February 6th, 2010 by merickson
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I am having an issue where the MonoTouch libraries for the iPhone don’t seem to be able to parse a response from a WCF web service call that returns a complex type, in this case a collection of server objects. I’ve created a test client using plain old ASP.NET and made the call using the same proxy code generated using SLSvcUtil tool. The ASP.NET client has no issues making the same calls in the same order. What’s even more puzzling is that it does not seem like the method call from the iPhone is not even making it to the WCF web service.
UPDATE (2/6/10): Looks like it’s an issue with a DataContract containing a member that is a collection of itself.
namespace blah.Service.DataContracts
{
[CollectionDataContract(Namespace = "urn:blah.Services.DataContracts", ItemName = "TaskCollection")]
public partial class TaskCollection : System.Collections.Generic.List<Task>
{
}
}
namespace veSentry.Service.DataContracts
{
[DataContract(Namespace = "urn:veSentry.Services.DataContracts", Name = "Task")]
public partial class Task
{
[DataMember(Name = "Name", IsRequired = false, Order = 0)]
public string Name { get; set; }
[DataMember(Name="SubTasks", IsRequired = false, Order = 1)]
public TaskCollection SubTasks { get; set; }
}
}
Microsoft clients (ie. ASP.NET) did not have any issues de-serializing this.
So now I need to refactor the DataContracts and the Collections so there are no circular references so to speak.
January 26th, 2010 by merickson
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I was running into an issue that apparently had been taken care of since version 1.3 of MonoTouch so I tried to find out which version of MonoTouch I’m running with. To do this you have to run Terminal on your mac (it’s under applications/utilities) and then execute the following:
/Developer/MonoTouch/usr/bin/mtouch –version
Turns out I’m running 1.4.5.4799, so it’s on to more troubleshooting!
January 8th, 2010 by merickson
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Up until today, I’ve usually been very comfortable interviewing. I’ve been on several interviews and nailed a very good majority of them. I’ve been without work for the past 4 months and finally got an interview with a company with a progressive development team. The guys interviewing me had great questions, some of which stumped me, which to me is great….I love a challenge. Then came some canned “logic” questions. Now I pride myself on my knowledge of math, I love math and did very well in Math through college. The first question was if you have an item that costs $80 and it’s marked down 20%, how much is that item. I completely locked! You would have thought these guys had asked me to derive Cosine! Holy crap, why couldn’t I come up with the answer! So I had to pass, OMFG! Is this a sign of age? Did I over think it? Was it too simple? LOL! I dunno, but this one is gunna haunt me for a while. LOL!
November 29th, 2009 by merickson
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Novell has introduced a nice product that should boost development for the iPhone, not that there aren’t already too many apps for that! MonoTouch.Net is a development environment allowing C# developers to leverage their C# experience to write applications for the iPhone. Traditionally, iPhone apps are written using Objective-C. Objective-C is basically an object oriented C language with SmallTalk type messaging added in. When I was researching what to use, many people warned to stay clear of Objective-C to avoid frustration. Anyway, if you want to do iPhone development and know C#, but don’t know Objective-C, check out MonoTouch from Novell.
November 25th, 2009 by merickson
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There are a couple of new burger joints in our area so the wife and I decided to give them a try. The first was Smash Burger which is across from the Dayton Mall in Centerville. I like what they are trying to do with fresh ingredients and Angus meat, but MAN there was just too much grease for me. The buns became soggy from the grease and the onion rings were dripping with it. I know fat is flavor, but too much grease is disgusting! Both the wife and I had food aversions for the rest of the day. We’re definitely not going back there.
Then we tried Five Guys Burgers and Fries which is located near Sam’s club in Centerville. This is right next door to Rue Domaine, one of the restaurants on my list to try! There was nothing really exciting about this burger place, but they did not have the grease amounts of Smash Burger! They have free peanuts for while you wait, and everything is very low maintenance. Even for dine-in you get your food in a paper bag with the fries at the bottom. We’d probably go there again, but it’s not something we’ll crave.
November 25th, 2009 by merickson
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My current project requires a mobile aspect and given the nature of the project BlackBerry’s are the predominate mobile device. So I decided to try my hand at some BlackBerry development. This will be the first in a series of….ummm…..ok I have no idea how many of these I’ll do, but this won’t be the last!
Unlike .NET development, there are many IDE’s out there for you to do BlackBerry development. NetBeans, Eclipse etc… Based on my quick research I found the Eclipse IDE to be the most popular, plus BlackBerry has a plug-in for Eclipse. The BlackBerry developers site has a great document on how to set up your development environment. I pretty much followed that document except that newer versions have come out since that documents release.
I will give one WARNING, do NOT install the latest version of Eclipse, you MUST install the 3.4 version or the BlackBerry JDK will not install.
One of the main problems to overcome in my project is how to communicate with a web service. In my case the web service is a .NET web service. As of this posting the web service is implementing WCF, but if this poses issues I will change the implementation to ASPX. It looks like there are a couple of ways of approaching this, there is a library called KSoap where you can set up all the SOAP calls, or you can use the Java ME 3.0 wscompile.exe to generate stubs from the WSDL. I’m going to try the latter first.
Next posting should have some sample code for making the web service connection and making a few calls.
October 30th, 2009 by merickson
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Over the last couple of months I’ve been making a point to hit some local restaurants and try new foods. Since it’s been a while I will try to compile the list of places I’ve hit so far.
Flavors Eatery in Centerville, Ohio boasts a healthy menu. And by looking at the menu one would think just about everything lacks in flavor. I’ve been there three time so far, each time getting something different and each time it has had great flavor (hence the name I think!). Their sauce has an amazing flavor, and luckily they sell it by the bottle/jar. I’ll definitely be going back.
Meadowlark also in the Centerville/Miamisburg area has very explosive flavors using nothing but the freshest ingredients they can find! I had their pulled pork tacos and they were simply the best tacos I’ve ever had. A little on the pricey side, but in my opinion it’s worth it.
The Pub at the Greene in Beavercreek, Ohio is an authentic British Pub full of a wide variety of beers. A friend of mine tend to hit the Pub after a round of golf. I’ve had their Cuban sandwich, Shepherds Pie, and Fish and Chips. All of which were delicious. I’m going to try the Bangers and Mash next, see what that’s all about. Oh and for the guys out there (disclaimer: not trying to be sexist or anything!) the waitresses usually dress in the skimpiest of British skirts. All in all I like the atmosphere there, the beer is good and the food has been great so far.
Bahn Mai Thai Cafe in Centerville, Ohio has some decent non-buffet style Thai food. This is only the second or third time I’ve had Thai, so for me it’s difficult to compare to other Thai food. I’ve been here twice, the first time I got their Curry Special with chicken (extra spicy). I was sweating from every pore but it wasn’t a painful heat, it was just right. The second time my wife and I share two plates. I got the Thai Fried Rice with chicken and she got the Pad Thai. Both were good dishes, she didn’t care for the Pad-Thai too much. We want to try Thai9 sometime to compare.
Places on our list to try, C’est Tout Bistro in the Kettering/Oakwood area, and a New Orleans transplant Rue Dumaine
October 30th, 2009 by merickson
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I tried my hand at Windows CE a LONG time ago and really didn’t like it too much and I haven’t done anything mobile since. Until now that it is. I jumped face first into writing some mobile apps and either I’m older and wiser or I’m older and developing on these platforms has gotten easier. 
I have to thank a good friend of mine for tipping me off to something Novell recently put out called MonoTouch. Now I grew up writing ANSI-C so jumping into Objective-C wasn’t a big deal except for the fact I didn’t want to. So I looked into MonoTouch and find that it allows C# developers to write iPhone apps. VERY COOL! Obviously there are some drawbacks to this. If you’re trying to put the same app on multiple platforms, you really don’t want to re-write the app for each platform. Anyway, I’ll discuss that later. So I purchased a MacBook Pro laptop, became a “paying” iPhone developer.
October 30th, 2009 by merickson
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It’s been a while, but I’m back to putting bits of hopefully usefull information out there. At the very least it serves as a off-site backup if my memory fails me.
