Is there an automated way to document Nancy services? - nancy

Is there any way to auto-generate Swagger documentation (or similar) for a Nancy service?
I found Nancy.Swagger, but there's no information on how to use it and the demo application doesn't seem to demonstrate generating documentation (if it does, it's not obvious).
Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!

In my current project I've been looking a lot into this problem. I used both nancy.swagger and nancy.swagger.attributes.
I quickly discarded Nancy.swagger, because for me personally it doesn't sound right that you have to create a pure documentation class for each nancy module. The attributes solution was a bit "cleaner" - at least codebase and documentation were in one place. But very fast this became unmaintainable. Module code is unreadable because of many attributes. Nothing is generated automatically: you have to put path, all parameters, even http method as an attribute. This is a huge effort duplication. Problems came very fast, a few examples:
I changed POST to PUT in Nancy and forgot to update [Method] attribute.
I added a parameter but not the attribute for it.
I changed parameter from path to query and didn't update the attribute.
It's too easy to forget to update the attributes (let alone documentation module solution), which leads to discrepancies between your documentation and actual code base. Our UI team is in another country and they had some trouble using the APIs because docu just wasn't up-to-date.
My solution? Don't mix code and documentation. Generating docu from code (like Swashbuckle does) IS ok, but actually writing docu in code and try to dublicate the code in docu is NOT. It's not better than writing it in a Word document for your clients.
If you want Swagger docu, just do it the Swagger way.
- Spend some time with Swagger.Editor and really author your API in
YAML. It looks all-text and hard, but once you get used to it, it's
not.
- Spend some time with Swagger.Codegen and adapt it (it already does a fair job for generating Nancy server code and with a few
adjustments to moustache templates it was just what I needed).
- Automate your process: write a couple of batches to generate your modules and models from yaml and copy them to your repository.
Benefits? Quite a few:
-
Your YAML definition is now the single truth of your REST contract.
If somewhere something is defferent, it's wrong.
Nancy server code is auto-generated
Client code-bases are auto-generated (in our case it's android, ios and angular)
So whenever I change something in REST contract, all codebases are regenerated and added to projects in one batch. I just have to tell the teams something was updated. They don't have to look through some documents and search for it. They just have their code regenerated and probably see some compile errors, in case of breaking changes.
Do I still use nancy.swagger(.annotations)?
Yes, I do use it in another project, which has just one endpoint with a couple of methods. They don't change often. It's not worth the effort to set up everything, I have my swagger docu fast up and running. But if your project is big, API is changing, and you have multiple code-bases depending on your API, my advice is to invest some time into a real swagger setup.

I am quoting the author answer here from https://github.com/khellang/Nancy.Swagger/issues/59
The installation should be really simple, just pull down the NuGet package, add metadata modules to describe your routes, and hit /api-docs. That should get you the JSON. If you want to add swagger-ui as well, you have to add that manually right now.

No. Not in an automated. https://github.com/yahehe/Nancy.Swagger needs lots of manually created metadata.

There is a nice article here: http://www.c-sharpcorner.com/article/generating-api-document-in-nancy-using-swagger/
Looks like you still have to add swagger-ui separately.

Related

Where or How can I find a Complete List of Available Services for DNN and 2sxc

I've been trying to both convert old code and write new code using GetScopedService().
However, I keep discovering ones I didn't know about.
Is there an easy way to find the complete list of services available for 2sxc? For DNN? And maybe even RazorBlade?
If they are not documented somewhere, is there a page of code in the public repositories that I could bookmark where it would be easy to see (and compile) a list of them?
Your best place to start is https://r.2sxc.org/services (which goes to https://docs.2sxc.org/api/dot-net/ToSic.Sxc.Services.html)
This is where we keep all the current services published. Other services are to be seen as exotic / rare use.
Razor-Blade is still mostly non-service, but we plan to fix that.
We're just about to release ServiceKits as a feature, which would make things even more intuitive. For example, ServiceKit14 has all commonly used services on it, and also IScrub from Razor Blade.

2SXC/DNN - Delete ADAM Files in Entity

We're designing a system for a client where they are allowing authenticated users to upload images. We've created an API to upload the files but the client only wants the latest file and delete all previous ones so that there would only ever be one.
We've looked through the docs and can't come across a way for ADAM to handle this in both 2SXC and DNN's file system.
Internally when deleting images we see API calls like the following to the internal 2SXC API, but we're wondering if this is exposed somewhere within the public API?
https://somedomain.com/api/2sxc/app/auto/data/61393528-b401-411f-a001-f423ea46700a/b7d04e2c-c565-496c-8efb-aa133cf90d33/Photo/delete?subfolder=&isFolder=false&id=189&usePortalRoot=false&appId=3
We could probably use the same endpoint above, but we'd likely run into permission issues or changes to the APIs that could be problematic.
Thank you for any advice you can give! Perhaps #iJungleBoy can provide some thoughts on this.
As a solution from a completely different direction, if you are on the later release of 2sxc (v12.8+, v13+), and comfortable programming in C#, you might consider doing this as a "cleanup" from a Dnn Scheduled Task. This can be done with a relatively easy setup. We have a Gist in place that we use as a starter. You simply put the code in the /App_Code folder then setup a normal Dnn Scheduled Task. NOTE that you can scroll down to the first comment on the Gist to see a screenshot of a complete working setup.
Accuraty's AccuTasks template on GitHub Gists
There are two more key things to note:
You need to install Dnn's CodeDom 3.6 because the example uses the later versions C#'s string interpolation - OR remove the few $"ASL2021 - {this.GetType().Name}, Task Scheduled Email", bits or convert to string.Format() or something.
Since your task's code is NOT running in a (2sxc) module, if needed, you'll do stuff like this: 2sxc Docs - Use 2sxc Instance or App Data from External C# Code
So, if you are comfortable writing code that "finds and deletes stuff older than NN days" - this might be the way to go.

How to merge Drupal database changes

We currently use an SVN repository to ensure everyone's local environments are kept up-to-date. However, Drupal website development is somewhat trickier in that any custom code you write (for instance, PHP code written for a node body) is stored in the DB and the changes aren't recognized by the SVN working copy.
There are a couple of developers who are presently working on the same area of a Drupal site, but we're uncertain about how to best merge our local Drupal database changes together. Committing patches of database dumps seem clumsy at best and is most likely inefficient and error-prone for this purpose.
Any suggestions about how to approach this issue is appreciated!
Unfortunately, database deployment/update is one of Drupals weak spots. See this question & answers as well as this one for some suggestions on how to deal with it.
As for CCK, you could find some hints here.
As for php code in content, I agree with googletorp in that you should avoid doing this. However, if for some reason you absolutely have to do it, you could try to reduce the code to a simple function call. Thus you'd have the function itself in a module (and this would be tracked via SVN). But then you are only a little step from removing the need for the inline code anyways ...
If you are putting php code into your database then you are doing it wrong. Some stuff are inside the database like views and cck fields plus some settings. But if you put php code inside the node body you are creating a big code maintenance problem. You should really use the API and hooks instead. Create modules instead of ugly hacks with eval etc.
All that has been said above is true and good advice.. To answer your practical question, there are a number of recent modules that you could use to transport the changes done by the various developers.
The "Features" modules is a cure the the described issue of Drupal often providing nice features, albeit storing lots of configs and structure in the DB. This module enables you to capture a feature and output it as a pseudo-module (qualifies as a module with .info and code-files and all). Here is how it works:
Select functionality/feature to export
The module analyses the modules, files, DB content that is required to rebuild that feature elsewhere
The module creates a pseudo-module that contains the instructions in #3 and outputs everything (even SQL to rebuild the stuff in the DB) into a module package (as well as sets dependencies for other modules required)
Install the pseudo-module on your new site and enable it
The pseudo-module replicates the feature you exported rebuilding DB data and all
And you can tell your boss you did it all manually with razor focus to avoid even 1 error ;)
I hope this helps - http://drupal.org/project/features
By committing patches of database dumps, do you mean taking an entire extract of the db and committing it after each change?
How about a master copy of the database? Extract all tables, views, sps, etc... into individual files, put them into svn and do your merge edits on the individual objects?

How flexible is elgg?

I know it has great out-of-the-box features but is it easy to customize?
Like when I query stuff from the database or change css layouts.
Is it faster to create my own modules for it or just go on and write everything from scratch using frameworks like Cake
I'm currently working on an Elgg-based site and I absolutely hate it. The project was near completion when I stepped in, but the people who created were no longer available, so I took it over as a freelancer.
As a personal impression, you are much better off writing the app from scratch in a framework. I don't know if the people before me butchered it, but the code looks awful, the entity-based relationship model is wierd to say the least and debugging is horrendous. Also, from my point of view, it doesn't scale very well. If you were to have a consistent user base, I'd be really really worried.
It keeps two global objects ($vars and $CONFIG) that have more than 5000(!) members loaded in memory on each page. This is a crap indicator.
I've worked extensively with cake. With Elgg, for about a month in a project that is on QA stage right now.
My advise is: if you need something quick with a lot of features and you only need to customize a little, go with Elgg.
If you're going to customize a lot and you can afford the development of all the forums, friends, invites, etc. features, go with Cake or any other MVC framework.
I have been working on a Elgg site for the past month or so, its code is horrible, however it's not the worst I've seen :D. it's not built for programmers like Drupal is :D. But it's not too bad. Once I got a handle on the metadata functions and read most of the code I was able to navigate it well and create custom modules and such.
What would help immensely would be some real documentation and explanation of the Elgg system. I don't think that's going to happen though :).
Out of the box there are a few problems, there are some bugs that haven't been fixed for a while and I've had to go in and fix them myself. Overall, you can make it pretty and it has some cool functions, but i wouldn't dive in until i had read the main core code to get a handle on what's happening on the backend.
Oh and massive use of storing values in globals. and a crap ton of DB calls (same with Drupal though).
i wonder if the use of storing everything, and i mean everything for your site in the globals will really hinder the server if you have a massive user load.
If you want to build a product based on a social networking platform/framework then Elgg is definately a good way to go. The code is not that bad if you actually look before leaping and doing what elgg expects. You go against its processes and structures and it will leave you beaten by the side of the road.
Developing modules/plugins or editing CSS is easy and Elgg does give you great flexability to basically build your own product ontop of it. Dolphin, as comparrison, does not allow you to do anything outside of what it expects you to do.
If you however just need a framework (not primarily for social networking etc) with some user based functionality then i suggest Cake, or if your project is HUGE then maybe Symfony or Zend. They all have plugins you can download and use/hack which would be easirer to adjust for personalised needs.
To show what you can do with elgg here is a site Mobilitate we built with Elgg 1.7. This is a very complicated website and was built ontop of Elgg.
We are starting a new project with Elgg 1.8. The new version is a major improvement they have made a lot of elements easier, incorporated better JS and CSS implementation/structure and have better commented their own code.
Elgg's database schema is horrific. They've essentially implemented a NoSQL database in SQL. It completely defeats the purpose of using a relational table structure.
If you can ignore this, and aren't doing much customization, you might be OK with Elgg. If not, STAY AWAY.
I've been working with Elgg for over a year. It is easier to customize than it would be to build something from scratch using a framework like CakePHP. I tried CakePHP and found it even more complicated than Elgg.
It is difficult to query the database due to the entity-based relationship model. You should use the build-in methods for accessing data. However, I have written many queries to double check on what is actually stored in the database.
You cannot change layouts using CSS alone. You have to deal with the various Elgg views. But CakePHP uses the same Model/View/Controller MVC concept so that would be just as difficult.

Apache module FORM handling in C

I'm implementing an Apache 2.0.x module in C, to interface with an existing product we have. I need to handle FORM data, most likely using POST but I want to handle the GET case as well.
Nick Kew's Apache Modules book has a section on handling form data. It provides code examples for POST and GET, which return an apr_hash_t of the key+value pairs in the form. parse_form_from_POST marshalls the bucket brigade and flattens it into a buffer, while parse_form_from_GET can simply reference the URL. Both routines rely on a parse_form_from_string routine to walk through each delimited field and extract the information into the hash table.
That would be fine, but it seems like there should be an easier way to do this than adding a couple hundred lines of code to my module. Is there an existing module or routines within apache, apr, or apr-util to extract the field names and associated data from a GET or POST FORM into a structure which C code can more easily access? I cannot find anything relevant, but this seems like a common need for which there should be a solution.
I switched to G-WAN which offers a transparent ANSI C scripts interface for GET and POST forms (and many other goodies like charts, GIF I/O, etc.).
A couple of AJAX examples are available at the GWAN developer page
Hope it helps!
While, on it's surface, this may seem common, cgi-style content handlers in C on apache are pretty rare. Most people just use CGI, FastCGI, or the myriad of frameworks such as mod_perl.
Most of the C apache modules that I've written are targeted at modifying the particular behavior of the web server in specific, targeted ways that are applicable to every request.
If it's at all possible to write your handler outside of an apache module, I would encourage you to pursue that strategy.
I have not yet tried any solution, since I found this SO question as a result of my own frustration with the example in the "Apache Modules" book as well. But here's what I've found, so far. I will update this answer when I have researched more.
Luckily it looks like this is now a solved problem in Apache 2.4 using the ap_parse_form_data funciton.
No idea how well this works compared to your example, but here is a much more concise read_post function.
It is also possible that mod_form could be of value.

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