Lil' Bits of Code

Write clean code. It should be mandatory!

2013-05-21T10:05:00.002-04:00

So I'm several months in to my latest job and into my first experience digging into other peoples code. Before this I've always been rather fortunate and created code from scratch and was able to set forth the guidelines of how it should look, etc.

This time around, I get to play with other peoples code and what I found was not pretty at all. And I don't mean pretty as in it didn't "look" nice. This code base essentially followed everything that defined "bad code". It would be a prime example of it actually. Everything from Hungarian notation, using anything but SOLID principles and useless commenting and leftover dead code scattered everywhere. And that's just the beginning. Yes, it's THAT bad. It needs major re-factoring and lots of TLC.

That being said, as a professional developer, clean code should be one of your top priorities. And just what is clean code? That in itself is a topic made for a book. Which is something that fortunately has already been written. Check out the following book and see if you can spot any of your bad habits.

Clean Code - A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship

Clean code = code that's easy to follow, debug and less prone to having bugs in the first place. Make it your priority!

Google acquires Channel Intelligence

2013-02-06T09:24:00.000-05:00

It's official. The company I've been working for the past 9 months has finally been acquired. By Google no less. Quite a feat for a small company. http://lnkd.in/pdNipX

Onion Architecture

2013-02-04T11:46:00.002-05:00

If you haven't heard about the Onion Archtecture, you really should spend a few moments to check it out. If you develop code using n-tier archtectures this may just be the future...

Check out my long time friend & coworker's blog on the subject: http://www.jackpines.info/

He's got slides explaining the architecture & it's benefits over traditional layered/tiered and even has a template created to help you get started. Definitely worth the time and you may just use it for your next big project. I know I will!

Using a detailed template in a Kendo UI grid...

2013-02-04T11:41:00.002-05:00

Just a note to myself (and this may be useful to someone else). This was using MVC3/Razor with a Kendo UI grid control. Special gotcha's in RED.

To use a detailed template in a kendo grid…

Specify the template id in the grid you are creating

@(Html.Kendo().Grid<PortalRolesModel>()

.Name("roleGrid")

à .ClientDetailTemplateId("roleDetailTemplate") ß

.Columns(columns =>

{

columns.Bound(c => c.RoleName);

columns.Bound(c => c.UsersInRole).Width(100).HtmlAttributes(new { style = "text-align: center;" });

})

.Pageable()

.Sortable()

.DataSource(dataSource => dataSource

.Ajax()

.Read(read => read.Action("RoleSelect", "AccountAdministration"))

.Model(model => model.Id(p => p.RoleName))))

Then script the template for the detailed view:

@(Html.Kendo().Grid<SelectUserModel>()

.Name("Roles_#=RoleName#")

.ToolBar(toolbar=>toolbar.Create().Text("Add User To Role"))

.Columns(columns =>

{

columns.Bound(ud => ud.UserName);

columns.Bound(ud => ud.LastLoginDate).Format("{0:dd MMM yyyy hh:mm:ss tt}").Width(170);

columns.Bound(c => c.IsOnline)

.Title("Online")

à .ClientTemplate("\\#= IsOnline ? '✓' : '' \\#") ß Must use \\# in client templates in a detailed template for this to work as just # won’t do anything.

.HtmlAttributes(new { style = "text-align:center;" })

.Width(50);

columns.Command(commands => commands.Destroy().Text("Remove")).Width(95);

})

.Editable(editable => editable.Mode(GridEditMode.PopUp).DisplayDeleteConfirmation("Remove user from role?"))

.DataSource(dataSource => dataSource

.Ajax()

.Read(read => read.Action("UsersInRolesHierarchyAjax", "AccountAdministration", new { roleName = "#=RoleName#" }))

.Create(create => create.Action("AddUserToRole", "AccountAdministration", new { roleName = "#=RoleName#" }))

.Destroy(destroy => destroy.Action("RemoveUserFromRole", "AccountAdministration", new { roleName = "#=RoleName#" }))

.Model(model => model.Id(p => p.UserName)))

à .ToClientTemplate()) ß IMPORTANT

</script>

Cell formatting. Reducing the size of text in a Kendo UI grid.

2013-02-04T11:38:00.002-05:00

Here's something I ran into while using MVC3/Razor & Kendo UI by Telerik. I needed a way to minimize what was shown in the grid cells. In my case I wanted to shorten the width of a column containing email addresses. Since there aren't spaces in email addresses, word wrapping is not going to happen.

So here's how I went about it (using Kendo UI Grid (MVC Template version)):

To shorten the length of an email address displayed in a row so it will fit better I did the following (same method can be applied to shorten a paragraph or other text):

I bind my column in my grid and applied a client template.

columns.Bound(c => c.Email).ClientTemplate(string.Format("{0}...", "#= formatter(Email) #"));

I wrote a javascript function to handle the formatting:

function formatter(value) {

return value.substring(0, 10);

}

</script>

Yikes!

2013-02-04T11:32:00.001-05:00

Wow.. Almost 2 years have passed since my last post. A lot has changed since then too. I'm not an avid blogger but I've sure used more than a few blogs to research issues I've come across that I couldn't quite find anywhere else. Maybe I'll continue to do so, only time will tell...

Go to a Code Camp!!

2011-03-26T21:37:00.000-04:00

I went to the Orlando .NET Code Camp this year (as well as last year) and picked up quite a few tid bits of information. They put on a great event and I even walked away with a few thousand dollars in software licenses for FREE. Can't beat that deal!

If you have an event in your area, I suggest you attend and who knows what you might get out of it :)

Finding a Control within a RadGrid Edit Template

2011-03-23T23:06:00.000-04:00

I’ve recently needed to incorporate a RadGrid in which my edit template contained two RadComboBoxes. Depending on the value of my first combo box, the second would be updated with different sets of data. The problem I ran into was how to connect to this second combo box so I can bind it with data.

Here’s the basic premise:

RadComboBox combo1 = (RadComboBox)sender;GridEditFormItem editItem = (GridEditFormItem)combo1.NamingContainer;RadComboBox combo2 = (RadComboBox)editItem.FindControl("RadComboBox2");

And the more complete code sample here:

ASPX --

<telerik:RadGrid ID="RadGrid1" runat="server">  <MasterTableView EditMode="EditForms">    <EditFormSettings EditFormType="Template">      <FormTemplate>        <telerik:RadComboBox ID="RadComboBox1" runat="server" AutoPostBack="true" OnSelectedIndexChanged="RadComboBox1_OnSelectedIndexChanged">          <Items>            <telerik:RadComboBoxItem Text="Selection 1" Value="1" />            <telerik:RadComboBoxItem Text="Selection 2" Value="2" />          </Items>        </telerik:RadComboBox>        <telerik:RadComboBox ID="RadComboBox2" runat="server">        </telerik:RadComboBox>      </FormTemplate>    </EditFormSettings>  </MasterTableView></telerik:RadGrid>     

Code-behind --

protected void RadComboBox1_OnSelectedIndexChanged(object sender, RadComboBoxSelectedIndexChangedEventArgs e){    RadComboBox combo1 = (RadComboBox)sender;    GridEditFormItem editItem = (GridEditFormItem)combo1.NamingContainer;    RadComboBox combo2 = (RadComboBox)editItem.FindControl("RadComboBox2");     switch(e.Value)    {           case "1":          combo2.Items.Add(new RadComboBoxItem("Test"));          break;       case "2":          combo2.Items.Add(new RadComboBoxItem("Test Again"));          break;    }}

Good luck :)

Calling a function in a ASP.Net User Control from another User Control on the same page

2011-03-16T17:41:00.001-04:00

I recently had to develop a web application in which a page consisted of several user controls. One of the problems I encountered during the development of this page is that I needed User Control A to perform some bit of work, then pass of results and post them into User Control B.

I spent the better part of a day trying to find decent documentation on how to achieve this feat.

You would think you can simply do something like this from User Control A during a button click for example:

ControlB ctrlB = (ControlB)Page.FindControl("cB");

DropDownList ddl = ctrlB.ControlB_DDL;

txtDDLValue.Text = ddl.SelectedValue;

And as long as both controls are referenced on the page this works fine. Unfortunately this is not the case. This would be too easy. While this may work in some situations, it doesn’t seem to hold together well if master pages are used. And in my case nested master pages.

What to do… Well I continued researching and found several interesting articles about using delegates, event bubbling and all sorts of crazy things just to do one relatively simple task. Most of these articles (mostly blog entries) were so bad and hard to follow they aren’t worth reposting here.

In any event, I finally found a solution that worked for my needs. Instead of attempting something difficult and knowing .FindControl(..) wouldn’t work I found out about using .NamingContainer.

In my case my page consisted of a master page, a nested master page, an asp:Panel with an ID=”Data” on the page itself which housed my (destination)user control, and my user control in which I want to to modify data on, and finally the control itself living in that user control.

This code snippet is something I called during an InsertCommand event for a Telerik RadGrid control I happen to be using and takes the little info I want and adds it to a CheckBoxList control housed with my other user control.

CheckBoxList improvementsAddressed = (CheckBoxList)Grid_Improvement

    .NamingContainer

    .NamingContainer

    .FindControl("Data")

    .FindControl("ImprovementsAddressed")

    .FindControl("CheckBoxList_ImprovementsAddressed");

improvementsAddressed.Items.Add(new ListItem(improvement, guid));

I could go into more elaborate detail, but since I’m new to this blogging thing, I’m not even sure if anyone will actually read it. Feel free to leave a comment if you need more details and/or help. But hopefully there’s enough info here to point you in the right direction to get you an elegant solution to your problem.

Instant Oracle Using C#

2011-03-16T16:32:00.000-04:00

I’m amazed that people actually find the time to blog. I set this blog site up 2 or 3 weeks ago, have plenty of code to blog about but have been busy coding at my day job (and sometimes night job) that I haven’t had much time at all to even think about this.

Anyhow, the topic is about Oracle & C#, not my daily work load. I wrote up this article several years ago, when I actually did have more time and it’s apparently still getting plenty of good use today.

You can view the article here at codeproject.com: Instant Oracle Using C#

I myself haven’t worked with Oracle databases for quite some time, but if you find you need to this article will help you get a project started.

Enjoy :)

Ehhhh... Now what??

2011-02-27T20:50:00.000-05:00

Ok, I've made it to the world o' blog...

Now what?!?! Guess I should blog about what I know best. Or at least can talk somewhat intelligently about. Well, that's the plan anyway...

At the very least, I may be able to share some of my expertise (or lack thereof) Who knows, I may be completely wrong, but either way somebody will learn something. Anyhow, this blog is inspired by an old post I made to a site called CodeProject.com which has been helping millions of people in my profession with all things code.

The article I wrote entitled “Instant Oracle Using C#” is something I wrote after having created an application that needed to connect to a database. At the time, information on the subject was scarce so I thought I’d take a stab at it and I thought I did rather well. Having had over 150,000 page views in just under 4 years and 50-200 hits daily is pretty impressive given it’s just one article. So I thought I’d put this together so I can post bits of code I used to solve whatever problem I happen to be working on. Postings may be scare given time constraints of work & family life, but who knows… I may just post something that may just help you and that’s good enough for me!