I've been trying to set up a way to pull a JSON file from a JMenu File Selector, and while I'm able to create a layer from said file, I'm not sure what to do in order to render it.
From what I understand, layers in World Wind render themselves. However the layer.render method requires a DrawContext object as input. I'm not able to find the relevant DrawContext object in the appFrame I've been passed as an argument. I can find a GlContext object via appFrame.getWwd().getContext(). I thought there might be a way to find the object that created that GLContext, which should be a DrawContext object. I suppose another GLContext could have created that specific GLContext, but eventually the first GLContext has to have been made by a DrawContext object of some sort. At least that's my understanding of how that interaction works.
So my question has two parts I suppose:
Am I correct in the method I'm using to render the Layer/My understanding of how Layers are rendered?
Where do I find the appropriate instances of the DrawContext object I need to render the layer if the way I'm going about it is correct?
Related
I would like to call an API to enrich an existing dataset.
The existing dataset is a CSVDataSet configured in the catalog.
Now I would like to create a Node, that enriches the CSVDataSet with data from the API, that I have to call for every row in the CSV file. Then save the data into a database (SQLTableDataSet). My approach is to create an APIDataSet entry in the catalog and provide it as an input for the node, next to the CSVDataSet.
The issue here is, the APIDataSet is static (in general the DataSets seem to be very static). I need to call the load function at runtime within the Node for every entry in the csv file.
I didn't find a way to do this. Is it just a bad approach? Do I have to call the API within the Node instead of creating a APIDataSet?
So typically, we don't like our nodes having knowledge of IO configuration. The belief is that functionally pure python functions are easier to test, maintain and build.
Typically the way we would keep this distinction would be for you to subclass our APIDataSet / CSVDataSet or both and then add your custom logic to do it all there.
I have done this in my GDALRasterDataSet implementation. The idea is that if you need to enrich a dataset on the go, you can overload the load() method in a custom dataset and pass additional parameters there.
You can see an implementation here and an example of usage here.
The only extra thing you need to do is to re-write the load() method to accept kwargs (line 143) and write your own _load method that enriches your dataset. Everything else is boilerplate.
Lets say we have a class "Car" than has different pieces of data ( maker, model, color, fabrication date, registration date, etc). The class has no method to get data, but it knows to as for it from another object (sent via constructor, let's cal it for short DS).- and the same for when needing to update changes.
A method getColor() would be implemented like this
if(! this->loaded('color')){
this->askDS('color') // this will do the necesarry work to generate a request to DS
}
return this->information('color');
Nothing too fancy so far. No comes the part i want to find out if it has a name, or if there are libraries / frameworks that do this already.
DS has a list of methods registered dinamically based on the class that needs data. For car we have:
input: car serial number, output: method to use to read the numbers to extract raw values
input: car raw color value, output: color code
input: car color code, manufacturer, year, mode, output:human-readable color (for example navy blue)
Now, DS or any method does not have an ordered list of using command to start from serial number and return the color blue, but if can construct a chain of methods that from one set of data, it can run them in order and get the desired data.
For our example above, DS runs 1,2,3 in that order and injects the data resulted from all methods into the class object that needed it.
Now if the car needs registration info, we have method (4) that gets that from the police database with an api request.
So, given:
- a type of model (class/object)
- a list of methods that take a fixed list of input(object properties) and give out a fixed list of output (object properties)
- a class DS that can glue the methods and run the needed ones for a model to get from property A (serial) to properby B (human readable colour) without the model or DS having a preconfigured way to get this data but finding it as needed.
does this have a name or is it already implemented somewhere ?
I've implemented a very basic prototype and it works very nice and i think this implementation method has useful features:
if you have a set of methods that do sql queries and then your app switches to using an api, you only need to change the methods and don't have to touch any other part of the application
when looking for a chain of methods that resolve the 'need' the object has, you can find a method chain, run it, if it fails keep looking for another list of methods based on the currently available data - so if you have multiple sources for a piece of data, it can try multiple versions
starting from the above paragraph i could start with an app that only has sql queries for data retrieval - when i find out a part of the app overloads the sql server i could add a method to retrieve data from cache with a lower cost than the one from database (or multiple layered caches, each with different costs)
i could probably add business logi in the mix the same ways as cache, and based on the user location / options present different data
this requires less coding overall, and decouples the data source from the object, making each piece easier to mock/test
what is needed to make this fast is a caching solution for the discovered method chains, since matching hundreds of thousands of methods per model type would be time-consuming but I don't think this is very hard to do - just store all found chains in memory as you find them and some metadata to be able to resume a search from any point in time - when you update the methods, just clear the cache, take a performance hit for the first requests
Thank you for your time
What you describe sounds like a somewhat roundabout way of doing Dependency Injection. Quote:
"Passing the service to the client, rather than allowing a client to
build or find the service, is the fundamental requirement of the
pattern."
Depending on what language you're using, there should be several Dependency Injection frameworks/libraries available.
I am brand new to Magento and the documentation, primarily the phpDocs, are difficult to navigate. For example,
$attributeSet = Mage::getModel('eav/entity_attribute_set')->load($id);
In the php doc for Class Mage_Eav_Model_Entity_Attribute_Set there is no mention of the method getAttributeSetName() either in inherited methods or otherwise and yet this works.
$attributeSet = Mage::getModel('eav/entity_attribute_set')->load($id);
echo $attributeSet->getAttributeSetName();
So I suppose I have several questions.
Can someone explain to me why the documentation is this way?
Where I can find the mysterious getAttributeSetName() method in the phpDocs?
My theory is that there is some inheritance or a design pattern implementation going on that I'm not understanding, maybe someone can shed some light on this for me.
If you really want to fry your brain, take a look at the source code for Mage_Eav_Model_Entity_Attribute_Set and follow the inheritance chain all the way back. You won't find a getAttributeSetName method defined anywhere.
All Magento objects that inherit from Varien_Object can have arbitrary data members set on them. Try this.
$attributeSet = Mage::getModel('eav/entity_attribute_set')->load($id);
$attributeSet->setFooBazBar('Value');
var_dump($attributeSet->getFooBazBar());
var_dump($attributeSet->getData('foo_baz_bar'));
var_dump($attributeSet->setData('foo_baz_bar','New Value'));
var_dump($attributeSet->getFooBazBar());
You can also get all the data members by using
var_dump($attributeSet->getData());
but be careful dumping these, because if there's a data object that has a circular reference and you're not using something like xDebug, then PHP will have a fit trying to display the object.
Magento stores data properties in a special _data array property. You can get/set values in this array with getData and setData. Magento also has implemented magic getting and setter methods, so when you say something like
$object->getFooBazBar();
The method getFooBazBar is transformed into the data property foo_baz_bar. and then getData is called using this property. It's a little tricky to get your head around, but once you get it you'll start to see how much time you can save using this pattern.
One side effect of this is, of course, it's impossible to infer what data properties any object might have by looking at it's class file, so there's no phpDocs for these methods.
I have this idea of generating an array of user-links that will depend on user-roles.
The user can be a student or an admin.
What I have in mind is use a foreach loop to generate a list of links that is only available for certain users.
My problem is, I created a helper class called Navigation, but I am so certain that I MUST NOT hard-code the links in there, instead I want that helper class to just read an object sent from somewhere, and then will return the desired navigation array to a page.
Follow up questions, where do you think should i keep the links that will only be available for students, for admins. Should i just keep them in a text-file?
or if it is possible to create a controller that passes an array of links, for example
a method in nav_controller class -> studentLinks(){} that will send an array of links to the helper class, the the helper class will then send it to the view..
Sorry if I'm quite crazy at explaining. Do you have any related resources?
From your description it seems that you are building some education-related system. It would make sense to create implementation in such way, that you can later expand the project. Seems reasonable to expect addition of "lectors" as a role later.
Then again .. I am not sure how extensive your knowledge about MVC design pattern is.
That said, in this situation I would consider two ways to solve this:
View requests current user's status from model layer and, based on the response, requests additional data. Then view uses either admin or user templates and creates the response.
You can either hardcode the specific navigation items in the templates, from which you build the response, or the lit of available navigation items can be a part of the additional information that you requested from model layer.
The downside for this method is, that every time you need, when you need to add another group, you will have to rewrite some (if not all) view classes.
Wrap the structures from model layer in a containment object (the basis of implementation available in this post), which would let you restrict, what data is returned.
When using this approach, the views aways request all the available information from model layer, but some of it will return null, in which case the template would not be applied. To implement this, the list of available navigation items would have to be provided by model layer.
P.S. As you might have noticed from this description, view is not a template and model is not a class.
It really depends on what you're already using and the scale of your project. If you're using a db - stick it there. If you're using xml/json/yaml/whatever - store it in a file with corresponding format. If you have neither - hardcode it. What I mean - avoid using multiple technologies to store data. Also, if the links won't be updated frequently and the users won't be able to customize them I'd hardcode them. There's no point in creating something very complex for the sake of dynamics if the app will be mostly static.
Note that this question doesn't quite fit in stackoverflow. programmers.stackexchange.com would probably be a better fit
I'm trying to figure out how to decide when to use NSDictionary or NSCoder/NSCoding?
It seems that for general property lists and such that NSDictionary is the easy way to go that generates XML files that are easily editable outside of the application.
When dealing with custom classes that holds data or possibly other custom classes nested inside, it seems like NSCoder/NSCoding would be the better route since it will step through all the contained object classes and encode them as well when an archive command is used.
NSDictionary seems like it would take more work to get all the properties or data characteristics to a single level to be able to save it, where as NSCoder/NSCoding would automatically encode nested custom classes that implement the NSCoding interface.
Outside of it being binary data and not editable outside of your application is there a real reason to use one over the other? And along those lines is there an indicator of which way you should lean between the two? Am I missing something obvious?
Apple's documentation on object graphs has this to say:
Mac OS X serializations store a simple hierarchy of value objects, such as dictionaries, arrays, strings, and binary data. The serialization only preserves the values of the objects and their position in the hierarchy. Multiple references to the same value object might result in multiple objects when deserialized. The mutability of the objects is not maintained.
…
Mac OS X archives store an arbitrarily complex object graph. The archive preserves the identity of every object in the graph and all the relationships it has with all the other objects in the graph. When unarchived, the rebuilt object graph should, with few exceptions, be an exact copy of the original object graph.
The way I interpret this is that, if you want to store simple values, serialization (using an NSDictionary, for example) is a fine way to go. If you want to store an object graph of arbitrary types, with uniqueness and mutability preserved, using archives (with NSCoder, for example) is your best bet.
You may also want to read Apple's Archives and Serializations Programming Guide for Cocoa, of which the aforelinked page on object graphs is a part, as it covers this topic well.
I am NOT a big fan of using NSCoding/NSCoder/NSArchiver (we need to pick a name!) to serialise an object graph to a file.
Archives created in this way are incredibly fragile. If you save an object of class Foo then by golly you need to make sure when you load the data back in you have a class Foo in your application.
This makes NSCoder based serialisation difficult from the perspective of sharing files with other applications or even forwards compatibility with your future application.
I forgot to list what I would recommend.
NSCoding can be ok in certain situations: if you're just doing something quick and simple (although you do have to write a lot of code - two methods per class to be serialised). It can also be ok if you're not worried about compatibility with other applications.
Export/import via property lists (perhaps using the NSPropertyListSerializaion class) is a fine solution. XML based plists are easy to create and edit. Main advantage to plists is that you're not tying the file format to just your application.
You can also create your own XML based file format and read/write to it using NSXMLDocument API and friends. This really isn't much more work than using property lists.
I think you're a bit confused, NSDictionary is a data structure, it also happens to implement the NSCoding protocol. So in essence, you could either put all your data into a NSDictionary and have that encode itself later on, or you can implement the NSCoding protocol and encode your object tree using the NSCoder API. Based on the type of NSCoder object passed in to the encodeWithCoder: method, is the output of your encoding.