xFx application and SDK refresh

[Stuart Booth <lists@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

An update of a few things. It's been ages since I updated these but
the code has moved on in various areas.

1) xAP Hub (GUI, Console, Windows Service)

These haven't changed in their outward functionality at all, but they
are built atop the very latest xFx platform so they inherit many bug
fixes along the way. Probably the most significant that I can recall
is proper handling of binary (!) values in xAP messages. These also
bind to the first network interface they find which seems to work
better in a multi-NIC scenario.

I've been hearing of a few 'stops sending on messages' problems with
these in the past day or two which I need to look into. If any of
these builds fixes that, it's by luck rather than intent!

<http://www.xapframework.net/modules.php?name=Downloads&d_op=viewdownload&cid=5>

2) xAP Message Viewer

This has had quite a few new things added, as well as benefiting from
changes to xFx itself ie binary message values in particular, and
binding to the first network interface. Probably the most useful new
feature is the ability to save/load message history traces. This
retains the timing/source information and is a neat way of passing
problem reports back and forth. The change history also includes:

* Enhanced general speed of xAP message processing.
* Message history bug fix to prevent it consuming vast amounts of memory
over long periods of time.
* Added VB.NET support in customisable column types.
* Added Edit/ForgetAllDevices menu option to drop all known devices from
the view effectively resetting everything.
* Added Load/Save option to save message history to a file for later
reopening.
* Added Pause/Resume option to stop xAP message reception when examining
message flow.
* Added message tagging option for File/Save.
* Fixed bug resending message when viewing them with the hex dump option
enabled. The hex dump portion is now ignored.
* Fixed bug in the forgetting of devices which wasn't removing the previous
subaddress device messages for that device node.
* Added subaddress node counting.

<http://www.xapframework.net/modules.php?name=Downloads&d_op=getit&lid=83>

3) xAP Send / xAP Message Flood

Again, built upon the latest xFx these allows binary (!) messages to
be sent successfully.

<http://www.xapframework.net/modules.php?name=Downloads&d_op=getit&lid=31>

4) xAPFramework.net (binaries, documentation, source code)

A complete refresh of all source code and binaries. The change history
for this is quite large:

* Added a new key to the config file, xAPCharacterEncoding, to allow the
encoding scheme for xAP messages to be adjusted.
* Made the xAPMessage class and many other core xAP message classes
serialisable. You can now serialise xAPMessage's to a Stream.
* Implemented the IComparable interface for xAPMessage - present on all
other classes but missing at the top level here.
* Fixed several bugs in xAPAddressBase that were unable to handle address
of "KCSoft.>" or just ">".
* Altered xAPHeaderSource address copy CTOR to take xAPAddressBase objects
instead of xAPHeaderSource objects.
* Internal changes to message parsing to support 'raw' data in message
preview panes.
* Fixed a bug reading in binary data using the ! separator. This would get
altered into an = separator in all applications.
* Changed the xAP News schema classes to use class Uri rather than Url.
* Added a Source property to xAPPluginModuleBase to ease access to the
plugin's own source address.
* Added BitTorrent.Download schema wrappers to xAPSchemas.
* Changed the signature of xAPMessageBlock.GetYesNo to match that of the
other value accessor helpers.
* Added xAPMessageBlock.GetOptionalBoolean and GetMandatoryBoolean to pair
with the Get[Flavour]YesNo variants.
* Fixed: a xFx-based xAPp running as a Hub wouldn't send xap-hbeat.stopped
messages when it closed. Only HubClients would do so.
* Changed the default listening and broadcast IPs that xFx uses. It now
picks the first network adapter it finds rather than a 'broader' address to
fix problems with multiple NICs being installed.
* Added xAPErrorAppMessage CTOR that unwraps the details of an Exception
object.
* Added support for "Test-XX=Parameter Value" fields in message
headers. These can be used for various testing purposes.
* Added a filtering option for invalid messages, in addition to
unrecognised messages, to xAPUI.
* Added an additional overload of OutputMessage to xAPPluginModuleBase to
ease plugin development and screen output.
* Added a plugin event tag object to store basic string objects to
xAPUtilities.
* Added ConcatenateMessageBlockNames to xAPMessageBody so all message block
names can be concatenated together into one string e.g.
"Playlist.Query, Track.Info"
* Added attribute for plugins to specify that they require desktop
interaction when installed as a Windows Service.
* Added IR schema.
* Fixed bug in header copy constructor whereby a Target address wasn't
being cloned correctly.
* Altered the xAPListenerErrorEventArgs class to implement IFormattable so
that the message output content can be customised.
* Changed the parameter list for OnUnknownMessage in transport class
xAPListener. Makes it consistent with the others and allows more data to be
added to the event args object without changing interfaces.
* Added IxAPTimestampedEvent interface to xAPMessage and some listener
events to provide a common interface to the date/time that the event
occured.
* Fixed bug in handling of target address fields. Blank target lines ie
"target=" were flagged as an error by xFx when in fact they are
valid, just non-targetted. Source lines MUST be fully-formed.

Full source code and documentation:
<http://www.xapframework.net/modules.php?name=Downloads&d_op=getit&lid=22>

Binaries + documentation:
<http://www.xapframework.net/modules.php?name=Downloads&d_op=getit&lid=3>

Any problems/comments ... shout.

S
--
Stuart Booth <stuart@xxxxxxx>
xAPFramework.NET - a xAP software development framework for .NET

http://www.xapautomation.org/ 
     http://www.xapframework.net/