inno: converting Ansi string to string

When you work in Unicode Inno Setup the data typing of strings for functions seems to always get you one way or the other.
There are no easy build in conversions either.
After running into this repeatdly I build a helper function that simply converts the Ansi string to regulare string.

May come in handy for others:

//convert Ansi String to String
function ConvertToString(AString:AnsiString):String;
var
 i : Integer;
 iChar : Integer;
 outString : String;
begin
 outString :='';
 for i := 1 to Length(AString) do
 begin
  iChar := Ord(AString[i]); //get int value
  outString := outString + Chr(iChar);
 end;

 Result := outString;
end;

Cheers,
B.

tomcat: Another way to connect IIS and Tomcat

If you were working with tomcat and IIS for a while you know things are getting a little long in the tooth. The last principle update to how IIS and Tomcat interact was made in early 2000. In the meantime many changes have occured to IIS and Tomcat with more capabilities added.
So, I thought it would be time to also update the way IIS and Tomcat connect.
I just published a project on RIAForge whose goal is to modernize this part:

Lastest Release Available on Github.

Online Documentation is regularly updated.

Here are some reasons to consider a new connector:
• no ISAPI code
• no IIS6 vestiges or backward compatibility elements needed on IIS7
• all managed code using the modern extensibility framework
• works on IIS6 and IIS7
• speed improvements
• easier control by file type on IIS side
• no virtual directories and virtual mapping needed
• configuration can be inherited to sub-sites and virtual sites
• easy install/uninstall
• support partial stream sending to browser (automatic flushing) with faster response to client
• support both 32/64 bit of Windows with same process and files
• transfer of all request headers to servlet container
• build in simple-security for web-administration pages

Happy experimenting,
B.

.NET: C# find pattern in byte array

Byte Arrays are not as easily handled as strings when it comes to finding what they contain, especially if we are searching for a pattern of matching bytes.
It seems like everyone is rolling their own on this one. Most examples I have seen look at converting bytes to strings and then using IndexOf operators.
However, if you use bytes that cannot be converted to a string easily or do not want to use string comparison here is my version of a working function that does the trick.

private static int ByteSearch(byte[] searchIn, byte[] searchBytes, int start = 0)
{
    int found = -1;
    bool matched = false;
    //only look at this if we have a populated search array and search bytes with a sensible start
    if (searchIn.Length > 0 && searchBytes.Length > 0 && start <= (searchIn.Length - searchBytes.Length) && searchIn.Length >= searchBytes.Length)
    {
        //iterate through the array to be searched
        for (int i = start; i <= searchIn.Length - searchBytes.Length; i++)
        {
            //if the start bytes match we will start comparing all other bytes
            if (searchIn[i] == searchBytes[0])
            {
                if (searchIn.Length > 1)
                {
                    //multiple bytes to be searched we have to compare byte by byte
                    matched = true;
                    for (int y = 1; y <= searchBytes.Length - 1; y++)
                    {
                        if (searchIn[i + y] != searchBytes[y])
                        {
                            matched = false;
                            break;
                        }
                    }
                    //everything matched up
                    if (matched)
                    {
                        found = i;
                        break;
                    }
 
                }
                else
                {
                    //search byte is only one bit nothing else to do
                    found = i;
                    break; //stop the loop
                }
 
            }
        }
 
    }
    return found;
}

Cheers,
B.

CF: ColdFusion Report Builder migration errors with Invalid construct.A script statement must end with ";"

You may had the opportunity to work with ColdFusion Report Builder in the past. It was a cool little tool that we used with ColdFusion 7 when you could not afford anything else to write reports with.
In its first iteration it was pretty buggy; today, it still is around but I see fewer people using or mentioning it. It barely gets any play at the user conferences and is treated more like a red-headed step child (I have nothing against red headed people of any kind ;o).
In my opinion it is still a useful tool that does not get its share of attention. However, when you migrate from older versions of reports that you have written with, say, ColdFusion Report Builder (CFRB) 7, to ColdFusion Report Builder 8 or 9 you may get some fairly unexpected errors.
Such as this:

Invalid construct.A script statement must end with ";"

The only thing you did it just open and save the report. No changes were actually made. All of a sudden, errors jump up from seemingly nowhere. Well, for me, that resulted in many hours of ghost hunting (since I cannot see what's in the cfr files) until I finally got the bright idea to dig up an old copy of Report Writer 7 for those reports.

I restored the .cfr file from backup, made a change using CFRB 7 and everything worked. Just to check for sanity, I, then, restored the file again, made a simple change using either CFRB 8 or 9 and, boom, broken again.

The lesson here is to make sure you ask before you touch a ColdFusion report (.cfr) file with which version of ColdFusion/ColdFusion Report Builder it was created. Then, make the modifications only with that tool.

This in the end may save you many hours of frustration.

Cheers,
B.

CF: Explicit "undefined" in ColdFusion 9 results in Bug when using CustomTag Attribute collections

Adobe ColdFusion 9 introduced many new enhancements but as with any major release there are new behaviors and new problems galore.
This particular bug I encountered deals with a change in behavior of component function processing. I encountered this while migrating an application from CF8 to CF9.
In previous releases of ColdFusion an Argument that was not passed would not exist in the arguments scope. With ColdFusion 9, an argument is always created even if not passed if it is part of the arguments declaration in your function.

For example this simple function:

<cffunction name="fTwo">   
  <cfargument name="argA" default="1"> 
  <cfargument name="argB" required="no">  
  <cfreturn arguments>

</cffunction>

a dump of this function will return:

1: <cfdump var="#fTwo()#">
2: 

ARGA 1
ARGB undefined

Rather than just

ARGA 1

Thus ColdFusion 9 is introducing a new state in the variables, the Explicit "undefined".
Since this is a new state all function working with CF objects/ i.e. variables will also need to be aware of it. And most are and, thus, little problem.

However, if you introduce some slight alterations, e.g. call a custom tag from a component, this system fails.
You will get errors as the IsDefined() function will identify something as defined while it is not.

Let's introduce a simple custom tag (CT9Test) with the following 6 lines of code:

1: <cfdump var="#Attributes#">
2: <cfif IsDefined("Attributes.ArgB")>  
3:   Attributes B is defined
4: <cfelse> 
5:   Attributes B is NOT Defined
6: </cfif>
7: 
8: 

First let's call this custom tag from the function like so:

1: <cffunction name="fTwo">
2: <cfargument name="argA" default="1">
3: <cfargument name="argB" required="no">
4: <cf_CT9Test attributeCollection = "#Arguments#">
5: </cffunction>
6:


Nope. This is still good. No problem here. But, let's go ahead and break ColdFusion:

1: <cffunction name="fThree">
2: <cfargument name="argA" default="1">
3: <cfargument name="argB" required="no">
4: <cf_CT9Test anotherVar="something" attributeCollection = "#Arguments#">
5: </cffunction>
6:

You see the difference?
We are simply adding another parameter to be passed to the custom tag in addition to the attribute collection received from the function arguments.
In the above case, the attributes.argB all of a sudden becomes defined. But since it is explicitly "undefined" using it will throw weird errors.
Something like:
if (IsDefined("attributes.argB") ) calc=attributes.argB + 1;
will fail.

The workaround to this is to go back to scenario one and not use any additional parameters when calling your custom tags and using attributeCollection. Package all parameters into one structure, e.g.

1: <cffunction name="fFour">
2: <cfargument name="argA" default="1">
3: <cfargument name="argB" required="no">
4: <cfset arguments.anotherVar="something">
5: <cf_CT9Test attributeCollection = "#Arguments#">
6: </cffunction>
7:

Now that you know this. Happy migrating.
-B

CF: Railo 3.2 Released

After much work the Railo team released the new version (3.2) of Railo over Christmas.
Railo is one of the Open Source ColdFusion application engines available. The other notable one is Open Blue Dragon.
If you are doing ColdFusion based programming this is something that should belong to your stable of tools that you are familiar with.
In the past the discover-ability of Railo was harder as it was not as easy to understand how to get things going once you downloaded it. Though technically simply the step of getting it installed and going was a hurdle that made it harder than the Adobe engine.
With this release among a myriad of enhancement installers were made available for multiple platforms. For example, for the windows platform the comparable Railo installer is one third the size of Adobe's while it handles both 32 and 64 bit installations.

Happy Experimenting,
B.

XJS: Using the debugger command to start a debugging session

The ability to kick of the an in-line step-by-step debugger was introduced in JavaScript early on. Since before JS version 1.5, I believe. However, practically speaking there were few client-side debuggers that could take advantage of this.
Thus, the use of it has not been heavy even after the more ready availability of Browser development support and in-line debuggers. Today, all browsers support some sort of step-by-step debugger that can be used in concert with the debugger command to more effectively debug code, so perfect time to remind us of this option.

Why would we need to use it?. Let use this snippet as an example:

for (var i=0; i <= 10000; i++) {   
 if (i==98) {

  debugger;
 }   
}

Using conventional in-line debugging you would have to set a break-point, then iterate along until you reached the loop condition that you were interested in, i.e. 98. Using the debugger statement, you simplify this drastically.

Expanding this principle into use with ExtJS is easy. Giving the nested nature of much of the ExtJS code and heavy use of complex configuration objects setting breakpoints is sometimes a game of hit-and-miss.
Using the debbuger statement you will still able to halt the execution at the right place even if you did not hit the correct break-point in your debugging tool.

For example:

 1: listeners: {
 2:  render: {
 3:   fn: function(){

 4:    //stop for debugging here
 5:    debugger;
 6:    
 7:    Ext.fly(clock.getEl().parent()).addClass('x-status-text-panel').createChild({cls:'spacer'});

 8:    
 9:    //Kick off the clock timer that updates the clock el every second:
10:    //Would need to be set in application format
11:    Ext.TaskMgr.start({

12:     run: function(){
13:       Ext.fly(clock.getEl()).update(new Date().format('g:i:s A'));

14:       },
15:    interval: 1000
16:    });

17:   },
18:   delay: 100
19:  }
20: } 

Here we can stop when then rendering is activated to investigate code execution further.

The debugger statment works in most browsers, i.e. Firefox with Firebug, IE 8, Chrome. In IE you will have to explicitly put the browser in debugging mode by clicking the "Start Debugging" button in the developer tools.

Happy Debugging,
B.