Comments - C - eCraft Labs

RE: Calling web services from JavaScript with ASP.NET AJAX: Answering the Why and How questions

Tim Viney — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 22:24:39 GMT

I love this, great blog, thanks. I'm developing an on going asp.net app that is growing arms and legs. One major page has about 10 user controls each in it's own update panel. There is a heck of alot of text in gridviews and datalists all over the page, so as you can imagine it can be a tad slugish. I'm working on a part where I need to check that a corisponding file exists on the server when a user clicks a checkbox in a large datalist. To do this check in an update panel and wate for the big roundtrip would be unexceptable I think, but could be just the ticket for my scenario I think :) Thanks, very usefull.

RE: Extension Method: Convenient way to add items to an ICollection

Per Lundberg — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 15:52:41 GMT

Valid points, yes. :-) But perhaps there are other situations when the extension method *would* be more useful? I remember to have written something like this in a project, but I didn't find it now when looking...

RE: Extension Method: Convenient way to add items to an ICollection

Simon — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 14:56:52 GMT

..obviously there should be angle brackets. Seems the blog software ate them...

RE: Extension Method: Convenient way to add items to an ICollection

Simon — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 14:53:55 GMT

While extension methods are neat, in this case it's not needed at all as you can just use collection initializers like so: IEnumerable customers = new List { new Customer { CustomerNumber=123456, Name="Customer #1"}, new Customer { CustomerNumber=123456, Name="Customer #2"}}; ..and while not applicable in this case, I hope you are aware of Ghostdoc. A *class* named I doesn't seem like good naming to me..

RE: From Windows Forms to Silverlight (WPF)

Johnny Ribacka — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 14:57:16 GMT

I already beat the "normal" computer 63-0, so in order for a high score table to be of use, the AI would probably need to be better. The trick to really wiping the floor with the computer is to play a few games until you find a starting sequence where the computer surrenders a corner to you quite early in the game. After that it is often quite easy to win in a way that leaves the computer at 0... Hi Jonte! :-)

RE: From Windows Forms to Silverlight (WPF)

Tero Tapanainen — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 13:49:23 GMT

Yes, if we want high secure version the moves should be send to the server. This way the server holds the state of the game and knows if illegal moves are tried to make. Actually to separate the AI etc. logic from the client and move to the server side woulnd't be that hard. Also the high score feature would be cool. Let's see if I have time to implement it. -Tero

RE: From Windows Forms to Silverlight (WPF)

Jon Wickström — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 20:02:47 GMT

A somewhat secure highscore could be implemented by also submitting the moves. Number of turns is quite finite in reversi... A server could replay the game and chek the computer moves are moves it possibly would have chosen. But there is no easy way to check the player is human...

RE: From Windows Forms to Silverlight (WPF)

Per Lundberg — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 11:44:30 GMT

I should mention that this was on "easy" mode. :-) Thanks for the source link! I might look into it some day. Some potential improvements/changes I've been thinking about: - Add a "high score" table. This is an interesting challenge from a security point of view. If you just let the client report in the score after the game has been played, how can you trust the content to be reliable? A malicious user (developer) could place a handcrafted webservice call and "cheat" his way into the highscore chart. The only reliable way to implement this feature that I can think of would be to change the application to a client/server app, where each turn is validated by the server (rather than just the client). This will change the app rather fundamentally, though. :-) Do you have any other ideas about how we could implement a high score listing in a secure manner? Best regards, Per

RE: From Windows Forms to Silverlight (WPF)

Tero Tapanainen — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 13:58:39 GMT

Yep, the computer could be tweaked a lot but with limited time (less that a week, mostly evenings) this was the best I could come up with :). I added link to the full source at the end of the post. -Tero

RE: From Windows Forms to Silverlight (WPF)

Per Lundberg — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 15:37:42 GMT

Yes! I won 32-31 in my first attempt to play it. (Oh, then I realized that there was one free spot as well, so the actual victory was a total of 39-25 to my advantage) Really cool Tero, very good work. How about putting up the full source here? I'll gladly take a look at it and share my opinions. Best regards, Per

RE: Calling web services from JavaScript with ASP.NET AJAX: Answering the Why and How questions

per.lundberg@ecraft.com — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 08:40:22 GMT

Thanks for the comment, Robin. You're right (even though you're expressing yourself slightly incorrectly - it's the ethernet frame size, not the TCP/IP packet, that is normally limited to 1,5 kbytes - 1514 bytes including 14 bytes or so worth of header). But then again, TCP/IP packets are normally delivered in ethernet frames, so my 20 KiB TCP/IP packet is likely to be split by the TCP/IP layer in my Windows Vista into suitable ethernet frames anyway, so in practice what you say is true, even it's theoretically incorrect. ;-) Anyway, in my example both messages will be delivered in 1 ethernet frame, so the difference is 0% in terms of packets being sent over the wire. Still, the overhead has to be processed by the target TCP/IP layer and so forth. In real-world scenarios though, my reasoning might be more correct (even though the 97,9% performance increase is unlikely to remain :-) ). It would be interesting to see some figures of more complex scenarios of UpdatePanel vs "raw" Javascript. I think usually people who make more complex stuff usually prefer the UpdatePanel approach though, since it makes the solution more homogeneous (all the code in simple C# code-behind files rather than some parts in Javascript files hidden away somewhere...).

RE: Calling web services from JavaScript with ASP.NET AJAX: Answering the Why and How questions

Robin Lauren — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 13:17:29 GMT

Your intentions are good but your reasoning is flaky. As long as a return packet is under 1.5 kB, it doesn't really matter how small it is since it's still going to fit inside one TCP/IP pcket. I'm not a C# coder so i can't comment on the code purity issues, but i much appreciate the cleaner return value of "just the facts, mam".