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• DataTable to JSON

  - by Joel Coehoorn

  I recently needed to serialize a datatable to JSON. Where I'm at we're still on .Net 2.0, so I can't use the JSON serializer in .Net 3.5. I figured this must have been done before, so I went looking online and found a number of different options. Some of them depend on an additional library, which I would have a hard time pushing through here. Others require first converting to List<Dictionary<>>, which seemed a little awkward and needless. Another treated all values like a string. For one reason or another I couldn't really get behind any of them, so I decided to roll my own, which is posted below. As you can see from reading the //TODO comments, it's incomplete in a few places. This code is already in production here, so it does "work" in the basic sense. The places where it's incomplete are places where we know our production data won't currently hit it (no timespans or byte arrays in the db). The reason I'm posting here is that I feel like this can be a little better, and I'd like help finishing and improving this code. Any input welcome. public static class JSONHelper { public static string FromDataTable(DataTable dt) { string rowDelimiter = ""; StringBuilder result = new StringBuilder("["); foreach (DataRow row in dt.Rows) { result.Append(rowDelimiter); result.Append(FromDataRow(row)); rowDelimiter = ","; } result.Append("]"); return result.ToString(); } public static string FromDataRow(DataRow row) { DataColumnCollection cols = row.Table.Columns; string colDelimiter = ""; StringBuilder result = new StringBuilder("{"); for (int i = 0; i < cols.Count; i++) { // use index rather than foreach, so we can use the index for both the row and cols collection result.Append(colDelimiter).Append("\"") .Append(cols[i].ColumnName).Append("\":") .Append(JSONValueFromDataRowObject(row[i], cols[i].DataType)); colDelimiter = ","; } result.Append("}"); return result.ToString(); } // possible types: // http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.data.datacolumn.datatype(VS.80).aspx private static Type[] numeric = new Type[] {typeof(byte), typeof(decimal), typeof(double), typeof(Int16), typeof(Int32), typeof(SByte), typeof(Single), typeof(UInt16), typeof(UInt32), typeof(UInt64)}; // I don't want to rebuild this value for every date cell in the table private static long EpochTicks = new DateTime(1970, 1, 1).Ticks; private static string JSONValueFromDataRowObject(object value, Type DataType) { // null if (value == DBNull.Value) return "null"; // numeric if (Array.IndexOf(numeric, DataType) > -1) return value.ToString(); // TODO: eventually want to use a stricter format // boolean if (DataType == typeof(bool)) return ((bool)value) ? "true" : "false"; // date -- see http://weblogs.asp.net/bleroy/archive/2008/01/18/dates-and-json.aspx if (DataType == typeof(DateTime)) return "\"\\/Date(" + new TimeSpan(((DateTime)value).ToUniversalTime().Ticks - EpochTicks).TotalMilliseconds.ToString() + ")\\/\""; // TODO: add Timespan support // TODO: add Byte[] support //TODO: this would be _much_ faster with a state machine // string/char return "\"" + value.ToString().Replace(@"\", @"\\").Replace(Environment.NewLine, @"\n").Replace("\"", @"\""") + "\""; } }

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• Why are there so many man-made edge cases in IT, and is there any hope for simplification / unificat

  - by Hamish Grubijan

  This question is meant to generate discussion and so it is marked as community wiki. My observation is that the field of information technology grows so rapidly and randomly, that for many it takes a lot of time to learn many intricacies of some tools that will be obsolete in just short 3 years. If you look at the questions asked on StackOverflow ... at least half of them stem from the fact that some language / tool / API / protocol was poorly designed, is backwards and has gotchas. There are so many things which distract developers from converting English into machine code; instead they spend their time configuring stuff and gluing together things that do not really fit. How many times do you pick up somebody else's project (or someone picks up yours :) ) and realize that this program does not need half of the dialogs that it has, and that the logic can be simplified a great deal? But, it had to be made and sold here before a better thing is made and sold elsewhere, and hence all this rush. I often wish that things would just slow down. I do not want Microsoft Windows to run on my car's computer, my watch, my table, my toaster oven, and my toilet seat. I'd rather have Windows that DOES NOT HAVE WINDOWS REGISTRY, I'd rather have Windows that allows two different programs to work on the same file at the same time, the way it works on Unix systems. Microsoft is just an example. I am looking forward to the day when I do not have to worry about Windows vs Unix new line break, when System32 actually means that this directory contains 32-bit binaries, and not 64-bit ones, the day when dll hell and manifest hell are no longer an issue, the day when it takes me a lot less than 3 months on a new job to learn the system. I do not mean learning the entire code base of a product (depending on the size of it, it can take a long time). I mean - remembering which build-assisting scripts are written in Perl and which version of it, and which ones are done through .bat files, when do I need to manually make every file in some directory writable before running a script, or else a critical step of a database maintenance home-grown tool will bomb, and it will take 2 days to clean that up. Makes me wonder if humans enslaved computers, or if it is the other way around. The key is that improving those things will not bring extra revenue, and hence those taking the time to fix crap like that are not "business focused". However, these imperfections irritate me immensely, particularly because my memory is limited - I can hold only a small portion of that useless knowledge of a system in my head at any given point in time. I must not be alone. Did you also happen to notice that a programmer can waste a lot of time on things that should have been a lot more straight-forward? Is there hope? Will things get better/simpler in the future, or will there be a lot more IT crap floating around? I suppose I see diversity of tools, protocols, etc. as a bad thing. Thank you for participation.

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• Binary data from a serial port in linux using c

  - by user1680393

  I am reading binary data from a serial port on Phidget sbc using Linux to get a command from an application running on a PC. I wrote a test program in VB to read the data into a byte array and convert it to decimal to use it but can’t figure out how to do it in c. I am unable to come up with anything with the research I have done on the internet. Command sent from PC is 0x0F. To check if I am getting correct data I read the data and send it back. Here is what I get back. Returned data has a carriage return added to it. Hex Display 0F00 0000 0D ‘\’ Display \0F\00\00\00\r Normal display just display a strange character. This tells me that the data is there that I can use, but can’t figure out to extract the value 0F or 15. How can I convert the incoming data to use it? I tried converting the received data using strtol, but it returns 0. I also tried setting the port to raw but it did not make any difference. unsigned char buffer1[1]; int ReadPort1() { int result; result = read(file1, &buffer1,1); if(result > 0) { WritePort1(buffer1); sprintf(tempstr, "Port1 data %s %d", buffer1, result); DisplayText(2,tempstr); } return result; } Port Open/Setup void OpenPort1() { //file1 = open("/dev/ttyUSB1", O_RDWR | O_NOCTTY | O_NONBLOCK); file1 = open("/dev/ttyUSB1", O_RDWR | O_NOCTTY | O_NODELAY); if(file1 < 0) printf("Error opening serial port1.\n"); else { SetPort(file1, 115200, 8, 1, 0, 1); port1open = 1; } } void SetPort(int fd, int Baud_Rate, int Data_Bits, int Stop_Bits, int Parity, int raw) { long BAUD; // derived baud rate from command line long DATABITS; long STOPBITS; long PARITYON; long PARITY; struct termios newtio; switch (Baud_Rate) { case 115200: BAUD = B115200; break; case 38400: BAUD = B38400; break; case 19200: BAUD = B19200; break; case 9600: BAUD = B9600; break; } //end of switch baud_rate switch (Data_Bits) { case 8: default: DATABITS = CS8; break; case 7: DATABITS = CS7; break; case 6: DATABITS = CS6; break; case 5: DATABITS = CS5; break; } //end of switch data_bits switch (Stop_Bits) { case 1: default: STOPBITS = 0; break; case 2: STOPBITS = CSTOPB; break; } //end of switch stop bits switch (Parity) { case 0: default: //none PARITYON = 0; PARITY = 0; break; case 1: //odd PARITYON = PARENB; PARITY = PARODD; break; case 2: //even PARITYON = PARENB; PARITY = 0; break; } //end of switch parity newtio.c_cflag = BAUD | DATABITS | STOPBITS | PARITYON | PARITY | CLOCAL | CREAD; newtio.c_iflag = IGNPAR; if(raw == 1) { newtio.c_oflag &= ~OPOST; newtio.c_lflag &= ~(ICANON | ECHO | ECHOE | ISIG); } else { newtio.c_lflag = 0; //ICANON; newtio.c_oflag = 0; } newtio.c_cc[VMIN]=1; newtio.c_cc[VTIME]=0; tcflush(fd, TCIFLUSH); tcsetattr(fd,TCSANOW,&newtio); }

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• Android Google-Shopping API force closes while parsing

  - by Sam Jackson

  I'm trying to send a request to the Google-Shopping API with the following static method which I think is working: public static String GET_TITLE(String url) throws JSONException { InputStream is = null; String result = ""; JSONObject jArray = null; // http post try { HttpClient httpclient = new DefaultHttpClient(); HttpPost httppost = new HttpPost(url); HttpResponse response = httpclient.execute(httppost); HttpEntity entity = response.getEntity(); is = entity.getContent(); } catch(Exception e) { Log.e("log_tag", "Error in http connection "+e.toString()); } The URL I'm passing is this BTW: https://www.googleapis.com/shopping/search/v1/public/products/country=US&q=shirts&alt=json &rankBy=relevancy&key=AIzaSyDRKgGmJrdG6pV6DIg2m-nmIbXydxvpjww Next I try to parse this response (where I think the problem comes in) in the same method: try { jArray = new JSONObject(result); } catch(JSONException e){ Log.e("log_tag", "Error parsing data "+e.toString()); } JSONObject itemObject = jArray.getJSONObject("items"); JSONObject productObject = itemObject.getJSONObject("product"); String attributeGoogleId = productObject.getString("googleId"); String attributeProviderId = productObject.getString("providerId"); String attributeTitle = productObject.getString("title");*/ String attributePrice = productObject.getString("price"); JSONObject popupObject = productObject.getJSONObject("popup"); return attributeTitle; } This has been so frustrating, I know it should be simple but everywhere I look I just can't quite get it to work, I'm not exactly sure what the error is since I'm testing it on my HTC Desire because my emulator gives an 'invalid command-line parameter' error when starting, but that's a different issue, anyway, thanks in advance! EDIT: The first one makes it look like there's a problem with the URL, should I change it and see if it makes a difference? 04-01 12:09:05.142: ERROR/log_tag(24968): Error in http connection java.net.UnknownHostException: www.googleapis.com 04-01 12:09:05.142: ERROR/log_tag(24968): Error converting result java.lang.NullPointerException 04-01 12:09:05.142: ERROR/log_tag(24968): Error parsing data org.json.JSONException: End of input at character 0 of 04-01 12:09:05.142: DEBUG/AndroidRuntime(24968): Shutting down VM 04-01 12:09:05.142: WARN/dalvikvm(24968): threadid=1: thread exiting with uncaught exception (group=0x400259f8) 04-01 12:09:05.152: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(24968): FATAL EXCEPTION: main 04-01 12:09:05.152: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(24968): java.lang.RuntimeException: Failure delivering result ResultInfo{who=null, request=0, result=-1, data=Intent { act=com.google.zxing.client.android.SCAN flg=0x80000 (has extras) }} to activity {com.spectrum.stock/com.spectrum.stock.CaptureActivity}: java.lang.NullPointerException 04-01 12:09:05.152: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(24968): at android.app.ActivityThread.deliverResults(ActivityThread.java:3734) 04-01 12:09:05.152: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(24968): at android.app.ActivityThread.handleSendResult(ActivityThread.java:3776) 04-01 12:09:05.152: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(24968): at android.app.ActivityThread.access$2800(ActivityThread.java:135) 04-01 12:09:05.152: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(24968): at android.app.ActivityThread$H.handleMessage(ActivityThread.java:2166) 04-01 12:09:05.152: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(24968): at android.os.Handler.dispatchMessage(Handler.java:99) 04-01 12:09:05.152: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(24968): at android.os.Looper.loop(Looper.java:144) 04-01 12:09:05.152: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(24968): at android.app.ActivityThread.main(ActivityThread.java:4937) 04-01 12:09:05.152: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(24968): at java.lang.reflect.Method.invokeNative(Native Method) 04-01 12:09:05.152: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(24968): at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:521) 04-01 12:09:05.152: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(24968): at com.android.internal.os.ZygoteInit$MethodAndArgsCaller.run(ZygoteInit.java:868) 04-01 12:09:05.152: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(24968): at com.android.internal.os.ZygoteInit.main(ZygoteInit.java:626) 04-01 12:09:05.152: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(24968): at dalvik.system.NativeStart.main(Native Method) 04-01 12:09:05.152: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(24968): Caused by: java.lang.NullPointerException 04-01 12:09:05.152: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(24968): at com.spectrum.stock.JSONResponse.GET_TITLE(JSONResponse.java:61) 04-01 12:09:05.152: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(24968): at com.spectrum.stock.CaptureActivity.onActivityResult(CaptureActivity.java:78) 04-01 12:09:05.152: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(24968): at android.app.Activity.dispatchActivityResult(Activity.java:3931) 04-01 12:09:05.152: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(24968): at android.app.ActivityThread.deliverResults(ActivityThread.java:3730) 04-01 12:09:05.152: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(24968): ... 11 more 04-01 12:09:05.162: WARN/ActivityManager(96): Force finishing activity com.spectrum.stock/.CaptureActivity

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• mysql db connection

  - by Dragster

  hi there i have been searching the web for a connection between my android simulator and a mysql db. I've fount that you can't connect directly but via a webserver. The webserver wil handle my request from my android. I fount the following code on www.helloandroid.com But i don't understand. If i run this code on the simulator nothing happens. The screen stays black. Where does Log.i land. In the android screen or in the error log or somewhere else? Can somebody help me with this code? package app.android.ticket; import java.io.BufferedReader; import java.io.InputStream; import java.io.InputStreamReader; import java.util.ArrayList; import org.apache.http.HttpEntity; import org.apache.http.HttpResponse; import org.apache.http.NameValuePair; import org.apache.http.client.HttpClient; import org.apache.http.client.entity.UrlEncodedFormEntity; import org.apache.http.client.methods.HttpPost; import org.apache.http.impl.client.DefaultHttpClient; import org.apache.http.message.BasicNameValuePair; import org.json.JSONArray; import org.json.JSONException; import org.json.JSONObject; import android.app.Activity; import android.os.Bundle; import android.util.Log; public class fetchData extends Activity { /** Called when the activity is first created. */ @Override public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) { super.onCreate(savedInstanceState); setContentView(R.layout.main); //call the method to run the data retreival getServerData(); } public static final String KEY_121 = "http://www.jorisdek.nl/android/getAllPeopleBornAfter.php"; public fetchData() { Log.e("fetchData", "Initialized ServerLink "); } private void getServerData() { InputStream is = null; String result = ""; //the year data to send ArrayList<NameValuePair> nameValuePairs = new ArrayList<NameValuePair>(); nameValuePairs.add(new BasicNameValuePair("year","1980")); //http post try{ HttpClient httpclient = new DefaultHttpClient(); HttpPost httppost = new HttpPost(KEY_121); httppost.setEntity(new UrlEncodedFormEntity(nameValuePairs)); HttpResponse response = httpclient.execute(httppost); HttpEntity entity = response.getEntity(); is = entity.getContent(); }catch(Exception e){ Log.e("log_tag", "Error in http connection "+e.toString()); } //convert response to string try{ BufferedReader reader = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(is,"iso-8859-1"),8); StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder(); String line = null; while ((line = reader.readLine()) != null) { sb.append(line + "\n"); } is.close(); result=sb.toString(); }catch(Exception e){ Log.e("log_tag", "Error converting result "+e.toString()); } //parse json data try{ JSONArray jArray = new JSONArray(result); for(int i=0;i<jArray.length();i++){ JSONObject json_data = jArray.getJSONObject(i); Log.i("log_tag","id: "+json_data.getInt("id")+ ", name: "+json_data.getString("name")+ ", sex: "+json_data.getInt("sex")+ ", birthyear: "+json_data.getInt("birthyear") ); } }catch(JSONException e){ Log.e("log_tag", "Error parsing data "+e.toString()); } } }

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• Make interchangeable class types via pointer casting only, without having to allocate any new objects?

  - by HostileFork

  UPDATE: I do appreciate "don't want that, want this instead" suggestions. They are useful, especially when provided in context of the motivating scenario. Still...regardless of goodness/badness, I've become curious to find a hard-and-fast "yes that can be done legally in C++11" vs "no it is not possible to do something like that". I want to "alias" an object pointer as another type, for the sole purpose of adding some helper methods. The alias cannot add data members to the underlying class (in fact, the more I can prevent that from happening the better!) All aliases are equally applicable to any object of this type...it's just helpful if the type system can hint which alias is likely the most appropriate. There should be no information about any specific alias that is ever encoded in the underlying object. Hence, I feel like you should be able to "cheat" the type system and just let it be an annotation...checked at compile time, but ultimately irrelevant to the runtime casting. Something along these lines: Node<AccessorFoo>* fooPtr = Node<AccessorFoo>::createViaFactory(); Node<AccessorBar>* barPtr = reinterpret_cast< Node<AccessorBar>* >(fooPtr); Under the hood, the factory method is actually making a NodeBase class, and then using a similar reinterpret_cast to return it as a Node<AccessorFoo>*. The easy way to avoid this is to make these lightweight classes that wrap nodes and are passed around by value. Thus you don't need casting, just Accessor classes that take the node handle to wrap in their constructor: AccessorFoo foo (NodeBase::createViaFactory()); AccessorBar bar (foo.getNode()); But if I don't have to pay for all that, I don't want to. That would involve--for instance--making a special accessor type for each sort of wrapped pointer (AccessorFooShared, AccessorFooUnique, AccessorFooWeak, etc.) Having these typed pointers being aliased for one single pointer-based object identity is preferable, and provides a nice orthogonality. So back to that original question: Node<AccessorFoo>* fooPtr = Node<AccessorFoo>::createViaFactory(); Node<AccessorBar>* barPtr = reinterpret_cast< Node<AccessorBar>* >(fooPtr); Seems like there would be some way to do this that might be ugly but not "break the rules". According to ISO14882:2011(e) 5.2.10-7: An object pointer can be explicitly converted to an object pointer of a different type.70 When a prvalue v of type "pointer to T1" is converted to the type "pointer to cv T2", the result is static_cast(static_cast(v)) if both T1 and T2 are standard-layout types (3.9) and the alignment requirements of T2 are no stricter than those of T1, or if either type is void. Converting a prvalue of type "pointer to T1" to the type "pointer to T2" (where T1 and T2 are object types and where the alignment requirements of T2 are no stricter than those of T1) and back to its original type yields the original pointer value. The result of any other such pointer conversion is unspecified. Drilling into the definition of a "standard-layout class", we find: has no non-static data members of type non-standard-layout-class (or array of such types) or reference, and has no virtual functions (10.3) and no virtual base classes (10.1), and has the same access control (clause 11) for all non-static data members, and has no non-standard-layout base classes, and either has no non-static data member in the most-derived class and at most one base class with non-static data members, or has no base classes with non-static data members, and has no base classes of the same type as the first non-static data member. Sounds like working with something like this would tie my hands a bit with no virtual methods in the accessors or the node. Yet C++11 apparently has std::is_standard_layout to keep things checked. Can this be done safely? Appears to work in gcc-4.7, but I'd like to be sure I'm not invoking undefined behavior.

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• Custom string class (C++)

  - by Sanctus2099

  Hey guys. I'm trying to write my own C++ String class for educational and need purposes. The first thing is that I don't know that much about operators and that's why I want to learn them. I started writing my class but when I run it it blocks the program but does not do any crash. Take a look at the following code please before reading further: class CString { private: char* cstr; public: CString(); CString(char* str); CString(CString& str); ~CString(); operator char*(); operator const char*(); CString operator+(const CString& q)const; CString operator=(const CString& q); }; First of all I'm not so sure I declared everything right. I tried googleing about it but all the tutorials about overloading explain the basic ideea which is very simple but lack to explain how and when each thing is called. For instance in my = operator the program calls CString(CString& str); but I have no ideea why. I have also attached the cpp file below: CString::CString() { cstr=0; } CString::CString(char *str) { cstr=new char[strlen(str)]; strcpy(cstr,str); } CString::CString(CString& q) { if(this==&q) return; cstr = new char[strlen(q.cstr)+1]; strcpy(cstr,q.cstr); } CString::~CString() { if(cstr) delete[] cstr; } CString::operator char*() { return cstr; } CString::operator const char* () { return cstr; } CString CString::operator +(const CString &q) const { CString s; s.cstr = new char[strlen(cstr)+strlen(q.cstr)+1]; strcpy(s.cstr,cstr); strcat(s.cstr,q.cstr); return s; } CString CString::operator =(const CString &q) { if(this!=&q) { if(cstr) delete[] cstr; cstr = new char[strlen(q.cstr)+1]; strcpy(cstr,q.cstr); } return *this; } For testing I used a code just as simple as this CString a = CString("Hello") + CString(" World"); printf(a); I tried debugging it but at a point I get lost. First it calls the constructor 2 times for "hello" and for " world". Then it get's in the + operator which is fine. Then it calls the constructor for the empty string. After that it get's into "CString(CString& str)" and now I'm lost. Why is this happening? After this I noticed my string containing "Hello World" is in the destructor (a few times in a row). Again I'm very puzzeled. After converting again from char* to Cstring and back and forth it stops. It never get's into the = operator but neither does it go further. printf(a) is never reached. I use VisualStudio 2010 for this but it's basically just standard c++ code and thus I don't think it should make that much of a difference

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• Recursively created linked lists with a class, C++

  - by Jon Brant

  I'm using C++ to recursively make a hexagonal grid (using a multiply linked list style). I've got it set up to create neighboring tiles easily, but because I'm doing it recursively, I can only really create all 6 neighbors for a given tile. Obviously, this is causing duplicate tiles to be created and I'm trying to get rid of them in some way. Because I'm using a class, checking for null pointers doesn't seem to work. It's either failing to convert from my Tile class to and int, or somehow converting it but not doing it properly. I'm explicitly setting all pointers to NULL upon creation, and when I check to see if it still is, it says it's not even though I never touched it since initialization. Is there a specific way I'm supposed to do this? I can't even traverse the grid without NULLs of some kind Here's some of my relevant code. Yes, I know it's embarassing. Tile class header: class Tile { public: Tile(void); Tile(char *Filename); ~Tile(void); void show(void); bool LoadGLTextures(); void makeDisplayList(); void BindTexture(); void setFilename(char *newName); char Filename[100]; GLuint texture[2]; GLuint displayList; Tile *neighbor[6]; float xPos, yPos,zPos; };` Tile Initialization: Tile::Tile(void) { xPos=0.0f; yPos=0.0f; zPos=0.0f; glEnable(GL_DEPTH_TEST); strcpy(Filename, strcpy(Filename, "Data/BlueTile.bmp")); if(!BuildTexture(Filename, texture[0]))MessageBox(NULL,"Texture failed to load!","Crap!",MB_OK|MB_ICONASTERISK); for(int x=0;x<6;x++) { neighbor[x]=NULL; } } Creation of neighboring tiles: void MakeNeighbors(Tile *InputTile, int stacks) { for(int x=0;x<6;x++) { InputTile->neighbor[x]=new Tile();InputTile->neighbor[x]->xPos=0.0f;InputTile->neighbor[x]->yPos=0.0f;InputTile->zPos=float(stacks); } if(stacks) { for(int x=0;x<6;x++)MakeNeighbors(InputTile->neighbor[x],stacks-1); } } And finally, traversing the grid: void TraverseGrid(Tile *inputTile) { Tile *temp; for(int x=0;x<6;x++) if(inputTile->neighbor[x]) { temp=inputTile->neighbor[x]; temp->xPos=0.0f; TraverseGrid(temp); //MessageBox(NULL,"Not Null!","SHUTDOWN ERROR",MB_OK | MB_ICONINFORMATION); } } The key line is "if(inputTile-neighbor[x])" and whether I make it "if(inputTile-neighbor[x]==NULL)" or whatever I do, it just isn't handling it properly. Oh and I'm also aware that I haven't set up the list fully. It's only one direction now.

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• C#: The input stream is not a valid binary format.

  - by Mcoroklo

  I have a problem with deserializing in C#/ASP.NET, which gives the exact error: The input stream is not a valid binary format. The starting contents (in bytes) are: 41-41-45-41-41-41-44-2F-2F-2F-2F-2F-41-51-41-41-41 ... What I am trying to do I have a structure with 3 classes. I have a class A which is a base class, and then class B and C which are derived from A. I am trying to store random types of B and C in the database using LINQ to SQL, in a column with the type VARCHAR(MAX). I cannot use BINARY as the length is around 15.000. My code... Error is in the LAST codeblock C# Code in Business layer- Storing a record private void AddTraceToDatabase(FightTrace trace) { MemoryStream recieverStream = new MemoryStream(); MemoryStream firedStream = new MemoryStream(); MemoryStream moveStream = new MemoryStream(); BinaryFormatter binaryFormatter = new BinaryFormatter(); binaryFormatter.Serialize(recieverStream,trace.Reciever); binaryFormatter.Serialize(firedStream,trace.FiredBy); binaryFormatter.Serialize(moveStream,trace.Move); string reciever = Convert.ToBase64String(recieverStream.ToArray()); string fired = Convert.ToBase64String(firedStream.ToArray()); string move = Convert.ToBase64String(moveStream.ToArray()); this.dataAccess.AddFightTrace(trace.TraceType.ToString(),reciever,move,fired,trace.DateTime,this.FightId); } C# Code in Data access layer - Storing a record public void AddFightTrace(string type, string reciever, string Move, string firedBy, DateTime firedAt, int fightid) { GameDataContext db = new GameDataContext(); dbFightTrace trace = new dbFightTrace(); trace.TraceType = type; trace.Reciever = reciever; trace.Move = Move; trace.FiredBy = firedBy; trace.FiredAt = firedAt; trace.FightId = fightid; db.dbFightTraces.InsertOnSubmit(trace); db.SubmitChanges(); } C# Code getting the entry in the database public List<dbFightTrace> GetNewTraces(int fightid, DateTime lastUpdate) { GameDataContext db = new GameDataContext(); var data = from d in db.dbFightTraces where d.FightId==fightid && d.FiredAt > lastUpdate select d; return data.ToList(); } C# Factory, converting from LINQ to SQL class to my objects THIS IS HERE THE ERROR COMES public FightTrace CreateTrace(dbFightTrace trace) { TraceType traceType = (TraceType) Enum.Parse(typeof(TraceType), trace.TraceType); BinaryFormatter formatter = new BinaryFormatter(); System.Text.UTF8Encoding enc = new System.Text.UTF8Encoding(); MemoryStream recieverStream = new MemoryStream(enc.GetBytes(trace.Reciever)); recieverStream.Position = 0; MemoryStream firedStream = new MemoryStream(enc.GetBytes(trace.FiredBy)); firedStream.Position = 0; MemoryStream movedStream = new MemoryStream(enc.GetBytes(trace.Move)); movedStream.Position = 0; // THE NEXT LINE HERE CAUSES THE ERROR NPC reciever = formatter.Deserialize(recieverStream) as NPC; Player fired = formatter.Deserialize(firedStream) as Player; BaseAttack attack = formatter.Deserialize(movedStream) as BaseAttack; FightTrace t = new FightTrace(traceType,reciever,attack,fired); t.TraceId = trace.FightTraceId; t.DateTime = trace.FiredAt; return t; } So the error happends when the first Deserialize method is run, with the above error. I have tried several things but I am quite lost on this one.. Thanks! :-)

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• Do you know of a C macro to compute Unix time and date?

  - by Alexis Wilke

  I'm wondering if someone knows/has a C macro to compute a static Unix time from a hard coded date and time as in: time_t t = UNIX_TIMESTAMP(2012, 5, 10, 9, 26, 13); I'm looking into that because I want to have a numeric static timestamp. This will be done hundred of times throughout the software, each time with a different date, and I want to make sure it is fast because it will run hundreds of times every second. Converting dates that many times would definitively slow down things (i.e. calling mktime() is slower than having a static number compiled in place, right?) [made an update to try to render this paragraph clearer, Nov 23, 2012] Update I want to clarify the question with more information about the process being used. As my server receives requests, for each request, it starts a new process. That process is constantly updated with new plugins and quite often such updates require a database update. Those must be run only once. To know whether an update is necessary, I want to use a Unix date (which is better than using a counter because a counter is much more likely to break once in a while.) The plugins will thus receive an update signal and have their on_update() function called. There I want to do something like this: void some_plugin::on_update(time_t last_update) { if(last_update < UNIX_TIMESTAMP(2010, 3, 22, 20, 9, 26)) { ...run update... } if(last_update < UNIX_TIMESTAMP(2012, 5, 10, 9, 26, 13)) { ...run update... } // as many test as required... } As you can see, if I have to compute the unix timestamp each time, this could represent thousands of calls per process and if you receive 100 hits a second x 1000 calls, you wasted 100,000 calls when you could have had the compiler compute those numbers once at compile time. Putting the value in a static variable is of no interest because this code will run once per process run. Note that the last_update variable changes depending on the website being hit (it comes from the database.) Code Okay, I got the code now: // helper (Days in February) #define _SNAP_UNIX_TIMESTAMP_FDAY(year) \ (((year) % 400) == 0 ? 29LL : \ (((year) % 100) == 0 ? 28LL : \ (((year) % 4) == 0 ? 29LL : \ 28LL))) // helper (Days in the year) #define _SNAP_UNIX_TIMESTAMP_YDAY(year, month, day) \ ( \ /* January */ static_cast<qint64>(day) \ /* February */ + ((month) >= 2 ? 31LL : 0LL) \ /* March */ + ((month) >= 3 ? _SNAP_UNIX_TIMESTAMP_FDAY(year) : 0LL) \ /* April */ + ((month) >= 4 ? 31LL : 0LL) \ /* May */ + ((month) >= 5 ? 30LL : 0LL) \ /* June */ + ((month) >= 6 ? 31LL : 0LL) \ /* July */ + ((month) >= 7 ? 30LL : 0LL) \ /* August */ + ((month) >= 8 ? 31LL : 0LL) \ /* September */+ ((month) >= 9 ? 31LL : 0LL) \ /* October */ + ((month) >= 10 ? 30LL : 0LL) \ /* November */ + ((month) >= 11 ? 31LL : 0LL) \ /* December */ + ((month) >= 12 ? 30LL : 0LL) \ ) #define SNAP_UNIX_TIMESTAMP(year, month, day, hour, minute, second) \ ( /* time */ static_cast<qint64>(second) \ + static_cast<qint64>(minute) * 60LL \ + static_cast<qint64>(hour) * 3600LL \ + /* year day (month + day) */ (_SNAP_UNIX_TIMESTAMP_YDAY(year, month, day) - 1) * 86400LL \ + /* year */ (static_cast<qint64>(year) - 1970LL) * 31536000LL \ + ((static_cast<qint64>(year) - 1969LL) / 4LL) * 86400LL \ - ((static_cast<qint64>(year) - 1901LL) / 100LL) * 86400LL \ + ((static_cast<qint64>(year) - 1601LL) / 400LL) * 86400LL ) WARNING: Do not use these macros to dynamically compute a date. It is SLOWER than mktime(). This being said, if you have a hard coded date, then the compiler will compute the time_t value at compile time. Slower to compile, but faster to execute over and over again.

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• Create and Share a File (Also a mysterious error)

  - by Kirk

  My goal is to create a XML file and then send it through the share Intent. I'm able to create a XML file using this code FileOutputStream outputStream = context.openFileOutput(fileName, Context.MODE_WORLD_READABLE); PrintStream printStream = new PrintStream(outputStream); String xml = this.writeXml(); // get XML here printStream.println(xml); printStream.close(); I'm stuck trying to retrieve a Uri to the output file in order to share it. I first tried to access the file by converting the file to a Uri File outFile = context.getFileStreamPath(fileName); return Uri.fromFile(outFile); This returns file:///data/data/com.my.package/files/myfile.xml but I cannot appear to attach this to an email, upload, etc. If I manually check the file length, it's proper and shows there is a reasonable file size. Next I created a content provider and tried to reference the file and it isn't a valid handle to the file. The ContentProvider doesn't ever seem to be called a any point. Uri uri = Uri.parse("content://" + CachedFileProvider.AUTHORITY + "/" + fileName); return uri; This returns content://com.my.package.provider/myfile.xml but I check the file and it's zero length. How do I access files properly? Do I need to create the file with the content provider? If so, how? Update Here is the code I'm using to share. If I select Gmail, it does show as an attachment but when I send it gives an error Couldn't show attachment and the email that arrives has no attachment. public void onClick(View view) { Log.d(TAG, "onClick " + view.getId()); switch (view.getId()) { case R.id.share_cancel: setResult(RESULT_CANCELED, getIntent()); finish(); break; case R.id.share_share: MyXml xml = new MyXml(); Uri uri; try { uri = xml.writeXmlToFile(getApplicationContext(), "myfile.xml"); //uri is "file:///data/data/com.my.package/files/myfile.xml" Log.d(TAG, "Share URI: " + uri.toString() + " path: " + uri.getPath()); File f = new File(uri.getPath()); Log.d(TAG, "File length: " + f.length()); // shows a valid file size Intent shareIntent = new Intent(); shareIntent.setAction(Intent.ACTION_SEND); shareIntent.putExtra(Intent.EXTRA_STREAM, uri); shareIntent.setType("text/plain"); startActivity(Intent.createChooser(shareIntent, "Share")); } catch (FileNotFoundException e) { e.printStackTrace(); } break; } } I noticed that there is an Exception thrown here from inside createChooser(...), but I can't figure out why it's thrown. E/ActivityThread(572): Activity com.android.internal.app.ChooserActivity has leaked IntentReceiver com.android.internal.app.ResolverActivity$1@4148d658 that was originally registered here. Are you missing a call to unregisterReceiver()? I've researched this error and can't find anything obvious. Both of these links suggest that I need to unregister a receiver. Chooser Activity Leak - Android Why does Intent.createChooser() need a BroadcastReceiver and how to implement? I have a receiver setup, but it's for an AlarmManager that is set elsewhere and doesn't require the app to register / unregister. Code for openFile(...) In case it's needed, here is the content provider I've created. public ParcelFileDescriptor openFile(Uri uri, String mode) throws FileNotFoundException { String fileLocation = getContext().getCacheDir() + "/" + uri.getLastPathSegment(); ParcelFileDescriptor pfd = ParcelFileDescriptor.open(new File(fileLocation), ParcelFileDescriptor.MODE_READ_ONLY); return pfd; }

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• How to manipulate data after its retrieved via remote database

  - by bMon

  So I've used code examples from all over the net and got my app to accurately call a .php file on my server, retrieve the JSON data, then parse the data, and print it. The problem is that its just printing to the screen for sake of the tutorial I was following, but now I need to use that data in other places and need help figuring out that process. The ultimate goal is to return my db query with map coordinates, then plot them on a google map. I have another app in which I manually plot points on a map, so I'll be integrating this app with that once I can get my head around how to correctly manipulate the data returned. public class Remote extends Activity { /** Called when the activity is first created. */ TextView txt; @Override public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) { super.onCreate(savedInstanceState); setContentView(R.layout.main); // Create a crude view - this should really be set via the layout resources // but since its an example saves declaring them in the XML. LinearLayout rootLayout = new LinearLayout(getApplicationContext()); txt = new TextView(getApplicationContext()); rootLayout.addView(txt); setContentView(rootLayout); // Set the text and call the connect function. txt.setText("Connecting..."); //call the method to run the data retreival txt.setText(getServerData(KEY_121)); } public static final String KEY_121 = "http://example.com/mydbcall.php"; private String getServerData(String returnString) { InputStream is = null; String result = ""; //the year data to send //ArrayList<NameValuePair> nameValuePairs = new ArrayList<NameValuePair>(); //nameValuePairs.add(new BasicNameValuePair("year","1970")); try{ HttpClient httpclient = new DefaultHttpClient(); HttpPost httppost = new HttpPost(KEY_121); HttpResponse response = httpclient.execute(httppost); HttpEntity entity = response.getEntity(); is = entity.getContent(); }catch(Exception e){ Log.e("log_tag", "Error in http connection "+e.toString()); } //convert response to string try{ BufferedReader reader = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(is,"iso-8859-1"),8); StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder(); String line = null; while ((line = reader.readLine()) != null) { sb.append(line + "\n"); } is.close(); result=sb.toString(); }catch(Exception e){ Log.e("log_tag", "Error converting result "+e.toString()); } //parse json data try{ JSONArray jArray = new JSONArray(result); for(int i=0;i<jArray.length();i++){ JSONObject json_data = jArray.getJSONObject(i); Log.i("log_tag","longitude: "+json_data.getDouble("longitude")+ ", latitude: "+json_data.getDouble("latitude") ); //Get an output to the screen returnString += "\n\t" + jArray.getJSONObject(i); } }catch(JSONException e){ Log.e("log_tag", "Error parsing data "+e.toString()); } return returnString; } } So the code: returnString += "\n\t" + jArray.getJSONObject(i); is what is currently printing to the screen. What I have to figure out is how to get the data into something I can reference in other spots in the program, and access the individual elements ie: double longitude = jArray.getJSONObject(3).longitude; or something to that effect.. I figure the class getServerData will have to return a Array type or something? Any help is appreciated, thanks.

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• C/PHP: How do I convert the following PHP JSON API script into a C plugin for apache?

  - by TeddyB

  I have a JSON API that I need to provide super fast access to my data through. The JSON API makes a simply query against the database based on the GET parameters provided. I've already optimized my database, so please don't recommend that as an answer. I'm using PHP-APC, which helps PHP by saving the bytecode, BUT - for a JSON API that is being called literally dozens of times per second (as indicated by my logs), I need to reduce the massive RAM consumption PHP is consuming ... as well as rewrite my JSON API in a language that execute much faster than PHP. My code is below. As you can see, is fairly straight forward. <?php define(ALLOWED_HTTP_REFERER, 'example.com'); if ( stristr($_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER'], ALLOWED_HTTP_REFERER) ) { try { $conn_str = DB . ':host=' . DB_HOST . ';dbname=' . DB_NAME; $dbh = new PDO($conn_str, DB_USERNAME, DB_PASSWORD); $params = array(); $sql = 'SELECT homes.home_id, address, city, state, zip FROM homes WHERE homes.display_status = true AND homes.geolat BETWEEN :geolatLowBound AND :geolatHighBound AND homes.geolng BETWEEN :geolngLowBound AND :geolngHighBound'; $params[':geolatLowBound'] = $_GET['geolatLowBound']; $params[':geolatHighBound'] = $_GET['geolatHighBound']; $params[':geolngLowBound'] =$_GET['geolngLowBound']; $params[':geolngHighBound'] = $_GET['geolngHighBound']; if ( isset($_GET['min_price']) && isset($_GET['max_price']) ) { $sql = $sql . ' AND homes.price BETWEEN :min_price AND :max_price '; $params[':min_price'] = $_GET['min_price']; $params[':max_price'] = $_GET['max_price']; } if ( isset($_GET['min_beds']) && isset($_GET['max_beds']) ) { $sql = $sql . ' AND homes.num_of_beds BETWEEN :min_beds AND :max_beds '; $params['min_beds'] = $_GET['min_beds']; $params['max_beds'] = $_GET['max_beds']; } if ( isset($_GET['min_sqft']) && isset($_GET['max_sqft']) ) { $sql = $sql . ' AND homes.sqft BETWEEN :min_sqft AND :max_sqft '; $params['min_sqft'] = $_GET['min_sqft']; $params['max_sqft'] = $_GET['max_sqft']; } $stmt = $dbh->prepare($sql); $stmt->execute($params); $result_set = $stmt->fetchAll(PDO::FETCH_ASSOC); /* output a JSON representation of the home listing data retrieved */ ob_start("ob_gzhandler"); // compress the output header('Content-type: text/javascript'); print "{'homes' : "; array_walk_recursive($result_set, "cleanOutputFromXSS"); print json_encode( $result_set ); print '}'; $dbh = null; } catch (PDOException $e) { die('Unable to retreive home listing information'); } } function cleanOutputFromXSS(&$value) { $value = htmlspecialchars($value, ENT_QUOTES, 'UTF-8'); } ?> How would I begin converting this PHP code over to C, since C is both better on memory management (since you do it yourself) and much, much faster to execute?

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• Windows App. Thread Aborting Issue

  - by Patrick

  I'm working on an application that has to make specific decisions based on files that are placed into a folder being watched by a file watcher. Part of this decision making process involves renaming files before moving them off to another folder to be processed. Since I'm working with files of all different sizes I created an object that checks the file in a seperate thread to verify that it is "available" and when it is it fires an event. When I run the rename code from inside this available event it works. public void RenameFile_Test() { string psFilePath = @"C:\File1.xlsx"; tgt_File target = new FileObject(psFilePath); target.FileAvailable += new FileEventHandler(OnFileAvailable); target.FileUnAvailable += new FileEventHandler(OnFileUnavailable); } private void OnFileAvailable(object source, FileEventArgs e) { ((FileObject)source).RenameFile(@"C:\File2.xlsx"); } The problem I'm running into is that when the extensions are different from the source file and the rename to file I am making a call to a conversion factory that returns a factory object based on the type of conversion and then converts the file accordingly before doing the rename. When I run that particular piece of code in unit test it works, the factory object is returned, and the conversion happens correctly. But when I run it within the process I get up to the... moExcelApp = new Application(); part of converting an .xls or .xlsx to a .csv and i get a "Thread was being Aborted" error. Any thoughts? Update: There is a bit more information and a bit of map of how the application works currently. Client Application running FSW On File Created event Creates a FileObject passing in the path of the file. On construction the file is validated: if file exists is true then, Thread toAvailableCheck = new Thread(new ThreadStart(AvailableCheck)); toAvailableCheck.Start(); The AvailableCheck Method repeatedly tries to open a streamreader to the file until the reader is either created or the number of attempts times out. If the reader is opened, it fires the FileAvailable event, if not it fires the FileUnAvailable event, passing back itself in the event. The client application is wired to catch those events from inside the Oncreated event of the FSW. the OnFileAvailable method then calls the rename functionality which contains the excel interop call. If the file is being renamed (not converted, extensions stay the same) it does a move to change the name from the old file name to the new, and if its a conversion it runs a conversion factory object which returns the correct type of conversion based on the extensions of the source file and the destination file name. If it is a simple rename it works w/o a problem. If its a conversion (which is the XLS to CSV object that is returned as a part of the factory) the very first thing it does is create a new application object. That is where the application bombs. When i test the factory and conversion/rename process outside of the thread and in its own unit test the process works w/o a problem. Update: I tested the Excel Interop inside a thread by doing this: [TestMethod()] public void ExcelInteropTest() { Thread toExcelInteropThreadTest = new Thread(new ThreadStart(Instantiate_App)); toExcelInteropThreadTest.Start(); } private void Instantiate_App() { Application moExcelApp = new Application(); moExcelApp.Quit(); } And on the line where the application is instatntiated I got the 'A first chance exception of type 'System.Threading.ThreadAbortException' error. So I added; toExcelInteropThreadTest.SetApartmentState(ApartmentState.MTA); after the thread instantiation and before the thread start call and still got the same error. I'm getting the notion that I'm going to have to reconsider the design.

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• Using AsyncTask, but experiencing unexpected behaviour

  - by capcom

  Please refer to the following code which continuously calls a new AsyncTask. The purpose of the AsyncTask is to make an HTTP request, and update the string result. package room.temperature; import java.io.BufferedReader; import java.io.InputStream; import java.io.InputStreamReader; import java.util.ArrayList; import java.util.concurrent.ExecutionException; import org.apache.http.HttpEntity; import org.apache.http.HttpResponse; import org.apache.http.NameValuePair; import org.apache.http.client.HttpClient; import org.apache.http.client.entity.UrlEncodedFormEntity; import org.apache.http.client.methods.HttpPost; import org.apache.http.impl.client.DefaultHttpClient; import android.app.Activity; import android.os.AsyncTask; import android.os.Bundle; import android.util.Log; import android.widget.TextView; public class RoomTemperatureActivity extends Activity { String result = null; StringBuilder sb=null; TextView TemperatureText, DateText; ArrayList<NameValuePair> nameValuePairs; @Override public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) { super.onCreate(savedInstanceState); setContentView(R.layout.main); TemperatureText = (TextView) findViewById(R.id.temperature); DateText = (TextView) findViewById(R.id.date); nameValuePairs = new ArrayList<NameValuePair>(); for (int i = 0; i < 10; i++) { RefreshValuesTask task = new RefreshValuesTask(); task.execute(""); } } // The definition of our task class private class RefreshValuesTask extends AsyncTask<String, Integer, String> { @Override protected void onPreExecute() { super.onPreExecute(); } @Override protected String doInBackground(String... params) { InputStream is = null; try { HttpClient httpclient = new DefaultHttpClient(); HttpPost httppost = new HttpPost("http://mywebsite.com/roomtemp/tempscript.php"); httppost.setEntity(new UrlEncodedFormEntity(nameValuePairs)); HttpResponse response = httpclient.execute(httppost); HttpEntity entity = response.getEntity(); is = entity.getContent(); } catch(Exception e) { Log.e("log_tag", "Error in http connection" + e.toString()); } try { BufferedReader reader = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(is,"iso-8859-1"),8); sb = new StringBuilder(); sb.append(reader.readLine()); is.close(); result=sb.toString(); } catch(Exception e) { Log.e("log_tag", "Error converting result " + e.toString()); } return result; } @Override protected void onProgressUpdate(Integer... values) { super.onProgressUpdate(values); } @Override protected void onPostExecute(String result) { super.onPostExecute(result); //System.out.println(result); setValues(result); } } public void setValues(String resultValue) { System.out.println(resultValue); String[] values = resultValue.split("&"); TemperatureText.setText(values[0]); DateText.setText(values[1]); } } The problem I am experiencing relates to the AsyncTask in some way or the function setValues(), but I am not sure how. Essentially, I want each call to the AsyncTask to run, eventually in an infinite while loop, and update the TextView fields as I have attempted in setValues. I have tried since yesterday after asking a question which led to this code, for reference. Oh yes, I did try using the AsyncTask get() method, but that didn't work either as I found out that it is actually a synchronous call, and renders the whole point of AsyncTask useless.

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• Making Sense of ASP.NET Paths

  - by Rick Strahl

  ASP.Net includes quite a plethora of properties to retrieve path information about the current request, control and application. There's a ton of information available about paths on the Request object, some of it appearing to overlap and some of it buried several levels down, and it can be confusing to find just the right path that you are looking for. To keep things straight I thought it a good idea to summarize the path options along with descriptions and example paths. I wrote a post about this a long time ago in 2004 and I find myself frequently going back to that page to quickly figure out which path I’m looking for in processing the current URL. Apparently a lot of people must be doing the same, because the original post is the second most visited even to this date on this blog to the tune of nearly 500 hits per day. So, I decided to update and expand a bit on the original post with a little more information and clarification based on the original comments. Request Object Paths Available Here's a list of the Path related properties on the Request object (and the Page object). Assume a path like http://www.west-wind.com/webstore/admin/paths.aspx for the paths below where webstore is the name of the virtual. .blackborder td { border-bottom: solid 1px silver; border-left: solid 1px silver; } Request Property Description and Value ApplicationPath Returns the web root-relative logical path to the virtual root of this app. /webstore/ PhysicalApplicationPath Returns local file system path of the virtual root for this app. c:\inetpub\wwwroot\webstore PhysicalPath Returns the local file system path to the current script or path. c:\inetpub\wwwroot\webstore\admin\paths.aspx Path FilePath CurrentExecutionFilePath All of these return the full root relative logical path to the script page including path and scriptname. CurrentExcecutionFilePath will return the ‘current’ request path after a Transfer/Execute call while FilePath will always return the original request’s path. /webstore/admin/paths.aspx AppRelativeCurrentExecutionFilePath Returns an ASP.NET root relative virtual path to the script or path for the current request. If in  a Transfer/Execute call the transferred Path is returned. ~/admin/paths.aspx PathInfo Returns any extra path following the script name. If no extra path is provided returns the root-relative path (returns text in red below). string.Empty if no PathInfo is available. /webstore/admin/paths.aspx/ExtraPathInfo RawUrl Returns the full root relative URL including querystring and extra path as a string. /webstore/admin/paths.aspx?sku=wwhelp40 Url Returns a fully qualified URL including querystring and extra path. Note this is a Uri instance rather than string. http://www.west-wind.com/webstore/admin/paths.aspx?sku=wwhelp40 UrlReferrer The fully qualified URL of the page that sent the request. This is also a Uri instance and this value is null if the page was directly accessed by typing into the address bar or using an HttpClient based Referrer client Http header. http://www.west-wind.com/webstore/default.aspx?Info Control.TemplateSourceDirectory Returns the logical path to the folder of the page, master or user control on which it is called. This is useful if you need to know the path only to a Page or control from within the control. For non-file controls this returns the Page path. /webstore/admin/ As you can see there’s a ton of information available there for each of the three common path formats: Physical Path is an OS type path that points to a path or file on disk. Logical Path is a Web path that is relative to the Web server’s root. It includes the virtual plus the application relative path. ~/ (Root-relative) Path is an ASP.NET specific path that includes ~/ to indicate the virtual root Web path. ASP.NET can convert virtual paths into either logical paths using Control.ResolveUrl(), or physical paths using Server.MapPath(). Root relative paths are useful for specifying portable URLs that don’t rely on relative directory structures and very useful from within control or component code. You should be able to get any necessary format from ASP.NET from just about any path or script using these mechanisms. ~/ Root Relative Paths and ResolveUrl() and ResolveClientUrl() ASP.NET supports root-relative virtual path syntax in most of its URL properties in Web Forms. So you can easily specify a root relative path in a control rather than a location relative path: <asp:Image runat="server" ID="imgHelp" ImageUrl="~/images/help.gif" /> ASP.NET internally resolves this URL by using ResolveUrl("~/images/help.gif") to arrive at the root-relative URL of /webstore/images/help.gif which uses the Request.ApplicationPath as the basepath to replace the ~. By convention any custom Web controls also should use ResolveUrl() on URL properties to provide the same functionality. In your own code you can use Page.ResolveUrl() or Control.ResolveUrl() to accomplish the same thing: string imgPath = this.ResolveUrl("~/images/help.gif"); imgHelp.ImageUrl = imgPath; Unfortunately ResolveUrl() is limited to WebForm pages, so if you’re in an HttpHandler or Module it’s not available. ASP.NET Mvc also has it’s own more generic version of ResolveUrl in Url.Decode: <script src="<%= Url.Content("~/scripts/new.js") %>" type="text/javascript"></script> which is part of the UrlHelper class. In ASP.NET MVC the above sort of syntax is actually even more crucial than in WebForms due to the fact that views are not referencing specific pages but rather are often path based which can lead to various variations on how a particular view is referenced. In a Module or Handler code Control.ResolveUrl() unfortunately is not available which in retrospect seems like an odd design choice – URL resolution really should happen on a Request basis not as part of the Page framework. Luckily you can also rely on the static VirtualPathUtility class: string path = VirtualPathUtility.ToAbsolute("~/admin/paths.aspx"); VirtualPathUtility also many other quite useful methods for dealing with paths and converting between the various kinds of paths supported. One thing to watch out for is that ToAbsolute() will throw an exception if a query string is provided and doesn’t work on fully qualified URLs. I wrote about this topic with a custom solution that works fully qualified URLs and query strings here (check comments for some interesting discussions too). Similar to ResolveUrl() is ResolveClientUrl() which creates a fully qualified HTTP path that includes the protocol and domain name. It’s rare that this full resolution is needed but can be useful in some scenarios. Mapping Virtual Paths to Physical Paths with Server.MapPath() If you need to map root relative or current folder relative URLs to physical URLs or you can use HttpContext.Current.Server.MapPath(). Inside of a Page you can do the following: string physicalPath = Server.MapPath("~/scripts/ww.jquery.js")); MapPath is pretty flexible and it understands both ASP.NET style virtual paths as well as plain relative paths, so the following also works. string physicalPath = Server.MapPath("scripts/silverlight.js"); as well as dot relative syntax: string physicalPath = Server.MapPath("../scripts/jquery.js"); Once you have the physical path you can perform standard System.IO Path and File operations on the file. Remember with physical paths and IO or copy operations you need to make sure you have permissions to access files and folders based on the Web server user account that is active (NETWORK SERVICE, ASPNET typically). Note the Server.MapPath will not map up beyond the virtual root of the application for security reasons. Server and Host Information Between these settings you can get all the information you may need to figure out where you are at and to build new Url if necessary. If you need to build a URL completely from scratch you can get access to information about the server you are accessing: Server Variable Function and Example SERVER_NAME The of the domain or IP Address wwww.west-wind.com or 127.0.0.1 SERVER_PORT The port that the request runs under. 80 SERVER_PORT_SECURE Determines whether https: was used. 0 or 1 APPL_MD_PATH ADSI DirectoryServices path to the virtual root directory. Note that LM typically doesn’t work for ADSI access so you should replace that with LOCALHOST or the machine’s NetBios name. /LM/W3SVC/1/ROOT/webstore Request.Url and Uri Parsing If you still need more control over the current request URL or  you need to create new URLs from an existing one, the current Request.Url Uri property offers a lot of control. Using the Uri class and UriBuilder makes it easy to retrieve parts of a URL and create new URLs based on existing URL. The UriBuilder class is the preferred way to create URLs – much preferable over creating URIs via string concatenation. Uri Property Function Scheme The URL scheme or protocol prefix. http or https Port The port if specifically specified. DnsSafeHost The domain name or local host NetBios machine name www.west-wind.com or rasnote LocalPath The full path of the URL including script name and extra PathInfo. /webstore/admin/paths.aspx Query The query string if any ?id=1 The Uri class itself is great for retrieving Uri parts, but most of the properties are read only if you need to modify a URL in order to change it you can use the UriBuilder class to load up an existing URL and modify it to create a new one. Here are a few common operations I’ve needed to do to get specific URLs: Convert the Request URL to an SSL/HTTPS link For example to take the current request URL and converted  it to a secure URL can be done like this: UriBuilder build = new UriBuilder(Request.Url); build.Scheme = "https"; build.Port = -1; // don't inject port Uri newUri = build.Uri; string newUrl = build.ToString(); Retrieve the fully qualified URL without a QueryString AFAIK, there’s no native routine to retrieve the current request URL without the query string. It’s easy to do with UriBuilder however: UriBuilder builder = newUriBuilder(Request.Url); builder.Query = ""; stringlogicalPathWithoutQuery = builder.ToString(); What else? I took a look through the old post’s comments and addressed as many of the questions and comments that came up in there. With a few small and silly exceptions this update post handles most of these. But I’m sure there are a more things that go in here. What else would be useful to put onto this post so it serves as a nice all in one place to go for path references? If you think of something leave a comment and I’ll try to update the post with it in the future.© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2010Posted in ASP.NET  

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• 500 Metro Style WP7 Icons

  - by Bil Simser

  I was inspired by The Noun Project, a project that offers up “Metro-style” icons in SVG format. The project is licensed under a public domain license and while it’s a great project, all of the content is in SVG format. Jon Galloway has a great post (from 2007) talking about the differences between SVG and XAML so I highly recommend that for some background. I thought it would be helpful to the WPF/Windows Phone 7/Silverlight community to provide the content in alternative formats for use in your applications. The Goods I’ve put together a package of the 500 icons (502 actually) in PNG, XAML and the original SVG format along with a couple of sample projects so you can see them in action. There’s a WPF desktop app: And a Windows Phone 7 app: Building It To get all the content first I wrote up a quick program to suck the original SVG files. Luckily they’re all in a common path just named 1.SVG, 2.SVG, and so on. Easy sleazy to grab the contents. Once I had 500 SVG files I used the latest copy of XamlTune, an open source CodePlex project that has a command line conversion tool to convert the directory of SVG files into XAML (the tool also created a PNG file of each SVG so that’s just icing on the cake). Conversions The conversion from SVG to XAML isn’t 100%. While you can just drop the content into a WPF app, it doesn’t work that way for WP7. There are just some small adjustments I made to each format so you’ll have to do the same. Follow the information below or refer to the sample applications. As a sample, here’s an icon we want to use: Here’s the original SVG file: <svg version="1.0" id="Layer_1" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" x="0px" y="0px" width="100px" height="94.616px" viewBox="0 0 100 94.616" enable-background="new 0 0 100 94.616" xml:space="preserve"> <path d="M25.076,15.639c4.324,0.009,7.824-3.488,7.82-7.82C32.9,3.512,29.4,0.012,25.076,0c-4.313,0.012-7.814,3.512-7.821,7.819 C17.262,12.15,20.763,15.648,25.076,15.639L25.076,15.639z"/> <path d="M4.593,43.388h6.861l4.137-15.135h1.716L13.22,43.388h24.318l-4.389-15.135h1.817l2.32,7.415 c1.08,3.131,3.852,3.851,6.003,1.162l8.375-10.142c2.651-3.42-2.104-7.021-4.844-4.035l-4.993,5.952 c0.007,0.095-0.96-3.278-0.96-3.278c-1.135-3.978-4.918-7.903-10.595-7.922H19.576c-5.071,0.019-9.043,4.434-9.888,7.214 L4.593,43.388L4.593,43.388z"/> <polygon points="56.206,22.753 56.206,7.163 49.192,7.163 49.192,22.753 56.206,22.753 "/> <path d="M79.87,15.738c4.332-0.014,7.831-3.516,7.82-7.82c0.011-4.332-3.488-7.833-7.82-7.82c-4.306-0.013-7.806,3.488-7.821,7.82 C72.064,12.222,75.564,15.725,79.87,15.738L79.87,15.738z"/> <path d="M89.759,89.556v-43.19h5.751V22.804c0.007-3.079-2.757-5.448-6.71-5.449H70.436c-3.65,0.001-4.539,1.186-5.551,2.168 L49.597,37.889c-3.098,3.848,2.428,8.333,5.55,4.743L69.88,25.226v64.43c-0.019,6.475,9.06,6.686,9.081,0.201v-36.58h1.765v36.379 C80.748,96.109,89.772,96.13,89.759,89.556L89.759,89.556z"/> <polygon points="100,54.035 100,45.155 0,45.155 0,54.035 100,54.035 "/> </svg> Here’s the XAML that XamlTune created. It can be used in any WPF app without any changes: <Canvas Name="Layer_1" Width="100" Height="94.616" ClipToBounds="True" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"> <Path Fill="#FF000000"> <Path.Data> <PathGeometry FillRule="Nonzero" Figures="M25.076,15.639C29.4,15.648 32.9,12.151 32.896,7.819 32.9,3.512 29.4,0.012 25.076,0 20.763,0.012 17.262,3.512 17.255,7.819 17.262,12.15 20.763,15.648 25.076,15.639L25.076,15.639z" /> </Path.Data> </Path> <Path Fill="#FF000000"> <Path.Data> <PathGeometry FillRule="Nonzero" Figures="M4.593,43.388L11.454,43.388 15.591,28.253 17.307,28.253 13.22,43.388 37.538,43.388 33.149,28.253 34.966,28.253 37.286,35.668C38.366,38.799,41.138,39.519,43.289,36.83L51.664,26.688C54.315,23.268,49.56,19.667,46.82,22.653L41.827,28.605C41.834,28.7 40.867,25.327 40.867,25.327 39.732,21.349 35.949,17.424 30.272,17.405L19.576,17.405C14.505,17.424,10.533,21.839,9.688,24.619L4.593,43.388 4.593,43.388z" /> </Path.Data> </Path> <Path Fill="#FF000000"> <Path.Data> <PathGeometry FillRule="Nonzero" Figures="M56.206,22.753L56.206,7.163 49.192,7.163 49.192,22.753 56.206,22.753z" /> </Path.Data> </Path> <Path Fill="#FF000000"> <Path.Data> <PathGeometry FillRule="Nonzero" Figures="M79.87,15.738C84.202,15.724 87.701,12.222 87.69,7.918 87.701,3.586 84.202,0.0849999999999991 79.87,0.097999999999999 75.564,0.084999999999999 72.064,3.586 72.049,7.918 72.064,12.222 75.564,15.725 79.87,15.738L79.87,15.738z" /> </Path.Data> </Path> <Path Fill="#FF000000"> <Path.Data> <PathGeometry FillRule="Nonzero" Figures="M89.759,89.556L89.759,46.366 95.51,46.366 95.51,22.804C95.517,19.725,92.753,17.356,88.8,17.355L70.436,17.355C66.786,17.356,65.897,18.541,64.885,19.523L49.597,37.889C46.499,41.737,52.025,46.222,55.147,42.632L69.88,25.226 69.88,89.656C69.861,96.131,78.94,96.342,78.961,89.857L78.961,53.277 80.726,53.277 80.726,89.656C80.748,96.109,89.772,96.13,89.759,89.556L89.759,89.556z" /> </Path.Data> </Path> <Path Fill="#FF000000"> <Path.Data> <PathGeometry FillRule="Nonzero" Figures="M100,54.035L100,45.155 0,45.155 0,54.035 100,54.035z" /> </Path.Data> </Path> </Canvas> The XAML works AS-IS in a WPF application but there are some changes I did to get it to work in a WP7 app. Here’s the modified XAML in a WP7 application: <Canvas Grid.Row="0" Grid.Column="0" Name="Icon_1" Width="100" Height="94.616"> <Path Fill="#FF000000" Data="M25.076,15.639C29.4,15.648 32.9,12.151 32.896,7.819 32.9,3.512 29.4,0.012 25.076,0 20.763,0.012 17.262,3.512 17.255,7.819 17.262,12.15 20.763,15.648 25.076,15.639L25.076,15.639z"> </Path> <Path Fill="#FF000000" Data="M4.593,43.388L11.454,43.388 15.591,28.253 17.307,28.253 13.22,43.388 37.538,43.388 33.149,28.253 34.966,28.253 37.286,35.668C38.366,38.799,41.138,39.519,43.289,36.83L51.664,26.688C54.315,23.268,49.56,19.667,46.82,22.653L41.827,28.605C41.834,28.7 40.867,25.327 40.867,25.327 39.732,21.349 35.949,17.424 30.272,17.405L19.576,17.405C14.505,17.424,10.533,21.839,9.688,24.619L4.593,43.388 4.593,43.388z"> </Path> <Path Fill="#FF000000" Data="M56.206,22.753L56.206,7.163 49.192,7.163 49.192,22.753 56.206,22.753z"> </Path> <Path Fill="#FF000000" Data="M79.87,15.738C84.202,15.724 87.701,12.222 87.69,7.918 87.701,3.586 84.202,0.0849999999999991 79.87,0.097999999999999 75.564,0.084999999999999 72.064,3.586 72.049,7.918 72.064,12.222 75.564,15.725 79.87,15.738L79.87,15.738z"> </Path> <Path Fill="#FF000000" Data="M89.759,89.556L89.759,46.366 95.51,46.366 95.51,22.804C95.517,19.725,92.753,17.356,88.8,17.355L70.436,17.355C66.786,17.356,65.897,18.541,64.885,19.523L49.597,37.889C46.499,41.737,52.025,46.222,55.147,42.632L69.88,25.226 69.88,89.656C69.861,96.131,78.94,96.342,78.961,89.857L78.961,53.277 80.726,53.277 80.726,89.656C80.748,96.109,89.772,96.13,89.759,89.556L89.759,89.556z"> </Path> <Path Fill="#FF000000" Data="M100,54.035L100,45.155 0,45.155 0,54.035 100,54.035z"> </Path> </Canvas> All I did was take the data portion and put it directly into a Data attribute on the Path. Note that while it does show up in the app (on the emulator or device) it wouldn’t show up in Visual Studio for me. Maybe some XAML guru out there can tell me why. You can just as easily use the PNG files in WP7 but if you want the crispness of vector graphics, go for the XAML version. Of course with XamlTune being open source you could always modify the output of that program to cater it to your app. If you do make a change that’s worthy please consider submitting a patch to the project so everyone can benefit. Hope this helps and happy programming! Resources and Links Sample Project and Icons XamlTune an open source project to convert SVG to XAML The Noun Project source of the original files Jon Galloways post on SVG and XAML StackOverflow question on converting SVG to XAML

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• Pluralsight Meet the Author Podcast on Structuring JavaScript Code

  - by dwahlin

  I had the opportunity to talk with Fritz Onion from Pluralsight about one of my recent courses titled Structuring JavaScript Code for one of their Meet the Author podcasts. We talked about why JavaScript patterns are important for building more re-useable and maintainable apps, pros and cons of different patterns, and how to go about picking a pattern as a project is started. The course provides a solid walk-through of converting what I call “Function Spaghetti Code” into more modular code that’s easier to maintain, more re-useable, and less susceptible to naming conflicts. Patterns covered in the course include the Prototype Pattern, Revealing Module Pattern, and Revealing Prototype Pattern along with several other tips and techniques that can be used. Meet the Author:  Dan Wahlin on Structuring JavaScript Code   The transcript from the podcast is shown below: [Fritz]  Hello, this is Fritz Onion with another Pluralsight author interview. Today we’re talking with Dan Wahlin about his new course, Structuring JavaScript Code. Hi, Dan, it’s good to have you with us today. [Dan]  Thanks for having me, Fritz. [Fritz]  So, Dan, your new course, which came out in December of 2011 called Structuring JavaScript Code, goes into several patterns of usage in JavaScript as well as ways of organizing your code and what struck me about it was all the different techniques you described for encapsulating your code. I was wondering if you could give us just a little insight into what your motivation was for creating this course and sort of why you decided to write it and record it. [Dan]  Sure. So, I got started with JavaScript back in the mid 90s. In fact, back in the days when browsers that most people haven’t heard of were out and we had JavaScript but it wasn’t great. I was on a project in the late 90s that was heavy, heavy JavaScript and we pretty much did what I call in the course function spaghetti code where you just have function after function, there’s no rhyme or reason to how those functions are structured, they just kind of flow and it’s a little bit hard to do maintenance on it, you really don’t get a lot of reuse as far as from an object perspective. And so coming from an object-oriented background in JAVA and C#, I wanted to put something together that highlighted kind of the new way if you will of writing JavaScript because most people start out just writing functions and there’s nothing with that, it works, but it’s definitely not a real reusable solution. So the course is really all about how to move from just kind of function after function after function to the world of more encapsulated code and more reusable and hopefully better maintenance in the process. [Fritz]  So I am sure a lot of people have had similar experiences with their JavaScript code and will be looking forward to seeing what types of patterns you’ve put forth. Now, a couple I noticed in your course one is you start off with the prototype pattern. Do you want to describe sort of what problem that solves and how you go about using it within JavaScript? [Dan]  Sure. So, the patterns that are covered such as the prototype pattern and the revealing module pattern just as two examples, you know, show these kind of three things that I harp on throughout the course of encapsulation, better maintenance, reuse, those types of things. The prototype pattern specifically though has a couple kind of pros over some of the other patterns and that is the ability to extend your code without touching source code and what I mean by that is let’s say you’re writing a library that you know either other teammates or other people just out there on the Internet in general are going to be using. With the prototype pattern, you can actually write your code in such a way that we’re leveraging the JavaScript property and by doing that now you can extend my code that I wrote without touching my source code script or you can even override my code and perform some new functionality. Again, without touching my code.  And so you get kind of the benefit of the almost like inheritance or overriding in object oriented languages with this prototype pattern and it makes it kind of attractive that way definitely from a maintenance standpoint because, you know, you don’t want to modify a script I wrote because I might roll out version 2 and now you’d have to track where you change things and it gets a little tricky. So with this you just override those pieces or extend them and get that functionality and that’s kind of some of the benefits that that pattern offers out of the box. [Fritz]  And then the revealing module pattern, how does that differ from the prototype pattern and what problem does that solve differently? [Dan]  Yeah, so the prototype pattern and there’s another one that’s kind of really closely lined with revealing module pattern called the revealing prototype pattern and it also uses the prototype key word but it’s very similar to the one you just asked about the revealing module pattern. [Fritz]  Okay. [Dan]  This is a really popular one out there. In fact, we did a project for Microsoft that was very, very heavy JavaScript. It was an HMTL5 jQuery type app and we use this pattern for most of the structure if you will for the JavaScript code and what it does in a nutshell is allows you to get that encapsulation so you have really a single function wrapper that wraps all your other child functions but it gives you the ability to do public versus private members and this is kind of a sort of debate out there on the web. Some people feel that all JavaScript code should just be directly accessible and others kind of like to be able to hide their, truly their private stuff and a lot of people do that. You just put an underscore in front of your field or your variable name or your function name and that kind of is the defacto way to say hey, this is private. With the revealing module pattern you can do the equivalent of what objective oriented languages do and actually have private members that you literally can’t get to as an external consumer of the JavaScript code and then you can expose only those members that you want to be public. Now, you don’t get the benefit though of the prototype feature, which is I can’t easily extend the revealing module pattern type code if you don’t like something I’m doing, chances are you’re probably going to have to tweak my code to fix that because we’re not leveraging prototyping but in situations where you’re writing apps that are very specific to a given target app, you know, it’s not a library, it’s not going to be used in other apps all over the place, it’s a pattern I actually like a lot, it’s very simple to get going and then if you do like that public/private feature, it’s available to you. [Fritz]  Yeah, that’s interesting. So it’s almost, you can either go private by convention just by using a standard naming convention or you can actually enforce it by using the prototype pattern. [Dan]  Yeah, that’s exactly right. [Fritz]  So one of the things that I know I run across in JavaScript and I’m curious to get your take on is we do have all these different techniques of encapsulation and each one is really quite different when you’re using closures versus simply, you know, referencing member variables and adding them to your objects that the syntax changes with each pattern and the usage changes. So what would you recommend for people starting out in a brand new JavaScript project? Should they all sort of decide beforehand on what patterns they’re going to stick to or do you change it based on what part of the library you’re working on? I know that’s one of the points of confusion in this space. [Dan]  Yeah, it’s a great question. In fact, I just had a company ask me about that. So which one do I pick and, of course, there’s not one answer fits all. [Fritz]  Right. [Dan]  So it really depends what you just said is absolutely in my opinion correct, which is I think as a, especially if you’re on a team or even if you’re just an individual a team of one, you should go through and pick out which pattern for this particular project you think is best. Now if it were me, here’s kind of the way I think of it. If I were writing a let’s say base library that several web apps are going to use or even one, but I know that there’s going to be some pieces that I’m not really sure on right now as I’m writing I and I know people might want to hook in that and have some better extension points, then I would look at either the prototype pattern or the revealing prototype. Now, really just a real quick summation between the two the revealing prototype also gives you that public/private stuff like the revealing module pattern does whereas the prototype pattern does not but both of the prototype patterns do give you the benefit of that extension or that hook capability. So, if I were writing a library that I need people to override things or I’m not even sure what I need them to override, I want them to have that option, I’d probably pick a prototype, one of the prototype patterns. If I’m writing some code that is very unique to the app and it’s kind of a one off for this app which is what I think a lot of people are kind of in that mode as writing custom apps for customers, then my personal preference is the revealing module pattern you could always go with the module pattern as well which is very close but I think the revealing module patterns a little bit cleaner and we go through that in the course and explain kind of the syntax there and the differences. [Fritz]  Great, that makes a lot of sense. [Fritz]  I appreciate you taking the time, Dan, and I hope everyone takes a chance to look at your course and sort of make these decisions for themselves in their next JavaScript project. Dan’s course is, Structuring JavaScript Code and it’s available now in the Pluralsight Library. So, thank you very much, Dan. [Dan]  Thanks for having me again.

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• Faceted search with Solr on Windows

  - by Dr.NETjes

  With over 10 million hits a day, funda.nl is probably the largest ASP.NET website which uses Solr on a Windows platform. While all our data (i.e. real estate properties) is stored in SQL Server, we're using Solr 1.4.1 to return the faceted search results as fast as we can.And yes, Solr is very fast. We did do some heavy stress testing on our Solr service, which allowed us to do over 1,000 req/sec on a single 64-bits Solr instance; and that's including converting search-url's to Solr http-queries and deserializing Solr's result-XML back to .NET objects! Let me tell you about faceted search and how to integrate Solr in a .NET/Windows environment. I'll bet it's easier than you think :-) What is faceted search? Faceted search is the clustering of search results into categories, allowing users to drill into search results. By showing the number of hits for each facet category, users can easily see how many results match that category. If you're still a bit confused, this example from CNET explains it all: The SQL solution for faceted search Our ("pre-Solr") solution for faceted search was done by adding a lot of redundant columns to our SQL tables and doing a COUNT(...) for each of those columns:   So if a user was searching for real estate properties in the city 'Amsterdam', our facet-query would be something like: SELECT COUNT(hasGarden), COUNT(has2Bathrooms), COUNT(has3Bathrooms), COUNT(etc...) FROM Houses WHERE city = 'Amsterdam' While this solution worked fine for a couple of years, it wasn't very easy for developers to add new facets. And also, performing COUNT's on all matched rows only performs well if you have a limited amount of rows in a table (i.e. less than a million). Enter Solr "Solr is an open source enterprise search server based on the Lucene Java search library, with XML/HTTP and JSON APIs, hit highlighting, faceted search, caching, replication, and a web administration interface." (quoted from Wikipedia's page on Solr) Solr isn't a database, it's more like a big index. Every time you upload data to Solr, it will analyze the data and create an inverted index from it (like the index-pages of a book). This way Solr can lookup data very quickly. To explain the inner workings of Solr is beyond the scope of this post, but if you want to learn more, please visit the Solr Wiki pages. Getting faceted search results from Solr is very easy; first let me show you how to send a http-query to Solr:    http://localhost:8983/solr/select?q=city:Amsterdam This will return an XML document containing the search results (in this example only three houses in the city of Amsterdam):    <response>     <result name="response" numFound="3" start="0">         <doc>            <long name="id">3203</long>            <str name="city">Amsterdam</str>            <str name="steet">Keizersgracht</str>            <int name="numberOfBathrooms">2</int>        </doc>         <doc>             <long name="id">3205</long>             <str name="city">Amsterdam</str>             <str name="steet">Vondelstraat</str>             <int name="numberOfBathrooms">3</int>          </doc>          <doc>             <long name="id">4293</long>             <str name="city">Amsterdam</str>             <str name="steet">Wibautstraat</str>             <int name="numberOfBathrooms">2</int>          </doc>       </result>   </response> By adding a facet-querypart for the field "numberOfBathrooms", Solr will return the facets for this particular field. We will see that there's one house in Amsterdam with three bathrooms and two houses with two bathrooms.    http://localhost:8983/solr/select?q=city:Amsterdam&facet=true&facet.field=numberOfBathrooms The complete XML response from Solr now looks like:    <response>      <result name="response" numFound="3" start="0">         <doc>            <long name="id">3203</long>            <str name="city">Amsterdam</str>            <str name="steet">Keizersgracht</str>            <int name="numberOfBathrooms">2</int>         </doc>         <doc>            <long name="id">3205</long>            <str name="city">Amsterdam</str>            <str name="steet">Vondelstraat</str>            <int name="numberOfBathrooms">3</int>         </doc>         <doc>            <long name="id">4293</long>            <str name="city">Amsterdam</str>            <str name="steet">Wibautstraat</str>            <int name="numberOfBathrooms">2</int>         </doc>      </result>      <lst name="facet_fields">         <lst name="numberOfBathrooms">            <int name="2">2</int>            <int name="3">1</int>         </lst>      </lst>   </response> Trying Solr for yourself To run Solr on your local machine and experiment with it, you should read the Solr tutorial. This tutorial really only takes 1 hour, in which you install Solr, upload sample data and get some query results. And yes, it works on Windows without a problem. Note that in the Solr tutorial, you're using Jetty as a Java Servlet Container (that's why you must start it using "java -jar start.jar"). In our environment we prefer to use Apache Tomcat to host Solr, which installs like a Windows service and works more like .NET developers expect. See the SolrTomcat page.Some best practices for running Solr on Windows: Use the 64-bits version of Tomcat. In our tests, this doubled the req/sec we were able to handle!Use a .NET XmlReader to convert Solr's XML output-stream to .NET objects. Don't use XPath; it won't scale well.Use filter queries ("fq" parameter) instead of the normal "q" parameter where possible. Filter queries are cached by Solr and will speed up Solr's response time (see FilterQueryGuidance)In my next post I’ll talk about how to keep Solr's indexed data in sync with the data in your SQL tables. Timestamps / rowversions will help you out here!

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• Passing multiple simple POST Values to ASP.NET Web API

  - by Rick Strahl

  A few weeks backs I posted a blog post  about what does and doesn't work with ASP.NET Web API when it comes to POSTing data to a Web API controller. One of the features that doesn't work out of the box - somewhat unexpectedly -  is the ability to map POST form variables to simple parameters of a Web API method. For example imagine you have this form and you want to post this data to a Web API end point like this via AJAX: <form> Name: <input type="name" name="name" value="Rick" /> Value: <input type="value" name="value" value="12" /> Entered: <input type="entered" name="entered" value="12/01/2011" /> <input type="button" id="btnSend" value="Send" /> </form> <script type="text/javascript"> $("#btnSend").click( function() { $.post("samples/PostMultipleSimpleValues?action=kazam", $("form").serialize(), function (result) { alert(result); }); }); </script> or you might do this more explicitly by creating a simple client map and specifying the POST values directly by hand:$.post("samples/PostMultipleSimpleValues?action=kazam", { name: "Rick", value: 1, entered: "12/01/2012" }, $("form").serialize(), function (result) { alert(result); }); On the wire this generates a simple POST request with Url Encoded values in the content:POST /AspNetWebApi/samples/PostMultipleSimpleValues?action=kazam HTTP/1.1 Host: localhost User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.2; WOW64; rv:15.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/15.0.1 Accept: application/json Connection: keep-alive Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded; charset=UTF-8 X-Requested-With: XMLHttpRequest Referer: http://localhost/AspNetWebApi/FormPostTest.html Content-Length: 41 Pragma: no-cache Cache-Control: no-cachename=Rick&value=12&entered=12%2F10%2F2011 Seems simple enough, right? We are basically posting 3 form variables and 1 query string value to the server. Unfortunately Web API can't handle request out of the box. If I create a method like this:[HttpPost] public string PostMultipleSimpleValues(string name, int value, DateTime entered, string action = null) { return string.Format("Name: {0}, Value: {1}, Date: {2}, Action: {3}", name, value, entered, action); }You'll find that you get an HTTP 404 error and { "Message": "No HTTP resource was found that matches the request URI…"} Yes, it's possible to pass multiple POST parameters of course, but Web API expects you to use Model Binding for this - mapping the post parameters to a strongly typed .NET object, not to single parameters. Alternately you can also accept a FormDataCollection parameter on your API method to get a name value collection of all POSTed values. If you're using JSON only, using the dynamic JObject/JValue objects might also work. ModelBinding is fine in many use cases, but can quickly become overkill if you only need to pass a couple of simple parameters to many methods. Especially in applications with many, many AJAX callbacks the 'parameter mapping type' per method signature can lead to serious class pollution in a project very quickly. Simple POST variables are also commonly used in AJAX applications to pass data to the server, even in many complex public APIs. So this is not an uncommon use case, and - maybe more so a behavior that I would have expected Web API to support natively. The question "Why aren't my POST parameters mapping to Web API method parameters" is already a frequent one… So this is something that I think is fairly important, but unfortunately missing in the base Web API installation. Creating a Custom Parameter Binder Luckily Web API is greatly extensible and there's a way to create a custom Parameter Binding to provide this functionality! Although this solution took me a long while to find and then only with the help of some folks Microsoft (thanks Hong Mei!!!), it's not difficult to hook up in your own projects. It requires one small class and a GlobalConfiguration hookup. Web API parameter bindings allow you to intercept processing of individual parameters - they deal with mapping parameters to the signature as well as converting the parameters to the actual values that are returned. Here's the implementation of the SimplePostVariableParameterBinding class:public class SimplePostVariableParameterBinding : HttpParameterBinding { private const string MultipleBodyParameters = "MultipleBodyParameters"; public SimplePostVariableParameterBinding(HttpParameterDescriptor descriptor) : base(descriptor) { } /// <summary> /// Check for simple binding parameters in POST data. Bind POST /// data as well as query string data /// </summary> public override Task ExecuteBindingAsync(ModelMetadataProvider metadataProvider, HttpActionContext actionContext, CancellationToken cancellationToken) { // Body can only be read once, so read and cache it NameValueCollection col = TryReadBody(actionContext.Request); string stringValue = null; if (col != null) stringValue = col[Descriptor.ParameterName]; // try reading query string if we have no POST/PUT match if (stringValue == null) { var query = actionContext.Request.GetQueryNameValuePairs(); if (query != null) { var matches = query.Where(kv => kv.Key.ToLower() == Descriptor.ParameterName.ToLower()); if (matches.Count() > 0) stringValue = matches.First().Value; } } object value = StringToType(stringValue); // Set the binding result here SetValue(actionContext, value); // now, we can return a completed task with no result TaskCompletionSource<AsyncVoid> tcs = new TaskCompletionSource<AsyncVoid>(); tcs.SetResult(default(AsyncVoid)); return tcs.Task; } private object StringToType(string stringValue) { object value = null; if (stringValue == null) value = null; else if (Descriptor.ParameterType == typeof(string)) value = stringValue; else if (Descriptor.ParameterType == typeof(int)) value = int.Parse(stringValue, CultureInfo.CurrentCulture); else if (Descriptor.ParameterType == typeof(Int32)) value = Int32.Parse(stringValue, CultureInfo.CurrentCulture); else if (Descriptor.ParameterType == typeof(Int64)) value = Int64.Parse(stringValue, CultureInfo.CurrentCulture); else if (Descriptor.ParameterType == typeof(decimal)) value = decimal.Parse(stringValue, CultureInfo.CurrentCulture); else if (Descriptor.ParameterType == typeof(double)) value = double.Parse(stringValue, CultureInfo.CurrentCulture); else if (Descriptor.ParameterType == typeof(DateTime)) value = DateTime.Parse(stringValue, CultureInfo.CurrentCulture); else if (Descriptor.ParameterType == typeof(bool)) { value = false; if (stringValue == "true" || stringValue == "on" || stringValue == "1") value = true; } else value = stringValue; return value; } /// <summary> /// Read and cache the request body /// </summary> /// <param name="request"></param> /// <returns></returns> private NameValueCollection TryReadBody(HttpRequestMessage request) { object result = null; // try to read out of cache first if (!request.Properties.TryGetValue(MultipleBodyParameters, out result)) { // parsing the string like firstname=Hongmei&lastname=Ge result = request.Content.ReadAsFormDataAsync().Result; request.Properties.Add(MultipleBodyParameters, result); } return result as NameValueCollection; } private struct AsyncVoid { } }   The ExecuteBindingAsync method is fired for each parameter that is mapped and sent for conversion. This custom binding is fired only if the incoming parameter is a simple type (that gets defined later when I hook up the binding), so this binding never fires on complex types or if the first type is not a simple type. For the first parameter of a request the Binding first reads the request body into a NameValueCollection and caches that in the request.Properties collection. The request body can only be read once, so the first parameter request reads it and then caches it. Subsequent parameters then use the cached POST value collection. Once the form collection is available the value of the parameter is read, and the value is translated into the target type requested by the Descriptor. SetValue writes out the value to be mapped. Once you have the ParameterBinding in place, the binding has to be assigned. This is done along with all other Web API configuration tasks at application startup in global.asax's Application_Start:GlobalConfiguration.Configuration.ParameterBindingRules .Insert(0, (HttpParameterDescriptor descriptor) => { var supportedMethods = descriptor.ActionDescriptor.SupportedHttpMethods; // Only apply this binder on POST and PUT operations if (supportedMethods.Contains(HttpMethod.Post) || supportedMethods.Contains(HttpMethod.Put)) { var supportedTypes = new Type[] { typeof(string), typeof(int), typeof(decimal), typeof(double), typeof(bool), typeof(DateTime) }; if (supportedTypes.Where(typ => typ == descriptor.ParameterType).Count() > 0) return new SimplePostVariableParameterBinding(descriptor); } // let the default bindings do their work return null; });   The ParameterBindingRules.Insert method takes a delegate that checks which type of requests it should handle. The logic here checks whether the request is POST or PUT and whether the parameter type is a simple type that is supported. Web API calls this delegate once for each method signature it tries to map and the delegate returns null to indicate it's not handling this parameter, or it returns a new parameter binding instance - in this case the SimplePostVariableParameterBinding. Once the parameter binding and this hook up code is in place, you can now pass simple POST values to methods with simple parameters. The examples I showed above should now work in addition to the standard bindings. Summary Clearly this is not easy to discover. I spent quite a bit of time digging through the Web API source trying to figure this out on my own without much luck. It took Hong Mei at Micrsoft to provide a base example as I asked around so I can't take credit for this solution :-). But once you know where to look, Web API is brilliantly extensible to make it relatively easy to customize the parameter behavior. I'm very stoked that this got resolved  - in the last two months I've had two customers with projects that decided not to use Web API in AJAX heavy SPA applications because this POST variable mapping wasn't available. This might actually change their mind to still switch back and take advantage of the many great features in Web API. I too frequently use plain POST variables for communicating with server AJAX handlers and while I could have worked around this (with untyped JObject or the Form collection mostly), having proper POST to parameter mapping makes things much easier. I said this in my last post on POST data and say it again here: I think POST to method parameter mapping should have been shipped in the box with Web API, because without knowing about this limitation the expectation is that simple POST variables map to parameters just like query string values do. I hope Microsoft considers including this type of functionality natively in the next version of Web API natively or at least as a built-in HttpParameterBinding that can be just added. This is especially true, since this binding doesn't affect existing bindings. Resources SimplePostVariableParameterBinding Source on GitHub Global.asax hookup source Mapping URL Encoded Post Values in  ASP.NET Web API© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2012Posted in Web Api  AJAX   Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, March 30, 2010

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, March 30, 2010New ProjectsCloudMail: Want to send email from Azure? Cloud Mail is designed to provide a small, effective and reliable solution for sending email from the Azure platfor...CommunityServer Extensions: Here you can find some CommunityServer extensions and bug fixes. The main goal is to provide you with the ability to correct some common problems...ContactSync: ContactSync is a set of .NET libraries, UI controls and applications for managing and synchronizing contact information. It includes managed wrapp...Dng portal: DNG Portal base on asp.net MVCDotNetNuke Referral Tracker: The Referral Tracker module allows you to save URL variables, the referring page, and the previous page into a session variable or cookie. Then, th...Foursquare for Windows Phone 7: Foursquare for Windows Phone 7.GEGetDocConfig: SharePoint utility to list information concerning document libraries in one or more sites. Displays Size, Validity, Folder, Parent, Author, Minor a...Google Maps API for .NET: Fast and lightweight client libraries for Google Maps API.kbcchina: kbc chinaLoad Test User Mock Toolkits: 用途 This project is a framework mocking the user actvities with VSTS Load Test tool to faster the test script development. 此项目包括一套模拟用户行为的通用框架，可以简化...Resonance: Resonance is a system to train neural networks, it allows to automate the train of a neural network, distributing the calculation on multiple machi...SharePoint Company Directory / Active Directory Self Service System: This is a very simple system which was designed for a Bank to allow users to update their contact information within SharePoint . Then this info ca...SmartShelf: Manage files and folders on Windows and Windows Live.sysFix: sysFix is a tool for system administrators to easily manage and fix common system errors.xnaWebcam: Webcam usage in XNA GameStudio 3.1New ReleasesAll-In-One Code Framework: All-In-One Code Framework 2010-03-29: Improved and Newly Added Examples:For an up-to-date list, please refer to All-In-One Code Framework Sample Catalog. Samples for Azure Name Des...ARSoft.Tools.Net - C# DNS and SPF Library: 1.3.0: Added support for creating own dns server implementations. Added full IPv6 support to dns client Some performance optimizations to dns clientArtefact Animator: Artefact Animator - Silverlight 3 and WPF .Net 3.5: Artefact Animator Version 2.0.4.1 Silverlight 3 ArtefactSL.dll for both Debug and Release. WPF 3.5 Artefact.dll for both Debug and Release.BatterySaver: Version 0.4: Added support for a system tray icon for controlling the application and switching profiles (Issue)BizTalk Server 2006 Orchestration Profiler: Profiler v1.2: This is a point release of the profiler and has been updatd to work on 64 bit systems. No other new functionality is available. To use this ensure...CloudMail: CloudMail_0.5_beta: Initial public release. For documentation see http://cloudmail.codeplex.com/documentation.CycleMania Starter Kit EAP - ASP.NET 4 Problem - Design - Solution: Cyclemania 0.08.44: See Source Code tab for recent change history.Dawf: Dual Audio Workflow: Beta 2: Fix little bugs and improve usablity by changing the way it finds the good audio.DotNetNuke Referral Tracker: 2.0.1: First releaseFoursquare for Windows Phone 7: Foursquare 2010.03.29.02: Foursquare 2010.03.29.02GEGetDocConfig: GEGETDOCCONFIG.ZIP: Installation: Simply download the zip file and extract the executable into its own directory on the SharePoint front end server Note: There will b...GKO Libraries: GKO Libraries 0.2 Beta: Added: Binary search Unmanaged wrappers, interop and pinvoke functions and structures Windows service wrapper Video mode helpers and more.....Google Maps API for .NET: GoogleMapsForNET v0.9 alpha release: First version, contains Core library featuring: Geocoding API Elevation API Static Maps APIGoogle Maps API for .NET: GoogleMapsForNET v0.9.1 alpha release: Fixed dependencies issues; added NUnit binaries and updated Newtonsoft Json library.Google Maps API for .NET: GoogleMapsForNET v0.9.2a alpha release: Recommended update.Code clean-up; did refactoring and major interface changes in Static Maps because it wasn't aligned to the 'simplest and least r...Home Access Plus+: v3.2.0.0: v3.2.0.0 Release Change Log: More AJAX to reduce page refreshes (Deleting, New Folder, Rename moved from browser popups) Only 3 Browser Popups (1...Html to OpenXml: HtmlToOpenXml 1.1: The dll library to include in your project. The dll is signed for GAC support. Compiled with .Net 3.5, Dependencies on System.Drawing.dll and Docu...Latent Semantic Analysis: Latest sources: Just the latest sources. Just click the changeset. Please note that in order to compile this code you need to download some additional code. You ...Load Test User Mock Toolkits: Load Test User Mock Toolkits Help Doc: Samples and The framework introduction. 包括框架介绍和典型示例Load Test User Mock Toolkits: Open.LoadTest.User.Mock.Toolkits 1.0 alpha: 此版本为非正式版本，未对性能方面进行优化。而且框架正在重构调整中。Mobile Broadband Logging Monitor: Mobile Broadband Logging Monitor 1.2.4: This edition supports: Newer and older editions of Birdstep Technology's EasyConnect HUAWEI Mobile Partner MWConn User defined location for s...Nito.KitchenSink: Version 3: Added Encoding.GetString(Stream, bool) for converting an entire stream into a string. Changed Stream.CopyTo to allow the stream to be closed/abor...Numina Application Framework: Numina.Framework Core 49088: Fixed Bug with Headers introduced in rev. 48249 with change to HttpUtil class. admin/User_Pending.aspx page users weren't able to be deleted Do...OAuthLib: OAuthLib (1.6.4.0): Fix for 6390 Make it possible to configure time out value.Quack Quack Says the Duck: Quack Quack Says The Duck 1.1.0.0: This new release pushes some work onto a background thread clearing issues with multiple screen clicks while the UI was blocking.Rapidshare Episode Downloader: RED v0.8.4: - Added Edit feature - Moved season & episode int to string into a separate function - Fixed some more minor issues - Added 'Previous' feature - F...RoTwee: RoTwee (8.1.3.0): Update OAuthLib to 1.6.4.0SharePoint Company Directory / Active Directory Self Service System: SharePoint Company Directory with AD Import: This is a very simple system which was designed for a Bank to allow users to update their contact information within SharePoint . Then this info ca...Simply Classified: v1.00.12: Comsite Simply Classified v1.00.12 - STABLE - Tested against DotNetNuke v4.9.5 and v5.2.x Bug Fixes/Enhancements: BUGFIX: Resolved issues with 1...sPATCH: sPatch v0.9: Completely Recoded with wxWidgetsFollowing Content is different to .NET Patcher no requirement for .NET Framework Manual patch was removed to av...SSAS Profiler Trace Scheduler: SSAS Profiler Trace Scheduler: AS Profiler Scheduler is a tool that will enable Scheduling of SQL AS Tracing using predefined Profiler Templates. For tracking different issues th...sysFix: sysfix build v5: A stable beta release, please refer to home page for further details.VOB2MKV: vob2mkv-1.0.4: This is a feature update of the VOB2MKV utility. The command-line parsing in the VOB2MKV application has been greatly improved. You can now get f...xnaWebcam: xnaWebcam 0.1: xnaWebcam 0.1 Program Version 0.1: -Show Webcam Device -Draw.String WebcamTexture.VideoDevice.Name.ToString() Instructions: 1. Plug-in your Webca...xnaWebcam: xnaWebcam 0.2: xnaWebcam 0.2 Version 0.2: -setResolution -Keys.Escape: this.Exit() << Exit the Game/Application. --- Version 0.1: -Show Webcam Device -Draw.Strin...xnaWebcam: xnaWebcam 0.21: xnaWebcam 0.2 Version 0.21: -Fix: Don't quit game/application after closing mainGameWindow -Fix: Text Position; Window.X, Window.Y --- Version 0.2...Xploit Game Engine: Xploit_1_1 Release: Added Features Multiple Mesh instancing.Xploit Game Engine: Xploit_1_1 Source Code: Updates Create multiple instances of the same Meshe using XModelMesh and XSkinnedMesh.Yakiimo3D: DX11 DirectCompute Buddhabrot Source and Binary: DX11 DirectCompute Buddhabrot/Nebulabrot source and binary.Most Popular ProjectsRawrWBFS ManagerASP.NET Ajax LibraryMicrosoft SQL Server Product Samples: DatabaseSilverlight ToolkitAJAX Control ToolkitWindows Presentation Foundation (WPF)LiveUpload to FacebookASP.NETMicrosoft SQL Server Community & SamplesMost Active ProjectsRawrjQuery Library for SharePoint Web ServicesBlogEngine.NETLINQ to TwitterManaged Extensibility FrameworkMicrosoft Biology FoundationFarseer Physics EngineN2 CMSNB_Store - Free DotNetNuke Ecommerce Catalog Modulepatterns & practices – Enterprise Library

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• ASP.NET Web Forms Extensibility: Providers

  - by Ricardo Peres

  Introduction This will be the first of a number of posts on ASP.NET extensibility. At this moment I don’t know exactly how many will be and I only know a couple of subjects that I want to talk about, so more will come in the next days. I have the sensation that the providers offered by ASP.NET are not widely know, although everyone uses, for example, sessions, they may not be aware of the extensibility points that Microsoft included. This post won’t go into details of how to configure and extend each of the providers, but will hopefully give some pointers on that direction. Canonical These are the most widely known and used providers, coming from ASP.NET 1, chances are, you have used them already. Good support for invoking client side, either from a .NET application or from JavaScript. Lots of server-side controls use them, such as the Login control for example. Membership The Membership provider is responsible for managing registered users, including creating new ones, authenticating them, changing passwords, etc. ASP.NET comes with two implementations, one that uses a SQL Server database and another that uses the Active Directory. The base class is Membership and new providers are registered on the membership section on the Web.config file, as well as parameters for specifying minimum password lengths, complexities, maximum age, etc. One reason for creating a custom provider would be, for example, storing membership information in a different database engine. 1: <membership defaultProvider="MyProvider"> 2: <providers> 3: <add name="MyProvider" type="MyClass, MyAssembly"/> 4: </providers> 5: </membership> Role The Role provider assigns roles to authenticated users. The base class is Role and there are three out of the box implementations: XML-based, SQL Server and Windows-based. Also registered on Web.config through the roleManager section, where you can also say if your roles should be cached on a cookie. If you want your roles to come from a different place, implement a custom provider. 1: <roleManager defaultProvider="MyProvider"> 2: <providers> 3: <add name="MyProvider" type="MyClass, MyAssembly" /> 4: </providers> 5: </roleManager> Profile The Profile provider allows defining a set of properties that will be tied and made available to authenticated or even anonymous ones, which must be tracked by using anonymous authentication. The base class is Profile and the only included implementation stores these settings in a SQL Server database. Configured through profile section, where you also specify the properties to make available, a custom provider would allow storing these properties in different locations. 1: <profile defaultProvider="MyProvider"> 2: <providers> 3: <add name="MyProvider" type="MyClass, MyAssembly"/> 4: </providers> 5: </profile> Basic OK, I didn’t know what to call these, so Basic is probably as good as a name as anything else. Not supported client-side (doesn’t even make sense). Session The Session provider allows storing data tied to the current “session”, which is normally created when a user first accesses the site, even when it is not yet authenticated, and remains all the way. The base class and only included implementation is SessionStateStoreProviderBase and it is capable of storing data in one of three locations: In the process memory (default, not suitable for web farms or increased reliability); A SQL Server database (best for reliability and clustering); The ASP.NET State Service, which is a Windows Service that is installed with the .NET Framework (ok for clustering). The configuration is made through the sessionState section. By adding a custom Session provider, you can store the data in different locations – think for example of a distributed cache. 1: <sessionState customProvider=”MyProvider”> 2: <providers> 3: <add name=”MyProvider” type=”MyClass, MyAssembly” /> 4: </providers> 5: </sessionState> Resource A not so known provider, allows you to change the origin of localized resource elements. By default, these come from RESX files and are used whenever you use the Resources expression builder or the GetGlobalResourceObject and GetLocalResourceObject methods, but if you implement a custom provider, you can have these elements come from some place else, such as a database. The base class is ResourceProviderFactory and there’s only one internal implementation which uses these RESX files. Configuration is through the globalization section. 1: <globalization resourceProviderFactoryType="MyClass, MyAssembly" /> Health Monitoring Health Monitoring is also probably not so well known, and actually not a good name for it. First, in order to understand what it does, you have to know that ASP.NET fires “events” at specific times and when specific things happen, such as when logging in, an exception is raised. These are not user interface events and you can create your own and fire them, nothing will happen, but the Health Monitoring provider will detect it. You can configure it to do things when certain conditions are met, such as a number of events being fired in a certain amount of time. You define these rules and route them to a specific provider, which must inherit from WebEventProvider. Out of the box implementations include sending mails, logging to a SQL Server database, writing to the Windows Event Log, Windows Management Instrumentation, the IIS 7 Trace infrastructure or the debugger Trace. Its configuration is achieved by the healthMonitoring section and a reason for implementing a custom provider would be, for example, locking down a web application in the event of a significant number of failed login attempts occurring in a small period of time. 1: <healthMonitoring> 2: <providers> 3: <add name="MyProvider" type="MyClass, MyAssembly"/> 4: </providers> 5: </healthMonitoring> Sitemap The Sitemap provider allows defining the site’s navigation structure and associated required permissions for each node, in a tree-like fashion. Usually this is statically defined, and the included provider allows it, by supplying this structure in a Web.sitemap XML file. The base class is SiteMapProvider and you can extend it in order to supply you own source for the site’s structure, which may even be dynamic. Its configuration must be done through the siteMap section. 1: <siteMap defaultProvider="MyProvider"> 2: <providers><add name="MyProvider" type="MyClass, MyAssembly" /> 3: </providers> 4: </siteMap> Web Part Personalization Web Parts are better known by SharePoint users, but since ASP.NET 2.0 they are included in the core Framework. Web Parts are server-side controls that offer certain possibilities of configuration by clients visiting the page where they are located. The infrastructure handles this configuration per user or globally for all users and this provider is responsible for just that. The base class is PersonalizationProvider and the only included implementation stores settings on SQL Server. Add new providers through the personalization section. 1: <webParts> 2: <personalization defaultProvider="MyProvider"> 3: <providers> 4: <add name="MyProvider" type="MyClass, MyAssembly"/> 5: </providers> 6: </personalization> 7: </webParts> Build The Build provider is responsible for compiling whatever files are present on your web folder. There’s a base class, BuildProvider, and, as can be expected, internal implementations for building pages (ASPX), master pages (Master), user web controls (ASCX), handlers (ASHX), themes (Skin), XML Schemas (XSD), web services (ASMX, SVC), resources (RESX), browser capabilities files (Browser) and so on. You would write a build provider if you wanted to generate code from any kind of non-code file so that you have strong typing at development time. Configuration goes on the buildProviders section and it is per extension. 1: <buildProviders> 2: <add extension=".ext" type="MyClass, MyAssembly” /> 3: </buildProviders> New in ASP.NET 4 Not exactly new since they exist since 2010, but in ASP.NET terms, still new. Output Cache The Output Cache for ASPX pages and ASCX user controls is now extensible, through the Output Cache provider, which means you can implement a custom mechanism for storing and retrieving cached data, for example, in a distributed fashion. The base class is OutputCacheProvider and the only implementation is private. Configuration goes on the outputCache section and on each page and web user control you can choose the provider you want to use. 1: <caching> 2: <outputCache defaultProvider="MyProvider"> 3: <providers> 4: <add name="MyProvider" type="MyClass, MyAssembly"/> 5: </providers> 6: </outputCache> 7: </caching> Request Validation A big change introduced in ASP.NET 4 (and refined in 4.5, by the way) is the introduction of extensible request validation, by means of a Request Validation provider. This means we are not limited to either enabling or disabling event validation for all pages or for a specific page, but we now have fine control over each of the elements of the request, including cookies, headers, query string and form values. The base provider class is RequestValidator and the configuration goes on the httpRuntime section. 1: <httpRuntime requestValidationType="MyClass, MyAssembly" /> Browser Capabilities The Browser Capabilities provider is new in ASP.NET 4, although the concept exists from ASP.NET 2. The idea is to map a browser brand and version to its supported capabilities, such as JavaScript version, Flash support, ActiveX support, and so on. Previously, this was all hardcoded in .Browser files located in %WINDIR%\Microsoft.NET\Framework(64)\vXXXXX\Config\Browsers, but now you can have a class inherit from HttpCapabilitiesProvider and implement your own mechanism. Register in on the browserCaps section. 1: <browserCaps provider="MyClass, MyAssembly" /> Encoder The Encoder provider is responsible for encoding every string that is sent to the browser on a page or header. This includes for example converting special characters for their standard codes and is implemented by the base class HttpEncoder. Another implementation takes care of Anti Cross Site Scripting (XSS) attacks. Build your own by inheriting from one of these classes if you want to add some additional processing to these strings. The configuration will go on the httpRuntime section. 1: <httpRuntime encoderType="MyClass, MyAssembly" /> Conclusion That’s about it for ASP.NET providers. It was by no means a thorough description, but I hope I managed to raise your interest on this subject. There are lots of pointers on the Internet, so I only included direct references to the Framework classes and configuration sections. Stay tuned for more extensibility!

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• Time Warp

  - by Jesse

  It’s no secret that daylight savings time can wreak havoc on systems that rely heavily on dates. The system I work on is centered around recording dates and times, so naturally my co-workers and I have seen our fair share of date-related bugs. From time to time, however, we come across something that we haven’t seen before. A few weeks ago the following error message started showing up in our logs: “The supplied DateTime represents an invalid time. For example, when the clock is adjusted forward, any time in the period that is skipped is invalid.” This seemed very cryptic, especially since it was coming from areas of our application that are typically only concerned with capturing date-only (no explicit time component) from the user, like reports that take a “start date” and “end date” parameter. For these types of parameters we just leave off the time component when capturing the date values, so midnight is used as a “placeholder” time. How is midnight an “invalid time”? Globalization Is Hard Over the last couple of years our software has been rolled out to users in several countries outside of the United States, including Brazil. Brazil begins and ends daylight savings time at midnight on pre-determined days of the year. On October 16, 2011 at midnight many areas in Brazil began observing daylight savings time at which time their clocks were set forward one hour. This means that at the instant it became midnight on October 16, it actually became 1:00 AM, so any time between 12:00 AM and 12:59:59 AM never actually happened. Because we store all date values in the database in UTC, always adjust any “local” dates provided by a user to UTC before using them as filters in a query. The error we saw was thrown by .NET when trying to convert the Brazilian local time of 2011-10-16 12:00 AM to UTC since that local time never actually existed. We hadn’t experienced this same issue with any of our US customers because the daylight savings time changes in the US occur at 2:00 AM which doesn’t conflict with our “placeholder” time of midnight. Detecting Invalid Times In .NET you might use code similar to the following for converting a local time to UTC: var localDate = new DateTime(2011, 10, 16); //2011-10-16 @ midnight const string timeZoneId = "E. South America Standard Time"; //Windows system timezone Id for "Brasilia" timezone. var localTimeZone = TimeZoneInfo.FindSystemTimeZoneById(timeZoneId); var convertedDate = TimeZoneInfo.ConvertTimeToUtc(localDate, localTimeZone); The code above throws the “invalid time” exception referenced above. We could try to detect whether or not the local time is invalid with something like this: var localDate = new DateTime(2011, 10, 16); //2011-10-16 @ midnight const string timeZoneId = "E. South America Standard Time"; //Windows system timezone Id for "Brasilia" timezone. var localTimeZone = TimeZoneInfo.FindSystemTimeZoneById(timeZoneId); if (localTimeZone.IsInvalidTime(localDate)) localDate = localDate.AddHours(1); var convertedDate = TimeZoneInfo.ConvertTimeToUtc(localDate, localTimeZone); This code works in this particular scenario, but it hardly seems robust. It also does nothing to address the issue that can arise when dealing with the ambiguous times that fall around the end of daylight savings. When we roll the clocks back an hour they record the same hour on the same day twice in a row. To continue on with our Brazil example, on February 19, 2012 at 12:00 AM, it will immediately become February 18, 2012 at 11:00 PM all over again. In this scenario, how should we interpret February 18, 2011 11:30 PM? Enter Noda Time I heard about Noda Time, the .NET port of the Java library Joda Time, a little while back and filed it away in the back of my mind under the “sounds-like-it-might-be-useful-someday” category.  Let’s see how we might deal with the issue of invalid and ambiguous local times using Noda Time (note that as of this writing the samples below will only work using the latest code available from the Noda Time repo on Google Code. The NuGet package version 0.1.0 published 2011-08-19 will incorrectly report unambiguous times as being ambiguous) : var localDateTime = new LocalDateTime(2011, 10, 16, 0, 0); const string timeZoneId = "Brazil/East"; var timezone = DateTimeZone.ForId(timeZoneId); var localDateTimeMaping = timezone.MapLocalDateTime(localDateTime); ZonedDateTime unambiguousLocalDateTime; switch (localDateTimeMaping.Type) { case ZoneLocalMapping.ResultType.Unambiguous: unambiguousLocalDateTime = localDateTimeMaping.UnambiguousMapping; break; case ZoneLocalMapping.ResultType.Ambiguous: unambiguousLocalDateTime = localDateTimeMaping.EarlierMapping; break; case ZoneLocalMapping.ResultType.Skipped: unambiguousLocalDateTime = new ZonedDateTime( localDateTimeMaping.ZoneIntervalAfterTransition.Start, timezone); break; default: throw new InvalidOperationException(string.Format("Unexpected mapping result type: {0}", localDateTimeMaping.Type)); } var convertedDateTime = unambiguousLocalDateTime.ToInstant().ToDateTimeUtc(); Let’s break this sample down: I’m using the Noda Time ‘LocalDateTime’ object to represent the local date and time. I’ve provided the year, month, day, hour, and minute (zeros for the hour and minute here represent midnight). You can think of a ‘LocalDateTime’ as an “invalidated” date and time; there is no information available about the time zone that this date and time belong to, so Noda Time can’t make any guarantees about its ambiguity. The ‘timeZoneId’ in this sample is different than the ones above. In order to use the .NET TimeZoneInfo class we need to provide Windows time zone ids. Noda Time expects an Olson (tz / zoneinfo) time zone identifier and does not currently offer any means of mapping the Windows time zones to their Olson counterparts, though project owner Jon Skeet has said that some sort of mapping will be publicly accessible at some point in the future. I’m making use of the Noda Time ‘DateTimeZone.MapLocalDateTime’ method to disambiguate the original local date time value. This method returns an instance of the Noda Time object ‘ZoneLocalMapping’ containing information about the provided local date time maps to the provided time zone.  The disambiguated local date and time value will be stored in the ‘unambiguousLocalDateTime’ variable as an instance of the Noda Time ‘ZonedDateTime’ object. An instance of this object represents a completely unambiguous point in time and is comprised of a local date and time, a time zone, and an offset from UTC. Instances of ZonedDateTime can only be created from within the Noda Time assembly (the constructor is ‘internal’) to ensure to callers that each instance represents an unambiguous point in time. The value of the ‘unambiguousLocalDateTime’ might vary depending upon the ‘ResultType’ returned by the ‘MapLocalDateTime’ method. There are three possible outcomes: If the provided local date time is unambiguous in the provided time zone I can immediately set the ‘unambiguousLocalDateTime’ variable from the ‘Unambiguous Mapping’ property of the mapping returned by the ‘MapLocalDateTime’ method. If the provided local date time is ambiguous in the provided time zone (i.e. it falls in an hour that was repeated when moving clocks backward from Daylight Savings to Standard Time), I can use the ‘EarlierMapping’ property to get the earlier of the two possible local dates to define the unambiguous local date and time that I need. I could have also opted to use the ‘LaterMapping’ property in this case, or even returned an error and asked the user to specify the proper choice. The important thing to note here is that as the programmer I’ve been forced to deal with what appears to be an ambiguous date and time. If the provided local date time represents a skipped time (i.e. it falls in an hour that was skipped when moving clocks forward from Standard Time to Daylight Savings Time),  I have access to the time intervals that fell immediately before and immediately after the point in time that caused my date to be skipped. In this case I have opted to disambiguate my local date and time by moving it forward to the beginning of the interval immediately following the skipped period. Again, I could opt to use the end of the interval immediately preceding the skipped period, or raise an error depending on the needs of the application. The point of this code is to convert a local date and time to a UTC date and time for use in a SQL Server database, so the final ‘convertedDate’  variable (typed as a plain old .NET DateTime) has its value set from a Noda Time ‘Instant’. An 'Instant’ represents a number of ticks since 1970-01-01 at midnight (Unix epoch) and can easily be converted to a .NET DateTime in the UTC time zone using the ‘ToDateTimeUtc()’ method. This sample is admittedly contrived and could certainly use some refactoring, but I think it captures the general approach needed to take a local date and time and convert it to UTC with Noda Time. At first glance it might seem that Noda Time makes this “simple” code more complicated and verbose because it forces you to explicitly deal with the local date disambiguation, but I feel that the length and complexity of the Noda Time sample is proportionate to the complexity of the problem. Using TimeZoneInfo leaves you susceptible to overlooking ambiguous and skipped times that could result in run-time errors or (even worse) run-time data corruption in the form of a local date and time being adjusted to UTC incorrectly. I should point out that this research is my first look at Noda Time and I know that I’ve only scratched the surface of its full capabilities. I also think it’s safe to say that it’s still beta software for the time being so I’m not rushing out to use it production systems just yet, but I will definitely be tinkering with it more and keeping an eye on it as it progresses.

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• The Low Down Dirty Azure Blues

  - by SGWellens

  Remember the SETI screen savers that used to be on everyone's computer? As far I as know, it was the first bona-fide use of "Cloud" computing…albeit an ad hoc cloud. I still think it was a brilliant leveraging of computing power. My interest in clouds was re-piqued when I went to a technical seminar at the local .Net User Group. The speaker was Mike Benkovitch and he expounded magnificently on the virtues of the Azure platform. Mike always does a good job. One killer reason he gave for cloud computing is instant scalability. Not applicable for most applications, but it is there if needed. I have a bunch of files stored on Microsoft's SkyDrive platform which is cloud storage. It is painfully slow. Accessing a file means going through layers and layers of software, redirections and security. Am I complaining? Hell no! It's free! So my opinions of Cloud Computing are both skeptical and appreciative. What intrigued me at the seminar, in addition to its other features, is that Azure can serve as a web hosting platform. I have a client with an Asp.Net web site I developed who is not happy with the performance of their current hosting service. I checked the cost of Azure and since the site has low bandwidth/space requirements the cost would be competitive with the existing host provider: Azure Pricing Calculator. And, Azure has a three month free trial. Perfect! I could try moving the website and see how it works for free. I went through the signup process. Everything was proceeding fine until I went to the MS SQL database management screen. A popup window informed me that I needed to install Silverlight on my machine. Silverlight? No thanks. Buh-Bye. I half-heartedly found the Azure support button and logged a ticket telling them I didn't want Silverlight on my machine. Within 4 to 6 hours (and a myriad (5) of automated support emails) they sent me a link to a database management page that did not require Silverlight. Thanks! I was able to create a database immediately. One really nice feature was that after creating the database, I was given a list of connection strings. I went to the current host provider, made a backup of the database and saved it to my machine. I attached to the remote database using SQL Server Studio 2012 and looked for the Restore menu item. It was missing. So I tried using the SQL command: RESTORE DATABASE MyDatabase FROM DISK ='C:\temp\MyBackup.bak' Msg 40510, Level 16, State 1, Line 1 Statement 'RESTORE DATABASE' is not supported in this version of SQL Server. Are you kidding me? Why on earth…? This can't be happening! I opened both the source database and destination database in SQL Management Studio. I right clicked the source database, selected "Tasks" and noticed a menu selection called "Deploy Database to SQL Azure" Are you kidding me? Could it be? Oh yes, it be! There was a small problem because the database already existed on the Azure machine, I deployed to a new name, deleted the existing database and renamed the deployed database to what I needed. It was ridiculously easy. Being able to attach SQL Management Studio to remote databases is an awesome but scary feature. You can limit the IP addresses that can access the database which enhances security but when you give people, any people, me included, that much power, one errant mouse click could bring a live system down. My Advice: Tread softly and carry a large backup thumb-drive. Then I created a web site, the URL it returned look something like this: http://MyWebSite.azurewebsites.net/ Azure supports FTP, but I couldn't figure out the settings until I downloaded the publishing profile. It was an XML file that contained the needed information. I still couldn't connect with my FTP client (FileZilla). After about an hour of messing around, I deleted the port number from the FileZilla setup page….and voila, I was in like Flynn.   There are other options of deploying directly from Visual Studio, TFS, etc. but I do not like integrated tools that do things without my asking: It's usually hard to figure out what they did and how to undo it. I uploaded the aspx , cs , webconfig, etc. files. Bu it didn't run. The site I ported was in .NET 3.5. The Azure website configuration page gave me a choice between .NET 2.0 and 4.0. So, I switched to Visual Studio 2010, chose .NET 4.0 and upgraded the site. Of course I have the original version completely backed up and stored in a granite cave beneath the Nevada desert. And I have a backup CD under my pillow. The site uses ReportViewer to generate PDF documents. Of course it was the wrong version. I removed the old references to version 9 and added new references to version 10 (*see note below). Since the DLLs were not on the Azure Server, I uploaded them to the bin directory, crossed my fingers, burned some incense and gave it a try. After some fiddling around it ran. I don't know if I did anything particular to make it work or it just needed time to sort things out. However, one critical feature didn't work: ReportViewer could not programmatically generate PDF documents. I was getting this exception: "An error occurred during local report processing. Parameter is not valid." Rats. I did some searching and found other people were having the same problem, so I added a post saying I was having the same problem: http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/windowsazurewebsitespreview/thread/b4a6eb43-0013-435f-9d11-00ee26a8d017 Currently they are looking into this problem and I am waiting for the results. Hence I had the time to write this BLOG entry. How lucky you are. This was the last message I got from the Microsoft person: Hi Steve, Windows Azure Web Sites is a multi-tenant environment. For security issue, we limited some API calls. Unfortunately, some GDI APIS required by the PDF converting function are in this list. We have noticed this issue, and still investigation the best way to go. At this moment, there is no news to share. Sorry about this. Will keep you posted. If I had to guess, I would say they are concerned with people uploading images and doing intensive graphics programming which would hog CPU time.  But that is just a guess. Another problem. While trying to resolve the ReportViewer problem, I tried to write a file to the PDF directory to see if there was a permissions problem with some test code: String MyPath = MapPath(@"~\PDFs\Test.txt"); File.WriteAllText(MyPath, "Hello Azure");     I got this message: Access to the path <my path> is denied. After some research, I understood that since Azure is a cloud based platform, it can't allow web applications to save files to local directories. The application could be moved or replicated as scaling occurs and trying to manage local files would be problematic to say the least. There are other options: Use the Azure APIs to get a path. That way the location of the storage is separated from the application. However, the web site is then tied Azure and can't be moved to another hosting platform. Use the ApplicationData folder (not recommended). Write to BLOB storage. Or, I could try and stream the PDF output directly to the email and not save a file. I'm not going to work on a final solution until the ReportViewer is fixed. I am just sharing some of the things you need to be aware of if you decide to use Azure. I got this information from here. (Note the author of the BLOG added a comment saying he has updated his entry). Is my memory faulty? While getting this BLOG ready, I tried to write the test file again. And it worked. My memory is incorrect, or much more likely, something changed on the server…perhaps while they are trying to get ReportViewer to work. (Anyway, that's my story and I'm sticking to it). *Note: Since Visual Studio 2010 Express doesn't include a Report Editor, I downloaded and installed SQL Server Report Builder 2.0. It is a standalone Report Editor to replace the one not in Visual Studio 2010 Express. I hope someone finds this useful. Steve Wellens CodeProject

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• Move Files from a Failing PC with an Ubuntu Live CD

  - by Trevor Bekolay

  You’ve loaded the Ubuntu Live CD to salvage files from a failing system, but where do you store the recovered files? We’ll show you how to store them on external drives, drives on the same PC, a Windows home network, and other locations. We’ve shown you how to recover data like a forensics expert, but you can’t store recovered files back on your failed hard drive! There are lots of ways to transfer the files you access from an Ubuntu Live CD to a place that a stable Windows machine can access them. We’ll go through several methods, starting each section from the Ubuntu desktop – if you don’t yet have an Ubuntu Live CD, follow our guide to creating a bootable USB flash drive, and then our instructions for booting into Ubuntu. If your BIOS doesn’t let you boot using a USB flash drive, don’t worry, we’ve got you covered! Use a Healthy Hard Drive If your computer has more than one hard drive, or your hard drive is healthy and you’re in Ubuntu for non-recovery reasons, then accessing your hard drive is easy as pie, even if the hard drive is formatted for Windows. To access a hard drive, it must first be mounted. To mount a healthy hard drive, you just have to select it from the Places menu at the top-left of the screen. You will have to identify your hard drive by its size. Clicking on the appropriate hard drive mounts it, and opens it in a file browser. You can now move files to this hard drive by drag-and-drop or copy-and-paste, both of which are done the same way they’re done in Windows. Once a hard drive, or other external storage device, is mounted, it will show up in the /media directory. To see a list of currently mounted storage devices, navigate to /media by clicking on File System in a File Browser window, and then double-clicking on the media folder. Right now, our media folder contains links to the hard drive, which Ubuntu has assigned a terribly uninformative label, and the PLoP Boot Manager CD that is currently in the CD-ROM drive. Connect a USB Hard Drive or Flash Drive An external USB hard drive gives you the advantage of portability, and is still large enough to store an entire hard disk dump, if need be. Flash drives are also very quick and easy to connect, though they are limited in how much they can store. When you plug a USB hard drive or flash drive in, Ubuntu should automatically detect it and mount it. It may even open it in a File Browser automatically. Since it’s been mounted, you will also see it show up on the desktop, and in the /media folder. Once it’s been mounted, you can access it and store files on it like you would any other folder in Ubuntu. If, for whatever reason, it doesn’t mount automatically, click on Places in the top-left of your screen and select your USB device. If it does not show up in the Places list, then you may need to format your USB drive. To properly remove the USB drive when you’re done moving files, right click on the desktop icon or the folder in /media and select Safely Remove Drive. If you’re not given that option, then Eject or Unmount will effectively do the same thing. Connect to a Windows PC on your Local Network If you have another PC or a laptop connected through the same router (wired or wireless) then you can transfer files over the network relatively quickly. To do this, we will share one or more folders from the machine booted up with the Ubuntu Live CD over the network, letting our Windows PC grab the files contained in that folder. As an example, we’re going to share a folder on the desktop called ToShare. Right-click on the folder you want to share, and click Sharing Options. A Folder Sharing window will pop up. Check the box labeled Share this folder. A window will pop up about the sharing service. Click the Install service button. Some files will be downloaded, and then installed. When they’re done installing, you’ll be appropriately notified. You will be prompted to restart your session. Don’t worry, this won’t actually log you out, so go ahead and press the Restart session button. The Folder Sharing window returns, with Share this folder now checked. Edit the Share name if you’d like, and add checkmarks in the two checkboxes below the text fields. Click Create Share. Nautilus will ask your permission to add some permissions to the folder you want to share. Allow it to Add the permissions automatically. The folder is now shared, as evidenced by the new arrows above the folder’s icon. At this point, you are done with the Ubuntu machine. Head to your Windows PC, and open up Windows Explorer. Click on Network in the list on the left, and you should see a machine called UBUNTU in the right pane. Note: This example is shown in Windows 7; the same steps should work for Windows XP and Vista, but we have not tested them. Double-click on UBUNTU, and you will see the folder you shared earlier! As well as any other folders you’ve shared from Ubuntu. Double click on the folder you want to access, and from there, you can move the files from the machine booted with Ubuntu to your Windows PC. Upload to an Online Service There are many services online that will allow you to upload files, either temporarily or permanently. As long as you aren’t transferring an entire hard drive, these services should allow you to transfer your important files from the Ubuntu environment to any other machine with Internet access. We recommend compressing the files that you want to move, both to save a little bit of bandwidth, and to save time clicking on files, as uploading a single file will be much less work than a ton of little files. To compress one or more files or folders, select them, and then right-click on one of the members of the group. Click Compress…. Give the compressed file a suitable name, and then select a compression format. We’re using .zip because we can open it anywhere, and the compression rate is acceptable. Click Create and the compressed file will show up in the location selected in the Compress window. Dropbox If you have a Dropbox account, then you can easily upload files from the Ubuntu environment to Dropbox. There is no explicit limit on the size of file that can be uploaded to Dropbox, though a free account begins with a total limit of 2 GB of files in total. Access your account through Firefox, which can be opened by clicking on the Firefox logo to the right of the System menu at the top of the screen. Once into your account, press the Upload button on top of the main file list. Because Flash is not installed in the Live CD environment, you will have to switch to the basic uploader. Click Browse…find your compressed file, and then click Upload file. Depending on the size of the file, this could take some time. However, once the file has been uploaded, it should show up on any computer connected through Dropbox in a matter of minutes. Google Docs Google Docs allows the upload of any type of file – making it an ideal place to upload files that we want to access from another computer. While your total allocation of space varies (mine is around 7.5 GB), there is a per-file maximum of 1 GB. Log into Google Docs, and click on the Upload button at the top left of the page. Click Select files to upload and select your compressed file. For safety’s sake, uncheck the checkbox concerning converting files to Google Docs format, and then click Start upload. Go Online – Through FTP If you have access to an FTP server – perhaps through your web hosting company, or you’ve set up an FTP server on a different machine – you can easily access the FTP server in Ubuntu and transfer files. Just make sure you don’t go over your quota if you have one. You will need to know the address of the FTP server, as well as the login information. Click on Places > Connect to Server… Choose the FTP (with login) Service type, and fill in your information. Adding a bookmark is optional, but recommended. You will be asked for your password. You can choose to remember it until you logout, or indefinitely. You can now browse your FTP server just like any other folder. Drop files into the FTP server and you can retrieve them from any computer with an Internet connection and an FTP client. Conclusion While at first the Ubuntu Live CD environment may seem claustrophobic, it has a wealth of options for connecting to peripheral devices, local computers, and machines on the Internet – and this article has only scratched the surface. Whatever the storage medium, Ubuntu’s got an interface for it! 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