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• Mscorlib mocking minus the attribute

  - by mehfuzh

  Mocking .net framework members (a.k.a. mscorlib) is always a daunting task. It’s the breed of static and final methods and full of surprises. Technically intercepting mscorlib members is completely different from other class libraries. This is the reason it is dealt differently. Generally, I prefer writing a wrapper around an mscorlib member (Ex. File.Delete(“abc.txt”)) and expose it via interface but that is not always an easy task if you already have years old codebase. While mocking mscorlib members first thing that comes to people’s mind is DateTime.Now. If you Google through, you will find tons of example dealing with just that. May be it’s the most important class that we can’t ignore and I will create an example using JustMock Q2 with the same. In Q2 2012, we just get rid of the MockClassAtrribute for mocking mscorlib members. JustMock is already attribute free for mocking class libraries. We radically think that vendor specific attributes only makes your code smelly and therefore decided the same for mscorlib. Now, I want to fake DateTime.Now for the following class: public class NestedDateTime { public DateTime GetDateTime() { return DateTime.Now; } } It is the simplest one that can be. The first thing here is that I tell JustMock “hey we have a DateTime.Now in NestedDateTime class that we want to mock”. To do so, during the test initialization I write this: .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } Mock.Replace(() => DateTime.Now).In<NestedDateTime>(x => x.GetDateTime());.csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } I can also define it for all the members in the class, but that’s just a waste of extra watts. Mock.Replace(() => DateTime.Now).In<NestedDateTime>(); Now question, why should I bother doing it? The answer is that I am not using attribute and with this approach, I can mock any framework members not just File, FileInfo or DateTime. Here to note that we already mock beyond the three but when nested around a complex class, JustMock was not intercepting it correctly. Therefore, we decided to get rid of the attribute altogether fixing the issue. Finally, I write my test as usual. [TestMethod] public void ShouldAssertMockingDateTimeFromNestedClass() { var expected = new DateTime(2000, 1, 1); Mock.Arrange(() => DateTime.Now).Returns(expected); Assert.Equal(new NestedDateTime().GetDateTime(), expected); } .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } That’s it, we are good. Now let me do the same for a random one, let’s say I want mock a member from DriveInfo: Mock.Replace<DriveInfo[]>(() => DriveInfo.GetDrives()).In<MsCorlibFixture>(x => x.ShouldReturnExpectedDriveWhenMocked()); Moving forward, I write my test: [TestMethod] public void ShouldReturnExpectedDriveWhenMocked() { Mock.Arrange(() => DriveInfo.GetDrives()).MustBeCalled(); DriveInfo.GetDrives(); Mock.Assert(()=> DriveInfo.GetDrives()); } .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } Here is one convention; you have to replace the mscorlib member before executing the target method that contains it. Here the call to DriveInfo is within the MsCorlibFixture therefore it should be defined during test initialization or before executing the test method. Hope this gives you the idea.

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• It was a figure of speech!

  - by Ratman21

  Yesterday I posted the following as attention getter / advertisement (as well as my feelings). In the groups, (I am in) on the social networking site, LinkedIn and boy did I get responses.    I am fighting mad about (a figure of speech, really) not having a job! Look just because I am over 55 and have gray hair. It does not mean, my brain is dead or I can no longer trouble shoot a router or circuit or LAN issue. Or that I can do “IT” work at all. And I could prove this if; some one would give me at job. Come on try me for 90 days at min. wage. I know you will end up keeping me (hope fully at normal pay) around. Is any one hearing me…come on take up the challenge!     This was the responses I got.   I hear you. We just need to retrain and get our skills up to speed is all. That is what I am doing. I have not given up. Just got to stay on top of the game. Experience is on our side if we have the credentials and we are reasonable about our salaries this should not be an issue.   Already on it, going back to school and have got three certifications (CompTIA A+, Security+ and Network+. I am now studying for my CISCO CCNA certification. As to my salary, I am willing to work at very reasonable rate.   You need to re-brand yourself like a product, market and sell yourself. You need to smarten up, look and feel a million dollars, re-energize yourself, regain your confidents. Either start your own business, or re-write your CV so it stands out from the rest, get the template off the internet. Contact every recruitment agent in your town, state, country and overseas, and on the web. Apply to every job you think you could do, you may not get it but you will make a contact for your network, which may lead to a job at the end of the tunnel. Get in touch with everyone you know from past jobs. Do charity work. I maintain the IT Network, stage electrical and the Telecom equipment in my church,   Again already on it. I have email the world is seems with my resume and cover letters. So far, I have rewritten or had it rewrote, my resume and cover letters; over seven times so far. Re-energize? I never lost my energy level or my self-confidents in my work (now if could get some HR personal to see the same). I also volunteer at my church, I created and maintain the church web sit.   I share your frustration. Sucks being over 50 and looking for work. Please don't sell yourself short at min wage because the employer will think that’s your worth. Keep trying!!   I never stop trying and min wage is only for 90 days. If some one takes up the challenge. Some post asked if I am keeping up technology.   Do you keep up with the latest technology and can speak the language fluidly?   Yep to that and as to speaking it also a yep! I am a geek you know. I heard from others over the 50 year mark and younger too.   I'm with you! I keep getting told that I don't have enough experience because I just recently completed a Masters level course in Microsoft SQL Server, which gave me a project-intensive equivalent of between 2 and 3 years of experience. On top of that training, I have 19 years as an applications programmer and database administrator. I can normalize rings around experienced DBAs and churn out effective code with the best of them. But my 19 years is worthless as far as most recruiters and HR people are concerned because it is not the specific experience for which they're looking. HR AND RECRUITERS TAKE NOTE: Experience, whatever the language, translates across platforms and technology! By the way, I'm also over 55 and still have "got it"!   I never lost it and I also can work rings round younger techs.   I'm 52 and female and seem to be having the same issues. I have over 10 years experience in tech support (with a BS in CIS) and can't get hired either.   Ow, I only have an AS in computer science along with my certifications.   Keep the faith, I have been unemployed since August of 2008. I agree with you...I am willing to return to the beginning of my retail career and work myself back through the ranks, if someone will look past the grey and realize the knowledge I would bring to the table.   I also would like some one to look past the gray.   Interesting approach, volunteering to work for minimum wage for 90 days. I'm in the same situation as you, being 55 & balding w/white hair, so I know where you're coming from. I've been out of work now for a year. I'm in Michigan, where the unemployment rate is estimated to be 15% (the worst in the nation) & even though I've got 30+ years of IT experience ranging from mainframe to PC desktop support, it's difficult to even get a face-to-face interview. I had one prospective employer tell me flat out that I "didn't have the energy required for this position". Mostly I never get any feedback. All I can say is good luck & try to remain optimistic.   He said WHAT! Yes remaining optimistic is key. Along with faith in God. Then there was this (for lack of better word) jerk.   Give it up already. You were too old to work in high tech 10 years ago. Scratch that, 20 years ago! Try selling hot dogs in front of Fry's Electronics. At least you would get a chance to eat lunch with your previous colleagues....   You know funny thing on this person is that I checked out his profile. He is older than I am.

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• Why do we (really) program to interfaces?

  - by Kyle Burns

  One of the earliest lessons I was taught in Enterprise development was "always program against an interface".  This was back in the VB6 days and I quickly learned that no code would be allowed to move to the QA server unless my business objects and data access objects each are defined as an interface and have a matching implementation class.  Why?  "It's more reusable" was one answer.  "It doesn't tie you to a specific implementation" a slightly more knowing answer.  And let's not forget the discussion ending "it's a standard".  The problem with these responses was that senior people didn't really understand the reason we were doing the things we were doing and because of that, we were entirely unable to realize the intent behind the practice - we simply used interfaces and had a bunch of extra code to maintain to show for it. It wasn't until a few years later that I finally heard the term "Inversion of Control".  Simply put, "Inversion of Control" takes the creation of objects that used to be within the control (and therefore a responsibility of) of your component and moves it to some outside force.  For example, consider the following code which follows the old "always program against an interface" rule in the manner of many corporate development shops: 1: ICatalog catalog = new Catalog(); 2: Category[] categories = catalog.GetCategories(); In this example, I met the requirement of the rule by declaring the variable as ICatalog, but I didn't hit "it doesn't tie you to a specific implementation" because I explicitly created an instance of the concrete Catalog object.  If I want to test the functionality of the code I just wrote I have to have an environment in which Catalog can be created along with any of the resources upon which it depends (e.g. configuration files, database connections, etc) in order to test my functionality.  That's a lot of setup work and one of the things that I think ultimately discourages real buy-in of unit testing in many development shops. So how do I test my code without needing Catalog to work?  A very primitive approach I've seen is to change the line the instantiates catalog to read: 1: ICatalog catalog = new FakeCatalog();   once the test is run and passes, the code is switched back to the real thing.  This obviously poses a huge risk for introducing test code into production and in my opinion is worse than just keeping the dependency and its associated setup work.  Another popular approach is to make use of Factory methods which use an object whose "job" is to know how to obtain a valid instance of the object.  Using this approach, the code may look something like this: 1: ICatalog catalog = CatalogFactory.GetCatalog();   The code inside the factory is responsible for deciding "what kind" of catalog is needed.  This is a far better approach than the previous one, but it does make projects grow considerably because now in addition to the interface, the real implementation, and the fake implementation(s) for testing you have added a minimum of one factory (or at least a factory method) for each of your interfaces.  Once again, developers say "that's too complicated and has me writing a bunch of useless code" and quietly slip back into just creating a new Catalog and chalking any test failures up to "it will probably work on the server". This is where software intended specifically to facilitate Inversion of Control comes into play.  There are many libraries that take on the Inversion of Control responsibilities in .Net and most of them have many pros and cons.  From this point forward I'll discuss concepts from the standpoint of the Unity framework produced by Microsoft's Patterns and Practices team.  I'm primarily focusing on this library because it questions about it inspired this posting. At Unity's core and that of most any IoC framework is a catalog or registry of components.  This registry can be configured either through code or using the application's configuration file and in the most simple terms says "interface X maps to concrete implementation Y".  It can get much more complicated, but I want to keep things at the "what does it do" level instead of "how does it do it".  The object that exposes most of the Unity functionality is the UnityContainer.  This object exposes methods to configure the catalog as well as the Resolve<T> method which is used to obtain an instance of the type represented by T.  When using the Resolve<T> method, Unity does not necessarily have to just "new up" the requested object, but also can track dependencies of that object and ensure that the entire dependency chain is satisfied. There are three basic ways that I have seen Unity used within projects.  Those are through classes directly using the Unity container, classes requiring injection of dependencies, and classes making use of the Service Locator pattern. The first usage of Unity is when classes are aware of the Unity container and directly call its Resolve method whenever they need the services advertised by an interface.  The up side of this approach is that IoC is utilized, but the down side is that every class has to be aware that Unity is being used and tied directly to that implementation. Many developers don't like the idea of as close a tie to specific IoC implementation as is represented by using Unity within all of your classes and for the most part I agree that this isn't a good idea.  As an alternative, classes can be designed for Dependency Injection.  Dependency Injection is where a force outside the class itself manipulates the object to provide implementations of the interfaces that the class needs to interact with the outside world.  This is typically done either through constructor injection where the object has a constructor that accepts an instance of each interface it requires or through property setters accepting the service providers.  When using dependency, I lean toward the use of constructor injection because I view the constructor as being a much better way to "discover" what is required for the instance to be ready for use.  During resolution, Unity looks for an injection constructor and will attempt to resolve instances of each interface required by the constructor, throwing an exception of unable to meet the advertised needs of the class.  The up side of this approach is that the needs of the class are very clearly advertised and the class is unaware of which IoC container (if any) is being used.  The down side of this approach is that you're required to maintain the objects passed to the constructor as instance variables throughout the life of your object and that objects which coordinate with many external services require a lot of additional constructor arguments (this gets ugly and may indicate a need for refactoring). The final way that I've seen and used Unity is to make use of the ServiceLocator pattern, of which the Patterns and Practices team has also provided a Unity-compatible implementation.  When using the ServiceLocator, your class calls ServiceLocator.Retrieve in places where it would have called Resolve on the Unity container.  Like using Unity directly, it does tie you directly to the ServiceLocator implementation and makes your code aware that dependency injection is taking place, but it does have the up side of giving you the freedom to swap out the underlying IoC container if necessary.  I'm not hugely concerned with hiding IoC entirely from the class (I view this as a "nice to have"), so the single biggest problem that I see with the ServiceLocator approach is that it provides no way to proactively advertise needs in the way that constructor injection does, allowing more opportunity for difficult to track runtime errors. This blog entry has not been intended in any way to be a definitive work on IoC, but rather as something to spur thought about why we program to interfaces and some ways to reach the intended value of the practice instead of having it just complicate your code.  I hope that it helps somebody begin or continue a journey away from being a "Cargo Cult Programmer".

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• REST to Objects in C#

  RESTful interfaces for web services are all the rage for many Web 2.0 sites.  If you want to consume these in a very simple fashion, LINQ to XML can do the job pretty easily in C#.  If you go searching for help on this, youll find a lot of incomplete solutions and fairly large toolkits and frameworks (guess how I know this) this quick article is meant to be a no fluff just stuff approach to making this work. POCO Objects Lets assume you have a Model that you want to suck data into from a RESTful web service.  Ideally this is a Plain Old CLR Object, meaning it isnt infected with any persistence or serialization goop.  It might look something like this: public class Entry { public int Id; public int UserId; public DateTime Date; public float Hours; public string Notes; public bool Billable;   public override string ToString() { return String.Format("[{0}] User: {1} Date: {2} Hours: {3} Notes: {4} Billable {5}", Id, UserId, Date, Hours, Notes, Billable); } } Not that this isnt a completely trivial object.  Lets look at the API for the service.  RESTful HTTP Service In this case, its TickSpots API, with the following sample output: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <entries type="array"> <entry> <id type="integer">24</id> <task_id type="integer">14</task_id> <user_id type="integer">3</user_id> <date type="date">2008-03-08</date> <hours type="float">1.00</hours> <notes>Had trouble with tribbles.</notes> <billable>true</billable> # Billable is an attribute inherited from the task <billed>true</billed> # Billed is an attribute to track whether the entry has been invoiced <created_at type="datetime">Tue, 07 Oct 2008 14:46:16 -0400</created_at> <updated_at type="datetime">Tue, 07 Oct 2008 14:46:16 -0400</updated_at> # The following attributes are derived and provided for informational purposes: <user_email>[email protected]</user_email> <task_name>Remove converter assembly</task_name> <sum_hours type="float">2.00</sum_hours> <budget type="float">10.00</budget> <project_name>Realign dilithium crystals</project_name> <client_name>Starfleet Command</client_name> </entry> </entries> Im assuming in this case that I dont necessarily care about all of the data fields the service is returning I just need some of them for my applications purposes.  Thus, you can see there are more elements in the <entry> XML than I have in my Entry class. Get The XML with C# The next step is to get the XML.  The following snippet does the heavy lifting once you pass it the appropriate URL: protected XElement GetResponse(string uri) { var request = WebRequest.Create(uri) as HttpWebRequest; request.UserAgent = ".NET Sample"; request.KeepAlive = false;   request.Timeout = 15 * 1000;   var response = request.GetResponse() as HttpWebResponse;   if (request.HaveResponse == true && response != null) { var reader = new StreamReader(response.GetResponseStream()); return XElement.Parse(reader.ReadToEnd()); } throw new Exception("Error fetching data."); } This is adapted from the Yahoo Developer article on Web Service REST calls.  Once you have the XML, the last step is to get the data back as your POCO. Use LINQ-To-XML to Deserialize POCOs from XML This is done via the following code: public IEnumerable<Entry> List(DateTime startDate, DateTime endDate) { string additionalParameters = String.Format("start_date={0}&end_date={1}", startDate.ToShortDateString(), endDate.ToShortDateString()); string uri = BuildUrl("entries", additionalParameters);   XElement elements = GetResponse(uri);   var entries = from e in elements.Elements() where e.Name.LocalName == "entry" select new Entry { Id = int.Parse(e.Element("id").Value), UserId = int.Parse(e.Element("user_id").Value), Date = DateTime.Parse(e.Element("date").Value), Hours = float.Parse(e.Element("hours").Value), Notes = e.Element("notes").Value, Billable = bool.Parse(e.Element("billable").Value) }; return entries; }   For completeness, heres the BuildUrl method for my TickSpot API wrapper: // Change these to your settings protected const string projectDomain = "DOMAIN.tickspot.com"; private const string authParams = "[email protected]&password=MyTickSpotPassword";   protected string BuildUrl(string apiMethod, string additionalParams) { if (projectDomain.Contains("DOMAIN")) { throw new ApplicationException("You must update your domain in ProjectRepository.cs."); } if (authParams.Contains("MyTickSpotPassword")) { throw new ApplicationException("You must update your email and password in ProjectRepository.cs."); } return string.Format("https://{0}/api/{1}?{2}&{3}", projectDomain, apiMethod, authParams, additionalParams); } Thats it!  Now go forth and consume XML and map it to classes you actually want to work with.  Have fun! Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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• DevConnections Spring 2010 Speaker Evals and Tips

  As a conference speaker, I always look forward to hearing from attendees whether they felt my sessions were valuable and worth their time.  Its always gratifying  get a high score, but of course its the (preferably constructive) criticism thats key to continued improvement.  Im by no means the best technical presenter around, and Im always looking for ways to improve. Ive recently spoken at a few events, including TechEd and an Ohio event called Stir Trek.  DevConnections was actually back in April, but theyre just getting their final evals out to speakers.  TechEd, of course, does online evals so immediately after your talks you can see what people think.  Ill try and post my TechEd evals in the next week or so. I gave 3 talks at DevConnections Spring 2010 / VS2010 Launch which I discussed in this previous blog post.  In this follow-up, Im just going to share some eval info and my thoughts on it, albeit a couple of months later. Pragmatic ASP.NET Tips, Tricks, and Tools Evals Turned In: 27 Overall Eval: 3.74 Average Score: 3.47 89% found the technical level Just Right.  7.4% thought it was too basic (3.6% did not respond).  Since nobody thought the content was Too complex, I could perhaps have added some more complex material, but having about 90% say its Just Right is pretty good. 92% said at least 50% of the material was new to them.  36% said 75% or more was new.  Thats also pretty good, I think. 77.8% can use the information immediately; 15% can use it within 2-6 months (7.2 % no response). Overall 78% rated the session Excellent, 18% Good, 4% Fair. All comments (9): Steve did a great job Excellent session! It was good. Im now super excited to attend Steves other sessions later today.  Very useful. One of the best speakers here.  Bring him back to future conferences please. Continue to have this session with new and old stuff.  I always find something I did not know about. Excellent!  This was the best session Ive seen all week. Did not increase font on all pages could not see. For Steve to have had more sessions. Note to self make the fonts bigger across the board.  Otherwise, this is all good for my ego. :)  This is always a very popular session and one I really enjoy giving.  Tips and Tricks talks are pretty easy because you dont have to go in depth with any particular thing, and theyre almost always with existing technology so youre not dealing with betas, lack of documentation, and other issues.  Its an easy session to do well, in my experience, and one which I think attendees definitely appreciate.   Whats New in ASP.NET MVC 2 Evals Turned In: 23 Overall Eval: 3.77 Average Score: 3.47 (wow, I cant believe I scored better on this talk than the tips and tricks talk, which Ive given many times and was more excited about) 96% found the technical level Just Right.  90% found 50% or more of the material to be new.  43% can use the info immediately, and another 43% can use it within 2-6 months I guess that speaks to adoption rates of MVC 2 among my attendees Overall 74% said the session was Excellent, 22% Good.  4% No Response. All Comments (6): Great job, thank you. Great speaker! Really good, a little lost in the code at some points, but great information. Speaker needs to repeat questions from audience for everyone to hear. Exceeded my expectations. Great speaker, very informative. I really do try to religiously repeat questions from the audience for everyone to hear, but obviously I didnt do it 100% of the time.  Note to self remember to repeat questions.  That and making fonts big are really basic speaker best practices, which just goes to prove that fundamentals are always something that can be perfected.   SOLIDify Your ASP.NET MVC 2 Application Evals Turned In: 8 (!) Overall Eval: 3.63 Average Score: 3.47 As I recall this was one of the last talks of the day / show, which might account for the low number of evals turned in.  I dont recall speaking to an empty room for this talk, although it certainly wasnt as crowded as the tips and tricks talk. 100% found the technical level Just Right.  100% found at least half the material new.  62.5% can use it at once and 37.5% within 2-6 months.  62.5% rated the session Excellent overall; 37.5% Good.  Im thinking there were 5 evals with all 4s checked and 3 with all 3s checked (4 = Excellent, 3 = Good) All Comments (3): This covered many topics Ive read about recently, and it helped reinforce them. It was a nice overview of the solid principle, but I thought there might be specifics for MVC2.  I am glad there is not. Move a little slower. Ok, so another fundamental dont go too fast.  Looks like I got one fundamental tip from the comments of each talk. My Take-Aways Remember the fundamentals.  Its worth going through a checklist prior to presenting to make sure these things are fresh in your mind.  Increase all font sizes.  Repeat all questions from audience members without microphones (this is also a great way to stall for time, btw).  Resist the urge to move too quickly especially if youre nervous or short of time.  Writing this up in a blog post also further reinforces these fundamentals for me, which is one of the main reasons why I do it I retain things better when I write them, and even moreso when I write them for public consumption since I have to really think about what Im saying.  And maybe a few of you find this interesting or helpful, which is a bonus. Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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• 5 Ways Android Still Disappoints (Me)

  - by TStewartDev

  Let me make this clear: I'm annoyed with Apple. I don't like their current policies and I don't like where Steve Jobs is taking the company. In general, I don't like it when any one company gets too much control in a market. When that happens, the leading company dictates the game and as consumers, our options all but disappear. That said, I'm still going to buy a new iPhone next week. My Apple-hating friends seem to desperately want me to go Android instead, but frankly, it's not good enough for me, and here are the reasons why. The Modern WinMo One of the reasons that Microsoft has identified for Windows Mobile's rapid decline is the breadth of hardware. They exercised little control over manufacturer's implementations. In theory, that sounds great. We as consumers have lots of choice. In practice, though, it meant among other things that updates to the devices were left up to the manufacturers. As a result, that rarely happened. (I'm still bitter at Toshiba for leaving me hanging back in 2002.) And now, Google is doing the same thing with Android. Case in point: my wife has a Motorola Backflip that we bought in April. It was released in March. Motorola says it will get Android 2.1 "sometime in Q3". Great. Meanwhile, I pull down the latest version of iPhone OS (now iOS) and install it the same day it's released. You may say that I can't judge Android by one lazy manufacturer. Yup, I sure can. With Apple, my original iPhone has been supported perfectly for 3 years. With Android, I will have to wait for upgrades after Google releases them, possibly indefinitely. Not cool. AT&T We signed a new contract with AT&T in April to get my wife's phone. I've had a reasonable experience with them. I don't imagine my experience with Verizon would be any better, and I'm relatively confident that Sprint doesn't have the coverage it takes to work well for us. The fact is, AT&T, for whatever reason, doesn't have jack for Android phones. May not be Android's fault, but it's still a shortcoming that prevents me from having it just like the iPhone's exclusivity keeps some folks on other networks from having it. Innovation? What Innovation? Android has a nice dashboard and a great notification system and… nothing else original. I keep reading about how disappointing the iPhone is nowadays. "It has no innovation," people say. Who does? Android has modeled its behavior after the iPhone. That's fine, but if all you've got is a similar product and I'm invested both skill-wise and app-wise in my current platform, why should I change? Microsoft's new Windows Phone 7 looks somewhat innovative, and I'm pretty excited to see what they'll bring to the table, but that's another six months away, at least. I've got a 3 year old phone that has some annoying issues now (thanks to recent encounters with water). I need a new phone now. Is This Going to Work? There's no shortage of criticism of Apple over its App Store policies, and I've vented my own anger about it. However, I will give them credit: their screening of apps has done a great job of weeding out the crap and gives an excellent indication that the app will work on my device. How about Android? Nope. It might work on your phone. Maybe. You'll have to try it to see. Get burned by it? Well, write a nasty review to try to keep others from making the mistake you did. If you don't mind doing that stuff, then Android is the platform for you. Personally, I'd rather have a receptionist screening out the telemarketing and survey calls than hang up on them myself, but that's your call. Slow, Slowing, Slower All this yapping about multitasking. This is an area I've been on Apple's side from the beginning. Sorry folks, but this is the number one reason I hated Windows Mobile: the longer you use it, the slower it gets because it doesn't kill apps. I'm with Steve Jobs on this one: if you see a task manager, we're doing it wrong. I don't want to have to manually kill apps. I hate doing that on Windows let alone on a mobile device. To me, priority one should be keeping the device speedy. Waiting for your device to respond is unacceptable. Bonus! Taken from iPhone Letdown? 8 Things Apple Didn't Announce, here are my responses: 4G Yeah, let me know if your area actually has it. I live in Lincoln, Nebraska. No carrier is going to have 4G here for at least 3 years. Meanwhile, you still get to pay for it. Yay! Cloud iTunes/OTA Sync You got me here. Of course, whether or not your Android device will be able to do it is always a good question. 3G Video Chat You got me here, too. I'm sure you spent countless hours in front of your phone with video chat. Also, I can't wait for the "No Video Chat While Driving" laws. Mobile Hotspot This is a neat feature, but as the author points out, it's left up to the carrier whether to implement it or not. Pretty sure any Android phones that come to AT&T won't have this enabled in the foreseeable future. Is Verizon even allowing this? I just figured Sprint was because they're failing so hard at keeping customers. Free MobileMe I use Google's services with my iPhone. The only people I know who use MobileMe are Apple fanboys and fangirls. If you choose to pay for a service that you can get for free, that's your decision, not Apple's. Voice Input Voice input has been available on phones (even "dumb" phones) for years now. iPhone does have the ability, though limited. Why don't I hear people telling their phones what to do? Maybe because it's still easier to use your fingers than talk to it. Get back to me when this becomes an important feature. Free Navigation Maybe this will be a bigger deal to me now that I'm getting a phone with GPS, but when using my buddy's 3gs, Google maps has worked just fine. Maybe I just don't trust turn-by-turn navigation enough to want it. Dashboard The only legitimate complaint on this list, to me. iPhone's home screen is pathetic, doubly so for the iPad. What a waste of perfectly usable space. I also want to add notifications to this list. Android's notification panel is far superior to the iPhone's. I don't want to hunt all over my screen to find little red dots. Put 'em in one place, Apple.

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• Feedback on meeting of the Linux User Group of Mauritius

  Once upon a time in a country far far away... Okay, actually it's not that bad but it has been a while since the last meeting of the Linux User Group of Mauritius (LUGM). There have been plans in the past but it never really happened. Finally, Selven took the opportunity and organised a new meetup with low administrative overhead, proper scheduling on alternative dates and a small attendee's survey on the preferred option. All the pre-work was nicely executed. First, I wasn't sure whether it would be possible to attend. Luckily I got some additional information, like children should come, too, and I was sold to this community gathering. According to other long-term members of the LUGM it was the first time 'ever' that a gathering was organised outside of Quatre Bornes, and I have to admit it was great! LUGM - user group meeting on the 15.06.2013 in L'Escalier Quick overview of Linux & the LUGM With a little bit of delay the LUGM meeting officially started with a quick overview and introduction to Linux presented by Avinash. During the session he told the audience that there had been quite some activity over the island some years ago but unfortunately it had been quiet during recent times. Of course, we also spoke about the acknowledged world dominance of Linux - thanks to Android - and the interesting possibilities for countries like Mauritius. It is known that a couple of public institutions have there back-end infrastructure running on Red Hat Linux systems but the presence on the desktop is still very low. Users are simply hanging on to Windows XP and older versions of Microsoft Office. Following the introduction of the LUGM Ajay joined into the session and it quickly changed into a panel discussion with lots of interesting questions and answers, sharing of first-hand experience either on the job or in private use of Linux, and a couple of ideas about how the LUGM could promote Linux a bit more in Mauritius. It was great to get an insight into other attendee's opinion and activities. Especially taking into consideration that I'm already using Linux since around 1996/97. Frankly speaking, I bought a SuSE 4.x distribution back in those days because I couldn't achieve certain tasks on Windows NT 4.0 without spending a fortune. OpenELEC Mediacenter Next, Selven gave us decent introduction on OpenELEC: Open Embedded Linux Entertainment Center (OpenELEC) is a small Linux distribution built from scratch as a platform to turn your computer into an XBMC media center. OpenELEC is designed to make your system boot fast, and the install is so easy that anyone can turn a blank PC into a media machine in less than 15 minutes. I didn't know about it until this presentation. In the past, I was mainly attached to Video Disk Recorder (VDR) as it allows the use of satellite receiver cards very easily. Hm, somehow I'm still missing my precious HTPC that I had to leave back in Germany years ago. It was great piece of hardware and software; self-built PC in a standard HiFi-sized (43cm) black desktop casing with 2 full-featured Hauppauge DVB-s cards, an old-fashioned Voodoo graphics card, WiFi card, Pioneer slot-in DVD drive, and fully remote controlled via infra-red thanks to Debian, VDR and LIRC. With EP Guide, scheduled recordings and general multimedia centre it offered all the necessary comfort in the living room, besides a Nintendo game console; actually a GameCube at that time... But I have to admit that putting OpenELEC on a Raspberry Pi would be a cool DIY project in the near future. LUGM - our next generation of linux users (15.06.2013) Project Evil Genius (PEG) Don't be scared of the paragraph header. Ish gave us a cool explanation why he named it PEG - Project Evil Genius; it's because of the time of the day when he was scripting down his ideas to be able to build, package and provide software applications to various Linux distributions. The main influence came from openSuSE but the platform didn't cater for his needs and ideas, so he started to work out something on his own. During his passionate session he also talked about the amazing experience he had due to other Linux users from all over the world. During the next couple of days Ish promised to put his script to GitHub... Looking forward to that. Check out Ish's personal blog over at hacklog.in. Highly recommended to read. Why India? Simply because the registration fees per year for an Indian domain are approximately 20 times less than for a Mauritian domain (.mu). Exploring the beach of L'Escalier af the meeting 'After-party' at the beach of L'Escalier Puh, after such interesting sessions, ideas around Linux and good conversation during the breaks and over lunch it was time for a little break-out. Selven suggested that we all should head down to the beach of L'Escalier and get some impressions of nature down here in the south of the island. Talking about 'beach' ;-) - absolutely not comparable to the white-sanded ones here in Flic en Flac... There are no lagoons down at the south coast of Mauriitus, and watching the breaking waves is a different experience and joy after all. Unfortunately, I was a little bit worried about the thoughtless littering at such a remote location. You have to drive on natural paths through the sugar cane fields and I was really shocked by the amount of rubbish lying around almost everywhere. Sad, really sad and it concurs with Yasir's recent article on the same topic. Resumé & outlook It was a great event. I met with new people, had some good conversations, and even my children enjoyed themselves the whole day. The location was well-chosen, enough space for each and everyone, parking spaces and even a playground for the children. Also, a big "Thank You" to Selven and his helpers for the organisation and preparation of lunch. I'm kind of sure that this was an exceptional meeting of LUGM and I'm really looking forward to the next gathering of Linux geeks. Hopefully, soon. All images are courtesy of Avinash Meetoo. More pictures are available on Flickr.

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• Google Analytics on Android

  - by pjv

  There is a specific and official analytics SDK for native Android apps (note that I'm not talking about webpages in apps on a phone). This library basically sends pages and events to Google Analytics and you can view your analytics in exactly the same dashboard as for websites. Since my background is apps rather than websites, and since a lot of the Google Analytics terminology seems particularly inapplicable to a native app, I need some pointers. Please discuss my remarks, provide some clarification where you think I'm off-track, and above all share good experiences! 1. Page Views Pages mostly can match different Activities (and Dialogs) being displayed. Activities can be visible behind non-full-screen Activities however, though only the top-level Activity can be interacted. This sort-off clashes with a "(page) view". You'd also want at least one page view for each visit and therefore put one page view tracker in the Application class. However this does not constitute a window or sorts. Usually an Activity will open at the same time, so the time spent on that page will have been 0. This will influence your "time spent" statistics. How are these counted anyway? Moreover, there is a loose coupling between the Activities, by means of Intents. A user can, much like on any website, step in at any Activity, although usually this then concerns resuming the application where he left off. This makes that the hierarchy of Activities usually is very flat. And since there are no url's involved. What meaning would using slashes in page titles have, such as "/Home"? All pages would appear on an equal level in the reports, so no content drilldown. Non-unique page views seem to be counted as some kind of indicator of successfulness: how often does the visitor revisit the page. When the user rotates the screen however usually an Activity resumes again, thus making it a new page view. This happens a lot. Maybe a well-thought-through placement of the call might solve this, or placing several, I'm not sure. How to deal with Page Views? 2. Events I'd say there are two sorts: A user event Something that happened, usually as an indirect consequence of the above. The latter particularly is giving me headaches. First of all, many events aren't written in code any more, but pieced logically together by means of Intents. This means that there is no place to put the analytics call. You'd either have to give up this advantage and start doing it the old-fashioned way in favor of good analytics, or, just be missing some events. Secondly, as a developer you're not so much interested in when a user clicks a button, but if the action that should have been performed really was performed and what the result was. There seems to be no clear way to get resulting data into Google Analytics (what's up with the integers? I want to put in Strings!). The same that applies to the flat pages hierarchy, also goes for the event categories. You could do "vertical" categories (topically, that is), but some code is shared "horizontally" and the tracking will be equally shared. Just as with the Intents mechanism, inheritance makes it hard for you to put the tracking in the right places at all times. And I can't really imagine "horizontal" categories. Unless you start making really small categories, such as all the items form the same menu in one category, I have a hard time grasping the concept. Finally, how do you deal with cancelling? Usually you both have an explicit cancel mechanism by ways of a button, as well as the implicit cancel when the "back"-button is pressed to leave the activity and there were no changes. The latter also applies to "saves", when the back button is pressed and there ARE changes. How are you consequently going to catch all these if not by doing all the "back"-button work yourself? How to deal with events? 3. Goals For goal types I have choice of: URL Destination, Time on Site, and Pages/Visit. Most apps don't have a funnel that leads the user to some "registration done" or "order placed" page. Apps have either already been bought (in which case you want to stimulate the user to love your app, so that he might bring on new buyers) or are paid for by in-app ads. So URL Destination is not a very important goal. Time on Site also seems troublesome. First, I have some doubt on how this would be measured. Second, I don't necessarily want my user to spend a lot of time in my already paid app, just be active and content. Equivalently, why not mention how frequent a user uses your app? Regarding Pages/Visit I already mentioned how screen orientation changes blow up the page view numbers. In an app I'd be most interested in events/visit to measure the user's involvement/activity. If he's intensively using the app then he must be loving it right? Furthermore, I also have some small funnels (that do not lead to conversion though) that I want to see streamlined. In my mind those funnels would end in events rather than page views but that seems not to be possible. I could also measure clickthroughs on in-app ads, but then I'd need to track those as Page Views rather than Events, in view of "URL Destination". What are smart goals for apps and how can you fit them on top of Analytics? 4. Optimisation Is there a smart way to manually do what "Website Optimiser" does for websites? Most importantly, how would I track different landing page designs? 5. Traffic Sources Referrals deal with installation time referrals, if you're smart enough to get them included. But perhaps I'd also want to get some data which third-party app sends users to my app to perform some actions (this app interoperability is possible via Intents). Many of the terminologies related to "Traffic Sources" seem totally meaningless and there is no possibility of connecting in AdSense. What are smart uses of this data? 6. Visitors Of the "Browser capabilities", "Network Properties" and "Mobile" tabs, many things are pointless as they have no influence on / relation with my mostly offline app that won't use flash anyway. Only if you drill down far enough, can you get to OS versions, which do matter a lot. I even forgot where you could check what exact Android devices visited. What are smart uses of this data? How can you make the relevant info more prominent? 7. Other No in-page analytics. I have to register my app as a web-url (What!?)?

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• How to begin? Windows 8 Development

  - by Dennis Vroegop

  Ok. I convinced you in my last post to do some Win8 development. You want a piece of that cake, or whatever your reasons may be. Good! Welcome to the club! Now let me ask you a question: what are you going to write? Ah. That’s the big one, isn’t it? What indeed? If you have been creating applications for computers before you’re in for quite a shock. The way people perceive apps on a tablet is quite different from what we know as applications. There’s a reason we call them apps instead of applications! Yes, technically they are applications but we don’t call them apps only because it sounds cool. The abbreviated form of the word applications itself is a pointer. Apps are small. Apps are focused. Apps are more lightweight. Apps do one thing but they do that one thing extremely good. In the ‘old’ days we wrote huge systems. We build ecosystems of services, screens, databases and more to create a system that provides value for the user. Think about it: what application do you use most at work? Can you in one sentence describe what it is, or what it does and yet still distinctively describe its purpose? I doubt you can. Let’s have a look at Outlouk. We all know it and we all love or hate it. But what is it? A mail program? No, there’s so much more there: calendar, contacts, RSS feeds and so on. Some call it a ‘collaboration’  application but that’s not really true as well. After all, why should a collaboration application give me my schedule for the day? I think the best way to describe Outlook is “client for Exchange”  although that isn’t accurate either. Anyway: Outlook is a great application but it’s not an ‘app’ and therefor not very suitable for WinRT. Ok. Disclaimer here: yes, you can write big applications for WinRT. Some will. But that’s not what 99.9% of the developers will do. So I am stating here that big applications are not meant for WinRT. If 0.01% of the developers think that this is nonsense then they are welcome to go ahead but for the majority here this is not what we’re talking about. So: Apps are small, lightweight and good at what they do but only at that. If you’re a Phone developer you already know that: Phone apps on any platform fit the description I have above. If you’ve ever worked in a large cooperation before you might have seen one of these before: the Mission Statement. It’s supposed to be a oneliner that sums up what the company is supposed to do. Funny enough: although this doesn’t work for large companies it does work for defining your app. A mission statement for an app describes what it does. If it doesn’t fit in the mission statement then your app is going to get to big and will fail. A statement like this should be in the following style “<your app name> is the best app to <describe single task>” Fill in the blanks, write it and go! Mmm.. not really. There are some things there we need to think about. But the statement is a very, very important one. If you cannot fit your app in that line you’re preparing to fail. Your app will become to big, its purpose will be unclear and it will be hard to use. People won’t download it and those who do will give it a bad rating therefor preventing that huge success you’ve been dreaming about. Stick to the statement! Ok, let’s give it a try: “PlanesAreCool” is the best app to do planespotting in the field. You might have seen these people along runways of airports: taking photographs of airplanes and noting down their numbers and arrival- and departure times. We are going to help them out with our great app! If you look at the statement, can you guess what it does? I bet you can. If you find out it isn’t clear enough of if it’s too broad, refine it. This is probably the most important step in the development of your app so give it enough time! So. We’ve got the statement. Print it out, stick it to the wall and look at it. What does it tell you? If you see this, what do you think the app does? Write that down. Sit down with some friends and talk about it. What do they expect from an app like this? Write that down as well. Brainstorm. Make a list of features. This is mine: Note planes Look up aircraft carriers Add pictures of that plane Look up airfields Notify friends of new spots Look up details of a type of plane Plot a graph with arrival and departure times Share new spots on social media Look up history of a particular aircraft Compare your spots with friends Write down arrival times Write down departure times Write down wind conditions Write down the runway they take Look up weather conditions for next spotting day Invite friends to join you for a day of spotting. Now, I must make it clear that I am not a planespotter nor do I know what one does. So if the above list makes no sense, I apologize. There is a lesson: write apps for stuff you know about…. First of all, let’s look at our statement and then go through the list of features. Remove everything that has nothing to do with that statement! If you end up with an empty list, try again with both steps. Note planes Look up aircraft carriers Add pictures of that plane Look up airfields Notify friends of new spots Look up details of a type of plane Plot a graph with arrival and departure times Share new spots on social media Look up history of a particular aircraft Compare your spots with friends Write down arrival times Write down departure times Write down wind conditions Write down the runway they take Look up weather conditions for next spotting day Invite friends to join you for a day of spotting. That's better. The things I removed could be pretty useful to a plane spotter and could be fun to write. But do they match the statement? I said that the app is for spotting in the field, so “look up airfields” doesn’t belong there: I know where I am so why look it up? And the same goes for inviting friends or looking up the weather conditions for tomorrow. I am at the airfield right now, looking through my binoculars at the planes. I know the weather now and I don’t care about tomorrow. If you feel the items you’ve crossed out are valuable, then why not write another app? One that says “SpotNoter” is the best app for preparing a day of spotting with my friends. That’s a different app! Remember: Win8 apps are small and very good at doing ONE thing, and one thing only! If you have made that list, it’s time to prepare the navigation of your app. The navigation is how users see your app and how they use it. We’ll do that next time!

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• Applications: The Mathematics of Movement, Part 2

  - by TechTwaddle

  In part 1 of this series we saw how we can make the marble move towards the click point, with a fixed speed. In this post we’ll see, first, how to get rid of Atan2(), sine() and cosine() in our calculations, and, second, reducing the speed of the marble as it approaches the destination, so it looks like the marble is easing into it’s final position. As I mentioned in one of the previous posts, this is achieved by making the speed of the marble a function of the distance between the marble and the destination point. Getting rid of Atan2(), sine() and cosine() Ok, to be fair we are not exactly getting rid of these trigonometric functions, rather, replacing one form with another. So instead of writing sin(?), we write y/length. You see the point. So instead of using the trig functions as below, double x = destX - marble1.x; double y = destY - marble1.y; //distance between destination and current position, before updating marble position distanceSqrd = x * x + y * y; double angle = Math.Atan2(y, x); //Cos and Sin give us the unit vector, 6 is the value we use to magnify the unit vector along the same direction incrX = speed * Math.Cos(angle); incrY = speed * Math.Sin(angle); marble1.x += incrX; marble1.y += incrY; we use the following, double x = destX - marble1.x; double y = destY - marble1.y; //distance between destination and marble (before updating marble position) lengthSqrd = x * x + y * y; length = Math.Sqrt(lengthSqrd); //unit vector along the same direction as vector(x, y) unitX = x / length; unitY = y / length; //update marble position incrX = speed * unitX; incrY = speed * unitY; marble1.x += incrX; marble1.y += incrY; so we replaced cos(?) with x/length and sin(?) with y/length. The result is the same.   Adding oomph to the way it moves In the last post we had the speed of the marble fixed at 6, double speed = 6; to make the marble decelerate as it moves, we have to keep updating the speed of the marble in every frame such that the speed is calculated as a function of the length. So we may have, speed = length/12; ‘length’ keeps decreasing as the marble moves and so does speed. The Form1_MouseUp() function remains the same as before, here is the UpdatePosition() method, private void UpdatePosition() {     double incrX = 0, incrY = 0;     double lengthSqrd = 0, length = 0, lengthSqrdNew = 0;     double unitX = 0, unitY = 0;     double speed = 0;     double x = destX - marble1.x;     double y = destY - marble1.y;     //distance between destination and marble (before updating marble position)     lengthSqrd = x * x + y * y;     length = Math.Sqrt(lengthSqrd);     //unit vector along the same direction as vector(x, y)     unitX = x / length;     unitY = y / length;     //speed as a function of length     speed = length / 12;     //update marble position     incrX = speed * unitX;     incrY = speed * unitY;     marble1.x += incrX;     marble1.y += incrY;     //check for bounds     if ((int)marble1.x < MinX + marbleWidth / 2)     {         marble1.x = MinX + marbleWidth / 2;     }     else if ((int)marble1.x > (MaxX - marbleWidth / 2))     {         marble1.x = MaxX - marbleWidth / 2;     }     if ((int)marble1.y < MinY + marbleHeight / 2)     {         marble1.y = MinY + marbleHeight / 2;     }     else if ((int)marble1.y > (MaxY - marbleHeight / 2))     {         marble1.y = MaxY - marbleHeight / 2;     }     //distance between destination and marble (after updating marble position)     x = destX - (marble1.x);     y = destY - (marble1.y);     lengthSqrdNew = x * x + y * y;     /*      * End Condition:      * 1. If there is not much difference between lengthSqrd and lengthSqrdNew      * 2. If the marble has moved more than or equal to a distance of totLenToTravel (see Form1_MouseUp)      */     x = startPosX - marble1.x;     y = startPosY - marble1.y;     double totLenTraveledSqrd = x * x + y * y;     if ((int)totLenTraveledSqrd >= (int)totLenToTravelSqrd)     {         System.Console.WriteLine("Stopping because Total Len has been traveled");         timer1.Enabled = false;     }     else if (Math.Abs((int)lengthSqrd - (int)lengthSqrdNew) < 4)     {         System.Console.WriteLine("Stopping because no change in Old and New");         timer1.Enabled = false;     } } A point to note here is that, in this implementation, the marble never stops because it travelled a distance of totLenToTravelSqrd (first if condition). This happens because speed is a function of the length. During the final few frames length becomes very small and so does speed; and so the amount by which the marble shifts is quite small, and the second if condition always hits true first. I’ll end this series with a third post. In part 3 we will cover two things, one, when the user clicks, the marble keeps moving in that direction, rebounding off the screen edges and keeps moving forever. Two, when the user clicks on the screen, the marble moves towards it, with it’s speed reducing by every frame. It doesn’t come to a halt when the destination point is reached, instead, it continues to move, rebounds off the screen edges and slowly comes to halt. The amount of time that the marble keeps moving depends on how far the user clicks from the marble. I had mentioned this second situation here. Finally, here’s a video of this program running,

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• HTG Explains: Should You Buy Extended Warranties?

  - by Chris Hoffman

  Buy something at an electronics store and you’ll be confronted by a pushy salesperson who insists you need an extended warranty. You’ll also see extended warranties pushed hard when shopping online. But are they worth it? There’s a reason stores push extended warranties so hard. They’re almost always pure profit for the store involved. An electronics store may live on razor-thin product margins and make big profits on extended warranties and overpriced HDMI cables. You’re Already Getting Multiple Warranties First, back up. The product you’re buying already includes a warranty. In fact, you’re probably getting several different types of warranties. Store Return and Exchange: Most electronics stores allow you to return a malfunctioning product within the first 15 or 30 days and they’ll provide you with a new one. The exact period of time will vary from store to store. If you walk out of the store with a defective product and have to swap it for a new one within the first few weeks, this should be easy. Manufacturer Warranty: A device’s manufacturer — whether the device is a laptop, a television, or a graphics card — offers their own warranty period. The manufacturer warranty covers you after the store refuses to take the product back and exchange it. The length of this warranty depends on the type of product. For example, a cheap laptop may only offer a one-year manufacturer warranty, while a more expensive laptop may offer a two-year warranty. Credit Card Warranty Extension: Many credit cards offer free extended warranties on products you buy with that credit card. Credit card companies will often give you an additional year of warranty. For example, if you buy a laptop with a two year warranty and it fails in the third year, you could then contact your credit card company and they’d cover the cost of fixing or replacing it. Check your credit card’s benefits and fine print for more information. Why Extended Warranties Are Bad You’re already getting a fairly long warranty period, especially if you have a credit card that offers you a free extended warranty — these are fairly common. If the product you get is a “lemon” and has a manufacturing error, it will likely fail pretty soon — well within your warranty period. The extended warranty matters after all your other warranties are exhausted. In the case of a laptop with a two-year warranty that you purchase with a credit card giving you a one-year warranty extension, your extended warranty will kick in three years after you purchase the laptop. In that many years, your current laptop will likely feel pretty old and laptops that are as good — or better — will likely be pretty cheap. If it’s a television, better television displays will be available at a lower price point. You’ll either want to upgrade to a newer model or you’ll be able to buy a new, just-as-good product for very cheap. You’ll only have to pay out-of-pocket if your device fails after the normal warranty period — in over two or three years for typical laptops purchased with a decent credit card. Save the money you would have spent on the warranty and put it towards a future upgrade. How Much Do Extended Warranties Cost? Let’s look at an example from a typical pushy retail outlet, Best Buy. We went to Best Buy’s website and found a pretty standard $600 Samsung laptop. This laptop comes with a one-year warranty period. If purchased with a fairly common credit card, you can easily get a two-year warranty period on this laptop without spending an additional penny. (Yes, such credit cards are available with no yearly fees.) During the check-out process, Best Buy tries to sell you a Geek Squad “Accidental Protection Plan.” To get an additional year of Best Buy’s extended warranty, you’d have to pay $324.98 for a “3-Year Accidental Protection Plan”. You’d basically be paying more than half the price of your laptop for an additional year of warranty — remember, the standard warranties would cover you anyway for the first two years. If this laptop did break sometime between two and three years from now, we wouldn’t be surprised if you could purchase a comparable laptop for about $325 anyway. And, if you don’t need to replace it, you’ve saved that money. Best Buy would object that this isn’t a standard extended warranty. It’s a supercharged warranty plan that will also provide coverage if you spill something on your laptop or drop it and break it. You just have to ask yourself a question. What are the odds that you’ll drop your laptop or spill something on it? They’re probably pretty low if you’re a typical human being. Is it worth spending more than half the price of the laptop just in case you’ll make an uncommon mistake? Probably not. There may be occasional exceptions to this — some Apple users swear by Apple’s AppleCare, for example — but you should generally avoid buying these things. There’s a reason stores are so pushy about extended warranties, and it’s not because they want to help protect you. It’s because they’re making lots of profit from these plans, and they’re making so much profit because they’re not a good deal for customers. Image Credit: Philip Taylor on Flickr     

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• Making Those PanelBoxes Behave

  - by Duncan Mills

  I have a little problem to solve earlier this week - misbehaving <af:panelBox> components... What do I mean by that? Well here's the scenario, I have a page fragment containing a set of panelBoxes arranged vertically. As it happens, they are stamped out in a loop but that does not really matter. What I want to be able to do is to provide the user with a simple UI to close and open all of the panelBoxes in concert. This could also apply to showDetailHeader and similar items with a disclosed attrubute, but in this case it's good old panelBoxes.  Ok, so the basic solution to this should be self evident. I can set up a suitable scoped managed bean that the panelBoxes all refer to for their disclosed attribute state. Then the open all / close commandButtons in the UI can simply set the state of that bean for all the panelBoxes to pick up via EL on their disclosed attribute. Sound OK? Well that works basically without a hitch, but turns out that there is a slight problem and this is where the framework is attempting to be a little too helpful. The issue is that is the user manually discloses or hides a panelBox then that will override the value that the EL is setting. So for example. I start the page with all panelBoxes collapsed, all set by the EL state I'm storing on the session I manually disclose panelBox no 1. I press the Expand All button - all works as you would hope and all the panelBoxes are now disclosed, including of course panelBox 1 which I just expanded manually. Finally I press the Collapse All button and everything collapses except that first panelBox that I manually disclosed.  The problem is that the component remembers this manual disclosure and that overrides the value provided by the expression. If I change the viewId (navigate away and back) then the panelBox will start to behave again, until of course I touch it again! Now, the more astute amoungst you would think (as I did) Ah, sound like the MDS personalizaton stuff is getting in the way and the solution should simply be to set the dontPersist attribute to disclosed | ALL. Alas this does not fix the issue.  After a little noodling on the best way to approach this I came up with a solution that works well, although if you think of an alternative way do let me know. The principle is simple. In the disclosureListener for the panelBox I take a note of the clientID of the panelBox component that has been touched by the user along with the state. This all gets stored in a Map of Booleans in ViewScope which is keyed by clientID and stores the current disclosed state in the Boolean value.  The listener looks like this (it's held in a request scope backing bean for the page): public void handlePBDisclosureEvent(DisclosureEvent disclosureEvent) { String clientId = disclosureEvent.getComponent().getClientId(FacesContext.getCurrentInstance()); boolean state = disclosureEvent.isExpanded(); pbState.addTouchedPanelBox(clientId, state); } The pbState variable referenced here is a reference to the bean which will hold the state of the panelBoxes that lives in viewScope (recall that everything is re-set when the viewid is changed so keeping this in viewScope is just fine and cleans things up automatically). The addTouchedPanelBox() method looks like this: public void addTouchedPanelBox(String clientId, boolean state) { //create the cache if needed this is just a Map<String,Boolean> if (_touchedPanelBoxState == null) { _touchedPanelBoxState = new HashMap<String, Boolean>(); } // Simply put / replace _touchedPanelBoxState.put(clientId, state); } So that's the first part, we now have a record of every panelBox that the user has touched. So what do we do when the Collapse All or Expand All buttons are pressed? Here we do some JavaScript magic. Basically for each clientID that we have stored away, we issue a client side disclosure event from JavaScript - just as if the user had gone back and changed it manually. So here's the Collapse All button action: public String CloseAllAction() { submitDiscloseOverride(pbState.getTouchedClientIds(true), false); _uiManager.closeAllBoxes(); return null; }  The _uiManager.closeAllBoxes() method is just manipulating the master-state that all of the panelBoxes are bound to using EL. The interesting bit though is the line:  submitDiscloseOverride(pbState.getTouchedClientIds(true), false); To break that down, the first part is a call to that viewScoped state holder to ask for a list of clientIDs that need to be "tweaked": public String getTouchedClientIds(boolean targetState) { StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder(); if (_touchedPanelBoxState != null && _touchedPanelBoxState.size() > 0) { for (Map.Entry<String, Boolean> entry : _touchedPanelBoxState.entrySet()) { if (entry.getValue() == targetState) { if (sb.length() > 0) { sb.append(','); } sb.append(entry.getKey()); } } } return sb.toString(); } You'll notice that this method only processes those panelBoxes that will be in the wrong state and returns those as a comma separated list. This is then processed by the submitDiscloseOverride() method: private void submitDiscloseOverride(String clientIdList, boolean targetDisclosureState) { if (clientIdList != null && clientIdList.length() > 0) { FacesContext fctx = FacesContext.getCurrentInstance(); StringBuilder script = new StringBuilder(); script.append("overrideDiscloseHandler('"); script.append(clientIdList); script.append("',"); script.append(targetDisclosureState); script.append(");"); Service.getRenderKitService(fctx, ExtendedRenderKitService.class).addScript(fctx, script.toString()); } } This method constructs a JavaScript command to call a routine called overrideDiscloseHandler() in a script attached to the page (using the standard <af:resource> tag). That method parses out the list of clientIDs and sends the correct message to each one: function overrideDiscloseHandler(clientIdList, newState) { AdfLogger.LOGGER.logMessage(AdfLogger.INFO, "Disclosure Hander newState " + newState + " Called with: " + clientIdList); //Parse out the list of clientIds var clientIdArray = clientIdList.split(','); for (var i = 0; i < clientIdArray.length; i++){ var panelBox = flipPanel = AdfPage.PAGE.findComponentByAbsoluteId(clientIdArray[i]); if (panelBox.getComponentType() == "oracle.adf.RichPanelBox"){ panelBox.broadcast(new AdfDisclosureEvent(panelBox, newState)); } }  }  So there you go. You can see how, with a few tweaks the same code could be used for other components with disclosure that might suffer from the same problem, although I'd point out that the behavior I'm working around here us usually desirable. You can download the running example (11.1.2.2) from here. 

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• Data Source Connection Pool Sizing

  - by Steve Felts

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";} One of the most time-consuming procedures of a database application is establishing a connection. The connection pooling of the data source can be used to minimize this overhead.  That argues for using the data source instead of accessing the database driver directly. Configuring the size of the pool in the data source is somewhere between an art and science – this article will try to move it closer to science.  From the beginning, WLS data source has had an initial capacity and a maximum capacity configuration values.  When the system starts up and when it shrinks, initial capacity is used.  The pool can grow to maximum capacity.  Customers found that they might want to set the initial capacity to 0 (more on that later) but didn’t want the pool to shrink to 0.  In WLS 10.3.6, we added minimum capacity to specify the lower limit to which a pool will shrink.  If minimum capacity is not set, it defaults to the initial capacity for upward compatibility.   We also did some work on the shrinking in release 10.3.4 to reduce thrashing; the algorithm that used to shrink to the maximum of the currently used connections or the initial capacity (basically the unused connections were all released) was changed to shrink by half of the unused connections. The simple approach to sizing the pool is to set the initial/minimum capacity to the maximum capacity.  Doing this creates all connections at startup, avoiding creating connections on demand and the pool is stable.  However, there are a number of reasons not to take this simple approach. When WLS is booted, the deployment of the data source includes synchronously creating the connections.  The more connections that are configured in initial capacity, the longer the boot time for WLS (there have been several projects for parallel boot in WLS but none that are available).  Related to creating a lot of connections at boot time is the problem of logon storms (the database gets too much work at one time).   WLS has a solution for that by setting the login delay seconds on the pool but that also increases the boot time. There are a number of cases where it is desirable to set the initial capacity to 0.  By doing that, the overhead of creating connections is deferred out of the boot and the database doesn’t need to be available.  An application may not want WLS to automatically connect to the database until it is actually needed, such as for some code/warm failover configurations. There are a number of cases where minimum capacity should be less than maximum capacity.  Connections are generally expensive to keep around.  They cause state to be kept on both the client and the server, and the state on the backend may be heavy (for example, a process).  Depending on the vendor, connection usage may cost money.  If work load is not constant, then database connections can be freed up by shrinking the pool when connections are not in use.  When using Active GridLink, connections can be created as needed according to runtime load balancing (RLB) percentages instead of by connection load balancing (CLB) during data source deployment. Shrinking is an effective technique for clearing the pool when connections are not in use.  In addition to the obvious reason that there times where the workload is lighter,  there are some configurations where the database and/or firewall conspire to make long-unused or too-old connections no longer viable.  There are also some data source features where the connection has state and cannot be used again unless the state matches the request.  Examples of this are identity based pooling where the connection has a particular owner and XA affinity where the connection is associated with a particular RAC node.  At this point, WLS does not re-purpose (discard/replace) connections and shrinking is a way to get rid of the unused existing connection and get a new one with the correct state when needed. So far, the discussion has focused on the relationship of initial, minimum, and maximum capacity.  Computing the maximum size requires some knowledge about the application and the current number of simultaneously active users, web sessions, batch programs, or whatever access patterns are common.  The applications should be written to only reserve and close connections as needed but multiple statements, if needed, should be done in one reservation (don’t get/close more often than necessary).  This means that the size of the pool is likely to be significantly smaller then the number of users.   If possible, you can pick a size and see how it performs under simulated or real load.  There is a high-water mark statistic (ActiveConnectionsHighCount) that tracks the maximum connections concurrently used.  In general, you want the size to be big enough so that you never run out of connections but no bigger.   It will need to deal with spikes in usage, which is where shrinking after the spike is important.  Of course, the database capacity also has a big influence on the decision since it’s important not to overload the database machine.  Planning also needs to happen if you are running in a Multi-Data Source or Active GridLink configuration and expect that the remaining nodes will take over the connections when one of the nodes in the cluster goes down.  For XA affinity, additional headroom is also recommended.  In summary, setting initial and maximum capacity to be the same may be simple but there are many other factors that may be important in making the decision about sizing.

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• What's up with LDoms: Part 5 - A few Words about Consoles

  - by Stefan Hinker

  Back again to look at a detail of LDom configuration that is often forgotten - the virtual console server. Remember, LDoms are SPARC systems.  As such, each guest will have it's own OBP running.  And to connect to that OBP, the administrator will need a console connection.  Since it's OBP, and not some x86 BIOS, this console will be very serial in nature ;-)  It's really very much like in the good old days, where we had a terminal concentrator where all those serial cables ended up in.  Just like with other components in LDoms, the virtualized solution looks very similar. Every LDom guest requires exactly one console connection.  Envision this similar to the RS-232 port on older SPARC systems.  The LDom framework provides one or more console services that provide access to these connections.  This would be the virtual equivalent of a network terminal server (NTS), where all those serial cables are plugged in.  In the physical world, we'd have a list somewhere, that would tell us which TCP-Port of the NTS was connected to which server.  "ldm list" does just that: root@sun # ldm list NAME STATE FLAGS CONS VCPU MEMORY UTIL UPTIME primary active -n-cv- UART 16 7680M 0.4% 27d 8h 22m jupiter bound ------ 5002 20 8G mars active -n---- 5000 2 8G 0.5% 55d 14h 10m venus active -n---- 5001 2 8G 0.5% 56d 40m pluto inactive ------ 4 4G The column marked "CONS" tells us, where to reach the console of each domain. In the case of the primary domain, this is actually a (more) physical connection - it's the console connection of the physical system, which is either reachable via the ILOM of that system, or directly via the serial console port on the chassis. All the other guests are reachable through the console service which we created during the inital setup of the system.  Note that pluto does not have a port assigned.  This is because pluto is not yet bound.  (Binding can be viewed very much as the assembly of computer parts - CPU, Memory, disks, network adapters and a serial console cable are all put together when binding the domain.)  Unless we set the port number explicitly, LDoms Manager will do this on a first come, first serve basis.  For just a few domains, this is fine.  For larger deployments, it might be a good idea to assign these port numbers manually using the "ldm set-vcons" command.  However, there is even better magic associated with virtual consoles. You can group several domains into one console group, reachable through one TCP port of the console service.  This can be useful when several groups of administrators are to be given access to different domains, or for other grouping reasons.  Here's an example: root@sun # ldm set-vcons group=planets service=console jupiter root@sun # ldm set-vcons group=planets service=console pluto root@sun # ldm bind jupiter root@sun # ldm bind pluto root@sun # ldm list NAME STATE FLAGS CONS VCPU MEMORY UTIL UPTIME primary active -n-cv- UART 16 7680M 6.1% 27d 8h 24m jupiter bound ------ 5002 200 8G mars active -n---- 5000 2 8G 0.6% 55d 14h 12m pluto bound ------ 5002 4 4G venus active -n---- 5001 2 8G 0.5% 56d 42m root@sun # telnet localhost 5002 Trying 127.0.0.1... Connected to localhost. Escape character is '^]'. sun-vnts-planets: h, l, c{id}, n{name}, q:l DOMAIN ID DOMAIN NAME DOMAIN STATE 2 jupiter online 3 pluto online sun-vnts-planets: h, l, c{id}, n{name}, q:npluto Connecting to console "pluto" in group "planets" .... Press ~? for control options .. What I did here was add the two domains pluto and jupiter to a new console group called "planets" on the service "console" running in the primary domain.  Simply using a group name will create such a group, if it doesn't already exist.  By default, each domain has its own group, using the domain name as the group name.  The group will be available on port 5002, chosen by LDoms Manager because I didn't specify it.  If I connect to that console group, I will now first be prompted to choose the domain I want to connect to from a little menu. Finally, here's an example how to assign port numbers explicitly: root@sun # ldm set-vcons port=5044 group=pluto service=console pluto root@sun # ldm bind pluto root@sun # ldm list NAME STATE FLAGS CONS VCPU MEMORY UTIL UPTIME primary active -n-cv- UART 16 7680M 3.8% 27d 8h 54m jupiter active -t---- 5002 200 8G 0.5% 30m mars active -n---- 5000 2 8G 0.6% 55d 14h 43m pluto bound ------ 5044 4 4G venus active -n---- 5001 2 8G 0.4% 56d 1h 13m With this, pluto would always be reachable on port 5044 in its own exclusive console group, no matter in which order other domains are bound. Now, you might be wondering why we always have to mention the console service name, "console" in all the examples here.  The simple answer is because there could be more than one such console service.  For all "normal" use, a single console service is absolutely sufficient.  But the system is flexible enough to allow more than that single one, should you need them.  In fact, you could even configure such a console service on a domain other than the primary (or control domain), which would make that domain a real console server.  I actually have a customer who does just that - they want to separate console access from the control domain functionality.  But this is definately a rather sophisticated setup. Something I don't want to go into in this post is access control.  vntsd, which is the daemon providing all these console services, is fully RBAC-aware, and you can configure authorizations for individual users to connect to console groups or individual domain's consoles.  If you can't wait until I get around to security, check out the man page of vntsd. Further reading: The Admin Guide is rather reserved on this subject.  I do recommend to check out the Reference Manual. The manpage for vntsd will discuss all the control sequences as well as the grouping and authorizations mentioned here.

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• Lambda&rsquo;s for .NET made easy&hellip;

  - by mbcrump

  The purpose of my blog is to explain things for a beginner to intermediate c# programmer. I’ve seen several blog post that use lambda expressions always assuming the audience is familiar with them. The purpose of this post is to make them simple and easily understood. Let’s begin with a definition. A lambda expression is an anonymous function that can contain expressions and statements, and can be used to create delegates or expression tree types. So anonymous function… delegates or expression tree types? I don’t get it??? Confused yet?   Lets break this into a few definitions and jump right into the code. anonymous function – is an "inline" statement or expression that can be used wherever a delegate type is expected. delegate - is a type that references a method. Once a delegate is assigned a method, it behaves exactly like that method. The delegate method can be used like any other method, with parameters and a return value. Expression trees - represent code in a tree-like data structure, where each node is an expression, for example, a method call or a binary operation such as x < y.   Don’t worry if this still sounds confusing, lets jump right into the code with a simple 3 line program. We are going to use a Function Delegate (all you need to remember is that this delegate returns a value.) Lambda expressions are used most commonly with the Func and Action delegates, so you will see an example of both of these. Lambda Expression 3 lines. using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Text;   namespace ConsoleApplication7 {     class Program     {          static void Main(string[] args)         {             Func<int, int> myfunc = x => x *x;             Console.WriteLine(myfunc(6).ToString());             Console.ReadLine();         }       } } Is equivalent to Old way of doing it. using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Text;   namespace ConsoleApplication7 {     class Program     {          static void Main(string[] args)         {               Console.WriteLine(myFunc(6).ToString());             Console.ReadLine();         }            static int myFunc(int x)          {              return x * x;            }       } } In the example, there is a single parameter, x, and the expression is x*x. I’m going to stop here to make sure you are still with me. A lambda expression is an unnamed method written in place of a delegate instance. In other words, the compiler converts the lambda expression to either a : A delegate instance An expression tree All lambda have the following form: (parameters) => expression or statement block Now look back to the ones we have created. It should start to sink in. Don’t get stuck on the => form, use it as an identifier of a lambda. A Lamba expression can also be written in the following form: Lambda Expression. using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Text;   namespace ConsoleApplication7 {     class Program     {          static void Main(string[] args)         {             Func<int, int> myFunc = x =>             {                 return x * x;             };               Console.WriteLine(myFunc(6).ToString());             Console.ReadLine();         }       } } This form may be easier to read but consumes more space. Lets try an Action delegate – this delegate does not return a value. Action Delegate example. using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Text;   namespace ConsoleApplication7 {     class Program     {          static void Main(string[] args)         {             Action<string> myAction = (string x) => { Console.WriteLine(x); };             myAction("michael has made this so easy");                                   Console.ReadLine();         }       } } Lambdas can also capture outer variables (such as the example below) A lambda expression can reference the local variables and parameters of the method in which it’s defined. Outer variables referenced by a lambda expression are called captured variables. Capturing Outer Variables using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Text;   namespace ConsoleApplication7 {     class Program     {          static void Main(string[] args)         {             string mike = "Michael";             Action<string> myAction = (string x) => {                 Console.WriteLine("{0}{1}", mike, x);          };             myAction(" has made this so easy");                                   Console.ReadLine();         }       } } Lamba’s can also with a strongly typed list to loop through a collection.   Used w a strongly typed list. using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Text;   namespace ConsoleApplication7 {     class Program     {          static void Main(string[] args)         {             List<string> list = new List<string>() { "1", "2", "3", "4" };             list.ForEach(s => Console.WriteLine(s));             Console.ReadLine();         }       } } Outputs: 1 2 3 4 I think this will get you started with Lambda’s, as always consult the MSDN documentation for more information. Still confused? Hopefully you are not.

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• REST to Objects in C#

  RESTful interfaces for web services are all the rage for many Web 2.0 sites.  If you want to consume these in a very simple fashion, LINQ to XML can do the job pretty easily in C#.  If you go searching for help on this, youll find a lot of incomplete solutions and fairly large toolkits and frameworks (guess how I know this) this quick article is meant to be a no fluff just stuff approach to making this work. POCO Objects Lets assume you have a Model that you want to suck data into from a RESTful web service.  Ideally this is a Plain Old CLR Object, meaning it isnt infected with any persistence or serialization goop.  It might look something like this: public class Entry { public int Id; public int UserId; public DateTime Date; public float Hours; public string Notes; public bool Billable;   public override string ToString() { return String.Format("[{0}] User: {1} Date: {2} Hours: {3} Notes: {4} Billable {5}", Id, UserId, Date, Hours, Notes, Billable); } } Not that this isnt a completely trivial object.  Lets look at the API for the service.  RESTful HTTP Service In this case, its TickSpots API, with the following sample output: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <entries type="array"> <entry> <id type="integer">24</id> <task_id type="integer">14</task_id> <user_id type="integer">3</user_id> <date type="date">2008-03-08</date> <hours type="float">1.00</hours> <notes>Had trouble with tribbles.</notes> <billable>true</billable> # Billable is an attribute inherited from the task <billed>true</billed> # Billed is an attribute to track whether the entry has been invoiced <created_at type="datetime">Tue, 07 Oct 2008 14:46:16 -0400</created_at> <updated_at type="datetime">Tue, 07 Oct 2008 14:46:16 -0400</updated_at> # The following attributes are derived and provided for informational purposes: <user_email>[email protected]</user_email> <task_name>Remove converter assembly</task_name> <sum_hours type="float">2.00</sum_hours> <budget type="float">10.00</budget> <project_name>Realign dilithium crystals</project_name> <client_name>Starfleet Command</client_name> </entry> </entries> Im assuming in this case that I dont necessarily care about all of the data fields the service is returning I just need some of them for my applications purposes.  Thus, you can see there are more elements in the <entry> XML than I have in my Entry class. Get The XML with C# The next step is to get the XML.  The following snippet does the heavy lifting once you pass it the appropriate URL: protected XElement GetResponse(string uri) { var request = WebRequest.Create(uri) as HttpWebRequest; request.UserAgent = ".NET Sample"; request.KeepAlive = false;   request.Timeout = 15 * 1000;   var response = request.GetResponse() as HttpWebResponse;   if (request.HaveResponse == true && response != null) { var reader = new StreamReader(response.GetResponseStream()); return XElement.Parse(reader.ReadToEnd()); } throw new Exception("Error fetching data."); } This is adapted from the Yahoo Developer article on Web Service REST calls.  Once you have the XML, the last step is to get the data back as your POCO. Use LINQ-To-XML to Deserialize POCOs from XML This is done via the following code: public IEnumerable<Entry> List(DateTime startDate, DateTime endDate) { string additionalParameters = String.Format("start_date={0}&end_date={1}", startDate.ToShortDateString(), endDate.ToShortDateString()); string uri = BuildUrl("entries", additionalParameters);   XElement elements = GetResponse(uri);   var entries = from e in elements.Elements() where e.Name.LocalName == "entry" select new Entry { Id = int.Parse(e.Element("id").Value), UserId = int.Parse(e.Element("user_id").Value), Date = DateTime.Parse(e.Element("date").Value), Hours = float.Parse(e.Element("hours").Value), Notes = e.Element("notes").Value, Billable = bool.Parse(e.Element("billable").Value) }; return entries; }   For completeness, heres the BuildUrl method for my TickSpot API wrapper: // Change these to your settings protected const string projectDomain = "DOMAIN.tickspot.com"; private const string authParams = "[email protected]&password=MyTickSpotPassword";   protected string BuildUrl(string apiMethod, string additionalParams) { if (projectDomain.Contains("DOMAIN")) { throw new ApplicationException("You must update your domain in ProjectRepository.cs."); } if (authParams.Contains("MyTickSpotPassword")) { throw new ApplicationException("You must update your email and password in ProjectRepository.cs."); } return string.Format("https://{0}/api/{1}?{2}&{3}", projectDomain, apiMethod, authParams, additionalParams); } Thats it!  Now go forth and consume XML and map it to classes you actually want to work with.  Have fun! Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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• I'm a contract developer and I think I'm about to get screwed [closed]

  - by kagaku

  I do contract development on the side. You could say that I'm a contract developer? Considering I've only ever had one client I'd say that's not exactly the truth - more like I took a side job and needed some extra cash. It started out as a "rebuild our website and we'll pay you $10k" type project. Once that was complete (a bit over schedule, but certainly not over budget), the company hired me on as a "long term support" contractor. The contract is to go from March of this year, expiring on December 31st of this year - 10 months. Over which a payment is to be paid on the 30th of each month for a set amount. I've been fulfilling my end of the contract on all points - doing server maintenence, application and database changes, doing huge rush changes and pretty much just going above and beyond. Currently I'm in the middle of development of an iPhone mobile application (PhoneGap based) which is nearing completion (probably 3-4 weeks from submission). It has not been all peaches and flowers though. Each and every month when my paycheck comes due, there always seems to be an issue of sorts. These issues did not occur during the initial project, only during the support contract. The actual contract states that my check should be mailed out on the 30th of the month. I have received my check on time approximately once (on time being about 2-3 days within the 30th). I've received my paycheck as late as the 15th of the next month - over two weeks late. I've put up with it because I need the paycheck. There have been promises and promises of "we'll send it out on time next time! I promise" - only to receive it just as late the next month. When I ask about payment they give me a vibe like "why are you only worried about money?" - unfortunately I don't have the luxury of not worrying about money. The last straw was with my August payment, which should have been mailed on August 30th. I received it on September 12th. The reason for the delay? "USPS is delaying it man! we sent it out on the 1st!" is the reason I got. When I finally got the check in the mail, the postage on the envelope was marked September 10th - the date it was run through the postage machine. I've been outright lied to, at this point. I carry on working, because again - I need a paycheck. I orchestrated the move of our application to a new server, developed a bunch of new changes and continued work on the iPhone app. All told I probably went over my hourly allotment (I'm paid for 40 hours a month, I probably put in at least 50). On Saturday, the 1st, I gave the main contact at the company (a company of 3, by the way - this is not some big corporation) a ring and filled him in on the status of my work for the past two weeks. Unusually I hadn't heard from him since the middle of September. His response was "oh... well, that is nice and uh.. good job. well, we've been talking within the company about things and we've certainly got some decisions ahead of us..." - not verbatim but you get the idea (I hope?). I got out of this conversation that the site is not doing very well (which it's not) and they're considering pulling the plug. Crap, this contract is going to end early - there goes Christmas! Fine, that's alright, no problem. I'll get paid for the last months work and call it a day. Unfortunately I still haven't gotten last months check, and I'm getting dicked around now. "Oh.. we had problems transferring funds, we'll try and mail it out tomorrow" and "I left a VM with the finance guy, but I can't get ahold of him". So I'm getting the feeling I'm not getting paid for all the work I put in for September. This is obviously breach of contract, and I am pissed. Thinking irrationally, I considered changing all their passwords and holding their stuff hostage. Before I think it through (by the way, I am NOT going to do this, realized it would probably get me in trouble), I go and try some passwords for our various accounts. Google Apps? Oh, I'm no longer administrator here. Godaddy? Whoops, invalid password. Disqus? Nope, invalid password here too. Google Adsense / Analytics? Invalid password. Dedicated server account manager? Invalid password. Now, I have the servers root password - I just built the box last week and haven't had a chance to send the guy the root password. Wasn't in a rush, I manage the server and they never touch it. Now all of a sudden all the passwords except this one are changed; the writing is on the wall - I am out. Here's the conundrum. I have the root password, they do not. If I give them this password all the leverage I have is gone, out the door and out of my hands. During this argument of why am I not getting paid the guy sends me an email saying "oh by the way, what's the root username and password to the server?". Considering he knows absolutely nothing, I gave him an "admin" account which really has almost no rights. I still have exclusive access to the server, I just don't know where to go. I can hold their data hostage, but I'm almost positive this is the wrong thing to do. I'd consider it blackmail, regardless of whether or not I have gotten paid yet. I can "break" something on the server and give them the whole "well, if you were paying me I could fix it!" spiel. This works from a "well he's not holding their stuff hostage" point of view, but what stops them from hiring some one else to just fix the issue at hand? For all I know the guys nephew is a "l33t hax0r" and can figure it out for free. I can give in, document as much as I can and take him to small claims court. This is breach of contract, I'm not getting paid. I have a case, right? ???? Does anyone have any experience in this? What can I do? What are my options? I'm broke, I can't afford a lawyer and I can barely afford not getting this paycheck. My wife doesn't work (I work two jobs so she doesn't have to work - we have a 1 year old) and is already looking at getting a part time job to cover the bills. Long term we'll be fine, but this has pissed me off beyond belief! Help me out, I'm about to get screwed.

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• RTS style fog of war woes

  - by Fricken Hamster

  So I'm trying to make a rts style line of sight fog of war style engine for my grid based game. Currently I am getting a set of vertices by raycasting in 360 degree. Then I use that list of vertices to do a graphics style polygon scanline fill to get a list of all points within the polygon. The I compare the new list of seen tiles and compare that with the old one and increment or decrement the world vision array as needed. The polygon scanline function is giving me trouble. I'm mostly following this http://www.cs.uic.edu/~jbell/CourseNotes/ComputerGraphics/PolygonFilling.html So far this is my code without cleaning anything up var edgeMinX:Vector.<int> = new Vector.<int>; var edgeMinY:Vector.<int> = new Vector.<int>; var edgeMaxY:Vector.<int> = new Vector.<int>; var edgeInvSlope:Vector.<Number> = new Vector.<Number>; var ilen:int = outvert.length; var miny:int = -1; var maxy:int = -1; for (i = 0; i < ilen; i++) { var curpoint:Point = outvert[i]; if (i == ilen -1) { var nextpoint:Point = outvert[0]; } else { nextpoint = outvert[i + 1]; } if (nextpoint.y == curpoint.y) { continue; } if (curpoint.y < nextpoint.y) { var curslope:Number = ((nextpoint.y - curpoint.y) / (nextpoint.x - curpoint.x)); edgeMinY.push(curpoint.y); edgeMinX.push(curpoint.x); edgeMaxY.push(nextpoint.y); edgeInvSlope.push(1 / curslope); if (curpoint.y < miny || miny == -1) { miny = curpoint.y; } if (nextpoint.y > maxy) { maxy = nextpoint.y; } } else { curslope = ((curpoint.y - nextpoint.y) / (curpoint.x - nextpoint.x)); edgeMinY.push(nextpoint.y); edgeMinX.push(nextpoint.x); edgeMaxY.push(curpoint.y); edgeInvSlope.push(1 / curslope); if (nextpoint.y < miny || miny == -1) { miny = curpoint.y; } if (curpoint.y > maxy) { maxy = nextpoint.y; } } } var activeMaxY:Vector.<int> = new Vector.<int>; var activeCurX:Vector.<Number> = new Vector.<Number>; var activeInvSlope:Vector.<Number> = new Vector.<Number>; for (var scanline:int = miny; scanline < maxy + 1; scanline++) { ilen = edgeMinY.length; for (i = 0; i < ilen; i++) { if (edgeMinY[i] == scanline) { activeMaxY.push(edgeMaxY[i]); activeCurX.push(edgeMinX[i]); activeInvSlope.push(edgeInvSlope[i]); //trace("added(" + edgeMinX[i]); edgeMaxY.splice(i, 1); edgeMinX.splice(i, 1); edgeMinY.splice(i, 1); edgeInvSlope.splice(i, 1); i--; ilen--; } } ilen = activeCurX.length; for (i = 0; i < ilen - 1; i++) { for (var j:int = i; j < ilen - 1; j++) { if (activeCurX[j] > activeCurX[j + 1]) { var tempint:int = activeMaxY[j]; activeMaxY[j] = activeMaxY[j + 1]; activeMaxY[j + 1] = tempint; var tempnum:Number = activeCurX[j]; activeCurX[j] = activeCurX[j + 1]; activeCurX[j + 1] = tempnum; tempnum = activeInvSlope[j]; activeInvSlope[j] = activeInvSlope[j + 1]; activeInvSlope[j + 1] = tempnum; } } } var prevx:int = -1; var jlen:int = activeCurX.length; for (j = 0; j < jlen; j++) { if (prevx == -1) { prevx = activeCurX[j]; } else { for (var k:int = prevx; k < activeCurX[j]; k++) { graphics.lineStyle(2, 0x124132); graphics.drawCircle(k * 20 + 10, scanline * 20 + 10, 5); if (k == prevx || k > activeCurX[j] - 1) { graphics.lineStyle(3, 0x004132); graphics.drawCircle(k * 20 + 10, scanline * 20 + 10, 2); } prevx = -1; //tileLightList.push(k, scanline); } } } ilen = activeCurX.length; for (i = 0; i < ilen; i++) { if (activeMaxY[i] == scanline + 1) { activeCurX.splice(i, 1); activeMaxY.splice(i, 1); activeInvSlope.splice(i, 1); i--; ilen--; } else { activeCurX[i] += activeInvSlope[i]; } } } It works in some cases but some of the x intersections are skipped, primarily when there are more than 2 x intersections in one scanline I think. Is there a way to fix this, or a better way to do what I described? Thanks

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• Added splash screen code to my package

  - by Youssef

  Please i need support to added splash screen code to my package /* * T24_Transformer_FormView.java */ package t24_transformer_form; import org.jdesktop.application.Action; import org.jdesktop.application.ResourceMap; import org.jdesktop.application.SingleFrameApplication; import org.jdesktop.application.FrameView; import org.jdesktop.application.TaskMonitor; import java.awt.event.ActionEvent; import java.awt.event.ActionListener; import javax.swing.filechooser.FileNameExtensionFilter; import javax.swing.filechooser.FileFilter; // old T24 Transformer imports import java.io.File; import java.io.FileWriter; import java.io.StringWriter; import java.text.SimpleDateFormat; import java.util.ArrayList; import java.util.Date; import java.util.HashMap; import java.util.Iterator; //import java.util.Properties; import java.util.StringTokenizer; import javax.swing.; import javax.xml.parsers.DocumentBuilder; import javax.xml.parsers.DocumentBuilderFactory; import javax.xml.transform.Result; import javax.xml.transform.Source; import javax.xml.transform.Transformer; import javax.xml.transform.TransformerFactory; import javax.xml.transform.dom.DOMSource; import javax.xml.transform.stream.StreamResult; import org.apache.log4j.Logger; import org.apache.log4j.PropertyConfigurator; import org.w3c.dom.Document; import org.w3c.dom.DocumentFragment; import org.w3c.dom.Element; import org.w3c.dom.Node; import org.w3c.dom.NodeList; import com.ejada.alinma.edh.xsdtransform.util.ConfigKeys; import com.ejada.alinma.edh.xsdtransform.util.XSDElement; import com.sun.org.apache.xml.internal.serialize.OutputFormat; import com.sun.org.apache.xml.internal.serialize.XMLSerializer; /* * The application's main frame. */ public class T24_Transformer_FormView extends FrameView { /**} * static holders for application-level utilities * { */ //private static Properties appProps; private static Logger appLogger; /** * */ private StringBuffer columnsCSV = null; private ArrayList<String> singleValueTableColumns = null; private HashMap<String, String> multiValueTablesSQL = null; private HashMap<Object, HashMap<String, Object>> groupAttrs = null; private ArrayList<XSDElement> xsdElementsList = null; /** * initialization */ private void init() /*throws Exception*/ { // init the properties object //FileReader in = new FileReader(appConfigPropsPath); //appProps.load(in); // log4j.properties constant String PROP_LOG4J_CONFIG_FILE = "log4j.properties"; // init the logger if ((PROP_LOG4J_CONFIG_FILE != null) && (!PROP_LOG4J_CONFIG_FILE.equals(""))) { PropertyConfigurator.configure(PROP_LOG4J_CONFIG_FILE); if (appLogger == null) { appLogger = Logger.getLogger(T24_Transformer_FormView.class.getName()); } appLogger.info("Application initialization successful."); } columnsCSV = new StringBuffer(ConfigKeys.FIELD_TAG + "," + ConfigKeys.FIELD_NUMBER + "," + ConfigKeys.FIELD_DATA_TYPE + "," + ConfigKeys.FIELD_FMT + "," + ConfigKeys.FIELD_LEN + "," + ConfigKeys.FIELD_INPUT_LEN + "," + ConfigKeys.FIELD_GROUP_NUMBER + "," + ConfigKeys.FIELD_MV_GROUP_NUMBER + "," + ConfigKeys.FIELD_SHORT_NAME + "," + ConfigKeys.FIELD_NAME + "," + ConfigKeys.FIELD_COLUMN_NAME + "," + ConfigKeys.FIELD_GROUP_NAME + "," + ConfigKeys.FIELD_MV_GROUP_NAME + "," + ConfigKeys.FIELD_JUSTIFICATION + "," + ConfigKeys.FIELD_TYPE + "," + ConfigKeys.FIELD_SINGLE_OR_MULTI + System.getProperty("line.separator")); singleValueTableColumns = new ArrayList<String>(); singleValueTableColumns.add(ConfigKeys.COLUMN_XPK_ROW + ConfigKeys.DELIMITER_COLUMN_TYPE + ConfigKeys.DATA_TYPE_XSD_NUMERIC); multiValueTablesSQL = new HashMap<String, String>(); groupAttrs = new HashMap<Object, HashMap<String, Object>>(); xsdElementsList = new ArrayList<XSDElement>(); } /** * initialize the <code>DocumentBuilder</code> and read the XSD file * * @param docPath * @return the <code>Document</code> object representing the read XSD file */ private Document retrieveDoc(String docPath) { Document xsdDoc = null; File file = new File(docPath); try { DocumentBuilder builder = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance().newDocumentBuilder(); xsdDoc = builder.parse(file); } catch (Exception e) { appLogger.error(e.getMessage()); } return xsdDoc; } /** * perform the iteration/modification on the document * iterate to the level which contains all the elements (Single-Value, and Groups) and start processing each * * @param xsdDoc * @return */ private Document processDoc(Document xsdDoc) { ArrayList<Object> newElementsList = new ArrayList<Object>(); HashMap<String, Object> docAttrMap = new HashMap<String, Object>(); Element sequenceElement = null; Element schemaElement = null; // get document's root element NodeList nodes = xsdDoc.getChildNodes(); for (int i = 0; i < nodes.getLength(); i++) { if (ConfigKeys.TAG_SCHEMA.equals(nodes.item(i).getNodeName())) { schemaElement = (Element) nodes.item(i); break; } } // process the document (change single-value elements, collect list of new elements to be added) for (int i1 = 0; i1 < schemaElement.getChildNodes().getLength(); i1++) { Node childLevel1 = (Node) schemaElement.getChildNodes().item(i1); // <ComplexType> element if (childLevel1.getNodeName().equals(ConfigKeys.TAG_COMPLEX_TYPE)) { // first, get the main attributes and put it in the csv file for (int i6 = 0; i6 < childLevel1.getChildNodes().getLength(); i6++) { Node child6 = childLevel1.getChildNodes().item(i6); if (ConfigKeys.TAG_ATTRIBUTE.equals(child6.getNodeName())) { if (child6.getAttributes().getNamedItem(ConfigKeys.ATTR_NAME) != null) { String attrName = child6.getAttributes().getNamedItem(ConfigKeys.ATTR_NAME).getNodeValue(); if (((Element) child6).getElementsByTagName(ConfigKeys.TAG_SIMPLE_TYPE).getLength() != 0) { Node simpleTypeElement = ((Element) child6).getElementsByTagName(ConfigKeys.TAG_SIMPLE_TYPE) .item(0); if (((Element) simpleTypeElement).getElementsByTagName(ConfigKeys.TAG_RESTRICTION).getLength() != 0) { Node restrictionElement = ((Element) simpleTypeElement).getElementsByTagName( ConfigKeys.TAG_RESTRICTION).item(0); if (((Element) restrictionElement).getElementsByTagName(ConfigKeys.TAG_MAX_LENGTH).getLength() != 0) { Node maxLengthElement = ((Element) restrictionElement).getElementsByTagName( ConfigKeys.TAG_MAX_LENGTH).item(0); HashMap<String, String> elementProperties = new HashMap<String, String>(); elementProperties.put(ConfigKeys.FIELD_TAG, attrName); elementProperties.put(ConfigKeys.FIELD_NUMBER, "0"); elementProperties.put(ConfigKeys.FIELD_DATA_TYPE, ConfigKeys.DATA_TYPE_XSD_STRING); elementProperties.put(ConfigKeys.FIELD_FMT, ""); elementProperties.put(ConfigKeys.FIELD_NAME, attrName); elementProperties.put(ConfigKeys.FIELD_SHORT_NAME, attrName); elementProperties.put(ConfigKeys.FIELD_COLUMN_NAME, attrName); elementProperties.put(ConfigKeys.FIELD_SINGLE_OR_MULTI, "S"); elementProperties.put(ConfigKeys.FIELD_LEN, maxLengthElement.getAttributes().getNamedItem( ConfigKeys.ATTR_VALUE).getNodeValue()); elementProperties.put(ConfigKeys.FIELD_INPUT_LEN, maxLengthElement.getAttributes() .getNamedItem(ConfigKeys.ATTR_VALUE).getNodeValue()); constructElementRow(elementProperties); // add the attribute as a column in the single-value table singleValueTableColumns.add(attrName + ConfigKeys.DELIMITER_COLUMN_TYPE + ConfigKeys.DATA_TYPE_XSD_STRING + ConfigKeys.DELIMITER_COLUMN_TYPE + maxLengthElement.getAttributes().getNamedItem(ConfigKeys.ATTR_VALUE).getNodeValue()); // add the attribute as an element in the elements list addToElementsList(attrName, attrName); appLogger.debug("added attribute: " + attrName); } } } } } } // now, loop on the elements and process them for (int i2 = 0; i2 < childLevel1.getChildNodes().getLength(); i2++) { Node childLevel2 = (Node) childLevel1.getChildNodes().item(i2); // <Sequence> element if (childLevel2.getNodeName().equals(ConfigKeys.TAG_SEQUENCE)) { sequenceElement = (Element) childLevel2; for (int i3 = 0; i3 < childLevel2.getChildNodes().getLength(); i3++) { Node childLevel3 = (Node) childLevel2.getChildNodes().item(i3); // <Element> element if (childLevel3.getNodeName().equals(ConfigKeys.TAG_ELEMENT)) { // check if single element or group if (isGroup(childLevel3)) { processGroup(childLevel3, true, null, null, docAttrMap, xsdDoc, newElementsList); // insert a new comment node with the contents of the group tag sequenceElement.insertBefore(xsdDoc.createComment(serialize(childLevel3)), childLevel3); // remove the group tag sequenceElement.removeChild(childLevel3); } else { processElement(childLevel3); } } } } } } } // add new elements // this step should be after finishing processing the whole document. when you add new elements to the document // while you are working on it, those new elements will be included in the processing. We don't need that! for (int i = 0; i < newElementsList.size(); i++) { sequenceElement.appendChild((Element) newElementsList.get(i)); } // write the new required attributes to the schema element Iterator<String> attrIter = docAttrMap.keySet().iterator(); while(attrIter.hasNext()) { Element attr = (Element) docAttrMap.get(attrIter.next()); Element newAttrElement = xsdDoc.createElement(ConfigKeys.TAG_ATTRIBUTE); appLogger.debug("appending attr. [" + attr.getAttribute(ConfigKeys.ATTR_NAME) + "]..."); newAttrElement.setAttribute(ConfigKeys.ATTR_NAME, attr.getAttribute(ConfigKeys.ATTR_NAME)); newAttrElement.setAttribute(ConfigKeys.ATTR_TYPE, attr.getAttribute(ConfigKeys.ATTR_TYPE)); schemaElement.appendChild(newAttrElement); } return xsdDoc; } /** * add a new <code>XSDElement</code> with the given <code>name</code> and <code>businessName</code> to * the elements list * * @param name * @param businessName */ private void addToElementsList(String name, String businessName) { xsdElementsList.add(new XSDElement(name, businessName)); } /** * add the given <code>XSDElement</code> to the elements list * * @param element */ private void addToElementsList(XSDElement element) { xsdElementsList.add(element); } /** * check if the <code>element</code> sent is single-value element or group * element. the comparison depends on the children of the element. if found one of type * <code>ComplexType</code> then it's a group element, and if of type * <code>SimpleType</code> then it's a single-value element * * @param element * @return <code>true</code> if the element is a group element, * <code>false</code> otherwise */ private boolean isGroup(Node element) { for (int i = 0; i < element.getChildNodes().getLength(); i++) { Node child = (Node) element.getChildNodes().item(i); if (child.getNodeName().equals(ConfigKeys.TAG_COMPLEX_TYPE)) { // found a ComplexType child (Group element) return true; } else if (child.getNodeName().equals(ConfigKeys.TAG_SIMPLE_TYPE)) { // found a SimpleType child (Single-Value element) return false; } } return false; /* String attrName = null; if (element.getAttributes() != null) { Node attribute = element.getAttributes().getNamedItem(XSDTransformer.ATTR_NAME); if (attribute != null) { attrName = attribute.getNodeValue(); } } if (attrName.startsWith("g")) { // group element return true; } else { // single element return false; } */ } /** * process a group element. recursively, process groups till no more group elements are found * * @param element * @param isFirstLevelGroup * @param attrMap * @param docAttrMap * @param xsdDoc * @param newElementsList */ private void processGroup(Node element, boolean isFirstLevelGroup, Node parentGroup, XSDElement parentGroupElement, HashMap<String, Object> docAttrMap, Document xsdDoc, ArrayList<Object> newElementsList) { String elementName = null; HashMap<String, Object> groupAttrMap = new HashMap<String, Object>(); HashMap<String, Object> parentGroupAttrMap = new HashMap<String, Object>(); XSDElement groupElement = null; if (element.getAttributes().getNamedItem(ConfigKeys.ATTR_NAME) != null) { elementName = element.getAttributes().getNamedItem(ConfigKeys.ATTR_NAME).getNodeValue(); } appLogger.debug("processing group [" + elementName + "]..."); groupElement = new XSDElement(elementName, elementName); // get the attributes if a non-first-level-group // attributes are: groups's own attributes + parent group's attributes if (!isFirstLevelGroup) { // get the current element (group) attributes for (int i1 = 0; i1 < element.getChildNodes().getLength(); i1++) { if (ConfigKeys.TAG_COMPLEX_TYPE.equals(element.getChildNodes().item(i1).getNodeName())) { Node complexTypeNode = element.getChildNodes().item(i1); for (int i2 = 0; i2 < complexTypeNode.getChildNodes().getLength(); i2++) { if (ConfigKeys.TAG_ATTRIBUTE.equals(complexTypeNode.getChildNodes().item(i2).getNodeName())) { appLogger.debug("add group attr: " + ((Element) complexTypeNode.getChildNodes().item(i2)).getAttribute(ConfigKeys.ATTR_NAME)); groupAttrMap.put(((Element) complexTypeNode.getChildNodes().item(i2)).getAttribute(ConfigKeys.ATTR_NAME), complexTypeNode.getChildNodes().item(i2)); docAttrMap.put(((Element) complexTypeNode.getChildNodes().item(i2)).getAttribute(ConfigKeys.ATTR_NAME), complexTypeNode.getChildNodes().item(i2)); } } } } // now, get the parent's attributes parentGroupAttrMap = groupAttrs.get(parentGroup); if (parentGroupAttrMap != null) { Iterator<String> iter = parentGroupAttrMap.keySet().iterator(); while (iter.hasNext()) { String attrName = iter.next(); groupAttrMap.put(attrName, parentGroupAttrMap.get(attrName)); } } // add the attributes to the group element that will be added to the elements list Iterator<String> itr = groupAttrMap.keySet().iterator(); while(itr.hasNext()) { groupElement.addAttribute(itr.next()); } // put the attributes in the attributes map groupAttrs.put(element, groupAttrMap); } for (int i = 0; i < element.getChildNodes().getLength(); i++) { Node childLevel1 = (Node) element.getChildNodes().item(i); if (childLevel1.getNodeName().equals(ConfigKeys.TAG_COMPLEX_TYPE)) { for (int j = 0; j < childLevel1.getChildNodes().getLength(); j++) { Node childLevel2 = (Node) childLevel1.getChildNodes().item(j); if (childLevel2.getNodeName().equals(ConfigKeys.TAG_SEQUENCE)) { for (int k = 0; k < childLevel2.getChildNodes().getLength(); k++) { Node childLevel3 = (Node) childLevel2.getChildNodes().item(k); if (childLevel3.getNodeName().equals(ConfigKeys.TAG_ELEMENT)) { // check if single element or group if (isGroup(childLevel3)) { // another group element.. // unfortunately, a recursion is // needed here!!! :-( processGroup(childLevel3, false, element, groupElement, docAttrMap, xsdDoc, newElementsList); } else { // reached a single-value element.. copy it under the // main sequence and apply the name<>shorname replacement processGroupElement(childLevel3, element, groupElement, isFirstLevelGroup, xsdDoc, newElementsList); } } } } } } } if (isFirstLevelGroup) { addToElementsList(groupElement); } else { parentGroupElement.addChild(groupElement); } appLogger.debug("finished processing group [" + elementName + "]."); } /** * process the sent <code>element</code> to extract/modify required * information: * 1. replace the <code>name</code> attribute with the <code>shortname</code>. * * @param element */ private void processElement(Node element) { String fieldShortName = null; String fieldColumnName = null; String fieldDataType = null; String fieldFormat = null; String fieldInputLength = null; String elementName = null; HashMap<String, String> elementProperties = new HashMap<String, String>(); if (element.getAttributes().getNamedItem(ConfigKeys.ATTR_NAME) != null) { elementName = element.getAttributes().getNamedItem(ConfigKeys.ATTR_NAME).getNodeValue(); } appLogger.debug("processing element [" + elementName + "]..."); for (int i = 0; i < element.getChildNodes().getLength(); i++) { Node childLevel1 = (Node) element.getChildNodes().item(i); if (childLevel1.getNodeName().equals(ConfigKeys.TAG_ANNOTATION)) { for (int j = 0; j < childLevel1.getChildNodes().getLength(); j++) { Node childLevel2 = (Node) childLevel1.getChildNodes().item(j); if (childLevel2.getNodeName().equals(ConfigKeys.TAG_APP_INFO)) { for (int k = 0; k < childLevel2.getChildNodes().getLength(); k++) { Node childLevel3 = (Node) childLevel2.getChildNodes().item(k); if (childLevel3.getNodeName().equals(ConfigKeys.TAG_HAS_PROPERTY)) { if (childLevel3.getAttributes() != null) { String attrName = null; Node attribute = childLevel3.getAttributes().getNamedItem(ConfigKeys.ATTR_NAME); if (attribute != null) { attrName = attribute.getNodeValue(); elementProperties.put(attrName, childLevel3.getAttributes().getNamedItem(ConfigKeys.ATTR_VALUE) .getNodeValue()); if (attrName.equals(ConfigKeys.FIELD_SHORT_NAME)) { fieldShortName = childLevel3.getAttributes().getNamedItem(ConfigKeys.ATTR_VALUE) .getNodeValue(); } else if (attrName.equals(ConfigKeys.FIELD_COLUMN_NAME)) { fieldColumnName = childLevel3.getAttributes().getNamedItem(ConfigKeys.ATTR_VALUE) .getNodeValue(); } else if (attrName.equals(ConfigKeys.FIELD_DATA_TYPE)) { fieldDataType = childLevel3.getAttributes().getNamedItem(ConfigKeys.ATTR_VALUE) .getNodeValue(); } else if (attrName.equals(ConfigKeys.FIELD_FMT)) { fieldFormat = childLevel3.getAttributes().getNamedItem(ConfigKeys.ATTR_VALUE) .getNodeValue(); } else if (attrName.equals(ConfigKeys.FIELD_INPUT_LEN)) { fieldInputLength = childLevel3.getAttributes().getNamedItem(ConfigKeys.ATTR_VALUE) .getNodeValue(); } } } } } } } } } // replace the name attribute with the shortname if (element.getAttributes().getNamedItem(ConfigKeys.ATTR_NAME) != null) { element.getAttributes().getNamedItem(ConfigKeys.ATTR_NAME).setNodeValue(fieldShortName); } elementProperties.put(ConfigKeys.FIELD_SINGLE_OR_MULTI, "S"); constructElementRow(elementProperties); singleValueTableColumns.add(fieldShortName + ConfigKeys.DELIMITER_COLUMN_TYPE + fieldDataType + fieldFormat + ConfigKeys.DELIMITER_COLUMN_TYPE + fieldInputLength); // add the element to elements list addToElementsList(fieldShortName, fieldColumnName); appLogger.debug("finished processing element [" + elementName + "]."); } /** * process the sent <code>element</code> to extract/modify required * information: * 1. copy the element under the main sequence * 2. replace the <code>name</code> attribute with the <code>shortname</code>. * 3. add the attributes of the parent groups (if non-first-level-group) * * @param element */ private void processGroupElement(Node element, Node parentGroup, XSDElement parentGroupElement, boolean isFirstLevelGroup, Document xsdDoc, ArrayList<Object> newElementsList) { String fieldShortName = null; String fieldColumnName = null; String fieldDataType = null; String fieldFormat = null; String fieldInputLength = null; String elementName = null; Element newElement = null; HashMap<String, String> elementProperties = new HashMap<String, String>(); ArrayList<String> tableColumns = new ArrayList<String>(); HashMap<String, Object> groupAttrMap = null; if (element.getAttributes().getNamedItem(ConfigKeys.ATTR_NAME) != null) { elementName = element.getAttributes().getNamedItem(ConfigKeys.ATTR_NAME).getNodeValue(); } appLogger.debug("processing element [" + elementName + "]..."); // 1. copy the element newElement = (Element) element.cloneNode(true); newElement.setAttribute(ConfigKeys.ATTR_MAX_OCCURS, "unbounded"); // 2. if non-first-level-group, replace the element's SimpleType tag with a ComplexType tag if (!isFirstLevelGroup) { if (((Element) newElement).getElementsByTagName(ConfigKeys.TAG_SIMPLE_TYPE).getLength() != 0) { // there should be only one tag of SimpleType Node simpleTypeNode = ((Element) newElement).getElementsByTagName(ConfigKeys.TAG_SIMPLE_TYPE).item(0); // create the new ComplexType element Element complexTypeNode = xsdDoc.createElement(ConfigKeys.TAG_COMPLEX_TYPE); complexTypeNode.setAttribute(ConfigKeys.ATTR_MIXED, "true"); // get the list of attributes for the parent group groupAttrMap = groupAttrs.get(parentGroup); Iterator<String> attrIter = groupAttrMap.keySet().iterator(); while(attrIter.hasNext()) { Element attr = (Element) groupAttrMap.get(attrIter.next()); Element newAttrElement = xsdDoc.createElement(ConfigKeys.TAG_ATTRIBUTE); appLogger.debug("adding attr. [" + attr.getAttribute(ConfigKeys.ATTR_NAME) + "]..."); newAttrElement.setAttribute(ConfigKeys.ATTR_REF, attr.getAttribute(ConfigKeys.ATTR_NAME)); newAttrElement.setAttribute(ConfigKeys.ATTR_USE, "optional"); complexTypeNode.appendChild(newAttrElement); } // replace the old SimpleType node with the new ComplexType node newElement.replaceChild(complexTypeNode, simpleTypeNode); } } // 3. replace the name with the shortname in the new element for (int i = 0; i < newElement.getChildNodes().getLength(); i++) { Node childLevel1 = (Node) newElement.getChildNodes().item(i); if (childLevel1.getNodeName().equals(ConfigKeys.TAG_ANNOTATION)) { for (int j = 0; j < childLevel1.getChildNodes().getLength(); j++) { Node childLevel2 = (Node) childLevel1.getChildNodes().item(j); if (childLevel2.getNodeName().equals(ConfigKeys.TAG_APP_INFO)) { for (int k = 0; k < childLevel2.getChildNodes().getLength(); k++) { Node childLevel3 = (Node) childLevel2.getChildNodes().item(k); if (childLevel3.getNodeName().equals(ConfigKeys.TAG_HAS_PROPERTY)) { if (childLevel3.getAttributes() != null) { String attrName = null; Node attribute = childLevel3.getAttributes().getNamedItem(ConfigKeys.ATTR_NAME); if (attribute != null) { attrName = attribute.getNodeValue(); elementProperties.put(attrName, childLevel3.getAttributes().getNamedItem(ConfigKeys.ATTR_VALUE) .getNodeValue()); if (attrName.equals(ConfigKeys.FIELD_SHORT_NAME)) { fieldShortName = childLevel3.getAttributes().getNamedItem(ConfigKeys.ATTR_VALUE) .getNodeValue(); } else if (attrName.equals(ConfigKeys.FIELD_COLUMN_NAME)) { fieldColumnName = childLevel3.getAttributes().getNamedItem(ConfigKeys.ATTR_VALUE) .getNodeValue(); } else if (attrName.equals(ConfigKeys.FIELD_DATA_TYPE)) { fieldDataType = childLevel3.getAttributes().getNamedItem(ConfigKeys.ATTR_VALUE) .getNodeValue(); } else if (attrName.equals(ConfigKeys.FIELD_FMT)) { fieldFormat = childLevel3.getAttributes().getNamedItem(ConfigKeys.ATTR_VALUE) .getNodeValue(); } else if (attrName.equals(ConfigKeys.FIELD_INPUT_LEN)) { fieldInputLength = childLevel3.getAttributes().getNamedItem(ConfigKeys.ATTR_VALUE) .getNodeValue(); } } } } } } } } } if (newElement.getAttributes().getNamedItem(ConfigKeys.ATTR_NAME) != null) { newElement.getAttributes().getNamedItem(ConfigKeys.ATTR_NAME).setNodeValue(fieldShortName); } // 4. save the new element to be added to the sequence list newElementsList.add(newElement); elementProperties.put(ConfigKeys.FIELD_SINGLE_OR_MULTI, "M"); constructElementRow(elementProperties); // create the MULTI-VALUE table // 0. Primary Key tableColumns.add(ConfigKeys.COLUMN_XPK_ROW + ConfigKeys.DELIMITER_COLUMN_TYPE + ConfigKeys.DATA_TYPE_XSD_STRING + ConfigKeys.DELIMITER_COLUMN_TYPE + ConfigKeys.COLUMN_XPK_ROW_LENGTH); // 1. foreign key tableColumns.add(ConfigKeys.COLUMN_FK_ROW + ConfigKeys.DELIMITER_COLUMN_TYPE + ConfigKeys.DATA_TYPE_XSD_NUMERIC); // 2. field value tableColumns.add(fieldShortName + ConfigKeys.DELIMITER_COLUMN_TYPE + fieldDataType + fieldFormat + ConfigKeys.DELIMITER_COLUMN_TYPE + fieldInputLength); // 3. attributes if (groupAttrMap != null) { Iterator<String> attrIter = groupAttrMap.keySet().iterator(); while (attrIter.hasNext()) { Element attr = (Element) groupAttrMap.get(attrIter.next()); tableColumns.add(attr.getAttribute(ConfigKeys.ATTR_NAME) + ConfigKeys.DELIMITER_COLUMN_TYPE + ConfigKeys.DATA_TYPE_XSD_NUMERIC); } } multiValueTablesSQL.put(sub_table_prefix.getText() + fieldShortName, constructMultiValueTableSQL( sub_table_prefix.getText() + fieldShortName, tableColumns)); // add the element to it's parent group children parentGroupElement.addChild(new XSDElement(fieldShortName, fieldColumnName)); appLogger.debug("finished processing element [" + elementName + "]."); } /** * write resulted files * * @param xsdDoc * @param docPath */ private void writeResults(Document xsdDoc, String resultsDir, String newXSDFileName, String csvFileName) { String rsDir = resultsDir + File.separator + new SimpleDateFormat("yyyyMMdd-HHmm").format(new Date()); try { File resultsDirFile = new File(rsDir); if (!resultsDirFile.exists()) { resultsDirFile.mkdirs(); } // write the XSD doc appLogger.info("writing the transformed XSD..."); Source source = new DOMSource(xsdDoc); Result result = new StreamResult(rsDir + File.separator + newXSDFileName); Transformer xformer = TransformerFactory.newInstance().newTransformer(); // xformer.setOutputProperty("indent", "yes"); xformer.transform(source, result); appLogger.info("finished writing the transformed XSD."); // write the CSV columns file appLogger.info("writing the CSV file..."); FileWriter csvWriter = new FileWriter(rsDir + File.separator + csvFileName); csvWriter.write(columnsCSV.toString()); csvWriter.close(); appLogger.info("finished writing the CSV file."); // write the master single-value table appLogger.info("writing the creation script for master table (single-values)..."); FileWriter masterTableWriter = new FileWriter(rsDir + File.separator + main_edh_table_name.getText() + ".sql"); masterTableWriter.write(constructSingleValueTableSQL(main_edh_table_name.getText(), singleValueTableColumns)); masterTableWriter.close(); appLogger.info("finished writing the creation script for master table (single-values)."); // write the multi-value tables sql appLogger.info("writing the creation script for slave tables (multi-values)..."); Iterator<String> iter = multiValueTablesSQL.keySet().iterator(); while (iter.hasNext()) { String tableName = iter.next(); String sql = multiValueTablesSQL.get(tableName); FileWriter tableSQLWriter = new FileWriter(rsDir + File.separator + tableName + ".sql"); tableSQLWriter.write(sql); tableSQLWriter.close(); } appLogger.info("finished writing the creation script for slave tables (multi-values)."); // write the single-value view appLogger.info("writing the creation script for single-value selection view..."); FileWriter singleValueViewWriter = new FileWriter(rsDir + File.separator + view_name_single.getText() + ".sql"); singleValueViewWriter.write(constructViewSQL(ConfigKeys.SQL_VIEW_SINGLE)); singleValueViewWriter.close(); appLogger.info("finished writing the creation script for single-value selection view."); // debug for (int i = 0; i < xsdElementsList.size(); i++) { getMultiView(xsdElementsList.get(i)); /*// if (xsdElementsList.get(i).getAllDescendants() != null) { // for (int j = 0; j < xsdElementsList.get(i).getAllDescendants().size(); j++) { // appLogger.debug(main_edh_table_name.getText() + "." + ConfigKeys.COLUMN_XPK_ROW // + "=" + xsdElementsList.get(i).getAllDescendants().get(j).getName() + "." + ConfigKeys.COLUMN_FK_ROW); // } // } */ } } catch (Exception e) { appLogger.error(e.getMessage()); } } private String getMultiView(XSDElement element)

  Read the article

• 2 javascripts problem

  - by pradeep

  <?php global $user; $userId = $user->uid; /* start with default */ $myresult = ""; /* All Includes - start */ include_once('db.php'); include_once('valid-scripts/validateData.php'); /* All Includes - end */ /* Build All required Variables - start */ $alias = $_GET['alias']; $product = $_GET['product']; $product = strtolower(substr($product,0,-1)); $master_table = $product.'_master'; $rating_master_table = $product.'_rating_master'; $rating_table = $product.'_rating'; $numProperties = 15; /* Build All required Variables - end */ /* Add all Styles required - start */ $myresult .= '<link href="/jquery.rating.css" type="text/css" rel="stylesheet"/>'; /* Add all Styles required - end */ /* Show Hide Variables/parameters - start */ include_once('all_include_files/show_hide.php'); /* Show Hide Variables/parameters - end */ /* All Javascript - start */ //$myresult .= '<script src="/jquery.rating.js" type="text/javascript" language="javascript"></script>'; ?> <style> #tabs { //font-size: 90%; //margin: 20px 0; margin: 2px 0; } #tabs ul { float: right; background: #E3FEFA; width: 600px; //padding-top: 4px; } #tabs li { margin-left: 8px; list-style: none; } * html #tabs li { display: inline; /* ie6 double float margin bug */ } #tabs li, #tabs li a { float: left; } #tabs ul li a { text-decoration: none; //padding: 8px; color: #0073BF; font-weight: bold; } #tabs ul li.active { background: #CEE1EF url(/all_include_files/img/nav-right.gif) no-repeat right top; } #tabs ul li.active a { background: url(/all_include_files/img/nav-left.gif) no-repeat left top; color: #333333; } #tabs div { //background: #CEE1EF; clear: both; //padding: 20px; min-height: 200px; } #tabs div h3 { text-transform: uppercase; margin-bottom: 10px; letter-spacing: 1px; #tabs div p { line-height: 150%; } </style> <script src="/jquery.rating.js" type="text/javascript" language="javascript"></script> <script src="/jquery.metadata.js" type="text/javascript" language="javascript"></script> <script type='text/javascript'> function openComment(number) { alert('working'); $('#comment'+number).css('display',''); } $('.star').rating({ callback: function(value, link){ alert(value); } }); $(document).ready(function() { //$('#tabs div').hide(); //$('#tabs div:first').show(); $('#tabs ul li:first').addClass('active'); $('#tabs ul li a').click(function() { $('#tabs ul li').removeClass('active'); $(this).parent().addClass('active'); var currentTab = $(this).attr('href'); $('#tabs div').hide(); $(currentTab).show(); return false; }); $("#clickit").click(function() { $.post("/mobile/tablechange.php",{ p1:'<?php echo $brand ?>',p2:'<?php echo $model ?>',userid:'<?php echo $userid ?>' } ,function(data){ $("#changetable").html(data); }); }); $('div.expandable p').expander({ slicePoint: 200, // default is 100 expandText: 'more &raquo;', // default is 'read more...' collapseTimer: 0, // re-collapses after 5 seconds; default is 0, so no re-collapsing userCollapseText: '[^]' // default is '[collapse expanded text]' }); }); </script> <?php /* All Javascript - end */ /* Form Processing after submit - start */ /* Form Processing after submit - end */ /* Actual Form or Page - start */ /*fetch all data needed */ /* initial query */ $result_product = query_product_table($product,$alias); /*fetch property names of product */ $product_properties = master_table($master_table); /*rating table query */ $master_rating_properties = master_rating_table($rating_master_table); /*get user ratings*/ $user_ratings = user_ratings($userId,$alias,$rating_table); $myresult .= '<div class=\'Services\'>'; //$myresult .="<form name ='form1' id='form1' method = 'POST' action='".$_SERVER['php_self'] ."'>"; if(!$result_product) { header('Location: /page-not-found'); } else { $row_product = mysql_fetch_array($result_product); $myresult .= "<h3 class='newstyle'>".$row_product['alias']." <a style='float:right;padding-right:20px;color:white;text-decoration:underline;' href='/'>Back</a> </h3>"; /* start actual product display - start*/ $myresult .= "<div class=\"product\">"; /* start table 1*/ $myresult .= '<table border=\'0\' cellspacing=\'0\' cellpadding=\'0\' style=\'width:580px; table-layout:fixed;\'>'; $myresult .= '<tr>'; $myresult .='<td valign=\'top\'>'; /* start table 2*/ $myresult .='<table width=\'100%\' border=\'0\' cellspacing=\'0\' cellpadding=\'0\'>'; $myresult .= '<tr>'; $myresult .= '<td valign=\'top\' style=\'width:164px;\'>'; /* start table 3*/ $myresult .= '<table style=\'width:164px;\' border=\'0\' cellspacing=\'0\' cellpadding=\'0\'>'; $myresult .= "<tr>"; /* start of the pic row */ $myresult .= '<td align=\'center\' class=\'various_product\'>'; if($row_product['pic'] != "") { $myresult .= '<ul id=\'mycarousel\' style=\'display:\';>'; $myresult .= '<li><a href=\'/all_image_scripts/origpicdisplay.php?product='.rawurlencode($product).'&alias='.rawurlencode($alias).'&picid=pic&p= \'rel=\'lightbox[roadtrip]\'><img src=\'/all_image_scripts/picdisplay1.php?product='.rawurlencode($product).'&alias='.rawurlencode($alias).'\'></img></a></li>'; for($p = 1; $p <= 4; $p++) { if($row_product['pic'.$p] != "") { $myresult .= '<li><a href=\'/all_image_scripts/origpicdisplay.php?product='.rawurlencode($product).'&alias='.rawurlencode($alias).'&picid=pic'.rawurlencode($p).'&p='.rawurlencode($p).'\' rel=\'lightbox[roadtrip]\'><img src=\'/all_image_scripts/thumbpicdisplay.php?product='.rawurlencode($product).'&alias='.rawurlencode($alias).'&picid=pic'.rawurlencode($p).'\'></img></a></li>'; } } $myresult .= '</ul>'; } else { $myresult .= "<img width='50' height='70' src='/images/no-image.gif'></img>"; } jcarousel_add('#mycarousel', array('horizontal' => TRUE,'scroll' => 1,'visible' => 1)); $myresult .= "</td>"; /* end display of pic td*/ $myresult .= "</tr>"; /* end display of pic tr*/ $myresult .= "</table></td>"; /* end display of pic table and earlier td - Still 1 open TR td table tr -hint*/ $myresult .= '<td style=\'width:450px;\'>'; /*table - 4*/ $myresult .= '<table width=\'100%\' border=\'0\' cellspacing=\'0\' cellpadding=\'0\' style=\'display:block;\'>'; /* Start showing property and values */ $myresult .= '<tr>'; $myresult .= '<td class=\'tick\'><img src=\'/images/ul_li_bg.gif\' width=\'12\' height=\'12\' /></td>'; $myresult .= '<td class=\'leftText\'>'.ucfirst($product).':</td>'; $myresult .= '<td class=\'rightText\'>'.$row_product['alias'] .'</td>'; $myresult .= "</tr>"; for($j = 3; $j <= 5 ; $j++){ if($product_properties['property'.$j.'_name'] != "") { if($row_product['property'.$j] != "") { $myresult .= '<tr>'; $myresult .= '<td class=\'tick\'><img src=\'/images/ul_li_bg.gif\' width=\'12\' height=\'12\' /></td>'; $myresult .= '<td class=\'leftText\'>'.$product_properties['property'.$j.'_name'].':</td>'; $myresult .= '<td class=\'rightText\'>'.$row_product['property'.$j] .'</td>'; $myresult .= '</tr>'; } /* end if*/ } /* end if*/ } /* end for*/ /* show hide block */ $myresult .= '<tbody id=\'extra_properties\' style=\'display: none;\'>'; for($j = 6; $j <= 15 ; $j++){ if($product_properties['property'.$j.'_name'] != "") { if($row_product['property'.$j] != "") { $myresult .= '<tr>'; $myresult .= '<td class=\'tick\'><img src=\'/images/ul_li_bg.gif\' width=\'12\' height=\'12\' /></td>'; $myresult .= '<td class=\'leftText\'>'.$produtc_properties['property'.$j.'_name'].':</td>'; $myresult .= '<td class=\'rightText\'>'.$row_product['property'.$j] .'</td>'; $myresult .= '</tr>'; } /* end if*/ } /* end if*/ } /* end for */ $myresult .= '</tbody>'; /* end show/hide tbody */ $myresult .= '<tr>'; $myresult .= '<td>'; $myresult .= '&nbsp;'; $myresult .= '</td>'; $myresult .= '<td>'; $myresult .= '&nbsp;'; $myresult .= '</td>'; $myresult .= '<td align=\'right\' style=\'text-align:right;text-decoration:underline;\'>'; $myresult .= '<a class=\'right_link\' href=\'javascript:showMore()\'>Show Additional Details...</a>'; $myresult .= '</td>'; $myresult .= '</tr>'; /* End showing property and values */ $showreview = 'display:'; /* review show hide */ /*$myresult .= '<tbody '.$showreview.'>'; $myresult .= '<tr>'; $myresult .= '<td colspan=\'2\'><span class=\'reviews\'>'; //check //$numreviews = getreviewcount($brand,$model,'mobile_user_reviews'); if($numreviews > 0) { $myresult .= '<a href=\'mobilereviews?alias='.rawurlencode($alias).'\'> <span>$numreviews Reviews</span></a>'; } else { $myresult .= " $numreviews Reviews"; } $myresult .= "</span></td>"; $myresult .= "</tr>"; */ $myresult .= "</tbody>"; /* review show hide - end */ /* count show hide */ $myresult .= '<tbody '.$showcount.'>'; $myresult .= '<tr>'; $myresult .= '<td colspan=\'2\'><span class=\'reviews\'>'; //check //$totalvotes = gettotalvotes($row['property1'],$row['property2'],'mobile_rating'); $myresult .= "</td>"; $myresult .= "</tr>"; $myresult .= "</tbody>"; /* count show hide - end */ $myresult .= "</table></td>"; /* end table 4 */ $myresult .= '</tr>'; /* end 1 row and remaining tr , td ,table */ $myresult .= '</table></td>'; $myresult .= '</tr>'; /* remianing only 1 table */ /* ratings - positive last section starts here */ $max= array(); for ($l = 1 ; $l < 15; $l++){ if($row_product['property'.$l.'_avg']){ $maxarray = 0; $maxarray = $row_product['property'.$l.'_avg']; $max['rating'.$l.'_name'] = $maxarray; } } if(count($max) >0 ) { include('all_include_files/min_max_properties.php'); } if(($row_product['freshness'] <= strtotime("-3 month"))) { $image_type= 'old'; } else if(($row_product['freshness'] <= strtotime("-2 month"))) { $image_type= 'bitold'; } else if(($row_product['freshness'] <= strtotime("-1 month")) || ($row_product['freshness'] > strtotime("-1 month"))) { $image_type= 'new'; } $img_name = $image_type; $myresult .= "<tr>"; $myresult .= "<td>"; $myresult .= "<table width='100%' border='0'>"; $myresult .= "<tr>"; $myresult .= "<td width='170' class=\"ratingz\"><span><u>Overall rating</u></span></td>"; $myresult .= "<td width='150' class=\"ratingz\"><span><u>Positive</u></span></td>"; $myresult .= "<td width='150' class=\"ratingz\"><span><u>Negative</u></span></td>"; if($img_name == 'new'){ $images = "<img src='/sites/default/files/battery-discharging-100.png' width='40' height='40'></img>"; } else if($img_name == 'bitold'){ $images = "<img src='/sites/default/files/battery-discharging-80.png' width='40' height='40'></img>"; } else if($img_name == 'old'){ $images = "<img src='/sites/default/files/battery-discharging-0.png' width='40' height='40'></img>"; } else { $images = ""; } $myresult .= "<td rowspan='2'><p ".$showbattery.">". $images ."</p></td>"; $myresult .= "</tr>"; $myresult .= "<tr>"; $myresult .= "<td>"; $i++; for($k = 0.5; $k <= 10.0; $k+=0.5) { $overall = roundOff($row_product['overall_rating']); if($overall == $k) { $chk ="checked"; } else { $chk = ""; } $myresult .= '<input class=\'star {split:2}\' type=\'radio\' value=\''. $k .'\' '.$chk.' title=\''. $k.' out of 10 \' disabled />'; } $myresult .= '</td>'; $myresult .= '<td ><span>'.$positive.'</span></td>'; $myresult .= '<td ><span>'.$negative.'</span></td>'; $myresult .= '</tr>'; $myresult .= '</table></td>'; $myresult .= '</tr>'; /* ratings - positive last section ends here */ $myresult .= '<tr>'; if($row_product['description'] != ""){ if(words_count($row_product['description']) > 8){ $myresult .= '<td><p><span class=\'description\'><strong><u>Description</u>:</strong></span>&nbsp;&nbsp; <div class=\'expandable\'><p>'.$row_product['description'].'</div></p></p></td>'; } else { $myresult .= '<td><p><span class=\'description\'><strong><u>Description</u>:</strong></span>&nbsp;&nbsp;'. $row_product['description'] .'</p></td>'; } } $myresult .= '</tr>'; $myresult .= '</table>'; /* end 1st table */ $myresult .= '</div>'; /* start actual product display - end*/ /*start the form to take ratings */ $myresult .= '<div id=\'tabs\'>'; $myresult .= '<ul>'; $myresult .= '<li><a href=\'#tab-1\'>Ratings</a></li>'; $myresult .= '<li><a href=\'#tab-2\'>Click here to rate</a></li>'; $myresult .= '</ul>'; $myresult .= '<div id=\'tab-1\'>'; /* actual rating table - start - jsut display ratings */ $myresult .= '<table id=\'rounded-corner\'>'; /* thead - start */ $myresult .= '<thead>'; $myresult .= '<tr>'; $myresult .= '<th width=\'30%\' class=\'rounded-company\' scope=\'col\'><span style=\'font: normal 18px Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; color:#FFF;\'>Ratings</span></th>'; $myresult .= '<th width=\'70%\' colspan=\'2\'class=\'rounded-q4\' scope=\'col\'><a href=\'#rounded-corner\' id=\'clickit\' style=\'color:white;text-decoration:underline;\' $disabled ></a></th> '; /*$myresult .= '<th width=\'70%\' colspan=\'2\'class=\'rounded-q4\' scope=\'col\'><a href=\'#rounded-corner\' id=\'clickit\' style=\'color:white;text-decoration:underline;\' $disabled >Click here to rate</a></th> ';*/ $myresult .= '</tr>'; $myresult .= '</thead>'; /* thead - end */ /* tbody - start */ $myresult .= '<tbody>'; /*start printing the table wth feature and ratings */ for ($i = 1 ; $i < $numProperties; $i++){ if($master_rating_properties['rating'.$i.'_name']){ $myresult .= '<tr>'; $myresult .= '<td width=\'22%\'>'; $indfeature = 0; $indfeature = $row_product['property'.$i.'_avg']; $myresult .= $master_rating_properties['rating'.$i.'_name'].' ( '.$indfeature .')'; $myresult .= '</td>'; $myresult .= '<td colspan=\'0\' width=\'38%\' >'; $tocheck = $indfeature; for($k = 0.5; $k <= 10.0; $k+=0.5){ $tocheck = roundOff($tocheck); if(($tocheck) == $k) { $chk = "checked"; } else { $chk = ""; } $myresult .= '<input class=\'star {split:2}\' type=\'radio\' name=\'drating'.$i.'\' id=\'drating'.$i.''.$k.'\' value=\''. $k .'\' '.$chk.' title=\''. $k.' out of 10 \' disabled \'/>'; } /* for k loop end */ $myresult .= '</tr>'; } /* end if loop */ } /* end i for loop */ $myresult .= '</tbody>'; /* end tbody */ /* footer round corner start */ $myresult .= '<tfoot>'; $myresult .= '<tr>'; $myresult .= '<td class=\'rounded-foot-left\'>&nbsp;</td>'; $myresult .= '<td class=\'rounded-foot-right\' colspan=\'4\' >'; $myresult .= '</td>'; $myresult .= '</tr>'; $myresult .= '</tfoot>'; $myresult .= '</table>'; /*round corner table end */ $myresult .= '</div>'; /*end 1st tab */ /*start 2nd tab */ $myresult .= '<div id=\'tab-2\'>'; $myresult .= '<form name =\'form1\' id=\'form1\' method = \'POST\' action=\''.$_SERVER['php_self'] .'\'>'; /* actual rating table - start - actual rate/update */ $myresult .= '<table id=\'rounded-corner\'>'; /* thead - start */ $myresult .= '<thead>'; $myresult .= '<tr>'; $myresult .= '<th width=\'30%\' class=\'rounded-company\' scope=\'col\'><span style=\'font: normal 18px Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; color:#FFF;\'>Ratings</span></th>'; $myresult .= '<th width=\'70%\' colspan=\'2\'class=\'rounded-q4\' scope=\'col\'></th>'; $myresult .= '</tr>'; $myresult .= '</thead>'; /* thead - end */ /* tbody - start */ $myresult .= '<tbody>'; unset($i); /*start printing the table wth feature and ratings */ for ($i = 1 ; $i < $numProperties; $i++){ if($master_rating_properties['rating'.$i.'_name']){ $myresult .= '<tr>'; /*fetch ratings and comments - 1st make it to null */ $indfeature = 0; $comment = ''; $indfeature = $user_ratings['rating'.$i]; if($indfeature == NULL){ $indfeature = 0; } $comment = $user_ratings['rating'.$i.'_comment']; $myresult .= '<td width=\'22%\'>'; $myresult .= $master_rating_properties['rating'.$i.'_name'].' ( '.$indfeature.' )'; $myresult .= '</td>'; $myresult .= '<td colspan=\'0\' width=\'38%\' >'; if(($userId != '0') && (is_array($user_ratings))) { $tocheck = $indfeature; } else { $tocheck = '0'; } for($k = 0.5; $k <= 10.0; $k+=0.5){ $tocheck = roundOff($tocheck); if(($tocheck) == $k) { $chk = "checked"; } else { $chk = ""; } $myresult .= '<input class=\'star {split:2}\' type=\'radio\' name=\'rating'.$i.'\' id=\'rating'.$i.''.$k.'\' value=\''. $k .'\' '.$chk.' title=\''. $k.' out of 10 \' '.$disabled.' \' />'; } /* for k loop end */ $myresult .= '</td>'; $myresult .= '<td width=\'40%\'>'; $myresult .= '<input title=\'Reason for this Rating.. \'type=\'text\' size=\'25\' name=\'comment'.$i.'\' id=\'comment'.$i.'\' style=\'display:;\' maxlength=\'255\' value="'.$comment.'">'; $myresult .= '</td>'; $myresult .= '</tr>'; } /* end if loop */ } /* end i for loop */ $myresult .= '</tbody>'; /* end tbody */ /* footer round corner start */ $myresult .= '<tfoot>'; $myresult .= '<tr>'; $myresult .= '<td class=\'rounded-foot-left\'>&nbsp;</td>'; $myresult .= '<td class=\'rounded-foot-right\' colspan=\'4\' >'; if(($userId != '0') && (is_array($user_ratings))) { $myresult .= '<input type=\'button\' id=\'update_form\' value=\'Update\'>'; } else { $myresult .= '<input type=\'button\' id=\'save_form\' value=\'Save\'>'; } $myresult .= '</td>'; $myresult .= '</tr>'; $myresult .= '</tfoot>'; $myresult .= '</table>'; /*round corner table end */ $myresult .= '</form>'; /*end the form to take ratings */ $myresult .= '</div>'; /*end 2nd tab */ $myresult .= '</div>'; /*end tabs div */ /* actual rating table - end */ /* 1st form ends here id- ratings_form */ } /* end of if loop result_product loop */ /* start table 3 - overall comment*/ $myresult .= '<table border=\'0\' cellspacing=\'0\' cellpadding=\'0\' style=\'width:580px; table-layout:fixed;\' id=\'rounded-corner\'>'; $myresult .= '<tbody>'; /* thead - start */ $myresult .= '<thead>'; $myresult .= '<tr>'; $myresult .= '<th width=\'100%\' colspan=\'2\' class=\'rounded-company\' scope=\'col\'><span style=\'font: normal 18px Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; color:#FFF;\'>Overall Comments</span></th>'; $myresult .= '<th colspan=\'3\' class=\'rounded-q4\' scope=\'col\'></th>'; $myresult .= '</tr>'; $myresult .= '</thead>'; /* thead - end */ $myresult .= '<tr>'; $myresult .= '<td colspan=\'4\'>'; $myresult .= '<textarea title=\'OverAll Comment\' name=\'overall_comment\' cols=\'65\'></textarea>'; $myresult .= '</td>'; $myresult .= '</tr>'; $myresult .= '<tbody>'; $myresult .= '</table>'; /* end table 3 - overall comment*/ /* start table 4 - summary*/ $myresult .= '<table border=\'0\' cellspacing=\'0\' cellpadding=\'0\' style=\'width:580px; table-layout:fixed;\' id=\'rounded-corner\'>'; $myresult .= '<tbody>'; /* thead - start */ $myresult .= '<thead>'; $myresult .= '<tr>'; $myresult .= '<th colspan=\'2\' class=\'rounded-company\' scope=\'col\'><span style=\'font: normal 18px Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; color:#FFF;\'>Your Opinion</span></th>'; $myresult .= '<th colspan=\'2\'class=\'rounded-q4\' scope=\'col\'></th>'; $myresult .= '</tr>'; $myresult .= '</thead>'; /* thead - end */ $myresult .= '<tr>'; $myresult .= '<td colspan=\'2\'>'; $myresult .= 'Do you Agree with the Ratings'; $myresult .= '</td>'; $myresult .= '<td colspan=\'2\'>'; $myresult .= 'Was the Information Helpful'; $myresult .= '</td>'; $myresult .= '</tr>'; $myresult .= '<tr>'; $myresult .= '<form name=\'form2\' id=\'form2\' method=\'post\'>'; $myresult .= '<td>'; $myresult .= '<input type=\'button\' class=\'agree\' value=\'agree\'>'; $myresult .= '</td>'; $myresult .= '<td>'; $myresult .= '<input type=\'button\' class=\'disagree\' value=\'disagree\'>'; $myresult .= '</td>'; $myresult .= '<input type=\'hidden\' name=\'agree_disagree\' id=\'agree_disagree\'>'; $myresult .= '</form>'; $myresult .= '<form name=\'form3\' id=\'form3\' method=\'post\'>'; $myresult .= '<td>'; $myresult .= '<input type=\'button\' class=\'helpful\' value=\'Helpful\'>'; $myresult .= '</td>'; $myresult .= '<td>'; $myresult .= '<input type=\'button\' class=\'nothelpful\' value=\'Not Helpful\'>'; $myresult .= '</td>'; $myresult .= '<input type=\'hidden\' name=\'help_nohelp\' id=\'help_nohelp\'>'; $myresult .= '</form>'; $myresult .= '</tr>'; $myresult .= '</tbody>'; $myresult .= '</table>'; /*end table 4 summary table */ $myresult .= '</div>'; /* Actual Form or Page - end */ echo $myresult; //echo 'Product: '.$product; //echo '<br/>Alias: '.$alias; ?> hey this code is working fine for me . as required. the star class code is taken from http://www.fyneworks.com/jquery/star-rating/ ... it works well.. but when i insert code to add tabs for content ,the starts is not visible at all. but when i check source code. the stars are actually there . dono whats the prob. any suggestions on this this is the tabs code $('#tabs div').hide(); ('#tabs div:first').show(); $('#tabs ul li:first').addClass('active'); $('#tabs ul li a').click(function() { $('#tabs ul li').removeClass('active'); $(this).parent().addClass('active'); var currentTab = $(this).attr('href'); $('#tabs div').hide(); $(currentTab).show(); return false; });

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• How to Configure Windows Machine to Allow File Sharing with DNS Alias

  - by Michael Ferrante

  I have not seen a single article posted anywhere online that brings together all the settings one would need to do to make this work properly on Windows, so I thought I would post it here. To facilitate failover schemes, a common technique is to use DNS CNAME records (DNS Aliases) for different machine roles. Then instead of changing the Windows computername of the actual machine name, one can switch a DNS record to point to a new host. This can work on Microsoft Windows machines, but to make it work with file sharing the following configuration steps need to be taken. Outline The Problem The Solution Allowing other machines to use filesharing via the DNS Alias (DisableStrictNameChecking) Allowing server machine to use filesharing with itself via the DNS Alias (BackConnectionHostNames) Providing browse capabilities for multiple NetBIOS names (OptionalNames) Register the Kerberos service principal names (SPNs) for other Windows functions like Printing (setspn) References 1. The Problem On Windows machines, file sharing can work via the computer name, with or without full qualification, or by the IP Address. By default, however, filesharing will not work with arbitrary DNS aliases. To enable filesharing and other Windows services to work with DNS aliases, you must make registry changes as detailed below and reboot the machine. 2. The Solution Allowing other machines to use filesharing via the DNS Alias (DisableStrictNameChecking) This change alone will allow other machines on the network to connect to the machine using any arbitrary hostname. (However this change will not allow a machine to connect to itself via a hostname, see BackConnectionHostNames below). Edit the registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\lanmanserver\parameters and add a value DisableStrictNameChecking of type DWORD set to 1. Allowing server machine to use filesharing with itself via the DNS Alias (BackConnectionHostNames) This change is necessary for a DNS alias to work with filesharing from a machine to find itself. This creates the Local Security Authority host names that can be referenced in an NTLM authentication request. To do this, follow these steps for all the nodes on the client computer: To the registry subkey HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Lsa\MSV1_0, add new Multi-String Value BackConnectionHostNames In the Value data box, type the CNAME or the DNS alias, that is used for the local shares on the computer, and then click OK. Note: Type each host name on a separate line. Providing browse capabilities for multiple NetBIOS names (OptionalNames) Allows ability to see the network alias in the network browse list. Edit the registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\lanmanserver\parameters and add a value OptionalNames of type Multi-String Add in a newline delimited list of names that should be registered under the NetBIOS browse entries Names should match NetBIOS conventions (i.e. not FQDN, just hostname) Register the Kerberos service principal names (SPNs) for other Windows functions like Printing (setspn) NOTE: Should not need to do this for basic functions to work, documented here for completeness. We had one situation in which the DNS alias was not working because there was an old SPN record interfering, so if other steps aren't working check if there are any stray SPN records. You must register the Kerberos service principal names (SPNs), the host name, and the fully-qualified domain name (FQDN) for all the new DNS alias (CNAME) records. If you do not do this, a Kerberos ticket request for a DNS alias (CNAME) record may fail and return the error code KDC_ERR_S_SPRINCIPAL_UNKNOWN. To view the Kerberos SPNs for the new DNS alias records, use the Setspn command-line tool (setspn.exe). The Setspn tool is included in Windows Server 2003 Support Tools. You can install Windows Server 2003 Support Tools from the Support\Tools folder of the Windows Server 2003 startup disk. How to use the tool to list all records for a computername: setspn -L computername To register the SPN for the DNS alias (CNAME) records, use the Setspn tool with the following syntax: setspn -A host/your_ALIAS_name computername setspn -A host/your_ALIAS_name.company.com computername 3. References All the Microsoft references work via: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/ Connecting to SMB share on a Windows 2000-based computer or a Windows Server 2003-based computer may not work with an alias name Covers the basics of making file sharing work properly with DNS alias records from other computers to the server computer. KB281308 Error message when you try to access a server locally by using its FQDN or its CNAME alias after you install Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1: "Access denied" or "No network provider accepted the given network path" Covers how to make the DNS alias work with file sharing from the file server itself. KB926642 How to consolidate print servers by using DNS alias (CNAME) records in Windows Server 2003 and in Windows 2000 Server Covers more complex scenarios in which records in Active Directory may need to be updated for certain services to work properly and for browsing for such services to work properly, how to register the Kerberos service principal names (SPNs). KB870911 Distributed File System update to support consolidation roots in Windows Server 2003 Covers even more complex scenarios with DFS (discusses OptionalNames). KB829885

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• Installing multiple php versions plus extensions on freebsd

  - by jgtumusiime

  I'm a currently learning how to work with freebsd. Lately I have been trying to run multiple php versions along with their respective packages. However, I seem to be running into issues while making installations. The default location for my php installation is /usr/local/etc/, however I want to be able to install php5.2, php5.3 and php5.4 in /usr/local/etc/php52, /usr/local/etc/php53 and /usr/local/etc/php54 respectively. Using ports I simply achieved this by doing cd /usr/ports/lang/php5x && make PREFIX="/usr/local/etc/php5x" install clean. The problem now is: How do I do the same for extensions of all my PHP versions? When I try installing php-extensions like so: cd /usr/ports/lang/php5x-extension && make PREFIX="/usr/local/etc/php5x/lib/php" install clean, I get this error ... ===> PHPizing for php53-bcmath-5.3.17 env: /usr/local/bin/phpize: No such file or directory *** Error code 127 Stop in /usr/ports/math/php53-bcmath. *** Error code 1 Stop in /usr/ports/lang/php53-extensions. My PHPize is located in /usr/local/etc/php5x/bin/phpize So how do I get make or whatever to look for phpize in the right path? Is there a cleaner, may be simpler way of maintaining multiple php installations? I need to achieve this because of compatibility issues from some legacy code that runs on 5.2 and breaks on 5.3. Thank you. ================= So I successfully installed an configured freebsd jail and I would like to install software within my jail but I cannot connect to the network. Here is my rc.conf jail_enable="YES" # Set to NO to disable starting of any jails jail_list="mambo2" # Space separated list of names of jails jail_mambo2_rootdir="/usr/jails/j01" # jail's root directory jail_mambo2_hostname="mambo2.ug" # jail's hostname jail_mambo2_ip="192.168.100.174" # jail's IP address jail_mambo2_devfs_enable="YES" # mount devfs in the jail jail_mambo2_devfs_ruleset="mambo2_ruleset" # devfs ruleset to apply to jail here is my jail ifconfig output mambo2# ifconfig rl0: flags=8843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> metric 0 mtu 1500 options=8<VLAN_MTU> ether 00:c1:28:00:48:db media: Ethernet autoselect (100baseTX <full-duplex>) status: active plip0: flags=108810<POINTOPOINT,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST,NEEDSGIANT> metric 0 mtu 1500 lo0: flags=8049<UP,LOOPBACK,RUNNING,MULTICAST> metric 0 mtu 16384 mambo2# I created a /etc/resolv.conf for nameservers mambo2# cat /etc/resolv.conf nameserver 192.168.100.251 nameserver 8.8.8.8 mambo2# Here is a list of jails running [root@mambo /usr/home/jtumusiime]# jls JID IP Address Hostname Path 5 192.168.100.174 mambo2.ug /usr/jails/j01 my host has 4 ip addresses, 3 public and one private: 192.168.100.173 I tried creating a jail using ezjail and this does not work out. [root@mambo /usr/home/jtumusiime]# ezjail-admin update -p -i Error: Cannot find your copy of the FreeBSD source tree in . Consider using 'ezjail-admin install' to create the base jail from an ftp server. [root@mambo /usr/home/jtumusiime]# I have an updated copy of freebsd 7.1 source in /usr/src/ and I did #make buildworld while building the first jail mambo2 Here is an excerpt of ouput of ezjail-admin install ... 221 Goodbye. Trying 193.162.146.4... Connected to ftp.freebsd.org. 220 ftp.beastie.tdk.net FTP server (Version 6.00LS) ready. 331 Guest login ok, send your email address as password. 230 Guest login ok, access restrictions apply. Remote system type is UNIX. Using binary mode to transfer files. 200 Type set to I. 550 pub/FreeBSD-Archive/old-releases/i386/7.1-RELEASE/base: No such file or directory. 221 Goodbye. Could not fetch base from ftp.freebsd.org. Maybe your release (7.1-RELEASE) is specified incorrectly or the host ftp.freebsd.org does not provide that release build. Use the -r option to specify an existing release or the -h option to specify an alternative ftp server. Querying your ftp-server... The ftp server you specified (ftp.freebsd.org) seems to provide the following builds: Trying 193.162.146.4... total 10 drwxrwxr-x 13 1006 1006 512 Feb 20 2011 8.2-RELEASE drwxrwxr-x 13 1006 1006 512 Apr 10 2012 8.3-RELEASE lrwxr-xr-x 1 1006 1006 16 Jan 7 2012 9.0-RELEASE -> i386/9.0-RELEASE drwxrwxr-x 7 1006 1006 1024 Feb 19 2012 ISO-IMAGES -rw-rw-r-- 1 1006 1006 637 Nov 23 2005 README.TXT drwxrwxr-x 5 1006 1006 512 Nov 2 02:59 i386 I do not want to upgrade my freebsd installation. I have googled around; but all on vail

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• installed openstack using devstack install shell script but getting 500 error when i try opening dashboard

  - by Arvind

  I followed the instructions at http://devstack.org/guides/single-machine.html to install OpenStack. I first installed Ubuntu on my Windows 7 PC using the officially supported Windows installer for Ubuntu 12.04 LTS. And after that I followed the instructions at above page to install OpenStack. As per instructions, I should be able to access the dashboard aka Horizon, at http://192.168.1.4/ (thats the IP of the PC on which I installed Ubuntu-OpenStack). However I am getting a 500 error web page when I open that. How do I resolve this error? I want to set up a dev environment for OpenStack. For your ref, the whole error message is given now-- FilterError at / /usr/bin/env: node: No such file or directory Request Method: GET Request URL: http://192.168.1.4/ Django Version: 1.4.2 Exception Type: FilterError Exception Value: /usr/bin/env: node: No such file or directory Exception Location: /usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/compressor/filters/base.py in input, line 133 Python Executable: /usr/bin/python Python Version: 2.7.3 Python Path: ['/opt/stack/horizon/openstack_dashboard/wsgi/../..', '/opt/stack/python-keystoneclient', '/opt/stack/python-novaclient', '/opt/stack/python-openstackclient', '/opt/stack/keystone', '/opt/stack/glance', '/opt/stack/python-glanceclient/setuptools_git-0.4.2-py2.7.egg', '/opt/stack/python-glanceclient', '/opt/stack/nova', '/opt/stack/horizon', '/opt/stack/cinder', '/opt/stack/python-cinderclient', '/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages', '/usr/lib/python2.7', '/usr/lib/python2.7/plat-linux2', '/usr/lib/python2.7/lib-tk', '/usr/lib/python2.7/lib-old', '/usr/lib/python2.7/lib-dynload', '/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages', '/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/PIL', '/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/gst-0.10', '/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/gtk-2.0', '/usr/lib/pymodules/python2.7', '/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/ubuntu-sso-client', '/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/ubuntuone-client', '/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/ubuntuone-control-panel', '/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/ubuntuone-couch', '/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/ubuntuone-storage-protocol', '/opt/stack/horizon/openstack_dashboard'] Server time: Sat, 27 Oct 2012 08:43:29 +0000 Error during template rendering In template /opt/stack/horizon/openstack_dashboard/templates/_stylesheets.html, error at line 3 /usr/bin/env: node: No such file or directory 1 {% load compress %} 2 3 {% compress css %} 4 <link href='{{ STATIC_URL }}dashboard/less/horizon.less' type='text/less' media='screen' rel='stylesheet' /> 5 {% endcompress %} 6 7 <link rel="shortcut icon" href="{{ STATIC_URL }}dashboard/img/favicon.ico"/> 8 Also, the traceback is now given below-- Environment: Request Method: GET Request URL: http://192.168.1.4/ Django Version: 1.4.2 Python Version: 2.7.3 Installed Applications: ('openstack_dashboard', 'django.contrib.contenttypes', 'django.contrib.auth', 'django.contrib.sessions', 'django.contrib.messages', 'django.contrib.staticfiles', 'django.contrib.humanize', 'compressor', 'horizon', 'openstack_dashboard.dashboards.project', 'openstack_dashboard.dashboards.admin', 'openstack_dashboard.dashboards.settings', 'openstack_auth') Installed Middleware: ('django.middleware.common.CommonMiddleware', 'django.middleware.csrf.CsrfViewMiddleware', 'django.contrib.sessions.middleware.SessionMiddleware', 'django.contrib.auth.middleware.AuthenticationMiddleware', 'django.contrib.messages.middleware.MessageMiddleware', 'horizon.middleware.HorizonMiddleware', 'django.middleware.doc.XViewMiddleware', 'django.middleware.locale.LocaleMiddleware') Template error: In template /opt/stack/horizon/openstack_dashboard/templates/_stylesheets.html, error at line 3 /usr/bin/env: node: No such file or directory 1 : {% load compress %} 2 : 3 : {% compress css %} 4 : <link href='{{ STATIC_URL }}dashboard/less/horizon.less' type='text/less' media='screen' rel='stylesheet' /> 5 : {% endcompress %} 6 : 7 : <link rel="shortcut icon" href="{{ STATIC_URL }}dashboard/img/favicon.ico"/> 8 : Traceback: File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/django/core/handlers/base.py" in get_response 111. response = callback(request, *callback_args, **callback_kwargs) File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/django/views/decorators/vary.py" in inner_func 36. response = func(*args, **kwargs) File "/opt/stack/horizon/openstack_dashboard/wsgi/../../openstack_dashboard/views.py" in splash 38. return shortcuts.render(request, 'splash.html', {'form': form}) File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/django/shortcuts/__init__.py" in render 44. return HttpResponse(loader.render_to_string(*args, **kwargs), File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/django/template/loader.py" in render_to_string 176. return t.render(context_instance) File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/django/template/base.py" in render 140. return self._render(context) File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/django/template/base.py" in _render 134. return self.nodelist.render(context) File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/django/template/base.py" in render 823. bit = self.render_node(node, context) File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/django/template/debug.py" in render_node 74. return node.render(context) File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/django/template/loader_tags.py" in render 155. return self.render_template(self.template, context) File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/django/template/loader_tags.py" in render_template 137. output = template.render(context) File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/django/template/base.py" in render 140. return self._render(context) File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/django/template/base.py" in _render 134. return self.nodelist.render(context) File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/django/template/base.py" in render 823. bit = self.render_node(node, context) File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/django/template/debug.py" in render_node 74. return node.render(context) File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/compressor/templatetags/compress.py" in render 147. return self.render_compressed(context, self.kind, self.mode, forced=forced) File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/compressor/templatetags/compress.py" in render_compressed 107. rendered_output = self.render_output(compressor, mode, forced=forced) File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/compressor/templatetags/compress.py" in render_output 119. return compressor.output(mode, forced=forced) File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/compressor/css.py" in output 51. ret.append(subnode.output(*args, **kwargs)) File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/compressor/css.py" in output 53. return super(CssCompressor, self).output(*args, **kwargs) File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/compressor/base.py" in output 230. content = self.filter_input(forced) File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/compressor/base.py" in filter_input 192. for hunk in self.hunks(forced): File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/compressor/base.py" in hunks 167. precompiled, value = self.precompile(value, **options) File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/compressor/base.py" in precompile 210. command=command, filename=filename).input(**kwargs) File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/compressor/filters/base.py" in input 133. raise FilterError(err) Exception Type: FilterError at / Exception Value: /usr/bin/env: node: No such file or directory

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• Making Thunar the default file browser without hiding the desktop icons

  - by Manu

  I really dislike Ubuntu's default file browser, nautilus, and decided to opt for a lighter alternative (Thunar or Xfe). I've used the following script to change the default to Thunar, but now all my icons are gone from the desktop ! The files are still there, in /home/myid/Desktop, but they do not appear. Is there a way to show them, or is this a consequence of removing nautilus as the default file browser ? Can I modify the following script* in order to keep the icons ? *copied from https://help.ubuntu.com/...: ## Originally written by aysiu from the Ubuntu Forums ## This is GPL'ed code ## So improve it and re-release it ## Define portion to make Thunar the default if that appears to be the appropriate action makethunardefault() { ## I went with --no-install-recommends because ## I didn't want to bring in a whole lot of junk, ## and Jaunty installs recommended packages by default. echo -e "\nMaking sure Thunar is installed\n" sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install thunar --no-install-recommends ## Does it make sense to change to the directory? ## Or should all the individual commands just reference the full path? echo -e "\nChanging to application launcher directory\n" cd /usr/share/applications echo -e "\nMaking backup directory\n" ## Does it make sense to create an entire backup directory? ## Should each file just be backed up in place? sudo mkdir nonautilusplease echo -e "\nModifying folder handler launcher\n" sudo cp nautilus-folder-handler.desktop nonautilusplease/ ## Here I'm using two separate sed commands ## Is there a way to string them together to have one ## sed command make two replacements in a single file? sudo sed -i -n 's/nautilus --no-desktop/thunar/g' nautilus-folder-handler.desktop sudo sed -i -n 's/TryExec=nautilus/TryExec=thunar/g' nautilus-folder-handler.desktop echo -e "\nModifying browser launcher\n" sudo cp nautilus-browser.desktop nonautilusplease/ sudo sed -i -n 's/nautilus --no-desktop --browser/thunar/g' nautilus-browser.desktop sudo sed -i -n 's/TryExec=nautilus/TryExec=thunar/g' nautilus-browser.desktop echo -e "\nModifying computer icon launcher\n" sudo cp nautilus-computer.desktop nonautilusplease/ sudo sed -i -n 's/nautilus --no-desktop/thunar/g' nautilus-computer.desktop sudo sed -i -n 's/TryExec=nautilus/TryExec=thunar/g' nautilus-computer.desktop echo -e "\nModifying home icon launcher\n" sudo cp nautilus-home.desktop nonautilusplease/ sudo sed -i -n 's/nautilus --no-desktop/thunar/g' nautilus-home.desktop sudo sed -i -n 's/TryExec=nautilus/TryExec=thunar/g' nautilus-home.desktop echo -e "\nModifying general Nautilus launcher\n" sudo cp nautilus.desktop nonautilusplease/ sudo sed -i -n 's/Exec=nautilus/Exec=thunar/g' nautilus.desktop ## This last bit I'm not sure should be included ## See, the only thing that doesn't change to the ## new Thunar default is clicking the files on the desktop, ## because Nautilus is managing the desktop (so technically ## it's not launching a new process when you double-click ## an icon there). ## So this kills the desktop management of icons completely ## Making the desktop pretty useless... would it be better ## to keep Nautilus there instead of nothing? Or go so far ## as to have Xfce manage the desktop in Gnome? echo -e "\nChanging base Nautilus launcher\n" sudo dpkg-divert --divert /usr/bin/nautilus.old --rename /usr/bin/nautilus && sudo ln -s /usr/bin/thunar /usr/bin/nautilus echo -e "\nRemoving Nautilus as desktop manager\n" killall nautilus echo -e "\nThunar is now the default file manager. To return Nautilus to the default, run this script again.\n" } restorenautilusdefault() { echo -e "\nChanging to application launcher directory\n" cd /usr/share/applications echo -e "\nRestoring backup files\n" sudo cp nonautilusplease/nautilus-folder-handler.desktop . sudo cp nonautilusplease/nautilus-browser.desktop . sudo cp nonautilusplease/nautilus-computer.desktop . sudo cp nonautilusplease/nautilus-home.desktop . sudo cp nonautilusplease/nautilus.desktop . echo -e "\nRemoving backup folder\n" sudo rm -r nonautilusplease echo -e "\nRestoring Nautilus launcher\n" sudo rm /usr/bin/nautilus && sudo dpkg-divert --rename --remove /usr/bin/nautilus echo -e "\nMaking Nautilus manage the desktop again\n" nautilus --no-default-window & ## The only change that isn't undone is the installation of Thunar ## Should Thunar be removed? Or just kept in? ## Don't want to load the script with too many questions? } ## Make sure that we exit if any commands do not complete successfully. ## Thanks to nanotube for this little snippet of code from the early ## versions of UbuntuZilla set -o errexit trap 'echo "Previous command did not complete successfully. Exiting."' ERR ## This is the main code ## Is it necessary to put an elseif in here? Or is ## redundant, since the directory pretty much ## either exists or it doesn't? ## Is there a better way to keep track of whether ## the script has been run before? if [[ -e /usr/share/applications/nonautilusplease ]]; then restorenautilusdefault else makethunardefault fi;

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• Mac OS X Server Open Directory does not push Software Update settings to clients

  - by joxl

  I have an Xserve G5 running Mac OS X Server 10.5.8 configured as an Open Directory master. I have also enabled and configured Software Update service on the machine. The SUS is configured to serve Tiger, Leopard and Snow Leopard clients (see http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=10297359#10297359) The clients bound to the OD are a variety of Mac's running OS X 10.4, 10.5 or 10.6. In Workgroup Manager, I have created 3 machine groups for each client OS. Each group is configured with a custom SUS URL, and the managed client computers are members accordingly (see http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=10493154#10493154) My problem is that the server pushes the SUS settings to some of the client machines, but not all. When I first configured all this stuff on the server (a few weeks ago) I was closely monitoring a few of the client machines to confirm that they received the custom settings. I noticed that some of the clients (10.4/5/6 alike) seemed to get the settings immediately, others didn't show the new settings until after a reboot. As I said, results are mixed across OS's, but some clients will not "sync" at all. My immediate thought was to unbind/rebind the problematic machines. I did this on several client computers with no success. For example, today I was working on one of the Tiger clients. I noticed it was not pointed at my local SUS, so I checked the OD binding; it was fine. Just to be sure I unbound the machine. Next, I checked WM and confirmed the computer record was gone. I noticed the machine group still had a residual (broken?) member from the unbound client; I manually removed this. Finally, I re-bound the client to OD and re-added the machine to it's correct group in WM. Unfortunately, the client still pings apple's SUS for updates. Just to play it safe I rebooted the client, but to no avail, it will not see my local SUS. To confirm that there is nothing wrong with the server, or the client's connection to it, forcefully pointed the machine at my SUS: sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.SoftwareUpdate CatalogURL "$LOCAL_SUS_URL" and the machine successfully updated off my local server. Great, successful updates, but problem not solved. I've done exhaustive reading on discussions.apple.com (not saying I read everything, I'm just saying I have read a lot) without a good answer. The discouraging thing is that a lot of OD problems I've read about only result in the sysadmin completely reinstalling the server, or OD, or some other similarly heavy-handed operation. At this point, I am not willing to go that route. I still have hope that I can find the reason for this flaky behavior. If anyone can point me in a helpful direction it would be much appreciated. EDIT: Indeed, some files are being pushed to the client: # from client machine: $ sudo find /Library -type f -name com.apple.SoftwareUpdate.plist /Library/Managed Preferences/com.apple.SoftwareUpdate.plist /Library/Managed Preferences/username/com.apple.SoftwareUpdate.plist /Library/Preferences/com.apple.SoftwareUpdate.plist A few weeks ago, prior to my (previously mentioned) modifications, the SUS was still running "stock". Which meant it could not serve SL (10.6) machines. At that time, the Software Update settings were setup in WM under User Groups. This didn't make any sense because some users work on multiple machines with different OS's. Before creating Machine Groups in WM, I deleted all the SU settings from the User Group Preferences. This just makes the whole thing more confusing, because when I see a file here: /Library/Managed Preferences/username/com.apple.SoftwareUpdate.plist I assume it's still remaining from the "old" settings, because I wouldn't think a Machine Setting belongs there. Despite all the com.apple.SoftwareUpdate.plist hanging around under the Managed Preferences, why does the client machine still call home to Apple and not my SUS? # on client machine: $ date Tue Jan 25 17:01:46 EST 2011 $ softwareupdate --list Software Update Tool Copyright 2002-2005 Apple No new software available. switch terminals... # on server: $ tail -n1 /var/log/swupd/swupd_access_log 10.x.x.x - - [25/Jan/2011:15:54:29 -0500] XXXX POST "/cgi-bin/SoftwareUpdateServerStats" 200 13 ... Notice the date of the client softwareupdate and the latest access to the SUS server; the server never heard a peep from that client.

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