Will's Blog

Building an eCommerce Site with NopCommerce

noreply@blogger.com (Will M.) — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 21:51:00 +0000

Below is a blog entry I wrote for Bayshore Solutions in March, 2013. It contains information about my experience implementing NopCommerce. Hopefully some of the contents provide valuable information for somebody else. Enjoy!

Not long ago, an online store was seen as a means of adding presence to traditional brick-and-mortar stores. According to the National Retail Federation, online shopping makes up to 40% of retail purchases for an average person these days.

Clearly the convenience of eCommerce has been embraced by consumers and the trend is unlikely to change, therefore many retailers are reinventing their business in order to make their products available on the web.

Bayshore Solutions has worked with many retailers to support their eCommerce efforts by building state of the art sites that help businesses expose their products in ways never seen before.

Although there are plenty of tools available to create an on-line store, one of the most common tools used by Bayshore Solutions to develop a custom eCommerce store is NopCommerce.

NopCommerce is an open source shopping cart designed and developed by a group of entrepreneurs from many different countries using state of the art technology; this has transformed NopCommerce into one of the preferred solutions for developing eCommerce sites under the .NET Platform.

NopCommerce offers a quick and effective way to get a store started; installation is a breeze thanks to their web install. NopCommerce has a wealth of features and capabilities out of the box. Below is a summary of some key features:

Unlimited Number of products on the catalog
Support for categories, subcategories and manufacturers
Product Attributes
Management of Stock by Attribute
Ability to manage discounts by role
Tier pricing
Customer can enter price
Support for downloadable products
Anonymous checkout
Open ID, Facebook and Twitter Authentication
One page checkout
Multilingual/Internationalization
Multiple Shipment methods and shipment amount calculations
Free shipping over $X amount
Support for multiple payment methods
Extensible interface that allows creating custom plug ins
Sales dashboard
Import/Export of basic data
PDF Invoicing
Source code is provided for the entire product. The source code is well organized, documented and it is possible to extend it and modify it to accomplish any task imaginable.

A detailed list of features can be found at: http://www.nopcommerce.com/featurelist.aspx

Despite the fact that NopCommerce offers a great amount of features and functionality, there are multiple challenges to overcome when building an eCommerce site using this tool. Some of the common challenges faced when building a custom NopCommerce site are listed below:

Design integration, although the system includes the ability to incorporate new themes; it is always challenging to incorporate layouts that modify the default. Adding custom styles to NopCommerce native controls is not simple; this usually requires a developer in conjunction with a graphic designer.
Importing product and attribute data could be complicated when interfacing disconnected systems, for example trying to feed a catalog of existing products from an ERP system to NopCommerce will require a customization in most cases. Assuming that the source of the data will be the ERP system it will be necessary to create a scheduled task that will load the products once or multiple times a day by using an external CSV file or a web feed.
Implementing complex shipping, taxes or payment methods could be challenging. Although the framework includes a myriad of shipping, taxes and payment options, customized business rules are difficult to implement. For example taxes can be calculated based on a zip code and percentage, however if the business requires to set a threshold before applying taxes, then a customization to an existing tax calculation plug-ins would have to performed. Consider the following scenario: Charge taxes by zip code but only apply taxes to purchases over $500, although the first part of the requirement is met out of the box, there is no way to set a rule to only charge taxes for purchases over $500.
Heavy content sites: Although NopCommerce includes a feature that allows the user to create content and display it, it is not meant to be used on a heavy content site that involves pages, subpages and dynamic navigation. Since the main purpose of NopCommerce is to build a store, content can be included but within its limits. Bayshore Solutions usually approaches this issue by building a content site, with a store domain. Both sites have the same look and feel but when the user clicks on any feature that requires displaying inventory, they are taken to the NopCommerce store.
Additional data fields. Because of the number of features in NopCommerce, a common request is the need is to store additional information linked to existing NopCommerce entities in order to better match the business need being addressed by the site; for example add additional customer information such as: phone numbers, addresses, comments or business related information. Although it would be tempting to add these extra pieces of data to existing NopCommerce entities, it is often easier to create separate objects and layers to hold and manage this data and link them to the default entities; this will allow to better maintain the site and to facilitate a possible future upgrade.

Creating a Generic List of Anonymous Types using Casting by Example

noreply@blogger.com (Will M.) — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Consider the following scenario. You have two lists of data which are the result of separate queries. The select in the queries is identical and you want to merge the lists into a generic anonymous list to display the results in a control.

The code below receives a pipe delimited string, the string contains keywords. The code loops the string array and executes two separate queries against separate fields (coded this way for the purpose of this example) the biggest obstacle would be how to combine the results of the queries into a single list.

In order to merge the lists into one, it is possible to use a technique called Casting by Example, by creating an anonymous type that matches the intended select, it will be possible to cast this type into an array and then into a list. See below:

var result = new {Id = 1, CriteriaId = 0, MarketName = string.Empty};
var results = (new[] {result}).ToList();

Here is the complete code for your review:


var keywords = p.Split('|');
if (keywords.Length == 0)
    return;
           
var result = new {Id = 1, CriteriaId = 0, MarketName = string.Empty};
var results = (new[] {result}).ToList();
                
using (var ctxt = new MarketSearchDataContext())
{                
  foreach (var keyword in keywords)
  {
   var nameResults = ctxt.Markets.Where(m => m.MarketName.ToLower()
       .Contains(keyword.ToLower().Trim()))
       .Select(m => new {Id = m.Id, CriteriaId = 0, MarketName = m.MarketName})
       .ToList();

   var detailResults = ctxt.Markets.Where(m => m.HTML
       .Contains(keyword.ToLower().Trim()))
       .Select(m => new { Id = m.Id, CriteriaId = 0, MarketName = m.MarketName })
       .ToList();
   if (nameResults.Count > 0)
       results.AddRange(nameResults);

   if (detailResults.Count > 0)
        results.AddRange(detailResults);
}

//Raw results from the list - Duplicates will exist
results.RemoveAt(0); //Cast by Example row
var cleanResults = results.Distinct();

BindResultsGrid(cleanResults);

Web Browsing with Windows 8 and IE10

noreply@blogger.com (Will M.) — Mon, 06 Aug 2012 17:12:00 +0000

Web Browsing with Windows 8 and IE10

The upcoming release of Windows 8 will ship with version 10 of Internet Explorer and feature a newly designed Operating System interface named Metro. Metro is similar to the Windows Phone interface currently used by Microsoft on smart phones. Its main goal is to improve touch screen navigation along with traditional mouse and keyboard input for an immersive web browsing experience. Metro is a tile-based interface, each tile represents an application, web page or social media feed. A metro application typically runs in full-screen mode and utilizes a new set of runtime libraries or HTML markup to construct the UI.

IE10 plays an important role in Windows 8 since it interacts with the Metro interface and can also be run in the traditional Windows Desktop view, both modes use the same rendering engine. IE10 will not support plug-ins or ActiveX components but will include a version of Adobe Flash Player that has been improved for use with a touch screen interface.

The rendering engine in IE10 contains many improvements and support for HTML5 and CSS3. Examples of the multiple rendering engine enhancements are: Touch sensitive areas on a page react based on touch or mouse navigation, the ability to adapt website layouts to any device and multiple styling enhancements such a text-shadow and built-in support for OpenType fonts.

A preview of some of these features can be seen at http://ie.microsoft.com/testdrive/.

When IE10 starts, it runs in full screen mode, swiping the screen reveals the top navigation section which contains a list of active websites and the footer which contains the navigation controls such the back, address bar, refresh, tools, pin and forward controls. Right click options are limited on IE10, for example there are no options to view the image source or size, holding a finger on a link will only allow to copy and paste it but additional options that exist in IE9 such as view Encoding have been removed.

In IE10 websites can be pinned. This means that the sites will be added as tiles to the desktop. An existing site, when pinned will display on the desktop as a tile using a generic color and IE logo. It is expected that sites will add additional programming to supply a customized icon and description when pinned, an alternative is to supply a metro App to wrap the site content in the same way smart phone and table Apps do. Sites that supply an App are marked with a plus sign in the footer, which allows the developers to redirect the web site to the Microsoft Store to download or purchase the corresponding App for their device. The goal is to create integrated web sites that can be used across all platforms.

Initial tests by Ziff Davis labs indicate that IE’s performance is better than Chrome and FireFox in some areas but not really fit for sites that make extensive use of JavaScript. It is expected that performance will be improved on the final version.

Conclusion: IE10 has been labeled as “the best version of Internet Explorer yet”. The interface enhancements allows the user to fully experience the content of a website. Web designers that plan on taking full advantage of the Metro version of IE need to keep in consideration that there is no browser interface therefore the site will behave as a standalone App in the same way that is done in mobile devices such as tablets and smart phones, fortunately with support for HTML5 and CSS3 the browser should support all modern design elements. IE10 has been promised to run on Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows Server 2012 and has been should be available in August 2012.

Implementing a JSON Feed with ASP.Net

noreply@blogger.com (Will M.) — Mon, 14 May 2012 17:42:00 +0000

Obtaining data from an external web site using a JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) feed is a relatively simple process.

JSON represents data structures using a JavaScript object notation which is human readable. It provides some advantages over XML because it is easier to obtain data from multilevel (nested) structures.

Below is an example of a JSON feed implementation to a service that provides quotes for precious metals at: http://drayah.no.de/metals/latest

The objective is to get the feed from the site in order to obtain the price of Gold.

Step 1. Create a Class for JSON Feed

You may want to use the JsonCSharp tool that helps you create a class based on the output from the feed. Check it out at http://json2csharp.com/

using System;

using System.Collections.Generic;

using System.Linq;

using System.Web;

namespace JSONFeed

{

public class Gold

{

public double quote { get; set; }

public double quoteKg { get; set; }

}

public class Silver

{

public double quote { get; set; }

public double quoteKg { get; set; }

}

public class Platinum

{

public double quote { get; set; }

public double quoteKg { get; set; }

}

public class Palladium

{

public double quote { get; set; }

public double quoteKg { get; set; }

}

public class Metals

{

public Gold gold { get; set; }

public Silver silver { get; set; }

public Platinum platinum { get; set; }

public Palladium palladium { get; set; }

}

Step 2. Creating a Method to invoke the Feed

using System;

using System.Collections.Generic;

using System.Linq;

using System.Web;

using System.Net;

using System.Runtime.Serialization.Json;

using System.Web.Configuration;

namespace JSONFeed

{

public class GetFeed

{

public double GoldPrice()

{

try

{

//Get Precious Metals Pricess from Drayah feed

//http://drayah.no.de/metals/latest

string url = "http://drayah.no.de/metals/latest";

WebRequest request = WebRequest.Create(url);

WebResponse ws = request.GetResponse();

//Used http://json2csharp.com/ to auto-generate C# Class

//for the Json feed.

//DataContractJsonSerializer will Serialize based on another

//class named Metals

DataContractJsonSerializer jsonSerializer =

new DataContractJsonSerializer(typeof(Metals));

Metals _metals =

(Metals)jsonSerializer.ReadObject(ws.GetResponseStream());

if (_metals.gold.quote > 0)

return _metals.gold.quote;

else

return 0;

}

//Add your exception code here.

catch (Exception ex)

{

return 0;

}

Step 3. Test Class to run and test the feed

If you believe in using Visual Studio Automated Testing Classes, use the below.

using JSONFeed;

using Microsoft.VisualStudio.TestTools.UnitTesting;

using System;

using Microsoft.VisualStudio.TestTools.UnitTesting.Web;

namespace JSONFeed.Test

{

[TestClass()]

public class GetFeedTest

{

private TestContext testContextInstance;

///

///Gets or sets the test context which provides

///information about and functionality for the current test run.

///

public TestContext TestContext

{

get

{

return testContextInstance;

}

set

{

testContextInstance = value;

}

#endregion

[TestMethod()]

public void GoldPriceTest()

{

GetFeed target = new GetFeed();

double actual;

actual = target.GoldPrice();

Assert.AreNotEqual(0, actual);

}

The GoldPrice() Method, invokes the jsonSerializer which will try to match the output of the feed with the appropriate class which in this case is the class named Metals. The data will be filled into the corresponding subclass. If the data contains multiple rows of information, it needs to be defined as a list so the serializer knows that multiple rows are affected.

Below is a screenshot of the output after it's been serialized.

Hope this helps,

Happy coding.

Make your voice heard!

noreply@blogger.com (Will M.) — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 16:32:00 +0000

As some of you may already know, some sites are going dark for a day.
SOPA and PIPA have the potential to affect all of those that make a living out of the internet, Google’s got a petition going and I figured that I would pass it along.

Do with it what you will: https://www.google.com/landing/takeaction/

Blacked out sites:

http://www.google.com/

http://en.wikipedia.org/

http://www.reddit.com/

http://boingboing.net/

Sites that aren’t going dark, but still raising awareness:

http://gizmodo.com/

http://www.fark.com/

Information about SOPA and PIPA: https://www.google.com/landing/takeaction/sopa-pipa/
Nice Blog:
http://www.bayshoresolutions.com/blog/emarketing/stop-sopa-and-pipa-make-your-voice-heard/

Make your voice heard!

Show Indentation Lines in Visual Studio 2010

noreply@blogger.com (Will M.) — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 20:38:00 +0000

Have you found yourself wondering if your HTML tags have matching closing tags?
Wouldn’t it be great to have a visual aid to help you read your code and verify that is aligned properly and the tags match?

There is a great Visual Studio extension named Indent Guides which you can download from CodePlex, @ http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/e792686d-542b-474a-8c55-630980e72c30 once installed, restart Visual Studio and you can easily notice that your source code has now a visual line that you can use to ensure indentation is correct and to match tags. See screenshot below.

Speaking of Visual Studio tips and tricks, here are another couple of tricks to improve the editor experience:

- You can use Ctrl+E, D to format the selected text. This would add indentation to your code so it is easier to read, although you may want to use with caution because the indentation can be excessive for some people. You can find this option on the Edit -> Advanced menu.
- A common question is how to display Line number on the Visual Studio 2010 editor. To do so, go to the Tools menu, click on Options -> Expand Text Editor, select a language, for example C# and click on General if is not selected automatically. Then on the last section of the window named “Display” enable the Line Numbers checkbox.
- What if the code you are reading is all collapsed because somebody else used the Outline feature? Well you can quickly turn off the Outline by pressing Ctrl+M, P, you can find all the Outline options on the Edit menu Outlining

Hope this helps somebody out there,
Will

Clearing Another User's Checkout in TFS

noreply@blogger.com (Will M.) — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 21:08:00 +0000

A long gone coworker has left a few objects checked out in TFS, now you discover that you need to clear the checkout in order to incorporate new changes. How can this be done?

Clearing out another user's check out is NOT supported from the GUI, however there is a command line option to accomplish this:

- From Visual Studio Tools in the Start menu, open the Visual Studio Command Prompt

- If you use TFS, your workstation should have the TF command available, then type:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\VC>TF undo /workspace:WorkstationName;UserName $/ProjectName/ObjectName.cs /s:http://YourTFSServer:8080

Once the command completes, refresh the Source Control Explorer to see the changes, you may also need to get the latest version of the project if multiple objects have been locked for a long period of time.

Hope this helps,

Will

Using DotNetZip Library to Compress Data in ASP.Net

noreply@blogger.com (Will M.) — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 18:28:00 +0000

I recently worked on a project that involved creating encrypted Zip files. Data is captured on a web form and then written to a text file.
At first, the task sounded complex. However, if you are aware of the DotNetZip library existence, your task just got easier.

You can download the DotNetZip library from http://dotnetzip.codeplex.com/
Once you download and install the package, you will need to add a reference to Ionic.Zip.dll or copy the file to your \lib folder, this is all you need to start generating your own zip files.

The best part: DotNetZip is free!!

DotNetZip is well documented and is much easier to use than any other solutions out there including System.IO.Compression and SharpZipLib, after trying both methods I would highly recommend DotNetZip because is incredibly easy to use.

Below is a sample method to illustrate how to easily to compress content that is being passed as a string.
The method takes the file name and the content as arguments:

internal MemoryStream ZipString(string aZipFileName, string aContents, string aMode)

{

try

{

//Add these to your AppSettings on Web.Config

string sZipFilePassword = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["ZipFilePassword"];

string sZipFileEncryption = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["ZipFileStrongEncryption"];

//Stored the zippped data on this memory stream

MemoryStream msZippedContent = new MemoryStream();

// Creating Zip

using (var zip = new ZipFile())

{

// Add the password protection

zip.Password = sZipFilePassword;

if (sZipFileEncryption == "N")

{

//PkZipWeak is not a string encryption method, but is supported by any UnZip utility

zip.Encryption = EncryptionAlgorithm.PkzipWeak;

}

else

{

//WinZipAes128 and WinZipAes256 is NOT compatible with Windows ZIP

zip.Encryption = EncryptionAlgorithm.WinZipAes256;

}

// Add the desired file to the Zip

zip.AddEntry(aZipFileName, aContents, Encoding.ASCII);

// Send the contents of the ZIP back to the output stream

zip.Save(msZippedContent);

return msZippedContent;

}

catch (Exception genEx)

{

Response.Write(genEx.Message);

return null;

}

}//ZipString

The method declares a variable of type ZipFile which is available once you add a reference: "using Ionic.Zip;" That declaration creates the shell of the zip file. After that, the process to save the file is simple, add a password if needed, add an encryption method and you can proceed to add an entry to the Zip file by using AddEntry.
Of course, you could add multiple files to the same Zip archive. Finally, you can Save the contents of the Zip which in this case are returned by the method as a MemoryStream that could be used for other purpose such as creating an e-mail attachment.

Be aware that if you need to encrypt the contents of the zip, choosing the encryption method is important because the built-in Windows unzip feature can only decrypt PkZip.Weak content. You would need to have WinZip or WinRar Installed on the target workstation to unzip contents encrypted with the WinZipAes128 or WinZipAes256 methods.

Hope this is helpful and feel free to contact me if you have any questions,
Will

Save the directory listing to a text file

noreply@blogger.com (Will M.) — Sat, 12 Nov 2011 18:45:00 +0000

Here is a useful and handy trick is to write the contents of a directory listing to a text file so you can create a report or execute a search in another tool, say Word or Excel.

I've used this in the past for other simple stuff for example, creating a spreadsheet out of a massive MP3 directory. Since I have music organized by album, each album being a directory I wanted to write the contents of My Music to a text file.

Go to CMD:
C:\User\My Music>dir *. >>Music.txt

This will list only directories and send the contents to the music.txt file. Of course you must have write permissions in the directory.

If you want a cleaner listing. Say only the directory names without any other information try:

C:\User\My Music>dir *. /b >>Music.txt

Hope it helps,
Will

How to clear a String Builder?

noreply@blogger.com (Will M.) — Sat, 12 Nov 2011 18:36:00 +0000

How to clear a StringBuilder?
By now you probably realized that rhere is no Clear method.

You can use the two lines below, the assumption is that you are going to reuse the StringBuilder several times in your code and you want to temporarily clear it to ensure is empty and ready for a new assignment.

sbSQL.Length = 0;
sbSQL.Capacity = 0;

This trims the contents but also shortens the capacity to zero. I was surprised to noticed that both Length and Capacity properties are writable.

Hope it helps,
Will

Exporting Data as XML in a MemoryStream with Download Prompt

noreply@blogger.com (Will M.) — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 19:05:00 +0000

The below snippet demonstrates how to generate XML content on the fly and then storing the contents in memory. (MemoryStream)
This practice is useful if the output can't be saved on the server and avoids the hassle of dealing with permissions. Instead the XML is generated in memory and then the user will be automatically prompted to download the XML file to their local resource, similar to what happens when attempting to download a file.

protected bool GenerateExportFile()

{

try

{

//Create Memory Stream to store XML Data

MemoryStream ms = new MemoryStream();

//Use a writer to greate the XML

using (XmlWriter writer = XmlWriter.Create(ms))

{

writer.WriteStartDocument(); //Header

writer.WriteComment("Comment goes here");

{

writer.WriteStartElement("Root"); //<Root>

{

writer.WriteStartElement("Element1"); //<Element1>

writer.WriteAttributeString("Attribute1", "AtributeValue");

writer.WriteStartElement("Element2");

writer.WriteString("Element2Value");

writer.WriteEndElement(); //<Element2>

}

writer.WriteEndElement(); //<Root>

//Closed the Root Tag

}

writer.WriteEndDocument();

writer.Close();

//Convert Memory Stream to Byte Array

byte[] data = ms.ToArray();

//The Proposed FileName that will show when the user is prompted to save the file

string xmlFileName = "OrdExp_" + DateTime.Today.Year.ToString() + DateTime.Today.Month.ToString("00") + DateTime.Today.Day.ToString("00");

//Creating the Context

HttpContext.Current.Response.Clear();

//Heads up browser, here comes some XML

HttpContext.Current.Response.ContentType = "text/xml";

HttpContext.Current.Response.AddHeader("Content-Disposition:", "attachment;filename=" + HttpUtility.UrlEncode(xmlFileName));

//Set the size of the file so the progress bar reports that correctly

HttpContext.Current.Response.AddHeader("Content-Length", data.Length.ToString());

//Download the file and prompt the user to save

HttpContext.Current.Response.BinaryWrite(data);

HttpContext.Current.Response.End();

ms.Flush();

ms.Close();

return true;

}

catch (Exception exc)

{

lblMsg.Text = "Error Generating File: " + exc.Message;

return false;

}

return true;

}//Method

This code was used to generate XML data output and then added the ability to automatically export the data to a local machine.
Hope this helps,
Will

How to receive execution arguments on a C# WinForms Application?

noreply@blogger.com (Will M.) — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 01:05:00 +0000

The below code that illustrates how to receive arguments for a WinForms Application.The example expects two arguments and validates that the are converted properly.
If the appropiate argumetns are sent, these are stored in a public class named GlobalVars.

[STAThread]
static void Main( string[] MyArgs)
{
     Application.EnableVisualStyles();
     Application.SetCompatibleTextRenderingDefault(false);

     if (MyArgs.Length == 0 || MyArgs.Length < 2)
     {
        MessageBox.Show(
        "Please specify Parm1 and Parm2 as Arguments in order to
         Proceed.",
        "YourAppTitle", MessageBoxButtons.OK, MessageBoxIcon.Error);
        Application.Exit();
        return;
      }
      else
      {
         try
         {
            GlobalVars lGlobalVars = new GlobalVars();
            lGlobalVars.gOrderSkey = Int64.Parse(MyArgs[0]);
            lGlobalVars.gShipmentNo = Int64.Parse(MyArgs[1]);
          }
          catch (Exception Ex)
          {
             MessageBox.Show(
          "Invalid Parm1 and/or Parm2 Arguments. Please verify. \rError: "
          + Ex.Message, "YourAppTitle",
          MessageBoxButtons.OK, MessageBoxIcon.Error);
          Application.Exit();
          return;
          }
          Application.Run(new Form1());
      }

}
Notice the "\n" to break down the MessageBox in two lines. Is a nice little trick that I often forget
Hope this helps,
Will

Where is Microsoft Outlook Temp Folder? (Windows 7 and Outlook 2010)

noreply@blogger.com (Will M.) — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 19:37:00 +0000

Ever wondered where Microsoft Outlook stores temp files?

It is useful to know this location, so you can go there and delete the multiple copies of attachments and pictures and other Outlook files. It can also be useful if you are looking for an attachment contained in a message that you deleted by mistake.

For Outlook 2010 running under Windows 7 go to:
C:\Users\UserName\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Temporary Internet Files\Content.Outlook

In this folder you will find that there is one or multiple folders named with a random combination of numbers and letters, for example: 82UOSVIP
Inside this directory you will find attachments and pictures stored by Outlook.

If you are curious. This is stored in a registry entry:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Office\14.0\Outlook\Security

Value Name: OutlookSecureTempFolder
Data Type: REG_SZ

If you need more info, or you are looking for the temp folder in previous versions of Outlook, go to:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/817878

Executing a Stored Procedure from a WCF Service Method

noreply@blogger.com (Will M.) — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 15:07:00 +0000

Here is an example of a method that is used within a WCF Service to execute a Stored Procedure and parse the return value (a success/failure string) to a local variable which can be manipulated to display a friendly success or failure message.

public String fSave (string aParm1, string aParm2, 
                             string aParm3, Int32 aParm4)
{
    SqlConnection lSQLConn = null;
    SqlCommand lSQLCmd = new SqlCommand();
    string lsResponse = "";
    string connStr = "";
 
    connStr = 
    ConfigurationManager.ConnectionStrings["MyConnStr"].ConnectionString;
 
    try
    {
        // create and open a connection object
        lSQLConn = new SqlConnection(connStr);
        lSQLConn.Open();
        //The CommandType must be StoredProcedure if we are using an ExecuteScalar
        lSQLCmd.CommandType = CommandType.StoredProcedure;
        lSQLCmd.CommandText = "sp_YourSPName"; 
        lSQLCmd.Parameters.Add(new SqlParameter("@Parm1", aParm1));
        lSQLCmd.Parameters.Add(new SqlParameter("@Parm2", aParm2));
        lSQLCmd.Parameters.Add(new SqlParameter("@Parm3", aParm3));
        lSQLCmd.Parameters.Add(new SqlParameter("@Parm4", aParm4));
               
        lSQLCmd.Connection = lSQLConn;
        //Executes the SP and returns the single select output to a variable
        lsResponse = Convert.ToString(lSQLCmd.ExecuteScalar());
    }
    catch (Exception Exc)
    {
        return "Error: " + Exc.Message;                
    }
    finally
    {
        lSQLCmd.Dispose();
        lSQLConn.Close();
    }
 
    if (String.IsNullOrEmpty(lsResponse))
    {
        return "Error: Unspecified problem while adding task.";                
    }
    return lsResponse;
}

Now, let's review the above method. There are a few interesting things:
Once the connection is open, the SQLCommand has to be defined as a CommandType = CommandType.StoredProcedure. This signals the type of action we need to execute.
Next, we define the Stored Procedure to be executed by defining the CommandText="sp_YourSPName".
To get the return value, we set the string variable to the results of a SQL Command, ExecuteScalar ()

But wait. What should we do if our Stored Procedure returns a result set rather than a single value?
Well, you need to make a slight change to the method, we need to add a DataAdapter and a DataSet to parse the result.
See below:

SqlConnection lSQLConn = null;
SqlCommand lSQLCmd = new SqlCommand();
//Declare a DataAdapter and a DataSet
SqlDataAdapter lDA = new SqlDataAdapter();
DataSet lDS = new DataSet();
 
//...Execution section
 
// create and open a connection object
lSQLConn = new SqlConnection(connStr);
lSQLConn.Open();
//The CommandType must be StoredProcedure if we are using an ExecuteScalar
lSQLCmd.CommandType = CommandType.StoredProcedure;
lSQLCmd.CommandText = "sp_YourSPName"; 
lSQLCmd.Parameters.Add(new SqlParameter("@Parm1", aParm1));
lSQLCmd.Parameters.Add(new SqlParameter("@Parm2", aParm2));
lSQLCmd.Parameters.Add(new SqlParameter("@Parm3", aParm3));
lSQLCmd.Parameters.Add(new SqlParameter("@Parm4", aParm4));
 
lSQLCmd.Connection = lSQLConn;
//Fill the DataAdapter with a SelectCommand
lDA.SelectCommand = lSQLCmd;
lDA.Fill(lDS);

Hope this is helpful,
Will

Reading Keys from App.Config

noreply@blogger.com (Will M.) — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 12:36:00 +0000

I would like to share a small code snippet that is useful if you need to read entries from a configuration file, for example: App.config

Below are the entries I want to read from my App.config

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<configuration>
 <appSettings>
    <add key="MyServiceURL" value="http://10.12.64.190:8086/MyService"/>
  </appSettings>
<startup><supportedRuntime version="v2.0.50727"/></startup></configuration>

Below is the best way I've found so far to read these entries in C#:

//Scan Thru the keys and use the Configuration Manager to make this happen
foreach (string key in ConfigurationManager.AppSettings)
{
 //Get your key
 string value = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings[key];
 this.Url = value;
}

Keep in mind that you need to add a reference to the System.Manager assembly for this to work.
I've tested this with the .NET Framework 3.5 and 4.0
HTH,
Will

Sample LINQ with Multiple Joins and Selected Columns

noreply@blogger.com (Will M.) — Sat, 08 Oct 2011 04:14:00 +0000

If you are like me, I sometimes find difficult remembering the syntax of LINQ statements because I jump from T-SQL to ASP.Net and C#.
I was searching for a sample that may show how to write a LINQ statement with multiple joins and I had little luck finding it, so finally after I put my few brain cells in action, I came up with the following:

var dbRegCourses = (from a in db.CourseRegistries
                    join b in db.Courses on a.courseid equals b.id
                    join c in db.aspnet_Users on a.userid equals c.UserId
                    where a.userid == sUserID
                    orderby a.regdate, b.code, b.description,
                            b.instructor, b.date, b.venue
                    select new
                    {
                      a.regdate, b.code, b.description,
                      b.instructor, b.date, b.venue});

if (dbRegCourses.Count() > 0)
{
    ResultLbl.Text = "We found that you are registered to: " +
                      dbRegCourses.Count().ToString() + " Courses.";
    return;
}

If you notice, here we are joining three tables, using a where statement and then pick and choosing columns from at least two tables.

I also added an if statement bottom to see if I got any rows back from the LINQ Statement and if that's the case return a message.

Hope this helps somebody out there,
Will

Import Data from a Text or CSV file into SQL Server

noreply@blogger.com (Will M.) — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 13:03:00 +0000

I was recently in need of importing data from a CSV (Comma Separated File) to a table in SQL Server 2008.
After searching in Google for a little while, found this blog entry from Pinal Dave (SQL Authority) which always provides good content.

Besides passing along the technique described in Pinal's blog post, I would like to expand by explaining a few a snags that I ran into.

My source data in the CSV file, looks something like this:

HOU009,Windows Phone 7,Will Martinez,11/10/2011,Houston; TX,999,2
HOU010,WPF for Business Applications,Will Martinez,11/15/2011,Houston; TX,695,1

More an less I have all the data needed to fill the columns of my target table. My assumption is that my column id of type uniqueidentifier is going to be auto-generated. This is my table:

CREATE TABLE [dbo].[Courses](
   [id] [uniqueidentifier] NOT NULL DEFAULT NEWSEQUENTIALID(),
   [code] [varchar](50) NOT NULL,
[description] [varchar](200) NULL,
[instructor] [varchar](50) NULL,
[date] [date] NULL,
       [venue] [varchar](50) NULL,
   [price] [money] NULL,
     [duration] [int] NULL,
CONSTRAINT [PK_Courses]
   PRIMARY KEY CLUSTERED ([id] ASC,[code] ASC )
WITH (PAD_INDEX = OFF, STATISTICS_NORECOMPUTE = OFF, IGNORE_DUP_KEY = OFF, ALLOW_ROW_LOCKS = ON, ALLOW_PAGE_LOCKS = ON)
ON [PRIMARY]) ON [PRIMARY]

As you may notice, I have two datatypes that may be challenging, first my primary key is of type uniqueidentifier and also, I'm using a date datatype.

Initially I tried to import my data from the CSV file using the below statement:

bulk insert [dbo].[Courses]
from 'C:\Courses.csv'
with (fieldterminator = ',', rowterminator = '\n')
go

On my first try I did not have any luck. I ran into the below issue:
Msg 4861, Level 16, State 1, Line 1
Cannot bulk load because the file "C:\Courses.csv" could not be opened. Operating system error code 5(Access is denied.).

Moved my file to the Public directory and then make sure permissions were set to 'Everyone'. No luck, although I did not get the "access denied" error. My insert returns 0 row(s) affected.

At this point my guess was that I had a couple of issues:
- First I did not have a value for the Id column which is our primary key
- My column of type date could be a problem if there is an implicit conversion of string data

To work around the problem, I decided to create a new temporary table, without a primary key and with a datetime datafield. Here is the table:

CREATE TABLE [dbo].[CoursesTemp](
   [code] [varchar](50) NOT NULL,
   [description] [varchar](200) NULL,
   [instructor] [varchar](50) NULL,
   [date] [datetime] NULL,
   [venue] [varchar](50) NULL,
   [price] [money] NULL,
   [duration] [int] NULL)

Ran my insert statement again:
bulk insert [dbo].[CoursesTemp]
from 'C:\Users\Public\Downloads\Courses.csv'
with (fieldterminator = ',', rowterminator = '\n')
go

Success! Finally got to see what I was waiting for...(20 row(s) affected)

At this point, life is easy. I can use the data I just inserted in the temporary table and use it to insert into the "live" table.

insert [dbo].[Courses]
(code, description, instructor, date, venue, duration)
select
   code, description, instructor, cast(date as date), venue,
   duration
from [dbo].[CoursesTemp]

Notice that, my Id column is not listed, since it has a uniqueidentifier with a default of  NEWSEQUENTIALID , it automatically generates a GUID for each record.
To deal with the issue of the date field, noticed that there is a CAST statement that will convert the data to the appropriate datatype.

Below is how the data looks in my table.

Now I have the data I needed and my id column has nice GUIDs generated for every record.
I'm ready to get some work done.

Hope this helps somebody out there,
Will

How to Force an Application to Open in Administrator Mode without Prompt

noreply@blogger.com (Will M.) — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 14:14:00 +0000

Say you have an application, in my case the ancient PowerBuilder and you want it to always "Run as Administrator" so it has access to writing files to the Program Files (x86) folder instead of the users AppData folder.

Obviously you don't want to turn off UAC, that would be silly.

Here is a little trick that I've been using for a while to get an application to open without the annoying User Account Control prompt asking you to Allow the Application to run in Admin mode.

1. Go go the Administrative Tools -> Scheduled Tasks
2. Create a new Scheduled Task

3. Add a Task name and then make sure you select the "Run with highest privileges" option

4. Click on the Actions tab and then browse for the Application you want to open. In my case PowerBuilder

5. Click OK to save the task. Make a note of the Task Name you assigned.
6. Now, create a shortcut, on the target, you will call the task scheduler and then send as an argument the name of the task you previously created, like this: C:\Windows\System32\schtasks.exe /run /tn "YourTaskName" this will run your taks by invoking the Task Scheduler Directly.

You are all set, now use the shortcut to access your application. It will open with Administrative privileges.

If you would like to see this workaround in action and get additional details, please check my video posting below:

Hope it helps,
Will

An awesome weekend with Opeth and Katatonia

noreply@blogger.com (Will M.) — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 21:09:00 +0000

First of all, I want to say that this blog entry is totally non-technical.

I just wanted to share with my friends the great experience I had this weekend.
A few months ago, I learned that my two favorite bands Opeth and Katatonia were on tour and coming to FL, they were scheduled to play at the House of Blues in Orlando on October 1rst.
I was lucky enough to grab one of the VIP tickets to meet and greet Opeth.

The experience was great. It was awesome to be able to spend a time and to talk and with the members of Opeth. All the guys are incredibly nice, kind and friendly; they talked to all the fans there, signed autographs, we took pictures with them and had an awesome time together.

The concert was great. Both bands played awesome sets. Katatonia played a mix of new and old material including some favs such as Teargas, My Twin and July.
Opeth had a great set, playing basically a set from their latest album Heritage and a few tracks from Watershed plus a track from Damnation.
I have to admit that I was curious to hear the tracks from Heritage live. They sound awesome! Actually listening to these tracks live, helped me to like the album even more now that I've realized how complex and varied those tracks are.

I want to share some of the pictures I took.

VIP Package

Pre-Concert Stage

Ready for the "Meet and Greet"

Got to talk with the great Mikael Åkerfeldt

Martin Mendez: Totally cool guy!

One of the best drummers out there: Martin Axenrot

Mikael signing a few cymbals for fans

Lead Guitar Fredrik Akesson

Katatonia

Stage Ready for Opeth

Opeth Intro

Opeth

Great Gig!

Thank you!

Katatonia - Nephilim (2 Min. Segment)

Opeth - I Feel the Dark (1:30 Segment)

Date Validation JavaScript vs Code Behind vs RangeValidator

noreply@blogger.com (Will M.) — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 20:50:00 +0000

Although you can use a RangeValidator or CustomValidator to evaluate the contents of a textbox that captures a date, there might be instances in which you want to use a Client-Javascript to manually validate or manipulate what's typed.
Another possible situation is to do this on the code behind to validate the input at the moment the data is sent to the server.

After reading a few blogs and articles, below are two JavaScript functions that I've found extremely useful to validate dates .

-Validating the String
Notice how this function will evaluate a string input by using a regular expression. It separates the string and checks if the date elements fall within the numeric range established.

        function validateUSDate(strValue) {
 
            var objRegExp = /^\d{1,2}(\-|\/|\.)\d{1,2}\1\d{4}$/
 
            //check to see if in correct format
            if (!objRegExp.test(strValue))
                return false; //doesn't match pattern, bad date
            else {
                var strSeparator = strValue.substring(2, 3)
                var arrayDate = strValue.split(strSeparator);
                //create a lookup for months not equal to Feb.
                var arrayLookup = { '01': 31, '03': 31,
                    '04': 30, '05': 31,
                    '06': 30, '07': 31,
                    '08': 31, '09': 30,
                    '10': 31, '11': 30, '12': 31
                }
                var intDay = parseInt(arrayDate[1], 10);
 
                //check if month value and day value agree
                if (arrayLookup[arrayDate[0]] != null) {
                    if (intDay <= arrayLookup[arrayDate[0]] && intDay != 0)
                        return true; //found in lookup table, good date
                }
 
                var intMonth = parseInt(arrayDate[0], 10);
                if (intMonth == 2) {
                    var intYear = parseInt(arrayDate[2]);
                    if (intDay > 0 && intDay < 29) {
                        return true;
                    }
                    else if (intDay == 29) {
                        if ((intYear % 4 == 0) && (intYear % 100 != 0) ||
             (intYear % 400 == 0)) {
                            // year div by 4 and ((not div by 100) or div by 400) ->ok
                            return true;
                        }
                    }
                }
            }
            return false; //any other values, bad date
        }

-Implementing validateUSDate
Below is another function that demonstrates how the validateUSDate function is being implemented in the JavaScript attached to the TextBox's OnBlur event. If the entered date fails. We default the date to Today.

        function fWorkDateValidate(str, object) {
            var dt = new Date();
            var dd = dt.getDate();
            var mm = dt.getMonth() + 1; //January is 0!
            var yyyy = dt.getFullYear();
 
            if (dd < 10) { dd = '0' + dd }
            if (mm < 10) { mm = '0' + mm } 
            
            var today = mm + '/' + dd + '/' + yyyy;
 
            if (validateUSDate(str) == false ) {
                alert('Invalid Work Date entered. Please specify date in format mm/dd/yyyy. Example: ' + today);
                object.value = today;
                object.focus();
            }
        }

-Textbox Date HTML

<asp:TextBox ID="TextBox3" runat="server"  style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size: small;text-align: right; color: #FF6600" Width="81px"onBlur="fWorkDateValidate(this.value, this);" MaxLength="10"></asp:TextBox>

I have to admit that I didn't write validateUSDate, I just modified it to fit my needs, I wanted to give credit to the authors but unfortunately since I tried code from several blogs, I can't find the exact pages where I took the function from. So credit is due to the author(s) whoever they are.

In case that you need to validate a date range in Code Behind. Below is an "if" statement to validate data elements using a Regular Expression. Notice how we can easily define the ranges, for example 0 to 1 and 0-9 for the month digits, then a "/", then a 0-3 for the first digit of the day and so on... you get the idea.

if (String.IsNullOrEmpty(TextBox3.Text) ||

Regex.IsMatch(TextBox3.Text, @"^[0-1]?[0-9](/|-)[0-3]?[0-9](/|-)[1-2][0-9][0-9][0-9]$") == false)

-RangeValidator
Finally, let's review how can you use a RangeValidator to evaluate a date. It is a piece of cake. Just keep in mind that you need to specify a "type" of Date on your Validator and define the Minimum and Maximum Value.

<asp:RangeValidator ID="StDateValidator" runat="server" 
    ControlToValidate="TextBox1" Type="Date" 
    MinimumValue="01/21/1980" MaximumValue="12/31/2100" 
    ErrorMessage="Invalid Start Date. Please verify." 
    style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; 
    font-size: xx-small; font-weight: 700"></asp:RangeValidator>

The validator will display the error message automatically, if the data on TextBox1 does not pass the validation.

Happy Coding,
Will

Converting and Formatting DataSet Strings

noreply@blogger.com (Will M.) — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 13:48:00 +0000

Consider the following. You have a DataSet and you need to assign the contest of this dataset to another string. In the example below, several TextBoxes.

You could do the below to convert the non-string data in the DataSet row to a String and then apply a String Format.

TextBoxDecimal.Text = ((decimal)lProjectsDS.Tables[0].Rows[0]["Budget"]).ToString("c");
TextBoxDouble.Text = ((double)lProjectsDS.Tables[0].Rows[0]["MaxHours"]).ToString("0.00");
TextBoxDate.Text = ((DateTime)lProjectsDS.Tables[0].Rows[0]["ExpDate"]).ToString("d");

The ToString format work as follows:
- Format: "c" converts to a currency using the default locate.
- Format: "0.00" converts the number so it has two decimals, if no decimals found then displays 00
- Format: "d" shortdate using the default locate.

You could also apply formatting to the TextBoxes or the target string, however in my case the need was to format the data you receive right out of the Dataset.

Happy Coding,
Will

How to Find the UserID using Membership

noreply@blogger.com (Will M.) — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 18:06:00 +0000

I have a table which is driven by the UserID which is assigned when a new user is added to the database using Membership.

My application needs to retrieve the UserID on the fly in order to be able to find the correct record.
One way to do this is the following:

Membership.GetUser().ProviderUserKey.ToString();

I hope this helps,
Will

Where is the iPhone, iPad, MAC Address?

noreply@blogger.com (Will M.) — Sat, 24 Sep 2011 14:48:00 +0000

Wondering where is the MAC address of your Apple mobile device?
Go to: Settings -> General -> About

The Wi-Fi Address is the device's MAC Address

Will

How to Format an Eval Statement to Display a Date using Date Locale

noreply@blogger.com (Will M.) — Sat, 24 Sep 2011 14:44:00 +0000

I need to format a DateTime value that I'm using inside an ItemTemplate via an Eval expression, so it displays a short date using the locale. I tried working with the format syntax on the Eval statement without any luck.
I came across the following syntax to format an Eval expression so it displays a short date formatted according to the user's locale:

<%#((DateTime)Eval("ExpDate")).ToString("d")%>

The key is casting Eval as a DateTime which you can then convert to String. At this point you can take advantage of the ToString format "d" which uses a locale short date format.
This works for ASP.Net 2.0 and later, it will save you having to create a function to determine the users locale.
Will

Using ASP.Net Profile Feature in a Web Application Project

noreply@blogger.com (Will M.) — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 12:31:00 +0000

So, I decided to take advantage of the Profile feature of .NET to store some personal data per user. Shouldn't be a big deal right? After all, you just call the appropriate assembly and then, you should be able to invoke Profile.Save() and like magic the data is now in your ASP database on the Profiles table.

This is when I came across a huge set of posts and threads about how complex and confusing it can be to implement the Profile feature if you have a Web Application Project.

Among the confusing, credit should be due to Lee Dumond and Scott Gu as usual for posting some awesome examples in their blogs.

By following Lee's blog, below is my implementation of the same technique to be able to use Profiles in my Web Application Project. I thought it would be a good idea to post it, in order to give you a second example.

Step 1. Created a Class named ProfileInfo which exposes the properties that I want to save in my profile, in this case, let's work with two FirstName and Last Name

namespace Project1.Account
{
    [Serializable]
    public class ProfileInfo
    {
        public string FirstName { get; set; } 
        public string LastName { get; set; } 
    }
}

Step 2. Created a second Class named wProfile, this class is inherited from the ProfileBase class and will be used to expose the profile functionality on other pages in the site.

using System.Web;
using System.Web.Profile;
namespace Project1.Account
{
    public class wProfile : ProfileBase
    {
 
        public ProfileInfo ProfileInfo
        { 
            get { return (ProfileInfo) GetPropertyValue("ProfileInfo"); }       
        } 
 
        public static wProfile GetProfile() 
        { 
            return (wProfile) HttpContext.Current.Profile; 
        } 
 
        public static wProfile GetProfile(string userName) 
        { 
            return (wProfile) Create(userName); 
        }  
    }
}

Step 3. Modify your Web.config file to implement a SQLProfileProvider. Notice the "inherits" on the defaultProvider definition. Also noticed that the connection ApplicationServices was previously defined.

    <profile defaultProvider="AspNetSqlProfileProvider" inherits="Project1.Account.wProfile"> 
      <providers>
        <clear/>
        <add name="AspNetSqlProfileProvider" type="System.Web.Profile.SqlProfileProvider" connectionStringName="ApplicationServices" applicationName="/wMyApp"/>
      </providers>
    </profile>

Step 4. Implementing the logic in my ASPX pages

        protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
            wProfile lProfile = wProfile.GetProfile(Membership.GetUser().UserName);
            Label1.Text = "Welcome, " + lProfile.ProfileInfo.FirstName + " " + lProfile.ProfileInfo.LastName;
        }

Happy Coding, Hope this helps,
Will