How-To Tutorials

The Top Menu is a horizontal menu; the other menus are vertical. Each menu is coupled with a so-called module, which is administered in the module manager. Menus By clicking on this menu item, you get an overview of the available menus. You can also access the content of these menus by means of the menu bar—Menus | Main Menu, Top Menu, or by clicking the respective menu link in the overview. This Menu Manager serves as an overview and shows you the number of Published and Unpublished menu items, the number of menu items that are in the Trash can, and the respective menu ID. In this section you can, for instance, copy a menu or create a new one. Customizing an Existing Menu Experiment a little with the menus to get a feel for things. The following edit steps are same for all the menus. Go to the menu item Menus | Main Menu. You will see a listing of the menu items that turn up in the mainmenu. Several functions can be executed in the table with a simple mouse click. By clicking on the checkmark, you can enable or disable a menu link. You can change the order of the items by clicking on the triangles or by typing numbers into the fields under Order. If you use the numbers method, you have to click on the disk symbol in the header in order to make the change effective. In the Access Level column, via mouse click you can decide whether the menu is available to all users (Public), only to registered users (Registered), or only to a particular circle of users (Special). The menu items are then displayed or hidden, independent of the user's rights. Menus Icon If you click on this icon, you are taken to the menu overview screen. Default Icon The menu item that is marked as default here with a star is displayed as the start page when someone calls up the URL of your website. At the moment this is the menu item Home, but you can designate any element that you want as the start page. Just mark the checkbox and click on the Default icon. Publish/Unpublish Icon The status of a content element can either be published (activated) or unpublished (deactivated). You can toggle this status individually by clicking the green checkmark and/or the red cross, or marking the checkbox and subsequently clicking on the appropriate icon. If you follow the later method, you can toggle several menu items at the same time. Move Icon This entails the moving of menu entries. Let's move the text More about Joomla! into the top menu. Select the respective menu elements or even several menu elements and click the Move icon. This opens a form, listing the available menus. On the right you will see the elements that you want to move: Select the menu into which you would like to move the marked menu items. Here, we have moved More about Joomla! from Main Menu into the Top Menu. You can admire the results in the front end. Copy Icon You can also copy menu items. To do that, select one or more menu items and click on the Copy icon. Just as with moving, a form with the available menus opens. Select the menu into which you want to copy the marked menu entries. Trash Icon In order to protect you from inadvertently deleting items, when editing them you cannot delete them immediately; you can only throw them in the trash. To throw them into trash can, select one or several menu elements and click on the Trash icon. The marked menu items are then dumped into the trash can. You can display the content of the trash can by clicking on Menus | Menu Trash. Edit Icon (Edit Menu Items) Here you can modify an existing menu, for instance the Web Links. After clicking on the name Web Links you will see the edit form for menu elements: The form is divided into three parts.    Menu Item Type    Menu Item Details    Parameters Menu Item Type Every menu item is of a particular type. We will get into greater details when we create new menus. For instance, a menu item can refer to an installed Joomla! component, a content element, a link to an external website, or many other things. You can see what the type of the link is in this section; in our case it is a link to the Joomla! weblinks component, and you can also see a button with the label Change Type. If you click on that button, you get the following screen: This manager is new in Joomla! version 1.5 and really handy. In version 1.0.x there was no option to change the type of a menu item. You had to delete the old menu item and create a new one. Now you can change the display to a single category or to a link-suggestion menu item, with which you invite other users to suggest links. Now close this; we will get back to it when we create a new menu. Menu Item Details It contains the following options: ID: Everything in an administration requires an ID number and so does our menu item. In this case the menu item has the ID number 48. Joomla! assigns this number for internal administration purposes at the time the item is created. This number cannot be changed. Title: This is the name of the menu and it will be displayed that way on your website. Alias: This is the name of the search-engine friendly URL after the domain name. When this is enabled, the URL for this menu will look as follows: http://localhost/joomla150/web-links Link: This is the request for a component, in other words also the part of the URL after the domain name with which you call up your website. In this case it is  index.php?option=com_weblinks&view=categories Display in: With this you can change the place where the item is displayed; in other words you can move it to another menu. The options field presents you with a list of the available menus. Parent Item: Of course menus can also contain nested, tree-like items. Top means that the item is at the uppermost level. The rest of the items represent existing menu items. If, for instance, you classify and save Web Links under The News, the display on the item list and the display on your website are changed. The following figures show the change. The menu item Web Links has now moved into The News on your website. So you have to first click on The News in order to see the Web Links item. Your website can easily and effectively be structured like a database tree in this manner. Published: With this you can publish a menu item. Order: From the options list, you can select after which link you want to position this link. Access Level: You can restrict users that can see this list. On Click, Open in: A very handy option that influences the behavior of the link. The page is either opened in the existing window or in a new browser window after clicking. You can also define whether the new window will be displayed with or without browser navigation. Parameters The possible parameters of a menu item depend on the type of the item. A simple link, of course, has fewer parameters than a configurable list or for example the front page link. In this case we have a link to the categories. The number and type of parameters depend on the type of the menu item. You can open and collapse the parameter fields by clicking on the header. If the parameter fields are open, the arrow next to header points down. Parameters–Basic The basic parameters are the same for all menu links. Image: Here you can specify an image that must be in the root directory of the media manager (/images/stories/). Depending on the template, this picture is displayed on the left, next to the menu item. Image Align: You can decide if the image should be on the left or right. Show a Feed Link: It is possible to create an RSS feed for every list display in Joomla! 1.5. This could be desirable or undesirable depending on the content of the list. In this case, with list displays, RSS feed links that contain the list items are enabled in the browser.

(For more resources on iPhone, see here.) The design phase of development is typically where we take into account any element of an application that may have a significant impact on the overall architecture of the final product. Project structuring, required functions, preferred features, hardware specifications, interoperability, and logical limitations are all factors that should be considered within this phase. Elements not regularly included during the design phase may include visuals, color schemes, intricate feature details, and other interchangeable aspects of the final product. When designing with performance in mind, you must take into account the desired characteristics and levels of performance you are looking to achieve in your application. Knowing precisely where your application's performance needs are and focusing greater attention in those areas is the basic premise of the performance-tuning concept. Identifying areas where performance tuning is necessary in many circumstances may be the most difficult part. Obvious areas like memory, database, and network communications may stand out and be somewhat simple to diagnose, however, less common user interface or architectural issues may require profiling and even user feedback for identification. For instance, a database-laden application would be expected to be as optimized as possible for efficient querying, while an application tailored towards video recording and playback may not necessarily require a focus on database efficiency. Similarly a project, which may end up with as little as a few thousand lines of source code may not require a great deal of project structuring and framework planning, while a much larger project will need more time dedicated to these areas. Overloading your application and testing for weaknesses by pushing it beyond its capabilities can prove to be extremely valuable. As an example, databases and table views can be loaded with overly large datasets to identify missing keys or object misuse. The design phase may help you identify potential bottlenecks giving you an opportunity to alter the layout and design of your project before any development has taken place and it becomes too cumbersome to resolve in the midst of coding. Bottlenecks that are unavoidable can be highlighted as areas in your application, which you may want to spend more time squeezing efficiency from. Bottlenecks, which are identified early, stand a good chance of being resolved much easier than waiting until after an applications project is secured and in motion. Preparing the project To take full advantage of Xcode means to understand in depth the philosophy behind the Xcode user interface. Becoming proficient with Xcode will have a great impact on your effectiveness as a developer. Like any tool, knowing its capabilities as well as its limitations allows you to make smarter decisions, quicker. A car is not designed from the interior to the exterior or from the roof to the tires; it is designed from the core outward. Any good vehicle gets its start from a well engineered, tested, and proven frame. The frame is the single key component to which all other components will be bolted and attached. A poor frame design will lead to various structural issues, which in turn lead to more granular problems as these components get further away from the frame. An application project is quite similar, without a solid frame to build an application upon; the quality of the final product will surely be affected. Source code, files, and other resources become cluttered, which has the potential to create similarly damaging granular issues later on in the development lifecycle. Just like one single automotive frame is not the answer for every vehicle on the road, developers are free to organize a project in the way that is most beneficial for the application as well as the workflow and preference of the developer. Although refactoring has come a long way and making organizational project changes during the development phase can be done, it is highly recommended that project decisions be made early on to limit problems and keep productivity as high as possible. A large portion of project management as far as iOS applications are concerned are handled by and through Xcode, Apple's standard integrated development environment. Xcode is an extremely powerful and feature rich integrated development environment with dozens of configuration options that directly affect an individual project. Xcode is not limited to iOS development and is quite capable of creating virtually any type of application including applications for OS X, command-line utilities, libraries, frameworks, plugins, kernel extensions, and more. Xcode is regularly used as a development environment for varying compiled languages as well as nearly all mainstream scripting languages. For those of you who keep regular tabs on Apple and Xcode, you are more than likely well aware of the release of Xcode 4 and may have actually followed it throughout the beta process as well. Xcode 4 is an entire rewrite of the popular development environment, making needed changes to a tool that was begging for upgrades. Xcode 4 follows the paradigm of single window applications, in which all development and testing is performed within the single Xcode 4 interface. Most notable is the integration of interface builder into the core Xcode 4 interface, which brings all of the functionality of these previously separate tools together, integrating them completely. Xcode's abilities far surpass the needs that developing an iOS application requires and it is again very important to understand the development environment in great detail in order to maximize its benefits. One particularly useful project configuration option is the ability to treat compiler warnings as errors. Warnings are the compilers way of telling the developer that something is happening that it may not understand or that it's just not bad enough to prevent an application from running, but still noteworthy to inform the developer. Good programming practice suggests, every developer strive to produce warning free code. Warning free code is simply healthy code and the practice of resolving warnings as early as possible is a habit that will ultimately help in producing code that performs well. Within the Build Settings for a specific target, we can enable the Treat Warnings as Errors option to nudge us in the proper direction for maintaining healthy code. Although this feature can have a slight impact on development and testing time, it comes highly recommended and should be considered for developers interested in high quality and well performing code. In addition to helping create higher quality code, it's a forced education that may be priceless for career programmers and weekend code warriors alike. It is shown in the following screenshot: Project organization Every feature, function, and activity that is performed within Xcode revolves around the project. Much like any other project concept we have been exposed to, Xcode uses projects to organize files, resources, and properties for the ultimate purpose of creating applications and products. For most intents and purposes, the default project settings of Xcode will be sufficient enough for the average developer to create a multitude of applications with relatively little issue. However, we are interested not in achieving averages but in tuning, optimizing, and grabbing every bit of performance possible. We're also interested in streamlining the development process as much as we can. This is precisely why a better than average understanding of the development environment we will be working in is critical. Obviously, the majority of an application project is going to be made up of its classes, libraries, and other source code specific components. Organization of source code is a core principle for any project that is more than a handful of classes and libraries. Once a project begins to mature into dozens or hundreds of files, the importance of well-organized code becomes more apparent. Inevitably, without some type of organizational form, source code, and general project resources become unruly and difficult to find. We've all experienced giant monolithic source code and project structures with resources wildly strewn about without order. Personally, I find this level of chaos revolting and believe order and organization to be a few of the many characteristics of quality. Project structure Xcode's project source code structure is an open canvas, one that doesn't force a developer to use any particular method for organizing code. Unlike various programming environments, Xcode provides the freedom for a developer to build in virtually any way they like. While this level of freedom allows a developer to use the project structure that best fits their style and experience, it leaves plenty of room for mess and confusion if not entirely setting them up for failure. The solution to this problem is to have a well organized and thought out plan of action for how a project and its resources will be laid out. Remember that not a single project structure will work, nor should it work for every proposed project, however, knowing what options are available and the positive and negative effects they might have is quite important. To understand the basic principles of how to organize an Xcode project, we must first understand how a default Xcode project is structured. Remember that not a single project structure will work, nor should it work for every proposed project, however, knowing what options are available and the positive and negative effects they might have is quite important. To understand the basic principles of how to organize an Xcode project, we must first understand how a default Xcode project is structured. Following is a screenshot of a new default Xcode project in which the structure in the left-panel appears to be well organized: Contrast the logical organization of the Xcode interface with the project's underlying file structure and the grouping principle becomes clearer. Xcode stores the logical reference of the project's underlying file structure and uses groups to help developers visualize order within the development environment. In other words, what you see within Xcode is not what is actually happening on disk. The structure within Xcode is comprised of references to the disks, files, and directories. This additional layer of abstraction allows developers to group or relocate project's resources within Xcode for easier management, but not effect the actual disk structure of the project as shown in the following screenshot: At first glance, the underlying structure looks rather clean and simplistic, but imagine this directory in a few days, weeks, or even months time with dozens of more classes and resources. Now, one might argue that as long as the logical representation of the project is clear and concise that the underlying file architecture is unimportant. While this might be true for smaller and less complicated application projects, as a project grows in size there are many factors to consider other than how data is represented within a development environment. Consider the impact that a flat storage architecture might have throughout the life of an Xcode project. The free naming of classes and other resources may be significantly limited as all files are stored within the same base folder. Additionally, browsing source code within a source code repository like GitHub and Google Code may become difficult and tedious. Choosing exactly how a project is laid out and how its components will be organized is akin to selecting the right vehicle frame for which our project will be based from.

Microsoft SharePoint 2010 is the best-in-class platform for content management and collaboration. With Visual Studio, developers have an end-to-end business solutions development IDE. To leverage this powerful combination of tools it is necessary to understand the different building blocks of SharePoint. In this article by Balaji Kithiganahalli, author of Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Development with Visual Studio 2010 Expert Cookbook, we will cover: Creating a list using a Client Object Model Handling exceptions Calling Object Model asynchronously (For more resources on Microsoft Sharepoint, see here.) Introduction Since out-of-the-box web services does not provide the full functionality that the server model exposes, developers always end up creating custom web services for use with client applications. But there are situations where deploying custom web services may not be feasible. For example, if your company is hosting SharePoint solutions in a cloud environment where access to the root folder is not permitted. In such cases, developing client applications with new Client Object Model (OM) will become a very attractive proposition. SharePoint exposes three OMs which are as follows: Managed Silverlight JavaScript (ECMAScript) Each of these OMs provide object interface to functionality exposed in Microsoft. SharePoint namespace. While none of the object models expose the full functionality that the server-side object exposes, the understanding of server Object Models will easily translate for a developer to develop applications using an OM. A managed OM is used to develop custom .NET managed applications (service, WPF, or console applications). You can also use the OM for ASP.NET applications that are not running in the SharePoint context as well. A Silverlight OM is used by Silverlight client applications. A JavaScript OM is only available to applications that are hosted inside the SharePoint applications like web part pages or application pages. Even though each of the OMs provide different programming interfaces to build applications, behind the scenes, they all call a service called Client.svc to talk to SharePoint. This Client.svc file resides in the ISAPI folder. The service calls are wrapped around with an Object Model that developers can use to make calls to SharePoint server. This way, developers make calls to an OM and the calls are all batched together in XML format to send it to the server. The response is always received in JSON format which is then parsed and associated with the right objects. The basic architectural representation of the client interaction with the SharePoint server is as shown in the following image: The three Object Models come in separate assemblies. The following table provides the locations and names of the assemblies: Object OM Location Names Managed ISAPI folder Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.dll Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.Runtime.dll Silverlight LayoutsClientBin Microsoft.SharePoint.Client. Silverlight.dll Microsoft.SharePoint.Client. Silverlight.Runtime.dll JavaScript Layouts SP.js The Client Object Model can be downloaded as a redistributable package from the Microsoft download center at:http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=b4579045-b183-4ed4-bf61-dc2f0deabe47 OM functionality focuses on objects at the site collection and below. The main reason being that it will be used to enhance the end-user interaction. Hence the OM is a smaller subset of what is available through the server Object Model. In all three Object Models, main object names are kept the same, and hence the knowledge from one OM is easily portable to another. As indicated earlier, knowledge of server Object Models easily transfer development using client OM The following table shows some of the major objects in the OM and their equivalent names in the server OM: Client OM Server OM ClientContext SPContext Site SPSite Web SPWeb List SPList ListItem SPListItem Field SPField Creating a list using a Managed OM In this recipe, we will learn how to create a list using a Managed Object Model. We will also add a new column to the list and insert about 10 rows of data to the list. For this recipe, we will create a console application that makes use of a generic list template. Getting ready You can copy the DLLs mentioned earlier to your development machine. Your development machine need not have the SharePoint server installed. But you should be able to access one with proper permission. You also need Visual Studio 2010 IDE installed on the development machine. How to do it… In order to create a list using a Managed OM, adhere to the following steps: Launch your Visual Studio 2010 IDE as an administrator (right-click the shortcut and select Run as administrator). Select File | New | Project . The new project wizard dialog box will be displayed (make sure to select .NET Framework 3.5 in the top drop-down box). Select Windows Console application under the Visual C# | Windows | Console Application node from Installed Templates section on the left-hand side. Name the project OMClientApplication and provide a directory location where you want to save the project and click on OK to create the console application template. To add a references to Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.dll and Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.Runtime.dll, go to the menu Project | Add Reference and navigate to the location where you copied the DLLs and select them as shown In the following screenshot: Now add the code necessary to create a list. A description field will also be added to our list. Your code should look like the following (make sure to change the URL passed to the ClientContext constructor to your environment): using Microsoft.SharePoint.Client;namespace OMClientApplication{ class Program { static void Main(string[] args) { using (ClientContext clientCtx = new ClientContext("http://intsp1")) { Web site = clientCtx.Web; // Create a list. ListCreationInformation listCreationInfo = new ListCreationInformation(); listCreationInfo.Title = "OM Client Application List"; listCreationInfo.TemplateType = (int)ListTemplateType.GenericList; listCreationInfo.QuickLaunchOption = QuickLaunchOptions.On; List list = site.Lists.Add(listCreationInfo); string DescriptionFieldSchema = "<Field Type='Note' DisplayName='Item Description' Name='Description' Required='True' MaxLength='500' NumLines='10' />"; list.Fields.AddFieldAsXml(DescriptionFieldSchema, true, AddFieldOptions.AddToDefaultContentType);// Insert 10 rows of data - Concat loop Id with "Item Number" string. for (int i = 1; i < 11; ++i) { ListItemCreationInformation listItemCreationInfo = new ListItemCreationInformation(); ListItem li = list.AddItem(listItemCreationInfo); li["Title"] = string.Format("Item number {0}",i); li["Item_x0020_Description"] = string.Format("Item number {0} from client Object Model", i); li.Update(); } clientCtx.ExecuteQuery(); Console.WriteLine("List creation completed"); Console.Read(); } } }} Build and execute the solution by pressing F5 or from the menu Debug | Start Debugging . This should bring up the command window with a message indicating that the List creation completed as shown in the following screenshot. Press Enter and close the command window. Navigate to your site to verify that the list has been created. The following screenshot shows the list with the new field and ten items inserted: (Move the mouse over the image to enlarge.) How it works... The first line of the code in the Main method is to create an instance of ClientContext class. The ClientContext instance provides information about the SharePoint server context in which we will be working. This is also the proxy for the server we will be working with. We passed the URL information to the context to get the entry point to that location. When you have access to the context instance, you can browse the site, web, and list objects of that location. You can access all the properties like Name , Title , Description , and so on. The ClientContext class implements the IDisposable interface, and hence you need to use the using statement. Without that you have to explicitly dispose the object. If you do not do so, your application will have memory leaks. For more information on disposing objects refer to MSDN at:http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee557362.aspx From the context we were able to obtain access to our site object on which we wanted to create the list. We provided list properties for our new list through the ListCreationInformation instance. Through the instance of ListCreationInformation, we set the values to list properties like name, the templates we want to use, whether the list should be shown in the quick launch bar or not, and so on. We added a new field to the field collection of the list by providing the field schema. Each of the ListItems are created by providing ListItemCreationInformation. The ListItemCreationInformation is similar to ListCreationInformation where you would provide information regarding the list item like whether it belongs to a document library or not, and so on. For more information on ListCreationInformation and ListItemCreationInformation members refer to MSDN at:http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee536774.aspx. All of this information is structured as an XML and batched together to send it to the server. In our case, we created a list and added a new field and about ten list items. Each of these would have an equivalent server-side call, and hence, all these multiple calls were batched together to send it to the server. The request is only sent to the server when we issue an ExecuteQuery or ExecuteQueryAsync method in the client context. The ExecuteQuery method creates an XML request and passes that to Client.svc. The application waits until the batch process on the server is completed and then returns back with the JSON response. Client.svc makes the server Object Model call to execute our request. There's more... By default, ClientContext instance uses windows authentication. It makes use of the windows identity of the person executing the application. Hence, the person running the application should have proper authorization on the site to execute the commands. Exceptions will be thrown if proper permissions are not available for the user executing the application. We will learn about handling exceptions in the next recipe. It also supports Anonymous and FBA (ASP.Net form based authentication) authentication. The following is the code for passing FBA credentials if your site supports it: using (ClientContext clientCtx = new ClientContext("http://intsp1")){clientCtx.AuthenticationMode = ClientAuthenticationMode.FormsAuthentication;FormsAuthenticationLoginInfo fba = new FormsAuthenticationLoginInfo("username", "password");clientCtx.FormsAuthenticationLoginInfo = fba;//Business Logic} Impersonation In order to impersonate you can pass in credential information to the ClientContext as shown in the following code: clientCtx.Credentials = new NetworkCredential("username", "password", "domainname"); Passing credential information this way is supported only in Managed OM.  

  (For more resources on iPhone JavaScript, see here.) Introduction The mashup applications allow us to exchange data with other web applications or services. Web 2.0 applications provide this feature through different mechanisms. Currently, some of the most popular websites like YouTube, Flickr, and Twitter provide a way for exchanging data through their API's. From the point of view of the user interfaces, mashups allow us to build rich interfaces for our application. The first recipe for this article will cover embedding a standard RSS feed information. Later in our application we'll delve into YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and Flickr and build some interesting mashup web applications for the iPhone. Embedding an RSS feed Our goal for this recipe will be to read an RSS feed and present the information provided n our application. In practice, we're going to use a feed offered by The New York Times newspaper, where each item provides a summary and a link to the original web page where the information resides. You could also choose another RSS feed for testing this recipe. The code for this recipe can be found at code/ch10/rss.html in the code bundle provided on the Packtpub site. Getting ready Make sure iWebKit is installed in your computer before continuing. How to do it... As you've learned in the previous recipes, you need to create an XHTML file with the required headers for loading the files provided by iWebKit: <link href="../iwebkit/css/style.css" rel="stylesheet" media="screen" type="text/css" /><scriptsrc="../iwebkit/javascript/functions.js" type="text/javascript"></script> The second step will be to build our simple user interface containing only a top bar and an unordered list with one item. The top bar is added with the following lines: <div id="topbar"> <div id="title">RSS feed</div></div> To add the unordered list , use the following code: <div id="content"> <ul class="pageitem"> <li class="textbox"> <p> <script src="http://rssxpress.ukoln.ac.uk/lite/ viewer/?rss=http://www.nytimes.com/services/xml/ rss/nyt/HomePage.xml" type="text/javascript"></script> </p> </li> </ul></div> Finally, you should add the code for closing the body and html tags and save the new file as rss.html. After loading your new application, you will see a screen, as shown in the screenshot: If you click on one of the items, Safari Mobile will open the web page for the article, as shown in the following screenshot: How it works... For avoiding complexity and keeping our recipe as simple as possible, we used a free web service provided by RSSxpress. This service is called RSSxpressLite and it works by returning a chunk of JavaScript code. This code inserts an HTML table, containing a summary and a link for each item provided by the referenced RSS feed. Thanks to this web service, we don't need to parse the response of the original feed; RSSxpressLite does the job for us. If the mentioned web service returns the code that we need, you should only write a small line of JavaScript code referring to the web service through its URL and pass as a parameter the RSS feed for displaying information. There's more... For learning more about RSSxpressLite, take a look at http://rssxpress.ukoln.ac.uk/lite/include/. Opening a YouTube video It is safe to say that everyone who uses the Internet knows of YouTube. It is one of the most popular websites in the world. Millions of people use YouTube to watch videos through an assortment of devices, such as PC's, tablets, and smartphones. Apple's devices are not an exception and of course we can watch YouTube videos on the iPhone and iPad. In this case, we're going to load a YouTube video when the user clicks on a specific button. The ink will open a new web page, which allows us to play it. The simple XHTML recipe can be found at code/ch10/youtube.html in the code bundle provided on the Packtpub site. Getting ready This recipe only requires the UiUIKit framework f or building the user interface for this application. You can use your favorite YouTube video for this recipe. By default, we're using a video provided by Apple introducing the new iPad 2 device. How to do it... Following the example from the previous recipe, create a new XHTML file called youtube.html and insert the standard headers for loading the UiUIKit framework. Then add the following CSS inside the <head> section to style the main button: <style type="text/css"> #btn { margin-right: 12px; }</style> Our graphical user interface will be completed by adding the following XHTML code: <div id="header"> <h1>YouTube video</h1></div><h1>Video</h1><p id="btn"> <a href="http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_d6_gbb90I" class="button white">Watch</a></p> After loading the new application on your device, you will see a screen similar to the following screenshot: When the user clicks on our main button, Safari Mobile will go to the web page of the video at YouTube, as shown in the following screenshot: After clicking on the play button, the video will start playing. We can rotate our device for a better aspect ratio, as shown in the following screenshot: How it works... This recipe is pretty simple; we only need to create a link to the desired YouTube video. The most important thing to keep in mind is that we'll use a mobile-specific domain for loading our video to mobile devices. The URL is simply http://m.youtube.com, instead of the regular URL http://www.youtube.com. Posting on your Facebook wall The application developed for this recipe shows how to authenticate with Facebook and how to write a post on your public wall. If everything is successful, an alert box is used to report it to the user. Although there are myriad complex applications with better functionalities that can be built for Facebook, we will focus on simple posting in this recipe. This application will only allow you to post on your wall. For this you need to hardcode your Facebook account for posting. This is to keep the recipe as simple as possible and to get a good understanding of all the complex processes involved in dealing with the OAuth protocol used by Facebook. However, thanks to this open protocol, it is easier to allow secure authentication of APIs from web applications. Also, this recipe requires using a real Internet domain and a server with public access. Thus, you cannot test this application on your local machine. Our application needs to use a server- side language for which we'll use PHP. Currently, it's very easy to find hosting services for PHP applications. You can also find very cheap services for hosting your PHP code. You can find the complete code for this recipe at code/ch10/facebook/ in the code bundle provided on the Packtpub site. Getting ready To bu ild the application for this recipe, you need to have a public server with an Internet domain linked to it. Also, you must install a web server with a PHP interpreter and have the UiUIKit framework ready to use. You need to install the cURL library, which allows PHP to connect and communicate to many different types of servers. Two interesting resources for this issue are: http://www.php.net/manual/en/book.curl.php http://www.php.net/manual/en/curl.setup.php  

  (For more resources on Mahara, see here.) Introduction In this article, we will explore groups: creating homepages, sharing group work, producing group projects, and even the ways in which groups can be used for assessment. Before we get started, there are a few things to know regarding groups. There are two basic types of groups in Mahara: standard groups and course groups. Standard groups have two roles—administrators and members; course groups have three—administrators , tutors, and members. By default, anyone can create a standard group; only individuals with the system roles of "Staff" or "Administrators" can create a course group. The purpose of groups is to facilitate communication and collaboration. Most of the recipes in this article will provide ideas for collaboration. Each recipe will be written for the administrator of a group. Administrators can change the roles of individuals in the group, which includes making everyone in the group an Administrator, or making all members in a course group, tutors. Tutors of course groups, and members of standard groups, have the ability to manage most areas in a group, including files and pages, but they cannot edit the group homepage, nor add or delete members. By default, members of course groups have read-only rights, except in forums. You might ask when (or why) one would use a standard group versus a course group. The answer is that there are two advantages a course group has over a standard group: course groups have one additional member role (as mentioned earlier) and only course groups provide participants with a drop-down menu that allows them to submit a page for grading/assessment purposes. When a Member of a course groups submits a page in this manner, it locks the Page until the administrator or Tutor has released it. Additionally, if you created a group in a version of Mahara prior to 1.4, your group's homepage may look different from how you remember it. The Creating a web page that features student projects recipe explains the changes. Let's get cooking… Creating a group and adding members In this recipe, we will create two types of groups, a standard group and a course group, and then discuss how to add users and set their roles. How to do it... Go to groups and My groups. Select the button labeled Create group. Give the group a Name and Description. From the drop-down menu labeled group Type, you will have four standard group options: Standard: Open membership, Request membership, Invite Only, and Controlled membership. If you have been given a staff role in the system, you will also have two course group options: course: Controlled membership and course: Request membership. For this recipe we will only look at the options that include Invite Only and Controlled membership, as these options require you to add members. We will select Standard: Invite Only. There is little difference between the process for adding Invite Only members, and the one for Controlled membership. The difference between Invite Only and Controlled membership is that Invite Only members can choose not to become members of the group, and they can choose to leave the group; Controlled memberships do not provide these options to members. The difference between Standard groups and Course groups is that Course groups provide an option that allows members to submit a page for grading. The Administrator and Tutor will see the page when they go to the group homepage. The page will be locked, barring the student from changing the page, until the administrator or tutor releases it. Course groups also provide three member roles instead of two. members in Course groups have far fewer permissions than members in a Standard group. Leave the option for Publically Viewable group unchecked. Leave the option for Users auto-added also unchecked. The option for Shared page notifications should have a checkmark next to it, so that members of the group will know when another member shares a page with the group. Once you click on Save group, you will be taken to your group homepage. To add your first member, click the Members tab. You will see a line that says This is an invite-only group. You can invite users through their profile pages or send multiple invitations at once. Click on the words: send multiple invitations at once. You will see two columns, Potential members and Users to be invited. Beneath Potential members, you will see a Search box. You can use the Search box to find the individual(s) you would like to invite by typing a portion of their name in the box and selecting the search icon. When their name appears in the column for Potential members, select their name and then click the arrow pointing towards the column labeled Users to be invited. When you have finished adding all of the individuals you wish to invite, click Submit. They will receive a notification that they have been invited to the group. The steps to add a member to a Controlled group are the same as those for Invite Only, only the wording is slightly different; the word add replaces the word invite. How it works... In the upper right-hand corner of each user's account is a small envelope icon. If a user has a notification, a small number will appear next to the envelope indicating to the individual that they have new notifications as well as the number of notifications. This is just one of the places where the individual can be notified of the invite; they will also receive an e-mail notification. The potential member must accept the invitation before they can become an actual member of the group. In a Controlled group, the individual is automatically added as a member. They do not have the option of accepting or not accepting the invite. There's more... Understanding how to manage member roles will help you use your group more effectively. Let's look at some ways to do this now. Adding members from their profile page: Controlled and Invite Only membership While you have the option of sending multiple invites at a time, you also have the option of adding users one at a time through their profile page. To do this, follow these instructions: Select groups and then Find Friends. Use the search box at the top of the page to locate the individual or scroll through the list of Mahara accounts. When you find the individual, click on their name to access their profile page. At the top of their profile page you will see a drop-down menu from which you can select the group. For an Invite Only group, select the group from the drop-down menu for Invite to and click the button Send invite. If the group is a Controlled membership group, you will click the Add button after selecting the group from the Standard Controlled membership drop-down menu. Changing roles You may wish to change the role of various members in your group, granting them more, or fewer, permissions. Let's see how to do that: On the group homepage, click the tab for members. Beneath each member's name, you will find their role and a link to Change role. Click the link Change role. In the window that opens, you will see a drop-down menu with the list of available roles for the group. Select the role you wish this member to have. Click the Submit button.

  (For more resources on SAP, see here.) Accessing an MDM server involves mounting and unmounting operations which we discuss in the following section. Mounting and unmounting an MDM server MDM server installations are accessible on the console only after they have been mounted. Multiple servers can be mounted within a single console session. We have a choice of mounting only those servers which need to be accessed. The server may or may not be in a running state when mounted in your console session. No password is required to mount a server in your console session even if it is password protected. The MDM Console provides the option of saving the list of currently mounted servers to an MDM Console Settings file. We can load this settings file in the console session and automatically get the previously saved server(s) list mounted as a group. An MDM server can be mounted by multiple MDM Consoles. Once an MDM server is started from any console, it runs on the machine where it is installed and is seen as running by all MDM Consoles that have mounted it. We can mount an MDM server as follows: Right-click on the root node (SAP MDM Servers) in the hierarchy pane tree and choose Mount MDM Server… from the context menu: Alternatively you many select the root node (SAP MDM Servers) and choose MDM Servers | Mount MDM Server… from the main menu: MDM opens the Mount MDM Server dialog prompting for the MDM Server input as displayed next: In the drop-down list input the region displaying the text Enter or select an MDM Server, type the name of the MDM server (typically the name of the machine on which the server is running) you want mounted or select it from the drop-down list. Alternatively (for non-Windows installations), type the name or IP address of any remote machine into the edit box in the Mount MDM Server dialog. Click on the OK button: The drop-down list of MDM Servers shows only those servers that you have previously mounted. If a specific server is not in the list, click on … (Browse) button to open the Select MDM Server dialog (see next) and select the machine on which the MDM Server has been installed from the list of Windows machines visible on the local network.   On successful mounting of the MDM server, you will see a new server node added in the tree structure of the hierarchy pane. Depending on the state of the MDM server, the corresponding icon is displayed in the tree node. The different states and the respective icons of the server node are listed in the following table: Status icon State of MDM server   MDM server is stopped   MDM server is running   MDM server is in one of the following states*: Server Inaccessible Communication Error Start Server Failed Invalid   If the MDM server is inaccessible via the console even after the server has been started, you can try unmounting and remounting the MDM server in the console to restore connectivity. Next we see how to unmount an already mounted MDM server: In the hierarchy tree, right-click on the MDM server that you want to unmount and choose Unmount MDM Server from the context menu. Alternatively, you may unmount the server by first selecting its node in the tree and then clicking on MDM Servers | Unmount MDM Server from the main menu. Unmounting an MDM server is also possible by using the MDM Servers pane (top-right) when the root node (SAP MDM Servers) is selected in the hierarchy tree. Then you can right-click on the MDM Server in the objects pane and select Unmount MDM Server from the context menu. The MDM server node disappears from the tree in the hierarchy pane. Unmounting a running MDM server while it is still running keeps the MDM repositories mounted and loaded even while the unmounted server remains disconnected from the console session. Unmounting and again re-mounting an MDM server within the same MDM Console session requires the MDM server's password to be re-entered to perform any server-level operations (like starting and stopping the server).

  (For more resources on Moodle, see here.) The Moodle philosophy Moodle is designed to support a style of learning called Social Constructionism. This style of learning is interactive. The social constructionist philosophy believes that people learn best when they interact with the learning material, construct new material for others, and interact with other students about the material. The difference between a traditional class and a class following the social constructionist philosophy is the difference between a lecture and a discussion. Moodle does not require you to use the social constructionist method for your courses. However, it best supports this method. For example, Moodle allows you to add several kinds of static course material. This is course material that a student reads, but does not interact with: Web pages Links to anything on the Web (including material on your Moodle site) A directory of files A label that displays any text or image However, Moodle also allows you to add interactive course material. This is course material that a student interacts with, by answering questions, entering text, or uploading files: Assignment (uploading files to be reviewed by the teacher) Choice (a single question) Lesson (a conditional, branching activity) Quiz (an online test) Moodle also offers activities where students interact with each other. These are used to create social course material: Chat (live online chat between students) Forum (you can have zero or more online bulletin boards for each course) Glossary (students and/or teachers can contribute terms to site-wide glossaries) Wiki (this is a familiar tool for collaboration to most younger students and many older students) Workshop (this supports the peer review and feedback of assignments that students upload) In addition, some of Moodle's add-on modules add even more types of interaction. For example, one add-on module enables students and teachers to schedule appointments with each other. The Moodle experience Because Moodle encourages interaction and exploration, your students' learning experience will often be non-linear. Moodle can be used to enforce a specific order upon a course, using something called conditional activities. Conditional activities can be arranged in a sequence. Your course can contain a mix of conditional and non-linear activities. In this section, I'll take you on a tour of a Moodle learning site. You will see the student's experience from the time that the student arrives at the site, through entering a course, to working through some material in the course. You will also see some student-to-student interaction, and some functions used by the teacher to manage the course. The Moodle Front Page The Front Page of your site is the first thing that most visitors will see. This section takes you on a tour of the Front Page of my demonstration site. Probably the best Moodle demo sites are http://demo.moodle.net/ and http://school.demo.moodle.net/. Arriving at the site When a visitor arrives at a learning site, the visitor sees the Front Page. You can require the visitor to register and log in before seeing any part of your site, or you can allow an anonymous visitor to see a lot of information about the site on the Front Page, which is what I have done: (Move the mouse over the image to enlarge.) One of the first things that a visitor will notice is the announcement at the top and centre of the page, Moodle 2.0 Book Almost Ready!. Below the announcement are two activities: a quiz, Win a Prize: Test Your Knowledge of E-mail History, and a chat room, Global Chat Room. Selecting either of these activities will require to the visitor to register with the site, as shown in the following screenshot: Anonymous, guest, and registered access Notice the line Some courses may allow guest access at the middle of the page. You can set three levels of access for your site, and for individual courses: Anonymous access allows anyone to see the contents of your site's Front Page. Notice that there is no Anonymous access for courses. Even if a course is open to Guests, the visitor must either manually log in as the user Guest, or you must configure the site to automatically log in a visitor as Guest. Guest access requires the user to login as Guest. This allows you to track usage, by looking at the statistics for the user Guest. However, as everyone is logged in as the user Guest, you can't track individual users. Registered access requires the user to register on your site. You can allow people to register with or without e-mail confirmation, require a special code for enrolment, manually create their accounts yourself, import accounts from another system, or use an outside system (like an LDAP server) for your accounts. The Main menu Returning to the Front Page, notice the Main menu in the upper-left corner. This menu consists of two documents that tell the user what the site is about, and how to use it. In Moodle, icons tell the user what kind of resource will be accessed by a link. In this case, the icon tells the user that the first resource is a PDF (Adobe Acrobat) document, and the second is a web page. Course materials that students observe or read, such as web or text pages, hyperlinks, and multimedia files are called Resources.

  (For more resources on BackTrack, see here.) Honeypot and Mis-Association attacks Normally, when a wireless client such as a laptop is turned on, it will probe for the networks it has previously connected to. These networks are stored in a list called the Preferred Network List (PNL) on Windows-based systems. Also, along with this list, it will display any networks available in its range. A hacker may do either of two things: Silently monitor the probe and bring up a fake access point with the same ESSID the client is searching for. This will cause the client to connect to the hacker machine, thinking it is the legitimate network. He may create fake access points with the same ESSID as neighboring ones to confuse the user to connect to him. Such attacks are very easy to conduct in coffee shops and airports where a user might be looking to connect to a Wi-Fi connection. These attacks are called Honeypot attacks, which happen due to Mis-Association to the hacker's access point thinking it is the legitimate one. In the next exercise, we will do both these attacks in our lab. Time for action – orchestrating a Mis-Association attack Follow these instructions to get started: In the previous labs, we used a client that had connected to the Wireless Lab access point. Let us switch on the client but not the actual Wireless Lab access point. Let us now run airodump-ng mon0 and check the output. You will very soon find the client to be in not associated mode and probing for Wireless Lab and other SSIDs in its stored profile (Vivek as shown): (Move the mouse over the image to enlarge.) To understand what is happening, let's run Wireshark and start sniffing on the mon0 interface. As expected you might see a lot of packets, which are not relevant to our analysis. Apply a Wireshark filter to only display Probe Request packets from the client MAC you are using: In my case, the filter would be wlan.fc.type_subtype == 0x04 && wlan.sa == 60:FB:42:D5:E4:01. You should now see Probe Request packets only from the client for the SSIDs Vivek and Wireless Lab: Let us now start a fake access point for the network Wireless Lab on the hacker machine using the command shown next: Within a minute or so, the client would connect to us automatically. This shows how easy it is to have un-associated clients. Now, we will try the second case, which is creating a fake access point Wireless Lab in the presence of the legitimate one. Let us turn our access point on to ensure that Wireless Lab is available to the client. For this experiment, we have set the access point channel to 3. Let the client connect to the access point. We can verify this from the airodump-ng screen as shown next: Now let us bring up our fake access point with the SSID Wireless Lab: Notice the client is still connected to the legitimate access point Wireless Lab: We will now send broadcast De-Authentication messages to the client on behalf of the legitimate access point to break their connection: Assuming the signal strength of our fake access point Wireless Lab is stronger than the legitimate one to the client, it connects to our fake access point, instead of the legitimate access point: We can verify the same by looking at the airodump-ng output to see the new association of the client with our fake access point: What just happened? We just created a Honeypot using the probed list from the client and also using the same ESSID as that of neighboring access points. In the first case, the client automatically connected to us as it was searching for the network. In the latter case, as we were closer to the client than the real access point, our signal strength was higher, and the client connected to us. Have a go hero – forcing a client to connect to the Honeypot In the preceding exercise, what do we do if the client does not automatically connect to us? We would have to send a De-Authentication packet to break the legitimate client-access point connection and then if our signal strength is higher, the client will connect to our spoofed access point. Try this out by connecting a client to a legitimate access point, and then forcing it to connect to our Honeypot. Caffe Latte attack In the Honeypot attack, we noticed that clients will continuously probe for SSIDs they have connected to previously. If the client had connected to an access point using WEP, operating systems such as Windows, cache and store the WEP key. The next time the client connects to the same access point, the Windows wireless configuration manager automatically uses the stored key. The Caffe Latte attack was invented by me, the author of this book and was demonstrated in Toorcon 9, San Diego, USA. The Caffe Latte attack is a WEP attack which allows a hacker to retrieve the WEP key of the authorized network, using just the client. The attack does not require the client to be anywhere close to the authorized WEP network. It can crack the WEP key using just the isolated client. In the next exercise, we will retreive the WEP key of a network from a client using the Caffe Latte attack. Time for action – conducting the Caffe Latte attack Follow these instructions to get started: Let us first set up our legitimate access point with WEP for the network Wireless Lab with the key ABCDEFABCDEFABCDEF12 in Hex: Let us connect our client to it and ensure that the connection is successful using airodump-ng as shown next: Let us unplug the access point and ensure the client is in the un-associated stage and searching for the WEP network Wireless Lab: Now we use airbase-ng to bring up an access point with Wireless Lab as the SSID with the parameters shown next: As soon as the client connects to this access point, airbase-ng starts the Caffe- Latte attack as shown: We now start airodump-ng to collect the data packets from this access point only, as we did before in the WEP-cracking case: We also start aircrack-ng as in the WEP-cracking exercise we did before to begin the cracking process. The command line would be aircrack-ng filename where filename is the name of the file created by airodump-ng: Once we have enough WEP encrypted packets, aircrack-ng succeeds in cracking the key as shown next: What just happened? We were successful in retrieving the WEP key from just the wireless client without requiring an actual access point to be used or present in the vicinity. This is the power of the Caffe Latte attack. The attack works by bit flipping and replaying ARP packets sent by the wireless client post association with the fake access point created by us. These bit flipped ARP Request packets cause more ARP response packets to be sent by the wireless client. Note that all these packets are encrypted using the WEP key stored on the client. Once we are able to gather a large number of these data packets, aircrack-ng is able to recover the WEP key easily. Have a go hero – practice makes you perfect! Try changing the WEP key and repeat the attack. This is a difficult attack and requires some practice to orchestrate successfully. It would also be a good idea to use Wireshark and examine the traffic on the wireless network.

  (For more resources on iPhone Development, see here.) There is a lot of fun stuff to cover, so let's get started. Development using the Xcode Tools If you are running Mac OSX 10.5, chances are your machine is already running Xcode. These are located within the /Developer/Applications folder. Apple also makes this freely available through the Apple Developer Connection at http://developer.apple.com/. The iPhone SDK includes a suite of development tools to assist you with your development of your iPhone, and other iOS device applications. We describe these in the following table. iPhone SDK Core Components COMPONENT DESCRIPTION Xcode This is the main Integrated Development Environment (IDE) that enables you to manage, edit, and debug your projects. DashCode This enables you to develop web-based iPhone and iPad applications, and Dashboard widgets. iPhone Simulator The iPhone Simulator is a Cocoa-based application, which provides a software simulator to simulate an iPhone or iPad on your Mac OSX. Interface Builder   Instruments These are the Analysis tools, which help you optimize your applications and monitor for memory leaks in real-time. The Xcode tools require an Intel-based Mac running Mac OS X version 10.6.4 or later in order to function correctly. Inside Xcode, Cocoa, and Objective-C Xcode 4 is a complete toolset for building Mac OSX (Cocoa-Based) and iOS applications. The new single-windowed development interface has been redesigned to be a lot easier and even more helpful to use than it has been in previous releases. It can now also identify mistakes in both syntax and logical errors, and will even fix your code for you. It provides you with the tools to enable you to speed up your development process, therefore becoming more productive. It also takes care of the deployment of both your Mac OSX and iOS applications. The Integrated Development Interface (IDE) allows you to do the following: Create and manage projects, including specifying platforms, target requirements, dependencies, and build configurations. Supports Syntax Colouring and automatic indenting of code. Enables you to navigate and search through the components of a project, including header files and documentation. Enables you to Build and Run your project. Enables you to debug your project locally, run within the iOS simulator, or remotely, within a graphical source-level debugger. Xcode incorporates many new features and improvements, apart from the redesigned user interface; it features a new and improved LLVM (Low Level Virtual Machine) debugger, which has been supercharged to run 3 times faster and 2.5 times more efficient. This new compiler is the next generation compiler technology designed for high-performance projects and completely supports C, Objective-c, and now C++. It is also incorporated into the Xcode IDE and compiles twice as fast and quickly as GCC and your applications will run faster. The following list includes the many improvements made to this release. The interface has been completely redesigned and features a single-window integrated development interface. Interface Builder has now been fully integrated within the Xcode development IDE. Code Assistant opens in a second window that shows you the file that you are working on, and can automatically find and open the corresponding header file(s). Fix-it checks the syntax of your code and validates symbol names as you type. It will even highlight any errors that it finds and will even fix them for you. The new Version Editor works with GIT (Free Open-Source) version control software or Subversion. This will show you the files entire SCM (software configuration management) history and will even compare any two versions of the file. The new LLVM 2.0 compiler includes full support for C, Objective-C, and C++ The LLDB debugger has now been improved to be even faster, it uses less memory than the GDB debugging engine. The new Xcode 4 development IDE now lets you work on several interdependent projects within the same window. It automatically determines its dependencies so that it builds the projects in the right order. Xcode allows you to customize an unlimited number of build and debugging tools, and executable packaging. It supports several source-code management tools, namely, CVS "Version control software which is an important component of the Source Configuration Management (SCM)" and Subversion, which allows you to add files to a repository, commit changes, get updated versions and compare versions using the Version Editor tool. The iPhone Simulator The iPhone Simulator is a very useful tool that enables you to test your applications without using your actual device, whether this being your iPhone or any other iOS device. You do not need to launch this application manually, as this is done when you Build and run your application within the Xcode Integrated Development Environment (IDE). Xcode installs your application on the iPhone Simulator for you automatically. The iPhone Simulator also has the capability of simulating different versions of the iPhone OS, and this can become extremely useful if your application needs to be installed on different iOS platforms, as well as testing and debugging errors reported in your application when run under different versions of the iOS. While the iPhone Simulator acts as a good test bed for your applications, it is recommended to test your application on the actual device, rather than relying on the iPhone Simulator for testing. The iPhone Simulator can be found at the following location /Developer/Platforms/iPhoneSimulator.Platform/Developer/Applications. Layers of the iOS Architecture According to Apple, they describe the set of frameworks and technologies that are currently implemented within the iOS operating system as a series of layers. Each of these layers is made up of a variety of different frameworks that can be used and incorporated into your applications. Layers of the iOS Architecture We shall now go into detail and explain each of the different layers of the iOS Architecture; this will give you a better understanding of what is covered within each of the Core layers. The Core OS Layer This is the bottom layer of the hierarchy and is responsible for the foundation of the Operating system, which the other layers sit on top of. This important layer is in charge of managing memory - allocating and releasing of memory once it has finished with it, taking care of file system tasks, handles networking, and other Operating System tasks. It also interacts directly with the hardware. The Core OS Layer consists of the following components: COMPONENT NAME COMPONENT NAME OS X Kernel Mach 3.0 BSD Sockets Security Power Management Keychain Certificates File System Bonjour The Core Services Layer The Core Services layer provides an abstraction over the services provided in the Core OS layer. It provides fundamental access to the iPhone OS services. The Core Services Layer consists of the following components: COMPONENT NAME COMPONENT NAME Collections Address Book Networking File Access SQLite Core Location Net Services Threading Preferences URL Utilities The Media Layer The Media Layer provides Multimedia services that you can use within your iPhone, and other iOS devices. The Media Layer is made up of the following components: COMPONENT NAME COMPONENT NAME Core Audio OpenGL Audio Mixing Audio Recording Video Playback Image Formats: JPG, PNG and TIFF PDF Quartz Core Animations OpenGL ES The Cocoa-Touch Layer The Cocoa-Touch layer provides an abstraction layer to expose the various libraries for programming the iPhone, and other IOS devices. You probably can understand why Cocoa-Touch is located at the top of the hierarchy due to its support for Multi-Touch capabilities. The Cocoa-Touch Layer is made up of the following components: COMPONENT NAME COMPONENT NAME Cocoa-Touch Layer Multi-Touch Events Multi-Touch Controls Accelerometer/Gyroscope View Hierarchy Localization/Geographical Alerts Web Views People Picker Image Picker Controllers   Understanding Cocoa, the language of the Mac Cocoa is defined as the development framework used for the development of most native Mac OSX applications. A good example of a Cocoa related application is Mail or Text Edit. This framework consists of a collection of shared object code libraries known as the Cocoa frameworks. It consists of a runtime system and a development environment. These set of frameworks provide you with a consistent and optimized set of prebuilt code modules that will speed up your development process. Cocoa provides you with a rich-layer of functionality, as well as a comprehensive object-oriented like structure and APIs on which you can build your applications. Cocoa uses the Model-View-Controller (MVC) design pattern. What are Design Patterns? Design Patterns represent and handle specific solutions to problems that arise when developing software within a particular context. These can be either a description or a template, on how to go about to solve a problem in a variety of different situations. What is the difference between Cocoa and Cocoa-Touch? Cocoa-Touch is the programming language framework that drives user interaction on iOS. It consists and uses technology derived from the cocoa framework and was redesigned to handle multi-touch capabilities. The power of the iPhone and its User Interface are available to developers throughout the Cocoa-Touch frameworks. Cocoa-Touch is built upon the Model-View-Controller structure; it provides a solid stable foundation for creating mind blowing applications. Using the Interface builder developer tool, developers will find it both very easy and fun to use the new drag-and-drop method when designing their next great masterpiece application on iOS. The Model-View-Controller The Model-View-Controller (or MVC) comprises a logical way of dividing up the code that makes up the GUI (Graphical User Interface) of an application. Object-Oriented applications like Java and .Net have adopted the MVC design pattern. The MVC model comprises three distinctive categories:Model : This part defines your application's underlying data engine. It is responsible for maintaining the integrity of that data. View : This part defines the user interface for your application and has no explicit knowledge of the origin of data displayed in that interface. It is made up of Windows, controls, and other elements that the user can see and interact with. Controller : This part acts as a bridge between the model and view and facilitates updates between them. It binds the Model and View together and the application logic decides how to handle the user's inputs.  

  (For more resources on Drupal, see here.) What are we going to do and why? Before we get started, let's take a closer look at what we are going to do in this article and why. At the moment, our users can interact with the website and contribute content, including through their own personal blog. Apart from the blog, there isn't a great deal which differentiates our users; they are simply a username with a blog! One key improvement to make now is to make provisions for customizable user profiles. Our site being a social network with a dinosaur theme, the following would be useful information to have on our users: Details of their pet dinosaurs, including: Name Breed Date of birth Hobbies Their details for other social networking sites; for example, links to their Facebook profile, Twitter account, or LinkedIn page Location of the user (city / area) Their web address (if they have their own website) Some of these can be added to user profiles by adding new fields to profiles, using the built in Field API; however we will also install some additional modules to extend the default offering. Many websites allow users to upload an to associate with their user account, either a photograph or an avatar to represent them. Drupal has provisions for this, but it has some drawbacks which can be fixed using Gravatar. Gravatar is a social avatar service through which users upload their avatar, which is then accessed by other websites that request the avatar using the user's e-mail address. This is convenient for our users, as it saves them having to upload their avatars to our site, and reduces the amount of data stored on our site, as well as the amount of data being transferred to and from our site. Since not all users will want to use a third-party service for their avatars (particularly, users who are not already signed up to Gravatar) we can let them upload their own avatars if they wish, through the Upload module. There are many other social networking sites out there, which don't complete with ours, and are more generalized, as a result we might want to allow our users to promote their profiles for other social networks too. We can download and install the Follow module which will allow users to publicize their profiles for other social networking sites on their profile on our site. Once our users get to know each other more, they may become more interested in each other's posts and topics and may wish to look up a specific user's contribution to the site. The tracker module allows users to track one another's contributions to the site. It is a core module, which just needs to be enabled and set up. Now that we have a better idea of what we are going to do in this , let's get started! Getting set up As this article covers features provided by both core modules and contributed modules (which need to be downloaded first), let's download and enable the modules first, saving us the need for continually downloading and enabling modules throughout the article. The modules which we will require are: Tracker (core module) Gravatar (can be downloaded from: http://drupal.org/project/gravatar) Follow (can be downloaded from: http://drupal.org/project/follow) Field_collection (can be downloaded from:http://drupal.org/project/field_collection) Entity (can be downloaded from:http://drupal.org/project/entity ) Trigger module (core module) These modules can be downloaded and then the contents extracted to the /sites/all/modules folder within our Drupal installation. Once extracted they will then be ready to be enabled within the Modules section of our admin area. Users, roles, and permissions Let's take a detailed look at users, roles, and permissions and how they all fit together. Users, roles, and permissions are all managed from the People section of the administration area: User management Within the People section, users are listed by default on the main screen. These are user accounts which are either created by us, as administrators, or created when a visitor to our site signs up for a user account. From here we can search for particular types of users, create new users, and edit users—including updating their profiles, suspending their account, or delete them permanently from our social network. Once our site starts to gain popularity it will become more difficult for us to navigate through the user list. Thankfully there are search, sort, and filter features available to make this easier for us. Let's start by taking a look at our user list: (Move the mouse over the image to enlarge.) This user list shows, for each user: Their username If their user account is active or blocked (their status) The roles which are associated with their account How long they have been a member of our community When they last accessed our site A link to edit the user's account Users: Viewing, searching, sorting, and filtering Clicking on a username will take us to the profile of that particular user, allowing us to view their profile as normal. Clicking one of the headings in the user list allows us to sort the list from the field we selected: This could be particularly useful to see who our latest members are, or to allow us to see which users are blocked, if we need to reactivate a particular account. We can also filter the user list based on a particular role that is assigned to a user, a particular permission they have (by virtue of their roles), or by their status (if their account is active or blocked). This is managed from the SHOW ONLY USERS WHERE panel: Creating a user Within the People area, there is a link Add user, which will allow us to create a new user account for our site: This takes us to the new user page where we are required to fill out the Username, E-mail address, and Password (twice to confirm) for the new user account we wish to create. We can also select the status of the user (Active or Blocked), any roles we wish to apply to their account, and indicate if we want to automatically e-mail the user to notify them of their new account: Editing a user To edit a user account we simply need to click the edit link displayed next to the user in the user list. This takes us to a page similar to the create user screen, except that it is pre-populated with the users details. It also contains a few other settings related to some default installed modules. As we install new modules, the page may include more options. Inform the user! If you are planning to change a user's username, password, or e-mail address you should notify them of the change, otherwise they may struggle the next time they try to log in! Suspending / blocking a user If we need to block or suspend a user, we can do this from the edit screen by updating their status to Blocked: This would prevent the user from accessing our site. For example, if a user had been posting inappropriate material, even after a number of warnings, we could block their account to prevent them from accessing the site. Why block? Why not just delete? If we were to simply delete a user who was troublesome on the site, they could simply sign up again (unless we went to a separate area and also blocked their e-mail address and username). Of course, the user could still sign up again using a different e-mail address and a different username, but this helps us keep things under control. Canceling and deleting a user account Also within the edit screen is the option to cancel a user's account: On clicking the Cancel account button, we are given a number of options for how we wish to cancel the account: The first and third options will at least keep the context of any discussions or contributions to which the user was involved with. The second option will unpublish their content, so if for example comments or pages are removed which have an impact on the community, we can at least re-enable them. The final option will delete the account and all content associated with it. Finally, we can also select if the user themselves must confirm that they wish to have their account deleted. Particularly useful if this is in response to a request from the user to delete all of their data, they can be given a final chance to change their mind. Bulk user operations For occasions when we need to perform specific operations to a range of user accounts (for example, unblocking a number of users, or adding / removing roles from specific users) we can use the Update options panel, in the user list to do these: From here we simply select the users we want to apply an action to, and then select one of the following options from the UPDATE OPTIONS list: Unblock the selected users Block the selected users Cancel the selected user accounts Add a role to the selected users Remove a role from the selected users Roles Users are grouped into a number of roles, which in turn have permissions assigned to them. By default there are three roles within Drupal: Administrators Anonymous users Authenticated users The anonymous and authenticated roles can be edited but they cannot be renamed or deleted. We can manage user roles by navigating to People | Permissions | Roles: The edit permissions link allows us to edit the permissions associated with a specific role. To create a new role, we simply need to enter the name for the role in the text box provided and click the Add role button.  

Adding static views to Roo-generated web application A static view in a Spring Web MVC application is a view for which you don't explicitly create a controller class. We saw earlier that Spring Web MVC application scaffolded by Roo configures static views using element of Spring's mvc schema. The static views don't have an explicit controller, but behind the scenes Spring's built-in ParameterizableViewController is used for rendering static views. Here, we will look at web mvc install view command of Roo, which creates a static view. Getting ready Delete contents of ch04-recipe sub-directory inside C:roo-cookbook directory. Copy ch04_web-app.roo script into ch04-recipe directory. Execute ch04_web-app.roo script that creates flight-app Roo project, sets up Hibernate as persistence provider, configures MySQL as the database for the application, creates Flight and FlightDescription JPA entities and defines many-to-one relationship between Flight and FlightDescription entities. If you are using a different database than MySQL or your connection settings are different than what is specified in the script, then modify the script accordingly. Start Roo shell from C:roo-cookbookch04-recipe directory. Execute the controller all command to create controllers and views corresponding to JPA entities in flight-app project, as shown here: .. roo> controller all --package ~.web Execute perform eclipse command to update project's classpath settings, as shown here: .. roo> perform eclipse Now, import the flight-app project into your Eclipse IDE. How to do it... To add static views to a Roo-generated web application execute the web mvc install view command, as shown here: .. roo> web mvc install view --path /static/views --viewName help --title Help How it works... The following table describes the arguments that web mvc install view command accepts: Argument Description path Specifies the sub-folder inside /WEB-INF/views/ folder in which the view is created. viewName The name of the view JSPX file. title Specifies the name of the menu option with which the static view is accessible. As the output from the web mvc install view command suggests, following actions are taken by Spring Roo in response to executing the command: Creates /static/views directory inside /WEB-INF/views folder. Roo uses the value of path argument to determine the directory to create. Creates help.jspx file inside /WEB-INF/views/static/views directory. The value of viewName argument is used as the name of the JSPX file. Adds a property with value Help to application.properties, that is, the value of title argument is used as the value of the newly added property. The property is used by menu.jspx to show a Help menu option. The Help menu option allows access to the newly created help.jspx view. Creates /WEB-INF/views/static/views/views.xml tiles definitions XML file, containing a single tiles definition for showing help.jspx view, as shown here: <tiles-definitions> <definition extends="default" name="static/views/help"> <put-attribute name="body" value="/WEB-INF/views/static/views/help.jspx"/> </definition> </tiles-definitions> Adds a element to webmvc-config.xml to allow accessing help.jspx view without requiring to write a controller, as shown here: <mvc:view-controller path="/static/view/help"/>  

  (For more resources on jQuery, see here.) Custom events The events that are triggered naturally by the DOM implementations of browsers are crucial to any interactive web application. However, we are not limited to this set of events in our jQuery code. We can freely add our own custom events to the repertoire. Custom events must be triggered manually by our code. In a sense, they are like regular functions that we define, in that we can cause a block of code to be executed when we invoke it from another place in the script. The .bind() call corresponds to a function definition and the .trigger() call to a function invocation. However, event handlers are decoupled from the code that triggers them. This means that we can trigger events at any time, without knowing in advance what will happen when we do. We might cause a single bound event handler to execute, as with a regular function. We also might cause multiple handlers to run or even none at all. In order to illustrate this, we can revise our Ajax loading feature to use a custom event. We will trigger a nextPage event whenever the user requests more photos and bind handlers that watch for this event and perform the work previously done by the .click() handler as follows: $(document).ready(function() { $('#more-photos').click(function() { $(this).trigger('nextPage'); return false; }); }); The .click() handler now does very little work itself. After triggering the custom event, it prevents the default behavior by returning false. The heavy lifting is transferred to the new event handlers for the nextPage event as follows: (function($) { $(document).bind('nextPage', function() { var url = $('#more-photos').attr('href'); if (url) { $.get(url, function(data) { $('#gallery').append(data); }); } }); var pageNum = 1; $(document).bind('nextPage', function() { pageNum++; if (pageNum < 20) { $('#more-photos') .attr('href', 'pages/' + pageNum + '.html'); } else { $('#more-photos').remove(); } }); })(jQuery); The largest difference is that we have split what was once a single function into two. This is simply to illustrate that a single event trigger can cause multiple bound handlers to fire. The other point to note is that we are illustrating another application of event bubbling here. Our nextPage handlers could be bound to the link that triggers the event, but we would need to wait to do this until the DOM was ready. Instead, we are binding the handlers to the document itself, which is available immediately, so we can do the binding outside of $(document).ready(). The event bubbles up and, so long as another handler does not stop the event propagation, our handlers will be fired. Infinite scrolling Just as multiple event handlers can react to the same triggered event, the same event can be triggered in multiple ways. We can demonstrate this by adding an infinite scrolling feature to our page. This popular technique lets the user's scroll bar manage the loading of content, fetching additional content whenever the user reaches the end of what has been loaded thus far. We will begin with a simple implementation, and then improve it in successive examples. The basic idea is to observe the scroll event, measure the current scroll bar position when scrolling occurs, and load the new content if needed, as follows: (function($) { var $window = $(window); function checkScrollPosition() { var distance = $window.scrollTop() + $window.height(); if ($('#container').height() <= distance) { $(document).trigger('nextPage'); } } $(document).ready(function() { $window.scroll(checkScrollPosition).scroll(); }); })(jQuery); The new checkScrollPosition() function is set as a handler for the window's scroll event. This function computes the distance from the top of the document to the bottom of the window, and then compares this distance to the total height of the main container in the document. As soon as these reach equality, we need to fill the page with additional photos, so we trigger the nextPage event. As soon as we bind the scroll handler, we immediately trigger it with a call to .scroll(). This kick-starts the process, so that if the page is not initially filled with photos, an Ajax request is made right away. Custom event parameters When we define functions, we can set up any number of parameters to be filled with argument values when we actually call the function. Similarly, when triggering a custom event, we may want to pass along additional information to any registered event handlers. We can accomplish this by using custom event parameters. The first parameter defined for any event handler, as we have seen, is the DOM event object as enhanced and extended by jQuery. Any additional parameters we define are available for our discretionary use. To see this action, we will add a new option to the nextPage event allowing us to scroll the page down to display the newly added content as follows: (function($) { $(document).bind('nextPage', function(event, scrollToVisible) { var url = $('#more-photos').attr('href'); if (url) { $.get(url, function(data) { var $data = $(data).appendTo('#gallery'); if (scrollToVisible) { var newTop = $data.offset().top; $(window).scrollTop(newTop); } checkScrollPosition(); }); } } ); }); We have now added a scrollToVisible parameter to the event callback. The value of this parameter determines whether we perform the new functionality, which entails measuring the position of the new content and scrolling to it. Measurement is easy using the .offset() method, which returns the top and left coordinates of the new content. In order to move down the page, we call the .scrollTop() method. Now we need to pass an argument into the new parameter. All that is required is providing an extra value when invoking the event using .trigger(). When newPage is triggered through scrolling, we don't want the new behavior to occur, as the user is already manipulating the scroll position directly. When the More Photos link is clicked, on the other hand, we want the newly added photos to be displayed on the screen, so we will pass a value of true to the handler as follows: $(document).ready(function() { $('#more-photos').click(function() { $(this).trigger('nextPage', [true]); return false; }); $window.scroll(checkScrollPosition).scroll(); }); In the call to .trigger(), we are now providing an array of values to pass to event handlers. In this case, the value of true will be given to the scrollToVisible parameter of the event handler. Note that custom event parameters are optional on both sides of the transaction. We have two calls to .trigger() in our code, only one of which provides argument values; when the other is called, this does not result in an error, but rather the value of null is passed to each parameter. Similarly, the lack of a scrollToVisible parameter in one of our .bind('nextPage') calls is not an error; if a parameter does not exist when an argument is passed, that argument is simply ignored. Throttling events A major issue with the infinite scrolling feature as we have implemented it is its performance impact. While our code is brief, the checkScrollPosition() function does need to do some work to measure the dimensions of the page and window. This effort can accumulate rapidly, because in some browsers the scroll event is triggered repeatedly during the scrolling of the window. The result of this combination could be choppy or sluggish performance. Several native events have the potential for frequent triggering. Common culprits include scroll, resize, and mousemove. To account for this, we need to limit our expensive calculations, so that they only occur after some of the event instances, rather than each one. This technique is known as event throttling. $(document).ready(function() { var timer = 0; $window.scroll(function() { if (!timer) { timer = setTimeout(function() { checkScrollPosition(); timer = 0; }, 250); } }).scroll(); }); Rather than setting checkScrollPosition() directly as the scroll event handler, we are using the JavaScript setTimeout function to defer the call by 250 milliseconds. More importantly, we are checking for a currently running timer first before performing any work. As checking the value of a simple variable is extremely fast, most of the calls to our event handler will return almost immediately. The checkScrollPosition() call will only happen when a timer completes, which will at most be every 250 milliseconds. We can easily adjust the setTimeout() value to a comfortable number that strikes a reasonable compromise between instant feedback and low performance impact. Our script is now a good web citizen. Other ways to perform throttling The throttling technique we have implemented is efficient and simple, but it is not the only solution. Depending on the performance characteristics of the action being throttled and typical interaction with the page, we may for instance want to institute a single timer for the page rather than create one when an event begins: $(document).ready(function() { var scrolled = false; $window.scroll(function() { scrolled = true; }); setInterval(function() { if (scrolled) { checkScrollPosition(); scrolled = false; } }, 250); checkScrollPosition(); }); Unlike our previous throttling code, this polling solution uses a single setInterval() call to begin checking the state of the scrolled variable every 250 milliseconds. Any time a scroll event occurs, scrolled is set to true, ensuring that the next time the interval passes, checkScrollPosition() will be called. A third solution for limiting the amount of processing performed during frequently repeated events is debouncing. This technique, named after the post-processing required handling repeated signals sent by electrical switches, ensures that only a single, final event is acted upon even when many have occurred. Deferred objects In jQuery 1.5, a concept known as a deferred object was introduced to the library. A deferred object encapsulates an operation that takes some time to complete. These objects allow us to easily handle situations in which we want to act when a process completes, but we don't necessarily know how long the process will take or even if it will be successful. A new deferred object can be created at any time by calling the $.Deferred() constructor. Once we have such an object, we can perform long-lasting operations and then call the .resolve() or .reject() methods on the object to indicate the operation was successful or unsuccessful. It is somewhat unusual to do this manually, however. Typically, rather than creating our own deferred objects by hand, jQuery or its plugins will create the object and take care of resolving or rejecting it. We just need to learn how to use the object that is created. Creating deferred objects is a very advanced topic. Rather than detailing how the $.Deferred() constructor operates, we will focus here on how jQuery effects take advantage of deferred objects.  

  (For more resources on IBM, see here.) Dumping namespaces To diagnose a problem, you might need to collect WAS JNDI information. WebSphere Application Server provides a utility that dumps the JNDI namespace. The dumpNamespace.sh script dumps information about the WAS namespace and is very useful when debugging applications when JNDI errors are seen in WAS logs. You can use this utility to dump the namespace to see the JNDI tree that the WAS name server (WAS JNDI lookup service provider) is providing for applications. This tool is very useful in JNDI problem determination, for example, when debugging incorrect JNDI resource mappings in the case where an application resource is not mapped correctly to a WAS-configured resource or the application is using direct JNDI lookups when really it should be using indirect lookups. For this tool to work, WAS must be running when this utility is run. To run the utility, use the following syntax: ./dumpNameSpace.sh -<command_option> There are many options for this tool and the following table lists the command-line options available by typing the command <was_root>/dumpsnameSpace.sh -help: Command option Description -host <host> Bootstrap host, that is, the WebSphere host whose namespace you want to dump. Defaults to localhost. -port <port> Bootstrap port. Defaults to 2809. -user <name> Username for authentication if security is enabled on the server. Acts the same way as the -username keyword. -username <name> Username for authentication if security is enabled on the server. Acts the same way as the -user keyword. -password <password> Password for authentication, if security is enabled in the server. -factory <factory> The initial context factory to be used to get the JNDI initial context. Defaults to com.ibm.websphere.naming. WsnInitialContextFactory and normally does not need to be changed. -root [ cell | server | node | host | legacy | tree | default ] Scope of the namespace to dump. For WS 5.0 or later: cell: DumpNameSpace default. Dump the tree starting at the cell root context. server: Dump the tree starting at the server root context. node: Dump the tree starting at the node root context. (Synonymous with host) For WS 4.0 or later: legacy: DumpNameSpace default. Dump the tree starting at the legacy root context. host: Dump the tree starting at the bootstrap host root context. (Synonymous with node) tree: Dump the tree starting at the tree root context. For all WebSphere and other name servers: default: Dump the tree starting at the initial context, which JNDI returns by default for that server type. This is the only -root choice that is compatible with WebSphere servers prior to 4.0 and with non-WebSphere name servers. The WebSphere initial JNDI context factory (default) obtains the desired root by specifying a key specific to the server type when requesting an initial CosNaming NamingContext reference. The default roots and the corresponding keys used for the various server types are listed as follows: WebSphere 5.0: Server root context. This is the initial reference registered under the key of NameServiceServerRoot on the server. WebSphere 4.0: Legacy root context. This context is bound under the name domain/legacyRoot, in the initial context registered on the server, under the key NameService. WebSphere 3.5: Initial reference registered under the key of NameService, on the server. Non-WebSphere: Initial reference registered under the key of NameService, on the server. -url <url> The value for the java.naming.provider.url property used to get the initial JNDI context. This option can be used in place of the -host, -port, and -root options. If the -url option is specified, the -host,-port, and -root options are ignored. -startAt <some/subcontext/ in/the/tree> The path from the requested root context to the top-level context, where the dump should begin. Recursively dumps (displays a tree-like structure) the sub-contexts of each namespace context. Defaults to empty string, that is, root context requested with the -root option. -format [ jndi | ins ] jndi: Display name components as atomic strings. ins: Display name components parsed per INS rules (id.kind) The default format is jndi. -report [ short | long ] short: Dumps the binding name and bound object type, which is essentially what JNDI Context. list() provides. long: Dumps the binding name, bound object type, local object type, and string representation of the local object, that is, Interoperable Object References (IORs) string values, and so on, are printed). The default report option is short. -traceString <some.package. to.trace.*=all> Trace string of the same format used with servers, with output going to the DumpNameSpaceTrace.out file. Example name space dump To see the result of using the namespace tool, navigate to the <was_root>/bin directory on your Linux server and type the following command: For Linux: ./dumpNameSpace.sh -root cell -report short -username wasadmin -password wasadmin >> /tmp/jnditree.txt For Windows: ./dumpNameSpace.bat -root cell -report short -username wasadmin -password wasadmin > c:tempjnditree.txt The following screenshot shows a few segments of the contents of an example jnditree.txt file which would contain the output of the previous command. EAR expander Sometimes during application debugging or automated application deployment, you may need to enquire about the contents of an Enterprise Archive (EAR) file. An EAR file is made up of one or more WAR files (web applications), one or more Enterprise JavaBeans (EJBs), and there can be shared JAR files as well. Also, within each WAR file, there may be JAR files as well. The EARExpander.sh utility allows all artifacts to be fully decompressed much as expanding a TAR file. Usage syntax: EARExpander -ear (name of the input EAR file for the expand operation or name of the output EAR file for the collapse operation) -operationDir (directory to which the EAR file is expanded or directory from which the EAR file is collapsed) -operation (expand | collapse) [-expansionFlags (all | war)] [-verbose] To demonstrate the utility, we will expand the HRListerEAR.ear file. Ensure that you have uploaded the HRListerEAR.ear file to a new folder called /tmp/EARExpander on your Linux server or an appropriate alternative location and run the following command: For Linux: <was_root>/bin/EARExpander.sh -ear /tmp/HRListerEAR.ear -operationDir /tmp/expanded -operation expand -expansionFlags all -verbose For Windows: <was_root>binEARExpander.bat -ear c:tempHRListerEAR.ear -operationDir c:tempexpanded -operation expand -expansionFlags all -verbose The result will be an expanded on-disk structure of the contents of the entire EAR file, as shown in the following screenshot: An example of everyday use could be that EARExpander.sh is used as part of a deployment script where an EAR file is expanded and hardcoded properties files are searched and replaced. The EAR is then re-packaged using the EARExpander -operation collapse option to recreate the EAR file once the find-and-replace routine has completed. An example of how to collapse an expanded EAR file is as follows: For Linux: <was_root>/bin/EARExpander.sh -ear /tmp/collapsed/HRListerEAR.ear -operationDir /tmp/expanded -operation collapse -expansionFlags all -verbose For Windows: <was_root>binEARExpander.bat -ear c:tempcollapsedHRListerEAR. ear -operationDir c:tempexpanded -operation collapse -expansionFlags all -verbose In the previous command line examples, the folder called EARExpander contains an expanded HRListerEAR.ear file, which was created when we used the -expand command example previously. To collapse the files back into an EAR file, use the -collapse option, as shown previously in the command line example. Collapsing the EAR folders results in a file called HRListerEAR.ear, which is created by collapsing the expanded folder contents back into a single EAR file. IBM Support Assistant IBM Support Assistant can help you locate technical documents and fixes, and discover the latest and most useful support resources available. IBM Support Assistant can be customized for over 350 products and over 20 tools, not just WebSphere Application Server. The following is a list of the current features in IBM Support Assistant: Search Information Search and filter results from a number of different websites and IBM Information Centers with just one click. Product Information Provides you with a page full of related resources specific to the IBM software you are looking to support. It also lists the latest support news and information, such as the latest fixes, APARs, Technotes, and other support data for your IBM product. Find product education and training materials Using this feature, you can search for online educational materials on how to use your IBM product. Media Viewer The media viewer allows you search and find free education and training materials available on the IBM Education Assistant sites. You can also watch Flash-based videos, read documentation, view slide presentations, or download for offline access. Automate data collection and analysis Support Assistant can help you gather the relevant diagnostic information automatically so you do not have to manually locate the resources that can explain the cause of the issue. With its automated data collection capabilities, ISA allows you to specify the troublesome symptom and have the relevant information automatically gathered in an archive. You can then look through this data, analyze it with the IBM Support Assistant tool, and even forward data to IBM support. Generate IBM Support Assistant Lite packages for any product addon that has data collection scripts. You can then export a lightweight Java application that can easily be transferred to remote systems for remote data connection. Analysis and troubleshooting tools for IBM products ISA contains tools that enable you to troubleshoot system problems. These include: analyzing JVM core dumps and garbage collector data, analyzing system ports, and also getting remote assistance from IBM support. Guided Troubleshooter This feature provides a step-by-step troubleshooting wizard that can be used to help you look for logs, suggest tools, or recommend steps on fixing the problems you are experiencing. Remote Agent technology Remote agent capabilities through the feature pack provide the ability to perform data collection and file transfer through the workbench from remote systems. Note that the Remote agents must be installed and configured with appropriate 'root-level' access. ISA is a very detailed tool and we cannot cover every feature in this article. However, for a demonstration, we will install ISA and then update ISA with an add-on called the Log Analyzer. We will use the Log Analyzer to analyze a WAS SystemOut.log file. Downloading the ISA workbench To download ISA you will require your IBM user ID. The download can be found at the following URL: http://www-01.ibm.com/software/support/isa/download.html It is possible to download both Windows and Linux versions.

  (For more resources on Mahara, see here.)   Information about the various add-ons and plugins is available on the Mahara.org site. You can access some of the plugins, as well as information on how to install and use them, at http://wiki.mahara.org/Plugins.   Adding a spreadsheet and chart using Google apps In this recipe, we will create a spreadsheet using Google Docs, and then, we will use the Google Apps block to add the spreadsheet to a page. Google Apps is now a standard block in Mahara, rather than a plugin. Getting ready Go to http://www.google.com. Across the upper left-hand portion of the page, you will see a small menu of options. Click the small arrow next to the word more to expand a menu of options. From the menu, select Documents. If you already have a Google account, sign in; if not, then click the link to Create an account now and complete the information form to open an account. Google accounts are free. How to do it... Once you are at your Google Docs page, click the button labeled Create new and then the option Spreadsheet. Before working, go to the File menu and select Save. In the small window that opens, you will see a space to put the title of this document. After typing in the title, click OK. Google will now automatically save your document as you work. Begin building your spreadsheet. To publish the document, click on the small arrow in the upper right-hand corner, then select Publish as a web page. Publishing a document as a web page allows those who have the link to the published page to see it. It does not give them permission to edit it, and it does not allow the general public to see it. In the Sheets to publish area, use the drop-down menu to select which sheets in the spreadsheet you would like to publish. If you’ve only used the first sheet, or you wish to publish all the sheets in this particular spreadsheet, then you can leave the default setting of All sheets. Leave the option Automatically republish when changes are made checked. Click the button to Start publishing. In the area labeled Get a link to the published data, leave the drop-down menus set to their defaults. Below them you will see a URL that begins with https. Highlight and copy that URL. Log in to Mahara and go to the Pages area of your Portfolio. Open the page you want to embed your Google spreadsheet into, and then click the Edit option in the upper right-hand corner of the page. From the Files, images and video tab, click and drag a Google Apps block into the area where you wish to add the spreadsheet. In the Block Title, type the name of the spreadsheet. In the box labeled Embed code or URL, past the URL you copied in step 9. For now, you can leave the default settings for Width and Height, as you can always change them later. Click on Save. How it works... As you update the spreadsheet in Google Documents, the spreadsheet displayed in your Mahara page will automatically update as well. At the bottom of the spreadsheet, in Mahara, there is a link to Edit this page. When the link is selected, a new window will open and the user will be asked to sign in to their Google account. If you have not given them access to the page, they will not be able to view the Google Docs page. If you have given them access to view, but not to edit, then they will be able to see the document in Google Docs, but they will not be able to edit it. There's more... There are two types of permissions in Google Docs. In the main recipe, we looked at the permission setting that allows for publication, but Google Docs also has a setting that controls who can view and edit a document. Changing this setting, which by default is “private”, can provide more functionality to your embedded Google Doc. Giving others the ability to view and/or edit the spreadsheet in Google Docs Log into your Google account and open your spreadsheet. Click the Share button in the upper right-hand corner. A Sharing settings window will open. In the area for Permissions, you see will the current setting for this document. By default, it is set to Private. You have two options: one allows you to provide general viewing and editing permissions; the other allows you to identify specific individuals you’d like to grant permissions to (they will have to log in before they are able to access the spreadsheet). To allow others to view the document without logging in, click the Change link. Click in the bubble next to the visibility option you would like to set. If you select anything other than Private, you will be given the option to Allow anyone to edit the document. Technically, only individuals that can see the document will be able to edit it. If you wish to grant that access, then select that option as well. Click on Save. If you wish to give permissions to specific individuals only, then skip steps 4-7. Click in the textbox under Add people. The area will expand. In the Add people box, type the e-mail addresses of the individuals whom you will be sharing this document with. From the drop-down menu, select whether you will give permission to edit or only to view. In the textbox for personal message, type a small e-mail message letting them know they now have access to the page. Click Share.   Using Embed.ly to add a Google map The Embed.ly block makes it possible for you to embed all kinds of media into a Mahara page. There are over 200 media services that work with the Embed.ly block. A list of these can be found at http://api.embed.ly/. In this recipe, we will use Embed.ly to add a Google Map to a page. The exercise will provide information that will be useful, whether you wish to embed a Google map or any of the other services available through Embed.ly. Getting ready You will need to open three windows (or tabs) in your browser. One window needs to be opened to your account in Mahara, the other to Google maps (http://maps.google.com), and the third to Embed.ly (http://api.embed.ly/). How to do it... We’ll start with Embed.ly: Go to the Embed.ly page listed previously. Scroll down to the list of Services available through Embed.ly and click on the one labeled Google Maps. A small window will open that displays the format of Google Map URLs that will work with Embed.ly. Make note of the format—see the following screenshot: The * in the URL patterns for Embed.ly are a type of placeholder, that is, they represent URL content that will be specific to the item you will be embedding. The other characters in the URL pattern are very specific and must be matched exactly. Go to the Google Maps window. In the search box, type the location you wish to get a map of and click on the Search Maps button. In the upper right-hand corner of the map, you will see three words Print, Save, and Link. Click on Link. A window will open with the URL for the map highlighted. Copy the link. (Move the mouse over the image to enlarge.) Notice that the URL has a format that Embed.ly had identified as an acceptable URL format. It begins with http://maps.google.com/maps?. After the ?, there are a number of letters and symbols. These characters are in the location that the * was in. This is a proper format for Embed.ly. Go to Mahara and open the page to which you wish to add the Google Map. Click the option to Edit the page. From the External feeds tab, click and drag the Embed.ly block into the area of the page where you wish to add the map. Change the Block Title to the name of the location displayed in the map. In the field for Content URL, paste the URL you copied on the Google Maps page. For Google Maps, do not check the Show Description? box (it displays an ad for Google Maps) The Width should be set according to the size of the column you’re using for this map. You can always go back and change the size, so begin with setting the Width to 300. You don’t need to set the Height as the Embed.ly block will display the content proportionately. Click on Save.  

  (For more resources on this topic, see here.)   Microsoft LightSwitch makes it easy to query multiple entities and with queries you can fine tune the results using multiple parameters. In the following, we will be considering the Orders and the Shippers tables from the Northwind database shown next: What we would like to achieve is to fashion a query in LightSwitch which finds orders later than a specified date (OrderDate) carried by a specified shipping company (CompanyName). In the previous example, we created a single parameter and here we extend it to two parameters, OrderDate and CompanyName. The following stored procedure in SQL Server 2008 would produce the rows that satisfy the above conditions: Use NorthwindGoCreate Procedure ByDateAndShprName @ordDate datetime, @shprName nvarchar(30)asSELECT Orders.OrderID, Orders.CustomerID, Orders.EmployeeID,Orders.OrderDate, Orders.RequiredDate, Orders.ShippedDate,Orders.ShipVia, Orders.Freight, Orders.ShipName, Orders.ShipAddress, Shippers.ShipperID,Shippers.CompanyName, Shippers.PhoneFROM Orders INNER JOIN Shippers ON Orders.ShipVia = Shippers.ShipperIDwhere Orders.OrderDate > @OrdDate and Shippers.CompanyName=@shprName The stored procedure ByDateAndShprName can be executed by providing the two parameters (variables), @OrdDate and @shprName, as shown below. Exec ByDateAndShprName '5/1/1998 12:00:00','United Package' The result returned by the previous command is shown next copied from the SQL Server Management Studio (only first few columns are shown): The same result can be achieved in LightSwitch using two parameters after attaching these two tables to the LightSwitch application. As the details of creating screens and queries have been described in detail, only some details specific to the present section are described. Note that the mm-dd-yyyy appears in the result reversed yyyy-mm-dd. Create a Microsoft LightSwitch application (VB or C#). Here project Using Combo6 was created. Attach a database using SQL Server 2008 Express and bring the two tables, Orders and Shippers, to create two entities, Order and Shipper, as shown in the next screenshot: Create a query as shown in the next image: Here the query is called ByDate. Note that the CompanyName in the Shippers table is distinct. The completed query with two parameters appears as shown: Create a new screen (click on Add Screen in the query designer shown in the previous screenshot) and choose the Editable Grid Screen template. Here the screen created is named EditableGridByDate. Click on Add Data Item… and add the query NorthwindData.ByDate. The designer changes as shown next: Click on OrderDate parameter on the left-hand side navigation of the screen and drag and drop it just below the Screen Command Bar as shown. In a similar manner, drag and drop the query parameter CompanyName below the OrderDate of the earlier step. This will display as two controls for two parameters on the screen. Hold with mouse, drag and drop ByDate below the CompanyName you added in the previous step. The completed screen design should appear as shown (some fields are not shown in the display): The previous image shows two parameters. The DataGrid rows show the rows returned by the query. As is, this screen would return no data if the parameters were not specified. The OrderDate defaults to Current Date. Click on F5 to display the screen as shown: Enter the date 5/1/1998 directly. Enter United Package in the CompanyName textbox and click on the Refresh button on the previous screen. The screen is displayed as shown here: The above screen is an editable screen and you should be able to add, delete, and edit the fields and they should update the fields in the backend database when you save the data. Also note that the LightSwitch application returned 11 rows of data while the stored procedure in SQL Server returned 10 rows. This may look weird but SQL Server date time refers to PM but Microsoft LightSwitch order date is datetime data type with AM. Entering PM instead of AM returns the correct number of rows.