Expando Helper with object hyrarchy

I just build very nice helper for razor engine which to convert dictionary key into object graph.

Expando helper will convert dictionary into proper object, it is very useful for razor engine. 

for example you can define Model.Parent.Child as a key and you can parse it to your favourite razor engine

AngularJS ng-option with IE8

IE always make our life a bit challenging. especially with AngularJS ng-option, it won't refresh the options unless we trigger it by modify the options content. I guess this is the rendering issue in IE8, it try to compare the reference instead of the value. Here is the code snippet if you need it.

AntiXSS for Web API

Most people forget to protect their site from XSS attack.
They simply accepting the fact that the smart javascript libary (AngularJS) will protect them by escaping the json characters.

But how about your legacy site, it still allow your XSS script to harm innocent user.

Unfortunately AntiXSS library doesn't protect you with Double open angle brackets which can pass this script in especially if the client use firefox.

Here is the complete snippets

AngularJS Placeholder for IE8/9 + Validation

After 5 hours looking how to fix IE8 bug with placeholder and required attribute,
I manage to find the problem and the solution.

The key problem is that our $formatter is executed before the model binder finish loading.
which caused the placeholder to be applied as a value.
You can guess, this lead to by passing your required validation.

So the key solution is to let the model binder finish their work first and then we do watermark of our control.

Key of the day : $timeout

Feel free to see the whole angular placeholder from my gist
https://gist.github.com/kkurni/7018564

Telerik Icenium first impression

An evolution of mobile development trends will demand cross development platform.

There are heaps of new technology out there which make this idea close to reality.

Besides PhoneGap, Titanium, Monotouch, Today I will share my first impression with Telerik Icenium.

What is Icenium ?

A Platform for Hybrid Mobile Development which includes IDE, Simulator, Debugging Tools and Publishing.

IDEs

• Icenium Graphite - Windows IDE
• Icenium Mist - Cloud IDE
• Visual Studio Extension

First Impression

This new platform sound promising and it definitely make development easier and cheaper to maintain.

However there are some minor limitation which may not effect your decision to start using Icenium such as Icenium Mist which is their cloud IDE is still buggy.

This is nice to have gimmick but mostly developer will prefer to work on their own local IDE. It asked me to wait for compiling the code which should be expected to be quicker overtime.

Sample code

Here are my sample code if you want to have a quick look

https://github.com/kkurni/DataVizDemo

https://github.com/kkurni/JQueryMobileDemo

https://github.com/kkurni/MobileCrossUIDemo

Goodies

I love their idea to quick deploy to IOS device.

They use QR Code to wrap the link and will deploy into icenium ion container.

Podcast project

Here is my podcast project dedicated for my lovely church.

Features :
* Searchable through ITunes



* Embedded player

* Fully CMS Website

Face detection using R

I just started to use cool statistic programming language tool called R.

Here is the example to do face detection.
https://gist.github.com/kkurni/6789379

The tricky part is how do you manage your memory for big processing data.

Suddenly my machine become very slow to me.
I will laverage AWS or google cloud machine for my dev machine

Using IOS 7 Simulator with old XCode

IOS 7 will be out of the door soon, so we need to make sure that our app doesn't blow out on that new IOS.

Replicate the issue which only exist with the old build on new IOS 7 simulator will be ideal.

Here how I did it.
-> Open your IOS Simulator V7 from XCODE5-DPx/Applications/IOSSimultor
-> Open your old XCODe and target your app to IOS6 and run it.

Because IOS7 simulator already open, XCODe will reuse them and run your app which build using old XCODE (IOS6 target) inside IOS7 Simulator.

Now is the time to fix the UI. =D
Hope shouldn't be too hard

Make Git Faster on Windows

Just a note to make git faster on windows

*Located C:\Users\{username}\Documents\WindowsPowerShell\Microsoft.PowerShell_profile.ps1

*And insert this.

 $GitPromptSettings.RepositoriesInWhichToDisableFileStatus = "C:\Projects\{wherever your repo may be}\Online\Trunk"

* WHY ?

Behind the scenes posh-git is running a format of “git status” to be able to tell you if any files have changed and that is expensive because it has to check each file in the repository.

To help regain some sanity you can disable the file status and just have the current branch presented in your prompt and manually call git status only when you need it.

Angular JS Resource to support Header

I just made a pull request from 1.1.2 which support header parameters in resource actions which very useful for doing authentication.
 https://github.com/angular/angular.js/pull/1906

 Here is the example how to use it

  $scope.signIn = function () {

      Authenticate.signIn(null,null,

          function (data, headers) {

              console.log(headers('x-token'));

              tokenHandler.setToken(headers('x-token'));

          },

          function(data, status, headers, config) {

              console.log('fail');

          },

          { 'Authorization': 'Basic dGVzdGtrMTNssdfdfsgsdfzdC5jb206cGFzc3dvcmQhMQ==' }

      );

===
 And Here is the example to use Token Handler https://gist.github.com/4662548

Cross-origin resource sharing (CORS)

Overview

Cross-origin resource sharing (CORS) is a mechanism that allows a web page to make XMLHttpRequests to another domain.[1] Such "cross-domain" requests would otherwise be forbidden by web browsers, per the same origin security policy. CORS defines a way in which the browser and the server can interact to determine whether or not to allow the cross-origin request.[2] It is more powerful than only allowing same-origin requests, but it is more secure than simply allowing all such requests.

Scenario

"Site A" needs to send GET/POST request to "Site B"

When "Site A" send a GET/POST request to "Site B" will automatically cancelled that request.

This type of request traditionally would not be allowed under the browser’s same origin policy.

Enable CORS

In order CORS to allow "Site A" to get the response from "Site B", we need to add Access-Control-Allow-Origin response header "Site B".

For Microsoft IIS7, merge this into the web.config file at the root of your application or site:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<configuration>
 <system.webServer>
   <httpProtocol>
     <customHeaders>
       <add name="Access-Control-Allow-Origin" value="*" />
     </customHeaders>
   </httpProtocol>
 </system.webServer>
</configuration>

Check this page for more information [enable-cors.org/server.html]

Challenge 1 - Handling a special request

Cross-origin requests come in two flavors:

• simple requests
• "special requests" (a term I just made up)

Simple requests are requests that meet the following criteria:

• HTTP Method matches (case-sensitive) one of: HEAD, GET, POST
• HTTP Headers matches (case-insensitive): Accept, Accept-Language, Content-Language, Last-Event-ID, Content-Type
• Content type :application/x-www-form-urlencoded, multipart/form-data, text/plain

If you send a request outside this simple request criteria which is "not-so-simple requests", The browser first issues a preflight request, which is like asking the server for permission to make the actual request.

preflight request will send a OPTIONS request.

Once permissions have been granted, the browser makes the actual request. The browser handles the details of these two requests transparently. The preflight response can also be cached so that it is not issued on every request.

---

Sample scenario : If you use [angularJS] v1.0.3 to make a $http request, It will add a custom header "X-Requested-With" into the request. Or we may also need to add custom header such as "X-BLA-*".

This kind of request will trigger preflight request which will ask the server permission to make the actual request.

To enable this request to be passed into the server, we need enable Access-Control-Allow-Headers response header However when we enable this Access-Control-Allow-Headers,

It requires us to provide specific origin in Access-Control-Allow-Origin response header.

<add name="Access-Control-Allow-Origin" value="http://localhost" />
<add name="Access-Control-Allow-Credentials " value="true" />

For more information, please check this site [html5rocks.com/cors]

.

Challenge 2 - Anti Forgery Session Token

Another challenge with CORS is dealing with [Anti Frogery Session Token]

There are 2 things you need to provide inside your POST request in order to satisfy Anti Frogery validation on the server.

• The incoming request has a Request.Form entry called __RequestVerificationToken
• Session ID which stored on your Cookie.

The server will use Session ID to get verification token and try to match this token with __RequestVerificationToken.

To solve this problem, both client and server need to allow credential to be shared between request and response.

• Enable Access-Control-Allow-Credentials on the server.

<add name="Access-Control-Allow-Credentials " value="true" />

• Enable .withCredentials on your request.

        $.ajax({

            // The 'type' property sets the HTTP method.
            // A value of 'PUT' or 'DELETE' will trigger a preflight request.
            type: 'POST',
            data: serializedData,
            
            // The URL to make the request to.
            url: $scope.url,

            xhrFields: {
                // The 'xhrFields' property sets additional fields on the XMLHttpRequest.
                // This can be used to set the 'withCredentials' property.
                // Set the value to 'true' if you'd like to pass cookies to the server.
                // If this is enabled, your server must respond with the header
                // 'Access-Control-Allow-Credentials: true'.
                withCredentials: true
            },
            ....
        });

Limitations

There are still 2 limitations which CORS can't handle at this moment.

• 302 (Redirect) Response code with special request (Which initialize preflight request).

In Fiddler it will look like this

1. OPTIONS - http://siteB => 404 (not found)
2. POST - http://siteB => 302 (redirect with location)
3. GET - http://siteB/new location => 200 (OK) 

Even in fiddler, we get 200 response status, the browser keep reject this response.

• Redirect from HTTP to HTTPS (vice versa)

This issue happen when your HTTP request redirects you to HTTPS protocol.

In Fiddler it will look like this

1. GET - http://siteB => 302 (redirect to HTTPS)
2. GET - https://siteB => 200 (OK)

Again, even in fiddler, we get 200 response status, the browser keep reject this response.

Sample code (end to ends)

• Enable CORS on server side by adding this response header into web.config

<system.webServer>
    <httpProtocol>
      <customHeaders>
         <add name="Access-Control-Allow-Origin" value="http://localhost:55129" />
  <add name="Access-Control-Allow-Credentials " value="true" />
  <add name="Access-Control-Allow-Headers" value="X-Requested-With" /> 
      </customHeaders>
    </httpProtocol>
</system.webServer>

• Client request using AJAX

  $.ajax({
            // The 'type' property sets the HTTP method.
            // A value of 'PUT' or 'DELETE' will trigger a preflight request.
            type: 'GET',

            // The URL to make the request to.
            url: 'http://siteB,

            // The 'contentType' property sets the 'Content-Type' header.
            // The JQuery default for this property is
            // 'application/x-www-form-urlencoded; charset=UTF-8', which does not trigger
            // a preflight. If you set this value to anything other than
            // application/x-www-form-urlencoded, multipart/form-data, or text/plain,
            // you will trigger a preflight request.
            contentType: 'text/plain',

            xhrFields: {
                // The 'xhrFields' property sets additional fields on the XMLHttpRequest.
                // This can be used to set the 'withCredentials' property.
                // Set the value to 'true' if you'd like to pass cookies to the server.
                // If this is enabled, your server must respond with the header
                // 'Access-Control-Allow-Credentials: true'.
                withCredentials: true
            },

            headers: {
                // Set any custom headers here.
                // If you set any non-simple headers, your server must include these
                // headers in the 'Access-Control-Allow-Headers' response header.
            },

            success: function (data, textStatus, jqXHR) {
                // Here's where you handle a successful response.
                $scope.data = data;
                $scope.$apply();
            },

            error: function (jqXHR, textStatus, errorThrown) {
                // Here's where you handle an error response.
                // Note that if the error was due to a CORS issue,
                // this function will still fire, but there won't be any additional
                // information about the error.
                alert('Woops, there was an error making the request. - with status ' + errorThrown);
            }
        });

• Or Client request using $http module from angularJS

    $http.get($scope.url, {withCredentials : true}).
          success(function (data, status) {
              $scope.data = data;
              $scope.$apply();
          }).
          error(function (data, status) {
              $scope.data = data || "Request failed";
              $scope.$apply();
          }
        );

Graph DB on Azure - unable to access jarfile windows-service-wrapper-*.jar

Recently I tried to publish neo4j into Azure cloud.
Fortunately, There is brilliant readify guy has started this and did all the hard work.

I need fix problem related to windows power shell support error "Unable to access jar file windows-service-wrapper-*.jar" which seems doesn't recognise the wildcard command properly.

Thanks to "Valsaul", which provide me with a solution to edit bin\base.bat file and replace the line with
windows-service-wrapper-*.jar 
and changed it to
windows-service-wrapper-4.jar , which was the name of the file that came with M1.8.1.


If you need to use the latest Neo4j blob, clone my fork at
https://github.com/kkurni/Neo4j.Server.AzureWorkerHost

and you can put your latest Neo4j into neo4j-install.zip

Git Rebase PullRequest formula

If you want to do Git Rebase your pull request instead of merge you can follow this step wisely.

//checkout your branch

git checkout branchName

//git rebase to your master

git rebase master

//checkout master

git checkout master

//fast forward your master to your branch pointer by merge it.

git merge branchName

//push your master to your repository

Git push origin master

//push your branch to your repository with force

Git push –f origin branchName

---- Once you done this, Github will automatically detect your pull request rebase.

-----You can check on Github and hit delete button or you can do manually using this step

//delete your branch on your repository first

Git push origin :branchName

//delete your local branch

Git branch –D branchName