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  • Regex for removing an item from a comma-separated string?

    - by ingredient_15939
    Say I have a string like this: "1,2,3,11" A simple regex like this will find a number in the string: (?<=^|,)1(?=,|$) - this will correctly find the "1" (ie. not the first "1" in "11"). However, to remove a number from the string, leaving the string properly formatted with commas in between each number, I need to include one adjacent comma only. For example, matching 1,, 2, or ,11. So the trick is to match one comma, on either side of the number, but to ignore the comma on the opposite side (if there is one). Can someone help me with this?

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  • how to generate tinymce to ajax generated textarea

    - by Jai_pans
    Hi, i have a image multi-uloader script which also each item uploaded was preview 1st b4 it submitted and each images has its following textarea which are also generated by javascript and my problem is i want to use the tinymce editor to each textarea generated by the ajax. Any help will be appreciated.. here is my script function fileQueueError(file, errorCode, message) { try { var imageName = "error.gif"; var errorName = ""; if (errorCode === SWFUpload.errorCode_QUEUE_LIMIT_EXCEEDED) { errorName = "You have attempted to queue too many files."; } if (errorName !== "") { alert(errorName); return; } switch (errorCode) { case SWFUpload.QUEUE_ERROR.ZERO_BYTE_FILE: imageName = "zerobyte.gif"; break; case SWFUpload.QUEUE_ERROR.FILE_EXCEEDS_SIZE_LIMIT: imageName = "toobig.gif"; break; case SWFUpload.QUEUE_ERROR.ZERO_BYTE_FILE: case SWFUpload.QUEUE_ERROR.INVALID_FILETYPE: default: alert(message); break; } addImage("images/" + imageName); } catch (ex) { this.debug(ex); } } function fileDialogComplete(numFilesSelected, numFilesQueued) { try { if (numFilesQueued 0) { this.startUpload(); } } catch (ex) { this.debug(ex); } } function uploadProgress(file, bytesLoaded) { try { var percent = Math.ceil((bytesLoaded / file.size) * 100); var progress = new FileProgress(file, this.customSettings.upload_target); progress.setProgress(percent); if (percent === 100) { progress.setStatus("Creating thumbnail..."); progress.toggleCancel(false, this); } else { progress.setStatus("Uploading..."); progress.toggleCancel(true, this); } } catch (ex) { this.debug(ex); } } function uploadSuccess(file, serverData) { try { var progress = new FileProgress(file, this.customSettings.upload_target); if (serverData.substring(0, 7) === "FILEID:") { addRow("tableID","thumbnail.php?id=" + serverData.substring(7),file.name); //setup(); //generateTinyMCE('itemdescription[]'); progress.setStatus("Thumbnail Created."); progress.toggleCancel(false); } else { addImage("images/error.gif"); progress.setStatus("Error."); progress.toggleCancel(false); alert(serverData); } } catch (ex) { this.debug(ex); } } function uploadComplete(file) { try { /* I want the next upload to continue automatically so I'll call startUpload here */ if (this.getStats().files_queued 0) { this.startUpload(); } else { var progress = new FileProgress(file, this.customSettings.upload_target); progress.setComplete(); progress.setStatus("All images received."); progress.toggleCancel(false); } } catch (ex) { this.debug(ex); } } function uploadError(file, errorCode, message) { var imageName = "error.gif"; var progress; try { switch (errorCode) { case SWFUpload.UPLOAD_ERROR.FILE_CANCELLED: try { progress = new FileProgress(file, this.customSettings.upload_target); progress.setCancelled(); progress.setStatus("Cancelled"); progress.toggleCancel(false); } catch (ex1) { this.debug(ex1); } break; case SWFUpload.UPLOAD_ERROR.UPLOAD_STOPPED: try { progress = new FileProgress(file, this.customSettings.upload_target); progress.setCancelled(); progress.setStatus("Stopped"); progress.toggleCancel(true); } catch (ex2) { this.debug(ex2); } case SWFUpload.UPLOAD_ERROR.UPLOAD_LIMIT_EXCEEDED: imageName = "uploadlimit.gif"; break; default: alert(message); break; } addImage("images/" + imageName); } catch (ex3) { this.debug(ex3); } } function addRow(tableID,src,filename) { var table = document.getElementById(tableID); var rowCount = table.rows.length; var row = table.insertRow(rowCount); rowCount + 1; row.id = "row"+rowCount; var cell0 = row.insertCell(0); cell0.innerHTML = rowCount; cell0.style.background = "#FFFFFF"; var cell1 = row.insertCell(1); cell1.align = "center"; cell1.style.background = "#FFFFFF"; var imahe = document.createElement("img"); imahe.setAttribute("src",src); var hidden = document.createElement("input"); hidden.setAttribute("type","hidden"); hidden.setAttribute("name","filename[]"); hidden.setAttribute("value",filename); /*var hidden2 = document.createElement("input"); hidden2.setAttribute("type","hidden"); hidden2.setAttribute("name","filename[]"); hidden2.setAttribute("value",filename); cell1.appendChild(hidden2);*/ cell1.appendChild(hidden); cell1.appendChild(imahe); var cell2 = row.insertCell(2); cell2.align = "left"; cell2.valign = "top"; cell2.style.background = "#FFFFFF"; //tr1.appendChild(td1); var div2 = document.createElement("div"); div2.style.padding ="0 0 0 10px"; div2.style.width = "400px"; var alink = document.createElement("a"); //alink.style.margin="40px 0 0 0"; alink.href ="#"; alink.innerHTML ="Cancel"; alink.onclick= function () { document.getElementById(row.id).style.display='none'; document.getElementById(textfield.id).disabled='disabled'; }; var div = document.createElement("div"); div.style.margin="10px 0"; div.appendChild(alink); var textfield = document.createElement("input"); textfield.id = "file"+rowCount; textfield.type = "text"; textfield.name = "itemname[]"; textfield.style.margin = "10px 0"; textfield.style.width = "400px"; textfield.value = "Item Name"; textfield.onclick= function(){ //textfield.value=""; if(textfield.value=="Item Name") textfield.value=""; if(desc.innerHTML=="") desc.innerHTML ="Item Description"; if(price.value=="") price.value="Item Price"; } var desc = document.createElement("textarea"); desc.name = "itemdescription[]"; desc.cols = "80"; desc.rows = "4"; desc.innerHTML = "Item Description"; desc.onclick = function(){ if(desc.innerHTML== "Item Description") desc.innerHTML = ""; if(textfield.value=="Item name" || textfield.value=="") textfield.value="Item Name"; if(price.value=="") price.value="Item Price"; } var price = document.createElement("input"); price.id = "file"+rowCount; price.type = "text"; price.name = "itemprice[]"; price.style.margin = "10px 0"; price.style.width = "400px"; price.value = "Item Price"; price.onclick= function(){ if(price.value=="Item Price") price.value=""; if(desc.innerHTML=="") desc.innerHTML ="Item Description"; if(textfield.value=="") textfield.value="Item Name"; } var span = document.createElement("span"); span.innerHTML = "View"; span.style.width = "auto"; span.style.padding = "10px 0"; var view = document.createElement("input"); view.id = "file"+rowCount; view.type = "checkbox"; view.name = "publicview[]"; view.value = "y"; view.checked = "checked"; var div3 = document.createElement("div"); div3.appendChild(span); div3.appendChild(view); var div4 = document.createElement("div"); div4.style.padding = "10px 0"; var span2 = document.createElement("span"); span2.innerHTML = "Default Display"; span2.style.width = "auto"; span2.style.padding = "10px 0"; var radio = document.createElement("input"); radio.type = "radio"; radio.name = "setdefault"; radio.value = "y"; div4.appendChild(span2); div4.appendChild(radio); div2.appendChild(div); //div2.appendChild(label); //div2.appendChild(table); div2.appendChild(textfield); div2.appendChild(desc); div2.appendChild(price); div2.appendChild(div3); div2.appendChild(div4); cell2.appendChild(div2); } function addImage(src,val_id) { var newImg = document.createElement("img"); newImg.style.margin = "5px 50px 5px 5px"; newImg.style.display= "inline"; newImg.id=val_id; document.getElementById("thumbnails").appendChild(newImg); if (newImg.filters) { try { newImg.filters.item("DXImageTransform.Microsoft.Alpha").opacity = 0; } catch (e) { // If it is not set initially, the browser will throw an error. This will set it if it is not set yet. newImg.style.filter = 'progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.Alpha(opacity=' + 0 + ')'; } } else { newImg.style.opacity = 0; } newImg.onload = function () { fadeIn(newImg, 0); }; newImg.src = src; } function fadeIn(element, opacity) { var reduceOpacityBy = 5; var rate = 30; // 15 fps if (opacity < 100) { opacity += reduceOpacityBy; if (opacity > 100) { opacity = 100; } if (element.filters) { try { element.filters.item("DXImageTransform.Microsoft.Alpha").opacity = opacity; } catch (e) { // If it is not set initially, the browser will throw an error. This will set it if it is not set yet. element.style.filter = 'progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.Alpha(opacity=' + opacity + ')'; } } else { element.style.opacity = opacity / 100; } } if (opacity < 100) { setTimeout(function () { fadeIn(element, opacity); }, rate); } } /* ************************************** * FileProgress Object * Control object for displaying file info * ************************************** */ function FileProgress(file, targetID) { this.fileProgressID = "divFileProgress"; this.fileProgressWrapper = document.getElementById(this.fileProgressID); if (!this.fileProgressWrapper) { this.fileProgressWrapper = document.createElement("div"); this.fileProgressWrapper.className = "progressWrapper"; this.fileProgressWrapper.id = this.fileProgressID; this.fileProgressElement = document.createElement("div"); this.fileProgressElement.className = "progressContainer"; var progressCancel = document.createElement("a"); progressCancel.className = "progressCancel"; progressCancel.href = "#"; progressCancel.style.visibility = "hidden"; progressCancel.appendChild(document.createTextNode(" ")); var progressText = document.createElement("div"); progressText.className = "progressName"; progressText.appendChild(document.createTextNode(file.name)); var progressBar = document.createElement("div"); progressBar.className = "progressBarInProgress"; var progressStatus = document.createElement("div"); progressStatus.className = "progressBarStatus"; progressStatus.innerHTML = "&nbsp;"; this.fileProgressElement.appendChild(progressCancel); this.fileProgressElement.appendChild(progressText); this.fileProgressElement.appendChild(progressStatus); this.fileProgressElement.appendChild(progressBar); this.fileProgressWrapper.appendChild(this.fileProgressElement); document.getElementById(targetID).appendChild(this.fileProgressWrapper); fadeIn(this.fileProgressWrapper, 0); } else { this.fileProgressElement = this.fileProgressWrapper.firstChild; this.fileProgressElement.childNodes[1].firstChild.nodeValue = file.name; } this.height = this.fileProgressWrapper.offsetHeight; } FileProgress.prototype.setProgress = function (percentage) { this.fileProgressElement.className = "progressContainer green"; this.fileProgressElement.childNodes[3].className = "progressBarInProgress"; this.fileProgressElement.childNodes[3].style.width = percentage + "%"; }; FileProgress.prototype.setComplete = function () { this.fileProgressElement.className = "progressContainer blue"; this.fileProgressElement.childNodes[3].className = "progressBarComplete"; this.fileProgressElement.childNodes[3].style.width = ""; }; FileProgress.prototype.setError = function () { this.fileProgressElement.className = "progressContainer red"; this.fileProgressElement.childNodes[3].className = "progressBarError"; this.fileProgressElement.childNodes[3].style.width = ""; }; FileProgress.prototype.setCancelled = function () { this.fileProgressElement.className = "progressContainer"; this.fileProgressElement.childNodes[3].className = "progressBarError"; this.fileProgressElement.childNodes[3].style.width = ""; }; FileProgress.prototype.setStatus = function (status) { this.fileProgressElement.childNodes[2].innerHTML = status; }; FileProgress.prototype.toggleCancel = function (show, swfuploadInstance) { this.fileProgressElement.childNodes[0].style.visibility = show ? "visible" : "hidden"; if (swfuploadInstance) { var fileID = this.fileProgressID; this.fileProgressElement.childNodes[0].onclick = function () { swfuploadInstance.cancelUpload(fileID); return false; }; } }; i am using a swfuploader an i jst added a input fields and a textarea when it preview the images which ready to be uploaded and from my html i have this script var swfu; window.onload = function () { swfu = new SWFUpload({ // Backend Settings upload_url: "../we_modules/upload.php", // Relative to the SWF file or absolute post_params: {"PHPSESSID": ""}, // File Upload Settings file_size_limit : "20 MB", // 2MB file_types : "*.*", //file_types : "", file_types_description : "jpg", file_upload_limit : "0", file_queue_limit : "0", // Event Handler Settings - these functions as defined in Handlers.js // The handlers are not part of SWFUpload but are part of my website and control how // my website reacts to the SWFUpload events. //file_queued_handler : fileQueued, file_queue_error_handler : fileQueueError, file_dialog_complete_handler : fileDialogComplete, upload_progress_handler : uploadProgress, upload_error_handler : uploadError, upload_success_handler : uploadSuccess, upload_complete_handler : uploadComplete, // Button Settings button_image_url : "../we_modules/images/SmallSpyGlassWithTransperancy_17x18.png", // Relative to the SWF file button_placeholder_id : "spanButtonPlaceholder", button_width: 180, button_height: 18, button_text : 'Select Files(2 MB Max)', button_text_style : '.button { font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;cursor:pointer } .buttonSmall { font-size: 10pt; }', button_text_top_padding: 0, button_text_left_padding: 18, button_window_mode: SWFUpload.WINDOW_MODE.TRANSPARENT, button_cursor: SWFUpload.CURSOR.HAND, // Flash Settings flash_url : "../swfupload/swfupload.swf", custom_settings : { upload_target : "divFileProgressContainer" }, // Debug Settings debug: false }); }; where should i put on the tinymce function as you mention below?

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  • Python regex to parse text file, get the items in list and count the list

    - by Nemo
    I have a text file which contains some data. I m particularly interested in finding the count of the number of items in v_dims v_dims pattern in my text file looks like this : v_dims={ "Sales", "Product Family", "Sales Organization", "Region", "Sales Area", "Sales office", "Sales Division", "Sales Person", "Sales Channel", "Sales Order Type", "Sales Number", "Sales Person", "Sales Quantity", "Sales Amount" } So I m thinking of getting all the elements in v_dims and dumping them out in a Python list. Then compute the len(mylist) to get the count of the items. The challenge is in getting all the elements of v_dims from my text file and putting them in an empty list. I m particularly interested in items in v_dims in my text file. The text file has data in the form of v_dims pattern i showed in my original post. Some data has nested patterns of v_dims. Thanks. Here's what I have tried and failed. Any help is appreciated. TIA. import re fname = "C:\Users\XXXX\Test.mrk" with open(fname, "r") as fo: content_as_string = fo.read() match = re.findall(r'v_dims={\"(.+?)\"}',content_as_string) Though I have a big text file, Here's a snippet of what's the structure of my text file version "1"; // Computer generated object language file object 'MRKR' "Main" { Data_Type=2, HeaderBlock={ Version_String="6.3 (25)" }, Printer_Info={ Orientation=0, Page_Width=8.50000000, Page_Height=11.00000000, Page_Header="", Page_Footer="", Margin_type=0, Top_Margin=0.50000000, Left_Margin=0.50000000, Bottom_Margin=0.50000000, Right_Margin=0.50000000 }, Marker_Options={ Close_All="TRUE", Hide_Console="FALSE", Console_Left="FALSE", Console_Width=217, Main_Style="Maximized", MDI_Rect={ 0, 0, 892, 1063 } }, Dives={ { Dive="A", Windows={ { View_Index=0, Window_Info={ Window_Rect={ 0, -288, 400, 1008 }, Window_Style="Maximized Front", Window_Name="Theater [Previous Qtr Diveplan-Dive A]" }, Dependent_bool="FALSE", Colset={ Dive_Type="Normal", Dimension_Name="Theater", Action_List={ Actions={ { Action_Type="Select", select_type=5 }, { Action_Type="Select", select_type=0, Key_Names={ "Theater" }, Key_Indexes={ { "AMERICAS" } } }, { Action_Type="Focus", Focus_Rows="True" }, { Action_Type="Dimensions", v_dims={ "Theater", "Product Family", "Division", "Region", "Install at Country Name", "Connect Home Type", "Connect In Type", "SymmConnect Enabled", "Connect Home Refusal Reason", "Sales Order Channel Type", "Maintained By Group", "PS Flag", "Avalanche Flag", "Product Item Family" }, Xtab_Bool="False", Xtab_Flip="False" }, { Action_Type="Select", select_type=5 }, { Action_Type="Select", select_type=0, Key_Names={ "Theater", "Product Family", "Division", "Region", "Install at Country Name", "Connect Home Type", "Connect In Type", "SymmConnect Enabled", "Connect Home Refusal Reason", "Sales Order Channel Type", "Maintained By Group", "PS Flag", "Avalanche Flag" }, Key_Indexes={ { "AMERICAS", "ATMOS", "Latin America CS Division", "37000 CS Region", "Mexico", "", "", "", "", "DIRECT", "EMC", "N", "0" } } } } }, Num_Palette_cols=0, Num_Palette_rows=0 }, Format={ Window_Type="Tabular", Tabular={ Num_row_labels=8 } } } } } }, Widget_Set={ Widget_Layout="Vertical", Go_Button=1, Picklist_Width=0, Sort_Subset_Dimensions="TRUE", Order={ } }, Views={ { Data_Type=1, dbname="Previous Qtr Diveplan", diveline_dbname="Current Qtr Diveplan", logical_name="Current Qtr Diveplan", cols={ { name="Total TSS installs", column_type="Calc[Total TSS installs]", output_type="Number", format_string="." }, { name="TSS Valid Connectivity Records", column_type="Calc[TSS Valid Connectivity Records]", output_type="Number", format_string="." }, { name="% TSS Connectivity Record", column_type="Calc[% TSS Connectivity Record]", output_type="Number" }, { name="TSS Not Applicable", column_type="Calc[TSS Not Applicable]", output_type="Number", format_string="." }, { name="TSS Customer Refusals", column_type="Calc[TSS Customer Refusals]", output_type="Number", format_string="." }, { name="% TSS Refusals", column_type="Calc[% TSS Refusals]", output_type="Number" }, { name="TSS Eligible for Physical Connectivity", column_type="Calc[TSS Eligible for Physical Connectivity]", output_type="Number", format_string="." }, { name="TSS Boxes with Physical Connectivty", column_type="Calc[TSS Boxes with Physical Connectivty]", output_type="Number", format_string="." }, { name="% TSS Physical Connectivity", column_type="Calc[% TSS Physical Connectivity]", output_type="Number" } }, dim_cols={ { name="Model", column_type="Dimension[Model]", output_type="None" }, { name="Model", column_type="Dimension[Model]", output_type="None" }, { name="Connect In Type", column_type="Dimension[Connect In Type]", output_type="None" }, { name="Connect Home Type", column_type="Dimension[Connect Home Type]", output_type="None" }, { name="SymmConnect Enabled", column_type="Dimension[SymmConnect Enabled]", output_type="None" }, { name="Theater", column_type="Dimension[Theater]", output_type="None" }, { name="Division", column_type="Dimension[Division]", output_type="None" }, { name="Region", column_type="Dimension[Region]", output_type="None" }, { name="Sales Order Number", column_type="Dimension[Sales Order Number]", output_type="None" }, { name="Product Item Family", column_type="Dimension[Product Item Family]", output_type="None" }, { name="Item Serial Number", column_type="Dimension[Item Serial Number]", output_type="None" }, { name="Sales Order Deal Number", column_type="Dimension[Sales Order Deal Number]", output_type="None" }, { name="Item Install Date", column_type="Dimension[Item Install Date]", output_type="None" }, { name="SYR Last Dial Home Date", column_type="Dimension[SYR Last Dial Home Date]", output_type="None" }, { name="Maintained By Group", column_type="Dimension[Maintained By Group]", output_type="None" }, { name="PS Flag", column_type="Dimension[PS Flag]", output_type="None" }, { name="Connect Home Refusal Reason", column_type="Dimension[Connect Home Refusal Reason]", output_type="None", col_width=177 }, { name="Cust Name", column_type="Dimension[Cust Name]", output_type="None" }, { name="Sales Order Channel Type", column_type="Dimension[Sales Order Channel Type]", output_type="None" }, { name="Sales Order Type", column_type="Dimension[Sales Order Type]", output_type="None" }, { name="Part Model Key", column_type="Dimension[Part Model Key]", output_type="None" }, { name="Ship Date", column_type="Dimension[Ship Date]", output_type="None" }, { name="Model Number", column_type="Dimension[Model Number]", output_type="None" }, { name="Item Description", column_type="Dimension[Item Description]", output_type="None" }, { name="Customer Classification", column_type="Dimension[Customer Classification]", output_type="None" }, { name="CS Customer Name", column_type="Dimension[CS Customer Name]", output_type="None" }, { name="Install At Customer Number", column_type="Dimension[Install At Customer Number]", output_type="None" }, { name="Install at Country Name", column_type="Dimension[Install at Country Name]", output_type="None" }, { name="TLA Serial Number", column_type="Dimension[TLA Serial Number]", output_type="None" }, { name="Product Version", column_type="Dimension[Product Version]", output_type="None" }, { name="Avalanche Flag", column_type="Dimension[Avalanche Flag]", output_type="None" }, { name="Product Family", column_type="Dimension[Product Family]", output_type="None" }, { name="Project Number", column_type="Dimension[Project Number]", output_type="None" }, { name="PROJECT_STATUS", column_type="Dimension[PROJECT_STATUS]", output_type="None" } }, Available_Columns={ "Total TSS installs", "TSS Valid Connectivity Records", "% TSS Connectivity Record", "TSS Not Applicable", "TSS Customer Refusals", "% TSS Refusals", "TSS Eligible for Physical Connectivity", "TSS Boxes with Physical Connectivty", "% TSS Physical Connectivity", "Total Installs", "All Boxes with Valid Connectivty Record", "% All Connectivity Record", "Overall Refusals", "Overall Refusals %", "All Eligible for Physical Connectivty", "Boxes with Physical Connectivity", "% All with Physical Conectivity" }, Remaining_columns={ { name="Total Installs", column_type="Calc[Total Installs]", output_type="Number", format_string="." }, { name="All Boxes with Valid Connectivty Record", column_type="Calc[All Boxes with Valid Connectivty Record]", output_type="Number", format_string="." }, { name="% All Connectivity Record", column_type="Calc[% All Connectivity Record]", output_type="Number" }, { name="Overall Refusals", column_type="Calc[Overall Refusals]", output_type="Number", format_string="." }, { name="Overall Refusals %", column_type="Calc[Overall Refusals %]", output_type="Number" }, { name="All Eligible for Physical Connectivty", column_type="Calc[All Eligible for Physical Connectivty]", output_type="Number" }, { name="Boxes with Physical Connectivity", column_type="Calc[Boxes with Physical Connectivity]", output_type="Number" }, { name="% All with Physical Conectivity", column_type="Calc[% All with Physical Conectivity]", output_type="Number" } }, calcs={ { name="Total TSS installs", definition="Total[Total TSS installs]", ts_flag="Not TS Calc" }, { name="TSS Valid Connectivity Records", definition="Total[PS Boxes w/ valid connectivity record (1=yes)]", ts_flag="Not TS Calc" }, { name="% TSS Connectivity Record", definition="Total[PS Boxes w/ valid connectivity record (1=yes)] /Total[Total TSS installs]", ts_flag="Not TS Calc" }, { name="TSS Not Applicable", definition="Total[Bozes w/ valid connectivity record (1=yes)]-Total[Boxes Eligible (1=yes)]-Total[TSS Refusals]", ts_flag="Not TS Calc" }, { name="TSS Customer Refusals", definition="Total[TSS Refusals]", ts_flag="Not TS Calc" }, { name="% TSS Refusals", definition="Total[TSS Refusals]/Total[PS Boxes w/ valid connectivity record (1=yes)]", ts_flag="Not TS Calc" }, { name="TSS Eligible for Physical Connectivity", definition="Total[TSS Eligible]-Total[Exception]", ts_flag="Not TS Calc" }, { name="TSS Boxes with Physical Connectivty", definition="Total[PS Physical Connectivity] - Total[PS Physical Connectivity, SymmConnect Enabled=\"Capable not enabled\"]", ts_flag="Not TS Calc" }, { name="% TSS Physical Connectivity", definition="Total[Boxes w/ phys conn]/Total[Boxes Eligible (1=yes)]", ts_flag="Not TS Calc" }, { name="Total Installs", definition="Total[Total Installs]", ts_flag="Not TS Calc" }, { name="All Boxes with Valid Connectivty Record", definition="Total[Bozes w/ valid connectivity record (1=yes)]", ts_flag="Not TS Calc" }, { name="% All Connectivity Record", definition="Total[Bozes w/ valid connectivity record (1=yes)]/Total[Total Installs]", ts_flag="Not TS Calc" }, { name="Overall Refusals", definition="Total[Overall Refusals]", ts_flag="Not TS Calc" }, { name="Overall Refusals %", definition="Total[Overall Refusals]/Total[Bozes w/ valid connectivity record (1=yes)]", ts_flag="Not TS Calc" }, { name="All Eligible for Physical Connectivty", definition="Total[Boxes Eligible (1=yes)]-Total[Exception]", ts_flag="Not TS Calc" }, { name="Boxes with Physical Connectivity", definition="Total[Boxes w/ phys conn]-Total[Boxes w/ phys conn,SymmConnect Enabled=\"Capable not enabled\"]", ts_flag="Not TS Calc" }, { name="% All with Physical Conectivity", definition="Total[Boxes w/ phys conn]/Total[Boxes Eligible (1=yes)]", ts_flag="Not TS Calc" } }, merge_type="consolidate", merge_dbs={ { dbname="connectivityallproducts.mdl", diveline_dbname="/DI_PSREPORTING/connectivityallproducts.mdl" } }, skip_constant_columns="FALSE", categories={ { name="Geography", dimensions={ "Theater", "Division", "Region", "Install at Country Name" } }, { name="Mappings and Flags", dimensions={ "Connect Home Type", "Connect In Type", "SymmConnect Enabled", "Connect Home Refusal Reason", "Sales Order Channel Type", "Maintained By Group", "Customer Installable", "PS Flag", "Top Level Flag", "Avalanche Flag" } }, { name="Product Information", dimensions={ "Product Family", "Product Item Family", "Product Version", "Item Description" } }, { name="Sales Order Info", dimensions={ "Sales Order Deal Number", "Sales Order Number", "Sales Order Type" } }, { name="Dates", dimensions={ "Item Install Date", "Ship Date", "SYR Last Dial Home Date" } }, { name="Details", dimensions={ "Item Serial Number", "TLA Serial Number", "Part Model Key", "Model Number" } }, { name="Customer Infor", dimensions={ "CS Customer Name", "Install At Customer Number", "Customer Classification", "Cust Name" } }, { name="Other Dimensions", dimensions={ "Model" } } }, Maintain_Category_Order="FALSE", popup_info="false" } } };

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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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  • Make ‘Associate’ the default checkin action

    When you associate a work item to a checkin, the work item will be resolved by default. Some teams have work items that are bigger then one checkin (although this is not recommended) and don’t want to resolve the work items during a checkin. The only ways to modify the behaviour are: - Remove the default checkin action from the work item type. Downside is that it is not possible in the UI to choose resolve if you actually want to resolve the work item. - Change the Resolve action to associate.   In Visual Studio 2010 you can modify this behaviour by changing a registry setting. Change value the following key to “False”. HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\10.0\TeamFoundation\SourceControl\Behavior @ResolveAsDefaultCheckinAction

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  • Inside the Concurrent Collections: ConcurrentBag

    - by Simon Cooper
    Unlike the other concurrent collections, ConcurrentBag does not really have a non-concurrent analogy. As stated in the MSDN documentation, ConcurrentBag is optimised for the situation where the same thread is both producing and consuming items from the collection. We'll see how this is the case as we take a closer look. Again, I recommend you have ConcurrentBag open in a decompiler for reference. Thread Statics ConcurrentBag makes heavy use of thread statics - static variables marked with ThreadStaticAttribute. This is a special attribute that instructs the CLR to scope any values assigned to or read from the variable to the executing thread, not globally within the AppDomain. This means that if two different threads assign two different values to the same thread static variable, one value will not overwrite the other, and each thread will see the value they assigned to the variable, separately to any other thread. This is a very useful function that allows for ConcurrentBag's concurrency properties. You can think of a thread static variable: [ThreadStatic] private static int m_Value; as doing the same as: private static Dictionary<Thread, int> m_Values; where the executing thread's identity is used to automatically set and retrieve the corresponding value in the dictionary. In .NET 4, this usage of ThreadStaticAttribute is encapsulated in the ThreadLocal class. Lists of lists ConcurrentBag, at its core, operates as a linked list of linked lists: Each outer list node is an instance of ThreadLocalList, and each inner list node is an instance of Node. Each outer ThreadLocalList is owned by a particular thread, accessible through the thread local m_locals variable: private ThreadLocal<ThreadLocalList<T>> m_locals It is important to note that, although the m_locals variable is thread-local, that only applies to accesses through that variable. The objects referenced by the thread (each instance of the ThreadLocalList object) are normal heap objects that are not specific to any thread. Thinking back to the Dictionary analogy above, if each value stored in the dictionary could be accessed by other means, then any thread could access the value belonging to other threads using that mechanism. Only reads and writes to the variable defined as thread-local are re-routed by the CLR according to the executing thread's identity. So, although m_locals is defined as thread-local, the m_headList, m_nextList and m_tailList variables aren't. This means that any thread can access all the thread local lists in the collection by doing a linear search through the outer linked list defined by these variables. Adding items So, onto the collection operations. First, adding items. This one's pretty simple. If the current thread doesn't already own an instance of ThreadLocalList, then one is created (or, if there are lists owned by threads that have stopped, it takes control of one of those). Then the item is added to the head of that thread's list. That's it. Don't worry, it'll get more complicated when we account for the other operations on the list! Taking & Peeking items This is where it gets tricky. If the current thread's list has items in it, then it peeks or removes the head item (not the tail item) from the local list and returns that. However, if the local list is empty, it has to go and steal another item from another list, belonging to a different thread. It iterates through all the thread local lists in the collection using the m_headList and m_nextList variables until it finds one that has items in it, and it steals one item from that list. Up to this point, the two threads had been operating completely independently. To steal an item from another thread's list, the stealing thread has to do it in such a way as to not step on the owning thread's toes. Recall how adding and removing items both operate on the head of the thread's linked list? That gives us an easy way out - a thread trying to steal items from another thread can pop in round the back of another thread's list using the m_tail variable, and steal an item from the back without the owning thread knowing anything about it. The owning thread can carry on completely independently, unaware that one of its items has been nicked. However, this only works when there are at least 3 items in the list, as that guarantees there will be at least one node between the owning thread performing operations on the list head and the thread stealing items from the tail - there's no chance of the two threads operating on the same node at the same time and causing a race condition. If there's less than three items in the list, then there does need to be some synchronization between the two threads. In this case, the lock on the ThreadLocalList object is used to mediate access to a thread's list when there's the possibility of contention. Thread synchronization In ConcurrentBag, this is done using several mechanisms: Operations performed by the owner thread only take out the lock when there are less than three items in the collection. With three or greater items, there won't be any conflict with a stealing thread operating on the tail of the list. If a lock isn't taken out, the owning thread sets the list's m_currentOp variable to a non-zero value for the duration of the operation. This indicates to all other threads that there is a non-locked operation currently occuring on that list. The stealing thread always takes out the lock, to prevent two threads trying to steal from the same list at the same time. After taking out the lock, the stealing thread spinwaits until m_currentOp has been set to zero before actually performing the steal. This ensures there won't be a conflict with the owning thread when the number of items in the list is on the 2-3 item borderline. If any add or remove operations are started in the meantime, and the list is below 3 items, those operations try to take out the list's lock and are blocked until the stealing thread has finished. This allows a thread to steal an item from another thread's list without corrupting it. What about synchronization in the collection as a whole? Collection synchronization Any thread that operates on the collection's global structure (accessing anything outside the thread local lists) has to take out the collection's global lock - m_globalListsLock. This single lock is sufficient when adding a new thread local list, as the items inside each thread's list are unaffected. However, what about operations (such as Count or ToArray) that need to access every item in the collection? In order to ensure a consistent view, all operations on the collection are stopped while the count or ToArray is performed. This is done by freezing the bag at the start, performing the global operation, and unfreezing at the end: The global lock is taken out, to prevent structural alterations to the collection. m_needSync is set to true. This notifies all the threads that they need to take out their list's lock irregardless of what operation they're doing. All the list locks are taken out in order. This blocks all locking operations on the lists. The freezing thread waits for all current lockless operations to finish by spinwaiting on each m_currentOp field. The global operation can then be performed while the bag is frozen, but no other operations can take place at the same time, as all other threads are blocked on a list's lock. Then, once the global operation has finished, the locks are released, m_needSync is unset, and normal concurrent operation resumes. Concurrent principles That's the essence of how ConcurrentBag operates. Each thread operates independently on its own local list, except when they have to steal items from another list. When stealing, only the stealing thread is forced to take out the lock; the owning thread only has to when there is the possibility of contention. And a global lock controls accesses to the structure of the collection outside the thread lists. Operations affecting the entire collection take out all locks in the collection to freeze the contents at a single point in time. So, what principles can we extract here? Threads operate independently Thread-static variables and ThreadLocal makes this easy. Threads operate entirely concurrently on their own structures; only when they need to grab data from another thread is there any thread contention. Minimised lock-taking Even when two threads need to operate on the same data structures (one thread stealing from another), they do so in such a way such that the probability of actually blocking on a lock is minimised; the owning thread always operates on the head of the list, and the stealing thread always operates on the tail. Management of lockless operations Any operations that don't take out a lock still have a 'hook' to force them to lock when necessary. This allows all operations on the collection to be stopped temporarily while a global snapshot is taken. Hopefully, such operations will be short-lived and infrequent. That's all the concurrent collections covered. I hope you've found it as informative and interesting as I have. Next, I'll be taking a closer look at ThreadLocal, which I came across while analyzing ConcurrentBag. As you'll see, the operation of this class deserves a much closer look.

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  • Blending textures together, texture fade over / fade in

    - by Deukalion
    What is the best way to render a texture overlapping effect? Like in this example: I want either the grass to fade in to the snow texture, or the other way around. No rough edges. Somehow make them blend over. So the grass has a bit of snow or the snow has a bit of grass How is this possible during runtime? If that's possible. I don't render this by using the SpriteBatch, since the ground isn't rectangles (they can be moved). This is the way I render each shape (each one of those squares): // LoadTexture // Apply EffectPass device.DrawUserIndexedPrimitives<VertexPositionNormalTexture> ( PrimitiveType.TriangleList, render.Item.Points, // Array of VertexPositionNormalTexture 0, render.Item.Points.Length, render.Item.Indexes, // Array of int indexes (triangulation) 0, render.Item.Indexes.Length / 3, VertexPositionNormalTexture.VertexDeclaration );

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  • C#/.NET Little Wonders: The Generic Func Delegates

    - by James Michael Hare
    Once again, in this series of posts I look at the parts of the .NET Framework that may seem trivial, but can help improve your code by making it easier to write and maintain. The index of all my past little wonders posts can be found here. Back in one of my three original “Little Wonders” Trilogy of posts, I had listed generic delegates as one of the Little Wonders of .NET.  Later, someone posted a comment saying said that they would love more detail on the generic delegates and their uses, since my original entry just scratched the surface of them. Last week, I began our look at some of the handy generic delegates built into .NET with a description of delegates in general, and the Action family of delegates.  For this week, I’ll launch into a look at the Func family of generic delegates and how they can be used to support generic, reusable algorithms and classes. Quick Delegate Recap Delegates are similar to function pointers in C++ in that they allow you to store a reference to a method.  They can store references to either static or instance methods, and can actually be used to chain several methods together in one delegate. Delegates are very type-safe and can be satisfied with any standard method, anonymous method, or a lambda expression.  They can also be null as well (refers to no method), so care should be taken to make sure that the delegate is not null before you invoke it. Delegates are defined using the keyword delegate, where the delegate’s type name is placed where you would typically place the method name: 1: // This delegate matches any method that takes string, returns nothing 2: public delegate void Log(string message); This delegate defines a delegate type named Log that can be used to store references to any method(s) that satisfies its signature (whether instance, static, lambda expression, etc.). Delegate instances then can be assigned zero (null) or more methods using the operator = which replaces the existing delegate chain, or by using the operator += which adds a method to the end of a delegate chain: 1: // creates a delegate instance named currentLogger defaulted to Console.WriteLine (static method) 2: Log currentLogger = Console.Out.WriteLine; 3:  4: // invokes the delegate, which writes to the console out 5: currentLogger("Hi Standard Out!"); 6:  7: // append a delegate to Console.Error.WriteLine to go to std error 8: currentLogger += Console.Error.WriteLine; 9:  10: // invokes the delegate chain and writes message to std out and std err 11: currentLogger("Hi Standard Out and Error!"); While delegates give us a lot of power, it can be cumbersome to re-create fairly standard delegate definitions repeatedly, for this purpose the generic delegates were introduced in various stages in .NET.  These support various method types with particular signatures. Note: a caveat with generic delegates is that while they can support multiple parameters, they do not match methods that contains ref or out parameters. If you want to a delegate to represent methods that takes ref or out parameters, you will need to create a custom delegate. We’ve got the Func… delegates Just like it’s cousin, the Action delegate family, the Func delegate family gives us a lot of power to use generic delegates to make classes and algorithms more generic.  Using them keeps us from having to define a new delegate type when need to make a class or algorithm generic. Remember that the point of the Action delegate family was to be able to perform an “action” on an item, with no return results.  Thus Action delegates can be used to represent most methods that take 0 to 16 arguments but return void.  You can assign a method The Func delegate family was introduced in .NET 3.5 with the advent of LINQ, and gives us the power to define a function that can be called on 0 to 16 arguments and returns a result.  Thus, the main difference between Action and Func, from a delegate perspective, is that Actions return nothing, but Funcs return a result. The Func family of delegates have signatures as follows: Func<TResult> – matches a method that takes no arguments, and returns value of type TResult. Func<T, TResult> – matches a method that takes an argument of type T, and returns value of type TResult. Func<T1, T2, TResult> – matches a method that takes arguments of type T1 and T2, and returns value of type TResult. Func<T1, T2, …, TResult> – and so on up to 16 arguments, and returns value of type TResult. These are handy because they quickly allow you to be able to specify that a method or class you design will perform a function to produce a result as long as the method you specify meets the signature. For example, let’s say you were designing a generic aggregator, and you wanted to allow the user to define how the values will be aggregated into the result (i.e. Sum, Min, Max, etc…).  To do this, we would ask the user of our class to pass in a method that would take the current total, the next value, and produce a new total.  A class like this could look like: 1: public sealed class Aggregator<TValue, TResult> 2: { 3: // holds method that takes previous result, combines with next value, creates new result 4: private Func<TResult, TValue, TResult> _aggregationMethod; 5:  6: // gets or sets the current result of aggregation 7: public TResult Result { get; private set; } 8:  9: // construct the aggregator given the method to use to aggregate values 10: public Aggregator(Func<TResult, TValue, TResult> aggregationMethod = null) 11: { 12: if (aggregationMethod == null) throw new ArgumentNullException("aggregationMethod"); 13:  14: _aggregationMethod = aggregationMethod; 15: } 16:  17: // method to add next value 18: public void Aggregate(TValue nextValue) 19: { 20: // performs the aggregation method function on the current result and next and sets to current result 21: Result = _aggregationMethod(Result, nextValue); 22: } 23: } Of course, LINQ already has an Aggregate extension method, but that works on a sequence of IEnumerable<T>, whereas this is designed to work more with aggregating single results over time (such as keeping track of a max response time for a service). We could then use this generic aggregator to find the sum of a series of values over time, or the max of a series of values over time (among other things): 1: // creates an aggregator that adds the next to the total to sum the values 2: var sumAggregator = new Aggregator<int, int>((total, next) => total + next); 3:  4: // creates an aggregator (using static method) that returns the max of previous result and next 5: var maxAggregator = new Aggregator<int, int>(Math.Max); So, if we were timing the response time of a web method every time it was called, we could pass that response time to both of these aggregators to get an idea of the total time spent in that web method, and the max time spent in any one call to the web method: 1: // total will be 13 and max 13 2: int responseTime = 13; 3: sumAggregator.Aggregate(responseTime); 4: maxAggregator.Aggregate(responseTime); 5:  6: // total will be 20 and max still 13 7: responseTime = 7; 8: sumAggregator.Aggregate(responseTime); 9: maxAggregator.Aggregate(responseTime); 10:  11: // total will be 40 and max now 20 12: responseTime = 20; 13: sumAggregator.Aggregate(responseTime); 14: maxAggregator.Aggregate(responseTime); The Func delegate family is useful for making generic algorithms and classes, and in particular allows the caller of the method or user of the class to specify a function to be performed in order to generate a result. What is the result of a Func delegate chain? If you remember, we said earlier that you can assign multiple methods to a delegate by using the += operator to chain them.  So how does this affect delegates such as Func that return a value, when applied to something like the code below? 1: Func<int, int, int> combo = null; 2:  3: // What if we wanted to aggregate the sum and max together? 4: combo += (total, next) => total + next; 5: combo += Math.Max; 6:  7: // what is the result? 8: var comboAggregator = new Aggregator<int, int>(combo); Well, in .NET if you chain multiple methods in a delegate, they will all get invoked, but the result of the delegate is the result of the last method invoked in the chain.  Thus, this aggregator would always result in the Math.Max() result.  The other chained method (the sum) gets executed first, but it’s result is thrown away: 1: // result is 13 2: int responseTime = 13; 3: comboAggregator.Aggregate(responseTime); 4:  5: // result is still 13 6: responseTime = 7; 7: comboAggregator.Aggregate(responseTime); 8:  9: // result is now 20 10: responseTime = 20; 11: comboAggregator.Aggregate(responseTime); So remember, you can chain multiple Func (or other delegates that return values) together, but if you do so you will only get the last executed result. Func delegates and co-variance/contra-variance in .NET 4.0 Just like the Action delegate, as of .NET 4.0, the Func delegate family is contra-variant on its arguments.  In addition, it is co-variant on its return type.  To support this, in .NET 4.0 the signatures of the Func delegates changed to: Func<out TResult> – matches a method that takes no arguments, and returns value of type TResult (or a more derived type). Func<in T, out TResult> – matches a method that takes an argument of type T (or a less derived type), and returns value of type TResult(or a more derived type). Func<in T1, in T2, out TResult> – matches a method that takes arguments of type T1 and T2 (or less derived types), and returns value of type TResult (or a more derived type). Func<in T1, in T2, …, out TResult> – and so on up to 16 arguments, and returns value of type TResult (or a more derived type). Notice the addition of the in and out keywords before each of the generic type placeholders.  As we saw last week, the in keyword is used to specify that a generic type can be contra-variant -- it can match the given type or a type that is less derived.  However, the out keyword, is used to specify that a generic type can be co-variant -- it can match the given type or a type that is more derived. On contra-variance, if you are saying you need an function that will accept a string, you can just as easily give it an function that accepts an object.  In other words, if you say “give me an function that will process dogs”, I could pass you a method that will process any animal, because all dogs are animals.  On the co-variance side, if you are saying you need a function that returns an object, you can just as easily pass it a function that returns a string because any string returned from the given method can be accepted by a delegate expecting an object result, since string is more derived.  Once again, in other words, if you say “give me a method that creates an animal”, I can pass you a method that will create a dog, because all dogs are animals. It really all makes sense, you can pass a more specific thing to a less specific parameter, and you can return a more specific thing as a less specific result.  In other words, pay attention to the direction the item travels (parameters go in, results come out).  Keeping that in mind, you can always pass more specific things in and return more specific things out. For example, in the code below, we have a method that takes a Func<object> to generate an object, but we can pass it a Func<string> because the return type of object can obviously accept a return value of string as well: 1: // since Func<object> is co-variant, this will access Func<string>, etc... 2: public static string Sequence(int count, Func<object> generator) 3: { 4: var builder = new StringBuilder(); 5:  6: for (int i=0; i<count; i++) 7: { 8: object value = generator(); 9: builder.Append(value); 10: } 11:  12: return builder.ToString(); 13: } Even though the method above takes a Func<object>, we can pass a Func<string> because the TResult type placeholder is co-variant and accepts types that are more derived as well: 1: // delegate that's typed to return string. 2: Func<string> stringGenerator = () => DateTime.Now.ToString(); 3:  4: // This will work in .NET 4.0, but not in previous versions 5: Sequence(100, stringGenerator); Previous versions of .NET implemented some forms of co-variance and contra-variance before, but .NET 4.0 goes one step further and allows you to pass or assign an Func<A, BResult> to a Func<Y, ZResult> as long as A is less derived (or same) as Y, and BResult is more derived (or same) as ZResult. Sidebar: The Func and the Predicate A method that takes one argument and returns a bool is generally thought of as a predicate.  Predicates are used to examine an item and determine whether that item satisfies a particular condition.  Predicates are typically unary, but you may also have binary and other predicates as well. Predicates are often used to filter results, such as in the LINQ Where() extension method: 1: var numbers = new[] { 1, 2, 4, 13, 8, 10, 27 }; 2:  3: // call Where() using a predicate which determines if the number is even 4: var evens = numbers.Where(num => num % 2 == 0); As of .NET 3.5, predicates are typically represented as Func<T, bool> where T is the type of the item to examine.  Previous to .NET 3.5, there was a Predicate<T> type that tended to be used (which we’ll discuss next week) and is still supported, but most developers recommend using Func<T, bool> now, as it prevents confusion with overloads that accept unary predicates and binary predicates, etc.: 1: // this seems more confusing as an overload set, because of Predicate vs Func 2: public static SomeMethod(Predicate<int> unaryPredicate) { } 3: public static SomeMethod(Func<int, int, bool> binaryPredicate) { } 4:  5: // this seems more consistent as an overload set, since just uses Func 6: public static SomeMethod(Func<int, bool> unaryPredicate) { } 7: public static SomeMethod(Func<int, int, bool> binaryPredicate) { } Also, even though Predicate<T> and Func<T, bool> match the same signatures, they are separate types!  Thus you cannot assign a Predicate<T> instance to a Func<T, bool> instance and vice versa: 1: // the same method, lambda expression, etc can be assigned to both 2: Predicate<int> isEven = i => (i % 2) == 0; 3: Func<int, bool> alsoIsEven = i => (i % 2) == 0; 4:  5: // but the delegate instances cannot be directly assigned, strongly typed! 6: // ERROR: cannot convert type... 7: isEven = alsoIsEven; 8:  9: // however, you can assign by wrapping in a new instance: 10: isEven = new Predicate<int>(alsoIsEven); 11: alsoIsEven = new Func<int, bool>(isEven); So, the general advice that seems to come from most developers is that Predicate<T> is still supported, but we should use Func<T, bool> for consistency in .NET 3.5 and above. Sidebar: Func as a Generator for Unit Testing One area of difficulty in unit testing can be unit testing code that is based on time of day.  We’d still want to unit test our code to make sure the logic is accurate, but we don’t want the results of our unit tests to be dependent on the time they are run. One way (of many) around this is to create an internal generator that will produce the “current” time of day.  This would default to returning result from DateTime.Now (or some other method), but we could inject specific times for our unit testing.  Generators are typically methods that return (generate) a value for use in a class/method. For example, say we are creating a CacheItem<T> class that represents an item in the cache, and we want to make sure the item shows as expired if the age is more than 30 seconds.  Such a class could look like: 1: // responsible for maintaining an item of type T in the cache 2: public sealed class CacheItem<T> 3: { 4: // helper method that returns the current time 5: private static Func<DateTime> _timeGenerator = () => DateTime.Now; 6:  7: // allows internal access to the time generator 8: internal static Func<DateTime> TimeGenerator 9: { 10: get { return _timeGenerator; } 11: set { _timeGenerator = value; } 12: } 13:  14: // time the item was cached 15: public DateTime CachedTime { get; private set; } 16:  17: // the item cached 18: public T Value { get; private set; } 19:  20: // item is expired if older than 30 seconds 21: public bool IsExpired 22: { 23: get { return _timeGenerator() - CachedTime > TimeSpan.FromSeconds(30.0); } 24: } 25:  26: // creates the new cached item, setting cached time to "current" time 27: public CacheItem(T value) 28: { 29: Value = value; 30: CachedTime = _timeGenerator(); 31: } 32: } Then, we can use this construct to unit test our CacheItem<T> without any time dependencies: 1: var baseTime = DateTime.Now; 2:  3: // start with current time stored above (so doesn't drift) 4: CacheItem<int>.TimeGenerator = () => baseTime; 5:  6: var target = new CacheItem<int>(13); 7:  8: // now add 15 seconds, should still be non-expired 9: CacheItem<int>.TimeGenerator = () => baseTime.AddSeconds(15); 10:  11: Assert.IsFalse(target.IsExpired); 12:  13: // now add 31 seconds, should now be expired 14: CacheItem<int>.TimeGenerator = () => baseTime.AddSeconds(31); 15:  16: Assert.IsTrue(target.IsExpired); Now we can unit test for 1 second before, 1 second after, 1 millisecond before, 1 day after, etc.  Func delegates can be a handy tool for this type of value generation to support more testable code.  Summary Generic delegates give us a lot of power to make truly generic algorithms and classes.  The Func family of delegates is a great way to be able to specify functions to calculate a result based on 0-16 arguments.  Stay tuned in the weeks that follow for other generic delegates in the .NET Framework!   Tweet Technorati Tags: .NET, C#, CSharp, Little Wonders, Generics, Func, Delegates

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  • Integrating eBay and PayPal inventory

    - by JW01
    Say I have an item for sale on eBay, and the same item for sale on another site via PayPal. Is it possible to have sales on one site reflected in the inventory for the other site, and vice-versa? In other words, if I have ten items for sale, and I buy one on either site, it should show that there are nine items left on both sites. I know that PayPal has an API for setting the inventory level of an item associated with a button. eBay also has an API for controlling an item's inventory. I'm wondering if anyone has tried to integrate them.

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  • C#/.NET Little Wonders: Skip() and Take()

    - by James Michael Hare
    Once again, in this series of posts I look at the parts of the .NET Framework that may seem trivial, but can help improve your code by making it easier to write and maintain. The index of all my past little wonders posts can be found here. I’ve covered many valuable methods from System.Linq class library before, so you already know it’s packed with extension-method goodness.  Today I’d like to cover two small families I’ve neglected to mention before: Skip() and Take().  While these methods seem so simple, they are an easy way to create sub-sequences for IEnumerable<T>, much the way GetRange() creates sub-lists for List<T>. Skip() and SkipWhile() The Skip() family of methods is used to ignore items in a sequence until either a certain number are passed, or until a certain condition becomes false.  This makes the methods great for starting a sequence at a point possibly other than the first item of the original sequence.   The Skip() family of methods contains the following methods (shown below in extension method syntax): Skip(int count) Ignores the specified number of items and returns a sequence starting at the item after the last skipped item (if any).  SkipWhile(Func<T, bool> predicate) Ignores items as long as the predicate returns true and returns a sequence starting with the first item to invalidate the predicate (if any).  SkipWhile(Func<T, int, bool> predicate) Same as above, but passes not only the item itself to the predicate, but also the index of the item.  For example: 1: var list = new[] { 3.14, 2.72, 42.0, 9.9, 13.0, 101.0 }; 2:  3: // sequence contains { 2.72, 42.0, 9.9, 13.0, 101.0 } 4: var afterSecond = list.Skip(1); 5: Console.WriteLine(string.Join(", ", afterSecond)); 6:  7: // sequence contains { 42.0, 9.9, 13.0, 101.0 } 8: var afterFirstDoubleDigit = list.SkipWhile(v => v < 10.0); 9: Console.WriteLine(string.Join(", ", afterFirstDoubleDigit)); Note that the SkipWhile() stops skipping at the first item that returns false and returns from there to the rest of the sequence, even if further items in that sequence also would satisfy the predicate (otherwise, you’d probably be using Where() instead, of course). If you do use the form of SkipWhile() which also passes an index into the predicate, then you should keep in mind that this is the index of the item in the sequence you are calling SkipWhile() from, not the index in the original collection.  That is, consider the following: 1: var list = new[] { 1.0, 1.1, 1.2, 2.2, 2.3, 2.4 }; 2:  3: // Get all items < 10, then 4: var whatAmI = list 5: .Skip(2) 6: .SkipWhile((i, x) => i > x); For this example the result above is 2.4, and not 1.2, 2.2, 2.3, 2.4 as some might expect.  The key is knowing what the index is that’s passed to the predicate in SkipWhile().  In the code above, because Skip(2) skips 1.0 and 1.1, the sequence passed to SkipWhile() begins at 1.2 and thus it considers the “index” of 1.2 to be 0 and not 2.  This same logic applies when using any of the extension methods that have an overload that allows you to pass an index into the delegate, such as SkipWhile(), TakeWhile(), Select(), Where(), etc.  It should also be noted, that it’s fine to Skip() more items than exist in the sequence (an empty sequence is the result), or even to Skip(0) which results in the full sequence.  So why would it ever be useful to return Skip(0) deliberately?  One reason might be to return a List<T> as an immutable sequence.  Consider this class: 1: public class MyClass 2: { 3: private List<int> _myList = new List<int>(); 4:  5: // works on surface, but one can cast back to List<int> and mutate the original... 6: public IEnumerable<int> OneWay 7: { 8: get { return _myList; } 9: } 10:  11: // works, but still has Add() etc which throw at runtime if accidentally called 12: public ReadOnlyCollection<int> AnotherWay 13: { 14: get { return new ReadOnlyCollection<int>(_myList); } 15: } 16:  17: // immutable, can't be cast back to List<int>, doesn't have methods that throw at runtime 18: public IEnumerable<int> YetAnotherWay 19: { 20: get { return _myList.Skip(0); } 21: } 22: } This code snippet shows three (among many) ways to return an internal sequence in varying levels of immutability.  Obviously if you just try to return as IEnumerable<T> without doing anything more, there’s always the danger the caller could cast back to List<T> and mutate your internal structure.  You could also return a ReadOnlyCollection<T>, but this still has the mutating methods, they just throw at runtime when called instead of giving compiler errors.  Finally, you can return the internal list as a sequence using Skip(0) which skips no items and just runs an iterator through the list.  The result is an iterator, which cannot be cast back to List<T>.  Of course, there’s many ways to do this (including just cloning the list, etc.) but the point is it illustrates a potential use of using an explicit Skip(0). Take() and TakeWhile() The Take() and TakeWhile() methods can be though of as somewhat of the inverse of Skip() and SkipWhile().  That is, while Skip() ignores the first X items and returns the rest, Take() returns a sequence of the first X items and ignores the rest.  Since they are somewhat of an inverse of each other, it makes sense that their calling signatures are identical (beyond the method name obviously): Take(int count) Returns a sequence containing up to the specified number of items. Anything after the count is ignored. TakeWhile(Func<T, bool> predicate) Returns a sequence containing items as long as the predicate returns true.  Anything from the point the predicate returns false and beyond is ignored. TakeWhile(Func<T, int, bool> predicate) Same as above, but passes not only the item itself to the predicate, but also the index of the item. So, for example, we could do the following: 1: var list = new[] { 1.0, 1.1, 1.2, 2.2, 2.3, 2.4 }; 2:  3: // sequence contains 1.0 and 1.1 4: var firstTwo = list.Take(2); 5:  6: // sequence contains 1.0, 1.1, 1.2 7: var underTwo = list.TakeWhile(i => i < 2.0); The same considerations for SkipWhile() with index apply to TakeWhile() with index, of course.  Using Skip() and Take() for sub-sequences A few weeks back, I talked about The List<T> Range Methods and showed how they could be used to get a sub-list of a List<T>.  This works well if you’re dealing with List<T>, or don’t mind converting to List<T>.  But if you have a simple IEnumerable<T> sequence and want to get a sub-sequence, you can also use Skip() and Take() to much the same effect: 1: var list = new List<double> { 1.0, 1.1, 1.2, 2.2, 2.3, 2.4 }; 2:  3: // results in List<T> containing { 1.2, 2.2, 2.3 } 4: var subList = list.GetRange(2, 3); 5:  6: // results in sequence containing { 1.2, 2.2, 2.3 } 7: var subSequence = list.Skip(2).Take(3); I say “much the same effect” because there are some differences.  First of all GetRange() will throw if the starting index or the count are greater than the number of items in the list, but Skip() and Take() do not.  Also GetRange() is a method off of List<T>, thus it can use direct indexing to get to the items much more efficiently, whereas Skip() and Take() operate on sequences and may actually have to walk through the items they skip to create the resulting sequence.  So each has their pros and cons.  My general rule of thumb is if I’m already working with a List<T> I’ll use GetRange(), but for any plain IEnumerable<T> sequence I’ll tend to prefer Skip() and Take() instead. Summary The Skip() and Take() families of LINQ extension methods are handy for producing sub-sequences from any IEnumerable<T> sequence.  Skip() will ignore the specified number of items and return the rest of the sequence, whereas Take() will return the specified number of items and ignore the rest of the sequence.  Similarly, the SkipWhile() and TakeWhile() methods can be used to skip or take items, respectively, until a given predicate returns false.    Technorati Tags: C#, CSharp, .NET, LINQ, IEnumerable<T>, Skip, Take, SkipWhile, TakeWhile

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  • Difference between jquery.clone() and simple concatenation of string [closed]

    - by Francis Cebu
    Which of the following code samples is faster in generating HTML code using jQuery? Sample 1: var div = $("<div>"); $.each(data,function(count,item){ var Elem = div.clone().addClass("message").html(item.Firstname); $(".container").append(Elem); }); Sample 2: $.each(data,function(count,item){ var Elem = "<div class = 'Elem'>" + item.Firstname + "</div>"; $(".container").append(Elem); });

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  • Using Excel data in Microsoft Publisher

    - by TK
    I have never worked in Microsoft Publisher. To build the presentation we're having to input the same information from a microsoft excel master. For instance- My excel has these columns: Item Title, Item Description, Item Dimensions, Notes, Created Date From there, I'm having the RE-type the information underneath a picture of the item in powerpoint (or publisher) in order to present to the client. So I'm retyping the item name, description, dimensions, etc. I'm also reformatting slides each time I do this. I know there's a way to streamline this process, to build a powerpoint and/or something in publisher that will bring in the data needed based on a merge (or maybe macro), but I haven't been able to figure out how. Any suggestions?

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  • SQL Script to Assign All Items to ALL Sites with Dynamics GP

    - by Ryan McBee
    v\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} o\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} w\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} .shape {behavior:url(#default#VML);} Normal 0 false false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} When setting up new items within Microsoft Dynamics GP, you will often run into the error message below which reads “This site is not assigned to the selected item.  Do you want to assign this site?”  The fix is quite simple given that you simply click the Add button below which opens up the Item Quantities Maintenance window which you will hit the save button and proceed with the entry of your Sales Order or Purchase Order.   If you have a lot of new items into GP and have just one Site ID setup, the best approach to assigning your items to a particular site is by going to the Site Maintenance Window which is located in Cards>>Inventory>>Site.  Once you are in the window below, you can click the Assign button to assign Items to the Site selected.     However, if you have you a lot of Sites and Items created, this can be quite a cumbersome and time consuming process.  For that, I have created the following SQL Script below that Assigns all Items to all Site ID’s within Microsoft Dynamics GP 2010.    declare @item varchar(100)       , @loc varchar(100)       , @ItemExist int         DECLARE TablePositionCursor CURSOR FOR         SELECT itemnmbr from IV00101 i         OPEN TablePositionCursor       FETCH NEXT FROM TablePositionCursor INTO @item       WHILE (@@fetch_status <> -1)             BEGIN                         DECLARE TablePositionCursor2 CURSOR FOR                         select locncode from IV40700                   OPEN TablePositionCursor2                   FETCH NEXT FROM TablePositionCursor2 INTO  @loc                   WHILE (@@fetch_status <> -1)                         BEGIN                           SELECT @ItemExist = isnull(count(*), 0) FROM IV00102 where ITEMNMBR = @item and LOCNCODE = @loc                                                 if @ItemExist  = 0                               BEGIN                                      insert into iv00102 values(                                     @item                                     ,@loc                                     ,''                                     ,2                                     ,''                                     ,0                                     ,0                                     ,0                                     ,0                                     ,'01/01/1900'                                     ,''                                     ,'01/01/1900'                                     ,0                                     ,0                                     ,0                                     ,0                                     ,0                                     ,0                                     ,0                                     ,0                                     ,0                                     ,0                                     ,0                                     ,0                                     ,'01/01/1900'                                     ,'01/01/1900'                                     ,'01/01/1900'                                     ,'01/01/1900'                                     ,0                                     ,''                                     ,''                                     ,''                                     ,1                                     ,0                                     ,0                                     ,1                                     ,0                                     ,0                                     ,1                                     ,2                                     ,0                                     ,0                                     ,0                                     ,0                                     ,0                                     ,0                                     ,0                                     ,1                                     ,0                                     ,0                                     ,0                                     ,3                                     ,0                                     ,0                                     ,0                                     ,''                                     ,''                                     ,''                                     ,''                                     ,''                                     ,''                                     ,''                                     ,''                                     ,1                                     ,1                                     ,''                                     ,1                                     ,1                                     ,0                                     ,1                                     ,1                                     ,1                                     ,0                                     ,0                                     ,0                                     ,0                                     ,0                                       )                         END                               FETCH NEXT FROM TablePositionCursor2 INTO @loc                         END                   DEALLOCATE TablePositionCursor2                     FETCH NEXT FROM TablePositionCursor INTO  @item             END       DEALLOCATE TablePositionCursor     The script below works just for GP 2010 since the columns in the IV00102 have changed from version to version.  If you need it for prior versions, please email me and I will send it to you.   Disclaimer: I tested this on limited data, if you find an issue or have a suggestion for improvement, please let me know and I will post the update here for everyone.  This blog is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

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  • Where is a good place to start to learn about custom caching in .Net

    - by John
    I'm looking to make some performance enhancements to our site, but I'm not sure exactly where to begin. We have some custom object caching, but I think that we can do better. Our Business We aggregate news stories on a news type of web site. We get approximately 500-1000 new stories per week. We have index pages that show various lists of the items and details pages that show the individual stories. Our Current Use case: Getting an Individual Story User makes a request The Data Access Layer(DAL) checks to see if the item is in cache and if item is fresh (15 minutes). If the item is not in cache or is not fresh, retrieve the item from SQL Server, save to cache and return to user. Problems with this approach The pull nature of caching means that users have to pay the waiting cost every time that the cache is refreshed. Once a story is published, it changes infrequently and I think that we should replace the pull model with something better. My initial thoughts My initial thought is that stories should ALL be stored locally in some type of dictionary. (Cache or is there another, better way?). If the story is not found, then make a trip to the database, update the local dictionary and send the item back. Since there may be occasional updates to stories, this should be an entirely process from the user. I watched a video by Brent Ozar, How StackOverflow Scales SQL Server, in which Brent states "the fastest database query is the one that you don't make". Where do I start? At this point, I don't know exactly what the solution is. Is it caching? Is there a better way of using local storage? Do I use a Dictionary, OrderedDictionary, List ? It seems daunting and I'm just looking for some good starting points to learn more about how to do this type of optimization.

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  • When is an object oriented program truly object oriented?

    - by Syed Aslam
    Let me try to explain what I mean: Say, I present a list of objects and I need to get back a selected object by a user. The following are the classes I can think of right now: ListViewer Item App [Calling class] In case of a GUI application, usually click on a particular item is selection of the item and in case of a command line, some input, say an integer representing that item. Let us go with command line application here. A function lists all the items and waits for the choice of object, an integer. So here, I get the choice, is choice going to conceived as an object? And based on the choice, return back the object in the list. Does writing this program like the way explained above make it truly object oriented? If yes, how? If not, why? Or is the question itself wrong and I shouldn't be thinking along those lines?

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  • Sub-Select to Delimited List in T-SQL

    - by Doug Lampe
    The following transact-SQL statement can be used with Microsoft SQL Server to create a delimited list from a sub-query.  In this case the delimiter is a comma. SELECT Left(item,LEN(item)-1)as delimited_list FROM (     select       CAST       (          (               select original_item + ','               from TABLE             where condition_field = 'value'             for xml path ('')           )   as varchar(max)      ) as item ) as temp

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  • What is the best way to check if there is overlap between player and static, non-collidable items in bullet physic engine

    - by tigrou
    I'd like to add non collidable objects (eg: power ups, items, ...) in a game world using Bullet Physics Engine and to know if there is collision between player and them. Some info : there is a lot of items ( 1000), all are box shapes and they don't overlap. Here is things i have tried : btDbvt* bvtItems = new btDbvt(); //btDbvt is a hierachical AABB tree, used by Bullet foreach(var item ...) { btDbvtVolume volume = ... //compute item AABB; bvtItems->insert(volume, (void*)someExtraData); } Then, to find collisions between items and player : playerRigidBody->getAabb(min, max); btDbvtVolume playervolume = ... //compute player AABB bvtItems->collideTV(bvtItems->m_root, playervolume, *someCollisionHandler); This works fairly well (and its very fast), however, there is a problem : it only check items AABB against player AABB. That loss of precision is acceptable for items but not for player which is not a box. It would actually need another check to make sure player really collide with item but i don't know how to do this in Bullet. It would have been nice to have a function like this : playerRigidBody->checkCollisionWithAABB(); After doing trying that, I discovered that a btGhostObject exist and seems to have been made for that. I changed my code like this : foreach(var item...) { btCollisionObject* ghostObject = new btGhostObject(); ghostObject->setCollisionShape(boxShape); ghostObject->setCollisionFlags(ghostObject->getCollisionFlags() | btCollisionObject::CF_NO_CONTACT_RESPONSE); startTransform.setOrigin(...); //item position ghostObject->setWorldTransform(startTransform); dynamicsWorld->addCollisionObject(ghostObject, btBroadphaseProxy::SensorTrigger, btBroadphaseProxy:: CharacterFilter); } It also works ok, but there is a huge fps drop (almost ten times slower) which is not acceptable. Maybe there is something missing (forget set a flag) and Bullet is doing extra job for nothing or maybe all that ghostObjects are polluting broad phase and ghostObject is not the right thing for that. Any help would be appreciated.

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  • Radiosity using a hemisphere

    - by P. Avery
    I'm working on a radiosity processor. I'm projecting scene geometry onto a hemisphere at a high order of tessellation during a visibility pass onto a 1024x1024 render target. The problem is that the edges of certain triangles are not being rendered to the item buffer( render target )...so when I test certain edges( or pixels during pixel shader ) for visibility during a reconstruction pass, visible edges are not identified and as a result the pixel for that edge is discarded. One solution was to increase the resolution of the item buffer( up to 4096x4096 )...this helped and more edges were visible, however, this was not fullproof. How do I increase visibility? Here is a screenshot of a scene after radiosity is applied: the seams are edges along a triangle face that were not visible due to the resolution of the item buffer... fixed the problem by sampling the item buffer w/8 points:

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  • How to modify Dreamweaver's SpryMenuBar.js to send a msgbox on what menu was clicked?

    - by Mike
    I have a simple HTML webpage made in Dreamweaver with a SpryMenuBar. When I click on a menu item, I want to send a pop up message box that says which menu item was clicked. (This is not really my objective but once I can learn to hook into the spry java script with a mouse click listener I can try to do what I am really after.) The problem is for some reason I can't seem to get started with this seemingly simple task. Does anybody know how to revise the SpryMenuBar.js to make a msgbox showing the item that was clicked? For example if I click a menu that say's 'Contact us', I wan't to throw a message box that says "You pressed, Contact us". Note: My final objective is to actually call another function that changes text in the center of my page, depending on what menu item was clicked.

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  • Buffer System For Items

    - by Ohmages
    I am going to reference this image of what I want to accomplish in JavaScript. This is the Diablo buffer system. This question may be a bit advanced (or possibly not even allowed). But I was wondering how you might go about implementing this type of system in a JavaScript game. Currently to implement such a system in JavaScript escapes me, and I am turning to SO to get some suggestions, ideas, and hopefully some insight in how I could accomplish this without being to costly on the CPU. Some thoughts of mine for implementing such a system would be to: Create DIVS within a DIV that hold each position of the inventory Go through each item you own in a container and see which DIV it belongs to Make said item images the DIVs image This type of system might possibly work if ALL items were 1x1, but for this example its not going to work out. I am at a complete lost of ideas how to even accomplish this. Although, maybe rendering directly to the canvas and checking mouse cords could work, there would more than likely be A HUGE annoyance when checking if other items are overlapping each other (meaning you cant place the item down, and possibly switching item with the cursor item ). That said, what am I left with? Do I need to makeshift my own hack system with messy code, or is there some source out there (that I don't know about) that has replicated this type of system in their own game. I would be very grateful to get some replies on how you might go about doing this, and will accept answers that can logically explain how you might implement such a system (code is not required). P.S. Id like to use pure JavaScript, and nothing else (even though it might be "reinventing the wheel", I also like to learn).

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  • jQuery open and close nested ul nav depending on location

    - by firefusion
    I'm making a sub nav in wordpress and have a nested list style menu. An example of the HTML is below. Whichever is the current item has the li class "current_page_item". I need all child menus collapsed unless there is a current_page_item class on the parent or one of the children. <ul> <li class="current_page_item"><a href="#">Parent Item</a> <ul class="children"> <li><a href="#">Child page</a></li> <li><a href="#">Child page</a></li> <li><a href="#">Child page</a></li> <li><a href="#">Child page</a></li> </ul> </li> <li><a href="#">Parent Item</a> <ul class="children"> <li><a href="#">Child page</a></li> <li><a href="#">Child page</a></li> </ul> </li> <li><a href="#">Parent Item</a> <ul class="children"> <li><a href="#">Child page</a></li> <li><a href="#">Child page</a></li> </ul> </li> <li><a href="#">Parent Item</a></li> <li><a href="#">Parent Item</a></li> </ul> This so far, which works but i wonder if it can be improved as there is some flashing open and then closed again.... jQuery('ul.children').slideUp(); jQuery('li.current_page_item ul.children').slideDown('medium'); jQuery('li.current_page_item').parent().slideDown('medium');

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  • Generate a Word document from list data

    - by PeterBrunone
    This came up on a discussion list lately, so I threw together some code to meet the need.  In short, a colleague needed to take the results of an InfoPath form survey and give them to the user in Word format.  The form data was already in a list item, so it was a simple matter of using the SharePoint API to get the list item, formatting the data appropriately, and using response headers to make the client machine treat the response as MS Word content.  The following rudimentary code can be run in an ASPX (or an assembly) in the 12 hive.  When you link to the page, send the list name and item ID in the querystring and use them to grab the appropriate data. // Clear the current response headers and set them up to look like a word doc.HttpContext.Current.Response.Clear();HttpContext.Current.Response.Charset ="";HttpContext.Current.Response.ContentType ="application/msword";string strFileName = "ThatWordFileYouWanted"+ ".doc";HttpContext.Current.Response.AddHeader("Content-Disposition", "inline;filename=" + strFileName);// Using the current site, get the List by name and then the Item by ID (from the URL).string myListName = HttpContext.Current.Request.Querystring["listName"];int myID = Convert.ToInt32(HttpContext.Current.Request.Querystring["itemID"]);SPSite oSite = SPContext.Current.Site;SPWeb oWeb = oSite.OpenWeb();SPList oList = oWeb.Lists["MyListName"];SPListItem oListItem = oList.Items.GetItemById(myID);// Build a string with the data -- format it with HTML if you like. StringBuilder strHTMLContent = newStringBuilder();// *// Here's where you pull individual fields out of the list item.// *// Once everything is ready, spit it out to the client machine.HttpContext.Current.Response.Write(strHTMLContent);HttpContext.Current.Response.End();HttpContext.Current.Response.Flush();

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