Posted by jpluimers on 2012/10/23
Interesting SharePoint CAML XML trouble shooting tool:
this script is NOT meant to help you *build* your queries. There are other tools for that. This is purely a testing tool to help you during those “doh” moments.
-jeroen
via: Simple CAML Query Tester using jQuery & SPServices –.
Posted in .NET, Development, JavaScript/ECMAScript, jQuery, Scripting, SharePoint, Software Development, Web Development | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2012/10/17
While preparing for the Category Cloud series of posts, I found a lot of helpful links.
Here they are:
–jeroen
Posted in .NET, ASP.NET, C#, Development, HTML, Software Development, Web Development | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2012/10/04
I saw julian Bucknall post some beautiful formatted functions in a few of his Algorithms for the masses blog and wondered how he did it.
[a = P . r^N . \frac { (1 – r) } { (1 – r^N) }]
Why is his formula code looking so simple, and why doesn’t it display on my blog?
So I asked him (:
Hi response was “use MathJax“:
I’m loading the MathJax JavaScript library in my pages:
http://www.mathjax.org/Here’s the post where I talk about it and how I tweak the expressions:
http://blog.boyet.com/blog/blog/tightening-the-feedback-loop-when-writing-latex-expressions-for-mathjax/If you want to experiment writing such expressions, I have the page I’m describing in the above post online:
http://blog.boyet.com/blog/files/uploads/MathJaxFeedback.html
There are various ways to include the MathJax JavaScript, and if you do, you can use both LaTeX and MathML style formulas. Read all about it on the MathJax Getting Started page.
–jeroen
via:
Posted in Development, HTML, Software Development, UI Design, Web Development | 2 Comments »
Posted by jpluimers on 2012/10/03
Earlie last month, I missed this: Fiddler has joined the Telerik family (and Eric joined Telerik too)
So I missed the announcements here:
Fiddler Web Debugger – Letter from Eric to the Fiddler community.
and here:
Christopher Eyhorn’s blog > Here we grow again. Telerik acquires Fiddler. What’s next?.
Cool news (:
–jeroen
Posted in Development, Fiddler, Software Development, Web Development | Tagged: technology | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2012/09/26
Notes:
Log, Ln, Lg, Log10, LogE, Ld
Common logarithm – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Exponential_and_logarithmic_functions ISO 31-11 – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Binary logarithm – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
What is logarithm(log, lg, ln).
Why Use a Logarithmic Scale to Display Data Math Forum – Ask Dr. Math.
STRAIGHT LINE ON ARITHMETIC GRAPH PAPER (LINEAR FUNCTION)
http://www.humboldt.edu/geology/courses/geology531/531_handouts/equations_of_graphs.pdf
Font sizes
Five simple steps to better typography – Part 4 | Mark Boulton.
A List Apart: Articles: How to Size Text in CSS.
–jeroen
Posted in .NET, C#, C# 4.0, C# 5.0, Development, Software Development, Web Development, WordPress | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2012/08/28
Dang; I thought this had long left the posting queue, but somehow it ended in the drafts (:
Since then, many more event videos made it to Channel 9, including Build 2011, and TechDays 2012.
Anyway, here it is:
Microsoft’s PDC 2010 was held at the end of October 2010 in Redmond, WA, USA.
For the people that could not attend, it is very nice to view the sessions using the PDC10 player (it seems still people didn’t learn and start stripping the century parts from years again!).
Even if you are not using Visual Studio, .NET Azure or other Microsoft Technologies, there are a lot of interesting sessions showing the directions that Microsoft is taking.
Comparing that to what you do today is always a good thing to do: it helps you reflect, an important part of your personal development.
A few things I found interesting (in no particular order):
Enjoy!
–jeroen
Posted in .NET, .NET 4.5, C#, C# 4.0, C# 5.0, Channel9, Cloud Development, Database Development, Delphi, Development, HTML, HTML5, Mobile Development, SilverLight, SocialMedia, Software Development, Visual Studio 11, Visual Studio 2010, Visual Studio and tools, Web Development, Windows Azure, Windows Phone Development, XNA | 2 Comments »
Posted by jpluimers on 2012/08/22
In Generating a WordPress posting categories page – part 1, you learned how to
This episode, you will learn how the data read from the XHTML can be transformed to a simple tree in HTML suited for a posting categories page like mine.
In the final post, the same data will be transferred into a real category cloud with font sizes indicating the frequency of the category usage.
From there, you can go into other directions (for instance generating squarified treemaps from the data).
That’s the cool thing about data: there are many ways to visualize, and this series was meant – next to some groundwork on how to get the data – as inspiration into some forms of visualization.
Hope you had fun reading it!
StringBuilder outputHtml = new StringBuilder();
string rootUrl = args[1];
foreach (optionType item in select.option)
{
if (item.Level == optionType.RootLevel)
continue;
// <a style="font-size: 100.3986332574%; padding: 1px; margin: 1px;" title="XML/XSD (23)" href="https://wiert.me/category/development/xmlxsd/">XML/XSD</a>
string url = String.Format("{0}/category{1}", rootUrl, item.HtmlPath);
string prefix = new string('.', item.Level * 5);// optionType.NbspEscaped.Repeat(item.Level);
outputHtml.AppendFormat("{0}<a title="{2}" href="{1}">{2} ({3})</a>", prefix, url, item.Category, item.Count);
outputHtml.AppendLine();
}
One way of generating an HTML tree, is to prefix every node with a series of dots corresponding with the level of that node. Not the most pretty sight, but it will suffice for this episode.
Inside each node, I want to show the Category and Count.
Since the optionType as generated from the XSD only contains the below properties, a major portion on this posting is how to decode the Value so we can generate HTML like this:
...............<a href='https://wiert.me/category/development/software-development/net/c-' title='C#'>C# (118)</a> ....................<a href='https://wiert.me/category/development/software-development/net/c-/c--2-0' title='C# 2.0'>C# 2.0 (46)</a> ....................<a href='https://wiert.me/category/development/software-development/net/c-/c--3-0' title='C# 3.0'>C# 3.0 (33)</a> ....................<a href='https://wiert.me/category/development/software-development/net/c-/c--4-0' title='C# 4.0'>C# 4.0 (31)</a> ....................<a href='https://wiert.me/category/development/software-development/net/c-/c--5-0' title='C# 5.0'>C# 5.0 (2)</a>
optionType only contains the these properties:
Slug and Value without breaking the links between posts and categoriesThe extra properties needed for the HTML generation logic above are these:
Value undone from leading non breaking space character escapes, and the trailing count informationC# 5.0Value undone from leading non breaking space character escapes, Caption information, separator non breaking space character escapes, and surrounding parenthesis2class undone from the level- prefix4c--5-0 (it consists of lowercase letters and hyphens derived from the Category)/category in the category url/development/software-development/net/c-/c--5-0 that points to https://wiert.me/category/development/software-development/net/c-/c–5-0The really cool thing about XSD2Code is that it generated the optionType C# code as a partial class.
Which means we can extend the generated partial classes in a seperate C# file like the code fragments below (you can download it from the WordPressCategoriesDropDown.cs file at BeSharp.CodePlex.com)
partial class optionType
{
public const int RootLevel = -1;
private const string slash = "/";
private const char hyphen = '-';
public const string NbspEscaped = " ";
private const string emptyCountInParenthesis = "(-1)";
public optionType parent { get; set; }
public string Category
{
get
{
string result;
string countInParenthesis;
splitValue(out result, out countInParenthesis);
return result;
}
}
public int Count
{
get
{
string category;
string countInParenthesis;
splitValue(out category, out countInParenthesis);
string count = countInParenthesis.Substring(1, countInParenthesis.Length - 2);
int result = int.Parse(count);
return result;
}
}
public int Level
{
get
{
if (string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(@class))
return RootLevel;
string[] split = @class.Split(hyphen);
string number = split[1];
int result = int.Parse(number);
return result;
}
}
/// <summary>
/// This is the HTML part that WordPress uses to reference a Category
/// </summary>
public string Slug
{
get
{
StringBuilder result = new StringBuilder();
foreach (char item in Category)
{
if (char.IsLetterOrDigit(item))
result.Append(item.ToString().ToLower());
else
if (result.Length > 0)
result.Append(hyphen);
}
return result.ToString();
}
}
public string HtmlPath
{
get
{
if (RootLevel == Level)
return string.Empty;
string result = Slug;
if (null != parent)
result = parent.HtmlPath + slash + result;
return result;
}
}
private void splitValue(out string category, out string countInParenthesis)
{
// might want to do this using RegEx, but that is a write-only language https://wiert.me/category/development/software-development/regex/
string result = Value;
int nbspCountToStripFromLeftOfValue = Level * 3; // strip 3 for each Level
for (int i = 0; i < nbspCountToStripFromLeftOfValue; i++)
{
int nbspEscapedLength = NbspEscaped.Length;
if (result.StartsWith(NbspEscaped))
result = result.Substring(nbspEscapedLength, result.Length - nbspEscapedLength);
}
string doubleNbspEscaped = NbspEscaped + NbspEscaped;
if (result.Contains(doubleNbspEscaped))
{
string[] separators = new string[] { doubleNbspEscaped };
string[] split = result.Split(separators, StringSplitOptions.None);
category = split[0];
countInParenthesis = split[1];
}
else
{
category = result;
countInParenthesis = emptyCountInParenthesis;
}
}
public override string ToString()
{
string result = string.Format("Level {0}, Count {1}, Slug {2}, HtmlPath {3}, Category '{4}'", Level, Count, Slug, HtmlPath, Category);
return result;
}
}
The bulk of the above code is in the splitValue method (that could have used RegEx, but I try to avoid RegEx when I can do without it).
Note that the HtmlPath propererty uses the parent property. Without it, the HtmlPath code would have been very complex. The value of the parent properties for all optionType instances is generated in the selectType.FixParents method below since the selectType instance contains all the optionType instances in its’ option property.
partial class selectType
{
public void FixParents()
{
Stack<optionType> itemStack = new Stack<optionType>();
optionType parent = null;
int previousLevel = optionType.RootLevel;
foreach (optionType item in option)
{
int itemLevel = item.Level;
if (itemLevel == previousLevel)
{
if (optionType.RootLevel != itemLevel)
{
itemStack.Pop();
item.parent = parent;
}
itemStack.Push(item);
}
else
{
if (itemLevel > previousLevel)
{
parent = itemStack.Peek();
}
else
{
do
{
itemStack.Pop();
parent = itemStack.Peek();
previousLevel = parent.Level;
}
while (previousLevel >= itemLevel);
}
itemStack.Push(item);
item.parent = parent;
previousLevel = itemLevel;
}
}
}
}
–jeroen
Posted in .NET, C#, C# 4.0, C# 5.0, Development, LINQ, Software Development, Usability, User Experience (ux), Web Development, WordPress, WordPress, XML, XML escapes, XML/XSD, XSD | 4 Comments »
Posted by jpluimers on 2012/08/15
A few weeks ago, Bill Karwin did a must watch webinar on the prevention SQL Injection titled “SQL Injection Myths and Fallacies“.
Bill Karwin (twitter, new blog, old blog, Amazon) is famous for much work in the SQL database community, including InterBase/Firebird, mySQL, Oracle and many more.
He also:
Anyway, his webinar is awesome. Be sure to get the slides, watch the replay, and read the questions follow up.
Watching it you’ll get a better understanding of defending against SQL injection.
A few very valuable points he made: Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in .NET, .NET 3.5, .NET 4.5, .NET ORM, ASP.NET, Batch-Files, C#, C# 1.0, C# 2.0, C# 3.0, C# 4.0, C# 5.0, C++, Cloud Development, COBOL, CommandLine, Database Development, Delphi, Delphi for PHP, Delphi x64, Delphi XE2, Development, EF Entity Framework, F#, Firebird, FireMonkey, History, InterBase, iSeries, Java, JavaScript/ECMAScript, Jet OLE DB, LINQ, LLBLGen, MEF, Microsoft Surface, Mobile Development, PHP, PowerShell, Prism, Scripting, SharePoint, SilverLight, Software Development, SQL, SQL Server, SQL Server 2000, SQL Server 2005, SQL Server 2008, SQL Server 2008 R2, SQL Server 2012, SQL Server 7, VB.NET, VBS, Visual Studio 11, Visual Studio 2002, Visual Studio 2003, Visual Studio 2005, Visual Studio 2008, Visual Studio 2010, Visual Studio and tools, Web Development, Windows Azure, WinForms, WPF, XAML, xCode/Mac/iPad/iPhone/iOS/cocoa | 1 Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2012/07/31
From the category cloud it is hard to see that the categories are organized as a hierarchy. The combobox on the right shows that, but does not have room to properly show the hierarchy. Since WordPress.com does not allow you to deploy your own code, I worked around it in this way using a small .NET C# console program:
Future posts will show more logic on how to handle the imported information, and generate nice category overviews. Preliminary source code is at the BeSharp.net source repository.
The HTML is not fully accurate (see my post on HTML and XML escapes from last week), but it is fairly easy to extract. Most web browsers allow you to view the source of your web page. Do that, then search for “All Categories”. Now you see HTML like this:
</pre> <h2 class="widgettitle">All categories</h2> <pre><select class="postform" name="cat"><option value="-1">Select Category</option></select><select class="postform" name="cat"><option class="level-0" value="256">About (66)</option></select><select class="postform" name="cat"><option class="level-1" value="64"> Personal (60)</option></select><select class="postform" name="cat"><option class="level-2" value="20254983"> Adest Musica (7)</option></select><select class="postform" name="cat"><option class="level-2" value="32122"> Certifications (2)</option></select><select class="postform" name="cat">...</select><select class="postform" name="cat"><option class="level-0" value="756">Comics (3)</option></select><select class="postform" name="cat"><option class="level-0" value="780">Development (473)</option></select><select class="postform" name="cat"><option class="level-1" value="872460"> Database Development (55)</option></select><select class="postform" name="cat">...</select><select class="postform" name="cat"><option class="level-0" value="9280">User Experience (3)</option></select>
I don’t need the H2 heading line, but the rest I do need to generate XML from. I saved the HTML into a text file for processing by the console app.
The HTML contains loads of , but XML does not allow for that entity. So the & ampersand needs to be escaped into &This also solves other uses of & in the HTML. The rest of the HTML is XHTML compliant, so does not require change, which results into this C# conversion method:
private static string toXml(string inputHtml)
{
string result = inputHtml.Replace("&", "&");
return result;
}
Given my comparison of tools for generating XSD from XML, so I used the XmlForAsp XML Schema generator, with the “Separate Complex Types” option.
(Note: I will link to the XSD before/after, as WordPress – yet again – screws the XSD sourcecode in the post; this should do for now). That gives me XSD like this (XML is also at pastebin):
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <xsd:schema attributeFormDefault="unqualified" elementFormDefault="qualified" version="1.0" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"> <xsd:element name="select" type="selectType" /> <xsd:complexType name="selectType"> <xsd:sequence> <xsd:element maxOccurs="unbounded" name="option" type="optionType" /> </xsd:sequence> <xsd:attribute name="name" type="xsd:string" /> <xsd:attribute name="id" type="xsd:string" /> <xsd:attribute name="class" type="xsd:string" /> </xsd:complexType> <xsd:complexType name="optionType"> <xsd:attribute name="value" type="xsd:int" /> </xsd:complexType> </xsd:schema>
Which is not complete, but gives a good start. The actual XSD it needs to be like this with a more elaborate optionType complex type that also defines it’s own content as deriving from xsd:string, and adds the class attribute (XML is also at pastebin):
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <xsd:schema attributeFormDefault="unqualified" elementFormDefault="qualified" version="1.0" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"> <xsd:element name="select" type="selectType" /> <xsd:complexType name="selectType"> <xsd:sequence> <xsd:element maxOccurs="unbounded" name="option" type="optionType" /> </xsd:sequence> <xsd:attribute name="name" type="xsd:string" /> <xsd:attribute name="id" type="xsd:string" /> <xsd:attribute name="class" type="xsd:string" /> </xsd:complexType> <xsd:complexType name="optionType"> <xsd:simpleContent> <xsd:extension base="xsd:string"> <xsd:attribute name="class" type="xsd:string" /> <xsd:attribute name="value" type="xsd:int" /> </xsd:extension> </xsd:simpleContent> </xsd:complexType> </xsd:schema>
You can generate C# wrapper classes using the XSD.exe tool that ships with Visual Studio, but XSD.exe is hard to use, is hard to integrate into Visual Studio (despite Microsoft Connect request for it), the XSD.exe generated code still needs work for deserializing, and XSD.exe has very limited generation options (heck, after it changed from .NET 1.x to 2.0, it hasn’t been updated for about a decade). XSD2Code has some great reviews, to I used that in stead. And indeed, very well integrates into Visual Studio 2010, and generates very nice C#, especially when you use the options (see also the screenshot on the right):
That way, loading the HTML, converting it to XML, then deserializing it into object instances is as simple as this:
string inputFileName = args[0];
string inputHtml = getHtml(inputFileName);
string xml = toXml(inputHtml);
selectType select = selectType.Deserialize(xml);
More on actually working with the loaded instances in the next episode, including the great benefit of XSD2Code: it generates C# code as partial classes.
–jeroen
Posted in .NET, C#, C# 4.0, C# 5.0, Development, SocialMedia, Software Development, Usability, User Experience (ux), Web Development, WordPress, WordPress, XML, XML escapes, XML/XSD, XSD | 2 Comments »
Posted by jpluimers on 2012/07/26
While reviewing some client’s code, I noticed they were generating and parsing XML and HTML by hand (do not ever do that yourself!).
Before refactoring this into something that uses libraries that properly understand XML and HTML, I needed to assess some of the risks.
A major risk is to get the escaping (and unescaping) of XML and HTML right.
Time to finally organize some of my links on escaping HTML and XML that I had in my favourites list.
The starting point is the List of XML and HTML character entity references on Wikipedia. It is readable, complete and lists both kinds of escapes.
The official W3C text that describes XML escaping is hard to read.
There are only 5 predefined XML entities for characters that can (some must) be escaped. This table is derived from the Wikipedia article.
| Name | Character | Unicode code point (decimal) |
Standard | When to escape (from the XML 1.0 standard) | Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| quot | “ | U+0022 (34) | XML 1.0 | To allow attribute values to contain both single and double quotes | double quotation mark |
| amp | & | U+0026 (38) | XML 1.0 | Outside comment, a processing instruction, or a CDATA section | ampersand |
| apos | ‘ | U+0027 (39) | XML 1.0 | To allow attribute values to contain both single and double quotes | apostrophe (= apostrophe-quote) |
| lt | < | U+003C (60) | XML 1.0 | Outside comment, a processing instruction, or a CDATA section | less-than sign |
| gt | > | U+003E (62) | XML 1.0 | in content, when that string is not marking the end of a CDATA section | greater-than sign |
Posted in " quot, & amp, > gt, < lt, ' apos, ASCII, Development, Encoding, HTML, Power User, SocialMedia, Software Development, Unicode, Web Development, WordPress, XML, XML escapes, XML/XSD | 1 Comment »
The Wiert Corner - irregular stream of stuff 