Search Results

Search found 11073 results on 443 pages for 'higher kinded types'.

Page 99/443 | < Previous Page | 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106  | Next Page >

• Boost Solr results based on the field that contained the hit

  - by TomFor

  Hi, I was browsing the web looking for a indexing and search framework and stumbled upon Solr. A functionality that we abolutely need is to boost results based on what field contained the hit. A small example: Consider a record like this: <movie> <title>The Dark Knight</title> <alternative_title>Batman Begins 2</alternative_title> <year>2008</year> <director>Christopher Nolan</director> <plot>Batman, Gordon and Harvey Dent are forced to deal with the chaos unleashed by an anarchist mastermind known only as the Joker, as it drives each of them to their limits.</plot> </movie> I want to combine for example the title, alternative_title and plot fields into one search field, which isn't too difficult after looking at the Solr/Lucene documentation and tutorials. However I also want that movies that have a hit in title have a higher score than hits on alternative_title and those in their turn should score higher than hits in the plot field. Is there any way to indicate this kond of scoring in the xml or do we need to develop some custom scoring algorythm? Please also note that the example I've givnen is fictional end the real data will probably contain 100+ fields. Thanks in advance, Tom

  Read the article

• Windows-Mobile Directshow: Specifying bitrate/quality of a WMV video capture

  - by Landstander

  Hi- I'm stumped on this, and I'm really hoping someone could point me in the right direction. I'm currently capturing video in Windows Mobile and encoding it using the WMV 9 DMO (CLSID_CWMV9EncMediaObject). That all works well enough, but the output video's bitrate is too high, resulting in a video file that's much too large for my needs. Ultimately, my goal is to mimic the video settings that Microsoft's Camera Capture Dialog outputs in the "messaging" quality mode (64kbps) from my C++ code. Currently, my code's outputting a WMV file with a bitrate of 352kbps. The only example I could find of specifying the capture bitrate with a WMV9 DMO was this. The idea in that code was basically to use a propertybag to write a bitrate to a property of the DMO. Update: In windows mobile, the closest codec property I can find that seems to equate to the bitrate is "g_wszWMVCVBRQuality". Microsoft's documentation of this property is extremely confusing to me: It basically seems to say that a higher number equates to a higher quality, but it gives absolutely no explanation of the specifics for each number. When I attempt to set this property to value like "1" via a propertybag for the WMV9 DMO, I run into a -2147467259 (unknown) error. To summarize: What is the basic strategy to specify the bitrate/quality of a video being captured via directshow (wmv9) on a windows mobile platform? I've heard (or wondered about) the following methods: Use the propertybag to change the encoder DMO's property that corresponds to bitrate/quality (currently failing) Create your own custom transcoder/encoder to specify it. This seems unnecessary since the WMV encoder works well enough- it's just at too high a bitrate. The VIDEOINFOHEADER has a bitrate property, but I suspect that specifying new settings here will do nothing to alter the actual encoding process since I wouldn't think file attributes would come into play until after the encoding. Any suggestions? PS: I would post specific source code, but at this point it may confuse more than it helps since I'm floundering so much on how to do this. At this point, I'm just trying to validate the general strategy. THANKS!

  Read the article

• Understanding evaluation of expressions containing '++' and '->' operators in C.

  - by Leif Ericson

  Consider this example: struct { int num; } s, *ps; s.num = 0; ps = &s; ++ps->num; printf("%d", s.num); /* Prints 1 */ It prints 1. So I understand that it is because according to operators precedence, -> is higher than ++, so the value ps->num (which is 0) is firstly fetched and then the ++ operator operates on it, so it increments it to 1. struct { int num; } s, *ps; s.num = 0; ps = &s; ps++->num; printf("%d", s.num); /* Prints 0 */ In this example I get 0 and I don't understand why; the explanation of the first example should be the same for this example. But it seems that this expression is evaluated as follows: At first, the operator ++ operates, and it operates on ps, so it increments it to the next struct. Only then -> operates and it does nothing because it just fetches the num field of the next struct and does nothing with it. But it contradicts the precedence of operators, which says that -> have higher precedence than ++. Can someone explain this behavior? Edit: After reading two answers which refer to a C++ precedence tables which indicate that a prefix ++/-- operators have lower precedence than ->, I did some googling and came up with this link that states that this rule applies also to C itself. It fits exactly and fully explains this behavior, but I must add that the table in this link contradicts a table in my own copy of K&R ANSI C. So if you have suggestions as to which source is correct I would like to know. Thanks.

  Read the article

• Getting Argument Names In Ruby Reflection

  - by Joe Soul-bringer

  I would like to do some fairly heavy-duty reflection in the Ruby programming language. I would like to create a function which would return the names of the arguments of various calling functions higher up the call stack (just one higher would be enough but why stop there?). I could use Kernel.caller go to the file and parse the argument list but that would be ugly and unreliable. The function that I would like would work in the following way: module A def method1( tuti, fruity) foo end def method2(bim, bam, boom) foo end def foo print caller_args[1].join(",") #the "1" mean one step up the call stack end end A.method1 #prints "tuti,fruity" A.method2 #prints "bim, bam, boom" I would not mind using ParseTree or some similar tool for this task but looking at Parsetree, it is not obvious how to use it for this purpose. Creating a C extension like this is another possibility but it would be nice if someone had already done it for me. Edit2: I can see that I'll probably need some kind of C extension. I suppose that means my question is what combination of C extension would work most easily. I don't think caller+ParseTree would be enough by themselves. As far as why I would like to do this goes, rather than saying "automatic debugging", perhaps I should say that I would like to use this functionality to do automatic checking of the calling and return conditions of functions. Say def add x, y check_positive return x + y end Where check_positive would throw an exception if x and y weren't positive (obviously, there would be more to it than that but hopefully this gives enough motivation)

  Read the article

• iPhone OS: Strategies for high density image work

  - by Jasconius

  I have a project that is coming around the bend this summer that is going to involve, potentially, an extremely high volume of image data for display. We are talking hundreds of 640x480-ish images in a given application session (scaled to a smaller resolution when displayed), and handfuls of very large (1280x1024 or higher) images at a time. I've already done some preliminary work and I've found that the typical 640x480ish image is just a shade under 1MB in memory when placed into a UIImageView and displayed... but the very large images can be a whopping 5+ MB's in some cases. This project is actually be targeted at the iPad, which, in my Instruments tests seems to cap out at about 80-100MB's of addressable physical memory. Details aside, I need to start thinking of how to move huge volumes of image data between virtual and physical memory while preserving the fluidity and responsiveness of the application, which will be high visibility. I'm probably on the higher ends of intermediate at Objective-C... so I am looking for some solid articles and advice on the following: 1) Responsible management of UIImage and UIImageView in the name of conserving physical RAM 2) Merits of using CGImage over UIImage, particularly for the huge images, and if there will be any performance gain 3) Anything dealing with memory paging particularly as it pertains to images I will epilogue by saying that the numbers I have above maybe off by about 10 or 15%. Images may or may not end up being bundled into the actual app itself as opposed to being loaded in from an external server.

  Read the article

• Is a "factory" method the right pattern?

  - by jdt141

  Hey all - So I'm working to improve an existing implementation. I have a number of polymorphic classes that are all composed into a higher level container class. The problem I'm dealing with at the moment is that the higher level container class, well, sucks. It looks something like this, which I really don't have a problem with (as the polymorphic classes in the container should be public). My real issue is the constructor... /* * class1 and class 2 derive from the same superclass */ class Container { public: boost::shared_ptr<ComposedClass1> class1; boost::shared_ptr<ComposedClass2> class2; private: ... } /* * Constructor - builds the objects that we need in this container. */ Container::Container(some params) { class1.reset(new ComposedClass1(...)); class2.reset(new ComposedClass2(...)); } What I really need is to make this container class more re-usable. By hard-coding up the member objects and instantiating them, it basically isn't and can only be used once. A factory is one way to build what I need (potentially by supplying a list of objects and their specific types to be created?) Other ways to get around this problem? Seems like someone should have solved it before... Thanks!

  Read the article

• Possible to rank partial matches in Postgres full text search?

  - by Joe

  I'm trying to calculate a ts_rank for a full-text match where some of the terms in the query may not be in the ts_vector against which it is being matched. I would like the rank to be higher in a match where more words match. Seems pretty simple? Because not all of the terms have to match, I have to | the operands, to give a query such as to_tsquery('one|two|three') (if it was &, all would have to match). The problem is, the rank value seems to be the same no matter how many words match. In other words, it's maxing rather than multiplying the clauses. select ts_rank('one two three'::tsvector, to_tsquery('one')); gives 0.0607927. select ts_rank('one two three'::tsvector, to_tsquery('one|two|three|four')); gives the expected lower value of 0.0455945 because 'four' is not the vector. But select ts_rank('one two three'::tsvector, to_tsquery('one|two')); gives 0.0607927 and likewise select ts_rank('one two three'::tsvector, to_tsquery('one|two|three')); gives 0.0607927 I would like the result of ts_rank to be higher if more terms match. Possible? To counter one possible response: I cannot calculate all possible subsequences of the search query as intersections and then union them all in a query because I am going to be working with large queries. I'm sure there are plenty of arguments against this anyway! Edit: I'm aware of ts_rank_cd but it does not solve the above problem.

  Read the article

• Problem loading scripts from Ajax Response

  - by konathamrajesh

  The problem is I am using get_info() to make a ajax call to Result.lasso and paste the response in div with id 'test'.I am unable to use the sendForm() function from the page where i am calling the get_info(). I have also tried using different versions of jQuery 1.1.1.3 is working fine.But i am facing the problem while using higher versions of jquery. The error with higher versions is as follows missing } in XML expression [Break on this error] alert('hi');\n test.lasso (line 3) sendForm is not defined [Break on this error] sendForm(); get_info() function definition <script src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.2.6/jquery.min.js" type="text/javascript"></script> <SCRIPT> function get_info() { $.ajax({url: "Result.lasso", context: document.body, success: function(response){ document.getElementById('test').innerHTML = response ;},dataType:"script"}); } </SCRIPT> The code in Result.lasso is as follows [Content_Type: 'text/html; charset=UTF-8'] <script type="text/javascript"> function sendForm() { alert('hi'); } </script> [Date] form name= "abc" method = "get" action = "abcd.lasso"> input type ="text" name = "element1"/> input type = "button" value="Click" onClick = "javascript: sendForm();"/> </form> Please help me out in resolving this problem Thanks, Rajesh Konatham

  Read the article

• Anchor HTML DIV tag to right of screen

  - by Phillip

  Hello, I have a site that has 2 DIV tags, one floats left the other floats right. The left DIV contains text for the page, the other DIV is used to display a video. When I have text in the left DIV that fits the entire width of the screen the video shows up where I want it. However, a few pages have very little text and cause the video to show up in the right-center of the screen. I want to anchor this DIV to the right of the screen regardless of how much text is shown. I don't seem to get this problem in lower resolutions, it occurs more in the higher resolutions (such as 1280x1024). You can see an example on these pages: http://www.quilnet.com/TechSupport.aspx - Positions the right DIV where I want it regardless of the resolution. http://www.quilnet.com/ContactUs.aspx - Makes the right DIV closer to the center in higher resolutions. I want it in the position of the page TechSupport.aspx. I am trying to refrain from using the width parameter because I want it to be resolutionally compliant. I don't want my viewers to have to move a scroll bar left and right. Any ideas? Thanks!

  Read the article

• How to calculate this string-dissimilarity function efficiently?

  - by ybungalobill

  Hello, I was looking for a string metric that have the property that moving around large blocks in a string won't affect the distance so much. So "helloworld" is close to "worldhello". Obviously Levenshtein distance and Longest common subsequence don't fulfill this requirement. Using Jaccard distance on the set of n-grams gives good results but has other drawbacks (it's a pseudometric and higher n results in higher penalty for changing single character). [original research] As I thought about it, what I'm looking for is a function f(A,B) such that f(A,B)+1 equals the minimum number of blocks that one have to divide A into (A1 ... An), apply a permutation on the blocks and get B: f("hello", "hello") = 0 f("helloworld", "worldhello") = 1 // hello world -> world hello f("abba", "baba") = 2 // ab b a -> b ab a f("computer", "copmuter") = 3 // co m p uter -> co p m uter This can be extended for A and B that aren't necessarily permutations of each other: any additional character that can't be matched is considered as one additional block. f("computer", "combuter") = 3 // com uter -> com uter, unmatched: p and b. Observing that instead of counting blocks we can count the number of pairs of indices that are taken apart by a permutation, we can write f(A,B) formally as: f(A,B) = min { C(P) | P:|A|?|B|, P is bijective, ?i?dom(P) A[P(i)]=B[P(i)] } C(P) = |A| + |B| - |dom(P)| - |{ i | i,i+1?dom(P) and P(i)+1=P(i+1) }| - 1 The problem is... guess what... ... that I'm not able to calculate this in polynomial time. Can someone suggest a way to do this efficiently? Or perhaps point me to already known metric that exhibits similar properties?

  Read the article

• Add less than integer variable to string search

  - by user1691832

  I'm scanning a text document for certain installed programs on a computer and looking for an easy way to include a greater or less than variable in the string I'm scanning for. Here is a very ugly and cumbersome example of what I'm using currently and while it works as a temporary fix, isn't practical or sustainable. If CheckBox2.Checked Then sReader.Close() If text.Contains("Adobe Flash Player 11 Plugin") And text.Contains("Adobe Flash Player 11 ActiveX") Then Else If text.Contains("Adobe Flash Player 12 Plugin") And text.Contains("Adobe Flash Player 12 ActiveX") Then Else If text.Contains("Adobe Flash Player 13 Plugin") And text.Contains("Adobe Flash Player 13 ActiveX") Then Else '(Goes ahead and does a silent install of the missing or outdated program) So far I've run into this problem with both Adobe Flash and Java RTE and am certain to run into it with future programs. Essentially I need to scan for "Adobe Flash Player (Any number less than 11) Plugin" , "Adobe Flash Player (Any number less than 11) ActiveX" , "Java (number less than 9) Update (any number)". I'm sure whatever solution is offered can likely be adapted to similar programs I'm likely to encounter later. Thanks ----- Edit ----- I've since tried the following code but it always returns the "Found" messagebox, even when no version of adobe flash is present in the file it is scanning. If CheckBox2.Checked Then sReader.Close() Dim options As RegexOptions = RegexOptions.None Dim regex As Regex = New Regex("Adobe Flash Player (?<version>\d+) (Plugin|ActiveX)", options) Dim input As String = "Adobe Flash Player 11 Plugin" ' Get match Dim match As Match = regex.Match(input) Dim version As String = match.Groups("version").Value If (match.Success) Then MessageBox.Show("Version 11 or higher found, skipping install") Else MessageBox.Show("Version 11 or higher not found, installing Version 11")

  Read the article

• How can I make keyword order more relevant in my search?

  - by Atomiton

  In my database, I have a keywords field that stores a comma-delimited list of keywords. For example, a Shrek doll might have the following keywords: ogre, green, plush, hero, boys' toys A "Beanie Baby" doll ( that happens to be an ogre ) might have: beanie baby, kids toys, beanbag toys, soft, infant, ogre (That's a completely contrived example.) What I'd like to do is if the consumer searches for "ogre" I'd like the "Shrek" doll to come up higher in the search results. My content administrator feels that if the keyword is earlier in the list, it should get a higher ranking. ( This makes sense to me and it makes it easy for me to let them control the search result relevance ). Here's a simplified query: SELECT p.ProductID AS ContentID , p.ProductName AS Title , p.ProductCode AS Subtitle , 100 AS Rank , p.ProductKeywords AS Keywords FROM Products AS p WHERE FREETEXT( p.ProductKeywords, @SearchPredicate ) I'm thinking something along the lines of replacing the RANK with: , 200 - INDEXOF(@SearchTerm) AS Rank This "should" rank the keyword results by their relevance I know INDEXOF isn't a SQL command... but it's something LIKE that I would like to accomplish. Am I approaching this the right way? Is it possible to do something like this? Does this make sense?

  Read the article

• iphone how to determine and code according to base sdk version?

  - by Nareshkumar

  I have a code for UIImage picker photoImagePicker=[[UIImagePickerController alloc]init]; photoImagePicker.delegate=self; photoImagePicker.sourceType=UIImagePickerControllerSourceTypeCamera; photoImagePicker.mediaTypes=[UIImagePickerController availableMediaTypesForSourceType:photoImagePicker.sourceType]; [self presentModalViewController:photoImagePicker animated:YES]; photoImagePicker.showsCameraControls = YES; //Doesnot work on 3.0 photoImagePicker.navigationBarHidden = YES; photoImagePicker.toolbarHidden = YES; photoImagePicker.allowsEditing=YES; //Doesnt work on 3.0 Now everything works fine when the sdk is 3.1 or higher but when i put the os version as 3.0, the code starts showing errors. Turns out these methods were not present in 3.0 and so errors. I want to keep a mechanism which will enable these for higher versions(3.1) and at the same time work properly for 3.0 version. How do i do it? One solution i have thought of is to verify the version value and then put that code. But i am not sure how this is got. Any help will be appreciated.

  Read the article

• Localisable Resources: how can (should one?!) wrap a UI layer source as a BL layer service?

  - by Ciel

  A service that returns localised strings could be wrapped in a service, so that it could be used both locally (eg in an MVC app) and remotely (eg possibly Silverlight). But...if sticking with the standard practice of creating resources in the UI assembly, that would in effect make a lower layer (BL/Services) have to have a ref on a higher layer (UI)...a definite no-no. And whereas a lot of AppWide resources (eg: AppName, OK, Cancel, etc.) could be defined in a Common cross-cutting assembly, and the BL/ResourceSerouce could ref and wrap those, that doesn't work in a a Modular App, where the Core app should have no binding to/knowledge of any Module. One solution could be to have each module, once mounted in mem, 'register' their Resource files with the service, who would then return it to the service (rather a long round trip, but at least consistent as a service, and potentially resources/images could be shared with other resources). Secondly, that may work in a web app...but not sure how that pattern could be extended to a Silverlight modular app (the round tripping becomes prohibitive). ie...what are best practices for allowing Resources to be to be defined by the UI designer, in a higher level, but served from the lower BL layer, as a Service? Or is there a better way of understanding/solving the problem?

  Read the article

• How can I write to a single xml file from two programs at the same time?

  - by Tom Bushell

  We recently started working with XML files, after many years of experience with the old INI files. My coworker found some CodeProject sample code that uses System.Xml.XmlDocument.Save. We are getting exceptions when two programs try to write to the same file at the same time. System.IO.IOException: The process cannot access the file 'C:\Test.xml' because it is being used by another process. This seems obvious in hindsight, but we had not anticipated it because accessing INI files via the Win32 API does not have this limitation. I assume there's some arbitration done by the Win32 calls that work at a higher level than the the XmlDocument.Save method. I'm hoping there are higher level XML routines somewhere in the .Net library that work similarily to the Win32 functions, but don't know where to start looking. Or maybe we can set up our file access permissions to allow multiple programs to write to the same file? Time is short (like almost all SW projects), and if we can't find a solution quickly, we'll have to hold our noses and go back to INI files.

  Read the article

• Faster quadrature decoder loops with Python code

  - by Kelei

  I'm working with a BeagleBone Black and using Adafruit's IO Python library. Wrote a simple quadrature decoding function and it works perfectly fine when the motor runs at about 1800 RPM. But when the motor runs at higher speeds, the code starts missing some of the interrupts and the encoder counts start to accumulate errors. Do you guys have any suggestions as to how I can make the code more efficient or if there are functions which can cycle the interrupts at a higher frequency. Thanks, Kel Here's the code: # Define encoder count function def encodercount(term): global counts global Encoder_A global Encoder_A_old global Encoder_B global Encoder_B_old global error Encoder_A = GPIO.input('P8_7') # stores the value of the encoders at time of interrupt Encoder_B = GPIO.input('P8_8') if Encoder_A == Encoder_A_old and Encoder_B == Encoder_B_old: # this will be an error error += 1 print 'Error count is %s' %error elif (Encoder_A == 1 and Encoder_B_old == 0) or (Encoder_A == 0 and Encoder_B_old == 1): # this will be clockwise rotation counts += 1 print 'Encoder count is %s' %counts print 'AB is %s %s' % (Encoder_A, Encoder_B) elif (Encoder_A == 1 and Encoder_B_old == 1) or (Encoder_A == 0 and Encoder_B_old == 0): # this will be counter-clockwise rotation counts -= 1 print 'Encoder count is %s' %counts print 'AB is %s %s' % (Encoder_A, Encoder_B) else: #this will be an error as well error += 1 print 'Error count is %s' %error Encoder_A_old = Encoder_A # store the current encoder values as old values to be used as comparison in the next loop Encoder_B_old = Encoder_B # Initialize the interrupts - these trigger on the both the rising and falling GPIO.add_event_detect('P8_7', GPIO.BOTH, callback = encodercount) # Encoder A GPIO.add_event_detect('P8_8', GPIO.BOTH, callback = encodercount) # Encoder B # This is the part of the code which runs normally in the background while True: time.sleep(1)

  Read the article

• Was Visual Studio 2008 or 2010 written to use multi cores?

  - by Erx_VB.NExT.Coder

  basically i want to know if the visual studio IDE and/or compiler in 2010 was written to make use of a multi core environment (i understand we can target multi core environments in 08 and 10, but that is not my question). i am trying to decide on if i should get a higher clock dual core or a lower clock quad core, as i want to try and figure out which processor will give me the absolute best possible experience with Visual Studio 2010 (ide and background compiler). if they are running the most important section (background compiler and other ide tasks) in one core, then the core will get cut off quicker if running a quad core, esp if background compiler is the heaviest task, i would imagine this would b e difficult to seperate in more then one process, so even if it uses multi cores you might still be better off with going for a higher clock cpu if the majority of the processing is still bound to occur in one core (ie the most significant part of the VS environment). i am a vb programmer, they've made great performance improvements in beta 2, congrats, but i would love to be able to use VS seamlessly... anyone have any ideas? thanks, erx

  Read the article

• How Are These Styles Cascading?

  - by user1569275

  Problem is viewable at this link. http://dansdemos.info/prototypes/htmlSamples/responsive/step08_megaGridForward.html The three boxes need to have green backgrounds, but another style is taking precedence. I thought styles were supposed to take precedence based on where they appear in the style sheets, with styles lower in the style sheet cascading (taking precedence) over styles higher in the style sheet. I guess that is wrong, because the style sheet for the background colors of those boxes is here: #maincontent .col { background: #ccc; background: rgba(204, 204, 204, 0.85); } #callout1 { background-color: #00B300; text-align:center; } #callout2 { background-color: #00CC00; text-align:center; } #callout3 { background-color: #00E600; text-align:center; } When the style for "#maincontent .col" is removed, the green shows up (link)http://dansdemos.info/prototypes/htmlSamples/responsive/step08_megaGridForwardGreen.html, but I thought the green should show up because it is after the gray color specified higher up. I am finding a way to get what I need, but it would really make it a lot easier if I understood why the backgrounds are gray, instead of green. Any assistance would be extremely much appreciated. Thank you.

  Read the article

• WordPress not resizing images with Nginx + php-fpm and other issues

  - by Julian Fernandes

  Recently i setup a Ubuntu 12.04 VPS with 512mb/1ghz CPU, Nginx + php-fpm + Varnish + APC + Percona's MySQL server + CloudFlare Pro for our Ubuntu LoCo Team's WordPress blog. The blog get about 3~4k daily hits, use about 180MB and 8~20% CPU. Everything seems to be working insanely fast... page load is really good and is about 16x faster than any of our competitors... but there is one problem. When we upload a image, WordPress don't resize it, so all we can do it insert the full image in the post. If the imagem have, let's say, 30kb, it resize fine... but if the image have 100kb+, it won't... In nginx error logs i see this: upstream timed out (110: Connection timed out) while reading response header from upstream, client: 150.162.216.64, server: www.ubuntubrsc.com, request: "POST /wp-admin/async-upload.php HTTP/1.1", upstream: "fastcgi://unix:/var/run/php5-fpm.sock:", host: "www.ubuntubrsc.com", referrer: "http://www.ubuntubrsc.com/wp-admin/media-upload.php?post_id=2668&" It seems to be related with the issue, but i dunno. When that timeout happens, i started to get it when i'm trying to view a post too: upstream timed out (110: Connection timed out) while reading response header from upstream, client: 150.162.216.64, server: www.ubuntubrsc.com, request: "GET /tutoriais-gimp-6-adicionando-aplicando-novos-pinceis.html HTTP/1.1", upstream: "fastcgi://unix:/var/run/php5-fpm.sock:", host: "www.ubuntubrsc.com", referrer: "http://www.ubuntubrsc.com/" And only a restart of php5-fpm fix it. I tryed increasing some timeouts and stuffs but it did not worked, so i guess it's some kind of limitation i did not figured yet. Could someone help me with it, please? /etc/nginx/nginx.conf: user www-data; worker_processes 1; pid /var/run/nginx.pid; events { worker_connections 1024; use epoll; multi_accept on; } http { ## # Basic Settings ## sendfile on; tcp_nopush on; tcp_nodelay off; keepalive_timeout 15; keepalive_requests 2000; types_hash_max_size 2048; server_tokens off; server_name_in_redirect off; open_file_cache max=1000 inactive=300s; open_file_cache_valid 360s; open_file_cache_min_uses 2; open_file_cache_errors off; server_names_hash_bucket_size 64; # server_name_in_redirect off; client_body_buffer_size 128K; client_header_buffer_size 1k; client_max_body_size 2m; large_client_header_buffers 4 8k; client_body_timeout 10m; client_header_timeout 10m; send_timeout 10m; include /etc/nginx/mime.types; default_type application/octet-stream; ## # Logging Settings ## error_log /var/log/nginx/error.log; access_log off; ## # CloudFlare's IPs (uncomment when site goes live) ## set_real_ip_from 204.93.240.0/24; set_real_ip_from 204.93.177.0/24; set_real_ip_from 199.27.128.0/21; set_real_ip_from 173.245.48.0/20; set_real_ip_from 103.22.200.0/22; set_real_ip_from 141.101.64.0/18; set_real_ip_from 108.162.192.0/18; set_real_ip_from 190.93.240.0/20; real_ip_header CF-Connecting-IP; set_real_ip_from 127.0.0.1/32; ## # Gzip Settings ## gzip on; gzip_disable "msie6"; gzip_vary on; gzip_proxied any; gzip_comp_level 9; gzip_min_length 1000; gzip_proxied expired no-cache no-store private auth; gzip_buffers 32 8k; # gzip_http_version 1.1; gzip_types text/plain text/css application/json application/x-javascript text/xml application/xml application/xml+rss text/javascript; ## # nginx-naxsi config ## # Uncomment it if you installed nginx-naxsi ## #include /etc/nginx/naxsi_core.rules; ## # nginx-passenger config ## # Uncomment it if you installed nginx-passenger ## #passenger_root /usr; #passenger_ruby /usr/bin/ruby; ## # Virtual Host Configs ## include /etc/nginx/conf.d/*.conf; include /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/*; } /etc/nginx/fastcgi_params: fastcgi_param QUERY_STRING $query_string; fastcgi_param REQUEST_METHOD $request_method; fastcgi_param CONTENT_TYPE $content_type; fastcgi_param CONTENT_LENGTH $content_length; fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $request_filename; fastcgi_param SCRIPT_NAME $fastcgi_script_name; fastcgi_param REQUEST_URI $request_uri; fastcgi_param DOCUMENT_URI $document_uri; fastcgi_param DOCUMENT_ROOT $document_root; fastcgi_param SERVER_PROTOCOL $server_protocol; fastcgi_param GATEWAY_INTERFACE CGI/1.1; fastcgi_param SERVER_SOFTWARE nginx/$nginx_version; fastcgi_param REMOTE_ADDR $remote_addr; fastcgi_param REMOTE_PORT $remote_port; fastcgi_param SERVER_ADDR $server_addr; fastcgi_param SERVER_PORT $server_port; fastcgi_param SERVER_NAME $server_name; fastcgi_param HTTPS $https; fastcgi_send_timeout 180; fastcgi_read_timeout 180; fastcgi_buffer_size 128k; fastcgi_buffers 256 4k; # PHP only, required if PHP was built with --enable-force-cgi-redirect fastcgi_param REDIRECT_STATUS 200; /etc/nginx/sites-avaiable/default: ## # DEFAULT HANDLER # ubuntubrsc.com ## server { listen 8080; # Make site available from main domain server_name www.ubuntubrsc.com; # Root directory root /var/www; index index.php index.html index.htm; include /var/www/nginx.conf; access_log off; location / { try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?q=$uri&$args; } location = /favicon.ico { log_not_found off; access_log off; } location = /robots.txt { allow all; log_not_found off; access_log off; } location ~ /\. { deny all; access_log off; log_not_found off; } location ~* ^/wp-content/uploads/.*.php$ { deny all; access_log off; log_not_found off; } rewrite /wp-admin$ $scheme://$host$uri/ permanent; error_page 404 = @wordpress; log_not_found off; location @wordpress { include /etc/nginx/fastcgi_params; fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php5-fpm.sock; fastcgi_param SCRIPT_NAME /index.php; fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root/index.php; } location ~ \.php$ { try_files $uri =404; include /etc/nginx/fastcgi_params; fastcgi_index index.php; fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name; if (-f $request_filename) { fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php5-fpm.sock; } } } server { listen 8080; server_name ubuntubrsc.* www.ubuntubrsc.net www.ubuntubrsc.org www.ubuntubrsc.com.br www.ubuntubrsc.info www.ubuntubrsc.in; return 301 $scheme://www.ubuntubrsc.com$request_uri; } /var/www/nginx.conf: # BEGIN W3TC Minify cache location ~ /wp-content/w3tc/min.*\.js$ { types {} default_type application/x-javascript; expires modified 31536000s; add_header X-Powered-By "W3 Total Cache/0.9.2.5b"; add_header Vary "Accept-Encoding"; add_header Pragma "public"; add_header Cache-Control "max-age=31536000, public, must-revalidate, proxy-revalidate"; } location ~ /wp-content/w3tc/min.*\.css$ { types {} default_type text/css; expires modified 31536000s; add_header X-Powered-By "W3 Total Cache/0.9.2.5b"; add_header Vary "Accept-Encoding"; add_header Pragma "public"; add_header Cache-Control "max-age=31536000, public, must-revalidate, proxy-revalidate"; } location ~ /wp-content/w3tc/min.*js\.gzip$ { gzip off; types {} default_type application/x-javascript; expires modified 31536000s; add_header X-Powered-By "W3 Total Cache/0.9.2.5b"; add_header Vary "Accept-Encoding"; add_header Pragma "public"; add_header Cache-Control "max-age=31536000, public, must-revalidate, proxy-revalidate"; add_header Content-Encoding gzip; } location ~ /wp-content/w3tc/min.*css\.gzip$ { gzip off; types {} default_type text/css; expires modified 31536000s; add_header X-Powered-By "W3 Total Cache/0.9.2.5b"; add_header Vary "Accept-Encoding"; add_header Pragma "public"; add_header Cache-Control "max-age=31536000, public, must-revalidate, proxy-revalidate"; add_header Content-Encoding gzip; } # END W3TC Minify cache # BEGIN W3TC Browser Cache gzip on; gzip_types text/css application/x-javascript text/x-component text/richtext image/svg+xml text/plain text/xsd text/xsl text/xml image/x-icon; location ~ \.(css|js|htc)$ { expires 31536000s; add_header Pragma "public"; add_header Cache-Control "max-age=31536000, public, must-revalidate, proxy-revalidate"; add_header X-Powered-By "W3 Total Cache/0.9.2.5b"; } location ~ \.(html|htm|rtf|rtx|svg|svgz|txt|xsd|xsl|xml)$ { expires 3600s; add_header Pragma "public"; add_header Cache-Control "max-age=3600, public, must-revalidate, proxy-revalidate"; add_header X-Powered-By "W3 Total Cache/0.9.2.5b"; try_files $uri $uri/ $uri.html /index.php?$args; } location ~ \.(asf|asx|wax|wmv|wmx|avi|bmp|class|divx|doc|docx|eot|exe|gif|gz|gzip|ico|jpg|jpeg|jpe|mdb|mid|midi|mov|qt|mp3|m4a|mp4|m4v|mpeg|mpg|mpe|mpp|otf|odb|odc|odf|odg|odp|ods|odt|ogg|pdf|png|pot|pps|ppt|pptx|ra|ram|svg|svgz|swf|tar|tif|tiff|ttf|ttc|wav|wma|wri|xla|xls|xlsx|xlt|xlw|zip)$ { expires 31536000s; add_header Pragma "public"; add_header Cache-Control "max-age=31536000, public, must-revalidate, proxy-revalidate"; add_header X-Powered-By "W3 Total Cache/0.9.2.5b"; } # END W3TC Browser Cache # BEGIN W3TC Minify core rewrite ^/wp-content/w3tc/min/w3tc_rewrite_test$ /wp-content/w3tc/min/index.php?w3tc_rewrite_test=1 last; set $w3tc_enc ""; if ($http_accept_encoding ~ gzip) { set $w3tc_enc .gzip; } if (-f $request_filename$w3tc_enc) { rewrite (.*) $1$w3tc_enc break; } rewrite ^/wp-content/w3tc/min/(.+\.(css|js))$ /wp-content/w3tc/min/index.php?file=$1 last; # END W3TC Minify core # BEGIN W3TC Skip 404 error handling by WordPress for static files if (-f $request_filename) { break; } if (-d $request_filename) { break; } if ($request_uri ~ "(robots\.txt|sitemap(_index)?\.xml(\.gz)?|[a-z0-9_\-]+-sitemap([0-9]+)?\.xml(\.gz)?)") { break; } if ($request_uri ~* \.(css|js|htc|htm|rtf|rtx|svg|svgz|txt|xsd|xsl|xml|asf|asx|wax|wmv|wmx|avi|bmp|class|divx|doc|docx|eot|exe|gif|gz|gzip|ico|jpg|jpeg|jpe|mdb|mid|midi|mov|qt|mp3|m4a|mp4|m4v|mpeg|mpg|mpe|mpp|otf|odb|odc|odf|odg|odp|ods|odt|ogg|pdf|png|pot|pps|ppt|pptx|ra|ram|svg|svgz|swf|tar|tif|tiff|ttf|ttc|wav|wma|wri|xla|xls|xlsx|xlt|xlw|zip)$) { return 404; } # END W3TC Skip 404 error handling by WordPress for static files # BEGIN Better WP Security location ~ /\.ht { deny all; } location ~ wp-config.php { deny all; } location ~ readme.html { deny all; } location ~ readme.txt { deny all; } location ~ /install.php { deny all; } set $susquery 0; set $rule_2 0; set $rule_3 0; rewrite ^wp-includes/(.*).php /not_found last; rewrite ^/wp-admin/includes(.*)$ /not_found last; if ($request_method ~* "^(TRACE|DELETE|TRACK)"){ return 403; } set $rule_0 0; if ($request_method ~ "POST"){ set $rule_0 1; } if ($uri ~ "^(.*)wp-comments-post.php*"){ set $rule_0 2$rule_0; } if ($http_user_agent ~ "^$"){ set $rule_0 4$rule_0; } if ($rule_0 = "421"){ return 403; } if ($args ~* "\.\./") { set $susquery 1; } if ($args ~* "boot.ini") { set $susquery 1; } if ($args ~* "tag=") { set $susquery 1; } if ($args ~* "ftp:") { set $susquery 1; } if ($args ~* "http:") { set $susquery 1; } if ($args ~* "https:") { set $susquery 1; } if ($args ~* "(<|%3C).*script.*(>|%3E)") { set $susquery 1; } if ($args ~* "mosConfig_[a-zA-Z_]{1,21}(=|%3D)") { set $susquery 1; } if ($args ~* "base64_encode") { set $susquery 1; } if ($args ~* "(%24&x)") { set $susquery 1; } if ($args ~* "(\[|\]|\(|\)|<|>|ê|\"|;|\?|\*|=$)"){ set $susquery 1; } if ($args ~* "(&#x22;|&#x27;|&#x3C;|&#x3E;|&#x5C;|&#x7B;|&#x7C;|%24&x)"){ set $susquery 1; } if ($args ~* "(%0|%A|%B|%C|%D|%E|%F|127.0)") { set $susquery 1; } if ($args ~* "(globals|encode|localhost|loopback)") { set $susquery 1; } if ($args ~* "(request|select|insert|concat|union|declare)") { set $susquery 1; } if ($http_cookie !~* "wordpress_logged_in_" ) { set $susquery "${susquery}2"; set $rule_2 1; set $rule_3 1; } if ($susquery = 12) { return 403; } # END Better WP Security /etc/php5/fpm/php-fpm.conf: pid = /var/run/php5-fpm.pid error_log = /var/log/php5-fpm.log emergency_restart_threshold = 3 emergency_restart_interval = 1m process_control_timeout = 10s events.mechanism = epoll /etc/php5/fpm/php.ini (only options i changed): open_basedir ="/var/www/" disable_functions = pcntl_alarm,pcntl_fork,pcntl_waitpid,pcntl_wait,pcntl_wifexited,pcntl_wifstopped,pcntl_wifsignaled,pcntl_wexitstatus,pcntl_wtermsig,pcntl_wstopsig,pcntl_signal,pcntl_signal_dispatch,pcntl_get_last_error,pcntl_strerror,pcntl_sigprocmask,pcntl_sigwaitinfo,pcntl_sigtimedwait,pcntl_exec,pcntl_getpriority,pcntl_setpriority,dl,system,shell_exec,fsockopen,parse_ini_file,passthru,popen,proc_open,proc_close,shell_exec,show_source,symlink,proc_close,proc_get_status,proc_nice,proc_open,proc_terminate,shell_exec ,highlight_file,escapeshellcmd,define_syslog_variables,posix_uname,posix_getpwuid,apache_child_terminate,posix_kill,posix_mkfifo,posix_setpgid,posix_setsid,posix_setuid,escapeshellarg,posix_uname,ftp_exec,ftp_connect,ftp_login,ftp_get,ftp_put,ftp_nb_fput,ftp_raw,ftp_rawlist,ini_alter,ini_restore,inject_code,syslog,openlog,define_syslog_variables,apache_setenv,mysql_pconnect,eval,phpAds_XmlRpc,phpA ds_remoteInfo,phpAds_xmlrpcEncode,phpAds_xmlrpcDecode,xmlrpc_entity_decode,fp,fput,virtual,show_source,pclose,readfile,wget expose_php = off max_execution_time = 30 max_input_time = 60 memory_limit = 128M display_errors = Off post_max_size = 2M allow_url_fopen = off default_socket_timeout = 60 APC settings: [APC] apc.enabled = 1 apc.shm_segments = 1 apc.shm_size = 64M apc.optimization = 0 apc.num_files_hint = 4096 apc.ttl = 60 apc.user_ttl = 7200 apc.gc_ttl = 0 apc.cache_by_default = 1 apc.filters = "" apc.mmap_file_mask = "/tmp/apc.XXXXXX" apc.slam_defense = 0 apc.file_update_protection = 2 apc.enable_cli = 0 apc.max_file_size = 10M apc.stat = 1 apc.write_lock = 1 apc.report_autofilter = 0 apc.include_once_override = 0 apc.localcache = 0 apc.localcache.size = 512 apc.coredump_unmap = 0 apc.stat_ctime = 0 /etc/php5/fpm/pool.d/www.conf user = www-data group = www-data listen = /var/run/php5-fpm.sock listen.owner = www-data listen.group = www-data listen.mode = 0666 pm = ondemand pm.max_children = 5 pm.process_idle_timeout = 3s; pm.max_requests = 50 I also started to get 404 errors in front page if i use W3 Total Cache's Page Cache (Disk Enhanced). It worked fine untill somedays ago, and then, out of nowhere, it started to happen. Tonight i will disable my mobile plugin and activate only W3 Total Cache to see if it's a conflict with them... And to finish all this, i have been getting this error: PHP Warning: apc_store(): Unable to allocate memory for pool. in /var/www/wp-content/plugins/w3-total-cache/lib/W3/Cache/Apc.php on line 41 I already modifed my APC settings, but no sucess. So... could anyone help me with those issuees, please? Ooohh... if it helps, i instaled PHP like this: sudo apt-get install php5-fpm php5-suhosin php-apc php5-gd php5-imagick php5-curl And Nginx from the official PPA. Sorry for my bad english and thanks for your time people! (:

  Read the article

• An Introduction to ASP.NET Web API

  - by Rick Strahl

  Microsoft recently released ASP.NET MVC 4.0 and .NET 4.5 and along with it, the brand spanking new ASP.NET Web API. Web API is an exciting new addition to the ASP.NET stack that provides a new, well-designed HTTP framework for creating REST and AJAX APIs (API is Microsoft’s new jargon for a service, in case you’re wondering). Although Web API ships and installs with ASP.NET MVC 4, you can use Web API functionality in any ASP.NET project, including WebForms, WebPages and MVC or just a Web API by itself. And you can also self-host Web API in your own applications from Console, Desktop or Service applications. If you're interested in a high level overview on what ASP.NET Web API is and how it fits into the ASP.NET stack you can check out my previous post: Where does ASP.NET Web API fit? In the following article, I'll focus on a practical, by example introduction to ASP.NET Web API. All the code discussed in this article is available in GitHub: https://github.com/RickStrahl/AspNetWebApiArticle [republished from my Code Magazine Article and updated for RTM release of ASP.NET Web API] Getting Started To start I’ll create a new empty ASP.NET application to demonstrate that Web API can work with any kind of ASP.NET project. Although you can create a new project based on the ASP.NET MVC/Web API template to quickly get up and running, I’ll take you through the manual setup process, because one common use case is to add Web API functionality to an existing ASP.NET application. This process describes the steps needed to hook up Web API to any ASP.NET 4.0 application. Start by creating an ASP.NET Empty Project. Then create a new folder in the project called Controllers. Add a Web API Controller Class Once you have any kind of ASP.NET project open, you can add a Web API Controller class to it. Web API Controllers are very similar to MVC Controller classes, but they work in any kind of project. Add a new item to this folder by using the Add New Item option in Visual Studio and choose Web API Controller Class, as shown in Figure 1. Figure 1: This is how you create a new Controller Class in Visual Studio   Make sure that the name of the controller class includes Controller at the end of it, which is required in order for Web API routing to find it. Here, the name for the class is AlbumApiController. For this example, I’ll use a Music Album model to demonstrate basic behavior of Web API. The model consists of albums and related songs where an album has properties like Name, Artist and YearReleased and a list of songs with a SongName and SongLength as well as an AlbumId that links it to the album. You can find the code for the model (and the rest of these samples) on Github. To add the file manually, create a new folder called Model, and add a new class Album.cs and copy the code into it. There’s a static AlbumData class with a static CreateSampleAlbumData() method that creates a short list of albums on a static .Current that I’ll use for the examples. Before we look at what goes into the controller class though, let’s hook up routing so we can access this new controller. Hooking up Routing in Global.asax To start, I need to perform the one required configuration task in order for Web API to work: I need to configure routing to the controller. Like MVC, Web API uses routing to provide clean, extension-less URLs to controller methods. Using an extension method to ASP.NET’s static RouteTable class, you can use the MapHttpRoute() (in the System.Web.Http namespace) method to hook-up the routing during Application_Start in global.asax.cs shown in Listing 1.using System; using System.Web.Routing; using System.Web.Http; namespace AspNetWebApi { public class Global : System.Web.HttpApplication { protected void Application_Start(object sender, EventArgs e) { RouteTable.Routes.MapHttpRoute( name: "AlbumVerbs", routeTemplate: "albums/{title}", defaults: new { symbol = RouteParameter.Optional, controller="AlbumApi" } ); } } } This route configures Web API to direct URLs that start with an albums folder to the AlbumApiController class. Routing in ASP.NET is used to create extensionless URLs and allows you to map segments of the URL to specific Route Value parameters. A route parameter, with a name inside curly brackets like {name}, is mapped to parameters on the controller methods. Route parameters can be optional, and there are two special route parameters – controller and action – that determine the controller to call and the method to activate respectively. HTTP Verb Routing Routing in Web API can route requests by HTTP Verb in addition to standard {controller},{action} routing. For the first examples, I use HTTP Verb routing, as shown Listing 1. Notice that the route I’ve defined does not include an {action} route value or action value in the defaults. Rather, Web API can use the HTTP Verb in this route to determine the method to call the controller, and a GET request maps to any method that starts with Get. So methods called Get() or GetAlbums() are matched by a GET request and a POST request maps to a Post() or PostAlbum(). Web API matches a method by name and parameter signature to match a route, query string or POST values. In lieu of the method name, the [HttpGet,HttpPost,HttpPut,HttpDelete, etc] attributes can also be used to designate the accepted verbs explicitly if you don’t want to follow the verb naming conventions. Although HTTP Verb routing is a good practice for REST style resource APIs, it’s not required and you can still use more traditional routes with an explicit {action} route parameter. When {action} is supplied, the HTTP verb routing is ignored. I’ll talk more about alternate routes later. When you’re finished with initial creation of files, your project should look like Figure 2.   Figure 2: The initial project has the new API Controller Album model   Creating a small Album Model Now it’s time to create some controller methods to serve data. For these examples, I’ll use a very simple Album and Songs model to play with, as shown in Listing 2. public class Song { public string AlbumId { get; set; } [Required, StringLength(80)] public string SongName { get; set; } [StringLength(5)] public string SongLength { get; set; } } public class Album { public string Id { get; set; } [Required, StringLength(80)] public string AlbumName { get; set; } [StringLength(80)] public string Artist { get; set; } public int YearReleased { get; set; } public DateTime Entered { get; set; } [StringLength(150)] public string AlbumImageUrl { get; set; } [StringLength(200)] public string AmazonUrl { get; set; } public virtual List<Song> Songs { get; set; } public Album() { Songs = new List<Song>(); Entered = DateTime.Now; // Poor man's unique Id off GUID hash Id = Guid.NewGuid().GetHashCode().ToString("x"); } public void AddSong(string songName, string songLength = null) { this.Songs.Add(new Song() { AlbumId = this.Id, SongName = songName, SongLength = songLength }); } } Once the model has been created, I also added an AlbumData class that generates some static data in memory that is loaded onto a static .Current member. The signature of this class looks like this and that's what I'll access to retrieve the base data:public static class AlbumData { // sample data - static list public static List<Album> Current = CreateSampleAlbumData(); /// <summary> /// Create some sample data /// </summary> /// <returns></returns> public static List<Album> CreateSampleAlbumData() { … }} You can check out the full code for the data generation online. Creating an AlbumApiController Web API shares many concepts of ASP.NET MVC, and the implementation of your API logic is done by implementing a subclass of the System.Web.Http.ApiController class. Each public method in the implemented controller is a potential endpoint for the HTTP API, as long as a matching route can be found to invoke it. The class name you create should end in Controller, which is how Web API matches the controller route value to figure out which class to invoke. Inside the controller you can implement methods that take standard .NET input parameters and return .NET values as results. Web API’s binding tries to match POST data, route values, form values or query string values to your parameters. Because the controller is configured for HTTP Verb based routing (no {action} parameter in the route), any methods that start with Getxxxx() are called by an HTTP GET operation. You can have multiple methods that match each HTTP Verb as long as the parameter signatures are different and can be matched by Web API. In Listing 3, I create an AlbumApiController with two methods to retrieve a list of albums and a single album by its title .public class AlbumApiController : ApiController { public IEnumerable<Album> GetAlbums() { var albums = AlbumData.Current.OrderBy(alb => alb.Artist); return albums; } public Album GetAlbum(string title) { var album = AlbumData.Current .SingleOrDefault(alb => alb.AlbumName.Contains(title)); return album; }} To access the first two requests, you can use the following URLs in your browser: http://localhost/aspnetWebApi/albumshttp://localhost/aspnetWebApi/albums/Dirty%20Deeds Note that you’re not specifying the actions of GetAlbum or GetAlbums in these URLs. Instead Web API’s routing uses HTTP GET verb to route to these methods that start with Getxxx() with the first mapping to the parameterless GetAlbums() method and the latter to the GetAlbum(title) method that receives the title parameter mapped as optional in the route. Content Negotiation When you access any of the URLs above from a browser, you get either an XML or JSON result returned back. The album list result for Chrome 17 and Internet Explorer 9 is shown Figure 3. Figure 3: Web API responses can vary depending on the browser used, demonstrating Content Negotiation in action as these two browsers send different HTTP Accept headers.   Notice that the results are not the same: Chrome returns an XML response and IE9 returns a JSON response. Whoa, what’s going on here? Shouldn’t we see the same result in both browsers? Actually, no. Web API determines what type of content to return based on Accept headers. HTTP clients, like browsers, use Accept headers to specify what kind of content they’d like to see returned. Browsers generally ask for HTML first, followed by a few additional content types. Chrome (and most other major browsers) ask for: Accept: text/html, application/xhtml+xml,application/xml; q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8 IE9 asks for: Accept: text/html, application/xhtml+xml, */* Note that Chrome’s Accept header includes application/xml, which Web API finds in its list of supported media types and returns an XML response. IE9 does not include an Accept header type that works on Web API by default, and so it returns the default format, which is JSON. This is an important and very useful feature that was missing from any previous Microsoft REST tools: Web API automatically switches output formats based on HTTP Accept headers. Nowhere in the server code above do you have to explicitly specify the output format. Rather, Web API determines what format the client is requesting based on the Accept headers and automatically returns the result based on the available formatters. This means that a single method can handle both XML and JSON results.. Using this simple approach makes it very easy to create a single controller method that can return JSON, XML, ATOM or even OData feeds by providing the appropriate Accept header from the client. By default you don’t have to worry about the output format in your code. Note that you can still specify an explicit output format if you choose, either globally by overriding the installed formatters, or individually by returning a lower level HttpResponseMessage instance and setting the formatter explicitly. More on that in a minute. Along the same lines, any content sent to the server via POST/PUT is parsed by Web API based on the HTTP Content-type of the data sent. The same formats allowed for output are also allowed on input. Again, you don’t have to do anything in your code – Web API automatically performs the deserialization from the content. Accessing Web API JSON Data with jQuery A very common scenario for Web API endpoints is to retrieve data for AJAX calls from the Web browser. Because JSON is the default format for Web API, it’s easy to access data from the server using jQuery and its getJSON() method. This example receives the albums array from GetAlbums() and databinds it into the page using knockout.js.$.getJSON("albums/", function (albums) { // make knockout template visible $(".album").show(); // create view object and attach array var view = { albums: albums }; ko.applyBindings(view); }); Figure 4 shows this and the next example’s HTML output. You can check out the complete HTML and script code at http://goo.gl/Ix33C (.html) and http://goo.gl/tETlg (.js). Figu Figure 4: The Album Display sample uses JSON data loaded from Web API.   The result from the getJSON() call is a JavaScript object of the server result, which comes back as a JavaScript array. In the code, I use knockout.js to bind this array into the UI, which as you can see, requires very little code, instead using knockout’s data-bind attributes to bind server data to the UI. Of course, this is just one way to use the data – it’s entirely up to you to decide what to do with the data in your client code. Along the same lines, I can retrieve a single album to display when the user clicks on an album. The response returns the album information and a child array with all the songs. The code to do this is very similar to the last example where we pulled the albums array:$(".albumlink").live("click", function () { var id = $(this).data("id"); // title $.getJSON("albums/" + id, function (album) { ko.applyBindings(album, $("#divAlbumDialog")[0]); $("#divAlbumDialog").show(); }); }); Here the URL looks like this: /albums/Dirty%20Deeds, where the title is the ID captured from the clicked element’s data ID attribute. Explicitly Overriding Output Format When Web API automatically converts output using content negotiation, it does so by matching Accept header media types to the GlobalConfiguration.Configuration.Formatters and the SupportedMediaTypes of each individual formatter. You can add and remove formatters to globally affect what formats are available and it’s easy to create and plug in custom formatters.The example project includes a JSONP formatter that can be plugged in to provide JSONP support for requests that have a callback= querystring parameter. Adding, removing or replacing formatters is a global option you can use to manipulate content. It’s beyond the scope of this introduction to show how it works, but you can review the sample code or check out my blog entry on the subject (http://goo.gl/UAzaR). If automatic processing is not desirable in a particular Controller method, you can override the response output explicitly by returning an HttpResponseMessage instance. HttpResponseMessage is similar to ActionResult in ASP.NET MVC in that it’s a common way to return an abstract result message that contains content. HttpResponseMessage s parsed by the Web API framework using standard interfaces to retrieve the response data, status code, headers and so on[MS2] . Web API turns every response – including those Controller methods that return static results – into HttpResponseMessage instances. Explicitly returning an HttpResponseMessage instance gives you full control over the output and lets you mostly bypass WebAPI’s post-processing of the HTTP response on your behalf. HttpResponseMessage allows you to customize the response in great detail. Web API’s attention to detail in the HTTP spec really shows; many HTTP options are exposed as properties and enumerations with detailed IntelliSense comments. Even if you’re new to building REST-based interfaces, the API guides you in the right direction for returning valid responses and response codes. For example, assume that I always want to return JSON from the GetAlbums() controller method and ignore the default media type content negotiation. To do this, I can adjust the output format and headers as shown in Listing 4.public HttpResponseMessage GetAlbums() { var albums = AlbumData.Current.OrderBy(alb => alb.Artist); // Create a new HttpResponse with Json Formatter explicitly var resp = new HttpResponseMessage(HttpStatusCode.OK); resp.Content = new ObjectContent<IEnumerable<Album>>( albums, new JsonMediaTypeFormatter()); // Get Default Formatter based on Content Negotiation //var resp = Request.CreateResponse<IEnumerable<Album>>(HttpStatusCode.OK, albums); resp.Headers.ConnectionClose = true; resp.Headers.CacheControl = new CacheControlHeaderValue(); resp.Headers.CacheControl.Public = true; return resp; } This example returns the same IEnumerable<Album> value, but it wraps the response into an HttpResponseMessage so you can control the entire HTTP message result including the headers, formatter and status code. In Listing 4, I explicitly specify the formatter using the JsonMediaTypeFormatter to always force the content to JSON.  If you prefer to use the default content negotiation with HttpResponseMessage results, you can create the Response instance using the Request.CreateResponse method:var resp = Request.CreateResponse<IEnumerable<Album>>(HttpStatusCode.OK, albums); This provides you an HttpResponse object that's pre-configured with the default formatter based on Content Negotiation. Once you have an HttpResponse object you can easily control most HTTP aspects on this object. What's sweet here is that there are many more detailed properties on HttpResponse than the core ASP.NET Response object, with most options being explicitly configurable with enumerations that make it easy to pick the right headers and response codes from a list of valid codes. It makes HTTP features available much more discoverable even for non-hardcore REST/HTTP geeks. Non-Serialized Results The output returned doesn’t have to be a serialized value but can also be raw data, like strings, binary data or streams. You can use the HttpResponseMessage.Content object to set a number of common Content classes. Listing 5 shows how to return a binary image using the ByteArrayContent class from a Controller method. [HttpGet] public HttpResponseMessage AlbumArt(string title) { var album = AlbumData.Current.FirstOrDefault(abl => abl.AlbumName.StartsWith(title)); if (album == null) { var resp = Request.CreateResponse<ApiMessageError>( HttpStatusCode.NotFound, new ApiMessageError("Album not found")); return resp; } // kinda silly - we would normally serve this directly // but hey - it's a demo. var http = new WebClient(); var imageData = http.DownloadData(album.AlbumImageUrl); // create response and return var result = new HttpResponseMessage(HttpStatusCode.OK); result.Content = new ByteArrayContent(imageData); result.Content.Headers.ContentType = new MediaTypeHeaderValue("image/jpeg"); return result; } The image retrieval from Amazon is contrived, but it shows how to return binary data using ByteArrayContent. It also demonstrates that you can easily return multiple types of content from a single controller method, which is actually quite common. If an error occurs - such as a resource can’t be found or a validation error – you can return an error response to the client that’s very specific to the error. In GetAlbumArt(), if the album can’t be found, we want to return a 404 Not Found status (and realistically no error, as it’s an image). Note that if you are not using HTTP Verb-based routing or not accessing a method that starts with Get/Post etc., you have to specify one or more HTTP Verb attributes on the method explicitly. Here, I used the [HttpGet] attribute to serve the image. Another option to handle the error could be to return a fixed placeholder image if no album could be matched or the album doesn’t have an image. When returning an error code, you can also return a strongly typed response to the client. For example, you can set the 404 status code and also return a custom error object (ApiMessageError is a class I defined) like this:return Request.CreateResponse<ApiMessageError>( HttpStatusCode.NotFound, new ApiMessageError("Album not found") );   If the album can be found, the image will be returned. The image is downloaded into a byte[] array, and then assigned to the result’s Content property. I created a new ByteArrayContent instance and assigned the image’s bytes and the content type so that it displays properly in the browser. There are other content classes available: StringContent, StreamContent, ByteArrayContent, MultipartContent, and ObjectContent are at your disposal to return just about any kind of content. You can create your own Content classes if you frequently return custom types and handle the default formatter assignments that should be used to send the data out . Although HttpResponseMessage results require more code than returning a plain .NET value from a method, it allows much more control over the actual HTTP processing than automatic processing. It also makes it much easier to test your controller methods as you get a response object that you can check for specific status codes and output messages rather than just a result value. Routing Again Ok, let’s get back to the image example. Using the original routing we have setup using HTTP Verb routing there's no good way to serve the image. In order to return my album art image I’d like to use a URL like this: http://localhost/aspnetWebApi/albums/Dirty%20Deeds/image In order to create a URL like this, I have to create a new Controller because my earlier routes pointed to the AlbumApiController using HTTP Verb routing. HTTP Verb based routing is great for representing a single set of resources such as albums. You can map operations like add, delete, update and read easily using HTTP Verbs. But you cannot mix action based routing into a an HTTP Verb routing controller - you can only map HTTP Verbs and each method has to be unique based on parameter signature. You can't have multiple GET operations to methods with the same signature. So GetImage(string id) and GetAlbum(string title) are in conflict in an HTTP GET routing scenario. In fact, I was unable to make the above Image URL work with any combination of HTTP Verb plus Custom routing using the single Albums controller. There are number of ways around this, but all involve additional controllers.  Personally, I think it’s easier to use explicit Action routing and then add custom routes if you need to simplify your URLs further. So in order to accommodate some of the other examples, I created another controller – AlbumRpcApiController – to handle all requests that are explicitly routed via actions (/albums/rpc/AlbumArt) or are custom routed with explicit routes defined in the HttpConfiguration. I added the AlbumArt() method to this new AlbumRpcApiController class. For the image URL to work with the new AlbumRpcApiController, you need a custom route placed before the default route from Listing 1.RouteTable.Routes.MapHttpRoute( name: "AlbumRpcApiAction", routeTemplate: "albums/rpc/{action}/{title}", defaults: new { title = RouteParameter.Optional, controller = "AlbumRpcApi", action = "GetAblums" } ); Now I can use either of the following URLs to access the image: Custom route: (/albums/rpc/{title}/image)http://localhost/aspnetWebApi/albums/PowerAge/image Action route: (/albums/rpc/action/{title})http://localhost/aspnetWebAPI/albums/rpc/albumart/PowerAge Sending Data to the Server To send data to the server and add a new album, you can use an HTTP POST operation. Since I’m using HTTP Verb-based routing in the original AlbumApiController, I can implement a method called PostAlbum()to accept a new album from the client. Listing 6 shows the Web API code to add a new album.public HttpResponseMessage PostAlbum(Album album) { if (!this.ModelState.IsValid) { // my custom error class var error = new ApiMessageError() { message = "Model is invalid" }; // add errors into our client error model for client foreach (var prop in ModelState.Values) { var modelError = prop.Errors.FirstOrDefault(); if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(modelError.ErrorMessage)) error.errors.Add(modelError.ErrorMessage); else error.errors.Add(modelError.Exception.Message); } return Request.CreateResponse<ApiMessageError>(HttpStatusCode.Conflict, error); } // update song id which isn't provided foreach (var song in album.Songs) song.AlbumId = album.Id; // see if album exists already var matchedAlbum = AlbumData.Current .SingleOrDefault(alb => alb.Id == album.Id || alb.AlbumName == album.AlbumName); if (matchedAlbum == null) AlbumData.Current.Add(album); else matchedAlbum = album; // return a string to show that the value got here var resp = Request.CreateResponse(HttpStatusCode.OK, string.Empty); resp.Content = new StringContent(album.AlbumName + " " + album.Entered.ToString(), Encoding.UTF8, "text/plain"); return resp; } The PostAlbum() method receives an album parameter, which is automatically deserialized from the POST buffer the client sent. The data passed from the client can be either XML or JSON. Web API automatically figures out what format it needs to deserialize based on the content type and binds the content to the album object. Web API uses model binding to bind the request content to the parameter(s) of controller methods. Like MVC you can check the model by looking at ModelState.IsValid. If it’s not valid, you can run through the ModelState.Values collection and check each binding for errors. Here I collect the error messages into a string array that gets passed back to the client via the result ApiErrorMessage object. When a binding error occurs, you’ll want to return an HTTP error response and it’s best to do that with an HttpResponseMessage result. In Listing 6, I used a custom error class that holds a message and an array of detailed error messages for each binding error. I used this object as the content to return to the client along with my Conflict HTTP Status Code response. If binding succeeds, the example returns a string with the name and date entered to demonstrate that you captured the data. Normally, a method like this should return a Boolean or no response at all (HttpStatusCode.NoConent). The sample uses a simple static list to hold albums, so once you’ve added the album using the Post operation, you can hit the /albums/ URL to see that the new album was added. The client jQuery code to call the POST operation from the client with jQuery is shown in Listing 7. var id = new Date().getTime().toString(); var album = { "Id": id, "AlbumName": "Power Age", "Artist": "AC/DC", "YearReleased": 1977, "Entered": "2002-03-11T18:24:43.5580794-10:00", "AlbumImageUrl": http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/…, "AmazonUrl": http://www.amazon.com/…, "Songs": [ { "SongName": "Rock 'n Roll Damnation", "SongLength": 3.12}, { "SongName": "Downpayment Blues", "SongLength": 4.22 }, { "SongName": "Riff Raff", "SongLength": 2.42 } ] } $.ajax( { url: "albums/", type: "POST", contentType: "application/json", data: JSON.stringify(album), processData: false, beforeSend: function (xhr) { // not required since JSON is default output xhr.setRequestHeader("Accept", "application/json"); }, success: function (result) { // reload list of albums page.loadAlbums(); }, error: function (xhr, status, p3, p4) { var err = "Error"; if (xhr.responseText && xhr.responseText[0] == "{") err = JSON.parse(xhr.responseText).message; alert(err); } }); The code in Listing 7 creates an album object in JavaScript to match the structure of the .NET Album class. This object is passed to the $.ajax() function to send to the server as POST. The data is turned into JSON and the content type set to application/json so that the server knows what to convert when deserializing in the Album instance. The jQuery code hooks up success and failure events. Success returns the result data, which is a string that’s echoed back with an alert box. If an error occurs, jQuery returns the XHR instance and status code. You can check the XHR to see if a JSON object is embedded and if it is, you can extract it by de-serializing it and accessing the .message property. REST standards suggest that updates to existing resources should use PUT operations. REST standards aside, I’m not a big fan of separating out inserts and updates so I tend to have a single method that handles both. But if you want to follow REST suggestions, you can create a PUT method that handles updates by forwarding the PUT operation to the POST method:public HttpResponseMessage PutAlbum(Album album) { return PostAlbum(album); } To make the corresponding $.ajax() call, all you have to change from Listing 7 is the type: from POST to PUT. Model Binding with UrlEncoded POST Variables In the example in Listing 7 I used JSON objects to post a serialized object to a server method that accepted an strongly typed object with the same structure, which is a common way to send data to the server. However, Web API supports a number of different ways that data can be received by server methods. For example, another common way is to use plain UrlEncoded POST  values to send to the server. Web API supports Model Binding that works similar (but not the same) as MVC's model binding where POST variables are mapped to properties of object parameters of the target method. This is actually quite common for AJAX calls that want to avoid serialization and the potential requirement of a JSON parser on older browsers. For example, using jQUery you might use the $.post() method to send a new album to the server (albeit one without songs) using code like the following:$.post("albums/",{AlbumName: "Dirty Deeds", YearReleased: 1976 … },albumPostCallback); Although the code looks very similar to the client code we used before passing JSON, here the data passed is URL encoded values (AlbumName=Dirty+Deeds&YearReleased=1976 etc.). Web API then takes this POST data and maps each of the POST values to the properties of the Album object in the method's parameter. Although the client code is different the server can both handle the JSON object, or the UrlEncoded POST values. Dynamic Access to POST Data There are also a few options available to dynamically access POST data, if you know what type of data you're dealing with. If you have POST UrlEncoded values, you can dynamically using a FormsDataCollection:[HttpPost] public string PostAlbum(FormDataCollection form) { return string.Format("{0} - released {1}", form.Get("AlbumName"),form.Get("RearReleased")); } The FormDataCollection is a very simple object, that essentially provides the same functionality as Request.Form[] in ASP.NET. Request.Form[] still works if you're running hosted in an ASP.NET application. However as a general rule, while ASP.NET's functionality is always available when running Web API hosted inside of an  ASP.NET application, using the built in classes specific to Web API makes it possible to run Web API applications in a self hosted environment outside of ASP.NET. If your client is sending JSON to your server, and you don't want to map the JSON to a strongly typed object because you only want to retrieve a few simple values, you can also accept a JObject parameter in your API methods:[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); } There quite a few options available to you to receive data with Web API, which gives you more choices for the right tool for the job. Unfortunately one shortcoming of Web API is that POST data is always mapped to a single parameter. This means you can't pass multiple POST parameters to methods that receive POST data. It's possible to accept multiple parameters, but only one can map to the POST content - the others have to come from the query string or route values. I have a couple of Blog POSTs that explain what works and what doesn't here: Passing multiple POST parameters to Web API Controller Methods Mapping UrlEncoded POST Values in ASP.NET Web API   Handling Delete Operations Finally, to round out the server API code of the album example we've been discussin, here’s the DELETE verb controller method that allows removal of an album by its title:public HttpResponseMessage DeleteAlbum(string title) { var matchedAlbum = AlbumData.Current.Where(alb => alb.AlbumName == title) .SingleOrDefault(); if (matchedAlbum == null) return new HttpResponseMessage(HttpStatusCode.NotFound); AlbumData.Current.Remove(matchedAlbum); return new HttpResponseMessage(HttpStatusCode.NoContent); } To call this action method using jQuery, you can use:$(".removeimage").live("click", function () { var $el = $(this).parent(".album"); var txt = $el.find("a").text(); $.ajax({ url: "albums/" + encodeURIComponent(txt), type: "Delete", success: function (result) { $el.fadeOut().remove(); }, error: jqError }); }   Note the use of the DELETE verb in the $.ajax() call, which routes to DeleteAlbum on the server. DELETE is a non-content operation, so you supply a resource ID (the title) via route value or the querystring. Routing Conflicts In all requests with the exception of the AlbumArt image example shown so far, I used HTTP Verb routing that I set up in Listing 1. HTTP Verb Routing is a recommendation that is in line with typical REST access to HTTP resources. However, it takes quite a bit of effort to create REST-compliant API implementations based only on HTTP Verb routing only. You saw one example that didn’t really fit – the return of an image where I created a custom route albums/{title}/image that required creation of a second controller and a custom route to work. HTTP Verb routing to a controller does not mix with custom or action routing to the same controller because of the limited mapping of HTTP verbs imposed by HTTP Verb routing. To understand some of the problems with verb routing, let’s look at another example. Let’s say you create a GetSortableAlbums() method like this and add it to the original AlbumApiController accessed via HTTP Verb routing:[HttpGet] public IQueryable<Album> SortableAlbums() { var albums = AlbumData.Current; // generally should be done only on actual queryable results (EF etc.) // Done here because we're running with a static list but otherwise might be slow return albums.AsQueryable(); } If you compile this code and try to now access the /albums/ link, you get an error: Multiple Actions were found that match the request. HTTP Verb routing only allows access to one GET operation per parameter/route value match. If more than one method exists with the same parameter signature, it doesn’t work. As I mentioned earlier for the image display, the only solution to get this method to work is to throw it into another controller. Because I already set up the AlbumRpcApiController I can add the method there. First, I should rename the method to SortableAlbums() so I’m not using a Get prefix for the method. This also makes the action parameter look cleaner in the URL - it looks less like a method and more like a noun. I can then create a new route that handles direct-action mapping:RouteTable.Routes.MapHttpRoute( name: "AlbumRpcApiAction", routeTemplate: "albums/rpc/{action}/{title}", defaults: new { title = RouteParameter.Optional, controller = "AlbumRpcApi", action = "GetAblums" } ); As I am explicitly adding a route segment – rpc – into the route template, I can now reference explicit methods in the Web API controller using URLs like this: http://localhost/AspNetWebApi/rpc/SortableAlbums Error Handling I’ve already done some minimal error handling in the examples. For example in Listing 6, I detected some known-error scenarios like model validation failing or a resource not being found and returning an appropriate HttpResponseMessage result. But what happens if your code just blows up or causes an exception? If you have a controller method, like this:[HttpGet] public void ThrowException() { throw new UnauthorizedAccessException("Unauthorized Access Sucka"); } You can call it with this: http://localhost/AspNetWebApi/albums/rpc/ThrowException The default exception handling displays a 500-status response with the serialized exception on the local computer only. When you connect from a remote computer, Web API throws back a 500  HTTP Error with no data returned (IIS then adds its HTML error page). The behavior is configurable in the GlobalConfiguration:GlobalConfiguration .Configuration .IncludeErrorDetailPolicy = IncludeErrorDetailPolicy.Never; If you want more control over your error responses sent from code, you can throw explicit error responses yourself using HttpResponseException. When you throw an HttpResponseException the response parameter is used to generate the output for the Controller action. [HttpGet] public void ThrowError() { var resp = Request.CreateResponse<ApiMessageError>( HttpStatusCode.BadRequest, new ApiMessageError("Your code stinks!")); throw new HttpResponseException(resp); } Throwing an HttpResponseException stops the processing of the controller method and immediately returns the response you passed to the exception. Unlike other Exceptions fired inside of WebAPI, HttpResponseException bypasses the Exception Filters installed and instead just outputs the response you provide. In this case, the serialized ApiMessageError result string is returned in the default serialization format – XML or JSON. You can pass any content to HttpResponseMessage, which includes creating your own exception objects and consistently returning error messages to the client. Here’s a small helper method on the controller that you might use to send exception info back to the client consistently:private void ThrowSafeException(string message, HttpStatusCode statusCode = HttpStatusCode.BadRequest) { var errResponse = Request.CreateResponse<ApiMessageError>(statusCode, new ApiMessageError() { message = message }); throw new HttpResponseException(errResponse); } You can then use it to output any captured errors from code:[HttpGet] public void ThrowErrorSafe() { try { List<string> list = null; list.Add("Rick"); } catch (Exception ex) { ThrowSafeException(ex.Message); } }   Exception Filters Another more global solution is to create an Exception Filter. Filters in Web API provide the ability to pre- and post-process controller method operations. An exception filter looks at all exceptions fired and then optionally creates an HttpResponseMessage result. Listing 8 shows an example of a basic Exception filter implementation.public class UnhandledExceptionFilter : ExceptionFilterAttribute { public override void OnException(HttpActionExecutedContext context) { HttpStatusCode status = HttpStatusCode.InternalServerError; var exType = context.Exception.GetType(); if (exType == typeof(UnauthorizedAccessException)) status = HttpStatusCode.Unauthorized; else if (exType == typeof(ArgumentException)) status = HttpStatusCode.NotFound; var apiError = new ApiMessageError() { message = context.Exception.Message }; // create a new response and attach our ApiError object // which now gets returned on ANY exception result var errorResponse = context.Request.CreateResponse<ApiMessageError>(status, apiError); context.Response = errorResponse; base.OnException(context); } } Exception Filter Attributes can be assigned to an ApiController class like this:[UnhandledExceptionFilter] public class AlbumRpcApiController : ApiController or you can globally assign it to all controllers by adding it to the HTTP Configuration's Filters collection:GlobalConfiguration.Configuration.Filters.Add(new UnhandledExceptionFilter()); The latter is a great way to get global error trapping so that all errors (short of hard IIS errors and explicit HttpResponseException errors) return a valid error response that includes error information in the form of a known-error object. Using a filter like this allows you to throw an exception as you normally would and have your filter create a response in the appropriate output format that the client expects. For example, an AJAX application can on failure expect to see a JSON error result that corresponds to the real error that occurred rather than a 500 error along with HTML error page that IIS throws up. You can even create some custom exceptions so you can differentiate your own exceptions from unhandled system exceptions - you often don't want to display error information from 'unknown' exceptions as they may contain sensitive system information or info that's not generally useful to users of your application/site. This is just one example of how ASP.NET Web API is configurable and extensible. Exception filters are just one example of how you can plug-in into the Web API request flow to modify output. Many more hooks exist and I’ll take a closer look at extensibility in Part 2 of this article in the future. Summary Web API is a big improvement over previous Microsoft REST and AJAX toolkits. The key features to its usefulness are its ease of use with simple controller based logic, familiar MVC-style routing, low configuration impact, extensibility at all levels and tight attention to exposing and making HTTP semantics easily discoverable and easy to use. Although none of the concepts used in Web API are new or radical, Web API combines the best of previous platforms into a single framework that’s highly functional, easy to work with, and extensible to boot. I think that Microsoft has hit a home run with Web API. Related Resources Where does ASP.NET Web API fit? Sample Source Code on GitHub Passing multiple POST parameters to Web API Controller Methods Mapping UrlEncoded POST Values in ASP.NET Web API Creating a JSONP Formatter for ASP.NET Web API Removing the XML Formatter from ASP.NET Web API Applications© 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); })();

  Read the article

• SQL Monitor’s data repository: Alerts

  - by Chris Lambrou

  In my previous post, I introduced the SQL Monitor data repository, and described how the monitored objects are stored in a hierarchy in the data schema, in a series of tables with a _Keys suffix. In this post I had planned to describe how the actual data for the monitored objects is stored in corresponding tables with _StableSamples and _UnstableSamples suffixes. However, I’m going to postpone that until my next post, as I’ve had a request from a SQL Monitor user to explain how alerts are stored. In the SQL Monitor data repository, alerts are stored in tables belonging to the alert schema, which contains the following five tables: alert.Alert alert.Alert_Cleared alert.Alert_Comment alert.Alert_Severity alert.Alert_Type In this post, I’m only going to cover the alert.Alert and alert.Alert_Type tables. I may cover the other three tables in a later post. The most important table in this schema is alert.Alert, as each row in this table corresponds to a single alert. So let’s have a look at it. SELECT TOP 100 AlertId, AlertType, TargetObject, [Read], SubType FROM alert.Alert ORDER BY AlertId DESC;  AlertIdAlertTypeTargetObjectReadSubType 165550397:Cluster,1,4:Name,s29:srp-mr03.testnet.red-gate.com,9:SqlServer,1,4:Name,s0:,10 265549387:Cluster,1,4:Name,s29:srp-mr03.testnet.red-gate.com,7:Machine,1,4:Name,s0:,10 365548187:Cluster,1,4:Name,s7:granger,9:SqlServer,1,4:Name,s0:,8:Database,1,4:Name,s15:FavouriteThings,00 465547157:Cluster,1,4:Name,s7:granger,9:SqlServer,1,4:Name,s0:,8:Database,1,4:Name,s15:FavouriteThings,00 565546147:Cluster,1,4:Name,s7:granger,9:SqlServer,1,4:Name,s0:,8:Database,1,4:Name,s15:FavouriteThings,00 665545187:Cluster,1,4:Name,s7:granger,9:SqlServer,1,4:Name,s0:,8:Database,1,4:Name,s14:SqlMonitorData,00 765544157:Cluster,1,4:Name,s7:granger,9:SqlServer,1,4:Name,s0:,8:Database,1,4:Name,s14:SqlMonitorData,00 865543147:Cluster,1,4:Name,s7:granger,9:SqlServer,1,4:Name,s0:,8:Database,1,4:Name,s14:SqlMonitorData,00 965542187:Cluster,1,4:Name,s7:granger,9:SqlServer,1,4:Name,s0:,8:Database,1,4:Name,s4:msdb,00 1065541147:Cluster,1,4:Name,s7:granger,9:SqlServer,1,4:Name,s0:,8:Database,1,4:Name,s4:msdb,00 11…     So what are we seeing here, then? Well, AlertId is an auto-incrementing identity column, so ORDER BY AlertId DESC ensures that we see the most recent alerts first. AlertType indicates the type of each alert, such as Job failed (6), Backup overdue (14) or Long-running query (12). The TargetObject column indicates which monitored object the alert is associated with. The Read column acts as a flag to indicate whether or not the alert has been read. And finally the SubType column is used in the case of a Custom metric (40) alert, to indicate which custom metric the alert pertains to. Okay, now lets look at some of those columns in more detail. The AlertType column is an easy one to start with, and it brings use nicely to the next table, data.Alert_Type. Let’s have a look at what’s in this table: SELECT AlertType, Event, Monitoring, Name, Description FROM alert.Alert_Type ORDER BY AlertType;  AlertTypeEventMonitoringNameDescription 1100Processor utilizationProcessor utilization (CPU) on a host machine stays above a threshold percentage for longer than a specified duration 2210SQL Server error log entryAn error is written to the SQL Server error log with a severity level above a specified value. 3310Cluster failoverThe active cluster node fails, causing the SQL Server instance to switch nodes. 4410DeadlockSQL deadlock occurs. 5500Processor under-utilizationProcessor utilization (CPU) on a host machine remains below a threshold percentage for longer than a specified duration 6610Job failedA job does not complete successfully (the job returns an error code). 7700Machine unreachableHost machine (Windows server) cannot be contacted on the network. 8800SQL Server instance unreachableThe SQL Server instance is not running or cannot be contacted on the network. 9900Disk spaceDisk space used on a logical disk drive is above a defined threshold for longer than a specified duration. 101000Physical memoryPhysical memory (RAM) used on the host machine stays above a threshold percentage for longer than a specified duration. 111100Blocked processSQL process is blocked for longer than a specified duration. 121200Long-running queryA SQL query runs for longer than a specified duration. 131400Backup overdueNo full backup exists, or the last full backup is older than a specified time. 141500Log backup overdueNo log backup exists, or the last log backup is older than a specified time. 151600Database unavailableDatabase changes from Online to any other state. 161700Page verificationTorn Page Detection or Page Checksum is not enabled for a database. 171800Integrity check overdueNo entry for an integrity check (DBCC DBINFO returns no date for dbi_dbccLastKnownGood field), or the last check is older than a specified time. 181900Fragmented indexesFragmentation level of one or more indexes is above a threshold percentage. 192400Job duration unusualThe duration of a SQL job duration deviates from its baseline duration by more than a threshold percentage. 202501Clock skewSystem clock time on the Base Monitor computer differs from the system clock time on a monitored SQL Server host machine by a specified number of seconds. 212700SQL Server Agent Service statusThe SQL Server Agent Service status matches the status specified. 222800SQL Server Reporting Service statusThe SQL Server Reporting Service status matches the status specified. 232900SQL Server Full Text Search Service statusThe SQL Server Full Text Search Service status matches the status specified. 243000SQL Server Analysis Service statusThe SQL Server Analysis Service status matches the status specified. 253100SQL Server Integration Service statusThe SQL Server Integration Service status matches the status specified. 263300SQL Server Browser Service statusThe SQL Server Browser Service status matches the status specified. 273400SQL Server VSS Writer Service statusThe SQL Server VSS Writer status matches the status specified. 283501Deadlock trace flag disabledThe monitored SQL Server’s trace flag cannot be enabled. 293600Monitoring stopped (host machine credentials)SQL Monitor cannot contact the host machine because authentication failed. 303700Monitoring stopped (SQL Server credentials)SQL Monitor cannot contact the SQL Server instance because authentication failed. 313800Monitoring error (host machine data collection)SQL Monitor cannot collect data from the host machine. 323900Monitoring error (SQL Server data collection)SQL Monitor cannot collect data from the SQL Server instance. 334000Custom metricThe custom metric value has passed an alert threshold. 344100Custom metric collection errorSQL Monitor cannot collect custom metric data from the target object. Basically, alert.Alert_Type is just a big reference table containing information about the 34 different alert types supported by SQL Monitor (note that the largest id is 41, not 34 – some alert types have been retired since SQL Monitor was first developed). The Name and Description columns are self evident, and I’m going to skip over the Event and Monitoring columns as they’re not very interesting. The AlertId column is the primary key, and is referenced by AlertId in the alert.Alert table. As such, we can rewrite our earlier query to join these two tables, in order to provide a more readable view of the alerts: SELECT TOP 100 AlertId, Name, TargetObject, [Read], SubType FROM alert.Alert a JOIN alert.Alert_Type at ON a.AlertType = at.AlertType ORDER BY AlertId DESC;  AlertIdNameTargetObjectReadSubType 165550Monitoring error (SQL Server data collection)7:Cluster,1,4:Name,s29:srp-mr03.testnet.red-gate.com,9:SqlServer,1,4:Name,s0:,00 265549Monitoring error (host machine data collection)7:Cluster,1,4:Name,s29:srp-mr03.testnet.red-gate.com,7:Machine,1,4:Name,s0:,00 365548Integrity check overdue7:Cluster,1,4:Name,s7:granger,9:SqlServer,1,4:Name,s0:,8:Database,1,4:Name,s15:FavouriteThings,00 465547Log backup overdue7:Cluster,1,4:Name,s7:granger,9:SqlServer,1,4:Name,s0:,8:Database,1,4:Name,s15:FavouriteThings,00 565546Backup overdue7:Cluster,1,4:Name,s7:granger,9:SqlServer,1,4:Name,s0:,8:Database,1,4:Name,s15:FavouriteThings,00 665545Integrity check overdue7:Cluster,1,4:Name,s7:granger,9:SqlServer,1,4:Name,s0:,8:Database,1,4:Name,s14:SqlMonitorData,00 765544Log backup overdue7:Cluster,1,4:Name,s7:granger,9:SqlServer,1,4:Name,s0:,8:Database,1,4:Name,s14:SqlMonitorData,00 865543Backup overdue7:Cluster,1,4:Name,s7:granger,9:SqlServer,1,4:Name,s0:,8:Database,1,4:Name,s14:SqlMonitorData,00 965542Integrity check overdue7:Cluster,1,4:Name,s7:granger,9:SqlServer,1,4:Name,s0:,8:Database,1,4:Name,s4:msdb,00 1065541Backup overdue7:Cluster,1,4:Name,s7:granger,9:SqlServer,1,4:Name,s0:,8:Database,1,4:Name,s4:msdb,00 Okay, the next column to discuss in the alert.Alert table is TargetObject. Oh boy, this one’s a bit tricky! The TargetObject of an alert is a serialized string representation of the position in the monitored object hierarchy of the object to which the alert pertains. The serialization format is somewhat convenient for parsing in the C# source code of SQL Monitor, and has some helpful characteristics, but it’s probably very awkward to manipulate in T-SQL. I could document the serialization format here, but it would be very dry reading, so perhaps it’s best to consider an example from the table above. Have a look at the alert with an AlertID of 65543. It’s a Backup overdue alert for the SqlMonitorData database running on the default instance of granger, my laptop. Each different alert type is associated with a specific type of monitored object in the object hierarchy (I described the hierarchy in my previous post). The Backup overdue alert is associated with databases, whose position in the object hierarchy is root → Cluster → SqlServer → Database. The TargetObject value identifies the target object by specifying the key properties at each level in the hierarchy, thus: Cluster: Name = "granger" SqlServer: Name = "" (an empty string, denoting the default instance) Database: Name = "SqlMonitorData" Well, look at the actual TargetObject value for this alert: "7:Cluster,1,4:Name,s7:granger,9:SqlServer,1,4:Name,s0:,8:Database,1,4:Name,s14:SqlMonitorData,". It is indeed composed of three parts, one for each level in the hierarchy: Cluster: "7:Cluster,1,4:Name,s7:granger," SqlServer: "9:SqlServer,1,4:Name,s0:," Database: "8:Database,1,4:Name,s14:SqlMonitorData," Each part is handled in exactly the same way, so let’s concentrate on the first part, "7:Cluster,1,4:Name,s7:granger,". It comprises the following: "7:Cluster," – This identifies the level in the hierarchy. "1," – This indicates how many different key properties there are to uniquely identify a cluster (we saw in my last post that each cluster is identified by a single property, its Name). "4:Name,s14:SqlMonitorData," – This represents the Name property, and its corresponding value, SqlMonitorData. It’s split up like this: "4:Name," – Indicates the name of the key property. "s" – Indicates the type of the key property, in this case, it’s a string. "14:SqlMonitorData," – Indicates the value of the property. At this point, you might be wondering about the format of some of these strings. Why is the string "Cluster" stored as "7:Cluster,"? Well an encoding scheme is used, which consists of the following: "7" – This is the length of the string "Cluster" ":" – This is a delimiter between the length of the string and the actual string’s contents. "Cluster" – This is the string itself. 7 characters. "," – This is a final terminating character that indicates the end of the encoded string. You can see that "4:Name,", "8:Database," and "14:SqlMonitorData," also conform to the same encoding scheme. In the example above, the "s" character is used to indicate that the value of the Name property is a string. If you explore the TargetObject property of alerts in your own SQL Monitor data repository, you might find other characters used for other non-string key property values. The different value types you might possibly encounter are as follows: "I" – Denotes a bigint value. For example, "I65432,". "g" – Denotes a GUID value. For example, "g32116732-63ae-4ab5-bd34-7dfdfb084c18,". "d" – Denotes a datetime value. For example, "d634815384796832438,". The value is stored as a bigint, rather than a native SQL datetime value. I’ll describe how datetime values are handled in the SQL Monitor data repostory in a future post. I suggest you have a look at the alerts in your own SQL Monitor data repository for further examples, so you can see how the TargetObject values are composed for each of the different types of alert. Let me give one further example, though, that represents a Custom metric alert, as this will help in describing the final column of interest in the alert.Alert table, SubType. Let me show you the alert I’m interested in: SELECT AlertId, a.AlertType, Name, TargetObject, [Read], SubType FROM alert.Alert a JOIN alert.Alert_Type at ON a.AlertType = at.AlertType WHERE AlertId = 65769;  AlertIdAlertTypeNameTargetObjectReadSubType 16576940Custom metric7:Cluster,1,4:Name,s7:granger,9:SqlServer,1,4:Name,s0:,8:Database,1,4:Name,s6:master,12:CustomMetric,1,8:MetricId,I2,02 An AlertType value of 40 corresponds to the Custom metric alert type. The Name taken from the alert.Alert_Type table is simply Custom metric, but this doesn’t tell us anything about the specific custom metric that this alert pertains to. That’s where the SubType value comes in. For custom metric alerts, this provides us with the Id of the specific custom alert definition that can be found in the settings.CustomAlertDefinitions table. I don’t really want to delve into custom alert definitions yet (maybe in a later post), but an extra join in the previous query shows us that this alert pertains to the CPU pressure (avg runnable task count) custom metric alert. SELECT AlertId, a.AlertType, at.Name, cad.Name AS CustomAlertName, TargetObject, [Read], SubType FROM alert.Alert a JOIN alert.Alert_Type at ON a.AlertType = at.AlertType JOIN settings.CustomAlertDefinitions cad ON a.SubType = cad.Id WHERE AlertId = 65769;  AlertIdAlertTypeNameCustomAlertNameTargetObjectReadSubType 16576940Custom metricCPU pressure (avg runnable task count)7:Cluster,1,4:Name,s7:granger,9:SqlServer,1,4:Name,s0:,8:Database,1,4:Name,s6:master,12:CustomMetric,1,8:MetricId,I2,02 The TargetObject value in this case breaks down like this: "7:Cluster,1,4:Name,s7:granger," – Cluster named "granger". "9:SqlServer,1,4:Name,s0:," – SqlServer named "" (the default instance). "8:Database,1,4:Name,s6:master," – Database named "master". "12:CustomMetric,1,8:MetricId,I2," – Custom metric with an Id of 2. Note that the hierarchy for a custom metric is slightly different compared to the earlier Backup overdue alert. It’s root → Cluster → SqlServer → Database → CustomMetric. Also notice that, unlike Cluster, SqlServer and Database, the key property for CustomMetric is called MetricId (not Name), and the value is a bigint (not a string). Finally, delving into the custom metric tables is beyond the scope of this post, but for the sake of avoiding any future confusion, I’d like to point out that whilst the SubType references a custom alert definition, the MetricID value embedded in the TargetObject value references a custom metric definition. Although in this case both the custom metric definition and custom alert definition share the same Id value of 2, this is not generally the case. Okay, that’s enough for now, not least because as I’m typing this, it’s almost 2am, I have to go to work tomorrow, and my alarm is set for 6am – eek! In my next post, I’ll either cover the remaining three tables in the alert schema, or I’ll delve into the way SQL Monitor stores its monitoring data, as I’d originally planned to cover in this post.

  Read the article

• ASP.NET MVC 3 Hosting :: How to Deploy Web Apps Using ASP.NET MVC 3, Razor and EF Code First - Part I

  - by mbridge

  First, you can download the source code from http://efmvc.codeplex.com. The following frameworks will be used for this step by step tutorial. public class Category {     public int CategoryId { get; set; }     [Required(ErrorMessage = "Name Required")]     [StringLength(25, ErrorMessage = "Must be less than 25 characters")]     public string Name { get; set;}     public string Description { get; set; }     public virtual ICollection<Expense> Expenses { get; set; } } Expense Class public class Expense {             public int ExpenseId { get; set; }            public string  Transaction { get; set; }     public DateTime Date { get; set; }     public double Amount { get; set; }     public int CategoryId { get; set; }     public virtual Category Category { get; set; } }    Define Domain Model Let’s create domain model for our simple web application Category Class We have two domain entities - Category and Expense. A single category contains a list of expense transactions and every expense transaction should have a Category. In this post, we will be focusing on CRUD operations for the entity Category and will be working on the Expense entity with a View Model object in the later post. And the source code for this application will be refactored over time. The above entities are very simple POCO (Plain Old CLR Object) classes and the entity Category is decorated with validation attributes in the System.ComponentModel.DataAnnotations namespace. Now we want to use these entities for defining model objects for the Entity Framework 4. Using the Code First approach of Entity Framework, we can first define the entities by simply writing POCO classes without any coupling with any API or database library. This approach lets you focus on domain model which will enable Domain-Driven Development for applications. EF code first support is currently enabled with a separate API that is runs on top of the Entity Framework 4. EF Code First is reached CTP 5 when I am writing this article. Creating Context Class for Entity Framework We have created our domain model and let’s create a class in order to working with Entity Framework Code First. For this, you have to download EF Code First CTP 5 and add reference to the assembly EntitFramework.dll. You can also use NuGet to download add reference to EEF Code First. public class MyFinanceContext : DbContext {     public MyFinanceContext() : base("MyFinance") { }     public DbSet<Category> Categories { get; set; }     public DbSet<Expense> Expenses { get; set; }         }   The above class MyFinanceContext is derived from DbContext that can connect your model classes to a database. The MyFinanceContext class is mapping our Category and Expense class into database tables Categories and Expenses using DbSet<TEntity> where TEntity is any POCO class. When we are running the application at first time, it will automatically create the database. EF code-first look for a connection string in web.config or app.config that has the same name as the dbcontext class. If it is not find any connection string with the convention, it will automatically create database in local SQL Express database by default and the name of the database will be same name as the dbcontext class. You can also define the name of database in constructor of the the dbcontext class. Unlike NHibernate, we don’t have to use any XML based mapping files or Fluent interface for mapping between our model and database. The model classes of Code First are working on the basis of conventions and we can also use a fluent API to refine our model. The convention for primary key is ‘Id’ or ‘<class name>Id’.  If primary key properties are detected with type ‘int’, ‘long’ or ‘short’, they will automatically registered as identity columns in the database by default. Primary key detection is not case sensitive. We can define our model classes with validation attributes in the System.ComponentModel.DataAnnotations namespace and it automatically enforces validation rules when a model object is updated or saved. Generic Repository for EF Code First We have created model classes and dbcontext class. Now we have to create generic repository pattern for data persistence with EF code first. If you don’t know about the repository pattern, checkout Martin Fowler’s article on Repository Let’s create a generic repository to working with DbContext and DbSet generics. public interface IRepository<T> where T : class     {         void Add(T entity);         void Delete(T entity);         T GetById(long Id);         IEnumerable<T> All();     } RepositoryBasse – Generic Repository class protected MyFinanceContext Database {     get { return database ?? (database = DatabaseFactory.Get()); } } public virtual void Add(T entity) {     dbset.Add(entity);            }        public virtual void Delete(T entity) {     dbset.Remove(entity); }   public virtual T GetById(long id) {     return dbset.Find(id); }   public virtual IEnumerable<T> All() {     return dbset.ToList(); } } DatabaseFactory class public class DatabaseFactory : Disposable, IDatabaseFactory {     private MyFinanceContext database;     public MyFinanceContext Get()     {         return database ?? (database = new MyFinanceContext());     }     protected override void DisposeCore()     {         if (database != null)             database.Dispose();     } } Unit of Work If you are new to Unit of Work pattern, checkout Fowler’s article on Unit of Work . According to Martin Fowler, the Unit of Work pattern "maintains a list of objects affected by a business transaction and coordinates the writing out of changes and the resolution of concurrency problems." Let’s create a class for handling Unit of Work public interface IUnitOfWork {     void Commit(); } UniOfWork class public class UnitOfWork : IUnitOfWork {     private readonly IDatabaseFactory databaseFactory;     private MyFinanceContext dataContext;       public UnitOfWork(IDatabaseFactory databaseFactory)     {         this.databaseFactory = databaseFactory;     }       protected MyFinanceContext DataContext     {         get { return dataContext ?? (dataContext = databaseFactory.Get()); }     }       public void Commit()     {         DataContext.Commit();     } } The Commit method of the UnitOfWork will call the commit method of MyFinanceContext class and it will execute the SaveChanges method of DbContext class.   Repository class for Category In this post, we will be focusing on the persistence against Category entity and will working on other entities in later post. Let’s create a repository for handling CRUD operations for Category using derive from a generic Repository RepositoryBase<T>. public class CategoryRepository: RepositoryBase<Category>, ICategoryRepository     {     public CategoryRepository(IDatabaseFactory databaseFactory)         : base(databaseFactory)         {         }                } public interface ICategoryRepository : IRepository<Category> { } If we need additional methods than generic repository for the Category, we can define in the CategoryRepository. Dependency Injection using Unity 2.0 If you are new to Inversion of Control/ Dependency Injection or Unity, please have a look on my articles at http://weblogs.asp.net/shijuvarghese/archive/tags/IoC/default.aspx. I want to create a custom lifetime manager for Unity to store container in the current HttpContext. public class HttpContextLifetimeManager<T> : LifetimeManager, IDisposable {     public override object GetValue()     {         return HttpContext.Current.Items[typeof(T).AssemblyQualifiedName];     }     public override void RemoveValue()     {         HttpContext.Current.Items.Remove(typeof(T).AssemblyQualifiedName);     }     public override void SetValue(object newValue)     {         HttpContext.Current.Items[typeof(T).AssemblyQualifiedName] = newValue;     }     public void Dispose()     {         RemoveValue();     } } Let’s create controller factory for Unity in the ASP.NET MVC 3 application.                 404, String.Format(                     "The controller for path '{0}' could not be found" +     "or it does not implement IController.",                 reqContext.HttpContext.Request.Path));       if (!typeof(IController).IsAssignableFrom(controllerType))         throw new ArgumentException(                 string.Format(                     "Type requested is not a controller: {0}",                     controllerType.Name),                     "controllerType");     try     {         controller= container.Resolve(controllerType) as IController;     }     catch (Exception ex)     {         throw new InvalidOperationException(String.Format(                                 "Error resolving controller {0}",                                 controllerType.Name), ex);     }     return controller; }   } Configure contract and concrete types in Unity Let’s configure our contract and concrete types in Unity for resolving our dependencies. private void ConfigureUnity() {     //Create UnityContainer               IUnityContainer container = new UnityContainer()                 .RegisterType<IDatabaseFactory, DatabaseFactory>(new HttpContextLifetimeManager<IDatabaseFactory>())     .RegisterType<IUnitOfWork, UnitOfWork>(new HttpContextLifetimeManager<IUnitOfWork>())     .RegisterType<ICategoryRepository, CategoryRepository>(new HttpContextLifetimeManager<ICategoryRepository>());                 //Set container for Controller Factory                ControllerBuilder.Current.SetControllerFactory(             new UnityControllerFactory(container)); } In the above ConfigureUnity method, we are registering our types onto Unity container with custom lifetime manager HttpContextLifetimeManager. Let’s call ConfigureUnity method in the Global.asax.cs for set controller factory for Unity and configuring the types with Unity. protected void Application_Start() {     AreaRegistration.RegisterAllAreas();     RegisterGlobalFilters(GlobalFilters.Filters);     RegisterRoutes(RouteTable.Routes);     ConfigureUnity(); } Developing web application using ASP.NET MVC 3 We have created our domain model for our web application and also have created repositories and configured dependencies with Unity container. Now we have to create controller classes and views for doing CRUD operations against the Category entity. Let’s create controller class for Category Category Controller public class CategoryController : Controller {     private readonly ICategoryRepository categoryRepository;     private readonly IUnitOfWork unitOfWork;           public CategoryController(ICategoryRepository categoryRepository, IUnitOfWork unitOfWork)     {         this.categoryRepository = categoryRepository;         this.unitOfWork = unitOfWork;     }       public ActionResult Index()     {         var categories = categoryRepository.All();         return View(categories);     }     [HttpGet]     public ActionResult Edit(int id)     {         var category = categoryRepository.GetById(id);         return View(category);     }       [HttpPost]     public ActionResult Edit(int id, FormCollection collection)     {         var category = categoryRepository.GetById(id);         if (TryUpdateModel(category))         {             unitOfWork.Commit();             return RedirectToAction("Index");         }         else return View(category);                 }       [HttpGet]     public ActionResult Create()     {         var category = new Category();         return View(category);     }           [HttpPost]     public ActionResult Create(Category category)     {         if (!ModelState.IsValid)         {             return View("Create", category);         }                     categoryRepository.Add(category);         unitOfWork.Commit();         return RedirectToAction("Index");     }       [HttpPost]     public ActionResult Delete(int  id)     {         var category = categoryRepository.GetById(id);         categoryRepository.Delete(category);         unitOfWork.Commit();         var categories = categoryRepository.All();         return PartialView("CategoryList", categories);       }        } Creating Views in Razor Now we are going to create views in Razor for our ASP.NET MVC 3 application.  Let’s create a partial view CategoryList.cshtml for listing category information and providing link for Edit and Delete operations. CategoryList.cshtml @using MyFinance.Helpers; @using MyFinance.Domain; @model IEnumerable<Category>      <table>         <tr>         <th>Actions</th>         <th>Name</th>          <th>Description</th>         </tr>     @foreach (var item in Model) {             <tr>             <td>                 @Html.ActionLink("Edit", "Edit",new { id = item.CategoryId })                 @Ajax.ActionLink("Delete", "Delete", new { id = item.CategoryId }, new AjaxOptions { Confirm = "Delete Expense?", HttpMethod = "Post", UpdateTargetId = "divCategoryList" })                           </td>             <td>                 @item.Name             </td>             <td>                 @item.Description             </td>         </tr>         }       </table>     <p>         @Html.ActionLink("Create New", "Create")     </p> The delete link is providing Ajax functionality using the Ajax.ActionLink. This will call an Ajax request for Delete action method in the CategoryCotroller class. In the Delete action method, it will return Partial View CategoryList after deleting the record. We are using CategoryList view for the Ajax functionality and also for Index view using for displaying list of category information. Let’s create Index view using partial view CategoryList  Index.chtml @model IEnumerable<MyFinance.Domain.Category> @{     ViewBag.Title = "Index"; }    <h2>Category List</h2>    <script src="@Url.Content("~/Scripts/jquery.unobtrusive-ajax.min.js")" type="text/javascript"></script>    <div id="divCategoryList">               @Html.Partial("CategoryList", Model) </div> We can call the partial views using Html.Partial helper method. Now we are going to create View pages for insert and update functionality for the Category. Both view pages are sharing common user interface for entering the category information. So I want to create an EditorTemplate for the Category information. We have to create the EditorTemplate with the same name of entity object so that we can refer it on view pages using @Html.EditorFor(model => model) . So let’s create template with name Category. Category.cshtml @model MyFinance.Domain.Category <div class="editor-label"> @Html.LabelFor(model => model.Name) </div> <div class="editor-field"> @Html.EditorFor(model => model.Name) @Html.ValidationMessageFor(model => model.Name) </div> <div class="editor-label"> @Html.LabelFor(model => model.Description) </div> <div class="editor-field"> @Html.EditorFor(model => model.Description) @Html.ValidationMessageFor(model => model.Description) </div> Let’s create view page for insert Category information @model MyFinance.Domain.Category   @{     ViewBag.Title = "Save"; }   <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>Category</legend>                @Html.EditorFor(model => model)               <p>             <input type="submit" value="Create" />         </p>     </fieldset> }   <div>     @Html.ActionLink("Back to List", "Index") </div> ViewStart file In Razor views, we can add a file named _viewstart.cshtml in the views directory  and this will be shared among the all views with in the Views directory. The below code in the _viewstart.cshtml, sets the Layout page for every Views in the Views folder.     @{     Layout = "~/Views/Shared/_Layout.cshtml"; } Tomorrow, we will cotinue the second part of this article. :)

  Read the article

• CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, March 17, 2012

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, March 17, 2012Popular ReleasesAutoSPEditor: AutoSPEditor Installer: Installs the current version of the AutoSPEditor using ClickOnce. Your application will be updated automatically.Javascript .NET: Javascript .NET v0.6: Upgraded to the latest stable branch of v8 (/tags/3.9.18), and switched to using their scons build system. We no longer include v8 source code as part of this project's source code. Simultaneous multithreaded use of v8 now supported (v8 Isolates), although different contexts may not share objects or call each other. 64-bit .Net 4.0 DLL now included. (Download now includes x86 and x64 for both .Net 3.5 and .Net 4.0.)MyRouter (Virtual WiFi Router): MyRouter 1.0.6: This release should be more stable there were a few bug fixes including the x64 issue as well as an error popping up when MyRouter started this was caused by a NULL valuePulse: Pulse Beta 4: This version is still in development but should include: Logging and error handling have been greatly improved. If you run into an error or Pulse crashes make sure to check the Log folder for a recently modified log file so you can report the details of the issue A bunch of new features for the Wallbase.cc provider. Cleaner separation between inputs, downloading and output. Input and downloading are fairly clean now but outputs are still mixed up in the mix which I'm trying to resolve ...Google Books Downloader for Windows: Google Books Downloader-2.0.0.0.: Google Books DownloaderFinestra Virtual Desktops: 2.5.4501: This is a very minor update release. Please see the information about the 2.5 and 2.5.4500 releases for more information on recent changes. This update did not even have an automatic update triggered for it. Adds error checking and reporting to all threads, not only those with message loopsAcDown????? - Anime&Comic Downloader: AcDown????? v3.9.2: ?? ●AcDown??????????、??、??????，????1M，????，????，?????????????????????????。???????????Acfun、????(Bilibili)、??、??、YouTube、??、???、??????、SF????、????????????。??????AcPlay?????，??????、????????????????。 ● AcDown???????????????????????????，???，???????????????????。 ● AcDown???????C#??，????.NET Framework 2.0??。?????"Acfun?????"。 ????32??64? Windows XP/Vista/7/8 ????????????? ??：????????Windows XP???,?????????.NET Framework 2.0???(x86)，?????"?????????"??? ??????????????，??????????： ??"AcDo...ArcGIS Editor for OpenStreetMap: ArcGIS Editor for OSM 2.0 Release Candidate: Your feedback is welcome - and this is your last chance to get your fixes in for this version! Includes installer for both Feature Server extension and Desktop extension, enhanced functionality for the Desktop tools, and enhanced built-in Javascript Editor for the Feature Server component. This release candidate includes fixes to beta 4 that accommodate domain users for setting up the Server Component, and fixes for reporting/uploading references tracked in the revision table. See Code In-P...C.B.R. : Comic Book Reader: CBR 0.6: 20 Issue trackers are closed and a lot of bugs too Localize view is now MVVM and delete is working. Added the unused flag (take care that it goes to true only when displaying screen elements) Backstage - new input/output format choice control for the conversion Backstage - Add display, behaviour and register file type options in the extended options dialog Explorer list view has been transformed to a custom control. New group header, colunms order and size are saved Single insta...Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows 8: Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows 8 Consumer Prv: Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows 8 Consumer Preview - Preview Release v1.2.1Minor updates to setup experience: Check for WebPI before install Dependency Check updated to support the following VS 11 and VS 2010 SKUs Ultimate, Premium, Professional and Express Certs Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows 8 Consumer Preview - Preview Release v1.2.0 Please download this for Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows 8 functionality on Windows 8 Consumer Preview. The core features of the toolkit include:...Facebook Graph Toolkit: Facebook Graph Toolkit 3.0: ships with JSON Toolkit v3.0, offering parse speed up to 10 times of last version supports Facebook's new auth dialog supports new extend access token endpoint new example Page Tab app filter Graph Api connections using dates fixed bugs in Page Tab appsCODE Framework: 4.0.20312.0: This version includes significant improvements in the WPF system (and the WPF MVVM/MVC system). This includes new styles for Metro controls and layouts. Improved color handling. It also includes an improved theme/style swapping engine down to active (open) views. There also are various other enhancements and small fixes throughout the entire framework.ScintillaNET: ScintillaNET 2.4: 3/12/2012 Jacob Slusser Added support for annotations. Issues Fixed with this Release Issue # Title 25012 25012 25018 25018 25023 25023 25014 25014 Visual Studio ALM Quick Reference Guidance: v3 - For Visual Studio 11: RELEASE README Welcome to the BETA release of the Quick Reference Guide preview As this is a BETA release and the quality bar for the final Release has not been achieved, we value your candid feedback and recommend that you do not use or deploy these BETA artifacts in a production environment. Quality-Bar Details Documentation has been reviewed by Visual Studio ALM Rangers Documentation has not been through an independent technical review Documentation ...AvalonDock: AvalonDock 2.0.0345: Welcome to early alpha release of AvalonDock 2.0 I've completely rewritten AvalonDock in order to take full advantage of the MVVM pattern. New version also boost a lot of new features: 1) Deep separation between model and layout. 2) Full WPF binding support thanks to unified logical tree between main docking manager, auto-hide windows and floating windows. 3) Support for Aero semi-maximized windows feature. 4) Support for multiple panes in the same floating windows. For a short list of new f...Windows Azure PowerShell Cmdlets: Windows Azure PowerShell Cmdlets 2.2.2: Changes Added Start Menu Item for Easy Startup Added Link to Getting Started Document Added Ability to Persist Subscription Data to Disk Fixed Get-Deployment to not throw on empty slot Simplified numerous default values for cmdlets Breaking Changes: -SubscriptionName is now mandatory in Set-Subscription. -DefaultStorageAccountName and -DefaultStorageAccountKey parameters were removed from Set-Subscription. Instead, when adding multiple accounts to a subscription, each one needs to be added ...IronPython: 2.7.2.1: On behalf of the IronPython team, I'm happy to announce the final release IronPython 2.7.2. This release includes everything from IronPython 54498 and 62475 as well. Like all IronPython 2.7-series releases, .NET 4 is required to install it. Installing this release will replace any existing IronPython 2.7-series installation. Unlike previous releases, the assemblies for all supported platforms are included in the installer as well as the zip package, in the "Platforms" directory. IronPython 2...Kooboo CMS: Kooboo CMS 3.2.0.0: Breaking changes: When upgrade from previous versions, MUST reset the all the content type templates, otherwise the content manager might get a compile error. New features Integrate with Windows azure. See: http://wiki.kooboo.com/?wiki=Kooboo CMS on Azure Complete solution to deploy on load balance servers. See: http://wiki.kooboo.com/?wiki=Kooboo CMS load balance Update Jquery and Jquery ui to the lastest version(Jquery 1.71, Jquery UI 1.8.16). Tree style text content editing. See:h...Extensions for Reactive Extensions (Rxx): Rxx 1.3: Please read the latest release notes for details about what's new. Related Work Items Content SummaryRxx provides the following features. See the Documentation for details. Many IObservable<T> extension methods and IEnumerable<T> extension methods. Many wrappers that convert asynchronous Framework Class Library APIs into observables. Many useful types such as ListSubject<T>, DictionarySubject<T>, CommandSubject, ViewModel, ObservableDynamicObject, Either<TLeft, TRight>, Maybe<T>, Scala...Microsoft Ajax Minifier: Microsoft Ajax Minifier 4.47: Properly output escaped characters in CSS identifiers throw an EOF error when parsing a CSS selector that doesn't end in a declaration block chased down a stack-overflow issue with really large JS sources. Needed to flatten out the AST tree for adjacent expression statements that the application merges into a single expression statement, or that already contain large, comma-separated expressions in the original source. fix issue #17569: tie together the -debug switch with the DEBUG defi...New ProjectsCOBOL Bubble Sort: The famous Bubble Sort algorithm using COBOLCross Site Media Dashboard (webpart) for SharePoint video content: View video content in easy to configure dashboard structure. Supports a vast range of video formatsDataObjects.Net Samples: DataObjects.Net SamplesDev Tracking Tool: Dev Tracking Tool is thought to help software developers keeping track of their activities in a fast way, and use these informations for later update of tasks in other informatic systems (i.e.: tracking tasks in TFS and/or other tracking tools).Governance Checklist - Create/manage your Governance Checklist: Governance Checklist - Create/manage your Governance Checklist. SharePoint Governance Checklist generated as a starting point however you can update to your own criteria. Visual Guages to show the status of your governance progresslibspotify.NET - a managed interop library for libspotify: libspotify.NET is a simple interop wrapper library for libspotify written in C#. It enables .NET developers to write applications that can browse, search, and stream digital music from the Spotify platform. This project is compatible with libspotify API version 10.1.16. Requires libspotify.dll, a Spotify premium account, and an application API key. More info on the libspotify API at http://developer.spotify.com/en/libspotify/overview/ Media.Net: All-In-One Media Player for Windows XP, Vista, Windows 7 and Windows 8.MisTutoriales: MisTutoriales Ejemplos de programación.mobile video: mobile videoMugen MVVM Toolkit: Mugen MVVM Toolkit makes it easier to develop Silverlight, WPF and WP7 applications using the Model-View-ViewModel design pattern. It is very easy to use. It combines the pattern of DI (dependency injection) and MVVM (Model-View-ViewModel).Project SIMPLE Orca: SIMPLE makes it easier for non-programmers to create simple applications. You'll no longer have to learn an entire language in order to create that simple application you've been stressing over. S imple And I deal M acroed P rogramming L anguage For E aseRelational data Transfer Application: Relational data Transfer Application helps to move data scenarios from One relational database to other Relational database without moving entire tables. Basically this applciation moves a given data row along with its relational data to destination database. rGUI: rGUI is an open source .NET front-end for Robocopy written in C#. It is designed for users already familiar with the Robocopy command-line switches and what they do, but who want the command parameters presented in a visual way.S#: Spontaneous Sharp: A mix of very easy to use c# libraries, born out of spontaneous needs to simplify a large number of programming tasks in .NET C#.SDF - Smart Document Framework: Smart Document Framework offers an alternative to the FlowDocument which provides a simpler rendering engine and allows for better pagination.Shatong: Shatong SystemSPD 2007 Custom Activity Pause Until CheckOut = None: This activity can be added to the beginning of a SharePoint Designer 2007 workflow to pause the workflow until the item is no longer checked out (soft or hard checkout)Spontaneous XNA Library (SXL): Yet another XNA Library that has arisen from various spontaneous needs. Hopefully it can be as helpful to others as it has been to me.TeaFiles.Net - time series storage: TeaFiles.Net is an API for TeaFiles that makes it easy to store and exchange time series data between .Net programs and C++, Python, R and other applications. Written in C#. Find more details about the file specification, other APIs and tools at discretelogics.comTypePipe: TypePipe allows you to modify existing CLR types using a simple, expression-based API. Modifications from several tools and libraries (AOP, IoC etc.) can be combined. Types are generated via Reflection.Emit or user-defined back-ends.UCB_12_1: This is a research projectUCB_12_2: UCB_12_2UCB_12_3: UCB_12_3UCB_12_4: UCB_12_4UCB_12_Common: UCB_12_CommonVG Task Manager: task manager demo project created by Vivek Gupta.WP7 Map Control: Lightweight universal map control for Windows Phone 7xRM#: xRM# is focused on boosting productivity while developing JavaScript customizations for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011. xRM# provided a platform to scribble code in C# and translating them to JavaScript snippet for xRM customizations. Developers can benefit from structural and coherent flow of using existing C# coding guidelines. Pseudo data types, IntelliSense and Code Documentation reduce code look-ups and increase productivity. xRM# also supports deploying generated scripts as minified ver...

  Read the article

• Understanding the value of Customer Experience & Loyalty for the Telecommunications Industry

  - by raul.goycoolea

  Worried by economic woes and market forces, especially in mature markets, communications service providers (CSPs) increasingly focus on improving customer experience. In fact, it seems difficult to find a major message by a C-level executive in the developed world that does not include something on "meeting and exceeding customers' needs". Frequently in customer satisfaction studies by prominent firms, CSPs fall short of the leadership demonstrated by other industries that take customer-centric approaches to their bottom-line strategies. Consider the following:Despite the continued impact of global economic crisis, in July 2010, Apple Computer posted record revenue and net quarterly profit. Those who attribute the results primarily to the iPhone 4 launch should note that Apple also shipped around 30% more Macintosh computers than the same period the previous year. Even sales of the iPod line increased by 8% in a highly commoditized, shrinking media player market. Finally, Apple began selling iPads during the quarter, with total sales of more than 3 million units. What does Apple have that the others lack? Well, some great products (and services) to be sure, but it also excels at customer service and support, marketing, and distribution, and has one of the strongest brands globally. Its products are useful, simple to use, easy to acquire and augment, high quality, and considered very cool. They also evoke such an emotional response from many of Apple's customers, which they turn up their noses at competitive products.In other words, Apple appears to have mastered virtually every aspect of customer experience and the resultant loyalty of its customer base - even in difficult financial times. Through that unwavering customer focus, Apple continues to drive its revenues and profits to new heights. Other customer loyalty leaders like Wal-Mart, Google, Toyota and Honda are also doing well by focusing on customer experience as an essential driver of profitability. Service providers should note this performance and ask themselves how they might leverage the same principles to increase their own profitability. After all, that is what customer experience and loyalty are all about: profitability.To successfully manage all the critical touch points of customer experience, CSPs must shun the one-size-fits-all approach. They can no longer afford to view customer service fundamentally as an act of altruism - which mentality dates back to the industry's civil service days, when CSPs were typically government organizations that were critical to economic development and public safety.As regulators and public officials have pushed, and continue to push, service providers to new heights of reliability - using incentives and punishments - most CSPs already have some of the fundamental building blocks of customer service in place. Yet despite that history and experience, service providers still lag other industries in providing what is seen as good customer service.As we observed in the TMF's 2009 Insights Research report, Customer Experience Management: Driving Loyalty & Profitability there has been resurgence in interest by CSPs. More and more of them have stated ambitions to catch up other industries, and they are realizing that good customer service is a powerful strategy for increasing business performance and profitability, not an act of good will.CSPs are recognizing the connection between customer experience and profitability, as demonstrated in many studies. For example, according to research by Bain & Company, a 5 percent improvement in customer retention rates can yield as much as a 75 percent increase in profits for companies across a range of industries.After decades of customer experience strategy formulation, Bain partner and business author, Frederick Reichheld, considers "would you recommend us to a friend?" as the ultimate question for a customer. How many times have you or your friends recommended an iPod, iPhone or a Mac? What do your children recommend to their peers? Their peers to them?There are certain steps service providers have to take to create more personalized relationships with their customers, as well as reduce churn and increase profitability, all while becoming leaner and more agile. First, they have to define customer experience, we define it as the result of the sum of observations, perceptions, thoughts and feelings arising from interactions and relationships between customers and their service provider(s). Virtually every customer touch point - whether directly or indirectly linked to service providers and their partners - contributes to customer perception, satisfaction, loyalty, and ultimately profitability. Gaining leadership in customer experience and satisfaction will not be a simple task, as it is affected by virtually every customer-facing aspect of the service provider, and in turn impacts the service provider deeply - especially on the all-important bottom line. The scope of issues affecting customer experience is complex and dynamic.With new services, devices and applications extending the basis of customer experience to domains beyond the direct control of the service provider, it is likely to increase in complexity and dynamism.Customer loyalty = increased profitsAs stated earlier, customer experience programs are not fundamentally altruistic exercises, but a strategic means of improving competitiveness and profitability in the short and long term. Loyalty is essential to deriving long term profits from customers.Some of the earliest loyalty programs date back to the 1930s, when packaged goods companies offered embedded coupons for rewards to buyers, and eventually retail chains began offering reward programs to frequent shoppers. These programs continued for decades but were leapfrogged in the 1980s by more aggressive programs from the airlines.This movement was led by American Airlines, which launched the first full-scale loyalty marketing program of the modern era with the AAdvantage frequent flyer scheme. It was the first to reward frequent fliers with notional air miles that could be accumulated and later redeemed for free travel. Figure 1: Opportunities example of Customer loyalty driven profitOther airlines and travel providers were quick to grasp the incredible value of providing customers with an incentive to use their company exclusively. Within a few years, dozens of travel industry companies launched similar initiatives and now loyalty programs are achieving near-ubiquity in many service industries, especially those in which it is difficult to differentiate offerings by product attributes.The belief is that increased profitability will result from customer retention efforts because:•    The cost of acquisition occurs only at the beginning of a relationship: the longer the relationship, the lower the amortized cost;•    Account maintenance costs decline as a percentage of total costs, or as a percentage of revenue, over the lifetime of the relationship;•    Long term customers tend to be less inclined to switch and less price sensitive which can result in stable unit sales volume and increases in dollar-sales volume;•    Long term customers may initiate word-of-mouth promotions and referrals, which cost the company nothing and arguably are the most effective form of advertising;•    Long-term customers are more likely to buy ancillary products and higher margin supplemental products;•    Long term customers tend to be satisfied with their relationship with the company and are less likely to switch to competitors, making market entry or competitors gaining market share difficult;•    Regular customers tend to be less expensive to service, as they are familiar with the processes involved, require less 'education', and are consistent in their order placement;•    Increased customer retention and loyalty makes the employees' jobs easier and more satisfying. In turn, happy employees feed back into higher customer satisfaction in a virtuous circle. Figure 2: The virtuous circle of customer loyaltyFigure 2 represents a high-level example of a virtuous cycle driven by customer satisfaction and loyalty, depicting how superiority in product and service offerings, as well as strong customer support by competent employees, lead to higher sales and ultimately profitability. As stated above, this is not a new concept, but succeeding with it is difficult. It has eluded many a company driven to achieve profitability goals. Of course, for this circle to be virtuous, the customer relationship(s) must be profitable.Trying to maintain the loyalty of unprofitable customers is not a viable business strategy. It is, therefore, important that marketers can assess the profitability of each customer (or customer segment), and either improve or terminate relationships that are not profitable. This means each customer's 'relationship costs' must be understood and compared to their 'relationship revenue'. Customer lifetime value (CLV) is the most commonly used metric here, as it is generally accepted as a representation of exactly how much each customer is worth in monetary terms, and therefore a determinant of exactly how much a service provider should be willing to spend to acquire or retain that customer.CLV models make several simplifying assumptions and often involve the following inputs:•    Churn rate represents the percentage of customers who end their relationship with a company in a given period;•    Retention rate is calculated by subtracting the churn rate percentage from 100;•    Period/horizon equates to the units of time into which a customer relationship can be divided for analysis. A year is the most commonly used period for this purpose. Customer lifetime value is a multi-period calculation, often projecting three to seven years into the future. In practice, analysis beyond this point is viewed as too speculative to be reliable. The model horizon is the number of periods used in the calculation;•    Periodic revenue is the amount of revenue collected from a customer in a given period (though this is often extended across multiple periods into the future to understand lifetime value), such as usage revenue, revenues anticipated from cross and upselling, and often some weighting for referrals by a loyal customer to others; •    Retention cost describes the amount of money the service provider must spend, in a given period, to retain an existing customer. Again, this is often forecast across multiple periods. Retention costs include customer support, billing, promotional incentives and so on;•    Discount rate means the cost of capital used to discount future revenue from a customer. Discounting is an advanced method used in more sophisticated CLV calculations;•    Profit margin is the projected profit as a percentage of revenue for the period. This may be reflected as a percentage of gross or net profit. Again, this is generally projected across the model horizon to understand lifetime value.A strong focus on managing these inputs can help service providers realize stronger customer relationships and profits, but there are some obstacles to overcome in achieving accurate calculations of CLV, such as the complexity of allocating costs across the customer base. There are many costs that serve all customers which must be properly allocated across the base, and often a simple proportional allocation across the whole base or a segment may not accurately reflect the true cost of serving that customer;  This is made worse by the fragmentation of customer information, which is likely to be across a variety of product or operations groups, and may be difficult to aggregate due to different representations.In addition, there is the complexity of account relationships and structures to take into consideration. Complex account structures may not be understood or properly represented. For example, a profitable customer may have a separate account for a second home or another family member, which may appear to be unprofitable. If the service provider cannot relate the two accounts, CLV is not properly represented and any resultant cancellation of the apparently unprofitable account may result in the customer churning from the profitable one.In summary, if service providers are to realize strong customer relationships and their attendant profits, there must be a very strong focus on data management. This needs to be coupled with analytics that help business managers and those who work in customer-facing functions offer highly personalized solutions to customers, while maintaining profitability for the service provider. It's clear that acquiring new customers is expensive. Advertising costs, campaign management expenses, promotional service pricing and discounting, and equipment subsidies make a serious dent in a new customer's profitability. That is especially true given the rising subsidies for Smartphone users, which service providers hope will result in greater profits from profits from data services profitability in future.  The situation is made worse by falling prices and greater competition in mature markets.Customer acquisition through industry consolidation isn't cheap either. A North American service provider spent about $2,000 per subscriber in its acquisition of a smaller company earlier this year. While this has allowed it to leapfrog to become the largest mobile service provider in the country, it required a total investment of more than $28 billion (including assumption of the acquiree's debt).While many operating cost synergies clearly made this deal more attractive to the acquiring company, this is certainly an expensive way to acquire customers: the cost per subscriber in this case is not out of line with the prices others have paid for acquisitions.While growth by acquisition certainly increases overall revenues, it often creates tremendous challenges for profitability. Organic growth through increased customer loyalty and retention is a more effective driver of profit, as well as a stronger predictor of future profitability. Service providers, especially those in mature markets, are increasingly recognizing this and taking steps toward a creating a more personalized, flexible and satisfying experience for their customers.In summary, the clearest path to profitability for companies in virtually all industries is through customer retention and maximization of lifetime value. Service providers would do well to recognize this and focus attention on profitable customer relationships.

  Read the article

• CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, June 16, 2011

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, June 16, 2011Popular ReleasesTibiaPingFixer: TibiaPingFixer v.1.0: TibiaPingFixer v.1.0TerrariViewer: TerrariViewer v3.1 [Terraria Inventory Editor]: This version adds tool tips. Almost every picture box you mouse over will tell you what item is in that box. I have also cleaned up the GUI a little more to make things easier on my end. There are various bug fixes including ones associated with opening different characters in the same instance of the program. As always, please bring any bugs you find to my attention.CommonLibrary.NET: CommonLibrary.NET - 0.9.7 Beta: A collection of very reusable code and components in C# 3.5 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 6583 6737DropBox Linker: DropBox Linker 1.2: Public sub-folders are now monitored for changes as well (thanks to mcm69) Automatic public sync folder detection (thanks to mcm69) Non-Latin and special characters encoded correctly in URLs Pop-ups are now slot-based (use first free slot and will never be overlapped — test it while previewing timeout) Public sync folder setting is hidden when auto-detected Timeout interval is displayed in popup previews A lot of major and minor code refactoring performed .NET Framework 4.0 Client...Terraria World Viewer: Version 1.3: Update June 15th Removed "Draw Markers" checkbox from main window because of redundancy/confusing. (Select all or no items from the Settings tab for the same effect.) Fixed Marker preferences not being saved. It is now possible to render more than one map without having to restart the application. World file will not be locked while the world is being rendered. Note: The World Viewer might render an inaccurate map or even crash if Terraria decides to modify the World file during the pro...MVC Controls Toolkit: Mvc Controls Toolkit 1.1.5 RC: Added Extended Dropdown allows a prompt item to be inserted as first element. RequiredAttribute, if present, trggers if no element is chosen Client side javascript function to set/get the values of DateTimeInput, TypedTextBox, TypedEditDisplay, and to bind/unbind a "change" handler The selected page in the pager is applied the attribute selected-page="selected" that can be used in the definition of CSS rules to style the selected page items controls now interpret a null value as an empr...Umbraco CMS: Umbraco CMS 5.0 CTP 1: Umbraco 5 Community Technology Preview Umbraco 5 will be the next version of everyone's favourite, friendly ASP.NET CMS that already powers over 100,000 websites worldwide. Try out our first CTP of version 5 today! If you're new to Umbraco and would like to get a quick low-down on our popular and easy-to-learn approach to content management, check out our intro video here. What's in the v5 CTP box? This is a preview version of version 5 and includes support for the following familiar Umbr...Ribbon Browser for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011: Ribbon Browser (1.0.514.30): Initial releaseCoding4Fun Kinect Toolkit: Coding4Fun.Kinect Toolkit: Version 1.0Kinect Mouse Cursor: Kinect Mouse Cursor v1.0: The initial release of the Kinect Mouse Cursor project!patterns & practices: Project Silk: Project Silk Community Drop 11 - June 14, 2011: Changes from previous drop: Many code changes: please see the readme.mht for details. New "Client Data Management and Caching" chapter. Updated "Application Notifications" chapter. Updated "Architecture" chapter. Updated "jQuery UI Widget" chapter. Updated "Widget QuickStart" appendix and code. Guidance Chapters Ready for Review The Word documents for the chapters are included with the source code in addition to the CHM to help you provide feedback. The PDF is provided as a separat...Orchard Project: Orchard 1.2: Build: 1.2.41 Published: 6/14/2010 How to Install Orchard To install Orchard using Web PI, follow these instructions: http://www.orchardproject.net/docs/Installing-Orchard.ashx. Web PI will detect your hardware environment and install the application. Alternatively, to install the release manually, download the Orchard.Web.1.2.41.zip file. http://orchardproject.net/docs/Manually-installing-Orchard-zip-file.ashx The zip contents are pre-built and ready-to-run. Simply extract the contents o...PowerGUI Visual Studio Extension: PowerGUI VSX 1.3.4: Changes - Got rid of suppressed exceptions on assemblies loading at project startup - Fixed Issue #28535 "No Print Support" - Enabled IntelliSence commands wich are supported by ActiPro Syntax Editor control: ToggleBookmark, NextBookmark, PreviousBookmark, ShowMemberList - Added missing Import directives in PS Script project template - Fixed exception occurring on debug start - Fixed an issue: after creating a new PS project, a debugging session hung being run for the second timeSnippet Designer: Snippet Designer 1.4.0: Snippet Designer 1.4.0 for Visual Studio 2010 Change logSnippet Explorer ChangesReworked language filter UI to work better in the side bar. Added result count drop down which lets you choose how many results to see. Language filter and result count choices are persisted after Visual Studio is closed. Added file name to search criteria. Search is now case insensitive. Snippet Editor Changes Snippet Editor ChangesAdded menu option for the $end$ symbol which indicates where the c...Mobile Device Detection and Redirection: 1.0.4.1: Stable Release 51 Degrees.mobi Foundation is the best way to detect and redirect mobile devices and their capabilities on ASP.NET and is being used on thousands of websites worldwide. We’re highly confident in our software and we recommend all users update to this version. Changes to Version 1.0.4.1Changed the BlackberryHandler and BlackberryVersion6Handler to have equal CONFIDENCE values to ensure they both get a chance at detecting BlackBerry version 4&5 and version 6 devices. Prior to thi...Rawr: Rawr 4.1.06: 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...AcDown????? - Anime&Comic Downloader: AcDown????? v3.0 Beta6: ??AcDown?????????????，?????????????，????、????。?????Acfun????? ????32??64? Windows XP/Vista/7 ????????????? ??：????????Windows XP???,?????????.NET Framework 2.0???(x86)?.NET Framework 2.0???(x64)，?????"?????????"??? ??v3.0 Beta6 ?????(imanhua.com)????? ???? ?? ??"????","?????","?????","????"?????? "????"?????"????????"?? ??????????? ?????????????? ?????????????/???? ?? ????Windows 7???????????? ????????? ?? ????????????? ???????/??????????? ???????????? ?? ?? ?????(imanh...Pulse: Pulse Beta 2: - Added new wallpapers provider http://wallbase.cc. Supports english search, multiple keywords* - Improved font rendering in Options window - Added "Set wallpaper as logon background" option* - Fixed crashes if there is no internet connection - Fixed: Rewalls downloads empty images sometimes - Added filters* Note 1: wallbase provider supports only english search. Rewalls provider supports only russian search but Pulse automatically translates your english keyword into russian using Google Tr...WPF Application Framework (WAF): WPF Application Framework (WAF) 2.0.0.7: Version: 2.0.0.7 (Milestone 7): This release contains the source code of the WPF Application Framework (WAF) and the sample applications. Requirements .NET Framework 4.0 (The package contains a solution file for Visual Studio 2010) The unit test projects require Visual Studio 2010 Professional Remark The sample applications are using Microsoft’s IoC container MEF. However, the WPF Application Framework (WAF) doesn’t force you to use the same IoC container in your application. You can use ...Windows Azure VM Assistant: AzureVMAssist V1.0.0.5: AzureVMAssist V1.0.0.5 (Debug) - Test Release VersionNew ProjectsASP.NET REST Services Framework: This framework provides capability to work with backend server-side .NET code via REST services from client-side javascript or other types of client code. REST-service component is a server-side framework that allows easy creation and working with REST services within any ASP.NET application. Ones a REST-service is defined it can be consumed via regular URL, or using client-side javascript call that resembles the standard C# style function call that is expected to be used within server-sid...ASP.NET, MVC, Learning: This project is for MojtabaSahraei's blog ResourceAuto Downloads Service: ADSrv (Auto Downloads Service) is a windows services (based on BITS) to add, remove and track downloads from several text files.BizTalk BDD Sample: This project is to go alongside the videos I have recently done about BDD and acceptance testing in BizTalk development.Bluvee Boxer: Video conveter for the WD TV Live Hub.Clomibep: PL: Zaawansowany system zarzadzania trescia Clomibep. EN: Advenced content managment system ClomibepCVPAT: CVPAT is a Process Automation ToolDigital Life Assistant Framework: DLAEF SharePoint 2010 web parts: SharePoint 2010 visual web parts ( SharePoint 2010 only ) Please change "Deploy.cmd" with the correct SharePoint site url, then run it from the SharePoint 2010 server.Entity Framework Query Visualizer: This is a visual studio debug visualizer for retrieving the SQL query generated by the Entity Framework at run time. In order to install this visualizer, you need to copy the downloaded DLL file ( EntityFrameworkLinqQueryVisualizer.dll ) to "C:\Users\<User Name>\Documents\Visual Studio 2010\Visualizers" folderHighYouth: HighYouthHMM-CMS: CMS pour le site HMMICompas: Sample startup siteKontrolDJNET: KontrolDJ.NET is: * A midi translator for KontrolDJ KDJ500 controller: This software is designed to work with Traktor Pro 2.0.1, Traktor Pro 1.0.1 or Traktor 3.4. (4 Decks support, Led feedback, Soft Takeover, ...) * An HID to Midi translator for all your gamepads, joysticks, ... This software is designed to work with Windows XP SP3, Vista and Seven. OS: Windows XP SP3, Vista and Seven (32 or 64bits). LevelZap: LevelZap is a Windows Explorer add-on that adds an item to the contextual menu on all folders allowing the user to "zap" the folder by moving all files/folders within it up one level, then deleting the folder itself. Works on Windows XP or later, both 32-bit and 64-bit versions.Locadora de Veiculos: Locadora de Veiculos - Projeto teste da pós graduaçãoMediator Framework: LINQ DataSource Integration FrameworkMetin2 Patcher: This project is a patcher. First Release Under ConstructionMVC Obsidian: Obsidian aims at creating a solid Quickstart solution for MVC3 projects.Orchard Delete Content Type: This Orchard modules provides a feature to delete dynamic content types.Osbourne Shell (Forth-like scripting language for .NET): I wrote it under the influence of LSD. There are a lot of architectural & codding mistakes and I do not want to even try to correct them. So, enjoy, lol.PowerShell EventLogWatcher Module: A PowerShell module that provides some additional functions to enhance PowerShell Eventing in relation to Windows Event Log events. Subscriptions can be made and actions taken when new events are written to a log. In a sense, this can be used as "poor mans" auditing system.Present it now!: PresentItNow allows to present the desktop to others on the LAN. Since SharedView does not work with IE9 and Netmeeting is not working on Vista/Windows 7 there is a need for a tool to be able to share the desktop with others on the LAN. This is a simple tool written in C#.Quadruple 128-bit Floating Point Library: 128-bit floating point library with 64 effective bits of precision (vs. 53 for the built-in Double type) and a 64 bit exponent (vs. 11 for Doubles). Greater range avoids under/overflows and makes log arithmetic unnecessary.Ribbon Browser for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011: This tool helps developer to browse ribbons in Microsoft Dynamics CRM. It makes easier to identify ribbon controls properties.Rsp.Windows.Forms: This project includes several custom Button types, Windows Form types, a numeric textbox and a custom MessageBox class. * RoundedButton - A button with rounded corners. * ShadedButton - A button with customizable shine. * ColorizedButton - A button with customizable Tint color for specified background image. * NumericTextBox - Textbox allowing only numeric input. * MsgBoxUI - Alternative to Windows MessageBox with a nicer look. * ShadowedForm - Windows form with a shadow. ...SocialTFS: SocialTFS is an extension of the Team Foundation Server which provides members of a global software team with information collected from Enterprise 2.0 applications, such as professional social networks and corporate microblogging. SocialTFS makes it easier for members of large distributed software teams to get in touch with each other, using corporate microblogging services (first StatusNet, then Yammer) and professional SNS profiles (Ohloh and LinkedIn). SocialTFS is part of a researc...SQLite Code Generator: Contains a stand alone GUI application and a Visual Studio Custom Tool for automatically generating a .NET data access layer code for objects in a SQLite database.Taste : state machines made easy: Taste is a lightweight state machine implementation for .NET. Its main purpose is to simplify the implementation of complex ViewModels in WPF and Silverlight applications, where the code to execute, the commands to enable and their effects depend on the current state of the View.Tau: TauTelerik MVC Music Store: This project has Telerik OpenAccess ORM as its database access logic and is entirely based of http://mvcmusicstore.codeplex.com/ . TextFileToGrid: This is the library made specifically to render the text file data stored in tabular form into data grid view.TFS Scrumboard: TFS Scrumboard is an extension to TFS 2010 Web Access, providing easy planning and managing of workitem progress.Umbraco Advertising Management: This is the home page for the Umbraco Advertising Management Project. Umbraco CMS is an .NET opensource CMS. This project has just started, you can download the source code of the initial version. The objective of this project is to create a package that would provide a new toVAI: The goal of this project is to create a home entertainment solution focused on various forms of user interaction such as audio, video, and traditional.XBee DSS service for Robotics Studio: This is a Microsoft Robotics Studio DSS service used to communicate with XBee devices. It is able to send messages to remote end devices and receive data samples from them. It is built on top of the Grommet library.????: ??:???

  Read the article

< Previous Page | 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106  | Next Page >