Tellingmachine

Parsing dates from filenames and grouping them by week to get the latest file of that week using PowerShell

Klaus Graefensteiner — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 05:18:04 -1400

Introduction

This script selects a file based on a date string that is part of the filename. Once the date has been determined, the script tries to find out whether this file is the latest of the week that the date belongs to. The first part of the script generates some sample files and the second part filters out the correct files and copies them into the export folder.

Figure 1: The Orange County Great Park from a helium balloon

The script uses a regular expression to parse the date and hashtables for grouping the files weeks based on the parsed date.

Set-StrictMode -Version "latest"
$DebugPreference = "Continue"

Remove-Item -Path "E:\Archive" -Recurse -Force


New-Item -Path "E:\Archive\Export\Final" -Type "Directory"

$FinalFolder = "E:\Archive\Export\Final"
$ArchiveFolder = "E:\Archive\Export\"

function CreateArchiveFile($Prefix, $Date, $ArchiveFolder)
{
    $FileName = "{0}{1:yyyyMMdd}.txt" -f $Prefix, $Date
    Write-Debug "Debug $FileName"
    $FilePath = Join-Path -Path $ArchiveFolder -ChildPath $FileName
    New-Item -Path $FilePath -Type "File"
}

#Create Archive Files
$Today = Get-Date
$TwoMonthsAgo = $Today.AddMonths(-2)
$CurrentDay = $TwoMonthsAgo
while($CurrentDay -le $Today.AddDays(-1))
{
    CreateArchiveFile -Prefix "ExportPrevious" -Date $CurrentDay -ArchiveFolder $ArchiveFolder
    $CurrentDay = $CurrentDay.AddDays(1)
}
CreateArchiveFile -Prefix "ExportCurrent" -Date $CurrentDay -ArchiveFolder $ArchiveFolder


$Files = Get-ChildItem -Path $ArchiveFolder

$WeeklyFileTable = @{}

function ParseDateFromFileName($FileName)
{
    $FileName -match '^(?<PREFIX>ExportPrevious|ExportCurrent)(?<YEAR>\d{4})(?<MONTH>\d{2})(?<DAY>\d{2}).txt$' | Out-Null
    $Date = New-Object -TypeName "System.DateTime" -ArgumentList $matches.YEAR, $matches.MONTH, $matches.DAY, 0, 0, 0, 0
    return $Date
}

function CopyWeeklyFiles($FileTable, $Destination)
{
    $FileTable.GetEnumerator() | ForEach-Object { Write-Debug ($_.Value.FullName);Copy-Item -Path ($_.Value.Fullname) -Destination $Destination -Force }

}

function GetNextSaturday($CurrentDay)
{
    $LastSaturdayTable = @{"Saturday"=0; "Friday"=1; "Thursday"=2; "Wednesday" = 3; "Tuesday" = 4; "Monday"=5; "Sunday" = 6}
    $DaysToNextSaturday = $LastSaturdayTable[($CurrentDay.DayOfWeek).ToString()]
    $NextSaturday = $CurrentDay.AddDays($DaysToNextSaturday)
    return $NextSaturday
}

foreach($file in $files)
{
    Write-Debug $file.Fullname
    #ParseFileDate String -> DateTime
    $Date = ParseDateFromFileName -FileName $file.name 
    $NextSaturday = GetNextSaturday -CurrentDay $Date
    
    if($WeeklyFileTable[$NextSaturday] -ne $Null)
    {
        $LatestFile = $WeeklyFileTable[$NextSaturday]
        $LatestFileDate = ParseDateFromFileName -FileName $LatestFile.name
        if($Date -gt $LatestFileDate)
        {
            $WeeklyFileTable[$NextSaturday] = $file
        }
    }
    else
    {
        $WeeklyFileTable[$NextSaturday] = $file
    }
    $NextSaturday
}

$WeeklyFileTable


CopyWeeklyFiles -FileTable $WeeklyFileTable -Destination $FinalFolder

Ausblick

I actually needed to write this function as part of a .NET C# project, but I used PowerShell to prototype the algorithm. The .NET C# version will be published in the next blog post. Stay tuned!

Moving my Blog from BlogEngine.NET on DiscoutASP.NET to WordPress on Dreamhost.COM – Day 1

Klaus Graefensteiner — Sat, 07 Apr 2012 06:22:07 -1400

Why would someone want to move from BlogEngine.NET to WordPress?

I like to blog and I like web development. But I don’t like it, if web development stands in the way of blogging. I started with BlogEngine.NET because back then I had no clue about PHP, but knew a little bit about ASP.NET. The obvious choice for a blogging platform to me was BlogEngine.NET. Now I prefer WordPress and my newer blogs are running it on Dreamhost.com. Now its time to upgrade this blog as well and this and upcoming blog posts will journal the migration path.

Here are few reasons why WordPress is superior to BlogEngine.NET

The MySQL database backend for the Wordpress on Dreamhost is free. On DiscountASP.NET you would have to buy expensive SQL Server storage.
The spam filtering system on BlogEngine.NET is not working well enough.
Upgrading to a newer version of Wordpress is literally automatic, but for BlogEngine.NET a major hassle.
There aren’t any web hosting providers that do LAMP and Windows well.
Windows hosting is in general more expensive than LAMP hosting.
Wordpress has some great blog authoring tools like the WordPress iOS app.
Wordpress has a great mobile theme.

Figure 1: Sticky notes for the Day 1 tasks

Measurable Goals

Goals that can be objectively measured are good goals, because they are good candidates for automation.

The migration from BlogEngine.NET to Wordpress will be successfully completed if:

All Tellingmachine.com links to existing content on will be redirected to the migrated content on WordPress.
The change of the domain name registrar to GoDaddy.com and the DNS setup for Dreamhost.com has been completed within 24 hours.
All content has been converted successfully.
The WordPress blog has a similar look.
Existing plug-ins have been migrated to WordPress

The Master Plan

Here are my thoughts about the migration strategy:

Sandbox testing and research

Create a test site that can be used for researching content migration, link redirection and changing domain registration and DNS setup. It will also help to determine how long the migration will take and what kind of complications I might encounter.

Redirection testing

Create a Watir, Selenium or cURL test script that verifies that all content URLs to the existing site will continue to work after the migration with the new site.

Content migration

Once a blog conversion method as been researched and selected, the existing website’s content can be imported into the new WordPress application that is using possibly a different or no domain name. Special content that needs to be considered are:

Pictures
Source code highlighting
Attachments
Comments
Internal links
External links

Theme migration

Use high quality and high fidelity free theme and try to move some of the Tellingmachine.comtheme characteristics over to the new site.

Domain migration

After all the content has been migrated successfully into the new WordPress application, the domain name registrar and the DNS settings can be modified.

Day 1 Tasks

The tasks for day 1 are focusing on setting up the sandbox environment:

Register new domain with DiscountASP.NET called NeptuneLemonade.com
Signup for a new ASP.NET hosting plan with DiscountASP.NET
Create new BlogEngine.NET 1.5.1 deployment and configure it like Tellingmachine.com
Create new WordPress instance on Dreamhost.com that will be the migration target. Assign a temporary domain name to it and configure it

Ausblick

The migration is on! There will be a series of blog posts journaling the progress and the success. And hopefully the last one of this set will be published to the new WordPress site.

Installing and enabling WebDAV on Windows 2008 R2 and IIS 7

Klaus Graefensteiner — Sat, 07 Apr 2012 04:07:41 -1400

Wonderware Information Server WIS and InBatch Reporting require WebDAV

WebDAV is not used very frequently, but some applications like the Wonderware Information Server WIS and the InBatch 9.5 Reporting website are requiring WebDAV not only to be installed but also to be enabled.

Unfortunately enabling WebDAV is not as easy as it sounds. You have to make sure that you select and highlight the right items on the right pane in the IIS Manager. This blog post will hopefully point out what to watch out for to get this simple task accomplished.

Install WebDAV

Go to Start->Run and type: Server Manager
Click on the Server Manager node, which is in the left pane at the top of the tree view
Now on the right pane check that the WebDAV feature is installed in Web Server (IIS) Role
If is not already installed, then click the Add Role Service link and pick the WebDAV Publishing Service

Figure 1: Server Manager

Figure 2: WebDAV Publishing Feature is installed

Enable WebDAV

This is the tricky part, because if you don’t click the correct combination of tree node and icon, then the Enable link will not be visible.

Go to Start->Run and type: IIS Manager
Select Default Web Site node in the tree view which is in the right pane
Double click on WebDAV Authoring Rules icon in the middle
Click Enable WebDAV link in the Action Pane on the right

Figure 3: Select Default Web Site and double click on the WebDAV Authoring Rules icon in the pane in the center

Figure 4: The Enable WebDAV link should be visible on the right pane now