Another programming blog

iPhone keyboard - hide when done

2012-01-27T14:58:00.002Z

Ever got stuck in a form using an iPhone app? You've edited a text field but you're left with the keyboard hiding the form submit button. I have, and its bloody annoying, and it almost feels like some fundamental Apple design flaw. But you should blame the developer, because what he/she forgot to do was tie an action to the text field's 'Did End On Exit' event.

The keyboard hiding method declared in the action just needs to do one thing - resign the text field as first responder, like so:

[yourTextField resignFirstResponder];

And, to make things even better for your user, change the return key to 'Done' in your Attributes Inspector.

And even better still, create a big invisible custom button behind all your other controls and attach it to your keyboard hide method too. This will comply with the common convention that a touch outside of any controls kills the keyboard.

Return user to paginated list page after delete or edit event

2012-01-24T15:42:00.002Z

The easy way to send your users back the same list page (page number, ordering) they were on prior to selecting an item for edit (or deleting it non-ajax style with full postback) is to store the referring path in session and redirect to it when the task is done, like so:

def destroy #or whatever you're handling
  session[:return_to] = request.referer
  #do whatever you need to do here
  redirect_to session[:return_to]
end

Regular expression regex for validating email addresses

2012-01-20T09:28:00.001Z

I've seen a few of these in my time, but this one has been serving me well...found in Michael Hartl's Rails book:

/\A[\w+\-.]+@[a-z\d\-.]+\.[a-z]+\z/i

Using the Visual Studio 'Consolas' font in RubyMine

2012-01-18T09:02:00.002Z

The default font in Visual Studio 2010 is the lovely 'Consolas'. So lovely in fact that I wanted it on my Mac, specifically for my Rails IDE, RubyMine. After a little googling I found the answer here.

The gist of it is

Download the Open XML File Format Converter for Mac
Open its contents, and find and install the package 'OpenXML_all_fonts.pkg'

Reformat code keyboard shortcut - RubyMine

2012-01-17T13:47:00.002Z

alt(option)-cmd-L

Git .gitignore entries on a Mac

2011-12-27T20:28:00.000Z

Note to self. Don't forget to add .DS_Store to the Git ignore file when creating a new repository!

Throttle network speed on a Mac

2011-12-06T21:43:00.000Z

I've often needed to throttle my bandwidth to replicate a slow connection. This is often useful when building mobile sites or when using ajax and you want to see how your loader message is behaving. On my PC I use Netlimiter which is very intuitive and configurable. You can specify precise speeds for different bandwidth consumers on your machine, and you can also specify different upload and download speeds.

You can't get Netlimiter for Mac, but there is a simple way of throttling your bandwidth. Simply type this into your terminal to limit your bandwidth to 20 kilobytes per second:

sudo ipfw pipe 1 config bw 20KByte/s
sudo ipfw add 100 pipe 1 src-port 80

When you're done, be sure to delete the rule:

sudo ipfw delete 100

or:

sudo ipfw flush

which will delete all custom rules.

Putting SEO advice into context

2011-11-28T16:37:00.001Z

I've been building websites since 1996, which is almost as long as is possible. I've seen the advent of modern-day SEO and witnessed it mature into a serious and valuable discipline in its own right.

SEO is a good thing. Get it right (SEO services Bristol) and it can reap rewards. Ignore it and you'll be throwing money down the drain on your new site.

I've been at the sharp end of several debates between technicians and SEOs adjudicated by account managers doing the best they can to do the best thing for their client. They often pan out like this:

SEO: I think we should be doing XYZ to this site because it will improve ranking
Tech: OK, cool, we've looked into it and it could take up to 2 days to implement
AM: Oh that's a bit expensive
Tech: Where did you learn about XYZ? Can we quantify for the client how much benefit this will have?
SEO: I read it on seo-speculation.com. Apparently it's really important for the Google algorithm.
Tech & AM: How important?
SEO: Very
Tech & AM: Really?
SEO: Yes

And so AM and Tech are left with a 'demand' from SEO for which they (SEO, through no fault of their own) have found impossible to quantify the benefits. Nobody's arguing that there won't be any benefit, but nobody can say how much. The deciding factor always seems to be the threat that the client might have their site prodded and poked by other agencies or specifically SEO consultants who could highlight the lack of XYZ as evidence of ineptitude. In all of this to-ing and fro-ing, the client may not have been consulted.

Many blogs about SEO by SEOs are full of what seem like theories and speculation about the search engine algorithms, that appear to lack quantification or qualification. Evidence is often scant and anecdotal. I'm not saying SEOs should do their job differently - they can't, they're operating in a speculative, theoretical, anecdotal, iterative, experimental world as long as search engines keep their algorithm under wraps, which of course will be forever.

We should instead put SEO advice into context. We should be open with clients about the fast-moving world of SEO so that when new techniques arise we discuss with them the costs and speculate with them about the benefits. Make it the client's decision, and if they say 'no' we remember this. And when a few months down the line they call up and say that an independent SEO expert has spotted failings their site we remind them that they chose not to get their cheque book out.

Sharepoint site running under multiple URLs

2011-11-21T11:26:00.000Z

I needed to make our dev site run under a further URL today, and it really wasn't obvious how this is done. I got it working in the end, here's the screen snaps:

And, don't forget to add it as a host header in IIS too...yes you have to do this manually!

System.Configuration configurationmanager reference

2011-11-18T13:17:00.000Z

Note to self. Today I tried to use System.Configuration to access configurationmanager. I had 'using System.Configuration' at the top of my class and Visual Studio seemed happy with this.....until compilation time.

It turned out that I needed to add System.Configuration as a project reference too.

SPMetal and workflows - excluding columns and content types

2011-10-18T13:06:00.001+01:00

<web xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/SharePoint/2009/spmetal"> 
<list name="My List Name">
 <contenttype name="My Content Type Name">
      <excludecolumn name="ColumnName">
</excludecolumn></contenttype>
</list>
</web>

British pound Sterling sign (£) in xml causes error

2011-09-16T11:28:00.001+01:00

British pound Sterling sign (£) in xml causing an error? Try this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>

Using a custom task list template for a Workflow task list

2011-09-15T16:13:00.001+01:00

In Visual Studio I created a custom content type, a custom task list template and a custom list instance using the template, but couldn't get this list to appear in the task list when trying to add a new Workflow in the SharePoint UI.

The problem turned out to be my use of the wrong value for the 'Type' attribute of the <ListTemplate> element in my list definition. When creating a workflow you are only able to select task lists with Type="107". The Elements.xml file should look some like this:

<ListTemplate
        Name="CustomTasks"
        Type="107"
        BaseType="0"
        OnQuickLaunch="TRUE"
        SecurityBits="11"
        Sequence="360"
        DisplayName="Custom Tasks"
        Description="Custom Tasks"
        Image="/_layouts/images/ittask.png"/>

SharePoint base content type ID list

2011-09-12T13:13:00.000+01:00

Name	ID
System	0x
Item	0x01
Document	0x0101
Event	0x0102
Issue	0x0103
Announcement	0x0104
Link	0x0105
Contact	0x0106
Message	0x0107
Task	0x0108
Workflow History	0x0109
Post	0x0110
Comment	0x0111
East Asia Contact	0x0116
Folder	0x0120

Specifying a namespace in SPMetal generated entities files

2011-09-07T14:12:00.001+01:00

Today I generated two entities.cs files using SPMetal without specifying namespaces, and was met with a whole host of ambiguity errors, such as

Ambiguity between 'Item._entityState' and 'Item._entityState'

Deleting my files and re-running SPMetal, this time specifying different namespaces for each file, resolved the problem:

SPMetal /web:http://mysite/myweb /code:C:\Projects\MyProject\MyEntities.cs /namespace:MyExampleNamespace

How to determine if your 'Assigned To' field contains user(s) or group(s)

2011-07-14T15:31:00.000+01:00

public override void ItemAdded(SPItemEventProperties properties)
{
 // Check that the item has been assigned to someone and that the ListItem isn't an empty one.
 if (properties.AfterProperties["AssignedTo"] != null && properties.ListItem.Name != null)
 {
  this.EventFiringEnabled = false;

  SPFieldUserValue field = new SPFieldUserValue(properties.Web, properties.AfterProperties["AssignedTo"].ToString());

  // Test for a user or group value (null indicates a group)
  if (field.User != null)
  {
   //user  
  }
  else
  {
   //group
  }
  this.EventFiringEnabled = true;
 }
}

A deployment or retraction is already under way for the solution

2011-07-01T10:15:00.000+01:00

Find job like this:

C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\14\BIN>stsadm.exe -o enumdeployments

Cancel it like this:

C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\14\BIN>stsadm.exe -o canceldeployment -id "jobId"

Using comma-delimited lists in SQL searches

2011-06-22T08:15:00.000+01:00

Today I wanted to run a search against a comma-delimited list of values, a little like this:

Select name from People Where category IN ('N,S,L,C')

I wanted the comma-delimited list to be set as a parameter value in a stored procedure. However, the IN operator cannot accept a comma-delimited string. It only accepts comma-delimited constants or the results of a SQL query.

Eventually I found this excellent solution on the 4 Guys site. It shows you how to build a UDF (user-defined function) that will split a comma-delimted string into a recordset representation, and then how to make use of it. It's a neat and effective solution.

Language code

2011-06-08T10:06:00.000+01:00

The following table lists all the possible language codes used to specify various system settings.

af	Afrikaans	sq	Albanian
ar-sa	Arabic (Saudi Arabia)	ar-iq	Arabic (Iraq)
ar-eg	Arabic (Egypt)	ar-ly	Arabic (Libya)
ar-dz	Arabic (Algeria)	ar-ma	Arabic (Morocco)
ar-tn	Arabic (Tunisia)	ar-om	Arabic (Oman)
ar-ye	Arabic (Yemen)	ar-sy	Arabic (Syria)
ar-jo	Arabic (Jordan)	ar-lb	Arabic (Lebanon)
ar-kw	Arabic (Kuwait)	ar-ae	Arabic (U.A.E.)
ar-bh	Arabic (Bahrain)	ar-qa	Arabic (Qatar)
eu	Basque	bg	Bulgarian
be	Belarusian	ca	Catalan
zh-tw	Chinese (Taiwan)	zh-cn	Chinese (PRC)
zh-hk	Chinese (Hong Kong SAR)	zh-sg	Chinese (Singapore)
hr	Croatian	cs	Czech
da	Danish	nl	Dutch (Standard)
nl-be	Dutch (Belgium)	en	English
en-us	English (United States)	en-gb	English (United Kingdom)
en-au	English (Australia)	en-ca	English (Canada)
en-nz	English (New Zealand)	en-ie	English (Ireland)
en-za	English (South Africa)	en-jm	English (Jamaica)
en	English (Caribbean)	en-bz	English (Belize)
en-tt	English (Trinidad)	et	Estonian
fo	Faeroese	fa	Farsi
fi	Finnish	fr	French (Standard)
fr-be	French (Belgium)	fr-ca	French (Canada)
fr-ch	French (Switzerland)	fr-lu	French (Luxembourg)
gd	Gaelic (Scotland)	ga	Irish
de	German (Standard)	de-ch	German (Switzerland)
de-at	German (Austria)	de-lu	German (Luxembourg)
de-li	German (Liechtenstein)	el	Greek
he	Hebrew	hi	Hindi
hu	Hungarian	is	Icelandic
id	Indonesian	it	Italian (Standard)
it-ch	Italian (Switzerland)	ja	Japanese
ko	Korean	ko	Korean (Johab)
lv	Latvian	lt	Lithuanian
mk	Macedonian (FYROM)	ms	Malaysian
mt	Maltese	no	Norwegian (Bokmal)
no	Norwegian (Nynorsk)	pl	Polish
pt-br	Portuguese (Brazil)	pt	Portuguese (Portugal)
rm	Rhaeto-Romanic	ro	Romanian
ro-mo	Romanian (Republic of Moldova)	ru	Russian
ru-mo	Russian (Republic of Moldova)	sz	Sami (Lappish)
sr	Serbian (Cyrillic)	sr	Serbian (Latin)
sk	Slovak	sl	Slovenian
sb	Sorbian	es	Spanish (Spain)
es-mx	Spanish (Mexico)	es-gt	Spanish (Guatemala)
es-cr	Spanish (Costa Rica)	es-pa	Spanish (Panama)
es-do	Spanish (Dominican Republic)	es-ve	Spanish (Venezuela)
es-co	Spanish (Colombia)	es-pe	Spanish (Peru)
es-ar	Spanish (Argentina)	es-ec	Spanish (Ecuador)
es-cl	Spanish (Chile)	es-uy	Spanish (Uruguay)
es-py	Spanish (Paraguay)	es-bo	Spanish (Bolivia)
es-sv	Spanish (El Salvador)	es-hn	Spanish (Honduras)
es-ni	Spanish (Nicaragua)	es-pr	Spanish (Puerto Rico)
sx	Sutu	sv	Swedish
sv-fi	Swedish (Finland)	th	Thai
ts	Tsonga	tn	Tswana
tr	Turkish	uk	Ukrainian
ur	Urdu	ve	Venda
vi	Vietnamese	xh	Xhosa
ji	Yiddish	zu	Zulu

Rubymine Ruby on Rails IDE makes me feel more at home

2011-05-29T21:11:00.002+01:00

Working without an IDE makes me shudder at the memory of my days coding PHP in BBEdit, and then classic ASP using some other win-based text editor whose name escapes me. Since moving into C#.NET I've led a privileged life of code completion, syntax checking, snippets, and a multitude of other killer-functionality that makes me highly productive and feel warm and fuzzy inside.

So it's of some surprise to me that a good proportion of the Ruby on Rails community appear to favour text editors (such as TextMate) and command-line activity to an IDE. It may be due to old-skool stubbornness, like one of my colleagues whose core job is javascript development, yet he uses a simple text editor without even any syntax colouring...yikes. It could be lack of choice, but when I recently installed Rubymine I breathed a deep sigh of relief, and could see that me and RoR could get on well together.

On first appearances, and having read reviews, it seems to do everything I'd want of an IDE and the productivity gains it will provide are well worth the small license fee. I have little doubt I'll be buying it after my 30 day trial.

Iterate through a SharePoint list (SPList)

2011-05-18T11:32:00.000+01:00

SPList list = web.Lists["TestTasks"];
SPListItemCollection listItems = list.Items;

foreach (SPListItem item in listItems)
{
//do stuff
}

Determine if your SPFieldUserValue is a user or group

2011-05-18T10:35:00.005+01:00

SPFieldUserValue field = new SPFieldUserValue(web, item["AssignedTo"].ToString());

 // Test for a user or group value (null indicates a group)
      if (field.User != null)
       {
         //user
       }
      else
       {
         //group
        }

IIS .NET globalization settings affecting date displays

2011-05-12T16:50:00.000+01:00

I had a strange problem today - a site I recently deployed to live from my local dev environment was displaying dates in American formay (mm/dd/yyyy), yet when running locally it was fine (dd/mm/yyyy). At first I thought I must have had the wrong default language for the db user, but everything was as it should be.

Later I discovered that the live website in IIS had a culture setting of "Invariant Language (Invariant Country)". Changing this to "English (United Kingdom) (en-GB)" resolved the problem. It adds an entry to the system.web entry your web.config like so:

globalization culture="en-GB"

I don't recall ever having to do this before, and this entry isn't present in my local webconf, but it's one I'll look out for in the future.

Community Kit for SharePoint

2011-05-10T15:08:00.000+01:00

"The Community Kit for SharePoint: Development Tools Edition extends the Visual Studio 2010 SharePoint project system with advanced templates and tools. Using these extensions you will be able to find relevant information from your SharePoint environments without leaving Visual Studio. You will have greater productivity while developing SharePoint components and you will have greater deployment capabilities on your local SharePoint installation."

http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/ee876627-962c-4c35-a4a6-a4d89bfb61dc/

Setting up SharePoint - note to self

2011-05-05T14:49:00.001+01:00

Setting up a new SharePoint installation today on a virtual machine, and I came across a couple of problems that will probably repeat themselves next time.

First off, I never set up a password for my Win Server 2008 account. This was later to cause problems with the subsequent SharePoint installation. In the end I uninstalled SharePoint, setup a password for the user, then started again.

Secondly, Network Discovery and File and Printer in Win Server 2008 sharing was off by default, meaning I couldn't browse to my SharePoint sites across the network. Switching these on resolved the issue.