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Jeroen W. Pluimers on .NET, C#, Delphi, databases, and personal interests

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Archive for the ‘Scripting’ Category

Windows command prompt: decrementing loop

Posted by jpluimers on 2020/12/30

I needed a decrementing loop on the Windows command prompt, but that seems very hard from batch files without programming your own kind of while loop:

PowerShell to the rescue to loop back from and including 463 down to and including 290:

PowerShell -Command "for ($i=463; $i -ge 290; $i--) { Write-Host "Value " $i}"

This outputs:

Value 463
Value 462
...
Value 291
Value 290

In a similar way, you can execute a cmd command, but then you need to be careful on how to pass parameters: the \" is important to you can have quotes within quoted strings..

PowerShell -Command "for ($i=463; $i -ge 290; $i--) { & echo \"Value $i\"}"

gives this:

Value 463
Value 462
...
Value 291
Value 290

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Posted in Batch-Files, CommandLine, Console (command prompt window), Development, PowerShell, PowerShell, Scripting, Software Development, Windows | 1 Comment »

Spinettaro’s Blog: Delphi Flux application architecture

Posted by jpluimers on 2020/12/16

On my list of things to try: [WayBack] Spinettaro’s Blog: Delphi Flux application architecture.

It is about a Delphi implementation of the Facebook Flux application architecture.

Related:

Via: [WayBack] Delphi Flux application architecture A good application architecture Finding a good application architecture is not easy, but defining an architecture f… – Daniele Spinetti – Google+

Note that by using the [WayBack] CodeRage 2018 Replay | Embarcadero Academy, you are disallowed using any of what you learn in a commercial way.

Embarcadero evangelists told the public that for the Community Edition, similar terms would not be upheld, but then the sales department started sending out nasty emails to people registering Community Edition using their work email address.

[WayBackhttps://www.embarcaderoacademy.com/p/terms:

under this license you may not:

  1. modify or copy the materials;
  2. use the materials for any commercial purpose, or for any public display (commercial or non-commercial);
  3. attempt to decompile or reverse engineer any software contained on the School’s web site;
  4. remove any copyright or other proprietary notations from the materials; or
  5. transfer the materials to another person or ‘mirror’ the materials on any other server.

–jeroen

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Posted in Delphi, Development, JavaScript/ECMAScript, Scripting, Software Development, Systems Architecture, TypeScript | Leave a Comment »

On Windows 7 and 8.x too: Completely disable Windows 10 telemetry collection – twm’s blog

Posted by jpluimers on 2020/12/10

From [WayBack] Completely disable Windows 10 telemetry collection – twm’s blog:

So I don’t forget: According to an article in c’t magazine, disabling the “DiagTrack” service (“Connected User Experience and Telemetry”) will completely disable user tracking in Windows 10. They also say that they did not see any negative effects.

Source: [WayBack] Telefonierverbot in c’t 01/2019 page 172 (in German)

I saw at least one system where the service is not shown when you run Services.msc: it did not list DiagTrack, nor Connected User Experience and Telemetry. How awful is that!

The service can also be installed non older Windows versions: [WayBack] Just found DiagTrack running in Services – Tips and Tricks

Sometimes, it gets re-enabled. I think this happens during major Windows updates.

To inspect, stop and disable

Run all commands from the console the below bold commands. The non-bold text was the output on my system. If instead of the cmd.exe console, you run a PowerShell console, then remove the bits PowerShell -Command " and " at the start and end of each command.

The first command does not require an Administrative (UAC Elevated) command prompt; the last one does.

However, the first command, needs the | Select-Object * bit as otherwise most of the fields will not be displayed, excluding for instance StartType.

powershell -Command "Get-Service -Name DiagTrack | Select-Object *"


Name                : DiagTrack
RequiredServices    : {RpcSs}
CanPauseAndContinue : False
CanShutdown         : True
CanStop             : True
DisplayName         : Connected User Experiences and Telemetry
DependentServices   : {}
MachineName         : .
ServiceName         : DiagTrack
ServicesDependedOn  : {RpcSs}
ServiceHandle       :
Status              : Running
ServiceType         : Win32OwnProcess
StartType           : Automatic
Site                :
Container           :

On an Administrative command-prompt:

powershell -Command "Set-Service -Name DiagTrack -StartUpType Disabled"
powershell -Command "Get-Service -Name DiagTrack | Stop-Service"

Two notes:

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Posted in Batch-Files, CommandLine, Development, Power User, PowerShell, PowerShell, Scripting, Software Development, Windows | Leave a Comment »

GitHub – DevExpress/testcafe: A Node.js tool to automate end-to-end web testing.

Posted by jpluimers on 2020/12/09

In my list of things to play with: [WayBack] GitHub – DevExpress/testcafe: A Node.js tool to automate end-to-end web testing.:

A Node.js tool to automate end-to-end web testing.
Write tests in JS or TypeScript, run them and view results.

https://devexpress.github.io/testcafe


  • Works on all popular environments: TestCafe runs on Windows, MacOS, and Linux. It supports desktop, mobile, remote and cloud browsers (UI or headless).
  • 1 minute to set up: You do not need WebDriver or any other testing software. Install TestCafe with one command, and you are ready to test: npm install -g testcafe
  • Free and open source: TestCafe is free to use under the MIT licensePlugins provide custom reports, integration with other tools, launching tests from IDE, etc. You can use the plugins made by the GitHub community or make your own.

Related:

  • [WayBack] A node.js tool to automate end-to-end web testing | TestCafe:

    Use TestCafe to write tests in JS or TypeScript, run them and view results. TestCafe runs on Windows, MacOS, and Linux and takes 1 minute to set up.

  • [WayBack] TestCafe: Web Testing Framework | DevExpress

    100% web-based functional testing framework with integrated visual test recorder, remote device testing, and natural JavaScript API

    • From download to recording your first test in less than 5 minutes — installer automatically configures your environment.
    • With TestCafe, you can run tests in any browser that supports HTML5 (including IE9+, Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Opera).
    • TestCafe is operating system agnostic so you can run tests on Windows, Mac or Linux machines.
    • Run tests on remote computers and mobile devices.
    • Run tests in multiple browsers and on multiple machines in parallel.
    • Run tests in the background on any machine.
    • TestCafe allows you to test web pages that require Basic and Windows HTTP Authentication.

Via:

Screen materials below the fold.

–jeroen

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Posted in Development, JavaScript/ECMAScript, LifeHacker, Power User, Scripting, Software Development, Testing, Web Development | Leave a Comment »

Making it dead simple to implement @haveibeenpwnd in your applications, including strength warning if found in @troyhunt’s password collection.

Posted by jpluimers on 2020/12/02

I wasn’t aware that Troy Hunt created an API [WayBack] for [WayBack] Have I Been Pwned: Check if your email has been compromised in a data breach.

He did, as I noticed through [WayBack] Michelangelo van Dam on Twitter: “Making it dead simple to implement @haveibeenpwnd in my applications, including strength warning if found in @troyhunt’s password collection. Check out to try it out yourself. #ImproveSecurity #haveibeenpwnd”.

There are in fact plenty of other packages, web-sites and apps using the API as seen on [WayBack] Have I Been Pwned: API consumers.

Many people ask “if it is safe” (often assuming passwords are sent in clear, or hashes are sent in full; my fear is that those people implement security somewhere).

It is safe:

PHP source is at [WayBack] GitHub – DragonBe/hibp: A composer package to verify if a password was previously used in a breach using Have I Been Pwned API.

There is also a [WayBack] composer package at [WayBack] dragonbe/hibp – Packagist.

A really cool thing on it is this:

This project was also the subject of my talk [WayBack] Mutation Testing with Infection where the code base was not only covered by unit tests, but also was subjected to Mutation Testing using [WayBack] Infection to ensure no coding mistakes could slip into the codebase.

Apart from the tests, the most important source is at [WayBack] hibp/Hibp.php at master · DragonBe/hibp · GitHub

Related:

–jeroen

Posted in Development, Mobile Development, PHP, Python, Scripting, Software Development, Web Development | Leave a Comment »

`exit /b #`: set `errorlevel` to `#`, then exit batch file or subroutine – via: Errorlevel – Windows CMD – SS64.com

Posted by jpluimers on 2020/11/25

I seem to always forget how to set an error leve in side a batch file, but [WayBack] Errorlevel – Windows CMD – SS64.com tells how:

  • When ending a [WayBacksubroutine, you can use EXIT /b N to set a specific ERRORLEVEL N.
  • You can make a [WayBackbatch file return a non-zero exit code by using the [WayBackEXIT command.

    Exit 0
    Exit /B 5

    To force an ERRORLEVEL of 1 to be set without exiting, run a small but invalid command like [WayBack]COLOR 00 

    There is a key difference between the way .CMD and .BAT batch files set errorlevels:

    An old .BAT batch script running the ‘new’ internal commands: APPEND, ASSOC, PATH, PROMPT, FTYPE and SET will only set ERRORLEVEL if an error occurs. So if you have two commands in the batch script and the first fails, the ERRORLEVEL will remain set even after the second command succeeds.

    This can make debugging a problem BAT script more difficult, a CMD batch script is more consistent and will set ERRORLEVEL after every command that you run [[archive.is]source].

It looks like I already used a bare EXIT /B without explaining it in Source: stop/start IIS.

Further reading, including the difference between subroutines, blocks and batch files:

Finally saving Google Groups messages in the way back machine:

  1. Convert the URL
  2. Save the latter in archive.is

–jeroen

Posted in Batch-Files, Development, Software Development | Leave a Comment »

powershell – Format-Table forgets some properties, but Format-List shows them all. Why? – Stack Overflow

Posted by jpluimers on 2020/11/12

Reminder to self: finish the script that initiated this 2013 question (yes ages ago!) [WayBack] powershell – Format-Table forgets some properties, but Format-List shows them all. Why? – Stack Overflow.

The question was based on code I was really happy I saved in the WayBack machine: WayBack: how-to: Print/List installed programs/applications sorted by date | Tech Off | Forums | Channel 9

So here the question and the answer.

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Posted in .NET, CommandLine, Development, PowerShell, PowerShell, Scripting, Software Development | Leave a Comment »

JSON to tabular format via JSONformatter.org and JSON2table.com

Posted by jpluimers on 2020/11/10

Two interesting sites to ease transforming JSON fragments in log-messages to a table system, for instance Excel.

  1. Paste the bits in [WayBack] Best JSON Pretty Print Online then fix any syntax errors.
  2. Copy from there to [WayBack] json2table.com and press the triangle button (run)
  3. Copy either the tabular or tree result to your favourite program.
  4. Format any numbers for readability. I really like the Custom format ##0.00E+00 that just shows the exponents in multiples of 3 (so kilo, mega, giga, etc)[WayBack] formatting – How can I format bytes a cell in Excel as KB, MB, GB etc? – Stack Overflow

This way I copied the example code into adjecent Excel areas, so I could compare the values and calculate memory increase of a Delphi application.

jeroen

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Posted in Development, JavaScript/ECMAScript, JSON, LifeHacker, Power User, Scripting, Software Development | Leave a Comment »

Mikrotik Remote Access via Multiple WAN Links | Syed Jahanzaib Personal Blog to Share Knowledge !

Posted by jpluimers on 2020/11/04

Multi-WAN routing always involves marking incoming connections to the replies go out on the same connection: [WayBack] Mikrotik Remote Access via Multiple WAN Links | Syed Jahanzaib Personal Blog to Share Knowledge !

# Mirkotik IP Firewall Mangle Section
/ ip firewall mangle
# Mark traffic coming via WAN-1 link
add chain=input in-interface=WAN1 action=mark-connection new-connection-mark=WAN1_incoming_conn
# Mark traffic coming via WAN-2 link
add chain=input in-interface=WAN2 action=mark-connection new-connection-mark=WAN2_incoming_conn
# Mark traffic routing mark for above marked connection for WAN-1 , so that mikrotik will return traffic via same interface it came in
add chain=output connection-mark=WAN1_incoming_conn action=mark-routing new-routing-mark=to_WAN1
# Mark traffic routing mark for above marked connection for WAN-2, so that mikrotik will return traffic via same interface it came in
add chain=output connection-mark=WAN2_incoming_conn action=mark-routing new-routing-mark=to_WAN2
# Finally Add appropriate routes in ROUTE section
/ ip route
add dst-address=0.0.0.0/0 gateway=1.1.1.2 routing-mark=to_WAN1 check-gateway=ping
add dst-address=0.0.0.0/0 gateway=2.2.2.2 routing-mark=to_WAN2 check-gateway=ping

Related:

–jeroen

Posted in Development, Internet, MikroTik, Power User, RouterOS, routers, Scripting, Software Development | Leave a Comment »

Installing Windows software with Chocolatey: a few notes

Posted by jpluimers on 2020/10/28

I will limit myself to software that needs Administrative elevation in order to be installed. This is the default use-case for Chocolatey. It is way way easier than installing software all by hand, but there are a few things you need to know, hence these notes.

Administrative elevation

Since the default use case is installing software that requires Administrative elevation during install, Chocolatey needs to run with Administrative privileges in order to perform these installs.

If you were hoping for a way around this (for instance by having a client/service architecture), then just stop here.

Even though such a structure could technically be created, getting it stable and working it correctly with a truckload of software to be installed (much of which not available as packages during Chocolatey development in the first place) is a task too big.

Think of the size of the Windows Installer team at Microsoft to get installers working in the first place, the extra effort needed by Chocolatey volunteers to get the installers working from the console, then another much more complex layer of getting them running from inside a service and communicating everything back and forth to a non-elevated command prompt would be a nightmare.

I won’t even mention the security steps involved to ensure the non-elevated command prompt has enough rights to send installation instructions to the elevated service.

So the first step is to have an elevated command prompt for Chocolatey.

Being elevated, and Chocolatey needing to download installers requires a local temporary place for them.

By default, that place is %Temp%\chocolatey of the administrative user that elevated the Chocolatey command prompt.

This directory can grow quite big, so dir, so – since there is no choco cleanup yet [WayBack] you need to either:

Install Chocolatey itself

Either the direct one below, or the more secure one (so you can inspect the intermediate [WayBackinstall.ps1) at [WayBack] Installation using PowerShell from cmd.exe:

@echo off
SET DIR=%~dp0%
::download install.ps1
%systemroot%\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\powershell.exe -NoProfile -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Command "((new-object net.webclient).DownloadFile('https://chocolatey.org/install.ps1','%DIR%install.ps1'))"
::run installer
%systemroot%\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\powershell.exe -NoProfile -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Command "& '%DIR%install.ps1' %*"

If you want to get rid of it, use [WayBack] Uninstallation.

Besides the one above and below, there are many more [WayBack] Installation: more install options

Output of direct install as Administrator (disclaimers apply):

C:\WINDOWS\system32>powershell -NoProfile -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Command "[System.Net.WebRequest]::DefaultWebProxy.Credentials = [System.Net.CredentialCache]::DefaultCredentials; iex ((New-Object System.Net.WebClient).DownloadString('https://chocolatey.org/install.ps1'))" && SET PATH="%PATH%;%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\chocolatey\bin"
Getting latest version of the Chocolatey package for download.
Getting Chocolatey from https://chocolatey.org/api/v2/package/chocolatey/0.10.11.
Downloading 7-Zip commandline tool prior to extraction.
Extracting C:\Users\JEROEN~1\AppData\Local\Temp\chocolatey\chocInstall\chocolatey.zip to C:\Users\JEROEN~1\AppData\Local\Temp\chocolatey\chocInstall...
Installing chocolatey on this machine
Creating ChocolateyInstall as an environment variable (targeting 'Machine')
  Setting ChocolateyInstall to 'C:\ProgramData\chocolatey'
WARNING: It's very likely you will need to close and reopen your shell
  before you can use choco.
Restricting write permissions to Administrators
We are setting up the Chocolatey package repository.
The packages themselves go to 'C:\ProgramData\chocolatey\lib'
  (i.e. C:\ProgramData\chocolatey\lib\yourPackageName).
A shim file for the command line goes to 'C:\ProgramData\chocolatey\bin'
  and points to an executable in 'C:\ProgramData\chocolatey\lib\yourPackageName'.

Creating Chocolatey folders if they do not already exist.

WARNING: You can safely ignore errors related to missing log files when
  upgrading from a version of Chocolatey less than 0.9.9.
  'Batch file could not be found' is also safe to ignore.
  'The system cannot find the file specified' - also safe.
chocolatey.nupkg file not installed in lib.
 Attempting to locate it from bootstrapper.
PATH environment variable does not have C:\ProgramData\chocolatey\bin in it. Adding...
WARNING: Not setting tab completion: Profile file does not exist at 'C:\Users\jeroenAdministrator\Documents\WindowsPowerShell\Microsoft.PowerShell_profile.ps1'.
Chocolatey (choco.exe) is now ready.
You can call choco from anywhere, command line or powershell by typing choco.
Run choco /? for a list of functions.
You may need to shut down and restart powershell and/or consoles
 first prior to using choco.
Ensuring chocolatey commands are on the path
Ensuring chocolatey.nupkg is in the lib folder

Installing packages

Compressing

If you run out of SSD or VM disk space, you can try compress using compact /c /s *.* in these directories:

  • C:\ProgramData\Package Cache
  • C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\VisualStudio\Packages
  • C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\ClickToRun\ProductReleases

Further reading

–jeroen

PS: always watch the output and logs!

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Posted in Chocolatey, CommandLine, Conference Topics, Conferences, Development, Event, Power User, PowerShell, PowerShell, Scripting, Software Development, Windows | Leave a Comment »