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  • PHP ORM style of querying

    - by Petah
    Ok so I have made an ORM library for PHP. It uses syntax like so: *(assume that $business_locations is an array)* Business::type(Business:TYPE_AUTOMOTIVE)-> size(Business::SIZE_SMALL)-> left_join(BusinessOwner::table(), BusinessOwner::business_id(), SQL::OP_EQUALS, Business::id())-> left_join(Owner::table(), SQL::OP_EQUALS, Owner::id(), BusinessOwner::owner_id())-> where(Business::location_id(), SQL::in($business_locations))-> group_by(Business::id())-> select(SQL::count(BusinessOwner::id()); Which can also be represented as: $query = new Business(); $query->set_type(Business:TYPE_AUTOMOTIVE); $query->set_size(Business::SIZE_SMALL); $query->left_join(BusinessOwner::table(), BusinessOwner::business_id(), SQL::OP_EQUALS, $query->id()); $query->left_join(Owner::table(), SQL::OP_EQUALS, Owner::id(), BusinessOwner::owner_id()); $query->where(Business::location_id(), SQL::in($business_locations)); $query->group_by(Business::id()); $query->select(SQL::count(BusinessOwner::id()); This would produce a query like: SELECT COUNT(`business_owners`.`id`) FROM `businesses` LEFT JOIN `business_owners` ON `business_owners`.`business_id` = `businesses`.`id` LEFT JOIN `owners` ON `owners`.`id` = `business_owners`.`owner_id` WHERE `businesses`.`type` = 'automotive' AND `businesses`.`size` = 'small' AND `businesses`.`location_id` IN ( 1, 2, 3, 4 ) GROUP BY `businesses`.`id` Please keep in mind that the syntax might not be prefectly correct (I only wrote this off the top of my head) Any way, what do you think of this style of querying? Is the first method or second better/clearer/cleaner/etc? What would you do to improve it?

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  • Were the first assemblers written in machine code?

    - by The111
    I am reading the book The Elements of Computing Systems: Building a Modern Computer from First Principles, which contains projects encompassing the build of a computer from boolean gates all the way to high level applications (in that order). The current project I'm working on is writing an assembler using a high level language of my choice, to translate from Hack assembly code to Hack machine code (Hack is the name of the hardware platform built in the previous chapters). Although the hardware has all been built in a simulator, I have tried to pretend that I am really constructing each level using only the tools available to me at that point in the real process. That said, it got me thinking. Using a high level language to write my assembler is certainly convenient, but for the very first assembler ever written (i.e. in history), wouldn't it need to be written in machine code, since that's all that existed at the time? And a correlated question... how about today? If a brand new CPU architecture comes out, with a brand new instruction set, and a brand new assembly syntax, how would the assembler be constructed? I'm assuming you could still use an existing high level language to generate binaries for the assembler program, since if you know the syntax of both the assembly and machine languages for your new platform, then the task of writing the assembler is really just a text analysis task and is not inherently related to that platform (i.e. needing to be written in that platform's machine language)... which is the very reason I am able to "cheat" while writing my Hack assembler in 2012, and use some preexisting high level language to help me out.

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  • Run database checks but omit large tables or filegroups - New option in Ola Hallengren's Scripts

    - by Greg Low
    One of the things I've always wanted in DBCC CHECKDB is the option to omit particular tables from the check. The situation that I often see is that companies with large databases often have only one or two very large tables. They want to run a DBCC CHECKDB on the database to check everything except those couple of tables due to time constraints. I posted a request on the Connect site about time some time ago: https://connect.microsoft.com/SQLServer/feedback/details/611164/dbcc-checkdb-omit-tables-option The workaround from the product team was that you could script out the checks that you did want to carry out, rather than omitting the ones that you didn't. I didn't overly like this as a workaround as clients often had a very large number of objects that they did want to check and only one or two that they didn't. I've always been impressed with the work that our buddy Ola Hallengren has done on his maintenance scripts. He pinged me recently about my old Connect item and said he was going to implement something similar. The good news is that it's available now. Here are some examples he provided of the newly-supported syntax: EXECUTE dbo.DatabaseIntegrityCheck @Databases = 'AdventureWorks', @CheckCommands = 'CHECKDB' EXECUTE dbo.DatabaseIntegrityCheck @Databases = 'AdventureWorks', @CheckCommands = 'CHECKALLOC,CHECKTABLE,CHECKCATALOG', @Objects = 'AdventureWorks.Person.Address' EXECUTE dbo.DatabaseIntegrityCheck @Databases = 'AdventureWorks', @CheckCommands = 'CHECKALLOC,CHECKTABLE,CHECKCATALOG', @Objects = 'ALL_OBJECTS,-AdventureWorks.Person.Address' EXECUTE dbo.DatabaseIntegrityCheck @Databases = 'AdventureWorks', @CheckCommands = 'CHECKFILEGROUP,CHECKCATALOG', @FileGroups = 'AdventureWorks.PRIMARY' EXECUTE dbo.DatabaseIntegrityCheck @Databases = 'AdventureWorks', @CheckCommands = 'CHECKFILEGROUP,CHECKCATALOG', @FileGroups = 'ALL_FILEGROUPS,-AdventureWorks.PRIMARY' Note the syntax to omit an object from the list of objects and the option to omit one filegroup. Nice! Thanks Ola! You'll find details here: http://ola.hallengren.com/  

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  • Ad-hoc String Manipulation With Visual Studio

    - by Liam McLennan
    Visual studio supports relatively advanced string manipulation via the ‘Quick Replace’ dialog. Today I had a requirement to modify some html, replacing line breaks with unordered list items. For example, I need to convert: Infrastructure<br/> Energy<br/> Industrial development<br/> Urban growth<br/> Water<br/> Food security<br/> to: <li>Infrastructure</li> <li>Energy</li> <li>Industrial development</li> <li>Urban growth</li> <li>Water</li> <li>Food security</li> This cannot be done with a simple search-and-replace but it can be done using the Quick Replace regular expression support. To use regular expressions expand ‘Find Options’, check ‘Use:’ and select ‘Regular Expressions’ Typically, Visual Studio regular expressions use a different syntax to every other regular expression engine. We need to use a capturing group to grab the text of each line so that it can be included in the replacement. The syntax for a capturing group is to replace the part of the expression to be captured with { and }. So my regular expression: {.*}\<br/\> means capture all the characters before <br/>. Note that < and > have to be escaped with \. In the replacement expression we can use \1 to insert the previously captured text. If the search expression had a second capturing group then its text would be available in \2 and so on. Visual Studio’s quick replace feature can be scoped to a selection, the current document, all open documents or every document in the current solution.

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  • Visage

    - by Geertjan
    Raj, the Chennai JUG lead, together with others from that JUG, is interested in Visage, the JavaFX script language closely associated with Stephen Chin. He sent me the related lexer and parser and I started by having a look at them in the new version of ANTLRWorks being developed by Sam Harwell (who demonstrated it very effectively during JavaOne): Notice how the lexer and parser are shown in a tree structure, as well as in a cool syntax diagram. Next, I downloaded a bunch of JARs from here, so that packages such as from "com.sun.tools.mjavac" can be used, i.e., these are Visage-specific packages that aren't found anywhere except in the location below: http://code.google.com/p/visage/wiki/GettingStarted It turns out that there's also a Visage NetBeans plugin out there: http://code.google.com/p/visage/source/browse/?repo=netbeans-plugin Rather than recreating everything from scratch, i.e., generating ANTLR Java classes from the lexer and parser, I copied a lot of stuff from the site above and now a file Raj sent me looks as follows, i.e., basic syntax coloring is shown: For anyone wanting to seriously support Visage in NetBeans IDE, I recommend downloading the existing Visage NetBeans plugin above, rather than creating everything yourself from scratch, and then figuring out how to use that code in some way, i.e., add the JARs I pointed to above, and work on its build.xml file, which could be frustrating in the beginning, but there's no point in recreating everything if everything already exists.

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  • ArchBeat Link-o-Rama for 2012-09-06

    - by Bob Rhubart
    Oracle Technology Network Architect Day - Boston, MA - 9/12/2012 Sure, you could ask a voodoo priestess for help in improving your solution architecture skills. But there's the whole snake thing, and the zombie thing, and other complications. So why not keep it simple and register for Oracle Technology Network Architect Day in Boston, MA. There's no magic, just a full day of technical sessions covering Cloud, SOA, Engineered Systems, and more. Registration is free, but seating is limited. You'll curse yourself if you miss this one. Register now. Adding a runtime LOV for a taskflow parameter in WebCenter | Yannick Ongena Oracle ACE Yannick Ongena illustrates how to customize the parameters tab for a taskflow in WebCenter. Tips on Migrating from AquaLogic .NET Accelerator to WebCenter WSRP Producer for .NET | Scott Nelson "It has been a very winding path and this blog entry is intended to share both the lessons learned and relevant approaches that led to those learnings," says Scott Nelson. "Like most journeys of discovery, it was not a direct path, and there are notes to let you know when it is practical to skip a section if you are in a hurry to get from here to there." Using FMAP and AnalyticsRes in a Oracle BI High Availability Implementation | Christian Screen "The fmap syntax has been used for a long time in Oracle BI / Siebel Analytics when referencing images inherent in the application as well as custom images," says Oracle ACE Christian Screen. "This syntax is used on Analysis requests an dashboards." More on Embedded Business Intelligence | David Haimes David Haimes give an example of Timeliness as "one of the three key attributes required for BI to be considered embedded BI." Thought for the Day "Architect: Someone who knows the difference between that which could be done and that which should be done. " — Larry McVoy Source: Quotes for Software Engineers

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  • JSON Support in Azure

    - by kaleidoscope
    Please find how we call JavaScript Object Notation in cloud applications. As we all know how client script is useful in web applications in terms of performance.           Same we can use JQuery in Asp.net using Cloud  computing which will  asynchronously pull any messages out of the table(cloud storage)  and display them in the     browser by invoking a method on a controller that returns JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) in a well-known shape. Syntax : Suppose we want to write a  JQuery function which return some notification while end user interact with our application so use following syntax : public JsonResult GetMessages() {      if (User.Identity.IsAuthenticated)      {     UserTextNotification[] userToasts =           toastRepository.GetNotifications(User.Identity.Name);          object[] data =          (from UserTextNotification toast in userToasts          select new { title = toast.Title ?? "Notification",          text = toast.MessageText }).ToArray();           return Json(data, JsonRequestBehavior.AllowGet);      }         else            return Json(null); } Above function is used to check authentication and display message if user is not exists in Table. Plateform :   ASP.NET 3.5  MVC 1   Under Visual Studio 2008  . Please find below link for more detail : http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/ee335721.aspx   Chandraprakash, S

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  • Can JSON be made easily and safely editable by the non-technical Excel crowd?

    - by glitch
    I'm looking for a data storage format that's very intuitive and easy to edit. It should be ideally targeted towards the same crowd as Excel. At the same time I would like the data structure to be a tree. Ideally this would be JSON, since it offers both the tree aspect and allows for more interesting constructs like arrays. That and parsing libraries for JSON are ubiquitous, so I don't have to reinvent the wheel. The problem is that, at least with a non-specialized text editor, JSON is a giant pain to edit for a non-technical user. I'm thinking along the lines of someone who might have used Excel in the past, but never a real text editor. Someone who might not be comfortable with the idea of preserving JSON syntax by hand. Are there data formats out there that would fit this profile? I'd very much prefer this to be a JSON actually, but then it would require a solid editing tool that would hide the underlying implementation from the user. Think Excel and how it abstracts CSV syntax from the user. The reason I'm looking for something like this is because the team has been working with pretty hierarchical data for a while now and we've hit the limits of how easy it is to represent in simple CSVs without having to create complex rules for how represent hierarchy semantics from each row. Any suggestions?

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  • What kind of language will replace C++ as C++ replaced C ? [closed]

    - by jokoon
    I think I'm not totally wrong when thinking that C++0x (or C++1x) is still C++, just better, with functionnalities coming from boost. I can't stop thinking that computer sciences, even with all that has been made so far, have to evolve again. I don't really like D since it just try to be some sort of "what C++ should have been", and Go seems to be too sophisticated when I dig a little into it, especially after watching some presentation video like this one http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKnDgT73v8s The first thing that come into my mind is a new kind of syntax to directly handle specific datatypes and containers such as map, vectors, queues... What kind of things are researchers thinking about ? What are the real features that could make C++ better or a new C-like language could invent ? Does Go features such things ? Would there be a new kind of syntax that would "unbloat" C++ while keeping its advantages ? Could C++ have some of the interesting stuff of languages such as C# and ObjC ? EDIT: Please consider that I'm talking about a system language, not a VM/CLI/bytecode thing.

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  • Writing Java in Java

    - by Skeith
    I have been using Java for several months at work now and am becoming mildly competent in it. The problem I think I am having is that I program C++ in Java . By that I mean I have always used C++ and am treating Java as a simple syntax change instead of appreciate if for its own language. For instance a static variable in C++ is the same as a normal variable in Java as Java is all classes so they maintain there values between function calls. Little things like this are tripping me up constantly as I am self taught. What I want is to invest the time to become a good java programmer not just a C++ programmer that can write in Java. The problem is I do not know how to do this. I have tried reading the Java doc pages but I find them very clinical and hard to understand. So what I am looking for is recommendations on how I can learn to think in Java. Books that teach Java concepts not Java syntax, online tutorials that I can work through that give it a context, established Java traditions/best practices and any other thing that you could recommend.

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  • Using HTML5 Today part 4&ndash;What happened to XHTML?

    - by Steve Albers
    This is the fourth entry in a series of descriptions & demos from the “Using HTML5 Today” user group presentation. For practical purposes, the original XHTML standard is a historical footnote, although XHTML transitional will probably live on forever in the default web page templates of old web page editors. The original XHTML spec was released in 2000, on the heels of the HTML 4.01 spec.  The plan was to move web development away from HTML to the more formal, rigorous approach that XHTML offered, but it was built on a principle that conflicts with the history and culture of the Internet: XHTML introduced the idea of Draconian Error Handling, which essentially means that invalid XML markup on a page will cause a page to stop rendering. There is a transitional mode offered in the original XHTML spec, but the goal was to move to D.E.H.  You can see the result by changing the doc type for a document to “application/xhtml+xml” - for my class example we change this setting in the web.config file: <staticContent> <remove fileExtension=".html" /> <mimeMap fileExtension=".html" mimeType="application/xhtml+xml" /> </staticContent> With the new strict syntax a simple error, in this case a duplicate </td> tag, can cause a critical page error: While XHTML became very popular in the ensuing decade, the Strict form of XHTML never achieved widespread use. Draconian Error Handling was one of the factors that led in time to the creation of the WHATWG, or Web Hypertext Application Technology Group.  WHATWG contributed to the eventually disbanding of the XHTML 2.0 working group and the W3C’s move to embrace the HTML5 standard. For developers who long for XML markup the W3C HTML5 standard includes an XHTML5 syntax. For the longer, more definitive look at what happened to XHTML and how HTML5 came to be check out the Dive Into HTML mirror site or Bruce Lawson’s “HTML5: Who, What, When Why” talk.

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  • How will closures in Java impact the Java Community?

    - by Ryan Delucchi
    It is one of the most talked about features planned for Java: Closures. Many of us have been longing for them. Some of us (including I) have grown a bit impatient and have turned to scripting languages to fill the void. But, once closures have finally arrived to Java: how will they effect the Java Community? Will the advancement of VM-targetted scripting languages slow to a crawl, stay the same, or acclerate? Will people flock to the new closure syntax, thus turning Java code-bases all-around into more functionally structured implementations? Will we only see closures sprinkled in Java throughout? What will be the effect on tool/IDE support? How about performance? And finally, what will it mean for Java's continued adoption, as a language, compared with other languages that are rising in popularity? To provide an example of one of the latest proposed Java Closure syntax specs: public interface StringOperation { String invoke(String s); } // ... (new StringOperation() { public invoke(String s) { new StringBuilder(s).reverse().toString(); } }).invoke("abcd"); would become ... String reversed = { String s => new StringBuilder(s).reverse().toString() }.invoke("abcd"); [source: http://tronicek.blogspot.com/2007/12/closures-closure-is-form-of-anonymous_28.html]

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  • Advanced TSQL training

    - by Dave Ballantyne
    Over the past few years, Ive had it on my to do list to write and deliver and full-scale SQLServer training course and not just an hour long bite size session at user groups and conferences.  To me, SQLServer development is not just knowing and remembering the syntax of commands.  Sometimes I semi-jest that i have “Written a merge statement without looking up the syntax”, but I know from my interactions on and off line that I am far from alone in this.  In any case we have an awesome tool in the internet which is great at looking things up. When developing SQL Server based solutions,  of more importance is knowing the internals of the engine.  SQL Server is a complex piece of software and we need to be able to understand to a fairly low level ( you can always dive deeper ) the choices that it makes and why it makes them in order to deliver performant, reliable, predictable and scalable systems to our customers and end-users. This is the view i shall be taking over two days in March (19th and 20th) in London and ,TBH, one I dont see taken often enough. Early bird discounts are available until 31Dec. Full details of the course and a high level view of the bullet points we shall be covering are available at the Technitrain site ( http://tinyurl.com/TSQLTraining )

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  • What Is The Formula for the 3 of 9 Bar Code Alphabet?

    - by Chris Moschini
    Background: 3 of 9 Barcode Alphabet A simple syntax for 3 of 9 bar codes What is the formula behind the alphabet and digits in a 3 of 9 bar code? For example, ASCII has a relatively clear arrangement. Numbers start at 33, capitals at 65, lowercase at 97. From these starting points you can infer the ASCII code for any number or letter. The start point for each range is also a multiple of 32 + 1. Bar codes seem random and lacking sequence. If we use the syntax from the second link, this is the first six characters in 3 of 9: A 100-01 B 010-01 C 110-00 D 001-01 E 101-00 F 011-00 I see no pattern here; what is it? I'm as much interested in the designer's intended pattern behind these as I am in someone devising an algorithm of their own that can give you the above code for a given character based on its sequence. I struggled with where to put this question; is it history, computer science, information science? I chose Programmers because a StackExchange search had the most barcode hits here, and because I wanted to specifically relate it to ASCII to explain what sort of formula/explanation I'm looking for.

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  • How to Downgrade Razor 3 and fix the issue that CSHTML not work in VS10,12 ?

    - by Anirudha
    Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/anirugu/archive/2013/11/04/how-to-downgrade-razor-3-and-fix-the-issue-that.aspxFew days ago I migrate a project to MVC 4 and suddenly I have seen that MVC project’s cshtml file is no longer working. The problem happen because my project is now based on Razor 3 RC and VS12 doesn’t even have support it. (Remember that VS team will ship support in VS update 4). My migration update it to Razor 3 (which is not related to MVC 4, MVC 4 used old version of Razor 2).   So how to fix the problem. Since VS update 4 in development and MVC 3 support exist in both old Version of VS (10,12) then better to migrate back our Razor to old version so we can use our project in VS 10 or 12. If your project have Razor 3 and it seem that Syntax highlighting doesn’t work for you then I suggest you to try this Nuget package https://www.nuget.org/packages/UpgradeMvc3ToMvc4 Remember that this will not be succeed. What you need to do is delete package folder in your project and now open the packages.config remove all entry of package now.   Now Run this command PM> Install-Package UpgradeMvc3ToMvc4 If this is failed then see what thing make error in console. simply remove the reference and try again. Now run it and see this will work.   After run this you will see that WebGrease Dll have a version number issue. Simply update it to version 1.5.2 and now you have ready your project to run it in .net 4. If you do bin deployment then you don’t need to have installed MVC 4 on server either. Remember that MVC 5 is based on .net 4.5 which simply means you can’t run it in VS10. until VS12 update 4 MVC 5 cshtml page will be work as simple html pages (syntax highlighting and intellisense). Thanks for read my post

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  • Android: Not able to experiment on own?

    - by user221287
    I have just started learning Android App Development a few days ago, with prior knowledge of C/C++, HTML and CSS. This is the situation I am facing Repeatedly: I am learning from a Video Tutorial Series, after each video, or each few videos, I say myself: Let's use what I have just learnt in the simple (and also "meaningless") app that I have made so far by watching the tutorials. I start implementing it, but then after a few minutes, I realize that I cannot do it because I do not know a few other syntax related to the particular thing, (or) I do not know whether these things can be combined with these other things by the use of . (dot). Whatever I try, I get either an error in eclipse or "Sorry...the app com.example.simple has stopped unexpectedly...." when the app runs. Then I search StackOverflow, Google and learn that what I want to implement requires learning about a few more classes, syntax and creating a few more java classes. I am not able to experiment on my own. Is it normal? Is it the HARD-WAY in which one is supposed to learn? Should I first learn Java and then come back to Android - would that be helpful?

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

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

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  • What&rsquo;s New in ASP.NET 4.0 Part Two: WebForms and Visual Studio Enhancements

    - by Rick Strahl
    In the last installment I talked about the core changes in the ASP.NET runtime that I’ve been taking advantage of. In this column, I’ll cover the changes to the Web Forms engine and some of the cool improvements in Visual Studio that make Web and general development easier. WebForms The WebForms engine is the area that has received most significant changes in ASP.NET 4.0. Probably the most widely anticipated features are related to managing page client ids and of ViewState on WebForm pages. Take Control of Your ClientIDs Unique ClientID generation in ASP.NET has been one of the most complained about “features” in ASP.NET. Although there’s a very good technical reason for these unique generated ids - they guarantee unique ids for each and every server control on a page - these unique and generated ids often get in the way of client-side JavaScript development and CSS styling as it’s often inconvenient and fragile to work with the long, generated ClientIDs. In ASP.NET 4.0 you can now specify an explicit client id mode on each control or each naming container parent control to control how client ids are generated. By default, ASP.NET generates mangled client ids for any control contained in a naming container (like a Master Page, or a User Control for example). The key to ClientID management in ASP.NET 4.0 are the new ClientIDMode and ClientIDRowSuffix properties. ClientIDMode supports four different ClientID generation settings shown below. For the following examples, imagine that you have a Textbox control named txtName inside of a master page control container on a WebForms page. <%@Page Language="C#"      MasterPageFile="~/Site.Master"     CodeBehind="WebForm2.aspx.cs"     Inherits="WebApplication1.WebForm2"  %> <asp:Content ID="content"  ContentPlaceHolderID="content"               runat="server"               ClientIDMode="Static" >       <asp:TextBox runat="server" ID="txtName" /> </asp:Content> The four available ClientIDMode values are: AutoID This is the existing behavior in ASP.NET 1.x-3.x where full naming container munging takes place. <input name="ctl00$content$txtName" type="text"        id="ctl00_content_txtName" /> This should be familiar to any ASP.NET developer and results in fairly unpredictable client ids that can easily change if the containership hierarchy changes. For example, removing the master page changes the name in this case, so if you were to move a block of script code that works against the control to a non-Master page, the script code immediately breaks. Static This option is the most deterministic setting that forces the control’s ClientID to use its ID value directly. No naming container naming at all is applied and you end up with clean client ids: <input name="ctl00$content$txtName"         type="text" id="txtName" /> Note that the name property which is used for postback variables to the server still is munged, but the ClientID property is displayed simply as the ID value that you have assigned to the control. This option is what most of us want to use, but you have to be clear on that because it can potentially cause conflicts with other controls on the page. If there are several instances of the same naming container (several instances of the same user control for example) there can easily be a client id naming conflict. Note that if you assign Static to a data-bound control, like a list child control in templates, you do not get unique ids either, so for list controls where you rely on unique id for child controls, you’ll probably want to use Predictable rather than Static. I’ll write more on this a little later when I discuss ClientIDRowSuffix. Predictable The previous two values are pretty self-explanatory. Predictable however, requires some explanation. To me at least it’s not in the least bit predictable. MSDN defines this value as follows: This algorithm is used for controls that are in data-bound controls. The ClientID value is generated by concatenating the ClientID value of the parent naming container with the ID value of the control. If the control is a data-bound control that generates multiple rows, the value of the data field specified in the ClientIDRowSuffix property is added at the end. For the GridView control, multiple data fields can be specified. If the ClientIDRowSuffix property is blank, a sequential number is added at the end instead of a data-field value. Each segment is separated by an underscore character (_). The key that makes this value a bit confusing is that it relies on the parent NamingContainer’s ClientID to build its own ClientID value. This effectively means that the value is not predictable at all but rather very tightly coupled to the parent naming container’s ClientIDMode setting. For my simple textbox example, if the ClientIDMode property of the parent naming container (Page in this case) is set to “Predictable” you’ll get this: <input name="ctl00$content$txtName" type="text"         id="content_txtName" /> which gives an id that based on walking up to the currently active naming container (the MasterPage content container) and starting the id formatting from there downward. Think of this as a semi unique name that’s guaranteed unique only for the naming container. If, on the other hand, the Page is set to “AutoID” you get the following with Predictable on txtName: <input name="ctl00$content$txtName" type="text"         id="ctl00_content_txtName" /> The latter is effectively the same as if you specified AutoID because it inherits the AutoID naming from the Page and Content Master Page control of the page. But again - predictable behavior always depends on the parent naming container and how it generates its id, so the id may not always be exactly the same as the AutoID generated value because somewhere in the NamingContainer chain the ClientIDMode setting may be set to a different value. For example, if you had another naming container in the middle that was set to Static you’d end up effectively with an id that starts with the NamingContainers id rather than the whole ctl000_content munging. The most common use for Predictable is likely to be for data-bound controls, which results in each data bound item getting a unique ClientID. Unfortunately, even here the behavior can be very unpredictable depending on which data-bound control you use - I found significant differences in how template controls in a GridView behave from those that are used in a ListView control. For example, GridView creates clean child ClientIDs, while ListView still has a naming container in the ClientID, presumably because of the template container on which you can’t set ClientIDMode. Predictable is useful, but only if all naming containers down the chain use this setting. Otherwise you’re right back to the munged ids that are pretty unpredictable. Another property, ClientIDRowSuffix, can be used in combination with ClientIDMode of Predictable to force a suffix onto list client controls. For example: <asp:GridView runat="server" ID="gvItems"              AutoGenerateColumns="false"             ClientIDMode="Static"              ClientIDRowSuffix="Id">     <Columns>     <asp:TemplateField>         <ItemTemplate>             <asp:Label runat="server" id="txtName"                        Text='<%# Eval("Name") %>'                   ClientIDMode="Predictable"/>         </ItemTemplate>     </asp:TemplateField>     <asp:TemplateField>         <ItemTemplate>         <asp:Label runat="server" id="txtId"                     Text='<%# Eval("Id") %>'                     ClientIDMode="Predictable" />         </ItemTemplate>     </asp:TemplateField>     </Columns>  </asp:GridView> generates client Ids inside of a column in the master page described earlier: <td>     <span id="txtName_0">Rick</span> </td> where the value after the underscore is the ClientIDRowSuffix field - in this case “Id” of the item data bound to the control. Note that all of the child controls require ClientIDMode=”Predictable” in order for the ClientIDRowSuffix to be applied, and the parent GridView controls need to be set to Static either explicitly or via Naming Container inheritance to give these simple names. It’s a bummer that ClientIDRowSuffix doesn’t work with Static to produce this automatically. Another real problem is that other controls process the ClientIDMode differently. For example, a ListView control processes the Predictable ClientIDMode differently and produces the following with the Static ListView and Predictable child controls: <span id="ctrl0_txtName_0">Rick</span> I couldn’t even figure out a way using ClientIDMode to get a simple ID that also uses a suffix short of falling back to manually generated ids using <%= %> expressions instead. Given the inconsistencies inside of list controls using <%= %>, ids for the ListView might not be a bad idea anyway. Inherit The final setting is Inherit, which is the default for all controls except Page. This means that controls by default inherit the parent naming container’s ClientIDMode setting. For more detailed information on ClientID behavior and different scenarios you can check out a blog post of mine on this subject: http://www.west-wind.com/weblog/posts/54760.aspx. ClientID Enhancements Summary The ClientIDMode property is a welcome addition to ASP.NET 4.0. To me this is probably the most useful WebForms feature as it allows me to generate clean IDs simply by setting ClientIDMode="Static" on either the page or inside of Web.config (in the Pages section) which applies the setting down to the entire page which is my 95% scenario. For the few cases when it matters - for list controls and inside of multi-use user controls or custom server controls) - I can use Predictable or even AutoID to force controls to unique names. For application-level page development, this is easy to accomplish and provides maximum usability for working with client script code against page controls. ViewStateMode Another area of large criticism for WebForms is ViewState. ViewState is used internally by ASP.NET to persist page-level changes to non-postback properties on controls as pages post back to the server. It’s a useful mechanism that works great for the overall mechanics of WebForms, but it can also cause all sorts of overhead for page operation as ViewState can very quickly get out of control and consume huge amounts of bandwidth in your page content. ViewState can also wreak havoc with client-side scripting applications that modify control properties that are tracked by ViewState, which can produce very unpredictable results on a Postback after client-side updates. Over the years in my own development, I’ve often turned off ViewState on pages to reduce overhead. Yes, you lose some functionality, but you can easily implement most of the common functionality in non-ViewState workarounds. Relying less on heavy ViewState controls and sticking with simpler controls or raw HTML constructs avoids getting around ViewState problems. In ASP.NET 3.x and prior, it wasn’t easy to control ViewState - you could turn it on or off and if you turned it off at the page or web.config level, you couldn’t turn it back on for specific controls. In short, it was an all or nothing approach. With ASP.NET 4.0, the new ViewStateMode property gives you more control. It allows you to disable ViewState globally either on the page or web.config level and then turn it back on for specific controls that might need it. ViewStateMode only works when EnableViewState="true" on the page or web.config level (which is the default). You can then use ViewStateMode of Disabled, Enabled or Inherit to control the ViewState settings on the page. If you’re shooting for minimal ViewState usage, the ideal situation is to set ViewStateMode to disabled on the Page or web.config level and only turn it back on particular controls: <%@Page Language="C#"      CodeBehind="WebForm2.aspx.cs"     Inherits="Westwind.WebStore.WebForm2"        ClientIDMode="Static"                ViewStateMode="Disabled"     EnableViewState="true"  %> <!-- this control has viewstate  --> <asp:TextBox runat="server" ID="txtName"  ViewStateMode="Enabled" />       <!-- this control has no viewstate - it inherits  from parent container --> <asp:TextBox runat="server" ID="txtAddress" /> Note that the EnableViewState="true" at the Page level isn’t required since it’s the default, but it’s important that the value is true. ViewStateMode has no effect if EnableViewState="false" at the page level. The main benefit of ViewStateMode is that it allows you to more easily turn off ViewState for most of the page and enable only a few key controls that might need it. For me personally, this is a perfect combination as most of my WebForm apps can get away without any ViewState at all. But some controls - especially third party controls - often don’t work well without ViewState enabled, and now it’s much easier to selectively enable controls rather than the old way, which required you to pretty much turn off ViewState for all controls that you didn’t want ViewState on. Inline HTML Encoding HTML encoding is an important feature to prevent cross-site scripting attacks in data entered by users on your site. In order to make it easier to create HTML encoded content, ASP.NET 4.0 introduces a new Expression syntax using <%: %> to encode string values. The encoding expression syntax looks like this: <%: "<script type='text/javascript'>" +     "alert('Really?');</script>" %> which produces properly encoded HTML: &lt;script type=&#39;text/javascript&#39; &gt;alert(&#39;Really?&#39;);&lt;/script&gt; Effectively this is a shortcut to: <%= HttpUtility.HtmlEncode( "<script type='text/javascript'>" + "alert('Really?');</script>") %> Of course the <%: %> syntax can also evaluate expressions just like <%= %> so the more common scenario applies this expression syntax against data your application is displaying. Here’s an example displaying some data model values: <%: Model.Address.Street %> This snippet shows displaying data from your application’s data store or more importantly, from data entered by users. Anything that makes it easier and less verbose to HtmlEncode text is a welcome addition to avoid potential cross-site scripting attacks. Although I listed Inline HTML Encoding here under WebForms, anything that uses the WebForms rendering engine including ASP.NET MVC, benefits from this feature. ScriptManager Enhancements The ASP.NET ScriptManager control in the past has introduced some nice ways to take programmatic and markup control over script loading, but there were a number of shortcomings in this control. The ASP.NET 4.0 ScriptManager has a number of improvements that make it easier to control script loading and addresses a few of the shortcomings that have often kept me from using the control in favor of manual script loading. The first is the AjaxFrameworkMode property which finally lets you suppress loading the ASP.NET AJAX runtime. Disabled doesn’t load any ASP.NET AJAX libraries, but there’s also an Explicit mode that lets you pick and choose the library pieces individually and reduce the footprint of ASP.NET AJAX script included if you are using the library. There’s also a new EnableCdn property that forces any script that has a new WebResource attribute CdnPath property set to a CDN supplied URL. If the script has this Attribute property set to a non-null/empty value and EnableCdn is enabled on the ScriptManager, that script will be served from the specified CdnPath. [assembly: WebResource(    "Westwind.Web.Resources.ww.jquery.js",    "application/x-javascript",    CdnPath =  "http://mysite.com/scripts/ww.jquery.min.js")] Cool, but a little too static for my taste since this value can’t be changed at runtime to point at a debug script as needed, for example. Assembly names for loading scripts from resources can now be simple names rather than fully qualified assembly names, which make it less verbose to reference scripts from assemblies loaded from your bin folder or the assembly reference area in web.config: <asp:ScriptManager runat="server" id="Id"          EnableCdn="true"         AjaxFrameworkMode="disabled">     <Scripts>         <asp:ScriptReference          Name="Westwind.Web.Resources.ww.jquery.js"         Assembly="Westwind.Web" />     </Scripts>        </asp:ScriptManager> The ScriptManager in 4.0 also supports script combining via the CompositeScript tag, which allows you to very easily combine scripts into a single script resource served via ASP.NET. Even nicer: You can specify the URL that the combined script is served with. Check out the following script manager markup that combines several static file scripts and a script resource into a single ASP.NET served resource from a static URL (allscripts.js): <asp:ScriptManager runat="server" id="Id"          EnableCdn="true"         AjaxFrameworkMode="disabled">     <CompositeScript          Path="~/scripts/allscripts.js">         <Scripts>             <asp:ScriptReference                    Path="~/scripts/jquery.js" />             <asp:ScriptReference                    Path="~/scripts/ww.jquery.js" />             <asp:ScriptReference            Name="Westwind.Web.Resources.editors.js"                 Assembly="Westwind.Web" />         </Scripts>     </CompositeScript> </asp:ScriptManager> When you render this into HTML, you’ll see a single script reference in the page: <script src="scripts/allscripts.debug.js"          type="text/javascript"></script> All you need to do to make this work is ensure that allscripts.js and allscripts.debug.js exist in the scripts folder of your application - they can be empty but the file has to be there. This is pretty cool, but you want to be real careful that you use unique URLs for each combination of scripts you combine or else browser and server caching will easily screw you up royally. The script manager also allows you to override native ASP.NET AJAX scripts now as any script references defined in the Scripts section of the ScriptManager trump internal references. So if you want custom behavior or you want to fix a possible bug in the core libraries that normally are loaded from resources, you can now do this simply by referencing the script resource name in the Name property and pointing at System.Web for the assembly. Not a common scenario, but when you need it, it can come in real handy. Still, there are a number of shortcomings in this control. For one, the ScriptManager and ClientScript APIs still have no common entry point so control developers are still faced with having to check and support both APIs to load scripts so that controls can work on pages that do or don’t have a ScriptManager on the page. The CdnUrl is static and compiled in, which is very restrictive. And finally, there’s still no control over where scripts get loaded on the page - ScriptManager still injects scripts into the middle of the HTML markup rather than in the header or optionally the footer. This, in turn, means there is little control over script loading order, which can be problematic for control developers. MetaDescription, MetaKeywords Page Properties There are also a number of additional Page properties that correspond to some of the other features discussed in this column: ClientIDMode, ClientTarget and ViewStateMode. Another minor but useful feature is that you can now directly access the MetaDescription and MetaKeywords properties on the Page object to set the corresponding meta tags programmatically. Updating these values programmatically previously required either <%= %> expressions in the page markup or dynamic insertion of literal controls into the page. You can now just set these properties programmatically on the Page object in any Control derived class on the page or the Page itself: Page.MetaKeywords = "ASP.NET,4.0,New Features"; Page.MetaDescription = "This article discusses the new features in ASP.NET 4.0"; Note, that there’s no corresponding ASP.NET tag for the HTML Meta element, so the only way to specify these values in markup and access them is via the @Page tag: <%@Page Language="C#"      CodeBehind="WebForm2.aspx.cs"     Inherits="Westwind.WebStore.WebForm2"      ClientIDMode="Static"                MetaDescription="Article that discusses what's                      new in ASP.NET 4.0"     MetaKeywords="ASP.NET,4.0,New Features" %> Nothing earth shattering but quite convenient. Visual Studio 2010 Enhancements for Web Development For Web development there are also a host of editor enhancements in Visual Studio 2010. Some of these are not Web specific but they are useful for Web developers in general. Text Editors Throughout Visual Studio 2010, the text editors have all been updated to a new core engine based on WPF which provides some interesting new features for various code editors including the nice ability to zoom in and out with Ctrl-MouseWheel to quickly change the size of text. There are many more API options to control the editor and although Visual Studio 2010 doesn’t yet use many of these features, we can look forward to enhancements in add-ins and future editor updates from the various language teams that take advantage of the visual richness that WPF provides to editing. On the negative side, I’ve noticed that occasionally the code editor and especially the HTML and JavaScript editors will lose the ability to use various navigation keys like arrows, back and delete keys, which requires closing and reopening the documents at times. This issue seems to be well documented so I suspect this will be addressed soon with a hotfix or within the first service pack. Overall though, the code editors work very well, especially given that they were re-written completely using WPF, which was one of my big worries when I first heard about the complete redesign of the editors. Multi-Targeting Visual Studio now targets all versions of the .NET framework from 2.0 forward. You can use Visual Studio 2010 to work on your ASP.NET 2, 3.0 and 3.5 applications which is a nice way to get your feet wet with the new development environment without having to make changes to existing applications. It’s nice to have one tool to work in for all the different versions. Multi-Monitor Support One cool feature of Visual Studio 2010 is the ability to drag windows out of the Visual Studio environment and out onto the desktop including onto another monitor easily. Since Web development often involves working with a host of designers at the same time - visual designer, HTML markup window, code behind and JavaScript editor - it’s really nice to be able to have a little more screen real estate to work on each of these editors. Microsoft made a welcome change in the environment. IntelliSense Snippets for HTML and JavaScript Editors The HTML and JavaScript editors now finally support IntelliSense scripts to create macro-based template expansions that have been in the core C# and Visual Basic code editors since Visual Studio 2005. Snippets allow you to create short XML-based template definitions that can act as static macros or real templates that can have replaceable values that can be embedded into the expanded text. The XML syntax for these snippets is straight forward and it’s pretty easy to create custom snippets manually. You can easily create snippets using XML and store them in your custom snippets folder (C:\Users\rstrahl\Documents\Visual Studio 2010\Code Snippets\Visual Web Developer\My HTML Snippets and My JScript Snippets), but it helps to use one of the third-party tools that exist to simplify the process for you. I use SnippetEditor, by Bill McCarthy, which makes short work of creating snippets interactively (http://snippeteditor.codeplex.com/). Note: You may have to manually add the Visual Studio 2010 User specific Snippet folders to this tool to see existing ones you’ve created. Code snippets are some of the biggest time savers and HTML editing more than anything deals with lots of repetitive tasks that lend themselves to text expansion. Visual Studio 2010 includes a slew of built-in snippets (that you can also customize!) and you can create your own very easily. If you haven’t done so already, I encourage you to spend a little time examining your coding patterns and find the repetitive code that you write and convert it into snippets. I’ve been using CodeRush for this for years, but now you can do much of the basic expansion natively for HTML and JavaScript snippets. jQuery Integration Is Now Native jQuery is a popular JavaScript library and recently Microsoft has recently stated that it will become the primary client-side scripting technology to drive higher level script functionality in various ASP.NET Web projects that Microsoft provides. In Visual Studio 2010, the default full project template includes jQuery as part of a new project including the support files that provide IntelliSense (-vsdoc files). IntelliSense support for jQuery is now also baked into Visual Studio 2010, so unlike Visual Studio 2008 which required a separate download, no further installs are required for a rich IntelliSense experience with jQuery. Summary ASP.NET 4.0 brings many useful improvements to the platform, but thankfully most of the changes are incremental changes that don’t compromise backwards compatibility and they allow developers to ease into the new features one feature at a time. None of the changes in ASP.NET 4.0 or Visual Studio 2010 are monumental or game changers. The bigger features are language and .NET Framework changes that are also optional. This ASP.NET and tools release feels more like fine tuning and getting some long-standing kinks worked out of the platform. It shows that the ASP.NET team is dedicated to paying attention to community feedback and responding with changes to the platform and development environment based on this feedback. If you haven’t gotten your feet wet with ASP.NET 4.0 and Visual Studio 2010, there’s no reason not to give it a shot now - the ASP.NET 4.0 platform is solid and Visual Studio 2010 works very well for a brand new release. Check it out. © Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2010Posted in ASP.NET  

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  • The future for Microsoft

    - by Scott Dorman
    Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/sdorman/archive/2013/10/16/the-future-for-microsoft.aspxMicrosoft is in the process of reinventing itself. While some may argue that it’s “too little, too late” or that their growing consumer-focused strategy is wrong, the truth of the situation is that Microsoft is reinventing itself into a new company. While Microsoft is now calling themselves a “devices and services” company, that’s not entirely accurate. Let’s look at some facts: Microsoft will always (for the long-term foreseeable future) be financially split into the following divisions: Windows/Operating Systems, which for FY13 made up approximately 24% of overall revenue. Server and Tools, which for FY13 made up approximately 26% of overall revenue. Enterprise/Business Products, which for FY13 made up approximately 32% of overall revenue. Entertainment and Devices, which for FY13 made up approximately 13% of overall revenue. Online Services, which for FY13 made up approximately 4% of overall revenue. It is important to realize that hardware products like the Surface fall under the Windows/Operating Systems division while products like the Xbox 360 fall under the Entertainment and Devices division. (Presumably other hardware, such as mice, keyboards, and cameras, also fall under the Entertainment and Devices division.) It’s also unclear where Microsoft’s recent acquisition of Nokia’s handset division will fall, but let’s assume that it will be under Entertainment and Devices as well. Now, for the sake of argument, let’s assume a slightly different structure that I think is more in line with how Microsoft presents itself and how the general public sees it: Consumer Products and Devices, which would probably make up approximately 9% of overall revenue. Developer Tools, which would probably make up approximately 13% of overall revenue. Enterprise Products and Devices, which would probably make up approximately 47% of overall revenue. Entertainment, which would probably make up approximately 13% of overall revenue. Online Services, which would probably make up approximately 17% of overall revenue. (Just so we’re clear, in this structure hardware products like the Surface, a portion of Windows sales, and other hardware fall under the Consumer Products and Devices division. I’m assuming that more of the income for the Windows division is coming from enterprise/volume licenses so 15% of that income went to the Enterprise Products and Devices division. Most of the enterprise services, like Azure, fall under the Online Services division so half of the Server and Tools income went there as well.) No matter how you look at it, the bulk of Microsoft’s income still comes from not just the enterprise but also software sales, and this really shouldn’t surprise anyone. So, now that the stage is set…what’s the future for Microsoft? The future I see for Microsoft (again, this is just my prediction based on my own instinct, gut-feel and publicly available information) is this: Microsoft is becoming a consumer-focused enterprise company. Let’s look at it a different way. Microsoft is an enterprise-focused company trying to create a larger consumer presence.  To a large extent, this is the exact opposite of Apple, who is really a consumer-focused company trying to create a larger enterprise presence. The major reason consumer-focused companies (like Apple) have started making in-roads into the enterprise is the “bring your own device” phenomenon. Yes, Apple has created some “game-changing” products but their enterprise influence is still relatively small. Unfortunately (for this blog post at least), Apple provides revenue in terms of hardware products rather than business divisions, so it’s not possible to do a direct comparison. However, in the interest of transparency, from Apple’s Quarterly Report (filed 24 July 2013), their revenue breakdown is: iPhone, which for the 3 months ending 29 June 2013 made up approximately 51% of revenue. iPad, which for the 3 months ending 29 June 2013 made up approximately 18% of revenue. Mac, which for the 3 months ending 29 June 2013 made up approximately 14% of revenue. iPod, which for the 3 months ending 29 June 2013 made up approximately 2% of revenue. iTunes, Software, and Services, which for the 3 months ending 29 June 2013 made up approximately 11% of revenue. Accessories, which for the 3 months ending 29 July 2013 made up approximately 3% of revenue. From this, it’s pretty clear that Apple is a consumer-and-hardware-focused company. At this point, you may be asking yourself “Where is all of this going?” The answer to that lies in Microsoft’s shift in company focus. They are becoming more consumer focused, but what exactly does that mean? The biggest change (at least that’s been in the news lately) is the pending purchase of Nokia’s handset division. This, in combination with their Surface line of tablets and the Xbox, will put Microsoft squarely in the realm of a hardware-focused company in addition to being a software-focused company. That can (and most likely will) shift the revenue split to looking at revenue based on software sales (both consumer and enterprise) and also hardware sales (mostly on the consumer side). If we look at things strictly from a Windows perspective, Microsoft clearly has a lot of irons in the fire at the moment. Discounting the various product SKUs available and painting the picture with broader strokes, there are currently 5 different Windows-based operating systems: Windows Phone Windows Phone 7.x, which runs on top of the Windows CE kernel Windows Phone 8.x+, which runs on top of the Windows 8 kernel Windows RT The ARM-based version of Windows 8, which runs on top of the Windows 8 kernel Windows (Pro) The Intel-based version of Windows 8, which runs on top of the Windows 8 kernel Xbox The Xbox 360, which runs it’s own proprietary OS. The Xbox One, which runs it’s own proprietary OS, a version of Windows running on top of the Windows 8 kernel and a proprietary “manager” OS which manages the other two. Over time, Windows Phone 7.x devices will fade so that really leaves 4 different versions. Looking at Windows RT and Windows Phone 8.x paints an interesting story. Right now, all mobile phone devices run on some sort of ARM chip and that doesn’t look like it will change any time soon. That means Microsoft has two different Windows based operating systems for the ARM platform. Long term, it doesn’t make sense for Microsoft to continue supporting that arrangement. I have long suspected (since the Surface was first announced) that Microsoft will unify these two variants of Windows and recent speculation from some of the leading Microsoft watchers lends credence to this suspicion. It is rumored that upcoming Windows Phone releases will include support for larger screen sizes, relax the requirement to have a hardware-based back button and will continue to improve API parity between Windows Phone and Windows RT. At the same time, Windows RT will include support for smaller screen sizes. Since both of these operating systems are based on the same core Windows kernel, it makes sense (both from a financial and development resource perspective) for Microsoft to unify them. The user interfaces are already very similar. So similar in fact, that visually it’s difficult to tell them apart. To illustrate this, here are two screen captures: Other than a few variations (the Bing News app, the picture shown in the Pictures tile and the spacing between the tiles) these are identical. The one on the left is from my Windows 8.1 laptop (which looks the same as on my Surface RT) and the one on the right is from my Windows Phone 8 Lumia 925. This pretty clearly shows that from a consumer perspective, there really is no practical difference between how these two operating systems look and how you interact with them. For the consumer, your entertainment device (Xbox One), phone (Windows Phone) and mobile computing device (Surface [or some other vendors tablet], laptop, netbook or ultrabook) and your desktop computing device (desktop) will all look and feel the same. While many people will denounce this consistency of user experience, I think this will be a good thing in the long term, especially for the upcoming generations. For example, my 5-year old son knows how to use my tablet, phone and Xbox because they all feature nearly identical user experiences. When Windows 8 was released, Microsoft allowed a Windows Store app to be purchased once and installed on as many as 5 devices. With Windows 8.1, this limit has been increased to over 50. Why is that important? If you consider that your phone, computing devices, and entertainment device will be running the same operating system (with minor differences related to physical hardware chipset), that means that I could potentially purchase my sons favorite Angry Birds game once and be able to install it on all of the devices I own. (And for those of you wondering, it’s only 7 [at the moment].) From an app developer perspective, the story becomes even more compelling. Right now there are differences between the different operating systems, but those differences are shrinking. The user interface technology for both is XAML but there are different controls available and different user experience concepts. Some of the APIs available are the same while some are not. You can’t develop a Windows Phone app that can also run on Windows (either Windows Pro or RT). With each release of Windows Phone and Windows RT, those difference become smaller and smaller. Add to this mix the Xbox One, which will also feature a Windows-based operating system and the same “modern” (tile-based) user interface and the visible distinctions between the operating systems will become even smaller. Unifying the operating systems means one set of APIs and one code base to maintain for an app that can run on multiple devices. One code base means it’s easier to add features and fix bugs and that those changes become available on all devices at the same time. It also means a single app store, which will increase the discoverability and reach of your app and consolidate revenue and app profile management. Now, the choice of what devices an app is available on becomes a simple checkbox decision rather than a technical limitation. Ultimately, this means more apps available to consumers, which is always good for the app ecosystem. Is all of this just rumor, speculation and conjecture? Of course, but it’s not unfounded. As I mentioned earlier, some of the prominent Microsoft watchers are also reporting similar rumors. However, Microsoft itself has even hinted at this future with their recent organizational changes and by telling developers “if you want to develop for Xbox One, start developing for Windows 8 now.” I think this pretty clearly paints the following picture: Microsoft is committed to the “modern” user interface paradigm. Microsoft is changing their release cadence (for all products, not just operating systems) to be faster and more modular. Microsoft is going to continue to unify their OS platforms both from a consumer perspective and a developer perspective. While this direction will certainly concern some people it will excite many others. Microsoft’s biggest failing has always been following through with a strong and sustained marketing strategy that presents a consistent view point and highlights what this unified and connected experience looks like and how it benefits consumers and enterprises. We’ve started to see some of this over the last few years, but it needs to continue and become more aggressive and consistent. In the long run, I think Microsoft will be able to pull all of these technologies and devices together into one seamless ecosystem. It isn’t going to happen overnight, but my prediction is that we will be there by the end of 2016. As both a consumer and a developer, I, for one, am excited about the future of Microsoft.

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  • A C# implementation of the CallStream pattern

    - by Bertrand Le Roy
    Dusan published this interesting post a couple of weeks ago about a novel JavaScript chaining pattern: http://dbj.org/dbj/?p=514 It’s similar to many existing patterns, but the syntax is extraordinarily terse and it provides a new form of friction-free, plugin-less extensibility mechanism. Here’s a JavaScript example from Dusan’s post: CallStream("#container") (find, "div") (attr, "A", 1) (css, "color", "#fff") (logger); The interesting thing here is that the functions that are being passed as the first argument are arbitrary, they don’t need to be declared as plug-ins. Compare that with a rough jQuery equivalent that could look something like this: $.fn.logger = function () { /* ... */ } $("selector") .find("div") .attr("A", 1) .css("color", "#fff") .logger(); There is also the “each” method in jQuery that achieves something similar, but its syntax is a little more verbose. Of course, that this pattern can be expressed so easily in JavaScript owes everything to the extraordinary way functions are treated in that language, something Douglas Crockford called “the very best part of JavaScript”. One of the first things I thought while reading Dusan’s post was how I could adapt that to C#. After all, with Lambdas and delegates, C# also has its first-class functions. And sure enough, it works really really well. After about ten minutes, I was able to write this: CallStreamFactory.CallStream (p => Console.WriteLine("Yay!")) (Dump, DateTime.Now) (DumpFooAndBar, new { Foo = 42, Bar = "the answer" }) (p => Console.ReadKey()); Where the Dump function is: public static void Dump(object options) { Console.WriteLine(options.ToString()); } And DumpFooAndBar is: public static void DumpFooAndBar(dynamic options) { Console.WriteLine("Foo is {0} and bar is {1}.", options.Foo, options.Bar); } So how does this work? Well, it really is very simple. And not. Let’s say it’s not a lot of code, but if you’re like me you might need an Advil after that. First, I defined the signature of the CallStream method as follows: public delegate CallStream CallStream (Action<object> action, object options = null); The delegate define a call stream as something that takes an action (a function of the options) and an optional options object and that returns a delegate of its own type. Tricky, but that actually works, a delegate can return its own type. Then I wrote an implementation of that delegate that calls the action and returns itself: public static CallStream CallStream (Action<object> action, object options = null) { action(options); return CallStream; } Pretty nice, eh? Well, yes and no. What we are doing here is to execute a sequence of actions using an interesting novel syntax. But for this to be actually useful, you’d need to build a more specialized call stream factory that comes with some sort of context (like Dusan did in JavaScript). For example, you could write the following alternate delegate signature that takes a string and returns itself: public delegate StringCallStream StringCallStream(string message); And then write the following call stream (notice the currying): public static StringCallStream CreateDumpCallStream(string dumpPath) { StringCallStream str = null; var dump = File.AppendText(dumpPath); dump.AutoFlush = true; str = s => { dump.WriteLine(s); return str; }; return str; } (I know, I’m not closing that stream; sure; bad, bad Bertrand) Finally, here’s how you use it: CallStreamFactory.CreateDumpCallStream(@".\dump.txt") ("Wow, this really works.") (DateTime.Now.ToLongTimeString()) ("And that is all."); Next step would be to combine this contextual implementation with the one that takes an action parameter and do some really fun stuff. I’m only scratching the surface here. This pattern could reveal itself to be nothing more than a gratuitous mind-bender or there could be applications that we hardly suspect at this point. In any case, it’s a fun new construct. Or is this nothing new? You tell me… Comments are open :)

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  • Check Your Spelling, Grammar, and Style in Firefox and Chrome

    - by Matthew Guay
    Are you tired of making simple writing mistakes that get past your browser’s spell-check?  Here’s how you can get advanced grammar check and more in Firefox and Chrome with After the Deadline. Microsoft Word has spoiled us with grammar, syntax, and spell checking, but the default spell check in Firefox and Chrome still only does basic checks.  Even webapps like Google Docs don’t check more than basic spelling errors.  However, WordPress.com is an exception; it offers advanced spelling, grammar, and syntax checking with its After the Deadline proofing system.  This helps you keep from making embarrassing mistakes on your blog posts, and now, thanks to a couple free browser plugins, it can help you keep from making these mistakes in any website or webapp. After the Deadline in Google Chrome Add the After the Deadline extension (link below) to Chrome as usual. As soon as it’s installed, you’re ready to start improving your online writing.  To check spelling, grammar, and more, click the ABC button that you’ll now see at the bottom of most text boxes online. After a quick scan, grammar mistakes are highlighted in green, complex expressions and other syntax problems are highlighted in blue, and spelling mistakes are highlighted in red as would be expected.  Click on an underlined word to choose one of its recommended changes or ignore the suggestion. Or, if you want more explanation about what was wrong with that word or phrase, click Explain for more info. And, if you forget to run an After the Deadline scan before submitting a text entry, it will automatically check to make sure you still want to submit it.  Click Cancel to go back and check your writing first.   To change the After the Deadline settings, click its icon in the toolbar and select View Options.  Additionally, if you want to disable it on the site you’re on, you can click Disable on this site directly from the popup. From the settings page, you can choose extra things to check for such as double negatives and redundant phrases, as well as add sites and words to ignore. After the Deadline in Firefox Add the After the Deadline add-on to Firefox (link below) as normal. After the Deadline basically the same in Firefox as it does in Chrome.  Select the ABC icon in the lower right corner of textboxes to check them for problems, and After the Deadline will underline the problems as it did in Chrome.  To view a suggested change in Firefox, right-click on the underlined word and select the recommended change or ignore the suggestion. And, if you forget to check, you’ll see a friendly reminder asking if you’re sure you want to submit your text like it is. You can access the After the Deadline settings in Firefox from the menu bar.  Click Tools, then select AtD Preferences.  In Firefox, the settings are in a options dialog with three tabs, but it includes the same options as the Chrome settings page.  Here you can make After the Deadline as correction-happy as you like.   Conclusion The web has increasingly become an interactive place, and seldom does a day go by that we aren’t entering text in forms and comments that may stay online forever.  Even our insignificant tweets are being archived in the Library of Congress.  After the Deadline can help you make sure that your permanent internet record is as grammatically correct as possible.  Even though it doesn’t catch every problem, and even misses some spelling mistakes, it’s still a great help. Links Download the After the Deadline extension for Google Chrome Download the After the Deadline add-on for Firefox Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Quick Tip: Disable Favicons in FirefoxStupid Geek Tricks: Duplicate a Tab with a Shortcut Key in Chrome or FirefoxHow to Disable the New Geolocation Feature in Google ChromeStupid Geek Tricks: Compare Your Browser’s Memory Usage with Google ChromeStop YouTube Videos from Automatically Playing in Chrome TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Acronis Online Backup DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows Easily Search Food Recipes With Recipe Chimp Tech Fanboys Field Guide Check these Awesome Chrome Add-ons iFixit Offers Gadget Repair Manuals Online Vista style sidebar for Windows 7 Create Nice Charts With These Web Based Tools

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  • Book review (Book 6) - Wikinomics

    - by BuckWoody
    This is a continuation of the books I challenged myself to read to help my career - one a month, for year. You can read my first book review here. The book I chose for November 2011 was: Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything, by Don Tapscott   Why I chose this Book: I’ve heard a lot about this book - was one of the “must read” kind of business books (many of which are very “fluffy”) and supposedly deals with collaborating using technology - so I want to see what it says about collaborative efforts and how I can leverage them. What I learned: I really disliked this book. I’ve never been a fan of the latest “business book”, and sadly that’s what this felt like to me. A “business book” is what I call a work that has a fairly simple concept to get across, and then proceeds to use various made-up terms, analogies and other mechanisms to fill hundreds of pages doing it. This perception is at my own – the book is pretty old, and these things go stale quickly. The author’s general point (at least what I took away from it) was: Open Source is good, proprietary is bad. Collaboration is the hallmark of successful companies. In my mind, you can save yourself the trouble of reading this work if you get these two concepts down. Don’t get me wrong – open source is awesome, and collaboration is a good thing, especially in places where it fits. But it’s not a panacea as the author seems to indicate. For instance, he continuously uses the example of MySpace to show a “2.0” company, which I think means that you can enter text as well as read it on a web page. All well and good. But we all know what happened to MySpace, and of course he missed the point entirely about this new web environment: low barriers to entry often mean low barriers to exit. And the open, collaborative company being the best model – well, I think we all know a certain computer company famous for phones and music that is arguably quite successful, and is probably one of the most closed, non-collaborative (at least with its customers) on the planet. So that sort of takes away that argument. The reality of business is far more complicated. Collaboration is an amazing tool, and should be leveraged heavily. However, at the end of the day, after you do your research you need to pick a strategy and stick with it. Asking thousands of people to assist you in building your product probably will not work well. Open Source is great – but some proprietary products are quite functional as well, have a long track record, are well supported, and will probably be upgraded. Everything has its place, so use what works where it is needed. There is no single answer, sadly. So did I waste my time reading the book? Did I make a bad choice? Not at all! Reading the opinions and thoughts of others is almost always useful, and it’s important to consider opinions other than your own. If nothing else, thinking through the process either convinces you that you are wrong, or helps you understand better why you are right.

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  • Why Your ERP System Isn't Ready for the Next Evolution of the Enterprise

    - by ken.pulverman
      ERP has been the backbone of enterprise software.  The data held in your ERP system is core of most companies.  Efficiencies gained through the accounting and resource allocation through ERP software have literally saved companies trillions of dollars. Not only does everything seem to be fine with your ERP system, you haven't had to touch it in years.  Why aren't you ready for what comes next? Well judging by the growth rates in the space (Oracle posted only a 3% growth rate, while SAP showed a 12% decline) there hasn't been much modernization going on, just a little replacement activity. If you are like most companies, your ERP system is connected to a proprietary middleware solution that only effectively talks with a handful of other systems you might have acquired from the same vendor.   Connecting your legacy system through proprietary middleware is expensive and brittle and if you are like most companies, you were only willing to pay an SI so much before you said "enough."  So your ERP is working.  It's humming along.  You might not be able to get Order to Promise information when you take orders in your call center, but there are work arounds that work just fine. So what's the problem? The problem is that you built your business around your ERP core, and now there is such pressure to innovate your business processes to keep up that you need a whole new slew of modern apps and you need ERP data to be accessible from everywhere.   Every time you change a sales territory or a comp plan or change a benefits provider your ERP system, literally the economic brain of your business, needs to know what's going on.  And this giant need to access and provide information to your ERP is only growing. What makes matters even more challenging is that apps today come in every flavor under the Sun™.   SaaS, cloud, managed, hybrid, outsourced, composite....and they all have different integration protocols. The only easy way to get ahead of all this is to modernize the way you connect and run your applications.  Unlike the middleware solutions of yesteryear, modern middleware is effectively the operating system of the enterprise.  In the same way that you rely on Apple, Microsoft, and Google to find a video driver for your 23" monitor or to ensure the Word or Keynote runs, modern middleware takes care of intra-application connectivity and process execution.  It effectively allows you to take ERP out of the middle while ensuring connectivity to your vital data for anything you want to do.  The diagram below reflects that change.    In this model, the hegemony of ERP is over.  It too has to become a stealthy modern app to help you quickly adapt to business changes while managing vital information.  And through modern middleware it will connect to everything.  So yes ERP as we've know it is dead, but long live ERP as a connected application member of the modern enterprise. I want to Thank Andrew Zoldan, Group Vice President Oracle Manufacturing Industries Business Unit for introducing me to how some of his biggest customers have benefited by modernizing their applications infrastructure and making ERP a connected application. by John Burke, Group Vice President, Applications Business Unit

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  • Why Your ERP System Isn't Ready for the Next Evolution of the Enterprise

    - by [email protected]
    By ken.pulverman on March 24, 2010 8:51 AM ERP has been the backbone of enterprise software. The data held in your ERP system is core of most companies. Efficiencies gained through the accounting and resource allocation through ERP software have literally saved companies trillions of dollars. Not only does everything seem to be fine with your ERP system, you haven't had to touch it in years. Why aren't you ready for what comes next? Well judging by the growth rates in the space (Oracle posted only a 3% growth rate, while SAP showed a 12% decline) there hasn't been much modernization going on, just a little replacement activity. If you are like most companies, your ERP system is connected to a proprietary middleware solution that only effectively talks with a handful of other systems you might have acquired from the same vendor. Connecting your legacy system through proprietary middleware is expensive and brittle and if you are like most companies, you were only willing to pay an SI so much before you said "enough." So your ERP is working. It's humming along. You might not be able to get Order to Promise information when you take orders in your call center, but there are work arounds that work just fine. So what's the problem? The problem is that you built your business around your ERP core, and now there is such pressure to innovate your business processes to keep up that you need a whole new slew of modern apps and you need ERP data to be accessible from everywhere. Every time you change a sales territory or a comp plan or change a benefits provider your ERP system, literally the economic brain of your business, needs to know what's going on. And this giant need to access and provide information to your ERP is only growing. What makes matters even more challenging is that apps today come in every flavor under the Sun™. SaaS, cloud, managed, hybrid, outsourced, composite....and they all have different integration protocols. The only easy way to get ahead of all this is to modernize the way you connect and run your applications. Unlike the middleware solutions of yesteryear, modern middleware is effectively the operating system of the enterprise. In the same way that you rely on Apple, Microsoft, and Google to find a video driver for your 23" monitor or to ensure that Word or Keynote runs, modern middleware takes care of intra-application connectivity and process execution. It effectively allows you to take ERP out of the middle while ensuring connectivity to your vital data for anything you want to do. The diagram below reflects that change. In this model, the hegemony of ERP is over. It too has to become a stealthy modern app to help you quickly adapt to business changes while managing vital information. And through modern middleware it will connect to everything. So yes ERP as we've know it is dead, but long live ERP as a connected application member of the modern enterprise. I want to Thank Andrew Zoldan, Group Vice President Oracle Manufacturing Industries Business Unit for introducing me to how some of his biggest customers have benefited by modernizing their applications infrastructure and making ERP a connected application. by John Burke, Group Vice President, Applications Business Unit

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  • problem on my site [closed]

    - by ali
    Errors found while checking this document as XHTML How and from where repaired ,please help my hello, I have a problem on my site, was discovered by the program (A1 website analyzer) you can fix my site? Because I really do not know about the programming language, if it please email me and thank you please see this link it http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/validator?uri=http://www.moneybillion.com/#errors Validation Output: 19 Errors Line 193, Column 261: there is no attribute "data-count" …ass="twitter-share-button" data-count="horizontal" data-via="elibeto1199"Twee…? You have used the attribute named above in your document, but the document type you are using does not support that attribute for this element. This error is often caused by incorrect use of the "Strict" document type with a document that uses frames (e.g. you must use the "Transitional" document type to get the "target" attribute), or by using vendor proprietary extensions such as "marginheight" (this is usually fixed by using CSS to achieve the desired effect instead). This error may also result if the element itself is not supported in the document type you are using, as an undefined element will have no supported attributes; in this case, see the element-undefined error message for further information. How to fix: check the spelling and case of the element and attribute, (Remember XHTML is all lower-case) and/or check that they are both allowed in the chosen document type, and/or use CSS instead of this attribute. If you received this error when using the element to incorporate flash media in a Web page, see the FAQ item on valid flash. Line 193, Column 283: there is no attribute "data-via" …ton" data-count="horizontal" data-via="elibeto1199"Tweet This error may also result if the element itself is not supported in the document type you are using, as an undefined element will have no supported attributes; in this case, see the element-undefined error message for further information. How to fix: check the spelling and case of the element and attribute, (Remember XHTML is all lower-case) and/or check that they are both allowed in the chosen document type, and/or use CSS instead of this attribute. If you received this error when using the element to incorporate flash media in a Web page, see the FAQ item on valid flash. Line 193, Column 393: required attribute "type" not specified …ript" src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"var facebook = {? The attribute given above is required for an element that you've used, but you have omitted it. For instance, in most HTML and XHTML document types the "type" attribute is required on the "script" element and the "alt" attribute is required for the "img" element. Typical values for type are type="text/css" for and type="text/javascript" for . Line 194, Column 23: element "data:post.url" undefined url : "",? You have used the element named above in your document, but the document type you are using does not define an element of that name. This error is often caused by: incorrect use of the "Strict" document type with a document that uses frames (e.g. you must use the "Frameset" document type to get the "" element), by using vendor proprietary extensions such as "" or "" (this is usually fixed by using CSS to achieve the desired effect instead). by using upper-case tags in XHTML (in XHTML attributes and elements must be all lower-case). Line 197, Column 62: required attribute "type" not specified src="http://orkut-share.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/facebook.js"?

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