Asp.net error object not set to a reference - asp.net

Because I rush in development (a lot of whip cracking here) and declare my objects at the top of the function and instantiate inside my try-catch block, I get a lot of the good old "object not set to an instance of an object" errors while doing TDD, and later if I do miss a branch that object was used in (doing VB now, would prefer C#) or just in every day coding, object not set to an instance of an object is a bit vague. Sure the stack trace sends me to the line the error occured at, but it would be nice if I could modify my logging to either name the object or its type because sometimes I have multiple objects on the same line. It's not the end of the world, but in the end it would save me a few minutes each day. Any ideas on how I can pass the info on which object wasn't set? Thanks

It is non trivial to "modify your logging" to output variable name or type - I am sure that if the framework could easily get this information from the executing IL, MS would have included it the null reference exception.
Prevention is always better than cure. Here are a couple of tips I would do
Fix your compiler warnings
C# would generate a compile error if it detects that there are code paths that could use an unassigned local variable. [For some odd reason] VB.Net will still compile but the compiler will generate a warning - take heed of these and go and fix the code and you should never run into the problem of unassigned variables again!
Adopt a different coding pattern for variable declaration
I appreciate that method variable scope in ye olde VB was that the variable was visible throughout the entire method regardless of where it was defined. As a result, it was a reasonable practice to put all your var declarations at the top of the method. VB.Net of course is different - you can only use variables after they are declared and so it is OK (and I would say preferable*) to put the declaration (and assignment) closer to where the variable is actually used. This should help you see "by eye" if your program logic means it is possible to use an unassigned variable.
Some people think this is a think that it is always good practice to put variable declarations in a block at the top of the method. I will not argue against them but I would say that that approach works best with small methods that do not use lots of variables.

Related

Is it safe to initialize a struct containing a std::shared_ptr with std::memset?

I'm modifying a code written in c++ in order to add several features required by my company. I need to modify as less as possible this code, because it's a public code get from a Git repository, and we want to avoid to deviate from the original source code in case we need to synchronize our code with possible new versions in the future.
In this code, a structure is initialized with a call to std::memset. And I had need to add a shared pointer to this structure.
I notice no issue about that, the code compiles, links and works as expected, and I get even no warnings while the compilation.
But is it safe to achieve that this way? May a std::shared_ptr be correctly initialized if it is part of a structure initialized with std::memset? Or are side effects or hazardous issues which prevent to do that?

What exactly does FXMLLoader do when a document is loaded?

Let's say I want to load an FXML document to be used somewhere in my application. As far as I'm aware, there are two ways of doing this:
Call the static FXMLLoader#load(<various resource args>) method.
Initialize an FXMLLoader (with the resource location), and then call load() on that instance.
My question is what exactly "loading" an FXML document does here.
Initially, I assumed the static method would do an entire parse "cycle" on every call, and that creating an instance would allow multiple loads to take advantage of some kind of preprocessed representation, but documentation for the non-static load() method just states;
"Loads an object hierarchy from an FXML document. The location from which the document will be loaded...", which sounds like the document is loaded on every call.
I'm using JavaFX 17.
After spending a fair bit of time with the source, I feel I can give a pretty good overview of how FXML loading functions behind the scenes. That being said, I can't guarantee that there isn't anything I didn't miss. I've thoroughly looked over quite a bit of code I thought to be important, but most isn't all, and I may have simply not noticed something.
This answer should be valid for JavaFX 17.
As a TLDR answering the main concern of my question: As far as I can tell, no information is cached across load() calls, regardless of whether you use the static or non-static versions. That being said, the non-static calls will still give you a slight performance gain, the fastest of which is the load(InputStream inputStream) overload, which (in addition to skipping some argument processing) will prevent the loader from opening a new InputStream on every call.
I've built a call graph (CallGraph Viewer) showing important parts of the FXML loading code in order to make it a bit more digestible.
This is easily the most likely part of my answer to contain inaccuracies. To generate this graph, I simply copied the FXMLLoader code into eclipse and generated connections for parts of the code I deemed important. Unfortunately, the plugin doesn't always correctly parse code containing missing imports, requiring me to write in definitions for a couple of classes, but I left most alone. Additionally, the initial result was incomprehensible and needed a fair bit of manual cleanup, a large portion of which was done simply based on whether I thought something sounded useful or not.
If you are unfamiliar with eclipse's icons, documentation can be found here (make sure to zoom the image, or open it in a new tab, or I doubt you will be able to see much).
Yes, there are three processEndElement() methods with the same signature, they are overridden methods in subclasses of Element.
If you're wondering what I spent all that manual cleanup time on, try not to worry about the individual methods, more the overall structure.
Here's my breakdown of this mess as a step by step recreation of what happens when load() is called:
The application calls one of the public load() methods. This simply calls a matching loadImpl() overload (static if the load() call was static and vice-versa) with the provided arguments. All existing loadImpl() overloads also ask for the class which called them, which the method attempts to provide with a java.lang.StackWalker. No additional processing is done.
After passing the public interface, execution is routed through a hierarchy of loadImpl() calls. Each overload just calls an overload with one more argument than itself, passing on its own arguments and giving null for the missing one (except in the case of a missing charset, which is given a default value).
The more arguments you give to load(), the farther you start in the hierarchy, with non-static versions beginning after the static ones. If you call one of the static overloads, an instance of the FXMLLoader class is created at the final static loadImpl(), which is used to continue onto the non-static calls.
Once reaching the non-static loadImpl() calls, things begin to get interesting. If using the load(void) overload, an InputStream is created based on arguments set when the FXMLLoader instance was initialized, and is given to the next stage in the hierarchy as before. At the final (non-static) loadImpl() (which can be called immediately using the load(InputStream inputStream) overload; this is the fastest method I know of to get from the initial load() call to XML processing), we finally exit the loadImpl() hierarchy, and move to XML processing.
Two things happen here:
a ControllerAccessor instance is given the callingClass argument passed up the loadImpl() hierarchy. I can't exactly explain how this class works, but it contains two Map's; controllerFields and controllerMethods, used in the initialization of controllers.
clearImports() is called, clearing packages (a List) and classes (a Map), both used in further XML processing.
The four variables here (except for maybe the controller ones, I'm a little iffy on them) act as important cache data for the backend XML processing cycle. However, all are cleared between loads (there is no logic controlling their execution, if the load succeeded, the cache data will not have survived), so using an FXMLLoader instance will not improve performance due to data caching (it's still worth using one, however, as the non-static calls skip much of the loadImpl() hierarchy, and you can even reuse the InputStream if using that particular overload).
Next, the XML parser itself is loaded. First, a new instance of a XMLInputFactory is created. This is then used to create a XmlStreamReader from the provided InputStream
Finally, we now begin actually processing the loaded XML.
The main XML processing loop is actually relatively simple to explain;
First, the code enters a while loop, checking the value of xmlStreamReader.hasNext().
During each cycle, a switch statement is entered, routing execution to different process<X>() methods depending on what the XML reader encounters. Those methods process the incoming events, and use an assortment of more "backend" methods to carry out common operations (The 'backend XML processing' section of the call graph is only a small portion of the actual code). These include methods like processImports(), which calls importPackage() or importClass(), in turn populating the packages and classes caches. Those caches are accessed by getType(), a backend method used by many other processing methods.
Additionally, I think that some part of controllers is "assigned" during this stage; processEndElements(), for example, ends up calling getControllerFields() or getControllerMethods(), which access the aforementioned controllerFields and controllerMethods caches, but also sometimes modify them. That being said, the call graph gets a bit too deep for me to easily understand at this point, and those methods are also called later, so I can't be sure.
After XML processing, a controller (controllers? see comment below) is initialized. You can read about controller initialization a bit in James_D's answer here, but I don't have much to say about it, as this is the section I am least confident in understanding.
That being said, it is interesting to note that this code is out of the previous while loop; only one initialization method is called. Either what seems like one call is actually multiple (which is definitely possible; the initialization "method" called is returned by controllerAccessor.getControllerMethods() and "it" is called using the MethodHelper JavaFX class), or only one controller is initialized here (assumedly the controller for the root node) and the others are initialized during parsing. I'd lean towards the first possibility here, but that's based purely on intuition.
Finally (and if you're still reading by now, consider me impressed), we enter cleanup. This stage is super simple;
The ControllerAccessor has its "calling class" variable nulled, and its controllerFields and controllerMethods caches cleared.
The XmlStreamReader instance is nulled.
The root node is returned, and thus the function exits.
Thanks to #jewelsea for links to other answers and for recommending I look at the source.

Can't get the Sessions to work in webmatrix

I am trying to pass variables from one page to another using Sessions , but they don't seem to have effect. In the source page inside the razor syntax
Session["variable"] = "value";
And in the target page:
<p>#Session["variable"].ToString()</p>
but I get a server error
Exception Details: System.NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object.
Any suggestions would be most welcome........Thanks
I was only ever able to get this to work with casting:
<p>#(string)Session["variable"]</p>
Although it has been a long time since I have tried it with ToString() instead, I do explicitly remember my attempt to call a Session variable only successful with the casting option, although I have heard that ToString() should work. Either way, I always get it to work with casting.
That having been said, I feel it only right of me to warn you that if you are simply trying to pass data between pages, you shouldn't be using Session variables at all. Use hidden form fields, query strings, Url Data, or even cookies and/or databases before you do that.
I like to look at Session variables as something to quickly solve very special cases and only to be used very CAREFULLY. ALWAYS expect the value to be null and test its value before using it.
For help with the options for transferring data between web pages using WebMatrix, check out Mike Brind's very helpful site: http://www.mikesdotnetting.com/Article/192/Transferring-Data-Between-ASP.NET-Web-Pages <-- You'll want to bookmark this for now. It is right up the alley of what you are getting yourself into with WebMatrix.
If you still want to use the Session variable and casting doesn't work, the only other thing I can think that would cause the error is that the value you expect in Session["variable"] isn't what you think it is.
For the Record:
I was only trying to make a point when saying, "or even cookies and/or databases before you do that" Please do not use those options, as they are likely terrible in your case (also, cookies would just give you the same problems as Session variables, actually). In any case, it really all depends on how you are using the data and if you are always checking to make sure the value hasn't been cleared in the case of Session variables and/or cookies.

Can i compile without life cycle method in EJB 2.0?

iam begineer in ejb's.I have one doubt in ejb 2.0,In session beans,i will create() with out args in EJBhome.But i didn't define any methods i.e., ejbcreate and ejbremove in the bean.So,Can i compile or run this code without those method in the bean?.
You can compile it but cannot run it. You must have a matching ejbCreate() method in your bean class.
If you are very new to EJB I recommend testing your code with OpenEJB (here's a getting started video). Not because I work on the project (which I do), but because we aggressively check code for mistakes and will print clear errors as to what you might have done wrong.
The output can come in 3 levels of verbosity. On the most verbose level, the output is more email response oriented and error messages include information like "put code like this -code-sample- in your bean." The code samples even try to use your method names and parameter names where possible.
As well it is compiler style. Meaning if you made the same mistake in 10 places, you will see all 10 in the first run and then have the opportunity to fix them all at once. Rather than the traditional style of fix 1 issue, compile, test, get same error elsewhere in code, repeat N times.
And of course you can still deploy into another EJB container. Sounds like you are stuck using a pretty old one if you have to use EJB 2.0.
Here's a list of some of the mistakes that are checked

Dynamic Typing without duck typing?

I'm used to dynamic typing meaning checking for type info of object/non object oriented structure at runtime and throwing some sort of type error, ie if it quacks like a duck its a duck. Is there a different type of dynamic typing (please go into details).
Yes, absolutely. Duck-typing is an idiom which says that the type of a value at this moment in time is based on the fields and methods that it has right now. Dynamic typing just says that types are associated with run-time values, not with static variables and parameters. There is a difference between the two, and you can use the latter without the former.
For example, if you programmed in PHP and limited yourself to the basic types without using OO, then you would be using dynamic typing without using duck-typing.
No, dynamic typing is when values have type but variables do not, so most type checking is done at runtime. So, basically, if the value walks or quacks like a duck, it's a duck, else an error is thrown. Duck typing really just describes a feature of dynamic typing that ensures it will be typesafe (i.e. a method will only run if variable foo'has the right attribute or can execute that method).

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