SOAP Monitor

Came across this brilliant tool for monitoring SOAP inbound/outbound messages:

http://java-source.net/open-source/web-services-tools/membrane-soap-monitor

This is more like a tunneling software, but purely for SOAP monitoring. It formats requests/responses for easiness.

YOu could use the SOAP-UI plugin for eclipse, but its quite heavy. One good thing I liked about SOAPUI eclipse plugin is its ability ot crete Junit test case from WSDL.

XML PI 3.0 For DHL

Product decommissioned.

A very innovative tool...

Steve send a mail to the group about a cool online tool - Dropbox.


If you install DropBox on your desktop, it gives you a 'folder' which you can drop files into. The files are actually stored on the DropBox server.
When you get home, just click on the folder to access all your 'dropped' files. Much easier than emailing files to yourself and more convenient than Google docs.

If you use this link https://www.dropbox.com/referrals/NTgxMjE0NDQ5 (demo video and signup form)


You will get free 250MB of storage. I find it very handy.
No credit card details asked for - its free!

java.lang.IllegalStateException: Error while loading manipulator

While trying to update eclipse plugins, you might get this error:
java.lang.IllegalStateException: Error while loading manipulator

The underlying error in the\workspace\.metadata\.log - would be something similar to:

!ENTRY org.eclipse.equinox.p2.engine 4 4 2010-06-01 00:19:00.483
!MESSAGE An error occurred while unconfiguring the items to uninstall
!SUBENTRY 1 org.eclipse.equinox.p2.engine 4 0 2010-06-01 00:19:00.483
!MESSAGE session context was:(profile=SDKProfile, phase=org.eclipse.equinox.internal.provisional.p2.engine.phases.Unconfigure, operand=[R]org.eclipse.equinox.common 3.5.0.v20090520-1800 --> [R]org.eclipse.equinox.common 3.5.1.R35x_v20090807-1100, action=org.eclipse.equinox.internal.p2.touchpoint.eclipse.actions.SetStartLevelAction).
!SUBENTRY 1 org.eclipse.equinox.p2.engine 4 0 2010-06-01 00:19:00.483
!MESSAGE Error while loading manipulator.
!STACK 0
java.lang.IllegalStateException: Error while loading manipulator.


Reason:
The eclipse has not loaded the equinox.launcher plugin.

What is Equinox and Why should I bother?

Equinox is the Osgi Framework implementation. So what? Alright, Eclipse uses OSGi as the basis for its plug-in system.

http://www.eclipse.org/equinox/

Solution:

We have to force load this plugin during startup by specifying it in the eclipse.ini.

• Open the Eclipse.ini
• Add the following line:

-startup
plugins/org.eclipse.equinox.launcher_1.0.201.R35x_v20090715.jar

• Restart Eclipse
• Try updating/installing plugins

Online XML Formatting.

Most of the times XML generated are not formatted. It is extremely difficult to read/debug.

This cool online tool solves this headache:

http://xmlindent.com/

Browser Emulator

I was recently requested by my client to help fix a bug happening in I.E 6. I can't remember when on earth I last used I.E 6 and why this customer is so skeptical about this old nasty browser. But the truth is I have to fix it. My Windows now is a neat 64 Bit Windows 7 which doesn’t even knew there existed a browser called I.E 6.

I was looking for Emulators online and came across this stuff from Microsoft - Microsoft Expression SuperPreview. I downloaded, installed and played with it while I fixed the bug.

It's a good tool with some features of firebug. The difference being this displays the page layout as it is in a particular browser version, and can open two frames of two different browser versions and show the comparison I tried it and seems very helpful.

On the dark side sessions cannot be configured so for checking UI issues of Session enabled pages – I had to save as webpage complete and then open that file.

Some cool Features:

• Multi browsers Firefox xx , IE (6, 7, 8)
• Compare in two browsers simultaneously
• Dom related checks available
• Can set screen resolutions
• Configure more browsers like chrome/Safari etc.

Drawbacks (I didn’t explore, could be wrong)

• No JavaScript Checks
• Session pages cannot be tested live


Read more:

http://expression.microsoft.com/en-us/dd565874.aspx

JSON - Jquery

JSON & Jquery might have stormed well in the AJAX/WS world. But the right documents are missing. I was banging myu head for a few hours, on how to get a json object from a codebehind:

I was building a JSON object:{name:myvalue}

Tried all ways and it never workd in the Ajax method:

$.post("test.aspx?tbg=yu", $("#form1").serialize(),
function(data) {
alert(data.name); ---->Always returned undefined. In firebug it was not showing at all.


The Right solution is {name:'myvalue'}. This ******ing >>>>'<<<<< style="font-style: italic;">-Happy Hacking

String to Stream in C#

There are multiple ways, best two:

Us the System.IO.StringReader.

//Good when you want to preserve the UTL character
byte[] bytesFromString = System.Text.Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(xml);
System.IO.Stream stream = new System.IO.MemoryStream(xmlBytes);