PROBLEM

Although, there isn’t an in built library in unix for reading an xml attribute, there are several ways to read an xml attribute in unix. Some of them are complicated and some of them are too easy. Today, I’ll discuss one of the easiest ways to read the attribute of an xml node in unix.

COMMON APPROACHES

Before I come to the easiest one, I’ll point out some of the other ways to read/parse an xml but without much explanation. Here are some of the suggestions made by fellow unix users :-

1. Using xsltproc: xsltproc is a unix tool for transforming xml into html/ other xml format by using xslt (stylesheet). This method needs the knowledge of xslt and might be a bit tricky and cumbersome. However, this method will have more accurate and less error prone results because of the use of an xml oriented tool
2. Using awk / sed: awk or sed can be used in a somewhat tricky manner to read the xml attributes. This one is also sometimes tricky and a beginner might wanna avoid

THE SOLUTION – MY APPROACH

The way i read the attributes of an xml node in unix is quite easy and can be used effectively for many attributes but with one drawback. This method cannot be used to read attribute values if there are multiple attributes with the same name. Otherwise this method is very easy and very efficient.

Let’s consider an xml from which we want to read the attribute values.
e.g. item.xml

<root>
<item name="foo" value="bar"></item>
</root>

In the above example, we can read the attribute values of “name” and “value” by using the following unix command.

eval $(tr '[< >]' '\n' < item.xml | egrep 'name|value')

EXPLANATION

In order to understand the above command, let's break it down into small pieces.
First, let's consider the command "tr '[< >]' '\n'". This command is basically splitting the xml into lines. It replaces >< and spaces with new lines. In other words, the above xml will become:

root
item
name="foo"
value="bar"
/item
/root

Now, the piped command egrep 'name|value' does nothing but filter out all lines except the ones containing the name and value attributes. This way, the xml is now reduced to

name="foo"
value="bar"

Then we evaluate this string as unix commands by using the eval command so that their values are assigned to their respective variable names. And we can easily access the values of these attributes by using their variable names in the shell as $name and $value respectively.

In Firefox, you can automate file upload by simple using the “selenium.type” method over the file selector.

Selenium.type("/input[@name=image_file]");

However, the type method doesn’t work in Internet explorer because of security restrictions. Internet Explorer doesn’t allow you to change the value of file inputs through JavaScript. So, I did a little research on how I can automate the process in Internet Explorer. There seems to be a few solutions to this problem but none of them really solved mine because all of the solutions are for those who are not using selenium RC or are not using RC server in a remote machine. In my case, selenium RC is located in a remote machine and all my java classes in a separate controller machine. This makes it difficult to invoke autoit scripts as it is mentioned in most of the available solutions. Some of the methods I tried are:

1. Using selenium.attachFIle: Selenium has an api for automating file uploads and is provided as the attachFile method. However, this method is supported in Firefox only and doesn’t work with Internet Explorer.
2. Using native keys to type in the characters: Selenium RC has apis for generating native keyboard events. This method can be used to automate keyboard events in the OS level and outside the web browser. I also tried this in Internet Explorer, but once I click the browse button and the file selector popups, selenium gets blocked and the keys could not be typed without manual intervention
3. Using AutoIT with Selenium: One most popular method of automating the file upload is to use an autoit script in conjuction with selenium. However this also had it’s own problem. I couldn’t invoke the autoit script from my test script as I was running selenium RC in a remote machine. I found another interesting post about this method here – http://automationtricks.blogspot.com/2010/09/how-to-upload-file-in-selenium.html

THE FIX

After a series of trials, I could finally automate the file upload scenario in Internet explorer. The fix was to upgrade my selenium from 1.x to 2.x (or webdriver). Unlike selenium 1.x, webdriver is not javascript driven and is not as restricted as javascript driven selenium 1.x. However, upgrading from 1.x to webdriver was a mess because all my test cases were then not working as expected in firefox. So, i did a little hack here to make sure web driver is used only in case of Internet explorer. Given below are the changes I made.

Before:

DefaultSelenium selenium = new DefaultSelenium("localhost",4444,"*iexplore","http://www.example.com");
selenium.start();

After:

WebDriver driver = new RemoteWebDriver(new URL("http://localhost:4444/wd/hub"),DesiredCapabilities.internetExplorer());
DefaultSelenium selenium = new WebDriverBackedSelenium(driver,"http://www.example.com"));

With this code change, we are now using web driver backed selenium, and because of this, the selenium.type method can be used without any security restrictions. As a result, my file upload automation was run successfully. Well, thanks to those guys working on web driver.

In fact, many of the limitations of selenium 1.x have been addressed by web driver and there’s a properly documented section on migrating selenium 1.x to webdriver. If you are facing any issues with selenium 1.x, you might try upgrading to web driver. More details on the upgrade process are available here – migrating from selenium 1.x to web driver. Well, if you find anything interesting, feel free to share it here.

How to prevent/disable javascript error popups in internet explorer?

It seems there are lots of information out there in Google on how to prevent / disable javascript error popups but none of them really worked for me. Some of them are simple settings change in IE but for some reason, all those instructions didn’t help me in any way. But finally, I got this worked when I reset the IE Settings. So, here we go all the steps I followed in order to disable those freaky javascript popups.

1. Disable script debugging – I tried disabling the script debugging option with no use. Well, if you want to, you can disable script debugging by opening Internet Explorer -> Tools->Internet Options -> Advanced and checking the “disable script debugging” option there.
2. Disable JavaScript error notification (both manually & using Microsoft fixit) – I tried this too but in vain. You can disable the error notifications by going to Tools->Internet Options -> Advanced and unchecking the “Display a notification about every script error” option. Or if your don’t want to do it manually, you can use the Microsoft fixit wizard available at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/822521 or follow the manual steps there
3. Reset IE Settings – This was the last resort and it did solve the problem. The downside is that all IE settings are lost and you might not want it. But as I said, if the above steps didn’t work and you are ready to lose your IE settings, you can reset the IE settings to disable/prevent those crazy javascript errors. Well, you can find more info on the resetting procedure at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/923737/ln.

Well, with these steps, I was able to get rid of those annoying popups. If you are facing this issue, try these out and let me know the results.

One thing that I like the most about apple products is their finishing. And in this case also, the macbook pro displays a symbol of delicate and super smooth finishing touch. Although I haven’t got one of these macbooks, I’m really in the mood to get one. And I’m sure I’ll buy one soon enough. Also, below is a video on the unibody and is worth watching.

Click here to view the embedded video.

But then, what about the bucks I get from kontera? I went to their site and just checked my last quarter earnings and it was pathetic. Who’s gonna sacrifice the speed of their blog for a few bucks a quarter. Maybe i’ll try something like infolinks but not kontera. Not anymore. Well, if you have kontera and your blog is taking too much time, removing the kontera ad code is the first thing I’ll suggest you to do. And after that, you can start looking for “i like taking time to load” plugins in firebug.

However, these are old proxy sites and must be already blocked by almost 99% of network filters. So, you need a new one but as reliable and good as these. Well, the new one is hideipproxy.com. Hide Ip is only a few weeks old and is still a new proxy which leaves it unaware to many of the network filters. It is fast and not overloaded. It runs on a 1GB dedicated Intel dual core server and has lots of bandwidth to accommodate its users. It supports SSL or secure browsing. And not like those quick proxies which get expired tomorrow, this proxy was created with the same intention as those of the premium proxies mentioned above. So, start using it, tell your friends and share it with everyone as you enjoy the surfing.

Bypassy.com is a new web based proxy which is based on the proxy script glype. It runs on a dedicated server with pentium 4 CPU and 1GB RAM. It has a high network connectivity of 10 Mbits/sec and has large amount of hard disk space to store your proxy session information and cached data. Bypass proxy is a reliable web proxy which will be active for years. You don’t have to find another proxy for months and enjoy the unrestricted browsing for free. You can browse the web with full anonymity and keeping your privacy protected.

Security is one of the main features of bypassy.com which makes it one of the best web proxies. With bypassy.com, you don’t have to worry about malicious programs like malwares, viruses, trojans etc. into your PC. You can freely browse the web as it filters all suspicious codes and forward only the safe content.

What’s more, everything’s free and still it is one of the fastest and most reliable web proxies on the internet. You can not only use it for browsing but also share it with your friends. Happy browsing..

I just created a squidoo lens on proxy sites just to promote my sites. But I found out that squidoo has lots and lots of stuffs from which you can earn constantly. If you go to the proxy sites lens on squidoo, you will find out a section which consists of amazon products for sale. When some reader clicks on this sale and buy it, Squidoo earns the commission from amazon and shares its earnings with you. Similarly, there are other modules like Ebay, donations, etc. which can let you earn commissions when users buy through your lens.

So, how do you earn from squidoo? All you have to do is to have a Paypal account. Create a Squidoo lens on some topic and add the modules amazon, ebay and donations. Now, you can start promoting your squidoo lens by sharing it with your fiends on digg, stumbleupon, twitter, etc. The more visitors you have, the more earnings you will have. So, try it out and start earning online. Well, its all for free, so you don’t have to worry at all.

1. Proxy IP address: A proxy server hides the ip address of the web server from the network of the end user. To the user’s network, the end user seems to be browsing the proxy site and not the website which is browsed through the proxy. So, if you are browsing facebook through a proxy, your network filter can’t detect that you are browsing facebook.
2. Url Proxy: A proxy site proxies the name of the domain that the user is browsing. Many of the website blockers block sites based on the domain of the website or the url of the site. When you are browsing through a proxy, the url is that of the proxy and not that of the website you are browsing.
So, when you browse through a proxy, the proxies hide ip address of the destination server and hides the url thereby rendering the network filters undetectable.

The question is how did I promote these new sites without any investment. The answer is my strong base of 20000 proxy users. I’ve been collecting emails of users who are interested in proxy sites for the last two years. Now that I have such information, I can easily send email blasts to these users and start getting traffic right away. I used phplist for sending the mails which is a free script in php. PHPlist is a very good free mailing list manager. It can also track clicks, bounces, views etc.

Finally, the juice about today is, if you want to start a business or have a business, keep collecting the information (emails specially) of those interested in the same field. This will make it easy to start your business and expand it quickly without much investments.