On Authentication Timeout - Save Web Form Contents

10. June 2010

I was working on a project recently where I had to figure out how to persist user data in a web form after their Forms Authentication session as expired.

So I was thinking of ways to do this as I searched the know all Google. Walla!  Someone's already had to do this, why invent the wheel.  Found a post by Peter Ravnholt, on the MSDN site. http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/formsaver 

He Implements the HttpModule and handles saving the form state on FormAuthentication events. Really neat idea.  I tried is code, now keep in mind I'm doing this for Visual Basic, so I manually converted it all, but I couldn't get it work. Maybe I was converting something wrong.  I was getting "The state information is invalid for this page and might be corrupted."

Well RichardDeeming in the discussions for this post had an updated version that worked a little better then the original. http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/formsaver/Thread/View.aspx?ThreadId=88  Thanks to his code, I converted it to VB.Net and walla!  My pages now handle web content.

I'll post the converted VB version below. 

Thanks Richard and Peter if you ever find your names on here via Google :p

This is my VB version o the FormSaverHttpModule with Richard's changes.  I've modified it a bit since but this works.

Imports Microsoft.VisualBasic
Imports System.Security.Principal
Imports System.IO
Imports System.Web.Configuration
Imports System.Security.Permissions
 
''' <summary>
''' FormSaverModule Version 1.0
''' -Mastro:  Not my orignal idea, found this in use out on MSDN site. I manually converted it to VB
''' as the orignaly is in C#. No comments, so I'll add my own.
''' 
''' This class will handle every new request coming in and PostMapRequest. 
''' If user has Forms Authentication has timed out, class will save the state of the form into cache
''' with a Unique ID of that state to the user's cookie. 
''' 
''' When user logs back in, this class will check if they have the cookie set, if so it will then 
''' load that state back to their page and load the webcontent by generating a runtime transit page that
''' post submits the data back to the destination page and pre-fills in the values.
''' </summary>
''' <remarks></remarks>
<AspNetHostingPermission(SecurityAction.LinkDemand, Level:=System.Web.AspNetHostingPermissionLevel.Minimal)> _
<AspNetHostingPermission(SecurityAction.InheritanceDemand, Level:=AspNetHostingPermissionLevel.Minimal)> _
Public Class FormSaverHTTPModule
    Implements IHttpModule
 
#Region "Private Variables"
 
    Private Const CookieName As String = "#FormStateSaverModule/FormRestoreId"
    Private Shared ReadOnly StateCacheDuration As TimeSpan = TimeSpan.FromMinutes(40)
    Private Shared ReadOnly _AnonymousUser As IPrincipal = New GenericPrincipal(New GenericIdentity(String.Empty), Nothing)
    Private _FormsCookieName As String
    Private _LoginUrl As String
 
#End Region
 
    ''' <summary>
    ''' This class is required from the IHttpModule contract
    ''' </summary>
    ''' <remarks></remarks>
    Public Sub Dispose() Implements System.Web.IHttpModule.Dispose
 
    End Sub
 
    ''' <summary>
    ''' This is the first method to run on application start
    ''' </summary>
    ''' <param name="Context"></param>
    ''' <remarks></remarks>
    Public Sub IHttpModuleInit(ByVal Context As HttpApplication) Implements System.Web.IHttpModule.Init
        Me.Init(Context) 'Lets call our Init and send the Application state along with it
    End Sub
 
    ''' <summary>
    ''' We call this Init Method from the IHttpModuleInit and send it the Application State
    ''' and then turn on Events to capture
    ''' </summary>
    ''' <param name="Context">Hold's the Application State</param>
    ''' <remarks></remarks>
    Protected Overridable Sub Init(ByVal Context As HttpApplication)
        If Context Is Nothing Then
            Throw New ArgumentNullException("context")
        End If
 
        _LoginUrl = FormsAuthentication.LoginUrl 'Store the Login page name
        _FormsCookieName = FormsAuthentication.FormsCookieName 'Store the Forms Authentication Cookie Name
 
        If Not String.IsNullOrEmpty(_LoginUrl) Then 'If LoginUrl Exists....
            Dim index As Integer = _LoginUrl.IndexOf("?"c) 'Search for a ? for query string
            If -1 <> index Then 'If ? was found....
                _LoginUrl = _LoginUrl.Substring(0, index) 'Grab the first part of the URL before the ? and set LoginUrl
            End If
        End If
 
        'Add Handlers that now raise events on every Application BeginRequest... and Application PostMapRequest
        AddHandler Context.BeginRequest, New EventHandler(AddressOf Application_BeginRequest)
        AddHandler Context.PostMapRequestHandler, New EventHandler(AddressOf Application_PostMapRequestHandler)
 
    End Sub
 
    ''' <summary>
    ''' A Delegate receiver method for the Application.BeginRequest Event
    ''' </summary>
    ''' <param name="sender">Object</param>
    ''' <param name="e">EventArgs</param>
    ''' <remarks></remarks>
    Protected Overridable Sub Application_BeginRequest(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As EventArgs)
        Dim application As HttpApplication = DirectCast(sender, HttpApplication)
        Dim context As HttpContext = application.Context
 
        Dim cookie As HttpCookie = context.Request.Cookies(CookieName)
        If cookie IsNot Nothing AndAlso Not String.IsNullOrEmpty(cookie.Value) Then 'If Cookie exist and has value....
            Dim state As FormState = FormState.Load(cookie.Value) 'Lets try and load the state via the CookieID
 
            'Lets see if the State is valid now that it's loaded and it's originaly location matches where the user is trying to go
            If state IsNot Nothing AndAlso String.Equals(state.Path, context.Request.Path, StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase) Then
                FormState.SetCurrent(context, state) 'State is valid and it's for this request so lets create the object of the state to be used later by Application_PostMapRequestHandler
                Return
            End If
        End If
 
        If IsPost(context) AndAlso Not IsAccessingLoginPage(context, _LoginUrl) Then 'If user is doing a Post back and it's not to the login page...
            cookie = context.Request.Cookies(_FormsCookieName) 'Load Authenication cookie
            If cookie IsNot Nothing Then
                Try
                    Dim ticket As FormsAuthenticationTicket = FormsAuthentication.Decrypt(cookie.Value)
                    If ticket IsNot Nothing AndAlso ticket.Expired AndAlso Not HasAnonymousAccess(context) Then 'If the user has expired.....
                        Dim state As FormState = FormState.Create(context) 'Store current state into cache
                        If state IsNot Nothing Then
                            cookie = New HttpCookie(CookieName, state.StateId) 'save cache ID into user's cookie
 
                            cookie.HttpOnly = True
                            context.Response.Cookies.Add(cookie)
                        End If
                    End If
                Catch generatedExceptionName As ArgumentException
                End Try
            End If
        End If
    End Sub
 
    Protected Overridable Sub Application_PostMapRequestHandler(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As EventArgs)
        Dim application As HttpApplication = DirectCast(sender, HttpApplication)
        Dim context As HttpContext = application.Context
 
        Dim state As FormState = FormState.GetCurrent(context) 'Get the context from the cache if it's there
        If state IsNot Nothing AndAlso state.Form IsNot Nothing AndAlso 0 <> state.Form.Count Then 'if the context was there....
            context.Handler = New FormStateSaverHandler(state) 'Then load the runtime transit page and post it back to destination page
        End If
    End Sub
 
    ''' <summary>
    ''' Returns Boolean if request is a Post request to page.
    ''' </summary>
    ''' <returns></returns>
    ''' <remarks></remarks>
    Protected Shared Function IsPost(ByVal context As HttpContext) As Boolean
        Return String.Equals("POST", context.Request.HttpMethod, StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase)
    End Function
 
    ''' <summary>
    ''' Return Boolean after it checks to see if content matches the LoginURL. Basically is the user 
    ''' going to the login page.
    ''' </summary>
    ''' <returns></returns>
    ''' <remarks></remarks>
    Protected Shared Function IsAccessingLoginPage(ByVal context As HttpContext, ByVal loginUrl As String) As Boolean
        Dim result As Boolean = False
        If Not String.IsNullOrEmpty(loginUrl) Then
            If String.Equals(context.Request.Path, loginUrl, StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase) Then
                result = True
            ElseIf -1 <> loginUrl.IndexOf("%"c) Then
                Dim temp As String = HttpUtility.UrlDecode(loginUrl)
                If String.Equals(context.Request.Path, temp, StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase) Then
                    result = True
                Else
                    temp = HttpUtility.UrlDecode(loginUrl, context.Request.ContentEncoding)
                    If String.Equals(context.Request.Path, temp, StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase) Then
                        result = True
                    End If
                End If
            End If
        End If
 
        Return result
    End Function
 
    ''' <summary>
    ''' Returns Boolean if the destination URL in question has anonymouse access.
    ''' </summary>
    ''' <param name="context"></param>
    ''' <returns></returns>
    ''' <remarks></remarks>
    Protected Shared Function HasAnonymousAccess(ByVal context As HttpContext) As Boolean
        Return UrlAuthorizationModule.CheckUrlAccessForPrincipal(context.Request.Path, _AnonymousUser, context.Request.HttpMethod)
    End Function
 
    ''' <summary>
    ''' This class becomes the actual FormState the user was on and is Serialzied and then saved 
    ''' </summary>
    ''' <remarks></remarks>
    <Serializable()> _
    Protected NotInheritable Class FormState
        Private Shared ReadOnly FormRestoreKey As New Object()
 
        Private ReadOnly _id As String
        Private ReadOnly _path As String
        Private ReadOnly _form As NameValueCollection
 
        Private Sub New(ByVal id As String, ByVal path As String, ByVal form As NameValueCollection)
            _id = id
            _path = path
            _form = form
        End Sub
 
        Public ReadOnly Property StateId() As String
            Get
                Return _id
            End Get
        End Property
 
        Public ReadOnly Property Path() As String
            Get
                Return _path
            End Get
        End Property
 
        Public ReadOnly Property Form() As NameValueCollection
            Get
                Return _form
            End Get
        End Property
 
        ''' <summary>
        ''' Loads the state that was set by Setcurrent and tries to return it as a FormState object.
        ''' Returns nothing if it's invalid.
        ''' </summary>
        ''' <param name="context"></param>
        ''' <returns></returns>
        ''' <remarks></remarks>
        Public Shared Function GetCurrent(ByVal context As HttpContext) As FormState
            If context Is Nothing Then
                Return Nothing
            End If
            Return TryCast(context.Items(FormRestoreKey), FormState)
        End Function
 
        ''' <summary>
        ''' Takes the state sent and creates a valid formstate object
        ''' </summary>
        ''' <param name="context"></param>
        ''' <param name="state"></param>
        ''' <remarks></remarks>
        Public Shared Sub SetCurrent(ByVal context As HttpContext, ByVal state As FormState)
            If context IsNot Nothing Then
                context.Items(FormRestoreKey) = state
            End If
        End Sub
 
        ''' <summary>
        ''' Takes the Context of the current Request Form and stores it into Cache with a Unique ID
        ''' </summary>
        ''' <returns></returns>
        ''' <remarks></remarks>
        Public Shared Function Create(ByVal context As HttpContext) As FormState
            Dim result As FormState = Nothing
            If context IsNot Nothing AndAlso context.Request.Form IsNot Nothing AndAlso 0 <> context.Request.Form.Count Then
                Dim id As String = Guid.NewGuid().ToString()
                result = New FormState(id, context.Request.Path, context.Request.Form)
                HttpRuntime.Cache.Add("FormStateSaver_" + id, result, Nothing, Cache.NoAbsoluteExpiration, StateCacheDuration, CacheItemPriority.Normal, _
                Nothing)
            End If
            Return result
        End Function
 
        ''' <summary>
        ''' Loads the Context stored in Cache using the Unique ID
        ''' </summary>
        ''' <param name="id">Unique GUID</param>
        ''' <returns></returns>
        ''' <remarks></remarks>
        Public Shared Function Load(ByVal id As String) As FormState
            Dim result As FormState = Nothing
            If Not String.IsNullOrEmpty(id) Then
                result = TryCast(HttpRuntime.Cache("FormStateSaver_" + id), FormState)
            End If
 
            Return result
        End Function
 
        ''' <summary>
        ''' Deletes the stored Context from Cache
        ''' </summary>
        ''' <remarks></remarks>
        Public Sub Delete()
            HttpRuntime.Cache.Remove("FormStateSaver_" + _id)
        End Sub
    End Class
 
    ''' <summary>
    ''' This class is responsible for generating the Transit page on the fly. 
    ''' Basically a page that loads all the values then submits them back to the destination
    ''' page with the previous viewstate settings so that the form reloads the controls to where
    ''' they were prior.
    ''' 
    ''' This page quickly shows when the user is logging back in and loading a previous web form.
    ''' 
    ''' </summary>
    ''' <remarks></remarks>
    Protected Class FormStateSaverHandler
        Implements IHttpHandler
 
        Private ReadOnly _state As FormState
 
        Public Sub New(ByVal state As FormState)
            _state = state
        End Sub
 
        Protected ReadOnly Property FormState() As FormState
            Get
                Return _state
            End Get
        End Property
 
        Public ReadOnly Property IsReusable() As Boolean Implements IHttpHandler.IsReusable
            Get
                Return False
            End Get
        End Property
 
        Public Overridable Sub ProcessRequest(ByVal context As HttpContext) Implements System.Web.IHttpHandler.ProcessRequest
            Try
                Using writer As HtmlTextWriter = CreateHtmlTextWriter(context.Response.Output, context.Request.Browser)
                    Me.Render(writer)
                End Using
            Finally
                _state.Delete()
            End Try
        End Sub
 
        Protected Overridable Sub Render(ByVal writer As HtmlTextWriter)
            writer.RenderBeginTag(HtmlTextWriterTag.Html)
            writer.RenderBeginTag(HtmlTextWriterTag.Head)
            writer.RenderBeginTag(HtmlTextWriterTag.Title)
            writer.Write("Restoring form")
            writer.RenderEndTag()
            ' TITLE 
            writer.RenderEndTag()
            ' HEAD 
            writer.AddAttribute("onload", "document.forms[0].submit();")
            writer.RenderBeginTag(HtmlTextWriterTag.Body)
 
            writer.AddAttribute("method", "post")
            writer.RenderBeginTag(HtmlTextWriterTag.Form)
 
            Dim form As NameValueCollection = Me.FormState.Form
            For Each name As String In form.Keys
                RenderHiddenField(writer, name, form(name))
            Next
 
            'writer.AddAttribute(HtmlTextWriterAttribute.Align, "center")
            'writer.RenderBeginTag(HtmlTextWriterTag.P)
            'writer.Write("You should be redirected in a moment.")
            'writer.WriteFullBeginTag("br")
            'writer.Write("If nothing happens, please click ")
            'RenderSubmitButton(writer, "Submit")
            'writer.RenderEndTag()
            ' P 
            writer.RenderEndTag()
            ' FORM 
            writer.RenderEndTag()
            ' BODY 
            writer.RenderEndTag()
            ' HTML 
        End Sub
 
        Protected Shared Sub RenderHiddenField(ByVal writer As HtmlTextWriter, ByVal name As String, ByVal value As String)
            writer.AddAttribute(HtmlTextWriterAttribute.Type, "hidden")
            writer.AddAttribute(HtmlTextWriterAttribute.Name, name)
            writer.AddAttribute(HtmlTextWriterAttribute.Value, value)
            writer.RenderBeginTag(HtmlTextWriterTag.Input)
            writer.RenderEndTag()
            ' INPUT 
        End Sub
 
        Protected Shared Sub RenderSubmitButton(ByVal writer As HtmlTextWriter, ByVal text As String)
            writer.AddAttribute(HtmlTextWriterAttribute.Type, "submit")
            writer.AddAttribute(HtmlTextWriterAttribute.Value, text)
            writer.RenderBeginTag(HtmlTextWriterTag.Input)
            writer.RenderEndTag()
            ' INPUT 
        End Sub
 
        Protected Shared Function CreateHtmlTextWriter(ByVal writer As TextWriter, ByVal browser As HttpCapabilitiesBase) As HtmlTextWriter
            If browser Is Nothing Then
                Return New HtmlTextWriter(writer)
            End If
            Return browser.CreateHtmlTextWriter(writer)
        End Function
 
 
    End Class
 
 
End Class
 
 
 
 
 

 

Update: 6/10/10

Here is the original post, and it was moved to codeplex here.  Thanks Peter Revnholt!

.Net Framework, ASP.NET, Programming, VB.NET , , , , , , , ,

Casting Types in VB.Net and More

2. December 2009

Source: Cheat Sheet - Casting in VB.NET and C#

Great little find, and since I’m a VB.Net whore, I’ll just post up the VB.Net version :)

Casting in VB.NET

  1. By default in VB, casting is automatically done for you when you assign objects to variables. The objects are then automatically casted to the variables' type.

    This behavior can be influenced by an option line on top of your code file:

    Option Strict On
    Option Strict Off

    When on, casting is strict and not automatic.

  2. Explicit casting can be done with the cast operator CType() or DirectCast():

    textbox = CType(obj, TextBox)
    textbox = DirectCast(obj, TextBox)


    The difference between the two keywords is that CType succeeds as long as there is a valid conversion defined between the expression and the type, whereas DirectCast requires the run-time type of an object variable to be the same as the specified type. If the specified type and the run-time type of the expression are the same, however, the run-time performance of DirectCast is better than that of CType. DirectCast throws an InvalidCastException error if the argument types do not match.

  3. Testing if an object is of a particular type, can be done with the TypeOf...Is operator:

    If TypeOf obj Is TextBox Then...
  4. Obtaining a System.Type object for a given type can be done with the GetType operator:

    Dim t As System.Type
    t = GetType(String)
    MessageBox.Show(t.FullName)
  5. Obtaining a System.Type object for a given object can be done with the GetType method:

    Dim t as System.Type
    t = obj.GetType()
    MessageBox.Show(t.FullName)

Now to build on and add one more of my own…

Get the type based on an arbitrary string.

System.Type.GetType("System.String")

Problem with this though is you can not use it to cast using CType or DirectCast. Looking at the CType Function..

typename - Any expression that is legal within an As clause in a Dim statement, that is, the name of any data type, object, structure, class, or interface.

You can only use types that are compiled and can’t use types that show up at runtime. So trying to use CType(obj, System.Type.GetType(“System.String”)) will only get you an error.  Array bounds cannot appear in type specifiers.

How to get around this? I have no freaking idea, yet. I’m think I might could create a custom type of my own and do something so that it converts to the proper method but for now I’ll just catch a few ArgumentExceptions and try different cast types then.

Code Snippets, VB.NET, Programming, .Net Framework , , , ,

C# - Singleton Pattern vs. Static Classes

15. October 2009

Link sent to me from Justin.. as we’ve been discussing using Singleton’s in Win Services for the previous post I talked about. I’ll convert to VB later.

Original Article: http://dotnet.dzone.com/news/c-singleton-pattern-vs-static-

By Sam Allen

Problem: Store some common data in a singleton or static class about your program in an object array, which you store in a class. It saves state between usages and stores some caches, and must be initialized only once and shared in many code locations. Making a new object each time would be expensive.

Solution

This article covers the differences between the singleton design pattern and the static keyword on C# classes. Static classes and singletons both provide sharing of redundant objects in memory, but they are very different in usage and implementation.

Introducing the Singleton Pattern

Our ideal solution is called the singleton design pattern. Here is an implementation of a singleton that I will use. As you know, a singleton is a single-instance object. It is highly efficient and very graceful. Singletons have a static property that you must access to get the object reference.

view source

print?

01./// <summary>

02./// Sample singleton object.

03./// </summary>

04.public sealed class SiteStructure

05.{

06. /// <summary>

07. /// Possible an expensive resource we need to only store in one place.

08. /// </summary>

09. object[] _data = new object[10];

10. /// <summary>

11. /// Allocate ourselves. We have a private constructor, so no one else can.

12. /// </summary>

13. static readonly SiteStructure _instance = new SiteStructure();

14. /// <summary>

15. /// Access SiteStructure.Instance to get the singleton object.

16. /// Then call methods on that instance.

17. /// </summary>

18. public static SiteStructure Instance

19. {

20. get { return _instance; }

21. }

22. /// <summary>

23. /// This is a private constructor, meaning no outsides have access.

24. /// </summary>

25. private SiteStructure()

26. {

27. // Initialize members, etc. here.

28. }

29.}

Static Class Example

In the following example, look carefully at how the static keyword is used on the class and constructor. Static classes may be simpler, but the singleton example has many important advantages, which I will elaborate on after this code block.

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01./// <summary>

02./// Static class example. Pay heed to the static keywords.

03./// </summary>

04.static public class SiteStatic

05.{

06. /// <summary>

07. /// The data must be a static member in this example.

08. /// </summary>

09. static object[] _data = new object[10];

10. /// <summary>

11. /// C# doesn't define when this constructor is run, but it will

12. /// be run right before it is used most likely.

13. /// </summary>

14. static SiteStatic()

15. {

16. // Initialize all of our static members.

17. }

18.}

You can use static classes to store single-instance, global data. The class will be initialized at any time, but it is my experience that it is initialized lazily, meaning at the last possible moment. However, you lose control over the exact behavior of the class by using a static class.

Singleton Advantages

Singletons preserve the conventional class approach, and don't require that you use the static keyword everywhere. They may be more demanding to implement at first, but will greatly simplify the architecture of your program. Unlike static classes, we can use singletons as parameters or objects.

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1.// We want to call a function with this structure as an object.

2.// Get a reference from the Instance property on the singleton.

3.{

4. SiteStructure site = SiteStructure.Instance;

5. OtherFunction(site); // Use singleton as parameter.

6.}

Interface Inheritance

In C#, an interface is a contract, and objects that have an interface must meet all of the requirements of that interface. Usually, the requirements of the interface are a subset of the object in question. Here is how we can use a singleton with an interface, which in the example is called ISiteInterface.

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print?

01./// <summary>

02./// Stores signatures of various important methods related to the site.

03./// </summary>

04.public interface ISiteInterface

05.{

06.};

07./// <summary>

08./// Skeleton of the singleton that inherits the interface.

09./// </summary>

10.class SiteStructure : ISiteInterface

11.{

12. // Implements all ISiteInterface methods.

13. // [omitted]

14.}

15./// <summary>

16./// Here is an example class where we use a singleton with the interface.

17./// </summary>

18.class TestClass

19.{

20. /// <summary>

21. /// Sample.

22. /// </summary>

23. public TestClass()

24. {

25. // Send singleton object to any function that can take its interface.

26. SiteStructure site = SiteStructure.Instance;

27. CustomMethod((ISiteInterface)site);

28. }

29. /// <summary>

30. /// Receives a singleton that adheres to the ISiteInterface interface.

31. /// </summary>

32. private void CustomMethod(ISiteInterface interfaceObject)

33. {

34. // Use the singleton by its interface.

35. }

36.}

Now we can reuse our singleton for any of the implementations of interface-conforming objects. There may be 1, 2, or 10. We don't need to rewrite anything over and over again. We store state more conventionally, use objects by their interfaces, and can use traditional object-oriented programming best practices.

Conclusion

Here we can reuse code and control object state much easier. This allows you greatly improved code-sharing, and a far cleaner body of code. With less code, your programs will usually have fewer bugs and will be easier to maintain. One good book about this topic is called C# Design Patterns and is written by Judith Bishop.

C#, .Net Framework, Programming , ,

.Net – Improve garbage collection and performance

15. October 2009

My friend Pasha, found a great article by QuestPond over at DotNetFunda that covers the theory and best practices of proper .Net garbage collection.

-----------------

Ask any developer which is the best place in a .NET class to clean unmanaged resources?, 70% of them will say the destructor. Although it looks the most promising place for cleanup it has a huge impact on performance and memory consumption. Writing clean up code in the destructor leads to double GC visits and thus affecting the performance multifold times.

In order to validate the same we will first start with bit of theory and then we will actually see how GC algorithm performance is impacted using destructor. So we will first understand the concept of generations and then we will see the finalize dispose pattern.

Is this Article worth reading ahead?

With this article you will understand how performance of GC algorithm can be improved using finalize dispose pattern. Below figure shows the comparison of what we will be achieving after this article.

Introduction and Goal

Ask any developer which is the best place in a .NET class to clean unmanaged resources?, 70% of them will say the destructor. Although it looks the most promising place for cleanup it has a huge impact on performance and memory consumption. Writing clean up code in the destructor leads to double GC visits and thus affecting the performance multifold times.
In order to validate the same we will first start with bit of theory and then we will actually see how GC algorithm performance is impacted using destructor. So we will first understand the concept of generations and then we will see the finalize dispose pattern.
I am sure this article will change your thought process regarding destructor, dispose and finalize.
Please feel free to download my free 500 question and answer eBook which covers .NET , ASP.NET , SQL Server , WCF , WPF , WWF@ http://www.questpond.com .

Assumptions

This article uses CLR profiler to profile how GC works. In case you are new to CLR profiler please do read net-best-practice-no-1-detecting-high-memory-consuming-functions-in-net-code   before you go ahead with this one.

Thanks Mr. Jeffrey Richter and Peter Sollich

Let’s start this article by first thanking Mr. Jeffery Richter for explaining in depth how garbage collection algorithm works. He has written two legendary articles about the way garbage collector work. I actually wanted to point to the MSDN magazine article written by Jeffery Richter but for some reason it’s not showing up in MSDN. So I am pointing to a different unofficial location, you can download both the articles from http://www.cs.inf.ethz.ch/ssw/files/GC_in_NET.pdf in a PDF format.
Also thanks to Mr. Peter Sollich who is the CLR Performance Architect to write such a detail help on CLR profiler. When you install the CLR profiler please do not forget to read the detail help document written by Peter Sollich. In this article we will use the CLR profiler to check how the garbage collector performance is affected using finalize.
Thanks a lot to you guys. There was no way I would have completed this article without reading articles written by you. Any time you guys pass by article please do comment on the same would love to hear from you guys.

Garbage collector – The unsung Hero

As said in the introduction writing clean up code in constructor leads to double GC visits. Many developers would like to just shrug off and say ‘Should we really worry about GC and what it does behind scenes?”. Yes, actually we should not worry about GC if you write your code properly. GC has the best algorithm to ensure that your application is not impacted. But many times the way you have written your code and assigned/cleaned memory resources in your code affects GC algorithm a lot. Sometimes this impact leads to bad performance of GC and hence bad performance for your application.
So let’s first understand what different tasks are performed by the garbage collector to allocate and clean up memory in an application.
Let’s say we have 3 classes where in class ‘A’ uses class ‘B’ and class ‘B’ uses class ‘C’.

When the first time your application starts predefined memory is allocated to the application. When the application creates these 3 objects they are assigned in the memory stack with a memory address. You can see in the below figure how the memory looks before the object creation and how it looks after object creation. In case there was an object D created it will be allocated from the address where Object C ends.

Internally GC maintains an object graph to know which objects are reachable. All objects belong to the main application root object. The root object also maintains which object is allocated on which memory address. In case an object is using other objects then that object also holds a memory address of the used object. For example in our case object A uses Object B. So object A stores the memory address of Object B.

Now let’s say Object ‘A’ is removed from memory. So the Object ‘A’ memory is assigned to Object ‘B’ and Object ‘B’ memory is assigned to object ‘C’. So the memory allocation internally looks something as shown below.

As the address pointers are updated GC also needs to ensure that his internal graph is updated with new memory addresses. So the object graph becomes something as shown below. Now that’s a bit of work for GC it needs to ensure that the object is removed from graph and the new addresses for the existing objects is updated throughout the object tree.

An application other than his own custom objects also has .NET objects which also form the part of the graph. The addresses to those objects also need to be updated. The number of objects of .NET runtime is very high. For instance below is the number of objects created for a simple console based hello world application. The numbers of objects are approximately in 1000’s. Updating pointers for each of these objects is a huge task.

Generation algorithm – Today, yesterday and day before yesterday

GC uses the concept of generations to improve performance. Concept of generation is based on the way human psychology handles tasks. Below are some points related to how tasks are handled by humans and how garbage collector algorithm works on the same lines:-
• If you decide some task today there is a high possibility of completion of those tasks.
• If some task is pending from yesterday then probably that task has gained a low priority and it can be delayed further.
• If some task is pending from day before yesterday then there is a huge probability that the task can be pending forever.
GC thinks in the same lines and has the below assumptions:-
• If the object is new then the life time of the object can be short.
• If an object is old then it can have a long life time.
So said and done GC supports three generations (Generation 0, Generation 1 and Generation 2).

Generation 0 has all the newly created objects. When the application creates objects they first come and fall in the Generation 0 bucket. A time comes when Generation 0 fills up so GC needs to run to free memory resources. So GC starts building the graph and eliminating any objects which are not used in application any more. In case GC is not able to eliminate an object from generation 0 it promotes it to generation 1. If in the coming iterations it’s not able to remove objects from generation 1 it’s promoted to generation 2. The maximum generation supported by .NET runtime is 2.
Below is a sample display of how generation objects are seen when you run CLR profiler. In case you are new to CLR profiler you can catch up the basics from net-best-practice-no-1-detecting-high-memory-consuming-functions-in-net-code

Ok, so how does generation help in optimization

As the objects are now contained in generations, GC can make a choice which generation objects he wants to clean. If you remember in the previous section we talked about the assumptions made by GC regarding object ages. GC assumes that all new objects have shorter life time. So in other words GC will mainly go through generation 0 objects more rather than going through all objects in all generations.
If clean up from generation 0 does not provide enough memory it will then move towards cleaning from generation 1 and so on. This algorithm improves GC performance to a huge extent.

Conclusion about generations

• Huge number of object in Gen 1 and 2 means memory utilization is not optimized.
• Larger the Gen 1 and Gen 2 regions GC algorithm will perform more worst.

Using finalize/destructor leads to more objects in Gen 1 and Gen 2

The C# compiler translates (renames) the destructor into Finalize. If you see the IL code using IDASM you can see that the destructor is renamed to finalize. So let’s try to understand why implementing destructor leads to more objects in gen 1 and gen 2 regions. Here’s how the process actually works:-
• When new objects are created they are moved to gen 0.
• When gen 0 fills out GC runs and tries to clear memory.
• If the objects do not have a destructor then it just cleans them up if they are not used.
• If the object has a finalize method it moves those objects to the finalization queue.
• If the objects are reachable it’s moved to the ‘Freachable’ queue. If the objects are unreachable the memory is reclaimed.
• GC work is finished for this iteration.
• Next time when GC again starts its goes to Freachable queue to check if the objects are not reachable. If the objects are not reachable from Freachable memory is claimed back.

In other words objects which have destructor can stay more time in memory.
Let’s try to see the same practically. Below is a simple class which has destructor.

class clsMyClass 
{ 
public clsMyClass()
{ 
}
~clsMyClass()
{
}
}

We will create 100 * 10000 objects and monitor the same using CLR profiler.

for (int i = 0; i < 100 * 10000; i++)
{
clsMyClass obj = new clsMyClass();
}

If you see the CLR profiler memory by address report you will see lot of objects in gen 1.

Now let’s remove the destructor and do the same exercise.

class clsMyClass 
{ 
public clsMyClass()
{ 
}
}

You can see the gen 0 has increased considerably while gen 1 and 2 are less in number.

If we see a one to one comparison it’s something as shown in the below figure.

Get rid of the destructor by using Dispose

We can get rid of the destructor by implementing our clean up code in the dispose method For that we need to implement the ‘IDisposable’ method , write our clean up code in this and call suppress finalize method as shown in the below code snippet. ‘SuppressFinalize’ dictates the GC to not call the finalize method. So the double GC call does not happen.

class clsMyClass : IDisposable
{ 
public clsMyClass()
{ 
}
~clsMyClass()
{
}

public void Dispose()
{
GC.SuppressFinalize(this);
} 
}

The client now needs to ensure that it calls the dispose method as shown below.

for (int i = 0; i < 100 ; i++)
{
clsMyClass obj = new clsMyClass();
obj.Dispose(); 
}

Below is the comparison of how Gen 0 and 1 distribution looks with constructor and with dispose. You can see there is marked improvement in gen 0 allocation which signifies good memory allocation.

What if developers forget to call Dispose?

It’s not a perfect world. We cannot ensure that the dispose method is always called from the client. So that’s where we can use Finalize / Dispose pattern as explained in the coming section.
There is a detailed implementation of this pattern at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/b1yfkh5e(VS.71).aspx.
Below is how the implementation of finalize / dispose pattern looks like.

class clsMyClass : IDisposable
{ 
public clsMyClass()
{

}

~clsMyClass()
{
// In case the client forgets to call
// Dispose , destructor will be invoked for
Dispose(false);
}
protected virtual void Dispose(bool disposing)
{
if (disposing)
{
// Free managed objects.
}
// Free unmanaged objects

}

public void Dispose()
{
Dispose(true);
// Ensure that the destructor is not called
GC.SuppressFinalize(this);
} 
}

Explanation of the code:-
• We have defined a method called as Dispose which takes a Boolean flag. This flag says is this method called from Dispose or from the destructor. If this is called from the ‘Dispose’ method then we can free both managed and unmanaged resources.
• If this method is called from the destructor then we will just free the unmanaged resources.
• In the dispose method we have suppressed the finalize and called the dispose with true.
• In the destructor we have called the dispose function with false value. In other words we assume that the GC will take care of managed resources and let’s take the destructor call to clean unmanaged resources.
In other words if the client does not call the dispose function the destructor will take care of cleaning the unmanaged resources.

Conclusion

• Do not have empty constructors in your classes.
• In case you need to clean up use finalize dispose pattern with ‘SupressFinalize’ method called.
• If there is a dispose method exposed by a class , ensure to call the same from your client code.
• Application should have more objects allocated in Gen 0 than Gen 1 and Gen 2. More objects in Gen 1 and 2 is sign of bad GC algorithm execution.

Source code

You can find the sample source code for the dispose pattern at from here

Programming, .Net Framework ,

Merging DataTables

25. March 2009
   1: Public Sub MergeDataTables(source as DataTable, destination As DataTable)   
   2:   destination.BeginLoadData()   
   3:  
   4:   For i As Integer=0 To source.Rows.Count - 1
   5:     destination.LoadDataRow(source.Rows(i).ItemArray,True)
   6:   Next
   7:  
   8:   destination.EndLoadData()  
   9: End Sub

Reference: by All-Star at http://forums.asp.net/p/1075389/1578419.aspx

Programming, VB.NET , ,

MCSD and MCAD Outdated? Is MCPD Widely Recognized?

7. February 2008

So I was tracing out my Certification Path from Microsoft to get my MCSD.  MCSD the mother ship of programming cert's, equivalent to MCSE right? Well that's what I thought.  However, as I started to dig down to what test were needed and the study material, I realized that it only covers .Net 1.0 and 1.1.  Hmm, strange, and MCAD? Same thing, .NET 1.0 and 1.1.  With .NET 2.0 out, that makes those cert's more outdated, but tell someone you are an MCSD and they recognize that certification as top of the line development. 

So then what? Well as I traced the paths of other cert's I realized that the new version is called MCPD - Enterprise Applications.  You actually need 5 test to get this certification which is the new top of the line in my eyes.  However, if you simply take 3 test you can get MCPD - Web Developer.  Notice the cert has the same name. Both are MCPD. So telling someone your an MCPD isn't enough.  There are three levels of MCPD. Web, Windows and Enterprise.  Each of these require a pre-req Cert called MCTS in Web, Windows or Distributed.

 

Anyway, you could still get your MCSD as that seems to be more widely known then MCPD.  Never even heard of it until I checked the site. So here's the tracks to take. 

 

  MS .NET Framework 2.0 - Application Development Foundation
Exam 70-536
 
MS .NET Framework 2.0 Web-Based Client Development
Exam 70-528
MS .NET Framework 2.0 Windows-Based Client Development
Exam 70-526
MS .NET Framework 2.0 Distributed Application Development
Exam 70-529
MCTS - Web Client Development Certification MCTS - Windows Client Development Certification MCTS - Distributed Application Development Certification
Designing and Developing Web-Based Applications Using MS .Net Framework Designing and Developing Windows-Based Applications Using MS .Net Framework Designing and Developing Enterprise Applications Using MS .Net Framework
MCPD - Web Application Certification MCPD - Windows Application Certification MCPD - Enterprise Application* Certification
*Note
- You can't get this certification until you've taken 70-528, 70-526, 70-529

 

After all this you could try for an MCA that's really the new mac-daddy certification.

 

Programming, Training & Learning, Microsoft , , ,