Tech Has No Boundary

Deploy TimerJobs to SharePoint 2007 farm

2012-07-31T12:09:00.001-07:00

Working with SharePoint 2007 is full with excitement, don't you agree? I am lucky enough to be an advanced SharePoint developer + admin. Today, I am going to share one trick on deploying TimerJobs to MOSS 3.0.

After executing a list of "stsadm" commands, please be sure to recycle the MOSS Timer service, and do a recycle of your IIS app pools.

It took me a day for figure out why the newly deployed timerjob wasn't running, as there is no any system trace available to you. Hope it help.

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MVC 4 Web API access Session

2012-03-23T13:34:00.000-07:00

It's not recommended to use Session in Web API for various of good reasons. However, in case you're still so interested to access Session for any business needs, here is a quick solution to allow accessing Session in Web API.

 
// In global.asax
public class MvcApp : System.Web.HttpApplication
{
 public static void RegisterRoutes(RouteCollection routes)
 {
  var route = routes.MapHttpRoute(
   name: "DefaultApi",
   routeTemplate: "api/{controller}/{id}",
   defaults: new { id = RouteParameter.Optional }
  );
  route.RouteHandler = new MyHttpControllerRouteHandler();
 }
}

// Create two new classes
public class MyHttpControllerHandler : HttpControllerHandler, IRequiresSessionState
{
 public MyHttpControllerHandler(RouteData routeData): base(routeData)
 {
 }
}
public class MyHttpControllerRouteHandler : HttpControllerRouteHandler
{
 protected override IHttpHandler GetHttpHandler(RequestContext requestContext)
 {
  return new MyHttpControllerHandler(requestContext.RouteData);
 }
}

// Now Session is visible in your Web API
public class ValuesController : ApiController
{
 public string GET(string input)
 {
  var session = HttpContext.Current.Session;
  if (session != null)
  {
   if (session["Time"] == null)
    session["Time"] = DateTime.Now;
   return "Session Time: " + session["Time"] + input;
  }
  return "Session is not availabe" + input;
 }
}

Source is here.

First Cloud OS - Solaris 11

2012-03-22T08:51:00.000-07:00

Oracle has released Solaris 11 and claimed it as the first Cloud OS in the market. Looking forward to having my hands on it.

Details of Oracle Solaris 11 can be found on here

Best IDE tools/plug-ins for eclipse Java development

2012-02-13T11:44:00.000-08:00

Looking for best IDE integrated tools/plug-ins for eclipse Java development just like Resharper or CodeRush for Visual Studio .Net platform. Anyone has few suggestions?

javascript: base64 encoding

2012-01-30T11:38:00.000-08:00

It's quite easy to implement. See the code snippets below

<script>
    base64Keys = "ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz0123456789-_=";
    base64Encode = function(input) {
      var chr1, chr2, chr3, enc1, enc2, enc3, enc4, i, output;
      output = "";
      i = 0;
      input = utf8Encode(input);
      while (i < input.length) {
        chr1 = input.charCodeAt(i++);
        chr2 = input.charCodeAt(i++);
        chr3 = input.charCodeAt(i++);
        enc1 = chr1 >> 2;
        enc2 = ((chr1 & 3) << 4) | (chr2 >> 4);
        enc3 = ((chr2 & 15) << 2) | (chr3 >> 6);
        enc4 = chr3 & 63;
        if (isNaN(chr2)) {
          enc3 = enc4 = 64;
        } else if (isNaN(chr3)) {
          enc4 = 64;
        }
        output = "" + output + (base64Keys.charAt(enc1)) + (base64Keys.charAt(enc2)) + (enc3 < 64 ? base64Keys.charAt(enc3) : '') + (enc4 < 64 ? base64Keys.charAt(enc4) : '');
      }
      return output;
    };

    utf8Encode = function(string) {
      var c, s, utftext, _i, _len, _ref;
      string = string.replace(/\r\n/g, "\n");
      utftext = "";
      _ref = string.split('');
      for (_i = 0, _len = _ref.length; _i < _len; _i++) {
        s = _ref[_i];
        c = s.charCodeAt(0);
        if (c < 128) {
          utftext += String.fromCharCode(c);
        } else if (c > 127 && c < 2048) {
          utftext += String.fromCharCode((c >> 6) | 192);
          utftext += String.fromCharCode((c & 63) | 128);
        } else {
          utftext += String.fromCharCode((c >> 12) | 224);
          utftext += String.fromCharCode(((c >> 6) & 63) | 128);
          utftext += String.fromCharCode((c & 63) | 128);
        }
      }
      return utftext;
    };
</script>

Command-line to launch Android emulator.

2012-01-27T10:29:00.000-08:00

Assuming Android SDK has been successfully installed and AVD of your target android version was created. For Window 7 user, the install path is likely at "c:\Program Files\Android\android-sdk\tools\". If you have problems on above step, please refer to Android developer site or email me. The command line to launch your emulator, for example IceCream.

c:\>"C:\Program Files\Android\android-sdk\tools\emulator.exe" -avd IceCream

Javascript to request GPS location from web page

2012-01-27T10:16:00.000-08:00

There is no direct method natively built in Javascript stack. Don't give up though. I am giving your few lines of code to provide the result you look for. The code runs well on IE9, Chrome, FireFox, Safari on both PC and mobile device platforms.

 
function requestGeoLocation() {
 if (navigator.geolocation) {
 navigator.geolocation.getCurrentPosition(function(loc){
 // do nothing
 //document.getElementById('myloc').innerHTML = 'Location: ' + 
 //    loc.coords.latitude + ', ' +
 //    loc.coords.longitude;
    
        }, function() { alert('request denied or something went wrong.');});
} else { 
 alert('GPS is supported.'); 
}

bada mobile platform for C++ and Flash developersd

2012-01-24T09:41:00.000-08:00

bada is Korean name meaning "ocean" or "sea". As you could guess, it's provided by another mobile device manufacture outside the North American region, called Samsung. Many mobile/tablet developers probably already knew much as objective-c and android. If you were hard core C++ fans like me, you probably want to take look at bada which provides you a ever familiar syntax and powerful OOD support. bada's home site is here.

bada IDE is eclipse CDT-base (C/C++ Development Tools). So you don't have to learn everything from the beginning if knows eclipse.

A new project wizard dialog pops up from "File->New->bada C++/Flash Application Project"

The database principal owns a schema in the database, and cannot be dropped

2012-01-12T23:01:00.000-08:00

Encounter this while restoring a SQL Server database backup from one server to another, and trying to delete a user comes from the backup.

The workaround is to list all the schema that user owns by following script:

SELECT name FROM  sys.schemas WHERE principal_id = USER_ID('usertodelete');

then remove or transfer those schema owned by that user to another user, such as dbo by this script:

alter authorization on schema::schema_name to dbo;

Microsoft Managed Extensibility Framework (MEF)

2011-12-31T23:44:00.000-08:00

Managed Extensibility Framework (MEF) is a composition layer for .NET that improves the flexibility, maintainability and testability of large applications. MEF can be used for third-party plugin extensibility, or it can bring the benefits of a loosely-coupled plugin-like architecture to regular applications.

MEF is a part of the Microsoft .NET Framework, with types primarily under theSystem.ComponentModel.Composition.* namespaces.

MEF has shipped with .NET 4.0 and Silverlight 4
MEF 2 is under development and can be downloaded in source code and binary form from this site

For more information, click here.

Useful Git Terms

2011-12-24T14:51:00.000-08:00

master: this is the main code branch, equivalent to trunk in Subversion. Branches are generally created off of master.
origin: the default remote repository that all your branches are pull'ed from and push'ed to. This is defined when you execute the initial git clone command.
fast-forward: the process of bringing a branch up-to-date with another branch, by fast-forwarding the commits in one branch onto the other.
rebase: the process by which you cut off the changes made in your local branch, and graft them onto the end of another branch.
unpublished vs. published branches: an unpublished branch is a branch that only exists on your local workstation, in your local repository. Nobody but you know that branch exists. A published branch is one that has beenpush'ed up to github, and is available for other developers to checkout and work on.

NuGet Install Castle.Windsor and factilies for NLog or log4net

2011-12-22T23:37:00.000-08:00

Install the following Castle packages from NuGet command line.

PM> install-package Castle.Windsor
PM> install-package Castle.Core-NLog
PM> install-package Castle.Core-log4net
PM> install-package Castle.LoggingFacility

Notes: that Castle.Core-NLog has the Castle.Facilities for NLog.

Validation of viewstate MAC failed,in hosting on a web farm

2011-12-08T08:51:00.001-08:00

If a web application is hosted by a web farm or cluster, you would experience this exception if you didn't set up the web.config correctly. The solution for resolving this exception is to ensure the configuration specifies the same validation key and validation algorithm in every single web.config in your deployment. AutoGeneration by default cannot be used in a cluster environment. Below is the sample machinekey config entry for your web.config

 
<configuration>
    <appSettings/>
    <connectionStrings/>
    <system.web>
        <machineKey  validationKey='44DB9132AD56D581F6DBFDD8F09EDFD167B75283771DB3241804B0F03602EBACF6349C724FAC64785F60653EC9F9CA20A4D377387A1677704525FE9147CE6AC3' decryptionKey='C77E66D32F8F554C507DDEC6DA2A1A470B5EE195DA584EDD' validation='SHA1'/>
    </system.web>
</configuration>

Manage IIS Application Pool from .Net C# code

2011-11-13T14:47:00.001-08:00

.Net framework provides a very easy-to-use API wrapper class, ServerManager, to help manage IIS system from any .Net application using either C# or VB.net. Below C# code snippet demonstrates how to restart/recycle a given AppPool in IIS.

     
    public void RestartAppPool(string appPool)
        {
            try
            {
                logger.Info("Restarting app pool: " + appPool);

                // Recycle app pool
                using (var manager = new ServerManager())
                {
                    var pool = manager.ApplicationPools[appPool];

                    if (pool != null) 
                    {
                        Process process = null;

                        if (pool.WorkerProcesses.Count > 0)
                        {
                            process = Process.GetProcessById(pool.WorkerProcesses[0].ProcessId);
                        }

                        if (pool.State == ObjectState.Stopped)
                            pool.Start();
                        else
                            pool.Recycle();

                        // clean up any worker thread created by app pool
                        if (process != null)
                        {
                            while (!process.HasExited)
                            {
                                Thread.Sleep(10);
                            }

                            process.Dispose();
                        }
                    }
                }

                //logger.Info("Successfully restarted app pool: " + appPool);
            }
            catch (Exception ex)
            {
               // logger.Error("Restart app pool error: " + ex);
            }
        }

JQuery extension: numeric only input text

2011-11-08T10:50:00.000-08:00

Here is the simply but re-usable approach, IMO: create an jquery numeric extension and then use the numeric extension in your input text box:

 
// numeric extension
jQuery.fn.onlyNumeric = function () {
    return this.each(function () {
        $(this).keydown(function (e) {
            var key = e.which || e.keyCode;
            if (!e.shiftKey && !e.altKey && !e.ctrlKey &&
                key >= 48 && key <= 57 || key >= 96 && key <= 105 ||
                key == 8 || key == 13 || key == 46 ||
                key == 35 || key == 36 || key == 37 || key == 39)
                return true;
            return false;
        });
    });
};
// use it in your input text box
$('#input_box').onlyNumeric();

HTML meta tags for mobile or regular sites

2011-11-02T13:32:00.000-07:00

For mobile site specifically:
<meta content='HandheldFriendly' name='true' />
<meta content='width=device-width; initial-scale=1.0; maximum-scale=1.0; user-scalable=0;' name='viewport' />
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width" />
<meta content='MobileOptimized' name='width' />
<meta content='HandheldFriendly' name='true' />
<meta name="google-site-verification" content="wYqVbCtxN_YM1tLTZmGkUDbEmNrSjpB7hBNp5_Avsvs" />

General meta tags for all sites:

<meta name="keywords" content="key words of you site" />
<meta name="description" content="description of your site" />

<meta http-equiv="Content-Typ" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=8" />

Load testing ajax application using Visual Studio 2010

2011-10-21T11:16:00.000-07:00

In order to do this, you need to extend Visual Studio Web Performance Test with your own Extraction and/or Validation Rule. Visual Studio 2010, which my current working copy, has all interfaces provided for the needed customizations.

Here is an official tutorial for Creating a Custom Extraction Rule, which can lead you to the place where you can find all useful information and a real code example.

For java users, you may want to explore HtmlUnit platform.

Avoid InfoWindow from shifting Google Maps

2011-10-19T09:25:00.000-07:00

It's kind of inconsistent in some cases that Google InfoWindow would shift the map while panning. That's a huge user experience if this map behaviour is not your intention. There a couple ways to resolve it, either close the InfoWindow when panning the map way far causing it invisible, or set the proper value to an attribute of InfoWindow, which I believe it is the easiest and most solid solution. Here is the code snippet for the 2nd solution.

 
var infoWin = new google.maps.InfoWindow({disableAutoPan: true});

Get Ready for Android App Development

2011-10-18T10:36:00.000-07:00

Being excited about mobile application and open source platform? Apple or Android? Personally I like both platforms but more lean to Android as I don't have any "expensive" Apple computer. Would be nice if I could get a sponsor. So Android App is my target for contributing to the community.

To get ready for your Android App development, you need the following stuff.

JDK, any version since1.6.x or later and can be downloaded from here.
Android SDK, and it can be downloaded from here.
Eclipse IDE (recommended but not necessary), preferable to download Java EE Developer version.
Download and install Android Development Tools (ADT) plug-in for Eclipse.
Add Android platforms to development environment.

From Eclipse, go to Window -> Android SDK and AVD Manager.
On Windows, double click the SDK Manager.exe file at the root fo the Android SDK directory.
On Mac or Linux, open a terminal and navigate to the tools/ directory in the Android SDK, then execute command: android

Now, you should be ready to get your hands wet on your first Android App development, Hello Word, for example. :)

For more information, you can always go to Android official home site for developers.

Convert Latitude and Longitude to android.maps.GeoPoint

2011-10-16T23:42:00.000-07:00

Use the following code snippets

 
GeoPoint point = new GeoPoint((int)(latitude * 1e6), (int)(longitude * 1e6));

Obtain Android Google Maps SDK Debug Certificate

2011-10-16T18:01:00.000-07:00

For developing your Google Maps application for android, I would like to obtain a debug Google Maps SDK debug certificate before production release. Android.com provides a very thorough instruction for helping newbies and beginners. Here I just list the steps that I went through in my own development environment: Windows 7 32bit + JDK1.7.0. Hope it would help simplify your learning curve.

1. Locate your debug.keystore.
By default, build tools create the debug keystore in the active AVD directory which varies by platform:

Windows Vista/7: c:\users\<user>\.android\debug.keystore

For eclipse/ADT user, go to Windows -> Preferences -> Android -> Build for the full path of debug.keystore.

2. After the debug.keystore was located, use keytool utility to obtain the MD5 fingerprint of the debug certificate.

Replace the below command with your JDK installation path and your actual user id

"c:\program files\java\jdk1.7.0\bin\keytool" -v -list -alias androiddebugkey -keystore c:\users\<user>\.android\debug.keystore -storepass android -keypass android
Note: only the MD5 fingerprint is recognized by Google. Other version, such as SHA1/256, is new since JDK 1.7, and cannot be used for registering Google Maps API.

3. Now, follow steps below to register your debug certificate with Google Maps Service

Go to http://code.google.com/android/maps-api-signup.html
If you don't have a Google account, use the link on the page to set one up.
Read the Android Maps API Terms of Service carefully. If you agree to the terms, indicate so using the checkbox on the screen.
Paste the MD5 certificate fingerprint of the certificate that you are registering into the appropriate form field.
Click "Generate API Key"

The server will handle your request, associating the fingerprint with your developer identity and generating a unique Maps API Key, and then will return a results page that gives you your Key string.

Find GPS location (latitude and longitude) is within given radius

2011-10-05T10:45:00.000-07:00

In a project, I need to determine whether a given GPS location (latitude and longitude) is within a pre-set radius area, for example, within a 2 kilometres circle of a target place - Vancouver Convention Centre. It's not a rocket science to do it but it would be helpful for those who need to implement the similar logic.

Here is code snippet in javascript, and could be easily ported to other languages, like C#.

 
// center: the center goelocation of the radius
// radius: radius in meter
// loc: the geolocation that you want to check
function isInArea(center, radius, loc) {
        var R = 6371;
        var lat1 = loc.lat();
        var lon1 = loc.lng();
        var lat2 = center.lat();
        var lon2 = center.lng();
        var dLat = (lat2 - lat1) * Math.PI / 180;
        var dLon = (lon2 - lon1) * Math.PI / 180;
        var a = Math.sin(dLat / 2) * Math.sin(dLat / 2) +
		Math.cos(lat1 * Math.PI / 180) * Math.cos(lat2 * Math.PI / 180) *
		Math.sin(dLon / 2) * Math.sin(dLon / 2);
        var c = 2 * Math.atan2(Math.sqrt(a), Math.sqrt(1 - a));
        var d = R * c;
        return (d * 1000 <= radius)
    };

Create/Change SVN user and password using htpasswd

2011-09-27T22:37:00.000-07:00

To create a new SVN user c:\program files\Collabnet\bin\htpasswd -cm ../config/authz-file username password To change existing SVN user's password c:\program files\Collabnet\bin\htpasswd -m ../config/authz-file username

Android Historical Version Names

2011-09-24T22:11:00.000-07:00

Android version history and its nick name.
1.5 Cupcake
1.6 Donut
2.0 Eclair
2.2 Froyo
2.3 Gingerbread
3.0 Honeycomb

JQuery Ajax Call to Web service via POST

2011-09-23T10:08:00.000-07:00

Have been used a lots of jquery in the recent real-time information web development project, I found this quite easy to initiate a POST HTTP call to web service through JQuery. Here are 2 sample code snippets.

Case 1: Pass no parameter

 
<script type="text/javascript">
    // in this case, we post nothing back to api but
    // just call it (no parameter required) and expected json object as result
    function callWebApiViaPost() {
        $.ajax({
            type: "POST",
            url: "yourwebapi",
            data: "{}",
            contentType: "application/json;",
            dataType: "json",
            success: function (t) {
                $("#your_result_display_div").text(t.d);
            }
        });
    }

</script>

Case 2: Pass parameter(s)

For example, you have a API like below:

 
[WebMethod]
public static string ToUpperCase(string yourparam)
{
    return yourparam.ToUpper();
}

The corresponding jquery ajax post call will be like this:

 
<script type="text/javascript">
    // in this case, we post nothing back to api but
    // just call it (no parameter required) and expected json object as result
    function callWebApiViaPost() {
        $.ajax({
            type: "POST",
            url: "yourweb/ToUpperCase",
            data: "{yourparam: 'hello-world'}",
            contentType: "application/json;",
            dataType: "json",
            success: function (t) {
                $("#your_result_display_div").text(t.d);
            }
        });
    }

</script>