background job - Page 694

Problems with a from CSS

- by Michael

I am trying to create a fairly basic form with in my maincontent. I am sure I am coding things incorrectly and it is driving me crazy. Note my code. I get extremely wide vertical spacing in IE 7 and the bacground color between the field sets does not work correctly. All is good in FF. My CSS is: fieldset { margin: 1.5em 0 0 0; padding: 0; border-style: none; border-top: 1px solid #BFBAB0; background-color: #FFFFFF; } legend { margin-left: 1em; color: #000000; font-weight: bold; } fieldset ol { padding: 1em 1em 0 1em; list-style: none; } fieldset li { padding-bottom: 1em; } fieldset.submit { border-style: none; } { var w = document.myform.mylist.selectedIndex; var selected_text = document.myform.mylist.options[w].text; alert(selected_text); } label em { display: block; color: #900; font-size: 85%; font-style: normal; text-transform: uppercase; } This is my html code. <div id="mainContent1"> <form name="myform"> <label for="mylist"><strong>Select an Account Type:</strong></label> <select name="mylist"><option value="traditional">Traditional Account</option> <option value="paperless">Paperless Account</option> </select> </form> <br /><a> </a> <form action="example.php"> <fieldset> <legend>Contact Details</legend> <ol> <li> <label for="name">Name:</label> <input id="name" name="name" class="text" type="text" /> <label for="name"> <em>required</em> </label> </li> <li> <label for="email">Email address:</label> <input id="email" name="email" class="text" type="text" /> <label for="name"> <em>required</em> </li> <li> <label for="phone">Telephone:</label> <input id="phone" name="phone" class="text" type="text" /> <label for="name"> <em>required</em> <ol> <li> <input id="option1" name="option1" class="checkbox" type="checkbox" value="1" /> <label for="option1">Savings</label> </li> <li> <input id="option2" name="option2" class="checkbox" type="checkbox" value="1" /> <label for="option2">Checkings</label> </li> </ol> </fieldset> <fieldset> <legend>Delivery Address</legend> <ol> <li> <label for="address1">Address 1:</label> <input id="address1" name="address1" class="text" type="text" /> </li> <li> <label for="city">City:</label> <input id="city" name="city" class="text" type="text" /> </li> <li> <label for="postcode">Zip Code:</label> <input id="postcode" name="postcode" class="text textSmall" type="text" /> </li> <li> <label for="country">Country:</label> <input id="country" name="country" class="text" type="text" /> </li> </ol> </fieldset> <fieldset class="submit"> <input class="submit" type="submit" value="Submit" /> </fieldset> <fieldset class="clear"> <input class="clear" type="clear" value="Submit" /> </fieldset> </form>

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Swing object: first setText() gets "stuck" when using Mac Java SE 6

- by Tim

Hi there, I am a Java newbie trying to maintain an application that works fine under J2SE 5.0 (32- and 64-bit) but has a very specific problem when run under Java SE 6 64-bit: [Tims-MPB:~] tlynch% java -version java version "1.6.0_15" Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.6.0_15-b03-226) Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (build 14.1-b02-92, mixed mode) The application is cross-platform and reportedly works correctly on Java SE 6 under Windows, though I haven't been able to verify that myself. The program uses a JTextField for some text entry and a JLabel to indicate the text to be entered. The first time the showDialog() method is called to set the label text and display the dialog, it works correctly, but subsequent calls all result in the display of the label from the initial invocation rather than the one most recently specified via setText(). public void showDialog(String msgText) { System.out.println("set ChatDialog: " + msgText); jLabel1.setText(msgText); jLabel1.repaint(); // I added this; it didn't help System.out.println("get ChatDialog: " + jLabel1.getText()); super.setVisible(true); } [the full text of the class is provided below] The added printlns validate that expected text is passed to the label's setText() method and is confirmed by retrieving it using getText(), but what shows up on the screen/GUI is always the text from the very first time the method was called for the object. A similar issue is observed with a JTextArea used to label another dialog box. These problem are consistent across multiple Mac systems running Java SE 6 under OS 10.5.x and 10.6.x, but they are never observed when one reverts to J2SE 5.0. If there is some background information pertinent to this problem that I have omitted, please let me know. Any insights or advice appreciated. package gui; import java.awt.*; import java.awt.event.KeyEvent; import javax.swing.*; // Referenced classes of package gui: // MyJPanel, ChatDialog_jTextField1_keyAdapter, WarWindow public class ChatDialog extends JDialog { public ChatDialog(JFrame parent, WarWindow w) { super(parent, true); text = ""; borderLayout1 = new BorderLayout(); jPanel1 = new MyJPanel(); borderLayout2 = new BorderLayout(); jPanel2 = new MyJPanel(); jPanel3 = new MyJPanel(); jLabel1 = new JLabel(); jTextField1 = new JTextField(); warWindow = w; try { jbInit(); } catch(Exception exception) { System.out.println("Problem with ChatDialog init"); exception.printStackTrace(); } return; } public String getText() { return text; } void jTextField1_keyPressed(KeyEvent e) { int id = e.getKeyCode(); switch(id) { case 10: // '\n' text = jTextField1.getText(); setVisible(false); break; } } private void jbInit() throws Exception { setLocation(232, 450); setSize(560, 60); setModal(true); setResizable(false); setUndecorated(true); getContentPane().setLayout(borderLayout1); jPanel1.setLayout(borderLayout2); jPanel2.setMinimumSize(new Dimension(10, 20)); jPanel2.setPreferredSize(new Dimension(10, 20)); jLabel1.setPreferredSize(new Dimension(380, 15)); jLabel1.setHorizontalAlignment(0); jLabel1.setText("Chat Message"); jTextField1.setPreferredSize(new Dimension(520, 21)); jTextField1.setRequestFocusEnabled(false); jTextField1.addKeyListener(new ChatDialog_jTextField1_keyAdapter(this)); getContentPane().add(jPanel1, "Center"); jPanel1.add(jPanel2, "North"); jPanel2.add(jLabel1, null); jPanel1.add(jPanel3, "Center"); jPanel3.add(jTextField1, null); } public void setVisible(boolean b) { jTextField1.setText(""); super.setVisible(b); } public void showDialog(String msgText) { System.out.println("set ChatDialog: " + msgText); jLabel1.setText(msgText); jLabel1.repaint(); // I added this; it didn't help System.out.println("get ChatDialog: " + jLabel1.getText()); super.setVisible(true); } void this_keyPressed(KeyEvent e) { int id = e.getKeyCode(); switch(id) { case 10: // '\n' System.exit(88); break; } } BorderLayout borderLayout1; BorderLayout borderLayout2; JLabel jLabel1; JPanel jPanel1; JPanel jPanel2; JPanel jPanel3; JTextField jTextField1; String text; WarWindow warWindow; }

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PHP: How to automate building a 100 <UL>/<LI> menuitems, while keeping the Menu Structure File Flat / Simply Managable?

- by Sam

Above: current "stupid" menu. (entire ul/li menu for javascript menu system) + (some li lines as page-specific submenu) Hi folks! With passion for automation and elegancy, but limited knowledge/knowhow, im stuck with "my hands in my hair" as we Dutch say, for my current menu system works perfectly, but is a pain in the a*s to update! So, i would appreciate it greatly, if you can suggest how to automate this in php: how to let the php generate the html menu code basing on a flat menu input file with TABS indented. OLD SITUATION <ul>  <li><a href="carrot.php"><p class="mnu" style="background-position:0 -820px"><? echo __("carrot juice") ?></p></a></li>  </ul a javascript file reads a ul/li structure as input to build menu of format in that ul/li, the items with a hyperlink and sprite-bg position represent webpages, (inside LI) while items without hyperlink and sprite-bg are just headers of that menusection, (inside H6) to highlight the current page in the menu, the javascript menumaker uses an id number. this number corresponds to the consequtive li that is a webpage, skips h6 headers correctly. these h6 headers are only there for when importing sections of the same menu as submenu. non-li headers are not shown in menu, nore counted by the javascript menu for their ID. to know which page should be shown, i have to count from ID 0, the li items till finding the current webpage in the li structure and then manually put it in each webpage! BUT: changing an item in li order, means stupidly re-counting their entire li again! each webpage has an icon (= sprite bg-position numer), which is also used in the webpage. INTENDED RESULT I dream of, once setting what the current webpage is (e.g carrot.php) the menu system automatically "finds" and "counts" the li's and returns the id nr (for proper highlight of main menu); generates the entire menu html, and depending on which headings are set for submenu, (e.g. meals, drinks) generates those submenu (entire section below each given header); ginally adds h5 highlight inside the li of that submenu item. For the menu, i wish an easily readable, simple plain txt menu that is indented with tabs, (each tab is one depth for example) and further tabs follow for url and sprite position of icon. MY DREAM MENU-MANAGEMENT FILE |>TAB SEPARATED/INDENTED FLATMENU FILE |MUST BE CALCULATED BY PHP: |>MENUTEXT============URL=============SPRITE=====|ID===TAG================== |>about "#" -520 |00 li |> INFORMATION |—— h6 |> physical state "physical.php" -920 |01 li |> mental health "mental.php" -10 |02 li |> |>apetite "#" -1290 |03 li |> meals "#" -600 |04 li |> COLD MEAL |—— h6 |> egg salade "salad.php" -1040 |05 li |> salmon fish "salmon.php" -540 |06 li |> HOT MEAL |—— h6 |> spare ribs "spareribs.php" -120 |07 li |> di macaroni "macaroni.php" -870 |08 li |> |> drinks "#" -230 |09 li |> JUCY DRINK |—— h6 |> carrot juice "carrot.php" -820 |10 li |> mango hive "mango.php" -270 |11 li DESIRED CHRONOLOGY php outputs the entire ul/li html so the javascript can show the menu: webpage items go inside li tags, and header items go inside h6 tags, e.g. <h6>JUCY DRINK</h6> Each website page has a url filename [eg: salad.php]. Based on this given fact, the php menu generator detects the pagename, gives the IDnr of the position of that page according to the li-item nr and sets variable for javascript to highlight current menu item. the menu items below the specified headers are loaded as submenu in which the current page.php is wrapped inside h5 to highlight current page in submenu: e.g. (<li><h5><a href="carrot.php"><p>..etc..</p></h5></li> Question Which methods / steps / (chronological)ways are there for doing this? I am no good in php programming, but am learning it so please dont write any code without a line of comment why I should use that method etc. Where do I start? If I am unclear in my question, please ask. Thanks. Much appreciated!! Concrete Task List from the provided Comments/Answers, sofar: (RobertB) First, get some PHP code working that can read through a tab-delimited file and put the data into an appropriate data structure. NOW WORKING AT THIS

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pagination in css/php

- by fusion

two questions: --1-- it displays all the number of pages. but i'd like it to display as: << Prev . . 3 4 [5] 6 7 . . Next --2-- when i hover on the current page no, it should change color or increase the font-size, but when i modify the css of a:hover, all the page nos change color or size instead of the one which i'm pointing to. also, when modifying a:active, nothing happens. this is my paging code in php: $self = $_SERVER['PHP_SELF']; $limit = 2; //Number of results per page $numpages=ceil($totalrows/$limit); $query = $query." ORDER BY idQuotes LIMIT " . ($page-1)*$limit . ",$limit"; $result = mysql_query($query, $conn) or die('Error:' .mysql_error()); ?> <div class="caption">Search Results</div> <div class="center_div"> <table> <?php while ($row= mysql_fetch_array($result, MYSQL_ASSOC)) { $cQuote = highlightWords(htmlspecialchars($row['cQuotes']), $search_result); ?> <tr> <td style="text-align:right; font-size:15px;"><?php h($row['cArabic']); ?></td> <td style="font-size:16px;"><?php echo $cQuote; ?></td> <td style="font-size:12px;"><?php h($row['vAuthor']); ?></td> <td style="font-size:12px; font-style:italic; text-align:right;"><?php h($row['vReference']); ?></td> </tr> <?php } ?> </table> </div> <div class="searchmain"> <?php //Create and print the Navigation bar $nav=""; $next = $page+1; $prev = $page-1; if($page > 1) { $nav .= "<span class=\"searchpage\"><a onclick=\"showPage('','$prev'); return false;\" href=\"$self?page=" . $prev . "&q=" .urlencode($search_result) . "\">< Prev</a></span>"; $first = "<span class=\"searchpage\"><a onclick=\"showPage('','1'); return false;\" href=\"$self?page=1&q=" .urlencode($search_result) . "\"> << </a></span>" ; } else { $nav .= " "; $first = " "; } for($i = 1 ; $i <= $numpages ; $i++) { if($i == $page) { $nav .= "<span class=\"searchpage\">$i</span>"; }else{ $nav .= "<span class=\"searchpage\"><a onclick=\"showPage('',$i); return false;\" href=\"$self?page=" . $i . "&q=" .urlencode($search_result) . "\">$i</a></span>"; } } if($page < $numpages) { $nav .= "<span class=\"searchpage\"><a onclick=\"showPage('','$next'); return false;\" href=\"$self?page=" . $next . "&q=" .urlencode($search_result) . "\">Next ></a></span>"; $last = "<span class=\"searchpage\"><a onclick=\"showPage('','$numpages'); return false;\" href=\"$self?page=$numpages&q=" .urlencode($search_result) . "\"> >> </a></span>"; } else { $nav .= " "; $last = " "; } echo $first . $nav . $last; ?> </div> and this is how it displays currently: css: .searchmain { margin:30px; text-align: center; } .searchpage { border: solid 1px #ddd; background: #fff; text-align:left; font-size: 16px; padding:9px 12px; color: #FEBE33; margin-left:2px; } .searchpage a{ text-decoration: none; color: #808080; } .searchpage a:hover { color: #FEBE33; border-color: #036; text-decoration: none; } .searchpage a:visited { color: #808080; }

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Multiset of shared_ptrs as a dynamic priority queue: Concept and practice

- by Sarah

I was using a vector-based priority queue typedef std::priority_queue< Event, vector< Event >, std::greater< Event > > EventPQ; to manage my Event objects. Now my simulation has to be able to find and delete certain Event objects not at the top of the queue. I'd like to know if my planned work-around can do what I need it to, and if I have the syntax right. I'd also like to know if dramatically better solutions exist. My plan is to make EventPQ a multiset of smart pointers to Event objects: typedef std::multi_set< boost::shared_ptr< Event > > EventPQ; I'm borrowing functions of the Event class from a related post on a multimap priority queue. // Event.h #include <cstdlib> using namespace std; #include <set> #include <boost/shared_ptr.hpp> class Event; typedef std::multi_set< boost::shared_ptr< Event > > EventPQ; class Event { public: Event( double t, int eid, int hid ); ~Event(); void add( EventPQ& q ); void remove(); bool operator < ( const Event & rhs ) const { return ( time < rhs.time ); } bool operator > ( const Event & rhs ) const { return ( time > rhs.time ); } double time; int eventID; int hostID; EventPQ* mq; EventPQ::iterator mIt; }; // Event.cpp Event::Event( double t, int eid, int hid ) { time = t; eventID = eid; hostID = hid; } Event::~Event() {} void Event::add( EventPQ& q ) { mq = &q; mIt = q.insert( boost::shared_ptr<Event>(this) ); } void Event::remove() { mq.erase( mIt ); mq = 0; mIt = EventPQ::iterator(); } I was hoping that by making EventPQ a container of pointers, I could avoid wasting time copying Events into the container and avoid accidentally editing the wrong copy. Would it be dramatically easier to store the Events themselves in EventPQ instead? Does it make more sense to remove the time keys from Event objects and use them instead as keys in a multimap? Assuming the current implementation seems okay, my questions are: Do I need to specify how to sort on the pointers, rather than the objects, or does the multiset automatically know to sort on the objects pointed to? If I have a shared_ptr ptr1 to an Event that also has a pointer in the EventPQ container, how do I find and delete the corresponding pointer in EventPQ? Is it enough to .find( ptr1 ), or do I instead have to find by the key (time)? Is the Event::remove() sufficient for removing the pointer in the EventPQ container? There's a small chance multiple events could be created with the same time (obviously implied in the use of multiset). If the find() works on event times, to avoid accidentally deleting the wrong event, I was planning to throw in a further check on eventID and hostID. Does this seem reasonable? (Dumb syntax question) In Event.h, is the declaration of dummy class Event;, then the EventPQ typedef, and then the real class Event declaration appropriate? I'm obviously an inexperienced programmer with very spotty background--this isn't for homework. Would love suggestions and explanations. Please let me know if any part of this is confusing. Thanks.

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Access Qry Questions

- by kralco626

It was suggested that I repost this questions as I didn't do a very good job discribing my issue the first time. (http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2921286/access-question) THE SITUATION: I have inspections from many months of many years. Sometimes there is more than one inspection in a month, sometimes there is no inspection. However, the report that is desired by the clients requires that I have EXACTLY ONE record per month for the time frame they request the report. They understand the data issues and have stated that if there is more than one inspection in a month to take the latest one. If the is not an inspection for that month, go back in time untill you find one and use that one. So a sample of the data is as follows: (I am including many records because I was told I did not include enough data on my last try) equip_id month year runtime date 1 5 2008 400 5/10/2008 12:34 PM 1 7 2008 500 7/12/2008 1:45 PM 1 8 2008 600 8/20/2008 1:12 PM 1 8 2008 605 8/30/2008 8:00 AM 1 1 2010 2000 1/12/2010 2:00 PM 1 3 2010 2200 3/24/2010 10:00 AM 2 7 2009 1000 7/20/2009 8:00 AM 2 10 2009 1400 10/14/2009 9:00 AM 2 1 2010 1600 1/15/2010 1:00 PM 2 1 2010 1610 1/30/2010 4:00 PM 2 3 2010 1800 3/15/2010 1:00PM After all the transformations to the data are done, it should look like this: equip_id month year runtime date 1 5 2008 400 5/10/2008 12:34 PM 1 6 2008 400 5/10/2008 12:34 PM 1 7 2008 500 7/12/2008 1:45 PM 1 8 2008 605 8/30/2008 8:00 AM 1 9 2008 605 8/30/2008 8:00 AM 1 10 2008 605 8/30/2008 8:00 AM 1 11 2008 605 8/30/2008 8:00 AM 1 12 2008 605 8/30/2008 8:00 AM 1 1 2009 605 8/30/2008 8:00 AM 1 2 2009 605 8/30/2008 8:00 AM 1 3 2009 605 8/30/2008 8:00 AM 1 4 2009 605 8/30/2008 8:00 AM 1 5 2009 605 8/30/2008 8:00 AM 1 6 2009 605 8/30/2008 8:00 AM 1 7 2009 605 8/30/2008 8:00 AM 1 8 2009 605 8/30/2008 8:00 AM 1 9 2009 605 8/30/2008 8:00 AM 1 10 2009 605 8/30/2008 8:00 AM 1 11 2009 605 8/30/2008 8:00 AM 1 12 2009 605 8/30/2008 8:00 AM 1 1 2010 2000 1/12/2010 2:00 PM 1 2 2010 2000 1/12/2010 2:00 PM 1 3 2010 2200 3/24/2010 10:00 AM 2 7 2009 1000 7/20/2009 8:00 AM 2 8 2009 1000 7/20/2009 8:00 AM 2 9 2009 1000 7/20/2009 8:00 AM 2 10 2009 1400 10/14/2009 9:00 AM 2 11 2009 1400 10/14/2009 9:00 AM 2 12 2009 1400 10/14/2009 9:00 AM 2 1 2010 1610 1/30/2010 4:00 PM 2 2 2010 1610 1/30/2010 4:00 PM 2 3 2010 1800 3/15/2010 1:00PM I think that this is the most accurate dipiction of the problem that I can give. I will now say what I have tried. Although if someone else has a better approach, I am perfectly willing to throw away what I have done and do it differently... STEP 1: create a query that removes the duplicates from the data. Ie. only one record per equip_id for each month/year, keeping the latest one. (done successfully) STEP 2: create a table of the date ranges the client wants the report for. (This is done dynamically at runtime) This table two field, Month and Year. So if the client wants a report from FEb 2008 to March 2010 the table would look like: Month Year 2 2008 3 2008 . . . 12 2008 1 2009 . . . 12 2009 1 2010 2 2010 3 2010 I then left joined this table with my query from step 1. So now I have a record for every month and every year that they want the report for, with nulls(or blanks) or sometimes 0s (not sure why, access is weird, but sometiems they are nulls and sumtimes they are 0s...) for the runtimes that are not avaiable. I don't particurally like this solution, but ill do it if i have to. (this is also done successfully) STEP 3: Fill in the missing runtime values. This I HAVE NOT done successfully. Note that if the request range for the report is feb 2008 to march 2010 and the oldest record for a particular equip_id is say june 2008, it is O.K. for the runtimes to be null (or zeros) for feb - may 2008. I am working with the following query for this step: SELECT equip_id as e_id,year,month, (select top 1 runhours from qry_1_c_One_Record_per_Month a where a.equip_id = e_id order by year,month) FROM qry_1_c_One_Record_per_Month where runhours is null or runhours = 0; UNION SELECT equip_id, year, month, runhours FROM qry_1_c_One_Record_per_Month WHERE .runhours Is Not Null And runhours <> 0 However I clearly can't check the a.equip_id = e_id ... so i don't have anyway to make sure i'm looking at the correct equip_id SUMMARY: So like i said i'm willing to throw away any part, or all of what I tried. Just trying to give everyone a complete picture. I REALLY apreciate ANY help! Thanks so much in advance!

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Developed android application cannot connect to phpmyadmin

- by user1850936

I am developing an app with eclipse. I tried to store the data that key in by user into database in phpmyadmin. Unfortunately, after the user has clicked on submit button, there is no response and data is not stored in my database. Here is my java file: import java.util.ArrayList; import java.util.List; import org.apache.http.NameValuePair; import org.apache.http.message.BasicNameValuePair; import org.json.JSONObject; import android.app.Activity; import android.app.AlertDialog; import android.content.DialogInterface; import android.content.Intent; import android.os.Bundle; import android.util.Log; import android.view.View; import android.widget.Button; import android.widget.EditText; import android.widget.RadioButton; import android.content.res.Configuration; public class UserRegister extends Activity { JSONParser jsonParser = new JSONParser(); EditText inputName; EditText inputUsername; EditText inputEmail; EditText inputPassword; RadioButton button1; RadioButton button2; Button button3; int success = 0; private static String url_register_user = "http://10.20.92.81/database/add_user.php"; private static final String TAG_SUCCESS = "success"; @Override public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) { super.onCreate(savedInstanceState); setContentView(R.layout.activity_user_register); inputName = (EditText) findViewById(R.id.nameTextBox); inputUsername = (EditText) findViewById(R.id.usernameTextBox); inputEmail = (EditText) findViewById(R.id.emailTextBox); inputPassword = (EditText) findViewById(R.id.pwTextBox); Button button3 = (Button) findViewById(R.id.regSubmitButton); button3.setOnClickListener(new View.OnClickListener() { public void onClick(View view) { String name = inputName.getText().toString(); String username = inputUsername.getText().toString(); String email = inputEmail.getText().toString(); String password = inputPassword.getText().toString(); if (name.contentEquals("")||username.contentEquals("")||email.contentEquals("")||password.contentEquals("")) { AlertDialog.Builder builder = new AlertDialog.Builder(UserRegister.this); builder.setMessage(R.string.nullAlert) .setTitle(R.string.alertTitle); builder.setPositiveButton(R.string.ok, new DialogInterface.OnClickListener() { public void onClick(DialogInterface dialog, int id) { } }); AlertDialog dialog = builder.show(); } // creating new product in background thread RegisterNewUser(); } }); } public void RegisterNewUser() { try { String name = inputName.getText().toString(); String username = inputUsername.getText().toString(); String email = inputEmail.getText().toString(); String password = inputPassword.getText().toString(); // Building Parameters List<NameValuePair> params = new ArrayList<NameValuePair>(); params.add(new BasicNameValuePair("name", name)); params.add(new BasicNameValuePair("username", username)); params.add(new BasicNameValuePair("email", email)); params.add(new BasicNameValuePair("password", password)); // getting JSON Object // Note that create product url accepts POST method JSONObject json = jsonParser.makeHttpRequest(url_register_user, "GET", params); // check log cat for response Log.d("Send Notification", json.toString()); success = json.getInt(TAG_SUCCESS); if (success == 1) { // successfully created product Intent i = new Intent(getApplicationContext(), StudentLogin.class); startActivity(i); finish(); } else { // failed to register } } catch (Exception e) { e.printStackTrace(); } } @Override public void onConfigurationChanged(Configuration newConfig) { super.onConfigurationChanged(newConfig); } } my php file: <?php $response = array(); require_once __DIR__ . '/db_connect.php'; $db = new DB_CONNECT(); if (isset($_GET['name']) && isset($_GET['username']) && isset($_GET['email']) && isset($_GET['password'])) { $name = $_GET['name']; $username = $_GET['username']; $email = $_GET['email']; $password = $_GET['password']; // mysql inserting a new row $result = mysql_query("INSERT INTO register(name, username, email, password) VALUES('$name', '$username', '$email', '$password')"); // check if row inserted or not if ($result) { // successfully inserted into database $response["success"] = 1; $response["message"] = "You are successfully registered to MEMS."; // echoing JSON response echo json_encode($response); } else { // failed to insert row $response["success"] = 0; $response["message"] = "Oops! An error occurred."; // echoing JSON response echo json_encode($response); } } else { // required field is missing $response["success"] = 0; $response["message"] = "Required field(s) is missing"; // echoing JSON response echo json_encode($response); } ?> the log cat is as follows: 11-25 10:37:46.772: I/Choreographer(638): Skipped 30 frames! The application may be doing too much work on its main thread.

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How should I implement simple caches with concurrency on Redis?

- by solublefish

Background I have a 2-tier web service - just my app server and an RDBMS. I want to move to a pool of identical app servers behind a load balancer. I currently cache a bunch of objects in-process. I hope to move them to a shared Redis. I have a dozen or so caches of simple, small-sized business objects. For example, I have a set of Foos. Each Foo has a unique FooId and an OwnerId. One "owner" may own multiple Foos. In a traditional RDBMS this is just a table with an index on the PK FooId and one on OwnerId. I'm caching this in one process simply: Dictionary<int,Foo> _cacheFooById; Dictionary<int,HashSet<int>> _indexFooIdsByOwnerId; Reads come straight from here, and writes go here and to the RDBMS. I usually have this invariant: "For a given group [say by OwnerId], the whole group is in cache or none of it is." So when I cache miss on a Foo, I pull that Foo and all the owner's other Foos from the RDBMS. Updates make sure to keep the index up to date and respect the invariant. When an owner calls GetMyFoos I never have to worry that some are cached and some aren't. What I did already The first/simplest answer seems to be to use plain ol' SET and GET with a composite key and json value: SET( "ServiceCache:Foo:" + theFoo.Id, JsonSerialize(theFoo)); I later decided I liked: HSET( "ServiceCache:Foo", theFoo.FooId, JsonSerialize(theFoo)); That lets me get all the values in one cache as HVALS. It also felt right - I'm literally moving hashtables to Redis, so perhaps my top-level items should be hashes. This works to first order. If my high-level code is like: UpdateCache(myFoo); AddToIndex(myFoo); That translates into: HSET ("ServiceCache:Foo", theFoo.FooId, JsonSerialize(theFoo)); var myFoos = JsonDeserialize( HGET ("ServiceCache:FooIndex", theFoo.OwnerId) ); myFoos.Add(theFoo.OwnerId); HSET ("ServiceCache:FooIndex", theFoo.OwnerId, JsonSerialize(myFoos)); However, this is broken in two ways. Two concurrent operations can read/modify/write at the same time. The latter "wins" the final HSET and the former's index update is lost. Another operation could read the index in between the first and second lines. It would miss a Foo that it should find. So how do I index properly? I think I could use a Redis set instead of a json-encoded value for the index. That would solve part of the problem since the "add-to-index-if-not-already-present" would be atomic. I also read about using MULTI as a "transaction" but it doesn't seem like it does what I want. Am I right that I can't really MULTI; HGET; {update}; HSET; EXEC since it doesn't even do the HGET before I issue the EXEC? I also read about using WATCH and MULTI for optimistic concurrency, then retrying on failure. But WATCH only works on top-level keys. So it's back to SET/GET instead of HSET/HGET. And now I need a new index-like-thing to support getting all the values in a given cache. If I understand it right, I can combine all these things to do the job. Something like: while(!succeeded) { WATCH( "ServiceCache:Foo:" + theFoo.FooId ); WATCH( "ServiceCache:FooIndexByOwner:" + theFoo.OwnerId ); WATCH( "ServiceCache:FooIndexAll" ); MULTI(); SET ("ServiceCache:Foo:" + theFoo.FooId, JsonSerialize(theFoo)); SADD ("ServiceCache:FooIndexByOwner:" + theFoo.OwnerId, theFoo.FooId); SADD ("ServiceCache:FooIndexAll", theFoo.FooId); EXEC(); //TODO somehow set succeeded properly } Finally I'd have to translate this pseudocode into real code depending how my client library uses WATCH/MULTI/EXEC; it looks like they need some sort of context to hook them together. All in all this seems like a lot of complexity for what has to be a very common case; I can't help but think there's a better, smarter, Redis-ish way to do things that I'm just not seeing. How do I lock properly? Even if I had no indexes, there's still a (probably rare) race condition. A: HGET - cache miss B: HGET - cache miss A: SELECT B: SELECT A: HSET C: HGET - cache hit C: UPDATE C: HSET B: HSET ** this is stale data that's clobbering C's update. Note that C could just be a really-fast A. Again I think WATCH, MULTI, retry would work, but... ick. I know in some places people use special Redis keys as locks for other objects. Is that a reasonable approach here? Should those be top-level keys like ServiceCache:FooLocks:{Id} or ServiceCache:Locks:Foo:{Id}? Or make a separate hash for them - ServiceCache:Locks with subkeys Foo:{Id}, or ServiceCache:Locks:Foo with subkeys {Id} ? How would I work around abandoned locks, say if a transaction (or a whole server) crashes while "holding" the lock?

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Handling file upload in a non-blocking manner

- by Kaliyug Antagonist

The background thread is here Just to make objective clear - the user will upload a large file and must be redirected immediately to another page for proceeding different operations. But the file being large, will take time to be read from the controller's InputStream. So I unwillingly decided to fork a new Thread to handle this I/O. The code is as follows : The controller servlet /** * @see HttpServlet#doPost(HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse * response) */ protected void doPost(HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse response) throws ServletException, IOException { // TODO Auto-generated method stub System.out.println("In Controller.doPost(...)"); TempModel tempModel = new TempModel(); tempModel.uploadSegYFile(request, response); System.out.println("Forwarding to Accepted.jsp"); /*try { Thread.sleep(1000 * 60); } catch (InterruptedException e) { // TODO Auto-generated catch block e.printStackTrace(); }*/ request.getRequestDispatcher("/jsp/Accepted.jsp").forward(request, response); } The model class package com.model; import java.io.IOException; import java.util.concurrent.ExecutionException; import java.util.concurrent.Future; import javax.servlet.http.HttpServletRequest; import javax.servlet.http.HttpServletResponse; import com.utils.ProcessUtils; public class TempModel { public void uploadSegYFile(HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse response) { // TODO Auto-generated method stub System.out.println("In TempModel.uploadSegYFile(...)"); /* * Trigger the upload/processing code in a thread, return immediately * and notify when the thread completes */ try { FileUploaderRunnable fileUploadRunnable = new FileUploaderRunnable( request.getInputStream()); /* * Future<FileUploaderRunnable> future = ProcessUtils.submitTask( * fileUploadRunnable, fileUploadRunnable); * * FileUploaderRunnable processed = future.get(); * * System.out.println("Is file uploaded : " + * processed.isFileUploaded()); */ Thread uploadThread = new Thread(fileUploadRunnable); uploadThread.start(); } catch (IOException e) { // TODO Auto-generated catch block e.printStackTrace(); } /* * catch (InterruptedException e) { // TODO Auto-generated catch block * e.printStackTrace(); } catch (ExecutionException e) { // TODO * Auto-generated catch block e.printStackTrace(); } */ System.out.println("Returning from TempModel.uploadSegYFile(...)"); } } The Runnable package com.model; import java.io.File; import java.io.FileInputStream; import java.io.FileNotFoundException; import java.io.FileOutputStream; import java.io.IOException; import java.io.InputStream; import java.nio.ByteBuffer; import java.nio.channels.Channels; import java.nio.channels.ReadableByteChannel; public class FileUploaderRunnable implements Runnable { private boolean isFileUploaded = false; private InputStream inputStream = null; public FileUploaderRunnable(InputStream inputStream) { // TODO Auto-generated constructor stub this.inputStream = inputStream; } public void run() { // TODO Auto-generated method stub /* Read from InputStream. If success, set isFileUploaded = true */ System.out.println("Starting upload in a thread"); File outputFile = new File("D:/06c01_output.seg");/* * This will be changed * later */ FileOutputStream fos; ReadableByteChannel readable = Channels.newChannel(inputStream); ByteBuffer buffer = ByteBuffer.allocate(1000000); try { fos = new FileOutputStream(outputFile); while (readable.read(buffer) != -1) { fos.write(buffer.array()); buffer.clear(); } fos.flush(); fos.close(); readable.close(); } catch (FileNotFoundException e) { // TODO Auto-generated catch block e.printStackTrace(); } catch (IOException e) { // TODO Auto-generated catch block e.printStackTrace(); } System.out.println("File upload thread completed"); } public boolean isFileUploaded() { return isFileUploaded; } } My queries/doubts : Spawning threads manually from the Servlet makes sense to me logically but scares me coding wise - the container isn't aware of these threads after all(I think so!) The current code is giving an Exception which is quite obvious - the stream is inaccessible as the doPost(...) method returns before the run() method completes : In Controller.doPost(...) In TempModel.uploadSegYFile(...) Returning from TempModel.uploadSegYFile(...) Forwarding to Accepted.jsp Starting upload in a thread Exception in thread "Thread-4" java.lang.NullPointerException at org.apache.coyote.http11.InternalInputBuffer.fill(InternalInputBuffer.java:512) at org.apache.coyote.http11.InternalInputBuffer.fill(InternalInputBuffer.java:497) at org.apache.coyote.http11.InternalInputBuffer$InputStreamInputBuffer.doRead(InternalInputBuffer.java:559) at org.apache.coyote.http11.AbstractInputBuffer.doRead(AbstractInputBuffer.java:324) at org.apache.coyote.Request.doRead(Request.java:422) at org.apache.catalina.connector.InputBuffer.realReadBytes(InputBuffer.java:287) at org.apache.tomcat.util.buf.ByteChunk.substract(ByteChunk.java:407) at org.apache.catalina.connector.InputBuffer.read(InputBuffer.java:310) at org.apache.catalina.connector.CoyoteInputStream.read(CoyoteInputStream.java:202) at java.nio.channels.Channels$ReadableByteChannelImpl.read(Unknown Source) at com.model.FileUploaderRunnable.run(FileUploaderRunnable.java:39) at java.lang.Thread.run(Unknown Source) Keeping in mind the point 1., does the use of Executor framework help me in anyway ? package com.utils; import java.util.concurrent.Future; import java.util.concurrent.ScheduledThreadPoolExecutor; public final class ProcessUtils { /* Ensure that no more than 2 uploads,processing req. are allowed */ private static final ScheduledThreadPoolExecutor threadPoolExec = new ScheduledThreadPoolExecutor( 2); public static <T> Future<T> submitTask(Runnable task, T result) { return threadPoolExec.submit(task, result); } } So how should I ensure that the user doesn't block and the stream remains accessible so that the (uploaded)file can be read from it?

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Map wont show rigth in Joomla

- by user1653126

I have the following code of a map using api google, I have tested the code in several html editor and its work perfectly, but when i upload in my web page doesn’t work. The map appears all zoomed in some random point in the ocean. I create an article in Joomla 1.5.20, paste the code. Its shows right in the preview but not in the web page. I disable filtering and use none editor and still won’t work. Thanks for the help. <!DOCTYPE html> <html> <head> <meta name="viewport" content="initial-scale=1.0, user-scalable=no" /> <style type="text/css"> html { height: 100% } body { height: 100%; margin: 0; padding: 0 } #map_canvas { height: 100% } </style> <script type="text/javascript" src="http://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/js?key=AIzaSyBInlv7FuwtKGhzBP0oISDoB2Iu79HNrPU&sensor=false"> </script> <script type="text/javascript"> var map; // lets define some vars to make things easier later var kml = { a: { name: "Productor", url: "https://maps.google.hn/maps/ms?authuser=0&vps=2&hl=es&ie=UTF8&msa=0&output=kml&msid=200984447026903306654.0004c934a224eca7c3ad4" }, b: { name: "A&S", url: "https://maps.google.hn/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&authuser=0&msa=0&output=kml&msid=200984447026903306654.0004c94bac74cf2304c71" } // keep adding more if ye like }; // initialize our goo function initializeMap() { var options = { center: new google.maps.LatLng(13.324182,-87.080071), zoom: 9, mapTypeId: google.maps.MapTypeId.TERRAIN } map = new google.maps.Map(document.getElementById("map_canvas"), options); var ctaLayer = new google.maps.KmlLayer('https://maps.google.hn/maps/ms?authuser=0&vps=5&hl=es&ie=UTF8&oe=UTF8&msa=0&output=kml&msid=200984447026903306654.0004c94bc3bce6f638aa1'); ctaLayer.setMap(map); var ctaLayer = new google.maps.KmlLayer('https://maps.google.hn/maps/ms?authuser=0&vps=2&ie=UTF8&msa=0&output=kml&msid=200984447026903306654.0004c94ec7e838242b67d'); ctaLayer.setMap(map); createTogglers(); }; google.maps.event.addDomListener(window, 'load', initializeMap); // the important function... kml[id].xxxxx refers back to the top function toggleKML(checked, id) { if (checked) { var layer = new google.maps.KmlLayer(kml[id].url, { preserveViewport: true, suppressInfoWindows: true }); google.maps.event.addListener(layer, 'click', function(kmlEvent) { var text = kmlEvent.featureData.description; showInContentWindow(text); }); function showInContentWindow(text) { var sidediv = document.getElementById('content_window'); sidediv.innerHTML = text; } // store kml as obj kml[id].obj = layer; kml[id].obj.setMap(map); } else { kml[id].obj.setMap(null); delete kml[id].obj; } }; // create the controls dynamically because it's easier, really function createTogglers() { var html = "<form><ul>"; for (var prop in kml) { html += "<li id=\"selector-" + prop + "\"><input type='checkbox' id='" + prop + "'" + " onclick='highlight(this,\"selector-" + prop + "\"); toggleKML(this.checked, this.id)' \/>" + kml[prop].name + "<\/li>"; } html += "<li class='control'><a href='#' onclick='removeAll();return false;'>" + "Limpiar el Mapa<\/a><\/li>" + "<\/ul><\/form>"; document.getElementById("toggle_box").innerHTML = html; }; // easy way to remove all objects function removeAll() { for (var prop in kml) { if (kml[prop].obj) { kml[prop].obj.setMap(null); delete kml[prop].obj; } } }; // Append Class on Select function highlight(box, listitem) { var selected = 'selected'; var normal = 'normal'; document.getElementById(listitem).className = (box.checked ? selected: normal); }; </script> <style type="text/css"> .selected { font-weight: bold; } </style> </head> <body> <div id="map_canvas" style="width: 80%; height: 400px; float:left"></div> <div id="toggle_box" style="position: absolute; top: 100px; right: 640px; padding: 10px; background: #fff; z-index: 5; "></div> <div id="content_window" style="width:10%; height:10%; float:left"></div> </body> </html>

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Simple prime number program - Weird issue with threads C#

- by Para

Hi! This is my code: using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Text; using System.Threading; namespace FirePrime { class Program { static bool[] ThreadsFinished; static bool[] nums; static bool AllThreadsFinished() { bool allThreadsFinished = false; foreach (var threadFinished in ThreadsFinished) { allThreadsFinished &= threadFinished; } return allThreadsFinished; } static bool isPrime(int n) { if (n < 2) { return false; } if (n == 2) { return true; } if (n % 2 == 0) { return false; } int d = 3; while (d * d <= n) { if (n % d == 0) { return false; } d += 2; } return true; } static void MarkPrimes(int startNumber,int stopNumber,int ThreadNr) { for (int j = startNumber; j < stopNumber; j++) nums[j] = isPrime(j); lock (typeof(Program)) { ThreadsFinished[ThreadNr] = true; } } static void Main(string[] args) { int nrNums = 100; int nrThreads = 10; //var threadStartNums = new List<int>(); ThreadsFinished = new bool[nrThreads]; nums = new bool[nrNums]; //var nums = new List<bool>(); nums[0] = false; nums[1] = false; for(int i=2;i<nrNums;i++) nums[i] = true; int interval = (int)(nrNums / nrThreads); //threadStartNums.Add(2); //int aux = firstStartNum; //int i = 2; //while (aux < interval) //{ // aux = interval*i; // i=i+1; // threadStartNums.Add(aux); //} int startNum = 0; for (int i = 0; i < nrThreads; i++) { var _thread = new System.Threading.Thread(() => MarkPrimes(startNum, Math.Min(startNum + interval, nrNums), i)); startNum = startNum + interval; //set the thread to run in the background _thread.IsBackground = true; //start our thread _thread.Start(); } while (!AllThreadsFinished()) { Thread.Sleep(1); } for (int i = 0; i < nrNums; i++) if(nums[i]) Console.WriteLine(i); } } } This should be a pretty simple program that is supposed to find and output the first nrNums prime numbers using nrThreads threads working in parallel. So, I just split nrNums into nrThreads equal chunks (well, the last one won't be equal; if nrThreads doesn't divide by nrNums, it will also contain the remainder, of course). I start nrThreads threads. They all test each number in their respective chunk and see if it is prime or not; they mark everything out in a bool array that keeps a tab on all the primes. The threads all turn a specific element in another boolean array ThreadsFinished to true when they finish. Now the weird part begins: The threads never all end. If I debug, I find that ThreadNr is not what I assign to it in the loop but another value. I guess this is normal since the threads execute afterwards and the counter (the variable i) is already increased by then but I cannot understand how to make the code be right. Can anyone help? Thank you in advance. P.S.: I know the algorithm is not very efficient; I am aiming at a solution using the sieve of Eratosthenes also with x given threads. But for now I can't even get this one to work and I haven't found any examples of any implementations of that algorithm anywhere in a language that I can understand.

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Trying to draw textured triangles on device fails, but the emulator works. Why?

- by Dinedal

I have a series of OpenGL-ES calls that properly render a triangle and texture it with alpha blending on the emulator (2.0.1). When I fire up the same code on an actual device (Droid 2.0.1), all I get are white squares. This suggests to me that the textures aren't loading, but I can't figure out why they aren't loading. All of my textures are 32-bit PNGs with alpha channels, under res/raw so they aren't optimized per the sdk docs. Here's how I am loading my textures: private void loadGLTexture(GL10 gl, Context context, int reasource_id, int texture_id) { //Get the texture from the Android resource directory Bitmap bitmap = BitmapFactory.decodeResource(context.getResources(), reasource_id, sBitmapOptions); //Generate one texture pointer... gl.glGenTextures(1, textures, texture_id); //...and bind it to our array gl.glBindTexture(GL10.GL_TEXTURE_2D, textures[texture_id]); //Create Nearest Filtered Texture gl.glTexParameterf(GL10.GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL10.GL_TEXTURE_MIN_FILTER, GL10.GL_NEAREST); gl.glTexParameterf(GL10.GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL10.GL_TEXTURE_MAG_FILTER, GL10.GL_LINEAR); //Different possible texture parameters, e.g. GL10.GL_CLAMP_TO_EDGE gl.glTexParameterf(GL10.GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL10.GL_TEXTURE_WRAP_S, GL10.GL_REPEAT); gl.glTexParameterf(GL10.GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL10.GL_TEXTURE_WRAP_T, GL10.GL_REPEAT); //Use the Android GLUtils to specify a two-dimensional texture image from our bitmap GLUtils.texImage2D(GL10.GL_TEXTURE_2D, 0, bitmap, 0); //Clean up bitmap.recycle(); } Here's how I am rendering the texture: //Clear gl.glClear(GL10.GL_COLOR_BUFFER_BIT | GL10.GL_DEPTH_BUFFER_BIT); //Enable vertex buffer gl.glEnableClientState(GL10.GL_VERTEX_ARRAY); gl.glEnableClientState(GL10.GL_TEXTURE_COORD_ARRAY); gl.glVertexPointer(3, GL10.GL_FLOAT, 0, vertexBuffer); gl.glTexCoordPointer(2, GL10.GL_FLOAT, 0, textureBuffer); //Push transformation matrix gl.glPushMatrix(); //Transformation matrices gl.glTranslatef(x, y, 0.0f); gl.glScalef(scalefactor, scalefactor, 0.0f); gl.glColor4f(1.0f,1.0f,1.0f,1.0f); //Bind the texture gl.glBindTexture(GL10.GL_TEXTURE_2D, textures[textureid]); //Draw the vertices as triangles gl.glDrawElements(GL10.GL_TRIANGLES, indices.length, GL10.GL_UNSIGNED_BYTE, indexBuffer); //Pop the matrix back to where we left it gl.glPopMatrix(); //Disable the client state before leaving gl.glDisableClientState(GL10.GL_VERTEX_ARRAY); gl.glDisableClientState(GL10.GL_TEXTURE_COORD_ARRAY); And here are the options I have enabled: gl.glShadeModel(GL10.GL_SMOOTH); //Enable Smooth Shading gl.glEnable(GL10.GL_DEPTH_TEST); //Enables Depth Testing gl.glDepthFunc(GL10.GL_LEQUAL); //The Type Of Depth Testing To Do gl.glEnable(GL10.GL_TEXTURE_2D); gl.glEnable(GL10.GL_BLEND); gl.glBlendFunc(GL10.GL_SRC_ALPHA,GL10.GL_ONE_MINUS_SRC_ALPHA); Edit: I just tried supplying a BitmapOptions to the BitmapFactory.decodeResource() call, but this doesn't seem to fix the issue, despite manually setting the same preferredconfig, density, and targetdensity. Edit2: As requested, here is a screenshot of the emulator working. The underlaying triangles are shown with a circle texture rendered onto it, the transparency is working because you can see the black background. Here is a shot of what the droid does with the exact same code on it: Edit3: Here are my BitmapOptions, updated the call above with how I am now calling the BitmapFactory, still the same results as below: sBitmapOptions.inPreferredConfig = Bitmap.Config.RGB_565; sBitmapOptions.inDensity = 160; sBitmapOptions.inTargetDensity = 160; sBitmapOptions.inScreenDensity = 160; sBitmapOptions.inDither = false; sBitmapOptions.inSampleSize = 1; sBitmapOptions.inScaled = false; Here are my vertices, texture coords, and indices: /** The initial vertex definition */ private static final float vertices[] = { -1.0f, -1.0f, 0.0f, 1.0f, -1.0f, 0.0f, -1.0f, 1.0f, 0.0f, 1.0f, 1.0f, 0.0f }; /** The initial texture coordinates (u, v) */ private static final float texture[] = { //Mapping coordinates for the vertices 0.0f, 1.0f, 1.0f, 1.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f, 1.0f, 0.0f }; /** The initial indices definition */ private static final byte indices[] = { //Faces definition 0,1,3, 0,3,2 }; Is there anyway to dump the contents of the texture once it's been loaded into OpenGL ES? Maybe I can compare the emulator's loaded texture with the actual device's loaded texture? I did try with a different texture (the default android icon) and again, it works fine for the emulator but fails to render on the actual phone. Edit4: Tried switching around when I do texture loading. No luck. Tried using a constant offset of 0 to glGenTextures, no change. Is there something that I'm using that the emulator supports that the actual phone does not? Edit5: Per Ryan below, I resized my texture from 200x200 to 256x256, and the issue was NOT resolved. Edit: As requested, added the calls to glVertexPointer and glTexCoordPointer above. Also, here is the initialization of vertexBuffer, textureBuffer, and indexBuffer: ByteBuffer byteBuf = ByteBuffer.allocateDirect(vertices.length * 4); byteBuf.order(ByteOrder.nativeOrder()); vertexBuffer = byteBuf.asFloatBuffer(); vertexBuffer.put(vertices); vertexBuffer.position(0); byteBuf = ByteBuffer.allocateDirect(texture.length * 4); byteBuf.order(ByteOrder.nativeOrder()); textureBuffer = byteBuf.asFloatBuffer(); textureBuffer.put(texture); textureBuffer.position(0); indexBuffer = ByteBuffer.allocateDirect(indices.length); indexBuffer.put(indices); indexBuffer.position(0); loadGLTextures(gl, this.context);

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Which workaround to use for the following SQL deadlock?

- by Marko

I found a SQL deadlock scenario in my application during concurrency. I belive that the two statements that cause the deadlock are (note - I'm using LINQ2SQL and DataContext.ExecuteCommand(), that's where this.studioId.ToString() comes into play): exec sp_executesql N'INSERT INTO HQ.dbo.SynchronizingRows ([StudioId], [UpdatedRowId]) SELECT @p0, [t0].[Id] FROM [dbo].[UpdatedRows] AS [t0] WHERE NOT (EXISTS( SELECT NULL AS [EMPTY] FROM [dbo].[ReceivedUpdatedRows] AS [t1] WHERE ([t1].[StudioId] = @p0) AND ([t1].[UpdatedRowId] = [t0].[Id]) ))',N'@p0 uniqueidentifier',@p0='" + this.studioId.ToString() + "'; and exec sp_executesql N'INSERT INTO HQ.dbo.ReceivedUpdatedRows ([UpdatedRowId], [StudioId], [ReceiveDateTime]) SELECT [t0].[UpdatedRowId], @p0, GETDATE() FROM [dbo].[SynchronizingRows] AS [t0] WHERE ([t0].[StudioId] = @p0)',N'@p0 uniqueidentifier',@p0='" + this.studioId.ToString() + "'; The basic logic of my (client-server) application is this: Every time someone inserts or updates a row on the server side, I also insert a row into the table UpdatedRows, specifying the RowId of the modified row. When a client tries to synchronize data, it first copies all of the rows in the UpdatedRows table, that don't contain a reference row for the specific client in the table ReceivedUpdatedRows, to the table SynchronizingRows (the first statement taking part in the deadlock). Afterwards, during the synchronization I look for modified rows via lookup of the SynchronizingRows table. This step is required, otherwise if someone inserts new rows or modifies rows on the server side during synchronization I will miss them and won't get them during the next synchronization (explanation scenario to long to write here...). Once synchronization is complete, I insert rows to the ReceivedUpdatedRows table specifying that this client has received the UpdatedRows contained in the SynchronizingRows table (the second statement taking part in the deadlock). Finally I delete all rows from the SynchronizingRows table that belong to the current client. The way I see it, the deadlock is occuring on tables SynchronizingRows (abbreviation SR) and ReceivedUpdatedRows (abbreviation RUR) during steps 2 and 3 (one client is in step 2 and is inserting into SR and selecting from RUR; while another client is in step 3 inserting into RUR and selecting from SR). I googled a bit about SQL deadlocks and came to a conclusion that I have three options. Inorder to make a decision I need more input about each option/workaround: Workaround 1: The first advice given on the web about SQL deadlocks - restructure tables/queries so that deadlocks don't happen in the first place. Only problem with this is that with my IQ I don't see a way to do the synchronization logic any differently. If someone wishes to dwelve deeper into my current synchronization logic, how and why it is set up the way it is, I'll post a link for the explanation. Perhaps, with the help of someone smarter than me, it's possible to create a logic that is deadlock free. Workaround 2: The second most common advice seems to be the use of WITH(NOLOCK) hint. The problem with this is that NOLOCK might miss or duplicate some rows. Duplication is not a problem, but missing rows is catastrophic! Another option is the WITH(READPAST) hint. On the face of it, this seems to be a perfect solution. I really don't care about rows that other clients are inserting/modifying, because each row belongs only to a specific client, so I may very well skip locked rows. But the MSDN documentaion makes me a bit worried - "When READPAST is specified, both row-level and page-level locks are skipped". As I said, row-level locks would not be a problem, but page-level locks may very well be, since a page might contain rows that belong to multiple clients (including the current one). While there are lots of blog posts specifically mentioning that NOLOCK might miss rows, there seems to be none about READPAST (never) missing rows. This makes me skeptical and nervous to implement it, since there is no easy way to test it (implementing would be a piece of cake, just pop WITH(READPAST) into both statements SELECT clause and job done). Can someone confirm whether the READPAST hint can miss rows? Workaround 3: The final option is to use ALLOW_SNAPSHOT_ISOLATION and READ_COMMITED_SNAPSHOT. This would seem to be the only option to work 100% - at least I can't find any information that would contradict with it. But it is a little bit trickier to setup (I don't care much about the performance hit), because I'm using LINQ. Off the top of my head I probably need to manually open a SQL connection and pass it to the LINQ2SQL DataContext, etc... I haven't looked into the specifics very deeply. Mostly I would prefer option 2 if somone could only reassure me that READPAST will never miss rows concerning the current client (as I said before, each client has and only ever deals with it's own set of rows). Otherwise I'll likely have to implement option 3, since option 1 is probably impossible... I'll post the table definitions for the three tables as well, just in case: CREATE TABLE [dbo].[UpdatedRows]( [Id] [uniqueidentifier] NOT NULL ROWGUIDCOL DEFAULT NEWSEQUENTIALID() PRIMARY KEY CLUSTERED, [RowId] [uniqueidentifier] NOT NULL, [UpdateDateTime] [datetime] NOT NULL, ) ON [PRIMARY] GO CREATE NONCLUSTERED INDEX IX_RowId ON dbo.UpdatedRows ([RowId] ASC) WITH (STATISTICS_NORECOMPUTE = OFF, IGNORE_DUP_KEY = OFF, ALLOW_ROW_LOCKS = ON, ALLOW_PAGE_LOCKS = ON) ON [PRIMARY] GO CREATE TABLE [dbo].[ReceivedUpdatedRows]( [Id] [uniqueidentifier] NOT NULL ROWGUIDCOL DEFAULT NEWSEQUENTIALID() PRIMARY KEY NONCLUSTERED, [UpdatedRowId] [uniqueidentifier] NOT NULL REFERENCES [dbo].[UpdatedRows] ([Id]), [StudioId] [uniqueidentifier] NOT NULL REFERENCES, [ReceiveDateTime] [datetime] NOT NULL, ) ON [PRIMARY] GO CREATE CLUSTERED INDEX IX_Studios ON dbo.ReceivedUpdatedRows ([StudioId] ASC) WITH (STATISTICS_NORECOMPUTE = OFF, IGNORE_DUP_KEY = OFF, ALLOW_ROW_LOCKS = ON, ALLOW_PAGE_LOCKS = ON) ON [PRIMARY] GO CREATE TABLE [dbo].[SynchronizingRows]( [StudioId] [uniqueidentifier] NOT NULL [UpdatedRowId] [uniqueidentifier] NOT NULL REFERENCES [dbo].[UpdatedRows] ([Id]) PRIMARY KEY CLUSTERED ([StudioId], [UpdatedRowId]) ) ON [PRIMARY] GO PS! Studio = Client. PS2! I just noticed that the index definitions have ALLOW_PAGE_LOCK=ON. If I would turn it off, would that make any difference to READPAST? Are there any negative downsides for turning it off?

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IE 8 Automatically Closing <header> tag

- by djthoms

Background I am currently working on the final QA of a responsive website and I'm having an issue with IE 8 and IE 7. My client deals with government contracting so their website needs to be compatible with IE 8 and IE 7. I am using Modernizr with html5shiv built in. I am loading Modernizr in the footer of a WordPress theme that was custom built for this project. I'm not missing a doctype or any other obvious code. I am using the following scripts, all of which are loaded in the footer of WordPress: jQuery 1.10.1 Modernizr 2.6.3 (click for config) respond.js 1.3.0 superfish jQuery Waypoints 2.0.3 jQuery Waypoints Sticky 2.0.3 The Situation I'm having an issue with IE 8 automatically closing a <header> tag. First, I have used two utilities to check this issue: IETester IE 11 emulated to IE 8 w/ IE 8 User agent Here is the correct output <div class="wrapper main-header"> <header class="container"> <div class="sixteen columns alpha omega"> <div class="eight columns alpha omega logo"> <a href="http://example.com"><img src="http://example.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/logo.png" alt="Example"></a> </div> <div class="wrapper main-navigation desktop"> <nav id="nav" class="six columns alpha omega"> ... </nav> <div class="eight columns alpha omega overlay" style="display: none;"> ... </div> <div class="two columns alpha omega menu-ss"> ... </div> </div> </div> </header> </div> What IE 8 is rendering: <div class="wrapper main-header"> <header class="container"></header> <div class="sixteen columns alpha omega"> <div class="eight columns alpha omega logo"> <a href="http://example.com"><img src="http://example.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/logo.png" alt="Example"></a> </div> <div class="wrapper main-navigation desktop"> <nav id="nav" class="six columns alpha omega"> ... </nav> <div class="eight columns alpha omega overlay" style="display: none;"> ... </div> <div class="two columns alpha omega menu-ss"> ... </div> </div> </div> </header><//header> </div> What I have Tried Loading html5shiv with IE conditional in the <head> Loading Modernizr in the <head> I have looked at these Stackoverflow questions/answers: html 5 tags foorter or header in ie 8 and ie 7 html5 not rendering header tags in ie IE 8 self closing tags automatically Any assistance with this is greatly appreciated! I would really really really like to finish this website over the weekend. I've been banging my head against a wall for the past few hours over this issue. Update Here are some images from browsershack to cut out the emulation. I tested the site virtually with Windows 7 and WIndows XP (IE 8 & IE 7). http://www.browserstack.com/screenshots/0d7c1d6dd22927c20495e67f07afe8934957b4d1

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Objects in Java ArrayList don't get updated.

- by Sbm007

This is going to be a very long post, hopefully you can understand what I'm talking about and I appreciate any help. Thanks Basically, I've created a personal, non-commercial project (which I don't plan to release) that can read ZIP and RAR files. It can only read the contents in the archive, the folders inside, the files inside the folders and its properties (such as last modified date, last modified time, CRC checksum, uncompressed size, compressed size and file name). It can't extract files either, so it's really a ZIP/RAR viewer if you may. Anyway that's slightly irrelevant to my problem but I thought I'd give you some background info. Now for my problem: I can successfully list all the folders and files inside a ZIP archive, so now I want to take that raw input and link it together in some useful way. I made 2 classes: ArchiveFile (represents a file inside a ZIP) and ArchiveFolder (represents a folder inside a ZIP). They both have some useful methods such as getLastModifiedDate, getName, getPath and so on. But the difference is that ArchiveFolder can hold an ArrayList of ArchiveFile's and additional ArchiveFolder's (think of this as files and folders inside a folder). Now I want to populate my raw input into one root ArchiveFolder, which will have all the files in the root dir of the ZIP in the ArchiveFile's ArrayList and any additional folders in the root dir of the ZIP in the ArchiveFolder's ArrayList (and this process can continue on like this like a chain reaction (more files/folders in that ArchiveFolder etc etc). So I came up with the following code: while (archive.hasMore()) { String path = ""; ArchiveFolder current = root; String[] contents = archive.getName().split("/"); for (int x = 0; x < contents.length; ++x) { if (x == (contents.length - 1) && !archive.getName().endsWith("/")) { // If on last item and item is a file path += contents[x]; // Update final path ArchiveFile file = new ArchiveFile(path, contents[x], archive.getUncompressedSize(), archive.getCompressedSize(), archive.getModifiedTime(), archive.getModifiedDate(), archive.getCRC()); current.addFile(file); // Create and add the file to the current ArchiveFolder } else if (x == (contents.length - 1)) { // Else if we are on last item and it is a folder path += contents[x] + "/"; // Update final path ArchiveFolder folder = new ArchiveFolder(path, contents[x], archive.getModifiedTime(), archive.getModifiedDate()); current.addFolder(folder); // Create and add this folder to the current ArchiveFile } else { // Else if we are still traversing through the path path += contents[x] + "/"; // Update path ArchiveFolder folder = new ArchiveFolder(path, contents[x]); current.addFolder(folder); // Create and add folder (remember we do not know the modified date/time as all we know is the path, so we can deduce the name only) current = folder; // Update current ArchiveFolder to the newly created one for the next iteration of the for loop } } archive.getNext(); } Assume that root is the root ArchiveFolder (initially empty). And that archive.getName() returns the name of the current file OR folder in the following fashion: file.txt or folder1/file2.txt or folder4/folder2/ (this is a empty folder) etc. So basically the relative path from the root of the ZIP archive. Please read through the comments in the above code to familiarize yourself with it. Also assume that the addFolder method in an ArchiveFile, only adds the folder if it doesn't exist already (so there are no multiple folders) and it also updates the time and date of an existing folder if it is blank (ie it was a intermediate folder we only knew the name of, but now we know its details). The code for addFolder is (pretty self-explanitory): public void addFolder(ArchiveFolder folder) { int loc = folders.indexOf(folder); // folders is the ArrayList containing ArchiveFolder's if (loc == -1) { folders.add(folder); } else { ArchiveFolder real = folders.get(loc); if (real.time == null) { real.setTime(folder.getTime()); real.setDate(folder.getDate()); } } } So I can't see anything wrong with the code, it works and after finishing, the root ArchiveFolder contains all the files in the root of the ZIP as I want it to, and it contains all the direcories in the root folder as I want it to. So you'd think it works as expected, but no the ArchiveFolder's in the root folder don't contain the data inside those 'child' folders, it's just a blank folder with no additional files and folders (while it does really contain some more files/folders when viewed in WinZip). After debugging using Eclipse, the for loop does iterate through all the files (even those not included above), so this led me to believe that there is a problem with this line of the code: current = folder; What it does is, it updates the current folder (used as an intermediate by the loop) to the newly added folder. I thought Java passed by reference and thus all new operations and new additions in future ArchiveFile's and ArchiveFolder's are automatically updated, and parent ArchiveFolder's will be updated accordingly. But that does not appear to be the case? I know this is a long ass post and I really hope anyone can help me out with this. Thanks in advance.

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Unable to center text in IE but works in firefox

- by greenpool

Can somebody point out where I'm going wrong with the following code. Text inside td elements need to be centered except for Summary and Experience. This only appears to work in Firefox/chrome. In IE8 all td text are displayed as left-justified. No matter what I try it doesn't center it. Any particular reason why this would happen? Thanks. css #viewAll { font-family:"Trebuchet MS", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; width:100%; border-collapse:collapse; margin-left:10px; table-layout: fixed; } #viewAll td, #viewAll th { font-size:1.1em; border:1px solid #98bf21; word-wrap:break-word; text-align:center; overflow:hidden; } #viewAll tbody td{ padding:2px; } #viewAll th { font-size:1.1em; padding-top:5px; padding-bottom:4px; background-color:#A7C942; color:#ffffff; } table <?php echo '<table id="viewAll" class="tablesorter">'; echo '<thead>'; echo '<tr align="center">'; echo '<th style="width:70px;">Product</th>'; echo '<th style="width:105px;">Prob</th>'; echo '<th style="width:105px;">I</th>'; echo '<th style="width:60px;">Status</th>'; echo '<th style="width:120px;">Experience</th>'; echo '<th style="width:200px;">Technical Summary</th>'; echo '<th style="width:80px;">Record Created</th>'; echo '<th style="width:80px;">Record Updated</th>'; echo '<th style="width:50px;">Open</th>'; echo '</tr>'; echo '</thead>'; echo '<tbody>'; while ($data=mysqli_fetch_array($result)){ #limiting the summary text displayed in the table $limited_summary = (strlen($data['summary']) > 300) ? substr(($data['summary']),0,300) . '...' : $data['summary']; $limited_exp = (strlen($data['exp']) > 300) ? substr(($data['exp']),0,300) . '...' : $data['exp']; echo '<tr align="center"> <td style="width:70px; text-align:center;">'.$data['product'].'</td>'; //if value is '-' do not display as link if ($data['prob'] != '-'){ echo '<td style="width:105px;">'.$data['prob'].'</a></td>'; } else{ echo '<td style="width:105px; ">'.$data['prob'].'</td>'; } if ($data['i'] != '-'){ echo '<td style="width:105px; ">'.$data['i'].'</a></td>'; } else{ echo '<td style="width:105px; ">'.$data['i'].'</td>'; } echo'<td style="width:40px; " >'.$data['status'].'</td> <td style="width:120px; text-align:left;">'.$limited_cust_exp.'</td> <td style="width:200px; text-align:left;">'.$limited_summary.'</td> <td style="width:80px; ">'.$data['created'].'</td> <td style="width:80px; ">'.$data['updated'].'</td>'; if (isset($_SESSION['username'])){ echo '<td style="width:50px; "> <form action="displayRecord.php" method="get">'.' <input type="hidden" name="id" value="'. $data['id'].'" style="text-decoration: none" /><input type="submit" value="Open" /></form></td>'; }else{ echo '<td style="width:50px; "> <form action="displayRecord.php" method="get">'.' <input type="hidden" name="id" value="'. $data['id'].'" style="text-decoration: none" /><input type="submit" value="View" /></form></td>'; } echo '</tr>'; }#end of while echo '</tbody>'; echo '</table>'; ?>

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I can NOT submit the form

- by buri kuri

Hey guys Im trying to develop an advance consumer website using php and I stuck somewhere while trying to get the data with submitting to another page. All I want to do is to get the checkbox values which are stored in an array and checked by user. I urgently need your help please here is the code: $sql2="SELECT * FROM alinanfis WHERE alinanfis.fis_id='".$fis."'" ; $resultFis=mysql_query($sql2); if(mysql_num_rows($resultFis)>0) { print "<form method='POST' action='deletionResult.php'>"; print "<table>"; print "<tr>"; print "<th style='background: transparent;'></th>"; print "<th>Fis No</th>"; print "<th>isim</th>"; print "<th>soyisim</th>"; print "<th >Tarih</th>"; print "<th>Fis Tipi</th>"; print "<th>Nerede</th>"; print "<th>Litre</th>"; print "<th>Tutar</th>"; print "</tr>"; while($rowAlinan=mysql_fetch_array($resultFis)) { $sqlFisTipi="SELECT * FROM atype WHERE a_id='".$rowAlinan['a_id']."'" ; $resultFisTipi=mysql_query($sqlFisTipi); $rowFisTipi=mysql_fetch_array($resultFisTipi); $sqlNerede="SELECT * FROM isyeri WHERE i_id='".$rowAlinan['nerde']."'" ; $resultNerede=mysql_query($sqlNerede); $rowNerede=mysql_fetch_array($resultNerede); $sqlMID="SELECT * FROM musteri WHERE m_id='".$rowAlinan['m_id']."'" ; $resultMID1=mysql_query($sqlMID); $rowMID1=mysql_fetch_array($resultMID1); print "<tr>"; print "<td><input name='checkBox[]' type='checkbox' value='".$rowAlinan['fis_id']."' /> php</td>"; print "<td>".$rowAlinan['fis_id']."</td>"; print "<td>".$rowMID1['m_name']."</td>"; print "<td>".$rowMID1['m_lastName']."</td>"; print "<td>".$rowAlinan['alinan_tarih']."</td>"; print "<td>".$rowFisTipi['a_name']."</td>"; print "<td>".$rowNerede['i_name']."</td>"; print "<td>".$rowAlinan['litre']."</td>"; print "<td>".$rowAlinan['tutar']."</td>"; print "</tr>"; } print '<div class="form_settings">'; print "<input class='submit' type='submit' name= 'send' value='Send'>"; / print '</div>'; print "</table>"; print "</form>"; }//end of if(num_rows>0) else echo '*no such receipt found!!'; mysql_close($con);

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tables wrapping to next line when width 100%

- by jmo

I'm encountering some weirdness with tables in css. The layout is fairly simple, a fixed-width nav bar on the left and the content on the right. When the content includes a table with a width of 100% the table ends up getting pushed down until it has room to take up the full width of the screen (instead of just the area to the right of the nav bar). If I remove the width=100% from the table's css, then it looks fine, but obviously the table doesn't grow to fill the space of the div. The problem is that i want the table to grow and shrink with the window but still stay in the bounds of its div. Thanks. Here's a simple example: <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd"> <html> <head> <title>Test</title> <style type="text/css"> #content { padding-right:20px; background:white; overflow:hidden; margin:20px; } #content .column { position:relative; padding-bottom: 20010px; margin-bottom: -20000px; } #center { width:100%; padding-top:15px; } body { min-width:700px; } #left { width: 330px; padding: 0 10px; padding-top:10px; float:left; } .tableData { width:100%; } </style> </head> <body> <div id="content"> <div class="column" id="left"> <div> Some text goes in here<br/> some more text<br/> some more text<br/> some more text<br/> some more text<br/> some more text<br/> </div> </div> <div class="column" id="center"> Some text at the top; <hr/> <table class="tableData"> <thead> <tr><th>A</th><th>B</th><th>C</th></tr> </thead> <tbody> <tr> <td>A1 A1 A1 A1</td> <td>B1 B1 B1 B1</td> <td>C1 C1 C1 C1 C</td> </tr> <tr> <td>A2 A2 A2 A2 </td> <td>B2 B2 B2 B2 </td> <td>C2 C2 C2 C2</td> </tr> <tr> <td>A3 A3 A3 A3 A3 </td> <td>B3 B3 B3 B3 B3 </td> <td>C3 C3 C3 C3 C3</td> </tr> <tr> <td>A4 A4 A4 A4 A4</td> <td>B4 B4 B4 B4 B4</td> <td>C4 C4 C4 C4 C4</td> </tr> </tbody> </table> </div> </div> </body> </html>

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Using FiddlerCore to capture HTTP Requests with .NET

- by Rick Strahl

Over the last few weeks I’ve been working on my Web load testing utility West Wind WebSurge. One of the key components of a load testing tool is the ability to capture URLs effectively so that you can play them back later under load. One of the options in WebSurge for capturing URLs is to use its built-in capture tool which acts as an HTTP proxy to capture any HTTP and HTTPS traffic from most Windows HTTP clients, including Web Browsers as well as standalone Windows applications and services. To make this happen, I used Eric Lawrence’s awesome FiddlerCore library, which provides most of the functionality of his desktop Fiddler application, all rolled into an easy to use library that you can plug into your own applications. FiddlerCore makes it almost too easy to capture HTTP content! For WebSurge I needed to capture all HTTP traffic in order to capture the full HTTP request – URL, headers and any content posted by the client. The result of what I ended up creating is this semi-generic capture form: In this post I’m going to demonstrate how easy it is to use FiddlerCore to build this HTTP Capture Form. If you want to jump right in here are the links to get Telerik’s Fiddler Core and the code for the demo provided here. FiddlerCore Download FiddlerCore on NuGet Show me the Code (WebSurge Integration code from GitHub) Download the WinForms Sample Form West Wind Web Surge (example implementation in live app) Note that FiddlerCore is bound by a license for commercial usage – see license.txt in the FiddlerCore distribution for details. Integrating FiddlerCore FiddlerCore is a library that simply plugs into your application. You can download it from the Telerik site and manually add the assemblies to your project, or you can simply install the NuGet package via: PM> Install-Package FiddlerCore The library consists of the FiddlerCore.dll as well as a couple of support libraries (CertMaker.dll and BCMakeCert.dll) that are used for installing SSL certificates. I’ll have more on SSL captures and certificate installation later in this post. But first let’s see how easy it is to use FiddlerCore to capture HTTP content by looking at how to build the above capture form. Capturing HTTP Content Once the library is installed it’s super easy to hook up Fiddler functionality. Fiddler includes a number of static class methods on the FiddlerApplication object that can be called to hook up callback events as well as actual start monitoring HTTP URLs. In the following code directly lifted from WebSurge, I configure a few filter options on Form level object, from the user inputs shown on the form by assigning it to a capture options object. In the live application these settings are persisted configuration values, but in the demo they are one time values initialized and set on the form. Once these options are set, I hook up the AfterSessionComplete event to capture every URL that passes through the proxy after the request is completed and start up the Proxy service:void Start() { if (tbIgnoreResources.Checked) CaptureConfiguration.IgnoreResources = true; else CaptureConfiguration.IgnoreResources = false; string strProcId = txtProcessId.Text; if (strProcId.Contains('-')) strProcId = strProcId.Substring(strProcId.IndexOf('-') + 1).Trim(); strProcId = strProcId.Trim(); int procId = 0; if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(strProcId)) { if (!int.TryParse(strProcId, out procId)) procId = 0; } CaptureConfiguration.ProcessId = procId; CaptureConfiguration.CaptureDomain = txtCaptureDomain.Text; FiddlerApplication.AfterSessionComplete += FiddlerApplication_AfterSessionComplete; FiddlerApplication.Startup(8888, true, true, true); } The key lines for FiddlerCore are just the last two lines of code that include the event hookup code as well as the Startup() method call. Here I only hook up to the AfterSessionComplete event but there are a number of other events that hook various stages of the HTTP request cycle you can also hook into. Other events include BeforeRequest, BeforeResponse, RequestHeadersAvailable, ResponseHeadersAvailable and so on. In my case I want to capture the request data and I actually have several options to capture this data. AfterSessionComplete is the last event that fires in the request sequence and it’s the most common choice to capture all request and response data. I could have used several other events, but AfterSessionComplete is one place where you can look both at the request and response data, so this will be the most common place to hook into if you’re capturing content. The implementation of AfterSessionComplete is responsible for capturing all HTTP request headers and it looks something like this:private void FiddlerApplication_AfterSessionComplete(Session sess) { // Ignore HTTPS connect requests if (sess.RequestMethod == "CONNECT") return; if (CaptureConfiguration.ProcessId > 0) { if (sess.LocalProcessID != 0 && sess.LocalProcessID != CaptureConfiguration.ProcessId) return; } if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(CaptureConfiguration.CaptureDomain)) { if (sess.hostname.ToLower() != CaptureConfiguration.CaptureDomain.Trim().ToLower()) return; } if (CaptureConfiguration.IgnoreResources) { string url = sess.fullUrl.ToLower(); var extensions = CaptureConfiguration.ExtensionFilterExclusions; foreach (var ext in extensions) { if (url.Contains(ext)) return; } var filters = CaptureConfiguration.UrlFilterExclusions; foreach (var urlFilter in filters) { if (url.Contains(urlFilter)) return; } } if (sess == null || sess.oRequest == null || sess.oRequest.headers == null) return; string headers = sess.oRequest.headers.ToString(); var reqBody = sess.GetRequestBodyAsString(); // if you wanted to capture the response //string respHeaders = session.oResponse.headers.ToString(); //var respBody = session.GetResponseBodyAsString(); // replace the HTTP line to inject full URL string firstLine = sess.RequestMethod + " " + sess.fullUrl + " " + sess.oRequest.headers.HTTPVersion; int at = headers.IndexOf("\r\n"); if (at < 0) return; headers = firstLine + "\r\n" + headers.Substring(at + 1); string output = headers + "\r\n" + (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(reqBody) ? reqBody + "\r\n" : string.Empty) + Separator + "\r\n\r\n"; BeginInvoke(new Action<string>((text) => { txtCapture.AppendText(text); UpdateButtonStatus(); }), output); } The code starts by filtering out some requests based on the CaptureOptions I set before the capture is started. These options/filters are applied when requests actually come in. This is very useful to help narrow down the requests that are captured for playback based on options the user picked. I find it useful to limit requests to a certain domain for captures, as well as filtering out some request types like static resources – images, css, scripts etc. This is of course optional, but I think it’s a common scenario and WebSurge makes good use of this feature. AfterSessionComplete like other FiddlerCore events, provides a Session object parameter which contains all the request and response details. There are oRequest and oResponse objects to hold their respective data. In my case I’m interested in the raw request headers and body only, as you can see in the commented code you can also retrieve the response headers and body. Here the code captures the request headers and body and simply appends the output to the textbox on the screen. Note that the Fiddler events are asynchronous, so in order to display the content in the UI they have to be marshaled back the UI thread with BeginInvoke, which here simply takes the generated headers and appends it to the existing textbox test on the form. As each request is processed, the headers are captured and appended to the bottom of the textbox resulting in a Session HTTP capture in the format that Web Surge internally supports, which is basically raw request headers with a customized 1st HTTP Header line that includes the full URL rather than a server relative URL. When the capture is done the user can either copy the raw HTTP session to the clipboard, or directly save it to file. This raw capture format is the same format WebSurge and also Fiddler use to import/export request data. While this code is application specific, it demonstrates the kind of logic that you can easily apply to the request capture process, which is one of the reasonsof why FiddlerCore is so powerful. You get to choose what content you want to look up as part of your own application logic and you can then decide how to capture or use that data as part of your application. The actual captured data in this case is only a string. The user can edit the data by hand or in the the case of WebSurge, save it to disk and automatically open the captured session as a new load test. Stopping the FiddlerCore Proxy Finally to stop capturing requests you simply disconnect the event handler and call the FiddlerApplication.ShutDown() method:void Stop() { FiddlerApplication.AfterSessionComplete -= FiddlerApplication_AfterSessionComplete; if (FiddlerApplication.IsStarted()) FiddlerApplication.Shutdown(); } As you can see, adding HTTP capture functionality to an application is very straight forward. FiddlerCore offers tons of features I’m not even touching on here – I suspect basic captures are the most common scenario, but a lot of different things can be done with FiddlerCore’s simple API interface. Sky’s the limit! The source code for this sample capture form (WinForms) is provided as part of this article. Adding Fiddler Certificates with FiddlerCore One of the sticking points in West Wind WebSurge has been that if you wanted to capture HTTPS/SSL traffic, you needed to have the full version of Fiddler and have HTTPS decryption enabled. Essentially you had to use Fiddler to configure HTTPS decryption and the associated installation of the Fiddler local client certificate that is used for local decryption of incoming SSL traffic. While this works just fine, requiring to have Fiddler installed and then using a separate application to configure the SSL functionality isn’t ideal. Fortunately FiddlerCore actually includes the tools to register the Fiddler Certificate directly using FiddlerCore. Why does Fiddler need a Certificate in the first Place? Fiddler and FiddlerCore are essentially HTTP proxies which means they inject themselves into the HTTP conversation by re-routing HTTP traffic to a special HTTP port (8888 by default for Fiddler) and then forward the HTTP data to the original client. Fiddler injects itself as the system proxy in using the WinInet Windows settings which are the same settings that Internet Explorer uses and that are configured in the Windows and Internet Explorer Internet Settings dialog. Most HTTP clients running on Windows pick up and apply these system level Proxy settings before establishing new HTTP connections and that’s why most clients automatically work once Fiddler – or FiddlerCore/WebSurge are running. For plain HTTP requests this just works – Fiddler intercepts the HTTP requests on the proxy port and then forwards them to the original port (80 for HTTP and 443 for SSL typically but it could be any port). For SSL however, this is not quite as simple – Fiddler can easily act as an HTTPS/SSL client to capture inbound requests from the server, but when it forwards the request to the client it has to also act as an SSL server and provide a certificate that the client trusts. This won’t be the original certificate from the remote site, but rather a custom local certificate that effectively simulates an SSL connection between the proxy and the client. If there is no custom certificate configured for Fiddler the SSL request fails with a certificate validation error. The key for this to work is that a custom certificate has to be installed that the HTTPS client trusts on the local machine. For a much more detailed description of the process you can check out Eric Lawrence’s blog post on Certificates. If you’re using the desktop version of Fiddler you can install a local certificate into the Windows certificate store. Fiddler proper does this from the Options menu: This operation does several things: It installs the Fiddler Root Certificate It sets trust to this Root Certificate A new client certificate is generated for each HTTPS site monitored Certificate Installation with FiddlerCore You can also provide this same functionality using FiddlerCore which includes a CertMaker class. Using CertMaker is straight forward to use and it provides an easy way to create some simple helpers that can install and uninstall a Fiddler Root certificate:public static bool InstallCertificate() { if (!CertMaker.rootCertExists()) { if (!CertMaker.createRootCert()) return false; if (!CertMaker.trustRootCert()) return false; } return true; } public static bool UninstallCertificate() { if (CertMaker.rootCertExists()) { if (!CertMaker.removeFiddlerGeneratedCerts(true)) return false; } return true; } InstallCertificate() works by first checking whether the root certificate is already installed and if it isn’t goes ahead and creates a new one. The process of creating the certificate is a two step process – first the actual certificate is created and then it’s moved into the certificate store to become trusted. I’m not sure why you’d ever split these operations up since a cert created without trust isn’t going to be of much value, but there are two distinct steps. When you trigger the trustRootCert() method, a message box will pop up on the desktop that lets you know that you’re about to trust a local private certificate. This is a security feature to ensure that you really want to trust the Fiddler root since you are essentially installing a man in the middle certificate. It’s quite safe to use this generated root certificate, because it’s been specifically generated for your machine and thus is not usable from external sources, the only way to use this certificate in a trusted way is from the local machine. IOW, unless somebody has physical access to your machine, there’s no useful way to hijack this certificate and use it for nefarious purposes (see Eric’s post for more details). Once the Root certificate has been installed, FiddlerCore/Fiddler create new certificates for each site that is connected to with HTTPS. You can end up with quite a few temporary certificates in your certificate store. To uninstall you can either use Fiddler and simply uncheck the Decrypt HTTPS traffic option followed by the remove Fiddler certificates button, or you can use FiddlerCore’s CertMaker.removeFiddlerGeneratedCerts() which removes the root cert and any of the intermediary certificates Fiddler created. Keep in mind that when you uninstall you uninstall the certificate for both FiddlerCore and Fiddler, so use UninstallCertificate() with care and realize that you might affect the Fiddler application’s operation by doing so as well. When to check for an installed Certificate Note that the check to see if the root certificate exists is pretty fast, while the actual process of installing the certificate is a relatively slow operation that even on a fast machine takes a few seconds. Further the trust operation pops up a message box so you probably don’t want to install the certificate repeatedly. Since the check for the root certificate is fast, you can easily put a call to InstallCertificate() in any capture startup code – in which case the certificate installation only triggers when a certificate is in fact not installed. Personally I like to make certificate installation explicit – just like Fiddler does, so in WebSurge I use a small drop down option on the menu to install or uninstall the SSL certificate: This code calls the InstallCertificate and UnInstallCertificate functions respectively – the experience with this is similar to what you get in Fiddler with the extra dialog box popping up to prompt confirmation for installation of the root certificate. Once the cert is installed you can then capture SSL requests. There’s a gotcha however… Gotcha: FiddlerCore Certificates don’t stick by Default When I originally tried to use the Fiddler certificate installation I ran into an odd problem. I was able to install the certificate and immediately after installation was able to capture HTTPS requests. Then I would exit the application and come back in and try the same HTTPS capture again and it would fail due to a missing certificate. CertMaker.rootCertExists() would return false after every restart and if re-installed the certificate a new certificate would get added to the certificate store resulting in a bunch of duplicated root certificates with different keys. What the heck? CertMaker and BcMakeCert create non-sticky CertificatesI turns out that FiddlerCore by default uses different components from what the full version of Fiddler uses. Fiddler uses a Windows utility called MakeCert.exe to create the Fiddler Root certificate. FiddlerCore however installs the CertMaker.dll and BCMakeCert.dll assemblies, which use a different crypto library (Bouncy Castle) for certificate creation than MakeCert.exe which uses the Windows Crypto API. The assemblies provide support for non-windows operation for Fiddler under Mono, as well as support for some non-Windows certificate platforms like iOS and Android for decryption. The bottom line is that the FiddlerCore provided bouncy castle assemblies are not sticky by default as the certificates created with them are not cached as they are in Fiddler proper. To get certificates to ‘stick’ you have to explicitly cache the certificates in Fiddler’s internal preferences. A cache aware version of InstallCertificate looks something like this:public static bool InstallCertificate() { if (!CertMaker.rootCertExists()) { if (!CertMaker.createRootCert()) return false; if (!CertMaker.trustRootCert()) return false; App.Configuration.UrlCapture.Cert = FiddlerApplication.Prefs.GetStringPref("fiddler.certmaker.bc.cert", null); App.Configuration.UrlCapture.Key = FiddlerApplication.Prefs.GetStringPref("fiddler.certmaker.bc.key", null); } return true; } public static bool UninstallCertificate() { if (CertMaker.rootCertExists()) { if (!CertMaker.removeFiddlerGeneratedCerts(true)) return false; } App.Configuration.UrlCapture.Cert = null; App.Configuration.UrlCapture.Key = null; return true; } In this code I store the Fiddler cert and private key in an application configuration settings that’s stored with the application settings (App.Configuration.UrlCapture object). These settings automatically persist when WebSurge is shut down. The values are read out of Fiddler’s internal preferences store which is set after a new certificate has been created. Likewise I clear out the configuration settings when the certificate is uninstalled. In order for these setting to be used you have to also load the configuration settings into the Fiddler preferences *before* a call to rootCertExists() is made. I do this in the capture form’s constructor:public FiddlerCapture(StressTestForm form) { InitializeComponent(); CaptureConfiguration = App.Configuration.UrlCapture; MainForm = form; if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(App.Configuration.UrlCapture.Cert)) { FiddlerApplication.Prefs.SetStringPref("fiddler.certmaker.bc.key", App.Configuration.UrlCapture.Key); FiddlerApplication.Prefs.SetStringPref("fiddler.certmaker.bc.cert", App.Configuration.UrlCapture.Cert); }} This is kind of a drag to do and not documented anywhere that I could find, so hopefully this will save you some grief if you want to work with the stock certificate logic that installs with FiddlerCore. MakeCert provides sticky Certificates and the same functionality as Fiddler But there’s actually an easier way. If you want to skip the above Fiddler preference configuration code in your application you can choose to distribute MakeCert.exe instead of certmaker.dll and bcmakecert.dll. When you use MakeCert.exe, the certificates settings are stored in Windows so they are available without any custom configuration inside of your application. It’s easier to integrate and as long as you run on Windows and you don’t need to support iOS or Android devices is simply easier to deal with. To integrate into your project, you can remove the reference to CertMaker.dll (and the BcMakeCert.dll assembly) from your project. Instead copy MakeCert.exe into your output folder. To make sure MakeCert.exe gets pushed out, include MakeCert.exe in your project and set the Build Action to None, and Copy to Output Directory to Copy if newer. Note that the CertMaker.dll reference in the project has been removed and on disk the files for Certmaker.dll, as well as the BCMakeCert.dll files on disk. Keep in mind that these DLLs are resources of the FiddlerCore NuGet package, so updating the package may end up pushing those files back into your project. Once MakeCert.exe is distributed FiddlerCore checks for it first before using the assemblies so as long as MakeCert.exe exists it’ll be used for certificate creation (at least on Windows). Summary FiddlerCore is a pretty sweet tool, and it’s absolutely awesome that we get to plug in most of the functionality of Fiddler right into our own applications. A few years back I tried to build this sort of functionality myself for an app and ended up giving up because it’s a big job to get HTTP right – especially if you need to support SSL. FiddlerCore now provides that functionality as a turnkey solution that can be plugged into your own apps easily. The only downside is FiddlerCore’s documentation for more advanced features like certificate installation which is pretty sketchy. While for the most part FiddlerCore’s feature set is easy to work with without any documentation, advanced features are often not intuitive to gleam by just using Intellisense or the FiddlerCore help file reference (which is not terribly useful). While Eric Lawrence is very responsive on his forum and on Twitter, there simply isn’t much useful documentation on Fiddler/FiddlerCore available online. If you run into trouble the forum is probably the first place to look and then ask a question if you can’t find the answer. The best documentation you can find is Eric’s Fiddler Book which covers a ton of functionality of Fiddler and FiddlerCore. The book is a great reference to Fiddler’s feature set as well as providing great insights into the HTTP protocol. The second half of the book that gets into the innards of HTTP is an excellent read for anybody who wants to know more about some of the more arcane aspects and special behaviors of HTTP – it’s well worth the read. While the book has tons of information in a very readable format, it’s unfortunately not a great reference as it’s hard to find things in the book and because it’s not available online you can’t electronically search for the great content in it. But it’s hard to complain about any of this given the obvious effort and love that’s gone into this awesome product for all of these years. A mighty big thanks to Eric Lawrence for having created this useful tool that so many of us use all the time, and also to Telerik for picking up Fiddler/FiddlerCore and providing Eric the resources to support and improve this wonderful tool full time and keeping it free for all. Kudos! Resources FiddlerCore Download FiddlerCore NuGet Fiddler Capture Sample Form Fiddler Capture Form in West Wind WebSurge (GitHub) Eric Lawrence’s Fiddler Book© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2014Posted in .NET HTTP 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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.NET HTML Sanitation for rich HTML Input

- by Rick Strahl

Recently I was working on updating a legacy application to MVC 4 that included free form text input. When I set up the new site my initial approach was to not allow any rich HTML input, only simple text formatting that would respect a few simple HTML commands for bold, lists etc. and automatically handles line break processing for new lines and paragraphs. This is typical for what I do with most multi-line text input in my apps and it works very well with very little development effort involved. Then the client sprung another note: Oh by the way we have a bunch of customers (real estate agents) who need to post complete HTML documents. Oh uh! There goes the simple theory. After some discussion and pleading on my part (<snicker>) to try and avoid this type of raw HTML input because of potential XSS issues, the client decided to go ahead and allow raw HTML input anyway. There has been lots of discussions on this subject on StackOverFlow (and here and here) but to after reading through some of the solutions I didn't really find anything that would work even closely for what I needed. Specifically we need to be able to allow just about any HTML markup, with the exception of script code. Remote CSS and Images need to be loaded, links need to work and so. While the 'legit' HTML posted by these agents is basic in nature it does span most of the full gamut of HTML (4). Most of the solutions XSS prevention/sanitizer solutions I found were way to aggressive and rendered the posted output unusable mostly because they tend to strip any externally loaded content. In short I needed a custom solution. I thought the best solution to this would be to use an HTML parser - in this case the Html Agility Pack - and then to run through all the HTML markup provided and remove any of the blacklisted tags and a number of attributes that are prone to JavaScript injection. There's much discussion on whether to use blacklists vs. whitelists in the discussions mentioned above, but I found that whitelists can make sense in simple scenarios where you might allow manual HTML input, but when you need to allow a larger array of HTML functionality a blacklist is probably easier to manage as the vast majority of elements and attributes could be allowed. Also white listing gets a bit more complex with HTML5 and the new proliferation of new HTML tags and most new tags generally don't affect XSS issues directly. Pure whitelisting based on elements and attributes also doesn't capture many edge cases (see some of the XSS cheat sheets listed below) so even with a white list, custom logic is still required to handle many of those edge cases. The Microsoft Web Protection Library (AntiXSS) My first thought was to check out the Microsoft AntiXSS library. Microsoft has an HTML Encoding and Sanitation library in the Microsoft Web Protection Library (formerly AntiXSS Library) on CodePlex, which provides stricter functions for whitelist encoding and sanitation. Initially I thought the Sanitation class and its static members would do the trick for me,but I found that this library is way too restrictive for my needs. Specifically the Sanitation class strips out images and links which rendered the full HTML from our real estate clients completely useless. I didn't spend much time with it, but apparently I'm not alone if feeling this library is not really useful without some way to configure operation. To give you an example of what didn't work for me with the library here's a small and simple HTML fragment that includes script, img and anchor tags. I would expect the script to be stripped and everything else to be left intact. Here's the original HTML:var value = "<b>Here</b> <script>alert('hello')</script> we go. Visit the " + "<a href='http://west-wind.com'>West Wind</a> site. " + "<img src='http://west-wind.com/images/new.gif' /> " ; and the code to sanitize it with the AntiXSS Sanitize class:@Html.Raw(Microsoft.Security.Application.Sanitizer.GetSafeHtmlFragment(value)) This produced a not so useful sanitized string: Here we go. Visit the <a>West Wind</a> site. While it removed the <script> tag (good) it also removed the href from the link and the image tag altogether (bad). In some situations this might be useful, but for most tasks I doubt this is the desired behavior. While links can contain javascript: references and images can 'broadcast' information to a server, without configuration to tell the library what to restrict this becomes useless to me. I couldn't find any way to customize the white list, nor is there code available in this 'open source' library on CodePlex. Using Html Agility Pack for HTML Parsing The WPL library wasn't going to cut it. After doing a bit of research I decided the best approach for a custom solution would be to use an HTML parser and inspect the HTML fragment/document I'm trying to import. I've used the HTML Agility Pack before for a number of apps where I needed an HTML parser without requiring an instance of a full browser like the Internet Explorer Application object which is inadequate in Web apps. In case you haven't checked out the Html Agility Pack before, it's a powerful HTML parser library that you can use from your .NET code. It provides a simple, parsable HTML DOM model to full HTML documents or HTML fragments that let you walk through each of the elements in your document. If you've used the HTML or XML DOM in a browser before you'll feel right at home with the Agility Pack. Blacklist based HTML Parsing to strip XSS Code For my purposes of HTML sanitation, the process involved is to walk the HTML document one element at a time and then check each element and attribute against a blacklist. There's quite a bit of argument of what's better: A whitelist of allowed items or a blacklist of denied items. While whitelists tend to be more secure, they also require a lot more configuration. In the case of HTML5 a whitelist could be very extensive. For what I need, I only want to ensure that no JavaScript is executed, so a blacklist includes the obvious <script> tag plus any tag that allows loading of external content including <iframe>, <object>, <embed> and <link> etc. <form> is also excluded to avoid posting content to a different location. I also disallow <head> and <meta> tags in particular for my case, since I'm only allowing posting of HTML fragments. There is also some internal logic to exclude some attributes or attributes that include references to JavaScript or CSS expressions. The default tag blacklist reflects my use case, but is customizable and can be added to. Here's my HtmlSanitizer implementation:using System.Collections.Generic; using System.IO; using System.Xml; using HtmlAgilityPack; namespace Westwind.Web.Utilities { public class HtmlSanitizer { public HashSet<string> BlackList = new HashSet<string>() { { "script" }, { "iframe" }, { "form" }, { "object" }, { "embed" }, { "link" }, { "head" }, { "meta" } }; /// <summary> /// Cleans up an HTML string and removes HTML tags in blacklist /// </summary> /// <param name="html"></param> /// <returns></returns> public static string SanitizeHtml(string html, params string[] blackList) { var sanitizer = new HtmlSanitizer(); if (blackList != null && blackList.Length > 0) { sanitizer.BlackList.Clear(); foreach (string item in blackList) sanitizer.BlackList.Add(item); } return sanitizer.Sanitize(html); } /// <summary> /// Cleans up an HTML string by removing elements /// on the blacklist and all elements that start /// with onXXX . /// </summary> /// <param name="html"></param> /// <returns></returns> public string Sanitize(string html) { var doc = new HtmlDocument(); doc.LoadHtml(html); SanitizeHtmlNode(doc.DocumentNode); //return doc.DocumentNode.WriteTo(); string output = null; // Use an XmlTextWriter to create self-closing tags using (StringWriter sw = new StringWriter()) { XmlWriter writer = new XmlTextWriter(sw); doc.DocumentNode.WriteTo(writer); output = sw.ToString(); // strip off XML doc header if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(output)) { int at = output.IndexOf("?>"); output = output.Substring(at + 2); } writer.Close(); } doc = null; return output; } private void SanitizeHtmlNode(HtmlNode node) { if (node.NodeType == HtmlNodeType.Element) { // check for blacklist items and remove if (BlackList.Contains(node.Name)) { node.Remove(); return; } // remove CSS Expressions and embedded script links if (node.Name == "style") { if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(node.InnerText)) { if (node.InnerHtml.Contains("expression") || node.InnerHtml.Contains("javascript:")) node.ParentNode.RemoveChild(node); } } // remove script attributes if (node.HasAttributes) { for (int i = node.Attributes.Count - 1; i >= 0; i--) { HtmlAttribute currentAttribute = node.Attributes[i]; var attr = currentAttribute.Name.ToLower(); var val = currentAttribute.Value.ToLower(); span style="background: white; color: green">// remove event handlers if (attr.StartsWith("on")) node.Attributes.Remove(currentAttribute); // remove script links else if ( //(attr == "href" || attr== "src" || attr == "dynsrc" || attr == "lowsrc") && val != null && val.Contains("javascript:")) node.Attributes.Remove(currentAttribute); // Remove CSS Expressions else if (attr == "style" && val != null && val.Contains("expression") || val.Contains("javascript:") || val.Contains("vbscript:")) node.Attributes.Remove(currentAttribute); } } } // Look through child nodes recursively if (node.HasChildNodes) { for (int i = node.ChildNodes.Count - 1; i >= 0; i--) { SanitizeHtmlNode(node.ChildNodes[i]); } } } } } Please note: Use this as a starting point only for your own parsing and review the code for your specific use case! If your needs are less lenient than mine were you can you can make this much stricter by not allowing src and href attributes or CSS links if your HTML doesn't allow it. You can also check links for external URLs and disallow those - lots of options. The code is simple enough to make it easy to extend to fit your use cases more specifically. It's also quite easy to make this code work using a WhiteList approach if you want to go that route. The code above is semi-generic for allowing full featured HTML fragments that only disallow script related content. The Sanitize method walks through each node of the document and then recursively drills into all of its children until the entire document has been traversed. Note that the code here uses an XmlTextWriter to write output - this is done to preserve XHTML style self-closing tags which are otherwise left as non-self-closing tags. The sanitizer code scans for blacklist elements and removes those elements not allowed. Note that the blacklist is configurable either in the instance class as a property or in the static method via the string parameter list. Additionally the code goes through each element's attributes and looks for a host of rules gleaned from some of the XSS cheat sheets listed at the end of the post. Clearly there are a lot more XSS vulnerabilities, but a lot of them apply to ancient browsers (IE6 and versions of Netscape) - many of these glaring holes (like CSS expressions - WTF IE?) have been removed in modern browsers. What a Pain To be honest this is NOT a piece of code that I wanted to write. I think building anything related to XSS is better left to people who have far more knowledge of the topic than I do. Unfortunately, I was unable to find a tool that worked even closely for me, or even provided a working base. For the project I was working on I had no choice and I'm sharing the code here merely as a base line to start with and potentially expand on for specific needs. It's sad that Microsoft Web Protection Library is currently such a train wreck - this is really something that should come from Microsoft as the systems vendor or possibly a third party that provides security tools. Luckily for my application we are dealing with a authenticated and validated users so the user base is fairly well known, and relatively small - this is not a wide open Internet application that's directly public facing. As I mentioned earlier in the post, if I had my way I would simply not allow this type of raw HTML input in the first place, and instead rely on a more controlled HTML input mechanism like MarkDown or even a good HTML Edit control that can provide some limits on what types of input are allowed. Alas in this case I was overridden and we had to go forward and allow *any* raw HTML posted. Sometimes I really feel sad that it's come this far - how many good applications and tools have been thwarted by fear of XSS (or worse) attacks? So many things that could be done *if* we had a more secure browser experience and didn't have to deal with every little script twerp trying to hack into Web pages and obscure browser bugs. So much time wasted building secure apps, so much time wasted by others trying to hack apps… We're a funny species - no other species manages to waste as much time, effort and resources as we humans do :-) Resources Code on GitHub Html Agility Pack XSS Cheat Sheet XSS Prevention Cheat Sheet Microsoft Web Protection Library (AntiXss) StackOverflow Links: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/341872/html-sanitizer-for-net http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2008/06/safe-html-and-xss/ http://code.google.com/p/subsonicforums/source/browse/trunk/SubSonic.Forums.Data/HtmlScrubber.cs?r=61© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2012Posted in Security HTML ASP.NET JavaScript 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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Using JSON.NET for dynamic JSON parsing

- by Rick Strahl

With the release of ASP.NET Web API as part of .NET 4.5 and MVC 4.0, JSON.NET has effectively pushed out the .NET native serializers to become the default serializer for Web API. JSON.NET is vastly more flexible than the built in DataContractJsonSerializer or the older JavaScript serializer. The DataContractSerializer in particular has been very problematic in the past because it can't deal with untyped objects for serialization - like values of type object, or anonymous types which are quite common these days. The JavaScript Serializer that came before it actually does support non-typed objects for serialization but it can't do anything with untyped data coming in from JavaScript and it's overall model of extensibility was pretty limited (JavaScript Serializer is what MVC uses for JSON responses). JSON.NET provides a robust JSON serializer that has both high level and low level components, supports binary JSON, JSON contracts, Xml to JSON conversion, LINQ to JSON and many, many more features than either of the built in serializers. ASP.NET Web API now uses JSON.NET as its default serializer and is now pulled in as a NuGet dependency into Web API projects, which is great. Dynamic JSON Parsing One of the features that I think is getting ever more important is the ability to serialize and deserialize arbitrary JSON content dynamically - that is without mapping the JSON captured directly into a .NET type as DataContractSerializer or the JavaScript Serializers do. Sometimes it isn't possible to map types due to the differences in languages (think collections, dictionaries etc), and other times you simply don't have the structures in place or don't want to create them to actually import the data. If this topic sounds familiar - you're right! I wrote about dynamic JSON parsing a few months back before JSON.NET was added to Web API and when Web API and the System.Net HttpClient libraries included the System.Json classes like JsonObject and JsonArray. With the inclusion of JSON.NET in Web API these classes are now obsolete and didn't ship with Web API or the client libraries. I re-linked my original post to this one. In this post I'll discus JToken, JObject and JArray which are the dynamic JSON objects that make it very easy to create and retrieve JSON content on the fly without underlying types. Why Dynamic JSON? So, why Dynamic JSON parsing rather than strongly typed parsing? Since applications are interacting more and more with third party services it becomes ever more important to have easy access to those services with easy JSON parsing. Sometimes it just makes lot of sense to pull just a small amount of data out of large JSON document received from a service, because the third party service isn't directly related to your application's logic most of the time - and it makes little sense to map the entire service structure in your application. For example, recently I worked with the Google Maps Places API to return information about businesses close to me (or rather the app's) location. The Google API returns a ton of information that my application had no interest in - all I needed was few values out of the data. Dynamic JSON parsing makes it possible to map this data, without having to map the entire API to a C# data structure. Instead I could pull out the three or four values I needed from the API and directly store it on my business entities that needed to receive the data - no need to map the entire Maps API structure. Getting JSON.NET The easiest way to use JSON.NET is to grab it via NuGet and add it as a reference to your project. You can add it to your project with: PM> Install-Package Newtonsoft.Json From the Package Manager Console or by using Manage NuGet Packages in your project References. As mentioned if you're using ASP.NET Web API or MVC 4 JSON.NET will be automatically added to your project. Alternately you can also go to the CodePlex site and download the latest version including source code: http://json.codeplex.com/ Creating JSON on the fly with JObject and JArray Let's start with creating some JSON on the fly. It's super easy to create a dynamic object structure with any of the JToken derived JSON.NET objects. The most common JToken derived classes you are likely to use are JObject and JArray. JToken implements IDynamicMetaProvider and so 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 JObject for the base object and songs and JArray for the actual collection of songs:[TestMethod] public void JObjectOutputTest() { // strong typed instance var jsonObject = new JObject(); // you can explicitly add values here using class interface jsonObject.Add("Entered", DateTime.Now); // or cast to dynamic to dynamically add/read properties dynamic album = jsonObject; album.AlbumName = "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap"; album.Artist = "AC/DC"; album.YearReleased = 1976; album.Songs = new JArray() as dynamic; dynamic song = new JObject(); song.SongName = "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap"; song.SongLength = "4:11"; album.Songs.Add(song); song = new JObject(); song.SongName = "Love at First Feel"; song.SongLength = "3:10"; album.Songs.Add(song); Console.WriteLine(album.ToString()); } This produces a complete JSON structure: { "Entered": "2012-08-18T13:26:37.7137482-10:00", "AlbumName": "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap", "Artist": "AC/DC", "YearReleased": 1976, "Songs": [ { "SongName": "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap", "SongLength": "4:11" }, { "SongName": "Love at First Feel", "SongLength": "3:10" } ] } Notice that JSON.NET does a nice job formatting the JSON, so it's easy to read and paste into blog posts :-). JSON.NET includes a bunch of configuration options that control how JSON is generated. Typically the defaults are just fine, but you can override with the JsonSettings object for most operations. The important thing about this code is that there's no explicit type used for holding the values to serialize to JSON. Rather the JSON.NET objects are the containers that receive the data as I build up my JSON structure dynamically, simply by adding properties. This means this code can be entirely driven at runtime without compile time restraints of structure for the JSON output. Here I use JObject to create a album 'object' and immediately cast it to dynamic. JObject() is kind of similar in behavior to ExpandoObject in that it allows you to add properties by simply assigning to them. Internally, JObject values are stored in pseudo collections of key value pairs that are exposed as properties through the IDynamicMetaObject interface exposed in JSON.NET's JToken base class. For objects the syntax is very clean - you add simple typed values as properties. For objects and arrays you have to explicitly create new JObject or JArray, cast them to dynamic and then add properties and items to them. 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 names and values you create are accessed consistently and without typos in your code. Note that you can also access the JObject instance directly (not as dynamic) and get access to the underlying JObject 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 JObject(); // 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"; JContainer (the base class for JObject and JArray) is a collection so you can also iterate over the properties at runtime easily:foreach (var item in jsonObject) { Console.WriteLine(item.Key + " " + item.Value.ToString()); } The functionality of the JSON objects are very similar to .NET's ExpandObject and if you used it before, you're already familiar with how the dynamic interfaces to the JSON objects works. Importing JSON with JObject.Parse() and JArray.Parse() The JValue structure supports importing JSON via the Parse() and Load() methods which can read JSON data from a string or various streams respectively. Essentially JValue 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:public void JValueParsingTest() { var jsonString = @"{""Name"":""Rick"",""Company"":""West Wind"", ""Entered"":""2012-03-16T00:03:33.245-10:00""}"; dynamic json = JValue.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 JObject class 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 JToken and I have to cast them to their appropriate types first before I can do type comparisons as in the Asserts at the end of the test method. This is required because of the way that dynamic types work which can't determine the type based on the method signature of the Assert.AreEqual(object,object) method. I have to either assign the dynamic value to a variable as I did above, or explicitly cast ( (string) json.Name) in the actual method call. 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"": 1976, ""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/…ASIN=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"": ""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"" } ] } ]"; JArray jsonVal = JArray.Parse(jsonString) as JArray; dynamic albums = jsonVal; 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); } JObject and JArray in ASP.NET Web API Of course these types also work in ASP.NET Web API controller methods. If you want you can accept parameters using these object or return them back to the server. The following contrived example receives dynamic JSON input, and then creates a new dynamic JSON object and returns it based on data from the first:[HttpPost] public JObject PostAlbumJObject(JObject jAlbum) { // dynamic input from inbound JSON dynamic album = jAlbum; // create a new JSON object to write out dynamic newAlbum = new JObject(); // Create properties on the new instance // with values from the first newAlbum.AlbumName = album.AlbumName + " New"; newAlbum.NewProperty = "something new"; newAlbum.Songs = new JArray(); foreach (dynamic song in album.Songs) { song.SongName = song.SongName + " New"; newAlbum.Songs.Add(song); } return newAlbum; } The raw POST request to the server looks something like this: POST http://localhost/aspnetwebapi/samples/PostAlbumJObject HTTP/1.1User-Agent: FiddlerContent-type: application/jsonHost: localhostContent-Length: 88 {AlbumName: "Dirty Deeds",Songs:[ { SongName: "Problem Child"},{ SongName: "Squealer"}]} and the output that comes back looks like this: { "AlbumName": "Dirty Deeds New", "NewProperty": "something new", "Songs": [ { "SongName": "Problem Child New" }, { "SongName": "Squealer New" } ]} The original values are echoed back with something extra appended to demonstrate that we're working with a new object. When you receive or return a JObject, JValue, JToken or JArray instance in a Web API method, Web API ignores normal content negotiation and assumes your content is going to be received and returned as JSON, so effectively the parameter and result type explicitly determines the input and output format which is nice. Dynamic to Strong Type Mapping You can also map JObject and JArray instances to a strongly typed object, so you can mix dynamic and static typing in the same piece of code. Using the 2 Album jsonString shown earlier, the code below takes an array of albums and picks out only a single album and casts that album to a static Album instance.[TestMethod] public void JsonParseToStrongTypeTest() { JArray albums = JArray.Parse(jsonString) as JArray; // pick out one album JObject jalbum = albums[0] as JObject; // Copy to a static Album instance Album album = jalbum.ToObject<Album>(); Assert.IsNotNull(album); Assert.AreEqual(album.AlbumName,jalbum.Value<string>("AlbumName")); Assert.IsTrue(album.Songs.Count > 0); } This is pretty damn useful for the scenario I mentioned earlier - you can read a large chunk of JSON and dynamically walk the property hierarchy down to the item you want to access, and then either access the specific item dynamically (as shown earlier) or map a part of the JSON to a strongly typed object. That's very powerful if you think about it - it leaves you in total control to decide what's dynamic and what's static. Strongly typed JSON Parsing With all this talk of dynamic let's not forget that JSON.NET of course also does strongly typed serialization which is drop dead easy. Here's a simple example on how to serialize and deserialize an object with JSON.NET:[TestMethod] public void StronglyTypedSerializationTest() { // Demonstrate deserialization from a raw string var album = new Album() { AlbumName = "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap", Artist = "AC/DC", Entered = DateTime.Now, YearReleased = 1976, Songs = new List<Song>() { new Song() { SongName = "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap", SongLength = "4:11" }, new Song() { SongName = "Love at First Feel", SongLength = "3:10" } } }; // serialize to string string json2 = JsonConvert.SerializeObject(album,Formatting.Indented); Console.WriteLine(json2); // make sure we can serialize back var album2 = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<Album>(json2); Assert.IsNotNull(album2); Assert.IsTrue(album2.AlbumName == "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap"); Assert.IsTrue(album2.Songs.Count == 2); } JsonConvert is a high level static class that wraps lower level functionality, but you can also use the JsonSerializer class, which allows you to serialize/parse to and from streams. It's a little more work, but gives you a bit more control. The functionality available is easy to discover with Intellisense, and that's good because there's not a lot in the way of documentation that's actually useful. Summary JSON.NET is a pretty complete JSON implementation with lots of different choices for JSON parsing from dynamic parsing to static serialization, to complex querying of JSON objects using LINQ. It's good to see this open source library getting integrated into .NET, and pushing out the old and tired stock .NET parsers so that we finally have a bit more flexibility - and extensibility - in our JSON parsing. Good to go! Resources Sample Test Project http://json.codeplex.com/© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2012Posted in .NET Web Api AJAX 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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Tools and Utilities for the .NET Developer

- by mbcrump

Tweet this list! Add a link to my site to your bookmarks to quickly find this page again! Add me to twitter! This is a list of the tools/utilities that I use to do my job/hobby. I wanted this page to load fast and contain information that only you care about. If I have missed a tool that you like, feel free to contact me and I will add it to the list. Also, this list took a lot of time to complete. Please do not steal my work, if you like the page then please link back to my site. I will keep the links/information updated as new tools/utilities are created. Windows/.NET Development – This is a list of tools that any Windows/.NET developer should have in his bag. I have used at some point in my career everything listed on this page and below is the tools worth keeping. Name Description License AnkhSVN Subversion support for Visual Studio. It also works with VS2010. Free Aurora XAML Designer One of the best XAML creation tools available. Has a ton of built in templates that you can copy/paste into VS2010. COST/Trial BeyondCompare Beyond Compare 3 is the ideal tool for comparing files and folders on your Windows or Linux system. Visualize changes in your code and carefully reconcile them. COST/Trial BuildIT Automated Task Tool Its main purpose is to automate tasks, whether it is the final packaging of a product, an automated daily build, maybe sending out a mailing list, even backing-up files. Free C Sharper for VB Convert VB to C#. COST CLRProfiler Analyze and improve the behavior of your .NET app. Free CodeRush Direct competitor to ReSharper, contains similar feature. This is one of those decide for yourself. COST/Trial Disk2VHD Disk2vhd is a utility that creates VHD (Virtual Hard Disk - Microsoft's Virtual Machine disk format) versions of physical disks for use in Microsoft Virtual PC or Microsoft Hyper-V virtual machines (VMs). Free Eazfuscator.NET Is a free obfuscator for .NET. The main purpose is to protect intellectual property of software. Free EQATEC Profiler Make your .NET app run faster. No source code changes are needed. Just point the profiler to your app, run the modified code, and get a visual report. COST Expression Studio 3/4 Comes with Web, Blend, Sketch Flow and more. You can create websites, produce beautiful XAML and more. COST/Trial Expresso The award-winning Expresso editor is equally suitable as a teaching tool for the beginning user of regular expressions or as a full-featured development environment for the experienced programmer or web designer with an extensive knowledge of regular expressions. Free Fiddler Fiddler is a web debugging proxy which logs all HTTP(s) traffic between your computer and the internet. Free Firebug Powerful Web development tool. If you build websites, you will need this. Free FxCop FxCop is an application that analyzes managed code assemblies (code that targets the .NET Framework common language runtime) and reports information about the assemblies, such as possible design, localization, performance, and security improvements. Free GAC Browser and Remover Easy way to remove multiple assemblies from the GAC. Assemblies registered by programs like Install Shield can also be removed. Free GAC Util The Global Assembly Cache tool allows you to view and manipulate the contents of the global assembly cache and download cache. Free HelpScribble Help Scribble is a full-featured, easy-to-use help authoring tool for creating help files from start to finish. You can create Win Help (.hlp) files, HTML Help (.chm) files, a printed manual and online documentation (on a web site) all from the same Help Scribble project. COST/Trial IETester IETester is a free Web Browser that allows you to have the rendering and JavaScript engines of IE9 preview, IE8, IE7 IE 6 and IE5.5 on Windows 7, Vista and XP, as well as the installed IE in the same process. Free iTextSharp iText# (iTextSharp) is a port of the iText open source java library for PDF generation written entirely in C# for the .NET platform. Use the iText mailing list to get support. Free Kaxaml Kaxaml is a lightweight XAML editor that gives you a "split view" so you can see both your XAML and your rendered content. Free LINQPad LinqPad lets you interactively query databases in a LINQ. Free Linquer Many programmers are familiar with SQL and will need a help in the transition to LINQ. Sometimes there are complicated queries to be written and Linqer can help by converting SQL scripts to LINQ. COST/Trial LiquidXML Liquid XML Studio 2010 is an advanced XML developers toolkit and IDE, containing all the tools needed for designing and developing XML schema and applications. COST/Trial Log4Net log4net is a tool to help the programmer output log statements to a variety of output targets. log4net is a port of the excellent log4j framework to the .NET runtime. We have kept the framework similar in spirit to the original log4j while taking advantage of new features in the .NET runtime. For more information on log4net see the features document. Free Microsoft Web Platform Installer The Microsoft Web Platform Installer 2.0 (Web PI) is a free tool that makes getting the latest components of the Microsoft Web Platform, including Internet Information Services (IIS), SQL Server Express, .NET Framework and Visual Web Developer easy. Free Mono Development Don't have Visual Studio - no problem! This is an open Source C# and .NET development environment for Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X Free Net Mass Downloader While it’s great that Microsoft has released the .NET Reference Source Code, you can only get it one file at a time while you’re debugging. If you’d like to batch download it for reading or to populate the cache, you’d have to write a program that instantiated and called each method in the Framework Class Library. Fortunately, .NET Mass Downloader comes to the rescue! Free nMap Nmap ("Network Mapper") is a free and open source (license) utility for network exploration or security auditing. Many systems and network administrators also find it useful for tasks such as network inventory, managing service upgrade schedules, and monitoring host or service uptime. Free NoScript (Firefox add-in) The NoScript Firefox extension provides extra protection for Firefox, Flock, Seamonkey and other Mozilla-based browsers: this free, open source add-on allows JavaScript, Java and Flash and other plug-ins to be executed only by trusted web sites of your choice (e.g. your online bank), and provides the most powerful Anti-XSS protection available in a browser. Free NotePad 2 Notepad2, a fast and light-weight Notepad-like text editor with syntax highlighting. This program can be run out of the box without installation, and does not touch your system's registry. Free PageSpy PageSpy is a small add-on for Internet Explorer that allows you to select any element within a webpage, select an option in the context menu, and view detailed information about both the coding behind the page and the element you selected. Free Phrase Express PhraseExpress manages your frequently used text snippets in customizable categories for quick access. Free PowerGui PowerGui is a free community for PowerGUI, a graphical user interface and script editor for Microsoft Windows PowerShell! Free Powershell Comes with Win7, but you can automate tasks by using the .NET Framework. Great for network admins. Free Process Explorer Ever wondered which program has a particular file or directory open? Now you can find out. Process Explorer shows you information about which handles and DLLs processes have opened or loaded. Also, included in the SysInterals Suite. Free Process Monitor Process Monitor is an advanced monitoring tool for Windows that shows real-time file system, Registry and process/thread activity. Free Reflector Explore and analyze compiled .NET assemblies, viewing them in C#, Visual Basic, and IL. This is an Essential for any .NET developer. Free Regular Expression Library Stuck on a Regular Expression but you think someone has already figured it out? Chances are they have. Free Regulator Regulator makes Regular Expressions easy. This is a must have for a .NET Developer. Free RenameMaestro RenameMaestro is probably the easiest batch file renamer you'll find to instantly rename multiple files COST ReSharper The one program that I cannot live without. Supports VS2010 and offers simple refactoring, code analysis/assistance/cleanup/templates. One of the few applications that is worth the $$$. COST/Trial ScrewTurn Wiki ScrewTurn Wiki allows you to create, manage and share wikis. A wiki is a collaboratively-edited, information-centered website: the most famous is Wikipedia. Free SharpDevelop What is #develop? SharpDevelop is a free IDE for C# and VB.NET projects on Microsoft's .NET platform. Free Show Me The Template Show Me The Template is a tool for exploring the templates, be their data, control or items panel, that comes with the controls built into WPF for all 6 themes. Free SnippetCompiler Compiles code snippets without opening Visual Studio. It does not support .NET 4. Free SQL Prompt SQL Prompt is a plug-in that increases how fast you can work with SQL. It provides code-completion for SQL server, reformatting, db schema information and snippets. Awesome! COST/Trial SQLinForm SQLinForm is an automatic SQL code formatter for all major databases including ORACLE, SQL Server, DB2, UDB, Sybase, Informix, PostgreSQL, Teradata, MySQL, MS Access etc. with over 70 formatting options. COST/OnlineFree SSMS Tools SSMS Tools Pack is an add-in for Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) including SSMS Express. Free Storm STORM is a free and open source tool for testing web services. Free Telerik Code Convertor Convert code from VB to C Sharp and Vice Versa. Free TurtoiseSVN TortoiseSVN is a really easy to use Revision control / version control / source control software for Windows.Since it's not an integration for a specific IDE you can use it with whatever development tools you like. Free UltraEdit UltraEdit is the ideal text, HTML and hex editor, and an advanced PHP, Perl, Java and JavaScript editor for programmers. UltraEdit is also an XML editor including a tree-style XML parser. An industry-award winner, UltraEdit supports disk-based 64-bit file handling (standard) on 32-bit Windows platforms (Windows 2000 and later). COST/Trial Virtual Windows XP Comes with some W7 version and allows you to run WinXP along side W7. Free VirtualBox Virtualization by Sun Microsystems. You can virtualize Windows, Linux and more. Free Visual Log Parser SQL queries against a variety of log files and other system data sources. Free WinMerge WinMerge is an Open Source differencing and merging tool for Windows. WinMerge can compare both folders and files, presenting differences in a visual text format that is easy to understand and handle. Free Wireshark Wireshark is one of the best network protocol analyzer's for Unix and windows. This has been used several times to get me out of a bind. Free XML Notepad 07 Old, but still one of my favorite XML viewers. Free Productivity Tools – This is the list of tools that I use to save time or quickly navigate around Windows. Name Description License AutoHotKey Automate almost anything by sending keystrokes and mouse clicks. You can write a mouse or keyboard macro by hand or use the macro recorder. Free CLCL CLCL is clipboard caching utility. Free Ditto Ditto is an extension to the standard windows clipboard. It saves each item placed on the clipboard allowing you access to any of those items at a later time. Ditto allows you to save any type of information that can be put on the clipboard, text, images, html, custom formats, ..... Free Evernote Remember everything from notes to photos. It will synch between computers/devices. Free InfoRapid Inforapid is a search tool that will display all you search results in a html like browser. If you click on a word in that browser, it will start another search to the word you clicked on. Handy if you want to trackback something to it's true origin. The word you looked for will be highlighted in red. Clicking on the red word will open the containing file in a text based viewer. Clicking on any word in the opened document will start another search on that word. Free KatMouse The prime purpose of the KatMouse utility is to enhance the functionality of mice with a scroll wheel, offering 'universal' scrolling: moving the mouse wheel will scroll the window directly beneath the mouse cursor (not the one with the keyboard focus, which is default on Windows OSes). This is a major increase in the usefulness of the mouse wheel. Free ScreenR Instant Screencast with nothing to download. Works with Mac or PC and free. Free Start++ Start++ is an enhancement for the Start Menu in Windows Vista. It also extends the Run box and the command-line with customizable commands. For example, typing "w Windows Vista" will take you to the Windows Vista page on Wikipedia! Free Synergy Synergy lets you easily share a single mouse and keyboard between multiple computers with different operating systems, each with its own display, without special hardware. It's intended for users with multiple computers on their desk since each system uses its own monitor(s). Free Texter Texter lets you define text substitution hot strings that, when triggered, will replace hotstring with a larger piece of text. By entering your most commonly-typed snippets of text into Texter, you can save countless keystrokes in the course of the day. Free Total Commander File handling, FTP, Archive handling and much more. Even works with Win3.11. COST/Trial Available Wizmouse WizMouse is a mouse enhancement utility that makes your mouse wheel work on the window currently under the mouse pointer, instead of the currently focused window. This means you no longer have to click on a window before being able to scroll it with the mouse wheel. This is a far more comfortable and practical way to make use of the mouse wheel. Free Xmarks Bookmark sync and search between computers. Free General Utilities – This is a list for power user users or anyone that wants more out of Windows. I usually install a majority of these whenever I get a new system. Name Description License µTorrent µTorrent is a lightweight and efficient BitTorrent client for Windows or Mac with many features. I use this for downloading LEGAL media. Free Audacity Audacity® is free, open source software for recording and editing sounds. It is available for Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows, GNU/Linux, and other operating systems. Learn more about Audacity... Also check our Wiki and Forum for more information. Free AVast Free FREE Antivirus. Free CD Burner XP Pro CDBurnerXP is a free application to burn CDs and DVDs, including Blu-Ray and HD-DVDs. It also includes the feature to burn and create ISOs, as well as a multilanguage interface. Free CDEX You can extract digital audio CDs into mp3/wav. Free Combofix Combofix is a freeware (a legitimate spyware remover created by sUBs), Combofix was designed to scan a computer for known malware, spyware (SurfSideKick, QooLogic, and Look2Me as well as any other combination of the mentioned spyware applications) and remove them. Free Cpu-Z Provides information about some of the main devices of your system. Free Cropper Cropper is a screen capture utility written in C#. It makes it fast and easy to grab parts of your screen. Use it to easily crop out sections of vector graphic files such as Fireworks without having to flatten the files or open in a new editor. Use it to easily capture parts of a web site, including text and images. It's also great for writing documentation that needs images of your application or web site. Free DropBox Drag and Drop files to sync between computers. Free DVD-Fab Converts/Copies DVDs/Blu-Ray to different formats. (like mp4, mkv, avi) COST/Trial Available FastStone Capture FastStone Capture is a powerful, lightweight, yet full-featured screen capture tool that allows you to easily capture and annotate anything on the screen including windows, objects, menus, full screen, rectangular/freehand regions and even scrolling windows/web pages. Free ffdshow FFDShow is a DirectShow decoding filter for decompressing DivX, XviD, H.264, FLV1, WMV, MPEG-1 and MPEG-2, MPEG-4 movies. Free Filezilla FileZilla Client is a fast and reliable cross-platform FTP, FTPS and SFTP client with lots of useful features and an intuitive graphical user interface. You can also download a server version. Free FireFox Web Browser, do you really need an explanation? Free FireGestures A customizable mouse gestures extension which enables you to execute various commands and user scripts with five types of gestures. Free FoxIt Reader Light weight PDF viewer. You should install this with the advanced setting or it will install a toolbar and setup some shortcuts. Free gSynchIt Synch Gmail and Outlook. Even supports Outlook 2010 32/64 bit COST/Trial Available Hulu Desktop At home or in a hotel, this has replaced my cable/satellite subscription. Free ImgBurn ImgBurn is a lightweight CD / DVD / HD DVD / Blu-ray burning application that everyone should have in their toolkit! Free Infrarecorder InfraRecorder is a free CD/DVD burning solution for Microsoft Windows. It offers a wide range of powerful features; all through an easy to use application interface and Windows Explorer integration. Free KeePass KeePass is a free open source password manager, which helps you to manage your passwords in a secure way. Free LastPass Another password management, synchronize between browsers, automatic form filling and more. Free Live Essentials One download and lots of programs including Mail, Live Writer, Movie Maker and more! Free Monitores MonitorES is a small windows utility that helps you to turnoff monitor display when you lock down your machine.Also when you lock your machine, it will pause all your running media programs & set your IM status message to "Away" / Custom message(via options) and restore it back to normal when you back. Free mRemote mRemote is a full-featured, multi-tab remote connections manager. Free Open Office OpenOffice.org 3 is the leading open-source office software suite for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, databases and more. It is available in many languages and works on all common computers. It stores all your data in an international open standard format and can also read and write files from other common office software packages. It can be downloaded and used completely free of charge for any purpose. Free Paint.NET Simple, intuitive, and innovative user interface for editing photos. Free Picasa Picasa is free photo editing software from Google that makes your pictures look great. Free Pidgin Pidgin is an easy to use and free chat client used by millions. Connect to AIM, MSN, Yahoo, and more chat networks all at once. Free PING PING is a live Linux ISO, based on the excellent Linux From Scratch (LFS) documentation. It can be burnt on a CD and booted, or integrated into a PXE / RIS environment. Free Putty PuTTY is an SSH and telnet client, developed originally by Simon Tatham for the Windows platform. Free Revo Uninstaller Revo Uninstaller Pro helps you to uninstall software and remove unwanted programs installed on your computer easily! Even if you have problems uninstalling and cannot uninstall them from "Windows Add or Remove Programs" control panel applet.Revo Uninstaller is a much faster and more powerful alternative to "Windows Add or Remove Programs" applet! It has very powerful features to uninstall and remove programs. Free Security Essentials Microsoft Security Essentials is a new, free consumer anti-malware solution for your computer. Free SetupVirtualCloneDrive Virtual CloneDrive works and behaves just like a physical CD/DVD drive, however it exists only virtually. Point to the .ISO file and it appears in Windows Explorer as a Drive. Free Shark 007 Codec Pack Play just about any file format with this download. Also includes my W7 Media Playlist Generator. Free Snagit 9 Screen Capture on steroids. Add arrows, captions, etc to any screenshot. COST/Trial Available SysinternalsSuite Go ahead and download the entire sys internals suite. I have mentioned multiple programs in this suite already. Free TeraCopy TeraCopy is a compact program designed to copy and move files at the maximum possible speed, providing the user with a lot of features. Free for Home TrueCrypt Free open-source disk encryption software for Windows 7/Vista/XP, Mac OS X, and Linux Free TweetDeck Fully featured Twitter client. Free UltraVNC UltraVNC is a powerful, easy to use and free software that can display the screen of another computer (via internet or network) on your own screen. The program allows you to use your mouse and keyboard to control the other PC remotely. It means that you can work on a remote computer, as if you were sitting in front of it, right from your current location. Free Unlocker Unlocks locked files. Pretty simple right? Free VLC Media Player VLC media player is a highly portable multimedia player and multimedia framework capable of reading most audio and video formats Free Windows 7 Media Playlist This program is special to my heart because I wrote it. It has been mentioned on podcast and various websites. It allows you to quickly create wvx video playlist for Windows Media Center. Free WinRAR WinRAR is a powerful archive manager. It can backup your data and reduce the size of email attachments, decompress RAR, ZIP and other files downloaded from Internet and create new archives in RAR and ZIP file format. COST/Trial Available Blogging – I use the following for my blog. Name Description License Insert Code for Windows Live Writer Insert Code for Windows Live Writer will format a snippet of text in a number of programming languages such as C#, HTML, MSH, JavaScript, Visual Basic and TSQL. Free LiveWriter Included in Live Essentials, but the ultimate in Windows Blogging Free PasteAsVSCode Plug-in for Windows Live Writer that pastes clipboard content as Visual Studio code. Preserves syntax highlighting, indentation and background color. Converts RTF, outputted by Visual Studio, into HTML. Free Desktop Management – The list below represent the best in Windows Desktop Management. Name Description License 7 Stacks Allows users to have "stacks" of icons in their taskbar. Free Executor Executor is a multi purpose launcher and a more advanced and customizable version of windows run. Free Fences Fences is a program that helps you organize your desktop and can hide your icons when they are not in use. Free RocketDock Rocket Dock is a smoothly animated, alpha blended application launcher. It provides a nice clean interface to drop shortcuts on for easy access and organization. With each item completely customizable there is no end to what you can add and launch from the dock. Free WindowsTab Tabbing is an essential feature of modern web browsers. Window Tabs brings the productivity of tabbed window management to all of your desktop applications. Free

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Differences Between NHibernate and Entity Framework

- by Ricardo Peres

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

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

- by Jason Fitzpatrick

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

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Quick guide to Oracle IRM 11g: Server configuration

- by Simon Thorpe

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

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