How to extract exponents and modulus from SSH-RSA key files

Programmer Question

http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc4253.html

::http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc4251.html

Does anyone know the SSH key file format?

!! UPDATE

!! The base64 function I was using doesn't work. After running the key file through a different function (mozilla's built in atob()) the data fit into the specifications listed above.

I have rsa key files created with puttygen, but I must be missing something critical. Here is the hex of the public section:

00 00 00 07 73 73 68 2d 72 73 61 00 00 00 01 25
00 00 00 10 1c 1c 57 3f 4f 58 63 69 38 ad 19 35
b5 28 3d 78 53 35 53 6c 15 0e 69 23 ac 17 14 84
21 29 13 07 36 62 90 26 37 93 73 17 28 b8 ce 95
c3 11 24 21 61 b7 82 d9 04 42 97 f8 27 c3 44 06
46 ca e8 a3 a3 34 d7 3c c3 95 13 dd 16 1b 2c 29
7c 35 19 5f c2 7a 17 d5 14 0d 26 36 27 18 71 67
8d 9c 5b c4 7d 

first 4 bytes are UINT 7, the number of bytes inthe following string "ssh-rsa" but the format stops making sense after that. It SHOULD be followed by two MPINT but they lengths don't add up for the 3rd value.

Thanks!

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Using a numbered file descriptor from Java

Programmer Question

I need to access numbered file descriptors from Java -- other than 0, 1 or 2.

How can this be done? I looked at the FileDescriptor class but did'nt find any way to initialize it with a given file descriptor number.

As a concrete example lets suppose Java gets called as a child process from another programing language. File descriptors 3 and 4 are provided by the other language for input and output.

What I need in Java are InputStream and OutputStream objects connected to these file-descriptors, just like System.in, System.out and System.error are connected to file-desctiptors 0, 1 and 2.

I'm using Java 1.6 and this should run on Unix alike systems.

Tested working solution:

The answer with the file descriptor special filesystem entries did point me to the following workable solution:

1. find out if and where your Unix alike system has a special filesystem that contains named entries for all file descriptors.

   
   
   
   
   
   • I'm using FreeBSD where fdescfs(5) is a filesystem that does just this. Under Linux it would be procfs.
   
   



2. make sure this filesystem is mounted

   
   
   
   
   

   • FreeBSD: put fdescfs /dev/fd fdescfs rw 0 0 in /etc/fstab

     
     
     

     or run mount -t fdescfs null /dev/fd on a shell prompt (probably with sudo)

   
   



3. Use new FileInputStream("/dev/fd/3") and new FileOutputStream("/dev/fd/4") to get the streams connected to the filedescriptors (the paths are for FreeBSD, replace with your operating systems paths)

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Checking a null value in Objective-C that has been returned from a JSON string

Programmer Question

Heya,

I have a JSON object that is coming from a webserver.

The log is something like this:
{"status":"success","UserID":15,"Name":"John","DisplayName":"John","Surname":"Smith","Email":"email","Telephone":null,"FullAccount":"true"}

Note the Telephone is coming in as null if the user doesn't enter one.

When assigning this value to a NSString, in the NSLog it's coming out as

What is the correct way to check this value? It's preventing me from saving a NSDictionary.

I have tried using the conditions [myString length] and myString == nil and myString == NULL

Additionally where is the best place in the iOS documentation to read up on this?

Many thanks

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How can I intercept the mass-assignment hash for an ActiveRecord object and filter it?

Programmer Question

Let's say I have a record class Person with an integer field awesomeness.

If I call Person.new(:awesomeness => 5), it works fine.

If I call Person.new(:awesomeness => 'five'), as expected, Rails does its bets to figure out what 'five' is as an integer and fails, so it just defaults to 0. Can I intervene by intercepting the hash and fidgeting with the data somehow?

The earliest "event" in the ActiveRecord callbacks is the before_save, by which point 'five' has already become 0.

I could obviously do this controller-side, but this seems to be something that belongs strictly in the model as a filter.

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TSQL- Finding the differene in days of multiple records

Programmer Question

Is it possible to find the difference of days of different records in SQL Server 2008 R2?

SELECT OrderDate FROM OrdersTbl WHERE SKU='AA0000' ORDER BY ORDERDATE DESC


OrderDate
-----------------------
2009-12-03 00:00:00.000
2009-04-03 00:00:00.000
2008-02-22 00:00:00.000
2008-02-21 00:00:00.000
2007-02-18 00:00:00.000
2007-01-27 00:00:00.000
2006-10-13 00:00:00.000

I would like a way to get how many days in between there are for each order date so that I could find the average frequency. Thanks in advance.

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Display RSS Image with SimplePie

Programmer Question

I'm setting up a page which grabs the first entry from multiple RSS feeds. I'm running into a lot of RSS feeds that are formated differently. I'm using SimplePie to parse the feeds. The current feed I'm trying to grab the image from is below:

2011-01-28T09:00:00Z





Title of Image

How can I grab the img tag from within the summary tag with SimplePie so I can display this on my website?

Thanks in advance.

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Import JavaScript file from within JavaScript synchroniously?

Programmer Question

Instead of messing up my HTML file, I'd like to import my external JavaScript files through another JavaScript file, much like @import in css.

On several websites, including StackOverflow itself, I noticed that appending a script tag to the DOM can solve this issue; however, this is done asynchroniuosly, while the order of my files is important - the second file for example may rely on the first file in the list. When, say, loading jQuery first and then loading a dependency (plugin etc.) of it, the dependency might finish loading earlier and will throw errors because jQuery doesn't exist yet.

Therefore, this does not seem to be an option. How can I synchroniously load JavaScript files from within another JavaScript file?

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How to use sprite css

Programmer Question

I have the following image that I want to use for users to log into site.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/7468116/facebook_signin.png

However I am not able to make css work properly.

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Xpath checking the amount of text input fields

Programmer Question

Hello everyone,

I am trying to write a phpUnit test in the Zend framework. And this time I for the fun want to test that I have two input fields of type text in my contact form.

So I wrote this line of code:

 $this->assertQueryCount('form#contact-form/input[@type="text"]',2);

But it returns:

1) IndexControllerTest::testCanDisplayContactForm
Failed asserting node DENOTED BY form#contact-form/input[type="text"] OCCURS EXACTLY 2 times

So I have a form with the id 'contact' form. And within this I want to get all the input fields of type text

Any idea's or tips?

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How can I get non-english characters from ajax form to MySQL

Programmer Question

I have a form that submits data using the jQuery form plugin. From there it goes through some server side handling and finally stored in a MySQL db.

Upon submitting these characters ����� they become sent to the server as áâãäï' (before hitting the database). The same type of thing happens with Japanese characters, etc.

I have tried both UTF-8 and ISO-8859-1 for the form encoding, page encoding, php server side encoding and db encoding. Still no luck.

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How to get a vendor type from an open OdbcConnection in C#?

Programmer Question

I might be connected to either Oracle, Sybase, or MSFT SQL Server databases.
How can I detect which vendor I am connected to at run-time if an instance of System.Data.Odbc.OdbcConnection is passed to my method? Here is a set-up:

enum VendorType
{
    Unknown = 0, // Bill Wagner recommends an Unknown enum.
    Microsoft,
    Oracle,
    Sybase
}

public static VendorType GetConnectionVendorType()
{
    if (Connection == null)
    {
        return VendorType.Unknown;
    }

    if (...)
    {
        return VendorType.Microsft;
    }

    if (...)
    {
        return VendorType.Oracle;
    }

    if (...)
    {
        return VendorType.Oracle;
    }

    // Just in case we got here.
    return VendorType.Unknown;
}

Thanks!

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Proper Amazon AWS S3 usage

Programmer Question

Heres a quick rundown. We have two apps. Both apps are different from each other in every aspect.

Our first app is a company profile (4 page layout: home, products, about, contact). I don't think it will generate the same traffic as social web sites online. It allows staff members to post product photos. Is it better to have an AWS S3 account to store this content on? Or would I be better off storing the files on the local web server?

Our second app is more social oriented. Here, we have decided to use an S3 bucket for this app. Since we already have an AWS account, should we create a bucket for the first app on this AWS account? Or will this just render more expenses in the long run? What are your thoughts?

On another note. Should app related content (logo, icons, background images, buttons, etc) be stored on the S3 account or on the local server? What is the general consensus on this?

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Cancel split window in Vim

Programmer Question

I have split my windows horizontally. Now how can I return to normal mode, i.e. no split window just one window without cancelling all of my open windows. I have 5 and do not want to "quit", just want to get out of split window.

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How to capture into file only last 30 secounds? Java JFM

Programmer Question

Hi Guys,
Maybee anyone have any idea how to capture into file only last 30 secounds from camera?

It's working something like this.
Camera working non stop, but when it catch action ( maybee from button )
I'm should ge only last 30 secounds of movie.
Please help.
Mik

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Realistic dice throwing animation with predefined outcome

Programmer Question

I need to create a small dice game in Flash. The random number generator is external and I have to create a 3D realistic dice animation with that outcome.

I'm using Away3D engine and JigLib for physics.
So far the best idea I've had is to do many simulations and create a list of outcomes and their corresponding input parameters (initial position, initial orientation and the forces added to the RigidBody).

This is not working so well. Sometimes for the same parameters the outcome is different.

What is the best way to do this?

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How should I handle third-party input/output streams?

Programmer Question

Hi all!

There is a piece of project dealing mostly with input/output streams. So I have to pass streams as arguments and receive them from third-party libraries. I've read Good design: How to pass InputStreams as argument? and Closing Java InputStreams, but I'm not 100% sure that third-parties are sharing the same coding values and following best designs patterns (in particular - "the one who opens the stream should close the stream")

Assuming that streams are pretty big (500Mb - 3Gb) and I'm tight on CPU and memory resources, here are few questions to the java SO community:

1. Should I ever try to close streams I got from third-party library?


2. What are possible dangerous implications of unclosed streams (not counting extra GC workload)


3. Are these implications somewhat proportional to the stream size?

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Android: More descriptive error please!

Programmer Question

Hi all

I'm using Eclipse.

I'm burning hours trying to debug my first (very simple) android app.

When I hit an error, I don't get a proper exception with a description of what went wrong, I get a screen asking for source code and a "Suspended(Exception RuntimeException))" on the debug log.

I'm resorting to logging each line to see where the last execution point was, and then trying to understand by googling why the following line would cause an error.

See my screenshots: Error and Missing Source.

The highlighted line:

SimpleCursorAdapter scaSights = new SimpleCursorAdapter(this,R.layout.sight_row,sightsCursor,fromDisplayFields,toDataFields);

is where the exception occurs. I've got no idea what's wrong there, but a good exception message would help, not a prompt for source code.

Any help is hugely appreciated!

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PHP and Javascript cookies

Programmer Question

Can I access a cookie written with jQuery's cookie plug-in with PHP? I know you can't set Javascript equal to PHP or vice versa, but IN ESSENCE is:

$.cookie('var') = $_COOKIE['var']?

Again, I know you can't set them equal to each other, but if I set it in jQuery and then go to another page, can PHP access it? I've read lots of posts about this, but I can't seem to find an answer to this part.

Note, if I look in Firefox's preferences, I can see the cookies are there, so I know they're set.

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Platform independent remote file editing

Programmer Question

I've been investigating possibilities on editing remote files from a website without having a need to download and upload the files manually while editing. So far I've ruled out WebDAV as a possibility since it is cumbersome to use on any platform (it either requires manual setup or works unreliably).

Currently I'm looking in to various Applets, but they mostly target either uploading or downloading, not file editing. What I'm currently looking for is an applet that downloads the document, launches the application that is meant to open the file and then monitors the file for changes and uploads the changed file (either automatically or by prompting the user first).

I know that I'm not alone with this scenario, so i'm looking for solutions that others have thought of.

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const variable paradox

Programmer Question

hello everyone, if I have some expression on c++:

const int x = 3;

can I say that x is a variable? It seems very strange cause x is not variable cause I can't change it, thanks in advance for any expanations

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Trace (like OutputDebugString/Trace.writeline) from MS-SQL stored procedure

Programmer Question

Hey everybody

I've been looking for a while for a way to trace from SQL stored procedure on MS-SQL.
I am talking about tracing to "DebugView", just like the function OutputDebugString() (or C#'s Trace.WriteLine()).

Does anyone know how to do that, or if it is even possible?

Thanks! :-)

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Can someone explain to me why I would need functional programming instead of OOP?

Programmer Question

Can someone explain to me why I would need functional programming instead of OOP?

E.g. why would I need to use Haskell instead of C++ (or a similar language)?

What are the advantages of functional programming over OOP?

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Java Equivalent to iif function

Programmer Question

Hello, the question is simple, there is a functional equivalent of the famous iif in java?

For example:

IIf (vData = "S", True, False)

Thanks in advance.

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How to execute several batch commands in sequence

Programmer Question

I want to create a Windows XP batch script that sequentially performs something like the following:

@echo off
:: build everything
cd \workspace\project1
mvn clean install
cd ..\project2
mvn clean install

:: run some java file
cd \workspace\project3
java -jar somefile.jar

When I create a Batch script like this (following these instructions), I still have the problem that the script stops doing something after the first

mvn clean install

and then displays the command line.
How can i execute all of these commands in sequence in one batch file?

I don't want to refer to other files, I want to do it in one file.

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What are the best practices for writing maintainable CSS?

Programmer Question

I am just starting to explore this area and wonder what are the best practices when it comes to production of clean, well-structured and maintainable CSSes.

There seems to be few different approaches to structuring CSS rules.

One of the most commonly encountered ones I saw was throwing everything together in one rule, i.e. margins, borders, typefaces, backgrounds, something like this:

.my-class {
    border-top:1px solid #c9d7f1;
    font-size:1px;
    font-weight:normal;
    height:0;
    position:absolute;
    top:24px;
    width:100%;
}

Another approach I noticed employed grouping of properties, say text-related properties like font-size, typeface, emphasis etc goes into one rule, backgrounds go into other, borders/margins go into yet another one:

.my-class {
    border-top:1px solid #c9d7f1;
}

.my-class {
    font-size:1px;
    font-weight:normal;
}

.my-class {
    height:0;
    top:24px;
    width:100%;
    position:absolute;
}

I guess I am looking for a silver bullet here which I know I am not going to get, bet nevertheless - what are the best practices in this space?

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OpenId authentification in ASP.NET MVC as a restful service?

Programmer Question

Can I offer the authentication, authorization, etc created using "ASP.NET MVC Open Id website" extension.. as a REST service in ASP.NET MVC? How can I create this service(maybe using WCF)?
(Please if you can, offer me some examples please).

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IE8 on Win7 image not loaded.

Programmer Question

I have an image that is not loading in IE8. When browsing to the image it comes up. It loads in Firefox and Chrome.

I have tried running IE8 in safe mode and compatibility mode.

On some boxes with the same OS and browser it displays. Any other suggestions?

Thanks

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Magento order import/export

Programmer Question

Hi,

Is there any way to import/export the orders from magento. Since we have magento store on live and another dev. version is ready with greatest change now we only need to import the magento orders alone. Here i can see only export -

http://www.magentocommerce.com/magento-connect/slandsbek/extension/1350/simple-order-export

But how can i import the order data into new store.

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ffmpeg async io?

Programmer Question

Anyone know if ffmpeg does asynchronous file io? That is, the input file is read in a separate thread as to avoid io blocking the processing thread?

Basically what I want to figure out is whether or not i need to do calls to "av_read_frame" inside a separate thread (to avoid blocking) or if ffmpeg alrdy handles this issue?

How might I figure this out? I've tried downloading the ffmpeg source but haven't been able to find anything useful.

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Jquery mobile framework in android OS

Programmer Question

Why jquery mobile framework is slow performance in android2.2 OS

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can php function parameters be passed in different order as defined in declaration.

Programmer Question

Suppose I have a function/method F() that takes 3 parameters $A, $B and $C defined as this.

function F($A,$B,$C){
  ...
}

Suppose I don't want to follow the order to pass the parameters, instead can I make a call like this?

F($C=3,$A=1,$B=1);

instead of

F(1,2,3)

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I can't insert data into my database

Programmer Question

I don't know why, but my data doesn't go into my database 'users' with the table 'data'.

All i get is a blank page.

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ClassLoader exceptions being memoized

Programmer Question

Hello,

I am writing a classloader for a long-running server instance. If a user has not yet uploaded a class definition, I through a ClassNotFoundException; seems reasonable.

The problem is this: There are three classes (C1, C2, and C3). C1 depends on C2, C2 depends on C3. C1 and C2 are resolvable, C3 isn't (yet). C1 is loaded. C1 subsequently performs an action that requires C2, so C2 is loaded. C2 subsequently performs an action that requires C3, so the classloader attempts to load C3, but can't resolve it, and an exception is thrown. Now C3 is added to the classpath, and the process is restarted (starting from the originally-loaded C1). The issue is, C2 seems to remember that C3 couldn't be loaded, and doesn't bother asking the classloader to find the class... it just re-throws the memoized exception.

Clearly I can't reload C1 or C2 because other classes may have linked to them (as C1 has already linked to C2).

I tried throwing different types of errors, hoping the class might not memoize them. Unfortunately, no such luck.

Is there a way to prevent the loaded class from binding to the exception? That is, I want the classloader to be allowed to keep trying if it didn't succeed the first time.

Thanks!

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How do I distribute precompiled extension modules for Windows on pypi for multiple versions of Python?

Programmer Question

I would like to distribute a precompiled C extension module for Python 2.6 and Python 2.7 for 32- and 64-bit versions of Python. How should I build and distribute that on pypi? Should I just use bdist_egg? Can I retain compatibility with pip?

I notice ordinary bdist just creates a .zip that does not include the Python version, although the internal folder structure does. Can this .zip just contain e.g. a Python26 and Python27 subdirectory?

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how to run line by line in text file - on windows mobile ?

Programmer Question

hi

in WinForm on PC i use to run like this:

FileStream FS = null;
StreamWriter SW = null;
FS = new FileStream(@"\Items.txt", FileMode.Create, FileAccess.ReadWrite, FileShare.ReadWrite);
SW = new StreamWriter(FS, Encoding.Default);
while (SW.Peek() != -1)
{
   TEMP = (SW.ReadLine());
}

but when i try this on Windows-mobile i get error:

Error   1   'System.IO.StreamWriter' does not contain a definition for 'Peek' and no extension method 'Peek' accepting a first argument of type 'System.IO.StreamWriter' could be found (are you missing a using directive or an assembly reference?)
Error   2   'System.IO.StreamWriter' does not contain a definition for 'ReadLine' and no extension method 'ReadLine' accepting a first argument of type 'System.IO.StreamWriter' could be found (are you missing a using directive or an assembly reference?)

how to do it ?

thanks

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Best practice for ignoring files within a folder with GIT

Programmer Question

I'm just looking for some advice on the best way to manage the following situation with git.

my project has a folder called "photos" that users can upload images to.

I have a version of the project running locally and I am adding images to this folder for testing purposes.

When I push to the live server I want the "photos" folder to get pushed but not the images within it. Also when users add images to the "photos" folder on the live server I want GIT to ignore them.

I know I need to use Git Ignore but I'm unsure what the best way to do this is.

Should I just add "photos" to the git ignore file and then manually create the "photos" folder on the live server?

Thanks in advance.

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What programming language is my windows hosts file?

Programmer Question

Maybe this is a silly question, but today I was working in my hosts file (C:\windows\system32\drivers\hosts) in notepad++ and would like to use the language formatting.

For example, the first line appears to be a comment

# Copyright (c) 1993-1999 Microsoft Corp.

What language do I choose to view the file?

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How to fetch data for AutoCompleteTextView in separate thread?

Programmer Question

For my AutoCompleteTextView I need to fetch the data from a webservice. As it can take a little time I do not want UI thread to be not responsive, so I need somehow to fetch the data in a separate thread. For example, while fetching data from SQLite DB, it is very easy done with CursorAdapter method - runQueryOnBackgroundThread. I was looking around to other adapters like ArrayAdapter, BaseAdapter, but could not find anything similar...

Is there an easy way how to achieve this? I cannot simply use ArrayAdapter directly, as the suggestions list is dynamic - I always fetch the suggestions list depending on user input, so it cannot be pre-fetched and cached for further use...

If someone could give some tips or examples on this topic - would be great!

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UIApplicationExitsOnSuspend anything else I'm missing?

Programmer Question

So I know this has been beaten to death but I still can't figure out a solution.

I have my UIApplicationExitsOnSuspend set to in the Info.plist and still both in the simulator as well as on an iPhone 4 device, the app goes into standby instead of terminating?

Any ideas of what else could one do to get it to terminate? Perhaps are there methods that I need to remove from the app delegate? Any ideas?

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Accessing TextView from another class

Programmer Question

I've got my main startup class loading main.xml but I'm trying to figure out how to access the TextView from another class which is loading information from a database. I would like to publish that information to the TextView.

So far I've not found any helpful examples on Google.

EDIT:
This is my class that is doing the Database work:

import android.widget.TextView;import android.view.View; 
public class DBWork{
    private View view;
...
TextView tv = (TextView) view.findViewById(R.id.TextView01);
tv.setText("TEXT ME")

Yet, everytime I do that I get a nullpointerexception

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Can't store UTF-8 in RDS despite setting up new Parameter Group using Rails on Heroku

Programmer Question

I'm setting up a new instance of a Rails(2.3.5) app on Heroku using Amazon RDS as the database. I'd like to use UTF-8 for everything. Since RDS isn't UTF-8 by default, I set up a new Parameter Group and switched the database to use that one, basically per this. Seems to have worked:

SHOW VARIABLES LIKE '%character%';

character_set_client        utf8
character_set_connection    utf8
character_set_database    utf8
character_set_filesystem    binary
character_set_results      utf8
character_set_server        utf8
character_set_system        utf8
character_sets_dir       /rdsdbbin/mysql-5.1.50.R3/share/mysql/charsets/

Furthermore, I've successfully setup Heroku to use the RDS database. After rake db:migrate, everything looks good:

CREATE TABLE `comments` (
  `id` int(11) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
  `commentable_id` int(11) DEFAULT NULL,
  `parent_id` int(11) DEFAULT NULL,
  `content` text COLLATE utf8_unicode_ci,
  `child_count` int(11) DEFAULT '0',
  `created_at` datetime DEFAULT NULL,
  `updated_at` datetime DEFAULT NULL,
  PRIMARY KEY (`id`),
  KEY `commentable_id` (`commentable_id`),
  KEY `index_comments_on_community_id` (`community_id`),
  KEY `parent_id` (`parent_id`)
) ENGINE=InnoDB AUTO_INCREMENT=4 DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8 COLLATE=utf8_unicode_ci;

In the markup, I've included:

Also, I've set:

production:
  encoding: utf8
  collation: utf8_general_ci

...in the database.yml, though I'm not very confident that anything is being done to honor any of those settings in this case, as Heroku seems to be doing its own config when connecting to RDS.

Now, I enter a comment through the form in the app: "�be� ��iL", but in the database I've got "Úbe® ƒåiL"

It looks fine when Rails loads it back out of the database and it is rendered to the page, so whatever it is doing one way, it's undoing the other way. If I look at the RDS database in Sequel Pro, it looks fine if I set the encoding to "UTF-8 Unicode via Latin 1". So it seems Latin-1 is sneaking in there somewhere.

Somebody must have done this before, right? What am I missing?

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What are good ways to collaberate on a group programming project?

Programmer Question

I'm in my second year of CS now (not the American one though) and am looking at a pretty big project next semester. I don't know the specifics just yet, but it'll involve a back-end in COBOL, most of the 'functionality' in Java and the rest in .Net. (I still know nothing about .Net, it's a course that starts in the 2nd semester as well)

We're programming Cobol in Percobol and Java in Eclipse. Next to the programming, we'll also have extra assignments such as English and French translation tasks that are often related to the software.

So here's my question: how would you organize this, knowing you work together with 3 other people?

Last year we had a smaller project. We synchronized our code using Google Code (through the Subversion plugin for Eclipse) and used Google Wave to share documents and updates. Google Wave was actually very useful, but it appears it's shutting down soon. I don't want to take any risks with a project this important.

Sharing documents is very easy with Dropbox, but it doesn't quite offer the flow of communication and interactivity that Google Wave did. (Can you add this sort of functionality to Dropbox?)

To state what I specifically need:

• A website or program to easily collaborate with 3 other people, sharing files and providing commentary. Google Wave is/was a good example. Dropbox is an improvement on the file sharing, but lacks in the communication department.




• An easy way to share a Cobol project? I'm willing to switch compilers, because Percobol royally sucks.




• You're welcome to comment about .Net, but I don't know anything about it yet so I don't really have questions about it (yet).

Any opinions or advice on the matter are welcome. Thanks in advance!

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How to reformat URLs to be more restful (from .../?id=123 to .../123)?

Programmer Question

Currently I have pages accessed via:

www.foo.com/details.html?id=123

I'd like to make them more restful-like, such as by the following:

www.foo.com/details/123

I'm using Google App Engine. Currently the URL's are mapped in the html-mappings file:

 ('/details.html*', DetailsPage),

And then on the DetailsPage handler, it fetches the ID value via:

class DetailsPage(webapp.RequestHandler):
    def get(self):
        announcement_id = self.request.get("id")

How might I restructure this so that it can map the URL and a extract the ID via the other-formatted URL: www.foo.com/details/123

Thanks

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Ruby using helpers in single script

Programmer Question

I am wanting to use the pluralize text helper in a ruby script I am writing, but can't find anywhere on how to include Rails helpers in a single ruby script. I know you need to include the helper module and require the helpers, but like I said I am not 100% sure on how to get it to work.

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Fatal warnings on Windows

Programmer Question

While working between a Windows MySQL server and a Debian MySQL server, I noticed that warnings were fatal on Windows, but silently ignored on Debian. I'd like to make the warnings fatal on both servers while I'm doing development, but I wasn't able to find a setting that effected this behavior. Anyone have any ideas?

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Web UI prototyping tools

Programmer Question

Can anyone recomend me a simple web UI prototyping tool,
so I could quicky prototype the look of a my web site.

I have tried to use MS Visio for this, but found it
very "user un-friendly".

What I really need is to be able quicky sketch the layout
of the page, put some links, images and buttons on in,
play a little bit with a colors (CSS), and it would be
great it this tool could support navigation between
the pages - but it is not essential.

I would rather consider a low-cost or an open-source solution,
since I am not a web designer and not going to use that
tool on a daily basis.

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