Dan's Archive

Links for 2008-10-29 [del.icio.us]

Thu, 30 Oct 2008 00:00:00 -0500

Fast AJAX, Faster AJAX
Alik Leven presents a cae study using script-callable web services to increase productivity and performance.

Links for 2008-10-27 [del.icio.us]

Tue, 28 Oct 2008 00:00:00 -0500

Summary Data Access from A to Z
Paul Gielens summarizes the PDC Pre-conf day on Data Access

Links for 2008-10-23 [del.icio.us]

Fri, 24 Oct 2008 00:00:00 -0500

Brad Abrams : Building a Great Ajax application from Scratch
Quick all the way through tutorial to building up a ASP.NET AJAX site
How to use Windows 2008 on your laptop
Kzu points to a good guide for runnign Win2008 as a workstation along with how to install Live Writer on the OS too

Links for 2008-10-21 [del.icio.us]

Wed, 22 Oct 2008 00:00:00 -0500

Introduction to ASP.NET Dynamic Data
Quick walkthrough for building a Dynamic Data website
No Empty Selector in jQuery
How To Write Testable ASP.NET UserControls
How To Write Testable ASP.NET WebForms
Design Patterns on dotNetSlackers
First of an ongoing series on using and implementing design patterns
Adding OpenID to your web site in conjunction with ASP.NET Membership
Dan Hounshell on incorporating OpenID into your website
Sending XHTML as text/html considered harmful
Article on why this is a bad idea
HTML vs. XHTML - WHATWG Wiki
The WHATwg's take on HTML vs XHTML
A List Apart: Working From Home: The Readers Respond
Notes from ALA Readers on how to stay sane while working from home
"Zermatt" Resources for Developers and Architects
Rick Raineys list of resources for Microsoft's cardspace sequel
IComparer vs IEqualityComparer
Keyvan Neyyeri on the difference in use between these two interfaces
Visual Studio Team System 2010 on Channel 9
VS2010 Videos on Channel 9
If the .Net BCL is drywall, Extension Methods are spackle
Jeremy Miller on extension methods (he's for them btw)
Encodo C# Handbook
Coding standards download - probably has a couple of things you didn't already know in it if you can drag yourself away from FxCop
Auto-generating help with NAnt and CC.net
Garry Pilkington on using NAnt scripts to drive Sandcastle to generate your documentation during a build

Links for 2008-10-20 [del.icio.us]

Tue, 21 Oct 2008 00:00:00 -0500

Guide to Freeing up Disk Space under Windows Vista
Nice little list of ways to free up space on your hard drive from Vista's standard operating procedure. The comments add a few more too. Good for the virtual spring cleaning
ASP.NET MVC Beta Released
Release notes from ScottGu for the new ASP.NET MVC Beta release

Links for 2008-10-16 [del.icio.us]

Fri, 17 Oct 2008 00:00:00 -0500

Web Platform Installer
Phil Haack introduces Microsoft's all-in-one installer for web related technologies on (currently) Vista and Server 2008. Win2003 and XP are being looked into apparently. But IIS7 doesn't work on those does it?
How to Find or Validate an Email Address
Looking at regular expressions to validate email adresses as specified in full in rfc2822 rather than just the usual set of alphanumeric characters
Show Permissions for Database Role
SQL script that returns the current permissions on a database for a named role.
Response.Redirect(url) ThreadAbortException Solution
Good article on how to handle ThreadAbortExceptions when calling Response.Redirect and why they occur. Also a nice brief discussion on the event sequence that occurs while a handler deals with a page.
XHTML - myths and realities
Good article by Tina Holmboe on the reality of XHTML, its non-adoption, what it actually does and doesn't do, and so on, while we wait for HTML 5.

Gallio \ MbUnit v3.0.4 Released

Dan Maharry — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 00:44:32 GMT

Jeff Brown has announced the release of Gallio \ MbUnit v3.0.4.

Today we are releasing v3.0.4 of Gallio and MbUnit. This release incorporates many new features as well improvements for robustness.
New asserts, assertion diffs, 0rdered tests, Rollback, Repeat, ThreadedRepeat, R# 4.1, VSTS, CSUnit, TeamCity, Gallio.Ambience, clickable report links (IE/Firefox integration), and more...
Try it out! Please be aware that there are now separate x86 and x64 installers.
Download here: http://www.gallio.org/Downloads.aspx
Documentation here: http://www.gallio.org/Docs.aspx
[...]

The whole alpha / beta thing got too confusing in the end due to scope creep so I dropped it. In any case, this release is pretty much feature-complete.

The full announcement and complete rundown of the new features can be found here on Jeff's blog. Congrats to him, Vadim, Graham and the rest of the team.

MbUnit.Framework v2 Docs October CTP

Dan Maharry — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 21:54:25 GMT

Well, it's been a while and as Jeff leads Gallio into the autumn sunshine, it's time to push out a little something for those still using MbUnit v2. You may recall, back in August last year, we launched docs.mbunit.com. Regrettably, it's been quite static since then but now the monster is complete there's some progress.

Here then is a first draft of complete documentation for all the assert classes, attributes, helper and exception classes in the MbUnit.Framework namespace only as found in MbUnit v2.4. Call it the October 2008 CTP if you will.

You can download it from here on HMobius until I find somewhere stable to put it. Feel free to let me know what you think of the style, what other MbUnit namespaces you'd like documented in full either here or via the MbUnit-User group.

Links for 2008-10-07 [del.icio.us]

Wed, 08 Oct 2008 00:00:00 -0500

Exclude Files and Folders from WDP Output
Quick tutorial on using the MSBuild file that is a web deployment project to exclude or remove directories from a website's output directory once VS has been asked to build it.

Expressing the Meme

Dan Maharry — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 18:22:21 GMT

Chris Hart has tagged me, so here are six random facts about me which are moderately interesting.

I have, at various points, been referred to as 'Bamber', 'The Milky Bar Kid' and 'Beep', mostly in a friendly way. Sometimes not.
The worst holiday I ever had was in Nice (sic). I intend one day to return and prove this was a fluke.
I was, at one point, going to quit tech and become a session guitar player. It's still tempting
For ten years, I helped out at the National Student Drama Festival. I still miss it.
The first girl who ever kissed me was called Ruth. The first girl I wanted to kiss was called Angelique
Of the schools and universities I attended, only one still exists as it was when I was there. And it ain't the university.

And, to perpetuate the meme, I tag Emma Jones, Emma Vieceli, Lou Barr, Ariana Osborne, Julia Gilbert and Vanessa Yaremchuk.

These are the rules. Should you break them, do it in an interesting fashion...

Link to the person who tagged you.
Post the rules on the blog.
Write six random things about yourself.
Tag six people at the end of your post.
Let each person know they have been tagged.
Let the tagger know when your entry is up.

Programming ASP.NET 3.5 Is Slated For PDC

Dan Maharry — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 21:31:33 GMT

Well, it’s been a while coming but it looks like Programming ASP.NET 3.5 will finally hit the shelves in late October just in time for this year’s PDC. Hurrah! So, to take a leaf out of John Papa’s blog, it’s time to take a few seconds out and thank those who were involved in its creation.

First off, my co-authors Jesse Liberty and Dan Hurwitz for their support and words. And to Lou Franco and Mike Pope as well for their contributions to the book. They were both timely and well received by those of us all worded out.

Second, to the reviewing team for the necessary evil of reminding the authors that their words are not the be all and end all of the subject and should never treat them as such. Especially when trying to incorporate ever-changing technology into a set of static pages. So, to Don Kiely, Eugene Osovetsky, Frank Wang, Scott Isaacs, Christy Henriksson, Kyle Beyer, and Miles Whitener my humble thanks, even if some of your comments made me want to throw the laptop in the bin because I knew you were right and it would mean writing another five or ten pages to cover the point. Lou Franco and Mike Pope also get a second vote of thanks here because they not only provided really solid comments, they also decided to back their own comments up with words.

Next, thanks to the folks at O'Reilly. Lou Barr initially mentioned me to John Osborn as a potential co-author, so I thank her for the mention and John for getting in touch and then letting me get on with it at a pace I could manage. Brian MacDonald, Audrey Doyle and Rachel Monaghan have also been great as technical, copy and production editors respectively. I hope I'll work with them again (preferable on something smaller).

And finally, thanks to Jane for putting up with about thirteen or so months of the book-writing process.

Programming ASP.NET 3.5 is already up for pre-order on Amazon UK and Amazon US. Why not buy a copy?

Red Gate Reflector

Dan Maharry — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 08:20:22 GMT

Well, it looks like one of the best .NET utilities out there has changed hands. Lutz Roeder, the original creator and developer of Reflector has agreed with Red Gate software (they of SQL Compare and SQL Toolkit fame) to let them continue development of it from now one. An interview with both Lutz and James Shore of Red Gate outlining the deal and what Red Gate hopes to do with Reflector can be found here on simple talk.

Red gate are quite clear that they “will continue to offer the tool for free to the community.” but don’t categorically state that they may not offer a corporate, paid-for version later down the line. As long as there’s a free version I’m not too fussed. Reflector’s new home is http://reflector.red-gate.com/

Technorati Tags: reflector,red gate

RadioButton Groups, Table Rows And NamingContainers

Dan Maharry — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 16:42:51 GMT

(In which AJAX-enhanced CheckBoxes become more useful than RadioButtons but inheritance saves the day, and a simple RadioButton-derived control establishes the purpose of a control's naming container)

The RadioButtonList. Very handy for inviting users to select just one item from a list although because of the screen real estate it takes up, used less and less in favour of the DropDownList. In plain HTML, the browser knows to enforce the unique selected value amongst a list of radio buttons because they all have the same value for their name attributes.

<input type="radio" name="RadioButtonList1" value="1" />
   <label for="RadioButtonList1_0">Orlando Gee</label><br />
<input type="radio" name="RadioButtonList1" value="2" />
   <label for="RadioButtonList1_1">Keith Harris</label><br />
<input type="radio" name="RadioButtonList1" value="3" />
   <label for="RadioButtonList1_2">Donna Carreras</label>

And in ASP.NET, the RadioButtonList control lets you set the name attribute for each radio button in the list using the control's ID property.

<asp:RadioButtonList ID="RadioButtonList1" runat="server" />

Alternately, you can group individual RadioButton controls together using their GroupName property.

<asp:RadioButton runat="server" ID="rbSelectUnique" GroupName="selectList" />

And the effect is still the same; each HTML radio button (with the same GroupName) has its name attribute set to the same value.

The Problem

The main problem with RadioButtons though is that by default you cannot span a group of them across table rows. Let's take an example, I have a sortable, pageable GridView of customers which I like, but I want to make sure the user can select only one of those customers as we go down the list. The obvious (in my mind anyway) solution is to add a template field to the GridView containing a RadioButton for each row and make the table generated by a GridView into a big radio button list by setting their GroupName attribute the same.

<asp:GridView ID="GridView2" runat="server" AutoGenerateColumns="False" DataKeyNames="customerid"
    DataSourceID="SqlDataSource1">
    <Columns>
        <asp:TemplateField>
            <ItemTemplate>
                <asp:RadioButton runat="server" ID="rbSelectUnique" />
            </ItemTemplate>
        </asp:TemplateField>
        <asp:BoundField DataField="name" HeaderText="name" ReadOnly="True" SortExpression="name" />
        <asp:BoundField DataField="customerid" HeaderText="customerid" InsertVisible="False"
            ReadOnly="True" SortExpression="customerid" />
    </Columns>
</asp:GridView>

Perfectly sensible except that because each RadioButton is dynamically added to a table row by the GridView, ASP.NET generates the name attribute of each radio button by appending the value you give it in GroupName to the internal name it generates for it when rendering the GridView. Hence we get this code for the <asp:GridView> above.

<table cellspacing="0" rules="all" border="1" id="GridView2" style="border-collapse:collapse;">
   <tr>
      <th scope="col">&nbsp;</th><th scope="col">name</th><th scope="col">customerid</th>
   </tr>
   <tr>
      <td>
         <input id="GridView2_ctl02_rbSelectUnique" type="radio" 
            name="GridView2$ctl02$rbSelectUnique" value="rbSelectUnique" />
      </td>
      <td>Orlando Gee</td><td>1</td>
   </tr>
   <tr>
      <td>
         <input id="GridView2_ctl03_rbSelectUnique" type="radio" 
            name="GridView2$ctl03$rbSelectUnique" value="rbSelectUnique" />
      </td><td>Keith Harris</td><td>2</td>
   </tr>
   <tr>
      <td>
         <input id="GridView2_ctl04_rbSelectUnique" type="radio" 
            name="GridView2$ctl04$rbSelectUnique" value="rbSelectUnique" />
      </td><td>Donna Carreras</td><td>3</td>
   </tr>
</table>

As you can see, the radio button's name value takes the form GridView2$ctlXX$rbSelectUnique, where XX changes for each row and renders the list of the radio buttons useless. You can select them all at the same time if you wish. And it turns out that this issue is by design, according to the bug report on MS Connect.

Each row in a GridView is its own naming container so the controls' names don't collide. However, RadioButtons do not support spanning multiple naming containers and having their groupname attribute still work correctly. We will be looking at solving the RadioButton GroupName/multiple naming container issue in future versions of the product.

Or, in English, asp.net generates a unique NamingContainer for each cell in a table generated by a GridView and then uses that as a basis for all control IDs within the cell. It seems to be the only way to keep track of which events occurred where when the page posts back. That was written in April 2005 and it hasn't been fixed in VS2008, so it's time to look at workarounds.

The Solution

If you're using AJAX already on the page, or are prepared to use it on the page, one way to get a radio button list of sorts into your GridView is to use checkboxes and a MutuallyExclusiveCheckBoxExtender in each TemplateField.

<ItemTemplate>
    <asp:CheckBox runat="server" ID="chkSelect" />
    <cc1:MutuallyExclusiveCheckBoxExtender ID="mecbe1" runat="server" 
        Key="chkSelectGroup" TargetControlID="chkSelect" />
</ItemTemplate>

Now this works fine, but if you're trying to keep your pages lean, the additional script for each MECBE added to the page might not be so good. From a UI point of view, you might also object to having checkboxes work like radio buttons and so might your users.

Fortunately, a quick check in Visual Studio’s Object Browser reveals that the RadioButton derives from a CheckBox, so you can easily swap out one for the other. And behold your RadioButtonList is back, spanning table rows.

<ItemTemplate>
    <asp:RadioButton runat="server" ID="rbSelect" />
    <cc1:MutuallyExclusiveCheckBoxExtender ID="mecbe1" runat="server" 
        Key="rbSelectGroup" TargetControlID="rbSelect" />
</ItemTemplate>

Not The Solution, But Good To Know

If you’re not willing to use AJAX, the issue is always with the naming container clashing with the radio button list’s name property. Perhaps an obvious solution is to use your own RadioButton Control which overrides the name attribute for the button when it is rendered. Something like this.

using System;
using System.ComponentModel;
using System.IO;
using System.Text;
using System.Text.RegularExpressions;
using System.Web.UI;
using System.Web.UI.WebControls;

namespace TryOuts
{
    public class MyRadioButton : RadioButton
    {
        public string GroupName2
        {
            get  {
                String s = (String)ViewState["GroupName2"];
                return ((s == null) ? "" : s); }
            set { ViewState["GroupName2"] = value; }
        }

        public bool Checked
        {
            get { return base.Checked; }
            set { base.Checked = value; }
        }

        protected override void Render(HtmlTextWriter writer)
        {
            StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
            StringWriter sw = new StringWriter(sb);
            HtmlTextWriter hw = new HtmlTextWriter(sw);

            base.Render(hw);

            if (String.IsNullOrEmpty(GroupName2))
            {
                writer.Write(sb.ToString());
            }
            else
            {
                string html = Regex.Replace(
                   sb.ToString(), @"name=""[\w\$]+""", 
                   String.Format("name=\"{0}\"", GroupName2));
                writer.Write(html);
            }
        }
    }
}

Now this approach works to a degree. Replacing a standard RadioButton with this control does indeed override the control’s Name property and the RadioButtons all work within the table as required.

<cc2:MyRadioButton runat="server" ID="mrbTest" GroupName2="test" />

However, do anything simple such as select a row and post back the page (by clicking a button) and you’ll see that you can’t determine which radio button has been clicked.

foreach (GridViewRow row in GridView.Rows)
{
   RadioButton rb = (RadioButton)row.FindControl("mrbTest");
   if (rb.Checked)
   {
      lblSelected.Text = row.Cells[1].Text;
   }
}

And that’s because the NamingContainers for the cells containing the RadioButtons in the table generated in the GridView can no longer identify the RadioButtons in the cells in the table. Because our custom control has overridden the name attribute for each RadioButton to “test”, ASP.NET can’t find any controls called GridView2$ctlXX$mrbTest which is what it expects them to be called and why the naming container exists in the first place. Without the naming container producing these unique names in the way it does, we can’t do useful things like iterate over the rows in a GridView and why AJAX is the way forward when it comes to this particular problem.

Now strictly speaking, it should be possible to write a HttpModule that rewrites a RadioButton’s name attribute as it is sent to the browser so it works as part of a RadioButtonList and then rewrites the name attribute back as the page is posted back so the naming container appears to still be intact. But think about it, that’s a lot of effort for a small thing. Is the AJAX-free convenience worth the hassle?

Three Different Ways To Find The Currently Edited Row In A GridView

Dan Maharry — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 16:06:50 GMT

The GridView, and indeed all the other templated data bound controls, are lifeblood to an ASP.NET developer when it comes to creating websites. A little DataSource control here, a GridView there and even if it isn't exactly what you want, you've got a prototype page up and running in no time to start the real development with. Today's chores involved tweaking the contents of a GridView's EditItemTemplate so that the contents of one DropDownList (Clients) would change based on the contents of another (Roles) and should the Update button be clicked the values of both DropDownLists saved out to the database.

The roles DropDownList always contained the same items, so it was bound to a DataSource control separate to the GridView itself and then its selected value bound to the current value for the row in the GridView. The RoleId is two-way bound to the SelectedValue of the DropDownList so clicking Update works correctly.

<EditItemTemplate>
   <asp:DropDownList runat="server" ID="ddlRolesForEditUserDialog" AutoPostBack="true"
      DataTextField="Name" DataValueField="RoleId" 
      DataSourceID="RolesDataSource" SelectedValue='<%# Bind("RoleId") %>'
      OnSelectedIndexChanged="ddlRolesForEditUserDialog_SelectedIndexChanged" />
</EditItemTemplate>

The clients DropDownList on the other hand, needed

to be populated dynamically when the the GridView's row was switched to Edit mode
to be populated dynamically when the choice in the roles List changed.
to be accessed when Update is clicked and the DataSource is making changes to the database.

As it turns out, each occasion used a slightly different way to find the row being edited and through that, using FindControl to access the ClientList.

In case 1, by the time a GridView's OnRowEditing event (raised when 'Edit' is clicked on the GridView) is handled, the EditItemTemplate for the row hasn't become accessible yet, so the client list can't be found. The option instead then is to handle the GridView's OnRowDataBound event at which point the EditItemTemplate has been created and the client list is accessible. The trick is to identify the row being edited is to use its RowState property. Every row on a GridView is rebound when Edit is clicked, so we can use the following.

protected void grdUsers_RowDataBound(object sender, GridViewRowEventArgs e)
{
   if ((e.Row.RowState == DataControlRowState.Edit) || 
       (e.Row.RowState == (DataControlRowState.Edit|DataControlRowState.Alternate)))
   {
      //Get the client dropdownlist
      DropDownList clientList = (DropDownList)e.Row.FindControl("ddlClients");

      //more stuff here
   }
}

In case 2, the EditItemTemplate already exists. Indeed, we're capturing an event on the roles List within a cell in the EditItemTemplate. One option to then find the client List in the cell next to it is to start with the object that raised the event, find the control that contains both it and the client List and then call FindControl.

protected void RulesList_SelectedIndexChanged(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
   //Get the roles dropdownlist
   DropDownList ddlRoles = (DropDownList)sender;

   //Get the client dropdownlist
   DropDownList clientList = 
      (DropDownList)ddlRoles.Parent.Parent.FindControl("ddlClients");

   // more stuff here
}

Or, as in Case 3, because we know the EditItemTemplate is visible, we can locate the row being edited through the GridView's EditIndex template. This returns -1 if no row is being edited or the index of a row in the GridView.

protected void usersDataSource_Updating(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
   GridViewRow row = grdUsers.Rows[grdUsers.EditIndex];
   DropDownList clientList = (DropDownList)row.FindControl("ddlClients");

   // more stuff here

}

Case 3 is the easiest way to find the currently edited row, though the other two are no less valid.

Is this the truth of it?

Dan Maharry — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 20:49:21 GMT

Achieving perpetual mass for any community only takes place if the underlying purpose of the community is appealing to enough users that they decide to contribute some of their cognitive surplus to its furtherance.

More of that discussion here. Discuss

Enabling SSL Certificates on any Given HTTP Port

Dan Maharry — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 10:45:19 GMT

Following on from my travails with HttpListeners not working as a non-admin user, it turned out that the Cardspace samples (download them here if you're interested) had one more sticking point up their sleeve before everything worked. The main example demonstrates how a simple Security Token Service is used to verify the managed card a user wants to send to a site. However, the service is accessible only through the HTTPS protocol on port 7001 and Cardspace was unable to access it. A little digging revealed that the setup scripts for the sample tried and failed to build a copy of httpcfg, a utility found on Windows Server 2003. I didn't have the necessary files to build httpcfg successfully, bit it turns out that the netsh utility that comes with Vista and helped me out previously could also help me out here to.

The command required to add the certificate to a port with netsh is

netsh http add sslcert ipport=0.0.0.0:7001 certhash=thumbprint appid=arbitrary_guid

And the corresponding one to remove it is

netsh http delete sslcert ipport=0.0.0.0:7001

The add command needs two pieces of information besides the port number.

appid is an arbitrary guid to represent the application accessing the port.
certhash requires the certificate's thumbprint to identify it to netsh

If you've never needed to find a certificate's thumbprint before, hit Win+R and run certmgr.msc from the prompt to open the Vista Certificates MMC Viewer. (If the certificate is stored in the Local Machine certificate store rather than your own accounts store, you'll need to run certmgr.msc as an admin). The certificate should be stored in Personal\Certificates. When you find it, double-click it and select the Details tab. If you scroll the view down, you'll see Thumbprint towards the bottom of the dialog.

You'll need to copy all 20 pairs of hex digits and remove all the spaces. Given the example above then, you can add the certificate shown to port 7001 using this command.

netsh http add sslcert ipport=0.0.0.0:7001 certhash=d47de657fa4902555902cb7f0edd2ba9b05debb8 appid={C61EC2E2-BC18-4522-903B-F44A56299787}

And then you can check that all's well with this command

netsh http show sslcert

This will show you all the certificates bound to a port on your machine. netsh - the network admin's swiss army knife

Enabling HttpListeners for Non-Admins

Dan Maharry — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 12:50:19 GMT

I've just started working through the Cardspace samples to learn some more about online identity layers (download them here if you're interested). The first example demonstrates a web service running on http://localhost:4123 requesting a certificate from a client. However, as a non-admin, I get the following error from Visual Studio when running the sample.

AddressAccessDeniedException was unhandled
HTTP could not register URL http://+:4123/HelloService/. Your process does not have access rights to this namespace

Coincidentally, the error is totally analogous to a similar problem I've had while trying out the CR_Documentor plug-in that Travis Illig has created and it's Travis and co that figured out both problems in hindsight. To paraphrase,

By default, only local admins have permission to listen to http prefixes. Other accounts require explicit grant using either httpcfg.exe for WinXp/2003 users or netsh for Vista/2008 users. This isn't a .net permission, it goes right to the windows urlacl level.

Just as this cardspace demo relies on port 4123 being accessible, so too does CR_Documentor rely on port 11235. The full commands to call either can be found here, explaining the various options.

Thus, to solve my cardspace problem, I needed to open a command prompt as an admin and run the following command to match the URL given in the error dialog.

netsh http add urlacl url=http://+:4123/ user=cweb\dan

And hey presto, I can continue debugging my web services as a standard user.

Thanks again to Travis and the CR_Documentor guys for figuring this one out and explaining it here. I'm just passing on the info