INTRODUCTION
I am part of a project team which uses an old GForge system (community edition v5.6.1) to host our source code and provide some further services. One builtin service is the upload and download feature. Thus users can easily get the generated application version. In order to provide this downloadable version, we as developers have to use a browser (e.g. IE or FF) to navigate into the appropriate GForge page, then tick some buttons, fill some text boxes and finally hit an "upload" button which opens a file dialog to specify any file to be uploaded into the GForge download area. For a download, the procedure is similar. Additionally, from time to time there comes a separate WEB page to request a session login.
Now, as we as developers are in a "hot phase" and need to provide downloadable versions with high frequency, the procedure described above is much too error-prone concerning essential parts of the release, and too slow. Besides that, there is always a real person necessary in front of the screen to click around.
QUESTION
How can we manage to programmatically upload and download generated software versions into and out of GForge's download area while overcoming the password page on the first hand (of course using a valid user account)?
WHAT WE'VE TRIED SO FAR
Using a Python script. Python provides very helpful modules like "urllib", "urllib2" and "requests", with which any HTTP access (even the ones with session password protection) should be managable. After many hours of trying, the GForge system only returns the password request page. Not any of the interesting files. Even far away from uploading anything.
Using an AutoIt script. AutoIt can automate mouse movements and keyboard presses as well as direct access of visible elements on the screen. It provides a "Window Info" application to identify any window element. But e.g. buttons and text fields within WEB pages (HTML) are not recognized. So we don't know how to correctly identify GForge's password text field in order to move the mouse there, and type in the necessary text. And from there go on imitating the person sitting in front of the screen.
Does anybody have some experience regarding the solution of our problem?
I'd upgrade your system to v6.4.2 (current GForge version). From there you will have access to the SOAP interface which will make all this possible. When GForgeNEXT is released, https://next.gforge.com, the SOAP interface will be replace by a REST-ful API making this integration even easier.
The upgrade to v6.4.2 from 5.6.x will be a bit painful but our team would be happy to help, just create an account on gforge.com and then open a free support ticket here:
https://gforge.com/gf/project/gforge5/tracker/?action=TrackerItemBrowse&tracker_id=10345
Disclaimer: My company manages GForge so the advice given above I'd give to any paying client. For further clarity, files in GForge are stored in the file system. The SOAP interface allows you to reach into the database for any ticket or document grab the appropriate document and even replace it. Programatically, it is the cleanest answer.
In Firefox, I'd like to be able to highlight a word or number, then right click and have options that would open various custom links such as:
View User Profile -> http://mysite.com/user/HIGHLIGHTEDWORD
View User Admin Page -> http://mysite.com/admin/user.php?user=HIGHLIGHTEDWORD
View Order Page -> http://mysite.com/orderdetailspage.php?order_id=HIGHLIGHTEDWORD
Something like that would save me and my team a lot of time.
Does anyone know is such a plugin exists, and if not what would be involved in developing one?
thanks
This page has some options for Menu customization extensions:
Maybe you could use one of those extensions with keyword searches?
I believe in you!
I know you're trying to save yourself some time with due diligence researching whether it's been done, but with the power of copy and paste, you could "write your own" almost as quickly as asking the question.
I want to display a "folderview" which I can drag and drop files into but via WebForm. I am doing this via a webbrowser control pointing at local drive. The code works in a win form user control but what I want is to embed this control in web form. This is an intranet so security etc is less of an issue. However when I add things like AllowDrop or the webbrowser control to my control it stops working - I get the image placeholder which I take to mean an error. Can anyone give me an idea what is wrong or perhaps suggest a different solution.
Hi I figured it out when you deploy a new version of your user control you need to clear the GAC download cache - gacutil /clc but I think versioning your dll may work. I don't think web browser control work at all but I may be wrong. I've managed to drag and drop msg files with Outlook Automation see http://bytes.com/groups/net-vb/527320-drag-drop-outlook-vb-net-richtextbox
I really don't like the VS2008 Start Page. I don't need the RSS reader, Getting started or Headlines. The only thing useful is "Recent Projects"
Is there a way to customize it or replace with a better one?
It will be nice that the page contains Favorites Projects and Recent projects.
P.S. I know that I can disabled it or replace it with other web page, just looking for a good productivity tip.
Here's an article with a lot of detail on how to precisely customize the start page. Unfortunately, it looks to be a rather arduous process. But hey, if you have the time...
Customizing the Visual Studio .NET 2003 Start Page
Goto Tools > Options > Environment > Startup and pick the best option you like
One suggestion would be to follow the steps here:
http://blogs.msdn.com/saraford/archive/2008/01/03/did-you-know-how-to-customize-what-visual-studio-opens-to-or-how-to-make-the-start-page-not-show-up-when-vs-opens.aspx
You can also check out the useful information here. Aso for suggested things, check out this post.
The link posted by Kyralessa is a complete answer to your original question. Unfortunately, it does look like a complicated procedure.
I'll just add that if you're worried about any performance impact associated with fetching the RSS feed, you can enter a non-existent URL such as http://localhost:12345 that will fail quickly and reduce the amount of content needing to be rendered. In that way, you could keep the 'Recent projects' panel.
I too am not a fan of the startup page showing latest articles and news from MSDN.
I wouldn't mind glancing through a few articles, but the RSS feed is mega slow and the wait really slows down productivity, especially if I find myself opening and close it all the time.
Visual Studio will load much faster when the start page is disabled.
Here's how to do it:
Go to Tools => Options
Select the Startup child node under the Environment node.
Un-tick the auto loading of news articles
Clear the url box ...just to be sure ;)
Select "Show empty environment" from the combo box
Now, marvel at the dramatic speed boost to Visual studio 2008.
What Firefox add-ons do you use that are useful for programmers?
I guess it's silly to mention Firebug -- doubt any of us could live without it. Other than that I use the following (only listing dev-related):
Console2: next-generation error console
DOM inspector: as the title might indicate, allows you to browse the DOM
Edit Cookies: change cookies on the fly
Execute JS: ad-hoc Javascript execution
IE Tab: render a page in IE
Inspect This: brings the selected object into the DOM inspector
JSView: display linked javascript and CSS
LORI (Life of Request Info): shows how long it takes to render a page
Measure IT: a popup ruler.
URL Params: shows GET and POST variables
Web Developer: a myriad of tools for the web developer
Here are mine (developer centric):
FireBug - a myriad of productivity enhancing tools, includes javascript debugger, DOM inspector, allows you to edit the CSS/HTML on the fly which is highly valuable for troubleshooing layout and display problems.
Web Developer - again another great developer productivity tool. I mostly use it for quickly validating pages, disabling javascript (yes I disable javascript sometimes, don't you?), viewing cookies, etc.
Tamper Data - lets you tamper with http headers, form values, cookies, etc. prior to posting back to a page, or getting a page. Incredibly valuable for poking and prodding your pages, and seeing how your web app responds when used with slightly malicious intent.
JavaScript Debugger - has a few more features than javascript debugger provided by firebug. Although I must admit, I sparingly use this one since firebug has largely won me over.
Live HTTP Headers - invaluable for troubleshooting, use it frequently. Lets you spy on all HTTP headers communicated back and forth between client and server. It has helped me track down nefarious problems, especially when debugging issues when deploying your web app between environments.
Header Spy - nice addon for the geeky types, shows you the web server and platform a web site runs on in the status bar.
MeasureIt - I don't use this all too frequently, but I've still found it valuable from time to time.
ColorZilla - again, not something I use all that frequently, but when I need it, I need it. Valuable when you want to know a color and you don't want to dig through a CSS file, or open up a graphics editing app to get a color embedded in some image.
Add N Edit Cookies - this has been a great debugging tool in web farms where the load balancer writes a cookie, and uses the cookie value to keep your session "sticky". It allowed me to switch at will between servers to track down problems on specific machine. Also a good tool if you want to try to mess with a site that uses cookies to track your login status/account, and you want to see how your code responds to malformed or hacked info.
Yellowpipe Lynx Viewer Tool - yeah I know what your thinking, lynx, who needs it, its so 1994. But if you are developing a site that needs to take web accessibility into account (meaning accessible to users with visual impairments who use screen readers), or if you need to get a sense of how a web spider/indexer "sees" your site, this tool is invaluable. Granted, you could always just go out and grab Lynx for yourselfhere's the windows xp port that I use.
I've got a handful of other addons that I've used from time to time that I'll just quickly mention: FireFTP (one I installed wasn't stable and I've not tried a newer release), Html Validator (also found this one unstable, least back when I installed like a year ago), IE Tab (I usually just have both IE and FireFox open concurrently, but that is just me, I know many others that find this addon useful).
I'd also recommend the Web Developer extension by Chris Pederick.
As far as web development, especially for javascript, I find Firebug to be invaluable. Web developer toolbar is also very useful.
The ones I have are...
Y-SLow
Live Headers
Firebug
Dom Inspector
One that wasn't mentioned yet is this HTML Validator extension that I found very useful.
#Flávio Amieiro
MeasureIt is an unnecessary extension to have if you install the Web Developer Toolbar. Web Developer Toolbar includes a ruler as one of its features. Under the "Miscellaneous" category for Web Developer click the option "Display Ruler" to use a ruler identical to the MeasureIt one.
That will allow you reduce the number of extensions needed by at least one.
Firefox addons:
FireBug:helps web developers and designers test and inspect front-end code. It provides us with many useful features such as a console panel for logging information, a DOM inspector, detailed information about page elements, and much, much more.
Web Developer-gives you the power disable CSS, edit CSS on the fly, measure certain areas of a page and much more.
ColorZilla
Just click on the icon, hover over the area you'd like to know the hex color for, and click.
Window Resizer
to make sure the layout is displayed properly in the standard resolutions of today.
Total Validator
validating websites much easier by checking HTML, links, CSS and doing a lot more.
Web Developer for web development. Scribefire if you're a blogger-progammer
For web developing I use the Web Developer Toolbar, CSS Viewer and MeasureIt.
But I'm really not one of those who has a thousand of extensions to do everything. I like to keep things simple.
EDIT: Thanks to Dan's answer I don't need MeasureIt anymore. Can't believe I've never seen that! I guess I'll just have to pay more atention to this WebDeveloper toolbar.
Adding to everyones lists, Tamper Data is quite useful, lets you intercept requests and change the data in them.
It can be used to bypass javascript validation and check whether the server side is doing its thing.
I use Web Developer, it's a real time saver.
+1 for LORI ("life-of-request-info"). It's a very convenient alternative for rough measurements of the load time of a particular web page -- the kind of thing that you might otherwise use an external stopwatch for.
New Tab Homepage. Combined with a "speed dial"-type homepage (a personal, fast-loading page of links that you use frequently), helps you get where you're going faster when you open a new browser tab.
LastTab. Changes the behavior of Ctrl+Tab to let you navigate back and forth between your most-recently-used tabs with repeated presses of Ctrl+Tab, the same way that Alt+Tab works in Windows. Also provides a nice view of all open tabs while Ctrl is still being held down for easy navigation. (The resultant behavior is very similar to the Ctrl+Tab behavior in recent releases of Visual Studio.)
FireFTP is good for grabbing/uploading any necessary files.
I find Hackbar to be quite useful. Very useful if you want to edit the querystring part of the url, to test for vulnerabilities, or just general other types of testing where you might end up with complicated query string values.
I was learning DOM inspector, but I've switched to Firebug.
Some of which has been missed above are here
Load Time Analyzer – View detailed graphs of the loading time of web pages in firefox. The graphs display events like page requests, image loading times etc.
Poster – A must have tool for web developers enabling them to interact with web services and other web resources.
Aardvark – A cool extension for web developers and designers, allows them to view CSS attributes, id, class by highlighting page element individually.
Fiddler is a really great debugging proxy. Think of it as a more powerful version of the "Net" panel in Firebug or the Live HTTP headers.
It used to be an IE-only extension, now it also has hooks into Firefox.
Groundspeed, is useful for testing server side code. It was created for input validation tests during pentest, but can be useful for any test that require manipulating input (similar to TamperData).
It lets you control the form elements in the page, you can change their type and other attributes (size, lenght, javascript event handlers, etc). So for example you can change a hidden field or a select to a textbox and then enter any value to test the server response and stuff like that.