There is a need to have a calculator for our invoices which will be used both in the web UI and in the back-end. This requires two implementations of the same logic in Javascript and C# and the real problem is to keep these two logics in sync when it comes to changing the rules.
At the moment, what we do in the JS side is that we send all the requests for recalculations to the backend through ajax calls in order to use the calculator implemented in C#. This keeps our servers busy and I don't like the idea. I think that there should be a rule engine or something somewhere that we could utilise to keep the calculation logic in a language other than C# or JS and use/interpret it in both the front-end and the back-end.
Has anyone else faced the same problem? Any idea would be appreciated.
Faced the same problem and solved it by implementing the logic in javascript and then run it with https://jurassic.codeplex.com/ on the server. Works nicely.
You can try using Haxe to implement your rule engine and then cross-compile it to JavaScript and C#. This would give you a common implementation base for both and then - during compilation - your two different language outputs would be formed.
Disclaimer: I haven't used Haxe yet so I can't testify if it'd work for your situation but it supports both languages as targets.
You can use any decision-as-a-service platform. They usually expose decisions(bunch of connected business rules with relations and dependencies) as a REST API service. So you can simply interact with the service for execution and management of rules.
For example here is a sample how you can communicate with decision service for execution by passing input parameter values in JavaScript.
Related
What kind of framework is Razor? Is it backend or frontend?
What is the difference between the two types of frameworks?
I'm trying to learn a little bit more about backend and frontend frameworks and since I usually work with Visual Studio Asp.net MVC was wondering about it.
It is not a framework . I think you're misinterpreting certain concepts. Razor is a server side view engine, and it uses C # or VB.NET to generate dynamic content.
Razor Syntax Quick Reference
This question is a couple of years old, but I'm going to add my two cents.
People struggle to give an answer to this question because the terms 'front-end' and 'back-end' aren't formally defined anywhere. Because of that, any answer is purely subjective.
That being said, it is my opinion that the relationship between front-end/back-end and client-side/server-side isn't necessarily one-to-one
I think it helps to think of it like this: client-side and server-side are run-times, while front-end and back-end are a separation of concerns.
'Client-side' always refers to code executing on the client's machine and 'server-side' always refers to code executing on the server. A 'front-end' developer deals with displaying data to the user and getting data from the user, while a back-end developer deals with storing, manipulating, and retrieving that data.
Consider a front-end developer who is tasked with building a UI. Much of the code they write will be the typical HTML / CSS / JS. However, they will also have to deal with the data that is passed to the front-end from the backend. This is where Razor comes into play. The front-end developer will write the Razor code (which executes on the server-side) to display the data.
That is, the front-end developer will write server-side code to help generate the UI, in addition to writing the client-side code that really defines the UI.
Now, I can't imagine a scenario where a back-end developer will write client-side code.
So, to answer your question, Razor is a front-end technology that executes on the server-side runtime. It's only purpose is to generate the UI, which is the concern of the front-end.
Razor is for writing dynamic html page which is front end and c# is for writing backend logic. Although you could move all the backend logic inside razor but its highly not recommended.
Razor allows you on the back-end more easily create views (.cshtml in C#).
It is more like templating system...
http://www.asp.net/web-pages/overview/getting-started/introducing-razor-syntax-c
I'm in this project:
A web page that's gonna be used by the front-end company people to query and update data from a SQL DB.
I'm working with visual studio and the code behind (C#) is almost done, so the interactions between SQL and C# are ok.
My original idea was to work with ASP.NET which is familiar to me, but that's not gonna be possible. I have to switch to PHP.
So, today is my first day learning PHP, checking http://php.net/manual/en/index.php and a lot of things seem quite similar to ASP.NET so I guess it won't be that hard.
Anyways, some questions popped up quite fast as I wanted to script something else than a "hello world".
Is there an easy way to get/send C# variables from my class using a php page? I've read soemthing about using XML in order to do so, but still I'm scratching my head, is there another, easier, way to do this?
You have options.
direct integration. PHP can instantiate and use .NET objects . See the DOTNET library in PHP. So if you run PHP on Windows, and you expose your .NET logic according to the requirements of the PHP DOTNET infrastructure, then you can just call .NET classes directly from PHP. Some restrictions: PHP is built to integrate with the .NET 2.0 runtime. You can't build .NET 4.0 objects and connect to them from PHP.
synchronous network protocols. As others have suggested you can expose your C# logic via aREST or web services interface, then invoke those services from PHP using the curl library or file_get_contents(). The C# logic could be, but need not be, publicly exposed. In other words, you could make it accessible only from within the firewall of your app, so that no anonymous public access is possible. on the other hand your architecture may call for access to the same API from 3rd-party or user apps. In that case it needs to be exposed publicly.
in either case, public or private, you will want to use WCF or ASPNET MVC to expose these services implemented in C#.
asynchronous mechanisms. PHP can connect to MSMQ. See Using PHP to Open MSMQ Queues . Of course C# can do likewise. You could use MSMQ as a buffering communication mechanism between the two worlds. To do this you'd need to come up with a data serialization protocol, for the messages you put and get on the queue. JSON or XML would be appropriate choices here.
Database. If you are concerned about employing MSMQ as it is "one more piece of infrastructure to manage" you can also employ a database as a go-between. A shared database can be accessed by both PHP and C# and used as a message queue or communication conduit. PHP inserts messages in a MySQL Table, and the C# app could read and process them, then place reply messages in a different table. This would require some work by you to design the message formats, protocols, indexes, and request/reply correlation mechanism. But it relies on proven, existing technology that you already know how to use.
Finally, there is Phalanger. This lets you compile PHP onto the .NET Framework. This means integration between C# and PHP will be simple. I haven't tried this but it might satisfy your requirements.
In the java world there is the bean validation framework JSR-303 which is a nicely well thought out strategy for performing data validation in both the presentation and persistence layers of an application. It covers a lot of things, including validation of whole graph models, validation domain grouping, i18n, etc.
I have failed to find any data model validation frameworks in C#. Are there anything similar to JSR-303 in C#?
You can try fluent validation:
http://fluentvalidation.codeplex.com/
There is the Enterprise Library Validation block.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff648831.aspx
It may not do some of the specific items you are asking about (i18n) out of the box, but it fits the bill for many other use cases.
Also, is free to use and has source code available.
On the front end:
The web side (asp.net) has Validation controls for web forms, and Validation Helpers for MVC. Both of these are smart enough to know how to render validation logic to the client page (for faster failure responses and reduced server load) and duplicate the necessary logic server-side (since you can't trust the client).
The Windows side has Error Providers for winforms. I'm not sure about WPF/Silverlight, or if there's anything for Console apps.
The result is that things are a little fragmented, but not so bad that you can't quickly find what you need. The idea is find the approach that's best for each platform, rather than shoehorning different platforms to the same set of principles.
On the back end, you can use the Enterprise Validation Application Block.
There is also the data annotations that can help with client and server side validation: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee256141.aspx
I am working on a VB.Net application that needs to access a web service that I am nearly certain has a C# backend. At bare minimum, the backend is providing classes to me that are differentiated only by case, and within a number of those classes, there are properties and methods that are only differentiated by case.
VB.Net is case insensitive, and it sees a number of these items as being ambiguous.
I've thought of a few ways of dealing with this, but I would like suggestions before I go down a road that is likely difficult.
Here are some ways I have considered going about it.
Modifying the generated code for the wsdl. This has presented problems in responding as the xml output would no longer conform to the webservice requirements. I think there might be some attributes I could use to override this, but I'm not sure what they are yet. Even so, this web service gets frequent updates and I would hate to have to keep refixing the service every time I refreshed it.
Creating a csharp wrapper project where I expose the underlying classes with different names. Primarily through inheritance. Although the big problem here has been the issue with properties and methods that are only differentiated by case as well.
I'm sure at some point I could get one or the other of these solutions working, but if anyone has any better suggestions that I'm not thinking of, I'd appreciate the help.
Thank you
If the web service was developed in-house, you'll want to review your company's development practices; in particular, ensuring that all your public .NET APIs are CLS compliant.
If the web service was not developed in-house, or you can't make changes to it (customers are already using it, etc.), then I would take the approach of either writing a C# wrapper library, or at least centralizing the calling code into a new (or existing) business-tier C# project. There's a good chance you'll want to do this kind of abstraction anyway, instead of calling web methods directly from the application tier.
I am developing a Flex / Flash application which talks to an ASP.Net / C# backend. Is there any way I can share code between the two?
The server provides a reasonably interesting domain model which the client is designed to maniuplate. Ideally I would like to be able to define this domain model once and have both sides use it for consistency. I am after all the benefits that come with being DRY.
I'm new to Flex but the sort of thing I had in mind was some intermediate language that compile to both C# and ActionScript.
Update
I currently have a basic REST style web service which sends XML serialized versions of the objects down the wire to Flex. This works fine but what I am really interested in is being able to share simple business logic that goes along with these objects. There are certain business rules that need to be processed on both the server and the client and is possible I would prefer not to have to call back to the server for performance reasons.
I faced this problem as well, so I wrote a C# to ActionScript converter.
http://cs2as.codeplex.com/
Write your logic in C#, and add this utility as a post-build step. Then your business logic will be available in both environments. It works very well for me - I'm using it to share over 30,000 lines of code.
I'd hack together a domain model specification and have it generate models in both languages. But that's probably not the most time-effective thing to do.
Check out http://www.fluorinefx.com/ (It is open source flash remoting). I have used it extensively to call web services written in C# from ActionScript, and it works great. Once nice thing is that your c# can return a DataSet (or something similar) and the Flourine framework will convert that into an object ActionScript understands.
Not that I'm aware of, C# is essentially a strongly-typed, compiled language and ActionScript is a loosely-typed, interpreted language. Chalk and cheese I'm afraid.
What if you serialize the objects to XML and send them to Flex....that would at least let you share the data
Update
You can pass objects through the use of Lists, but what you're really passing through is just the data.
You can't really pass a 'method' to a client.
They don't necessarily have to honor it. Once they're in possession of the data, you can't control whether they honor the methods you passed or not.
You wouldn't want to trust anything they send back to you subsequently.
I think the issue is with the set-up.
You can process anything you want on the client side using ActionScript, and you'll just have to put the business logic you want to manipulate in the ActionScript side of things if you want to do it on the client-side.
Olde Answer
I use Flex and C# together through the use of a web service layer.
You may want to look at creating web services to have flex talk to your C# code.
Web Services with ASP.NET
CodePlex ASP.NET Tutorial (web services)
try weborb # http://www.themidnightcoders.com/products/weborb-for-net/overview.html