European Silverlight 4 & Silverlight 5 Hosting BLOG

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European Silverlight 4 Hosting - Amsterdam :: How to Use AutoCompleteBox in Silverlight 4

clock March 14, 2012 07:44 by author Scott

In this article let us see how to use a AutoCompleteBox Control in a Silverlight application. As usual, open the visual studio and select the Silverlight project.

First let us drag a AutoCompleteBox to Stack Panel as shown below into
MainPage.xaml.

<sdk:AutoCompleteBox x:Name="CountriesNames" Width="200" />


Now we will add List to
AutoCompleteBox from MainPage.xaml.cs as shown below. In the below code, First i prepared list of type string and assigned a name "Countries" to it. Then i added strings( Countries names) to the list "Countries".

List<string> Countries = new List<string>();
             Countries.Add("India");
             Countries.Add("USA");
             Countries.Add("Japan");
             Countries.Add("UK");
             Countries.Add("Australia");
             Countries.Add("Switzerland");
             CountriesNames.ItemsSource = Countries;


At last i am binding this list "
Countries" to the "AutoCompleteBox" using its name "CountriesNames". Thats it!!! Just press F5 and see the result. The output of the above code looks like as

<image>


Note
: For the people who find it difficult to integrate the above code, I am pasting the complete code here.

MainPage.Xaml:

<UserControl x:Class="SilverlightTest1.MainPage"
    xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"
    xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"
    xmlns:d="http://schemas.microsoft.com/expression/blend/2008"
    xmlns:mc="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/markup-compatibility/2006"
    xmlns:sdk="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation/sdk"
    mc:Ignorable="d"
    d:DesignHeight="300" d:DesignWidth="400">

    <StackPanel Background="White">
        <StackPanel x:Name="LayoutRoot" Orientation="Horizontal">
            <TextBlock Text="CountriesList: " Margin="5" VerticalAlignment="Center" />
            <sdk:AutoCompleteBox x:Name="CountriesNames" Width="200" />
        </StackPanel>
     </StackPanel>

</UserControl>


MainPage.Xaml.cs:

public MainPage()
{
InitializeComponent();
List<string> Countries = new List<string>();
Countries.Add("India");
Countries.Add("USA");
Countries.Add("Japan");
Countries.Add("UK");
Countries.Add("Australia");
Countries.Add("Switzerland");
CountriesNames.ItemsSource = Countries;

}

 



European Silverlight 4 Hosting :: UserControls and the dreaded “name already exists in the tree”

clock January 27, 2012 09:45 by author Scott

I was doing some work with Silverlight the other week which involved using UserControls where the control named itself. That is, a situation such as;

<UserControl x:Name=”foo”>

<!—Content of control –>

</UserControl>

and, under unpredictable circumstances I was finding that I kept hitting a semi-random error when running my code which was something along the lines of;


“The name already exists in the tree: foo”

I spent an awfully long time on this and hence the blog post to try and perhaps save you some time in the future. I took long enough on it to come up with a simple repro scenario which looks something like this;



and so in words I have a ListBox which displays instances of UserControl1 and that control is just a StackPanel which contains 2 instances of UserControl2 and that control happens to name itself in its definition.

I found that if I ran this application a few times then sometimes it would work fine and sometimes it would fail with the dreaded exception and so I asked internally whether that was expected and it was confirmed as a bug in the Silverlight 4 runtime which has been fixed in Silverlight 5.

In my particular case, I could work around the bug anyway because I was naming that user control in order to use it for some bindings and the workaround I used was to create those bindings from code instead.



European Silverlight 5 Hosting :: Get the Data From Database, Update it and Then Save it Back to Database

clock January 10, 2012 09:40 by author Scott

Lets start by updating the Code Behind of the Mainage.xaml .

Step 1:

Add a event handler for RowEditEnded .

This would give me the updated values of the Row . With this I would be able to update the update the cell and commit it. This event would help me trace the updated values . This event handler is to be added in the constrcutor of the Mainpage.xaml .

articleDataGrid.RowEditEnded += new EventHandler<DataGridRowEditEndedEventArgs>(articleDataGrid_RowEditEnded);


Step 2:

Implement the event handler for RowEditEnded .

I simply put the code to update the article and saving the context in the block .

void
articleDataGrid_RowEditEnded(object sender, DataGridRowEditEndedEventArgs e)
{
   
try
    {
        if (e.EditAction == DataGridEditAction.Commit)
        {

            articleId = ((Article)e.Row.DataContext).ArticleID;

            Article art = (from article in context.Articles
                          where article.ArticleID == articleId
                          select article).First();

            art.ArticleID = ((Article)e.Row.DataContext).ArticleID;
            art.AuthorID = ((Article)e.Row.DataContext).AuthorID;
            art.Body = ((Article)e.Row.DataContext).Body;
            art.Title = ((Article)e.Row.DataContext).Title;


            context.SubmitChanges();

            MessageBox.Show("Article was sucessfully Updated"); 

        }
    }
    catch (Exception ex)
    {
        MessageBox.Show("Updating Article failed :" + ex.Message);
    }

}

Step 3 :

Make sure you load the context in the Constructor of the MainPage class .

context.Load(context.GetArticlesQuery());

We are done. Run the App. Modify the Body or the Title . The Field would be sucessfully updated .



So we are done with Updation . I still need to add the validation to this .

Lets add validation then .

For this example we will go for basic validation . Just go ahead and add a Required attribute to the Domainservice Metadata that was generated .

Your Final Metadata class (DataDomainService.metadata.cs ) would look like as follows :

DataDomainService.metadata.cs

namespace SL2wayWCFRia.Web
{
    using System;
    using System.Collections.Generic;
    using System.ComponentModel;
    using System.ComponentModel.DataAnnotations;
    using System.Linq;
    using System.ServiceModel.DomainServices.Hosting;
    using System.ServiceModel.DomainServices.Server;


    // The MetadataTypeAttribute identifies ArticleMetadata as the class
   
// that carries additional metadata for the Article class.
    [MetadataTypeAttribute(typeof(Article.ArticleMetadata))]
    public partial class
Article
    {
 
       
// This class allows you to attach custom attributes to properties
       
// of the Article class.
       
//
       
// For example, the following marks the Xyz property as a
       
// required property and specifies the format for valid values:
       
//    [Required]
       
//    [RegularExpression("[A-Z][A-Za-z0-9]*")]
       
//    [StringLength(32)]
       
//    public string Xyz { get; set; }
        internal sealed class
ArticleMetadata
        {


            // Metadata classes are not meant to be instantiated.
            private ArticleMetadata()
            {
            }


            [Required]
            public int ArticleID { get; set; }


            [Required]|
            public Nullable<int> AuthorID { get; set; }


            [Required]
            public string Body { get; set; }


            [Required]
            public string Title { get; set; }
        }
    }
}


Now give it a run .

Make the AuthorId field empty and press tab to move to the next field you would get a message as shown below :



European Silverlight 4 WCF Hosting :: How to Solve IIS specified authentication schemes 'Basic, Anonymous'

clock December 21, 2011 08:13 by author Scott

This is an error message that sometimes you can find it when you host your WCF site:

IIS specified authentication schemes 'Basic, Anonymous', but the binding only supports specification of exactly one authentication scheme. Valid authentication schemes are Digest, Negotiate, NTLM, Basic, or Anonymous. Change the IIS settings so that only a single authentication scheme is used."

To resolve this problem on an IIS 7.0 server, add the following to the web.config file to disable Basic authentication:

<
system.webServer> 
     <security> 
            <authentication> 
                <basicAuthentication enabled="false" 
/>
            </authentication> 
     </security> 
</system.webServer> 

Note that Anonymous authentication can also be disabled using:

<anonymousAuthentication enabled="false" />

If your site is hosted on an IIS 6.0 server, please contact technical support to disable appropriate authentication on the application containing the WCF service.

OR

You can ask your provider to disable Anonymous authentication for you on IIS. Good luck.



European Silverlight Hosting :: Collections and Data Structures in Silverlight

clock November 10, 2011 05:29 by author Scott

Closely related data can be handled more efficiently when grouped together into a collection. Instead of writing separate code to handle each individual object, you can use the same code to process all the elements of a collection.

To manage a collection, use the Array class and the System.Collections classes to add, remove, and modify either individual elements of the collection or a range of elements. An entire collection can even be copied to another collection.

Some Collections classes have sorting capabilities, and most are indexed. Memory management is handled automatically, and the capacity of a collection is expanded as required. Synchronization provides thread safety when accessing members of the collection. Some Collections classes can generate wrappers that make the collection read-only or fixed-size. Any Collections class can generate it's own enumerator that makes it easy to iterate through the elements.

In the .NET Framework version 2.0, generic collection classes provide new functionality and make it easy to create strongly typed collections. See the System.Collections.Generic and System.Collections.ObjectModel namespaces.
The LINQ to Objects feature allows you to use LINQ queries to access in-memory objects as long as the object type implements IEnumerable or IEnumerable<(Of <(<T>)>)>. LINQ queries provide a common pattern for accessing data; they are typically more concise and readable than standard foreach loops; and provide filtering, ordering and grouping capabilities. LINQ queries can also improve performance.

Defining Collections

A collection is a set of similarly typed objects that are grouped together.

Objects of any type can be grouped into a single collection of the type Object to take advantage of constructs that are inherent in the language. For example, the C# foreach statement (for each in Visual Basic) expects all objects in the collection to be of a single type.

However, in a collection of type Object, additional processing is done on the elements individually, such as boxing and unboxing or conversions, which affect the performance of the collection. Boxing and unboxing typically occur if storing or retrieving a value type in a collection of type Object.

Generic collections, such as List<(Of <(<'T>)>)> avoid these performance hits if the type of the element is the type that the collection is intended for. In addition, strongly typed collections automatically perform type validation of each element added to the collection.

All collections that directly or indirectly implement the ICollection interface or the ICollection<(Of <(<'T>)>)> generic interface share several features in addition to methods that add, remove, or search elements:

An Enumerator

An enumerator is an object that iterates through it's associated collection. It can be thought of as a movable pointer to any element in the collection. An enumerator can be associated with only one collection, but a collection can have multiple enumerators. The C# foreach statement (for each in Visual Basic) uses the enumerator and hides the complexity of manipulating the enumerator.

Synchronization Members

Synchronization provides thread safety when accessing elements of the collection. The collections are not thread safe by default. Only a few classes in the System.Collections namespaces provide a Synchronize method that creates a thread-safe wrapper over the collection. However, all classes in all System.Collections namespaces provide a SyncRoot property that can be used by derived classes to create their own thread-safe wrapper. An IsSynchronized property is also provided to determine whether the collection is thread safe. Synchronization is not available in the ICollection<(Of <(<'T>)>)> generic interface.

The CopyTo method

All collections can be copied to an array using the CopyTo method; however, the order of the elements in the new array is based on the sequence in which the enumerator returns them. The resulting array is always one-dimensional with a lower bound of zero.

Note that the ICollection<(Of <(<'T>)>)> generic interface has additional members, which the non-generic interface does not include.

The following features are implemented in some classes in the System.Collections namespaces:

Capacity and Count

The capacity of a collection is the number of elements it can contain. The count of a collection is the number of elements it actually contains.

All collections in the System.Collections namespaces automatically expand in capacity when the current capacity is reached. The memory is reallocated, and the elements are copied from the old collection to the new one. This reduces the code required to use the collection; however, the performance of the collection might still be negatively affected. The best way to avoid poor performance caused by multiple reallocations is to set the initial capacity to be the estimated size of the collection.

Lower Bound

The lower bound of a collection is the index of it's first element. All indexed collections in the System.Collections namespaces have a lower bound of zero. Arrays have a lower bound of zero by default, but a different lower bound can be defined when creating an instance of the Array class using CreateInstance.

System.Collections classes can generally be categorized into three types:

Commonly used collections

These are the common variations of data collections, such as hash tables, queues, stacks, dictionaries, and lists. Commonly used collections have generic versions and non-generic versions.

Bit collections

These are collections whose elements are bit flags. They behave slightly differently from other collections.
Be sure to choose a collection class carefully. Because each collection has it's own functionality, each also has it's own limitations.

Commonly used Collection Types

Collection types are the common variations of data collections, such as hash tables, queues, stacks, dictionaries, and lists.

Collections are based on the ICollection interface, the IList interface, the IDictionary interface, or their generic counterparts. The IList interface and the IDictionary interface are both derived from the ICollection interface;
therefore, all collections are based on the ICollection interface either directly or indirectly.

Every element contains a value in collections based on the IList interface (such as Array, or List<(Of <(<'T>)>)>) or based directly on the ICollection interface LinkedList<(Of <(<'T>)>)>).

Every collection based on the ICollection interface (such as the Dictionary<(Of <(<'TKey, TValue>)>)> generic class) contains both a key and a value.

The KeyedCollection<(Of <(<'TKey, TItem>)>)> class is unique because it is a list of values with keys embedded within the values and, therefore, it behaves like a list and like a dictionary.

Collections can vary, depending on how the elements are stored, how they are sorted, how searches are performed, and how comparisons are made. The elements of a Dictionary<(Of <(<'TKey, TValue>)>)> are accessible only by the key of the element, but the elements of a KeyedCollection<(Of <(<'TKey, TItem>)>)> are accessible either by the key or by the index of the element. The indexes in all collections are zero-based, except Array, which allows arrays that are not zero-based.

Array Collection Type

The Array class is not part of the System.Collections namespaces. However, it is still a collection because it is based on the IList interface.

The rank of an Array object is the number of dimensions in the Array. An Array can have one or more ranks.
The lower bound of an Array is the index of it's first element. An Array can have any lower bound. It has a lower bound of zero by default, but a different lower bound can be defined when creating an instance of the Array class using CreateInstance.

Unlike the classes in the System.Collections namespaces, Array has a fixed capacity. To increase the capacity, you must create a new Array object with the required capacity, copy the elements from the old Array object to the new one, and delete the old Array.

List Collection Types

The generic List<(Of <(<'T>)>)> class provides features that are offered in most System.Collections classes but are not in the Array class. For example:

- The capacity of an Array is fixed, whereas the capacity of a List<(Of <(<'T>)>)> is automatically expanded as required. If the value of the Capacity property changes, the memory reallocation and copying of elements occur automatically.
- The List<(Of <(<'T>)>)> class provide methods that add, insert, or remove a range of elements. In Array, you can get or set the value of only one element at a time.
- The List<(Of <(<'T>)>)> provides methods that return read-only and fixed-size wrappers to the collection. The Array class does not.

On the other hand, Array offers some flexibility that List<(Of <(<'T>)>)> does not. For example:

- You can set the lower bound of an Array, but the lower bound of a List<(Of <(<'T>)>)> is always zero.
- An Array can have multiple dimensions, while a List<(Of <(<'T>)>)> always has exactly one dimension.

Most situations that call for an array can use a List<(Of <(<'T>)>)> instead; they are easier to use and, in general, have performance similar to an array of the same type.

Array is in the System namespace; List<(Of <(<'T>)>)> is in the System.Collections.Generic namespace.

Dictionary Collection Types

You can use the Dictionary<(Of <(<'TKey, TValue>)>)> generic class which implements the IDictionary interface. The Dictionary<(Of <(<'TKey, TValue>)>)> generic class also implements the IDictionary<(Of <(<'TKey, TValue>)>)> generic interface. Therefore, each element in these collections is a key-and-value pair.

Queue Collection Types

The Queue<(Of <(<'T>)>)> generic class is a first-in-first-out (FIFO) collection class that implements the ICollection interface and the ICollection<(Of <(<'T>)>)> generic interface.

The Queue<(Of <(<'T>)>)> and Stack<(Of <(<'T>)>)> generic classes are useful when you need temporary storage for information, that is, when you might want to discard an element after retrieving it's value. Use Queue<(Of <(<'T>)>)> if you need to access the information in the same order that it is stored in the collection. Use Stack<(Of <(<'T>)>)> if you need to access the information in reverse order.

Three main operations can be performed on a Queue<(Of <(<'T>)>)> and it's elements:

- The Enqueue method adds an element to the end of the queue.
- The Dequeue method removes the oldest element from the start of the queue.
- The Peek method returns the oldest element from the start of the queue but does not remove it from the queue.

Stack Collection Types

The Stack<(Of <(<'T>)>)> generic class is a last-in-first-out (LIFO) collection class that implements the ICollection interface. The Stack<(Of <(<'T>)>)> generic class also implements the ICollection<(Of <(<'T>)>)> generic interface.
Use a queue if you need to access the information in the same order that it is stored in the collection. Use a stack if you need to access the information in reverse order.

A common use for a stack is preserving variable states during calls to other procedures.

Three main operations can be performed on a stack and it's elements:

- The Push method inserts an element at the top of the stack.
- The Pop method removes an element at the top of the stack.
- The Peek method returns an element at the top of the stack but does not remove it from the stack.

Bit Collection Type

Bit collections are collections whose elements are bit flags. Because each element is a bit instead of an object, these collections behave slightly differently from other collections.

The BitArray class is a collection class in which the capacity is always the same as the count. Elements are added to a BitArray by increasing the Length property; elements are deleted by decreasing the Length property. The BitArray class provides methods that are not found in other collections, including those that allow multiple elements to be modified at once using a filter, such as And, Or, Xor , Not, and SetAll.



European Silverlight 4 Hosting :: Create Custom Control in Silverlight 4

clock October 20, 2011 06:51 by author Scott

In this tutorial, I will show you how to create custom control in Silverlight. First of all, we need to create a Silverlight project. Assume, you already know about it. Just for your reference, create a new project. From the left panel, select Silverlight and chose "Silverlight Application" from the right panel. Give a proper name for your application and solution. Click ok to continue.

Then, once it is done, you need to created a Custom Control. In this example, we will just create a default control without any additional customization. See this image below



To do this, right click on your Silverlight project, from the context menu select "Add" and from the second level context menu click "New Item". This will open the "Add New Item" dialog box.

As shown in the below screen shot, select "Silverlight Templated Control" and give you proper name to the control. Remember that, the "Silverlight Templated Control" is the template for Custom Silverlight control.



Click "Add" button to add the custom control into your project. Once the control creation is done, you will notice two things in the solution explorer. Expand the "Solution Explorer" and there you will find the following things:

1. A "Themes" folder containing a file called "Generic.xaml". This is the default resource file for all of your styles for your controls.

2. A "MyControl.cs" file, which is nothing but the class of your custom control. The class name is the control name.

Note that, if you create multiple controls the IDE will create multiple class files for you with the name of the control. But the resource file will be same. All styles and templates of your control will go into the same file.



The above screenshot will give you better visibility of the files that has been created in our demo application.

Here we will discuss about the class of the Custom control. You will get detailed knowledge on the class in later part of the series. For now just know, every control by default derives from base class called “Control”. You may change the base class to other control depending upon your requirement.

Have a look into the basic code that has been generated for you by the IDE:

using System.Windows.Controls; 

namespace CustomControlDemo
{
    public class MyControl : Control
    {
        public MyControl()
        {
            this.DefaultStyleKey = typeof(MyControl);
        }
    }
}

You will see the above code in the constructor. It takes the control style from the resource file and set it as the default style of the control. More on the class, we will discuss later.

You will find the basic template of the custom control in the Generic.xaml file. Open the file and you will find the below style inside the ResourceDictionary: 

<Style TargetType="local:MyControl">
    <Setter Property="Template">
        <Setter.Value>
            <ControlTemplate TargetType="local:MyControl">
                <Border Background="{TemplateBinding Background}"
                        BorderBrush="{TemplateBinding BorderBrush}"
                        BorderThickness="{TemplateBinding BorderThickness}">
                </Border>
            </ControlTemplate>
        </Setter.Value>
    </Setter>
</Style>
 

The first line describes the TargetType of the style. The second line declares the Template of the control. Third line sets the value of the template. The child of the value is your ControlTemplate. You can design your control template here.

One thing I want to tell you here is that, this is the default template of any control. You can add more style values before starting the template declaration. We will discuss this later.

Let us add the custom control that we created to our main page. To do this, you need to add the XMLNS namespace in the XAML. In our case, it is the project name. Once you declare the namespace, you will be able to access the control easily.

<UserControl x:Class="CustomControlDemo.MainPage"
    xmlns=http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation
    xmlns:x=http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml
    xmlns:d=http://schemas.microsoft.com/expression/blend/2008
    xmlns:mc=http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/markup-compatibility/2006
    xmlns:CustomControlDemo="clr-namespace:CustomControlDemo" mc:Ignorable="d"
    d:DesignHeight="300" d:DesignWidth="400"> 

    <Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot" Background="White">
        <CustomControlDemo:MyControl
            Width="200"
            Height="200"
            Background="Yellow"
            BorderBrush="Red"
            BorderThickness="1"/>
    </Grid>
</UserControl>
 

The above code will explain you everything. There we added our custom control named "MyControl" with proper declaration of height and width. If you don't specify the height and width, it will take the whole screen of the application (only for our example).

If you run the application, you will not see anything rather than the blank screen. This is because the control has default transparent background. Hence, we added a background color, border brush and border thickness to the control in the above code.



Once you run the application now, you will see the above UI in your browser. The rectangle is the custom control that we created in this sample. If you modify the control template, it will change the UI here automatically.



European WCF Hosting :: RIA Services and Authentication

clock October 12, 2011 08:22 by author Scott

Authentication is the third in a series of posts covering the key concepts of RIA Services using the Book Club application to digger deeper and go beyond the basics. Links to the first two posts on validation and authorization as well as an overview of the application/source code are at the end of this post.

Authentication Overview

Like authorization, RIA Services provides a higher level programming model, and out-of-the-box, but extensible solution. Authentication answers the question:

"Do these credentials represent a valid user?"

Credentials might be user name and password, or any other piece of data that can be used to verify that the user is who he/she says they are. Generally, a side-effect of authentication is to produce a representation of the user, usually represented as an IPrincipal, as well as establishing an authenticated session for the client to use in making subsequent requests.

RIA Service defines an authentication service as a domain service that implements IAuthetication<TUser> where TUser is application's notion of a user that brings together identity, roles and settings that span across client and server.

RIA Services also provides an out-of-box implementation based on the standard asp.net membership, roles and profile infrastructure services. If you use the business application template, this is all setup for you by default. However RIA Services also lets you implement your own authentication service when you want to use your own custom credential store, or a different authentication mechanism such as OpenID.

This post covers using authentication and the User object on client and server, as well as building a custom forms authentication service that works against the application's data model.

Using Authentication on the Client

I created an inplace-LoginControl with a number of visual states (Unauthenticated, CredentialInput, Authenticating and Authenticated) as shown here.



Authentication functionality is accessed through a class called WebContext on the client. WebContext represents the functionality provided by the home web server to the client application. This is how WebContext is initialized in the application:

public partial class WebContext {

    partial void OnCreated() {
        Authentication = new FormsAuthentication() {
            DomainContext = new AuthenticationContext()
        };
    }
}

The FormsAuthentication implementation uses a DomainContext to work against the corresponding DomainService implementing IAuthentication on the server. We'll see this service implementation below.

Looking at LoginControl implementation, the authentication-related functionality is invoked when the Submit and Logout buttons are clicked:

private void OnSubmitButtonClick(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e) {
    LoginParameters loginParameters =
        new LoginParameters(userNameTextBox.Text, passwordBox.Password);

    WebContextBase.Current.Authentication.Login(loginParameters,
        delegate(LoginOperation operation) {
            if (operation.HasError || (operation.LoginSuccess == false)) {
                MessageBox.Show(...);
                operation.MarkErrorAsHandled();
                return;
            }

            // Use the resulting User object
            userLabel.Text = "Welcome " + WebContext.Current.User.DisplayName;
        }, null);
}

private void OnLogoutButtonClick(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e) {
    WebContextBase.Current.Authentication.Logout(/* throwOnError */ false);
}

The resulting User object can be used imperatively as shown in the code above, or declaratively via data-bindings.

Using Authentication on the Server

The User object can also be used on the server, for example by other domain services. Here is a snippet of code from the BookShelfService:


[RequiresAuthentication]
public class BookShelfService : LinqToEntitiesDomainServiceEx<BookClubEntities> {
    private User _user;

    public BookShelfService(User user) {
        _user = user;
    }

    public IQueryable<Book> GetBooks() {
        return ObjectContext.Books.Where(b => b.MemberID == _user.MemberID).
                                    OrderByDescending(b => b.AddedDate);
    }

    public override void Initialize(DomainServiceContext context) {
        base.Initialize(context);

        // This allows authorization rules to get access to the current user
        AuthorizationContext customAuthContext =
            new AuthorizationContext(context);
        customAuthContext.Items[typeof(User)] = _user;

        AuthorizationContext = customAuthContext;
    }
}

The domain service has been marked with the authorization rule stating the service requires authentication. Consequently, RIA Services will ensure that there is a valid IPrincipal whenever this service is invoked. However, the service also requires a User object to be passed in into constructor, so it can use it when retrieving shared by the current user, or when initializing an AuthorizationContext to pass along the User in into authorization rules.

In order to pass in custom values through the constructor, one needs to implement a custom DomainServiceFactory. The default one only works for domain services with default parameterless constructors. In the application, I have implemented a simple domain service factory, that uses hardcoded logic, but in a larger application, the general idea is to use an IoC container and call into that from the custom DomainServiceFactory.

internal sealed class DomainServiceFactory : IDomainServiceFactory {
    private IDomainServiceFactory _defaultFactory;

    public DomainServiceFactory(IDomainServiceFactory defaultFactory) {
        _defaultFactory = defaultFactory;
    }

    public DomainService CreateDomainService(Type domainServiceType, DomainServiceContext context) {
        if ((domainServiceType == typeof(BookShelfService)) ||

            (domainServiceType == typeof(BookClubService))) {
            User currentUser =
                Authentication.GetUser<User, AuthenticationService>(context);

            DomainService domainService =
                (DomainService)Activator.CreateInstance(domainServiceType,
                                                        currentUser);
            domainService.Initialize(context);

            return domainService;
        }

        return _defaultFactory.CreateDomainService(domainServiceType, context);
    }

    public void ReleaseDomainService(DomainService domainService) {
        if ((domainService is BookShelfService) ||
            (domainService is BookClubService)) {
            domainService.Dispose();
        }
        else {
            _defaultFactory.ReleaseDomainService(domainService);
        }
    }

    public static void Setup() {
        // Call this from Global.asax.cs in the Application's Start event handler
        if (!(DomainService.Factory is DomainServiceFactory)) {
            DomainService.Factory =
                new DomainServiceFactory(DomainService.Factory);
        }
    }
}

Notice the use of the helper class, Authentication, that allows you to correctly instantiate the authentication service on the server, invoke it and retrieve the User object corresponding to the current authenticated principal. This helper class is in the RIAEssentials framework (link below). The resulting User object is passed in when constructing BookShelfService.

Book Club Data Model

Before we see the actual Authentication service implementation It is worth taking a quick look at the data model behind the Book Club application:




As you see, one of the tables is the Member table. It is intrinsically tied to various other tables by virtue of multiple associations. It also contains information about the user, such as display name, last login date, joined date etc. As such, I'd like my authentication implementation to use this Member table from my data model directly.

The User Object

One of the key things to think about in your application is what constitutes the User object than spans across client and server. What is the state you want to expose to the client for visualization purposes, and what is the state you want to have quick access to within the context of an authenticated session? These are the questions to ask.


The UserBase object provides the ability to track Name and Roles. The User object in the application is defined as follows to add additional properties:

public class User : UserBase {
    public string DisplayName { get; set; }
    public int MemberID { get; set; }
}

I added DisplayName, so it can be used on the client in the UI. I also added the MemberID, so this information can be used on the server on subsequent requests (for example, when doing authorization to ensure a user can only update a book they own - see the authorization post for that example). The User object will be populated from the Member entity from the data model.

Implementing Authentication

Authentication builds on the same domain services infrastructure you use to define your operations/tasks in your application. There are two approaches to implementing authentication:

1. Derive from the out-of-box AuthenticationService base class. This provides a default implementation that leverages the asp.net membership, roles and profile infrastructure.

2. Implement IAuthentication on your domain service and do whatever you like based on your unique scenarios when implementing Login, Logout and other methods of the interface. This is especially useful if you're not using the asp.net infrastructure services or want to use some custom auth mechanism.

In my case, I want to use my own DAL and its notion of members, so I am going to build my own custom authentication service. However, I don't really want to implement the intricacies of forms authentication, which aren't specific to my application, such as setting up HTTP cookies. I only want to write the parts that interact with my data model (very much in spirit with the rest of RIA Services - focus on your application logic, and not the on-wire or service plumbing).

I am going to use a base class called FormsAuthenticationService which implements the guts of forms authentication, and is provided as part of the RIAEssentials framework, that you can easily reuse in your own applications. With that handy base class, here is all I have to do is implement ValidateCredentials, and produce a valid User object using my data model:

[EnableClientAccess]
public class AuthenticationService : FormsAuthenticationService<User> {

    protected override User ValidateCredentials(string name, string password, string customData) {
        User user = null;
        using (BookClubEntities bookClubObjectContext = new BookClubEntities()) {
            Member member =
                bookClubObjectContext.Members.Where(m => m.MemberAlias == name).
                                              FirstOrDefault();

            if ((member != null) &&
                Authentication.ValidatePassword(password, member.PasswordHash)) {
                user = new User() {
                    Name = name,
                    MemberID = member.MemberID,
                    DisplayName = member.MemberName
                };

                if (member.LoginDate != DateTime.UtcNow.Date) {
                    member.LoginDate = DateTime.UtcNow.Date;
                    bookClubObjectContext.SaveChanges();
                }
            }
        }

        return user;
    }
}

Also note how the validation method tracks the last login date, which is something that is captured within the data model.

In the initial version of the Book Club app, the code was [incorrectly] storing passwords in the database. In reality it was a detail that I had yet to get to. Since I am now writing about authentication, I have fixed this. The database stores password hashes, rather than passwords in clear text. This required a small schema update, so you'll need to recreate the database and run the BookClub.sql SQL script before you run the code.

Any application code that uses the authentication service only depends on the contract defined by IAuthentication (whether it is the server, or the client), giving you freedom to implement what it means to authenticate and produce a User object as you desire.

Authentication over HTTPS

If you use forms authentication or even basic authentication (i.e. anything that transfers a user name/password as clear text from client to server), you would be advised to use HTTPS.

This takes a little bit of setup, i.e. setting up an HTTPS site binding, that goes beyond the scope of this post. However RIA Services makes it easy to declaratively indicate that a particular domain service should only be exposed to the world using a secure endpoint, once you've handled the server configuration.

[EnableClientAccess(RequiresSecureEndpoint = true)]
public class AuthenticationService : FormsAuthenticationService<User> {
}



European Silverlight 4 Hosting :: WCF 4.0 Automatic Formatting with Jquery Ajax

clock October 10, 2011 06:49 by author Scott

at this time I am going to look at Automatic Formatting in WCF 4.0.That is one of the great addition in WCF Web HTTP programming model(WCF RESTful). By using this feature it’s dynamically determine the format for the service operation. Previously, if consumed JSON and XML format for the same operation of the service then must have defined two different operations with explicitly annotated RequestFormat parameter of the WebGetAttribute and WebInvokeAttribute attributes.

For getting json format in WCF 3.5

[OperationContract]
[WebGet(RequestFormat = WebMessageFormat.Json)]
string GetJsonData();

For getting Xml format in WCF 3.5

[OperationContract]

[WebGet(RequestFormat = WebMessageFormat.Xml)]
string GetXmlData();

Now we have option either go with explicit as above or go with new automatic way .By default Automatic format selection is disable due to backwards compatibility and when it’s enabled, it would automatically get the best format in which to return the response. WCF infrastructure actually checks the type which is contained the request messages of Accept Header. The first priorities for media types, if it’s not found in Accept Header than its checks the content-type of the request message and if content-type would not give the suitable response than it would be used default format setting which is defined by RequestFormat parameter of the WebGetAttribute and WebInvokeAttribute attributes and at the last if there is no any default format setting than it would be used value of the DefaultOutgoingResponseFormat property.

1. Priorities of media types in request message’s Accept Header.
2. The content-type of the request message.
3. The default format setting in the operation.
4. The default format setting in the WebHttpBehavior.

Automatic format selection depends on AutomaticFormatSelectionEnabled property. It can be enabled programmatically or using configuration, for getting the clarification I would like to show example of it with Jquery, using  jquery I will be getting the different  format by calling the same operation of the service, for keeping it simple I am enabling the AutomaticFormatSelectionEnabled through standard endpoints, so let’s start it.

First I am going to create an empty web application JqueryWithWCF and hosting it at IIS.



I am going to add following items in the solution.

- WCFService item named 
RestfulService.svc
-
html page named 
jqueryPage.htm
- jquery scripts
file



We have to add System.ServiceModel.Web
 reference for working with WCF RESTful services.



Now let’s look at the
IRestfulService.cs code

namespace WCFRestfulService
{
    [ServiceContract]
    public interface IrestfulService
    {
        [OperationContract]
        [WebGet(UriTemplate = "/data")]
        string GetData();
    }
}

I added ServiceContract attribute at intrface to expose the service and OperationContract attribute for expose the operation out of the world ,now we have to add WebGet attribute with property name UriTemplate=”/data”, it means, it can be called using UriTemplate property name.

Look at the RestfulService.cs code

namespace WCFRestfulService
{
    public class RestfulService : IrestfulService
    {
        public string GetData()
        {
            return "WCF 4.0 has introduced
            a new property \"automaticFormatSelectionEnabled\"";
        }
    }
}

There is nothing special I did, just implemented IRestfulService interface and return a string.

Here is very key part for enabling the Automatic formate, we have Three different ways to enable the automaticFormatSelectionEnabled ,

1. Using Coding with ServiceHost object we can enable it.
2. Using webhttp behavior option
3. Using the standard endpoints

I am going with standard endpoints, because in standard endpoints we don’t need to configure each and every attribute , it has already configured the some attribute build in , so here is the configuration



As we can see in the above, I have commented behavior and serviceHostEnviroment tag, because we don’t need to service metadata and I have add the standard endpoint with “automaticFormatSelectionEnabled” attribute with value true.

That’s it, we have made a restful service and we can get the JSON or XML format by using single operation.

Now we have to put code at jqueryPage.htm page , here is the code of the page

<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
    <title></title>
    <style type="text/css">
        ul{
            border:1px solid black;
            overflow:hidden;
            width:270px;
        }
        li {
            list-style-type:none;
            float:left;
            padding:5px;        
        }
    </style>
    <script src="Scripts/jquery-1.6.1.min.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
    <script type="text/javascript">

        $(function () {

            // javascript object for getting all the jquery objects
            var pageElements = {
                actionButton: $('#btnAction'),
                xmlRadio: $('#rdoXml'),
                jsonRadio: $('#rdoJson'),
                xmlLabel: $('#lblGetXml'),
                jsonLabel: $('#lblGetJson'),
                isXML: true,
                dataTypeValue: 'XML'                
            };

            // set the button value on page load
            SetButtonValue(pageElements.xmlRadio, pageElements.xmlLabel,
                           pageElements.actionButton);

            //click event of xml radio button
            pageElements.xmlRadio.bind('click', function () {
                pageElements.isXML = true;
                SetButtonValue(pageElements.xmlRadio, pageElements.xmlLabel,
                           pageElements.actionButton);
            });

            //click event for json radio button
            pageElements.jsonRadio.bind('click', function () {
                pageElements.isXML = false;
                SetButtonValue(pageElements.jsonRadio, pageElements.jsonLabe
,

                           pageElements.actionButton);
            });

            //click event of the action button
            pageElements.actionButton.bind('click', function () {

                if (!pageElements.isXML) {
                    pageElements.dataTypeValue = 'JSON';
                } else {
                    pageElements.dataTypeValue = 'XML';
                }

                //jquery ajax method for getting the result
                $.ajax({
                    type: 'GET',
                    url: '/WCFRestfulService/RestfulService.svc/data',
                    contentType: 'application/json; charset=utf-8',                    
                    dataType: pageElements.dataTypeValue,
                    processdata: true,
                    success: function (msg) {                        
                        AjaxSuccess(msg, pageElements.isXML);
                    },
                    error: function (msg) {
                        alert(msg.error);
                    }
                });
            });
        });

        //it will call when the ajax hit successful
        function AjaxSuccess(result,isXML) {
            if (isXML) {
                alert($(result).find('string').text());
            } else {
                alert(result);
            }
        }

        //set button value on click on radio buttons
        function SetButtonValue(elem,label,button) {
            var buttonAction = $('#btnAction');
            if (elem.is(':checked')) {
                button.val(label.text());
            }
        }
    </script>
</head>
<body>    
    <div>
        <ul>            
            <li>
                <input type="radio" name="rdobutton" id="rdoXml"
                 value="Get XML" checked="checked" /></li>
            <li id="lblGetXml">Get XML</li>

            <li>
                <input type="radio" name="rdobutton" id="rdoJson"
                 value="Get JSON" /></li>
            <li id="lblGetJson">Get JSON</li>
        </ul>
        <input type="button" id="btnAction" value="" />
    </div>
</body>
</html>

I have created two radio buttons and a input button, when we hit the button it will call the jquery ajax method and check the pageElements.isXML Boolean value, if its false than JSON format called otherwise XML. For getting the proof i am using firebug, here is the result of firebug when we check radio button with Get XML and Get JSON.



I hope so you enjoyed the post . J



European Silverlight 4 Hosting :: How to Use "ClickMode" for Button Control in Silverlight?

clock September 29, 2011 08:10 by author Scott

In this article let us see the different ways of using the property ClickMode for a Button Control in a silverlight application. As usual, open the visual studio and select the silverlight project.

First let us drag three different Button and TextBlock controls to Stack Panel as shown below into MainPage.xaml. Here i used a property
called "ClickMode" for all the three button controls, But the value assigned to it is different.

For the first button i assigned the value Hover to the ClickMode property, It means that the
click event handler takes place whenever the mouse is hovered onto this button.

For the
second button i assigned the value Press to the ClickMode property, It means that the click event handler takes place whenever the mouse is clicked on this button.

For the third button i assigned the value Release to the ClickMode property, It means that the click event handler takes place whenever the mouse is released from this button. 

        <Button x:Name="btn1" Margin ="5" HorizontalAlignment="Left"
            Foreground="Black" Width="320" Click="OnClick1"
            Content="On Mouse Hover this text will appear below"
ClickMode
="Hover" />


        <TextBlock x:Name="text1" Margin ="0,8,0,0" />

        <Button x:Name="btn2" Margin ="5,5,5,5"  HorizontalAlignment="Left"             Foreground="Black" Width="320" Click="OnClick2"
            Content="On Button Press this text will appear below" ClickMode="Press" />

        <TextBlock x:Name="text2" Margin="0,8,0,0" />

<Button x:Name="btn3" Margin ="5,5,5,5" HorizontalAlignment="Left" Click="OnClick3" Width="320" Content="On Button Release this text will appear below" ClickMode="Release"/>

        <TextBlock x:Name="text3" Margin ="0,8,0,0" />

Now I am writing the code for button click events in the MainPage.xaml.cs

public
MainPage()
        {
            InitializeComponent();          

        }
        void OnClick1(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
        {
            btn1.Foreground = new SolidColorBrush(Colors.Blue);
            text1.Text = "On Mouse Hover this text will appear below.";
            text2.Text = "";
            text3.Text = "";
        }

        void OnClick2(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
        {
            btn2.Foreground = new SolidColorBrush(Colors.Green);
            text1.Text = "";
            text2.Text = "On Button Press this text will appear below.";
            text3.Text = "";
        }

        void OnClick3(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
        {
            btn1.Foreground = new SolidColorBrush(Colors.Green);
            btn2.Foreground = new SolidColorBrush(Colors.Blue);
            text1.Text = "";
            text2.Text = "";
            text3.Text = "On Button Release this text will appear below.";
        }

Thats it!!! Just press F5 and see the result. 


The output for the first Button looks like as



The output for the second Button looks like as



Note: For the people who find it difficult to integrate the above
code, I am pasting the complete code here.

MainPage.Xaml:

<UserControl x:Class="SilverlightTest1.MainPage"

    xmlns=http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation
    xmlns:x=http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml
    xmlns:d=http://schemas.microsoft.com/expression/blend/2008
    xmlns:mc=http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/markup-compatibility/2006
   xmlns:sdk=http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation/sdk
    mc:Ignorable="d"
    d:DesignHeight="300" d:DesignWidth="400">

    <StackPanel x:Name="LayoutRoot" Background="White" Margin="10">

        <Button x:Name="btn1" Margin ="5" HorizontalAlignment="Left"
            Foreground="Black" Width="320" Click="OnClick1"
            Content="On Mouse Hover this text will appear below" ClickMode="Hover" />

        <TextBlock x:Name="text1" Margin ="0,8,0,0" />

        <Button x:Name="btn2" Margin ="5,5,5,5"  HorizontalAlignment="Left"
            Foreground="Black" Width="320" Click="OnClick2"
            Content="On Button Press this text will appear below" ClickMode="Press" />

        <TextBlock x:Name="text2" Margin="0,8,0,0" />

<Button x:Name="btn3" Margin ="5,5,5,5" HorizontalAlignment="Left" Click="OnClick3" Width="320" Content="On Button Release this text will appear below" ClickMode="Release"/>

        <TextBlock x:Name="text3" Margin ="0,8,0,0" />

    StackPanel>

UserControl>

MainPage.Xaml.cs:

public MainPage()
        {
            InitializeComponent();           

        }
        void OnClick1(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
        {
            btn1.Foreground = new SolidColorBrush(Colors.Blue);
            text1.Text = "On Mouse Hover this text will appear below.";
            text2.Text = "";
            text3.Text = "";
        }

        void OnClick2(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
        {
            btn2.Foreground = new SolidColorBrush(Colors.Green);
            text1.Text = "";
            text2.Text = "On Button Press this text will appear below.";
            text3.Text = "";

        }

        void OnClick3(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
        {
            btn1.Foreground = new SolidColorBrush(Colors.Green);
            btn2.Foreground = new SolidColorBrush(Colors.Blue);
            text1.Text = "";
            text2.Text = "";
            text3.Text = "On Button Release this text will appear below.";
        }

Happy coding



European WCF Hosting :: Use dataset across WCF service

clock September 16, 2011 06:50 by author Scott

Some times you need to return a set of data from a WCF service and When you are working with ado.net, dataset is the obvious reason you wish at your client side. But passing dataset can make service less interoportable because in that case you are forced to use dataset on your client code. Second point is that dataset might become very bulky as per size of the data grows. Instead, passing dataset we can pass compressed byte array of dataset from WCF service and consume it like a byte array on client end. After Uncompression, either you can convert it into dataset or you can use this XML in any other form you want.

For this, lets first create a WCF service:

[OperationContract]
public byte[] GetEmployee(string BranchId)
{
string sQ = "Select EmpId, EmployeeName from EmployeeMaster";

SqlConnection objConn = new SqlConnection("Data Source=[YourServer];Initial Catalog=[Database];User ID=[UserName];Password=[Password];MultipleActiveResultSets=True");
SqlCommand objCom = new SqlCommand(sQ, objConn);
SqlDataAdapter objDa = new SqlDataAdapter(objCom);
DataSet objDs = new DataSet();
objDa.Fill(objDs);
//Now we'll convert dataset into byte array and compress it using gzStream.
byte[] binaryDataResult = null;
MemoryStream memStream = new MemoryStream();
GZipStream gzStream = new GZipStream(memStream, CompressionMode.Compress);
objDs.WriteXml(gzStream);
binaryDataResult = memStream.ToArray();
gzStream.Close();
memStream.Close();
return binaryDataResult;
}

Here, We are first filling dataset from database then after compression using GZipStream, we are converting it to byte array. At client end we will get this byte array and we'll again follow these steps in reverse order.

ServiceClient s = new ServiceClient();
byte[] btEmployee = (byte[])s.GetEmployee("0");
if (btEmployee != null)
{
MemoryStream mEmployee = new MemoryStream(btEmployee);
GZipStream gStreamEmployee = new GZipStream(mEmployee, CompressionMode.Decompress);
DataSet objDsEmployee = new DataSet();
objDsEmployee.ReadXml(gStreamEmployee);
gStreamEmployee.Close();
gvEmployee.DataSource = objDsEmployee;
gvEmployee.DataBind();
}



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