Extend your game development skills by harnessing the power of Android SDK About This Book Gain the knowledge to design and build highly interactive and amazing games for your phone and tablet from scratch Create games that run at super-smooth 60 frames per second with the help of these easy-to-follow projects Understand the internals of a game engine by building one and seeing the reasoning behind each of the components Who This Book Is For If you are completely new to Java, Android, or game programming, this book is for you. If you want to publish Android games for fun or for business and are not sure where to start, then this book will show you what to do, step by step, from the start. What You Will Learn Set up an efficient, professional game development environment in Android Studio Explore object-oriented programming (OOP) and design scalable, reliable, and well-written Java games or apps on almost any Android device Build simple to advanced game engines for different types of game, with cool features such as sprite sheet character animation and scrolling parallax backgrounds Implement basic and advanced collision detection mechanics Process multitouch screen input effectively and efficiently Implement a flexible and advanced game engine that uses OpenGL ES 2 to ensure fast, smooth frame rates Use animations and particle systems to provide a rich experience Create beautiful, responsive, and reusable UIs by taking advantage of the Android SDK Integrate Google Play Services to provide achievements and leaderboards to the players In Detail Gaming has historically been a strong driver of technology, whether we're talking about hardware or software performance, the variety of input methods, or graphics support, and the Android game platform is no different. Android is a mature, yet still growing, platform that many game developers have embraced as it provides tools, APIs, and services to help bootstrap Android projects and ensure their success, many of which are specially designed to help game developers. Since Android uses one of the most popular programming languages, Java, as the primary language to build apps of all types, you will start this course by first obtaining a solid grasp of the Java language and its foundation APIs. This will improve your chances of succeeding as an Android app developer. We will show you how to get your Android development environment set up and you will soon have your first working game. The course covers all the aspects of game development through various engrossing and insightful game projects. You will learn all about frame-by-frame animations and resource animations using a space shooter game, create beautiful and responsive menus and dialogs, and explore the different options to play sound effects and music in Android. You will also learn the basics of creating a particle system and will see how to use the Leonids library. By the end of the course, you will be able to configure and use Google Play Services on the developer console and port your game to the big screen. This Learning Path combines some of the best that Packt has to offer in one complete, curated package. It includes content from the following Packt products: Learning Java by Building Android Games by John Horton Android Game Programming by Example by John Horton Mastering Android Game Development by Raul Portales Style and approach This course is a step-by-step guide where you will learn to build Android games from scratch. It takes a practical approach where each project is a game. It starts off with simple arcade games, and then gradually the complexity of the games keep on increasing as you uncover the new and advanced tools that Android offers.

Learn to use some of the most exciting and powerful tools to deliver world-class quality software with continuous delivery and DevOps About This Book Get to know the background of DevOps so you understand the collaboration between different aspects of an IT organization and a software developer Deploy top-quality software and ensure software maintenance and release management with this practical guide This course covers some of the most exciting technology available to DevOps engineers, and demonstrates multiple techniques for using them Real-world and realistic examples are provided to help you as you go about the implementation and adoption of continuous delivery and DevOps Who This Book Is For This course is for developers who want to understand how the infrastructure that builds today's enterprises works, and how to painlessly and regularly ship quality software. What You Will Learn Set up and familiarize yourself with all the tools you need to be efficient with DevOps Design an application that is suitable for continuous deployment systems with DevOps in mind Test the code using automated regression testing with Jenkins Selenium Managing the lifecycle of hosts, from creation to ongoing management using Puppet Razor Find out how to manage, use, and work with Code in the Git version management system See what traps, pitfalls, and hurdles to look out for as you implement continuous delivery and DevOps In Detail Harness the power of DevOps to boost your skill set and make your IT organization perform better. If you’re keen to employ DevOps techniques to better your software development, this course contains all you need to overcome the day-to-day complications of managing complex infrastructures the DevOps way. Start with your first module – Practical DevOps - that encompasses the entire flow from code from testing to production. Get a solid ground-level knowledge of how to monitor code for any anomalies, perform code testing, and make sure the code is running smoothly through a series of real-world exercise, and develop practical skills by creating a sample enterprise Java application. In the second module, run through a series of tailored mini-tutorials designed to give you a complete understanding of every DevOps automation technique. Create real change in the way you deliver your projects by utilizing some of the most commendable software available today. Go from your first steps of managing code in Git to configuration management in Puppet, monitoring using Sensu, and more. In the final module, get to grips with the continuous delivery techniques that will help you reduce the time and effort that goes into the delivery and support of software. This Learning Path combines some of the best that Packt has to offer in one complete, curated package. It includes content from the following Packt products: Practical DevOps by Joakim Verona DevOps Automation Cookbook by Michael Duffy Continuous Delivery and DevOps : A Quickstart Guide - Second Edition by Paul Swartout Style and approach This course is an easy to follow project based guide for all those with a keen interest in deploying world-class software using some of the most effective and remarkable technologies available.

Boost the performance of your Haskell applications using optimization, concurrency, and parallel programming About This Book Explore the benefits of lazy evaluation, compiler features, and tools and libraries designed for high performance Write fast programs at extremely high levels of abstraction Work through practical examples that will help you address the challenges of writing efficient code Who This Book Is For To get the most out of this book, you need to have a working knowledge of reading and writing basic Haskell. No knowledge of performance, optimization, or concurrency is required. What You Will Learn Program idiomatic Haskell that's also surprisingly efficient Improve performance of your code with data parallelism, inlining, and strictness annotations Profile your programs to identify space leaks and missed opportunities for optimization Find out how to choose the most efficient data and control structures Optimize the Glasgow Haskell Compiler and runtime system for specific programs See how to smoothly drop to lower abstractions wherever necessary Execute programming for the GPU with Accelerate Implement programming to easily scale to the cloud with Cloud Haskell In Detail Haskell, with its power to optimize the code and its high performance, is a natural candidate for high performance programming. It is especially well suited to stacking abstractions high with a relatively low performance cost. This book addresses the challenges of writing efficient code with lazy evaluation and techniques often used to optimize the performance of Haskell programs. We open with an in-depth look at the evaluation of Haskell expressions and discuss optimization and benchmarking. You will learn to use parallelism and we'll explore the concept of streaming. We’ll demonstrate the benefits of running multithreaded and concurrent applications. Next we’ll guide you through various profiling tools that will help you identify performance issues in your program. We’ll end our journey by looking at GPGPU, Cloud and Functional Reactive Programming in Haskell. At the very end there is a catalogue of robust library recommendations with code samples. By the end of the book, you will be able to boost the performance of any app and prepare it to stand up to real-world punishment. Style and approach This easy-to-follow guide teaches new practices and techniques to optimize your code, and then moves towards more advanced ways to effectively write efficient Haskell code. Small and simple practical examples will help you test the concepts yourself, and you will be able to easily adapt them for any application.

Explore the world of data science from scratch with Julia by your side About This Book An in-depth exploration of Julia's growing ecosystem of packages Work with the most powerful open-source libraries for deep learning, data wrangling, and data visualization Learn about deep learning using Mocha.jl and give speed and high performance to data analysis on large data sets Who This Book Is For This book is aimed at data analysts and aspiring data scientists who have a basic knowledge of Julia or are completely new to it. The book also appeals to those competent in R and Python and wish to adopt Julia to improve their skills set in Data Science. It would be beneficial if the readers have a good background in statistics and computational mathematics. What You Will Learn Apply statistical models in Julia for data-driven decisions Understanding the process of data munging and data preparation using Julia Explore techniques to visualize data using Julia and D3 based packages Using Julia to create self-learning systems using cutting edge machine learning algorithms Create supervised and unsupervised machine learning systems using Julia. Also, explore ensemble models Build a recommendation engine in Julia Dive into Julia’s deep learning framework and build a system using Mocha.jl In Detail Julia is a fast and high performing language that's perfectly suited to data science with a mature package ecosystem and is now feature complete. It is a good tool for a data science practitioner. There was a famous post at Harvard Business Review that Data Scientist is the sexiest job of the 21st century. (https://hbr.org/2012/10/data-scientist-the-sexiest-job-of-the-21st-century). This book will help you get familiarised with Julia's rich ecosystem, which is continuously evolving, allowing you to stay on top of your game. This book contains the essentials of data science and gives a high-level overview of advanced statistics and techniques. You will dive in and will work on generating insights by performing inferential statistics, and will reveal hidden patterns and trends using data mining. This has the practical coverage of statistics and machine learning. You will develop knowledge to build statistical models and machine learning systems in Julia with attractive visualizations. You will then delve into the world of Deep learning in Julia and will understand the framework, Mocha.jl with which you can create artificial neural networks and implement deep learning. This book addresses the challenges of real-world data science problems, including data cleaning, data preparation, inferential statistics, statistical modeling, building high-performance machine learning systems and creating effective visualizations using Julia. Style and approach This practical and easy-to-follow yet comprehensive guide will get you learning about Julia with respect to data science. Each topic is explained thoroughly and placed in context. For the more inquisitive, we dive deeper into the language and its use case. This is the one true guide to working with Julia in data science.

Start empowering users and protecting corporate data, while managing Identities and Access with Microsoft Azure in different environments About This Book Deep dive into the Microsoft Identity and Access Management as a Service (IDaaS) solution Design, implement and manage simple and complex hybrid identity and access management environments Learn to apply solution architectures directly to your business needs and understand how to identify and manage business drivers during transitions Who This Book Is For This book is for business decision makers, IT consultants, and system and security engineers who wish to plan, design, and implement Identity and Access Management solutions with Microsoft Azure. What You Will Learn Apply technical de*ions and solution architectures directly to your business needs and deployments Identify and manage business drivers and architecture changes to transition between different scenarios Understand and configure all relevant Identity and Access Management key features and concepts Implement simple and complex directory integration, authentication, and authorization scenarios Get to know about modern identity management, authentication, and authorization protocols and standards Implement and configure a modern information protection solution Integrate and configure future improvements in authentication and authorization functionality of Windows 10 and Windows Server 2016 In Detail Microsoft Azure and its Identity and Access Management is at the heart of Microsoft’s Software as a Service, including Office 365, Dynamics CRM, and Enterprise Mobility Management. It is an essential tool to master in order to effectively work with the Microsoft Cloud. Through practical, project based learning this book will impart that mastery. Beginning with the basics of features and licenses, this book quickly moves on to the user and group lifecycle required to design roles and administrative units for role-based access control (RBAC). Learn to design Azure AD to be an identity provider and provide flexible and secure access to SaaS applications. Get to grips with how to configure and manage users, groups, roles, and administrative units to provide a user- and group-based application and self-service access including the audit functionality. Next find out how to take advantage of managing common identities with the Microsoft Identity Manager 2016 and build cloud identities with the Azure AD Connect utility. Construct blueprints with different authentication scenarios including multi-factor authentication. Discover how to configure and manage the identity synchronization and federation environment along with multi -factor authentication, conditional access, and information protection scenarios to apply the required security functionality. Finally, get recommendations for planning and implementing a future-oriented and sustainable identity and access management strategy. Style and approach A practical, project-based learning experience explained through hands-on examples.

Your one-stop resource for mastering extensions and customizations in JIRA 7+ About This Book Explore the new features of JIRA 7 and best practices for agile development and integration with development tools Customize the look and feel of your JIRA UI to match your specific user needs Create seamless reports that make sense of your data through easy-to-use techniques Who This Book Is For If you are a JIRA developer or administrator, or a project manager who wants to fully exploit the exciting capabilities of JIRA, then this is the perfect book for you. What You Will Learn Create and deploy your own JIRA plugins Manipulate workflows to transform JIRA into a user-friendly system Create custom reports that show statistics for particular people, projects, versions, or other fields within issues Simplify reporting by writing your own JIRA gadgets, which can be added into a user's dashboard Master database handling by extending and retrieving custom field details from the database Deal with custom fields on an issue and program custom field option In Detail JIRA provides issue and project tracking for software development teams to improve code quality and the speed of development. With the new version of JIRA, you can create your own JIRA plugins and customize the look and feel of your JIRA UI easier than ever. JIRA Development Cookbook , Third Edition, is a one-stop resource to master extensions and customizations in JIRA. This book starts with recipes about simplifying the plugin development process followed by recipes dedicated to the plugin framework. Then, you will move on to writing custom field plugins to create new field types or custom searchers. You will also learn how to program and customize workflows to transform JIRA into a user-friendly system. With so much data spanning different projects, issues, and so on, we will cover how to work on reports and gadgets to get customized data according to our needs. At the end of the book, you will learn how to customize JIRA by adding new tabs, menus, and web items; communicate with JIRA via the REST APIs; and work with the JIRA database. Style and approach The most unique aspect of this book is its approach. This book is recipe-based, with real-world examples, that will empower you to implement agile processes and explore the exciting capabilities of Jira.

Master powerful strategies to acquire and analyze evidence from real-life scenarios About This Book A straightforward guide to address the roadblocks face when doing mobile forensics Simplify mobile forensics using the right mix of methods, techniques, and tools Get valuable advice to put you in the mindset of a forensic professional, regardless of your career level or experience Who This Book Is For This book is for forensic analysts and law enforcement and IT security officers who have to deal with digital evidence as part of their daily job. Some basic familiarity with digital forensics is assumed, but no experience with mobile forensics is required. What You Will Learn Understand the challenges of mobile forensics Grasp how to properly deal with digital evidence Explore the types of evidence available on iOS, Android, Windows, and BlackBerry mobile devices Know what forensic outcome to expect under given circumstances Deduce when and how to apply physical, logical, over-the-air, or low-level (advanced) acquisition methods Get in-depth knowledge of the different acquisition methods for all major mobile platforms Discover important mobile acquisition tools and techniques for all of the major platforms In Detail Investigating digital media is impossible without forensic tools. Dealing with complex forensic problems requires the use of dedicated tools, and even more importantly, the right strategies. In this book, you’ll learn strategies and methods to deal with information stored on smartphones and tablets and see how to put the right tools to work. We begin by helping you understand the concept of mobile devices as a source of valuable evidence. Throughout this book, you will explore strategies and "plays" and decide when to use each technique. We cover important techniques such as seizing techniques to shield the device, and acquisition techniques including physical acquisition (via a USB connection), logical acquisition via data backups, over-the-air acquisition. We also explore cloud analysis, evidence discovery and data analysis, tools for mobile forensics, and tools to help you discover and analyze evidence. By the end of the book, you will have a better understanding of the tools and methods used to deal with the challenges of acquiring, preserving, and extracting evidence stored on smartphones, tablets, and the cloud. Style and approach This book takes a unique strategy-based approach, executing them on real-world scenarios. You will be introduced to thinking in terms of "game plans," which are essential to succeeding in analyzing evidence and conducting investigations.

Leverage the power of Xamarin to create stunning cross-platform and native apps About This Book Helps you get a clear practical understanding of creating professional-grade apps with Xamarin Covers Xamarin.Forms, Xamarin Android, and Xamarin iOS If you want to transform yourself from an amateur mobile developer into a professional app developer across multiple platforms, then this is the ideal book for you Who This Book Is For If you are a mobile developer looking to create interesting and fully featured apps for different platforms, then this book is the ideal solution for you. A basic knowledge of Xamarin and C# programming is assumed What You Will Learn Discover eight different ways to create your own Xamarin applications Improve app performance by using SQLite for data-intensive applications Set up a simple web service to feed JSON data into mobile applications Store files locally with Xamarin.Forms using dependency services Use Xamarin extension libraries to create effective applications with less coding In Detail Do you want to create powerful, efficient, and independent apps from scratch that will leverage the Xamarin framework and code with C#Well, look no further; you’ve come to the right place! This is a learn-as-you-build practical guide to building eight full-fledged applications using Xamarin.Forms, Xamarin Android, and Xamarin iOS. Each chapter includes a project, takes you through the process of building applications (such as a gallery Application, a text-to-speech service app, a GPS locator app, and a stock market app), and will show you how to deploy the application’s source code to a Google Cloud Source Repository. Other practical projects include a chat and a media-editing app, as well as other examples fit to adorn any developer’s utility belt. In the course of building applications, this book will teach you how to design and prototype professional-grade applications implementing performance and security considerations. Style and approach A project-based approach that will solve all your needs when it comes to creating native Android, iOS, and cross-platform apps efficiently and effectively.

A fast-paced and practical guide to demystifying big data and transforming it into operational intelligence About This Book Want to get started with Splunk to analyze and visualize machine dataOpen this book and step into the world of Splunk. Leverage the exceptional analysis and visualization capabilities to make informed decisions for your business This easy-to-follow, practical book can be used by anyone, even if you have never managed any data before Who This Book Is For This book will be perfect for you if you are a Software engineer or developer or System administrators or Business analyst who seek to correlate machine data with business metrics and provide intuitive real-time and statistical visualizations. Some knowledge or experience of previous versions of Splunk will be helpful but not essential. What You Will Learn Install and configure Splunk Gather data from different sources, isolate them by indexes, classify them into source types, and tag them with the essential fields Be comfortable with the Search Processing Language and get to know the best practices in writing search queries Create stunning and powerful dashboards Be proactive by implementing alerts and scheduled reports Use the Splunk SDK and integrate Splunk data into other applications Implement the best practices in using Splunk. In Detail Splunk is a search, analysis, and reporting platform for machine data, which has a high adoption on the market. More and more organizations want to adopt Splunk to use their data to make informed decisions. This book is for anyone who wants to manage data with Splunk. You’ll start with very basics of Splunk— installing Splunk—and then move on to searching machine data with Splunk. You will gather data from different sources, isolate them by indexes, classify them into source types, and tag them with the essential fields. After this, you will learn to create various reports, XML forms, and alerts. You will then continue using the Pivot Model to transform the data models into visualization. You will also explore visualization with D3 in Splunk. Finally you’ll be provided with some real-world best practices in using Splunk. Style and approach This fast-paced, example-rich guide will help you analyze and visualize machine data with Splunk through simple, practical instructions.

A practical guide to obtaining, transforming, exploring, and analyzing data using Python, MongoDB, and Apache Spark About This Book Learn to use various data analysis tools and algorithms to classify, cluster, visualize, simulate, and forecast your data Apply Machine Learning algorithms to different kinds of data such as social networks, time series, and images A hands-on guide to understanding the nature of data and how to turn it into insight Who This Book Is For This book is for developers who want to implement data analysis and data-driven algorithms in a practical way. It is also suitable for those without a background in data analysis or data processing. Basic knowledge of Python programming, statistics, and linear algebra is assumed. What You Will Learn Acquire, format, and visualize your data Build an image-similarity search engine Generate meaningful visualizations anyone can understand Get started with analyzing social network graphs Find out how to implement sentiment text analysis Install data analysis tools such as Pandas, MongoDB, and Apache Spark Get to grips with Apache Spark Implement machine learning algorithms such as classification or forecasting In Detail Beyond buzzwords like Big Data or Data Science, there are a great opportunities to innovate in many businesses using data analysis to get data-driven products. Data analysis involves asking many questions about data in order to discover insights and generate value for a product or a service. This book explains the basic data algorithms without the theoretical jargon, and you’ll get hands-on turning data into insights using machine learning techniques. We will perform data-driven innovation processing for several types of data such as text, Images, social network graphs, documents, and time series, showing you how to implement large data processing with MongoDB and Apache Spark. Style and approach This is a hands-on guide to data analysis and data processing. The concrete examples are explained with simple code and accessible data.

Build rich, high production value mobile games and distribute them across different platforms with Buildbox About This Book Create captivating 2D & 2.5D (isometric) video games for all platforms Leverage Buildbox to monetize and prepare your games for distribution This step-by-step tutorial will get you generating complex and media rich games with no coding experience Who This Book Is For This book caters to those who have an interest or desire to create their own mobile games either as a hobbyist or who are looking to enhance their skills as a professional games developer. No coding experience is required. What You Will Learn Create the illusion of a 3D background in your game using parallax Add advanced controls and obstacles to our first world Develop assets (graphic and audio) for the Buildbox engine Design games based on the capabilities and limitations of Buildbox and their target platforms Compile and distribute video games on various channels such as Steam, iOS store, Android stores, and the Mac App Store Optimize your games to get the absolute best quality within platform restrictions Conquer common issues experienced with Buildbox development In Detail Buildbox is an “any skill level” development platform to develop video games with no coding experience. It also exports these games to be compiled for any platform (from Windows to Mac to iOS to Android and Blackberry) all using the same graphic user interface. Using an example as a tutorial, we will relate the driving principles and you’ll see how you can implement these principles to develop any games on the platform. We begin by setting expectations and providing a brief overview of the software. But it’s not long before you “dive in” to creating your first video game. You will actually have a playable level (“world”) by the end of the second chapter. Later on, you’ll learn everything from basic graphics creation to advanced world design while you refine your first game, called “Ramblin’ Rover.” All along the way, you will see how certain functions could be used in tandem to create other types of games; hoping to spark imagination. We will follow the principles and process of monetization through ads and in-game rewards. Lastly, we will go through the process of exporting, compiling, and preparing your storefront to sell the games you will eventually create. Style and approach This book follows a tutorial-based approach that teaches through examples, while also providing the necessary principles to enable you to abstract these principles into any game you want to make.

Analyze your data and delve deep into the world of machine learning with the latest Spark version, 2.0 About This Book Perform data analysis and build predictive models on huge datasets that leverage Apache Spark Learn to integrate data science algorithms and techniques with the fast and scalable computing features of Spark to address big data challenges Work through practical examples on real-world problems with sample code snippets Who This Book Is For This book is for anyone who wants to leverage Apache Spark for data science and machine learning. If you are a technologist who wants to expand your knowledge to perform data science operations in Spark, or a data scientist who wants to understand how algorithms are implemented in Spark, or a newbie with minimal development experience who wants to learn about Big Data Analytics, this book is for you! What You Will Learn Consolidate, clean, and transform your data acquired from various data sources Perform statistical analysis of data to find hidden insights Explore graphical techniques to see what your data looks like Use machine learning techniques to build predictive models Build scalable data products and solutions Start programming using the RDD, DataFrame and Dataset APIs Become an expert by improving your data analytical skills In Detail This is the era of Big Data. The words ‘Big Data’ implies big innovation and enables a competitive advantage for businesses. Apache Spark was designed to perform Big Data analytics at scale, and so Spark is equipped with the necessary algorithms and supports multiple programming languages. Whether you are a technologist, a data scientist, or a beginner to Big Data analytics, this book will provide you with all the skills necessary to perform statistical data analysis, data visualization, predictive modeling, and build scalable data products or solutions using Python, Scala, and R. With ample case studies and real-world examples, Spark for Data Science will help you ensure the successful execution of your data science projects. Style and approach This book takes a step-by-step approach to statistical analysis and machine learning, and is explained in a conversational and easy-to-follow style. Each topic is explained sequentially with a focus on the fundamentals as well as the advanced concepts of algorithms and techniques. Real-world examples with sample code snippets are also included.

Use Hadoop to solve business problems by learning from a rich set of real-life case studies About This Book Solve real-world business problems using Hadoop and other Big Data technologies Build efficient data lakes in Hadoop, and develop systems for various business cases like improving marketing campaigns, fraud detection, and more Power packed with six case studies to get you going with Hadoop for Business Intelligence Who This Book Is For If you are interested in building efficient business solutions using Hadoop, this is the book for you This book assumes that you have basic knowledge of Hadoop, Java, and any *ing language. What You Will Learn Learn about the evolution of Hadoop as the big data platform Understand the basics of Hadoop architecture Build a 360 degree view of your customer using Sqoop and Hive Build and run classification models on Hadoop using BigML Use Spark and Hadoop to build a fraud detection system Develop a churn detection system using Java and MapReduce Build an IoT-based data collection and visualization system Get to grips with building a Hadoop-based Data Lake for large enterprises Learn about the coexistence of NoSQL and In-Memory databases in the Hadoop ecosystem In Detail If you have a basic understanding of Hadoop and want to put your knowledge to use to build fantastic Big Data solutions for business, then this book is for you. Build six real-life, end-to-end solutions using the tools in the Hadoop ecosystem, and take your knowledge of Hadoop to the next level. Start off by understanding various business problems which can be solved using Hadoop. You will also get acquainted with the common architectural patterns which are used to build Hadoop-based solutions. Build a 360-degree view of the customer by working with different types of data, and build an efficient fraud detection system for a financial institution. You will also develop a system in Hadoop to improve the effectiveness of marketing campaigns. Build a churn detection system for a telecom company, develop an Internet of Things (IoT) system to monitor the environment in a factory, and build a data lake – all making use of the concepts and techniques mentioned in this book. The book covers other technologies and frameworks like Apache Spark, Hive, Sqoop, and more, and how they can be used in conjunction with Hadoop. You will be able to try out the solutions explained in the book and use the knowledge gained to extend them further in your own problem space. Style and approach This is an example-driven book where each chapter covers a single business problem and describes its solution by explaining the structure of a dataset and tools required to process it. Every project is demonstrated with a step-by-step approach, and explained in a very easy-to-understand manner.

Unleash the power of XMPP in order to build exciting, real-time, federated applications based on open standards in a secure and highly scalable fashion About This Book Learn about the fundamentals of XMPP and be able to work with the core functionality both server-side and in the browser Build a simple 1-to-1 chat (the “Hello World” of XMPP), explore multi-user chat, publish subscribe systems, and work with a decentralized social network Author Lloyd Watkins is a member of the XMPP standards committee Who This Book Is For If you want to learn about the fundamentals of XMPP, be able to work with the core functionality both server-side and in the browser then this book is for you.No knowledge of XMPP is required, or of TCP/IP networking. It's important that you already know how to build applications of some form, and are looking get a better understanding of how to implement XMPP for one or more of its many uses. You should be interested in the decentralized web, know HTML, and likely know JavaScript and NodeJS. You will probably know JSON, and hopefully XML (this is the native output of XMPP). What You Will Learn Install and configure an XMPP server and use it to connect from a traditional desktop client and send a message Build a simple server-side application that will respond to messages from our logged in desktop client Install and run XMPP-FTW, connect to the server from the browser, and handle incoming/outgoing messages Connect to a multi-user chat room, send/receive stanzas, add a room password, join a protected room, set the room’s subject, and change a user's affiliation Get to grips with the publish-subscribe extension of XMPP and use it to build a pusher system that can make any website real-time Build a simple XMPP component and create an extension for XMPP-FTW that allows you to use your own custom format Build an XMPP version of the classic game “Pong” In Detail XMPP (eXtensible Messaging and Presence Protocol) is a messaging protocol that enables communication between two or more devices via the Internet. With this book, developers will learn about the fundamentals of XMPP, be able to work with the core functionality both server-side and in the browser, as well as starting to explore several of the protocol extensions. You will not only have a solid grasp of XMPP and how it works, but will also be able to use the protocol to build real-world applications that utilize the power of XMPP. By the end of this book, you will know more about networking applications in general, and have a good understanding of how to extend XMPP, as well as using it in sample applications. Style and approach Through a number of hands-on projects, this book shows you how to build usable applications that highlights a feature of XMPP.

Go beyond the basics and unleash the full power of QGIS with practical, step-by-step examples About This Book This book is your one-stop solution to all of your GIS needs using the open source QGIS Master QGIS by learning about database integration, geoprocessing tools, Python *s, advanced cartography, and custom plugins This example-rich, practical guide will help you create sophisticated analyses and maps Who This Book Is For If you are a GIS professional, a consultant, a student, or perhaps a fast learner who wants to go beyond the basics of QGIS, then this book is for you. It will prepare you to realize the full potential of QGIS. What You Will Learn Create and manage a spatial database Get to know advanced techniques to style GIS data Prepare both vector and raster data for processing Add heat maps, live layer effects, and labels to your maps Master LAStools and GRASS integration with the Processing Toolbox Edit and repair topological data errors Automate workflows with batch processing and the QGIS Graphical Modeler Integrate Python *ing into your data processing workflows Develop your own QGIS plugin In Detail QGIS is an open source solution to GIS. It is widely used by GIS professionals all over the world. It is the leading alternative to the proprietary GIS software. Although QGIS is described as intuitive, it is also by default complex. Knowing which tools to use and how to apply them is essential to producing valuable deliverables on time. Starting with a refresher on the QGIS basics, this book will take you all the way through to creating your first custom QGIS plugin. From the refresher, we will recap how to create, populate, and manage a spatial database. You’ll also walk through styling GIS data, from creating custom symbols and color ramps to using blending modes. In the next section, you will discover how to prepare vector, heat maps, and create live layer effects, labeling, and raster data for processing. You’ll also discover advanced data creation and editing techniques. The last third of the book covers the more technical aspects of QGIS such as using LAStools and GRASS GIS’s integration with the Processing Toolbox, how to automate workflows with batch processing, and how to create graphical models. Finally, you will see how to create and run Python data processing *s and write your own QGIS plugin with pyqgis. By the end of the book, you will understand how to work with all the aspects of QGIS, and will be ready to use it for any type of GIS work. Style and approach This step-by-step comprehensive guide will let you dig your teeth into working with spatial databases, creating your own QGIS plugins, and creating your own custom graphical models.

Over 60 recipes will help you build smart IoT solutions and surprise yourself with captivating IoT projects you thought only existed in Bond movies About This Book This book offers key solutions and advice to address the hiccups faced when working on Arduino-based IoT projects in the real world Take your existing skills and capabilities to the next level by building challenging IoT applications with ease. Be the tech disruptor you always wanted to be with key recipes that help you solve Arduino IoT related problems smarter and faster. Put IoT to work through recipes on building Arduino-based devices that take control of your home, health, and life! Who This Book Is For This book is primarily for tech enthusiasts and early IoT adopters who would like to make the most of IoT and address the challenges encountered while developing IoT-based applications with Arduino. This book is also good for developers with basic electronics knowledge who need help to successfully build Arduino projects. What You Will Learn Monitor several Arduino boards simultaneously Tweet sensor data directly from your Arduino board Post updates on your Facebook wall directly from your Arduino board Create an automated access control with a fingerprint sensor Control your entire home from a single dashboard Make a GPS tracker that you can track in Google Maps Build a live camera that streams directly from your robot In Detail Arduino is a powerful and very versatile platform used by millions of people around the world to create DIY electronics projects. It can be connected to a wide variety of sensors and other components, making it the ideal platform to build amazing Internet of Things (IoT) projects on—the next wave in the era of computing. This book takes a recipe-based approach, giving you precise examples on how to build IoT projects of all types using the Arduino platform. You will come across projects from several fields, including the popular robotics and home automation domains. Along with being introduced to several forms of interactions within IoT, including projects that directly interact with well-known web services such as Twitter, Facebook, and Dropbox we will also focus on Machine-to-Machine (M2M) interactions, where Arduino projects interact without any human intervention. You will learn to build a few quick and easy-to-make fun projects that will really expand your horizons in the world of IoT and Arduino. Each chapter ends with a troubleshooting recipe that will help you overcome any problems faced while building these projects. By the end of this book, you will not only know how to build these projects, but also have the skills necessary to build your own IoT projects in the future. Style and approach This book takes a recipe-based approach, giving you precise examples on how to build IoT projects using the Arduino platform. You will learn to build fun and easy projects through a task-oriented approach.

Find out how to transform your Arduino device into an awesome secret agent gadget with this course, taking in everything from robotics to remote control cameras About This Book ?This course won’t just teach you. It will help you apply your knowledge so you can get creative – quickly! ?Find out how to make a computer interact with the real-world – you’ll be learning the basics of IoT without realizing it. ?Robots. A sound controlled Christmas tree. This course proves anything is possible with an Arduino! Who This Book Is For Seeking inspirationThis course will help you get creative with your Arduino quickly. What You Will Learn ?Find out how to explore the full potential of your tiny Arduino ?Find out how to bridge the gap between the real world and software, as you gather and visualize data from the environment ?Create simple servers to allow communication to occur ?Transform your Arduino into a GPS tracker ?Use the Arduino to monitor top secret data ?Build a complete spy robot! In Detail An Arduino might be a tiny computer but it can be used as the foundation for a huge range of projects. In this course, we’ll show you how just some of the projects that are possible with an Arduino. From robotics to secret agent gadgets, we’re pretty confident that this course will get you thinking creatively – and inspire you to create your very own new projects using the Arduino hacking skills you learn. This course, combines both text and video content – it’s made up of three modules to help organize your learning. In the first module we’ll show you how to build three different Arduino projects. All of these will not only get you up and running with something practical, they’ll also help you better understand how the Arduino works. Find out how to develop a home automation system and even build a robot! In the second module we’ll go one step further to help you get creative as you learn how to program LEDs with your Arduino. You’ll find out how to build a mood lamp and a remote-controlled TV backlight, before going on to make a sound controlled LED Christmas tree that makes use of sound visualization. Finally, the third module takes you from stylish design into espionage, as you learn how to create neat secret agent gadgets with your Arduino. Find out how to build an alarm system, a fingerprint sensor, even open a lock with a text message. And that’s not all – but to find out more you’ll have to dive in! This Learning Path combines some of the best that Packt has to offer in one complete, curated package. It includes content from the following Packt products: ● Arduino By Example by Adith Jagadish Boloor ● Arduino BLINK Blueprints by Samarth Shah, Utsav Shah ● Arduino for Secret Agents by Marco Shwartz Style and approach Combining both video and text and built from some of Packt’s very best Arduino content, this course comprises of three modules covering a range of projects. It’s completely focused on helping the user get creative as quickly as possible so they can explore what’s possible with Arduino themselves.

Use new features of PHP 7 to solve practical, real-world problems faced by PHP developers like yourself every day. About This Book .This course covers the new features of version 7.x, best practices for server-side programming, and MVC frameworks .Leverage the potential of PHP for server-side programming, memory management, and Object-Oriented Programming to improve your programming productivity .This course also illustrates the development of a complete modular application using PHP 7 in detail Who This Book Is For If you are an aspiring web developer, mobile developer, or back-end programmer, who has basic experience in PHP programming and wants to develop performance-critical applications, then this course is for you. It will take your PHP programming skills to next level. What You Will Learn .Solve practical real-world programming problems using PHP 7 .Discover where and when PHP 5 code needs to be re-written to avoid backwards-compatibility breaks .Use advanced PHP 7 features such as the Abstract Syntax Tree, Uniform Variable Syntax, Scalar Type Hints, Generator Delegation, Anonymous Classes, and the Context Sensitive Lexer .Set up a high performance development and production environment for PHP 7 .Discover new OOP features in PHP 7 to achieve high performance .Discover the new features of PHP 7 that are relevant to modular application development .Explore the ins and outs of the Symfony framework .Build a set of modules based on the Symfony framework that comprise a simple web shop app In Detail PHP is a great language for developing web applications. It is essentially a server-side *ing language. PHP 7 is the latest version, providing major backward-compatibility breaks and focusing on improved performance and speed. This course follows a learning path which is divided into three modules. Each module is a mini course in its own right, taking your basic PHP programing skills to the next level by showing you intermediate to advanced PHP techniques with a focus on PHP 7. This way, get you equipped with the tools and skills required to develop professional and efficient applications for your websites and enterprises. The first module of the book is a programming cookbook that consists over 80 recipes! Each recipe is designed to solve practical, real-world problems faced by PHP developers like yourself every day. This course also covers new ways of writing PHP code made possible only in version 7. The second module of the course is designed to improve the performance and productivity of your application. We’ll introduce you to the concepts of Object-Oriented Programming (OOP) in PHP 7, then shed some light on how to improve the performance of your PHP 7 applications and database. Throughout this module you will be introduced to benchmarking tools. With all important concepts of PHP covered up you will move on to third module. In this module you will gain a deep insight into the modular programming paradigm and how to achieve modularity in your PHP code. Modular design techniques help you build readable, manageable, reusable, and more efficient codes. PHP 7, which is a popular open source *ing language, is used to build modular functions for your software. This Learning Path combines some of the best that Packt has to offer in one complete, curated package. It includes content from the following Packt products: .PHP 7 Programming Cookbook, Doug Bierer .Learning PHP 7 High Performance, Altaf Hussain .Modular Programming with PHP 7, Branko Ajzele Style and approach This book takes a practical, step-by-step approach with real-world examples that serve as building blocks for your application development and guide you through improving the quality of your code.

Cassandra is a distributed database that stands out thanks to its robust feature set and intuitive interface, while providing high availability and scalability of a distributed data store. This book will introduce you to the rich feature set offered by Cassandra, and empower you to create and manage a highly scalable, performant and fault-tolerant database layer. The book starts by explaining the new features implemented in Cassandra 3.x and get you set up with Cassandra. Then you'll walk through data modeling in Cassandra and the rich feature set available to design a flexible schema. Next you'll learn to create tables with composite partition keys, collections and user-defined types and get to know different methods to avoid denormalization of data. You will then proceed to create user-defined functions and aggregates in Cassandra. Then, you will set up a multi node cluster and see how the dynamics of Cassandra change with it. Finally, you will implement some application-level optimizations using a Java client. By the end of this book, you'll be fully equipped to build powerful, scalable Cassandra database layers for your applications. What you will learn ?Install Cassandra ?Create keyspaces and tables with multiple clustering columns to organize related data ?Use secondary indexes and materialized views to avoid denormalization of data

If you want to design and develop enterprise applications using .NET Core as the development framework and learn about industry-wide best practices and guidelines, then this book is for you. The book starts with a brief introduction to enterprise architecture, which will help you to understand what enterprise architecture is and what the key components are. It will then teach you about the types of patterns and the principles of software development, and explain the various aspects of distributed computing to keep your applications effective and scalable. These chapters act as a catalyst to start the practical implementation, and design and develop applications using different architectural approaches, such as layered architecture, service oriented architecture, microservices and cloud-specific solutions. Gradually, you will learn about the different approaches and models of the Security framework and explore various authentication models and authorization techniques, such as social media-based authentication and safe storage using app secrets. By the end of the book, you will get to know the concepts and usage of the emerging fields, such as DevOps, BigData, architectural practices, and Artificial Intelligence.

Utilize proven solutions to solve common problems in game development About This Book ?Untangle your game development workflow, make cleaner code, and create structurally solid games ?Implement key programming patterns that will enable you to make efficient AI and remove duplication ?Optimize your game using memory management techniques Who This Book Is For If you are a game developer who wants to solve commonly-encountered issues or have some way to communicate to other developers in a standardized format, then this book is for you. Knowledge of basic game programming principles and C++ programming is assumed. What You Will Learn ?Learn what design patterns are and why you would want to use them ?Reduce the maintenance burden with well-tested, cleaner code ?Employ the singleton pattern effectively to reduce your compiler workload ?Use the factory pattern to help you create different objects with the same creation logic and reduce coding time ?Improve game performance with Object Pools ?Allow game play to interact with physics or graphics in an abstract way ?Refractor your code to remove common code smells In Detail You've learned how to program, and you've probably created some simple games at some point, but now you want to build larger projects and find out how to resolve your problems. So instead of a coder, you might now want to think like a game developer or software engineer. To organize your code well, you need certain tools to do so, and that's what this book is all about. You will learn techniques to