Object JavaScript – Building Stateful jQuery UI Plugin Using Widget Factory

February 25, 2015

imageIn this post, you will learn step-by-step to build your own custom, reusable, testable jQuery UI widget.

You will extend the jQuery library with custom UI code and then use it on a page. The initial plug-in will be trivial to demonstrate the jQuery Widget Factory pattern. You will provide properties that you can change to change the look of your widget and you will provide some methods that will respond to user input.

In this post example, you will learn how to create a simple click counter. Click a button, increase the count. The idea is to show you the steps to create a jQuery UI Widget.

The Widget Factory system manages state, allows multiple functions to be exposed via a single plugin, and provides various extension points.

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Object JavaScript – Building a Reusable Stateless jQuery Plugin

February 23, 2015

6327_image_58FAEDFAIn this post, you will learn step-by-step to build your own custom, reusable, testable jQuery Plugin.

There are times where you will want to reuse code that performs a series of operations on a selection.

For example, you may want to embed information a span element and then have that information displayed in a references section near the end of the document. In this case, the jQuery plugin is stateless.

In the next post, Building Stateful jQuery UI Plugin Using Widget Factory, you will see how to create a stateful jQuery plugin using jQuery Widget. And you will see how the widget is a better solution for plugins that require user interaction, because the Widget factory helps you maintain state.

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CloudDays™ – Introduction to Azure Content Delivery Network (CDN)

February 11, 2015

cdnAzure Content Delivery Network (CDN) is designed to send audio, video, applications, images, and other files faster and more reliably to customers using servers that are closest to each user.  If you want to put binary files and blobs closer to your user, then CDN can be the right solution.

The CDN caches publicly available objects at strategically placed locations to provide maximum bandwidth for delivering content to users.

Essentially, when a user wants some content, the first user gets the data from the source server. When you use a CDN, that data is then cached at a site near the user. So subsequent users can get the data from the cache instead of going all the way back to the source server. For example, if a picture stored in a blob is in a European data center in Azure, a user in Portland Oregon would be able to access the file from a server set up in Seattle, making your image load much faster.

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CloudDays™ – Quick Start to Azure Redis Cache

February 9, 2015

redisAzure Redis Cache helps your application become more responsive even as user load increases and leverages the low latency, high-throughput capabilities of the Redis engine. This separate distributed cache layer allows your data tier to scale independently for more efficient use of compute resources in your application layer.

Redis is an open source, BSD licensed, advanced key-value cache and store. It is often referred to as a data structure server since keys can contain strings, hashes, lists, sets, sorted sets, bitmaps and hyperloglogs. Redis supports a set of atomic operations on these data types.

Microsoft Azure Redis Cache is based on this cache and store. It gives you access to a secure, dedicated Redis cache, managed by Microsoft, providing the best of both worlds: the rich features and ecosystem of Redis, and reliable hosting and monitoring by Microsoft.

You can use Redis from most programming languages used today.

Azure Redis Cache leverages Redis authentication and also supports SSL connections to Redis.

The purpose of this article is to help you decide if Azure Redis is the right technology for your project. The Azure documentation is pretty good to help you get started, but is spread all over the place, so this article focuses on the steps to get started, and gives you a peek into what your code looks like. (If you are like me, you can often tell if the technology is a good fit by seeing code.)

NOTE: Of course, you can use Redis without Azure. For more information on that, see Distributed Caching using Redis Server with .NET/C# Client.

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CloudDays™ – Choosing the Right Azure Cache Technology

February 6, 2015

azurecloudMicrosoft Azure Cache is a family of distributed, in-memory, scalable solutions that enable you to build highly scalable and responsive applications by providing super-fast access to your data. But what do you choose?

This post provides you with an overview of the options you have when you are considering caching technologies.

Microsoft Azure Cache is available in the following offerings.

Microsoft offers a strong recommended choice for these caches. “Microsoft recommends all new developments use Azure Redis Cache.”

That said, this post discusses each to give you a quick overview. This article also introduces you to one other cache.

Here’s the short answer:

  • Use Azure Redis Cache when you want to cache string, hashes, .NET classes, data.
  • Use CDN when you want to cache audio, video, applications, images, and other files.

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Dev Patterns – Dependency Injection (aka Inversion of Control)

January 22, 2015

diamond-cubes-2-pattern-clip-art“Dependency Injection” (DI), also more cryptically known as “Inversion of Control” (IoC), can be used as a technique for encouraging this loose coupling.

John Munsch explains it like this:

When you go and get things out of the refrigerator for yourself, you can cause problems. You might leave the door open, you might get something Mommy or Daddy doesn’t want you to have. You might even be looking for something we don’t even have or which has expired.

What you should be doing is stating a need, “I need something to drink with lunch,” and then we will make sure you have something when you sit down to eat.

In designing an object-oriented application, a major tenet of design is “loose coupling”. Objects should only have as many dependencies as is needed to do their job – and the dependencies should be few.

There are three primary approaches to implementing DI:

  • Constructor injection
  • Setter injection (also called Property injection)
  • Method injection

Constructor injection uses parameters to inject dependencies. In setter injection, you use setter methods to inject the object’s dependencies. Finally, in interface-based injection, you design an interface to inject dependencies.

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CloudDays™ Quick Start – Introduction to Design Methodology, Patterns for REST

January 20, 2015

In his talk on Some REST Design Patterns (and Anti-Patterns), Cesare Pautasso explains, “REST architectural style is simple to define, but understanding how to apply it to design concrete REST services in support of SOA can be more complex.”

Several SOA Design Patterns:

  • Uniform Contract
  • Endpoint Redirection
  • Content Negotiation
  • Idempotent Capability

In this post,  you will learn the design methodology, walk through a step by step scenario where the client and server trade information to perform a set of actions, and you will learn more about the SOA design patterns.

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CloudDays™ Quick Start – Designing Your RESTful API Part 3: Best Practices

January 16, 2015

imageIn the previous posts, you learned how to design your RESTful API. In this post, you will learn about the best practices of versioning, analytics, how to set up your API root, what your consumers are expecting for results,  why and how filtering should work, and caching.

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Windows the Next Chapter – Live Webcast of Windows 10 Media Briefing Jan 21

January 15, 2015

imageThe live webcast media briefing on Windows 10 will be January 21 at 9am (Pacific) and you’ll be able to watch it at: http://www.microsoft.com/windows10story.

Microsoft promises an on-demand version to be available shortly after the event at the same link. We’re pretty excited about this event and to be able to talk about what’s next for Windows 10. You’ll hear directly from senior leaders from the Operating Systems Group including Terry Myerson, Joe Belfiore, Phil Spencer and CEO Satya Nadella.

Set your calendars.

Resources

Live webcast details for our Windows 10 media briefing next week

CloudDays™ Quick Start – Designing Your RESTful API Part 2: The Verbs, Responses, Response Status Codes

January 14, 2015

imageIn the post Designing Your RESTful API Part 1: The Nouns, you learned the importance of resources, request headers, and the request body when you defined your RESTful API. In this post, you will learn about the five or so request verbs and what is send back to the client in the response body and the response status code.

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