Disable control callbacks when setting values in code? - xaml

I've noticed that when a control such as an AutoSuggestBox has a callback, the callback is executed both when a user interacts with the control and when my code changes the associated value.
For example, if I set the TextChanged property on an AutoSuggestBox, the function is called even when my code sets the Text property to an initial value.
This is causing problems in my application in the form of both bugs and unnecessary function calls. You may be wondering how the code came to be in this state -- the answer is, I don't know. The project was handed off to me from another developer and I've been tasked to fix a number of bugs.
Although I can individually hunt down all the places in the code where this happens and temporarily remove the callback, I'm wondering if there is an easier way, for example a property I can set on the control that says, "don't call the callbacks when it is the code making a change rather than the UI".

For the AutoSuggestBox.TextChanged event, the attribute of the trigger reason is provided in AutoSuggestBoxTextChangedEventArgs, and you can judge based on this
private void AutoSuggestBox_TextChanged(AutoSuggestBox sender, AutoSuggestBoxTextChangedEventArgs args)
{
if (args.Reason == AutoSuggestionBoxTextChangeReason.ProgrammaticChange)
{
return;
}
//other code
}
For other controls, you need to deal with them according to your situation.
Best regards.

Related

Identifying objects in IBM RFT

While executing my script in RFT, my script got failed due to the slight position change of a button. (This button's position slightly changes according to the option selected for previous combo box due to the label appearing near the button)
As there are 2 positions for this button in window, one of my script fails while other passes.
Please suggest how to identify this same object in 2 different places in RFT?
If you're alright with not using pre-mapped values and instead work with objects directly in code (which I've personally found to be extremely useful... it's allowed me to do great and wondrous things with RFT :), the following ought to work fine:
private void clickObject(String uniqueIdentifier) {
// Find object
RootTestObject root = RootTestObject.getRootTestObject();
TestObject[] matchingObjs = root.find(atProperty(".id", uniqueIdentifier));
if (matchingObjs.length > 0) {
// Click the object
((GuiTestObject) matchingObjs[0]).click();
}
// Clean-up
unregister(matchingObjs);
}
Feel free to replace ".id" with whatever property is best suited for the situation... since I work primarily with a web application, the ".id" property has worked splendidly for me.
Because the method finds the object anew each time, it'll grab the object's position wherever it's at at the time the method's called. The clean-up will also prevent any weird, horrible, and otherwise unfortunate UnregisteredObjectExceptions from cropping up.
Without looking at your pages I cannot be sure, but I think the buttons are actually two different buttons. Maybe they are generated by javascript, or they are just un-hidden after the option you select in the combobox.
If they are two different buttons (record them both and look at the recognition properties) you can either replace some properties with a regular expression or check wich button is visible/exists and then click it:
if (btn_button1.exists()) {
btn_button1.click();
} else if (btn_button2.exists()) {
btn_button1.click();
}
Here's a more complete tutorial on Object Recognition.
You can increase the tolerance of Rational Performance Tester AssureScript in the properties tab or you could set the description but hide the value. You can also make a custom code that updates the object map to prepare for this change in a java IF structure

Play Framework 2.1.1: bindFromRequest() returns the correct data but ignores all data pertaining to relations

I have a form that is supposed to create an entity of type Load, but for some reason, doesn't seem to be actually passing or seeing any of the data related to associations of the entity (load.user, load.client, etc). This all used to work fine but stopped working at some point during a bunch of refactoring (that didn't change any of the fields in any of the models). Now all of the forms in my website have broken the same way and I have no clue where to even look to start fixing it.
From the view, I submit the form for a new Load, printing out the data everywhere I can along the way. Printing out the data being sent to the server before it's sent shows all the data is there like it should be. Printing out Form.form(Load.class).bindFromRequest() in the controller shows the form's data contains everything needed, for example, the value user.id=1 is in the data. However, there is also a validation error saying that the user is missing. How can this be?
Form(of=class models.Load, data={ a bunch of stuff, user.id=1, a bunch more stuff}, value=None, errors={=[ValidationError(,Logged in user is missing or invalid.,[])]})
The validation error is being generated by public String validate() in the Load class, which is simply checking if(user==null) and returning that string if it is. I should note that every form that submits multiple entities (for example, submitting a Dock and then also the Dock's Location) only saves the main entity (in this example, the Dock) and ignores all others (the Dock's Location is never saved, even though Dock cascades in the model to also save the Location). All of our form fields are labelled correctly, this code did used to work at some point before it mysteriously stopped working!
So why did all of my forms suddenly stop correctly dealing with anything but the main model for the form? It is as if they cannot even "see" the data contained in bindFromRequest(). If I print out a variable in the validation method of Load, such as this.status, it prints the correct thing. But if I try to print something like this.user.id or this.client.id I get a null pointer error. Where is the code in Play that actually interprets the data (user.id=1) and turns it into the User associated with the Load, and how could it be breaking?
Edit: Also, yes, I did try "play clean", it was the first thing I tried since usually it fixes weird errors like these! But this time, no dice.
Edit2: I'm including the html from the form, in case it is helpful.
<input type="text" id="user_id" name="user.id" value="1" class="idfield">
Edit3: The only change I made during the refactoring that might have influenced this is that I had to make some setter methods like Load.setBroker() because the ones that are supposedly generated by Play didn't work. For example, load.broker=aBroker would not have set the Load's Broker before, so I had to make a public void setBroker(Broker broker) method in Load. Does Play use the auto-generated setters to bind the data? Could overwriting them cause problems?
Whoops, I figured it out. It was the setters I had written. Some of them were set to private purely by mistake, and apparently this was preventing Play from setting the values when binding the data. Changed them all to public and the mystery error vanished.

Best OO way to handle "cancel button"

I always wondered what's the best way of handling a cancel button in a more OO way. In the hurry I always end up putting the ugly checking of a boolean form property if the button was canceled of not.
The thing is that way makes the code dirty, having a lot of "cancel checks" between logic that matters.
I always get to something like this:
void doLogic()
{
checkIfIsCancelled();
callOtherFunction();
checkIfIsCancelled();
callAnotherFunction();
checkIfIsCancelled();
callAnotherFunction();
checkIfIsCancelled();
callAnotherFunction();
}
I hope I was clear enough. I just want a neater way to do this :)
A proper way to handle this is the strategy pattern, where you have a default strategy where you do the normal processing and you have a Cancelled strategy.
Canceling changes the strategy to the cancelledStrategy that does nothing but some cleanup. The next call will go to the cancelledStrategy.
In this way even the cleanup is pretty straight forward because you know exactly where in the flow it was cancelled.
Another possible solution (but very dependent on your situation) would be the state pattern, but if you only need it for canceling it creates a lot of overhead.
it would REALLY help to know what GUI kit you're using here. Just from this it's impossible to know if you're taking about a windows, linux or mac machine. Add to that I can't think of a single GUI that that would function in this manner.
Most GUI's operate with a 'callback' pattern Widgets(buttons, menus, listboxes etc) are created and your code attaches a 'callback', a piece code or object&method that is executed when an action is performed on a widget.
In java for example:
Button b = JButton("Push") ;
listener = new ActionListener()_ {
public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e) {
System.out.println("I was pushed!") ;
}
} ;
b.addActionListener(listener)
Arranges for the message "I was pushed!" to be printed when the button is pressed. Of course this thin examples omits all of the work you need to do to setup your window, populate this widget etc.
1st what comes to mind is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chain-of-responsibility_pattern but I'm not sure, it's good here.
You can use the command pattern alongwith a stack to implement multi level undo support.

How can I use the FilterFunction passed to Gdk.Window.AddFilter?

I need to intercept several events before they are delivered to the widget's standard handlers, so I've done this already:
//Inside the definition of my custom widget
protected override void OnRealized()
{
base.OnRealized();
this.GdkWindow.AddFilter(PreFilterMessage);
...
}
So, later I define the PreFilterMessage method:
public Gdk.FilterReturn PreFilterMessage(IntPtr xEvent, Gdk.Event evnt)
{
Console.WriteLine(evnt.Type);
...
}
But the thing is that when I test it, whatever message gets to the window (KeyEvent, ButtonEvent, etc.) it always prints "Nothing", so I'm only getting empty events every time. Somewhere I read that the real information gets through the xEvent parameter, but that's just an IntPtr, so I don't know how to get the information I need (event type, pointer coordinates, etc.) from it.
Can anyone tell me how to do this? Thanks in advance.
Per the docs on the gtk.org website, the GdkEvent received in the filter func is unpopulated. The purpose of this AddFilter mechanism is to allow the user to intercept X events before the gdk event processing starts up. We do not bind any of the X data structures in Gtk#, so you would need to manually marshal that data from the IntPtr using System.Runtime.InteropServices Marshal.
So, unless that sounds familiar as far as what you are trying to accomplish, you may want to consider other alternatives.

Explain ASP.NET Events

See Also:
understanding events and event handlers in C#
As a web dev, I don't typically have to get into building my own events for objects, since most are inherent in the page. However, now I'm into a pretty complex (web) project where I think I may have to use them. I just read a chapter out of Pro VB 2008 and the .NET 3.5 Platform regarding events, delegates and lambdas (ch. 11) and while I have a better idea of what's going on, I am still having trouble wrapping my mind around when exactly to use them and how to use them. I understand their implementation, but the example in the book is a bit contrived.
I was hoping someone with a bit more understanding on the subject of events could provide me with a really solid example.
For my real-world application, I'm trying to use an event that would let me know when an item (some class, named OrderItem) has been updated and perform actions based on whether or not it's been updated. I considered using a flag/boolean property, but I know this doesn't smell right, and it's high-time I learn about how to use events correctly.
Thanks a lot!
EDIT Ok, so I guess to clarify a bit, what is the point of calling an event when all it is doing is calling a method? Why not simply call the method? This isn't a duplicate either, as I'm talking conceptually and she wants to know about handlers specifically. Also, I want to know what the difference would be between using an event or a "flag" property. And what do people mean by "subscribe" to an event?
Lets say you had an elevator system, and the part that moves up and down is called the ElevatorCar. When a person pushes a button to go to the 5th floor, it would make sense for the ElevatorController to call the ElevatorCar.RequestToFloor(5) method. Now when the car actually arrives at the 5th floor, it makes sense for it to raise an event like ArrivedAtFloor, passing 5 as the argument. The ElevatorController class would subscribe to the ArrivedAtFloor event of the ElevatorCar class.
This is all becauase the ElevatorCar class doesn't "know" anything about the ElevatorController class, but the ElevatorController class does know about the ElevatorCar class. Therefore the ElevatorCar class is given instructions by means of Methods, and it notifies the outside world of stuff that happens by means of events.
Does that make any sense?
EDIT:
Ok, first, go read the excellent answer listed in the See Also link (assume you've done that). An event is basically an object saying "if you want me to call you whenever X happens, then register your method here". Registering an event handler with the event is "subscribing". This allows encapsulation. So you can write, for instance, your ElevatorCar class once, and use it many times by many other classes.
As for the difference between using an event, or just calling a method, you have to ask yourself, should the ElevatorCar know about the ElevatorController class. If ElevatorController calls ElevatorCar.GoToFloor(x), how could the ElevatorCar class "call back" to ElevatorController without storing a reference to ElevatorController? That means the call has to become ElevatorCar.GoToFloor(int floor, ElevatorController ctrlr). Then the ElevatorCar class eventually has to call ctrlr.ArrivedAtFloor(floor). But you get into a lot of complexities... what if there's more than one car? You probably have to call ctrlr.ArrivedAtFloor(floor, this). Passing around references to yourself isn't optimal.
As for just setting a property, how does the other class know to come and read the property? The only way is to poll the property over and over to check for it to change. You can solve this, of course, by implementing INotifyPropertyChanged, but then again you're back to events!
Events are a specific case of the Inversion of Control (IoC) pattern. The traditional control flow, the caller invokes a method on the callee (like you are suggesting). With IoC (and thus events), we change around the application control and instead of tell the callee what to do, we tell the callee to notify us when something we are interested in happens.
Consider the case of a Timer. I want to be notified every 5 seconds (say). I don't want to constantly poll the timer ("is it time yet? is it time yet? is it time yet?"). Instead, I want to invert the flow control of my application. I want to tell the timer: "When it's time, please tell me by calling this method." That way, control is "inverted", the callee is invoking a method on the caller!
Consider the following code ...
using System;
using System.Timers;
namespace TestTimer
{
class Program
{
static void Main(string[] args)
{
// create my timer.
var t = new System.Timers.Timer(1000);
// register for notification
// tell the timer, "when it's time, call TimerGoesOff method"
t.Elapsed += new ElapsedEventHandler( TimerGoesOff );
// start the timer
t.Start();
// wait
Console.ReadLine();
}
// this gets called when the timer goes off
public static void TimerGoesOff(object source, ElapsedEventArgs e)
{
Console.WriteLine("The Time is " + e.SignalTime);
}
}
}
Rather than call a method on the Timer to ask when it will go off again (as you suggest), I tell it, "when you go off, call the TimerGoesOff" method. Now, instead of just waiting for the Timer to go off, I could do some work. Consider this code ...
using System;
using System.Threading;
using System.Timers;
namespace TestTimer
{
class Program
{
static void Main(string[] args)
{
// create my timer.
var t = new System.Timers.Timer(1000);
// register for notification
t.Elapsed += new ElapsedEventHandler( TimerGoesOff );
// start the timer
t.Start();
// do some work while timer is going
new Thread(() => DoWork()).Start();
Console.ReadLine();
}
// this gets called when the timer goes off
public static void TimerGoesOff(object source, ElapsedEventArgs e)
{
Console.WriteLine("The Time is " + e.SignalTime);
}
public static void DoWork()
{
for (int i = 0; i < 5; i++)
{
Console.WriteLine( "Working ..." );
Thread.Sleep( 1000 );
}
}
}
}
Now, I get output something like ...
Working ...
The Time is 8/25/2009 1:05:59 PM
Working ...
Working ...
The Time is 8/25/2009 1:06:00 PM
Working ...
The Time is 8/25/2009 1:06:01 PM
Working ...
The Time is 8/25/2009 1:06:02 PM
The Time is 8/25/2009 1:06:03 PM
I have used the Timer.Elapsed Event to change the control flow of my application. I can go off and do work while "waiting" for the timer event to pulse. This is made possible by IoC and Events.
This is particularly visible (hehe) in User Interfaces. I don't want to keep asking "has the user done anything yet? has the user done anything yet?" (that's the way it used to be done way back when). Instead, I tell Controls for example, "when the user clicks you, let me know". That way, I can go off and do other great stuff and still be responsive to the user.