extend - Page 99 - Developer IT

Conditional Validation using JQuery Validation Plugin

- by Steve Kemp

I have a simple html form that I've added validation to using the JQuery Validation plugin. I have it working for single fields that require a value. I now need to extend that so that if a user answers Yes to a question they must enter something in the Details field, otherwise the Details field can be left blank. I'm using radio buttons to display the Yes/No. Here's my complete html form - I'm not sure where to go from here: <script type="text/javascript" charset="utf-8"> $.metadata.setType("attr", "validate"); $(document).ready(function() { $("#editRecord").validate(); }); </script> <style type="text/css"> .block { display: block; } form.cmxform label.error { display: none; } </style> </head> <body> <div id="header"> <h1> Questions</h1> </div> <div id="content"> <h1> Questions Page 1 </h1> </div> <div id="content"> <h1> </h1> <form class="cmxform" method="post" action="editrecord.php" id="editRecord"> <input type="hidden" name="-action" value="edit"> <h1> Questions </h1> <table width="46%" class="record"> <tr> <td width="21%" valign="top" class="field_name_left"><p>Question 1</p></td> <td width="15%" valign="top" class="field_data"> <label for="Yes"> <input type="radio" name="Question1" value="Yes" validate = "required:true" /> Yes </label> <label for="No"> <input type="radio" name="Question1" value="No" /> No </label> <label for="Question1" class="error">You must answer this question to proceed</label> </td> <td width="64%" valign="top" class="field_data"><strong>Details:</strong> <textarea id = "Details1" class="where" name="Details1" cols="25" rows="2"></textarea></td> </tr> <tr> <td valign="top" class="field_name_left">Question 2</td> <td valign="top" class="field_data"> <label for="Yes"> <input type="radio" name="Question2" value="Yes" validate = "required:true" /> Yes </label> <label for="No"> <input type="radio" name="Question2" value="No" /> No </label> <label for="Question2" class="error">You must answer this question to proceed</label> </td> <td valign="top" class="field_data"><strong>Details:</strong> <textarea id = "Details2" class="where" name="Details2" cols="25" rows="2"></textarea> </td> </tr> <tr class="submit_btn"> <td colspan="3"> <input type="submit" name="-edit" value="Finish"> <input type="reset" name="reset" value="Reset"> </td> </tr> </table> </form> </div> </body> </html>

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Add child to scene from within a class.

- by Fecal Brunch

Hi, I'm new to flash in general and have been writing a program with two classes that extend MovieClip (Stems and Star). I need to create a new Stems object as a child of the scene when the user stops dragging a Star object, but do not know how to reference the scene from within the Star class's code. I've tried passing the scene into the constructor of the Star and doing sometihng like: this.scene.addChild (new Stems ()); But apparently that's not how to do it... Below is the code for Stems and Stars, any advice would be appreciated greatly. package { import flash.display.MovieClip; import flash.events.*; import flash.utils.Timer; public class Stems extends MovieClip { public const centreX=1026/2; public const centreY=600/2; public var isFlowing:Boolean; public var flowerType:Number; public const outerLimit=210; public const innerLimit=100; public function Stems(fType:Number) { this.isFlowing=false; this.scaleX=this.scaleY= .0007* distanceFromCentre(this.x, this.y); this.setXY(); trace(distanceFromCentre(this.x, this.y)); if (fType==2) { gotoAndStop("Aplant"); } } public function distanceFromCentre(X:Number, Y:Number):int { return (Math.sqrt((X-centreX)*(X-centreX)+(Y-centreY)*(Y-centreY))); } public function rotateAwayFromCentre():void { var theX:int=centreX-this.x; var theY:int = (centreY - this.y) * -1; var angle = Math.atan(theY/theX)/(Math.PI/180); if (theX<0) { angle+=180; } if (theX>=0&&theY<0) { angle+=360; } this.rotation = ((angle*-1) + 90)+180; } public function setXY() { do { var tempX=Math.random()*centreX*2; var tempY=Math.random()*centreY*2; } while (distanceFromCentre (tempX, tempY)>this.outerLimit || distanceFromCentre (tempX, tempY)<this.innerLimit); this.x=tempX; this.y=tempY; rotateAwayFromCentre(); } public function getFlowerType():Number { return this.flowerType; } } } package { import flash.display.MovieClip; import flash.events.*; import flash.utils.Timer; public class Star extends MovieClip { public const sWide=1026; public const sTall=600; public var startingX:Number; public var startingY:Number; public var starColor:Number; public var flicker:Timer; public var canUpdatePos:Boolean=true; public const innerLimit=280; public function Star(color:Number, basefl:Number, factorial:Number) { this.setXY(); this.starColor=color; this.flicker = new Timer (basefl + factorial * (Math.ceil(100* Math.random ()))); this.flicker.addEventListener(TimerEvent.TIMER, this.tick); this.addEventListener(MouseEvent.MOUSE_OVER, this.hover); this.addEventListener(MouseEvent.MOUSE_UP, this.drop); this.addEventListener(MouseEvent.MOUSE_DOWN, this.drag); this.addChild (new Stems (2)); this.flicker.start(); this.updateAnimation(0, false); } public function distanceOK(X:Number, Y:Number):Boolean { if (Math.sqrt((X-(sWide/2))*(X-(sWide/2))+(Y-(sTall/2))*(Y-(sTall/2)))>innerLimit) { return true; } else { return false; } } public function setXY() { do { var tempX=this.x=Math.random()*sWide; var tempY=this.y=Math.random()*sTall; } while (distanceOK (tempX, tempY)==false); this.startingX=tempX; this.startingY=tempY; } public function tick(event:TimerEvent) { if (this.canUpdatePos) { this.setXY(); } this.updateAnimation(0, false); this.updateAnimation(this.starColor, false); } public function updateAnimation(color:Number, bright:Boolean) { var brightStr:String; if (bright) { brightStr="bright"; } else { brightStr="low"; } switch (color) { case 0 : this.gotoAndStop("none"); break; case 1 : this.gotoAndStop("N" + brightStr); break; case 2 : this.gotoAndStop("A" + brightStr); break; case 3 : this.gotoAndStop("F" + brightStr); break; case 4 : this.gotoAndStop("E" + brightStr); break; case 5 : this.gotoAndStop("S" + brightStr); break; } } public function hover(event:MouseEvent):void { this.updateAnimation(this.starColor, true); this.canUpdatePos=false; } public function drop(event:MouseEvent):void { this.stopDrag(); this.x=this.startingX; this.y=this.startingY; this.updateAnimation(0, false); this.canUpdatePos=true; } public function drag(event:MouseEvent):void { this.startDrag(false); this.canUpdatePos=false; } } }

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How to determine whether a class has a particular templated member function?

- by Aozine

I was wondering if it's possible to extend the SFINAE approach to detecting whether a class has a certain member function (as discussed here: "Is there a Technique in C++ to know if a class has a member function of a given signature?" http://stackoverflow.com/questions/87372/is-there-a-technique-in-c-to-know-if-a-class-has-a-member-function-of-a-given-s ) to support templated member functions? E.g. to be able to detect the function foo in the following class: struct some_class { template < int _n > void foo() { } }; I thought it might be possible to do this for a particular instantiation of foo, (e.g. check to see if void foo< 5 >() is a member) as follows: template < typename _class, int _n > class foo_int_checker { template < typename _t, void (_t::*)() > struct sfinae { }; template < typename _t > static big test( sfinae< _t, &_t::foo< _n > > * ); template < typename _t > static small test( ... ); public: enum { value = sizeof( test< _class >( 0 ) ) == sizeof( big ) }; }; Then do foo_int_checker< some_class, 5 >::value to check whether some_class has the member void foo< 5 >(). However on MSVC++ 2008 this always returns false while g++ gives the following syntax errors at the line test( sfinae< _t, &_t::foo< _n > > ); test.cpp:24: error: missing `>' to terminate the template argument list test.cpp:24: error: template argument 2 is invalid test.cpp:24: error: expected unqualified-id before '<' token test.cpp:24: error: expected `,' or `...' before '<' token test.cpp:24: error: ISO C++ forbids declaration of `parameter' with no type Both seem to fail because I'm trying to get the address of a template function instantiation from a type that is itself a template parameter. Does anyone know whether this is possible or if it's disallowed by the standard for some reason? EDIT: It seems that I missed out the ::template syntax to get g++ to compile the above code correctly. If I change the bit where I get the address of the function to &_t::template foo< _n > then the program compiles, but I get the same behaviour as MSVC++ (value is always set to false). If I comment out the ... overload of test to force the compiler to pick the other one, I get the following compiler error in g++: test.cpp: In instantiation of `foo_int_checker<A, 5>': test.cpp:40: instantiated from here test.cpp:32: error: invalid use of undefined type `class foo_int_checker<A, 5>' test.cpp:17: error: declaration of `class foo_int_checker<A, 5>' test.cpp:32: error: enumerator value for `value' not integer constant where line 32 is the enum { value = sizeof( test< _class >( 0 ) ) == sizeof( big ) }; line. Unfortunately this doesn't seem to help me diagnose the problem :(. MSVC++ gives a similar nondescript error: error C2770: invalid explicit template argument(s) for 'clarity::meta::big checker<_checked_type>::test(checker<_checked_type>::sfinae<_t,&_t::template foo<5>> *)' on the same line. What's strange is that if I get the address from a specific class and not a template parameter (i.e. rather than &_t::template foo< _n > I do &some_class::template foo< _n >) then I get the correct result, but then my checker class is limited to checking a single class (some_class) for the function. Also, if I do the following: template < typename _t, void (_t::*_f)() > void f0() { } template < typename _t > void f1() { f0< _t, &_t::template foo< 5 > >(); } and call f1< some_class >() then I DON'T get a compile error on &_t::template foo< 5 >. This suggests that the problem only arises when getting the address of a templated member function from a type that is itself a template parameter while in a SFINAE context. Argh!

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Setting marker title in Google Maps API 3 using jQuery

- by bateman_ap

Hi, I am having a couple of problems with Google Maps and jQuery. Wondered if anyone can help with the smaller of the two problems and hopefully it will help me to fixing the bigger one. I am using the below code to populate a google map, basically it uses generated HTML to populate the maps in the form: <div class="item mapSearch" id="map52.48228_-1.9026:800"> <div class="box-prise"><p>(0.62km away)</p><div class="btn-book-now"> <a href="/venue/800.htm">BOOK NOW</a> </div> </div><img src="http://media.toptable.com/images/thumb/13152.jpg" alt="Metro Bar and Grill" width="60" height="60" /> <div class="info"> <h2><a href="/venue/800.htm">Metro Bar and Grill</a></h2> <p class="address">73 Cornwall Street, Birmingham, B3 2DF</p><strong class="proposal">2 courses £14.50</strong> <dl> <dt>Diner Rating: </dt> <dd>7.8</dd> </dl></div></div> <div class="item mapSearch" id="map52.4754_-1.8999:3195"> <div class="box-prise"><p>(0.97km away)</p><div class="btn-book-now"> <a href="/venue/3195.htm">BOOK NOW</a> </div> </div><img src="http://media.toptable.com/images/thumb/34998.jpg" alt="Filini Restaurant - Birmingham" width="60" height="60" /> <div class="info"> <h2><a href="/venue/3195.htm">Filini Restaurant - Birmingham</a></h2> <p class="address">Radisson Blu Hotel, 12 Holloway Circus, Queensway, Birmingham, B1 1BT</p><strong class="proposal">2 for 1: main courses </strong> <dl> <dt>Diner Rating: </dt> <dd>7.8</dd> </dl></div></div> <div class="item mapSearch" id="map52.47775_-1.90619:10657"> <div class="box-prise"><p>(1.05km away)</p><div class="btn-book-now"> <a href="/venue/10657.htm">BOOK NOW</a> </div> </div><img src="http://media.toptable.com/images/thumb/34963.jpg" alt="B1 " width="60" height="60" /> <div class="info"> <h2><a href="/venue/10657.htm">B1 </a></h2> <p class="address">Central Square , Birmingham, B1 1HH</p><strong class="proposal">25% off food</strong> <dl> <dt>Diner Rating: </dt> <dd>7.9</dd> </dl></div></div> The JavaScript loops though all the divs with class mapSearch and uses this to plot markers using the div ID to get the lat/lon and ID of the venue: var locations = $(".mapSearch"); for (var i=0;i<locations.length;i++) { var id = locations[i].id; if (id) { var jsLonLat = id.substring(3).split(":")[0]; var jsId = id.substring(3).split(":")[1]; var jsLat = jsLonLat.split("_")[0]; var jsLon = jsLonLat.split("_")[1]; var jsName = $("h2").text(); var jsAddress = $("p.address").text(); var latlng = new google.maps.LatLng(jsLat,jsLon); var marker = new google.maps.Marker({ position: latlng, map:map, icon: greenRestaurantImage, title: jsName }); google.maps.event.addListener(marker, 'click', function() { //Check to see if info window already exists if (!infowindow) { //if doesn't exist then create a empty InfoWindow object infowindow = new google.maps.InfoWindow(); } //Set the content of InfoWindow infowindow.setContent(jsAddress); //Tie the InfoWindow to the market infowindow.open(map,marker); }); bounds.extend(latlng); map.fitBounds(bounds); } } The markers all plot OK on the map, however I am having probs with the infoWindow bit. I want to display info about each venue when clicked, however using my code above it just puts all info in one box when clicked, not individually. Hoping it is a simple fix! Hoping once I fix this I can work out a way to get the info window displaying if I hover over the div in the html.

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Cannot understand NullPointerException with custom adapter

- by ganesh

hi, I am trying to create a list view which as TextView that can display html content , an WebView and other basic TextViews.I tried to extend SimpleAdapter but i struck with the problem ,I will be glad if someone can point out the mistake i am doing. In onCreate method ArrayList mylist= resultfromXmlparser(); adap = new MyAdapter(TourLandingPage.this, mylist, R.layout.row, new String[] {"Name", "desc","Duration","Price","imgurl"}, new int[] {R.id.productname,R.id.des,R.id.duration,R.id.pricefrom,R.id.photo}); setListAdapter(adap); My custom Adapter looks like this private class MyAdapter extends SimpleAdapter { ArrayList<HashMap<String,String>> elements; Context ctx; public MyAdapter(Context context, ArrayList<HashMap<String,String>> mylist,int textViewResourceId,String[] names,int[] resouceid) { super(context, mylist,textViewResourceId, names,resouceid); this.elements=mylist; this.ctx=context; } @Override public int getCount() { return elements.size(); } @Override public Object getItem(int position) { return elements.get(position); } @Override public long getItemId(int position) { return position; } @Override public View getView(int position, View convertView, ViewGroup parent) { RelativeLayout rowLayout; if (convertView == null) { rowLayout = (RelativeLayout) LayoutInflater.from(ctx).inflate(R.layout.rowfor_tourlist, parent, false); } else { rowLayout = (RelativeLayout) convertView; } TextView in = (TextView)rowLayout.findViewById(R.id.introduction); TextView du = (TextView)rowLayout.findViewById(R.id.duration); TextView pf = (TextView)rowLayout.findViewById(R.id.pricefrom); TextView pn = (TextView)rowLayout.findViewById(R.id.productname); WebView wv=(WebView)rowLayout.findViewById(R.id.photo); in.setText(Html.fromHtml(mylist.get(position).get("desc"))); du.setText(mylist.get(position).get("Duration")); pf.setText(mylist.get(position).get("Price")); pn.setText(mylist.get(position).get("Name")); wv.getSettings().setJavaScriptEnabled(true); wv.loadUrl(mylist.get(position).get("imgurl")); return convertView; } }//class and my row.xml file looks like RelativeLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android" android:layout_width="fill_parent" android:layout_height="fill_parent" TextView android:id="@+id/productname" ...... LinearLayout android:layout_width="wrap_content" android:layout_height="60dip" android:layout_margin="5dip" android:layout_below="@id/productname" android:orientation="horizontal" android:id="@+id/lay1" WebView android:id="@+id/photo" .... TextView android:id="@+id/introduction" ...... LinearLayout TextView android:id="@+id/duration" .... TextView android:id="@+id/pricefrom" ..... RelativeLayout The error i was getting was 04-28 19:46:17.749: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(976): Uncaught handler: thread main exiting due to uncaught exception 04-28 19:46:17.769: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(976): java.lang.NullPointerException 04-28 19:46:17.769: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(976): at android.widget.ListView.setupChild(ListView.java:1693) 04-28 19:46:17.769: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(976): at android.widget.ListView.makeAndAddView(ListView.java:1671) 04-28 19:46:17.769: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(976): at android.widget.ListView.fillDown(ListView.java:637) 04-28 19:46:17.769: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(976): at android.widget.ListView.fillFromTop(ListView.java:694) 04-28 19:46:17.769: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(976): at android.widget.ListView.layoutChildren(ListView.java:1521) 04-28 19:46:17.769: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(976): at android.widget.AbsListView.onLayout(AbsListView.java:1113) 04-28 19:46:17.769: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(976): at android.view.View.layout(View.java:6831) 04-28 19:46:17.769: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(976): at android.widget.LinearLayout.setChildFrame(LinearLayout.java:1119) 04-28 19:46:17.769: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(976): at android.widget.LinearLayout.layoutHorizontal(LinearLayout.java:1108) 04-28 19:46:17.769: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(976): at android.widget.LinearLayout.onLayout(LinearLayout.java:920) 04-28 19:46:17.769: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(976): at android.view.View.layout(View.java:6831) 04-28 19:46:17.769: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(976): at android.widget.LinearLayout.setChildFrame(LinearLayout.java:1119) 04-28 19:46:17.769: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(976): at android.widget.LinearLayout.layoutVertical(LinearLayout.java:998) 04-28 19:46:17.769: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(976): at android.widget.LinearLayout.onLayout(LinearLayout.java:918) 04-28 19:46:17.769: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(976): at android.view.View.layout(View.java:6831) 04-28 19:46:17.769: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(976): at android.widget.FrameLayout.onLayout(FrameLayout.java:333) 04-28 19:46:17.769: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(976): at android.view.View.layout(View.java:6831) 04-28 19:46:17.769: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(976): at android.widget.LinearLayout.setChildFrame(LinearLayout.java:1119) 04-28 19:46:17.769: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(976): at android.widget.LinearLayout.layoutVertical(LinearLayout.java:998) 04-28 19:46:17.769: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(976): at android.widget.LinearLayout.onLayout(LinearLayout.java:918) 04-28 19:46:17.769: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(976): at android.view.View.layout(View.java:6831) 04-28 19:46:17.769: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(976): at android.widget.FrameLayout.onLayout(FrameLayout.java:333) 04-28 19:46:17.769: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(976): at android.view.View.layout(View.java:6831) 04-28 19:46:17.769: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(976): at android.view.ViewRoot.performTraversals(ViewRoot.java:996) 04-28 19:46:17.769: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(976): at android.view.ViewRoot.handleMessage(ViewRoot.java:1633) 04-28 19:46:17.769: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(976): at android.os.Handler.dispatchMessage(Handler.java:99) 04-28 19:46:17.769: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(976): at android.os.Looper.loop(Looper.java:123) 04-28 19:46:17.769: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(976): at android.app.ActivityThread.main(ActivityThread.java:4338) 04-28 19:46:17.769: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(976): at java.lang.reflect.Method.invokeNative(Native Method) 04-28 19:46:17.769: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(976): at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:521) 04-28 19:46:17.769: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(976): at com.android.internal.os.ZygoteInit$MethodAndArgsCaller.run(ZygoteInit.java:860) 04-28 19:46:17.769: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(976): at com.android.internal.os.ZygoteInit.main(ZygoteInit.java:618) 04-28 19:46:17.769: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(976): at dalvik.system.NativeStart.main(Native Method) 04-28 19:46:17.789: INFO/Process(52): Sending signal. PID: 976 SIG: 3 04-28 19:46:17.799: INFO/dalvikvm(976): threadid=7: reacting to signal 3 04-28 19:46:17.829: INFO/dalvikvm(976): Wrote stack trace to '/data/anr/traces.txt'

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Ajax call in a jQuery plugin not working properly

- by Saneef

I'm trying to create a jQuery plugin, inside I need to do an AJAX call to load an xml. jQuery.fn.imagetags = function(options) { s = jQuery.extend({ height:null, width:null, url:false, callback:null, title:null, }, options); return this.each(function(){ obj = $(this); //Initialising the placeholder $holder = $('<div />') .width(s.width).height(s.height) .addClass('jimageholder') .css({ position: 'relative', }); obj.wrap($holder); $.ajax({ type: "GET", url: s.url, dataType: "xml", success:function(data){ initGrids(obj,data,s.callback,s.title); } , error: function(data) { alert("Error loading Grid data."); }, }); function initGrids(obj, data,callback,gridtitle){ if (!data) { alert("Error loading Grid data"); } $("gridlist gridset",data).each(function(){ var gridsetname = $(this).children("setname").text(); var gridsetcolor = ""; if ($(this).children("color").text() != "") { gridsetcolor = $(this).children("color").text(); } $(this).children("grid").each(function(){ var gridcolor = gridsetcolor; //This colour will override colour set for the grid set if ($(this).children("color").text() != "") { gridcolor = $(this).children("color").text(); } //addGrid(gridsetname,id,x,y,height,width) addGrid( obj, gridsetname, $(this).children("id").text(), $(this).children("x").text(), $(this).children("y").text(), $(this).children("height").text(), $(this).children("width").text(), gridcolor, gridtitle ); }); }); } function addGrid(obj,gridsetname,id,x,y,height,width,color,gridtitle){ //To compensate for the 2px border height-=4; width-=4; $grid = $('<div />') .addClass(gridsetname) .attr("id",id) .addClass('gridtag') .imagetagsResetHighlight() .css({ "bottom":y+"px", "left":x+"px", "height":height+"px", "width":width+"px", }); if(gridtitle != null){ $grid.attr("title",gridtitle); } if(color != ""){ $grid.css({ "border-color":color, }); } obj.after($grid); } }); } The above plugin I bind with 2 DOM objects and loads two seperate XML files but the callback function is run only on the last DOM object using both loaded XML files. How can I fix this, so that the callback is applied on the corresponding DOMs. Is the above ajax call is correct? Sample usage: <script type="text/javascript"> $(function(){ $(".romeo img").imagetags({ height:500, width:497, url: "sample-data.xml", title: "Testing...", callback:function(id){ console.log(id); }, }); }); </script> <div class="padding-10 min-item background-color-black"> <div class="romeo"><img src="images/samplecontent/test_500x497.gif" alt="Image"> </div> </div> <script type="text/javascript"> $(function(){ $(".romeo2 img").imagetags({ height:500, width:497, url: "sample-data2.xml", title: "Testing...", callback:function(id){ console.log(id); }, }); }); </script> <div class="padding-10 min-item background-color-black"> <div class="romeo2"><img src="images/samplecontent/test2_500x497.gif" alt="Image"> </div> </div> Here is the sample XML data: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <gridlist> <gridset> <setname>gridset4</setname> <color>#00FF00</color> <grid> <color>#FF77FF</color> <id>grid2-324</id> <x>300</x> <y>300</y> <height>60</height> <width>60</width> </grid> </gridset> <gridset> <setname>gridset3</setname> <color>#00FF00</color> <grid> <color>#FF77FF</color> <id>grid2-212</id> <x>300</x> <y>300</y> <height>100</height> <width>100</width> </grid> <grid> <color>#FF77FF</color> <id>grid2-1212</id> <x>200</x> <y>10</y> <height>200</height> <width>10</width> </grid> </gridset> </gridlist>

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Fetch a specific tag from Rally in order to compute a value in another field

- by 4jas

I'm extremely new to Rally development so my question may sound dumb (but couldn't find how to do it from rally's help or from previous posts here) :) I've started from the rally freeform grid example - my purpose is to implement a Business Value calculator: I fill the score field with a 5-digit figure where each number is a score in the 1-5 range. Then I compute a business value as the result of a calculation, where each number is weighted by a preset weight. I can sort my stories by Business Value to help me prioritize my backlog: that's the first step, and it works. Now what I want to do is to make my freeform grid editable: I am extracting each of my digits as a separate column, but those columns are display-only. How can I turn them into something editable? What I want to do of course is update back the score field based on the values input in each custom column. Here's an example: I have a record with score "15254", which means Business Value criteria 1 scores 1 out of 5, Business Value criteria 2 scores 5 out of 5, and so on... In the end my Business Value is computed as "1*1 + 5*2 + 2*3 + 5*4 + 4*5 = 57". So far this is the part that works. Now let's say I found that the third criteria should not score 2 but 3, I want to be able to edit the value in the corresponding column and have my score field updated to "15354", and my Business Value to display 60 instead of 57. Here is my current code, I'll be really grateful if you can help me with turning that grid into something editable :)  <script type="text/javascript" src="https://rally1.rallydev.com/apps/2.0p2/sdk-debug.js"></script>  <script type="text/javascript"> Rally.onReady(function() { Ext.define('BVApp', { extend: 'Rally.app.App', componentCls: 'app', launch: function() { Ext.create('Rally.data.WsapiDataStore', { model: 'UserStory', autoLoad: true, listeners: { load: this._onDataLoaded, scope: this } }); }, _onDataLoaded: function(store, data) { var records = []; var li_score; var li_bv1, li_bv2, li_bv3, li_bv4, li_bv5, li_bvtotal; var weights = new Array(1, 2, 3, 4, 5); Ext.Array.each(data, function(record) { //Let's fetch score and compute the business values... li_score = record.get('Score'); if (li_score) { li_bv1 = li_score.toString().substring(0,1); li_bv2 = li_score.toString().substring(1,2); li_bv3 = li_score.toString().substring(2,3); li_bv4 = li_score.toString().substring(3,4); li_bv5 = li_score.toString().substring(4,5); li_bvtotal = li_bv1*weights[0] + li_bv2*weights[1] + li_bv3*weights[2] + li_bv4*weights[3] + li_bv5*weights[4]; } records.push({ FormattedID: record.get('FormattedID'), ref: record.get('_ref'), Name: record.get('Name'), Score: record.get('Score'), Bv1: li_bv1, Bv2: li_bv2, Bv3: li_bv3, Bv4: li_bv4, Bv5: li_bv5, BvTotal: li_bvtotal }); }); this.add({ xtype: 'rallygrid', store: Ext.create('Rally.data.custom.Store', { data: records, pageSize: 5 }), columnCfgs: [ { text: 'FormattedID', dataIndex: 'FormattedID' }, { text: 'ref', dataIndex: 'ref' }, { text: 'Name', dataIndex: 'Name', flex: 1 }, { text: 'Score', dataIndex: 'Score' }, { text: 'BusVal 1', dataIndex: 'Bv1' }, { text: 'BusVal 2', dataIndex: 'Bv2' }, { text: 'BusVal 3', dataIndex: 'Bv3' }, { text: 'BusVal 4', dataIndex: 'Bv4' }, { text: 'BusVal 5', dataIndex: 'Bv5' }, { text: 'BusVal Total', dataIndex: 'BvTotal' } ] }); } }); Rally.launchApp('BVApp', { name: 'Business Values App' }); var exampleHtml = '<div id="example-intro"><h1>Business Values App</h1>' + '<div>Own sample app for Business Values</div>' + '</div>'; // Default app viewport uses layout: 'fit', // so we need to insert a container into the viewport var viewport = Ext.ComponentQuery.query('viewport')[0]; var appComponent = viewport.items.getAt(0); var viewportContainerItems = [{ html: exampleHtml, border: 0 }]; //hide advanced cardboard live previews in examples for now viewportContainerItems.push({ xtype: 'container', items: [appComponent] }); viewport.remove(appComponent, false); viewport.add({ xtype: 'container', layout: 'vbox', items: viewportContainerItems }); }); </script>  <style type="text/css"> .app { /* Add app styles here */ } </style>

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how do I use html block snippets with dynamic content inside a django template that extends another

- by stackoverflowusername

Hi. Can someone please help me figure out a way to achieve the following (see snippets below) in Django templates? I know that you cannot use more than one extends, but I am new to django and I do not know the proper syntax for something like this. I want to be able to do this so that I can use my nested div layout for css reasons without having to type it like that each time and risking a typo. In words, I want to be able to have a page template extend my base.html file and then use html snippets of dynamic template content (i.e. template for loops or other template logic devices, not just a context variable I set from my view controller). ------------------------------------------------------------ base.html ------------------------------------------------------------ <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"> <head> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=utf-8" /> <title>{% block title %}Title{% endblock %}</title> </head> <body> <div class="wrapper"> <div class="header"> This is the common header </div> <div class="nav"> This is the common nav </div> {% if messages %} <div class="messages"> <ul> {% for message in messages %} <li{% if message.tags %} class="{{ message.tags }}"{% endif %}>{{ message }}</li> {% endfor %} </ul> </div> {% endif %} <div class="content"> {% block content %}Page Content{% endblock %} </div> <div class="footer"> This is the common footer </div> </div> </body> </html> ------------------------------------------------------------ columnlayout2.html ------------------------------------------------------------ <div class="twocol container2"> <div class="container1"> <div class="col1"> {% block twocol_col1 %}{% endblock %} </div> <div class="col2"> {% block twocol_col2 %}{% endblock %} </div> </div> </div> ------------------------------------------------------------ columnlayout3.html ------------------------------------------------------------ <div class="threecol container3"> <div class="container2"> <div class="container1"> <div class="col1"> {% block threecol_col1 %}{% endblock %} </div> <div class="col2"> {% block threecol_col2 %}{% endblock %} </div> <div class="col3"> {% block threecol_col3 %}{% endblock %} </div> </div> </div> </div> ------------------------------------------------------------ page.html ------------------------------------------------------------ {% extends "base.html" %} {% block content %} {% extends "columnlayout2.html" %} {% block twocol_col1 %}twocolumn column 1{% endblock %} {% block twocol_col2 %}twocolumn column 2{% endblock %} {% extends "columnlayout3.html" %} {% block threecol_col1 %}threecol column 1{% endblock %} {% block threecol_col2 %}threecol column 2{% endblock %} {% block threecol_col3 %}threecol column 3{% endblock %} {% endblock %} ------------------------------------------------------------ page.html output ------------------------------------------------------------ <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"> <head> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=utf-8" /> <title>Title</title> </head> <body> <div class="wrapper"> <div class="header"> This is the common header </div> <div class="nav"> This is the common nav </div> <div class="content"> <div class="twocol container2"> <div class="container1"> <div class="col1"> twocolumn column 1 </div> <div class="col2"> twocolumn column 2 </div> </div> </div> <div class="threecol container3"> <div class="container2"> <div class="container1"> <div class="col1"> threecol column 1 </div> <div class="col2"> threecol column 2 </div> <div class="col3"> threecol column 3 </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> <div class="footer"> This is the common footer </div> </div> </body> </html>

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Vector of Object Pointers, general help and confusion

- by Staypuft

Have a homework assignment in which I'm supposed to create a vector of pointers to objects Later on down the load, I'll be using inheritance/polymorphism to extend the class to include fees for two-day delivery, next day air, etc. However, that is not my concern right now. The final goal of the current program is to just print out every object's content in the vector (name & address) and find it's shipping cost (weight*cost). My Trouble is not with the logic, I'm just confused on few points related to objects/pointers/vectors in general. But first my code. I basically cut out everything that does not mater right now, int main, will have user input, but right now I hard-coded two examples. #include <iostream> #include <string> #include <vector> using namespace std; class Package { public: Package(); //default constructor Package(string d_name, string d_add, string d_zip, string d_city, string d_state, double c, double w); double calculateCost(double, double); void Print(); ~Package(); private: string dest_name; string dest_address; string dest_zip; string dest_city; string dest_state; double weight; double cost; }; Package::Package() { cout<<"Constucting Package Object with default values: "<<endl; string dest_name=""; string dest_address=""; string dest_zip=""; string dest_city=""; string dest_state=""; double weight=0; double cost=0; } Package::Package(string d_name, string d_add, string d_zip, string d_city, string d_state, string r_name, string r_add, string r_zip, string r_city, string r_state, double w, double c){ cout<<"Constucting Package Object with user defined values: "<<endl; string dest_name=d_name; string dest_address=d_add; string dest_zip=d_zip; string dest_city=d_city; string dest_state=d_state; double weight=w; double cost=c; } Package::~Package() { cout<<"Deconstructing Package Object!"<<endl; delete Package; } double Package::calculateCost(double x, double y){ return x+y; } int main(){ double cost=0; vector<Package*> shipment; cout<<"Enter Shipping Cost: "<<endl; cin>>cost; shipment.push_back(new Package("tom r","123 thunder road", "90210", "Red Bank", "NJ", cost, 10.5)); shipment.push_back(new Package ("Harry Potter","10 Madison Avenue", "55555", "New York", "NY", cost, 32.3)); return 0; } So my questions are: I'm told I have to use a vector of Object Pointers, not Objects. Why? My assignment calls for it specifically, but I'm also told it won't work otherwise. Where should I be creating this vector? Should it be part of my Package Class? How do I go about adding objects into it then? Do I need a copy constructor? Why? What's the proper way to deconstruct my vector of object pointers? Any help would be appreciated. I've searched for a lot of related articles on here and I realize that my program will have memory leaks. Using one of the specialized ptrs from boost:: will not be available for me to use. Right now, I'm more concerned with getting the foundation of my program built. That way I can actually get down to the functionality I need to create. Thanks.

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How to improve Varnish performance?

- by Darkseal

We're experiencing a strange problem with our current Varnish configuration. 4x Web Servers (IIS 6.5 on Windows 2003 Server, each installed on a Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5450 @ 3.00GHz Quad Core, 4GB RAM) 3x Varnish Servers (varnish-3.0.3 revision 9e6a70f on Ubuntu 12.04.2 LTS - 64 bit/precise, Kernel Linux 3.2.0-29-generic, each installed on a Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5450 @ 3.00GHz Quad Core, 4GB RAM) The Varnish Servers performance are awfully bad in general, to the point that if we shut down one of them the other two are unable to fullfill all the requests and start to skip beats resulting in pending requests, timeouts, 404, etc. What can we do to improve our Varnish performance? Considering that we're getting less than 5k request per seconds during our max peak, we should be able to serve our pages even with a single one of them without any problem. We use a standard, vanilla CFG, as shown by this varnishadm param.show output: acceptor_sleep_decay 0.900000 [] acceptor_sleep_incr 0.001000 [s] acceptor_sleep_max 0.050000 [s] auto_restart on [bool] ban_dups on [bool] ban_lurker_sleep 0.010000 [s] between_bytes_timeout 60.000000 [s] cc_command "exec gcc -std=gnu99 -g -O2 -pthread -fpic -shared - Wl,-x -o %o %s" cli_buffer 8192 [bytes] cli_timeout 20 [seconds] clock_skew 10 [s] connect_timeout 0.700000 [s] critbit_cooloff 180.000000 [s] default_grace 10.000000 [seconds] default_keep 0.000000 [seconds] default_ttl 120.000000 [seconds] diag_bitmap 0x0 [bitmap] esi_syntax 0 [bitmap] expiry_sleep 1.000000 [seconds] fetch_chunksize 128 [kilobytes] fetch_maxchunksize 262144 [kilobytes] first_byte_timeout 60.000000 [s] group varnish (113) gzip_level 6 [] gzip_memlevel 8 [] gzip_stack_buffer 32768 [Bytes] gzip_tmp_space 0 [] gzip_window 15 [] http_gzip_support off [bool] http_max_hdr 64 [header lines] http_range_support on [bool] http_req_hdr_len 8192 [bytes] http_req_size 32768 [bytes] http_resp_hdr_len 8192 [bytes] http_resp_size 32768 [bytes] idle_send_timeout 60 [seconds] listen_address :80 listen_depth 1024 [connections] log_hashstring on [bool] log_local_address off [bool] lru_interval 2 [seconds] max_esi_depth 5 [levels] max_restarts 4 [restarts] nuke_limit 50 [allocations] pcre_match_limit 10000 [] pcre_match_limit_recursion 10000 [] ping_interval 3 [seconds] pipe_timeout 60 [seconds] prefer_ipv6 off [bool] queue_max 100 [%] rush_exponent 3 [requests per request] saintmode_threshold 10 [objects] send_timeout 600 [seconds] sess_timeout 5 [seconds] sess_workspace 16384 [bytes] session_linger 50 [ms] session_max 100000 [sessions] shm_reclen 255 [bytes] shm_workspace 8192 [bytes] shortlived 10.000000 [s] syslog_cli_traffic on [bool] thread_pool_add_delay 2 [milliseconds] thread_pool_add_threshold 2 [requests] thread_pool_fail_delay 200 [milliseconds] thread_pool_max 2000 [threads] thread_pool_min 5 [threads] thread_pool_purge_delay 1000 [milliseconds] thread_pool_stack unlimited [bytes] thread_pool_timeout 300 [seconds] thread_pool_workspace 65536 [bytes] thread_pools 2 [pools] thread_stats_rate 10 [requests] user varnish (106) vcc_err_unref on [bool] vcl_dir /etc/varnish vcl_trace off [bool] vmod_dir /usr/lib/varnish/vmods waiter default (epoll, poll) This is our default.vcl file: LINK sub vcl_recv { # BASIC recv COMMANDS: # # lookup -> search the item in the cache # pass -> always serve a fresh item (no-caching) # pipe -> like pass but ensures a direct-connection with the backend (no-cache AND no-proxy) # Allow the backend to serve up stale content if it is responding slow. # This defines when Varnish should use a stale object if it has one in the cache. set req.grace = 30s; if (client.ip == "127.0.0.1") { # request from NGINX - do not alter X-Forwarded-For set req.http.HTTPS = "on"; } else { # Add an X-Forwarded-For to keep track of original request unset req.http.HTTPS; unset req.http.X-Forwarded-For; set req.http.X-Forwarded-For = client.ip; } set req.backend = www_director; # Strip all cookies to force an anonymous request when the back-end servers are down. if (!req.backend.healthy) { unset req.http.Cookie; } ## HHTP Accept-Encoding if (req.http.Accept-Encoding) { if (req.http.Accept-Encoding ~ "gzip") { set req.http.Accept-Encoding = "gzip"; } else if (req.http.Accept-Encoding ~ "deflate") { set req.http.Accept-Encoding = "deflate"; } else { unset req.http.Accept-Encoding; } } if (req.request != "GET" && req.request != "HEAD" && req.request != "PUT" && req.request != "POST" && req.request != "TRACE" && req.request != "OPTIONS" && req.request != "DELETE") { /* non-RFC2616 or CONNECT */ return (pipe); } if (req.request != "GET" && req.request != "HEAD") { /* only deal with GET and HEAD by default */ return (pass); } if (req.http.Authorization) { return (pass); } if (req.http.HTTPS ~ "on") { return (pass); } ###################################################### # COOKIE HANDLING ###################################################### # METHOD 1: do not remove cookies, but pass the page if they contain TB_NC if (!(req.url ~ "(?i)\.(png|gif|ipeg|jpg|ico|swf|css|js)(\?[a-z0-9]+)?$")) { if (req.http.Cookie && req.http.Cookie ~ "TB_NC") { return (pass); } } return (lookup); } # Code determining what to do when serving items from the IIS Server sub vcl_fetch { unset beresp.http.Server; set beresp.http.Server = "Server-1"; # Allow items to be stale if needed. This is the maximum time Varnish should keep an object. set beresp.grace = 1h; if (req.url ~ "(?i)\.(png|gif|ipeg|jpg|ico|swf|css|js)(\?[a-z0-9]+)?$") { unset beresp.http.set-cookie; } # Default Varnish VCL logic if (!beresp.cacheable || beresp.ttl <= 0s || beresp.http.Set-Cookie || beresp.http.Vary == "*") { set beresp.ttl = 120 s; return(hit_for_pass); } # Not Cacheable if it has specific TB_NC no-caching cookie if (req.http.Cookie && req.http.Cookie ~ "TB_NC") { set beresp.http.X-Cacheable = "NO:Got Cookie"; set beresp.ttl = 120 s; return(hit_for_pass); } # Not Cacheable if it has Cache-Control private else if (beresp.http.Cache-Control ~ "private") { set beresp.http.X-Cacheable = "NO:Cache-Control=private"; set beresp.ttl = 120 s; return(hit_for_pass); } # Not Cacheable if it has Cache-Control no-cache or Pragma no-cache else if (beresp.http.Cache-Control ~ "no-cache" || beresp.http.Pragma ~ "no-cache") { set beresp.http.X-Cacheable = "NO:Cache-Control=no-cache (or pragma no-cache)"; set beresp.ttl = 120 s; return(hit_for_pass); } # If we reach to this point, the object is cacheable. # Cacheable but with not enough ttl: we need to extend the lifetime of the object artificially # NOTE: Varnish default TTL is set in /etc/sysconfig/varnish # and can be checked using the following command: # varnishadm param.show default_ttl else if (beresp.ttl < 1s) { set beresp.ttl = 5s; set beresp.grace = 5s; set beresp.http.X-Cacheable = "YES:FORCED"; } # Cacheable and with valid TTL. else { set beresp.http.X-Cacheable = "YES"; } # DEBUG INFO (Cookies) # set beresp.http.X-Cookie-Debug = "Request cookie: " + req.http.Cookie; return(deliver); } sub vcl_error { set obj.http.Content-Type = "text/html; charset=utf-8"; if (obj.status == 404) { synthetic {"  "}; } else if (obj.status == 500) { synthetic {"  "}; } else if (obj.status == 503) { if (req.restarts < 4) { return(restart); } else { synthetic {"  "}; } } else { synthetic {"  "}; } } sub vcl_deliver { if (obj.hits > 0) { set resp.http.X-Cache = "HIT"; } else { set resp.http.X-Cache = "MISS"; } } Thanks in advance,

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Maven : Is it possible to override the configuration of a plugin already defined for a profile in a parent POM

- by Guillaume Cernier

In a POM parent file of my project, I have such a profile defining some configurations useful for this project (so that I can't get rid of this parent POM) : <profile> <id>wls7</id> ... <build> <plugins>  <plugin> <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId> <artifactId>maven-compiler-plugin</artifactId> <configuration> <fork>true</fork> <source>1.4</source> <target>1.4</target> <meminitial>128m</meminitial> <maxmem>1024m</maxmem> <executable>%${jdk14.executable}</executable> </configuration> </plugin> </plugins> </build> ... </profile> But in my project I just would like to override the configuration of the maven-compiler-plugin in order to use jdk5 instead of jdk4 for compiling test-classes. That's why I did this section in the POM of my project : <profiles> <profile> <id>wls7</id> <activation> <property> <name>jdk</name> <value>4</value> </property> </activation> <build> <directory>target-1.4</directory> <plugins> <plugin> <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId> <artifactId>maven-compiler-plugin</artifactId> <executions> <execution> <id>my-testCompile</id> <phase>test-compile</phase> <goals> <goal>testCompile</goal> </goals> <configuration> <fork>true</fork> <executable>${jdk15.executable}</executable> <compilerVersion>1.5</compilerVersion> <source>1.5</source> <target>1.5</target> <verbose>true</verbose> </configuration> </execution> </executions> </plugin> </plugins> </build> </profile> ... </profiles> and it's not working ... I even tried to override the configuration in regular plugin sections of my POM (I mean, not for a specific profile but for my whole POM). What could be the problem ? To clarify some of my requirements : I don't want to get rid of the parent POM and the profile (wls7) defined inside it (since I need many and many properties, configurations, ...) and that is not the process in my company. A solution based on duplicating the parent POM and/or the profile defined inside it is not a good one. Since if the responsible of the parent POM change something, I would have to report it in mine. It's just an inheritance matter (extend or override a profile, a configuration from an upper-level POM) so I think it should be possible with maven2.

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Can't append to second container

- by George Katsanos

I have the following script: (function($) { $.fn.easyPaginate = function(options){ var defaults = { step: 4, delay: 100, numeric: true, nextprev: true, controls: 'pagination', current: 'current' }; var options = $.extend(defaults, options); var step = options.step; var lower, upper; var children = $(this).children(); var count = children.length; var obj, next, prev; var page = 1; var timeout; var clicked = false; function show(){ clearTimeout(timeout); lower = ((page-1) * step); upper = lower+step; $(children).each(function(i){ var child = $(this); child.hide(); if(i>=lower && i<upper){ setTimeout(function(){ child.fadeIn('fast') }, ( i-( Math.floor(i/step) * step) )*options.delay ); } if(options.nextprev){ if(upper >= count) { next.addClass('stop'); } else { next.removeClass('stop'); }; if(lower >= 1) { prev.removeClass('stop'); } else { prev.addClass('stop'); }; }; }); $('li','#'+ options.controls).removeClass(options.current); $('li[data-index="'+page+'"]','#'+ options.controls).addClass(options.current); if(options.auto){ if(options.clickstop && clicked){}else{ timeout = setTimeout(auto,options.pause); }; }; }; function auto(){ if(upper <= count){ page++; show(); } else { page--; show(); } }; this.each(function(){ obj = this; if(count>step){ var pages = Math.floor(count/step); if((count/step) > pages) pages++; var ol = $('<ol id="'+ options.controls +'" class="pagin"></ol>').insertAfter(obj); if(options.nextprev){ prev = $('<li class="prev">prev</li>') .appendTo(ol) .bind('click', function() { //check to see if there are any more pages in the negative direction if (page > 1) { clicked = true; page--; show(); } }); } if(options.numeric){ for(var i=1;i<=pages;i++){ $('<li data-index="'+ i +'">'+ i +'</li>') .appendTo(ol) .click(function(){ clicked = true; page = $(this).attr('data-index'); show(); }); }; }; if(options.nextprev){ next = $('<li class="next">next</li>') .appendTo(ol) .bind('click', function() { //check to see if there are any pages in the positive direction if (page < (count / 4)) { clicked = true; page++; show(); } }); } show(); }; }); }; })(jQuery); jQuery(function($){ $('ul.news').easyPaginate({step:4}); }); which is a carousel-like plugin that produces this html structure for the navigation: <ol id="pagination" class="pagin"><li class="prev">prev</li><li data-index="1" class="">1</li><li data-index="2" class="">2</li><li data-index="3" class="current">3</li><li class="next stop">next</li></ol> And all I want is to enclose this list in a div. Seems simple, but appendTo doesn't want to cooperate with me, or I'm doing something wrong (I'd appreciate if you would help me understand what that is..) So I'm modifying as such: var ol = $('<ol id="'+ options.controls +'" class="pagin"></ol>'); var tiv = $('<div id="lala"></div>'); ol.appendTo('#lala'); tiv.insertAfter(obj); I know how to chain, but I'm in "debugging" mode trying to understand why I don't get the result I imagine I would get: <div id="lala> <ol id="pagination><li>...... </li></ol> </div> I tried putting some console.log's to see the status of my variables but couldn't find something useful.. I guess there's something with DOM insertion I don't get.

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.NET HTML Sanitation for rich HTML Input

- by Rick Strahl

Recently I was working on updating a legacy application to MVC 4 that included free form text input. When I set up the new site my initial approach was to not allow any rich HTML input, only simple text formatting that would respect a few simple HTML commands for bold, lists etc. and automatically handles line break processing for new lines and paragraphs. This is typical for what I do with most multi-line text input in my apps and it works very well with very little development effort involved. Then the client sprung another note: Oh by the way we have a bunch of customers (real estate agents) who need to post complete HTML documents. Oh uh! There goes the simple theory. After some discussion and pleading on my part (<snicker>) to try and avoid this type of raw HTML input because of potential XSS issues, the client decided to go ahead and allow raw HTML input anyway. There has been lots of discussions on this subject on StackOverFlow (and here and here) but to after reading through some of the solutions I didn't really find anything that would work even closely for what I needed. Specifically we need to be able to allow just about any HTML markup, with the exception of script code. Remote CSS and Images need to be loaded, links need to work and so. While the 'legit' HTML posted by these agents is basic in nature it does span most of the full gamut of HTML (4). Most of the solutions XSS prevention/sanitizer solutions I found were way to aggressive and rendered the posted output unusable mostly because they tend to strip any externally loaded content. In short I needed a custom solution. I thought the best solution to this would be to use an HTML parser - in this case the Html Agility Pack - and then to run through all the HTML markup provided and remove any of the blacklisted tags and a number of attributes that are prone to JavaScript injection. There's much discussion on whether to use blacklists vs. whitelists in the discussions mentioned above, but I found that whitelists can make sense in simple scenarios where you might allow manual HTML input, but when you need to allow a larger array of HTML functionality a blacklist is probably easier to manage as the vast majority of elements and attributes could be allowed. Also white listing gets a bit more complex with HTML5 and the new proliferation of new HTML tags and most new tags generally don't affect XSS issues directly. Pure whitelisting based on elements and attributes also doesn't capture many edge cases (see some of the XSS cheat sheets listed below) so even with a white list, custom logic is still required to handle many of those edge cases. The Microsoft Web Protection Library (AntiXSS) My first thought was to check out the Microsoft AntiXSS library. Microsoft has an HTML Encoding and Sanitation library in the Microsoft Web Protection Library (formerly AntiXSS Library) on CodePlex, which provides stricter functions for whitelist encoding and sanitation. Initially I thought the Sanitation class and its static members would do the trick for me,but I found that this library is way too restrictive for my needs. Specifically the Sanitation class strips out images and links which rendered the full HTML from our real estate clients completely useless. I didn't spend much time with it, but apparently I'm not alone if feeling this library is not really useful without some way to configure operation. To give you an example of what didn't work for me with the library here's a small and simple HTML fragment that includes script, img and anchor tags. I would expect the script to be stripped and everything else to be left intact. Here's the original HTML:var value = "<b>Here</b> <script>alert('hello')</script> we go. Visit the " + "<a href='http://west-wind.com'>West Wind</a> site. " + "<img src='http://west-wind.com/images/new.gif' /> " ; and the code to sanitize it with the AntiXSS Sanitize class:@Html.Raw(Microsoft.Security.Application.Sanitizer.GetSafeHtmlFragment(value)) This produced a not so useful sanitized string: Here we go. Visit the <a>West Wind</a> site. While it removed the <script> tag (good) it also removed the href from the link and the image tag altogether (bad). In some situations this might be useful, but for most tasks I doubt this is the desired behavior. While links can contain javascript: references and images can 'broadcast' information to a server, without configuration to tell the library what to restrict this becomes useless to me. I couldn't find any way to customize the white list, nor is there code available in this 'open source' library on CodePlex. Using Html Agility Pack for HTML Parsing The WPL library wasn't going to cut it. After doing a bit of research I decided the best approach for a custom solution would be to use an HTML parser and inspect the HTML fragment/document I'm trying to import. I've used the HTML Agility Pack before for a number of apps where I needed an HTML parser without requiring an instance of a full browser like the Internet Explorer Application object which is inadequate in Web apps. In case you haven't checked out the Html Agility Pack before, it's a powerful HTML parser library that you can use from your .NET code. It provides a simple, parsable HTML DOM model to full HTML documents or HTML fragments that let you walk through each of the elements in your document. If you've used the HTML or XML DOM in a browser before you'll feel right at home with the Agility Pack. Blacklist based HTML Parsing to strip XSS Code For my purposes of HTML sanitation, the process involved is to walk the HTML document one element at a time and then check each element and attribute against a blacklist. There's quite a bit of argument of what's better: A whitelist of allowed items or a blacklist of denied items. While whitelists tend to be more secure, they also require a lot more configuration. In the case of HTML5 a whitelist could be very extensive. For what I need, I only want to ensure that no JavaScript is executed, so a blacklist includes the obvious <script> tag plus any tag that allows loading of external content including <iframe>, <object>, <embed> and <link> etc. <form> is also excluded to avoid posting content to a different location. I also disallow <head> and <meta> tags in particular for my case, since I'm only allowing posting of HTML fragments. There is also some internal logic to exclude some attributes or attributes that include references to JavaScript or CSS expressions. The default tag blacklist reflects my use case, but is customizable and can be added to. Here's my HtmlSanitizer implementation:using System.Collections.Generic; using System.IO; using System.Xml; using HtmlAgilityPack; namespace Westwind.Web.Utilities { public class HtmlSanitizer { public HashSet<string> BlackList = new HashSet<string>() { { "script" }, { "iframe" }, { "form" }, { "object" }, { "embed" }, { "link" }, { "head" }, { "meta" } }; /// <summary> /// Cleans up an HTML string and removes HTML tags in blacklist /// </summary> /// <param name="html"></param> /// <returns></returns> public static string SanitizeHtml(string html, params string[] blackList) { var sanitizer = new HtmlSanitizer(); if (blackList != null && blackList.Length > 0) { sanitizer.BlackList.Clear(); foreach (string item in blackList) sanitizer.BlackList.Add(item); } return sanitizer.Sanitize(html); } /// <summary> /// Cleans up an HTML string by removing elements /// on the blacklist and all elements that start /// with onXXX . /// </summary> /// <param name="html"></param> /// <returns></returns> public string Sanitize(string html) { var doc = new HtmlDocument(); doc.LoadHtml(html); SanitizeHtmlNode(doc.DocumentNode); //return doc.DocumentNode.WriteTo(); string output = null; // Use an XmlTextWriter to create self-closing tags using (StringWriter sw = new StringWriter()) { XmlWriter writer = new XmlTextWriter(sw); doc.DocumentNode.WriteTo(writer); output = sw.ToString(); // strip off XML doc header if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(output)) { int at = output.IndexOf("?>"); output = output.Substring(at + 2); } writer.Close(); } doc = null; return output; } private void SanitizeHtmlNode(HtmlNode node) { if (node.NodeType == HtmlNodeType.Element) { // check for blacklist items and remove if (BlackList.Contains(node.Name)) { node.Remove(); return; } // remove CSS Expressions and embedded script links if (node.Name == "style") { if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(node.InnerText)) { if (node.InnerHtml.Contains("expression") || node.InnerHtml.Contains("javascript:")) node.ParentNode.RemoveChild(node); } } // remove script attributes if (node.HasAttributes) { for (int i = node.Attributes.Count - 1; i >= 0; i--) { HtmlAttribute currentAttribute = node.Attributes[i]; var attr = currentAttribute.Name.ToLower(); var val = currentAttribute.Value.ToLower(); span style="background: white; color: green">// remove event handlers if (attr.StartsWith("on")) node.Attributes.Remove(currentAttribute); // remove script links else if ( //(attr == "href" || attr== "src" || attr == "dynsrc" || attr == "lowsrc") && val != null && val.Contains("javascript:")) node.Attributes.Remove(currentAttribute); // Remove CSS Expressions else if (attr == "style" && val != null && val.Contains("expression") || val.Contains("javascript:") || val.Contains("vbscript:")) node.Attributes.Remove(currentAttribute); } } } // Look through child nodes recursively if (node.HasChildNodes) { for (int i = node.ChildNodes.Count - 1; i >= 0; i--) { SanitizeHtmlNode(node.ChildNodes[i]); } } } } } Please note: Use this as a starting point only for your own parsing and review the code for your specific use case! If your needs are less lenient than mine were you can you can make this much stricter by not allowing src and href attributes or CSS links if your HTML doesn't allow it. You can also check links for external URLs and disallow those - lots of options. The code is simple enough to make it easy to extend to fit your use cases more specifically. It's also quite easy to make this code work using a WhiteList approach if you want to go that route. The code above is semi-generic for allowing full featured HTML fragments that only disallow script related content. The Sanitize method walks through each node of the document and then recursively drills into all of its children until the entire document has been traversed. Note that the code here uses an XmlTextWriter to write output - this is done to preserve XHTML style self-closing tags which are otherwise left as non-self-closing tags. The sanitizer code scans for blacklist elements and removes those elements not allowed. Note that the blacklist is configurable either in the instance class as a property or in the static method via the string parameter list. Additionally the code goes through each element's attributes and looks for a host of rules gleaned from some of the XSS cheat sheets listed at the end of the post. Clearly there are a lot more XSS vulnerabilities, but a lot of them apply to ancient browsers (IE6 and versions of Netscape) - many of these glaring holes (like CSS expressions - WTF IE?) have been removed in modern browsers. What a Pain To be honest this is NOT a piece of code that I wanted to write. I think building anything related to XSS is better left to people who have far more knowledge of the topic than I do. Unfortunately, I was unable to find a tool that worked even closely for me, or even provided a working base. For the project I was working on I had no choice and I'm sharing the code here merely as a base line to start with and potentially expand on for specific needs. It's sad that Microsoft Web Protection Library is currently such a train wreck - this is really something that should come from Microsoft as the systems vendor or possibly a third party that provides security tools. Luckily for my application we are dealing with a authenticated and validated users so the user base is fairly well known, and relatively small - this is not a wide open Internet application that's directly public facing. As I mentioned earlier in the post, if I had my way I would simply not allow this type of raw HTML input in the first place, and instead rely on a more controlled HTML input mechanism like MarkDown or even a good HTML Edit control that can provide some limits on what types of input are allowed. Alas in this case I was overridden and we had to go forward and allow *any* raw HTML posted. Sometimes I really feel sad that it's come this far - how many good applications and tools have been thwarted by fear of XSS (or worse) attacks? So many things that could be done *if* we had a more secure browser experience and didn't have to deal with every little script twerp trying to hack into Web pages and obscure browser bugs. So much time wasted building secure apps, so much time wasted by others trying to hack apps… We're a funny species - no other species manages to waste as much time, effort and resources as we humans do :-) Resources Code on GitHub Html Agility Pack XSS Cheat Sheet XSS Prevention Cheat Sheet Microsoft Web Protection Library (AntiXss) StackOverflow Links: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/341872/html-sanitizer-for-net http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2008/06/safe-html-and-xss/ http://code.google.com/p/subsonicforums/source/browse/trunk/SubSonic.Forums.Data/HtmlScrubber.cs?r=61© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2012Posted in Security HTML ASP.NET JavaScript 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 Friday, March 12, 2010

CodePlex Daily Summary for Friday, March 12, 2010New Projects.NET DEPENDENCY INJECTION: Abel Perez Enterprise FrameworkAutodocs - WCF REST Automatic API Documentation Generator: Autodocs is an automatic API documentation generator for .NET applications that use Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) to establish REST API's.BlockBlock: Block Block is a free game. You know Lumines and you will like BlockBlock.C4F XNA ASCII Post-Processing: This is the source code for the Coding4Fun article "XNA Effects – ASCII Art in 3D"ChequePrinter: this is ChequePrinterCompiladores MSIL usando Phoenix (PLP 2008.1 - CIn/UFPE): Este projeto foi feito com o intuito de explorar a plataforma Microsoft Phoenix para a construção de compiladores para MSIL de duas linguagens de E...CRM External View: CRM External View enables more robust control over exposing Microsoft CRM data (in a form of views) for external parties. The solution uses web ser...CS Project2: This is for the projectDotNetNuke IM Module of Facebook Like Messenger: Help you integrate 123 Web Messenger into DotNetNuke, and add a powerful 1-to-1 IM Software named "Facebook Messenger Style Web Chat Bar" at the bo...DotNetNuke® RadPanelBar: DNNRadPanelBar makes it easy to add telerik RadPanelBar functionality to your module or skin. Licensing permits anyone to use the components (incl...DotNetNuke® Skin Blocks: A DotNetNuke Design Challenge skin package submitted to the "Modern Business" category by Armand Datema of Schwingsoft. This skin uses a bit of jQu...Drilltrough and filtering on SSAS-cubes in SSRS: We will describe a technique to create Reporting services (SSRS) reports that use Analysis services (SSAS) cubes as data sources, have a very intu...Ecosystem Diagnosis & Treatment: The Ecosystem DIagnosis & Treatment community provides tools, analyses and applications of the medical model to natural resource problems. EDT sof...ExIf 35: A utility for use by film photographers for keeping track of critical facts about images taken on a roll of film, just as digital cameras do automa...FabricadeTI: Desenvolvimento do framework FabricadeTI.Find and Replace word in the sentences: This program used Java Development Kid 6.0 and i were using HighLighter class. It was completed code with source code and then everybody can use in...Flash Nut: Flash Nut is a flash card program. You can build and review decks of flash cards. The project is a vs2008 wpf application.Free DotNetNuke Chat Module (Popup Mode): With this free DotNetNuke Chat Module (Popup Mode), master will assist to integrate DotNetNuke with 123 Flash Chat seamlessly, and add a popup mode...Free DotNetNuke IM of 123 Web Messenger -- Web-based Friend List: With this FREE application, you could integrate DNN website Database with 123 Web Messenger seamlessly and embed a web-based Friends List into anyw...Free DotNetNuke Live Help Module: With DotNetNuke Live Help Module, integrate 123 Live Help into DotNetNuke website and add Live Chat Button anywhere you like. Let visitors to chat ...G52GRP Videowall: NottinghamHappy Turtle Plugins for BVI :: Repository Based Versioning for Visual Studio: The Happy Turtle project creates plugins for the Build Version Increment Add-In for Visual Studio (BVI). The focus is to automatically version asse...Hasher: Hasher es capaz de generar el hash MD5 y SHA de textos de hasta 100.000 caracteres y ficheros. También te permitirá comprobar dos hash para verifi...Infragistics Silverlight Extended Controls: This project is a group of controls that extend or add functionality to the Infragistics Silverlight control suite. This control requires Infragis...Insert Video Jnr: This is a baby version of my Video plugin, it is intended for Hosted Wordpress blogs only and shouldn't be used with other blog providers.jccc .NET smart framework: jccc .NET smart framework allows the creation of fast connections to MSSQL or MYSQL databases, and the data manipulation by using of c# class's tha...LytScript: 函数式脚本语言Microsoft - DDD NLayerApp .NET 4.0 Example (Microsoft Spain): DDD NLayered App .NET 4.0 Example By Microsoft - Spain Domain Driven Design NLayered App .NET 4.0 Example Implementation Example of our local Arc...mimiKit: Lightweight ASP.NET MVC / Javascript Framework for creating mobile applications PHPWord: With PHPWord you can easily create a Word document with PHP. PHPWord creates docx Files that can include all major word functions like TextElements...Protocol Transition with BizTalk: An example solution the shows how todo Protocol Transition with BizTalk. This also shows you how to create a WCF extension to allow this to happen.Raid Runner: Raid Runner makes it easier to run and manage raid in World of Warcraft. It is a Silverlight application developed in c#SQL Server Authentication Troubleshooter: SQL Server Authentication Troubleshooter is a tool to help investigate a root cause of ‘Login Failed’ error in SQL Server. There could be number of...SuperviseObjects: SuperviseObjects consists of a collection which is derived from ObservableCollection<T>. This collection fires ItemPropertyChanging and ItemPropert...Viuto: Viuto.NET project aims to create a fully track and trace application. It is developed in: - Java & C: Firmware - C#: Parser - Asp.net: Tracki...Zealand IT MSBuild Tasks: Zealand IT MSBuild Tasks is a collection that you cannot do without if you are serious about continous integration. Ever wish you could specify an...New ReleasesASP.NET: ASP.NET MVC 2 RTM: This release contains the source code for ASP.NET MVC 2 RTM as well as the ASP.NET MVC Futures project. The futures project contains features that ...C#Mail: Higuchi.Mail.dll (2010.3.11 ver): Higuchi.Mail.dll at 2010-3-11 version.C#Mail: Higuchi.MailServer.dll (2010.3.11 ver): Higuchi.MailServer.dll at 2010.3.11 version.C4F XNA ASCII Post-Processing: XNA ASCII FPS v1 - Full Version: This is the full, complete example of the XNA ASCII FPS.C4F XNA ASCII Post-Processing: XNA ASCII FPS v1.0 - Base Project: This is the base project to be used by those who plan to follow along the Coding4Fun article.CRM External View: 1.0: Release 1.0DevTreks -social budgeting that improves lives and livelihoods: Social Budgeting Web Software, DevTreks alpha 3c: Alpha 3c upgrades custom/virtual uris (devpacks), temp uris, and zip packages. This is believed to be the first fully functional/performant release.DotNetNuke® RadPanelBar: DNNRadPanelBar 1.0.0: DNNRadPanelBar makes it easy to add telerik RadPanelBar functionality to your module or skin. Licensing permits anyone to use the components (inclu...Drilltrough and filtering on SSAS-cubes in SSRS: Release 1: Release 1ExIf 35: ExIf 35: Daily build of ExIf 35Family Tree Analyzer: Version 1.0.3.0: Version 1.0.3.0 Added options to check for updates on load and on help menu Disable use of US census for now until dealt with years being differen...Family Tree Analyzer: Version 1.0.4.0: Version 1.0.4.0 Added support for display of Ahnenfatel numbers Added filter to hide individuals from Lost Cousins report that have been flagged a...Flash Nut: Flash Nut 1.0 Setup: Flash Nut SetupFluent Validation for .NET: 1.2 RC: This is the release candidate for FluentValidation 1.2. If no bugs are found within the next couple of weeks, then this will become the 1.2 Final b...Free DotNetNuke Chat Module (Popup Mode): Download DNN Chat Module (Popup Mode)+Source Code: Feel free to download DotNetNuke Chat Module (Popup Mode), integrating DotNetNuke with 123 Flash Chat Software, and add a free popup mode flash cha...Free DotNetNuke Live Help Module: Download DNN Live Support Module and Source Code: In Readme file, there are detailed Installation and Integration Manual for you. This module is compatible with DotNetNuke v5.x.Happy Turtle Plugins for BVI :: Repository Based Versioning for Visual Studio: Happy Turtle 1.0.44927: This is the first release of the SVN based version incrementor. How To InstallMake sure that Build Version Increment v2.2.10065.1524 or newer is i...Hasher: 1.0: Versión inicial de la aplicación: Obtención de hash MD5 y SHA. Codificación en tiempo real de textos de hasta 100.000 caracteres. Codificación ...Jamolina: PhotosynthDemo: PhotosynthDemoMapWindow GIS: MapWindow 6.0 msi (March 11): This fixes an PixelToProj problem for the Extended Buffer case, as well as adding fixes to the WKBFeatureReader to fix an X,Y reversal and some ext...Math.NET Numerics: 2010.3.11.291 Build: Latest alpha buildMicrosoft - DDD NLayerApp .NET 4.0 Example (Microsoft Spain): V0.5 - N-Layer DDD Sample App: Required Software (Microsoft Base Software needed for Development environment) Unity Application Block 1.2 - October 2008 http://www.microsoft.com/...MiniTwitter: 1.09.2: MiniTwitter 1.09.2 更新内容修正タイムラインを削除すると落ちるバグを修正稀にタイムラインのスクロールが出来ないバグを修正Nestoria.NET: Nestoria.NET 0.8: Provides access to the Nestoria API. Documentation contains a basic getting started guide. Please visit Darren Edge's blog for ongoing developmen...Pod Thrower: Version 1.0: Here is version 1.0. It has all the features I was looking to do in it. Please let me know if you use this and if you would like any changes.SharePoint Ad Rotator: SPAdRotator 2.0 Beta: This new release of the Ad Rotator contains many new features. One major new feature is that jQuery has been added to do image rotation without hav...SharePoint Objects: Democode Ton Stegeman: These download contains sample code for some SharePoint 2007 blog posts: TST.Themes_Build20100311.zip contains a feature receiver that registers Sh...SharePoint Taxonomy Extensions: SharePoint Taxonomy Extensions 1.2: Make Taxonomy Extensions useable in every list type. Not only in document libraries.SharePoint Video Player Web Part & SharePoint Video Library: Version 3.0.0: Absolutely killer feature - installing multiple players on a page without any loss of performance.SilverLight Interface for Mapserver: SLMapViewer v. 1.0: SLMapviewer sample application version 1.0. This new release includes the following enhancements: Silverlight 3.0 native Added a new init parame...Spark View Engine: Spark v1.1: Changes since RC1Built against ASP.NET MVC 2 RTMSPSS .NET interop library: 2.0: This new version supports SPSS 15, and includes spssio32.dll and other native .dll dependencies so that it works out of the box without SPSS being ...stefvanhooijdonk.com: SharePoint2010.ProfilePicturesLoader: So, with the help of Reflector, I wrote a small tool that would import all our profile pictures and update the user profiles. http://wp.me/pMnlQ-6G SuperviseObjects: SuperviseObjects 1.0: First releaseTortoiseSVN Addin for Visual Studio: TortoiseSVN Addin 1.0.5: Feature: Visual Studio/svn action synchronization on Item in Solution explorer like add, move, delete and rename. Note: Move action does not rememb...VCC: Latest build, v2.1.30311.0: Automatic drop of latest buildVivoSocial: VivoSocial 7.0.4: Business Management ■This release fixes a Could not load type error on the main view of the module. Groups ■Group requests were failing in some i...WikiPlex – a Regex Wiki Engine: WikiPlex 1.3: Info: Official Version: 1.3.0.215 | Full Release Notes Documentation - This new documentation includes Full Markup Guide with Examples Articles ...Zealand IT MSBuild Tasks: Zealand IT MSBuild Tasks: Initial beta release of Zealand IT MSBuild Tasks. Contains the following tasks: RunAs - Same as Exec task, but provides parameters for impersonat...ZoomBarPlus: V1 (Beta): This is the initial release. It should be considered a beta test version as it has not been tested for very long on my device.Most Popular ProjectsMetaSharpWBFS ManagerRawrAJAX Control ToolkitMicrosoft SQL Server Product Samples: DatabaseSilverlight ToolkitWindows Presentation Foundation (WPF)ASP.NET Ajax LibraryASP.NETMicrosoft SQL Server Community & SamplesMost Active ProjectsUmbraco CMSRawrN2 CMSBlogEngine.NETFasterflect - A Fast and Simple Reflection APIjQuery Library for SharePoint Web Servicespatterns & practices – Enterprise LibraryFarseer Physics EngineCaliburn: An Application Framework for WPF and SilverlightSharePoint Team-Mailer

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Quick guide to Oracle IRM 11g: Server configuration

- by Simon Thorpe

Quick guide to Oracle IRM 11g index Welcome to the second article in this quick quide to Oracle IRM 11g. Hopefully you've just finished the first article which takes you through deploying the software onto a Linux server. This article walks you through the configuration of this new service and contains a subset of information from the official documentation and is focused on installing the server on Oracle Enterprise Linux. If you are planning to deploy on a non-Linux platform, you will need to reference the documentation for platform specific information. Contents Introduction Create IRM WebLogic Domain Starting the Admin Server and initial configuration Introduction In the previous article the database was prepared, the WebLogic Application Server installed and the files required for an IRM server installed. But we don't actually have a configured system yet. We need to now create a WebLogic Domain in which the IRM server will run, then configure some of the settings and crypography so that we can create a context and be ready to seal some content and test it all works. This article doesn't cover the configuration of SSL communication from client to server. This is quite a big topic and a separate article has been dedicated for this area. In these articles I also use the hostname, irm.company.internal to reference the IRM server and later on use the hostname irm.company.com in reference to the public facing service. Create IRM WebLogic Domain First step is creating the WebLogic domain, in a console switch to the newly created IRM installation folder as shown below and we will run the domain configuration wizard. [oracle@irm /]$ cd /oracle/middleware/Oracle_IRM/common/bin [oracle@irm bin]$ ./config.sh First thing the wizard will ask is if you wish to create a new or extend an existing domain. This guide is creating a standalone system so you should select to create a new domain. Next step is to choose what technologies from the Oracle ECM Suite you wish this domain to host. You are only interested in selecting the option "Oracle Information Rights Management". When you select this check box you will notice that it also selects "Oracle Enterprise Manager" and "Oracle JRF" as these are dependencies of the IRM server. You then need to specify where you wish to place the domain files. I usually just change the domain name from base_domain or irm_domain and leave the others with their defaults. Now the domain will have a single user initially and by default this user is called "weblogic". I usually change this account name to "sysadmin" or "administrator", but in this guide lets just accept the default. With respects to the next dialog, again for eval or dev reasons, leave the server startup mode as development. The JDK should also be automatically detected. We now need to provide details of the database. This guide is using the Oracle 11gR2 database and the settings I used can be seen in the image to the right. There is a lot of configuration that can now be done for the admin server, any managed servers and where the deployments reside. In this guide I am leaving all of these to their defaults so do not check any of the boxes. However I will on this blog be detailing later how you can go back and setup things such as automated startup of an IRM server which require changes to these default settings. But for now, lets leave it all alone and just click next. Now we are ready to install. Note that from this dialog you can scroll the left window and see there are going to be two servers created from the defaults. The AdminServer which is where you modify settings for the WebLogic Server and also hosts the Oracle Enterprise Manager for IRM which allows to monitor the IRM service performance and also make service related settings (which we shortly do below) and the IRM_server1 which hosts the actual IRM services themselves. So go right ahead and hit create, the process is pretty quick and usually under 10 minutes. When the domain creation ends, it will give you the URL to the admin server. It's worth noting this down and the URL is usually; http://irm.company.internal:7001 Starting the Admin Server and initial configuration First thing to do is to start the WebLogic Admin server and review the initial IRM server settings. In this guide we are going to run the Admin server and IRM server in console windows, in another article I will discuss running these as background services. So for now, start a console and run the Admin server by doing the following. cd /oracle/middleware/user_projects/domains/irm_domain/ ./startWebLogic.sh Wait for the server to start, you are looking for the following line to be reported in the console window. <BEA-00360><Server started in RUNNING mode> First step is configuring the IRM service via Enterprise Manager. Now that the Admin server is running you can point a browser at http://irm.company.internal:7001/em. Login with the username and password you supplied when you created the domain. In Enterprise Manager the IRM service administrator is able to make server wide configuration. However finding where to access the pages with these settings can be a bit of a challenge. After logging in on the left you'll see a tree containing elements of the Enterprise Manager farm Farm_irm_domain. Open up Content Management, then Information Rights Management and finally select the IRM node. On the right then select the IRM menu item, navigate to the Administration section and now we have four options, for now, we are just going to look at General Settings. The image on the right proves that a picture is worth a thousand words (or 113 in this case). The General Settings page allows you to set the cryptographic algorithms used for protecting sealed content. Unless you have a burning need to increase the key lengths or you need to comply to a regulation or government mandate, AES192 is a good start. You can change this later on without worry. The most important setting here we need to make is the Server URL. In this blog article I go over why this URL is so important, basically every single piece of content you protect with Oracle IRM is going to have this URL embedded in it, so if it's wrong or unresolvable, then nobody can open the secured documents. Note that in our environment we have yet to do any SSL configuration of the service. If you intend to build a server without SSL, then use http as the protocol instead of https. But I would recommend using SSL and setting this up is described in the next article. I would also probably up the device count from 1 to 3. This means that any user can retrieve rights to access content onto 3 computers at any one time. The default of 1 doesn't really make sense in development, evaluation nor even production environments and my experience is that 3 is a better number. Next step is to create the keystore for the IRM server. When a classification (called a context) is created, Oracle IRM generates a unique set of symmetric keys which are used to secure the content itself. These keys are then encrypted with a set of "wrapper" asymmetric cryptography keys which are stored externally to the server either in a Java Key Store or a HSM. These keys need to be generated and the following shows my commands and the resulting output. I have greyed out the responses from the commands so you can see the input a little easier. [oracle@irmsrv ~]$ cd /oracle/middleware/wlserver_10.3/server/bin/ [oracle@irmsrv bin]$ ./setWLSEnv.sh CLASSPATH=/oracle/middleware/patch_wls1033/profiles/default/sys_manifest_classpath/weblogic_patch.jar:/oracle/middleware/patch_ocp353/profiles/default/sys_manifest_classpath/weblogic_patch.jar:/usr/java/jdk1.6.0_18/lib/tools.jar:/oracle/middleware/wlserver_10.3/server/lib/weblogic_sp.jar:/oracle/middleware/wlserver_10.3/server/lib/weblogic.jar:/oracle/middleware/modules/features/weblogic.server.modules_10.3.3.0.jar:/oracle/middleware/wlserver_10.3/server/lib/webservices.jar:/oracle/middleware/modules/org.apache.ant_1.7.1/lib/ant-all.jar:/oracle/middleware/modules/net.sf.antcontrib_1.1.0.0_1-0b2/lib/ant-contrib.jar: PATH=/oracle/middleware/wlserver_10.3/server/bin:/oracle/middleware/modules/org.apache.ant_1.7.1/bin:/usr/java/jdk1.6.0_18/jre/bin:/usr/java/jdk1.6.0_18/bin:/usr/kerberos/bin:/usr/local/bin:/bin:/usr/bin:/home/oracle/bin Your environment has been set. [oracle@irmsrv bin]$ cd /oracle/middleware/user_projects/domains/irm_domain/config/fmwconfig/ [oracle@irmsrv fmwconfig]$ keytool -genkeypair -alias oracle.irm.wrap -keyalg RSA -keysize 2048 -keystore irm.jks Enter keystore password: Re-enter new password: What is your first and last name? [Unknown]: Simon Thorpe What is the name of your organizational unit? [Unknown]: Oracle What is the name of your organization? [Unknown]: Oracle What is the name of your City or Locality? [Unknown]: San Francisco What is the name of your State or Province? [Unknown]: CA What is the two-letter country code for this unit? [Unknown]: US Is CN=Simon Thorpe, OU=Oracle, O=Oracle, L=San Francisco, ST=CA, C=US correct? [no]: yes Enter key password for (RETURN if same as keystore password): At this point we now have an irm.jks in the directory /oracle/middleware/user_projects/domains/irm_domain/config/fmwconfig. The reason we store it here is this folder would be backed up as part of a domain backup. As with any cryptographic technology, DO NOT LOSE THESE KEYS OR THIS KEY STORE. Once you've sealed content against a context, the keys will be wrapped with these keys, lose these keys, and you can't get access to any secured content, pretty important. Now we've got the keys created, we need to go back to the IRM Enterprise Manager and set the location of the key store. Going back to the General Settings page in Enterprise Manager scroll down to Keystore Settings. Leave the type as JKS but change the location to; /oracle/Middleware/user_projects/domains/irm_domain/config/fmwconfig/irm.jks and hit Apply. The final step with regards to the key store is we need to tell the server what the password is for the Java Key Store so that it can be opened and the keys accessed. Once more fire up a console window and run these commands (again i've greyed out the clutter to see the commands easier). You will see dummy passed into the commands, this is because the command asks for a username, but in this instance we don't use one, hence the value dummy is passed and it isn't used. [oracle@irmsrv fmwconfig]$ cd /oracle/middleware/Oracle_IRM/common/bin/ [oracle@irmsrv bin]$ ./wlst.sh ... lots of settings fly by... Welcome to WebLogic Server Administration Scripting Shell Type help() for help on available commands wls:/offline>connect('weblogic','password','t3://irmsrv.us.oracle.com:7001') Connecting to t3://irmsrv.us.oracle.com:7001 with userid weblogic ... Successfully connected to Admin Server 'AdminServer' that belongs to domain 'irm_domain'. Warning: An insecure protocol was used to connect to the server. To ensure on-the-wire security, the SSL port or Admin port should be used instead. wls:/irm_domain/serverConfig>createCred("IRM","keystore:irm.jks","dummy","password") Location changed to domainRuntime tree. This is a read-only tree with DomainMBean as the root. For more help, use help(domainRuntime)wls:/irm_domain/serverConfig>createCred("IRM","key:irm.jks:oracle.irm.wrap","dummy","password") Already in Domain Runtime Tree wls:/irm_domain/serverConfig> At last we are now ready to fire up the IRM server itself. The domain creation created a managed server called IRM_server1 and we need to start this, use the following commands in a new console window. cd /oracle/middleware/user_projects/domains/irm_domain/bin/ ./startManagedWebLogic.sh IRM_server1 This will start up the server in the console, unlike the Admin server, you need to provide the username and password for the service to start. Enter in your weblogic username and password when prompted. You can change this behavior by putting the password into a boot.properties file, read more about this in the WebLogic Server documentation. Once running, wait until you see the line; <Notice><WebLogicServer><BEA-000360><Server started in RUNNING mode> At this point we can now login to the Oracle IRM Management Website at the URL. http://irm.company.internal:1600/irm_rights/ The server is just configured for HTTP at the moment, no SSL involved. Just want to ensure we can get a working system up and running. You should now see a login like the image on the right and you can now login using your weblogic username and password. The next article in this guide goes over adding SSL and now testing your server by actually adding a few users, sealing some content and opening this content as a user.

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What’s new in ASP.NET 4.0: Core Features

- by Rick Strahl

Microsoft released the .NET Runtime 4.0 and with it comes a brand spanking new version of ASP.NET – version 4.0 – which provides an incremental set of improvements to an already powerful platform. .NET 4.0 is a full release of the .NET Framework, unlike version 3.5, which was merely a set of library updates on top of the .NET Framework version 2.0. Because of this full framework revision, there has been a welcome bit of consolidation of assemblies and configuration settings. The full runtime version change to 4.0 also means that you have to explicitly pick version 4.0 of the runtime when you create a new Application Pool in IIS, unlike .NET 3.5, which actually requires version 2.0 of the runtime. In this first of two parts I'll take a look at some of the changes in the core ASP.NET runtime. In the next edition I'll go over improvements in Web Forms and Visual Studio. Core Engine Features Most of the high profile improvements in ASP.NET have to do with Web Forms, but there are a few gems in the core runtime that should make life easier for ASP.NET developers. The following list describes some of the things I've found useful among the new features. Clean web.config Files Are Back! If you've been using ASP.NET 3.5, you probably have noticed that the web.config file has turned into quite a mess of configuration settings between all the custom handler and module mappings for the various web server versions. Part of the reason for this mess is that .NET 3.5 is a collection of add-on components running on top of the .NET Runtime 2.0 and so almost all of the new features of .NET 3.5 where essentially introduced as custom modules and handlers that had to be explicitly configured in the config file. Because the core runtime didn't rev with 3.5, all those configuration options couldn't be moved up to other configuration files in the system chain. With version 4.0 a consolidation was possible, and the result is a much simpler web.config file by default. A default empty ASP.NET 4.0 Web Forms project looks like this: <?xml version="1.0"?> <configuration> <system.web> <compilation debug="true" targetFramework="4.0" /> </system.web> </configuration> Need I say more? Configuration Transformation Files to Manage Configurations and Application Packaging ASP.NET 4.0 introduces the ability to create multi-target configuration files. This means it's possible to create a single configuration file that can be transformed based on relatively simple replacement rules using a Visual Studio and WebDeploy provided XSLT syntax. The idea is that you can create a 'master' configuration file and then create customized versions of this master configuration file by applying some relatively simplistic search and replace, add or remove logic to specific elements and attributes in the original file. To give you an idea, here's the example code that Visual Studio creates for a default web.Release.config file, which replaces a connection string, removes the debug attribute and replaces the CustomErrors section: <?xml version="1.0"?> <configuration xmlns:xdt="http://schemas.microsoft.com/XML-Document-Transform"> <connectionStrings> <add name="MyDB" connectionString="Data Source=ReleaseSQLServer;Initial Catalog=MyReleaseDB;Integrated Security=True" xdt:Transform="SetAttributes" xdt:Locator="Match(name)"/> </connectionStrings> <system.web> <compilation xdt:Transform="RemoveAttributes(debug)" /> <customErrors defaultRedirect="GenericError.htm" mode="RemoteOnly" xdt:Transform="Replace"> <error statusCode="500" redirect="InternalError.htm"/> </customErrors> </system.web> </configuration> You can see the XSL transform syntax that drives this functionality. Basically, only the elements listed in the override file are matched and updated – all the rest of the original web.config file stays intact. Visual Studio 2010 supports this functionality directly in the project system so it's easy to create and maintain these customized configurations in the project tree. Once you're ready to publish your application, you can then use the Publish <yourWebApplication> option on the Build menu which allows publishing to disk, via FTP or to a Web Server using Web Deploy. You can also create a deployment package as a .zip file which can be used by the WebDeploy tool to configure and install the application. You can manually run the Web Deploy tool or use the IIS Manager to install the package on the server or other machine. You can find out more about WebDeploy and Packaging here: http://tinyurl.com/2anxcje. Improved Routing Routing provides a relatively simple way to create clean URLs with ASP.NET by associating a template URL path and routing it to a specific ASP.NET HttpHandler. Microsoft first introduced routing with ASP.NET MVC and then they integrated routing with a basic implementation in the core ASP.NET engine via a separate ASP.NET routing assembly. In ASP.NET 4.0, the process of using routing functionality gets a bit easier. First, routing is now rolled directly into System.Web, so no extra assembly reference is required in your projects to use routing. The RouteCollection class now includes a MapPageRoute() method that makes it easy to route to any ASP.NET Page requests without first having to implement an IRouteHandler implementation. It would have been nice if this could have been extended to serve *any* handler implementation, but unfortunately for anything but a Page derived handlers you still will have to implement a custom IRouteHandler implementation. ASP.NET Pages now include a RouteData collection that will contain route information. Retrieving route data is now a lot easier by simply using this.RouteData.Values["routeKey"] where the routeKey is the value specified in the route template (i.e., "users/{userId}" would use Values["userId"]). The Page class also has a GetRouteUrl() method that you can use to create URLs with route data values rather than hardcoding the URL: <%= this.GetRouteUrl("users",new { userId="ricks" }) %> You can also use the new Expression syntax using <%$RouteUrl %> to accomplish something similar, which can be easier to embed into Page or MVC View code: <a runat="server" href='<%$RouteUrl:RouteName=user, id=ricks %>'>Visit User</a> Finally, the Response object also includes a new RedirectToRoute() method to build a route url for redirection without hardcoding the URL. Response.RedirectToRoute("users", new { userId = "ricks" }); All of these routines are helpers that have been integrated into the core ASP.NET engine to make it easier to create routes and retrieve route data, which hopefully will result in more people taking advantage of routing in ASP.NET. To find out more about the routing improvements you can check out Dan Maharry's blog which has a couple of nice blog entries on this subject: http://tinyurl.com/37trutj and http://tinyurl.com/39tt5w5. Session State Improvements Session state is an often used and abused feature in ASP.NET and version 4.0 introduces a few enhancements geared towards making session state more efficient and to minimize at least some of the ill effects of overuse. The first improvement affects out of process session state, which is typically used in web farm environments or for sites that store application sensitive data that must survive AppDomain restarts (which in my opinion is just about any application). When using OutOfProc session state, ASP.NET serializes all the data in the session statebag into a blob that gets carried over the network and stored either in the State server or SQL Server via the Session provider. Version 4.0 provides some improvement in this serialization of the session data by offering an enableCompression option on the web.Config <Session> section, which forces the serialized session state to be compressed. Depending on the type of data that is being serialized, this compression can reduce the size of the data travelling over the wire by as much as a third. It works best on string data, but can also reduce the size of binary data. In addition, ASP.NET 4.0 now offers a way to programmatically turn session state on or off as part of the request processing queue. In prior versions, the only way to specify whether session state is available is by implementing a marker interface on the HTTP handler implementation. In ASP.NET 4.0, you can now turn session state on and off programmatically via HttpContext.Current.SetSessionStateBehavior() as part of the ASP.NET module pipeline processing as long as it occurs before the AquireRequestState pipeline event. Output Cache Provider Output caching in ASP.NET has been a very useful but potentially memory intensive feature. The default OutputCache mechanism works through in-memory storage that persists generated output based on various lifetime related parameters. While this works well enough for many intended scenarios, it also can quickly cause runaway memory consumption as the cache fills up and serves many variations of pages on your site. ASP.NET 4.0 introduces a provider model for the OutputCache module so it becomes possible to plug-in custom storage strategies for cached pages. One of the goals also appears to be to consolidate some of the different cache storage mechanisms used in .NET in general to a generic Windows AppFabric framework in the future, so various different mechanisms like OutputCache, the non-Page specific ASP.NET cache and possibly even session state eventually can use the same caching engine for storage of persisted data both in memory and out of process scenarios. For developers, the OutputCache provider feature means that you can now extend caching on your own by implementing a custom Cache provider based on the System.Web.Caching.OutputCacheProvider class. You can find more info on creating an Output Cache provider in Gunnar Peipman's blog at: http://tinyurl.com/2vt6g7l. Response.RedirectPermanent ASP.NET 4.0 includes features to issue a permanent redirect that issues as an HTTP 301 Moved Permanently response rather than the standard 302 Redirect respond. In pre-4.0 versions you had to manually create your permanent redirect by setting the Status and Status code properties – Response.RedirectPermanent() makes this operation more obvious and discoverable. There's also a Response.RedirectToRoutePermanent() which provides permanent redirection of route Urls. Preloading of Applications ASP.NET 4.0 provides a new feature to preload ASP.NET applications on startup, which is meant to provide a more consistent startup experience. If your application has a lengthy startup cycle it can appear very slow to serve data to clients while the application is warming up and loading initial resources. So rather than serve these startup requests slowly in ASP.NET 4.0, you can force the application to initialize itself first before even accepting requests for processing. This feature works only on IIS 7.5 (Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2) and works in combination with IIS. You can set up a worker process in IIS 7.5 to always be running, which starts the Application Pool worker process immediately. ASP.NET 4.0 then allows you to specify site-specific settings by setting the serverAutoStartEnabled on a particular site along with an optional serviceAutoStartProvider class that can be used to receive "startup events" when the application starts up. This event in turn can be used to configure the application and optionally pre-load cache data and other information required by the app on startup. The configuration settings need to be made in applicationhost.config: <sites> <site name="WebApplication2" id="1"> <application path="/" serviceAutoStartEnabled="true" serviceAutoStartProvider="PreWarmup" /> </site> </sites> <serviceAutoStartProviders> <add name="PreWarmup" type="PreWarmupProvider,MyAssembly" /> </serviceAutoStartProviders> Hooking up a warm up provider is optional so you can omit the provider definition and reference. If you do define it here's what it looks like: public class PreWarmupProvider System.Web.Hosting.IProcessHostPreloadClient { public void Preload(string[] parameters) { // initialization for app } } This code fires and while it's running, ASP.NET/IIS will hold requests from hitting the pipeline. So until this code completes the application will not start taking requests. The idea is that you can perform any pre-loading of resources and cache values so that the first request will be ready to perform at optimal performance level without lag. Runtime Performance Improvements According to Microsoft, there have also been a number of invisible performance improvements in the internals of the ASP.NET runtime that should make ASP.NET 4.0 applications run more efficiently and use less resources. These features come without any change requirements in applications and are virtually transparent, except that you get the benefits by updating to ASP.NET 4.0. Summary The core feature set changes are minimal which continues a tradition of small incremental changes to the ASP.NET runtime. ASP.NET has been proven as a solid platform and I'm actually rather happy to see that most of the effort in this release went into stability, performance and usability improvements rather than a massive amount of new features. The new functionality added in 4.0 is minimal but very useful. A lot of people are still running pure .NET 2.0 applications these days and have stayed off of .NET 3.5 for some time now. I think that version 4.0 with its full .NET runtime rev and assembly and configuration consolidation will make an attractive platform for developers to update to. If you're a Web Forms developer in particular, ASP.NET 4.0 includes a host of new features in the Web Forms engine that are significant enough to warrant a quick move to .NET 4.0. I'll cover those changes in my next column. Until then, I suggest you give ASP.NET 4.0 a spin and see for yourself how the new features can help you out. © Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2010Posted in ASP.NET

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Adding Unobtrusive Validation To MVCContrib Fluent Html

- by srkirkland

ASP.NET MVC 3 includes a new unobtrusive validation strategy that utilizes HTML5 data-* attributes to decorate form elements. Using a combination of jQuery validation and an unobtrusive validation adapter script that comes with MVC 3, those attributes are then turned into client side validation rules. A Quick Introduction to Unobtrusive Validation To quickly show how this works in practice, assume you have the following Order.cs class (think Northwind) [If you are familiar with unobtrusive validation in MVC 3 you can skip to the next section]: public class Order : DomainObject { [DataType(DataType.Date)] public virtual DateTime OrderDate { get; set; } [Required] [StringLength(12)] public virtual string ShipAddress { get; set; } [Required] public virtual Customer OrderedBy { get; set; } } .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } Note the System.ComponentModel.DataAnnotations attributes, which provide the validation and metadata information used by ASP.NET MVC 3 to determine how to render out these properties. Now let’s assume we have a form which can edit this Order class, specifically let’s look at the ShipAddress property: @Html.LabelFor(x => x.Order.ShipAddress) @Html.EditorFor(x => x.Order.ShipAddress) @Html.ValidationMessageFor(x => x.Order.ShipAddress) .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } Now the Html.EditorFor() method is smart enough to look at the ShipAddress attributes and write out the necessary unobtrusive validation html attributes. Note we could have used Html.TextBoxFor() or even Html.TextBox() and still retained the same results. If we view source on the input box generated by the Html.EditorFor() call, we get the following: <input type="text" value="Rua do Paço, 67" name="Order.ShipAddress" id="Order_ShipAddress" data-val-required="The ShipAddress field is required." data-val-length-max="12" data-val-length="The field ShipAddress must be a string with a maximum length of 12." data-val="true" class="text-box single-line input-validation-error"> .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } As you can see, we have data-val-* attributes for both required and length, along with the proper error messages and additional data as necessary (in this case, we have the length-max=”12”). And of course, if we try to submit the form with an invalid value, we get an error on the client: Working with MvcContrib’s Fluent Html The MvcContrib project offers a fluent interface for creating Html elements which I find very expressive and useful, especially when it comes to creating select lists. Let’s look at a few quick examples: @this.TextBox(x => x.FirstName).Class("required").Label("First Name:") @this.MultiSelect(x => x.UserId).Options(ViewModel.Users) @this.CheckBox("enabled").LabelAfter("Enabled").Title("Click to enable.").Styles(vertical_align => "middle") @(this.Select("Order.OrderedBy").Options(Model.Customers, x => x.Id, x => x.CompanyName) .Selected(Model.Order.OrderedBy != null ? Model.Order.OrderedBy.Id : "") .FirstOption(null, "--Select A Company--") .HideFirstOptionWhen(Model.Order.OrderedBy != null) .Label("Ordered By:")) .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } These fluent html helpers create the normal html you would expect, and I think they make life a lot easier and more readable when dealing with complex markup or select list data models (look ma: no anonymous objects for creating class names!). Of course, the problem we have now is that MvcContrib’s fluent html helpers don’t know about ASP.NET MVC 3’s unobtrusive validation attributes and thus don’t take part in client validation on your page. This is not ideal, so I wrote a quick helper method to extend fluent html with the knowledge of what unobtrusive validation attributes to include when they are rendered. Extending MvcContrib’s Fluent Html Before posting the code, there are just a few things you need to know. The first is that all Fluent Html elements implement the IElement interface (MvcContrib.FluentHtml.Elements.IElement), and the second is that the base System.Web.Mvc.HtmlHelper has been extended with a method called GetUnobtrusiveValidationAttributes which we can use to determine the necessary attributes to include. With this knowledge we can make quick work of extending fluent html: public static class FluentHtmlExtensions { public static T IncludeUnobtrusiveValidationAttributes<T>(this T element, HtmlHelper htmlHelper) where T : MvcContrib.FluentHtml.Elements.IElement { IDictionary<string, object> validationAttributes = htmlHelper .GetUnobtrusiveValidationAttributes(element.GetAttr("name")); foreach (var validationAttribute in validationAttributes) { element.SetAttr(validationAttribute.Key, validationAttribute.Value); } return element; } } .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } The code is pretty straight forward – basically we use a passed HtmlHelper to get a list of validation attributes for the current element and then add each of the returned attributes to the element to be rendered. The Extension In Action Now let’s get back to the earlier ShipAddress example and see what we’ve accomplished. First we will use a fluent html helper to render out the ship address text input (this is the ‘before’ case): @this.TextBox("Order.ShipAddress").Label("Ship Address:").Class("class-name") .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } And the resulting HTML: <label id="Order_ShipAddress_Label" for="Order_ShipAddress">Ship Address:</label> <input type="text" value="Rua do Paço, 67" name="Order.ShipAddress" id="Order_ShipAddress" class="class-name"> Now let’s do the same thing except here we’ll use the newly written extension method: @this.TextBox("Order.ShipAddress").Label("Ship Address:") .Class("class-name").IncludeUnobtrusiveValidationAttributes(Html) .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } And the resulting HTML: <label id="Order_ShipAddress_Label" for="Order_ShipAddress">Ship Address:</label> <input type="text" value="Rua do Paço, 67" name="Order.ShipAddress" id="Order_ShipAddress" data-val-required="The ShipAddress field is required." data-val-length-max="12" data-val-length="The field ShipAddress must be a string with a maximum length of 12." data-val="true" class="class-name"> .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } Excellent! Now we can continue to use unobtrusive validation and have the flexibility to use ASP.NET MVC’s Html helpers or MvcContrib’s fluent html helpers interchangeably, and every element will participate in client side validation. Wrap Up Overall I’m happy with this solution, although in the best case scenario MvcContrib would know about unobtrusive validation attributes and include them automatically (of course if it is enabled in the web.config file). I know that MvcContrib allows you to author global behaviors, but that requires changing the base class of your views, which I am not willing to do. Enjoy!

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Using an alternate search platform in Commerce Server 2009

- by Lewis Benge

Although Microsoft Commerce Server 2009's architecture is built upon Microsoft SQL Server, and has the full power of the SQL Full Text Indexing Search Platform, there are time however when you may require a richer or alternate search platform. One of these scenarios if when you want to implement a faceted (refinement) search into your site, which provides dynamic refinements based on the search results dataset. Faceted search is becoming popular in most online retail environments as a way of providing an enhanced user experience when browsing a larger catalogue. This is powerful for two reasons, firstly with a traditional search it is down to a user to think of a search term suitable for the product they are trying to find. This typically will not return similar products or help in any way to refine a larger dataset. Faceted searches on the other hand provide a comprehensive list of product properties, grouped together by similarity to help the user narrow down the results returned, as the user progressively restricts the search criteria by selecting additional criteria to search again, these facets needs to continually refresh. The whole experience allows users to explore alternate brands, price-ranges, or find products they hadn't initially thought of or where looking for in a bid to enhance cross sell in the retail environment. The second advantage of this type of search from a business perspective is also to harvest the search result to start to profile your user. Even though anonymous users may routinely visit your site, and will not necessarily register or complete a transaction to build up marketing data- profiling, you can still achieve the same result by recording search facets used within the search sequence. Below is a faceted search scenario generated from eBay using the search term "server". By creating a search profile of clicking through Computer & Networking -> Servers -> Dell - > New and recording this information against my user profile you can start to predict with a lot more certainty what types of products I am interested in. This will allow you to apply shopping-cart analysis against your search data and provide great cross-sale or advertising opportunity, or personalise the user experience based on your prediction of what the user may be interested in. This type of search is extremely beneficial in e-Commerce environments but achieving it out of the box with Commerce Server and SQL Full Text indexing can be challenging. In many deployments it is often easier to use an alternate search platform such as Microsoft's FAST, Apache SOLR, or Endecca, however you still want these products to integrate natively into Commerce Server to ensure that up-to-date inventory information is presented, profile information is generated, and you provide a consistant API. To do so we make the most of the Commerce Server extensibilty points called operation sequence components. In this example I will be talking about Apache Solr hosted on Apache Tomcat, in this specific example I have used the SolrNet C# library to interface to the Java platform. Also I am not going to talk about Solr configuration of indexing – but in a production envionrment this would typically happen by using Powershell to call the Commerce Server management webservice to export your catalog as XML, apply an XSLT transform to the file to make it conform to SOLR and use a simple HTTP Post to send it to the search enginge for indexing. Essentially a sequance component is a step in a serial workflow used to call a data repository (which in most cases is usually the Commerce Server pipelines or databases) and map to and from a Commerce Entity object whilst enforcing any business rules. So the first step in the process is to add a new class library to your existing Commerce Server site. You will need to use a new library as Sequence Components will need to be strongly named to be deployed. Once you are inside of your new project, add a new class file and add a reference to the Microsoft.Commerce.Providers, Microsoft.Commerce.Contracts and the Microsoft.Commerce.Broker assemblies. Now make your new class derive from the base object Microsoft.Commerce.Providers.Components.OperationSequanceComponent and overide the ExecuteQueryMethod. Your screen will then look something similar ot this: As all we are doing on this component is conducting a search we are only interested in the ExecuteQuery method. This method accepts three arguments, queryOperation, operationCache, and response. The queryOperation will be the object in which we receive our search parameters, the cache allows access to the Commerce Server cache allowing us to store regulary accessed information, and the response object is the object which we will return the result of our search upon. Inside this method is simply where we are going to inject our logic for our third party search platform. As I am not going to explain the inner-workings of actually making a SOLR call, I'll simply provide the sample code here. I would highly recommend however looking at the SolrNet wiki as they have some great explinations of how the API works. What you will find however is that there are some further extensions required when attempting to integrate a custom search provider. Firstly you out of the box the CommerceQueryOperation you will receive into the method when conducting a search against a catalog is specifically geared towards a SQL Full Text Search with properties such as a Where clause. To make the operation you receive more relevant you will need to create another class, this time derived from Microsoft.Commerce.Contract.Messages.CommerceSearchCriteria and within this you need to detail the properties you will require to allow you to submit as parameters to the SOLR search API. My exmaple looks like this: [DataContract(Namespace = "http://schemas.microsoft.com/microsoft-multi-channel-commerce-foundation/types/2008/03")] public class CommerceCatalogSolrSearch : CommerceSearchCriteria { private Dictionary<string, string> _facetQueries; public CommerceCatalogSolrSearch() { _facetQueries = new Dictionary<String, String>(); } public Dictionary<String, String> FacetQueries { get { return _facetQueries; } set { _facetQueries = value; } } public String SearchPhrase{ get; set; } public int PageIndex { get; set; } public int PageSize { get; set; } public IEnumerable<String> Facets { get; set; } public string Sort { get; set; } public new int FirstItemIndex { get { return (PageIndex-1)*PageSize; } } public int LastItemIndex { get { return FirstItemIndex + PageSize; } } } To allow you to construct a CommerceQueryOperation call within the API you will also need to construct another class to derived from Microsoft.Commerce.Common.MessageBuilders.CommerceSearchCriteriaBuilder and is simply used to construct an instance of the CommerceQueryOperation you have just created and expose the properties you want set. My Message builder looks like this: public class CommerceCatalogSolrSearchBuilder : CommerceSearchCriteriaBuilder { private CommerceCatalogSolrSearch _solrSearch; public CommerceCatalogSolrSearchBuilder() { _solrSearch = new CommerceCatalogSolrSearch(); } public String SearchPhrase { get { return _solrSearch.SearchPhrase; } set { _solrSearch.SearchPhrase = value; } } public int PageIndex { get { return _solrSearch.PageIndex; } set { _solrSearch.PageIndex = value; } } public int PageSize { get { return _solrSearch.PageSize; } set { _solrSearch.PageSize = value; } } public Dictionary<String,String> FacetQueries { get { return _solrSearch.FacetQueries; } set { _solrSearch.FacetQueries = value; } } public String[] Facets { get { return _solrSearch.Facets.ToArray(); } set { _solrSearch.Facets = value; } } public override CommerceSearchCriteria ToSearchCriteria() { return _solrSearch; } } Once you have these two classes in place you can now safely cast the CommerceOperation you receive as an argument of the overidden ExecuteQuery method in the SequenceComponent to the CommerceCatalogSolrSearch operation you have just created, e.g. public CommerceCatalogSolrSearch TryGetSearchCriteria(CommerceOperation operation) { var searchCriteria = operation as CommerceQueryOperation; if (searchCriteria == null) throw new Exception("No search criteria present"); var local = (CommerceCatalogSolrSearch) searchCriteria.SearchCriteria; if (local == null) throw new Exception("Unexpected Search Criteria in Operation"); return local; } Now you have all of your search parameters present, you can go off an call the external search platform API. You will of-course get proprietry objects returned, so the next step in the process is to convert the results being returned back into CommerceEntities. You do this via another extensibility point within the Commerce Server API called translatators. Translators are another separate class, this time derived inheriting the interface Microsoft.Commerce.Providers.Translators.IToCommerceEntityTranslator . As you can imaginge this interface is specific for the conversion of the object TO a CommerceEntity, you will need to implement a separate interface if you also need to go in the opposite direction. If you implement the required method for the interace you will get a single translate method which has a source onkect, destination CommerceEntity, and a collection of properties as arguments. For simplicity sake in this example I have hard-coded the mappings, however best practice would dictate you map the objects using your metadatadefintions.xml file . Once complete your translator would look something like the following: public class SolrEntityTranslator : IToCommerceEntityTranslator { #region IToCommerceEntityTranslator Members public void Translate(object source, CommerceEntity destinationCommerceEntity, CommercePropertyCollection propertiesToReturn) { if (source.GetType().Equals(typeof (SearchProduct))) { var searchResult = (SearchProduct) source; destinationCommerceEntity.Id = searchResult.ProductId; destinationCommerceEntity.SetPropertyValue("DisplayName", searchResult.Title); destinationCommerceEntity.ModelName = "Product"; } } Once you have a translator in place you can then safely map the results of your search platform into Commerce Entities and attach them on to the CommerceResponse object in a fashion similar to this: foreach (SearchProduct result in matchingProducts) { var destinationEntity = new CommerceEntity(_returnModelName); Translator.ToCommerceEntity(result, destinationEntity, _queryOperation.Model.Properties); response.CommerceEntities.Add(destinationEntity); } In SOLR I actually have two objects being returned – a product, and a collection of facets so I have an additional translator for facet (which maps to a custom facet CommerceEntity) and my facet response from SOLR is passed into the Translator helper class seperatley. When all of this is pieced together you have sucessfully completed the extensiblity point coding. You would have created a new OperationSequanceComponent, a custom SearchCritiera object and message builder class, and translators to convert the objects into Commerce Entities. Now you simply need to configure them, and can start calling them in your code. Make sure you sign you assembly, compile it and identiy its signature. Next you need to put this a reference of your new assembly into the Channel.Config configuration file replacing that of the existing SQL Full Text component: You will also need to add your translators to the Translators node of your Channel.Config too: Lastly add any custom CommerceEntities you have developed to your MetaDataDefintions.xml file. Your configuration is now complete, and you should now be able to happily make a call to the Commerce Foundation API, which will act as a proxy to your third party search platform and return back CommerceEntities of your search results. If you require data to be enriched, or logged, or any other logic applied then simply add further sequence components into the OperationSequence (obviously keeping the search response first) to the node of your Channel.Config file. Now to call your code you simply request it as per any other CommerceQuery operation, but taking into account you may be receiving multiple types of CommerceEntity returned: public KeyValuePair<FacetCollection ,List<Product>> DoFacetedProductQuerySearch(string searchPhrase, string orderKey, string sortOrder, int recordIndex, int recordsPerPage, Dictionary<string, string> facetQueries, out int totalItemCount) { var products = new List<Product>(); var query = new CommerceQuery<CatalogEntity, CommerceCatalogSolrSearchBuilder>(); query.SearchCriteria.PageIndex = recordIndex; query.SearchCriteria.PageSize = recordsPerPage; query.SearchCriteria.SearchPhrase = searchPhrase; query.SearchCriteria.FacetQueries = facetQueries; totalItemCount = 0; CommerceResponse response = SiteContext.ProcessRequest(query.ToRequest()); var queryResponse = response.OperationResponses[0] as CommerceQueryOperationResponse; // No results. Return the empty list if (queryResponse != null && queryResponse.CommerceEntities.Count == 0) return new KeyValuePair<FacetCollection, List<Product>>(); totalItemCount = (int)queryResponse.TotalItemCount; // Prepare a multi-operation to retrieve the product variants var multiOperation = new CommerceMultiOperation(); //Add products to results foreach (Product product in queryResponse.CommerceEntities.Where(x => x.ModelName == "Product")) { var productQuery = new CommerceQuery<Product>(Product.ModelNameDefinition); productQuery.SearchCriteria.Model.Id = product.Id; productQuery.SearchCriteria.Model.CatalogId = product.CatalogId; var variantQuery = new CommerceQueryRelatedItem<Variant>(Product.RelationshipName.Variants); productQuery.RelatedOperations.Add(variantQuery); multiOperation.Add(productQuery); } CommerceResponse variantsResponse = SiteContext.ProcessRequest(multiOperation.ToRequest()); foreach (CommerceQueryOperationResponse queryOpResponse in variantsResponse.OperationResponses) { if (queryOpResponse.CommerceEntities.Count() > 0) products.Add(queryOpResponse.CommerceEntities[0]); } //Get facet collection FacetCollection facetCollection = queryResponse.CommerceEntities.Where(x => x.ModelName == "FacetCollection").FirstOrDefault(); return new KeyValuePair<FacetCollection, List<Product>>(facetCollection, products); } ..And that is it – simply a few classes and some configuration will allow you to extend the Commerce Server query operations to call a third party search platform, whilst still maintaing a unifed API in the remainder of your code. This logic stands for any extensibility within CommerceServer, which requires excution in a serial fashioon such as call to LOB systems or web service to validate or enrich data. Feel free to use this example on other applications, and if you have any questions please feel free to e-mail and I'll help out where I can!

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Passing multiple POST parameters to Web API Controller Methods

- by Rick Strahl

ASP.NET Web API introduces a new API for creating REST APIs and making AJAX callbacks to the server. This new API provides a host of new great functionality that unifies many of the features of many of the various AJAX/REST APIs that Microsoft created before it - ASP.NET AJAX, WCF REST specifically - and combines them into a whole more consistent API. Web API addresses many of the concerns that developers had with these older APIs, namely that it was very difficult to build consistent REST style resource APIs easily. While Web API provides many new features and makes many scenarios much easier, a lot of the focus has been on making it easier to build REST compliant APIs that are focused on resource based solutions and HTTP verbs. But RPC style calls that are common with AJAX callbacks in Web applications, have gotten a lot less focus and there are a few scenarios that are not that obvious, especially if you're expecting Web API to provide functionality similar to ASP.NET AJAX style AJAX callbacks. RPC vs. 'Proper' REST RPC style HTTP calls mimic calling a method with parameters and returning a result. Rather than mapping explicit server side resources or 'nouns' RPC calls tend simply map a server side operation, passing in parameters and receiving a typed result where parameters and result values are marshaled over HTTP. Typically RPC calls - like SOAP calls - tend to always be POST operations rather than following HTTP conventions and using the GET/POST/PUT/DELETE etc. verbs to implicitly determine what operation needs to be fired. RPC might not be considered 'cool' anymore, but for typical private AJAX backend operations of a Web site I'd wager that a large percentage of use cases of Web API will fall towards RPC style calls rather than 'proper' REST style APIs. Web applications that have needs for things like live validation against data, filling data based on user inputs, handling small UI updates often don't lend themselves very well to limited HTTP verb usage. It might not be what the cool kids do, but I don't see RPC calls getting replaced by proper REST APIs any time soon. Proper REST has its place - for 'real' API scenarios that manage and publish/share resources, but for more transactional operations RPC seems a better choice and much easier to implement than trying to shoehorn a boatload of endpoint methods into a few HTTP verbs. In any case Web API does a good job of providing both RPC abstraction as well as the HTTP Verb/REST abstraction. RPC works well out of the box, but there are some differences especially if you're coming from ASP.NET AJAX service or WCF Rest when it comes to multiple parameters. Action Routing for RPC Style Calls If you've looked at Web API demos you've probably seen a bunch of examples of how to create HTTP Verb based routing endpoints. Verb based routing essentially maps a controller and then uses HTTP verbs to map the methods that are called in response to HTTP requests. This works great for resource APIs but doesn't work so well when you have many operational methods in a single controller. HTTP Verb routing is limited to the few HTTP verbs available (plus separate method signatures) and - worse than that - you can't easily extend the controller with custom routes or action routing beyond that. Thankfully Web API also supports Action based routing which allows you create RPC style endpoints fairly easily:RouteTable.Routes.MapHttpRoute( name: "AlbumRpcApiAction", routeTemplate: "albums/{action}/{title}", defaults: new { title = RouteParameter.Optional, controller = "AlbumApi", action = "GetAblums" } ); This uses traditional MVC style {action} method routing which is different from the HTTP verb based routing you might have read a bunch about in conjunction with Web API. Action based routing like above lets you specify an end point method in a Web API controller either via the {action} parameter in the route string or via a default value for custom routes. Using routing you can pass multiple parameters either on the route itself or pass parameters on the query string, via ModelBinding or content value binding. For most common scenarios this actually works very well. As long as you are passing either a single complex type via a POST operation, or multiple simple types via query string or POST buffer, there's no issue. But if you need to pass multiple parameters as was easily done with WCF REST or ASP.NET AJAX things are not so obvious. Web API has no issue allowing for single parameter like this:[HttpPost] public string PostAlbum(Album album) { return String.Format("{0} {1:d}", album.AlbumName, album.Entered); } There are actually two ways to call this endpoint: albums/PostAlbum Using the Model Binder with plain POST values In this mechanism you're sending plain urlencoded POST values to the server which the ModelBinder then maps the parameter. Each property value is matched to each matching POST value. This works similar to the way that MVC's ModelBinder works. Here's how you can POST using the ModelBinder and jQuery:$.ajax( { url: "albums/PostAlbum", type: "POST", data: { AlbumName: "Dirty Deeds", Entered: "5/1/2012" }, success: function (result) { alert(result); }, error: function (xhr, status, p3, p4) { var err = "Error " + " " + status + " " + p3; if (xhr.responseText && xhr.responseText[0] == "{") err = JSON.parse(xhr.responseText).message; alert(err); } }); Here's what the POST data looks like for this request: The model binder and it's straight form based POST mechanism is great for posting data directly from HTML pages to model objects. It avoids having to do manual conversions for many operations and is a great boon for AJAX callback requests. Using Web API JSON Formatter The other option is to post data using a JSON string. The process for this is similar except that you create a JavaScript object and serialize it to JSON first.album = { AlbumName: "PowerAge", Entered: new Date(1977,0,1) } $.ajax( { url: "albums/PostAlbum", type: "POST", contentType: "application/json", data: JSON.stringify(album), success: function (result) { alert(result); } }); Here the data is sent using a JSON object rather than form data and the data is JSON encoded over the wire. The trace reveals that the data is sent using plain JSON (Source above), which is a little more efficient since there's no UrlEncoding that occurs. BTW, notice that WebAPI automatically deals with the date. I provided the date as a plain string, rather than a JavaScript date value and the Formatter and ModelBinder both automatically map the date propertly to the Entered DateTime property of the Album object. Passing multiple Parameters to a Web API Controller Single parameters work fine in either of these RPC scenarios and that's to be expected. ModelBinding always works against a single object because it maps a model. But what happens when you want to pass multiple parameters? Consider an API Controller method that has a signature like the following:[HttpPost] public string PostAlbum(Album album, string userToken) Here I'm asking to pass two objects to an RPC method. Is that possible? This used to be fairly straight forward either with WCF REST and ASP.NET AJAX ASMX services, but as far as I can tell this is not directly possible using a POST operation with WebAPI. There a few workarounds that you can use to make this work: Use both POST *and* QueryString Parameters in Conjunction If you have both complex and simple parameters, you can pass simple parameters on the query string. The above would actually work with: /album/PostAlbum?userToken=sekkritt but that's not always possible. In this example it might not be a good idea to pass a user token on the query string though. It also won't work if you need to pass multiple complex objects, since query string values do not support complex type mapping. They only work with simple types. Use a single Object that wraps the two Parameters If you go by service based architecture guidelines every service method should always pass and return a single value only. The input should wrap potentially multiple input parameters and the output should convey status as well as provide the result value. You typically have a xxxRequest and a xxxResponse class that wraps the inputs and outputs. Here's what this method might look like:public PostAlbumResponse PostAlbum(PostAlbumRequest request) { var album = request.Album; var userToken = request.UserToken; return new PostAlbumResponse() { IsSuccess = true, Result = String.Format("{0} {1:d} {2}", album.AlbumName, album.Entered,userToken) }; } with these support types:public class PostAlbumRequest { public Album Album { get; set; } public User User { get; set; } public string UserToken { get; set; } } public class PostAlbumResponse { public string Result { get; set; } public bool IsSuccess { get; set; } public string ErrorMessage { get; set; } } To call this method you now have to assemble these objects on the client and send it up as JSON:var album = { AlbumName: "PowerAge", Entered: "1/1/1977" } var user = { Name: "Rick" } var userToken = "sekkritt"; $.ajax( { url: "samples/PostAlbum", type: "POST", contentType: "application/json", data: JSON.stringify({ Album: album, User: user, UserToken: userToken }), success: function (result) { alert(result.Result); } }); I assemble the individual types first and then combine them in the data: property of the $.ajax() call into the actual object passed to the server, that mimics the structure of PostAlbumRequest server class that has Album, User and UserToken properties. This works well enough but it gets tedious if you have to create Request and Response types for each method signature. If you have common parameters that are always passed (like you always pass an album or usertoken) you might be able to abstract this to use a single object that gets reused for all methods, but this gets confusing too: Overload a single 'parameter' too much and it becomes a nightmare to decipher what your method actual can use. Use JObject to parse multiple Property Values out of an Object If you recall, ASP.NET AJAX and WCF REST used a 'wrapper' object to make default AJAX calls. Rather than directly calling a service you always passed an object which contained properties for each parameter: { parm1: Value, parm2: Value2 } WCF REST/ASP.NET AJAX would then parse this top level property values and map them to the parameters of the endpoint method. This automatic type wrapping functionality is no longer available directly in Web API, but since Web API now uses JSON.NET for it's JSON serializer you can actually simulate that behavior with a little extra code. You can use the JObject class to receive a dynamic JSON result and then using the dynamic cast of JObject to walk through the child objects and even parse them into strongly typed objects. Here's how to do this on the API Controller end:[HttpPost] public string PostAlbum(JObject jsonData) { dynamic json = jsonData; JObject jalbum = json.Album; JObject juser = json.User; string token = json.UserToken; var album = jalbum.ToObject<Album>(); var user = juser.ToObject<User>(); return String.Format("{0} {1} {2}", album.AlbumName, user.Name, token); } This is clearly not as nice as having the parameters passed directly, but it works to allow you to pass multiple parameters and access them using Web API. JObject is JSON.NET's generic object container which sports a nice dynamic interface that allows you to walk through the object's properties using standard 'dot' object syntax. All you have to do is cast the object to dynamic to get access to the property interface of the JSON type. Additionally JObject also allows you to parse JObject instances into strongly typed objects, which enables us here to retrieve the two objects passed as parameters from this jquery code:var album = { AlbumName: "PowerAge", Entered: "1/1/1977" } var user = { Name: "Rick" } var userToken = "sekkritt"; $.ajax( { url: "samples/PostAlbum", type: "POST", contentType: "application/json", data: JSON.stringify({ Album: album, User: user, UserToken: userToken }), success: function (result) { alert(result); } }); Summary ASP.NET Web API brings many new features and many advantages over the older Microsoft AJAX and REST APIs, but realize that some things like passing multiple strongly typed object parameters will work a bit differently. It's not insurmountable, but just knowing what options are available to simulate this behavior is good to know. Now let me say here that it's probably not a good practice to pass a bunch of parameters to an API call. Ideally APIs should be closely factored to accept single parameters or a single content parameter at least along with some identifier parameters that can be passed on the querystring. But saying that doesn't mean that occasionally you don't run into a situation where you have the need to pass several objects to the server and all three of the options I mentioned might have merit in different situations. For now I'm sure the question of how to pass multiple parameters will come up quite a bit from people migrating WCF REST or ASP.NET AJAX code to Web API. At least there are options available to make it work.© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2012Posted in Web Api 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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Windows Azure: General Availability of Web Sites + Mobile Services, New AutoScale + Alerts Support, No Credit Card Needed for MSDN

- by ScottGu

This morning we released a major set of updates to Windows Azure. These updates included: Web Sites: General Availability Release of Windows Azure Web Sites with SLA Mobile Services: General Availability Release of Windows Azure Mobile Services with SLA Auto-Scale: New automatic scaling support for Web Sites, Cloud Services and Virtual Machines Alerts/Notifications: New email alerting support for all Compute Services (Web Sites, Mobile Services, Cloud Services, and Virtual Machines) MSDN: No more credit card requirement for sign-up All of these improvements are now available to use immediately (note: some are still in preview). Below are more details about them. Web Sites: General Availability Release of Windows Azure Web Sites I’m incredibly excited to announce the General Availability release of Windows Azure Web Sites. The Windows Azure Web Sites service is perfect for hosting a web presence, building customer engagement solutions, and delivering business web apps. Today’s General Availability release means we are taking off the “preview” tag from the Free and Standard (formerly called reserved) tiers of Windows Azure Web Sites. This means we are providing: A 99.9% monthly SLA (Service Level Agreement) for the Standard tier Microsoft Support available on a 24x7 basis (with plans that range from developer plans to enterprise Premier support) The Free tier runs in a shared compute environment and supports up to 10 web sites. While the Free tier does not come with an SLA, it works great for rapid development and testing and enables you to quickly spike out ideas at no cost. The Standard tier, which was called “Reserved” during the preview, runs using dedicated per-customer VM instances for great performance, isolation and scalability, and enables you to host up to 500 different Web sites within them. You can easily scale your Standard instances on-demand using the Windows Azure Management Portal. You can adjust VM instance sizes from a Small instance size (1 core, 1.75GB of RAM), up to a Medium instance size (2 core, 3.5GB of RAM), or Large instance (4 cores and 7 GB RAM). You can choose to run between 1 and 10 Standard instances, enabling you to easily scale up your web backend to 40 cores of CPU and 70GB of RAM: Today’s release also includes general availability support for custom domain SSL certificate bindings for web sites running using the Standard tier. Customers will be able to utilize certificates they purchase for their custom domains and use either SNI or IP based SSL encryption. SNI encryption is available for all modern browsers and does not require an IP address. SSL certificates can be used for individual sites or wild-card mapped across multiple sites (we charge extra for the use of a SSL cert – but the fee is per-cert and not per site which means you pay once for it regardless of how many sites you use it with). Today’s release also includes the following new features: Auto-Scale support Today’s Windows Azure release adds preview support for Auto-Scaling web sites. This enables you to setup automatic scale rules based on the activity of your instances – allowing you to automatically scale down (and save money) when they are below a CPU threshold you define, and automatically scale up quickly when traffic increases. See below for more details. 64-bit and 32-bit mode support You can now choose to run your standard tier instances in either 32-bit or 64-bit mode (previously they only ran in 32-bit mode). This enables you to address even more memory within individual web applications. Memory dumps Memory dumps can be very useful for diagnosing issues and debugging apps. Using a REST API, you can now get a memory dump of your sites, which you can then use for investigating issues in Visual Studio Debugger, WinDbg, and other tools. Scaling Sites Independently Prior to today’s release, all sites scaled up/down together whenever you scaled any site in a sub-region. So you may have had to keep your proof-of-concept or testing sites in a separate sub-region if you wanted to keep them in the Free tier. This will no longer be necessary. Windows Azure Web Sites can now mix different tier levels in the same geographic sub-region. This allows you, for example, to selectively move some of your sites in the West US sub-region up to Standard tier when they require the features, scalability, and SLA of the Standard tier. Full pricing details on Windows Azure Web Sites can be found here. Note that the “Shared Tier” of Windows Azure Web Sites remains in preview mode (and continues to have discounted preview pricing). Mobile Services: General Availability Release of Windows Azure Mobile Services I’m incredibly excited to announce the General Availability release of Windows Azure Mobile Services. Mobile Services is perfect for building scalable cloud back-ends for Windows 8.x, Windows Phone, Apple iOS, Android, and HTML/JavaScript applications. Customers We’ve seen tremendous adoption of Windows Azure Mobile Services since we first previewed it last September, and more than 20,000 customers are now running mobile back-ends in production using it. These customers range from startups like Yatterbox, to university students using Mobile Services to complete apps like Sly Fox in their spare time, to media giants like Verdens Gang finding new ways to deliver content, and telcos like TalkTalk Business delivering the up-to-the-minute information their customers require. In today’s Build keynote, we demonstrated how TalkTalk Business is using Windows Azure Mobile Services to deliver service, outage and billing information to its customers, wherever they might be. Partners When we unveiled the source control and Custom API features I blogged about two weeks ago, we enabled a range of new scenarios, one of which is a more flexible way to work with third party services. The following blogs, samples and tutorials from our partners cover great ways you can extend Mobile Services to help you build rich modern apps: New Relic allows developers to monitor and manage the end-to-end performance of iOS and Android applications connected to Mobile Services. SendGrid eliminates the complexity of sending email from Mobile Services, saving time and money, while providing reliable delivery to the inbox. Twilio provides a telephony infrastructure web service in the cloud that you can use with Mobile Services to integrate phone calls, text messages and IP voice communications into your mobile apps. Xamarin provides a Mobile Services add on to make it easy building cross-platform connected mobile aps. Pusher allows quickly and securely add scalable real-time messaging functionality to Mobile Services-based web and mobile apps. Visual Studio 2013 and Windows 8.1 This week during //build/ keynote, we demonstrated how Visual Studio 2013, Mobile Services and Windows 8.1 make building connected apps easier than ever. Developers building Windows 8 applications in Visual Studio can now connect them to Windows Azure Mobile Services by simply right clicking then choosing Add Connected Service. You can either create a new Mobile Service or choose existing Mobile Service in the Add Connected Service dialog. Once completed, Visual Studio adds a reference to Mobile Services SDK to your project and generates a Mobile Services client initialization snippet automatically. Add Push Notifications Push Notifications and Live Tiles are a key to building engaging experiences. Visual Studio 2013 and Mobile Services make it super easy to add push notifications to your Windows 8.1 app, by clicking Add a Push Notification item: The Add Push Notification wizard will then guide you through the registration with the Windows Store as well as connecting your app to a new or existing mobile service. Upon completion of the wizard, Visual Studio will configure your mobile service with the WNS credentials, as well as add sample logic to your client project and your mobile service that demonstrates how to send push notifications to your app. Server Explorer Integration In Visual Studio 2013 you can also now view your Mobile Services in the the Server Explorer. You can add tables, edit, and save server side scripts without ever leaving Visual Studio, as shown on the image below: Pricing With today’s general availability release we are announcing that we will be offering Mobile Services in three tiers – Free, Standard, and Premium. Each tier is metered using a simple pricing model based on the # of API calls (bandwidth is included at no extra charge), and the Standard and Premium tiers are backed by 99.9% monthly SLAs. You can elastically scale up or down the number of instances you have of each tier to increase the # of API requests your service can support – allowing you to efficiently scale as your business grows. The following table summarizes the new pricing model (full pricing details here): You can find the full details of the new pricing model here. Build Conference Talks The //BUILD/ conference will be packed with sessions covering every aspect of developing connected applications with Mobile Services. The best part is that, even if you can’t be with us in San Francisco, every session is being streamed live. Be sure not to miss these talks: Mobile Services – Soup to Nuts — Josh Twist Building Cross-Platform Apps with Windows Azure Mobile Services — Chris Risner Connected Windows Phone Apps made Easy with Mobile Services — Yavor Georgiev Build Connected Windows 8.1 Apps with Mobile Services — Nick Harris Who’s that user? Identity in Mobile Apps — Dinesh Kulkarni Building REST Services with JavaScript — Nathan Totten Going Live and Beyond with Windows Azure Mobile Services — Kirill Gavrylyuk , Paul Batum Protips for Windows Azure Mobile Services — Chris Risner AutoScale: Dynamically scale up/down your app based on real-world usage One of the key benefits of Windows Azure is that you can dynamically scale your application in response to changing demand. In the past, though, you have had to either manually change the scale of your application, or use additional tooling (such as WASABi or MetricsHub) to automatically scale your application. Today, we’re announcing that AutoScale will be built-into Windows Azure directly. With today’s release it is now enabled for Cloud Services, Virtual Machines and Web Sites (Mobile Services support will come soon). Auto-scale enables you to configure Windows Azure to automatically scale your application dynamically on your behalf (without any manual intervention) so you can achieve the ideal performance and cost balance. Once configured it will regularly adjust the number of instances running in response to the load in your application. Currently, we support two different load metrics: CPU percentage Storage queue depth (Cloud Services and Virtual Machines only) We’ll enable automatic scaling on even more scale metrics in future updates. When to use Auto-Scale The following are good criteria for services/apps that will benefit from the use of auto-scale: The service/app can scale horizontally (e.g. it can be duplicated to multiple instances) The service/app load changes over time If your app meets these criteria, then you should look to leverage auto-scale. How to Enable Auto-Scale To enable auto-scale, simply navigate to the Scale tab in the Windows Azure Management Portal for the app/service you wish to enable. Within the scale tab turn the Auto-Scale setting on to either CPU or Queue (for Cloud Services and VMs) to enable Auto-Scale. Then change the instance count and target CPU settings to configure the Auto-Scale ranges you want to maintain. The image below demonstrates how to enable Auto-Scale on a Windows Azure Web-Site. I’ve configured the web-site so that it will run using between 1 and 5 VM instances. The exact # used will depend on the aggregate CPU of the VMs using the 40-70% range I’ve configured below. If the aggregate CPU goes above 70%, then Windows Azure will automatically add new VMs to the pool (up to the maximum of 5 instances I’ve configured it to use). If the aggregate CPU drops below 40% then Windows Azure will automatically start shutting down VMs to save me money: Once you’ve turned auto-scale on, you can return to the Scale tab at any point and select Off to manually set the number of instances. Using the Auto-Scale Preview With today’s update you can now, in just a few minutes, have Windows Azure automatically adjust the number of instances you have running in your apps to keep your service performant at an even better cost. Auto-scale is being released today as a preview feature, and will be free until General Availability. During preview, each subscription is limited to 10 separate auto-scale rules across all of the resources they have (Web sites, Cloud services or Virtual Machines). If you hit the 10 limit, you can disable auto-scale for any resource to enable it for another. Alerts and Notifications Starting today we are now providing the ability to configure threshold based alerts on monitoring metrics. This feature is available for compute services (cloud services, VM, websites and mobiles services). Alerts provide you the ability to get proactively notified of active or impending issues within your application. You can define alert rules for: Virtual machine monitoring metrics that are collected from the host operating system (CPU percentage, network in/out, disk read bytes/sec and disk write bytes/sec) and on monitoring metrics from monitoring web endpoint urls (response time and uptime) that you have configured. Cloud service monitoring metrics that are collected from the host operating system (same as VM), monitoring metrics from the guest VM (from performance counters within the VM) and on monitoring metrics from monitoring web endpoint urls (response time and uptime) that you have configured. For Web Sites and Mobile Services, alerting rules can be configured on monitoring metrics from monitoring endpoint urls (response time and uptime) that you have configured. Creating Alert Rules You can add an alert rule for a monitoring metric by navigating to the Setting -> Alerts tab in the Windows Azure Management Portal. Click on the Add Rule button to create an alert rule. Give the alert rule a name and optionally add a description. Then pick the service which you want to define the alert rule on: The next step in the alert creation wizard will then filter the monitoring metrics based on the service you selected: Once created the rule will show up in your alerts list within the settings tab: The rule above is defined as “not activated” since it hasn’t tripped over the CPU threshold we set. If the CPU on the above machine goes over the limit, though, I’ll get an email notifying me from an Windows Azure Alerts email address ([email protected]). And when I log into the portal and revisit the alerts tab I’ll see it highlighted in red. Clicking it will then enable me to see what is causing it to fail, as well as view the history of when it has happened in the past. Alert Notifications With today’s initial preview you can now easily create alerting rules based on monitoring metrics and get notified on active or impending issues within your application that require attention. During preview, each subscription is limited to 10 alert rules across all of the services that support alert rules. No More Credit Card Requirement for MSDN Subscribers Earlier this month (during TechEd 2013), Windows Azure announced that MSDN users will get Windows Azure Credits every month that they can use for any Windows Azure services they want. You can read details about this in my previous Dev/Test blog post. Today we are making further updates to enable an easier Windows Azure signup for MSDN users. MSDN users will now not be required to provide payment information (e.g. no credit card) during sign-up, so long as they use the service within the included monetary credit for the billing period. For usage beyond the monetary credit, they can enable overages by providing the payment information and remove the spending limit. This enables a super easy, one page sign-up experience for MSDN users. Simply sign-up for your Windows Azure trial using the same Microsoft ID that you use to manage your MSDN account, then complete the one page sign-up form below and you will be able to spend your free monthly MSDN credits (up to $150 each month) on any Windows Azure resource for dev/test: This makes it trivially easy for every MDSN customer to start using Windows Azure today. If you haven’t signed up yet, I definitely recommend checking it out. Summary Today’s release includes a ton of great features that enable you to build even better cloud solutions. If you don’t already have a Windows Azure account, you can sign-up for a free trial and start using all of the above features today. Then visit the Windows Azure Developer Center to learn more about how to build apps with it. Hope this helps, Scott P.S. In addition to blogging, I am also now using Twitter for quick updates and to share links. Follow me at: twitter.com/scottgu

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Introducing Data Annotations Extensions

- by srkirkland

Validation of user input is integral to building a modern web application, and ASP.NET MVC offers us a way to enforce business rules on both the client and server using Model Validation. The recent release of ASP.NET MVC 3 has improved these offerings on the client side by introducing an unobtrusive validation library built on top of jquery.validation. Out of the box MVC comes with support for Data Annotations (that is, System.ComponentModel.DataAnnotations) and can be extended to support other frameworks. Data Annotations Validation is becoming more popular and is being baked in to many other Microsoft offerings, including Entity Framework, though with MVC it only contains four validators: Range, Required, StringLength and Regular Expression. The Data Annotations Extensions project attempts to augment these validators with additional attributes while maintaining the clean integration Data Annotations provides. A Quick Word About Data Annotations Extensions The Data Annotations Extensions project can be found at http://dataannotationsextensions.org/, and currently provides 11 additional validation attributes (ex: Email, EqualTo, Min/Max) on top of Data Annotations’ original 4. You can find a current list of the validation attributes on the afore mentioned website. The core library provides server-side validation attributes that can be used in any .NET 4.0 project (no MVC dependency). There is also an easily pluggable client-side validation library which can be used in ASP.NET MVC 3 projects using unobtrusive jquery validation (only MVC3 included javascript files are required). On to the Preview Let’s say you had the following “Customer” domain model (or view model, depending on your project structure) in an MVC 3 project: public class Customer { public string Email { get; set; } public int Age { get; set; } public string ProfilePictureLocation { get; set; } } .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } When it comes time to create/edit this Customer, you will probably have a CustomerController and a simple form that just uses one of the Html.EditorFor() methods that the ASP.NET MVC tooling generates for you (or you can write yourself). It should look something like this: With no validation, the customer can enter nonsense for an email address, and then can even report their age as a negative number! With the built-in Data Annotations validation, I could do a bit better by adding a Range to the age, adding a RegularExpression for email (yuck!), and adding some required attributes. However, I’d still be able to report my age as 10.75 years old, and my profile picture could still be any string. Let’s use Data Annotations along with this project, Data Annotations Extensions, and see what we can get: public class Customer { [Email] [Required] public string Email { get; set; } [Integer] [Min(1, ErrorMessage="Unless you are benjamin button you are lying.")] [Required] public int Age { get; set; } [FileExtensions("png|jpg|jpeg|gif")] public string ProfilePictureLocation { get; set; } } .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } Now let’s try to put in some invalid values and see what happens: That is very nice validation, all done on the client side (will also be validated on the server). Also, the Customer class validation attributes are very easy to read and understand. Another bonus: Since Data Annotations Extensions can integrate with MVC 3’s unobtrusive validation, no additional scripts are required! Now that we’ve seen our target, let’s take a look at how to get there within a new MVC 3 project. Adding Data Annotations Extensions To Your Project First we will File->New Project and create an ASP.NET MVC 3 project. I am going to use Razor for these examples, but any view engine can be used in practice. Now go into the NuGet Extension Manager (right click on references and select add Library Package Reference) and search for “DataAnnotationsExtensions.” You should see the following two packages: The first package is for server-side validation scenarios, but since we are using MVC 3 and would like comprehensive sever and client validation support, click on the DataAnnotationsExtensions.MVC3 project and then click Install. This will install the Data Annotations Extensions server and client validation DLLs along with David Ebbo’s web activator (which enables the validation attributes to be registered with MVC 3). Now that Data Annotations Extensions is installed you have all you need to start doing advanced model validation. If you are already using Data Annotations in your project, just making use of the additional validation attributes will provide client and server validation automatically. However, assuming you are starting with a blank project I’ll walk you through setting up a controller and model to test with. Creating Your Model In the Models folder, create a new User.cs file with a User class that you can use as a model. To start with, I’ll use the following class: public class User { public string Email { get; set; } public string Password { get; set; } public string PasswordConfirm { get; set; } public string HomePage { get; set; } public int Age { get; set; } } Next, create a simple controller with at least a Create method, and then a matching Create view (note, you can do all of this via the MVC built-in tooling). Your files will look something like this: UserController.cs: public class UserController : Controller { public ActionResult Create() { return View(new User()); } [HttpPost] public ActionResult Create(User user) { if (!ModelState.IsValid) { return View(user); } return Content("User valid!"); } } .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } Create.cshtml: @model NuGetValidationTester.Models.User @{ ViewBag.Title = "Create"; } <h2>Create</h2> <script src="@Url.Content("~/Scripts/jquery.validate.min.js")" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="@Url.Content("~/Scripts/jquery.validate.unobtrusive.min.js")" type="text/javascript"></script> @using (Html.BeginForm()) { @Html.ValidationSummary(true) <fieldset> <legend>User</legend> @Html.EditorForModel() <p> <input type="submit" value="Create" /> </p> </fieldset> } .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } In the Create.cshtml view, note that we are referencing jquery validation and jquery unobtrusive (jquery is referenced in the layout page). These MVC 3 included scripts are the only ones you need to enjoy both the basic Data Annotations validation as well as the validation additions available in Data Annotations Extensions. These references are added by default when you use the MVC 3 “Add View” dialog on a modification template type. Now when we go to /User/Create we should see a form for editing a User Since we haven’t yet added any validation attributes, this form is valid as shown (including no password, email and an age of 0). With the built-in Data Annotations attributes we can make some of the fields required, and we could use a range validator of maybe 1 to 110 on Age (of course we don’t want to leave out supercentenarians) but let’s go further and validate our input comprehensively using Data Annotations Extensions. The new and improved User.cs model class. { [Required] [Email] public string Email { get; set; } [Required] public string Password { get; set; } [Required] [EqualTo("Password")] public string PasswordConfirm { get; set; } [Url] public string HomePage { get; set; } [Integer] [Min(1)] public int Age { get; set; } } .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } Now let’s re-run our form and try to use some invalid values: All of the validation errors you see above occurred on the client, without ever even hitting submit. The validation is also checked on the server, which is a good practice since client validation is easily bypassed. That’s all you need to do to start a new project and include Data Annotations Extensions, and of course you can integrate it into an existing project just as easily. Nitpickers Corner ASP.NET MVC 3 futures defines four new data annotations attributes which this project has as well: CreditCard, Email, Url and EqualTo. Unfortunately referencing MVC 3 futures necessitates taking an dependency on MVC 3 in your model layer, which may be unadvisable in a multi-tiered project. Data Annotations Extensions keeps the server and client side libraries separate so using the project’s validation attributes don’t require you to take any additional dependencies in your model layer which still allowing for the rich client validation experience if you are using MVC 3. Custom Error Message and Globalization: Since the Data Annotations Extensions are build on top of Data Annotations, you have the ability to define your own static error messages and even to use resource files for very customizable error messages. Available Validators: Please see the project site at http://dataannotationsextensions.org/ for an up-to-date list of the new validators included in this project. As of this post, the following validators are available: CreditCard Date Digits Email EqualTo FileExtensions Integer Max Min Numeric Url Conclusion Hopefully I’ve illustrated how easy it is to add server and client validation to your MVC 3 projects, and how to easily you can extend the available validation options to meet real world needs. The Data Annotations Extensions project is fully open source under the BSD license. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated. More information than you require, along with links to the source code, is available at http://dataannotationsextensions.org/. Enjoy!

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Coherence - How to develop a custom push replication publisher

- by cosmin.tudor(at)oracle.com

CoherencePushReplicationDB.zipIn the example bellow I'm describing a way of developing a custom push replication publisher that publishes data to a database via JDBC. This example can be easily changed to publish data to other receivers (JMS,...) by performing changes to step 2 and small changes to step 3, steps that are presented bellow. I've used Eclipse as the development tool. To develop a custom push replication publishers we will need to go through 6 steps: Step 1: Create a custom publisher scheme class Step 2: Create a custom publisher class that should define what the publisher is doing. Step 3: Create a class data is performing the actions (publish to JMS, DB, etc ) for the custom publisher. Step 4: Register the new publisher against a ContentHandler. Step 5: Add the new custom publisher in the cache configuration file. Step 6: Add the custom publisher scheme class to the POF configuration file. All these steps are detailed bellow. The coherence project is attached and conclusions are presented at the end. Step 1: In the Coherence Eclipse project create a class called CustomPublisherScheme that should implement com.oracle.coherence.patterns.pushreplication.publishers.AbstractPublisherScheme. In this class define the elements of the custom-publisher-scheme element. For instance for a CustomPublisherScheme that looks like that: <sync:publisher> <sync:publisher-name>Active2-JDBC-Publisher</sync:publisher-name> <sync:publisher-scheme> <sync:custom-publisher-scheme> <sync:jdbc-string>jdbc:oracle:thin:@machine-name:1521:XE</sync:jdbc-string> <sync:username>hr</sync:username> <sync:password>hr</sync:password> </sync:custom-publisher-scheme> </sync:publisher-scheme> </sync:publisher> the code is: package com.oracle.coherence; import java.io.DataInput; import java.io.DataOutput; import java.io.IOException; import com.oracle.coherence.patterns.pushreplication.Publisher; import com.oracle.coherence.configuration.Configurable; import com.oracle.coherence.configuration.Mandatory; import com.oracle.coherence.configuration.Property; import com.oracle.coherence.configuration.parameters.ParameterScope; import com.oracle.coherence.environment.Environment; import com.tangosol.io.pof.PofReader; import com.tangosol.io.pof.PofWriter; import com.tangosol.util.ExternalizableHelper; @Configurable public class CustomPublisherScheme extends com.oracle.coherence.patterns.pushreplication.publishers.AbstractPublisherScheme { /** * */ private static final long serialVersionUID = 1L; private String jdbcString; private String username; private String password; public String getJdbcString() { return this.jdbcString; } @Property("jdbc-string") @Mandatory public void setJdbcString(String jdbcString) { this.jdbcString = jdbcString; } public String getUsername() { return username; } @Property("username") @Mandatory public void setUsername(String username) { this.username = username; } public String getPassword() { return password; } @Property("password") @Mandatory public void setPassword(String password) { this.password = password; } public Publisher realize(Environment environment, ClassLoader classLoader, ParameterScope parameterScope) { return new CustomPublisher(getJdbcString(), getUsername(), getPassword()); } public void readExternal(DataInput in) throws IOException { super.readExternal(in); this.jdbcString = ExternalizableHelper.readSafeUTF(in); this.username = ExternalizableHelper.readSafeUTF(in); this.password = ExternalizableHelper.readSafeUTF(in); } public void writeExternal(DataOutput out) throws IOException { super.writeExternal(out); ExternalizableHelper.writeSafeUTF(out, this.jdbcString); ExternalizableHelper.writeSafeUTF(out, this.username); ExternalizableHelper.writeSafeUTF(out, this.password); } public void readExternal(PofReader reader) throws IOException { super.readExternal(reader); this.jdbcString = reader.readString(100); this.username = reader.readString(101); this.password = reader.readString(102); } public void writeExternal(PofWriter writer) throws IOException { super.writeExternal(writer); writer.writeString(100, this.jdbcString); writer.writeString(101, this.username); writer.writeString(102, this.password); } } Step 2: Define what the CustomPublisher should basically do by creating a new java class called CustomPublisher that implements com.oracle.coherence.patterns.pushreplication.Publisher package com.oracle.coherence; import com.oracle.coherence.patterns.pushreplication.EntryOperation; import com.oracle.coherence.patterns.pushreplication.Publisher; import com.oracle.coherence.patterns.pushreplication.exceptions.PublisherNotReadyException; import java.io.BufferedWriter; import java.util.Iterator; public class CustomPublisher implements Publisher { private String jdbcString; private String username; private String password; private transient BufferedWriter bufferedWriter; public CustomPublisher() { } public CustomPublisher(String jdbcString, String username, String password) { this.jdbcString = jdbcString; this.username = username; this.password = password; this.bufferedWriter = null; } public String getJdbcString() { return this.jdbcString; } public String getUsername() { return username; } public String getPassword() { return password; } public void publishBatch(String cacheName, String publisherName, Iterator<EntryOperation> entryOperations) { DatabasePersistence databasePersistence = new DatabasePersistence( jdbcString, username, password); while (entryOperations.hasNext()) { EntryOperation entryOperation = (EntryOperation) entryOperations .next(); databasePersistence.databasePersist(entryOperation); } } public void start(String cacheName, String publisherName) throws PublisherNotReadyException { System.err .printf("Started: Custom JDBC Publisher for Cache %s with Publisher %s\n", new Object[] { cacheName, publisherName }); } public void stop(String cacheName, String publisherName) { System.err .printf("Stopped: Custom JDBC Publisher for Cache %s with Publisher %s\n", new Object[] { cacheName, publisherName }); } } In the publishBatch method from above we inform the publisher that he is supposed to persist data to a database: DatabasePersistence databasePersistence = new DatabasePersistence( jdbcString, username, password); while (entryOperations.hasNext()) { EntryOperation entryOperation = (EntryOperation) entryOperations .next(); databasePersistence.databasePersist(entryOperation); } Step 3: The class that deals with the persistence is a very basic one that uses JDBC to perform inserts/updates against a database. package com.oracle.coherence; import com.oracle.coherence.patterns.pushreplication.EntryOperation; import java.sql.*; import java.text.SimpleDateFormat; import com.oracle.coherence.Order; public class DatabasePersistence { public static String INSERT_OPERATION = "INSERT"; public static String UPDATE_OPERATION = "UPDATE"; public Connection dbConnection; public DatabasePersistence(String jdbcString, String username, String password) { this.dbConnection = createConnection(jdbcString, username, password); } public Connection createConnection(String jdbcString, String username, String password) { Connection connection = null; System.err.println("Connecting to: " + jdbcString + " Username: " + username + " Password: " + password); try { // Load the JDBC driver String driverName = "oracle.jdbc.driver.OracleDriver"; Class.forName(driverName); // Create a connection to the database connection = DriverManager.getConnection(jdbcString, username, password); System.err.println("Connected to:" + jdbcString + " Username: " + username + " Password: " + password); } catch (ClassNotFoundException e) { e.printStackTrace(); } // driver catch (SQLException e) { e.printStackTrace(); } return connection; } public void databasePersist(EntryOperation entryOperation) { if (entryOperation.getOperation().toString() .equalsIgnoreCase(INSERT_OPERATION)) { insert(((Order) entryOperation.getPublishableEntry().getValue())); } else if (entryOperation.getOperation().toString() .equalsIgnoreCase(UPDATE_OPERATION)) { update(((Order) entryOperation.getPublishableEntry().getValue())); } } public void update(Order order) { String update = "UPDATE Orders set QUANTITY= '" + order.getQuantity() + "', AMOUNT='" + order.getAmount() + "', ORD_DATE= '" + (new SimpleDateFormat("dd-MMM-yyyy")).format(order .getOrdDate()) + "' WHERE SYMBOL='" + order.getSymbol() + "'"; System.err.println("UPDATE = " + update); try { Statement stmt = getDbConnection().createStatement(); stmt.execute(update); stmt.close(); } catch (SQLException ex) { System.err.println("SQLException: " + ex.getMessage()); } } public void insert(Order order) { String insert = "insert into Orders values('" + order.getSymbol() + "'," + order.getQuantity() + "," + order.getAmount() + ",'" + (new SimpleDateFormat("dd-MMM-yyyy")).format(order .getOrdDate()) + "')"; System.err.println("INSERT = " + insert); try { Statement stmt = getDbConnection().createStatement(); stmt.execute(insert); stmt.close(); } catch (SQLException ex) { System.err.println("SQLException: " + ex.getMessage()); } } public Connection getDbConnection() { return dbConnection; } public void setDbConnection(Connection dbConnection) { this.dbConnection = dbConnection; } } Step 4: Now we need to register our publisher against a ContentHandler. In order to achieve that we need to create in our eclipse project a new class called CustomPushReplicationNamespaceContentHandler that should extend the com.oracle.coherence.patterns.pushreplication.configuration.PushReplicationNamespaceContentHandler. In the constructor of the new class we define a new handler for our custom publisher. package com.oracle.coherence; import com.oracle.coherence.configuration.Configurator; import com.oracle.coherence.environment.extensible.ConfigurationContext; import com.oracle.coherence.environment.extensible.ConfigurationException; import com.oracle.coherence.environment.extensible.ElementContentHandler; import com.oracle.coherence.patterns.pushreplication.PublisherScheme; import com.oracle.coherence.environment.extensible.QualifiedName; import com.oracle.coherence.patterns.pushreplication.configuration.PushReplicationNamespaceContentHandler; import com.tangosol.run.xml.XmlElement; public class CustomPushReplicationNamespaceContentHandler extends PushReplicationNamespaceContentHandler { public CustomPushReplicationNamespaceContentHandler() { super(); registerContentHandler("custom-publisher-scheme", new ElementContentHandler() { public Object onElement(ConfigurationContext context, QualifiedName qualifiedName, XmlElement xmlElement) throws ConfigurationException { PublisherScheme publisherScheme = new CustomPublisherScheme(); Configurator.configure(publisherScheme, context, qualifiedName, xmlElement); return publisherScheme; } }); } } Step 5: Now we should define our CustomPublisher in the cache configuration file according to the following documentation. <cache-config xmlns:sync="class:com.oracle.coherence.CustomPushReplicationNamespaceContentHandler" xmlns:cr="class:com.oracle.coherence.environment.extensible.namespaces.InstanceNamespaceContentHandler"> <caching-schemes> <sync:provider pof-enabled="false"> <sync:coherence-provider /> </sync:provider> <caching-scheme-mapping> <cache-mapping> <cache-name>publishing-cache</cache-name> <scheme-name>distributed-scheme-with-publishing-cachestore</scheme-name> <autostart>true</autostart> <sync:publisher> <sync:publisher-name>Active2 Publisher</sync:publisher-name> <sync:publisher-scheme> <sync:remote-cluster-publisher-scheme> <sync:remote-invocation-service-name>remote-site1</sync:remote-invocation-service-name> <sync:remote-publisher-scheme> <sync:local-cache-publisher-scheme> <sync:target-cache-name>publishing-cache</sync:target-cache-name> </sync:local-cache-publisher-scheme> </sync:remote-publisher-scheme> <sync:autostart>true</sync:autostart> </sync:remote-cluster-publisher-scheme> </sync:publisher-scheme> </sync:publisher> <sync:publisher> <sync:publisher-name>Active2-Output-Publisher</sync:publisher-name> <sync:publisher-scheme> <sync:stderr-publisher-scheme> <sync:autostart>true</sync:autostart> <sync:publish-original-value>true</sync:publish-original-value> </sync:stderr-publisher-scheme> </sync:publisher-scheme> </sync:publisher> <sync:publisher> <sync:publisher-name>Active2-JDBC-Publisher</sync:publisher-name> <sync:publisher-scheme> <sync:custom-publisher-scheme> <sync:jdbc-string>jdbc:oracle:thin:@machine_name:1521:XE</sync:jdbc-string> <sync:username>hr</sync:username> <sync:password>hr</sync:password> </sync:custom-publisher-scheme> </sync:publisher-scheme> </sync:publisher> </cache-mapping> </caching-scheme-mapping>  <remote-invocation-scheme> <service-name>remote-site1</service-name> <initiator-config> <tcp-initiator> <remote-addresses> <socket-address> <address>localhost</address> <port>20001</port> </socket-address> </remote-addresses> <connect-timeout>2s</connect-timeout> </tcp-initiator> <outgoing-message-handler> <request-timeout>5s</request-timeout> </outgoing-message-handler> </initiator-config> </remote-invocation-scheme>  <proxy-scheme> <service-name>ExtendTcpProxyService</service-name> <acceptor-config> <tcp-acceptor> <local-address> <address>localhost</address> <port>20002</port> </local-address> </tcp-acceptor> </acceptor-config> <autostart>true</autostart> </proxy-scheme> </caching-schemes> </cache-config> As you can see in the red-marked text from above I've: - set new Namespace Content Handler - define the new custom publisher that should work together with other publishers like: stderr and remote publishers in our case. Step 6: Add the com.oracle.coherence.CustomPublisherScheme to your custom-pof-config file: <pof-config> <user-type-list>  <include>coherence-pof-config.xml</include> <include>coherence-common-pof-config.xml</include> <include>coherence-messagingpattern-pof-config.xml</include> <include>coherence-pushreplicationpattern-pof-config.xml</include>  <user-type> <type-id>1901</type-id> <class-name>com.oracle.coherence.Order</class-name> <serializer> <class-name>com.oracle.coherence.OrderSerializer</class-name> </serializer> </user-type> <user-type> <type-id>1902</type-id> <class-name>com.oracle.coherence.CustomPublisherScheme</class-name> </user-type> </user-type-list> </pof-config> CONCLUSIONSThis approach allows for publishers to publish data to almost any other receiver (database, JMS, MQ, ...). The only thing that needs to be changed is the DatabasePersistence.java class that should be adapted to the chosen receiver. Only minor changes are needed for the rest of the code (to publishBatch method from CustomPublisher class).

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The Product Owner

- by Robert May

In a previous post, I outlined the rules of Scrum. This post details one of those rules. Picking a most important part of Scrum is difficult. All of the rules are required, but if there were one rule that is “more” required that every other rule, its having a good Product Owner. Simply put, the Product Owner can make or break the project. Duties of the Product Owner A Product Owner has many duties and responsibilities. I’ll talk about each of these duties in detail below. A Product Owner: Discovers and records stories for the backlog. Prioritizes stories in the Product Backlog, Release Backlog and Iteration Backlog. Determines Release dates and Iteration Dates. Develops story details and helps the team understand those details. Helps QA to develop acceptance tests. Interact with the Customer to make sure that the product is meeting the customer’s needs. Discovers and Records Stories for the Backlog When I do Scrum, I always use User Stories as the means for capturing functionality that’s required in the system. Some people will use Use Cases, but the same rule applies. The Product Owner has the ultimate responsibility for figuring out what functionality will be in the system. Many different mechanisms for capturing this input can be used. User interviews are great, but all sources should be considered, including talking with Customer Support types. Often, they hear what users are struggling with the most and are a great source for stories that can make the application easier to use. Care should be taken when soliciting user stories from technical types such as programmers and the people that manage them. They will almost always give stories that are very technical in nature and may not have a direct benefit for the end user. Stories are about adding value to the company. If the stories don’t have direct benefit to the end user, the Product Owner should question whether or not the story should be implemented. In general, technical stories should be included as tasks in User Stories. Technical stories are often needed, but the ultimate value to the user is in user based functionality, so technical stories should be considered nothing more than overhead in providing that user functionality. Until the iteration prior to development, stories should be nothing more than short, one line placeholders. An exercise called Story Planning can be used to brainstorm and come up with stories. I’ll save the description of this activity for another blog post. For more information on User Stories, please read the book User Stories Applied by Mike Cohn. Prioritizes Stories in the Product Backlog, Release Backlog and Iteration Backlog Prioritization of stories is one of the most difficult tasks that a Product Owner must do. A key concept of Scrum done right is the need to have the team working from a single set of prioritized stories. If the team does not have a single set of prioritized stories, Scrum will likely fail at your organization. The Product Owner is the ONLY person who has the responsibility to prioritize that list. The Product Owner must be very diplomatic and sincerely listen to the people around him so that he can get the priorities correct. Just listening will still not yield the proper priorities. Care must also be taken to ensure that Return on Investment is also considered. Ultimately, determining which stories give the most value to the company for the least cost is the most important factor in determining priorities. Product Owners should be willing to look at cold, hard numbers to determine the order for stories. Even when many people want a feature, if that features is costly to develop, it may not have as high of a return on investment as features that are cheaper, but not as popular. The act of prioritization often causes conflict in an environment. Customer Service thinks that feature X is the most important, because it will stop people from calling. Operations thinks that feature Y is the most important, because it will stop servers from crashing. Developers think that feature Z is most important because it will make writing software much easier for them. All of these are useful goals, but the team can have only one list of items, and each item must have a priority that is different from all other stories. The Product Owner will determine which feature gives the best return on investment and the other features will have to wait their turn, which means that someone will not have their top priority feature implemented first. A weak Product Owner will refuse to do prioritization. I’ve heard from multiple Product Owners the following phrase, “Well, it’s all got to be done, so what does it matter what order we do it in?” If your product owner is using this phrase, you need a new Product Owner. Order is VERY important. In Scrum, every release is potentially shippable. If the wrong priority items are developed, then the value added in each release isn’t what it should be. Additionally, the Product Owner with this mindset doesn’t understand Agile. A product is NEVER finished, until the company has decided that it is no longer a going concern and they are no longer going to sell the product. Therefore, prioritization isn’t an event, its something that continues every day. The logical extension of the phrase “It’s all got to be done” is that you will never ship your product, since a product is never “done.” Once stories have been prioritized, assigning them to the Release Backlog and the Iteration Backlog becomes relatively simple. The top priority items are copied into the respective backlogs in order and the task is complete. The team does have the right to shuffle things around a little in the iteration backlog. For example, they may determine that working on story C with story A is appropriate because they’re related, even though story B is technically a higher priority than story C. Or they may decide that story B is too big to complete in the time available after Story A has tasks created, so they’ll work on Story C since it’s smaller. They can’t, however, go deep into the backlog to pick stories to implement. The team and the Product Owner should work together to determine what’s best for the company. Prioritization is time consuming, but its one of the most important things a Product Owner does. Determines Release Dates and Iteration Dates Product owners are responsible for determining release dates for a product. A common misconception that Product Owners have is that every “release” needs to correspond with an actual release to customers. This is not the case. In general, releases should be no more than 3 months long. You may decide to release the product to the customers, and many companies do release the product to customers, but it may also be an internal release. If a release date is too far away, developers will fall into the trap of not feeling a sense of urgency. The date is far enough away that they don’t need to give the release their full attention. Additionally, important tasks, such as performance tuning, regression testing, user documentation, and release preparation, will not happen regularly, making them much more difficult and time consuming to do. The more frequently you do these tasks, the easier they are to accomplish. The Product Owner will be a key participant in determining whether or not a release should be sent out to the customers. The determination should be made on whether or not the features contained in the release are valuable enough and complete enough that the customers will see real value in the release. Often, some features will take more than three months to get them to a state where they qualify for a release or need additional supporting features to be released. The product owner has the right to make this determination. In addition to release dates, the Product Owner also will help determine iteration dates. In general, an iteration length should be chosen and the team should follow that iteration length for an extended period of time. If the iteration length is changed every iteration, you’re not doing Scrum. Iteration lengths help the team and company get into a rhythm of developing quality software. Iterations should be somewhere between 2 and 4 weeks in length. Any shorter, and significant software will likely not be developed. Any longer, and the team won’t feel urgency and planning will become very difficult. Iterations may not be extended during the iteration. Companies where Scrum isn’t really followed will often use this as a strategy to complete all stories. They don’t want to face the harsh reality of what their true performance is, and looking good is more important than seeking visibility and improving the process and team. Companies like this typically don’t allow failure. This is unhealthy. Failure is part of life and unless we learn from it, we can’t improve. I would much rather see a team push out stories to the next iteration and then have healthy discussions about why they failed rather than extend the iteration and not deal with the core problems. If iteration length varies, retrospectives become more difficult. For example, evaluating the performance of the team’s estimation efforts becomes much more difficult if the iteration length varies. Also, the team must have a velocity measurement. If the iteration length varies, measuring velocity becomes impossible and upper management no longer will have the ability to evaluate the teams performance. People external to the team will no longer have the ability to determine when key features are likely to be developed. Variable iterations cause the entire company to fail and likely cause Scrum to fail at an organization. Develops Story Details and Helps the Team Understand Those Details A key concept in Scrum is that the stories are nothing more than a placeholder for a conversation. Stories should be nothing more than short, one line statements about the functionality. The team will then converse with the Product Owner about the details about that story. The product owner needs to have a very good idea about what the details of the story are and needs to be able to help the team understand those details. Too often, we see this requirement as being translated into the need for comprehensive documentation about the story, including old fashioned requirements documentation. The team should only develop the documentation that is required and should not develop documentation that is only created because their is a process to do so. In general, what we see that works best is the iteration before a team starts development work on a story, the Product Owner, with other appropriate business analysts, will develop the details of that story. They’ll figure out what business rules are required, potentially make paper prototypes or other light weight mock-ups, and they seek to understand the story and what is implied. Note that the time allowed for this task is deliberately short. The Product Owner only has a single iteration to develop all of the stories for the next iteration. If more than one iteration is used, I’ve found that teams will end up with Big Design Up Front and traditional requirements documents. This is a waste of time, since the team will need to then have discussions with the Product Owner to figure out what the requirements document says. Instead of this, skip making the pretty pictures and detailing the nuances of the requirements and build only what is minimally needed by the team to do development. If something comes up during development, you can address it at that time and figure out what you want to do. The goal is to keep things as light weight as possible so that everyone can move as quickly as possible. Helps QA to Develop Acceptance Tests In Scrum, no story can be counted until it is accepted by QA. Because of this, acceptance tests are very important to the team. In general, acceptance tests need to be developed prior to the iteration or at the very beginning of the iteration so that the team can make sure that the tasks that they develop will fulfill the acceptance criteria. The Product Owner will help the team, including QA, understand what will make the story acceptable. Note that the Product Owner needs to be careful about specifying that the feature will work “Perfectly” at the end of the iteration. In general, features are developed a little bit at a time, so only the bit that is being developed should be considered as necessary for acceptance. A weak Product Owner will make statements like “Do it right the first time.” Not only are these statements damaging to the team (like they would try to do it WRONG the first time . . .), they’re also ignoring the iterative nature of Scrum. Additionally, a weak product owner will seek to add scope in the acceptance testing. For example, they will refuse to determine acceptance at the beginning of the iteration, and then, after the team has planned and committed to the iteration, they will expand scope by defining acceptance. This often causes the team to miss the iteration because scope that wasn’t planned on is included. There are ways that the team can mitigate this problem. For example, include extra “Product Owner” time to deal with the uncertainty that you know will be introduced by the Product Owner. This will slow the perceived velocity of the team and is not ideal, since they’ll be doing more work than they get credit for. Interact with the Customer to Make Sure that the Product is Meeting the Customer’s Needs Once development is complete, what the team has worked on should be put in front of real live people to see if it meets the needs of the customer. One of the great things about Agile is that if something doesn’t work, we can revisit it in a future iteration! This frees up the team to make the best decision now and know that if that decision proves to be incorrect, the team can revisit it and change that decision. Features are about adding value to the customer, so if the customer doesn’t find them useful, then having the team make tweaks is valuable. In general, most software will be 80 to 90 percent “right” after the initial round and only minor tweaks are required. If proper coding standards are followed, these tweaks are usually minor and easy to accomplish. Product Owners that are doing a good job will encourage real users to see and use the software, since they know that they are trying to add value to the customer. Poor product owners will think that they know the answers already, that their customers are silly and do stupid things and that they don’t need customer input. If you have a product owner that is afraid to show the team’s work to real customers, you probably need a different product owner. Up Next, “Who Makes a Good Product Owner.” Followed by, “Messing with the Team.” Technorati Tags: Scrum,Product Owner

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Building a jQuery Plug-in to make an HTML Table scrollable

- by Rick Strahl

Today I got a call from a customer and we were looking over an older application that uses a lot of tables to display financial and other assorted data. The application is mostly meta-data driven with lots of layout formatting automatically driven through meta data rather than through explicit hand coded HTML layouts. One of the problems in this apps are tables that display a non-fixed amount of data. The users of this app don't want to use paging to see more data, but instead want to display overflow data using a scrollbar. Many of the forms are very densely populated, often with multiple data tables that display a few rows of data in the UI at the most. This sort of layout does not lend itself well to paging, but works much better with scrollable data. Unfortunately scrollable tables are not easily created. HTML Tables are mangy beasts as anybody who's done any sort of Web development knows. Tables are finicky when it comes to styling and layout, and they have many funky quirks, especially when it comes to scrolling both of the table rows themselves or even the child columns. There's no built-in way to make tables scroll and to lock headers while you do, and while you can embed a table (or anything really) into a scrolling div with something like this: <div style="position:relative; overflow: hidden; overflow-y: scroll; height: 200px; width: 400px;"> <table id="table" style="width: 100%" class="blackborder" > <thead> <tr class="gridheader"> <th>Column 1</th> <th>Column 2</th> <th>Column 3</th> <th >Column 4</th> </tr> </thead> <tbody> <tr> <td>Column 1 Content</td> <td>Column 2 Content</td> <td>Column 3 Content</td> <td>Column 4 Content</td> </tr> <tr> <td>Column 1 Content</td> <td>Column 2 Content</td> <td>Column 3 Content</td> <td>Column 4 Content</td> </tr> … </tbody> </table> </div> </div> that won't give a very satisfying visual experience: Both the header and body scroll which looks odd. You lose context as soon as the header scrolls off the top and when you reach the bottom of the list the bottom outline of the table shows which also looks off. The the side bar shows all the way down the length of the table yet another visual miscue. In a pinch this will work, but it's ugly. What's out there? Before we go further here you should know that there are a few capable grid plug-ins out there already. Among them: Flexigrid (can work of any table as well as with AJAX data) jQuery Scrollable Table Plug-in (feature similar to what I need but not quite) jqGrid (mostly an Ajax Grid which is very powerful and works very well) But in the end none of them fit the bill of what I needed in this situation. All of these require custom CSS and some of them are fairly complex to restyle. Others are AJAX only or work better with AJAX loaded data. However, I need to actually try (as much as possible) to maintain the original styling of the tables without requiring extensive re-styling. Building the makeTableScrollable() Plug-in To make a table scrollable requires rearranging the table a bit. In the plug-in I built I create two <div> tags and split the table into two: one for the table header and one for the table body. The bottom <div> tag then contains only the table's row data and can be scrolled while the header stays fixed. Using jQuery the basic idea is pretty simple: You create the divs, copy the original table into the bottom, then clone the table, clear all content append the <thead> section, into new table and then copy that table into the second header <div>. Easy as pie, right? Unfortunately it's a bit more complicated than that as it's tricky to get the width of the table right to account for the scrollbar (by adding a small column) and making sure the borders properly line up for the two tables. A lot of style settings have to be made to ensure the table is a fixed size, to remove and reattach borders, to add extra space to allow for the scrollbar and so forth. The end result of my plug-in is a table with a scrollbar. Using the same table I used earlier the result looks like this: To create it, I use the following jQuery plug-in logic to select my table and run the makeTableScrollable() plug-in against the selector: $("#table").makeTableScrollable( { cssClass:"blackborder"} ); Without much further ado, here's the short code for the plug-in: (function ($) { $.fn.makeTableScrollable = function (options) { return this.each(function () { var $table = $(this); var opt = { // height of the table height: "250px", // right padding added to support the scrollbar rightPadding: "10px", // cssclass used for the wrapper div cssClass: "" } $.extend(opt, options); var $thead = $table.find("thead"); var $ths = $thead.find("th"); var id = $table.attr("id"); var cssClass = $table.attr("class"); if (!id) id = "_table_" + new Date().getMilliseconds().ToString(); $table.width("+=" + opt.rightPadding); $table.css("border-width", 0); // add a column to all rows of the table var first = true; $table.find("tr").each(function () { var row = $(this); if (first) { row.append($("<th>").width(opt.rightPadding)); first = false; } else row.append($("<td>").width(opt.rightPadding)); }); // force full sizing on each of the th elemnts $ths.each(function () { var $th = $(this); $th.css("width", $th.width()); }); // Create the table wrapper div var $tblDiv = $("<div>").css({ position: "relative", overflow: "hidden", overflowY: "scroll" }) .addClass(opt.cssClass); var width = $table.width(); $tblDiv.width(width).height(opt.height) .attr("id", id + "_wrapper") .css("border-top", "none"); // Insert before $tblDiv $tblDiv.insertBefore($table); // then move the table into it $table.appendTo($tblDiv); // Clone the div for header var $hdDiv = $tblDiv.clone(); $hdDiv.empty(); var width = $table.width(); $hdDiv.attr("style", "") .css("border-bottom", "none") .width(width) .attr("id", id + "_wrapper_header"); // create a copy of the table and remove all children var $newTable = $($table).clone(); $newTable.empty() .attr("id", $table.attr("id") + "_header"); $thead.appendTo($newTable); $hdDiv.insertBefore($tblDiv); $newTable.appendTo($hdDiv); $table.css("border-width", 0); }); } })(jQuery); Oh sweet spaghetti code :-) The code starts out by dealing the parameters that can be passed in the options object map: height The height of the full table/structure. The height of the outside wrapper container. Defaults to 200px. rightPadding The padding that is added to the right of the table to account for the scrollbar. Creates a column of this width and injects it into the table. If too small the rightmost column might get truncated. if too large the empty column might show. cssClass The CSS class of the wrapping container that appears to wrap the table. If you want a border around your table this class should probably provide it since the plug-in removes the table border. The rest of the code is obtuse, but pretty straight forward. It starts by creating a new column in the table to accommodate the width of the scrollbar and avoid clipping of text in the rightmost column. The width of the columns is explicitly set in the header elements to force the size of the table to be fixed and to provide the same sizing when the THEAD section is moved to a new copied table later. The table wrapper div is created, formatted and the table is moved into it. The new wrapper div is cloned for the header wrapper and configured. Finally the actual table is cloned and cleared of all elements. The original table's THEAD section is then moved into the new table. At last the new table is added to the header <div>, and the header <div> is inserted before the table wrapper <div>. I'm always amazed how easy jQuery makes it to do this sort of re-arranging, and given of what's happening the amount of code is rather small. Disclaimer: Your mileage may vary A word of warning: I make no guarantees about the code above. It's a first cut and I provided this here mainly to demonstrate the concepts of decomposing and reassembling an HTML layout :-) which jQuery makes so nice and easy. I tested this component against the typical scenarios we plan on using it for which are tables that use a few well known styles (or no styling at all). I suspect if you have complex styling on your <table> tag that things might not go so well. If you plan on using this plug-in you might want to minimize your styling of the table tag and defer any border formatting using the class passed in via the cssClass parameter, which ends up on the two wrapper div's that wrap the header and body rows. There's also no explicit support for footers. I rarely if ever use footers (when not using paging that is), so I didn't feel the need to add footer support. However, if you need that it's not difficult to add - the logic is the same as adding the header. The plug-in relies on a well-formatted table that has THEAD and TBODY sections along with TH tags in the header. Note that ASP.NET WebForm DataGrids and GridViews by default do not generate well-formatted table HTML. You can look at my Adding proper THEAD sections to a GridView post for more info on how to get a GridView to render properly. The plug-in has no dependencies other than jQuery. Even with the limitations in mind I hope this might be useful to some of you. I know I've already identified a number of places in my own existing applications where I will be plugging this in almost immediately. Resources Download Sample and Plug-in code Latest version in the West Wind Web & AJAX Toolkit Repository © Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2011Posted in jQuery HTML ASP.NET

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CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, June 30, 2011

CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, June 30, 2011Popular ReleasesASP.NET Comet Ajax Library (Reverse Ajax - Server Push): Reverse Ajax Samples v1.53: 16 Comprehensive ASP.NET Ajax / Reverse Ajax / WCF / MVC / Mono samplesReactive Extensions - Extensions (Rxx): Rxx 1.1: What's NewRelated Work Items Please read the latest release notes for details about what's new. About LabsAll "Labs" downloads include the Rxx.dll assembly, so only a single download is required. To start RxxLabs.exe, right-mouse click and select Run as Administrator; otherwise, do not run the Reactive WebClient lab because it will crash the program. RxxLabs.exe requires administrator privileges for the Reactive WebClient lab to register a local HTTP port. To launch the Silverlight labs...CommonLibrary.NET: CommonLibrary.NET - 0.9.7 Final: A collection of very reusable code and components in C# 4.0 ranging from ActiveRecord, Csv, Command Line Parsing, Configuration, Holiday Calendars, Logging, Authentication, and much more. Samples in <root>\src\Lib\CommonLibrary.NET\Samples CommonLibrary.NET 0.9.7Documentation 6738 6503 New 6535 Enhancements 6759 6748 6583 6737datajs - JavaScript Library for data-centric web applications: datajs version 1.0.0: datajs is a cross-browser and UI agnostic JavaScript library that enables data-centric web applications with the following features: OData client that enables CRUD operations including batching and metadata support using both ATOM and JSON payloads. Single store abstraction that provides a common API on top of HTML5 local storage technologies. Data cache component that allows reading data ranges from a collection and storing them locally to reduce the number of network requests. Changes...Coding4Fun Tools: Coding4Fun.Phone.Toolkit v1.4.4: Fix for http://coding4fun.codeplex.com/workitem/6869 was incomplete. Back button wouldn't return app bar. Corrected now. High impact bugSiteMap Editor for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011: SiteMap Editor (1.0.528.279): Added keyboard shortcuts: - Cut (CTRL+X) - Copy (CTRL+C) - Paste (CTRL+V) - Delete (CTRL+D) - Move up (CTRL+UP ARROW) - Move down (CTRL+DOWN ARROW) Added ability to save/load SiteMap from/to a Xml file on disk Bug fix: - Connect to a server through the status bar was throwing error "Object Reference not set to an instance of an object" - Rename TreeNode.Name after changing TreeNode.TextMicrosoft - Domain Oriented N-Layered .NET 4.0 App Sample: V2.01 ALPHA N-Layered SampleApp .NET 4.0 and EF4.1: V2.0.01 - ALPHARequired Software (Microsoft Base Software needed for Development environment) Visual Studio 2010 RTM & .NET 4.0 RTM (Final Versions) Expression Blend 4 SQL Server 2008 R2 Express/Standard/Enterprise Unity Application Block 2.0 - Published May 5th 2010 http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=2D24F179-E0A6-49D7-89C4-5B67D939F91B&displaylang=en http://unity.codeplex.com/releases/view/31277 PEX & MOLES 0.94.51023.0, 29/Oct/2010 - Visual Studio 2010 Power ...Mosaic Project: Mosaic Alpha build 261: - Fixed crash when pinning applications in x64 OS - Added Hub to video widget. It shows videos from Video library (only .wmv and .avi). Can work slow if there are too much files. - Fixed some issues with scrolling - Fixed bug with html widgets - Fixed bug in Gmail widget - Added html today widget missed in previous release - Now Mosaic saves running widgets if you restarting from optionsEnhSim: EnhSim 2.4.9 BETA: 2.4.9 BETAThis release supports WoW patch 4.2 at level 85 To use this release, you must have the Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 Redistributable Package installed. This can be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=A7B7A05E-6DE6-4D3A-A423-37BF0912DB84 To use the GUI you must have the .NET 4.0 Framework installed. This can be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=9cfb2d51-5ff4-4491-b0e5-b386f32c0992 - Added in some of th....NET Reflector Add-Ins: Reflector V7 Add-Ins: All the add-ins compiled for Reflector V7TerrariViewer: TerrariViewer v4.1 [4.0 Bug Fixes]: Version 4.1 ChangelogChanged how users will Open Player files (This change makes it much easier) This allowed me to remove the "Current player file" labels that were present Changed file control icons Added submit bug button Various Bug Fixes Fixed crashes related to clicking on buffs before a character is loaded Fixed crashes related to selecting "No Buff" when choosing a new buff Fixed crashes related to clicking on a "Max" button on the buff tab before a character is loaded Cor...AcDown????? - Anime&Comic Downloader: AcDown????? v3.0 Beta8: ??AcDown???????????????，?????????????????????。????????????????????，??Acfun、Bilibili、???、???、?????，???????????、???????。 AcDown???????????????????????????，???，???????????????????。 AcDown???????C#??，?????"Acfun?????"。 ????32??64? Windows XP/Vista/7 ????????????? ??：????????Windows XP???,?????????.NET Framework 2.0???(x86)?.NET Framework 2.0???(x64)，?????"?????????"??? ??????????????，??????????： ??"AcDown?????"????????? ??v3.0 Beta8 ?? ??????????????? ???????????????(??????????) ???????...BlogEngine.NET: BlogEngine.NET 2.5: Get DotNetBlogEngine for 3 Months Free! Click Here for More Info 3 Months FREE – BlogEngine.NET Hosting – Click Here! If you want to set up and start using BlogEngine.NET right away, you should download the Web project. If you want to extend or modify BlogEngine.NET, you should download the source code. If you are upgrading from a previous version of BlogEngine.NET, please take a look at the Upgrading to BlogEngine.NET 2.5 instructions. To get started, be sure to check out our installatio...PHP Manager for IIS: PHP Manager 1.2 for IIS 7: This release contains all the functionality available in 62183 plus the following additions: Command Line Support via PowerShell - now it is possible to manage and script PHP installations on IIS by using Windows PowerShell. More information is available at Managing PHP installations with PHP Manager command line. Detection and alert when using local PHP handler - if a web site or a directory has a local copy of PHP handler mapping then the configuration changes made on upper configuration ...MiniTwitter: 1.71: MiniTwitter 1.71 ???? ?? OAuth ???????????? ????????、??????????????????? ???????????????????????SizeOnDisk: 1.0.10.0: Fix: issue 327: size format error when save settings Fix: some UI bindings trouble (sorting, refresh) Fix: user settings file deletion when corrupted Feature: TreeView virtualization (better speed with many folders) Feature: New file type DataGrid column Feature: In KByte view, show size of file < 1024B and > 0 with 3 decimal Feature: New language: Italian Task: Cleanup for speedRawr: Rawr 4.2.0: This is the Downloadable WPF version of Rawr!For web-based version see http://elitistjerks.com/rawr.php You can find the version notes at: http://rawr.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=VersionNotes Rawr AddonWe now have a Rawr Official Addon for in-game exporting and importing of character data hosted on Curse. The Addon does not perform calculations like Rawr, it simply shows your exported Rawr data in wow tooltips and lets you export your character to Rawr (including bag and bank items) like Char...N2 CMS: 2.2: * Web platform installer support available ** Nuget support available What's newDinamico Templates (beta) - an MVC3 & Razor based template pack using the template-first! development paradigm Boilerplate CSS & HTML5 Advanced theming with css comipilation (concrete, dark, roadwork, terracotta) Template-first! development style Content, news, listing, slider, image sizes, search, sitemap, globalization, youtube, google map Display Tokens - replaces text tokens with rendered content (usag...KinectNUI: Jun 25 Alpha Release: Initial public version. No installer needed, just run the EXE.Terraria World Viewer: Version 1.5: Update June 24th Made compatible with the new tiles found in Terraria 1.0.5New Projects{Adjunct} functionality for the .NET framework: A project to provide Ingots for the .NET framework.3Webee.net: 3Webee.net is the First Navigator dedicated to Web.3.0 by P2P. Developped in C# for DotNet-3.5 or Mono.net, compatible with Linux ready. Website.fr : http://3webee.net/ Download Win32 : http://3webee.net/Download/3Webee.net.beta.0.0.Win32.exe AB Donor Choose Planner: The goal of this doantion planner is to allow you to coordinate the completion of one or more Donors Choose projects. The tool gives you a portfolio view of the donations you would like to invest in by targeting your investments in a location/regional focused manner.appperu1: asdasdsaddas: ColinTestingasdfFindClone: Find clone files, find duplicate files, remove duplicate filesfirstcpapp: This is my appForecast Parser: The NOAA hosts forecast data accessible over the web. These libraries download and parse seven day hourly forecast data and encapsulates the data in an easy to use class.Future Apple Osx: Future Apple Osx, Is a free operating system to use. It was built from the ground up with the help of Cosmos. It is free to use and download. So please check it out today.Glimpse: Glimpse is a web debugger and diagnostics tool for ASP.NET and ASP.NET MVC. You can find out more at getGlimpse.comiAdm: ?? iToday ??? wince 6 R2 ?????ImagineCup Worldwide Finals Tracker: An open-source Windows Phone application that is used to track the events going on at the ImagineCup Worldwide Finals.John Owl: John OwlLAM - Local Area Messaging: A VB.NET local area chat application. Finds the lan clients and communicates through the lan with old Ms-Winsock Interop.MessyBrain: Organize your tasks in an efficient way. Assign tasks to members of your team. Create workflows for your team. Written in C# and ASP.NET MVC. Why did I start this project? Making mistakes is part of the learning process. They can be painful especially when they are made at work; there’s a cost attached to it. Why not start a project on my own? Mistakes will be less painful (only my ego will be damaged), I learn something new and there isn’t a cost attached to it. I can share the code ...Navigation Light Toolkit: Navigation Light add support for View Navigation in WPF and SilverlightRight Click Calculator: a mini calculator with numpad that opens in a dialogbox. it can combined with a textbox. bir textbox üzerinde sag tus ile açabileceginiz ufak bir hesap makinesi örnegi.Shaaps & Ladders: It's a modern software implementation of the popular classic board game Snakes & Ladders. The Bengali translation of "Snakes" pronounces "Shaaps" and thus the name of the game is such. The game is being developed on top of the Shaaps & Ladders GDK. Source for both are released.SharePoint PowerShell Scripts: Usefull PowerShell scripts written for SharePoint that helps organizations with governance.Smith Web Tools: Smith Web Tools are some useful controls to help to build web application. They are written in pure JavaScript and CSS without introducing any other JavaScript framework. At present, the Smith Calendar, Smith Editor, and Smith Dialog are available.SSAS Query Log Decoder & Analyzer: The Crisp description for the project will be "CUBE FOR CUBE". This is an end-to-end BI solution for analyzing the Query log created by SSAS Server. The Query Log data is loaded into a dimensional model and a cube is built on top of it for analysis of cube usage.takcandmansys: takcandmansysTestHG1: TestHG1TESTProjHG: TESTProjHGTestTFS1: TestTFS1TESTTFSAAA: TESTTFSAAATower: tower showTransit Feed Generator: Library for help the integration with Google Transit. This library generates the zipped file with data for Google Transit Feed, in the GTFS formatVRE Collaborator Search Kit for SharePoint 2010: VRE Collaborator Search Kit for SharePoint 2010VRE Content Archiving Kit for SharePoint 2010: VRE Content Archiving Kit for SharePoint 2010VRE Document Review Workflow Kit for SharePoint 2010: VRE Document Review Workflow Kit for SharePoint 2010 VRE Literature Review Kit for SharePoint 2010: VRE Literature Review Kit for SharePoint 2010 VRE Researcher and Project Templates for SharePoint 2010: VRE Researcher and Project Templates for SharePoint 2010 VRE RSS Feeds Kit for SharePoint 2010: VRE RSS Feeds Kit for SharePoint 2010 VRE User Administration (FBA) Kit for SharePoint 2010: VRE User Administration (FBA) Kit for SharePoint 2010 WebPart Collapser: WebPart Collapser is a lightweight, customizable jQuery plugin for SharePoint 2007 that allows visitors to expand/collapse WebParts. Through the use of cookies, the collapsed state of any webparts will be saved and collapsed each time a user visits a page. WPF Hex Editor: hex editor which is created with WPF with a xaml designed UI.Xoorscript: A proprietary scripting language created by Jared Thomson for the purpose of script defining an easy to use make system. The plans for this project are minimal for now, but if things go well I may expand it. This is low priority for me.

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