I have several Visual Studio Extensions (VSX) that I need to communicate with each other. (For instance activate features, share saved files, access project items from one to another.) I could utilize the registry but I have a very bad feeling about that. I was thinking of a commonly placed XML file but I'm afraid of not having the proper permissions to access it. Could you help me find the best practice for sharing data between (live) extensions?
I would store the information somewhere under %LOCALAPPDATA%. Both extensions would have access to it and it is per-user (it evaluates to something like C:\users\[username]\AppData\Local).
From this SO question, you can use the following to get a reference to this path:
Environment.GetFolderPath(Environment.SpecialFolder.LocalApplicationData)
General way of making two extensions to talk is by offering services. Packages offer and consume services.
Take a look at this
Related
recently we managed to solved some data transferring problem by finding out there is additional .xsl we could use. Since .xsl files seems to be main way of controlling information flow in dcm4chee (beside jmx configurations ofc) im wondering whether there is some kind of list or index or something like that with enumerated all .xsl files one could use and their places in workflow.
I mean it would be nice to know exactly in which points we could have some influence on process.
I tried to google something like that but no success so far :/
Any help will be appreciated.
Some online list of demo .xsl files is available at
https://svn.code.sf.net/p/dcm4che/svn/dcm4chee/dcm4chee-arc/trunk/dcm4jboss-hl7/src/etc/conf/dcm4chee-hl7
Which one will be used is configurable through the jmx console and the configuration is then written back into the configuration files.
So searching for .xsl both as file extension and as full text search pattern in your dcm4chee installation directory will point you exactly to the places where the workflow can be influenced.
It is Java-style, Linux-style open source project so don't expect it to be too user friendly or Google friendly. I'm not aware of any easy to consume overview table/list/index but it would be nice to have one. It is open source so maybe you can add one..
I am working on a VSTO-Excel-Addin (VB.NET) that we are about to sell to different companies.
The addin will (hopefully) be used by a couple of users of each customer. We are using ClickOnce for a web-based deployment.
The addin provides some default-settings - that is no problem with the app.config. User-specific Settings are also working fine with ClickOnce.
However what makes quite some headache is how to store settings per customer. Database-connectionstrings for example cannot be stored on the application-level but it would also be painfull for all users to change the Connection-string manually. What I would imagine is another layer (per Company) where this sort of Setting can be stored.
One alternative would be to create one VSTO-Project per customer but this would bring a lot of disadvantages since we are updating the addin quite regularly.
I would be happy about any ideas!
Regards,
Julian
I would show Excel's built in connection properties dialog and let each client configure this themselves.
You really shouldn't be distributing connection strings for all your clients as part of a shared package. It'll be a maintenance nightmare.
http://office.microsoft.com/en-nz/excel-help/connection-properties-HA010175443.aspx
What about storing the settings as custom properties in Book.xltx and copy it to
C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Excel\XLSTART
This is how you can programatically read and create Custom Properties in Excel.
When a new workbook is created then all the properties from Book.xltx will be available for New Workbook as well. But this solution may not work if the existing workbooks are opened so yo might have to explicitly add these properties when any existing workbooks are opened using the above solution.
Ok, I think I understand the problem. :)
How about storing all the settings in an offsite database that you maintain and using a webservice to allow the settings to be read and set and giving each client a unique license number that would allow them to access this webservice.
That way the individual users would only need a license number to set it up.
I am developing a Win8 Store app which allows users to download different types of files from an online learning platform and store them locally. I am also considering the function to help users organize these downloaded files by placing them in different folders (based on course name and etc.).
I was using Documents Library previously. But for every type of file that the user could download, I need to add a file type association, which does not make a lot of sense since my app would be able to open such files. So which local storage should my app use?
Many thanks in advance.
Kaizhi
The access to storage by Windows Store apps is quite restrictive, especially the DocumentsLibrary.
As you have noticed, you need to declare a file type association for every file type you want to read from or write to the DocumentsLibrary. This means your app need to handle file activations for these types in a meaningful way, which your app probably should not do.
But even if you jump through this hoop, there is another one that is not documented on the MSDN page of the DocumentsLibrary, but "hidden" in a lengthy page about app capability declarations: According to the current rules, you are not allowed to use the DocumentsLibrary for anything but offline access to SkyDrive! Bummer...
So what's left?
You can use SkyDrive or another cloud storage to put files in a well known place (which might or might not be somewhere on the hard disk). This is probably both overkill and undesirable in your case.
Or you save the files in the local app storage, provide your own in-app file browser and open the files with their default app. Seems viable to me.
Or, maybe, you can do something with share contracts or other contracts. I don't know much about these yet, but I doubt that they are helpful in your situation.
And that's it...
(Based on my current experience. No guaranty for correctness or completeness)
I have multiple projects in TRAC. I'm using mod_wsgi, and my wsgi script file TRAC_ENV_PARENT_DIR variable is pointing to the folder containing folders with all these projects. A few users have access to different projects. When a user visits the TRAC URL, she can see the listing containing all these projects, yet has no access to some of them.
Is there any way to show to a user only those projects this user has access to?
Please advise.
Preamble: I abhor security through obscurity. Your request could be read as cosmetics in web site presentation. Don't aim at improved access control, because knowing a valid path will still give access to each Trac environment depending on it's settings. Of course better navigation is a good reason.
Requiring to hide folders depending on user's permission means you require authentication before granting access to TRAC_ENV_PARENT_DIR. This could be done with standard mechanisms that your web server supports. This is just the precondition.
As you say, you have some non-public Trac instances in your Trac environment folder collection. How complicated it is to identify all folders correctly, that depends on how much you want to spend on initial implementation vs. maintenance.
I should be trivial, but error-prone, to provide a list of either the public or the private directories, of course whatever is easier to maintain. Zero additional configuration would require to open each Trac environment and look up user permissions. )** This sounds rather cumbersome and means probably a performance penalty for applications with large user base and frequent access. You will at least work with a cached list, if you go down this road.
You can't use Trac's auto-generated Available projects list but you'll have to deliver at least two versions of an index page for authenticated/unprivileged and authenticated and privileged users.
For the sake of maintenability you'll want to consolitate configuration and permissions. For access to each Trac environment you could use trac.ini inheritance and a shared .htpasswd file. However you can't inherit permissions, because these settings are stored inside the Trac db. You could give TracUserSyncPlugin a shot, but it seems not yet fit for production, or at least lacks feedback of all the happy users, if they exist.
)** While I'm not aware of dedicated documentation about this, there are actually several possibilities. Since permissions are stored in the Trac db, all involve reading/querying the permission db table. It's structure is documented with all other tables of the Trac db schema. To read you'll want to open the Trac environment(s) and then use a direct query on the table (see a AccountManagerPlugin changeset for an example) or construct and query a PermissionCache object.
It may be an old question, but so far i've found the answers to be rather complex without need.
I think using the information stated here, http://trac.edgewall.org/wiki/TracInterfaceCustomization#ProjectList , one could build a template that checks for users and permissions and then show the data it should.
In my case, i just needed to point the "TRAC_ENV_INDEX_TEMPLATE" variable to blank HTML, and that was enough for me.
I'm working on creating a WCF Domain Service which at the moment provides access to a database. I created the Entity Model, added the DomainService (LinqToEntitiesDomainService) and everything works so far.
But there are cases when my data doesn't come from the DB but somewhere else (for instance an uploaded file). Are there any best practices out there how to handle this different data sources properly without resorting to writing two completely different data providers? It would be great to access both types with one interface. Is there already something I can use?
I'm fairly new to this so any advice apart from that is highly appreciated.
How many cases where the data comes from a file? How many files? How will you know if a file is there? Are you going to poll the directory? what format are the files? (XML support is possible)
Microsoft's documentation suggests that you can create a custom host endpoint, but I don't know what limitations there are.