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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, January 30, 2011

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, January 30, 2011Popular ReleasesWPF Application Framework (WAF): WPF Application Framework (WAF) 2.0.0.3: Version: 2.0.0.3 (Milestone 3): 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 ...Rawr: Rawr 4.0.17 Beta: Rawr is now web-based. The link to use Rawr4 is: http://elitistjerks.com/rawr.phpThis is the Cataclysm Beta Release. More details can be found at the following link http://rawr.codeplex.com/Thread/View.aspx?ThreadId=237262 and on the Version Notes page: http://rawr.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=VersionNotes As of the 4.0.16 release, you can now also begin using the new Downloadable WPF version of Rawr!This is a pre-alpha release of the WPF version, there are likely to be a lot of issues. If you...VivoSocial: VivoSocial 7.4.2: Version 7.4.2 of VivoSocial has been released. If you experienced any issues with the previous version, please update your modules to the 7.4.2 release and see if they persist. If you have any questions about this release, please post them in our Support forums. If you are experiencing a bug or would like to request a new feature, please submit it to our issue tracker. Web Controls * Updated Business Objects and added a new SQL Data Provider File. Groups * Fixed a security issue whe...PHP Manager for IIS: PHP Manager 1.1.1 for IIS 7: This is a minor release of PHP Manager for IIS 7. It contains all the functionality available in 56962 plus several bug fixes (see change list for more details). Also, this release includes Russian language support. SHA1 codes for the downloads are: PHPManagerForIIS-1.1.0-x86.msi - 6570B4A8AC8B5B776171C2BA0572C190F0900DE2 PHPManagerForIIS-1.1.0-x64.msi - 12EDE004EFEE57282EF11A8BAD1DC1ADFD66A654VFPX: VFP2C32 2.0.0.8 Release Candidate: This release includes several bugfixes, new functions and finally a CHM help file for the complete library.EnhSim: EnhSim 2.3.3 ALPHA: 2.3.3 ALPHAThis release supports WoW patch 4.06 at level 85 To use this release, you must have the Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 Redistributable Package installed. This can be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=A7B7A05E-6DE6-4D3A-A423-37BF0912DB84 To use the GUI you must have the .NET 4.0 Framework installed. This can be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=9cfb2d51-5ff4-4491-b0e5-b386f32c0992 - Added back in a p...DB>doc for Microsoft SQL Server: 1.0.0.0: Initial release Supported output HTML WikiPlex markup Raw XML Supported objects Tables Primary Keys Foreign Keys ViewsmojoPortal: 2.3.6.1: see release notes on mojoportal.com http://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-2361-released.aspx Note that we have separate deployment packages for .NET 3.5 and .NET 4.0 The deployment package downloads on this page are pre-compiled and ready for production deployment, they contain no C# source code. To download the source code see the Source Code Tab I recommend getting the latest source code using TortoiseHG, you can get the source code corresponding to this release here.Office Web.UI: Alpha preview: This is the first alpha release. Very exciting moment... This download is just the demo application : "Contoso backoffice Web App". No source included for the moment, just the app, for testing purposes and for feedbacks !! This package includes a set of official MS Office icons (143 png 16x16 and 132 png 32x32) to really make a great app ! Please rate and give feedback ThanksParallel Programming with Microsoft Visual C++: Drop 6 - Chapters 4 and 5: This is Drop 6. It includes: Drafts of the Preface, Introduction, Chapters 2-7, Appendix B & C and the glossary Sample code for chapters 2-7 and Appendix A & B. The new material we'd like feedback on is: Chapter 4 - Parallel Aggregation Chapter 5 - Futures The source code requires Visual Studio 2010 in order to run. There is a known bug in the A-Dash sample when the user attempts to cancel a parallel calculation. We are working to fix this.Catel - WPF and Silverlight MVVM library: 1.1: (+) Styles can now be changed dynamically, see Examples application for a how-to (+) ViewModelBase class now have a constructor that allows services injection (+) ViewModelBase services can now be configured by IoC (via Microsoft.Unity) (+) All ViewModelBase services now have a unit test implementation (+) Added IProcessService to run processes from a viewmodel with directly using the process class (which makes it easier to unit test view models) (*) If the HasErrors property of DataObjec...NodeXL: Network Overview, Discovery and Exploration for Excel: NodeXL Excel Template, version 1.0.1.160: The NodeXL Excel template displays a network graph using edge and vertex lists stored in an Excel 2007 or Excel 2010 workbook. What's NewThis release improves NodeXL's Twitter and Pajek features. See the Complete NodeXL Release History for details. Installation StepsFollow these steps to install and use the template: Download the Zip file. Unzip it into any folder. Use WinZip or a similar program, or just right-click the Zip file in Windows Explorer and select "Extract All." Close Ex...Kooboo CMS: Kooboo CMS 3.0 CTP: Files in this downloadkooboo_CMS.zip: The kooboo application files Content_DBProvider.zip: Additional content database implementation of MSSQL, RavenDB and SQLCE. Default is XML based database. To use them, copy the related dlls into web root bin folder and remove old content provider dlls. Content provider has the name like "Kooboo.CMS.Content.Persistence.SQLServer.dll" View_Engines.zip: Supports of Razor, webform and NVelocity view engine. Copy the dlls into web root bin folder to enable...UOB & ME: UOB ME 2.6: UOB ME 2.6????: ???? V1.0: ???? V1.0 ??Password Generator: 2.2: Parallel password generation Password strength calculation ( Same method used by Microsoft here : https://www.microsoft.com/protect/fraud/passwords/checker.aspx ) Minor code refactoringVisual Studio 2010 Architecture Tooling Guidance: Spanish - Architecture Guidance: Francisco Fagas http://geeks.ms/blogs/ffagas, Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP), localized the Visual Studio 2010 Quick Reference Guidance for the Spanish communities, based on http://vsarchitectureguide.codeplex.com/releases/view/47828. Release Notes The guidance is available in a xps-only (default) or complete package. The complete package contains the files in xps, pdf and Office 2007 formats. 2011-01-24 Publish version 1.0 of the Spanish localized bits.ASP.NET MVC Project Awesome, jQuery Ajax helpers (controls): 1.6.2: A rich set of helpers (controls) that you can use to build highly responsive and interactive Ajax-enabled Web applications. These helpers include Autocomplete, AjaxDropdown, Lookup, Confirm Dialog, Popup Form, Popup and Pager the html generation has been optimized, the html page size is much smaller nowFacebook Graph Toolkit: Facebook Graph Toolkit 0.6: new Facebook Graph objects: Application, Page, Post, Comment Improved Intellisense documentation new Graph Api connections: albums, photos, posts, feed, home, friends JSON Toolkit upgraded to version 0.9 (beta release) with bug fixes and new features bug fixed: error when handling empty JSON arrays bug fixed: error when handling JSON array with square or large brackets in the message bug fixed: error when handling JSON obejcts with double quotation in the message bug fixed: erro...Microsoft All-In-One Code Framework: Visual Studio 2008 Code Samples 2011-01-23: Code samples for Visual Studio 2008New ProjectsAnaida - WebSocket Client/Adapter: Anaida is a WebSocket Client Library/Adapter. With 3 versions for Java, Silverlight and C#CutPasteAssign: Visual Studio extension to assist in the common refactoring of assigning parameters to local variables.Drori Photos: Photos of Drori the photographerD-Solution: App de D-SolutionEnigma Home Inventory: Most consumers do not have an itemized list of proof of ownership. Enigma Home Inventory may take the hassle out of arguing with the insurance companies. This project is aimed to be for a simple inventory program for end users who are not computer savvy.FastKnow: is a CMS & wikiFileSignatures: FileSignatures aims to create a class library that can identify the file format based on file contents. The project is written in C# 3.0, and can be used in .NET 3.5 and 4.0 projects.Genrsis: The aim of the Genrsis project is to be a suite of products that you can use to build things, starting with a workflow-based project management tool. Built in C#, it should be a one-stop place to get well-integrated products to get you up and running.MVC Demos: MVC 2 and MVC 3 examples with ajax and json.MVC Templates for DevExpress: Scaffolding templates for use in ASP.NET MVC 2 with DevExpress MVC Extensions for ASP.NET MVCPixel Replacer: The Pixel Replacer is a simple library for replacing pixel colors with a new color, by setting a filter rule.ReviewPal - The Code Review Companion for .Net.: ReviewPal, the Code Review Companion for .Net. This is an Add-In / Extension for Visual Studio 2008 & Visual Studio 2010. The aim of the Add-In / Extension is to do a source code review within the Visual Studio IDE where code makes more sense and most readable.SMVector3: Vector3 class implemented as float array or with SIMD instructions with the same interface so it is transparant whether you decide to use one version or another. You can also chance version during the life cycle of the projects.uRibbon - Office 2007 Ribbon control for VB.NET: Office 2007 ribbon control, with Orb and graphic transitions. After searching for many day looking for an Office 2007-like ribbon bar, I finally gave up and decided to write my own. It's in decent shape as-is. But anyone interested in helping me to continue the devlopment??vtcheck: This will read a target binary and check to see if it is detected by VirusTotal.Web Scheduled Task Framework: A simple set of classes intended to allow the standalone scheduling of tasks (arbitrary code to execute) on a .net website without requiring access to the operating system.WP7 codeproject app: A Windows Phone 7 app for browsing codeproject.com.zhongjh: ?????????，???????。???????????: ???????????

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• C#/.NET Little Wonders: Interlocked CompareExchange()

  - by James Michael Hare

  Once again, in this series of posts I look at the parts of the .NET Framework that may seem trivial, but can help improve your code by making it easier to write and maintain. The index of all my past little wonders posts can be found here. Two posts ago, I discussed the Interlocked Add(), Increment(), and Decrement() methods (here) for adding and subtracting values in a thread-safe, lightweight manner.  Then, last post I talked about the Interlocked Read() and Exchange() methods (here) for safely and efficiently reading and setting 32 or 64 bit values (or references).  This week, we’ll round out the discussion by talking about the Interlocked CompareExchange() method and how it can be put to use to exchange a value if the current value is what you expected it to be. Dirty reads can lead to bad results Many of the uses of Interlocked that we’ve explored so far have centered around either reading, setting, or adding values.  But what happens if you want to do something more complex such as setting a value based on the previous value in some manner? Perhaps you were creating an application that reads a current balance, applies a deposit, and then saves the new modified balance, where of course you’d want that to happen atomically.  If you read the balance, then go to save the new balance and between that time the previous balance has already changed, you’ll have an issue!  Think about it, if we read the current balance as $400, and we are applying a new deposit of $50.75, but meanwhile someone else deposits $200 and sets the total to $600, but then we write a total of $450.75 we’ve lost $200! Now, certainly for int and long values we can use Interlocked.Add() to handles these cases, and it works well for that.  But what if we want to work with doubles, for example?  Let’s say we wanted to add the numbers from 0 to 99,999 in parallel.  We could do this by spawning several parallel tasks to continuously add to a total: 1: double total = 0; 2:  3: Parallel.For(0, 10000, next => 4: { 5: total += next; 6: }); Were this run on one thread using a standard for loop, we’d expect an answer of 4,999,950,000 (the sum of all numbers from 0 to 99,999).  But when we run this in parallel as written above, we’ll likely get something far off.  The result of one of my runs, for example, was 1,281,880,740.  That is way off!  If this were banking software we’d be in big trouble with our clients.  So what happened?  The += operator is not atomic, it will read in the current value, add the result, then store it back into the total.  At any point in all of this another thread could read a “dirty” current total and accidentally “skip” our add.   So, to clean this up, we could use a lock to guarantee concurrency: 1: double total = 0.0; 2: object locker = new object(); 3:  4: Parallel.For(0, count, next => 5: { 6: lock (locker) 7: { 8: total += next; 9: } 10: }); Which will give us the correct result of 4,999,950,000.  One thing to note is that locking can be heavy, especially if the operation being locked over is trivial, or the life of the lock is a high percentage of the work being performed concurrently.  In the case above, the lock consumes pretty much all of the time of each parallel task – and the task being locked on is relatively trivial. Now, let me put in a disclaimer here before we go further: For most uses, lock is more than sufficient for your needs, and is often the simplest solution!    So, if lock is sufficient for most needs, why would we ever consider another solution?  The problem with locking is that it can suspend execution of your thread while it waits for the signal that the lock is free.  Moreover, if the operation being locked over is trivial, the lock can add a very high level of overhead.  This is why things like Interlocked.Increment() perform so well, instead of locking just to perform an increment, we perform the increment with an atomic, lockless method. As with all things performance related, it’s important to profile before jumping to the conclusion that you should optimize everything in your path.  If your profiling shows that locking is causing a high level of waiting in your application, then it’s time to consider lighter alternatives such as Interlocked. CompareExchange() – Exchange existing value if equal some value So let’s look at how we could use CompareExchange() to solve our problem above.  The general syntax of CompareExchange() is: T CompareExchange<T>(ref T location, T newValue, T expectedValue) If the value in location == expectedValue, then newValue is exchanged.  Either way, the value in location (before exchange) is returned. Actually, CompareExchange() is not one method, but a family of overloaded methods that can take int, long, float, double, pointers, or references.  It cannot take other value types (that is, can’t CompareExchange() two DateTime instances directly).  Also keep in mind that the version that takes any reference type (the generic overload) only checks for reference equality, it does not call any overridden Equals(). So how does this help us?  Well, we can grab the current total, and exchange the new value if total hasn’t changed.  This would look like this: 1: // grab the snapshot 2: double current = total; 3:  4: // if the total hasn’t changed since I grabbed the snapshot, then 5: // set it to the new total 6: Interlocked.CompareExchange(ref total, current + next, current); So what the code above says is: if the amount in total (1st arg) is the same as the amount in current (3rd arg), then set total to current + next (2nd arg).  This check and exchange pair is atomic (and thus thread-safe). This works if total is the same as our snapshot in current, but the problem, is what happens if they aren’t the same?  Well, we know that in either case we will get the previous value of total (before the exchange), back as a result.  Thus, we can test this against our snapshot to see if it was the value we expected: 1: // if the value returned is != current, then our snapshot must be out of date 2: // which means we didn't (and shouldn't) apply current + next 3: if (Interlocked.CompareExchange(ref total, current + next, current) != current) 4: { 5: // ooops, total was not equal to our snapshot in current, what should we do??? 6: } So what do we do if we fail?  That’s up to you and the problem you are trying to solve.  It’s possible you would decide to abort the whole transaction, or perhaps do a lightweight spin and try again.  Let’s try that: 1: double current = total; 2:  3: // make first attempt... 4: if (Interlocked.CompareExchange(ref total, current + i, current) != current) 5: { 6: // if we fail, go into a spin wait, spin, and try again until succeed 7: var spinner = new SpinWait(); 8:  9: do 10: { 11: spinner.SpinOnce(); 12: current = total; 13: } 14: while (Interlocked.CompareExchange(ref total, current + i, current) != current); 15: } 16:  This is not trivial code, but it illustrates a possible use of CompareExchange().  What we are doing is first checking to see if we succeed on the first try, and if so great!  If not, we create a SpinWait and then repeat the process of SpinOnce(), grab a fresh snapshot, and repeat until CompareExchnage() succeeds.  You may wonder why not a simple do-while here, and the reason it’s more efficient to only create the SpinWait until we absolutely know we need one, for optimal efficiency. Though not as simple (or maintainable) as a simple lock, this will perform better in many situations.  Comparing an unlocked (and wrong) version, a version using lock, and the Interlocked of the code, we get the following average times for multiple iterations of adding the sum of 100,000 numbers: 1: Unlocked money average time: 2.1 ms 2: Locked money average time: 5.1 ms 3: Interlocked money average time: 3 ms So the Interlocked.CompareExchange(), while heavier to code, came in lighter than the lock, offering a good compromise of safety and performance when we need to reduce contention. CompareExchange() - it’s not just for adding stuff… So that was one simple use of CompareExchange() in the context of adding double values -- which meant we couldn’t have used the simpler Interlocked.Add() -- but it has other uses as well. If you think about it, this really works anytime you want to create something new based on a current value without using a full lock.  For example, you could use it to create a simple lazy instantiation implementation.  In this case, we want to set the lazy instance only if the previous value was null: 1: public static class Lazy<T> where T : class, new() 2: { 3: private static T _instance; 4:  5: public static T Instance 6: { 7: get 8: { 9: // if current is null, we need to create new instance 10: if (_instance == null) 11: { 12: // attempt create, it will only set if previous was null 13: Interlocked.CompareExchange(ref _instance, new T(), (T)null); 14: } 15:  16: return _instance; 17: } 18: } 19: } So, if _instance == null, this will create a new T() and attempt to exchange it with _instance.  If _instance is not null, then it does nothing and we discard the new T() we created. This is a way to create lazy instances of a type where we are more concerned about locking overhead than creating an accidental duplicate which is not used.  In fact, the BCL implementation of Lazy<T> offers a similar thread-safety choice for Publication thread safety, where it will not guarantee only one instance was created, but it will guarantee that all readers get the same instance.  Another possible use would be in concurrent collections.  Let’s say, for example, that you are creating your own brand new super stack that uses a linked list paradigm and is “lock free”.  We could use Interlocked.CompareExchange() to be able to do a lockless Push() which could be more efficient in multi-threaded applications where several threads are pushing and popping on the stack concurrently. Yes, there are already concurrent collections in the BCL (in .NET 4.0 as part of the TPL), but it’s a fun exercise!  So let’s assume we have a node like this: 1: public sealed class Node<T> 2: { 3: // the data for this node 4: public T Data { get; set; } 5:  6: // the link to the next instance 7: internal Node<T> Next { get; set; } 8: } Then, perhaps, our stack’s Push() operation might look something like: 1: public sealed class SuperStack<T> 2: { 3: private volatile T _head; 4:  5: public void Push(T value) 6: { 7: var newNode = new Node<int> { Data = value, Next = _head }; 8:  9: if (Interlocked.CompareExchange(ref _head, newNode, newNode.Next) != newNode.Next) 10: { 11: var spinner = new SpinWait(); 12:  13: do 14: { 15: spinner.SpinOnce(); 16: newNode.Next = _head; 17: } 18: while (Interlocked.CompareExchange(ref _head, newNode, newNode.Next) != newNode.Next); 19: } 20: } 21:  22: // ... 23: } Notice a similar paradigm here as with adding our doubles before.  What we are doing is creating the new Node with the data to push, and with a Next value being the original node referenced by _head.  This will create our stack behavior (LIFO – Last In, First Out).  Now, we have to set _head to now refer to the newNode, but we must first make sure it hasn’t changed! So we check to see if _head has the same value we saved in our snapshot as newNode.Next, and if so, we set _head to newNode.  This is all done atomically, and the result is _head’s original value, as long as the original value was what we assumed it was with newNode.Next, then we are good and we set it without a lock!  If not, we SpinWait and try again. Once again, this is much lighter than locking in highly parallelized code with lots of contention.  If I compare the method above with a similar class using lock, I get the following results for pushing 100,000 items: 1: Locked SuperStack average time: 6 ms 2: Interlocked SuperStack average time: 4.5 ms So, once again, we can get more efficient than a lock, though there is the cost of added code complexity.  Fortunately for you, most of the concurrent collection you’d ever need are already created for you in the System.Collections.Concurrent (here) namespace – for more information, see my Little Wonders – The Concurent Collections Part 1 (here), Part 2 (here), and Part 3 (here). Summary We’ve seen before how the Interlocked class can be used to safely and efficiently add, increment, decrement, read, and exchange values in a multi-threaded environment.  In addition to these, Interlocked CompareExchange() can be used to perform more complex logic without the need of a lock when lock contention is a concern. The added efficiency, though, comes at the cost of more complex code.  As such, the standard lock is often sufficient for most thread-safety needs.  But if profiling indicates you spend a lot of time waiting for locks, or if you just need a lock for something simple such as an increment, decrement, read, exchange, etc., then consider using the Interlocked class’s methods to reduce wait. Technorati Tags: C#,CSharp,.NET,Little Wonders,Interlocked,CompareExchange,threading,concurrency

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• Tips for XNA WP7 Developers

  - by Michael B. McLaughlin

  There are several things any XNA developer should know/consider when coming to the Windows Phone 7 platform. This post assumes you are familiar with the XNA Framework and with the changes between XNA 3.1 and XNA 4.0. It’s not exhaustive; it’s simply a list of things I’ve gathered over time. I may come back and add to it over time, and I’m happy to add anything anyone else has experienced or learned as well. Display · The screen is either 800x480 or 480x800. · But you aren’t required to use only those resolutions. · The hardware scaler on the phone will scale up from 240x240. · One dimension will be capped at 800 and the other at 480; which depends on your code, but you cannot have, e.g., an 800x600 back buffer – that will be created as 800x480. · The hardware scaler will not normally change aspect ratio, though, so no unintended stretching. · Any dimension (width, height, or both) below 240 will be adjusted to 240 (without any aspect ratio adjustment such that, e.g. 200x240 will be treated as 240x240). · Dimensions below 240 will be honored in terms of calculating whether to use portrait or landscape. · If dimensions are exactly equal or if height is greater than width then game will be in portrait. · If width is greater than height, the game will be in landscape. · Landscape games will automatically flip if the user turns the phone 180°; no code required. · Default landscape is top = left. In other words a user holding a phone who starts a landscape game will see the first image presented so that the “top” of the screen is along the right edge of his/her phone, such that the natural behavior would be to turn the phone 90° so that the top of the phone will be held in the user’s left hand and the bottom would be held in the user’s right hand. · The status bar (where the clock, battery power, etc., are found) is hidden when the Game-derived class sets GraphicsDeviceManager.IsFullScreen = true. It is shown when IsFullScreen = false. The default value is false (i.e. the status bar is shown). · You should have a good reason for hiding the status bar. Users find it helpful to know what time it is, how much charge their battery has left, and whether or not their phone is in service range. This is especially true for casual games that you expect someone to play for a few minutes at a time, e.g. while waiting for some event to start, for a phone call to come in, or for a train, bus, or subway to arrive. · In portrait mode, the status bar occupies 32 pixels of space. This means that a game with a back buffer of 480x800 will be scaled down to occupy approximately 461x768 screen pixels. Setting the back buffer to 480x768 (or some resolution with the same 0.625 aspect ratio) will avoid this scaling. · In landscape mode, the status bar occupies 72 pixels of space. This means that a game with a back buffer of 800x480 will be scaled down to occupy approximately 728x437 screen pixels. Setting the back buffer to 728x480 (or some resolution with the same 1.51666667 aspect ratio) will avoid this scaling. Input · Touch input is scaled with screen size. · So if your back buffer is 600x360, a tap in the bottom right corner will come in as (599,359). You don’t need to do anything special to get this automatic scaling of touch behavior. · If you do not use full area of the screen, any touch input outside the area you use will still register as a touch input. For example, if you set a portrait resolution of 240x240, it would be scaled up to occupy a 480x480 area, centered in the screen. If you touch anywhere above this area, you will get a touch input of (X,0) where X is a number from 0 to 239 (in accordance with your 240 pixel wide back buffer). Any touch below this area will give a touch input of (X,239). · If you keep the status bar visible, touches within its area will not be passed to your game. · In general, a screen measurement is the diagonal. So a 3.5” screen is 3.5” long from the bottom right corner to the top left corner. With an aspect ratio of 0.6 (480/800 = 0.6), this means that a phone with a 3.5” screen is only approximately 1.8” wide by 3” tall. So there are approximately 267 pixels in an inch on a 3.5” screen. · Again, this time in metric! 3.5 inches is approximately 8.89 cm. So an 8.89 cm screen is 8.89 cm long from the bottom right corner to the top left corner. With an aspect ratio of 0.6, this means that a phone with an 8.89 cm screen is only approximately 4.57 cm wide by 7.62 cm tall. So there are approximately 105 pixels in a centimeter on an 8.89 cm screen. · Think about the size of your finger tip. If you do not have large hands, think about the size of the fingertip of someone with large hands. Consider that when you are sizing your touch input. Especially consider that when you are spacing two touch targets near one another. You need to judge it for yourself, but items that are next to each other and are each 100x100 should be fine when it comes to selecting items individually. Smaller targets than that are ok provided that you leave space between them. · You want your users to have a pleasant experience. Making touch controls too small or too close to one another will make them nervous about whether they will touch the right target. Take this into account when you plan out your game initially. If possible, do some quick size mockups on an actual phone using colored rectangles that you position and size where you plan to have your game controls. Adjust as necessary. · People do not have transparent hands! Nor are their hands the size of a mouse pointer icon. Consider leaving a dedicated space for input rather than forcing the user to cover up to one-third of the screen with a finger just to play the game. · Another benefit of designing your controls to use a dedicated area is that you’re less likely to have players moving their finger(s) so frantically that they accidentally hit the back button, start button, or search button (many phones have one or more of these on the screen itself – it’s easy to hit one by accident and really annoying if you hit, e.g., the search button and then quickly tap back only to find out that the game didn’t save your progress such that you just wasted all the time you spent playing). · People do not like doing somersaults in order to move something forward with accelerometer-based controls. Test your accelerometer-based controls extensively and get a lot of feedback. Very well-known games from noted publishers have created really bad accelerometer controls and been virtually unplayable as a result. Also be wary of exceptions and other possible failures that the documentation warns about. · When done properly, the accelerometer can add a nice touch to your game (see, e.g. ilomilo where the accelerometer was used to move the background; it added a nice touch without frustrating the user; I also think CarniVale does direct accelerometer controls very well). However, if done poorly, it will make your game an abomination unto the Marketplace. Days, weeks, perhaps even months of development time that you will never get back. I won’t name names; you can search the marketplace for games with terrible reviews and you’ll find them. Graphics · The maximum frame rate is 30 frames per second. This was set as a compromise between battery life and quality. · At least one model of phone is known to have a screen refresh rate that is between 59 and 60 hertz. Because of this, using a fixed time step with a target frame rate of 30 will cause a slight internal delay to build up as the framework is forced to wait slightly for the next refresh. Eventually the delay will get to the point where a draw is skipped in order to recover from the delay. (See Nick's comment below for clarification.) · To deal with that delay, you can either stay with a fixed time step and set the frame rate slightly lower or else you can go to a variable time step and make sure to adjust all of your update data (e.g. player movement distance) to take into account the elapsed time from the last update. A variable time step makes your update logic slightly more complicated but will avoid frame skips entirely. · Currently there are no custom shaders. This might change in the future (there is no hardware limitation preventing it; it simply wasn’t a feature that could be implemented in the time available before launch). · There are five built-in shaders. You can create a lot of nice effects with the built-in shaders. · There is more power on the CPU than there is on the GPU so things you might typically off-load to the GPU will instead make sense to do on the CPU side. · This is a phone. It is not a PC. It is not an Xbox 360. The emulator runs on a PC and uses the full power of your PC. It is very good for testing your code for bugs and doing early prototyping and layout. You should not use it to measure performance. Use actual phone hardware instead. · There are many phone models, each of which has slightly different performance levels for I/O, screen blitting, CPU performance, etc. Do not take your game right to the performance limit on your phone since for some other phones you might be crossing their limits and leaving players with a bad experience. Leave a cushion to account for hardware differences. · Smaller screened phones will have slightly more dots per inch (dpi). Larger screened phones will have slightly less. Either way, the dpi will be much higher than the typical 96 found on most computer screens. Make sure that whoever is doing art for your game takes this into account. · Screens are only required to have 16 bit color (65,536 colors). This is common among smart phones. Using gradients on a 16 bit display can produce an ugly artifact known as banding. Banding is when, rather than a smooth transition from one color to another, you instead see distinct lines. Be careful to avoid this when possible. Banding can be avoided through careful art creation. Its effects can be minimized and even unnoticeable when the texture in question is always moving. You should be careful not to rely on “looks good on my phone” since some phones do have 32-bit displays and thus you’ll find yourself wondering why you’re getting bad reviews that complain about the graphics. Avoid gradients; if you can’t, make sure they are 16-bit safe. Audio · Never rely on sounds as your sole signal to the player that something is happening in the game. They might have the sound off. They might be playing somewhere loud. Etc. · You have to provide controls to disable sound & music. These should be separate. · On at least one model of phone, the volume control API currently has no effect. Players can adjust sound with their hardware volume buttons, but in game selectors simply won’t work. As such, it may not be worth the effort of providing anything beyond on/off switches for sound and music. · MediaPlayer.GameHasControl will return true when a game is hooked up to a PC running Zune. When Zune is running, any attempts to do anything (beyond check GameHasControl) with MediaPlayer will cause an exception to be thrown. If this exception is thrown, catch it and disable music. Exceptions take time to propagate; you don’t want one popping up in every single run of your game’s Update method. · Remember that players can already be listening to music or using the FM radio. In this case GameHasControl will be false and you should handle this appropriately. You can, alternately, ask the player for permission to stop their current music and play your music instead, but the (current) requirement that you restore their music when done is very hard (if not impossible) to deal with. · You can still play sound effects even when the game doesn’t have control of the music, but don’t think this is a backdoor to playing music. Your game will fail certification if your “sound effect” seems to be more like music in scope and length.

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• Selling Federal Enterprise Architecture (EA)

  - by TedMcLaughlan

  Selling Federal Enterprise Architecture A taxonomy of subject areas, from which to develop a prioritized marketing and communications plan to evangelize EA activities within and among US Federal Government organizations and constituents. Any and all feedback is appreciated, particularly in developing and extending this discussion as a tool for use – more information and details are also available. "Selling" the discipline of Enterprise Architecture (EA) in the Federal Government (particularly in non-DoD agencies) is difficult, notwithstanding the general availability and use of the Federal Enterprise Architecture Framework (FEAF) for some time now, and the relatively mature use of the reference models in the OMB Capital Planning and Investment (CPIC) cycles. EA in the Federal Government also tends to be a very esoteric and hard to decipher conversation – early apologies to those who agree to continue reading this somewhat lengthy article. Alignment to the FEAF and OMB compliance mandates is long underway across the Federal Departments and Agencies (and visible via tools like PortfolioStat and ITDashboard.gov – but there is still a gap between the top-down compliance directives and enablement programs, and the bottom-up awareness and effective use of EA for either IT investment management or actual mission effectiveness. "EA isn't getting deep enough penetration into programs, components, sub-agencies, etc.", verified a panelist at the most recent EA Government Conference in DC. Newer guidance from OMB may be especially difficult to handle, where bottom-up input can't be accurately aligned, analyzed and reported via standardized EA discipline at the Agency level – for example in addressing the new (for FY13) Exhibit 53D "Agency IT Reductions and Reinvestments" and the information required for "Cloud Computing Alternatives Evaluation" (supporting the new Exhibit 53C, "Agency Cloud Computing Portfolio"). Therefore, EA must be "sold" directly to the communities that matter, from a coordinated, proactive messaging perspective that takes BOTH the Program-level value drivers AND the broader Agency mission and IT maturity context into consideration. Selling EA means persuading others to take additional time and possibly assign additional resources, for a mix of direct and indirect benefits – many of which aren't likely to be realized in the short-term. This means there's probably little current, allocated budget to work with; ergo the challenge of trying to sell an "unfunded mandate". Also, the concept of "Enterprise" in large Departments like Homeland Security tends to cross all kinds of organizational boundaries – as Richard Spires recently indicated by commenting that "...organizational boundaries still trump functional similarities. Most people understand what we're trying to do internally, and at a high level they get it. The problem, of course, is when you get down to them and their system and the fact that you're going to be touching them...there's always that fear factor," Spires said. It is quite clear to the Federal IT Investment community that for EA to meet its objective, understandable, relevant value must be measured and reported using a repeatable method – as described by GAO's recent report "Enterprise Architecture Value Needs To Be Measured and Reported". What's not clear is the method or guidance to sell this value. In fact, the current GAO "Framework for Assessing and Improving Enterprise Architecture Management (Version 2.0)", a.k.a. the "EAMMF", does not include words like "sell", "persuade", "market", etc., except in reference ("within Core Element 19: Organization business owner and CXO representatives are actively engaged in architecture development") to a brief section in the CIO Council's 2001 "Practical Guide to Federal Enterprise Architecture", entitled "3.3.1. Develop an EA Marketing Strategy and Communications Plan." Furthermore, Core Element 19 of the EAMMF is advised to be applied in "Stage 3: Developing Initial EA Versions". This kind of EA sales campaign truly should start much earlier in the maturity progress, i.e. in Stages 0 or 1. So, what are the understandable, relevant benefits (or value) to sell, that can find an agreeable, participatory audience, and can pave the way towards success of a longer-term, funded set of EA mechanisms that can be methodically measured and reported? Pragmatic benefits from a useful EA that can help overcome the fear of change? And how should they be sold? Following is a brief taxonomy (it's a taxonomy, to help organize SME support) of benefit-related subjects that might make the most sense, in creating the messages and organizing an initial "engagement plan" for evangelizing EA "from within". An EA "Sales Taxonomy" of sorts. We're not boiling the ocean here; the subjects that are included are ones that currently appear to be urgently relevant to the current Federal IT Investment landscape. Note that successful dialogue in these topics is directly usable as input or guidance for actually developing early-stage, "Fit-for-Purpose" (a DoDAF term) Enterprise Architecture artifacts, as prescribed by common methods found in most EA methodologies, including FEAF, TOGAF, DoDAF and our own Oracle Enterprise Architecture Framework (OEAF). The taxonomy below is organized by (1) Target Community, (2) Benefit or Value, and (3) EA Program Facet - as in: "Let's talk to (1: Community Member) about how and why (3: EA Facet) the EA program can help with (2: Benefit/Value)". Once the initial discussion targets and subjects are approved (that can be measured and reported), a "marketing and communications plan" can be created. A working example follows the Taxonomy. Enterprise Architecture Sales Taxonomy Draft, Summary Version 1. Community 1.1. Budgeted Programs or Portfolios Communities of Purpose (CoPR) 1.1.1. Program/System Owners (Senior Execs) Creating or Executing Acquisition Plans 1.1.2. Program/System Owners Facing Strategic Change 1.1.2.1. Mandated 1.1.2.2. Expected/Anticipated 1.1.3. Program Managers - Creating Employee Performance Plans 1.1.4. CO/COTRs – Creating Contractor Performance Plans, or evaluating Value Engineering Change Proposals (VECP) 1.2. Governance & Communications Communities of Practice (CoP) 1.2.1. Policy Owners 1.2.1.1. OCFO 1.2.1.1.1. Budget/Procurement Office 1.2.1.1.2. Strategic Planning 1.2.1.2. OCIO 1.2.1.2.1. IT Management 1.2.1.2.2. IT Operations 1.2.1.2.3. Information Assurance (Cyber Security) 1.2.1.2.4. IT Innovation 1.2.1.3. Information-Sharing/ Process Collaboration (i.e. policies and procedures regarding Partners, Agreements) 1.2.2. Governing IT Council/SME Peers (i.e. an "Architects Council") 1.2.2.1. Enterprise Architects (assumes others exist; also assumes EA participants aren't buried solely within the CIO shop) 1.2.2.2. Domain, Enclave, Segment Architects – i.e. the right affinity group for a "shared services" EA structure (per the EAMMF), which may be classified as Federated, Segmented, Service-Oriented, or Extended 1.2.2.3. External Oversight/Constraints 1.2.2.3.1. GAO/OIG & Legal 1.2.2.3.2. Industry Standards 1.2.2.3.3. Official public notification, response 1.2.3. Mission Constituents Participant & Analyst Community of Interest (CoI) 1.2.3.1. Mission Operators/Users 1.2.3.2. Public Constituents 1.2.3.3. Industry Advisory Groups, Stakeholders 1.2.3.4. Media 2. Benefit/Value (Note the actual benefits may not be discretely attributable to EA alone; EA is a very collaborative, cross-cutting discipline.) 2.1. Program Costs – EA enables sound decisions regarding... 2.1.1. Cost Avoidance – a TCO theme 2.1.2. Sequencing – alignment of capability delivery 2.1.3. Budget Instability – a Federal reality 2.2. Investment Capital – EA illuminates new investment resources via... 2.2.1. Value Engineering – contractor-driven cost savings on existing budgets, direct or collateral 2.2.2. Reuse – reuse of investments between programs can result in savings, chargeback models; avoiding duplication 2.2.3. License Refactoring – IT license & support models may not reflect actual or intended usage 2.3. Contextual Knowledge – EA enables informed decisions by revealing... 2.3.1. Common Operating Picture (COP) – i.e. cross-program impacts and synergy, relative to context 2.3.2. Expertise & Skill – who truly should be involved in architectural decisions, both business and IT 2.3.3. Influence – the impact of politics and relationships can be examined 2.3.4. Disruptive Technologies – new technologies may reduce costs or mitigate risk in unanticipated ways 2.3.5. What-If Scenarios – can become much more refined, current, verifiable; basis for Target Architectures 2.4. Mission Performance – EA enables beneficial decision results regarding... 2.4.1. IT Performance and Optimization – towards 100% effective, available resource utilization 2.4.2. IT Stability – towards 100%, real-time uptime 2.4.3. Agility – responding to rapid changes in mission 2.4.4. Outcomes –measures of mission success, KPIs – vs. only "Outputs" 2.4.5. Constraints – appropriate response to constraints 2.4.6. Personnel Performance – better line-of-sight through performance plans to mission outcome 2.5. Mission Risk Mitigation – EA mitigates decision risks in terms of... 2.5.1. Compliance – all the right boxes are checked 2.5.2. Dependencies –cross-agency, segment, government 2.5.3. Transparency – risks, impact and resource utilization are illuminated quickly, comprehensively 2.5.4. Threats and Vulnerabilities – current, realistic awareness and profiles 2.5.5. Consequences – realization of risk can be mapped as a series of consequences, from earlier decisions or new decisions required for current issues 2.5.5.1. Unanticipated – illuminating signals of future or non-symmetric risk; helping to "future-proof" 2.5.5.2. Anticipated – discovering the level of impact that matters 3. EA Program Facet (What parts of the EA can and should be communicated, using business or mission terms?) 3.1. Architecture Models – the visual tools to be created and used 3.1.1. Operating Architecture – the Business Operating Model/Architecture elements of the EA truly drive all other elements, plus expose communication channels 3.1.2. Use Of – how can the EA models be used, and how are they populated, from a reasonable, pragmatic yet compliant perspective? What are the core/minimal models required? What's the relationship of these models, with existing system models? 3.1.3. Scope – what level of granularity within the models, and what level of abstraction across the models, is likely to be most effective and useful? 3.2. Traceability – the maturity, status, completeness of the tools 3.2.1. Status – what in fact is the degree of maturity across the integrated EA model and other relevant governance models, and who may already be benefiting from it? 3.2.2. Visibility – how does the EA visibly and effectively prove IT investment performance goals are being reached, with positive mission outcome? 3.3. Governance – what's the interaction, participation method; how are the tools used? 3.3.1. Contributions – how is the EA program informed, accept submissions, collect data? Who are the experts? 3.3.2. Review – how is the EA validated, against what criteria?  Taxonomy Usage Example:   1. To speak with: a. ...a particular set of System Owners Facing Strategic Change, via mandate (like the "Cloud First" mandate); about... b. ...how the EA program's visible and easily accessible Infrastructure Reference Model (i.e. "IRM" or "TRM"), if updated more completely with current system data, can... c. ...help shed light on ways to mitigate risks and avoid future costs associated with NOT leveraging potentially-available shared services across the enterprise... 2. ....the following Marketing & Communications (Sales) Plan can be constructed: a. Create an easy-to-read "Consequence Model" that illustrates how adoption of a cloud capability (like elastic operational storage) can enable rapid and durable compliance with the mandate – using EA traceability. Traceability might be from the IRM to the ARM (that identifies reusable services invoking the elastic storage), and then to the PRM with performance measures (such as % utilization of purchased storage allocation) included in the OMB Exhibits; and b. Schedule a meeting with the Program Owners, timed during their Acquisition Strategy meetings in response to the mandate, to use the "Consequence Model" for advising them to organize a rapid and relevant RFI solicitation for this cloud capability (regarding alternatives for sourcing elastic operational storage); and c. Schedule a series of short "Discovery" meetings with the system architecture leads (as agreed by the Program Owners), to further populate/validate the "As-Is" models and frame the "To Be" models (via scenarios), to better inform the RFI, obtain the best feedback from the vendor community, and provide potential value for and avoid impact to all other programs and systems. --end example -- Note that communications with the intended audience should take a page out of the standard "Search Engine Optimization" (SEO) playbook, using keywords and phrases relating to "value" and "outcome" vs. "compliance" and "output". Searches in email boxes, internal and external search engines for phrases like "cost avoidance strategies", "mission performance metrics" and "innovation funding" should yield messages and content from the EA team. This targeted, informed, practical sales approach should result in additional buy-in and participation, additional EA information contribution and model validation, development of more SMEs and quick "proof points" (with real-life testing) to bolster the case for EA. The proof point here is a successful, timely procurement that satisfies not only the external mandate and external oversight review, but also meets internal EA compliance/conformance goals and therefore is more transparently useful across the community. In short, if sold effectively, the EA will perform and be recognized. EA won’t therefore be used only for compliance, but also (according to a validated, stated purpose) to directly influence decisions and outcomes. The opinions, views and analysis expressed in this document are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Oracle.

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• Parsing Concerns

  - by Jesse

  If you’ve ever written an application that accepts date and/or time inputs from an external source (a person, an uploaded file, posted XML, etc.) then you’ve no doubt had to deal with parsing some text representing a date into a data structure that a computer can understand. Similarly, you’ve probably also had to take values from those same data structure and turn them back into their original formats. Most (all?) suitably modern development platforms expose some kind of parsing and formatting functionality for turning text into dates and vice versa. In .NET, the DateTime data structure exposes ‘Parse’ and ‘ToString’ methods for this purpose. This post will focus mostly on parsing, though most of the examples and suggestions below can also be applied to the ToString method. The DateTime.Parse method is pretty permissive in the values that it will accept (though apparently not as permissive as some other languages) which makes it pretty easy to take some text provided by a user and turn it into a proper DateTime instance. Here are some examples (note that the resulting DateTime values are shown using the RFC1123 format): DateTime.Parse("3/12/2010"); //Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 GMT DateTime.Parse("2:00 AM"); //Sat, 01 Jan 2011 02:00:00 GMT (took today's date as date portion) DateTime.Parse("5-15/2010"); //Sat, 15 May 2010 00:00:00 GMT DateTime.Parse("7/8"); //Fri, 08 Jul 2011 00:00:00 GMT DateTime.Parse("Thursday, July 1, 2010"); //Thu, 01 Jul 2010 00:00:00 GMT Dealing With Inaccuracy While the DateTime struct has the ability to store a date and time value accurate down to the millisecond, most date strings provided by a user are not going to specify values with that much precision. In each of the above examples, the Parse method was provided a partial value from which to construct a proper DateTime. This means it had to go ahead and assume what you meant and fill in the missing parts of the date and time for you. This is a good thing, especially when we’re talking about taking input from a user. We can’t expect that every person using our software to provide a year, day, month, hour, minute, second, and millisecond every time they need to express a date. That said, it’s important for developers to understand what assumptions the software might be making and plan accordingly. I think the assumptions that were made in each of the above examples were pretty reasonable, though if we dig into this method a little bit deeper we’ll find that there are a lot more assumptions being made under the covers than you might have previously known. One of the biggest assumptions that the DateTime.Parse method has to make relates to the format of the date represented by the provided string. Let’s consider this example input string: ‘10-02-15’. To some people. that might look like ‘15-Feb-2010’. To others, it might be ‘02-Oct-2015’. Like many things, it depends on where you’re from. This Is America! Most cultures around the world have adopted a “little-endian” or “big-endian” formats. (Source: Date And Time Notation By Country) In this context,  a “little-endian” date format would list the date parts with the least significant first while the “big-endian” date format would list them with the most significant first. For example, a “little-endian” date would be “day-month-year” and “big-endian” would be “year-month-day”. It’s worth nothing here that ISO 8601 defines a “big-endian” format as the international standard. While I personally prefer “big-endian” style date formats, I think both styles make sense in that they follow some logical standard with respect to ordering the date parts by their significance. Here in the United States, however, we buck that trend by using what is, in comparison, a completely nonsensical format of “month/day/year”. Almost no other country in the world uses this format. I’ve been fortunate in my life to have done some international travel, so I’ve been aware of this difference for many years, but never really thought much about it. Until recently, I had been developing software for exclusively US-based audiences and remained blissfully ignorant of the different date formats employed by other countries around the world. The web application I work on is being rolled out to users in different countries, so I was recently tasked with updating it to support different date formats. As it turns out, .NET has a great mechanism for dealing with different date formats right out of the box. Supporting date formats for different cultures is actually pretty easy once you understand this mechanism. Pulling the Curtain Back On the Parse Method Have you ever taken a look at the different flavors (read: overloads) that the DateTime.Parse method comes in? In it’s simplest form, it takes a single string parameter and returns the corresponding DateTime value (if it can divine what the date value should be). You can optionally provide two additional parameters to this method: an ‘System.IFormatProvider’ and a ‘System.Globalization.DateTimeStyles’. Both of these optional parameters have some bearing on the assumptions that get made while parsing a date, but for the purposes of this article I’m going to focus on the ‘System.IFormatProvider’ parameter. The IFormatProvider exposes a single method called ‘GetFormat’ that returns an object to be used for determining the proper format for displaying and parsing things like numbers and dates. This interface plays a big role in the globalization capabilities that are built into the .NET Framework. The cornerstone of these globalization capabilities can be found in the ‘System.Globalization.CultureInfo’ class. To put it simply, the CultureInfo class is used to encapsulate information related to things like language, writing system, and date formats for a certain culture. Support for many cultures are “baked in” to the .NET Framework and there is capacity for defining custom cultures if needed (thought I’ve never delved into that). While the details of the CultureInfo class are beyond the scope of this post, so for now let me just point out that the CultureInfo class implements the IFormatInfo interface. This means that a CultureInfo instance created for a given culture can be provided to the DateTime.Parse method in order to tell it what date formats it should expect. So what happens when you don’t provide this value? Let’s crack this method open in Reflector: When no IFormatInfo parameter is provided (i.e. we use the simple DateTime.Parse(string) overload), the ‘DateTimeFormatInfo.CurrentInfo’ is used instead. Drilling down a bit further we can see the implementation of the DateTimeFormatInfo.CurrentInfo property: From this property we can determine that, in the absence of an IFormatProvider being specified, the DateTime.Parse method will assume that the provided date should be treated as if it were in the format defined by the CultureInfo object that is attached to the current thread. The culture specified by the CultureInfo instance on the current thread can vary depending on several factors, but if you’re writing an application where a single instance might be used by people from different cultures (i.e. a web application with an international user base), it’s important to know what this value is. Having a solid strategy for setting the current thread’s culture for each incoming request in an internationally used ASP .NET application is obviously important, and might make a good topic for a future post. For now, let’s think about what the implications of not having the correct culture set on the current thread. Let’s say you’re running an ASP .NET application on a server in the United States. The server was setup by English speakers in the United States, so it’s configured for US English. It exposes a web page where users can enter order data, one piece of which is an anticipated order delivery date. Most users are in the US, and therefore enter dates in a ‘month/day/year’ format. The application is using the DateTime.Parse(string) method to turn the values provided by the user into actual DateTime instances that can be stored in the database. This all works fine, because your users and your server both think of dates in the same way. Now you need to support some users in South America, where a ‘day/month/year’ format is used. The best case scenario at this point is a user will enter March 13, 2011 as ‘25/03/2011’. This would cause the call to DateTime.Parse to blow up since that value doesn’t look like a valid date in the US English culture (Note: In all likelihood you might be using the DateTime.TryParse(string) method here instead, but that method behaves the same way with regard to date formats). “But wait a minute”, you might be saying to yourself, “I thought you said that this was the best case scenario?” This scenario would prevent users from entering orders in the system, which is bad, but it could be worse! What if the order needs to be delivered a day earlier than that, on March 12, 2011? Now the user enters ‘12/03/2011’. Now the call to DateTime.Parse sees what it thinks is a valid date, but there’s just one problem: it’s not the right date. Now this order won’t get delivered until December 3, 2011. In my opinion, that kind of data corruption is a much bigger problem than having the Parse call fail. What To Do? My order entry example is a bit contrived, but I think it serves to illustrate the potential issues with accepting date input from users. There are some approaches you can take to make this easier on you and your users: Eliminate ambiguity by using a graphical date input control. I’m personally a fan of a jQuery UI Datepicker widget. It’s pretty easy to setup, can be themed to match the look and feel of your site, and has support for multiple languages and cultures. Be sure you have a way to track the culture preference of each user in your system. For a web application this could be done using something like a cookie or session state variable. Ensure that the current user’s culture is being applied correctly to DateTime formatting and parsing code. This can be accomplished by ensuring that each request has the handling thread’s CultureInfo set properly, or by using the Format and Parse method overloads that accept an IFormatProvider instance where the provided value is a CultureInfo object constructed using the current user’s culture preference. When in doubt, favor formats that are internationally recognizable. Using the string ‘2010-03-05’ is likely to be recognized as March, 5 2011 by users from most (if not all) cultures. Favor standard date format strings over custom ones. So far we’ve only talked about turning a string into a DateTime, but most of the same “gotchas” apply when doing the opposite. Consider this code: someDateValue.ToString("MM/dd/yyyy"); This will output the same string regardless of what the current thread’s culture is set to (with the exception of some cultures that don’t use the Gregorian calendar system, but that’s another issue all together). For displaying dates to users, it would be better to do this: someDateValue.ToString("d"); This standard format string of “d” will use the “short date format” as defined by the culture attached to the current thread (or provided in the IFormatProvider instance in the proper method overload). This means that it will honor the proper month/day/year, year/month/day, or day/month/year format for the culture. Knowing Your Audience The examples and suggestions shown above can go a long way toward getting an application in shape for dealing with date inputs from users in multiple cultures. There are some instances, however, where taking approaches like these would not be appropriate. In some cases, the provider or consumer of date values that pass through your application are not people, but other applications (or other portions of your own application). For example, if your site has a page that accepts a date as a query string parameter, you’ll probably want to format that date using invariant date format. Otherwise, the same URL could end up evaluating to a different page depending on the user that is viewing it. In addition, if your application exports data for consumption by other systems, it’s best to have an agreed upon format that all systems can use and that will not vary depending upon whether or not the users of the systems on either side prefer a month/day/year or day/month/year format. I’ll look more at some approaches for dealing with these situations in a future post. If you take away one thing from this post, make it an understanding of the importance of knowing where the dates that pass through your system come from and are going to. You will likely want to vary your parsing and formatting approach depending on your audience.

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• How do I get preferences to work in Android?

  - by Dan T

  I've really been struggling through this. New to Java/Android. I'm writing my first app and this is the first thing that has taken me longer than a couple days of searching to figure out. Here's the setup: It's a BAC calculator / drink counter: A formula is used to calculate the BAC. Here's the forumla: Bac = ((StandardDrinks / 2) * (GenderConstant / Weight)) - (0.017 * Hours); So as you can see, being able to modify the gender and weight will produce more accurate and personalized results. So I have them as doubles: double GenderConstant = 7.5; //9 for female double Weight = 180; To change these variables I would like the person to be able to go into the settings and choose different values. I have these things set up, but not linked to the variables shown above because I cannot for the life of me figure out how. Here they are: I press the menu button and this pops up. Great. I'll click Settings. Now the preferences pops up. Here is my preferences.xml: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <PreferenceScreen xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"> <PreferenceCategory android:title="Personal Settings"> <ListPreference android:title="Gender" android:summary="Verify or deny the presence of a Y chromosome." android:key="genderPref" android:defaultValue="male" android:entries="@array/genderArray" android:entryValues="@array/genderValues" /> <ListPreference android:title="Weight" android:summary="How much the planet pulls on you, in pounds." android:key="weightPref" android:defaultValue="180" android:entries="@array/weightArray" android:entryValues="@array/weightValues" /> </PreferenceCategory> <PreferenceCategory android:title="Drink Settings"> <ListPreference android:title="Beer Size" android:summary="The volume of your beer, in ounces." android:key="beerPref" android:defaultValue="12" android:entries="@array/beerArray" android:entryValues="@array/beerValues" /> <ListPreference android:title="Shot Size" android:summary="The volume of your shot, in ounces." android:key="shotPref" android:defaultValue="1.5" android:entries="@array/shotArray" android:entryValues="@array/shotValues" /> <ListPreference android:title="Wine Size" android:summary="The volume of your wine, in ounces." android:key="winePref" android:defaultValue="5" android:entries="@array/wineArray" android:entryValues="@array/wineValues" /> </PreferenceCategory> </PreferenceScreen> Onward to the weight ListPreference: And that shows up. The values are stored as string-arrays in res/values/arrays.xml. Here's a sample, of just the weight ones: <string-array name="weightArray"> <item>120 lbs</item> <item>150 lbs</item> <item>180 lbs</item> <item>210 lbs</item> <item>240 lbs</item> <item>270 lbs</item> </string-array> <string-array name="weightValues"> <item>120</item> <item>150</item> <item>180</item> <item>210</item> <item>240</item> <item>270</item> </string-array> This is basically as far as I've gotten. I can click a value, sure, but it doesn't change the formula because it's not linked with the doubles I created in DrinkingBuddy.java. All of the stuff displayed in the settings are just empty shells for now, including the spinner on the main layout (the default time is just set to 1 hour) I did create a Preferences.java and have tried implementing various combinations of code found in tutorials and resources around the web, but to no avail. Here it is anyway, filled with failed attempts to make beerPref (the settings option to change how many ounces in the beer) correlate with a variable in my main class: package com.dantoth.drinkingbuddy; import android.app.Activity; import android.content.SharedPreferences; import android.os.Bundle; import android.preference.Preference; import android.preference.PreferenceActivity; import android.preference.Preference.OnPreferenceClickListener; public class Preferences extends PreferenceActivity { public static final String PREF_BEER_SIZE = "PREF_BEER_SIZE"; @Override protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) { super.onCreate(savedInstanceState); addPreferencesFromResource(R.xml.preferences); //Get the custom preference Preference beerPref = (Preference) findPreference("beerPref"); beerPref.setOnPreferenceClickListener(new OnPreferenceClickListener() { public boolean onPreferenceClick(Preference preference) { SharedPreferences customSharedPreference = getSharedPreferences("myCustomSharedPrefs", Activity.MODE_PRIVATE); SharedPreferences.Editor editor = customSharedPreference.edit(); editor.commit(); return true; }} );} } A full on tutorial and sample code would be AWESOME as I've yet to find any reliable guides out there.

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• Java Generics, JPA 2, J2EE, JSF 2, GWT, Ajax, Oracle's Java Strategies, Flex, iPhone, Agile ALM, Gra

  - by Kim Won

  Great Indian Developer Summit 2010 – India's Biggest Polyglot Conference and Workshops for IT Software Professionals Bangalore, April 9, 2010: The GIDS.Java Conference and Workshops has announced the complete program of over 50 sessions on the present and future of the Java language and VM, how they are evolving to meet the community's ever-changing needs, and some of the cutting-edge tools, technologies & techniques used for building robust enterprise Java applications today. The GIDs.Java track at Great Indian Developer Summit takes place 22 and 23 April 2010, at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore. As one of the longest running independent developer conferences in India, GIDS.Java at the Great Indian Developer Summit 2010 is uniquely positioned to provide a blend of practical, pragmatic and immediately applicable knowledge and a glimpse of the future of technology. During 22 and 23 April 2010, GIDS.Java offers a multi-track conference, workshops, expo show floor, and networking opportunities. The first keynote at GIDS.Java "Pointy Haired Bosses and Pragmatic Programmers" is led by Dr. Venkat Subramaniam. He speaks about how each of us has a professional responsibility to be objective and make decisions that will help us and our teams be productive and deliver results. Venkat will pick on some fallacies, lay down facts, and discuss how to stay professional and objective in our daily efforts. The second keynote of the day explains the practical features that make the Cloud so interesting, and why everyone should start using it in their everyday life. Simone Brunozzi, Amazon Web Services Technology Evangelist, will detail technical examples, business details all mixed with a lot of Italian humor to ensure audience enjoy this talk without a single line of code. The third keynote of the day gives an exciting overview of directions in the Java space for Oracle, featuring concrete signs of Oracles heavy investment, a clear concise strategy overview, and deep dives into some of the most interesting pieces of technology being developed in the Java Platform Group today; such as JavaEE, JDK7, JavaFX, and our exciting new visual tools. Featuring demos by a Java evangelism team star, Simon Ritter, this talk takes you top to bottom in Java Technology. Featured talks at GID.Web include: Good, Bad, and Ugly of Java Generics, Venkat Subramaniam Pure Java Ajax: An Overview of GWT 2.0, Marty Hall How JPA 2.0 Makes a Good Thing Even Better, Mike Keith Building Enterprise RIAs with Adobe Flex and Java, Sujit Reddy G Integrated Ajax Support in JSF 2.0, Marty Hall Design Patterns in Java and Groovy, Venkat Subramaniam A Gentle Introduction to iPhone and Obj-C for Java Developers, Matthew McCullough Cloud Computing: Azure for Java Developers, Janakiram MSV Ajax Support in the Prototype JavaScript Library, Marty Hall First steps to IT Heaven Through the Cloud. Part III: .Java, Simone Brunozi Building Web 2.0 User Interfaces for Web Service Models using JSF, Frank Nimphius and Jobinesh P Acceptance Test Driven Development, John Tobin and Mohammed Mohsinali Architecting Your Java Applications for the Cloud, Praveen Srivatsa Effective Java, Venkat Subramaniam The Amazing Groovy Weight-loss Plan, Scott Davis Enterprise Modeling - from Conceptual Planning to Technical Blueprints, J Sripad Java Collections Renaissance, Donald Raab and Vlad Zakharov Power 7 and IBM J9VM, Himanshu Goyal A Whistle-stop Tour of Maven 3.0, Matthew McCullough Mass Volume Opportunities for Java Developers, Jouko Nuottila Emerging Technology Complex Event Processing, Duvvuri Srinivas Agile ALM for Distributed Development, Karthi Swaminathan Dim Sum Grails - A Sampler of Practical Non Database-Driven Grails Applications, Scott Davis Diagnosing Performance Bottlenecks in J2EE, Deepak Kaul Business Driven Identity Management, Suneet Agera Combining Java EE with OSGi using Eclipse Gemini, Mike Keith Workshop: Essence of Functional Programming, Venkat Subramaniam Workshop: Agile Development, Tools, and Teams and Scrum Certification, Stephen Forte Workshop: Cloud Computing Boot Camp on the Google App Engine, Matthew McCullough Workshop: Building Your First Amazon App, Simone Brunozzi Workshop: The 180-min AJAX and JSON Spike Class, Scott Davis Workshop: PHP + Adobe Flex = Killer RIA, Shyamprasad P Workshop: User Expereince Evaluation Model Walkthrough, Sanna Häiväläinen Workshop: Building Data Centric Applications using Adobe Flex and Java, Prashant Singh Workshop: Monetizing your Apps with PayPal X Payments Platform, Khurram Khan, Praveen Alavilli Sponsors of Great Indian Developer Summit 2010 include: Platinum sponsors Microsoft, Oracle Forum Nokia and Adobe; Gold sponsors Intel and SAP; Silver sponsors Quest Software, PayPal, Telerik and AMT. About Great Indian Developer Summit Great Indian Developer Summit is the gold standard for India's software developer ecosystem for gaining exposure to and evaluating new projects, tools, services, platforms, languages, software and standards. Packed with premium knowledge, action plans and advise from been-there-done-it veterans, creators, and visionaries, the 2010 edition of Great Indian Developer Summit features focused sessions, case studies, workshops and power panels that will transform you into a force to reckon with. Featuring 3 co-located conferences: GIDS.NET, GIDS.Web, GIDS.Java and an exclusive day of in-depth tutorials - GIDS.Workshops, from 20 April to 24 April at the IISc campus in Bangalore. At GIDS you'll participate in hundreds of sessions encompassing the full range of Microsoft computing, Java, Agile, RIA, Rich Web, open source/standards, languages, frameworks and platforms, practical tutorials that deep dive into technical skill and best practices, inspirational keynote presentations, an Expo Hall featuring dozens of the latest projects and products activities, engaging networking events, and the interact with the best and brightest of speakers from around the world. For further information on GIDS 2010, please visit the summit on the web http://www.developersummit.com/ A Saltmarch Media Press Release E: [email protected] Ph: +91 80 4005 1000

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• sqllite and populating list view, android

  - by Rob Bushway

  I am populating a text and list view from a sqllite database. The data is populating from the cursor correctly (I see the list filling with text rows), but I'm not able to see the actual text in the rows - all I see are empty rows. For the life of me, I can't figure out what I'm not able to see the data in the text rows. My layouts: Tab layout: list layout: row layout: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> / My topics activity package com.gotquestions.gqapp; import com.gotquestions.gqapp.R.layout; import android.R; import android.app.ListActivity; import android.database.Cursor; import android.database.SQLException; import android.os.Bundle; import android.widget.SimpleCursorAdapter; public class TopicsActivity extends ListActivity { private DataBaseHelper myDbHelper; public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) { super.onCreate(savedInstanceState); // DataBaseHelper myDbHelper = new DataBaseHelper(this); myDbHelper = new DataBaseHelper(this); //test try { myDbHelper.openDataBase(); }catch(SQLException sqle){ throw sqle; } setContentView(layout.list_layout); Cursor c = myDbHelper.fetchAllTopics(); startManagingCursor(c); String[] from = new String[] { DataBaseHelper.KEY_TITLE }; int[] to = new int[] { R.id.text1 }; // Now create an array adapter and set it to display using our row SimpleCursorAdapter notes = new SimpleCursorAdapter(this, layout.notes_row, c, from, to); setListAdapter(notes); myDbHelper.close(); } } My database helper: package com.gotquestions.gqapp; import java.io.FileOutputStream; import java.io.IOException; import java.io.InputStream; import java.io.OutputStream; import android.content.Context; import android.database.Cursor; import android.database.SQLException; import android.database.sqlite.SQLiteDatabase; import android.database.sqlite.SQLiteException; import android.database.sqlite.SQLiteOpenHelper; import android.util.Log; public class DataBaseHelper extends SQLiteOpenHelper{ //The Android's default system path of your application database. private static String DB_PATH = "/data/data/com.gotquestions.gqapp/databases/"; private static String DB_NAME = "gotquestions_database.mp3"; public static final String KEY_TITLE = "topic_title"; public static final String KEY_ARTICLE_TITLE = "article_title"; public static final String KEY_ROWID = "_id"; private static final String TAG = null; private SQLiteDatabase myDataBase; // private final Context myContext; /** * Constructor * Takes and keeps a reference of the passed context in order to access to the application assets and resources. * @param context */ public DataBaseHelper(Context context) { super(context, DB_NAME, null, 1); this.myContext = context; } /** * Creates a empty database on the system and rewrites it with your own database. * */ public void createDataBase() throws IOException{ boolean dbExist = checkDataBase(); if(dbExist){ //do nothing - database already exist }else{ //By calling this method and empty database will be created into the default system path //of your application so we are gonna be able to overwrite that database with our database. this.getReadableDatabase(); try { copyDataBase(); } catch (IOException e) { throw new Error("Error copying database"); } } } /** * Check if the database already exist to avoid re-copying the file each time you open the application. * @return true if it exists, false if it doesn't */ private boolean checkDataBase(){ SQLiteDatabase checkDB = null; try{ String myPath = DB_PATH + DB_NAME; checkDB = SQLiteDatabase.openDatabase(myPath, null, SQLiteDatabase.OPEN_READONLY); }catch(SQLiteException e){ //database does't exist yet. } if(checkDB != null){ checkDB.close(); } return checkDB != null ? true : false; } /** * Copies your database from your local assets-folder to the just created empty database in the * system folder, from where it can be accessed and handled. * This is done by transfering bytestream. * */ private void copyDataBase() throws IOException{ //Open your local db as the input stream InputStream myInput = myContext.getAssets().open(DB_NAME); // Path to the just created empty db String outFileName = DB_PATH + DB_NAME; //Open the empty db as the output stream OutputStream myOutput = new FileOutputStream(outFileName); //transfer bytes from the inputfile to the outputfile byte[] buffer = new byte[1024]; int length; while ((length = myInput.read(buffer))>0){ myOutput.write(buffer, 0, length); } //Close the streams myOutput.flush(); myOutput.close(); myInput.close(); } public void openDataBase() throws SQLException{ //Open the database String myPath = DB_PATH + DB_NAME; myDataBase = SQLiteDatabase.openDatabase(myPath, null, SQLiteDatabase.OPEN_READONLY); } @Override public synchronized void close() { if(myDataBase != null) myDataBase.close(); super.close(); } @Override public void onCreate(SQLiteDatabase db) { // TODO Auto-generated method stub } @Override public void onUpgrade(SQLiteDatabase db, int oldVersion, int newVersion) { Log.w(TAG, "Upgrading database from version " + oldVersion + " to " + newVersion + ", which will destroy all old data"); db.execSQL("DROP TABLE IF EXISTS titles"); onCreate(db); } public Cursor getTitle(long rowId) throws SQLException { Cursor mCursor = myDataBase.query(true, "topics", new String[] { KEY_ROWID, KEY_TITLE }, KEY_ROWID + "=" + rowId, null, null, null, null, null); if (mCursor != null) { mCursor.moveToFirst(); } return mCursor; } public Cursor fetchAllTopics() { return myDataBase.query("topics", new String[] {KEY_ROWID, KEY_TITLE}, null, null, null, null, null); }; public Cursor fetchAllFavorites() { return myDataBase.query("articles", new String[] { KEY_ROWID, KEY_ARTICLE_TITLE}, null, null, null, null, null); }; }

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• Why is my WCF Rest Service on IIS7 Authenticating TWICE!?!?

  - by TheAggie

  Ok, if someone could shed some light on this for me, I would greatly appreciate it. So here we go. I had a rest service running fine the other day but after I accidentally overwrote the web.config all hell broke loose. I've spent the past day and a half trying to sort things out but I can't seem to figure out what is missing or misplaced. So, I've designed this service around WCF Rest Contrib (http://wcfrestcontrib.codeplex.com)'s authentication process. Now, I can get this working fine on my localhost w/ the current web.config (minus the endpoint entry) but once I upload it to discountasp and select "basic authorization" in the ISS7 Manager, it appears that I'm getting authenticated twice! Once using my discount asp.net user/pass and then the next time using the application user/pass. Unfortunately I only provide one set of credentials and don't want to hard code my discountasp account info into the app. Like I said before, this worked fine a few days ago. Anyway. here is my web.config as it is now: <?xml version="1.0"?> <configuration> <connectionStrings> <add name="SQL2008_ConnectionString" connectionString="Data Source=sql2k8xx.discountasp.net;Initial Catalog=SQL2008_xx;Persist Security Info=True;User ID=SQL2008_xx_user;Password=myPass" providerName="System.Data.SqlClient" /> </connectionStrings> <system.web> <httpRuntime maxRequestLength="204800" executionTimeout="3600"/> <compilation debug="true"> <assemblies> <add assembly="System.Core, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=B77A5C561934E089"/> <add assembly="System.Web.Extensions, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31BF3856AD364E35"/> </assemblies> </compilation> <httpModules> <add name="ServiceAnonymityModule" type="WcfRestContrib.Web.ServiceAnonymityModule, WcfRestContrib"/> </httpModules> </system.web> <system.codedom> <compilers> <compiler language="c#;cs;csharp" extension=".cs" warningLevel="4" type="Microsoft.CSharp.CSharpCodeProvider, System, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089"> <providerOption name="CompilerVersion" value="v3.5"/> <providerOption name="WarnAsError" value="false"/> </compiler> </compilers> </system.codedom> <system.webServer> <validation validateIntegratedModeConfiguration="false"/> <modules> <remove name="ServiceAnonymityModule"/> <add name="ServiceAnonymityModule" type="WcfRestContrib.Web.ServiceAnonymityModule, WcfRestContrib"/> </modules> <handlers> <remove name="WebServiceHandlerFactory-Integrated"/> </handlers> </system.webServer> <system.diagnostics> <trace autoflush="true" /> </system.diagnostics> <system.serviceModel> <serviceHostingEnvironment aspNetCompatibilityEnabled="false"> <baseAddressPrefixFilters> <add prefix="http://www.mydomain.com/myServiceBaseAddress"/> </baseAddressPrefixFilters> </serviceHostingEnvironment> <extensions> <behaviorExtensions> <add name="webAuthentication" type="WcfRestContrib.ServiceModel.Configuration.WebAuthentication.ConfigurationBehaviorElement, WcfRestContrib, Version=1.0.5.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=89183999a8dc93b5"/> <add name="errorHandler" type="WcfRestContrib.ServiceModel.Configuration.ErrorHandler.BehaviorElement, WcfRestContrib, Version=1.0.5.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=89183999a8dc93b5"/> <add name="webFormatter" type="WcfRestContrib.ServiceModel.Configuration.WebDispatchFormatter.ConfigurationBehaviorElement, WcfRestContrib, Version=1.0.5.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=89183999a8dc93b5"/> <add name="webErrorHandler" type="WcfRestContrib.ServiceModel.Configuration.WebErrorHandler.ConfigurationBehaviorElement, WcfRestContrib, Version=1.0.5.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=89183999a8dc93b5"/> </behaviorExtensions> </extensions> <bindings> <customBinding> <binding name="HttpStreamedRest"> <httpTransport maxReceivedMessageSize="209715200" manualAddressing="true" /> </binding> <binding name="HttpsStreamedRest"> <httpsTransport maxReceivedMessageSize="209715200" manualAddressing="true" /> </binding> </customBinding> </bindings> <behaviors> <serviceBehaviors> <behavior name="Rest"> <webAuthentication requireSecureTransport="false" authenticationHandlerType="WcfRestContrib.ServiceModel.Dispatcher.WebBasicAuthenticationHandler, WcfRestContrib" usernamePasswordValidatorType="MyLibrary.Runtime.SecurityValidator, MyLibrary" source="MyRESTServiceRealm"/> <webFormatter> <formatters defaultMimeType="application/xml"> <formatter mimeTypes="application/xml,text/xml" type="WcfRestContrib.ServiceModel.Dispatcher.Formatters.PoxDataContract, WcfRestContrib"/> <formatter mimeTypes="application/json" type="WcfRestContrib.ServiceModel.Dispatcher.Formatters.DataContractJson, WcfRestContrib"/> <formatter mimeTypes="application/x-www-form-urlencoded" type="WcfRestContrib.ServiceModel.Dispatcher.Formatters.FormUrlEncoded, WcfRestContrib"/> </formatters> </webFormatter> <errorHandler errorHandlerType="WcfRestContrib.ServiceModel.Web.WebErrorHandler, WcfRestContrib"/> <webErrorHandler returnRawException="true" logHandlerType="MyLibrary.Runtime.LogHandler, MyLibrary" unhandledErrorMessage="An error has occured processing your request. Please contact technical support for further assistance."/> </behavior> </serviceBehaviors> </behaviors> </system.serviceModel> </configuration> So, whenever I upload this and change the ISS setting to Basic Authentication, it looks like it is trying to use the default handler for authentication as if I try to enter my web app user/pass, I get an error screen which has the following detailed information about the moduel/handler Detailed Error Information Module: IIS Web Core Notification: AuthenticateRequest Handler: svc-ISAPI-2.0 Error Code: 0x80070005 Requested URL: http://www.mydomain.com:80/MyService.../MyService.svc Physical Path: E:\web\xxxxxx\htdocs\MyServiceBaseAddress\MyService.svc Logon Method: Not yet determined Logon User: Not yet determined Now for the fun stuff... i tried providing my discountasp.net account username/password for kicks and sure enough it responded properly for any [OperationContract] which doesn't have [OperationAuthentication] defined (which is only one or two of the operations I have). I thought this was strange, so I looked at fiddler and saw something interesting. Whenever I try request a procedure with [OperationAuthentication] defined and provide my discountasp.net username/pass I get two different "WWW-Authenticate" headers back in Fiddler: WWW-Authenticate: Basic realm="MyRESTServiceRealm" WWW-Authenticate: Basic realm="www.mydomain.com" On the other hand, if I try to access the same procedures with only my application's user/pass, I only get the site's header: WWW-Authenticate: Basic realm="www.mydomain.com" My hypothesis is that for some reason I'm having to pass through the default "Basic Authorization" layer set by IIS before I can get to the application's "Custom Basic Authorization" layer. After verifying this by created an identical user/pass for my service that I use for my discountasp.net account, I was able to successfully pass both layers of authentication without any issues... so I think I can conclude that this is indeed the issue. Now how do I disable the default one? Do I need to do this in the IIS Manager, or in the web.config? Anyway, I have absolutely no idea how this is possible or what I need to do to resolve the issue, but I know that something is seriously out of whack. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated! Thanks.

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• AD Password About to Expire check problem with ASP.Net

  - by Vince

  Hello everyone, I am trying to write some code to check the AD password age during a user login and notify them of the 15 remaining days. I am using the ASP.Net code that I found on the Microsoft MSDN site and I managed to add a function that checks the if the account is set to change password at next login. The login and the change password at next login works great but I am having some problems with the check for the password age. This is the VB.Net code for the DLL file: Imports System Imports System.Text Imports System.Collections Imports System.DirectoryServices Imports System.DirectoryServices.AccountManagement Imports System.Reflection 'Needed by the Password Expiration Class Only -Vince Namespace FormsAuth Public Class LdapAuthentication Dim _path As String Dim _filterAttribute As String 'Code added for the password expiration added by Vince Private _domain As DirectoryEntry Private _passwordAge As TimeSpan = TimeSpan.MinValue Const UF_DONT_EXPIRE_PASSWD As Integer = &H10000 'Function added by Vince Public Sub New() Dim root As New DirectoryEntry("LDAP://rootDSE") root.AuthenticationType = AuthenticationTypes.Secure _domain = New DirectoryEntry("LDAP://" & root.Properties("defaultNamingContext")(0).ToString()) _domain.AuthenticationType = AuthenticationTypes.Secure End Sub 'Function added by Vince Public ReadOnly Property PasswordAge() As TimeSpan Get If _passwordAge = TimeSpan.MinValue Then Dim ldate As Long = LongFromLargeInteger(_domain.Properties("maxPwdAge")(0)) _passwordAge = TimeSpan.FromTicks(ldate) End If Return _passwordAge End Get End Property Public Sub New(ByVal path As String) _path = path End Sub 'Function added by Vince Public Function DoesUserHaveToChangePassword(ByVal userName As String) As Boolean Dim ctx As PrincipalContext = New PrincipalContext(System.DirectoryServices.AccountManagement.ContextType.Domain) Dim up = UserPrincipal.FindByIdentity(ctx, userName) Return (Not up.LastPasswordSet.HasValue) 'returns true if last password set has no value. End Function Public Function IsAuthenticated(ByVal domain As String, ByVal username As String, ByVal pwd As String) As Boolean Dim domainAndUsername As String = domain & "\" & username Dim entry As DirectoryEntry = New DirectoryEntry(_path, domainAndUsername, pwd) Try 'Bind to the native AdsObject to force authentication. Dim obj As Object = entry.NativeObject Dim search As DirectorySearcher = New DirectorySearcher(entry) search.Filter = "(SAMAccountName=" & username & ")" search.PropertiesToLoad.Add("cn") Dim result As SearchResult = search.FindOne() If (result Is Nothing) Then Return False End If 'Update the new path to the user in the directory. _path = result.Path _filterAttribute = CType(result.Properties("cn")(0), String) Catch ex As Exception Throw New Exception("Error authenticating user. " & ex.Message) End Try Return True End Function Public Function GetGroups() As String Dim search As DirectorySearcher = New DirectorySearcher(_path) search.Filter = "(cn=" & _filterAttribute & ")" search.PropertiesToLoad.Add("memberOf") Dim groupNames As StringBuilder = New StringBuilder() Try Dim result As SearchResult = search.FindOne() Dim propertyCount As Integer = result.Properties("memberOf").Count Dim dn As String Dim equalsIndex, commaIndex Dim propertyCounter As Integer For propertyCounter = 0 To propertyCount - 1 dn = CType(result.Properties("memberOf")(propertyCounter), String) equalsIndex = dn.IndexOf("=", 1) commaIndex = dn.IndexOf(",", 1) If (equalsIndex = -1) Then Return Nothing End If groupNames.Append(dn.Substring((equalsIndex + 1), (commaIndex - equalsIndex) - 1)) groupNames.Append("|") Next Catch ex As Exception Throw New Exception("Error obtaining group names. " & ex.Message) End Try Return groupNames.ToString() End Function 'Function added by Vince Public Function WhenExpires(ByVal username As String) As TimeSpan Dim ds As New DirectorySearcher(_domain) ds.Filter = [String].Format("(&(objectClass=user)(objectCategory=person)(sAMAccountName={0}))", username) Dim sr As SearchResult = FindOne(ds) Dim user As DirectoryEntry = sr.GetDirectoryEntry() Dim flags As Integer = CInt(user.Properties("userAccountControl").Value) If Convert.ToBoolean(flags And UF_DONT_EXPIRE_PASSWD) Then 'password never expires Return TimeSpan.MaxValue End If 'get when they last set their password Dim pwdLastSet As DateTime = DateTime.FromFileTime(LongFromLargeInteger(user.Properties("pwdLastSet").Value)) ' return pwdLastSet.Add(PasswordAge).Subtract(DateTime.Now); If pwdLastSet.Subtract(PasswordAge).CompareTo(DateTime.Now) > 0 Then Return pwdLastSet.Subtract(PasswordAge).Subtract(DateTime.Now) Else Return TimeSpan.MinValue 'already expired End If End Function 'Function added by Vince Private Function LongFromLargeInteger(ByVal largeInteger As Object) As Long Dim type As System.Type = largeInteger.[GetType]() Dim highPart As Integer = CInt(type.InvokeMember("HighPart", BindingFlags.GetProperty, Nothing, largeInteger, Nothing)) Dim lowPart As Integer = CInt(type.InvokeMember("LowPart", BindingFlags.GetProperty, Nothing, largeInteger, Nothing)) Return CLng(highPart) << 32 Or CUInt(lowPart) End Function 'Function added by Vince Private Function FindOne(ByVal searcher As DirectorySearcher) As SearchResult Dim sr As SearchResult = Nothing Dim src As SearchResultCollection = searcher.FindAll() If src.Count > 0 Then sr = src(0) End If src.Dispose() Return sr End Function End Class End Namespace And this is the Login.aspx page: sub Login_Click(sender as object,e as EventArgs) Dim adPath As String = "LDAP://DC=xxx,DC=com" 'Path to your LDAP directory server Dim adAuth As LdapAuthentication = New LdapAuthentication(adPath) Try If (True = adAuth.DoesUserHaveToChangePassword(txtUsername.Text)) Then Response.Redirect("passchange.htm") ElseIf (True = adAuth.IsAuthenticated(txtDomain.Text, txtUsername.Text, txtPassword.Text)) Then Dim groups As String = adAuth.GetGroups() 'Create the ticket, and add the groups. Dim isCookiePersistent As Boolean = chkPersist.Checked Dim authTicket As FormsAuthenticationTicket = New FormsAuthenticationTicket(1, _ txtUsername.Text, DateTime.Now, DateTime.Now.AddMinutes(60), isCookiePersistent, groups) 'Encrypt the ticket. Dim encryptedTicket As String = FormsAuthentication.Encrypt(authTicket) 'Create a cookie, and then add the encrypted ticket to the cookie as data. Dim authCookie As HttpCookie = New HttpCookie(FormsAuthentication.FormsCookieName, encryptedTicket) If (isCookiePersistent = True) Then authCookie.Expires = authTicket.Expiration End If 'Add the cookie to the outgoing cookies collection. Response.Cookies.Add(authCookie) 'Retrieve the password life Dim t As TimeSpan = adAuth.WhenExpires(txtUsername.Text) 'You can redirect now. If (passAge.Days = 90) Then errorLabel.Text = "Your password will expire in " & DateTime.Now.Subtract(t) 'errorLabel.Text = "This is" 'System.Threading.Thread.Sleep(5000) Response.Redirect("http://somepage.aspx") Else Response.Redirect(FormsAuthentication.GetRedirectUrl(txtUsername.Text, False)) End If Else errorLabel.Text = "Authentication did not succeed. Check user name and password." End If Catch ex As Exception errorLabel.Text = "Error authenticating. " & ex.Message End Try End Sub ` Every time I have this Dim t As TimeSpan = adAuth.WhenExpires(txtUsername.Text) enabled, I receive "Arithmetic operation resulted in an overflow." during the login and won't continue. What am I doing wrong? How can I correct this? Please help!! Thank you very much for any help in advance. Vince

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• Am I going about this the right way?

  - by Psytronic

  Hey Guys, I'm starting a WPF project, and just finished the base of the UI, it seems very convoluted though, so I'm not sure if I've gone around laying it out in the right way. I don't want to get to start developing the back-end and realise that I've done the front wrong, and make life harder for myself. Coming from a background of <DIV's and CSS to style this is a lot different, and really want to get it right from the start. Essentially it's a one week calendar (7 days, Mon-Sunday, defaulting to the current week.) Which will eventually link up to a DB and if I have an appointment for something on this day it will show it in the relevant day. I've opted for a Grid rather than ListView because of the way it will work I will not be binding the results to a collection or anything along those lines. Rather I will be filling out a Combo box within the canvas for each day (yet to be placed in the code) for each event and on selection it will show me further details. XAML: <Window x:Class="WOW_Widget.Window1" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation" xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml" xmlns:s="clr-namespace:System;assembly=mscorlib" xmlns:Extensions="clr-namespace:WOW_Widget" DataContext="{Binding RelativeSource={RelativeSource Self}}" Title="Window1" Height="239" Width="831" <Window.Resources <LinearGradientBrush x:Key="NormalBrush" StartPoint="0,0" EndPoint="0,1" <GradientBrush.GradientStops <GradientStopCollection <GradientStop Offset="1.0" Color="White"/ <GradientStop Offset="0.0" Color="LightSlateGray"/ </GradientStopCollection </GradientBrush.GradientStops </LinearGradientBrush <LinearGradientBrush x:Key="grdDayHeader" StartPoint="0,0" EndPoint="0,1" <GradientBrush.GradientStops <GradientStopCollection <GradientStop Offset="0.0" Color="Peru" / <GradientStop Offset="1.0" Color="White" / </GradientStopCollection </GradientBrush.GradientStops </LinearGradientBrush <LinearGradientBrush x:Key="grdToday" StartPoint="0,0" EndPoint="0,1" <GradientBrush.GradientStops <GradientStopCollection <GradientStop Offset="0.0" Color="LimeGreen"/ <GradientStop Offset="1.0" Color="DarkGreen" / </GradientStopCollection </GradientBrush.GradientStops </LinearGradientBrush <Style TargetType="{x:Type GridViewColumnHeader}" <Setter Property="Background" Value="Khaki" / </Style <Style x:Key="DayHeader" TargetType="{x:Type Label}" <Setter Property="Background" Value="{StaticResource grdDayHeader}" / <Setter Property="Width" Value="111" / <Setter Property="Height" Value="25" / <Setter Property="HorizontalContentAlignment" Value="Center" / </Style <Style x:Key="DayField" <Setter Property="Canvas.Width" Value="111" / <Setter Property="Canvas.Height" Value="60" / <Setter Property="Canvas.Background" Value="White" / </Style <Style x:Key="Today" <Setter Property="Canvas.Background" Value="{StaticResource grdToday}" / </Style <Style x:Key="CalendarColSpacer" <Setter Property="Canvas.Width" Value="1" / <Setter Property="Canvas.Background" Value="Black" / </Style <Style x:Key="CalendarRowSpacer" <Setter Property="Canvas.Height" Value="1" / <Setter Property="Canvas.Background" Value="Black" / </Style </Window.Resources <Grid Background="{StaticResource NormalBrush}" <Border BorderBrush="Black" BorderThickness="1" Width="785" Height="86" Margin="12,12,12,104" <Canvas Height="86" Width="785" VerticalAlignment="Top" <Grid <Grid.ColumnDefinitions <ColumnDefinition / <ColumnDefinition / <ColumnDefinition / <ColumnDefinition / <ColumnDefinition / <ColumnDefinition / <ColumnDefinition / <ColumnDefinition / <ColumnDefinition / <ColumnDefinition / <ColumnDefinition / <ColumnDefinition / <ColumnDefinition / </Grid.ColumnDefinitions <Grid.RowDefinitions <RowDefinition / <RowDefinition / <RowDefinition / </Grid.RowDefinitions <Label Grid.Column="0" Grid.Row="0" Content="Monday" Style="{StaticResource DayHeader}" / <Canvas Grid.Column="1" Grid.RowSpan="3" Grid.Row="0" Style="{StaticResource CalendarColSpacer}" / <Label Grid.Column="2" Grid.Row="0" Content="Tuesday" Style="{StaticResource DayHeader}" / <Canvas Grid.Column="3" Grid.RowSpan="3" Grid.Row="0" Style="{StaticResource CalendarColSpacer}" / <Label Grid.Column="4" Grid.Row="0" Content="Wednesday" Style="{StaticResource DayHeader}" / <Canvas Grid.Column="5" Grid.RowSpan="3" Grid.Row="0" Style="{StaticResource CalendarColSpacer}" / <Label Grid.Column="6" Grid.Row="0" Content="Thursday" Style="{StaticResource DayHeader}" / <Canvas Grid.Column="7" Grid.RowSpan="3" Grid.Row="0" Style="{StaticResource CalendarColSpacer}" / <Label Grid.Column="8" Grid.Row="0" Content="Friday" Style="{StaticResource DayHeader}" / <Canvas Grid.Column="9" Grid.RowSpan="3" Grid.Row="0" Style="{StaticResource CalendarColSpacer}" / <Label Grid.Column="10" Grid.Row="0" Content="Saturday" Style="{StaticResource DayHeader}" / <Canvas Grid.Column="11" Grid.RowSpan="3" Grid.Row="0" Style="{StaticResource CalendarColSpacer}" / <Label Grid.Column="12" Grid.Row="0" Content="Sunday" Style="{StaticResource DayHeader}" / <Canvas Grid.Column="0" Grid.ColumnSpan="13" Grid.Row="1" Style="{StaticResource CalendarRowSpacer}" / <Canvas Grid.Column="0" Grid.Row="2" Margin="0" Style="{StaticResource DayField}" <Label Name="lblMondayDate" / </Canvas <Canvas Grid.Column="2" Grid.Row="2" Margin="0" Style="{StaticResource DayField}" <Label Name="lblTuesdayDate" / </Canvas <Canvas Grid.Column="4" Grid.Row="2" Margin="0" Style="{StaticResource DayField}" <Label Name="lblWednesdayDate" / </Canvas <Canvas Grid.Column="6" Grid.Row="2" Margin="0" Style="{StaticResource DayField}" <Label Name="lblThursdayDate" / </Canvas <Canvas Grid.Column="8" Grid.Row="2" Margin="0" Style="{StaticResource DayField}" <Label Name="lblFridayDate" / </Canvas <Canvas Grid.Column="10" Grid.Row="2" Margin="0" Style="{StaticResource DayField}" <Label Name="lblSaturdayDate" / </Canvas <Canvas Grid.Column="12" Grid.Row="2" Margin="0" Style="{StaticResource DayField}" <Label Name="lblSundayDate" / </Canvas </Grid </Canvas </Border <Canvas Height="86" HorizontalAlignment="Right" Margin="0,0,12,12" Name="canvas1" VerticalAlignment="Bottom" Width="198"</Canvas </Grid </Window CS: public partial class Window1 : Window { private DateTime today = new DateTime(); private Label[] Dates = new Label[7]; public Window1() { DateTime start = today = DateTime.Now; int day = (int)today.DayOfWeek; while (day != 1) { start = start.Subtract(new TimeSpan(1, 0, 0, 0)); day--; } InitializeComponent(); Dates[0] = lblMondayDate; Dates[1] = lblTuesdayDate; Dates[2] = lblWednesdayDate; Dates[3] = lblThursdayDate; Dates[4] = lblFridayDate; Dates[5] = lblSaturdayDate; Dates[6] = lblSundayDate; FillWeek(start); } private void FillWeek(DateTime start) { for (int d = 0; d < Dates.Length; d++) { TimeSpan td = new TimeSpan(d, 0, 0, 0); DateTime _day = start.Add(td); if (_day.Date == today.Date) { Canvas dayCanvas = (Canvas)Dates[d].Parent; dayCanvas.Style = (Style)this.Resources["Today"]; } Dates[d].Content = (int)start.Add(td).Day; } } } Thanks for any tips you guys can give Psytronic

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• Silverlight Chat WrapPanel Crash / Bug

  - by Matt

  I've been given the task to create a simple Silverlight chat box for two people. My control must adhere to the following requirements Scrollable Text must wrap if it's too long When a new item / message is added it must scroll that item into view Now I've successfully made a usercontrol to meet these requirements, but I've run into a possible bug / crash that I can't for the life of me fix. I'm looking for either a fix to the bug, or a different approach to creating a scrollable chat control. Here's the code I've been using. We'll start with my XAML for the chat window <ListBox x:Name="lbChatHistory" Grid.Row="0" Grid.Column="0" Grid.ColumnSpan="2" ScrollViewer.VerticalScrollBarVisibility="Visible" ScrollViewer.HorizontalScrollBarVisibility="Disabled" > <ListBox.ItemTemplate> <DataTemplate> <Grid Background="Beige"> <Grid.ColumnDefinitions> <ColumnDefinition Width="70"></ColumnDefinition> <ColumnDefinition Width="Auto"></ColumnDefinition> </Grid.ColumnDefinitions> <TextBlock x:Name="lblPlayer" Foreground="{Binding ForeColor}" Text="{Binding Player}" Grid.Column="0"></TextBlock> <ContentPresenter Grid.Column="1" Width="200" Content="{Binding Message}" /> </Grid> </DataTemplate> </ListBox.ItemTemplate> </ListBox> The idea is to add a new Item to the listbox. The Item (as layed out in the XAML) is a simple 2 column grid. One column for the username, and one column for the message. Now the "items" that I add to the ListBox is a custom class. It has three properties (Player, ForeColor, and Message) that I using binding on within my XAML Player is a string of the current user to display. ForeColor is just a foreground color preference. It helps distinguish the difference between messages. Message is a WrapPanel. I programmatically break the supplied string on the white space for each word. Then for each word, I add a new TextBlock element to the WrapPanel Here is the custom class. public class ChatMessage :DependencyObject, INotifyPropertyChanged { public event PropertyChangedEventHandler PropertyChanged; public static DependencyProperty PlayerProperty = DependencyProperty.Register( "Player", typeof( string ), typeof( ChatMessage ), new PropertyMetadata( new PropertyChangedCallback( OnPlayerPropertyChanged ) ) ); public static DependencyProperty MessageProperty = DependencyProperty.Register( "Message", typeof( WrapPanel ), typeof( ChatMessage ), new PropertyMetadata( new PropertyChangedCallback( OnMessagePropertyChanged ) ) ); public static DependencyProperty ForeColorProperty = DependencyProperty.Register( "ForeColor", typeof( SolidColorBrush ), typeof( ChatMessage ), new PropertyMetadata( new PropertyChangedCallback( OnForeColorPropertyChanged ) ) ); private static void OnForeColorPropertyChanged( DependencyObject d, DependencyPropertyChangedEventArgs e ) { ChatMessage c = d as ChatMessage; c.ForeColor = ( SolidColorBrush ) e.NewValue; } public ChatMessage() { Message = new WrapPanel(); ForeColor = new SolidColorBrush( Colors.White ); } private static void OnMessagePropertyChanged( DependencyObject d, DependencyPropertyChangedEventArgs e ) { ChatMessage c = d as ChatMessage; c.Message = ( WrapPanel ) e.NewValue; } private static void OnPlayerPropertyChanged( DependencyObject d, DependencyPropertyChangedEventArgs e ) { ChatMessage c = d as ChatMessage; c.Player = e.NewValue.ToString(); } public SolidColorBrush ForeColor { get { return ( SolidColorBrush ) GetValue( ForeColorProperty ); } set { SetValue( ForeColorProperty, value ); if(PropertyChanged != null) PropertyChanged(this, new PropertyChangedEventArgs( "ForeColor" )); } } public string Player { get { return ( string ) GetValue( PlayerProperty ); } set { SetValue( PlayerProperty, value ); if ( PropertyChanged != null ) PropertyChanged( this, new PropertyChangedEventArgs( "Player" ) ); } } public WrapPanel Message { get { return ( WrapPanel ) GetValue( MessageProperty ); } set { SetValue( MessageProperty, value ); if ( PropertyChanged != null ) PropertyChanged( this, new PropertyChangedEventArgs( "Message" ) ); } } } Lastly I add my items to the ListBox. Here's the simple method. It takes the above ChatMessage class as a parameter public void AddChatItem( ChatMessage msg ) { lbChatHistory.Items.Add( msg ); lbChatHistory.ScrollIntoView( msg ); } Now I've tested this and it all works. The problem I'm getting is when I use the scroll bar. You can scroll down using the side scroll bar or arrow keys, but when you scroll up Silverlight crashes. FireBug returns a ManagedRuntimeError #4004 with a XamlParseException. I'm soo close to having this control work, I can taste it! Any thoughts on what I should do or change? Is there a better approach than the one I've taken? Thanks in advance. UPDATE I've found an alternative solution using a ScrollViewer and an ItemsControl instead of a ListBox control. For the most part it's stable.

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• Iphone NSXMLParser NSCFString memory leak

  - by atticusalien

  I am building an app that parses an rss feed. In the app there are two different types of feeds with different names for the elements in the feed, so I have created an NSXMLParser NSObject that takes the name of the elements of each feed before parsing. Here is my code: NewsFeedParser.h #import @interface NewsFeedParser : NSObject { NSInteger NewsSelectedCategory; NSXMLParser *NSXMLNewsParser; NSMutableArray *newsCategories; NSMutableDictionary *NewsItem; NSMutableString *NewsCurrentElement, *NewsCurrentElement1, *NewsCurrentElement2, *NewsCurrentElement3; NSString *NewsItemType, *NewsElement1, *NewsElement2, *NewsElement3; NSInteger NewsNumElements; } - (void) parseXMLFileAtURL:(NSString *)URL; @property(nonatomic, retain) NSString *NewsItemType; @property(nonatomic, retain) NSString *NewsElement1; @property(nonatomic, retain) NSString *NewsElement2; @property(nonatomic, retain) NSString *NewsElement3; @property(nonatomic, retain) NSMutableArray *newsCategories; @property(assign, nonatomic) NSInteger NewsNumElements; @end NewsFeedParser.m #import "NewsFeedParser.h" @implementation NewsFeedParser @synthesize NewsItemType; @synthesize NewsElement1; @synthesize NewsElement2; @synthesize NewsElement3; @synthesize newsCategories; @synthesize NewsNumElements; - (void)parserDidStartDocument:(NSXMLParser *)parser{ } - (void)parseXMLFileAtURL:(NSString *)URL { newsCategories = [[NSMutableArray alloc] init]; URL = [URL stringByReplacingOccurrencesOfString:@" " withString:@""]; URL = [URL stringByReplacingOccurrencesOfString:@"\n" withString:@""]; URL = [URL stringByReplacingOccurrencesOfString:@" " withString:@""]; //you must then convert the path to a proper NSURL or it won't work NSURL *xmlURL = [NSURL URLWithString:URL]; // here, for some reason you have to use NSClassFromString when trying to alloc NSXMLParser, otherwise you will get an object not found error // this may be necessary only for the toolchain [[NSURLCache sharedURLCache] setMemoryCapacity:0]; [[NSURLCache sharedURLCache] setDiskCapacity:0]; NSXMLNewsParser = [[NSXMLParser alloc] initWithContentsOfURL:xmlURL]; // Set self as the delegate of the parser so that it will receive the parser delegate methods callbacks. [NSXMLNewsParser setDelegate:self]; // Depending on the XML document you're parsing, you may want to enable these features of NSXMLParser. [NSXMLNewsParser setShouldProcessNamespaces:NO]; [NSXMLNewsParser setShouldReportNamespacePrefixes:NO]; [NSXMLNewsParser setShouldResolveExternalEntities:NO]; [NSXMLNewsParser parse]; [NSXMLNewsParser release]; } - (void)parser:(NSXMLParser *)parser parseErrorOccurred:(NSError *)parseError { NSString * errorString = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"Unable to download story feed from web site (Error code %i )", [parseError code]]; NSLog(@"error parsing XML: %@", errorString); UIAlertView * errorAlert = [[UIAlertView alloc] initWithTitle:@"Error loading content" message:errorString delegate:self cancelButtonTitle:@"OK" otherButtonTitles:nil]; [errorAlert show]; [errorAlert release]; [errorString release]; } - (void)parser:(NSXMLParser *)parser didStartElement:(NSString *)elementName namespaceURI:(NSString *)namespaceURI qualifiedName:(NSString *)qName attributes:(NSDictionary *)attributeDict{ NewsCurrentElement = [elementName copy]; if ([elementName isEqualToString:NewsItemType]) { // clear out our story item caches... NewsItem = [[NSMutableDictionary alloc] init]; NewsCurrentElement1 = [[NSMutableString alloc] init]; NewsCurrentElement2 = [[NSMutableString alloc] init]; if(NewsNumElements == 3) { NewsCurrentElement3 = [[NSMutableString alloc] init]; } } } - (void)parser:(NSXMLParser *)parser didEndElement:(NSString *)elementName namespaceURI:(NSString *)namespaceURI qualifiedName:(NSString *)qName{ if ([elementName isEqualToString:NewsItemType]) { // save values to an item, then store that item into the array... [NewsItem setObject:NewsCurrentElement1 forKey:NewsElement1]; [NewsItem setObject:NewsCurrentElement2 forKey:NewsElement2]; if(NewsNumElements == 3) { [NewsItem setObject:NewsCurrentElement3 forKey:NewsElement3]; } [newsCategories addObject:[[NewsItem copy] autorelease]]; [NewsCurrentElement release]; [NewsCurrentElement1 release]; [NewsCurrentElement2 release]; if(NewsNumElements == 3) { [NewsCurrentElement3 release]; } [NewsItem release]; } } - (void)parser:(NSXMLParser *)parser foundCharacters:(NSString *)string { //NSLog(@"found characters: %@", string); // save the characters for the current item... if ([NewsCurrentElement isEqualToString:NewsElement1]) { [NewsCurrentElement1 appendString:string]; } else if ([NewsCurrentElement isEqualToString:NewsElement2]) { [NewsCurrentElement2 appendString:string]; } else if (NewsNumElements == 3 && [NewsCurrentElement isEqualToString:NewsElement3]) { [NewsCurrentElement3 appendString:string]; } } - (void)dealloc { [super dealloc]; [newsCategories release]; [NewsItemType release]; [NewsElement1 release]; [NewsElement2 release]; [NewsElement3 release]; } When I create an instance of the class I do like so: NewsFeedParser *categoriesParser = [[NewsFeedParser alloc] init]; if(newsCat == 0) { categoriesParser.NewsItemType = @"article"; categoriesParser.NewsElement1 = @"category"; categoriesParser.NewsElement2 = @"catid"; } else { categoriesParser.NewsItemType = @"article"; categoriesParser.NewsElement1 = @"category"; categoriesParser.NewsElement2 = @"feedUrl"; } [categoriesParser parseXMLFileAtURL:feedUrl]; newsCategories = [[NSMutableArray alloc] initWithArray:categoriesParser.newsCategories copyItems:YES]; [self.tableView reloadData]; [categoriesParser release]; If I run the app with the leaks instrument, the leaks point to the [NSXMLNewsParser parse] call in the NewsFeedParser.m. Here is a screen shot of the Leaks instrument with the NSCFStrings leaking: http://img139.imageshack.us/img139/3997/leaks.png For the life of me I can't figure out where these leaks are coming from. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

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• What is the fastest cyclic synchronization in Java (ExecutorService vs. CyclicBarrier vs. X)?

  - by Alex Dunlop

  Which Java synchronization construct is likely to provide the best performance for a concurrent, iterative processing scenario with a fixed number of threads like the one outlined below? After experimenting on my own for a while (using ExecutorService and CyclicBarrier) and being somewhat surprised by the results, I would be grateful for some expert advice and maybe some new ideas. Existing questions here do not seem to focus primarily on performance, hence this new one. Thanks in advance! The core of the app is a simple iterative data processing algorithm, parallelized to the spread the computational load across 8 cores on a Mac Pro, running OS X 10.6 and Java 1.6.0_07. The data to be processed is split into 8 blocks and each block is fed to a Runnable to be executed by one of a fixed number of threads. Parallelizing the algorithm was fairly straightforward, and it functionally works as desired, but its performance is not yet what I think it could be. The app seems to spend a lot of time in system calls synchronizing, so after some profiling I wonder whether I selected the most appropriate synchronization mechanism(s). A key requirement of the algorithm is that it needs to proceed in stages, so the threads need to sync up at the end of each stage. The main thread prepares the work (very low overhead), passes it to the threads, lets them work on it, then proceeds when all threads are done, rearranges the work (again very low overhead) and repeats the cycle. The machine is dedicated to this task, Garbage Collection is minimized by using per-thread pools of pre-allocated items, and the number of threads can be fixed (no incoming requests or the like, just one thread per CPU core). V1 - ExecutorService My first implementation used an ExecutorService with 8 worker threads. The program creates 8 tasks holding the work and then lets them work on it, roughly like this: // create one thread per CPU executorService = Executors.newFixedThreadPool( 8 ); ... // now process data in cycles while( ...) { // package data into 8 work items ... // create one Callable task per work item ... // submit the Callables to the worker threads executorService.invokeAll( taskList ); } This works well functionally (it does what it should), and for very large work items indeed all 8 CPUs become highly loaded, as much as the processing algorithm would be expected to allow (some work items will finish faster than others, then idle). However, as the work items become smaller (and this is not really under the program's control), the user CPU load shrinks dramatically: blocksize | system | user | cycles/sec 256k 1.8% 85% 1.30 64k 2.5% 77% 5.6 16k 4% 64% 22.5 4096 8% 56% 86 1024 13% 38% 227 256 17% 19% 420 64 19% 17% 948 16 19% 13% 1626 Legend: - block size = size of the work item (= computational steps) - system = system load, as shown in OS X Activity Monitor (red bar) - user = user load, as shown in OS X Activity Monitor (green bar) - cycles/sec = iterations through the main while loop, more is better The primary area of concern here is the high percentage of time spent in the system, which appears to be driven by thread synchronization calls. As expected, for smaller work items, ExecutorService.invokeAll() will require relatively more effort to sync up the threads versus the amount of work being performed in each thread. But since ExecutorService is more generic than it would need to be for this use case (it can queue tasks for threads if there are more tasks than cores), I though maybe there would be a leaner synchronization construct. V2 - CyclicBarrier The next implementation used a CyclicBarrier to sync up the threads before receiving work and after completing it, roughly as follows: main() { // create the barrier barrier = new CyclicBarrier( 8 + 1 ); // create Runable for thread, tell it about the barrier Runnable task = new WorkerThreadRunnable( barrier ); // start the threads for( int i = 0; i < 8; i++ ) { // create one thread per core new Thread( task ).start(); } while( ... ) { // tell threads about the work ... // N threads + this will call await(), then system proceeds barrier.await(); // ... now worker threads work on the work... // wait for worker threads to finish barrier.await(); } } class WorkerThreadRunnable implements Runnable { CyclicBarrier barrier; WorkerThreadRunnable( CyclicBarrier barrier ) { this.barrier = barrier; } public void run() { while( true ) { // wait for work barrier.await(); // do the work ... // wait for everyone else to finish barrier.await(); } } } Again, this works well functionally (it does what it should), and for very large work items indeed all 8 CPUs become highly loaded, as before. However, as the work items become smaller, the load still shrinks dramatically: blocksize | system | user | cycles/sec 256k 1.9% 85% 1.30 64k 2.7% 78% 6.1 16k 5.5% 52% 25 4096 9% 29% 64 1024 11% 15% 117 256 12% 8% 169 64 12% 6.5% 285 16 12% 6% 377 For large work items, synchronization is negligible and the performance is identical to V1. But unexpectedly, the results of the (highly specialized) CyclicBarrier seem MUCH WORSE than those for the (generic) ExecutorService: throughput (cycles/sec) is only about 1/4th of V1. A preliminary conclusion would be that even though this seems to be the advertised ideal use case for CyclicBarrier, it performs much worse than the generic ExecutorService. V3 - Wait/Notify + CyclicBarrier It seemed worth a try to replace the first cyclic barrier await() with a simple wait/notify mechanism: main() { // create the barrier // create Runable for thread, tell it about the barrier // start the threads while( ... ) { // tell threads about the work // for each: workerThreadRunnable.setWorkItem( ... ); // ... now worker threads work on the work... // wait for worker threads to finish barrier.await(); } } class WorkerThreadRunnable implements Runnable { CyclicBarrier barrier; @NotNull volatile private Callable<Integer> workItem; WorkerThreadRunnable( CyclicBarrier barrier ) { this.barrier = barrier; this.workItem = NO_WORK; } final protected void setWorkItem( @NotNull final Callable<Integer> callable ) { synchronized( this ) { workItem = callable; notify(); } } public void run() { while( true ) { // wait for work while( true ) { synchronized( this ) { if( workItem != NO_WORK ) break; try { wait(); } catch( InterruptedException e ) { e.printStackTrace(); } } } // do the work ... // wait for everyone else to finish barrier.await(); } } } Again, this works well functionally (it does what it should). blocksize | system | user | cycles/sec 256k 1.9% 85% 1.30 64k 2.4% 80% 6.3 16k 4.6% 60% 30.1 4096 8.6% 41% 98.5 1024 12% 23% 202 256 14% 11.6% 299 64 14% 10.0% 518 16 14.8% 8.7% 679 The throughput for small work items is still much worse than that of the ExecutorService, but about 2x that of the CyclicBarrier. Eliminating one CyclicBarrier eliminates half of the gap. V4 - Busy wait instead of wait/notify Since this app is the primary one running on the system and the cores idle anyway if they're not busy with a work item, why not try a busy wait for work items in each thread, even if that spins the CPU needlessly. The worker thread code changes as follows: class WorkerThreadRunnable implements Runnable { // as before final protected void setWorkItem( @NotNull final Callable<Integer> callable ) { workItem = callable; } public void run() { while( true ) { // busy-wait for work while( true ) { if( workItem != NO_WORK ) break; } // do the work ... // wait for everyone else to finish barrier.await(); } } } Also works well functionally (it does what it should). blocksize | system | user | cycles/sec 256k 1.9% 85% 1.30 64k 2.2% 81% 6.3 16k 4.2% 62% 33 4096 7.5% 40% 107 1024 10.4% 23% 210 256 12.0% 12.0% 310 64 11.9% 10.2% 550 16 12.2% 8.6% 741 For small work items, this increases throughput by a further 10% over the CyclicBarrier + wait/notify variant, which is not insignificant. But it is still much lower-throughput than V1 with the ExecutorService. V5 - ? So what is the best synchronization mechanism for such a (presumably not uncommon) problem? I am weary of writing my own sync mechanism to completely replace ExecutorService (assuming that it is too generic and there has to be something that can still be taken out to make it more efficient). It is not my area of expertise and I'm concerned that I'd spend a lot of time debugging it (since I'm not even sure my wait/notify and busy wait variants are correct) for uncertain gain. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

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• [SOLVED] Iphone NSXMLParser NSCFString memory leak

  - by atticusalien

  I am building an app that parses an rss feed. In the app there are two different types of feeds with different names for the elements in the feed, so I have created an NSXMLParser NSObject that takes the name of the elements of each feed before parsing. Here is my code: NewsFeedParser.h #import @interface NewsFeedParser : NSObject { NSInteger NewsSelectedCategory; NSXMLParser *NSXMLNewsParser; NSMutableArray *newsCategories; NSMutableDictionary *NewsItem; NSMutableString *NewsCurrentElement, *NewsCurrentElement1, *NewsCurrentElement2, *NewsCurrentElement3; NSString *NewsItemType, *NewsElement1, *NewsElement2, *NewsElement3; NSInteger NewsNumElements; } - (void) parseXMLFileAtURL:(NSString *)URL; @property(nonatomic, retain) NSString *NewsItemType; @property(nonatomic, retain) NSString *NewsElement1; @property(nonatomic, retain) NSString *NewsElement2; @property(nonatomic, retain) NSString *NewsElement3; @property(nonatomic, retain) NSMutableArray *newsCategories; @property(assign, nonatomic) NSInteger NewsNumElements; @end NewsFeedParser.m #import "NewsFeedParser.h" @implementation NewsFeedParser @synthesize NewsItemType; @synthesize NewsElement1; @synthesize NewsElement2; @synthesize NewsElement3; @synthesize newsCategories; @synthesize NewsNumElements; - (void)parserDidStartDocument:(NSXMLParser *)parser{ } - (void)parseXMLFileAtURL:(NSString *)URL { newsCategories = [[NSMutableArray alloc] init]; URL = [URL stringByReplacingOccurrencesOfString:@" " withString:@""]; URL = [URL stringByReplacingOccurrencesOfString:@"\n" withString:@""]; URL = [URL stringByReplacingOccurrencesOfString:@" " withString:@""]; //you must then convert the path to a proper NSURL or it won't work NSURL *xmlURL = [NSURL URLWithString:URL]; // here, for some reason you have to use NSClassFromString when trying to alloc NSXMLParser, otherwise you will get an object not found error // this may be necessary only for the toolchain [[NSURLCache sharedURLCache] setMemoryCapacity:0]; [[NSURLCache sharedURLCache] setDiskCapacity:0]; NSXMLNewsParser = [[NSXMLParser alloc] initWithContentsOfURL:xmlURL]; // Set self as the delegate of the parser so that it will receive the parser delegate methods callbacks. [NSXMLNewsParser setDelegate:self]; // Depending on the XML document you're parsing, you may want to enable these features of NSXMLParser. [NSXMLNewsParser setShouldProcessNamespaces:NO]; [NSXMLNewsParser setShouldReportNamespacePrefixes:NO]; [NSXMLNewsParser setShouldResolveExternalEntities:NO]; [NSXMLNewsParser parse]; [NSXMLNewsParser release]; } - (void)parser:(NSXMLParser *)parser parseErrorOccurred:(NSError *)parseError { NSString * errorString = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"Unable to download story feed from web site (Error code %i )", [parseError code]]; NSLog(@"error parsing XML: %@", errorString); UIAlertView * errorAlert = [[UIAlertView alloc] initWithTitle:@"Error loading content" message:errorString delegate:self cancelButtonTitle:@"OK" otherButtonTitles:nil]; [errorAlert show]; [errorAlert release]; [errorString release]; } - (void)parser:(NSXMLParser *)parser didStartElement:(NSString *)elementName namespaceURI:(NSString *)namespaceURI qualifiedName:(NSString *)qName attributes:(NSDictionary *)attributeDict{ NewsCurrentElement = [elementName copy]; if ([elementName isEqualToString:NewsItemType]) { // clear out our story item caches... NewsItem = [[NSMutableDictionary alloc] init]; NewsCurrentElement1 = [[NSMutableString alloc] init]; NewsCurrentElement2 = [[NSMutableString alloc] init]; if(NewsNumElements == 3) { NewsCurrentElement3 = [[NSMutableString alloc] init]; } } } - (void)parser:(NSXMLParser *)parser didEndElement:(NSString *)elementName namespaceURI:(NSString *)namespaceURI qualifiedName:(NSString *)qName{ if ([elementName isEqualToString:NewsItemType]) { // save values to an item, then store that item into the array... [NewsItem setObject:NewsCurrentElement1 forKey:NewsElement1]; [NewsItem setObject:NewsCurrentElement2 forKey:NewsElement2]; if(NewsNumElements == 3) { [NewsItem setObject:NewsCurrentElement3 forKey:NewsElement3]; } [newsCategories addObject:[[NewsItem copy] autorelease]]; [NewsCurrentElement release]; [NewsCurrentElement1 release]; [NewsCurrentElement2 release]; if(NewsNumElements == 3) { [NewsCurrentElement3 release]; } [NewsItem release]; } } - (void)parser:(NSXMLParser *)parser foundCharacters:(NSString *)string { //NSLog(@"found characters: %@", string); // save the characters for the current item... if ([NewsCurrentElement isEqualToString:NewsElement1]) { [NewsCurrentElement1 appendString:string]; } else if ([NewsCurrentElement isEqualToString:NewsElement2]) { [NewsCurrentElement2 appendString:string]; } else if (NewsNumElements == 3 && [NewsCurrentElement isEqualToString:NewsElement3]) { [NewsCurrentElement3 appendString:string]; } } - (void)dealloc { [super dealloc]; [newsCategories release]; [NewsItemType release]; [NewsElement1 release]; [NewsElement2 release]; [NewsElement3 release]; } When I create an instance of the class I do like so: NewsFeedParser *categoriesParser = [[NewsFeedParser alloc] init]; if(newsCat == 0) { categoriesParser.NewsItemType = @"article"; categoriesParser.NewsElement1 = @"category"; categoriesParser.NewsElement2 = @"catid"; } else { categoriesParser.NewsItemType = @"article"; categoriesParser.NewsElement1 = @"category"; categoriesParser.NewsElement2 = @"feedUrl"; } [categoriesParser parseXMLFileAtURL:feedUrl]; newsCategories = [[NSMutableArray alloc] initWithArray:categoriesParser.newsCategories copyItems:YES]; [self.tableView reloadData]; [categoriesParser release]; If I run the app with the leaks instrument, the leaks point to the [NSXMLNewsParser parse] call in the NewsFeedParser.m. Here is a screen shot of the Leaks instrument with the NSCFStrings leaking: http://img139.imageshack.us/img139/3997/leaks.png For the life of me I can't figure out where these leaks are coming from. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

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• Code review - PHP syntax error unexpected $end

  - by dtufano

  Hey guys! I keep getting a syntax error (unexpected $end), and I've isolated it to this chunk of code. I can't for the life of me see any closure issues. It's probably something obvious but I'm going nutty trying to find it. Would appreciate an additional set of eyes. function generate_pagination( $base_url, $num_items, $per_page, $start_item, $add_prevnext_text = TRUE ) { global $lang; if ( $num_items == 0 ) { } else { $total_pages = ceil( $num_items / $per_page ); if ( $total_pages == 1 ) { return ""; } $on_page = floor( $start_item / $per_page ) + 1; $page_string = ""; if ( 8 < $total_pages ) { $init_page_max = 2 < $total_pages ? 2 : $total_pages; $i = 1; for ( ; $i < $init_page_max + 1; ++$i ) { $page_string .= $i == $on_page ? "<font face='verdana' size='2'><b>[{$i}]</b></font>" : "<a href=\"".$base_url."&amp;offset=".( $i - 1 ) * $per_page."\">{$i}</a>"; if ( $i < $init_page_max ) { $page_string .= ", "; } } if ( 2 < $total_pages ) { if ( 1 < $on_page && $on_page < $total_pages ) { $page_string .= 4 < $on_page ? " ... " : ", "; $init_page_min = 3 < $on_page ? $on_page : 4; $init_page_max = $on_page < $total_pages - 3 ? $on_page : $total_pages - 3; $i = $init_page_min - 1; for ( ; $i < $init_page_max + 2; ++$i ) { $page_string .= $i == $on_page ? "<font face='verdana' size='2'><b>[{$i}]</b></font>" : "<a href=\"".$base_url."&amp;offset=".( $i - 1 ) * $per_page."\">{$i}</a>"; if ( $i < $init_page_max + 1 ) { $page_string .= ", "; } } $page_string .= $on_page < $total_pages - 3 ? " ... " : ", "; } else { $page_string .= " ... "; } $i = $total_pages - 1; for ( ; $i < $total_pages + 1; ++$i ) { $page_string .= $i == $on_page ? "<font face='verdana' size='2'><b>[{$i}]</b></font>" : "<a href=\"".$base_url."&amp;offset=".( $i - 1 ) * $per_page."\">{$i}</a>"; if ( $i < $total_pages ) { $page_string .= ", "; } } continue; } } else { do { $i = 1; for ( ; $i < $total_pages + 1; ++$i) { $page_string .= $i == $on_page ? "<font face='verdana' size='2'><b>[{$i}]</b></font>" : "<a href=\"".$base_url."&amp;offset=".( $i - 1 ) * $per_page."\">{$i}</a>"; if ( $i < $total_pages ) { $page_string .= ", "; break; } } } while (0); if ( 1 < $on_page ) { $page_string = " <font size='2'><a href=\"".$base_url."&amp;offset=".( $on_page - 2 ) * $per_page."\">"."&laquo;"."</a></font>&nbsp;&nbsp;".$page_string; } if ( $on_page < $total_pages ) { $page_string .= "&nbsp;&nbsp;<font size='2'><a href=\"".$base_url."&amp;offset=".$on_page * $per_page."\">"."&raquo;"."</a></font>"; } $page_string = "Pages ({$total_pages}):"." ".$page_string; return $page_string; } }

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• HttpWebRequest Cookie weirdness

  - by Lachman

  I'm sure I must be doing something wrong. But can't for the life of me figure out what is going on. I have a problem where it seems that the HttpWebRequest class in the framework is not correctly parsing the cookies from a web response. I'm using Fiddler to see what is going on and after making a request, the headers of the response look as such: HTTP/1.1 200 Ok Connection: close Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2009 18:20:31 GMT Server: Microsoft-IIS/6.0 P3P: policyref="/w3c/p3p.xml", CP="CAO DSP IND COR ADM CONo CUR CUSi DEV PSA PSD DELi OUR COM NAV PHY ONL PUR UNI" Set-Cookie: user=v.5,0,EX01E508801E$97$2E401000t$1BV6$A1$EC$104$A1$EC$104$A1$EC$104$21O001000$1E31!90$7CP$AE$3F$F3$D8$19o$BC$1Cd$23; Domain=.thedomain.com; path=/ Set-Cookie: minfo=v.4,EX019ECD28D6k$A3$CA$0C$CE$A2$D6$AD$D4!2$8A$EF$E8n$91$96$E1$D7$C8$0F$98$AA$ED$DC$40V$AB$9C$C1$9CF$C9$C1zIF$3A$93$C6$A7$DF$A1$7E$A7$A1$A8$BD$A6$94c$D5$E8$2F$F4$AF$A2$DF$80$89$BA$BBd$F6$2C$B6$A8; expires=Sunday, 31-Dec-2014 23:59:59 GMT; Domain=.thedomain.com; path=/ Set-Cookie: accttype=v.2,3,1,EX017E651B09k$A3$CA$0C$DB$A2$CB$AD$D9$8A$8C$EF$E8t$91$90$E1$DC$C89$98$AA$E0$DC$40O$A8$A4$C1$9C; expires=Sunday, 31-Dec-2014 23:59:59 GMT; Domain=.thedomain.com; path=/ Set-Cookie: tpid=v.1,20001; expires=Sunday, 31-Dec-2014 23:59:59 GMT; Domain=.thedomain.com; path=/ Set-Cookie: MC1=GUID=541977e04a341a2a4f4cdaaf49615487; expires=Sunday, 31-Dec-2014 23:59:59 GMT; Domain=.thedomain.com; path=/ Set-Cookie: linfo=v.4,EQC|0|0|255|1|0||||||||0|0|0||0|0|0|-1|-1; expires=Sunday, 31-Dec-2014 23:59:59 GMT; Domain=.thedomain.com; path=/ Set-Cookie: group=v.1,0; expires=Sunday, 31-Dec-2014 23:59:59 GMT; Domain=.thedomain.com; path=/ Content-Type: text/html But when I look at the response.Cookies, I see far more cookies that I am expecting, with values of different cookies being split up into different cookies. Manually getting the headers seems to result in more wierdness eg: the code foreach(string cookie in response.Headers.GetValues("Set-Cookie")) { Console.WriteLine("Cookie found: " + cookie); } produces the output: Cookie found: user=v.5 Cookie found: 0 Cookie found: EX01E508801E$97$2E401000t$1BV6$A1$EC$104$A1$EC$104$A1$EC$104$21O00 1000$1E31!90$7CP$AE$3F$F3$D8$19o$BC$1Cd$23; Domain=.thedomain.com; path=/ Cookie found: minfo=v.4 Cookie found: EX019ECD28D6k$A3$CA$0C$CE$A2$D6$AD$D4!2$8A$EF$E8n$91$96$E1$D7$C8$0 F$98$AA$ED$DC$40V$AB$9C$C1$9CF$C9$C1zIF$3A$93$C6$A7$DF$A1$7E$A7$A1$A8$BD$A6$94c$ D5$E8$2F$F4$AF$A2$DF$80$89$BA$BBd$F6$2C$B6$A8; expires=Sunday Cookie found: 31-Dec-2014 23:59:59 GMT; Domain=.thedomain.com; path=/ Cookie found: accttype=v.2 Cookie found: 3 Cookie found: 1 Cookie found: EX017E651B09k$A3$CA$0C$DB$A2$CB$AD$D9$8A$8C$EF$E8t$91$90$E1$DC$C89 $98$AA$E0$DC$40O$A8$A4$C1$9C; expires=Sunday Cookie found: 31-Dec-2014 23:59:59 GMT; Domain=.thedomain.com; path=/ Cookie found: tpid=v.1 Cookie found: 20001; expires=Sunday Cookie found: 31-Dec-2014 23:59:59 GMT; Domain=.thedomain.com; path=/ Cookie found: MC1=GUID=541977e04a341a2a4f4cdaaf49615487; expires=Sunday Cookie found: 31-Dec-2014 23:59:59 GMT; Domain=.thedomain.com; path=/ Cookie found: linfo=v.4 Cookie found: EQC|0|0|255|1|0||||||||0|0|0||0|0|0|-1|-1; expires=Sunday Cookie found: 31-Dec-2014 23:59:59 GMT; Domain=.thedomain.com; path=/ Cookie found: group=v.1 Cookie found: 0; expires=Sunday Cookie found: 31-Dec-2014 23:59:59 GMT; Domain=.thedomain.com; path=/ as you can see - the first cookie in the list raw response: Set-Cookie: user=v.5,0,EX01E508801 is getting split into: Cookie found: user=v.5 Cookie found: 0 Cookie found: EX01E508801E$.......... So - what's going on here? Am I wrong? Is the HttpWebRequest class incorrectly parsing the http headers? Is the webserver that it spitting out the requests producing invalid http headers?

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• Html.BeginForm() not rendering properly

  - by Taskos George

  While searching in stackoverflow the other questions didn't exactly helped in my situation. How it would be possible to debug such an error like the one that the Html.BeginForm does not properly rendered to the page. I use this code @model ExtremeProduction.Models.SelectUserGroupsViewModel @{ ViewBag.Title = "User Groups"; } <h2>Groups for user @Html.DisplayFor(model => model.UserName)</h2> <hr /> @using (Html.BeginForm("UserGroups", "Account", FormMethod.Post, new { encType = "multipart/form-data", id = "userGroupsForm" })) { @Html.AntiForgeryToken() <div class="form-horizontal"> @Html.ValidationSummary(true) <div class="form-group"> <div class="col-md-10"> @Html.HiddenFor(model => model.UserName) </div> </div> <h4>Select Group Assignments</h4> <br /> <hr /> <table> <tr> <th> Select </th> <th> Group </th> </tr> @Html.EditorFor(model => model.Groups) </table> <br /> <hr /> <div class="form-group"> <div class="col-md-offset-2 col-md-10"> <input type="submit" value="Save" class="btn btn-default" /> </div> </div> </div> } <div> @Html.ActionLink("Back to List", "Index") </div> EDIT: Added the Model // Wrapper for SelectGroupEditorViewModel to select user group membership: public class SelectUserGroupsViewModel { public string UserName { get; set; } public string FirstName { get; set; } public string LastName { get; set; } public List<SelectGroupEditorViewModel> Groups { get; set; } public SelectUserGroupsViewModel() { this.Groups = new List<SelectGroupEditorViewModel>(); } public SelectUserGroupsViewModel(ApplicationUser user) : this() { this.UserName = user.UserName; this.FirstName = user.FirstName; this.LastName = user.LastName; var Db = new ApplicationDbContext(); // Add all available groups to the public list: var allGroups = Db.Groups; foreach (var role in allGroups) { // An EditorViewModel will be used by Editor Template: var rvm = new SelectGroupEditorViewModel(role); this.Groups.Add(rvm); } // Set the Selected property to true where user is already a member: foreach (var group in user.Groups) { var checkUserRole = this.Groups.Find(r => r.GroupName == group.Group.Name); checkUserRole.Selected = true; } } } // Used to display a single role group with a checkbox, within a list structure: public class SelectGroupEditorViewModel { public SelectGroupEditorViewModel() { } public SelectGroupEditorViewModel(Group group) { this.GroupName = group.Name; this.GroupId = group.Id; } public bool Selected { get; set; } [Required] public int GroupId { get; set; } public string GroupName { get; set; } } public class Group { public Group() { } public Group(string name) : this() { Roles = new List<ApplicationRoleGroup>(); Name = name; } [Key] [Required] public virtual int Id { get; set; } public virtual string Name { get; set; } public virtual ICollection<ApplicationRoleGroup> Roles { get; set; } } ** EDIT ** And I get this form http://i834.photobucket.com/albums/zz268/gtas/formmine_zpsf6470e02.png I should receive a form like the one that I copied the code like this http://i834.photobucket.com/albums/zz268/gtas/formcopied_zpsdb2f129e.png Any ideas where or how to look the source of evil that makes my life hard for some time now?

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• C# UDP decoding datagrams fails randomly

  - by Tom Frey

  Hi, I'm experiencing an issue in a multi threaded application and have been debugging it for the last 3 days but for the life of it can not figure it out. I'm writing this, hoping that I either have a DUH moment when typing this or somebody sees something obvious in the code snippets I provide. Here's what's going on: I've been working on a new UDP networking library and have a data producer that multicasts UDP datagrams to several receiver applications. The sender sends on two different sockets that are bound to separate UDP multicast addresses and separate ports. The receiver application also creates two sockets and binds each one to one of the sender's multicast address/port. When the receiver receives the datagram, it copies it from the the buffer in a MemoryStream which is then put onto a thread safe queue, where another thread reads from it and decodes the data out of the MemoryStream. Both sockets have their own queues. What happens now is really weird, it happens randomly, non-reproducible and when I run multiple receiver applications, it only happens randomly on one of them every now and then. Basically, the thread that reads the MemoryStream out of the queue, reads it via a BinaryReader like ReadInt32(), etc. and thereby decodes the data. Every now and then however when it reads the data, the data it reads from it is incorrect, e.g. a negative integer number which the sender never would encode. However, as mentioned before, the decoding only fails in one of the receiver applications, in the other ones the datagram decodes fine. Now you might be saying, well, probably the UDP datagram has a byte corruption or something but I've logged every single datagram that's coming in and compared them on all receivers and the datagrams every application receives are absolutely identical. Now it gets even weirder, when I dump the datagram that failed to decode to disk and write a unit test that reads it and runs it through the decoder, it decodes just fine. Also when I wrap a try/catch around the decoder, reset the MemoryStream position in the catch and run it through the decoder again, it decodes just fine. To make it even weirder, this also only happens when I bind both sockets to read data from the sender, if I only bind one, it doesn't happen or at least I wasn't able to reproduce it. Here are is some corresponding code to what's going on: This is the receive callback for the socket: private void ReceiveCompleted(object sender, SocketAsyncEventArgs args) { if (args.SocketError != SocketError.Success) { InternalShutdown(args.SocketError); return; } if (args.BytesTransferred > SequencedUnitHeader.UNIT_HEADER_SIZE) { DataChunk chunk = new DataChunk(args.BytesTransferred); Buffer.BlockCopy(args.Buffer, 0, chunk.Buffer, 0, args.BytesTransferred); chunk.MemoryStream = new MemoryStream(chunk.Buffer); chunk.BinaryReader = new BinaryReader(chunk.MemoryStream); chunk.SequencedUnitHeader.SequenceID = chunk.BinaryReader.ReadUInt32(); chunk.SequencedUnitHeader.Count = chunk.BinaryReader.ReadByte(); if (prevSequenceID + 1 != chunk.SequencedUnitHeader.SequenceID) { log.Error("UdpDatagramGap\tName:{0}\tExpected:{1}\tReceived:{2}", unitName, prevSequenceID + 1, chunk.SequencedUnitHeader.SequenceID); } else if (chunk.SequencedUnitHeader.SequenceID < prevSequenceID) { log.Error("UdpOutOfSequence\tName:{0}\tExpected:{1}\tReceived:{2}", unitName, prevSequenceID + 1, chunk.SequencedUnitHeader.SequenceID); } prevSequenceID = chunk.SequencedUnitHeader.SequenceID; messagePump.Produce(chunk); } else UdpStatistics.FramesRxDiscarded++; Socket.InvokeAsyncMethod(Socket.ReceiveAsync, ReceiveCompleted, asyncReceiveArgs); } Here's some stub code that decodes the data: public static void OnDataChunk(DataChunk dataChunk) { try { for (int i = 0; i < dataChunk.SequencedUnitHeader.Count; i++) { int val = dataChunk.BinaryReader.ReadInt32(); if(val < 0) throw new Exception("EncodingException"); // do something with that value } } catch (Exception ex) { writer.WriteLine("ID:" + dataChunk.SequencedUnitHeader.SequenceID + " Count:" + dataChunk.SequencedUnitHeader.Count + " " + BitConverter.ToString(dataChunk.Buffer, 0, dataChunk.Size)); writer.Flush(); log.ErrorException("OnDataChunk", ex); log.Info("RETRY FRAME:{0} Data:{1}", dataChunk.SequencedUnitHeader.SequenceID, BitConverter.ToString(dataChunk.Buffer, 0, dataChunk.Size)); dataChunk.MemoryStream.Position = 0; dataChunk.SequencedUnitHeader.SequenceID = dataChunk.BinaryReader.ReadUInt32(); dataChunk.SequencedUnitHeader.Count = dataChunk.BinaryReader.ReadByte(); OnDataChunk(dataChunk); } } You see in the catch{} part I simply reset the MemoryStream.Position to 0 and call the same method again and it works just fine that next time? I'm really out of ideas at this point and unfortunately had no DUH moment writing this. Anybody have any kind of idea what might be going on or what else I could do to troubleshoot this? Thanks, Tom

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• Using RJS to replace innerHTML with a real live instance variable.

  - by Steve Cotner

  I can't for the life of me get RJS to replace an element's innerHTML with an instance variable's attribute, i.e. something like @thing.name I'll show all the code (simplified from the actual project, but still complete), and I hope the solution will be forehead-slap obvious to someone... In RoR, I've made a simple page displaying a random Chinese character. This is a Word object with attributes chinese and english. Clicking on a link titled "What is this?" reveals the english attribute using RJS. Currently, it also hides the "What is this?" link and reveals a "Try Another?" link that just reloads the page, effectively starting over with a new random character. This is fine, but there are other elements on the page that make their own database queries, so I would like to load a new random character by an AJAX call, leaving the rest of the page alone. This has turned out to be harder than I expected: I have no trouble replacing the html using link_remote_to and page.replace_html, but I can't get it to display anything that includes an instance variable. I have a Word resource and a Page resource, which has a home page, where all this fun takes place. In the PagesController, I've made a couple ways to get random words. Either one works fine... Here's the code: class PagesController < ApplicationController def home all_words = Word.find(:all) @random_word = all_words.rand @random_words = Word.find(:all, :limit => 100, :order => 'rand()') @random_first = @random_words[1] end end As an aside, the SQL call with :limit => 100 is just in case I think of some way to cycle through those random words. Right now it's not useful. Also, the 'rand()' is MySQL specific, as far as I know. In the home page view (it's HAML), I have this: #character_box = render(:partial => "character", :object => @random_word) if @random_word #whatisthis = link_to_remote "? what is this?", :url => { :controller => 'words', :action => 'reveal_character' }, :html => { :title => "Click for the translation." } #tryanother.{:style => "display:none"} = link_to "try another?", root_path Note that the #'s in this case represent divs (with the given ids), not comments, because this is HAML. The "character" partial looks like this (it's erb, for no real reason): <div id="character"> <%= "#{@random_word.chinese}" } %> </div> <div id="revealed" style="display:none"> <ul> <li><span id="english"><%= "#{@random_word.english_name}" %></span></li> </ul> </div> The reveal_character.rjs file looks like this: page[:revealed].visual_effect :slide_down, :duration => '.2' page[:english].visual_effect :highlight, :startcolor => "#ffff00", :endcolor => "#ffffff", :duration => '2.5' page.delay(0.8) do page[:whatisthis].visual_effect :fade, :duration => '.3' page[:tryanother].visual_effect :appear end That all works perfectly fine. But if I try to turn link_to "try another?" into link_to_remote, and point it to an RJS template that replaces the "character" element with something new, it only works when I replace the innerHTML with static text. If I try to pass an instance variable in there, it never works. For instance, let's say I've defined a second random word under Pages#home... I'll add @random_second = @random_words[2] there. Then, in the home page view, I'll replace the "try another?" link (previously pointing to the root_path), with this: = link_to_remote "try another?", :url => { :controller => 'words', :action => 'second_character' }, :html => { :title => "Click for a new character." } I'll make that new RJS template, at app/views/words/second_character.rjs, and a simple test like this shows that it's working: page.replace_html("character", "hi") But if I change it to this: page.replace_html("character", "#{@random_second.english}") I get an error saying I fed it a nil object: ActionView::TemplateError (undefined method `english_name' for nil:NilClass) on line #1 of app/views/words/second_character.rjs: 1: page.replace_html("character", "#{@random_second.english}") Of course, actually instantiating @random_second, @random_third and so on ad infinitum would be ridiculous in a real app (I would eventually figure out some better way to keep grabbing a new random record without reloading the page), but the point is that I don't know how to get any instance variable to work here. This is not even approaching my ideal solution of rendering a partial that includes the object I specify, like this: page.replace_html 'character', :partial => 'new_character', :object => @random_second As I can't get an instance variable to work directly, I obviously cannot get it to work via a partial. I have tried various things like: :object => @random_second or :locals => { :random_second => @random_second } I've tried adding these all over the place -- in the link_to_remote options most obviously -- and studying what gets passed in the parameters, but to no avail. It's at this point that I realize I don't know what I'm doing. This is my first question here. I erred on the side of providing all necessary code, rather than being brief. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

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• How to filter Backbone.js Collection and Rerender App View?

  - by Jeremy H.

  Is is a total Backbone.js noob question. I am working off of the ToDo Backbone.js example trying to build out a fairly simple single app interface. While the todo project is more about user input, this app is more about filtering the data based on the user options (click events). I am completely new to Backbone.js and Mongoose and have been unable to find a good example of what I am trying to do. I have been able to get my api to pull the data from the MongoDB collection and drop it into the Backbone.js collection which renders it in the app. What I cannot for the life of me figure out how to do is filter that data and re-render the app view. I am trying to filter by the "type" field in the document. Here is my script: (I am totally aware of some major refactoring needed, I am just rapid prototyping a concept.) $(function() { window.Job = Backbone.Model.extend({ idAttribute: "_id", defaults: function() { return { attachments: false } } }); window.JobsList = Backbone.Collection.extend({ model: Job, url: '/api/jobs', leads: function() { return this.filter(function(job){ return job.get('type') == "Lead"; }); } }); window.Jobs = new JobsList; window.JobView = Backbone.View.extend({ tagName: "div", className: "item", template: _.template($('#item-template').html()), initialize: function() { this.model.bind('change', this.render, this); this.model.bind('destroy', this.remove, this); }, render: function() { $(this.el).html(this.template(this.model.toJSON())); this.setText(); return this; }, setText: function() { var month=new Array(); month[0]="Jan"; month[1]="Feb"; month[2]="Mar"; month[3]="Apr"; month[4]="May"; month[5]="Jun"; month[6]="Jul"; month[7]="Aug"; month[8]="Sep"; month[9]="Oct"; month[10]="Nov"; month[11]="Dec"; var title = this.model.get('title'); var description = this.model.get('description'); var datemonth = this.model.get('datem'); var dateday = this.model.get('dated'); var jobtype = this.model.get('type'); var jobstatus = this.model.get('status'); var amount = this.model.get('amount'); var paymentstatus = this.model.get('paymentstatus') var type = this.$('.status .jobtype'); var status = this.$('.status .jobstatus'); this.$('.title a').text(title); this.$('.description').text(description); this.$('.date .month').text(month[datemonth]); this.$('.date .day').text(dateday); type.text(jobtype); status.text(jobstatus); if(amount > 0) this.$('.paymentamount').text(amount) if(paymentstatus) this.$('.paymentstatus').text(paymentstatus) if(jobstatus === 'New') { status.addClass('new'); } else if (jobstatus === 'Past Due') { status.addClass('pastdue') }; if(jobtype === 'Lead') { type.addClass('lead'); } else if (jobtype === '') { type.addClass(''); }; }, remove: function() { $(this.el).remove(); }, clear: function() { this.model.destroy(); } }); window.AppView = Backbone.View.extend({ el: $("#main"), events: { "click #leads .highlight" : "filterLeads" }, initialize: function() { Jobs.bind('add', this.addOne, this); Jobs.bind('reset', this.addAll, this); Jobs.bind('all', this.render, this); Jobs.fetch(); }, addOne: function(job) { var view = new JobView({model: job}); this.$("#activitystream").append(view.render().el); }, addAll: function() { Jobs.each(this.addOne); }, filterLeads: function() { // left here, this event fires but i need to figure out how to filter the activity list. } }); window.App = new AppView; });

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• What is stopping data flow with .NET 3.5 asynchronous System.Net.Sockets.Socket?

  - by TonyG

  I have a .NET 3.5 client/server socket interface using the asynchronous methods. The client connects to the server and the connection should remain open until the app terminates. The protocol consists of the following pattern: send stx receive ack send data1 receive ack send data2 (repeat 5-6 while more data) receive ack send etx So a single transaction with two datablocks as above would consist of 4 sends from the client. After sending etx the client simply waits for more data to send out, then begins the next transmission with stx. I do not want to break the connection between individual exchanges or after each stx/data/etx payload. Right now, after connection, the client can send the first stx, and get a single ack, but I can't put more data onto the wire after that. Neither side disconnects, the socket is still intact. The client code is seriously abbreviated as follows - I'm following the pattern commonly available in online code samples. private void SendReceive(string data) { // ... SocketAsyncEventArgs completeArgs; completeArgs.Completed += new EventHandler<SocketAsyncEventArgs>(OnSend); clientSocket.SendAsync(completeArgs); // two AutoResetEvents, one for send, one for receive if ( !AutoResetEvent.WaitAll(autoSendReceiveEvents , -1) ) Log("failed"); else Log("success"); // ... } private void OnSend( object sender , SocketAsyncEventArgs e ) { // ... Socket s = e.UserToken as Socket; byte[] receiveBuffer = new byte[ 4096 ]; e.SetBuffer(receiveBuffer , 0 , receiveBuffer.Length); e.Completed += new EventHandler<SocketAsyncEventArgs>(OnReceive); s.ReceiveAsync(e); // ... } private void OnReceive( object sender , SocketAsyncEventArgs e ) {} // ... if ( e.BytesTransferred > 0 ) { Int32 bytesTransferred = e.BytesTransferred; String received = Encoding.ASCII.GetString(e.Buffer , e.Offset , bytesTransferred); dataReceived += received; } autoSendReceiveEvents[ SendOperation ].Set(); // could be moved elsewhere autoSendReceiveEvents[ ReceiveOperation ].Set(); // releases mutexes } The code on the server is very similar except that it receives first and then sends a response - the server is not doing anything (that I can tell) to modify the connection after it sends a response. The problem is that the second time I hit SendReceive in the client, the connection is already in a weird state. Do I need to do something in the client to preserve the SocketAsyncEventArgs, and re-use the same object for the lifetime of the socket/connection? I'm not sure which eventargs object should hang around during the life of the connection or a given exchange. Do I need to do something, or Not do something in the server to ensure it continues to Receive data? The server setup and response processing looks like this: void Start() { // ... listenSocket.Bind(...); listenSocket.Listen(0); StartAccept(null); // note accept as soon as we start. OK? mutex.WaitOne(); } void StartAccept(SocketAsyncEventArgs acceptEventArg) { if ( acceptEventArg == null ) { acceptEventArg = new SocketAsyncEventArgs(); acceptEventArg.Completed += new EventHandler<SocketAsyncEventArgs>(OnAcceptCompleted); } Boolean willRaiseEvent = this.listenSocket.AcceptAsync(acceptEventArg); if ( !willRaiseEvent ) ProcessAccept(acceptEventArg); // ... } private void OnAcceptCompleted( object sender , SocketAsyncEventArgs e ) { ProcessAccept(e); } private void ProcessAccept( SocketAsyncEventArgs e ) { // ... SocketAsyncEventArgs readEventArgs = new SocketAsyncEventArgs(); readEventArgs.SetBuffer(dataBuffer , 0 , Int16.MaxValue); readEventArgs.Completed += new EventHandler<SocketAsyncEventArgs>(OnIOCompleted); readEventArgs.UserToken = e.AcceptSocket; dataReceived = ""; // note server is degraded for single client/thread use // As soon as the client is connected, post a receive to the connection. Boolean willRaiseEvent = e.AcceptSocket.ReceiveAsync(readEventArgs); if ( !willRaiseEvent ) this.ProcessReceive(readEventArgs); // Accept the next connection request. this.StartAccept(e); } private void OnIOCompleted( object sender , SocketAsyncEventArgs e ) { // switch ( e.LastOperation ) case SocketAsyncOperation.Receive: ProcessReceive(e); // similar to client code // operate on dataReceived here case SocketAsyncOperation.Send: ProcessSend(e); // similar to client code } // execute this when a data has been processed into a response (ack, etc) private SendResponseToClient(string response) { // create buffer with response // currentEventArgs has class scope and is re-used currentEventArgs.SetBuffer(sendBuffer , 0 , sendBuffer.Length); Boolean willRaiseEvent = currentClient.SendAsync(currentEventArgs); if ( !willRaiseEvent ) ProcessSend(currentEventArgs); } A .NET trace shows the following when sending ABC\r\n: Socket#7588182::SendAsync() Socket#7588182::SendAsync(True#1) Data from Socket#7588182::FinishOperation(SendAsync) 00000000 : 41 42 43 0D 0A Socket#7588182::ReceiveAsync() Exiting Socket#7588182::ReceiveAsync() - True#1 And it stops there. It looks just like the first send from the client but the server shows no activity. I think that could be info overload for now but I'll be happy to provide more details as required. Thanks!

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• Page.ClientScript Register a pair of javascript code

  - by blgnklc

  How can I register a javascript code a page? I want to put th javascript function to the aspx.page; I thing it might be like that; string strJS= "<script language = javascript> (function(images, elements) { var fetchImages = function() { if(images.length > 0) { var numImages = 10; while(images.length > 0 && numImages-- > 0) { // assuming your elements are <img> document.getElementById(elements.shift()).src = images.shift(); // if not you could also set the background (or backgroundImage) css property // document.getElementById(elements.shift()).style.background = "url(" + images.shift() + ")"; } setTimeout(fetchImages, 5000); } } // bind to window onload window.onload = fetchImages; // if you're going to use something like jquery then do something like this instead //$(fetchImages); }(['url1', 'url2', 'url3'], ['img1', 'img2', 'img3'])) </script>"; Page.ClientScript.RegisterClientScriptBlock(typeof(ui_SUBMVGInfo), "SmartPenCheck", strJS); The second Questin is; ... ... g(ctrlIDBirthPlaceCode).onchange(); }} </script> <script language = javascript> var url1 = 'http://localhost:3645/ImageHandler.ashx?FormId=XXX.11&FieldId=s1_Adiniz'; var url2 ='http://localhost:3645/ImageHandler.ashx?FormId=XXX.11&FieldId=s1_Soyadiniz'; var url3 = 'http://localhost:3645/ImageHandler.ashx?FormId=XXX.11&FieldId=s1_tarih'; var url4 = 'http://localhost:3645/ImageHandler.ashx?FormId=XXX.11&FieldId=s1_Adiniz'; var url5 ='http://localhost:3645/ImageHandler.ashx?FormId=XXX.11&FieldId=s1_Soyadiniz'; var url6 = 'http://localhost:3645/ImageHandler.ashx?FormId=XXX.11&FieldId=s1_tarih'; var url7 = 'http://localhost:3645/ImageHandler.ashx?FormId=XXX.11&FieldId=s1_Adiniz'; var url8 ='http://localhost:3645/ImageHandler.ashx?FormId=XXX.11&FieldId=s1_Soyadiniz'; var url9 = 'http://localhost:3645/ImageHandler.ashx?FormId=XXX.11&FieldId=s1_tarih'; var url10 = 'http://localhost:3645/ImageHandler.ashx?FormId=XXX.11&FieldId=s1_Adiniz'; var url11 ='http://localhost:3645/ImageHandler.ashx?FormId=XXX.11&FieldId=s1_Soyadiniz'; var url12 = 'http://localhost:3645/ImageHandler.ashx?FormId=XXX.11&FieldId=s1_tarih'; function(images, elements) {var fetchImages = function() {if(images.length > 0) {var numImages = 5; while(images.length > 0 && numImages-- > 0) { document.getElementById(elements.shift()).src = images.shift(); }setTimeout(fetchImages, 5000); }}window.onload = fetchImages; }(['+url1+', '+url2+', '+url3+','+url4+', '+url5+', '+url6+','+url7+', '+url8+', '+url9+','+url10+', '+url11+', '+url12+'], ['ui_taskFormControl$ctl03$ctl00$ctl03$ui_CustomerNameImage', 'ui_taskFormControl$ctl03$ctl00$ctl03$ui_CustomerSurNameImage', 'ui_taskFormControl$ctl03$ctl00$ctl03$ui_MaritalStatusImage','ui_taskFormControl$ctl03$ctl00$ctl03$ui_SexImage','ui_taskFormControl$ctl03$ctl00$ctl03$ui_BirthDateImage','ui_taskFormControl$ctl03$ctl00$ctl03$ui_BirthPlaceCodeImage','ui_taskFormControl$ctl03$ctl00$ctl03$ui_BirthPlaceImage','ui_taskFormControl$ctl03$ctl00$ctl03$ui_IdNationalityImage','ui_taskFormControl$ctl03$ctl00$ctl03$ui_MotherOldSurNameImage','ui_taskFormControl$ctl03$ctl00$ctl03$ui_TaxNoImage','ui_taskFormControl$ctl03$ctl00$ctl03$ui_CitizenshipNoImage','ui_taskFormControl$ctl03$ctl00$ctl03$ui_HomePhoneImage'])); </script> <script> var ui_BirthPlaceCode_a='Intertech.Utility'; var ui_BirthPlaceCode_c='Intertech.Utility.Common'; var ui_BirthPlaceCode_sbn=''; ... .. What do you think is it allright or how can I do that? And according to second question above; the use of the code is correct? ref:** PS: To see my purpose please continue reading below; There is a web site page which is coded on asp.net with using c# and ajax is enabled too. I want a very fast loading web page; which is going to happen with the following architecture; 1- First all data is shown by the text boxes (There are 50 text boxes, it is an application form.) 2- When the web Page is requested and loaded, then I want all the photos are shown near the each text boxes 10 by 10 from top of the page till the end of it. (Each photo is between 5 kb - 20 kb; ) I know ImageHandler's the question is how can I put all these idea into real life? some examples and ideas will be great ! thanks This issue has been answered and you may have a look - here Regards Bk

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• Assembly - Read next sector of a virtual disk

  - by ali

  As any programmer in the world at least once in his/her life, I am trying to create my "revolutionary", the new and only one operating system. :D Well, I am using a virtual emulator (Oracle VM Virtual Box), for which I create a new unknwon operating system, with a vmdk disk. I like vmdk because they are just plain files, so I can paste my boot-loader over the first 512 bytes of the virtual hard disk. Now, I am trying to read the next sector of this virtual disk, on which I would paste a simple kernel that would display a message. I have two questions: Am I reading the second segment (the first -512 bytes- is occupied by the bootloader) correctly? CODE: CitesteDisc: mov bx, 0x8000 ; segment mov es, bx mov bx, 0x0000 ; offset mov ah, 0x02 ; read function mov al, 0x01 ; sectors - this might be wrong, trying to read from hd mov ch, 0x00 ; cylinder mov cl, 0x02 ; sector mov dh, 0x00 ; head mov dl, 0x80 ; drive - trying to read from hd int 0x13 ; disk int mov si, ErrorMessage ; - This will display an error message jc ShowMessage jmp [es:bx] ; buffer Here, I get the error message, after checking CF. However, if I use INT 13, 1 to get last status message, AL is 0 - so no error is saved. Am I pasting my simple kernel in the correct place inside the vmdk? What I do is pasting it after the 512th byte of the file, the first 512 bytes, as I said, are the boot-loader. The file would look like this: BE 45 7C E8 16 00 EB FE B4 0E B7 00 B3 07 CD 10 <- First sector C3 AC 08 C0 74 05 E8 EF FF EB F6 C3 B4 00 B2 80 CD 13 BE 5D 7C 72 F5 BB 00 80 8E C3 BB 00 00 B4 02 B0 06 B5 00 B1 01 B6 00 B2 07 CD 13 BE 4E 7C 72 CF 26 FF 27 57 65 6C 63 6F 6D 65 21 00 52 65 61 64 69 6E 67 20 65 72 72 6F 72 21 00 52 65 73 65 74 74 69 6E 67 20 65 72 72 6F 72 21 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 55 AA <- Boot-loader signature B4 0E B0 2E CD 10 EB FE 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 <- Start of the second sector 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 So, this is the way I am trying to add the kernel to the second sector. What do you think is wrong with this? Thanks!

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• (PHP) Validation, Security and Speed - Does my app have these?

  - by Devner

  Hi all, I am currently working on a building community website in PHP. This contains forms that a user can fill right from registration to lot of other functionality. I am not an Object-oriented guy, so I am using functions most of the time to handle my application. I know I have to learn OOPS, but currently need to develop this website and get it running soon. Anyway, here's a sample of what I let my app. do: Consider a page (register.php) that has a form where a user has 3 fields to fill up, say: First Name, Last Name and Email. Upon submission of this form, I want to validate the form and show the corresponding errors to the users: <form id="form1" name="form1" method="post" action="<?php echo $_SERVER['PHP_SELF']; ?>"> <label for="name">Name:</label> <input type="text" name="name" id="name" /><br /> <label for="lname">Last Name:</label> <input type="text" name="lname" id="lname" /><br /> <label for="email">Email:</label> <input type="text" name="email" id="email" /><br /> <input type="submit" name="submit" id="submit" value="Submit" /> </form> This form will POST the info to the same page. So here's the code that will process the POST'ed info: <?php require("functions.php"); if( isset($_POST['submit']) ) { $errors = fn_register(); if( count($errors) ) { //Show error messages } else { //Send welcome mail to the user or do database stuff... } } ?> <?php //functions.php page: function sql_quote( $value ) { if( get_magic_quotes_gpc() ) { $value = stripslashes( $value ); } else { $value = addslashes( $value ); } if( function_exists( "mysql_real_escape_string" ) ) { $value = mysql_real_escape_string( $value ); } return $value; } function clean($str) { $str = strip_tags($str, '<br>,<br />'); $str = trim($str); $str = sql_quote($str); return $str; } foreach ($_POST as &$value) { if (!is_array($value)) { $value = clean($value); } else { clean($value); } } foreach ($_GET as &$value) { if (!is_array($value)) { $value = clean($value); } else { clean($value); } } function validate_name( $fld, $min, $max, $rule, $label ) { if( $rule == 'required' ) { if ( trim($fld) == '' ) { $str = "$label: Cannot be left blank."; return $str; } } if ( isset($fld) && trim($fld) != '' ) { if ( isset($fld) && $fld != '' && !preg_match("/^[a-zA-Z\ ]+$/", $fld)) { $str = "$label: Invalid characters used! Only Lowercase, Uppercase alphabets and Spaces are allowed"; } else if ( strlen($fld) < $min or strlen($fld) > $max ) { $curr_char = strlen($fld); $str = "$label: Must be atleast $min character &amp; less than $max char. Entered characters: $curr_char"; } else { $str = 0; } } else { $str = 0; } return $str; } function validate_email( $fld, $min, $max, $rule, $label ) { if( $rule == 'required' ) { if ( trim($fld) == '' ) { $str = "$label: Cannot be left blank."; return $str; } } if ( isset($fld) && trim($fld) != '' ) { if ( !eregi('^[a-zA-Z0-9._-]+@[a-zA-Z0-9._-]+\.([a-zA-Z]{2,4})$', $fld) ) { $str = "$label: Invalid format. Please check."; } else if ( strlen($fld) < $min or strlen($fld) > $max ) { $curr_char = strlen($fld); $str = "$label: Must be atleast $min character &amp; less than $max char. Entered characters: $curr_char"; } else { $str = 0; } } else { $str = 0; } return $str; } function val_rules( $str, $val_type, $rule='required' ){ switch ($val_type) { case 'name': $val = validate_name( $str, 3, 20, $rule, 'First Name'); break; case 'lname': $val = validate_name( $str, 10, 20, $rule, 'Last Name'); break; case 'email': $val = validate_email( $str, 10, 60, $rule, 'Email'); break; } return $val; } function fn_register() { $errors = array(); $val_name = val_rules( $_POST['name'], 'name' ); $val_lname = val_rules( $_POST['lname'], 'lname', 'optional' ); $val_email = val_rules( $_POST['email'], 'email' ); if ( $val_name != '0' ) { $errors['name'] = $val_name; } if ( $val_lname != '0' ) { $errors['lname'] = $val_lname; } if ( $val_email != '0' ) { $errors['email'] = $val_email; } return $errors; } //END of functions.php page ?> OK, now it might look like there's a lot, but lemme break it down target wise: 1. I wanted the foreach ($_POST as &$value) and foreach ($_GET as &$value) loops to loop through the received info from the user submission and strip/remove all malicious input. I am calling a function called clean on the input first to achieve the objective as stated above. This function will process each of the input, whether individual field values or even arrays and allow only tags and remove everything else. The rest of it is obvious. Once this happens, the new/cleaned values will be processed by the fn_register() function and based on the values returned after the validation, we get the corresponding errors or NULL values (as applicable). So here's my questions: 1. This pretty much makes me feel secure as I am forcing the user to correct malicious data and won't process the final data unless the errors are corrected. Am I correct? Does the method that I follow guarantee the speed (as I am using lots of functions and their corresponding calls)? The fields of a form differ and the minimum number of fields I may have at any given point of time in any form may be 3 and can go upto as high as 100 (or even more, I am not sure as the website is still being developed). Will having 100's of fields and their validation in the above way, reduce the speed of application (say upto half a million users are accessing the website at the same time?). What can I do to improve the speed and reduce function calls (if possible)? 3, Can I do something to improve the current ways of validation? I am holding off object oriented approach and using FILTERS in PHP for the later. So please, I request you all to suggest me way to improve/tweak the current ways and suggest me if the script is vulnerable or safe enough to be used in a Live production environment. If not, what I can do to be able to use it live? Thank you all in advance.

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