Asp.Net Bundle from TypeMock

Unit Testing ASP.NET? ASP.NET unit testing has never been this easy.
Typemock is launching a new product for ASP.NET developers – the ASP.NET Bundle - and for the launch will be giving out FREE licenses to bloggers and their readers.
The ASP.NET Bundle is the ultimate ASP.NET unit testing solution, and offers both Typemock Isolator, a unit test tool and Ivonna, the Isolator add-on for ASP.NET unit testing, for a bargain price.
Typemock Isolator is a leading .NET unit testing tool (C# and VB.NET) for many ‘hard to test’ technologies such as SharePoint, ASP.NET, MVC, WCF, WPF, Silverlight and more. Note that for unit testing Silverlight there is an open source Isolator add-on called SilverUnit.
The first 60 bloggers who will blog this text in their blog and tell us about it, will get a Free Isolator ASP.NET Bundle license (Typemock Isolator + Ivonna). If you post this in an ASP.NET dedicated blog, you'll get a license automatically (even if more than 60 submit) during the first week of this announcement.
Also 8 bloggers will get an additional 2 licenses (each) to give away to their readers / friends.
Go ahead, click the following link for more information on how to get your free license.

Must add this to my blog..

Javascript code prettifier

Writing to Event log with ASP.Net and Enterprise Library

I recently had a problem writing to the event log from my application.  I had configured the application to use the Logging Application Block from the 3.1 version of the Microsoft Enterprise Library and followed the walk-through in the documentation to log exceptions to the Application Log, but nothing was appearing.

I had amended the code so that it always through an exception on clicking a test button, and stepping through the code, I could see that Log.Write was being called and no error was raised from this call.

A quick search on Google suggested that this was a permissions issue for the ASP.Net account, so I added the following key:

HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\EventLog\Application\<my app name>

I granted full control to the ASPNET account to this key and amended the source property of my trace listener to <my app name> using the Enterprise Library Configuration Manager.

I now get events recorded in the Application log and their source is set to <my app name> so it is easy to filter them for the events I want.

Code Access Security For Child AppDomain

I recently configured an existing application to use ClickOnce deployment. All seemed to go well until I tried to run the application, whereupon it threw an exception on a line that had previously been working perfectly:

AppDomain childDomain;

childDomain = AppDomain.CreateDomain(ChildAppDomainName);

//Following line throws exception

childDomain.UnhandledException += new UnhandledExceptionEventHandler(UnhandledExceptionHandler);

The exception was:

{"Request for the permission of type 'System.Security.Permissions.ReflectionPermission, mscorlib, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089' failed."}

The application was configured to run as FullTrust. To cut a long and frustrating story short, It turned out that the security settings were not being propagated to the child AppDomain. I changed the code to the following:

AppDomain childDomain;

Evidence baseEvidence = AppDomain.CurrentDomain.Evidence;

Evidence childEvidence = new Evidence(baseEvidence);

childDomain = AppDomain.CreateDomain(ChildAppDomainName, childEvidence, AppDomain.CurrentDomain.SetupInformation);

This allowed the child AppDomain to inherit the settings from the parent domain and everything worked as expected once more.

Check for existence of DB objects

Some queries I find useful to add before the Create/Alter Statements in SQL Server.

--Constraints
IF EXISTS(
SELECT NULL FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.Constraint_column_usage
where table_name ='MyTable'
and constraint_name = 'FK_COl1')

--Check existence of stored_proc
IF EXISTS (SELECT NULL
FROM information_schema.routines r
WHERE r.specific_schema = 'dbo'
AND r.specific_name = 'MyProc')
--Check column exists
IF NOT EXISTS (
SELECT NULL
FROM information_schema.columns
where column_name='Col1'
AND table_name ='MyTable'
and table_schema='dbo')

--Check for description
IF not EXISTS(
SELECT NULL from sys.all_objects ao
INNER JOIN sys.extended_properties ep on ao.object_id = ep.major_id and ep.name ='MS_Description'
where ao.name ='FK_key_name')

Disable full screen video on Dual monitor setup

I was recently trying to debug an application that hosts a windows media player control and I wanted the application to run full screen on my primary display with my Visual Studio IDE on the secondary display. Annoyingly, although the application appeared on my primary display as expected, the secondary display had a full screen video output. There appears to be nothing in the media player API to prevent this. It turns out that you need to change your driver display settings to prevent this. These settings are driver specific, for mine I needed to do:

1. Bring up display properties from control panel
2. Click Settings
3. Click Advanced
4. Click Quadro NVS 120 M (Nvidia specific)
5. Click Start NVidia control panel
6. Click Video and Television
7. Click Modify full screen options
8. Set "When watching video content" to Only show it in my viewing application
   

Soap Extensions in web forms client

On my current project, I need to consume a web service from a Windows Client, the web service is decorated with a custom attribute on the server side that causes the SOAP message to be compressed, this code was written by another developer but I think he got it from here. In order to uncompress it on the client, I needed to reference the assembly that contained the SoapExtension in my client and add the following section to the app.config:

<system.web>

<webServices>

<soapExtensionTypes>

<add type="myCompany.myProject.WebServices.SoapExtensions.CompressionExtension,myCompany.myProject.CompressionExtensionLib"

priority="3" group="High" />

soapExtensionTypes>

webServices>

system.web>

The first part of the type is the fully qualified class name, the second part is the namespace.

Another "What type of person are you ?" survey

XMLSerialization with multiple XMLRoot attributes

I recently had to construct an object hierarchy in order to produce an xml config file for a third party application. A lot of the config file could be constructed from boiler plate xml, so I needed a way to load in sections. The section I wanted to load was for a config element which occurs someway down the heirarchy:

sometag
core
object_definitions
object_type type="myType" plugin="myPlugin"
config
moretags
moretags
moretags
config
object_type
sometag
[Haven't worked out how to escape tags quickly, so I've stripped the brackets]
The following code shows how I created a static method in my config class to load this.

8 ///

9 /// Allows definition of all UI properties

10 ///

11 [Serializable]

12 [XmlRoot("config")]

13 public class ConfigureUIObjectConfig : ObjectConfigBase

14 {

15 public static ConfigureUIObjectConfig LoadUIConfig(string filePath)

16 {

17 System.IO.StreamReader sr=null;

18 ConfigureUIObjectConfig conf;

19 try

20 {

21

22 XmlSerializer xs = new XmlSerializer(typeof(ConfigObjects.ObjectTypes.ConfigureUIObjectConfig));

23

24 sr = new System.IO.StreamReader(filePath);

25 conf = (ConfigureUIObjectConfig)xs.Deserialize(sr);

26 }

27 catch (Exception)

28 {

29 throw;

30 }

31 finally

32 {

33 if (sr!=null)

34 sr.Close();

35 }

36

37 return conf;

38 }

I invoke it from what is normally the root class in my hierarchy in the constructor:

52 public ConfigFile()

53 {

54 //Add default object types

55 ConfigureUIObjectConfig uiConf = new ConfigureUIObjectConfig();

56 ObjectType obj = new ObjectType();

57 //obj.Config = uiConf;

58 obj.Config = ConfigureUIObjectConfig.LoadUIConfig("DefaultUIConfig.xml");//uiConf;

59 obj.Plugin = "UiConfiguratorPlugin";

60 obj.Type = "ConfigureUI";

61 this.Core.ObjectDefinitions.ObjectTypes.Add( obj);

62

63 }

The key to getting this to work is to decorate the ConfigureUIObjectConfig class with the [XmlRoot("config")] attribute. If you do not do this you will get an exception:

System.InvalidOperationException: <config xmlns=''> was not expected.


This eluded me at first as I assumed that I could only mark one class with the XmlRoot attribute, however, it appears that this does not matter in this instance.

Typed DataSet NullValue behaviour

The default value for NullBehaviour in a typed DataSet in Visual Studio 2005 is to throw an exception. I recently needed to change this in a dataset containing 50 tables. Rather than edit it manually I edited the .xsd file using xml Notepad. I found a post on MSDN that indicated what needed changing:

msprop:nullValue="_empty" -- (Empty)

msprop:nullValue="_null" -- (Nothing)

msprop:nullValue="_throw" -- (Throw exception)

msprop:nullValue="_throw" is the default value and it is not persisted by default.

The xpath queries I used were:

--Find string columns with no null value prop
/xs:schema/xs:element/xs:complexType/xs:choice/xs:element/xs:complexType/xs:sequence/xs:element[(child::xs:simpleType/xs:restriction/@base='xs:string') and (not(@msprop:nullValue))]

and

--Find nodes where value exists and is not '_empty'

xs:schema/xs:element/xs:complexType/xs:choice/xs:element/xs:complexType/xs:sequence/xs:element[xs:simpleType/xs:restriction/@base='xs:string']/@msprop:nullValue[.!='_empty']

Conditional build events

In my current C# interop project, I unregister the existing COM dll using a pre-build event:

regasm /u $(TargetPath)

However, this fails if the file is not present (after a clean), so I use the following command to only unregister it if it is present.

path= $(TargetDir) for %f in ($(TargetFileName)) do C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\RegAsm.exe /u %f

Exposing COM events from .Net to Javascript in web browser

A lot has already been written about this so I won't repeat all the details here. These two links give a good guide to how to do it.

COM Interop Exposed - Part 2
HOW TO: Sink Managed C# Events in Internet Explorer Script

This post is about troubleshooting some common mistakes that may occur. The key thing to note is that if you fail to follow the steps listed in these articles:

1. you will NOT get a compile time error
2. you will NOT get an error when registering the component
3. you will NOT get an error at runtime when you attach the event handler.

Mistakes that I made were:

1. Did not put a Dispid attribute on the methods in my event interface.
2. Had name mismatches between the events in my main class and the method names in my interface.

I'll add some test code here later.

COM component not registering properly

Related to my previous post, I was also having trouble getting the new .net COM object to register properly, even when I had removed all references to earlier versions. I had used:

>RegAsm assemblyName

but was unable to invoke the component in a web page. When I tried to examine it in OleView it initially seemed to be fine. However, when I tried to expand the class name node (under .Net category) I got the following error:

CoGetClassObject failed.
The system cannot find the file specified.

severity: SEVERITY_ERROR, facility: FACILITY_WIN32 ($80070002)

Registering it with:

>RegAsm assemblyName /codebase

fixed the issue

Regasm /u not working

I had a strange problem when trying to unregister a COM visible .Net component recently. I had built and registered several versions but when I tried to unregister them I could still see them listed when using OleView. It turns out that the command:

RegAsm /u assemblyName

will only remove the entries that match the version number of your assembly. If you have been incrementing the version number of your component and registering the new one without unregistering the previous version then you will end up with entries for each version. To clear them out you can just set the version number of the assembly, compile it and then unregister it with RegAsm. Do this for each version that you need to unregister.

What card are you?

You are The Hierophant

Divine Wisdom. Manifestation. Explanation. Teaching.

All things relating to education, patience, help from superiors.The Hierophant is often considered to be a Guardian Angel.

The Hierophant's purpose is to bring the spiritual down to Earth. Where the High Priestess between her two pillars deals with realms beyond this Earth, the Hierophant (or High Priest) deals with worldly problems. He is well suited to do this because he strives to create harmony and peace in the midst of a crisis. The Hierophant's only problem is that he can be stubborn and hidebound. At his best, he is wise and soothing, at his worst, he is an unbending traditionalist.

What Tarot Card are You?
Take the Test to Find Out.

Nice post at A very British Dude on the evils of socialism. Has this youTube video on the evils of communism:

Golden compass

There is a promotion site for the forthcoming film The Golden Compass which is the american name for the book The Northern Lights, the first in Philip Pullman's trilogy "His Dark Materials". They have a short personality test there which then assigns you a Daemon. You can then email a link to it to let your friends answer the same questions about you and see if your Daemon changes. Mine was initially a chimpanzee so I'll email a few people and see if it changes..

Michael Howard vs Alastair Campbell

Via Chicken Yoghurt:

Ask Tom "Avoiding overlap values..."

Nice check for overlapping values in Oracle

Ask Tom "Avoiding overlap values..."

Prescient

The following passage is from the introduction of the Rapstone Chronicles by John Mortimer:

The discovery that has struck the Titmuss philosopy and left it badly holed is that caring for the environment is quite inconsistent with the free-market economy. Green and true-blue are colours that don't, unfortunately, mix. Preserving the countryside, protecting the woodlands, concern for the ozone layer, all demand levels of government intervention unthinkable in the heady days of victory over the miners and the Falklands War. The high spring of laissez-faire economics is over, the bloom is gone and, such is the nature of politics, with the bloom goes Titmuss.

Who will take his place? It seems likely that Conservatism in the Titmuss mould is now out of style, and his successors may be those prepared to revert to the old consensus days of Butler and Harold Wilson. But what of the left? If free-market Toryism has taken a beating it's as nothing to what recent events in Europe have done to the dreams of the Reverend Simcox. The Labour Party seems to have achieved its huge rise in the opinion polls by freeing itself from what are seen as the tentacles of a Socialist octupus. So what is the new, up-and-coming Labour M.P. going to be like? No doubt he will have extinguished the dear old Trades Union dinosaur. Unquestionably he will be outspoken, quick-witted, with a talent for P.R. and a complete freedom from class distinctions. He will, of course, be wearing a blue suit with a discreet tie, own a car phone and a word processor and believe in free enterprise in a mixed economy. Is the stage set, after the next election, for the emergence of the first Labour Titmuss? Whatever happens, of one thing there is no doubt, British politics will remain a fertile ground for comedy.

John Mortimer 1991