How to access log information for ColdFusion server in Flex - apache-flex

I have Flex front end talking with ColdFusion as the back end. I have to debug my application and need to:
Add log support to ColdFusion where I can add my custom messages to log list
Access this log at Flex end.
Is it possible? Has anyone tried it before? Please help me with your suggestions ideas on this.

My recommendation :
Flex-side :
Create custom LogEvent objects that carry an id, a message, any other properties you want to log.
Dispatch those events whenever you want to Log an action or system event that occurs
Create a LogManager that's in charge of catching these events, and using a Delegate to make a ServiceCall to your ColdFusion services
ColdFusion :
Create a Logging service with APIs for listening for any service-calls from the Flex application
Save these log events into your database
Create a service that the Flex app can call to retrieve LogObjects (or whatever DAO you want)
Flex :
Create a LogView (a datagrid / advanced data grid with a column for every log property you want (essentially a mirror of the database log entries)
Create a delegate that your LogManager can use to call that Coldfusion Log Service to retrieve these Log Objects
I'm not sure if you're using a framework (Cairngorms, SWIZ, etc.) so my description of these objects is a little more abstract that you could do it all custom, or put it into your existing framework.
I've done this before, for AnalyticsEvents for GoogleAnalytics (worked with ExternalInterface) and with LogEvents for USER actions and SYSTEM actions.

Related

How to know an application is available?

when I use the cloudify(2.7) to deploy an application(e.g. an application app includes two services A and B ),I try to use the Admin.addEventListener() to add some eventListener,but it does't work !
I try to add the ProcessingUnitStatusChangedEventListener ,when I debug the code,the value of (ProcessingUnitStatusChangedEvent)event.getNewStatus() changes from SCHEDULED to INTACT,then SCHEDULED,then INTACT again,
I also try to add the ProcessingUnitInstanceLifecycleEventListener,when I debug the code,the status is intact,but the service is not available!
Is there any other listener or method to know the application(not the services) is available,or I use the listener in the wrong way?
First, the Admin API is internal - use it at your own risk. And you should not be using it the way you are - Cloudify adds a lot of logic on top of the internal Admin API.
Second, it is not exactly clear where you are executing your code from.
You can always use the rest client to get an accurate state of the application. Look at https://github.com/CloudifySource/cloudify/blob/master/rest-client/src/main/java/org/cloudifysource/restclient/RestClient.java#L388
In addition, if you are running this code in a service lifecycle event handler, the easiest way to implement this is to have your 'top' level service, the one that should be available last, write an application entry to the shared attributes store in its 'postStart' event. Everyone else can just periodically poll on this entry. The polling itself is very fast, all in-memory operations.
If you do not have a top-level service, or your logic is more complicated then that, you would need to use the Service Context API to scan each service and its instances to see if they are up. An explanation on getting service instance state is available here:
cloudify service dependsOn other service

hiding method from certain layers in project

I was looking through an old project and wanted to see if anyone had a suggestion on how to hide certain methods from being called by various layers. This was a 3 tier project, webapplication -> web service -> database
In the application there is a User object for example. When a User was being updated, the webapplication would create a User object and pass it to the webservice. The webservice would use the DataAccessLayer to save the User object to the database. After looking at this I was wondering if instead I should have made a Save method in the User class. This way the service and simply call the Save on the User object which would trigger the db update.
However doing it this way would expose the Save to be called from the webapplication as well, correct? Since the webapplication also has access to the same User object.
Is there anyway around this, or is it better to avoid this altogether?
There is a separation of concerns by keepeing the User object as object that only holds data with no logic in it. you better keep it separated for the following reasons:
As you stated, it is a bad practice since the Save' functionality will be exposed to other places/classes where it is irrelevant for them (This is an important for programming generally).
Modifying the service layer - I guess you are using WCF web service as you can transfer a .NET object (c#/VB) to the service via SOAP. If you put the saving logic in the 'User' object, you can't replace it another webservice that receives a simple textual data structures like JSON or XML or simply doesn't support .NET objects.
Modifying the data storage layer - If you want, for example, to store the data inside a different place like other database such as MongoDB, RavenDB, Redis or what ever you want, you will have to reimplement each class that responsible for updating the data. This is also relevant for Unit Testing and Mocking, making them more complicated to interrogate.

What is the best way to implement a inter-qwebview communication?

Overview:
I am trying to create a PoC application that mimics WebIntents-like feature.
So, in my Qt application, I create two QWebviews launching two different webApps. Now let's call them apps A and B.
Scenario:
Main Application creates two QWebViews each launching an App i.e. AppA, AppB.
App A is programmed to fetch some data via AJAX, automatically.
App B also needs part of that data. AppB simply displays a button (HTML) called .
Note: Since, AppA already has that info, I would like the AppB to invoke a JavaScript API which was injected into it's(appB) DOM by means of addToJavaScriptWindowObject() method call when the QWebView was launched.
App-A completed the Ajax Call and indicates the completion in its WebView.
User clicks the button in AppB,
App B invokes that JavaScript API i.e. fetcData({source: "AppA");
Now the control is in the QT-world:
Question: the Control is in the context of AppB, How should I communicate with the WebView in AppA -- i.e. AppB asks AppA: hey AppA, please give me that data that you have fetched?
Can Signals and Slots help me here? Or should I use some other form of IPC.
I read this page: http://qt-project.org/doc/qt-4.8/qtwebkit-bridge.html, but I still didn't get a hint for a solution for my problem.
Another related question: Are QWebViews created in their own threads ?
Can't you just emit some sort of signal from AppB that basically says, "Hey, I finished fetching my data if anyone wants it" or am I missing something? It would happen at the end of AppB::fetchData().
All you have to do after that is connect any interested objects to that signal.

Attaching an event listener to all URLRequest's

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.

Calling a method in an ASP.NET application from a Windows application

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

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