candland.code

Resolve Lists and Arrays with Castle Windsor

Dusty Candland — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 11:29:00 GMT

I’ve worked with the Castle Project for a long time, primarily with Windsor. However, I often forget there are Array and List dependencies resolvers build-in, but they need to be wired up. This is mostly for my memory and hopefully it helps someone else.

This sub resolvers are in this namespace;

using Castle.MicroKernel.Resolvers.SpecializedResolvers;

Before registering components, add the sub resolvers;

container.Kernel.Resolver.AddSubResolver(newArrayResolver(container.Kernel));

container.Kernel.Resolver.AddSubResolver(newListResolver(container.Kernel));

Use like this, where there are multiple IService implementations that are needed by the DependsOnArrayOrList class.

public class DependsOnArrayOrList

{

public DependsOnArrayOrList(IService[] services)

{

}

public DependsOnArrayOrList(IList<IService> services)

{

}

public interface IService

{

}

Not sure why these sub resolvers are not setup by default, but regardless they’re easy to setup and come in handy.

Psake Builds and TeamCity Integration

Dusty Candland — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 11:36:00 GMT

Psake is a powerful build system, build on Powershell for a lot of functionality and familiarity. And TeamCity is a really nice continuous integration server, checkout the CodeBetter TeamCity install for a good demo. Hooking the two up was not a easy as using just Msbuild or Nant, but it’s not really too bad.

First, your Psake script needs to check the exit codes of the applications it calls. This is important to do regardless because Powershell doesn’t error out based on the exit code. The trunk version of Psake has a convenience function to execute a command and check it’s exit code is greater than 0, called exec:


          task Compile -depends Clean { 
    exec {msbuild $sln_file /p:configuration=$configuration} 
}

You can also pass a message as the second argument.

With this checking in place, next is a bat script to use from the TeamCity command line build option.

@echo off

powershell -NoProfile -ExecutionPolicy unrestricted -Command "& {Import-Module
'.\tools\psake\psake.psm1'; invoke-psake -t %1; if ($Error -ne '') {write-host "ERROR:
$error" -fore RED; exit $error.Count} }"

This executes a Powershell prompt which imports the Psake module and then calls the provided Psake task. Finally, it checks the $Error variable and sets the exit code to the number of errors returned by the script. This will fail the TeamCity build and allows any error thrown by Powershell to break the build.

Last is to have TeamCity run the bat file with the desired target.

psake.bat Compile

One thing to note is that some things return exit code other then 0 but that are not errors. In that case you can check the Powershell variable $LastExitCode and throw errors based on that.

Thanks to the psake users group for all their help!

error CS1668: Warning as Error: Invalid search path 'C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v6.0A\lib' specified in 'LIB environment variable'

Dusty Candland — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 10:32:00 GMT

I’m not sure what caused my setup to produce this error, but after searching for a while and not finding any reason, I just added the lib directory and all was good. I was getting this when doing command line compiles and when using the spark view engine. I hope this might save me or someone else some time in the future.

error CS1668: Warning as Error: Invalid search path 'C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v6.0A\lib' specified in 'LIB environment variable'

A New Year & A New Venture: Red27 Consulting

Dusty Candland — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 21:54:00 GMT

I’ve decided to take the plunge and start consulting full time. My company, Red27 Consulting, has been around for few years, but this year I will be pursuing consulting/independent development work full time. Red27 will be an agile/alt.net/craftsmanship based business, building websites and web applications. We will partner with customers to build what they need quickly and with high quality. The challenge is how to show the value in these agile/alt.net/craftsmanship processes and principles to people not in software development. I believe, over time, using these processes and principles will prove to be a better way to build software. I will write about these experiences here along with the technical content that I’ve been writing.

Lastly, keep Red27 Consulting in mind when someone has a website or web application they want built!

Making Sure A NHibernate IInterceptor Is In The Session

Dusty Candland — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 03:24:00 GMT

Building on the previous post Intercepting NHibernate to Handle Additional Database Work, I used the ILifecycle interface to ensure the IInterceptor was setup on the session before saving MyEntity. I ILifecycle interface is deprecated, but I needed some way to make sure the interceptor was there. If an entity has the ILifecycle interface nothing more is needed, NHibernate will call the methods. I used the OnSave method, to inspect the session instance and throw and exception if needed. Anyway, here’s the code:


            public
            class
            MyEntity : ILifecycle

{

    publicvirtualint Id
{ get; set; }

    publicvirtualint ParentId
{ get; set; }

    publicvirtualLifecycleVeto OnSave(ISession s)

    {

        var sessionDelegate
= s asSessionDelegate;

        var session
= sessionDelegate != null ? sessionDelegate.InnerSession asSessionImpl :
s asSessionImpl;

        if (session
!= null && session.Interceptor.GetType().Equals(typeof(MyEntityInterceptor)))

            returnLifecycleVeto.NoVeto;

        thrownewApplicationException("MyEntityInterceptor
needs to be registered with the container.");

    }

    publicvirtualLifecycleVeto OnUpdate(ISession s)

    {

        returnLifecycleVeto.NoVeto;

    }

    publicvirtualLifecycleVeto OnDelete(ISession s)

    {

        returnLifecycleVeto.NoVeto;

    }

    publicvirtualvoid OnLoad(ISession s, object id)

    {

    }

}

I think there are potentially better ways to handle this, but with the existing constraints on the code and time work something out, this was the way I went.

Intercepting NHibernate to Handle Additional Database Work

Dusty Candland — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 03:13:00 GMT

Today I needed to take addition database action when an entity is saved or deleted. A trigger might have been an option, but I try to limit the use of triggers. NHibernate to the rescue! Since the code was already using NHibernate it was an easy choice. There are a couple of options here. First is to use a stored procedure for the insert. However, that requires not using identity columns and wouldn’t work in this case. There is the ILifecycle interface, but it is deprecated and doesn’t have after-save hooks. Which leaves the IInterceptor interface.

Sub-classing EmptyInterceptor, I overrode the needed methods. If the entity is the one I’m concerned with, I store it or it’s data for later use in a queue collection. In the PostFlush method the entities stored in the queue will have their Identity set and can be used to set the properties for the additional work. Also, the deleted object will have been deleted which is important. I’m not sure I needed lock the queue objects, but I guess there is a change the session could be used on multiple threads and to be save they are locked.

The named queries are stored in the MyEntity Mapping file using the sql-query element.


            public
            class
            MyEntityInterceptor : EmptyInterceptor

{

    privateISession _session;

    privatereadonlyQueue<MyEntity>
_saves = newQueue<MyEntity>();

    privatereadonlyQueue<int>
_deletes = newQueue<int>();

    publicoverridebool OnSave(object entity, object id, object[]
state, string[] propertyNames, global::NHibernate.Type.IType[]
types)

    {

        var myEntity
= entity asMyEntity;

        if (myEntity
!= null)

            _saves.Enqueue(myEntity);

        returntrue;

    }

    publicoverridevoid OnDelete(object entity, object id, object[]
state, string[] propertyNames, global::NHibernate.Type.IType[]
types)

    {

        var myEntity
= entity asMyEntity;

        if (myEntity
!= null)

            lock (_deletes)

                if (!_deletes.Contains(myEntity.ParentId))

_deletes.Enqueue(myEntity.ParentId);

    }

    publicoverridevoid PostFlush(ICollection entities)

    {

        ExecuteSaves();

        ExecuteDeletes();

    }

    privatevoid ExecuteSaves()

    {

        lock (_saves)

            while (_saves.Count
> 0)

            {

                var myEntity
= _saves.Dequeue();

_session.GetNamedQuery("SqlToExecuteForSaves")

.SetInt32("Id", myEntity.Id)

.ExecuteUpdate();

            }

    }

    privatevoid ExecuteDeletes()

    {

        lock (_deletes)

            while (_deletes.Count
> 0)

            {

                var id
= _deletes.Dequeue();

_session.GetNamedQuery("SqlToExecuteForDeletes")

.SetInt32("Id", id)

.ExecuteUpdate();

            }

    }

    publicoverridevoid SetSession(ISession session)

    {

        _session = session;

    }

}

            public
            class
            MyEntity
          
{

    publicint ParentId;

    publicint Id;

}

Since it’s using the ISession and IQuery interface, unit testing was easy.

The code is also using the NHibernateFacility from the CastleProject. Which makes adding interceptors as easy as adding them to the container. The naming is important as that’s how the facility looks up the interceptors. The first will be used for all session factories unless there is on for the specific factory as the second option shows.


container.Register(Component.For<IInterceptor>()

    .ImplementedBy<MyEntityInterceptor>()

    .Named("nhibernate.session.interceptor"));

container.Register(Component.For<IInterceptor>()

    .ImplementedBy<MyEntityInterceptor>()

    .Named("nhibernate.session.interceptor.MyOtherFactoryAlias"));

N2CMS Build From Source

Dusty Candland — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 08:46:00 GMT

Download source
Run Prepare_Dependencies-vs2008.bat
Deploy_Everything-vs2008.bat
Copy the output/Templates_Mvc directory to a new directory for the projects
Edit permissions on the wwwroot sub folder to add IIS_USERS if needed.
x64 only: download SQLite and copy the x64 version of System.Data.SQLite.dll to wwwroot\bin
Follow the instructions in the install.txt

FluentNHibernate Many-To-Many Mapping

Dusty Candland — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 08:32:00 GMT

Explained here Hackingon.net: Many-to-Many Relationships With Fluent NHibernate Automapping

Automating Releases with SFTP

Dusty Candland — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 23:32:00 GMT

I’m trying to automate the deployment process for a website. I’m using Psake for the build process and Migrator.Net for the db migrations. Which left the problem of getting the code to the server. I’ve taken a stab that this using this guide to setup SFTP with a restricted user with just SFTP access using public/private keys.

Next was to automate the file upload, first I just used at batch file and psftp.exe, this worked except it re-uploads everything, much of which didn’t change. So, next was FileZilla, no luck there. Finally, WinSCP which works ok, but it doesn’t seem to allow a fully automated sync of files, but it does get close.

Asp.Net MVC CheckBoxList HtmlHelper Extension

Dusty Candland — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 01:32:00 GMT

I added some more methods to the code provided by Tyler Garlick’s CheckBoxList for ASP.net MVC to allow a dictionary to be passed in place of a list of SelectListItems and an optional list of selected ids. Anyway, here’s the full class.

using System.Collections.Generic;

using System.Linq;

using System.Text;

namespace System.Web.Mvc

{

publicstaticclassCheckBoxListHelper

{

publicstaticstring CheckBoxList(thisHtmlHelper helper, string name, IDictionary<string, string> items)

{

return CheckBoxList(helper, name, items, null, null);

}

publicstaticstring CheckBoxList(thisHtmlHelper helper, string name, IDictionary<string, string> items, IDictionary<string, object> checkboxHtmlAttributes)

{

return CheckBoxList(helper, name, items, null, checkboxHtmlAttributes);

}

publicstaticstring CheckBoxList(thisHtmlHelper helper, string name, IDictionary<string, string> items, IEnumerable<string> selectedValues)

{

return CheckBoxList(helper, name, items, selectedValues, null);

}

publicstaticstring CheckBoxList(thisHtmlHelper helper, string name, IDictionary<string, string> items, IEnumerable<string> selectedValues, IDictionary<string, object> checkboxHtmlAttributes)

{

var selectListItems = from i in items

selectnewSelectListItem

{

Text = i.Key,

Value = i.Value,

Selected = (selectedValues != null && selectedValues.Contains(i.Value))

};

return CheckBoxList(helper, name, selectListItems, checkboxHtmlAttributes);

}

publicstaticstring CheckBoxList(thisHtmlHelper helper, string name, IEnumerable<SelectListItem> items)

{

return CheckBoxList(helper, name, items, null);

}

publicstaticstring CheckBoxList(thisHtmlHelper helper, string name, IEnumerable<SelectListItem> items, IDictionary<string, object> checkboxHtmlAttributes)

{

var output = newStringBuilder();

foreach (var item in items)

{

output.Append("<div class=\"fields\"><label>");

var checkboxList = newTagBuilder("input");

checkboxList.MergeAttribute("type", "checkbox");

checkboxList.MergeAttribute("name", name);

checkboxList.MergeAttribute("value", item.Value);

// Check to see if it's checked

if (item.Selected)

checkboxList.MergeAttribute("checked", "checked");

// Add any attributes

if (checkboxHtmlAttributes != null)

checkboxList.MergeAttributes(checkboxHtmlAttributes);

checkboxList.SetInnerText(item.Text);

output.Append(checkboxList.ToString(TagRenderMode.SelfClosing));

output.Append("  " + item.Text + "</label></div>");

}

return output.ToString();

}

On the view you can pass a dictionary made from items in your view model and selected values form your view model.

< div >

${Html.CheckBoxList("Product.Categories",

ViewData.Model.Categories.ToDictionary(c => c.Name, c => c.Id.ToString()),

ViewData.Model.Product.Categories.Select(c => c.Id.ToString()))}

</ div >

In the controller you can access the form values in the request as a comma list of values by the name of the form field.

Request.Form["Product.Categories"]

Hope this helps and thanks to Tyler Garlick for meat of the code.