For manually testing an HTTP client in my application, I'd like to use a tool which starts an HTTP server my application can connect to and that lets me respond to request from my application manually. I'm basically looking for a tool with a GUI that lists all incoming requests and allows me to select a status code and type a response message. I've already tested the functionality with unit tests but I also want to verify it manually with no mocking etc.
Sounds simple but I didn't find such a tool. I've found some that can be scripted but no interactive one. Do you know one?
This can probably be written relatively easily by creating the Swing GUI dialog popup inside the servlet servicing methods. Have never seen Tomcat running this way but probably it would. Only, mind the server time out. It may be not long enough for you to make an input and require to be configured, also on the client side. Also, parallel calls will make multiple popups that may be difficult to respond but probably this is a single client app.
As a simplest solution, server GUI can be simply disposed after call and newly created as the next call arrives. This will make eveything indepenent on how servlet container is managing the servlets (does it stays, is it destroyed, maybe class is unloaded, who knows). Advanced solution could include the "server servlet" that would interact through its own JSP page but then it may be complex to update it when the new call arrives (unless maybe refresh periodically).
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I have two Asp.Net web apps, App 1 and App 2. They both use the same database. I am trying to give command from App 1 and immediately run a bit of code in App 2.
The only way I can think of doing this is by inserting a command in the database and have App 2 poll the database every few minutes. But this means there may be a delay in running the code.
Is there a way to run code in App 2 immediately?
You can fire an HttpRequest from one app to another and the code will run almost immediately.
I don't know what language and platform you're using, so it's hard to give you concrete examples, but here are the outlines:
Create a page in App2. In standard ASP.Net, you can use a handler. In ASP Core, you can use an API controller. Both car return a single value or a full object in JSON or XML. Or you can use a standard page if you like to return HTML. The code behind is what you want to run. The rendered page or return value from the handler or controller is what you want App1 to get back in response.
Then from App1, issue an HttpRequest to that page in App2 and check the response to see how to continue (for example, if the code ran successfully or not).
The HttpRequest is in case you want to make the call from the server side of App1. If you want to make the call from the client side, then you use Ajax instead. In the case of Ajax, you have to pay attention to the security side, because you don't want to allow whoever to call that page from App2 unless it unless the code behind doesn't pose any security risk and doesn't return any sensitive data.
One last idea specific to your scenario, since both apps are using the same database, you can add the required values to the database as you were planning to do, and then issue a simple HttpRequest. This way, you don't need to worry about security or passing a any sensitive info. When App2 receives the request, it checks the database to see if the request was actually made from App1 and then processes it, otherwise ignores it.
We have a flex application that connects to a proxy server which handles authentication. If the authentication has timeout out the proxy server returns a json formatted error string. What I would like to do is inspect every URLRequest response and check if there's an error message and display it in the flex client then redirect back to login screen.
So I'm wondering if its possible to create an event listener to all URLRequests in a global fashion. Without having to search through the project and add some method to each URLRequest. Any ideas if this is possible?
Unless you're only using one service, there is no way to set a global URLRequest handler. If I were you, I'd think more about architecting your application properly by using a delegate and always checking the result through a particular service which is used throughout the app.
J_A_X has some good suggestions, but I'd take it a bit farther. Let me make some assumptions based on the limited information you've provided.
The services are scattered all over your application means that they're actually embedded in multiple Views.
If your services can all be handled by the same handler, you notionally have one service, copied many times.
Despite what you see in the Adobe examples showing their new Service generation code, it's incredibly bad practice to call services directly from Views, in part because of the very problem you are seeing--you can wind up with lots of copies of the same service code littered all over your application.
Depending on how tightly interwoven your application is (believe me, I've inherited some pretty nasty stuff, so I know this might be easier said than done), you may find that the easiest thing is to remove all of those various services and replace them by having all your Views dispatch a bubbling event that gets caught at the top level. At the top level, you respond to that event by calling one instance of your service, which is again handled in one place.
You may or may not choose to wrap that single service in a delegate, but once you have your application archtected in a way where the service is decoupled from your Views, you can make that choice at any time.
Would you be able to extend the class and add an event listener in the object's constructor? I don't like this approach but it could work.
You would just have to search/replace the whole project.
How do you capture errors that happen on client side when building RIA apps using Flex and Silverlight? What are the common practices? I have seen some asynch js calls to a web service implemented but would like to know how the community is dealing with it.
First, I use client side logging all of the times.
the way I handle it depends on the entire application.
if I use an AMF gateway then there's a call for an application error, with every error that occurs the server is notified, in the server side a bug is open in BugZilla (this is what we use, you can use any other hook you want).
If I use a web-service based application then there's a web-service call for a client error.
one would say you shouldn't sample the server with every error, I disagree with this comment because an error in the client side is rare, it goes thorough QA before being released to the client so I want to know immediately on every error the client is experiencing.
In Silverlight I like to use a WebClient to log back to a web service somewhere -- you can do this directly in the Silverlight application without calling out to JavaScript.
To catch exceptions that are fired when your code isn't on the stack, you can use the Application.UnhandledException event.
I've used the same approach as Avi Tzurel - you need to know on the server side when an error appeared in the Flex client. If you want to collect more data (all the log messages, warnings) I would use an internal buffer and I will flush it asynchronously.
Anyway, you need to take into consideration if your customers are ok with this approach..maybe you need their agreement before sending the error message to the server.
I basically percolate all errors to the top, and capture them in the unhandled exception. I display a friendly message to the user. However, throughout my application I implement an ILogger interface. This interface can be initialized with various levels and handles any messaging. You can set it up so the user can add an init param to determine whether or not to transmit the errors to a service, and I typically have the logger write the messages with Debug.WriteLine if the debugger is attached to make it very easy to trace issues in debug mode.
In Silverlight you may want to consider the Logging and Exception Handling Application Blocks from the Silverlight Integration Pack for Enterprise Library.
I'm inheriting a legacy project, and there's a page that calls a method that makes a web service call. Load and performance testing has detected that this page sometimes takes a really long time to close, but usually it's fine, and if there is one hanging, all other requests for that page hang until the first one resolves, and then they all resolve.
I think this might have something to do with the web service being instantiated and not disposed, but I don't know how I can be more sure. I tried to add a delegate to the Dispose method but that doesn't seem to ever fire. (I'm not sure it would without Dispose being called explicitly, but that doesn't really matter.)
So what can I look for on the production server or any deployed environment to watch those requests pile up and go out (or get handled in an orderly manner, if they aren't the problem)?
You might consider using a tool like .NET Memory Profiler. You can use it to attach to your running application, and it can find and report all undisposed objects.
I think they have a free two week trial.
In your web app code, you could write to a log (event log, text file) right before you send a request, and again right after you get the response. Include some identifying information about the request. Add timestamps.
If you only want to use this while debugging, wrap it in #debug.
Or if you want to test in release mode, you could put a boolean in appSettings in web.config so you could turn the logging off and on.
Other than using a web service, is there anyway to call a method in a web app from a windows application? Both run on the same machine.
I basically want to schedule a job to run a windows app which updates some file (for a bayesian spam filter), then I want to notify the web app to reload that file.
I know this can be done in other ways but I'm curious to know whether it's possible anyway.
You can make your windows app connect to the web app and do a GET in a page that responds by reloading your file, I don't think it is strictly necessary to use a web service. This way you can also make it happen from a web browser.
A Web Service is the "right" way if you want them to communicate directly. However, I've found it easier in some situations to coordinate via database records. For example, my web app has bulk email capability. To make it work, the web app just leaves a database record behind specifying the email to be sent. The WinApp scans periodically for these records and, when it finds one with an "unprocessed" status, it takes the appropriate action. This works like a charm for me in a very high volume environment.
You cannot quite do this in the other direction only because web apps don't generally sit around in a timing loop (there are ways around this but they aren't worth the effort). Thus, you'll require some type of initiating action to let the web app know when to reload the file. To do this, you could use the following code to do a GET on a page:
WebRequest wrContent = WebRequest.Create("http://www.yourUrl.com/yourpage.aspx");
Stream objStream = wrContent.GetResponse().GetResponseStream();
// I don't think you'll need the stream Reader but I include it for completeness
StreamReader objStreamReader = new StreamReader(objStream);
You'll then reload the file in the PageLoad method whenever this page is opened.
How is the web application loading the file? If you were using a dependency on the Cache object, then simply updating the file will invalidate the Cache entry, causing your code to reload that entry when it is found to be null (or based on the "invalidated" event).
Otherwise, I don't know how you would notify the application to update the file.
An ASP.NET application only exists as an instance to serve a request. This is why web services are an easy way to handle this - the application has been instantiated to serve the service request. If you could be sure the instance existed and got a handle to it, you could use remoting. But without having a concrete handle to an instance of the application, you can't invoke the method directly.
There's plenty of other ways to communicate. You could use a database or some other kind of list which both applications poll and update periodically. There are plenty of asynchronous MQ solutions out there.
So you'll create a page in your webapp specifically for this purpose. Use a Get request and pass in a url parameter. Then in the page_load event check for this paremter. if it exists then do your processing. By passing in the parameter you'll prevent accidental page loads that will cause the file to be uploaded and processed when you don't want it to be.
From the windows app make the url Get request by using the .Net HttpWebRequest. Example here: http://www.codeproject.com/KB/webservices/HttpWebRequest_Response.aspx