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Policy based design and defaults.

- by Noah Roberts

Hard to come up with a good title for this question. What I really need is to be able to provide template parameters with different number of arguments in place of a single parameter. Doesn't make a lot of sense so I'll go over the reason: template < typename T, template <typename,typename> class Policy = default_policy > struct policy_based : Policy<T, policy_based<T,Policy> > { // inherits R Policy::fun(arg0, arg1, arg2,...,argn) }; // normal use: policy_base<type_a> instance; // abnormal use: template < typename PolicyBased > // No T since T is always the same when you use this struct custom_policy {}; policy_base<type_b,custom_policy> instance; The deal is that for many abnormal uses the Policy will be based on one single type T, and can't really be parameterized on T so it makes no sense to take T as a parameter. For other uses, including the default, a Policy can make sense with any T. I have a couple ideas but none of them are really favorites. I thought that I had a better answer--using composition instead of policies--but then I realized I have this case where fun() actually needs extra information that the class itself won't have. This is like the third time I've refactored this silly construct and I've got quite a few custom versions of it around that I'm trying to consolidate. I'd like to get something nailed down this time rather than just fish around and hope it works this time. So I'm just fishing for ideas right now hoping that someone has something I'll be so impressed by that I'll switch deities. Anyone have a good idea? Edit: You might be asking yourself why I don't just retrieve T from the definition of policy based in the template for default_policy. The reason is that default_policy is actually specialized for some types T. Since asking the question I have come up with something that may be what I need, which will follow, but I could still use some other ideas. template < typename T > struct default_policy; template < typename T, template < typename > class Policy = default_policy > struct test : Policy<test<T,Policy>> {}; template < typename T > struct default_policy< test<T, default_policy> > { void f() {} }; template < > struct default_policy< test<int, default_policy> > { void f(int) {} }; Edit: Still messing with it. I wasn't too fond of the above since it makes default_policy permanently coupled with "test" and so couldn't be reused in some other method, such as with multiple templates as suggested below. It also doesn't scale at all and requires a list of parameters at least as long as "test" has. Tried a few different approaches that failed until I found another that seems to work so far: template < typename T > struct default_policy; template < typename T, template < typename > class Policy = default_policy > struct test : Policy<test<T,Policy>> {}; template < typename PolicyBased > struct fetch_t; template < typename PolicyBased, typename T > struct default_policy_base; template < typename PolicyBased > struct default_policy : default_policy_base<PolicyBased, typename fetch_t<PolicyBased>::type> {}; template < typename T, template < typename > class Policy > struct fetch_t< test<T,Policy> > { typedef T type; }; template < typename PolicyBased, typename T > struct default_policy_base { void f() {} }; template < typename PolicyBased > struct default_policy_base<PolicyBased,int> { void f(int) {} };

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how can i update view when fragment change?

- by user1524393

i have a activity that have 2 sherlockfragment in this The first two pages display fragments with custom list views which are built from xml from server using AsyncTask. However, when the app runs, only one list view is displayed, the other page is just blank public class VpiAbsTestActivity extends SherlockFragmentActivity { private static final String[] CONTENT = new String[] { "1","2"}; TestFragmentAdapter mAdapter; ViewPager mPager; PageIndicator mIndicator; protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) { setRequestedOrientation(ActivityInfo.SCREEN_ORIENTATION_PORTRAIT); super.onCreate(savedInstanceState); setContentView(R.layout.simple_tabs); mAdapter = new TestFragmentAdapter(getSupportFragmentManager()); mPager = (ViewPager)findViewById(R.id.pager); mPager.setAdapter(mAdapter); mIndicator = (TabPageIndicator)findViewById(R.id.indicator); mIndicator.setViewPager(mPager); mIndicator.notifyDataSetChanged(); } class TestFragmentAdapter extends FragmentPagerAdapter { private int mCount = CONTENT.length; public TestFragmentAdapter(FragmentManager fm) { super(fm); } @Override public Fragment getItem(int position) { switch(position) { case 0: return new customlist(); case 1: return new customlistnotuser(); default: return null; } } @Override public int getCount() { return mCount; } public CharSequence getPageTitle(int position) { return VpiAbsTestActivity.CONTENT[position % VpiAbsTestActivity.CONTENT.length].toUpperCase(); } @Override public void destroyItem(View collection, int position, Object view) { ((ViewPager) collection).removeView((View) view); } } } what can i update viewpager when change pages ? the customlistnotuser page likes customlist page but not show public class customlistnotuser extends SherlockFragment { // All static variables static final String URL = "url"; // XML node keys static final String KEY_TEST = "test"; // parent node static final String KEY_ID = "id"; static final String KEY_TITLE = "title"; static final String KEY_Description = "description"; static final String KEY_DURATION = "duration"; static final String KEY_THUMB_URL = "thumb_url"; static final String KEY_PRICE = "price"; static final String KEY_URL = "url"; private ProgressDialog pDialog; ListView list; LazyAdapterbeth adapter; XMLParser parser = new XMLParser(); public void onActivityCreated(Bundle savedInstanceState) { super.onActivityCreated(savedInstanceState); } public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) { super.onCreate(savedInstanceState); new getFeed().execute(); } public View onCreateView(LayoutInflater inflater, ViewGroup container, Bundle savedInstanceState) { View thisfragment = inflater.inflate(R.layout.dovomi, container, false); return thisfragment; } private class getFeed extends AsyncTask<Void, Void, Document> { } protected Document doInBackground(Void... params) { XMLParser parser = new XMLParser(); String xml = parser.getXmlFromUrl(URL); // getting XML from URL Document doc = parser.getDomElement(xml); // getting DOM element return doc; } protected void onPostExecute(Document doc) { ArrayList<HashMap<String, String>> songsList = new ArrayList<HashMap<String, String>>(); NodeList nl = doc.getElementsByTagName(KEY_TEST); // looping through all song nodes <song> for (int i = 0; i < nl.getLength(); i++) { // creating new HashMap HashMap<String, String> map = new HashMap<String, String>(); Element e = (Element) nl.item(i); // adding each child node to HashMap key => value map.put(KEY_ID, parser.getValue(e, KEY_ID)); map.put(KEY_TITLE, parser.getValue(e, KEY_TITLE)); map.put(KEY_Description, parser.getValue(e, KEY_Description)); map.put(KEY_DURATION, parser.getValue(e, KEY_DURATION)); map.put(KEY_THUMB_URL, parser.getValue(e, KEY_THUMB_URL)); map.put(KEY_PRICE, parser.getValue(e, KEY_PRICE)); map.put(KEY_URL, parser.getValue(e, KEY_URL)); // adding HashList to ArrayList songsList.add(map); pDialog.dismiss(); } list=(ListView)getActivity().findViewById(R.id.list); // Getting adapter by passing xml data ArrayList adapter=new LazyAdapterbeth(getActivity(), songsList); list.setAdapter(adapter); // Click event for single list row list.setOnItemClickListener(new OnItemClickListener() {

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how to use TinyMCE(rich text editor) in google-maps info window..

- by zjm1126

this is the demo rar file:http://omploader.org/vM3U1bA when i drag the red block to the google-maps ,it will be changed to a marker, and it will has TinyMCE when you click the info window, but my program is : it can not be written when i click it the second time, the first time: the second time(can not be written): and my code is : <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//WAPFORUM//DTD XHTML Mobile 1.0//EN" "http://www.wapforum.org/DTD/xhtml-mobile10.dtd"> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" > <head> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8"> <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width,minimum-scale=0.3,maximum-scale=5.0,user-scalable=yes"> </head> <body onload="initialize()" onunload="GUnload()"> <style type="text/css"> *{ margin:0; padding:0; } </style>  <div id="map_canvas" style="width: 500px; height: 300px;"></div> <div class=b style="width: 20px; height: 20px;background:red;position:absolute;left:700px;top:200px;"></div> <div class=b style="width: 20px; height: 20px;background:red;position:absolute;left:700px;top:200px;"></div> <script src="jquery-1.4.2.js" type="text/javascript"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="tiny_mce.js"></script> <script src="jquery-ui-1.8rc3.custom.min.js" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="http://maps.google.com/maps?file=api&v=2&key=ABQIAAAA-7cuV3vqp7w6zUNiN_F4uBRi_j0U6kJrkFvY4-OX2XYmEAa76BSNz0ifabgugotzJgrxyodPDmheRA&sensor=false"type="text/javascript"></script> <script type="text/javascript"> var aFn; //********** function initialize() { if (GBrowserIsCompatible()) { var map = new GMap2(document.getElementById("map_canvas")); var center=new GLatLng(39.9493, 116.3975); map.setCenter(center, 13); aFn=function(x,y){ var point =new GPoint(x,y) point = map.fromContainerPixelToLatLng(point); //console.log(point.x+" "+point.y) var marker = new GMarker(point,{draggable:true}); var a=$( '<form method="post" action="" style="height:100px;overflow:hidden;width:220px;">'+ '<textarea id="" class="mce" name="content" cols="22" rows="5" style="border:none">sss</textarea>'+ '</form>') a.click(function(){ // }) GEvent.addListener(marker, "click", function() { marker.openInfoWindowHtml(a[0]); }); /****************** GEvent.addListener(marker, 'click', function() { marker.openInfoWindowHtml('<div contentEditable="true" ' + 'style="height: 100px; overflow: auto;">' + 'wwww</div>'); }); ***************/ map.addOverlay(marker); /********** var marker = new GMarker(point, {draggable: true}); GEvent.addListener(marker, "dragstart", function() { map.closeInfoWindow(); }); GEvent.addListener(marker, "dragend", function() { marker.openInfoWindowHtml("????..."); }); map.addOverlay(marker); //*/ } $(".b").draggable({ revert: true, revertDuration: 0 }); $("#map_canvas").droppable({ drop: function(event,ui) { //console.log(ui.offset.left+' '+ui.offset.top) aFn(event.pageX-$("#map_canvas").offset().left,event.pageY-$("#map_canvas").offset().top); } }); } } //********** $(".mce").live("click", function(){ var once=0; mce(); }); function mce(once){ if(once)return; tinyMCE.init({ // General options mode : "textareas", theme : "advanced", plugins : "safari,pagebreak,style,layer,table,save,advhr,advimage,advlink,emotions,iespell,inlinepopups,insertdatetime,preview,media,searchreplace,print,contextmenu,paste,directionality,fullscreen,noneditable,visualchars,nonbreaking,xhtmlxtras,template", // Theme options theme_advanced_buttons1 : "bold,forecolor,|,justifyleft,justifycenter,justifyright,|,fontsizeselect", theme_advanced_buttons2 : "", theme_advanced_buttons3 : "", theme_advanced_buttons4 : "", theme_advanced_toolbar_location : "top", theme_advanced_toolbar_align : "left", theme_advanced_statusbar_location : "bottom", theme_advanced_resizing : true, // Example content CSS (should be your site CSS) content_css : "css/example.css", // Drop lists for link/image/media/template dialogs template_external_list_url : "js/template_list.js", external_link_list_url : "js/link_list.js", external_image_list_url : "js/image_list.js", media_external_list_url : "js/media_list.js", // Replace values for the template plugin template_replace_values : { username : "Some User", staffid : "991234" } }); once=1; } //********** </script> </body> </html>

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jQuery doesn't work after an Ajax post

- by user1758979

I'm using jQuery to sort a list of entries, between <LI></LI> tags, and then an Ajax post to validate the order and 'update' the page with the content returned. $.ajax({url: "./test.php?id=<?php echo $id; ?>&action=modify", contenttype: "application/x-www-form-urlencoded;charset=utf-8", data: {myJson: data}, type: 'post', success: function(data) { $('html').html(data); OnloadFunction (); } }); Then, I lose the ability to sort the list (I'm not sure if clear...). I tried to move the content of the $(document).ready inside the OnloadFunction (), and call it with <script>OnloadFunction ();</script> inside the block dealing with the modifications to do : $action= $_GET['action']; if ($action == "modify") { // Code here } but it doesn't work... I can't figure out how to do that. Could anyone help ? I stripped out the main part of the code to keep only the essential (filename: test.php) <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <head> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1"> <script type="text/javascript" src="jquery-1.8.2.min.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="jquery-ui-1.9.0.custom.min.js"></script> <script> $(document).ready(function(){ //alert("I am ready"); OnloadFunction (); }); function OnloadFunction () { $(function() { $("#SortColumn ul").sortable({ opacity: 0.6, cursor: 'move', update: function() {} }); }); //alert('OnloadFunction ends'); } function valider(){ var SortedId = new Array(); SortIdNb = 0; $('#SortColumn ul li').each(function() { SortedId.push(this.id); }); var data = { /* Real code contains an array with the <li> id */ CheckedId: "CheckedId", SortedId: SortedId, }; data = JSON.stringify(data); $.ajax({url: "./test.php?id=<?php echo $id; ?>&action=modify", contenttype: "application/x-www-form-urlencoded;charset=utf-8", data: {myJson: data}, type: 'post', success: function(data) { //alert(data); $('html').html(data); OnloadFunction (); } }); } </script> </head> <body> <? $action= $_GET['action']; $id = $_GET['id']; if ($id == 0) {$id=1;} $id += 1; if ($action == "modify") { echo "action: modify<br>"; echo "id (àvèc aççént$): ".$id."<br>"; // "(àvèc aççént$)" to check characters because character set is incorrect after the ajax post $data = json_decode($_POST['myJson'], true); // PHP code here to treat the new list send via the post and update the database print_r($data); } ?>  <div id="SortColumn"> <ul> <li id="recordsArray_1">recordsArray_1</li> <li id="recordsArray_2">recordsArray_2</li> <li id="recordsArray_3">recordsArray_3</li> <li id="recordsArray_4">recordsArray_4</li> <li id="recordsArray_5">recordsArray_5</li> </ul> </div> <input type="button" value="Modifier" onclick="valider();"> </body> </html>

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How do I get a JComponent to resize after calling `setVisible(true)`?

- by iWerner

Our application displays a 2D view of our data (mainly maps) and then allows the user to change to a 3D view. The 2D and 3D views are generated by custom C++ code that is SWIG'ed into our Swing GUI and wrapped within a JComponent. These JComponents are then displayed within another parent JComponent. Our problem is that when we change from the 2D to the 3D view and then back to the 2D view, when we resize the window the 2D view does not get resized. The resize events don't get sent to the 2D view. Our application runs under Linux (Fedora 11). We're running Java version 1.6.0_12. Here is some sample code in which I've replaced the 2D view and 3D view with two 2 JButtons, that produces the same behaviour. Once you go to 3D and then back to 2D, resizing the window does not cause the 2D view to be resized. /* TestFrame.java * Compile with: $ javac TestFrame.java * Run with: $ java TestFrame */ import java.awt.BorderLayout; import java.awt.Container; import java.awt.event.ComponentEvent; import java.awt.event.ComponentListener; import javax.swing.JButton; public class TestFrame extends javax.swing.JFrame { private boolean mode2D = true; private JButton view2D = null; private JButton view3D = null; private Container parent = null; public TestFrame() { initComponents(); containerPanel.setLayout(new BorderLayout()); view2D = new JButton("2D View"); view2D.addComponentListener(new MyListener("2D VIEW")); containerPanel.add(view2D); } private void changerButtonActionPerformed(java.awt.event.ActionEvent evt) { if (parent == null) { parent = view2D.getParent(); } if (mode2D) { System.out.println("Going from 2D to 3D"); view2D.setVisible(false); if (view3D != null) { view3D.setVisible(true); } else { view3D = new JButton("3D View"); view3D.addComponentListener(new MyListener("3D VIEW")); parent.add(view3D); } ((JButton) evt.getSource()).setText("Change to 2D"); mode2D = false; } else { System.out.println("Going from 3D to 2D"); view3D.setVisible(false); view2D.setVisible(true); ((JButton) evt.getSource()).setText("Change to 3D"); mode2D = true; } } public static void main(String args[]) { java.awt.EventQueue.invokeLater(new Runnable() { public void run() { new TestFrame().setVisible(true); } }); } private javax.swing.JPanel containerPanel; private javax.swing.JButton changerButton; private class MyListener implements ComponentListener { private String name; public MyListener(String name) { this.name = name; } @Override public void componentHidden(ComponentEvent event) { System.out.println("@@@ [" + name + "] component Hidden"); } @Override public void componentResized(ComponentEvent event) { System.out.println("@@@ [" + name + "] component Resized"); } @Override public void componentShown(ComponentEvent event) { System.out.println("@@@ [" + name + "] component Shown"); } @Override public void componentMoved(ComponentEvent event) { System.out.println("@@@ [" + name + "] component Moved"); } }; @SuppressWarnings("unchecked") private void initComponents() { containerPanel = new javax.swing.JPanel(); changerButton = new javax.swing.JButton(); setDefaultCloseOperation(javax.swing.WindowConstants.EXIT_ON_CLOSE); containerPanel.setBorder(new javax.swing.border.MatteBorder(null)); javax.swing.GroupLayout containerPanelLayout = new javax.swing.GroupLayout(containerPanel); containerPanel.setLayout(containerPanelLayout); containerPanelLayout.setHorizontalGroup( containerPanelLayout.createParallelGroup(javax.swing.GroupLayout.Alignment.LEADING) .addGap(0, 374, Short.MAX_VALUE) ); containerPanelLayout.setVerticalGroup( containerPanelLayout.createParallelGroup(javax.swing.GroupLayout.Alignment.LEADING) .addGap(0, 239, Short.MAX_VALUE) ); changerButton.setText("Change to 3D"); changerButton.addActionListener(new java.awt.event.ActionListener() { public void actionPerformed(java.awt.event.ActionEvent evt) { changerButtonActionPerformed(evt); } }); javax.swing.GroupLayout layout = new javax.swing.GroupLayout(getContentPane()); getContentPane().setLayout(layout); layout.setHorizontalGroup( layout.createParallelGroup(javax.swing.GroupLayout.Alignment.LEADING) .addGroup(layout.createSequentialGroup() .addContainerGap() .addGroup(layout.createParallelGroup(javax.swing.GroupLayout.Alignment.LEADING) .addComponent(containerPanel, javax.swing.GroupLayout.DEFAULT_SIZE, javax.swing.GroupLayout.DEFAULT_SIZE, Short.MAX_VALUE) .addComponent(changerButton)) .addContainerGap()) ); layout.setVerticalGroup( layout.createParallelGroup(javax.swing.GroupLayout.Alignment.LEADING) .addGroup(layout.createSequentialGroup() .addContainerGap() .addComponent(containerPanel, javax.swing.GroupLayout.DEFAULT_SIZE, javax.swing.GroupLayout.DEFAULT_SIZE, Short.MAX_VALUE) .addPreferredGap(javax.swing.LayoutStyle.ComponentPlacement.RELATED) .addComponent(changerButton) .addContainerGap()) ); pack(); } } (My apologies for the Netbeans generated GUI code) I should mention that when we call parent.remove(view2D) and parent.add(view3D) to change the views the X Windows ID of our 3D view changes and we're unable to get our 3D view back. Therefore parent.remove(view2D) and parent.add(view3D) is not really a solution and we have to call setVisible(false) and setVisible(true) on the JComponents that contain our 2D and 3D views in order to hide and show them. Any help will be greatly appreciated.

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My application crashing Please help me out.

- by kiran kumar

My Application get crashing ... its loading data of all the cities... and when i click its displaying my detailed view controller.... when iam getting back from my controller... and selecting another city my application get crashed.. Please help me out. To get idea i am pasting my code. #import "CityNameViewController.h" #import "Cities.h" #import "XMLParser.h" #import "PartyTemperature_AppDelegate.h" #import "CityEventViewController.h" @implementation CityNameViewController //@synthesize aCities; @synthesize appDelegate; @synthesize currentIndex; @synthesize aCities; /* // The designated initializer. Override if you create the controller programmatically and want to perform customization that is not appropriate for viewDidLoad. - (id)initWithNibName:(NSString *)nibNameOrNil bundle:(NSBundle *)nibBundleOrNil { if ((self = [super initWithNibName:nibNameOrNil bundle:nibBundleOrNil])) { // Custom initialization } return self; } */ // Implement viewDidLoad to do additional setup after loading the view, typically from a nib. - (void)viewDidLoad { [super viewDidLoad]; self.title=@"Cities"; appDelegate=(PartyTemperature_AppDelegate *)[[UIApplication sharedApplication]delegate]; } /* // Override to allow orientations other than the default portrait orientation. - (BOOL)shouldAutorotateToInterfaceOrientation:(UIInterfaceOrientation)interfaceOrientation { // Return YES for supported orientations return (interfaceOrientation == UIInterfaceOrientationPortrait); } */ - (NSInteger)numberOfSectionsInTableView:(UITableView *)tableView { // Return the number of sections. return 1; } - (NSInteger)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView numberOfRowsInSection:(NSInteger)section { // Return the number of rows in the section. return [appDelegate.cityListArray count]; } - (CGFloat)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView heightForRowAtIndexPath:(NSIndexPath *)indexPath { return 95.0f; } - (void)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView willDisplayCell:(UITableViewCell *)cell forRowAtIndexPath:(NSIndexPath *)indexPath { cell.accessoryType=UITableViewCellAccessoryDisclosureIndicator; cell.textLabel.textColor = [[[UIColor alloc] initWithRed:0.2 green:0.2 blue:0.6 alpha:1] autorelease]; cell.detailTextLabel.textColor = [UIColor blackColor]; cell.detailTextLabel.font=[UIFont systemFontOfSize:10]; if (indexPath.row %2 == 1) { cell.backgroundColor = [[[UIColor alloc] initWithRed:0.87f green:0.87f blue:0.87f alpha:1.0f] autorelease]; } else { cell.backgroundColor = [[[UIColor alloc] initWithRed:0.97f green:0.97f blue:0.97f alpha:1.0f] autorelease]; } } // Customize the appearance of table view cells. - (UITableViewCell *)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView cellForRowAtIndexPath:(NSIndexPath *)indexPath { static NSString *CellIdentifier = @"Cell"; UITableViewCell *cell = [tableView dequeueReusableCellWithIdentifier:CellIdentifier]; if (cell == nil) { cell = [[[UITableViewCell alloc] initWithStyle:UITableViewCellStyleSubtitle reuseIdentifier:CellIdentifier] autorelease]; cell.selectionStyle= UITableViewCellSelectionStyleBlue; // cell.accessoryType=UITableViewCellAccessoryDisclosureIndicator; cell.backgroundColor=[UIColor blueColor]; } // aCities=[appDelegate.cityListArray objectAtIndex:indexPath.row]; // cell.textLabel.text=aCities.city_Name; cell.textLabel.text=[[appDelegate.cityListArray objectAtIndex:indexPath.row]city_Name]; return cell; } - (void)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView didSelectRowAtIndexPath:(NSIndexPath *)indexPath{ //http://compliantbox.com/party_temperature/citysearch.php?city=Amsterdam&latitude=52.366125&longitude=4.899171 NSString *url; aCities=[appDelegate.cityListArray objectAtIndex:indexPath.row]; if ([appDelegate.cityListArray count]>0){ url=@"http://compliantbox.com/party_temperature/citysearch.php?city="; url=[url stringByAppendingString:aCities.city_Name]; url=[url stringByAppendingString:@"&latitude=52.366125&longitude=4.899171"]; NSLog(@"url value is %@",url); [self parseCityName:[[NSURL alloc]initWithString:url]]; } } -(void)parseCityName:(NSURL *)url{ NSXMLParser *xmlParser=[[NSXMLParser alloc]initWithContentsOfURL:url]; XMLParser *parser=[[XMLParser alloc] initXMLParser]; [xmlParser setDelegate:parser]; BOOL success; success=[xmlParser parse]; if (success) { NSLog(@"Sucessfully parsed"); CityEventViewController *cityEventViewController=[[CityEventViewController alloc]initWithNibName:@"CityEventViewController" bundle:nil]; cityEventViewController.index=currentIndex; [self.navigationController pushViewController:cityEventViewController animated:YES]; [cityEventViewController release]; cityEventViewController=nil; } else { NSLog(@"Try it Idoit"); UIAlertView *alert=[[UIAlertView alloc] initWithTitle:@"Alert!" message:@"Event Not In Radius" delegate:self cancelButtonTitle:@"OK" otherButtonTitles:nil]; [alert show]; [alert release]; } } - (void)didReceiveMemoryWarning { // Releases the view if it doesn't have a superview. [super didReceiveMemoryWarning]; // Release any cached data, images, etc that aren't in use. } - (void)viewDidUnload { [super viewDidUnload]; // Release any retained subviews of the main view. // e.g. self.myOutlet = nil; } - (void)dealloc { [aCities release]; [super dealloc]; } @end And the error is * Terminating app due to uncaught exception 'NSRangeException', reason: ' -[NSMutableArray objectAtIndex:]: index 1 beyond bounds for empty array' ** Call stack at first throw:

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Does my basic PHP Socket Server need optimization?

- by Tom

Like many people, I can do a lot of things with PHP. One problem I do face constantly is that other people can do it much cleaner, much more organized and much more structured. This also results in much faster execution times and much less bugs. I just finished writing a basic PHP Socket Server (the real core), and am asking you if you can tell me what I should do different before I start expanding the core. I'm not asking about improvements such as encrypted data, authentication or multi-threading. I'm more wondering about questions like "should I maybe do it in a more object oriented way (using PHP5)?", or "is the general structure of the way the script works good, or should some things be done different?". Basically, "is this how the core of a socket server should work?" In fact, I think that if I just show you the code here many of you will immediately see room for improvements. Please be so kind to tell me. Thanks! #!/usr/bin/php -q <? // config $timelimit = 180; // amount of seconds the server should run for, 0 = run indefintely $address = $_SERVER['SERVER_ADDR']; // the server's external IP $port = 9000; // the port to listen on $backlog = SOMAXCONN; // the maximum of backlog incoming connections that will be queued for processing // configure custom PHP settings error_reporting(1); // report all errors ini_set('display_errors', 1); // display all errors set_time_limit($timelimit); // timeout after x seconds ob_implicit_flush(); // results in a flush operation after every output call //create master IPv4 based TCP socket if (!($master = socket_create(AF_INET, SOCK_STREAM, SOL_TCP))) die("Could not create master socket, error: ".socket_strerror(socket_last_error())); // set socket options (local addresses can be reused) if (!socket_set_option($master, SOL_SOCKET, SO_REUSEADDR, 1)) die("Could not set socket options, error: ".socket_strerror(socket_last_error())); // bind to socket server if (!socket_bind($master, $address, $port)) die("Could not bind to socket server, error: ".socket_strerror(socket_last_error())); // start listening if (!socket_listen($master, $backlog)) die("Could not start listening to socket, error: ".socket_strerror(socket_last_error())); //display startup information echo "[".date('Y-m-d H:i:s')."] SERVER CREATED (MAXCONN: ".SOMAXCONN.").\n"; //max connections is a kernel variable and can be adjusted with sysctl echo "[".date('Y-m-d H:i:s')."] Listening on ".$address.":".$port.".\n"; $time = time(); //set startup timestamp // init read sockets array $read_sockets = array($master); // continuously handle incoming socket messages, or close if time limit has been reached while ((!$timelimit) or (time() - $time < $timelimit)) { $changed_sockets = $read_sockets; socket_select($changed_sockets, $write = null, $except = null, null); foreach($changed_sockets as $socket) { if ($socket == $master) { if (($client = socket_accept($master)) < 0) { echo "[".date('Y-m-d H:i:s')."] Socket_accept() failed, error: ".socket_strerror(socket_last_error())."\n"; continue; } else { array_push($read_sockets, $client); echo "[".date('Y-m-d H:i:s')."] Client #".count($read_sockets)." connected (connections: ".count($read_sockets)."/".SOMAXCONN.")\n"; } } else { $data = @socket_read($socket, 1024, PHP_NORMAL_READ); //read a maximum of 1024 bytes until a new line has been sent if ($data === false) { //the client disconnected $index = array_search($socket, $read_sockets); unset($read_sockets[$index]); socket_close($socket); echo "[".date('Y-m-d H:i:s')."] Client #".($index-1)." disconnected (connections: ".count($read_sockets)."/".SOMAXCONN.")\n"; } else { if ($data = trim($data)) { //remove whitespace and continue only if the message is not empty switch ($data) { case "exit": //close connection when exit command is given $index = array_search($socket, $read_sockets); unset($read_sockets[$index]); socket_close($socket); echo "[".date('Y-m-d H:i:s')."] Client #".($index-1)." disconnected (connections: ".count($read_sockets)."/".SOMAXCONN.")\n"; break; default: //for experimental purposes, write the given data back socket_write($socket, "\n you wrote: ".$data); } } } } } } socket_close($master); //close the socket echo "[".date('Y-m-d H:i:s')."] SERVER CLOSED.\n"; ?>

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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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FreeBSD performance tuning. Sysctls, loader.conf, kernel

- by SaveTheRbtz

I wanted to share knowledge of tuning FreeBSD via sysctl.conf/loader.conf/KENCONF. It was initially based on Igor Sysoev's (author of nginx) presentation about FreeBSD tuning up to 100,000-200,000 active connections. Tunings are for FreeBSD-CURRENT. Since 7.2 amd64 some of them are tuned well by default. Prior 7.0 some of them are boot only (set via /boot/loader.conf) or does not exist at all. sysctl.conf: # No zero mapping feature # May break wine # (There are also reports about broken samba3) #security.bsd.map_at_zero=0 # If you have really busy webserver with apache13 you may run out of processes #kern.maxproc=10000 # Same for servers with apache2 / Pound #kern.threads.max_threads_per_proc=4096 # Max. backlog size kern.ipc.somaxconn=4096 # Shared memory // 7.2+ can use shared memory > 2Gb kern.ipc.shmmax=2147483648 # Sockets kern.ipc.maxsockets=204800 # Can cause this on older kernels: # http://old.nabble.com/Significant-performance-regression-for-increased-maxsockbuf-on-8.0-RELEASE-tt26745981.html#a26745981 ) kern.ipc.maxsockbuf=10485760 # Mbuf 2k clusters (on amd64 7.2+ 25600 is default) # For such high value vm.kmem_size must be increased to 3G kern.ipc.nmbclusters=262144 # Jumbo pagesize(_SC_PAGESIZE) clusters # Used as general packet storage for jumbo frames # can be monitored via `netstat -m` #kern.ipc.nmbjumbop=262144 # Jumbo 9k/16k clusters # If you are using them #kern.ipc.nmbjumbo9=65536 #kern.ipc.nmbjumbo16=32768 # For lower latency you can decrease scheduler's maximum time slice # default: stathz/10 (~ 13) #kern.sched.slice=1 # Increase max command-line length showed in `ps` (e.g for Tomcat/Java) # Default is PAGE_SIZE / 16 or 256 on x86 # This avoids commands to be presented as [executable] in `ps` # For more info see: http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/query-pr.cgi?pr=120749 kern.ps_arg_cache_limit=4096 # Every socket is a file, so increase them kern.maxfiles=204800 kern.maxfilesperproc=200000 kern.maxvnodes=200000 # On some systems HPET is almost 2 times faster than default ACPI-fast # Useful on systems with lots of clock_gettime / gettimeofday calls # See http://old.nabble.com/ACPI-fast-default-timecounter,-but-HPET-83--faster-td23248172.html # After revision 222222 HPET became default: http://svnweb.freebsd.org/base?view=revision&revision=222222 kern.timecounter.hardware=HPET # Small receive space, only usable on http-server, on file server this # should be increased to 65535 or even more #net.inet.tcp.recvspace=8192 # This is useful on Fat-Long-Pipes #net.inet.tcp.recvbuf_max=10485760 #net.inet.tcp.recvbuf_inc=65535 # Small send space is useful for http servers that serve small files # Autotuned since 7.x net.inet.tcp.sendspace=16384 # This is useful on Fat-Long-Pipes #net.inet.tcp.sendbuf_max=10485760 #net.inet.tcp.sendbuf_inc=65535 # Turn off receive autotuning # You can play with it. #net.inet.tcp.recvbuf_auto=0 #net.inet.tcp.sendbuf_auto=0 # This should be enabled if you going to use big spaces (>64k) # Also timestamp field is useful when using syncookies net.inet.tcp.rfc1323=1 # Turn this off on high-speed, lossless connections (LAN 1Gbit+) # If you set it there is no need in TCP_NODELAY sockopt (see man tcp) net.inet.tcp.delayed_ack=0 # This feature is useful if you are serving data over modems, Gigabit Ethernet, # or even high speed WAN links (or any other link with a high bandwidth delay product), # especially if you are also using window scaling or have configured a large send window. # Automatically disables on small RTT ( http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/cvsweb.cgi/src/sys/netinet/tcp_subr.c?#rev1.237 ) # This sysctl was removed in 10-CURRENT: # See: http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/msg06178.html #net.inet.tcp.inflight.enable=0 # TCP slowstart algorithm tunings # We assuming we have very fast clients #net.inet.tcp.slowstart_flightsize=100 #net.inet.tcp.local_slowstart_flightsize=100 # Disable randomizing of ports to avoid false RST # Before usage check SA here www.bsdcan.org/2006/papers/ImprovingTCPIP.pdf # (it's also says that port randomization auto-disables at some conn.rates, but I didn't checked it thou) #net.inet.ip.portrange.randomized=0 # Increase portrange # For outgoing connections only. Good for seed-boxes and ftp servers. net.inet.ip.portrange.first=1024 net.inet.ip.portrange.last=65535 # # stops route cache degregation during a high-bandwidth flood # http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en/books/handbook/securing-freebsd.html #net.inet.ip.rtexpire=2 net.inet.ip.rtminexpire=2 net.inet.ip.rtmaxcache=1024 # Security net.inet.ip.redirect=0 net.inet.ip.sourceroute=0 net.inet.ip.accept_sourceroute=0 net.inet.icmp.maskrepl=0 net.inet.icmp.log_redirect=0 net.inet.icmp.drop_redirect=1 net.inet.tcp.drop_synfin=1 # # There is also good example of sysctl.conf with comments: # http://www.thern.org/projects/sysctl.conf # # icmp may NOT rst, helpful for those pesky spoofed # icmp/udp floods that end up taking up your outgoing # bandwidth/ifqueue due to all that outgoing RST traffic. # #net.inet.tcp.icmp_may_rst=0 # Security net.inet.udp.blackhole=1 net.inet.tcp.blackhole=2 # IPv6 Security # For more info see http://www.fosslc.org/drupal/content/security-implications-ipv6 # Disable Node info replies # To see this vulnerability in action run `ping6 -a sglAac ::1` or `ping6 -w ::1` on unprotected node net.inet6.icmp6.nodeinfo=0 # Turn on IPv6 privacy extensions # For more info see proposal http://unix.derkeiler.com/Mailing-Lists/FreeBSD/net/2008-06/msg00103.html net.inet6.ip6.use_tempaddr=1 net.inet6.ip6.prefer_tempaddr=1 # Disable ICMP redirect net.inet6.icmp6.rediraccept=0 # Disable acceptation of RA and auto linklocal generation if you don't use them #net.inet6.ip6.accept_rtadv=0 #net.inet6.ip6.auto_linklocal=0 # Increases default TTL, sometimes useful # Default is 64 net.inet.ip.ttl=128 # Lessen max segment life to conserve resources # ACK waiting time in miliseconds # (default: 30000. RFC from 1979 recommends 120000) net.inet.tcp.msl=5000 # Max bumber of timewait sockets net.inet.tcp.maxtcptw=200000 # Don't use tw on local connections # As of 15 Apr 2009. Igor Sysoev says that nolocaltimewait has some buggy realization. # So disable it or now till get fixed #net.inet.tcp.nolocaltimewait=1 # FIN_WAIT_2 state fast recycle net.inet.tcp.fast_finwait2_recycle=1 # Time before tcp keepalive probe is sent # default is 2 hours (7200000) #net.inet.tcp.keepidle=60000 # Should be increased until net.inet.ip.intr_queue_drops is zero net.inet.ip.intr_queue_maxlen=4096 # Interrupt handling via multiple CPU, but with context switch. # You can play with it. Default is 1; #net.isr.direct=0 # This is for routers only #net.inet.ip.forwarding=1 #net.inet.ip.fastforwarding=1 # This speed ups dummynet when channel isn't saturated net.inet.ip.dummynet.io_fast=1 # Increase dummynet(4) hash #net.inet.ip.dummynet.hash_size=2048 #net.inet.ip.dummynet.max_chain_len # Should be increased when you have A LOT of files on server # (Increase until vfs.ufs.dirhash_mem becomes lower) vfs.ufs.dirhash_maxmem=67108864 # Note from commit http://svn.freebsd.org/base/head@211031 : # For systems with RAID volumes and/or virtualization envirnments, where # read performance is very important, increasing this sysctl tunable to 32 # or even more will demonstratively yield additional performance benefits. vfs.read_max=32 # Explicit Congestion Notification (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Explicit_Congestion_Notification) net.inet.tcp.ecn.enable=1 # Flowtable - flow caching mechanism # Useful for routers #net.inet.flowtable.enable=1 #net.inet.flowtable.nmbflows=65535 # Extreme polling tuning #kern.polling.burst_max=1000 #kern.polling.each_burst=1000 #kern.polling.reg_frac=100 #kern.polling.user_frac=1 #kern.polling.idle_poll=0 # IPFW dynamic rules and timeouts tuning # Increase dyn_buckets till net.inet.ip.fw.curr_dyn_buckets is lower net.inet.ip.fw.dyn_buckets=65536 net.inet.ip.fw.dyn_max=65536 net.inet.ip.fw.dyn_ack_lifetime=120 net.inet.ip.fw.dyn_syn_lifetime=10 net.inet.ip.fw.dyn_fin_lifetime=2 net.inet.ip.fw.dyn_short_lifetime=10 # Make packets pass firewall only once when using dummynet # i.e. packets going thru pipe are passing out from firewall with accept #net.inet.ip.fw.one_pass=1 # shm_use_phys Wires all shared pages, making them unswappable # Use this to lessen Virtual Memory Manager's work when using Shared Mem. # Useful for databases #kern.ipc.shm_use_phys=1 # ZFS # Enable prefetch. Useful for sequential load type i.e fileserver. # FreeBSD sets vfs.zfs.prefetch_disable to 1 on any i386 systems and # on any amd64 systems with less than 4GB of avaiable memory # For additional info check this nabble thread http://old.nabble.com/Samba-read-speed-performance-tuning-td27964534.html #vfs.zfs.prefetch_disable=0 # On highload servers you may notice following message in dmesg: # "Approaching the limit on PV entries, consider increasing either the # vm.pmap.shpgperproc or the vm.pmap.pv_entry_max tunable" vm.pmap.shpgperproc=2048 loader.conf: # Accept filters for data, http and DNS requests # Useful when your software uses select() instead of kevent/kqueue or when you under DDoS # DNS accf available on 8.0+ accf_data_load="YES" accf_http_load="YES" accf_dns_load="YES" # Async IO system calls aio_load="YES" # Linux specific devices in /dev # As for 8.1 it only /dev/full #lindev_load="YES" # Adds NCQ support in FreeBSD # WARNING! all ad[0-9]+ devices will be renamed to ada[0-9]+ # 8.0+ only #ahci_load="YES" #siis_load="YES" # FreeBSD 8.2+ # New Congestion Control for FreeBSD # http://caia.swin.edu.au/urp/newtcp/tools/cc_chd-readme-0.1.txt # http://www.ietf.org/proceedings/78/slides/iccrg-5.pdf # Initial merge commit message http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/msg31410.html #cc_chd_load="YES" # Increase kernel memory size to 3G. # # Use ONLY if you have KVA_PAGES in kernel configuration, and you have more than 3G RAM # Otherwise panic will happen on next reboot! # # It's required for high buffer sizes: kern.ipc.nmbjumbop, kern.ipc.nmbclusters, etc # Useful on highload stateful firewalls, proxies or ZFS fileservers # (FreeBSD 7.2+ amd64 users: Check that current value is lower!) #vm.kmem_size="3G" # If your server has lots of swap (>4Gb) you should increase following value # according to http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-hackers/2009-October/029616.html # Otherwise you'll be getting errors # "kernel: swap zone exhausted, increase kern.maxswzone" # kern.maxswzone="256M" # Older versions of FreeBSD can't tune maxfiles on the fly #kern.maxfiles="200000" # Useful for databases # Sets maximum data size to 1G # (FreeBSD 7.2+ amd64 users: Check that current value is lower!) #kern.maxdsiz="1G" # Maximum buffer size(vfs.maxbufspace) # You can check current one via vfs.bufspace # Should be lowered/upped depending on server's load-type # Usually decreased to preserve kmem # (default is 10% of mem) #kern.maxbcache="512M" # Sendfile buffers # For i386 only #kern.ipc.nsfbufs=10240 # FreeBSD 9+ # HPET "legacy route" support. It should allow HPET to work per-CPU # See http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/msg03603.html #hint.atrtc.0.clock=0 #hint.attimer.0.clock=0 #hint.hpet.0.legacy_route=1 # syncache Hash table tuning net.inet.tcp.syncache.hashsize=1024 net.inet.tcp.syncache.bucketlimit=512 net.inet.tcp.syncache.cachelimit=65536 # Increased hostcache # Later host cache can be viewed via net.inet.tcp.hostcache.list hidden sysctl # Very useful for it's RTT RTTVAR # Must be power of two net.inet.tcp.hostcache.hashsize=65536 # hashsize * bucketlimit (which is 30 by default) # It allocates 255Mb (1966080*136) of RAM net.inet.tcp.hostcache.cachelimit=1966080 # TCP control-block Hash table tuning net.inet.tcp.tcbhashsize=4096 # Disable ipfw deny all # Should be uncommented when there is a chance that # kernel and ipfw binary may be out-of sync on next reboot #net.inet.ip.fw.default_to_accept=1 # # SIFTR (Statistical Information For TCP Research) is a kernel module that # logs a range of statistics on active TCP connections to a log file. # See prerelease notes http://groups.google.com/group/mailing.freebsd.current/browse_thread/thread/b4c18be6cdce76e4 # and man 4 sitfr #siftr_load="YES" # Enable superpages, for 7.2+ only # Also read http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-hackers/2009-November/030094.html vm.pmap.pg_ps_enabled=1 # Usefull if you are using Intel-Gigabit NIC #hw.em.rxd=4096 #hw.em.txd=4096 #hw.em.rx_process_limit="-1" # Also if you have ALOT interrupts on NIC - play with following parameters # NOTE: You should set them for every NIC #dev.em.0.rx_int_delay: 250 #dev.em.0.tx_int_delay: 250 #dev.em.0.rx_abs_int_delay: 250 #dev.em.0.tx_abs_int_delay: 250 # There is also multithreaded version of em/igb drivers can be found here: # http://people.yandex-team.ru/~wawa/ # # for additional em monitoring and statistics use # sysctl dev.em.0.stats=1 ; dmesg # sysctl dev.em.0.debug=1 ; dmesg # Also after r209242 (-CURRENT) there is a separate sysctl for each stat variable; # Same tunings for igb #hw.igb.rxd=4096 #hw.igb.txd=4096 #hw.igb.rx_process_limit=100 # Some useful netisr tunables. See sysctl net.isr #net.isr.maxthreads=4 #net.isr.defaultqlimit=4096 #net.isr.maxqlimit: 10240 # Bind netisr threads to CPUs #net.isr.bindthreads=1 # # FreeBSD 9.x+ # Increase interface send queue length # See commit message http://svn.freebsd.org/viewvc/base?view=revision&revision=207554 #net.link.ifqmaxlen=1024 # Nicer boot logo =) loader_logo="beastie" And finally here is KERNCONF: # Just some of them, see also # cat /sys/{i386,amd64,}/conf/NOTES # This one useful only on i386 #options KVA_PAGES=512 # You can play with HZ in environments with high interrupt rate (default is 1000) # 100 is for my notebook to prolong it's battery life #options HZ=100 # Polling is goot on network loads with high packet rates and low-end NICs # NB! Do not enable it if you want more than one netisr thread #options DEVICE_POLLING # Eliminate datacopy on socket read-write # To take advantage with zero copy sockets you should have an MTU >= 4k # This req. is only for receiving data. # Read more in man zero_copy_sockets # Also this epic thread on kernel trap: # http://kerneltrap.org/node/6506 # Here Linus says that "anybody that does it that way (FreeBSD) is totally incompetent" #options ZERO_COPY_SOCKETS # Support TCP sign. Used for IPSec options TCP_SIGNATURE # There was stackoverflow found in KAME IPSec stack: # See http://secunia.com/advisories/43995/ # For quick workaround you can use `ipfw add deny proto ipcomp` options IPSEC # This ones can be loaded as modules. They described in loader.conf section #options ACCEPT_FILTER_DATA #options ACCEPT_FILTER_HTTP # Adding ipfw, also can be loaded as modules options IPFIREWALL # On 8.1+ you can disable verbose to see blocked packets on ipfw0 interface. # Also there is no point in compiling verbose into the kernel, because # now there is net.inet.ip.fw.verbose tunable. #options IPFIREWALL_VERBOSE #options IPFIREWALL_VERBOSE_LIMIT=10 options IPFIREWALL_FORWARD # Adding kernel NAT options IPFIREWALL_NAT options LIBALIAS # Traffic shaping options DUMMYNET # Divert, i.e. for userspace NAT options IPDIVERT # This is for OpenBSD's pf firewall device pf device pflog # pf's QoS - ALTQ options ALTQ options ALTQ_CBQ # Class Bases Queuing (CBQ) options ALTQ_RED # Random Early Detection (RED) options ALTQ_RIO # RED In/Out options ALTQ_HFSC # Hierarchical Packet Scheduler (HFSC) options ALTQ_PRIQ # Priority Queuing (PRIQ) options ALTQ_NOPCC # Required for SMP build # Pretty console # Manual can be found here http://forums.freebsd.org/showthread.php?t=6134 #options VESA #options SC_PIXEL_MODE # Disable reboot on Ctrl Alt Del #options SC_DISABLE_REBOOT # Change normal|kernel messages color options SC_NORM_ATTR=(FG_GREEN|BG_BLACK) options SC_KERNEL_CONS_ATTR=(FG_YELLOW|BG_BLACK) # More scroll space options SC_HISTORY_SIZE=8192 # Adding hardware crypto device device crypto device cryptodev # Useful network interfaces device vlan device tap #Virtual Ethernet driver device gre #IP over IP tunneling device if_bridge #Bridge interface device pfsync #synchronization interface for PF device carp #Common Address Redundancy Protocol device enc #IPsec interface device lagg #Link aggregation interface device stf #IPv4-IPv6 port # Also for my notebook, but may be used with Opteron device amdtemp # Same for Intel processors device coretemp # man 4 cpuctl device cpuctl # CPU control pseudo-device # Support for ECMP. More than one route for destination # Works even with default route so one can use it as LB for two ISP # For now code is unstable and panics (panic: rtfree 2) on route deletions. #options RADIX_MPATH # Multicast routing #options MROUTING #options PIM # Debug & DTrace options KDB # Kernel debugger related code options KDB_TRACE # Print a stack trace for a panic options KDTRACE_FRAME # amd64-only(?) options KDTRACE_HOOKS # all architectures - enable general DTrace hooks #options DDB #options DDB_CTF # all architectures - kernel ELF linker loads CTF data # Adaptive spining in lockmgr (8.x+) # See http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/msg10782.html options ADAPTIVE_LOCKMGRS # UTF-8 in console (8.x+) #options TEKEN_UTF8 # FreeBSD 8.1+ # Deadlock resolver thread # For additional information see http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/msg18124.html # (FYI: "resolution" is panic so use with caution) #options DEADLKRES # Increase maximum size of Raw I/O and sendfile(2) readahead #options MAXPHYS=(1024*1024) #options MAXBSIZE=(1024*1024) # For scheduler debug enable following option. # Debug will be available via `kern.sched.stats` sysctl # For more information see http://svnweb.freebsd.org/base/head/sys/conf/NOTES?view=markup #options SCHED_STATS If you are tuning network for maximum performance you may wish to play with ifconfig options like: # You can list all capabilities via `ifconfig -m` ifconfig [-]rxcsum [-]txcsum [-]tso [-]lro mtu In case you've enabled DDB in kernel config, you should edit your /etc/ddb.conf and add something like this to enable automatic reboot (and textdump as bonus): script kdb.enter.panic=textdump set; capture on; show pcpu; bt; ps; alltrace; capture off; call doadump; reset script kdb.enter.default=textdump set; capture on; bt; ps; capture off; call doadump; reset And do not forget to add ddb_enable="YES" to /etc/rc.conf Since FreeBSD 9 you can select to enable/disable flowcontrol on your NIC: # See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethernet_flow_control and # http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/msg07927.html for additional info ifconfig bge0 media auto mediaopt flowcontrol PS. Also most of FreeBSD's limits can be monitored by # vmstat -z and # limits PPS. variety of network counters can be monitored via # netstat -s In FreeBSD-9 netstat's -Q option appeared, try following command to display netisr stats # netstat -Q PPPS. also see # man 7 tuning PPPPS. I wanted to thank FreeBSD community, especially author of nginx - Igor Sysoev, nginx-ru@ and FreeBSD-performance@ mailing lists for providing useful information about FreeBSD tuning. FreeBSD WIP * Whats cooking for FreeBSD 7? * Whats cooking for FreeBSD 8? * Whats cooking for FreeBSD 9? So here is the question: What tunings are you using on yours FreeBSD servers? You can also post your /etc/sysctl.conf, /boot/loader.conf, kernel options, etc with description of its' meaning (do not copy-paste from sysctl -d). Don't forget to specify server type (web, smb, gateway, etc) Let's share experience!

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Loading jQuery Consistently in a .NET Web App

- by Rick Strahl

One thing that frequently comes up in discussions when using jQuery is how to best load the jQuery library (as well as other commonly used and updated libraries) in a Web application. Specifically the issue is the one of versioning and making sure that you can easily update and switch versions of script files with application wide settings in one place and having your script usage reflect those settings in the entire application on all pages that use the script. Although I use jQuery as an example here, the same concepts can be applied to any script library - for example in my Web libraries I use the same approach for jQuery.ui and my own internal jQuery support library. The concepts used here can be applied both in WebForms and MVC. Loading jQuery Properly From CDN Before we look at a generic way to load jQuery via some server logic, let me first point out my preferred way to embed jQuery into the page. I use the Google CDN to load jQuery and then use a fallback URL to handle the offline or no Internet connection scenario. Why use a CDN? CDN links tend to be loaded more quickly since they are very likely to be cached in user's browsers already as jQuery CDN is used by many, many sites on the Web. Using a CDN also removes load from your Web server and puts the load bearing on the CDN provider - in this case Google - rather than on your Web site. On the downside, CDN links gives the provider (Google, Microsoft) yet another way to track users through their Web usage. Here's how I use jQuery CDN plus a fallback link on my WebLog for example: <!DOCTYPE HTML> <html> <head> <script src="//ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.6.4/jquery.min.js"></script> <script> if (typeof (jQuery) == 'undefined') document.write(unescape("%3Cscript " + "src='/Weblog/wwSC.axd?r=Westwind.Web.Controls.Resources.jquery.js' %3E%3C/script%3E")); </script> <title>Rick Strahl's Web Log</title> ... </head> You can see that the CDN is referenced first, followed by a small script block that checks to see whether jQuery was loaded (jQuery object exists). If it didn't load another script reference is added to the document dynamically pointing to a backup URL. In this case my backup URL points at a WebResource in my Westwind.Web assembly, but the URL can also be local script like src="/scripts/jquery.min.js". Important: Use the proper Protocol/Scheme for for CDN Urls [updated based on comments] If you're using a CDN to load an external script resource you should always make sure that the script is loaded with the same protocol as the parent page to avoid mixed content warnings by the browser. You don't want to load a script link to an http:// resource when you're on an https:// page. The easiest way to use this is by using a protocol relative URL: <script src="//ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.6.4/jquery.min.js"></script> which is an easy way to load resources from other domains. This URL syntax will automatically use the parent page's protocol (or more correctly scheme). As long as the remote domains support both http:// and https:// access this should work. BTW this also works in CSS (with some limitations) and links. BTW, I didn't know about this until it was pointed out in the comments. This is a very useful feature for many things - ah the benefits of my blog to myself :-) Version Numbers When you use a CDN you notice that you have to reference a specific version of jQuery. When using local files you may not have to do this as you can rename your private copy of jQuery.js, but for CDN the references are always versioned. The version number is of course very important to ensure you getting the version you have tested with, but it's also important to the provider because it ensures that cached content is always correct. If an existing file was updated the updates might take a very long time to get past the locally cached content and won't refresh properly. The version number ensures you get the right version and not some cached content that has been changed but not updated in your cache. On the other hand version numbers also mean that once you decide to use a new version of the script you now have to change all your script references in your pages. Depending on whether you use some sort of master/layout page or not this may or may not be easy in your application. Even if you do use master/layout pages, chances are that you probably have a few of them and at the very least all of those have to be updated for the scripts. If you use individual pages for all content this issue then spreads to all of your pages. Search and Replace in Files will do the trick, but it's still something that's easy to forget and worry about. Personaly I think it makes sense to have a single place where you can specify common script libraries that you want to load and more importantly which versions thereof and where they are loaded from. Loading Scripts via Server Code Script loading has always been important to me and as long as I can remember I've always built some custom script loading routines into my Web frameworks. WebForms makes this fairly easy because it has a reasonably useful script manager (ClientScriptManager and the ScriptManager) which allow injecting script into the page easily from anywhere in the Page cycle. What's nice about these components is that they allow scripts to be injected by controls so components can wrap up complex script/resource dependencies more easily without having to require long lists of CSS/Scripts/Image includes. In MVC or pure script driven applications like Razor WebPages the process is more raw, requiring you to embed script references in the right place. But its also more immediate - it lets you know exactly which versions of scripts to use because you have to manually embed them. In WebForms with different controls loading resources this often can get confusing because it's quite possible to load multiple versions of the same script library into a page, the results of which are less than optimal… In this post I look a simple routine that embeds jQuery into the page based on a few application wide configuration settings. It returns only a string of the script tags that can be manually embedded into a Page template. It's a small function that merely a string of the script tags shown at the begging of this post along with some options on how that string is comprised. You'll be able to specify in one place which version loads and then all places where the help function is used will automatically reflect this selection. Options allow specification of the jQuery CDN Url, the fallback Url and where jQuery should be loaded from (script folder, Resource or CDN in my case). While this is specific to jQuery you can apply this to other resources as well. For example I use a similar approach with jQuery.ui as well using practically the same semantics. Providing Resources in ControlResources In my Westwind.Web Web utility library I have a class called ControlResources which is responsible for holding resource Urls, resource IDs and string contants that reference those resource IDs. The library also provides a few helper methods for loading common scriptscripts into a Web page. There are specific versions for WebForms which use the ClientScriptManager/ScriptManager and script link methods that can be used in any .NET technology that can embed an expression into the output template (or code for that matter). The ControlResources class contains mostly static content - references to resources mostly. But it also contains a few static properties that configure script loading: A Script LoadMode (CDN, Resource, or script url) A default CDN Url A fallback url They are static properties in the ControlResources class: public class ControlResources { /// <summary> /// Determines what location jQuery is loaded from /// </summary> public static JQueryLoadModes jQueryLoadMode = JQueryLoadModes.ContentDeliveryNetwork; /// <summary> /// jQuery CDN Url on Google /// </summary> public static string jQueryCdnUrl = "//ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.6.4/jquery.min.js"; /// <summary> /// jQuery CDN Url on Google /// </summary> public static string jQueryUiCdnUrl = "//ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jqueryui/1.8.16/jquery-ui.min.js"; /// <summary> /// jQuery UI fallback Url if CDN is unavailable or WebResource is used /// Note: The file needs to exist and hold the minimized version of jQuery ui /// </summary> public static string jQueryUiLocalFallbackUrl = "~/scripts/jquery-ui.min.js"; } These static properties are fixed values that can be changed at application startup to reflect your preferences. Since they're static they are application wide settings and respected across the entire Web application running. It's best to set these default in Application_Init or similar startup code if you need to change them for your application: protected void Application_Start(object sender, EventArgs e) { // Force jQuery to be loaded off Google Content Network ControlResources.jQueryLoadMode = JQueryLoadModes.ContentDeliveryNetwork; // Allow overriding of the Cdn url ControlResources.jQueryCdnUrl = "http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.6.2/jquery.min.js"; // Route to our own internal handler App.OnApplicationStart(); } With these basic settings in place you can then embed expressions into a page easily. In WebForms use: <!DOCTYPE html> <html> <head runat="server"> <%= ControlResources.jQueryLink() %> <script src="scripts/ww.jquery.min.js"></script> </head> In Razor use: <!DOCTYPE html> <html> <head> @Html.Raw(ControlResources.jQueryLink()) <script src="scripts/ww.jquery.min.js"></script> </head> Note that in Razor you need to use @Html.Raw() to force the string NOT to escape. Razor by default escapes string results and this ensures that the HTML content is properly expanded as raw HTML text. Both the WebForms and Razor output produce: <!DOCTYPE html> <html> <head> <script src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.6.2/jquery.min.js" type="text/javascript"></script> <script type="text/javascript"> if (typeof (jQuery) == 'undefined') document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='/WestWindWebToolkitWeb/WebResource.axd?d=-b6oWzgbpGb8uTaHDrCMv59VSmGhilZP5_T_B8anpGx7X-PmW_1eu1KoHDvox-XHqA1EEb-Tl2YAP3bBeebGN65tv-7-yAimtG4ZnoWH633pExpJor8Qp1aKbk-KQWSoNfRC7rQJHXVP4tC0reYzVw2&t=634535391996872492' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E"));</script> <script src="scripts/ww.jquery.min.js"></script> </head> which produces the desired effect for both CDN load and fallback URL. The implementation of jQueryLink is pretty basic of course: /// <summary> /// Inserts a script link to load jQuery into the page based on the jQueryLoadModes settings /// of this class. Default load is by CDN plus WebResource fallback /// </summary> /// <param name="url"> /// An optional explicit URL to load jQuery from. Url is resolved. /// When specified no fallback is applied /// </param> /// <returns>full script tag and fallback script for jQuery to load</returns> public static string jQueryLink(JQueryLoadModes jQueryLoadMode = JQueryLoadModes.Default, string url = null) { string jQueryUrl = string.Empty; string fallbackScript = string.Empty; if (jQueryLoadMode == JQueryLoadModes.Default) jQueryLoadMode = ControlResources.jQueryLoadMode; if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(url)) jQueryUrl = WebUtils.ResolveUrl(url); else if (jQueryLoadMode == JQueryLoadModes.WebResource) { Page page = new Page(); jQueryUrl = page.ClientScript.GetWebResourceUrl(typeof(ControlResources), ControlResources.JQUERY_SCRIPT_RESOURCE); } else if (jQueryLoadMode == JQueryLoadModes.ContentDeliveryNetwork) { jQueryUrl = ControlResources.jQueryCdnUrl; if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(jQueryCdnUrl)) { // check if jquery loaded - if it didn't we're not online and use WebResource fallbackScript = @"<script type=""text/javascript"">if (typeof(jQuery) == 'undefined') document.write(unescape(""%3Cscript src='{0}' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E""));</script>"; fallbackScript = string.Format(fallbackScript, WebUtils.ResolveUrl(ControlResources.jQueryCdnFallbackUrl)); } } string output = "<script src=\"" + jQueryUrl + "\" type=\"text/javascript\"></script>"; // add in the CDN fallback script code if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(fallbackScript)) output += "\r\n" + fallbackScript + "\r\n"; return output; } There's one dependency here on WebUtils.ResolveUrl() which resolves Urls without access to a Page/Control (another one of those features that should be in the runtime, not in the WebForms or MVC engine). You can see there's only a little bit of logic in this code that deals with potentially different load modes. I can load scripts from a Url, WebResources or - my preferred way - from CDN. Based on the static settings the scripts to embed are composed to be returned as simple string <script> tag(s). I find this extremely useful especially when I'm not connected to the internet so that I can quickly swap in a local jQuery resource instead of loading from CDN. While CDN loading with the fallback works it can be a bit slow as the CDN is probed first before the fallback kicks in. Switching quickly in one place makes this trivial. It also makes it very easy once a new version of jQuery rolls around to move up to the new version and ensure that all pages are using the new version immediately. I'm not trying to make this out as 'the' definite way to load your resources, but rather provide it here as a pointer so you can maybe apply your own logic to determine where scripts come from and how they load. You could even automate this some more by using configuration settings or reading the locations/preferences out of some sort of data/metadata store that can be dynamically updated instead via recompilation. FWIW, I use a very similar approach for loading jQuery UI and my own ww.jquery library - the same concept can be applied to any kind of script you might be loading from different locations. Hopefully some of you find this a useful addition to your toolset. Resources Google CDN for jQuery Full ControlResources Source Code ControlResource Documentation Westwind.Web NuGet This method is part of the Westwind.Web library of the West Wind Web Toolkit or you can grab the Web library from NuGet and add to your Visual Studio project. This package includes a host of Web related utilities and script support features. © Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2011Posted in ASP.NET jQuery Tweet (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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Why is Java EE 6 better than Spring ?

- by arungupta

Java EE 6 was released over 2 years ago and now there are 14 compliant application servers. In all my talks around the world, a question that is frequently asked is Why should I use Java EE 6 instead of Spring ? There are already several blogs covering that topic: Java EE wins over Spring by Bill Burke Why will I use Java EE instead of Spring in new Enterprise Java projects in 2012 ? by Kai Waehner (more discussion on TSS) Spring to Java EE migration (Part 1 and 2, 3 and 4 coming as well) by David Heffelfinger Spring to Java EE - A Migration Experience by Lincoln Baxter Migrating Spring to Java EE 6 by Bert Ertman and Paul Bakker at NLJUG Moving from Spring to Java EE 6 - The Age of Frameworks is Over at TSS Java EE vs Spring Shootout by Rohit Kelapure and Reza Rehman at JavaOne 2011 Java EE 6 and the Ewoks by Murat Yener Definite excuse to avoid Spring forever - Bert Ertman and Arun Gupta I will try to share my perspective in this blog. First of all, I'd like to start with a note: Thank you Spring framework for filling the interim gap and providing functionality that is now included in the mainstream Java EE 6 application servers. The Java EE platform has evolved over the years learning from frameworks like Spring and provides all the functionality to build an enterprise application. Thank you very much Spring framework! While Spring was revolutionary in its time and is still very popular and quite main stream in the same way Struts was circa 2003, it really is last generation's framework - some people are even calling it legacy. However my theory is "code is king". So my approach is to build/take a simple Hello World CRUD application in Java EE 6 and Spring and compare the deployable artifacts. I started looking at the official tutorial Developing a Spring Framework MVC Application Step-by-Step but it is using the older version 2.5. I wasn't able to find any updated version in the current 3.1 release. Next, I downloaded Spring Tool Suite and thought that would provide some template samples to get started. A least a quick search did not show any handy tutorials - either video or text-based. So I searched and found a link to their SVN repository at src.springframework.org/svn/spring-samples/. I tried the "mvc-basic" sample and the generated WAR file was 4.43 MB. While it was named a "basic" sample it seemed to come with 19 different libraries bundled but it was what I could find: ./WEB-INF/lib/aopalliance-1.0.jar./WEB-INF/lib/hibernate-validator-4.1.0.Final.jar./WEB-INF/lib/jcl-over-slf4j-1.6.1.jar./WEB-INF/lib/joda-time-1.6.2.jar./WEB-INF/lib/joda-time-jsptags-1.0.2.jar./WEB-INF/lib/jstl-1.2.jar./WEB-INF/lib/log4j-1.2.16.jar./WEB-INF/lib/slf4j-api-1.6.1.jar./WEB-INF/lib/slf4j-log4j12-1.6.1.jar./WEB-INF/lib/spring-aop-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar./WEB-INF/lib/spring-asm-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar./WEB-INF/lib/spring-beans-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar./WEB-INF/lib/spring-context-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar./WEB-INF/lib/spring-context-support-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar./WEB-INF/lib/spring-core-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar./WEB-INF/lib/spring-expression-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar./WEB-INF/lib/spring-web-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar./WEB-INF/lib/spring-webmvc-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar./WEB-INF/lib/validation-api-1.0.0.GA.jar And it is not even using any database! The app deployed fine on GlassFish 3.1.2 but the "@Controller Example" link did not work as it was missing the context root. With a bit of tweaking I could deploy the application and assume that the account got created because no error was displayed in the browser or server log. Next I generated the WAR for "mvc-ajax" and the 5.1 MB WAR had 20 JARs (1 removed, 2 added): ./WEB-INF/lib/aopalliance-1.0.jar./WEB-INF/lib/hibernate-validator-4.1.0.Final.jar./WEB-INF/lib/jackson-core-asl-1.6.4.jar./WEB-INF/lib/jackson-mapper-asl-1.6.4.jar./WEB-INF/lib/jcl-over-slf4j-1.6.1.jar./WEB-INF/lib/joda-time-1.6.2.jar./WEB-INF/lib/jstl-1.2.jar./WEB-INF/lib/log4j-1.2.16.jar./WEB-INF/lib/slf4j-api-1.6.1.jar./WEB-INF/lib/slf4j-log4j12-1.6.1.jar./WEB-INF/lib/spring-aop-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar./WEB-INF/lib/spring-asm-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar./WEB-INF/lib/spring-beans-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar./WEB-INF/lib/spring-context-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar./WEB-INF/lib/spring-context-support-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar./WEB-INF/lib/spring-core-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar./WEB-INF/lib/spring-expression-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar./WEB-INF/lib/spring-web-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar./WEB-INF/lib/spring-webmvc-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar./WEB-INF/lib/validation-api-1.0.0.GA.jar 2 more JARs for just doing Ajax. Anyway, deploying this application gave the following error: Caused by: java.lang.NoSuchMethodError: org.codehaus.jackson.map.SerializationConfig.<init>(Lorg/codehaus/jackson/map/ClassIntrospector;Lorg/codehaus/jackson/map/AnnotationIntrospector;Lorg/codehaus/jackson/map/introspect/VisibilityChecker;Lorg/codehaus/jackson/map/jsontype/SubtypeResolver;)V at org.springframework.samples.mvc.ajax.json.ConversionServiceAwareObjectMapper.<init>(ConversionServiceAwareObjectMapper.java:20) at org.springframework.samples.mvc.ajax.json.JacksonConversionServiceConfigurer.postProcessAfterInitialization(JacksonConversionServiceConfigurer.java:40) at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.applyBeanPostProcessorsAfterInitialization(AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.java:407) Seems like some incorrect repos in the "pom.xml". Next one is "mvc-showcase" and the 6.49 MB WAR now has 28 JARs as shown below: ./WEB-INF/lib/aopalliance-1.0.jar./WEB-INF/lib/aspectjrt-1.6.10.jar./WEB-INF/lib/commons-fileupload-1.2.2.jar./WEB-INF/lib/commons-io-2.0.1.jar./WEB-INF/lib/el-api-2.2.jar./WEB-INF/lib/hibernate-validator-4.1.0.Final.jar./WEB-INF/lib/jackson-core-asl-1.8.1.jar./WEB-INF/lib/jackson-mapper-asl-1.8.1.jar./WEB-INF/lib/javax.inject-1.jar./WEB-INF/lib/jcl-over-slf4j-1.6.1.jar./WEB-INF/lib/jdom-1.0.jar./WEB-INF/lib/joda-time-1.6.2.jar./WEB-INF/lib/jstl-api-1.2.jar./WEB-INF/lib/jstl-impl-1.2.jar./WEB-INF/lib/log4j-1.2.16.jar./WEB-INF/lib/rome-1.0.0.jar./WEB-INF/lib/slf4j-api-1.6.1.jar./WEB-INF/lib/slf4j-log4j12-1.6.1.jar./WEB-INF/lib/spring-aop-3.1.0.RELEASE.jar./WEB-INF/lib/spring-asm-3.1.0.RELEASE.jar./WEB-INF/lib/spring-beans-3.1.0.RELEASE.jar./WEB-INF/lib/spring-context-3.1.0.RELEASE.jar./WEB-INF/lib/spring-context-support-3.1.0.RELEASE.jar./WEB-INF/lib/spring-core-3.1.0.RELEASE.jar./WEB-INF/lib/spring-expression-3.1.0.RELEASE.jar./WEB-INF/lib/spring-web-3.1.0.RELEASE.jar./WEB-INF/lib/spring-webmvc-3.1.0.RELEASE.jar./WEB-INF/lib/validation-api-1.0.0.GA.jar The app at least deployed and showed results this time. But still no database! Next I tried building "jpetstore" and got the error: [ERROR] Failed to execute goal on project org.springframework.samples.jpetstore:Could not resolve dependencies for project org.springframework.samples:org.springframework.samples.jpetstore:war:1.0.0-SNAPSHOT: Failed to collect dependencies for [commons-fileupload:commons-fileupload:jar:1.2.1 (compile), org.apache.struts:com.springsource.org.apache.struts:jar:1.2.9 (compile), javax.xml.rpc:com.springsource.javax.xml.rpc:jar:1.1.0 (compile), org.apache.commons:com.springsource.org.apache.commons.dbcp:jar:1.2.2.osgi (compile), commons-io:commons-io:jar:1.3.2 (compile), hsqldb:hsqldb:jar:1.8.0.7 (compile), org.apache.tiles:tiles-core:jar:2.2.0 (compile), org.apache.tiles:tiles-jsp:jar:2.2.0 (compile), org.tuckey:urlrewritefilter:jar:3.1.0 (compile), org.springframework:spring-webmvc:jar:3.0.0.BUILD-SNAPSHOT (compile), org.springframework:spring-orm:jar:3.0.0.BUILD-SNAPSHOT (compile), org.springframework:spring-context-support:jar:3.0.0.BUILD-SNAPSHOT (compile), org.springframework.webflow:spring-js:jar:2.0.7.RELEASE (compile), org.apache.ibatis:com.springsource.com.ibatis:jar:2.3.4.726 (runtime), com.caucho:com.springsource.com.caucho:jar:3.2.1 (compile), org.apache.axis:com.springsource.org.apache.axis:jar:1.4.0 (compile), javax.wsdl:com.springsource.javax.wsdl:jar:1.6.1 (compile), javax.servlet:jstl:jar:1.2 (runtime), org.aspectj:aspectjweaver:jar:1.6.5 (compile), javax.servlet:servlet-api:jar:2.5 (provided), javax.servlet.jsp:jsp-api:jar:2.1 (provided), junit:junit:jar:4.6 (test)]: Failed to read artifact descriptor for org.springframework:spring-webmvc:jar:3.0.0.BUILD-SNAPSHOT: Could not transfer artifact org.springframework:spring-webmvc:pom:3.0.0.BUILD-SNAPSHOT from/to JBoss repository (http://repository.jboss.com/maven2): Access denied to: http://repository.jboss.com/maven2/org/springframework/spring-webmvc/3.0.0.BUILD-SNAPSHOT/spring-webmvc-3.0.0.BUILD-SNAPSHOT.pom It appears the sample is broken - maybe I was pulling from the wrong repository - would be great if someone were to point me at a good target to use here. With a 50% hit on samples in this repository, I started searching through numerous blogs, most of which have either outdated information (using XML-heavy Spring 2.5), some piece of configuration (which is a typical "feature" of Spring) is missing, or too much complexity in the sample. I finally found this blog that worked like a charm. This blog creates a trivial Spring MVC 3 application using Hibernate and MySQL. This application performs CRUD operations on a single table in a database using typical Spring technologies. I downloaded the sample code from the blog, deployed it on GlassFish 3.1.2 and could CRUD the "person" entity. The source code for this application can be downloaded here. More details on the application statistics below. And then I built a similar CRUD application in Java EE 6 using NetBeans wizards in a couple of minutes. The source code for the application can be downloaded here and the WAR here. The Spring Source Tool Suite may also offer similar wizard-driven capabilities but this blog focus primarily on comparing the runtimes. The lack of STS tutorials was slightly disappointing as well. NetBeans however has tons of text-based and video tutorials and tons of material even by the community. One more bit on the download size of tools bundle ... NetBeans 7.1.1 "All" is 211 MB (which includes GlassFish and Tomcat) Spring Tool Suite 2.9.0 is 347 MB (~ 65% bigger) This blog is not about the tooling comparison so back to the Java EE 6 version of the application .... In order to run the Java EE version on GlassFish, copy the MySQL Connector/J to glassfish3/glassfish/domains/domain1/lib/ext directory and create a JDBC connection pool and JDBC resource as: ./bin/asadmin create-jdbc-connection-pool --datasourceclassname \\ com.mysql.jdbc.jdbc2.optional.MysqlDataSource --restype \\ javax.sql.DataSource --property \\ portNumber=3306:user=mysql:password=mysql:databaseName=mydatabase \\ myConnectionPool ./bin/asadmin create-jdbc-resource --connectionpoolid myConnectionPool jdbc/myDataSource I generated WARs for the two projects and the table below highlights some differences between them: Java EE 6 Spring WAR File Size 0.021030 MB 10.87 MB (~516x) Number of files 20 53 (> 2.5x) Bundled libraries 0 36 Total size of libraries 0 12.1 MB XML files 3 5 LoC in XML files 50 (11 + 15 + 24) 129 (27 + 46 + 16 + 11 + 19) (~ 2.5x) Total .properties files 1 Bundle.properties 2 spring.properties, log4j.properties Cold Deploy 5,339 ms 11,724 ms Second Deploy 481 ms 6,261 ms Third Deploy 528 ms 5,484 ms Fourth Deploy 484 ms 5,576 ms Runtime memory ~73 MB ~101 MB Some points worth highlighting from the table ... 516x WAR file, 10x deployment time - With 12.1 MB of libraries (for a very basic application) bundled in your application, the WAR file size and the deployment time will naturally go higher. The WAR file for Spring-based application is 516x bigger and the deployment time is double during the first deployment and ~ 10x during subsequent deployments. The Java EE 6 application is fully portable and will run on any Java EE 6 compliant application server. 36 libraries in the WAR - There are 14 Java EE 6 compliant application servers today. Each of those servers provide all the functionality like transactions, dependency injection, security, persistence, etc typically required of an enterprise or web application. There is no need to bundle 36 libraries worth 12.1 MB for a trivial CRUD application. These 14 compliant application servers provide all the functionality baked in. Now you can also deploy these libraries in the container but then you don't get the "portability" offered by Spring in that case. Does your typical Spring deployment actually do that ? 3x LoC in XML - The number of XML files is about 1.6x and the LoC is ~ 2.5x. So much XML seems circa 2003 when the Java language had no annotations. The XML files can be further reduced, e.g. faces-config.xml can be replaced without providing i18n, but I just want to compare stock applications. Memory usage - Both the applications were deployed on default GlassFish 3.1.2 installation and any additional memory consumed as part of deployment/access was attributed to the application. This is by no means scientific but at least provides an initial ballpark. This area definitely needs more investigation. Another table that compares typical Java EE 6 compliant application servers and the custom-stack created for a Spring application ... Java EE 6 Spring Web Container ? 53 MB (tcServer 2.6.3 Developer Edition) Security ? 12 MB (Spring Security 3.1.0) Persistence ? 6.3 MB (Hibernate 4.1.0, required) Dependency Injection ? 5.3 MB (Framework) Web Services ? 796 KB (Spring WS 2.0.4) Messaging ? 3.4 MB (RabbitMQ Server 2.7.1) 936 KB (Java client 936) OSGi ? 1.3 MB (Spring OSGi 1.2.1) GlassFish and WebLogic (starting at 33 MB) 83.3 MB There are differentiating factors on both the stacks. But most of the functionality like security, persistence, and dependency injection is baked in a Java EE 6 compliant application server but needs to be individually managed and patched for a Spring application. This very quickly leads to a "stack explosion". The Java EE 6 servers are tested extensively on a variety of platforms in different combinations whereas a Spring application developer is responsible for testing with different JDKs, Operating Systems, Versions, Patches, etc. Oracle has both the leading OSS lightweight server with GlassFish and the leading enterprise Java server with WebLogic Server, both Java EE 6 and both with lightweight deployment options. The Web Container offered as part of a Java EE 6 application server not only deploys your enterprise Java applications but also provide operational management, diagnostics, and mission-critical capabilities required by your applications. The Java EE 6 platform also introduced the Web Profile which is a subset of the specifications from the entire platform. It is targeted at developers of modern web applications offering a reasonably complete stack, composed of standard APIs, and is capable out-of-the-box of addressing the needs of a large class of Web applications. As your applications grow, the stack can grow to the full Java EE 6 platform. The GlassFish Server Web Profile starting at 33MB (smaller than just the non-standard tcServer) provides most of the functionality typically required by a web application. WebLogic provides battle-tested functionality for a high throughput, low latency, and enterprise grade web application. No individual managing or patching, all tested and commercially supported for you! Note that VMWare does have a server, tcServer, but it is non-standard and not even certified to the level of the standard Web Profile most customers expect these days. Customers who choose this risk proprietary lock-in since VMWare does not seem to want to formally certify with either Java EE 6 Enterprise Platform or with Java EE 6 Web Profile but of course it would be great if they were to join the community and help their customers reduce the risk of deploying on VMWare software. Some more points to help you decide choose between Java EE 6 and Spring ... Freedom to choose container - There are 14 Java EE 6 compliant application servers today, with a variety of open source and commercial offerings. A Java EE 6 application can be deployed on any of those containers. So if you deployed your application on GlassFish today and would like to scale up with your demands then you can deploy the same application to WebLogic. And because of the portability of a Java EE 6 application, you can even take it a different vendor altogether. Spring requires a runtime which could be any of these app servers as well. But why use Spring when all the required functionality is already baked into the application server itself ? Spring also has a different definition of portability where they claim to bundle all the libraries in the WAR file and move to any application server. But we saw earlier how bloated that archive could be. The equivalent features in Spring runtime offerings (mainly tcServer) are not all open source, not as mature, and often require manual assembly. Vendor choice - The Java EE 6 platform is created using the Java Community Process where all the big players like Oracle, IBM, RedHat, and Apache are conritbuting to make the platform successful. Each application server provides the basic Java EE 6 platform compliance and has its own competitive offerings. This allows you to choose an application server for deploying your Java EE 6 applications. If you are not happy with the support or feature of one vendor then you can move your application to a different vendor because of the portability promise offered by the platform. Spring is a set of products from a single company, one price book, one support organization, one sustaining organization, one sales organization, etc. If any of those cause a customer headache, where do you go ? Java EE, backed by multiple vendors, is a safer bet for those that are risk averse. Production support - With Spring, typically you need to get support from two vendors - VMWare and the container provider. With Java EE 6, all of this is typically provided by one vendor. For example, Oracle offers commercial support from systems, operating systems, JDK, application server, and applications on top of them. VMWare certainly offers complete production support but do you really want to put all your eggs in one basket ? Do you really use tcServer ? ;-) Maintainability - With Spring, you are likely building your own distribution with multiple JAR files, integrating, patching, versioning, etc of all those components. Spring's claim is that multiple JAR files allow you to go à la carte and pick the latest versions of different components. But who is responsible for testing whether all these versions work together ? Yep, you got it, its YOU! If something does not work, who patches and maintains the JARs ? Of course, you! Commercial support for such a configuration ? On your own! The Java EE application servers manage all of this for you and provide a well-tested and commercially supported bundle. While it is always good to realize that there is something new and improved that updates and replaces older frameworks like Spring, the good news is not only does a Java EE 6 container offer what is described here, most also will let you deploy and run your Spring applications on them while you go through an upgrade to a more modern architecture. End result, you get the best of both worlds - keeping your legacy investment but moving to a more agile, lightweight world of Java EE 6. A message to the Spring lovers ... The complexity in J2EE 1.2, 1.3, and 1.4 led to the genesis of Spring but that was in 2004. This is 2012 and the name has changed to "Java EE 6" :-) There are tons of improvements in the Java EE platform to make it easy-to-use and powerful. Some examples: Adding @Stateless on a POJO makes it an EJB EJBs can be packaged in a WAR with no special packaging or deployment descriptors "web.xml" and "faces-config.xml" are optional in most of the common cases Typesafe dependency injection is now part of the Java EE platform Add @Path on a POJO allows you to publish it as a RESTful resource EJBs can be used as backing beans for Facelets-driven JSF pages providing full MVC Java EE 6 WARs are known to be kilobytes in size and deployed in milliseconds Tons of other simplifications in the platform and application servers So if you moved away from J2EE to Spring many years ago and have not looked at Java EE 6 (which has been out since Dec 2009) then you should definitely try it out. Just be at least aware of what other alternatives are available instead of restricting yourself to one stack. Here are some workshops and screencasts worth trying: screencast #37 shows how to build an end-to-end application using NetBeans screencast #36 builds the same application using Eclipse javaee-lab-feb2012.pdf is a 3-4 hours self-paced hands-on workshop that guides you to build a comprehensive Java EE 6 application using NetBeans Each city generally has a "spring cleanup" program every year. It allows you to clean up the mess from your house. For your software projects, you don't need to wait for an annual event, just get started and reduce the technical debt now! Move away from your legacy Spring-based applications to a lighter and more modern approach of building enterprise Java applications using Java EE 6. Watch this beautiful presentation that explains how to migrate from Spring -> Java EE 6: List of files in the Java EE 6 project: ./index.xhtml./META-INF./person./person/Create.xhtml./person/Edit.xhtml./person/List.xhtml./person/View.xhtml./resources./resources/css./resources/css/jsfcrud.css./template.xhtml./WEB-INF./WEB-INF/classes./WEB-INF/classes/Bundle.properties./WEB-INF/classes/META-INF./WEB-INF/classes/META-INF/persistence.xml./WEB-INF/classes/org./WEB-INF/classes/org/javaee./WEB-INF/classes/org/javaee/javaeemysql./WEB-INF/classes/org/javaee/javaeemysql/AbstractFacade.class./WEB-INF/classes/org/javaee/javaeemysql/Person.class./WEB-INF/classes/org/javaee/javaeemysql/Person_.class./WEB-INF/classes/org/javaee/javaeemysql/PersonController$1.class./WEB-INF/classes/org/javaee/javaeemysql/PersonController$PersonControllerConverter.class./WEB-INF/classes/org/javaee/javaeemysql/PersonController.class./WEB-INF/classes/org/javaee/javaeemysql/PersonFacade.class./WEB-INF/classes/org/javaee/javaeemysql/util./WEB-INF/classes/org/javaee/javaeemysql/util/JsfUtil.class./WEB-INF/classes/org/javaee/javaeemysql/util/PaginationHelper.class./WEB-INF/faces-config.xml./WEB-INF/web.xml List of files in the Spring 3.x project: ./META-INF ./META-INF/MANIFEST.MF./WEB-INF./WEB-INF/applicationContext.xml./WEB-INF/classes./WEB-INF/classes/log4j.properties./WEB-INF/classes/org./WEB-INF/classes/org/krams ./WEB-INF/classes/org/krams/tutorial ./WEB-INF/classes/org/krams/tutorial/controller ./WEB-INF/classes/org/krams/tutorial/controller/MainController.class ./WEB-INF/classes/org/krams/tutorial/domain ./WEB-INF/classes/org/krams/tutorial/domain/Person.class ./WEB-INF/classes/org/krams/tutorial/service ./WEB-INF/classes/org/krams/tutorial/service/PersonService.class ./WEB-INF/hibernate-context.xml ./WEB-INF/hibernate.cfg.xml ./WEB-INF/jsp ./WEB-INF/jsp/addedpage.jsp ./WEB-INF/jsp/addpage.jsp ./WEB-INF/jsp/deletedpage.jsp ./WEB-INF/jsp/editedpage.jsp ./WEB-INF/jsp/editpage.jsp ./WEB-INF/jsp/personspage.jsp ./WEB-INF/lib ./WEB-INF/lib/antlr-2.7.6.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/aopalliance-1.0.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/c3p0-0.9.1.2.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/cglib-nodep-2.2.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/commons-beanutils-1.8.3.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/commons-collections-3.2.1.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/commons-digester-2.1.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/commons-logging-1.1.1.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/dom4j-1.6.1.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/ejb3-persistence-1.0.2.GA.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/hibernate-annotations-3.4.0.GA.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/hibernate-commons-annotations-3.1.0.GA.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/hibernate-core-3.3.2.GA.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/javassist-3.7.ga.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/jstl-1.1.2.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/jta-1.1.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/junit-4.8.1.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/log4j-1.2.14.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/mysql-connector-java-5.1.14.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/persistence-api-1.0.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/slf4j-api-1.6.1.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/slf4j-log4j12-1.6.1.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/spring-aop-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/spring-asm-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/spring-beans-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/spring-context-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/spring-context-support-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/spring-core-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/spring-expression-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/spring-jdbc-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/spring-orm-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/spring-tx-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/spring-web-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/spring-webmvc-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/standard-1.1.2.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/xml-apis-1.0.b2.jar ./WEB-INF/spring-servlet.xml ./WEB-INF/spring.properties ./WEB-INF/web.xml So, are you excited about Java EE 6 ? Want to get started now ? Here are some resources: Java EE 6 SDK (including runtime, samples, tutorials etc) GlassFish Server Open Source Edition 3.1.2 (Community) Oracle GlassFish Server 3.1.2 (Commercial) Java EE 6 using WebLogic 12c and NetBeans (Video) Java EE 6 with NetBeans and GlassFish (Video) Java EE with Eclipse and GlassFish (Video)

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SimpleMembership, Membership Providers, Universal Providers and the new ASP.NET 4.5 Web Forms and ASP.NET MVC 4 templates

- by Jon Galloway

The ASP.NET MVC 4 Internet template adds some new, very useful features which are built on top of SimpleMembership. These changes add some great features, like a much simpler and extensible membership API and support for OAuth. However, the new account management features require SimpleMembership and won't work against existing ASP.NET Membership Providers. I'll start with a summary of top things you need to know, then dig into a lot more detail. Summary: SimpleMembership has been designed as a replacement for traditional the previous ASP.NET Role and Membership provider system SimpleMembership solves common problems people ran into with the Membership provider system and was designed for modern user / membership / storage needs SimpleMembership integrates with the previous membership system, but you can't use a MembershipProvider with SimpleMembership The new ASP.NET MVC 4 Internet application template AccountController requires SimpleMembership and is not compatible with previous MembershipProviders You can continue to use existing ASP.NET Role and Membership providers in ASP.NET 4.5 and ASP.NET MVC 4 - just not with the ASP.NET MVC 4 AccountController The existing ASP.NET Role and Membership provider system remains supported as is part of the ASP.NET core ASP.NET 4.5 Web Forms does not use SimpleMembership; it implements OAuth on top of ASP.NET Membership The ASP.NET Web Site Administration Tool (WSAT) is not compatible with SimpleMembership The following is the result of a few conversations with Erik Porter (PM for ASP.NET MVC) to make sure I had some the overall details straight, combined with a lot of time digging around in ILSpy and Visual Studio's assembly browsing tools. SimpleMembership: The future of membership for ASP.NET The ASP.NET Membership system was introduces with ASP.NET 2.0 back in 2005. It was designed to solve common site membership requirements at the time, which generally involved username / password based registration and profile storage in SQL Server. It was designed with a few extensibility mechanisms - notably a provider system (which allowed you override some specifics like backing storage) and the ability to store additional profile information (although the additional profile information was packed into a single column which usually required access through the API). While it's sometimes frustrating to work with, it's held up for seven years - probably since it handles the main use case (username / password based membership in a SQL Server database) smoothly and can be adapted to most other needs (again, often frustrating, but it can work). The ASP.NET Web Pages and WebMatrix efforts allowed the team an opportunity to take a new look at a lot of things - e.g. the Razor syntax started with ASP.NET Web Pages, not ASP.NET MVC. The ASP.NET Web Pages team designed SimpleMembership to (wait for it) simplify the task of dealing with membership. As Matthew Osborn said in his post Using SimpleMembership With ASP.NET WebPages: With the introduction of ASP.NET WebPages and the WebMatrix stack our team has really be focusing on making things simpler for the developer. Based on a lot of customer feedback one of the areas that we wanted to improve was the built in security in ASP.NET. So with this release we took that time to create a new built in (and default for ASP.NET WebPages) security provider. I say provider because the new stuff is still built on the existing ASP.NET framework. So what do we call this new hotness that we have created? Well, none other than SimpleMembership. SimpleMembership is an umbrella term for both SimpleMembership and SimpleRoles. Part of simplifying membership involved fixing some common problems with ASP.NET Membership. Problems with ASP.NET Membership ASP.NET Membership was very obviously designed around a set of assumptions: Users and user information would most likely be stored in a full SQL Server database or in Active Directory User and profile information would be optimized around a set of common attributes (UserName, Password, IsApproved, CreationDate, Comment, Role membership...) and other user profile information would be accessed through a profile provider Some problems fall out of these assumptions. Requires Full SQL Server for default cases The default, and most fully featured providers ASP.NET Membership providers (SQL Membership Provider, SQL Role Provider, SQL Profile Provider) require full SQL Server. They depend on stored procedure support, and they rely on SQL Server cache dependencies, they depend on agents for clean up and maintenance. So the main SQL Server based providers don't work well on SQL Server CE, won't work out of the box on SQL Azure, etc. Note: Cory Fowler recently let me know about these Updated ASP.net scripts for use with Microsoft SQL Azure which do support membership, personalization, profile, and roles. But the fact that we need a support page with a set of separate SQL scripts underscores the underlying problem. Aha, you say! Jon's forgetting the Universal Providers, a.k.a. System.Web.Providers! Hold on a bit, we'll get to those... Custom Membership Providers have to work with a SQL-Server-centric API If you want to work with another database or other membership storage system, you need to to inherit from the provider base classes and override a bunch of methods which are tightly focused on storing a MembershipUser in a relational database. It can be done (and you can often find pretty good ones that have already been written), but it's a good amount of work and often leaves you with ugly code that has a bunch of System.NotImplementedException fun since there are a lot of methods that just don't apply. Designed around a specific view of users, roles and profiles The existing providers are focused on traditional membership - a user has a username and a password, some specific roles on the site (e.g. administrator, premium user), and may have some additional "nice to have" optional information that can be accessed via an API in your application. This doesn't fit well with some modern usage patterns: In OAuth and OpenID, the user doesn't have a password Often these kinds of scenarios map better to user claims or rights instead of monolithic user roles For many sites, profile or other non-traditional information is very important and needs to come from somewhere other than an API call that maps to a database blob What would work a lot better here is a system in which you were able to define your users, rights, and other attributes however you wanted and the membership system worked with your model - not the other way around. Requires specific schema, overflow in blob columns I've already mentioned this a few times, but it bears calling out separately - ASP.NET Membership focuses on SQL Server storage, and that storage is based on a very specific database schema. SimpleMembership as a better membership system As you might have guessed, SimpleMembership was designed to address the above problems. Works with your Schema As Matthew Osborn explains in his Using SimpleMembership With ASP.NET WebPages post, SimpleMembership is designed to integrate with your database schema: All SimpleMembership requires is that there are two columns on your users table so that we can hook up to it – an “ID” column and a “username” column. The important part here is that they can be named whatever you want. For instance username doesn't have to be an alias it could be an email column you just have to tell SimpleMembership to treat that as the “username” used to log in. Matthew's example shows using a very simple user table named Users (it could be named anything) with a UserID and Username column, then a bunch of other columns he wanted in his app. Then we point SimpleMemberhip at that table with a one-liner: WebSecurity.InitializeDatabaseFile("SecurityDemo.sdf", "Users", "UserID", "Username", true); No other tables are needed, the table can be named anything we want, and can have pretty much any schema we want as long as we've got an ID and something that we can map to a username. Broaden database support to the whole SQL Server family While SimpleMembership is not database agnostic, it works across the SQL Server family. It continues to support full SQL Server, but it also works with SQL Azure, SQL Server CE, SQL Server Express, and LocalDB. Everything's implemented as SQL calls rather than requiring stored procedures, views, agents, and change notifications. Note that SimpleMembership still requires some flavor of SQL Server - it won't work with MySQL, NoSQL databases, etc. You can take a look at the code in WebMatrix.WebData.dll using a tool like ILSpy if you'd like to see why - there places where SQL Server specific SQL statements are being executed, especially when creating and initializing tables. It seems like you might be able to work with another database if you created the tables separately, but I haven't tried it and it's not supported at this point. Note: I'm thinking it would be possible for SimpleMembership (or something compatible) to run Entity Framework so it would work with any database EF supports. That seems useful to me - thoughts? Note: SimpleMembership has the same database support - anything in the SQL Server family - that Universal Providers brings to the ASP.NET Membership system. Easy to with Entity Framework Code First The problem with with ASP.NET Membership's system for storing additional account information is that it's the gate keeper. That means you're stuck with its schema and accessing profile information through its API. SimpleMembership flips that around by allowing you to use any table as a user store. That means you're in control of the user profile information, and you can access it however you'd like - it's just data. Let's look at a practical based on the AccountModel.cs class in an ASP.NET MVC 4 Internet project. Here I'm adding a Birthday property to the UserProfile class. [Table("UserProfile")] public class UserProfile { [Key] [DatabaseGeneratedAttribute(DatabaseGeneratedOption.Identity)] public int UserId { get; set; } public string UserName { get; set; } public DateTime Birthday { get; set; } } Now if I want to access that information, I can just grab the account by username and read the value. var context = new UsersContext(); var username = User.Identity.Name; var user = context.UserProfiles.SingleOrDefault(u => u.UserName == username); var birthday = user.Birthday; So instead of thinking of SimpleMembership as a big membership API, think of it as something that handles membership based on your user database. In SimpleMembership, everything's keyed off a user row in a table you define rather than a bunch of entries in membership tables that were out of your control. How SimpleMembership integrates with ASP.NET Membership Okay, enough sales pitch (and hopefully background) on why things have changed. How does this affect you? Let's start with a diagram to show the relationship (note: I've simplified by removing a few classes to show the important relationships): So SimpleMembershipProvider is an implementaiton of an ExtendedMembershipProvider, which inherits from MembershipProvider and adds some other account / OAuth related things. Here's what ExtendedMembershipProvider adds to MembershipProvider: The important thing to take away here is that a SimpleMembershipProvider is a MembershipProvider, but a MembershipProvider is not a SimpleMembershipProvider. This distinction is important in practice: you cannot use an existing MembershipProvider (including the Universal Providers found in System.Web.Providers) with an API that requires a SimpleMembershipProvider, including any of the calls in WebMatrix.WebData.WebSecurity or Microsoft.Web.WebPages.OAuth.OAuthWebSecurity. However, that's as far as it goes. Membership Providers still work if you're accessing them through the standard Membership API, and all of the core stuff - including the AuthorizeAttribute, role enforcement, etc. - will work just fine and without any change. Let's look at how that affects you in terms of the new templates. Membership in the ASP.NET MVC 4 project templates ASP.NET MVC 4 offers six Project Templates: Empty - Really empty, just the assemblies, folder structure and a tiny bit of basic configuration. Basic - Like Empty, but with a bit of UI preconfigured (css / images / bundling). Internet - This has both a Home and Account controller and associated views. The Account Controller supports registration and login via either local accounts and via OAuth / OpenID providers. Intranet - Like the Internet template, but it's preconfigured for Windows Authentication. Mobile - This is preconfigured using jQuery Mobile and is intended for mobile-only sites. Web API - This is preconfigured for a service backend built on ASP.NET Web API. Out of these templates, only one (the Internet template) uses SimpleMembership. ASP.NET MVC 4 Basic template The Basic template has configuration in place to use ASP.NET Membership with the Universal Providers. You can see that configuration in the ASP.NET MVC 4 Basic template's web.config: <profile defaultProvider="DefaultProfileProvider"> <providers> <add name="DefaultProfileProvider" type="System.Web.Providers.DefaultProfileProvider, System.Web.Providers, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35" connectionStringName="DefaultConnection" applicationName="/" /> </providers> </profile> <membership defaultProvider="DefaultMembershipProvider"> <providers> <add name="DefaultMembershipProvider" type="System.Web.Providers.DefaultMembershipProvider, System.Web.Providers, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35" connectionStringName="DefaultConnection" enablePasswordRetrieval="false" enablePasswordReset="true" requiresQuestionAndAnswer="false" requiresUniqueEmail="false" maxInvalidPasswordAttempts="5" minRequiredPasswordLength="6" minRequiredNonalphanumericCharacters="0" passwordAttemptWindow="10" applicationName="/" /> </providers> </membership> <roleManager defaultProvider="DefaultRoleProvider"> <providers> <add name="DefaultRoleProvider" type="System.Web.Providers.DefaultRoleProvider, System.Web.Providers, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35" connectionStringName="DefaultConnection" applicationName="/" /> </providers> </roleManager> <sessionState mode="InProc" customProvider="DefaultSessionProvider"> <providers> <add name="DefaultSessionProvider" type="System.Web.Providers.DefaultSessionStateProvider, System.Web.Providers, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35" connectionStringName="DefaultConnection" /> </providers> </sessionState> This means that it's business as usual for the Basic template as far as ASP.NET Membership works. ASP.NET MVC 4 Internet template The Internet template has a few things set up to bootstrap SimpleMembership: \Models\AccountModels.cs defines a basic user account and includes data annotations to define keys and such \Filters\InitializeSimpleMembershipAttribute.cs creates the membership database using the above model, then calls WebSecurity.InitializeDatabaseConnection which verifies that the underlying tables are in place and marks initialization as complete (for the application's lifetime) \Controllers\AccountController.cs makes heavy use of OAuthWebSecurity (for OAuth account registration / login / management) and WebSecurity. WebSecurity provides account management services for ASP.NET MVC (and Web Pages) WebSecurity can work with any ExtendedMembershipProvider. There's one in the box (SimpleMembershipProvider) but you can write your own. Since a standard MembershipProvider is not an ExtendedMembershipProvider, WebSecurity will throw exceptions if the default membership provider is a MembershipProvider rather than an ExtendedMembershipProvider. Practical example: Create a new ASP.NET MVC 4 application using the Internet application template Install the Microsoft ASP.NET Universal Providers for LocalDB NuGet package Run the application, click on Register, add a username and password, and click submit You'll get the following execption in AccountController.cs::Register: To call this method, the "Membership.Provider" property must be an instance of "ExtendedMembershipProvider". This occurs because the ASP.NET Universal Providers packages include a web.config transform that will update your web.config to add the Universal Provider configuration I showed in the Basic template example above. When WebSecurity tries to use the configured ASP.NET Membership Provider, it checks if it can be cast to an ExtendedMembershipProvider before doing anything else. So, what do you do? Options: If you want to use the new AccountController, you'll either need to use the SimpleMembershipProvider or another valid ExtendedMembershipProvider. This is pretty straightforward. If you want to use an existing ASP.NET Membership Provider in ASP.NET MVC 4, you can't use the new AccountController. You can do a few things: Replace the AccountController.cs and AccountModels.cs in an ASP.NET MVC 4 Internet project with one from an ASP.NET MVC 3 application (you of course won't have OAuth support). Then, if you want, you can go through and remove other things that were built around SimpleMembership - the OAuth partial view, the NuGet packages (e.g. the DotNetOpenAuthAuth package, etc.) Use an ASP.NET MVC 4 Internet application template and add in a Universal Providers NuGet package. Then copy in the AccountController and AccountModel classes. Create an ASP.NET MVC 3 project and upgrade it to ASP.NET MVC 4 using the steps shown in the ASP.NET MVC 4 release notes. None of these are particularly elegant or simple. Maybe we (or just me?) can do something to make this simpler - perhaps a NuGet package. However, this should be an edge case - hopefully the cases where you'd need to create a new ASP.NET but use legacy ASP.NET Membership Providers should be pretty rare. Please let me (or, preferably the team) know if that's an incorrect assumption. Membership in the ASP.NET 4.5 project template ASP.NET 4.5 Web Forms took a different approach which builds off ASP.NET Membership. Instead of using the WebMatrix security assemblies, Web Forms uses Microsoft.AspNet.Membership.OpenAuth assembly. I'm no expert on this, but from a bit of time in ILSpy and Visual Studio's (very pretty) dependency graphs, this uses a Membership Adapter to save OAuth data into an EF managed database while still running on top of ASP.NET Membership. Note: There may be a way to use this in ASP.NET MVC 4, although it would probably take some plumbing work to hook it up. How does this fit in with Universal Providers (System.Web.Providers)? Just to summarize: Universal Providers are intended for cases where you have an existing ASP.NET Membership Provider and you want to use it with another SQL Server database backend (other than SQL Server). It doesn't require agents to handle expired session cleanup and other background tasks, it piggybacks these tasks on other calls. Universal Providers are not really, strictly speaking, universal - at least to my way of thinking. They only work with databases in the SQL Server family. Universal Providers do not work with Simple Membership. The Universal Providers packages include some web config transforms which you would normally want when you're using them. What about the Web Site Administration Tool? Visual Studio includes tooling to launch the Web Site Administration Tool (WSAT) to configure users and roles in your application. WSAT is built to work with ASP.NET Membership, and is not compatible with Simple Membership. There are two main options there: Use the WebSecurity and OAuthWebSecurity API to manage the users and roles Create a web admin using the above APIs Since SimpleMembership runs on top of your database, you can update your users as you would any other data - via EF or even in direct database edits (in development, of course)

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E-Business Suite Technology Sessions at OpenWorld 2012

- by Max Arderius

Oracle OpenWorld 2012 is almost here! We're looking forward to updating you on our products, strategy, and roadmaps. This year, the E-Business Suite Applications Technology Group (ATG) will participate in 25 speaker sessions, two Meet the Experts round-table discussions, five demoground booths and seven Special Interest Group meetings as guest speakers. We hope to see you at our sessions. Please join us to hear the latest news and connect with senior ATG development staff. Here's a downloadable listing of all Applications Technology Group-related sessions with times and locations: FOCUS ON Oracle E-Business Suite - Applications Tools and Technology (PDF) General Sessions GEN8474 - Oracle E-Business Suite - Strategy, Update, and RoadmapCliff Godwin, SVP, Oracle Monday, Oct 1, 12:15 PM - 1:15 PM - Moscone West 2002/2004 In this session, hear Oracle E-Business Suite General Manager Cliff Godwin deliver an update on the Oracle E-Business Suite product line. This session covers the value delivered by the current release of Oracle E-Business Suite, the momentum, and how Oracle E-Business Suite applications integrate into Oracle’s overall applications strategy. You’ll come away with an understanding of the value Oracle E-Business Suite applications deliver now and will deliver in the future. GEN9173 - Optimize and Extend Oracle Applications - The Path to Oracle Fusion ApplicationsNadia Bendjedou, Oracle; Corre Curtice, Bhavish Madurai (CSC) Tuesday, Oct 2, 10:15 AM - 11:15 AM - Moscone West 3002/3004 One of the main objectives of this session is to help organizations build their IT roadmap for the next five years and be aligned with the Oracle Applications strategy in general and the Oracle Fusion Applications strategy in particular. Come hear about some of the common sense, practical steps you can take to optimize the performance of your Oracle Applications today and prepare your path to Oracle Fusion Applications for when your organization is ready to embrace them. Each step you take in adopting Oracle Fusion technology gets you partway to Oracle Fusion Applications. Conference Sessions CON9024 - Oracle E-Business Suite Technology: Latest Features and Roadmap Lisa Parekh, Oracle Monday, Oct 1, 10:45 AM - 11:45 AM - Moscone West 2016 This Oracle development session provides a comprehensive overview of Oracle’s product strategy for Oracle E-Business Suite technology, the capabilities and associated business benefits of recent releases, and a review of capabilities on the product roadmap. This is the cornerstone session for the Oracle E-Business Suite technology stack. Come hear about the latest new usability enhancements of the user interface; systems administration and configuration management tools; security-related updates; and tools and options for extending, customizing, and integrating Oracle E-Business Suite with other applications. CON9021 - Oracle E-Business Suite Future Directions: Deployment and System AdministrationMax Arderius, Oracle Monday, Oct 1, 3:15 PM - 4:15 PM - Moscone West 2016 What’s coming in the next major version of Oracle E-Business Suite 12? This Oracle Development session covers the latest technology stack, including the use of Oracle WebLogic Server (Oracle Fusion Middleware 11g) and Oracle Database 11g Release 2 (11.2). Topics include an architectural overview of the latest updates, installation and upgrade options, new configuration options, and new tools for hot cloning and automated “lights-out” cloning. Come learn how online patching (based on the Oracle Database 11g Release 2 Edition-Based Redefinition feature) will reduce your database patching downtimes to however long it takes to bounce your database server. CON9017 - Desktop Integration in Oracle E-Business Suite 12.1 Padmaprabodh Ambale, Gustavo Jimenez, Oracle Monday, Oct 1, 4:45 PM - 5:45 PM - Moscone West 2016 This presentation covers the latest functional enhancements in Oracle Web Applications Desktop Integrator and Oracle Report Manager, enhanced Microsoft Office support, and greater support for building custom desktop integration solutions. The session also presents tips and tricks for upgrading from Oracle Applications Desktop Integrator to Oracle Web Applications Desktop Integrator and Oracle Report Manager. CON9023 - Oracle E-Business Suite Technology Certification Primer and Roadmap Steven Chan, Oracle Tuesday, Oct 2, 10:15 AM - 11:15 AM - Moscone West 2016 Is your Oracle E-Business Suite technology stack up to date? Are you taking advantage of all the latest options and capabilities? This Oracle development session summarizes the latest certifications and roadmap for the Oracle E-Business Suite technology stack, including elements such as database releases and options, Java, Oracle Forms, Oracle Containers for J2EE, desktop operating systems, browsers, JRE releases, development and Web authoring tools, user authentication and management, business intelligence, Oracle Application Management Packs, security options, clouds, Oracle VM, and virtualization. The session also covers the most commonly asked questions about tech stack component support dates and upgrade implications. CON9028 - Minimizing Oracle E-Business Suite Maintenance DowntimesSantiago Bastidas, Elke Phelps, Oracle Tuesday, Oct 2, 11:45 AM - 12:45 PM - Moscone West 2016 This Oracle development session features a survey of the best techniques sysadmins can use to minimize patching downtimes. It starts with an architectural-level review of Oracle E-Business Suite fundamentals and then moves to a practical view of the various tools and approaches for downtimes. Topics include patching shortcuts, merging patches, distributing worker processes across multiple servers, running ADPatch in noninteractive mode, staged APPL_TOPs, shared file systems, deferring systemwide database tasks, avoiding resource bottlenecks, and more. An added bonus: hear about the upcoming Oracle E-Business Suite 12 online patching capabilities based on the groundbreaking Oracle Database 11g Release 2 Edition-Based Redefinition feature. CON9116 - Extending the Use of Oracle E-Business Suite with the Oracle Endeca PlatformOsama Elkady, Muhannad Obeidat, Oracle Tuesday, Oct 2, 11:45 AM - 12:45 PM - Moscone West 2018 The Oracle Endeca platform includes a leading unstructured data correlation and analytics engine, together with a best-in class catalog search and guided navigation solution, to improve the productivity of all types of users in your enterprise. This development session focuses on the details behind the Oracle Endeca platform’s integration into Oracle E-Business Suite. It demonstrates how easily you can extend the use of the Oracle Endeca platform into other areas of Oracle E-Business Suite and how you can bring in your own data and build new Oracle Endeca applications for Oracle E-Business Suite. CON9005 - Oracle E-Business Suite Integration Best PracticesVeshaal Singh, Oracle, Jeffrey Hand, Zebra Technologies Tuesday, Oct 2, 1:15 PM - 2:15 PM - Moscone West 2018 Oracle is investing across applications and technologies to make the application integration experience easier for customers. Today Oracle has certified Oracle E-Business Suite on Oracle Fusion Middleware 11g and provides a comprehensive set of integration technologies. Learn about Oracle’s integration offering across data- and process-centric integrations. These technologies can be used to address various application integration challenges and styles. In this session, you will get an understanding of how, when, and where you can leverage Oracle’s integration technologies to connect end-to-end business processes across your enterprise, including your Oracle Applications portfolio. CON9026 - Latest Oracle E-Business Suite 12.1 User Interface and Usability EnhancementsPadmaprabodh Ambale, Oracle Tuesday, Oct 2, 1:15 PM - 2:15 PM - Moscone West 2016 This Oracle development session details the latest UI enhancements to Oracle Application Framework in Oracle E-Business Suite 12.1. Developers will get a detailed look at new features to enhance usability, offer more capabilities for personalization and extensions, and support the development and use of dashboards and Web services. Topics include new rich UI capabilities such as new home page features, Navigator and Favorites pull-down menus, REST interface, embedded widgets for analytics content, Oracle Application Development Framework (Oracle ADF) task flows, third-party widgets, a look-ahead list of values, inline attachments, pop-ups, personalization and extensibility enhancements, business layer extensions, Oracle ADF integration, and mobile devices. CON8805 - Planning Your Oracle E-Business Suite Upgrade from 11i to Release 12.1 and BeyondAnne Carlson, Oracle Tuesday, Oct 2, 5:00 PM - 6:00 PM - Moscone West 3002/3004 Attend this session to hear the latest Oracle E-Business Suite 12.1 upgrade planning tips from Oracle’s support, consulting, development, and IT organizations. You’ll get specific cross-product advice on how to understand the factors that affect your project’s duration, decide on your project’s scope, develop a robust testing strategy, leverage Oracle Support resources, and more. In a nutshell, this session tells you things you need to know before embarking upon your Release 12.1 upgrade project. CON9053 - Advanced Management of Oracle E-Business Suite with Oracle Enterprise ManagerAngelo Rosado, Oracle Tuesday, Oct 2, 5:00 PM - 6:00 PM - Moscone West 2016 The task of managing and monitoring Oracle E-Business Suite environments can be very challenging. Oracle Enterprise Manager is the only product on the market that is designed to monitor and manage all the different technologies that constitute Oracle E-Business Suite applications, including end user, midtier, configuration, host, and database management—to name just a few. Customers that have implemented Oracle Enterprise Manager have experienced dramatic improvements in system visibility and diagnostic capability as well as administrator productivity. The purpose of this session is to highlight the key features and benefits of Oracle Enterprise Manager and Oracle Application Management Suite for Oracle E-Business Suite. CON8809 - Oracle E-Business Suite 12.1 Upgrade Best Practices: Technical InsightIsam Alyousfi, Udayan Parvate, Oracle Wednesday, Oct 3, 10:15 AM - 11:15 AM - Moscone West 3011 This session is ideal for organizations thinking about upgrading to Oracle E-Business Suite 12.1. It covers the fundamentals of upgrading to Release 12.1, including the technology stack components and supported upgrade paths. Hear from Oracle Development about the set of best practices for patching in general and executing the Release 12.1 technical upgrade, with special considerations for minimizing your downtime. Also get to know about relatively recent upgrade resources. CON9032 - Upgrading Your Customizations of Oracle E-Business Suite 12.1Sara Woodhull, Oracle Wednesday, Oct 3, 10:15 AM - 11:15 AM - Moscone West 2016 Have you personalized Oracle Forms or Oracle Application Framework screens in Oracle E-Business Suite? Have you used mod_plsql in Release 11i? Have you extended or customized your Release 11i environment with other tools? The technical options for upgrading these customizations as part of your Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.1 upgrade can be bewildering. Come to this Oracle development session to learn about selecting the best upgrade approach for your existing customizations. The session will help you understand customization scenarios and use cases, tools, and technologies to ensure that your Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.1 environment fits your users’ needs closely and that any future customizations will be easy to upgrade. CON9259 - Oracle E-Business Suite Internationalization and Multilingual FeaturesMaher Al-Nubani, Oracle Wednesday, Oct 3, 10:15 AM - 11:15 AM - Moscone West 2018 Oracle E-Business Suite supports more countries, languages, and regions than ever. Come to this Oracle development session to get an overview of internationalization features and capabilities and see new Release 12 features such as calendar support for Hijra and Thai, new group separators, lightweight multilingual support (MLS) setup, new character sets such as AL32UTF, newly supported languages, Mac certifications, Oracle iSetup support for moving MLS setups, new file export options for Unicode, new MLS number spelling options, and more. CON7188 - Mobile Apps for Oracle E-Business Suite with Oracle ADF Mobile and Oracle SOA SuiteSrikant Subramaniam, Joe Huang, Veshaal Singh, Oracle Wednesday, Oct 3, 10:15 AM - 11:15 AM - Moscone West 3001 Follow your mobile customers, employees, and partners with Oracle Fusion Middleware. See how native iPhone and iPad applications can easily be built for Oracle E-Business Suite with the new Oracle ADF Mobile and Oracle SOA Suite. Using Oracle ADF Mobile, developers can quickly develop native applications for Apple iOS and other mobile platforms. The Oracle SOA Suite/Oracle ADF Mobile combination can execute business transactions on Oracle E-Business Suite. This session includes a demo in which a mobile user approves a business transaction in Oracle E-Business Suite and a demo of the tools used to build a native on-device solution. These concepts for mobile applications also apply to other Oracle applications.CON9029 - Oracle E-Business Suite Directions: Slashing Downtimes with Online PatchingKevin Hudson, Oracle Wednesday, Oct 3, 11:45 AM - 12:45 PM - Moscone West 2016 Oracle E-Business Suite will soon include online patching (based on the Oracle Database 11g Release 2 Edition-Based Redefinition feature), which will reduce your database patching downtimes to however long it takes to bounce your database server. This Oracle development session details how online patching works, with special attention to what’s happening at a database object level when database patches are applied to an Oracle E-Business Suite environment that’s still running. Come learn about the operational and system management implications for minimizing maintenance downtimes when applying database patches with this new technology and the related impact on customizations you might have built on top of Oracle E-Business Suite. CON8806 - Upgrading to Oracle E-Business Suite 12.1: Technical and Functional PanelAndrew Katz, Komori America Corporation; Sandra Vucinic, VLAD Group, Inc. ;Srini Chavali, Cummins Inc.; Amrita Mehrok, Nadia Bendjedou, Anne Carlson Oracle Wednesday, Oct 3, 1:15 PM - 2:15 PM - Moscone West 2018 In this panel discussion, Oracle experts, customers, and partners share their experiences in upgrading to the latest release of Oracle E-Business Suite, Release 12.1. The panelists cover aspects of a typical Release 12 upgrade, technical (upgrading the technical infrastructure) as well as functional (upgrading to the new financial infrastructure). Hear directly from the experts who either develop the product or support, implement, or upgrade it, and find out how to apply their lessons learned to your organization. CON9027 - Personalize and Extend Oracle E-Business Suite Applications with Rich MashupsGustavo Jimenez, Padmaprabodh Ambale, Oracle Wednesday, Oct 3, 1:15 PM - 2:15 PM - Moscone West 2016 This session covers the use of several Oracle Fusion Middleware technologies to personalize and extend your existing Oracle E-Business Suite applications. The Oracle Fusion Middleware technologies covered include Oracle Application Development Framework (Oracle ADF), Oracle WebCenter, Oracle Endeca applications, and Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition with Oracle E-Business Suite Oracle Application Framework applications. CON9036 - Advanced Oracle E-Business Suite Architectures: Maximum Availability, Security, and MoreElke Phelps, Oracle Wednesday, Oct 3, 3:30 PM - 4:30 PM - Moscone West 2016 This session includes architecture diagrams and configuration instructions for building a maximum availability architecture (MAA) that will help you design a disaster recovery solution that fits the needs of your business. Database and application high-availability features it describes include Oracle Data Guard, Oracle Real Application Clusters (Oracle RAC), Oracle Active Data Guard, load-balancing Web and forms services, parallel concurrent processing, and the use of Oracle Exalogic and Oracle Exadata to provide a highly available environment. The session also covers the latest updates to systems management tools, AutoConfig, cloud computing, virtualization, and Oracle WebLogic Server and provides sneak previews of upcoming functionality. CON9047 - Efficiently Scaling Oracle E-Business Suite on Oracle Exadata and Oracle ExalogicIsam Alyousfi, Nishit Rao, Oracle Wednesday, Oct 3, 5:00 PM - 6:00 PM - Moscone West 2016 Oracle Exadata and Oracle Exalogic are designed from the ground up with optimizations in software and hardware to deliver superfast performance for mission-critical applications such as Oracle E-Business Suite. Oracle E-Business Suite applications run three to eight times as fast on the Oracle Exadata/Oracle Exalogic platform in standard benchmark tests. Besides performance, customers benefit from simplified support, enhanced manageability, and the ability to consolidate multiple Oracle E-Business Suite instances. Attend this session to understand best practices for Oracle E-Business Suite deployment on Oracle Exalogic and Oracle Exadata through customer case studies. Learn how adopting the Exa* platform increases efficiency, simplifies scaling, and boosts performance for peak loads. CON8716 - Web Services and SOA Integration Options for Oracle E-Business SuiteRekha Ayothi, Veshaal Singh, Oracle Thursday, Oct 4, 11:15 AM - 12:15 PM - Moscone West 2016 This Oracle development session provides a deep dive into a subset of the Web services and SOA-related integration options available to Oracle E-Business Suite systems integrators. It offers a technical look at Oracle E-Business Suite Integrated SOA Gateway, Oracle SOA Suite, Oracle Application Adapters for Data Integration for Oracle E-Business Suite, and other Web services options for integrating Oracle E-Business Suite with other applications. Systems integrators and developers will get an overview of the latest integration capabilities and technologies available out of the box with Oracle E-Business Suite and possibly a sneak preview of upcoming functionality and features. CON9030 - Recommendations for Oracle E-Business Suite Performance TuningIsam Alyousfi, Samer Barakat, Oracle Thursday, Oct 4, 11:15 AM - 12:15 PM - Moscone West 2018 Need to squeeze more performance out of your existing servers? This packed Oracle development session summarizes practical tips and lessons learned from performance-tuning and benchmarking the world’s largest Oracle E-Business Suite environments. Apps sysadmins will learn concrete tips and techniques for identifying and resolving performance bottlenecks on all layers, with special attention to application- and database-tier servers. Learn about tuning Oracle Forms, Oracle Concurrent Manager, Apache, and Oracle Discoverer. Track down memory leaks and other issues at the Java and JVM layers. The session also covers Oracle E-Business Suite product-level tuning, including Oracle Workflow, Oracle Order Management, Oracle Payroll, and other modules. CON3429 - Using Oracle ADF with Oracle E-Business Suite: The Full Integration ViewSiva Puthurkattil, Lake County; Juan Camilo Ruiz, Sara Woodhull, Oracle Thursday, Oct 4, 11:15 AM - 12:15 PM - Moscone West 3003 Oracle E-Business Suite delivers functionality for handling the core business of your organization. However, user requirements and new technologies are driving an emerging need to implement new types of user interfaces for these applications. This session provides an overview of how to use Oracle Application Development Framework (Oracle ADF) to deliver cutting-edge Web 2.0 and mobile rich user interfaces that front existing Oracle E-Business Suite processes, and it also explores all the existing types of integration between the two worlds. CON9020 - Integrating Oracle E-Business Suite with Oracle Identity Management SolutionsSunil Ghosh, Elke Phelps, Oracle Thursday, Oct 4, 12:45 PM - 1:45 PM - Moscone West 2016 Need to integrate Oracle E-Business Suite with Microsoft Windows Kerberos, Active Directory, CA Netegrity SiteMinder, or other third-party authentication systems? Want to understand your options when Oracle Premier Support for Oracle Single Sign-On ends in December 2011? This Oracle Development session covers the latest certified integrations with Oracle Access Manager 11g and Oracle Internet Directory 11g, which can be used individually or as bridges for integrating with third-party authentication solutions. The session presents an architectural overview of how Oracle Access Manager, its WebGate and AccessGate components, and Oracle Internet Directory work together, with implications for Oracle Discoverer, Oracle Portal, and other Oracle Fusion identity management products. CON9019 - Troubleshooting, Diagnosing, and Optimizing Oracle E-Business Suite TechnologyGustavo Jimenez, Oracle Thursday, Oct 4, 2:15 PM - 3:15 PM - Moscone West 2016 This session covers how you can proactively diagnose Oracle E-Business Suite applications, including extensions built with Oracle Fusion Middleware technologies such as Oracle Application Development Framework (Oracle ADF) and Oracle WebCenter to catch potential issues in the middle tier before they become more serious. Topics include debugging, logging infrastructure, warning signs, performance tuning, information required when logging service requests, general JVM optimization, and an overall picture of all the moving parts that make it possible for Oracle E-Business Suite to isolate and fix problems. Also learn how Oracle Diagnostics Framework will help prevent downtime caused by failures. CON9031 - The Top 10 Things You Can Do to Secure Your Oracle E-Business Suite InstanceEric Bing, Erik Graversen, Oracle Thursday, Oct 4, 2:15 PM - 3:15 PM - Moscone West 2018 Learn the top 10 things you can do to secure your applications and your sensitive data. This Oracle development session for system administrators and security professionals explores some of the most important and overlooked things you can do to secure your Oracle E-Business Suite instance. It also covers data masking and other mechanisms for protecting sensitive data. Special Interest Groups (SIG) Some of our most senior staff have been invited to participate on the following SIG meetings as guest speakers: SIG10525 - OAUG - Archive & Purge SIGBrian Bent - Pre-Sales Engineer, TierData, Inc. Sunday, Sep 30, 10:30 AM - 12:00 PM - Moscone West 3011 The Archive and Purge SIG is an organization in which users can share their experiences and solicit functional and technical advice on archiving and purging data in Oracle E-Business Suite. This session provides an opportunity for users to network and share best practices, tips, and tricks. Guest: Oracle E-Business Suite Database Performance, Archive & Purging - Q&A SessionIsam Alyousfi, Senior Director, Applications Performance, Oracle SIG10547 - OAUG - Oracle E-Business (EBS) Applications Technology SIGSrini Chavali - IT Director, Cummins Inc Sunday, Sep 30, 10:30 AM - 12:00 PM - Moscone West 3018 The general purpose of the EBS Applications Technology SIG is to inform and educate its members about current and future components of the tech stack as they relate to Oracle E-Business Suite. Attend this meeting for networking and education and to share best practices. Guest: Oracle E-Business Suite Technology Certification Roadmap - Presentation and Q&ASteven Chan, Sr. Director, Applications Technology Group, Oracle SIG10559 - OAUG - User Management SIGSusan Behn - VP of Oracle Delivery, Infosemantics, Inc. Sunday, Sep 30, 10:30 AM - 12:00 PM - Moscone West 3024 The E-Business Suite User Management SIG focuses on the components of user management that enable Oracle E-Business Suite users to define administrative functions and manage users’ access to functions and data based on roles within an organization—rather than the user’s individual identity—which is referred to as role-based access control (RBAC). This meeting includes an introduction to Oracle User Management that covers the Oracle User Management building blocks and presents an example of creating a security policy.Guest: Security and User Management - Q&A SessionEric Bing, Sr. Director, EBS Security, OracleSara Woodhull, Principal Product Manager, Applications Technology Group, Oracle SIG10515 - OAUG – Upgrade SIGBarbara Matthews - Consultant, On Call DBASandra Vucinic, VLAD Group, Inc. Sunday, Sep 30, 12:00 PM - 2:00 PM - Moscone West 3009 This Upgrade SIG session starts with a business meeting and then features a Q&A panel discussion on Oracle E-Business Suite upgrade topics. The session• Reviews Upgrade SIG goals and objectives• Provides answers, during the Q&A session, to questions related to Oracle E-Business Suite upgrades• Shares “real world” experiences, tips, and techniques for Oracle E-Business Suite upgrades to Release 12.1. Guest: Oracle E-Business Suite Upgrade - Q&A SessionAnne Carlson - Sr. Director, Oracle E-Business Suite Product Strategy, OracleUdayan Parvate - Director, EBS Release Engineering, OracleSuzana Ferrari, Sr. Principal Consultant, OracleIsam Alyousfi, Sr. Director, Applications Performance, Oracle SIG10552 - OAUG - Oracle E-Business Suite SIGDonna Rosentrater - Manager, Global Sourcing & Procurement Systems, TJX Sunday, Sep 30, 12:15 PM - 1:45 PM - Moscone West 3020 The E-Business Suite SIG, affiliated with OAUG, supports Oracle E-Business Suite users through networking, education, and sharing of best practices. This SIG meeting will feature a general discussion of Oracle E-Business Suite product strategies in Release 12 and migration to Oracle Fusion Applications. Guest: Oracle E-Business Suite - Q&A SessionJeanne Lowell, Vice President, EBS Product Strategy, OracleNadia Bendjedou, Sr. Director, Product Strategy, Oracle SIG10556 - OAUG - SysAdmin SIGRandy Giefer - Sr Systems and Security Architect, Solution Beacon, LLC Sunday, Sep 30, 12:15 PM - 1:45 PM - Moscone West 3022 The SysAdmin SIG provides a forum in which OAUG members and participants can share updates, tips, and successful practices relating to system administration in an Oracle applications environment. The SysAdmin SIG strives to enable system administrators to become more effective and efficient in their jobs by providing them with access to people and information that can increase their system administration knowledge and experience. Attend this meeting to network, share best practices, and benefit from educational content. Guest: Oracle E-Business Suite 12.2 Online Patching- Presentation and Q&AKevin Hudson, Sr. Director, Applications Technology Group, Oracle SIG10553 - OAUG - Database SIGMichael Brown - Senior DBA, COLIBRI LTD LC Sunday, Sep 30, 2:00 PM - 3:15 PM - Moscone West 3020 The OAUG Database SIG provides an opportunity for applications database administrators to learn from and share their experiences with supporting the various Oracle applications environments. This session will include a brief business meeting followed by a short presentation. It will end with an open discussion among the attendees about items of interest to those present. Guest: Oracle E-Business Suite Database Performance - Presentation and Q&AIsam Alyousfi, Sr. Director, Applications Performance, Oracle Meet the Experts We're planning two round-table discussions where you can review your questions with senior E-Business Suite ATG staff: MTE9648 - Meet the Experts for Oracle E-Business Suite: Planning Your Upgrade Jeanne Lowell - VP, EBS Product Strategy, Oracle John Abraham - Sr. Principal Product Manager, Oracle Nadia Bendjedou - Sr. Director - Product Strategy, Oracle Anne Carlson - Sr. Director, Applications Technology Group, Oracle Udayan Parvate - Director, EBS Release Engineering, Oracle Isam Alyousfi, Sr. Director, Applications Performance, Oracle Monday, Oct 1, 3:15 PM - 4:15 PM - Moscone West 2001A Don’t miss this Oracle Applications Meet the Experts session with experts who specialize in Oracle E-Business Suite upgrade best practices. This is the place where attendees can have informal and semistructured but open one-on-one discussions with Strategy and Development regarding Oracle Applications strategy and your specific business and IT strategy. The experts will be available to discuss the value of the latest releases and share insights into the best path for your enterprise, so come ready with your questions. Space is limited, so make sure you register. MTE9649 - Meet the Oracle E-Business Suite Tools and Technology Experts Lisa Parekh - Vice President, Technology Integration, Oracle Steven Chan - Sr. Director, Oracle Elke Phelps - Sr. Principal Product Manager, Applications Technology Group, Oracle Max Arderius - Manager, Applications Technology Group, Oracle Tuesday, Oct 2, 1:15 PM - 2:15 PM - Moscone West 2001A Don’t miss this Oracle Applications Meet the Experts session with experts who specialize in Oracle E-Business Suite technology. This is the place where attendees can have informal and semistructured but open one-on-one discussions with Strategy and Development regarding Oracle Applications strategy and your specific business and IT strategy. The experts will be available to discuss the value of the latest releases and share insights into the best path for your enterprise, so come ready with your questions. Space is limited, so make sure you register. Demos We have five booths in the exhibition demogrounds this year, where you can try ATG technologies firsthand and get your questions answered. Please stop by and meet our staff at the following locations: Advanced Architecture and Technology Stack for Oracle E-Business Suite (W-067) New User Productivity Capabilities in Oracle E-Business Suite (W-065) End-to-End Management of Oracle E-Business Suite (W-063) Oracle E-Business Suite 12.1 Technical Upgrade Best Practices (W-066) SOA-Based Integration for Oracle E-Business Suite (W-064)

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CodePlex Daily Summary for Wednesday, February 17, 2010

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Using the West Wind Web Toolkit to set up AJAX and REST Services

- by Rick Strahl

I frequently get questions about which option to use for creating AJAX and REST backends for ASP.NET applications. There are many solutions out there to do this actually, but when I have a choice - not surprisingly - I fall back to my own tools in the West Wind West Wind Web Toolkit. I've talked a bunch about the 'in-the-box' solutions in the past so for a change in this post I'll talk about the tools that I use in my own and customer applications to handle AJAX and REST based access to service resources using the West Wind West Wind Web Toolkit. Let me preface this by saying that I like things to be easy. Yes flexible is very important as well but not at the expense of over-complexity. The goal I've had with my tools is make it drop dead easy, with good performance while providing the core features that I'm after, which are: Easy AJAX/JSON Callbacks Ability to return any kind of non JSON content (string, stream, byte[], images) Ability to work with both XML and JSON interchangeably for input/output Access endpoints via POST data, RPC JSON calls, GET QueryString values or Routing interface Easy to use generic JavaScript client to make RPC calls (same syntax, just what you need) Ability to create clean URLS with Routing Ability to use standard ASP.NET HTTP Stack for HTTP semantics It's all about options! In this post I'll demonstrate most of these features (except XML) in a few simple and short samples which you can download. So let's take a look and see how you can build an AJAX callback solution with the West Wind Web Toolkit. Installing the Toolkit Assemblies The easiest and leanest way of using the Toolkit in your Web project is to grab it via NuGet: West Wind Web and AJAX Utilities (Westwind.Web) and drop it into the project by right clicking in your Project and choosing Manage NuGet Packages from anywhere in the Project. When done you end up with your project looking like this: What just happened? Nuget added two assemblies - Westwind.Web and Westwind.Utilities and the client ww.jquery.js library. It also added a couple of references into web.config: The default namespaces so they can be accessed in pages/views and a ScriptCompressionModule that the toolkit optionally uses to compress script resources served from within the assembly (namely ww.jquery.js and optionally jquery.js). Creating a new Service The West Wind Web Toolkit supports several ways of creating and accessing AJAX services, but for this post I'll stick to the lower level approach that works from any plain HTML page or of course MVC, WebForms, WebPages. There's also a WebForms specific control that makes this even easier but I'll leave that for another post. So, to create a new standalone AJAX/REST service we can create a new HttpHandler in the new project either as a pure class based handler or as a generic .ASHX handler. Both work equally well, but generic handlers don't require any web.config configuration so I'll use that here. In the root of the project add a Generic Handler. I'm going to call this one StockService.ashx. Once the handler has been created, edit the code and remove all of the handler body code. Then change the base class to CallbackHandler and add methods that have a [CallbackMethod] attribute. Here's the modified base handler implementation now looks like with an added HelloWorld method: using System; using Westwind.Web; namespace WestWindWebAjax { /// <summary> /// Handler implements CallbackHandler to provide REST/AJAX services /// </summary> public class SampleService : CallbackHandler { [CallbackMethod] public string HelloWorld(string name) { return "Hello " + name + ". Time is: " + DateTime.Now.ToString(); } } } Notice that the class inherits from CallbackHandler and that the HelloWorld service method is marked up with [CallbackMethod]. We're done here. Services Urlbased Syntax Once you compile, the 'service' is live can respond to requests. All CallbackHandlers support input in GET and POST formats, and can return results as JSON or XML. To check our fancy HelloWorld method we can now access the service like this: http://localhost/WestWindWebAjax/StockService.ashx?Method=HelloWorld&name=Rick which produces a default JSON response - in this case a string (wrapped in quotes as it's JSON): (note by default JSON will be downloaded by most browsers not displayed - various options are available to view JSON right in the browser) If I want to return the same data as XML I can tack on a &format=xml at the end of the querystring which produces: <string>Hello Rick. Time is: 11/1/2011 12:11:13 PM</string> Cleaner URLs with Routing Syntax If you want cleaner URLs for each operation you can also configure custom routes on a per URL basis similar to the way that WCF REST does. To do this you need to add a new RouteHandler to your application's startup code in global.asax.cs one for each CallbackHandler based service you create: protected void Application_Start(object sender, EventArgs e) { CallbackHandlerRouteHandler.RegisterRoutes<StockService>(RouteTable.Routes); } With this code in place you can now add RouteUrl properties to any of your service methods. For the HelloWorld method that doesn't make a ton of sense but here is what a routed clean URL might look like in definition: [CallbackMethod(RouteUrl="stocks/HelloWorld/{name}")] public string HelloWorld(string name) { return "Hello " + name + ". Time is: " + DateTime.Now.ToString(); } The same URL I previously used now becomes a bit shorter and more readable with: http://localhost/WestWindWebAjax/HelloWorld/Rick It's an easy way to create cleaner URLs and still get the same functionality. Calling the Service with $.getJSON() Since the result produced is JSON you can now easily consume this data using jQuery's getJSON method. First we need a couple of scripts - jquery.js and ww.jquery.js in the page: <!DOCTYPE html> <html> <head> <link href="Css/Westwind.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" /> <script src="scripts/jquery.min.js" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="scripts/ww.jquery.min.js" type="text/javascript"></script> </head> <body> Next let's add a small HelloWorld example form (what else) that has a single textbox to type a name, a button and a div tag to receive the result: <fieldset> <legend>Hello World</legend> Please enter a name: <input type="text" name="txtHello" id="txtHello" value="" /> <input type="button" id="btnSayHello" value="Say Hello (POST)" /> <input type="button" id="btnSayHelloGet" value="Say Hello (GET)" /> <div id="divHelloMessage" class="errordisplay" style="display:none;width: 450px;" > </div> </fieldset> Then to call the HelloWorld method a little jQuery is used to hook the document startup and the button click followed by the $.getJSON call to retrieve the data from the server. <script type="text/javascript"> $(document).ready(function () { $("#btnSayHelloGet").click(function () { $.getJSON("SampleService.ashx", { Method: "HelloWorld", name: $("#txtHello").val() }, function (result) { $("#divHelloMessage") .text(result) .fadeIn(1000); }); });</script> .getJSON() expects a full URL to the endpoint of our service, which is the ASHX file. We can either provide a full URL (SampleService.ashx?Method=HelloWorld&name=Rick) or we can just provide the base URL and an object that encodes the query string parameters for us using an object map that has a property that matches each parameter for the server method. We can also use the clean URL routing syntax, but using the object parameter encoding actually is safer as the parameters will get properly encoded by jQuery. The result returned is whatever the result on the server method is - in this case a string. The string is applied to the divHelloMessage element and we're done. Obviously this is a trivial example, but it demonstrates the basics of getting a JSON response back to the browser. AJAX Post Syntax - using ajaxCallMethod() The previous example allows you basic control over the data that you send to the server via querystring parameters. This works OK for simple values like short strings, numbers and boolean values, but doesn't really work if you need to pass something more complex like an object or an array back up to the server. To handle traditional RPC type messaging where the idea is to map server side functions and results to a client side invokation, POST operations can be used. The easiest way to use this functionality is to use ww.jquery.js and the ajaxCallMethod() function. ww.jquery wraps jQuery's AJAX functions and knows implicitly how to call a CallbackServer method with parameters and parse the result. Let's look at another simple example that posts a simple value but returns something more interesting. Let's start with the service method: [CallbackMethod(RouteUrl="stocks/{symbol}")] public StockQuote GetStockQuote(string symbol) { Response.Cache.SetExpires(DateTime.UtcNow.Add(new TimeSpan(0, 2, 0))); StockServer server = new StockServer(); var quote = server.GetStockQuote(symbol); if (quote == null) throw new ApplicationException("Invalid Symbol passed."); return quote; } This sample utilizes a small StockServer helper class (included in the sample) that downloads a stock quote from Yahoo's financial site via plain HTTP GET requests and formats it into a StockQuote object. Lets create a small HTML block that lets us query for the quote and display it: <fieldset> <legend>Single Stock Quote</legend> Please enter a stock symbol: <input type="text" name="txtSymbol" id="txtSymbol" value="msft" /> <input type="button" id="btnStockQuote" value="Get Quote" /> <div id="divStockDisplay" class="errordisplay" style="display:none; width: 450px;"> <div class="label-left">Company:</div> <div id="stockCompany"></div> <div class="label-left">Last Price:</div> <div id="stockLastPrice"></div> <div class="label-left">Quote Time:</div> <div id="stockQuoteTime"></div> </div> </fieldset> The final result looks something like this: Let's hook up the button handler to fire the request and fill in the data as shown: $("#btnStockQuote").click(function () { ajaxCallMethod("SampleService.ashx", "GetStockQuote", [$("#txtSymbol").val()], function (quote) { $("#divStockDisplay").show().fadeIn(1000); $("#stockCompany").text(quote.Company + " (" + quote.Symbol + ")"); $("#stockLastPrice").text(quote.LastPrice); $("#stockQuoteTime").text(quote.LastQuoteTime.formatDate("MMM dd, HH:mm EST")); }, onPageError); }); So we point at SampleService.ashx and the GetStockQuote method, passing a single parameter of the input symbol value. Then there are two handlers for success and failure callbacks. The success handler is the interesting part - it receives the stock quote as a result and assigns its values to various 'holes' in the stock display elements. The data that comes back over the wire is JSON and it looks like this: { "Symbol":"MSFT", "Company":"Microsoft Corpora", "OpenPrice":26.11, "LastPrice":26.01, "NetChange":0.02, "LastQuoteTime":"2011-11-03T02:00:00Z", "LastQuoteTimeString":"Nov. 11, 2011 4:20pm" } which is an object representation of the data. JavaScript can evaluate this JSON string back into an object easily and that's the reslut that gets passed to the success function. The quote data is then applied to existing page content by manually selecting items and applying them. There are other ways to do this more elegantly like using templates, but here we're only interested in seeing how the data is returned. The data in the object is typed - LastPrice is a number and QuoteTime is a date. Note about the date value: JavaScript doesn't have a date literal although the JSON embedded ISO string format used above ("2011-11-03T02:00:00Z") is becoming fairly standard for JSON serializers. However, JSON parsers don't deserialize dates by default and return them by string. This is why the StockQuote actually returns a string value of LastQuoteTimeString for the same date. ajaxMethodCallback always converts dates properly into 'real' dates and the example above uses the real date value along with a .formatDate() data extension (also in ww.jquery.js) to display the raw date properly. Errors and Exceptions So what happens if your code fails? For example if I pass an invalid stock symbol to the GetStockQuote() method you notice that the code does this: if (quote == null) throw new ApplicationException("Invalid Symbol passed."); CallbackHandler automatically pushes the exception message back to the client so it's easy to pick up the error message. Regardless of what kind of error occurs: Server side, client side, protocol errors - any error will fire the failure handler with an error object parameter. The error is returned to the client via a JSON response in the error callback. In the previous examples I called onPageError which is a generic routine in ww.jquery that displays a status message on the bottom of the screen. But of course you can also take over the error handling yourself: $("#btnStockQuote").click(function () { ajaxCallMethod("SampleService.ashx", "GetStockQuote", [$("#txtSymbol").val()], function (quote) { $("#divStockDisplay").fadeIn(1000); $("#stockCompany").text(quote.Company + " (" + quote.Symbol + ")"); $("#stockLastPrice").text(quote.LastPrice); $("#stockQuoteTime").text(quote.LastQuoteTime.formatDate("MMM dd, hh:mmt")); }, function (error, xhr) { $("#divErrorDisplay").text(error.message).fadeIn(1000); }); }); The error object has a isCallbackError, message and stackTrace properties, the latter of which is only populated when running in Debug mode, and this object is returned for all errors: Client side, transport and server side errors. Regardless of which type of error you get the same object passed (as well as the XHR instance optionally) which makes for a consistent error retrieval mechanism. Specifying HttpVerbs You can also specify HTTP Verbs that are allowed using the AllowedHttpVerbs option on the CallbackMethod attribute: [CallbackMethod(AllowedHttpVerbs=HttpVerbs.GET | HttpVerbs.POST)] public string HelloWorld(string name) { … } If you're building REST style API's this might be useful to force certain request semantics onto the client calling. For the above if call with a non-allowed HttpVerb the request returns a 405 error response along with a JSON (or XML) error object result. The default behavior is to allow all verbs access (HttpVerbs.All). Passing in object Parameters Up to now the parameters I passed were very simple. But what if you need to send something more complex like an object or an array? Let's look at another example now that passes an object from the client to the server. Keeping with the Stock theme here lets add a method called BuyOrder that lets us buy some shares for a stock. Consider the following service method that receives an StockBuyOrder object as a parameter: [CallbackMethod] public string BuyStock(StockBuyOrder buyOrder) { var server = new StockServer(); var quote = server.GetStockQuote(buyOrder.Symbol); if (quote == null) throw new ApplicationException("Invalid or missing stock symbol."); return string.Format("You're buying {0} shares of {1} ({2}) stock at {3} for a total of {4} on {5}.", buyOrder.Quantity, quote.Company, quote.Symbol, quote.LastPrice.ToString("c"), (quote.LastPrice * buyOrder.Quantity).ToString("c"), buyOrder.BuyOn.ToString("MMM d")); } public class StockBuyOrder { public string Symbol { get; set; } public int Quantity { get; set; } public DateTime BuyOn { get; set; } public StockBuyOrder() { BuyOn = DateTime.Now; } } This is a contrived do-nothing example that simply echoes back what was passed in, but it demonstrates how you can pass complex data to a callback method. On the client side we now have a very simple form that captures the three values on a form: <fieldset> <legend>Post a Stock Buy Order</legend> Enter a symbol: <input type="text" name="txtBuySymbol" id="txtBuySymbol" value="GLD" />   Qty: <input type="text" name="txtBuyQty" id="txtBuyQty" value="10" style="width: 50px" />   Buy on: <input type="text" name="txtBuyOn" id="txtBuyOn" value="<%= DateTime.Now.ToString("d") %>" style="width: 70px;" /> <input type="button" id="btnBuyStock" value="Buy Stock" /> <div id="divStockBuyMessage" class="errordisplay" style="display:none"></div> </fieldset> The completed form and demo then looks something like this: The client side code that picks up the input values and assigns them to object properties and sends the AJAX request looks like this: $("#btnBuyStock").click(function () { // create an object map that matches StockBuyOrder signature var buyOrder = { Symbol: $("#txtBuySymbol").val(), Quantity: $("#txtBuyQty").val() * 1, // number Entered: new Date() } ajaxCallMethod("SampleService.ashx", "BuyStock", [buyOrder], function (result) { $("#divStockBuyMessage").text(result).fadeIn(1000); }, onPageError); }); The code creates an object and attaches the properties that match the server side object passed to the BuyStock method. Each property that you want to update needs to be included and the type must match (ie. string, number, date in this case). Any missing properties will not be set but also not cause any errors. Pass POST data instead of Objects In the last example I collected a bunch of values from form variables and stuffed them into object variables in JavaScript code. While that works, often times this isn't really helping - I end up converting my types on the client and then doing another conversion on the server. If lots of input controls are on a page and you just want to pick up the values on the server via plain POST variables - that can be done too - and it makes sense especially if you're creating and filling the client side object only to push data to the server. Let's add another method to the server that once again lets us buy a stock. But this time let's not accept a parameter but rather send POST data to the server. Here's the server method receiving POST data: [CallbackMethod] public string BuyStockPost() { StockBuyOrder buyOrder = new StockBuyOrder(); buyOrder.Symbol = Request.Form["txtBuySymbol"]; ; int qty; int.TryParse(Request.Form["txtBuyQuantity"], out qty); buyOrder.Quantity = qty; DateTime time; DateTime.TryParse(Request.Form["txtBuyBuyOn"], out time); buyOrder.BuyOn = time; // Or easier way yet //FormVariableBinder.Unbind(buyOrder,null,"txtBuy"); var server = new StockServer(); var quote = server.GetStockQuote(buyOrder.Symbol); if (quote == null) throw new ApplicationException("Invalid or missing stock symbol."); return string.Format("You're buying {0} shares of {1} ({2}) stock at {3} for a total of {4} on {5}.", buyOrder.Quantity, quote.Company, quote.Symbol, quote.LastPrice.ToString("c"), (quote.LastPrice * buyOrder.Quantity).ToString("c"), buyOrder.BuyOn.ToString("MMM d")); } Clearly we've made this server method take more code than it did with the object parameter. We've basically moved the parameter assignment logic from the client to the server. As a result the client code to call this method is now a bit shorter since there's no client side shuffling of values from the controls to an object. $("#btnBuyStockPost").click(function () { ajaxCallMethod("SampleService.ashx", "BuyStockPost", [], // Note: No parameters - function (result) { $("#divStockBuyMessage").text(result).fadeIn(1000); }, onPageError, // Force all page Form Variables to be posted { postbackMode: "Post" }); }); The client simply calls the BuyStockQuote method and pushes all the form variables from the page up to the server which parses them instead. The feature that makes this work is one of the options you can pass to the ajaxCallMethod() function: { postbackMode: "Post" }); which directs the function to include form variable POST data when making the service call. Other options include PostNoViewState (for WebForms to strip out WebForms crap vars), PostParametersOnly (default), None. If you pass parameters those are always posted to the server except when None is set. The above code can be simplified a bit by using the FormVariableBinder helper, which can unbind form variables directly into an object: FormVariableBinder.Unbind(buyOrder,null,"txtBuy"); which replaces the manual Request.Form[] reading code. It receives the object to unbind into, a string of properties to skip, and an optional prefix which is stripped off form variables to match property names. The component is similar to the MVC model binder but it's independent of MVC. Returning non-JSON Data CallbackHandler also supports returning non-JSON/XML data via special return types. You can return raw non-JSON encoded strings like this: [CallbackMethod(ReturnAsRawString=true,ContentType="text/plain")] public string HelloWorldNoJSON(string name) { return "Hello " + name + ". Time is: " + DateTime.Now.ToString(); } Calling this method results in just a plain string - no JSON encoding with quotes around the result. This can be useful if your server handling code needs to return a string or HTML result that doesn't fit well for a page or other UI component. Any string output can be returned. You can also return binary data. Stream, byte[] and Bitmap/Image results are automatically streamed back to the client. Notice that you should set the ContentType of the request either on the CallbackMethod attribute or using Response.ContentType. This ensures the Web Server knows how to display your binary response. Using a stream response makes it possible to return any of data. Streamed data can be pretty handy to return bitmap data from a method. The following is a method that returns a stock history graph for a particular stock over a provided number of years: [CallbackMethod(ContentType="image/png",RouteUrl="stocks/history/graph/{symbol}/{years}")] public Stream GetStockHistoryGraph(string symbol, int years = 2,int width = 500, int height=350) { if (width == 0) width = 500; if (height == 0) height = 350; StockServer server = new StockServer(); return server.GetStockHistoryGraph(symbol,"Stock History for " + symbol,width,height,years); } I can now hook this up into the JavaScript code when I get a stock quote. At the end of the process I can assign the URL to the service that returns the image into the src property and so force the image to display. Here's the changed code: $("#btnStockQuote").click(function () { var symbol = $("#txtSymbol").val(); ajaxCallMethod("SampleService.ashx", "GetStockQuote", [symbol], function (quote) { $("#divStockDisplay").fadeIn(1000); $("#stockCompany").text(quote.Company + " (" + quote.Symbol + ")"); $("#stockLastPrice").text(quote.LastPrice); $("#stockQuoteTime").text(quote.LastQuoteTime.formatDate("MMM dd, hh:mmt")); // display a stock chart $("#imgStockHistory").attr("src", "stocks/history/graph/" + symbol + "/2"); },onPageError); }); The resulting output then looks like this: The charting code uses the new ASP.NET 4.0 Chart components via code to display a bar chart of the 2 year stock data as part of the StockServer class which you can find in the sample download. The ability to return arbitrary data from a service is useful as you can see - in this case the chart is clearly associated with the service and it's nice that the graph generation can happen off a handler rather than through a page. Images are common resources, but output can also be PDF reports, zip files for downloads etc. which is becoming increasingly more common to be returned from REST endpoints and other applications. Why reinvent? Obviously the examples I've shown here are pretty basic in terms of functionality. But I hope they demonstrate the core features of AJAX callbacks that you need to work through in most applications which is simple: return data, send back data and potentially retrieve data in various formats. While there are other solutions when it comes down to making AJAX callbacks and servicing REST like requests, I like the flexibility my home grown solution provides. Simply put it's still the easiest solution that I've found that addresses my common use cases: AJAX JSON RPC style callbacks Url based access XML and JSON Output from single method endpoint XML and JSON POST support, querystring input, routing parameter mapping UrlEncoded POST data support on callbacks Ability to return stream/raw string data Essentially ability to return ANYTHING from Service and pass anything All these features are available in various solutions but not together in one place. I've been using this code base for over 4 years now in a number of projects both for myself and commercial work and it's served me extremely well. Besides the AJAX functionality CallbackHandler provides, it's also an easy way to create any kind of output endpoint I need to create. Need to create a few simple routines that spit back some data, but don't want to create a Page or View or full blown handler for it? Create a CallbackHandler and add a method or multiple methods and you have your generic endpoints. It's a quick and easy way to add small code pieces that are pretty efficient as they're running through a pretty small handler implementation. I can have this up and running in a couple of minutes literally without any setup and returning just about any kind of data. Resources Download the Sample NuGet: Westwind Web and AJAX Utilities (Westwind.Web) ajaxCallMethod() Documentation Using the AjaxMethodCallback WebForms Control West Wind Web Toolkit Home Page West Wind Web Toolkit Source Code © Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2011Posted in ASP.NET jQuery AJAX Tweet (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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IIS SSL Certificate Renewal Pain

- by Rick Strahl

I’m in the middle of my annual certificate renewal for the West Wind site and I can honestly say that I hate IIS’s certificate system. When it works it’s fine, but when it doesn’t man can it be a pain. Because I deal with public certificates on my site merely once a year, and you have to perform the certificate dance just the right way, I seem to run into some sort of trouble every year, thinking that Microsoft surely must have addressed the issues I ran into previously – HA! Not so. Don’t ever use the Renew Certificate Feature in IIS! The first rule that I should have never forgotten is that certificate renewals in IIS (7 is what I’m using but I think it’s no different in 7.5 and 8), simply don’t work if you’re submitting to get a public certificate from a certificate authority. I use DNSimple for my DNS domain management and SSL certificates because they provide ridiculously easy domain management and good prices for SSL certs – especially wildcard certificates, which is what I use on west-wind.com. Certificates in IIS can be found pegged to the machine root. If you go into the IIS Manager, go to the machine root the tree and then click on certificates and you then get various certificate options: Both of these options create a new Certificate request (CSR), which is just a text file. But if you’re silly enough like me to click on the Renew button on your old certificate, you’ll find that you end up generating a very long Certificate Request that looks nothing like the original certificate request and the format that’s used for this is not accepted by most certificate authorities. While I’m not sure exactly what the problem is, it simply looks like IIS is respecting none of your original certificate bit size choices and is generating a huge certificate request that is 3 times the size of a ‘normal’ certificate request. The end result is (and I’ve done this at least twice now) is that the certificate processor is likely to fail processing those renewals. Always create a new Certificate While it’s a little more work and you have to remember how to fill out the certificate request properly, this is the safe way to make sure your certificate generates properly. First comes the Distinguished Name Properties dialog: Ah yes you have to love the nomenclature of this stuff. Distinguished name, Common name – WTF is a common name? It doesn’t look common to me! Make sure this form gets filled out correctly. Common NameThis is the domain name of the Web site. In my case I’m creating a wildcard certificate so I’m using the * prefix. If you’re purchasing a certificate for a specific domain use www.west-wind.com or store.west-wind.com for example. Make sure this matches the EXACT domain you’re trying to use secure access on because that’s all the certificate is going to work on unless you get a wildcard certificate. Organization Is the name of your company or organization. Depending on the kind of certificate you purchase this name will show up on your certificate. Most low end SSL certificates (ie. those that cost under $100 for single domains) don’t list the organization, the higher signature certificates that also require extensive validation by the cert authority do. Regardless you should make sure this matches the right company/organization. Organizational Unit This can be anything. Not really sure what this is for, but traditionally I’ve always set this to Web because – well this is a Web thing after all right? I’ve never seen this used anywhere that I can tell other than to internally reference the cert. State and CountryPretty obvious. Should reflect the location of the business/organization/person or site. Next you have to configure the bit size used for the certificate: The default on this dialog is 1024, but I’ve found that most providers these days request a minimum bit length of 2048, as did my DNSimple provider. Again check with the provider when you submit to make sure. Bit length mismatches can cause problems if you use a size that isn’t supported by the provider. I had that happen last year when I submitted my CSR and it got rejected quite a bit later, when the certs usually are issued within an hour or less. When you’re done here, the certificate is saved to disk as a .txt file and it should look something like this (this is a 2048 bit length CSR):-----BEGIN NEW CERTIFICATE REQUEST----- MIIEVGCCAz0CAQAwdjELMAkGA1UEBhMCVVMxDzANBgNVBAgMBkhhd2FpaTENMAsG A1UEBwwEUGFpYTEfMB0GA1UECgwWV2VzdCBXaW5kIFRlY2hub2xvZ2llczEMMAoG B1UECwwDV2ViMRgwFgYDVQQDDA8qLndlc3Qtd2luZC5jb20wggEiMA0GCSqGSIb3 DQEBAQUAA4IBDwAwggEKAoIBAQDIPWOFMkMVRp2Ftj9w/cCVV4OYYhoZYtl+8lTk oqDwKca0xWHLgioX/9v0rZLS6a82MHqKEBxVXu+cuCmSE4AQtB/1YH9lS4tpc/be OZDvnTotP6l4MCEzzAfROcw4CiIg6X0RMSnl8IATAvv2V5LQM9TDdt9oDdMpX2IY +vVC9RZ7PMHBmR9kwI2i/lrKitzhQKaHgpmKcRlM6iqpALUiX28w5HJaDKK1MDHN 607tyFJLHijuJKx7PdTqZYf50KkC3NupfZ2avVycf18Q13jHWj59tvwEOczoVzRL l4LQivAqbhyiqMpWnrZunIOUZta5aGm+jo7O1knGWJjxuraTAgMBAAGgggGYMBoG CisGAQQBgjcNAgMxDBYKNi4yLjkyMDAuMjA0BgkrBgEEAYI3FRQxJzAlAgEFDAZS QVNYUFMMC1JBU1hQU1xSaWNrDAtJbmV0TWdyLmV4ZTByBgorBgEEAYI3DQICMWQw YgIBAR5aAE0AaQBjAHIAbwBzAG8AZgB0ACAAUgBTAEEAIABTAEMAaABhAG4AbgBl AGwAIABDAHIAeQBwAHQAbwBnAHIAYQBwAGgAaQBjACAAUAByAG8AdgBpAGQAZQBy AwEAMIHPBgkqhkiG9w0BCQ4xgcEwgb4wDgYDVR0PAQH/BAQDAgTwMBMGA1UdJQQM MAoGCCsGAQUFBwMBMHgGCSqGSIb3DQEJDwRrMGkwDgYIKoZIhvcNAwICAgCAMA4G CCqGSIb3DQMEAgIAgDALBglghkgBZQMEASowCwYJYIZIAWUDBAEtMAsGCWCGSAFl AwQBAjALBglghkgBZQMEAQUwBwYFKw4DAgcwCgYIKoZIhvcNAwcwHQYDVR0OBBYE FD/yOsTbXE+GVFCFMmldzQvyloz9MA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBBQUAA4IBAQCK6LlsCuIM 1AU0niB6QZ9v0FTsGFxP1dYvVUnJyY6VEKNiGFiQjZac7UCs0p58yScdXWEFOE8V OsjAYD3xYNc05+ckyD67UHRGEUAVB9RBvbKW23KeR/8kBmEzc8PemD52YOgExxAJ 57xWmAwEHAvbgYzQvhO8AOzH3TGvvHbg5UKM1pYgNmuwZq5DkL/IDoeIJwfk/wrI wghNTuxxIFgbH4YrgLgv4PRvrS/LaTCRBdboaCgzATMczaOb1nd/DVNR+3fCtMhM W0psTAjzRbmXF3nJyAQa7jF/52gkY0RfFX2lG5tJnG+XDsVNvKNvh9Qa5Tlmkm06 ILKCm9ciWCKk -----END NEW CERTIFICATE REQUEST----- You can take that certificate request and submit that to your certificate provider. Since this is base64 encoded you can typically just paste it into a text box on the submission page, or some providers will ask you to upload the CSR as a file. What does a Renewal look like? Note the length of the CSR will vary somewhat with key strength, but compare this to a renewal request that IIS generated from my existing site:-----BEGIN NEW CERTIFICATE REQUEST----- MIIPpwYFKoZIhvcNAQcCoIIPmDCCD5QCAQExCzAJBgUrDgMCGgUAMIIIqAYJKoZI hvcNAQcBoIIImQSCCJUwggiRMIIH+gIBADBdMSEwHwYDVQQLDBhEb21haW4gQ29u dHJvbCBWYWxpFGF0ZWQxHjAcBgNVBAsMFUVzc2VudGlhbFNTTCBXaWxkY2FyZDEY MBYGA1UEAwwPKi53ZXN0LXdpbmQuY29tMIGfMA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBAQUAA4GNADCB iQKBgQCK4OuIOR18Wb8tNMGRZiD1c9X57b332Lj7DhbckFqLs0ys8kVDHrTXSj+T Ye9nmAvfPpZmBtE5p9qRNN79rUYugAdl+qEtE4IJe1bRfxXzcKa1SXa8+TEs3zQa zYSmcR2dDuC8om1eAdeCtt0NnkvANgm1VLwGOor/UHMASaEhCQIDAQABoIIG8jAa BgorBgEEAYI3DQIDMQwWCjYuMi45MjAwLjIwNAYJKwYBBAGCNxUUMScwJQIBBQwG UkFTWFBTDAtSQVNYUFNcUmljawwLSW5ldE1nci5leGUwZgYKKwYBBAGCNw0CAjFY MFYCAQIeTgBNAGkAYwByAG8AcwBvAGYAdAAgAFMAdAByAG8AbgBnACAAQwByAHkA cAB0AG8AZwByAGEAcABoAGkAYwAgAFAAcgBvAHYAaQBkAGUAcgMBADCCAQAGCSqG SIb3DQEJDjGB8jCB7zAOBgNVHQ8BAf8EBAMCBaAwDAYDVR0TAQH/BAIwADA0BgNV 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And it didn’t work. IIS creates a custom CSR that is encoded in a format that no certificate authority I’ve ever used uses. If you want the gory details of what’s in there look at this ServerFault question (thanks to Mika in the comments). In the end it doesn’t matter though – no certificate authority knows what to do with this CSR. So create a new CSR and skip the renewal. Always! Use the same Server Keep in mind that on IIS at least you should always create your certificate on a single server and then when you receive the final certificate from your provider import it on that server. IIS tracks the CSR it created and requires it in order to import the final certificate properly. So if for some reason you try to install the certificate on another server, it won’t work. I’ve also run into trouble trying to install the same certificate twice – this time around I didn’t give my certificate the proper friendly name and IIS failed to allow me to assign the certificate to any of my Web sites. So I removed the certificate and tried to import again, only to find it failed the second time around. There are other ways to fix this, but in my case I had to have the certificate re-issued to work – not what you want to do. Regardless of what you do though, when you import make sure you do it right the first time by crossing all your t’s and dotting your i's– it’ll save you a lot of grief! You don’t actually have to use the server that the certificate gets installed on to generate the CSR and first install it, but it is generally a good idea to do so just so you can get the certificate installed into the right place right away. If you have access to the server where you need to install the certificate you might as well use it. But you can use another machine to generated the and install the certificate, then export the certificate and move it to another machine as needed. So you can use your Dev machine to create a certificate then export it and install it on a live server. More on installation and back up/export later. Installing the Certificate Once you’ve submitted a CSR request your provider will process the request and eventually issue you a new final certificate that contains another text file with the final key to import into your certificate store. IIS does this by combining the content in your certificate request with the original CSR. If all goes well your new certificate shows up in the certificate list and you’re ready to assign the certificate to your sites. Make sure you use a friendly name that matches domain name of your site. So use *.mysite.com or www.mysite.com or store.mysite.com to ensure IIS recognizes the certificate. I made the mistake of not naming my friendly name this way and found that IIS was unable to link my sites to my wildcard certificate. It needed to have the *. as part of the certificate otherwise the Hostname input field was blanked out. Changing the Friendly Name If you by accidentally used an invalid friendly name you can change it later in the Windows certificate store. Bring up a Run Box Type MMC File | Add/Remove Snap In Add Certificates | Computer Account | Local Computer Drill into Certificates | Personal | Certificates Find your Certificate | Right Click | Properties Edit the Friendly Name | Click OK Backing up your Certificate The first thing you should do once your certificate is successfully installed is to back it up! In case your server crashes or you otherwise lose your configuration this will ensure you have an easy way to recover and reinstall your certificate either on the same server or a different one. If you’re running a server farm or using a wildcard certificate you also need to get the certificate onto other machines and a PFX file import is the easiest way to do this. To back up your certificate select your certificate and choose Export from the context or sidebar menu: The Export Certificate option allows you to export a password protected binary file that you can import in a single step. You can copy the resulting binary PFX file to back up or copy to other machines to install on. Importing the certificate on another machine is as easy as pointing at the PFX file and specifying the password. IIS handles the rest. Assigning a new certificate to your Site Once you have the new certificate installed, all that’s left to do is assign it to your site. In IIS select your Web site and bring up the Site Bindings from the right sidebar. Add a new binding for https, bind it to port 443, specify your hostname and pick the certificate from the pick list. If you’re using a root site make sure to set up your certificate for www.yoursite.com and also for yoursite.com so that both work properly with SSL. Note that you need to explicitly configure each hostname for a certificate if you plan to use SSL. Luckily if you update your SSL certificate in the following year, IIS prompts you and asks whether you like to update all other sites that are using the existing cert to the newer cert. And you’re done. So what’s the Pain? So, all of this is old hat and it doesn’t look all that bad right? So what’s the pain here? Well if you follow the instructions and do everything right, then the process is about as straight forward as you would expect it to be. You create a cert request, you import it and assign it to your sites. That’s the basic steps and to be perfectly fair it works well – if nothing goes wrong. However, renewing tends to be the problem. The first unintuitive issue is that you simply shouldn’t renew but create a new CSR and generate your new certificate from that. Over the years I’ve fallen prey to the belief that Microsoft eventually will fix this so that the renewal creates the same type of CSR as the old cert, but apparently that will just never happen. Booo! The other problem I ran into is that I accidentally misnamed my imported certificate which in turn set off a chain of events that caused my originally issued certificate to become uninstallable. When I received my completed certificate I installed it and it installed just fine, but the friendly name was wrong. As a result IIS refused to assign the certificate to any of my host headered sites. That’s strike number one. Why the heck should the friendly name have any effect on the ability to attach the certificate??? Next I uninstalled the certificate because I figured that would be the easiest way to make sure I get it right. But I found that I could not reinstall my certificate. I kept getting these stop errors: "ASN1 bad tag value met" that would prevent the installation from completion. After searching around for this error and reading countless long messages on forums, I found that this error supposedly does not actually mean the install failed, but the list wouldn’t refresh. Commodo has this to say: Note: There is a known issue in IIS 7 giving the following error: "Cannot find the certificate request associated with this certificate file. A certificate request must be completed on the computer where it was created." You may also receive a message stating "ASN1 bad tag value met". If this is the same server that you generated the CSR on then, in most cases, the certificate is actually installed. Simply cancel the dialog and press "F5" to refresh the list of server certificates. If the new certificate is now in the list, you can continue with the next step. If it is not in the list, you will need to reissue your certificate using a new CSR (see our CSR creation instructions for IIS 7). After creating a new CSR, login to your Comodo account and click the 'replace' button for your certificate. Not sure if this issue is fixed in IIS 8 but that’s an insane bug to have crop up. As it turns out, in my case the refresh didn’t work and the certificate didn’t show up in the IIS list after the reinstall. In fact when looking at the certificate store I could see my certificate was installed in the right place, but the private key is missing which is most likely why IIS is not picking it up. It looks like IIS could not match the final cert to the original CSR generated. But again some sort of message to that affect might be helpful instead of ASN1 bad tag value met. Recovering the Private Key So it turns out my original problem was that I received the published key, but when I imported the private key was missing. There’s a relatively easy way to recover from this. If your certificate doesn’t show up in IIS check in the certificate store for the local machine (see steps above on how to bring this up). If you look at the certificate in Certificates/Personal/Certificates make sure you see the key as shown in the image below: if the key is missing it means that the certificate is missing the private key most likely. To fix a certificate you can do the following: Double click the certificate Go to the Details Tab Copy down the Serial number You can copy the serial number from the area blurred out above. The serial number will be in a format like ?00 a7 9b a1 a4 9d 91 63 57 d6 9f 26 b8 ee 79 b5 cb and you’ll need to strip out the spaces in order to use it in the next step. Next open up an Administrative command prompt and issue the following command: certutil -repairstore my 00a79ba1a49d916357d69f26b8ee79b5cb You should get a confirmation message that the repair worked. If you now go back to the certificate store you should now see the key icon show up on the certificate. Your certificate is fixed. Now go back into IIS Manager and refresh the list of certificates and if all goes well you should see all the certificates that showed in the cert store now: Remember – back up the key first then map to your site… Summary I deal with a lot of customers who run their own IIS servers, and I can’t tell you how often I hear about botched SSL installations. When I posted some of my issues on Twitter yesterday I got a hell storm of “me too” responses. I’m clearly not the only one, who’s run into this especially with renewals. I feel pretty comfortable with IIS configuration and I do a lot of it for support purposes, but the SSL configuration is one that never seems to go seamlessly. This blog post is meant as reminder to myself to read next time I do a renewal. So I can dot my i's and dash my t’s before I get caught in the mess I’m dealing with today. Hopefully some of you find this useful as well.© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2014Posted in IIS7 Security 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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Setting up and using Bing Translate API Service for Machine Translation

- by Rick Strahl

Last week I spent quite a bit of time trying to set up the Bing Translate API service. I can honestly say this was one of the most screwed up developer experiences I've had in a long while - specifically related to the byzantine sign up process that Microsoft has in place. Not only is it nearly impossible to find decent documentation on the required signup process, some of the links in the docs are just plain wrong, and some of the account pages you need to access the actual account information once signed up are not linked anywhere from the administration UI. To make things even harder is the fact that the APIs changed a while back, with a completely new authentication scheme that's described and not directly linked documentation topic also made for a very frustrating search experience. It's a bummer that this is the case too, because the actual API itself is easy to use and works very well - fast and reasonably accurate (as accurate as you can expect machine translation to be). But the sign up process is a pain in the ass doubtlessly leaving many people giving up in frustration. In this post I'll try to hit all the points needed to set up to use the Bing Translate API in one place since such a document seems to be missing from Microsoft. Hopefully the API folks at Microsoft will get their shit together and actually provide this sort of info on their site… Signing Up The first step required is to create a Windows Azure MarketPlace account. Go to: https://datamarket.azure.com/ Sign in with your Windows Live Id If you don't have an account you will be taken to a registration page which you have to fill out. Follow the links and complete the registration. Once you're signed in you can start adding services. Click on the Data Link on the main page Select Microsoft Translator from the list This adds the Microsoft Bing Translator to your services. Pricing The page shows the pricing matrix and the free service which provides 2 megabytes for translations a month for free. Prices go up steeply from there. Pricing is determined by actual bytes of the result translations used. Max translations are 1000 characters so at minimum this means you get around 2000 translations a month for free. However most translations are probable much less so you can expect larger number of translations to go through. For testing or low volume translations this should be just fine. Once signed up there are no further instructions and you're left in limbo on the MS site. Register your Application Once you've created the Data association with Translator the next step is registering your application. To do this you need to access your developer account. Go to https://datamarket.azure.com/developer/applications/register Provide a ClientId, which is effectively the unique string identifier for your application (not your customer id!) Provide your name The client secret was auto-created and this becomes your 'password' For the redirect url provide any https url: https://microsoft.com works Give this application a description of your choice so you can identify it in the list of apps Now, once you've registered your application, keep track of the ClientId and ClientSecret - those are the two keys you need to authenticate before you can call the Translate API. Oddly the applications page is hidden from the Azure Portal UI. I couldn't find a direct link from anywhere on the site back to this page where I can examine my developer application keys. To find them you can go to: https://datamarket.azure.com/developer/applications You can come back here to look at your registered applications and pick up the ClientID and ClientSecret. Fun eh? But we're now ready to actually call the API and do some translating. Using the Bing Translate API The good news is that after this signup hell, using the API is pretty straightforward. To use the translation API you'll need to actually use two services: You need to call an authentication API service first, before you can call the actual translator API. These two APIs live on different domains, and the authentication API returns JSON data while the translator service returns XML. So much for consistency. Authentication The first step is authentication. The service uses oAuth authentication with a bearer token that has to be passed to the translator API. The authentication call retrieves the oAuth token that you can then use with the translate API call. The bearer token has a short 10 minute life time, so while you can cache it for successive calls, the token can't be cached for long periods. This means for Web backend requests you typically will have to authenticate each time unless you build a more elaborate caching scheme that takes the timeout into account (perhaps using the ASP.NET Cache object). For low volume operations you can probably get away with simply calling the auth API for every translation you do. To call the Authentication API use code like this:/// /// Retrieves an oAuth authentication token to be used on the translate /// API request. The result string needs to be passed as a bearer token /// to the translate API. /// /// You can find client ID and Secret (or register a new one) at: /// https://datamarket.azure.com/developer/applications/ /// /// The client ID of your application /// The client secret or password /// public string GetBingAuthToken(string clientId = null, string clientSecret = null) { string authBaseUrl = https://datamarket.accesscontrol.windows.net/v2/OAuth2-13; if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(clientId) || string.IsNullOrEmpty(clientSecret)) { ErrorMessage = Resources.Resources.Client_Id_and_Client_Secret_must_be_provided; return null; } var postData = string.Format("grant_type=client_credentials&client_id={0}" + "&client_secret={1}" + "&scope=http://api.microsofttranslator.com", HttpUtility.UrlEncode(clientId), HttpUtility.UrlEncode(clientSecret)); // POST Auth data to the oauth API string res, token; try { var web = new WebClient(); web.Encoding = Encoding.UTF8; res = web.UploadString(authBaseUrl, postData); } catch (Exception ex) { ErrorMessage = ex.GetBaseException().Message; return null; } var ser = new JavaScriptSerializer(); var auth = ser.Deserialize<BingAuth>(res); if (auth == null) return null; token = auth.access_token; return token; } private class BingAuth { public string token_type { get; set; } public string access_token { get; set; } } This code basically takes the client id and secret and posts it at the oAuth endpoint which returns a JSON string. Here I use the JavaScript serializer to deserialize the JSON into a custom object I created just for deserialization. You can also use JSON.NET and dynamic deserialization if you are already using JSON.NET in your app in which case you don't need the extra type. In my library that houses this component I don't, so I just rely on the built in serializer. The auth method returns a long base64 encoded string which can be used as a bearer token in the translate API call. Translation Once you have the authentication token you can use it to pass to the translate API. The auth token is passed as an Authorization header and the value is prefixed with a 'Bearer ' prefix for the string. Here's what the simple Translate API call looks like:/// /// Uses the Bing API service to perform translation /// Bing can translate up to 1000 characters. /// /// Requires that you provide a CLientId and ClientSecret /// or set the configuration values for these two. /// /// More info on setup: /// http://www.west-wind.com/weblog/ /// /// Text to translate /// Two letter culture name /// Two letter culture name /// Pass an access token retrieved with GetBingAuthToken. /// If not passed the default keys from .config file are used if any /// public string TranslateBing(string text, string fromCulture, string toCulture, string accessToken = null) { string serviceUrl = "http://api.microsofttranslator.com/V2/Http.svc/Translate"; if (accessToken == null) { accessToken = GetBingAuthToken(); if (accessToken == null) return null; } string res; try { var web = new WebClient(); web.Headers.Add("Authorization", "Bearer " + accessToken); string ct = "text/plain"; string postData = string.Format("?text={0}&from={1}&to={2}&contentType={3}", HttpUtility.UrlEncode(text), fromCulture, toCulture, HttpUtility.UrlEncode(ct)); web.Encoding = Encoding.UTF8; res = web.DownloadString(serviceUrl + postData); } catch (Exception e) { ErrorMessage = e.GetBaseException().Message; return null; } // result is a single XML Element fragment var doc = new XmlDocument(); doc.LoadXml(res); return doc.DocumentElement.InnerText; } The first of this code deals with ensuring the auth token exists. You can either pass the token into the method manually or let the method automatically retrieve the auth code on its own. In my case I'm using this inside of a Web application and in that situation I simply need to re-authenticate every time as there's no convenient way to manage the lifetime of the auth cookie. The auth token is added as an Authorization HTTP header prefixed with 'Bearer ' and attached to the request. The text to translate, the from and to language codes and a result format are passed on the query string of this HTTP GET request against the Translate API. The translate API returns an XML string which contains a single element with the translated string. Using the Wrapper Methods It should be pretty obvious how to use these two methods but here are a couple of test methods that demonstrate the two usage scenarios:[TestMethod] public void TranslateBingWithAuthTest() { var translate = new TranslationServices(); string clientId = DbResourceConfiguration.Current.BingClientId; string clientSecret = DbResourceConfiguration.Current.BingClientSecret; string auth = translate.GetBingAuthToken(clientId, clientSecret); Assert.IsNotNull(auth); string text = translate.TranslateBing("Hello World we're back home!", "en", "de",auth); Assert.IsNotNull(text, translate.ErrorMessage); Console.WriteLine(text); } [TestMethod] public void TranslateBingIntegratedTest() { var translate = new TranslationServices(); string text = translate.TranslateBing("Hello World we're back home!","en","de"); Assert.IsNotNull(text, translate.ErrorMessage); Console.WriteLine(text); } Other API Methods The Translate API has a number of methods available and this one is the simplest one but probably also the most common one that translates a single string. You can find additional methods for this API here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff512419.aspx Soap and AJAX APIs are also available and documented on MSDN: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd576287.aspx These links will be your starting points for calling other methods in this API. Dual Interface I've talked about my database driven localization provider here in the past, and it's for this tool that I added the Bing localization support. Basically I have a localization administration form that allows me to translate individual strings right out of the UI, using both Google and Bing APIs: As you can see in this example, the results from Google and Bing can vary quite a bit - in this case Google is stumped while Bing actually generated a valid translation. At other times it's the other way around - it's pretty useful to see multiple translations at the same time. Here I can choose from one of the values and driectly embed them into the translated text field. Lost in Translation There you have it. As I mentioned using the API once you have all the bureaucratic crap out of the way calling the APIs is fairly straight forward and reasonably fast, even if you have to call the Auth API for every call. Hopefully this post will help out a few of you trying to navigate the Microsoft bureaucracy, at least until next time Microsoft upends everything and introduces new ways to sign up again. Until then - happy translating… Related Posts Translation method Source on Github Translating with Google Translate without Google API Keys Creating a data-driven ASP.NET Resource Provider© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2013Posted in Localization ASP.NET .NET Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

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IIS 7.5 , Tomcat 7 - Isapi redirector - Fail Over - sticky sessions

- by Jose Matias

I have two instances of Tomcat 7.0.8 running in the same machine (Tomcat7A and Tomcat7B) and IIS 7.5 acting as front-end load-balancer with isapi-redirector 1.2.31, running on Windows 2008 R2. When i disconnect the instance wich is handling a request i can see a new instance being assigned with the same sessionid but then the user is redirected to the login page. server.xml configuration file <Engine name="Catalina" defaultHost="localhost" jvmRoute="Tomcat7A"> <Realm className="org.apache.catalina.realm.LockOutRealm"> <Realm className="org.apache.catalina.realm.UserDatabaseRealm" resourceName="UserDatabase"/> </Realm> <Host name="localhost" appBase="webapps" unpackWARs="true" autoDeploy="true"> <Cluster className="org.apache.catalina.ha.tcp.SimpleTcpCluster" channelSendOptions="8"> <Manager className="org.apache.catalina.ha.session.DeltaManager" expireSessionsOnShutdown="false" notifyListenersOnReplication="true"/> <Channel className="org.apache.catalina.tribes.group.GroupChannel"> <Membership className="org.apache.catalina.tribes.membership.McastService" address="228.0.0.8" bind="7.3.1.22" port="45564" frequency="500" dropTime="3000"/> <Receiver className="org.apache.catalina.tribes.transport.nio.NioReceiver" address="auto" port="4200" autoBind="100" selectorTimeout="5000" maxThreads="6"/> <Sender className="org.apache.catalina.tribes.transport.ReplicationTransmitter"> <Transport className="org.apache.catalina.tribes.transport.nio.PooledParallelSender"/> </Sender> <Interceptor className="org.apache.catalina.tribes.group.interceptors.TcpFailureDetector"/> <Interceptor className="org.apache.catalina.tribes.group.interceptors.MessageDispatch15Interceptor"/> </Channel> <Valve className="org.apache.catalina.ha.tcp.ReplicationValve" filter=".*\.gif;.*\.js;.*\.jpg;.*\.htm;.*\.html;.*\.txt"/> <Valve className="org.apache.catalina.ha.session.JvmRouteBinderValve"/> <ClusterListener className="org.apache.catalina.ha.session.JvmRouteSessionIDBinderListener"/> <ClusterListener className="org.apache.catalina.ha.session.ClusterSessionListener"/> </Cluster> <Valve className="org.apache.catalina.valves.AccessLogValve" directory="logs" prefix="localhost_access_log." suffix=".txt" pattern="%h %l %u %t "%r" %s %b" resolveHosts="false"/> </Host> </Engine> worker_mount_file=C:\tomcat\iis\conf\uriworkermap_prod.properties worker.list = balancer,status worker.Tomcat7B.host = 7.3.1.22 worker.Tomcat7B.type = ajp13 worker.Tomcat7B.port = 8010 worker.Tomcat7B.lbfactor = 10 worker.Tomcat7A.host = 7.3.1.22 worker.Tomcat7A.type = ajp13 worker.Tomcat7A.port = 8009 worker.Tomcat7A.lbfactor = 10 worker.balancer.type = lb worker.balancer.sticky_session = 1 worker.balancer.balance_workers = Tomcat7B, Tomcat7A worker.status.type = status isapi_redirect log [debug] wc_get_worker_for_name::jk_worker.c (116): found a worker balancer [debug] HttpExtensionProc::jk_isapi_plugin.c (2188): got a worker for name balancer [debug] service::jk_lb_worker.c (1118): service sticky_session=1 id='89569C584CC4F58740D649C4BE655D36.Tomcat7B' [debug] get_most_suitable_worker::jk_lb_worker.c (946): searching worker for partial sessionid 89569C584CC4F58740D649C4BE655D36.Tomcat7B [debug] get_most_suitable_worker::jk_lb_worker.c (954): searching worker for session route Tomcat7B [debug] get_most_suitable_worker::jk_lb_worker.c (968): found worker Tomcat7B (Tomcat7B) for route Tomcat7B and partial sessionid 89569C584CC4F58740D649C4BE655D36.Tomcat7B [debug] service::jk_lb_worker.c (1161): service worker=Tomcat7B route=Tomcat7B [debug] ajp_get_endpoint::jk_ajp_common.c (3096): acquired connection pool slot=0 after 0 retries [debug] ajp_marshal_into_msgb::jk_ajp_common.c (605): ajp marshaling done [debug] ajp_service::jk_ajp_common.c (2379): processing Tomcat7B with 2 retries [debug] jk_shutdown_socket::jk_connect.c (726): About to shutdown socket 820 [7.3.1.22:24482 -> 7.3.1.22:8010] [debug] jk_shutdown_socket::jk_connect.c (797): shutting down the read side of socket 820 [7.3.1.22:24482 -> 7.3.1.22:8010] [debug] jk_shutdown_socket::jk_connect.c (808): Shutdown socket 820 [7.3.1.22:24482 -> 7.3.1.22:8010] and read 0 lingering bytes in 0 sec. [debug] ajp_send_request::jk_ajp_common.c (1496): (Tomcat7B) failed sending request, socket 820 is not connected any more (errno=-10000) [debug] ajp_next_connection::jk_ajp_common.c (823): (Tomcat7B) Will try pooled connection socket 896 from slot 1 [debug] jk_shutdown_socket::jk_connect.c (726): About to shutdown socket 896 [7.3.1.22:24488 -> 7.3.1.22:8010] [debug] jk_shutdown_socket::jk_connect.c (797): shutting down the read side of socket 896 [7.3.1.22:24488 -> 7.3.1.22:8010] [debug] jk_shutdown_socket::jk_connect.c (808): Shutdown socket 896 [7.3.1.22:24488 -> 7.3.1.22:8010] and read 0 lingering bytes in 0 sec. [debug] ajp_send_request::jk_ajp_common.c (1496): (Tomcat7B) failed sending request, socket 896 is not connected any more (errno=-10000) [info] ajp_send_request::jk_ajp_common.c (1567): (Tomcat7B) all endpoints are disconnected, detected by connect check (2), cping (0), send (0) [debug] jk_open_socket::jk_connect.c (484): socket TCP_NODELAY set to On [debug] jk_open_socket::jk_connect.c (608): trying to connect socket 896 to 7.3.1.22:8010 [info] jk_open_socket::jk_connect.c (626): connect to 7.3.1.22:8010 failed (errno=61) [info] ajp_connect_to_endpoint::jk_ajp_common.c (959): Failed opening socket to (7.3.1.22:8010) (errno=61) [error] ajp_send_request::jk_ajp_common.c (1578): (Tomcat7B) connecting to backend failed. Tomcat is probably not started or is listening on the wrong port (errno=61) [info] ajp_service::jk_ajp_common.c (2543): (Tomcat7B) sending request to tomcat failed (recoverable), because of error during request sending (attempt=1) [debug] ajp_service::jk_ajp_common.c (2400): retry 1, sleeping for 100 ms before retrying [debug] ajp_send_request::jk_ajp_common.c (1572): (Tomcat7B) all endpoints are disconnected. [debug] jk_open_socket::jk_connect.c (484): socket TCP_NODELAY set to On [debug] jk_open_socket::jk_connect.c (608): trying to connect socket 896 to 7.3.1.22:8010 [info] jk_open_socket::jk_connect.c (626): connect to 7.3.1.22:8010 failed (errno=61) [info] ajp_connect_to_endpoint::jk_ajp_common.c (959): Failed opening socket to (7.3.1.22:8010) (errno=61) [error] ajp_send_request::jk_ajp_common.c (1578): (Tomcat7B) connecting to backend failed. Tomcat is probably not started or is listening on the wrong port (errno=61) [info] ajp_service::jk_ajp_common.c (2543): (Tomcat7B) sending request to tomcat failed (recoverable), because of error during request sending (attempt=2) [error] ajp_service::jk_ajp_common.c (2562): (Tomcat7B) connecting to tomcat failed. [debug] ajp_reset_endpoint::jk_ajp_common.c (757): (Tomcat7B) resetting endpoint with socket -1 (socket shutdown) [debug] ajp_done::jk_ajp_common.c (3013): recycling connection pool slot=0 for worker Tomcat7B [debug] service::jk_lb_worker.c (1374): worker Tomcat7B escalating local error to global error [info] service::jk_lb_worker.c (1388): service failed, worker Tomcat7B is in error state [debug] service::jk_lb_worker.c (1399): recoverable error... will try to recover on other worker [debug] get_most_suitable_worker::jk_lb_worker.c (946): searching worker for partial sessionid 89569C584CC4F58740D649C4BE655D36.Tomcat7B [debug] get_most_suitable_worker::jk_lb_worker.c (954): searching worker for session route Tomcat7B [debug] get_most_suitable_worker::jk_lb_worker.c (1001): found best worker Tomcat7A (Tomcat7A) using method 'Request' [debug] service::jk_lb_worker.c (1161): service worker=Tomcat7A route=Tomcat7B [debug] ajp_get_endpoint::jk_ajp_common.c (3096): acquired connection pool slot=0 after 0 retries [debug] ajp_marshal_into_msgb::jk_ajp_common.c (605): ajp marshaling done [debug] ajp_service::jk_ajp_common.c (2379): processing Tomcat7A with 2 retries [debug] ajp_send_request::jk_ajp_common.c (1572): (Tomcat7A) all endpoints are disconnected. [debug] jk_open_socket::jk_connect.c (484): socket TCP_NODELAY set to On [debug] jk_open_socket::jk_connect.c (608): trying to connect socket 896 to 7.3.1.22:8009 [debug] jk_open_socket::jk_connect.c (634): socket 896 [7.3.1.22:24496 -> 7.3.1.22:8009] connected [debug] ajp_connection_tcp_send_message::jk_ajp_common.c (1145): sending to ajp13 pos=4 len=615 max=8192 [debug] ajp_connection_tcp_send_message::jk_ajp_common.c (1145): 0000 .4.c....HTTP/1.1 [debug] ajp_connection_tcp_send_message::jk_ajp_common.c (1145): 0010 .../Accounter/pr [debug] ajp_connection_tcp_send_message::jk_ajp_common.c (1145): 0020 intFrameSet.jhtm [debug] ajp_connection_tcp_send_message::jk_ajp_common.c (1145): 0030 l...::1...::1... [debug] ajp_connection_tcp_send_message::jk_ajp_common.c (1145): 0040 localhost..P.... [debug] ajp_connection_tcp_send_message::jk_ajp_common.c (1145): 0050 ...Keep-Alive... [debug] ajp_connection_tcp_send_message::jk_ajp_common.c (1145): 0060 ..0....rimage/jp [debug] ajp_connection_tcp_send_message::jk_ajp_common.c (1145): 0070 eg,.image/gif,.i [debug] ajp_connection_tcp_send_message::jk_ajp_common.c (1145): 0080 mage/pjpeg,.appl [debug] ajp_connection_tcp_send_message::jk_ajp_common.c (1145): 0090 ication/x-ms-app [debug] ajp_connection_tcp_send_message::jk_ajp_common.c (1145): 00a0 lication,.applic [debug] ajp_connection_tcp_send_message::jk_ajp_common.c (1145): 00b0 ation/xaml+xml,. [debug] ajp_connection_tcp_send_message::jk_ajp_common.c (1145): 00c0 application/x-ms [debug] ajp_connection_tcp_send_message::jk_ajp_common.c (1145): 00d0 -xbap,.*/*...Acc [debug] ajp_connection_tcp_send_message::jk_ajp_common.c (1145): 00e0 ept-Encoding...g [debug] ajp_connection_tcp_send_message::jk_ajp_common.c (1145): 00f0 zip,.deflate...A [debug] ajp_connection_tcp_send_message::jk_ajp_common.c (1145): 0100 ccept-Language.. [debug] ajp_connection_tcp_send_message::jk_ajp_common.c (1145): 0110 .nb-NO....]Usern [debug] ajp_connection_tcp_send_message::jk_ajp_common.c (1145): 0120 ame=NA_jose.mati [debug] ajp_connection_tcp_send_message::jk_ajp_common.c (1145): 0130 as_AT_addenergy. [debug] ajp_connection_tcp_send_message::jk_ajp_common.c (1145): 0140 no;.JSESSIONID=8 [debug] ajp_connection_tcp_send_message::jk_ajp_common.c (1145): 0150 9569C584CC4F5874 [debug] ajp_connection_tcp_send_message::jk_ajp_common.c (1145): 0160 0D649C4BE655D36. [debug] ajp_connection_tcp_send_message::jk_ajp_common.c (1145): 0170 Tomcat7B.....loc [debug] ajp_connection_tcp_send_message::jk_ajp_common.c (1145): 0180 alhost.....http: [debug] ajp_connection_tcp_send_message::jk_ajp_common.c (1145): 0190 //localhost/Acco [debug] ajp_connection_tcp_send_message::jk_ajp_common.c (1145): 01a0 unter/NemsAccoun [debug] ajp_connection_tcp_send_message::jk_ajp_common.c (1145): 01b0 ter.jhtml....uMo [debug] ajp_connection_tcp_send_message::jk_ajp_common.c (1145): 01c0 zilla/4.0.(compa [debug] ajp_connection_tcp_send_message::jk_ajp_common.c (1145): 01d0 tible;.MSIE.8.0; [debug] ajp_connection_tcp_send_message::jk_ajp_common.c (1145): 01e0 .Windows.NT.6.1; [debug] ajp_connection_tcp_send_message::jk_ajp_common.c (1145): 01f0 .WOW64;.Trident/ [debug] ajp_connection_tcp_send_message::jk_ajp_common.c (1145): 0200 4.0;.SLCC2;..NET [debug] ajp_connection_tcp_send_message::jk_ajp_common.c (1145): 0210 .CLR.2.0.50727;. [debug] ajp_connection_tcp_send_message::jk_ajp_common.c (1145): 0220 .NET4.0C;..NET4. [debug] ajp_connection_tcp_send_message::jk_ajp_common.c (1145): 0230 0E)............F [debug] ajp_connection_tcp_send_message::jk_ajp_common.c (1145): 0240 rameName=Reports [debug] ajp_connection_tcp_send_message::jk_ajp_common.c (1145): 0250 _CS_EUETS....Tom [debug] ajp_connection_tcp_send_message::jk_ajp_common.c (1145): 0260 cat7B........... [debug] ajp_send_request::jk_ajp_common.c (1632): (Tomcat7A) request body to send 0 - request body to resend 0 [debug] ajp_connection_tcp_get_message::jk_ajp_common.c (1329): received from ajp13 pos=0 len=238 max=8192 [debug] ajp_connection_tcp_get_message::jk_ajp_common.c (1329): 0000 .....Moved.Tempo [debug] ajp_connection_tcp_get_message::jk_ajp_common.c (1329): 0010 rarily......OJSE [debug] ajp_connection_tcp_get_message::jk_ajp_common.c (1329): 0020 SSIONID=6A2507A4 [debug] ajp_connection_tcp_get_message::jk_ajp_common.c (1329): 0030 626F698EC74A733C [debug] ajp_connection_tcp_get_message::jk_ajp_common.c (1329): 0040 DBA7D9FE.Tomcat7 [debug] ajp_connection_tcp_get_message::jk_ajp_common.c (1329): 0050 A;.Path=/Account [debug] ajp_connection_tcp_get_message::jk_ajp_common.c (1329): 0060 er;.HttpOnly...P [debug] ajp_connection_tcp_get_message::jk_ajp_common.c (1329): 0070 ragma...no-cache [debug] ajp_connection_tcp_get_message::jk_ajp_common.c (1329): 0080 ...Cache-Control [debug] ajp_connection_tcp_get_message::jk_ajp_common.c (1329): 0090 ...no-cache....& [debug] ajp_connection_tcp_get_message::jk_ajp_common.c (1329): 00a0 http://localhost [debug] ajp_connection_tcp_get_message::jk_ajp_common.c (1329): 00b0 /Accounter/login [debug] ajp_connection_tcp_get_message::jk_ajp_common.c (1329): 00c0 .jhtml.....text/ [debug] ajp_connection_tcp_get_message::jk_ajp_common.c (1329): 00d0 html;charset=ISO [debug] ajp_connection_tcp_get_message::jk_ajp_common.c (1329): 00e0 -8859-1.....0... [debug] ajp_unmarshal_response::jk_ajp_common.c (660): status = 302 [debug] ajp_unmarshal_response::jk_ajp_common.c (667): Number of headers is = 6 [debug] ajp_unmarshal_response::jk_ajp_common.c (723): Header[0] [Set-Cookie] = [JSESSIONID=6A2507A4626F698EC74A733CDBA7D9FE.Tomcat7A; Path=/Accounter; HttpOnly] [debug] ajp_unmarshal_response::jk_ajp_common.c (723): Header[1] [Pragma] = [no-cache] [debug] ajp_unmarshal_response::jk_ajp_common.c (723): Header[2] [Cache-Control] = [no-cache] [debug] ajp_unmarshal_response::jk_ajp_common.c (723): Header[3] [Location] = [http://localhost/Accounter/login.jhtml] [debug] ajp_unmarshal_response::jk_ajp_common.c (723): Header[4] [Content-Type] = [text/html;charset=ISO-8859-1] [debug] ajp_unmarshal_response::jk_ajp_common.c (723): Header[5] [Content-Length] = [0] [debug] start_response::jk_isapi_plugin.c (963): Starting response for URI '/Accounter/printFrameSet.jhtml' (protocol HTTP/1.1) [debug] start_response::jk_isapi_plugin.c (1063): Not using Keep-Alive [debug] ajp_connection_tcp_get_message::jk_ajp_common.c (1329): received from ajp13 pos=0 len=2 max=8192 [debug] ajp_connection_tcp_get_message::jk_ajp_common.c (1329): 0000 ................ [debug] ajp_process_callback::jk_ajp_common.c (1943): AJP13 protocol: Reuse is OK [debug] ajp_reset_endpoint::jk_ajp_common.c (757): (Tomcat7A) resetting endpoint with socket 896 [debug] ajp_done::jk_ajp_common.c (3013): recycling connection pool slot=0 for worker Tomcat7A [debug] HttpExtensionProc::jk_isapi_plugin.c (2211): service() returned OK [debug] HttpFilterProc::jk_isapi_plugin.c (1851): Filter started [debug] map_uri_to_worker_ext::jk_uri_worker_map.c (1036): Attempting to map URI '/localhost/Accounter/login.jhtml' from 8 maps [debug] find_match::jk_uri_worker_map.c (850): Attempting to map context URI '/Accounter/servlet/*=balancer' source 'uriworkermap' [debug] find_match::jk_uri_worker_map.c (850): Attempting to map context URI '/Accounter/ws/*=balancer' source 'uriworkermap' [debug] find_match::jk_uri_worker_map.c (850): Attempting to map context URI '/Accounter/nems*.pdf=balancer' source 'uriworkermap' [debug] find_match::jk_uri_worker_map.c (850): Attempting to map context URI '/Accounter/*.service=balancer' source 'uriworkermap' [debug] find_match::jk_uri_worker_map.c (850): Attempting to map context URI '/Accounter/*.jhtml=balancer' source 'uriworkermap' [debug] find_match::jk_uri_worker_map.c (850): Attempting to map context URI '/Accounter/*.json=balancer' source 'uriworkermap' [debug] find_match::jk_uri_worker_map.c (850): Attempting to map context URI '/jkmanager=status' source 'uriworkermap' [debug] find_match::jk_uri_worker_map.c (850): Attempting to map context URI '/Accounter/servlet/*=balancer' source 'uriworkermap' [debug] find_match::jk_uri_worker_map.c (850): Attempting to map context URI '/Accounter/ws/*=balancer' source 'uriworkermap' [debug] find_match::jk_uri_worker_map.c (850): Attempting to map context URI '/Accounter/nems*.pdf=balancer' source 'uriworkermap' [debug] find_match::jk_uri_worker_map.c (850): Attempting to map context URI '/Accounter/*.service=balancer' source 'uriworkermap' [debug] find_match::jk_uri_worker_map.c (850): Attempting to map context URI '/Accounter/*.jhtml=balancer' source 'uriworkermap' [debug] find_match::jk_uri_worker_map.c (863): Found a wildchar match '/Accounter/*.jhtml=balancer' [debug] HttpFilterProc::jk_isapi_plugin.c (1938): check if [/Accounter/login.jhtml] points to the web-inf directory [debug] HttpFilterProc::jk_isapi_plugin.c (1954): [/Accounter/login.jhtml] is a servlet url - should redirect to balancer [debug] HttpFilterProc::jk_isapi_plugin.c (1994): fowarding escaped URI [/Accounter/login.jhtml] [debug] init_ws_service::jk_isapi_plugin.c (2982): Reading extension header HTTP_TOMCATWORKER0000000180000000: balancer [debug] init_ws_service::jk_isapi_plugin.c (2983): Reading extension header HTTP_TOMCATWORKERIDX0000000180000000: 5 [debug] init_ws_service::jk_isapi_plugin.c (2984): Reading extension header HTTP_TOMCATURI0000000180000000: /Accounter/login.jhtml [debug] init_ws_service::jk_isapi_plugin.c (2985): Reading extension header HTTP_TOMCATQUERY0000000180000000: (null) [debug] init_ws_service::jk_isapi_plugin.c (3040): Applying service extensions [debug] init_ws_service::jk_isapi_plugin.c (3298): Service protocol=HTTP/1.1 method=GET host=::1 addr=::1 name=localhost port=80 auth= user= uri=/Accounter/login.jhtml [debug] init_ws_service::jk_isapi_plugin.c (3310): Service request headers=9 attributes=0 chunked=no content-length=0 available=0 [debug] wc_get_worker_for_name::jk_worker.c (116): found a worker balancer [debug] HttpExtensionProc::jk_isapi_plugin.c (2188): got a worker for name balancer [debug] service::jk_lb_worker.c (1118): service sticky_session=1 id='6A2507A4626F698EC74A733CDBA7D9FE.Tomcat7A' [debug] get_most_suitable_worker::jk_lb_worker.c (946): searching worker for partial sessionid 6A2507A4626F698EC74A733CDBA7D9FE.Tomcat7A [debug] get_most_suitable_worker::jk_lb_worker.c (954): searching worker for session route Tomcat7A [debug] get_most_suitable_worker::jk_lb_worker.c (968): found worker Tomcat7A (Tomcat7A) for route Tomcat7A and partial sessionid 6A2507A4626F698EC74A733CDBA7D9FE.Tomcat7A [debug] service::jk_lb_worker.c (1161): service worker=Tomcat7A route=Tomcat7A [debug] ajp_get_endpoint::jk_ajp_common.c (3096): acquired connection pool slot=0 after 0 retries [debug] ajp_marshal_into_msgb::jk_ajp_common.c (605): ajp marshaling done [debug] ajp_service::jk_ajp_common.c (2379): processing Tomcat7A with 2 retries [debug] ajp_connection_tcp_send_message::jk_ajp_common.c (1145): sending to ajp13 pos=4 len=577 max=8192 [debug] ajp_connection_tcp_send_message::jk_ajp_common.c (1145): 0000 .4.=....HTTP/1.1 [debug] ajp_connection_tcp_send_message::jk_ajp_common.c (1145): 0010 .../Accounter/lo [debug] ajp_connection_tcp_send_message::jk_ajp_common.c (1145): 0020 gin.jhtml...::1. [debug] ajp_connection_tcp_send_message::jk_ajp_common.c (1145): 0030 ..::1...localhos [debug] ajp_connection_tcp_send_message::jk_ajp_common.c (1145): 0040 t..P.......Keep- [debug] ajp_connection_tcp_send_message::jk_ajp_common.c (1145): 0050 Alive.....0....r [debug] ajp_connection_tcp_send_message::jk_ajp_common.c (1145): 0060 image/jpeg,.imag [debug] ajp_connection_tcp_send_message::jk_ajp_common.c (1145): 0070 e/gif,.image/pjp [debug] ajp_connection_tcp_send_message::jk_ajp_common.c (1145): 0080 eg,.application/ [debug] ajp_connection_tcp_send_message::jk_ajp_common.c (1145): 0090 x-ms-application [debug] ajp_connection_tcp_send_message::jk_ajp_common.c (1145): 00a0 ,.application/xa [debug] ajp_connection_tcp_send_message::jk_ajp_common.c (1145): 00b0 ml+xml,.applicat [debug] ajp_connection_tcp_send_message::jk_ajp_common.c (1145): 00c0 ion/x-ms-xbap,.* [debug] ajp_connection_tcp_send_message::jk_ajp_common.c (1145): 00d0 /*...Accept-Enco [debug] ajp_connection_tcp_send_message::jk_ajp_common.c (1145): 00e0 ding...gzip,.def [debug] ajp_connection_tcp_send_message::jk_ajp_common.c (1145): 00f0 late...Accept-La [debug] ajp_connection_tcp_send_message::jk_ajp_common.c (1145): 0100 nguage...nb-NO.. [debug] ajp_connection_tcp_send_message::jk_ajp_common.c (1145): 0110 ..]Username=NA_j [debug] ajp_connection_tcp_send_message::jk_ajp_common.c (1145): 0120 ose.matias_AT_ad [debug] ajp_connection_tcp_send_message::jk_ajp_common.c (1145): 0130 denergy.no;.JSES [debug] ajp_connection_tcp_send_message::jk_ajp_common.c (1145): 0140 SIONID=6A2507A46 [debug] ajp_connection_tcp_send_message::jk_ajp_common.c (1145): 0150 26F698EC74A733CD [debug] ajp_connection_tcp_send_message::jk_ajp_common.c (1145): 0160 BA7D9FE.Tomcat7A [debug] ajp_connection_tcp_send_message::jk_ajp_common.c (1145): 0170 .....localhost.. [debug] ajp_connection_tcp_send_message::jk_ajp_common.c (1145): 0180 ...http://localh [debug] ajp_connection_tcp_send_message::jk_ajp_common.c (1145): 0190 ost/Accounter/Ne [debug] ajp_connection_tcp_send_message::jk_ajp_common.c (1145): 01a0 msAccounter.jhtm [debug] ajp_connection_tcp_send_message::jk_ajp_common.c (1145): 01b0 l....uMozilla/4. [debug] ajp_connection_tcp_send_message::jk_ajp_common.c (1145): 01c0 0.(compatible;.M [debug] ajp_connection_tcp_send_message::jk_ajp_common.c (1145): 01d0 SIE.8.0;.Windows [debug] ajp_connection_tcp_send_message::jk_ajp_common.c (1145): 01f0 Trident/4.0;.SLC [debug] ajp_connection_tcp_send_message::jk_ajp_common.c (1145): 01e0 .NT.6.1;.WOW64;. [debug] ajp_connection_tcp_send_message::jk_ajp_common.c (1145): 0200 C2;..NET.CLR.2.0 [debug] ajp_connection_tcp_send_message::jk_ajp_common.c (1145): 0210 .50727;..NET4.0C [debug] ajp_connection_tcp_send_message::jk_ajp_common.c (1145): 0220 ;..NET4.0E)..... [debug] ajp_connection_tcp_send_message::jk_ajp_common.c (1145): 0230 .......Tomcat7A. [debug] ajp_connection_tcp_send_message::jk_ajp_common.c (1145): 0240 ................ [debug] ajp_send_request::jk_ajp_common.c (1621): (Tomcat7A) Statistics about invalid connections: connect check (0), cping (0), send (0) [debug] ajp_send_request::jk_ajp_common.c (1632): (Tomcat7A) request body to send 0 - request body to resend 0 [debug] ajp_connection_tcp_get_message::jk_ajp_common.c (1329): received from ajp13 pos=0 len=135 max=8192 [debug] ajp_connection_tcp_get_message::jk_ajp_common.c (1329): 0000 .....OK.....Prag [debug] ajp_connection_tcp_get_message::jk_ajp_common.c (1329): 0010 ma...no-cache... [debug] ajp_connection_tcp_get_message::jk_ajp_common.c (1329): 0020 Expires...Thu,.0 [debug] ajp_connection_tcp_get_message::jk_ajp_common.c (1329): 0030 1.Jan.1970.00:00 [debug] ajp_connection_tcp_get_message::jk_ajp_common.c (1329): 0040 :00.GMT...Cache- [debug] ajp_connection_tcp_get_message::jk_ajp_common.c (1329): 0050 Control...no-cac [debug] ajp_connection_tcp_get_message::jk_ajp_common.c (1329): 0060 he...Cache-Contr [debug] ajp_connection_tcp_get_message::jk_ajp_common.c (1329): 0070 ol...no-store... [debug] ajp_connection_tcp_get_message::jk_ajp_common.c (1329): 0080 ..2995..........

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Using Durandal to Create Single Page Apps

- by Stephen.Walther

A few days ago, I gave a talk on building Single Page Apps on the Microsoft Stack. In that talk, I recommended that people use Knockout, Sammy, and RequireJS to build their presentation layer and use the ASP.NET Web API to expose data from their server. After I gave the talk, several people contacted me and suggested that I investigate a new open-source JavaScript library named Durandal. Durandal stitches together Knockout, Sammy, and RequireJS to make it easier to use these technologies together. In this blog entry, I want to provide a brief walkthrough of using Durandal to create a simple Single Page App. I am going to demonstrate how you can create a simple Movies App which contains (virtual) pages for viewing a list of movies, adding new movies, and viewing movie details. The goal of this blog entry is to give you a sense of what it is like to build apps with Durandal. Installing Durandal First things first. How do you get Durandal? The GitHub project for Durandal is located here: https://github.com/BlueSpire/Durandal The Wiki — located at the GitHub project — contains all of the current documentation for Durandal. Currently, the documentation is a little sparse, but it is enough to get you started. Instead of downloading the Durandal source from GitHub, a better option for getting started with Durandal is to install one of the Durandal NuGet packages. I built the Movies App described in this blog entry by first creating a new ASP.NET MVC 4 Web Application with the Basic Template. Next, I executed the following command from the Package Manager Console: Install-Package Durandal.StarterKit As you can see from the screenshot of the Package Manager Console above, the Durandal Starter Kit package has several dependencies including: · jQuery · Knockout · Sammy · Twitter Bootstrap The Durandal Starter Kit package includes a sample Durandal application. You can get to the Starter Kit app by navigating to the Durandal controller. Unfortunately, when I first tried to run the Starter Kit app, I got an error because the Starter Kit is hard-coded to use a particular version of jQuery which is already out of date. You can fix this issue by modifying the App_Start\DurandalBundleConfig.cs file so it is jQuery version agnostic like this: bundles.Add( new ScriptBundle("~/scripts/vendor") .Include("~/Scripts/jquery-{version}.js") .Include("~/Scripts/knockout-{version}.js") .Include("~/Scripts/sammy-{version}.js") // .Include("~/Scripts/jquery-1.9.0.min.js") // .Include("~/Scripts/knockout-2.2.1.js") // .Include("~/Scripts/sammy-0.7.4.min.js") .Include("~/Scripts/bootstrap.min.js") ); The recommendation is that you create a Durandal app in a folder off your project root named App. The App folder in the Starter Kit contains the following subfolders and files: · durandal – This folder contains the actual durandal JavaScript library. · viewmodels – This folder contains all of your application’s view models. · views – This folder contains all of your application’s views. · main.js — This file contains all of the JavaScript startup code for your app including the client-side routing configuration. · main-built.js – This file contains an optimized version of your application. You need to build this file by using the RequireJS optimizer (unfortunately, before you can run the optimizer, you must first install NodeJS). For the purpose of this blog entry, I wanted to start from scratch when building the Movies app, so I deleted all of these files and folders except for the durandal folder which contains the durandal library. Creating the ASP.NET MVC Controller and View A Durandal app is built using a single server-side ASP.NET MVC controller and ASP.NET MVC view. A Durandal app is a Single Page App. When you navigate between pages, you are not navigating to new pages on the server. Instead, you are loading new virtual pages into the one-and-only-one server-side view. For the Movies app, I created the following ASP.NET MVC Home controller: public class HomeController : Controller { public ActionResult Index() { return View(); } } There is nothing special about the Home controller – it is as basic as it gets. Next, I created the following server-side ASP.NET view. This is the one-and-only server-side view used by the Movies app: @{ Layout = null; } <!DOCTYPE html> <html> <head> <title>Index</title> </head> <body> <div id="applicationHost"> Loading app.... </div> @Scripts.Render("~/scripts/vendor") <script type="text/javascript" src="~/App/durandal/amd/require.js" data-main="/App/main"></script> </body> </html> Notice that I set the Layout property for the view to the value null. If you neglect to do this, then the default ASP.NET MVC layout will be applied to the view and you will get the <!DOCTYPE> and opening and closing <html> tags twice. Next, notice that the view contains a DIV element with the Id applicationHost. This marks the area where virtual pages are loaded. When you navigate from page to page in a Durandal app, HTML page fragments are retrieved from the server and stuck in the applicationHost DIV element. Inside the applicationHost element, you can place any content which you want to display when a Durandal app is starting up. For example, you can create a fancy splash screen. I opted for simply displaying the text “Loading app…”: Next, notice the view above includes a call to the Scripts.Render() helper. This helper renders out all of the JavaScript files required by the Durandal library such as jQuery and Knockout. Remember to fix the App_Start\DurandalBundleConfig.cs as described above or Durandal will attempt to load an old version of jQuery and throw a JavaScript exception and stop working. Your application JavaScript code is not included in the scripts rendered by the Scripts.Render helper. Your application code is loaded dynamically by RequireJS with the help of the following SCRIPT element located at the bottom of the view: <script type="text/javascript" src="~/App/durandal/amd/require.js" data-main="/App/main"></script> The data-main attribute on the SCRIPT element causes RequireJS to load your /app/main.js JavaScript file to kick-off your Durandal app. Creating the Durandal Main.js File The Durandal Main.js JavaScript file, located in your App folder, contains all of the code required to configure the behavior of Durandal. Here’s what the Main.js file looks like in the case of the Movies app: require.config({ paths: { 'text': 'durandal/amd/text' } }); define(function (require) { var app = require('durandal/app'), viewLocator = require('durandal/viewLocator'), system = require('durandal/system'), router = require('durandal/plugins/router'); //>>excludeStart("build", true); system.debug(true); //>>excludeEnd("build"); app.start().then(function () { //Replace 'viewmodels' in the moduleId with 'views' to locate the view. //Look for partial views in a 'views' folder in the root. viewLocator.useConvention(); //configure routing router.useConvention(); router.mapNav("movies/show"); router.mapNav("movies/add"); router.mapNav("movies/details/:id"); app.adaptToDevice(); //Show the app by setting the root view model for our application with a transition. app.setRoot('viewmodels/shell', 'entrance'); }); }); There are three important things to notice about the main.js file above. First, notice that it contains a section which enables debugging which looks like this: //>>excludeStart(“build”, true); system.debug(true); //>>excludeEnd(“build”); This code enables debugging for your Durandal app which is very useful when things go wrong. When you call system.debug(true), Durandal writes out debugging information to your browser JavaScript console. For example, you can use the debugging information to diagnose issues with your client-side routes: (The funny looking //> symbols around the system.debug() call are RequireJS optimizer pragmas). The main.js file is also the place where you configure your client-side routes. In the case of the Movies app, the main.js file is used to configure routes for three page: the movies show, add, and details pages. //configure routing router.useConvention(); router.mapNav("movies/show"); router.mapNav("movies/add"); router.mapNav("movies/details/:id"); The route for movie details includes a route parameter named id. Later, we will use the id parameter to lookup and display the details for the right movie. Finally, the main.js file above contains the following line of code: //Show the app by setting the root view model for our application with a transition. app.setRoot('viewmodels/shell', 'entrance'); This line of code causes Durandal to load up a JavaScript file named shell.js and an HTML fragment named shell.html. I’ll discuss the shell in the next section. Creating the Durandal Shell You can think of the Durandal shell as the layout or master page for a Durandal app. The shell is where you put all of the content which you want to remain constant as a user navigates from virtual page to virtual page. For example, the shell is a great place to put your website logo and navigation links. The Durandal shell is composed from two parts: a JavaScript file and an HTML file. Here’s what the HTML file looks like for the Movies app: <h1>Movies App</h1> <div class="container-fluid page-host">  </div> And here is what the JavaScript file looks like: define(function (require) { var router = require('durandal/plugins/router'); return { router: router, activate: function () { return router.activate('movies/show'); } }; }); The JavaScript file contains the view model for the shell. This view model returns the Durandal router so you can access the list of configured routes from your shell. Notice that the JavaScript file includes a function named activate(). This function loads the movies/show page as the first page in the Movies app. If you want to create a different default Durandal page, then pass the name of a different age to the router.activate() method. Creating the Movies Show Page Durandal pages are created out of a view model and a view. The view model contains all of the data and view logic required for the view. The view contains all of the HTML markup for rendering the view model. Let’s start with the movies show page. The movies show page displays a list of movies. The view model for the show page looks like this: define(function (require) { var moviesRepository = require("repositories/moviesRepository"); return { movies: ko.observable(), activate: function() { this.movies(moviesRepository.listMovies()); } }; }); You create a view model by defining a new RequireJS module (see http://requirejs.org). You create a RequireJS module by placing all of your JavaScript code into an anonymous function passed to the RequireJS define() method. A RequireJS module has two parts. You retrieve all of the modules which your module requires at the top of your module. The code above depends on another RequireJS module named repositories/moviesRepository. Next, you return the implementation of your module. The code above returns a JavaScript object which contains a property named movies and a method named activate. The activate() method is a magic method which Durandal calls whenever it activates your view model. Your view model is activated whenever you navigate to a page which uses it. In the code above, the activate() method is used to get the list of movies from the movies repository and assign the list to the view model movies property. The HTML for the movies show page looks like this: <table> <thead> <tr> <th>Title</th><th>Director</th> </tr> </thead> <tbody data-bind="foreach:movies"> <tr> <td data-bind="text:title"></td> <td data-bind="text:director"></td> <td><a data-bind="attr:{href:'#/movies/details/'+id}">Details</a></td> </tr> </tbody> </table> <a href="#/movies/add">Add Movie</a> Notice that this is an HTML fragment. This fragment will be stuffed into the page-host DIV element in the shell.html file which is stuffed, in turn, into the applicationHost DIV element in the server-side MVC view. The HTML markup above contains data-bind attributes used by Knockout to display the list of movies (To learn more about Knockout, visit http://knockoutjs.com). The list of movies from the view model is displayed in an HTML table. Notice that the page includes a link to a page for adding a new movie. The link uses the following URL which starts with a hash: #/movies/add. Because the link starts with a hash, clicking the link does not cause a request back to the server. Instead, you navigate to the movies/add page virtually. Creating the Movies Add Page The movies add page also consists of a view model and view. The add page enables you to add a new movie to the movie database. Here’s the view model for the add page: define(function (require) { var app = require('durandal/app'); var router = require('durandal/plugins/router'); var moviesRepository = require("repositories/moviesRepository"); return { movieToAdd: { title: ko.observable(), director: ko.observable() }, activate: function () { this.movieToAdd.title(""); this.movieToAdd.director(""); this._movieAdded = false; }, canDeactivate: function () { if (this._movieAdded == false) { return app.showMessage('Are you sure you want to leave this page?', 'Navigate', ['Yes', 'No']); } else { return true; } }, addMovie: function () { // Add movie to db moviesRepository.addMovie(ko.toJS(this.movieToAdd)); // flag new movie this._movieAdded = true; // return to list of movies router.navigateTo("#/movies/show"); } }; }); The view model contains one property named movieToAdd which is bound to the add movie form. The view model also has the following three methods: 1. activate() – This method is called by Durandal when you navigate to the add movie page. The activate() method resets the add movie form by clearing out the movie title and director properties. 2. canDeactivate() – This method is called by Durandal when you attempt to navigate away from the add movie page. If you return false then navigation is cancelled. 3. addMovie() – This method executes when the add movie form is submitted. This code adds the new movie to the movie repository. I really like the Durandal canDeactivate() method. In the code above, I use the canDeactivate() method to show a warning to a user if they navigate away from the add movie page – either by clicking the Cancel button or by hitting the browser back button – before submitting the add movie form: The view for the add movie page looks like this: <form data-bind="submit:addMovie"> <fieldset> <legend>Add Movie</legend> <div> <label> Title: <input data-bind="value:movieToAdd.title" required /> </label> </div> <div> <label> Director: <input data-bind="value:movieToAdd.director" required /> </label> </div> <div> <input type="submit" value="Add" /> <a href="#/movies/show">Cancel</a> </div> </fieldset> </form> I am using Knockout to bind the movieToAdd property from the view model to the INPUT elements of the HTML form. Notice that the FORM element includes a data-bind attribute which invokes the addMovie() method from the view model when the HTML form is submitted. Creating the Movies Details Page You navigate to the movies details Page by clicking the Details link which appears next to each movie in the movies show page: The Details links pass the movie ids to the details page: #/movies/details/0 #/movies/details/1 #/movies/details/2 Here’s what the view model for the movies details page looks like: define(function (require) { var router = require('durandal/plugins/router'); var moviesRepository = require("repositories/moviesRepository"); return { movieToShow: { title: ko.observable(), director: ko.observable() }, activate: function (context) { // Grab movie from repository var movie = moviesRepository.getMovie(context.id); // Add to view model this.movieToShow.title(movie.title); this.movieToShow.director(movie.director); } }; }); Notice that the view model activate() method accepts a parameter named context. You can take advantage of the context parameter to retrieve route parameters such as the movie Id. In the code above, the context.id property is used to retrieve the correct movie from the movie repository and the movie is assigned to a property named movieToShow exposed by the view model. The movie details view displays the movieToShow property by taking advantage of Knockout bindings: <div> <h2 data-bind="text:movieToShow.title"></h2> directed by <span data-bind="text:movieToShow.director"></span> </div> Summary The goal of this blog entry was to walkthrough building a simple Single Page App using Durandal and to get a feel for what it is like to use this library. I really like how Durandal stitches together Knockout, Sammy, and RequireJS and establishes patterns for using these libraries to build Single Page Apps. Having a standard pattern which developers on a team can use to build new pages is super valuable. Once you get the hang of it, using Durandal to create new virtual pages is dead simple. Just define a new route, view model, and view and you are done. I also appreciate the fact that Durandal did not attempt to re-invent the wheel and that Durandal leverages existing JavaScript libraries such as Knockout, RequireJS, and Sammy. These existing libraries are powerful libraries and I have already invested a considerable amount of time in learning how to use them. Durandal makes it easier to use these libraries together without losing any of their power. Durandal has some additional interesting features which I have not had a chance to play with yet. For example, you can use the RequireJS optimizer to combine and minify all of a Durandal app’s code. Also, Durandal supports a way to create custom widgets (client-side controls) by composing widgets from a controller and view. You can download the code for the Movies app by clicking the following link (this is a Visual Studio 2012 project): Durandal Movie App

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The Execute SQL Task

In this article we are going to take you through the Execute SQL Task in SQL Server Integration Services for SQL Server 2005 (although it appies just as well to SQL Server 2008). We will be covering all the essentials that you will need to know to effectively use this task and make it as flexible as possible. The things we will be looking at are as follows: A tour of the Task. The properties of the Task. After looking at these introductory topics we will then get into some examples. The examples will show different types of usage for the task: Returning a single value from a SQL query with two input parameters. Returning a rowset from a SQL query. Executing a stored procedure and retrieveing a rowset, a return value, an output parameter value and passing in an input parameter. Passing in the SQL Statement from a variable. Passing in the SQL Statement from a file. Tour Of The Task Before we can start to use the Execute SQL Task in our packages we are going to need to locate it in the toolbox. Let's do that now. Whilst in the Control Flow section of the package expand your toolbox and locate the Execute SQL Task. Below is how we found ours. Now drag the task onto the designer. As you can see from the following image we have a validation error appear telling us that no connection manager has been assigned to the task. This can be easily remedied by creating a connection manager. There are certain types of connection manager that are compatable with this task so we cannot just create any connection manager and these are detailed in a few graphics time. Double click on the task itself to take a look at the custom user interface provided to us for this task. The task will open on the general tab as shown below. Take a bit of time to have a look around here as throughout this article we will be revisting this page many times. Whilst on the general tab, drop down the combobox next to the ConnectionType property. In here you will see the types of connection manager which this task will accept. As with SQL Server 2000 DTS, SSIS allows you to output values from this task in a number of formats. Have a look at the combobox next to the Resultset property. The major difference here is the ability to output into XML. If you drop down the combobox next to the SQLSourceType property you will see the ways in which you can pass a SQL Statement into the task itself. We will have examples of each of these later on but certainly when we saw these for the first time we were very excited. Next to the SQLStatement property if you click in the empty box next to it you will see ellipses appear. Click on them and you will see the very basic query editor that becomes available to you. Alternatively after you have specified a connection manager for the task you can click on the Build Query button to bring up a completely different query editor. This is slightly inconsistent. Once you've finished looking around the general tab, move on to the next tab which is the parameter mapping tab. We shall, again, be visiting this tab throughout the article but to give you an initial heads up this is where you define the input, output and return values from your task. Note this is not where you specify the resultset. If however you now move on to the ResultSet tab this is where you define what variable will receive the output from your SQL Statement in whatever form that is. Property Expressions are one of the most amazing things to happen in SSIS and they will not be covered here as they deserve a whole article to themselves. Watch out for this as their usefulness will astound you. For a more detailed discussion of what should be the parameter markers in the SQL Statements on the General tab and how to map them to variables on the Parameter Mapping tab see Working with Parameters and Return Codes in the Execute SQL Task. Task Properties There are two places where you can specify the properties for your task. One is in the task UI itself and the other is in the property pane which will appear if you right click on your task and select Properties from the context menu. We will be doing plenty of property setting in the UI later so let's take a moment to have a look at the property pane. Below is a graphic showing our properties pane. Now we shall take you through all the properties and tell you exactly what they mean. A lot of these properties you will see across all tasks as well as the package because of everything's base structure The Container. BypassPrepare Should the statement be prepared before sending to the connection manager destination (True/False) Connection This is simply the name of the connection manager that the task will use. We can get this from the connection manager tray at the bottom of the package. DelayValidation Really interesting property and it tells the task to not validate until it actually executes. A usage for this may be that you are operating on table yet to be created but at runtime you know the table will be there. Description Very simply the description of your Task. Disable Should the task be enabled or not? You can also set this through a context menu by right clicking on the task itself. DisableEventHandlers As a result of events that happen in the task, should the event handlers for the container fire? ExecValueVariable The variable assigned here will get or set the execution value of the task. Expressions Expressions as we mentioned earlier are a really powerful tool in SSIS and this graphic below shows us a small peek of what you can do. We select a property on the left and assign an expression to the value of that property on the right causing the value to be dynamically changed at runtime. One of the most obvious uses of this is that the property value can be built dynamically from within the package allowing you a great deal of flexibility FailPackageOnFailure If this task fails does the package? FailParentOnFailure If this task fails does the parent container? A task can he hosted inside another container i.e. the For Each Loop Container and this would then be the parent. ForcedExecutionValue This property allows you to hard code an execution value for the task. ForcedExecutionValueType What is the datatype of the ForcedExecutionValue? ForceExecutionResult Force the task to return a certain execution result. This could then be used by the workflow constraints. Possible values are None, Success, Failure and Completion. ForceExecutionValue Should we force the execution result? IsolationLevel This is the transaction isolation level of the task. IsStoredProcedure Certain optimisations are made by the task if it knows that the query is a Stored Procedure invocation. The docs say this will always be false unless the connection is an ADO connection. LocaleID Gets or sets the LocaleID of the container. LoggingMode Should we log for this container and what settings should we use? The value choices are UseParentSetting, Enabled and Disabled. MaximumErrorCount How many times can the task fail before we call it a day? Name Very simply the name of the task. ResultSetType How do you want the results of your query returned? The choices are ResultSetType_None, ResultSetType_SingleRow, ResultSetType_Rowset and ResultSetType_XML. SqlStatementSource Your Query/SQL Statement. SqlStatementSourceType The method of specifying the query. Your choices here are DirectInput, FileConnection and Variables TimeOut How long should the task wait to receive results? TransactionOption How should the task handle being asked to join a transaction? Usage Examples As we move through the examples we will only cover in them what we think you must know and what we think you should see. This means that some of the more elementary steps like setting up variables will be covered in the early examples but skipped and simply referred to in later ones. All these examples used the AventureWorks database that comes with SQL Server 2005. Returning a Single Value, Passing in Two Input Parameters So the first thing we are going to do is add some variables to our package. The graphic below shows us those variables having been defined. Here the CountOfEmployees variable will be used as the output from the query and EndDate and StartDate will be used as input parameters. As you can see all these variables have been scoped to the package. Scoping allows us to have domains for variables. Each container has a scope and remember a package is a container as well. Variable values of the parent container can be seen in child containers but cannot be passed back up to the parent from a child. Our following graphic has had a number of changes made. The first of those changes is that we have created and assigned an OLEDB connection manager to this Task ExecuteSQL Task Connection. The next thing is we have made sure that the SQLSourceType property is set to Direct Input as we will be writing in our statement ourselves. We have also specified that only a single row will be returned from this query. The expressions we typed in was: SELECT COUNT(*) AS CountOfEmployees FROM HumanResources.Employee WHERE (HireDate BETWEEN ? AND ?) Moving on now to the Parameter Mapping tab this is where we are going to tell the task about our input paramaters. We Add them to the window specifying their direction and datatype. A quick word here about the structure of the variable name. As you can see SSIS has preceeded the variable with the word user. This is a default namespace for variables but you can create your own. When defining your variables if you look at the variables window title bar you will see some icons. If you hover over the last one on the right you will see it says "Choose Variable Columns". If you click the button you will see a list of checkbox options and one of them is namespace. after checking this you will see now where you can define your own namespace. The next tab, result set, is where we need to get back the value(s) returned from our statement and assign to a variable which in our case is CountOfEmployees so we can use it later perhaps. Because we are only returning a single value then if you remember from earlier we are allowed to assign a name to the resultset but it must be the name of the column (or alias) from the query. A really cool feature of Business Intelligence Studio being hosted by Visual Studio is that we get breakpoint support for free. In our package we set a Breakpoint so we can break the package and have a look in a watch window at the variable values as they appear to our task and what the variable value of our resultset is after the task has done the assignment. Here's that window now. As you can see the count of employess that matched the data range was 2. Returning a Rowset In this example we are going to return a resultset back to a variable after the task has executed not just a single row single value. There are no input parameters required so the variables window is nice and straight forward. One variable of type object. Here is the statement that will form the soure for our Resultset. select p.ProductNumber, p.name, pc.Name as ProductCategoryNameFROM Production.ProductCategory pcJOIN Production.ProductSubCategory pscON pc.ProductCategoryID = psc.ProductCategoryIDJOIN Production.Product pON psc.ProductSubCategoryID = p.ProductSubCategoryID We need to make sure that we have selected Full result set as the ResultSet as shown below on the task's General tab. Because there are no input parameters we can skip the parameter mapping tab and move straight to the Result Set tab. Here we need to Add our variable defined earlier and map it to the result name of 0 (remember we covered this earlier) Once we run the task we can again set a breakpoint and have a look at the values coming back from the task. In the following graphic you can see the result set returned to us as a COM object. We can do some pretty interesting things with this COM object and in later articles that is exactly what we shall be doing. Return Values, Input/Output Parameters and Returning a Rowset from a Stored Procedure This example is pretty much going to give us a taste of everything. We have already covered in the previous example how to specify the ResultSet to be a Full result set so we will not cover it again here. For this example we are going to need 4 variables. One for the return value, one for the input parameter, one for the output parameter and one for the result set. Here is the statement we want to execute. Note how much cleaner it is than if you wanted to do it using the current version of DTS. In the Parameter Mapping tab we are going to Add our variables and specify their direction and datatypes. In the Result Set tab we can now map our final variable to the rowset returned from the stored procedure. It really is as simple as that and we were amazed at how much easier it is than in DTS 2000. Passing in the SQL Statement from a Variable SSIS as we have mentioned is hugely more flexible than its predecessor and one of the things you will notice when moving around the tasks and the adapters is that a lot of them accept a variable as an input for something they need. The ExecuteSQL task is no different. It will allow us to pass in a string variable as the SQL Statement. This variable value could have been set earlier on from inside the package or it could have been populated from outside using a configuration. The ResultSet property is set to single row and we'll show you why in a second when we look at the variables. Note also the SQLSourceType property. Here's the General Tab again. Looking at the variable we have in this package you can see we have only two. One for the return value from the statement and one which is obviously for the statement itself. Again we need to map the Result name to our variable and this can be a named Result Name (The column name or alias returned by the query) and not 0. The expected result into our variable should be the amount of rows in the Person.Contact table and if we look in the watch window we see that it is. Passing in the SQL Statement from a File The final example we are going to show is a really interesting one. We are going to pass in the SQL statement to the task by using a file connection manager. The file itself contains the statement to run. The first thing we are going to need to do is create our file connection mananger to point to our file. Click in the connections tray at the bottom of the designer, right click and choose "New File Connection" As you can see in the graphic below we have chosen to use an existing file and have passed in the name as well. Have a look around at the other "Usage Type" values available whilst you are here. Having set that up we can now see in the connection manager tray our file connection manager sitting alongside our OLE-DB connection we have been using for the rest of these examples. Now we can go back to the familiar General Tab to set up how the task will accept our file connection as the source. All the other properties in this task are set up exactly as we have been doing for other examples depending on the options chosen so we will not cover them again here. We hope you will agree that the Execute SQL Task has changed considerably in this release from its DTS predecessor. It has a lot of options available but once you have configured it a few times you get to learn what needs to go where. We hope you have found this article useful.

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CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, November 18, 2010

CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, November 18, 2010Popular ReleasesSitefinity Migration Tool: Sitefinity Migration Tool 0.2 Alpha: - Improvements for the Sitefinity RC releaseMiniTwitter: 1.57: MiniTwitter 1.57 ???? ?? ?????????????????? ?? User Streams ????????????????????? ???????????????·??????·???????VFPX: VFP2C32 2.0.0.7: fixed a bug in AAverage - NULL values in the array corrupted the result removed limitation in ASum, AMin, AMax, AAverage - the functions were limited to 65000 elements, now they're limited to 65000 rows ASplitStr now returns a 1 element array with an empty string when an empty string is passed (behaves more like ALINES) internal code cleanup and optimization: optimized FoxArray class - results in a speedup of 10-20% in many functions which return the result in an array - like AProcesses...Microsoft SQL Server Product Samples: Database: AdventureWorks 2008R2 SR1: Sample Databases for Microsoft SQL Server 2008R2 (SR1)This release is dedicated to the sample databases that ship for Microsoft SQL Server 2008R2. See Database Prerequisites for SQL Server 2008R2 for feature configurations required for installing the sample databases. See Installing SQL Server 2008R2 Databases for step by step installation instructions. The SR1 release contains minor bug fixes to the installer used to create the sample databases. There are no changes to the databases them...VidCoder: 0.7.2: Fixed duplicated subtitles when running multiple encodes off of the same title.Razor Templating Engine: Razor Template Engine v1.1: Release 1.1 Changes: ADDED: Signed assemblies with strong name to allow assemblies to be referenced by other strongly-named assemblies. FIX: Filter out dynamic assemblies which causes failures in template compilation. FIX: Changed ASCII to UTF8 encoding to support UTF-8 encoded string templates. FIX: Corrected implementation of TemplateBase adding ITemplate interface.Prism Training Kit: Prism Training Kit - 1.1: This is an updated version of the Prism training Kit that targets Prism 4.0 and fixes the bugs reported in the version 1.0. This release consists of a Training Kit with Labs on the following topics Modularity Dependency Injection Bootstrapper UI Composition Communication Note: Take into account that this is a Beta version. If you find any bugs please report them in the Issue Tracker PrerequisitesVisual Studio 2010 Microsoft Word 2007/2010 Microsoft Silverlight 4 Microsoft S...Craig's Utility Library: Craig's Utility Library Code 2.0: This update contains a number of changes, added functionality, and bug fixes: Added transaction support to SQLHelper. Added linked/embedded resource ability to EmailSender. Updated List to take into account new functions. Added better support for MAC address in WMI classes. Fixed Parsing in Reflection class when dealing with sub classes. Fixed bug in SQLHelper when replacing the Command that is a select after doing a select. Fixed issue in SQL Server helper with regard to generati...MFCMAPI: November 2010 Release: Build: 6.0.0.1023 Full release notes at SGriffin's blog. If you just want to run the tool, get the executable. If you want to debug it, get the symbol file and the source. The 64 bit build will only work on a machine with Outlook 2010 64 bit installed. All other machines should use the 32 bit build, regardless of the operating system. Facebook BadgeDotNetNuke® Community Edition: 05.06.00: Major HighlightsAdded automatic portal alias creation for single portal installs Updated the file manager upload page to allow user to upload multiple files without returning to the file manager page. Fixed issue with Event Log Email Notifications. Fixed issue where Telerik HTML Editor was unable to upload files to secure or database folder. Fixed issue where registration page is not set correctly during an upgrade. Fixed issue where Sendmail stripped HTML and Links from emails...mVu Mobile Viewer: mVu Mobile Viewer 0.7.10.0: Tube8 fix.EPPlus-Create advanced Excel 2007 spreadsheets on the server: EPPlus 2.8.0.1: EPPlus-Create advanced Excel 2007 spreadsheets on the serverNew Features Improved chart support Different chart-types series on the same chart Support for secondary axis and a lot of new properties Better styling Encryption and Workbook protection Table support Import csv files Array formulas ...and a lot of bugfixesAutoLoL: AutoLoL v1.4.2: Added support for more clients (French and Russian) Settings are now stored sepperatly for each user on a computer Auto Login is much faster now Auto Login detects and handles caps lock state properly nowTailspinSpyworks - WebForms Sample Application: TailspinSpyworks-v0.9: Contains a number of bug fixes and additional tutorial steps as well as complete database implementation details.ASP.NET MVC Project Awesome (rich jQuery AJAX helpers): 1.3 and demos: a library with mvc helpers and a demo project that demonstrates an awesome way of doing asp.net mvc. tested on mozilla, safari, chrome, opera, ie 9b/8/7/6 new stuff in 1.3 Autocomplete helper Autocomplete and AjaxDropdown can have parentId and be filled with data depending on the value of the parent PopupForm besides Content("ok") on success can also return Json(data) and use 'data' in a client side function Awesome demo improved (cruder, builder, added service layer)Nearforums - ASP.NET MVC forum engine: Nearforums v4.1: Version 4.1 of the ASP.NET MVC forum engine, with great improvements: TinyMCE added as visual editor for messages (removed CKEditor). Integrated AntiSamy for cleaner html user post and add more prevention to potential injections. Admin status page: a page for the site admin to check the current status of the configuration / db / etc. View Roadmap for more details.UltimateJB: UltimateJB 2.01 PL3 KakaRoto + PSNYes by EvilSperm: Voici une version attendu avec impatience pour beaucoup : - La Version PSNYes pour pouvoir jouer sur le PSN avec une PS3 Jailbreaker. - Pour l'instant le PSNYes n'est disponible qu'avec les PS3 en firmwares 3.41 !!! - La version PL3 KAKAROTO intégre ses dernières modification et prépare a l'intégration du Firmware 3.30 !!! Conclusion : - UltimateJB PSNYes => Valide l'utilisation du PSN : Uniquement compatible avec les 3.41 - ultimateJB DEFAULT => Pas de PSN mais disponible pour les PS3 sui...Fluent Ribbon Control Suite: Fluent Ribbon Control Suite 2.0: Fluent Ribbon Control Suite 2.0(supports .NET 4.0 RTM and .NET 3.5) Includes: Fluent.dll (with .pdb and .xml) Showcase Application Samples (only for .NET 4.0) Foundation (Tabs, Groups, Contextual Tabs, Quick Access Toolbar, Backstage) Resizing (ribbon reducing & enlarging principles) Galleries (Gallery in ContextMenu, InRibbonGallery) MVVM (shows how to use this library with Model-View-ViewModel pattern) KeyTips ScreenTips Toolbars ColorGallery NEW! *Walkthrough (documenta...patterns & practices: Prism: Prism 4 Documentation: This release contains the Prism 4 documentation in Help 1.0 (CHM) format and PDF format. The documentation is also included with the full download of the guidance. Note: If you cannot view the content of the CHM, using Windows Explorer, select the properties for the file and then click Unblock on the General tab. Note: The PDF version of the guidance is provided for printing and reading in book format. The online version of the Prism 4 documentation can be read here.Farseer Physics Engine: Farseer Physics Engine 3.1: DonationsIf you like this release and would like to keep Farseer Physics Engine running, please consider a small donation. What's new?We bring a lot of new features in Farseer Physics Engine 3.1. Just to name a few: New Box2D core Rope joint added More stable CCD algorithm YuPeng clipper Explosives logic New Constrained Delaunay Triangulation algorithm from the Poly2Tri project. New Flipcode triangulation algorithm. Silverlight 4 samples Silverlight 4 debug view XNA 4.0 relea...New Projectsbizicosoft crm: crmBlog Migrator: The Blog Migrator tool is an all purpose utility designed to help transition a blog from one platform to another. It leverages XML-RPC, BlogML, and WordPress WXR formats. It also provides the ability to "rewrite" your posts on your old blog to point to the new location.bzr-tfs integration tests: Used to test bzr-tfs integrationC++ Open Source Advanced Operating System: C++ Open Source Advanced Operating System is a project which allows starter developers create their own OS. For now it is at a really initial stage.Chavah - internet radio for Yeshua's disciples: Chavah (pronounced "ha-vah") is internet radio for Yeshua's disciples. Inspired by Pandora, Chavah is a Silverlight application that brings community-driven Messianic Jewish tunes for the Lord over the web to your eager ears.CodePoster: An add-in for Visual Studio which allows you to post code directly from Visual Studio to your blog. CRM 2011 Plugin Testing Tools: This solution is meant to make unit testing of plugins in CRM 2011 a simpler and more efficient process. This solution serializes the objects that the CRM server passes to a plugin on execution and then offers a library that allows you to deserialize them in a unit test.Edinamarry Free Tarot Software for Windows: A freeware yet an advanced Tarot reading divinity Software for Psychics and for all those who practice Divinity and Spirituality. This software includes Tarot Spread Designer, Tarot Deck Designer, Tarot Cards Gallery, Client & Customer Profile, Word Editor, Tarot Reader, etc.EPiSocial: Social addons for EPiServer.first team foundation project: this is my first project for the student to teach them about the ms visual studio 201o and team foundation serverFKTdev: Proyecto donde subiremos las pruebas, códigos de ejemplo y demás recursos en nuestro aprendizaje en XNA, hasta que comencemos un desarrollo estable.Gardens Point Component Pascal: Gardens Point Component Pascal is an implementation for .NET of the Component Pascal Language (CP). CP is an object oriented version of Pascal, and shares many design features with Oberon-2. Geoinformatics: geoinformaticsGREENHOUSEMANAGER: GREENHOUSE es un proyecto universitario para manejar los distintos aspectos de un invernadero. El sistema esta desarrollado en c# con interfaz grafica en WPFHousing: This project is only for the asp.net learning. HR-XML.NET: A .NET HR-XML Serialization Library. Also supports the Dutch SETU standard and some proprietary extensions used in the Netherlands. The project is currently targeting HR-XML version 2.5 and Setu standard 2008-01.InternetShop2: ShopLesson4: Lesson4 for M.Logical Synchronous Circuit Simulator: As part of a student project, we are trying to make a logic synchronous circuit simulator, with the ultimate goal of simulating a processor and a digital clock running on it.MediaOwl: MediaOwl is a music (albums, artists, tracks, tags) and movie (movies, series, actors, directors, genres) search engine, but above all, it is a Microsoft Silverlight 4 application (C#), that shows how to use Caliburn Micro.N2F Yverdon Solar Flare Reflector: The solar flare reflector provides minimal base-range protection for your N2F Yverdon installation against solar flare interference.Netduino Plus Home Automation Toolkit: The Netduino Plus Home Automation project is designed to proivde a communication platform from various consumer based home automation products that offer a common web service endpoint. This will hopefully create a low cost DIY alternative to the expensive ethernet interfaces.NRapid: NRapidOfficeHelper: Wrapper around the open xml office package. You can easily create xlsx documents based on a template xlsx document and reuse parts from that document, if you mark them as named ranges (i.e. "names").OffProjects: This is a private project which for my dev investigationParis Velib Stations for Windows Mobile: Allow to find the closest Velib bike station in Paris on a Windows Mobile Phone (6.5)/ Permet de trouver la station de Vélib la plus proche dans Paris ainsi que ses informations sur un smartphone Windows MobilePolarConverter: Adjust the measured distance of HRM files created by Polar Heart Rate monitorsSexy Select: a jQuery plugin that allows for easy manipulation of select options. Allows for adding, removing, sorting, validation and custom skinningSilverlight Progress Feedback: Demonstrates how to get progress feedback from slow running WPF processes in Silverlight.Silverlight Tabbed Panel: Tabbed Panel based on Silverlight targeted for both developers and designers audience. Tabbed Control is used in this project. This is a basic application. More features will be added in further releases. XAML has been used to design this panel. slabhid: SLABHIDDevice.dll is used for the SLAB MCU example code on PC, the original source code is written by C++. This wrapper class brings SLABHIDDevice.dll to the .Net world, so it will be possible to make some quick solution for firmware testing purpose.SuperWebSocket: A .NET server side implementation of WebSocket protocol.test1-jjoiner: just a test projectTotem Alpha Developer Framework For .Net: ????tadf??VS.NET???????????，????jtadf???????????????。 ?????????tadf??????????????J2EE???????VS.NET?????????，??tadf?????.NET??，???????????，????????????，??????C#??????????Java???????，??????。 tadf?????????????，????HTML???????????，???????，?????????，?????。tadf???????????，????????RICH UI?????WEB??。??????，??。 tadf?????????????????????，????WEB??????????。???????，???????????，?Ajax???????，????????????????，????????，????????????????。???????????，???????????????????????????????，?xml??????，?????????????xml...Ukázkové projekty: Obsahuje ukázkové projekty uživatele TenCoKaciStromy.WPFDemo: This Peoject is only for the WPF learning.Xinx TimeIt!: TinyAlarm is a small utility that allows you to configure an Alarm so that you can opt for 1. Shutdown computer 2. Play a sound 3. Show a note with sound 4. Disconnect a dial-up connection 5. Connect via dial-up connection

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A way of doing real-world test-driven development (and some thoughts about it)

- by Thomas Weller

Lately, I exchanged some arguments with Derick Bailey about some details of the red-green-refactor cycle of the Test-driven development process. In short, the issue revolved around the fact that it’s not enough to have a test red or green, but it’s also important to have it red or green for the right reasons. While for me, it’s sufficient to initially have a NotImplementedException in place, Derick argues that this is not totally correct (see these two posts: Red/Green/Refactor, For The Right Reasons and Red For The Right Reason: Fail By Assertion, Not By Anything Else). And he’s right. But on the other hand, I had no idea how his insights could have any practical consequence for my own individual interpretation of the red-green-refactor cycle (which is not really red-green-refactor, at least not in its pure sense, see the rest of this article). This made me think deeply for some days now. In the end I found out that the ‘right reason’ changes in my understanding depending on what development phase I’m in. To make this clear (at least I hope it becomes clear…) I started to describe my way of working in some detail, and then something strange happened: The scope of the article slightly shifted from focusing ‘only’ on the ‘right reason’ issue to something more general, which you might describe as something like 'Doing real-world TDD in .NET , with massive use of third-party add-ins’. This is because I feel that there is a more general statement about Test-driven development to make: It’s high time to speak about the ‘How’ of TDD, not always only the ‘Why’. Much has been said about this, and me myself also contributed to that (see here: TDD is not about testing, it's about how we develop software). But always justifying what you do is very unsatisfying in the long run, it is inherently defensive, and it costs time and effort that could be used for better and more important things. And frankly: I’m somewhat sick and tired of repeating time and again that the test-driven way of software development is highly preferable for many reasons - I don’t want to spent my time exclusively on stating the obvious… So, again, let’s say it clearly: TDD is programming, and programming is TDD. Other ways of programming (code-first, sometimes called cowboy-coding) are exceptional and need justification. – I know that there are many people out there who will disagree with this radical statement, and I also know that it’s not a description of the real world but more of a mission statement or something. But nevertheless I’m absolutely sure that in some years this statement will be nothing but a platitude. Side note: Some parts of this post read as if I were paid by Jetbrains (the manufacturer of the ReSharper add-in – R#), but I swear I’m not. Rather I think that Visual Studio is just not production-complete without it, and I wouldn’t even consider to do professional work without having this add-in installed... The three parts of a software component Before I go into some details, I first should describe my understanding of what belongs to a software component (assembly, type, or method) during the production process (i.e. the coding phase). Roughly, I come up with the three parts shown below: First, we need to have some initial sort of requirement. This can be a multi-page formal document, a vague idea in some programmer’s brain of what might be needed, or anything in between. In either way, there has to be some sort of requirement, be it explicit or not. – At the C# micro-level, the best way that I found to formulate that is to define interfaces for just about everything, even for internal classes, and to provide them with exhaustive xml comments. The next step then is to re-formulate these requirements in an executable form. This is specific to the respective programming language. - For C#/.NET, the Gallio framework (which includes MbUnit) in conjunction with the ReSharper add-in for Visual Studio is my toolset of choice. The third part then finally is the production code itself. It’s development is entirely driven by the requirements and their executable formulation. This is the delivery, the two other parts are ‘only’ there to make its production possible, to give it a decent quality and reliability, and to significantly reduce related costs down the maintenance timeline. So while the first two parts are not really relevant for the customer, they are very important for the developer. The customer (or in Scrum terms: the Product Owner) is not interested at all in how the product is developed, he is only interested in the fact that it is developed as cost-effective as possible, and that it meets his functional and non-functional requirements. The rest is solely a matter of the developer’s craftsmanship, and this is what I want to talk about during the remainder of this article… An example To demonstrate my way of doing real-world TDD, I decided to show the development of a (very) simple Calculator component. The example is deliberately trivial and silly, as examples always are. I am totally aware of the fact that real life is never that simple, but I only want to show some development principles here… The requirement As already said above, I start with writing down some words on the initial requirement, and I normally use interfaces for that, even for internal classes - the typical question “intf or not” doesn’t even come to mind. I need them for my usual workflow and using them automatically produces high componentized and testable code anyway. To think about their usage in every single situation would slow down the production process unnecessarily. So this is what I begin with: namespace Calculator { /// <summary> /// Defines a very simple calculator component for demo purposes. /// </summary> public interface ICalculator { /// <summary> /// Gets the result of the last successful operation. /// </summary> /// <value>The last result.</value> /// <remarks> /// Will be <see langword="null" /> before the first successful operation. /// </remarks> double? LastResult { get; } } // interface ICalculator } // namespace Calculator So, I’m not beginning with a test, but with a sort of code declaration - and still I insist on being 100% test-driven. There are three important things here: Starting this way gives me a method signature, which allows to use IntelliSense and AutoCompletion and thus eliminates the danger of typos - one of the most regular, annoying, time-consuming, and therefore expensive sources of error in the development process. In my understanding, the interface definition as a whole is more of a readable requirement document and technical documentation than anything else. So this is at least as much about documentation than about coding. The documentation must completely describe the behavior of the documented element. I normally use an IoC container or some sort of self-written provider-like model in my architecture. In either case, I need my components defined via service interfaces anyway. - I will use the LinFu IoC framework here, for no other reason as that is is very simple to use. The ‘Red’ (pt. 1) First I create a folder for the project’s third-party libraries and put the LinFu.Core dll there. Then I set up a test project (via a Gallio project template), and add references to the Calculator project and the LinFu dll. Finally I’m ready to write the first test, which will look like the following: namespace Calculator.Test { [TestFixture] public class CalculatorTest { private readonly ServiceContainer container = new ServiceContainer(); [Test] public void CalculatorLastResultIsInitiallyNull() { ICalculator calculator = container.GetService<ICalculator>(); Assert.IsNull(calculator.LastResult); } } // class CalculatorTest } // namespace Calculator.Test This is basically the executable formulation of what the interface definition states (part of). Side note: There’s one principle of TDD that is just plain wrong in my eyes: I’m talking about the Red is 'does not compile' thing. How could a compiler error ever be interpreted as a valid test outcome? I never understood that, it just makes no sense to me. (Or, in Derick’s terms: this reason is as wrong as a reason ever could be…) A compiler error tells me: Your code is incorrect, but nothing more. Instead, the ‘Red’ part of the red-green-refactor cycle has a clearly defined meaning to me: It means that the test works as intended and fails only if its assumptions are not met for some reason. Back to our Calculator. When I execute the above test with R#, the Gallio plugin will give me this output: So this tells me that the test is red for the wrong reason: There’s no implementation that the IoC-container could load, of course. So let’s fix that. With R#, this is very easy: First, create an ICalculator - derived type: Next, implement the interface members: And finally, move the new class to its own file: So far my ‘work’ was six mouse clicks long, the only thing that’s left to do manually here, is to add the Ioc-specific wiring-declaration and also to make the respective class non-public, which I regularly do to force my components to communicate exclusively via interfaces: This is what my Calculator class looks like as of now: using System; using LinFu.IoC.Configuration; namespace Calculator { [Implements(typeof(ICalculator))] internal class Calculator : ICalculator { public double? LastResult { get { throw new NotImplementedException(); } } } } Back to the test fixture, we have to put our IoC container to work: [TestFixture] public class CalculatorTest { #region Fields private readonly ServiceContainer container = new ServiceContainer(); #endregion // Fields #region Setup/TearDown [FixtureSetUp] public void FixtureSetUp() { container.LoadFrom(AppDomain.CurrentDomain.BaseDirectory, "Calculator.dll"); } ... Because I have a R# live template defined for the setup/teardown method skeleton as well, the only manual coding here again is the IoC-specific stuff: two lines, not more… The ‘Red’ (pt. 2) Now, the execution of the above test gives the following result: This time, the test outcome tells me that the method under test is called. And this is the point, where Derick and I seem to have somewhat different views on the subject: Of course, the test still is worthless regarding the red/green outcome (or: it’s still red for the wrong reasons, in that it gives a false negative). But as far as I am concerned, I’m not really interested in the test outcome at this point of the red-green-refactor cycle. Rather, I only want to assert that my test actually calls the right method. If that’s the case, I will happily go on to the ‘Green’ part… The ‘Green’ Making the test green is quite trivial. Just make LastResult an automatic property: [Implements(typeof(ICalculator))] internal class Calculator : ICalculator { public double? LastResult { get; private set; } } One more round… Now on to something slightly more demanding (cough…). Let’s state that our Calculator exposes an Add() method: ... /// <summary> /// Adds the specified operands. /// </summary> /// <param name="operand1">The operand1.</param> /// <param name="operand2">The operand2.</param> /// <returns>The result of the additon.</returns> /// <exception cref="ArgumentException"> /// Argument <paramref name="operand1"/> is < 0.<br/> /// -- or --<br/> /// Argument <paramref name="operand2"/> is < 0. /// </exception> double Add(double operand1, double operand2); } // interface ICalculator A remark: I sometimes hear the complaint that xml comment stuff like the above is hard to read. That’s certainly true, but irrelevant to me, because I read xml code comments with the CR_Documentor tool window. And using that, it looks like this: Apart from that, I’m heavily using xml code comments (see e.g. here for a detailed guide) because there is the possibility of automating help generation with nightly CI builds (using MS Sandcastle and the Sandcastle Help File Builder), and then publishing the results to some intranet location. This way, a team always has first class, up-to-date technical documentation at hand about the current codebase. (And, also very important for speeding up things and avoiding typos: You have IntelliSense/AutoCompletion and R# support, and the comments are subject to compiler checking…). Back to our Calculator again: Two more R# – clicks implement the Add() skeleton: ... public double Add(double operand1, double operand2) { throw new NotImplementedException(); } } // class Calculator As we have stated in the interface definition (which actually serves as our requirement document!), the operands are not allowed to be negative. So let’s start implementing that. Here’s the test: [Test] [Row(-0.5, 2)] public void AddThrowsOnNegativeOperands(double operand1, double operand2) { ICalculator calculator = container.GetService<ICalculator>(); Assert.Throws<ArgumentException>(() => calculator.Add(operand1, operand2)); } As you can see, I’m using a data-driven unit test method here, mainly for these two reasons: Because I know that I will have to do the same test for the second operand in a few seconds, I save myself from implementing another test method for this purpose. Rather, I only will have to add another Row attribute to the existing one. From the test report below, you can see that the argument values are explicitly printed out. This can be a valuable documentation feature even when everything is green: One can quickly review what values were tested exactly - the complete Gallio HTML-report (as it will be produced by the Continuous Integration runs) shows these values in a quite clear format (see below for an example). Back to our Calculator development again, this is what the test result tells us at the moment: So we’re red again, because there is not yet an implementation… Next we go on and implement the necessary parameter verification to become green again, and then we do the same thing for the second operand. To make a long story short, here’s the test and the method implementation at the end of the second cycle: // in CalculatorTest: [Test] [Row(-0.5, 2)] [Row(295, -123)] public void AddThrowsOnNegativeOperands(double operand1, double operand2) { ICalculator calculator = container.GetService<ICalculator>(); Assert.Throws<ArgumentException>(() => calculator.Add(operand1, operand2)); } // in Calculator: public double Add(double operand1, double operand2) { if (operand1 < 0.0) { throw new ArgumentException("Value must not be negative.", "operand1"); } if (operand2 < 0.0) { throw new ArgumentException("Value must not be negative.", "operand2"); } throw new NotImplementedException(); } So far, we have sheltered our method from unwanted input, and now we can safely operate on the parameters without further caring about their validity (this is my interpretation of the Fail Fast principle, which is regarded here in more detail). Now we can think about the method’s successful outcomes. First let’s write another test for that: [Test] [Row(1, 1, 2)] public void TestAdd(double operand1, double operand2, double expectedResult) { ICalculator calculator = container.GetService<ICalculator>(); double result = calculator.Add(operand1, operand2); Assert.AreEqual(expectedResult, result); } Again, I’m regularly using row based test methods for these kinds of unit tests. The above shown pattern proved to be extremely helpful for my development work, I call it the Defined-Input/Expected-Output test idiom: You define your input arguments together with the expected method result. There are two major benefits from that way of testing: In the course of refining a method, it’s very likely to come up with additional test cases. In our case, we might add tests for some edge cases like ‘one of the operands is zero’ or ‘the sum of the two operands causes an overflow’, or maybe there’s an external test protocol that has to be fulfilled (e.g. an ISO norm for medical software), and this results in the need of testing against additional values. In all these scenarios we only have to add another Row attribute to the test. Remember that the argument values are written to the test report, so as a side-effect this produces valuable documentation. (This can become especially important if the fulfillment of some sort of external requirements has to be proven). So your test method might look something like that in the end: [Test, Description("Arguments: operand1, operand2, expectedResult")] [Row(1, 1, 2)] [Row(0, 999999999, 999999999)] [Row(0, 0, 0)] [Row(0, double.MaxValue, double.MaxValue)] [Row(4, double.MaxValue - 2.5, double.MaxValue)] public void TestAdd(double operand1, double operand2, double expectedResult) { ICalculator calculator = container.GetService<ICalculator>(); double result = calculator.Add(operand1, operand2); Assert.AreEqual(expectedResult, result); } And this will produce the following HTML report (with Gallio): Not bad for the amount of work we invested in it, huh? - There might be scenarios where reports like that can be useful for demonstration purposes during a Scrum sprint review… The last requirement to fulfill is that the LastResult property is expected to store the result of the last operation. I don’t show this here, it’s trivial enough and brings nothing new… And finally: Refactor (for the right reasons) To demonstrate my way of going through the refactoring portion of the red-green-refactor cycle, I added another method to our Calculator component, namely Subtract(). Here’s the code (tests and production): // CalculatorTest.cs: [Test, Description("Arguments: operand1, operand2, expectedResult")] [Row(1, 1, 0)] [Row(0, 999999999, -999999999)] [Row(0, 0, 0)] [Row(0, double.MaxValue, -double.MaxValue)] [Row(4, double.MaxValue - 2.5, -double.MaxValue)] public void TestSubtract(double operand1, double operand2, double expectedResult) { ICalculator calculator = container.GetService<ICalculator>(); double result = calculator.Subtract(operand1, operand2); Assert.AreEqual(expectedResult, result); } [Test, Description("Arguments: operand1, operand2, expectedResult")] [Row(1, 1, 0)] [Row(0, 999999999, -999999999)] [Row(0, 0, 0)] [Row(0, double.MaxValue, -double.MaxValue)] [Row(4, double.MaxValue - 2.5, -double.MaxValue)] public void TestSubtractGivesExpectedLastResult(double operand1, double operand2, double expectedResult) { ICalculator calculator = container.GetService<ICalculator>(); calculator.Subtract(operand1, operand2); Assert.AreEqual(expectedResult, calculator.LastResult); } ... // ICalculator.cs: /// <summary> /// Subtracts the specified operands. /// </summary> /// <param name="operand1">The operand1.</param> /// <param name="operand2">The operand2.</param> /// <returns>The result of the subtraction.</returns> /// <exception cref="ArgumentException"> /// Argument <paramref name="operand1"/> is < 0.<br/> /// -- or --<br/> /// Argument <paramref name="operand2"/> is < 0. /// </exception> double Subtract(double operand1, double operand2); ... // Calculator.cs: public double Subtract(double operand1, double operand2) { if (operand1 < 0.0) { throw new ArgumentException("Value must not be negative.", "operand1"); } if (operand2 < 0.0) { throw new ArgumentException("Value must not be negative.", "operand2"); } return (this.LastResult = operand1 - operand2).Value; } Obviously, the argument validation stuff that was produced during the red-green part of our cycle duplicates the code from the previous Add() method. So, to avoid code duplication and minimize the number of code lines of the production code, we do an Extract Method refactoring. One more time, this is only a matter of a few mouse clicks (and giving the new method a name) with R#: Having done that, our production code finally looks like that: using System; using LinFu.IoC.Configuration; namespace Calculator { [Implements(typeof(ICalculator))] internal class Calculator : ICalculator { #region ICalculator public double? LastResult { get; private set; } public double Add(double operand1, double operand2) { ThrowIfOneOperandIsInvalid(operand1, operand2); return (this.LastResult = operand1 + operand2).Value; } public double Subtract(double operand1, double operand2) { ThrowIfOneOperandIsInvalid(operand1, operand2); return (this.LastResult = operand1 - operand2).Value; } #endregion // ICalculator #region Implementation (Helper) private static void ThrowIfOneOperandIsInvalid(double operand1, double operand2) { if (operand1 < 0.0) { throw new ArgumentException("Value must not be negative.", "operand1"); } if (operand2 < 0.0) { throw new ArgumentException("Value must not be negative.", "operand2"); } } #endregion // Implementation (Helper) } // class Calculator } // namespace Calculator But is the above worth the effort at all? It’s obviously trivial and not very impressive. All our tests were green (for the right reasons), and refactoring the code did not change anything. It’s not immediately clear how this refactoring work adds value to the project. Derick puts it like this: STOP! Hold on a second… before you go any further and before you even think about refactoring what you just wrote to make your test pass, you need to understand something: if your done with your requirements after making the test green, you are not required to refactor the code. I know… I’m speaking heresy, here. Toss me to the wolves, I’ve gone over to the dark side! Seriously, though… if your test is passing for the right reasons, and you do not need to write any test or any more code for you class at this point, what value does refactoring add? Derick immediately answers his own question: So why should you follow the refactor portion of red/green/refactor? When you have added code that makes the system less readable, less understandable, less expressive of the domain or concern’s intentions, less architecturally sound, less DRY, etc, then you should refactor it. I couldn’t state it more precise. From my personal perspective, I’d add the following: You have to keep in mind that real-world software systems are usually quite large and there are dozens or even hundreds of occasions where micro-refactorings like the above can be applied. It’s the sum of them all that counts. And to have a good overall quality of the system (e.g. in terms of the Code Duplication Percentage metric) you have to be pedantic on the individual, seemingly trivial cases. My job regularly requires the reading and understanding of ‘foreign’ code. So code quality/readability really makes a HUGE difference for me – sometimes it can be even the difference between project success and failure… Conclusions The above described development process emerged over the years, and there were mainly two things that guided its evolution (you might call it eternal principles, personal beliefs, or anything in between): Test-driven development is the normal, natural way of writing software, code-first is exceptional. So ‘doing TDD or not’ is not a question. And good, stable code can only reliably be produced by doing TDD (yes, I know: many will strongly disagree here again, but I’ve never seen high-quality code – and high-quality code is code that stood the test of time and causes low maintenance costs – that was produced code-first…) It’s the production code that pays our bills in the end. (Though I have seen customers these days who demand an acceptance test battery as part of the final delivery. Things seem to go into the right direction…). The test code serves ‘only’ to make the production code work. But it’s the number of delivered features which solely counts at the end of the day - no matter how much test code you wrote or how good it is. With these two things in mind, I tried to optimize my coding process for coding speed – or, in business terms: productivity - without sacrificing the principles of TDD (more than I’d do either way…). As a result, I consider a ratio of about 3-5/1 for test code vs. production code as normal and desirable. In other words: roughly 60-80% of my code is test code (This might sound heavy, but that is mainly due to the fact that software development standards only begin to evolve. The entire software development profession is very young, historically seen; only at the very beginning, and there are no viable standards yet. If you think about software development as a kind of casting process, where the test code is the mold and the resulting production code is the final product, then the above ratio sounds no longer extraordinary…) Although the above might look like very much unnecessary work at first sight, it’s not. With the aid of the mentioned add-ins, doing all the above is a matter of minutes, sometimes seconds (while writing this post took hours and days…). The most important thing is to have the right tools at hand. Slow developer machines or the lack of a tool or something like that - for ‘saving’ a few 100 bucks - is just not acceptable and a very bad decision in business terms (though I quite some times have seen and heard that…). Production of high-quality products needs the usage of high-quality tools. This is a platitude that every craftsman knows… The here described round-trip will take me about five to ten minutes in my real-world development practice. I guess it’s about 30% more time compared to developing the ‘traditional’ (code-first) way. But the so manufactured ‘product’ is of much higher quality and massively reduces maintenance costs, which is by far the single biggest cost factor, as I showed in this previous post: It's the maintenance, stupid! (or: Something is rotten in developerland.). In the end, this is a highly cost-effective way of software development… But on the other hand, there clearly is a trade-off here: coding speed vs. code quality/later maintenance costs. The here described development method might be a perfect fit for the overwhelming majority of software projects, but there certainly are some scenarios where it’s not - e.g. if time-to-market is crucial for a software project. So this is a business decision in the end. It’s just that you have to know what you’re doing and what consequences this might have… Some last words First, I’d like to thank Derick Bailey again. His two aforementioned posts (which I strongly recommend for reading) inspired me to think deeply about my own personal way of doing TDD and to clarify my thoughts about it. I wouldn’t have done that without this inspiration. I really enjoy that kind of discussions… I agree with him in all respects. But I don’t know (yet?) how to bring his insights into the described production process without slowing things down. The above described method proved to be very “good enough” in my practical experience. But of course, I’m open to suggestions here… My rationale for now is: If the test is initially red during the red-green-refactor cycle, the ‘right reason’ is: it actually calls the right method, but this method is not yet operational. Later on, when the cycle is finished and the tests become part of the regular, automated Continuous Integration process, ‘red’ certainly must occur for the ‘right reason’: in this phase, ‘red’ MUST mean nothing but an unfulfilled assertion - Fail By Assertion, Not By Anything Else!

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Import Data from Excel sheet to DB Table through OAF page

- by PRajkumar

1. Create a New Workspace and Project File > New > General > Workspace Configured for Oracle Applications File Name – PrajkumarImportxlsDemo Automatically a new OA Project will also be created Project Name -- ImportxlsDemo Default Package -- prajkumar.oracle.apps.fnd.importxlsdemo 2. Add JAR file jxl-2.6.3.jar to Apache Library Download jxl-2.6.3.jar from following link – http://www.findjar.com/jar/net.sourceforge.jexcelapi/jars/jxl-2.6.jar.html Steps to add jxl.jar file in Local Machine Right Click on ImportxlsDemo > Project Properties > Libraries > Add jar/Directory and browse to directory where jxl-2.6.3.jar has been downloaded and select the JAR file Steps to add jxl.jar file at EBS middle tier On your EBS middile tier copy jxl.jar at $FND_TOP/java/3rdparty/standalone Add $FND_TOP/java/3rdparty/standalone\jxl.jar to custom classpath in Jser.properties file which is at $IAS_ORACLE_HOME/Apache/Jserv/etc wrapper.classpath=/U01/oracle/dev/devappl/fnd/11.5.0/java/3rdparty/stdalone/jxl.jar Bounce Apache Server 3. Create a New Application Module (AM) Right Click on ImportxlsDemo > New > ADF Business Components > Application Module Name -- ImportxlsAM Package -- prajkumar.oracle.apps.fnd.importxlsdemo.server Check Application Module Class: ImportxlsAMImpl Generate JavaFile(s) 4. Create Test Table in which we will insert data from excel CREATE TABLE xx_import_excel_data_demo ( -- -------------------- -- Data Columns -- -------------------- column1 VARCHAR2(100), column2 VARCHAR2(100), column3 VARCHAR2(100), column4 VARCHAR2(100), column5 VARCHAR2(100), -- -------------------- -- Who Columns -- -------------------- last_update_date DATE NOT NULL, last_updated_by NUMBER NOT NULL, creation_date DATE NOT NULL, created_by NUMBER NOT NULL, last_update_login NUMBER ); 5. Create a New Entity Object (EO) Right click on ImportxlsDemo > New > ADF Business Components > Entity Object Name – ImportxlsEO Package -- prajkumar.oracle.apps.fnd.importxlsdemo.schema.server Database Objects -- XX_IMPORT_EXCEL_DATA_DEMO Note – By default ROWID will be the primary key if we will not make any column to be primary key Check the Accessors, Create Method, Validation Method and Remove Method 6. Create a New View Object (VO) Right click on ImportxlsDemo > New > ADF Business Components > View Object Name -- ImportxlsVO Package -- prajkumar.oracle.apps.fnd.importxlsdemo.server In Step2 in Entity Page select ImportxlsEO and shuttle it to selected list In Step3 in Attributes Window select all columns and shuttle them to selected list In Java page Uncheck Generate Java file for View Object Class: ImportxlsVOImpl Select Generate Java File for View Row Class: ImportxlsVORowImpl -> Generate Java File -> Accessors 7. Add Your View Object to Root UI Application Module Right click on ImportxlsAM > Edit ImportxlsAM > Data Model > Select ImportxlsVO and shuttle to Data Model list 8. Create a New Page Right click on ImportxlsDemo > New > Web Tier > OA Components > Page Name -- ImportxlsPG Package -- prajkumar.oracle.apps.fnd.importxlsdemo.webui 9. Select the ImportxlsPG and go to the strcuture pane where a default region has been created 10. Select region1 and set the following properties: Attribute Property ID PageLayoutRN AM Definition prajkumar.oracle.apps.fnd.importxlsdemo.server.ImportxlsAM Window Title Import Data From Excel through OAF Page Demo Window Title Import Data From Excel through OAF Page Demo 11. Create messageComponentLayout Region Under Page Layout Region Right click PageLayoutRN > New > Region Attribute Property ID MainRN Item Style messageComponentLayout 12. Create a New Item messageFileUpload Bean under MainRN Right click on MainRN > New > messageFileUpload Set Following Properties for New Item -- Attribute Property ID MessageFileUpload Item Style messageFileUpload 13. Create a New Item Submit Button Bean under MainRN Right click on MainRN > New > messageLayout Set Following Properties for messageLayout -- Attribute Property ID ButtonLayout Right Click on ButtonLayout > New > Item Attribute Property ID Go Item Style submitButton Attribute Set /oracle/apps/fnd/attributesets/Buttons/Go 14. Create Controller for page ImportxlsPG Right Click on PageLayoutRN > Set New Controller Package Name: prajkumar.oracle.apps.fnd.importxlsdemo.webui Class Name: ImportxlsCO Write Following Code in ImportxlsCO in processFormRequest import oracle.apps.fnd.framework.OAApplicationModule; import oracle.apps.fnd.framework.OAException; import java.io.Serializable; import oracle.apps.fnd.framework.webui.OAControllerImpl; import oracle.apps.fnd.framework.webui.OAPageContext; import oracle.apps.fnd.framework.webui.beans.OAWebBean; import oracle.cabo.ui.data.DataObject; import oracle.jbo.domain.BlobDomain; public void processFormRequest(OAPageContext pageContext, OAWebBean webBean) { super.processFormRequest(pageContext, webBean); if (pageContext.getParameter("Go") != null) { DataObject fileUploadData = (DataObject)pageContext.getNamedDataObject("MessageFileUpload"); String fileName = null; try { fileName = (String)fileUploadData.selectValue(null, "UPLOAD_FILE_NAME"); } catch(NullPointerException ex) { throw new OAException("Please Select a File to Upload", OAException.ERROR); } BlobDomain uploadedByteStream = (BlobDomain)fileUploadData.selectValue(null, fileName); try { OAApplicationModule oaapplicationmodule = pageContext.getRootApplicationModule(); Serializable aserializable2[] = {uploadedByteStream}; Class aclass2[] = {BlobDomain.class }; oaapplicationmodule.invokeMethod("ReadExcel", aserializable2,aclass2); } catch (Exception ex) { throw new OAException(ex.toString(), OAException.ERROR); } } } Write Following Code in ImportxlsAMImpl.java import java.io.IOException; import java.io.InputStream; import jxl.Cell; import jxl.CellType; import jxl.Sheet; import jxl.Workbook; import jxl.read.biff.BiffException; import oracle.apps.fnd.framework.server.OAApplicationModuleImpl; import oracle.jbo.Row; import oracle.apps.fnd.framework.OAViewObject; import oracle.apps.fnd.framework.server.OAViewObjectImpl; import oracle.jbo.domain.BlobDomain; public void createRecord(String[] excel_data) { OAViewObject vo = (OAViewObject)getImportxlsVO1(); if (!vo.isPreparedForExecution()) { vo.executeQuery(); } Row row = vo.createRow(); try { for (int i=0; i < excel_data.length; i++) { row.setAttribute("Column" +(i+1) ,excel_data[i]); } } catch(Exception e) { System.out.println(e.getMessage()); } vo.insertRow(row); getTransaction().commit(); } public void ReadExcel(BlobDomain fileData) throws IOException { String[] excel_data = new String[5]; InputStream inputWorkbook = fileData.getInputStream(); Workbook w; try { w = Workbook.getWorkbook(inputWorkbook); // Get the first sheet Sheet sheet = w.getSheet(0); for (int i = 0; i < sheet.getRows(); i++) { for (int j = 0; j < sheet.getColumns(); j++) { Cell cell = sheet.getCell(j, i); CellType type = cell.getType(); if (cell.getType() == CellType.LABEL) { System.out.println("I got a label " + cell.getContents()); excel_data[j] = cell.getContents(); } if (cell.getType() == CellType.NUMBER) { System.out.println("I got a number " + cell.getContents()); excel_data[j] = cell.getContents(); } } createRecord(excel_data); } } catch (BiffException e) { e.printStackTrace(); } } 15. Congratulation you have successfully finished. Run Your page and Test Your Work Consider Excel PRAJ_TEST.xls with following data -- Lets Try to import this data into DB Table --

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CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, March 16, 2010

CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, March 16, 2010New ProjectsAAPL-MySQL (a MySql implementation of the Agile ADO.Net Persistence Layer): Using the code conventions and code of the Agile ADO.Net Persistence Layer to build a MySql implementationAddress Book: Address Book is simple and easy to use application for storing and editing contacts. It has many features like search and grouping. It's developed ...Airplanes: Airplanes GameAJAX Fax document viewer: The AJAX Fax document viewer is an ASP.net 4.0 project which uses a Seadragon control to display Tiff/Tif files inside the browser. Since it's base...AxeFrog Core: This project contains the foundational code used in several other projects.Bolão: O objetivo deste projeto é estimular a troca de informações e experiências sobre arquitetura e desenvolvimento de software na prática, através do d...Caramel Engine: This is designed to be a logic engine for developing a wide variety of games. To include card logic, dice logic, territories, players, and even man...DotNetNuke® Skin BrandWorks: A DotNetNuke Design Challenge skin package submitted to the "Modern Business" category by M Perakakis & M Siganou (e-bilab). A very minimal look sk...DotNetNuke® Skin Reasonable: A DotNetNuke Design Challenge skin package submitted to the "Personal" category by Ralph Williams of Architech Solutions. A clean, classy, professi...DotNetNuke® Skin Seasons: A DotNetNuke Design Challenge skin package submitted to the "Personal" category by Atul Handa and Kevin McCusker of Mercer. This skin is a generic ...File Eraser: File Eraser make it esasier for IT Administrator or Advanced Users to administer files and eliminate long addresses, even UNC. It's developed in VB...GreenEyes: My project for IT personalHulu Launcher: Hulu Launcher is a simple Windows Media Center add-in that attempts to launch Hulu Desktop and manage the windows as seamlessly as possible.Imenik: Imenik makes it easier for users to organise their contacts!KharaPOS: KharaPOS is an Exemplar application for Silverlight 4, WCF RIA Services and .NET Framework 4.Mantas Cryptography: Pequena biblioteca de criptografia com suporte aos algorítmos DES, RC2, Rexor e TripleDES. Gera hashes HMAC-MD5, HMAC-RIPEMD160, HMAC-SHA (SHA1, S...MapWindow3D: A C# DirectX library that extends the MapWindow 6.0 geospatial software library by adding an external map. The map supports rotation and tilting i...Microsoft Silverlight Analytics Framework: Extensible Web Analytics Framework for Microsoft Silverlight Applications.Moq Examples: Unit tests demonstrating Moq features.Ncqrs: Framework that helps you to create Command-Query Responsibility Segregation based applications easily.NoLedge - Notetaking and knowledge database: NoLedge is an easy knowledge gathering and notetaking freeware with a simple interface. You can link a note with different titles and can retrieve ...Numina Application Framework: The framework is a set of tools that help facilitate authentication, authorization, and access control. It is much more than a SSO. It is a central...OData SDK for PHP: OData SDK for PHP is a library to facilitate the connection with OData Services.patterns & practices - Windows Azure Guidance: p&p site for Windows Azure related guidance.projecteuler.net: Exploring projecteuler.net using F#ResumeTracker: Small and easy to use tool that helps to track your job applications. To report bugs or for suggestions please email kirunchik@gmail.com.Selection Maker: Have you ever create a collection of music files? Imagine you just want to pick best of them by your choice. you should go to several folder,play...ShureValidation: Multilingual model validation library. Supports fluent validations, attribute validations and own custom validations.Simple Phonebook: Simple phonebook allows you to store contacts. It also allows you to export the contacts to .txt or .csv. This application is written in C#, but it...SoftUpd: A usefull library which provides an Update feature to any .Net software.sTASKedit: This program can modify and export Perfect World tasks.data files...Tigie: Tigie is a simple CMS system for basic website. It's simple, easy to customize. you'll have a very basic cms to start with and expand for it. All c...toapp: ap hwUltiLogger: UltiLogger is a fast, lightweight logging library programmed in C#. It is meant as a fast, easy, and efficient way for developers to access a relia...Unnme: UnnmeVisual Studio 2008 NUnit snippets: A simple set of useful NUnit snippets, for Visual studio 2008.webdama: italian checkers game c#XBrowser - Headless Browser for .Net: XBrowser is a "headless" web browser written for .Net applications using C#. It is designed to allow automated, remote controlled and test-based br...XML Integrator: XML integration, collaborative toolNew ReleasesAddress Book: Address Book: Address BookAddress Book: Address Book - Source: Address Book source code.AJAX Fax document viewer: AJAXTiff_Source 1.0: Source project for the AJAX Tiff viewer v1.0. Written in Visual Studio 2010 RC using ASP.net 4.0ASP.Net Routing Configuration: mal.Web.Routing v1.0.0.0: mal.Web.Routing v1.0.0.0ASP.NET Wiki Control: Release 1.0: Includes VS2010 Solution and Project files but targets the 3.5 framework so can still be used with VS2008 if new project files are created.BingPaper: Beta: BingPaper Beta Release This Beta release contains quite a few improvements: This Beta release contains a complate overhaul of the replacement tok...Bolão: teste: testeDotNetNuke® Skin Reasonable: Reasonable Package 1.0.0: A DotNetNuke Design Challenge skin package submitted to the "Personal" category by Ralph Williams of Architech Solutions. A clean, classy, professi...DotNetNuke® Skin Seasons: Seasons Package 1.0.0: A DotNetNuke Design Challenge skin package submitted to the "Personal" category by Atul Handa and Kevin McCusker of Mercer. This skin is a generic ...dylan.NET: dylan.NET v. 9.2: In TFS Serverdylan.NET Apps: dylan.NET Apps v. 1.1: First version of dnu.dll together with v.9.2 of dylan.NETFamily Tree Analyzer: Version 1.1.0.0: Version 1.1.0.0 Census report now shows in bold those individuals you KNOW to be alive at the date of the census. Direct Ancestors on census repor...GLB Virtual Player Builder: 0.4.1: Minor change to reset non-major/minor attr to 8.Hulu Launcher: HuluLauncher Release 1.0.1.1: HuluLauncher Release 1.0.1.1 is the initial, barely-tested release of this Windows Media Center add-in. It should work in Vista Media Center and 7 ...Imenik: Imenik: Imenik is now available!jQuery Library for SharePoint Web Services: SPServices 0.5.3: NOTE: While I work on new releases, I post alpha versions. Usually the alpha versions are here to address a particular need. I DO NOT recommend usi...KeelKit: KeelKit 1.0.3800: 更新内容如下: 优化了DBHelper的一些机制修正一些BUG 支持Mysql PHP代理，使得能通过Web代理的方式远程访问数据库服务器添加Model实例化方法，支持所有非自动计算字段的参数实例化、支持所有非空字段实例化添加Model中的常量，使用这些常量可以获得表名称。添加了自...Managed Extensibility Framework (MEF) Contrib: MefContrib 0.9.0.0: Updated to MEF Preview 9 Moved MefContrib.Extensions.Generics to MefContrib.Hosting.Generics Moved MefContrib.Extensions.Generics.Tests to MefC...MooiNooi MVC2LINQ2SQL Web Databinder: MooiNooi MVC2LINQ2SQL Web Databinder v0.1.1: Repaired a problem with collections... only index number under 10 were allowed... Please send me your comments and rate the project. Sorry.Mouse Gestures for .NET: Mouse Gestures 1.0: Improved version of the component + sample application. Version 1.0 is not backward compatible.MoviesForMyBlog: MoviesForMyBlog V1.0: This is version 1.0Nito.KitchenSink: Version 1: The first release of Nito.KitchenSink, which uses Nito.Linq 0.1. Please report any issues via the Issue Tracker.Nito.LINQ: Beta (v0.1): This is the first official public release of Nito.Linq. This release only supports .NET 3.5 SP1 with the Microsoft Rx libraries. The documentation...Nito.LINQ: Beta (v0.2): Added ListSource.Generate overloads that take a delegate for counting the list elements.OData SDK for PHP: OData SDK for PHP: This is an updated version of the ADO.NET Data Services toolkit for PHP. It includes full support for OData Protocol V2.0 specification, better pro...Orchard Project: Orchard Latest Build (0.1.2010.0312): This is a technical preview release of Orchard. Our intent with this release is to demonstrate representative experiences for our audiences (end-us...patterns & practices – Enterprise Library: Enterprise Library 5.0 - Beta2: This is a preliminary release of the code and documentation that may potentially be incomplete, and may change prior to the final release of Enterp...patterns & practices - Unity: Unity 2.0 - Beta2: This is a preliminary release of the code and documentation that may potentially be incomplete, and may change prior to the final release of Unity ...patterns & practices - Windows Azure Guidance: Code drop - 1: This initial version is the before the cloud baseline application, so you won’t find anything related to Windows Azure here. Next iteration, we'l...Rawr: Rawr 2.3.12: - First, a note about Rawr3. Rawr3 has been in development for quite a while now, and we know that everyone's eager to get it. It's been held back ...ResumeTracker: Resume Tracker v1.0: First release.Selection Maker: Selection Maker 1.0: This is just the first release of this programSevenZipSharp: SevenZipSharp 0.61: Added: Windows Mobile support bool Check() method for Extractor to test archives integrity FileExtractionFinished now returns FileInfoEventArgs...Silverlight 3.0 Advanced ToolTipService: Advanced ToolTipService v2.0.1: This release is compiled against the Silverlight 3.0 runtime. A demonstration on how to set the ToolTip content to a property of the DataContext o...Silverlight Flow Layouts library: SL and WPF Flow Layouts library March 2010: This release indtroduces some bug fixes, performance improvements, Silverlight 4 RC and WPF 4.0 RC support. Flow Layouts Library is a control libra...Simple Phonebook: SimplePhonebook Visual Studio 2010 Solution: Ovo je cijeli projekt u kojem se nalaze svi source fileovi koje sam koristio u izradi ove aplikacije. Za pokretanje je potreban Visual Studio 2010....Simple Phonebook: SimplePhonebook.rar: U ovoj .rar datoteci nalaze se izvršni fileovi. _ In this .rar file you can find .exe file needed for executing the application.SLARToolkit - Silverlight Augmented Reality Toolkit: SLARToolkit 1.0.1.0: Updated to Silverlight 4 Release Candidate. Introduces the new GenericMarkerDetector which uses the IXrgbReader interface. See the Marker Detecto...sPWadmin: pwAdmin v1.0: Fixed: Templates can now be saved server restart persistant (wait at least 60 seconds between saving and restarting)SQL Director for Dependencies & Indexes: SDD CTP 1.0: SQL Director for Dependencies allows you to view dependencies between tables, views, function, stored procedures and jobs. Newest Testing build, f...SqlCeViewer: SeasonStar Database Management 0.7.0.2: Update the user interface to help user understand clearly how to use .UltiLogger: Initial alpha release: Important! This is not a feature-complete release! It contains the logging priorities, and an interface for building logging systems from. THERE IS...Visual Studio 2008 NUnit snippets: Version 1.0: First stable release.Zeta Resource Editor: Source Code Release 2010-03-16: New source code. Binary setup is also available.Most Popular ProjectsMetaSharpWBFS ManagerRawrAJAX Control ToolkitMicrosoft SQL Server Product Samples: DatabaseSilverlight ToolkitASP.NET Ajax LibraryWindows Presentation Foundation (WPF)ASP.NETLiveUpload to FacebookMost Active ProjectsLINQ to TwitterOData SDK for PHPRawrN2 CMSpatterns & practices – Enterprise LibraryDirectQBlogEngine.NETMapWindow6SharePoint Team-MailerNB_Store - Free DotNetNuke Ecommerce Catalog Module

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The broken Promise of the Mobile Web

- by Rick Strahl

High end mobile devices have been with us now for almost 7 years and they have utterly transformed the way we access information. Mobile phones and smartphones that have access to the Internet and host smart applications are in the hands of a large percentage of the population of the world. In many places even very remote, cell phones and even smart phones are a common sight. I’ll never forget when I was in India in 2011 I was up in the Southern Indian mountains riding an elephant out of a tiny local village, with an elephant herder in front riding atop of the elephant in front of us. He was dressed in traditional garb with the loin wrap and head cloth/turban as did quite a few of the locals in this small out of the way and not so touristy village. So we’re slowly trundling along in the forest and he’s lazily using his stick to guide the elephant and… 10 minutes in he pulls out his cell phone from his sash and starts texting. In the middle of texting a huge pig jumps out from the side of the trail and he takes a picture running across our path in the jungle! So yeah, mobile technology is very pervasive and it’s reached into even very buried and unexpected parts of this world. Apps are still King Apps currently rule the roost when it comes to mobile devices and the applications that run on them. If there’s something that you need on your mobile device your first step usually is to look for an app, not use your browser. But native app development remains a pain in the butt, with the requirement to have to support 2 or 3 completely separate platforms. There are solutions that try to bridge that gap. Xamarin is on a tear at the moment, providing their cross-device toolkit to build applications using C#. While Xamarin tools are impressive – and also *very* expensive – they only address part of the development madness that is app development. There are still specific device integration isssues, dealing with the different developer programs, security and certificate setups and all that other noise that surrounds app development. There’s also PhoneGap/Cordova which provides a hybrid solution that involves creating local HTML/CSS/JavaScript based applications, and then packaging them to run in a specialized App container that can run on most mobile device platforms using a WebView interface. This allows for using of HTML technology, but it also still requires all the set up, configuration of APIs, security keys and certification and submission and deployment process just like native applications – you actually lose many of the benefits that Web based apps bring. The big selling point of Cordova is that you get to use HTML have the ability to build your UI once for all platforms and run across all of them – but the rest of the app process remains in place. Apps can be a big pain to create and manage especially when we are talking about specialized or vertical business applications that aren’t geared at the mainstream market and that don’t fit the ‘store’ model. If you’re building a small intra department application you don’t want to deal with multiple device platforms and certification etc. for various public or corporate app stores. That model is simply not a good fit both from the development and deployment perspective. Even for commercial, big ticket apps, HTML as a UI platform offers many advantages over native, from write-once run-anywhere, to remote maintenance, single point of management and failure to having full control over the application as opposed to have the app store overloads censor you. In a lot of ways Web based HTML/CSS/JavaScript applications have so much potential for building better solutions based on existing Web technologies for the very same reasons a lot of content years ago moved off the desktop to the Web. To me the Web as a mobile platform makes perfect sense, but the reality of today’s Mobile Web unfortunately looks a little different… Where’s the Love for the Mobile Web? Yet here we are in the middle of 2014, nearly 7 years after the first iPhone was released and brought the promise of rich interactive information at your fingertips, and yet we still don’t really have a solid mobile Web platform. I know what you’re thinking: “But we have lots of HTML/JavaScript/CSS features that allows us to build nice mobile interfaces”. I agree to a point – it’s actually quite possible to build nice looking, rich and capable Web UI today. We have media queries to deal with varied display sizes, CSS transforms for smooth animations and transitions, tons of CSS improvements in CSS 3 that facilitate rich layout, a host of APIs geared towards mobile device features and lately even a number of JavaScript framework choices that facilitate development of multi-screen apps in a consistent manner. Personally I’ve been working a lot with AngularJs and heavily modified Bootstrap themes to build mobile first UIs and that’s been working very well to provide highly usable and attractive UI for typical mobile business applications. From the pure UI perspective things actually look very good. Not just about the UI But it’s not just about the UI - it’s also about integration with the mobile device. When it comes to putting all those pieces together into what amounts to a consolidated platform to build mobile Web applications, I think we still have a ways to go… there are a lot of missing pieces to make it all work together and integrate with the device more smoothly, and more importantly to make it work uniformly across the majority of devices. I think there are a number of reasons for this. Slow Standards Adoption HTML standards implementations and ratification has been dreadfully slow, and browser vendors all seem to pick and choose different pieces of the technology they implement. The end result is that we have a capable UI platform that’s missing some of the infrastructure pieces to make it whole on mobile devices. There’s lots of potential but what is lacking that final 10% to build truly compelling mobile applications that can compete favorably with native applications. Some of it is the fragmentation of browsers and the slow evolution of the mobile specific HTML APIs. A host of mobile standards exist but many of the standards are in the early review stage and they have been there stuck for long periods of time and seem to move at a glacial pace. Browser vendors seem even slower to implement them, and for good reason – non-ratified standards mean that implementations may change and vendor implementations tend to be experimental and likely have to be changed later. Neither Vendors or developers are not keen on changing standards. This is the typical chicken and egg scenario, but without some forward momentum from some party we end up stuck in the mud. It seems that either the standards bodies or the vendors need to carry the torch forward and that doesn’t seem to be happening quickly enough. Mobile Device Integration just isn’t good enough Current standards are not far reaching enough to address a number of the use case scenarios necessary for many mobile applications. While not every application needs to have access to all mobile device features, almost every mobile application could benefit from some integration with other parts of the mobile device platform. Integration with GPS, phone, media, messaging, notifications, linking and contacts system are benefits that are unique to mobile applications and could be widely used, but are mostly (with the exception of GPS) inaccessible for Web based applications today. Unfortunately trying to do most of this today only with a mobile Web browser is a losing battle. Aside from PhoneGap/Cordova’s app centric model with its own custom API accessing mobile device features and the token exception of the GeoLocation API, most device integration features are not widely supported by the current crop of mobile browsers. For example there’s no usable messaging API that allows access to SMS or contacts from HTML. Even obvious components like the Media Capture API are only implemented partially by mobile devices. There are alternatives and workarounds for some of these interfaces by using browser specific code, but that’s might ugly and something that I thought we were trying to leave behind with newer browser standards. But it’s not quite working out that way. It’s utterly perplexing to me that mobile standards like Media Capture and Streams, Media Gallery Access, Responsive Images, Messaging API, Contacts Manager API have only minimal or no traction at all today. Keep in mind we’ve had mobile browsers for nearly 7 years now, and yet we still have to think about how to get access to an image from the image gallery or the camera on some devices? Heck Windows Phone IE Mobile just gained the ability to upload images recently in the Windows 8.1 Update – that’s feature that HTML has had for 20 years! These are simple concepts and common problems that should have been solved a long time ago. It’s extremely frustrating to see build 90% of a mobile Web app with relative ease and then hit a brick wall for the remaining 10%, which often can be show stoppers. The remaining 10% have to do with platform integration, browser differences and working around the limitations that browsers and ‘pinned’ applications impose on HTML applications. The maddening part is that these limitations seem arbitrary as they could easily work on all mobile platforms. For example, SMS has a URL Moniker interface that sort of works on Android, works badly with iOS (only works if the address is already in the contact list) and not at all on Windows Phone. There’s no reason this shouldn’t work universally using the same interface – after all all phones have supported SMS since before the year 2000! But, it doesn’t have to be this way Change can happen very quickly. Take the GeoLocation API for example. Geolocation has taken off at the very beginning of the mobile device era and today it works well, provides the necessary security (a big concern for many mobile APIs), and is supported by just about all major mobile and even desktop browsers today. It handles security concerns via prompts to avoid unwanted access which is a model that would work for most other device APIs in a similar fashion. One time approval and occasional re-approval if code changes or caches expire. Simple and only slightly intrusive. It all works well, even though GeoLocation actually has some physical limitations, such as representing the current location when no GPS device is present. Yet this is a solved problem, where other APIs that are conceptually much simpler to implement have failed to gain any traction at all. Technically none of these APIs should be a problem to implement, but it appears that the momentum is just not there. Inadequate Web Application Linking and Activation Another important piece of the puzzle missing is the integration of HTML based Web applications. Today HTML based applications are not first class citizens on mobile operating systems. When talking about HTML based content there’s a big difference between content and applications. Content is great for search engine discovery and plain browser usage. Content is usually accessed intermittently and permanent linking is not so critical for this type of content. But applications have different needs. Applications need to be started up quickly and must be easily switchable to support a multi-tasking user workflow. Therefore, it’s pretty crucial that mobile Web apps are integrated into the underlying mobile OS and work with the standard task management features. Unfortunately this integration is not as smooth as it should be. It starts with actually trying to find mobile Web applications, to ‘installing’ them onto a phone in an easily accessible manner in a prominent position. The experience of discovering a Mobile Web ‘App’ and making it sticky is by no means as easy or satisfying. Today the way you’d go about this is: Open the browser Search for a Web Site in the browser with your search engine of choice Hope that you find the right site Hope that you actually find a site that works for your mobile device Click on the link and run the app in a fully chrome’d browser instance (read tiny surface area) Pin the app to the home screen (with all the limitations outline above) Hope you pointed at the right URL when you pinned Even for you and me as developers, there are a few steps in there that are painful and annoying, but think about the average user. First figuring out how to search for a specific site or URL? And then pinning the app and hopefully from the right location? You’ve probably lost more than half of your audience at that point. This experience sucks. For developers too this process is painful since app developers can’t control the shortcut creation directly. This problem often gets solved by crazy coding schemes, with annoying pop-ups that try to get people to create shortcuts via fancy animations that are both annoying and add overhead to each and every application that implements this sort of thing differently. And that’s not the end of it - getting the link onto the home screen with an application icon varies quite a bit between browsers. Apple’s non-standard meta tags are prominent and they work with iOS and Android (only more recent versions), but not on Windows Phone. Windows Phone instead requires you to create an actual screen or rather a partial screen be captured for a shortcut in the tile manager. Who had that brilliant idea I wonder? Surprisingly Chrome on recent Android versions seems to actually get it right – icons use pngs, pinning is easy and pinned applications properly behave like standalone apps and retain the browser’s active page state and content. Each of the platforms has a different way to specify icons (WP doesn’t allow you to use an icon image at all), and the most widely used interface in use today is a bunch of Apple specific meta tags that other browsers choose to support. The question is: Why is there no standard implementation for installing shortcuts across mobile platforms using an official format rather than a proprietary one? Then there’s iOS and the crazy way it treats home screen linked URLs using a crazy hybrid format that is neither as capable as a Web app running in Safari nor a WebView hosted application. Moving off the Web ‘app’ link when switching to another app actually causes the browser and preview it to ‘blank out’ the Web application in the Task View (see screenshot on the right). Then, when the ‘app’ is reactivated it ends up completely restarting the browser with the original link. This is crazy behavior that you can’t easily work around. In some situations you might be able to store the application state and restore it using LocalStorage, but for many scenarios that involve complex data sources (like say Google Maps) that’s not a possibility. The only reason for this screwed up behavior I can think of is that it is deliberate to make Web apps a pain in the butt to use and forcing users trough the App Store/PhoneGap/Cordova route. App linking and management is a very basic problem – something that we essentially have solved in every desktop browser – yet on mobile devices where it arguably matters a lot more to have easy access to web content we have to jump through hoops to have even a remotely decent linking/activation experience across browsers. Where’s the Money? It’s not surprising that device home screen integration and Mobile Web support in general is in such dismal shape – the mobile OS vendors benefit financially from App store sales and have little to gain from Web based applications that bypass the App store and the cash cow that it presents. On top of that, platform specific vendor lock-in of both end users and developers who have invested in hardware, apps and consumables is something that mobile platform vendors actually aspire to. Web based interfaces that are cross-platform are the anti-thesis of that and so again it’s no surprise that the mobile Web is on a struggling path. But – that may be changing. More and more we’re seeing operations shifting to services that are subscription based or otherwise collect money for usage, and that may drive more progress into the Web direction in the end . Nothing like the almighty dollar to drive innovation forward. Do we need a Mobile Web App Store? As much as I dislike moderated experiences in today’s massive App Stores, they do at least provide one single place to look for apps for your device. I think we could really use some sort of registry, that could provide something akin to an app store for mobile Web apps, to make it easier to actually find mobile applications. This could take the form of a specialized search engine, or maybe a more formal store/registry like structure. Something like apt-get/chocolatey for Web apps. It could be curated and provide at least some feedback and reviews that might help with the integrity of applications. Coupled to that could be a native application on each platform that would allow searching and browsing of the registry and then also handle installation in the form of providing the home screen linking, plus maybe an initial security configuration that determines what features are allowed access to for the app. I’m not holding my breath. In order for this sort of thing to take off and gain widespread appeal, a lot of coordination would be required. And in order to get enough traction it would have to come from a well known entity – a mobile Web app store from a no name source is unlikely to gain high enough usage numbers to make a difference. In a way this would eliminate some of the freedom of the Web, but of course this would also be an optional search path in addition to the standard open Web search mechanisms to find and access content today. Security Security is a big deal, and one of the perceived reasons why so many IT professionals appear to be willing to go back to the walled garden of deployed apps is that Apps are perceived as safe due to the official review and curation of the App stores. Curated stores are supposed to protect you from malware, illegal and misleading content. It doesn’t always work out that way and all the major vendors have had issues with security and the review process at some time or another. Security is critical, but I also think that Web applications in general pose less of a security threat than native applications, by nature of the sandboxed browser and JavaScript environments. Web applications run externally completely and in the HTML and JavaScript sandboxes, with only a very few controlled APIs allowing access to device specific features. And as discussed earlier – security for any device interaction can be granted the same for mobile applications through a Web browser, as they can for native applications either via explicit policies loaded from the Web, or via prompting as GeoLocation does today. Security is important, but it’s certainly solvable problem for Web applications even those that need to access device hardware. Security shouldn’t be a reason for Web apps to be an equal player in mobile applications. Apps are winning, but haven’t we been here before? So now we’re finding ourselves back in an era of installed app, rather than Web based and managed apps. Only it’s even worse today than with Desktop applications, in that the apps are going through a gatekeeper that charges a toll and censors what you can and can’t do in your apps. Frankly it’s a mystery to me why anybody would buy into this model and why it’s lasted this long when we’ve already been through this process. It’s crazy… It’s really a shame that this regression is happening. We have the technology to make mobile Web apps much more prominent, but yet we’re basically held back by what seems little more than bureaucracy, partisan bickering and self interest of the major parties involved. Back in the day of the desktop it was Internet Explorer’s 98+% market shareholding back the Web from improvements for many years – now it’s the combined mobile OS market in control of the mobile browsers. If mobile Web apps were allowed to be treated the same as native apps with simple ways to install and run them consistently and persistently, that would go a long way to making mobile applications much more usable and seriously viable alternatives to native apps. But as it is mobile apps have a severe disadvantage in placement and operation. There are a few bright spots in all of this. Mozilla’s FireFoxOs is embracing the Web for it’s mobile OS by essentially building every app out of HTML and JavaScript based content. It supports both packaged and certified package modes (that can be put into the app store), and Open Web apps that are loaded and run completely off the Web and can also cache locally for offline operation using a manifest. Open Web apps are treated as full class citizens in FireFoxOS and run using the same mechanism as installed apps. Unfortunately FireFoxOs is getting a slow start with minimal device support and specifically targeting the low end market. We can hope that this approach will change and catch on with other vendors, but that’s also an uphill battle given the conflict of interest with platform lock in that it represents. Recent versions of Android also seem to be working reasonably well with mobile application integration onto the desktop and activation out of the box. Although it still uses the Apple meta tags to find icons and behavior settings, everything at least works as you would expect – icons to the desktop on pinning, WebView based full screen activation, and reliable application persistence as the browser/app is treated like a real application. Hopefully iOS will at some point provide this same level of rudimentary Web app support. What’s also interesting to me is that Microsoft hasn’t picked up on the obvious need for a solid Web App platform. Being a distant third in the mobile OS war, Microsoft certainly has nothing to lose and everything to gain by using fresh ideas and expanding into areas that the other major vendors are neglecting. But instead Microsoft is trying to beat the market leaders at their own game, fighting on their adversary’s terms instead of taking a new tack. Providing a kick ass mobile Web platform that takes the lead on some of the proposed mobile APIs would be something positive that Microsoft could do to improve its miserable position in the mobile device market. Where are we at with Mobile Web? It sure sounds like I’m really down on the Mobile Web, right? I’ve built a number of mobile apps in the last year and while overall result and response has been very positive to what we were able to accomplish in terms of UI, getting that final 10% that required device integration dialed was an absolute nightmare on every single one of them. Big compromises had to be made and some features were left out or had to be modified for some devices. In two cases we opted to go the Cordova route in order to get the integration we needed, along with the extra pain involved in that process. Unless you’re not integrating with device features and you don’t care deeply about a smooth integration with the mobile desktop, mobile Web development is fraught with frustration. So, yes I’m frustrated! But it’s not for lack of wanting the mobile Web to succeed. I am still a firm believer that we will eventually arrive a much more functional mobile Web platform that allows access to the most common device features in a sensible way. It wouldn't be difficult for device platform vendors to make Web based applications first class citizens on mobile devices. But unfortunately it looks like it will still be some time before this happens. So, what’s your experience building mobile Web apps? Are you finding similar issues? Just giving up on raw Web applications and building PhoneGap apps instead? Completely skipping the Web and going native? Leave a comment for discussion. Resources Rick Strahl on DotNet Rocks talking about Mobile Web© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2014Posted in HTML5 Mobile 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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