Links

• Codeplex

// Hauptknoten in devbar.js erzeugen
var devbar = new Object();

Sehr simple: Man erzeugt seinen Hauptknoten einfach als Objekt.

// Verschiedene Input/Output-Operationen
(function(){

    // Unterknoten io
    devbar.io = new Object();

    // Klasse File
    devbar.io.File = function(filename){
    }

    // Hier ein paar Methoden
    devbar.io.File.prototype = {
        saveFile: function(){...},
        readFile: function(){...}
    }

    // Hier ein paar *statische* Methoden
    devbar.io.File.deleteFile = function(filename){
        ...
    }

    devbar.io.File.createFile = function(filename){
        ...
    }

}());

Weitere Konten lassen sich also ganz einfach erzeugen. Statische Methoden sind ebenfalls möglich.

Zuletzt ein kleines Anwendungsbeispiel:

<script src="devbar/devbar.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
<script src="devbar/io.js" type="text/javascript"></script>

// Klasse erstellen
var file = new devbar.io.File("test.txt");

// Datei lesen
var text = file.readFile();
alert(text);

// Statische Methode ohne Instanz
devbar.io.File.deleteFile("test.txt");

Wie funktioniert ’s?

Das BlackBerry muss so eingerichtet sein, dass automatisch eine WLAN-Verbindung mit eurem Heimnetzwerk hergestellt wird. Wenn eine Verbindung aufgebaut ist verbindet sich die App mit einem Server der z.B. auf eurem Arbeitsplatzrechner installiert sein kann. Im Systeminfo-Bereich von Windows wird ein kleines Symbol angezeigt, das u.a. den Akkuladestand meldet. Bei Doppelklick öffnet sich die Liste von Anrufen und SMS die Smart Notifier mitbekommen hat.

Features

• Wenn eine SMS auf eurem Blackberry eingeht, könnt ihr diese auf eurem PC lesen ohne nach dem Telefon zu kramen.
• Wenn ein Anruf eingeht kann die App automatisch die Windows-Lautstärke herunterregeln, damit ihr das Klingeln hört.
• Wenn ein bestimmtes Batterielevel erreicht ist, gibt es eine Meldung auf eurem Rechner und ihr könnte euer Telefon direkt ans Ladegerät packen.
• Eigene Sounds bei SMS oder Anruf

Ihr könnt die App natürlich erstmal  30 Tage testen. (Unverbindlich und mit Rückgaberecht )

Viel Spaß!

Smart Notifier Website

Let me tell you a story about a German US immigrant called Jason driving taxi in New York (this is the repeating excuse for some bad English pitfalls I’ll run into). He was unhappy about his CEO because he gets always calls like “Where you are?”, “How many guests do you drive?” and “Where is daily route document?”.

He read Yakov’s article about PowerBuilder and RESTful Web Services and wanted to learn more about RESTful Web Services in Powerbuilder. He asked himself : “Is it possible to create it instead just consuming it?”.

Yes it is! Let me show you how deep the rabbit hole goes .

What means RESTful?

To get a feeling what’s the idea of RESTful Web Services I would recommend you two sources. The term “RESTful” is like “object oriented” and means “using REST” (Representational State Transfer). Maybe the “ful” to the REST is just invited to make it easier to Google.  If you want to get a quick overview, visit the this MSDN document. It’s specialized to .NET developers and this should include PowerBuilder developers too.

If you want to dive into the topic I would suggest “RESTful Web Services” by Leonard Richardson and Sam Ruby. It has a lot of theoretical stuff into but it’s nice to read and it will offer you what’s the advantages of REST compared to SOAP or RPC.

What PowerBuilder can do?

If you ask, what PowerBuilder Classic can do, then the answer is: nothing. I didn’t find a way to get a RESTful Web Service in PB without thinking about some strange converter and wrapper stuff. Nobody wants to see something like this.

The door we use was opened when Sybase offers WCF Services in PowerBuilder .NET. The WCF Service brings us all the cool stuff from .NET including the way to configure or endpoint in that way we want.

So let’s code and implement the first WCF Service.

The CEO-Server

It sounds like we have to implement data-catching server for Jason’s boss. He wants to see where the cabs are. (are cabs only New York taxis? Someone could post it in the comments)

So let’s think about some methods:

n_taxi // that's the name of the service

n_taxi.of_setPosition(
    as_cab,            // Name of cab
    al_guest_count,    // count of guests
    adc_longitude,     // longitude
    adc_latitude,      // latitude
    al_accuracy,       // accuracy
    adc_speed,         // important! This is New York city!
    al_catchmillis )   // the timestamp

n_taxi.of_getPosition(
    as_id )            // maybe we want to get a position

n_taxi.of_renderPdf(
    as_cab )           // it renders a PDF of a report
                       // Jason's CEO can print and archive

That’s nice. This is all Jason’s CEO need to get happy. To save all this data a database would be nice. I prefer MS SQL. Here is the script to create table for positions.

CREATE TABLE position (
    id INTEGER PRIMARY KEY IDENTITY,
    cab NVARCHAR(50),
    guest_count INTEGER,
    longitude DECIMAL(9,6),
    latitude DECIMAL(9,6),
    accuracy INTEGER,
    speed DECIMAL(4,1));

To let someone see this database (without being admin) I configure the new user taxi with pass dontdrinkanddrive. Keep in mind the user needs read and write permission to the database.

Creating WCF Service in PowerBuilder

Creating a WCF Service in PowerBuilder .NET is easy. You can select File->New in your Workspace. There you can navigate to Target->WCF Service. Follow the wizard and the job is done.

The initial protocol WCF is configured for is SOAP. SOAP? Are you serious? This bloated inflexible monster? I am just kidding

But if we want to use a clean JSON response or request the first we have to do is to change the <service_name>.config like this.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<configuration>
  <system.serviceModel>
    <services>
      <service name="Sybase.PowerBuilder.WCFNVO.n_taxi" behaviorConfiguration="ServiceNameBehavior">
        <!-- old stuff! <endpoint address="" binding="basicHttpBinding" contract="Sybase.PowerBuilder.WCFNVO.n_taxi" />-->
        <!-- old stuff! <endpoint address="mex" binding="mexHttpBinding" contract="IMetadataExchange" />-->

        <!-- new stuff -->
        <endpoint address="" behaviorConfiguration="NewBehavior" binding="webHttpBinding" bindingConfiguration="" contract="Sybase.PowerBuilder.WCFNVO.n_taxi" />
      </service>
    </services>
    <!--For debugging purposes set the includeExceptionDetailInFaults attribute to true-->
    <!-- old stuff!
    <behaviors>
      <serviceBehaviors>
        <behavior name="ServiceNameBehavior">
          <serviceMetadata httpGetEnabled="True" />
          <serviceDebug includeExceptionDetailInFaults="False" />
        </behavior>
      </serviceBehaviors>
    </behaviors>-->

    <!-- new stuff -->
    <behaviors>
      <endpointBehaviors>
        <behavior name="NewBehavior">
          <webHttp />
        </behavior>
      </endpointBehaviors>
      <serviceBehaviors>
        <behavior name="ServiceNameBehavior">
          <serviceMetadata httpGetEnabled="true" />
          <serviceDebug includeExceptionDetailInFaults="false" />
        </behavior>
      </serviceBehaviors>
    </behaviors>
  </system.serviceModel>
</configuration>

After editing you can implement your service. You don’t have to do it by your own. The completed project is ready to download in GitHub.

Is it RESTful now?

No. It’s not really/completely/full RESTful to have a method of_setPosition and of_getPosition and different URLs to invoke them. So it is necessary to configure some more stuff in PB after coding is done.

Let’s have a look in the Project Painter.

In PB 12.5 .NET it is possible to define Operation Attributes to every public function. This is the chance to let this service behave like a RESTful Web Service.

Please setup your method in area WebInvoke.

of_getPosition

BodyStyle	WebMessageBodyStyle.Wrapped
Method	GET
ResponseFormat	WebMessageFormat.Json
UriTemplate	position/{as_id}

of_renderPdf

of_setPosition

The Service is now accessible under http://myserver/position to insert data and http://myserver/position/<id> to get some data. A request to http://myserver/position/render/pdf/<cab> will response with a URL to download a PDF of a report.

That’s all the magic. Keep in mind to set the Service Attribute RequirementMode to AspNetCompatibilityRequirementsMode.Allowed.

Id didn’t post some PowerBuilder code here. Visit GitHub to browser and download the project.

The CEO App

James is dozing in his cab when his CEO is calling: “Good job, this peace of software! But what’s the f****** trick to get this f****** report where your lazy ass was this morning at 8 o’clock?”. James babbles: “It’s easy let me code it for you.”.

<html>
<head>
    <title>Taxi</title>
    <link rel="stylesheet" href="jquery.mobile-1.0.css" />
    <script type="text/javascript" src="jquery-1.7.1.js"></script>
    <script type="text/javascript">
        $(document).ready(function(){
            $('#searchButton').click(function(){
                $.getJSON('http://homeserver:82/_taxi/n_taxi.svc/position/render/pdf/' + $('#taxi').val(),function(data){
                    $.each(data,function(key,val){
                        location.href = val;
                    });
                });
            });
        });
    </script>
</head>
<body>
<input type="text" id="taxi" value="TAX 667">
<button type="submit" data-theme="a" id="searchButton">Report</button>
</body>
</html>

This really simple Web App can be used to let James’ boss enter a cab and get the report of positions.

If you want to implement this site it’s necessary to host it under the same top level domain then the service. Many browser don’t allow cross-site-requests for security reasons.

The Tracking App

If you followed my blog you know that there is one tablet I prefer for app development at the moment. It’s RIM’s Blackberry Playbook. The easiest way to code application for Playbook is to use HTML5 an JavaScript. So in one Script I get my Tracking App to let James’ CEO know where his lazy … I mean … where he was.

<html>
<head>
    <title>Taxi</title>
    <link rel="stylesheet" href="jquery.mobile-1.0.css" />
    <script type="text/javascript" src="jquery-1.7.1.js"></script>
    <script type="text/javascript" src="jquery.mobile-1.0.js"></script>
    <script type="text/javascript">
        var running;

        function postPosition(){
            var taxi = $('#taxi').val();
            var guestCount = $('#guestCount').val();
            var longitude = $('#longitude').val();
            var latitude = $('#latitude').val();
            var accuracy = $('#accuracy').val();
            var speed = $('#speed').val();
            var millis = $('#millis').val();

            $.ajax({
                type: "POST",
                url: "http://homeserver:82/_taxi/n_taxi.svc/position",
                contentType: "application/json",
                data: '{ "as_cab": "' + taxi + '", ' +
                        '"al_guest_count": ' + guestCount + ', ' +
                        '"adc_longitude": ' + longitude + ', ' +
                        '"adc_latitude": ' + latitude + ', ' +
                        '"al_accuracy": ' + accuracy + ', ' +
                        '"adc_speed": ' + speed + ', ' +
                        '"al_catchmillis": ' + millis + '}'
            });
        }

        $(document).ready(function(){
            $('#startTracking').click(function(){
                running = window.setInterval(function(){
                    navigator.geolocation.getCurrentPosition(function(position){
                        $('#longitude').val(position.coords.longitude);
                        $('#latitude').val(position.coords.latitude);
                        $('#speed').val(position.coords.speed);
                        $('#accuracy').val(position.coords.accuracy);
                        $('#millis').val(new Date().getTime());

                        postPosition();
                    });
                },10000);

                $('#statusTracking').html("Tracking started!");
            });

            $('#stopTracking').click(function(){
                window.clearInterval(running);
                $('#statusTracking').html("Tracking stopped!");
            });
        });
    </script>
</head>
<body>
<div data-role="fieldcontain">
    <label for="taxi">Taxi:</label>
    <input type="text" id="taxi" value="TAX 667">

    <label for="guestCount">Guest Count:</label>
    <input type="text" id="guestCount" value="4">

    <label for="longitude">Longitude:</label>
    <input type="text" id="longitude" value="1.567">

    <label for="latitude">Latitude:</label>
    <input type="text" id="latitude" value="2.345">

    <label for="accuracy">Accuracy:</label>
    <input type="text" id="accuracy" value="5">

    <label for="speed">Speed:</label>
    <input type="text" id="speed" value="60">

    <label for="millis">Millis:</label>
    <input type="text" id="millis" value="100">
</div>

<fieldset class="ui-grid-b">
    <div class="ui-block-a">
        <button data-theme="a" id="startTracking">Start</button>
    </div>
    <div class="ui-block-b">
        <button data-theme="a" id="stopTracking">Stop</button>
    </div>
</fieldset>

<div id="statusTracking" >
    Tracking stopped!
</div>

</body>
</html>

Not everyone have a Playbook (but everyone should ). So the easiest way to test this app is to use the Ripple Emulator. You can download the stand-alone application here or a Chrome plugin here.

You should host this app on same server like ceo app. It’s also possible to package it to run client-side but not in emulator.

Conclusion

James is happy. James’ boss is happy. The PowerBuilder developer is happy? Not at all.

I am tired about discussing the quality of PowerBuilder 12.5 .NET. It’s bad and not like an professional high prized development tool.

There are two extremely different technologies in this project. On the one hand there is the big bloated PowerBuilder with all the DataWindow stuff the heavy IDE a lot of Painters to help you get you job is done.

On the other hand there is HTML5, JavaScript, JQuery and an Editor. Not very comfortable but light and fast.

On the one hand we have PowerScript with hard and old ideas, not very elegant and in many ways outdated.

On the other hand we have JavaScript with a high flexible but sometimes hard to understand and a potential to produce unreadable code.

And the all over question for PowerBuilder developers in these days: Why I can’t use .NET or Java for this job?

Happy coding! And we’ll see how long PowerBuilder will live, Yakov

Links

• GitHub
• MSDN
• O’Reilly: RESTful Web Services

Was ist launchd

launchd ist ein vereinheitlichtes Open-Source Service Management Framework zum Starten, Anhalten und Managen von Daemons, Anwendungen, Prozessen und Skripten.

Im Prinzip ersetzt es Dinge wie init.d, cron, System Starter und bietet eine Möglichkeit Services zu kontrollieren, die bei einem bestimmten Event gestartet werden (z.B. Hochfahren des Computers oder das Anschließen einer externen Festplatte).

Was ich also machen musste, war für jeden Service, den ich beim Booten brauche, einen Job zu erstellen und diese Jobs dann auf die Watchlist von launchd zu setzen.

Jobs in launchd

Ein Job ist eine einfache .plist Datei, die aus einer in XML verpackten Beschreibung der jeweiligen Aufgabe besteht. Meine Beanstalkd Plist-Datei sieht zum Beispiel so aus:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN"
  "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
  <key>Label</key>
  <string>org.beanstalkd.bean</string>
  <key>ProgramArguments</key>
  <array>
    <string>/usr/local/bin/beanstalkd</string>
  </array>
  <key>RunAtLoad</key>
  <true/>
  <key>KeepAlive</key>
  <true/>
  <key>WorkingDirectory</key>
  <string>/usr/local/Cellar/beanstalk</string>
  <key>StandardErrorPath</key>
  <string>/var/log/beanstalkd.log</string>
  <key>StandardOutPath</key>
  <string>/var/log/beanstalkd.log</string>
</dict>
</plist>
view raw
org.beanstalkd.bean.plist
This Gist brought to you by GitHub.

Die Datei ist sehr minimalistisch. Der wichtigste Teil ist die ProgramArguments Node, in der beschrieben wird, welcher Befehl ausgeführt werden muss. Jeder Teil des Befehls wird zu einer <string> Node zugefügt, das bedeutet, wenn man einen Befehl wie ls -al /Users/foo/Sites ausführen will, wird er so formatiert:

<array>
    <string>ls</string>
    <string>-al</string>
    <string>/Users/foo/Sites</string>
</array>

Die restlichen Argumente erklären sich soweit von selbst und in der vollständigen property list findet ihr weitere mögliche Parameter.

Einen Job zur Watchlist hinzufügen

Speichert eure plist-Dateien unter/Library/LaunchDaemons/ und sie werden automatisch beim nächsten Neustart eures Macs gestartet. Wenn ihr sie direkt ohne einen Neustart laden möchtet, dann ladet sie über das Terminal:

$ sudo launchctl load /Library/LaunchDaemons/name.of.your.job.plist

Meine launch-Jobs

Neben dem Job für Beanstalkd habe ich Jobs für solr und MongoDB eingerichtet. Wie ihr seht, verwende ich Homebrew, um MongoDB und Beanstalk zu installieren und meine solr Installation liegt in /usr/local/solr. Wenn euer System mit einem anderen Setup läuft, müsst ihr diese Pfade auf eurem System anpassen.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN"
  "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
  <key>Label</key>
  <string>org.mongodb.mongod</string>
  <key>ProgramArguments</key>
  <array>
    <string>/usr/local/bin/mongod</string>
    <string>run</string>
    <string>--config</string>
    <string>/usr/local/Cellar/mongodb/1.8.3-x86_64/mongod.conf</string>
  </array>
  <key>RunAtLoad</key>
  <true/>
  <key>KeepAlive</key>
  <true/>
  <key>WorkingDirectory</key>
  <string>/usr/local/Cellar/mongodb</string>
  <key>StandardErrorPath</key>
  <string>/var/log/mongo.log</string>
  <key>StandardOutPath</key>
  <string>/var/log/mongo.log</string>
</dict>
</plist>
view raw
org.mongodb.mongod.plist
This Gist brought to you by GitHub.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN"
  "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
  <key>Label</key>
  <string>org.apache.lucene</string>
  <key>ProgramArguments</key>
  <array>
    <string>java</string>
    <string>-jar</string>
    <string>/usr/local/solr/start.jar</string>
  </array>
  <key>RunAtLoad</key>
  <true/>
  <key>KeepAlive</key>
  <true/>
  <key>WorkingDirectory</key>
  <string>/usr/local/solr</string>
  <key>StandardErrorPath</key>
  <string>/var/log/solr.log</string>
  <key>StandardOutPath</key>
  <string>/var/log/solr.log</string>
</dict>
</plist>
view raw
org.apache.lucene.plist
This Gist brought to you by GitHub.

Und das war es auch schon! Wenn ihr euer System jetzt neu startet, werden alle Services automatisch als Daemons geladen und ihr müsst sie nicht manuell starten.

Ninja Lamberty

Business Developer

Springest.de

Rokin 75

1012KL Amsterdam

Niederlande

Jetzt hab’ ich mir allerdings in den Kopf gesetzt, dass meine neuen Apps alle in JavaScript & HTML5 programmiert sein müssen. Vor allem reizt mich die einfache Portierbarkeit zwischen verschiedenen Tablet-Betriebssystemen.

Wie man objektorientiert JavaScript programmiert und bekannte Entwurfsmuster einsetzen kann ohne den Verstand zu verlieren hat mir dieses Buch gezeigt

Das Projekt www.iconfinder.com versucht den Dschungel zu lichten. Hier lassen sich gezielt die richtigen Grafiken suchen und die Ergebnisse nach kostenlosen/kostenpflichtigen Angeboten filtern.

It isn’t a big thing but user-friendly to let your user drop some files in your PowerBuilder application. Maybe to import, merge, strip, archive, …. you name it

1. Insert the external functions to your window object.

function ulong DragQueryFileW( ulong hDrop, ulong iFile, ref string LPTSTR, ulong cb ) library 'shell32.dll'
subroutine DragAcceptFiles(ulong h, boolean b ) library 'shell32.dll' 

2. Insert a custom event with ID “pbm_dropfiles” to you window object and insert some code like this.

string     ls_filename
ulong     ll_fileCount
ulong     ll_index
long        ll_row

ll_fileCount = DragQueryFileW(Message.WordParm,-1,ls_filename,0)
ls_filename = space(255)
for ll_index = 1 to ll_fileCount
    DragQueryFileW(Message.WordParm,ll_index - 1,ls_filename,255)
    ll_row = dw_files.insertRow ( 0 )
    dw_files.setItem ( ll_row, "filename", ls_filename);
next 

3. Make sure you enabled and disabled Drop behavior in open and close event of the window object.

DragAcceptFiles(handle(this),true) //open

DragAcceptFiles(handle(this),false) //close

That’s it!

If you like it

Insert following lines in your pb.ini to get this look.

[PB]
...
EditorColor0=31777504 20197673
EditorColor1=65280 20197673
EditorColor2=65280 20197673
EditorColor3=31777504 20197673
EditorColor4=31777504 20197673
EditorColor5=31777504 20197673
EditorColor6=31777504 20197673
EditorColor7=32768 1073741824
EditorColor8=31777504 20197673
EditorColor9=255 20197673
EditorColor10=31777504 20197673
EditorColor11=255 20197673
EditorColor12=8421504 20197673
EditorColor13=255 20197673
EditorColor14=16776960 20197673
...

[colors]
color1=15000288
color2=16777215
color3=3420457
color4=16777215
color5=16777215
color6=16777215
color7=16777215
color8=16777215
color9=16777215
color10=16777215
color11=16777215
color12=16777215
color13=16777215
color14=16777215
color15=16777215
color16=16777215

So back to topic: What is this post about? Inspired by a small discussion in the Powerbuilder 12.5 beta newsgroup I created a small plugin to easily create some Structures and NonVisualObjects from a Datawindow.

This is very useful if you want to transfer data from or to a Datawindow by dot notation. If you have a lot of fields it can be a very painful job to create the Nonvisual and enter the variables in the correct order. Because of this Bruce Armstrong created a small tool called “Dw2Struct” that can do this for you in PB Classic. What I do is to extend the tool for NonVisuals and build a add-in around it.

So take a look at the code and the binaries. The Installation is easy. Just put it in a directory where Powerbuilder 12.5 .NET looks for add-ins. You can see what paths are observed by going to Extras->Options->Add-In. If you are not sure where to copy it, enter the path where you unpack the downloaded files. After restart the IDEs shows you two new entries in context menu of Datawindow. That’s it.

Have fun!

Links:

• PB-Addin-Dw2Struct.zip
• GitHub