Adventures in .Net

Debugging T4 Templates

2011-11-14T16:09:00.001-05:00

T4 templates are a great way to write code that writes code. Huh? I'm not going to go into it here, so if you want more information, see Scott Hanselman's post on T4 templates, as well as Oleg Synch's posts. One of the pain points when writing T4 templates is with debugging them. Sometimes you'll save a .tt file and get some obscure error message that is impossible to figure out, and you have

Constructor vs. ClassInitialize

2011-10-11T15:52:00.001-04:00

I recently ran across some code in a test class where I saw that the class was initialized in a constructor rather than in a method with the ClassInitialize method, and it made me wonder - what's the difference? The goal is that we have a test class with several test methods, and we have some initialization code that is common to all of the test methods. We want the initialization code to run

Sendoid

2011-07-20T14:46:00.000-04:00

I've been keeping an eye out for a simple way to share a large file (1-5 GB) to another person over the internet privately, and I finally found something that I like. Sendoid. The uploader and downloader can use it either from the web page or from the client app they provide. However, if you use the client app you get the ability to resume a transfer in the event that it's interrupted, which

Postback Failing

2011-06-01T11:04:00.006-04:00

I ran into a strange problem this week on a client's .Net site I was working on. There were two pages where postbacks were being completely ignored. If you clicked on anything that required codebehind or postbacks to work, such as the login/logout button, the save button, etc., an HTTP POST would occur (verified by Firebug), but the server would ignore the POST and serve up the page as if you

Sharepoint 2010 Custom Workflow Activites

2011-05-23T21:14:00.000-04:00

(If you're impatient, you can see the code before reading the article) Sharepoint has a workflow engine, and you can develop workflows for Sharepoint using either Sharepoint Designer or Visual Studio. Today I'm going to focus on workflows that are created using Sharepoint Designer. A step in a workflow, such as "Copy item from List A to List B", is called an Activity. Sharepoint Designer

Generics

2010-11-04T18:53:00.000-04:00

Ok, so I'm a little late to the game here. Generics came out with .Net 2.0, which was released back in 2005. I've used them a good bit, but today I was asked what particular advantages Generics had over what was available in .Net 1.1, and, not having worked with .Net 1.1, I wasn't really sure. So I did some digging and figured I'd share my results, for what it's worth. In .Net 1.1, if you

Development Tools

2010-10-16T16:11:00.000-04:00

I'm setting up a new development environment, and I thought I'd share the list of tools and technologies I'm putting into place there. Please add any you'd recommend in the comments. Everything here is free except the OS, SmartSVN, and RedGate SQL Source Control. Operating System: Windows Server 2008 R2 x64 ($$) Application Server: IIS 7 with .Net 4.0 Database Server: SQL Server 2008

Migrating Umbraco from MySQL to MSSQL

2010-10-14T01:17:00.006-04:00

So you've been running the Umbraco CMS for a while on MySQL, but you've been told you need to move it to Microsoft SQL Server. Does it sound intimidating? It doesn't have to be. With the SQL script and instructions in this post, it's not too bad. First, let's start with an overview of the process. Overview: 1. Use the Umbraco installer scripts to create blank Umbraco tables on your SQL

SVN Trouble

2010-09-07T23:55:00.004-04:00

(If all you want to do is solve the same problem, you only need to add a Timeout 1800 line to your c:\program files\visualsvn server\conf\httpd-custom.conf file and restart Visual SVN server - you can, of course, adjust the number of seconds as you like) First off, if you are doing any kind of software development and you aren't using source control of some kind, you are missing out big time.

Toodledo

2010-09-07T09:34:00.004-04:00

Having recently changed over to using a Droid Incredible, I'm having to rework some of my productivity tools to work with the Incredible. Part of that was finding a new GTD / Todo list app. I had used OmniFocus on my Mac / iPod Touch, but ever since the iOS 4 upgrade, the only way to get it to sync is to wipe out the OmniFocus database on the iPod Touch and start over (My guess is that they

Sharepoint 2007: 'Only their own' permission on Document Library - Update!

2010-07-02T23:39:00.004-04:00

OK, after getting tired of manually setting this using Sharepoint Manager 2007, I decided to put together a solution. This solution provides a nice drop-down on the Document Library 'Security' menu like this:And when you click on the 'Read/Write Security' link, you'll see this:It looks and acts just like the page for standard lists - but this one also works for document libraries.Download the

Sharepoint 2007: Picture Library limitations

2010-06-30T09:18:00.004-04:00

In working with the Picture Library in Sharepoint 2007, I've run across 2 limitations:1. No web part connections. For some reason Microsoft decided that Picture Libraries would never need web part connections. It's greyed out, as seen here:2. Picture Libraries do not have the option to give users permissions to only view the pictures they created (and not view pictures that other users

Sharepoint 2007: 'Only their own' permission on Document Library

2010-06-17T17:59:00.003-04:00

In Sharepoint 2007 you have a great permission you can set: 'Only their own'. This allows someone to view and edit only the items that they have created, and not other items that other people have created. Administrators of the site can see everything, of course.This is easy to set on a List under the list settings. However, if you are using a Document Library, the setting is nowhere to be

Passing a table using Nav Automation

2010-05-28T09:46:00.004-04:00

I just had someone comment on my previous blog post asking how to pass a table using Nav Automation. Great question. You can pass complex objects using Nav Automation, but only ones that you define (or that have been explicitly written to work with COM). This means that you can't pass a DataTable object, but you can create your own implementation of a DataTable object and pass it. In your

x does not contain a definition for y

2010-03-30T10:38:00.002-04:00

I just ran across this problem... again... and because I didn't note the solution last time I had to figure it out again. It's so simple - but so hard to remember. Let's hope that next time I hit this I'll at least remember that I blogged about it. Here we go.I'm building a web site, and it makes use of some DLLs that come from some C# libraries I've built. Over the course of time, I've added

Linq causes the Setup project to fail when building

2009-10-20T09:37:00.002-04:00

All of a sudden, my setup project stopped building. It was very strange - when I tried to build it, it would say that the build failed, but it gave no errors. Nothing anywhere.Thankfully, I'm not the first person to have run across this. It turns out that adding Linq to one of the projects in my solution caused this failure - it appears to be a bug in Visual Studio.The solution appears at

OOO, C#, and C/AL

2009-10-09T11:10:00.004-04:00

I've been working with building some web services built on the Microsoft Dynamics Nav 2009 web services platform. Microsoft is doing something fairly slick here - you write code in the C/AL language, save it as a Nav Object, expose it as a web service, and the web services layer automatically translates the C/AL to C# and runs it in .Net. This allows you to debug the code using visual studio,

SQL Reporting Services, Sharepoint, and Firefox

2009-10-05T14:26:00.008-04:00

I ran into a problem when I tried to use Firefox to view a SQL report on Sharepoint. In IE it works fine, but when it hits firefox, a 'display: block-inline' CSS style set on a table buried way down in the code caused firefox to do this:The report is squeezed into a little IFrame, and you don't even get a vertical scrollbar. Sure, you can right-click on it and get your browser to show that

Sharepoint Thumbnails and AssetUploader.aspx

2009-03-10T12:51:00.005-04:00

We recently had a consultant build a web part for us that displayed thumbnails from images in a document library. In digging around in the code they gave us I discovered that they used a page built into Sharepoint called AssetUploader.aspx (in 12\TEMPLATE\LAYOUTS\AssetUploader.aspx, available off any web at _layouts\AssetUploader.aspx). This page is a rather handy. It's specifically designed

NAV Automation Object

2008-12-03T23:54:00.006-05:00

It took me a good while, but I finally managed to get my first automation object created, compiled, and made visible in NAV. Stefano Demiliani provided most of the guidance that I needed on this, as well as a few postings on mibuso, but there were a few other tricks I picked up on in the process that I figured I'd share here. Also, since I couldn't find one anywhere else, I figured I'd post a