8 Free eBooks from APress

APress offering several free ebooks on their website !!!

Dissecting a C# Application: Inside SharpDevelop
Learn advanced .NET programming techniques by getting an insider's look at a complete application!

The developers who created SharpDevelop give you the inside track on application development with a guided tour of the source code for SharpDevelop. They show you the most important code features and explain how you can use these techniques in your own projects. You will gain valuable experience of building an application on this scale, learning from the decisions, mistakes, problems, and solutions that led to the current version of SharpDevelop.

Download eBook (3.8 MB PDF file) – Download Source code (5.9MB Zip file)

Practical Common Lisp

Lisp is often thought of as an academic language, but it need not be. This is the first book that introduces Lisp as a language for the real world.

Practical Common Lisp presents a thorough introduction to Common Lisp, providing you with an overall understanding of the language features and how they work. Over a third of the book is devoted to practical examples such as the core of a spam filter and a web application for browsing MP3s and streaming them via the Shoutcast protocol to any standard MP3 client software (e.g., iTunes, XMMS, or WinAmp). In other "practical" chapters, author Peter Seibel demonstrates how to build a simple but flexible in-memory database, how to parse binary files, and how to build a unit test framework in 26 lines of code.

Download eBook (17.45 MB PDF file)

Google, Amazon, and Beyond: Creating and Consuming Web Services

While many books are focused on the underlying technologies of web services and others are dedicated to providing web services, few books show how to consume web services. Google, Amazon, and Beyond: Creating and Consuming Web Services provides a thorough review of the technologies and techniques for connecting client applications to services of all kinds.

Using a decidedly hands-on approach, authors Alexander Nakhimovsky and Tom Myers present extensive examples of programming with XML, SOAP, REST, and WSDL in JavaScript (tested in IE and Mozilla) and in Java (using open-source tools available on Windows, Linux, and OS X).

Download eBook (4.90 MB PDF file)

XML Programming: Web Applications and Web Services With JSP and ASP

XML Programming: Web Applications and Web Services with JSP and ASP provides a fast-moving introduction to the XML family of technologies for programmers. Although written with a focus upon JSP- and ASP-based XML solutions, the book presents the material from a language-independent point of view that benefits all developers, whatever their language. The code is written to be readable by all.

Chapters 1 through 3 cover the foundations of XML—well-formed and valid documents, DTDs and namespaces—but XLink, XPointer, and elements of XSLT are introduced early so the examples can be interesting and useful. Chapters 4 through 6 cover XML processing using SAX, DOM, and XSLT, separately and in various combinations. Each chapter progresses from simple to advanced examples.

Chapter 7 is devoted to the development of a real world project involving the use of various XML technologies to create an information repository. In the context of the project, the authors present RDF and the Dublin Core; revisit XPath, XLink, and XPointer; and show how XML data can live inside a relational database. Chapter 8 introduces the newer validation technologies (RELAX NG and XML Schema), in preparation for the final chapter on Web services. In the concluding chapter, the authors not only explain the specifications, but also build working examples: You're shown, step-by-step, how to convert a software module into a Web service, how to generate a WSDL description from code, how to use WSDL to generate stubs and skeletons for distributed language-independent applications, and how to register such applications with a UDDI repository, either local or on the Internet.

XML Programming: Web Applications and Web Services with JSP and ASP is an indispensable resource for programmers who wish to become proficient in XML technologies and use them for solving large-scale, real-life problems.

Download eBook (3.66 MB PDF file)

COM and .NET Interoperability

COM and .NET Interoperability provides a complete overview of the process of building .NET applications that interact (interoperate) with existing COM code. Before digging into that critical topic, author Andrew Troelsen offers a concise overview of the COM architecture and provides examples using various COM frameworks (C++, ATL, and VB 6.0) as well as the core .NET managed languages (C# and VB .NET).

After covering the preliminaries, the book explores numerous issues that arise in interoperability, including interacting with the Win32 API, dynamically generating source code via System.CodeDOM, creating serviced (COM+) components using managed code, manually editing (and recompiling) .NET metadata, and the process of constructing custom COM/.NET conversion utilities. Both intermediate and advanced developers will welcome the practical information they need to quickly work with COM and COM+ in .NET applications, and learn how to create .NET components that are COM compatible.

Download eBook (6.36 MB PDF file)

Programming VB .NET: A Guide For Experienced Programmers

In Programming VB .NET: A Guide for Experienced Programmers, authors Gary Cornell and Jonathan Morrison carefully explain the exciting new features of Visual Basic .NET. Since VB .NET is, for all practical purposes, a whole new language even for the most experienced Visual Basic programmers, developers need to think differently about many familiar topics. Cornell and Morrison are there to help you with careful discussions of each topic.

All experienced programmers wishing to take advantage of the amazing new powers of VB .NET will benefit from this book’s careful treatment of fundamental topics, including inheritance, interfaces, and exception handling, as well as all the powerful new features, such as stream-based I/O and true multithreading.

Cornell and Morrison write from the point of view of the experienced programmer, with constant references to the changes from earlier versions of VB. Developers learn how to use VB .NET for database programming through ADO.NET and web programming through ASP.NET. After reading Programming VB .NET: A Guide for Experienced Programmers, developers will have a firm grasp of the exciting new VB .NET language and its uses in creating powerful .NET applications.

Download eBook (4.93 MB PDF file)

Writing Perl Modules for CPAN

Writing Perl Modules for CPAN offers Perl developers a comprehensive guide to using and contributing to the Comprehensive Perl Archive Network (CPAN). Starting with a general overview of CPAN's history, network topology, and navigational mechanisms, the book quickly brings you up to speed regarding how to search out and install available modules. However, in the true open source spirit, author and experienced Perl developer Sam Tregar teaches you how to not only use, but also contribute to CPAN via an in-depth discussion of module creation, submission, and maintenance.

Beginning with a survey of basic design principles, Tregar takes care to discuss all issues relevant to developers wishing to create great Perl modules, including choosing a proper name, properly using Perl’s POD (plain old documentation) feature, concepts surrounding functional and object-oriented API development, and much more. Tregar then proceeds with a complete dissertation of how modules should conform to CPAN module specifications, covering required distribution files and coding considerations, in addition to offering advice regarding proper module testing. After demonstrating how to create a module and prepare it for release, Tregar guides you through the CPAN module submission process and discusses module maintenance once the module has been contributed to the CPAN service.

Writing Perl Modules for CPAN is an indispensable guide for anyone wishing to make the most of the CPAN service.

Donwload eBook (3.44 MB PDF file)

A Programmer's Introduction to PHP 4.0

No matter what language you are familiar with, this book will benefit you. Beginning with a rapid introduction to PHP's syntax and basic functionality, you will swiftly understand PHP. The book then steers you toward advanced issues, like PHP's role in database manipulation, sessions, and user interactivity.

Author W.J. Gilmore also examines how PHP can work with XML, JavaScript, and the Component Object Model (COM). He loads the book with practical examples and several projects that can be immediately incorporated on any website. The invaluable A Programmer's Introduction to PHP 4.0 shows you how to make the most of PHP's powerful capabilities, regardless of your current scope of PHP knowledge.

Download eBook (4.2 MB PDF file) – Download Source Code (60k zip file)

Several other free eBooks:

Code Notes for J#

Download eBook (2.47 MB)

Code Notes .NET Component Developer

Download eBook (1.3MB)

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