Late in 2014, Microsoft finally started Application Insights (AI), their own telemetry service for all kind of apps. For Windows (Phone) 8.1 apps, the service was a long running beta. This month, Microsoft finally released version 1.0 of Application Insights for Windows apps.
However, if you are upgrading from a previous version, you will see that AI will no longer send any data to Azure. This has a very simple reason. Microsoft moved the configuration from the former ApplicationInsights.config file to a class called WindowsAppInitializer. I only found this out because I commented at the corresponding documentation site, which causes Microsoft to send me an email with a link to the solution in the forums. You will not find these info in the documentation as of writing this blog post. Microsoft also updated the docs tonight.
I strongly recommend you to remove all old references in favor of just updating to avoid any glitches with the new API.
I played around with the new WindowsAppInitializer class. If you want to collect all data with the automatic WindowsCollectors, all you have to add to your code is one line in your App.xaml.cs constructor (Microsoft recommends to add it before all other code):
That’s it. Really. Here’s a screen shot of the test app in Visual Studio I created to play around with the new WindowsAppInitializer class:
As you can see, telemetry data gets written to the debug output, and with that, it will be submitted to your Azure account. If you do not want to use all Collectors, just add those you want to use after your InstrumentationKey, separated with ‘|’ in the IninitalizeAsync Method.
Adding custom telemetry data collection is still possible. Quick sample:
var tc = new TelemetryClient();
tc.TrackEvent("MainPage loaded... [WP TestEvent]");
This will send this string as a custom event to your Azure account. For more info about custom telemetry data, check this page.
As always, I hope this blog post is helpful for some of you.
As you might guess, I am still working on that app I mentioned in my last blog post. As I was diving deeper into the functions I want, I recognized that Twitter does a very well url handling server side.
Like the official documentation says, every url will be shortened with a link that has 22 characters (23 for https urls).
I was trying to write a RegEx expression to detect all the links that can be:
http
https
just plain domain names like “msicc.net”
This is not as easy as it sounds, and so I was a bit struggling. I then talked with @_MadMatt (follow him!) who has a lot of experience with twitter. My first attempt was a bit confusing as I did first only select http and https, then the plain domain names.
I found the names by their domain ending, but had some problems to get their length (which is essential). After the very helpful talk with Matthieu, I finally found a very good working RegEx expression here on GitHub.
I tested it with tons of links, and I got the desired results and it is now also very easy for me to get their length.
Recovering the amount of time I needed for this, I decided to share my solution with you. Here is the method I wrote:
public int CalculateTweetCountWithLinks(int currentCount, string text)
{
int resultCount = 0;
if (text != string.Empty)
{
//detailed explanation: https://gist.github.com/gruber/8891611
string pattern = @"(?i)\b((?:https?:(?:/{1,3}|[a-z0-9%])|[a-z0-9.\-]+[.](?:com|net|org|edu|gov|mil|aero|asia|biz|cat|coop|info|int|jobs|mobi|museum|name|post|pro|tel|travel|xxx|ac|ad|ae|af|ag|ai|al|am|an|ao|aq|ar|as|at|au|aw|ax|az|ba|bb|bd|be|bf|bg|bh|bi|bj|bm|bn|bo|br|bs|bt|bv|bw|by|bz|ca|cc|cd|cf|cg|ch|ci|ck|cl|cm|cn|co|cr|cs|cu|cv|cx|cy|cz|dd|de|dj|dk|dm|do|dz|ec|ee|eg|eh|er|es|et|eu|fi|fj|fk|fm|fo|fr|ga|gb|gd|ge|gf|gg|gh|gi|gl|gm|gn|gp|gq|gr|gs|gt|gu|gw|gy|hk|hm|hn|hr|ht|hu|id|ie|il|im|in|io|iq|ir|is|it|je|jm|jo|jp|ke|kg|kh|ki|km|kn|kp|kr|kw|ky|kz|la|lb|lc|li|lk|lr|ls|lt|lu|lv|ly|ma|mc|md|me|mg|mh|mk|ml|mm|mn|mo|mp|mq|mr|ms|mt|mu|mv|mw|mx|my|mz|na|nc|ne|nf|ng|ni|nl|no|np|nr|nu|nz|om|pa|pe|pf|pg|ph|pk|pl|pm|pn|pr|ps|pt|pw|py|qa|re|ro|rs|ru|rw|sa|sb|sc|sd|se|sg|sh|si|sj|Ja|sk|sl|sm|sn|so|sr|ss|st|su|sv|sx|sy|sz|tc|td|tf|tg|th|tj|tk|tl|tm|tn|to|tp|tr|tt|tv|tw|tz|ua|ug|uk|us|uy|uz|va|vc|ve|vg|vi|vn|vu|wf|ws|ye|yt|yu|za|zm|zw)/)(?:[^\s()<>{}\[\]]+|\([^\s()]*?\([^\s()]+\)[^\s()]*?\)|\([^\s]+?\))+(?:\([^\s()]*?\([^\s()]+\)[^\s()]*?\)|\([^\s]+?\)|[^\s`!()\[\]{};:'.,<>?«»“”‘’])|(?:(?<!@)[a-z0-9]+(?:[.\-][a-z0-9]+)*[.](?:com|net|org|edu|gov|mil|aero|asia|biz|cat|coop|info|int|jobs|mobi|museum|name|post|pro|tel|travel|xxx|ac|ad|ae|af|ag|ai|al|am|an|ao|aq|ar|as|at|au|aw|ax|az|ba|bb|bd|be|bf|bg|bh|bi|bj|bm|bn|bo|br|bs|bt|bv|bw|by|bz|ca|cc|cd|cf|cg|ch|ci|ck|cl|cm|cn|co|cr|cs|cu|cv|cx|cy|cz|dd|de|dj|dk|dm|do|dz|ec|ee|eg|eh|er|es|et|eu|fi|fj|fk|fm|fo|fr|ga|gb|gd|ge|gf|gg|gh|gi|gl|gm|gn|gp|gq|gr|gs|gt|gu|gw|gy|hk|hm|hn|hr|ht|hu|id|ie|il|im|in|io|iq|ir|is|it|je|jm|jo|jp|ke|kg|kh|ki|km|kn|kp|kr|kw|ky|kz|la|lb|lc|li|lk|lr|ls|lt|lu|lv|ly|ma|mc|md|me|mg|mh|mk|ml|mm|mn|mo|mp|mq|mr|ms|mt|mu|mv|mw|mx|my|mz|na|nc|ne|nf|ng|ni|nl|no|np|nr|nu|nz|om|pa|pe|pf|pg|ph|pk|pl|pm|pn|pr|ps|pt|pw|py|qa|re|ro|rs|ru|rw|sa|sb|sc|sd|se|sg|sh|si|sj|Ja|sk|sl|sm|sn|so|sr|ss|st|su|sv|sx|sy|sz|tc|td|tf|tg|th|tj|tk|tl|tm|tn|to|tp|tr|tt|tv|tw|tz|ua|ug|uk|us|uy|uz|va|vc|ve|vg|vi|vn|vu|wf|ws|ye|yt|yu|za|zm|zw)\b/?(?!@)))";
//generating a MatchCollection
MatchCollection linksInText = Regex.Matches(text, pattern, RegexOptions.Multiline);
//going forward only when links where found
if (linksInText.Count != 0)
{
//important to set them to 0 to get the correct count
int linkValueLength = 0;
int httpOrNoneCount = 0;
int httpsCount = 0;
foreach (Match m in linksInText)
{
//https urls need 23 characters, http and others 22
if (m.Value.Contains("https://"))
{
httpsCount = httpsCount + 1;
}
else
{
httpOrNoneCount = httpOrNoneCount + 1;
}
linkValueLength = linkValueLength + m.Value.Length;
}
//generating summaries of character counts
int httpOrNoneReplacedValueLength = httpOrNoneCount * 22;
int httpsReplacedValueLength = httpsCount * 23;
//calculating final count
resultCount = (currentCount - linkValueLength) + (httpOrNoneReplacedValueLength + httpsReplacedValueLength);
}
else
{
resultCount = currentCount;
}
}
return resultCount;
}
First, we are detecting links in the string using the above mentioned RegEx expression and collect them in a MatchCollection.
As https urls have a 23 character length on t.co (Twitter’s url shortener), I am generating two new counts – one for https, one for all other urls.
The last step is to substract the the length of all Match values and add the newly calculated replaced link values lengths.
Add this little method to your TextChanged event, and you will be able to detect the character count on the fly.
As always, I hope this is helpful for some of you.
