Serialize a GWT Canvas - gwt

I have an application which must save client instances of com.smartgwt.client.widgets.Canvas to a disk on the server, and then restore them.
My solution is to serialize the canvases, send them to the server to be saved, save them, load them, send them back to the client, and then deserialize.
Currently, the network transfer code is all in place. The only thing left is serializing the canvases. However, I want to know if doing so is even possible? If not, any workarounds? Clues?
Thanks,
Ian

I would suggest that you do not serialize the Canvases themselves, but instead save their state. Depending on what the canvases contain, this can be easier or harder, but in most cases makes better sense than trying to save the objects themselves. SmartGWT provides API calls to save the state of some complex object, e.g. ListGrids . For simpler objects you can come up with a way to store their view state, e.g by using a JSON object that holds of what is important to your case.

Related

asp.net mvc accessing class fields from a custom auth attribute

I am using a custom AuthAttribute to determine whether a user can access a controller and/or actions. The problem is I have to duplicate information and EFx connections in the attribute that already exist on the class that is being adorned.
My question is whether there is a way to access the fields on the adorned class from the custom AuthAttribute? I am trying to avoid having to re-architect the software in a way that would provide a single point of access since that would open up a different can of worms.
I believe I have found an answer that works. I welcome all comments on this solution.
Rather than have the attribute gain access to the properties and fields on the controller it adorns you can share values between them in a thread-safe way through the common HttpContext object. So if you are being extreme like I am and are trying to cut down on duplicate calls to your database in both the authattribute and the adorned controller action then pass the results forward. What that means is the authattribute will be called first and you can stash the retrieved values in the "Items" collection off the HttpContext object passed into the AuthorizeCore(..) method. You can then retrieve the same value in a THREAD-SAFE way through the HttpContext object in the controller.
example to save value within the AuthorizeCore(..) override of the AuthAttribute:
httpContext.Items.Add("fester", "bester");
example to retrieve value inside the subsequent call to the Controller/Action:
this.HttpContext.ApplicationInstance.Context.Items["fester"];
I have to warn you this is only a possible implementation that appears to work in simple testing. Personally it feels like a hack and there has to be a better way. I would also state this is in pursuit of a dubious performance benefit. It should cut down on the number of database and/or network calls by cache'ing retrieved data in the HttpContext so you don't have to repeat the calls in both the authattribute and the adorned Controller/Action. If you don't have a web site that gets a huge volume of calls then I would warn you against this.
I hope someone recommends something better on this page. I will keep an eye on how this works on my web site and let y'all know if it behaves and is truly thread-safe.

iPhone: Load Queue on Startup

I've not found a answer to this question anywhere, but this seems like a typical problem:
I would like to send some POST-Requests (with ASIHTTPRequest, what I already do), but if something goes wrong, ther user can decide to "Try Later", that means, the task should be put on a queue and this queue should be read next time the application starts. So, that's my question: how to "save" the queue, so that the app can read it next time it starts? Is it possible to "read" the queue and try sending this POST-Request again, let's say, 10 min later, even if the application is not running?
What kind of documentation should I read in order to be able to do this?
I would be very glad to hear any answers. Thanks in advance.
P.S.: Another Idea I have: as I just have to Upload Photos, I could have a folder with all the Photos that still need to be uploaded, and when the App starts, the app looks at this folder and try to send all the photos in this folder. Does it make sense?
My approach for this issue would be like this:
Whenever you fail to send details - write content of the array to a file using '[NSArray writeToFile:]' you can use serialization if array contain any data which is custom defined (if your array contain standard cocoa objects(NSString,NSData etc) they already implemented with serialization )
When app launches; load the content from file directly to an array object ('[NSArray arrayWithContentsOfFile:]')
then construct http request and try sending. In application the data(in your case array) is stored/serialized not the request, you need to reconstruct the http request when you want to try one more time.(don't try serializing ASIHTTPRequest, you have reconstruct it)
I'm going to assume you've already looked at NSOperationQueue and NSOperation. AFAIK there is no built-in support for serializing NSOperation, but you could very easily write your own serialization mechanism for an NSOperation subclass that you use for posting data and write the an NSOperationQueue's operations to disk if something goes wrong.
Without knowing too many details it's hard to give a precise answer. There are many ways to write data to disk and load it again later, the direction you take will be largely dependent on your situation.

Approaches to save some NSManagedObjects but not others?

I'm working on a Core Data iPhone app that pulls remote resources from the web into NSManagedObjects and saves them locally.
I want the user to be able to designate which of these objects should be saved. This means that some will be saved, but many should be deleted. However, I might want to save and delete at different times - I'd prefer to save designated objects immediately (in case the app crashes), but still keep around the other objects because they're hanging out in table views and such.
One approach I can think of is to have a different persistent store - one for stuff that will be saved, one for stuff that won't; this way I can save the "should be saved" store at any time. However, I would much prefer to keep objects of the same type in the same domain.
Another approach would be to just save at the very end - negating any ability to recover from a crash. But saving at the end would allow me to parse out any objects that weren't designated "should save".
And that's really what I want - a "shouldSave" method in the NSManagedObject class, or at least a save method that I could fire at select objects. But as far as I can tell, neither of those exist.
So, if anyone has any other suggestions, please let me know! It would be greatly appreciated.
CoreData is not for object serialization, it is an object graph serialization. That is an important distinction. Once you have an NSManagedObject it is associated with a context, and CoreData handles saves at context level since that is the only way it guarantee any sort of object graph consistency. In other words, you can't save individual objects because if they have relationships with other objects you would need to also save those objects and it quickly cascades out to the whole graph.
You seem to be worried about crash recovery. If the app crashed and the user relaunched it would they expect to see just the items they saved, or everything that was on the screen before they crashed? If it is the former you should just delete them at save time and remove them from the users view (with some animation), if it is the later you should commit out everything, and potentially delete the objects you are not interested in at another time.

Good strategies for REST -> XML -> Core Data -> UITableView?

What are good practices for asynchronously pulling large amounts of XML from a RESTful service into a Core Data store, and from this store, populating a UITableView on the fly?
I'm thinking of using libxml2's xmlParseChunk() function to parse chunks of incoming XML and translate a node and its children into the relevant managed objects, as nodes come in.
At the same time that these XML nodes are turned into managed objects, I want to generate UITableView rows, in turn. Say, 50 rows at a time. Is this realistic?
In your experience, what do you do to accomplish this task, to maintain performance and handle, potentially, thousands of rows? Are there different, simpler approaches that work as well or better?
Sure, this is a pretty standard thing. The easiest solution is to do the loading in a background thread on one MOC, and have the UI running on the main thread with its own MOC. Whenever you get a chunk of data you want to have appear (say 50 entries), you have the background MOCsave:.
Assuming you have the foreground MOC rigged to merge changes (via mergeChangesFromContextDidSaveNotification:) then whenever you save the background MOC the foreground MOC will get all of those changes. Assuming you are using NSFetchedResultsController it has delegate methods to cope with changes in its MOC, and if you are using Apple's sample code then you probably already have everything setup correctly.
In general CoreData is going to be faster than anything you roll yourself unless you really know what you are doing and are willing to spend a ton of time tuning for your specific case. The biggest thing you can do is make sure that slow things (like XML processing and synchronous flash I/O caused by save:) are not on the main thread blocking user interaction.
Joe Hewitt (Facebook app developer) has release much of his code as open-source. It is called Three20. There is a class there that is great for fetching internet data and populating it into a table, without the need for the data beforehand. The classes used for this are called TTTableViewController and TTTableViewDataSource.
From here, it would not be much of a stretch to store as CoreData, just subclass the classes as you see fit with the supplied hooks.
If you are worried about too much data, 50 at a time does sound reasonable. These classes have a built in "More" button to help you out.
From the Three20 readme:
Internet-aware table view controllers
TTTableViewController and
TTTableViewDataSource help you to
build tables which load their content
from the Internet. Rather than just
assuming you have all the data ready
to go, like UITableView does by
default, TTTableViewController lets
you communicate when your data is
loading, and when there is an error or
nothing to display. It also helps you
to add a "More" button to load the
next page of data, and optionally
supports reloading the data by shaking
the device.
No one has mentioned RestKit yet? My friends ... seriously, you have to check this out. If you are doing anything with REST on iOS (and now on OS X) and particularly if you're wanting to work with Core Data ... PLEASE have a look at RestKit. I've saved countless hours implementing some pretty complex data synchronization between a server and my Core Data models on iOS. RestKit made it so damned easy, it almost makes you sick.

Wicket, page stack, and memory usage

A Wicket application serializes and caches all pages to support stateful components, as well as for supporting the back button, among other possible reasons. I have an application which uses setResponsePage to navigate from screen to screen. Over a pretty short amount of time the session gets rather large because all of the prior pages are stored in the session. For the most part, I only need the session to contain the current page, for obvious reasons, and perhaps the last 2 or 3 pages to allow easy navigation using the browser's back button.
Can I force a page to expire after I have navigated away from it and I know that I don't want to use to back button to that version of the page? More generally what is the recommended way to deal with session growth in Wicket?
http://apache-wicket.1842946.n4.nabble.com/Wicket-Session-grows-too-big-real-fast-td1875816.html
If you use loads of domain objects on your page, which are eventually tightly coupled to other domain objects, be sure to avoid serialization for these!
Have a look at
LoadableDetachableModel for wrapping domaing objects
DataView and IDataProvider for displaying list of domain objects
Thou shalt not stuff domain objects into instance variables of components.
Thou shalt not make domain object references final in order to use them in anonymous subclasses.
Thou shalt not pass a mere List of domain objects to a ListView.
Perhaps, when subclassing WbeRequestCycle in your Application class, you might gain control of a page's lifetime in the pagemap... haven't tried it, though
In order to avoid Session choke due to continuous stacking of byte-stream due to serialization in a session and memory usage piling , you can use detachable models by using hooks to arrange for their own storage and restoration at the beginning of each request cycle , this way you have complete control over models containing byte-stream of pages not required in the session or navigable through 'Back' button.