary> /// List of referenced assemblies as string values. /// Must be in GAC or in the current folder of the host app/ /// base BinaryFolder /// </summary> public List<string> ReferencedAssemblies = new List<string>(); /// <summary> /// Name of the generated namespace for template classes /// </summary> public string GeneratedNamespace {get; set; } /// <summary> /// Any error messages /// </summary> public string ErrorMessage { get; set; } /// <summary> /// Cached instance of the Host. Required to keep the /// reference to the host alive for multiple uses. /// </summary> public RazorEngine<TBaseTemplateType> Engine; /// <summary> /// Cached instance of the Host Factory - so we can unload /// the host and its associated AppDomain. /// </summary> protected RazorEngineFactory<TBaseTemplateType> EngineFactory; /// <summary> /// Keep track of each compiled assembly /// and when it was compiled. /// /// Use a hash of the string to identify string /// changes. /// </summary> protected Dictionary<int, CompiledAssemblyItem> LoadedAssemblies = new Dictionary<int, CompiledAssemblyItem>(); /// <summary> /// Call to start the Host running. Follow by a calls to RenderTemplate to /// render individual templates. Call Stop when done. /// </summary> /// <returns>true or false - check ErrorMessage on false </returns> public virtual bool Start() { if (Engine == null) { if (UseAppDomain) Engine = RazorEngineFactory<TBaseTemplateType>.CreateRazorHostInAppDomain(); else Engine = RazorEngineFactory<TBaseTemplateType>.CreateRazorHost(); Engine.Configuration.CompileToMemory = true; Engine.HostContainer = this; if (Engine == null) { this.ErrorMessage = EngineFactory.ErrorMessage; return false; } } return true; } /// <summary> /// Stops the Host and releases the host AppDomain and cached /// assemblies. /// </summary> /// <returns>true or false</returns> public bool Stop() { this.LoadedAssemblies.Clear(); RazorEngineFactory<RazorTemplateBase>.UnloadRazorHostInAppDomain(); this.Engine = null; return true; } … } This base class provides most of the mechanics to host the runtime, but no application specific implementation for rendering. There are rendering functions but they just call the engine directly and provide no caching – there’s no context to decide how to cache and reuse templates. The key methods are Start and Stop and their main purpose is to start a new AppDomain (optionally) and shut it down when requested. The RazorFolderHostContainer – Folder Based Runtime Hosting Let’s look at the more application specific RazorFolderHostContainer implementation which is defined like this: public class RazorFolderHostContainer : RazorBaseHostContainer<RazorTemplateFolderHost> Note that a customized RazorTemplateFolderHost class template is used for this implementation that supports partial rendering in form of a RenderPartial() method that’s available to templates. The folder host’s features are: Render templates based on a Template Base Path (a ‘virtual’ if you will) Cache compiled assemblies based on the relative path and file time stamp File changes on templates cause templates to be recompiled into new assemblies Support for partial rendering using base folder relative pathing As shown in the startup examples earlier host containers require some startup code with a HostContainer tied to a persistent property (like a Form property): // The base path for templates - templates are rendered with relative paths // based on this path. HostContainer.TemplatePath = Path.Combine(Environment.CurrentDirectory, TemplateBaseFolder); // Default output rendering disk location HostContainer.RenderingOutputFile = Path.Combine(HostContainer.TemplatePath, "__Preview.htm"); // Add any assemblies you want reference in your templates HostContainer.ReferencedAssemblies.Add("System.Windows.Forms.dll"); // Start up the host container HostContainer.Start(); Once that’s done, you can render templates with the host container: // Pass the template path for full filename seleted with OpenFile Dialog // relativepath is: subdir\file.cshtml or file.cshtml or ..\file.cshtml var relativePath = Utilities.GetRelativePath(fileName, HostContainer.TemplatePath); if (!HostContainer.RenderTemplate(relativePath, Context, HostContainer.RenderingOutputFile)) { MessageBox.Show("Error: " + HostContainer.ErrorMessage); return; } webBrowser1.Navigate("file://" + HostContainer.RenderingOutputFile); The most critical task of the RazorFolderHostContainer implementation is to retrieve a template from disk, compile and cache it and then deal with deciding whether subsequent requests need to re-compile the template or simply use a cached version. Internally the GetAssemblyFromFileAndCache() handles this task: /// <summary> /// Internally checks if a cached assembly exists and if it does uses it /// else creates and compiles one. Returns an assembly Id to be /// used with the LoadedAssembly list. /// </summary> /// <param name="relativePath"></param> /// <param name="context"></param> /// <returns></returns> protected virtual CompiledAssemblyItem GetAssemblyFromFileAndCache(string relativePath) { string fileName = Path.Combine(TemplatePath, relativePath).ToLower(); int fileNameHash = fileName.GetHashCode(); if (!File.Exists(fileName)) { this.SetError(Resources.TemplateFileDoesnTExist + fileName); return null; } CompiledAssemblyItem item = null; this.LoadedAssemblies.TryGetValue(fileNameHash, out item); string assemblyId = null; // Check for cached instance if (item != null) { var fileTime = File.GetLastWriteTimeUtc(fileName); if (fileTime <= item.CompileTimeUtc) assemblyId = item.AssemblyId; } else item = new CompiledAssemblyItem(); // No cached instance - create assembly and cache if (assemblyId == null) { string safeClassName = GetSafeClassName(fileName); StreamReader reader = null; try { reader = new StreamReader(fileName, true); } catch (Exception ex) { this.SetError(Resources.ErrorReadingTemplateFile + fileName); return null; } assemblyId = Engine.ParseAndCompileTemplate(this.ReferencedAssemblies.ToArray(), reader); // need to ensure reader is closed if (reader != null) reader.Close(); if (assemblyId == null) { this.SetError(Engine.ErrorMessage); return null; } item.AssemblyId = assemblyId; item.CompileTimeUtc = DateTime.UtcNow; item.FileName = fileName; item.SafeClassName = safeClassName; this.LoadedAssemblies[fileNameHash] = item; } return item; } This code uses a LoadedAssembly dictionary which is comprised of a structure that holds a reference to a compiled assembly, a full filename and file timestamp and an assembly id. LoadedAssemblies (defined on the base class shown earlier) is essentially a cache for compiled assemblies and they are identified by a hash id. In the case of files the hash is a GetHashCode() from the full filename of the template. The template is checked for in the cache and if not found the file stamp is checked. If that’s newer than the cache’s compilation date the template is recompiled otherwise the version in the cache is used. All the core work defers to a RazorEngine<T> instance to ParseAndCompileTemplate(). The three rendering specific methods then are rather simple implementations with just a few lines of code dealing with parameter and return value parsing: /// <summary> /// Renders a template to a TextWriter. Useful to write output into a stream or /// the Response object. Used for partial rendering. /// </summary> /// <param name="relativePath">Relative path to the file in the folder structure</param> /// <param name="context">Optional context object or null</param> /// <param name="writer">The textwriter to write output into</param> /// <returns></returns> public bool RenderTemplate(string relativePath, object context, TextWriter writer) { // Set configuration data that is to be passed to the template (any object) Engine.TemplatePerRequestConfigurationData = new RazorFolderHostTemplateConfiguration() { TemplatePath = Path.Combine(this.TemplatePath, relativePath), TemplateRelativePath = relativePath, }; CompiledAssemblyItem item = GetAssemblyFromFileAndCache(relativePath); if (item == null) { writer.Close(); return false; } try { // String result will be empty as output will be rendered into the // Response object's stream output. However a null result denotes // an error string result = Engine.RenderTemplateFromAssembly(item.AssemblyId, context, writer); if (result == null) { this.SetError(Engine.ErrorMessage); return false; } } catch (Exception ex) { this.SetError(ex.Message); return false; } finally { writer.Close(); } return true; } /// <summary> /// Render a template from a source file on disk to a specified outputfile. /// </summary> /// <param name="relativePath">Relative path off the template root folder. Format: path/filename.cshtml</param> /// <param name="context">Any object that will be available in the template as a dynamic of this.Context</param> /// <param name="outputFile">Optional - output file where output is written to. If not specified the /// RenderingOutputFile property is used instead /// </param> /// <returns>true if rendering succeeds, false on failure - check ErrorMessage</returns> public bool RenderTemplate(string relativePath, object context, string outputFile) { if (outputFile == null) outputFile = RenderingOutputFile; try { using (StreamWriter writer = new StreamWriter(outputFile, false, Engine.Configuration.OutputEncoding, Engine.Configuration.StreamBufferSize)) { return RenderTemplate(relativePath, context, writer); } } catch (Exception ex) { this.SetError(ex.Message); return false; } return true; } /// <summary> /// Renders a template to string. Useful for RenderTemplate /// </summary> /// <param name="relativePath"></param> /// <param name="context"></param> /// <returns></returns> public string RenderTemplateToString(string relativePath, object context) { string result = string.Empty; try { using (StringWriter writer = new StringWriter()) { // String result will be empty as output will be rendered into the // Response object's stream output. However a null result denotes // an error if (!RenderTemplate(relativePath, context, writer)) { this.SetError(Engine.ErrorMessage); return null; } result = writer.ToString(); } } catch (Exception ex) { this.SetError(ex.Message); return null; } return result; } The idea is that you can create custom host container implementations that do exactly what you want fairly easily. Take a look at both the RazorFolderHostContainer and RazorStringHostContainer classes for the basic concepts you can use to create custom implementations. Notice also that you can set the engine’s PerRequestConfigurationData() from the host container: // Set configuration data that is to be passed to the template (any object) Engine.TemplatePerRequestConfigurationData = new RazorFolderHostTemplateConfiguration() { TemplatePath = Path.Combine(this.TemplatePath, relativePath), TemplateRelativePath = relativePath, }; which when set to a non-null value is passed to the Template’s InitializeTemplate() method. This method receives an object parameter which you can cast as needed: public override void InitializeTemplate(object configurationData) { // Pick up configuration data and stuff into Request object RazorFolderHostTemplateConfiguration config = configurationData as RazorFolderHostTemplateConfiguration; this.Request.TemplatePath = config.TemplatePath; this.Request.TemplateRelativePath = config.TemplateRelativePath; } With this data you can then configure any custom properties or objects on your main template class. It’s an easy way to pass data from the HostContainer all the way down into the template. The type you use is of type object so you have to cast it yourself, and it must be serializable since it will likely run in a separate AppDomain. This might seem like an ugly way to pass data around – normally I’d use an event delegate to call back from the engine to the host, but since this is running over AppDomain boundaries events get really tricky and passing a template instance back up into the host over AppDomain boundaries doesn’t work due to serialization issues. So it’s easier to pass the data from the host down into the template using this rather clumsy approach of set and forward. It’s ugly, but it’s something that can be hidden in the host container implementation as I’ve done here. It’s also not something you have to do in every implementation so this is kind of an edge case, but I know I’ll need to pass a bunch of data in some of my applications and this will be the easiest way to do so. Summing Up Hosting the Razor runtime is something I got jazzed up about quite a bit because I have an immediate need for this type of templating/merging/scripting capability in an application I’m working on. I’ve also been using templating in many apps and it’s always been a pain to deal with. The Razor engine makes this whole experience a lot cleaner and more light weight and with these wrappers I can now plug .NET based templating into my code literally with a few lines of code. That’s something to cheer about… I hope some of you will find this useful as well… Resources The examples and code require that you download the Razor runtimes. Projects are for Visual Studio 2010 running on .NET 4.0 Platform Installer 3.0 (install WebMatrix or MVC 3 for Razor Runtimes) Latest Code in Subversion Repository Download Snapshot of the Code Documentation (CHM Help File) © Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2010Posted in ASP.NET  .NET  

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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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  • SSO Configuration MMC Snap-in

    - by Christopher House
    This may be old news to most people but I've been away from BizTalk for about a year, so this was a welcome development for me.  The other day, I was discussing with my client the various options for storing configuration data required by our project.  I brought up SSO as it's something I've used with success on previous projects.  The client hadn't previously used SSO and was concerned about the maintainability of configuration stored in SSO.  I offered to do a quick POC to demonstrate storing/retrieving/maintaining configuration via SSO.  As I set about creating the POC, I needed to download Richard Seroter's SSO configuration tool, since that's what I've used previously for managing SSO data.  I went to google to track it down and was pleasantly surprised to discover that Microsoft has finally released an MMC snap-in for maintaining SSO applications. The download contains three components.  The first is the MMC snap-in which allows you to create/delete applications as well as name/value pairs within an application.  Next is a C# class file, SSOConfigHelper.cs, which can be used to retrieve values from an SSO application.  Finally, there's an MSBuild task that allows you to deploy SSO application data with your builds. I didn't see any information as to which versions are supported, I'm using it in a BizTalk 2009 environment and it seems to work quite nicely.  The download package is available here.

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  • Relationship between C#, .NET, ASP, ASP.NET etc

    - by Samuel Walker
    I'm really unclear on the difference between C#, C#.NET and the same for ASP and other '.NET' languages. From what I understand, .NET is a library/framework of... things. I think they're essentially access to Windows data such as form elements etc, but that doesn't seem to apply for ASP.NET. In addition, I see people calling themselves '.NET' developers. Does this mean they're fluent in C#, ASP and other languages? Finally, I never see C# without .NET attached. Is C# tied that closely to .NET as to be unusable without it? In summary: what exactly does .NET provide? How does it relate to C# and ASP etc? What does 'a .NET developer' mean? And finally, why do you never see C# without .NET? [As an aside, I realise these are multiple questions, but I think they are very inter-related (or at least that is the impression that browsing Programmers / SO etc has given me)].

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  • Numerous Unexpected Obstacles Ruining any Project Plans

    - by Libor
    I am working as software developer and struggling with this problem time and time again for almost thirteen years. There seems not to be any way out of the following problem. And it happens with small projects as well. For example, I plan to write an extension for Microsoft Visual Studio. I dowload learning materials, get some book on the topic and allocate time for learning and development. However, during the development, many seemingly trivial problems arise, for example: Why the script refuses to delete the file? Why Visual Studio does not register the extension? (after two days) OK, it registers it, but now it got broken. How to fix it? each of these "small" obstacles usually take 1-5 days to resolve and the project finally consumes several times more man-hours than planned. Maybe it happens only because I am working on Microsoft platform and many of their Frameworks and architectures are bit confusing and badly documented. I would like to have most problems resolved by finding answer in a book or official documentation (MSDN), but the only answer I usually find is on some weird forum or personal blog googled after desperately searching for any relevant information on the topic. Do you have the same struggles? Do you have techniques on how to prevent these problems? I was thinking of simply multiplying projected time for a given project by some factor, but this does not help. Some projects get done briskly and some take months and the guiding factor here are these small "glitches" which take programmers whole weeks to resolve. I have to admit that lots of these obstacles demoralizes me and drains me of focus and joy of work (who likes to get back to work when he have to resolve some stupid registry problem or weird framework bug instead of doing creative work?) After the project is finally done, I am feeling like dying from thousand cuts.

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  • Bookbindng Samples

    - by Tim Dexter
    I have finally found a home for the bookbinding samples I have put together in support of my white paper on Bookbinding. OTN has a great newish sample code site where you can create code samples to share with the community. In their own words: Welcome to the Oracle Sample Code public repository, where Oracle Technology Network members collaboratively build and share sample applications, code snippets, skins and templates, and more. Note the word 'templates' I read that as an open invitation to share your latest and greatest! If you have template samples or code snippets that you think would benefit the wider BIP community please create new code samples and let me know the link and I'll ensure they get promotion through the blog. https://www.samplecode.oracle.com/ You just need an OTN account to get started. I'll be pushing some more samples and snippets in the near future, its a great centrally managed repository. Finally, Oracle has somewhere to get code and files hosted. The two samples I have created cover the book bindng function from a couple of angles: S523: Oracle BI Publisher Bookbinding Examples - this walks you through a series of examples that show you how to create the bookbinding control files to generate the final bound document. S522: Oracle BI Publisher Bookbinding Demonstration - this is a sample J2EE application that demonstrates how to create an HTML/servlet combination to allow users to make sub document selections and then the document features e.g. TOC, page numbering, cross links, etc you would like added to the final document I'd be very interested in any feedback. Happy Binding!

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  • Relationship between C#, .NET, ASP, ASP.NET etc

    - by Samuel Walker
    I'm really unclear on the difference between C#, C#.NET and the same for ASP and other '.NET' languages. From what I understand, .NET is a library/framework of... things. I think they're essentially access to Windows data such as form elements etc, but that doesn't seem to apply for ASP.NET. In addition, I see people calling themselves '.NET' developers. Does this mean they're fluent in C#, ASP and other languages? Finally, I never see C# without .NET attached. Is C# tied that closely to .NET as to be unusable without it? In summary: what exactly does .NET provide? How does it relate to C# and ASP etc? What does 'a .NET developer' mean? And finally, why do you never see C# without .NET? [As an aside, I realise these are multiple questions, but I think they are very inter-related (or at least that is the impression that browsing Programmers / SO etc has given me)].

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  • links for 2010-06-09

    - by Bob Rhubart
    Enterprise Architecture: From Incite comes Insight...: Why aren't we seeing more adoption of open source in large enterprises? (tags: ping.fm entarch opensource linux) Forms Modernization, Part 1: Motivation for change iAdvise blog (tags: ping.fm oracleace apex middleware oracle) OmniGraffle for iPad Now Supports VGA Output (Enterprise Architecture at Oracle) (tags: ping.fm entarch ipad oracle) SysAdmin access in Oracle VDI - Jaap's VDI Blog Space (tags: ping.fm virtualization sunray vdi) Securing Enterprise Data in AWS Oracle PeopleSoft Enterprise Consulting, Support and Training (tags: ping.fm cloud peoplesoft entarch) Enterprise Software Development with Java: ODTUG Kaleidoscope 2010 - preparations and sessions (tags: ping.fm oracle java oracleace) @toddbiske: Enterprise Architecture Must Assist Delivery "In most IT organizations, things get delivered through projects, and enterprise architects don’t typically play the role of project architect. At best, there is an indirect association with delivery." -- Todd Biske (tags: entarch enterprisearchitecture) @pevansgreenwood: The Rules of Enterprise IT "The rules of this game need to change if enterprise IT — as we know it — is to remain relevant in the future." -- Peter Evans Greenwood (tags: entarch enterprisearchitecture) @bex: Oracle UCM 11g Now Released! "Good news!" says Oracle ACE Director Bex Huff. "The 11g version of Oracle UCM is finally available! This version is a bit of a re-write to run on top of the WebLogic application server. Oracle has been talking about this release for some time, so I'm glad to see it finally available." (tags: oracle enteprise2.0 e20 oracleace) Marc Kelderman: SOA 11g Cloning Cloning an Oracle SOA Suite 11g environment is rather simple. Marc Kelderman shows you how. (tags: soa oracle)

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  • .NET CoffeeScript Handler

    - by Liam McLennan
    After more time than I care to admit I have finally released a rudimentary Http Handler for serving compiled CoffeeScript from Asp.Net applications. It was a long and painful road but I am glad to finally have a usable strategy for client-side scripting in CoffeeScript. Why CoffeeScript? As Douglas Crockford discussed in detail, Javascript is a mixture of good and bad features. The genius of CoffeeScript is to treat javascript in the browser as a virtual machine. By compiling to javascript CoffeeScript gets a clean slate to re-implement syntax, taking the best of javascript and ruby and combining them into a beautiful scripting language. The only limitation is that CoffeeScript cannot do anything that javascript cannot do. Here is an example from the CoffeeScript website. First, the coffeescript syntax: reverse: (string) -> string.split('').reverse().join '' alert reverse '.eeffoC yrT' and the javascript that it compiles to: var reverse; reverse = function(string) { return string.split('').reverse().join(''); }; alert(reverse('.eeffoC yrT')); Areas For Improvement ;) The current implementation is deeply flawed, however, at this point I’m just glad it works. When the server receives a request for a coffeescript file the following things happen: The CoffeeScriptHandler is invoked If the script has previously been compiled then the compiled version is returned. Else it writes a script file containing the CoffeeScript compiler and the requested coffee script The process shells out to CScript.exe to to execute the script. The resulting javascript is sent back to the browser. This outlandish process is necessary because I could not find a way to directly execute the coffeescript compiler from .NET. If anyone can help out with that I would appreciate it.

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  • How to install Canon MP610 printer on Ubuntu 12.04 x64

    - by Arkadius
    I installed Ubuntu 12.04 x64. Orginal Canon drivers are only for 32-bit version. How can I install this printer in 64-bit version ? Arkadius HERE IS SOLUTION I looked for solution some time and finally found it. First I try to do it by adding repository like it is written here: http://www.iheartubuntu.com/2012/02/install-canon-printer-for-ubuntu-linux.html BUT it did NOT work. Printer was installed but every print JOB goes somewhere ( probably to /dev/null :) ) Also installing sudo apt-get install ia32-libs did NOT worked (it was already installed) Finally I found solution. NOTE I did NOT use orginal Canon drivers for 32-bit. I also removed drivers from repository: ppa:michael-gruz/canon I found solution almost at the end of this thread: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1967725&page=10 Most important hint was found in Response #97 "Do NOT install any PPA" I did as follows: Removed all copies of my printer Removed Canon drivers from repository ppa:michael-gruz/canon sudo apt-get remove cnijfilter* Added new repository and installed CUPS for Canon: sudo apt-add-repository ppa:robbiew/cups-bjnp sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install cups-bjnp Installed Gutenprint: sudo apt-get install printer-driver-gutenprint Restarted CUPS: sudo restart cups Add myself to group lp: sudo usermod -G lp -a your_user_name Added printer usings steps from link above: Don't install any PPA for the drivers. Click the Cog up in the right-hand corner and select Printers. Turn on the printer and make sure it is connected. When the Printers windows appears, click +Add and wait a few minutes. Your printer should appear within the configuration wizard. Mine did and its an Canon MX330. Click the defaults and continue on. Cups should identify your printer. I saw a few other models in the list. I was able to successfully print a test page afterwards. I hope this will also help someone else. Arkadius .

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  • A Kingdom To Conquer: Character Sketches

    - by George Clingerman
    Still not 100% sold on my title so it remains a working title for now, but here’s a series of character sketches I’ve done for a turn based strategy game I’m playing at making. I’ve been sketching these on various pieces of paper throughout the last two weeks and just finished the last of them today (my plan was for 16 different types of units and well, now I have them, so I consider that done!).                    Pretty rough sketches for now, but I’m pretty happy with the art style overall. I was wrestling for quite a while just HOW I wanted the game to look and then I finally stumbled across Art Baltazar and I was like, THAT’S IT! There’s a few characters I need to re-do a bit more, I feel they’re a bit TOO much like some of the characters that inspired them but I’m happy that the ideas are finally sketched out. I’ve also been playing a bit in InkScape working on making these guys digital. A pretty new experience for me since I’m not used to working with vector images but I think I’ll get the hang of it. Here’s the Knight all vectorized. Now if I could just start making some progress on the actual game itself…

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  • IIM Calcutta &ndash; EPBM 14 &ndash; Campus Visit &ndash; Day 1 &ndash; Registration &amp; Beginning

    - by Ram Shankar Yadav
    Hey Guys! I’m back with the updates, it was an awesome Monday morning, for me it started when Sun came on my face, and the time was 5:30AM~~ I was amazed that this part of the country gets the sunrise quite early, but I ignored the sunlight for a while by covering my face, but…finally the door knocked….~ It was Mukesh, and the time was 6 AM, so I thought let’s get rid of laziness and start my day~ After having my brush and bath, I shaved and we headed for the Breakfast~ We quickly had our bread butter jam combo, and left for the Auditorium for Registration~ We searched for our names and signed the Registration paper and got a cool IIM C bag, with following in it: - a IIMC Notepad - Cello X Caliber pen - a book “What the Best MBAs Know”, and - Reading Material for Campus Sessions Today we had lectures on “Evolution of Indian Corporate Sector” (2 Session of 1.5 hrs each) and “Indian Economy: Crisis & Response” (2 Sessions of 1.5 hrs). “Evolution of Indian Corporate Sector” was by Prof. Raghabendra Chattopadhyay, was one of my best lectures I’ve ever attended in my life, he started with a question that saying that “The Indian Capitalists didn’t wanted the economy to open up till the economic reforms occurred?”, he is one of the best story tellers I’ve ever met, he started with the ancient European and Indian history and linked the trade & economics with it, simply amazing~ I can’t believe I didn’t get bore even after a 2hour long session…awesome~~ Afterward we had our lunch break, we did our lunch in “New Hostel” building and got back for “Indian Economy” sessions. Indian Economy session was taken by Sudip Chaudhuri, for us he’s a well known face as we have already attended his sessions on Macroeconomics~ It was an interactive, easy going, and a laughable session, and we did discussed some serious issues as well. After the class got over we went out and got few T-Shirts and Mugs for ourselves, and yep not to forget it “Rained” in Kolkata today~~ We got back and had our dinner and dispersed finally… I loved this amazing Monday, and hope the spirit continues till Saturday~ I’m feeling the enrichment in my thought and perceptions~ I’m lovin’ it~~ ram :)

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  • How can I retrieve the details of the file from an outbound operation in BPEL 11g

    - by [email protected]
    Several times, we come across requirements where we need to capture the details of the file that got written out as a part of a BPEL process invoking a File/Ftp Adapter. Consider a case where we're using FileNamingConvention as "PurchaseOrder_%SEQ%.txt" and we need to do some post processing based on the filename (please remember that we wouldn't know the filename until the adapter invocation completes) In order to achieve this, we need to manually tweak the WSDL so that the File/Ftp Adapter can return the metadata of the file that was written out. In general, the File/Ftp Write/Put WSDL operations are one way as shown below:         The File/Ftp Adapters are designed to return the metadata back if this WSDL is tweaked into a two-way WSDL. In addition, the <wsdl:output/> must import the fileread.xsd schema (see below). You will need to copy fileread.xsd from  here into the xsd folder of your composite.       Finally, we will need to tweak the  WSDL. (highlighted below)           Finally, the BPEL <invoke> would look as shown below. Please note that the file metadata would be returned as a part of the BPEL output variable:

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  • Carriers Holding Your OS Updates Hostage

    - by Tim Murphy
    Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/tmurphy/archive/2013/10/10/carriers-holding-your-os-updates-hostage.aspx Just a small rant here.  Today the Windows Phone 8 GDR2 update finally became available for Nokia handset users.  Now I’m not sure that it is AT&T fault entirely that Samsung and HTC users got their updates two months ago and we are just finally seeing it.  It may have something to do with the Nokia Amber update.  But every Windows Phone update on AT&T from 7.1 on seems to have been delayed.  How is it that the premiere Windows Phone carrier is always the last one to release updates? Smart phone ecosystems are a partnership between the OS provider, the hardware manufacturer and the carriers.  If any one of those partners does not hold up its responsibilities then everyone gets a black eye.  The goal for all involved should be to release updates as early as possible with reasonable assurance of stability.  This ensures the satisfaction of consumers and increases the likelihood of future sales. From what I have seen so far AT&T has been the one breaking the consumer’s trust in the Windows Phone ecosystem.  Aside from voicing our dissatisfaction we may need to start voting with our feet until they realize that they being a poor citizen has consequences. Technorati Tags: ATT,Windows Phone,Windows Phone 8,Microsoft,Nokia,GDR2

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  • SQL Saturday Atlanta: Intro To Performance Tuning

    - by Mike Femenella
    I'm looking forward to speaking in Atlanta on the 24th, will be fun to get back down that way to visit with some friends and present two topics that I really enjoy. First, an introduction to performance tuning. Performance tuning is a very wide and deep topic and we're staying close to the surface. I direct this class for newbie sql users who have less than 2 years of experience. It's all the things I wish someone would have told me in my first 2 years about what to look for when the database was slow...or allegedly slow I should say. We'll cover using profiler to find slow performing queries and how to save the data off to a table as well as a tour of other features. The difference between clustered, non clustered and covering indexes. How to look at and understand an execution plan (at a high level) and finally the difference between a temp table and a table variable and what the implications are of using either one in your code. That pretty much takes up a full hour. Second presentation, Loading Data in Real Time. It's really a presentation about partitioning but with a twist that we used at work recently to solve a need to load some data quickly and put it into production with minimal downtime. We'll cover partition functions, schemes,$partition, merge, sys.partitions and show some examples of building a set of partitioned tables and using the switch statement to move it from one table to another. Finally we'll cover the differences in partitioning between 2005 and 2008. Hope to see you there! And if you read my blog please introduce yourself!

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  • Allow JMX connection on JVM 1.6.x

    - by Martin Müller
    While trying to monitor a JVM on a remote system using visualvm the activation of JMX gave me some challenges. Dr Google and my employers documentation quickly revealed some -D opts needed for JMX, but strangely it only worked for a Solaris 10 system (my setup: MacOS laptop monitoring SPARC Solaris based JVMs) On S11 with the same opts I saw that "my" JVM listening on port 3000 (which I chose for JMX), but visualvm was not able to get a connection. Finally I found out that at least my S11 installation needed an explicit setting of the RMI host name. This what finally worked:         -Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote=true \        -Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.ssl=false \        -Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.authenticate=false \        -Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.port=3000 \        -Djava.rmi.server.hostname=s11name.us.oracle.com \ Maybe this post saves someone else the time I spent on research 

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  • Wifi not working on Acer Aspire One D270

    - by Dani
    brand new baby linux user here, never used Ubuntu or any other linux OS before, so be gentle and use short words! I installed Ubuntu 12.04 on my new Acer Aspire One D270-F61C/KF netbook (it's a Japanese computer which had Japanese windows preinstalled, and I decided to take the plunge and try Ubuntu because English Windows costs the earth and stars). Wifi isn't working; I enter my wireless password, it tries to connect for a while, then asks for my password again. And KEEPS ASKING, every few minutes. Wired connection works fine. Wireless card is a Broadcom BCM4313; I have the "additional drivers" checked and installed (I tried unchecking and then reinstalling them in case that would help, no joy, and now my home wifi connection isn't showing up in the list of available connections, argh). I've done a lot of googling and I gather there's a lot of issues with Broadcom cards, but some of the answers are for earlier ubuntu builds and many of them are a bit confusing for a new user. I gather I need to try installing some new drivers other than the proprietary ones provided, but I'm having trouble figuring out how that's done. Anyone got some simple, step by step instructions for me? Please bear in mind, TOTAL N00B. (EDIT): OKAY, got it fixed finally; after suggestions on the Ubuntu forums and messing around with drivers, what finally worked was installing Wicd. Not... using Wicd, for some reason, just installing it fixed it. ...I CHOOSE NOT TO QUESTION IT.

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  • Failure to Boot 12.04 on HP AMD Dual Core. Rescue Mode doesn't even come up

    - by L R Bellmore Jr
    I have 12.04 installed on HP 64 bit dual core AMD laptop.. worked great until about 1-2 months ago.. now takes 1/2 hour to 25 hours to boot if it ever does. A minor number of times I get the HP logo with hash lines on screen and it just hangs... When it finally boots 95% it will run until I turn it off days later to see if any of the upgrades fixed the problem. Currently, if it boots, it is random.. .left on over night .. 2 nights ago and came back to a HP logo with Hash Lines horizontal across the screen.. frozen.. rebooted back to black screen.. no HP logo... Most often when it does boot.. no HP logo.. just cursor shows up.. and then I know it will finally load... computer has been made worthless and it is my work computer..HELP PLEASE... Rescue Mode can't be invoked.. computer doesnt respond.. has shown up 3 times in about 100 and when I have tried it... 1 time it resulted in a boot up but then failed in a couple hours.

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  • Can't start webcam for google video services

    - by wisemonkey
    I've got Ubuntu 11.10 64 bit and have installed the google video chat plugin. However webcam doesn't seem to work (black screen -- no video at all). For cheese it works but shows really bad (black and white kinda) image. Following some link I installed guvcview if I start it then image looks neat. Any suggestions on how can it be fixed? If it helps I've tried the solution: $ sudo mv /opt/google/talkplugin/GoogleTalkPlugin /opt/google/talkplugin/GoogleTalkPlugin.old $ sudo gedit /opt/google/talkplugin/GoogleTalkPlugin and putting following lines in: #!/bin/sh LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib32/libv4l/v4l1compat.so /opt/google/talkplugin/GoogleTalkPlugin.old OR #!/bin/sh LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libv4l/v4l1compat.so /opt/google/talkplugin/GoogleTalkPlugin.old Cause I've both files. Finally $sudo chmod +x /opt/google/talkplugin/GoogleTalkPlugin.old I closed and reopened chrome then started gmail tried video call -- black screen :-/ Ok so today finally google+ provided me with trouble shoot link and advised me: The plug-in won't install If you're having trouble installing the plug-in, or are receiving a message asking you to reinstall it, you should check to make sure your configuration is right. To do so simply: Check to make sure the Google Talk Plugin Video Accelerator and Google Talk NPAPI Plugin are enabled. If you're using Chrome you can type about:plugins in your browser to display your plug-ins. Make sure you're not using Internet Explorer 64-bit (this is a browser version that is 64 bit as opposed to 32 bit). Ensure that you don't have any "click to run" extensions enabled. If you're still experiencing this issue after checking your configuration you can follow these steps: Refresh the browser page. Close any running Google Talk plug-in processes. Close all open and running browser processes. Restart your computer. Uninstall and then reinstall the plug-in. Try a different browser such as Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox. I looked in about:plugins for chrome and firefox: I don't have Google Talk NPAPI Plugin, does that matter? and I thought its installed with google talk plugin or no?

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  • Kids and programming: ScratchKara

    - by Mike Pagel
    Ever now and then I kept wondering how to share with my kids the excitement of creating something with your computer. Of course, today this is a bit more difficult, as they have seen 3D animation games and well-edited websites. I guess that's why they weren't all that hyped when I found my first computer model at our local recycling facilities (an 8-bit Laser VZ-200 with rubber keys). When I finally got it up and running with an old analog TV set they finally asked whether we could play soccer on it. Needless to say that my showing them how it remembers some BASIC commands and lists and executes them did not make any impression. So the question is for real: How do you get today's kids excited about programming? And just recently I looked again for environments that allow even young kids (mine are 7 and 9 years old now) to do something and have fun. Obviously any real, text-oriented programming language wouldn't work well. To cut it short: Something really nice was built by University of Oldenburg: ScratchKara. It is the perfect mixture of Kara, a simulation of a little ladybug and Scratch, an authoring environment from MIT. ScratchKara allows kids to initially simply explore how the bug moves and turns by pressing the action buttons, then move towards sequencing commands through drag & drop, and eventually end up building algorithms with procedures and functions. Even through it is built for kids and beginners, the environment comes with debugging and refactoring, which I found more than amazing. My kids love it and I have to admit I keep thinking about how to solve a bit more advanced problems with this language, which does not allow you to store any state information (other than your call stack). Yes, I am hooked, too... Once the language is understood you can then move to one of the original Kara versions, where you can define the bug's behavior through finite statemachines, Turing tables, Java and other textual languages. And from there, anything is possible.

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