Currently nuts about Javascript, C# and Patterns

Recently I ran across a question on StackOverflow.com. The question was: “Is it possible to have an event that fires when the value of a certain variable changes“. My first reaction was “No… you can’t”. You must create a setter method on your object and pray that the users of your code use the setter method instead of setting the variable itself.

But luckily there are people in this world who are more ingenious than me… it is possible. You must write a little bit of code on the Object-prototype but it is quite self explaining. The code is found here: Eli Grey’s Gist.

I copy/pasted the code here below (changed some formatting). But again… All credits go to Eli Grey.

// object.watch
if (!Object.prototype.watch)
{
    Object.prototype.watch = function (prop, handler)
    {
        var val = this[prop],
        getter = function ()
        {
            return val;
        },
        setter = function (newval) {
            return val = handler.call(this, prop, val, newval);
        };
        if (delete this[prop]) { // can't watch constants
            if (Object.defineProperty) { // ECMAScript 5
                Object.defineProperty(this, prop, {
                   get: getter,
                   set: setter
                });
            }
            else if (Object.prototype.__defineGetter__ &&
                     Object.prototype.__defineSetter__) //legacy
            {
                Object.prototype.__defineGetter__.call(this, prop, getter);
                Object.prototype.__defineSetter__.call(this, prop, setter);
            }
        }
    };
}

// object.unwatch
if (!Object.prototype.unwatch)
{
    Object.prototype.unwatch = function (prop) {
        var val = this[prop];
        delete this[prop]; // remove accessors
        this[prop] = val;
    };
}

That’s it… works great…

Happy Coding…

Recently I ran into some challenging moments trying to reorder some classes which had an hierarchical order. Implementing the IComparable<T> interface and calling the Sort method on the List<T> just wasn’t enough. This was caused by the fact that the CompareTo method doesn’t know anything about the nested hierarchy.

The problem described above emerged when I was working with OpenLayers. We have made a lot of changes to OpenLayers and therefore I do not use the merged OpenLayers file but the separate source files. OpenLayers comes with a Python build script which orders the sourcefiles (based on it’s hierarchy) and compresses it to one file. Due to some circumstances the standard OpenLayers build script had to be changed significantly. The changes where bigger than my knowledge of Python and therefore I decided to make a .NET builder which will do the same thing as the Python script but with my changes in it.  And then I ran into the problem with the correct order of files.

OpenLayers files has a ‘@ reguires’ commentline in it’s files which determines the dependency between the files. I started to create a class which represents the OpenLayers file:

internal class OpenLayersFile: IComparable<OpenLayersFile>
{
    public OpenLayersFile(string filename)
    { ... }

    public string Name { get; set; }
    public List<string> DependsOn { get; set; }
    public int CompareTo(OpenLayersFile otherFile)
    { ... }
}

The class was simple. It has a Name – property which is the concatenated name of the file (e.g. OpenLayers/Layer/WMS.js). and a DependsOn – property which is a list of “Names” of the files it depends on. The CompareTo method just does a check if DependsOn contains the Name of the file it’s compared to. The logic is omitted because it will clutter up the code snippet and doesn’t add value to this post.

Because List<T>.Sort() didn’t work as described expected as described above I created my own Dependency Walker which runs down all the files and orders them correctly. This dependency walker also keeps in mind to order correct when we have a baseclass with a baseclass which has a baseclass (and so on). Here is the code:

private static class DependencyWalker
{
     public static void Walk(List<OpenLayersFile> files)
     {
          for (int index = 0; index < files.Count; index++)
          {
              OpenLayersFile fileToCompare = files[index];
              for (int i = 0; i < index; i++)
              {
                  OpenLayersFile otherFile = files[i];
                  if (fileToCompare.CompareTo(otherFile) == -1)
                  {
                      files.Remove(fileToCompare);
                      files.Insert(i, fileToCompare);
                      index = 0;
                      break;
                   }
                }
           }
      }
}

This worked perfectly for me and I hope that it will help you too. I am also interested if you have a different solution to the problem. If so, please contact me.

Happy coding!

Recently I had to put a map control (like Google Maps) in a Winforms application and I had to make the map control react on actions performed on the Winform. I discovered that this was very easy and fun to do with the ObjectForScripting.

In this post I will explain the basics of how to work and communicate with a WebBrowserControl in a Winforms application. I have made a test project which you can download so you can see the magic in action. Because I want to show you the basics of the ObjectForScripting I kept the project as simple as possible. No fancy code-patterns… just straightforward coding.

The idea of the project is:

• The Winform has several input fields for personal information which are all disabled
• A button on a webpage in the WebBrowserControl activates the input fields of the Winform
• The Winform contains a button which transfers the values of the input fields on the Winform to the input fields of a webpage

By implementing this in my project I can demonstrate the communication from Webpage to Winform (activating the controls on the Winform) as well as the communication from Winform to the Webpage (filling the input fields). Download the project and examine it carefully.

So now look at the code
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