Yesterday I pulled a remote into the wrong local branch and couldn’t find a way to reset the branch again to undo my mistake. Fire up your chosen command prompt, which for me is currently the Console2 Command Prompt and enter the following command.

git reset --hard ORIG_HEAD

This solution is suitable for undoing a pull or a merge. Full details on the git-reset Manual Page.

I still find Git a bit harder to master than Mercurial so I can see me adding a few more short posts on here for my own future reference.

When running the following command in the Nuget console

update-package UmbracoCms -version 4.11.10

I was getting getting an error back informing me the update failed due to the fact that UmbracoCms was not installed in any project. I know this fact to be incorrect since I checked each package.config file in all projects within my solution and they were all referencing UmbracoCms 4.11.8. Digging a little further I found this post http://nuget.codeplex.com/workitem/1307 on CodePlex which ultimately led me to remove an old and unused Umbraco 4.11.6 directory which was inside of the Packages directory in my solution. Once removed the update completed without any errors.

I am still taming the setup however Tom Fulton drew my attention to the fact I was committing the garbage that Umbraco fails to remove during the package installation process which are directories in the App_Data folder that have a guid for a name. Tom said he’d not yet worked out how to exclude them easily without explicitly ignoring each one and so not being one to turn down a challenge I thought I would beat him to it.

The solution it seems is quite simple, the .hgignore file also accepts a regex syntax so the simple addition of the following to your .hgignore file does the trick:

syntax: regexp

b[a-f0-9]{8}(?:-[a-f0-9]{4}){3}-[a-f0-9]{12}b

In true Umbraco style that’s all the information I got, no reasoning and nothing in the logs and so began my quest to find a solution. Thankfully I was not the first to have the issue and I’m sure I won’t be the last so I thought I make this post as a reminder to myself and to aid anyone else in their search for a solution to the same issue.

The fix is nice and straight forward and simply requires the addition of the following entry in your web.config:

<system.web.extensions>
    <scripting>
      <webServices>
        <jsonSerialization maxJsonLength="500000">
        </jsonSerialization>
      </webServices>
    </scripting>
  </system.web.extensions>

You can amend the maxJsonLength attribute value to suit your requirements but the above worked for me.

Credit to @NielsHaasnoot for his solution to my problem.

The solution it turns out is extremely simple, a bit of hack nonetheless but it works.

<title visible="false" runat="server" />

All we need to do is to trick the framework by adding a title tag with the runat=”server” attribute and set it’s visibilty to “false” so that it doesn’t get rendered – job done!

Of course some of you will be sitting there thinking, “Why don’t you just remove the runat=”server” attribute from the header” – well, in this instance that is not an option since I have other stuff going on in the header that requires it but it is another viable solution – if you don’t need it, simply remove it from the header tag and this should also resolve your problem.

If you want to read further on this topic try reading ‘Title Tags and Master Pages’ by Phil Haack.

Having spoken to one of the other developers about updating his mercurial.ini file with a static username and email address I found he was blissfully unaware of the feature as I expect are many others and hence my blog post.

You should find your Mercurial configuration file in %USERPROFILE%mercurial.ini. If your’s is not there you can either create it or refer to the Configuration files for Mercurial documentation.

See below for an extract of my mercurial.ini configuration file with a breakdown below of the purpose for each configuration setting:

[ui]
username = Simon Dingley <simon@prolificnotion.co.uk>
verbose = True
editor = "C:Program Files (x86)Notepad++notepad++.exe" -multiInst -nosession
merge = tortoisemerge
ssh = "TortoisePlink.exe" -ssh -2 -batch -C

[paths]
ucpp = ssh://hg@bitbucket.org/ProNotion/ucommerce-payment-providers
umbraco = https://hg.codeplex.com/umbraco

[extensions]
color =
progress =
convert =
fetch =

[tortoisehg]
vdiff = tortoisemerge

[ui]

username

Identifies the user committing the changeset. Typically a person’s name and email address, e.g. Simon Dingley <simon@example.com>. Default is often username@hostname and one of the reasons for this blog post.

verbose

Display more detailed output. Default is False. I find this useful to know what is going on in the background.

editor

This is the application to use for editing comments relating to your commits. As you can see, my preferred choice is Notepad++ but could really be any text editor of your choice.

merge

This is your tool of choice for resolving merge conflicts, my personal preference is still with tortoisemerge which I am familiar with from my Subversion days. I’ve tried a few alternatives but this is the one that works for me so I’ve stuck with it.

ssh

This is a relatively new addition to my configuration file and provides mercurial with the command to execute for any SSH connections. Depending on interest in this I may at a later date do another post on setting up SSH with mercurial to save the hassle of entering repository login details all of the time.

[paths]

This section of the configuration file allows you to supply shorter friendly names for your repositories so you don’t need to enter the full repository address each time you want to interact with it by means of pushing or pulling changesets. So taking my example below I can very quickly pull from the Umbraco repository by typing the following into my chosen command prompt:

hg pull umbraco

[extensions]

This section defines any extensions you wish to use to add additional features to your mercurial experience. Some Mercurial extensions are available right out of the box. TO enable an extension that already comes with Mercurial you simply need to add the name of the extension followed by the = sign in order to load the extension with Mercurial it’s really that easy. If you want to load any other extensions you simply supply the path after the = sign.

Here is a quick overview of the extensions I currently have enabled…

color

This basically provides colouring of the output if you do a diff in your command window (which I don’t often as I find it far too hard to read and instead use the tortoisehg GUI. Read more about the Mercurial Color extension.

progress

This is one of the first extensions I enabled to get some visual feedback on the progress of push/pull commands which otherwise would cause the process to look like it is doing nothing – again this is just visual fluff! Read more about the Mercurial Progress extension.

convert

This is one I used mostly in my early days of moving from SubVersion to Mercurial and allows you to convert repositories from other source control repositories to Mercurial. I still use this on occassion. Read more about the Mercurial Convert extension.

fetch

I don’t use this as often as I should but it’s basically a productivity enhancement and saves writing a couple of commands by combining pull, merge and update into a single command. Read more about the Mercurial Fetch extension.

Other bundled extensions

For a full list of bundled extensions you can Extensions bundled with Mercurial entry on the Mercurial wiki.

[tortoisehg]

vdiff

This is a configuration section added by the tortoisehg GUI and simply defines my preferred visual diff editor. I’m actually not sure why it is redefined instead of using the tool already defined in my [ui] section.

So that’s a wrap on this post however in a related note you may wish to read my other post ‘Console2 – My new and improved command prompt for Windows‘ which I use for entering all of my Mercurial commands.

Any feedback or requests for additions to this post would be useful and I will look to keep it up to date as I build up my configuration file further in the future.

I’m not going to cover how to configure your instance of the Console because Scott’s post already does a very good job of this, however, what I do want to share with you is my own configuration and how I have made it a bit more useful for me.

First of all I have installed Console2 into my Dropbox Tools folder so I essentially have access to it wherever I need it and with the configuration I am now used to. This is easy enough to do since Console2 has no installer you just extract the files to a location of your choice so no further detail needed here. My Console 2 Settings File is attached to this post for anyone that is interested or wants to use it as a basis for configuring your own.

The next thing I did was create a new right-click menu option in Windows to “Open Console here” which basically allows me to open a prompt at any folder location in my file system and saves a bit of time since you no longer have to navigate your folder hierarchy to get the prompt to where you want. To do this you need to create a couple of entries in your registry, simply copy and paste the below into a text file, tweak accordingly and save as a .reg file. Once saved you can double click the .reg file to insert the keys into your registry. Alternatively you can just create the keys manually through regedit. It goes without saying that if you are going to fiddle with your registry please be wise and make a backup first!

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOTDirectoryshellOpenConsole2Here]
@="&Open Console 2 Here..."

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOTDirectoryshellOpenConsole2Herecommand]
@="D:\Dropbox\Tools\Console2\Console.exe -d "%L""

It should be noted that these keys relate to my Windows 7 Professional installation and are untested on other versions of Windows!

Credit to Scott Hanselman for the icons and the image used in this post

I guess I have been working with uSiteBuilder since earlier this year, shortly after it was released and it is the first dependency I now add to any new Umbraco project. The only show stopper I’ve encountered rears it’s ugly head when working on a project with multiple developers and occurs when uSiteBuilder runs its synchronisation process and then throws an exception when it encounters a datatype on one of your document types that doesn’t exist in the target environment. The only real way around this is to comment out the offending document type property as recommended by Barry Fogarty, rebuild and deploy your solution, create the missing datatype and then uncomment, rebuild and deploy again which is a pain and slows down development.

Those kind people over at Vega IT Sourcing have released the source code for uSiteBuilder which is great for people like me who like to have a go at plugging the gaps myself. So I pulled down the source code and made a custom build in an attempt to support at least the default datatypes for Umbraco. I have tried to follow the same logic as the rest of the project so you don’t really need to think too much about it and can quickly familiarise yourself with  the process for creating your datatypes in code. Here is an example of a custom datatype based on the TinyMCE Richtexteditor datatype in Umbraco:

// --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
// <copyright file="StandardContentEditor.cs" company="Prolific Notion">
//   (c) Copyright 2011 Prolific Notion, http://prolificnotion.co.uk
// </copyright>
// <summary>
//   Defines the StandardContentEditor type.
// </summary>
// --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

namespace MyUmbracoProject.Web.DataTypes
{
    using umbraco.cms.businesslogic.datatype;

    using Vega.USiteBuilder;

    /// <summary>
    /// Defines the Standard Content Editor Datatype
    /// </summary>
    [DataType(
        UniqueId = "{8AB81EFB-35F5-4EF0-9300-04A3AC8A2D21}",
        Name = "Standard Content Editor",
        DatabaseDataType = DBTypes.Ntext,
        RenderControlGuid = "5e9b75ae-face-41c8-b47e-5f4b0fd82f83")]
    public class StandardContentEditor : DataTypeBase
    {
    }
}
}

Most of the attributes used here should be self explanatory however…

1. UniqueId – A unique Guid for your datatype
2. Name – The name of your datatype. This is displayed in the Umbraco UI.
3. DatabaseDataType – This maps to the umbraco.cms.businesslogic.datatype.DBTypes Enum and defines the type of field to store data in the database.
4. RenderControlGuid – Defines the Guid of the control you would like to render for this datatype. In the example above ‘5e9b75ae-face-41c8-b47e-5f4b0fd82f83’ is the Guid for the TinyMCE control.

There is one other attribute not in the example above called ‘RenderControlName‘ which I am in two minds whether to keep or not. Essentially its purpose would be to try and find the control by name and therefore grab it’s Guid if the Guid attribute was not provided, any thoughts or comments on this appreciated however I think it may be subject to clashes or getting the wrong control because names do not have to be unique.

The only other thing you need to remember is to inherit from DataTypeBase.

I am very happy to have been accepted as a contributor on the uSiteBuilder project this week and hope that I can contribute some of my work into the next release. For now, if you are interested in trying out the build for my initial proof of concept you can grab it on CodePlex, changset 84163. I welcome any feedback and comments.

Where do we go from here?

At this stage it’s really just a means of overcoming the exceptions I was previously encountering however I would ideally like to extend this to allow you to also configure your datatype settings in code so watch this space…!

In case this is of use to anyone else I am posting up my extension method as this will also have uses outside of UCommerce for Umbraco.

        /// <summary>
        /// Gets the ISO3166 Numeric Country Code
        /// </summary>
        /// <param name="country">The country.</param>
        /// <returns>The ISO3166 NUmeric Country Code</returns>
        public static int GetIsoNumericCode(this EntitiesV2.Country country)
        {
            var countryCodesInEu = new Dictionary<string, int>
                                       {
                                           { "AND", 20 },
                                           { "ARE", 784 },
                                           { "AFG", 4 },
                                           { "ATG", 28 },
                                           { "AIA", 660 },
                                           { "ALB", 8 },
                                           { "ARM", 51 },
                                           { "ANT", 530 },
                                           { "AGO", 24 },
                                           { "ATA", 10 },
                                           { "ARG", 32 },
                                           { "ASM", 16 },
                                           { "AUT", 40 },
                                           { "AUS", 36 },
                                           { "ABW", 533 },
                                           { "ALA", 248 },
                                           { "AZE", 31 },
                                           { "BIH", 70 },
                                           { "BRB", 52 },
                                           { "BGD", 50 },
                                           { "BEL", 56 },
                                           { "BFA", 854 },
                                           { "BGR", 100 },
                                           { "BHR", 48 },
                                           { "BDI", 108 },
                                           { "BEN", 204 },
                                           { "BMU", 60 },
                                           { "BRN", 96 },
                                           { "BOL", 68 },
                                           { "BRA", 76 },
                                           { "BHS", 44 },
                                           { "BTN", 64 },
                                           { "BVT", 74 },
                                           { "BWA", 72 },
                                           { "BLR", 112 },
                                           { "BLZ", 84 },
                                           { "CAN", 124 },
                                           { "CCK", 166 },
                                           { "COD", 180 },
                                           { "CAF", 140 },
                                           { "COG", 178 },
                                           { "CHE", 756 },
                                           { "CIV", 384 },
                                           { "COK", 184 },
                                           { "CHL", 152 },
                                           { "CMR", 120 },
                                           { "CHN", 156 },
                                           { "COL", 170 },
                                           { "CRI", 188 },
                                           { "SCG", 891 },
                                           { "CUB", 192 },
                                           { "CPV", 132 },
                                           { "CXR", 162 },
                                           { "CYP", 196 },
                                           { "CZE", 203 },
                                           { "DEU", 276 },
                                           { "DJI", 262 },
                                           { "DNK", 208 },
                                           { "DMA", 212 },
                                           { "DOM", 214 },
                                           { "DZA", 12 },
                                           { "ECU", 218 },
                                           { "EST", 233 },
                                           { "EGY", 818 },
                                           { "ESH", 732 },
                                           { "ERI", 232 },
                                           { "ESP", 724 },
                                           { "ETH", 231 },
                                           { "FIN", 246 },
                                           { "FJI", 242 },
                                           { "FLK", 238 },
                                           { "FSM", 583 },
                                           { "FRO", 234 },
                                           { "FRA", 250 },
                                           { "GAB", 266 },
                                           { "GBR", 826 },
                                           { "GRD", 308 },
                                           { "GEO", 268 },
                                           { "GUF", 254 },
                                           { "GHA", 288 },
                                           { "GIB", 292 },
                                           { "GRL", 304 },
                                           { "GMB", 270 },
                                           { "GIN", 324 },
                                           { "GLP", 312 },
                                           { "GNQ", 226 },
                                           { "GRC", 300 },
                                           { "SGS", 239 },
                                           { "GTM", 320 },
                                           { "GUM", 316 },
                                           { "GNB", 624 },
                                           { "GUY", 328 },
                                           { "HKG", 344 },
                                           { "HMD", 334 },
                                           { "HND", 340 },
                                           { "HRV", 191 },
                                           { "HTI", 332 },
                                           { "HUN", 348 },
                                           { "IDN", 360 },
                                           { "IRL", 372 },
                                           { "ISR", 376 },
                                           { "IND", 356 },
                                           { "IOT", 86 },
                                           { "IRQ", 368 },
                                           { "IRN", 364 },
                                           { "ISL", 352 },
                                           { "ITA", 380 },
                                           { "JAM", 388 },
                                           { "JOR", 400 },
                                           { "JPN", 392 },
                                           { "KEN", 404 },
                                           { "KGZ", 417 },
                                           { "KHM", 116 },
                                           { "KIR", 296 },
                                           { "COM", 174 },
                                           { "KNA", 659 },
                                           { "PRK", 408 },
                                           { "KOR", 410 },
                                           { "KWT", 414 },
                                           { "CYM", 136 },
                                           { "KAZ", 398 },
                                           { "LAO", 418 },
                                           { "LBN", 422 },
                                           { "LCA", 662 },
                                           { "LIE", 438 },
                                           { "LKA", 144 },
                                           { "LBR", 430 },
                                           { "LSO", 426 },
                                           { "LTU", 440 },
                                           { "LUX", 442 },
                                           { "LVA", 428 },
                                           { "LBY", 434 },
                                           { "MAR", 504 },
                                           { "MCO", 492 },
                                           { "MDA", 498 },
                                           { "MDG", 450 },
                                           { "MHL", 584 },
                                           { "MKD", 807 },
                                           { "MLI", 466 },
                                           { "MMR", 104 },
                                           { "MNG", 496 },
                                           { "MAC", 446 },
                                           { "MNP", 580 },
                                           { "MTQ", 474 },
                                           { "MRT", 478 },
                                           { "MSR", 500 },
                                           { "MLT", 470 },
                                           { "MUS", 480 },
                                           { "MDV", 462 },
                                           { "MWI", 454 },
                                           { "MEX", 484 },
                                           { "MYS", 458 },
                                           { "MOZ", 508 },
                                           { "NAM", 516 },
                                           { "NCL", 540 },
                                           { "NER", 562 },
                                           { "NFK", 574 },
                                           { "NGA", 566 },
                                           { "NIC", 558 },
                                           { "NLD", 528 },
                                           { "NOR", 578 },
                                           { "NPL", 524 },
                                           { "NRU", 520 },
                                           { "NIU", 570 },
                                           { "NZL", 554 },
                                           { "OMN", 512 },
                                           { "PAN", 591 },
                                           { "PER", 604 },
                                           { "PYF", 258 },
                                           { "PNG", 598 },
                                           { "PHL", 608 },
                                           { "PAK", 586 },
                                           { "POL", 616 },
                                           { "SPM", 666 },
                                           { "PCN", 612 },
                                           { "PRI", 630 },
                                           { "PSE", 275 },
                                           { "PRT", 620 },
                                           { "PLW", 585 },
                                           { "PRY", 600 },
                                           { "QAT", 634 },
                                           { "REU", 638 },
                                           { "ROU", 642 },
                                           { "RUS", 643 },
                                           { "RWA", 646 },
                                           { "SAU", 682 },
                                           { "SLB", 90 },
                                           { "SYC", 690 },
                                           { "SDN", 736 },
                                           { "SWE", 752 },
                                           { "SGP", 702 },
                                           { "SHN", 654 },
                                           { "SVN", 705 },
                                           { "SJM", 744 },
                                           { "SVK", 703 },
                                           { "SLE", 694 },
                                           { "SMR", 674 },
                                           { "SEN", 686 },
                                           { "SOM", 706 },
                                           { "SUR", 740 },
                                           { "STP", 678 },
                                           { "SLV", 222 },
                                           { "SYR", 760 },
                                           { "SWZ", 748 },
                                           { "TCA", 796 },
                                           { "TCD", 148 },
                                           { "ATF", 260 },
                                           { "TGO", 768 },
                                           { "THA", 764 },
                                           { "TJK", 762 },
                                           { "TKL", 772 },
                                           { "TLS", 626 },
                                           { "TKM", 795 },
                                           { "TUN", 788 },
                                           { "TON", 776 },
                                           { "TUR", 792 },
                                           { "TTO", 780 },
                                           { "TUV", 798 },
                                           { "TWN", 158 },
                                           { "TZA", 834 },
                                           { "UKR", 804 },
                                           { "UGA", 800 },
                                           { "UMI", 581 },
                                           { "USA", 840 },
                                           { "URY", 858 },
                                           { "UZB", 860 },
                                           { "VAT", 336 },
                                           { "VCT", 670 },
                                           { "VEN", 862 },
                                           { "VGB", 92 },
                                           { "VIR", 850 },
                                           { "VNM", 704 },
                                           { "VUT", 548 },
                                           { "WLF", 876 },
                                           { "WSM", 882 },
                                           { "YEM", 887 },
                                           { "MYT", 175 },
                                           { "ZAF", 710 },
                                           { "ZMB", 894 },
                                           { "ZWE", 716 },
                                       };

            var regionInfo = new RegionInfo(country.Culture);

            if (countryCodesInEu.Keys.Contains(regionInfo.ThreeLetterISORegionName))
                return countryCodesInEu[country.Name];

            return -1;
        }

The create dialog for “Media” does not match anything defined in the “~/umbraco/config/create/UI.xml”. This could mean an incorrectly installed package or a corrupt UI file

There is an easy fix for this and sadly is due simply to the incorrect casing of the ‘Media’ nodeType defined in the UI.xml configuration file. To fix simply open the ~/umbraco/config/create/UI.xml file in your preferred text editor and locate the following line:

<nodeType alias="media">

Simply change the word media to have an uppercase ‘m’ and save the file and your problems will go away!

<nodeType alias="Media">

Update: As per the comment by Petr Snobelt, for future compatibility it is possibly best to change the case in the database rather than the UI.xml file