TutorialGenius.com

Full path of service and service temporary directory when running

2012-01-25T06:59:00.000-08:00

Execute the following command to view all processes and do a search of a service name (The service your searching for)
ps auxwwwe | grep SERVICENAMEHERE

This will give you back some info about the service. We are really only interested in the ProcessID (PID). This will be an integer.

Example return
root 24466 0.0 0.0 1476 280 ? S 2009 0:00 supervise sshd

PID will be: 24466

So now navigate to /proc and view the contents. You will see a directory for your PID. View the contents of this directory to see the info for the service.

The file path is located @ exe in this example: exe -> /usr/sbin/servicename

proftpd - Adding FTPS Support

2012-01-23T07:34:00.000-08:00

This guide assumes you have proftpd installed with OpenSSL libs. If not, follow this guide

Firstly, I will quickly say....

FTPS or SFTP

People intend to mix FTPS and SFTP together, but both are actually completely differend.

FTPS is a normal FTP server but using SSL encrytion.
SFTP is a ftp kind of session over SSH (so everything is encrypted just like in SSH).

Notes
Users Guide: http://proftpd.org/localsite/Userguide/linked/userguide.html

Steps

*** Ensure mod_tls module is available within your proftpd installation.
*** Ensure you are a root user

1. Open proftpd.conf and add an include to a config file we are going to create (tls.conf). Add the following line below...

Include         /etc/proftpd/tls.conf

2. Now use vi to create the config file in the specified location...

vi /etc/proftpd/tls.conf

3. Enter the following information into the file (How to use vi)

# Proftpd sample configuration for FTPS connections.

# Note that FTPS impose some limitations in NAT traversing.

# See http://www.castaglia.org/proftpd/doc/contrib/ProFTPD-mini-HOWTO-TLS.html

# for more information.

<IfModule mod_tls.c>

TLSEngine                               on

TLSLog                                  /var/log/proftpd/tls.log

TLSProtocol                             SSLv23

TLSRSACertificateFile                   /etc/proftpd/ssl/proftpd.cert.pem

TLSRSACertificateKeyFile                /etc/proftpd/ssl/proftpd.key.pem

# Avoid CA cert and allow client renegotiation (to overcome 1.3.2c bug 3324)

#TLSOptions                             NoCertRequest AllowClientRenegotiation

# Authenticate clients that want to use FTP over TLS?

TLSVerifyClient                         off

# Are clients required to use FTP over TLS when talking to this server?

TLSRequired                             on

# Allow SSL/TLS renegotiations when the client requests them, but

# do not force the renegotations.  Some clients do not support

# SSL/TLS renegotiations; when mod_tls forces a renegotiation, these

# clients will close the data connection, or there will be a timeout

# on an idle data connection.

TLSRenegotiate                          required off

</IfModule>

4. Generate certificate using OpenSSL

openssl req -new -x509 -days 365 -nodes -out /etc/proftpd/ssl/proftpd.cert.pem -keyout /etc/proftpd/ssl/proftpd.key.pem

5. Save and close the file.

6. Now restart proftpd for the changes to take effect.

/etc/init.d/proftpd restart

7. Test FTPS connectivity with the server. See below...
Note: if there are any issues with the connection process, check the log file within the tls.conf file we created: /var/log/proftpd/tls.log

Testing FTPS with lftp

1. Execute following command

lftp -u USERNAMEHERE -e 'set ftp:ssl-force true,ftp:ssl-protect-data true' SERVERNAMEHERE

2. Enter password for user.

3. Perform a simple command. I.e. ls -l

Solaris 9 [SunOS 5.9] - Installing Python [This example uses 2.7.2]

2012-01-17T07:51:00.000-08:00

This is a simple guide on how to install python on a Solaris 9 system. There are a few gotcha's which I am sharing and writing for future use.

1. Download Python. I took the compressed source tarball (.tgz). You are essentially compiling the source on your system.

2. Optional: Transferring it to the server. I had to transfer it to the server to install, so if you need to do that, see my previous post

3. Unzip the package using the following command. It will unzip, then untar.

gunzip -c PYTHONFILENAME.tgz |tar xvf -

4. You now need to configure the source. This will produce a Makefile based on your system. Navigate to the Python source directory, and execute the following command...

./configure --prefix=/usr/local

5. Ensure you are a root user before this step ("su root" - to change). Execute the following command to install Python.

make -i install

6. If everything went well (it probably didn't - see below!). Add Python to your system PATH variable. This way, you don't need to refer to /usr/local everytime you execute a script. See my previous blog post on how to do this.

7. Simply execute the following command to check Python has set itself up correctly... Do this outside of the source directory, so you can test the PATH variable aswell.

python --version

8. Get an ice cold beerski in!

Troubleshooting

During the install procedure, you receive the following...

./Parser/asdl_c.py -c ./Python ./Parser/Python.asdl
/usr/bin/env: No such file or directory
make: *** [Python/Python-ast.c] Error 127

Simply touch the libraries it requires (see below), and re-try... (Run make clean before re-try)

touch Include/Python-ast.h Python/Python-ast.c

During the install procedure, you receive the following...

make: ar: Command not found

You need to add ar to your PATH variable. This is located in /usr/ccs/bin. See my previous blog post on how to do this.

Note: If you are receiving an error while re-trying or you wish to remove temporary install files, simply execute the following command... "make clean"

Bash/sh/csh/tcsh - Updating PATH environment variable in session and on logon

2012-01-17T07:31:00.000-08:00

When updating your PATH varible, it's usually because an installation requires programs and utilities within a directory, and the knowledge of the full path is not known. Either that, or you would like to refer to a command program within specifying the full path. You will usually receive the following error message if a program cannot be found...

xxx: Command not found

So lets check our current PATH using the following command...

echo $PATH

We can now view the current directories included in our PATH variable.
Example: /usr/sysmgr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/ucb:/usr/sysmg/bin:/etc:/usr/local/bin:.

For example, we may wish to install a program, and it requires the ar tool (A tool to aid archiving). It is unaware of the full system path, so we need to add the directory it resides in to our environment variable.

We can either do this temporarily or permanently... It also depends on which shell you are using.

Note: To find out which shell you are using, execute the following command.

echo $SHELL

Temporarily

tcsh/csh Shell (Seperate by spaces and use set command)
set path=(/usr/sysmgr/bin /bin /usr/sbin /usr/bin /usr/ucb /usr/sysmg/bin /etc /usr/local/bin .)

bath/sh Shell (Seperate by colon and use export command)
export PATH=$PATH:/path/to/dir1:/path/to/dir2

Permanently

Bash Shell (Edit /.bash_profile or /.bash_profile files)
http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/change-bash-profile/

tcsh/csh Shell (Edit /.login or /.cshrc files)
http://osr507doc.sco.com/en/OSUserG/_The_C-shell_login_and_cshrc.html

In both cases, you are simply adding the command into a login/shell startup script to that the variable is always set with the extra paths. To edit these files, I recommend using vi (text editor).

vi Help
vi in Solaris help
vi in Unix help

Transfer Files From One UNIX Server To Another using ssh scp

2012-01-17T03:56:00.000-08:00

In Unix, you can use the scp command to copy files and directories securely between remote hosts without starting an FTP session or logging into the remote systems explicitly. The scp command uses SSH to transfer data, so it requires a password or passphrase for authentication. Unlike rcp or FTP, scp encrypts both the file and any passwords exchanged so that anyone snooping on the network can't view them.

Warning: Be careful when copying between hosts files that have the same names; you may accidently overwrite them.

From Server to Local
scp -r user@server1:/directory/files /localDirectory

From Local to Server
scp -r /localDirectory user@server1:/directory/files

Python SUDS (SOAP API) full example with WSSE and complex types

2012-01-04T08:52:00.000-08:00

I began this task in Perl originally, then decided to switch to Python and have an easier ride. I will upload the Perl example when I sort out a few minor issues with the SOAP::Lite library.

Anyway, in this example, you can specify a WSDL and WSSE (Web Service Security Extensions) username and password (sent in clear text btw), and it will send a SOAP request out and get a sample response back.

I have purposely consumed a service that has some complex types available (basically not just strings and ints). You can see how it is to work with the library and consume your own methods with this example.

Here are some useful things to note
- There have been problems with SUDS generating empty tags for optional properties for complex types. If this is the case, you will receive this error in your SOAP Body's response... "Server was unable to read request. ---> There is an error in the XML document. ---> Instance validation error: '' is not a valid value for PROPERTY_HERE."... To get around this, simply specify those properties (example below)

- client.factory.create() is used to let Python know about the complex types.

- "print client" (Using the example below) will tell you everything you need to know about your service (namespaces, types, methods, properties etc).

- The logger is your friend! Don't be a hero! Start out small and go big! The technique is to analyze the SOAP response and query the errors. If you can get a hold of what the correct SOAP envelope should look like, then compare this against the SOAP request you are sending out. This is the easiest way to solve any problems.

- Coming from a .NET background, I added a service reference and made a simple call with C#. You can then write more code to analyze the SOAP Request, or simply install Fiddler2 (If you haven't got it already, only 600kb and very useful!) to get the correct SOAP envelope to compare against.

The code


#!/usr/bin/python
#
# Sean Greasley. TutorialGenius.com 2012.
#
# Creates a portfolio object using the exacttarget SOAP API. An image must exist at the specified URN
# before alerting the system that the image is ready to be processed,
#
# USAGE:
#    -portfolio <Display Name> <URN> <File Name> <Optional: CustomerKey>
#    -portfoliowsdl <WSDL Address> <WSSE Username> <WSSE Password> <Display Name> <URN> <File Name> <Optional: CustomerKey>
#
#
# Imports
from suds.client import Client
from suds.wsse import *

# Logging Options
import logging
logging.basicConfig(level=logging.INFO)
logging.getLogger('suds.client').setLevel(logging.DEBUG)
logging.getLogger('suds.wsdl').setLevel(logging.DEBUG)
logging.getLogger('suds.wsse').setLevel(logging.DEBUG)


# Define usage options
def printUsage():
    print ""
    print "[USAGE]"
    print "------------------------------------------------------------------------"
    print "    " + sys.argv[0] + " -portfolio <Display Name> <URN> <File Name> <Optional: CustomerKey>"
    print "    " + sys.argv[0] + " -portfoliowsdl <WSDL Address> <WSSE Username> <WSSE Password> <Display Name> <URN> <File Name> <Optional: CustomerKey>"
    print ""
    return


# Validate argument input
if (len(sys.argv) <= 1):
    print "Invalid usage options..."
    printUsage()
    sys.exit(1)
elif (sys.argv[1] == "-portfolio" and (len(sys.argv) == 5 or len(sys.argv) == 6)):
    print "Setting up a portfolio"
elif (sys.argv[1] == "-portfoliowsdl" and (len(sys.argv) == 8 or len(sys.argv) == 9)):
    print "Setting up a portfolio with WSDL options"
else:
    print "Invalid usage options..."
    printUsage()
    sys.exit(1)



# Setup variables
WSDL_URL = "https://webservice.s4.exacttarget.com/etframework.wsdl"
WSSE_USERNAME = "Username here!"
WSSE_PASSWORD = "Password here!"
PORTFOLIO_DISPLAYNAME = "Test Sean Display Name1"
PORTFOLIO_URN = "http://www.ct4me.net/images/dmbtest.gif"
PORTFOLIO_FILENAME = "dmbtest.gif"
PORTFOLIO_CUSTOMERKEY = ""

if (sys.argv[1] == "-portfoliowsdl"):
    WSDL_URL = sys.argv[2]
    WSSE_USERNAME = sys.argv[3]
    WSSE_PASSWORD = sys.argv[4]
    PORTFOLIO_DISPLAYNAME = sys.argv[5]
    PORTFOLIO_URN = sys.argv[6]
    PORTFOLIO_FILENAME = sys.argv[7]
    
    try:
        PORTFOLIO_CUSTOMERKEY = sys.argv[8]
    except:
        print "No Customer key specified. Using default..."
elif (sys.argv[1] == "-portfolio"):
    PORTFOLIO_DISPLAYNAME = sys.argv[2]
    PORTFOLIO_URN = sys.argv[3]
    PORTFOLIO_FILENAME = sys.argv[4]
    
    try:
        PORTFOLIO_CUSTOMERKEY = sys.argv[5]
    except:
        print "No Customer key specified. Using default..."


# URL Detail
client = Client(WSDL_URL)


# WSSE Security
security = Security()
token = UsernameToken(WSSE_USERNAME, WSSE_PASSWORD)
security.tokens.append(token)
client.set_options(wsse=security)


# Build up portfolio
# 'Portfolio' is a complex type... so we use the create method to expose the properties to us. We can then populate the properties as normal.
portfolio = client.factory.create('Portfolio')
portfolio.DisplayName = PORTFOLIO_DISPLAYNAME
portfolio.CustomerKey = PORTFOLIO_CUSTOMERKEY
portfolio.Source = client.factory.create('ResourceSpecification')
portfolio.Source.URN = PORTFOLIO_URN
portfolio.FileName = PORTFOLIO_FILENAME


# For some reason the SUDS library tends to generate empty SOAP tags for optional properties. Here I have manually specified the defaults here. Just be aware of that! 
createOptions = client.factory.create('CreateOptions')
createOptions.RequestType = "Synchronous"
createOptions.QueuePriority= "High"


# Attach Portfolio to array - Need to set at pos 0, as it returns 1 by default.
apiObject = [client.factory.create('APIObject')]  # Remember [ ], its an array!
apiObject[0] = portfolio


# Create portfolio
# This method also had 'out' parameters exposed
print client.service.Create(createOptions, apiObject)


# Uncomment this next line to find out useful information about your service.
# print client

WSDL and SOAP: Test and Invoke WSDL online!

2011-12-23T03:56:00.000-08:00

Really good website for service discovery
http://www.service-repository.com

They also have a WSDL tester and invoker... displays the SOAP messages and response. It also builds the HTML forms dynamically. Great stuff!
http://www.service-repository.com/client/start

Perl: SOAP::Lite - 500 Can't connect to webservice.service.com:443 (Invalid argument) https

2011-12-22T04:37:00.000-08:00

I had a problem recently with trying to call a HTTPS Web Service using Perl's SOAP::Lite library, and I was receiving this error "500 Can't connect to webservice.service.com:443 (Invalid argument)"...

Note: Port 443 ssl. This is the default port for HTTPS/SSL. This is the encrypted form of HTTP that normally runs over port 80.

Okay, so problem identified... Cannot communicate with service over 443... What next?

We use cpan to install another library called "Crypt::SSLeay"... sounds spooky! But don't worry, it simply provides support for the HTTPS protocol in LWP (Library for WWW in Perl).

cpan - what the heck? View my previous post on cpan here

Simply issue this command, and cpan will do the rest...

sudo perl -MCPAN -e "install Crypt::SSLeay"

Perl: SOAP::Lite Simple .NET Service Call

2011-12-22T04:03:00.001-08:00

Ever wondered how to call a .NET web service using the SOAP::Lite library?
I didn't think so, but just incase you did!....

#!/usr/bin/perl
use SOAP::Lite 'trace', 'debug'; # adds debug and tracing to view SOAP msgs
use SOAP::WSDL;
use strict;
use warnings;

my $soap = SOAP::Lite
-> uri('http://services.aonaware.com/webservices')
-> on_action( sub {sprintf '%s/%s', @_} )
-> proxy('http://services.aonaware.com/DictService/DictService.asmx');

print $soap->ServerInfo()->result;

Key Points to note
1. Use the tracing and debugging options, this will tell you what is wrong (trust me, it will happen!)
2. URI - This is a reference to the NAMESPACE.... Simple view your WSDL or ASMX service, and view the 'targetNamespace' attribute for the base node.... This references the namespace... This is required when making SOAP calls.
3. PROXY - This is the actual URL to the service or WSDL.
4. on_action - What to do when the action is raised.... similar to an event.... In the example, its simply printing the response. I am also manually printing the response in the code... so you will see output twice.

For reference, there is a really good post here that troubleshoots these issues further.
Microsoft also did a good post here

Perl: Can't locate [Library Here] in @INC - (CPAN Usage)

2011-12-22T02:27:00.000-08:00

So i've been looking into Perl this week and I came across an error... quite simple when you know how... this post explains in !English! the options you can take to tackle this... CPAN is utilised and explained in this post.

The Error

SeanMAC:tmp localhome$ perl test.pl
Can't locate SOAP/Lite.pm in @INC (@INC contains: /Library/Perl/Updates/5.8.8/darwin-thread-multi-2level /Library/Perl/Updates/5.8.8 /System/Library/Perl/5.8.8/darwin-thread-multi-2level /System/Library/Perl/5.8.8 /Library/Perl/5.8.8/darwin-thread-multi-2level /Library/Perl/5.8.8 /Library/Perl /Network/Library/Perl/5.8.8/darwin-thread-multi-2level /Network/Library/Perl/5.8.8 /Network/Library/Perl /System/Library/Perl/Extras/5.8.8/darwin-thread-multi-2level /System/Library/Perl/Extras/5.8.8 /Library/Perl/5.8.6 /Library/Perl/5.8.1 .) at test.pl line 17.
BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at test.pl line 17.

So I created a test script and attempted to execute it. It threw up an error at Line 17 complaining that I didn't have the SOAP::Lite library. I.e. "Can't locate SOAP/Lite.pm"

In .NET we would probably either Google the library or use NuGet (NuGet.org - NuGet is a Visual Studio extension that makes it easy to install and update open source libraries).

If we would ever try to compare Perl to the .NET world, we could relate CPAN to NuGet in terms of what it does for us. That is, gets third party libraries, unpacks them and installs them for us.

CPAN
CPAN, the Comprehensive Perl Archive Network, is an archive of over 100,000 modules of software written in Perl, as well as documentation for it.

To use cpan, open up a terminal or command window, and use the following command. This will run cpan as ROOT user. This is sometimes necessary as it requires access to shared library directories.

perl -MCPAN -e 'shell'

You will then be in the cpan shell. Type 'h' for help....

command	argument	description
a,b,d,m	WORD or /REGEXP/	about authors, bundles, distributions, modules
i	WORD or /REGEXP/	about anything of above
r	NONE	reinstall recommendations
ls	AUTHOR	about files in the author's directory
get		download
make		make (implies get)
test	MODULES	make test (implies make)
install	DISTS, BUNDLES	make install (implies test)
clean		make clean
look		open subshell in these dists' directories
readme		display these dists' README files

If we wish to install our library (This includes get/download, make, test and install) then we simply issue the command....

install [Library Name]

with example

install SOAP::Lite

You will be asked a few options, mostly regarding ideal location to download from, connection timeouts etc... You can simply keep hitting enter to use the defaults.

If all is successful, your library will be installed and included within the @INC array (Containing paths to libraries used by Perl).

Happy Scripting!

iOS - Viewing hidden files and directories

2011-12-09T07:58:00.000-08:00

Write the following into a terminal window....

defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE
killall Finder

This will show you all of the hidden files and folders on your operating system. If you want to reverse the command replace TRUE with FALSE.

REST Web Services

2011-11-12T05:30:00.000-08:00

Good article on RESTful Web Service Architecture

LINQ to SQL vs. ADO.NET Entity Framework

2011-11-09T10:15:00.000-08:00

LINQ to SQL and the Entity Framework have a lot in common, but each have features targeting different scenarios in the Orcas timeframe.

LINQ to SQL has features targeting “Rapid Development” against a Microsoft SQL Server database. Think of LINQ to SQL as allowing you to have a strongly-typed view of your existing database schema. LINQ to SQL supports a direct, 1:1 mapping of your existing database schema to classes; a single table can be mapped to a single inheritance hierarchy (i.e. , a table can contain persons, customers, and employees) and foreign keys can be exposed as strongly-typed relationships. You can build LINQ queries over tables/views/table valued functions and return results as strongly typed objects, and call stored procedures that return strongly typed results through strongly typed methods.

A key design principle of LINQ to SQL is that it “just work” for the common cases; so, for example, if you access a collection of orders through the Orders property of a customer, and that customer’s orders have not previously been retrieved, LINQ to SQL will automatically get them for you.

LINQ to SQL relies on convention, for example default insert, update, and delete logic through generated DML can be overwritten by exposing appropriately named methods (for example, “InsertCustomer“, “UpdateCustomer“, “DeleteCustomer“). These methods may invoke stored procedures or perform other logic in order to process changes.

The Entity Framework has features targeting “Enterprise Scenarios“. In an enterprise, the database is typically controlled by a DBA, the schema is generally optimized for storage considerations (performance, consistency, partitioning) rather than exposing a good application model, and may change over time as usage data and usage patterns evolve. With this in mind, the Entity Framework is designed around exposing an application-oriented data model that is loosely coupled, and may differ significantly, from your existing database schema. For example, you can map a single class (or “entity”) to multiple tables/views, or map multiple classes to the same table/view. You can map an inheritance hierarchy to a single table/view (as
in LINQ to SQL) or to multiple tables/views (for example, persons, customers, and employees could each be separate tables, where customers and employees contain only the additional columns not present in persons, or repeat the columns from the persons table). You can group properties into complex (or “composite”) types (for example, a Customer type may have an “Address” property that is an Address type with Street, City, Region, Country and Postal code properties).

The Entity Framework lets you optionally represent many:many relationships directly, without representing the join table as an entity in your data model, and has a new feature called “Defining Query” that lets you expose any native query against the store as a “table” that can be mapped just as any other table (except that updates must be performed through stored procedures). This flexible mapping, including the option to use stored procedures to process changes, is specified declaratively in order to account for the schema of the database evolving over time without having to recompile the application.

The Entity Framework includes LINQ to Entities which exposes many of the same features as LINQ to SQL over your conceptual application data model; you can build queries in LINQ (or in “Entity SQL”, a canonical version of SQL extended to support concepts like strong typing, polymorphism, relationship navigation and complex types), return results as strongly typed CLR objects, execute stored procedures or table valued functions through strongly-typed methods, and process changes by calling a single save method.

However, the Entity Framework is more than LINQ to Entities; it includes a “Storage Layer” that lets you use the same conceptual application model through low-level ADO.NET Data Provider interfaces using Entity SQL, and efficiently stream results as possibly hierarchical/polymorphic DataReaders, saving the overhead of materializing objects for read-only scenarios where there is no additional business logic.

The Entity Framework works with Microsoft SQL Server and 3rd party databases through extended ADO.NET Data Providers, providing a common query language against different relational databases through either LINQ to Entities or Entity SQL.

So while there is a lot of overlap, LINQ to SQL is targeted more toward rapidly developing applications against your existing Microsoft SQL Server schema, while the Entity Framework provides object- and storage-layer access to Microsoft SQL Server and 3rd party databases through a loosely coupled, flexible mapping to existing relational schema.

I know this is a confusing area, and we’re trying to figure out how best to describe these differences to help customers make the appropriate choices. Please let me know if this helps, or if there are still areas of confusion…

Thanks,
Michael Pizzo
Principal Architect
Microsoft Data Programmability

I want SQL Management Studio Express (The GUI!!) After installing VS 2010

2011-10-25T02:55:00.000-07:00

So I re-installed VS 2010 the other day and as usual, it installs about 50 versions of SQL Server with it (urgh!)... after seeing copious amount of SQL Server names in "Add/Remove Programs", I still didn't have the nice GUI to work with (SQL Management Studio Express)... gees!

So I found a link where a few people have had the same issue, check it here

If anybody knows of a minimal version or a better suggestion, please comment!

How To: Unlock and Activate iPhone on iOS 5 [teathered]

2011-10-18T15:20:00.000-07:00

So i spent some time the other day trying to unlock and activate an iPhone 3GS (also works for other models and iPad)... So rather than letting this be forgotten forever (because it took a while!) I'd thought i'd make a blog about my findings.

Preliminaries
- Latest version of iTunes
- Redsn0w [Which version?]
- Tiny Umbrella (Used to find out the firmware version)
- The Target Firmware [Files here]

!!Things to note!!

Teathered vs. Unteathered?
This simply means, weather you need a computer to start your phone. If a release of redsn0w offers a Teathered solution, then !everytime! your phone turns off (out of battery, new app install etc.) you will need to plug it into your computer and use redsn0w to boot the phone! The batteries are pretty decent, so you probably don't even care or it's no big deal.

Which firmware shall I get?
Currently, if you want an UNTEATHERED solution (basically the phone can boot by itself) then firmware 4.3.3 is what you need. Currently there is no unteathered solution for the latest firmware (including: 4.3.4, 4.3.5 and 5).

I want UNTEATHERED, but, I have later than 4.3.3 on my iPhone!?
Most website will tell you that you need SHSH Blobs in order to do this. If you don't know what they are or you didn't upgrade your iPhone before, chances are you won;t have them.
Apparently there IS solution to do this, I have not tried it personally. You can find it here

OK enough preliminaries, lets do it!....

1. Ok this guide is for iOS 5 and TEATHERED, so lets get iOS 5 on the iPhone. If your not sure weather you have it already, connect the iPhone to the computer and open TinyUmbrella. This will tell you your current firmware version. If you already have iOS 5, skip steps 3-5.

2. Put iPhone in DFU mode HOWTO VIDEO HERE

3. Connect iPhone to computer, and use 'Restore', this will prompt you to install the latest firmware (iOS 5).

4. You now have the latest and greatest firmware!

5. Ok, now, lets jailbreak.... download firmware for iOS 5 (links above or here). If you already did an update through iTunes, this will already be in your downloaded directory. See below to find this...

On Windows XP :
Documents and Settings\\Application Data\Apple Computer\iTunes\iPhone Software Updates

On Windows Vista/Windows 7:
Users\\AppData\Roaming\Apple Computer\iTunes\iPhone Software Updates

On Mac:
~/Library/iTunes/iPhone Software Updates

6. Now you have the firmware handy, open redsn0w for your current firmware version. Currently, 0.9.9b4 for windows or 0.9.9b5 for mac.

7. Click extras and specify firmware manually. Point to the iOS 5 firmware (*.ispw).

8. Go back and hit the jailbreak button. Select 'Install Cydia', continue to next dialog which will ask you to put the phone into DFU mode. HOWTO VIDEO HERE

9. Redsn0w will do all its business, don't touch the iPhone until it finishes, it stops on the spinner (which has probably stopped spinning).

10. Ok the jailbreak is done, but like I said, its teathered. So open redsn0w, click extras, and we just want to boot the iPhone. Click the button, and prepare to enter DFU mode again. This is a bit trickier with a phone that won't turn off.

Note: If your jailbreak left you on the crashed spinner, don't worry its fine. Simply hold the power and home buttons for 10secs until the phone does a hard reset. Once the phone resets, proceed with the DFU instructions!

11. Ok you should see a pineapple logo on the iPhone if done correctly, and the iPhone will boot up. You should be able to use the iPhone to its full extent, unless you need to unlock your iPhone to any network, then only your calls will not work. If you need to unlock as well, follow the rest of this guide....

12. Next step (for the unlock), you need a WIFI connection! It'll probably say 'No Service' in the top left corner.

13. Open Cydia (now on dashboard) and search for ultrasn0w. Download and install this and it will ask you to reboot when you are done. (Don't forget you need to boot using redsn0w as its teathered!)

14. When you re-boot, your iPhone should is unlocked and ready to party!

OK i've done all of this, but still 'No Service'!?

1. Ok first, disabled 3G (general settings > Network > Enable 3G)
2. Toggle airplane mode (this will refresh the signal).

If this does not work, then you may need to update your base band (basically a firmware update for your inbuilt modem). We will update this to match the iPad's baseband (currently v06.15.00), works just as well. There are somethings you should be aware of before doing this though!! - Personally, I needed to do this myself!

OK i've decided to update my base band, how do I do this?!

1. First, double check you actually don't already have v06. (Settings > General > About > Modem Firmware).
2. Re-run the jailbreak process again, but when you check 'Install Cydia', also check 'Install iPad base band'... this will do the jailbreak, but also update your modem firmware.
3. Check on iPhone that the modem firmware was updated to v06.
4. Repeat the process above to unlock the phone with ultrasn0w.
5. Awesome!

OK I DON'T WANT THIS JAILBREAK STUFF ANYMORE, HELP!?

1. Plug into Computer via. USB.
2. Put phone in DFU mode.
3. Click 'Restore' in iTunes.
4. Sorted!

MVC3/Razor - Global Error Handling

2011-07-28T09:02:00.000-07:00

Here is a technique you can use within your MVC application to control global error handling. The technique is quite similar to aspx pages where you populate the Application_Error function within Global.asax, however, the routing is completely new!

Global.asax

/// <summary>

/// Handle application error on a global level.

/// Passes handling off to the ErrorController

/// </summary>

protected void Application_Error()

    var exception = Server.GetLastError();

    var httpException = exception as HttpException;

    Response.Clear();

    Server.ClearError();

    var routeData = new RouteData();

    routeData.Values["controller"] = "Errors";

    routeData.Values["action"] = "General";

    routeData.Values["exception"] = exception;

    Response.StatusCode = 500;

    if (httpException != null)

        Response.StatusCode = httpException.GetHttpCode();

        switch (Response.StatusCode)

            case 403:

                routeData.Values["action"] = "Http403";

                break;

            case 404:

                routeData.Values["action"] = "Http404";

                break;

    IController errorsController = new ErrorController();

    var rc = new RequestContext(new HttpContextWrapper(Context), routeData);

    errorsController.Execute(rc);

Note: This will route our errors to the ErrorController. Lets take a look at the error controller...

ErrorController.cs

// <copyright file="ErrorController.cs" company="GinkoSolutions.com">

// Copyright (c) 2011 All Right Reserved

// </copyright>

// <author>Sean Greasley</author>

// <email>sean@ginkosolutions.com/sean@tutorialgenius.com</email>

// <summary>Controller for handling errors within the application.</summary>

namespace MVCEmailExample.Controllers

    using System;

    using System.Collections.Generic;

    using System.Linq;

    using System.Web;

    using System.Web.Mvc;

    using MVCEmailExample.Models;

    /// <summary>

    /// Controller for handling errors within the application.

    /// </summary>

    public class ErrorController : Controller

        public ActionResult General(Exception exception)

            return View("Error", new ErrorModel() { ErrorTitle = "General Error", ExceptionDetail = exception });

        public ActionResult Http404()

            return View("Error", new ErrorModel() { ErrorTitle = "Not found" });

        public ActionResult Http403()

            return View("Error", new ErrorModel() { ErrorTitle = "Forbidden" });

So now were handling our errors and throwing them out to the Error View (in Views/Shared!). However, were now using a strongly typed view and passing a custom class into it. This custom class contains details of our error!

ErrorModel.cs (Our custom error class!)

using System;

using System.Collections.Generic;

using System.Linq;

using System.Web;

namespace MVCEmailExample.Models

    public class ErrorModel

        public string ErrorTitle { get; set; }

        public Exception ExceptionDetail { get; set; }

Very simple! All it does it holds information really.
Now lets take a look at our error view...

Error View (This will already exist with a new MVC3 application) P.s. I'm using Razor syntax!

@using MVCEmailExample.Models

@model ErrorModel

@{

    Layout = "~/Views/Shared/_Layout.cshtml";

<h2>@Model.ErrorTitle</h2>

Sorry, an error occurred while processing your request.

<br />

@if (Model.ExceptionDetail != null)

      @Model.ExceptionDetail.Message

This is our strongly typed view (Hint: @model ErrorModel). We simply extract the error info here and display it in a very (unstylish) form!

This sample below is for a sample email application. This uses the code described above. Just hit the button without entering any information and (assuming you don't have local mail server) u'll see some errors appearing!

MVC3 Razor - Global Error Handling

C# - Sending HTML Email template with linked resources and plain text fallback

2011-07-28T08:23:00.001-07:00

Hi all,

If your reading this, then chances are you've looked how to create a simple email with C# and added some HTML in there. You might have then looked for including images and the documentation on the internet for this is kinda poor/bad/doesn't work. Well here's how!!

In this example, I have created a class library that can be used with any C# application. So it doesn't matter what kinda application you have (MVC, ASPX Web App, Client App, Command Line etc...).

Lets let on with it!! I've created this project in .NET 4.0 at time of writing and included a VS2010 MVC3 Web App with it for full example. I have also included some global MVC3 error handling!

Class Library

// <copyright file="EmailHelper.cs" company="GinkoSolutions.com">

// Copyright (c) 2011 All Right Reserved

// </copyright>

// <author>Sean Greasley</author>

// <email>sean@ginkosolutions.com/sean@tutorialgenius.com</email>

// <summary>Email helper class. Allows sending of html and plain text emails to a target email address.</summary>

namespace MVCEmailExample.Helpers

    using System;

    using System.Collections.Generic;

    using System.Collections.Specialized;

    using System.Configuration;

    using System.Linq;

    using System.Net.Mail;

    using System.Net.Mime;

    using System.Web;

    using System.Web.UI;

    using System.Web.UI.WebControls;

    using MVCEmailExample.Exceptions;

    using MVCEmailExample.Models;

    /// <summary>

    /// Email helper class.

    /// Allows sending of html and plain text emails to a target email address.

    /// </summary>

    public class EmailHelper

        /// <summary>

        /// Sends an email to a recipient. Provides HTML and plain text views.

        /// The recipient will receive which one their client supports.

        /// </summary>

        /// <param name="templateDir">Directory of where the HTML email template is stored.</param>

        /// <param name="recipient">Receipient information</param>

        public static void SendEmail(string templateDir, Recipient recipient)

try

                // Build message

                MailMessage message = new MailMessage();

                message.To.Add(new MailAddress(recipient.Email));

                message.Subject = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["EmailSubject"];

                // Create plain text mode for alternative view

                AlternateView plainView = AlternateView.CreateAlternateViewFromString(ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["PlainTextEmail"], null, "text/plain");

                message.AlternateViews.Add(plainView);

                // Create HTML email version

                MailDefinition mailDef = new MailDefinition();

                mailDef.BodyFileName = string.Format(@"{0}\{1}", templateDir, @"Email.html");

                mailDef.IsBodyHtml = true;

                mailDef.Subject = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["EmailSubject"];

                // Build replacement collection to replace fields in Email.htm file

                // Use fields anywhere in the template file. I.e.   <%FRIENDNAME%>

                ListDictionary replacements = new ListDictionary();

                replacements.Add("<%NAME%>", recipient.Name);

                // Use dummy control as owner (I.e. new System.Web.UI.Control()) as were in a class library.

                // It's only use to determine where the access templates from as a relative base.

                MailMessage msgHtml = mailDef.CreateMailMessage(recipient.Email, replacements, new System.Web.UI.Control());

                AlternateView htmlView = AlternateView.CreateAlternateViewFromString(msgHtml.Body, null, "text/html");

                // Add linked resources

                AddLinkedResources(templateDir, ref htmlView);

                // Add HTML view

                message.AlternateViews.Add(htmlView);

                // Send message

                SmtpClient client = new SmtpClient();

                client.Send(message);

            catch (Exception mailEx) { throw new MailerException("Error sending email.", mailEx); }

        /// <summary>

        /// Adds linked resources to the email

        /// Email template must contain the resource IDs in the following format: <img src="cid:CONTENTID" />

        /// </summary>

        /// <param name="templateDir">Directory of where the HTML email template images are stored.</param>

        /// <param name="htmlView">A reference to the HTML view.</param>

        private static void AddLinkedResources(string templateDir, ref AlternateView htmlView)

            LinkedResource logo1 = new LinkedResource(string.Format(@"{0}\{1}", templateDir, @"Images\email.jpg"), MediaTypeNames.Image.Jpeg);

            logo1.ContentId = "email";

            htmlView.LinkedResources.Add(logo1);

Note: This will attempt to send a HTML email with an embedded image (linked resource). If the client does not support HTML, then a plain text email will be used as backup. boom! (I've defined this in the application settings, as well as the email subject and "from" email address).

Configuration - App Settings (Optional, just didn't want to hard code them) [Web/App.config]

<appSettings>

    <!-- Email App Settings -->

    <add key="EmailSubject" value="GinkoSolutions.com Email Example"/>

    <add key="PlainTextEmail" value="Hi There, You currently don't support HTML emails, but thats ok! I'm just saying hello anyway!"/>

</appSettings>

Configuration - Email server [App/Web.config]

<system.net>

    <mailSettings>

        <smtp from="Admin &lt;admin@ginkosolutions.com&gt;">

            <network host="localhost" port="25"  />

        </smtp>

    </mailSettings>

</system.net>

Note: This won't work unless you have a local email server. Please provide the details to an SMTP email server here.

Create a sample recipient class (Just for storing recipient details)

public class Recipient

    public string Name { get; set; }

    public string Email { get; set; }

Invoke the email static class

// Construct recipient from form

Recipient recipient = new Recipient() { Name = FriendName, Email = FriendEmail };

// Send email

EmailHelper.SendEmail(Server.MapPath("~/EmailTemplate"), recipient);

Note: I have added an email template path as a parameter. This is so that if you execute the email helper from a web application, it knows where to find the templates!

Sample HTML Template File

<body style="background: #000000;">

Hello <%NAME%>,

<br /><br />

I thought i'd send you a picture of some guy holding an envelope.

<br /><br />

<img src="cid:email" />

<br /><br />

I have no idea why though!

<br /><br />

Thanks!

</body>

Note:
Notice the cid prefix for the images. This indicates a contentID for a linked resource. If you look in the code for the email helper, you will notice that I am created 1 linked resource and setting the contentID to 'email'. This will simply embed the image.
Again, in this template, you will notice I have used a custom tag for the friend's name called NAME. This is replaced within the email helper when we construct a ListDictionary and add our replacements to it.

and thats it!!

If you stuck, or can't get it to compile, then download the full sample here

MVC3 Web Application - Full Email Example with Fallback

MVC3 JQuery Client Validation using Entity Model Framework 4.1 auto generated classes

2011-07-22T02:19:00.000-07:00

Hi all,

This is a quick tutorial on how to perform client validation using the MVC framework with auto generated classes in the backend. You might have these auto-generated classes by using a data modelling framework such as: Entity Framework or Linq-To-Sql.

Prerequisites
Creating an MVC 3 Web Application with the Razor View Engine, HTML5 and IIS Express 7.5

Creating an entity model using EMF 4.1
1. Create a new Entity Data Model (.edmx) file within your Modules folder. Right click Modules and add a "ADO.NET Entity Data Model" item. Call this "MembershipModel.edmx"
2. If you have a database already, seelct "Generate from database". This will automatically create entities based on your tables. If not, select "Empty model".
3. Open the entity designer file (.edmx).
4. If you selected "Empty model", Right click the designer > Add > Entity...
5. Name the entity "User"
6. OK to create!
7. Right click the new entity > Add > Scalar Property
8. Call the property "Name"
9. Right click the new entity > Add > Scalar Property
10. Call the property "Email"
11. You can generate your database from your model. Once you have created your entities, right click the designer and select "Generate Database from Model". Don't worry if you need to update these at a later date, EMF does a good job of syncing these later.
12. Setup a new connection to your database
13. You will be presented with an SQL script for your entities, cool huh?
14. Execute this against your datastore.

Note: If you open the designer oce behind file (MembershipModel.Designer.cs), you can see that the classes have been created for us (one per entity), aswell as some properties and a method to create a new user (in our example). By default, the designer uses a code generater called T4 (Text Template Transformation Toolkit). You will notice that all classes using the default template implement the EntityObject base class. These classes provide a lot of functionality, but are quite cumbersome to work with. So we are going to use a different generator! (DbContext Generator)

Using the DbContext Generator
1. Right click the Entity Model .edmx designer > "Add Code generation"
2. Select "ADO.NET DbContext Generator" from the dialog and name it "Model1.tt".
3. OK to create!
4. You will receive a warning because template can potentially contain harmful content. Just click ok!

Note: You will notice that two files have been created under the Models folder: Model1.tt and Model1.Context.tt. Underneath the Model1.tt file, you will be a custom class representing your entity "User.cs". This is the class you will be using throughout this sample application to represent users! If you don't see this class here, then you have created your database!

ok, im a master at EMF, show me the validation already!

With MVC, a simple way to perform validation is to use the [Required] atrribute for properties of our class. Now the problem lies with the way our classes are generated by the code generator (We cannot change the designer fiels because we'll lose our changes, plus its stupid!). An easy way around this is to use Metadatatype!

Metadatatype and T4 class validation
1. Right click the Models folder > Add > Class..
2. Call it "UserValidation.cs"
3. Enter the following code...

using System;

using System.Collections.Generic;

using System.ComponentModel.DataAnnotations;

using System.Linq;

using System.Web;

namespace MvcApplication1.Models

    [MetadataType(typeof(UserValidation))]

    public partial class User

{}

    public class UserValidation

        [Required(ErrorMessage = "Your Full Name is required")]

        public string Name { get; set; }

        [Required(ErrorMessage = "Your Email Address is required")]

        [RegularExpression(@"^[\w-]+(\.[\w-]+)*@([a-z0-9-]+(\.[a-z0-9-]+)*?\.[a-z]{2,6}|(\d{1,3}\.){3}\d{1,3})(:\d{4})?$", ErrorMessage = "Your Email Address is invalid")]

        public string Email { get; set; }

Note: You will notice that Metadatatype allows us to specify another class on behalf of an existing partial class, to append attribues to. These attributes will be our validation attributes! I have chosen the Name and the Email properties of our user entity to apply validation to.

Configuring the Controller
1. Add a new controller. I.e. HomeController
2. In the Index method, return the view with a new copy of the EMF generated User class.

using System;

using System.Collections.Generic;

using System.Linq;

using System.Web;

using System.Web.Mvc;

using MvcApplication1.Models;

namespace MvcApplication1.Controllers

    public class HomeController : Controller

//

        // GET: /Home/

        public ActionResult Index()

            return View(new User());

Creating the configuring the view
1. Right click the Index method in the controller and add the view.
2. Make this strongly typed, or we will have a problem with the dynamic operations we will be using in the view (Example error: CS1963: An expression tree may not contain a dynamic operation)
3. Enter the following form information into the view...

@using MvcApplication1.Models

@model User

@{

    ViewBag.Title = "Index";

    Layout = "~/Views/Shared/_Layout.cshtml";

<h2>Sample EMF Class Validation</h2>

@using (Html.BeginForm())

    <fieldset>

<p>

        @Html.LabelFor(Model => Model.Name)

        @Html.TextBoxFor(Model => Model.Name)

        @Html.ValidationMessageFor(Model => Model.Name)

    </p>

<p>

        @Html.LabelFor(Model => Model.Email)

        @Html.TextBoxFor(Model => Model.Email)

        @Html.ValidationMessageFor(Model => Model.Email)

    </p>

<p>

        <input type="submit" value="Submit" />

    </p>

    </fieldset>

We are almost there, but one more thing!! We need to add a reference to the jquery validation libraries. You can either do this in your view (using sections from the main layout page) or simply add the following into the head on the _Layout.cshtml page...

    <script src="@Url.Content("~/Scripts/jquery.validate.min.js")" type="text/javascript"></script>

    <script src="@Url.Content("~/Scripts/jquery.validate.unobtrusive.min.js")" type="text/javascript"></script>

Download Sample Files Here

Enjoy!

Creating an MVC 3 Web Application with the Razor View Engine, HTML5 and IIS Express 7.5

2011-07-20T08:46:00.000-07:00

This was originally going to be a few simple steps, but I decided to go the whole hog. Good first read if your getting started with MVC3! (Rough knowledge required, when I say rough, I mean VS, aspx and O-O knowledge)

Creating new MVC 3 Web Application in VS 2010
1. Create a new MVC 3 Web Application
2. Select an Empty template from the templates dialog (the others ship with authentication that were not goign to use).
3. View engine, select Razor (This will allow us to use the Razor view engine which has slightly different markup and uses .cshtml files rather than .aspx pages). Note: Razor view can be rendered inside unit tests, something that aspx pages cannot.
4. Use HTML5 semantic markup, check it!
5. OK to create.

Note: You can see that quite a lot of libraries are included by default. You will also notice that JQuery (JS and CSS) is included as standard and we have a good base setup to begin developing our web application.

WHAT IS MVC and Order of execution

Init
Within an MVC application, you have a list of routes and filters defined when the application starts. These are defined the the Global.asax.cs file (yes it still exists!). The routes are referenced everytime a page is requested (URL is entered that is associated with the application). The routes describe which Controller will serve the view's content.

Controller
The Controller is responsible for all the business logic. This is the "C" part of MVC. The Controller may utilise the Model ("M" in MVC) to manipulate the datastore is some way (basically ask the database to grab something). The Controller may do some casting or validation on the data, then render the View (may also pass data to the view when rendering).

Model
The Model is all about the database and the database layer. Usually you will have a framework here for managing access and control to your database. In this example, we are using the entity framework. So we will have our .edmx files and our template files here. Our classes will also be defined here as they will be generated automatically from our database content!

View
The "V" in MVC. View's should know nothing about how the data is constructed and how the data works internally. The view should be essentially be dumb and told nothing about the data, other than anything required to display the data to the user. The reason for this aides the seperation of concerns principle of O-O programming. This allows us to clearly seperate are busienss logic. The rewards consist of: Unit testable busienss layer, designers can work with views without worrying about learning C#/VB etc.

Razor View Engine
I don't want to explain everything in this post or were gonna be writing a novel. Here is a good link by ScottGu on the Razor view engine. Either than, or you can just trust me that it's great!

Note about Razor 'master' pages and entry points
_ViewStart.cshtml - Does what it says! This is executed first and initialises the view.
_Layout.cshtml - Razor's answer to aspx master pages.

Creating a Controller
1. Right click the Controllers directory.
2. Add > Controller.
3. Name the controller HomeController (We already have a route defined in the Global.asax as default that points to a Home Controller - So there is no extra work required to link it up yet).
4. Set the template as an empty template
5. OK to create!
6. You will notice that you controller contains an Index method. Will will be executed by default when the user hits the 'Home' directory for your application. I.e. http://localhost/Home

Creating a View based off the Controller
1. Each method in our controller can map to its own view page. This is what we will be doing in this example. Once the controller is created, then creating a view is simple!
2. Open the HomeController, and right click on the Index method.
3. Select 'Add View...'
4. The view name will be Index by default. This is fine...
5. THe view engine will be Razor, this again is fine...
6. Creating a strongly typed view just means that this view will only accept classes of a single type. So if you are ALWAYS passing a TEST class to this view, then it should be strongly typed.
7. Partial view can be compared to an aspx user control. It's a partial view, not a complete one! This can be re-used throughout the web application. We are not creatign one of these now...
8. "Use layout or master page". We are using this (as describes before). Set this as the _Layout.cshtml file. It will reside in the Shared folder within Views (~/Views/Shared/_Layout.cshtml).
9. OK to create!

Setting up test server and launching application

Note: I recommend using IIS Express (7.5 latest at time of writing) or something different to the visual studio server for this application. MVC uses URL Routing (aka URL rewriting before MVC), so sometimes the routing gets a little confusing with the visual studio development server. IIS7 handles URL routing out of the box (Whereas more steps were requried for IIS 6, and you can't install IIS7 on windows XP). However, IIS Express 7.5 solves all of these problems becaue it performs both nicely!

Setting up IIS Express 7.5
1. If you don't have it, its a lightweight seperate install. Simply get it via the web platform intaller
2. Right click the web application in Visual Studio > Properties.
3. Web tab
4. Use local IIS Web server
5. Check "Use IIS Express".
6. Click create virtual directory button
7. OK to execute application!

Now, simply execute the application and you'll be presented with a very blank dull webpage. Congratulations, you did it! It's the start of something good, trust me!

Reference Links
Building an MVC 3 App with Database First and Entity Framework 4.1
Creating an MVC3 Application with Razor and JS

Deploying an MVC application on IIS 6

2011-07-11T01:34:00.000-07:00

http://haacked.com/archive/2008/11/26/asp.net-mvc-on-iis-6-walkthrough.aspx

Visual Studio/SQL Server - Script schema and data in Visual Studio 2008 and onwards

2011-06-28T01:12:00.000-07:00

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/webdevtools/archive/2007/10/15/sql-database-publishing-wizard-is-now-in-visual-studio-orcas.aspx

C#/XSLT - Adding custom xml namespaces / extension objects

2011-06-24T03:36:00.000-07:00

Today I had a bit of a ball ache trying to capture errors that were failing within my XSLT. Whenever I called the document() function with an invalid file path, the document will fail to transform and nothing will be displayed.

Initially I looked at trying to capture the error using when/otherwise by passing the result of the document() function into a test attribute. This simply does not work, even if you convert the result to a boolean. So after wading through crappy advice, I thought as I'm using C# to do my transformations, I will simply add a custom namespace.

The following example explains how to check if a file exists using a custom namespace in C#.

1. Add a custom xmlns reference to your XSL file. The format is as follows: xmlns:<tag name>="<namespace>"

Example:

<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" xmlns:file="urn:schemas-file">

This will allow me to prefix functions within my urn:schemas-file namespace with the prefix: file

2. Now the XSL has access to this custom library of functions (which we haven't yet coded yet)... we need to actually call one of our functions within the XSL.

Example:

<!-- Sample variable holding a location to a file -->

<xsl:variable name="filePath" select="../root/xml/testdocument.xml" />

<!-- Check to see if the file exists -->

<xsl:choose>

<xsl:when test="file:fileExists($filePath)">

    File exists... process the file here and output some stuff!

</xsl:when>

<xsl:otherwise>

    File does not exist. perform fallback operation!

</xsl:otherwise>

</xsl:choose>

3. Now the XSL knows out our functions and were consuming one of them, we just need to write the namespace itself and apply to to the transformation! Create a class in C# and add some functionality that you wish to make available to your XSL file.

Example:

// <copyright file="XSLFileHelper.cs" company="Ginko Solutions">

// Copyright (c) 2011 All Right Reserved

// </copyright>

// <author>Sean Greasley</author>

// <email>sean.greasley@fusedigital.com</email>

// <summary>Provides file functionality to support XSL processing</summary>

namespace RegulationExplorerWebHTML.Helpers

    using System;

    using System.IO;

    using System.Web;

    /// <summary>

    /// Provides file functionality to support XSL processing

    /// </summary>

    public class XSLFileHelper

        public bool fileExists(string file)

            // Get path

            string path = HttpContext.Current.Server.MapPath(file);

            // Exists<?>

            return File.Exists(path);

4. The final step is to apply this class to the transformation process! To do this, will use the AddExtensionObject method of the XsltArgumentList class.

Note: Please see my previous post about how to do an XML/XSL transformation in C# with parameters and settings.

Example:

XsltArgumentList xslArgs = new XsltArgumentList();

xslArgs.AddExtensionObject("urn:schemas-file", new XSLFileHelper());

5. and thats it!

Serializing LINQ-to-SQL classes example with deep cloning

2011-06-23T03:24:00.000-07:00

Serializing Linq-To-Sql classes isn't as straight forward as you might imagine. You may have got as far as attempting to serialize a class and found an error stating Linq.EntityRef cannot be serialized. This post explains to to serialize Linq-To-Sql entities using a cloning example.

For this example, I will be taking a deep clone of a Linq-To-Sql object and all of its associated properties. To do this, I will use serialization and utilise the ICloneable interface.

This example assumes you already have a Linq-To-Sql classes file (.dbml) with some tables/class information within the designer...

1. Open the Linq-To-Sql designer (.dbml) and view the main properties. Change the 'Serialzation Mode' to Unidirectional. This decorates our Linq-To-Sql entities with serialization capabilities.

2. Create a partial class for the Linq-To-Sql class you wish to clone. This allows you to extend the functionality of a Linq-To-Sql class as all classes are partial.

3. Add the [Serializable] attribute to the header of the class. This marks the class as serializable.

4. Implement the ICloneable inteferface. We can now override the Clone() method. When this method is called, we need to apply the serialization process to the object we wish to clone.

5. When serializing a Linq-To-Sql class, we cannot use the BinaryFormatter. Linq-To-Sql classes simply do not support this. Instead, we can utilise the NetDataContractSerializer. This will suit out requirements for the serialization of Linq-To-Sql entities.

6. and your done!

Serialzation code snippet

/// <summary>

/// Linq-To-Sql partial class, extends the 'Event' entity/class.

/// Note: Also changed Serialzation mode in designer to Unidirectional

/// </summary>

[Serializable]

public partial class Event : ICloneable

    /// <summary>

    /// Overrides the Clone method within the IClonable interface

    /// to performing object cloning

    /// </summary>

    /// <returns>A clone of the incoming object</returns>

    public object Clone()

        return CloningFunctions.CloneObject(this);

/// <summary>

/// Provides functions aiding object cloning

/// </summary>

public class CloningFunctions

    /// <summary>

    /// Clones an  object using the NetDataContractSerializer

    /// </summary>

    /// <param name="obj">Incoming object to clone</param>

    /// <returns>A clone of the incoming object</returns>

    public static object CloneObject(object obj)

        using (MemoryStream memStream = new MemoryStream())

            NetDataContractSerializer formatter = new NetDataContractSerializer(new StreamingContext(StreamingContextStates.Clone));

            formatter.Serialize(memStream, obj);

            memStream.Seek(0, SeekOrigin.Begin);

            return formatter.Deserialize(memStream);

Access computer behind router over the internet

2011-06-22T07:57:00.001-07:00

Here's a few notes which I find useful for accessing my system over the internet from an external location.

Is the remote system behind a router?
If so, use the router's IP address. Either go to whatismyip.com, or get the router's IP Address from the router control panel (typically 192.168.1.1). This will be the IP address you will use to access the system.

Enabling remote access
Enable remote access to the system. For windows, its usually at "Right Click My Computer > Properties > Remote/Remote Settings". Here you can also configure who is allowed to access the system.

Systems behind a router
Setup port forwarding to the system in question. Find your local IP address (usually 192.168.x.x) and forward the necessary ports to this system. I.e. for HTTP, use port 80. So when you visit the router's IP address over HTTP (http://externalRouterIP), it will forward the request to your machine. Another useful one is 3389 for remote desktop.
Optional: It may be useful to set a static IP for your system. This ensures that your internal IP address stays the same. If your router software does not support this, you can figure your own in Network Settings under the Control Panel in Windows.

SVN: Setting up SubVersion server on Windows

2011-06-21T03:34:00.000-07:00

Here is a great article on how to setup SVN server on a windows machine.

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2008/04/setting-up-subversion-on-windows.html

SEO - Search Engine Optimization

2011-06-20T09:30:00.000-07:00

Here's a good post on hoe to use an SEO tool to crawl your website for SEO improvements.
The tool installs itself into most web servers and is free to download!

Description
The IIS Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Toolkit helps Web developers, hosting providers, and Web server administrators to improve their Web site’s relevance in search results by recommending how to make the site content more search engine-friendly. The IIS SEO Toolkit includes the Site Analysis module, the Robots Exclusion module, and the Sitemaps and Site Indexes module, which let you perform detailed analysis and offer recommendations and editing tools for managing your Robots and Sitemaps files.

Article and Download
http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2009/06/03/iis-search-engine-optimization-toolkit.aspx

C# - Simple TripleDES Encryption with or without hashing

2011-06-15T08:15:00.000-07:00

This class below enables simple encryption and decryption of text strings. It uses the TripleDES algorithms and you can chose weather to use MD5 hash against the key.
Simply change the value of the encryptionKey to whatever you want the key to be.

C# Source code

// <copyright file="EncryptionHelper.cs" company="GinkoSolutions.com">

// Copyright (c) 2011 All Right Reserved

// </copyright>

// <author>Sean Greasley</author>

// <email>sean@ginkosolutions.com</email>

// <summary>Enables simple TripleDES encryption with or without hashing</summary>

using System;

using System.Collections.Generic;

using System.Text;

using System.Web;

using System.Security.Cryptography;

/// <summary>

/// Enables simple TripleDES encryption with or without hashing

/// </summary>

public class EncryptionHelper

    /// <summary>

    /// Encryption key. Used to encrypt and decrypt.

    /// </summary>

    private static readonly string encryptionKey = "YOURSECRETKEY";

    public EncryptionHelper() {}

    /// <summary>

    /// Encrypt text string

    /// </summary>

    /// <param name="toEncrypt">The string of data to encrypt</param>

    /// <param name="useHashing">Weather hashing is used or not</param>

    /// <returns>An encrypted string</returns>

    public static string Encrypt(string toEncrypt, bool useHashing)

        byte[] keyArray;

        byte[] toEncryptArray = UTF8Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(toEncrypt);

        // If hashing use get hashcode regards to your key

        if (useHashing)

            MD5CryptoServiceProvider hashmd5 = new MD5CryptoServiceProvider();

            keyArray = hashmd5.ComputeHash(UTF8Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(encryptionKey));

            hashmd5.Clear();

        else

            keyArray = UTF8Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(encryptionKey);

        // Set the secret key for the tripleDES algorithm

        TripleDESCryptoServiceProvider tdes = new TripleDESCryptoServiceProvider();

        tdes.Key = keyArray;

        tdes.Mode = CipherMode.ECB;

        tdes.Padding = PaddingMode.PKCS7;

        // Transform the specified region of bytes array to resultArray

        ICryptoTransform cTransform = tdes.CreateEncryptor();

        byte[] resultArray = cTransform.TransformFinalBlock(toEncryptArray, 0, toEncryptArray.Length);

        tdes.Clear();

        // Return the encrypted data into unreadable string format

        return Convert.ToBase64String(resultArray, 0, resultArray.Length);

    /// <summary>

    /// Decrypts a text string

    /// </summary>

    /// <param name="cipherString">The encrypted string</param>

    /// <param name="useHashing">Weather hashing is used or not</param>

    /// <returns>Decrypted text string</returns>

    public static string Decrypt(string cipherString, bool useHashing)

        byte[] keyArray;

        byte[] toEncryptArray = Convert.FromBase64String(cipherString.Replace(' ', '+'));

        if (useHashing)

            // If hashing was used get the hash code with regards to your key

            MD5CryptoServiceProvider hashmd5 = new MD5CryptoServiceProvider();

            keyArray = hashmd5.ComputeHash(UTF8Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(encryptionKey));

            hashmd5.Clear();

        else

            // If hashing was not implemented get the byte code of the key

            keyArray = UTF8Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(encryptionKey);

        // Set the secret key for the tripleDES algorithm

        TripleDESCryptoServiceProvider tdes = new TripleDESCryptoServiceProvider();

        tdes.Key = keyArray;

        tdes.Mode = CipherMode.ECB;

        tdes.Padding = PaddingMode.PKCS7;

        ICryptoTransform cTransform = tdes.CreateDecryptor();

        byte[] resultArray = cTransform.TransformFinalBlock(toEncryptArray, 0, toEncryptArray.Length);

        tdes.Clear();

        // Return the Clear decrypted TEXT

        return UTF8Encoding.UTF8.GetString(resultArray);

Facebook Connect - Post to wall feed

2011-06-15T07:13:00.000-07:00

After using Facebook Connect for a while, you can soon find out how shoddy the documentation is. There seem to be about 5000 half-written API's, most out of date and even the Facebook API documentation is barely holding itself together.

Anyway, here's a small JS snippet on how to post to a user's wall. The user must first allow the application pushing rights, or an error will occur.

I have already written a great blog entry on getting started with Facebook Connect, check it out here!

Pre-requisites
- Check out the above link if you have no idea how to get started!
- Allow pushing rights (publish_stream)
- Ensure your already dealing with an authentication session (I have added the code to ensure you already have a valid session in the code below)

Javascript Code

FB.getLoginStatus(function (response) {

    if (response.session) {

        var params = {};

        params['message'] = 'This is the main message';

        params['name'] = 'This is the name of the link';

        params['description'] = 'This is the link description';

        params['link'] = 'http://www.URLToNavigateTo.com';

        params['picture'] = 'http://www.FULLpathtoimage.com/image.png'; // 90x90 px

        params['caption'] = 'Small caption appearing under the link';

        FB.api('/me/feed', 'post', params, function (response) {

            if (!response || response.error) {

                // Error occured posting to the fb wall

});

    } else {

        // User isn't authenticated with facebook

});

This will produce the following result...

ASP.NET C# 4.0 - Facebook Connect Example

2011-06-14T09:29:00.001-07:00

Facebook connect example

This is a full example written in ASP.NET 4.0 and Javascript. It uses the Facebook Connect client-side library to authenticate and register uses into a database. This minimalist example explains how to easily integrate Facebook Connect into existing or new web applications.

Technologies used:
- ASP.NET/C#
- Javascript/JQuery
- AJAX
- SQL Server Compact
- Entity Framework
- LINQ

Setup Instructions
1. Add the Developer application to your facebook account and create a new facebook application.

Make sure you run the server on port "8080"... Facebook won't argue with this.
(Note: If you use any other port, other than the standard web traffic ports [80/8080],
then Facebook will throw a blank proxy dialog at you, with no kind of helpful error messages!
The URL will contain something like "xd_proxy"...so make sure it's set at 8080!

The settings you can use are as follows...
[Web Site] > [Site URL] > http://localhost:8080/
[Web Site] > [Site Domain] > localhost
[Facebook Integration] > [Canvas URL] > http://localhost:8080/
[Facebook Integration] > [Tab URL] > http://localhost:8080/
[Advanced] > [Sandbox Mode] > Enable [Note: Must only use developer accounts to test with! or you will get errors]

2. Enter application details into Web.config.

3. Enjoy!

Download
Download Source Files Here

CSS: Aligning form fields on a page

2011-06-10T08:22:00.000-07:00

In the following example, I have used ASP.NET controls as I have lifted this from a project I have been working on.
If you are not familiar with ASP.NET, when the browser renders these server controls, the controls are rendered down to simple HTML tags:

label (asp:Label)
input (asp:TextBox)
span (asp:RequiredFieldValidator))

HTML/ASP.NET Code

<fieldset class="regForm">

<div class="field">

    <asp:Label ID="lblFirstName" AssociatedControlID="txtFirstName" runat="server" Text="Firstname" />

    <asp:TextBox ID="txtFirstName" runat="server" />

    <asp:RequiredFieldValidator ID="rfvFirstName" runat="server" ControlToValidate="txtFirstName" SetFocusOnError="True" ValidationGroup="vgRegister" ErrorMessage="*" />

</div>

<div class="field">

    <asp:Label ID="lblSurname" AssociatedControlID="txtSurname" runat="server" Text="Surname" />

    <asp:TextBox ID="txtSurname" runat="server" />

    <asp:RequiredFieldValidator ID="rfvSurname" runat="server" ControlToValidate="txtSurname" SetFocusOnError="True" ValidationGroup="vgRegister" ErrorMessage="*" />

</div>

<div class="field">

    <asp:Label ID="lblEmail" AssociatedControlID="txtEmailAddress" runat="server" Text="Email" />

    <asp:TextBox ID="txtEmailAddress" runat="server" />

    <asp:RequiredFieldValidator ID="rfvEmail" runat="server" ControlToValidate="txtEmailAddress" SetFocusOnError="True" ValidationGroup="vgRegister" ErrorMessage="*" />

</div>

</fieldset>

CSS Code

fieldset.regForm div {

    clear: both;

    padding-top:0.2em;

fieldset.regForm label {

    display:inline;

    padding-top:0.2em;

    text-align:right;

    margin-right:0.5em;

    float:left;

    width:25%;

ASP.NET: Quick and simple client-side validation

2011-06-10T08:16:00.000-07:00

If you have created some server side controls, some ASP.NET validator controls to go with them, but... you would like to validate on the client, then call the function in the code snippet below from javascript.
Just remember to specify a ValidationGroup on your form fields so the JS function knows which controls to validate

Code Snippet

// By leaving the validation group parameter blank, it will

// validate the whole page, not just a target group.

if (Page_ClientValidate("ValidationGroupNameHere")) {

   // JS Code here...

Javascript: format() string extension for easy formatting!

2011-06-10T08:12:00.000-07:00

Here's a simple javascript string extension for easy string formatting

Code Snippet

// Example:

//

//    var testString = "Hey {0}, this is a pretty {1} string formatter. I hope you have {2} with it!".format("guys", "cool", "fun");

//    alert(testString);

//

// String.format extension for easy formatting

String.prototype.format = function () {

    var s = this,

        i = arguments.length;

    while (i--) {

        s = s.replace(new RegExp('\\{' + i + '\\}', 'gm'), arguments[i]);

    return s;

};

JQuery: Dynamically Add/Remove jquery.ui button from dialog

2011-06-10T08:04:00.000-07:00

When using the dialog widget within the jquery.ui library, it may become necessary to add or remove buttons dynamically.
Invoking the extension methods below will allow you to achieve the desired result.

Code Snippet

// Example:

//            $('#IDDialogDiv').dialog('addbutton', 'Name of button');

//            $('#IDDialogDiv').dialog('removebutton', 'Name of button');

//

//

// Allows simple button addition to a ui dialog

$.extend($.ui.dialog.prototype, {

    'addbutton': function (buttonName, func) {

        var buttons = this.element.dialog('option', 'buttons');

        buttons[buttonName] = func;

        this.element.dialog('option', 'buttons', buttons);

});

// Allows simple button removal from a ui dialog

$.extend($.ui.dialog.prototype, {

    'removebutton': function (buttonName) {

        var buttons = this.element.dialog('option', 'buttons');

        delete buttons[buttonName];

        this.element.dialog('option', 'buttons', buttons);

});

Javascript: Pass parameter into setTimeout

2011-06-10T05:35:00.000-07:00

Sometimes passing a parameter into a function, specified within a setTimeout() function isn't so straight forward. Different browser garbage collectors operate differently, and your function sometimes won't be executed at all.

Here is a method that works in all browsers. You need to specify the function within an anonymous function, and set the parameter to null.

Code Sample

var foo = "Hello World";

setTimeout(function () { helloWorld(foo); foo = null }, 3000);

function helloWorld(foo)

    alert(foo);

CKEditor - WYSIWYG editor for web pages

2011-06-08T01:49:00.000-07:00

CKEditor is a text editor to be used inside web pages. It's a WYSIWYG editor, which means that the text being edited on it looks as similar as possible to the results users have when publishing it. It brings to the web common editing features found on desktop editing applications like Microsoft Word and OpenOffice.

Because CKEditor is licensed under flexible Open Source and commercial licenses, you'll be able to integrate and use it inside any kind of application. This is the ideal editor for developers, created to provide easy and powerful solutions to their users.

Download Here

LinqToXML - Safe element and attribute checking [XElement Extension Method]

2011-06-08T01:25:00.002-07:00

When using LINQ with XML, you may run into issues where nodes do not exist, values are empty, attribute are either missing or empty also.

By creating two extension methods for the XElement class, we can provide safe checking for these elements and attributes. Consider the following code snippet below...

Invoking the extension method with LINQ

XDocument contentXML = XDocument.Load(xmlPath);

var res = from x in contentXML.Descendants("rootNode")

orderby x.Element("title").ElementValueNull()

select new TestObject(x.AttributeValueOrDefault("id"), x.Element("title").ElementValueNull());

XElement Extension class

// <copyright file="XElementExtensionMethods.cs" company="GinkoSolutions">

// Copyright (c) 2011 All Right Reserved

// </copyright>

// <author>Sean Greasley</author>

// <email>sean@ginkosolutions.com</email>

// <summary>Extension methods for the XElement class</summary>

namespace XElementTest

    using System;

    using System.Collections;

    using System.Collections.Generic;

    using System.Linq;

    using System.Xml;

    using System.Xml.Linq;

    /// <summary>

    /// Extension methods for the XElement class

    /// </summary>

    public static class XElementExtensionMethods

        /// <summary>

        /// Allows a safe way to retrieve attribute values from an element

        /// </summary>

        /// <param name="element">A reference to the element object</param>

        /// <param name="attributeName">The name of the attribute</param>

        /// <returns>The attribute content or null</returns>

        public static string AttributeValueOrDefault(this XElement element, string attributeName)

            XAttribute attr = null;

            if (element != null)

                attr = element.Attribute(attributeName);

            return attr == null ? null : attr.Value;

        /// <summary>

        /// Allows a safe way to retrieve element data

        /// </summary>

        /// <param name="element">A reference to the element object</param>

        /// <returns>Element content or an empty string</returns>

        public static string ElementValueNull(this XElement element)

            if (element != null)

                return element.Value;

            return string.Empty;

C# MVC 3 - Render XSLT using a HTMLHelper Extension

2011-06-07T09:15:00.000-07:00

This is an example on how to transform XML documents using XSLT, within C# MVC using a HTMLHelper extension and Razor View Syntax.

Method of operation
1. View is requested
2. Controller is invoked
3. Controller finds the location of the XML and XSL files for the current request. Parameters are also defined here.
4. The view is created and returned by the controller
5. The view invokes the HTMLExtension method (Razor View Syntax) to render the XML (RenderXSLT method).
6. The extension transforms the document and returns the result.
7. The transformation is displayed within the view.

Controller Method

        public ActionResult Index()

            XsltViewModel model = new XsltViewModel()

                XmlPath = Server.MapPath("~/PathToXMLFileHere.xslt")

                XsltPath = Server.MapPath("~/PathToXSLTFileHere.xslt")

};

            return View(model);

Code within the view (calls out extension method using the model info)

@model RenderXSLTExample.XsltViewModel

<div class="xmlResult">

    @Html.RenderXslt(Model.XsltPath, Model.XmlPath)

</section>

XsltViewModel object (holds reference to XML, XSLT and params)

// <copyright file="XsltViewModel.cs" company="GinkoSolutions">

// Copyright (c) 2011 All Right Reserved

// </copyright>

// <author>Sean Greasley</author>

// <email>sean@ginkosolutions.com</email>

// <summary>Manages XSLT and XML information model objects</summary>

namespace RenderXSLTExample

    using System.Collections.Generic;

    /// <summary>

    /// Manages XSLT and XML information model objects

    /// </summary>

    public class XsltViewModel

        /// <summary>

        /// Holds a reference to the XSLT path

        /// </summary>

        public string XsltPath { get; set; }

        /// <summary>

        /// Holds a reference to the XML path

        /// </summary>

        public string XmlPath { get; set; }

        /// <summary>

        /// Optional parameters to pass into the XSL file.

        /// </summary>

        public List<KeyValuePair<string, string>> Params { get; set; }

HTMLHelper Extension class

// <copyright file="HtmlHelperExtensions.cs" company="GinkoSolutions">

// Copyright (c) 2011 All Right Reserved

// </copyright>

// <author>Sean Greasley</author>

// <email>sean@ginkosolutions.com</email>

// <summary>A HTMLExtension method to render XML using XSL</summary>

namespace RenderXSLTExample

    using System;

    using System.Collections.Generic;

    using System.IO;

    using System.Linq;

    using System.Reflection;

    using System.Text;

    using System.Web;

    using System.Web.Mvc;

    using System.Xml;

    using System.Xml.Resolvers;

    using System.Xml.Xsl;

    using System.Xml.XPath;

    /// <summary>

    /// A HTMLExtension method to render XML using XSL

    /// </summary>

    public static class HtmlHelperExtensions

        /// <summary>

        /// Accepts a reference to the XML and XSL files and applies a transformation with optional

        /// parameters.

        /// </summary>

        /// <param name="helper">A reference to the HtmlHelper object</param>

        /// <param name="xsltPath">The path to the XSL file</param>

        /// <param name="xmlPath">The path to the XML file</param>

        /// <param name="parameters">Optional: A list  of arguments to pass into the XSL file</param>

        /// <returns>MvcHtmlString representing the transform</returns>

        public static MvcHtmlString RenderXslt(this HtmlHelper helper, string xslPath, string xmlPath, List<KeyValuePair<string, string>> parameters = null)

            string xsltResult = string.Empty;

try

                // XML Settings

                XmlReaderSettings xmlSettings = new XmlReaderSettings();

                xmlSettings.XmlResolver = null;

                xmlSettings.IgnoreComments = true;

                xmlSettings.DtdProcessing = DtdProcessing.Ignore;

                xmlSettings.ValidationType = ValidationType.None;

                // Attaches an action to the valiation event handler. This will write out error messages in the Output pane.

                #if DEBUG

                xmlSettings.ValidationEventHandler += (sender, e) =>

                    Debug.WriteLine(string.Format("{0}({1},{2}): {3} - {4}", e.Exception.SourceUri, e.Exception.LineNumber, e.Exception.LinePosition, e.Severity, e.Message));

};

                #endif

                // XSLT Settings

                XmlReaderSettings xsltSettings = new XmlReaderSettings();

                xsltSettings.XmlResolver = null;

                xsltSettings.DtdProcessing = DtdProcessing.Ignore;

                xsltSettings.ValidationType = ValidationType.None;

                // Attaches an action to the valiation event handler. This will write out error messages in the Output pane.

                #if DEBUG

                xsltSettings.ValidationEventHandler += (sender, e) =>

                    Debug.WriteLine(string.Format("{0}({1},{2}): {3} - {4}", e.Exception.SourceUri, e.Exception.LineNumber, e.Exception.LinePosition, e.Severity, e.Message));

};

                #endif

                // Init params

                XsltArgumentList xslArgs = new XsltArgumentList();

                if (parameters != null)

                    foreach (KeyValuePair<string, string> param in parameters)

                        xslArgs.AddParam(param.Key, string.Empty, param.Value);

                // Load XML

                using (XmlReader reader = XmlReader.Create(xmlPath, settings))

                    // Load XSL

                    XsltSettings xslSettings = new XsltSettings(true, true); // Need to enable the document() fucntion

                    using (XmlReader xslSource = XmlReader.Create(xslPath, xsltSettings))

                        XslCompiledTransform xsltDoc = new XslCompiledTransform();

                        xsltDoc.Load(xslSource, xslSettings, new XmlUrlResolver());

                        // Transform

                        using (var sw = new UTF8StringWriter())

                            XmlWriterSettings settings = new XmlWriterSettings();

                            settings.Encoding = Encoding.UTF8;

                            settings.OmitXmlDeclaration = true;

                            using (var xw = XmlWriter.Create(sw, settings))

                                xsltDoc.Transform(reader, xslArgs, sw);

                            xsltResult = sw.ToString();

            catch { } // custom error handling here

            // Return result

            return MvcHtmlString.Create(xsltResult);

C#.NET 4 - Transforming XML and XSL documents with settings and parameters

2011-06-07T09:07:00.000-07:00

This following example takes a path to an XML file, a path to an XSL file and optional parameters to pass to the XSL file. The XSL file will decorate any xsl:param tags with these values.

The example also includes settings objects to show how settings can be applied to the tranformation and the loading of the XML.

Example C# Code

string xsltResult = string.Empty;

try

    // XML Settings

    XmlReaderSettings xmlSettings = new XmlReaderSettings();

    xmlSettings.XmlResolver = null;

    xmlSettings.IgnoreComments = true;

    xmlSettings.DtdProcessing = DtdProcessing.Ignore;

    xmlSettings.ValidationType = ValidationType.None;

    // Attaches an action to the valiation event handler. This will write out error messages in the Output pane.

    #if DEBUG

    xmlSettings.ValidationEventHandler += (sender, e) =>

        Debug.WriteLine(string.Format("{0}({1},{2}): {3} - {4}", e.Exception.SourceUri, e.Exception.LineNumber, e.Exception.LinePosition, e.Severity, e.Message));

};

    #endif

    // XSLT Settings

    XmlReaderSettings xsltSettings = new XmlReaderSettings();

    xsltSettings.XmlResolver = null;

    xsltSettings.DtdProcessing = DtdProcessing.Ignore;

    xsltSettings.ValidationType = ValidationType.None;

    // Attaches an action to the valiation event handler. This will write out error messages in the Output pane.

    #if DEBUG

    xsltSettings.ValidationEventHandler += (sender, e) =>

        Debug.WriteLine(string.Format("{0}({1},{2}): {3} - {4}", e.Exception.SourceUri, e.Exception.LineNumber, e.Exception.LinePosition, e.Severity, e.Message));

};

    #endif

    // Init params

    XsltArgumentList xslArgs = new XsltArgumentList();

    if (parameters != null)

        foreach (KeyValuePair<string, string> param in parameters)

            xslArgs.AddParam(param.Key, string.Empty, param.Value);

    // Load XML

    using (XmlReader reader = XmlReader.Create(xmlPath, settings))

        // Load XSL

        XsltSettings xslSettings = new XsltSettings(true, true); // Need to enable the document() fucntion

        using(XmlReader xslSource = XmlReader.Create(xslPath, xsltSettings))

            XslCompiledTransform xsltDoc = new XslCompiledTransform();

            xsltDoc.Load(xslSource, xslSettings, new XmlUrlResolver());

            // Transform

            using (var sw = new UTF8StringWriter())

                        XmlWriterSettings settings = new XmlWriterSettings();

                        settings.Encoding = Encoding.UTF8;

                        settings.OmitXmlDeclaration = true;

                using(var xw = XmlWriter.Create(sw,settings))

                    xsltDoc.Transform(reader, xslArgs, sw);

                xsltResult = sw.ToString();

catch {} // custom error handling here

XSLT - Adding an attribute to an element based on XML data

2011-06-07T09:01:00.000-07:00

Adding an attribute to an element requires us to utilise the xsl:attribute element.

Consider the following example:

<img>

  <xsl:attribute name="src">

    <xsl:value-of select="imageURL" />

  </xsl:attribute>

  <xsl:attribute name="alt">

    <xsl:value-of select="altText" />

  </xsl:attribute>

</img>

This will add an src and an alt attribute to an img element; based on the values within the imageURL and altText elements in the XML in this example.

Note: You must make sure that the attributes are added within the element itself. I.e. If the img tag is closed before the attributes are added in the above example, then this would be invalid.

XSLT - Displaying HTML content within XML tags

2011-06-07T08:50:00.000-07:00

Rather then using the value-of tag, utilise the copy-of tag instead.

XML File

<?xml version="1.0"?>

<?xml-stylesheet type="text/xml" href="stylesheet.xsl"?>

<test><p><b>This is bold text in a paragraph</b></p></test>

XSL File

<xsl:stylesheet version="2.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">

  <xsl:template match="/">

    <xsl:copy-of select="test" />

    <xsl:value-of select="test" />

  </xsl:template>

</xsl:stylesheet>

Output

This is bold text in a paragraph

This is bold text in a paragraph

XSLT - Dynamic Grouping Using the Muenchian Method

2011-06-07T08:20:00.000-07:00

This blog post describes a full example on how to group XML using the Muenchian Method, using: keys, generate-id() and external parameters [xsl:param] passed into the XSL stylesheet.

My original requirement was to pass in parameters to the XSL file using C# and transform the XML on-the-fly. Therefore, I used xsl:param tags to hold the input values and generate a portion of XML based on this. I had a few problems matching templates and keys based on parameters, as this is not valid.
I therefore, generated by keys based on all the data and filtered the data I required based on the parameters.

The following code describes a full example using: Parameters, Keys and grouping. The aim is to dynamically group events by year and sort them in a descending order.

Grouping.xml

<?xml version="1.0"?>

<?xml-stylesheet type="text/xml" href="stylesheet.xsl"?>

<theme>

    <styles>

        <style id="style1">

        <title>Test Style 1</title>

            <elements>

                <element id="element1">

                    <title>Test Element 1</title>

                    <events>

                        <event id="event11" date="2008-10-13">

                            <title>Test Event 1</title>

                        </event>

                        <event id="event12" date="2009-03-18">

                            <title>Test Event 2</title>

                        </event>

                        <event id="event13" date="2009-02-26">

                            <title>Test Event 3</title>

                        </event>

                        <event id="event14" date="2011-04-12">

                            <title>Test Event 4</title>

                        </event>

                        <event id="event15" date="2010-01-01">

                            <title>Test Event 5</title>

                        </event>

                        <event id="event16" date="2010-07-06">

                            <title>Test Event 6</title>

                        </event>

                    </events>

                </element>

                <element id="element2">

                    <title>Test Element 2</title>

                    <events>

                        <event id="event21" date="2001-10-13">

                            <title>Test Event 1</title>

                        </event>

                        <event id="event22" date="2001-03-18">

                            <title>Test Event 2</title>

                        </event>

                        <event id="event23" date="2007-02-26">

                            <title>Test Event 3</title>

                        </event>

                        <event id="event24" date="2008-04-12">

                            <title>Test Event 4</title>

                        </event>

                        <event id="event25" date="2010-01-01">

                            <title>Test Event 5</title>

                        </event>

                        <event id="event26" date="2010-07-06">

                            <title>Test Event 6</title>

                        </event>

                    </events>

                </element>

            </elements>

        </style>

        <style id="style2">

        <title>Test Style 2</title>

            <elements>

                <element id="element3">

                    <title>Test Element 3</title>

                    <events>

                        <event id="event31" date="2003-10-13">

                            <title>Test Event 1</title>

                        </event>

                        <event id="event32" date="2007-03-18">

                            <title>Test Event 2</title>

                        </event>

                        <event id="event33" date="2007-02-26">

                            <title>Test Event 3</title>

                        </event>

                        <event id="event34" date="2010-04-12">

                            <title>Test Event 4</title>

                        </event>

                        <event id="event35" date="2010-01-01">

                            <title>Test Event 5</title>

                        </event>

                        <event id="event36" date="2010-07-06">

                            <title>Test Event 6</title>

                        </event>

                    </events>

                </element>

            </elements>

        </style>

    </styles>

</theme>

Stylesheet.xsl

<xsl:stylesheet version="2.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" xmlns:ms="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:xslt">

  <!-- Parameters -->

  <xsl:param name="style">style1</xsl:param>

  <xsl:param name="element">element1</xsl:param>

  <!-- Create a key based on the YYYY portion of the start_date attribute -->

  <xsl:key

    name="keyYear"

    match="events/event"

    use="substring(@date, 1, 4)"

/>

  <xsl:key

    name="keyEventID"

    match="events/event"

    use="@id"

/>

  <!-- Match default template -->

  <xsl:template match="/">

    <xsl:apply-templates select="/theme/styles/style[@id=$style]/elements/element[@id=$element]/events" />

  </xsl:template>

  <!-- matches on events, so only outputs once [per stream] -->

  <xsl:template match="events">

    <table>

      <xsl:for-each select="//event[generate-id()=generate-id(key('keyYear', substring(@date, 1, 4))[1])]">

        <xsl:sort select="substring(@date, 1, 4)" order="descending" />

        <!-- Save the Year to a variable -->

        <xsl:variable name="varCurrentYear"><xsl:value-of select="substring(@date, 1, 4)" /></xsl:variable>

        <!-- Select all the events belonging to the year -->

        <xsl:variable name="lstEventPerYear" select="/theme/styles/style[@id=$style]/elements/element[@id=$element]/events/event[substring(@date, 1, 4)=$varCurrentYear]" />

        <!-- Store child count -->

        <xsl:variable name="varChildCount"><xsl:value-of select="count($lstEventPerYear[generate-id(.) = generate-id(key('keyEventID', @id)[1])])" /></xsl:variable>

        <!-- Output year only if there are sub elements -->

        <xsl:if test="$varChildCount > 0">

            <tr>

                <td>

                    <h3><xsl:value-of select="$varCurrentYear" /></h3>

                </td>

            </tr>

            <xsl:for-each select="$lstEventPerYear[generate-id(.) = generate-id(key('keyEventID', @id)[1])]">

            <xsl:sort select="title" />

            <tr>

                <td>

                    <h4>

                        <xsl:value-of select="title" />

                          <xsl:text disable-output-escaping="yes">&amp;nbsp;</xsl:text>

                        [<xsl:value-of select="ms:format-date(@date, 'dd MMM yyyy')"/>]

                    </h4>

                </td>

            </tr>

            </xsl:for-each>

        </xsl:if>

      </xsl:for-each>

    </table>

  </xsl:template>

</xsl:stylesheet>

Developing Facebook Applications locally

2011-05-25T02:39:00.000-07:00

Hosts File [C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc]
1. Edit the windows hosts file

2. Add an entry to map to localhost (127.0.0.1). This url name can be anything, it’s so that when you re-direct your browser to this url, it will forward directly to localhost. This matches the Facebook canvas URL schema that is required.

Example: "127.0.0.1 bigblunts.com" (without quotes)

3. Save and close the hosts file. If you do not have permissions to do this, open Notepad (or any other text editor) as an Administrator, and try again.

4. Open your web browser and go to the url you have just added, the browser should be displaying the same as if your went to http://localhost (This should usually be the IIS homepage).

Web Server Configuration
I personally use .NET and IIS, but you can really use which ever development tools and web servers you like. Just ensure that the application is accessible through the localhost.

So for example, if you access your application via. http://localhost/FacebookApp (Where 'FacebookApp' is the application configured within your webserver) Then using the settings in your hosts file, this will also work for you: http://bigblunts.com/FacebookApp. This will be the URL that you will be adding within your Facebook application settings.

Facebook Settings
1. I usually create a new Facebook application and append "staging" to the name. This saves me having to change canvas urls and other things to point to different environments each time I want to deploy something.

The Facebook settings are as follows [as of May 2011]:
Replace the vales with the name of your webserver path...
[Web Site] > [Site URL] > http://bigblunts.com/FacebookApp/
[Web Site] > [Site Domain] > bigblunts.com
[Facebook Integration] > [Canvas URL] > http://bigblunts.com/FacebookApp/
[Facebook Integration] > [Tab URL] > http://bigblunts.com/FacebookApp/ [When integrating with pages, it'll use this as the menu item/tab name]
[Advanced] > [Sandbox Mode] > Enable [Note: Must only use developer accounts to test with! or you will get errors]

Some of the settings may be irrelevant for your application requirements, but this is where to specify the URLs when these features are required.

!!!!UPDATE!!!!
You can also use the visual studio development server to get around this problem (or any other server, just use port 8080!)

Make sure you run the server on port "8080"... Facebook won't argue with this. (Note: If you use any other port, other than the standard web traffic ports [80/8080], then Facebook will throw a blank proxy dialog at you, with no kind of helpful error messages! The URL will contain something like "xd_proxy"...so make sure it's set at 8080!

The settings you can use are as follows...
[Web Site] > [Site URL] > http://localhost:8080/
[Web Site] > [Site Domain] > localhost
[Facebook Integration] > [Canvas URL] > http://localhost:8080/
[Facebook Integration] > [Tab URL] > http://localhost:8080/
[Advanced] > [Sandbox Mode] > Enable [Note: Must only use developer accounts to test with! or you will get errors]

C#: DescriptionAttribute with Enums

2011-04-08T02:20:00.000-07:00

If you've ever created an Enum, usually the entities you define within the enum are not user friendly. I.e. outputting to the console "EnumDescEntityTwo". We would probably prefer it to have whitespaces "Enum Desc Entity Two" or even be called something totally different "Cheese Sandwich".

So there are a few ways to achieve this without writing a bunch of conditions in the GUI layer.

1. Map the Enums to database table.

I.e.
- ID (For DB use only)
- EnumID (Maps onto the Enum value)
- EnumDescription (A description representing the enum)

The only bad thing is that a database call must be made at some point to gather the description. But the good things are that these values will not be hardcoded.

2. Use Attributes

Like any attributes in .NET, we can define a custom attribute class by defining a class and inheriting the "System.Attribute" base class. However, .NET already provides a DescriptionAttribute class for cases like these in the "System.ComponentModel" namespace.

[Example]

a) Define your enum

    using System.ComponentModel;

    public enum FoodItems

        [DescriptionAttribute("A Specialist Bacon Roll")]

        BaconRollWithBurgerSauce = 1,

        [DescriptionAttribute("Burning Hot Chilli")]

        HotChilliBurningHot = 2,

        [DescriptionAttribute("Sixty Inch Pizza with Everything!")]

        SixtyInchPizzaWithEverythingOnIt = 3

b) Use reflection to get the description attribute

// Get the descrption attribute for the status

FoodItem item = FoodItem.BaconRollWithBurgerSauce;

FieldInfo fi = typeof(FoodItem).GetField(Enum.GetName(typeof(FoodItem), item));

DescriptionAttribute da = (DescriptionAttribute)fi.GetCustomAttributes(typeof(DescriptionAttribute), false)[0];

string desc = da.Description;

JOINS - Which is which!?

2011-03-28T04:15:00.001-07:00

Amazing post about different joins represented by a Venn Diagram.

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2007/10/a-visual-explanation-of-sql-joins.html

T-SQL: How to rename a table or column using T-SQL in Microsoft SQL

2011-03-14T03:26:00.000-07:00

So yeah, you could use the Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio UI to rename your table or column. But sometimes you need to do the rename in T-SQL. Here’s how.

How to rename a table:

EXEC sp_rename 'OldTableName','NewTableName'

How to rename a column:

EXEC sp_rename
    @objname = 'TableName.OldColumnName',
    @newname = 'NewColumnName',
    @objtype = 'COLUMN'

For a more detailed explanation of sp_rename check out this MSDN article: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms188351.aspx

.NET: Take Securing Web Services With Username and Password One Step Further With a Custom SoapExtension

2011-03-11T01:49:00.001-08:00

Brilliant page and explains everything

http://keithelder.net/2007/01/09/

LinqToSql: ForeignKeyReferenceAlreadyHasValueException

2011-03-09T05:14:00.000-08:00

I recently had an error with a project while attempting to modify a foreign key for a database object. Quite simply, once the foreign key was established, if any chances were made to it, it would throw this exception. This is correct by design! So in theory, the initial insert is fine, but any update made will throw this error.

The resolve this issue, open up the linq designer file (dbml) and modify the association between the table and its foreign counterpart. If you set 'Child Property' to true, this will allow you to add this association as a property to the database object for your class.

So in the code, instead of editing the foreign key

i.e. Object.ForeignKeyID = id;

You need to make a call using the same data context to retrieve the object, and set it to the property you have just created for your assoication.

i.e. Object.AssociationName = dataContext.Table.Single(val = val.id == idhere);

Fix External Display issues (mirrored) with Hackintosh [Dell 10v mini]

2011-02-17T06:54:00.000-08:00

Hi,

I recently bought a Hackintosh (Dell 10v Mini with Snow Leopard installed) to do some iPhone development. It almost becomes necessary to attach an external monitor to the system to see all of XCode interfaces.

Warning: Do not click mirror displays

If your still reading, that means you have clicked mirrored displays, and you are getting either:

1. Random lines/bugged image on the notebook screen, and the external monitor either showing the same, on standby or showing signal out of range.
2. Dell mini LCD displays solid white and even when unplugging the monitor, it remains until you do a hard reset.
3. Other annoying things.

So, you may have noticed you can't turn off mirroring until you have an external display attached, even more annoying right? Initially I located all com.apple.WindowServer* files and set the mirroring property to '0'. This works, but it can take a while.

Heres a better solution!
http://www.fabiancanas.com/Projects/MirrorDisplays/

Just run the application, the terminal window will say it has been processed successfully. Then simply plug in your external monitor. Great!

H.264 FLV to MP4 without Re-Encoding

2011-01-24T08:49:00.001-08:00

I have had an issue recently where I would like to produce MP4 files for my corresponding FLV files, preferably a batch process (as I have a fair few) without re-encoding. After all, I knew my FLV files were all H.264 and the FLV was only the container; so I didn't see why I needed to re-encode the whole batch and potentially lose further quality.

This is when I stumbled upon FLV Extract. This is an amazing tool, downloadable source as well, written in C#. This allows me to extract the video and audio streams for a FLV file. This will produce corresponding .264 and .ACC/.MP3 files. Excellent!

With these files, I now needed a way to generate my MP4 file. This is where MP4Box became quite handy. It will produce a nice MP4 container for .264 and .AAC files, even more amazing!

I now needed a way to batch this up. I opened up Notepad and drafted a quick batch script. This will search the current directory for all .FLV files, ensure the .264 and .aac/.mp3 files have been produced, run them through MP4Box, and drop the MP4's into a complete directory. It will then clean up the temporary files afterwards.
It works pretty well, I have added some brief instruction, and you can download the full package here.

For a 100mb video, it can take around ~5-10seconds on an average system.

H.264 FLV to MP4 (Without Re-encoding) Download Here

[ASP.NET] Pass your own arguments to the ClientValidationFunction in a CustomValidator

2010-12-16T08:35:00.001-08:00

When using a CustomValidator in asp.net you can specify a ClientValidationFunction to run on your client side. This function need to have 2 parameters (sender, args). The sender is the customvalidator control and the args is where you can specify the result of your validation(args.IsValid) and also access to the value of the control attached to you custom validator(args.Value). This is very useful for more complex validation on client side.

http://alejandrobog.wordpress.com/2009/09/27/pass-your-own-arguments-to-the-clientvalidationfunction-in-a-customvalidator/

[.NET] Determining File Mime Types (Correctly!)

2010-12-16T04:39:00.000-08:00

If you have used an ASP.NET upload control, you may have been reliant on getting the ContentType property and making security decisions based on the value from that. However, this isn't truly accurate.
What .NET does here is take the uploaded file and look at the file extension. It will then feed the extension into a mime library and generate the relevant content type.

I.e.
Upload a .doc file - ContentType will read: "application/msword"

For this to fail, we could rename an executable file (.exe) to a .doc and upload it. The ContentType will still be application/msword as it's based off the extension.

To overcome this problem, there are two methods we can use. Both of them involve peeking into the file and fetching some data relevant to it's type. So there is a natural trade-off with performance vs. security.

The first example below uses InterOp, and gives us an accurate mime type for the file. The second example uses feature codes, the only down side to using this is where you wish to accept doc and ppt but not xls. This isn't possible as these all share the same feature code (see below).

Two Examples to make decisions based on file/mime type

[System.Runtime.InteropServices.DllImport("urlmon.dll", CharSet = System.Runtime.InteropServices.CharSet.Unicode, ExactSpelling = true, SetLastError = false)]

static extern int FindMimeFromData(IntPtr pBC,

[System.Runtime.InteropServices.MarshalAs(System.Runtime.InteropServices.UnmanagedType.LPWStr)] string pwzUrl,

[System.Runtime.InteropServices.MarshalAs(System.Runtime.InteropServices.UnmanagedType.LPArray, ArraySubType = System.Runtime.InteropServices.UnmanagedType.I1, SizeParamIndex = 3)]

byte[] pBuffer, int cbSize,

[System.Runtime.InteropServices.MarshalAs(System.Runtime.InteropServices.UnmanagedType.LPWStr)] string pwzMimeProposed, int dwMimeFlags, out IntPtr ppwzMimeOut, int dwReserved);

/// <summary>

/// Ensures that file exists and retrieves the mime type

/// </summary>

/// <param name="fileName">Full path to the file</param>

/// <returns>Returns the Mime Type</returns>

public string GetMimeFromFile(string fileName)

    IntPtr mimeout;

    if (!System.IO.File.Exists(fileName))

    throw new System.IO.FileNotFoundException(fileName + " not found");

    int MaxContent = (int)new System.IO.FileInfo(fileName).Length;

    if (MaxContent > 4096) MaxContent = 4096;

    System.IO.FileStream fs = System.IO.File.OpenRead(fileName);

    byte[] buf = new byte[MaxContent];

    fs.Read(buf, 0, MaxContent);

    fs.Close();

    int result = FindMimeFromData(IntPtr.Zero, fileName, buf, MaxContent, null, 0, out mimeout, 0);

    if (result != 0)

    throw System.Runtime.InteropServices.Marshal.GetExceptionForHR(result);

    string mime = System.Runtime.InteropServices.Marshal.PtrToStringUni(mimeout);

    System.Runtime.InteropServices.Marshal.FreeCoTaskMem(mimeout);

    return mime;

/// <summary>

/// Reads the file to determine the feature code.

///     /* Extension name specification [Feature codes]

///     *7173        gif

///     *255216      jpg

///     *13780       png

///     *6677        bmp

///     *239187      txt,aspx,asp,sql

///     *208207      xls,doc,ppt

///     *6063        xml

///     *6033        htm,html

///     *4742        js

///     *8075        xlsx,docx,pptx,mmap,zip,msi

///     *8297        rar

///     *01          accdb,mdb

///     *7790        exe,dll

///     *5666        psd

///     *255254      rdp

///     *10056       bt

///     *64101       bat

///     *3780        pdf

///     */

/// </summary>

/// <param name="hifile">Posted file following the upload process</param>

/// <returns>Returns weather the file type is allowed</returns>

public bool IsAllowedExtension(HttpPostedFile hifile)

    bool ret = false;

    System.IO.BinaryReader r = new System.IO.BinaryReader(hifile.InputStream);

    string fileclass = string.Empty;

    byte buffer;

try

    buffer = r.ReadByte();

    fileclass = buffer.ToString();

    buffer = r.ReadByte();

    fileclass += buffer.ToString();

    catch

    return false;

    r.Close();

    String[] fileType = {"208207", "8075", "3780"}; // Place allowed file types here

    for (int i = 0; i < fileType.Length; i++)

    if (fileclass == fileType[i])

        ret = true;

        break;

    return ret;

AJAX - ASP.NET : Call WebMethod defined in User Control

2010-11-26T02:13:00.000-08:00

If you have welcomed the joys of AJAX into your ASP.NET application, you may or may not have come across this problem.

With AJAX calls, I tend to store the WebMethod within the ASPX pages rather than services; so that I can keep my logic relating to the page separate from everything else. There is nothing worse than having a global service with tens or hundreds of methods in that get called every time. (well maybe there is, but you see my point!)

However, where user controls are concerned, we have a slight problem. A limitation of the framework prevents us from calling a WebMethod defined in a User Control (as of .NET 3.5). Some people have suggested adding a proxy method to the page which hosts the user control to call a method within the user control. This is wrong on many levels as it ties the page to the control and defeats the purpose or re-usability with ease.

Solution
Instead of a page method, add a service method instead. Either an ASMX or an SVC, it doesn't really matter. These are useful to hosting WebMethods that can be reused by many pages within the application OR user controls (which are re-usable by design anyway).

asp:menu - Fix submenu appearing as a white box [IE8+]

2010-11-25T07:15:00.000-08:00

If you have an asp:menu control as part of your ASP.NET application, you will notice that the sub menu appears as a white box and your content isn't visible. This is quite crucial if this is the only access point to your web pages!

Solutions
1. Add z-index: 100; within a CSS class bound to the DynamicMenuItemStyle property on the menu control. This is the easiest fix. What IE8+ browsers are doing here is in theory correct, it more of a shortfall of the control. [Best Solution]

2. Use CSS friendly adapters. Requires a total re-design, why not take a look anyway.

3. Making your browser emulate IE7 by using the following meta tag in the appropriate pages.

<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=EmulateIE7" />

Note: The 3rd solution is not the best idea as it goes against the principles of moving forward with the technology!

SQL Server Management Studio - Edit Query Results

2010-11-25T07:11:00.000-08:00

This is a useful way to edit results of queries in SQL Server Management Studio 2005 and 2008.

SQL Server 2005
1. Right click table
2. Open Table
3. Right click anywhere in the results > Pane > SQL
4. SQL query windows pops up, enter query here.

SQL Server 2008
1. Right click table
2. Edit Top 200 Rows
3. Right click anywhere in the results > Pane > SQL
4. SQL query windows pops up, enter query here.

XSS: Cross style scripting attacks in ASP.NET [Examples]

2010-11-25T02:42:00.000-08:00

Recently I have been looking at vulnerabilities in ASP.NET applications where XSS attacks are concerned. In recent years, integration with ASP.NET and AJAX has become more apparent as it offers many benefits; including partial page refreshes. However, this opens our applications up to potential attacks, one of which is the main area of focus for this topic: XSS (Cross-style scripting).

Must Read: The XSS Wiki

When creating pages in ASP.NET, you may have stumbled upon the ValidateRequest property of the Page directive before. If not, it's a useful .NET feature that analyses page submissions for potentially unsafe mark up. You can test this yourself by entering <script>alert('Xss Vector!')</script> into a asp.net textbox control and hitting submit on the form. You will receive an exception informing you that the submission is potentially unsafe. Try setting this to false (default is true if not specified) and you'll see that this is no longer picked up by the framework on submit.

So why not leave this set to true for all pages, what's the problem?
1. User's may want to enter markup into a text area control for example.
2. AJAX calls to WebMethod's do not follow this process.
3. Sessions/Cookies/application variables can be hijacked that also do not follow this process.

The three reasons above present a clear reason of why we should add protection to our ASP.NET applications against XSS attacks. Especially as ASP.NET AJAX is becoming more and more common. We have three options for protection against these kinds of attacks.

1. Write your own utility to strip out potentially unsafe markup upon each potentially dangerous call.
2. Include the Microsoft Anti-Cross Site Scripting Library into your solution. This is the same as step 1, but without the "Write your own" bit. It's around 700kb (V1.5).
3. Do not make any of this calls where this becomes an issue [not realistic]

For steps 1 and 2... We need to analyse our code or potential code (I.e. in the design process!) where these issues arise. You refer to the 3 potentially unsafe areas above as a starting point as these area areas where XSS attacks can occur. This Microsoft page gives a good description on how to do this.

Once this areas are known, we can makes all inbound calls safe by stripping out or parsing incoming data using a bespoke tool or Microsoft's Anti-Cross Site Scripting Library.

Here is a typical example where we make an AJAX call to the server and we use Microsoft's library to parse the incoming data. The example also includes a vulnerable option so the two approaches can be compared.

The example can be downloaded here [Requires .NET 3.5]

Useful links:
XSS Cheat Sheet
Test your XSS Attack skills here!

ASP.NET/AJAX - Client-side validation with server validation controls

2010-11-23T02:53:00.000-08:00

With web applications getting more and more complex, it becomes necessary to make them more per-formant. It is quite easy to create an ASP.NET web application and within little or no time, most of the logic exists on the server. This is all good and well for a simple application, but as complexity increases, we need to start handing process to the client where client-side operations need to exist.

One good example is validation. For example, there is no reason why we should have required field validation on the server (I.e. checking if a field exists in the code behind after submitting a form to the server). We can easily use a RequiredFieldValidator in this case, and this will be processed on the client-side.

Ok, now for more complex examples, and this is the main vocal point of this article... What if we are using a custom validator and we need to check if, for example; an email exists dynamically without submitting the whole form? The common thing developers do here is override the OnServerValidate property of a CustomValidator, then this will take care of things when the form is submitted. I am now going to discuss how we can avoid this....

The old method

- Requires whole page postback
- Less per-formant

The new method

- Partial page postback
- Asynchronous, can be performed on-the-fly (dynamically)

With the old method, you can see that we must submit the form to the server in order to use our server side validation method. Server side validation is useful if you wish to use a database for example (check if email exists), something that your Javascript cannot do alone.

With the new method, we override the ClientValidationFunction of the CustomValidator and set it to a javascript function. This javascript function then wraps up some data using JSON; this data refers to what we are validating (I.e. email address), then passes it to a WebMethod on the server. The server method will behave exactly like the previous OnServerValidate method previously, and pass back the results of our validation process. The CustomValidator will then use this to trigger an error if necessary.

I have attached the project files used in this example (written in ASP.NET 3.5). If you open the Javascript file, you can see that a page method is being referenced. You can also reference a service (.asmx) by uncommenting the line below in the script, and commenting out the page method reference. Both work exactly the same but present two alternate mechanisms.

Download the project files here

If the Web Service in different Namespace you can refer it before the class name this Main formula may help you :

NameSpaceName.ClassName.WebMethdName(Parameters , Success callback function, Error callback function);

Parameters: you can pass one or many parameters.

Success callback function :handles returned data from the service .

Error callback function :Any errors that occur when the Web Service is called will trigger in this function. Using Error Callback function is optional.

Note: In this example, I am using the $.ajax command of JQuery to call the WebMethod. So in the url section, we need to specify the method as a URL relative to where it's being called from.

I.e

+ javascript
--- callwebservice.js < the script calling the service
+ Services
--- service.asmx < the service being called

Then your url will be "../Services/service.asmx/NameOfTheWebMethod"

Multiple Versions of IE - With IE7, IE8 and IE9!!!

2010-11-09T02:44:00.001-08:00

Here is a really good tool for emulating versions IE from 5.5 to 9. For those of you that have used a similar tool in the past (Multiple IE's) you'll notice that this has been discontinued and there are a few difficulties getting it to work with Windows Vista and Windows 7.

Here is a better tool, IETester
http://www.my-debugbar.com/wiki/IETester/HomePage

CSS: Corner Radius

2010-11-03T08:09:00.001-07:00

http://www.the-art-of-web.com/css/border-radius/

Really good article!

C#: Capture exception and all inner exceptions

2010-10-21T03:50:00.000-07:00

With complex architectures and many layers in the code throwing exceptions, it can prove difficult to find out exactly what went wrong.

Generally, the GUI may produce an error for example "Payment could not be processed." when making a payment on-line. From this error, we don't know which layer caused this error, but we know that along the way, something occurred.

This code snippet takes an exception and loops through all inner exceptions and produces a string for the whole exception. This can be stored in a logfile and the problem can be easily identified.

/// <summary>

/// Gets a full exception message string from a given exception.

/// This will loop through all inner exceptions.

/// </summary>

/// <param name="ex">Incoming exception</param>

/// <returns>Full exception message</returns>

internal string GetFullExceptionMessage(Exception ex)

    string result = string.Empty;

    while (ex != null)

    result += ex.ToString() + Environment.NewLine;

    ex = ex.InnerException;

    return result;

Downgrading Adobe Flash Player

2010-10-13T08:19:00.000-07:00

So I had an issue today where all of my SWF video tutorials did not work correctly after a certain version of the Flash Player. I originally used ViewletCam software to do this back in 2004; and the videos seemed to half at random intervals and then crash.

I needed a way to at least view these files locally, so that I could convert them to something more suitable. I had FLV in mind, and I could use these to load into many free web-embedded flash players.

This is what I did.

1. Uninstall the current version of flash. Adobe provides uninstallers for all versions. Current page to do this
2. test that the uninstall worked. This should either: not load or prompt you to install flash player (do not install here) Link here
3. Obtain an older copy of flash player. Adobe has them all Here or take a visit to OldVersions.com
4. Install the old flash player.
5. Repeat step 2... this should give you your new flash version.

CSS: Hacks in Google Chrome and Safari only...

2010-10-12T04:06:00.000-07:00

Here's a nice snippet to use in CSS when it seems like all other browsers are displaying your content correctly besides browsers based on Apple WebKit (Chrome, Safari etc.)

An example of setting css properties in WebKit browsers

/* This works only in Safari and Google Chrome */

@media screen and (-webkit-min-device-pixel-ratio:0) {

    .classNameHere {

        margin: 0 0 1px 0;

        padding: 0px 3px 0px 3px;

    #exampleBorderStyleHere {

        border:solid 1px #000000;

ASP.NET/JQUERY - Maintain Scroll Position of DIV (example uses a treeview)

2010-10-08T05:25:00.001-07:00

Today I had the task of maintaining the scroll position of an asp:TreeView control. Keeping it short and sweet; here's what I came up with.

I noticed that when rendered in the browser, the TreeView is rendered as a div... and from back in the days of remembering window positions after post backs, I knew this wouldn't be much different.

The solution I was working on used JQuery already and I found it useful to pull out references to server controls using the 'endwith' syntax. You can also get client id's, it doesn't matter to an extent.

Code behind

protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)

    this.AddEvents();

private void AddEvents()

    ScriptManager.RegisterStartupScript(this, this.GetType(), "Load", "PageLoad();", true);

    this.tvOrganisation.Attributes.Add("onscroll", "saveScrollPosition(this)");

In the above code i'm attaching an onscroll event to the Treeview. I'm also adding a form load function in javascript so that I can initialise anything in here.

Page Markup

<script type="text/javascript" src="LOCATION OF JQUERY HERE/jquery-x.x.x.js"> </script>

<script type="text/javascript">

    function saveScrollPosition(div) {

        $("[id$='hdnTVScrollYPos']").val(div.scrollTop);

        $("[id$='hdnTVScrollXPos']").val(div.scrollLeft);

    function restoreScrollPosition() {

        $("[id$='tvTREEVIEWNAME']").scrollTop($("[id$='hdnTVScrollYPos']").val());

        $("[id$='tvTREEVIEWNAME']").scrollLeft($("[id$='hdnTVScrollXPos']").val());

    function PageLoad() {;

        restoreScrollPosition();

</script>

<asp:HiddenField ID="hdnTVScrollXPos" runat="server" Value="0" />

<asp:HiddenField ID="hdnTVScrollYPos" runat="server" Value="0" />

Here i'm using two hidden fields to hold the values of X and Y. This will maintain throughout postback and uses a cookie-less approach towards maintaining these details. The JavaScript speaks for itself.

CSS: Cross Browser Gradients

2010-10-04T06:31:00.000-07:00

As a Web Developer, my usual ethic is to immediately create an ingenious architecture and spill out reusable code within the framework I've just created; while my design aspects are crudely left to the side until I need a GUI to make the thing work!
In practise, it doesn't really matter which order these are done, just as long as the requirements are in place and there is a general idea.

However, when i'm at home (without the glorious support of a design team to make my images and write my CSS for me), things do get done, but designing pages with a div layout; bearing cross browser functionality in mind and actually making it look good takes a lot of skill. So here's one for the skillset....

Cross Browser Gradients with CSS

.gradientTitle {

    background-color: #CECEF6; /* Opera and browsers that do not support gradients  */

    background: -webkit-gradient(linear, left top, right bottom, from(#CECEF6), to(#FFFFFF)); /* Webkit browsers: Chrome, Safari etc. */

    background: -moz-linear-gradient(left,  #CECEF6,  #FFFFFF); /* Mozilla Firefox */

    filter: progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.gradient(GradientType=1, startColorstr='#CECEF6', endColorstr='#FFFFFF'); /* IE 5.5+ */

    padding: 2px 2px 2px 8px;

    color: #1C1C1C;

    width: 60%;

I have set an initial background for browsers that do not support gradients. If a browser is capable of picking up one of these three, the background-color is overridden.

Preview

Here's a Sample Heading

Javascript: Namespaces and O-O examples...

2010-09-29T03:32:00.000-07:00

I'm not sure how common practise this is, but where I currently work we have a standard whereby we placed common JavaScript functionality in separate files and what could be called classes. I'm sure most developers out there do group common functions in files and import them when needed. This is fine, but it doesn't promote certain O-O practises like information hiding and the feel of objects, methods and properties. This is what this post aims to achieve.

I have attached a sample project file which declares a JavaScript name space in a separate file, declares a Messages 'class' in another and a sample HTML page which invokes various methods and properties against it. Sample can be found at the end of this post.

Namespace declaration - Must be imported first

/******************************

** BANTY Namespace definition

******************************/

var BANTY = BANTY || {};

BANTY = (function() {

    return {

        helloWorld : function() {

            return "Helllo World!";

}());

Class definition

/******************************

** Define Messages class

*******************************/

if (!BANTY.Messages) BANTY.Messages = {};

BANTY.Messages = (function() {

    // private declarations here

    var pi_Message;

    var pi_ChangeMessage = function (newMsg) {

        pi_Message = newMsg;

};

    // public declarations here

    return {

        publicProperty : "This is a public property",

        init : function (Args) {

            pi_Message = "Message initialised.";

},

        showMessage : function () {

            return "The value of the message is: " + pi_Message;

},

        changeMessage : function (msg) {

            pi_ChangeMessage(msg);

},

};

}());

Example HTML Page

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">

<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" >

<head>

    <title>Javascript O-O Example</title>

    <script src="Banty.js" type="text/javascript"></script>

    <script src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.2.6/jquery.min.js" type="text/javascript"></script>

</head>

<body style="font-family: verdana; font-size: 8pt">

    <div id="tagged"></div>

    <script src="BANTY.Messages.js" type="text/javascript"></script>

    <script type="text/javascript">

    $('#tagged').append('<br /><div><font color="0000FF"><b>Information hiding principles...</b></font></div>');

    $('#tagged').append('<div>Can I see BANTY?:<b> '+ (BANTY ? 'Yes' : 'No') +'</b></div>');

    $('#tagged').append('<div>Can I see BANTY.helloWorld?:<b> '+ (BANTY ? 'Yes' : 'No') +'</b></div>');

    $('#tagged').append('<div>Can I see BANTY.Messages?:<b> '+ (BANTY.Messages ? 'Yes' : 'No') +'</b></div>');

    $('#tagged').append('<div>Can I see BANTY.Messages.publicProperty?:<b> '+ (BANTY.Messages.publicProperty ? 'Yes' : 'No') +'</b></div>');

    $('#tagged').append('<div>Can I see BANTY.Messages.showMessage?:<b> '+ (BANTY.Messages.showMessage ? 'Yes' : 'No') +'</b></div>');

    $('#tagged').append('<div>Can I see BANTY.Messages.pi_Message?:<b> '+ (BANTY.Messages.pi_Message ? 'Yes' : 'No') +'</b></div>');

    $('#tagged').append('<div>Can I see BANTY.Messages.pi_ChangeMessage?:<b> '+ (BANTY.Messages.pi_ChangeMessage ? 'Yes' : 'No') +'</b></div>');

    $('#tagged').append('<br /><div><font color="0000FF"><b>Show and Change Messages...</b></font></div>');

    $('#tagged').append('<div><b> BANTY.helloWorld:</b> '+ BANTY.helloWorld() +'</div>');

    $('#tagged').append('<div><b> BANTY.Messages.report():</b> '+ BANTY.Messages.showMessage() +'</div>');

    $('#tagged').append('<div><b> BANTY.Messages.init():</b> '+ BANTY.Messages.init() +'</div>');

    $('#tagged').append('<div><b> BANTY.Messages.report():</b> '+ BANTY.Messages.showMessage() +'</div>');

    $('#tagged').append('<div><b> BANTY.Messages.changeMessage(newmsg):</b> '+ BANTY.Messages.changeMessage("newmsg") +'</div>');

    $('#tagged').append('<div><b> BANTY.Messages.report():</b> '+ BANTY.Messages.showMessage() +'</div>');

    </script>

</body>

</html>

Example Output

Information hiding principles...

Can I see BANTY?: Yes

Can I see BANTY.helloWorld?: Yes

Can I see BANTY.Messages?: Yes

Can I see BANTY.Messages.publicProperty?: Yes

Can I see BANTY.Messages.showMessage?: Yes

Can I see BANTY.Messages.pi_Message?: No

Can I see BANTY.Messages.pi_ChangeMessage?: No

Show and Change Messages...

BANTY.helloWorld: Helllo World!

BANTY.Messages.report(): The value of the message is: undefined

BANTY.Messages.init(): undefined

BANTY.Messages.report(): The value of the message is: Message initialised.

BANTY.Messages.changeMessage(newmsg): undefined

BANTY.Messages.report(): The value of the message is: newmsg

Download Sample Files Here

Thanks go out to my company for putting this standard in place.

ASP.NET - Get IPv4 Address, even if the user is using a proxy or an intranet user

2010-09-29T01:49:00.001-07:00

Today I was working on some PayPal integration for an internal web application when part of the API suggested I needed an IP Address for the user to enhance security.
Realising this was an intranet application which could be used externally, I had to cater for all aspects.
Getting an IP Address for an internal users involves looking up the host addresses using the System.Net.Dns namespace, rather than a simple peek in a server variable. As well as this, I needed to make sure I could identify real IP Addresses for users behind a proxy. If that wasn;t enough, the PayPal API doesn't support IPv6, so I had to search the host list for a IPv4 address and use that.... PayPal requires an IP or it will fail, so if everything else fails, it will return the loopback address (ack!). here's what I came up with...

// Invoker

string IPAddress = IPHelper.GetIPAddress(Request.ServerVariables["HTTP_VIA"],

                                                Request.ServerVariables["HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR"],

                                                Request.ServerVariables["REMOTE_ADDR"]);

/// <summary>

/// Provides IP addressing functionality to any

/// calling part of the system.

/// </summary>

public class IPHelper

    /// <summary>

    /// Gets the user's IP Address

    /// </summary>

    /// <param name="httpVia">HTTP_VIA Server variable</param>

    /// <param name="httpXForwardedFor">HTTP_X_FORWARDED Server variable</param>

    /// <param name="RemoteAddr">REMOTE_ADDR Server variable</param>

    /// <returns>user's IP Address</returns>

    public static string GetIPAddress(string HttpVia, string HttpXForwardedFor, string RemoteAddr)

        // Use a default address if all else fails.

        string result = "127.0.0.1";

        // Web user - if using proxy

        string tempIP = string.Empty;

        if (HttpVia != null)

            tempIP = HttpXForwardedFor;

        else // Web user - not using proxy or can't get the Client IP

            tempIP = RemoteAddr;

        // If we can't get a V4 IP from the above, try host address list for internal users.

        if (!IsIPV4(tempIP))

try

                string hostName = System.Net.Dns.GetHostName();

                foreach (System.Net.IPAddress ip in System.Net.Dns.GetHostAddresses(hostName))

                    if (IsIPV4(ip))

                        result = ip.ToString();

                        break;

            catch { }

        return result;

    /// <summary>

    /// Determines weather an IP Address is V4

    /// </summary>

    /// <param name="input">input string</param>

    /// <returns>Is IPV4 True or False</returns>

    private static bool IsIPV4(string input)

        bool result = false;

        System.Net.IPAddress address = null;

        if (System.Net.IPAddress.TryParse(input, out address))

            result = IsIPV4(address);

        return result;

    /// <summary>

    /// Determines weather an IP Address is V4

    /// </summary>

    /// <param name="address">input IP address</param>

    /// <returns>Is IPV4 True or False</returns>

    private static bool IsIPV4(System.Net.IPAddress address)

        bool result = false;

        switch (address.AddressFamily)

            case System.Net.Sockets.AddressFamily.InterNetwork:   // we have IPv4

                result = true;

                break;

            case System.Net.Sockets.AddressFamily.InterNetworkV6: // we have IPv6

                    break;

                default:

                    break;

            return result;

asp:Menu controls not working in Chrome/Safari

2010-09-23T02:22:00.000-07:00

I faced a small issue today with asp:Menu controls not working properly in Chrome or Safari the first time the page is loaded. However, if I refresh the page, the contents seem to load fine.
The underlying problem is the way Chrome manages it's adaptors and we need to be able to clear these out and refresh the page if this situation occurs.

I have therefore written an OnInit event for any ASP.NET page or user control in which the menu is placed. Simply just add it in the code behind...

Fix Menu rendering in Chrome and Safari

protected override void OnInit(EventArgs e)

    // For Chrome and Safari

    if (Request.UserAgent.IndexOf("AppleWebKit") > 0)

        if (Request.Browser.Adapters.Count > 0)

            Request.Browser.Adapters.Clear();

            Response.Redirect(Page.Request.Url.AbsoluteUri);

- Using the "AppleWebKit" we can identify these browsers
- By checking more than one adapter exists, we avoid re-directing every time; this only needs to be done on the first hit.
- We Re-Direct back to itself the first time the page is hit.

C#: Cultures

2010-09-22T07:53:00.000-07:00

Cultures are things you probably won't come across for general projects unless you are dealing with support for multiple viewing countries. This mainly includes: Dates, times and currencies.

For example, When parsing (using Parse/TryParse) a DateTime object, it assumes the DateTime is in US format... so when we come to use this, we'll notice our days and months are the wrong way round!

Parsing a string in a DateTime object with a UK Culture

using System.Globalization;   // For access to culture objects

private DateTime ParseDate(string IncomingDate)

    CultureInfo ukCulture = new CultureInfo("en-GB");

    DateTime parsedDate = new DateTime();

    DateTime.TryParse(IncomingDate, ukCulture.DateTimeFormat, DateTimeStyles.None, out parsedDate);

    return parsedDate;

An implicit example

DateTime dateObj = DateTime.Parse(inputString, new CultureInfo("en-GB"));

We can also apply culture globally across a whole application by setting culture settings in the Web.config file. In the following snippet, we have Culture and UICulture. The former refers to how DateTime objects and currencies are parsed etc. Using a en-GB culture will ensure these all use UK currencies and formatting. The latter determines which resource files are used for the UI.

Setting the culture globally in the Web.config

<globalization uiCulture="en-GB" culture="en-GB" />

Sending HTML Emails and Emailing Tricks with C#

2010-09-20T06:32:00.000-07:00

Sending emails is relatively easy with C#, even-so, its not much more difficult to send HTML based emails either. The formatting, and how different email clients interpret the HTML and CSS in the emails, differs slightly. The aims of this post is to present a few typical scenarios of different types of emails which are sent.

Sending a Simple email using an email server - non-HTML

using System.Net.Mail;

MailMessage mail = new MailMessage("from@email.com", "to@email.com", "Email Subject", "Email Message");

mail.IsBodyHtml = false;

this.SendMail(mail);

/// <summary>

/// Sends the mail using a mail message.

/// </summary>

/// <param name="Mail">The mail message.</param>

private void SendMail(MailMessage Mail)

     SmtpClient smtpClient = new SmtpClient();

     smtpClient.Host = "Email Server Address";

     smtpClient.DeliveryMethod = SmtpDeliveryMethod.Network;

try

          smtpClient.Send(Mail);

     catch (Exception ex)

          throw new EmailException(ErrorCodeType.SendFailed, ex);

This is enough to send a simple email to a target destination using an existing email server. To enable HTML is the body, we simply enable the IsBodyHtml property of the MailMessage object by setting it to true.

Simple HTML Email using the function in the previous example

MailMessage mail = new MailMessage("from@email.com", "to@email.com", "Email Subject", "<b>HELLO!!</b><br><br>Test Message...");

mail.IsBodyHtml = true;

this.SendMail(mail);

With OutLook for example, some representations of styling alter slightly. For example, I spent some time trying to understand why the line-height was interpreted differently in outlook. For whatever reason, If I tested the HTML template in IE, FF or Chrome; everything would be the same apart from the line-height. This seems to be a common problem. The solution I came up with is to tell outlook to render it in a certain way and that other browsers should ignore it.

HTML Email with line spacing and styles applied to the body of the email

string emailBody = "<div style=\"font-family: Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 9pt; mso-line-height-rule:exactly; line-height: 20px\">";

emailBody += "<b>HELLO!!</b><br><br>Test Message...</div>";

MailMessage mail = new MailMessage("from@email.com", "to@email.com", "Email Subject", emailBody);

mail.IsBodyHtml = true;

this.SendMail(mail);

By setting "mso-line-height-rule:exactly" before the line-height property, we are tell mso (Microsoft Office) to render this differently to other browsers. You'll notice that I set the line-height to 20px... for a 9pt font, this is quite huge normally, but in Outlook; it's not.

One more tip, which may be quite trivial to some... If you want to using alias' in your emails (I.e. Appear that the email is being sent from an Alias) then there is no special code. Simply format the 'From' address in the following Format... "AliasName" (Include the quotes aswell)

In a config file, this might look like... [Remember we need to escape special characters in the XML config file!]

<appSettings>

    <add key="Email.FromAddress" value="&quot;WebAdmin&quot; &lt;online@tmgcrb.co.uk&gt;"/>

</appSettings>

Forcibly clear a printer queue

2010-09-16T00:57:00.000-07:00

Sometimes the printer queue just won't clear, no matter how many times you right click and try to delete the job. Here's how to actually clear it out properly!

1. Start > Run > Services.msc

2. Find "Printer Spooler" and stop the service

3. Go to "C:\Windows\System32\spool\PRINTERS" and you will see a list of files. These represent the jobs in the printer queue. Remove these.

4. Restart the "Printer Spooler" service and your queue should be cleared.

View Gradients/Colours properly in your Virtual Machine (VM)

2010-09-13T03:53:00.000-07:00

• In the Windows XP operating system (remote system), click on Start menu, then Run.
• Type GPEdit.msc to open Group Policy Editor.
• Navigate to Local Computer Policy -> Computer Configuration -> Administrative Templates -> Windows Components -> Terminal Services.
• In the right pane, double-click on the Limit Maximum Color Depth setting.
• In the Properties dialog, select radio button of Enabled, and then set Color Depth value to 24 bit or Client Compatible

Code Snippit - Determining whether brackets are balanced

2010-09-10T02:56:00.000-07:00

We usually have coding challenges at work quite often. This one was quite useful. The aims were to do something that regular expressions struggle doing; that is, determine whether brackets are balanced.

Example of a legal expression: “([as](<{}>))”.

Example of an illegal expression: “({<)>}”.

Here's what I came up with...


private bool IsValid(string str)
{
    if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(str))
    {
        List<char> LeftParenthesis = new List<char>() { '(', '{', '[', '<' };
        List<char> RightParenthesis = new List<char>() { ')', '}', ']', '>' };
        List<char> items = new List<char>(str.Length);

        // Loop through each character
        for (int i = 0; i < str.Length; i++)
        {
            char c = str[i];

            if (LeftParenthesis.Contains(c))
            {
                items.Add(c); // Add each opening bracket
            }
            else if (RightParenthesis.Contains(c))
            {
                int rpIndex = RightParenthesis.IndexOf(c);

                // Invalid if there are no open brackets and we find a closing one
                int lastPairIndex = items.LastIndexOf(LeftParenthesis[rpIndex]);

                if (lastPairIndex >= 0)
                {
                    if (items[items.Count - 1] != items[lastPairIndex]) // Last item must be matching bracket
                        return false;
                    else
                        items.RemoveAt(lastPairIndex); // Remove last pair
                }
                else
                    return false;
            }
        }

        // Look for any other brackets left over
        if (items.Count > 0)
            return false;
    }

    return true;
}

How to: Configure XHTML Rendering in ASP.NET Web Sites

2010-08-23T04:08:00.000-07:00

Here's how to configure a website to use XHTML strict. You need to make a minor web.config change too.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms178159.aspx

LINQ To SQL ERROR: An attempt was made to remove a relationship between a [Table1] and a [Table2].

2010-06-30T01:42:00.000-07:00

Full Error
An attempt was made to remove a relationship between a [Table1] and a [Table2]. However, one of the relationship's foreign keys ([Table1].[Foreign Key]) cannot be set to null.

This error usually occurs when trying to called SubmitChanges() on the data context.
For example, I have received this error when trying to commit an object and I have not property build up its properties (one of which may be another table) and when trying to commit this parent object, its related table will be null; this throws an error.

So what you could do is...

1. Ensure the property is present (that is, if you want to commit it in one transaction).
2. Tell the framework to delete child items on submitting... Open the DBML file in Xml Editor (Right Click > Open With...) and find the association and tag " DeleteOnNull="true" " to the end.
- Alternately, you can specify this in the code... DataContextInstance.TableName.DeleteAllOnSubmit(items);
3. Remove the table reference as a property all together. Open the DBML file, click on the association and view the properties. Set 'Child Property' to 'False'.

Hope this helps!

iPhone SDK in Windows

2010-06-16T06:10:00.001-07:00

Here's a good guide on getting the iPhone SDK working from a windows isntallation.

http://iphone-sdk-in-windows.co.uk/

CruiseControl.NET: 10 Useful Plugins [Written in C#.NET]

2010-06-11T07:10:00.000-07:00

For the past two years I have developed various Continuous Integration systems and along the way, like most things, you collect a lot of information. Recently, I have managed to compile most of this into this solution and kept it up to date.

For the build process of our Continuous Integration, we can give CruiseControl.NET as much power as we desire. Most developers prefer to keep logic in Nant/MSBuild scripts, while some find themselves using CCNET plugins to manage a lot of the work.

In this solution attached, I have included all of the plugins I have developed and have used within some of my processes (I say some because the other use build scripts to perform similar actions). I have updated the solution to work with CCNET v1.5 [1.5.6804.1 to be specific].

If you don't have this particular version, you can either upgrade to it, or easier, copy the required files into the 'References' folder and recompile the plugins. The files required are:

- ThoughtWorks.CruiseControl.Core.dll

- NetReflector.dll

- Wix.dll

These can all be found in the 'server' directory of your CCNET setup. Remember, with plugins, the file names are specific (NOTE: all must start with ccnet and end within plugin.dll). This has already been done.

Included in the ZIP file are the following plugins:

- Banty.AssemblyInfoUpdater - Updates assemblyinfo files with a CCNET build version number.

- Banty.CustomVersioner - Enables a custom versioner (labeller) with wildcard support.

- Banty.MSILister - Lists and produced a packing file to display the contents of an MSI file as XML.

- Banty.TestHarness - Used to test the plugins locally

- Banty.VersionMSIFile - Injects a CCNET version into an MSI file

- Banty.VersionWixFile - Injects a CCNET version into a Wix Setup project

- Banty.VSSCommentCollector - Collects VSS comments for the build.

- CCNet.Sequential.PlugIn+Unittests (External project updated to latest version)

- MsBuildToCCNet (External project by rodymeister)

Download here

Working with ASP.NET, JQUERY and JSON [EXAMPLES]

2010-06-11T07:00:00.001-07:00

I have put together some examples of working with ASP.NET, JQUERY and JSON. The examples use three techniques:

- Page Methods

- Web Services

- WCF Services

and neither of them use UpdatePanels or ScriptManagers to display dynamic content, worth a look!

The file is for .NET Framework 3.5 and written in C#.

Download Here

JQuery: Calling ASP.NET Page Methods

2010-06-11T01:32:00.000-07:00

Here is a great page explaining how to call page methods directly using JQuery.

http://encosia.com/2008/05/29/using-jquery-to-directly-call-aspnet-ajax-page-methods/

Error connecting to undo manager of source file "designer file here"

2010-06-04T03:57:00.000-07:00

This error happens a lot with visual studio, up to and including VS2008. The reason being that VS keep track of the form designers in debug mode by creating 'designer' files for each ASP.NET or each Windows Form etc...

This usually occurs, for whatever reason, when the designer file cannot be updated, usually being its corrupted. To resolve this error, simply do the following...

ASP.NET

1) Right-click the designer file and select delete
2) Right-click the aspx file and select Convert to Web Application

Other Project Types

Exclude the file from the Project, recompile, then re-include, the recompiles.

.NET: LoaderLock was detected

2010-06-02T06:58:00.000-07:00

Error Message

Attempting managed execution inside OS Loader lock. Do not attempt to run managed code inside a DllMain or image initialization function since doing so can cause the application to hang.

The problem can be solved by switching off the MDA:

Debug -> Exceptions -> Managed Debug Assistants

and unchecking the LoaderLock item.

This simply tells visual studio that you do not wish to be alerted by this exception everytime you debug the application.

Restore SQL Server Database from .BAK backup file

2010-06-02T03:09:00.000-07:00

You would think that restoring a backup would be fairly straight forward, but usual, this isn't always the case. We need to create an MDF (database) and LDF (log file) from the .BAK file, and plug this into SQL Server. urgh.

First things first... Run the below command to find out the logical names of the MDF and LDF files. I recommand running this under the master database or you will receive a 'database in use' error message.

RESTORE FILELISTONLY

FROM DISK = 'C:\dbbackup.bak'

Now we have these names, we can restore to them using the following command. We can specify a UNC path to the BAK file incase we want to update over a network, but the MDF and LDF file paths cannot be UNC.

RESTORE DATABASE [TESTDB]

FROM DISK = 'C:\dbbackup.bak'

WITH REPLACE,

MOVE 'TESTDB' TO 'C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL.1\MSSQL\Data\TESTDB.MDF',

MOVE 'TESTDB_log' TO 'C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL.1\MSSQL\Data\TESTDB_log.LDF'

The database name will be the logical name of the MDF file... In my case, I could not get this to work until I had created a database with the same name before hand.
Ensure the directories above exist otherwise it will not work. I chose to place them with my other SQL Server table definitions.

Unit Testing: Accessing AppSettings within the context of the test

2010-04-26T04:05:00.000-07:00

I recently had an issue with my tests failing, I realised it was because when using my particular gtest suite, the debug files are not stored within bin\Debug, but rather somewhere else; and the configuration files are not being copied!

This was quite dramatic as my DB connection strings are stored as settings, and needed these to produce tests against the data. The simpliest way to solve this problem is to add a post-build event to the test project. This psot build event will copy the configuration file to the target destination. The testing suite will then pick up these settings as and when requested.

1. Right click and properties on the test project
2. Click Build Events Tab.
3. Add the following post build event...

copy /Y "$(ProjectDir)app.config" "$(TargetPath).config"

This will ensure your config file is copied to its destination, where your test suite (I.e. NUnit can pick it up).

JQuery: Select elements containing an attribute

2010-04-23T06:51:00.000-07:00

Here's a simply JQuery snippit that will select all elements using the selector which contain a specified attribute...

This will select all table rows (TR's) of a table with an ID of 'tblTest' that have an attribute 'uniqueid'.

$("table#tblTest tr[uniqueid]")

Javascript: Add/Remove classes from elements

2010-04-23T05:48:00.000-07:00

Here's a simple way of achiving this without any bloating libraries (I.e. JQuery etc.)
There is also a 'HasClass' method, which becomes quite useful.

function hasClass(ele, cls) {

    return ele.className.match(new RegExp('(\\s|^)' + cls + '(\\s|$)'));

function addClass(ele, cls) {

    if (!this.hasClass(ele, cls)) ele.className += " " + cls;

function removeClass(ele, cls) {

    if (hasClass(ele, cls)) {

        var reg = new RegExp('(\\s|^)' + cls + '(\\s|$)');

        ele.className = ele.className.replace(reg, ' ');

ASP.NET: Using FindControl Recursively.

2010-04-21T05:12:00.000-07:00

FindControl can be a bit of a pain, especially as it doesn't contain recursive support; that being, you need to know the direct parent of an object before you can start your search.

I have attached a method which is useful, especially when creating generic methods for groups of objects where the parent is unknown.

        /// <summary>

        /// Finds a Control recursively. Note finds the first match and exists

        /// </summary>

        /// <param name="RootControl">Root control to start looking in.</param>

        /// <param name="ControlToFind">The control to find within it recursively.</param>

        /// <returns>The control if it exists.</returns>

        public Control FindControlRecursive(Control RootControl, string ControlToFind)

            if (RootControl.ID == ControlToFind)

                return RootControl;

            foreach (Control Ctl in RootControl.Controls)

                Control FoundCtl = FindControlRecursive(Ctl, ControlToFind);

                if (FoundCtl != null)

                    return FoundCtl;

            return null;