Friday, April 11, 2014

How to change InnerHTML of all the HTML Buttons in one go using jQuery?

How to change InnerHTML of all the HTML Buttons in one go using jQuery?

Suppose, I have 5 buttons on my page. How can I change the innerHTML of the buttons in one go using jQuery? I want that buttons having text "Clicked" should get changed to "Click me" when Change InnerHTML button is clicked. I will use jQuery to solve this problem. Refer the following example.

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
<script type="text/javascript">
function ChangeInnerHTML()
{
//Iterate all the buttons with innerHTML = "Clicked" in the DOM and set them to "Click me".
}
</script>
</head>
<body>
<button type="button" id="myButton1">Click me</button>
<button type="button" id="myButton2">Clicked</button>
<button type="button" id="myButton3">Click me</button>
<button type="button" id="myButton4">Clicked</button>
<button type="button" id="myButton5">Click me</button>

<button type="button" id="btnChangeInnerHTML"      onclick="ChangeInnerHTML()">Change InnerHTML</button>

</body>
 </html>

 There are many approaches for doing this task.

Approach 1:

 function ChangeInnerHTML() {
    $('button').each(function() {
        if ($.trim($(this).html()) == "Clicked") 
            $(this).html('Click me');
    });
}

Approach 2:

Use Attribute selector in jquery.

function ChangeInnerHTML() 
{
$("[id^=myButton]:contains('Clicked')").click(function() {
$(this).text("Click Me");

});
}

Approach 3:

function ChangeInnerHTML()
{
document.body.innerHTML=
document.body.innerHTML.replace(/Clicked/g,'Click me');
}

Approach 4:

Without jQuery

function ChangeInnerHTML() 
{
    var btns = document.querySelectorAll('button[id^=myButton]');
    for (var i = 0; i < btns.length; i++) {
        if (btns[i].innerHTML.trim() == 'Clicked') {
            btns[i].innerHTML = 'Click Me'
        }
    }
}

Approach 5:

This will change the innerHTML of all the buttons.

function ChangeInnerHTML()
{
    $("button[id*=myButton]").html("Click me");
}

Friday, April 4, 2014

How to return value from child window to parent window using window.open in Javascript?

How to return value from child window to parent window using window.open in Javascript?

It is very easy to return a value from a child window to parent window which has been opened from parent window using window.open method in Javascript. In many scenarios, it is possible to do some calculations on the child window and parent window need the result of that calculations to perform some task. So, let's try to resolve this problem.

In Parent Window

I have following Javascript function which will open a child window named childWin. I also have a function which will catch the value returned by the child window.

function openChildWin() 
{   
    var childWin = window.open("childWin.html", "_blank", "height=400, width=550, status=yes, toolbar=no, menubar=no, location=no,addressbar=no); 
}

function setValue(val1) 
{
   //you can use the value here which has been returned by your child window
}

ChildWin.html page

Following is my childWin HTML page. There is a button on this HTML page which when clicked will return a value to the parent window which has setValue function. Basically, child window is accessing parent's setValue function here. After this, child window is closed.

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
  <head>

<script type="text/javascript">

function OKClicked()
{
window.opener.setValue('Hello');; //I want to return true here
window.close(); //Close this child window  
}

</script>

  </head>
  <body>
<button type="button" id="OKButton" onclick="OKClicked()">Click ME</button>
  </body>
 </html>

How to pass a Javascript Array to PHP file using AJAX and JSON?

How to pass a Javascript Array to PHP file using AJAX and JSON?

I have an array in javascript and I need to pass this array to a PHP by using AJAX call to that PHP file. I will get this array in PHP file and assign this javascript array to PHP array. Then I will find out the count of that PHP array elements and return it back to the javascript. I will convert JS array in JSON format by JSON.stringify. This is a very simple example on how to pass javascript array to PHP asynchronously. You can perform a lot of operations on this array which you have passed to PHP file but for simplicity I am just returning its count. Let's have a look at the following code snippet.

Javascript Array

var myJSArray = new Array("Saab","Volvo","BMW");

ProcessAJAXRequest() function wil pass JS array to PHP file using AJAX request and will show count of array elements returned by PHP file.

function ProcessAJAXRequest()
{
    $.ajax
    ({
        type: "POST",
        url: "myphpfile.php",
        data: {"myJSArray" : JSON.stringify(myJSArray)},
        success: function (data) 
        {
            alert(data); //count of array elements
        }
    });
}

myphpfile.php

<?php 
    $myPHPArray = json_decode($_POST["myJSArray"]);
    echo count($myPHPArray);
 ?>

Tuesday, March 11, 2014

How to use Generic TList Class in Delphi?

How to use Generic TList Class in Delphi?

TList generic class is used to store a list of various data type variables in Delphi. Below is the simple program to illustrate the concept of TList generic class in Delphi.

var
  List: TList<Integer>;
  FoundIndex: Integer;

begin
  { Create a new List. }
  List := TList<Integer>.Create;
  { Add a few values to the list. }
  List.AddRange([5, 1, 8, 2, 9, 14, 4, 5, 1]);

  writeln('Index of first 1 is ' + IntToStr(List.IndexOf(1)));
  writeln('Index of last 1 is ' + IntToStr(List.LastIndexOf(1)));
  writeln('Does List contains element 100? ' + BoolToStr(List.Contains(100)));

  { Add another element to the list. }
  List.Add(100);

  writeln('There are ' + IntToStr(List.Count) + ' elements in the list.');

  { Remove the first occurrence of 1. }
  List.Remove(1);
  { Delete a few elements from position 0. }
  List.Delete(0);
  List.DeleteRange(0, 2);
  { Extract the remaining 1 from the list. }
  List.Extract(1);
  { Set the capacity to the actual length. }
  List.TrimExcess;
  writeln('Capacity of the list is ' + IntToStr(List.Capacity));

  { Clear the list. }
  List.Clear;
  { Insert some elements. }
  List.Insert(0, 2);
  List.Insert(1, 1);
  List.InsertRange(0, [6, 3, 8, 10, 11]);

  { Sort the list. }
  List.Sort;

  { Binary search for the required element. }
  if List.BinarySearch(6, FoundIndex) then
    writeln('Found element 6 at index ' + IntToStr(FoundIndex));

  { Reverse the list. }
  List.Reverse;
  writeln('The element on position 0 is ' + IntToStr(List.Items[0]));
  List.Free;
  readln;

end.

How to use TDictionary Generics Collection in Delphi?

How to use TDictionary Generics Collection in Delphi?


TDictionary is used to store key-value pair in Delphi. TDictionary is an example of Generic Collections in Delphi. Below is the simple Delphi program to illustrate the concept of TDictionary in Delphi.

type
  TCity = class
    Country: String;
    Latitude: Double;
    Longitude: Double;
  end;

const
  EPSILON = 0.0000001;

var
  Dictionary: TDictionary<String, TCity>;
  City, Value: TCity;
  Key: String;

begin
  { Create the dictionary. }
  Dictionary := TDictionary<String, TCity>.Create;
  City := TCity.Create;
  { Add some key-value pairs to the dictionary. }
  City.Country := 'Romania';
  City.Latitude := 47.16;
  City.Longitude := 27.58;
  Dictionary.Add('Iasi', City);

  City := TCity.Create;
  City.Country := 'United Kingdom';
  City.Latitude := 51.5;
  City.Longitude := -0.17;
  Dictionary.Add('London', City);

  City := TCity.Create;
  City.Country := 'Argentina';
  { Notice the wrong coordinates }
  City.Latitude := 0;
  City.Longitude := 0;
  Dictionary.Add('Buenos Aires', City);

  { Display the current number of key-value entries. }
  writeln('Number of pairs in the dictionary: ' +
  IntToStr(Dictionary.Count));

  // Try looking up "Iasi".
  if (Dictionary.TryGetValue('Iasi', City) = True) then
  begin
    writeln(
    'Iasi is located in ' + City.Country +
    ' with latitude = ' + FloatToStrF(City.Latitude, ffFixed, 4, 2) +
    ' and longitude = ' + FloatToStrF(City.Longitude, ffFixed, 4, 2)
    );
  end
  else
    writeln('Could not find Iasi in the dictionary');

  { Remove the "Iasi" key from dictionary. }
  Dictionary.Remove('Iasi');

  { Make sure the dictionary's capacity is set to the number of entries. }
  Dictionary.TrimExcess;

  { Test if "Iasi" is a key in the dictionary. }
  if Dictionary.ContainsKey('Iasi') then
    writeln('The key "Iasi" is in the dictionary.')
  else
    writeln('The key "Iasi" is not in the dictionary.');

  { Test how (United Kingdom, 51.5, -0.17) is a value in the dictionary but
    ContainsValue returns False if passed a different instance of TCity with the
    same data, as different instances have different references. }
  if Dictionary.ContainsKey('London') then
  begin
    Dictionary.TryGetValue('London', City);
    if (City.Country = 'United Kingdom') and (CompareValue(City.Latitude, 51.5, EPSILON) = EqualsValue) and (CompareValue(City.Longitude, -0.17, EPSILON) = EqualsValue) then
      writeln('The value (United Kingdom, 51.5, -0.17) is in the dictionary.')
    else
      writeln('Error: The value (United Kingdom, 51.5, -0.17) is not in the dictionary.');
    City := TCity.Create;
    City.Country := 'United Kingdom';
    City.Latitude := 51.5;
    City.Longitude := -0.17;
    if Dictionary.ContainsValue(City) then
      writeln('Error: A new instance of TCity with values (United Kingdom, 51.5, -0.17) matches an existing instance in the dictionary.')
    else
      writeln('A new instance of TCity with values (United Kingdom, 51.5, -0.17) does not match any existing instance in the dictionary.');
    City.Free;
  end
  else
    writeln('Error: The key "London" is not in the dictionary.');

  { Update the coordinates to the correct ones. }
  City := TCity.Create;
  City.Country := 'Argentina';
  City.Latitude := -34.6;
  City.Longitude := -58.45;
  Dictionary.AddOrSetValue('Buenos Aires', City);

  { Generate the exception "Duplicates not allowed". }
  try
    Dictionary.Add('Buenos Aires', City);
  except
    on Exception do
      writeln('Could not add entry. Duplicates are not allowed.');
  end;

  { Display all countries. }
  writeln('All countries:');
  for Value in Dictionary.Values do
    writeln(Value.Country);

  { Iterate through all keys in the dictionary and display their coordinates. }
  writeln('All cities and their coordinates:');
  for Key in Dictionary.Keys do
  begin
    writeln(Key + ': ' + FloatToStrF(Dictionary.Items[Key].Latitude, ffFixed, 4, 2) + ', ' +
    FloatToStrF(Dictionary.Items[Key].Longitude, ffFixed, 4, 2));
  end;

  { Clear all entries in the dictionary. }
  Dictionary.Clear;

  { There should be no entries at this point. }
  writeln('Number of key-value pairs in the dictionary after cleaning: ' + IntToStr(Dictionary.Count));

  { Free the memory allocated for the dictionary. }
  Dictionary.Free;
  City.Free;
  readln;
end.

Generic Types in Delphi

Generic Types in Delphi

Generics, a powerful addition to Delphi, were introduced in Delphi 2009 as a new language feature. Generics or generic types (also know as parametrized types), allow you to define classes that don't specifically define the type of certain data members.

As an example, instead of using the TObjectList type to have a list of any object types, from Delphi 2009, the Generics.Collections unit defines a more strongly typed TObjectList.

Simple Generics Type Example in Delphi

Here's how to define a simple generic class:

type
  TGenericContainer<T> = class
  Value : T;
 end;

With the following definition, here's how to use an integer and string generic container:

var
  genericInt : TGenericContainer<integer>;
  genericStr : TGenericContainer<string>;
begin
  genericInt := TGenericContainer<integer>.Create;
  genericInt.Value := 2009; //only integers
  genericInt.Free;

  genericStr := TGenericContainer<string>.Create;
  genericStr.Value := 'Delphi Generics'; //only strings
  genericStr.Free;
end;

Basic WCF Interview Questions and Answers for .NET Developers

Basic WCF Interview Questions and Answers for .NET Developers

If you are preparing of .NET interview, must brush up WCF concepts also. Mostly in every .NET project, WCF is used. So, every .NET developer must know at least basics of WCF. By keeping that in mind, I have tried to list down some basic WCF interview questions and answers which every .NET developer should know before going to the interview room. These WCF interview questions and answers cover basic concepts of WCF, SOA, difference between WCF and web services, need of WCF, endpoints in WCF like Address, Contracts and Bindings, types of Bindings in WCF, types of contracts in WCF, components of WCF, transport schemas in WCF, transactions in WCF, isolation levels in WCF, how to host WCF services, generating proxies for WCF services etc. So, lets have a look upon thes basic WCF interview questions and answers.

1. What is WCF (Windows Communication Foundation)?

Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) is an SDK for developing and deploying services on Windows. WCF provides a runtime environment for services, enabling you to expose CLR types as services, and to consume other services as CLR types.

WCF is part of .NET 3.0 and requires .NET 2.0, so it can only run on systems that support it. WCF is Microsoft’s unified programming model for building service-oriented applications with managed code. It extends the .NET Framework to enable developers to build secure and reliable transacted Web services that integrate across platforms and interoperate with existing investments.

Windows Communication Foundation combines and extends the capabilities of existing Microsoft distributed systems technologies, including Enterprise Services, System.Messaging, Microsoft .NET Remoting, ASMX, and WSE to deliver a unified development experience across multiple axes, including distance (cross-process, cross-machine, cross-subnet, cross-intranet, cross-Internet), topologies (farms, fire-walled, content-routed, dynamic), hosts (ASP.NET, EXE, Windows Presentation Foundation, Windows Forms, NT Service, COM+), protocols (TCP, HTTP, cross-process, custom), and security models (SAML, Kerberos, X509, username/password, custom).

2. What is SOA (Service Oriented Architecture)?

Service-oriented architecture (SOA) is an evolution of distributed computing based on the request/reply design paradigm for synchronous and asynchronous applications. An application's business logic or individual functions are modularized and presented as services for consumer/client applications.

3. What is the difference between WCF and Web Services?

1. Web services can only be invoked by HTTP. While Service or a WCF component can be invoked by any protocol and any transport type.

2. Second web services are not flexible. But Services are flexible. If you make a new version of the service then you need to just expose a new end point. So services are agile and which is a very practical approach looking at the current business trends.

4. What was the code name for WCF?

The code name of WCF was Indigo . 

WCF is a unification of .NET framework communication technologies which unites the following technologies:- 

NET remoting 
MSMQ 
Web services 
COM+

5. How does WCF work?

Follows the ‘software as a service’ model, where all units of functionality are defined as services.

A WCF Service is a program that exposes a collection of Endpoints. Each Endpoint is a portal (connection) for communication with either clients (applications) or other services.

Enables greater design flexibility and extensibility of distributed systems architectures.

A WCF application is represented as a collection of services with multiple entry points for communications.

6. What are the main components of WCF?

1. Service: The working logic or offering, implemented using any .Net Language©.

2. Host: The environment where the service is parked. E.g. exe, process, windows service

3. Endpoints: The way a service is exposed to outside world.

7. What is the endpoint in WCF? 

Every service must have Address that defines where the service resides, Contract that defines what the service does and a Binding that defines how to communicate with the service.

In WCF the relationship between Address, Contract and Binding is called Endpoint. The Endpoint is the fusion of Address, Contract and Binding.

1. Address: Specifies the location of the service which will be like http://Myserver/MyService.Clients will use this location to communicate with our service.

2. Contract: Specifies the interface between client and the server.It’s a simple interface with some attribute.

3. Binding: Specifies how the two paries will communicate in term of transport and encoding and protocols.

8. What is the binding in WCF and how many types of bindings are there in WCF?

A binding defines how an endpoint communicates to the world. A binding defines the transport (such as HTTP or TCP) and the encoding being used (such as text or binary).

A binding can contain binding elements that specify details like the security mechanisms used to secure messages, or the message pattern used by an endpoint.

WCF supports nine types of bindings.

1. Basic binding:

Offered by the BasicHttpBinding class, this is designed to expose a WCF service as a legacy ASMX web service, so that old clients can work with new services. When used by the client, this binding enables new WCF clients to work with old ASMX services.

2. TCP binding:

Offered by the NetTcpBinding class, this uses TCP for cross-machine communication on the intranet. It supports a variety of features, including reliability, transactions, and security, and is optimized for WCF-to-WCF communication. As a result, it requires both the client and the service to use WCF.

3. Peer network binding:

Offered by the NetPeerTcpBinding class, this uses peer networking as a transport. The peer network-enabled client and services all subscribe to the same grid and broadcast messages to it.

4. IPC binding:

Offered by the NetNamedPipeBinding class, this uses named pipes as a transport for same-machine communication. It is the most secure binding since it cannot accept calls from outside the machine and it supports a variety of features similar to the TCP binding.

5. Web Service (WS) binding:

Offered by the WSHttpBinding class, this uses HTTP or HTTPS for transport, and is designed to offer a variety of features such as reliability, transactions, and security over the Internet.

6. Federated WS binding:

Offered by the WSFederationHttpBinding class, this is a specialization of the WS binding, offering support for federated security.

7. Duplex WS binding:

Offered by the WSDualHttpBinding class, this is similar to the WS binding except it also supports bidirectional communication from the service to the client.

8. MSMQ binding:

Offered by the NetMsmqBinding class, this uses MSMQ for transport and is designed to offer support for disconnected queued calls.

9. MSMQ integration binding:

Offered by the MsmqIntegrationBinding class, this converts WCF messages to and from MSMQ messages, and is designed to interoperate with legacy MSMQ clients.

9. What are the contracts in WCF?

In WCF, all services expose contracts. The contract is a platform-neutral and standard way of describing what the service does.

WCF defines four types of contracts.

1. Service contracts: Describe which operations the client can perform on the service.

2. Data contracts: Define which data types are passed to and from the service. WCF defines implicit contracts for built-in types such as int and string, but we can easily define explicit opt-in data contracts for custom types.

3. Fault contracts: Define which errors are raised by the service, and how the service handles and propagates errors to its clients.

4. Message contracts: Allow the service to interact directly with messages. Message contracts can be typed or untyped, and are useful in interoperability cases and when there is an existing message format we have to comply with.

10. What is address in WCF and how many types of transport schemas are there in WCF?

Address is a way of letting client know that where a service is located. In WCF, every service is associated with a unique address. This contains the location of the service and transport schemas. 

WCF supports following transport schemas:

1. HTTP
2. TCP
3. Peer network
4. IPC (Inter-Process Communication over named pipes)
5. MSMQ

The sample address for above transport schema may look like

http://localhost:81
http://localhost:81/MyService
net.tcp://localhost:82/MyService
net.pipe://localhost/MyPipeService
net.msmq://localhost/private/MyMsMqService
net.msmq://localhost/MyMsMqService

11. Explain transactions in WCF.

Transactions in WCF allow several components to concurrently participate in an operation. Transactions are a group of operations that are atomic, consistent, isolated and durable. WCF has features that allow distributed transactions. Application config file can be used for setting transaction timeouts.

12. What are different isolation levels provided in WCF?

The different isolation levels:

1. READ UNCOMMITTED: An uncommitted transaction can be read. This transaction can be rolled back later.

2. READ COMMITTED: Will not read data of a transaction that has not been committed yet

3. REPEATABLE READ: Locks placed on all data and another transaction cannot read.

4. SERIALIZABLE: Does not allow other transactions to insert or update data until the transaction is complete.

13. How do I serialize entities using WCF?

LINQ to SQL supports serialization as XML via WCF by generating WCF serialization attributes and special serialization specific logic during code-generation. You can turn on this feature in the designer by setting serialization mode to ‘Unidirectional’. Note this is not a general solution for serialization as unidirectional mode may be insufficient for many use cases.

14. What are various ways of hosting WCF Services?

There are three major ways of hosting a WCF services 

1. Self-hosting the service in his own application domain. This we have already covered in the first section. The service comes in to existence when you create the object of Service Host class and the service closes when you call the Close of the Service Host class. 

2. Host in application domain or process provided by IIS Server

3. Host in Application domain and process provided by WAS (Windows Activation Service) Server. 

15. What is Transport and Message Reliability?

Transport reliability (such as the one offered by TCP) offers point-to-point guaranteed delivery at the network packet level, as well as guarantees the order of the packets. Transport reliability is not resilient to dropping network connections and a variety of other communication problems. 

Message reliability deals with reliability at the message level independent of how many packets are required to deliver the message. Message reliability provides for end-to-end guaranteed delivery and order of messages, regardless of how many intermediaries are involved, and how many network hops are required to deliver the message from the client to the service.

16. What is service and client in perspective of data communication?

A service is a unit of functionality exposed to the world. The client of a service is merely the party consuming the service.

17. What is Proxy and how to generate proxy for WCF Services?

The proxy is a CLR class that exposes a single CLR interface representing the service contract. The proxy provides the same operations as service's contract, but also has additional methods for managing the proxy life cycle and the connection to the service. The proxy completely encapsulates every aspect of the service: its location, its implementation technology and runtime platform, and the communication transport. 

The proxy can be generated using Visual Studio by right clicking Reference and clicking on Add Service Reference. This brings up the Add Service Reference dialog box, where you need to supply the base address of the service (or a base address and a MEX URI) and the namespace to contain the proxy. 

Proxy can also be generated by using SvcUtil.exe command-line utility. We need to provide SvcUtil with the HTTP-GET address or the metadata exchange endpoint address and, optionally, with a proxy filename. The default proxy filename is output.cs but you can also use the /out switch to indicate a different name. 

SvcUtil http://localhost/MyService/MyService.svc /out:Proxy.cs 

When we are hosting in IIS and selecting a port other than port 80 (such as port 88), we must provide that port number as part of the base address: 

SvcUtil http://localhost:88/MyService/MyService.svc /out:Proxy.cs