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Nice to have feature

Quick post on this article by Seth Godin : Stop Stealing Dreams

You can read the manifesto online here.

More photo available on my flickr set

Photos will be coming soon !!!

But in the meanwhile check out my photos on Flickr

The solution found to this problem is to transform the list in the parameter into a table form that can be used in the dynamic WHERE IN clause

DECLARE @ParamList NVARCHAR(max)

DECLARE @Query NVARCHAR(4000)

SET @ParamList = 'hello,this,is,a,list,of,param'

SET @Query = N'SELECT * FROM TableName WHERE ColumnName IN (SELECT param FROM iter_simple_charlist_to_tbl(@ParamList))'

exec sp_executesql @Query, N'@ParamList NVARCHAR(max)', @ParamList

Below is the script for the Table-valued function to convert a given VARCHAR parameter list to table (A small variation is needed for integer type parameter list)

/****** Object: UserDefinedFunction [dbo].[iter_simple_charlist_to_tbl] Script Date: 06/17/2011 12:40:04 ******/
IF EXISTS (SELECT * FROM sys.objects WHERE object_id = OBJECT_ID(N'[dbo].[iter_simple_charlist_to_tbl]') AND type in (N'FN', N'IF', N'TF', N'FS', N'FT'))
DROP FUNCTION [dbo].[iter_simple_charlist_to_tbl]
GO
/****** Object: UserDefinedFunction [dbo].[iter_simple_charlist_to_tbl] Script Date: 06/17/2011 12:40:00 ******/
SET ANSI_NULLS ON
GO
SET QUOTED_IDENTIFIER ON
GO
CREATE FUNCTION [dbo].[iter_simple_charlist_to_tbl] (@list nvarchar(MAX))
RETURNS @tbl TABLE (param nvarchar(50) NOT NULL) AS
BEGIN
DECLARE @pos int,
@nextpos int,
@valuelen int

SELECT @pos = 0, @nextpos = 1

WHILE @nextpos > 0
BEGIN
SELECT @nextpos = charindex(',', @list, @pos + 1)
SELECT @valuelen = CASE WHEN @nextpos > 0
THEN @nextpos
ELSE len(@list) + 1
END - @pos - 1
INSERT @tbl (param)
VALUES (substring(@list, @pos + 1, @valuelen))
SELECT @pos = @nextpos
END
RETURN
END

References of this implementation are:
http://www.sommarskog.se/arrays-in-sql-2005.html#returnformat
http://www.restfuldevelopment.net/david-kawliche/writing/dynamic-in-without-dynamic-sql/

Note: This solution does not offer an performance optimization and can be inefficient in some scenarios.

Take a look at it: http://simpleresxeditor.blogspot.com/2010/12/simple-resx-editor-0660-is-now.html

There is also a video tutorial available: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hUdkqVXmWc&feature=player_embedded

It features:

* Highlight differences and coincidences (1)

* Highlight keys containing text

* Show/Hide keys

* Filter text-only rows

* Drag and drop support

* Multi-language UI

(1) With multiple resx files loaded

Toggl is Time tracking that works. Get things done and turn your time into money. Track time with a single click, switch easily between different tasks and create reports.

I have been using it for a few month now and it’s really worst a try, the free version offers nearly all functionality that a time tracker needs. It has a windows agent that allows you to track your time directly from your desktop without event connecting to the website. And most of all it’s compatible with all major platforms (Windows/Mac/Linux/Mobile) !!!

Even though CodeIgniter is a very flexible framework, it’s very lightweight and some feature for Web application have not been taken into account, that in mind, the people behind EllisLab, Inc made sure that these small twigs were easily bypassed by allowing complete customization of their libraries.

Here is my original issue:

I have a item listing page with pagination activated and I wanted the first page to be the the root URL of the item page.
e.g. http://www.mysite.com/items

But what CodeIgniter Pagination Library generated for the first page was: http://www.mysite.com/result/1

That is pretty inconvenient for SEO, because the crawler will find two pages with the same content while crawling the pages.

Thus i modified the CI_Pagination library an created MY_Pagination.

First of all i have added a new variable called first_page_url as class variable in MY_Pagination class

class MY_Pagination extends CI_Pagination {

var $first_page_url        = ''; // The first page will have this URL

I have changed the original Pagination Library First page rendering from

// Render the "First" link
if  ($this->cur_page > ($this->num_links + 1))
{
$output .= $this->first_tag_open.'<a href="'.$this->base_url.'">'.$this->first_link.'</a>'.$this->first_tag_close;
}

to

// Render the "First" link
if  ($this->cur_page > ($this->num_links + 1))
{
$output .= $this->first_tag_open.'<a href="'.$this->first_page_url == '' ? $this->base_url : $this->first_page_url.'">'.$this->first_link.'</a>'.$this->first_tag_close;
}

This way if during the initialization of the Pagination class the configuration setting first_page_url was passed it will be used instead of the base_url.

Some modification were also made to the pagination digit generation from

// Write the digit links
for ($loop = $start -1; $loop <= $end; $loop++)
{
$i = ($loop * $this->per_page) - $this->per_page;

if ($i >= 0)
{
if ($this->cur_page == $loop)
{
$output .= $this->cur_tag_open.$loop.$this->cur_tag_close; // Current page
}
else
{
$n = ($i == 0) ? '' : $i;
$output .= $this->num_tag_open.'<a href="'.$this->base_url.$n.'">'.$loop.'</a>'.$this->num_tag_close;
}
}
}

to

// Write the digit links
for ($loop = $start -1; $loop <= $end; $loop++)
{
$i = ($loop * $this->per_page) - $this->per_page;

if ($i >= 0)
{
if ($this->cur_page == $loop)
{
$output .= $this->cur_tag_open.$loop.$this->cur_tag_close; // Current page
}
else if($loop == 1 && $this->first_page_url != '')
{
$output .= $this->num_tag_open.'<a href="'.$this->first_page_url.'">'.$loop.'</a>'.$this->num_tag_close;
}
else
{
$n = ($i == 0) ? '' : $i;
$output .= $this->num_tag_open.'<a href="'.$this->base_url.$n.'">'.$loop.'</a>'.$this->num_tag_close;
}
}
}

which will make sure that the page numbered 1 takes has the first_page_url has href when  first_page_url is available.

The complete file can be found here: MY_Pagination

After a few minutes of GOOG, I came up to this “ITextSharp”

iText# (iTextSharp) is a port of the iText open source java library written entirely in C# for the .NET platform. iText# is a library that allows you to generate PDF files on the fly. It is implemented as an assembly.

It must be noted that the assembly is coded and compiled using the .NET Framework 1.1. You might want to migrate to the version 2.0 or 3.5 of the .NET Framework.

With a some more research on PDF merging. I was able to create a class that will make use of the ITextSharp assembly and perform as the merge pdf operation as needed.

Here is the code:

using iTextSharp.text;
using iTextSharp.text.pdf;

public class MergeEx
{
#region Fields
private string sourcefolder;
private string destinationfile;
private IList fileList = new ArrayList();
#endregion

#region Public Methods
///
/// Add a new file, together with a given docname to the fileList and namelist collection
///
public void AddFile(string pathnname)
{
fileList.Add(pathnname);
}

///
/// Generate the merged PDF
///
public void Execute()
{
MergeDocs();
}
#endregion

#region Private Methods
///
/// Merges the Docs and renders the destinationFile
///
private void MergeDocs()
{

//Step 1: Create a Docuement-Object
Document document = new Document();
try
{
//Step 2: we create a writer that listens to the document
PdfWriter writer = PdfWriter.GetInstance(document, new FileStream(destinationfile, FileMode.Create));

//Step 3: Open the document
document.Open();

PdfContentByte cb = writer.DirectContent;
PdfImportedPage page;

int n = 0;
int rotation = 0;

//Loops for each file that has been listed
foreach (string filename in fileList)
{
//The current file path
string filePath = sourcefolder + filename;

// we create a reader for the document
PdfReader reader = new PdfReader(filePath);

//Gets the number of pages to process
n = reader.NumberOfPages;

int i = 0;
while (i < n)
{
i++;
document.SetPageSize(reader.GetPageSizeWithRotation(1));
document.NewPage();

//Insert to Destination on the first page
if (i == 1)
{
Chunk fileRef = new Chunk(" ");
fileRef.SetLocalDestination(filename);
document.Add(fileRef);
}

page = writer.GetImportedPage(reader, i);
rotation = reader.GetPageRotation(i);
if (rotation == 90 || rotation == 270)
{
cb.AddTemplate(page, 0, -1f, 1f, 0, 0, reader.GetPageSizeWithRotation(i).Height);
}
else
{
cb.AddTemplate(page, 1f, 0, 0, 1f, 0, 0);
}
}
}
}
catch (Exception e) { throw e; }
finally { document.Close(); }
}
#endregion

#region Properties
///
/// Gets or Sets the SourceFolder
///
public string SourceFolder
{
get { return sourcefolder; }
set {sourcefolder = value; }
}

///
/// Gets or Sets the DestinationFile
///
public string DestinationFile
{
get { return destinationfile; }
set { destinationfile = value; }
}
#endregion
}

To use the MergeEx class:
1) Initialize the class
2) Set the SourceFolder and DestinationFile properties
3) Using the AddFile method, add the source file names that need to be merged (Filename only since the SourceFolder has already been set)
4) Call the Execute Method

If everything works fine you will find your Merged PDF Document at your stated destination file.

The code is pretty much self decribed. If there is any question, i can always be contacted via this post.