Develop Reference

Is it possible to have more than one parse client configured in a single app?

So I have a few different parse servers setup.
One server is just to capture error logs from various applications (I have a LOT out there) in nice uniformed database.
So I might have a specific standalone data migration tool that if it encounters an error, will write out the exception into this Error_log parse table/class. No problem there.
But, if I have an app that uses a Parse Database for itself, I have not been able to figure out how to let it work on it's own parse server configuration for it's own stuff, but write out error logs to this other Parse server instance.
Yes... I could go through the trouble of writing out something via the REST api just for writing out logs,but I am I trying to avoid that and stick with native parse APIs for the particular platform I am on because of the benefits that the APIs give over REST (like save eventually for the none .NET stuff).
EDIT
Some clarification was requested so here I go...
On the app side of things (c# for this example but the same holds true for iOS etc)… I do the usual initialization of the Parse client as such …
ParseClient.Initialize(new ParseClient.Configuration
{
ApplicationId = "MyAppID",
WindowsKey = "MyDotNetKey",
Server = "www.myparseserver.com/app1"
});
So for all calls to save a parse object go through that parse client connection
But what I need to do would be something like this ….
//Main App cloud database
ParseClient1.Initialize(new ParseClient.Configuration
{
ApplicationId = "MyAppID",
WindowsKey = "MyDotNetKey",
Server = "www.myparseserver.com/app1"
});
ParseClient2.Initialize(new ParseClient.Configuration
{
ApplicationId = "MyAppID",
WindowsKey = "MyDotNetKey",
Server = "www.myparseserver.com/errorcollection"
});
try{
ParseConfig config = null;
config = await ParseConfig.GetAsync().ParseClient1;
} catch (Exception ex){
ParseObject MyError = new ParseObject("Error_Log");
MyError["Application"] = "My First App-App2";
MyError["Error"] = ex.message;
await MyError.Save().ParseClient2;
}
Yes - this is all fake code... my point is I want to be able to have multiple ParseClient instances in one app.
Now... I can simply write a routine that writes out errors that resets the ParseClient.Initialization to the error parse server instance and then redo it back to the original (primary app data) instance when it's done... but that is just asking for trouble in a multi threaded environment and will cause conflicts if some other thread in the app goes to write out parse data right at the moment the error method resets the init.
If ParseClient were IDisposable I could probably do that using :
ParseClient ParseErrorServer = new ParseClient();
ParseErrorServer.ApplicationId = "hmmm";
ParseErrorServer.WindwosKey= "hmmm";
ParseErrorServer.Server= "www.hmmm.com/errorcollection";
using ParseErrorServer {
//Do The Work
}
Is that clear as mud yet? ;P

Without alteration I believe none of the Parse SDKs have the ability to initialise multiple instances.
In the iOS SDK for example, is possible to make a new instance (say with a different server url) upon restarting the app but you cannot have multiple. There has also been discussion on the iOS SDK about being able to change the configuration without restart but no one has implemented this yet.
We would happily review a PR for this, however it would require a major and complex overhaul as you would have to manage cache, users etc across multiple instances.

XML-RPC .NET call with associative array

I'm trying to perform some actions on a remote server using the XML-RPC .NET library and C#. I have no prior experience using this protocol but most examples seemed pretty straight forward. But the server I'm trying to communicate with seems to parse commands slightly different than most examples I've seen.
All calls are made using a 'perform_actions' function and it expects a list of action(s) along side with it as parameter. Fortunately there's a pretty decent documentation with some code samples included but these examples are done in Ruby/Perl with which I have no experience. I've tried translating these to C# with which I believe I'm on the right path but I'm consistently getting the error"Server returned a fault exception: [400] Invalid request: expected list of actions."
My current code
[XmlRpcUrl("https://DOMAIN/admin/rpc")]
public interface iFace : IXmlRpcProxy
{
[XmlRpcMethod("perform_actions")]
XmlRpcStruct[] perform_actions(XmlRpcStruct struc);
}
public void GetData()
{
XmlRpcStruct actions = new XmlRpcStruct();
actions.Add("name", "registrations.accounts.list");
iFace proxy = XmlRpcProxyGen.Create<iFace>();
proxy.Credentials = new NetworkCredential("USERNAME", "PASSWORD");
XmlRpcStruct[] response = proxy.perform_actions(actions);
}
And here is a Ruby example from the API documentation which I was trying to replicate which is functional
require 'xmlrpc/client'
url = 'https://user:passwd#qmanage.example.com/admin/rpc'
c = XMLRPC::Client.new_from_uri(url)
# Call the action to list the access groups.
ags = c.call('perform_actions', [{
'name' => 'network.accessgroups.list',
'args' => {}
}])
The server doesn't really seem to recognize the XmlRpcStruct I'm sending as the error seems to complain about not receiving a list of actions. (I receive the same error if I send no parameter). However if I change the XmlRpcStruct to a regular string array it will complain about expecting a struct instead so the data isn't ignored entirely.
Is anyone able to help me in the right direction with my problem or does anyone know why this error is returned?

Finally managed to figure out my dilemma. Seems I had to pass an array of XmlRpcStruct's rather than just singular XmlRpcStruct, the following solved my problem:
XmlRpcStruct[] actions = new XmlRpcStruct[1];
XmlRpcStruct action = new XmlRpcStruct();
action.Add("name", "registrations.accounts.list");
actions[0] = action;
I just passed actions as parameter to the perform_actions function.

cXML PunchOutSetupRequest and PunchOutSetupResponse examples in C#

I'm trying to implement punchout catalogs on our eComm site. Honestly, the documentation for cXML is a mess and all the code examples are in javascript and/or VB.Net (I use C# and would rather not have to try and translate). Does anyone out there have examples or samples of how to receive the PunchOutSetupRequest XML and then send out the PunchOutSetupResponse XML using C#? I've been unable to find anything on the interwebs (I've been looking for two days now)...
I'm hoping I can just do this inside an ActionResult (vs. a 'launch page' as suggested).
I'm a complete noob at punchouts and could really use some help here. The bosses are being pretty pushy, so any assistance would be greatly appreciated. Suggestions as to how to make this work would also be much appreciated.
I apologize to all for the vagueness of the question (request).

This isn't trivial, but this should get you started.
You'll need 3 generic handlers (.ashx): Setup, Start, and Order....
Setup and Order will receive HTTP Post with content-type of "text/xml". Look at HttpRequest.InputStream if needed to get the XML into a string. From there, look at LINQ-to-XML to dig out the data you want. Your HTTP Response to both of these will also be content-type "text/xml" and UTF8 encoded, returning the CXML as documented...use LINQ-to-XML to produce that.
The Setup handler will need to validate credentials and return a URL with a unique QueryString token pointing to the Start handler. Do not expect session persistence between Setup and Start, because they're not from the same caller. This handler will need to create an application object for the token and associated data you extracted from the cXML.
The Start handler will be called as a simple GET, and will need to match the token in the QueryString to the appropriate application object, copy that data to the session, and then do a response.redirect to whatever page in your site you want the buyer to land on.
Once they populate their cart with some things, and are ready to check out, you'll take them to a page that has an embedded form (not to be confused with an ASP.Net form that posts back to your server) and a submit button (again, not an ASP.Net button). From your Setup handler, you captured a URL to point this form's Post, and within the form you'll have a hidden input tag with the UTF8 encoded CXML Punchout Order injected as the value produced with LINQ-to-XML. Highly recommend Base64 encoding that value to avoid ASP.Net messing with the tags it contains during rendering, and naming the hidden input "cxml-base64" per the documentation. The result is the form is client-side POSTed to your customer's server instead of yours, and their server will extract the CXML Punchout Order and that ends your visitor's session.
The Order handler will receive a CXML OrderRequest and just like Setup, you'll dump that to a string and then use LINQ-to-XML to parse it and act upon it. Again you'll get credentials to verify, possibly a credit card to process, and the order items, ship-to, etc. Note that the OrderRequest may not contain all the items that were in the Punchout Order, because the system on your customer's side may remove items or even change item quantities before submitting the final OrderRequest to you. The OrderRequest could come back to you after the Punchout Order is posted to them in a matter of minutes, days, weeks, or never...don't bother storing the cart data in hopes of matching it to the order later.
Last note...the buyer may be experiencing your site in an iframe embedded in their web-based procurement UI, so design accordingly.
If you need more info, reply to this and I'll get back.
Update...Additional considerations:
Discuss with the buyer how they want fault handling to flow, particularly with orders, because you have a choice. 1) exhaustively evaluate everything in the CXML you receive and return response codes other than 200 if anything is wrong, or 2) always return a 200 Success and deal with any issues out of band or by generating a ConfirmationRequest that rejects the order. My experience is that a mix of the two works best. Certainly you should throw a non-200 if the credentials fail, but you may not want (or be able) to run a credit card or validate stock availability inline. Your buyer's system may not be able to cope with dozens of possible faults, and/or may not show your fault messages to the user for them to make corrections. I've seen systems that will flat-out discard any non-200 response code and just blindly retry the submission repeatedly on an interval for hours or days until it gives up on a sanity check, while others will handle response codes within certain ranges differently than others, for example a 4xx invokes a retry, while a 5xx is treated as fatal. Remember that Setup and Order are not coming directly from the user...their procurement system is generating those internally.
Update...answering the comment about how to test things...
You'd use the same method as you will for generating outbound ConfirmationRequest, ShipNoticeRequest, and InvoiceDetailRequest, all of which generally are produced on your side after receiving an OrderRequest from your customer's procurement system.
Start with Linq-To-XML for an example of crafting your outgoing cXML (Creating XML Trees section). Combine that example with this bit of code:
StringBuilder output = new StringBuilder();
XmlWriterSettings objXmlWriterSettings = new XmlWriterSettings();
objXmlWriterSettings.Indent = true;
objXmlWriterSettings.NewLineChars = Environment.NewLine;
objXmlWriterSettings.NewLineHandling = NewLineHandling.Replace;
objXmlWriterSettings.NewLineOnAttributes = false;
objXmlWriterSettings.Encoding = new UTF8Encoding();
using (XmlWriter objXmlWriter = XmlWriter.Create(output, objXmlWriterSettings)) {
XElement root = new XElement("Root",
new XElement("Child", "child content")
);
root.Save(objXmlWriter);
}
Console.WriteLine(output.ToString());
So at this point the StringBuilder (output) has your whole cXML, and you need to POST it someplace. Your Web Application project, started with F5 and a default.aspx page will be listening on localhost and some port (you'll see that in the URL it opens). Separately, perhaps using VS Express for Desktop, you have the above code in a console app that you can run to do the Post using something like this:
Net.HttpWebRequest objRequest = Net.WebRequest.Create("http://localhost:12345/handler.ashx");
objRequest.Method = "POST";
objRequest.UserAgent = "Some User Agent";
objRequest.ContentLength = output.Length;
objRequest.ContentType = "text/xml";
IO.StreamWriter objStreamWriter = new IO.StreamWriter(objRequest.GetRequestStream, System.Text.Encoding.ASCII);
objStreamWriter.Write(output);
objStreamWriter.Flush();
objStreamWriter.Close();
Net.WebResponse objWebResponse = objRequest.GetResponse();
XmlReaderSettings objXmlReaderSettings = new XmlReaderSettings();
objXmlReaderSettings.DtdProcessing = DtdProcessing.Ignore;
XmlReader objXmlReader = XmlReader.Create(objWebResponse.GetResponseStream, objXmlReaderSettings);
// Pipes the stream to a higher level stream reader with the required encoding format.
IO.MemoryStream objMemoryStream2 = new IO.MemoryStream();
XmlWriter objXmlWriter2 = XmlWriter.Create(objMemoryStream2, objXmlWriterSettings);
objXmlWriter2.WriteNode(objXmlReader, true);
objXmlWriter2.Flush();
objXmlWriter2.Close();
objWebResponse.Close();
// Reset current position to the beginning so we can read all below.
objMemoryStream2.Position = 0;
StreamReader objStreamReader = new StreamReader(objMemoryStream2, Encoding.UTF8);
Console.WriteLine(objStreamReader.ReadToEnd());
objStreamReader.Close();
Since your handler should be producing cXML you'll see that spat out in the console. If it pukes, you'll get a big blob of debug mess in the console, which of course will help you fix whatever is broken.
pardon the verbosity in the variable names, done to try to make things clear.

Web Service capture Response

My web service calls a url which returns a value which I must capture and use in a different function.
I've only recently starting working with web services and am very new to the concept of calling a url within a web service (Previously asked and answered on this forum for those requiring more information)
Webservice method to call a url
My web service is: Insurance Service.
My client sends me data through the Insurance service which calls a url which returns an Insurance Number.
How do I capture this insurance number? I thought I could use session to capture it but I was so wrong insurance Number comes as null with an object reference error.
int insuranceNo;
insuranceNo = Convert.ToInt16(HttpContext.Current.Session["insuranceNo"]);
It must have something to do with response right?
I thought I could try google what I am looking for but I honestly don't know what to call this in order to search for it. Thought I'd give it another shot in this forum since I found the answer to the first part of this function here.
code to call url:
string url = string.Format("www.insuranceini.com/insurance.asp?fileno1={0},&txtfileno2={1‌​}&username={2}&userid={3}&dteinsured={4}&dteDob={5}&InsurerName={6}", txtfileno1, txtfileno2, username, userid, dteinsured,dteDob,InsurerName)
WebRequest request = HttpWebRequest.Create(url);
using(WebResponse response = request.GetResponse())
{
using(StreamReader reader = new StreamReader(response.GetResponseStream()))
{
string urlText = reader.ReadToEnd();
//Do whatever you need to do
}
}
I would be grateful for any sort of pointers or places to start looking or any advice.

Code began giving different errors. Closing this and referring to : Datetime Conversion and Parsing
Thank you everyone for the helpful comments.

Need some help with code for getting a response from a Web service. Can you help me connect the dots?

Ok, its been a while since I've worked with a Web References. I need a refresher. I think I have about 80% of the code I need to get a response going but I'm missing something. Maybe you can help me :)
Given:
A web method called GetSomething in the list of methods when pointing to a .wsdl url.
This produces a few classes/objects:
GetSomethingRequest
GetSomethingCompletedEventHandler
GetSomethingCompletedEventArgs
myComplexType
Which I use to create this code:
void someMethodToTestResponse()
{
GetSomethingRequest request = new GetSomethingRequest();
// fill in the request
request.myComplexType.Property1 = "Blah";
request.myComplexType.Property2 = "Kachoo";
GetSomethingCompletedEventHandler handler = GetSomethingCompleted_Response;
//.... ok now what?
//handler.Invoke(???)
// at this point I'm supposed to send an object for source (request maybe?)
// and a new instance of GetSomethingCompletedEventArgs but that class is
// asking for stuff that makes me think that is not the right idea.
}
void GetSomethingCompleted_Response(object source, GetSomethingCompletedEventArgs args)
{
// get the result
var result = args.Result;
}
What am I doing wrong? What am I missing? Thanks in advance.

You don't need web service source codes. The web service can be implemented in Java. Creating service reference woks the same, as we really don't know what is on the other side.
So, try Add Service Reference in VS2008 and enter the url to working web service. VS will examine the wsdl on server and generate needed classes for you.
From than on, you just call the service as some ordinary method call. Meaning you don't have to fiddle with requests and http and such details. All that is hidden from you. Except in app.config where many WCF settings can be changed.

Ok, I figured out that I needed to find a Service type class. See this SO Post where it mentions:
private com.nowhere.somewebservice ws;
The issue was that the class they provide wasn't intellisensing for me and I figured it wasn't what I was looking for.
Here is how I would solve my problem:
blah.webservice.SomeMainServiceClass service = new SomeMainServiceClass();
GetSomethingRequest request = new GetSomethingRequest();
// fill in the request
request.myComplexType.Property1 = "Blah";
request.myComplexType.Property2 = "Kachoo";
object myResponse = service.GetSomething(request);