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I'm looking for an online ASP.NET tutor.

- by pkiyan

$15/hr. I know it's not much but... Hi. I'm looking for an ASP.NET tutor. I want to use a remote desktop application so we can see each others screens and use Skype or phone to communicate with. You won't need to come up with any lessons or anything like that. I was thinking we could spend an hour or two each time we logged in to build a decent sized website from scratch. That's basically it. I'm a beginner with about 2 months experience with ASP.NET so we won't have to start from the very beginning, but pretty close. I wanted this site to have a little complexity to it and not just a website for beginners, but something I could study for a while. I'll pay you through PayPal or some other method if you prefer. By the way, it doesn't have to be a website that we work on together. I'll listen to other suggestions too. Maybe we could use an open source site/app to walk-through and study and modify. I've looked at 'My Web Pages Starter Kit 1.30', 'SubText 2.1.2', 'nopCommerce 1.5', and some others. They were all beyond me, and I couldn't make sense of any of the source code. But if you use and are really familiar with an open source app/site that I can download, we could study that. Here are some technical specs about the site I'd like to build/study: ASP.NET 2.0+ (preferably 3.5+, but I don't really care) C# / VB.NET ( don't really care, I suck at both. This is more about ASP.NET and helping me understand the structure of an ASP.NET website and the .NET framework in general. ) SQL Server ( I have SQL Server 2008 express and would someday like to learn how to use this thing. ) JavaScript / AJAX ( at least some use of this ) XML ( basically, I'd like to spend some time in the web.config file, and have some sense of what's going on in there. ) ASP.NET Folders ( I'd like to work with all of the ASP.NET folders if possible: App_Code, App_GlobalResources, etc.. and understand what does/doesn't go in them. Hopefully we can build more than one theme too. ) Assemblies ( how do you create a .dll and use it across different websites? maybe you could suggest a third party .dll that we could use ) Web Service ( I read about this once but didn't really get it ) I can't think of anything else but the above will definitely keep me busy. Hopefully we could make use of a lot of the server controls too (the nav controls gave me a headache when I tried customizing them). Is someone willing to help? I'll pay through PayPal 15 bucks an hour. I live in the Dallas, Texas (US) area so we'd have to synchronize time zones and agree on a day(s)/time of the week. I prefer working at night and on the weekends because I work during the week but whatever your schedule allows too. If you'd like to help me, can you post: years of experience with ASP.NET, your Time zone and time you're available and any ideas you might have about how you'd like to tutor? THANK YOU.

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How to design a high-level application protocol for metadata syncing between devices and server?

- by Jaanus

I am looking for guidance on how to best think about designing a high-level application protocol to sync metadata between end-user devices and a server. My goal: the user can interact with the application data on any device, or on the web. The purpose of this protocol is to communicate changes made on one endpoint to other endpoints through the server, and ensure all devices maintain a consistent picture of the application data. If user makes changes on one device or on the web, the protocol will push data to the central repository, from where other devices can pull it. Some other design thoughts: I call it "metadata syncing" because the payloads will be quite small, in the form of object IDs and small metadata about those ID-s. When client endpoints retrieve new metadata over this protocol, they will fetch actual object data from an external source based on this metadata. Fetching the "real" object data is out of scope, I'm only talking about metadata syncing here. Using HTTP for transport and JSON for payload container. The question is basically about how to best design the JSON payload schema. I want this to be easy to implement and maintain on the web and across desktop and mobile devices. The best approach feels to be simple timer- or event-based HTTP request/response without any persistent channels. Also, you should not have a PhD to read it, and I want my spec to fit on 2 pages, not 200. Authentication and security are out of scope for this question: assume that the requests are secure and authenticated. The goal is eventual consistency of data on devices, it is not entirely realtime. For example, user can make changes on one device while being offline. When going online again, user would perform "sync" operation to push local changes and retrieve remote changes. Having said that, the protocol should support both of these modes of operation: Starting from scratch on a device, should be able to pull the whole metadata picture "sync as you go". When looking at the data on two devices side by side and making changes, should be easy to push those changes as short individual messages which the other device can receive near-realtime (subject to when it decides to contact server for sync). As a concrete example, you can think of Dropbox (it is not what I'm working on, but it helps to understand the model): on a range of devices, the user can manage a files and folders—move them around, create new ones, remove old ones etc. And in my context the "metadata" would be the file and folder structure, but not the actual file contents. And metadata fields would be something like file/folder name and time of modification (all devices should see the same time of modification). Another example is IMAP. I have not read the protocol, but my goals (minus actual message bodies) are the same. Feels like there are two grand approaches how this is done: transactional messages. Each change in the system is expressed as delta and endpoints communicate with those deltas. Example: DVCS changesets. REST: communicating the object graph as a whole or in part, without worrying so much about the individual atomic changes. What I would like in the answers: Is there anything important I left out above? Constraints, goals? What is some good background reading on this? (I realize this is what many computer science courses talk about at great length and detail... I am hoping to short-circuit it by looking at some crash course or nuggets.) What are some good examples of such protocols that I could model after, or even use out of box? (I mention Dropbox and IMAP above... I should probably read the IMAP RFC.)

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How can I tell the size of my app during development?

- by Newbyman

My programming decissions are directly related to how much room I have left, or worse perhaps how much I need to shave off in order to get up the 10mb limit. I have read that Apple has quietly increased the 3G & Edge download limit from 10mb up to 20mb in preparation for the iPad in April. Either way, my real question is how can I gauge a rough estimate of how large my app will end while I'm still in the development phase? Is the file size of my development folder roughly 1 to 1 ratio? Is the compressed file size of my development a better approximation? My .xcodeproj file is only a couple hundred kB, but the size of my folder is 11.8 MB. I have a .sqlite database, less than 20 small png images and a Settings.Bundle. The rest are unknown Xcode files related to build, build for iphoneOS, simulator etc.... My source code is rather large with around 1000 lines in most of the major controllers, all in all around 48 .h&.m files. But my classes folder inside my development folder is less than 800kb. Digging around inside my Build file, there is lots of iphone simulator files and debugging files which I don't think will contribute to the final product. The Application file states that it is around 2.3 MB. However, this is such a large difference from the 11.8 MB, I have to wonder if this is just another piece of the equation. I have the app on the my device, I'm in the testing phase. Therefore, I though that I would try to see how large the working version was on the device by checking in iTunes, however my development app is visible on the right-hand the application's iphone screen, but no information about the app most importantly its size. I also checked in Organizer, I used the lower portion of the screen-(Applications), found my application and selected the drop down arrow which gave my "Application Data" and a download arrow button to the right to save a file on my desktop, named with the unique AppleID. Inside the folder it had three folders-(documents, library, tmp) the documents had a copy of my .sqlite database, the library a few more files but not anything obvious or of size, and the tmp was empty. All in all the entire folder was only 164kb-which tells me that this is not the right place to find the size either. I understand that the size is considered to be the size of my binary plus all the additional files and images that I have add. Does anyone have a effective way of guaging how large the binary is or the relating the development folder size to what the final App Store application size will end up. I know that questions have been posted with similar aspects, but I could not find any answered post that really described...what files, or how to determine size specifically. I know that this question looks like a book, but I just wanted to be specific in conveying exactly what I'm looking for and the attempts thus far. *Note all files are unzipped and still in regular working Xcode order of a single app with no brought-in builds or referenced projects. I'm sure that this is straight forward, I just don't know where to look?

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Appropriate programming design questions.

- by Edward

I have a few questions on good programming design. I'm going to first describe the project I'm building so you are better equipped to help me out. I am coding a Remote Assistance Tool similar to TeamViewer, Microsoft Remote Desktop, CrossLoop. It will incorporate concepts like UDP networking (using Lidgren networking library), NAT traversal (since many computers are invisible behind routers nowadays), Mirror Drivers (using DFMirage's Mirror Driver (http://www.demoforge.com/dfmirage.htm) for realtime screen grabbing on the remote computer). That being said, this program has a concept of being a client-server architecture, but I made only one program with both the functionality of client and server. That way, when the user runs my program, they can switch between giving assistance and receiving assistance without having to download a separate client or server module. I have a Windows Form that allows the user to choose between giving assistance and receiving assistance. I have another Windows Form for a file explorer module. I have another Windows Form for a chat module. I have another Windows Form form for a registry editor module. I have another Windows Form for the live control module. So I've got a Form for each module, which raises the first question: 1. Should I process module-specific commands inside the code of the respective Windows Form? Meaning, let's say I get a command with some data that enumerates the remote user's files for a specific directory. Obviously, I would have to update this on the File Explorer Windows Form and add the entries to the ListView. Should I be processing this code inside the Windows Form though? Or should I be handling this in another class (although I have to eventually pass the data to the Form to draw, of course). Or is it like a hybrid in which I process most of the data in another class and pass the final result to the Form to draw? So I've got like 5-6 forms, one for each module. The user starts up my program, enters the remote machine's ID (not IP, ID, because we are registering with an intermediary server to enable NAT traversal), their password, and connects. Now let's suppose the connection is successful. Then the user is presented with a form with all the different modules. So he can open up a File Explorer, or he can mess with the Registry Editor, or he can choose to Chat with his buddy. So now the program is sort of idle, just waiting for the user to do something. If the user opens up Live Control, then the program will be spending most of it's time receiving packets from the remote machine and drawing them to the form to provide a 'live' view. 2. Second design question. A spin off question #1. How would I pass module-specific commands to their respective Windows Forms? What I mean is, I have a class like "NetworkHandler.cs" that checks for messages from the remote machine. NetworkHandler.cs is a static class globally accessible. So let's say I get a command that enumerates the remote user's files for a specific directory. How would I "give" that command to the File Explorer Form. I was thinking of making an OnCommandReceivedEvent inside NetworkHandler, and having each form register to that event. When the NetworkHandler received a command, it would raise the event, all forms would check it to see if it was relevant, and the appropriate form would take action. Is this an appropriate/the best solution available? 3. The networking library I'm using, Lidgren, provides two options for checking networking messages. One can either poll ReadMessage() to return null or a message, or one can use an AutoResetEvent OnMessageReceived (I'm guessing this is like an event). Which one is more appropriate?

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[C#][Design] Appropriate programming design questions.

- by Edward

I have a few questions on good programming design. I'm going to first describe the project I'm building so you are better equipped to help me out. I am coding a Remote Assistance Tool similar to TeamViewer, Microsoft Remote Desktop, CrossLoop. It will incorporate concepts like UDP networking (using Lidgren networking library), NAT traversal (since many computers are invisible behind routers nowadays), Mirror Drivers (using DFMirage's Mirror Driver (http://www.demoforge.com/dfmirage.htm) for realtime screen grabbing on the remote computer). That being said, this program has a concept of being a client-server architecture, but I made only one program with both the functionality of client and server. That way, when the user runs my program, they can switch between giving assistance and receiving assistance without having to download a separate client or server module. I have a Windows Form that allows the user to choose between giving assistance and receiving assistance. I have another Windows Form for a file explorer module. I have another Windows Form for a chat module. I have another Windows Form form for a registry editor module. I have another Windows Form for the live control module. So I've got a Form for each module, which raises the first question: 1. Should I process module-specific commands inside the code of the respective Windows Form? Meaning, let's say I get a command with some data that enumerates the remote user's files for a specific directory. Obviously, I would have to update this on the File Explorer Windows Form and add the entries to the ListView. Should I be processing this code inside the Windows Form though? Or should I be handling this in another class (although I have to eventually pass the data to the Form to draw, of course). Or is it like a hybrid in which I process most of the data in another class and pass the final result to the Form to draw? So I've got like 5-6 forms, one for each module. The user starts up my program, enters the remote machine's ID (not IP, ID, because we are registering with an intermediary server to enable NAT traversal), their password, and connects. Now let's suppose the connection is successful. Then the user is presented with a form with all the different modules. So he can open up a File Explorer, or he can mess with the Registry Editor, or he can choose to Chat with his buddy. So now the program is sort of idle, just waiting for the user to do something. If the user opens up Live Control, then the program will be spending most of it's time receiving packets from the remote machine and drawing them to the form to provide a 'live' view. 2. Second design question. A spin off question #1. How would I pass module-specific commands to their respective Windows Forms? What I mean is, I have a class like "NetworkHandler.cs" that checks for messages from the remote machine. NetworkHandler.cs is a static class globally accessible. So let's say I get a command that enumerates the remote user's files for a specific directory. How would I "give" that command to the File Explorer Form. I was thinking of making an OnCommandReceivedEvent inside NetworkHandler, and having each form register to that event. When the NetworkHandler received a command, it would raise the event, all forms would check it to see if it was relevant, and the appropriate form would take action. Is this an appropriate/the best solution available? 3. The networking library I'm using, Lidgren, provides two options for checking networking messages. One can either poll ReadMessage() to return null or a message, or one can use an AutoResetEvent OnMessageReceived (I'm guessing this is like an event). Which one is more appropriate?

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Create / build / generate a web form that can be on my server and has modern looks and could be impl

- by Luay

I have a small web site and would like to add a 'contact us' form and a 'feedback' form. i would like the forms to satisfy the following: 1- be modern looking (with beautiful css effects) 2- the form fields are validated properly and 'inline'. What I mean is once a user skips a required field or enters an email address incorrectly some kind of tooltip or icon is displayed to ask him to cerrect the error (as opposed to a message box that appears after the user clicks 'submit') 3- once the submit button is clicked the form contents are emailed to me. 4- the whole thing can be setup by a noob like myself. 5- no ads on the form I have been searching for at least 5 days for a solution but I can't seem to find anything the would satisfy the above 5 conditions. I don't mind paying for a solution as long as it is hosted on my site and it is a one off payment and not a monthly payment. So far my search has lead me to the following: 1 wufoo. The good: the generated forms seem to look okay but not the best there is. The bad: the free service is limited to 100 submissions. ads on the form. it is not hosted on my server. Paid service requires monthly payments 2- emailmeform: almost same as above except the generated form looks old. They do have an offer where you pay only $4 to get the form and set it up on your own site but that doesn't solve the fact that the forms look old. 3- formAssembly: same as above with minor variations (the generated form looks better) 4- formchamp, formthis, kontaktr,... And other similar online services: the same problem. either the form generated looks outdated or require monthly payments or they put ads...they don't satisfy my conditions. 5- coffeecup form builder. a desktop software. The problem is the generated forms look too old and use flash. 6- simfatic. Another software. Much better than coffeecup. almost satisfies my conditions but the forms not as good as I like. 7- many, many php scripts or html templates that look so outdated or fail when tested (probably because they are too old). Seriously guys, how hard is this. At least 90%+ of website contain at least a 'contact us' form. Why aren't there better solutions? if there is I can't seem to find them. In terms of looks I want something similar to this: http://web-kreation.com/articles/lightform-free-ajaxphp-contact-form/ It is called lightform. And this is a perfect example of what I mean by 'inline' validation. the only problem: there is no script to handle sending the mail. Even if I find one, I don't know how to modify it for my needs. So could you please help me out. I really can't search anymore. I reached rock bottom with this issue. I need a complete solution. If nothing exists then at least a: 1- form template (html) that looks nice and can easily be modified 2- a validation script that does 'inline' validation like the example above (or similar to it) and can be easily implemented by a noob like me to work with the html form. 3- a php script that will handle sending the email and can be easily implemented (all three working in harmony). I hope there is a complete solution but am I asking for too much? Pretty please...help...

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Why is my NSURLConnection so slow?

- by Bama91

I have setup an NSURLConnection using the guidelines in Using NSURLConnection from the Mac OS X Reference Library, creating an NSMutableURLRequest as POST to a PHP script with a custom body to upload 20 MB of data (see code below). Note that the post body is what it is (line breaks and all) to exactly match an existing desktop implementation. When I run this in the iPhone simulator, the post is successful, but takes an order of magnitude longer than if I run the equivalent code locally on my Mac in C++ (20 minutes vs. 20 seconds, respectively). Any ideas why the difference is so dramatic? I understand that the simulator will give different results than the actual device, but I would expect at least similar results. Thanks const NSUInteger kDataSizePOST = 20971520; const NSString* kServerBDC = @"WWW.SOMEURL.COM"; const NSString* kUploadURL = @"http://WWW.SOMEURL.COM/php/test/upload.php"; const NSString* kUploadFilename = @"test.data"; const NSString* kUsername = @"testuser"; const NSString* kHostname = @"testhost"; srandom(time(NULL)); NSMutableData *uniqueData = [[NSMutableData alloc] initWithCapacity:kDataSizePOST]; for (unsigned int i = 0 ; i < kDataSizePOST ; ++i) { u_int32_t randomByte = ((random() % 95) + 32); [uniqueData appendBytes:(void*)&randomByte length:1]; } NSMutableURLRequest *request = [[NSMutableURLRequest alloc] init]; [request setURL:[NSURL URLWithString:kUploadURL]]; [request setHTTPMethod:@"POST"]; NSString *boundary = @"aBcDd"; NSString *contentType = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"multipart/form-data; boundary=%@",boundary]; [request addValue:contentType forHTTPHeaderField: @"Content-Type"]; NSMutableData *postbody = [NSMutableData data]; [postbody appendData:[[NSString stringWithFormat:@"--%@\nContent-Size:%d",boundary,[uniqueData length]] dataUsingEncoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding]]; [postbody appendData:[[NSString stringWithFormat:@"\nContent-Disposition: form-data; name=test; filename=%@", kUploadFilename] dataUsingEncoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding]]; [postbody appendData:[[NSString stringWithString:@";\nContent-Type: multipart/mixed;\n\r\n"] dataUsingEncoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding]]; [postbody appendData:[NSData dataWithData:uniqueData]]; [postbody appendData:[[NSString stringWithFormat:@"--%@\nContent-Size:%d",boundary,[kUsername length]] dataUsingEncoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding]]; [postbody appendData:[[NSString stringWithFormat:@"\nContent-Disposition: inline; name=Username;\n\r\n%@",kUsername] dataUsingEncoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding]]; [postbody appendData:[[NSString stringWithFormat:@"--%@\nContent-Size:%d",boundary,[kHostname length]] dataUsingEncoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding]]; [postbody appendData:[[NSString stringWithFormat:@"\nContent-Disposition: inline; name=Hostname;\n\r\n%@",kHostname] dataUsingEncoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding]]; [postbody appendData:[[NSString stringWithFormat:@"\n--%@--",boundary] dataUsingEncoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding]]; [request setHTTPBody:postbody]; NSURLConnection *theConnection = [[NSURLConnection alloc] initWithRequest:request delegate:self]; if (theConnection) { _receivedData = [[NSMutableData data] retain]; } else { // Inform the user that the connection failed. } [request release]; [uniqueData release];

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Path to background in servlet

- by kapil chhattani

//the below line is the element of my HTML form which renders the image sent by the servlet written further below. <img style="margin-left:91px; margin-top:-6px;" class="image" src="http://www.abcd.com/captchaServlet"> I generate a captcha code using the following code in java. public class captchaServlet extends HttpServlet { protected void processRequest(HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse response) throws ServletException, IOException { int width = 150; int height = 50; int charsToPrint = 6; String elegibleChars = "ABCDEFGHJKLMPQRSTUVWXYabcdefhjkmnpqrstuvwxy1234567890"; char[] chars = elegibleChars.toCharArray(); StringBuffer finalString = new StringBuffer(); for ( int i = 0; i < charsToPrint; i++ ) { double randomValue = Math.random(); int randomIndex = (int) Math.round(randomValue * (chars.length - 1)); char characterToShow = chars[randomIndex]; finalString.append(characterToShow); } System.out.println(finalString); BufferedImage bufferedImage = new BufferedImage(width, height, BufferedImage.TYPE_INT_RGB); Graphics2D g2d = bufferedImage.createGraphics(); Font font = new Font("Georgia", Font.BOLD, 18); g2d.setFont(font); RenderingHints rh = new RenderingHints( RenderingHints.KEY_ANTIALIASING, RenderingHints.VALUE_ANTIALIAS_ON); rh.put(RenderingHints.KEY_RENDERING, RenderingHints.VALUE_RENDER_QUALITY); g2d.setRenderingHints(rh); GradientPaint gp = new GradientPaint(0, 0, Color.BLUE, 0, height/2, Color.black, true); g2d.setPaint(gp); g2d.fillRect(0, 0, width, height); g2d.setColor(new Color(255, 255, 0)); Random r = new Random(); int index = Math.abs(r.nextInt()) % 5; char[] data=new String(finalString).toCharArray(); String captcha = String.copyValueOf(data); int x = 0; int y = 0; for (int i=0; i<data.length; i++) { x += 10 + (Math.abs(r.nextInt()) % 15); y = 20 + Math.abs(r.nextInt()) % 20; g2d.drawChars(data, i, 1, x, y); } g2d.dispose(); response.setContentType("image/png"); OutputStream os = response.getOutputStream(); ImageIO.write(bufferedImage, "png", os); os.close(); } protected void doGet(HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse response) throws ServletException, IOException { processRequest(request, response); } protected void doPost(HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse response) throws ServletException, IOException { processRequest(request, response); } } But in the above code background is also generated using the setPaint menthod I am guessing. I want the background to be some image from my local machine whoz URL i should be able to mention like URL url=this.getClass().getResource("Desktop/images.jpg"); BufferedImage bufferedImage = ImageIO.read(url); I am just writing the above two lines for making the reader understand better what the issue is. Dont want to use the exact same commands. All I want is the the background of the captcha code generated should be an image of my choice.

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Two functions working but not when I put them together

- by Error_404

I'm really new to C(I have been learning Cuda and wanted to learn C so I can run everything together instead of generating data in Java/Python and copy/pasting it manually to my Cuda program to play with). I am trying to open a large file(20+gb) and parse some data but because I was having problems I decided to try to break down my problem first to verify I can open and read line by line a file and then in another file take a sample of the output of a line and try to parse it, then if all goes well I can simply bring them together. I managed(after a bit of a struggle) to get each part working but when I combine them together it doesn't work(I tried in both eclipse & QT creator. QT creator says it exited unexpectedly and eclipse just stops..). Here's the parsing part(it works exactly as I want): #include <string.h> #include <stdio.h> int main() { char line[1024] = "[0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 2, 2, 2, 4],"; size_t len = strlen(line); memmove(line, line+1, len-3); line[len-3] = 0; printf("%s \n",line); char str[100], *s = str, *t = NULL; strcpy(str, line); while ((t = strtok(s, " ,")) != NULL) { s = NULL; printf(":%s:\n", t); } return 0; } The data in variable line is exactly as I get if I print each line of a file. But when I copy/paste it into my main program then it doesn't work(QT shows nothing and eclipse just shows the first line). This code is just a few file IO commands that are wrapped around the commands above(everything within the while loop is the exact same as above) #include <stdio.h> #include <stdlib.h> int main() { char line[1024]; FILE *fp = fopen("/Users/me/Desktop/output.txt","r"); printf("Starting.. \n"); int count = 0; int list[30]; //items will be stored here while(fgets(line, 1024, fp) != NULL){ count++; //char line[1024] = "[0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 2, 2, 2, 4],"; size_t len = strlen(line); memmove(line, line+1, len-3); line[len-3] = 0; printf("%s \n",line); char str[100], *s = str, *t = NULL; strcpy(str, line); while ((t = strtok(s, " ,")) != NULL) { s = NULL; printf(":%s:\n", t); } } printf(" num of lines is %i \n", count); return 0; } eclipse output: Starting.. 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 2, 2, 2, 4 I can't figure out what I'm doing wrong. I'm using a mac with gcc 4.2, if that helps. The only thing I can think of is maybe I'm doing something wrong the way I parse the list variable so its not accessible later on(I'm not sure its a wild guess). Is there anything I'm missing?

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Change columns order in bootstrap 3

- by TNK

I am trying to change bootstrap columns order in desktop and mobile screen. <div class="container"> <div class="row"> <section class="content-secondary col-sm-4"> <h4>Don't Miss!</h4> <p>Suspendisse et arcu felis, ac gravida turpis. Suspendisse potenti. Ut porta rhoncus ligula, sed fringilla felis feugiat eget. In non purus quis elit iaculis tincidunt. Donec at ultrices est.</p> <p><a class="btn btn-primary pull-right" href="#">Read more <span class="icon fa fa-arrow-circle-right"></span></a></p> <h4>Check it out</h4> <p>Suspendisse et arcu felis, ac gravida turpis. Suspendisse potenti. Ut porta rhoncus ligula, sed fringilla felis feugiat eget. In non purus quis elit iaculis tincidunt. Donec at ultrices est.</p> <p><a class="btn btn-primary pull-right" href="#">Read more <span class="icon fa fa-arrow-circle-right"></span></a></p> <h4>Finally</h4> <p>Suspendisse et arcu felis, ac gravida turpis. Suspendisse potenti. Ut porta rhoncus ligula, sed fringilla felis feugiat eget. In non purus quis elit iaculis tincidunt. Donec at ultrices est.</p> <p><a class="btn btn-primary pull-right" href="#">Read more <span class="icon fa fa-arrow-circle-right"></span></a></p> </section> <section class="content-primary col-sm-8"> <div class="main-content" ........... ........... </div> </section> </div> </div> View Port = SM columns order should be : |content- secondary | content-primary | View Port < SM columns order should be : | content-primary | |content- secondary | I tried it something like this using 'pulland 'push clases. <div class="row"> <section class="content-secondary col-sm-4 col-sm-push-4"> Content ...... </section> <section class="content-primary col-sm-8 col-sm-pull-8"> Content ...... </section> </div> But this is not working for me. Hope someone will help me out. Thank you.

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insert xml into sql server

- by JonDog

ok, so I know there are a bunch of other post on importing xml to sql server but I just cant seem to figure it out. I think my problem may have to do with having multi-levels. Can anyone help please. My xml, sql table, and the code i've tried. thanks in advance. <items> <item> <sku> <value> the_sku </value> </sku> <short_dis2> <value> short_discription2 <value/> </short_dis2> <short_dis1> <value> short_discription1 </value> </short_dis1> <title> <value> product_title </value> </title> <detailSpec> <value> detailed_specification_html </value> </detailSpec> <basicSpec> <value> basic_overview_html </value> </basicSpec> <basicSpecHeading> <value> besic_spec_heading </value> </basicSpecHeading> <detailSpecHeading> <value> detailed_specifications_heading </value> </detailSpecHeading> <model> <value> the_model_number </value> </model> <image_file_name> <value> the_image_url </value> </image_file_name> </item> ... CREATE TABLE [dbo].[products]( [sku] [nchar](15) NOT NULL, [model] [nvarchar](50) NULL, [title] [ntext] NULL, [short_dis1] [ntext] NULL, [short_dis2] [ntext] NULL, [basicSpecHeading] [ntext] NULL, [basicSpec] [ntext] NULL, [detailSpecHeading] [ntext] NULL, [detailSpec] [ntext] NULL, [image_file_name] [nchar](100) NULL INSERT INTO products (sku, short_dis2,short_dis1,title,detailSpec,basicSpec,basicSpecHeading,detailSpecHeading,model,image_file_name) SELECT X.product.query('sku').value('.', 'nchar(15)'), X.product.query('short_dis2').value('.', 'nvarchar(max)'), X.product.query('short_dis1').value('.', 'nvarchar(max)'), X.product.query('title').value('.', 'nvarchar(max)'), X.product.query('detailSpec').value('.', 'nvarchar(max)'), X.product.query('basicSpec').value('.', 'nvarchar(max)'), X.product.query('basicSpecHeading').value('.', 'nvarchar(max)'), X.product.query('detailSpecHeading').value('.', 'nvarchar(max)'), X.product.query('model').value('.', 'nvarchar(max)'), X.product.query('image_file_name').value('.', 'nvarchar(max)') FROM ( SELECT CAST(x AS XML) FROM OPENROWSET( BULK 'C:\users\me\desktop\xml_sample.xml', SINGLE_BLOB) AS T(x) ) AS T(x) CROSS APPLY x.nodes('Products/Product') AS X(product);

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Dynamic JSON Parsing in .NET with JsonValue

- by Rick Strahl

So System.Json has been around for a while in Silverlight, but it's relatively new for the desktop .NET framework and now moving into the lime-light with the pending release of ASP.NET Web API which is bringing a ton of attention to server side JSON usage. The JsonValue, JsonObject and JsonArray objects are going to be pretty useful for Web API applications as they allow you dynamically create and parse JSON values without explicit .NET types to serialize from or into. But even more so I think JsonValue et al. are going to be very useful when consuming JSON APIs from various services. Yes I know C# is strongly typed, why in the world would you want to use dynamic values? So many times I've needed to retrieve a small morsel of information from a large service JSON response and rather than having to map the entire type structure of what that service returns, JsonValue actually allows me to cherry pick and only work with the values I'm interested in, without having to explicitly create everything up front. With JavaScriptSerializer or DataContractJsonSerializer you always need to have a strong type to de-serialize JSON data into. Wouldn't it be nice if no explicit type was required and you could just parse the JSON directly using a very easy to use object syntax? That's exactly what JsonValue, JsonObject and JsonArray accomplish using a JSON parser and some sweet use of dynamic sauce to make it easy to access in code. Creating JSON on the fly with JsonValue Let's start with creating JSON on the fly. It's super easy to create a dynamic object structure. JsonValue uses the dynamic keyword extensively to make it intuitive to create object structures and turn them into JSON via dynamic object syntax. Here's an example of creating a music album structure with child songs using JsonValue:[TestMethod] public void JsonValueOutputTest() { // strong type instance var jsonObject = new JsonObject(); // dynamic expando instance you can add properties to dynamic album = jsonObject; album.AlbumName = "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap"; album.Artist = "AC/DC"; album.YearReleased = 1977; album.Songs = new JsonArray() as dynamic; dynamic song = new JsonObject(); song.SongName = "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap"; song.SongLength = "4:11"; album.Songs.Add(song); song = new JsonObject(); song.SongName = "Love at First Feel"; song.SongLength = "3:10"; album.Songs.Add(song); Console.WriteLine(album.ToString()); } This produces proper JSON just as you would expect: {"AlbumName":"Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap","Artist":"AC\/DC","YearReleased":1977,"Songs":[{"SongName":"Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap","SongLength":"4:11"},{"SongName":"Love at First Feel","SongLength":"3:10"}]} The important thing about this code is that there's no explicitly type that is used for holding the values to serialize to JSON. I am essentially creating this value structure on the fly by adding properties and then serialize it to JSON. This means this code can be entirely driven at runtime without compile time restraints of structure for the JSON output. Here I use JsonObject() to create a new object and immediately cast it to dynamic. JsonObject() is kind of similar in behavior to ExpandoObject in that it allows you to add properties by simply assigning to them. Internally, JsonValue/JsonObject these values are stored in pseudo collections of key value pairs that are exposed as properties through the DynamicObject functionality in .NET. The syntax gets a little tedious only if you need to create child objects or arrays that have to be explicitly defined first. Other than that the syntax looks like normal object access sytnax. Always remember though these values are dynamic - which means no Intellisense and no compiler type checking. It's up to you to ensure that the values you create are accessed consistently and without typos in your code. Note that you can also access the JsonValue instance directly and get access to the underlying type. This means you can assign properties by string, which can be useful for fully data driven JSON generation from other structures. Below you can see both styles of access next to each other:// strong type instance var jsonObject = new JsonObject(); // you can explicitly add values here jsonObject.Add("Entered", DateTime.Now); // expando style instance you can just 'use' properties dynamic album = jsonObject; album.AlbumName = "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap"; JsonValue internally stores properties keys and values in collections and you can iterate over them at runtime. You can also manipulate the collections if you need to to get the object structure to look exactly like you want. Again, if you've used ExpandoObject before JsonObject/Value are very similar in the behavior of the structure. Reading JSON strings into JsonValue The JsonValue structure supports importing JSON via the Parse() and Load() methods which can read JSON data from a string or various streams respectively. Essentially JsonValue includes the core JSON parsing to turn a JSON string into a collection of JsonValue objects that can be then referenced using familiar dynamic object syntax. Here's a simple example:[TestMethod] public void JsonValueParsingTest() { var jsonString = @"{""Name"":""Rick"",""Company"":""West Wind"",""Entered"":""2012-03-16T00:03:33.245-10:00""}"; dynamic json = JsonValue.Parse(jsonString); // values require casting string name = json.Name; string company = json.Company; DateTime entered = json.Entered; Assert.AreEqual(name, "Rick"); Assert.AreEqual(company, "West Wind"); } The JSON string represents an object with three properties which is parsed into a JsonValue object and cast to dynamic. Once cast to dynamic I can then go ahead and access the object using familiar object syntax. Note that the actual values - json.Name, json.Company, json.Entered - are actually of type JsonPrimitive and I have to assign them to their appropriate types first before I can do type comparisons. The dynamic properties will automatically cast to the right type expected as long as the compiler can resolve the type of the assignment or usage. The AreEqual() method oesn't as it expects two object instances and comparing json.Company to "West Wind" is comparing two different types (JsonPrimitive to String) which fails. So the intermediary assignment is required to make the test pass. The JSON structure can be much more complex than this simple example. Here's another example of an array of albums serialized to JSON and then parsed through with JsonValue():[TestMethod] public void JsonArrayParsingTest() { var jsonString = @"[ { ""Id"": ""b3ec4e5c"", ""AlbumName"": ""Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap"", ""Artist"": ""AC/DC"", ""YearReleased"": 1977, ""Entered"": ""2012-03-16T00:13:12.2810521-10:00"", ""AlbumImageUrl"": ""http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61kTaH-uZBL._AA115_.jpg"", ""AmazonUrl"": ""http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00008BXJ4/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=westwindtechn-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B00008BXJ4"", ""Songs"": [ { ""AlbumId"": ""b3ec4e5c"", ""SongName"": ""Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap"", ""SongLength"": ""4:11"" }, { ""AlbumId"": ""b3ec4e5c"", ""SongName"": ""Love at First Feel"", ""SongLength"": ""3:10"" }, { ""AlbumId"": ""b3ec4e5c"", ""SongName"": ""Big Balls"", ""SongLength"": ""2:38"" } ] }, { ""Id"": ""67280fb8"", ""AlbumName"": ""Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace"", ""Artist"": ""Foo Fighters"", ""YearReleased"": 2007, ""Entered"": ""2012-03-16T00:13:12.2810521-10:00"", ""AlbumImageUrl"": ""http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41mtlesQPVL._SL500_AA280_.jpg"", ""AmazonUrl"": ""http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000UFAURI/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=westwindtechn-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B000UFAURI"", ""Songs"": [ { ""AlbumId"": ""67280fb8"", ""SongName"": ""The Pretender"", ""SongLength"": ""4:29"" }, { ""AlbumId"": ""67280fb8"", ""SongName"": ""Let it Die"", ""SongLength"": ""4:05"" }, { ""AlbumId"": ""67280fb8"", ""SongName"": ""Erase/Replay"", ""SongLength"": ""4:13"" } ] }, { ""Id"": ""7b919432"", ""AlbumName"": ""End of the Silence"", ""Artist"": ""Henry Rollins Band"", ""YearReleased"": 1992, ""Entered"": ""2012-03-16T00:13:12.2800521-10:00"", ""AlbumImageUrl"": ""http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51FO3rb1tuL._SL160_AA160_.jpg"", ""AmazonUrl"": ""http://www.amazon.com/End-Silence-Rollins-Band/dp/B0000040OX/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1302232195&sr=8-5"", ""Songs"": [ { ""AlbumId"": ""7b919432"", ""SongName"": ""Low Self Opinion"", ""SongLength"": ""5:24"" }, { ""AlbumId"": ""7b919432"", ""SongName"": ""Grip"", ""SongLength"": ""4:51"" } ] } ]"; dynamic albums = JsonValue.Parse(jsonString); foreach (dynamic album in albums) { Console.WriteLine(album.AlbumName + " (" + album.YearReleased.ToString() + ")"); foreach (dynamic song in album.Songs) { Console.WriteLine("\t" + song.SongName ); } } Console.WriteLine(albums[0].AlbumName); Console.WriteLine(albums[0].Songs[1].SongName);} It's pretty sweet how easy it becomes to parse even complex JSON and then just run through the object using object syntax, yet without an explicit type in the mix. In fact it looks and feels a lot like if you were using JavaScript to parse through this data, doesn't it? And that's the point…© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2012Posted in .NET Web Api JSON Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

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Creating a dynamic, extensible C# Expando Object

- by Rick Strahl

I love dynamic functionality in a strongly typed language because it offers us the best of both worlds. In C# (or any of the main .NET languages) we now have the dynamic type that provides a host of dynamic features for the static C# language. One place where I've found dynamic to be incredibly useful is in building extensible types or types that expose traditionally non-object data (like dictionaries) in easier to use and more readable syntax. I wrote about a couple of these for accessing old school ADO.NET DataRows and DataReaders more easily for example. These classes are dynamic wrappers that provide easier syntax and auto-type conversions which greatly simplifies code clutter and increases clarity in existing code. ExpandoObject in .NET 4.0 Another great use case for dynamic objects is the ability to create extensible objects - objects that start out with a set of static members and then can add additional properties and even methods dynamically. The .NET 4.0 framework actually includes an ExpandoObject class which provides a very dynamic object that allows you to add properties and methods on the fly and then access them again. For example with ExpandoObject you can do stuff like this:dynamic expand = new ExpandoObject(); expand.Name = "Rick"; expand.HelloWorld = (Func<string, string>) ((string name) => { return "Hello " + name; }); Console.WriteLine(expand.Name); Console.WriteLine(expand.HelloWorld("Dufus")); Internally ExpandoObject uses a Dictionary like structure and interface to store properties and methods and then allows you to add and access properties and methods easily. As cool as ExpandoObject is it has a few shortcomings too: It's a sealed type so you can't use it as a base class It only works off 'properties' in the internal Dictionary - you can't expose existing type data It doesn't serialize to XML or with DataContractSerializer/DataContractJsonSerializer Expando - A truly extensible Object ExpandoObject is nice if you just need a dynamic container for a dictionary like structure. However, if you want to build an extensible object that starts out with a set of strongly typed properties and then allows you to extend it, ExpandoObject does not work because it's a sealed class that can't be inherited. I started thinking about this very scenario for one of my applications I'm building for a customer. In this system we are connecting to various different user stores. Each user store has the same basic requirements for username, password, name etc. But then each store also has a number of extended properties that is available to each application. In the real world scenario the data is loaded from the database in a data reader and the known properties are assigned from the known fields in the database. All unknown fields are then 'added' to the expando object dynamically. In the past I've done this very thing with a separate property - Properties - just like I do for this class. But the property and dictionary syntax is not ideal and tedious to work with. I started thinking about how to represent these extra property structures. One way certainly would be to add a Dictionary, or an ExpandoObject to hold all those extra properties. But wouldn't it be nice if the application could actually extend an existing object that looks something like this as you can with the Expando object:public class User : Westwind.Utilities.Dynamic.Expando { public string Email { get; set; } public string Password { get; set; } public string Name { get; set; } public bool Active { get; set; } public DateTime? ExpiresOn { get; set; } } and then simply start extending the properties of this object dynamically? Using the Expando object I describe later you can now do the following:[TestMethod] public void UserExampleTest() { var user = new User(); // Set strongly typed properties user.Email = "[email protected]"; user.Password = "nonya123"; user.Name = "Rickochet"; user.Active = true; // Now add dynamic properties dynamic duser = user; duser.Entered = DateTime.Now; duser.Accesses = 1; // you can also add dynamic props via indexer user["NickName"] = "AntiSocialX"; duser["WebSite"] = "http://www.west-wind.com/weblog"; // Access strong type through dynamic ref Assert.AreEqual(user.Name,duser.Name); // Access strong type through indexer Assert.AreEqual(user.Password,user["Password"]); // access dyanmically added value through indexer Assert.AreEqual(duser.Entered,user["Entered"]); // access index added value through dynamic Assert.AreEqual(user["NickName"],duser.NickName); // loop through all properties dynamic AND strong type properties (true) foreach (var prop in user.GetProperties(true)) { object val = prop.Value; if (val == null) val = "null"; Console.WriteLine(prop.Key + ": " + val.ToString()); } } As you can see this code somewhat blurs the line between a static and dynamic type. You start with a strongly typed object that has a fixed set of properties. You can then cast the object to dynamic (as I discussed in my last post) and add additional properties to the object. You can also use an indexer to add dynamic properties to the object. To access the strongly typed properties you can use either the strongly typed instance, the indexer or the dynamic cast of the object. Personally I think it's kinda cool to have an easy way to access strongly typed properties by string which can make some data scenarios much easier. To access the 'dynamically added' properties you can use either the indexer on the strongly typed object, or property syntax on the dynamic cast. Using the dynamic type allows all three modes to work on both strongly typed and dynamic properties. Finally you can iterate over all properties, both dynamic and strongly typed if you chose. Lots of flexibility. Note also that by default the Expando object works against the (this) instance meaning it extends the current object. You can also pass in a separate instance to the constructor in which case that object will be used to iterate over to find properties rather than this. Using this approach provides some really interesting functionality when use the dynamic type. To use this we have to add an explicit constructor to the Expando subclass:public class User : Westwind.Utilities.Dynamic.Expando { public string Email { get; set; } public string Password { get; set; } public string Name { get; set; } public bool Active { get; set; } public DateTime? ExpiresOn { get; set; } public User() : base() { } // only required if you want to mix in seperate instance public User(object instance) : base(instance) { } } to allow the instance to be passed. When you do you can now do:[TestMethod] public void ExpandoMixinTest() { // have Expando work on Addresses var user = new User( new Address() ); // cast to dynamicAccessToPropertyTest dynamic duser = user; // Set strongly typed properties duser.Email = "[email protected]"; user.Password = "nonya123"; // Set properties on address object duser.Address = "32 Kaiea"; //duser.Phone = "808-123-2131"; // set dynamic properties duser.NonExistantProperty = "This works too"; // shows default value Address.Phone value Console.WriteLine(duser.Phone); } Using the dynamic cast in this case allows you to access *three* different 'objects': The strong type properties, the dynamically added properties in the dictionary and the properties of the instance passed in! Effectively this gives you a way to simulate multiple inheritance (which is scary - so be very careful with this, but you can do it). How Expando works Behind the scenes Expando is a DynamicObject subclass as I discussed in my last post. By implementing a few of DynamicObject's methods you can basically create a type that can trap 'property missing' and 'method missing' operations. When you access a non-existant property a known method is fired that our code can intercept and provide a value for. Internally Expando uses a custom dictionary implementation to hold the dynamic properties you might add to your expandable object. Let's look at code first. The code for the Expando type is straight forward and given what it provides relatively short. Here it is.using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Dynamic; using System.Reflection; namespace Westwind.Utilities.Dynamic { /// <summary> /// Class that provides extensible properties and methods. This /// dynamic object stores 'extra' properties in a dictionary or /// checks the actual properties of the instance. /// /// This means you can subclass this expando and retrieve either /// native properties or properties from values in the dictionary. /// /// This type allows you three ways to access its properties: /// /// Directly: any explicitly declared properties are accessible /// Dynamic: dynamic cast allows access to dictionary and native properties/methods /// Dictionary: Any of the extended properties are accessible via IDictionary interface /// </summary> [Serializable] public class Expando : DynamicObject, IDynamicMetaObjectProvider { /// <summary> /// Instance of object passed in /// </summary> object Instance; /// <summary> /// Cached type of the instance /// </summary> Type InstanceType; PropertyInfo[] InstancePropertyInfo { get { if (_InstancePropertyInfo == null && Instance != null) _InstancePropertyInfo = Instance.GetType().GetProperties(BindingFlags.Instance | BindingFlags.Public | BindingFlags.DeclaredOnly); return _InstancePropertyInfo; } } PropertyInfo[] _InstancePropertyInfo; /// <summary> /// String Dictionary that contains the extra dynamic values /// stored on this object/instance /// </summary> /// <remarks>Using PropertyBag to support XML Serialization of the dictionary</remarks> public PropertyBag Properties = new PropertyBag(); //public Dictionary<string,object> Properties = new Dictionary<string, object>(); /// <summary> /// This constructor just works off the internal dictionary and any /// public properties of this object. /// /// Note you can subclass Expando. /// </summary> public Expando() { Initialize(this); } /// <summary> /// Allows passing in an existing instance variable to 'extend'. /// </summary> /// <remarks> /// You can pass in null here if you don't want to /// check native properties and only check the Dictionary! /// </remarks> /// <param name="instance"></param> public Expando(object instance) { Initialize(instance); } protected virtual void Initialize(object instance) { Instance = instance; if (instance != null) InstanceType = instance.GetType(); } /// <summary> /// Try to retrieve a member by name first from instance properties /// followed by the collection entries. /// </summary> /// <param name="binder"></param> /// <param name="result"></param> /// <returns></returns> public override bool TryGetMember(GetMemberBinder binder, out object result) { result = null; // first check the Properties collection for member if (Properties.Keys.Contains(binder.Name)) { result = Properties[binder.Name]; return true; } // Next check for Public properties via Reflection if (Instance != null) { try { return GetProperty(Instance, binder.Name, out result); } catch { } } // failed to retrieve a property result = null; return false; } /// <summary> /// Property setter implementation tries to retrieve value from instance /// first then into this object /// </summary> /// <param name="binder"></param> /// <param name="value"></param> /// <returns></returns> public override bool TrySetMember(SetMemberBinder binder, object value) { // first check to see if there's a native property to set if (Instance != null) { try { bool result = SetProperty(Instance, binder.Name, value); if (result) return true; } catch { } } // no match - set or add to dictionary Properties[binder.Name] = value; return true; } /// <summary> /// Dynamic invocation method. Currently allows only for Reflection based /// operation (no ability to add methods dynamically). /// </summary> /// <param name="binder"></param> /// <param name="args"></param> /// <param name="result"></param> /// <returns></returns> public override bool TryInvokeMember(InvokeMemberBinder binder, object[] args, out object result) { if (Instance != null) { try { // check instance passed in for methods to invoke if (InvokeMethod(Instance, binder.Name, args, out result)) return true; } catch { } } result = null; return false; } /// <summary> /// Reflection Helper method to retrieve a property /// </summary> /// <param name="instance"></param> /// <param name="name"></param> /// <param name="result"></param> /// <returns></returns> protected bool GetProperty(object instance, string name, out object result) { if (instance == null) instance = this; var miArray = InstanceType.GetMember(name, BindingFlags.Public | BindingFlags.GetProperty | BindingFlags.Instance); if (miArray != null && miArray.Length > 0) { var mi = miArray[0]; if (mi.MemberType == MemberTypes.Property) { result = ((PropertyInfo)mi).GetValue(instance,null); return true; } } result = null; return false; } /// <summary> /// Reflection helper method to set a property value /// </summary> /// <param name="instance"></param> /// <param name="name"></param> /// <param name="value"></param> /// <returns></returns> protected bool SetProperty(object instance, string name, object value) { if (instance == null) instance = this; var miArray = InstanceType.GetMember(name, BindingFlags.Public | BindingFlags.SetProperty | BindingFlags.Instance); if (miArray != null && miArray.Length > 0) { var mi = miArray[0]; if (mi.MemberType == MemberTypes.Property) { ((PropertyInfo)mi).SetValue(Instance, value, null); return true; } } return false; } /// <summary> /// Reflection helper method to invoke a method /// </summary> /// <param name="instance"></param> /// <param name="name"></param> /// <param name="args"></param> /// <param name="result"></param> /// <returns></returns> protected bool InvokeMethod(object instance, string name, object[] args, out object result) { if (instance == null) instance = this; // Look at the instanceType var miArray = InstanceType.GetMember(name, BindingFlags.InvokeMethod | BindingFlags.Public | BindingFlags.Instance); if (miArray != null && miArray.Length > 0) { var mi = miArray[0] as MethodInfo; result = mi.Invoke(Instance, args); return true; } result = null; return false; } /// <summary> /// Convenience method that provides a string Indexer /// to the Properties collection AND the strongly typed /// properties of the object by name. /// /// // dynamic /// exp["Address"] = "112 nowhere lane"; /// // strong /// var name = exp["StronglyTypedProperty"] as string; /// </summary> /// <remarks> /// The getter checks the Properties dictionary first /// then looks in PropertyInfo for properties. /// The setter checks the instance properties before /// checking the Properties dictionary. /// </remarks> /// <param name="key"></param> /// /// <returns></returns> public object this[string key] { get { try { // try to get from properties collection first return Properties[key]; } catch (KeyNotFoundException ex) { // try reflection on instanceType object result = null; if (GetProperty(Instance, key, out result)) return result; // nope doesn't exist throw; } } set { if (Properties.ContainsKey(key)) { Properties[key] = value; return; } // check instance for existance of type first var miArray = InstanceType.GetMember(key, BindingFlags.Public | BindingFlags.GetProperty); if (miArray != null && miArray.Length > 0) SetProperty(Instance, key, value); else Properties[key] = value; } } /// <summary> /// Returns and the properties of /// </summary> /// <param name="includeProperties"></param> /// <returns></returns> public IEnumerable<KeyValuePair<string,object>> GetProperties(bool includeInstanceProperties = false) { if (includeInstanceProperties && Instance != null) { foreach (var prop in this.InstancePropertyInfo) yield return new KeyValuePair<string, object>(prop.Name, prop.GetValue(Instance, null)); } foreach (var key in this.Properties.Keys) yield return new KeyValuePair<string, object>(key, this.Properties[key]); } /// <summary> /// Checks whether a property exists in the Property collection /// or as a property on the instance /// </summary> /// <param name="item"></param> /// <returns></returns> public bool Contains(KeyValuePair<string, object> item, bool includeInstanceProperties = false) { bool res = Properties.ContainsKey(item.Key); if (res) return true; if (includeInstanceProperties && Instance != null) { foreach (var prop in this.InstancePropertyInfo) { if (prop.Name == item.Key) return true; } } return false; } } } Although the Expando class supports an indexer, it doesn't actually implement IDictionary or even IEnumerable. It only provides the indexer and Contains() and GetProperties() methods, that work against the Properties dictionary AND the internal instance. The reason for not implementing IDictionary is that a) it doesn't add much value since you can access the Properties dictionary directly and that b) I wanted to keep the interface to class very lean so that it can serve as an entity type if desired. Implementing these IDictionary (or even IEnumerable) causes LINQ extension methods to pop up on the type which obscures the property interface and would only confuse the purpose of the type. IDictionary and IEnumerable are also problematic for XML and JSON Serialization - the XML Serializer doesn't serialize IDictionary<string,object>, nor does the DataContractSerializer. The JavaScriptSerializer does serialize, but it treats the entire object like a dictionary and doesn't serialize the strongly typed properties of the type, only the dictionary values which is also not desirable. Hence the decision to stick with only implementing the indexer to support the user["CustomProperty"] functionality and leaving iteration functions to the publicly exposed Properties dictionary. Note that the Dictionary used here is a custom PropertyBag class I created to allow for serialization to work. One important aspect for my apps is that whatever custom properties get added they have to be accessible to AJAX clients since the particular app I'm working on is a SIngle Page Web app where most of the Web access is through JSON AJAX calls. PropertyBag can serialize to XML and one way serialize to JSON using the JavaScript serializer (not the DCS serializers though). The key components that make Expando work in this code are the Properties Dictionary and the TryGetMember() and TrySetMember() methods. The Properties collection is public so if you choose you can explicitly access the collection to get better performance or to manipulate the members in internal code (like loading up dynamic values form a database). Notice that TryGetMember() and TrySetMember() both work against the dictionary AND the internal instance to retrieve and set properties. This means that user["Name"] works against native properties of the object as does user["Name"] = "RogaDugDog". What's your Use Case? This is still an early prototype but I've plugged it into one of my customer's applications and so far it's working very well. The key features for me were the ability to easily extend the type with values coming from a database and exposing those values in a nice and easy to use manner. I'm also finding that using this type of object for ViewModels works very well to add custom properties to view models. I suspect there will be lots of uses for this - I've been using the extra dictionary approach to extensibility for years - using a dynamic type to make the syntax cleaner is just a bonus here. What can you think of to use this for? Resources Source Code and Tests (GitHub) Also integrated in Westwind.Utilities of the West Wind Web Toolkit West Wind Utilities NuGet© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2012Posted in CSharp .NET Dynamic Types Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

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WiX 3 Tutorial: Understanding main WXS and WXI file

- by Mladen Prajdic

In the previous post we’ve taken a look at the WiX solution/project structure and project properties. We’re still playing with our super SuperForm application and today we’ll take a look at the general parts of the main wxs file, SuperForm.wxs, and the wxi include file. For wxs file we’ll just go over the general description of what each part does in the code comments. The more detailed descriptions will be in future posts about features themselves. WXI include file Include files are exactly what their name implies. To include a wxi file into the wxs file you have to put the wxi at the beginning of each .wxs file you wish to include it in. If you’ve ever worked with C++ you can think of the include files as .h files. For example if you include SuperFormVariables.wxi into the SuperForm.wxs, the variables in the wxi won’t be seen in FilesFragment.wxs or RegistryFragment.wxs. You’d have to include it manually into those two wxs files too. For preprocessor variable $(var.VariableName) to be seen by every file in the project you have to include them in the WiX project properties->Build->“Define preprocessor variables” textbox. This is why I’ve chosen not to go this route because in multi developer teams not everyone has the same directory structure and having a single variable would mean each developer would have to checkout the wixproj file to edit the variable. This is pretty much unacceptable by my standards. This is why we’ve added a System Environment variable named SuperFormFilesDir as is shown in the previous Wix Tutorial post. Because the FilesFragment.wxs is autogenerated on every project build we don’t want to change it manually each time by adding the include wxi at the beginning of the file. This way we couldn’t recreate it in each pre-build event. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?><Include>  <?define MajorVersion="1" ?> <?define MinorVersion="0" ?> <?define BuildVersion="0" ?>  <?define Revision="0" ?>  <?define VersionNumber="$(var.MajorVersion).$(var.MinorVersion).$(var.BuildVersion).$(var.Revision)" ?>  <?define UpgradeCode="YOUR-GUID-HERE" ?>  <?define ResourcesDir="$(var.ProjectDir)\Resources" ?>  <?define ExeProcessName="SuperForm.MainApp.exe" ?></Include> For now there’s no way to tell WiX in Visual Studio to have a wxi include file available to the whole project, so you have to include it in each file separately. Only variables set in “Define preprocessor variables” or System Environment variables are accessible to the whole project for now. The main WXS file: SuperForm.wxs We’ll only take a look at the general structure of the main SuperForm.wxs and not its the details. We’ll cover the details in future posts. The code comments should provide plenty info about what each part does in general. Basically there are 5 major parts. The update part, the conditions and actions part, the UI install sequence, the directory structure and the features we want to include. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><Wix xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/wix/2006/wi" xmlns:util="http://schemas.microsoft.com/wix/UtilExtension">  <?include $(sys.CURRENTDIR)Includes\SuperFormVariables.wxi ?>  <Product Id="*" Name="!(loc.ProductName) $(var.VersionNumber)" Language="!(loc.LANG)" Version="$(var.VersionNumber)" Manufacturer="!(loc.ManufacturerName)" UpgradeCode="$(var.UpgradeCode)">  <Package InstallerVersion="300" Compressed="yes" InstallScope="perMachine"/> <Media Id="1" Cabinet="media1.cab" EmbedCab="yes" />  <Upgrade Id="$(var.UpgradeCode)"> <UpgradeVersion OnlyDetect="yes" Minimum="$(var.VersionNumber)" IncludeMinimum="no" Property="NEWER_VERSION_FOUND" /> <UpgradeVersion Minimum="0.0.0.0" IncludeMinimum="yes" Maximum="$(var.VersionNumber)" IncludeMaximum="no" Property="OLDER_VERSION_FOUND" /> </Upgrade>  <PropertyRef Id="NETFRAMEWORK35"/>  <Condition Message="!(loc.DotNetFrameworkNeeded)"> <![CDATA[Installed OR NETFRAMEWORK35]]> </Condition> <Condition Message="!(loc.AppNotSupported)"> <![CDATA[Installed OR ((VersionNT >= 501 AND ServicePackLevel >= 2) OR (VersionNT >= 502))]]> </Condition>  <CustomAction Id="NewerVersionFound" Error="!(loc.SuperFormNewerVersionInstalled)" /> <InstallExecuteSequence>  <Custom Action="NewerVersionFound" After="FindRelatedProducts"> <![CDATA[NEWER_VERSION_FOUND]]> </Custom>  <RemoveExistingProducts After="InstallInitialize"/>  <Custom Action="WixCloseApplications" Before="InstallInitialize" /> </InstallExecuteSequence>  <util:CloseApplication Id="CloseSuperForm" CloseMessage="no" Description="!(loc.MustCloseSuperForm)" ElevatedCloseMessage="no" RebootPrompt="no" Target="$(var.ExeProcessName)" />  <UIRef Id="WixUI_InstallDir" /> <UI>  <DialogRef Id="FilesInUse" /> <DialogRef Id="MsiRMFilesInUse" />  </UI>  <Icon Id="SuperFormIcon.ico" SourceFile="$(var.ResourcesDir)\Exclam.ico" /> <Property Id="ARPPRODUCTICON" Value="SuperFormIcon.ico" />   <Directory Id="TARGETDIR" Name="SourceDir"> <Directory Id="ProgramFilesFolder"> <Directory Id="INSTALLLOCATION" Name="!(loc.ProductName)" /> </Directory> </Directory>  <Property Id="WIXUI_INSTALLDIR" Value="INSTALLLOCATION" />  <Feature Id="SuperFormFeature" Title="!(loc.ProductName)" Level="1"> <ComponentGroupRef Id="SuperFormFiles" /> <ComponentRef Id="cmpVersionInRegistry" /> <ComponentRef Id="cmpIsThisUpdateInRegistry" /> </Feature> </Product></Wix> For more info on what certain attributes mean you should look into the WiX Documentation. WiX 3 tutorial by Mladen Prajdic navigation WiX 3 Tutorial: Solution/Project structure and Dev resources WiX 3 Tutorial: Understanding main wxs and wxi file WiX 3 Tutorial: Generating file/directory fragments with Heat.exe

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WCF WS-Security and WSE Nonce Authentication

- by Rick Strahl

WCF makes it fairly easy to access WS-* Web Services, except when you run into a service format that it doesn't support. Even then WCF provides a huge amount of flexibility to make the service clients work, however finding the proper interfaces to make that happen is not easy to discover and for the most part undocumented unless you're lucky enough to run into a blog, forum or StackOverflow post on the matter. This is definitely true for the Password Nonce as part of the WS-Security/WSE protocol, which is not natively supported in WCF. Specifically I had a need to create a WCF message on the client that includes a WS-Security header that looks like this from their spec document:<soapenv:Header> <wsse:Security soapenv:mustUnderstand="1" xmlns:wsse="http://docs.oasis-open.org/wss/2004/01/oasis-200401-wss-wssecurity-secext-1.0.xsd"> <wsse:UsernameToken wsu:Id="UsernameToken-8" xmlns:wsu="http://docs.oasis-open.org/wss/2004/01/oasis-200401-wss-wssecurity-utility-1.0.xsd"> <wsse:Username>TeStUsErNaMe1</wsse:Username> <wsse:Password Type="http://docs.oasis-open.org/wss/2004/01/oasis-200401-wss-username-token-profile-1.0#PasswordText" >TeStPaSsWoRd1</wsse:Password> <wsse:Nonce EncodingType="http://docs.oasis-open.org/wss/2004/01/oasis-200401-wss-soap-message-security-1.0#Base64Binary" >f8nUe3YupTU5ISdCy3X9Gg==</wsse:Nonce> <wsu:Created>2011-05-04T19:01:40.981Z</wsu:Created> </wsse:UsernameToken> </wsse:Security> </soapenv:Header> Specifically, the Nonce and Created keys are what WCF doesn't create or have a built in formatting for. Why is there a nonce? My first thought here was WTF? The username and password are there in clear text, what does the Nonce accomplish? The Nonce and created keys are are part of WSE Security specification and are meant to allow the server to detect and prevent replay attacks. The hashed nonce should be unique per request which the server can store and check for before running another request thus ensuring that a request is not replayed with exactly the same values. Basic ServiceUtl Import - not much Luck The first thing I did when I imported this service with a service reference was to simply import it as a Service Reference. The Add Service Reference import automatically detects that WS-Security is required and appropariately adds the WS-Security to the basicHttpBinding in the config file:<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?> <configuration> <system.serviceModel> <bindings> <basicHttpBinding> <binding name="RealTimeOnlineSoapBinding"> <security mode="Transport" /> </binding> <binding name="RealTimeOnlineSoapBinding1" /> </basicHttpBinding> </bindings> <client> <endpoint address="https://notarealurl.com:443/services/RealTimeOnline" binding="basicHttpBinding" bindingConfiguration="RealTimeOnlineSoapBinding" contract="RealTimeOnline.RealTimeOnline" name="RealTimeOnline" /> </client> </system.serviceModel> </configuration> If if I run this as is using code like this:var client = new RealTimeOnlineClient(); client.ClientCredentials.UserName.UserName = "TheUsername"; client.ClientCredentials.UserName.Password = "ThePassword"; … I get nothing in terms of WS-Security headers. The request is sent, but the the binding expects transport level security to be applied, rather than message level security. To fix this so that a WS-Security message header is sent the security mode can be changed to: <security mode="TransportWithMessageCredential" /> Now if I re-run I at least get a WS-Security header which looks like this:<s:Envelope xmlns:s="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/" xmlns:u="http://docs.oasis-open.org/wss/2004/01/oasis-200401-wss-wssecurity-utility-1.0.xsd"> <s:Header> <o:Security s:mustUnderstand="1" xmlns:o="http://docs.oasis-open.org/wss/2004/01/oasis-200401-wss-wssecurity-secext-1.0.xsd"> <u:Timestamp u:Id="_0"> <u:Created>2012-11-24T02:55:18.011Z</u:Created> <u:Expires>2012-11-24T03:00:18.011Z</u:Expires> </u:Timestamp> <o:UsernameToken u:Id="uuid-18c215d4-1106-40a5-8dd1-c81fdddf19d3-1"> <o:Username>TheUserName</o:Username> <o:Password Type="http://docs.oasis-open.org/wss/2004/01/oasis-200401-wss-username-token-profile-1.0#PasswordText" >ThePassword</o:Password> </o:UsernameToken> </o:Security> </s:Header> Closer! Now the WS-Security header is there along with a timestamp field (which might not be accepted by some WS-Security expecting services), but there's no Nonce or created timestamp as required by my original service. Using a CustomBinding instead My next try was to go with a CustomBinding instead of basicHttpBinding as it allows a bit more control over the protocol and transport configurations for the binding. Specifically I can explicitly specify the message protocol(s) used. Using configuration file settings here's what the config file looks like:<?xml version="1.0"?> <configuration> <system.serviceModel> <bindings> <customBinding> <binding name="CustomSoapBinding"> <security includeTimestamp="false" authenticationMode="UserNameOverTransport" defaultAlgorithmSuite="Basic256" requireDerivedKeys="false" messageSecurityVersion="WSSecurity10WSTrustFebruary2005WSSecureConversationFebruary2005WSSecurityPolicy11BasicSecurityProfile10"> </security> <textMessageEncoding messageVersion="Soap11"></textMessageEncoding> <httpsTransport maxReceivedMessageSize="2000000000"/> </binding> </customBinding> </bindings> <client> <endpoint address="https://notrealurl.com:443/services/RealTimeOnline" binding="customBinding" bindingConfiguration="CustomSoapBinding" contract="RealTimeOnline.RealTimeOnline" name="RealTimeOnline" /> </client> </system.serviceModel> <startup> <supportedRuntime version="v4.0" sku=".NETFramework,Version=v4.0"/> </startup> </configuration> This ends up creating a cleaner header that's missing the timestamp field which can cause some services problems. The WS-Security header output generated with the above looks like this:<s:Header> <o:Security s:mustUnderstand="1" xmlns:o="http://docs.oasis-open.org/wss/2004/01/oasis-200401-wss-wssecurity-secext-1.0.xsd"> <o:UsernameToken u:Id="uuid-291622ca-4c11-460f-9886-ac1c78813b24-1"> <o:Username>TheUsername</o:Username> <o:Password Type="http://docs.oasis-open.org/wss/2004/01/oasis-200401-wss-username-token-profile-1.0#PasswordText" >ThePassword</o:Password> </o:UsernameToken> </o:Security> </s:Header> This is closer as it includes only the username and password. The key here is the protocol for WS-Security:messageSecurityVersion="WSSecurity10WSTrustFebruary2005WSSecureConversationFebruary2005WSSecurityPolicy11BasicSecurityProfile10" which explicitly specifies the protocol version. There are several variants of this specification but none of them seem to support the nonce unfortunately. This protocol does allow for optional omission of the Nonce and created timestamp provided (which effectively makes those keys optional). With some services I tried that requested a Nonce just using this protocol actually worked where the default basicHttpBinding failed to connect, so this is a possible solution for access to some services. Unfortunately for my target service that was not an option. The nonce has to be there. Creating Custom ClientCredentials As it turns out WCF doesn't have support for the Digest Nonce as part of WS-Security, and so as far as I can tell there's no way to do it just with configuration settings. I did a bunch of research on this trying to find workarounds for this, and I did find a couple of entries on StackOverflow as well as on the MSDN forums. However, none of these are particularily clear and I ended up using bits and pieces of several of them to arrive at a working solution in the end. http://stackoverflow.com/questions/896901/wcf-adding-nonce-to-usernametoken http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/wcf/thread/4df3354f-0627-42d9-b5fb-6e880b60f8ee The latter forum message is the more useful of the two (the last message on the thread in particular) and it has most of the information required to make this work. But it took some experimentation for me to get this right so I'll recount the process here maybe a bit more comprehensively. In order for this to work a number of classes have to be overridden: ClientCredentials ClientCredentialsSecurityTokenManager WSSecurityTokenizer The idea is that we need to create a custom ClientCredential class to hold the custom properties so they can be set from the UI or via configuration settings. The TokenManager and Tokenizer are mainly required to allow the custom credentials class to flow through the WCF pipeline and eventually provide custom serialization. Here are the three classes required and their full implementations:public class CustomCredentials : ClientCredentials { public CustomCredentials() { } protected CustomCredentials(CustomCredentials cc) : base(cc) { } public override System.IdentityModel.Selectors.SecurityTokenManager CreateSecurityTokenManager() { return new CustomSecurityTokenManager(this); } protected override ClientCredentials CloneCore() { return new CustomCredentials(this); } } public class CustomSecurityTokenManager : ClientCredentialsSecurityTokenManager { public CustomSecurityTokenManager(CustomCredentials cred) : base(cred) { } public override System.IdentityModel.Selectors.SecurityTokenSerializer CreateSecurityTokenSerializer(System.IdentityModel.Selectors.SecurityTokenVersion version) { return new CustomTokenSerializer(System.ServiceModel.Security.SecurityVersion.WSSecurity11); } } public class CustomTokenSerializer : WSSecurityTokenSerializer { public CustomTokenSerializer(SecurityVersion sv) : base(sv) { } protected override void WriteTokenCore(System.Xml.XmlWriter writer, System.IdentityModel.Tokens.SecurityToken token) { UserNameSecurityToken userToken = token as UserNameSecurityToken; string tokennamespace = "o"; DateTime created = DateTime.Now; string createdStr = created.ToString("yyyy-MM-ddThh:mm:ss.fffZ"); // unique Nonce value - encode with SHA-1 for 'randomness' // in theory the nonce could just be the GUID by itself string phrase = Guid.NewGuid().ToString(); var nonce = GetSHA1String(phrase); // in this case password is plain text // for digest mode password needs to be encoded as: // PasswordAsDigest = Base64(SHA-1(Nonce + Created + Password)) // and profile needs to change to //string password = GetSHA1String(nonce + createdStr + userToken.Password); string password = userToken.Password; writer.WriteRaw(string.Format( "<{0}:UsernameToken u:Id=\"" + token.Id + "\" xmlns:u=\"http://docs.oasis-open.org/wss/2004/01/oasis-200401-wss-wssecurity-utility-1.0.xsd\">" + "<{0}:Username>" + userToken.UserName + "</{0}:Username>" + "<{0}:Password Type=\"http://docs.oasis-open.org/wss/2004/01/oasis-200401-wss-username-token-profile-1.0#PasswordText\">" + password + "</{0}:Password>" + "<{0}:Nonce EncodingType=\"http://docs.oasis-open.org/wss/2004/01/oasis-200401-wss-soap-message-security-1.0#Base64Binary\">" + nonce + "</{0}:Nonce>" + "<u:Created>" + createdStr + "</u:Created></{0}:UsernameToken>", tokennamespace)); } protected string GetSHA1String(string phrase) { SHA1CryptoServiceProvider sha1Hasher = new SHA1CryptoServiceProvider(); byte[] hashedDataBytes = sha1Hasher.ComputeHash(Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(phrase)); return Convert.ToBase64String(hashedDataBytes); } } Realistically only the CustomTokenSerializer has any significant code in. The code there deals with actually serializing the custom credentials using low level XML semantics by writing output into an XML writer. I can't take credit for this code - most of the code comes from the MSDN forum post mentioned earlier - I made a few adjustments to simplify the nonce generation and also added some notes to allow for PasswordDigest generation. Per spec the nonce is nothing more than a unique value that's supposed to be 'random'. I'm thinking that this value can be any string that's unique and a GUID on its own probably would have sufficed. Comments on other posts that GUIDs can be potentially guessed are highly exaggerated to say the least IMHO. To satisfy even that aspect though I added the SHA1 encryption and binary decoding to give a more random value that would be impossible to 'guess'. The original example from the forum post used another level of encoding and decoding to string in between - but that really didn't accomplish anything but extra overhead. The header output generated from this looks like this:<s:Header> <o:Security s:mustUnderstand="1" xmlns:o="http://docs.oasis-open.org/wss/2004/01/oasis-200401-wss-wssecurity-secext-1.0.xsd"> <o:UsernameToken u:Id="uuid-f43d8b0d-0ebb-482e-998d-f544401a3c91-1" xmlns:u="http://docs.oasis-open.org/wss/2004/01/oasis-200401-wss-wssecurity-utility-1.0.xsd"> <o:Username>TheUsername</o:Username> <o:Password Type="http://docs.oasis-open.org/wss/2004/01/oasis-200401-wss-username-token-profile-1.0#PasswordText">ThePassword</o:Password> <o:Nonce EncodingType="http://docs.oasis-open.org/wss/2004/01/oasis-200401-wss-soap-message-security-1.0#Base64Binary" >PjVE24TC6HtdAnsf3U9c5WMsECY=</o:Nonce> <u:Created>2012-11-23T07:10:04.670Z</u:Created> </o:UsernameToken> </o:Security> </s:Header> which is exactly as it should be. Password Digest? In my case the password is passed in plain text over an SSL connection, so there's no digest required so I was done with the code above. Since I don't have a service handy that requires a password digest, I had no way of testing the code for the digest implementation, but here is how this is likely to work. If you need to pass a digest encoded password things are a little bit trickier. The password type namespace needs to change to: http://docs.oasis-open.org/wss/2004/01/oasis-200401-wss-username-token-profile-1.0#Digest and then the password value needs to be encoded. The format for password digest encoding is this: Base64(SHA-1(Nonce + Created + Password)) and it can be handled in the code above with this code (that's commented in the snippet above): string password = GetSHA1String(nonce + createdStr + userToken.Password); The entire WriteTokenCore method for digest code looks like this:protected override void WriteTokenCore(System.Xml.XmlWriter writer, System.IdentityModel.Tokens.SecurityToken token) { UserNameSecurityToken userToken = token as UserNameSecurityToken; string tokennamespace = "o"; DateTime created = DateTime.Now; string createdStr = created.ToString("yyyy-MM-ddThh:mm:ss.fffZ"); // unique Nonce value - encode with SHA-1 for 'randomness' // in theory the nonce could just be the GUID by itself string phrase = Guid.NewGuid().ToString(); var nonce = GetSHA1String(phrase); string password = GetSHA1String(nonce + createdStr + userToken.Password); writer.WriteRaw(string.Format( "<{0}:UsernameToken u:Id=\"" + token.Id + "\" xmlns:u=\"http://docs.oasis-open.org/wss/2004/01/oasis-200401-wss-wssecurity-utility-1.0.xsd\">" + "<{0}:Username>" + userToken.UserName + "</{0}:Username>" + "<{0}:Password Type=\"http://docs.oasis-open.org/wss/2004/01/oasis-200401-wss-username-token-profile-1.0#Digest\">" + password + "</{0}:Password>" + "<{0}:Nonce EncodingType=\"http://docs.oasis-open.org/wss/2004/01/oasis-200401-wss-soap-message-security-1.0#Base64Binary\">" + nonce + "</{0}:Nonce>" + "<u:Created>" + createdStr + "</u:Created></{0}:UsernameToken>", tokennamespace)); } I had no service to connect to to try out Digest auth - if you end up needing it and get it to work please drop a comment… How to use the custom Credentials The easiest way to use the custom credentials is to create the client in code. Here's a factory method I use to create an instance of my service client: public static RealTimeOnlineClient CreateRealTimeOnlineProxy(string url, string username, string password) { if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(url)) url = "https://notrealurl.com:443/cows/services/RealTimeOnline"; CustomBinding binding = new CustomBinding(); var security = TransportSecurityBindingElement.CreateUserNameOverTransportBindingElement(); security.IncludeTimestamp = false; security.DefaultAlgorithmSuite = SecurityAlgorithmSuite.Basic256; security.MessageSecurityVersion = MessageSecurityVersion.WSSecurity10WSTrustFebruary2005WSSecureConversationFebruary2005WSSecurityPolicy11BasicSecurityProfile10; var encoding = new TextMessageEncodingBindingElement(); encoding.MessageVersion = MessageVersion.Soap11; var transport = new HttpsTransportBindingElement(); transport.MaxReceivedMessageSize = 20000000; // 20 megs binding.Elements.Add(security); binding.Elements.Add(encoding); binding.Elements.Add(transport); RealTimeOnlineClient client = new RealTimeOnlineClient(binding, new EndpointAddress(url)); // to use full client credential with Nonce uncomment this code: // it looks like this might not be required - the service seems to work without it client.ChannelFactory.Endpoint.Behaviors.Remove<System.ServiceModel.Description.ClientCredentials>(); client.ChannelFactory.Endpoint.Behaviors.Add(new CustomCredentials()); client.ClientCredentials.UserName.UserName = username; client.ClientCredentials.UserName.Password = password; return client; } This returns a service client that's ready to call other service methods. The key item in this code is the ChannelFactory endpoint behavior modification that that first removes the original ClientCredentials and then adds the new one. The ClientCredentials property on the client is read only and this is the way it has to be added. Summary It's a bummer that WCF doesn't suport WSE Security authentication with nonce values out of the box. From reading the comments in posts/articles while I was trying to find a solution, I found that this feature was omitted by design as this protocol is considered unsecure. While I agree that plain text passwords are rarely a good idea even if they go over secured SSL connection as WSE Security does, there are unfortunately quite a few services (mosly Java services I suspect) that use this protocol. I've run into this twice now and trying to find a solution online I can see that this is not an isolated problem - many others seem to have struggled with this. It seems there are about a dozen questions about this on StackOverflow all with varying incomplete answers. Hopefully this post provides a little more coherent content in one place. Again I marvel at WCF and its breadth of support for protocol features it has in a single tool. And even when it can't handle something there are ways to get it working via extensibility. But at the same time I marvel at how freaking difficult it is to arrive at these solutions. I mean there's no way I could have ever figured this out on my own. It takes somebody working on the WCF team or at least being very, very intricately involved in the innards of WCF to figure out the interconnection of the various objects to do this from scratch. Luckily this is an older problem that has been discussed extensively online and I was able to cobble together a solution from the online content. I'm glad it worked out that way, but it feels dirty and incomplete in that there's a whole learning path that was omitted to get here… Man am I glad I'm not dealing with SOAP services much anymore. REST service security - even when using some sort of federation is a piece of cake by comparison :-) I'm sure once standards bodies gets involved we'll be right back in security standard hell…© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2012Posted in WCF Web Services Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

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CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, March 14, 2010

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The editor supports code completion, syntax highlighting, spell checker and more.Mydra Center: Mydra Center is a Media center with the particularity to be very flexible, allowing developers to extend it and add new features. The philosophy be...MyTwits - A rich Twitter client for Windows powered by WPF: MyTwits is a free Twitter client for Windows XP/Vista/7 powered by WPF which gives you freedom to twit right from your desktop. You can do almost a...na laborke: aaaaaaaaaaaaaaasssssssssssssssddddddddddddddddddddfffffffffffffNMTools: The "Network Management Tools" (NMTools) complete OpenSLIM CMDB capabilities with Network Discovery, Automation and Configuration Managem...orionSRO: This project aims to make a fully functional server.Project Naduvar: Project Naduvar, is a centralized Locking Service in distribute systems. You can use this service in any of your existing distributed application. ...Silverlight Input Keyboard: Silverlight Input Keyboard and Behaviorsuh: uh.py is a command line tool that helps developers porting native projects from a case-insensitive filesystem to a case-sensitive filesystem by sea...New ReleasesAmiBroker Plug-ins with C#. A non official AmiBroker Plug-in SDK: AmiBroker Plug-in SDK v0.0.3: Small changesAmiBroker Plug-ins with C#. A non official AmiBroker Plug-in SDK: AmiBroker Plug-in SDK v0.0.4: Small updatesAStyle AddIn for SharpDevelop (Alex): 2.0 Production: #D 3.* add in with updated GUI elements.Coding Cockerel code samples: Validation with ASP .NET MVC and jQuery: Code sample related to the following blog post, http://codingcockerel.co.uk/consistent-validation-with-asp-net-mvc-and-jquery/.CoreSystem Library: Release - 1.0.3725.10575: This release contains a new class Crypto which makes encryption and descryption of string easy, it uses TripleDESCrystal Mapper: Release - 2.0.3725.11614: This is preview if release 2.0* that I promised, it contains following new features Tracking dirty entities and provide Save function to save all ...Digital Media Processing Project 1: Image Processor: Image Processor Alpha: First Release Features Include: Curve Adjustment Tool Region Growing Segmetation Threshold Segmentation Guassian/Butterworth High/Low pass filter...Exepack.NET: Exepack.NET version 0.03 beta: Exepack.NET is executable file compressor for .NET Framework. 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Add filter to exclude individuals over...Home Access Plus+: v3.1.2.1: Version 3.1.2.1 Release Change Log: Added SSL SMTP Added SSL Authentication File Changes: ~/bin/CHS Extranet.dll ~/bin/CHS Extranet.pdb ~/we...Home Access Plus+: v3.1.3.1: Version 3.1.3.1 Release Change Log: Fixed Help Desk File Changes: ~/bin/CHS Extranet.dll ~/bin/CHS Extranet.pdb ~/helpdesk/*.htmIceChat: IceChat 2009 Alpha 11.6 Full Install: IceChat 2009 Alpha 11.6 - Full Installer, installs IceChat 2009, and the Emoticons, and will also download .Net Framework 2.0 if needed.IceChat: IceChat 2009 Alpha 11.6 Simple Binaries: This simply the IceChat2009.exe and the IPluginIceChat.dll needed to run IceChat 2009. Is not an installer, does not include emoticons.IceChat: IceChat 2009 Alpha 11.6 Source Code: IceChat 2009 Alpha 11.6 Source CodeLunar Phase Silverlight Gadget: Lunar Phase RC: Stable release. 6 languages Auto refresh. Name / Light problem fixedMiracle OS: Miracle OS Alpha 0.001: Our first release is the Alpha 0.001. Miracle OS doens't work at all, but we work on it. You to? Please help us.MyTwits - A rich Twitter client for Windows powered by WPF: MyTwits BETA 1: I'm happy to release first BETA version of MyTwits. Just download the zip file attached and run setup.exe and you are done! If you've any problem...MyTwits - A rich Twitter client for Windows powered by WPF: MyTwits Source BETA 1: I'm providing you just a project file, I'll upload complete source code once I fine tuned the code.NMock3: NMock3 - Beta 5, .NET 3.5: Hilights of this releaseTutorials have been updated and are in a much better place now. (they compile) Public API is getting locked down. Void me...Project Naduvar: com.declum.naduvar.locking: First ReleaseQueryToGrid Module for DotNetNuke®: QueryToGrid Module version 01.00.01: This module is a proof of concept for both using AJAX in a DotNetNuke® module, and for using SQL in a module. »»» IMPORTANT NOTE ««« Using this mo...SCSI Interface for Multimedia and Block Devices: Release 10 - Almost like a commercial burner!!: I made many changes in the ISOBurn program in this version, making it much more user-friendly than before. You can now add, rename, and delete file...Silverlight Input Keyboard: Initial Release: For more information see http://www.orktane.com/Blog/post/2009/11/09/Virtual-Input-Keyboard-Behaviours-for-Silverlight.aspxThe Silverlight Hyper Video Player [http://slhvp.com]: RC: The release candidate is now in place. Unfortunately, because there are aspects of it that I'm not yet ready to discuss, the code for the RC will...twNowplaying: twNowplaying 1.0.0.3: Press the Twitter icon to get started, don't forget to submit bugs to the issue tracker. What's new This release has some minor UI fixes.uh: 1.0: This is the first stable release. It isn't super full featured but it does the basics.UriTree: UriTree 2.0.0: This release is the WPF version of this application.VCC: Latest build, v2.1.30313.0: Automatic drop of latest buildVr30 OS: Blackra1n: The software was made by blackra1n for jailbreak iphone and ipod touch. Is not the Vr30 OS Team ProjectVr30 OS: Vr30 Operating System Live Cd 1.0: The Operating system linux made by team. For more information go to http://vr30os.tuxfamily.orgWatchersNET.TagCloud: WatchersNET.TagCloud 01.01.00: Whats New Decide between Tags generated from the Search words, or create your own Tag List Custom Tag list changes Small BugfixesZeta Resource Editor: Source code release 2010-03-13: New sources, some small fixes.ZipStorer - A Pure C# Class to Store Files in Zip: ZipStorer 2.35: Improved UTF-8 Support Correct writting of modification time for extracted filesMost Popular ProjectsMetaSharpWBFS ManagerRawrAJAX Control ToolkitMicrosoft SQL Server Product Samples: DatabaseSilverlight ToolkitWindows Presentation Foundation (WPF)ASP.NET Ajax LibraryASP.NETMicrosoft SQL Server Community & SamplesMost Active ProjectsRawrN2 CMSBlogEngine.NETpatterns & practices – Enterprise LibrarySharePoint Team-MailerFasterflect - A Fast and Simple Reflection APICaliburn: An Application Framework for WPF and SilverlightjQuery Library for SharePoint Web ServicesCalcium: A modular application toolset leveraging PrismFarseer Physics Engine

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Dual Boot issues with Windows 7 and Ubuntu

- by Michael

I'm finding myself in a rather unique situation. I've read through just about every resource I can find about this and while things have helped me understand some background, I haven't yet been able to find a solution. So I'm asking here. I originally had just a Windows 7 64-bit OS installation on my desktop. Learning that I couldn't do anything with Apache, PHP and MySql from within a 64-bit system, I did some research and found out that I could use Ubuntu. I've installed the latest version: 11.04. I created a CD to install Ubuntu from and the install went just fine. I installed it side-by-side with Windows 7. I can boot into Ubuntu just fine through the dual-boot option. When I reboot to load Windows though, the Grub2 list shows Windows 7 (loader) and when I select this option the Windows System Recovery loads instead of the actual OS. I haven't made it past there because I didn't know what to do. I just shut the computer down and rebooted into Ubuntu. I've been working for the last hour and a half to try to figure out how to boot into the Windows 7 OS and I haven't got a clue. While I'm somewhat proficient with Windows 7, I'm totally new to Ubuntu, so if you do know what needs to happen, please keep it simple enough that I'll be able to understand. Thanks for all your help in advance. Here's the results after using the Boot Info Script: Boot Info Script 0.55 dated February 15th, 2010 ============================= Boot Info Summary: ============================== => Grub 2 is installed in the MBR of /dev/sda and looks on the same drive in partition #5 for cbh. => Windows is installed in the MBR of /dev/sdb => Grub 2 is installed in the MBR of /dev/mapper/pdc_bdadcfbdif and looks on the same drive in partition #5 for cbh. sda1: _________________________________________________________________________ File system: ntfs Boot sector type: Windows Vista/7 Boot sector info: No errors found in the Boot Parameter Block. Mounting failed: fuse: mount failed: Device or resource busy fuse: mount failed: Device or resource busy sda2: _________________________________________________________________________ File system: ntfs Boot sector type: Windows Vista/7 Boot sector info: No errors found in the Boot Parameter Block. Mounting failed: fuse: mount failed: Device or resource busy fuse: mount failed: Device or resource busy fuse: mount failed: Device or resource busy fuse: mount failed: Device or resource busy sda3: _________________________________________________________________________ File system: ntfs Boot sector type: Windows Vista/7 Boot sector info: No errors found in the Boot Parameter Block. Mounting failed: fuse: mount failed: Device or resource busy fuse: mount failed: Device or resource busy fuse: mount failed: Device or resource busy fuse: mount failed: Device or resource busy fuse: mount failed: Device or resource busy fuse: mount failed: Device or resource busy sdb1: _________________________________________________________________________ File system: ntfs Boot sector type: Windows Vista/7 Boot sector info: No errors found in the Boot Parameter Block. Operating System: Boot files/dirs: /bootmgr /Boot/BCD sdb2: _________________________________________________________________________ File system: ntfs Boot sector type: Windows Vista/7 Boot sector info: No errors found in the Boot Parameter Block. Operating System: Boot files/dirs: sdb3: _________________________________________________________________________ File system: ntfs Boot sector type: Windows Vista/7 Boot sector info: No errors found in the Boot Parameter Block. Operating System: Boot files/dirs: /bootmgr /boot/BCD sdb4: _________________________________________________________________________ File system: Extended Partition Boot sector type: - Boot sector info: sdb5: _________________________________________________________________________ File system: ext4 Boot sector type: - Boot sector info: Operating System: Ubuntu 11.04 Boot files/dirs: /boot/grub/grub.cfg /etc/fstab /boot/grub/core.img sdb6: _________________________________________________________________________ File system: swap Boot sector type: - Boot sector info: pdc_bdadcfbdif1: _________________________________________________________________________ File system: ntfs Boot sector type: Windows Vista/7 Boot sector info: No errors found in the Boot Parameter Block. Operating System: Boot files/dirs: /bootmgr /Boot/BCD pdc_bdadcfbdif2: _________________________________________________________________________ File system: ntfs Boot sector type: Windows Vista/7 Boot sector info: No errors found in the Boot Parameter Block. Operating System: Windows 7 Boot files/dirs: /bootmgr /Boot/BCD /Windows/System32/winload.exe pdc_bdadcfbdif3: _________________________________________________________________________ File system: Boot sector type: Unknown Boot sector info: Mounting failed: fuse: mount failed: Device or resource busy fuse: mount failed: Device or resource busy fuse: mount failed: Device or resource busy fuse: mount failed: Device or resource busy fuse: mount failed: Device or resource busy fuse: mount failed: Device or resource busy mount: unknown filesystem type '' =========================== Drive/Partition Info: ============================= Drive: sda ___________________ _____________________________________________________ Disk /dev/sda: 750.2 GB, 750156374016 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 91201 cylinders, total 1465149168 sectors Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Partition Boot Start End Size Id System /dev/sda1 * 2,048 206,847 204,800 7 HPFS/NTFS /dev/sda2 206,911 1,440,372,735 1,440,165,825 7 HPFS/NTFS /dev/sda3 1,440,372,736 1,464,856,575 24,483,840 7 HPFS/NTFS Drive: sdb ___________________ _____________________________________________________ Disk /dev/sdb: 1000.2 GB, 1000204886016 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 121601 cylinders, total 1953525168 sectors Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Partition Boot Start End Size Id System /dev/sdb1 * 2,048 206,847 204,800 7 HPFS/NTFS /dev/sdb2 206,911 1,342,554,688 1,342,347,778 7 HPFS/NTFS /dev/sdb3 1,930,344,448 1,953,521,663 23,177,216 7 HPFS/NTFS /dev/sdb4 1,342,556,158 1,930,344,447 587,788,290 5 Extended /dev/sdb5 1,342,556,160 1,896,806,399 554,250,240 83 Linux /dev/sdb6 1,896,808,448 1,930,344,447 33,536,000 82 Linux swap / Solaris Drive: pdc_bdadcfbdif ___________________ _____________________________________________________ Disk /dev/mapper/pdc_bdadcfbdif: 750.0 GB, 749999947776 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 91182 cylinders, total 1464843648 sectors Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Partition Boot Start End Size Id System /dev/mapper/pdc_bdadcfbdif1 * 2,048 206,847 204,800 7 HPFS/NTFS /dev/mapper/pdc_bdadcfbdif2 206,911 1,440,372,735 1,440,165,825 7 HPFS/NTFS /dev/mapper/pdc_bdadcfbdif3 1,440,372,736 1,464,856,575 24,483,840 7 HPFS/NTFS /dev/mapper/pdc_bdadcfbdif3 ends after the last sector of /dev/mapper/pdc_bdadcfbdif blkid -c /dev/null: ____________________________________________________________ Device UUID TYPE LABEL /dev/mapper/pdc_bdadcfbdif1 888E54CC8E54B482 ntfs SYSTEM /dev/mapper/pdc_bdadcfbdif2 C2766BF6766BEA1D ntfs OS /dev/mapper/pdc_bdadcfbdif: PTTYPE="dos" /dev/sda1 888E54CC8E54B482 ntfs SYSTEM /dev/sda2 C2766BF6766BEA1D ntfs OS /dev/sda3 BE6CA31D6CA2CF87 ntfs HP_RECOVERY /dev/sda promise_fasttrack_raid_member /dev/sdb1 20B65685B6565B7C ntfs SYSTEM /dev/sdb2 B4467A314679F508 ntfs HP /dev/sdb3 6E10B7A410B77227 ntfs FACTORY_IMAGE /dev/sdb4: PTTYPE="dos" /dev/sdb5 266f9801-cf4f-4acc-affa-2092be035f0c ext4 /dev/sdb6 1df35749-a887-45ff-a3de-edd52239847d swap /dev/sdb: PTTYPE="dos" error: /dev/mapper/pdc_bdadcfbdif3: No such file or directory error: /dev/sdc: No medium found error: /dev/sdd: No medium found error: /dev/sde: No medium found error: /dev/sdf: No medium found error: /dev/sdg: No medium found ============================ "mount | grep ^/dev output: =========================== Device Mount_Point Type Options /dev/sdb5 / ext4 (rw,errors=remount-ro,commit=0) =========================== sdb5/boot/grub/grub.cfg: =========================== # # DO NOT EDIT THIS FILE # # It is automatically generated by grub-mkconfig using templates # from /etc/grub.d and settings from /etc/default/grub # ### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/00_header ### if [ -s $prefix/grubenv ]; then set have_grubenv=true load_env fi set default="0" if [ "${prev_saved_entry}" ]; then set saved_entry="${prev_saved_entry}" save_env saved_entry set prev_saved_entry= save_env prev_saved_entry set boot_once=true fi function savedefault { if [ -z "${boot_once}" ]; then saved_entry="${chosen}" save_env saved_entry fi } function recordfail { set recordfail=1 if [ -n "${have_grubenv}" ]; then if [ -z "${boot_once}" ]; then save_env recordfail; fi; fi } function load_video { insmod vbe insmod vga insmod video_bochs insmod video_cirrus } insmod part_msdos insmod ext2 set root='(/dev/sdb,msdos5)' search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root 266f9801-cf4f-4acc-affa-2092be035f0c if loadfont /usr/share/grub/unicode.pf2 ; then set gfxmode=auto load_video insmod gfxterm fi terminal_output gfxterm insmod part_msdos insmod ext2 set root='(/dev/sdb,msdos5)' search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root 266f9801-cf4f-4acc-affa-2092be035f0c set locale_dir=($root)/boot/grub/locale set lang=en_US insmod gettext if [ "${recordfail}" = 1 ]; then set timeout=-1 else set timeout=10 fi ### END /etc/grub.d/00_header ### ### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/05_debian_theme ### set menu_color_normal=white/black set menu_color_highlight=black/light-gray if background_color 44,0,30; then clear fi ### END /etc/grub.d/05_debian_theme ### ### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/10_linux ### if [ ${recordfail} != 1 ]; then if [ -e ${prefix}/gfxblacklist.txt ]; then if hwmatch ${prefix}/gfxblacklist.txt 3; then if [ ${match} = 0 ]; then set linux_gfx_mode=keep else set linux_gfx_mode=text fi else set linux_gfx_mode=text fi else set linux_gfx_mode=keep fi else set linux_gfx_mode=text fi export linux_gfx_mode if [ "$linux_gfx_mode" != "text" ]; then load_video; fi menuentry 'Ubuntu, with Linux 2.6.38-8-generic-pae' --class ubuntu --class gnu-linux --class gnu --class os { recordfail set gfxpayload=$linux_gfx_mode insmod part_msdos insmod ext2 set root='(/dev/sdb,msdos5)' search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root 266f9801-cf4f-4acc-affa-2092be035f0c linux /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.38-8-generic-pae root=UUID=266f9801-cf4f-4acc- affa-2092be035f0c ro quiet splash vt.handoff=7 initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.38-8-generic-pae } menuentry 'Ubuntu, with Linux 2.6.38-8-generic-pae (recovery mode)' --class ubuntu --class gnu-linux --class gnu --class os { recordfail set gfxpayload=$linux_gfx_mode insmod part_msdos insmod ext2 set root='(/dev/sdb,msdos5)' search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root 266f9801-cf4f-4acc-affa-2092be035f0c echo 'Loading Linux 2.6.38-8-generic-pae ...' linux /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.38-8-generic-pae root=UUID=266f9801-cf4f-4acc-affa-2092be035f0c ro single echo 'Loading initial ramdisk ...' initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.38-8-generic-pae } ### END /etc/grub.d/10_linux ### ### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/20_linux_xen ### ### END /etc/grub.d/20_linux_xen ### ### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/20_memtest86+ ### menuentry "Memory test (memtest86+)" { insmod part_msdos insmod ext2 set root='(/dev/sdb,msdos5)' search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root 266f9801-cf4f-4acc-affa-2092be035f0c linux16 /boot/memtest86+.bin } menuentry "Memory test (memtest86+, serial console 115200)" { insmod part_msdos insmod ext2 set root='(/dev/sdb,msdos5)' search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root 266f9801-cf4f-4acc-affa-2092be035f0c linux16 /boot/memtest86+.bin console=ttyS0,115200n8 } ### END /etc/grub.d/20_memtest86+ ### ### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/30_os-prober ### menuentry "Windows 7 (loader) (on /dev/sdb1)" --class windows --class os { insmod part_msdos insmod ntfs set root='(/dev/sdb,msdos1)' search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root 20B65685B6565B7C chainloader +1 } menuentry "Windows Recovery Environment (loader) (on /dev/sdb3)" --class windows --class os { insmod part_msdos insmod ntfs set root='(/dev/sdb,msdos3)' search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root 6E10B7A410B77227 drivemap -s (hd0) ${root} chainloader +1 } ### END /etc/grub.d/30_os-prober ### ### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/40_custom ### # This file provides an easy way to add custom menu entries. Simply type the # menu entries you want to add after this comment. Be careful not to change # the 'exec tail' line above. ### END /etc/grub.d/40_custom ### ### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/41_custom ### if [ -f $prefix/custom.cfg ]; then source $prefix/custom.cfg; fi ### END /etc/grub.d/41_custom ### =============================== sdb5/etc/fstab: =============================== # /etc/fstab: static file system information. # # Use 'blkid -o value -s UUID' to print the universally unique identifier # for a device; this may be used with UUID= as a more robust way to name # devices that works even if disks are added and removed. See fstab(5). # # <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass> proc /proc proc nodev,noexec,nosuid 0 0 # / was on /dev/sdb5 during installation UUID=266f9801-cf4f-4acc-affa-2092be035f0c / ext4 errors=remount-ro 0 1 # swap was on /dev/sdb6 during installation UUID=1df35749-a887-45ff-a3de-edd52239847d none swap sw 0 0 =================== sdb5: Location of files loaded by Grub: =================== 900.1GB: boot/grub/core.img 825.0GB: boot/grub/grub.cfg 688.7GB: boot/initrd.img-2.6.38-8-generic-pae 688.0GB: boot/vmlinuz-2.6.38-8-generic-pae 688.7GB: initrd.img 688.0GB: vmlinuz =========================== Unknown MBRs/Boot Sectors/etc ======================= Unknown BootLoader on pdc_bdadcfbdif3 =======Devices which don't seem to have a corresponding hard drive============== sdc sdd sde sdf sdg =============================== StdErr Messages: =============================== ERROR: dos: partition address past end of RAID device hexdump: /dev/mapper/pdc_bdadcfbdif3: No such file or directory hexdump: /dev/mapper/pdc_bdadcfbdif3: No such file or directory ERROR: dos: partition address past end of RAID device

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500 Metro Style WP7 Icons

- by Bil Simser

I was inspired by The Noun Project, a project that offers up “Metro-style” icons in SVG format. The project is licensed under a public domain license and while it’s a great project, all of the content is in SVG format. Jon Galloway has a great post (from 2007) talking about the differences between SVG and XAML so I highly recommend that for some background. I thought it would be helpful to the WPF/Windows Phone 7/Silverlight community to provide the content in alternative formats for use in your applications. The Goods I’ve put together a package of the 500 icons (502 actually) in PNG, XAML and the original SVG format along with a couple of sample projects so you can see them in action. There’s a WPF desktop app: And a Windows Phone 7 app: Building It To get all the content first I wrote up a quick program to suck the original SVG files. Luckily they’re all in a common path just named 1.SVG, 2.SVG, and so on. Easy sleazy to grab the contents. Once I had 500 SVG files I used the latest copy of XamlTune, an open source CodePlex project that has a command line conversion tool to convert the directory of SVG files into XAML (the tool also created a PNG file of each SVG so that’s just icing on the cake). Conversions The conversion from SVG to XAML isn’t 100%. While you can just drop the content into a WPF app, it doesn’t work that way for WP7. There are just some small adjustments I made to each format so you’ll have to do the same. Follow the information below or refer to the sample applications. As a sample, here’s an icon we want to use: Here’s the original SVG file: <svg version="1.0" id="Layer_1" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" x="0px" y="0px" width="100px" height="94.616px" viewBox="0 0 100 94.616" enable-background="new 0 0 100 94.616" xml:space="preserve"> <path d="M25.076,15.639c4.324,0.009,7.824-3.488,7.82-7.82C32.9,3.512,29.4,0.012,25.076,0c-4.313,0.012-7.814,3.512-7.821,7.819 C17.262,12.15,20.763,15.648,25.076,15.639L25.076,15.639z"/> <path d="M4.593,43.388h6.861l4.137-15.135h1.716L13.22,43.388h24.318l-4.389-15.135h1.817l2.32,7.415 c1.08,3.131,3.852,3.851,6.003,1.162l8.375-10.142c2.651-3.42-2.104-7.021-4.844-4.035l-4.993,5.952 c0.007,0.095-0.96-3.278-0.96-3.278c-1.135-3.978-4.918-7.903-10.595-7.922H19.576c-5.071,0.019-9.043,4.434-9.888,7.214 L4.593,43.388L4.593,43.388z"/> <polygon points="56.206,22.753 56.206,7.163 49.192,7.163 49.192,22.753 56.206,22.753 "/> <path d="M79.87,15.738c4.332-0.014,7.831-3.516,7.82-7.82c0.011-4.332-3.488-7.833-7.82-7.82c-4.306-0.013-7.806,3.488-7.821,7.82 C72.064,12.222,75.564,15.725,79.87,15.738L79.87,15.738z"/> <path d="M89.759,89.556v-43.19h5.751V22.804c0.007-3.079-2.757-5.448-6.71-5.449H70.436c-3.65,0.001-4.539,1.186-5.551,2.168 L49.597,37.889c-3.098,3.848,2.428,8.333,5.55,4.743L69.88,25.226v64.43c-0.019,6.475,9.06,6.686,9.081,0.201v-36.58h1.765v36.379 C80.748,96.109,89.772,96.13,89.759,89.556L89.759,89.556z"/> <polygon points="100,54.035 100,45.155 0,45.155 0,54.035 100,54.035 "/> </svg> Here’s the XAML that XamlTune created. It can be used in any WPF app without any changes: <Canvas Name="Layer_1" Width="100" Height="94.616" ClipToBounds="True" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"> <Path Fill="#FF000000"> <Path.Data> <PathGeometry FillRule="Nonzero" Figures="M25.076,15.639C29.4,15.648 32.9,12.151 32.896,7.819 32.9,3.512 29.4,0.012 25.076,0 20.763,0.012 17.262,3.512 17.255,7.819 17.262,12.15 20.763,15.648 25.076,15.639L25.076,15.639z" /> </Path.Data> </Path> <Path Fill="#FF000000"> <Path.Data> <PathGeometry FillRule="Nonzero" Figures="M4.593,43.388L11.454,43.388 15.591,28.253 17.307,28.253 13.22,43.388 37.538,43.388 33.149,28.253 34.966,28.253 37.286,35.668C38.366,38.799,41.138,39.519,43.289,36.83L51.664,26.688C54.315,23.268,49.56,19.667,46.82,22.653L41.827,28.605C41.834,28.7 40.867,25.327 40.867,25.327 39.732,21.349 35.949,17.424 30.272,17.405L19.576,17.405C14.505,17.424,10.533,21.839,9.688,24.619L4.593,43.388 4.593,43.388z" /> </Path.Data> </Path> <Path Fill="#FF000000"> <Path.Data> <PathGeometry FillRule="Nonzero" Figures="M56.206,22.753L56.206,7.163 49.192,7.163 49.192,22.753 56.206,22.753z" /> </Path.Data> </Path> <Path Fill="#FF000000"> <Path.Data> <PathGeometry FillRule="Nonzero" Figures="M79.87,15.738C84.202,15.724 87.701,12.222 87.69,7.918 87.701,3.586 84.202,0.0849999999999991 79.87,0.097999999999999 75.564,0.084999999999999 72.064,3.586 72.049,7.918 72.064,12.222 75.564,15.725 79.87,15.738L79.87,15.738z" /> </Path.Data> </Path> <Path Fill="#FF000000"> <Path.Data> <PathGeometry FillRule="Nonzero" Figures="M89.759,89.556L89.759,46.366 95.51,46.366 95.51,22.804C95.517,19.725,92.753,17.356,88.8,17.355L70.436,17.355C66.786,17.356,65.897,18.541,64.885,19.523L49.597,37.889C46.499,41.737,52.025,46.222,55.147,42.632L69.88,25.226 69.88,89.656C69.861,96.131,78.94,96.342,78.961,89.857L78.961,53.277 80.726,53.277 80.726,89.656C80.748,96.109,89.772,96.13,89.759,89.556L89.759,89.556z" /> </Path.Data> </Path> <Path Fill="#FF000000"> <Path.Data> <PathGeometry FillRule="Nonzero" Figures="M100,54.035L100,45.155 0,45.155 0,54.035 100,54.035z" /> </Path.Data> </Path> </Canvas> The XAML works AS-IS in a WPF application but there are some changes I did to get it to work in a WP7 app. Here’s the modified XAML in a WP7 application: <Canvas Grid.Row="0" Grid.Column="0" Name="Icon_1" Width="100" Height="94.616"> <Path Fill="#FF000000" Data="M25.076,15.639C29.4,15.648 32.9,12.151 32.896,7.819 32.9,3.512 29.4,0.012 25.076,0 20.763,0.012 17.262,3.512 17.255,7.819 17.262,12.15 20.763,15.648 25.076,15.639L25.076,15.639z"> </Path> <Path Fill="#FF000000" Data="M4.593,43.388L11.454,43.388 15.591,28.253 17.307,28.253 13.22,43.388 37.538,43.388 33.149,28.253 34.966,28.253 37.286,35.668C38.366,38.799,41.138,39.519,43.289,36.83L51.664,26.688C54.315,23.268,49.56,19.667,46.82,22.653L41.827,28.605C41.834,28.7 40.867,25.327 40.867,25.327 39.732,21.349 35.949,17.424 30.272,17.405L19.576,17.405C14.505,17.424,10.533,21.839,9.688,24.619L4.593,43.388 4.593,43.388z"> </Path> <Path Fill="#FF000000" Data="M56.206,22.753L56.206,7.163 49.192,7.163 49.192,22.753 56.206,22.753z"> </Path> <Path Fill="#FF000000" Data="M79.87,15.738C84.202,15.724 87.701,12.222 87.69,7.918 87.701,3.586 84.202,0.0849999999999991 79.87,0.097999999999999 75.564,0.084999999999999 72.064,3.586 72.049,7.918 72.064,12.222 75.564,15.725 79.87,15.738L79.87,15.738z"> </Path> <Path Fill="#FF000000" Data="M89.759,89.556L89.759,46.366 95.51,46.366 95.51,22.804C95.517,19.725,92.753,17.356,88.8,17.355L70.436,17.355C66.786,17.356,65.897,18.541,64.885,19.523L49.597,37.889C46.499,41.737,52.025,46.222,55.147,42.632L69.88,25.226 69.88,89.656C69.861,96.131,78.94,96.342,78.961,89.857L78.961,53.277 80.726,53.277 80.726,89.656C80.748,96.109,89.772,96.13,89.759,89.556L89.759,89.556z"> </Path> <Path Fill="#FF000000" Data="M100,54.035L100,45.155 0,45.155 0,54.035 100,54.035z"> </Path> </Canvas> All I did was take the data portion and put it directly into a Data attribute on the Path. Note that while it does show up in the app (on the emulator or device) it wouldn’t show up in Visual Studio for me. Maybe some XAML guru out there can tell me why. You can just as easily use the PNG files in WP7 but if you want the crispness of vector graphics, go for the XAML version. Of course with XamlTune being open source you could always modify the output of that program to cater it to your app. If you do make a change that’s worthy please consider submitting a patch to the project so everyone can benefit. Hope this helps and happy programming! Resources and Links Sample Project and Icons XamlTune an open source project to convert SVG to XAML The Noun Project source of the original files Jon Galloways post on SVG and XAML StackOverflow question on converting SVG to XAML

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Building an HTML5 App with ASP.NET

- by Stephen Walther

I’m teaching several JavaScript and ASP.NET workshops over the next couple of months (thanks everyone!) and I thought it would be useful for my students to have a really easy to use JavaScript reference. I wanted a simple interactive JavaScript reference and I could not find one so I decided to put together one of my own. I decided to use the latest features of JavaScript, HTML5 and jQuery such as local storage, offline manifests, and jQuery templates. What could be more appropriate than building a JavaScript Reference with JavaScript? You can try out the application by visiting: http://Superexpert.com/JavaScriptReference Because the app takes advantage of several advanced features of HTML5, it won’t work with Internet Explorer 6 (but really, you should stop using that browser). I have tested it with IE 8, Chrome 8, Firefox 3.6, and Safari 5. You can download the source for the JavaScript Reference application at the end of this article. Superexpert JavaScript Reference Let me provide you with a brief walkthrough of the app. When you first open the application, you see the following lookup screen: As you type the name of something from the JavaScript language, matching results are displayed: You can click the details link for any entry to view details for an entry in a modal dialog: Alternatively, you can click on any of the tabs -- Objects, Functions, Properties, Statements, Operators, Comments, or Directives -- to filter results by type of syntax. For example, you might want to see a list of all JavaScript built-in objects: You can login to the application to make modification to the application: After you login, you can add, update, or delete entries in the reference database: HTML5 Local Storage The application takes advantage of HTML5 local storage to store all of the reference entries on the local browser. IE 8, Chrome 8, Firefox 3.6, and Safari 5 all support local storage. When you open the application for the first time, all of the reference entries are transferred to the browser. The data is stored persistently. Even if you shutdown your computer and return to the application many days later, the data does not need to be transferred again. Whenever you open the application, the app checks with the server to see if any of the entries have been updated on the server. If there have been updates, then only the updates are transferred to the browser and the updates are merged with the existing entries in local storage. After the reference database has been transferred to your browser once, only changes are transferred in the future. You get two benefits from using local storage. First, the application loads very fast and works very fast after the data has been loaded once. The application does not query the server whenever you filter or view entries. All of the data is persisted in the browser. Second, you can browse the JavaScript reference even when you are not connected to the Internet (when you are on the proverbial airplane). The JavaScript Reference works as an offline application for browsers that support offline applications (unfortunately, not IE). When using Google Chrome, you can easily view the contents of local storage by selecting Tools, Developer Tools (CTRL-SHIFT I) and selecting Storage, Local Storage: The JavaScript Reference app stores two items in local storage: entriesLastUpdated and entries. HTML5 Offline App For browsers that support HTML5 offline applications – Chrome 8 and Firefox 3.6 but not Internet Explorer – you do not need to be connected to the Internet to use the JavaScript Reference. The JavaScript Reference can execute entirely on your machine just like any other desktop application. When you first open the application with Firefox, you are presented with the following warning: Notice the notification bar that asks whether you want to accept offline content. If you click the Allow button then all of the files (generated ASPX, images, CSS, JavaScript) needed for the JavaScript Reference will be stored on your local computer. Automatic Script Minification and Combination All of the custom JavaScript files are combined and minified automatically whenever the application is built with Visual Studio. All of the custom scripts are contained in a folder named App_Scripts: When you perform a build, the combine.js and combine.debug.js files are generated. The Combine.config file contains the list of files that should be combined (importantly, it specifies the order in which the files should be combined). Here’s the contents of the Combine.config file: <?xml version="1.0"?> <combine> <scripts> <file path="compat.js" /> <file path="storage.js" /> <file path="serverData.js" /> <file path="entriesHelper.js" /> <file path="authentication.js" /> <file path="default.js" /> </scripts> </combine> jQuery and jQuery UI The JavaScript Reference application takes heavy advantage of jQuery and jQuery UI. In particular, the application uses jQuery templates to format and display the reference entries. Each of the separate templates is stored in a separate ASP.NET user control in a folder named Templates: The contents of the user controls (and therefore the templates) are combined in the default.aspx page:  <user:EntryTemplate runat="server" /> <user:EntryDetailsTemplate runat="server" /> <user:BrowsersTemplate runat="server" /> <user:EditEntryTemplate runat="server" /> <user:EntryDetailsCloudTemplate runat="server" /> When the default.aspx page is requested, all of the templates are retrieved in a single page. WCF Data Services The JavaScript Reference application uses WCF Data Services to retrieve and modify database data. The application exposes a server-side WCF Data Service named EntryService.svc that supports querying, adding, updating, and deleting entries. jQuery Ajax calls are made against the WCF Data Service to perform the database operations from the browser. The OData protocol makes this easy. Authentication is handled on the server with a ChangeInterceptor. Only authenticated users are allowed to update the JavaScript Reference entry database. JavaScript Unit Tests In order to build the JavaScript Reference application, I depended on JavaScript unit tests. I needed the unit tests, in particular, to write the JavaScript merge functions which merge entry change sets from the server with existing entries in browser local storage. In order for unit tests to be useful, they need to run fast. I ran my unit tests after each build. For this reason, I did not want to run the unit tests within the context of a browser. Instead, I ran the unit tests using server-side JavaScript (the Microsoft Script Control). The source code that you can download at the end of this blog entry includes a project named JavaScriptReference.UnitTests that contains all of the JavaScripts unit tests. JavaScript Integration Tests Because not every feature of an application can be tested by unit tests, the JavaScript Reference application also includes integration tests. I wrote the integration tests using Selenium RC in combination with ASP.NET Unit Tests. The Selenium tests run against all of the target browsers for the JavaScript Reference application: IE 8, Chrome 8, Firefox 3.6, and Safari 5. For example, here is the Selenium test that checks whether authenticating with a valid user name and password correctly switches the application to Admin Mode: [TestMethod] [HostType("ASP.NET")] [UrlToTest("http://localhost:26303/JavaScriptReference")] [AspNetDevelopmentServerHost(@"C:\Users\Stephen\Documents\Repos\JavaScriptReference\JavaScriptReference\JavaScriptReference", "/JavaScriptReference")] public void TestValidLogin() { // Run test for each controller foreach (var controller in this.Controllers) { var selenium = controller.Value; var browserName = controller.Key; // Open reference page. selenium.Open("http://localhost:26303/JavaScriptReference/default.aspx"); // Click login button displays login form selenium.Click("btnLogin"); Assert.IsTrue(selenium.IsVisible("loginForm"), "Login form appears after clicking btnLogin"); // Enter user name and password selenium.Type("userName", "Admin"); selenium.Type("password", "secret"); selenium.Click("btnDoLogin"); // Should set adminMode == true selenium.WaitForCondition("selenium.browserbot.getCurrentWindow().adminMode==true", "30000"); } } The results for running the Selenium tests appear in the Test Results window just like the unit tests: The Selenium tests take much longer to execute than the unit tests. However, they provide test coverage for actual browsers. Furthermore, if you are using Visual Studio ALM, you can run the tests automatically every night as part of your standard nightly build. You can view the Selenium tests by opening the JavaScriptReference.QATests project. Summary I plan to write more detailed blog entries about this application over the next week. I want to discuss each of the features – HTML5 local storage, HTML5 offline apps, jQuery templates, automatic script combining and minification, JavaScript unit tests, Selenium tests -- in more detail. You can download the source control for the JavaScript Reference Application by clicking the following link: Download You need Visual Studio 2010 and ASP.NET 4 to build the application. Before running the JavaScript unit tests, install the Microsoft Script Control. Before running the Selenium tests, start the Selenium server by running the StartSeleniumServer.bat file located in the JavaScriptReference.QATests project.

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Novo Suporte para Combinação e Minificação de Arquivos JavaScript e CSS (Série de posts sobre a ASP.NET 4.5)

- by Leniel Macaferi

Este é o sexto post de uma série de posts que estou escrevendo sobre a ASP.NET 4.5. Os próximos lançamentos do .NET e Visual Studio incluem vários novos e ótimos recursos e capacidades. Com a ASP.NET 4.5 você vai ver um monte de melhorias realmente emocionantes em formulários da Web ( Web Forms ) e MVC - assim como no núcleo da base de código da ASP.NET, no qual estas tecnologias são baseadas. O post de hoje cobre um pouco do trabalho que estamos realizando para adicionar suporte nativo para combinação e minificação de arquivos JavaScript e CSS dentro da ASP.NET - o que torna mais fácil melhorar o desempenho das aplicações. Este recurso pode ser utilizado por todas as aplicações ASP.NET, incluindo tanto a ASP.NET MVC quanto a ASP.NET Web Forms. Noções básicas sobre Combinação e Minificação Como mais e mais pessoas usando dispositivos móveis para navegar na web, está se tornando cada vez mais importante que os websites e aplicações que construímos tenham um bom desempenho neles. Todos nós já tentamos carregar sites em nossos smartphones - apenas para, eventualmente, desistirmos em meio à frustração porque os mesmos são carregados lentamente através da lenta rede celular. Se o seu site/aplicação carrega lentamente assim, você está provavelmente perdendo clientes em potencial por causa do mau desempenho/performance. Mesmo com máquinas desktop poderosas, o tempo de carregamento do seu site e o desempenho percebido podem contribuir enormemente para a percepção do cliente. A maioria dos websites hoje em dia são construídos com múltiplos arquivos de JavaScript e CSS para separar o código e para manter a base de código coesa. Embora esta seja uma boa prática do ponto de vista de codificação, muitas vezes isso leva a algumas consequências negativas no tocante ao desempenho geral do site. Vários arquivos de JavaScript e CSS requerem múltiplas solicitações HTTP provenientes do navegador - o que pode retardar o tempo de carregamento do site. Exemplo Simples A seguir eu abri um site local no IE9 e gravei o tráfego da rede usando as ferramentas do desenvolvedor nativas do IE (IE Developer Tools) que podem ser acessadas com a tecla F12. Como mostrado abaixo, o site é composto por 5 arquivos CSS e 4 arquivos JavaScript, os quais o navegador tem que fazer o download. Cada arquivo é solicitado separadamente pelo navegador e retornado pelo servidor, e o processo pode levar uma quantidade significativa de tempo proporcional ao número de arquivos em questão. Combinação A ASP.NET está adicionando um recurso que facilita a "união" ou "combinação" de múltiplos arquivos CSS e JavaScript em menos solicitações HTTP. Isso faz com que o navegador solicite muito menos arquivos, o que por sua vez reduz o tempo que o mesmo leva para buscá-los. A seguir está uma versão atualizada do exemplo mostrado acima, que tira vantagem desta nova funcionalidade de combinação de arquivos (fazendo apenas um pedido para JavaScript e um pedido para CSS): O navegador agora tem que enviar menos solicitações ao servidor. O conteúdo dos arquivos individuais foram combinados/unidos na mesma resposta, mas o conteúdo dos arquivos permanece o mesmo - por isso o tamanho do arquivo geral é exatamente o mesmo de antes da combinação (somando o tamanho dos arquivos separados). Mas note como mesmo em uma máquina de desenvolvimento local (onde a latência da rede entre o navegador e o servidor é mínima), o ato de combinar os arquivos CSS e JavaScript ainda consegue reduzir o tempo de carregamento total da página em quase 20%. Em uma rede lenta a melhora de desempenho seria ainda maior. Minificação A próxima versão da ASP.NET também está adicionando uma nova funcionalidade que facilita reduzir ou "minificar" o tamanho do download do conteúdo. Este é um processo que remove espaços em branco, comentários e outros caracteres desnecessários dos arquivos CSS e JavaScript. O resultado é arquivos menores, que serão enviados e carregados no navegador muito mais rapidamente. O gráfico a seguir mostra o ganho de desempenho que estamos tendo quando os processos de combinação e minificação dos arquivos são usados ??em conjunto: Mesmo no meu computador de desenvolvimento local (onde a latência da rede é mínima), agora temos uma melhoria de desempenho de 40% a partir de onde originalmente começamos. Em redes lentas (e especialmente com clientes internacionais), os ganhos seriam ainda mais significativos. Usando Combinação e Minificação de Arquivos dentro da ASP.NET A próxima versão da ASP.NET torna realmente fácil tirar proveito da combinação e minificação de arquivos dentro de projetos, possibilitando ganhos de desempenho como os que foram mostrados nos cenários acima. A forma como ela faz isso, te permite evitar a execução de ferramentas personalizadas/customizadas, como parte do seu processo de construção da aplicação/website - ao invés disso, a ASP.NET adicionou suporte no tempo de execução/runtime para que você possa executar a combinação/minificação dos arquivos dinamicamente (cacheando os resultados para ter certeza de que a performance seja realmente satisfatória). Isto permite uma experiência de desenvolvimento realmente limpa e torna super fácil começar a tirar proveito destas novas funcionalidades. Vamos supor que temos um projeto simples com 4 arquivos JavaScript e 6 arquivos CSS: Combinando e Minificando os Arquivos CSS Digamos que você queira referenciar em uma página todas as folhas de estilo que estão dentro da pasta "Styles" mostrada acima. Hoje você tem que adicionar múltiplas referências para os arquivos CSS para obter todos eles - o que se traduziria em seis requisições HTTP separadas: O novo recurso de combinação/minificação agora permite que você combine e minifique todos os arquivos CSS da pasta Styles - simplesmente enviando uma solicitação de URL para a pasta (neste caso, "styles"), com um caminho adicional "/css" na URL. Por exemplo: Isso fará com que a ASP.NET verifique o diretório, combine e minifique os arquivos CSS que estiverem dentro da pasta, e envie uma única resposta HTTP para o navegador com todo o conteúdo CSS. Você não precisa executar nenhuma ferramenta ou pré-processamento para obter esse comportamento. Isso te permite separar de maneira limpa seus estilos em arquivos CSS separados e condizentes com cada funcionalidade da aplicação mantendo uma experiência de desenvolvimento extremamente limpa - e mesmo assim você não terá um impacto negativo de desempenho no tempo de execução da aplicação. O designer do Visual Studio também vai honrar a lógica de combinação/minificação - assim você ainda terá uma experiência WYSWIYG no designer dentro VS. Combinando e Minificando os Arquivos JavaScript Como a abordagem CSS mostrada acima, se quiséssemos combinar e minificar todos os nossos arquivos de JavaScript em uma única resposta, poderíamos enviar um pedido de URL para a pasta (neste caso, "scripts"), com um caminho adicional "/js": Isso fará com que a ASP.NET verifique o diretório, combine e minifique os arquivos com extensão .js dentro dele, e envie uma única resposta HTTP para o navegador com todo o conteúdo JavaScript. Mais uma vez - nenhuma ferramenta customizada ou etapas de construção foi necessária para obtermos esse comportamento. Este processo funciona em todos os navegadores. Ordenação dos Arquivos dentro de um Pacote Por padrão, quando os arquivos são combinados pela ASP.NET, eles são ordenados em ordem alfabética primeiramente, exatamente como eles são mostrados no Solution Explorer. Em seguida, eles são automaticamente reorganizados de modo que as bibliotecas conhecidas e suas extensões personalizadas, tais como jQuery, MooTools e Dojo sejam carregadas antes de qualquer outra coisa. Assim, a ordem padrão para a combinação dos arquivos da pasta Scripts, como a mostrada acima será: jquery-1.6.2.js jquery-ui.js jquery.tools.js a.js Por padrão, os arquivos CSS também são classificados em ordem alfabética e depois são reorganizados de forma que o arquivo reset.css e normalize.css (se eles estiverem presentes na pasta) venham sempre antes de qualquer outro arquivo. Assim, o padrão de classificação da combinação dos arquivos da pasta "Styles", como a mostrada acima será: reset.css content.css forms.css globals.css menu.css styles.css A ordenação/classificação é totalmente personalizável, e pode ser facilmente alterada para acomodar a maioria dos casos e qualquer padrão de nomenclatura que você prefira. O objetivo com a experiência pronta para uso, porém, é ter padrões inteligentes que você pode simplesmente usar e ter sucesso com os mesmos. Qualquer número de Diretórios/Subdiretórios é Suportado No exemplo acima, nós tivemos apenas uma única pasta "Scripts" e "Styles" em nossa aplicação. Isso funciona para alguns tipos de aplicação (por exemplo, aplicações com páginas simples). Muitas vezes, porém, você vai querer ter múltiplos pacotes/combinações de arquivos CSS/JS dentro de sua aplicação - por exemplo: um pacote "comum", que tem o núcleo dos arquivos JS e CSS que todas as páginas usam, e então arquivos específicos para páginas ou seções que não são utilizados globalmente. Você pode usar o suporte à combinação/minificação em qualquer número de diretórios ou subdiretórios em seu projeto - isto torna mais fácil estruturar seu código de forma a maximizar os benefícios da combinação/minificação dos arquivos. Cada diretório por padrão pode ser acessado como um pacote separado e endereçável através de uma URL. Extensibilidade para Combinação/Minificação de Arquivos O suporte da ASP.NET para combinar e minificar é construído com extensibilidade em mente e cada parte do processo pode ser estendido ou substituído. Regras Personalizadas Além de permitir a abordagem de empacotamento - baseada em diretórios - que vem pronta para ser usada, a ASP.NET também suporta a capacidade de registrar pacotes/combinações personalizadas usando uma nova API de programação que estamos expondo. O código a seguir demonstra como você pode registrar um "customscript" (script personalizável) usando código dentro da classe Global.asax de uma aplicação. A API permite que você adicione/remova/filtre os arquivos que farão parte do pacote de maneira muito granular: O pacote personalizado acima pode ser referenciado em qualquer lugar dentro da aplicação usando a referência de <script> mostrada a seguir: Processamento Personalizado Você também pode substituir os pacotes padrão CSS e JavaScript para suportar seu próprio processamento personalizado dos arquivos do pacote (por exemplo: regras personalizadas para minificação, suporte para Saas, LESS ou sintaxe CoffeeScript, etc). No exemplo mostrado a seguir, estamos indicando que queremos substituir as transformações nativas de minificação com classes MyJsTransform e MyCssTransform personalizadas. Elas são subclasses dos respectivos minificadores padrão para CSS e JavaScript, e podem adicionar funcionalidades extras: O resultado final desta extensibilidade é que você pode se plugar dentro da lógica de combinação/minificação em um nível profundo e fazer algumas coisas muito legais com este recurso. Vídeo de 2 Minutos sobre Combinação e Minificacão de Arquivos em Ação Mads Kristensen tem um ótimo vídeo de 90 segundo (em Inglês) que demonstra a utilização do recurso de Combinação e Minificação de Arquivos. Você pode assistir o vídeo de 90 segundos aqui. Sumário O novo suporte para combinação e minificação de arquivos CSS e JavaScript dentro da próxima versão da ASP.NET tornará mais fácil a construção de aplicações web performáticas. Este recurso é realmente fácil de usar e não requer grandes mudanças no seu fluxo de trabalho de desenvolvimento existente. Ele também suporta uma rica API de extensibilidade que permite a você personalizar a lógica da maneira que você achar melhor. Você pode facilmente tirar vantagem deste novo suporte dentro de aplicações baseadas em ASP.NET MVC e ASP.NET Web Forms. Espero que ajude, Scott P.S. Além do blog, eu uso o Twitter para disponibilizar posts rápidos e para compartilhar links.Lidar com o meu Twitter é: @scottgu Texto traduzido do post original por Leniel Macaferi. google_ad_client = "pub-8849057428395760"; /* 728x90, created 2/15/09 */ google_ad_slot = "4706719075"; google_ad_width = 728; google_ad_height = 90;

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The How-To Geek Holiday Gift Guide (Geeky Stuff We Like)

- by The Geek

Welcome to the very first How-To Geek Holiday Gift Guide, where we’ve put together a list of our absolute favorites to help you weed through all of the junk out there to pick the perfect gift for anybody. Though really, it’s just a list of the geeky stuff we want. We’ve got a whole range of items on the list, from cheaper gifts that most anybody can afford, to the really expensive stuff that we’re pretty sure nobody is giving us. Stocking Stuffers Here’s a couple of ideas for items that won’t break the bank. LED Keychain Micro-Light Magcraft 1/8-Inch Rare Earth Cube Magnets Best little LED keychain light around. If they don’t need the penknife of the above item this is the perfect gift. I give them out by the handfuls and nobody ever says anything but good things about them. I’ve got ones that are years old and still running on the same battery. Price: $8 Geeks cannot resist magnets. Jason bought this pack for his fridge because he was sick of big clunky magnets… these things are amazing. One tiny magnet, smaller than an Altoid mint, can practically hold a clipboard right to the fridge. Amazing. I spend more time playing with them on the counter than I do actually hanging stuff. Price: $10 Lots of Geeky Mugs Astronomy Powerful Green Laser Pointer There’s loads of fun, geeky mugs you can find on Amazon or anywhere else—and they are great choices for the geek who loves their coffee. You can get the Caffeine mug pictured here, or go with an Atari one, Canon Lens, or the Aperture mug based on Portal. Your choice. Price: $7 No, it’s not a light saber, but it’s nearly bright enough to be one—you can illuminate low flying clouds at night or just blind some aliens on your day off. All that for an extremely low price. Loads of fun. Price: $15 Geeky TV Shows and Books Sometimes you just want to relax and enjoy a some TV or a good book. Here’s a few choices. The IT Crowd Fourth Season Doctor Who, Complete Fifth Series Ridiculous, funny show about nerds in the IT department, loved by almost all the geeks here at HTG. Justin even makes this required watching for new hires in his office so they’ll get his jokes. You can pre-order the fourth season, or pick up seasons one, two, or three for even cheaper. Price: $13 It doesn’t get any more nerdy than Eric’s pick, the fifth all-new series of Doctor Who, where the Daleks are hatching a new master plan from the heart of war-torn London. There’s also alien vampires, humanoid reptiles, and a lot more. Price: $52 Battlestar Galactica Complete Series MAKE: Electronics: Learning Through Discovery Watch the epic fight to save the human race by finding the fabled planet Earth while being hunted by the robotic Cylons. You can grab the entire series on DVD or Blu-ray, or get the seasons individually. This isn’t your average sci-fi TV show. Price: $150 for Blu-ray. Want to learn the fundamentals of electronics in a fun, hands-on way? The Make:Electronics book helps you build the circuits and learn how it all works—as if you had any more time between all that registry hacking and loading software on your new PC. Price: $21 Geeky Gadgets for the Gadget-Loving Geek Here’s a few of the items on our gadget list, though lets be honest: geeks are going to love almost any gadget, especially shiny new ones. Klipsch Image S4i Premium Noise-Isolating Headset with 3-Button Apple Control GP2X Caanoo MAME/Console Emulator If you’re a real music geek looking for some serious quality in the headset for your iPhone or iPod, this is the pair that Alex recommends. They aren’t terribly cheap, but you can get the less expensive S3 earphones instead if you prefer. Price: $50-100 Eric says: “As an owner of an older version, I can say the GP2X is one of my favorite gadgets ever. Touted a “Retro Emulation Juggernaut,” GP2X runs Linux and may be the only open source software console available. Sounds too good to be true, but isn’t.” Price: $150 Roku XDS Streaming Player 1080p Western Digital WD TV Live Plus HD Media Player If you do a lot of streaming over Netflix, Hulu Plus, Amazon’s Video on Demand, Pandora, and others, the Roku box is a great choice to get your content on your TV without paying a lot of money. It’s also got Wireless-N built in, and it supports full 1080P HD. Price: $99 If you’ve got a home media collection sitting on a hard drive or a network server, the Western Digital box is probably the cheapest way to get that content on your TV, and it even supports Netflix streaming too. It’ll play loads of formats in full HD quality. Price: $99 Fujitsu ScanSnap S300 Color Mobile Scanner Doxie, the amazing scanner for documents Trevor said: “This wonderful little scanner has become absolutely essential to me. My desk used to just be a gigantic pile of papers that I didn’t need at the moment, but couldn’t throw away ‘just in case.’ Now, every few weeks, I’ll run that paper pile through this and then happily shred the originals!” Price: $300 If you don’t scan quite as often and are looking for a budget scanner you can throw into your bag, or toss into a drawer in your desk, the Doxie scanner is a great alternative that I’ve been using for a while. It’s half the price, and while it’s not as full-featured as the Fujitsu, it might be a better choice for the very casual user. Price: $150 (Expensive) Gadgets Almost Anybody Will Love If you’re not sure that one of the more geeky presents is gonna work, here’s some gadgets that just about anybody is going to love, especially if they don’t have one already. Of course, some of these are a bit on the expensive side—but it’s a wish list, right? Amazon Kindle The Kindle weighs less than a paperback book, the screen is amazing and easy on the eyes, and get ready for the kicker: the battery lasts at least a month. We aren’t kidding, either—it really lasts that long. If you don’t feel like spending money for books, you can use it to read PDFs, and if you want to get really geeky, you can hack it for custom screensavers. Price: $139 iPod Touch or iPad You can’t go wrong with either of these presents—the iPod Touch can do almost everything the iPhone can do, including games, apps, and music, and it has the same Retina display as the iPhone, HD video recording, and a front-facing camera so you can use FaceTime. Price: $229+, depending on model. The iPad is a great tablet for playing games, browsing the web, or just using on your coffee table for guests. It’s well worth buying one—but if you’re buying for yourself, keep in mind that the iPad 2 is probably coming out in 3 months. Price: $500+ MacBook Air The MacBook Air comes in 11” or 13” versions, and it’s an amazing little machine. It’s lightweight, the battery lasts nearly forever, and it resumes from sleep almost instantly. Since it uses an SSD drive instead of a hard drive, you’re barely going to notice any speed problems for general use. So if you’ve got a lot of money to blow, this is a killer gift. Price: $999 and up. Stuck with No Idea for a Present? Gift Cards! Yeah, you’re not going to win any “thoughtful present” awards with these, but you might just give somebody what they really want—the new Angry Birds HD for their iPad, Cut the Rope, or anything else they want. ITunes Gift Card Amazon.com Gift Card Somebody in your circle getting a new iPod, iPhone, or iPad? You can get them an iTunes gift card, which they can use to buy music, games or apps. Yep, this way you can gift them a copy of Angry Birds if they don’t already have it. Or even Cut the Rope. No clue what to get somebody on your list? Amazon gift cards let them buy pretty much anything they want, from organic weirdberries to big screen TVs. Yeah, it’s not as thoughtful as getting them a nice present, but look at the bright side: maybe they’ll get you an Amazon gift card and it’ll balance out. That’s the highlights from our lists—got anything else to add? Share your geeky gift ideas in the comments. Latest Features How-To Geek ETC The How-To Geek Holiday Gift Guide (Geeky Stuff We Like) LCD? LED? Plasma? 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The HTG Guide to Using a Bluetooth Keyboard with Your Android Device

- by Matt Klein

Android devices aren’t usually associated with physical keyboards. But, since Google is now bundling their QuickOffice app with the newly-released Kit-Kat, it appears inevitable that at least some Android tablets (particularly 10-inch models) will take on more productivity roles. In recent years, physical keyboards have been rendered obsolete by swipe style input methods such as Swype and Google Keyboard. Physical keyboards tend to make phones thick and plump, and that won’t fly today when thin (and even flexible and curved) is in vogue. So, you’ll be hard-pressed to find smartphone manufacturers launching new models with physical keyboards, thus rendering sliders to a past chapter in mobile phone evolution. It makes sense to ditch the clunky keyboard phone in favor of a lighter, thinner model. You’re going to carry around in your pocket or purse all day, why have that extra bulk and weight? That said, there is sound logic behind pairing tablets with keyboards. Microsoft continues to plod forward with its Surface models, and while critics continue to lavish praise on the iPad, its functionality is obviously enhanced and extended when you add a physical keyboard. Apple even has an entire page devoted specifically to iPad-compatible keyboards. But an Android tablet and a keyboard? Does such a thing even exist? They do actually. There are docking keyboards and keyboard/case combinations, there’s the Asus Transformer family, Logitech markets a Windows 8 keyboard that speaks “Android”, and these are just to name a few. So we know that keyboard products that are designed to work with Android exist, but what about an everyday Bluetooth keyboard you might use with Windows or OS X? How-To Geek wanted look at how viable it is to use such a keyboard with Android. We conducted some research and examined some lists of Android keyboard shortcuts. Most of what we found was long outdated. Many of the shortcuts don’t even apply anymore, while others just didn’t work. Regardless, after a little experimentation and a dash of customization, it turns out using a keyboard with Android is kind of fun, and who knows, maybe it will catch on. Setting things up Setting up a Bluetooth keyboard with Android is very easy. First, you’ll need a Bluetooth keyboard and of course an Android device, preferably running version 4.1 (Jelly Bean) or higher. For our test, we paired a second-generation Google Nexus 7 running Android 4.3 with a Samsung Series 7 keyboard. In Android, enable Bluetooth if it isn’t already on. We’d like to note that if you don’t normally use Bluetooth accessories and peripherals with your Android device (or any device really), it’s best practice to leave Bluetooth off because, like GPS, it drains the device’s battery more quickly. To enable Bluetooth, simply go to “Settings” -> “Bluetooth” and tap the slider button to “On”. To set up the keyboard, make sure it is on and then tap “Bluetooth” in the Android settings. On the resulting screen, your Android device should automatically search for and hopefully find your keyboard. If you don’t get it right the first time, simply turn the keyboard on again and then tap “Search for Devices” to try again. If it still doesn’t work, make sure you have fresh batteries and the keyboard isn’t paired to another device. If it is, you will need to unpair it before it will work with your Android device (consult your keyboard manufacturer’s documentation or Google if you don’t know how to do this). When Android finds your keyboard, select it under “Available Devices” … … and you should be prompted to type in a code: If successful, you will see that device is now “Connected” and you’re ready to go. If you want to test things out, try pressing the “Windows” key (“Apple” or “Command”) + ESC, and you will be whisked to your Home screen. So, what can you do? Traditional Mac and Windows users know there’s usually a keyboard shortcut for just about everything (and if there isn’t, there’s all kinds of ways to remap keys to do a variety of commands, tasks, and functions). So where does Android fall in terms of baked-in keyboard commands? There answer to that is kind of enough, but not too much. There are definitely established combos you can use to get around, but they aren’t clear and there doesn’t appear to be any one authority on what they are. Still, there is enough keyboard functionality in Android to make it a viable option, if only for those times when you need to get something done (long e-mail or important document) and an on-screen keyboard simply won’t do. It’s important to remember that Android is, and likely always will be a touch-first interface. That said, it does make some concessions to physical keyboards. In other words, you can get around Android fairly well without having to lift your hands off the keys, but you will still have to tap the screen regularly, unless you add a mouse. For example, you can wake your device by tapping a key rather than pressing its power button. However, if your device is slide or pattern-locked, then you’ll have to use the touchscreen to unlock it – a password or PIN however, works seamlessly with a keyboard – other things like widgets and app controls and features, have to be tapped. You get the idea. Keyboard shortcuts and navigation As we said, baked-in keyboard shortcut combos aren’t necessarily abundant nor apparent. The one thing you can always do is search. Any time you want to Google something, start typing from the Home screen and the search screen will automatically open and begin displaying results. Other than that, here is what we were able to figure out: ESC = go back CTRL + ESC = menu CTRL + ALT + DEL = restart (no questions asked) ALT + SPACE = search page (say “OK Google” to voice search) ALT + TAB (ALT + SHIFT + TAB) = switch tasks Also, if you have designated volume function keys, those will probably work too. There’s also some dedicated app shortcuts like calculator, Gmail, and a few others: CMD + A = calculator CMD + C = contacts CMD + E = e-mail CMD + G = Gmail CMD + L = Calendar CMD + P = Play Music CMD + Y = YouTube Overall, it’s not a long comprehensive list and there’s no dedicated keyboard combos for the full array of Google’s products. Granted, it’s hard to imagine getting a lot of mileage out of a keyboard with Maps but with something like Keep, you could type out long, detailed lists on your tablet, and then view them on your smartphone when you go out shopping. You can also use the arrow keys to navigate your Home screen over shortcuts and open the app drawer. When something on the screen is selected, it will be highlighted in blue. Press “Enter” to open your selection. Additionally, if an app has its own set of shortcuts, e.g. Gmail has quite a few unique shortcuts to it, as does Chrome, some – though not many – will work in Android (not for YouTube though). Also, many “universal” shortcuts such as Copy (CTRL + C), Cut (CTRL + X), Paste (CTRL + V), and Select All (CTRL + A) work where needed – such as in instant messaging, e-mail, social media apps, etc. Creating custom application shortcuts What about custom shortcuts? When we were researching this article, we were under the impression that it was possible to assign keyboard combinations to specific apps, such as you could do on older Android versions such as Gingerbread. This no long seems to be the case and nowhere in “Settings” could we find a way to assign hotkey combos to any of our favorite, oft-used apps or functions. If you do want custom keyboard shortcuts, what can you do? Luckily, there’s an app on Google Play that allows you to, among other things, create custom app shortcuts. It is called External Keyboard Helper (EKH) and while there is a free demo version, the pay version is only a few bucks. We decided to give EKH a whirl and through a little experimentation and finally reading the developer’s how-to, we found we could map custom keyboard combos to just about anything. To do this, first open the application and you’ll see the main app screen. Don’t worry about choosing a custom layout or anything like that, you want to go straight to the “Advanced settings”: In the “Advanced settings” select “Application shortcuts” to continue: You can have up to 16 custom application shortcuts. We are going to create a custom shortcut to the Facebook app. We choose “A0”, and from the resulting list, Facebook. You can do this for any number of apps, services, and settings. As you can now see, the Facebook app has now been linked to application-zero (A0): Go back to the “Advanced settings” and choose “Customize keyboard mappings”: You will be prompted to create a custom keyboard layout so we choose “Custom 1”: When you choose to create a custom layout, you can do a great many more things with your keyboard. For example, many keyboards have predefined function (Fn) keys, which you can map to your tablet’s brightness controls, toggle WiFi on/off, and much more. A word of advice, the application automatically remaps certain keys when you create a custom layout. This might mess up some existing keyboard combos. If you simply want to add some functionality to your keyboard, you can go ahead and delete EKH’s default changes and start your custom layout from scratch. To create a new combo, select “Add new key mapping”: For our new shortcut, we are going to assign the Facebook app to open when we key in “ALT + F”. To do this, we press the “F” key while in the “Scancode” field and we see it returns a value of “33”. If we wanted to use a different key, we can press “Change” and scan another key’s numerical value. We now want to assign the “ALT” key to application “A0”, previously designated as the Facebook app. In the “AltGr” field, we enter “A0” and then “Save” our custom combo. And now we see our new application shortcut. Now, as long as we’re using our custom layout, every time we press “ALT + F”, the Facebook app will launch: External Keyboard Helper extends far beyond simple application shortcuts and if you are looking for deeper keyboard customization options, you should definitely check it out. Among other things, EKH also supports dozens of languages, allows you to quickly switch between layouts using a key or combo, add up to 16 custom text shortcuts, and much more! It can be had on Google Play for $2.53 for the full version, but you can try the demo version for free. More extensive documentation on how to use the app is also available. Android? Keyboard? Sure, why not? Unlike traditional desktop operating systems, you don’t need a physical keyboard and mouse to use a mobile operating system. You can buy an iPad or Nexus 10 or Galaxy Note, and never need another accessory or peripheral – they work as intended right out of the box. It’s even possible you can write the next great American novel on one these devices, though that might require a lot of practice and patience. That said, using a keyboard with Android is kind of fun. It’s not revelatory but it does elevate the experience. You don’t even need to add customizations (though they are nice) because there are enough existing keyboard shortcuts in Android to make it usable. Plus, when it comes to inputting text such as in an editor or terminal application, we fully advocate big, physical keyboards. Bottom line, if you’re looking for a way to enhance your Android tablet, give a keyboard a chance. Do you use your Android device for productivity? Is a physical keyboard an important part of your setup? Do you have any shortcuts that we missed? Sound off in the comments and let us know what you think.

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Guidance: A Branching strategy for Scrum Teams

- by Martin Hinshelwood

Having a good branching strategy will save your bacon, or at least your code. Be careful when deviating from your branching strategy because if you do, you may be worse off than when you started! This is one possible branching strategy for Scrum teams and I will not be going in depth with Scrum but you can find out more about Scrum by reading the Scrum Guide and you can even assess your Scrum knowledge by having a go at the Scrum Open Assessment. You can also read SSW’s Rules to Better Scrum using TFS which have been developed during our own Scrum implementations. Acknowledgements Bill Heys – Bill offered some good feedback on this post and helped soften the language. Note: Bill is a VS ALM Ranger and co-wrote the Branching Guidance for TFS 2010 Willy-Peter Schaub – Willy-Peter is an ex Visual Studio ALM MVP turned blue badge and has been involved in most of the guidance including the Branching Guidance for TFS 2010 Chris Birmele – Chris wrote some of the early TFS Branching and Merging Guidance. Dr Paul Neumeyer, Ph.D Parallel Processes, ScrumMaster and SSW Solution Architect – Paul wanted to have feature branches coming from the release branch as well. We agreed that this is really a spin-off that needs own project, backlog, budget and Team. Scenario: A product is developed RTM 1.0 is released and gets great sales. Extra features are demanded but the new version will have double to price to pay to recover costs, work is approved by the guys with budget and a few sprints later RTM 2.0 is released. Sales a very low due to the pricing strategy. There are lots of clients on RTM 1.0 calling out for patches. As I keep getting Reverse Integration and Forward Integration mixed up and Bill keeps slapping my wrists I thought I should have a reminder: You still seemed to use reverse and/or forward integration in the wrong context. I would recommend reviewing your document at the end to ensure that it agrees with the common understanding of these terms merge (forward integration) from parent to child (same direction as the branch), and merge (reverse integration) from child to parent (the reverse direction of the branch). - one of my many slaps on the wrist from Bill Heys. As I mentioned previously we are using a single feature branching strategy in our current project. The single biggest mistake developers make is developing against the “Main” or “Trunk” line. This ultimately leads to messy code as things are added and never finished. Your only alternative is to NEVER check in unless your code is 100%, but this does not work in practice, even with a single developer. Your ADD will kick in and your half-finished code will be finished enough to pass the build and the tests. You do use builds don’t you? Sadly, this is a very common scenario and I have had people argue that branching merely adds complexity. Then again I have seen the other side of the universe ... branching structures from he... We should somehow convince everyone that there is a happy between no-branching and too-much-branching. - Willy-Peter Schaub, VS ALM Ranger, Microsoft A key benefit of branching for development is to isolate changes from the stable Main branch. Branching adds sanity more than it adds complexity. We do try to stress in our guidance that it is important to justify a branch, by doing a cost benefit analysis. The primary cost is the effort to do merges and resolve conflicts. A key benefit is that you have a stable code base in Main and accept changes into Main only after they pass quality gates, etc. - Bill Heys, VS ALM Ranger & TFS Branching Lead, Microsoft The second biggest mistake developers make is branching anything other than the WHOLE “Main” line. If you branch parts of your code and not others it gets out of sync and can make integration a nightmare. You should have your Source, Assets, Build scripts deployment scripts and dependencies inside the “Main” folder and branch the whole thing. Some departments within MSFT even go as far as to add the environments used to develop the product in there as well; although I would not recommend that unless you have a massive SQL cluster to house your source code. We tried the “add environment” back in South-Africa and while it was “phenomenal”, especially when having to switch between environments, the disk storage and processing requirements killed us. We opted for virtualization to skin this cat of keeping a ready-to-go environment handy. - Willy-Peter Schaub, VS ALM Ranger, Microsoft I think people often think that you should have separate branches for separate environments (e.g. Dev, Test, Integration Test, QA, etc.). I prefer to think of deploying to environments (such as from Main to QA) rather than branching for QA). - Bill Heys, VS ALM Ranger & TFS Branching Lead, Microsoft You can read about SSW’s Rules to better Source Control for some additional information on what Source Control to use and how to use it. There are also a number of branching Anti-Patterns that should be avoided at all costs: You know you are on the wrong track if you experience one or more of the following symptoms in your development environment: Merge Paranoia—avoiding merging at all cost, usually because of a fear of the consequences. Merge Mania—spending too much time merging software assets instead of developing them. Big Bang Merge—deferring branch merging to the end of the development effort and attempting to merge all branches simultaneously. Never-Ending Merge—continuous merging activity because there is always more to merge. Wrong-Way Merge—merging a software asset version with an earlier version. Branch Mania—creating many branches for no apparent reason. Cascading Branches—branching but never merging back to the main line. Mysterious Branches—branching for no apparent reason. Temporary Branches—branching for changing reasons, so the branch becomes a permanent temporary workspace. Volatile Branches—branching with unstable software assets shared by other branches or merged into another branch. Note Branches are volatile most of the time while they exist as independent branches. That is the point of having them. The difference is that you should not share or merge branches while they are in an unstable state. Development Freeze—stopping all development activities while branching, merging, and building new base lines. Berlin Wall—using branches to divide the development team members, instead of dividing the work they are performing. -Branching and Merging Primer by Chris Birmele - Developer Tools Technical Specialist at Microsoft Pty Ltd in Australia In fact, this can result in a merge exercise no-one wants to be involved in, merging hundreds of thousands of change sets and trying to get a consolidated build. Again, we need to find a happy medium. - Willy-Peter Schaub on Merge Paranoia Merge conflicts are generally the result of making changes to the same file in both the target and source branch. If you create merge conflicts, you will eventually need to resolve them. Often the resolution is manual. Merging more frequently allows you to resolve these conflicts close to when they happen, making the resolution clearer. Waiting weeks or months to resolve them, the Big Bang approach, means you are more likely to resolve conflicts incorrectly. - Bill Heys, VS ALM Ranger & TFS Branching Lead, Microsoft Figure: Main line, this is where your stable code lives and where any build has known entities, always passes and has a happy test that passes as well? Many development projects consist of, a single “Main” line of source and artifacts. This is good; at least there is source control . There are however a couple of issues that need to be considered. What happens if: you and your team are working on a new set of features and the customer wants a change to his current version? you are working on two features and the customer decides to abandon one of them? you have two teams working on different feature sets and their changes start interfering with each other? I just use labels instead of branches? That's a lot of “what if’s”, but there is a simple way of preventing this. Branching… In TFS, labels are not immutable. This does not mean they are not useful. But labels do not provide a very good development isolation mechanism. Branching allows separate code sets to evolve separately (e.g. Current with hotfixes, and vNext with new development). I don’t see how labels work here. - Bill Heys, VS ALM Ranger & TFS Branching Lead, Microsoft Figure: Creating a single feature branch means you can isolate the development work on that branch. Its standard practice for large projects with lots of developers to use Feature branching and you can check the Branching Guidance for the latest recommendations from the Visual Studio ALM Rangers for other methods. In the diagram above you can see my recommendation for branching when using Scrum development with TFS 2010. It consists of a single Sprint branch to contain all the changes for the current sprint. The main branch has the permissions changes so contributors to the project can only Branch and Merge with “Main”. This will prevent accidental check-ins or checkouts of the “Main” line that would contaminate the code. The developers continue to develop on sprint one until the completion of the sprint. Note: In the real world, starting a new Greenfield project, this process starts at Sprint 2 as at the start of Sprint 1 you would have artifacts in version control and no need for isolation. Figure: Once the sprint is complete the Sprint 1 code can then be merged back into the Main line. There are always good practices to follow, and one is to always do a Forward Integration from Main into Sprint 1 before you do a Reverse Integration from Sprint 1 back into Main. In this case it may seem superfluous, but this builds good muscle memory into your developer’s work ethic and means that no bad habits are learned that would interfere with additional Scrum Teams being added to the Product. The process of completing your sprint development: The Team completes their work according to their definition of done. Merge from “Main” into “Sprint1” (Forward Integration) Stabilize your code with any changes coming from other Scrum Teams working on the same product. If you have one Scrum Team this should be quick, but there may have been bug fixes in the Release branches. (we will talk about release branches later) Merge from “Sprint1” into “Main” to commit your changes. (Reverse Integration) Check-in Delete the Sprint1 branch Note: The Sprint 1 branch is no longer required as its useful life has been concluded. Check-in Done But you are not yet done with the Sprint. The goal in Scrum is to have a “potentially shippable product” at the end of every Sprint, and we do not have that yet, we only have finished code. Figure: With Sprint 1 merged you can create a Release branch and run your final packaging and testing In 99% of all projects I have been involved in or watched, a “shippable product” only happens towards the end of the overall lifecycle, especially when sprints are short. The in-between releases are great demonstration releases, but not shippable. Perhaps it comes from my 80’s brain washing that we only ship when we reach the agreed quality and business feature bar. - Willy-Peter Schaub, VS ALM Ranger, Microsoft Although you should have been testing and packaging your code all the way through your Sprint 1 development, preferably using an automated process, you still need to test and package with stable unchanging code. This is where you do what at SSW we call a “Test Please”. This is first an internal test of the product to make sure it meets the needs of the customer and you generally use a resource external to your Team. Then a “Test Please” is conducted with the Product Owner to make sure he is happy with the output. You can read about how to conduct a Test Please on our Rules to Successful Projects: Do you conduct an internal "test please" prior to releasing a version to a client? Figure: If you find a deviation from the expected result you fix it on the Release branch. If during your final testing or your “Test Please” you find there are issues or bugs then you should fix them on the release branch. If you can’t fix them within the time box of your Sprint, then you will need to create a Bug and put it onto the backlog for prioritization by the Product owner. Make sure you leave plenty of time between your merge from the development branch to find and fix any problems that are uncovered. This process is commonly called Stabilization and should always be conducted once you have completed all of your User Stories and integrated all of your branches. Even once you have stabilized and released, you should not delete the release branch as you would with the Sprint branch. It has a usefulness for servicing that may extend well beyond the limited life you expect of it. Note: Don't get forced by the business into adding features into a Release branch instead that indicates the unspoken requirement is that they are asking for a product spin-off. In this case you can create a new Team Project and branch from the required Release branch to create a new Main branch for that product. And you create a whole new backlog to work from. Figure: When the Team decides it is happy with the product you can create a RTM branch. Once you have fixed all the bugs you can, and added any you can’t to the Product Backlog, and you Team is happy with the result you can create a Release. This would consist of doing the final Build and Packaging it up ready for your Sprint Review meeting. You would then create a read-only branch that represents the code you “shipped”. This is really an Audit trail branch that is optional, but is good practice. You could use a Label, but Labels are not Auditable and if a dispute was raised by the customer you can produce a verifiable version of the source code for an independent party to check. Rare I know, but you do not want to be at the wrong end of a legal battle. Like the Release branch the RTM branch should never be deleted, or only deleted according to your companies legal policy, which in the UK is usually 7 years. Figure: If you have made any changes in the Release you will need to merge back up to Main in order to finalise the changes. Nothing is really ever done until it is in Main. The same rules apply when merging any fixes in the Release branch back into Main and you should do a reverse merge before a forward merge, again for the muscle memory more than necessity at this stage. Your Sprint is now nearly complete, and you can have a Sprint Review meeting knowing that you have made every effort and taken every precaution to protect your customer’s investment. Note: In order to really achieve protection for both you and your client you would add Automated Builds, Automated Tests, Automated Acceptance tests, Acceptance test tracking, Unit Tests, Load tests, Web test and all the other good engineering practices that help produce reliable software. Figure: After the Sprint Planning meeting the process begins again. Where the Sprint Review and Retrospective meetings mark the end of the Sprint, the Sprint Planning meeting marks the beginning. After you have completed your Sprint Planning and you know what you are trying to achieve in Sprint 2 you can create your new Branch to develop in. How do we handle a bug(s) in production that can’t wait? Although in Scrum the only work done should be on the backlog there should be a little buffer added to the Sprint Planning for contingencies. One of these contingencies is a bug in the current release that can’t wait for the Sprint to finish. But how do you handle that? Willy-Peter Schaub asked an excellent question on the release activities: In reality Sprint 2 starts when sprint 1 ends + weekend. Should we not cater for a possible parallelism between Sprint 2 and the release activities of sprint 1? It would introduce FI’s from main to sprint 2, I guess. Your “Figure: Merging print 2 back into Main.” covers, what I tend to believe to be reality in most cases. - Willy-Peter Schaub, VS ALM Ranger, Microsoft I agree, and if you have a single Scrum team then your resources are limited. The Scrum Team is responsible for packaging and release, so at least one run at stabilization, package and release should be included in the Sprint time box. If more are needed on the current production release during the Sprint 2 time box then resource needs to be pulled from Sprint 2. The Product Owner and the Team have four choices (in order of disruption/cost): Backlog: Add the bug to the backlog and fix it in the next Sprint Buffer Time: Use any buffer time included in the current Sprint to fix the bug quickly Make time: Remove a Story from the current Sprint that is of equal value to the time lost fixing the bug(s) and releasing. Note: The Team must agree that it can still meet the Sprint Goal. Cancel Sprint: Cancel the sprint and concentrate all resource on fixing the bug(s) Note: This can be a very costly if the current sprint has already had a lot of work completed as it will be lost. The choice will depend on the complexity and severity of the bug(s) and both the Product Owner and the Team need to agree. In this case we will go with option #2 or #3 as they are uncomplicated but severe bugs. Figure: Real world issue where a bug needs fixed in the current release. If the bug(s) is urgent enough then then your only option is to fix it in place. You can edit the release branch to find and fix the bug, hopefully creating a test so it can’t happen again. Follow the prior process and conduct an internal and customer “Test Please” before releasing. You can read about how to conduct a Test Please on our Rules to Successful Projects: Do you conduct an internal "test please" prior to releasing a version to a client? Figure: After you have fixed the bug you need to ship again. You then need to again create an RTM branch to hold the version of the code you released in escrow. Figure: Main is now out of sync with your Release. We now need to get these new changes back up into the Main branch. Do a reverse and then forward merge again to get the new code into Main. But what about the branch, are developers not working on Sprint 2? Does Sprint 2 now have changes that are not in Main and Main now have changes that are not in Sprint 2? Well, yes… and this is part of the hit you take doing branching. But would this scenario even have been possible without branching? Figure: Getting the changes in Main into Sprint 2 is very important. The Team now needs to do a Forward Integration merge into their Sprint and resolve any conflicts that occur. Maybe the bug has already been fixed in Sprint 2, maybe the bug no longer exists! This needs to be identified and resolved by the developers before they continue to get further out of Sync with Main. Note: Avoid the “Big bang merge” at all costs. Figure: Merging Sprint 2 back into Main, the Forward Integration, and R0 terminates. Sprint 2 now merges (Reverse Integration) back into Main following the procedures we have already established. Figure: The logical conclusion. This then allows the creation of the next release. By now you should be getting the big picture and hopefully you learned something useful from this post. I know I have enjoyed writing it as I find these exploratory posts coupled with real world experience really help harden my understanding. Branching is a tool; it is not a silver bullet. Don’t over use it, and avoid “Anti-Patterns” where possible. Although the diagram above looks complicated I hope showing you how it is formed simplifies it as much as possible. Technorati Tags: Branching,Scrum,VS ALM,TFS 2010,VS2010

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An Introduction to Meteor

- by Stephen.Walther

The goal of this blog post is to give you a brief introduction to Meteor which is a framework for building Single Page Apps. In this blog entry, I provide a walkthrough of building a simple Movie database app. What is special about Meteor? Meteor has two jaw-dropping features: Live HTML – If you make any changes to the HTML, CSS, JavaScript, or data on the server then every client shows the changes automatically without a browser refresh. For example, if you change the background color of a page to yellow then every open browser will show the new yellow background color without a refresh. Or, if you add a new movie to a collection of movies, then every open browser will display the new movie automatically. With Live HTML, users no longer need a refresh button. Changes to an application happen everywhere automatically without any effort. The Meteor framework handles all of the messy details of keeping all of the clients in sync with the server for you. Latency Compensation – When you modify data on the client, these modifications appear as if they happened on the server without any delay. For example, if you create a new movie then the movie appears instantly. However, that is all an illusion. In the background, Meteor updates the database with the new movie. If, for whatever reason, the movie cannot be added to the database then Meteor removes the movie from the client automatically. Latency compensation is extremely important for creating a responsive web application. You want the user to be able to make instant modifications in the browser and the framework to handle the details of updating the database without slowing down the user. Installing Meteor Meteor is licensed under the open-source MIT license and you can start building production apps with the framework right now. Be warned that Meteor is still in the “early preview” stage. It has not reached a 1.0 release. According to the Meteor FAQ, Meteor will reach version 1.0 in “More than a month, less than a year.” Don’t be scared away by that. You should be aware that, unlike most open source projects, Meteor has financial backing. The Meteor project received an $11.2 million round of financing from Andreessen Horowitz. So, it would be a good bet that this project will reach the 1.0 mark. And, if it doesn’t, the framework as it exists right now is still very powerful. Meteor runs on top of Node.js. You write Meteor apps by writing JavaScript which runs both on the client and on the server. You can build Meteor apps on Windows, Mac, or Linux (Although the support for Windows is still officially unofficial). If you want to install Meteor on Windows then download the MSI from the following URL: http://win.meteor.com/ If you want to install Meteor on Mac/Linux then run the following CURL command from your terminal: curl https://install.meteor.com | /bin/sh Meteor will install all of its dependencies automatically including Node.js. However, I recommend that you install Node.js before installing Meteor by installing Node.js from the following address: http://nodejs.org/ If you let Meteor install Node.js then Meteor won’t install NPM which is the standard package manager for Node.js. If you install Node.js and then you install Meteor then you get NPM automatically. Creating a New Meteor App To get a sense of how Meteor works, I am going to walk through the steps required to create a simple Movie database app. Our app will display a list of movies and contain a form for creating a new movie. The first thing that we need to do is create our new Meteor app. Open a command prompt/terminal window and execute the following command: Meteor create MovieApp After you execute this command, you should see something like the following: Follow the instructions: execute cd MovieApp to change to your MovieApp directory, and run the meteor command. Executing the meteor command starts Meteor on port 3000. Open up your favorite web browser and navigate to http://localhost:3000 and you should see the default Meteor Hello World page: Open up your favorite development environment to see what the Meteor app looks like. Open the MovieApp folder which we just created. Here’s what the MovieApp looks like in Visual Studio 2012: Notice that our MovieApp contains three files named MovieApp.css, MovieApp.html, and MovieApp.js. In other words, it contains a Cascading Style Sheet file, an HTML file, and a JavaScript file. Just for fun, let’s see how the Live HTML feature works. Open up multiple browsers and point each browser at http://localhost:3000. Now, open the MovieApp.html page and modify the text “Hello World!” to “Hello Cruel World!” and save the change. The text in all of the browsers should update automatically without a browser refresh. Pretty amazing, right? Controlling Where JavaScript Executes You write a Meteor app using JavaScript. Some of the JavaScript executes on the client (the browser) and some of the JavaScript executes on the server and some of the JavaScript executes in both places. For a super simple app, you can use the Meteor.isServer and Meteor.isClient properties to control where your JavaScript code executes. For example, the following JavaScript contains a section of code which executes on the server and a section of code which executes in the browser: if (Meteor.isClient) { console.log("Hello Browser!"); } if (Meteor.isServer) { console.log("Hello Server!"); } console.log("Hello Browser and Server!"); When you run the app, the message “Hello Browser!” is written to the browser JavaScript console. The message “Hello Server!” is written to the command/terminal window where you ran Meteor. Finally, the message “Hello Browser and Server!” is execute on both the browser and server and the message appears in both places. For simple apps, using Meteor.isClient and Meteor.isServer to control where JavaScript executes is fine. For more complex apps, you should create separate folders for your server and client code. Here are the folders which you can use in a Meteor app: · client – This folder contains any JavaScript which executes only on the client. · server – This folder contains any JavaScript which executes only on the server. · common – This folder contains any JavaScript code which executes on both the client and server. · lib – This folder contains any JavaScript files which you want to execute before any other JavaScript files. · public – This folder contains static application assets such as images. For the Movie App, we need the client, server, and common folders. Delete the existing MovieApp.js, MovieApp.html, and MovieApp.css files. We will create new files in the right locations later in this walkthrough. Combining HTML, CSS, and JavaScript Files Meteor combines all of your JavaScript files, and all of your Cascading Style Sheet files, and all of your HTML files automatically. If you want to create one humongous JavaScript file which contains all of the code for your app then that is your business. However, if you want to build a more maintainable application, then you should break your JavaScript files into many separate JavaScript files and let Meteor combine them for you. Meteor also combines all of your HTML files into a single file. HTML files are allowed to have the following top-level elements: <head> — All <head> files are combined into a single <head> and served with the initial page load. <body> — All <body> files are combined into a single <body> and served with the initial page load. <template> — All <template> files are compiled into JavaScript templates. Because you are creating a single page app, a Meteor app typically will contain a single HTML file for the <head> and <body> content. However, a Meteor app typically will contain several template files. In other words, all of the interesting stuff happens within the <template> files. Displaying a List of Movies Let me start building the Movie App by displaying a list of movies. In order to display a list of movies, we need to create the following four files: · client\movies.html – Contains the HTML for the <head> and <body> of the page for the Movie app. · client\moviesTemplate.html – Contains the HTML template for displaying the list of movies. · client\movies.js – Contains the JavaScript for supplying data to the moviesTemplate. · server\movies.js – Contains the JavaScript for seeding the database with movies. After you create these files, your folder structure should looks like this: Here’s what the client\movies.html file looks like: <head> <title>My Movie App</title> </head> <body> <h1>Movies</h1> {{> moviesTemplate }} </body> Notice that it contains <head> and <body> top-level elements. The <body> element includes the moviesTemplate with the syntax {{> moviesTemplate }}. The moviesTemplate is defined in the client/moviesTemplate.html file: <template name="moviesTemplate"> <ul> {{#each movies}} <li> {{title}} </li> {{/each}} </ul> </template> By default, Meteor uses the Handlebars templating library. In the moviesTemplate above, Handlebars is used to loop through each of the movies using {{#each}}…{{/each}} and display the title for each movie using {{title}}. The client\movies.js JavaScript file is used to bind the moviesTemplate to the Movies collection on the client. Here’s what this JavaScript file looks like: // Declare client Movies collection Movies = new Meteor.Collection("movies"); // Bind moviesTemplate to Movies collection Template.moviesTemplate.movies = function () { return Movies.find(); }; The Movies collection is a client-side proxy for the server-side Movies database collection. Whenever you want to interact with the collection of Movies stored in the database, you use the Movies collection instead of communicating back to the server. The moviesTemplate is bound to the Movies collection by assigning a function to the Template.moviesTemplate.movies property. The function simply returns all of the movies from the Movies collection. The final file which we need is the server-side server\movies.js file: // Declare server Movies collection Movies = new Meteor.Collection("movies"); // Seed the movie database with a few movies Meteor.startup(function () { if (Movies.find().count() == 0) { Movies.insert({ title: "Star Wars", director: "Lucas" }); Movies.insert({ title: "Memento", director: "Nolan" }); Movies.insert({ title: "King Kong", director: "Jackson" }); } }); The server\movies.js file does two things. First, it declares the server-side Meteor Movies collection. When you declare a server-side Meteor collection, a collection is created in the MongoDB database associated with your Meteor app automatically (Meteor uses MongoDB as its database automatically). Second, the server\movies.js file seeds the Movies collection (MongoDB collection) with three movies. Seeding the database gives us some movies to look at when we open the Movies app in a browser. Creating New Movies Let me modify the Movies Database App so that we can add new movies to the database of movies. First, I need to create a new template file – named client\movieForm.html – which contains an HTML form for creating a new movie: <template name="movieForm"> <fieldset> <legend>Add New Movie</legend> <form> <div> <label> Title: <input id="title" /> </label> </div> <div> <label> Director: <input id="director" /> </label> </div> <div> <input type="submit" value="Add Movie" /> </div> </form> </fieldset> </template> In order for the new form to show up, I need to modify the client\movies.html file to include the movieForm.html template. Notice that I added {{> movieForm }} to the client\movies.html file: <head> <title>My Movie App</title> </head> <body> <h1>Movies</h1> {{> moviesTemplate }} {{> movieForm }} </body> After I make these modifications, our Movie app will display the form: The next step is to handle the submit event for the movie form. Below, I’ve modified the client\movies.js file so that it contains a handler for the submit event raised when you submit the form contained in the movieForm.html template: // Declare client Movies collection Movies = new Meteor.Collection("movies"); // Bind moviesTemplate to Movies collection Template.moviesTemplate.movies = function () { return Movies.find(); }; // Handle movieForm events Template.movieForm.events = { 'submit': function (e, tmpl) { // Don't postback e.preventDefault(); // create the new movie var newMovie = { title: tmpl.find("#title").value, director: tmpl.find("#director").value }; // add the movie to the db Movies.insert(newMovie); } }; The Template.movieForm.events property contains an event map which maps event names to handlers. In this case, I am mapping the form submit event to an anonymous function which handles the event. In the event handler, I am first preventing a postback by calling e.preventDefault(). This is a single page app, no postbacks are allowed! Next, I am grabbing the new movie from the HTML form. I’m taking advantage of the template find() method to retrieve the form field values. Finally, I am calling Movies.insert() to insert the new movie into the Movies collection. Here, I am explicitly inserting the new movie into the client-side Movies collection. Meteor inserts the new movie into the server-side Movies collection behind the scenes. When Meteor inserts the movie into the server-side collection, the new movie is added to the MongoDB database associated with the Movies app automatically. If server-side insertion fails for whatever reasons – for example, your internet connection is lost – then Meteor will remove the movie from the client-side Movies collection automatically. In other words, Meteor takes care of keeping the client Movies collection and the server Movies collection in sync. If you open multiple browsers, and add movies, then you should notice that all of the movies appear on all of the open browser automatically. You don’t need to refresh individual browsers to update the client-side Movies collection. Meteor keeps everything synchronized between the browsers and server for you. Removing the Insecure Module To make it easier to develop and debug a new Meteor app, by default, you can modify the database directly from the client. For example, you can delete all of the data in the database by opening up your browser console window and executing multiple Movies.remove() commands. Obviously, enabling anyone to modify your database from the browser is not a good idea in a production application. Before you make a Meteor app public, you should first run the meteor remove insecure command from a command/terminal window: Running meteor remove insecure removes the insecure package from the Movie app. Unfortunately, it also breaks our Movie app. We’ll get an “Access denied” error in our browser console whenever we try to insert a new movie. No worries. I’ll fix this issue in the next section. Creating Meteor Methods By taking advantage of Meteor Methods, you can create methods which can be invoked on both the client and the server. By taking advantage of Meteor Methods you can: 1. Perform form validation on both the client and the server. For example, even if an evil hacker bypasses your client code, you can still prevent the hacker from submitting an invalid value for a form field by enforcing validation on the server. 2. Simulate database operations on the client but actually perform the operations on the server. Let me show you how we can modify our Movie app so it uses Meteor Methods to insert a new movie. First, we need to create a new file named common\methods.js which contains the definition of our Meteor Methods: Meteor.methods({ addMovie: function (newMovie) { // Perform form validation if (newMovie.title == "") { throw new Meteor.Error(413, "Missing title!"); } if (newMovie.director == "") { throw new Meteor.Error(413, "Missing director!"); } // Insert movie (simulate on client, do it on server) return Movies.insert(newMovie); } }); The addMovie() method is called from both the client and the server. This method does two things. First, it performs some basic validation. If you don’t enter a title or you don’t enter a director then an error is thrown. Second, the addMovie() method inserts the new movie into the Movies collection. When called on the client, inserting the new movie into the Movies collection just updates the collection. When called on the server, inserting the new movie into the Movies collection causes the database (MongoDB) to be updated with the new movie. You must add the common\methods.js file to the common folder so it will get executed on both the client and the server. Our folder structure now looks like this: We actually call the addMovie() method within our client code in the client\movies.js file. Here’s what the updated file looks like: // Declare client Movies collection Movies = new Meteor.Collection("movies"); // Bind moviesTemplate to Movies collection Template.moviesTemplate.movies = function () { return Movies.find(); }; // Handle movieForm events Template.movieForm.events = { 'submit': function (e, tmpl) { // Don't postback e.preventDefault(); // create the new movie var newMovie = { title: tmpl.find("#title").value, director: tmpl.find("#director").value }; // add the movie to the db Meteor.call( "addMovie", newMovie, function (err, result) { if (err) { alert("Could not add movie " + err.reason); } } ); } }; The addMovie() method is called – on both the client and the server – by calling the Meteor.call() method. This method accepts the following parameters: · The string name of the method to call. · The data to pass to the method (You can actually pass multiple params for the data if you like). · A callback function to invoke after the method completes. In the JavaScript code above, the addMovie() method is called with the new movie retrieved from the HTML form. The callback checks for an error. If there is an error then the error reason is displayed in an alert (please don’t use alerts for validation errors in a production app because they are ugly!). Summary The goal of this blog post was to provide you with a brief walk through of a simple Meteor app. I showed you how you can create a simple Movie Database app which enables you to display a list of movies and create new movies. I also explained why it is important to remove the Meteor insecure package from a production app. I showed you how to use Meteor Methods to insert data into the database instead of doing it directly from the client. I’m very impressed with the Meteor framework. The support for Live HTML and Latency Compensation are required features for many real world Single Page Apps but implementing these features by hand is not easy. Meteor makes it easy.

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December release of Microsoft All-In-One Code Framework is available now.

- by Jialiang

The code samples in Microsoft All-In-One Code Framework are updated on 2010-12-13. Download address: http://1code.codeplex.com/releases/view/57459#DownloadId=185534 Updated code sample index categorized by technologies: http://1code.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=All-In-One%20Code%20Framework%20Sample%20Catalog (it also allows you to download individual code samples instead of the entire All-In-One Code Framework sample package.) If it’s the first time that you hear about Microsoft All-In-One Code Framework, please watch the introduction video on YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cO5Li3APU58, or read the introduction on our homepage http://1code.codeplex.com/, and this Port25 article http://port25.technet.com/archive/2010/01/18/the-all-in-one-code-framework.aspx. -------------- New ASP.NET Code Samples VBASPNETAJAXWebChat and CSASPNETAJAXWebChat Most of you have some experience in chatting with friends on the web. So you may want to know how to make a web chat application, it seems to be quite complicated. But ASP.NET gives you the power to buiild a chat room easily. In this code sample, we will construct our own web chat room with the amazing AJAX feature. The principle is simple relatively. As we all know, a base chat application need 4 base controls: one List control to show the chat room members, one List control to show the message list, one TextBox control to input messages and one button to send message. User inputs his message in the textbox first and then presses Send button, it will send the message to the server. The message list will update every 2 seconds to get the newest message list in the chat room from the server. We need to know, it is hard for us to make an AJAX web chat application like a windows form application because we cannot keep the connection after one web request ended. So a lot of events which communicates between client side and server side cannot be realized. The common workaround is to make web requests in every some seconds to check whether the server side has been updated. But another technique called COMET makes it possible. But it is different with AJAX and will not be talked in details in this KB. For more details about COMET, we can get some clues from the Reference. CSASPNETCurrentOnlineUserList and VBASPNETCurrentOnlineUserList This sample demos a system that needs to display a list of current online users' information. As a matter of fact, Membership.GetNumberOfUsersOnline Method can get the number of online users and there is a convenient approach to check whether the user is online by using Membership.GetUser(string userName).IsOnline property,however many asp.net projects are not using membership.So in this case,the sample shows how to display a list of current online users' information without using membership provider. It is not difficult to check whether the user is online by using session.Many projects tend to be used “Session_End” event to mark a user as “Offline”,however ,it may not be a good idea,because it can’t detect the user status accurately. In addition, "Session_End" event is only available in the "InProc" session mode. If you are storing session states in the State Server or SQL Server, "Session_End" event will never fire. To handle this issue, we need to save the user online status to a global DataTable or DataBase. In the sample application, define a global DataTable to store the information of online users.Use XmlHttpRequest in the pages to update and check user's last active time at intervals and also retrieve information on how many users are still online. The sample project can auto delete offline users' information from a global DataTable by checking users’ last active time. A step-by-step guide illustrating how to display a list of current online users' information without using membership provider: 1. Login page. Let user sign in and add current user’s information to a global datatable while Initialize the global datatable which used to store information of current online users. 2. Current online user list page. Use XmlHttpRequest in this page to update and check user's last active time at intervals and also retrieve information on how many users are still online. 3. If user closes the page without clicking the sign out link button ,the sample project can auto mark the user as offline and delete offline users' information from a global DataTable which used to store information of current online users by checking users’ last active time. Then the current online user list will be like this: CSASPNETIPtoLocation This sample demonstrates how to find the geographical location from an IP address. As we know, it is not hard for us to get the IP address of visitors via Request.ServerVariable property, but it is really difficult for us to know where they come from. To achieve this feature, the sample uses a free third party web service from http://freegeoip.appspot.com/, which returns the information about an IP address we send to the server in the format of XML, JSON or CSV. It makes all things easier. CSASPNETBackgroundWorker Sometimes we do an operation which needs long time to complete. It will stop the response and the page is blank until the operation finished. In this case, we want the operation to run in the background, and in the page, we want to display the progress of the running operation. Therefore, the user can know the operation is running and can know the progress. CSASPNETInheritingFromTreeNode In windows forms TreeView, each tree node has a property called "Tag" which can be used to store a custom object. Many customers want to implement the same tag feature in ASP.NET TreeView. This project creates a custom TreeView control named "CustomTreeView" to achieve this goal. CSASPNETRemoteUploadAndDownload and VBASPNETRemoteUploadAndDownload This code sample was created in response to a code sample request in our new code sample request frunction for customers. The code samples demonstrate uploading files to and downloading files from a remote HTTP or FTP server. In .NET Framework 2.0 and higher versions, there are some lightweight class libraries which support HTTP and FTP protocol transmission. By using these classes, we can achieve this programming requirement. CSASPNETImageEditUpload and VBASPNETImageEditUpload This demo will shows how to insert, edit and update a common image with the type of "jpg", "png", "gif" or "bmp" . We mainly use two different SqlDataSources with the same database to bind to GridView and FormView in order to establish the “cascading” effort. Besides we apply our self-made ImageHanlder to encoding or decoding images of different types, and use context to output the stream of images. We will explicitly assign the binary streams of images through the event of “FormView_ItemInserting” or “Form_ItemUpdating” to synchronize the stream both in what we can see on an aspx page as well as in what’s really stored in the database. WebBrowser Control, Network and other Windows General New Code Samples CSWebBrowserSuppressError and VBWebBrowserSuppressError The sample demonstrates how to make WebBrowser suppress errors, such as script error, navigation error and so on. CSWebBrowserWithProxy and VBWebBrowserWithProxy The sample demonstrates how to make WebBrowser use a proxy server. CSWebDownloadProgress and VBWebDownloadProgress The sample demonstrates how to show progress during the download. It also supplies the features to Start, Pause, Resume and Cancel a download. CppSetDesktopWallpaper, CSSetDesktopWallpaper and VBSetDesktopWallpaper This code sample application allows you select an image, view a preview (resized smaller to fit if necessary), select a display style among Tile, Center, Stretch, Fit (Windows 7 and later) and Fill (Windows 7 and later), and set the image as the Desktop wallpaper. CSWindowsServiceRecoveryProperty and VBWindowsServiceRecoveryProperty CSWindowsServiceRecoveryProperty example demonstrates how to use ChangeServiceConfig2 to configure the service "Recovery" properties in C#. This example operates all the options you can see on the service "Recovery" tab, including setting the "Enable actions for stops with errors" option in Windows Vista and later operating systems. This example also include how to grant the shut down privilege to the process, so that we can configure a special option in the "Recovery" tab - "Restart Computer Options...". New Office Development Code Samples CSOneNoteRibbonAddIn and VBOneNoteRibbonAddIn The code sample demonstrates a OneNote 2010 COM add-in that implements IDTExtensibility2. The add-in also supports customizing the Ribbon by implementing the IRibbonExtensibility interface. It is a skeleton OneNote add-in that developers can extend it to implement more functions. The code sample was requested by a customer in our code sample request service. We expect that this could help developers in the community. New Windows Shell Code Samples CppShellExtPreviewHandler, CSShellExtPreviewHandler and VBShellExtPreviewHandler In the past two months, we released the code samples of Windows Context Menu Handler, Infotip Handler, and Thumbnail Handler. This is the fourth part of the shell extension series: Preview Handler. The code samples demo the C++, C# and VB.NET implementation of a preview handler for a new file type registered with the .recipe extension. Preview handlers are called when an item is selected to show a lightweight, rich, read-only preview of the file's contents in the view's reading pane. This is done without launching the file's associated application. Windows Vista and later operating systems support preview handlers. To be a valid preview handler, several interfaces must be implemented. This includes IPreviewHandler (shobjidl.h); IInitializeWithFile, IInitializeWithStream, or IInitializeWithItem (propsys.h); IObjectWithSite (ocidl.h); and IOleWindow (oleidl.h). There are also optional interfaces, such as IPreviewHandlerVisuals (shobjidl.h), that a preview handler can implement to provide extended support. Windows API Code Pack for Microsoft .NET Framework makes the implementation of these interfaces very easy in .NET. The example preview handler provides previews for .recipe files. The .recipe file type is simply an XML file registered as a unique file name extension. It includes the title of the recipe, its author, difficulty, preparation time, cook time, nutrition information, comments, an embedded preview image, and so on. The preview handler extracts the title, comments, and the embedded image, and display them in a preview window. In response to many customers' request, we added setup projects in every shell extension samples in this release. Those setup projects allow you to deploy the shell extensions to your end users' machines. ---------- Download address: http://1code.codeplex.com/releases/view/57459#DownloadId=185534 Updated code sample index categorized by technologies: http://1code.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=All-In-One%20Code%20Framework%20Sample%20Catalog (it also allows you to download individual code samples instead of the entire All-In-One Code Framework sample package.) If you have any feedback for us, please email: [email protected]. We look forward to your comments.

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