Sunday, August 26, 2012

Objective-C: Using Swapping to Mock Method Impelmentaion

Recently I read an interest blog on Unit test in Objective-C. A customized class is defined as method-swizzling helper. With this helper class, two methods in two difference class can be easily swapped at runtime. Therefore, by using this strategy, you can easily mock method calls avoid calling to database or making HTTP requests.

The key points for this helper class is based on Objective-C runtime functions.

class_getClassMethod(...)
method_exchangeImplementations(...)

The first method is used to get a class method as a data type Method. The original and swapped methods can be obtained by this function call. Then the second method is used to make an exchange of method implementation.

The blog has an example of this usage. It looks very easy to make a mock of a method implementation, which is a key practice in unit tests.

Reference


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Saturday, August 18, 2012

Scrollbar in Mac OS

Since 2007, my interest has been shift to iOS and Mac. One thing interesting UI is scroll bar. Apple has changed the behaviour of scrollbar in iOS. The purpose of this change is to utilize the maximum territory space in a scrollable view. The scrollbar will disappear after the view stays static within seconds. To bring it back, you can user touch gestures to swipe the view. All these are handled by OS. This has been in iOS devices for long time.

Since Lion OS,  Apple introduced the similar support in Mac OS. It is a very interesting design. Here is my understanding. The scrollbars (horizontal and vertical ones) are two UI components. When they are visible, they are UI elements with two main purpose:

  1. They provide visual vision of positions of its content, and
  2. They respond to user interaction, moving or scroll to a position when they are clicked or dragged.
When scrollbars are invisible, not only cannot users see content positions or if content is scrollable, users also have no way to interact with scrollbars. In iOS and Mac native applications, this normally does not present any issue. Users can user touch like swipe to check or move content positions.

However, I had a case recently that invisible scrollbars do cause me some trouble. I use web based RDC to connect to Windows. The RDC window was developed in Java, which is based on Java UI component. It does not support swipe gesture. When I saw a blue window, I had no way to scroll its contents even I knew the Start menu there on the bottom behind the window.


What I found there are two solutions to resolve the issue. The first method method is limit to Mountain Lion OS. Windows in ML are resizable by dragging any boarders. By dragging boarders, the scrollbar will appear for a short period of time. With that period, just quickly touch the scrollbar to make a move.


The second solution is to make scrollbars always visible. This can be set in System Preference | General.



Actually, the scrollbar-always-visible looks really ugly after I am getting used to the new-and-clearn views. However, this solution is the only solution when a window is not sizable.

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Saturday, August 11, 2012

DataGrid and Object Binding

Last week, one of my good friends asked me some questions about using DataGrid in Windows Form app. I looked at his codes. My first reaction, after I saw his codes, was to recommend him using object or class as data source binding instead of SQL or LINQ binding. I have experience using ASP.Net DataGrid with object binding in my previous work proejcts. I like this strategy very much. By using class as data source, as a developer, I have total control of how data being pumped into DataGrid. The comlicated SQL data structure should be left at SQL server side. The .Net project should forcuse on data and UI.

I quickedly showed him an example. First I added an example class MyData as a data object template. Then I added a DataGrid control on a Windows form. I used data source wizard from the form's DataGrid to set up its object data source to MyData. That was very quick and easy, based on my ASP.Net experience. However, the wizard does not provide a way to let me to tell which method the DataGrid to get data. It seems that DataGrid for Window Form is very different from the one for ASP.Net.

After that meeting, one day, I created an example project and tried to figure it out. Now I got the solution. Basically, in the case of Windows Form application, the data source for DataGrid should a be collection, not an object class. It is very different from the case of ASP.Net DataGrid. Since the data source is a collection, the data binding to DataGrid has to be manually added from DataGrid UI wizard. That's very easy to do: adding column header text and data binding property of DataPropertyName.

Here is the simple Windows Form application. I added a DataGrid to Form1.



DataGrid has a designer wizard. Leave the Data Source as default (none). Click on Add Column... to  define data grid columns. For this demo, add two columns: Name and Age, with column header names as: Column Name, Column Age.




In order to bind data to DataGrid, I need to edit columns from Edit Columns... in DataGrid designer. From there, change DataPropertyName to Name and Age.





With above DataGrid settings, I add a simple class of MyData, which will be used as objects to be displayed on the DataGrid with only two properties: Name and Age. I added another static method to return a collection of MyData objects. Here are my simplified codes:

Public Class MyData
 Private m_name As String
 Private m_age As Integer

 Public Sub New(ByVal nameValue As String, _
     ByVal ageValue As Integer)
   m_name = nameValue
   m_age = ageValue
 End Sub

 Public Property Name() As String
   Get
     Return m_name
   End Get
   Set (ByVal value As String)
     m_name = value
   End Set
 End Property

 Public Property Age() As Integer
   Get
     Return m_age
   End Get
   Set (ByVal value As Integer)
     m_age = value
   End Set
 End Property

 Public Shared Function GetObjects() As List(Of MyData)
  Dim list As List(Of MyData)
  list = New List(Of MyData)
  list.Add(New MyData("John", 12))
  list.Add(New MyData("Mike", 21))
  Return list
 End Function
End Class

In reality, this method (GetObjects) should contain codes to get data from database, or to call data bridge to get mapped data from database.

For the Form, the codes are very simple:

Public Class Form1
...
 Private Sub Button1_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, _
   ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles Button1.Click
   Me.DataGridView1.DataSource = MyData.GetObjects()
 End Sub
...
End Class

The basic concept of this strategy is to make the app as simple as possible: only two element in the Windows Form application:

  • a Form with DataGrid as UI; and 
  • MyData as data source template.

In this way, the focuse can be placed on UI, to provide convenient and nice format for client. The data bridge part, which provides data, can be placed in another class, library, or SQL server.

Here is the result of the application:

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Friday, August 03, 2012

Finished Watching WWDC2012 Videos

Today I finished watching all available WWDC 2012 videos. There 111 video talk shows. I downloaded them in SD format, which are good enough. To view outlines, I found that I can go to HD area to get PDF files. In this way, I can separate videos from PDF files.

WWDC 2012 shows in iTunes grouped in serials. I started from 400 serial, Developer Tools, with 14 shows. Then 700 serial, Core OS, has 14 shows. 200 serial has 42 shows, which is the largest group. Next is 500, with 24 shows in Graphics , Media and Games. 300 serial is for App services, with 11 shows. The last serial, 600, has 6 shows.

I took some notes in Chinese for the first two serials. I cannot keep taking notes for all of the shows.

Reference


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