http://www.pomodorotechnique.com
"A way to get the most out of time management". Charlie Brooker mentioned this on the Guardian website (in amongst a rant against Google's crazy new instant search) and I have found it a very useful way of getting some work done. I've been struggling recently with my concentration levels; in a hot, noisy office where people are talking to you it can be difficult to focus on the task in hand - especially when said task is repetitive and / or dull.
Pomodoro basically says "get a stopwatch, work for 25 mins then grab a 5 minute break and repeat". That's not all it says and I urge you to read the website for more information. I think I remember reading somewhere else that the maximum concentration span of an undergraduate in a lecture is 25 minutes which makes the 50 minute lectures I used to attend 100% too long and this technique backs that up. It's been useful for me in breaking the day down into smaller slots with a beginning (and, more importantly, an end) and has helped me to work through what I have needed to do today. Maybe it will work for you too?
Monday 13 September 2010
Wednesday 8 September 2010
Creating a JSON - enabled .NET Web Service
Assuming that you're writing VB.NET. The blogging app won't let me put less than / greater than tags in so make sure you add these.
1. Create a new ASP.NET Web Service Application project in Visual Studio 2008 / 2010. Call it 'JSONWebService'.
2. Rename the default 'Service1.asmx' to 'json.asmx'. Also rename the code behind class from 'Service1' to 'json' and change the binding on the front .asmx page.
3. There should be a commented line in the template code that the project creates that looks like "system.web.script.services.scriptservice()_" . Uncomment this.
4. Add a new Public Class to your code behind. The example I am going to use will provide data on staff contact information (i.e. phone number, email address) but you can fit in whatever data you want. So I will do Public Class StaffInformation. Create four public string variables within the Class; Public forename As String, Public surname As String, Public phonenumber As String, Public email As String.
5. Add a new Web Method to the json Class. Call it GetEmployees so you'll need to do Public Function GetEmployees(ByVal id As String) As List(Of StaffInformation). Make sure you add the WebMethod() line of code above the Function declaration - you can copy / paste that from the HelloWorld method that the project template creates.
6. You'll also need to add this line inside tags below the WebMethod declaration: System.Web.Script.Services.ScriptMethod(UseHttpGet:=False, ResponseFormat:=Script.Services.ResponseFormat.Json)
7. Couple of important points here. The WebMethod is returning a List - that's pretty vital to the JSON output because from what I have read .NET struggles to convert more complicated objects such as DataTables. I had never used this before until I sorted this example out and it's a useful look into how OO works in VB.NET. The ScriptMethod in point 6. is also important because a) it tells the web service to return data in JSON notation, not XML and b) it forces the AJAX call to get made using HTTP POST and not GET. POST is essential when you write the AJAX call in jQuery.
8. The GetEmployees function is going to read some data from a database, put it into the List object and then return the List. Something clever then serialises the List into JSON.
9. Create SqlConnection, SqlCommand and SqlDataReader objects and set the first two up. In my example I did a simple SELECT statement against a table to return the four fields I'm looking for (as specified in the custom List).
10. Declare a new instance of the List (i.e. Dim MyList = New List(Of StaffInformation).
11. Execute the SqlDataReader. Loop through the dataset with it and do the following:
12. Dim item = New StaffInformation With {.field1 = reader(0).ToString(), .field2 = reader(1).ToString(), etc.}
13. MyList.Add(item)
14. Return MyList at the end of the Function.
15. You also need to modify the Web.Config file to allow AJAX HTTP calls. Inside the system.Web node add webServices, then protocols inside that, and then two new entries inside protocols: 'add name="HttpGet"' and 'add name="HttpPost"'.
16. That's it. Compile, publish to IIS and test with a jQuery AJAX call.
1. Create a new ASP.NET Web Service Application project in Visual Studio 2008 / 2010. Call it 'JSONWebService'.
2. Rename the default 'Service1.asmx' to 'json.asmx'. Also rename the code behind class from 'Service1' to 'json' and change the binding on the front .asmx page.
3. There should be a commented line in the template code that the project creates that looks like "system.web.script.services.scriptservice()_" . Uncomment this.
4. Add a new Public Class to your code behind. The example I am going to use will provide data on staff contact information (i.e. phone number, email address) but you can fit in whatever data you want. So I will do Public Class StaffInformation. Create four public string variables within the Class; Public forename As String, Public surname As String, Public phonenumber As String, Public email As String.
5. Add a new Web Method to the json Class. Call it GetEmployees so you'll need to do Public Function GetEmployees(ByVal id As String) As List(Of StaffInformation). Make sure you add the WebMethod() line of code above the Function declaration - you can copy / paste that from the HelloWorld method that the project template creates.
6. You'll also need to add this line inside tags below the WebMethod declaration: System.Web.Script.Services.ScriptMethod(UseHttpGet:=False, ResponseFormat:=Script.Services.ResponseFormat.Json)
7. Couple of important points here. The WebMethod is returning a List - that's pretty vital to the JSON output because from what I have read .NET struggles to convert more complicated objects such as DataTables. I had never used this before until I sorted this example out and it's a useful look into how OO works in VB.NET. The ScriptMethod in point 6. is also important because a) it tells the web service to return data in JSON notation, not XML and b) it forces the AJAX call to get made using HTTP POST and not GET. POST is essential when you write the AJAX call in jQuery.
8. The GetEmployees function is going to read some data from a database, put it into the List object and then return the List. Something clever then serialises the List into JSON.
9. Create SqlConnection, SqlCommand and SqlDataReader objects and set the first two up. In my example I did a simple SELECT statement against a table to return the four fields I'm looking for (as specified in the custom List).
10. Declare a new instance of the List (i.e. Dim MyList = New List(Of StaffInformation).
11. Execute the SqlDataReader. Loop through the dataset with it and do the following:
12. Dim item = New StaffInformation With {.field1 = reader(0).ToString(), .field2 = reader(1).ToString(), etc.}
13. MyList.Add(item)
14. Return MyList at the end of the Function.
15. You also need to modify the Web.Config file to allow AJAX HTTP calls. Inside the system.Web node add webServices, then protocols inside that, and then two new entries inside protocols: 'add name="HttpGet"' and 'add name="HttpPost"'.
16. That's it. Compile, publish to IIS and test with a jQuery AJAX call.
Friday 3 September 2010
jQuery with ASP.NET Web Service
Had a very productive day today hooking up an HTML web page with the jQuery library to an ASP.NET web service. I've written previously about my research into this and while the WCF RESTful stuff looked good I wasn't convinced it was the best way forward to this. We've decided to use a sickness absence report as a trial for developing some skills in Javascript development and today I was looking for a better way to expose web service methods that jQuery could easily communicate with.
After several hours of searching and some dead ends I stumbled across this article http://www.dotnetcurry.com/ShowArticle.aspx?ID=320&AspxAutoDetectCookieSupport=1 that finally showed me how to do all the things I have been reading about. The standard ASP.NET web service gets a few additions to it (such as System.Web.Script.Services.ScriptService / ScriptMethod) and you can tell the individual ScriptMethod to return data as JSON. That's great because the numerous jQuery AJAX examples all deal with JSON instead of XML. The article also shows you how to return a List of data from VB.NET (something I had never done before - I have always used DataSet / DataTable) which allows you to create a custom List with a number of attributes and then add as many items to this List as you like. The list gets populated with data from the SQL result set.
You can then write what is now becoming a pretty standard jQuery AJAX function, get a result set object, loop through it with a FOR loop and write the output into an HTML table, which then gets displayed in a div on the page (that's another thing I love about jQuery; you can actually modify whole divs).
There are plenty of examples in C# on the web but this is the first complete working example I found in VB.NET. Check it out!
After several hours of searching and some dead ends I stumbled across this article http://www.dotnetcurry.com/ShowArticle.aspx?ID=320&AspxAutoDetectCookieSupport=1 that finally showed me how to do all the things I have been reading about. The standard ASP.NET web service gets a few additions to it (such as System.Web.Script.Services.ScriptService / ScriptMethod) and you can tell the individual ScriptMethod to return data as JSON. That's great because the numerous jQuery AJAX examples all deal with JSON instead of XML. The article also shows you how to return a List of data from VB.NET (something I had never done before - I have always used DataSet / DataTable) which allows you to create a custom List with a number of attributes and then add as many items to this List as you like. The list gets populated with data from the SQL result set.
You can then write what is now becoming a pretty standard jQuery AJAX function, get a result set object, loop through it with a FOR loop and write the output into an HTML table, which then gets displayed in a div on the page (that's another thing I love about jQuery; you can actually modify whole divs).
There are plenty of examples in C# on the web but this is the first complete working example I found in VB.NET. Check it out!
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