Friday 5 September 2014

Razor, data attributes, all that jazz.

Take this pretty normal HTML
<input checked="checked" data-extension="pdf" data-type="file" name="ft" type="radio" value="pdf" />PDF

You get some pretty standard results remdered

Take this razorized variable HTML:
@{var s = @"input type=""radio"" name=""ft"" ";}
<@s data-extension="pdf" data-type="file" checked="checked" value="pdf" />PDF

You get some pretty interesting HTML
<input checked="checked" data-extension="pdf" data-type="file" name=""ft"" type=""radio"" value="pdf" />

Which is Really interesting when rendered (Chrome and  IE10, most likely all of the usual suspects)

-----
And if you find that amusing, how about this: Saving things in the Blogger "Compose" view isn't really great at encoding the HTML used, so this:

Becomes this:
Derrrp! Are the data attributes to blame?

Friday 8 March 2013

IE points to what?

Ever ran into an IE issue when doing some sweet JavaScript? Me too. But here's something that might be new - at least it was for me! Pay attention to PonyName and ponyName:

<html><body>
 <input type="hidden" name="PonyName" id="NameKeeper" />

 <script>
  "use strict";
  function neigh(ponyName) {
   "use strict";
   alert("Greetings, " + PonyName + "!\n\nHerd, please welcome " + ponyName + "!");
  }
 </script>
 <input type="button" value="Neigh!" onclick="neigh('Rarity');" />
</body></html>

Chrome: As expected.
IE                     .
Wat R U Doin ?
IE                     .
Stahp               !

Strict mode might help here, but IE9... you know.

Tuesday 19 February 2013

Brace yourself: Razor @Sections fail

Every now and then a bug is so hard to track down that when you do, you have to blag about it to let off some steam.


ASP.net MVC3 + Razor + Layouts + Sections can be a lovely combo - except when it isn't. Gere's the situation: you have a rogue bastard brace printing on your page and you figure that it's from some JavaScript syntax error or a Razor foreach fail but you are finding no errors. You could be the victim of a Razor bug.

Your _Layout has a Section like so:

@RenderSection("FooterScripts", required: false)

And your View contains code like so:

@section FooterScripts {
<script type="text/javascript">
function () {
    if (1 === 1) { // bla {
        console.log("bla");
    }
}
</script>
}


Everything is ok, right? Wrong. In the line with the comment, Razer completely assplodes and THAT is the line that is producing the extra brace on your view page. There are Many variations on this but all of the following produce a rogue brace in mvc3+razer+section (Yeah, it even fails on different rows).
  • if (1 === 1) { // bla {
  • if (1 === 1) { /* bla { */
  • if (1 === 1) { // bla { //AAAAAAA
  • if (1 === 1) { 
    // {
Be on the lookout for some nasty bugs. Solution: Use Razor comments and it'll work:

  • if (1 === 1) { @* bla { *@

Sunday 16 December 2012

PHP, Wkhtmltopdf and Win 7: Eleven steps

Proof of Concept tutorial

This is a barebones guide on getting HTML to PDF / HTML to Image conversion using Windows 7, PHP and Wkhtmltopdf. This is a POC only; this tutorial does not describe server installation or configuration (using a package like WAMP makes it easy anyway). I might add those in a later revision or an extended version of this guide.

The steps
  1. Download wkhtmltopdf
  2. Installation step 1
  3. Installation step 2
  4. Installation step 3
  5. Start WampServer
  6. Open www-directory
  7. Create a test file
  8. Call the test file
  9. Examine generated
  10. Compare file contents

Download wkhtmltopdf


Download and run the "wkhtmltox" installer, that contains both wkhtmltopdf and wkhtmltoimage.

Installation step 1


After running the executable read the license agreement and click "I agree" if you do.

Installation step 2


Choose the installer to install both wkhtmltopdf and wkhtmltoimage but don't let it modify path because it breaks the PATH variable. If you want it to be in %PATH%, add it yourself.

Installation step 3


Choose the destination folder. I like the simple custom path C:\wkhtmltopdf.

Start your WWW Server

I use WAMP. It is very simple, easy to install, has sensible defaults but it's also very configurable.

Open www-directory


Wampserver opens with an icon in the system tray. Use it or otherwise navigate to your www root directory.

Create a test file


Create the following or similar test page and save it into your www root directory. The only PHP function used here is shell_exec(...); that executes the command given. The 2>>err1.txt forwards the standard error stream (stderr) to a file called err1.txt, which will be created if it doesn't exist. The 1>>out1.txt likewise forwards standard output stream (stdout) to the out1.txt file. Capturing both errors and normal output is useful in debugging. You need to call wkhtmltopdf but it's full path because it's not included in your environment PATH variable. Add it there and you can omit the folder.


<?php
// Test correct and failed output
shell_exec('c:\wkhtmltopdf\wkhtmltopdf --asdasdsadsad 2>> err1.txt 1>> out1.txt');
shell_exec('c:\wkhtmltopdf\wkhtmltopdf --version 2>> err2.txt 1>> out2.txt');
?>
<html>
<head>
</head>
<body>
<p>Magical ponies!</p>
</body>
</html>

Here we are intentionally forcing an error with the bogus parameter -asdasddas so we can test that we indeed do get stderr output.

Call the test file


Examine generated


Compare file contents


Examine your various outputs. The first test generated an almost empty file from standard output, but did generate some text in the error log err1.txt.
shell_exec('c:\wkhtmltopdf\wkhtmltopdf --asdasdsadsad 2>> err1.txt 1>> out1.txt');

The second test generated the standard version output as expected and nothing to standard error output.
shell_exec('c:\wkhtmltopdf\wkhtmltopdf --version 2>> err2.txt 1>> out2.txt');

If this is not the case, you need to check that you are pointing to the right path when calling wkhtmltopdf and that your PHP server is configured correctly. If you get no errors, check that PHP error reporting is on and check what the Apache and PHP error logs say. If your WAMP is installed into C:\wamp, your Apache log will by default be at C:\wamp\logs\apache_error.log and your PHP log will be at C:\wamp\logs\php_error.log.

Finally

This sort of testing is a proof of concept and is not directly usable in a production environment. Remember to validate your inputs and to keep a tight watch on security but this is a method that will get you wkhtmltopdf up and running. You will likely need to play with the stderr and stdout streams a little to get it to work like you wish but after you do a few experiments it really isn't that complicated. Working with streams in PHP is a different issue.

Tuesday 11 December 2012

0x1F, 0x1F, wherefore art thou 0x1F?

Playing with XML in .net you might run into some pesky characters that throw errors during conversions. One offender is 0x1F which can be hard to remove. Replacing the character can lead to surprising issues, check the variables below and their values:

// string x contains the bad char.
var a = x.IndexOf('\u001f');                     // 513
var b = x.IndexOf(Convert.ToString((byte)0x1F)); // -1
var c = x.Contains(Convert.ToChar((byte)0x1F));  // true
var d = x.Contains('\u001f');                    // true
var e = x.Contains(Convert.ToString((byte)0x1F));// false
var f = x.Contains(Convert.ToChar((byte)0x1F));  // true


If you simply want to remove the character:

x = x.Replace(Convert.ToChar((byte)0x1F), ' '); // Works
x = x.Replace(Convert.ToString((byte)0x1F), "");// Fails

Related
  • http://stackoverflow.com/questions/9949921/
  • http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6728329/