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  • Posting form using javascript and json with nested objects

    - by Tim
    I have an html form that has the following structure: <input type="text" name="title" /> <input type="text" name="persons[0].name" /> <input type="text" name="persons[0].color" /> <input type="text" name="persons[1].name" /> <input type="text" name="persons[1].color" /> I would like to serialize this into the following json: { "title":"titlecontent", "persons":[ { "name":"person0name", "color":"red" }, { "name":"person1name", "color":"blue" } ] } Notice that the number of persons can vary from case to case. The structure of the html form can change, but the structure of the submitted json can't. How is this done the easiest?

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  • Pass a variable from javascript to php in the same session OnClickFunction

    - by MickyScion
    I was seeing through stackoverflow the solutions for this kind of problems but any of them are executing the code of javascript in the same session...please i want some help with this...i have this in my session <script> function show_alert() { var ProdAntes = document.getElementById("productoseleccionado").value; var CantAntes = document.getElementById("cantidadantes").value; var PrecAntes = document.getElementById("precioantes").value; var FecAntes = document.getElementById("fechaantes").value; var ProdAhora = document.getElementById("SoyaProductorProduccionProducto").value; var CantAhora = document.getElementById("SoyaProductorProduccionCantidadtm").value; var PrecAhora = document.getElementById("SoyaProductorProduccionPreciodolar").value; var FecAhora = document.getElementById("select_date").value; } </script> and in my html stuff i have this <?php echo $this->Form->create('SoyaProductorProduccion');?> <fieldset> <?php echo $this->Form->hidden('id', array('value' => $this->data['SoyaProductorProduccion']['id'])); echo $this->Form->input('operacion', array('type' => 'hidden', 'value'=>'Produccion')); //-------------------------------------------------------------- $productoseleccionado = $this->data['SoyaProductorProduccion']['producto']; echo $this->Form->input('productoseleccionado', array('type' => 'hidden','style'=>'width:500px; height:30px;','id' => 'productoseleccionado' , 'value' => $productoseleccionado)); echo $this->Form->input('producto', array( 'options' => array( $productoseleccionado => $productoseleccionado, 'Torta solvente de soya' => 'Torta solvente de soya', 'Torta solvente de girasol' => 'Torta solvente de girasol', 'Harina integral de soya' => 'Harina integral de soya', 'Harina de girasol' => 'Harina de girasol', 'Cascarilla de soya' => 'Cascarilla de soya', 'Cascarilla de girasol' => 'Cascarilla de girasol', 'Aceite de soya refinado' => 'Aceite de soya refinado', 'Aceite de soya crudo' => 'Aceite de soya crudo', 'Aceite de girasol refinado' => 'Aceite de girasol refinado', 'Aceite de girasol crudo' => 'Aceite de girasol crudo', ),'label'=>'Tipo de Producto' )); foreach ($soyacambiodolares as $soyacambiodolar): $dolar=$soyacambiodolar['SoyaCambioDolar']['cambio']; endforeach; echo $this->Form->input('cambio', array('type' => 'hidden','value' => $dolar)); //----------------------------------------------------------------------------- $cantidadantes = $this->data['SoyaProductorProduccion']['cantidadtm']; echo $this->Form->input('cantidadantes', array('type' => 'hidden','style'=>'width:500px; height:30px;', 'value' => $cantidadantes,'id' => 'cantidadantes')); echo $this->Form->input('cantidadtm', array('label' => 'Cantidad en tonelada(s) métrica(s) del producto (TM)','style'=>'width:500px; height:30px;')); //----------------------------------------------------------------------------- $precioantes = $this->data['SoyaProductorProduccion']['preciodolar']; echo $this->Form->input('precioantes', array('type' => 'hidden','style'=>'width:500px; height:30px;', 'value' => $precioantes,'id' => 'precioantes')); echo $this->Form->input('preciodolar', array('label' => 'Precio en Dolares Americanos por tonelada métrica (TM / $us)','style'=>'width:500px; height:30px;')); //----------------------------------------------------------------------------- ?> <table style="width: 600px"> <tr> <td > <?php //---------------------------------------------------------------- $fechaantes = $this->data['SoyaProductorProduccion']['fecharegistro']; echo $this->Form->input('fechaantes', array('type' => 'hidden','style'=>'width:500px; height:30px;', 'value' => $fechaantes, 'id' => 'fechaantes')); //---------------------------------------------------------------- echo $this->Form->input("fecharegistro", array( 'label' => '<strong>Periodo al que corresponde la declaración</strong>', 'type' => 'text', 'style' => 'width: 110px', 'class' => 'fl tal vat w300p', 'error' => false , 'id' => 'select_date')); ?> <?php echo $this->Html->div('datepicker_img w100p fl pl460p pa', $this->Html->image('datepicker_calendar_icon.gif'),array('id' => 'datepicker_img')); ?> <?php echo $this->Html->div('datepicker fl pl460p pa', ' ' ,array('id' => 'datepicker')); ?> </td> </tr> </table> <?php echo $this->Form->submit('Modificar Existencia', array('class' => 'form-submit', 'title' => 'Presione aqui para agregar datos', 'onclick' => 'return show_alert();')); ?> </fieldset> <?php echo $this->Form->end(); ?> my function is ok but i want these: when i click the submit button i want to compare wich field had been changed, and i want to create a chain of detailed changes like "change in the field 1, change in the fiel 2.--" and so on...and this has to be saved in my database so i have to pass to a variable in my php before saving...thanks!

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  • jQuery: manipulating through children to check the checkbox in a table row

    - by gsquare567
    $("tr.clickable").each(function() {$(this).click(function() { $(this).children("td:first > input").is(":checked") ? $(this).children("td:first > input").removeAttr("checked") : $(this).children("td:first > input").attr("checked","checked"); })}); this only checks the first row in my table (no matter which row i click on). how can i apply it so that it checks the input on the specific row i click on? thanks! HTML: <tr id="row0" class="alternate clickable"> <td><img width="11" height="11" title="This email failed to send." alt="Failed" src="images/error_warning.png"><br> <input type="checkbox" value="6751" name="emailCheck[]" class="emailCheck"> </td>...

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  • What is the equivalent of PHP's $_POST in a Perl CGI script and how can I use it?

    - by dexter
    I have two Perl files: action.pl and the other is test.pl action.pl has a form: print $cgi->header, <<html; <form action="test.pl" method="post"> html while (my @row = $sth->fetchrow) { print $cgi->header, <<html; ID:<input name="pid" value="@row[0]" readonly="true"/><br/> Name: <input name="pname" value="@row[1]"/><br/> Description : <input name="pdescription" value="@row[2]"/><br/> Unit Price :<input name="punitprice" value="@row[3]"/><br/> html } print $cgi->header, <<html <input type="submit" value="update Row"> </form> html What should I write in test.pl so as to access the form values submitted by the user? In other words, what equivalent of PHP's $_POST['pid'] in Perl?

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  • aggregate form elements into object ? [Solved]

    - by Mahmoud
    hey all i am trying to aggregate form elements into object and then send it via ajax here is the code that i start using but i cant figure out how to do the rest $('.jcart').live('submit', function() { }); Update 1: html form http://pasite.org/code/572 Update 2: I have successfully submit the form using ajax but it still refreshes the page after submiting this what i did function adding(form){ $( "form.jcart" ).livequery('submit', function() {var b=$(this).find('input[name=<?php echo $jcart['item_id']?>]').val();var c=$(this).find('input[name=<?php echo $jcart['item_price']?>]').val();var d=$(this).find('input[name=<?php echo $jcart['item_name']?>]').val();var e=$(this).find('input[name=<?php echo $jcart['item_qty']?>]').val();var f=$(this).find('input[name=<?php echo $jcart['item_add']?>]').val();$.post('<?php echo $jcart['path'];?>jcart-relay.php',{"<?php echo $jcart['item_id']?>":b,"<?php echo $jcart['item_price']?>":c,"<?php echo $jcart['item_name']?>":d,"<?php echo $jcart['item_qty']?>":e,"<?php echo $jcart['item_add']?>":f} }); return false; }

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  • Send select's values in array

    - by Ockonal
    Hello, I have such select list in html: <input type="checkbox" name="drive_style" value=1 checked />123<br /> <input type="checkbox" name="drive_style" value=2 />123<br /> <input type="checkbox" name="drive_style" value=3 checked /> 123<br /> <input type="checkbox" name="drive_style" value=4 />123<br /> <input type="checkbox" name="drive_style" value=5 checked />123<br /> I have to send values(1, 3, ...) of checked boxes to the php script (I'm using ajax with jquery) like an array. Something like: drive_style[index]. $.post('post_reply.php', {'drive_style' : $('drive_style')}, function(data){ alert(data); }); In PHP script: print_r($_POST['drive_style']); [object Object]

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  • copy - paste in javascript

    - by Dumbledore of flash
    I have this code <input name="mpan[]" value="" maxlength="2" size="2"> <input name="mpan[]" value="" maxlength="2" size="3"> <input name="mpan[]" value="" maxlength="2" size="3"> <input name="mpan[]" value="" maxlength="2" size="12"> What I have to do is I am provided with a large key for example 0380112129021. When I do Ctrl+C on that key and select any box and press Ctrl+V, the number automatically get pasted in different box, for example: first input box gets 03, next gets 801, next gets 112 and rest gets pasted on last one 129021.how do i achive this from javascript

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  • Traversing Java Object Arrays [migrated]

    - by Sundi
    Please Help. Program does not read Array rentBooks[] in the for() loop this option is selected when choosing option 2 then option 4 in the menu The Array reads perfectly when reading the items after the setBook() Method import java.io.File; import java.io.FileNotFoundException; import java.util.Scanner; import java.io.*; import java.util.Locale; import java.text.SimpleDateFormat ; class Library { protected static String Author; protected static String Title; SimpleDateFormat PublicationDate; int itemCode; int available = 1; } class Book extends Library { protected static String PublisherName; protected static String Edition; static Book[] rentBooks = new Book[5]; //Book[] rentBooks = new Book[5]; int count = 0; public Book() { String start= "start"; showBook.main(anza); } public void setBook( String Auth, String Titl, String PublishName) { this.Author = Auth; this.Title = Titl; this.PublisherName = PublishName; } public void getBook() { //System.out.println("*************BOOKS*************************"); System.out.println( "\n\nThe Author of the first Book is "+ this.Author ); System.out.println( "The Title of the book is "+ this.Title); System.out.println( "The Publisher of the book is "+ this.PublisherName ); // System.out.println( "The Edition of the book is "+ Edition ); } } class showBook{ static Book[] rentBooks = new Book[5]; static Book[] rentBooks2 = new Book[5]; static int a,b; //for ( a=0; a < 5; a++ ) //rentBooks2[a] = new Book(); public static void main(String[] args) { File file = new File("Book2.txt"); //Book libraryBooks = new Book(); int j; //initialise Array Class Objects for( j = 0; j < 5; j++) { rentBooks[j] = new Book(); } int i = 0; try{ Scanner scanner = new Scanner(file); scanner.useDelimiter(","); String loan=""; int loan2; while( scanner.hasNextLine()) { //Should the Books be Stored in An Array? // At the moment you have separate objects stored in unknown location String Author = scanner.next(); String Title = scanner.next(); String PublisherName = scanner.next(); if ( i < 4) { System.out.println(i); rentBooks[i].setBook(Author, Title, PublisherName); rentBooks[i].getBook(); // MEMBERS SHOWN i++; } public class readBook4{ public static void main(String[] args) { int number =0; System.out.println( "Please select one of the choices below " ); System.out.println( "Select option 1 to list all items in the library "); System.out.println( "Select option 2 to list the items by category"); System.out.println( "Select option 3 to choose item available in the library "); System.out.println( "Select option 7 to exit " ); InputStreamReader isr = new InputStreamReader( System.in); BufferedReader buffer = new BufferedReader( isr); String input = ""; try { input = buffer.readLine(); number = Integer.parseInt(input); //int number = Integer.parseInt( Edition); if ( number == 1 ) { System.out.println( " \nThanks you are reading "+ input); //showStudent.main(args); showPeriodical.main(args); showDVD.main(args); // showBook.main(args); } if ( number == 2 ) { //jht.cls(); int number2; System.out.println( "Please select one of the choices below " ); System.out.println( "Select option 4 to list Books only "); System.out.println( "Select option 5 to list the Periodicals only"); System.out.println( "Select option 6 to list DVDs only"); InputStreamReader isr2 = new InputStreamReader(System.in); BufferedReader buffer2 = new BufferedReader(isr2); String input2 = ""; try { input2 = buffer2.readLine(); buffer.close(); } catch(IOException e) { System.out.println("An input error has occured"); } //System.out.println("Thanks, you are reading" + input2); number2 = Integer.parseInt(input2); if ( number2 == 4 ) { showBook.main(args); } if ( number2 == 5 ) { showPeriodical.main(args); } if ( number2 == 6 ) { showDVD.main(args); } // readBook4.main(args); } if( number == 3 ) { //showBook.main(args); showBook.availableBooks(); showDVD.availableDVD(); showPeriodical.availablePeriodical(); } if ( number == 7 ) { showStudent.main(args); } buffer.close(); } catch( IOException e ) { System.out.println( " An input error has occured "); } //System.out.println( " \nThanks you are reading "+ input); } } } //buffer.close(); scanner.close(); } catch( FileNotFoundException e) { System.out.println("File not Found"); } for ( i=0; i < 5; i++ ) rentBooks[i].getBook(); //ARRAY NOT SHOWN } }

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  • issue in jquery radio button selection

    - by Sri
    I am not much more flexible with jquery. I have some li tags and for each li tag, I have one input tag of type radio like: <li><input type='radio' value='cool' name='radiooption' id='2'>2</li> <li class='answered'><input type='radio' name='radiooption' value='cool1' id='3'>3</li> <li><input type='radio' value='cool' name='radiooption' id='4'>4</li> <li><input type='radio' value='cool' name='radiooption' id='2'>5</li> Now by jquery how to add checked="checked" for radio button which is under li tag having class='answered'? Please guide me.

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  • form doesn't work after use render

    - by Rodrigo
    I trying to use render method inside my activeAdmin form method, but after insert render in code, it stopped to work. form do |f| f.inputs I18n.t('sale_header') do f.input :client f.input :room end f.inputs I18n.t('sale_items') do render :partial => "form_sale" end f.inputs I18n.t('totalization') do f.input :sub_total, :input_html => { :disabled => :true } f.input :discount f.input :total_value, :input_html => { :disabled => :true } end f.buttons end After insert the render method, only form_sale content is showed on screen. Any help? Thank You!

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  • i get error when i try to upload a file?

    - by getaway
    I keep getting an error:Notice: Undefined index: on line 35 line 35: $handle = new Upload($_FILES['my_field']); this is my input field <input type="file" size="32" name="my_field" value="" /> I do not understand this error, thanks!!! EDIT: <form name="upload" id="upload" enctype="multipart/form-data" method="post" action="actions/upload.php" /> <p><input type="file" size="32" name="my_field" value="" /></p> <p class="button"><input type="hidden" name="action" value="image" /> <br> <input style="margin-left:224px;" type="submit" name="submit" value="upload" />

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  • How to prevent users from inputting letters or numbers ?

    - by ZaZu
    Hello, I have a simple problem; Here is the code : #include<stdio.h> main(){ int input; printf("Choose a numeric value"); scanf("%d",&input); } I want the user to only enter numbers ... So it has to be something like this : #include<stdio.h> main(){ int input; printf("Choose a numeric value"); do{ scanf("%d",&input); }while(input!= 'something'); } My problem is that I dont know what to replace in 'something' ... How can I prevent users from inputting alphabetic characters ? Thanks for your help ! }

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  • jQuery, wont change value but will change any othere attribute...

    - by Phil Jackson
    function send_mail( token, loader ) { $(".send_mail").bind( "click", function() { try{ var to = $(this).attr('ref'); var mail_form = $("#mail_form"); mail_form.find("li:eq(0) input").val("sdsds"); //mail_form.find("li:eq(0) input").attr("ref", "sdsds"); //mail_form.find("li:eq(0) input").attr("value", "sdsds"); $.fancybox(mail_form.html(), { 'autoDimensions' : false, 'width' : 360, 'height' : 200, 'transitionIn' : 'none', 'transitionOut' : 'none', 'scrolling' : 'no', 'showCloseButton' : false }); return false; }catch(err){alert(err);} }); } My problem being that the above will not work yet if I use //mail_form.find("li:eq(0) input").attr("ref", "sdsds"); it will change the ref and even //mail_form.find("li:eq(0) input").attr("value", "sdsds"); will not work... Any ideas whats happening here?

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  • Angularjs showin time portion from date time

    - by J. Davidson
    Hi I have following input which displays datetime <div ng-repeat="item in items"> <input type="text" ng-model="item.name" /> <input ng-model="item.time" /> </div> The issue i have is that time is in following format. "2002-11-28T14:00:00Z" I want to just display the time portion. For which I would have to apply filter date: 'hh:mm a' I tried ng-model="labor.start_time | date: 'hh:mm a'" Please let me know how i can show only time portion in input box showin time only. I cant use span tag as the time a user can change so have to show in input tag. Thanks

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  • Looking for a jquery plugin to serialize a form to an object

    - by John
    I'm looking for a jQuery function or plugin that serializes form inputs to an object using the naming convention for deep-serialization supported by param() in jQuery 1.4: <form> <input name="a[b]" value="1"/> <input name="a[c]" value="2"/> <input name="d[]" value="3"/> <input name="d[]" value="4"/> <input name="d[2][e]" value="5"/> </form> $('form').serializeObject(); // { a: { b:1,c:2 }, d: [3,4,{ e:5 }] } Prototype's Form.serialize method can do exactly this. What's the jQuery equivalent? I found this plugin but it doesn't follow this naming convention.

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  • C# IndexOutOfRange issue, probably simple.

    - by MWC
    Banging my head off the wall due to this. I'm getting the error at cell[rcell] = repack[counter] even though I have 190 items in the repack array. private string csvtogrid(string input) { input = input.Replace("\r", ",").Substring(2).TrimEnd(',').Trim().Replace("\n", ",").Replace(",,,", ",").Replace(",,",","); string[] repack = input.Split(','); string[] cell = { }; int rcell = 1; for (int counter = 1; counter < repack.Length; counter++) { if (rcell < 4) { cell[rcell] = repack[counter]; rcell++; } procgrid.Rows.Add(cell[1], cell[2], cell[3]); rcell = 1; } richTextBox1.Text = input; return null; }

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  • Scroll Viewer not visible in wpf DataGrid

    - by cre-johnny07
    I have a datagrid in a grid but the scrollviewer is not visibile even though I made it auto. Below in my code. I can't figure out where's the problem. <Grid Grid.Row="0" Grid.Column="0"> <Grid.RowDefinitions> <RowDefinition Height="Auto" ></RowDefinition> <RowDefinition Height="Auto" ></RowDefinition> <RowDefinition Height="Auto" ></RowDefinition> <RowDefinition Height="Auto" ></RowDefinition> <RowDefinition Height="Auto" ></RowDefinition> <RowDefinition Height="Auto" ></RowDefinition> <RowDefinition Height="Auto" ></RowDefinition> <RowDefinition Height="Auto" ></RowDefinition> <RowDefinition Height="Auto"></RowDefinition> <RowDefinition Height="Auto"></RowDefinition> </Grid.RowDefinitions> <Grid.ColumnDefinitions> <ColumnDefinition Width="Auto"></ColumnDefinition> <ColumnDefinition Width="Auto"></ColumnDefinition> </Grid.ColumnDefinitions> <TextBlock Text="Doctor Name" Grid.Row="0" Grid.Column="0" Margin="5,5,0,0"/> <TextBlock Text="Doctor Address" Grid.Row="1" Grid.Column="0" Margin="5,5,0,0"/> <TextBlock Text="Entry Note" Grid.Row="2" Grid.Column="0" Margin="5,5,0,0"/> <TextBlock Text="Join Date" Grid.Row="3" Grid.Column="0" Margin="5,5,0,0"/> <TextBlock Text="Default Discount" Grid.Row="4" Grid.Column="0" Margin="5,5,0,0"/> <TextBlock Text="Discount Valid Till" Grid.Row="5" Grid.Column="0" Margin="5,5,0,0"/> <TextBlock Text="Employee Name" Grid.Row="6" Grid.Column="0" Margin="5,5,0,0"/> <Grid Grid.Row="7" Grid.Column="0" Grid.ColumnSpan="2"> <Grid.ColumnDefinitions> <ColumnDefinition></ColumnDefinition> <ColumnDefinition></ColumnDefinition> <ColumnDefinition></ColumnDefinition> </Grid.ColumnDefinitions> <TextBlock Text="Report Type" Grid.Row="0" Grid.Column="0" Margin="5,5,0,0"/> <ComboBox Grid.Row="0" Grid.Column="1" Name="cmbReportType" Text="{Binding CurrentEntity.ReportType}"/> <Button Grid.Row="0" Grid.Column="2" Name="btnAddDetail" Content="Add Details" Command="{Binding AddDetailsCommand}"/> </Grid> <TextBox Grid.Row="0" Grid.Column="1" Margin="5,5,0,0" Width="190" Name="txtDocName" Text="{Binding CurrentEntity.RefName}"/> <TextBox Grid.Row="1" Grid.Column="1" Margin="5,5,0,0" Width="190" Height="75" Name="txtDocAddress" Text="{Binding CurrentEntity.RefAddress}"/> <TextBox Grid.Row="2" Grid.Column="1" Margin="5,5,0,0" Width="190" Height="100" Name="txtEntryNote" Text="{Binding CurrentEntity.EntryNotes}"/> <Custom:DatePicker Grid.Row="3" Grid.Column="1" Margin="5,3,0,0" Width="125" Name="dtpJoinDate" Height="24" HorizontalAlignment="Left" VerticalAlignment="Top" SelectedDate="{Binding CurrentEntity.DateStarted}" SelectedDateFormat="Short"/> <TextBox Grid.Row="4" Grid.Column="1" Height="25" Width="75" Name="txtDefaultDiscount" HorizontalAlignment="Left" Margin="5,0,0,0" VerticalAlignment="Top" Text="{Binding CurrentEntity.DefaultDiscount}"/> <Custom:DatePicker Grid.Row="5" Grid.Column="1" Margin="5,3,0,0" Width="125" Name="dtpValidTill" Height="24" HorizontalAlignment="Left" VerticalAlignment="Top" SelectedDate="{Binding CurrentEntity.DefaultDiscountValidTill}" SelectedDateFormat="Short"/> <ComboBox Grid.Row="6" Grid.Column="1" Margin="5,3,0,0" Width="190" Height="30" Name="cmbEmployeeName" ItemsSource="{Binding Employees}" DisplayMemberPath="FullName" SelectedIndex="{Binding SelecteIndex}"> </ComboBox> <Custom:DataGrid Grid.Row="8" Grid.Column="0" Grid.ColumnSpan="2" ItemsSource="{Binding XYZ}" AutoGenerateColumns="False" Name="grdTestDept"> <Custom:DataGrid.Columns> <Custom:DataGridTextColumn Binding="{Binding dep_id}" Width="40" Header="ID"/> <Custom:DataGridTextColumn Binding="{Binding dep_name}" Width="125" Header="Name"/> <Custom:DataGridTextColumn Binding="{Binding default_data}" Width="100" Header="Default Data"/> </Custom:DataGrid.Columns> </Custom:DataGrid> </Grid> <Grid Grid.Row="0" Grid.Column="1" Grid.RowSpan="9"> <Grid.ColumnDefinitions> <ColumnDefinition Width="Auto" MinWidth="43"></ColumnDefinition> <ColumnDefinition Width="Auto" MinWidth="150"></ColumnDefinition> <ColumnDefinition Width="Auto" MinWidth="50"></ColumnDefinition> </Grid.ColumnDefinitions> <Grid.RowDefinitions> <RowDefinition Height="34*" ></RowDefinition> <RowDefinition Height="337.88*"></RowDefinition> </Grid.RowDefinitions> <TextBlock Text="Name: " Grid.Row="0" Grid.Column="0" Margin="5,4,0,0" /> <cc:ValueEnabledCombo Grid.Column="1" x:Name="cmbfilEmployeeName" Width="150" Height="30" Margin="5,4,0,0" VerticalAlignment="Top" SelectedIndex="0" ItemsSource="{Binding Employees}" DisplayMemberPath="FullName" SelectedValuePath="EmployeeId" cc:ValueEnabledCombo.SelectionChanged="{Binding SelectionChangedCommand}"> </cc:ValueEnabledCombo> <Button Grid.Column="2" Name="btnReport" Width="50" Content="Report" Height="28" Margin="5,4,0,0" Command="{Binding ReportCommand}" VerticalAlignment="Top" /> <Grid Grid.Row="1" Grid.Column="0" Grid.ColumnSpan="3"> <Custom:DataGrid ItemsSource="{Binding DoctorList}" AutoGenerateColumns="False" Name="grdDoctor" ScrollViewer.HorizontalScrollBarVisibility="Auto" ScrollViewer.VerticalScrollBarVisibility="Auto"> <Custom:DataGrid.Columns> <Custom:DataGridTextColumn Binding="{Binding RefName}" Width="Auto" Header="Doctor Name"/> <Custom:DataGridTextColumn Binding="{Binding EmployeeFullName}" Width="Auto" Header="Employee Name"/> </Custom:DataGrid.Columns> </Custom:DataGrid> </Grid> </Grid> </Grid>

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  • half or quarter black screen in android

    - by Mike McKeown
    I have an android activity that when I launch sometimes (about 1 in 4 times) it only draws quarter or half the screen before showing it. When I change the orientation or press a button the screen draws properly. I'm just using TextViews, Buttons, Fonts - no drawing or anything like that. All of my code for initialising is in the onCreate(). In this method I'm loading a text file, of about 40 lines long, and also getting a shared preference. Could this cause a delay so that it can't draw the intent? Thanks in advance if anyone has seen anything similar. EDIT - I tried commenting out the loading of the word list, but it didn't fix the problem. Here is the activity <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <RelativeLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android" android:id="@+id/mainRelativeLayout" android:layout_width="fill_parent" android:layout_height="fill_parent" android:background="@drawable/blue_abstract_background" > <RelativeLayout android:id="@+id/relativeScore" android:layout_width="fill_parent" android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:gravity="center_horizontal" > <TextView android:id="@+id/ScoreLabel" style="@style/yellowShadowText" android:layout_width="wrap_content" android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:layout_alignParentLeft="true" android:layout_centerVertical="true" android:padding="10dip" android:text="SCORE:" android:textSize="18dp" /> /> <TextView android:id="@+id/ScoreText" style="@style/yellowShadowText" android:layout_width="wrap_content" android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:layout_centerVertical="true" android:layout_toRightOf="@id/ScoreLabel" android:padding="5dip" android:text="0" android:textSize="18dp" /> <TextView android:id="@+id/GameTimerText" style="@style/yellowShadowText" android:layout_width="wrap_content" android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:layout_alignParentRight="true" android:layout_centerVertical="true" android:layout_marginLeft="5dp" android:layout_marginRight="5dp" android:minWidth="25dp" android:text="0" android:textSize="18dp" /> <TextView android:id="@+id/GameTimerLabel" style="@style/yellowShadowText" android:layout_width="wrap_content" android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:layout_centerVertical="true" android:layout_toLeftOf="@id/GameTimerText" android:padding="10dip" android:text="TIMER:" android:textSize="18dp" /> /> </RelativeLayout> <RelativeLayout android:id="@+id/relativeHighScore" android:layout_width="fill_parent" android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:layout_below="@id/relativeScore" > <TextView android:id="@+id/HighScoreLabel" style="@style/yellowShadowText" android:layout_width="wrap_content" android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:layout_alignParentLeft="true" android:padding="10dip" android:text="HIGH SCORE:" android:textSize="16dp" /> <TextView android:id="@+id/HighScoreText" style="@style/yellowShadowText" android:layout_width="wrap_content" android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:layout_toRightOf="@id/HighScoreLabel" android:padding="10dip" android:text="0" android:textSize="16dp" /> </RelativeLayout> <LinearLayout android:layout_width="fill_parent" android:layout_height="fill_parent" android:layout_alignParentLeft="true" android:layout_below="@+id/relativeHighScore" android:orientation="vertical" > <LinearLayout android:id="@+id/linearMissing" android:layout_width="fill_parent" android:layout_height="80dp" android:layout_gravity="center" android:orientation="vertical" > <View android:layout_width="match_parent" android:layout_height="2dp" android:background="@color/yellow_text" /> <TextView android:id="@+id/MissingWordText" style="@style/yellowShadowText" android:layout_width="wrap_content" android:layout_height="fill_parent" android:layout_gravity="center_horizontal" android:layout_marginTop="25dp" android:text="MSSNG WRD" android:textSize="22dp" android:typeface="normal" /> </LinearLayout> <View android:layout_width="match_parent" android:layout_height="2dp" android:background="@color/yellow_text" /> <TableLayout android:id="@+id/buttonsTableLayout" android:layout_width="fill_parent" android:layout_height="wrap_content" > <TableRow android:id="@+id/tableRow3" android:layout_width="fill_parent" android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:gravity="center_horizontal" android:paddingTop="5dp" > <Button android:id="@+id/aVowelButton" android:layout_width="66dp" android:layout_height="66dp" android:layout_gravity="center_horizontal" android:layout_marginBottom="10dp" android:layout_marginRight="5dp" android:background="@drawable/blue_vowel_button" android:text="@string/a" android:textColor="@color/yellow_text" android:textSize="30dp" /> <Button android:id="@+id/eVowelButton" android:layout_width="66dp" android:layout_height="66dp" android:layout_gravity="center_horizontal" android:layout_marginBottom="10dp" android:layout_marginRight="5dp" android:background="@drawable/blue_vowel_button" android:text="@string/e" android:textColor="@color/yellow_text" android:textSize="30dp" /> </TableRow> <TableRow android:id="@+id/tableRow4" android:layout_width="fill_parent" android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:gravity="center_horizontal" > <Button android:id="@+id/iVowelButton" android:layout_width="66dp" android:layout_height="66dp" android:layout_gravity="center_horizontal" android:layout_margin="5dp" android:background="@drawable/blue_vowel_buttoni" android:text="@string/i" android:textColor="@color/yellow_text" android:textSize="30dp" /> <Button android:id="@+id/oVowelButton" android:layout_width="66dp" android:layout_height="66dp" android:layout_gravity="center_horizontal" android:layout_margin="5dp" android:background="@drawable/blue_vowel_button" android:text="@string/o" android:textColor="@color/yellow_text" android:textSize="30dp" /> <Button android:id="@+id/uVowelButton" android:layout_width="66dp" android:layout_height="66dp" android:layout_gravity="center_horizontal" android:layout_margin="5dp" android:background="@drawable/blue_vowel_button" android:text="@string/u" android:textColor="@color/yellow_text" android:textSize="30dp" /> </TableRow> </TableLayout> <TextView android:id="@+id/TimeToStartText" style="@style/yellowShadowText" android:layout_width="wrap_content" android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:layout_gravity="center" android:textSize="24dp" /> <Button android:id="@+id/startButton" style="@style/yellowShadowText" android:layout_width="wrap_content" android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:layout_gravity="center_horizontal" android:layout_marginTop="10dp" android:background="@drawable/blue_button_menu" android:gravity="center" android:padding="10dip" android:text="START!" android:textSize="28dp" /> </LinearLayout> </RelativeLayout> And the OnCreate() and a few methods: public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) { super.onCreate(savedInstanceState); setContentView(R.layout.activity_game); isNewWord = true; m_gameScore = 0; m_category = getCategoryFromExtras(); // loadWordList(m_category); initialiseTextViewField(); loadHighScoreAndDifficulty(); setFonts(); setButtons(); setStartButton(); enableDisableButtons(false); } private void loadHighScoreAndDifficulty() { //setting preferences SharedPreferences prefs = this.getSharedPreferences(m_category, Context.MODE_PRIVATE); int score = prefs.getInt(m_category, 0); //0 is the default value m_highScore = score; m_highScoreText.setText(String.valueOf(m_highScore)); prefs = this.getSharedPreferences(DIFFICULTY, Context.MODE_PRIVATE); m_difficulty = prefs.getString(DIFFICULTY, NRML_DIFFICULTY); } private void initialiseTextViewField() { m_startButton = (Button) findViewById(R.id.startButton); m_missingWordText = (TextView) findViewById(R.id.MissingWordText); m_gameScoreText = (TextView) findViewById(R.id.ScoreText); m_gameScoreLabel = (TextView) findViewById(R.id.ScoreLabel); m_gameTimerText = (TextView) findViewById(R.id.GameTimerText); m_gameTimerLabel = (TextView) findViewById(R.id.GameTimerLabel); m_timeToStartText = (TextView) findViewById(R.id.TimeToStartText); m_highScoreLabel = (TextView) findViewById(R.id.HighScoreLabel); m_highScoreText = (TextView) findViewById(R.id.HighScoreText); } private String getCategoryFromExtras() { String category = ""; Bundle extras = getIntent().getExtras(); if (extras != null) { category = extras.getString("category"); } return category; } private void enableDisableButtons(boolean enable) { Button button = (Button) findViewById(R.id.aVowelButton); button.setEnabled(enable); button = (Button) findViewById(R.id.eVowelButton); button.setEnabled(enable); button = (Button) findViewById(R.id.iVowelButton); button.setEnabled(enable); button = (Button) findViewById(R.id.oVowelButton); button.setEnabled(enable); button = (Button) findViewById(R.id.uVowelButton); button.setEnabled(enable); } private void setStartButton() { m_startButton.setOnClickListener(new View.OnClickListener() { public void onClick(View view) { m_gameScore = 0; updateScore(); m_startButton.setVisibility(View.GONE); m_timeToStartText.setVisibility(View.VISIBLE); startPreTimer(); } }); }

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  • Style Problem with Repeater Inside a Datalist

    - by Jepe d Hepe
    i've used a DataList (dlparent) control for one of my page. Inside that datalist is another Datalist (dlchild) that is being populated by itemdatabound event of the parent datalist. i've used css with dlchild. Databinding is ok and the required output shows great with mozilla and IE but not in netscape, safari and google chrome. dlchild is not showing. only item in dlparent appears. Here's the markup for the dlparent: <asp:DataList ID="SprintsWorkData" Style="float: left; padding-top: 10px;" runat="server" OnItemDataBound="SprintsWorkData_ItemDataBound"> <ItemTemplate> <asp:HiddenField ID="hiddenSprintId" runat="server" Value='<%# Eval("SprintId") %>' /> <div id="SprintNameSection"> <h4> <%# Eval("SprintName") %></h4> </div> <div id="HeaderSection_SelectAll"> <div style="padding-top: 3px; height: 23px; padding-left: 2px;"> <asp:CheckBox ID="isAllCheck" runat="server" onclick="checkAll(this)" /> <b> <asp:Label ID="sAll" Style="color: Black; text-indent: 1px;" Text="Select All" runat="server"></asp:Label> </b> </div> </div> <div class="HeaderSection_WorkedHours"> <b><asp:Literal ID="workedHours" runat="server" Text='<%$ Resources:LanguagePack, Worked_Hours %>'></asp:Literal></b></div> <div class="HeaderSection_BillableHours"> <b><asp:Literal ID="billableHours" runat="server" Text='<%$ Resources:LanguagePack, Billable_Hours %>'></asp:Literal></b></div> <div class="HeaderSection_Comments"> <b><asp:Literal ID="comments" runat="server" Text='<%$ Resources:LanguagePack, Comments %>'></asp:Literal></b></div> <asp:DataList ID="HoursWorkData" runat="server"> <ItemTemplate> <asp:HiddenField ID="hiddenTaskId" runat="server" Value='<%# Eval("BacklogId") %>' /> <div id="ItemSection_Task_Header"> <div style="vertical-align: middle; padding-bottom: 2px; padding-left: 2px; height: 18px;"> <asp:CheckBox ID="checkboxSub" runat="server" onclick="checkAllSub(this)" /> <b style="text-indent: 1px;"> <%# Eval("Title") %></b> </div> </div> <div id="ItemSection_WorkedHours_Header"> <%# Eval("WorkedHours")%>&nbsp;</div> <div id="ItemSection_BillableHours_Header"> <asp:Label ID="lblBillableHours_Header" Text='<%# Eval("BillableHours")%>' runat="server"></asp:Label>&nbsp;</div> <div id="ItemSection_Comments_Header"> </div> <asp:Repeater ID="repResourcesList" runat="server"> <ItemTemplate> <asp:HiddenField ID="hiddenReportId1" runat="server" Value='<%# Eval("ReportId") %>' /> <div id="ItemSection_Task_Item"> <div style="vertical-align: middle; padding-bottom: 5px; padding-left: 2px; padding-top: 1px; height: 14px;"> <asp:CheckBox ID="CB" runat="server" onclick="checkItem(this)" /> <b style="text-indent: 1px;"> <%# Eval("EnteredbyName") %></b> </div> </div> <div id="ItemSection_WorkedHours_Item"> <asp:Label ID="lblWorkedHours_Item" Text='<%# Eval("WorkedHours")%>' runat="server"></asp:Label>&nbsp;</div> <div id="ItemSection_BillableHours_Item"> <asp:RegularExpressionValidator ValidationGroup="ApproveBillable" ID="RegularExpressionValidator1" runat="server" ErrorMessage="*" ValidationExpression="^(-)?\d+(\.\d\d)?$" ControlToValidate="txtBillableHours" Style="position: absolute;">*</asp:RegularExpressionValidator> <asp:TextBox ID="txtBillableHours" Style="text-align: right" runat="server" Font-Size="12px" Width="50px" Text='<%# Eval("BillableHours") %>'></asp:TextBox> </div> <div id="ItemSection_Comments_Item"> <asp:TextBox ID="txtComments" Font-Size="12px" Width="93px" runat="server" Text='<%# Eval("Comment") %>'></asp:TextBox> </div> </ItemTemplate> </asp:Repeater> </ItemTemplate> <ItemStyle Height="24px" /> <SeparatorTemplate> <div id="divSeparator"> </div> </SeparatorTemplate> <FooterTemplate> <div id="Footer1"> TOTAL HOURS &nbsp; </div> <div id="Footer_WorkedHours"> <asp:Label ID="lblWorkedHours" runat="server" Text="0.00" Font-Size="12px" ForeColor="White"></asp:Label>&nbsp; </div> <div id="Footer_BillableHours"> <asp:Label ID="lblBillableHours_Footer" runat="server" Text="0.00" Font-Size="12px" ForeColor="White"></asp:Label>&nbsp; </div> <div id="Footer_Comments"> </div> </FooterTemplate> </asp:DataList> </ItemTemplate> <SeparatorTemplate> &nbsp; </SeparatorTemplate> </asp:DataList> What might be the problem?

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  • Rendering ASP.NET Script References into the Html Header

    - by Rick Strahl
    One thing that I’ve come to appreciate in control development in ASP.NET that use JavaScript is the ability to have more control over script and script include placement than ASP.NET provides natively. Specifically in ASP.NET you can use either the ClientScriptManager or ScriptManager to embed scripts and script references into pages via code. This works reasonably well, but the script references that get generated are generated into the HTML body and there’s very little operational control for placement of scripts. If you have multiple controls or several of the same control that need to place the same scripts onto the page it’s not difficult to end up with scripts that render in the wrong order and stop working correctly. This is especially critical if you load script libraries with dependencies either via resources or even if you are rendering referenced to CDN resources. Natively ASP.NET provides a host of methods that help embedding scripts into the page via either Page.ClientScript or the ASP.NET ScriptManager control (both with slightly different syntax): RegisterClientScriptBlock Renders a script block at the top of the HTML body and should be used for embedding callable functions/classes. RegisterStartupScript Renders a script block just prior to the </form> tag and should be used to for embedding code that should execute when the page is first loaded. Not recommended – use jQuery.ready() or equivalent load time routines. RegisterClientScriptInclude Embeds a reference to a script from a url into the page. RegisterClientScriptResource Embeds a reference to a Script from a resource file generating a long resource file string All 4 of these methods render their <script> tags into the HTML body. The script blocks give you a little bit of control by having a ‘top’ and ‘bottom’ of the document location which gives you some flexibility over script placement and precedence. Script includes and resource url unfortunately do not even get that much control – references are simply rendered into the page in the order of declaration. The ASP.NET ScriptManager control facilitates this task a little bit with the abililty to specify scripts in code and the ability to programmatically check what scripts have already been registered, but it doesn’t provide any more control over the script rendering process itself. Further the ScriptManager is a bear to deal with generically because generic code has to always check and see if it is actually present. Some time ago I posted a ClientScriptProxy class that helps with managing the latter process of sending script references either to ClientScript or ScriptManager if it’s available. Since I last posted about this there have been a number of improvements in this API, one of which is the ability to control placement of scripts and script includes in the page which I think is rather important and a missing feature in the ASP.NET native functionality. Handling ScriptRenderModes One of the big enhancements that I’ve come to rely on is the ability of the various script rendering functions described above to support rendering in multiple locations: /// <summary> /// Determines how scripts are included into the page /// </summary> public enum ScriptRenderModes { /// <summary> /// Inherits the setting from the control or from the ClientScript.DefaultScriptRenderMode /// </summary> Inherit, /// Renders the script include at the location of the control /// </summary> Inline, /// <summary> /// Renders the script include into the bottom of the header of the page /// </summary> Header, /// <summary> /// Renders the script include into the top of the header of the page /// </summary> HeaderTop, /// <summary> /// Uses ClientScript or ScriptManager to embed the script include to /// provide standard ASP.NET style rendering in the HTML body. /// </summary> Script, /// <summary> /// Renders script at the bottom of the page before the last Page.Controls /// literal control. Note this may result in unexpected behavior /// if /body and /html are not the last thing in the markup page. /// </summary> BottomOfPage } This enum is then applied to the various Register functions to allow more control over where scripts actually show up. Why is this useful? For me I often render scripts out of control resources and these scripts often include things like a JavaScript Library (jquery) and a few plug-ins. The order in which these can be loaded is critical so that jQuery.js always loads before any plug-in for example. Typically I end up with a general script layout like this: Core Libraries- HeaderTop Plug-ins: Header ScriptBlocks: Header or Script depending on other dependencies There’s also an option to render scripts and CSS at the very bottom of the page before the last Page control on the page which can be useful for speeding up page load when lots of scripts are loaded. The API syntax of the ClientScriptProxy methods is closely compatible with ScriptManager’s using static methods and control references to gain access to the page and embedding scripts. For example, to render some script into the current page in the header: // Create script block in header ClientScriptProxy.Current.RegisterClientScriptBlock(this, typeof(ControlResources), "hello_function", "function helloWorld() { alert('hello'); }", true, ScriptRenderModes.Header); // Same again - shouldn't be rendered because it's the same id ClientScriptProxy.Current.RegisterClientScriptBlock(this, typeof(ControlResources), "hello_function", "function helloWorld() { alert('hello'); }", true, ScriptRenderModes.Header); // Create a second script block in header ClientScriptProxy.Current.RegisterClientScriptBlock(this, typeof(ControlResources), "hello_function2", "function helloWorld2() { alert('hello2'); }", true, ScriptRenderModes.Header); // This just calls ClientScript and renders into bottom of document ClientScriptProxy.Current.RegisterStartupScript(this,typeof(ControlResources), "call_hello", "helloWorld();helloWorld2();", true); which generates: <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" > <head><title> </title> <script type="text/javascript"> function helloWorld() { alert('hello'); } </script> <script type="text/javascript"> function helloWorld2() { alert('hello2'); } </script> </head> <body> … <script type="text/javascript"> //<![CDATA[ helloWorld();helloWorld2();//]]> </script> </form> </body> </html> Note that the scripts are generated into the header rather than the body except for the last script block which is the call to RegisterStartupScript. In general I wouldn’t recommend using RegisterStartupScript – ever. It’s a much better practice to use a script base load event to handle ‘startup’ code that should fire when the page first loads. So instead of the code above I’d actually recommend doing: ClientScriptProxy.Current.RegisterClientScriptBlock(this, typeof(ControlResources), "call_hello", "$().ready( function() { alert('hello2'); });", true, ScriptRenderModes.Header); assuming you’re using jQuery on the page. For script includes from a Url the following demonstrates how to embed scripts into the header. This example injects a jQuery and jQuery.UI script reference from the Google CDN then checks each with a script block to ensure that it has loaded and if not loads it from a server local location: // load jquery from CDN ClientScriptProxy.Current.RegisterClientScriptInclude(this, typeof(ControlResources), "http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.3.2/jquery.min.js", ScriptRenderModes.HeaderTop); // check if jquery loaded - if it didn't we're not online string scriptCheck = @"if (typeof jQuery != 'object') document.write(unescape(""%3Cscript src='{0}' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E""));"; string jQueryUrl = ClientScriptProxy.Current.GetWebResourceUrl(this, typeof(ControlResources), ControlResources.JQUERY_SCRIPT_RESOURCE); ClientScriptProxy.Current.RegisterClientScriptBlock(this, typeof(ControlResources), "jquery_register", string.Format(scriptCheck,jQueryUrl),true, ScriptRenderModes.HeaderTop); // Load jquery-ui from cdn ClientScriptProxy.Current.RegisterClientScriptInclude(this, typeof(ControlResources), "http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jqueryui/1.7.2/jquery-ui.min.js", ScriptRenderModes.Header); // check if we need to load from local string jQueryUiUrl = ResolveUrl("~/scripts/jquery-ui-custom.min.js"); ClientScriptProxy.Current.RegisterClientScriptBlock(this, typeof(ControlResources), "jqueryui_register", string.Format(scriptCheck, jQueryUiUrl), true, ScriptRenderModes.Header); // Create script block in header ClientScriptProxy.Current.RegisterClientScriptBlock(this, typeof(ControlResources), "hello_function", "$().ready( function() { alert('hello'); });", true, ScriptRenderModes.Header); which in turn generates this HTML: <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" > <head> <script src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.3.2/jquery.min.js" type="text/javascript"></script> <script type="text/javascript"> if (typeof jQuery != 'object') document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='/WestWindWebToolkitWeb/WebResource.axd?d=DIykvYhJ_oXCr-TA_dr35i4AayJoV1mgnQAQGPaZsoPM2LCdvoD3cIsRRitHKlKJfV5K_jQvylK7tsqO3lQIFw2&t=633979863959332352' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E")); </script> <title> </title> <script src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jqueryui/1.7.2/jquery-ui.min.js" type="text/javascript"></script> <script type="text/javascript"> if (typeof jQuery != 'object') document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='/WestWindWebToolkitWeb/scripts/jquery-ui-custom.min.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E")); </script> <script type="text/javascript"> $().ready(function() { alert('hello'); }); </script> </head> <body> …</body> </html> As you can see there’s a bit more control in this process as you can inject both script includes and script blocks into the document at the top or bottom of the header, plus if necessary at the usual body locations. This is quite useful especially if you create custom server controls that interoperate with script and have certain dependencies. The above is a good example of a useful switchable routine where you can switch where scripts load from by default – the above pulls from Google CDN but a configuration switch may automatically switch to pull from the local development copies if your doing development for example. How does it work? As mentioned the ClientScriptProxy object mimicks many of the ScriptManager script related methods and so provides close API compatibility with it although it contains many additional overloads that enhance functionality. It does however work against ScriptManager if it’s available on the page, or Page.ClientScript if it’s not so it provides a single unified frontend to script access. There are however many overloads of the original SM methods like the above to provide additional functionality. The implementation of script header rendering is pretty straight forward – as long as a server header (ie. it has to have runat=”server” set) is available. Otherwise these routines fall back to using the default document level insertions of ScriptManager/ClientScript. Given that there is a server header it’s relatively easy to generate the script tags and code and append them to the header either at the top or bottom. I suspect Microsoft didn’t provide header rendering functionality precisely because a runat=”server” header is not required by ASP.NET so behavior would be slightly unpredictable. That’s not really a problem for a custom implementation however. Here’s the RegisterClientScriptBlock implementation that takes a ScriptRenderModes parameter to allow header rendering: /// <summary> /// Renders client script block with the option of rendering the script block in /// the Html header /// /// For this to work Header must be defined as runat="server" /// </summary> /// <param name="control">any control that instance typically page</param> /// <param name="type">Type that identifies this rendering</param> /// <param name="key">unique script block id</param> /// <param name="script">The script code to render</param> /// <param name="addScriptTags">Ignored for header rendering used for all other insertions</param> /// <param name="renderMode">Where the block is rendered</param> public void RegisterClientScriptBlock(Control control, Type type, string key, string script, bool addScriptTags, ScriptRenderModes renderMode) { if (renderMode == ScriptRenderModes.Inherit) renderMode = DefaultScriptRenderMode; if (control.Page.Header == null || renderMode != ScriptRenderModes.HeaderTop && renderMode != ScriptRenderModes.Header && renderMode != ScriptRenderModes.BottomOfPage) { RegisterClientScriptBlock(control, type, key, script, addScriptTags); return; } // No dupes - ref script include only once const string identifier = "scriptblock_"; if (HttpContext.Current.Items.Contains(identifier + key)) return; HttpContext.Current.Items.Add(identifier + key, string.Empty); StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder(); // Embed in header sb.AppendLine("\r\n<script type=\"text/javascript\">"); sb.AppendLine(script); sb.AppendLine("</script>"); int? index = HttpContext.Current.Items["__ScriptResourceIndex"] as int?; if (index == null) index = 0; if (renderMode == ScriptRenderModes.HeaderTop) { control.Page.Header.Controls.AddAt(index.Value, new LiteralControl(sb.ToString())); index++; } else if(renderMode == ScriptRenderModes.Header) control.Page.Header.Controls.Add(new LiteralControl(sb.ToString())); else if (renderMode == ScriptRenderModes.BottomOfPage) control.Page.Controls.AddAt(control.Page.Controls.Count-1,new LiteralControl(sb.ToString())); HttpContext.Current.Items["__ScriptResourceIndex"] = index; } Note that the routine has to keep track of items inserted by id so that if the same item is added again with the same key it won’t generate two script entries. Additionally the code has to keep track of how many insertions have been made at the top of the document so that entries are added in the proper order. The RegisterScriptInclude method is similar but there’s some additional logic in here to deal with script file references and ClientScriptProxy’s (optional) custom resource handler that provides script compression /// <summary> /// Registers a client script reference into the page with the option to specify /// the script location in the page /// </summary> /// <param name="control">Any control instance - typically page</param> /// <param name="type">Type that acts as qualifier (uniqueness)</param> /// <param name="url">the Url to the script resource</param> /// <param name="ScriptRenderModes">Determines where the script is rendered</param> public void RegisterClientScriptInclude(Control control, Type type, string url, ScriptRenderModes renderMode) { const string STR_ScriptResourceIndex = "__ScriptResourceIndex"; if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(url)) return; if (renderMode == ScriptRenderModes.Inherit) renderMode = DefaultScriptRenderMode; // Extract just the script filename string fileId = null; // Check resource IDs and try to match to mapped file resources // Used to allow scripts not to be loaded more than once whether // embedded manually (script tag) or via resources with ClientScriptProxy if (url.Contains(".axd?r=")) { string res = HttpUtility.UrlDecode( StringUtils.ExtractString(url, "?r=", "&", false, true) ); foreach (ScriptResourceAlias item in ScriptResourceAliases) { if (item.Resource == res) { fileId = item.Alias + ".js"; break; } } if (fileId == null) fileId = url.ToLower(); } else fileId = Path.GetFileName(url).ToLower(); // No dupes - ref script include only once const string identifier = "script_"; if (HttpContext.Current.Items.Contains( identifier + fileId ) ) return; HttpContext.Current.Items.Add(identifier + fileId, string.Empty); // just use script manager or ClientScriptManager if (control.Page.Header == null || renderMode == ScriptRenderModes.Script || renderMode == ScriptRenderModes.Inline) { RegisterClientScriptInclude(control, type,url, url); return; } // Retrieve script index in header int? index = HttpContext.Current.Items[STR_ScriptResourceIndex] as int?; if (index == null) index = 0; StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder(256); url = WebUtils.ResolveUrl(url); // Embed in header sb.AppendLine("\r\n<script src=\"" + url + "\" type=\"text/javascript\"></script>"); if (renderMode == ScriptRenderModes.HeaderTop) { control.Page.Header.Controls.AddAt(index.Value, new LiteralControl(sb.ToString())); index++; } else if (renderMode == ScriptRenderModes.Header) control.Page.Header.Controls.Add(new LiteralControl(sb.ToString())); else if (renderMode == ScriptRenderModes.BottomOfPage) control.Page.Controls.AddAt(control.Page.Controls.Count-1, new LiteralControl(sb.ToString())); HttpContext.Current.Items[STR_ScriptResourceIndex] = index; } There’s a little more code here that deals with cleaning up the passed in Url and also some custom handling of script resources that run through the ScriptCompressionModule – any script resources loaded in this fashion are automatically cached based on the resource id. Raw urls extract just the filename from the URL and cache based on that. All of this to avoid doubling up of scripts if called multiple times by multiple instances of the same control for example or several controls that all load the same resources/includes. Finally RegisterClientScriptResource utilizes the previous method to wrap the WebResourceUrl as well as some custom functionality for the resource compression module: /// <summary> /// Returns a WebResource or ScriptResource URL for script resources that are to be /// embedded as script includes. /// </summary> /// <param name="control">Any control</param> /// <param name="type">A type in assembly where resources are located</param> /// <param name="resourceName">Name of the resource to load</param> /// <param name="renderMode">Determines where in the document the link is rendered</param> public void RegisterClientScriptResource(Control control, Type type, string resourceName, ScriptRenderModes renderMode) { string resourceUrl = GetClientScriptResourceUrl(control, type, resourceName); RegisterClientScriptInclude(control, type, resourceUrl, renderMode); } /// <summary> /// Works like GetWebResourceUrl but can be used with javascript resources /// to allow using of resource compression (if the module is loaded). /// </summary> /// <param name="control"></param> /// <param name="type"></param> /// <param name="resourceName"></param> /// <returns></returns> public string GetClientScriptResourceUrl(Control control, Type type, string resourceName) { #if IncludeScriptCompressionModuleSupport // If wwScriptCompression Module through Web.config is loaded use it to compress // script resources by using wcSC.axd Url the module intercepts if (ScriptCompressionModule.ScriptCompressionModuleActive) { string url = "~/wwSC.axd?r=" + HttpUtility.UrlEncode(resourceName); if (type.Assembly != GetType().Assembly) url += "&t=" + HttpUtility.UrlEncode(type.FullName); return WebUtils.ResolveUrl(url); } #endif return control.Page.ClientScript.GetWebResourceUrl(type, resourceName); } This code merely retrieves the resource URL and then simply calls back to RegisterClientScriptInclude with the URL to be embedded which means there’s nothing specific to deal with other than the custom compression module logic which is nice and easy. What else is there in ClientScriptProxy? ClientscriptProxy also provides a few other useful services beyond what I’ve already covered here: Transparent ScriptManager and ClientScript calls ClientScriptProxy includes a host of routines that help figure out whether a script manager is available or not and all functions in this class call the appropriate object – ScriptManager or ClientScript – that is available in the current page to ensure that scripts get embedded into pages properly. This is especially useful for control development where controls have no control over the scripting environment in place on the page. RegisterCssLink and RegisterCssResource Much like the script embedding functions these two methods allow embedding of CSS links. CSS links are appended to the header or to a form declared with runat=”server”. LoadControlScript Is a high level resource loading routine that can be used to easily switch between different script linking modes. It supports loading from a WebResource, a url or not loading anything at all. This is very useful if you build controls that deal with specification of resource urls/ids in a standard way. Check out the full Code You can check out the full code to the ClientScriptProxyClass here: ClientScriptProxy.cs ClientScriptProxy Documentation (class reference) Note that the ClientScriptProxy has a few dependencies in the West Wind Web Toolkit of which it is part of. ControlResources holds a few standard constants and script resource links and the ScriptCompressionModule which is referenced in a few of the script inclusion methods. There’s also another useful ScriptContainer companion control  to the ClientScriptProxy that allows scripts to be placed onto the page’s markup including the ability to specify the script location and script minification options. You can find all the dependencies in the West Wind Web Toolkit repository: West Wind Web Toolkit Repository West Wind Web Toolkit Home Page© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2010Posted in ASP.NET  JavaScript  

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  • JMS Step 4 - How to Create an 11g BPEL Process Which Writes a Message Based on an XML Schema to a JMS Queue

    - by John-Brown.Evans
    JMS Step 4 - How to Create an 11g BPEL Process Which Writes a Message Based on an XML Schema to a JMS Queue ol{margin:0;padding:0} .c11_4{vertical-align:top;width:129.8pt;border-style:solid;background-color:#f3f3f3;border-color:#000000;border-width:1pt;padding:5pt 5pt 5pt 5pt} .c9_4{vertical-align:top;width:207pt;border-style:solid;background-color:#f3f3f3;border-color:#000000;border-width:1pt;padding:5pt 5pt 5pt 5pt}.c14{vertical-align:top;width:207pt;border-style:solid;border-color:#000000;border-width:1pt;padding:5pt 5pt 5pt 5pt} .c17_4{vertical-align:top;width:129.8pt;border-style:solid;border-color:#000000;border-width:1pt;padding:5pt 5pt 5pt 5pt} .c7_4{vertical-align:top;width:130pt;border-style:solid;border-color:#000000;border-width:1pt;padding:0pt 5pt 0pt 5pt} .c19_4{vertical-align:top;width:468pt;border-style:solid;border-color:#000000;border-width:1pt;padding:5pt 5pt 5pt 5pt} .c22_4{background-color:#ffffff} .c20_4{list-style-type:disc;margin:0;padding:0} .c6_4{font-size:8pt;font-family:"Courier New"} .c24_4{color:inherit;text-decoration:inherit} .c23_4{color:#1155cc;text-decoration:underline} .c0_4{height:11pt;direction:ltr} .c10_4{font-size:10pt;font-family:"Courier New"} .c3_4{padding-left:0pt;margin-left:36pt} .c18_4{font-size:8pt} .c8_4{text-align:center} .c12_4{background-color:#ffff00} .c2_4{font-weight:bold} .c21_4{background-color:#00ff00} .c4_4{line-height:1.0} .c1_4{direction:ltr} .c15_4{background-color:#f3f3f3} .c13_4{font-family:"Courier New"} .c5_4{font-style:italic} .c16_4{border-collapse:collapse} .title{padding-top:24pt;line-height:1.15;text-align:left;color:#000000;font-size:36pt;font-family:"Arial";font-weight:bold;padding-bottom:6pt} .subtitle{padding-top:18pt;line-height:1.15;text-align:left;color:#666666;font-style:italic;font-size:24pt;font-family:"Georgia";padding-bottom:4pt} li{color:#000000;font-size:10pt;font-family:"Arial"} p{color:#000000;font-size:10pt;margin:0;font-family:"Arial"} h1{padding-top:0pt;line-height:1.15;text-align:left;color:#888;font-size:18pt;font-family:"Arial";font-weight:normal;padding-bottom:0pt} h2{padding-top:0pt;line-height:1.15;text-align:left;color:#888;font-size:18pt;font-family:"Arial";font-weight:bold;padding-bottom:0pt} h3{padding-top:0pt;line-height:1.15;text-align:left;color:#888;font-size:14pt;font-family:"Arial";font-weight:normal;padding-bottom:0pt} h4{padding-top:0pt;line-height:1.15;text-align:left;color:#888;font-style:italic;font-size:11pt;font-family:"Arial";padding-bottom:0pt} h5{padding-top:0pt;line-height:1.15;text-align:left;color:#888;font-size:10pt;font-family:"Arial";font-weight:normal;padding-bottom:0pt} h6{padding-top:0pt;line-height:1.15;text-align:left;color:#888;font-style:italic;font-size:10pt;font-family:"Arial";padding-bottom:0pt} This post continues the series of JMS articles which demonstrate how to use JMS queues in a SOA context. The previous posts were: JMS Step 1 - How to Create a Simple JMS Queue in Weblogic Server 11g JMS Step 2 - Using the QueueSend.java Sample Program to Send a Message to a JMS Queue JMS Step 3 - Using the QueueReceive.java Sample Program to Read a Message from a JMS Queue In this example we will create a BPEL process which will write (enqueue) a message to a JMS queue using a JMS adapter. The JMS adapter will enqueue the full XML payload to the queue. This sample will use the following WebLogic Server objects. The first two, the Connection Factory and JMS Queue, were created as part of the first blog post in this series, JMS Step 1 - How to Create a Simple JMS Queue in Weblogic Server 11g. If you haven't created those objects yet, please see that post for details on how to do so. The Connection Pool will be created as part of this example. Object Name Type JNDI Name TestConnectionFactory Connection Factory jms/TestConnectionFactory TestJMSQueue JMS Queue jms/TestJMSQueue eis/wls/TestQueue Connection Pool eis/wls/TestQueue 1. Verify Connection Factory and JMS Queue As mentioned above, this example uses a WLS Connection Factory called TestConnectionFactory and a JMS queue TestJMSQueue. As these are prerequisites for this example, let us verify they exist. Log in to the WebLogic Server Administration Console. Select Services > JMS Modules > TestJMSModule You should see the following objects: If not, or if the TestJMSModule is missing, please see the abovementioned article and create these objects before continuing. 2. Create a JMS Adapter Connection Pool in WebLogic Server The BPEL process we are about to create uses a JMS adapter to write to the JMS queue. The JMS adapter is deployed to the WebLogic server and needs to be configured to include a connection pool which references the connection factory associated with the JMS queue. In the WebLogic Server Console Go to Deployments > Next and select (click on) the JmsAdapter Select Configuration > Outbound Connection Pools and expand oracle.tip.adapter.jms.IJmsConnectionFactory. This will display the list of connections configured for this adapter. For example, eis/aqjms/Queue, eis/aqjms/Topic etc. These JNDI names are actually quite confusing. We are expecting to configure a connection pool here, but the names refer to queues and topics. One would expect these to be called *ConnectionPool or *_CF or similar, but to conform to this nomenclature, we will call our entry eis/wls/TestQueue . This JNDI name is also the name we will use later, when creating a BPEL process to access this JMS queue! Select New, check the oracle.tip.adapter.jms.IJmsConnectionFactory check box and Next. Enter JNDI Name: eis/wls/TestQueue for the connection instance, then press Finish. Expand oracle.tip.adapter.jms.IJmsConnectionFactory again and select (click on) eis/wls/TestQueue The ConnectionFactoryLocation must point to the JNDI name of the connection factory associated with the JMS queue you will be writing to. In our example, this is the connection factory called TestConnectionFactory, with the JNDI name jms/TestConnectionFactory.( As a reminder, this connection factory is contained in the JMS Module called TestJMSModule, under Services > Messaging > JMS Modules > TestJMSModule which we verified at the beginning of this document. )Enter jms/TestConnectionFactory  into the Property Value field for Connection Factory Location. After entering it, you must press Return/Enter then Save for the value to be accepted. If your WebLogic server is running in Development mode, you should see the message that the changes have been activated and the deployment plan successfully updated. If not, then you will manually need to activate the changes in the WebLogic server console. Although the changes have been activated, the JmsAdapter needs to be redeployed in order for the changes to become effective. This should be confirmed by the message Remember to update your deployment to reflect the new plan when you are finished with your changes as can be seen in the following screen shot: The next step is to redeploy the JmsAdapter.Navigate back to the Deployments screen, either by selecting it in the left-hand navigation tree or by selecting the “Summary of Deployments” link in the breadcrumbs list at the top of the screen. Then select the checkbox next to JmsAdapter and press the Update button On the Update Application Assistant page, select “Redeploy this application using the following deployment files” and press Finish. After a few seconds you should get the message that the selected deployments were updated. The JMS adapter configuration is complete and it can now be used to access the JMS queue. To summarize: we have created a JMS adapter connection pool connector with the JNDI name jms/TestConnectionFactory. This is the JNDI name to be accessed by a process such as a BPEL process, when using the JMS adapter to access the previously created JMS queue with the JNDI name jms/TestJMSQueue. In the following step, we will set up a BPEL process to use this JMS adapter to write to the JMS queue. 3. Create a BPEL Composite with a JMS Adapter Partner Link This step requires that you have a valid Application Server Connection defined in JDeveloper, pointing to the application server on which you created the JMS Queue and Connection Factory. You can create this connection in JDeveloper under the Application Server Navigator. Give it any name and be sure to test the connection before completing it. This sample will use the connection name jbevans-lx-PS5, as that is the name of the connection pointing to my SOA PS5 installation. When using a JMS adapter from within a BPEL process, there are various configuration options, such as the operation type (consume message, produce message etc.), delivery mode and message type. One of these options is the choice of the format of the JMS message payload. This can be structured around an existing XSD, in which case the full XML element and tags are passed, or it can be opaque, meaning that the payload is sent as-is to the JMS adapter. In the case of an XSD-based message, the payload can simply be copied to the input variable of the JMS adapter. In the case of an opaque message, the JMS adapter’s input variable is of type base64binary. So the payload needs to be converted to base64 binary first. I will go into this in more detail in a later blog entry. This sample will pass a simple message to the adapter, based on the following simple XSD file, which consists of a single string element: stringPayload.xsd <?xml version="1.0" encoding="windows-1252" ?> <xsd:schema xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns="http://www.example.org" targetNamespace="http://www.example.org" elementFormDefault="qualified" <xsd:element name="exampleElement" type="xsd:string"> </xsd:element> </xsd:schema> The following steps are all executed in JDeveloper. The SOA project will be created inside a JDeveloper Application. If you do not already have an application to contain the project, you can create a new one via File > New > General > Generic Application. Give the application any name, for example JMSTests and, when prompted for a project name and type, call the project JmsAdapterWriteWithXsd and select SOA as the project technology type. If you already have an application, continue below. Create a SOA Project Create a new project and choose SOA Tier > SOA Project as its type. Name it JmsAdapterWriteSchema. When prompted for the composite type, choose Composite With BPEL Process. When prompted for the BPEL Process, name it JmsAdapterWriteSchema too and choose Synchronous BPEL Process as the template. This will create a composite with a BPEL process and an exposed SOAP service. Double-click the BPEL process to open and begin editing it. You should see a simple BPEL process with a Receive and Reply activity. As we created a default process without an XML schema, the input and output variables are simple strings. Create an XSD File An XSD file is required later to define the message format to be passed to the JMS adapter. In this step, we create a simple XSD file, containing a string variable and add it to the project. First select the xsd item in the left-hand navigation tree to ensure that the XSD file is created under that item. Select File > New > General > XML and choose XML Schema. Call it stringPayload.xsd and when the editor opens, select the Source view. then replace the contents with the contents of the stringPayload.xsd example above and save the file. You should see it under the xsd item in the navigation tree. Create a JMS Adapter Partner Link We will create the JMS adapter as a service at the composite level. If it is not already open, double-click the composite.xml file in the navigator to open it. From the Component Palette, drag a JMS adapter over onto the right-hand swim lane, under External References. This will start the JMS Adapter Configuration Wizard. Use the following entries: Service Name: JmsAdapterWrite Oracle Enterprise Messaging Service (OEMS): Oracle Weblogic JMS AppServer Connection: Use an existing application server connection pointing to the WebLogic server on which the above JMS queue and connection factory were created. You can use the “+” button to create a connection directly from the wizard, if you do not already have one. This example uses a connection called jbevans-lx-PS5. Adapter Interface > Interface: Define from operation and schema (specified later) Operation Type: Produce Message Operation Name: Produce_message Destination Name: Press the Browse button, select Destination Type: Queues, then press Search. Wait for the list to populate, then select the entry for TestJMSQueue , which is the queue created earlier. JNDI Name: The JNDI name to use for the JMS connection. This is probably the most important step in this exercise and the most common source of error. This is the JNDI name of the JMS adapter’s connection pool created in the WebLogic Server and which points to the connection factory. JDeveloper does not verify the value entered here. If you enter a wrong value, the JMS adapter won’t find the queue and you will get an error message at runtime, which is very difficult to trace. In our example, this is the value eis/wls/TestQueue . (See the earlier step on how to create a JMS Adapter Connection Pool in WebLogic Server for details.) MessagesURL: We will use the XSD file we created earlier, stringPayload.xsd to define the message format for the JMS adapter. Press the magnifying glass icon to search for schema files. Expand Project Schema Files > stringPayload.xsd and select exampleElement: string. Press Next and Finish, which will complete the JMS Adapter configuration. Wire the BPEL Component to the JMS Adapter In this step, we link the BPEL process/component to the JMS adapter. From the composite.xml editor, drag the right-arrow icon from the BPEL process to the JMS adapter’s in-arrow. This completes the steps at the composite level. 4. Complete the BPEL Process Design Invoke the JMS Adapter Open the BPEL component by double-clicking it in the design view of the composite.xml, or open it from the project navigator by selecting the JmsAdapterWriteSchema.bpel file. This will display the BPEL process in the design view. You should see the JmsAdapterWrite partner link under one of the two swim lanes. We want it in the right-hand swim lane. If JDeveloper displays it in the left-hand lane, right-click it and choose Display > Move To Opposite Swim Lane. An Invoke activity is required in order to invoke the JMS adapter. Drag an Invoke activity between the Receive and Reply activities. Drag the right-hand arrow from the Invoke activity to the JMS adapter partner link. This will open the Invoke editor. The correct default values are entered automatically and are fine for our purposes. We only need to define the input variable to use for the JMS adapter. By pressing the green “+” symbol, a variable of the correct type can be auto-generated, for example with the name Invoke1_Produce_Message_InputVariable. Press OK after creating the variable. ( For some reason, while I was testing this, the JMS Adapter moved back to the left-hand swim lane again after this step. There is no harm in leaving it there, but I find it easier to follow if it is in the right-hand lane, because I kind-of think of the message coming in on the left and being routed through the right. But you can follow your personal preference here.) Assign Variables Drag an Assign activity between the Receive and Invoke activities. We will simply copy the input variable to the JMS adapter and, for completion, so the process has an output to print, again to the process’s output variable. Double-click the Assign activity and create two Copy rules: for the first, drag Variables > inputVariable > payload > client:process > client:input_string to Invoke1_Produce_Message_InputVariable > body > ns2:exampleElement for the second, drag the same input variable to outputVariable > payload > client:processResponse > client:result This will create two copy rules, similar to the following: Press OK. This completes the BPEL and Composite design. 5. Compile and Deploy the Composite We won’t go into too much detail on how to compile and deploy. In JDeveloper, compile the process by pressing the Make or Rebuild icons or by right-clicking the project name in the navigator and selecting Make... or Rebuild... If the compilation is successful, deploy it to the SOA server connection defined earlier. (Right-click the project name in the navigator, select Deploy to Application Server, choose the application server connection, choose the partition on the server (usually default) and press Finish. You should see the message ---- Deployment finished. ---- in the Deployment frame, if the deployment was successful. 6. Test the Composite This is the exciting part. Open two tabs in your browser and log in to the WebLogic Administration Console in one tab and the Enterprise Manager 11g Fusion Middleware Control (EM) for your SOA installation in the other. We will use the Console to monitor the messages being written to the queue and the EM to execute the composite. In the Console, go to Services > Messaging > JMS Modules > TestJMSModule > TestJMSQueue > Monitoring. Note the number of messages under Messages Current. In the EM, go to SOA > soa-infra (soa_server1) > default (or wherever you deployed your composite to) and click on JmsAdapterWriteSchema [1.0], then press the Test button. Under Input Arguments, enter any string into the text input field for the payload, for example Test Message then press Test Web Service. If the instance is successful you should see the same text in the Response message, “Test Message”. In the Console, refresh the Monitoring screen to confirm a new message has been written to the queue. Check the checkbox and press Show Messages. Click on the newest message and view its contents. They should include the full XML of the entered payload. 7. Troubleshooting If you get an exception similar to the following at runtime ... BINDING.JCA-12510 JCA Resource Adapter location error. Unable to locate the JCA Resource Adapter via .jca binding file element The JCA Binding Component is unable to startup the Resource Adapter specified in the element: location='eis/wls/QueueTest'. The reason for this is most likely that either 1) the Resource Adapters RAR file has not been deployed successfully to the WebLogic Application server or 2) the '' element in weblogic-ra.xml has not been set to eis/wls/QueueTest. In the last case you will have to add a new WebLogic JCA connection factory (deploy a RAR). Please correct this and then restart the Application Server at oracle.integration.platform.blocks.adapter.fw.AdapterBindingException. createJndiLookupException(AdapterBindingException.java:130) at oracle.integration.platform.blocks.adapter.fw.jca.cci. JCAConnectionManager$JCAConnectionPool.createJCAConnectionFactory (JCAConnectionManager.java:1387) at oracle.integration.platform.blocks.adapter.fw.jca.cci. JCAConnectionManager$JCAConnectionPool.newPoolObject (JCAConnectionManager.java:1285) ... then this is very likely due to an incorrect JNDI name entered for the JMS Connection in the JMS Adapter Wizard. Recheck those steps. The error message prints the name of the JNDI name used. In this example, it was incorrectly entered as eis/wls/QueueTest instead of eis/wls/TestQueue. This concludes this example. Best regards John-Brown Evans Oracle Technology Proactive Support Delivery

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  • Yet Another ASP.NET MVC CRUD Tutorial

    - by Ricardo Peres
    I know that I have not posted much on MVC, mostly because I don’t use it on my daily life, but since I find it so interesting, and since it is gaining such popularity, I will be talking about it much more. This time, it’s about the most basic of scenarios: CRUD. Although there are several ASP.NET MVC tutorials out there that cover ordinary CRUD operations, I couldn’t find any that would explain how we can have also AJAX, optimistic concurrency control and validation, using Entity Framework Code First, so I set out to write one! I won’t go into explaining what is MVC, Code First or optimistic concurrency control, or AJAX, I assume you are all familiar with these concepts by now. Let’s consider an hypothetical use case, products. For simplicity, we only want to be able to either view a single product or edit this product. First, we need our model: 1: public class Product 2: { 3: public Product() 4: { 5: this.Details = new HashSet<OrderDetail>(); 6: } 7:  8: [Required] 9: [StringLength(50)] 10: public String Name 11: { 12: get; 13: set; 14: } 15:  16: [Key] 17: [ScaffoldColumn(false)] 18: [DatabaseGenerated(DatabaseGeneratedOption.Identity)] 19: public Int32 ProductId 20: { 21: get; 22: set; 23: } 24:  25: [Required] 26: [Range(1, 100)] 27: public Decimal Price 28: { 29: get; 30: set; 31: } 32:  33: public virtual ISet<OrderDetail> Details 34: { 35: get; 36: protected set; 37: } 38:  39: [Timestamp] 40: [ScaffoldColumn(false)] 41: public Byte[] RowVersion 42: { 43: get; 44: set; 45: } 46: } Keep in mind that this is a simple scenario. Let’s see what we have: A class Product, that maps to a product record on the database; A product has a required (RequiredAttribute) Name property which can contain up to 50 characters (StringLengthAttribute); The product’s Price must be a decimal value between 1 and 100 (RangeAttribute); It contains a set of order details, for each time that it has been ordered, which we will not talk about (Details); The record’s primary key (mapped to property ProductId) comes from a SQL Server IDENTITY column generated by the database (KeyAttribute, DatabaseGeneratedAttribute); The table uses a SQL Server ROWVERSION (previously known as TIMESTAMP) column for optimistic concurrency control mapped to property RowVersion (TimestampAttribute). Then we will need a controller for viewing product details, which will located on folder ~/Controllers under the name ProductController: 1: public class ProductController : Controller 2: { 3: [HttpGet] 4: public ViewResult Get(Int32 id = 0) 5: { 6: if (id != 0) 7: { 8: using (ProductContext ctx = new ProductContext()) 9: { 10: return (this.View("Single", ctx.Products.Find(id) ?? new Product())); 11: } 12: } 13: else 14: { 15: return (this.View("Single", new Product())); 16: } 17: } 18: } If the requested product does not exist, or one was not requested at all, one with default values will be returned. I am using a view named Single to display the product’s details, more on that later. As you can see, it delegates the loading of products to an Entity Framework context, which is defined as: 1: public class ProductContext: DbContext 2: { 3: public DbSet<Product> Products 4: { 5: get; 6: set; 7: } 8: } Like I said before, I’ll keep it simple for now, only aggregate root Product is available. The controller will use the standard routes defined by the Visual Studio ASP.NET MVC 3 template: 1: routes.MapRoute( 2: "Default", // Route name 3: "{controller}/{action}/{id}", // URL with parameters 4: new { controller = "Home", action = "Index", id = UrlParameter.Optional } // Parameter defaults 5: ); Next, we need a view for displaying the product details, let’s call it Single, and have it located under ~/Views/Product: 1: <%@ Page Language="C#" Inherits="System.Web.Mvc.ViewPage<Product>" %> 2: <!DOCTYPE html> 3:  4: <html> 5: <head runat="server"> 6: <title>Product</title> 7: <script src="/Scripts/jquery-1.7.2.js" type="text/javascript"></script> 1:  2: <script src="/Scripts/jquery-ui-1.8.19.js" type="text/javascript"> 1: </script> 2: <script src="/Scripts/jquery.unobtrusive-ajax.js" type="text/javascript"> 1: </script> 2: <script src="/Scripts/jquery.validate.js" type="text/javascript"> 1: </script> 2: <script src="/Scripts/jquery.validate.unobtrusive.js" type="text/javascript"> 1: </script> 2: <script type="text/javascript"> 3: function onFailure(error) 4: { 5: } 6:  7: function onComplete(ctx) 8: { 9: } 10:  11: </script> 8: </head> 9: <body> 10: <div> 11: <% 1: : this.Html.ValidationSummary(false) %> 12: <% 1: using (this.Ajax.BeginForm("Edit", "Product", new AjaxOptions{ HttpMethod = FormMethod.Post.ToString(), OnSuccess = "onSuccess", OnFailure = "onFailure" })) { %> 13: <% 1: : this.Html.EditorForModel() %> 14: <input type="submit" name="submit" value="Submit" /> 15: <% 1: } %> 16: </div> 17: </body> 18: </html> Yes… I am using ASPX syntax… sorry about that!   I implemented an editor template for the Product class, which must be located on the ~/Views/Shared/EditorTemplates folder as file Product.ascx: 1: <%@ Control Language="C#" Inherits="System.Web.Mvc.ViewUserControl<Product>" %> 2: <div> 3: <%: this.Html.HiddenFor(model => model.ProductId) %> 4: <%: this.Html.HiddenFor(model => model.RowVersion) %> 5: <fieldset> 6: <legend>Product</legend> 7: <div class="editor-label"> 8: <%: this.Html.LabelFor(model => model.Name) %> 9: </div> 10: <div class="editor-field"> 11: <%: this.Html.TextBoxFor(model => model.Name) %> 12: <%: this.Html.ValidationMessageFor(model => model.Name) %> 13: </div> 14: <div class="editor-label"> 15: <%= this.Html.LabelFor(model => model.Price) %> 16: </div> 17: <div class="editor-field"> 18: <%= this.Html.TextBoxFor(model => model.Price) %> 19: <%: this.Html.ValidationMessageFor(model => model.Price) %> 20: </div> 21: </fieldset> 22: </div> One thing you’ll notice is, I am including both the ProductId and the RowVersion properties as hidden fields; they will come handy later or, so that we know what product and version we are editing. The other thing is the included JavaScript files: jQuery, jQuery UI and unobtrusive validations. Also, I am not using the Content extension method for translating relative URLs, because that way I would lose JavaScript intellisense for jQuery functions. OK, so, at this moment, I want to add support for AJAX and optimistic concurrency control. So I write a controller method like this: 1: [HttpPost] 2: [AjaxOnly] 3: [Authorize] 4: public JsonResult Edit(Product product) 5: { 6: if (this.TryValidateModel(product) == true) 7: { 8: using (BlogContext ctx = new BlogContext()) 9: { 10: Boolean success = false; 11:  12: ctx.Entry(product).State = (product.ProductId == 0) ? EntityState.Added : EntityState.Modified; 13:  14: try 15: { 16: success = (ctx.SaveChanges() == 1); 17: } 18: catch (DbUpdateConcurrencyException) 19: { 20: ctx.Entry(product).Reload(); 21: } 22:  23: return (this.Json(new { Success = success, ProductId = product.ProductId, RowVersion = Convert.ToBase64String(product.RowVersion) })); 24: } 25: } 26: else 27: { 28: return (this.Json(new { Success = false, ProductId = 0, RowVersion = String.Empty })); 29: } 30: } So, this method is only valid for HTTP POST requests (HttpPost), coming from AJAX (AjaxOnly, from MVC Futures), and from authenticated users (Authorize). It returns a JSON object, which is what you would normally use for AJAX requests, containing three properties: Success: a boolean flag; RowVersion: the current version of the ROWVERSION column as a Base-64 string; ProductId: the inserted product id, as coming from the database. If the product is new, it will be inserted into the database, and its primary key will be returned into the ProductId property. Success will be set to true; If a DbUpdateConcurrencyException occurs, it means that the value in the RowVersion property does not match the current ROWVERSION column value on the database, so the record must have been modified between the time that the page was loaded and the time we attempted to save the product. In this case, the controller just gets the new value from the database and returns it in the JSON object; Success will be false. Otherwise, it will be updated, and Success, ProductId and RowVersion will all have their values set accordingly. So let’s see how we can react to these situations on the client side. Specifically, we want to deal with these situations: The user is not logged in when the update/create request is made, perhaps the cookie expired; The optimistic concurrency check failed; All went well. So, let’s change our view: 1: <%@ Page Language="C#" Inherits="System.Web.Mvc.ViewPage<Product>" %> 2: <%@ Import Namespace="System.Web.Security" %> 3:  4: <!DOCTYPE html> 5:  6: <html> 7: <head runat="server"> 8: <title>Product</title> 9: <script src="/Scripts/jquery-1.7.2.js" type="text/javascript"></script> 1:  2: <script src="/Scripts/jquery-ui-1.8.19.js" type="text/javascript"> 1: </script> 2: <script src="/Scripts/jquery.unobtrusive-ajax.js" type="text/javascript"> 1: </script> 2: <script src="/Scripts/jquery.validate.js" type="text/javascript"> 1: </script> 2: <script src="/Scripts/jquery.validate.unobtrusive.js" type="text/javascript"> 1: </script> 2: <script type="text/javascript"> 3: function onFailure(error) 4: { 5: window.alert('An error occurred: ' + error); 6: } 7:  8: function onSuccess(ctx) 9: { 10: if (typeof (ctx.Success) != 'undefined') 11: { 12: $('input#ProductId').val(ctx.ProductId); 13: $('input#RowVersion').val(ctx.RowVersion); 14:  15: if (ctx.Success == false) 16: { 17: window.alert('An error occurred while updating the entity: it may have been modified by third parties. Please try again.'); 18: } 19: else 20: { 21: window.alert('Saved successfully'); 22: } 23: } 24: else 25: { 26: if (window.confirm('Not logged in. Login now?') == true) 27: { 28: document.location.href = '<%: FormsAuthentication.LoginUrl %>?ReturnURL=' + document.location.pathname; 29: } 30: } 31: } 32:  33: </script> 10: </head> 11: <body> 12: <div> 13: <% 1: : this.Html.ValidationSummary(false) %> 14: <% 1: using (this.Ajax.BeginForm("Edit", "Product", new AjaxOptions{ HttpMethod = FormMethod.Post.ToString(), OnSuccess = "onSuccess", OnFailure = "onFailure" })) { %> 15: <% 1: : this.Html.EditorForModel() %> 16: <input type="submit" name="submit" value="Submit" /> 17: <% 1: } %> 18: </div> 19: </body> 20: </html> The implementation of the onSuccess function first checks if the response contains a Success property, if not, the most likely cause is the request was redirected to the login page (using Forms Authentication), because it wasn’t authenticated, so we navigate there as well, keeping the reference to the current page. It then saves the current values of the ProductId and RowVersion properties to their respective hidden fields. They will be sent on each successive post and will be used in determining if the request is for adding a new product or to updating an existing one. The only thing missing is the ability to insert a new product, after inserting/editing an existing one, which can be easily achieved using this snippet: 1: <input type="button" value="New" onclick="$('input#ProductId').val('');$('input#RowVersion').val('');"/> And that’s it.

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  • JMS Step 2 - Using the QueueSend.java Sample Program to Send a Message to a JMS Queue

    - by John-Brown.Evans
    JMS Step 2 - Using the QueueSend.java Sample Program to Send a Message to a JMS Queue .c21_2{vertical-align:top;width:487.3pt;border-style:solid;border-color:#000000;border-width:1pt;padding:5pt 5pt 5pt 5pt} .c15_2{vertical-align:top;width:487.3pt;border-style:solid;border-color:#ffffff;border-width:1pt;padding:5pt 5pt 5pt 5pt} .c0_2{padding-left:0pt;direction:ltr;margin-left:36pt} .c20_2{list-style-type:circle;margin:0;padding:0} .c10_2{list-style-type:disc;margin:0;padding:0} .c6_2{background-color:#ffffff} .c17_2{padding-left:0pt;margin-left:72pt} .c3_2{line-height:1.0;direction:ltr} .c1_2{font-size:10pt;font-family:"Courier New"} .c16_2{color:#1155cc;text-decoration:underline} .c13_2{color:inherit;text-decoration:inherit} .c7_2{background-color:#ffff00} .c9_2{border-collapse:collapse} .c2_2{font-family:"Courier New"} .c18_2{font-size:18pt} .c5_2{font-weight:bold} .c19_2{color:#ff0000} .c12_2{background-color:#f3f3f3;border-style:solid;border-color:#000000;border-width:1pt;} .c14_2{font-size:24pt} .c8_2{direction:ltr;background-color:#ffffff} .c11_2{font-style:italic} .c4_2{height:11pt} .title{padding-top:24pt;line-height:1.15;text-align:left;color:#000000;font-size:36pt;font-family:"Arial";font-weight:bold;padding-bottom:6pt}.subtitle{padding-top:18pt;line-height:1.15;text-align:left;color:#666666;font-style:italic;font-size:24pt;font-family:"Georgia";padding-bottom:4pt} li{color:#000000;font-size:10pt;font-family:"Arial"} p{color:#000000;font-size:10pt;margin:0;font-family:"Arial"} h1{padding-top:0pt;line-height:1.15;text-align:left;color:#888;font-size:24pt;font-family:"Arial";font-weight:normal;padding-bottom:0pt} h2{padding-top:0pt;line-height:1.15;text-align:left;color:#888;font-size:18pt;font-family:"Arial";font-weight:normal;padding-bottom:0pt} h3{padding-top:0pt;line-height:1.15;text-align:left;color:#888;font-size:14pt;font-family:"Arial";font-weight:normal;padding-bottom:0pt} h4{padding-top:0pt;line-height:1.15;text-align:left;color:#888;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Arial";font-weight:normal;padding-bottom:0pt} h5{padding-top:0pt;line-height:1.15;text-align:left;color:#888;font-size:11pt;font-family:"Arial";font-weight:normal;padding-bottom:0pt} h6{padding-top:0pt;line-height:1.15;text-align:left;color:#888;font-size:10pt;font-family:"Arial";font-weight:normal;padding-bottom:0pt} This post is the second in a series of JMS articles which demonstrate how to use JMS queues in a SOA context. In the previous post JMS Step 1 - How to Create a Simple JMS Queue in Weblogic Server 11g I showed you how to create a JMS queue and its dependent objects in WebLogic Server. In this article, we will use a sample program to write a message to that queue. Please review the previous post if you have not created those objects yet, as they will be required later in this example. The previous post also includes useful background information and links to the Oracle documentation for addional research. The following post in this series will show how to read the message from the queue again. 1. Source code The following java code will be used to write a message to the JMS queue. It is based on a sample program provided with the WebLogic Server installation. The sample is not installed by default, but needs to be installed manually using the WebLogic Server Custom Installation option, together with many, other useful samples. You can either copy-paste the following code into your editor, or install all the samples. The knowledge base article in My Oracle Support: How To Install WebLogic Server and JMS Samples in WLS 10.3.x (Doc ID 1499719.1) describes how to install the samples. QueueSend.java package examples.jms.queue; import java.io.BufferedReader; import java.io.IOException; import java.io.InputStreamReader; import java.util.Hashtable; import javax.jms.*; import javax.naming.Context; import javax.naming.InitialContext; import javax.naming.NamingException; /** This example shows how to establish a connection * and send messages to the JMS queue. The classes in this * package operate on the same JMS queue. Run the classes together to * witness messages being sent and received, and to browse the queue * for messages. The class is used to send messages to the queue. * * @author Copyright (c) 1999-2005 by BEA Systems, Inc. All Rights Reserved. */ public class QueueSend { // Defines the JNDI context factory. public final static String JNDI_FACTORY="weblogic.jndi.WLInitialContextFactory"; // Defines the JMS context factory. public final static String JMS_FACTORY="jms/TestConnectionFactory"; // Defines the queue. public final static String QUEUE="jms/TestJMSQueue"; private QueueConnectionFactory qconFactory; private QueueConnection qcon; private QueueSession qsession; private QueueSender qsender; private Queue queue; private TextMessage msg; /** * Creates all the necessary objects for sending * messages to a JMS queue. * * @param ctx JNDI initial context * @param queueName name of queue * @exception NamingException if operation cannot be performed * @exception JMSException if JMS fails to initialize due to internal error */ public void init(Context ctx, String queueName) throws NamingException, JMSException { qconFactory = (QueueConnectionFactory) ctx.lookup(JMS_FACTORY); qcon = qconFactory.createQueueConnection(); qsession = qcon.createQueueSession(false, Session.AUTO_ACKNOWLEDGE); queue = (Queue) ctx.lookup(queueName); qsender = qsession.createSender(queue); msg = qsession.createTextMessage(); qcon.start(); } /** * Sends a message to a JMS queue. * * @param message message to be sent * @exception JMSException if JMS fails to send message due to internal error */ public void send(String message) throws JMSException { msg.setText(message); qsender.send(msg); } /** * Closes JMS objects. * @exception JMSException if JMS fails to close objects due to internal error */ public void close() throws JMSException { qsender.close(); qsession.close(); qcon.close(); } /** main() method. * * @param args WebLogic Server URL * @exception Exception if operation fails */ public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception { if (args.length != 1) { System.out.println("Usage: java examples.jms.queue.QueueSend WebLogicURL"); return; } InitialContext ic = getInitialContext(args[0]); QueueSend qs = new QueueSend(); qs.init(ic, QUEUE); readAndSend(qs); qs.close(); } private static void readAndSend(QueueSend qs) throws IOException, JMSException { BufferedReader msgStream = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(System.in)); String line=null; boolean quitNow = false; do { System.out.print("Enter message (\"quit\" to quit): \n"); line = msgStream.readLine(); if (line != null && line.trim().length() != 0) { qs.send(line); System.out.println("JMS Message Sent: "+line+"\n"); quitNow = line.equalsIgnoreCase("quit"); } } while (! quitNow); } private static InitialContext getInitialContext(String url) throws NamingException { Hashtable env = new Hashtable(); env.put(Context.INITIAL_CONTEXT_FACTORY, JNDI_FACTORY); env.put(Context.PROVIDER_URL, url); return new InitialContext(env); } } 2. How to Use This Class 2.1 From the file system on UNIX/Linux Log in to a machine with a WebLogic installation and create a directory to contain the source and code matching the package name, e.g. $HOME/examples/jms/queue. Copy the above QueueSend.java file to this directory. Set the CLASSPATH and environment to match the WebLogic server environment. Go to $MIDDLEWARE_HOME/user_projects/domains/base_domain/bin  and execute . ./setDomainEnv.sh Collect the following information required to run the script: The JNDI name of a JMS queue to use In the Weblogic server console > Services > Messaging > JMS Modules > (Module name, e.g. TestJMSModule) > (JMS queue name, e.g. TestJMSQueue)Select the queue and note its JNDI name, e.g. jms/TestJMSQueue The JNDI name of a connection factory to connect to the queue Follow the same path as above to get the connection factory for the above queue, e.g. TestConnectionFactory and its JNDI namee.g. jms/TestConnectionFactory The URL and port of the WebLogic server running the above queue Check the JMS server for the above queue and the managed server it is targeted to, for example soa_server1. Now find the port this managed server is listening on, by looking at its entry under Environment > Servers in the WLS console, e.g. 8001 The URL for the server to be given to the QueueSend program in this example will therefore be t3://host.domain:8001 e.g. t3://jbevans-lx.de.oracle.com:8001 Edit QueueSend.java and enter the above queue name and connection factory respectively under ...public final static String  JMS_FACTORY=" jms/TestConnectionFactory "; ... public final static String QUEUE=" jms/TestJMSQueue "; ... Compile QueueSend.java using javac QueueSend.java Go to the source’s top-level directory and execute it using java examples.jms.queue.QueueSend t3://jbevans-lx.de.oracle.com:8001 This will prompt for a text input or “quit” to end. In the WLS console, go to the queue and select Monitoring to confirm that a new message was written to the queue. 2.2 From JDeveloper Create a new application in JDeveloper, called, for example JMSTests. When prompted for a project name, enter QueueSend and select Java as the technology Default Package = examples.jms.queue (but you can enter anything here as you will overwrite it in the code later). Leave the other values at their defaults. Press Finish Create a new Java class called QueueSend and use the default values This will create a file called QueueSend.java. Open QueueSend.java, if it is not already open and replace all its contents with the QueueSend java code listed above Some lines might have warnings due to unfound objects. These are due to missing libraries in the JDeveloper project. Add the following libraries to the JDeveloper project: right-click the QueueSend  project in the navigation menu and select Libraries and Classpath , then Add JAR/Directory  Go to the folder containing the JDeveloper installation and find/choose the file javax.jms_1.1.1.jar , e.g. at D:\oracle\jdev11116\modules\javax.jms_1.1.1.jar Do the same for the weblogic.jar file located, for example in D:\oracle\jdev11116\wlserver_10.3\server\lib\weblogic.jar Now you should be able to compile the project, for example by selecting the Make or Rebuild icons   If you try to execute the project, you will get a usage message, as it requires a parameter pointing to the WLS installation containing the JMS queue, for example t3://jbevans-lx.de.oracle.com:8001 . You can automatically pass this parameter to the program from JDeveloper by editing the project’s Run/Debug/Profile. Select the project properties, select Run/Debug/Profile and edit the Default run configuration and add the connection parameter to the Program Arguments field If you execute it again, you will see that it has passed the parameter to the start command If you get a ClassNotFoundException for the class weblogic.jndi.WLInitialContextFactory , then check that the weblogic.jar file was correctly added to the project in one of the earlier steps above. Set the values of JMS_FACTORY and QUEUE the same way as described above in the description of how to use this from a Linux file system, i.e. ...public final static String  JMS_FACTORY=" jms/TestConnectionFactory "; ... public final static String QUEUE=" jms/TestJMSQueue "; ... You need to make one more change to the project. If you execute it now, it will prompt for the payload for the JMS message, but you won’t be able to enter it by default in JDeveloper. You need to enable program input for the project first. Select the project’s properties, then Tool Settings, then check the Allow Program Input checkbox at the bottom and Save. Now when you execute the project, you will get a text entry field at the bottom into which you can enter the payload. You can enter multiple messages until you enter “quit”, which will cause the program to stop. The following screen shot shows the TestJMSQueue’s Monitoring page, after a message was sent to the queue: This concludes the sample. In the following post I will show you how to read the message from the queue again.

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  • Hosting the Razor Engine for Templating in Non-Web Applications

    - by Rick Strahl
    Microsoft’s new Razor HTML Rendering Engine that is currently shipping with ASP.NET MVC previews can be used outside of ASP.NET. Razor is an alternative view engine that can be used instead of the ASP.NET Page engine that currently works with ASP.NET WebForms and MVC. It provides a simpler and more readable markup syntax and is much more light weight in terms of functionality than the full blown WebForms Page engine, focusing only on features that are more along the lines of a pure view engine (or classic ASP!) with focus on expression and code rendering rather than a complex control/object model. Like the Page engine though, the parser understands .NET code syntax which can be embedded into templates, and behind the scenes the engine compiles markup and script code into an executing piece of .NET code in an assembly. Although it ships as part of the ASP.NET MVC and WebMatrix the Razor Engine itself is not directly dependent on ASP.NET or IIS or HTTP in any way. And although there are some markup and rendering features that are optimized for HTML based output generation, Razor is essentially a free standing template engine. And what’s really nice is that unlike the ASP.NET Runtime, Razor is fairly easy to host inside of your own non-Web applications to provide templating functionality. Templating in non-Web Applications? Yes please! So why might you host a template engine in your non-Web application? Template rendering is useful in many places and I have a number of applications that make heavy use of it. One of my applications – West Wind Html Help Builder - exclusively uses template based rendering to merge user supplied help text content into customizable and executable HTML markup templates that provide HTML output for CHM style HTML Help. This is an older product and it’s not actually using .NET at the moment – and this is one reason I’m looking at Razor for script hosting at the moment. For a few .NET applications though I’ve actually used the ASP.NET Runtime hosting to provide templating and mail merge style functionality and while that works reasonably well it’s a very heavy handed approach. It’s very resource intensive and has potential issues with versioning in various different versions of .NET. The generic implementation I created in the article above requires a lot of fix up to mimic an HTTP request in a non-HTTP environment and there are a lot of little things that have to happen to ensure that the ASP.NET runtime works properly most of it having nothing to do with the templating aspect but just satisfying ASP.NET’s requirements. The Razor Engine on the other hand is fairly light weight and completely decoupled from the ASP.NET runtime and the HTTP processing. Rather it’s a pure template engine whose sole purpose is to render text templates. Hosting this engine in your own applications can be accomplished with a reasonable amount of code (actually just a few lines with the tools I’m about to describe) and without having to fake HTTP requests. It’s also much lighter on resource usage and you can easily attach custom properties to your base template implementation to easily pass context from the parent application into templates all of which was rather complicated with ASP.NET runtime hosting. Installing the Razor Template Engine You can get Razor as part of the MVC 3 (RC and later) or Web Matrix. Both are available as downloadable components from the Web Platform Installer Version 3.0 (!important – V2 doesn’t show these components). If you already have that version of the WPI installed just fire it up. You can get the latest version of the Web Platform Installer from here: http://www.microsoft.com/web/gallery/install.aspx Once the platform Installer 3.0 is installed install either MVC 3 or ASP.NET Web Pages. Once installed you’ll find a System.Web.Razor assembly in C:\Program Files\Microsoft ASP.NET\ASP.NET Web Pages\v1.0\Assemblies\System.Web.Razor.dll which you can add as a reference to your project. Creating a Wrapper The basic Razor Hosting API is pretty simple and you can host Razor with a (large-ish) handful of lines of code. I’ll show the basics of it later in this article. However, if you want to customize the rendering and handle assembly and namespace includes for the markup as well as deal with text and file inputs as well as forcing Razor to run in a separate AppDomain so you can unload the code-generated assemblies and deal with assembly caching for re-used templates little more work is required to create something that is more easily reusable. For this reason I created a Razor Hosting wrapper project that combines a bunch of this functionality into an easy to use hosting class, a hosting factory that can load the engine in a separate AppDomain and a couple of hosting containers that provided folder based and string based caching for templates for an easily embeddable and reusable engine with easy to use syntax. If you just want the code and play with the samples and source go grab the latest code from the Subversion Repository at: http://www.west-wind.com:8080/svn/articles/trunk/RazorHosting/ or a snapshot from: http://www.west-wind.com/files/tools/RazorHosting.zip Getting Started Before I get into how hosting with Razor works, let’s take a look at how you can get up and running quickly with the wrapper classes provided. It only takes a few lines of code. The easiest way to use these Razor Hosting Wrappers is to use one of the two HostContainers provided. One is for hosting Razor scripts in a directory and rendering them as relative paths from these script files on disk. The other HostContainer serves razor scripts from string templates… Let’s start with a very simple template that displays some simple expressions, some code blocks and demonstrates rendering some data from contextual data that you pass to the template in the form of a ‘context’. Here’s a simple Razor template: @using System.Reflection Hello @Context.FirstName! Your entry was entered on: @Context.Entered @{ // Code block: Update the host Windows Form passed in through the context Context.WinForm.Text = "Hello World from Razor at " + DateTime.Now.ToString(); } AppDomain Id: @AppDomain.CurrentDomain.FriendlyName Assembly: @Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().FullName Code based output: @{ // Write output with Response object from code string output = string.Empty; for (int i = 0; i < 10; i++) { output += i.ToString() + " "; } Response.Write(output); } Pretty easy to see what’s going on here. The only unusual thing in this code is the Context object which is an arbitrary object I’m passing from the host to the template by way of the template base class. I’m also displaying the current AppDomain and the executing Assembly name so you can see how compiling and running a template actually loads up new assemblies. Also note that as part of my context I’m passing a reference to the current Windows Form down to the template and changing the title from within the script. It’s a silly example, but it demonstrates two-way communication between host and template and back which can be very powerful. The easiest way to quickly render this template is to use the RazorEngine<TTemplateBase> class. The generic parameter specifies a template base class type that is used by Razor internally to generate the class it generates from a template. The default implementation provided in my RazorHosting wrapper is RazorTemplateBase. Here’s a simple one that renders from a string and outputs a string: var engine = new RazorEngine<RazorTemplateBase>(); // we can pass any object as context - here create a custom context var context = new CustomContext() { WinForm = this, FirstName = "Rick", Entered = DateTime.Now.AddDays(-10) }; string output = engine.RenderTemplate(this.txtSource.Text new string[] { "System.Windows.Forms.dll" }, context); if (output == null) this.txtResult.Text = "*** ERROR:\r\n" + engine.ErrorMessage; else this.txtResult.Text = output; Simple enough. This code renders a template from a string input and returns a result back as a string. It  creates a custom context and passes that to the template which can then access the Context’s properties. Note that anything passed as ‘context’ must be serializable (or MarshalByRefObject) – otherwise you get an exception when passing the reference over AppDomain boundaries (discussed later). Passing a context is optional, but is a key feature in being able to share data between the host application and the template. Note that we use the Context object to access FirstName, Entered and even the host Windows Form object which is used in the template to change the Window caption from within the script! In the code above all the work happens in the RenderTemplate method which provide a variety of overloads to read and write to and from strings, files and TextReaders/Writers. Here’s another example that renders from a file input using a TextReader: using (reader = new StreamReader("templates\\simple.csHtml", true)) { result = host.RenderTemplate(reader, new string[] { "System.Windows.Forms.dll" }, this.CustomContext); } RenderTemplate() is fairly high level and it handles loading of the runtime, compiling into an assembly and rendering of the template. If you want more control you can use the lower level methods to control each step of the way which is important for the HostContainers I’ll discuss later. Basically for those scenarios you want to separate out loading of the engine, compiling into an assembly and then rendering the template from the assembly. Why? So we can keep assemblies cached. In the code above a new assembly is created for each template rendered which is inefficient and uses up resources. Depending on the size of your templates and how often you fire them you can chew through memory very quickly. This slighter lower level approach is only a couple of extra steps: // we can pass any object as context - here create a custom context var context = new CustomContext() { WinForm = this, FirstName = "Rick", Entered = DateTime.Now.AddDays(-10) }; var engine = new RazorEngine<RazorTemplateBase>(); string assId = null; using (StringReader reader = new StringReader(this.txtSource.Text)) { assId = engine.ParseAndCompileTemplate(new string[] { "System.Windows.Forms.dll" }, reader); } string output = engine.RenderTemplateFromAssembly(assId, context); if (output == null) this.txtResult.Text = "*** ERROR:\r\n" + engine.ErrorMessage; else this.txtResult.Text = output; The difference here is that you can capture the assembly – or rather an Id to it – and potentially hold on to it to render again later assuming the template hasn’t changed. The HostContainers take advantage of this feature to cache the assemblies based on certain criteria like a filename and file time step or a string hash that if not change indicate that an assembly can be reused. Note that ParseAndCompileTemplate returns an assembly Id rather than the assembly itself. This is done so that that the assembly always stays in the host’s AppDomain and is not passed across AppDomain boundaries which would cause load failures. We’ll talk more about this in a minute but for now just realize that assemblies references are stored in a list and are accessible by this ID to allow locating and re-executing of the assembly based on that id. Reuse of the assembly avoids recompilation overhead and creation of yet another assembly that loads into the current AppDomain. You can play around with several different versions of the above code in the main sample form:   Using Hosting Containers for more Control and Caching The above examples simply render templates into assemblies each and every time they are executed. While this works and is even reasonably fast, it’s not terribly efficient. If you render templates more than once it would be nice if you could cache the generated assemblies for example to avoid re-compiling and creating of a new assembly each time. Additionally it would be nice to load template assemblies into a separate AppDomain optionally to be able to be able to unload assembli es and also to protect your host application from scripting attacks with malicious template code. Hosting containers provide also provide a wrapper around the RazorEngine<T> instance, a factory (which allows creation in separate AppDomains) and an easy way to start and stop the container ‘runtime’. The Razor Hosting samples provide two hosting containers: RazorFolderHostContainer and StringHostContainer. The folder host provides a simple runtime environment for a folder structure similar in the way that the ASP.NET runtime handles a virtual directory as it’s ‘application' root. Templates are loaded from disk in relative paths and the resulting assemblies are cached unless the template on disk is changed. The string host also caches templates based on string hashes – if the same string is passed a second time a cached version of the assembly is used. Here’s how HostContainers work. I’ll use the FolderHostContainer because it’s likely the most common way you’d use templates – from disk based templates that can be easily edited and maintained on disk. The first step is to create an instance of it and keep it around somewhere (in the example it’s attached as a property to the Form): RazorFolderHostContainer Host = new RazorFolderHostContainer(); public RazorFolderHostForm() { InitializeComponent(); // The base path for templates - templates are rendered with relative paths // based on this path. Host.TemplatePath = Path.Combine(Environment.CurrentDirectory, TemplateBaseFolder); // Add any assemblies you want reference in your templates Host.ReferencedAssemblies.Add("System.Windows.Forms.dll"); // Start up the host container Host.Start(); } Next anytime you want to render a template you can use simple code like this: private void RenderTemplate(string fileName) { // Pass the template path via the Context var relativePath = Utilities.GetRelativePath(fileName, Host.TemplatePath); if (!Host.RenderTemplate(relativePath, this.Context, Host.RenderingOutputFile)) { MessageBox.Show("Error: " + Host.ErrorMessage); return; } this.webBrowser1.Navigate("file://" + Host.RenderingOutputFile); } You can also render the output to a string instead of to a file: string result = Host.RenderTemplateToString(relativePath,context); Finally if you want to release the engine and shut down the hosting AppDomain you can simply do: Host.Stop(); Stopping the AppDomain and restarting it (ie. calling Stop(); followed by Start()) is also a nice way to release all resources in the AppDomain. The FolderBased domain also supports partial Rendering based on root path based relative paths with the same caching characteristics as the main templates. From within a template you can call out to a partial like this: @RenderPartial(@"partials\PartialRendering.cshtml", Context) where partials\PartialRendering.cshtml is a relative to the template root folder. The folder host example lets you load up templates from disk and display the result in a Web Browser control which demonstrates using Razor HTML output from templates that contain HTML syntax which happens to me my target scenario for Html Help Builder.   The Razor Engine Wrapper Project The project I created to wrap Razor hosting has a fair bit of code and a number of classes associated with it. Most of the components are internally used and as you can see using the final RazorEngine<T> and HostContainer classes is pretty easy. The classes are extensible and I suspect developers will want to build more customized host containers for their applications. Host containers are the key to wrapping up all functionality – Engine, BaseTemplate, AppDomain Hosting, Caching etc in a logical piece that is ready to be plugged into an application. When looking at the code there are a couple of core features provided: Core Razor Engine Hosting This is the core Razor hosting which provides the basics of loading a template, compiling it into an assembly and executing it. This is fairly straightforward, but without a host container that can cache assemblies based on some criteria templates are recompiled and re-created each time which is inefficient (although pretty fast). The base engine wrapper implementation also supports hosting the Razor runtime in a separate AppDomain for security and the ability to unload it on demand. Host Containers The engine hosting itself doesn’t provide any sort of ‘runtime’ service like picking up files from disk, caching assemblies and so forth. So my implementation provides two HostContainers: RazorFolderHostContainer and RazorStringHostContainer. The FolderHost works off a base directory and loads templates based on relative paths (sort of like the ASP.NET runtime does off a virtual). The HostContainers also deal with caching of template assemblies – for the folder host the file date is tracked and checked for updates and unless the template is changed a cached assembly is reused. The StringHostContainer similiarily checks string hashes to figure out whether a particular string template was previously compiled and executed. The HostContainers also act as a simple startup environment and a single reference to easily store and reuse in an application. TemplateBase Classes The template base classes are the base classes that from which the Razor engine generates .NET code. A template is parsed into a class with an Execute() method and the class is based on this template type you can specify. RazorEngine<TBaseTemplate> can receive this type and the HostContainers default to specific templates in their base implementations. Template classes are customizable to allow you to create templates that provide application specific features and interaction from the template to your host application. How does the RazorEngine wrapper work? You can browse the source code in the links above or in the repository or download the source, but I’ll highlight some key features here. Here’s part of the RazorEngine implementation that can be used to host the runtime and that demonstrates the key code required to host the Razor runtime. The RazorEngine class is implemented as a generic class to reflect the Template base class type: public class RazorEngine<TBaseTemplateType> : MarshalByRefObject where TBaseTemplateType : RazorTemplateBase The generic type is used to internally provide easier access to the template type and assignments on it as part of the template processing. The class also inherits MarshalByRefObject to allow execution over AppDomain boundaries – something that all the classes discussed here need to do since there is much interaction between the host and the template. The first two key methods deal with creating a template assembly: /// <summary> /// Creates an instance of the RazorHost with various options applied. /// Applies basic namespace imports and the name of the class to generate /// </summary> /// <param name="generatedNamespace"></param> /// <param name="generatedClass"></param> /// <returns></returns> protected RazorTemplateEngine CreateHost(string generatedNamespace, string generatedClass) { Type baseClassType = typeof(TBaseTemplateType); RazorEngineHost host = new RazorEngineHost(new CSharpRazorCodeLanguage()); host.DefaultBaseClass = baseClassType.FullName; host.DefaultClassName = generatedClass; host.DefaultNamespace = generatedNamespace; host.NamespaceImports.Add("System"); host.NamespaceImports.Add("System.Text"); host.NamespaceImports.Add("System.Collections.Generic"); host.NamespaceImports.Add("System.Linq"); host.NamespaceImports.Add("System.IO"); return new RazorTemplateEngine(host); } /// <summary> /// Parses and compiles a markup template into an assembly and returns /// an assembly name. The name is an ID that can be passed to /// ExecuteTemplateByAssembly which picks up a cached instance of the /// loaded assembly. /// /// </summary> /// <param name="namespaceOfGeneratedClass">The namespace of the class to generate from the template</param> /// <param name="generatedClassName">The name of the class to generate from the template</param> /// <param name="ReferencedAssemblies">Any referenced assemblies by dll name only. Assemblies must be in execution path of host or in GAC.</param> /// <param name="templateSourceReader">Textreader that loads the template</param> /// <remarks> /// The actual assembly isn't returned here to allow for cross-AppDomain /// operation. If the assembly was returned it would fail for cross-AppDomain /// calls. /// </remarks> /// <returns>An assembly Id. The Assembly is cached in memory and can be used with RenderFromAssembly.</returns> public string ParseAndCompileTemplate( string namespaceOfGeneratedClass, string generatedClassName, string[] ReferencedAssemblies, TextReader templateSourceReader) { RazorTemplateEngine engine = CreateHost(namespaceOfGeneratedClass, generatedClassName); // Generate the template class as CodeDom GeneratorResults razorResults = engine.GenerateCode(templateSourceReader); // Create code from the codeDom and compile CSharpCodeProvider codeProvider = new CSharpCodeProvider(); CodeGeneratorOptions options = new CodeGeneratorOptions(); // Capture Code Generated as a string for error info // and debugging LastGeneratedCode = null; using (StringWriter writer = new StringWriter()) { codeProvider.GenerateCodeFromCompileUnit(razorResults.GeneratedCode, writer, options); LastGeneratedCode = writer.ToString(); } CompilerParameters compilerParameters = new CompilerParameters(ReferencedAssemblies); // Standard Assembly References compilerParameters.ReferencedAssemblies.Add("System.dll"); compilerParameters.ReferencedAssemblies.Add("System.Core.dll"); compilerParameters.ReferencedAssemblies.Add("Microsoft.CSharp.dll"); // dynamic support! // Also add the current assembly so RazorTemplateBase is available compilerParameters.ReferencedAssemblies.Add(Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().CodeBase.Substring(8)); compilerParameters.GenerateInMemory = Configuration.CompileToMemory; if (!Configuration.CompileToMemory) compilerParameters.OutputAssembly = Path.Combine(Configuration.TempAssemblyPath, "_" + Guid.NewGuid().ToString("n") + ".dll"); CompilerResults compilerResults = codeProvider.CompileAssemblyFromDom(compilerParameters, razorResults.GeneratedCode); if (compilerResults.Errors.Count > 0) { var compileErrors = new StringBuilder(); foreach (System.CodeDom.Compiler.CompilerError compileError in compilerResults.Errors) compileErrors.Append(String.Format(Resources.LineX0TColX1TErrorX2RN, compileError.Line, compileError.Column, compileError.ErrorText)); this.SetError(compileErrors.ToString() + "\r\n" + LastGeneratedCode); return null; } AssemblyCache.Add(compilerResults.CompiledAssembly.FullName, compilerResults.CompiledAssembly); return compilerResults.CompiledAssembly.FullName; } Think of the internal CreateHost() method as setting up the assembly generated from each template. Each template compiles into a separate assembly. It sets up namespaces, and assembly references, the base class used and the name and namespace for the generated class. ParseAndCompileTemplate() then calls the CreateHost() method to receive the template engine generator which effectively generates a CodeDom from the template – the template is turned into .NET code. The code generated from our earlier example looks something like this: //------------------------------------------------------------------------------ // <auto-generated> // This code was generated by a tool. // Runtime Version:4.0.30319.1 // // Changes to this file may cause incorrect behavior and will be lost if // the code is regenerated. // </auto-generated> //------------------------------------------------------------------------------ namespace RazorTest { using System; using System.Text; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.IO; using System.Reflection; public class RazorTemplate : RazorHosting.RazorTemplateBase { #line hidden public RazorTemplate() { } public override void Execute() { WriteLiteral("Hello "); Write(Context.FirstName); WriteLiteral("! Your entry was entered on: "); Write(Context.Entered); WriteLiteral("\r\n\r\n"); // Code block: Update the host Windows Form passed in through the context Context.WinForm.Text = "Hello World from Razor at " + DateTime.Now.ToString(); WriteLiteral("\r\nAppDomain Id:\r\n "); Write(AppDomain.CurrentDomain.FriendlyName); WriteLiteral("\r\n \r\nAssembly:\r\n "); Write(Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().FullName); WriteLiteral("\r\n\r\nCode based output: \r\n"); // Write output with Response object from code string output = string.Empty; for (int i = 0; i < 10; i++) { output += i.ToString() + " "; } } } } Basically the template’s body is turned into code in an Execute method that is called. Internally the template’s Write method is fired to actually generate the output. Note that the class inherits from RazorTemplateBase which is the generic parameter I used to specify the base class when creating an instance in my RazorEngine host: var engine = new RazorEngine<RazorTemplateBase>(); This template class must be provided and it must implement an Execute() and Write() method. Beyond that you can create any class you chose and attach your own properties. My RazorTemplateBase class implementation is very simple: public class RazorTemplateBase : MarshalByRefObject, IDisposable { /// <summary> /// You can pass in a generic context object /// to use in your template code /// </summary> public dynamic Context { get; set; } /// <summary> /// Class that generates output. Currently ultra simple /// with only Response.Write() implementation. /// </summary> public RazorResponse Response { get; set; } public object HostContainer {get; set; } public object Engine { get; set; } public RazorTemplateBase() { Response = new RazorResponse(); } public virtual void Write(object value) { Response.Write(value); } public virtual void WriteLiteral(object value) { Response.Write(value); } /// <summary> /// Razor Parser implements this method /// </summary> public virtual void Execute() {} public virtual void Dispose() { if (Response != null) { Response.Dispose(); Response = null; } } } Razor fills in the Execute method when it generates its subclass and uses the Write() method to output content. As you can see I use a RazorResponse() class here to generate output. This isn’t necessary really, as you could use a StringBuilder or StringWriter() directly, but I prefer using Response object so I can extend the Response behavior as needed. The RazorResponse class is also very simple and merely acts as a wrapper around a TextWriter: public class RazorResponse : IDisposable { /// <summary> /// Internal text writer - default to StringWriter() /// </summary> public TextWriter Writer = new StringWriter(); public virtual void Write(object value) { Writer.Write(value); } public virtual void WriteLine(object value) { Write(value); Write("\r\n"); } public virtual void WriteFormat(string format, params object[] args) { Write(string.Format(format, args)); } public override string ToString() { return Writer.ToString(); } public virtual void Dispose() { Writer.Close(); } public virtual void SetTextWriter(TextWriter writer) { // Close original writer if (Writer != null) Writer.Close(); Writer = writer; } } The Rendering Methods of RazorEngine At this point I’ve talked about the assembly generation logic and the template implementation itself. What’s left is that once you’ve generated the assembly is to execute it. The code to do this is handled in the various RenderXXX methods of the RazorEngine class. Let’s look at the lowest level one of these which is RenderTemplateFromAssembly() and a couple of internal support methods that handle instantiating and invoking of the generated template method: public string RenderTemplateFromAssembly( string assemblyId, string generatedNamespace, string generatedClass, object context, TextWriter outputWriter) { this.SetError(); Assembly generatedAssembly = AssemblyCache[assemblyId]; if (generatedAssembly == null) { this.SetError(Resources.PreviouslyCompiledAssemblyNotFound); return null; } string className = generatedNamespace + "." + generatedClass; Type type; try { type = generatedAssembly.GetType(className); } catch (Exception ex) { this.SetError(Resources.UnableToCreateType + className + ": " + ex.Message); return null; } // Start with empty non-error response (if we use a writer) string result = string.Empty; using(TBaseTemplateType instance = InstantiateTemplateClass(type)) { if (instance == null) return null; if (outputWriter != null) instance.Response.SetTextWriter(outputWriter); if (!InvokeTemplateInstance(instance, context)) return null; // Capture string output if implemented and return // otherwise null is returned if (outputWriter == null) result = instance.Response.ToString(); } return result; } protected virtual TBaseTemplateType InstantiateTemplateClass(Type type) { TBaseTemplateType instance = Activator.CreateInstance(type) as TBaseTemplateType; if (instance == null) { SetError(Resources.CouldnTActivateTypeInstance + type.FullName); return null; } instance.Engine = this; // If a HostContainer was set pass that to the template too instance.HostContainer = this.HostContainer; return instance; } /// <summary> /// Internally executes an instance of the template, /// captures errors on execution and returns true or false /// </summary> /// <param name="instance">An instance of the generated template</param> /// <returns>true or false - check ErrorMessage for errors</returns> protected virtual bool InvokeTemplateInstance(TBaseTemplateType instance, object context) { try { instance.Context = context; instance.Execute(); } catch (Exception ex) { this.SetError(Resources.TemplateExecutionError + ex.Message); return false; } finally { // Must make sure Response is closed instance.Response.Dispose(); } return true; } The RenderTemplateFromAssembly method basically requires the namespace and class to instantate and creates an instance of the class using InstantiateTemplateClass(). It then invokes the method with InvokeTemplateInstance(). These two methods are broken out because they are re-used by various other rendering methods and also to allow subclassing and providing additional configuration tasks to set properties and pass values to templates at execution time. In the default mode instantiation sets the Engine and HostContainer (discussed later) so the template can call back into the template engine, and the context is set when the template method is invoked. The various RenderXXX methods use similar code although they create the assemblies first. If you’re after potentially cashing assemblies the method is the one to call and that’s exactly what the two HostContainer classes do. More on that in a minute, but before we get into HostContainers let’s talk about AppDomain hosting and the like. Running Templates in their own AppDomain With the RazorEngine class above, when a template is parsed into an assembly and executed the assembly is created (in memory or on disk – you can configure that) and cached in the current AppDomain. In .NET once an assembly has been loaded it can never be unloaded so if you’re loading lots of templates and at some time you want to release them there’s no way to do so. If however you load the assemblies in a separate AppDomain that new AppDomain can be unloaded and the assemblies loaded in it with it. In order to host the templates in a separate AppDomain the easiest thing to do is to run the entire RazorEngine in a separate AppDomain. Then all interaction occurs in the other AppDomain and no further changes have to be made. To facilitate this there is a RazorEngineFactory which has methods that can instantiate the RazorHost in a separate AppDomain as well as in the local AppDomain. The host creates the remote instance and then hangs on to it to keep it alive as well as providing methods to shut down the AppDomain and reload the engine. Sounds complicated but cross-AppDomain invocation is actually fairly easy to implement. Here’s some of the relevant code from the RazorEngineFactory class. Like the RazorEngine this class is generic and requires a template base type in the generic class name: public class RazorEngineFactory<TBaseTemplateType> where TBaseTemplateType : RazorTemplateBase Here are the key methods of interest: /// <summary> /// Creates an instance of the RazorHost in a new AppDomain. This /// version creates a static singleton that that is cached and you /// can call UnloadRazorHostInAppDomain to unload it. /// </summary> /// <returns></returns> public static RazorEngine<TBaseTemplateType> CreateRazorHostInAppDomain() { if (Current == null) Current = new RazorEngineFactory<TBaseTemplateType>(); return Current.GetRazorHostInAppDomain(); } public static void UnloadRazorHostInAppDomain() { if (Current != null) Current.UnloadHost(); Current = null; } /// <summary> /// Instance method that creates a RazorHost in a new AppDomain. /// This method requires that you keep the Factory around in /// order to keep the AppDomain alive and be able to unload it. /// </summary> /// <returns></returns> public RazorEngine<TBaseTemplateType> GetRazorHostInAppDomain() { LocalAppDomain = CreateAppDomain(null); if (LocalAppDomain == null) return null; /// Create the instance inside of the new AppDomain /// Note: remote domain uses local EXE's AppBasePath!!! RazorEngine<TBaseTemplateType> host = null; try { Assembly ass = Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly(); string AssemblyPath = ass.Location; host = (RazorEngine<TBaseTemplateType>) LocalAppDomain.CreateInstanceFrom(AssemblyPath, typeof(RazorEngine<TBaseTemplateType>).FullName).Unwrap(); } catch (Exception ex) { ErrorMessage = ex.Message; return null; } return host; } /// <summary> /// Internally creates a new AppDomain in which Razor templates can /// be run. /// </summary> /// <param name="appDomainName"></param> /// <returns></returns> private AppDomain CreateAppDomain(string appDomainName) { if (appDomainName == null) appDomainName = "RazorHost_" + Guid.NewGuid().ToString("n"); AppDomainSetup setup = new AppDomainSetup(); // *** Point at current directory setup.ApplicationBase = AppDomain.CurrentDomain.BaseDirectory; AppDomain localDomain = AppDomain.CreateDomain(appDomainName, null, setup); return localDomain; } /// <summary> /// Allow unloading of the created AppDomain to release resources /// All internal resources in the AppDomain are released including /// in memory compiled Razor assemblies. /// </summary> public void UnloadHost() { if (this.LocalAppDomain != null) { AppDomain.Unload(this.LocalAppDomain); this.LocalAppDomain = null; } } The static CreateRazorHostInAppDomain() is the key method that startup code usually calls. It uses a Current singleton instance to an instance of itself that is created cross AppDomain and is kept alive because it’s static. GetRazorHostInAppDomain actually creates a cross-AppDomain instance which first creates a new AppDomain and then loads the RazorEngine into it. The remote Proxy instance is returned as a result to the method and can be used the same as a local instance. The code to run with a remote AppDomain is simple: private RazorEngine<RazorTemplateBase> CreateHost() { if (this.Host != null) return this.Host; // Use Static Methods - no error message if host doesn't load this.Host = RazorEngineFactory<RazorTemplateBase>.CreateRazorHostInAppDomain(); if (this.Host == null) { MessageBox.Show("Unable to load Razor Template Host", "Razor Hosting", MessageBoxButtons.OK, MessageBoxIcon.Exclamation); } return this.Host; } This code relies on a local reference of the Host which is kept around for the duration of the app (in this case a form reference). To use this you’d simply do: this.Host = CreateHost(); if (host == null) return; string result = host.RenderTemplate( this.txtSource.Text, new string[] { "System.Windows.Forms.dll", "Westwind.Utilities.dll" }, this.CustomContext); if (result == null) { MessageBox.Show(host.ErrorMessage, "Template Execution Error", MessageBoxButtons.OK, MessageBoxIcon.Exclamation); return; } this.txtResult.Text = result; Now all templates run in a remote AppDomain and can be unloaded with simple code like this: RazorEngineFactory<RazorTemplateBase>.UnloadRazorHostInAppDomain(); this.Host = null; One Step further – Providing a caching ‘Runtime’ Once we can load templates in a remote AppDomain we can add some additional functionality like assembly caching based on application specific features. One of my typical scenarios is to render templates out of a scripts folder. So all templates live in a folder and they change infrequently. So a Folder based host that can compile these templates once and then only recompile them if something changes would be ideal. Enter host containers which are basically wrappers around the RazorEngine<t> and RazorEngineFactory<t>. They provide additional logic for things like file caching based on changes on disk or string hashes for string based template inputs. The folder host also provides for partial rendering logic through a custom template base implementation. There’s a base implementation in RazorBaseHostContainer, which provides the basics for hosting a RazorEngine, which includes the ability to start and stop the engine, cache assemblies and add references: public abstract class RazorBaseHostContainer<TBaseTemplateType> : MarshalByRefObject where TBaseTemplateType : RazorTemplateBase, new() { public RazorBaseHostContainer() { UseAppDomain = true; GeneratedNamespace = "__RazorHost"; } /// <summary> /// Determines whether the Container hosts Razor /// in a separate AppDomain. Seperate AppDomain /// hosting allows unloading and releasing of /// resources. /// </summary> public bool UseAppDomain { get; set; } /// <summary> /// Base folder location where the AppDomain /// is hosted. By default uses the same folder /// as the host application. /// /// Determines where binary dependencies are /// found for assembly references. /// </summary> public string BaseBinaryFolder { get; set; } /// <summary> /// List of referenced assemblies as string values. /// Must be in GAC or in the current folder of the host app/ /// base BinaryFolder /// </summary> public List<string> ReferencedAssemblies = new List<string>(); /// <summary> /// Name of the generated namespace for template classes /// </summary> public string GeneratedNamespace {get; set; } /// <summary> /// Any error messages /// </summary> public string ErrorMessage { get; set; } /// <summary> /// Cached instance of the Host. Required to keep the /// reference to the host alive for multiple uses. /// </summary> public RazorEngine<TBaseTemplateType> Engine; /// <summary> /// Cached instance of the Host Factory - so we can unload /// the host and its associated AppDomain. /// </summary> protected RazorEngineFactory<TBaseTemplateType> EngineFactory; /// <summary> /// Keep track of each compiled assembly /// and when it was compiled. /// /// Use a hash of the string to identify string /// changes. /// </summary> protected Dictionary<int, CompiledAssemblyItem> LoadedAssemblies = new Dictionary<int, CompiledAssemblyItem>(); /// <summary> /// Call to start the Host running. Follow by a calls to RenderTemplate to /// render individual templates. Call Stop when done. /// </summary> /// <returns>true or false - check ErrorMessage on false </returns> public virtual bool Start() { if (Engine == null) { if (UseAppDomain) Engine = RazorEngineFactory<TBaseTemplateType>.CreateRazorHostInAppDomain(); else Engine = RazorEngineFactory<TBaseTemplateType>.CreateRazorHost(); Engine.Configuration.CompileToMemory = true; Engine.HostContainer = this; if (Engine == null) { this.ErrorMessage = EngineFactory.ErrorMessage; return false; } } return true; } /// <summary> /// Stops the Host and releases the host AppDomain and cached /// assemblies. /// </summary> /// <returns>true or false</returns> public bool Stop() { this.LoadedAssemblies.Clear(); RazorEngineFactory<RazorTemplateBase>.UnloadRazorHostInAppDomain(); this.Engine = null; return true; } … } This base class provides most of the mechanics to host the runtime, but no application specific implementation for rendering. There are rendering functions but they just call the engine directly and provide no caching – there’s no context to decide how to cache and reuse templates. The key methods are Start and Stop and their main purpose is to start a new AppDomain (optionally) and shut it down when requested. The RazorFolderHostContainer – Folder Based Runtime Hosting Let’s look at the more application specific RazorFolderHostContainer implementation which is defined like this: public class RazorFolderHostContainer : RazorBaseHostContainer<RazorTemplateFolderHost> Note that a customized RazorTemplateFolderHost class template is used for this implementation that supports partial rendering in form of a RenderPartial() method that’s available to templates. The folder host’s features are: Render templates based on a Template Base Path (a ‘virtual’ if you will) Cache compiled assemblies based on the relative path and file time stamp File changes on templates cause templates to be recompiled into new assemblies Support for partial rendering using base folder relative pathing As shown in the startup examples earlier host containers require some startup code with a HostContainer tied to a persistent property (like a Form property): // The base path for templates - templates are rendered with relative paths // based on this path. HostContainer.TemplatePath = Path.Combine(Environment.CurrentDirectory, TemplateBaseFolder); // Default output rendering disk location HostContainer.RenderingOutputFile = Path.Combine(HostContainer.TemplatePath, "__Preview.htm"); // Add any assemblies you want reference in your templates HostContainer.ReferencedAssemblies.Add("System.Windows.Forms.dll"); // Start up the host container HostContainer.Start(); Once that’s done, you can render templates with the host container: // Pass the template path for full filename seleted with OpenFile Dialog // relativepath is: subdir\file.cshtml or file.cshtml or ..\file.cshtml var relativePath = Utilities.GetRelativePath(fileName, HostContainer.TemplatePath); if (!HostContainer.RenderTemplate(relativePath, Context, HostContainer.RenderingOutputFile)) { MessageBox.Show("Error: " + HostContainer.ErrorMessage); return; } webBrowser1.Navigate("file://" + HostContainer.RenderingOutputFile); The most critical task of the RazorFolderHostContainer implementation is to retrieve a template from disk, compile and cache it and then deal with deciding whether subsequent requests need to re-compile the template or simply use a cached version. Internally the GetAssemblyFromFileAndCache() handles this task: /// <summary> /// Internally checks if a cached assembly exists and if it does uses it /// else creates and compiles one. Returns an assembly Id to be /// used with the LoadedAssembly list. /// </summary> /// <param name="relativePath"></param> /// <param name="context"></param> /// <returns></returns> protected virtual CompiledAssemblyItem GetAssemblyFromFileAndCache(string relativePath) { string fileName = Path.Combine(TemplatePath, relativePath).ToLower(); int fileNameHash = fileName.GetHashCode(); if (!File.Exists(fileName)) { this.SetError(Resources.TemplateFileDoesnTExist + fileName); return null; } CompiledAssemblyItem item = null; this.LoadedAssemblies.TryGetValue(fileNameHash, out item); string assemblyId = null; // Check for cached instance if (item != null) { var fileTime = File.GetLastWriteTimeUtc(fileName); if (fileTime <= item.CompileTimeUtc) assemblyId = item.AssemblyId; } else item = new CompiledAssemblyItem(); // No cached instance - create assembly and cache if (assemblyId == null) { string safeClassName = GetSafeClassName(fileName); StreamReader reader = null; try { reader = new StreamReader(fileName, true); } catch (Exception ex) { this.SetError(Resources.ErrorReadingTemplateFile + fileName); return null; } assemblyId = Engine.ParseAndCompileTemplate(this.ReferencedAssemblies.ToArray(), reader); // need to ensure reader is closed if (reader != null) reader.Close(); if (assemblyId == null) { this.SetError(Engine.ErrorMessage); return null; } item.AssemblyId = assemblyId; item.CompileTimeUtc = DateTime.UtcNow; item.FileName = fileName; item.SafeClassName = safeClassName; this.LoadedAssemblies[fileNameHash] = item; } return item; } This code uses a LoadedAssembly dictionary which is comprised of a structure that holds a reference to a compiled assembly, a full filename and file timestamp and an assembly id. LoadedAssemblies (defined on the base class shown earlier) is essentially a cache for compiled assemblies and they are identified by a hash id. In the case of files the hash is a GetHashCode() from the full filename of the template. The template is checked for in the cache and if not found the file stamp is checked. If that’s newer than the cache’s compilation date the template is recompiled otherwise the version in the cache is used. All the core work defers to a RazorEngine<T> instance to ParseAndCompileTemplate(). The three rendering specific methods then are rather simple implementations with just a few lines of code dealing with parameter and return value parsing: /// <summary> /// Renders a template to a TextWriter. Useful to write output into a stream or /// the Response object. Used for partial rendering. /// </summary> /// <param name="relativePath">Relative path to the file in the folder structure</param> /// <param name="context">Optional context object or null</param> /// <param name="writer">The textwriter to write output into</param> /// <returns></returns> public bool RenderTemplate(string relativePath, object context, TextWriter writer) { // Set configuration data that is to be passed to the template (any object) Engine.TemplatePerRequestConfigurationData = new RazorFolderHostTemplateConfiguration() { TemplatePath = Path.Combine(this.TemplatePath, relativePath), TemplateRelativePath = relativePath, }; CompiledAssemblyItem item = GetAssemblyFromFileAndCache(relativePath); if (item == null) { writer.Close(); return false; } try { // String result will be empty as output will be rendered into the // Response object's stream output. However a null result denotes // an error string result = Engine.RenderTemplateFromAssembly(item.AssemblyId, context, writer); if (result == null) { this.SetError(Engine.ErrorMessage); return false; } } catch (Exception ex) { this.SetError(ex.Message); return false; } finally { writer.Close(); } return true; } /// <summary> /// Render a template from a source file on disk to a specified outputfile. /// </summary> /// <param name="relativePath">Relative path off the template root folder. Format: path/filename.cshtml</param> /// <param name="context">Any object that will be available in the template as a dynamic of this.Context</param> /// <param name="outputFile">Optional - output file where output is written to. If not specified the /// RenderingOutputFile property is used instead /// </param> /// <returns>true if rendering succeeds, false on failure - check ErrorMessage</returns> public bool RenderTemplate(string relativePath, object context, string outputFile) { if (outputFile == null) outputFile = RenderingOutputFile; try { using (StreamWriter writer = new StreamWriter(outputFile, false, Engine.Configuration.OutputEncoding, Engine.Configuration.StreamBufferSize)) { return RenderTemplate(relativePath, context, writer); } } catch (Exception ex) { this.SetError(ex.Message); return false; } return true; } /// <summary> /// Renders a template to string. Useful for RenderTemplate /// </summary> /// <param name="relativePath"></param> /// <param name="context"></param> /// <returns></returns> public string RenderTemplateToString(string relativePath, object context) { string result = string.Empty; try { using (StringWriter writer = new StringWriter()) { // String result will be empty as output will be rendered into the // Response object's stream output. However a null result denotes // an error if (!RenderTemplate(relativePath, context, writer)) { this.SetError(Engine.ErrorMessage); return null; } result = writer.ToString(); } } catch (Exception ex) { this.SetError(ex.Message); return null; } return result; } The idea is that you can create custom host container implementations that do exactly what you want fairly easily. Take a look at both the RazorFolderHostContainer and RazorStringHostContainer classes for the basic concepts you can use to create custom implementations. Notice also that you can set the engine’s PerRequestConfigurationData() from the host container: // Set configuration data that is to be passed to the template (any object) Engine.TemplatePerRequestConfigurationData = new RazorFolderHostTemplateConfiguration() { TemplatePath = Path.Combine(this.TemplatePath, relativePath), TemplateRelativePath = relativePath, }; which when set to a non-null value is passed to the Template’s InitializeTemplate() method. This method receives an object parameter which you can cast as needed: public override void InitializeTemplate(object configurationData) { // Pick up configuration data and stuff into Request object RazorFolderHostTemplateConfiguration config = configurationData as RazorFolderHostTemplateConfiguration; this.Request.TemplatePath = config.TemplatePath; this.Request.TemplateRelativePath = config.TemplateRelativePath; } With this data you can then configure any custom properties or objects on your main template class. It’s an easy way to pass data from the HostContainer all the way down into the template. The type you use is of type object so you have to cast it yourself, and it must be serializable since it will likely run in a separate AppDomain. This might seem like an ugly way to pass data around – normally I’d use an event delegate to call back from the engine to the host, but since this is running over AppDomain boundaries events get really tricky and passing a template instance back up into the host over AppDomain boundaries doesn’t work due to serialization issues. So it’s easier to pass the data from the host down into the template using this rather clumsy approach of set and forward. It’s ugly, but it’s something that can be hidden in the host container implementation as I’ve done here. It’s also not something you have to do in every implementation so this is kind of an edge case, but I know I’ll need to pass a bunch of data in some of my applications and this will be the easiest way to do so. Summing Up Hosting the Razor runtime is something I got jazzed up about quite a bit because I have an immediate need for this type of templating/merging/scripting capability in an application I’m working on. I’ve also been using templating in many apps and it’s always been a pain to deal with. The Razor engine makes this whole experience a lot cleaner and more light weight and with these wrappers I can now plug .NET based templating into my code literally with a few lines of code. That’s something to cheer about… I hope some of you will find this useful as well… Resources The examples and code require that you download the Razor runtimes. Projects are for Visual Studio 2010 running on .NET 4.0 Platform Installer 3.0 (install WebMatrix or MVC 3 for Razor Runtimes) Latest Code in Subversion Repository Download Snapshot of the Code Documentation (CHM Help File) © Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2010Posted in ASP.NET  .NET  

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  • Tip/Trick: Fix Common SEO Problems Using the URL Rewrite Extension

    - by ScottGu
    Search engine optimization (SEO) is important for any publically facing web-site.  A large % of traffic to sites now comes directly from search engines, and improving your site’s search relevancy will lead to more users visiting your site from search engine queries.  This can directly or indirectly increase the money you make through your site. This blog post covers how you can use the free Microsoft URL Rewrite Extension to fix a bunch of common SEO problems that your site might have.  It takes less than 15 minutes (and no code changes) to apply 4 simple URL Rewrite rules to your site, and in doing so cause search engines to drive more visitors and traffic to your site.  The techniques below work equally well with both ASP.NET Web Forms and ASP.NET MVC based sites.  They also works with all versions of ASP.NET (and even work with non-ASP.NET content). [In addition to blogging, I am also now using Twitter for quick updates and to share links. Follow me at: twitter.com/scottgu] Measuring the SEO of your website with the Microsoft SEO Toolkit A few months ago I blogged about the free SEO Toolkit that we’ve shipped.  This useful tool enables you to automatically crawl/scan your site for SEO correctness, and it then flags any SEO issues it finds.  I highly recommend downloading and using the tool against any public site you work on.  It makes it easy to spot SEO issues you might have in your site, and pinpoint ways to optimize it further. Below is a simple example of a report I ran against one of my sites (www.scottgu.com) prior to applying the URL Rewrite rules I’ll cover later in this blog post:   Search Relevancy and URL Splitting Two of the important things that search engines evaluate when assessing your site’s “search relevancy” are: How many other sites link to your content.  Search engines assume that if a lot of people around the web are linking to your content, then it is likely useful and so weight it higher in relevancy. The uniqueness of the content it finds on your site.  If search engines find that the content is duplicated in multiple places around the Internet (or on multiple URLs on your site) then it is likely to drop the relevancy of the content. One of the things you want to be very careful to avoid when building public facing sites is to not allow different URLs to retrieve the same content within your site.  Doing so will hurt with both of the situations above.  In particular, allowing external sites to link to the same content with multiple URLs will cause your link-count and page-ranking to be split up across those different URLs (and so give you a smaller page rank than what it would otherwise be if it was just one URL).  Not allowing external sites to link to you in different ways sounds easy in theory – but you might wonder what exactly this means in practice and how you avoid it. 4 Really Common SEO Problems Your Sites Might Have Below are 4 really common scenarios that can cause your site to inadvertently expose multiple URLs for the same content.  When this happens external sites linking to yours will end up splitting their page links across multiple URLs - and as a result cause you to have a lower page ranking with search engines than you deserve. SEO Problem #1: Default Document IIS (and other web servers) supports the concept of a “default document”.  This allows you to avoid having to explicitly specify the page you want to serve at either the root of the web-site/application, or within a sub-directory.  This is convenient – but means that by default this content is available via two different publically exposed URLs (which is bad).  For example: http://scottgu.com/ http://scottgu.com/default.aspx SEO Problem #2: Different URL Casings Web developers often don’t realize URLs are case sensitive to search engines on the web.  This means that search engines will treat the following links as two completely different URLs: http://scottgu.com/Albums.aspx http://scottgu.com/albums.aspx SEO Problem #3: Trailing Slashes Consider the below two URLs – they might look the same at first, but they are subtly different. The trailing slash creates yet another situation that causes search engines to treat the URLs as different and so split search rankings: http://scottgu.com http://scottgu.com/ SEO Problem #4: Canonical Host Names Sometimes sites support scenarios where they support a web-site with both a leading “www” hostname prefix as well as just the hostname itself.  This causes search engines to treat the URLs as different and split search rankling: http://scottgu.com/albums.aspx/ http://www.scottgu.com/albums.aspx/ How to Easily Fix these SEO Problems in 10 minutes (or less) using IIS Rewrite If you haven’t been careful when coding your sites, chances are you are suffering from one (or more) of the above SEO problems.  Addressing these issues will improve your search engine relevancy ranking and drive more traffic to your site. The “good news” is that fixing the above 4 issues is really easy using the URL Rewrite Extension.  This is a completely free Microsoft extension available for IIS 7.x (on Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows 7 and Windows Vista).  The great thing about using the IIS Rewrite extension is that it allows you to fix the above problems *without* having to change any code within your applications.  You can easily install the URL Rewrite Extension in under 3 minutes using the Microsoft Web Platform Installer (a free tool we ship that automates setting up web servers and development machines).  Just click the green “Install Now” button on the URL Rewrite Spotlight page to install it on your Windows Server 2008, Windows 7 or Windows Vista machine: Once installed you’ll find that a new “URL Rewrite” icon is available within the IIS 7 Admin Tool: Double-clicking the icon will open up the URL Rewrite admin panel – which will display the list of URL Rewrite rules configured for a particular application or site: Notice that our rewrite rule list above is currently empty (which is the default when you first install the extension).  We can click the “Add Rule…” link button in the top-right of the panel to add and enable new URL Rewriting logic for our site.  Scenario 1: Handling Default Document Scenarios One of the SEO problems I discussed earlier in this post was the scenario where the “default document” feature of IIS causes you to inadvertently expose two URLs for the same content on your site.  For example: http://scottgu.com/ http://scottgu.com/default.aspx We can fix this by adding a new IIS Rewrite rule that automatically redirects anyone who navigates to the second URL to instead go to the first one.  We will setup the HTTP redirect to be a “permanent redirect” – which will indicate to search engines that they should follow the redirect and use the new URL they are redirected to as the identifier of the content they retrieve.  Let’s look at how we can create such a rule.  We’ll begin by clicking the “Add Rule” link in the screenshot above.  This will cause the below dialog to display: We’ll select the “Blank Rule” template within the “Inbound rules” section to create a new custom URL Rewriting rule.  This will display an empty pane like below: Don’t worry – setting up the above rule is easy.  The following 4 steps explain how to do so: Step 1: Name the Rule Our first step will be to name the rule we are creating.  Naming it with a descriptive name will make it easier to find and understand later.  Let’s name this rule our “Default Document URL Rewrite” rule: Step 2: Setup the Regular Expression that Matches this Rule Our second step will be to specify a regular expression filter that will cause this rule to execute when an incoming URL matches the regex pattern.   Don’t worry if you aren’t good with regular expressions - I suck at them too. The trick is to know someone who is good at them or copy/paste them from a web-site.  Below we are going to specify the following regular expression as our pattern rule: (.*?)/?Default\.aspx$ This pattern will match any URL string that ends with Default.aspx. The "(.*?)" matches any preceding character zero or more times. The "/?" part says to match the slash symbol zero or one times. The "$" symbol at the end will ensure that the pattern will only match strings that end with Default.aspx.  Combining all these regex elements allows this rule to work not only for the root of your web site (e.g. http://scottgu.com/default.aspx) but also for any application or subdirectory within the site (e.g. http://scottgu.com/photos/default.aspx.  Because the “ignore case” checkbox is selected it will match both “Default.aspx” as well as “default.aspx” within the URL.   One nice feature built-into the rule editor is a “Test pattern” button that you can click to bring up a dialog that allows you to test out a few URLs with the rule you are configuring: Above I've added a “products/default.aspx” URL and clicked the “Test” button.  This will give me immediate feedback on whether the rule will execute for it.  Step 3: Setup a Permanent Redirect Action We’ll then setup an action to occur when our regular expression pattern matches the incoming URL: In the dialog above I’ve changed the “Action Type” drop down to be a “Redirect” action.  The “Redirect Type” will be a HTTP 301 Permanent redirect – which means search engines will follow it. I’ve also set the “Redirect URL” property to be: {R:1}/ This indicates that we want to redirect the web client requesting the original URL to a new URL that has the originally requested URL path - minus the "Default.aspx" in it.  For example, requests for http://scottgu.com/default.aspx will be redirected to http://scottgu.com/, and requests for http://scottgu.com/photos/default.aspx will be redirected to http://scottgu.com/photos/ The "{R:N}" regex construct, where N >= 0, is called a back-reference and N is the back-reference index. In the case of our pattern "(.*?)/?Default\.aspx$", if the input URL is "products/Default.aspx" then {R:0} will contain "products/Default.aspx" and {R:1} will contain "products".  We are going to use this {R:1}/ value to be the URL we redirect users to.  Step 4: Apply and Save the Rule Our final step is to click the “Apply” button in the top right hand of the IIS admin tool – which will cause the tool to persist the URL Rewrite rule into our application’s root web.config file (under a <system.webServer/rewrite> configuration section): <configuration>     <system.webServer>         <rewrite>             <rules>                 <rule name="Default Document" stopProcessing="true">                     <match url="(.*?)/?Default\.aspx$" />                     <action type="Redirect" url="{R:1}/" />                 </rule>             </rules>         </rewrite>     </system.webServer> </configuration> Because IIS 7.x and ASP.NET share the same web.config files, you can actually just copy/paste the above code into your web.config files using Visual Studio and skip the need to run the admin tool entirely.  This also makes adding/deploying URL Rewrite rules with your ASP.NET applications really easy. Step 5: Try the Rule Out Now that we’ve saved the rule, let’s try it out on our site.  Try the following two URLs on my site: http://scottgu.com/ http://scottgu.com/default.aspx Notice that the second URL automatically redirects to the first one.  Because it is a permanent redirect, search engines will follow the URL and should update the page ranking of http://scottgu.com to include links to http://scottgu.com/default.aspx as well. Scenario 2: Different URL Casing Another common SEO problem I discussed earlier in this post is that URLs are case sensitive to search engines on the web.  This means that search engines will treat the following links as two completely different URLs: http://scottgu.com/Albums.aspx http://scottgu.com/albums.aspx We can fix this by adding a new IIS Rewrite rule that automatically redirects anyone who navigates to the first URL to instead go to the second (all lower-case) one.  Like before, we will setup the HTTP redirect to be a “permanent redirect” – which will indicate to search engines that they should follow the redirect and use the new URL they are redirected to as the identifier of the content they retrieve. To create such a rule we’ll click the “Add Rule” link in the URL Rewrite admin tool again.  This will cause the “Add Rule” dialog to appear again: Unlike the previous scenario (where we created a “Blank Rule”), with this scenario we can take advantage of a built-in “Enforce lowercase URLs” rule template.  When we click the “ok” button we’ll see the following dialog which asks us if we want to create a rule that enforces the use of lowercase letters in URLs: When we click the “Yes” button we’ll get a pre-written rule that automatically performs a permanent redirect if an incoming URL has upper-case characters in it – and automatically send users to a lower-case version of the URL: We can click the “Apply” button to use this rule “as-is” and have it apply to all incoming URLs to our site.  Because my www.scottgu.com site uses ASP.NET Web Forms, I’m going to make one small change to the rule we generated above – which is to add a condition that will ensure that URLs to ASP.NET’s built-in “WebResource.axd” handler are excluded from our case-sensitivity URL Rewrite logic.  URLs to the WebResource.axd handler will only come from server-controls emitted from my pages – and will never be linked to from external sites.  While my site will continue to function fine if we redirect these URLs to automatically be lower-case – doing so isn’t necessary and will add an extra HTTP redirect to many of my pages.  The good news is that adding a condition that prevents my URL Rewriting rule from happening with certain URLs is easy.  We simply need to expand the “Conditions” section of the form above We can then click the “Add” button to add a condition clause.  This will bring up the “Add Condition” dialog: Above I’ve entered {URL} as the Condition input – and said that this rule should only execute if the URL does not match a regex pattern which contains the string “WebResource.axd”.  This will ensure that WebResource.axd URLs to my site will be allowed to execute just fine without having the URL be re-written to be all lower-case. Note: If you have static resources (like references to .jpg, .css, and .js files) within your site that currently use upper-case characters you’ll probably want to add additional condition filter clauses so that URLs to them also don’t get redirected to be lower-case (just add rules for patterns like .jpg, .gif, .js, etc).  Your site will continue to work fine if these URLs get redirected to be lower case (meaning the site won’t break) – but it will cause an extra HTTP redirect to happen on your site for URLs that don’t need to be redirected for SEO reasons.  So setting up a condition clause makes sense to add. When I click the “ok” button above and apply our lower-case rewriting rule the admin tool will save the following additional rule to our web.config file: <configuration>     <system.webServer>         <rewrite>             <rules>                 <rule name="Default Document" stopProcessing="true">                     <match url="(.*?)/?Default\.aspx$" />                     <action type="Redirect" url="{R:1}/" />                 </rule>                 <rule name="Lower Case URLs" stopProcessing="true">                     <match url="[A-Z]" ignoreCase="false" />                     <conditions logicalGrouping="MatchAll" trackAllCaptures="false">                         <add input="{URL}" pattern="WebResource.axd" negate="true" />                     </conditions>                     <action type="Redirect" url="{ToLower:{URL}}" />                 </rule>             </rules>         </rewrite>     </system.webServer> </configuration> Try the Rule Out Now that we’ve saved the rule, let’s try it out on our site.  Try the following two URLs on my site: http://scottgu.com/Albums.aspx http://scottgu.com/albums.aspx Notice that the first URL (which has a capital “A”) automatically does a redirect to a lower-case version of the URL.  Scenario 3: Trailing Slashes Another common SEO problem I discussed earlier in this post is the scenario of trailing slashes within URLs.  The trailing slash creates yet another situation that causes search engines to treat the URLs as different and so split search rankings: http://scottgu.com http://scottgu.com/ We can fix this by adding a new IIS Rewrite rule that automatically redirects anyone who navigates to the first URL (that does not have a trailing slash) to instead go to the second one that does.  Like before, we will setup the HTTP redirect to be a “permanent redirect” – which will indicate to search engines that they should follow the redirect and use the new URL they are redirected to as the identifier of the content they retrieve.  To create such a rule we’ll click the “Add Rule” link in the URL Rewrite admin tool again.  This will cause the “Add Rule” dialog to appear again: The URL Rewrite admin tool has a built-in “Append or remove the trailing slash symbol” rule template.  When we select it and click the “ok” button we’ll see the following dialog which asks us if we want to create a rule that automatically redirects users to a URL with a trailing slash if one isn’t present: Like within our previous lower-casing rewrite rule we’ll add one additional condition clause that will exclude WebResource.axd URLs from being processed by this rule.  This will avoid an unnecessary redirect for happening for those URLs. When we click the “OK” button we’ll get a pre-written rule that automatically performs a permanent redirect if the URL doesn’t have a trailing slash – and if the URL is not processed by either a directory or a file.  This will save the following additional rule to our web.config file: <configuration>     <system.webServer>         <rewrite>             <rules>                 <rule name="Default Document" stopProcessing="true">                     <match url="(.*?)/?Default\.aspx$" />                     <action type="Redirect" url="{R:1}/" />                 </rule>                 <rule name="Lower Case URLs" stopProcessing="true">                     <match url="[A-Z]" ignoreCase="false" />                     <conditions logicalGrouping="MatchAll" trackAllCaptures="false">                         <add input="{URL}" pattern="WebResource.axd" negate="true" />                     </conditions>                     <action type="Redirect" url="{ToLower:{URL}}" />                 </rule>                 <rule name="Trailing Slash" stopProcessing="true">                     <match url="(.*[^/])$" />                     <conditions logicalGrouping="MatchAll" trackAllCaptures="false">                         <add input="{REQUEST_FILENAME}" matchType="IsDirectory" negate="true" />                         <add input="{REQUEST_FILENAME}" matchType="IsFile" negate="true" />                         <add input="{URL}" pattern="WebResource.axd" negate="true" />                     </conditions>                     <action type="Redirect" url="{R:1}/" />                 </rule>             </rules>         </rewrite>     </system.webServer> </configuration> Try the Rule Out Now that we’ve saved the rule, let’s try it out on our site.  Try the following two URLs on my site: http://scottgu.com http://scottgu.com/ Notice that the first URL (which has no trailing slash) automatically does a redirect to a URL with the trailing slash.  Because it is a permanent redirect, search engines will follow the URL and update the page ranking. Scenario 4: Canonical Host Names The final SEO problem I discussed earlier are scenarios where a site works with both a leading “www” hostname prefix as well as just the hostname itself.  This causes search engines to treat the URLs as different and split search rankling: http://www.scottgu.com/albums.aspx http://scottgu.com/albums.aspx We can fix this by adding a new IIS Rewrite rule that automatically redirects anyone who navigates to the first URL (that has a www prefix) to instead go to the second URL.  Like before, we will setup the HTTP redirect to be a “permanent redirect” – which will indicate to search engines that they should follow the redirect and use the new URL they are redirected to as the identifier of the content they retrieve.  To create such a rule we’ll click the “Add Rule” link in the URL Rewrite admin tool again.  This will cause the “Add Rule” dialog to appear again: The URL Rewrite admin tool has a built-in “Canonical domain name” rule template.  When we select it and click the “ok” button we’ll see the following dialog which asks us if we want to create a redirect rule that automatically redirects users to a primary host name URL: Above I’m entering the primary URL address I want to expose to the web: scottgu.com.  When we click the “OK” button we’ll get a pre-written rule that automatically performs a permanent redirect if the URL has another leading domain name prefix.  This will save the following additional rule to our web.config file: <configuration>     <system.webServer>         <rewrite>             <rules>                 <rule name="Cannonical Hostname">                     <match url="(.*)" />                     <conditions logicalGrouping="MatchAll" trackAllCaptures="false">                         <add input="{HTTP_HOST}" pattern="^scottgu\.com$" negate="true" />                     </conditions>                     <action type="Redirect" url="http://scottgu.com/{R:1}" />                 </rule>                 <rule name="Default Document" stopProcessing="true">                     <match url="(.*?)/?Default\.aspx$" />                     <action type="Redirect" url="{R:1}/" />                 </rule>                 <rule name="Lower Case URLs" stopProcessing="true">                     <match url="[A-Z]" ignoreCase="false" />                     <conditions logicalGrouping="MatchAll" trackAllCaptures="false">                         <add input="{URL}" pattern="WebResource.axd" negate="true" />                     </conditions>                     <action type="Redirect" url="{ToLower:{URL}}" />                 </rule>                 <rule name="Trailing Slash" stopProcessing="true">                     <match url="(.*[^/])$" />                     <conditions logicalGrouping="MatchAll" trackAllCaptures="false">                         <add input="{REQUEST_FILENAME}" matchType="IsDirectory" negate="true" />                         <add input="{REQUEST_FILENAME}" matchType="IsFile" negate="true" />                         <add input="{URL}" pattern="WebResource.axd" negate="true" />                     </conditions>                     <action type="Redirect" url="{R:1}/" />                 </rule>             </rules>         </rewrite>     </system.webServer> </configuration> Try the Rule Out Now that we’ve saved the rule, let’s try it out on our site.  Try the following two URLs on my site: http://www.scottgu.com/albums.aspx http://scottgu.com/albums.aspx Notice that the first URL (which has the “www” prefix) now automatically does a redirect to the second URL which does not have the www prefix.  Because it is a permanent redirect, search engines will follow the URL and update the page ranking. 4 Simple Rules for Improved SEO The above 4 rules are pretty easy to setup and should take less than 15 minutes to configure on existing sites you already have.  The beauty of using a solution like the URL Rewrite Extension is that you can take advantage of it without having to change code within your web-site – and without having to break any existing links already pointing at your site.  Users who follow existing links will be automatically redirected to the new URLs you wish to publish.  And search engines will start to give your site a higher search relevancy ranking – which will list your site higher in search results and drive more traffic to it. Customizing your URL Rewriting rules further is easy to-do either by editing the web.config file directly, or alternatively, just double click the URL Rewrite icon within the IIS 7.x admin tool and it will list all the active rules for your web-site or application: Clicking any of the rules above will open the rules editor back up and allow you to tweak/customize/save them further. Summary Measuring and improving SEO is something every developer building a public-facing web-site needs to think about and focus on.  If you haven’t already, download and use the SEO Toolkit to analyze the SEO of your sites today. New URL Routing features in ASP.NET MVC and ASP.NET Web Forms 4 make it much easier to build applications that have more control over the URLs that are published.  Tools like the URL Rewrite Extension that I’ve talked about in this blog post make it much easier to improve the URLs that are published from sites you already have built today – without requiring you to change a lot of code. The URL Rewrite Extension provides a bunch of additional great capabilities – far beyond just SEO - as well.  I’ll be covering these additional capabilities more in future blog posts. Hope this helps, Scott

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