Flash with Drupal. Build dynamic, content-rich Flash CS3 and CS4 applications for Drupal 6

Travis Tidwell, Dries Buytaert

Due to its power and expandability, Drupal has become one of the most popular open source content management systems. At the same time, Flash has been adopted for its ability to create beautiful and dynamic web applications. By combining these technologies, you can create Flash applications that are both visually stunning and rich in content.This book is an in depth discussion and tutorial on how to integrate Flash applications with Drupal CMS. It will describe the best techniques and practices for integrating Flash technology with the power and flexibility of Drupal by building real-life Flash applications.Within this book, you will learn how to build Flash applications that show text from within Drupal and also present images, music, and video within a single Flash application. You will also be able to take advantage of the expandable fields and content filtering provided from the CCK and Views modules to add flexibility and power to your Flash applications. Finally, you will learn how to add your own custom functionality to Drupal and then utilize that from within your Flash applications leaving you with a world of possibilities.This book starts out with a simple introduction to Flash and Drupal technology where you will create a simple Flash application and then embed that within Drupal. From there, each subsequent chapter builds on the previous chapters tackling a new and challenging task.For each new task, you will take a step-by-step approach to building a real-life application that utilizes the feature introduced within that chapter. You will also explore alternative design approaches that will eliminate the current design challenges that developers face when building Flash-driven Drupal sites; and all this while staying true to the Object Oriented Principles that govern the foundation of the ActionScript 3 language. By the end of this book, you will be able to apply all the lessons learned from this book to any other use case you may encounter.

Leap Motion Development Essentials. Leverage the power of Leap Motion to develop and deploy a fully interactive application

Mischa Spiegelmock

Leap Motion is a company developing advanced motion sensing technology for human–computer interaction. Originally inspired by the level of difficulty of using a mouse and keyboard for 3D modeling, Leap Motion believe that moulding virtual clay should be as easy as moulding clay in your hands. Leap Motion now focus on bringing this motion sensing technology closer to the real world.Leap Motion Development Essentials explains the concepts and practical applications of gesture input for developers who want to take full advantage of Leap Motion technology. This guide explores the capabilities available to developers and gives you a clear overview of topics related to gesture input along with usable code samples.Leap Motion Development Essentials shows you everything you need to know about the Leap Motion SDK, from creating a working program with gesture input to more sophisticated applications covering a range of relevant topics. Sample code is provided and explained along with details of the most important and central API concepts.This book teaches you the essential information you need to design a gesture-enabled interface for your application, from specific gesture detection to best practices for this new input. You will be given guidance on practical considerations along with copious runnable demonstrations of API usage which are explained in step-by-step, reusable recipes.

Advanced Python Programming. Accelerate your Python programs using proven techniques and design patterns - Second Edition

Quan Nguyen

Python's powerful capabilities for implementing robust and efficient programs make it one of the most sought-after programming languages.In this book, you'll explore the tools that allow you to improve performance and take your Python programs to the next level.This book starts by examining the built-in as well as external libraries that streamline tasks in the development cycle, such as benchmarking, profiling, and optimizing. You'll then get to grips with using specialized tools such as dedicated libraries and compilers to increase your performance at number-crunching tasks, including training machine learning models.The book covers concurrency, a major solution to making programs more efficient and scalable, and various concurrent programming techniques such as multithreading, multiprocessing, and asynchronous programming.You'll also understand the common problems that cause undesirable behavior in concurrent programs.Finally, you'll work with a wide range of design patterns, including creational, structural, and behavioral patterns that enable you to tackle complex design and architecture challenges, making your programs more robust and maintainable.By the end of the book, you'll be exposed to a wide range of advanced functionalities in Python and be equipped with the practical knowledge needed to apply them to your use cases.

Haxe Game Development Essentials. Create games on multiple platforms from a single codebase using Haxe and the HaxeFlixel engine

Jeremy McCurdy, Steven Richey

Haxe is a powerful and high-level multi-platform language that's incredibly easy to learn. Used by thousands of developers and many high-profile companies, Haxe is quickly emerging as a forerunner in the area of cross-platform programming. OpenFL builds on top of Haxe to make developing for multiple platforms quick and painless. HaxeFlixel provides you with the tools you need to build amazing 2D games easier than ever before. Cross-platform development has been supercharged using the Haxe programming language, making it increasingly easy and hassle-free to develop multi-platform games. If you've programmed games before and want to learn out how to deliver games across multiple platforms, or develop games faster, then Haxe Game Development Essentials is the book for you.It starts by showing you how to set up your development environment, then running you through some Haxe language fundamentals, and finally taking you through the process of programming a game from start to finish.You will learn how to create a side scrolling shooter game using HaxeFlixel. Next you will learn to enhance the game with new gameplay features, user interfaces, animations, sound, and configuration files to make your game expandable. Once your game is built and ready, you will learn how to deploy it to web, Android, iOS, and desktop systems. By the end of this book, you will be confident about creating multi-platform games using Haxe, OpenFL, and HaxeFlixel in a faster and easier way.

Building Levels in Unity. Create exciting 3D game worlds with Unity

Volodymyr Gerasimov

Data Analysis with Stata. Explore the big data field and learn how to perform data analytics and predictive modelling in STATA

Prasad Kothari, Rahul Sharma

Mongoose for Application Development. Mongoose streamlines application development on the Node.js stack and this book is the ideal guide to both the concepts and practical application. From connecting to a database to re-usable plugins, it's all here

Simon Holmes

Mongoose is all about putting the data model where it should be: in your application. You can control everything from within your application in JavaScript, eliminating the need to work with the database or a separate management system.Mongoose for Application Development is a practical, hands-on guide that takes you from installing the technology stack through the steps of developing a web application. It covers the key features of Mongoose and how to use them to rapidly develop a Node.js and MongoDB application.This book introduces the full technology stack of Node.js, MongoDB, Express, and Mongoose. It will take you through the process of building an application on this stack with a focus on how Mongoose makes the process quicker and easier.You will see how Mongoose removes a layer of complexity when dealing with MongoDB whilst giving you more control over your data from your application. You will learn how to define schemas and models for your data in JavaScript. Using these schemas and models, you will learn how to build the cornerstone of any web application that will include CRUD operations (creating, reading, updating, and deleting data). If you want to learn how to build applications quickly and efficiently using Node.js, then Mongoose and this book are ideal for you.Using practical examples throughout, Mongoose for Application Development not only teaches you about the concepts of Mongoose, but walks through how to use them to build a real-life application.

Unity 2021 Shaders and Effects Cookbook. Over 50 recipes to help you transform your game into a visually stunning masterpiece - Fourth Edition

John P. Doran

Shaders enable you to create powerful visuals for your game projects. However, creating shaders for your games can be notoriously challenging with various factors such as complex mathematics standing in the way of attaining the level of realism you crave for your shaders.The Unity 2021 Shaders and Effects Cookbook helps you overcome that with a recipe-based approach to creating shaders using Unity. This fourth edition is updated and enhanced using Unity 2021 features and tools covering Unity's new way of creating particle effects with the VFX Graph. You'll learn how to use VFX Graph for advanced shader development. The book also features updated recipes for using Shader Graph to create 2D and 3D elements. You'll cover everything you need to know about vectors, how they can be used to construct lighting, and how to use textures to create complex effects without the heavy math. You'll also understand how to use the visual-based Shader Graph for creating shaders without any code.By the end of this Unity book, you'll have developed a set of shaders that you can use in your Unity 3D games and be able to accomplish new effects and address the performance needs of your Unity game development projects. So, let's get started!

Microsoft BizTalk ESB Toolkit 2.1. Discover innovative ways to solve your mission-critical integration problems with the ESB Toolkit

Andres Del R-o Benito, Howard Edidin

An Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) is an architectural pattern and a key enabler in implementing the infrastructure for a service-oriented architecture (SOA). The BizTalk ESB Toolkit is a collection of tools and libraries that extend the BizTalk Server capabilities of supporting a loosely coupled and dynamic messaging architecture. It functions as middleware that provides tools for rapid mediation between services and their consumers. Enabling maximum flexibility at runtime, the BizTalk ESB Toolkit simplifies loosely coupled composition of service endpoints and management of service interactions. The thing about the technology that gets most readers excited is how easy it is to quickly implement flexible and well-architected ESB solutions.Microsoft BizTalk Server 2010 ESB Toolkit 2.1 provides you with an easy-to-follow view of the tools and services that make up the toolkit. The content is packed with practical examples on how to utilize the technology, which will be appealing to the readers. This book provides you with all the information you need in one publication. The content is based on practical examples on how to use the technology to make it easier for readers to follow.This book starts off with a quick, high level introduction to ESB architectural principles, how these principles map into the ESB toolkit features, and an introduction to the different components that provide those features. The book then reveals the ins and outs of Itineraries. Next, you'll get engaged in the different ways errors can be handled and monitored by means of the ESB Toolkit features. There will be a hands-on sample on building a custom Repair and Resubmit solution to reprocess failed messages. Get to know the different web services that expose the ESB Toolkit features to external applications and how to use them with quick samples. The book ends with a preview to the new version of the toolkit.

Elasticsearch Server. Leverage Elasticsearch to create a robust, fast, and flexible search solution with ease - Third Edition

Marek Rogozinski, Rafal Kuc

ElasticSearch is a very fast and scalable open source search engine, designed with distribution and cloud in mind, complete with all the goodies that Apache Lucene has to offer. ElasticSearch’s schema-free architecture allows developers to index and search unstructured content, making it perfectly suited for both small projects and large big data warehouses, even those with petabytes of unstructured data.This book will guide you through the world of the most commonly used ElasticSearch server functionalities. You’ll start off by getting an understanding of the basics of ElasticSearch and its data indexing functionality. Next, you will see the querying capabilities of ElasticSearch, followed by a through explanation of scoring and search relevance. After this, you will explore the aggregation and data analysis capabilities of ElasticSearch and will learn how cluster administration and scaling can be used to boost your application performance. You’ll find out how to use the friendly REST APIs and how to tune ElasticSearch to make the most of it. By the end of this book, you will have be able to create amazing search solutions as per your project’s specifications.

3D Game Development with Microsoft Silverlight 3: Beginner's Guide. A practical guide to creating real-time responsive online 3D games in Silverlight 3 using C#, XBAP WPF, XAML, Balder, and Farseer Physics Engine

Gaston C. Hillar

Microsoft Silverlight is a programmable web browser plug-in that enables the animation, vector graphics, and audio-video playback features that characterize Rich Internet Applications. Silverlight is a great (and growing) RIA platform and games are the next level to exploit in it. But it doesn't offer 3D capabilities out of the box and integrating a 3D engine can involve lot of complex mathematics and matrix algebra. This book will help C# developers to get their fingers on the pulse of 3D in Silverlight.This book uses Balder, an open source 3D engine offering 3D capabilities for Silverlight 3. It leaves out boring matrix algebra and complex 3D mathematics. By the end of the book you will have explored the entire engine, and will be able to design and program your own 3D games with ease!The book begins by introducing you to the fundamental concepts of 2D games and then drives you into the 3D world, using easy-to-follow, step-by-step examples. The book employs amazing graphics and impressive performance, and increasingly adds more features to a 3D game giving you a rich interactive experience.By following the practical examples in this book, you will learn the important concepts, from the creation of the initial models, up to the addition of physics and artificial intelligence.The book helps you to provide realistic behaviors for 3D characters by enveloping models with different textures, using lights to create effects, animating multiple 3D characters using a physics engine (Farseer Physics Engine), and simulating real-life physics. Videos, music, and sounds associated with specific events offer the final touches to the 3D game development learning experience.

R Graph Essentials

David Lillis, David A Lillis

Effective Python Penetration Testing. Pen test your system like a pro and overcome vulnerabilities by leveraging Python scripts, libraries, and tools

Rejah Rehim

Penetration testing is a practice of testing a computer system, network, or web application to find weaknesses in security that an attacker can exploit. Effective Python Penetration Testing will help you utilize your Python scripting skills to safeguard your networks from cyberattacks. We will begin by providing you with an overview of Python scripting and penetration testing. You will learn to analyze network traffic by writing Scapy scripts and will see how to fingerprint web applications with Python libraries such as ProxMon and Spynner. Moving on, you will find out how to write basic attack scripts, and will develop debugging and reverse engineering skills with Python libraries. Toward the end of the book, you will discover how to utilize cryptography toolkits in Python and how to automate Python tools and libraries.

Professional Cloud Architect Google Cloud Certification Guide. Build a solid foundation in Google Cloud Platform to achieve the most lucrative IT certification - Second Edition

Konrad Cłapa, Brian Gerrard, Yujun Liang

Google Cloud Platform (GCP) is one of the industry leaders thanks to its array of services that can be leveraged by organizations to bring the best out of their infrastructure. This book is a comprehensive guide for learning methods to effectively utilize GCP services and help you become acquainted with the topics required to pass Google's Professional Cloud Architect certification exam.Following the Professional Cloud Architect's official exam syllabus, you'll first be introduced to the GCP. The book then covers the core services that GCP offers, such as computing and storage, and takes you through effective methods of scaling and automating your cloud infrastructure. As you progress through the chapters, you'll get to grips with containers and services and discover best practices related to the design and process. This revised second edition features new topics such as Cloud Run, Anthos, Data Fusion, Composer, and Data Catalog.By the end of this book, you'll have gained the knowledge required to take and pass the Google Cloud Certification – Professional Cloud Architect exam and become an expert in GCP services.

Robotic Process Automation with Automation Anywhere. Techniques to fuel business productivity and intelligent automation using RPA

Husan Mahey

With an increase in the number of organizations deploying RPA solutions, Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is quickly becoming the most desired skill set for both developers starting their career and seasoned professionals. This book will show you how to use Automation Anywhere A2019, one of the leading platforms used widely for RPA.Starting with an introduction to RPA and Automation Anywhere, the book will guide you through the registration, installation, and configuration of the Bot agent and Control Room. With the help of easy-to-follow instructions, you’ll build your first bot and discover how you can automate tasks with Excel, Word, emails, XML, and PDF files. You’ll learn from practical examples based on real-world business scenarios, and gain insights into building more robust and resilient bots, executing external scripts such as VBScripts and Python, and adding error handling routines.By the end of this RPA book, you’ll have developed the skills required to install and configure an RPA platform confidently and have a solid understanding of how to build complex and robust, yet performant, bots.

Transformers for Natural Language Processing. Build, train, and fine-tune deep neural network architectures for NLP with Python, Hugging Face, and OpenAI's GPT-3, ChatGPT, and GPT-4 - Second Edition

Denis Rothman, Antonio Gulli

Transformers are...well...transforming the world of AI. There are many platforms and models out there, but which ones best suit your needs?Transformers for Natural Language Processing, 2nd Edition, guides you through the world of transformers, highlighting the strengths of different models and platforms, while teaching you the problem-solving skills you need to tackle model weaknesses.You'll use Hugging Face to pretrain a RoBERTa model from scratch, from building the dataset to defining the data collator to training the model.If you're looking to fine-tune a pretrained model, including GPT-3, then Transformers for Natural Language Processing, 2nd Edition, shows you how with step-by-step guides.The book investigates machine translations, speech-to-text, text-to-speech, question-answering, and many more NLP tasks. It provides techniques to solve hard language problems and may even help with fake news anxiety (read chapter 13 for more details).You'll see how cutting-edge platforms, such as OpenAI, have taken transformers beyond language into computer vision tasks and code creation using DALL-E 2, ChatGPT, and GPT-4.By the end of this book, you'll know how transformers work and how to implement them and resolve issues like an AI detective.

Game Development with Unity for .NET Developers. The ultimate guide to creating games with Unity and Microsoft Game Stack

Jiadong Chen, Ed Price

Understand what makes Unity the world’s most widely used real-time 3D development platform and explore its powerful features for creating 3D and 2D games, as well as the Unity game engine and the Microsoft Game Dev, including the Microsoft Azure Cloud and Microsoft Azure PlayFab services, to create games.You will start by getting acquainted with the Unity editor and the basic concepts of Unity script programming with C#. You'll then learn how to use C# code to work with Unity's built-in modules, such as UI, animation, physics, video, and audio, and understand how to develop a game with Unity and C#. As you progress through the chapters, you'll cover advanced topics such as the math involved in computer graphics and how to create a custom render pipeline in Unity with the new Scriptable Render Pipeline, all while optimizing performance in Unity. Along the way, you'll be introduced to Microsoft Game Dev, Azure services, and Azure PlayFab, and using the Unity3D PlayFab SDK to access the PlayFab API.By the end of this Unity book, you'll have become familiar with the Unity engine and be ready to develop your own games while also addressing the performance issues that you could encounter in the development process.

SFML Blueprints. Sharpen your game development skills and improve your C++ and SFML knowledge with five exciting projects

SFML, Maxime Barbier

Customizing and Extending SharePoint Online. Design tailor-made solutions with modern SharePoint features to meet your organization's unique needs

Matti Paukkonen

Explore the robust functionalities of SharePoint that ensure your business processes remain flexible and scalable. With its custom development features, SharePoint presents abundant opportunities to meet evolving needs, deliver personalized experiences, and seamlessly integrate across platforms. If you’re looking for practical guidance on developing custom SharePoint solutions, Customizing and Extending SharePoint Online is your essential companion.This book takes you through the different techniques for customizing SharePoint, harnessing its native capabilities, and extending them across other platforms. You’ll begin by organizing content with SharePoint sites and learning best practices for permission governance before learning how to create and manage pages and use web parts to create, aggregate, and format content. This SharePoint book also covers specialized use cases of the Viva Suite and delves into SharePoint automation with Power Automate while extending solutions with Power Apps. Toward the end, you’ll get to grips with designing personalized solutions with SharePoint Framework and Microsoft Graph.By the end of this book, you’ll be ready to deliver highly customized SharePoint solutions that align with your business objectives.

The Aspiring CIO and CISO. A career guide to developing leadership skills, knowledge, experience, and behavior

David J. Gee, Darryl West

Explore the intricacies of CIO and CISO roles with The Aspiring CIO and CISO by David Gee. This book leverages Gee's 20+ years of digital and cyber leadership experience, providing real-world insights, making it a valuable resource for those navigating the evolving landscape of the C-suite.Tailored to entry-level, mid-level, and senior managers looking to advance to the C-suite, this book serves a unique purpose in the realm of career guidance. The narrative speaks directly to individuals uncertain about their readiness for CIO or CISO roles, offering a personal mentorship experience that goes beyond technicalities. Armed with insights into crafting a powerful 90-day plan, you'll be well-equipped to catapult into CIO or CISO roles successfully. Beyond technical proficiency, the book instills survival skills, ensuring longevity and helping you prevent burnout in these pivotal positions. Additionally, by mastering the art of brand development and soft skills, you'll grasp the interpersonal dynamics crucial for executive leadership. This book is an indispensable guide for ambitious professionals, offering foresight and empowerment to thrive in the digital age.By the end of this book, you'll emerge with strategic dexterity, confidently steering your career trajectory towards the C-suite.

Drupal 7 Media. Integrate, implement, and extend rich media resources such as images, videos, and audio on your Drupal 7 website with this book and ebook - Third Edition

Liran Tal

Integrating images, video, and audio content on a Drupal site requires knowledge of appropriate community modules, and an understanding of how to configure and connect them properly. With the power of up-to-date technologies such as HTML5, responsive web design, and the best modules available in Drupal's eco-system, we can create the best Drupal 7 media website.Drupal 7 Media is a practical, hands-on guide that will introduce you to the basic structure of a Drupal site and guide you through the integration of images, videos, and audio content. Learn to leverage the most suitable community modules and up-to-date technology such as HTML5 to offer a great user experience through rich media content.The book begins with a practical introduction to the basic Drupal building blocks. It then breaks down each media resource, and explores them in detail.You will learn how to leverage Drupal's community modules to implement support for images, videos, and audio content, along with the best practices for implementation. We will be mentioning ideas throughout the book, which you can extend upon and use to build your own web applications. We will explore HTML5 support for media resources, the semantic web, and responsive web design, which are key topics in modern web application development. We will then build upon this knowledge and add more functionality to our sample website, such as support for analytic charts and customizing images, all of which we will implement using our own custom modules.You will learn everything you need to know about building, extending, and configuring a Drupal 7 media web application.

Business Process Management with JBoss jBPM. Find out how to improve business processes with jBPM, and discover how you can begin making a transformative impact as a business analyst in your organization

Matt Cumberlidge, Tom Baeyens

JBoss jBPM is a free, open-source, business process management solution. It enables users to create business processes that coordinate people, applications, and services.A business process is a sequence of activities triggered by a certain input that results in a valuable output. Business Process Management is about analyzing those activities in a structured way and eventually supporting their execution with a workflow application. This allows for the following results:Better management visibility of their business: improved decision makingLow cost of inputs: de-skilled labor requirements, less waste, standardized componentsBetter outputs: consistent quality, more customer satisfactionBusinesses have always tried to manage their processes, but software such as jBPM brings the methodology and management theory to practical life.JBoss jBPM offers the following key features:Graphical process definitionFlexibility to integrate code into the graphical process definitionA customizable web-based workflow application that runs the process you’ve definedEasy programming model to extend the graphical process definitionA process-oriented programming model (jPDL) that blends the best of process definition languages and Java.Easy to integrate with other systems through the JBoss middleware suite.

PHP and MongoDB Web Development Beginner's Guide. Combine the power of PHP and MongoDB to build dynamic web 2.0 applications

Rahbirul Islam Rubayeet Rubayeet, Rubayeet Islam, MongoDB

With the rise of Web 2.0, the need for a highly scalable database, capable of storing diverse user-generated content is increasing. MongoDB, an open-source, non-relational database has stepped up to meet this demand and is being used in some of the most popular websites in the world. MongoDB is one of the NoSQL databases which is gaining popularity for developing PHP Web 2.0 applications.PHP and MongoDB Web Development Beginner’s Guide is a fast-paced, hands-on guide to get started with web application development using PHP and MongoDB. The book follows a “Code first, explain later” approach, using practical examples in PHP to demonstrate unique features of MongoDB. It does not overwhelm you with information (or starve you of it), but gives you enough to get a solid practical grasp on the concepts.The book starts by introducing the underlying concepts of MongoDB. Each chapter contains practical examples in PHP that teache specific features of the database.The book teaches you to build a blogging application, handle user sessions and authentication, and perform aggregation with MapReduce. You will learn unique MongoDB features and solve interesting problems like real-time analytics, location-aware web apps etc. You will be guided to use MongoDB alongside MySQL to build a diverse data back-end.With its concise coverage of concepts and numerous practical examples, PHP and MongoDB Web Development Beginner’s Guide is the right choice for the PHP developer to get started with learning MongoDB.

Metasploit Revealed: Secrets of the Expert Pentester. Build your defense against complex attacks

Sagar Rahalkar, Nipun Jaswal

Metasploit is a popular penetration testing framework that has one of the largest exploit databases around. This book will show you exactly how to prepare yourself against the attacks you will face every day by simulating real-world possibilities.This learning path will begin by introducing you to Metasploit and its functionalities. You will learn how to set up and configure Metasploit on various platforms to create a virtual test environment. You will also get your hands on various tools and components and get hands-on experience with carrying out client-side attacks. In the next part of this learning path, you’ll develop the ability to perform testing on various services such as SCADA, databases, IoT, mobile, tablets, and many more services. After this training, we jump into real-world sophisticated scenarios where performing penetration tests are a challenge. With real-life case studies, we take you on a journey through client-side attacks using Metasploit and various scripts built on the Metasploit framework. The final instalment of your learning journey will be covered through a bootcamp approach. You will be able to bring together the learning together and speed up and integrate Metasploit with leading industry tools for penetration testing. You’ll finish by working on challenges based on user’s preparation and work towards solving the challenge. The course provides you with highly practical content explaining Metasploit from the following Packt books:1. Metasploit for Beginners 2. Mastering Metasploit, Second Edition3. Metasploit Bootcamp