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Convert your datatable into generic poco object in c# using linq, ado and reflections.

2017-04-21T00:07:00.001+05:30

Follow @harshit_parshii
The most common problem that we face these days is to create a common class and method that can be used across all the projects and codes.

So today I will be sharing my code where you can see how to make and create a generic function without using entity framework for ado. net.

The scenario is like you have an old software that uses stored procedure to return set of entities as a data-table, you do not want to re-write the back-end code as you are creating a web API in c# which needs to be delivered asap.

You need to map these data tables to models as you might be using MV* pattern.

So here we will be doing one to one mapping of model to data- table, and in similar fashion insert or update can also be done.

So basically we are converting a data-table to list of strongly typed object model to do CRUD operations.

So we have following things before hand.

A helper class is referenced as the database(dbFactory) which executes ado. net commands and returns data whether it's a nonquery or a dataset/data tables.

Below is the code:

        /// <summary>
        /// Call the Get to fetch Data
        /// </summary>
        /// <typeparam name="T"></typeparam>
        /// <typeparam name="U"></typeparam>
        /// <param name="model"></param>
        /// <param name="param"></param>
        /// <param name="procName"></param>
        /// <returns></returns>
        public static List<T> Get<T, U>(T model, U param, string procName) where T : new()
        {
            Type type = param.GetType();
            Type modelType = param.GetType();
            var propertiesParam = typeof(U).GetProperties();
            prm = new SqlParameter[propertiesParam.Length];

            for (int i = 0; i < propertiesParam.Length; i++)
            {
                prm[i] = new SqlParameter(propertiesParam[i].Name.ToString(), propertiesParam[i].GetValue(param));
            }
            database = new DbFactory();
            return ToList(new T(), database.returnDataTable(strConn, procName, prm, 1));
        }
        
        
        /// <summary>
        /// Convert DataTable to Strongly typed objects
        /// </summary>
        /// <typeparam name="T"></typeparam>
        /// <param name="Model"></param>
        /// <param name="dataTable"></param>
        /// <returns></returns>
        private static List<T> ToList<T>(T Model, DataTable dataTable) where T : new()
        {
            var dataList = new List<T>();
            const BindingFlags flags = BindingFlags.Public | BindingFlags.Instance | BindingFlags.NonPublic;
            var objFieldNames = (from PropertyInfo aProp in typeof(T).GetProperties(flags)
                                 select new
                                 {
                                     Name = aProp.Name,
                                     Type = Nullable.GetUnderlyingType(aProp.PropertyType) ?? aProp.PropertyType
                                 }).ToList();

            var dataTblFieldNames = (from DataColumn aHeader in dataTable.Columns
                                     select new
                                     {
                                         Name = aHeader.ColumnName,
                                         Type = aHeader.DataType
                                     }).ToList();

            var commonFields = objFieldNames.Intersect(dataTblFieldNames).ToList();

            foreach (DataRow dataRow in dataTable.AsEnumerable().ToList())
            {
                var aTSource = new T();
                foreach (var aField in commonFields)
                {
                    PropertyInfo propertyInfos = aTSource.GetType().GetProperty(aField.Name);
                    var value = (dataRow[aField.Name] == DBNull.Value) ? null : dataRow[aField.Name]; //if database field is nullable
                    propertyInfos.SetValue(aTSource, value, null);
                }
                dataList.Add(aTSource);
            }
            return dataList;

        }

So in the above code as you can see these are generics methods in which we need to pass a model, sql proc name and parameters, we will recieve the model with values in it. The catch is the model properties name should be same as table column headers, my next target will be to have attributes functionality over model properties so we can have custom names of entity like in MVC.

Anyway ToList function above will convert your sql datatable to model entity using reflections capabilities of c#.

Well just copy paste the above code and enjoy.

Nested update panels with file upload and download in asp(.)net c#

2017-01-24T18:44:00.000+05:30

This comes as basic requirements by the majority of clients that they want a good user experience with some file uploaders/downloads for templates which are further used in your application.

Just in case, you are not using any new technologies, no spa, no JSON and no angularjs etc.

Your app is made of asp.net because of security concerns of your firm and not so knowledgeable managers and the page refreshes every time the second you click a button and reload the entire content, but you do not want that as you know UX design ethics, so to overcome this problem you added an update panel and a nested update panel outside button to make it asynchronous, but what is this? You are not able to make button click event to get hit in code behind c#.

What will you do?

You will use update panel triggers like below.

<asp:UpdatePanel ID="UpdatePanel1" runat="server">
            <ContentTemplate>
                <fieldset style="width: 90%">
                    <legend>File Uploader</legend>
                    <table style="width: 90%">
                        <tr>
                            <td>
                                <b>File Type:</b>&nbsp;&nbsp;
                            </td>
                            <td>
                                <asp:DropDownList ID="ddlFileType" runat="server" AutoPostBack="False">
                                </asp:DropDownList>
                            </td>
                            <td>
                                <b>Upload File:</b>
                            </td>
                            <td>
                                <asp:UpdatePanel ID="UpdatePanelUpload" runat="server" UpdateMode="conditional">
                                    <ContentTemplate>
                                        <asp:FileUpload ID="flUploadFile" runat="server" />
                                        <asp:Button ID="btnUpload" runat="server" Text="Upload" OnClick="btnUpload_Click" /><br />
                                    </ContentTemplate>
                                    <Triggers>
                                        <asp:PostBackTrigger ControlID="btnUpload" />
                                    </Triggers>
                                </asp:UpdatePanel>
                            </td>
                            <td>
                                <asp:UpdatePanel ID="UpdatePanelDownload" runat="server" UpdateMode="conditional">
                                    <ContentTemplate>
                                        <asp:Button ID="btnDownload" runat="server" OnClick="btnDownload_Click" Text="Download Sample File" />
                                    </ContentTemplate>
                                    <Triggers>
                                        <asp:PostBackTrigger ControlID="btnDownload" />
                                    </Triggers>
                                </asp:UpdatePanel>
                            </td>
                        </tr>
                    </table>
                </fieldset>
            </ContentTemplate>
        </asp:UpdatePanel>

Rest is same in backend file.

Enjoy coding.

Never ending (infinite) asp(.)net C# session

2016-12-20T00:12:00.000+05:30

Session timeout is the worst nightmare of a developer especially if you do not have much experience in coding but senior enough to design an small application which becomes a mammoth in few months.

So to all the mid-level experience guy, here is the key to success, do not make session variables in code behind, instead, create separate c# file either in app_code or in a separate project which you can call Utils as it will act like your utility file and create a public property in it which will call your DB whenever your session is null like following.

So let's create a never ending session for the c#,

Here is the scenario, suppose you have a user data-table coming from database which is on another project/DB and you have to get it through AD authentication or let's imagine it's a heavy DB call so calling, again and again, will reduce the app performance and that's why we use session which is again a non-performing thing but still better than DB chat.

Here is your user entity:

public class UserRoleInfo
{
    public string FullName { get; set; }
    public string Username { get; set; }
    public bool? IsManager { get; set; }
    public string RoleName { get; set; }
    public int? LoginId { get; set; }
    public int? EmployeeID { get; set; }
    public int? RoleId { get; set; }

}

Create the property like below in your utility class, where GetRoleInfo will get you the roles, user details from DB.

/// <summary>
/// UserSession property
/// </summary>
 public UserRoleInfo UserSession
 {
  get
  {
   UserRoleInfo session = (UserRoleInfo)HttpContext.Current.Session["userRoleInfo"];
   if (session == null)
   {
    session = GetRoleInfo(HttpContext.Current.User.Identity.Name.Remove(0, 8));                   
    HttpContext.Current.Session["userRoleInfo"] = session;
   }
  return session;
  }
 }

And use it while declaring an object for it like below:

userInfoHelper = new UserInfoHelper();           
if ((userInfoHelper.UserSession.RoleId == (int)UserInfo.Roles.User) ||

       (userInfoHelper.UserSession.RoleId == (int)UserInfo.Roles.Manager))
            {
                ddlEmployee.Enabled = false;
            }

Happy Coding with your infinite session, as whenever your session value will be null, it will fetch it for you.

With new experiences comes great responsibility

2016-09-09T21:06:00.000+05:30

Hello Everyone,
I am an ordinary person with some highly looked after skills, not boasting about myself. But after coding in this IT industry for almost 5 years for the first time I am thinking:-
Is delivering the code my only responsibility or is there anything else I need to look into as well?

From last few month's I was highly involved in some entirely new domain which is financial, and when you play with the number you need to be highly focused, so unable to update my blog as well.

When I was working on the urgent deadlines and tight estimates and being from a healthy UI background like css3, html5, responsive design, knockout js, less etc. I was put on the SQL server and asp.net with grid views and some freaked out Telerik controls.
I know it's a learning for me and I can see why UX matters to every person in this entire world but not UI and you can write it on stamp paper.

User Experience, with logical and functionally correct code, is the need of the hour today.
All the needed information we can show in some excel but on the web you need a grid with all the functionality including global search and dynamic ~~edit~~ batch edit.

And then you can have a co-worker who can become ill or who can have some urgent priority work which does not include your project. So it might be possible you are working on two-three projects together and handling everything together including two men's work. You can also have your personal problems as well it can be possible that your father, mother or even your girlfriend or wife may need you for help. Bogged down from everywhere, how will you handle all this with a manager shouting at you in front of 20 people.

So is delivering code is my only responsibility, being a developer what should I look into and how can I fix my overtime to regular office time and maintain my work-life balance.

Should I trust my manager or my company who is outsourcing me to Americans projects and giving me sleepless nights or should I look for better opportunity?

By the end of all the mishaps happened to me, I came to some conclusions as below in which makes me wonder and believe why management matters:

Deal directly with end users, try to skip your manager, QA or BA
Give daily or at least weekly updates
If somebody is not working then tell it in a peaceful way without letting them know you are complaining to your reporting manager
And one of the most important, do not touch the code without complete requirements and do not give estimates for development only, give estimates for the complete app development with testing in staging and QA environment
For other colleagues code failure, and you are fixing it let everyone knows
Be selfish, talk to everyone and keep a healthy rapport, especially with Business users, your managers will not say a word to you if your client is happy
Divide the tasks initially
Do testing, properly and ask everyone to do it
If everyone is senior, do not get into ugly fights make peace and work, if it doesn't work out that way try to find out their mistakes and start assigning them task, try to be a boss
Leadership quality is highly needed, you might need to control entire team as your team lead can be a jerk as well
Work for yourself but also do not let deserving one let down

I hope my intentions are clear here.

Thanks
A frustrated developer

Sitefinity - Custom Image selector - Azure Player Dynamic Image selector.

2015-11-02T18:53:00.003+05:30

Well,

I am writing this post after a really long gap of time, I was away from my blog due to some personal reason and aggressive deadlines for my project, so today I thought of writing a blog about my experience with sitefinity, (http://www.sitefinity.com/) which is Content Management System aka CMS from a very famous IT firm Telerik.

The CMS is purely on HTML and has its own pros and cons, it doesn't have any custom widgets available and you have to design most of them.

So while developing my client website for it I found issues about the CMS shortcoming and lack of documentation, basically lack of documentation is the major problem with this CMS.

So we had a requirement, we need to show the AES encrypted adaptive bit rate video to the user, we were using azure services for this, but the major requirement is that we were using a CMS and we need to make everything dynamic i.e. Business User editable and a drag and drop widget, which includes:

Video URL.
Video Title.
Video Description.
Video Poster Image.

The top three are easily doable and we did it in a record week time including testing, but the last point almost took our life away from us.

So below is a what we did, have a look at it and it may help you to create a custom image selector as well.
Enjoy.

Public properties in our .cs file:

public string Title { get; set; }

public string VideoURL { get; set; }

public string Description { get; set; }

public string ImageSelector { get; set; }

CS code in our Designer File for implementation:

/// <summary>

/// Gets a collection of script descriptors that represent ECMAScript (JavaScript) client components.

/// </summary>

public override System.Collections.Generic.IEnumerable<System.Web.UI.ScriptDescriptor> GetScriptDescriptors()

{

var scriptDescriptors = new List<ScriptDescriptor>(base.GetScriptDescriptors());

var descriptor = (ScriptControlDescriptor)scriptDescriptors.Last();

descriptor.AddElementProperty("title", Title.ClientID);

descriptor.AddElementProperty("description", Description.ClientID);

descriptor.AddElementProperty("videoURL", VideoURL.ClientID);

descriptor.AddComponentProperty("ImageSelector", ImageSelector.ClientID);

return scriptDescriptors;

}

ASCX Code for our Designer (widget) image selector:

<asp:Label runat="server" AssociatedControlID="ImageSelector" CssClass="sfTxtLbl">Poster</asp:Label>

<sitefinity:ImageField ID="ImageSelector" runat="server" DisplayMode="Write" UploadMode="Dialog" DataFieldName="Image" />

<div class="sfExample">Poster Image URL of video</div>

</li>

JS Code for our Designer file:

Add this line of code in initialization block created in widget:

this._ImageSelector = null;

Add this line of code in refresh UI block:

this.get_ImageSelector()._imageElement.src = controlData.ImageSelector;

Add this line of code in apply changes block:

controlData.ImageSelector = this.get_ImageSelector()._selectedImageItem ? this.get_ImageSelector()._selectedImageItem.Url : controlData.ImageSelector;

And the following changes at last part of JS below changes.

/*ImageSelector Properties*/

get_ImageSelector: function () { return this._ImageSelector; },

set_ImageSelector: function (value) { this._ImageSelector = value; },

Enjoy the dynamic Image selector like below:

I will also write next about how to consume the URLS in it in front end using the JS and .Net capabilities.

Thanks
Harshit aka parshii

Run CSS specific to Internet Explorer - Browser Hack

2015-09-02T12:22:00.001+05:30

Run CSS specific to Internet Explorer - Browser Hack

Referencing to the following blog post, we are going to make CSS targeting exclusively to IE browser, to make it work first we should know what are media queries.
A media query consists of a media type and at least one expression that limits the style sheets' scope by using media features, such as width, height, and color. Media queries, added in CSS3, let the presentation of content be tailored to a specific range of output devices without having to change the content itself.
For Ex:

<style>
@media (max-width: 600px) {
  .facet_sidebar {
    display: none;
  }
}

So below we will wrap the IE specific CSS rules in @media blocks and trick IE into rendering @media blocks that use media queries.

Targeting only IE browsers

Style rules defined in the following blocks will only be applied in IE, other browsers will ignore them.

IE 6 and 7
@media screen\9 {
body { background: red; }
}

IE 6, 7 and 8
@media \0screen\,screen\9 {
body { background: green; }
}

IE 8
@media \0screen {
body { background: blue; }
}

IE 8, 9 and 10
@media screen\0 {
body { background: orange; }
}

IE 9 and 10
@media screen and (min-width:0{{ content }}) {
body { background: yellow; }
}

Generalizing it in a tabular format:

Where yes and no are styles support.

Rule	IE 6	IE 7	IE 8	IE 9	IE 10
@media screen\0 {…}	No	No	Yes	Yes	Yes
@media screen\9 {…}	Yes	Yes	No	No	No
@media \0screen {…}	No	No	Yes	No	No
@media \0screen\,screen\9 {…}	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	No
@media screen and (min-width:0\0) {…}	No	No	No	Yes	Yes

IE 11 and Edge support most of the recent styles and css3, so it rarely face any prob with the css styling and styling looks almost similar as of chrome or firefox so the case of those are not updated here.

Disconnected Architecture

2015-06-11T18:24:00.000+05:30

Being a .Net Developer and using the open technologies, I have lots of options of taking the advantage of the framework but once you started growing in your career, more then What technology you use? the question become How the technology is used ? and that is Architecture.

An architecture of a something you are implementing is very important once you start writing the code.

If you are writing a mobile application that needs to be cross browser compatible and can work on on any mobile device, you need to follow the modern architecture that is getting common across all the application.

The architecture should use SPA (Single Page Application) and REST api's and should be devoid of any stored proc to avoid complexity.

Let's start with why to use SPA,

A SPA is written in HTML5, JS, CSS3 and lots of other JS libraries.

The other JS libraries has some basic needed libraries like .less or .sass for css maintenance, Require JS for correct Integration of code and ofcourse Jquery, bootstrap to give a beautiful touch and underscore and Grunt runner to reduce the load of the developer and release manager.

What you needed the most is to decide what architecture you need to follow in client side, MVVM or MV* model.

I am a fan of MVVM if you know your model structure and it won't change in time, it represents concrete db design and architecture with a vision.

An MVVM model consist of Models, Views and View Models that handles your views lots of helper files and uses web API to communicate to server,

The MVVM architecture can be achieved using the Knockout JS which is an open source JS framework developed by a Microsoft employee.

The other is MV* model the * can be P or C where P is presenter and C is controller. This model is a standardized model and is followed as a standard practice by Microsoft and Ruby on Rails and can be achieved using Angular JS.

So your front end design you need to decide what your application can use, it has no relations to DB and it only needs the data to display on screen and need a way to post to server. So here comes the basic operations which are

CRUD - Create Read Update and Delete or POST GET PUT and DELETE.

These basic operations can be achieved from front end using the popular AJAX calls.

As the libraries that needs to be used to achieve your dream, now for back end you need to decide what you want to use.

I will suggest .NET rest api with entity framework, they have excelled in it, performance wise also or Ruby and php is also suggestible. But if performance is what you are looking for then node.js is the choice for you, but it has its own learning curve or rather its more towards unlearning.

Disconnected Architecure

.

So this is how I approach towards making an application, how you do it its all upto you but the basic remains the same.

And one more thing, you can achieve cross platform and cross device app with it as well, how? Because it is disconnected with your server All you need to do is to change the frame of your app and you can also use third party tool like phone gap.

Happy understanding

Extending Object Oriented Programming concepts further with abstraction and interfaces

2014-09-11T15:02:00.002+05:30

Few days back I wrote for Solid and Grasp principles for oops

http://www.developerscloud.org/2014/08/oops-beyond-four-pillars-solid-and-grasp.html.

Now I am again extending it to make it more matured way to write code.

Let start with coupling and cohesion.

Loose/Low Coupling

low dependency between classes;
low impact in a class of changes in other classes
high reuse potential

High Cohesion

measure of how strongly-related or focused the responsibilities of a single module are
If methods of a class tend to be similar in many aspects, then the class have high cohesion
In highly-cohesive system, code readability and the likelihood of reuse is increased, while complexity is kept manageable.

Also check

Encapsulate what varies
Favor Composition over Inheritance
Program to interface not implementation
Strive for loosely coupled design between objects that interact

For Interfaces

Like an abstract base class: any non-abstract type inheriting the interface must implement all its members.
Cannot be instantiated directly.
Can contain events, indexers, methods and properties.
Contain no implementation of methods.
Classes and structs can inherit from more than one interface.
An interface can itself inherit from multiple interfaces.

Difference between Interface and abstract base class

Abstract class can have non abstract methods, methods of an interface are effectively abstract since they contain only the signature
A class can implement any no of interfaces, but can subclass at most one abstract class.
An abstract class can declare and use variables, an interface cannot.
An abstract class can have methods whose access is public, internal, protected, protected internal and private. Interface members implicitly have public access.
An abstract class can declare constructor, an interface cannot.
An abstract class can have delegate, an interface cannot

In my next post i'll give you an example on how to implement implicit, explicit and generic interface in and enterprise level application.

OOPs beyond the Four Pillars - SOLID and GRASP

2014-08-26T17:30:00.002+05:30

As we know Object oriented programming is a type of programming paradigm based around programming classes and instances of classes called objects. These can be objects that appear on the screen (e.g., pictures, textboxes, etc.) or are part of the programming (e.g. actors, connections, particles, etc as mentioned in my post http://www.developerscloud.org/2013/02/what-is-oop-basic-concepts.html written ages ago.

Here we are going to extend the oops beyond its four pillars i.e.

Abstraction
Encapsulation
Polymorphism and
Interfaces i.e. Inheritance

So first we will go through SOLID and then GRASP

SOLID Principles are principles of class design.

•SRP: Single Responsibility Principle

–An object should have only a single responsibility & all the responsibility should be entirely encapsulated by the class.

–There should never be more than one reason for a class to change

•OCP: Open/Closed Principle

–Software entities should be open for extension, but closed for modification

•LSP: Liskov Substituion Principle

–Objects in a program should be replaceable with instances of their subtypes without altering the correctness of that program

•ISP: Interface Segregation Principle

–many client specific interfaces are better than one general purpose interface

–once an interface has gotten too 'fat' split it into smaller and more specific interfaces so that any clients of the interface will only know about the methods that pertain to them. No client should be forced to depend on methods it does not use

•DIP: Dependency Inversion Principle

–Depend upon Abstractions. Do not depend upon concretions.

–Dependency Injection (DI) is one method of following this principle.

GRASP

•Acronym for General Responsibility Assignment Software Patterns.

•Assigning responsibilities to classes is a critical aspect of object-oriented design.

•Appropriate assignment of responsibilities to classes is the key to successful design.

•There are fundamental principles in assigning responsibilities that experienced designers apply.

•These principles are summarized in the GRASP patterns.

•Has nine core principles that object-oriented designers apply when assigning responsibilities to classes and designing message interactions.

Nine Principles:

•Expert.

•Creator.

•Controller.

•Low Coupling.

•High Cohesion.

•Polymorphism.

•Pure Fabrication.

•Indirection.

•Don’t Talk to Strangers.

I think this article is not so great in terms of visualizations but indeed if you read it, it will help you to brush up your concepts and increase your productivity as well...

In Continuation Next Post: http://www.developerscloud.org/2014/09/extending-object-oriented-programming.html

Unit Testing, In a right way.

2014-07-08T21:16:00.001+05:30

This blog is aimed at those developer who have little development and unit testing experience. Please refrain yourself to proceed if you don't know development.

What is Unit Testing ?

By Definition, In computer programming, unit testing is a method by which individual units of source code are tested to determine if they are fit for use. A unit is the smallest testable part of an application. In procedural programming a unit may be an individual function or procedure. Unit tests are created by programmers or occasionally by white box testers.

Some Benefits of Unit Testing:

Bug Tracking
Code Maintenance
Understandable code

How the above things help in actual scenario ?

Suppose you have developed a code from scratch and it went to maintenance. Now you left the company, there are no unit test written and a bug came via customer. The app went for a hot fix and some other guy fix it, and his fix created another which in turn creates another issue.

So the creation of issue cycle is continuous as nobody knows the complete actual scenarios and the actual (original) dev has left the company and the company went haywire when an issue came.

Now whose fault is this ?

Let me tell you, its original dev fault, as he didn't write the unit test cases.

If we would have written the unit test cases, then:

A wrong scenario would have failed the test case, and we can fix the code.
Code will become more understandable
Code in turn is maintainable.

Our Learning from our case study

Unit testing provides a sort of living documentation of the system. Developers looking to learn what functionality is provided by a unit and how to use it can look at the unit tests to gain a basic understanding of the unit's API.

Unit test cases embody characteristics that are critical to the success of the unit. These characteristics can indicate appropriate/inappropriate use of a unit as well as negative behaviors that are to be trapped by the unit. A unit test case, in and of itself, documents these critical characteristics, although many software development environments do not rely solely upon code to document the product in development.

By contrast, ordinary narrative documentation is more susceptible to drifting from the implementation of the program and will thus become outdated (e.g., design changes, feature creep, relaxed practices in keeping documents up-to-date).

So When a Test Fails Incorrectly please read above two paras or below two points.

Delete the failing test after verifying that it is no longer valid—essentially since the old requirement is either invalid or is tested elsewhere.
Change the old test so you test the new requirement (essentially using a new test), and test the old requirement under new settings (the test logic stays the same, but the initialization function may change).

Correct way to write Unit Tests (What is the biggest mistake developers generally do?)

In one line - Developers do Integration testing instead of unit testing.

Unit testing means we should not test external dependencies.
Simple Example is following.

Suppose we have following pseudo code:

Function loadData(Success, Fail){
if(Success){

helper.callThisWhenItsSuccess();

}

if(Fail){

helper.callThisWhenItsFail();

}

}

In above function if write a unit test case,

We should not worry about helper class and its function, the helper class should not be covered in this particular unit test If it is covered then it become type of integration testing.

How to avoid this in real time scenarios ?

Use mocks, Stubs and use correct assertions.

So ideally, each test case is independent from the others: substitutes like method stubs, mock objects, fakes and test harnesses can be used to assist testing a module in isolation. Unit tests are typically written and run by software developers to ensure that code meets its design and behaves as intended. Its implementation can vary from being very manual (pencil and paper) to being formalized as part of build automation.

Reference: Unit testing Wikibook

Decoding the date sorting in Javascript, efficient faster and native way.

2014-05-22T13:56:00.000+05:30

Coming from the previous post ( http://www.developerscloud.org/2014/05/decoding-underscore-js-sortby-sorting.html), where we have used the underscore to sort the array, with the limitation of sorting in descending order, I will show you in below post how to sort effectively using javascript native functionality.

Lets use the same array we have in the previous post.

var datesArray = ['6-01-2014','2-01-2014', '4-01-2014', '5-01-2014', '3-01-2014', '1-01-2014'];

datesArray is now

["6-01-2014", "2-01-2014", "4-01-2014", "5-01-2014", "3-01-2014", "1-01-2014"]

Running the for loop making each item of array a date type object.

for(var i = 0; i< datesArray.length; i++){

datesArray[i] = new Date(datesArray [i]);

}

After which datesArray will become

[Sun Jun 01 2014 00:00:00 GMT+0530 (India Standard Time),

Sat Feb 01 2014 00:00:00 GMT+0530 (India Standard Time),

Tue Apr 01 2014 00:00:00 GMT+0530 (India Standard Time),

Thu May 01 2014 00:00:00 GMT+0530 (India Standard Time),

Sat Mar 01 2014 00:00:00 GMT+0530 (India Standard Time),

Wed Jan 01 2014 00:00:00 GMT+0530 (India Standard Time)]

// below are the comparison function that will result in dates being sorted in

// ASCENDING & DESCENDING order. As you can see, JavaScript's native comparison operators

// can be used to compare dates. Avoiding the use of sort by of underscore.

//Descending

var date_sort_desc = function (date1, date2) {

if (date1 > date2) return -1;

if (date1 < date2) return 1;

return 0;

};

//Ascending

var date_sort_asc = function (date1, date2) {

if (date1 > date2) return 1;

if (date1 < date2) return -1;

return 0;

};

Output:

datesArray.sort(date_sort_desc);

[Sun Jun 01 2014 00:00:00 GMT+0530 (India Standard Time),

Thu May 01 2014 00:00:00 GMT+0530 (India Standard Time),

Tue Apr 01 2014 00:00:00 GMT+0530 (India Standard Time),

Sat Mar 01 2014 00:00:00 GMT+0530 (India Standard Time),

Sat Feb 01 2014 00:00:00 GMT+0530 (India Standard Time),

Wed Jan 01 2014 00:00:00 GMT+0530 (India Standard Time)]

datesArray.sort(date_sort_asc);

[Wed Jan 01 2014 00:00:00 GMT+0530 (India Standard Time),

Sat Feb 01 2014 00:00:00 GMT+0530 (India Standard Time),

Sat Mar 01 2014 00:00:00 GMT+0530 (India Standard Time),

Tue Apr 01 2014 00:00:00 GMT+0530 (India Standard Time),

Thu May 01 2014 00:00:00 GMT+0530 (India Standard Time),

Sun Jun 01 2014 00:00:00 GMT+0530 (India Standard Time)]

Converting back the array into the original format of dates.

for(var i = 0; i<x.length;i++){

datesArray[i] = datesArray[i].toISOString().slice(0, 10);

}

The formatted output result.

datesArray

["2013-12-31", "2014-01-31", "2014-02-28", "2014-03-31", "2014-04-30", "2014-05-31"]

I hope you will all find it helpful.

Decoding underscore js SortBy - Sorting in javascript

2014-05-13T19:38:00.005+05:30

Sorting can be the developers worst nightmare especially if it is done in more then one field.

So what can help, recently doing research on it I came across underscore js sortBy (underscorejs.org/#sortBy) function which will help you to sort the array very effectively.

So I was going through the documentation and found it very useful, but there are one drawback of it.
Will let you know that:

How to order in Ascending Order

_.sortBy([6, 2, 4, 5, 3, 1], function(num){ return num });

[1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]

How to order in Descending Order

_.sortBy([6, 2, 4, 5, 3, 1], function(num){ return -num });

[6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1]

The underscore sort by will also work with string literals
Ascending

_.sortBy(['6','2', '4', '5', '3', '1'], function(num){ return num });

["1", "2", "3", "4", "5", "6"]

Descending

_.sortBy(['6','2', '4', '5', '3', '1'], function(num){ return -num });

["6", "5", "4", "3", "2", "1"]

The only thing it wont work with is DATES in descending order

Ascending, it works just fine.
_.sortBy(['6-01-2014','2-01-2014', '4-01-2014', '5-01-2014', '3-01-2014', '1-01-2014'], function(num){ return num });

"1-01-2014", "2-01-2014", "3-01-2014", "4-01-2014", "5-01-2014", "6-01-2014"]

Descending, it sucks.
_.sortBy(['6-01-2014','2-01-2014', '4-01-2014', '5-01-2014', '3-01-2014', '1-01-2014'], function(num){ return -num });

["6-01-2014", "2-01-2014", "4-01-2014", "5-01-2014", "3-01-2014", "1-01-2014"]

So to overcome the date sorting, I have another way also, will let you know that in next post

Meanwhile you can go through underscorejs, its awesome

An Introduction to Underscore as per their official site

Underscore is a JavaScript library that provides a whole mess of useful functional programming helpers without extending any built-in objects. It’s the answer to the question: “If I sit down in front of a blank HTML page, and want to start being productive immediately, what do I need?” … and the tie to go along with jQuery's tux andBackbone's suspenders.

Underscore provides 80-odd functions that support both the usual functional suspects:map, select, invoke — as well as more specialized helpers: function binding, javascript templating, deep equality testing, and so on. It delegates to built-in functions, if present, so modern browsers will use the native implementations of forEach, map,reduce, filter, every, some and indexOf.

Continuing post: http://www.developerscloud.org/2014/05/decoding-date-sorting-in-javascript.html

Reflection in Dot Net (.Net)

2014-04-28T11:07:00.000+05:30

According to msdn, putting all the definition at one place:-

Reflection provides objects (of type Type) that encapsulate assemblies, modules and types. A type represents type declarations: class types, interface types, array types, value types, enumeration types, type parameters, generic type definitions, and open or closed constructed generic types. You can use reflection to dynamically create an instance of a type, bind the type to an existing object, or get the type from an existing object and invoke its methods or access its fields and properties. If you are using attributes in your code, Reflection enables you to access them.

Below is the code example for it.

using System;

using System.Collections.Generic;

using System.Linq;

using System.Text;

using System.Reflection;

namespace reflection

{

class Program

{

static void Main(string[] args)

{

var type = typeof(Program);

var members = type.GetMembers(BindingFlags.Static | BindingFlags.Public | BindingFlags.NonPublic | BindingFlags.Instance);

foreach (var MemberInfo in members)

{

Console.WriteLine(MemberInfo.Name);

}

Console.Read();

}

You can see while debugging its a reflection and by using Name space using System.Reflection we are using the reflection properties.

Refresh the Jquery Css for a HTML control using knockout in Javascript.

2014-03-04T19:43:00.000+05:30

If you are a JavaScript developer then you might have come across a situation where you load your HTML controls after the page load has happen, which is like dynamic binding of controls.

And then you see your input type text doesn't have the proper Css as other inputs.

You also load select (dropdown) that also doesn't have the proper css.

You are in chrome and press F-12 to inspect the element, you see that nothing is there in control, it is not applying the JQuery css.

But the controls that are loaded in page load have it.

What to do, no options just to manually copy the CSS classes.

VERY BAD IDEA?

Just do this,

In HTML

and in JS binding handler

ko.bindingHandlers.inputsRefresh = {

init: function (element) {

$(element).textinput().trigger('create');

}

};

Its only good if you are using knockout, you can thank me later. ;)

JavaScript is too cool and so is the inheritance.

2014-02-15T00:20:00.000+05:30

I can say million words about Javascript, it is so cool.

We will start with the inheritance in the JAVASCRIPT which will make our concepts a little shaky as it implements prototypical inheritance which are not bad the point is we are not used to code in JS. As almost everyone in this world are from JAVA or .NET background.

Inheritance is an important topic in most programming languages.

In the classical languages (such as Java), inheritance (or extends) provides two useful services. First, it is a form of code reuse. If a new class is mostly similar to an existing class, youonly have to specify the differences. Patterns of code reuse are extremely important because they have the potential to significantly reduce the cost of software development. The other benefit of classical inheritance is that it includes the specification of a system of types.

This mostly frees the programmer from having to write explicit casting operations, which is a very good thing because when casting, the safety benefits of a type system are lost. JavaScript, being a loosely typed language, never casts. The lineage of an object is irrelevant. What matters about an object is what it can do, not what it is descended from.

JavaScript provides a much richer set of code reuse patterns. It can ape the classical pattern, but it also supports other patterns that are more expressive. The set of possible inheritance patterns in JavaScript is vast.
In this, we’ll look at a few of the most straightforward patterns. Much more complicated constructions are possible, but it is usually best to keep it simple. In classical languages, objects are instances of classes, and a class can inherit from another class.

JavaScript is a prototypal language, which means that objects inherit directly from other objects.

In JavaScript, a prototype is a property of functions and of objects that are created by constructor functions. The prototype of a function is an object. Its main use is when a function is used as a constructor.

function Vehicle(wheels, engine) {
    this.wheels = wheels;
    this.engine = engine;
}

You can use the prototype property to add properties and methods to objects, even the ones that have already been created:

var testVehicle = new Vehicle(2, false);
Vehicle.prototype.color = "red";
var testColor = testVehicle.color;

The value of testColor is "red".

You can even add properties and methods to predefined objects. For example, you can define a Trim method on the String prototype object, and all the strings in your script will inherit the method.
String.prototype.trim = function()
{
    // Replace leading and trailing spaces with the empty string
    return this.replace(/(^\s*)|(\s*$)/g, "");
}
var s = "    leading and trailing spaces    ";
// Displays "    leading and trailing spaces     (35)"
window.alert(s + " (" + s.length + ")");
// Remove the leading and trailing spaces
s = s.trim();
// Displays "leading and trailing spaces (27)"
window.alert(s + " (" + s.length + ")");
The prototype object can be used to derive one object from another. For example, you can use the Object.create function to derive a new object Bicycle using the prototype of the Vehicle object we defined earlier (plus any new properties you need).

var Bicycle = Object.create(Object.getPrototypeOf(Vehicle), {
    "pedals" :{value: true}
});
The Bicycle object has the properties wheels, engine, color, and pedals, and its prototype is Vehicle.prototype. The JavaScript engine finds the pedalsproperty on Bicycle, and it looks up the prototype chain to find the wheels, engine, and color properties on Vehicle.
Reference: bible of Javascript, Javascript Good Parts, msdn

SQL Joins

2014-01-08T20:11:00.001+05:30

The JOIN keyword is used in an SQL statement to query data from two or more tables, based on a relationship between certain columns in these tables.

Tables in a database are often related to each other with keys.

A primary key is a column (or a combination of columns) with a unique value for each row. Each primary key value must be unique within the table. The purpose is to bind data together, across tables, without repeating all of the data in every table

FULL OUTER JOIN

A JOIN is made matching a column on a table to a column on the other table. After a FULL OUTER JOIN, for a given value (red), for a given row with this value on one table ([ red | 9999 ]), one row is created for each row that matches on the other table ([ red | OOOOOO ] and [ red | LLLLLL ]). If a value exists in only one table, then a row is created and is completed with NULL columns.

FROM table_1 FULL OUTER JOIN table_2 ON

 table_1.common_value = table_2.common_value

common_value specific_value_1 specific_value_2

red 9999 OOOOOO

red 9999 LLLLLL

grey 6666 NULL

white 0000 NULL

purple 7777 NULL

purple 2222 NULL

black 8888 FFFFFF

green NULL HHHHHH

yellow NULL PPPPPP

blue NULL RRRRRR

RIGHT OUTER JOIN

The RIGHT OUTER JOIN is like the FULL OUTER JOIN but it doesn't create row for values that don't exist on the left table.

FROM table_1 RIGHT OUTER JOIN table_2 ON

 table_1.common_value = table_2.common_value

common_value	specific_value_1	specific_value_2
red	9999	OOOOOO
red	9999	LLLLLL
black	8888	FFFFFF
green	NULL	HHHHHH
yellow	NULL	PPPPPP
blue	NULL	RRRRRR

LEFT OUTER JOIN

The LEFT OUTER JOIN is like the FULL OUTER JOIN but it doesn't create row for values that don't exist on the right table.

FROM table_1 LEFT OUTER JOIN table_2 ON

 table_1.common_value = table_2.common_value

common_value	specific_value_1	specific_value_2
red	9999	OOOOOO
red	9999	LLLLLL
grey	6666	NULL
white	0000	NULL
purple	7777	NULL
purple	2222	NULL
black	8888	FFFFFF

INNER JOIN

The INNER JOIN is like the FULL OUTER JOIN but it creates row only for values that exist on both the left table and the right table.

FROM table_1 INNER JOIN table_2 ON

 table_1.common_value = table_2.common_value

common_value	specific_value_1	specific_value_2
red	9999	OOOOOO
red	9999	LLLLLL
black	8888	FFFFFF

Originally posted in May 2013

Grunt - A command line JavaScript task runner.

2013-10-25T14:56:00.003+05:30

Grunt is a JavaScript task runner that will help you to mini-fy the various JS files. It will make your work really less while performing repetitive tasks like minification, compilation, unit testing, linting, etc with just few lines of code you need to write in command prompt.

Grunt is a task-based command line build tool for JavaScript projects.

If you have a Javascript and html based project that used MVVM model and you have millions of lines of code to minimize then grunt is the key for you.

Some of the plugins Grunt can enjoy.

Some of the big IT companies that uses grunt..

and Below is the starter guide provided by grunt official website to keep you jump started.

have fun in grunting.

Getting started:

Grunt and Grunt plugins are installed and managed via npm, the Node.js package manager.

Grunt 0.4.x requires Node.js version

>=
0.8.0

Installing the CLI

In order to get started, you'll want to install Grunt's command line interface (CLI) globally. You may need to use sudo (for OSX, *nix, BSD etc) or run your command shell as Administrator (for Windows) to do this.

npm install -g grunt-cli

This will put the grunt command in your system path, allowing it to be run from any directory.

Note that installing grunt-cli does not install the Grunt task runner! The job of the Grunt CLI is simple: run the version of Grunt which has been installed next to a Gruntfile. This allows multiple versions of Grunt to be installed on the same machine simultaneously.

How the CLI works

Each time grunt is run, it looks for a locally installed Grunt using node's require() system. Because of this, you can run grunt from any subfolder in your project.

If a locally installed Grunt is found, the CLI loads the local installation of the Grunt library, applies the configuration from your Gruntfile, and executes any tasks you've requested for it to run.

To really understand what is happening, read the code. It's very short.

Tips to increase your Transact-SQL efficiency Part 2

2013-10-02T10:47:00.001+05:30

First Part : http://www.developerscloud.org/2013/09/tips-to-increase-your-transact-sql.html

11. Use 'BETWEEN' operator instead of >= and <= operators to select data in range.

12. Wisely use the EXISTS, IN clauses in sub query select statement.

- IN has the slowest performance as data is filtered between the range.

- IN is efficient when most of the filter criteria is in the sub-query.

- EXISTS is efficient when most of the filter criteria is in the main query.

13. Avoid 'NOT IN' in select clause.

Because when we use “NOT IN” in SQL queries, the query optimizer uses 'Nested table scan' technique to perform the activity

14. Use Stored Procedure, functions(UDF) and views instead of heavy-duty queries.

- The application must first convert the binary value into a character string (which doubles its size, thus

increasing network traffic and taking more time) before it can be sent to the server. And when the server receives the character string, it then has to convert it back to the binary format (taking even more time). This can reduce network traffic as your client will send to the server only stored procedures, function or view name (perhaps with some parameters) instead of large heavy-duty queries text. The use of SP, UDF or view also improves DB security as this can be used to facilitate permission management. You can restrict user access to table columns they should not see.

15. Use 'SET NOCOUNT ON' statement into your stored procedures or UDF.

Bydefault the SQL server returns the number of affected rows for each query in SP or UDF

functionality. If the SP or UDF involves lots of insert,update or delete statement (DML scripts) then this messeging mechanism will consume lots of I/O resource as for every query execution it send back the number or rows affected. 'SET NOCOUNT ON' statement at the begining of SP or UDF body skips the messeging and never return how many rows altered through DML scripts.

16. Use constraints instead of triggers.

Constraints are logical conditions setup on table which allow/restrict the operation on table. Where as Triggers are special block of program (like Stored procedure) which get execute on certain action on table like insert,update, delete. Triggers and constraints both are used to maintain the integrity of database but constraints have more benefits over triggers as it uses very less resources.

17. Use table variable over temp table object.

Use table variables objects instead of temporary tables object. Table variable object declare with '@' symbol where as temp table object is declare with '#' sign as the suffix of table name.

#tempTable -> Temp. table object @tempTable -> in-memory table variable A table variable is created in memory, and so performs slightly better than #temp tables. Also because there is even less locking and logging in a table variable. Table variables are automatically cleared when the procedure or function goes out of scope, so you don't have to remember to drop or clear the data. The SQL server mentain very less log related table variable and log activity is truncated immediately. while #temp table log activity persists until the log hits a checkpoint, is manually truncated, or when the server restarts

18. use UNION ALL statement instead of UNION, whenever possible

The UNION ALL statement is much faster than UNION, because UNION ALL statement does not look for duplicate rows, while the UNION statement does look for duplicate rows, whether they exist or not

19. Use DISTINCT only whenever it is neccessery to use.

DISTINCT clause filter the result for unique combination of all columns in result rows which results in some performance degradation. You should use this clause only when it is absolutely necessary and should be used with minimum columns on table.

20. Use Indexes on table

Database indexes are similar to those you can find in libraries. They allow the database to find the requested information faster, just like a library index will allow a reader to find what they’re looking for without loosing time. An Index can be created on a single column or a combination of columns in a database table. A table index is a database structure that arranges the values of one or more columns in a database table in specific order.

Conclusion

There are many more performance improvement techniques in SQL script writing. But the given above are very generic techniques which can be adopted and implemented in our everyday scripts and can make a habit of writing optimized sql scripts

Tips to increase your Transact-SQL efficiency Part 1.

2013-09-19T22:04:00.000+05:30

Given below are little known tips that you can use to ensure your Transact-SQL queries are performing in the most efficient manner possible.

1. Avoid '*' in select query.

Restrict the queries result set by returning only the particular columns from the table and not all the table's columns. The sql query becomes faster if you use the actual column names in SELECT statement instead of than '*'.

2. Avoid COUNT(*) in select statement to check the existence of records in table.

Instead use IF EXISTS() to check records.

- Write the query as:

IF EXISTS (SELECT * FROM table_name WHERE column_name = ‘xxx’)

- Instead of :

SELECT COUNT(*) FROM table_name WHERE column_name = ‘xxx’

3. Use alternate of SELECT COUNT(*).

Use an alternative way instead of the SELECT COUNT(*) statement to count the number of records in table.

- SELECT COUNT(*) statement makes a full table scan to return the total table's row count which can take an extremely long time for large tables.

Use alternate query to achieve the same

SELECT rows FROM sysindexes WHERE id = OBJECT_ID('table_name') AND indid < 2

4. Use TOP keyword or the SET ROWCOUNT to fetch first Nth row from table.

- TOP or SET ROWCOUNT clause restricts the number of result and returns the smaller result set. This helps to reduce the data trafic between server and client.

5. Use ORDER BY clause with Primary or Indexed column of table

- Fetching the result set order by primary column or Indexed column added big performance benefits as SQL server don't have to perform the extra overheads to rearrange data. Also try to implement the ORDER BY clause on Integer column instead of VARCHAR or STRING column.

6. Avoid ORDER BY on multiple columns.

- Implementing the order by clause on multiple column degrade the query performance as the SQL

server has to run data sorting algorithm independently on each column or result set.

7. Use 'WHERE' instead of 'HAVING'

- 'HAVING' clause is used to filter the rows after all the rows are selected. It is just like a filter who filter

data from selected list.

- 'WHERE' clause work along with select statement to select only respective rows Do not use HAVING

clause for any other purposes.

8. Avoid Mathematical expression on column.

Avoid mathematical expression on column in WHERE clause.

We should avoid computation on columns as far as possible and hence we will get an index scan

instead of a seek

- For example : SELECT * FROM Orders WHERE OrderID*3 = 33000

degrade the performace as query performing calculation on column

9. Minimize the number of subquery block in your query.

The more number of sub query makes the execution plan complicated. Keep the script logic as simple as possible.

10. Use 'LIKE' clause in query instead of SUBSTR() function.

The SUBSTR() function first extract the value from data and then matching result get added in result

set. LIKE clause has potential great advantage over SUBSTR() whenever string data need to compare

- Write the query as:

SELECT id, first_name, age FROM student_details WHERE first_name LIKE 'ABC%'

- Instead of :

SELECT id, first_name, age FROM student_details WHERE SUBSTR(first_name,1,3) = 'ABC';

My next post will add 10 more tips to increase your transact-sql efficiency... wait for it.

Part 2 :- http://www.developerscloud.org/2013/10/tips-to-increase-your-transact-sql.html

Importing the Excel into the Database (SQL).

2013-09-04T00:20:00.000+05:30

We can import the excel into the Database by using the following query.

Suppose we have a table named as Address_Temp and it has three column.

1. Name

2. State

3. Zip

Here we need to update the zip code with the new value and to update that zip code we need to check the excel.

So we can use that excel in our sql server by importing it using the following command.

Its very easy query but make sure that it won't work in following two scenarios.

1. The file need to be in local machine.

2. The file should not be password protected.

Declare @ZipTemp NVarchar(255)   

set @ZipTemp = (SELECT * FROM OPENROWSET('Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0','Excel 8.0;Database=C:\Addresses.xls;IMEX=1','SELECT top 1 ZIP FROM [Sheet1$] where ZIP = "328301"'))
Update [dbo].[Addresses_Temp]
set State = 'CA', Zip = @ZipTemp 
where Zip = '328301'`

Here IMEX stands for mixed data type.

Simple Pyramid in Csharp .Net

2013-09-01T20:00:00.000+05:30

*
***
*****
*******
Updated
As you can see below the code for simple pyramid has two for loop nested in each other.
So for each row it enter, it increment the counter and draw the star against forming a pyramid like figure. You can use different special counter, play with the loop and enjoy the coding.

Simple Pyramid in Csharp

   class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            int row, col = 0, n = 5;
            for (row = 0; row <= n; row++)
            {
                for (int r = 0; r <= row; r++)
                {
                    Console.Write(" ");
                }

                for (col = 1; col <= 2 * row - 1; col++)
                {
                    Console.Write("*");

                }
                Console.WriteLine("\n");

            }
            Console.ReadLine();
      }
}

Output:
Original posted on 01 March 2013

Rise, Fall and Struggle of Microsoft .Net [Article]

2013-08-31T01:03:00.003+05:30

Some years ago there was a guy named Vinod Khosla from IIT- Delhi and Stanford. This awesome guy co-founded Sun Microsystem.

Sun Microsystem as we all know is fully undertaken by Oracle. But Sun Microsystem came up with a fantastic language called Java. This language was becoming too famous and popular since its birth and by 90's its JAVA, JAVA and only JAVA everywhere.

Microsoft who was struggling with the PC market at that time want's to capture the opportunity and Microsoft was building everything like the OS and Office and Java was taking the credit of so called windows application so then MICROSOFT plans to launch its own language.

Yes, so think back a decade or so ago. As you may recall, .Net was supposed to be much more than just the next version of Windows DNA or COM+ or COM. It was supposed to destroy Java, extend the Windows platform, and secure the Microsoft monopoly for another decade or two.

But then what happened after the DOT COM BUBBLE.

Rise

Like many Microsoft "innovations," .Net was a copy (embrace) and improvement (extend) of someone else's technology -- in this case, Java. Microsoft sought to extinguish Java by being a better Java; in a number of ways, it succeeded. C# cleaned up some Java mistakes, such as checked exceptions, the need to create an accessor, and mutator methods. The .Net VM had a cleaner bytecode setup.

So yes again like the OS they have a better language now so In some way it started leading. But Unlikely and unfortunately the rise of DoT net has eaten Microsoft's most successful corporate IT development environment, Visual Basic.

.Net's rise is all about Visual Basic's decline.

Visual Basic .Net didn't have much to recommend it. There wasn't enough documentation, so you had to learn C# anyhow. The API was the same between them, so why not just stick with C#? The corollary was that once you figured out C#, you also knew Java.

So C# .Net are on top then what happened for its fall and failure

Azure failed, its not making noise and business as it have to. Windows phone platform has mediocre success even after 3 years of launch. Windows 8 is complete failure we all know that. As users move from the desktop to the tablet and set top to view their pornography, cat pictures, and Netflix movies, the economics that caused folks to "target" Windows are abating.This results in a downward spiral for 'Softies hoping that writing to .Net is enough.

So in a Internet crazy market where users are more demanding while Microsoft is exactly opposite i.e. slow and lethargic. .Net is complete failure and if you are a .Net developer don't feel bad and start learning other languages like Node.js and Java.

And the struggle is still there for .Net which is of no use until they have innovation that is truly innovative.

Send a Fax in windows using faxcomexlib and TAPI in VB code .Net

2013-08-22T14:53:00.000+05:30

An application that provides sending fax from faxmodem, connected to the computer, will be explained in the following post.

We can use Telephony Application Programming Interface (TAPI) and the Fax Service Extended Component Object Model (COM) API to send fax.

The fax service is a Telephony Application Programming Interface (TAPI)-compliant system service that allows users on a network to send and receive faxes from their desktop applications. The service is available on computers that are running Windows 2000 and later. The fax service provides the following features:

Transmitting faxes
Receiving faxes
Flexible routing of inbound faxes
Outbound routing
Outgoing fax priorities
Archiving sent and received faxes
Server and device configuration management
Client use of server devices for sending and receiving faxes
Event logging
Activity logging
Delivery receipts
Security permissions

The following Microsoft Visual Basic code example sends a fax. Note that if you were to convert this Visual Basic example to Microsoft Visual Basic Scripting Edition (VBScript), you would have to use an enumeration constant instead of the value fptHigh.

    Private Sub Form_Load()
        Dim objFaxDocument As New FAXCOMEXLib.FaxDocument
        Dim objFaxServer As New FAXCOMEXLib.FaxServer
        Dim objSender As FAXCOMEXLib.FaxSender
        Dim JobID As Object

        'Error handling
        On Error GoTo Error_Handler

        'Connect to the fax server
        objFaxServer.Connect("")

        'Set the fax body
        objFaxDocument.Body = "c:\Docs\Body.txt"

        'Name the document
        objFaxDocument.DocumentName = "My First Fax"

        'Set the fax priority
        objFaxDocument.Priority = FAXCOMEXLib.FAX_PRIORITY_TYPE_ENUM.fptHIGH


        'Add the recipient with the fax number 12225550100
        objFaxDocument.Recipients.Add("12225550100", "Bud")

        'Choose to attach the fax to the fax receipt
        objFaxDocument.AttachFaxToReceipt = True

        'Set the cover page type and the path to the cover page
        objFaxDocument.CoverPageType = FAXCOMEXLib.FAX_COVERPAGE_TYPE_ENUM.fcptSERVER
        objFaxDocument.CoverPage = "generic"

        'Provide the cover page note
        objFaxDocument.Note = "Here is the info you requested"

        'Provide the address for the fax receipt
        objFaxDocument.ReceiptAddress = "someone@example.com"

        'Set the receipt type to email
        objFaxDocument.ReceiptType = FAXCOMEXLib.FAX_RECEIPT_TYPE_ENUM.frtMAIL

        'Specify that the fax is to be sent at a particular time
        objFaxDocument.ScheduleType = FAXCOMEXLib.FAX_SCHEDULE_TYPE_ENUM.fstSPECIFIC_TIME
        'CDate converts the time to the Date data type
        objFaxDocument.ScheduleTime = CDate("4:35:47 PM")

        objFaxDocument.Subject = "Today's fax"

        'Set the sender properties.
        objFaxDocument.Sender.Title = "Mr."
        objFaxDocument.Sender.Name = "Bob"
        objFaxDocument.Sender.City = "Cleveland Heights"
        objFaxDocument.Sender.State = "Ohio"
        objFaxDocument.Sender.Company = "Microsoft"
        objFaxDocument.Sender.Country = "USA"
        objFaxDocument.Sender.Email = "someone@microsoft.com"
        objFaxDocument.Sender.FaxNumber = "12165555554"
        objFaxDocument.Sender.HomePhone = "12165555555"
        objFaxDocument.Sender.OfficeLocation = "Downtown"
        objFaxDocument.Sender.OfficePhone = "12165555553"
        objFaxDocument.Sender.StreetAddress = "123 Main Street"
        objFaxDocument.Sender.TSID = "Office fax machine"
        objFaxDocument.Sender.ZipCode = "44118"
        objFaxDocument.Sender.BillingCode = "23A54"
        objFaxDocument.Sender.Department = "Accts Payable"

        'Save sender information as default
        objFaxDocument.Sender.SaveDefaultSender()

        'Submit the document to the connected fax server
        'and get back the job ID.

        JobID = objFaxDocument.ConnectedSubmit(objFaxServer)

        MsgBox("The Job ID is :" & JobID(0))

        objFaxServer.Disconnect()

        Exit Sub

Error_Handler:
        'Implement error handling at the end of your subroutine. This 
        ' implementation is for demonstration purposes
        MsgBox("Error number: " & Hex(Err.Number) & ", " & Err.Description)

    End Sub

Note On Windows Vista, the program must have write access to the archive folder or it will generate an exception.

Reference

What is OOP ? Basic Concepts.

2013-08-16T00:00:00.000+05:30

What is OOP?
Object oriented programming is a type of programming paradigm based around programming classes and instances of classes called objects. These can be objects that appear on the screen (e.g., pictures, textboxes, etc.) or are part of the programming (e.g. actors, connections, particles, etc.)

What is an Object?
An object is merely a collection of related information and functionality. An object can be something that has a corresponding real-world manifestation (such as an employee object), something that has some virtual meaning (such as a window on the screen), or just some convenient abstraction within a program (a list of work to be done, for example).

An object is composed of the data that describes the object and the operations that can be performed on the object. Information stored in an employee object, for example, might be various identification information (name, address), work information (job title, salary), and so on. The operations performed might include creating an employee paycheck or promoting an employee.

When creating an object-oriented design, the first step is to determine what the objects are. When dealing with real-life objects, this is often straightforward, but when dealing with the virtual world, the boundaries become less clear. That’s where the art of good design shows up, and it’s why good architects are in such demand.

What is a Class?
Structures are very similar to Classes in that they collect data together. However, classes extend this idea and are made from two different things:
Attributes - things that the object stores data in, generally variables.
Methods - Functions and Procedures attached to an Object and allowing the object to perform actions

Let's take a look at the following example:

class car
private maxSpeed as integer
public fuel as integer
public sub setSpeed(byVal s as integer)
maxSpeed = s
end sub
public function getSpeed() as integer
return maxSpeed
end function
public sub refuel(byVal x as integer)
console.writeline("pumping gas!")
fuel = fuel + x
end sub
public function getFuel() as integer
return fuel
end function
public sub drive()
fuel = fuel - 1
end sub
end class
:

two attributes: maxSpeed, fuel
four methods
three procedures: setSpeed, refuel, drive
one function: getSpeed
Attributes

These store information about the object. In the example above we store the fuel and maxSpeed. The attributes are attached to the classes, and if there are several instances (objects) of the classes then each will store its own version of these variables. Note that instead of the usual dim, there is the word private or public, we'll cover that in the encapsulation section.

Methods

Unlike structures, OOP allows you to attach functions and procedures to your code. This means that not only can you store details about you car (the attributes), you can also allow for sub routines such as drive() and refuel, which are attached to each class.

Three Tier Architecture : A simple Example/Illustration

2013-08-08T00:54:00.000+05:30

Three Tier Architecture: Very Easy to understand, the three tier are:

1. Presentation layer
2. Business Layer
3. Database Layer

Simple Example:
Lets take example of a Songs and Artist.

1. DataAccess Layer

Below is a class of Data Access Layer, that has some dummy/fudge data, we only write DataBase calling method in DataAccessLayer.

using System;

using System.Collections.Generic;

using System.Linq;

using System.Text;

namespace DataBaseLayer

{

public class DataAccessLayer

{

string[] ArtistName = { "Akon", "Shakira", "Michael_Jackson" };

string[] Shakira = { "Waka Waka", "Addicted to you", "Beautiful Liar" };

string[] Akon = { "Chammak Challo", "Lonely", "Dont Matter" };

string[] Michael_Jackson = { "Beat It", "Dangerous", "Smooth Criminal" };

public string[] Songs(string ArtistName)

{

string[] ArtistSong = new string[3];

int i = 0;

if (ArtistName == "Shakira" )

{

foreach (string s in Shakira)

{

ArtistSong[i] = s; ;

i++;

}

if (ArtistName == "Akon")

{

foreach (string s in Akon)

{

ArtistSong[i] = s; ;

i++;

}

if (ArtistName == "Michael_Jackson")

{

foreach (string s in Michael_Jackson)

{

ArtistSong[i] = s; ;

i++;

}

return ArtistSong;

}

2. Business Access Layer

using System;

using System.Collections.Generic;

using System.Linq;

using System.Text;

using DataBaseLayer;

namespace BusinessLayer

{

public class BusinessAccessLayer

{

public string[] DataCalling(string ArtistName)

{

DataAccessLayer dataAccessLayer = new DataAccessLayer();

string [] ArtistSongs = dataAccessLayer.Songs(ArtistName);

return ArtistSongs;

}

It only has object i.e. parameters and Stored Procedure Name that are used to call DB, its a wire between DB and View, it only believes in business.

3. Presentation Layer

It is no where related to database and no link, its only work is to display.

using System;

using System.Collections.Generic;

using System.Linq;

using System.Text;

using BusinessLayer;

namespace Three_Tier_Architecture

{

class PresentationLayer

{

static int flag = 0;

static string choice = null;

static void Main(string[] args)

{

while (flag == 0)

{

Console.WriteLine("Please Enter the Artist Name, Enter Number");

Console.WriteLine("Choose From: \n 1. Shakira \n 2. Akon \n 3. Michael Jackson");

choice = Console.ReadLine();

flag = CallingBusinessLayer(choice);

Console.WriteLine("Wanna Continue (Y/N)");

string Reply = Console.ReadLine().ToLower();

if (Reply == "n")

flag = 1;

else

flag = 0;

}

public static int CallingBusinessLayer(string SelectedChoice)

{

BusinessAccessLayer _businessAccessLayer = new BusinessAccessLayer();

string[] Songs = null;

if (flag == 0)

{

switch (choice)

{

case "1":

Songs = _businessAccessLayer.DataCalling("Shakira");

foreach (string s in Songs)

{

Console.WriteLine("\n " + s + "\n");

}

break;

case "2":

Songs = _businessAccessLayer.DataCalling("Akon");

foreach (string s in Songs)

{

Console.WriteLine("\n " + s + "\n");

}

break;

case "3":

Songs = _businessAccessLayer.DataCalling("Michael_Jackson");

foreach (string s in Songs)

{

Console.WriteLine("\n " + s +"\n");

}

break;

}

return 0;

}

A very simple and effective example. no Jargon's used.

things should be pretty clear here.

Download Source Code

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FULL OUTER JOIN

common_valuespecific_value_1specific_value_2 red9999OOOOOO red9999LLLLLL grey6666NULL white0000NULL purple7777NULL purple2222NULL black8888FFFFFF greenNULLHHHHHH yellowNULLPPPPPP blueNULLRRRRRR

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common_value specific_value_1 specific_value_2

red 9999 OOOOOO

red 9999 LLLLLL

grey 6666 NULL

white 0000 NULL

purple 7777 NULL

purple 2222 NULL

black 8888 FFFFFF

green NULL HHHHHH

yellow NULL PPPPPP

blue NULL RRRRRR