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• CSS Caching and User-CUstomized CSS - Any Suggestions?

  - by Joe

  I'm just trying to figure out the best approach here... my consideration is that I'd like my users to be able to customize the colors of certain elements on the page. These are not pre-made css they can choose from, but rather styles that can be edited using javascript to change the style, so they cannot be "pre-made" into separate style sheets. I am also generating the css into a cache directory since I am generating the css through a PHP script. I am thinking that, perhaps I should: 1) If cached css file doesn't exist, create css file using the website default style settings. 2) If cached css file does exist, check if user has custom settings, if so, edit the cache file before displaying it. Btw, when I refer to "cached file" I mean the PHP generated css document. My goal is to prevent the need to have PHP re-generate the css file each time, whilst still allowing users, when logged in, to have their customized css settings applied. I will store these settings in a database most likely so when they return it is saved for them when they login.

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• Network communication for a turn based board game

  - by randooom

  Hi all, my first question here, so please don't be to harsh if something went wrong :) I'm currently a CS student (from Germany, if this info is of any use ;) ) and we got a, free selectable, programming assignment, which we have to write in a C++/CLI Windows Forms Application. My team, two others and me, decided to go for a network-compatible port of the board game Risk. We divided the work in 3 Parts, namely UI, game logic and network. Now we're on the part where we have to get everything working together and the big question mark is, how to get the clients synchronized with each other? Our approach so far is, that each client has all information necessary to calculate and/or execute all possible actions. Actually the clients have all information available at all, aside from the game-initializing phase (add players, select map, etc.), which needs one "super-client" with some extra stuff to control things. This is the standard scenario of our approach: player performs action, the action is valid and got executed on the players client action is sent over the network action is executed on the other clients The design (i.e. no or code so far) we came up with so far, is something like the following pseudo sequence diagram. Gui, Controller and Network implement all possible actions (i.e. all actions which change data) as methods from an interface. So each part can implement the method in a way to get their job done. Example with Action(): On the player side's Client: Player-->Gui.Action() Gui-->Controller.Action() Controller-->Logic.Action (Logic.Action() == NoError)? Controller-->Network.Action() Network-->Parser.ParseAction() Network.Send(msg) On all other clients: Network.Recv(msg) Network-->Parser.Deparse(msg) Parser-->Logic.Action() Logic-->Gui.Action() The questions: Is this a viable approach to our task? Any better/easier way to this? Recommendations, critique? Our knowledge (so you can better target your answer): We are on the beginner side, in regards to programming on a somewhat larger projects with a small team. All of us have some general programming experience and basic understanding of the .Net Libraries and Windows Forms. If you need any further information, please feel free to ask.

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• redoing object model construction to fit with asynchronous data fetching

  - by Andrew Patterson

  I have a modeled a set of objects that correspond with some real world concepts. TradeDrug, GenericDrug, TradePackage, DrugForm Underlying the simple object model I am trying to provide is a complex medical terminology that uses numeric codes to represent relationships and concepts, all accessible via a REST service - I am trying to hide away some of that complexity with an object wrapper. To give a concrete example I can call TradeDrug d = Searcher.FindTradeDrug("Zoloft") or TradeDrug d = new TradeDrug(34) where 34 might be the code for Zoloft. This will consult a remote server to find out some details about Zoloft. I might then call GenericDrug generic = d.EquivalentGeneric() System.Out.WriteLine(generic.ActiveIngredient().Name) in order to get back the generic drug sertraline as an object (again via a background REST call to the remote server that has all these drug details), and then perhaps find its ingredient. This model works fine and is being used in some applications that involve data processing. Recently however I wanted to do a silverlight application that used and displayed these objects. The silverlight environment only allows asynchronous REST/web service calls. I have no problems with how to make the asychhronous calls - but I am having trouble with what the design should be for my object construction. Currently the constructors for my objects do some REST calls sychronously. public TradeDrug(int code) { form = restclient.FetchForm(code) name = restclient.FetchName(code) etc.. } If I have to use async 'events' or 'actions' in order to use the Silverlight web client (I know silverlight can be forced to be a synchronous client but I am interested in asychronous approaches), does anyone have an guidance or best practice for how to structure my objects. I can pass in an action callback to the constructor public TradeDrug(int code, Action<TradeDrug> constructCompleted) { } but this then allows the user to have a TradeDrug object instance before what I want to construct is actually finished. It also doesn't support an 'event' async pattern because the object doesn't exist to add the event to until it is constructed. Extending that approach might be a factory object that itself has an asynchronous interface to objects factory.GetTradeDrugAsync(code, completedaction) or with a GetTradeDrugCompleted event? Does anyone have any recommendations?

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• Have problems designing input and output for a calculator app

  - by zoul

  Hello! I am writing a button calculator. I have the code split into model, view and a controller. The model knows nothing about formatting, it is only concerned with numbers. All formatting is done in the view. The model gets its input as keypresses, each keypress is a part of an enum: typedef enum { kButtonUnknown = 0, kButtonMemoryClear = 100, kButtonMemoryPlus = 112, kButtonMemoryMinus = 109, kButtonMemoryRecall = 114, kButtonClear = 99, … }; When the user presses a button (say 1), the model receives a button code (kButtonNum1), adds the corresponding number to a string input buffer ("1") and updates the numeric output value (1.0). The controller then passes the numeric output value to the view that formats it (1). This is all plain, simple and clean, but does not really work. The problem is that when user enters a part of a number (say 0.00, going to enter 0.001), the input does not survive the way through model to view and the display says 0 instead of 0.00. I know why this happens ("0.00"::string parses to 0::double and that gets formatted as 0). What I don’t know is how to design the calculator so that the code stays clean and simple and the numbers will show up on screen exactly as the user types them. I’ve already come with some kind of solution, but that’s essentially a hack and breaks the beautiful and simple flow from the calculator model to the display. Ideas? Current solution keeps track of the calculator state. If the calculator is building a number, I take the calculator input buffer (a string) and directly set the display contents (also a string). Otherwise I take the proper path, ie. take the numeric calculator output, pass it to the view as a double and the view uses its internal formatter to create a string for the display. Example input: input | display | mode ------+---------+------------ 0 | 0 | from string 0. | 0. | from string 0.0 | 0.0 | from string 0.0+ | 0 | from number This is ugly. (1) The calculator has to expose its input buffer and state. (2) The view has to expose its display and allow setting its contents directly using a string. (3) I have to duplicate some of the formatting code to format the string I got from the calculator input buffer. If user enters 12345.000, I have to display 12,345.000 and therefore I’ve got to have a commification code for strings. Yuck.

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• java Properties - to expose or not to expose?

  - by ring bearer

  This might be an age old problem and I am sure everyone has their own ways. Suppose I have some properties defined such as secret.user.id=user secret.password=password website.url=http://stackoverflow.com Suppose I have 100 different classes and places where I need to use these properties. Which one is good (1) I create a Util class that will load all properties and serve them using a key constant Such as : Util is a singleton that loads all properties and keeps up on getInstance() call. Util myUtil = Util.getInstance(); String user = myUtil.getConfigByKey(Constants.SECRET_USER_ID); String password = myUtil.getConfigByKey(Constants.SECRET_PASSWORD); .. //getConfigByKey() - inturns invokes properties.get(..) doSomething(user, password) So wherever I need these properties, I can do steps above. (2) I create a meaningful Class to represent these properties; say, ApplicationConfig and provide getters to get specific properties. So above code may look like: ApplicationConfig config = ApplicationConfig.getInstance(); doSomething(config.getSecretUserId(), config.getPassword()); //ApplicationConfig would have instance variables that are initialized during // getInstance() after loading from properties file. Note: The properties file as such will have only minor changes in the future. My personal choice is (2) - let me hear some comments?

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• Any simple approaches for managing customer data change requests for global reference files?

  - by Kelly Duke

  For the first time, I am developing in an environment in which there is a central repository for a number of different industry standard reference data tables and many different customers who need to select records from these industry standard reference data tables to fill in foreign key information for their customer specific records. Because these industry standard reference files are utilized by all customers, I want to reserve Create/Update/Delete access to these records for global product administrators. However, I would like to implement a (semi-)automated interface by which specific customers could request record additions, deletions or modifications to any of the industry standard reference files that are shared among all customers. I know I need something like a "data change request" table specifying: user id, user request datetime, request type (insert, modify, delete), a user entered text explanation of the change request, the user request's current status (pending, declined, completed), admin resolution datetime, admin id, an admin entered text description of the resolution, etc. What I can't figure out is how to elegantly handle the fact that these data change requests could apply to dozens of different tables with differing table column definitions. I would like to give the customer users making these data change requests a convenient way to enter their proposed record additions/modifications directly into CRUD screens that look very much like the reference table CRUD screens they don't have write/delete permissions for (with an additional text explanation and perhaps request priority field). I would also like to give the global admins a tool that allows them to view all the outstanding data change requests for the users they oversee sorted by date requested or user/date requested. Upon selecting a data change request record off the list, the admin would be directed to another CRUD screen that would be populated with the fields the customer users requested for the new/modified industry standard reference table record along with customer's text explanation, the request status and the text resolution explanation field. At this point the admin could accept/edit/reject the requested change and if accepted the affected industry standard reference file would be automatically updated with the appropriate fields and the data change request record's status, text resolution explanation and resolution datetime would all also be appropriately updated. However, I want to keep the actual production reference tables as simple as possible and free from these extraneous and typically null customer change request fields. I'd also like the data change request file to aggregate all data change requests across all the reference tables yet somehow "point to" the specific reference table and primary key in question for modification & deletion requests or the specific reference table and associated customer user entered field values in question for record creation requests. Does anybody have any ideas of how to design something like this effectively? Is there a cleaner, simpler way I am missing? Thank you so much for reading.

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• How can I model the data in a multi-language data editor in WPF with MVVM?

  - by Patrick Szalapski

  Are there any good practices to follow when designing a model/ViewModel to represent data in an app that will view/edit that data in multiple languages? Our top-level class--let's call it Course--contains several collection properties, say Books and TopicsCovered, which each might have a collection property among its data. For example, the data needs to represent course1.Books.First().Title in different languages, and course1.TopicsCovered.First().Name in different languages. We want a app that can edit any of the data for one given course in any of the available languages--as well as edit non-language-specific data, perhaps the Author of a Book (i.e. course1.Books.First().Author). We are having trouble figuring out how best to set up the model to enable binding in the XAML view. For example, do we replace (in the single-language model) each String with a collection of LanguageSpecificString instances? So to get the author in the current language: course1.Books.First().Author.Where(Function(a) a.Language = CurrentLanguage).SingleOrDefault If we do that, we cannot easily bind to any value in one given language, only to the collection of language values such as in an ItemsControl. <TextBox Text={Binding Author.???} /> <!-- no way to bind to the current language author --> Do we replace the top-level Course class with a collection of language-specific Courses? So to get the author in the current language: course1.GetLanguage(CurrentLanguage).Books.First.Author If we do that, we can only easily work with one language at a time; we might want a view to show one language and let the user edit the other. <TextBox Text={Binding Author} /> <!-- good --> <TextBlock Text={Binding ??? } /> <!-- no way to bind to the other language author --> Also, that has the disadvantage of not representing language-neutral data as such; every property (such as Author) would seem to be in multiple languages. Even non-string properties would be in multiple languages. Is there an option in between those two? Is there another way that we aren't thinking of? I realize this is somewhat vague, but it would seem to be a somewhat common problem to design for. Note: This is not a question about providing a multilingual UI, but rather about actually editing multi-language data in a flexible way.

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• Architecting ASP.net MVC App to use repositories and services

  - by zaladane

  Hello, I recently started reading about ASP.net MVC and after getting excited about the concept, i started to migrate all my webform project to MVC but i am having a hard time keeping my controller skinny even after following all the good advices out there (or maybe i just don't get it ... ). The website i deal with has Articles, Videos, Quotes ... and each of these entities have categories, comments, images that can be associated with it. I am using Linq to sql for database operations and for each of these Entities, i have a Repository, and for each repository, i create a service to be used in the controller. so i have - ArticleRepository ArticleCategoryRepository ArticleCommentRepository and the corresponding service ArticleService ArticleCategoryService ... you see the picture. The problem i have is that i have one controller for article,category and comment because i thought that having ArticleController handle all of that might make sense, but now i have to pass all of the services needed to the Controller constructor. So i would like to know what it is that i am doing wrong. Are my services not designed properly? should i create Bigger service to encapsulate smaller services and use them in my controller? or should i have an articleCategory Controller and an articleComment Controller? A page viewed by the user is made of all of that, thee article to be viewed,the comments associated with it, a listing of the categories to witch it applies ... how can i efficiently break down the controller to keep it "skinny" and solve my headache? Thank you! I hope my question is not too long to be read ...

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• How can i convert this to a factory/abstract factory?

  - by Amitd

  I'm using MigraDoc to create a pdf document. I have business entities similar to the those used in MigraDoc. public class Page{ public List<PageContent> Content { get; set; } } public abstract class PageContent { public int Width { get; set; } public int Height { get; set; } public Margin Margin { get; set; } } public class Paragraph : PageContent{ public string Text { get; set; } } public class Table : PageContent{ public int Rows { get; set; } public int Columns { get; set; } //.... more } In my business logic, there are rendering classes for each type public interface IPdfRenderer<T> { T Render(MigraDoc.DocumentObjectModel.Section s); } class ParagraphRenderer : IPdfRenderer<MigraDoc.DocumentObjectModel.Paragraph> { BusinessEntities.PDF.Paragraph paragraph; public ParagraphRenderer(BusinessEntities.PDF.Paragraph p) { paragraph = p; } public MigraDoc.DocumentObjectModel.Paragraph Render(MigraDoc.DocumentObjectModel.Section s) { var paragraph = s.AddParagraph(); // add text from paragraph etc return paragraph; } } public class TableRenderer : IPdfRenderer<MigraDoc.DocumentObjectModel.Tables.Table> { BusinessEntities.PDF.Table table; public TableRenderer(BusinessEntities.PDF.Table t) { table =t; } public MigraDoc.DocumentObjectModel.Tables.Table Render(Section obj) { var table = obj.AddTable(); //fill table based on table } } I want to create a PDF page as : var document = new Document(); var section = document.AddSection();// section is a page in pdf var page = GetPage(1); // get a page from business classes foreach (var content in page.Content) { //var renderer = createRenderer(content); // // get Renderer based on Business type ?? // renderer.Render(section) } For createRenderer() i can use switch case/dictionary and return type. How can i get/create the renderer generically based on type ? How can I use factory or abstract factory here? Or which design pattern better suits this problem?

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• Designing a general database interface in PHP

  - by lamas

  I'm creating a small framework for my web projects in PHP so I don't have to do the basic work over and over again for every new website. It is not my goal to create a second CakePHP or Codeigniter and I'm also not planning to build my websites with any of the available frameworks as I prefer to use things I've created myself in general. I have no problems in designing that framework when it comes to parts like the core structure, request handling, and so on but I'm getting stuck with designing the database interface for my modules. I've already thought about using the MVC pattern but thought that it would be a bit of a overkill. So the exact problem I'm facing is how my frameworks modules (viewCustomers could be a module, for example) should interact with the database. Is it a good idea to write SQL directly in PHP (mysql_query( 'SELECT firstname, lastname(.....))? How could I abstract a query like SELECT firstname, lastname FROM customers WHERE id=X Would MySQL helper functions like $this->db->get( array('firstname', 'lastname'), array('id'=>X) ) be a good idea? I suppose not because they actually make everything more complicated by requiring arrays to be created and passed. Is the Model pattern from MVC my only real option?

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• Discovering a functional algorithm from a mutable one

  - by Garrett Rowe

  This isn't necessarily a Scala question, it's a design question that has to do with avoiding mutable state, functional thinking and that sort. It just happens that I'm using Scala. Given this set of requirements: Input comes from an essentially infinite stream of random numbers between 1 and 10 Final output is either SUCCEED or FAIL There can be multiple objects 'listening' to the stream at any particular time, and they can begin listening at different times so they all may have a different concept of the 'first' number; therefore listeners to the stream need to be decoupled from the stream itself. Pseudocode: if (first number == 1) SUCCEED else if (first number >= 9) FAIL else { first = first number rest = rest of stream for each (n in rest) { if (n == 1) FAIL else if (n == first) SUCCEED else continue } } Here is a possible mutable implementation: sealed trait Result case object Fail extends Result case object Succeed extends Result case object NoResult extends Result class StreamListener { private var target: Option[Int] = None def evaluate(n: Int): Result = target match { case None => if (n == 1) Succeed else if (n >= 9) Fail else { target = Some(n) NoResult } case Some(t) => if (n == t) Succeed else if (n == 1) Fail else NoResult } } This will work but smells to me. StreamListener.evaluate is not referentially transparent. And the use of the NoResult token just doesn't feel right. It does have the advantage though of being clear and easy to use/code. Besides there has to be a functional solution to this right? I've come up with 2 other possible options: Having evaluate return a (possibly new) StreamListener, but this means I would have to make Result a subtype of StreamListener which doesn't feel right. Letting evaluate take a Stream[Int] as a parameter and letting the StreamListener be in charge of consuming as much of the Stream as it needs to determine failure or success. The problem I see with this approach is that the class that registers the listeners should query each listener after each number is generated and take appropriate action immediately upon failure or success. With this approach, I don't see how that could happen since each listener is forcing evaluation of the Stream until it completes evaluation. There is no concept here of a single number generation. Is there any standard scala/fp idiom I'm overlooking here?

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• OOP - Handling Automated Instances of a Class - PHP

  - by dscher

  This is a topic that, as a beginner to PHP and programming, sort of perplexes me. I'm building a stockmarket website and want users to add their own stocks. I can clearly see the benefit of having each stock be a class instance with all the methods of a class. What I am stumped on is the best way to give that instance a name when I instantiate it. If I have: class Stock() { ....doing stuff..... } what is the best way to give my instances of it a name. Obviously I can write: $newStock = new Stock(); $newStock.getPrice(); or whatever, but if a user adds a stock via the app, where can the name of that instance come from? I guess that there is little harm in always creating a new child with $newStock = new Stock() and then storing that to the DB which leads me to my next question! What would be the best way to retrieve 20 user stocks(for example) into instances of class Stock()? Do I need to instantiate 20 new instances of class Stock() every time the user logs in or is there something I'm missing? I hope someone answers this and more important hope a bunch of people answer this and it somehow helps someone else who is having a hard time wrapping their head around what probably leads to a really elegant solution. Thanks guys!

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• Populating a foreign key table with variable user input

  - by Vincent

  I'm working on a website that will be based on user contributed data, submitted using a regular HTML form. To simplify my question, let's say that there will be two fields in the form: "User Name" and "Country" (this is just an example, not the actual site). There will be two tables in the database : "countries" and "users," with "users.country_id" being a foreign key to the "countries" table (one-to-many). The initial database will be empty. Users from all over the world will submit their names and the countries they live in and eventually the "countries" table will get filled out with all of the country names in the world. Since one country can have several alternative names, input like Chile, Chili, Chilli will generate 3 different records in the countries table, but in fact there is only one country. When I search for records from Chile, Chili and Chilli will not be included. So my question is - what would be the best way to deal with a situation like this, with conditions such that the initial database is empty, no other resources are available and everything is based on user input? How can I organize it in such way that Chile, Chili and Chilli would be treated as one country, with minimum manual interference. What are the best practices when it comes to normalizing user submitted data and is there a scientific term for this? I'm sure this is a common problem. Again, I used country names just to simplify my question, it can be anything that has possible different spellings.

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• Is it ok to dynamic cast "this" as a return value?

  - by Panayiotis Karabassis

  This is more of a design question. I have a template class, and I want to add extra methods to it depending on the template type. To practice the DRY principle, I have come up with this pattern (definitions intentionally omitted): template <class T> class BaseVector: public boost::array<T, 3> { protected: BaseVector<T>(const T x, const T y, const T z); public: bool operator == (const Vector<T> &other) const; Vector<T> operator + (const Vector<T> &other) const; Vector<T> operator - (const Vector<T> &other) const; Vector<T> &operator += (const Vector<T> &other) { (*this)[0] += other[0]; (*this)[1] += other[1]; (*this)[2] += other[2]; return *dynamic_cast<Vector<T> * const>(this); } } template <class T> class Vector : public BaseVector<T> { public: Vector<T>(const T x, const T y, const T z) : BaseVector<T>(x, y, z) { } }; template <> class Vector<double> : public BaseVector<double> { public: Vector<double>(const double x, const double y, const double z); Vector<double>(const Vector<int> &other); double norm() const; }; I intend BaseVector to be nothing more than an implementation detail. This works, but I am concerned about operator+=. My question is: is the dynamic cast of the this pointer a code smell? Is there a better way to achieve what I am trying to do (avoid code duplication, and unnecessary casts in the user code)? Or am I safe since, the BaseVector constructor is private?

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• translating specifications into query predicates

  - by Jeroen

  I'm trying to find a nice and elegant way to query database content based on DDD "specifications". In domain driven design, a specification is used to check if some object, also known as the candidate, is compliant to a (domain specific) requirement. For example, the specification 'IsTaskDone' goes like: class IsTaskDone extends Specification<Task> { boolean isSatisfiedBy(Task candidate) { return candidate.isDone(); } } The above specification can be used for many purposes, e.g. it can be used to validate if a task has been completed, or to filter all completed tasks from a collection. However, I want to re-use this, nice, domain related specification to query on the database. Of course, the easiest solution would be to retrieve all entities of our desired type from the database, and filter that list in-memory by looping and removing non-matching entities. But clearly that would not be optimal for performance, especially when the entity count in our db increases. Proposal So my idea is to create a 'ConversionManager' that translates my specification into a persistence technique specific criteria, think of the JPA predicate class. The services looks as follows: public interface JpaSpecificationConversionManager { <T> Predicate getPredicateFor(Specification<T> specification, Root<T> root, CriteriaQuery<?> cq, CriteriaBuilder cb); JpaSpecificationConversionManager registerConverter(JpaSpecificationConverter<?, ?> converter); } By using our manager, the users can register their own conversion logic, isolating the domain related specification from persistence specific logic. To minimize the configuration of our manager, I want to use annotations on my converter classes, allowing the manager to automatically register those converters. JPA repository implementations could then use my manager, via dependency injection, to offer a find by specification method. Providing a find by specification should drastically reduce the number of methods on our repository interface. In theory, this all sounds decent, but I feel like I'm missing something critical. What do you guys think of my proposal, does it comply to the DDD way of thinking? Or is there already a framework that does something identical to what I just described?

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• Event feed implementation - will it scale?

  - by SlappyTheFish

  Situation: I am currently designing a feed system for a social website whereby each user has a feed of their friends' activities. I have two possible methods how to generate the feeds and I would like to ask which is best in terms of ability to scale. Events from all users are collected in one central database table, event_log. Users are paired as friends in the table friends. The RDBMS we are using is MySQL. Standard method: When a user requests their feed page, the system generates the feed by inner joining event_log with friends. The result is then cached and set to timeout after 5 minutes. Scaling is achieved by varying this timeout. Hypothesised method: A task runs in the background and for each new, unprocessed item in event_log, it creates entries in the database table user_feed pairing that event with all of the users who are friends with the user who initiated the event. One table row pairs one event with one user. The problems with the standard method are well known – what if a lot of people's caches expire at the same time? The solution also does not scale well – the brief is for feeds to update as close to real-time as possible The hypothesised solution in my eyes seems much better; all processing is done offline so no user waits for a page to generate and there are no joins so database tables can be sharded across physical machines. However, if a user has 100,000 friends and creates 20 events in one session, then that results in inserting 2,000,000 rows into the database. Question: The question boils down to two points: Is this worst-case scenario mentioned above problematic, i.e. does table size have an impact on MySQL performance and are there any issues with this mass inserting of data for each event? Is there anything else I have missed?

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• Foreign key pointing to different tables

  - by Álvaro G. Vicario

  I'm implementing a table per subclass design I discussed in a previous question. It's a product database where products can have very different attributes depending on their type, but attributes are fixed for each type and types are not manageable at all. I have a master table that holds common attributes: product_type ============ product_type_id INT product_type_name VARCHAR E.g.: 1 'Magazine' 2 'Web site' product ======= product_id INT product_name VARCHAR product_type_id INT -> Foreign key to product_type.product_type_id valid_since DATETIME valid_to DATETIME E.g. 1 'Foo Magazine' 1 '1998-12-01' NULL 2 'Bar Weekly Review' 1 '2005-01-01' NULL 3 'E-commerce App' 2 '2009-10-15' NULL 4 'CMS' 2 '2010-02-01' NULL ... and one subtable for each product type: item_magazine ============= item_magazine_id INT title VARCHAR product_id INT -> Foreign key to product.product_id issue_number INT pages INT copies INT close_date DATETIME release_date DATETIME E.g. 1 'Foo Magazine Regular Issue' 1 89 52 150000 '2010-06-25' '2010-06-31' 2 'Foo Magazine Summer Special' 1 90 60 175000 '2010-07-25' '2010-07-31' 3 'Bar Weekly Review Regular Issue' 2 12 16 20000 '2010-06-01' '2010-06-02' item_web_site ============= item_web_site_id INT name VARCHAR product_id INT -> Foreign key to product.product_id bandwidth INT hits INT date_from DATETIME date_to DATETIME E.g. 1 'The Carpet Store' 3 10 90000 '2010-06-01' NULL 2 'Penauts R Us' 3 20 180000 '2010-08-01' NULL 3 'Springfield Cattle Fair' 4 15 150000 '2010-05-01' '2010-10-31' Now I want to add some fees that relate to one specific item. Since there are very little subtypes, it's feasible to do this: fee === fee_id INT fee_description VARCHAR item_magazine_id INT -> Foreign key to item_magazine.item_magazine_id item_web_site_id INT -> Foreign key to item_web_site.item_web_site_id net_price DECIMAL E.g.: 1 'Front cover' 2 NULL 1999.99 2 'Half page' 2 NULL 500.00 3 'Square banner' NULL 3 790.50 4 'Animation' NULL 3 2000.00 I have tight foreign keys to handle cascaded editions and I presume I can add a constraint so only one of the IDs is NOT NULL. However, my intuition suggests that it would be cleaner to get rid of the item_WHATEVER_id columns and keep a separate table: fee_to_item =========== fee_id INT -> Foreign key to fee.fee_id product_id INT -> Foreign key to product.product_id item_id INT -> ??? But I can't figure out how to create foreign keys on item_id since the source table varies depending on product_id. Should I stick to my original idea?

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• Grid sorting with persistent master sort

  - by MikeWyatt

  I have a UI with a grid. Each record in the grid is sorted by a "master" sort column, let's call it a page number. Each record is a story in a magazine. I want the user to be able to drag and drop a record to a new position in the grid and automatically update the page number field to reflect the updated position. Easy enough, right? Now imagine that I also want to have the grid sortable by any other column (story title, section, author name, etc.). How does the drag and drop operation work now? Revert to page number sort during or after the drag and drop operation? This could confuse the user (why did my sort just change?). It would also result in arbitrary row positioning. Would the story now be before the row that was after it when the user dropped it? Or, would it be after the row that was before it? Those rows may now be widely separated after the master order sort. Disable the drag and drop feature if the grid isn't currently sorted by the page number? This would be easy, but the user might wonder why he can't drag and drop at certain times. Knowing to first sort by page number may not be very intuitive. Let the user rearrange his rows, but not make any changes to the page number? Require the user to enter a "Arrange Stories" mode, in which the grid sort is temporarily switched to page number and drag and drop is enabled? They would then exit the mode, and the previous sort would be reapplied. The big difference between this and the second option is that it would be more explicit than simply clicking on a column header. Any other ideas, or reasons why one of the above is the way to go? EDIT I'd like to point out that any of the above is technically possible, and easy to implement. My question is design-related. What is the most intuitive way to solve this problem, from the user's perspective?

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• Are there any modern GUI toolkits which implement a heirarchical menu buffer zone?

  - by scomar

  In Bruce Tognazzini's quiz on Fitt's Law, the question discussing the bottleneck in the hierarchical menu (as used in almost every modern desktop UI), talks about his design for the original Mac: The bottleneck is the passage between the first-level menu and the second-level menu. Users first slide the mouse pointer down to the category menu item. Then, they must carefully slide the mouse directly across (horizontally) in order to move the pointer into the secondary menu. The engineer who originally designed hierarchicals apparently had his forearm mounted on a track so that he could move it perfectly in a horizontal direction without any vertical component. Most of us, however, have our forarms mounted on a pivot we like to call our elbow. That means that moving our hand describes an arc, rather than a straight line. Demanding that pivoted people move a mouse pointer along in a straight line horizontally is just wrong. We are naturally going to slip downward even as we try to slide sideways. When we are not allowed to slip downward, the menu we're after is going to slam shut just before we get there. The Windows folks tried to overcome the pivot problem with a hack: If they see the user move down into range of the next item on the primary menu, they don't instantly close the second-level menu. Instead, they leave it open for around a half second, so, if users are really quick, they can be inaccurate but still get into the second-level menu before it slams shut. Unfortunately, people's reactions to heightened chance of error is to slow down, rather than speed up, a well-established phenomenon. Therefore, few users will ever figure out that moving faster could solve their problem. Microsoft's solution is exactly wrong. When I specified the Mac hierarchical menu algorthm in the mid-'80s, I called for a buffer zone shaped like a <, so that users could make an increasingly-greater error as they neared the hierarchical without fear of jumping to an unwanted menu. As long as the user's pointer was moving a few pixels over for every one down, on average, the menu stayed open, no matter how slow they moved. (Cancelling was still really easy; just deliberately move up or down.) This just blew me away! Such a simple idea which would result in a huge improvement in usability. I'm sure I'm not the only one who regularly has the next level of a menu slam shut because I don't move the mouse pointer in a perfectly horizontal line. So my question is: Are there any modern UI toolkits which implement this brilliant idea of a < shaped buffer zone in hierarchical menus? And if not, why not?!

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• When does logic belong in the Business Object/Entity, and when does it belong in a Service?

  - by Casey

  In trying to understand Domain Driven Design I keep returning to a question that I can't seem to definitively answer. How do you determine what logic belongs to a Domain entity, and what logic belongs to a Domain Service? Example: We have an Order class for an online store. This class is an entity and an aggregate root (it contains OrderItems). Public Class Order:IOrder { Private List<IOrderItem> OrderItems Public Order(List<IOrderItem>) { OrderItems = List<IOrderItem> } Public Decimal CalculateTotalItemWeight() //This logic seems to belong in the entity. { Decimal TotalWeight = 0 foreach(IOrderItem OrderItem in OrderItems) { TotalWeight += OrderItem.Weight } return TotalWeight } } I think most people would agree that CalculateTotalItemWeight belongs on the entity. However, at some point we have to ship this order to the customer. To accomplish this we need to do two things: 1) Determine the postage rate necessary to ship this order. 2) Print a shipping label after determining the postage rate. Both of these actions will require dependencies that are outside the Order entity, such as an external webservice to retrieve postage rates. How should we accomplish these two things? I see a few options: 1) Code the logic directly in the domain entity, like CalculateTotalItemWeight. We then call: Order.GetPostageRate Order.PrintLabel 2) Put the logic in a service that accepts IOrder. We then call: PostageService.GetPostageRate(Order) PrintService.PrintLabel(Order) 3) Create a class for each action that operates on an Order, and pass an instance of that class to the Order through Constructor Injection (this is a variation of option 1 but allows reuse of the RateRetriever and LabelPrinter classes): Public Class Order:IOrder { Private List<IOrderItem> OrderItems Private RateRetriever _Retriever Private LabelPrinter _Printer Public Order(List<IOrderItem>, RateRetriever Retriever, LabelPrinter Printer) { OrderItems = List<IOrderItem> _Retriever = Retriever _Printer = Printer } Public Decimal GetPostageRate { _Retriever.GetPostageRate(this) } Public void PrintLabel { _Printer.PrintLabel(this) } } Which one of these methods do you choose for this logic, if any? What is the reasoning behind your choice? Most importantly, is there a set of guidelines that led you to your choice?

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• Is it okay to rely on javascript for menu layout?

  - by Ryan

  I have a website template where I do not know the number of menu items or the size of the menu items that will be required. The js below works exactly the way I want it to, however this is the most js I've every written. Are there any disadvantages or potential problems with this method that I'm not aware of because I'm a js beginner? I'm currently manually setting the padding for each site. Thank you! var width_of_text = 0; var number_of_li = 0; // measure the width of each <li> and add it to the total with, increment li counter $('li').each(function() { width_of_text += $(this).width(); number_of_li++; }); // calculate the space between <li>'s so the space is equal var padding = Math.floor((900 - width_of_text)/(number_of_li - 1)); // add the padding the all but the first <li> $('li').each(function(index) { if (index !== 0) { $(this).css("padding-left", padding); } });

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• Separation of business logic

  - by bruno

  When I was optimizing my architecture of our applications in our website, I came to a problem that I don't know the best solution for. Now at the moment we have a small dll based on this structure: Database <-> DAL <-> BLL the Dal uses Business Objects to pass to the BLL that will pass it to the applications that uses this dll. Only the BLL is public so any application that includes this dll, can see the bll. In the beginning, this was a good solution for our company. But when we are adding more and more applications on that Dll, the bigger the Bll is getting. Now we dont want that some applications can see Bll-logic from other applications. Now I don't know what the best solution is for that. The first thing I thought was, move and separate the bll to other dll's which i can include in my application. But then must the Dal be public, so the other dll's can get the data... and that I seems like a good solution. My other solution, is just to separate the bll in different namespaces, and just include only the namespaces you need in the applications. But in this solution, you can get directly access to other bll's if you want. So I'm asking for your opinions.

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• Database tables with dynamic information

  - by Tim Fennis

  I've googled this and found that it's almost impossible to create a database with dynamic collumns. I'll explain my problem first. I am making a webshop for a customer. It has multiple computer products for sale. CPU's HDD's RAM ect. All these products have different properties, a CPU has an FSB, RAM has a CAS latency. But this is very inconvenient because my orders table needs foreign keys to different tables which is impossible. An other option is to store all the product specific information in a varchar or blob field and let PHP figure it out. The problem with this solution is that the website needs a PC builder. A step-by-step guide to building your PC. So for instance if a customer decides he wants a new "i7 920" or whatever i want to be able to sellect all motherboards for socket 1366, which is impossible because all the data is stored in one field. I know it's possible to select all motherboards form the DB and let PHP figure out which ones are for socket 1366 but i was wondering, is there a better solution?

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• Best way to store this data?

  - by Malfist

  I have just been assigned to renovate an old website, and I get to move it from some old archaic system to drupal. The only problem is that it's a real-estate system and a lot of data is stored. Currently all the information is stored in a single table, an id represents the house and then everything else is key/value pairs. There are a possible 243 keys per estate, there are 23840 estates in the system. As you can imagine the system is slow and difficult to query. I don't think a table with 243 rows would be a very good idea, and probably worse than the current situation. I've done some investigating and here's what I've found out: Missing data does not indicate a 0 value, data is merged from two, unique sources/formats. Some guessing is involved. I have no control over the source of the data. There are 4 keys that are common to all estates, all values look like something that is commonly searched for and could be indexed There are 10 keys that are in the [90-100)% range 8 of these are information like who's selling it, and it's address. The other two seem to belong with the below range There are 80 keys that are in the [80-90)% range This range seems to mostly just list room types and how many the house has (e.g. bedrooms_possible, bathrooms, family_room_3rd, etc) This range also includes some minor information like school districts, one or two more pieces of data on the address. The 179 keys that are in the [0-80)% range include all sorts of miscellaneous information about the estate My best idea was a hybrid approach, create a table that stores important, common information and keep a smaller key/value table. How would you store this information?

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• Contructor parameters for dependent classes with Unity Framework

  - by Onisemus

  I just started using the Unity Application Block to try to decouple my classes and make it easier for unit testing. I ran into a problem though that I'm not sure how to get around. Looked through the documentation and did some Googling but I'm coming up dry. Here's the situation: I have a facade-type class which is a chat bot. It is a singleton class which handles all sort of secondary classes and provides a central place to launch and configure the bot. I also have a class called AccessManager which, well, manages access to bot commands and resources. Boiled down to the essence, I have the classes set up like so. public class Bot { public string Owner { get; private set; } public string WorkingDirectory { get; private set; } private IAccessManager AccessManager; private Bot() { // do some setup // LoadConfig sets the Owner & WorkingDirectory variables LoadConfig(); // init the access mmanager AccessManager = new MyAccessManager(this); } public static Bot Instance() { // singleton code } ... } And the AccessManager class: public class MyAccessManager : IAccessManager { private Bot botReference; public MyAccesManager(Bot botReference) { this.botReference = botReference; SetOwnerAccess(botReference.Owner); } private void LoadConfig() { string configPath = Path.Combine( botReference.WorkingDirectory, "access.config"); // do stuff to read from config file } ... } I would like to change this design to use the Unity Application Block. I'd like to use Unity to generate the Bot singleton and to load the AccessManager interface in some sort of bootstrapping method that runs before anything else does. public static void BootStrapSystem() { IUnityContainer container = new UnityContainer(); // create new bot instance Bot newBot = Bot.Instance(); // register bot instance container.RegisterInstance<Bot>(newBot); // register access manager container.RegisterType<IAccessManager,MyAccessManager>(newBot); } And when I want to get a reference to the Access Manager inside the Bot constructor I can just do: IAcessManager accessManager = container.Resolve<IAccessManager>(); And elsewhere in the system to get a reference to the Bot singleton: // do this Bot botInstance = container.Resolve<Bot>(); // instead of this Bot botInstance = Bot.Instance(); The problem is the method BootStrapSystem() is going to blow up. When I create a bot instance it's going to try to resolve IAccessManager but won't be able to because I haven't registered the types yet (that's the next line). But I can't move the registration in front of the Bot creation because as part of the registration I need to pass the Bot as a parameter! Circular dependencies!! Gah!!! This indicates to me I have a flaw in the way I have this structured. But how do I fix it? Help!!

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