Category: How to

Path must be a string. Received undefined

NG Android, How to, HTML5, Intel XDK, Mobile

It has been a couple months since I last used Intel XDK and a lot has changed since. I just tried to compile a demo HTML5 + Cordova Android app which was exported using Intel XDK version 3987 and got the following error while trying to add android platform to the app using cordova command line. To see how compiling is done, check this blog post. Discovered plugin “cordova-plugin-whitelist” in config.xml. Adding it to the project Installing “cordova-plugin-whitelist” for android This plugin is only applicable for versions of cordova-android greater than 4.0. If you have a previous platform version, you do *not* need this plugin since the whitelist will be built in. Saved plugin info for “cordova-plugin-whitelist” to config.xml Error: Path must be a string. Received undefined After this error you wont be able to compile the APK. Some research on google got me to this thread which eventually worked. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/46730465/can-not-add-cordova-platform-on-cordova-7-1-0-path-must-be-a-string To fix[…]

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Failed to remove a plugin from Intel XDK

NG Android, How to, Intel XDK, Plugin

In the latest Intel XDK version 3987 I was not able to remove the third-party plugins from HTML5 + Cordova app. Whenever I try to remove a plugin, it failed with the error message Uh oh! Path much be a string. Received undefined I found a workaround @ https://software.intel.com/en-us/forums/intel-xdk/topic/733620 Since Intel XDK is no more into development phase, I think this is the only way as long as this works. Steps are simple. Go to development tab and expand plugins folder there. Delete the third-party plugin and all dependent plugins. Also, delete fetch.json. Then go to Projects tab and delete the plugin from there under Plugin Management. Finally restart XDK.  

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How to Move WhatsApp Data to SD Card

Simy How to

With the increase of Video and Photo sharing on WhatsApp there has been a sudden requirement for more data storage space in phones. Phones have limited internal storage which fills up pretty soon with the amount of data being shared on WhatsApp. WhatsApp does not support storing data on SD card as specified on their FAQ page. This has more to do with technical limitations which leaves us only with the option to copy data from WhatsApp Media folders to SD card and then delete the data from the original location which in other words is a simple data backup task. Also, remember once you move the data from WhatsApp Media folder to SD card, the working link to those files in WhatsApp message history is not going to work anymore. You will need to access those files from other Video and Photo Viewer apps. In order to move data from WhatsApp we will need a File Explorer[…]

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Repeating or Tiled Background in Phaser

NG How to, Phaser

Creating tiled or repeating background is pretty straight forward in Phaser by using tileSprite. Let say we have an image or a texture such as  which we want to use to create a background by repeating it in entire game area. Check out the highlighted line in the example below which is all that is required to create a nice tiled background in Phaser. var TheGame = { }; TheGame.Params = { baseWidth: 200, baseHeight: 200 }; TheGame.Boot = function (game) { }; TheGame.Boot.prototype = { init: function () { this.scale.scaleMode = Phaser.ScaleManager.SHOW_ALL; this.game.scale.pageAlignHorizontally = true; this.game.scale.pageAlignVertically = true; }, preload: function () { this.load.image(“background”, “repeatxy.png”); this.load.image(“loading”, “loadingback.png”); }, create: function () { this.state.start(“Loading”); } }; TheGame.Loading = function (game) { }; TheGame.Loading.prototype = { init: function () { }, preload: function () { var loadingBar = this.add.sprite(this.world.centerX, this.world.centerY, “loading”); loadingBar.anchor.setTo(0.5); this.load.setPreloadSprite(loadingBar); }, create: function () { this.state.start(“TheGame”); } }; TheGame.MyGame =[…]

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How to Embed Google AdSense Code inside a WordPress Post without Any Plugin

NG Adsense, How to, WordPress

WordPress does not let you embed PHP code inside the posts but uses a feature to create Shortcode functions which are executed whenever they are encountered within a post. This is pretty handy feature since this gives you capability to add some PHP code in your WordPress files and then call it from your posts. The PHP code can be added to Theme’s functions.php file. We can use this to load ads from within the posts. Go to WordPress administration -> Appearance -> Editor -> By default style.css is opened for editing. Open functions.php by clicking on the file name on right hand side listing. Now copy the following code at the end of the file and change the return string to your Adsense code. Shortcode is defined by calling add_shortcode function and passing two parameters to it. The first one is a given name which will be used in the posts to call this[…]

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Cannot find type: verify that the assembly containing this type is loaded. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80131515)

NG How to

Downloaded  HtmlAgilityPack.dll and loaded in Windows Powershell by running the following command Add-Type -Path ‘c:\Temp\PS\Net40\HtmlAgilityPack.dll’ Got the following error.. Add-Type : Could not load file or assembly ‘file:///C:\Temp\PS\Net40\HtmlAgilityPack.dll’ or one of its dependencies. Operation is not supported. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80131515) At C:\Temp\PS\script.ps1:12 char:1 + Add-Type -Path ‘c:\Temp\PS\Net40\HtmlAgilityPack.dll’ + ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ + CategoryInfo : NotSpecified: (:) [Add-Type], FileLoadException + FullyQualifiedErrorId : System.IO.FileLoadException,Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.AddTypeCommand   HtmlAgilityPack.dll does not have any dependency for the .Net version I was on (use the command $psversiontable to get the .Net version used by Powershell) It turned out that the file was blocked since it was downloaded from the internet. All I needed to do was to go to DLL’s properties and unblock it.

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Asp.Net Error: There is no build provider registered for the extension ‘.html’

NG Asp.Net, How to

When you try to map an html file in ASP.net and rewrite the URL to remove .html extension such as the example below routes.MapPageRoute(“myhtml”, “myhtml”, “~/Resources/demo/myhtml.html”); It throws an error as following There is no build provider registered for the extension ‘.html’. You can register one in the <compilation><buildProviders> section in machine.config or web.config The following configuration changes in web.config fixes it. <compilation debug=”true” targetFramework=”4.5″ > <buildProviders > <add extension=”.htm” type=”System.Web.Compilation.PageBuildProvider” /> <add extension=”.html” type=”System.Web.Compilation.PageBuildProvider”/> </buildProviders> </compilation>  

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Cordova Plugins: Review Unnecessary Permissions

NG Android, How to, Intel XDK, Plugin

If you went through the article on adding social sharing feature in HTML5 game using Intel XDK, it seemed like a simple plugin which should not require any permission but after adding the plugin and few more other plugins I found that WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE permission was added in my android app so I checked all plugins one by one to see which plugin is adding what permissions and found out that WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE permission was being added by social sharing plugin. When I checked developer notes (quoted below) I found that the permission was not required in my case, since I was not fetching any remote images for sharing. For sharing remote images (or other files) on Android, the file needs to be stored locally first, so add this permission to AndroidManifest.xml: <uses-permission android:name=“android.permission.WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE“ /> In fact it was just a simple play store URL which I was sharing in my app so[…]

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WordPress Error: Briefly unavailable for scheduled maintenance. Check back in a minute

NG How to, WordPress

This error occurs when you try to update something in WordPress site and the update fails for some reason and then your site goes down and following message is displayed Don’t worry. The process to fix this is pretty straight-forward. Go to your blog installation folder and look for .maintenance file. This file is generated by WordPress when the update occurs and then removed after the update finishes. In case update fails and this file could not be removed, then the above error message is displayed. Delete this file and you will be back up.

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