This is so outrages.
Try showing a boolean value in HTML and it won’t show!
<input type="text" id="isNotificationRead" value="@Model.is_read" />
Instead, you’ll get ‘value’ if true and empty if false.
Frankly, I don’t know if this is related to MVC.NET or it’s genuinely a HTML problem. Anyway, to solve this add toString().
<input type="text" id="isNotificationRead" value="@Model.is_read.ToString()" />
Voilà, problem solved!
I wanted simply to change the default registration/login attributes from UserId & Username to other attributes. The project I’m working on had customized ID related to the customer’s company and for the other attribute I wanted to use a simple Id as a primary key for the UserProfile Table.
Steps:
[Table("UserProfile")]
public class UserProfile
{
[Key]
[DatabaseGeneratedAttribute(DatabaseGeneratedOption.Identity)]
public int Id { get; set; }
public string CompanyId { get; set; }
public string FirstName { get; set; }
public string LastName { get; set; }
public string DeviceNumber { get; set; }
}
For example:
[Required]
[Display(Name = "Company ID")]
public string CompanyId { get; set; }</code>
[Required]
[DataType(DataType.Password)]
[Display(Name = "Password")]
public string Password { get; set; }
[Display(Name = "Remember me?")]
public bool RememberMe { get; set; }
I wanted the user to login by his Company ID so I changed the unneeded UserName to CompanyID, same with registration.
Login example:
<ul>
<li>@Html.LabelFor(m => m.CompanyId)
@Html.TextBoxFor(m => m.CompanyId)
@Html.ValidationMessageFor(m => m.CompanyId)</li>
<li>@Html.LabelFor(m => m.Password)
@Html.PasswordFor(m => m.Password)
@Html.ValidationMessageFor(m => m.Password)</li>
<li>@Html.CheckBoxFor(m => m.RememberMe)
@Html.LabelFor(m => m.RememberMe, new { @class = "checkbox" })</li>
</ul>
if (ModelState.IsValid && WebSecurity.Login(model.CompanyID, model.Password, persistCookie: model.RememberMe))
{
return RedirectToLocal(returnUrl);
}
Changed UserId to CompanyId.
That’s it. Happy coding!
El7a2 is an Android application that provides user with the latest offers and discounts by various set of brands and restaurants in different categories.
Technologies & Tools used:
Libraries used:
Current features:
Future thoughts for the App:
Truth is, I learned a lot and I enjoyed a lot developing El7a2.
I was so excited about WebApi when I first heard about and immediately decided that my next SOA project should be implemented using it. But later on I was so frustrated when it came to publishing my service and spent like 2 weeks trying to figure out what’s wrong.
Publishing on IIS:
Seriously, what’s wrong with publishing on IIS? I added a custom action in my controller and almost tried everything yet it kept giving me the 404 error.
Here’s what I’ve tried so far after some googling:
[ActionName("api/Offers/brands/{brandID}")]
routes.MapHttpRoute(
name: "GetOffersByBrandID",
routeTemplate: "api/Offers/brands/{brandID}",
defaults: new { category = RouteParameter.Optional, controller = "Offers", action = "GetOffersByBrandID" }
);
<modules runAllManagedModulesForAllRequests="true">
Unfortunately, none of the above proposals worked and I never managed to call my custom action from my domain or through IIS browsing and it only kept giving me the lovely 404 screen.
To save my project I had to step back to and rebuild my service using WCF. However, I won’t stop looking for a solution.
In the previous post, I discussed how to consume a WCF service from an Android client. In this post I’m going to explain how to pass parameters from the client to the methods exposed in the service and then receive the data intended.
The parameters are passed through the URL, so we need to add a new method with a modified UriTemplate: On IPersonService interface add method GetPersonsDataJSONByID():
[WebGet(UriTemplate = "/personsdataJSONByID?ID={id}",
ResponseFormat = WebMessageFormat.Json)]
[OperationContract]
Person GetPersonsDataJSONByID(int id);
The personsdataJSONByID?ID={id} annotation will allow us to pass ID to the method through the service URL. On PersonService.svc.cs add GetPersonsDataJSONByID implementation:
Person GetPersonsDataJSONByID(int id)
{
Person p1 = new Person();
p1.ID = 1;
p1.Name = "Mina";
Person p2 = new Person();
p2.ID = 2;
p2.Name = "John";
Person p3 = new Person();
p3.ID = 3;
p3.Name = "Paula";
List persons = new List();
persons.Add(p1);
persons.Add(p2);
persons.Add(p3);
return persons[id – 1];
}
Same as GetPersonsDataJSON(),GetPersonsDataJSONByID() creates a list of persons on the fly, yet this time we’ll only return the person with the ID passed. Now let’s run and send ID = 2 through the URL: 
Now on the client modify the UI to let the user enters an ID:
New UI
Now, not much modification needed, when button GetDataByID is clicked, append the parameter and the value to the URL before executing:
EditText etID = (EditText)findViewById(R.id.etID);
int id = Integer.getInteger(etID.getText().toString());
StringBuilder strB = new StringBuilder();
strB.append(URL);
strB.append("byID?ID=");
strB.append(id);
And the output is:
Happy Coding 😉
In this post I’m going to explain how would you consume a WCF service published on IIS on your local machine from an Android app on a device connected to local WiFi.
Before we start 3 prerequisites are needed:
HOWEVER, I always believe in upside knowledge gain in software development; just try to code something even of you don’t understand much about .. you’ll get the big picture later.
Let’s start!
The service we’re building is a very simple one. It will provide some data about people ( just ID’s and Names).
Factory ="System.ServiceModel.Activation.WebServiceHostFactory"
Congratulations we now have a REST service, let’s start to make it useful for anything!
On IPersonsService.cs, you’ll find the Interface which will expose our methods and a class which acts as a data contract:
Rename the class to Person, remove the existing fields and add ID and Name Fields. It should look like this:
[DataContract]
public class Person
{
int id;
string name;
[DataMember]
public int ID
{
get { return id; }
set { id = value; }
}
[DataMember]
public string Name
{
get { return name; }
set { name = value; }
}
}
Next, clean everything at the interface “IPersonService” and add a GetPersonsDataJSON() method that returns a list of persons:
[ServiceContract]
public interface IPersonService
{
[WebGet(UriTemplate="/personsdataJSON",
ResponseFormat=WebMessageFormat.Json)]
[OperationContract]
List GetPersonsDataJSON();
}
Notice the “WebGet” annotation above the method, this actually says 2 things:
If we needed to provide data in XML format for some reason instead, we would add a new method to the IPersonService interface called GetPersonsDataXML() with UriTemplate=”/personsdataXML” & ResponseFormat=WebMessageFormat.XML.
One step for the end, on PersonService.svc.cs inherit the IPersonsService and implement the GetPersonsDataJSON method. Should look like this:
public class PersonService : IPersonService
{
public List GetPersonsDataJSON()
{
Person p1 = new Person();
p1.ID = 1;
p1.Name = "Mina";
Person p2 = new Person();
p2.ID = 2;
p2.Name = "John";
Person p3 = new Person();
p3.ID = 3;
p3.Name = "Paula";
List persons = new List();
persons.Add(p1);
persons.Add(p2);
persons.Add(p3);
return persons;
}
}
And the service is ready!
This should be the easiest part: Right click on your project –> Properties –> Web –> select Use Local IIS Web Server and make sure Use IIS Express is unmarked then press Create Virtual Directory:
Web tab on project properties
Note: You should be running Visual Studio as Administrator to be able to create the publish the service on IIS.
Now open IIS Manager, the service should be under Sites/Default Web Site .. Right click on it –> Manage Application –> Browse. You should see your project listing opened on your browser. Add /PersonService.svc/personsdataJSON to the path, so it should be:
http://localhost/PersonService/PersonService.svc/personsdataJSON
And the data should be returned on JSON format:
JSON formatted data
Note: Make sure to grant full control permission for IIS_IUSRS on the Web.config from properties & also on the PersonsService application on IIS through: Right click –> Edit Permissions –> Security tab.
UI: Well this is just a simple example to prove the concept, so let’s keep it simple. Here are the views:
It should look something like this:
Client UI
As for the client logic there are 3 main components:
1- Initialization:
HttpClient client; final static String URL = "http://192.168.1.6/RPersonService/PersonService.svc/personsdata"; JSONObject json;
Inside the onCreate method place:
client = new DefaultHttpClient();
2- Getting the Data:
Now add another method and call it getPersonsData(). This method will do the following:
Code:
public JSONArray getPersonsData() throws ClientProtocolException, IOException, JSONException
{
HttpGet get = new HttpGet(URL);
HttpResponse response = client.execute(get);
int status = response.getStatusLine().getStatusCode();
if(status == 200) //sucess
{
HttpEntity e = response.getEntity();
String data = EntityUtils.toString(e);
JSONArray personsData = new JSONArray(data);
return personsData;
}
else
{
Toast.makeText(this, "error", Toast.LENGTH_SHORT);
return null;
}
}
3- Extending AsyncTask to work asynchronously:
Add a new class called ReadData and set it to extend AsyncTask class. AsyncTask class let’s us generically specify the data structure we’re going to convert the JSONarray to, here we’ll use an ArrayList<String>.
Code:
public class ReadData extends AsyncTask<String, Integer, ArrayList>
{
@Override
protected void onPostExecute(ArrayList data) {
ArrayAdapter arrayAdapter =
new ArrayAdapter(getApplicationContext(),android.R.layout.simple_list_item_1, data);
lstView.setAdapter(arrayAdapter);
super.onPostExecute(data);
}
@Override
protected ArrayList doInBackground(String... params) {
try {
JSONArray personsNames = getPersonsData();
ArrayList persons = new ArrayList();
for(int i=0; i< personsNames.length(); i++)
{
persons.add(personsNames.getJSONObject(i).getString("Name"));
}
return persons;
} catch (ClientProtocolException e) {
// TODO Auto-generated catch block
e.printStackTrace();
} catch (IOException e) {
// TODO Auto-generated catch block
e.printStackTrace();
} catch (JSONException e) {
// TODO Auto-generated catch block
e.printStackTrace();
}
return null;
}
}
ReadData class contains two overridden functions:
Notice that the returned data type from doInBackground must match with the data type of the parameter passed to the OnPostExecute method.
At the button click event of button Get Data we will use the ReadData class as follows:
new ReadData().execute();
One last thing, on AndroidManifest.xml add this line which will give permission to the app to use the internet/WiFi:
<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.INTERNET"/>
Now disable your Windows firewall, Run & press Get Data!:
Your android client is consuming your WCF service!
Happy Coding! 🙂
BTranslator is a WPF application that translates text using Bing translator via Bing API 2.0. Bing API provides translation (as well as other services) using 3 data exchange protocols: JSON, Xml & SOAP.
BTranslator let’s the user chooses between the three protocols.
BTranslatorLib consists of three classes JSONTranslator, XmlTranslator & SOAPTranslator. They all implement IProtocol interface which has one function called Translate.
Translate takes 3 parameters: Text to translate, from language & to language and then uses these parameters according to the protocol’s structure.
Download BTranslator – 694 KB
*Further explanation might follow
Lately I became interested in C++ so much .. I started reading from where we stopped at college and also started learning some related technologies like C++/CLI & MFC which are used to develop windows applications using C++.
Anyway, this one of the simplest applications that you would do if you’re a C++/CLI beginner ( may be with some C# windows programming background)
Open your Visual Studio -> New Project -> Visual C++ -> Windows Forms Application
This looks pretty much like C#, the same controls on the toolbox & the same initial form .. even if you pressed Right Click -> View Code, you’ll find the same stuff that you find in C# forms except that the designer code & the code you’re going to write are on the same file.
Now go to the toolbox & and grab a Menu Strip then add 3 buttons & a TextBox inside it The user should enter the Url in the TextBox .. and then press Go To .. We’ll also have Forward & Back buttons.
Then add a web browser control under the Menu Strip .. It should look something like this:
Now let’s add some functionality for this .. Double Click on the Go To button and inside the click event handler write:
webBrowser1->Navigate(txtUrl->Text);
The Navigate function takes the text written in the textbox & ‘navigates’ to it.
Pause: Selection Operator (->):
>Now you might want to ask about the difference between the selection operator (->) & the dot (.) which is also used to access public members/functions of a class.
Well, it’s simple .. assume that we have class Student & that we created these instances:
Student stud
Student *studPtr = &stud;
Student &studRef = stud;
So we have stud (an object of Student), studPtr (a pointer to a Student object)
& studRef (a reference to a Student object)..
Assume further that Student has a Name which is a public member..
So if you want to access Name in the three cases this would be:
stud.Name = “name1”;
studPtr->Name = “name2”;
studRef.Name = “name3”;
That is, when you’re accessing public class members/functions of pointers to objects you use -> while a dot (.) is used if you’re dealing with an instance or a reference to an object of a class .. easy!
Back to our browser:
Do the same double click with the Forward/Backward buttons to create their event handlers ..
We’ll just call the GoBack() & GoForwad() functions found inside the webBrowser1
Browse!
Now let’s run and start some browsing ..
Yesterday, We made our first rehearsal for the Xna workshop we’re preparing to present in COMPASS’10 … hmm .. I think things went well..
I can’t really remember how it started with Xna and who exactly told me about it .. nah .. this is out of my memory range! .. though I think it was around the end of the second semester in third year .. yeah probably that’s when I started to read about it ..
One of the main reasons I got into FCIS was game development .. this one question:” How do they make these games?” kept flowing all the way .. this is also why I’ve chosen SC 😉
I don’t mind working with OpenGl or DirectX at all .. even though OpenGl was disastrous last year! .. It’s just that I nearly taught myself everything about Xna and that was completely new to me .. I’ve been interested in enhancing my technical skills!!
Anyway .. We still have too much work to do preparing the workshop .. I hope things go right!
Mina Fayek 