press release - Page 272

ATI Graphics Card driver creates crashlog -- where to submit?

- by gchernis

There's now an ACEEventLog entry in windows event logger. I was wondering where I should send these so they get fixed in the next release...

Why is ksoftirqd using 100% of the CPU?

Running FC release 12. Im alaways seeing ksoftirqd/x (x being 0-9) at the top of the processlist, with 100% cpu. The server has a bonded 2gbit connection, serving files from an SSD array. Currently its using 1.6gbit. Server load is ~ 1.5 (dual quad core). iowait is non-existent.

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Draw a Custom cell for tableview ( uitableview ) , with changed colors and separator color and width

- by Madhup

Hi, I want to draw the background of a UITableViewCell which has a grouped style. The problem with me is I am not able to call the -(void)drawRect:(CGRect)rect or I think it should be called programmatically... I have taken code from following link . http://stackoverflow.com/questions/400965/how-to-customize-the-background-border-colors-of-a-grouped-table-view/1031593#1031593 // // CustomCellBackgroundView.h // // Created by Mike Akers on 11/21/08. // Copyright 2008 __MyCompanyName__. All rights reserved. // #import <UIKit/UIKit.h> typedef enum { CustomCellBackgroundViewPositionTop, CustomCellBackgroundViewPositionMiddle, CustomCellBackgroundViewPositionBottom, CustomCellBackgroundViewPositionSingle } CustomCellBackgroundViewPosition; @interface CustomCellBackgroundView : UIView { UIColor *borderColor; UIColor *fillColor; CustomCellBackgroundViewPosition position; } @property(nonatomic, retain) UIColor *borderColor, *fillColor; @property(nonatomic) CustomCellBackgroundViewPosition position; @end // // CustomCellBackgroundView.m // // Created by Mike Akers on 11/21/08. // Copyright 2008 __MyCompanyName__. All rights reserved. // #import "CustomCellBackgroundView.h" static void addRoundedRectToPath(CGContextRef context, CGRect rect, float ovalWidth,float ovalHeight); @implementation CustomCellBackgroundView @synthesize borderColor, fillColor, position; - (BOOL) isOpaque { return NO; } - (id)initWithFrame:(CGRect)frame { if (self = [super initWithFrame:frame]) { // Initialization code } return self; } - (void)drawRect:(CGRect)rect { // Drawing code CGContextRef c = UIGraphicsGetCurrentContext(); CGContextSetFillColorWithColor(c, [fillColor CGColor]); CGContextSetStrokeColorWithColor(c, [borderColor CGColor]); CGContextSetLineWidth(c, 2.0); if (position == CustomCellBackgroundViewPositionTop) { CGFloat minx = CGRectGetMinX(rect) , midx = CGRectGetMidX(rect), maxx = CGRectGetMaxX(rect) ; CGFloat miny = CGRectGetMinY(rect) , maxy = CGRectGetMaxY(rect) ; minx = minx + 1; miny = miny + 1; maxx = maxx - 1; maxy = maxy ; CGContextMoveToPoint(c, minx, maxy); CGContextAddArcToPoint(c, minx, miny, midx, miny, ROUND_SIZE); CGContextAddArcToPoint(c, maxx, miny, maxx, maxy, ROUND_SIZE); CGContextAddLineToPoint(c, maxx, maxy); // Close the path CGContextClosePath(c); // Fill & stroke the path CGContextDrawPath(c, kCGPathFillStroke); return; } else if (position == CustomCellBackgroundViewPositionBottom) { CGFloat minx = CGRectGetMinX(rect) , midx = CGRectGetMidX(rect), maxx = CGRectGetMaxX(rect) ; CGFloat miny = CGRectGetMinY(rect) , maxy = CGRectGetMaxY(rect) ; minx = minx + 1; miny = miny ; maxx = maxx - 1; maxy = maxy - 1; CGContextMoveToPoint(c, minx, miny); CGContextAddArcToPoint(c, minx, maxy, midx, maxy, ROUND_SIZE); CGContextAddArcToPoint(c, maxx, maxy, maxx, miny, ROUND_SIZE); CGContextAddLineToPoint(c, maxx, miny); // Close the path CGContextClosePath(c); // Fill & stroke the path CGContextDrawPath(c, kCGPathFillStroke); return; } else if (position == CustomCellBackgroundViewPositionMiddle) { CGFloat minx = CGRectGetMinX(rect) , maxx = CGRectGetMaxX(rect) ; CGFloat miny = CGRectGetMinY(rect) , maxy = CGRectGetMaxY(rect) ; minx = minx + 1; miny = miny ; maxx = maxx - 1; maxy = maxy ; CGContextMoveToPoint(c, minx, miny); CGContextAddLineToPoint(c, maxx, miny); CGContextAddLineToPoint(c, maxx, maxy); CGContextAddLineToPoint(c, minx, maxy); CGContextClosePath(c); // Fill & stroke the path CGContextDrawPath(c, kCGPathFillStroke); return; } else if (position == CustomCellBackgroundViewPositionSingle) { CGFloat minx = CGRectGetMinX(rect) , midx = CGRectGetMidX(rect), maxx = CGRectGetMaxX(rect) ; CGFloat miny = CGRectGetMinY(rect) , midy = CGRectGetMidY(rect) , maxy = CGRectGetMaxY(rect) ; minx = minx + 1; miny = miny + 1; maxx = maxx - 1; maxy = maxy - 1; CGContextMoveToPoint(c, minx, midy); CGContextAddArcToPoint(c, minx, miny, midx, miny, ROUND_SIZE); CGContextAddArcToPoint(c, maxx, miny, maxx, midy, ROUND_SIZE); CGContextAddArcToPoint(c, maxx, maxy, midx, maxy, ROUND_SIZE); CGContextAddArcToPoint(c, minx, maxy, minx, midy, ROUND_SIZE); // Close the path CGContextClosePath(c); // Fill & stroke the path CGContextDrawPath(c, kCGPathFillStroke); return; } } - (void)dealloc { [borderColor release]; [fillColor release]; [super dealloc]; } @end static void addRoundedRectToPath(CGContextRef context, CGRect rect, float ovalWidth,float ovalHeight) { float fw, fh; if (ovalWidth == 0 || ovalHeight == 0) {// 1 CGContextAddRect(context, rect); return; } CGContextSaveGState(context);// 2 CGContextTranslateCTM (context, CGRectGetMinX(rect),// 3 CGRectGetMinY(rect)); CGContextScaleCTM (context, ovalWidth, ovalHeight);// 4 fw = CGRectGetWidth (rect) / ovalWidth;// 5 fh = CGRectGetHeight (rect) / ovalHeight;// 6 CGContextMoveToPoint(context, fw, fh/2); // 7 CGContextAddArcToPoint(context, fw, fh, fw/2, fh, 1);// 8 CGContextAddArcToPoint(context, 0, fh, 0, fh/2, 1);// 9 CGContextAddArcToPoint(context, 0, 0, fw/2, 0, 1);// 10 CGContextAddArcToPoint(context, fw, 0, fw, fh/2, 1); // 11 CGContextClosePath(context);// 12 CGContextRestoreGState(context);// 13 } but the problem is my drawRect is not getting called automatically......... I am doing it like this. CustomCellBackgroundView *custView = [[CustomCellBackgroundView alloc] initWithFrame:CGRectMake(0,0,320,44)]; [cell setBackgroundView:custView]; [custView release]; and doing this gives me transparent cell. I tried and fought with code but could get any results. Please help me out. I am really having no idea how this code will run.

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iPhone - UIImage Leak, CGBitmapContextCreateImage Leak

- by bbullis21

Alright I am having a world of difficulty tracking down this memory leak. When running this script I do not see any memory leaking, but my objectalloc is climbing. Instruments points to CGBitmapContextCreateImage create_bitmap_data_provider malloc, this takes up 60% of my objectalloc. This code is called several times with a NSTimer. //GET IMAGE FROM RESOURCE DIR NSString * fileLocation = [[NSBundle mainBundle] pathForResource:imgMain ofType:@"jpg"]; NSData * imageData = [NSData dataWithContentsOfFile:fileLocation]; UIImage * blurMe = [UIImage imageWithData:imageData]; NSAutoreleasePool * pool = [[NSAutoreleasePool alloc] init]; UIImage * scaledImage = [blurMe _imageScaledToSize:CGSizeMake(blurMe.size.width / dblBlurLevel, blurMe.size.width / dblBlurLevel) interpolationQuality:3.0]; UIImage * labelImage = [scaledImage _imageScaledToSize:blurMe.size interpolationQuality:3.0]; UIImage * imageCopy = [[UIImage alloc] initWithCGImage:labelImage.CGImage]; [pool drain]; // deallocates scaledImage and labelImage imgView.image = imageCopy; [imageCopy release]; Below is the blur function. I believe the objectalloc issue is located in here. Maybe I just need a pair of fresh eyes. Would be great if someone could figure this out. Sorry it is kind of long... I'll try and shorten it. @implementation UIImage(Blur) - (UIImage *)blurredCopy:(int)pixelRadius { //VARS unsigned char *srcData, *destData, *finalData; CGContextRef context = NULL; CGColorSpaceRef colorSpace; void * bitmapData; int bitmapByteCount; int bitmapBytesPerRow; //IMAGE SIZE size_t pixelsWide = CGImageGetWidth(self.CGImage); size_t pixelsHigh = CGImageGetHeight(self.CGImage); bitmapBytesPerRow = (pixelsWide * 4); bitmapByteCount = (bitmapBytesPerRow * pixelsHigh); colorSpace = CGColorSpaceCreateDeviceRGB(); if (colorSpace == NULL) { return NULL; } bitmapData = malloc( bitmapByteCount ); if (bitmapData == NULL) { CGColorSpaceRelease( colorSpace ); } context = CGBitmapContextCreate (bitmapData, pixelsWide, pixelsHigh, 8, bitmapBytesPerRow, colorSpace, kCGImageAlphaPremultipliedFirst ); if (context == NULL) { free (bitmapData); } CGColorSpaceRelease( colorSpace ); free (bitmapData); if (context == NULL) { return NULL; } //PREPARE BLUR size_t width = CGBitmapContextGetWidth(context); size_t height = CGBitmapContextGetHeight(context); size_t bpr = CGBitmapContextGetBytesPerRow(context); size_t bpp = (CGBitmapContextGetBitsPerPixel(context) / 8); CGRect rect = {{0,0},{width,height}}; CGContextDrawImage(context, rect, self.CGImage); // Now we can get a pointer to the image data associated with the bitmap // context. srcData = (unsigned char *)CGBitmapContextGetData (context); if (srcData != NULL) { size_t dataSize = bpr * height; finalData = malloc(dataSize); destData = malloc(dataSize); memcpy(finalData, srcData, dataSize); memcpy(destData, srcData, dataSize); int sums[5]; int i, x, y, k; int gauss_sum=0; int radius = pixelRadius * 2 + 1; int *gauss_fact = malloc(radius * sizeof(int)); for (i = 0; i < pixelRadius; i++) { .....blah blah blah... THIS IS JUST LONG CODE THE CREATES INT FIGURES ........blah blah blah...... } if (gauss_fact) { free(gauss_fact); } } size_t bitmapByteCount2 = bpr * height; //CREATE DATA PROVIDER CGDataProviderRef dataProvider = CGDataProviderCreateWithData(NULL, srcData, bitmapByteCount2, NULL); //CREATE IMAGE CGImageRef cgImage = CGImageCreate( width, height, CGBitmapContextGetBitsPerComponent(context), CGBitmapContextGetBitsPerPixel(context), CGBitmapContextGetBytesPerRow(context), CGBitmapContextGetColorSpace(context), CGBitmapContextGetBitmapInfo(context), dataProvider, NULL, true, kCGRenderingIntentDefault ); //RELEASE INFORMATION CGDataProviderRelease(dataProvider); CGContextRelease(context); if (destData) { free(destData); } if (finalData) { free(finalData); } if (srcData) { free(srcData); } UIImage *retUIImage = [UIImage imageWithCGImage:cgImage]; CGImageRelease(cgImage); return retUIImage; } The only thing I can think of that is holding up the objectalloc is this UIImage *retUIImage = [UIImage imageWithCGImage:cgImage];...but how to do I release that after it has been returned? Hopefully someone can help please.

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Optimized Image Loading in a UIScrollView

- by Michael Gaylord

I have a UIScrollView that has a set of images loaded side-by-side inside it. You can see an example of my app here: http://www.42restaurants.com. My problem comes in with memory usage. I want to lazy load the images as they are about to appear on the screen and unload images that aren't on screen. As you can see in the code I work out at a minimum which image I need to load and then assign the loading portion to an NSOperation and place it on an NSOperationQueue. Everything works great apart from a jerky scrolling experience. I don't know if anyone has any ideas as to how I can make this even more optimized, so that the loading time of each image is minimized or so that the scrolling is less jerky. - (void)scrollViewDidScroll:(UIScrollView *)scrollView{ [self manageThumbs]; } - (void) manageThumbs{ int centerIndex = [self centerThumbIndex]; if(lastCenterIndex == centerIndex){ return; } if(centerIndex >= totalThumbs){ return; } NSRange unloadRange; NSRange loadRange; int totalChange = lastCenterIndex - centerIndex; if(totalChange > 0){ //scrolling backwards loadRange.length = fabsf(totalChange); loadRange.location = centerIndex - 5; unloadRange.length = fabsf(totalChange); unloadRange.location = centerIndex + 6; }else if(totalChange < 0){ //scrolling forwards unloadRange.length = fabsf(totalChange); unloadRange.location = centerIndex - 6; loadRange.length = fabsf(totalChange); loadRange.location = centerIndex + 5; } [self unloadImages:unloadRange]; [self loadImages:loadRange]; lastCenterIndex = centerIndex; return; } - (void) unloadImages:(NSRange)range{ UIScrollView *scrollView = (UIScrollView *)[[self.view subviews] objectAtIndex:0]; for(int i = 0; i < range.length && range.location + i < [scrollView.subviews count]; i++){ UIView *subview = [scrollView.subviews objectAtIndex:(range.location + i)]; if(subview != nil && [subview isKindOfClass:[ThumbnailView class]]){ ThumbnailView *thumbView = (ThumbnailView *)subview; if(thumbView.loaded){ UnloadImageOperation *unloadOperation = [[UnloadImageOperation alloc] initWithOperableImage:thumbView]; [queue addOperation:unloadOperation]; [unloadOperation release]; } } } } - (void) loadImages:(NSRange)range{ UIScrollView *scrollView = (UIScrollView *)[[self.view subviews] objectAtIndex:0]; for(int i = 0; i < range.length && range.location + i < [scrollView.subviews count]; i++){ UIView *subview = [scrollView.subviews objectAtIndex:(range.location + i)]; if(subview != nil && [subview isKindOfClass:[ThumbnailView class]]){ ThumbnailView *thumbView = (ThumbnailView *)subview; if(!thumbView.loaded){ LoadImageOperation *loadOperation = [[LoadImageOperation alloc] initWithOperableImage:thumbView]; [queue addOperation:loadOperation]; [loadOperation release]; } } } } EDIT: Thanks for the really great responses. Here is my NSOperation code and ThumbnailView code. I tried a couple of things over the weekend but I only managed to improve performance by suspending the operation queue during scrolling and resuming it when scrolling is finished. Here are my code snippets: //In the init method queue = [[NSOperationQueue alloc] init]; [queue setMaxConcurrentOperationCount:4]; //In the thumbnail view the loadImage and unloadImage methods - (void) loadImage{ if(!loaded){ NSString *filename = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"%03d-cover-front", recipe.identifier, recipe.identifier]; NSString *directory = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"RestaurantContent/%03d", recipe.identifier]; NSString *path = [[NSBundle mainBundle] pathForResource:filename ofType:@"png" inDirectory:directory]; UIImage *image = [UIImage imageWithContentsOfFile:path]; imageView = [[ImageView alloc] initWithImage:image andFrame:CGRectMake(0.0f, 0.0f, 176.0f, 262.0f)]; [self addSubview:imageView]; [self sendSubviewToBack:imageView]; [imageView release]; loaded = YES; } } - (void) unloadImage{ if(loaded){ [imageView removeFromSuperview]; imageView = nil; loaded = NO; } } Then my load and unload operations: - (id) initWithOperableImage:(id<OperableImage>) anOperableImage{ self = [super init]; if (self != nil) { self.image = anOperableImage; } return self; } //This is the main method in the load image operation - (void)main { [image loadImage]; } //This is the main method in the unload image operation - (void)main { [image unloadImage]; }

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Changing CSS on the fly in a UIWebView on iPhone

- by Shaggy Frog

Let's say I'm developing an iPhone app that is a catalogue of cars. The user will choose a car from a list, and I will present a detail view for the car, which will describe things like top speed. The detail view will essentially be a UIWebView that is loading an existing HTML file. Different users will live in different parts of the world, so they will like to see the top speed for the car in whatever units are appropriate for their locale. Let's say there are two such units: SI (km/h) and conventional (mph). Let's also say the user will be able to change the display units by hitting a button on the screen; when that happens, the detail screen should switch to show the relevant units. So far, here's what I've done to try and solve this. The HTML might look something like this: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en-US" lang="en-US"> <head> <title>Some Car</title> <link rel="stylesheet" media="screen" type="text/css" href="persistent.css" /> <link rel="alternate stylesheet" media="screen" type="text/css" href="si.css" title="si" /> <link rel="alternate stylesheet" media="screen" type="text/css" href="conventional.css" title="conventional" /> <script type="text/javascript" src="switch.js"></script> </head> <body> <h1>Some Car</h1> <div id="si"> <h2>Top Speed: 160 km/h</h2> </div> <div id="conventional"> <h2>Top Speed: 100 mph</h2> </div> </body> The peristent stylesheet, persistent.css: #si { display:none; } #conventional { display:none; } The first alternate stylesheet, si.css: #si { display:inline; } #conventional { display:none; } And the second alternate stylesheet, conventional.css: #si { display:none; } #conventional { display:inline; } Based on a tutorial at A List Apart, my switch.js looks something like this: function disableStyleSheet(title) { var i, a; for (i = 0; (a = document.getElementsByTagName("link")[i]); i++) { if ((a.getAttribute("rel").indexOf("alt") != -1) && (a.getAttribute("title") == title)) { a.disabled = true; } } } function enableStyleSheet(title) { var i, a; for (i = 0; (a = document.getElementsByTagName("link")[i]); i++) { if ((a.getAttribute("rel").indexOf("alt") != -1) && (a.getAttribute("title") == title)) { a.disabled = false; } } } function switchToSiStyleSheet() { disableStyleSheet("conventional"); enableStyleSheet("si"); } function switchToConventionalStyleSheet() { disableStyleSheet("si"); enableStyleSheet("conventional"); } My button action handler looks something like this: - (void)notesButtonAction:(id)sender { static BOOL isUsingSi = YES; if (isUsingSi) { NSString* command = [[NSString alloc] initWithString:@"switchToSiStyleSheet();"]; [self.webView stringByEvaluatingJavaScriptFromString:command]; [command release]; } else { NSString* command = [[NSString alloc] initWithFormat:@"switchToConventionalStyleSheet();"]; [self.webView stringByEvaluatingJavaScriptFromString:command]; [command release]; } isUsingSi = !isUsingSi; } Here's the first problem. The first time the button is hit, the UIWebView doesn't change. The second time it's hit, it looks like the conventional style sheet is loaded. The third time, it switches to the SI style sheet; the fourth time, back to the conventional, and so on. So, basically, only that first button press doesn't seem to do anything. Here's the second problem. I'm not sure how to switch to the correct style sheet upon initial load of the UIWebView. I tried this: - (void)webViewDidFinishLoad:(UIWebView *)webView { NSString* command = [[NSString alloc] initWithString:@"switchToSiStyleSheet();"]; [self.webView stringByEvaluatingJavaScriptFromString:command]; [command release]; } But, like the first button hit, it doesn't seem to do anything. Can anyone help me with these two problems?

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Jquery qtip ajax issue

- by user272899

Hi All, I am trying to post the value of an input box (In this case a imdb link) to my imdbgrabber.php page and have it return the info of that movie into a qtip box. Everything works fine until i try and post the variable to the imdbgrabber page. This is the code. Javascript: var link = $("#link").val(); var imdbLink = 'link='+ link; $(".moviebox").qtip({ style: { name: 'cream' }, content: { method: 'GET', data: imdbLink, url: '/includes/imdbgrabber.php', text: '<img class="throbber" src="/images/loading.gif" alt="Loading..." />' }, position: { corner: { target: 'bottomright', tooltip: 'bottomleft' } } }); HTML:  <div class="moviebox"> <a href="#"> <img src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_mySxtRcQIag/S6deHcoChaI/AAAAAAAAObc/Z1Xg3aB_wkU/s200/rising_sun.jpg" /> <form method="get" action=""> <input type="text" name="link" id="link" style="display:none" value="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0367882"/> </form> </a> </div>  and finally the php: <?php $url=$_GET['link']; //$url = 'http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0367882/'; //get the page content $imdb_content = get_data($url); //parse for product name $name = get_match('/<title>(.*)<\/title>/isU',$imdb_content); $director = strip_tags(get_match('/<h5[^>]*>Director:<\/h5>(.*)<\/div>/isU',$imdb_content)); $plot = get_match('/<h5[^>]*>Plot:<\/h5>(.*)<\/div>/isU',$imdb_content); $release_date = get_match('/<h5[^>]*>Release Date:<\/h5>(.*)<\/div>/isU',$imdb_content); $mpaa = get_match('/<a href="\/mpaa">MPAA<\/a>:<\/h5>(.*)<\/div>/isU',$imdb_content); $run_time = get_match('/Runtime:<\/h5>(.*)<\/div>/isU',$imdb_content); $rating = get_match('/<div class="starbar-meta">(.*)<\/div>/isU',$imdb_content); ////build content //$content = '<h2>Film</h2><p>'.$name.'</p>' // . '<h2>Director</h2><p>'.$director.'</p>' // . '<h2>Plot</h2><p>'.substr($plot,0,strpos($plot,'<a')).'</p>' // . '<h2>Release Date</h2><p>'.substr($release_date,0,strpos($release_date,'<a')).'</p>' // . '<h2>MPAA</h2><p>'.$mpaa.'</p>' // . '<h2>Run Time</h2><p>'.$run_time.'</p>' // . '<h2>Full Details</h2><p><a href="'.$url.'" rel="nofollow">'.$url.'</a></p>'; //gets the match content function get_match($regex,$content) { preg_match($regex,$content,$matches); return $matches[1]; } //gets the data from a URL function get_data($url) { $ch = curl_init(); $timeout = 5; curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_URL,$url); curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER,1); curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_CONNECTTIMEOUT,$timeout); $data = curl_exec($ch); curl_close($ch); return $data; } ?>  <div class="info"> <span> <?php echo '<strong>'.$name.'</strong>' ?> </span> <img src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_mySxtRcQIag/S6deHcoChaI/AAAAAAAAObc/Z1Xg3aB_wkU/s200/rising_sun.jpg" /> <div class="plot"> <?php echo ''.substr($plot,0,strpos($plot,'<a')).'</div>' ?> </div> <div class="runtime"> <?php echo'<strong>Run Time</strong><br />'.$run_time.'</div>' ?> </div> <div class="releasedate"> <?php echo '<strong>Release Date</strong><br />'.substr($release_date,0,strpos($release_date,'<a')).'</div>' ?> </div> <div class="director"> <?php echo '<strong>Director</strong><br />'.$director.'' ?> </div> <div class="rating"> <?php echo '<strong>Rating</strong><br />'.$rating.'' ?> </div> </div>  I am sure it is a simple mistake somewhere but after hours of looking i thought i would ask the experts.

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Fragment shaders on a texture

- by Snowangelic

Hello stack overflow. I am trying to add some post-processing capabilities to a program. The rendering is done using openGL. I just want to allow the program to load some home made fragment shader and use them on the video stream. I wrote a little piece of shader using "OpenGL Shader Builder" that just turns a texture in grayscale. The shaders works well in the shader builder but I can't make it work in the main program. The screens stays all black. Here is the setup : @implementation PluginGLView - (id) initWithCoder: (NSCoder *) coder { const GLubyte * strExt; if ((self = [super initWithCoder:coder]) == nil) return nil; glLock = [[NSLock alloc] init]; if (nil == glLock) { [self release]; return nil; } // Init pixel format attribs NSOpenGLPixelFormatAttribute attrs[] = { NSOpenGLPFAAccelerated, NSOpenGLPFANoRecovery, NSOpenGLPFADoubleBuffer, 0 }; // Get pixel format from OpenGL NSOpenGLPixelFormat* pixFmt = [[NSOpenGLPixelFormat alloc] initWithAttributes:attrs]; if (!pixFmt) { NSLog(@"No Accelerated OpenGL pixel format found\n"); NSOpenGLPixelFormatAttribute attrs2[] = { NSOpenGLPFANoRecovery, 0 }; // Get pixel format from OpenGL pixFmt = [[NSOpenGLPixelFormat alloc] initWithAttributes:attrs2]; if (!pixFmt) { NSLog(@"No OpenGL pixel format found!\n"); [self release]; return nil; } } [self setPixelFormat:[pixFmt autorelease]]; /* long swapInterval = 1 ; [[self openGLContext] setValues:&swapInterval forParameter:NSOpenGLCPSwapInterval]; */ [glLock lock]; [[self openGLContext] makeCurrentContext]; // Init object members strExt = glGetString (GL_EXTENSIONS); texture_range = gluCheckExtension ((const unsigned char *)"GL_APPLE_texture_range", strExt) ? GL_TRUE : GL_FALSE; texture_hint = GL_STORAGE_SHARED_APPLE ; client_storage = gluCheckExtension ((const unsigned char *)"GL_APPLE_client_storage", strExt) ? GL_TRUE : GL_FALSE; rect_texture = gluCheckExtension((const unsigned char *)"GL_EXT_texture_rectangle", strExt) ? GL_TRUE : GL_FALSE; // Setup some basic OpenGL stuff glPixelStorei(GL_UNPACK_ALIGNMENT, 1); glTexEnvi(GL_TEXTURE_ENV, GL_TEXTURE_ENV_MODE, GL_REPLACE); glColor4f(1.0f, 1.0f, 1.0f, 1.0f); glClearColor(0.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f, 1.0f); glClear(GL_COLOR_BUFFER_BIT); // Loads the shaders shader=LoadShader(GL_FRAGMENT_SHADER,"/Users/alexandremathieu/fragment.fs"); program=glCreateProgram(); glAttachShader(program, shader); glLinkProgram(program); glUseProgram(program); [NSOpenGLContext clearCurrentContext]; [glLock unlock]; image_width = 1024; image_height = 512; image_depth = 16; image_type = GL_UNSIGNED_SHORT_1_5_5_5_REV; image_base = (GLubyte *) calloc(((IMAGE_COUNT * image_width * image_height) / 3) * 4, image_depth >> 3); if (image_base == nil) { [self release]; return nil; } // Create and load textures for the first time [self loadTextures:GL_TRUE]; // Init fps timer //gettimeofday(&cycle_time, NULL); drawBG = YES; // Call for a redisplay noDisplay = YES; PSXDisplay.Disabled = 1; [self setNeedsDisplay:true]; return self; } And here is the "render screen" function wich basically...renders the screen. - (void)renderScreen { int bufferIndex = whichImage; glBindTexture(GL_TEXTURE_RECTANGLE_EXT, bufferIndex+1); glUseProgram(program); int loc=glGetUniformLocation(program, "texture"); glUniform1i(loc,bufferIndex+1); glTexSubImage2D(GL_TEXTURE_RECTANGLE_EXT, 0, 0, 0, image_width, image_height, GL_BGRA, image_type, image[bufferIndex]); glBegin(GL_QUADS); glTexCoord2f(0.0f, 0.0f); glVertex2f(-1.0f, 1.0f); glTexCoord2f(0.0f, image_height); glVertex2f(-1.0f, -1.0f); glTexCoord2f(image_width, image_height); glVertex2f(1.0f, -1.0f); glTexCoord2f(image_width, 0.0f); glVertex2f(1.0f, 1.0f); glEnd(); [[self openGLContext] flushBuffer]; [NSOpenGLContext clearCurrentContext]; //[glLock unlock]; } and finally here's the shader. uniform sampler2DRect texture; void main() { vec4 color, texel; color = gl_Color; texel = texture2DRect(texture, gl_TexCoord[0].xy); color *= texel; // Begin Shader float gray=0.0; gray+=(color.r + color.g + color.b)/3.0; color=vec4(gray,gray,gray,color.a); // End Shader gl_FragColor = color; } The loading and using of shaders works since I am able to turn the screen all red with this shader void main(){ gl_FragColor=vec4(1.0,0.0,0.0,1.0); } If the shader contains a syntax error I get an error message from the LoadShader function etc. If I remove the use of the shader, everything works normally. I think the problem comes from the "passing the texture as a uniform parameter" thing. But these are my very firsts step with openGL and I cant be sure of anything. Don't hesitate to ask for more info. Thank you Stack O.

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Wisdom of merging 100s of Oracle instances into one instance

- by hoytster

Our application runs on the web, is mostly an inquiry tool, does some transactions. We host the Oracle database. The app has always had a different instance of Oracle for each customer. A customer is a company which pays us to provide our service to the company's employees, typically 10,000-25,000 employees per customer. We do a major release every few years, and migrating to that new release is challenging: we might have a team at the customer site for a couple weeks, explaining new functionality and setting up the driving data to suit that customer. We're considering going multi-client, putting all our customers into a single shared Oracle 11g instance on a big honkin' Windows Server 2008 server -- in order to reduce costs. I'm wondering if that's advisable. There are some advantages to having separate instances for each customer. Tell me if these are bogus, please. In my rough guess about decreasing importance: Our customers MyCorp and YourCo can be migrated separately when breaking changes are made to the schema. (With multi-client, we'd be migrating 300+ customers overnight!?!) MyCorp's data can be easily backed up and (!!!) restored, without affecting other customers. MyCorp's data is securely separated from their competitor YourCo's data, without depending on developers to get the code right and/or DBAs getting the configuration right. Performance is better because the database is smaller (5,000 vs 2,000,000 rows in ~50 tables). If MyCorp's offices are (mostly) in just one region, then the MyCorp's instance can be geographically co-located there, so network lag doesn't hurt performance. We can provide better service to global clients, for the same reason. In MyCorp wants to take their database in-house, then we can easily export their instance, to get MyCorp their data. Load-balancing is easier because instances can be placed on different servers (this is with a web farm). When a DEV or QA instance is needed, it's easier to clone the real instance and anonymize the data, because there's much less data. Because they're small enough, developers can have their own instance running locally, so they can work on code while waiting at the airport and while in-flight, without fighting VPN hassles. Q1: What are other advantages of separate instances? We are contemplating changing the database schema and merging all of our customers into one Oracle instance, running on one hefty server. Here are advantages of the multi-client instance approach, most important first (my WAG). Please snipe if these are bogus: Less work for the DBAs, since they only need to maintain one instance instead of hundreds. Less DBA work translates to cheaper, our main motive for this change. With just one instance, the DBAs can do a better job of optimizing performance. They'll have time to add appropriate indexes and review our SQL. It will be easier for developers to debug & enhance the application, because there is only one schema and one app (there might be dozens of schema versions if there are hundreds of instances, with a different version of the app for each version of the schema). This reduces costs too. The alternative is having to start every debug session with (1) What version is this customer running and (2) Let's struggle to recreate the corresponding development environment, code and database. (We need a Virtual Machine that includes the code AND database instance for each patch and release!) Licensing Oracle is cheaper because it's priced per server irrespective of heft (or something -- I don't know anything about the subject). The database becomes a viable persistent store for web session data, because there is just one instance. Some database operations are easier with one multi-client instance, like finding a participant when they're hazy about which customer they (or their spouse, maybe) works for: all the names are in one table. Reporting across customers is straightforward. Q2: What are other advantages of having multiple clients in one instance? Q3: Which approach do you think is better (why)? Instance per customer, or all customers in one instance? I'm concerned that having one multi-client instance makes migration near-impossible, and that's a deal killer... ... unless there is a compromise solution like having two multi-client instances, the old and the new. In that case case, we would design cross-instance solutions for finding participants, reporting, etc. so customers could go from one multi-client instance to the next without anything breaking. THANKS SO MUCH for your collective advice! This issue is beyond me -- but not beyond the collective you. :) Hoytster

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Undefined offset PHP error

- by user272899

I am recieving the following error: Notice indefined offset 1: in C:\wamp\www\includes\imdbgrabber.php line 36 the code is for getting information from IMDB. The link is posted to the page using ajax on another page, I have tested that i am getting the correct response using echo $url <?php $url = $_GET['link']; echo $url; //$url = 'http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0367882/'; //get the page content $imdb_content = get_data($url); //parse for product name $name = get_match('/<title>(.*)<\/title>/isU',$imdb_content); $director = strip_tags(get_match('/<h5[^>]*>Director:<\/h5>(.*)<\/div>/isU',$imdb_content)); $plot = get_match('/<h5[^>]*>Plot:<\/h5>(.*)<\/div>/isU',$imdb_content); $release_date = get_match('/<h5[^>]*>Release Date:<\/h5>(.*)<\/div>/isU',$imdb_content); $mpaa = get_match('/<a href="\/mpaa">MPAA<\/a>:<\/h5>(.*)<\/div>/isU',$imdb_content); $run_time = get_match('/Runtime:<\/h5>(.*)<\/div>/isU',$imdb_content); $rating = get_match('/<div class="starbar-meta">(.*)<\/div>/isU',$imdb_content); ////build content //$content = '<h2>Film</h2><p>'.$name.'</p>' // . '<h2>Director</h2><p>'.$director.'</p>' // . '<h2>Plot</h2><p>'.substr($plot,0,strpos($plot,'<a')).'</p>' // . '<h2>Release Date</h2><p>'.substr($release_date,0,strpos($release_date,'<a')).'</p>' // . '<h2>MPAA</h2><p>'.$mpaa.'</p>' // . '<h2>Run Time</h2><p>'.$run_time.'</p>' // . '<h2>Full Details</h2><p><a href="'.$url.'" rel="nofollow">'.$url.'</a></p>'; //gets the match content function get_match($regex,$content) { preg_match($regex,$content,$matches); return $matches[0]; } //gets the data from a URL function get_data($url) { $ch = curl_init(); $timeout = 5; curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_URL,$url); curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER,1); curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_CONNECTTIMEOUT,$timeout); $data = curl_exec($ch); curl_close($ch); return $data; } ?>  <div class="info"> <span> <?php echo '<strong>'.$name.'</strong>' ?> </span>  <div class="plot"> <?php echo ''.substr($plot,0,strpos($plot,'<a')).'</div>' ?> </div> <div class="runtime"> <?php echo'<strong>Run Time</strong><br />'.$run_time.'</div>' ?> </div> <div class="releasedate"> <?php echo '<strong>Release Date</strong><br />'.substr($release_date,0,strpos($release_date,'<a')).'</div>' ?> </div> <div class="director"> <?php echo '<strong>Director</strong><br />'.$director.'' ?> </div> <div class="rating"> <?php echo '<strong>Rating</strong><br />'.$rating.'' ?> </div> </div>

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Problem with XML parser

- by zp26

Hi, I have a problem with parsing XML. I have created a program which write a file xml in the project directory. The file XML are correct. (i checked). When i try to read this XML the program crash and return 1 status. I have controlled my 2 path and they are equals. Can you help me please? Thanks so much. #import "PositionIdentifierViewController.h" #import "WriterXML.h" @implementation PositionIdentifierViewController - (void)parser:(NSXMLParser *)parser foundCharacters:(NSString *)string { NSString *stringa = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"%@",string]; textArea.text = [textArea.text stringByAppendingString:@"\n"]; textArea.text = [textArea.text stringByAppendingString:stringa]; } -(IBAction)startParsing { NSURL *xmlURL = [NSURL fileURLWithPath:path]; NSXMLParser *parser = [[NSXMLParser alloc] initWithContentsOfURL:xmlURL]; [parser setDelegate:self]; BOOL success = [parser parse]; if(success == YES){ // } [parser release]; } // Implement viewDidLoad to do additional setup after loading the view, typically from a nib. - (void)viewDidLoad { [super viewDidLoad]; NSArray *tempPaths = NSSearchPathForDirectoriesInDomains(NSDocumentDirectory, NSUserDomainMask, YES); NSString *documentsDirectoryPath = [tempPaths objectAtIndex:0]; path = [documentsDirectoryPath stringByAppendingPathComponent:@"filePosizioni.xml"]; WriterXML *newWriter; newWriter = [[WriterXML alloc]init]; [newWriter saveXML:(NSString*)@"ciao":(float)10:(float)40:(float)70]; [newWriter saveXML:(NSString*)@"pippo":(float)20:(float)50:(float)80]; [newWriter saveXML:(NSString*)@"pluto":(float)30:(float)60:(float)90]; NSLog(path); } - (void)didReceiveMemoryWarning { // Releases the view if it doesn't have a superview. [super didReceiveMemoryWarning]; // Release any cached data, images, etc that aren't in use. } - (void)viewDidUnload { // Release any retained subviews of the main view. // e.g. self.myOutlet = nil; } - (void)dealloc { [super dealloc]; } @end #import "WriterXML.h" @implementation WriterXML -(void)saveXML:(NSString*)name:(float)x:(float)y:(float)z{ NSArray *paths = NSSearchPathForDirectoriesInDomains(NSDocumentDirectory, NSUserDomainMask, YES); NSString *documentsDirectoryPath = [paths objectAtIndex:0]; NSString *filePath = [documentsDirectoryPath stringByAppendingPathComponent:@"filePosizioni.xml"]; NSFileHandle *myHandle; NSFileManager *fileManager = [NSFileManager defaultManager]; NSString *titoloXML = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"<?xml version=1.0 encoding=UTF-8 ?>"]; NSString *inizioTag = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"\n\n\n<position>"]; NSString *tagName = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"\n <name>%@</name>", name]; NSString *tagX = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"\n <x>%f</x>", x]; NSString *tagY = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"\n <y>%f</y>", y]; NSString *tagZ = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"\n <z>%f</z>", z]; NSString *fineTag= [NSString stringWithFormat:@"\n</position>"]; NSData* dataTitoloXML = [titoloXML dataUsingEncoding: NSASCIIStringEncoding]; NSData* dataInizioTag = [inizioTag dataUsingEncoding: NSASCIIStringEncoding]; NSData* dataName = [tagName dataUsingEncoding: NSASCIIStringEncoding]; NSData* dataX = [tagX dataUsingEncoding: NSASCIIStringEncoding]; NSData* dataY = [tagY dataUsingEncoding: NSASCIIStringEncoding]; NSData* dataZ = [tagZ dataUsingEncoding: NSASCIIStringEncoding]; NSData* dataFineTag = [fineTag dataUsingEncoding: NSASCIIStringEncoding]; if(![fileManager fileExistsAtPath:filePath]) [fileManager createFileAtPath:filePath contents:dataTitoloXML attributes:nil]; myHandle = [NSFileHandle fileHandleForUpdatingAtPath:filePath]; [myHandle seekToEndOfFile]; [myHandle writeData:dataInizioTag]; NSLog(@"writeok"); [myHandle seekToEndOfFile]; [myHandle writeData:dataName]; NSLog(@"writeok"); [myHandle seekToEndOfFile]; [myHandle writeData:dataX]; NSLog(@"writeok"); [myHandle seekToEndOfFile]; [myHandle writeData:dataY]; NSLog(@"writeok"); [myHandle seekToEndOfFile]; [myHandle writeData:dataZ]; NSLog(@"writeok"); [myHandle seekToEndOfFile]; [myHandle writeData:dataFineTag]; NSLog(@"writeok"); [myHandle seekToEndOfFile]; NSLog(@"zp26 %@",filePath); } @end

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keyDown works but i get beeps

- by Oscar

I just got my keydown method to work. But i get system beep everytime i press key. i have no idea whats wrong. Googled for hours and all people say is that if you have your keyDown method you should also implement the acceptsFirstResponder. did that to and it still doesn't work. #import <Cocoa/Cocoa.h> #import "PaddleView.h" #import "BallView.h" @interface GameController : NSView { PaddleView *leftPaddle; PaddleView *rightPaddle; BallView * ball; CGPoint ballVelocity; int gameState; int player1Score; int player2Score; } @property (retain) IBOutlet PaddleView *leftPaddle; @property (retain) IBOutlet PaddleView *rightPaddle; @property (retain) IBOutlet BallView *ball; - (void)reset:(BOOL)newGame; @end #import "GameController.h" #define GameStateRunning 1 #define GameStatePause 2 #define BallSpeedX 0.2 #define BallSpeedY 0.3 #define CompMoveSpeed 15 #define ScoreToWin 5 @implementation GameController @synthesize leftPaddle, rightPaddle, ball; - (id)initWithCoder:(NSCoder *)aDecoder { self = [super initWithCoder:aDecoder]; if(self) { gameState = GameStatePause; ballVelocity = CGPointMake(BallSpeedX, BallSpeedY); [NSTimer scheduledTimerWithTimeInterval:0.001 target:self selector:@selector(gameLoop) userInfo:nil repeats:YES]; } return self; } - (void)gameLoop { if(gameState == GameStateRunning) { [ball setFrameOrigin:CGPointMake(ball.frame.origin.x + ballVelocity.x, ball.frame.origin.y + ballVelocity.y)]; if(ball.frame.origin.x + 15 > self.frame.size.width || ball.frame.origin.x < 0) { ballVelocity.x =- ballVelocity.x; } if(ball.frame.origin.y + 35 > self.frame.size.height || ball.frame.origin.y < 0) { ballVelocity.y =- ballVelocity.y; } } if(CGRectIntersectsRect(ball.frame, leftPaddle.frame)) { if(ball.frame.origin.x > leftPaddle.frame.origin.x) { ballVelocity.x =- ballVelocity.x; } } if(CGRectIntersectsRect(ball.frame, rightPaddle.frame)) { if(ball.frame.origin.x +15 > rightPaddle.frame.origin.x) { ballVelocity.x =- ballVelocity.x; } } if(ball.frame.origin.x <= self.frame.size.width / 2) { if(ball.frame.origin.y < leftPaddle.frame.origin.y + 75 && leftPaddle.frame.origin.y > 0) { [leftPaddle setFrameOrigin:CGPointMake(leftPaddle.frame.origin.x, leftPaddle.frame.origin.y - CompMoveSpeed)]; } if(ball.frame.origin.y > leftPaddle.frame.origin.y +75 && leftPaddle.frame.origin.y < 700 - leftPaddle.frame.size.height ) { [leftPaddle setFrameOrigin:CGPointMake(leftPaddle.frame.origin.x, leftPaddle.frame.origin.y + CompMoveSpeed)]; } } if(ball.frame.origin.x <= 0) { player2Score++; [self reset:(player2Score >= ScoreToWin)]; } if(ball.frame.origin.x + 15 > self.frame.size.width) { player1Score++; [self reset:(player1Score >= ScoreToWin)]; } } - (void)reset:(BOOL)newGame { gameState = GameStatePause; [ball setFrameOrigin:CGPointMake((self.frame.size.width + 7.5) / 2, (self.frame.size.height + 7.5)/2)]; if(newGame) { if(player1Score > player2Score) { NSLog(@"Player 1 Wins!"); } else { NSLog(@"Player 2 Wins!"); } player1Score = 0; player2Score = 0; } else { NSLog(@"Press key to serve"); } NSLog(@"Player 1: %d",player1Score); NSLog(@"Player 2: %d",player2Score); } - (void)moveRightPaddleUp { if(rightPaddle.frame.origin.y < 700 - rightPaddle.frame.size.height) { [rightPaddle setFrameOrigin:CGPointMake(rightPaddle.frame.origin.x, rightPaddle.frame.origin.y + 20)]; } } - (void)moveRightPaddleDown { if(rightPaddle.frame.origin.y > 0) { [rightPaddle setFrameOrigin:CGPointMake(rightPaddle.frame.origin.x, rightPaddle.frame.origin.y - 20)]; } } - (BOOL)acceptsFirstResponder { return YES; } - (void)keyDown:(NSEvent *)theEvent { if ([theEvent modifierFlags] & NSNumericPadKeyMask) { NSString *theArrow = [theEvent charactersIgnoringModifiers]; unichar keyChar = 0; if ( [theArrow length] == 0 ) { return; // reject dead keys } if ( [theArrow length] == 1 ) { keyChar = [theArrow characterAtIndex:0]; if ( keyChar == NSLeftArrowFunctionKey ) { gameState = GameStateRunning; } if ( keyChar == NSRightArrowFunctionKey ) { } if ( keyChar == NSUpArrowFunctionKey ) { [self moveRightPaddleUp]; } if ( keyChar == NSDownArrowFunctionKey ) { [self moveRightPaddleDown]; } [super keyDown:theEvent]; } } else { [super keyDown:theEvent]; } } - (void)drawRect:(NSRect)dirtyRect { } - (void)dealloc { [ball release]; [rightPaddle release]; [leftPaddle release]; [super dealloc]; } @end

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Can anyone tell me why my XML writer is not writing attributes?

- by user1632018

I am writing a parsing tool to help me clean up a large VC++ project before I make .net bindings for it. I am using an XML writer to read an xml file and write out each element to a new file. If an element with a certain name is found, then it executes some code and writes an output value into the elements value. So far it is almost working, except for one thing: It is not copying the attributes. Can anyone tell me why this is happening? Here is a sample of what it is supposed to copy/modify(Includes the attributes): <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <Project DefaultTargets="Build" ToolsVersion="4.0" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/msbuild/2003"> <ItemGroup Label="ProjectConfigurations"> <ProjectConfiguration Include="Debug|Win32"> <Configuration>Debug</Configuration> <Platform>Win32</Platform> </ProjectConfiguration> <ProjectConfiguration Include="Release|Win32"> <Configuration>Release</Configuration> <Platform>Win32</Platform> </ProjectConfiguration> </ItemGroup> <PropertyGroup Label="Globals"> <ProjectGuid>{57900E99-A405-49F4-83B2-0254117D041B}</ProjectGuid> <Keyword>Win32Proj</Keyword> <RootNamespace>libproj</RootNamespace> </PropertyGroup> Here is the output I am getting(No Attributes): <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <Project> <ItemGroup> <ProjectConfiguration> <Configuration>Debug</Configuration> <Platform>Win32</Platform> </ProjectConfiguration> <ProjectConfiguration> <Configuration>Release</Configuration> <Platform>Win32</Platform> </ProjectConfiguration> </ItemGroup> <PropertyGroup> <ProjectGuid>{57900E99-A405-49F4-83B2-0254117D041B}</ProjectGuid> <Keyword>Win32Proj</Keyword> <RootNamespace>libproj</RootNamespace> Here is my code currently. I have tried every way I can come up with to write the attributes. string baseDir = (textBox2.Text + "\\" + safeFileName); string vcName = Path.GetFileName(textBox1.Text); string vcProj = Path.Combine(baseDir, vcName); using (XmlReader reader = XmlReader.Create(textBox1.Text)) { XmlWriterSettings settings = new XmlWriterSettings(); settings.OmitXmlDeclaration = true; settings.ConformanceLevel = ConformanceLevel.Fragment; settings.Indent = true; settings.CloseOutput = false; using (XmlWriter writer = XmlWriter.Create(vcProj, settings)) { while (reader.Read()) { switch (reader.NodeType) { case XmlNodeType.Element: if (reader.Name == "ClInclude") { string include = reader.GetAttribute("Include"); string dirPath = Path.GetDirectoryName(textBox1.Text); Directory.SetCurrentDirectory(dirPath); string fullPath = Path.GetFullPath(include); //string dirPath = Path.GetDirectoryName(fullPath); copyFile(fullPath, 3); string filename = Path.GetFileName(fullPath); writer.WriteStartElement(reader.Name); writer.WriteAttributeString("Include", "include/" + filename); writer.WriteEndElement(); } else if (reader.Name == "ClCompile" && reader.HasAttributes) { string include = reader.GetAttribute("Include"); string dirPath = Path.GetDirectoryName(textBox1.Text); Directory.SetCurrentDirectory(dirPath); string fullPath = Path.GetFullPath(include); copyFile(fullPath, 2); string filename = Path.GetFileName(fullPath); writer.WriteStartElement(reader.Name); writer.WriteAttributeString("Include", "src/" + filename); writer.WriteEndElement(); } else { writer.WriteStartElement(reader.Name); } break; case XmlNodeType.Text: writer.WriteString(reader.Value); break; case XmlNodeType.XmlDeclaration: case XmlNodeType.ProcessingInstruction: writer.WriteProcessingInstruction(reader.Name, reader.Value); break; case XmlNodeType.Comment: writer.WriteComment(reader.Value); break; case XmlNodeType.Attribute: writer.WriteAttributes(reader, true); break; case XmlNodeType.EntityReference: writer.WriteEntityRef(reader.Value); break; case XmlNodeType.EndElement: writer.WriteFullEndElement(); break; } } } }

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Hosting the Razor Engine for Templating in Non-Web Applications

- by Rick Strahl

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

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Service Discovery in WCF 4.0 – Part 1

- by Shaun

When designing a service oriented architecture (SOA) system, there will be a lot of services with many service contracts, endpoints and behaviors. Besides the client calling the service, in a large distributed system a service may invoke other services. In this case, one service might need to know the endpoints it invokes. This might not be a problem in a small system. But when you have more than 10 services this might be a problem. For example in my current product, there are around 10 services, such as the user authentication service, UI integration service, location service, license service, device monitor service, event monitor service, schedule job service, accounting service, player management service, etc.. Benefit of Discovery Service Since almost all my services need to invoke at least one other service. This would be a difficult task to make sure all services endpoints are configured correctly in every service. And furthermore, it would be a nightmare when a service changed its endpoint at runtime. Hence, we need a discovery service to remove the dependency (configuration dependency). A discovery service plays as a service dictionary which stores the relationship between the contracts and the endpoints for every service. By using the discovery service, when service X wants to invoke service Y, it just need to ask the discovery service where is service Y, then the discovery service will return all proper endpoints of service Y, then service X can use the endpoint to send the request to service Y. And when some services changed their endpoint address, all need to do is to update its records in the discovery service then all others will know its new endpoint. In WCF 4.0 Discovery it supports both managed proxy discovery mode and ad-hoc discovery mode. In ad-hoc mode there is no standalone discovery service. When a client wanted to invoke a service, it will broadcast an message (normally in UDP protocol) to the entire network with the service match criteria. All services which enabled the discovery behavior will receive this message and only those matched services will send their endpoint back to the client. The managed proxy discovery service works as I described above. In this post I will only cover the managed proxy mode, where there’s a discovery service. For more information about the ad-hoc mode please refer to the MSDN. Service Announcement and Probe The main functionality of discovery service should be return the proper endpoint addresses back to the service who is looking for. In most cases the consume service (as a client) will send the contract which it wanted to request to the discovery service. And then the discovery service will find the endpoint and respond. Sometimes the contract and endpoint are not enough. It also contains versioning, extensions attributes. This post I will only cover the case includes contract and endpoint. When a client (or sometimes a service who need to invoke another service) need to connect to a target service, it will firstly request the discovery service through the “Probe” method with the criteria. Basically the criteria contains the contract type name of the target service. Then the discovery service will search its endpoint repository by the criteria. The repository might be a database, a distributed cache or a flat XML file. If it matches, the discovery service will grab the endpoint information (it’s called discovery endpoint metadata in WCF) and send back. And this is called “Probe”. Finally the client received the discovery endpoint metadata and will use the endpoint to connect to the target service. Besides the probe, discovery service should take the responsible to know there is a new service available when it goes online, as well as stopped when it goes offline. This feature is named “Announcement”. When a service started and stopped, it will announce to the discovery service. So the basic functionality of a discovery service should includes: 1, An endpoint which receive the service online message, and add the service endpoint information in the discovery repository. 2, An endpoint which receive the service offline message, and remove the service endpoint information from the discovery repository. 3, An endpoint which receive the client probe message, and return the matches service endpoints, and return the discovery endpoint metadata. WCF 4.0 discovery service just covers all these features in it's infrastructure classes. Discovery Service in WCF 4.0 WCF 4.0 introduced a new assembly named System.ServiceModel.Discovery which has all necessary classes and interfaces to build a WS-Discovery compliant discovery service. It supports ad-hoc and managed proxy modes. For the case mentioned in this post, what we need to build is a standalone discovery service, which is the managed proxy discovery service mode. To build a managed discovery service in WCF 4.0 just create a new class inherits from the abstract class System.ServiceModel.Discovery.DiscoveryProxy. This class implemented and abstracted the procedures of service announcement and probe. And it exposes 8 abstract methods where we can implement our own endpoint register, unregister and find logic. These 8 methods are asynchronized, which means all invokes to the discovery service are asynchronously, for better service capability and performance. 1, OnBeginOnlineAnnouncement, OnEndOnlineAnnouncement: Invoked when a service sent the online announcement message. We need to add the endpoint information to the repository in this method. 2, OnBeginOfflineAnnouncement, OnEndOfflineAnnouncement: Invoked when a service sent the offline announcement message. We need to remove the endpoint information from the repository in this method. 3, OnBeginFind, OnEndFind: Invoked when a client sent the probe message that want to find the service endpoint information. We need to look for the proper endpoints by matching the client’s criteria through the repository in this method. 4, OnBeginResolve, OnEndResolve: Invoked then a client sent the resolve message. Different from the find method, when using resolve method the discovery service will return the exactly one service endpoint metadata to the client. In our example we will NOT implement this method. Let’s create our own discovery service, inherit the base System.ServiceModel.Discovery.DiscoveryProxy. We also need to specify the service behavior in this class. Since the build-in discovery service host class only support the singleton mode, we must set its instance context mode to single. 1: using System; 2: using System.Collections.Generic; 3: using System.Linq; 4: using System.Text; 5: using System.ServiceModel.Discovery; 6: using System.ServiceModel; 7: 8: namespace Phare.Service 9: { 10: [ServiceBehavior(InstanceContextMode = InstanceContextMode.Single, ConcurrencyMode = ConcurrencyMode.Multiple)] 11: public class ManagedProxyDiscoveryService : DiscoveryProxy 12: { 13: protected override IAsyncResult OnBeginFind(FindRequestContext findRequestContext, AsyncCallback callback, object state) 14: { 15: throw new NotImplementedException(); 16: } 17: 18: protected override IAsyncResult OnBeginOfflineAnnouncement(DiscoveryMessageSequence messageSequence, EndpointDiscoveryMetadata endpointDiscoveryMetadata, AsyncCallback callback, object state) 19: { 20: throw new NotImplementedException(); 21: } 22: 23: protected override IAsyncResult OnBeginOnlineAnnouncement(DiscoveryMessageSequence messageSequence, EndpointDiscoveryMetadata endpointDiscoveryMetadata, AsyncCallback callback, object state) 24: { 25: throw new NotImplementedException(); 26: } 27: 28: protected override IAsyncResult OnBeginResolve(ResolveCriteria resolveCriteria, AsyncCallback callback, object state) 29: { 30: throw new NotImplementedException(); 31: } 32: 33: protected override void OnEndFind(IAsyncResult result) 34: { 35: throw new NotImplementedException(); 36: } 37: 38: protected override void OnEndOfflineAnnouncement(IAsyncResult result) 39: { 40: throw new NotImplementedException(); 41: } 42: 43: protected override void OnEndOnlineAnnouncement(IAsyncResult result) 44: { 45: throw new NotImplementedException(); 46: } 47: 48: protected override EndpointDiscoveryMetadata OnEndResolve(IAsyncResult result) 49: { 50: throw new NotImplementedException(); 51: } 52: } 53: } Then let’s implement the online, offline and find methods one by one. WCF discovery service gives us full flexibility to implement the endpoint add, remove and find logic. For the demo purpose we will use an internal dictionary to store the services’ endpoint metadata. In the next post we will see how to serialize and store these information in database. Define a concurrent dictionary inside the service class since our it will be used in the multiple threads scenario. 1: [ServiceBehavior(InstanceContextMode = InstanceContextMode.Single, ConcurrencyMode = ConcurrencyMode.Multiple)] 2: public class ManagedProxyDiscoveryService : DiscoveryProxy 3: { 4: private ConcurrentDictionary<EndpointAddress, EndpointDiscoveryMetadata> _services; 5: 6: public ManagedProxyDiscoveryService() 7: { 8: _services = new ConcurrentDictionary<EndpointAddress, EndpointDiscoveryMetadata>(); 9: } 10: } Then we can simply implement the logic of service online and offline. 1: protected override IAsyncResult OnBeginOnlineAnnouncement(DiscoveryMessageSequence messageSequence, EndpointDiscoveryMetadata endpointDiscoveryMetadata, AsyncCallback callback, object state) 2: { 3: _services.AddOrUpdate(endpointDiscoveryMetadata.Address, endpointDiscoveryMetadata, (key, value) => endpointDiscoveryMetadata); 4: return new OnOnlineAnnouncementAsyncResult(callback, state); 5: } 6: 7: protected override void OnEndOnlineAnnouncement(IAsyncResult result) 8: { 9: OnOnlineAnnouncementAsyncResult.End(result); 10: } 11: 12: protected override IAsyncResult OnBeginOfflineAnnouncement(DiscoveryMessageSequence messageSequence, EndpointDiscoveryMetadata endpointDiscoveryMetadata, AsyncCallback callback, object state) 13: { 14: EndpointDiscoveryMetadata endpoint = null; 15: _services.TryRemove(endpointDiscoveryMetadata.Address, out endpoint); 16: return new OnOfflineAnnouncementAsyncResult(callback, state); 17: } 18: 19: protected override void OnEndOfflineAnnouncement(IAsyncResult result) 20: { 21: OnOfflineAnnouncementAsyncResult.End(result); 22: } Regards the find method, the parameter FindRequestContext.Criteria has a method named IsMatch, which can be use for us to evaluate which service metadata is satisfied with the criteria. So the implementation of find method would be like this. 1: protected override IAsyncResult OnBeginFind(FindRequestContext findRequestContext, AsyncCallback callback, object state) 2: { 3: _services.Where(s => findRequestContext.Criteria.IsMatch(s.Value)) 4: .Select(s => s.Value) 5: .All(meta => 6: { 7: findRequestContext.AddMatchingEndpoint(meta); 8: return true; 9: }); 10: return new OnFindAsyncResult(callback, state); 11: } 12: 13: protected override void OnEndFind(IAsyncResult result) 14: { 15: OnFindAsyncResult.End(result); 16: } As you can see, we checked all endpoints metadata in repository by invoking the IsMatch method. Then add all proper endpoints metadata into the parameter. Finally since all these methods are asynchronized we need some AsyncResult classes as well. Below are the base class and the inherited classes used in previous methods. 1: using System; 2: using System.Collections.Generic; 3: using System.Linq; 4: using System.Text; 5: using System.Threading; 6: 7: namespace Phare.Service 8: { 9: abstract internal class AsyncResult : IAsyncResult 10: { 11: AsyncCallback callback; 12: bool completedSynchronously; 13: bool endCalled; 14: Exception exception; 15: bool isCompleted; 16: ManualResetEvent manualResetEvent; 17: object state; 18: object thisLock; 19: 20: protected AsyncResult(AsyncCallback callback, object state) 21: { 22: this.callback = callback; 23: this.state = state; 24: this.thisLock = new object(); 25: } 26: 27: public object AsyncState 28: { 29: get 30: { 31: return state; 32: } 33: } 34: 35: public WaitHandle AsyncWaitHandle 36: { 37: get 38: { 39: if (manualResetEvent != null) 40: { 41: return manualResetEvent; 42: } 43: lock (ThisLock) 44: { 45: if (manualResetEvent == null) 46: { 47: manualResetEvent = new ManualResetEvent(isCompleted); 48: } 49: } 50: return manualResetEvent; 51: } 52: } 53: 54: public bool CompletedSynchronously 55: { 56: get 57: { 58: return completedSynchronously; 59: } 60: } 61: 62: public bool IsCompleted 63: { 64: get 65: { 66: return isCompleted; 67: } 68: } 69: 70: object ThisLock 71: { 72: get 73: { 74: return this.thisLock; 75: } 76: } 77: 78: protected static TAsyncResult End<TAsyncResult>(IAsyncResult result) 79: where TAsyncResult : AsyncResult 80: { 81: if (result == null) 82: { 83: throw new ArgumentNullException("result"); 84: } 85: 86: TAsyncResult asyncResult = result as TAsyncResult; 87: 88: if (asyncResult == null) 89: { 90: throw new ArgumentException("Invalid async result.", "result"); 91: } 92: 93: if (asyncResult.endCalled) 94: { 95: throw new InvalidOperationException("Async object already ended."); 96: } 97: 98: asyncResult.endCalled = true; 99: 100: if (!asyncResult.isCompleted) 101: { 102: asyncResult.AsyncWaitHandle.WaitOne(); 103: } 104: 105: if (asyncResult.manualResetEvent != null) 106: { 107: asyncResult.manualResetEvent.Close(); 108: } 109: 110: if (asyncResult.exception != null) 111: { 112: throw asyncResult.exception; 113: } 114: 115: return asyncResult; 116: } 117: 118: protected void Complete(bool completedSynchronously) 119: { 120: if (isCompleted) 121: { 122: throw new InvalidOperationException("This async result is already completed."); 123: } 124: 125: this.completedSynchronously = completedSynchronously; 126: 127: if (completedSynchronously) 128: { 129: this.isCompleted = true; 130: } 131: else 132: { 133: lock (ThisLock) 134: { 135: this.isCompleted = true; 136: if (this.manualResetEvent != null) 137: { 138: this.manualResetEvent.Set(); 139: } 140: } 141: } 142: 143: if (callback != null) 144: { 145: callback(this); 146: } 147: } 148: 149: protected void Complete(bool completedSynchronously, Exception exception) 150: { 151: this.exception = exception; 152: Complete(completedSynchronously); 153: } 154: } 155: } 1: using System; 2: using System.Collections.Generic; 3: using System.Linq; 4: using System.Text; 5: using System.ServiceModel.Discovery; 6: using Phare.Service; 7: 8: namespace Phare.Service 9: { 10: internal sealed class OnOnlineAnnouncementAsyncResult : AsyncResult 11: { 12: public OnOnlineAnnouncementAsyncResult(AsyncCallback callback, object state) 13: : base(callback, state) 14: { 15: this.Complete(true); 16: } 17: 18: public static void End(IAsyncResult result) 19: { 20: AsyncResult.End<OnOnlineAnnouncementAsyncResult>(result); 21: } 22: 23: } 24: 25: sealed class OnOfflineAnnouncementAsyncResult : AsyncResult 26: { 27: public OnOfflineAnnouncementAsyncResult(AsyncCallback callback, object state) 28: : base(callback, state) 29: { 30: this.Complete(true); 31: } 32: 33: public static void End(IAsyncResult result) 34: { 35: AsyncResult.End<OnOfflineAnnouncementAsyncResult>(result); 36: } 37: } 38: 39: sealed class OnFindAsyncResult : AsyncResult 40: { 41: public OnFindAsyncResult(AsyncCallback callback, object state) 42: : base(callback, state) 43: { 44: this.Complete(true); 45: } 46: 47: public static void End(IAsyncResult result) 48: { 49: AsyncResult.End<OnFindAsyncResult>(result); 50: } 51: } 52: 53: sealed class OnResolveAsyncResult : AsyncResult 54: { 55: EndpointDiscoveryMetadata matchingEndpoint; 56: 57: public OnResolveAsyncResult(EndpointDiscoveryMetadata matchingEndpoint, AsyncCallback callback, object state) 58: : base(callback, state) 59: { 60: this.matchingEndpoint = matchingEndpoint; 61: this.Complete(true); 62: } 63: 64: public static EndpointDiscoveryMetadata End(IAsyncResult result) 65: { 66: OnResolveAsyncResult thisPtr = AsyncResult.End<OnResolveAsyncResult>(result); 67: return thisPtr.matchingEndpoint; 68: } 69: } 70: } Now we have finished the discovery service. The next step is to host it. The discovery service is a standard WCF service. So we can use ServiceHost on a console application, windows service, or in IIS as usual. The following code is how to host the discovery service we had just created in a console application. 1: static void Main(string[] args) 2: { 3: using (var host = new ServiceHost(new ManagedProxyDiscoveryService())) 4: { 5: host.Opened += (sender, e) => 6: { 7: host.Description.Endpoints.All((ep) => 8: { 9: Console.WriteLine(ep.ListenUri); 10: return true; 11: }); 12: }; 13: 14: try 15: { 16: // retrieve the announcement, probe endpoint and binding from configuration 17: var announcementEndpointAddress = new EndpointAddress(ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["announcementEndpointAddress"]); 18: var probeEndpointAddress = new EndpointAddress(ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["probeEndpointAddress"]); 19: var binding = Activator.CreateInstance(Type.GetType(ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["bindingType"], true, true)) as Binding; 20: var announcementEndpoint = new AnnouncementEndpoint(binding, announcementEndpointAddress); 21: var probeEndpoint = new DiscoveryEndpoint(binding, probeEndpointAddress); 22: probeEndpoint.IsSystemEndpoint = false; 23: // append the service endpoint for announcement and probe 24: host.AddServiceEndpoint(announcementEndpoint); 25: host.AddServiceEndpoint(probeEndpoint); 26: 27: host.Open(); 28: 29: Console.WriteLine("Press any key to exit."); 30: Console.ReadKey(); 31: } 32: catch (Exception ex) 33: { 34: Console.WriteLine(ex.ToString()); 35: } 36: } 37: 38: Console.WriteLine("Done."); 39: Console.ReadKey(); 40: } What we need to notice is that, the discovery service needs two endpoints for announcement and probe. In this example I just retrieve them from the configuration file. I also specified the binding of these two endpoints in configuration file as well. 1: <?xml version="1.0"?> 2: <configuration> 3: <startup> 4: <supportedRuntime version="v4.0" sku=".NETFramework,Version=v4.0"/> 5: </startup> 6: <appSettings> 7: <add key="announcementEndpointAddress" value="net.tcp://localhost:10010/announcement"/> 8: <add key="probeEndpointAddress" value="net.tcp://localhost:10011/probe"/> 9: <add key="bindingType" value="System.ServiceModel.NetTcpBinding, System.ServiceModel, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089"/> 10: </appSettings> 11: </configuration> And this is the console screen when I ran my discovery service. As you can see there are two endpoints listening for announcement message and probe message. Discoverable Service and Client Next, let’s create a WCF service that is discoverable, which means it can be found by the discovery service. To do so, we need to let the service send the online announcement message to the discovery service, as well as offline message before it shutdown. Just create a simple service which can make the incoming string to upper. The service contract and implementation would be like this. 1: [ServiceContract] 2: public interface IStringService 3: { 4: [OperationContract] 5: string ToUpper(string content); 6: } 1: public class StringService : IStringService 2: { 3: public string ToUpper(string content) 4: { 5: return content.ToUpper(); 6: } 7: } Then host this service in the console application. In order to make the discovery service easy to be tested the service address will be changed each time it’s started. 1: static void Main(string[] args) 2: { 3: var baseAddress = new Uri(string.Format("net.tcp://localhost:11001/stringservice/{0}/", Guid.NewGuid().ToString())); 4: 5: using (var host = new ServiceHost(typeof(StringService), baseAddress)) 6: { 7: host.Opened += (sender, e) => 8: { 9: Console.WriteLine("Service opened at {0}", host.Description.Endpoints.First().ListenUri); 10: }; 11: 12: host.AddServiceEndpoint(typeof(IStringService), new NetTcpBinding(), string.Empty); 13: 14: host.Open(); 15: 16: Console.WriteLine("Press any key to exit."); 17: Console.ReadKey(); 18: } 19: } Currently this service is NOT discoverable. We need to add a special service behavior so that it could send the online and offline message to the discovery service announcement endpoint when the host is opened and closed. WCF 4.0 introduced a service behavior named ServiceDiscoveryBehavior. When we specified the announcement endpoint address and appended it to the service behaviors this service will be discoverable. 1: var announcementAddress = new EndpointAddress(ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["announcementEndpointAddress"]); 2: var announcementBinding = Activator.CreateInstance(Type.GetType(ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["bindingType"], true, true)) as Binding; 3: var announcementEndpoint = new AnnouncementEndpoint(announcementBinding, announcementAddress); 4: var discoveryBehavior = new ServiceDiscoveryBehavior(); 5: discoveryBehavior.AnnouncementEndpoints.Add(announcementEndpoint); 6: host.Description.Behaviors.Add(discoveryBehavior); The ServiceDiscoveryBehavior utilizes the service extension and channel dispatcher to implement the online and offline announcement logic. In short, it injected the channel open and close procedure and send the online and offline message to the announcement endpoint. On client side, when we have the discovery service, a client can invoke a service without knowing its endpoint. WCF discovery assembly provides a class named DiscoveryClient, which can be used to find the proper service endpoint by passing the criteria. In the code below I initialized the DiscoveryClient, specified the discovery service probe endpoint address. Then I created the find criteria by specifying the service contract I wanted to use and invoke the Find method. This will send the probe message to the discovery service and it will find the endpoints back to me. The discovery service will return all endpoints that matches the find criteria, which means in the result of the find method there might be more than one endpoints. In this example I just returned the first matched one back. In the next post I will show how to extend our discovery service to make it work like a service load balancer. 1: static EndpointAddress FindServiceEndpoint() 2: { 3: var probeEndpointAddress = new EndpointAddress(ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["probeEndpointAddress"]); 4: var probeBinding = Activator.CreateInstance(Type.GetType(ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["bindingType"], true, true)) as Binding; 5: var discoveryEndpoint = new DiscoveryEndpoint(probeBinding, probeEndpointAddress); 6: 7: EndpointAddress address = null; 8: FindResponse result = null; 9: using (var discoveryClient = new DiscoveryClient(discoveryEndpoint)) 10: { 11: result = discoveryClient.Find(new FindCriteria(typeof(IStringService))); 12: } 13: 14: if (result != null && result.Endpoints.Any()) 15: { 16: var endpointMetadata = result.Endpoints.First(); 17: address = endpointMetadata.Address; 18: } 19: return address; 20: } Once we probed the discovery service we will receive the endpoint. So in the client code we can created the channel factory from the endpoint and binding, and invoke to the service. When creating the client side channel factory we need to make sure that the client side binding should be the same as the service side. WCF discovery service can be used to find the endpoint for a service contract, but the binding is NOT included. This is because the binding was not in the WS-Discovery specification. In the next post I will demonstrate how to add the binding information into the discovery service. At that moment the client don’t need to create the binding by itself. Instead it will use the binding received from the discovery service. 1: static void Main(string[] args) 2: { 3: Console.WriteLine("Say something..."); 4: var content = Console.ReadLine(); 5: while (!string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(content)) 6: { 7: Console.WriteLine("Finding the service endpoint..."); 8: var address = FindServiceEndpoint(); 9: if (address == null) 10: { 11: Console.WriteLine("There is no endpoint matches the criteria."); 12: } 13: else 14: { 15: Console.WriteLine("Found the endpoint {0}", address.Uri); 16: 17: var factory = new ChannelFactory<IStringService>(new NetTcpBinding(), address); 18: factory.Opened += (sender, e) => 19: { 20: Console.WriteLine("Connecting to {0}.", factory.Endpoint.ListenUri); 21: }; 22: var proxy = factory.CreateChannel(); 23: using (proxy as IDisposable) 24: { 25: Console.WriteLine("ToUpper: {0} => {1}", content, proxy.ToUpper(content)); 26: } 27: } 28: 29: Console.WriteLine("Say something..."); 30: content = Console.ReadLine(); 31: } 32: } Similarly, the discovery service probe endpoint and binding were defined in the configuration file. 1: <?xml version="1.0"?> 2: <configuration> 3: <startup> 4: <supportedRuntime version="v4.0" sku=".NETFramework,Version=v4.0"/> 5: </startup> 6: <appSettings> 7: <add key="announcementEndpointAddress" value="net.tcp://localhost:10010/announcement"/> 8: <add key="probeEndpointAddress" value="net.tcp://localhost:10011/probe"/> 9: <add key="bindingType" value="System.ServiceModel.NetTcpBinding, System.ServiceModel, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089"/> 10: </appSettings> 11: </configuration> OK, now let’s have a test. Firstly start the discovery service, and then start our discoverable service. When it started it will announced to the discovery service and registered its endpoint into the repository, which is the local dictionary. And then start the client and type something. As you can see the client asked the discovery service for the endpoint and then establish the connection to the discoverable service. And more interesting, do NOT close the client console but terminate the discoverable service but press the enter key. This will make the service send the offline message to the discovery service. Then start the discoverable service again. Since we made it use a different address each time it started, currently it should be hosted on another address. If we enter something in the client we could see that it asked the discovery service and retrieve the new endpoint, and connect the the service. Summary In this post I discussed the benefit of using the discovery service and the procedures of service announcement and probe. I also demonstrated how to leverage the WCF Discovery feature in WCF 4.0 to build a simple managed discovery service. For test purpose, in this example I used the in memory dictionary as the discovery endpoint metadata repository. And when finding I also just return the first matched endpoint back. I also hard coded the bindings between the discoverable service and the client. In next post I will show you how to solve the problem mentioned above, as well as some additional feature for production usage. You can download the code here. Hope this helps, Shaun All documents and related graphics, codes are provided "AS IS" without warranty of any kind. Copyright © Shaun Ziyan Xu. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons License.

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How to fix “The requested service, ‘net.pipe://localhost/SecurityTokenServiceApplication/appsts.svc’ could not be activated.”

- by ybbest

Problem: When I try to publish a SharePoint2013 workflow, I received the error: The requested service, ‘net.pipe://localhost/SecurityTokenServiceApplication/appsts.svc’ could not be activated. After that, my workflow stopped working and every time I start a work I receive the following error message: System.ApplicationException: PreconditionFailed ---> System.ApplicationException: Error in the application. --- End of inner exception stack trace --- at System.Activities.Statements.Throw.Execute(CodeActivityContext context) at System.Activities.CodeActivity.InternalExecute(ActivityInstance instance, ActivityExecutor executor, BookmarkManager bookmarkManager) at System.Activities.Runtime.ActivityExecutor.ExecuteActivityWorkItem.ExecuteBody(ActivityExecutor executor, BookmarkManager bookmarkManager, Location resultLocation) Analysis: After analysis, I found the error by visiting the http://localhost:32843/SecurityTokenServiceApplication/securitytoken.svc and the error I got on the message is Solution: The solution is basically getting more memory to the server. For development environment, you can restart your noderunner.exe or some other services to release some memories. To verify you have enough memory you can browse to http://localhost:32843/SecurityTokenServiceApplication/securitytoken.svc , it should return the information below. Then you can republish your workflow and it will work like a charm.

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Windows 7 Phone Database Rapid Repository – V2.0 Beta Released

- by SeanMcAlinden

Hi All, A V2.0 beta has been released for the Windows 7 Phone database Rapid Repository, this can be downloaded at the following: http://rapidrepository.codeplex.com/ Along with the new View feature which greatly enhances querying and performance, various bugs have been fixed including a more serious bug with the caching that caused the GetAll() method to sometimes return inconsistent results (I’m a little bit embarrased by this bug). If you are currently using V1.0 in development, I would recommend swapping in the beta immediately. A full release will be available very shortly, I just need a few more days of testing and some input from other users/testers. *Breaking Changes* The only real change is the RapidContext has moved under the main RapidRepository namespace. Various internal methods have been actually made ‘internal’ and replaced with a more friendly API (I imagine not many users will notice this change). Hope you like it Kind Regards, Sean McAlinden

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ASP.NET MVC 3 RTM Released

- by shiju

The ASP.NET team has released RTM version of ASP.NET MVC 3. You can download the ASP.NET MVC 3 RTM from here and source code of ASP.NET MVC 3 can download from here. Microsoft has released the following products along with ASP.NET MVC 3.NuGetIIS Express 7.5SQL Server Compact Edition 4Web Deploy and Web Farm Framework 2.0Orchard 1.0WebMatrix 1.0 You can read more details from ScottGu's blog post Announcing release of ASP.NET MVC 3, IIS Express, SQL CE 4, Web Farm Framework, Orchard, WebMatrix .You can upgrade your ASP.NET MVC 2 projects to ASP.NET MVC 3 using MVC 3 Project Upgrade Tool. You can read more details about the MVC 3 Upgrade Tool from here. Demo Web App using ASP.NET MVC 3 RTM You can download a demo web app using ASP.NET MVC 3 RTM from here. The demo app is explained in the below blog postsDeveloping web apps using ASP.NET MVC 3, Razor and EF Code First - Part 1Developing web apps using ASP.NET MVC 3, Razor and EF Code First - Part 2

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Download the ‘Getting Started with Ubuntu 12.04' Manual for Free

- by Asian Angel

If you or someone you know is new to Ubuntu, then the release of this free 143 page manual for the latest LTS edition of Ubuntu is the perfect download. The manual will take you from installing Ubuntu 12.04 all the way through to trouble-shooting the system if you run into problems. On the downloads page you can select a preferred language version, the specific version of Ubuntu you would like a manual for (10.04, 10.10, 11.10, and 12.04), and whether you prefer a ‘print or screen‘ version. Multiple Options Download Page for the Ubuntu Manual (Free Electronic Version) Note: Manual is in PDF format. Here is the link for those of you who prefer to use a regular print paperback copy of the manual. Purchase the ‘Getting Started with Ubuntu 12.04′ Manual Download the Official How-To Geek Trivia App for Windows 8 How to Banish Duplicate Photos with VisiPic How to Make Your Laptop Choose a Wired Connection Instead of Wireless

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MEF CompositionInitializer for WPF

- by Reed

The Managed Extensibility Framework is an amazingly useful addition to the .NET Framework. I was very excited to see System.ComponentModel.Composition added to the core framework. Personally, I feel that MEF is one tool I’ve always been missing in my .NET development. Unfortunately, one perfect scenario for MEF tends to fall short of it’s full potential is in Windows Presentation Foundation development. In particular, there are many times when the XAML parser constructs objects in WPF development, which makes composition of those parts difficult. The current release of MEF (Preview Release 9) addresses this for Silverlight developers via System.ComponentModel.Composition.CompositionInitializer. However, there is no equivalent class for WPF developers. The CompositionInitializer class provides the means for an object to compose itself. This is very useful with WPF and Silverlight development, since it allows a View, such as a UserControl, to be generated via the standard XAML parser, and still automatically pull in the appropriate ViewModel in an extensible manner. Glenn Block has demonstrated the usage for Silverlight in detail, but the same issues apply in WPF. As an example, let’s take a look at a very simple case. Take the following XAML for a Window: <Window x:Class="WpfApplication1.MainView" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation" xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml" Title="MainWindow" Height="220" Width="300"> <Grid> <TextBlock Text="{Binding TheText}" /> </Grid> </Window> This does nothing but create a Window, add a simple TextBlock control, and use it to display the value of our “TheText” property in our DataContext class. Since this is our main window, WPF will automatically construct and display this Window, so we need to handle constructing the DataContext and setting it ourselves. We could do this in code or in XAML, but in order to do it directly, we would need to hard code the ViewModel type directly into our XAML code, or we would need to construct the ViewModel class and set it in the code behind. Both have disadvantages, and the disadvantages grow if we’re using MEF to compose our ViewModel. Ideally, we’d like to be able to have MEF construct our ViewModel for us. This way, it can provide any construction requirements for our ViewModel via [ImportingConstructor], and it can handle fully composing the imported properties on our ViewModel. CompositionInitializer allows this to occur. We use CompositionInitializer within our View’s constructor, and use it for self-composition of our View. Using CompositionInitializer, we can modify our code behind to: public partial class MainView : Window { public MainView() { InitializeComponent(); CompositionInitializer.SatisfyImports(this); } [Import("MainViewModel")] public object ViewModel { get { return this.DataContext; } set { this.DataContext = value; } } } We then can add an Export on our ViewModel class like so: [Export("MainViewModel")] public class MainViewModel { public string TheText { get { return "Hello World!"; } } } MEF will automatically compose our application, decoupling our ViewModel injection to the DataContext of our View until runtime. When we run this, we’ll see: There are many other approaches for using MEF to wire up the extensible parts within your application, of course. However, any time an object is going to be constructed by code outside of your control, CompositionInitializer allows us to continue to use MEF to satisfy the import requirements of that object. In order to use this from WPF, I’ve ported the code from MEF Preview 9 and Glenn Block’s (now obsolete) PartInitializer port to Windows Presentation Foundation. There are some subtle changes from the Silverlight port, mainly to handle running in a desktop application context. The default behavior of my port is to construct an AggregateCatalog containing a DirectoryCatalog set to the location of the entry assembly of the application. In addition, if an “Extensions” folder exists under the entry assembly’s directory, a second DirectoryCatalog for that folder will be included. This behavior can be overridden by specifying a CompositionContainer or one or more ComposablePartCatalogs to the System.ComponentModel.Composition.Hosting.CompositionHost static class prior to the first use of CompositionInitializer. Please download CompositionInitializer and CompositionHost for VS 2010 RC, and contact me with any feedback. Composition.Initialization.Desktop.zip Edit on 3/29: Glenn Block has since updated his version of CompositionInitializer (and ExportFactory<T>!), and made it available here: http://cid-f8b2fd72406fb218.skydrive.live.com/self.aspx/blog/Composition.Initialization.Desktop.zip This is a .NET 3.5 solution, and should soon be pushed to CodePlex, and made available on the main MEF site.

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Download the ‘Getting Started with Ubuntu 12.10' Manual for Free

- by Asian Angel

Today is the official release date for Ubuntu’s latest version, so why not download the manual to go with it? This free manual is available to view online or download as a 145 page PDF file to best suits your needs. The home page for the manual will display a large Download Button, but the best option is to click on the Alternative Download Options link. Clicking on the Alternative Download Options link will let you select the language version you want, choose a system version, and let you download the manual directly or view it online. What To Do If You Get a Virus on Your Computer Why Enabling “Do Not Track” Doesn’t Stop You From Being Tracked HTG Explains: What is the Windows Page File and Should You Disable It?

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ASP.NET Universal Providers (System.Web.Providers)

- by shiju

Microsoft Web Platform and Tools (WPT) team has announced the release of ASP.NET Universal Providers that allows you to use Session, Membership, Roles and Profile providers along with all editions of SQL Server 2005 and later. This support includes Sql Server Express, Sql Server CE and Sql Azure.ASP.NET Universal Providers is available as a NuGet package and the following command will install the package via NuGet. PM> Install-Package System.Web.Providers The support for Sql Azure will help the Azure developers to easily migrate their ASP.NET applications to Azure platform. System.Web.Providers.DefaultMembershipProvider is the equivalent name for the current SqlMembershipProvider and you can put right connectionstring name in the configuration and it will work with any version of Sql Server based on the copnnection string. System.Web.Providers.DefaultProfileProvider is the equivalent provider name for existing System.Web.Profile.SqlProfileProvider and System.Web.Providers.DefaultRoleProvider is the equivalent provider name for the existing System.Web.Security.SqlRoleProvider.

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Replace Your Favorite Abandoned Extensions in Firefox with This List of Alternatives

- by Asian Angel

Have you or someone you know continued to use Firefox 3.6 because your favorite extensions were not updated for Firefox 4.0 and beyond? Perhaps you updated Firefox but lost that wonderful extension’s functionality and want it back. Then you will definitely want to look through this terrific list of alternatives and forks of popular abandoned extensions! The list that Jorge Villalobos has put together also has alternatives for some popular older themes that have been abandoned as well. Note: More alternatives are turning up as the comments section on the blog post continues to grow, so make sure to take a quick peek through those as well. Are add-ons keeping you on Firefox 3.6? [Mozilla Add-ons Blog] HTG Explains: Learn How Websites Are Tracking You Online Here’s How to Download Windows 8 Release Preview Right Now HTG Explains: Why Linux Doesn’t Need Defragmenting

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Creating Custom Ajax Control Toolkit Controls

- by Stephen Walther

The goal of this blog entry is to explain how you can extend the Ajax Control Toolkit with custom Ajax Control Toolkit controls. I describe how you can create the two halves of an Ajax Control Toolkit control: the server-side control extender and the client-side control behavior. Finally, I explain how you can use the new Ajax Control Toolkit control in a Web Forms page. At the end of this blog entry, there is a link to download a Visual Studio 2010 solution which contains the code for two Ajax Control Toolkit controls: SampleExtender and PopupHelpExtender. The SampleExtender contains the minimum skeleton for creating a new Ajax Control Toolkit control. You can use the SampleExtender as a starting point for your custom Ajax Control Toolkit controls. The PopupHelpExtender control is a super simple custom Ajax Control Toolkit control. This control extender displays a help message when you start typing into a TextBox control. The animated GIF below demonstrates what happens when you click into a TextBox which has been extended with the PopupHelp extender. Here’s a sample of a Web Forms page which uses the control: <%@ Page Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeBehind="ShowPopupHelp.aspx.cs" Inherits="MyACTControls.Web.Default" %> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> <html > <head runat="server"> <title>Show Popup Help</title> </head> <body> <form id="form1" runat="server"> <div> <act:ToolkitScriptManager ID="tsm" runat="server" /> <%-- Social Security Number --%> <asp:Label ID="lblSSN" Text="SSN:" AssociatedControlID="txtSSN" runat="server" /> <asp:TextBox ID="txtSSN" runat="server" /> <act:PopupHelpExtender id="ph1" TargetControlID="txtSSN" HelpText="Please enter your social security number." runat="server" /> <%-- Social Security Number --%> <asp:Label ID="lblPhone" Text="Phone Number:" AssociatedControlID="txtPhone" runat="server" /> <asp:TextBox ID="txtPhone" runat="server" /> <act:PopupHelpExtender id="ph2" TargetControlID="txtPhone" HelpText="Please enter your phone number." runat="server" /> </div> </form> </body> </html> In the page above, the PopupHelp extender is used to extend the functionality of the two TextBox controls. When focus is given to a TextBox control, the popup help message is displayed. An Ajax Control Toolkit control extender consists of two parts: a server-side control extender and a client-side behavior. For example, the PopupHelp extender consists of a server-side PopupHelpExtender control (PopupHelpExtender.cs) and a client-side PopupHelp behavior JavaScript script (PopupHelpBehavior.js). Over the course of this blog entry, I describe how you can create both the server-side extender and the client-side behavior. Writing the Server-Side Code Creating a Control Extender You create a control extender by creating a class that inherits from the abstract ExtenderControlBase class. For example, the PopupHelpExtender control is declared like this: public class PopupHelpExtender: ExtenderControlBase { } The ExtenderControlBase class is part of the Ajax Control Toolkit. This base class contains all of the common server properties and methods of every Ajax Control Toolkit extender control. The ExtenderControlBase class inherits from the ExtenderControl class. The ExtenderControl class is a standard class in the ASP.NET framework located in the System.Web.UI namespace. This class is responsible for generating a client-side behavior. The class generates a call to the Microsoft Ajax Library $create() method which looks like this: <script type="text/javascript"> $create(MyACTControls.PopupHelpBehavior, {"HelpText":"Please enter your social security number.","id":"ph1"}, null, null, $get("txtSSN")); }); </script> The JavaScript $create() method is part of the Microsoft Ajax Library. The reference for this method can be found here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb397487.aspx This method accepts the following parameters: type – The type of client behavior to create. The $create() method above creates a client PopupHelpBehavior. Properties – Enables you to pass initial values for the properties of the client behavior. For example, the initial value of the HelpText property. This is how server property values are passed to the client. Events – Enables you to pass client-side event handlers to the client behavior. References – Enables you to pass references to other client components. Element – The DOM element associated with the client behavior. This will be the DOM element associated with the control being extended such as the txtSSN TextBox. The $create() method is generated for you automatically. You just need to focus on writing the server-side control extender class. Specifying the Target Control All Ajax Control Toolkit extenders inherit a TargetControlID property from the ExtenderControlBase class. This property, the TargetControlID property, points at the control that the extender control extends. For example, the Ajax Control Toolkit TextBoxWatermark control extends a TextBox, the ConfirmButton control extends a Button, and the Calendar control extends a TextBox. You must indicate the type of control which your extender is extending. You indicate the type of control by adding a [TargetControlType] attribute to your control. For example, the PopupHelp extender is declared like this: [TargetControlType(typeof(TextBox))] public class PopupHelpExtender: ExtenderControlBase { } The PopupHelp extender can be used to extend a TextBox control. If you try to use the PopupHelp extender with another type of control then an exception is thrown. If you want to create an extender control which can be used with any type of ASP.NET control (Button, DataView, TextBox or whatever) then use the following attribute: [TargetControlType(typeof(Control))] Decorating Properties with Attributes If you decorate a server-side property with the [ExtenderControlProperty] attribute then the value of the property gets passed to the control’s client-side behavior. The value of the property gets passed to the client through the $create() method discussed above. The PopupHelp control contains the following HelpText property: [ExtenderControlProperty] [RequiredProperty] public string HelpText { get { return GetPropertyValue("HelpText", "Help Text"); } set { SetPropertyValue("HelpText", value); } } The HelpText property determines the help text which pops up when you start typing into a TextBox control. Because the HelpText property is decorated with the [ExtenderControlProperty] attribute, any value assigned to this property on the server is passed to the client automatically. For example, if you declare the PopupHelp extender in a Web Form page like this: <asp:TextBox ID="txtSSN" runat="server" /> <act:PopupHelpExtender id="ph1" TargetControlID="txtSSN" HelpText="Please enter your social security number." runat="server" /> Then the PopupHelpExtender renders the call to the the following Microsoft Ajax Library $create() method: $create(MyACTControls.PopupHelpBehavior, {"HelpText":"Please enter your social security number.","id":"ph1"}, null, null, $get("txtSSN")); You can see this call to the JavaScript $create() method by selecting View Source in your browser. This call to the $create() method calls a method named set_HelpText() automatically and passes the value “Please enter your social security number”. There are several attributes which you can use to decorate server-side properties including: ExtenderControlProperty – When a property is marked with this attribute, the value of the property is passed to the client automatically. ExtenderControlEvent – When a property is marked with this attribute, the property represents a client event handler. Required – When a value is not assigned to this property on the server, an error is displayed. DefaultValue – The default value of the property passed to the client. ClientPropertyName – The name of the corresponding property in the JavaScript behavior. For example, the server-side property is named ID (uppercase) and the client-side property is named id (lower-case). IDReferenceProperty – Applied to properties which refer to the IDs of other controls. URLProperty – Calls ResolveClientURL() to convert from a server-side URL to a URL which can be used on the client. ElementReference – Returns a reference to a DOM element by performing a client $get(). The WebResource, ClientResource, and the RequiredScript Attributes The PopupHelp extender uses three embedded resources named PopupHelpBehavior.js, PopupHelpBehavior.debug.js, and PopupHelpBehavior.css. The first two files are JavaScript files and the final file is a Cascading Style sheet file. These files are compiled as embedded resources. You don’t need to mark them as embedded resources in your Visual Studio solution because they get added to the assembly when the assembly is compiled by a build task. You can see that these files get embedded into the MyACTControls assembly by using Red Gate’s .NET Reflector tool: In order to use these files with the PopupHelp extender, you need to work with both the WebResource and the ClientScriptResource attributes. The PopupHelp extender includes the following three WebResource attributes. [assembly: WebResource("PopupHelp.PopupHelpBehavior.js", "text/javascript")] [assembly: WebResource("PopupHelp.PopupHelpBehavior.debug.js", "text/javascript")] [assembly: WebResource("PopupHelp.PopupHelpBehavior.css", "text/css", PerformSubstitution = true)] These WebResource attributes expose the embedded resource from the assembly so that they can be accessed by using the ScriptResource.axd or WebResource.axd handlers. The first parameter passed to the WebResource attribute is the name of the embedded resource and the second parameter is the content type of the embedded resource. The PopupHelp extender also includes the following ClientScriptResource and ClientCssResource attributes: [ClientScriptResource("MyACTControls.PopupHelpBehavior", "PopupHelp.PopupHelpBehavior.js")] [ClientCssResource("PopupHelp.PopupHelpBehavior.css")] Including these attributes causes the PopupHelp extender to request these resources when you add the PopupHelp extender to a page. If you open View Source in a browser which uses the PopupHelp extender then you will see the following link for the Cascading Style Sheet file: <link href="/WebResource.axd?d=0uONMsWXUuEDG-pbJHAC1kuKiIMteQFkYLmZdkgv7X54TObqYoqVzU4mxvaa4zpn5H9ch0RDwRYKwtO8zM5mKgO6C4WbrbkWWidKR07LD1d4n4i_uNB1mHEvXdZu2Ae5mDdVNDV53znnBojzCzwvSw2&t=634417392021676003" type="text/css" rel="stylesheet" /> You also will see the following script include for the JavaScript file: <script src="/ScriptResource.axd?d=pIS7xcGaqvNLFBvExMBQSp_0xR3mpDfS0QVmmyu1aqDUjF06TrW1jVDyXNDMtBHxpRggLYDvgFTWOsrszflZEDqAcQCg-hDXjun7ON0Ol7EXPQIdOe1GLMceIDv3OeX658-tTq2LGdwXhC1-dE7_6g2&t=ffffffff88a33b59" type="text/javascript"></script> The JavaScrpt file returned by this request to ScriptResource.axd contains the combined scripts for any and all Ajax Control Toolkit controls in a page. By default, the Ajax Control Toolkit combines all of the JavaScript files required by a page into a single JavaScript file. Combining files in this way really speeds up how quickly all of the JavaScript files get delivered from the web server to the browser. So, by default, there will be only one ScriptResource.axd include for all of the JavaScript files required by a page. If you want to disable Script Combining, and create separate links, then disable Script Combining like this: <act:ToolkitScriptManager ID="tsm" runat="server" CombineScripts="false" /> There is one more important attribute used by Ajax Control Toolkit extenders. The PopupHelp behavior uses the following two RequirdScript attributes to load the JavaScript files which are required by the PopupHelp behavior: [RequiredScript(typeof(CommonToolkitScripts), 0)] [RequiredScript(typeof(PopupExtender), 1)] The first parameter of the RequiredScript attribute represents either the string name of a JavaScript file or the type of an Ajax Control Toolkit control. The second parameter represents the order in which the JavaScript files are loaded (This second parameter is needed because .NET attributes are intrinsically unordered). In this case, the RequiredScript attribute will load the JavaScript files associated with the CommonToolkitScripts type and the JavaScript files associated with the PopupExtender in that order. The PopupHelp behavior depends on these JavaScript files. Writing the Client-Side Code The PopupHelp extender uses a client-side behavior written with the Microsoft Ajax Library. Here is the complete code for the client-side behavior: (function () { // The unique name of the script registered with the // client script loader var scriptName = "PopupHelpBehavior"; function execute() { Type.registerNamespace('MyACTControls'); MyACTControls.PopupHelpBehavior = function (element) { /// <summary> /// A behavior which displays popup help for a textbox /// </summmary> /// <param name="element" type="Sys.UI.DomElement">The element to attach to</param> MyACTControls.PopupHelpBehavior.initializeBase(this, [element]); this._textbox = Sys.Extended.UI.TextBoxWrapper.get_Wrapper(element); this._cssClass = "ajax__popupHelp"; this._popupBehavior = null; this._popupPosition = Sys.Extended.UI.PositioningMode.BottomLeft; this._popupDiv = null; this._helpText = "Help Text"; this._element$delegates = { focus: Function.createDelegate(this, this._element_onfocus), blur: Function.createDelegate(this, this._element_onblur) }; } MyACTControls.PopupHelpBehavior.prototype = { initialize: function () { MyACTControls.PopupHelpBehavior.callBaseMethod(this, 'initialize'); // Add event handlers for focus and blur var element = this.get_element(); $addHandlers(element, this._element$delegates); }, _ensurePopup: function () { if (!this._popupDiv) { var element = this.get_element(); var id = this.get_id(); this._popupDiv = $common.createElementFromTemplate({ nodeName: "div", properties: { id: id + "_popupDiv" }, cssClasses: ["ajax__popupHelp"] }, element.parentNode); this._popupBehavior = new $create(Sys.Extended.UI.PopupBehavior, { parentElement: element }, {}, {}, this._popupDiv); this._popupBehavior.set_positioningMode(this._popupPosition); } }, get_HelpText: function () { return this._helpText; }, set_HelpText: function (value) { if (this._HelpText != value) { this._helpText = value; this._ensurePopup(); this._popupDiv.innerHTML = value; this.raisePropertyChanged("Text") } }, _element_onfocus: function (e) { this.show(); }, _element_onblur: function (e) { this.hide(); }, show: function () { this._popupBehavior.show(); }, hide: function () { if (this._popupBehavior) { this._popupBehavior.hide(); } }, dispose: function() { var element = this.get_element(); $clearHandlers(element); if (this._popupBehavior) { this._popupBehavior.dispose(); this._popupBehavior = null; } } }; MyACTControls.PopupHelpBehavior.registerClass('MyACTControls.PopupHelpBehavior', Sys.Extended.UI.BehaviorBase); Sys.registerComponent(MyACTControls.PopupHelpBehavior, { name: "popupHelp" }); } // execute if (window.Sys && Sys.loader) { Sys.loader.registerScript(scriptName, ["ExtendedBase", "ExtendedCommon"], execute); } else { execute(); } })(); In the following sections, we’ll discuss how this client-side behavior works. Wrapping the Behavior for the Script Loader The behavior is wrapped with the following script: (function () { // The unique name of the script registered with the // client script loader var scriptName = "PopupHelpBehavior"; function execute() { // Behavior Content } // execute if (window.Sys && Sys.loader) { Sys.loader.registerScript(scriptName, ["ExtendedBase", "ExtendedCommon"], execute); } else { execute(); } })(); This code is required by the Microsoft Ajax Library Script Loader. You need this code if you plan to use a behavior directly from client-side code and you want to use the Script Loader. If you plan to only use your code in the context of the Ajax Control Toolkit then you can leave out this code. Registering a JavaScript Namespace The PopupHelp behavior is declared within a namespace named MyACTControls. In the code above, this namespace is created with the following registerNamespace() method: Type.registerNamespace('MyACTControls'); JavaScript does not have any built-in way of creating namespaces to prevent naming conflicts. The Microsoft Ajax Library extends JavaScript with support for namespaces. You can learn more about the registerNamespace() method here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb397723.aspx Creating the Behavior The actual Popup behavior is created with the following code. MyACTControls.PopupHelpBehavior = function (element) { /// <summary> /// A behavior which displays popup help for a textbox /// </summmary> /// <param name="element" type="Sys.UI.DomElement">The element to attach to</param> MyACTControls.PopupHelpBehavior.initializeBase(this, [element]); this._textbox = Sys.Extended.UI.TextBoxWrapper.get_Wrapper(element); this._cssClass = "ajax__popupHelp"; this._popupBehavior = null; this._popupPosition = Sys.Extended.UI.PositioningMode.BottomLeft; this._popupDiv = null; this._helpText = "Help Text"; this._element$delegates = { focus: Function.createDelegate(this, this._element_onfocus), blur: Function.createDelegate(this, this._element_onblur) }; } MyACTControls.PopupHelpBehavior.prototype = { initialize: function () { MyACTControls.PopupHelpBehavior.callBaseMethod(this, 'initialize'); // Add event handlers for focus and blur var element = this.get_element(); $addHandlers(element, this._element$delegates); }, _ensurePopup: function () { if (!this._popupDiv) { var element = this.get_element(); var id = this.get_id(); this._popupDiv = $common.createElementFromTemplate({ nodeName: "div", properties: { id: id + "_popupDiv" }, cssClasses: ["ajax__popupHelp"] }, element.parentNode); this._popupBehavior = new $create(Sys.Extended.UI.PopupBehavior, { parentElement: element }, {}, {}, this._popupDiv); this._popupBehavior.set_positioningMode(this._popupPosition); } }, get_HelpText: function () { return this._helpText; }, set_HelpText: function (value) { if (this._HelpText != value) { this._helpText = value; this._ensurePopup(); this._popupDiv.innerHTML = value; this.raisePropertyChanged("Text") } }, _element_onfocus: function (e) { this.show(); }, _element_onblur: function (e) { this.hide(); }, show: function () { this._popupBehavior.show(); }, hide: function () { if (this._popupBehavior) { this._popupBehavior.hide(); } }, dispose: function() { var element = this.get_element(); $clearHandlers(element); if (this._popupBehavior) { this._popupBehavior.dispose(); this._popupBehavior = null; } } }; The code above has two parts. The first part of the code is used to define the constructor function for the PopupHelp behavior. This is a factory method which returns an instance of a PopupHelp behavior: MyACTControls.PopupHelpBehavior = function (element) { } The second part of the code modified the prototype for the PopupHelp behavior: MyACTControls.PopupHelpBehavior.prototype = { } Any code which is particular to a single instance of the PopupHelp behavior should be placed in the constructor function. For example, the default value of the _helpText field is assigned in the constructor function: this._helpText = "Help Text"; Any code which is shared among all instances of the PopupHelp behavior should be added to the PopupHelp behavior’s prototype. For example, the public HelpText property is added to the prototype: get_HelpText: function () { return this._helpText; }, set_HelpText: function (value) { if (this._HelpText != value) { this._helpText = value; this._ensurePopup(); this._popupDiv.innerHTML = value; this.raisePropertyChanged("Text") } }, Registering a JavaScript Class After you create the PopupHelp behavior, you must register the behavior as a class by using the Microsoft Ajax registerClass() method like this: MyACTControls.PopupHelpBehavior.registerClass('MyACTControls.PopupHelpBehavior', Sys.Extended.UI.BehaviorBase); This call to registerClass() registers PopupHelp behavior as a class which derives from the base Sys.Extended.UI.BehaviorBase class. Like the ExtenderControlBase class on the server side, the BehaviorBase class on the client side contains method used by every behavior. The documentation for the BehaviorBase class can be found here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb311020.aspx The most important methods and properties of the BehaviorBase class are the following: dispose() – Use this method to clean up all resources used by your behavior. In the case of the PopupHelp behavior, the dispose() method is used to remote the event handlers created by the behavior and disposed the Popup behavior. get_element() -- Use this property to get the DOM element associated with the behavior. In other words, the DOM element which the behavior extends. get_id() – Use this property to the ID of the current behavior. initialize() – Use this method to initialize the behavior. This method is called after all of the properties are set by the $create() method. Creating Debug and Release Scripts You might have noticed that the PopupHelp behavior uses two scripts named PopupHelpBehavior.js and PopupHelpBehavior.debug.js. However, you never create these two scripts. Instead, you only create a single script named PopupHelpBehavior.pre.js. The pre in PopupHelpBehavior.pre.js stands for preprocessor. When you build the Ajax Control Toolkit (or the sample Visual Studio Solution at the end of this blog entry), a build task named JSBuild generates the PopupHelpBehavior.js release script and PopupHelpBehavior.debug.js debug script automatically. The JSBuild preprocessor supports the following directives: #IF #ELSE #ENDIF #INCLUDE #LOCALIZE #DEFINE #UNDEFINE The preprocessor directives are used to mark code which should only appear in the debug version of the script. The directives are used extensively in the Microsoft Ajax Library. For example, the Microsoft Ajax Library Array.contains() method is created like this: $type.contains = function Array$contains(array, item) { //#if DEBUG var e = Function._validateParams(arguments, [ {name: "array", type: Array, elementMayBeNull: true}, {name: "item", mayBeNull: true} ]); if (e) throw e; //#endif return (indexOf(array, item) >= 0); } Notice that you add each of the preprocessor directives inside a JavaScript comment. The comment prevents Visual Studio from getting confused with its Intellisense. The release version, but not the debug version, of the PopupHelpBehavior script is also minified automatically by the Microsoft Ajax Minifier. The minifier is invoked by a build step in the project file. Conclusion The goal of this blog entry was to explain how you can create custom AJAX Control Toolkit controls. In the first part of this blog entry, you learned how to create the server-side portion of an Ajax Control Toolkit control. You learned how to derive a new control from the ExtenderControlBase class and decorate its properties with the necessary attributes. Next, in the second part of this blog entry, you learned how to create the client-side portion of an Ajax Control Toolkit control by creating a client-side behavior with JavaScript. You learned how to use the methods of the Microsoft Ajax Library to extend your client behavior from the BehaviorBase class. Download the Custom ACT Starter Solution

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Issue Creating SQL Login for AppPoolIdentity on Windows Server 2008

- by Ben Griswold

IIS7 introduced the option to run your application pool as AppPoolIdentity. With the release of IIS7.5, AppPoolIdentity was promoted to the default option. You see this change if you’re running Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2. On my Windows 7 machine, I’m able to define my Application Pool Identity and then create an associated database login via the SQL Server Management Studio interface. No problem. However, I ran into some troubles when recently installing my web application onto a Windows Server 2008 R2 64-bit machine. Strange, but the same approach failed as SSMS couldn’t find the AppPoolIdentity user. Instead of using the tools, I created and executed the login via script and it worked fine. Here’s the script, based off of the DefaultAppPool identity, if the same happens to you: CREATE LOGIN [IIS APPPOOL\DefaultAppPool] FROM WINDOWS WITH DEFAULT_DATABASE=[master] USE [Chinook] CREATE USER [IIS APPPOOL\DefaultAppPool] FOR LOGIN [IIS APPPOOL\DefaultAppPool]

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