Alex Tsung - Blog

Audrey's 3 Years Old Birthday

2006-09-24T10:40:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was Audrey's 3 years old birthday. We took her to have ice cream in the afternoon and Audrey picked her own birthday cake - it's mango flavor. We held her birthday party at grandma's place. She wore a red dress and received a lot of gifts. Audrey enjoyed her birthday party very much.

Some Family Photos

2006-09-24T10:28:00.000-07:00

I keep forgetting to take family photos these days, but I realize kids grow up so fast, I should keep all the moments for memory. The left one was taken in December 2004, and the right one was taken yesterday (September 2006). Annie's face looks really different - she is not a preschooler anymore.

Stanley Park Miniature Train

2006-09-02T22:24:00.000-07:00

We finally have time to enjoy the last long weekend in the summer of 2006 - we went to Stanley Park today and took the Miniature Train, kids loved it. I was too busy to take family's pictures last month, so there's no gallery of "2006 August". This month I will spend more time with family and take more pictures of them.

New Ajax Example - Feedback

2006-08-25T00:14:00.000-07:00

I just finished a new Ajax example on www.alexajax.com to demonstrate adding feedback into database without postback. This example also used the Pagination class in Coge Igniter. I am thinking to update the Code Igniter to make some of its helper classes Ajax-enabled, but just thinking...

Annie's 6 Years Old Birthday

2006-08-21T20:20:00.000-07:00

Today is Annie's 6 Years Old Birthday. She invited her friends to her birthday party. Since the party was held in afternoon and I had to worked, I couldn't attend her party. Jenny took some pictures and they were very good. Annie received gifts from her friends and she enjoyed the party very well.

Beef Noodle

2006-08-21T20:12:00.000-07:00

We had a great dinner at Uncle Tea's place. The main dish was Beef Noodle - that's the best Beef Noodle I ever have in Vancouver. Trust me - I love Beef Noodle since I was a kid and I have tried all kinds of Beef Noodle when I was in Taiwan. Since I moved to Vancouver in 1996, I really miss the Beef Noodle and I tried different restaurants but I have never had such authentic one like Uncle Tea's Beef Noodle. That's awesome!!!

www.alexajax.com is launched

2006-08-11T22:43:00.000-07:00

The website - Alex's Ajax - is launched. This website is dedicated to demonstrate Ajax examples written in PHP with xajax library and built upon Code Igniter framework.

Now I have provided the following Ajax examples:

I will add more examples when I have time.

www.alexajax.com

2006-08-06T11:54:00.000-07:00

I am building a website which dedicates to demonstrate AJAX examples written in PHP. The whole website is built with the Code Igniter framework and the AJAX library will be using xajax. Now it's in the process of setting up the name servers, so you can see the site on the development server for now.

100000 Views

2006-07-18T10:23:00.000-07:00

Yeah! My PBase galleries have been viewed a total of 100000+ times. Last time I checked was 75600 views on June 02. It's exciting because it means something to me. I hope the total views can reach 200K soon - so I can tell Jenny I am good at photography and ask for a new camera, ha ha ha ... Go! Go! Go!

Anthem.NET - AJAX Library for ASP.NET 1.1/2.0

2006-07-11T00:55:00.000-07:00

Another AJAX Library/Framework for ASP.NET? This one is different! In my opinion, Anthem.NET has the following goodies over other AJAX Frameworks:

Anthem.NET provides many built-in AJAX-enabled web controls (this is the most different concept from other frameworks).
It supports ASP.NET 1.1 and 2.0.
Anthem.NET is compatible with IE, Firefox, and Opera (which I use the most).
The download package provides very detailed examples for VS 2003 and 2005.
Anthem.NET is free.

Here are what you need to do:

Read the simplest demo on Buttons and Labels and get the idea of Anthem.NET.
Read the introduction submitted by Howard Richards.
Download the latest release.
Read INSTALL.txt to install on VS 2003 or 2005.
Have fun!

CopySourceAsHtml (CSAH)

2006-07-06T22:45:00.000-07:00

I found an interesting free plug-in for Visual Studio .NET 2005 - CopySourceAsHtml (CSAH) - which allows you to highlight the source code in VS.NET 2005 and copy it as HTML, then you can save it as regular HTML file and it will be displayed in browser with the same syntax highlighting as in the VS.NET 2005!

Check this out:

protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
   {
       ProductsTableAdapter productsAdapter = new ProductsTableAdapter();
       GridView1.DataSource = productsAdapter.GetProductsByCategoryID(1);
       GridView1.DataBind();
   }

Tutorials of Data Access Patterns in ASP.NET 2.0

2006-07-03T19:32:00.000-07:00

I just found the ASP.NET website has published a serious of tutorials that explorers techniques for impelmenting common data access patterns in ASP.NET 2.0. I specially like the first paragraph in the first tutorial:

As web developers, our lives revolve around working with data. We create databases to store the data, code to retrieve and modify it, and web pages to collect and summarize it...

At least it sounds like my life :-)

The Fence Company

2006-07-03T15:43:00.000-07:00

After about one and half week of hard working, Victo'rs website - The Fence Company - was launched before my family vacation to Leavenworth. I implemented the website with Code Igniter Framework (see my previous post) extensively and I really enjoyed using this Framework. From now on, if I am going to write any PHP web site/application, I will keep using the MVC approach with the Code Igniter.

Leavenworth, Washington The Bavarian Village

2006-07-02T23:37:00.000-07:00

On Friday we decided to go to Leavenworth. It's a Bavarian Village in Washington, not very far from Vancouver, but it actually took us about 7 hours to get there on Saturday (July 1st). It was because we spent about 2 hours crossing US border - too many people coming down to the States on Canada Day.

The worst thing was that we couldn't find a motel or inn to stay for one night in Leavenworth. All rooms in all hotels were booked. We drove East for another 20 miles, then finally we found the last room (one King size bed) in Super 8 Motel in Wenatchee. We were totally exhausted. Kids went to the swimming pool for a while and forgot they were tired. We learned our lesson from this experience - we will definitely book a room ahead next time.

This morning we drove back to Leavenworth and stayed in this town until lunch. Three unforgetable things were - Chocolate truffle, German sausage and beer. Jenny and I think the town will be more beautiful in winter, but we are not sure we will come back there in winter. Here are the photos taken in Leavenworth.

PHP IDE

2006-06-30T00:37:00.000-07:00

I have been using Code Igniter Framework to build Victor's site for a week. I found I spend a lot of time on navigating between folders (like controllers, models, scripts, and views).The text editor I am using is EditPlus and its listings of folders and files are separated into two windows. So everytime I want to access file X in controllers folder, I have to click the controllers folder at the top, then click the file X at the bottom, later I want to access file Y in views folder, I have to click the views folder at the top, then click the file Y at the bottom. Since I am working directly with the files on the dev server via FTP connection, so the time spent on the navigation between folders is a tremendous.

Is there any shareware or freeware PHP IDE? or just simply a text editor with PHP syntax highlighting? I don't need the intelli-sense like Visual Studio.NET, but I do need the file explorer like capability with fast FTP connection built in the IDE or text editor. Any suggestion?

Stanley Park

2006-06-25T15:06:00.000-07:00

We went to Stanely Park last afternoon. We enjoyed walking in the park and watched sunset. I took some photos and Annie and Audrey took some too. After we were home, I checked the photos, it turned out the photos taken by Annie and Audrey were not bad, so I posted them to my gallery too.

Code Igniter

2006-06-24T01:12:00.000-07:00

Today is the first day I start working on Victor's website and it's the first time I start learning the Code Igniter Framework. I watched the two videos and went through the sample of creating a Blog in 20 minutes, then I start implementing the website. It's the first time I use the Model-View-Controller (MVC) approach to build a website and I found the concept of using segments in the URL to represent the MVC approach is interesting. The URI segments is like:


www.your-site.com/class/function/ID

The first segment represents the controller class that should be invoked.
The second segment represents the class function, or method, that should be called.
The third, and any additional segments, represent the ID and any variables that will be passed to the controller.

It really makes a lot of sense when I build the model for simple tables in database, but I also found there is limitation when the tables' relationship is getting complicated.

I also encountered some problems which were tough to a newbie like me:

I couldn't make the views and controllers work if they are in the subfolders of /views/ and /controllers/.
I couldn't make the form validation work.

On the other hand, I found the following classes are very cool and helpful:

Database class - very fast abstracted class and support Active Record patterns.
Pagination class - very easy to customize, but it is a little tricky to make it work with database query. Here is the hint.

I am still experimenting a lot of things and learn this framework by writing Victor's website. I will give a more detailed report later. By the way, here is Victor's website (development server for now) - this will be a simple CMS system contains Blog, photos, and other stuff.

Piece of Cake

2006-06-22T16:28:00.000-07:00

I have promised my best friend - Victor - to build a website for his fence company a long time ago. But since I have not much time besides work and family, I have not sit down to actually implement it. Recently I tried my best to persuade him to get a web hosting with ASP.NET 2.0 and SQL Server 2005 because I can reuse some components I built. But Victor still wants to use his original free web hosting, which has PHP4 and MySQL 4 installed. Therefore, I need to find some PHP framework similar to Ruby on Rails to make my life easier :-)

Luckily, I found CakePHP. What is CakePHP?

Cake is a rapid development framework for PHP which uses commonly known design patterns like ActiveRecord, Association Data Mapping, Front Controller and MVC. Our primary goal is to provide a structured framework that enables PHP users at all levels to rapidly develop robust web applications, without any loss to flexibility.

I am going to give CakePHP a try and see how it works. If it's easy and able to make my life easier, I will use it for Victor's website. If not, hmmm... I will persuade him again to get a web hosting with ASP.NET 2.0 and SQL Server 2005, ha ha ha...

ComfortASP.NET - AJAX Framework for ASP.NET

2006-06-22T16:13:00.000-07:00

I have tried the ComfortASP.NET V0.60. It is very easy to integrate the framework into existing applications with minimal efforts and code change. I like it a lot, but I found the pages cannot be displayed in my Opera browser (Version 8.51 Build 7712). It worked fine in Firefox and IE though. You can open the home page of the website in your Opera browser to see it yourself.

Pick One - AJAX Frameworks for ASP.NET

2006-06-21T16:07:00.000-07:00

After trying out the Atlas, I wanted to know more about various AJAX Frameworks for ASP.NET. Then I found Daniel Zeiss has posted the comparison of AJAX Frameworks for ASP.NET. Thanks Daniel for providing the detailed comparison of different frameworks and he also has been written his own framework - ComfortASP.NET. The newest release V0.60 is available now and I am going to give it a try.

Family Events Demo website

2006-06-20T17:01:00.000-07:00

I built a website for a client to demonstrate the family events with geographical map, calendar, and Google map. Here is the website. Nothing was fancy and the image map in the home page was hardcoded. I kept it very simple because I may need to update it later to adapt more business ideas.

I used the free web hosting from AspSpider.NET. The storage is only 10MB, so I had to remove all database stuff of the Memebership and Roles APIs when I deployed the website. But there is still the minimum authentication for the admin panel defined in the web.config, which is better than nothing.

PHP 5 Installer - WAMP5

2006-06-18T02:09:00.000-07:00

I wanted to try out PRADO Framework and Ruby on Rail, so I need to install at least Apache, PHP 5, and MySQL in my Windows environment. Since I am too lazy to go through all configuration settings after individual installation, so I need an installation to make my life easier.

When I used PHP 4, I used PHP EasyWindows Installer from PHP Everywhere. It was tiny as it did not include Apache and MySQL, and it's handy as it included a database abstraction library ADOdb and the PEAR already. Now I need PHP 5 to run PRADO Framework 3.0.1, so a new installer is necessary.

After doing some Google search, I found three candidates:

XAMPP and Apache2Triad contain too many utilities more than AMP (Apache/MySQL/PHP), so I decide to download WAMP5. The latest version is WAMP5 1.6.4, which contains:

Apache 2.0.58
PHP 5.1.4 + PECL
SQLiteManager
MySQL 5.0.22
PHPMyAdmin

By the way, I don't really like to use web-based MySQL GUI, speed is my main concern. So I will also download the SQLyog GUI - my favoriate MySQL front-end tool. They still have a free edition for download :-)

PRADO - Is this ASP.NET in PHP?

2006-06-17T11:52:00.000-07:00

Wow, this is a really cool PHP Framework, you must know this!

PRADO stands for PHP Rapid Application Development Object-oriented, it is a component-based and event-driven programming framework for developing Web applications in PHP5. I am not going to repeat what is already in the QuickStart Tutorial, but you have to take a look at this "Hello World" application to see how it is alike ASP.NET code-behind and event-driven modles.

I believe this framework will succeed because it really makes ASP.NET developers feel like home and gives PHP developers an environment to code like ASP.NET.

Let's take a quick look at the code in the "Hello World" application. Here is the "Home.page" (cannot use angle tags in the blog, so I use square tags instead):

[html]
[body]
[com:TForm]
[com:TButton Text="Click me" OnClick="buttonClicked" /]
[/com:TForm]
[/body]
[/html]

Here is the code-behind "Home.php":

class Home extends TPage
{
public function buttonClicked($sender,$param)
{
// $sender refers to the button component
$sender->Text="Hello World!";
}
}

ASP.NET developers, aren't they look similiar?

Since PRADO aims component-based and event-driven programming, so it does not include other back-end solutions such as database abstraction layer. I really hope PRADO team consider to include the ADOdb into their framework, maybe add another namespace like System.Data.ADOdb?

Unit Testing - NUnit

2006-06-14T23:24:00.000-07:00

Define Unit Test - A Unit Test is a procedure written to validate that a module of source code is working properly.

Recently I tried out the unit testing with NUnit - it seems creating extra classes to test each module invloves more work, but it actually let me to make sure each module I wrote don't do stupid things. I have tried several Assertions to make sure the outcome is what I expected, which worked pretty well. Now my questions are:

How do I test database insert/update/delete/select?
How do I test ASPX pages?

Maybe the main purpose of Unit Test is just for testing modules, like class libraries, but is there anyway I can test the database manipulation and web applications? Any comments?

JennyMyRealtor.com version 2.0 is launched

2006-06-09T09:48:00.000-07:00

OK, I finally finished Jenny's website with new styles. Now there is not much content yet, she will add them soon. This time I used Web Development Project with pre-compilation, and I do feel the site's speed is a bit faster than before.

I still have some optional stuff can be implemented on this website, like URL rewriting, better integration of Atlas into the current CMS in admin pages, etc. Anyway, I need some fresh air and relax a bit :-)

Keiko & Nobuki's Wedding

2006-06-09T09:36:00.000-07:00

My friend Keiko & Nobuki got married yesterday and the ceremony was held in Stanely Park. The ceremony was nice and they had a wedding company to organize everthing. My sister-in-law - Mei - helped everything and my daughters - Annie and Audrey - were the flower girls. Since the wedding company has hired a professional photographer and the photographer was directing their moves, so the new couple didn't actually look at my camera in most of my photos :P Here is the gallery.

Congradulations, Keiko & Nobuki, and Happy Honeymoon!

"Atlas" Control Toolkit - CascadingDropDown SelectedValue

2006-06-06T00:51:00.000-07:00

Most of time I need the parent-child dropdowns in code to represent some relationship, for example, categories and products, countries and provinces, cities and areas, etc. After the relationship is stored in database, next time the values are retrieved from database, the parent-child dropdowns can be set to the values programmatically.

Last time I tried to assign variables to the property "SelectedValue" of the Atlas Control "CascadingDropDown", it didn't work. I almost gave up using this Toolkit. Then I was thinking tonight - "Why don't I give another a try after I do some research?" - then I found this reply in ASP.NET Forums. Cool, it solved my problem :-)

Basically, you put the following code in the Page_Load():

CascadingDropDown1.TargetPropertied[0].ClientState = "selected_value";

So I add the database call into the logic:

protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
if (!IsPostBack)
{
int category_id;
int product_id;

// database call to get category_id and product_id

// first dropdown is categories, second is products
CascadingDropDown1.TargetPropertied[0].ClientState = category_id.ToString();
CascadingDropDown1.TargetPropertied[1].ClientState = product_id.ToString();
}
}

Well, I believe next version of the Toolkit may provide some way to preselect the value in the web method. If not, there definitely will have a better (elegant) way to do this :-)

JennyMyRealtor.com version 2.0 beta

2006-06-04T10:21:00.000-07:00

Since I have spent about a month building Jenny's website, I found I don't really like the styles, too many colours, and because there is not much content now, so the site looks empty and not attractive at all :-(

Last night I was looking for different CSS templates to use on Jenny's website, then I found Andrew Viklund's free website templates. Wow, those templates are awesome, look professional. So I decided to use his template - andreas08 - and applied to Jenny's website, here is the new look-and-feel of version 2.0 beta. Looks better!

New Gallery on PBase

2006-06-02T15:36:00.000-07:00

I just created a new gallery (2006 June) on PBase and posted 5 photos. The total views on my galleris is about 75600 since last April, it's not bad. I guess my galleries get more views since I bought the Sigma 17-70mm f/2.8-4.5 DC Macro lens and posted the Minter Garden gallery with that lens. The Sigma lens is razor sharp and its minimal focus distance is only 20cm, which is awesome for Macro photos. As my standard lens, I love it!

JennyMyRealtor.com

2006-06-01T17:43:00.000-07:00

I have spent about a month building this website - JennyMyRealtor.com - for my wife - Jenny, now the site is launched, not too much content yet because she is busy as usual on our two daughters, Annie and Audrey :-)

When I was builting this website, I have used several cool technologies, like Ajax.NET Professional, Google Maps API, Geocoder, and Atlas. The back-end Admin Panel used my beloved FCKeditor as the content editor to allow admin to edit HTML contents. I have also used other cool stuff, like ASP.NET 2.0 Membership Service and Rss Syndication, it was fun!

"Atlas" Control Toolkit

2006-06-01T16:46:00.000-07:00

I played with this cool toolkit - "Atlas" Control Toolkit and used the CollapsiblePanel in my code. I wanted to use the CascadingDropDown in my code as well because this is really helpful for many situations, but then I realized the SelectedValue of an extender cannot be set in the code :-(

BTW, I like the look-and-feel of Atlas website :-)

Hello World

2006-06-01T16:35:00.000-07:00

Welcome to my Weblog!

Currently I am working on a small project using Microsoft Enterprise Library for .NET Framework 2.0 - Cryptography Application Block.

Basically, the idea of the Cryptography Application Block is to simplify how developers incorporate cryptographic functionality in their applications. Applications can use the application block to encrypt information, create a hash from data, and compare hash values to verify that data has not been altered.

Now You can use Enterprise Library Configuration Console to configure Hash and Symmetric Cryptography Providers, then use the 4 major methods of the Cryptographyer: EncryptSymmetric(), DecryptSymmetric(), CreateHash(), and CompareHash() to do the main work. So the cool design has really simplified the Cryptography functionalities and made algorithm abstract.

But, sad thing is, I have tried to setup the Symmetric Crptography Provider dynamically and also set the protected file dynamically, but I have not figured out how to do this. Any comments?