Dynamically extract interfaces from silverlight modules and load modules - reflection

In some winforms / webforms applications, I wrote a module that at application start, using reflection, inspects all assemblies from BIN folder, extract all public classes and interfaces they implement and write into a repository. This to to allow me later, at runtime, to load modules based on interfaces they implements and use.
I need to know if / how can I accomplish this for Silverlight. Is there any way to inspect all XAP's and extract all modules together with their metadata? And later to be able to dynamically load the module where the component I need is located, and then load the component from it.
Thank you

The source code for MEF's DeploymentCatalog should show how to inspect the main application XAP as well as download and inspect other XAPs.

Related

where should inheritance classes be stored?

I want to create classes that can be inherited by other classes to use along my project.
i.e. i want to create a separate class for each Mail method, each class will implement differently the Compose method, and more Mail classes will be created in the future.
My question is - Where should I create these classes/interfaces? in the App_Code ?
I would suggest creating a separate assembly and include that assembly as a reference in your Web Project. That will enable you to write independent test cases against your classes / interfaces.
Other than user controls you can store source files in App_Code. In your case you can store Interfaces/classes in App_Code. You can have multiple folders for group of class/interfaces inside the AppCode.
AppCode
You can store source code in the App_Code folder, and it will be
automatically compiled at run time. The resulting assembly is
accessible to any other code in the Web application. The App_Code
folder therefore works much like the Bin folder, except that you can
store source code in it instead of compiled code. The App_Code folder
and its special status in an ASP.NET Web application makes it possible
to create custom classes and other source-code-only files and use them
in your Web application without having to compile them independently.
Edit: You may see this discuss: How to organize ASP.NET app_code folder?

What are Modules in a project?

Hi i want to know what is meant by modules in a project??how they are classified and how many modules we can have in a project?can anyone explain with simple examples??What modules we can have in a typical online shopping website?
In .net context I believe one can draw 2 meanings not sure what specific you are looking for.
One is modular programming by following design principles like "Separation of concerns", "Single Responsibility", "loose coupling". This means divide you code into classes based on these principles and further group these classes again based on these principles into modules.
In ASP.NET or C# or in general we create class library projects and use them across the entire project. Like all the logging functionality is put in some classes and these classes are include in an class library project which can be called "Logging module". Whenever you need logging in any of the project you can include this module and use the functionality.
Some examples:
Web module for HTTP requests ( The WebApp)
Repository and Data access Layer modules. (DAL code)
Models module containing all the business entities.
WebService modules for integrating with other apps.
Logging for debugging and problem identification
Infrastructure/Utility modules for utility like functionalities and
application configuration.
Business logic modules.
Transaction gateway module.
Other way to define module in .net is they are PE files and I believe they have extension .netmodule which contain Metadata but they do not contain the assembly manifest. To use a module you have to create a PE file with the necessary assembly manifest.
Create a module:
csc /t:module ufo.cs
Create assembly using the module:
csc /t:library /addmodule:ufo.netmodule /out:airvehicles.dll helicopter.cs
Above 2 commands are from this link
The module is an external code that you plugin on your site and runs in order to do some actions.
(source: codeguru.com)
We make and use modules to have the ability to share the actions of the module with others with out giving the source code, and vice versa, we use modules from other that we do not have access to the source code. Or we can simple use module for have the ability so simplify our code and remove it easy if we do not need it.
We can have as modules as we like, but each module place extra overhead on our code - after all is need to make more thinks there.
More about modules: http://www.codeguru.com/csharp/.net/net_asp/article.php/c19389/HTTP-Handlers-and-HTTP-Modules-in-ASPNET.htm
How to create module: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307996

Loading modules from a certain folder

I'm working with modules and each of it will be compiled (deployed) in a common folder in a webproject. In the main class I defined an array of module paths which I need for loading all these defined modules.
How can I make that more dynamically, for instance, I want to say, load all modules in a certain folder an its subfolders without to know each module by name.
You can't do anything in a Flex/AS3 related browser based app to get information about folders on the server.
You're going to have to write a server side service to get the information. Any technology should work, such as .NET, ColdFusion, PHP, Java, or whatever. Then just call the service, and it should send you back the information you need. In ColdFusion, you'd use the cfdirectory tag.

Embedding whole directory structure

I have a large directory structure with JavaScript, images, etc. that depend on each other. I would like to encapsulate it all into a DLL so I only have to reference one thing and not have multiple copies of all these files across projects.
Because the files depend on each other, I'm thinking I can create an IHttpModule that registers a route to accept URLs such as /MyEmbeddedDir/subdir/file.js. Anything in MyEmbeddedDir would then be handled by a custom IHttpHandler that does the correct mapping. Each web application would then need to reference the DLL and add the module and handler to web.config. Does this seem reasonable?
Also, is there an easier way to embed/reference the files than to set the build action to embedded resource and add [assembly: WebResource(...)] to each file (there are dozens!)? Thanks!
Edit: If I'm not using WebResource.axd then I shouldn't need to add [assembly: WebResource(...)]
Yes, having a single container is a great way to manage large number of files (and no, SQLite won't help here! ;).
We have a product, named SolFS, which is a virtual file system, that lets you keep your data in custom storage (resource DLL is one of the options) and provides file API for accessing the files. We even implemented asynchronous pluggable protocol for IE (on the client side, but the task is very similar to yours). SolFS includes a manager application that lets you easily create container files and import files into container.
I ended up going with the IHTTPModule (register route) and IHTTPHandler (obtain embedded resource). The route is configurable in web.config in case it conflicts with existing content.

Managing web services in FlexBuilder - How does the manager work?

In FlexBuilder 3, there are two items under the 'Data' menu to import and manage web services. After importing a webservice, I can update it with the manage option. However, the webservices seems to disappear after they are imported. The manager does however recognize that a certain WSDL URL was imported and refuses to do anything with it.
How does the manager know this, and how can I make it refresh a certain WSDL URL?
In your src folder of the flexbuilder project you should see the generated classes. For instance, if you use the manager to generate the proxy classes for www.example.com you should see the folders /com/example with the generated proxy classes inside.
To consume these webservices in ActionScript use the statement:
"import com.example.*;"
To consume the webservice in mxml include the .as file using:
<mx:Script source="yourscriptname.as"/>
To refresh the generated proxy classes, consuming the latest WSDL, simply open the manager and select "update".
Also, I found this article very useful for consuming web services.
I hope that helps, the question was kind of vague about the problem.

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