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• Problems with Asynchronous UDP Sockets

  - by ihatenetworkcoding

  Hi, I'm struggling a bit with socket programming (something I'm not at all familiar with) and I can't find anything which helps from google or MSDN (awful). Apologies for the length of this. Basically I have an existing service which recieves and responds to requests over UDP. I can't change this at all. I also have a client within my webapp which dispatches and listens for responses to that service. The existing client I've been given is a singleton which creates a socket and an array of response slots, and then creates a background thread with an infinite looping method that makes "sock.Receive()" calls and pushes the data received into the slot array. All kinds of things about this seem wrong to me and the infinite thread breaks my unit testing so I'm trying to replace this service with one which makes it's it's send/receives asynchronously instead. Point 1: Is this the right approach? I want a non-blocking, scalable, thread-safe service. My first attempt is roughly like this, which sort of worked but the data I got back was always shorter than expected (i.e. the buffer did not have the number of bytes requested) and seemed to throw exceptions when processed. private Socket MyPreConfiguredSocket; public object Query() { //build a request this.MyPreConfiguredSocket.SendTo(MYREQUEST, packet.Length, SocketFlags.Multicast, this._target); IAsyncResult h = this._sock.BeginReceiveFrom(response, 0, BUFFER_SIZE, SocketFlags.None, ref this._target, new AsyncCallback(ARecieve), this._sock); if (!h.AsyncWaitHandle.WaitOne(TIMEOUT)) { throw new Exception("Timed out"); } //process response data (always shortened) } private void ARecieve (IAsyncResult result) { int bytesreceived = (result as Socket).EndReceiveFrom(result, ref this._target); } My second attempt was based on more google trawling and this recursive pattern I frequently saw, but this version always times out! It never gets to ARecieve. public object Query() { //build a request this.MyPreConfiguredSocket.SendTo(MYREQUEST, packet.Length, SocketFlags.Multicast, this._target); State s = new State(this.MyPreConfiguredSocket); this.MyPreConfiguredSocket.BeginReceiveFrom(s.Buffer, 0, BUFFER_SIZE, SocketFlags.None, ref this._target, new AsyncCallback(ARecieve), s); if (!s.Flag.WaitOne(10000)) { throw new Exception("Timed out"); } //always thrown //process response data } private void ARecieve (IAsyncResult result) { //never gets here! State s = (result as State); int bytesreceived = s.Sock.EndReceiveFrom(result, ref this._target); if (bytesreceived > 0) { s.Received += bytesreceived; this._sock.BeginReceiveFrom(s.Buffer, s.Received, BUFFER_SIZE, SocketFlags.None, ref this._target, new AsyncCallback(ARecieve), s); } else { s.Flag.Set(); } } private class State { public State(Socket sock) { this._sock = sock; this._buffer = new byte[BUFFER_SIZE]; this._buffer.Initialize(); } public Socket Sock; public byte[] Buffer; public ManualResetEvent Flag = new ManualResetEvent(false); public int Received = 0; } Point 2: So clearly I'm getting something quite wrong. Point 3: I'm not sure if I'm going about this right. How does the data coming from the remote service even get to the right listening thread? Do I need to create a socket per request? Out of my comfort zone here. Need help.

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• How to reserve public API to internal usage in .NET?

  - by mark

  Dear ladies and sirs. Let me first present the case, which will explain my question. This is going to be a bit long, so I apologize in advance :-). I have objects and collections, which should support the Merge API (it is my custom API, the signature of which is immaterial for this question). This API must be internal, meaning only my framework should be allowed to invoke it. However, derived types should be able to override the basic implementation. The natural way to implement this pattern as I see it, is this: The Merge API is declared as part of some internal interface, let us say IMergeable. Because the interface is internal, derived types would not be able to implement it directly. Rather they must inherit it from a common base type. So, a common base type is introduced, which would implement the IMergeable interface explicitly, where the interface methods delegate to respective protected virtual methods, providing the default implementation. This way the API is only callable by my framework, but derived types may override the default implementation. The following code snippet demonstrates the concept: internal interface IMergeable { void Merge(object obj); } public class BaseFrameworkObject : IMergeable { protected virtual void Merge(object obj) { // The default implementation. } void IMergeable.Merge(object obj) { Merge(obj); } } public class SomeThirdPartyObject : BaseFrameworkObject { protected override void Merge(object obj) { // A derived type implementation. } } All is fine, provided a single common base type suffices, which is usually true for non collection types. The thing is that collections must be mergeable as well. Collections do not play nicely with the presented concept, because developers do not develop collections from the scratch. There are predefined implementations - observable, filtered, compound, read-only, remove-only, ordered, god-knows-what, ... They may be developed from scratch in-house, but once finished, they serve wide range of products and should never be tailored to some specific product. Which means, that either: they do not implement the IMergeable interface at all, because it is internal to some product the scope of the IMergeable interface is raised to public and the API becomes open and callable by all. Let us refer to these collections as standard collections. Anyway, the first option screws my framework, because now each possible standard collection type has to be paired with the respective framework version, augmenting the standard with the IMergeable interface implementation - this is so bad, I am not even considering it. The second option breaks the framework as well, because the IMergeable interface should be internal for a reason (whatever it is) and now this interface has to open to all. So what to do? My solution is this. make IMergeable public API, but add an extra parameter to the Merge method, I call it a security token. The interface implementation may check that the token references some internal object, which is never exposed to the outside. If this is the case, then the method was called from within the framework, otherwise - some outside API consumer attempted to invoke it and so the implementation can blow up with a SecurityException. Here is the modified code snippet demonstrating this concept: internal static class InternalApi { internal static readonly object Token = new object(); } public interface IMergeable { void Merge(object obj, object token); } public class BaseFrameworkObject : IMergeable { protected virtual void Merge(object obj) { // The default implementation. } public void Merge(object obj, object token) { if (!object.ReferenceEquals(token, InternalApi.Token)) { throw new SecurityException("bla bla bla"); } Merge(obj); } } public class SomeThirdPartyObject : BaseFrameworkObject { protected override void Merge(object obj) { // A derived type implementation. } } Of course, this is less explicit than having an internally scoped interface and the check is moved from the compile time to run time, yet this is the best I could come up with. Now, I have a gut feeling that there is a better way to solve the problem I have presented. I do not know, may be using some standard Code Access Security features? I have only vague understanding of it, but can LinkDemand attribute be somehow related to it? Anyway, I would like to hear other opinions. Thanks.

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• XHTML 1.0 DocType ignored in all browsers?

  - by John

  I was testing this, since I understood using XHTML let me use any valid XML for empty <div> elements: <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> <html> <head> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=utf-8"> <title>Test</title> </head> <body> <div style="border:solid 10px black; width:100px; height:100px"></div> <div style="border:solid 10px red; width:100px; height:100px"></div> <div style="border:solid 10px blue; width:100px; height:100px"></div> <div style="border:solid 10px black; width:100px; height:100px" /> <div style="border:solid 10px red; width:100px; height:100px" /> <div style="border:solid 10px blue; width:100px; height:100px" /> </body> </html> It doesn't work in any browser I try... this is how FireBug tells me it understands the document: <html> <head> <meta content="text/html;charset=utf-8" http-equiv="Content-Type"/> <title>Test</title> </head> <body> <div style="border: 10px solid black; width: 100px; height: 100px;"/> <div style="border: 10px solid red; width: 100px; height: 100px;"/> <div style="border: 10px solid blue; width: 100px; height: 100px;"/> <div style="border: 10px solid black; width: 100px; height: 100px;"> <div style="border: 10px solid red; width: 100px; height: 100px;"> <div style="border: 10px solid blue; width: 100px; height: 100px;"/> </div> </div> </body> </html> I'm a bit confused what the point is of using XHTML if I have to do this, I might as well just use HTML? Note, that setting the content type to content="application/xhtml+xml" makes no difference in FF3 at least.

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• Basic C question, concerning memory allocation and value assignment

  - by VHristov

  Hi there, I have recently started working on my master thesis in C that I haven't used in quite a long time. Being used to Java, I'm now facing all kinds of problems all the time. I hope someone can help me with the following one, since I've been struggling with it for the past two days. So I have a really basic model of a database: tables, tuples, attributes and I'm trying to load some data into this structure. Following are the definitions: typedef struct attribute { int type; char * name; void * value; } attribute; typedef struct tuple { int tuple_id; int attribute_count; attribute * attributes; } tuple; typedef struct table { char * name; int row_count; tuple * tuples; } table; Data is coming from a file with inserts (generated for the Wisconsin benchmark), which I'm parsing. I have only integer or string values. A sample row would look like: insert into table values (9205, 541, 1, 1, 5, 5, 5, 5, 0, 1, 9205, 10, 11, 'HHHHHHH', 'HHHHHHH', 'HHHHHHH'); I've "managed" to load and parse the data and also to assign it. However, the assignment bit is buggy, since all values point to the same memory location, i.e. all rows look identical after I've loaded the data. Here is what I do: char value[10]; // assuming no value is longer than 10 chars int i, j, k; table * data = (table*) malloc(sizeof(data)); data->name = "table"; data->row_count = number_of_lines; data->tuples = (tuple*) malloc(number_of_lines*sizeof(tuple)); tuple* current_tuple; for(i=0; i<number_of_lines; i++) { current_tuple = &data->tuples[i]; current_tuple->tuple_id = i; current_tuple->attribute_count = 16; // static in our system current_tuple->attributes = (attribute*) malloc(16*sizeof(attribute)); for(k = 0; k < 16; k++) { current_tuple->attributes[k].name = attribute_names[k]; // for int values: current_tuple->attributes[k].type = DB_ATT_TYPE_INT; // write data into value-field int v = atoi(value); current_tuple->attributes[k].value = &v; // for string values: current_tuple->attributes[k].type = DB_ATT_TYPE_STRING; current_tuple->attributes[k].value = value; } // ... } While I am perfectly aware, why this is not working, I can't figure out how to get it working. I've tried following things, none of which worked: memcpy(current_tuple->attributes[k].value, &v, sizeof(int)); This results in a bad access error. Same for the following code (since I'm not quite sure which one would be the correct usage): memcpy(current_tuple->attributes[k].value, &v, 1); Not even sure if memcpy is what I need here... Also I've tried allocating memory, by doing something like: current_tuple->attributes[k].value = (int *) malloc(sizeof(int)); only to get "malloc: * error for object 0x100108e98: incorrect checksum for freed object - object was probably modified after being freed." As far as I understand this error, memory has already been allocated for this object, but I don't see where this happened. Doesn't the malloc(sizeof(attribute)) only allocate the memory needed to store an integer and two pointers (i.e. not the memory those pointers point to)? Any help would be greatly appreciated! Regards, Vassil

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• (iOS) UI Automation AlertPrompt button/textField accessiblity

  - by lipd

  I'm having a bit of trouble with UI Automation (the built in to iOS tool) when it comes to alertView. First off, I'm not sure where I can set the accessibilityLabel and such for the buttons that are on the alertView. Secondly, although I am not getting an error, I can't get my textField to actually set the value of the textField to something. I'll put up my code for the alertView and the javaScript I am using for UI Automation. UIATarget.onAlert = function onAlert(alert) { // Log alerts and bail, unless it's the one we want var title = alert.name(); UIALogger.logMessage("Alert with title '" + title + "' encountered!"); alert.logElementTree(); if (title == "AlertPrompt") { UIALogger.logMessage(alert.textFields().length + ''); target.delay(1); alert.textFields()["AlertText"].setValue("AutoTest"); target.delay(1); return true; // Override default handler } else return false; } var target = UIATarget.localTarget(); var application = target.frontMostApp(); var mainWindow = application.mainWindow(); mainWindow.logElementTree(); //target.delay(1); //mainWindow.logElementTree(); //target.delay(1); var tableView = mainWindow.tableViews()[0]; var button = tableView.buttons(); //UIALogger.logMessage("Num buttons: " + button.length); //UIALogger.logMessage("num Table views: " + mainWindow.tableViews().length); //UIALogger.logMessage("Number of cells: " + tableView.cells().length); /*for (var currentCellIndex = 0; currentCellIndex < tableView.cells().length; currentCellIndex++) { var currentCell = tableView.cells()[currentCellIndex]; UIALogger.logStart("Testing table option: " + currentCell.name()); tableView.scrollToElementWithName(currentCell.name()); target.delay(1); currentCell.tap();// Go down a level target.delay(1); UIATarget.localTarget().captureScreenWithName(currentCell.name()); //mainWindow.navigationBar().leftButton().tap(); // Go back target.delay(1); UIALogger.logPass("Testing table option " + currentCell.name()); }*/ UIALogger.logStart("Testing add item"); target.delay(1); mainWindow.navigationBar().buttons()["addButton"].tap(); target.delay(1); if(tableView.cells().length == 5) UIALogger.logPass("Successfully added item to table"); else UIALogger.logFail("FAIL: didn't add item to table"); Here's what I'm using for the alertView #import "AlertPrompt.h" @implementation AlertPrompt @synthesize textField; @synthesize enteredText; - (id)initWithTitle:(NSString *)title message:(NSString *)message delegate:(id)delegate cancelButtonTitle:(NSString *)cancelButtonTitle okButtonTitle:(NSString *)okayButtonTitle withOrientation:(UIInterfaceOrientation) orientation { if ((self == [super initWithTitle:title message:message delegate:delegate cancelButtonTitle:cancelButtonTitle otherButtonTitles:okayButtonTitle, nil])) { self.isAccessibilityElement = YES; self.accessibilityLabel = @"AlertPrompt"; UITextField *theTextField; if(orientation == UIInterfaceOrientationPortrait) theTextField = [[UITextField alloc] initWithFrame:CGRectMake(12.0, 45.0, 260.0, 25.0)]; else theTextField = [[UITextField alloc] initWithFrame:CGRectMake(12.0, 30.0, 260.0, 25.0)]; [theTextField setBackgroundColor:[UIColor whiteColor]]; [self addSubview:theTextField]; self.textField = theTextField; self.textField.isAccessibilityElement = YES; self.textField.accessibilityLabel = @"AlertText"; [theTextField release]; CGAffineTransform translate = CGAffineTransformMakeTranslation(0.0, 0.0); [self setTransform:translate]; } return self; } - (void)show { [textField becomeFirstResponder]; [super show]; } - (NSString *)enteredText { return [self.textField text]; } - (void)dealloc { //[textField release]; [super dealloc]; } @end Thanks for any help!

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• "Undefined reference to"

  - by user1332364

  I know that there are a lot of questions somewhat related to this one, but they answers are a bit hard for me to make sense of. I'm receiving the following error for a few different lines of code: C:\Users\Jeff\AppData\Local\Temp\ccAixtmT.o:football.cpp:(.text+0x6f0): undefined reference to `Player::set_values(int, std::string, float)' From these blocks of code: class Player { int playerNum; string playerPos; float playerRank; public: void set_values(int, string, float); float get_rank(){ return playerRank; }; bool operator == (const Player &p1/*, const Player &p2*/) const { if(&p1.playerNum == &playerNum && &p1.playerPos == &playerPos && &p1.playerRank == &playerRank) return true; else return false; }; }; And this being the main function referencing the subclass: int main() { ifstream infile; infile.open ("input.txt", ifstream::in); int numTeams; string command; while(!infile.fail() && !infile.eof()){ infile >> numTeams; string name; Player p; int playNum; string playPos; float playRank; Player all[11]; float ranks[11]; Team allTeams[numTeams]; for(int i=0; i<numTeams; i++){ infile >> name; for(int j=0; j<11; j++){ infile >> playNum; infile >> playPos; infile >> playRank; if(playPos == "QB") p.set_values(playNum, playPos, (playRank*2.0)); else if(playPos == "RB") p.set_values(playNum, playPos, (playRank*1.5)); else if(playPos == "WR") p.set_values(playNum, playPos, (playRank/1.8)); else if(playPos == "TE") p.set_values(playNum, playPos, (playRank*1.1)); else if(playPos == "GD") p.set_values(playNum, playPos, (playRank/2.0)); else if(playPos == "TC") p.set_values(playNum, playPos, (playRank/2.2)); else if(playPos == "CR") p.set_values(playNum, playPos, (playRank/1.2)); all[j] = p; allTeams[i].set_values(all, name); } } infile >> command; if (command == "play"){ int t1; int t2; infile >> t1; infile >> t2; play(allTeams[t1], allTeams[t2]); } else { int t1; int p1; int t2; int p2; swap(allTeams[t1], allTeams[t1].get_player(p1), allTeams[t2], allTeams[t2].get_player(p2)); } } }

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• Templates, interfaces (multiple inheritance) and static functions (named constructors)

  - by fledgling Cxx user

  Setup I have a graph library where I am trying to decompose things as much as possible, and the cleanest way to describe it that I found is the following: there is a vanilla type node implementing only a list of edges: class node { public: int* edges; int edge_count; }; Then, I would like to be able to add interfaces to this whole mix, like so: template <class T> class node_weight { public: T weight; }; template <class T> class node_position { public: T x; T y; }; and so on. Then, the actual graph class comes in, which is templated on the actual type of node: template <class node_T> class graph { protected: node_T* nodes; public: static graph cartesian(int n, int m) { graph r; r.nodes = new node_T[n * m]; return r; } }; The twist is that it has named constructors which construct some special graphs, like a Cartesian lattice. In this case, I would like to be able to add some extra information into the graph, depending on what interfaces are implemented by node_T. What would be the best way to accomplish this? Possible solution I thought of the following humble solution, through dynamic_cast<>: template <class node_T, class weight_T, class position_T> class graph { protected: node_T* nodes; public: static graph cartesian(int n, int m) { graph r; r.nodes = new node_T[n * m]; if (dynamic_cast<node_weight<weight_T>>(r.nodes[0]) != nullptr) { // do stuff knowing you can add weights } if (dynamic_cast<node_position<positionT>>(r.nodes[0]) != nullptr) { // do stuff knowing you can set position } return r; } }; which would operate on node_T being the following: template <class weight_T, class position_T> class node_weight_position : public node, public node_weight<weight_T>, public node_position<position_T> { // ... }; Questions Is this -- philosophically -- the right way to go? I know people don't look nicely at multiple inheritance, though with "interfaces" like these it should all be fine. There are unfortunately problems with this. From what I know at least, dynamic_cast<> involves quite a bit of run-time overhead. Hence, I run into a problem with what I had solved earlier: writing graph algorithms that require weights independently of whether the actual node_T class has weights or not. The solution with this 'interface' approach would be to write a function: template <class node_T, class weight_T> inline weight_T get_weight(node_T const & n) { if (dynamic_cast<node_weight<weight_T>>(n) != nullptr) { return dynamic_cast<node_weight<weight_T>>(n).weight; } return T(1); } but the issue with it is that it works using run-time information (dynamic_cast), yet in principle I would like to decide it at compile-time and thus make the code more efficient. If there is a different solution that would solve both problems, especially a cleaner and better one than what I have, I would love to hear about it!

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• Programatically add UserControl with events

  - by schaermu

  Hi everybody I need to add multiple user controls to a panel for further editing of the contained data. My user control contains some panels, dropdown lists and input elements, which are populated in the user control's Page_Load event. protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e) { // populate comparer ddl from enum string[] enumNames = Enum.GetNames(typeof (SearchComparision)); var al = new ArrayList(); for (int i = 0; i < enumNames.Length; i++) al.Add(new {Value = i, Name = enumNames[i]}); scOperatorSelection.DataValueField = "Value"; scOperatorSelection.DataTextField = "Name"; ... The data to be displayed is added to the user control as a Field, defined above Page_Load. The signature of the events is the following: public delegate void ControlStateChanged(object sender, SearchCriteriaEventArgs eventArgs); public event ControlStateChanged ItemUpdated; public event ControlStateChanged ItemRemoved; public event ControlStateChanged ItemAdded; The update button on the user control triggers the following method: protected void UpdateCriteria(object sender, EventArgs e) { var searchCritCtl = (SearchCriteria) sender; var scEArgs = new SearchCriteriaEventArgs { TargetCriteria = searchCritCtl.CurrentCriteria.CriteriaId, SearchComparision = ParseCurrentComparer(searchCritCtl.scOperatorSelection.SelectedValue), SearchField = searchCritCtl.scFieldSelection.SelectedValue, SearchValue = searchCritCtl.scFilterValue.Text, ClickTarget = SearchCriteriaClickTarget.Update }; if (ItemUpdated != null) ItemUpdated(this, scEArgs); } The rendering page fetches the data objects from a storage backend and displays it in it's Page_Load event. This is the point where it starts getting tricky: i connect to the custom events! int idIt = 0; foreach (var item in _currentSearch.Items) { SearchCriteria sc = (SearchCriteria)LoadControl("~/content/controls/SearchCriteria.ascx"); sc.ID = "scDispCtl_" + idIt; sc.ControlMode = SearchCriteriaMode.Display; sc.CurrentCriteria = item; sc.ItemUpdated += CriteriaUpdated; sc.ItemRemoved += CriteriaRemoved; pnlDisplayCrit.Controls.Add(sc); idIt++; } When first rendering the page, everything is displayed fine, i get all my data. When i trigger an update event, the user control event is fired correctly, but all fields and controls of the user control are NULL. After a bit of research, i had to come to the conclusion that the event is fired before the controls are initialized... Is there any way to prevent such behavior / to override the page lifecycle somehow? I cannot initialize the user controls in the page's Init-event, because i have to access the Session-Store (not initialized in Page_Init). Any advice is welcome... EDIT: Since we hold all criteria informations in the storage backend (including the count of criteria) and that store uses the userid from the session, we cannot use Page_Init... just for clarification EDIT #2: I managed to get past some of the problems. Since i'm now using simple types, im able to bind all the data declaratively (using a repeater with a simple ItemTemplate). It is bound to the control, they are rendered in correct fashion. On Postback, all the data is rebound to the user control, data is available in the OnDataBinding and OnLoad events, everything looks fine. But as soon it enters the real event (bound to the button control of the user control), all field values are lost somehow... Does anybody know, how the page lifecycle continues to process the request after Databinding/Loading ? I'm going crazy about this issue...

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• Encoding GBK2312 Condundrum

  - by user792271

  I am an amateur coder and I have a small problem. My goal is to have one text input with two buttons. The first button uses a bit of Javascript called SundayMorning to translate the text (to Chinese) The second button submits the text to a URL. The URl requires that Chinese text be encoded it in GBK2312 character set. I have duct taped together various found code to the result I have now. Due to the finicky behavior of the SundayMorning Javascript, my solution is to have two input boxes, the second of which I will hide. Right now, this doesn't work: I am unable to encode the Chinese in GBK2312, no matter what I try. BONUS CONUNDRUM: The second box copies my input letter by letter as I type, but does not copy the Chinese translation that the Javascript returns. Sorry for my janky amateur code. I defer to those more clever, if you have any kind suggestions. <head> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=GB2312" /> <script type='text/javascript' Src='https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.6.1/jquery.min.js'> </script> ///THIS JS TRANSLATES THE TEXT INLINE <script type="text/javascript" src="jquery.sundaymorning.js"> </script> <script type="text/javascript"> $(function() { $('#example3').sundayMorningReset(); $('#example3 input[type=image]').click(function(evt) { $.sundayMorning( $('#example3 input[type=text]').val(),{source:'en', destination:'ZH', menuLeft:evt.pageX, menuTop:evt.pageY},function(response) {$('#example3 input[type=text]').val(response.translation);});});}); </script> /// ///THIS PUTS THE CONTENT OF THE TRANSLATION BOX INTO THE SUBMISSION BOX <script type="text/javascript"> $(document).ready(function(){ var $url = $("#url"); $("#track").keyup(function() { $url.val(this.value);}); $("#track").blur(function() { $url.val(this.value);});}); </script> ///THIS PUTS THE CONTENT OF THE SUBMISSION INSIDE A URL <SCRIPT type="text/javascript"> function goToPage(url) { var initial = "http://example.com/"; var extension = ".html"; document.something.action=initial+url+extension; } </SCRIPT> </head> <body> <div id="featured"> <div id="example3"> <input type="text" name="track" id="track" value="" class="box"onkeydown="javascript:if (event.which || event.keyCode){if ((event.which == 13) || (event.keyCode == 13)) {document.getElementById('mama').click();}};"/> <input type="image" src="http://taobaofieldguide.com/images/orange-translate-button.png" id="searchsubmit" value="Translate" class="btn" /> </div> <FORM name="something" method="post" onsubmit="goToPage(this.url.value);"> <input type="text" id="url";> <INPUT type="submit" id="mama" value="GO" > </FORM> </div> </body>

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• if statement to check available elements

  - by nicmare

  Hi there, i allways found an answer here just be reading the threads but now its time for my very first thread because i was unable to find related questions: this is my target code: <li> <span class="panel"> <a href="…" class="image" rel="group"> <img title="…" src="…" alt="…" width="128" height="96" /> </a> <span class="sizes"> <span class="button"> <a href="#" class="size1" rel="…" title="1">9x13</a> </span> <span class="button"> <a href="#" class="size2" rel="…" title="3">10x15</a> </span> <span class="button"> <a href="#" class="size3" rel="…" title="6">20x30</a> </span> </span> </span> <a href="…" class="image" rel="group"> <span class="added"></span> <img title="…" src="…" alt="…" width="128" height="96" class="thumbnail" /> </a> </li> i add two "span" elements through jquery: $('.sizes a').click( function (e) { e.preventDefault(); $(this).after("<span class='checked'></span><span class='remove'></span>"); } ); the maximum amount of those s are 3 times in a wrapped div. so i am trying to do is the following: $(".remove").live('click', function(){ $(this).hide(); $(this).prev().hide(); // hide checked span if ($(this).parent().parent().children().children().each().hasClass('checked')) { $(this).parent().parent().parent().next().children(".added").hide(); } } ); of course my if statement is crap. i try it in my own words: if there are more than one span(class=remove) in span(class=panel) then nothing should happen. but if there is just one span(class=remove) left in span(class=panel) THEN should be hidden how do i achieve this? there is an online demonstration of this: http://bit.ly/972be4 as you can see, every time when i hit a button below an image, the image gets marked by a label. and i want to hide this label (class=added) when no button is selected Thank you very much! best wishes from germany

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• Objective-C vs JavaScript loop performance

  - by micadelli

  I have a PhoneGap mobile application that I need to generate an array of match combinations. In JavaScript side, the code hanged pretty soon when the array of which the combinations are generated from got a bit bigger. So, I thought I'll make a plugin to generate the combinations, passing the array of javascript objects to native side and loop it there. To my surprise the following codes executes in 150 ms (JavaScript) whereas in native side (Objective-C) it takes ~1000 ms. Does anyone know any tips for speeding up those executing times? When players exceeds 10, i.e. the length of the array of teams equals 252 it really gets slow. Those execution times mentioned above are for 10 players / 252 teams. Here's the JavaScript code: for (i = 0; i < GAME.teams.length; i += 1) { for (j = i + 1; j < GAME.teams.length; j += 1) { t1 = GAME.teams[i]; t2 = GAME.teams[j]; if ((t1.mask & t2.mask) === 0) { GAME.matches.push({ Team1: t1, Team2: t2 }); } } } ... and here's the native code: NSArray *teams = [[NSArray alloc] initWithArray: [options objectForKey:@"teams"]]; NSMutableArray *t = [[NSMutableArray alloc] init]; int mask_t1; int mask_t2; for (NSInteger i = 0; i < [teams count]; i++) { for (NSInteger j = i + 1; j < [teams count]; j++) { mask_t1 = [[[teams objectAtIndex:i] objectForKey:@"mask"] intValue]; mask_t2 = [[[teams objectAtIndex:j] objectForKey:@"mask"] intValue]; if ((mask_t1 & mask_t2) == 0) { [t insertObject:[teams objectAtIndex:i] atIndex:0]; [t insertObject:[teams objectAtIndex:j] atIndex:1]; /* NSArray *newCombination = [[NSArray alloc] initWithObjects: [teams objectAtIndex:i], [teams objectAtIndex:j], nil]; */ [combinations addObject:t]; } } } ... the array in question (GAME.teams) looks like this: { count = 2; full = 1; list = ( { index = 0; mask = 1; name = A; score = 0; }, { index = 1; mask = 2; name = B; score = 0; } ); mask = 3; name = A; }, { count = 2; full = 1; list = ( { index = 0; mask = 1; name = A; score = 0; }, { index = 2; mask = 4; name = C; score = 0; } ); mask = 5; name = A; },

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• Nested loop traversing arrays

  - by alecco

  There are 2 very big series of elements, the second 100 times bigger than the first. For each element of the first series, there are 0 or more elements on the second series. This can be traversed and processed with 2 nested loops. But the unpredictability of the amount of matching elements for each member of the first array makes things very, very slow. The actual processing of the 2nd series of elements involves logical and (&) and a population count. I couldn't find good optimizations using C but I am considering doing inline asm, doing rep* mov* or similar for each element of the first series and then doing the batch processing of the matching bytes of the second series, perhaps in buffers of 1MB or something. But the code would be get quite messy. Does anybody know of a better way? C preferred but x86 ASM OK too. Many thanks! Sample/demo code with simplified problem, first series are "people" and second series are "events", for clarity's sake. (the original problem is actually 100m and 10,000m entries!) #include <stdio.h> #include <stdint.h> #define PEOPLE 1000000 // 1m struct Person { uint8_t age; // Filtering condition uint8_t cnt; // Number of events for this person in E } P[PEOPLE]; // Each has 0 or more bytes with bit flags #define EVENTS 100000000 // 100m uint8_t P1[EVENTS]; // Property 1 flags uint8_t P2[EVENTS]; // Property 2 flags void init_arrays() { for (int i = 0; i < PEOPLE; i++) { // just some stuff P[i].age = i & 0x07; P[i].cnt = i % 220; // assert( sum < EVENTS ); } for (int i = 0; i < EVENTS; i++) { P1[i] = i % 7; // just some stuff P2[i] = i % 9; // just some other stuff } } int main(int argc, char *argv[]) { uint64_t sum = 0, fcur = 0; int age_filter = 7; // just some init_arrays(); // Init P, P1, P2 for (int64_t p = 0; p < PEOPLE ; p++) if (P[p].age < age_filter) for (int64_t e = 0; e < P[p].cnt ; e++, fcur++) sum += __builtin_popcount( P1[fcur] & P2[fcur] ); else fcur += P[p].cnt; // skip this person's events printf("(dummy %ld %ld)\n", sum, fcur ); return 0; } gcc -O5 -march=native -std=c99 test.c -o test

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• about getadrrinfo() C++?

  - by Isavel

  I'm reading this book called beej's guide to network programming and there's a part in the book were it provide a sample code which illustrate the use of getaddrinfo(); the book state that the code below "will print the IP addresses for whatever host you specify on the command line" - beej's guide to network programming. now I'm curious and want to try it out and run the code, but I guess the code was develop in UNIX environment and I'm using visual studio 2012 windows 7 OS, and most of the headers was not supported so I did a bit of research and find out that I need to include the winsock.h and ws2_32.lib for windows, for it to get working, fortunately everything compiled no errors, but when I run it using the debugger and put in 'www.google.com' as command argument I was disappointed that it did not print any ipaddress, the output that I got from the console is "getaddrinfo: E" what does the letter E mean? Do I need to configure something out of the debugger? Interestingly I left the command argument blank and the output changed to "usage: showip hostname" Any help would be appreciated. #ifdef _WIN32 #endif #include <sys/types.h> #include <winsock2.h> #include <ws2tcpip.h> #include <iostream> using namespace std; #include <stdio.h> #include <string.h> #include <sys/types.h> #include <winsock.h> #pragma comment(lib, "ws2_32.lib") int main(int argc, char *argv[]) { struct addrinfo hints, *res, *p; int status; char ipstr[INET6_ADDRSTRLEN]; if (argc != 2) { fprintf(stderr,"usage: showip hostname\n"); system("PAUSE"); return 1; } memset(&hints, 0, sizeof hints); hints.ai_family = AF_UNSPEC; // AF_INET or AF_INET6 to force version hints.ai_socktype = SOCK_STREAM; if ((status = getaddrinfo(argv[1], NULL, &hints, &res)) != 0) { fprintf(stderr, "getaddrinfo: %s\n", gai_strerror(status)); system("PAUSE"); return 2; } printf("IP addresses for %s:\n\n", argv[1]); for(p = res;p != NULL; p = p->ai_next) { void *addr; char *ipver; // get the pointer to the address itself, // different fields in IPv4 and IPv6: if (p->ai_family == AF_INET) { // IPv4 struct sockaddr_in *ipv4 = (struct sockaddr_in *)p->ai_addr; addr = &(ipv4->sin_addr); ipver = "IPv4"; } else { // IPv6 struct sockaddr_in6 *ipv6 = (struct sockaddr_in6 *)p->ai_addr; addr = &(ipv6->sin6_addr); ipver = "IPv6"; } // convert the IP to a string and print it: inet_ntop(p->ai_family, addr, ipstr, sizeof ipstr); printf(" %s: %s\n", ipver, ipstr); } freeaddrinfo(res); // free the linked list system("PAUSE"); return 0; }

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• Persisting objects to a database using a loop

  - by ChaoticLoki

  I have a form that returns multiple values and each value I would like to store in a database, I created a test form for this purpose <form method="post" action="{{ path('submit_exercise', {'page': 1}) }}"> <input type="hidden" name="answers[]" value="Answer 1" "/> <input type="hidden" name="answers[]" value="Answer 2" "/> <input type="hidden" name="answers[]" value="Answer 3" "/> <input type="hidden" name="answers[]" value="Answer 4" "/> <input type="hidden" name="answers[]" value="Answer 5" "/> <input type="hidden" name="answers[]" value="Answer 6" "/> <input type="hidden" name="answers[]" value="Answer 7" "/> <input type="submit" name="submit" /> </form> </body> </html> My submit answers Action is currently written like so. public function submitAnswersAction($page) { //get submitted data $data = $this->get('request')->request->all(); $answers = $data['answers']; //get student ID $user = $this->get('security.context')->getToken()->getUser(); $studentID = $user->getId(); //Get Current time $currentTime = new \DateTime(date("Y-m-d H:m:s")); //var_dump($answers); //var_dump($studentID); //var_dump($currentTime); for($index = 0; $index < count($answers); $index++) { /*echo "Question ". ($index + 1) ."<br />"; echo "Student ID: ". $studentID."<br />"; echo "Page Number: $page <br />"; echo "Answer: $answers[$index]"."<br />"; echo "<br />";*/ $studentAnswer = new StudentAnswer(); $studentAnswer->setStudentID($studentID); $studentAnswer->setPageID($page); $studentAnswer->setQuestionID($index+1); $studentAnswer->setAnswer($answers[$index]); $studentAnswer->setDateCreated($currentTime); $studentAnswer->setReadStatus(0); $database = $this->getDoctrine()->getManager(); $database->persist($studentAnswer); $database->flush(); } return new Response('Answers saved for Student: '.$user->getFullName().' for page: '.$page); When I do a var_dump everything seems to be associated correctly, meaning that the answers array is populated with the right data and so is every other variable, my problem is actually persisting it to the database. when run it returns with this error which seems to me like it doesn't know what variables to put into the row. An exception occurred while executing 'INSERT INTO Student_Answer (student_id, page_id, question_id, answer, read, date_created) VALUES (?, ?, ?, ?, ?, ?)' with params {"1":2,"2":"1","3":1,"4":"Answer 1","5":0,"6":"2012-12-11 12:12:20"}: Any help would be greatly appreciated as this is a personal project to help me try and understand web development a bit more.

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• I am making a maze type of game using javascript and HTML and need some questions answered [on hold]

  - by Timothy Bilodeau

  First off, i am a noob to JavaScript but am willing to learn. :) I found a simple JavaScript moment engine created by another member on this site. Using that i made it so my character can walk around within a rectangle/square shaped room. I want to make it so the character can walk through a "doorway" within a wall to the next room. Either that or make it so if the character moves over a certain image within the room it will take the player to another webpage in which the character "spawns" into the room and so on and so fourth. Here is a link to what i have made so far as to get an idea. http://bit.ly/1fSMesA Any help would be much appreciated. Here is the javascript code for the character movement and boundaries. <script type='text/javascript'> // movement vars var xpos = 100; var ypos = 100; var xspeed = 1; var yspeed = 0; var maxSpeed = 5; // boundary var minx = 37; var miny = 41; var maxx = 187; // 10 pixels for character's width var maxy = 178; // 10 pixels for character's width // controller vars var upPressed = 0; var downPressed = 0; var leftPressed = 0; var rightPressed = 0; function slowDownX() { if (xspeed > 0) xspeed = xspeed - 1; if (xspeed < 0) xspeed = xspeed + 1; } function slowDownY() { if (yspeed > 0) yspeed = yspeed - 1; if (yspeed < 0) yspeed = yspeed + 1; } function gameLoop() { // change position based on speed xpos = Math.min(Math.max(xpos + xspeed,minx),maxx); ypos = Math.min(Math.max(ypos + yspeed,miny),maxy); // or, without boundaries: // xpos = xpos + xspeed; // ypos = ypos + yspeed; // change actual position document.getElementById('character').style.left = xpos; document.getElementById('character').style.top = ypos; // change speed based on keyboard events if (upPressed == 1) yspeed = Math.max(yspeed - 1,-1*maxSpeed); if (downPressed == 1) yspeed = Math.min(yspeed + 1,1*maxSpeed) if (rightPressed == 1) xspeed = Math.min(xspeed + 1,1*maxSpeed); if (leftPressed == 1) xspeed = Math.max(xspeed - 1,-1*maxSpeed); // deceleration if (upPressed == 0 && downPressed == 0) slowDownY(); if (leftPressed == 0 && rightPressed == 0) slowDownX(); // loop setTimeout("gameLoop()",10); } function keyDown(e) { var code = e.keyCode ? e.keyCode : e.which; if (code == 38) upPressed = 1; if (code == 40) downPressed = 1; if (code == 37) leftPressed = 1; if (code == 39) rightPressed = 1; } function keyUp(e) { var code = e.keyCode ? e.keyCode : e.which; if (code == 38) upPressed = 0; if (code == 40) downPressed = 0; if (code == 37) leftPressed = 0; if (code == 39) rightPressed = 0; } </script> here is the HTML code to follow <!-- The Level --> <img src="room1.png" /> <!-- The Character --> <img id='character' src='../texture packs/characters/snazgel.png' style='position:absolute;left:100;top:100;height:40;width:26;'/>

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• Zend models and database relathionships

  - by user608341

  Hi people, i'm starting with Zend Framework and I'm a little bit confused with models and relathionships (one-to-many, many-to-many etc). The "Zend Framework Quick Start" says to create a Zend_Db_Table, a Data Mapper and finally our model class Suppose we have a database like this: table A ( id integer primary key, name varchar(50) ); table B ( id integer primary key, a_id integer references A ); then, i'll create: Application_Model_DbTable_A extends Zend_Db_Table_Abstract, Application_Model_AMapper, Application_Model_A, Application_Model_DbTable_B extends Zend_Db_Table_Abstract, Application_Model_BMapper, Application_Model_B, if I understood, i've to store the references informations in Application_Model_DbTable_A: protected $_dependentTables = array('B'); and Application_Model_DbTable_B: protected $_referenceMap = array( 'A' => array( 'columns' => array('a_id'), 'refTableClass' => 'A', 'refColums' => array('id') ) ); and my models class: class Application_Model_A { protected $_id; protected $_name; public function __construct(array $options = null) { if(is_array($options)) { $this->setOptions($options); } } public function __set($name, $value) { $method = 'set' . $name; if (('mapper' == $name) || !method_exists($this, $method)) { throw new Exception('Invalid property'); } $this->$method($value); } public function __get($name) { $method = 'get' . $name; if (('mapper' == $name) || !method_exists($this, $method)) { throw new Exception('Invalid property'); } return $this->$method(); } public function setOptions(array $options) { $methods = get_class_methods($this); foreach ($options as $key => $value) { $method = 'set' . ucfirst($key); if (in_array($method, $methods)) { $this->$method($value); } } return $this; } public function setName($name) { $this->_name = (string) $name; return $this; } public function getName() { return $this->_name; } public function setId($id) { $this->_id = (int) $id; return $this; } public function getId() { return $this->_id; } class Application_Model_B { protected $_id; protected $_a_id; public function __construct(array $options = null) { if(is_array($options)) { $this->setOptions($options); } } public function __set($name, $value) { $method = 'set' . $name; if (('mapper' == $name) || !method_exists($this, $method)) { throw new Exception('Invalid property'); } $this->$method($value); } public function __get($name) { $method = 'get' . $name; if (('mapper' == $name) || !method_exists($this, $method)) { throw new Exception('Invalid property'); } return $this->$method(); } public function setOptions(array $options) { $methods = get_class_methods($this); foreach ($options as $key => $value) { $method = 'set' . ucfirst($key); if (in_array($method, $methods)) { $this->$method($value); } } return $this; } public function setA_id($a_id) { $this->_a_id = (int) $a_id; return $this; } public function getA_id() { return $this->_a_id; } public function setId($id) { $this->_id = (int) $id; return $this; } public function getId() { return $this->_id; } it's that right?

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• DropDownList not working 100% in ASP.Net MVC

  - by Program.X

  I am quite confused with how to effectively use the Html.DropDownList helper for ASP.NET MVC. Background: I have a 5-page form, which saves data to the form each time "Next" is clicked. Users may navigate back and forth between sections, so previous sections will already be pre-populated with previously-entered data. This works for TextBoxes. But not DropDownLists. I have tried a load of different methods, including: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/867117/how-to-add-static-list-of-items-in-mvc-html-dropdownlist/867218#867218 http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2080802/setting-selected-item-to-dropdownlist-in-mvc-application I have a ViewModel such taht I have got my lists and my Model (a LINQ-to-SQL generated class) as properties. eg: public class ConsultantRegistrationFormViewModel { public IConsultantRegistration ConsultantRegistration { get; private set; } public SelectList Titles { get; private set; } public SelectList Countries { get; private set; } public SelectList Currencies { get; private set; } public int CurrentSection { get; private set; } private ConsultantRegistrationFormViewModel(IConsultantRegistration consultantRegistration) { ConsultantRegistration = consultantRegistration; CurrentSection = 1; Titles = new SelectList(new string[] { "Mr", "Mrs", "Miss", "Ms", "Dr", "Sir" }); Countries = new SelectList(countries.Select(q => q.Name)); Currencies = new SelectList(currencies,"CurrencyCode","FriendlyForm"); } } My Controller's Edit Action on GET looks like: public class ConsultantRegistrationController : Controller { public IConsultantRegistrationRepository ConsultantRegistrationRepository { get; private set; } public ICountryRepository CountryRepository { get; private set; } public IEnumerable<ICountry> Countries { get; private set; } public ConsultantRegistrationController() { ConsultantRegistrationRepository = RepositoryFactory.CreateConsultantRegistrationRepository(); CountryRepository = RepositoryFactory.CreateCountryRepository(); Countries = CountryRepository.GetCountries().ToArray(); } public ActionResult Edit(Guid id, int sectionIndex) { IConsultantRegistration consultantRegistration = ConsultantRegistrationRepository.GetConsultantRegistration(id); SelectList bankBranchCountriesSelectList = new SelectList(Countries, "BankBranchCountry", "CountryName", consultantRegistration.BankBranchCountry); ViewData["bankBranchCountrySelectList"] = bankBranchCountriesSelectList; return View(new ConsultantRegistrationFormViewModel(consultantRegistration,sectionIndex, Countries,Currencies)); } } With my View doing: <%: Html.DropDownList("ConsultantRegistration.BankBranchCountry",ViewData["bankBranchCountrySelectList"] as SelectList) %> This gives me the error: DataBinding: 'IWW.ArrowPay.ConsultantRegistration.Data.Country' does not contain a property with the name 'BankBranchCountry'. Which it does, have a look at the schema of this property: public interface IConsultantRegistration { Guid ID { get; set; } [DisplayName("Branch Country")] string BankBranchCountry { get; set; } } (My LINQ-to-SQL type ConsultantRegistration implemented IConsultantRegistration) It seems that it is trying to bind to the wrong type, though? If I use this in my view (and use my Controller's Countries property): <%: Html.DropDownList("ConsultantRegistration.BankBranchCountry ",Model.Countries,"(select a Country)") %> I get the saved value fine, but my model doesn't update on POST. And if I use this in my view: <%: Html.DropDownListFor(model=>model.ConsultantRegistration.BankBranchCountry ",Model.Countries,"(select a Country)") %> I get the list, and it POSTs the selected value back, but does not pre-select the currently selected item in my model on the view. So I have a bit of the solution all over the place, but not all in one place. Hope you can help fill in my ignorance.

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• .NET WebRequest.PreAuthenticate not quite what it sounds like

  - by Rick Strahl

  I’ve run into the  problem a few times now: How to pre-authenticate .NET WebRequest calls doing an HTTP call to the server – essentially send authentication credentials on the very first request instead of waiting for a server challenge first? At first glance this sound like it should be easy: The .NET WebRequest object has a PreAuthenticate property which sounds like it should force authentication credentials to be sent on the first request. Looking at the MSDN example certainly looks like it does: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.net.webrequest.preauthenticate.aspx Unfortunately the MSDN sample is wrong. As is the text of the Help topic which incorrectly leads you to believe that PreAuthenticate… wait for it - pre-authenticates. But it doesn’t allow you to set credentials that are sent on the first request. What this property actually does is quite different. It doesn’t send credentials on the first request but rather caches the credentials ONCE you have already authenticated once. Http Authentication is based on a challenge response mechanism typically where the client sends a request and the server responds with a 401 header requesting authentication. So the client sends a request like this: GET /wconnect/admin/wc.wc?_maintain~ShowStatus HTTP/1.1 Host: rasnote User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1.3) Gecko/20090824 Firefox/3.5.3 (.NET CLR 4.0.20506) Accept: text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8 Accept-Language: en,de;q=0.7,en-us;q=0.3 Accept-Encoding: gzip,deflate Accept-Charset: ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.7 Keep-Alive: 300 Connection: keep-alive and the server responds with: HTTP/1.1 401 Unauthorized Cache-Control: private Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8 Server: Microsoft-IIS/7.5 WWW-Authenticate: basic realm=rasnote" X-AspNet-Version: 2.0.50727 WWW-Authenticate: Negotiate WWW-Authenticate: NTLM WWW-Authenticate: Basic realm="rasnote" X-Powered-By: ASP.NET Date: Tue, 27 Oct 2009 00:58:20 GMT Content-Length: 5163 plus the actual error message body. The client then is responsible for re-sending the current request with the authentication token information provided (in this case Basic Auth): GET /wconnect/admin/wc.wc?_maintain~ShowStatus HTTP/1.1 Host: rasnote User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1.3) Gecko/20090824 Firefox/3.5.3 (.NET CLR 4.0.20506) Accept: text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8 Accept-Language: en,de;q=0.7,en-us;q=0.3 Accept-Encoding: gzip,deflate Accept-Charset: ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.7 Keep-Alive: 300 Connection: keep-alive Cookie: TimeTrakker=2HJ1998WH06696; WebLogCommentUser=Rick Strahl|http://www.west-wind.com/|[email protected]; WebStoreUser=b8bd0ed9 Authorization: Basic cgsf12aDpkc2ZhZG1zMA== Once the authorization info is sent the server responds with the actual page result. Now if you use WebRequest (or WebClient) the default behavior is to re-authenticate on every request that requires authorization. This means if you look in  Fiddler or some other HTTP client Proxy that captures requests you’ll see that each request re-authenticates: Here are two requests fired back to back: and you can see the 401 challenge, the 200 response for both requests. If you watch this same conversation between a browser and a server you’ll notice that the first 401 is also there but the subsequent 401 requests are not present. WebRequest.PreAuthenticate And this is precisely what the WebRequest.PreAuthenticate property does: It’s a caching mechanism that caches the connection credentials for a given domain in the active process and resends it on subsequent requests. It does not send credentials on the first request but it will cache credentials on subsequent requests after authentication has succeeded: string url = "http://rasnote/wconnect/admin/wc.wc?_maintain~ShowStatus"; HttpWebRequest req = HttpWebRequest.Create(url) as HttpWebRequest; req.PreAuthenticate = true; req.Credentials = new NetworkCredential("rick", "secret", "rasnote"); req.AuthenticationLevel = System.Net.Security.AuthenticationLevel.MutualAuthRequested; req.UserAgent = ": Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1.3) Gecko/20090824 Firefox/3.5.3 (.NET CLR 4.0.20506)"; WebResponse resp = req.GetResponse(); resp.Close(); req = HttpWebRequest.Create(url) as HttpWebRequest; req.PreAuthenticate = true; req.Credentials = new NetworkCredential("rstrahl", "secret", "rasnote"); req.AuthenticationLevel = System.Net.Security.AuthenticationLevel.MutualAuthRequested; req.UserAgent = ": Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1.3) Gecko/20090824 Firefox/3.5.3 (.NET CLR 4.0.20506)"; resp = req.GetResponse(); which results in the desired sequence: where only the first request doesn’t send credentials. This is quite useful as it saves quite a few round trips to the server – bascially it saves one auth request request for every authenticated request you make. In most scenarios I think you’d want to send these credentials this way but one downside to this is that there’s no way to log out the client. Since the client always sends the credentials once authenticated only an explicit operation ON THE SERVER can undo the credentials by forcing another login explicitly (ie. re-challenging with a forced 401 request). Forcing Basic Authentication Credentials on the first Request On a few occasions I’ve needed to send credentials on a first request – mainly to some oddball third party Web Services (why you’d want to use Basic Auth on a Web Service is beyond me – don’t ask but it’s not uncommon in my experience). This is true of certain services that are using Basic Authentication (especially some Apache based Web Services) and REQUIRE that the authentication is sent right from the first request. No challenge first. Ugly but there it is. Now the following works only with Basic Authentication because it’s pretty straight forward to create the Basic Authorization ‘token’ in code since it’s just an unencrypted encoding of the user name and password into base64. As you might guess this is totally unsecure and should only be used when using HTTPS/SSL connections (i’m not in this example so I can capture the Fiddler trace and my local machine doesn’t have a cert installed, but for production apps ALWAYS use SSL with basic auth). The idea is that you simply add the required Authorization header to the request on your own along with the authorization string that encodes the username and password: string url = "http://rasnote/wconnect/admin/wc.wc?_maintain~ShowStatus"; HttpWebRequest req = HttpWebRequest.Create(url) as HttpWebRequest; string user = "rick"; string pwd = "secret"; string domain = "www.west-wind.com"; string auth = "Basic " + Convert.ToBase64String(System.Text.Encoding.Default.GetBytes(user + ":" + pwd)); req.PreAuthenticate = true; req.AuthenticationLevel = System.Net.Security.AuthenticationLevel.MutualAuthRequested;req.Headers.Add("Authorization", auth); req.UserAgent = ": Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1.3) Gecko/20090824 Firefox/3.5.3 (.NET CLR 4.0.20506)"; WebResponse resp = req.GetResponse(); resp.Close(); This works and causes the request to immediately send auth information to the server. However, this only works with Basic Auth because you can actually create the authentication credentials easily on the client because it’s essentially clear text. The same doesn’t work for Windows or Digest authentication since you can’t easily create the authentication token on the client and send it to the server. Another issue with this approach is that PreAuthenticate has no effect when you manually force the authentication. As far as Web Request is concerned it never sent the authentication information so it’s not actually caching the value any longer. If you run 3 requests in a row like this: string url = "http://rasnote/wconnect/admin/wc.wc?_maintain~ShowStatus"; HttpWebRequest req = HttpWebRequest.Create(url) as HttpWebRequest; string user = "ricks"; string pwd = "secret"; string domain = "www.west-wind.com"; string auth = "Basic " + Convert.ToBase64String(System.Text.Encoding.Default.GetBytes(user + ":" + pwd)); req.PreAuthenticate = true; req.Headers.Add("Authorization", auth); req.UserAgent = ": Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1.3) Gecko/20090824 Firefox/3.5.3 (.NET CLR 4.0.20506)"; WebResponse resp = req.GetResponse(); resp.Close(); req = HttpWebRequest.Create(url) as HttpWebRequest; req.PreAuthenticate = true; req.Credentials = new NetworkCredential(user, pwd, domain); req.UserAgent = ": Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1.3) Gecko/20090824 Firefox/3.5.3 (.NET CLR 4.0.20506)"; resp = req.GetResponse(); resp.Close(); req = HttpWebRequest.Create(url) as HttpWebRequest; req.PreAuthenticate = true; req.Credentials = new NetworkCredential(user, pwd, domain); req.UserAgent = ": Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1.3) Gecko/20090824 Firefox/3.5.3 (.NET CLR 4.0.20506)"; resp = req.GetResponse(); you’ll find the trace looking like this: where the first request (the one we explicitly add the header to) authenticates, the second challenges, and any subsequent ones then use the PreAuthenticate credential caching. In effect you’ll end up with one extra 401 request in this scenario, which is still better than 401 challenges on each request. Getting Access to WebRequest in Classic .NET Web Service Clients If you’re running a classic .NET Web Service client (non-WCF) one issue with the above is how do you get access to the WebRequest to actually add the custom headers to do the custom Authentication described above? One easy way is to implement a partial class that allows you add headers with something like this: public partial class TaxService { protected NameValueCollection Headers = new NameValueCollection(); public void AddHttpHeader(string key, string value) { this.Headers.Add(key,value); } public void ClearHttpHeaders() { this.Headers.Clear(); } protected override WebRequest GetWebRequest(Uri uri) { HttpWebRequest request = (HttpWebRequest) base.GetWebRequest(uri); request.Headers.Add(this.Headers); return request; } } where TaxService is the name of the .NET generated proxy class. In code you can then call AddHttpHeader() anywhere to add additional headers which are sent as part of the GetWebRequest override. Nice and simple once you know where to hook it. For WCF there’s a bit more work involved by creating a message extension as described here: http://weblogs.asp.net/avnerk/archive/2006/04/26/Adding-custom-headers-to-every-WCF-call-_2D00_-a-solution.aspx. FWIW, I think that HTTP header manipulation should be readily available on any HTTP based Web Service client DIRECTLY without having to subclass or implement a special interface hook. But alas a little extra work is required in .NET to make this happen Not a Common Problem, but when it happens… This has been one of those issues that is really rare, but it’s bitten me on several occasions when dealing with oddball Web services – a couple of times in my own work interacting with various Web Services and a few times on customer projects that required interaction with credentials-first services. Since the servers determine the protocol, we don’t have a choice but to follow the protocol. Lovely following standards that implementers decide to ignore, isn’t it? :-}© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2010Posted in .NET  CSharp  Web Services  

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• Using an alternate JSON Serializer in ASP.NET Web API

  - by Rick Strahl

  The new ASP.NET Web API that Microsoft released alongside MVC 4.0 Beta last week is a great framework for building REST and AJAX APIs. I've been working with it for quite a while now and I really like the way it works and the complete set of features it provides 'in the box'. It's about time that Microsoft gets a decent API for building generic HTTP endpoints into the framework. DataContractJsonSerializer sucks As nice as Web API's overall design is one thing still sucks: The built-in JSON Serialization uses the DataContractJsonSerializer which is just too limiting for many scenarios. The biggest issues I have with it are: No support for untyped values (object, dynamic, Anonymous Types) MS AJAX style Date Formatting Ugly serialization formats for types like Dictionaries To me the most serious issue is dealing with serialization of untyped objects. I have number of applications with AJAX front ends that dynamically reformat data from business objects to fit a specific message format that certain UI components require. The most common scenario I have there are IEnumerable query results from a database with fields from the result set rearranged to fit the sometimes unconventional formats required for the UI components (like jqGrid for example). Creating custom types to fit these messages seems like overkill and projections using Linq makes this much easier to code up. Alas DataContractJsonSerializer doesn't support it. Neither does DataContractSerializer for XML output for that matter. What this means is that you can't do stuff like this in Web API out of the box:public object GetAnonymousType() { return new { name = "Rick", company = "West Wind", entered= DateTime.Now }; } Basically anything that doesn't have an explicit type DataContractJsonSerializer will not let you return. FWIW, the same is true for XmlSerializer which also doesn't work with non-typed values for serialization. The example above is obviously contrived with a hardcoded object graph, but it's not uncommon to get dynamic values returned from queries that have anonymous types for their result projections. Apparently there's a good possibility that Microsoft will ship Json.NET as part of Web API RTM release.  Scott Hanselman confirmed this as a footnote in his JSON Dates post a few days ago. I've heard several other people from Microsoft confirm that Json.NET will be included and be the default JSON serializer, but no details yet in what capacity it will show up. Let's hope it ends up as the default in the box. Meanwhile this post will show you how you can use it today with the beta and get JSON that matches what you should see in the RTM version. What about JsonValue? To be fair Web API DOES include a new JsonValue/JsonObject/JsonArray type that allow you to address some of these scenarios. JsonValue is a new type in the System.Json assembly that can be used to build up an object graph based on a dictionary. It's actually a really cool implementation of a dynamic type that allows you to create an object graph and spit it out to JSON without having to create .NET type first. JsonValue can also receive a JSON string and parse it without having to actually load it into a .NET type (which is something that's been missing in the core framework). This is really useful if you get a JSON result from an arbitrary service and you don't want to explicitly create a mapping type for the data returned. For serialization you can create an object structure on the fly and pass it back as part of an Web API action method like this:public JsonValue GetJsonValue() { dynamic json = new JsonObject(); json.name = "Rick"; json.company = "West Wind"; json.entered = DateTime.Now; dynamic address = new JsonObject(); address.street = "32 Kaiea"; address.zip = "96779"; json.address = address; dynamic phones = new JsonArray(); json.phoneNumbers = phones; dynamic phone = new JsonObject(); phone.type = "Home"; phone.number = "808 123-1233"; phones.Add(phone); phone = new JsonObject(); phone.type = "Home"; phone.number = "808 123-1233"; phones.Add(phone); //var jsonString = json.ToString(); return json; } which produces the following output (formatted here for easier reading):{ name: "rick", company: "West Wind", entered: "2012-03-08T15:33:19.673-10:00", address: { street: "32 Kaiea", zip: "96779" }, phoneNumbers: [ { type: "Home", number: "808 123-1233" }, { type: "Mobile", number: "808 123-1234" }] } If you need to build a simple JSON type on the fly these types work great. But if you have an existing type - or worse a query result/list that's already formatted JsonValue et al. become a pain to work with. As far as I can see there's no way to just throw an object instance at JsonValue and have it convert into JsonValue dictionary. It's a manual process. Using alternate Serializers in Web API So, currently the default serializer in WebAPI is DataContractJsonSeriaizer and I don't like it. You may not either, but luckily you can swap the serializer fairly easily. If you'd rather use the JavaScriptSerializer built into System.Web.Extensions or Json.NET today, it's not too difficult to create a custom MediaTypeFormatter that uses these serializers and can replace or partially replace the native serializer. Here's a MediaTypeFormatter implementation using the ASP.NET JavaScriptSerializer:using System; using System.Net.Http.Formatting; using System.Threading.Tasks; using System.Web.Script.Serialization; using System.Json; using System.IO; namespace Westwind.Web.WebApi { public class JavaScriptSerializerFormatter : MediaTypeFormatter { public JavaScriptSerializerFormatter() { SupportedMediaTypes.Add(new System.Net.Http.Headers.MediaTypeHeaderValue("application/json")); } protected override bool CanWriteType(Type type) { // don't serialize JsonValue structure use default for that if (type == typeof(JsonValue) || type == typeof(JsonObject) || type== typeof(JsonArray) ) return false; return true; } protected override bool CanReadType(Type type) { if (type == typeof(IKeyValueModel)) return false; return true; } protected override System.Threading.Tasks.Taskobject OnReadFromStreamAsync(Type type, System.IO.Stream stream, System.Net.Http.Headers.HttpContentHeaders contentHeaders, FormatterContext formatterContext) { var task = Taskobject.Factory.StartNew(() = { var ser = new JavaScriptSerializer(); string json; using (var sr = new StreamReader(stream)) { json = sr.ReadToEnd(); sr.Close(); } object val = ser.Deserialize(json,type); return val; }); return task; } protected override System.Threading.Tasks.Task OnWriteToStreamAsync(Type type, object value, System.IO.Stream stream, System.Net.Http.Headers.HttpContentHeaders contentHeaders, FormatterContext formatterContext, System.Net.TransportContext transportContext) { var task = Task.Factory.StartNew( () = { var ser = new JavaScriptSerializer(); var json = ser.Serialize(value); byte[] buf = System.Text.Encoding.Default.GetBytes(json); stream.Write(buf,0,buf.Length); stream.Flush(); }); return task; } } } Formatter implementation is pretty simple: You override 4 methods to tell which types you can handle and then handle the input or output streams to create/parse the JSON data. Note that when creating output you want to take care to still allow JsonValue/JsonObject/JsonArray types to be handled by the default serializer so those objects serialize properly - if you let either JavaScriptSerializer or JSON.NET handle them they'd try to render the dictionaries which is very undesirable. If you'd rather use Json.NET here's the JSON.NET version of the formatter:// this code requires a reference to JSON.NET in your project #if true using System; using System.Net.Http.Formatting; using System.Threading.Tasks; using System.Web.Script.Serialization; using System.Json; using Newtonsoft.Json; using System.IO; using Newtonsoft.Json.Converters; namespace Westwind.Web.WebApi { public class JsonNetFormatter : MediaTypeFormatter { public JsonNetFormatter() { SupportedMediaTypes.Add(new System.Net.Http.Headers.MediaTypeHeaderValue("application/json")); } protected override bool CanWriteType(Type type) { // don't serialize JsonValue structure use default for that if (type == typeof(JsonValue) || type == typeof(JsonObject) || type == typeof(JsonArray)) return false; return true; } protected override bool CanReadType(Type type) { if (type == typeof(IKeyValueModel)) return false; return true; } protected override System.Threading.Tasks.Taskobject OnReadFromStreamAsync(Type type, System.IO.Stream stream, System.Net.Http.Headers.HttpContentHeaders contentHeaders, FormatterContext formatterContext) { var task = Taskobject.Factory.StartNew(() = { var settings = new JsonSerializerSettings() { NullValueHandling = NullValueHandling.Ignore, }; var sr = new StreamReader(stream); var jreader = new JsonTextReader(sr); var ser = new JsonSerializer(); ser.Converters.Add(new IsoDateTimeConverter()); object val = ser.Deserialize(jreader, type); return val; }); return task; } protected override System.Threading.Tasks.Task OnWriteToStreamAsync(Type type, object value, System.IO.Stream stream, System.Net.Http.Headers.HttpContentHeaders contentHeaders, FormatterContext formatterContext, System.Net.TransportContext transportContext) { var task = Task.Factory.StartNew( () = { var settings = new JsonSerializerSettings() { NullValueHandling = NullValueHandling.Ignore, }; string json = JsonConvert.SerializeObject(value, Formatting.Indented, new JsonConverter[1] { new IsoDateTimeConverter() } ); byte[] buf = System.Text.Encoding.Default.GetBytes(json); stream.Write(buf,0,buf.Length); stream.Flush(); }); return task; } } } #endif   One advantage of the Json.NET serializer is that you can specify a few options on how things are formatted and handled. You get null value handling and you can plug in the IsoDateTimeConverter which is nice to product proper ISO dates that I would expect any Json serializer to output these days. Hooking up the Formatters Once you've created the custom formatters you need to enable them for your Web API application. To do this use the GlobalConfiguration.Configuration object and add the formatter to the Formatters collection. Here's what this looks like hooked up from Application_Start in a Web project:protected void Application_Start(object sender, EventArgs e) { // Action based routing (used for RPC calls) RouteTable.Routes.MapHttpRoute( name: "StockApi", routeTemplate: "stocks/{action}/{symbol}", defaults: new { symbol = RouteParameter.Optional, controller = "StockApi" } ); // WebApi Configuration to hook up formatters and message handlers // optional RegisterApis(GlobalConfiguration.Configuration); } public static void RegisterApis(HttpConfiguration config) { // Add JavaScriptSerializer formatter instead - add at top to make default //config.Formatters.Insert(0, new JavaScriptSerializerFormatter()); // Add Json.net formatter - add at the top so it fires first! // This leaves the old one in place so JsonValue/JsonObject/JsonArray still are handled config.Formatters.Insert(0, new JsonNetFormatter()); } One thing to remember here is the GlobalConfiguration object which is Web API's static configuration instance. I think this thing is seriously misnamed given that GlobalConfiguration could stand for anything and so is hard to discover if you don't know what you're looking for. How about WebApiConfiguration or something more descriptive? Anyway, once you know what it is you can use the Formatters collection to insert your custom formatter. Note that I insert my formatter at the top of the list so it takes precedence over the default formatter. I also am not removing the old formatter because I still want JsonValue/JsonObject/JsonArray to be handled by the default serialization mechanism. Since they process in sequence and I exclude processing for these types JsonValue et al. still get properly serialized/deserialized. Summary Currently DataContractJsonSerializer in Web API is a pain, but at least we have the ability with relatively limited effort to replace the MediaTypeFormatter and plug in our own JSON serializer. This is useful for many scenarios - if you have existing client applications that used MVC JsonResult or ASP.NET AJAX results from ASMX AJAX services you can plug in the JavaScript serializer and get exactly the same serializer you used in the past so your results will be the same and don't potentially break clients. JSON serializers do vary a bit in how they serialize some of the more complex types (like Dictionaries and dates for example) and so if you're migrating it might be helpful to ensure your client code doesn't break when you switch to ASP.NET Web API. Going forward it looks like Microsoft is planning on plugging in Json.Net into Web API and make that the default. I think that's an awesome choice since Json.net has been around forever, is fast and easy to use and provides a ton of functionality as part of this great library. I just wish Microsoft would have figured this out sooner instead of now at the last minute integrating with it especially given that Json.Net has a similar set of lower level JSON objects JsonValue/JsonObject etc. which now will end up being duplicated by the native System.Json stuff. It's not like we don't already have enough confusion regarding which JSON serializer to use (JavaScriptSerializer, DataContractJsonSerializer, JsonValue/JsonObject/JsonArray and now Json.net). For years I've been using my own JSON serializer because the built in choices are both limited. However, with an official encorsement of Json.Net I'm happily moving on to use that in my applications. Let's see and hope Microsoft gets this right before ASP.NET Web API goes gold.© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2012Posted in Web Api  AJAX  ASP.NET   Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

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• Deploying Django on EC2 using Bitnami Djangostack: WSGI script cannot be loadded

  - by Arman

  I've been struggling to deploy Django application on Amazon EC2 using Bitnami Djangostack for the last couple of days. When I go to http://dewey.io I see the default bitnami page (/opt/bitnami/apache2/htdocs/index.html), however, when I open http://dewey.io/portnoy, I get 'Internal Server Error'. But it's known that if mod_wsgi is setup correctly, the DocumentRoot value from httpd.conf is ignored, thus, I should see my Django application when accessing http://dewey.io. Essentially, the main error is this - 'Target WSGI script cannot be loaded as Python module'. Two questions: 1) any ideas how to fix these mod_wsgi errors (the Apache logs are below)? 2) how to disable the default /opt/bitnami/apache2/htdocs/index.html page and show my homepage from django application when accessing http://dewey.io? Thank you in advance! The details On my EC2 instance I"m running 64-bit Ubuntu 12.04 with DjangoStack 1.4-1. My Django project is located here - /opt/bitnami/apps/django/django_projects/portnoy. root@dewey:/opt/bitnami/apps/django/django_projects/portnoy# ls manage.py README.md settings.py site_media users Procfile sandbox static test.py topics urls.py views.py __init__.pyc templates testviews.py Apache error logs (/opt/bitnami/apache2/logs/error_log): [Wed Jul 04 02:29:00 2012] [error] [client 140.180.6.212] File does not exist: /opt/bitnami/apache2/htdocs/favicon.ico [Wed Jul 04 02:29:15 2012] [error] [client 140.180.6.212] mod_wsgi (pid=3990): Target WSGI script '/opt/bitnami/apps/django/scripts/django.wsgi' cannot be loaded as Python module. [Wed Jul 04 02:29:15 2012] [error] [client 140.180.6.212] mod_wsgi (pid=3990): Exception occurred processing WSGI script '/opt/bitnami/apps/django/scripts/django.wsgi'. [Wed Jul 04 02:29:15 2012] [error] [client 140.180.6.212] Traceback (most recent call last): [Wed Jul 04 02:29:15 2012] [error] [client 140.180.6.212] File "/opt/bitnami/apps/django/scripts/django.wsgi", line 8, in <module> [Wed Jul 04 02:29:15 2012] [error] [client 140.180.6.212] import django.core.handlers.wsgi [Wed Jul 04 02:29:15 2012] [error] [client 140.180.6.212] File "/opt/bitnami/apps/django/lib/python2.7/site-packages/django/core/handlers/wsgi.py", line 8, in <module> [Wed Jul 04 02:29:15 2012] [error] [client 140.180.6.212] from django import http [Wed Jul 04 02:29:15 2012] [error] [client 140.180.6.212] File "/opt/bitnami/apps/django/lib/python2.7/site-packages/django/http/__init__.py", line 119, in <module> [Wed Jul 04 02:29:15 2012] [error] [client 140.180.6.212] from django.http.multipartparser import MultiPartParser [Wed Jul 04 02:29:15 2012] [error] [client 140.180.6.212] File "/opt/bitnami/apps/django/lib/python2.7/site-packages/django/http/multipartparser.py", line 13, in <module> [Wed Jul 04 02:29:15 2012] [error] [client 140.180.6.212] from django.utils.text import unescape_entities [Wed Jul 04 02:29:15 2012] [error] [client 140.180.6.212] File "/opt/bitnami/apps/django/lib/python2.7/site-packages/django/utils/text.py", line 4, in <module> [Wed Jul 04 02:29:15 2012] [error] [client 140.180.6.212] from gzip import GzipFile [Wed Jul 04 02:29:15 2012] [error] [client 140.180.6.212] File "/opt/bitnami/python/lib/python2.7/gzip.py", line 10, in <module> [Wed Jul 04 02:29:15 2012] [error] [client 140.180.6.212] import io [Wed Jul 04 02:29:15 2012] [error] [client 140.180.6.212] File "/opt/bitnami/python/lib/python2.7/io.py", line 60, in <module> [Wed Jul 04 02:29:15 2012] [error] [client 140.180.6.212] import _io [Wed Jul 04 02:29:15 2012] [error] [client 140.180.6.212] ImportError: /opt/bitnami/python/lib/python2.7/lib-dynload/_io.so: undefined symbol: PyUnicodeUCS2_AsEncodedString [Wed Jul 04 02:29:15 2012] [error] [client 140.180.6.212] File does not exist: /opt/bitnami/apache2/htdocs/favicon.ico [Wed Jul 04 02:44:00 2012] [error] [client 140.180.6.212] File does not exist: /opt/bitnami/apache2/htdocs/favicon.ico Let me quickly introduce the contents of the files to make the case more concrete. This is my /etc/apache2/sites-available/default file <VirtualHost *:80> ServerAdmin [email protected] ServerName dewey.io Alias /site_media/ /opt/bitnami/apps/django/django_projects/portnoy/site_media/ Alias /static/ /opt/bitnami/apps/django/lib/python2.7/site-packages/django/contrib/admin/static/ Alias /robots.txt /opt/bitnami/apps/django/django_projects/portnoy/site_media/robots.txt Alias /favicon.ico /opt/bitnami/apps/django/django_projects/portnoy/site_media/favicon.ico CustomLog "|/usr/sbin/rotatelogs /opt/bitnami/apps/django/django_projects/logs/access.log.%Y%m%d-%H%M%S 5M" combined ErrorLog "|/usr/sbin/rotatelogs /opt/bitnami/apps/django/django_projects/logs/error.log.%Y%m%d-%H%M%S 5M" LogLevel warn WSGIProcessGroup dewey.io WSGIScriptAlias / /opt/bitnami/apps/django/scripts/django.wsgi <Directory /opt/bitnami/apps/django/django_projects/portnoy/site_media> Order deny,allow Allow from all Options -Indexes FollowSymLinks </Directory> <Directory /opt/bitnami/apps/django/django_projects/portnoy/conf/apache> Order deny,allow Allow from all </Directory> </VirtualHost> This is my /opt/bitnami/apps/django/scripts/django.wsgi file import os, sys sys.path.append('/opt/bitnami/apps/django/lib/python2.7/site-packages/') sys.path.append('/opt/bitnami/apps/django/django_projects') sys.path.append('/opt/bitnami/apps/django/django_projects/portnoy') os.environ['DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE'] = 'portnoy.settings' import django.core.handlers.wsgi application = django.core.handlers.wsgi.WSGIHandler() Here is the relevant portion of /opt/bitnami/apache2/conf/httpd.conf file: ServerRoot "/opt/bitnami/apache2" Listen 80 ServerName dewey.io DocumentRoot "/opt/bitnami/apache2/htdocs" LoadModule wsgi_module modules/mod_wsgi.so WSGIPythonHome /opt/bitnami/python Include "/opt/bitnami/apache2/conf/ssi.conf" Include "/opt/bitnami/apps/django/conf/django.conf" Include "/opt/bitnami/apache2/conf/bitnami/httpd.conf"

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• Differences Between NHibernate and Entity Framework

  - by Ricardo Peres

  Introduction NHibernate and Entity Framework are two of the most popular O/RM frameworks on the .NET world. Although they share some functionality, there are some aspects on which they are quite different. This post will describe this differences and will hopefully help you get started with the one you know less. Mind you, this is a personal selection of features to compare, it is by no way an exhaustive list. History First, a bit of history. NHibernate is an open-source project that was first ported from Java’s venerable Hibernate framework, one of the first O/RM frameworks, but nowadays it is not tied to it, for example, it has .NET specific features, and has evolved in different ways from those of its Java counterpart. Current version is 3.3, with 3.4 on the horizon. It currently targets .NET 3.5, but can be used as well in .NET 4, it only makes no use of any of its specific functionality. You can find its home page at NHForge. Entity Framework 1 came out with .NET 3.5 and is now on its second major version, despite being version 4. Code First sits on top of it and but came separately and will also continue to be released out of line with major .NET distributions. It is currently on version 4.3.1 and version 5 will be released together with .NET Framework 4.5. All versions will target the current version of .NET, at the time of their release. Its home location is located at MSDN. Architecture In NHibernate, there is a separation between the Unit of Work and the configuration and model instances. You start off by creating a Configuration object, where you specify all global NHibernate settings such as the database and dialect to use, the batch sizes, the mappings, etc, then you build an ISessionFactory from it. The ISessionFactory holds model and metadata that is tied to a particular database and to the settings that came from the Configuration object, and, there will typically be only one instance of each in a process. Finally, you create instances of ISession from the ISessionFactory, which is the NHibernate representation of the Unit of Work and Identity Map. This is a lightweight object, it basically opens and closes a database connection as required and keeps track of the entities associated with it. ISession objects are cheap to create and dispose, because all of the model complexity is stored in the ISessionFactory and Configuration objects. As for Entity Framework, the ObjectContext/DbContext holds the configuration, model and acts as the Unit of Work, holding references to all of the known entity instances. This class is therefore not lightweight as its NHibernate counterpart and it is not uncommon to see examples where an instance is cached on a field. Mappings Both NHibernate and Entity Framework (Code First) support the use of POCOs to represent entities, no base classes are required (or even possible, in the case of NHibernate). As for mapping to and from the database, NHibernate supports three types of mappings: XML-based, which have the advantage of not tying the entity classes to a particular O/RM; the XML files can be deployed as files on the file system or as embedded resources in an assembly; Attribute-based, for keeping both the entities and database details on the same place at the expense of polluting the entity classes with NHibernate-specific attributes; Strongly-typed code-based, which allows dynamic creation of the model and strongly typing it, so that if, for example, a property name changes, the mapping will also be updated. Entity Framework can use: Attribute-based (although attributes cannot express all of the available possibilities – for example, cascading); Strongly-typed code mappings. Database Support With NHibernate you can use mostly any database you want, including: SQL Server; SQL Server Compact; SQL Server Azure; Oracle; DB2; PostgreSQL; MySQL; Sybase Adaptive Server/SQL Anywhere; Firebird; SQLLite; Informix; Any through OLE DB; Any through ODBC. Out of the box, Entity Framework only supports SQL Server, but a number of providers exist, both free and commercial, for some of the most used databases, such as Oracle and MySQL. See a list here. Inheritance Strategies Both NHibernate and Entity Framework support the three canonical inheritance strategies: Table Per Type Hierarchy (Single Table Inheritance), Table Per Type (Class Table Inheritance) and Table Per Concrete Type (Concrete Table Inheritance). Associations Regarding associations, both support one to one, one to many and many to many. However, NHibernate offers far more collection types: Bags of entities or values: unordered, possibly with duplicates; Lists of entities or values: ordered, indexed by a number column; Maps of entities or values: indexed by either an entity or any value; Sets of entities or values: unordered, no duplicates; Arrays of entities or values: indexed, immutable. Querying NHibernate exposes several querying APIs: LINQ is probably the most used nowadays, and really does not need to be introduced; Hibernate Query Language (HQL) is a database-agnostic, object-oriented SQL-alike language that exists since NHibernate’s creation and still offers the most advanced querying possibilities; well suited for dynamic queries, even if using string concatenation; Criteria API is an implementation of the Query Object pattern where you create a semi-abstract conceptual representation of the query you wish to execute by means of a class model; also a good choice for dynamic querying; Query Over offers a similar API to Criteria, but using strongly-typed LINQ expressions instead of strings; for this, although more refactor-friendlier that Criteria, it is also less suited for dynamic queries; SQL, including stored procedures, can also be used; Integration with Lucene.NET indexer is available. As for Entity Framework: LINQ to Entities is fully supported, and its implementation is considered very complete; it is the API of choice for most developers; Entity-SQL, HQL’s counterpart, is also an object-oriented, database-independent querying language that can be used for dynamic queries; SQL, of course, is also supported. Caching Both NHibernate and Entity Framework, of course, feature first-level cache. NHibernate also supports a second-level cache, that can be used among multiple ISessionFactorys, even in different processes/machines: Hashtable (in-memory); SysCache (uses ASP.NET as the cache provider); SysCache2 (same as above but with support for SQL Server SQL Dependencies); Prevalence; SharedCache; Memcached; Redis; NCache; Appfabric Caching. Out of the box, Entity Framework does not have any second-level cache mechanism, however, there are some public samples that show how we can add this. ID Generators NHibernate supports different ID generation strategies, coming from the database and otherwise: Identity (for SQL Server, MySQL, and databases who support identity columns); Sequence (for Oracle, PostgreSQL, and others who support sequences); Trigger-based; HiLo; Sequence HiLo (for databases that support sequences); Several GUID flavors, both in GUID as well as in string format; Increment (for single-user uses); Assigned (must know what you’re doing); Sequence-style (either uses an actual sequence or a single-column table); Table of ids; Pooled (similar to HiLo but stores high values in a table); Native (uses whatever mechanism the current database supports, identity or sequence). Entity Framework only supports: Identity generation; GUIDs; Assigned values. Properties NHibernate supports properties of entity types (one to one or many to one), collections (one to many or many to many) as well as scalars and enumerations. It offers a mechanism for having complex property types generated from the database, which even include support for querying. It also supports properties originated from SQL formulas. Entity Framework only supports scalars, entity types and collections. Enumerations support will come in the next version. Events and Interception NHibernate has a very rich event model, that exposes more than 20 events, either for synchronous pre-execution or asynchronous post-execution, including: Pre/Post-Load; Pre/Post-Delete; Pre/Post-Insert; Pre/Post-Update; Pre/Post-Flush. It also features interception of class instancing and SQL generation. As for Entity Framework, only two events exist: ObjectMaterialized (after loading an entity from the database); SavingChanges (before saving changes, which include deleting, inserting and updating). Tracking Changes For NHibernate as well as Entity Framework, all changes are tracked by their respective Unit of Work implementation. Entities can be attached and detached to it, Entity Framework does, however, also support self-tracking entities. Optimistic Concurrency Control NHibernate supports all of the imaginable scenarios: SQL Server’s ROWVERSION; Oracle’s ORA_ROWSCN; A column containing date and time; A column containing a version number; All/dirty columns comparison. Entity Framework is more focused on Entity Framework, so it only supports: SQL Server’s ROWVERSION; Comparing all/some columns. Batching NHibernate has full support for insertion batching, but only if the ID generator in use is not database-based (for example, it cannot be used with Identity), whereas Entity Framework has no batching at all. Cascading Both support cascading for collections and associations: when an entity is deleted, their conceptual children are also deleted. NHibernate also offers the possibility to set the foreign key column on children to NULL instead of removing them. Flushing Changes NHibernate’s ISession has a FlushMode property that can have the following values: Auto: changes are sent to the database when necessary, for example, if there are dirty instances of an entity type, and a query is performed against this entity type, or if the ISession is being disposed; Commit: changes are sent when committing the current transaction; Never: changes are only sent when explicitly calling Flush(). As for Entity Framework, changes have to be explicitly sent through a call to AcceptAllChanges()/SaveChanges(). Lazy Loading NHibernate supports lazy loading for Associated entities (one to one, many to one); Collections (one to many, many to many); Scalar properties (thing of BLOBs or CLOBs). Entity Framework only supports lazy loading for: Associated entities; Collections. Generating and Updating the Database Both NHibernate and Entity Framework Code First (with the Migrations API) allow creating the database model from the mapping and updating it if the mapping changes. Extensibility As you can guess, NHibernate is far more extensible than Entity Framework. Basically, everything can be extended, from ID generation, to LINQ to SQL transformation, HQL native SQL support, custom column types, custom association collections, SQL generation, supported databases, etc. With Entity Framework your options are more limited, at least, because practically no information exists as to what can be extended/changed. It features a provider model that can be extended to support any database. Integration With Other Microsoft APIs and Tools When it comes to integration with Microsoft technologies, it will come as no surprise that Entity Framework offers the best support. For example, the following technologies are fully supported: ASP.NET (through the EntityDataSource); ASP.NET Dynamic Data; WCF Data Services; WCF RIA Services; Visual Studio (through the integrated designer). Documentation This is another point where Entity Framework is superior: NHibernate lacks, for starters, an up to date API reference synchronized with its current version. It does have a community mailing list, blogs and wikis, although not much used. Entity Framework has a number of resources on MSDN and, of course, several forums and discussion groups exist. Conclusion Like I said, this is a personal list. I may come as a surprise to some that Entity Framework is so behind NHibernate in so many aspects, but it is true that NHibernate is much older and, due to its open-source nature, is not tied to product-specific timeframes and can thus evolve much more rapidly. I do like both, and I chose whichever is best for the job I have at hands. I am looking forward to the changes in EF5 which will add significant value to an already interesting product. So, what do you think? Did I forget anything important or is there anything else worth talking about? Looking forward for your comments!

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• HTG Reviews the CODE Keyboard: Old School Construction Meets Modern Amenities

  - by Jason Fitzpatrick

  There’s nothing quite as satisfying as the smooth and crisp action of a well built keyboard. If you’re tired of  mushy keys and cheap feeling keyboards, a well-constructed mechanical keyboard is a welcome respite from the $10 keyboard that came with your computer. Read on as we put the CODE mechanical keyboard through the paces. What is the CODE Keyboard? The CODE keyboard is a collaboration between manufacturer WASD Keyboards and Jeff Atwood of Coding Horror (the guy behind the Stack Exchange network and Discourse forum software). Atwood’s focus was incorporating the best of traditional mechanical keyboards and the best of modern keyboard usability improvements. In his own words: The world is awash in terrible, crappy, no name how-cheap-can-we-make-it keyboards. There are a few dozen better mechanical keyboard options out there. I’ve owned and used at least six different expensive mechanical keyboards, but I wasn’t satisfied with any of them, either: they didn’t have backlighting, were ugly, had terrible design, or were missing basic functions like media keys. That’s why I originally contacted Weyman Kwong of WASD Keyboards way back in early 2012. I told him that the state of keyboards was unacceptable to me as a geek, and I proposed a partnership wherein I was willing to work with him to do whatever it takes to produce a truly great mechanical keyboard. Even the ardent skeptic who questions whether Atwood has indeed created a truly great mechanical keyboard certainly can’t argue with the position he starts from: there are so many agonizingly crappy keyboards out there. Even worse, in our opinion, is that unless you’re a typist of a certain vintage there’s a good chance you’ve never actually typed on a really nice keyboard. Those that didn’t start using computers until the mid-to-late 1990s most likely have always typed on modern mushy-key keyboards and never known the joy of typing on a really responsive and crisp mechanical keyboard. Is our preference for and love of mechanical keyboards shining through here? Good. We’re not even going to try and hide it. So where does the CODE keyboard stack up in pantheon of keyboards? Read on as we walk you through the simple setup and our experience using the CODE. Setting Up the CODE Keyboard Although the setup of the CODE keyboard is essentially plug and play, there are two distinct setup steps that you likely haven’t had to perform on a previous keyboard. Both highlight the degree of care put into the keyboard and the amount of customization available. Inside the box you’ll find the keyboard, a micro USB cable, a USB-to-PS2 adapter, and a tool which you may be unfamiliar with: a key puller. We’ll return to the key puller in a moment. Unlike the majority of keyboards on the market, the cord isn’t permanently affixed to the keyboard. What does this mean for you? Aside from the obvious need to plug it in yourself, it makes it dead simple to repair your own keyboard cord if it gets attacked by a pet, mangled in a mechanism on your desk, or otherwise damaged. It also makes it easy to take advantage of the cable routing channels in on the underside of the keyboard to  route your cable exactly where you want it. While we’re staring at the underside of the keyboard, check out those beefy rubber feet. By peripherals standards they’re huge (and there is six instead of the usual four). Once you plunk the keyboard down where you want it, it might as well be glued down the rubber feet work so well. After you’ve secured the cable and adjusted it to your liking, there is one more task  before plug the keyboard into the computer. On the bottom left-hand side of the keyboard, you’ll find a small recess in the plastic with some dip switches inside: The dip switches are there to switch hardware functions for various operating systems, keyboard layouts, and to enable/disable function keys. By toggling the dip switches you can change the keyboard from QWERTY mode to Dvorak mode and Colemak mode, the two most popular alternative keyboard configurations. You can also use the switches to enable Mac-functionality (for Command/Option keys). One of our favorite little toggles is the SW3 dip switch: you can disable the Caps Lock key; goodbye accidentally pressing Caps when you mean to press Shift. You can review the entire dip switch configuration chart here. The quick-start for Windows users is simple: double check that all the switches are in the off position (as seen in the photo above) and then simply toggle SW6 on to enable the media and backlighting function keys (this turns the menu key on the keyboard into a function key as typically found on laptop keyboards). After adjusting the dip switches to your liking, plug the keyboard into an open USB port on your computer (or into your PS/2 port using the included adapter). Design, Layout, and Backlighting The CODE keyboard comes in two flavors, a traditional 87-key layout (no number pad) and a traditional 104-key layout (number pad on the right hand side). We identify the layout as traditional because, despite some modern trapping and sneaky shortcuts, the actual form factor of the keyboard from the shape of the keys to the spacing and position is as classic as it comes. You won’t have to learn a new keyboard layout and spend weeks conditioning yourself to a smaller than normal backspace key or a PgUp/PgDn pair in an unconventional location. Just because the keyboard is very conventional in layout, however, doesn’t mean you’ll be missing modern amenities like media-control keys. The following additional functions are hidden in the F11, F12, Pause button, and the 2×6 grid formed by the Insert and Delete rows: keyboard illumination brightness, keyboard illumination on/off, mute, and then the typical play/pause, forward/backward, stop, and volume +/- in Insert and Delete rows, respectively. While we weren’t sure what we’d think of the function-key system at first (especially after retiring a Microsoft Sidewinder keyboard with a huge and easily accessible volume knob on it), it took less than a day for us to adapt to using the Fn key, located next to the right Ctrl key, to adjust our media playback on the fly. Keyboard backlighting is a largely hit-or-miss undertaking but the CODE keyboard nails it. Not only does it have pleasant and easily adjustable through-the-keys lighting but the key switches the keys themselves are attached to are mounted to a steel plate with white paint. Enough of the light reflects off the interior cavity of the keys and then diffuses across the white plate to provide nice even illumination in between the keys. Highlighting the steel plate beneath the keys brings us to the actual construction of the keyboard. It’s rock solid. The 87-key model, the one we tested, is 2.0 pounds. The 104-key is nearly a half pound heavier at 2.42 pounds. Between the steel plate, the extra-thick PCB board beneath the steel plate, and the thick ABS plastic housing, the keyboard has very solid feel to it. Combine that heft with the previously mentioned thick rubber feet and you have a tank-like keyboard that won’t budge a millimeter during normal use. Examining The Keys This is the section of the review the hardcore typists and keyboard ninjas have been waiting for. We’ve looked at the layout of the keyboard, we’ve looked at the general construction of it, but what about the actual keys? There are a wide variety of keyboard construction techniques but the vast majority of modern keyboards use a rubber-dome construction. The key is floated in a plastic frame over a rubber membrane that has a little rubber dome for each key. The press of the physical key compresses the rubber dome downwards and a little bit of conductive material on the inside of the dome’s apex connects with the circuit board. Despite the near ubiquity of the design, many people dislike it. The principal complaint is that dome keyboards require a complete compression to register a keystroke; keyboard designers and enthusiasts refer to this as “bottoming out”. In other words, the register the “b” key, you need to completely press that key down. As such it slows you down and requires additional pressure and movement that, over the course of tens of thousands of keystrokes, adds up to a whole lot of wasted time and fatigue. The CODE keyboard features key switches manufactured by Cherry, a company that has manufactured key switches since the 1960s. Specifically the CODE features Cherry MX Clear switches. These switches feature the same classic design of the other Cherry switches (such as the MX Blue and Brown switch lineups) but they are significantly quieter (yes this is a mechanical keyboard, but no, your neighbors won’t think you’re firing off a machine gun) as they lack the audible click found in most Cherry switches. This isn’t to say that they keyboard doesn’t have a nice audible key press sound when the key is fully depressed, but that the key mechanism isn’t doesn’t create a loud click sound when triggered. One of the great features of the Cherry MX clear is a tactile “bump” that indicates the key has been compressed enough to register the stroke. For touch typists the very subtle tactile feedback is a great indicator that you can move on to the next stroke and provides a welcome speed boost. Even if you’re not trying to break any word-per-minute records, that little bump when pressing the key is satisfying. The Cherry key switches, in addition to providing a much more pleasant typing experience, are also significantly more durable than dome-style key switch. Rubber dome switch membrane keyboards are typically rated for 5-10 million contacts whereas the Cherry mechanical switches are rated for 50 million contacts. You’d have to write the next War and Peace  and follow that up with A Tale of Two Cities: Zombie Edition, and then turn around and transcribe them both into a dozen different languages to even begin putting a tiny dent in the lifecycle of this keyboard. So what do the switches look like under the classicly styled keys? You can take a look yourself with the included key puller. Slide the loop between the keys and then gently beneath the key you wish to remove: Wiggle the key puller gently back and forth while exerting a gentle upward pressure to pop the key off; You can repeat the process for every key, if you ever find yourself needing to extract piles of cat hair, Cheeto dust, or other foreign objects from your keyboard. There it is, the naked switch, the source of that wonderful crisp action with the tactile bump on each keystroke. The last feature worthy of a mention is the N-key rollover functionality of the keyboard. This is a feature you simply won’t find on non-mechanical keyboards and even gaming keyboards typically only have any sort of key roller on the high-frequency keys like WASD. So what is N-key rollover and why do you care? On a typical mass-produced rubber-dome keyboard you cannot simultaneously press more than two keys as the third one doesn’t register. PS/2 keyboards allow for unlimited rollover (in other words you can’t out type the keyboard as all of your keystrokes, no matter how fast, will register); if you use the CODE keyboard with the PS/2 adapter you gain this ability. If you don’t use the PS/2 adapter and use the native USB, you still get 6-key rollover (and the CTRL, ALT, and SHIFT don’t count towards the 6) so realistically you still won’t be able to out type the computer as even the more finger twisting keyboard combos and high speed typing will still fall well within the 6-key rollover. The rollover absolutely doesn’t matter if you’re a slow hunt-and-peck typist, but if you’ve read this far into a keyboard review there’s a good chance that you’re a serious typist and that kind of quality construction and high-number key rollover is a fantastic feature.  The Good, The Bad, and the Verdict We’ve put the CODE keyboard through the paces, we’ve played games with it, typed articles with it, left lengthy comments on Reddit, and otherwise used and abused it like we would any other keyboard. The Good: The construction is rock solid. In an emergency, we’re confident we could use the keyboard as a blunt weapon (and then resume using it later in the day with no ill effect on the keyboard). The Cherry switches are an absolute pleasure to type on; the Clear variety found in the CODE keyboard offer a really nice middle-ground between the gun-shot clack of a louder mechanical switch and the quietness of a lesser-quality dome keyboard without sacrificing quality. Touch typists will love the subtle tactile bump feedback. Dip switch system makes it very easy for users on different systems and with different keyboard layout needs to switch between operating system and keyboard layouts. If you’re investing a chunk of change in a keyboard it’s nice to know you can take it with you to a different operating system or “upgrade” it to a new layout if you decide to take up Dvorak-style typing. The backlighting is perfect. You can adjust it from a barely-visible glow to a blazing light-up-the-room brightness. Whatever your intesity preference, the white-coated steel backplate does a great job diffusing the light between the keys. You can easily remove the keys for cleaning (or to rearrange the letters to support a new keyboard layout). The weight of the unit combined with the extra thick rubber feet keep it planted exactly where you place it on the desk. The Bad: While you’re getting your money’s worth, the $150 price tag is a shock when compared to the $20-60 price tags you find on lower-end keyboards. People used to large dedicated media keys independent of the traditional key layout (such as the large buttons and volume controls found on many modern keyboards) might be off put by the Fn-key style media controls on the CODE. The Verdict: The keyboard is clearly and heavily influenced by the needs of serious typists. Whether you’re a programmer, transcriptionist, or just somebody that wants to leave the lengthiest article comments the Internet has ever seen, the CODE keyboard offers a rock solid typing experience. Yes, $150 isn’t pocket change, but the quality of the CODE keyboard is so high and the typing experience is so enjoyable, you’re easily getting ten times the value you’d get out of purchasing a lesser keyboard. Even compared to other mechanical keyboards on the market, like the Das Keyboard, you’re still getting more for your money as other mechanical keyboards don’t come with the lovely-to-type-on Cherry MX Clear switches, back lighting, and hardware-based operating system keyboard layout switching. If it’s in your budget to upgrade your keyboard (especially if you’ve been slogging along with a low-end rubber-dome keyboard) there’s no good reason to not pickup a CODE keyboard. Key animation courtesy of Geekhack.org user Lethal Squirrel.       

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Friday, March 12, 2010

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

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• Quick guide to Oracle IRM 11g: Server configuration

  - by Simon Thorpe

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

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• Use IIS Application Initialization for keeping ASP.NET Apps alive

  - by Rick Strahl

  I've been working quite a bit with Windows Services in the recent months, and well, it turns out that Windows Services are quite a bear to debug, deploy, update and maintain. The process of getting services set up,  debugged and updated is a major chore that has to be extensively documented and or automated specifically. On most projects when a service is built, people end up scrambling for the right 'process' to use for administration. Web app deployment and maintenance on the other hand are common and well understood today, as we are constantly dealing with Web apps. There's plenty of infrastructure and tooling built into Web Tools like Visual Studio to facilitate the process. By comparison Windows Services or anything self-hosted for that matter seems convoluted.In fact, in a recent blog post I mentioned that on a recent project I'd been using self-hosting for SignalR inside of a Windows service, because the application is in fact a 'service' that also needs to send out lots of messages via SignalR. But the reality is that it could just as well be an IIS application with a service component that runs in the background. Either way you look at it, it's either a Windows Service with a built in Web Server, or an IIS application running a Service application, neither of which follows the standard Service or Web App template.Personally I much prefer Web applications. Running inside of IIS I get all the benefits of the IIS platform including service lifetime management (crash and restart), controlled shutdowns, the whole security infrastructure including easy certificate support, hot-swapping of code and the the ability to publish directly to IIS from within Visual Studio with ease.Because of these benefits we set out to move from the self hosted service into an ASP.NET Web app instead.The Missing Link for ASP.NET as a Service: Auto-LoadingI've had moments in the past where I wanted to run a 'service like' application in ASP.NET because when you think about it, it's so much easier to control a Web application remotely. Services are locked into start/stop operations, but if you host inside of a Web app you can write your own ticket and control it from anywhere. In fact nearly 10 years ago I built a background scheduling application that ran inside of ASP.NET and it worked great and it's still running doing its job today.The tricky part for running an app as a service inside of IIS then and now, is how to get IIS and ASP.NET launched so your 'service' stays alive even after an Application Pool reset. 7 years ago I faked it by using a web monitor (my own West Wind Web Monitor app) I was running anyway to monitor my various web sites for uptime, and having the monitor ping my 'service' every 20 seconds to effectively keep ASP.NET alive or fire it back up after a reload. I used a simple scheduler class that also includes some logic for 'self-reloading'. Hacky for sure, but it worked reliably.Luckily today it's much easier and more integrated to get IIS to launch ASP.NET as soon as an Application Pool is started by using the Application Initialization Module. The Application Initialization Module basically allows you to turn on Preloading on the Application Pool and the Site/IIS App, which essentially fires a request through the IIS pipeline as soon as the Application Pool has been launched. This means that effectively your ASP.NET app becomes active immediately, Application_Start is fired making sure your app stays up and running at all times. All the other features like Application Pool recycling and auto-shutdown after idle time still work, but IIS will then always immediately re-launch the application.Getting started with Application InitializationAs of IIS 8 Application Initialization is part of the IIS feature set. For IIS 7 and 7.5 there's a separate download available via Web Platform Installer. Using IIS 8 Application Initialization is an optional install component in Windows or the Windows Server Role Manager: This is an optional component so make sure you explicitly select it.IIS Configuration for Application InitializationInitialization needs to be applied on the Application Pool as well as the IIS Application level. As of IIS 8 these settings can be made through the IIS Administration console.Start with the Application Pool:Here you need to set both the Start Automatically which is always set, and the StartMode which should be set to AlwaysRunning. Both have to be set - the Start Automatically flag is set true by default and controls the starting of the application pool itself while Always Running flag is required in order to launch the application. Without the latter flag set the site settings have no effect.Now on the Site/Application level you can specify whether the site should pre load: Set the Preload Enabled flag to true.At this point ASP.NET apps should auto-load. This is all that's needed to pre-load the site if all you want is to get your site launched automatically.If you want a little more control over the load process you can add a few more settings to your web.config file that allow you to show a static page while the App is starting up. This can be useful if startup is really slow, so rather than displaying blank screen while the user is fiddling their thumbs you can display a static HTML page instead: <system.webServer> <applicationInitialization remapManagedRequestsTo="Startup.htm" skipManagedModules="true"> <add initializationPage="ping.ashx" /> </applicationInitialization> </system.webServer>This allows you to specify a page to execute in a dry run. IIS basically fakes request and pushes it directly into the IIS pipeline without hitting the network. You specify a page and IIS will fake a request to that page in this case ping.ashx which just returns a simple OK string - ie. a fast pipeline request. This request is run immediately after Application Pool restart, and while this request is running and your app is warming up, IIS can display an alternate static page - Startup.htm above. So instead of showing users an empty loading page when clicking a link on your site you can optionally show some sort of static status page that says, "we'll be right back".  I'm not sure if that's such a brilliant idea since this can be pretty disruptive in some cases. Personally I think I prefer letting people wait, but at least get the response they were supposed to get back rather than a random page. But it's there if you need it.Note that the web.config stuff is optional. If you don't provide it IIS hits the default site link (/) and even if there's no matching request at the end of that request it'll still fire the request through the IIS pipeline. Ideally though you want to make sure that an ASP.NET endpoint is hit either with your default page, or by specify the initializationPage to ensure ASP.NET actually gets hit since it's possible for IIS fire unmanaged requests only for static pages (depending how your pipeline is configured).What about AppDomain Restarts?In addition to full Worker Process recycles at the IIS level, ASP.NET also has to deal with AppDomain shutdowns which can occur for a variety of reasons:Files are updated in the BIN folderWeb Deploy to your siteweb.config is changedHard application crashThese operations don't cause the worker process to restart, but they do cause ASP.NET to unload the current AppDomain and start up a new one. Because the features above only apply to Application Pool restarts, AppDomain restarts could also cause your 'ASP.NET service' to stop processing in the background.In order to keep the app running on AppDomain recycles, you can resort to a simple ping in the Application_End event:protected void Application_End() { var client = new WebClient(); var url = App.AdminConfiguration.MonitorHostUrl + "ping.aspx"; client.DownloadString(url); Trace.WriteLine("Application Shut Down Ping: " + url); }which fires any ASP.NET url to the current site at the very end of the pipeline shutdown which in turn ensures that the site immediately starts back up.Manual Configuration in ApplicationHost.configThe above UI corresponds to the following ApplicationHost.config settings. If you're using IIS 7, there's no UI for these flags so you'll have to manually edit them.When you install the Application Initialization component into IIS it should auto-configure the module into ApplicationHost.config. Unfortunately for me, with Mr. Murphy in his best form for me, the module registration did not occur and I had to manually add it.<globalModules> <add name="ApplicationInitializationModule" image="%windir%\System32\inetsrv\warmup.dll" /> </globalModules>Most likely you won't need ever need to add this, but if things are not working it's worth to check if the module is actually registered.Next you need to configure the ApplicationPool and the Web site. The following are the two relevant entries in ApplicationHost.config.<system.applicationHost> <applicationPools> <add name="West Wind West Wind Web Connection" autoStart="true" startMode="AlwaysRunning" managedRuntimeVersion="v4.0" managedPipelineMode="Integrated"> <processModel identityType="LocalSystem" setProfileEnvironment="true" /> </add> </applicationPools> <sites> <site name="Default Web Site" id="1"> <application path="/MPress.Workflow.WebQueueMessageManager" applicationPool="West Wind West Wind Web Connection" preloadEnabled="true"> <virtualDirectory path="/" physicalPath="C:\Clients\…" /> </application> </site> </sites> </system.applicationHost>On the Application Pool make sure to set the autoStart and startMode flags to true and AlwaysRunning respectively. On the site make sure to set the preloadEnabled flag to true.And that's all you should need. You can still set the web.config settings described above as well.ASP.NET as a Service?In the particular application I'm working on currently, we have a queue manager that runs as standalone service that polls a database queue and picks out jobs and processes them on several threads. The service can spin up any number of threads and keep these threads alive in the background while IIS is running doing its own thing. These threads are newly created threads, so they sit completely outside of the IIS thread pool. In order for this service to work all it needs is a long running reference that keeps it alive for the life time of the application.In this particular app there are two components that run in the background on their own threads: A scheduler that runs various scheduled tasks and handles things like picking up emails to send out outside of IIS's scope and the QueueManager. Here's what this looks like in global.asax:public class Global : System.Web.HttpApplication { private static ApplicationScheduler scheduler; private static ServiceLauncher launcher; protected void Application_Start(object sender, EventArgs e) { // Pings the service and ensures it stays alive scheduler = new ApplicationScheduler() { CheckFrequency = 600000 }; scheduler.Start(); launcher = new ServiceLauncher(); launcher.Start(); // register so shutdown is controlled HostingEnvironment.RegisterObject(launcher); }}By keeping these objects around as static instances that are set only once on startup, they survive the lifetime of the application. The code in these classes is essentially unchanged from the Windows Service code except that I could remove the various overrides required for the Windows Service interface (OnStart,OnStop,OnResume etc.). Otherwise the behavior and operation is very similar.In this application ASP.NET serves two purposes: It acts as the host for SignalR and provides the administration interface which allows remote management of the 'service'. I can start and stop the service remotely by shutting down the ApplicationScheduler very easily. I can also very easily feed stats from the queue out directly via a couple of Web requests or (as we do now) through the SignalR service.Registering a Background Object with ASP.NETNotice also the use of the HostingEnvironment.RegisterObject(). This function registers an object with ASP.NET to let it know that it's a background task that should be notified if the AppDomain shuts down. RegisterObject() requires an interface with a Stop() method that's fired and allows your code to respond to a shutdown request. Here's what the IRegisteredObject::Stop() method looks like on the launcher:public void Stop(bool immediate = false) { LogManager.Current.LogInfo("QueueManager Controller Stopped."); Controller.StopProcessing(); Controller.Dispose(); Thread.Sleep(1500); // give background threads some time HostingEnvironment.UnregisterObject(this); }Implementing IRegisterObject should help with reliability on AppDomain shutdowns. Thanks to Justin Van Patten for pointing this out to me on Twitter.RegisterObject() is not required but I would highly recommend implementing it on whatever object controls your background processing to all clean shutdowns when the AppDomain shuts down.Testing it outI'm still in the testing phase with this particular service to see if there are any side effects. But so far it doesn't look like it. With about 50 lines of code I was able to replace the Windows service startup to Web start up - everything else just worked as is. An honorable mention goes to SignalR 2.0's oWin hosting, because with the new oWin based hosting no code changes at all were required, merely a couple of configuration file settings and an assembly directive needed, to point at the SignalR startup class. Sweet!It also seems like SignalR is noticeably faster running inside of IIS compared to self-host. Startup feels faster because of the preload.Starting and Stopping the 'Service'Because the application is running as a Web Server, it's easy to have a Web interface for starting and stopping the services running inside of the service. For our queue manager the SignalR service and front monitoring app has a play and stop button for toggling the queue.If you want more administrative control and have it work more like a Windows Service you can also stop the application pool explicitly from the command line which would be equivalent to stopping and restarting a service.To start and stop from the command line you can use the IIS appCmd tool. To stop:> %windir%\system32\inetsrv\appcmd stop apppool /apppool.name:"Weblog"and to start> %windir%\system32\inetsrv\appcmd start apppool /apppool.name:"Weblog"Note that when you explicitly force the AppPool to stop running either in the UI (on the ApplicationPools page use Start/Stop) or via command line tools, the application pool will not auto-restart immediately. You have to manually start it back up.What's not to like?There are certainly a lot of benefits to running a background service in IIS, but… ASP.NET applications do have more overhead in terms of memory footprint and startup time is a little slower, but generally for server applications this is not a big deal. If the application is stable the service should fire up and stay running indefinitely. A lot of times this kind of service interface can simply be attached to an existing Web application, or if scalability requires be offloaded to its own Web server.Easier to work withBut the ultimate benefit here is that it's much easier to work with a Web app as opposed to a service. While developing I can simply turn off the auto-launch features and launch the service on demand through IIS simply by hitting a page on the site. If I want to shut down an IISRESET -stop will shut down the service easily enough. I can then attach a debugger anywhere I want and this works like any other ASP.NET application. Yes you end up on a background thread for debugging but Visual Studio handles that just fine and if you stay on a single thread this is no different than debugging any other code.SummaryUsing ASP.NET to run background service operations is probably not a super common scenario, but it probably should be something that is considered carefully when building services. Many applications have service like features and with the auto-start functionality of the Application Initialization module, it's easy to build this functionality into ASP.NET. Especially when combined with the notification features of SignalR it becomes very, very easy to create rich services that can also communicate their status easily to the outside world.Whether it's existing applications that need some background processing for scheduling related tasks, or whether you just create a separate site altogether just to host your service it's easy to do and you can leverage the same tool chain you're already using for other Web projects. If you have lots of service projects it's worth considering… give it some thought…© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2013Posted in ASP.NET  SignalR  IIS   Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

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