One of the most common examples to help learn a language or framework is an RSS Reader. This is an ideal mini-project because it includes networking, parsing XML, and binding to data elements such as lists. I wanted to provide an example that shows some more interesting solutions that are possible using C# in Silverlight. This is the first part in a series. By the end of this post, we’ll have a working reader. What I’ll then do is add some more detailed error handling, provide unit tests, tackle skinning and visual states, and hopefully end up with a fairly advanced client.
Today, let’s focus on getting a client where we can enter a feed and get some listings. A perfect way to test this will be a Twitter feed. If you would like to read my recent tweets as RSS, for example, you can simply navigate to http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/46210370.rss. By viewing the source, you can see the basic structure of an RSS feed. It is fairly straightforward.
Download the source for this project
Domain Entities
The first step is to define some domain entities. These are the “models” for our application, and represent the actual data we are working with. With an RSS feed, it is fairly simple. We’ll work our way backward from the item up to the channel. Our item to start with looks like this:
public class Item
{
public string Title { get; set; }
public string Description { get; set; }
public DateTime PublishDate { get; set; }
public string Guid { get; set; }
public Uri Link { get; set; }
}
A channel is simply some header information with a collection of items. For starters, we’ll make it look like this:
public class Channel
{
public Channel()
{
Items = new ObservableCollection<Item>();
}
public string Title { get; set; }
public Uri Link { get; set; }
public string Description { get; set; }
public ObservableCollection<Item> Items { get; set; }
}
Note that I build my entities based on the actual content, not how the content is delivered. In other words, even though the RSS stream may encode a link or a date as text, I want my domain entity to be able to work with the property as it was intended. Therefore, there are no “hacks” to force something into a Uri that doesn’t belong: we use that type for the links. Similarly, the date time is handled as a date, and we can worry about how to display it when the time is right. The point is this keeps the data we’re dealing with abstracted from the way we receive it, so if down the road we are reading a database or connecting to a different type of service, we only need to change the way we adapt from the service into our domain.
De-serialization
One of the challenges we’ll face with RSS feeds is taking the feed data and turning it into our domain objects (de-serializing the data). There are a number of different approaches, but I wanted to present one that I think makes it extremely easy to expand and extend entities that are mapped to XML documents. It involves using Silverlight’s powerful LINQ to XML features.
The concept is relatively simple: XML data is mostly strings in elements and attributes. For RSS feeds, the data is entirely in elements. Therefore, it should be relatively straightforward to parse an XML element into an entity. We’ll know the target property and the type of that property, so all we need is the element and the conversion.
To tackle the element, I decided to create a custom attribute called RssElement that allows me to tag a property with the name of the element the property’s value is contained within. Here is the attribute:
[AttributeUsage(AttributeTargets.Property,AllowMultiple = false)]
public class RssElementAttribute : System.Attribute
{
public readonly string ElementName;
public RssElementAttribute(string elementName)
{
ElementName = elementName;
}
}
Now I can circle back to my entities and tag them with the source elements. First, the item:
public class Item
{
[RssElement("title")]
public string Title { get; set; }
[RssElement("description")]
public string Description { get; set; }
[RssElement("pubDate")]
public DateTime PublishDate { get; set; }
[RssElement("guid")]
public string Guid { get; set; }
[RssElement("link")]
public Uri Link { get; set; }
}
And then the channel:
public class Channel
{
public Channel()
{
Items = new ObservableCollection();
}
[RssElement("title")]
public string Title { get; set; }
[RssElement("link")]
public Uri Link { get; set; }
[RssElement("description")]
public string Description { get; set; }
public ObservableCollection<Item> Items { get; set; }
}
Now that we have a way of tagging the properties, we can create a fluent extension to move from an XElement (what LINQ gives us) to an actual type.
I created a static class called LinqExtensions to extend my LINQ classes. Again, working backward, let’s consider what happens to the value of an element in XML when we move it to our entity. We’ll need to take that value (which is a string) and convert it based on the target type. It has a consistent method signature: receive a string, return a type. Therefore, I decided to implement a dictionary to map the conversion process to the target types. Working with the types I know I’ll need, my dictionary looks like this:
public static class LinqExtensions
{
private static readonly Dictionary<Type, Func<string, object>> _propertyMap;
static LinqExtensions()
{
_propertyMap = new Dictionary<Type, Func<string, object>>
{
{typeof (string), s => s},
{typeof (Uri), s => new Uri(s)},
{typeof (DateTime), s => DateTime.Parse(s)}
};
}
This is very simple when you see where I’m going. Everything is mapped to a function that takes a string and returns an object. A string is a pass-through (s => s). A Uri converts the string to a Uri (s => new Uri(s)) and a date time attempts to parse the date (s => DateTime.Parse(s)). By using the type as the key to the dictionary, I can do this:
...
DateTime date = _propertyMap[typeof(DateTime)]("1/1/2010") as DateTime;
...
Of course, part of what we can do down the road is add some better error handling and contract checking. Next, let’s use this conversion. I am taking in an element, then using the property information that I have to set the value onto an instance of the target class. Given a class instance T, an element, and the information about a property, I can inspect the custom attribute to find the element name, then use the conversion for the type of the property to set the value. My method looks like this:
private static void _ProcessProperty<T>(T instance, PropertyInfo property, XContainer element)
{
var attribute =
(RssElementAttribute) (property.GetCustomAttributes(true)
.Where(a => a is RssElementAttribute))
.SingleOrDefault();
XElement targetElement = element.Element(attribute.ElementName);
if (targetElement != null && _propertyMap.ContainsKey(property.PropertyType))
{
property.SetValue(instance, _propertyMap[property.PropertyType](targetElement.Value), null);
}
}
As you can see, we grab the element, find the value in the XML fragment we’re passed, then use the property’s SetValue method to set the value based on the conversion we find in the property map.
How do we get the property info? Take a look at this fluent extension. It takes an element and is typed to a target class. It will create a new instance of the class and iterate the properties to set the values. By using it as a fluent extension, I can write this in code, which I think makes it very readable:
... var widget = xmlElement.ParseAs<Widget>(); ...
The “parse as” method looks like this:
public static T ParseAs<T>(this XElement element) where T : new()
{
var retVal = new T();
((from p in typeof (T).GetProperties()
where (from a in p.GetCustomAttributes(true) where a is RssElementAttribute select a).Count() > 0
select p).AsEnumerable()).ForEach(p => _ProcessProperty(retVal, p, element));
return retVal;
}
I basically grab all properties with the custom attribute, then pass the class, element, and property to the method we developed earlier to set the value. Finally, I return the new instance of the class. The ForEach is available with the toolkit, but you can roll your own enumerator extension like this:
public static class IteratorExtensions
{
public static void ForEach<T>(this IEnumerable<T> list, Action<T> action)
{
foreach(var item in list)
{
action(item);
}
}
}
To me, it saves code and makes it easier to read what’s going on if you have to perform a simple action and use the ForEach extension to do it.
While we’re having fun with our fluent extensions, we’re almost ready to take an RSS feed and turn it into a group of objects. We need a way to get the text we receive from the call into an XDocument, so I made this extension:
public static XDocument AsXDocument(this string xml)
{
return XDocument.Parse(xml);
}
We also need to take the XDocument and iterate the elements to build channels and items. Because we already built our ParseAs method and have tagged the entities for channels and elements, this becomes as simple as:
public static List<Channel> AsRssChannelList(this XDocument rssDoc)
{
var retVal = new List<Channel>();
if (rssDoc.Root != null)
{
foreach(var c in rssDoc.Root.Elements("channel"))
{
var channel = c.ParseAs<Channel>();
c.Elements("item").ForEach(item => channel.Items.Add(item.ParseAs<Item>()));
retVal.Add(channel);
}
}
return retVal;
}
Again, I believe the fluent extensions are making our life easier because one logical layer builds on the next. We already have our entities tagged and our parsing worked out, so now we simply iterate the channels and parse those as channels, then iterate the items and parse those as items. Could it be an easier? Now, if I have the text of an RSS feed in a variable called rssFeed, the only thing I need to do in order to turn it into a list of channels and items is this:
... var channelList = rssFeed.AsXDocument().AsRssChannelList(); ...
We’ve done most of the heavy lifting, so let’s tackle actually going out and fetching the feed. If you’ve worked with Silverlight and tried to fetch any type of information from another website, you’ll be familiar with the strict cross-domain policies that Silverlight has. You can read the Microsoft article on Network Security Access Restrictions in Silverlight to get the full scoop.
In a nutshell, it says most likely we won’t be able to reach out from our Silverlight client to touch the RSS feeder and bring back the information. How do you like that twist? Fortunately, there is a workaround.
Using a Handler to Bypass Cross Domain Concerns
Silverlight is allowed to pull information from the same server that it is hosted from. One simple way to bypass the issue with going out directly from the client to the reader is to create a proxy. We don’t have the same restrictions on the server with going across domains, so we can have Silverlight “ask” the server to pull the feed for us, and deliver it back.
This, however, has its own issues. I can make a handler that takes a Uri and then returns the data, but this would expose a potential security risk in my web application. It would open the door for malicious attackers to hit other websites and make it look like it is coming from my server! It’s sort of like the old “call-forwarding” techniques that old school phreakers would use to hide their illicit telecommunications activities.
I am going to use the handler approach, but make it a little more difficult to abuse. In a production system, I’d implement a full brown encryption scheme. The issue with the Silverlight side is that it gets downloaded to the browser, so a would-be hacker can easily pull apart the code and dissect what’s going on. You’ll want a fairly strong algorithm to circumvent foul play. For this blog example, I’m going to implement a very light security piece that will thwart any casual foul play by preventing someone from guessing how to pull a feed without knowing the algorithm. OK, so it’s not very secret because I’m letting you in on the deal.
For the sake of illustration, I’m simply going to have the Silverlight client generate a guid, then generate a hash on the GUID using SHA1. Again, for a more secured solution, I’d have a SALT and keywords, etc, but this at least shows a way to secure the communication and should get you thinking about security concerns when you start exposing services for Silverlight to consume.
In order for this to work, both the client and the server need to implement the same algorithm. I am a big fan of DRY (Don’t Repeat Yourself) so I don’t want to duplicate the algorithm in both places. Instead, I’ll build this simple piece on the Silverlight side:
public static class SecurityToken
{
public static string GenerateToken(string seed)
{
Encoder enc = Encoding.Unicode.GetEncoder();
var unicodeText = new byte[seed.Length * 2];
enc.GetBytes(seed.ToCharArray(), 0, seed.Length, unicodeText, 0, true);
System.Security.Cryptography.SHA1 sha = new System.Security.Cryptography.SHA1Managed();
byte[] result = sha.ComputeHash(unicodeText);
var sb = new StringBuilder();
for (int i = 0; i It’s a simple method that takes a string and returns the hash as digits. On the web server side, I go into my project and use “add existing item.”
Then, I navigate to the security class in my Silverlight project, highlight it, then choose “add as link.”
This allows me to share the code between the two sides. I can make a change once and ensure both are always in sync. I call this “poor man’s WCF RIA.” OK, bad joke. Let’s move along.
In the ClientBin folder, I add a handler. I do it here because it makes it easy for Silverlight to reference the handler using a relative Uri. Otherwise, I’ll have to hack around with the application root and parse strings and do lots of work I just don’t care to do. This way, I can reference it as:
...
var handlerUri = new Uri("RssHandler.ashx");
...
And be done with it. Silverlight will pass the guid, the key, and the desired Uri. My handler will generate the key from the guid, make sure it matches what was passed, and then proxy the feed. The code looks like this:
[WebService(Namespace = "http://jeremylikness.com/rssReader")]
[WebServiceBinding(ConformsTo = WsiProfiles.BasicProfile1_1)]
public class RssHandler : IHttpHandler
{
public void ProcessRequest(HttpContext context)
{
context.Response.ContentType = "text/xml";
if (context.Request.QueryString["key"].Equals(SecurityToken.GenerateToken(context.Request.QueryString["guid"])))
{
using (var client = new WebClient())
{
context.Response.Write(client.DownloadString(context.Request.QueryString["rssuri"]));
}
}
}
public bool IsReusable
{
get
{
return false;
}
}
}
Now we need to the build the service on Silverlight.
The Reader Service
First, let’s start with the interface for the service. What we want is to pass in the URL of the RSS feed, and receive a list of channels with corresponding items that were fetched from the feed. That ends up looking like this:
public interface IRssReader
{
void GetFeed(Uri feedUri, Action<List<Channel>> result);
}
Notice I’m making life easy for classes that use the service. They won’t have to worry about the asynchronous nature of the service calls or how the result comes back, etc. All that is needed is to pass a method that will accept the list of channels when it becomes available.
As I mentioned earlier, we already did most of the heavy lifting with parsing out the feed, so wiring in the service is very straightforward. The implementation looks like this:
public class RssReader : IRssReader
{
private const string PROXY = "RssHandler.ashx?guid={0}&key={1}&rssuri={2}";
public void GetFeed(Uri feedUri, Action<List<Channel>> result)
{
var client = new WebClient();
Guid guid = Guid.NewGuid();
client.DownloadStringCompleted += ClientDownloadStringCompleted;
client.DownloadStringAsync(new Uri(
string.Format(PROXY,
guid,
SecurityToken.GenerateToken(guid.ToString()),
feedUri), UriKind.Relative), result);
}
static void ClientDownloadStringCompleted(object sender, DownloadStringCompletedEventArgs e)
{
var client = sender as WebClient;
if (client != null)
{
client.DownloadStringCompleted -= ClientDownloadStringCompleted;
}
if (e.Error != null)
{
throw e.Error;
}
var result = e.UserState as Action<List<Channel>>;
if (result != null)
{
result(e.Result.AsXDocument().AsRssChannelList());
}
}
}
Walking through the steps, we first get the Uri and the method to call when we’re done. We wire up a web client and pass it the URL of our handler. This has parameters for the guid and our key, as well as the Uri we want to fetch. We also pass the method to call when we’re done. The asynchronous calls all provide a generic object to pass state, so when the call returns we know which version of the call we’re dealing with (nice of them, hey?)
When the call is completed, we unhook the event to avoid any dangling references. If there was an error, we throw it. (Yeah, part of our refactoring in future posts will be dealing with all of the errors I’m either throwing or not catching throughout the example). We take the state object and turn it back into an action, then pass the received value as the list of channels using our fluent extensions.
So now we can get it and load it into our models. We need a view model to host all of this!
The View Model
For the first pass on this, I’m going to wire everything myself. No fancy PRISM or MEF extensions, we can refactor those later. Let’s get to showing something on the screen.
Our view model should be able to accept the URL of a feed, let the user click “load” and possibly “refresh” on the feed, then show it to us. We want to give them some feedback if the feed isn’t a valid Uri, and we probably should keep the load button disabled until there is a valid feed. I ended up creating this for phase one:
public class RssViewModel : INotifyPropertyChanged
{
private readonly IRssReader _reader;
public RssViewModel(IRssReader reader)
{
_reader = reader;
Channels = new ObservableCollection<Channel>();
}
private Uri _feedUri;
private string _uri;
public string FeedUri
{
get { return _uri; }
set
{
// this will throw an error if invalid, for validation
_feedUri = new Uri(value);
_uri = value;
RaisePropertyChanged("FeedUri");
RaisePropertyChanged("CanRefresh");
}
}
public bool CanRefresh { get { return _feedUri != null; }}
public void RefreshCommand()
{
if (CanRefresh)
{
Channels.Clear();
_reader.GetFeed(_feedUri, LoadChannels);
}
}
public void LoadChannels(List<Channel> channelList)
{
channelList.ForEach(channel=>Channels.Add(channel));
}
public ObservableCollection<Channel> Channels { get; set; }
protected void RaisePropertyChanged(string propertyName)
{
PropertyChangedEventHandler handler = PropertyChanged;
if (handler != null)
{
handler(this, new PropertyChangedEventArgs(propertyName));
}
}
public event PropertyChangedEventHandler PropertyChanged;
}
The view model implements INotifyPropertyChanged to support binding. In lieu of using a converter for the Uri, I decided to deal with it as a string, then cast it to a Uri. If the cast fails, it throws an error, so we can use the Silverlight validation engine to display the error. Only if the text was successfully cast to a valid Uri will we enable the refresh button. When it’s clicked, we call the service and clear the list of channels, then populate the list on the return call.
A Basic Page
Now we can throw together some XAML to show it. In this first iteration I’m not about getting stylish or fancy, so I tossed together something fast. I’m using grids in lieu of stack panels so they auto-size well, and a custom ItemsControl that allows vertical scroll bars. We simply add the scroll viewer around the items presenter using a style, like this:
<Style
TargetType="ItemsControl"
BasedOn="{StaticResource ItemsControlStyle}"
x_Name="ItemsControlOuterStyle">
<Setter Property="ItemsControl.Template">
<Setter.Value>
<ControlTemplate>
<ScrollViewer x_Name="ScrollViewer" Padding="{TemplateBinding Padding}">
<ItemsPresenter />
</ScrollViewer>
</ControlTemplate>
</Setter.Value>
</Setter>
</Style>
I know the high priests of MVVM are going to try and burn me for blasphemy with this next move, but we’re still in the proof of concept, OK? So far we have no testing, IoC, nor beautiful command extensions. Yes, you are about to see a plain old code-behind event:
<TextBlock
Grid.Column="0"
Margin="5"
Text="RSS Feed URL:"/>
<TextBox
Grid.Column="1"
Width="200"
Margin="5"
Text="{Binding Path=FeedUri,Mode=TwoWay,NotifyOnValidationError=True,ValidatesOnExceptions=True}"/>
<Button
Grid.Column="2"
Margin="5"
IsEnabled="{Binding Path=CanRefresh}"
Content="Refresh"
Click="Button_Click"/>
Here you can enter the feed. When you tab out, it will validate it and show an error if it is invalid. If it passes, the button will be enabled.
This next chunk of XAML shows the items. We’ll do more refactoring as well. I will introduce the concept of formatters than will parse things like hyperlinks and Twitter hash terms to provide more interactive functionality, but for now let’s just get it out there:
<ItemsControl
Style="{StaticResource ItemsControlOuterStyle}"
Grid.Row="1"
ItemsSource="{Binding Channels}">
<ItemsControl.ItemTemplate>
<DataTemplate>
<Grid
Margin="5"
HorizontalAlignment="Stretch"
VerticalAlignment="Top">
<Grid.RowDefinitions>
<RowDefinition/>
<RowDefinition/>
<RowDefinition/>
</Grid.RowDefinitions>
<HyperlinkButton
Grid.Row="0"
Margin="5"
FontWeight="Bold"
Content="{Binding Title}"
NavigateUri="{Binding Link}"/>
<TextBlock
Grid.Row="1"
Margin="5"
TextWrapping="Wrap"
Text="{Binding Description}"/>
<ItemsControl
Grid.Row="2"
Style="{StaticResource ItemsControlStyle}"
ItemsSource="{Binding Items}">
<ItemsControl.ItemTemplate>
<DataTemplate>
<Grid HorizontalAlignment="Stretch"
VerticalAlignment="Top"
Margin="5">
<Grid.RowDefinitions>
<RowDefinition/>
<RowDefinition/>
</Grid.RowDefinitions>
<Grid.ColumnDefinitions>
<ColumnDefinition Width="Auto"/>
<ColumnDefinition Width="Auto"/>
</Grid.ColumnDefinitions>
<TextBlock
Margin="5"
Grid.Row="0"
Grid.Column="0"
Text="{Binding PublishDate}"/>
<HyperlinkButton
Margin="5"
Grid.Row="0"
Grid.Column="1"
Content="{Binding Title}"
NavigateUri="{Binding Link}"/>
<TextBlock
Grid.Row="1"
Grid.Column="0"
Grid.ColumnSpan="2"
TextWrapping="Wrap"
Text="{Binding Description}"/>
</Grid>
</DataTemplate>
</ItemsControl.ItemTemplate>
</ItemsControl>
</Grid>
</DataTemplate>
</ItemsControl.ItemTemplate>
</ItemsControl>
Whew! Now we just need to put in a little bit of code behind. We’ll enrage the dependency injection purists by creating hard coded instances and further stoke the ire of MVVM evangelists by wiring in a code behind for the button click:
public partial class MainPage
{
public MainPage()
{
InitializeComponent();
LayoutRoot.DataContext = new RssViewModel(new RssReader());
}
private void Button_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
{
((RssViewModel)LayoutRoot.DataContext).RefreshCommand();
}
}
Upon publishing and hitting the service, I was able to pull up my Twitter feed:
That’s it. Now we have a proof of concept, and it worked. We have a lot more to do … making it expandable to handle different types of feeds including HTML, styling it, perhaps looking at using multiple feeds, tests, and the lot (yes, I know, I know, the tests should have come earlier). I hope you enjoyed this first look into my process of creating a basic reader and we’ll continue to evolve the project with time!
Download the source for this project
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