Brian's Blog

Can't Open Port 1433 on Win Server 2008 (attempting to connect to SQL Server 2012 Express)

briancarter — Sat, 27 Jul 2013 18:06:32 -0200

I have a test box that I wanted to give remote access to. Warning – think before opening ports. Pre-step is to add the firewall rule for 1433. Once completed, SQL Server needs to have TCP/IP enabled.

Opening SQL Server Configuration Manager
Going to the SQL Server Network Configuration for SQLEXPRESS
Editing "IPALL" of TCP/IP Protocol.
Under IP Addresses tab, make sure TCP dynamic ports is blank and TCP port is 1433

SSMS can now remote connect.

Deployment helpers

briancarter — Wed, 17 Jul 2013 12:17:52 -0200

Below are some links to help with your deployments and continuous integration. I’m striving to make deploying sites to Azure as simple as my past experience with PHP and SVN: SVN UP

Deployment with Azure
http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2012/09/17/announcing-great-improvements-to-windows-azure-web-sites.aspx

Deployment with Azure and Bitbucket
http://fabriccontroller.net/blog/posts/continuous-deployment-with-windows-azure-websites-and-bitbucket/

Continuous Integration
http://www.hanselman.com/blog/NuGetForTheEnterpriseNuGetInAContinuousIntegrationAutomatedBuildSystem.aspx

There's Gold in NUGets

briancarter — Wed, 17 Jul 2013 12:15:48 -0200

I was looking into MiniProfiler and found a great thread by Scott Hanselman. Below are the links:

Nullable property to entity field, Entity Framework through Code First

briancarter — Sun, 02 Jun 2013 12:03:17 -0200

Using the data annotation in your model – required:
[Required] public int somefield {get; set;}

Will set somefield to Not Null in database, How can i set somefield to allow NULLS?

1) Just omit the [Required] attribute from the somefield property.

2) To make int types allow NULLs in the database, they must be declared as nullable ints in the model:

// an int can never be null, so it will be created as NOT NULL in db
public int someintfield { get; set; }

// to have a nullable int, you need to declare it as an int?
// or as a System.Nullable<int>
public int? somenullableintfield { get; set; }
public System.Nullable<int> someothernullableintfield { get; set; }

Difference of “git add -A” and “git add .”

briancarter — Sun, 02 Jun 2013 11:58:20 -0200

A common question when working with any version control is how to add newly created files.

"git add -A" is equivalent to "git add .; git add -u".

The important point about "git add ." is that it looks at the working tree and adds all those paths to the staged changes if they are either changed or are new and not ignored, it does not stage any 'rm' actions.

"git add -u" looks at all the currently tracked files and stages the changes to those files if they are different or if they have been removed. It does not add any new files, it only stages changes to already tracked files.

git add –A -> is a handy shortcut for doing both.

To see what changes will be involved with your next commit:

git status

You will see that added file

Summary:

git add -A stages All
git add . stages new and modified, without deleted
git add -u stages modified and deleted, without new

Disable ajax cache for IE

briancarter — Sat, 01 Jun 2013 20:19:11 -0200

Working on a requirement to create a portal type landing page, I leveraged an @Html.Action. I noticed in Chrome, it didn’t cache; working as expected. After testing in IE, I noticed ajax call was cached – not showing updates.

There are many fixes available. I didn’t want to cache any ajax calls, so the option I implemented was to disable all ajax calls in my common.js file:

//Disable ajax cache for IE
$.ajaxSetup({ cache: false });

So the @Html Action works as expected.

<div>
@Html.Action("PartIndex", "Announcements", new { community_Id = Model.Key })
</div>

Git Basics - Viewing the Commit History

briancarter — Sat, 01 Jun 2013 18:40:18 -0200

Viewing the Commit History

After you have created several commits, or if you have cloned a repository with an existing commit history, you’ll probably want to look back to see what has happened. The most basic and powerful tool to do this is the git log command.

When you run git log in your project, you should get output that looks something like this:

$ git log

By default, with no arguments, git log lists the commits made in that repository in reverse chronological order. That is, the most recent commits show up first. As you can see, this command lists each commit with its SHA-1 checksum, the author’s name and e-mail, the date written, and the commit message.

A huge number and variety of options to the git log command are available to show you exactly what you’re looking for. Here, we’ll show you some of the most-used options.

One of the more helpful options is -p, which shows the diff introduced in each commit. You can also use-2, which limits the output to only the last two entries:

git log -p –2

If you like to use a more graphical tool to visualize your commit history, you may want to take a look at a Tcl/Tk program called gitk that is distributed with Git. Gitk is basically a visual git log tool, and it accepts nearly all the filtering options that git log does. If you type gitk on the command line in your project, you should see something like

gitk

You can see the commit history in the top half of the window along with a nice ancestry graph. The diff viewer in the bottom half of the window shows you the changes introduced at any commit you click.

I use Bitbucket; I find looking at diffs between changes is also very effective in a browser.

Thank you for listening. Brian.

Climb the Right Ladder

briancarter — Mon, 25 Mar 2013 13:12:47 -0200

It's better to be at the bottom of the ladder you want to climb than the top of the one you don't.

Html.Partial and HTML.Action

briancarter — Sun, 24 Mar 2013 10:39:32 -0200

Terminology and how different groups/companies give names to coding elements increase the time required to contribute for new team members. I was helping someone out today – and they changed the MVC terms for Partial and Action.

Html.Partial
Render a Partial View without hitting a controller action first.

Use Html.Partial when you are rendering static content or,
If you are going to pass data from the ViewModel that is being sent to the main view

Html.Action
Html.Action Call a Controller Action, which may return a view/partial view (or may not, it could return JSON, or other things).

Use Html.Action when you actually need to retrieve additional data from the server to populate the partial view

Basically, if is static, use Html.Partial. If dynamic, model independent data, use Html.RenderAction(). There are probably more scenarios, but this will give you a good idea of where/how to go.

Also, I would use RenderPartial and RenderAction in most cases, just because these methods output their content into the same TextWriter object as used in the current template. In contrast to this, @Html.Partial and @Html.Action methods create their own TextWriter instances each time and buffer all their content into memory.

@Html.Action() – Invokes the specified child action method and returns the result as an HTML string.

@{ Html.RenderAction(); } – Invokes the specified child action method and renders the result inline in the parent view.

Many terms to clarify in MVC

You've probably heard this one......but it cracked me up!

briancarter — Sat, 23 Mar 2013 09:24:56 -0200

Five cannibals get appointed as programmers in an IT company. During the welcoming ceremony the boss says: "You`re all part of our team now. You can earn good money here, and you can go to the company canteen for something to eat. So don`t trouble the other employees. The cannibals promise not to trouble the other employees.

A month later the boss returns and says: "You`re all working very hard, and I`m very satisfied with all of you. However, one of our cleaners has disappeared. Do any of you know what happened to her?" The cannibals disavowed all knowledge of the missing cleaner.

After the boss left, the leader of the cannibals says to the others: "Which of you idiots ate the cleaner?" A hand raises hesitantly, to which the leader of the cannibals says: "You fool! For four weeks we`ve been eating Architects, Team Leads, and Scrum Masters so no one would notice anything, and you have to go and eat the cleaner!"