Develop Reference

Accessing a local instance of the bot framework using DirectLine

I have a bot (basically a clone of the echo bot) and I'm running the service locally. Is it possible to use the Direct Line API to access it (I'm using the NuGet package: Microsoft.Bot.Connector.DirectLine), and I'm trying to access it like this:
DirectLineClient client = new DirectLineClient();
client.BaseUri = new Uri($"http://localhost:3978/api/messages");
var conversation = await client.Conversations.StartConversationAsync().ConfigureAwait(false);
However, conversation is always null. Is it possible to connect to the service locally, or does it have to be deployed to Azure? If the former, then what could I be doing wrong?
Any help would be appreciated.

The Offline-directline package is a way to set up a node server and use directline/webchat to connect to it as if it were a azure endpoint.
You're basically going to follow the usage instructions as they're laid out:
1) Install offline-directline (OD) package
2) Create the OD server using node
3) Run your bot
4) Connect to your bot through a custom webchat that looks to the OD server from step 2 instead of localhost or an azure endpoint

Cannot use r.net within a wcf service

I am trying to set up an R.net WCF service as a server to run R commands on.
I have set up a test WinForms application where everything works.
This is how I use it:
void init()
{
SetupPath()
engine = REngine.GetInstanceFromID("test");
if (engine == null) engine = REngine.CreateInstance("test");
engine.Initialize();
}
...
results.Add(engine.Evaluate(command).AsCharacter().ToArray());
I created an equivalent WCF service which should work exactly the same;
REngine.CreateInstance() returns a valid REngine object,
engine.Initialize() silently crashes my service. Try-Catch section is ignored so I cannot see what exactly is happening.
What is the correct way to use R.net within a WCF service?
What could be the reason of different behaviours?
Where can I see detailed logs of the crash?
Service calls which don't use R.net complete successfully.
Both winforms test application and WCF service are 64 bit (i need them to be). (I did not manage to set up a 64-bit IIS express application, so am using IIS instead).

I did not manage to find the reason of the problem, however, switching to R.NET.Community package did the trick.

Windows Azure In-Role Caching Exception issue

I am getting this exception :-
ErrorCode:SubStatus:There is a temporary failure. Please retry later. (One or more specified cache servers are
unavailable, which could be caused by busy network or servers. For
on-premises cache clusters, also verify the following conditions.
Ensure that security permission has been granted for this client
account, and check that the AppFabric Caching Service is allowed
through the firewall on all cache hosts. Also the MaxBufferSize on the
server must be greater than or equal to the serialized object size
sent from the client.). Additional Information : The client was trying
to communicate with the server: net.tcp://RoleName:24233.
I have followed this :- Documentation and there are lots of questions and article there but they are little bit old.
Client creation :-
var cacheFactory = new DataCacheFactory();
_cacheClient = (string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(cacheName))
? cacheFactory.GetDefaultCache() : cacheFactory.GetCache(cacheName);
WebConfig :-
<dataCacheClients>
<dataCacheClient name="default" >
<autoDiscover isEnabled="true" identifier="RoleName" />
</dataCacheClient>
Retry Policy :- It is inbuild now DataCacheFactory with interval of 1 minute and 60 recount.
I have latest nuget packages like Windows.azure.caching with version 2.5. So does anybody has solved this problem recently. i am quite a stuck here. any help is appreciated.

After hit and trial we have found that you should have the latest versions of both Windows Azure Tools and Windows Azure Cache libraries. What you can do is just install the latest Windows.Azure.Cache and then go to you publish azure settings project. Right click go to Properties => Application tab then upgrade the Windows Azure tools to latest version. And now everything will work like a charm :)
Hope it will save someone else day :)

Appwarp - Connection Resiliency

I'm currently implementing connection resiliency for a windows phone game following this documentation: Appwarp Connection Resiliency.
I can't seem to access the RecoverConnection API or any of the Connect Event Result Codes related to Connection Resiliency (SUCCESS_RECOVERED, CONNECTION_ERROR_RECOVERABLE, etc) in the ConnectionRequestListener in my project.
Looking at the AppWarp_WP7_SDK.dll in my project it doesnt seem to contain these API calls. I'm using the .dll downloaded from Appwarp Windows SDK. Anyone know has the .dll changed? Have they been removed from the latest version?
Cheers,
xDev

Please take our latest dll from below link
https://github.com/shephertz/AppWarp_WP7_SDK_DLL
We have also one sample game "Catapult War" in which we have implemented Connection Resiliency feature.Find it from below link
https://github.com/rahulpshephertz/CatapultWar
At the time of initialization don't forget to set recovery allowance.
WarpClient.setRecoveryAllowance(60);

WCF Data Service 5.6 quick start

I have been trying to get a WCF Data Service server working for a few days now.
I finally backed off today and just tried to do exactly what the quick-start shows.. nothing else.. and in completely fresh project. Surely that would work.
But it didn't.. it failed the same way as my other tests.
I am just following along with this example. Using Visual Studio 2013 for Web express and the hosting is using IIS Express.
I have installed the WCF Tools version 5.6 such that Visual Studio has the WFC Data Service 5.6 template.
The gist of it is
create an ASP.Net Application Select MVC type, adding no folders for anything other than MVC and no unit tests, individual account authenticaion.
Add an ADO.Net Entity Data Model for the NorthWind database, called NorthwindEntities in web.config, importing all tables.
Add WCF Data Service 5.6 item, call it NorthWind.svc.
Change the NorthWind.svc.cs backing code to the following.
using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Data.Services;
using System.Data.Services.Common;
using System.Linq;
using System.ServiceModel.Web;
using System.Web;
namespace StackOverflowApp
{
public class NorthWindService : DataService<NorthwindEntities>
{
// This method is called only once to initialize service-wide policies.
public static void InitializeService(DataServiceConfiguration config)
{
config.UseVerboseErrors = true;
config.SetEntitySetAccessRule("Orders", EntitySetRights.AllRead | EntitySetRights.WriteMerge | EntitySetRights.WriteReplace );
config.SetEntitySetAccessRule("Order_Details", EntitySetRights.AllRead| EntitySetRights.AllWrite);
config.SetEntitySetAccessRule("Customers", EntitySetRights.AllRead);
config.DataServiceBehavior.MaxProtocolVersion = DataServiceProtocolVersion.V3;
}
}
}
Now it is ready to build and run.. it should work.. yes?
I run it, and navigate to the service.. I am greeted with the following complaint.
<div id="content">
<p class="heading1">Request Error</p>
<p>The server encountered an error processing the request. See server logs for more details.</p>
</div>
How am I to debug that?
This is not the typical response when navigating to a page which generates an error in the application or to a page that does not exist. I get the feeling that the data.service system is generating this response.. that it actually started to process the request.. but failed for some obtuse reason.
I followed the instructions to a tee I thought, but apparently I missed something.
I've been through the process step by step several times now to try to find what I might have skipped to no avail.
Update:
Aha.. under another similar question, they recommended adding verbose messages using config.UserVerboseErrors = true. This didn't make any difference to me.. but the alternative method of using attributes sure did! Decorating the class with [ServiceBehavior(IncludeExceptionDetailInFaults = true)], now yields this more descriptive error.
The server encountered an error processing the request. The exception
message is 'Expression of type
'System.Data.Entity.Core.Objects.ObjectContext' cannot be used for
return type 'System.Data.Objects.ObjectContext''. See server logs for
more details. The exception stack trace is: blahblah

It sounds like you're using Entity Framework 6 which hasn't been out for all that long. You need to perform some additional steps to get WCF Data Services 5.6 and EF 6 to behave together nicely.
You need to add the additional WCF Data Services Entity Framework Provider Nuget package and then instead of inheriting your service from DataService<T>, you inherit from EntityFrameworkDataService<T>.
Full steps are on the data services blog here: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/astoriateam/archive/2013/10/02/using-wcf-data-services-5-6-0-with-entity-framework-6.aspx

Yes Thanks. Your answer is correct Chris. I was able to find the problem at last after I enabled the decorated version of verbose messaging, and got that extra detail regarding linking to objects being the problem.
So I found the problem and fixed it, or at least I can make it work using the quick-start guide now. Working with my own database is a little squirley still.. returns an empty set when I know I have items in the database.. but at least I now have working exhibit-A to compare against to find the issue. (Aha! found the problem there also, I had forgotten to add the entitie connection to web.config for my non-northwind database -- so its all workin' now!)
Anyway, the first decent clue was following the error message (that wasn't shown until after I enabled verbose messaging with the class attribute), found this note about the problem actually being with WCF's interface with EntityFramework 6. (had I not upgraded to version 6 I likely would not have had the problem)
https://entityframework.codeplex.com/workitem/896
Then, I searched for issues with WCF 5.6 and EntityFramework6. and whalla.. there is an alpha version of WCF which addresses the issue.
Note that if you follow the instructions here verbatim, there is still a problem (or was for me). Get alpha2 instead of alpha1 as it fixes a linking error. i.e.
Install-Package Microsoft.OData.EntityFrameworkProvider -Version 1.0.0-alpha2 -Pre
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/astoriateam/archive/2013/10/02/using-wcf-data-services-5-6-0-with-entity-framework-6.aspx

To install alpha2 today 6/7/2014 "Install-Package Microsoft.OData.EntityFrameworkProvider -Pre". Also the Microsoft.Data.Services version must be 5.6.0.0.