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Code Review Vol. 7 - Automated JS Loading, Reformatting and Injecting with ActionScript 3.0

Based on my previous post I then abstracted a bit further. Instead of having the JavaScript embedded directly in the ActionScript I read it in, reformat it to fit my needs and then inject it into the page. I use the same instance for all file loadings so I don't store any of the values in class properties and I make my own asynchronous token pattern since it's pure AS3 and not Flex. I'll do a full walk through at a later date.

 public class JSInjector extends EventDispatcher
 {
  public function JSInjector()
  {}
  
  
  public function loadExternalJS(url:String):void
  {
   readFile(url);
  }
  
  
  public function readFile(url:String):void
  {
   var ldr:ASyncTokenURLLoader = new ASyncTokenURLLoader()
   ldr.ASyncToken = url    
   ldr.addEventListener(Event.COMPLETE , loadComplete,false,0,true);
   ldr.addEventListener(IOErrorEvent.IO_ERROR, jsloadError,false,0,true);
                        
    var urlReq:URLRequest = new URLRequest(url);
    ldr.load(urlReq)
  }
  
  private function loadComplete(event:Event):void
  {
   var e:AsynTokenEvent = new AsynTokenEvent(AsynTokenEvent.ASYNC_LOADED)
   e.token = event.target.ASyncToken
   dispatchEvent(e);
   formatJS(event.target.data)
  }
  
  private function jsloadError(e:IOErrorEvent):void
  {
   
  }
  
  private function formatJS(js:String):void
  {
   js = formatFunctionDefinitions(js);
   js = formatGlobalVarDefinition(js)
   js = js.split("var ").join(" ")
   injectJS(js)
  }
  
  private function formatGlobalVarDefinition(js:String):String
  {
   var gvarSCPattern:RegExp =/var\s\w+\s?[^=](?=;\r|\n)/gixm 
   js =  js.replace(gvarSCPattern, '$& = ""')
   return js
  }
  
  private function formatFunctionDefinitions(js:String):String
  {
   
   var functionPattern:RegExp =/function[\s?](\w+)/gim
   var newFunctionSource:String = js.replace(functionPattern, "$1 = function")
     return newFunctionSource 
  }
   
  private function injectJS(js:String):void
  {
   var externalJS:String = "function(){ "+js+" }";
   
   try{
    ExternalInterface.call(externalJS);
   }catch(e:Error){
    
   }
  }

Code Review Vol. 6 - Injecting JavaScript from ActionScript

A project that I have been working on at my new company - which I will post about soon, I've just been waiting to take pictures so I can document how incredible the facilities are - is an ActionScript video player that allows us to play videos from multiple sources, including videos from vendors who require us to load in their player for the actual video playback. The external players, of course, require JavaScript to interact with them. In order to make my player self contained I needed a way to source the JavaScript directly from the ActionScript - this player is to used in a multitude of applications and projects company-wide and I couldn't guarantee that each project would have these necessary .js files.

I found this excellent article by Peter McBride - JavaScript and VBScript Injection in ActionScript 3

I based my solution off of the methodology in the article and it worked beautifully.

I created several AS classes, each with static public functions that could be invoked to load their respective JS into memory. Like the article describes, anonymous functions assigned to variables.

import flash.external.ExternalInterface;
 
 public class JSONInjector
 {
  public function JSONInjector()
  {
  }
  
  static public  function registerPlayer():void
  {
   var js:XML = <script>
    <![CDATA[
   function()
   {         
   JSPLAYER = new Object()
   JSPLAYER.obs = {}; // Observers
   JSPLAYER.addListener = function( eventType, callbackObj, callbackFunc){ .. }


   Rsize = function(divID, height, width)
   {
    var element = document.getElementById(divID);
    element.style.height = height + "px";
    element.style.width = width + "px";
   }
   
   OpenNewWindow = function(URLtoOpen, windowName, windowFeatures)
   {
    var newWindow=window.open(URLtoOpen, windowName, windowFeatures); 
   }

...
}
 ]]>
   </script>
    try{
    ExternalInterface.call(js);
   }catch(e:Error){}
   
  }
   

Then within the init of the main application I simply called the functions:

 JSONInjector.registerContainer()
 JSONInjector.registerPlayer()

And within my external interface files, I simply called the JS objects through external interface:

       ExternalInterface.call("JSPLAYER.pause",true)

It's as simple as that, and now the need for any peripheral .js files has been negated and we have a self-contained solution for all video playback.

New lesson plans

Over the long weekend, in between visiting my grandparents and hitting the shore, I wrote a few new lesson plans. One of the classes I'm teaching this semester is the Scripting Languages class that I re-worked. Previously the class was a VBA class, but I determined that VBA was out of place with the rest of the curriculum. I re-wrote it to cover PHP and .Net. But lately I'd been feeling unsatisfied by the class. It seemed that there really wasn't enough time in one semester to really get as far into each topic as I would like; including both only really allowed a brief primer of each, but I wanted more. So last year I changed it up and concentrated on PHP and it's interaction with MySQL. The results of that were good - except it became almost indistinguishable from my Database Management and Scripting class - which is in PHP and MySQL.

So this year I was determined to give the class an identity of its own while continuing to focus on PHP. This past weekend I got around to it. I wrote up one lesson plan purely as a primer to web services, what they are, how they are used, with examples to several real world ones - specifically last.fm and amazon's. I then concentrate one week going over SOAP and PHP and then finally another week on REST and PHP. I need to create some labs around those topics, and then a multi-week assignment and that will take up the last quarter of the semester.

I'm pretty happy with the results. The next thing I want to do is add some more JavaScript lessons to my HTML/JavaScript class. The class was originally written assuming no prior experience with either technology, but the past few years I've seen the students are all at least comfortable with HTML, so I feel that I can de-emphasize that part and maybe write some more advance topics in JavaScript. I'd love to cover some JSON or Dojo. Hopefully I can work that in this semester as well.

Code Review Vol. 5 - DRM Profile Generator in VB.Net

Here is a follow up to the Windows Media Encoder and DRM script I posted previously. I mentioned in the article that I had to export a DRM profile from the DRM server, but I never really elaborated on that. Here is the script that I wrote that I ran on the server which generated the DRM profile.

Imports WMEncoderLib
Imports WMRMOBJSLib
Imports System.IO
Imports System.Xml

Public Class Generate
    Shared Sub Main()
        Dim profValue
        CreateProfile()
    End Sub

    Shared Sub CreateProfile()
        ' Create a WMEncoder object.
        Dim Encoder As WMEncoder
        Encoder = New WMEncoder

        ' Create an IWMDRMContentAuthor object.
        Dim DRM As IWMDRMContentAuthor
        DRM = Encoder.EncoderDRMContentAuthor

        ' Retrieve the collection of DRM profiles.
        Dim DRMProColl As IWMDRMProfileCollection
        Dim KeyObj = New WMRMKeys


        DRMProColl = DRM.DRMProfileCollection

        ' Declare variables. Specify the provider's Web site, and certificate and
        ' signing values. The other variables are returned.
        Dim sPublicKey As String
        Dim sWebURL As String
        Dim vProfileID As Object
        Dim vSeed As Object
        Dim sPrivateKey As String
        Dim sSignedPublicKey As String
        Dim sSigLSCert As String
        Dim sSigRootCert As String
        Dim sProfilePublicKey As String

        Dim sContentID As String

        sContentID = KeyObj.GenerateKeyID()

        KeyObj.GenerateSigningKeysEx(sPrivateKey, sPublicKey, sSignedPublicKey)

 sWebURL = "http://license3.musicchoice.com/XXXX.asp"

 sSigLSCert = KeyObj.GetCertificate("LSLicenseSigningCert")
 sSigRootCert = KeyObj.GetCertificate("LSRootCert")

 ' Create the DRM profile. The public key, DRM profile ID, and
 ' license key seed are returned.
 sProfilePublicKey = DRM.CreateDRMProfile(sWebURL, sPrivateKey, sSignedPublicKey, sSigLSCert, sSigRootCert, vProfileID, vSeed)

 ' Create an IWMDRMProfile object and retrieve a profile.
 Dim DRMPro As IWMDRMProfile
 DRMPro = DRM.GetDRMProfile(vProfileID)

 ' Set the rest of the properties for the DRM profile.
 DRMPro.Description = "DRM for MC portable content"
 DRMPro.LicenseAcquisitionURL = "http://license3.musicchoice.com/XXXX.asp"
 DRMPro.Name = "MC Portable DRM"
 DRMPro.V1LicenseAcquisitionURL = "http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=10141"

 ' Add the required individualization version as an attribute.
 Dim ProAttr As IWMDRMAttributes
 ProAttr = DRMPro.Attributes
 ProAttr.Add("SECURITYVERSION", "2.2")

 ProAttr.Add("ContentID", sContentID)

 Dim sDetails As String

 Dim oXMLWriter As New XmlTextWriter("C:\Inetpub\wwwroot\wm\IssuedDetails.xml", System.Text.Encoding.UTF8)

 oXMLWriter.WriteStartElement("Details")
 oXMLWriter.WriteStartElement("Detail")

 oXMLWriter.WriteAttributeString("ContentID", sContentID)
 oXMLWriter.WriteAttributeString("Seed", vSeed)
 oXMLWriter.WriteAttributeString("Key", sProfilePublicKey)
 oXMLWriter.WriteAttributeString("PrivateKey", sPrivateKey)


 oXMLWriter.WriteEndElement()
 oXMLWriter.WriteEndElement()

 oXMLWriter.Close()

 DRMPro.Update()

 DRM.ExportDRMProfile(DRMPro.ID, "password", "C:\Inetpub\wwwroot\wm\ExportProfile.drm")

    End Sub

    Shared Sub SaveInfo(ByVal nSeed As String, ByVal nPath As String)
        Dim objStreamWriter As StreamWriter
        objStreamWriter = New StreamWriter(nPath)
        objStreamWriter.WriteLine(nSeed)
        objStreamWriter.Close()


    End Sub

End Class

Code Review Vol. 4 - Perl Recursive Directory Stepper

Here is a recursive directory browser I wrote in Perl. I later decorated it a bit and used it for a project back at Toll Brothers. The goal was to create a shared directory for the IT Training department, where trainers for each department could store their respective white papers without the admin for IT Training having to manage those documents.

So this script simply reads the contents of the shared directory and recursively steps through all folders inside and lists out all documents.

#!/usr/bin/perl
 
use DBI;
use CGI;


my $q = new CGI;
my $logFile = "exceptions.txt";
my $showDir= "/EASYT/TRAINING/manuals";
print $q->header( "text/html" );
peruseDir($showDir, '0');

exit(0);

sub peruseDir{
 #create local copy of parameters 
 #second parameter of which is an indirect file handle
 #so we can keep making recursive calls to peruseDir
 #increment the indirect fhandle as we go so that we
 #arent stuck on the same file through each iteration
 local($currDir, $input) = @_;
 $input++;
 if($currDir !~ m/.*\..*/){
 opendir($input, $currDir) || die print "Can't open $currDir $!
\n\n"; 
 my @tempArr = grep { $_ ne '.' and $_ ne '..' } readdir($input); 
 foreach $myDir(@tempArr){
   if(-d $currDir."/".$myDir){
   #if its a directory make another recursive step
      print "$input $myDir
";
      peruseDir($currDir."/".$myDir, $input);
   }else{
   #otherwise its a file, show file
         my $linkDir = $currDir;
      $linkDir =~ s/\/EASYT\/TRAINING\///;
      print "$myDir
";
   }
 }
 closedir($input);
 }
}


sub logExceptions{
open(LOG, ">> $logFile") || die print "Couldn't write to log $!";
foreach $exception(@_){
 print LOG "$exception\n"; 
}
close(LOG);
}

Code Review Vol. 3.01 - WMEncode and DRM Walkthrough

Imports WMEncoderLib
Imports System.Windows.Forms
Imports System.IO


Module Module1
    Dim WithEvents Encoder As WMEncoder
    Dim glbQuitBool As Boolean = False
    Dim baseURL As String
    Dim DRMProfilePass As String = "XXX"
    Dim DRMProfile As String = "ExportProfile.drm"


    Sub Main()
       Init()
       SearchDir(baseURL)
    End Sub

    Sub Init()
      Dim sr As StreamReader = New StreamReader("baseLoc.ini")
      Dim line As String
      line = sr.ReadLine()
      sr.Close()
      baseURL = line
    End Sub

    Function DoEncode(ByVal sourceFile As String, ByVal outputFile As String, ByVal thisProfile As WMEncProfile2, ByVal fileType As String) As Boolean
 Try
     Encoder = New WMEncoder
     Dim SrcGrpColl As IWMEncSourceGroupCollection = Encoder.SourceGroupCollection
     Dim SrcGrp As IWMEncSourceGroup = SrcGrpColl.Add("SG_1")
     Dim newFile As IWMEncFile = Encoder.File

     If fileType = "video" Then
      Dim vidFile As IWMEncVideoSource = SrcGrp.AddSource(2)
      vidFile.SetInput(sourceFile)
     End If


     Dim audFile As IWMEncAudioSource = SrcGrp.AddSource(1)

Up until this point it's fairly standard WMEncoder SDK code - create a sourcegroup collection, create a sourcegroup, and add a video or audio source to the source group - but here we introduce the DRM element. It follows the same template

     Dim DRM As IWMDRMContentAuthor
     Dim DRMProColl As IWMDRMProfileCollection
     Dim tempDRMPro As IWMDRMProfile

     DRM = Encoder.EncoderDRMContentAuthor

     ' Retrieve the collection of DRM profiles.
     DRMProColl = DRM.DRMProfileCollection

     'First remove any DRM Profiles that may still linger 
     tempDRMPro = DRMProColl.Item(0)
     DRM.RemoveDRMProfile(tempDRMPro.ID)

     ' Import a DRM profile.
     DRM.ImportDRMProfile(DRMProfilePass, DRMProfile)
     
     DRMProColl = DRM.DRMProfileCollection
     Dim DRMPro As IWMDRMProfile
     DRMPro = DRMProColl.Item(0)

Essentially the DRM set up follows the same format as the Encoder, create a ProfileCollection, create a profile object which references the literal .drm profile file that I had exported from the DRM server. A DRMContentAuthor is pulled from the base WMEncoder object and everything is imported into that.

     ' Set the current DRM profile into the encoding session.
     Dim vKeyID As Object = "XXXXX
     DRM.SetSessionDRMProfile(DRMPro.ID, vKeyID)

     Dim newProfile As WMEncProfile2 = New WMEncProfile2
     audFile.SetInput(sourceFile)
     newFile.LocalFileName = outputFile
     newProfile = thisProfile

     ' newProfile.LoadFromFile(thisProfile)
     SrcGrp.Profile = newProfile
     Encoder.AutoStop = True
     Encoder.RemoteAdmin = True
     Encoder.PrepareToEncode(True)
     Encoder.Start()

     Dim x As Integer

For the longest time the code didn't work. Until I found out that I needed to put a slight wait before encoding. And even while its encoding down below inside the while loop it still needs a pause between each iteration to register events and change states when necessary.

     
     'HACK - needs this to actually work, bug in WM SDK
     For x = 0 To 30
       Application.DoEvents()
       x = x + 1
     Next


     While Encoder.RunState = WMENC_ENCODER_STATE.WMENC_ENCODER_RUNNING
       Dim temp = Encoder.RunState
       Dim y As Integer
       For y = 0 To 300
         y = y + 1
       Next
      Application.DoEvents()
     End While

     Encoder.Stop()
     Return True

 Catch ex As Exception
     Console.WriteLine(ex)
     Dim errFile As String = outputFile + ".error"
     File.Create(errFile)
     File.Delete(outputFile)
     Return False
 End Try

 Encoder = Nothing

    End Function

Here I grab the .drm file from the filesystem and load it into the WMEncProfile2 object.

    Function RetrieveProfile(ByVal nFile) As WMEncProfile2
 Try
     Dim BasicEdit As WMEncBasicEdit
     BasicEdit = New WMEncBasicEdit

     ' Specify the input, output, and configuration files.
     BasicEdit.MediaFile = nFile

     ' Retrieve the duration of the input file, in seconds.
     Dim lFileDur As Long
     lFileDur = BasicEdit.Duration / 1000

     ' Retrieve the profile used by the input file.
     Dim Pro As WMEncProfile2
     Pro = BasicEdit.Profile

     Return Pro
 Catch ex As Exception
     Console.WriteLine(ex)
 End Try


    End Function




And here is the engine - I essentially read the directory that was set aside as the publishing directory, where all raw files to be encoded and distributed were deposited, and encode and drm them.



 Sub SearchDir(ByVal dir)
    'Environment.CurrentDirectory
     Dim di As New DirectoryInfo(dir)
     ' Create an array representing the files in the current directory.
     Dim fi As FileInfo() = di.GetFiles()
     Dim tempFile As FileInfo
     For Each tempFile In fi
       Dim currentProfile As WMEncProfile2
       Dim currentSourceFile As String = baseURL + "\" + tempFile.Name
       Dim currentOutputFile As String = baseURL + "\DRMed\" + tempFile.Name  
       Dim currentFType As String
       Dim currentFTypeArr = Split(tempFile.Name, ".")
       If currentFTypeArr(1) = "wma" Then
          currentFType = "audio"
       ElseIf currentFTypeArr(1) = "wmv" Then
          currentFType = "video"
       End If

       currentProfile = RetrieveProfile(currentSourceFile)
       DoEncode(currentSourceFile, currentOutputFile, currentProfile, currentFType)
     Next tempFile

 End Sub


End Module

And that's it. Pretty straightforward, but by automating the encoding process and combining it with the DRMing process I was anble to integrate that into the automated workflow that I was building as the infrastructure to the overall Music Choice broadband product.