The DLR according to wikipedia is “an ongoing effort to bring a set of services that run on top of the Common Language Runtime (CLR) and provides language services for several different dynamic languages.” As the definition says, it is independent of the CLR and adds no new OpCodes to the IL. Languages like C# used the DLR to introduce dynamic typing while maintaining the existing mechanism of statically determining types.

The dynamic keyword is the C# construct introduced for this. In short – it tells the compiler that the call to this method is to be resolved at runtime and not to be bothered by throwing compiler errors. Lets see a simple example for the usage of the dynamic keyword. Suppose you have a book class which has four main properties – Author, Publisher, Price and Number Of Pages. However, each book may have a lot of other properties as well, which you wont know at design time. So the question arises, how to store the additional information? The first answer that would come to mind is storing them in a collection class and later retrieving it. The dynamic class provides you with a neat way of doing this shown in the code below :-

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class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            // The dynamic keyword bypasses any compile time checking for this object
            dynamic _daVinciCode = new Book("Sample Author", "SomePublisher", 250, 450);
 
            /*** EXTRA PROPERTIES - NOT PRESENT IN THE OBJECT***/
            _daVinciCode.BookStores = new string[] { "Landmark", "Oddyssey", "Crosswords" };
            _daVinciCode.CitiesAvailable = new string[] { "Delhi", "Bangalore", "Chennai" };
            _daVinciCode.ExtraVat = 45;
 
            /*** PRINTING OUT EXTRA PROPERTIES VALUE ***/
            Console.WriteLine(_daVinciCode.ExtraVat);
        }
 
    }
 
    /// <summary>
    /// This is our dynamic class. It defines 4 concrete properties
    /// and a dictionary class for storing any other property values
    /// as well. The abstract class DynamicObject is implemented
    /// </summary>
    public class Book:DynamicObject
    {
        //Our four defined properties
        public string Author { get; private set; }
        public string Publisher { get; private set; }
        public double Price { get; private set; }
        public int NumberOfPages { get; private set; }
 
        //Constructor - Parametrized
        public Book(string _author, string _publisher, double _price, int _numberOfPages)
        {
            this.Author = _author;
            this.Publisher = _publisher;
            this.Price = _price;
            this.NumberOfPages = _numberOfPages;
        }
 
        //This collection object stores all the extra properties
        public Dictionary<string, object> _extraProperties = new Dictionary<string, object>();
 
        //At runtime this method is called in order to bind the propertyname to a Getter
        public override bool TryGetMember(GetMemberBinder binder, out object result)
        {
            return _extraProperties.TryGetValue(binder.Name.ToLower(), out result);
        }
 
        //At runtime this method is called in order to bind the propertyname to a setter
        public override bool TrySetMember(SetMemberBinder binder, object value)
        {
            _extraProperties.Add(binder.Name.ToLower(), value);
            return true;
        }
    }

The Book class is a dynamic type and derives from the abstract class DynamicObject. This base class can help determine how binding should occur at runtime. In our example, the dictionary object stores all the additional properties of the book class. The two overriden methods TryGetMember and the TrySetMember are responsible for the binding of the new properties to the dictionary object. The first time a property on a dynamic type is encountered, the DLR binds the property and then caches its address. So any subsequent calls are faster.

More on the DLR in future posts.

I implemented a basic Binary Tree in .NET for adding custom types. The Tree is generic and can be used to add any type objects. Also the object must implement the generic versions of IComparable and IEquitable for their types and object types. This leaves the search logic’s implementation to the type rather than the data structure. The complete solution can be downloaded here.

Lets see the declaration of the Binary Tree along with the private members.

class BinaryTree<T> where
    T:IComparable<T>,
    IEquatable<T>,
    IEquatable<object>,
    IComparable<object>
{
    BinaryTree<T> _parentNode;
    BinaryTree<T> _leftNode;
    BinaryTree<T> _rightNode;
    public T Value { get; set; }

Each BinaryTree object must be aware of its parent node and its left and right children, and the value it holds. Lets see the logic for adding the node. The adding logic is recursive. If it finds a null value, then the value is substituted. If not, then the node to be added is compared. If the value is lesser than the same method is called on the leftnode. This happens recursively till we get the node where the value is to be added.

public void AddNode(T _nodeTobeAdded)
{
    if (null==Value)
        //We found the value. Yay!!
        this.Value = _nodeTobeAdded;
    else
    {
        //Compare the node to be added. Here the
        //type's IComparable is called.
        if (_nodeTobeAdded.CompareTo(Value) < 0)
        {
            //Go down the left node. If the left node is null,
            //then create a new object, else return the existing object.
            _leftNode = null==_leftNode ?new BinaryTree<T>(this):_leftNode;
            _leftNode.AddNode(_nodeTobeAdded);
        }
        else
        {
            //Go Down the right node.
            _rightNode = null==_rightNode?new BinaryTree<T>(this):_rightNode;
            _rightNode.AddNode(_nodeTobeAdded);
        }
    }
}

The GetNode method follows a similar logic, with recursive searching of the tree till a match is found, if no match is found then a null value is returned. Note that only around half of the tree is searched, rather than all of the nodes, as would be the case with a linkedList. GetNode is implemented both for the type and an object. In both cases the Equals method’s implementation is called, giving the generic type the ability to decide on its own equality logic.

public T GetNode(T _nodeToBeGotten)
{
   if(_nodeToBeGotten.Equals(Value))
       return Value;
   else if(_nodeToBeGotten.CompareTo(Value)<0)
       return null==_leftNode? default(T): _leftNode.GetNode(_nodeToBeGotten);
   else
       return null==_rightNode?default(T): _rightNode.GetNode(_nodeToBeGotten);
}

public T GetNode(object o)
{
    if (Value.Equals(o))
        return Value;
    else if (Value.CompareTo(o)>0)
        return (null == _leftNode) ?
            default(T) : _leftNode.GetNode(o);
    else
        return null == _rightNode ?
            default(T) : _rightNode.GetNode(o);
}

Deleting is a bit tricky business. We have four scenarios here:-

1. Its a leaf node, i.e. both the left and right children are null. This is the simplest scenario. Simply set the node itself to null
2. The LeftNode is null but the right node is not, in this scenario – the node’s right node is set to the parent node’s right node, and the node is set to null.
3. The Right node is null but left node is not. It is handled similar to the previous scenario.
4. Both leftNode and rightNode is not null. In this scenarios we need to go down the leftnode, and iterate to its right most non empty node. This node is to be replaced with the node to be deleted. Just the value needs to be replaced and the right most node should be orphaned.

public void DeleteNode(object o)
{
    BinaryTree<T> _tempNode1 = this.GetTreeNode(o);
    DeleteNode(_tempNode1);
}

public void DeleteNode(T _nodeTobeDeleted)
{
    BinaryTree<T> _tempNode1 = this.GetTreeNode(_nodeTobeDeleted);
    DeleteNode(_tempNode1);
}

private void DeleteNode(BinaryTree<T> _tempNode1)
{
    BinaryTree<T> _tempNode2 = _tempNode1;
    if ((null == _tempNode1._leftNode) && (null == _tempNode1._rightNode))
        _tempNode1._parentNode = null;
    else if (null == _tempNode1._leftNode)
        _tempNode1._parentNode._rightNode = _tempNode1._rightNode;
    else if (null == _tempNode1._rightNode)
        _tempNode1._parentNode._leftNode = _tempNode1._leftNode;
    else
    {
        bool _goingRight = false;
        _tempNode1 = _tempNode1._leftNode;
        while (_tempNode1._rightNode != null)
        {
            _tempNode1 = _tempNode1._rightNode;
            _goingRight = true;
        }
        _tempNode2.Value = _tempNode1.Value;
        if (_goingRight) _tempNode1._parentNode._rightNode = null;
        else _tempNode1._parentNode._leftNode = null;
        _tempNode1 = null;
    }
}

//Private methods to get the nodes to be deleted
private BinaryTree<T> GetTreeNode(T _nodeToBeGotten)
{
    if (_nodeToBeGotten.Equals(Value))
        return this;
    else if (_nodeToBeGotten.CompareTo(Value) < 0)
        return null == _leftNode ? default(BinaryTree<T>) : _leftNode.GetTreeNode(_nodeToBeGotten);
    else
        return null == _rightNode ? default(BinaryTree<T>) : _rightNode.GetTreeNode(_nodeToBeGotten);
}

private BinaryTree<T> GetTreeNode(object o)
{
    if (Value.Equals(o))
        return this;
    else if (Value.CompareTo(o) > 0)
        return (null == _leftNode) ?
            default(BinaryTree<T>) : _leftNode.GetTreeNode(o);
    else
        return null == _rightNode ?
            default(BinaryTree<T>) : _rightNode.GetTreeNode(o);
}

The class which could be added to the tree needs to implement the four interfaces i mentioned. I implemented an Employee class which has just two fields Name and age and the comparison is done based on the age.

class Employee : IComparable<Employee>,IEquatable<Employee>,IEquatable<object>,IComparable<object>
    {
        private string _name;
        private int _age;

        public int Age{get{return _age;}}

        public Employee(string _name, int _age)
        {
            this._name = _name;
            this._age = _age;
        }

        #region IComparable<Employee> Members

        public int CompareTo(Employee other)
        {
            if (this._age < other._age)
                return -1;
            else
                return 1;
        }

        #endregion

        public bool Equals(Employee other)
        {
            if (this._age == other._age)
                return true;
            else
                return false;
        }

        #region IEquatable<object> Members

        public override bool Equals(object other)
        {
            int _age=0;
            if (int.TryParse(other.ToString(), out _age))
            {
                return this._age == _age ? true : false;
            }
            else return false;
        }

        #endregion

        #region IComparable<object> Members

        public int CompareTo(object other)
        {
            int _age = 0;
            if (int.TryParse(other.ToString(), out _age))
                return this._age < _age ? -1 : 1;
            else return 1;
        }

        #endregion

    }

This is the main method which adds a few objects to the tree collection.

static void Main(string[] args)
{
    BinaryTree<Employee> _btree = new BinaryTree<Employee>(new Employee("RootValue",40));
    _btree.AddNode(new Employee("Test1", 34));
    _btree.AddNode(new Employee("Test2", 26));
    _btree.AddNode(new Employee("Test3", 65));
}

Here is the code for the game as a silverlight application. The complete project can be downloaded here.

The XAML is quite simple. Just a grid with three rows and three columns

    <grid x:Name="gridGame" Background="White" Width="300" Height="300" HorizontalAlignment="Center" VerticalAlignment="Center">
        </grid><grid .RowDefinitions>
            <rowdefinition Height="100" />
            <rowdefinition Height="100" />
            <rowdefinition Height="100" />
        </grid>
        <grid .ColumnDefinitions>
            <columndefinition Width="100" />
            <columndefinition Width="100" />
            <columndefinition Width="100" />
        </grid>

It is then filled with the buttons in the Code Behind. I have hardcoded the grid size of three but this will work with any size.

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 public MainPage()
        {
            InitializeComponent();
            InitializeGameLogic(true);
        }
 
        private void InitializeGameLogic(bool _fromConstructor)
        {
            if (!_fromConstructor)
            {
                gridGame.Children.Clear();
            }
            _logic = new TicTacLogic();
            for (int i = 0; i < 3; i++)
                for (int j = 0; j < 3; j++)
                {
                    Button _btnGrid = new Button();
                    _btnGrid.Name = "btn" + i.ToString() + j.ToString();
                    gridGame.Children.Add(_btnGrid);
                    Grid.SetRow(_btnGrid, j);
                    Grid.SetColumn(_btnGrid, i);
                    _btnGrid.Height = 80;
                    _btnGrid.Width = 80;
                    _btnGrid.Click += new RoutedEventHandler(_btnGrid_Click);
                }
            _logic.StartGame();
        }

All the dynamically generated buttons have a single event handler. The idea is to identify the button which sent the event from the name. Once we have the position of the button, the content has to be changed with an X. After the user marks, the computer does its stuff and makes its move. After every marking, a check is done if someone has won or the board is full.

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void _btnGrid_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
        {
            Button _userClicked = sender as Button;
            int _xPos = Convert.ToInt32(_userClicked.Name.Substring(3,1));
            int _yPos = Convert.ToInt32(_userClicked.Name.Substring(4,1));
            _userClicked.Content = GetMarking("X");
            _logic.ClickUser(_xPos, _yPos);
            if (!(_logic.CheckIfSomeoneWon() || _logic.CheckIfBoardFull()))
            {
                int _xCom = 0;
                int _yCom = 0;
                _logic.MoveComputer(ref _xCom, ref _yCom);
                foreach (UIElement _tempElem in gridGame.Children)
                {
                    Button _comBtn = _tempElem as Button;
                    if (_comBtn != null && _comBtn.Name == "btn" + _xCom + _yCom)
                    {
                        _comBtn.Content = GetMarking("O");
                        break;
                    }
                }
                if (_logic.CheckIfSomeoneWon() || _logic.CheckIfBoardFull())
                    InitializeGameLogic(false);
            }
            else
                InitializeGameLogic(false);
 
        }
 
        private TextBlock GetMarking(string _mark)
        {
            TextBlock _t = new TextBlock();
            _t.Text = _mark;
            _t.FontSize = 25;
            _t.FontWeight = FontWeights.Bold;
            return _t;
        }

The Board class maintains two important things. The position of all the squares and which player has it marked. The Board doesnt depend on the Player objects. It has an object of the WinningPositions object which calculates the winning positions which can be compared with later. This object makes it possible to play with larger grids.

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public class Board
{
    readonly int MAXSIZE;
    List<positionmarking> _boardState = new List</positionmarking><positionmarking>();
    List<position []> _allWinningPositions;
 
    public List<positionmarking> BoardState { get { return _boardState; } }
    public List<position []> AllWinningPositions { get { return _allWinningPositions; } }
    public int MaxSize { get { return MAXSIZE; } }
 
    public Board()
    {
        this.MAXSIZE = 3;
        Initialize();
    }
 
    public Board(int _maxSize)
    {
        MAXSIZE = _maxSize;
        Initialize();
    }
 
    private void Initialize()
    {
        _allWinningPositions = (new WinningPositions(MAXSIZE)).AllWinningPositions;
        for(int _xPos=0;_xPos<maxsize ;_xPos++)
            for (int _yPos = 0; _yPos < MAXSIZE; _yPos++)
            {
                _boardState.Add(new PositionMarking(_xPos,_yPos));
            }
    }
 
    internal void MarkPosition(int _xUser, int _yUser, bool _userMarked)
    {
        foreach (PositionMarking _tempPos in _boardState)
        {
            if (_tempPos.BoardPosition.X == _xUser && _tempPos.BoardPosition.Y == _yUser)
            {
                _tempPos.MarkPosition(_userMarked);
                break;
            }
        }
#if DEBUG
        PrintBoardState();
#endif
    }
 
    internal bool? MarkedByUser(Position _tempPos)
    {
        foreach (PositionMarking _tempMark in _boardState)
        {
            if (_tempPos.X == _tempMark.BoardPosition.X && _tempPos.Y == _tempMark.BoardPosition.Y)
                return _tempMark.IsUserMarked;
 
        }
        throw new Exception("Position Not found on Board");
    }
 
    #if DEBUG
    internal void PrintBoardState()
    {
        string _userMarked = "";
        string _compMarked = "";
        foreach (PositionMarking _tempMark in _boardState)
        {
 
            if (_tempMark.IsUserMarked == true)
                _userMarked += "("+ _tempMark.BoardPosition.X + "," + _tempMark.BoardPosition.Y + ") ";
            else if (_tempMark.IsUserMarked == false)
                _compMarked += "(" + _tempMark.BoardPosition.X + "," + _tempMark.BoardPosition.Y + ") ";
        }
        Debug.WriteLine("USER: " + _userMarked);
        Debug.WriteLine("COMP: " + _compMarked);
        Debug.WriteLine("________________________________________");
    }
#endif
    internal bool IsBoardFull()
    {
        foreach (PositionMarking _tempMark in _boardState)
        {
            if (_tempMark.IsUserMarked == null)
                return false;
 
        }
        MessageBox.Show("Board Full");
        return true;
    }
}

The Winning Position class is given below and all positions are calculated at initialization. First the horizontal ones are considered and then the vertical ones. The remaining diagonal positons are taken care later. Each winning position is stored in an array of the position object which just holds the value of the Squares. These arrays are stored in a generic List.

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public class WinningPositions
{
    List<position []> _allWinningPositions = new List</position><position []>();
    Position[] _winPos1;
    Position[] _winPos2;
 
    public List</position><position []> AllWinningPositions
    {
        get { return _allWinningPositions; }
    }
 
    public WinningPositions(int _maxSize)
    {
        _winPos1 = new Position[_maxSize];
        _winPos2 = new Position[_maxSize];
        PopulateWinningPositions();
    }
 
    private void PopulateWinningPositions()
    {
        int _iCounter=0;
        int _xPos = 0;
        int _yPos = 0;
        for (_xPos = 0; _xPos < _winPos2.Length; _xPos++)
        {
            for (_yPos = 0; _yPos < _winPos2.Length; _yPos++)
            {
                _winPos1[_iCounter] = new Position(_xPos, _yPos);
                _winPos2[_iCounter] = new Position(_yPos, _xPos);
                _iCounter++;
            }
            _allWinningPositions.Add(_winPos1);
            _allWinningPositions.Add(_winPos2);
            _winPos1 = new Position[_winPos1.Length];
            _winPos2 = new Position[_winPos2.Length];
            _iCounter = 0;
        }
        _iCounter = 0;
        for (_xPos = 0, _yPos = 0;_xPos < _winPos1.Length; _xPos++, _yPos++)
        {
            _winPos1[_iCounter] = new Position(_xPos, _yPos);
 
            _iCounter++;
        }
        _allWinningPositions.Add(_winPos1);
        _iCounter = 0;
        for (_xPos = 0, _yPos = _winPos1.Length - 1; _xPos < _winPos1.Length; _xPos++, _yPos--)
        {
            _winPos2[_iCounter] = new Position(_xPos, _yPos);
            _iCounter++;
        }
        _allWinningPositions.Add(_winPos2);
    }
}

Then there is the Player class of which we create two objects. The user takes care of his own moving logic, all we need to do is to change the state of the square for him. But the computer has its method called the SmartMove. Here we first move through the winning positions to identify any open squares that can be marked. If there are no squares, then we look to block the opponent's winning. If even this opportunity is not found, we mark an available open square.

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public class Player
{
    Board _currentBoardPosition;
    bool _isComputer;
    List<position> _allMarkedPositions;
 
    public Player(bool _isComputer,Board _currentBoardPos)
    {
        this._isComputer = _isComputer;
        _allMarkedPositions = new List</position><position>();
        _currentBoardPosition = _currentBoardPos;
    }
 
    internal void SmartMove(ref int _xCom, ref int _yCom)
    {
        bool _markingDone = false;
        bool _blockUser = false;
        Position _userBlock = new Position();
        foreach (Position[] _winPos in _currentBoardPosition.AllWinningPositions)
        {
            int _userMarked = 0;
            int _computerMarked = 0;
            int _nullMarked=0;
 
            Position _openPos= new Position();
            foreach (Position _tempPos in _winPos)
            {
                bool? isUserMarked = _currentBoardPosition.MarkedByUser(_tempPos);
                if (isUserMarked==true)
                    _userMarked++;
                else if (isUserMarked == false)
                    _computerMarked++;
                else
                {
                    _openPos = _tempPos;
                    _nullMarked++;
                }
 
            }
            if (_computerMarked == 2 && _nullMarked == 1)
            {
                Debug.WriteLine("Wining block: " + _openPos.X + "," + _openPos.Y);
                _currentBoardPosition.MarkPosition(_openPos.X, _openPos.Y, false);
                _xCom = _openPos.X;
                _yCom = _openPos.Y;
                _markingDone = true;
                break;
            }
            else if (_userMarked == 2 && _nullMarked == 1)
            {
                _userBlock = _openPos;
                _blockUser = true;
            }
 
        }
        if (_blockUser && !_markingDone)
        {
            _currentBoardPosition.MarkPosition(_userBlock.X, _userBlock.Y, false);
            _xCom = _userBlock.X;
            _yCom = _userBlock.Y;
            _markingDone = true;
        }
 
        if (!_markingDone)
        {
 
            //No Winning Position Found or not able to block;
            foreach (PositionMarking _posMark in _currentBoardPosition.BoardState)
            {
                if (_posMark.IsUserMarked == null)
                {
                    _markingDone = true;
                    _currentBoardPosition.MarkPosition(_posMark.BoardPosition.X, _posMark.BoardPosition.Y,false);
                    _xCom = _posMark.BoardPosition.X;
                    _yCom = _posMark.BoardPosition.Y;
                    break;
                }
            }
 
        }
    }
}
</position>

Since the Board needs to maintain the state of each and every position on itself, we have another object for it, which maintains a position object and a nullable boolean. If the boolean is true, then the square is marked by the user, if false - then by the computer. If its still null - its open and can be marked. The marking is done by the object's method which makes a check to make sure no players marking is overwritten by another.

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public class PositionMarking
{
    Position _boardPos;
    bool? _isUserMarked;
 
    public Position BoardPosition { get { return _boardPos; } }
    public bool? IsUserMarked { get { return _isUserMarked; } }
 
    public PositionMarking(int _xPos,int _yPos)
    {
        _isUserMarked = null;
        _boardPos = new Position(_xPos, _yPos);
    }
 
    public void MarkPosition(bool _markedByUser)
    {
        if(_isUserMarked == null)
        _isUserMarked = _markedByUser;
        else
        throw new Exception("Position already taken");
    }
}

Then there is the rest of the code including our business logic layer.

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public class TicTacLogic
{
    bool _userToMove;
    bool _resultHasCome;
    Player _user;
    Player _computer;
    Board _gameBoard;
 
    public TicTacLogic()
    {
        _userToMove = true;
        _resultHasCome = false;
    }
 
    internal void StartGame()
    {
        Initialize();
    }
 
    internal bool ClickUser(int _xUser, int _yUser)
    {
        return _gameBoard.MarkPosition(_xUser, _yUser, true);
    }
 
    internal void MoveComputer(ref int _xCom, ref int _yCom)
    {
        _computer.SmartMove(ref _xCom, ref _yCom);
    }
 
    internal void Initialize()
    {
        _gameBoard = new Board(3);
        _user = new Player(false,_gameBoard);
        _computer = new Player(true,_gameBoard);
 
    }
 
    public bool CheckIfSomeoneWon()
    {
        foreach (Position[] _tempWin in _gameBoard.AllWinningPositions)
        {
            int _userWon=0;
            int _compWon=0;
            foreach (Position _p in _tempWin)
            {
                bool? isUserMarked = _gameBoard.MarkedByUser(_p);
                if (isUserMarked == null)
                    break;
                else if (isUserMarked == true)
                    _userWon++;
                else
                    _compWon++;
 
            }
            if (_userWon == _gameBoard.MaxSize)
            {
                MessageBox.Show("User Won");
                return true;
            }
            else if (_compWon == _gameBoard.MaxSize)
            {
                MessageBox.Show("Computer Won");
                return true;
            }
 
        }
        return false;
    }
 
    internal bool CheckIfBoardFull()
    {
        return _gameBoard.IsBoardFull();
    }
}
 
public class Position
{
    int _xPos;
    int _yPos;
 
    public Position()
    {
    }
 
    public int X { get { return _xPos; } }
    public int Y { get { return _yPos; } }
 
    public Position(int xPos, int yPos)
    {
        this._xPos = xPos;
        this._yPos = yPos;
    }
}

]]> http://blog.ganeshzone.net/blog/index.php/2010/01/tic-tac-toe-game-in-silverlight/feed/ 0 http://blog.ganeshzone.net/blog/index.php/2010/01/deploying-asp-net-mvc-apps-on-shared-hosting/ http://blog.ganeshzone.net/blog/index.php/2010/01/deploying-asp-net-mvc-apps-on-shared-hosting/#comments Sun, 10 Jan 2010 18:20:39 +0000 Ganesh Ranganathan http://blog.ganeshzone.net/blog/?p=823 Here are the steps to deploy MVC applications to servers with shared hosting providers.

MVC seeks to give developers an alternative, where they have complete control over the application including the viewstate of the controls. My first look was at ASP.NET MVC was a training session given by an architect from Microsoft, and I absolutely didn’t like the complexity it brought to a simple demo application that was showed. I found that we were writing too much code, again bringing back spaghetti code that died with ASP. But over time, after digging into MVC, I found that it made a lot of sense. If my need is just to display a set of data, why should I sacrifice performance over all of the gridview’s bulky viewstate. Rather, it makes sense to use a HTML table and apply CSS to style it.  That is exactly the flexibility that MVC gives you, instead of relying on built in abstraction done by Webform architecture, you get to control every detail of your application.

WebForms

ASP.NET Webforms are radically different from any other server side scripting technology. For one, its event driven. Just like Windows programming, you assign an event handler to an element, like a button and it calls the handler when the button is clicked. No longer, do you have to keep on submitting the form to handle click events and write bulky code to do simple stuff. ASP.NET made the server side code clean – in fact a helluva lot cleaner than ASP.

But all this ignores the age old truth about the web/HTTP – that it is stateless. The server forgets about the page the minute its sent to the client and thats the end of it. So how is context maintained in WebForms? The answer is Viewstate. All of the control states are Base64 encoded and recreated on the server again where the request is executed. There is a lot of built-in plumbing to achieve this level of abstraction.

The main problem with webforms is that though it cleans up your code and markup and seperates them neatly in your Visual studio solution, it horribly clutters the rendered markup to the browser. Every control takes up more and more viewstate and the nested control names which are really long, make the markup bulky, and since this does a round trip on every request, it starts impacting performance and eventually scalability.

One more concern is the Testability, due to the event driven approach, the GUI is tighly coupled with your business layer and there isnt any effective way to test your web page. Automating such testing could be an tedious effort and you would most probably end up doing manual testing.

Despite all of these problems, Webforms are not a bad architecture. It is extremely mature and extensible. A lot of good documentation exists for it and it still makes sense for quite a few scenarios.

MVC

With MVC, it was love at first byte. In fact I never realized how inefficient webforms were, until i worked with MVC. Instead of a page receiving the request, its the Controller which lives at the heart of MVC. Once it gets the request, it decides which view to render and may use models.

One great thing about MVC is the clean Seperation of Concerns (SoC ) which you are able to achieve out of the box. Both the Controllers and the Views can be tested separately using testing tools like NUnit or MBUnit. So that means no longer. Manual testing doesn’t really make any sense for most scenarios, because the effort is not repeatable and when you want to try with a different input, you would need to start all over again.

One major point that is oft repeated is that we shouldn’t jump the gun to convert every existing webforms applications into MVC just because its the in thing. You would have to rewrite your application completely, and the benefit derived would often not be worth the effort. But I would certainly  recommend that  you use MVC for any new applications you create. Its certainly the smarter way.

]]> http://blog.ganeshzone.net/blog/index.php/2010/01/asp-net-evolution-webforms-vs-mvc/feed/ 3 http://blog.ganeshzone.net/blog/index.php/2010/01/thread-synchronization-techniques-part-2-the-readerwriterlock-class/ http://blog.ganeshzone.net/blog/index.php/2010/01/thread-synchronization-techniques-part-2-the-readerwriterlock-class/#comments Sun, 03 Jan 2010 19:22:32 +0000 Ganesh Ranganathan http://blog.ganeshzone.net/blog/?p=754 In continuation to my earlier post about multithreading in .NET, I am writing about the ReaderWriterLock class which is one more method of thread synchronization.

The ReaderWriterLock is based on the fact that the Monitor locking (lock keyword in C#) doesnt really make any distinction whether the thread accessing the variable is [...]]]> In continuation to my earlier post about multithreading in .NET, I am writing about the ReaderWriterLock class which is one more method of thread synchronization.

The ReaderWriterLock is based on the fact that the Monitor locking (lock keyword in C#) doesnt really make any distinction whether the thread accessing the variable is reading it or writing to it. If its only reading it, then we should not need an exclusive lock. So If we allow multiple threads to read the value, it would be much faster than having mutually exclusive locks, which means a more scalable application? On paper, yes – but not in reality.

The problem with ReaderWriterLock is with its implementation. Several experts have slammed this technique and found that outside of limited scenarios, it is actually far slower than the Monitor.Enter method used to get an exclusive lock. ReaderWriterLock gives higher priority to reader threads then writers. This makes sense if you have many readers and only a few writers. So a lot of readers are able to read the resource while the writer has to wait longer to get the lock. But what If you have equal or more writers. The process of favoring readers make writer threads queued up and take a very long time to complete.

Jeffrey Richter says that this performance loss is due to support for Recursion in the ReaderWriterLock class. Due to this, the class needs to maintain a record of the number of times each thread acquires the lock and increment and decrement the counter. When multiple reader threads acquire the same lock (remember ReaderWriterLock class allows simultaneous reads), a counter is maintained for each thread. This overhead is what causes the ReaderWriterLock to pale in comparison to the Monitor class. It is approximately 6 times slower.

Here is a code sample. The Threads 1 and 3 are reader threads while the Thread 2 is a writer one. When you take a look at the output, its clear that the readers are granted simultaneous access to the _value variable, but when the writer thread is writing to it, all the readers wait in queue patiently for it to finish executing. I have made the DoWorkRead method parametrized in order to identify the thread on which the method is being executed.

class Program
{
    int _value = 0;
    ReaderWriterLock _rwLock = new ReaderWriterLock();
 
    static void Main(string[] args)
    {
        Program _prgm = new Program();
        for (int i = 0; i < 20; i++)
        {
            Thread _t1Obj = new Thread(_prgm.DoWorkRead); //Reader Thread
            //Writer Thread
            Thread _t2Obj = new Thread(new ThreadStart(_prgm.DoWorkWrite));
            //Reader Again
            Thread _t3Obj = new Thread(_prgm.DoWorkRead); 
 
            //Start all threads
            _t1Obj.Start("Thread 1");
            _t2Obj.Start();
            _t3Obj.Start("Thread 3");
 
            //Wait for them to finish execution
            _t1Obj.Join();
            _t2Obj.Join();
            _t3Obj.Join();
        }
 
    }
 
    public void DoWorkRead(object threadName)
    {
        //Accquire Reader Lock.
        _rwLock.AcquireReaderLock(Timeout.Infinite);
        Console.WriteLine("Read start: Thread: " + threadName + " " + _value);
        if (threadName.ToString() == "Thread 1")
            //Irregular sleeps makes more chances of
            //Multiple threads trying to access it
            //at same time
            Thread.Sleep(10);
        else
            Thread.Sleep(250);
        Console.WriteLine("Read end  : Thread: " + threadName + " " + _value);
        _rwLock.ReleaseReaderLock();
        //Release Lock
    }
 
    public void DoWorkWrite()
    {
        _rwLock.AcquireWriterLock(Timeout.Infinite);
        Console.WriteLine("\nWriter start: " + _value);
        _value++; //Writing
        Console.WriteLine("Writer End: " + _value);
        _rwLock.ReleaseWriterLock();
        Console.WriteLine();
    }
 
}

A look at the output shows the once the writer acquires a lock, it is mutually exclusive, but both the reader threads are able to access the variable _value.

One more problem with the ReaderWriterLock class is that it allows Reader threads to acquire writer locks. If you set an infinite timeout, it will create a deadlock situation, where the thread just waits to get the Writer lock but cant because the very same thread holds on to the Reader lock and is yet to release it. So the application just waits and waits.

        public void DoWorkRead(object threadName)
        {
            //Accquire Reader Lock.
            _rwLock.AcquireReaderLock(Timeout.Infinite);
            Console.WriteLine("Read start: Thread: " + threadName + " " + _value);
            //NEVER EVER DO THE BELOW. IT WILL CREATE A DEADLOCK
            _rwLock.AcquireWriterLock(Timeout.Infinite);
            Thread.Sleep(10);
            Console.WriteLine("Read start: Thread: " + threadName + " " + _value);
            _rwLock.ReleaseReaderLock();
            //Release Lock
        }

Keeping all these issues in mind, Microsoft introduced a new class – the ReaderWriterLockSlim class from .NET 3.0 onwards, while leaving the old one in there as well, for backwards compatibility. This class placed Lock recursion in the hands of the developers by giving an enum that could be set during object recursion. With recursion out of the way, performance is dramatically better and comparable to the Monitor class. It also took care of the deadlock situation above. As a conclusion, it is always better to avoid the ReaderWriterLock class and use the slim implementation instead. If you are on .NET 2.0, then since that option is not open to you, its better to look at some other synchronization technique.

Since the main thread is also the UI thread, the UI stops responding whenever its waiting for the function to return, making the user experience very bad. To avoid this, any time consuming operation should be executed on its own thread rather than the main thread. Lets see a simple example of a method created on another thread.

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        static void Main(string[] args){
            ThreadingApp _testObj = new ThreadingApp();
 
            //Declaring Two Objects for calling the parameterless and parametrized method
            Thread _tObj1 = new Thread(new ParameterizedThreadStart(_testObj.DoSomeWork));
            Thread _tObj2 = new Thread(new ThreadStart(_testObj.DoWork));
 
            //Calling the overloaded method
            _tObj1.Start("CustomParameter");
            //Calling the parameterless method
            _tObj2.Start();
 
        }
 
    class ThreadingApp{
        // Parameterless method executed on anothed
        public void DoWork(){
            Console.WriteLine("Executed On another thread");
        }
 
        public void DoSomeWork(object _name){
            Console.WriteLine("Executed on another thread. Paramter: " + _name);
        }
    }

The ability to pass parameters to methods on other threads is new in .NET 2.0. The delegate introduced for this is the ParametrizedThreadStart delegate which takes in an object parameter. Since its an object type, pretty much anything can be passed to the method. So creating new threads is pretty simple. But a word of caution here – Threading unless used carefully can introduce very hard to detect bugs in your system.

Multiple threads don’t cause any problem till the time each thread runs its own context not depending on shared resources or variables. The issues start when threads start to modify each others variables and access each others resources. Lets see a small example where multiple threads accessing the same variable can lead to unpredictable scenarios. In the below code two variables increment a class level variable and print the values before and after the incrementing. As you can see in the output below, it leads to a chaotic scenario where threads are misreading values and coming in each others way to access the variable.

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    class Program
    {
    int _value = 0;
    static void Main(string[] args){
        Program _prgm = new Program();
        for (int i = 0; i > 5; i++)
        {
            Thread _t1Obj = new Thread(new ThreadStart(_prgm.DoWork1));
            Thread _t2Obj = new Thread(new ThreadStart(_prgm.DoWork2));
 
            _t1Obj.Start();
            _t2Obj.Start();
        }
 
    }
 
    public void DoWork1()
    {
        Console.WriteLine("Thread1 start: " + _value);
        _value++;
        //Introduced a small sleep to bring some entropy in the system
        Thread.Sleep(10);
        Console.WriteLine("Thread1 End: " + _value);
    }
 
    public void DoWork2()
    {
        Console.WriteLine("Thread2 start: " + _value);
        _value++;
        Console.WriteLine("Thread2 End: " + _value);
    }
 
    }

When we see the output, it looks pretty haphazard. Its easy to see the threads are confused about execution and misreading the value of the variable.

The Monitor class can be used to synchronize threads in .NET. How it works is that it puts a lock on the currently executing code making all other threads wait before they can access the variables that current method has locked. The Monitor has two main static methods Monitor.Enter and Monitor.Exit for entering the lock and exiting from it. Apart from this there is also the Monitor.TryEnter which tries to gain ownership of the code block. If its not able to it returns false. This is very important since calling the Monitor.Exit for a block you dont have ownership of, would raise a SynchronizationLockException. However making sure to call Enter and Exit every time would get cumbersome for a developer and there are chances it might be forgotten. Here is where C# comes into rescue with the lock keyword. Enclosing the code within the lock block automatically does all the steps which are mentioned above.

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    static readonly object _lockObj = new object();
    public void DoWork1()
    {
        lock (_lockObj)
        {
            Console.WriteLine("Thread1 start: " + _value);
            _value++;
            //Introduced a small sleep to bring some entropy in the system
            Thread.Sleep(10);
            Console.WriteLine("Thread1 End: " + _value);
        }
    }

Enclosing the code within the lock block brings order back to the method execution and we can observe that that each thread waits for the other to complete before attempting to modify the variable. Here is the IL for the above method.

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.method public hidebysig instance void  DoWork1() cil managed
{
 
  IL_0000:  ldsfld     object ThreadingApp.Program::_lockObj
  IL_0005:  dup
  IL_0007:  call       void [mscorlib]System.Threading.Monitor::Enter(object)
  .try
  {
    //Our method logic removed for brevity
  }  // end .try
  finally
  {
    IL_0057:  ldloc.0
    IL_0058:  call       void [mscorlib]System.Threading.Monitor::Exit(object)
    IL_005d:  endfinally
  }  // end handler
  IL_005e:  ret
} // end of method Program::DoWork1

A very important point stressed time and again would be to make sure not to expose the locking object outside the class. If this is done, anyone can use the object to lock your methods and not release them while your application threads remain indefinitely waiting for the lock to be freed.

There are many other techniques for thread synchronization in .NET. I will be covering them in upcoming posts.