aspZone.com

Remote Desktop on a Second Monitor

john — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 15:22:00 GMT

I am blogging this link so that when I forget (again) how to do it, I can find it more easily.

ASP.NET MVC File Upload

john — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 14:35:00 GMT

This very short blog post will show you how to add support for uploading files to an ASP.NET MVC application.

Add a controller action

Add a controller action that accepts a parameter of type HttpPostedFileBase. In the example below, I save the file to my App_Data folder. I would highly recommend that you redirect the browser to another action when done.

public ActionResult Upload(HttpPostedFileBase file)
{
    var fileName = Path.Combine(Request.MapPath("~/App_Data"), Path.GetFileName(file.FileName));
    file.SaveAs(fileName);
    return RedirectToAction("Index");
}

Add an upload form

Add an upload form. Set the action to your upload controller action, the method to post, and very important, the enctype to multipart/form-data.

<form action="/Home/Upload" method="post" enctype="multipart/form-data">
    <label>Filename: <input type="file" name="file" /></label>
    <input type="submit" value="Submit" />
</form>

You’re done

That is all that is needed. Compile your app and give it a try. You browse or checkout the full source code from my googlecode repository.

StructureMap/Ninject + log4net

john — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 15:25:00 GMT

One fine day, my task was to refactor my classes so they did not have a dependency on log4net.

The first thing I did was to create an ILogger interface in my core library, and an Log4NetLogger class in my infrastructure library. Followed by adding a line to my IoC container bootstrapper class. Finally, I added an ILogger constructor argument to each of my classes that needed logging. Finished in no time, or so I thought.

The Problem

I quickly realized that the contents of my log files had lost one important piece of information that nearly rendered them useless.

2009-04-07 07:10:15,810 [1] DEBUG aspZone.LoggingExample.Log4NetLogger – Called Foo.DoSomething
2009-04-07 07:10:15,843 [1] DEBUG aspZone.LoggingExample.Log4NetLogger – Called Bar.DoSomething

In my Log4NetLogger constructor, I had called LogManager.GetLogger as per common practice:

public Log4NetLogger()
{
    this.logger = log4net.LogManager.GetLogger(
        System.Reflection.MethodBase.GetCurrentMethod().DeclaringType);
}

As a result, there was no way to filter my log entries by which logger they came from. Every single log entry looked like it came from Log4NetLogger. This had to change.

The Solution

After a bunch of searching and a few tweets, I found what I think is a very neat solution.

I changed my ILogger interface to ILogger<T>:

using System;
  
namespace aspZone.LoggingExample
{
    public interface ILogger<T>
    {
        void Debug(object message);
        // ...
    }
}

And I modified my Log4NetLogger like this:

using System;
using log4net;
  
namespace aspZone.LoggingExample
{
    public class Log4NetLogger<T> : ILogger<T>
    {
        private readonly ILog logger;
  
        public Log4NetLogger()
        {
            this.logger = LogManager.GetLogger(typeof(T));
        }
  
        // ...
    }
}

And using generic type inference, a syntax I was previously unaware of, to register the types in StructureMap:

using StructureMap.Configuration.DSL;
  
namespace aspZone.LoggingExample
{
    public class ExampleRegistry : Registry
    {
        public ExampleRegistry()
        {
            ForRequestedType(typeof(ILogger<>))
                .TheDefaultIsConcreteType(typeof(Log4NetLogger<>));
            // ...
        }
    }
}

The syntax for Ninject is very similar:

   1: Bind(typeof(ILogger<>)).To(typeof(Log4NetLogger<>));

Conclusion

My log entries are filterable like they were before.

2009-04-07 07:10:15,810 [1] DEBUG aspZone.LoggingExample.Foo – Called Foo.DoSomething
2009-04-07 07:10:15,843 [1] DEBUG aspZone.LoggingExample.Bar – Called Bar.DoSomething

And now I have much better separation of concerns.

ALT.NET Programming Contest

john — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 15:17:00 GMT

Last weekend, I went to the ALT.NET Seattle Open Spaces event. It was an awesome experience to talk with all my blogging heroes.

On Saturday night, they held a programming contest. I won!

http://codebetter.com/blogs/aaron.jensen/archive/2009/03/05/the-alt-net-programming-contest.aspx

Is this a good way to wire up NHibernate using StructureMap?

john — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 00:18:00 GMT

I am blogging this code snippet in order to ask some people at altnetseattle if this is a good implementation or not.

I want to know whether or not this is considered a good way of wiring up NHibernate using StructureMap. I am making use of the registry DSL feature, this code would get called somewhere in my bootstrapper.

Elsewhere in my code, my Repositories simply have a constructor dependency on ISession.

NHibernateConfiguration is my class that does all configuration of NHibernate using FluentNHibernate.

        1: public class DataAccessRegistry : Registry

       2: {

       3:     public DataAccessRegistry()

       4:     {

       5:         // NHibernate ISessionFactory

       6:         ForRequestedType<ISessionFactory>()

       7:             .CacheBy(InstanceScope.Singleton)

       8:             .TheDefault.Is.ConstructedBy(() => new NHibernateConfiguration().BuildSessionFactory());

       9:  

      10:         // NHibernate ISession

      11:         ForRequestedType<ISession>()

      12:             .CacheBy(InstanceScope.Hybrid)

      13:             .TheDefault.Is.ConstructedBy(() => ObjectFactory.GetInstance<ISessionFactory>().OpenSession());

      14:     }

      15: }

02/24/09 Tank Photos

john — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 01:56:00 GMT

How NHibernate saved my day

john — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 19:42:00 GMT

I am working on an ecommerce site as a personal learning project. Rob Conery’s MVC Storefront series of blog posts was my inspiration. However, I am following a different path. I am using NHibernate instead of Linq-To-Sql.

I determined that the hosting budget for this little project would be exceeded by any reputable hosting provider that offers Microsoft SQL server. I did find, however, several hosting providers that offered MySql at an acceptable rate.

After a half hour or so of fumbling around with installing MySql on my dev box for the very first time, and setting up an empty database, it was time to migrate my code over.

A couple of NHibernate configuration changes, and a couple of minor tweaks (and I mean very minor), my entire project was working against MySql. My database integration tests export the schema to the database, so I didn’t even have to create any tables manually. Migrating my code from one database vendor to another took less than 5 minutes.

I sat back and said to myself, “Wow!”

I shared this experience with a couple of co-workers, and they said the same thing.

Using the Code Behind in MVC causes blindness

john — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 18:37:00 GMT

LOL for the funny post title. Derik wrote a great post with a great list of tips to live by:

Keep your Code Behind empty
Keep your Views simple
Keep your Controllers light
Keep your Model fat (domain model that is)

How to get WebORB and ASP.NET MVC to work together.

john — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 18:28:00 GMT

As mentioned before, I have been writing some RIA applications using Flex. I've also been playing with ASP.NET MVC. I have one project where I am considering combining the two.

I have been using WebORB from MidnightCoders as my communication layer between .NET and Flex. I've been really happy with it. It does not, however, work properly with the ASP.NET MVC framework. When you copy the WebORB bits into the web application, and try to browse the console, you get the "Oops, something went wrong..." error.

I suspected early on that I needed to add an IgnoreRoute statement to the RegisterRoutes method of the global.asax.cs, but was not sure of the exact syntax to use in this case. Since this took me longer than I care to admit to figure out, I’m willing to bet someone else may run into this.

I first tried to add the following statement:

routes.IgnoreRoute("weborb.aspx{*}");

That resulted in weborb working, but left routing broken. I got 404 errors for any controller method that had previously worked. I tried several other permutations, but did not get anything to work properly until I found this post from Phil, Make Routing Ignore Requests For A File Extension. Using the technique that Phil used, I was able to get routing to work properly.

Here is my final RegisterRoutes method that got me up and running:

        1: public static void RegisterRoutes(RouteCollection routes)

       2: {

       3:     routes.IgnoreRoute("{*weborb}", new { weborb = @".*weborb\.aspx(/.*)?" });

       4:     routes.IgnoreRoute("{resource}.axd/{*pathInfo}");

       5:     routes.MapRoute(

       6:         "Default",

       7:         "{controller}/{action}/{id}",

       8:         new { controller = "Home", action = "Index", id = "" }

       9:     );

      10: }

LOL Cat I could not resist

john — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 14:56:00 GMT

I would normally never post an lol cat to my blog. However, this one struck my funny bone so bad that I almost spilt my morning coffee all over my desk.

more animals