I'm doing an program, which is running on an local system, with no internet access. Is it possible to create my own custom Web Map Service (WMS) server, using C#. I no that there are free open source system's. But i like to have full control.
Thanks Morten Starck
That is very possible, but you might be in for a headache or two before you are done. The implementation specification and more is available from the Open Geospatial Consortium at the url below.
http://www.opengeospatial.org/standards/wms
It's quite a large specification but you might be able to get away with implementing only the parts you really need and leaving some of the more specific stuff out. You will of course also need to parse and render the map data from some source which might be your largest problem (for which I really would suggest you have a look at SharpMap, http://sharpmap.codeplex.com/ instead of rolling your own).
Related
So... it's rather complicated, but basically I want to make a network based text editor, where multiple people can edit the same document at the same time. Think Google Docs. How would I go about doing this?
If it helps any, I have an FTP server, and a MySql database.
Do you want to create one, or do you need one? If the latter then try EtherPad, it's great for that.
If you want to create it, well, the source to EtherPad is available, you could use it as a starting point.
If you are thinking only about text-editing i.e. no formatting, then it can be done fairly easily. Operational transformation is the way to go (it also supportformatting but the text-only-editing part is a lot easier to work out and implement). Etherpad uses it to power it's collaboration capability. There are plenty of algorithms out there. You can start off by taking a look at this http://cooffice.ntu.edu.sg/otfaq/.
The question might sound weird, but I am planning to create a asp.net website, which when fully done, will ideally cater to all countries.
I am currently in the architecture phase.. and is there anything that I should keep in might when doing this?
like
saving all datetime fields in utc
using user's timezone to display all time related data
all labels in the website to be localizable
is there anything else??
thanks,
Chris
A few additional points:
Some languages read from Right to
Left (Hebrew for example), which
will affect your UI.
Make sure your datastore supports
unicode (NVARHCAR vs VARCHAR).
Provide an easy way for translators
to contribute content. Usually means
creating a Data Driven Resource
Provider.
Internationalization and Localization is a good place to start.
You should think about how the localization process will take place. I assume you are not a native speaker in all languages you want to use for your application.
There are several approachs on how to address this: For example, there are companies that specialize in localization, meaning you give them an excel sheet, or an xml file.
You should also think about, where do you want to have all these localizations. Do you only want them in your ASP.net application, meaning in only one place? Then the resource file will be your way to go, because they are easy to handle and easy to send to localization studios.
But if you want to use the localizations in more than one place, you need to store them in a web service or in a database. Keep in mind that using localizations across multiple plattforms (e.g. web site, administrative tools) will force you to write import/export functionality for the used tables. (Because you won't give the localization company access to your database)
I would start by looking here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/c6zyy3s9.aspx.
I also guess you are working on doing a SQL database. If that is the case look at things like using nvarchars.
For this post, I'm looking for more conceptual help than a specific technical solution (although anything helps).
Basically, I've been asked to automate an XML HTTP POST through an application layer. I've never done anything like this before, so I'm a bit confused where to even start on a high level. It would be great if someone could share with me what steps I would need to take to accomplish this task. Here is some more background information:
Currently, our company uses an application (we'll call it Program.exe) on a daily basis to design front-end interfaces with a visual editor. Once the interface is completed, Program.exe creates JSP files and submits them to the server. Unfortunately, the process of creating and sending the files takes an awfully large number of clicks, so management would like to automate this process by running a script that would take the project files from Program.exe, convert them to JSP and accurately submit them through the application layer of Program.exe to the appropriate server.
So far I have used WireShark to sniff the packets of a simple transaction using Program.exe and discovered a number of HTTP/XML POST packets that contained XML data with information like "Current File Name" "User name" and more. Curiously, all of these data items were submitted in different packets, not all in one. There are also multiple references to SOAP. (I have almost no knowledge of SOAP, except that it exists)
At this point, this is all of the information I have. I am unsure what steps I should take from here. I would really like to understand this process on a high level, so any conceptual information would be greatly appreciated.
Finally, we use C# primarily for these sorts of tasks, so if someone would like to share a technical solution feel free to use C#.
Thank you all very much.
I would tackle this by completely ignoring the expected method of solving the problem (generating an HTTP POST) and instead focusing on what the actual problem is.
What are your inputs? A bunch of JSP files by the sound of it.
What are your outputs? The same bunch of JSP files.
What has to be accomplished? Moving the inputs from one know location to another.
Now with a well defined problem, a solution is much more likely to clearly present itself.
For example, by looking at the problem I've defined I would think that XCopy would be an elegant solution to the problem.
Any time I get handed a solution and then told to go solve a certain problem, I am always highly suspicious of the tool I've been given. If they knew that this was the best solution to the problem, why didn't they do it themselves?
My advice: Find your own solution.
Hope that helps!
I'm building a small specialized search engine for prise info. The engine will only collect specific segments of data on each site. My plan is to split the process into two steps.
Simple screen scraping based on a URL that points to the page where the segment I need exists. Is the easiest way to do this just to use a WebClient object and get the full HTML?
Once the HTML is pulled and saved analyse it via some script and pull out just the segment and values I need (for example the price value of a product). My problem is that this script somehow has to be unique for each site I pull, it has to be able to handle really ugly HTML (so I don't think XSLT will do ...) and I need to be able to change it on the fly as the target sites updates and changes. I will finally take the specific values and write these to a database to make them searchable
Could you please give me some hints on how to architect the best way? Would you do different then described above?
Well, i would go with the way you describe.
1.
How much data is it going to handle? Fetching the full HTML via WebClient / HttpWebRequest should not be a problem.
2.
I would go for HtmlAgilityPack for HTML parsing. It's very forgiving, and can handle prety ugly markup. As HtmlAgilityPack supports XPath, it's pretty easy to have specific xpath selections for individual sites.
I'm on the run and going to expand on this answer asap.
Yes, a WebClient can work well for this. The WebBrowser control will work as well depending on your requirements. If you are going to load the document into a HtmlDocument (the IE HTML DOM) then it might be easier to use the web browser control.
The HtmlDocument object that is now built into .NET can be used to parse the HTML. It is designed to be used with the WebBrowser control but you can use the implementation from the mshtml dll as well. I hav enot used the HtmlAgilityPack, but I hear that it can do a similar job.
The HTML DOM objects will typically handle, and fix up, most ugly HTML That you throw at them. As well as allowing a nicer way to parse the html, document.GetElementsByTag to get a collection of tag objects for example.
As for handling the changing requirements of the site, it sounds like a good candidate for the strategy pattern. You could load the strategies for each site using reflection or something of that sort.
I have worked on a system that uses XML to define a generic set of parameters for extracting text from HTML pages. Basically it would define start and end elements to begin and end extraction. I have found this technique to work well enough for a small sample, but it gets rather cumbersome and difficult to customize as the collection of sites gets larger and larger. Keeping the XML up to date and trying to keep a generic set of XML and code the handle any type of site is difficult. But if the type and number of sites is small then this might work.
One last thing to mention is that you might want to add a cleaning step to your approach. A flexible way to clean up HTML as it comes into the process was invaluable on the code I have worked on in the past. Perhaps implementing a type of pipeline would be a good approach if you think the domain is complex enough to warrant it. But even just a method that runs some regexes over the HTML before you parse it would be valuable. Getting rid of images, replacing particular mis-used tags with nicer HTML , etc. The amount of really dodgy HTML that is out there continues to amaze me...
i am creating my own CMS frame work, because many of the clients i have, the have same requirements, like news module, newsletter module, etc.
now i am doing it fine, the only thing that is bothering me, is if a client wants to move from my server he would ask me to gibe him his files, and of course if i do so the new person who will take it he will see all my code, use it and benefit from i, and this is so bad for me that i spend all this time on creating my system and any one can easily see the code, plus he will see all the logic for my system, and he can easily know how other clients of mine sites are working, and that is a threat to me, finally i am using third party controls that i have paid for their license, and i don't want him to take it on a golden plate.
now what is the best way to solve this ? i thought it is encrypting, but how can i do that and how efficient is it ?
-should i merge all my CS files and Dlls in bin folder to one Dll and encrypt it, and how can i do that ?
i totally appreciate all the help on this matter as it is really crucial for me.
you should read this
Best .NET obfuscation tools/strategy
How effective is obfuscation?
In my experience, this is rarely worth the effort. Lots of companies who provide libraries like this don't bother obfuscating their code (Telerik, etc).
Especially considering what you are writing (CMSes are everywhere), you'd likely see more benefit from your time spent implementing features that put your product/implementation in a competitive advantage and make companies see that the software you are capable of writing has value, rather than the code itself.
In the end, you want to ensure you are a key factor in making software work for a company, not the DLLs you give them.
You'll need to precompile your site and obfuscate dlls.
Visual Studio has something like Dotfuscator Community Edition shipped with it. You could give it a try.
Of course, HTML output, CSS declarations, database structure and stored procedures code cannot be encrypted.
You can however try to compress CSS which will also reduce its readbility by humans.
Check here: The best approach to scramble CSS definitions to a human-unreadable state throughout an ASP.NET application
One other idea would be to use a frame in your HTML and put the most of the site pages inside of it. This way, it will not be visible when doing "View source".
Or just state it clearly that you offer whatever you're doing as a service and do not provide source codes of your work. I somehow doubt salesforce would be willing to give their sources to anyone who asks.