WebTrends Day Uno, Part Duex

Day number one has started off well. I’ve landed an awesome 2.66 Ghz Quad Core, 10GB RAM, 64-bit workstation and have started installing all of the necessary software. It looks like I’ll be doing a bit of what I’ve been wanting to do for a while, which is branch out and see some of the Java world. One of the things that is on my main to do list is to get Eclipse installed and running for Java Development efforts.

Over the next couple weeks I’ll be diving into some meetings and getting my feet on the ground for what projects are in the queue and what project priorities are. It’s nice to be on this side of the paradigm at WebTrends this time. Don’t get me wrong, it was awesome working in client services before, building cubes, troubleshooting the product, and building the various custon one of solution for customers but it’s definitely nice to dig into the innards of the code base!

Twitter, .NET, C#, and LINQ

Codeplex and Google Code I’ve found has numerous projects pertaining to Twitter, my new found obsession these days. Not sure if it will be an ongoing obsession, but having tools, code, and frameworks to work with it definitely help the prospect.

Some of the projects that I’ve found useful include;

LINQ to Twitter – What more could one want in a .NET world than a LINQ provider! ROCKZ!
Witty – A Twitter client made with WPF. Looks sweet, haven’t played with it enough to know if it is truly awesomeness or not.
GEO Twitter – I’ve been wanting to get into map & GIS related matters more. This should enable just that. I’ll be looking into this more over the coming weeks.

Over the next few months, along with the other fifty zillion projects I’m always working on, I think I’ll be playing with ways to filter, increase readability, and overall make twitter a bit more useful. In addition that that I’d like to figure out a way to add twitter feeds and RSS into a useful desktop or web based application that would allow me to keep them all in one place. Yahoo Pipes is a start, but there is a still a bit lacking, and if anything it needs a nice WPF interface for Windows Based PCs. If anyone is interested in teaming up on some of these efforts, let me know.

Making Maths Functions n' Stuff Part 2

After completing the tests and functional methods for the other part of the solution in part 1, we’re jumping into getting the WPF application built.

First I started out by simply creating a new WPF application and renaming the default xaml form. After renaming remember to change the StartupUri property name in the App.xaml file so things startup appropriately.

 <Application x:Class="Maths.App"
     xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"
     xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"
     StartupUri="MathsCooking.xaml">
     <Application.Resources>

     </Application.Resources>
 </Application>

.csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, “Courier New”, courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; }

I then made the following changes the the MathsCooking.xaml form and added the events below.

 <Window x:Class="Maths.Window1"
     xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"
     xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"
     Title="Maths Cooking" Height="768" Width="1024">
     <Grid>
         <Button BorderThickness="3" Height="23" HorizontalAlignment="Left" Margin="332,123.638,0,0" Name="getApproximateEqualityButton" VerticalAlignment="Top" Width="150" Click="getApproximateEqualityButton_Click">Get Approximate Equality</Button>
         <TextBox Height="23" HorizontalAlignment="Left" Margin="190,10,0,0" Name="textNumerator" VerticalAlignment="Top" Width="95" />
         <TextBox Height="23" HorizontalAlignment="Left" Margin="190,87,0,0" Name="textValue" VerticalAlignment="Top" Width="95" />
         <TextBox Height="23" HorizontalAlignment="Left" Margin="190,123,0,0" Name="textEpsilon" VerticalAlignment="Top" Width="95" />
         <TextBox Height="23" HorizontalAlignment="Left" Margin="190,48,0,0" Name="textDenominator" VerticalAlignment="Top" Width="95" />
         <Label Height="28" HorizontalAlignment="Left" Margin="10,10,0,0" Name="labelNumerator" VerticalAlignment="Top" Width="150">Numerator</Label>
         <Label Height="28" HorizontalAlignment="Left" Margin="10,48,0,0" Name="labelDenominator" VerticalAlignment="Top" Width="150">Denominator</Label>
         <Label Height="28" HorizontalAlignment="Left" Margin="10,123,0,0" Name="labelEpsilon" VerticalAlignment="Top" Width="150">Epsilon</Label>
         <Label Height="28" HorizontalAlignment="Left" Margin="10,87,0,0" Name="labelValue" VerticalAlignment="Top" Width="150">A Value (Float or Double)</Label>
         <Button BorderThickness="3" Height="23" HorizontalAlignment="Left" Margin="332,48.638,0,0" Name="getDecimalButton" VerticalAlignment="Top" Width="150" Click="getDecimalButton_Click">Get Decimal</Button>
         <TextBox Height="65" HorizontalAlignment="Left" Margin="10,168,0,0" Name="textAnswers" VerticalAlignment="Top" Width="472" />
     </Grid>
 </Window>

The C# Code Behind file. (Eventually I’ll learn all the lingo for this WPF stuff, until then, you can just deal with my WinForm speak)

 #region

 using System.Windows;

 #endregion

 namespace Maths
 {
     public partial class Window1 : Window
     {
         public Window1()
         {
             InitializeComponent();
         }

         private void getDecimalButton_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
         {
         }

         private void getApproximateEqualityButton_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
         {
         }
     }
 }

Next in order was the effort to make the UI actually do some things.

 #region

 using System;
 using System.Windows;
 using MathCookbook;

 #endregion

 namespace Maths
 {
     public partial class Window1 : Window
     {
         public Window1()
         {
             InitializeComponent();
         }

         private void getDecimalButton_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
         {
             textAnswers.Text = Functions.GetDecimalOfFraction(
                 Convert.ToDouble(textNumerator.Text),
                 Convert.ToDouble(textDenominator.Text)).ToString();
         }

         private void getApproximateEqualityButton_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
         {
             textAnswers.Text = Functions.IsApproximatelyEqualTo(
                 Convert.ToDouble(textNumerator.Text),
                 Convert.ToDouble(textDenominator.Text),
                 Convert.ToDouble(textValue.Text),
                 Convert.ToDouble(textEpsilon.Text)).ToString();
         }
     }
 }

Now we can actually try out various numbers with a UI. Next we’ll tackle a few more additional methods and move towards some non-math related items. I needed the Math Library refresher so I’ve hit that library first.

Best Youtube Feature EVER, from XKCD

Youtube Idiot Filter

This kind of goes along with the drunk e-mailing detection thing created at Google.

Making Maths Functions n' Stuff Part 1

Welcome to part 1 of my random blurbs of math stuff into methods, using TDD methods, and sticking a nice simple WPF Interface on top. Most of these examples I dug up out of O’Reilly’s C# Cookbook. My point below though is for TDD examples with some WPF tossed on top. More than anything, I just wanted to do this for fun. Without further ado, here goes the coding.

First I created two projects, one class project for the methods and one test project for the tests.

[](http://adronhall.smugmug.com/gallery/6181616_zg5Ko/1/389842739_7q6x4)

Next I jumped right in and created this test first.

 #region

 using MbUnit.Framework;

 #endregion

 namespace MathCookbookTests
 {
     [TestFixture]
     public class Functions
     {
         [Test]
         public void TestGettingDecimalValue()
         {
             const double numerator = 15;
             const double denominator = 3;
             const double result = 5;

             Assert.AreEqual(MathCookbook.Functions.GetDecimalOfFraction(numerator, denominator), result);
         }
     }
 }

Then I sketched out the method. Of course, as always I used ReSharper to get the skeleton of the code via the ole’ Alt+Enter option.

 namespace MathCookbook
 {
     public class Functions
     {
         public static double GetDecimalOfFraction(double numerator, double denominator)
         {
             return 0;
         }
     }
 }

This now gives me a failing test.

Now to go after the green light.

         public static double GetDecimalOfFraction(double numerator, double denominator)
         {
             return numerator/denominator;
         }

This now gives me a green light. Next I added two tests for the next method I wanted to add.

         [Test]
         public void TestApproximationIsTrue()
         {
             const double numerator = 1;
             const double denominator = 7;
             const double aValue = .1428571;
             const double epsilon = .0000001;

             Assert.IsTrue(MathCookbook.Functions.IsApproximatelyEqualTo(numerator, denominator, aValue, epsilon));
         }

         [Test]
         public void TestApproximationIsFalse()
         {
             const double numerator = 1;
             const double denominator = 7;
             const double aValue = .142857;
             const double epsilon = .0000001;

             Assert.IsFalse(MathCookbook.Functions.IsApproximatelyEqualTo(numerator, denominator, aValue, epsilon));
         }

Now of course, when I flesh out the skeleton code and just toss a default true or false back to get a clean compile, one will pass and one won’t. But just jump into getting it to perform the appropriate function.

         public static bool IsApproximatelyEqualTo(double numerator, double denominator, double value, double epsilon)
         {
             return Math.Abs((numerator / denominator) - value) < epsilon;
         }

Now we run, and get green lights.

I wanted to enable the method above to accept floats for the value parameter also, so to do that I first added two tests.

         [Test]
         public void TestApproximationIsTrueWithFloat()
         {
             const double numerator = 1;
             const double denominator = 7;
             const float aValue = (float) 0.1428571;
             const double epsilon = .0000001;

             Assert.IsTrue(MathCookbook.Functions.IsApproximatelyEqualTo(numerator, denominator, aValue, epsilon));
         }

         [Test]
         public void TestApproximationIsFalseWithFloat()
         {
             const double numerator = 1;
             const double denominator = 7;
             const float  aValue = (float) 0.142857;
             const double epsilon = .0000001;

             Assert.IsFalse(MathCookbook.Functions.IsApproximatelyEqualTo(numerator, denominator, aValue, epsilon));
         }

Then I got into doing two things, one adding the new method and the second thing was doing a complete refactor of the code. What I ended up getting green lights with was the code below.

         public static bool IsApproximatelyEqualTo(double numerator, double denominator, double value, double epsilon)
         {
             return IsApproximatelyEqual(numerator, denominator, value, epsilon);
         }

         public static bool IsApproximatelyEqualTo(double numerator, double denominator, float value, double epsilon)
         {
             return IsApproximatelyEqual(numerator, denominator, value, epsilon);
         }

         private static bool IsApproximatelyEqual(double numerator, double denominator, object value, double epsilon)
         {
             if (value is double)
             {
                 return Math.Abs((numerator / denominator) - (double)value) < epsilon;
             }
             return Math.Abs((numerator / denominator) - (float)value) < epsilon;
         }

So that’s it for now. I’ll be hitting on more Maths Cookbook material, and will eventually get on to some other topics related to security, threading, delegates, and other material. Eventually I’ll get around to posting some basic pattern implementations and how to test various parts of those patterns. Basically this is kind of a little series I’m starting for my own entertainment, but maybe it might be useful to some out there in the development community.

In part two I’ll add the WPF UI to the application so we can actually enter and play with different values.