Uploading files and folders to a specific Google Docs folder using the .NET API

The .NET API for Google Docs is a strange beast. First, it has a DocumentsRequest class and a DocumentsService class. Sometimes you’ll need to use one class, sometimes the other and it’s not clear what the distinction is between the two. And I’d assumed the .NET API supported everything you could do with the raw HTTP API and hence I thought uploading a file or folder to a specific folder wasn’t possible. This led to further confusion when I tried to move a folder and it did move but left the original folder behind and I couldn’t figure out how to delete that folder. And as with most things from Google, the documentation is somewhat lacking.

So I eventually figured out I’d have to do a little work myself and came up with a couple of extension methods, one to create a folder and one to upload a file, but both accepting a parent folder.  When I say I needed to do a little work, what I really mean is I used Reflector to see how the current methods worked and employed some copy and paste…

  public static class GoogleDocsExtensions
  {
    public static Document CreateFolder(this DocumentsRequest docsRequest, string folderName, Document parentFolder)
    {
      Document doc = new Document();
      doc.Type = Google.Documents.Document.DocumentType.Folder;
      doc.Title = folderName;
      if (parentFolder == null)
        return docsRequest.Insert<Document>(new Uri(DocumentsListQuery.documentsBaseUri), doc);
      else
      {
        return docsRequest.Insert<Document>(new Uri(parentFolder.AtomEntry.Content.AbsoluteUri), doc);
      }
    }

    public static void UploadFile(this DocumentsService docsService, string file, Document folder)
    {
      FileInfo info = new FileInfo(file);
      using (FileStream input = info.Open(FileMode.Open, FileAccess.Read, FileShare.ReadWrite))
      {
        Uri uri = new Uri(folder.AtomEntry.Content.AbsoluteUri);

        string str = info.Extension.ToUpper().Substring(1);
        string contentType = (string)DocumentsService.DocumentTypes[str];
        docsService.Insert(uri, input, contentType, info.Name);
      }
    }
  }

Installing PHP 5.2 on Windows 7 IIS 7.5

I had a bit of fun upgrading my Windows 7 machine to PHP 5.2 the other day. There’s an installer available that goes most of the way but didn’t quite work for me (there’s also an installer available on www.php.net, I’m not sure how they differ).

The first problem was that my installation of IIS didn’t have the FastCGI module installed. This was pretty easy to rectify, in the IIS administrator go to Modules and then click the ‘Configure Native Modules’ link and then click the ‘Register’ button. The FastCGI module will live somewhere like ‘C:\Windows\System32\inetsrv\iisfcgi.dll’. Then I manually added a handler for PHP files, although if you add the module with the correct ‘FastCgiModule’ name, a re-install should correctly add the handler.

After this was set up, I was able to load up PHP pages but they weren’t being rendered properly, because it looked like the PHP code wasn’t being evaluated and was just getting outputted as plain text. This confused me for a while and I thought the installer hadn’t done its job. But after firing up Fiddler, I saw this header in the response from the server – X-Powered-By: PHP/5.2.14, which suggested the file was getting handed to PHP which was doing something with it. So I guessed there must be a problem somewhere in the PHP config file, php.ini. After searching around in there, I discovered this setting - short_open_tag = Off. This means any PHP files that use <? as their opening tag instead of <?php will not get evaluated, and turning that option on fixed my problems. One other thing to note is that an IIS reset seems to be required for any changes to that config file, since when using FastCGI the PHP executable stays resident in memory rather than restarting for every request.

WinForms ProgressBar with text

Somebody asked how to use my transparent label on top of a ProgressBar control, since it disappeared when the progress bar changed its state. I had a look at it, but the transparent label wasn’t getting any notification of changes, even when I hooked into the WndProc method. So I wondered if it would be possible to sub-class the ProgressBar control and write some text on top of it that way. And that seems to work OK, as shown below.

Update – I’ve fixed the flickering

Update 2 – It now picks up the text colour from the ForeColor property

Update 3 – Should now work on Windows XP

Update 4 – Now lets you specify the font used for the text

using System.ComponentModel;
using System.Drawing;
using System.Windows.Forms;
using System;

namespace WinFormControls
{
 
  public class TextProgressBar : ProgressBar
  {
    protected override CreateParams CreateParams
    {
      get
      {
        CreateParams result = base.CreateParams;
        if (Environment.OSVersion.Platform == PlatformID.Win32NT
            && Environment.OSVersion.Version.Major >= 6)
        {
          result.ExStyle |= 0x02000000; // WS_EX_COMPOSITED 
        }

        return result;
      }
    }

    protected override void WndProc(ref Message m)
    {
      base.WndProc(ref m);
      if (m.Msg == 0x000F)
      {
        using (Graphics graphics = CreateGraphics())
        using (SolidBrush brush = new SolidBrush(ForeColor))
        {
          SizeF textSize = graphics.MeasureString(Text, Font);
          graphics.DrawString(Text, Font, brush, (Width - textSize.Width) / 2, (Height - textSize.Height) / 2);
        }
      }
    }

    [EditorBrowsable(EditorBrowsableState.Always)]
    [Browsable(true)]
    public override string Text
    {
      get
      {
        return base.Text;
      }
      set
      {
        base.Text = value;
        Refresh();
      }
    }

    [EditorBrowsable(EditorBrowsableState.Always)]
    [Browsable(true)]
    public override Font Font
    {
      get
      {
        return base.Font;
      }
      set
      {
        base.Font = value;
        Refresh();
      }
    }
  }
}

The problems with financial theories

We’re all looking for people to blame for the current mess we are in and apparently there are 38 causes of the current financial crisis. I’m not sure where to get hold of the original report so I’m not sure of what’s on the list but it made me think again about what I learned during my brief time working in the world of high finance a few years ago. I was there for a couple of years, so I'm clearly not hugely knowledgeable but the assumptions made when concocting the financial models used by many investors in the city always seemed a little fishy to me. Here are some of the main assumptions made and the problems I think are associated with them. Almost every financial theory will use one or more of these assumptions.

The market is efficient – All information about an asset is known and priced into the cost of that asset. Peston says this is one of the 38 causes. There are several issues with this theory, my favourite being this paradox – if the market is efficient then there is very little point in trying to play the market, since the market will always be priced accurately so there will be no opportunity to beat it by buying low, selling high. But if there are no players in the market, then it won’t be efficient. Which suggests it can never be perfectly efficient.

Another problem with the efficient market theory can be seen with something like the dot com bubble, where prices bore no relation to their underlying value, how is that sensible? The fact is share prices often bear no relation to the true worth of the company, because people think their value will continue to grow so they will be able to sell them on to a greater fool.

Investors are rational - Given two different assets with the same risk, investors will choose the one with the highest return. Clearly this isn't the case, otherwise bubbles would never happen. Another problem is that even a rational investor may not know the true risk/reward relationship. Shares may fall in value, making their dividend yield look very attractive, but there may be a good reason for this, like the economy is hitting trouble. Finally, some investors are just taking a punt, with no rational thought behind their trading.

Finally, if we decide that not all investors are rational, then we have another reason why the market will not be efficient.

There are no transaction charges – This may be nearly true for large institutional investors but for the man on the street this is very much not true, meaning any kind of investment strategy that involves a lot of trading will incur huge transaction costs, which will eat away at any profits made.

The market is liquid - This assumption basically says if you want to buy or sell, then you can. Whilst this holds true for most shares most of the time, it falls over at the most vital point, when markets are crashing, because everybody is trying to sell and there is nobody willing to buy. It is also not true for quite a few asset classes, as anyone who's tried to sell a house will know.

Normal distribution – A lot of financial theories use the normal distribution for the distribution of volatility/risk. Unfortunately this doesn’t seem to be the case. The black swans seem to occur a lot more frequently than a normal distribution would suggest. For the banks out there, this doesn’t seem to be such a problem, since they take the profits during the good times and get bailed out when those once in a lifetime occurrences strike a little too often.

And it’s the combination of all these flawed assumptions that caused at least some of the problems. They were used to build mathematical models that seemingly abolished risk or certainly incorrectly measured it.