Everything seems to be powering along at full steam as usual with the iTOK and iVisual projects having lots of action. These projects have hindered the projected release date of the first commercial version of BizBlox as I have had no time to complete the licensing aspect of the code. Also I now need to get it updated to VS2005 since Widbey finally made it to release.

For a little inspiration here is a great little clip of Rodney Mullen skating to get you stoked for a skate/surf! I could only ever dream of being this coordinated.

What else? Well – I started teaching Sebatian to surf. He is only three so he is getting a good start I think. He should be pretty awesome if he keeps it up for a few years after starting at this age. I have to hand it to him – he has really managed to control his fear since I can see that sometimes he is PETRIFIED as the waves he is riding are equivalent to 8 foot waves if he was my size – which is pretty daunting for any learner! Nice one son!

Finally a thankyou to Frederico Caldeira Knabben who is the author of (and maintains the site for) FCK Editor for posting links to the article I published on integrating the editor in to a virtual filesystem using .Net… Note that he has also updated to version 2.1 as of Friday!

When you’re developing those web services, make sure you only enable tracing if ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY and for short periods in development.

I had enabled tracing to use the WS Trace tool by Simon Guest (which is fantastic) – however when I left a client running overnight against my dev server everything slowed to a crawl. ASP worker process took up over 300Meg of RAM too… WTF?! I thought… took a while to realize but the logs were slowing down the whole PC, specifically the asp.net worker process and as soon as tracing was disabled everything was peachy. Not surprising really but something to look out for all the same.

I was searching for some information on good practises with managing COM exceptions in .Net and how to get the HRESULT value – and I found this documentation. It contains docs on using the GIS API, but also good generic examples on .Net coding practises (like handling COM exceptions) albeit in the context on the GIS API. Cudos to ESRI!

After having to integrate some high end APIs (or what you would EXPECT are high end APIs based on the WEEKLY licensing price tag!) for the latest development projects I had lowered my expectations.

Looks like someone out there is doing it right…

If you visit my blog often you will notice that I have pulled the articles about configuring an asp.Net connector for the default filebrowser. This is because the FCKEditor connector architecture is out and out the wrong tool for the job when it comes to providing a secure filesystem. The code we had working with 2.0FC broke with the 2.0 release and tracking down the reason for events not being called was not only pointless but highlighted the added layer of (unecessary) complexity which the generic filebrowser added.

This conclusion in no way demerits the power of FCKEditor – like I said before – the filebroswer is the wrong tool for the job in providing a proxy filesystem. FCKEditor is still the technology I am going to present in this article; in fact, to FCKEdit’s credit, it took an hour to write a custom filebrowser in .Net which plugged straight in to the existing FCKEditor without any fuss! One change to the config file and we were up and running.

If you DON’T read this blog often you may wonder what I am talking about. Fair call – this article is about integrating the FCKEditor in to a .Net web application which uses a proxy (virtual) filesystem. I will explain what a proxy fileysystem is later, but first lets take a look at what FCKEditor is;

“This HTML text editor brings to the web many of the powerful functionalities of desktop editors like MS Word. It’s lightweight and doesn’t require any kind of installation on the client computer.”

An open source HTML editor which is cross browser with features like Cut, Paste, Undo and Redo, Paste from Word(!), Image insertion, with upload and server browsing support, Skins support, Plugins support and a Spell checker! Quite impressive so you begin to see why we chose it.

If you have an editor which also provides hooks in to a document management subsystem and virtual filesystem then you have a very simple to use interface for editing content and managing attachments in a secure environment. This is what we were trying to implement for iTOK.

The document management system we use at iTOK is a fulltext searchable content library which has a complete role based permissions model associated with it. This has introduced two complex issues when integrating this (or any) third party editor technology which can manage files as well as edit text/HTML content.

Firstly, files themselves are an issue. We do not want to directly expose a filesystem to users. The approach which we have implemented is to create an FCKEditor file browser to use our virtual filesystem. The user is given a workspace during the editing process and the files are consumed in to the repository once editing is complete (or as it occurrs).

Secondly, links back in to the repository when viewing documents (without the editor) have to be done via view-only proxy (aspx page) which again is enforcing role based permissions inherited from the document being viewed before providing access to the files in the repository.

You see then that we have a few objectives in this article:
1. Illustrate a simple proxy filesystem
2. Configure FCKEdit for a .Net project
3. Create a custom filebrowser for FCKEdit

Project Primer
The project file attached to this article contains the complete 2.0 distro of FCKEditor as well as the .Net FCKEditor library. For the sake of simplicity in managing the database-driven aspect of this demonstration I am using the BizBlox API to perform the object-relational mapping so none of this example requires any SQL or database code. I have included 0.9.9.1 of the BizBlox ORM installer in the project too. To get the database “encrypted connection string” property you find in the web.config simply go to the Tools menu of the SQL import tool and choose ‘create encrypted connection string’ – just enter your connection string for the demo database and you’re off! For more information on how to format a connection string you can find info in the BizBlox knowledge base article here.

Part One: Proxy Filesystem
The process of actually DOWNLOADING a binary file from an area which IIS does not have permissions is the key to the proxy concept. We are using an ASP.Net page as the proxy which can perform intermediate permissions checking – or just use embedded .Net permissions – the access to the filesystem. The ASPX page gets a reference to the file (via the virtual filesystem key) and opens a stream to the requesting web browser and serves up the appropriate file. The ASPX page acts as a proxy between the web browser and the filesystem via the application server layer.

Why would you use a proxy instead of a custom HTTP handler for binary filetypes? Get some background by reading this great introduction to custom HTTPHandlers. The benefits of using a proxy are that files in other locations (outside of the bounds of our CMS system) are not filtered by the HTTPHandler in the same web appliction, so their performance is unhindered by this system. It also requires a tonne less configuration than having to setup custom extensions for the handlers in IIS. Of course with the next generation of IIS this will be less of an issue.

Now, lets look at our proxy example in the demofilesystem project:

The OnLoad event of the ViewVirtualFile.aspx page looks like this:

Private Sub Page_Load(ByVal sender As System.Object, _       ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles MyBase.Load    Dim id As Guid    Try        id = New Guid(Request("id"))        Dim vFactory As New VirtualFileFactory        Dim vf As VirtualFile = vFactory.Retrieve(id)        Dim d As Downloader = vf.GetDownloader()        d.Download()    Catch ex As Exception        Response.End()    End TryEnd Sub

The actual process of downloading a file is performed by – you guessed it – the Downloader class, the VirtualFile and VirtualFileFactory are BizBlox inherited classes which provide us with a VirtualFile record from the database. The GetDownloader() method is mapping virtual file to real filesystem entry and setting up an instance of the Downloader with that information.

The guts of the Downloader class is simple – we just reset the HTTPResponse going back to the browser client and set the MIME type based on the filename suffix (see the MimeMapper class) and use TransmitFile to send it back. Note, we are not intending on dealing with very large files in this example so see the sidebar below for the impact of large files on a system like this.

Public Sub Download()    Dim r As HttpResponse = HttpContext.Current.Response    r.Clear()    r.ContentType = Me._mimeType    r.AddHeader("Content-Disposition", _    "inline; filename=" & Me._targetFilename)    r.TransmitFile(Me._sourceFilename)    r.End()End Sub

Note that by setting the Content-Disposition header, we are determining how the browser behaves when it receives the file. We are indicating what the filename should be and that the file should be added inline with other content. This directive affords the browser flexibility to determine if content should or should not be in the web page. A filetype which cannot be natively rendered inline will still display the download dialog box or attempt to load the helper application it is assigned to on the client browser.

[SIDEBAR: Large Files] Many issues can come in to play when uploading or downloading large files and you must take this in to account. There are solutions for handling large files such as ABCUpload. And several articles have been written regarding how to manage memory efficiently when streaming binary files to the client. Worthwhile reading – but outside the scope of this article.

Thats it! Well, actually, not quite – the magic of proxy happens when the source file is outside of the IIS directory. At that point, you can physically only access this file through the proxy page. There is no way (permissions or not) that IIS could show a file which is outside its web-roots all by itself.

What about uploads I hear you cry! Well, you have to hang in there for the final installment to get that juicy part! In the mean time, lets figure out how to set up FCKEditor for .Net.

iVisual 3 (with MonitorMosaic 4.0) now supports touch screen printing on demand and also time-lapse monitoring.

The updated in-store kiosk looks great and has a color laser printer above it. The quality of the flyers from the print on demand feature is really amazing! HP print technology is just fantastic – the quality is unsurpassed.

Timelapse technology allows administrators to monitor all the MonitorMosaic installations and see if there are issues just by logging on to the iVisual intranet. There is also active monitoring and notifications from each installaion so you always know if something goes wrong.

The server technology is now completely multithreaded – the system now performs daily ad-rendering in multiple threads for each location improving render time by over 4000%! The thread-blocking whilst image downloads occurred was where the delays occurred so you can see why a parrallel approach has yielded such a huge improvement.

Here is a press release of the original iVisual technology. And here is a newsletter from the first iVisual technology reseller! Now that the system does print on demand as well as SMS and ‘no-touch’ content updates (the real estate version takes feeds from realestate.com.au – other vertical markets use appropriate content channel partners for fullfilment) deployment to smaller in-store displays is an attractive option for agents who do not wish to mess with their in store digital signage on a daily basis. The whole process is automated and saves thousands in wasted admin time.

Thanks to Command Australia, iVisual will also be on display at the Retail Business Technology and Shopfit Display & Design Exhibiton. Sydney Conference and Exhibition Centre, Darling Harbour, Sydney on Wednesday, 20th to Friday, 22nd July, 2005. You can find it at Stand O11 in the Shopfit area. We have a three monitor version of MonitorMosaic running with iVisual content and the print-on-demand feature enabled.

Anyhow, why the hell am I researching notebooks now? I am bored. Bored as hell. Yep. Its true… I do love my job, I love to code like a demon (daemon actually, as I work so many hours) and do the IT management work that I do every day, but right now I am coding reports. Mundane financial management reports and whilst I see the need for them to be done, it doesn’t make them more fun to do.

I am also in dire need of some adrenaline. I started doing my exercise routine. Walks to the beach – even got stuck in to the punching back – and knocked it off the chain. It had been so long since I used it that it had rusted through. Theres a sure sign I needed to get off my ass. So I need adrenaline… and a mission. More than that strawberry icing donut is going to provide for me after my 3pm snack run. Much more… I was looking at doing a ride day at Eastern Creek. Superbike School now hire out the racing gear as well as race tuned Daytona 600′s – which would be a hoot. This is definitely in my todo list in the coming months.

In the mean time, I had better get my ass back to coding.

Really wishing I had more time to do *anything* right now. Seems like my life is just a lot of staring at the Visual Studio IDE. Not cool… Just been so tired I have done stupid things like putting my thumb through the screen of my beloved Omnibook 500 which has given me a reason to drool over the new Vaio – but all the same, stupid stupid stupid. Also, I have been getting sick a lot. So I am cutting out the extra curricular computing activities a lot – and focussing on getting some real world action going on. I think the punching bag out the back is ready for some action.

I want to get fit enough to enjoy a track day with the guys. I think I have decided that is my mission. Good… I needed one of those.

Well, I figured a way around the problem:

Imports System.IO

Public Class Semaphore    Private Shared _hnd As Semaphore = New Semaphore    Private ReadOnly Property Filename() As String        Get            Dim s As New StackTrace            Return Path.Combine(Path.GetTempPath(), _           s.GetFrame(4).GetMethod().DeclaringType.FullName.Replace(".", "_") & _           ".TMP")        End Get    End Property

    Public Shared Function GetInstance() As Semaphore        Return _hnd    End Function

    Private _sem As FileStream

    Private Sub New()        Try            Me._sem = File.OpenWrite(Me.Filename)        Catch ex As Exception            Me._sem = Nothing        End Try    End Sub

    Public ReadOnly Property Owned() As Boolean        Get            If Not Me._sem Is Nothing Then Return True            Return False        End Get    End Property

    Protected Overrides Sub Finalize()        MyBase.Finalize()        Me._sem.Close()        Try            File.Delete(Filename)        Catch ex As Exception        End Try    End Sub

End Class